Exactly 8 months ago today my truck’s odometer rolled to 266,666. That’s pretty impressive.
![167225_10150089989886249_647596248_6567086_8240945_n1[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.monkeyinfinitum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/167225_10150089989886249_647596248_6567086_8240945_n11.jpg)
Today it rolled to 277,777 🙂 more impressive!
Even more impressive: This means that this year I’ve averaged 1,388.875 miles per month. I’m really happy about this because last year I was averaging between 2,500 and 2,800 miles per month.
This means it’ll take longer for me to reach my million-mile goal for the truck but that’s ok. Spending $334 a month on fuel is better than $600 a month 🙂
As I get older, with more experience, I see that news is like time. No, not Time the pretend-news magazine, ‘time’ as in ‘what time is it’ and ‘are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet’.
![vector-newspaper-prev1267447307ZPl5P41[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.monkeyinfinitum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/vector-newspaper-prev1267447307ZPl5P411.jpg)
Attention to news is a relative thing, unique to every individual, just as the awareness of time is keenly attuned to every one of us, fitted like a fingerprint on our hands.
What’s news to one is noise to another, or even not present at all. Just as time appears to slow down or speed up for a given person depending upon the circumstances, a news item’s importance grows and shrinks for a person depending upon the circumstances.
Given this, the “5 w’s” (who, what, when, where, why) of a given event is important only if the eye of the beholder thinks it’s important.
Today’s selection of news has changed drastically in the lifetimes of those who’ve ever actually used rabbit-ears, so the possibility of finding “important” news has increased to a level that was only dreamt of by science-fiction writers in the days of those telescopic tinny things.
Old TV with rabbit-ear antennae. Actually the TV’s back then had two antennae physically attached to them – one for ‘VHF’ (Very High Frequency’) channels and another for ‘UHF’ (‘Ultra High Frequency’) channels. When one changed the channel, one also had to usually move the antennae around to get a clearer picture. So it was actually a good thing that those TV’s didn’t have remote controls.
Today’s information world means we can choose when, where and what we wish to know about – a big difference from having to wait until 6 and 10 pm to get the dose of TV news, with a newspaper in the morning and possibly in the evening on the way home from work. With smartphones we can even get news pushed to our pockets as it is being published.
In the days of rabbit-eared TV’s we had radio news – a medium older than TV – which was very close to today’s smartphones with regards to having an omnipresent information channel to hand, but news broadcast was limited to the channel and time restrictions of the broadcasters. And it wasn’t until the late 1980’s-early 1990’s that we had affordable units that one could actually comfortably carry in a pocket (remember hip-hop 80s-style ‘boom-boxes’, all?).
gnarly dude, totally rad
For radio news, the selection, like TV and print, was limited to the editor’s choice of items, so even though we could tune into an all-news channel on the AM spectrum it was a hit-and-miss effort regarding getting news about our actual interests. Fr international or long-distance news we either received it filtered through a local radio station physically present in our area, or invest in expensive ham radio equipment if we wanted to listen in to far-away places during real-time coverage. No, not ham as in bacon, ham as in “amateurish” or “incompetent” (i.e. “ham actor”) – a popular label spread about which seems to be mainstream media’s attempt to discredit news sources outside of their domain.
One nice thing about Ham Radio culture and followers is that the genre spawns books like “22 Radio and Receiver Projects for the Evil Genius” which was the closest thing we had back then to hacker technology (please see my comments about “Hackers vs ‘Evil Internet Bad Guy'” on my “About The Monkey” page).
So today, we can select news of our choosing – still limited within the scope of the publisher and presenting medium and technology, but as close as we can get to actually being in a given place an time when an event occurs. That’s a very powerful thing for news consumers and very scary for news hunter-gatherers whose job it is to grab attention away from ‘puter and mobile device screens.
If you’re interested at all about who and what is controlling information presented as ‘news’ in the popular media outlets, the article I’m linking to, and the site it is based from is a very good source for this. type of information It’s not sensationalistic or conspiratorial – rather, it’s well thought-out and covers a lot of ground.
I especially like the concept presented in the article relating to a possible future of news collection and dispersion:
What may be more likely is that a new ecosystem could spring out of current networks of professional and amateur news organizations, using the cheap or free infrastructure of the Internet to create traction.
Tom Glaisyer, a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation, for example, envisions the emergence of a connected world of public service publishing based around libraries, community groups, and journalism schools, many of whom are already active participants in publishing to local communities. Such a vision relies on the idea that the majority of newsgathering will fall to more dispersed sources, some of them professional journalists and many of them not. “These will be new information institutions, and look very different from what we had in the past,” says Glaisyer. Context and analysis might as easily come from experts in the field publishing their own material as from news organizations.
Read more here at the original link from the Columbia Journalism Review, entitled “Signal and Noise”, written by Emily Bell: http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/signal_and_noise.php?page=1
you can tuna tuba but you can’t tuna fish.
Poor Barney needs help. Ayep, me too 😀
Hooo boy look at all that sun. Every day is sunday here in this part of the country.
Well, at least Bad Translator was able to read between the lines 🙂
Original text:
“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
…10 translations later Google gives us:
“I can be strong except in the plane, my family will not be less than $ 250,000 in revenue per year. No taxes on income and profits, not capital gains tax, in lieu of taxes.”
Make your own Bad Translation here: http://www.ackuna.com/badtranslator
Ah haha the King is no more. And a good thing, too.
![Creepy_King_Bed1[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.monkeyinfinitum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Creepy_King_Bed11.png)
Given everyone’s visceral response to the Creepster, I can only imagine the concept was sold to Burger King powers-that-be-signing-contracts at a very very high level. And those contracts were probably legally binding for a set period of time.
That’s the only reason I can think of as to why Plastic Vouyeurman has been around this long 🙂
It’s not just me who thinks this de-throning was a good thing – at the links below are a collection of
But a word of support (sort of) here:
I’m not a fan of Christine O’Donnell. Neither am I a detractor. I simply haven’t taken the time to find out about her.
However, a story that came across my news stream got my attention. The news source was rather sensationalistic, stating that she’d burst off an interview with Piers Morgan on 17-Aug-2011, upset by the interviewer’s sexually-focused questions. I did some searches to get some better (i.e. less emotional) sources of information and came across a follow-up interview.
If one watches the follow-up interview (linked to below) , one would see there was no emotional outburst and rushing off the set, but a rather professional response to someone who has no intent of staying on point.
When she asked the host if he didn’t think he was being a “a little rude”, and the subsequent dialogue between them, I saw no tantrum-throwing and certainly no “storming off the set” in the closure of the original interview.
Particularly telling is the question she asks of the host, (and I’m directly quoting) “Well, don’t you think that if you’re a host, if I say, ‘This is what I want to talk about’, that is what we should address? ”
He pauses, then responds, “Umm, not really, no”.
It was at THAT point she knew it was time to go – not because she wanted to avoid answering a particular question, but because she knew she had been baited-and-switched.
Granted, she knew who she was dealing with when she went into the interview, which is probably why she DIDN’T have an emotional outburst but responded firmly and quickly. Kudos to her, regardless of her political stance.
I’d have walked out as well, particularly if it was true – as she states in the follow-up interview – that he was overrunning the time slot by continuing to stray off-target and causing her to be late for an already-booked meeting.
These guys are what would be the offspring if The Beatles and The Monkees had ever given birth to a music group.
…using the “he inherited a mess” logic, we should all blame geo. washington for the right grand state our country is in.
It was him what done us in, along with that rapscallion “thomas jefferson” fella he was seen hanging around with.
Don’t forget to blame benny franklin, he was a co-conspirator too.
Fools, all of them. What we need is a right proper King to tell us what to do.
Or at least get him to assign some ministers of something to manage them taxes they’ve been collectin’. Someone up there knows what to do with all that money, lord knows they’ve taken enuff o the stuff.
Hm. The problem with using SEF Logic (“It’s someone else’s fault, don’t blame me”) is that this strengthens the SEP Field (“Someone Else’s Problem” Field) around said problem. Once the SEP Field has been put in place, nothing is done to fix the problem since no one can see it.
Photos courtesy of http://www.history.com/photos/american-revolution-continental-congress/photo5
See, now when i pull people over using my handy-dandy “Starsky & Hutch” magneto-coplight-on-the-roof trick, I can record people’s reactions.
Starting with that Blue Bell Ice Cream truck.
“I’ll need to take some of this back to the precinct as evidence, sir. Please hand over the cases of mint ice cream now.”
Just look how happy he is. So full of smiley joy.
Makes you just want to beep his nose.
This is a post inspired by the demise of the Facebook app – discussed on Last.fm “Does this app really work?
——
Last.fm (http://www.last.fm) used to have a fully-functional Facebook app that allowed one to link one’s Last.fm account to a Facebook account. Depending upon one’s settings for the app, a link would be posted to the Facebook wall whenever one ‘loved’ a song from Last.fm player or smartphone app.
That was nice, but what was nicer was that every time one ‘loved’ a song, the artist was added to one’s Facebook’s ‘Arts and Entertainment’ section in the FB profile.
Alas no more.
The Last.fm app developers had the Facebook app located on their website here: http://apps.facebook.com/lastfmmusic but the app is kaput. Sadface.
I got that link above from Last.fm’s blog page at http://blog.last.fm/2007/05/31/lastfm-on-facebook which is where I originally found the app in the first place a couple of years ago.
The Last.fm app used to add new entries automagically.
Funny. And Silly
It helps to master a look of simultaneous worry and anger on one’s face.
This is especially useful when walking into a convenience store in a bad part of town.
The bad guys don’t know if you are crazier than they are and will leave you alone.
You do get some attention from the security guards and store keepers, but just leave your hands in plain sight and no one gets hurt 🙂
![hugh_laurie[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.monkeyinfinitum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/hugh_laurie1.jpg)
For those wanting to know what I use for picture scanning and manipulation (and other stuffs), here’s my voodoo mojokit:
I use a HP Officejet 6500 All-in-One Printer – E709a, but any will do really, as long as it supports “Twain” scanning.
The scanner you purchase will come with drivers and etc. that control the scanning process. If the scanner comes with “Twain-compliant” drivers, you can override the scanner’s file saving features with more exciting and sexy options. Well yes, software can be exciting and sexy and at the same time doesn’t have to be something to hide from your spouse. But only if you’re realllly nerdy like me.
There’s an interesting history behind the term “Twain” as it pertains to scanners at this site: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213232,00.html.
This software Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) is massively cool if you are interested in managing electronic pictures.
I’ll focus on the bits that relate to scanned pictures instead of going off on random tangents. But that’s no real guarantee, though, as a random tangent is, by definition, random. As is this aside you’re reading at the moment…
Once this software has been installed, you tell it what is your Twain-compliant scanner, like so:
Menu options “File”, “Select TWAIN Source”
My scanner came with not one but TWO Twain drivers. Why? I dunno. I picked one and it worked, so I’m not asking any more questions…
Having set this up, you’ll want to set up a location for the scanned photos, as seen below. I’ll explain the naming convention in a second but you can see a sample here:
After gazing upon all this beauty, one might ask, “How did he name all these files? Did he have to type in the names by hand or copy/paste and modify the names?”
The answer is, “No I’m far too lazy for that, I set up my handy dandy freeware app to do this for me, like this…”
Menu options “File, “Acquire/Batch Scanning”
Every scanner’s driver software is unique to the scanner, so I can’t advise on how your scanner works to capture the image. I’ve shown an example from my HP scanner. The end result though will be sent to Irfanview, which will automatically save and name the file as per your settings set above.
Yay! It’s so easy and eventually becomes fun. Hours and hours and hours and hours of fun.
Boo! I am afraid I’ll lose my hours of work.
Can I copy these to CD/DVD? Yes! But don’t. CD/DVD for photos are as reliable as potato chips and not nearly as much fun when they go crunch.
Do yourself a favour and get a good, inexpensive mega-gigabyte USB or network drive. These will tell you when they start to fail, unlike CD/DVDs which will simply smile and laugh at your vain attempts to get any usable data off them in the future when they get scratched or simply get tired and stop working.
CD/DVDs use a gooey substance holds ‘bumps’ in place as the laser ‘writing’ takes place. Eventually the goo gets ‘tired’ and loses its shape, meaning the laser in the CD/DVD writer can’t read the morse-code-like bumps. So even a perfectly happy, unscratched CD/DVD will fail over time. Especially if the data on it is extremely precious 🙂 More info than I care to read about can be found here: http://www.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm
If you’re really really really interested in archiving family photos to CD/DVD, you’ll want to read up on the topic at this site: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html or at this site: http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
I use a Western Digital networked hard drive for my backups. Any good quality drive will do – I’d go for a USB mega-gigabyte drive if you’re not interested in getting a dedicated network drive.
More info about the drive can be found here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=270
So do you have to manually copy-and-paste each file onto the backup file drive?
Not if you are lazy like me! Yay for laziness!
I use Yadis! freeware file backup software (http://www.codessentials.com/products/yadisbackup.html) which runs in the background once I set it up. I select the directory to monitor and the software automagically syncs and/or copies new/changed files without my intervention.
And yes, ! is actually in the Yadis! name. I’m not that excited about exclamation points!!!
And that’s all the magic I have for today.
…thank you veterans and active servicemen/women for your dedication and protection…
