Category - Digest

Omnivore’s Delight?

Really? Chicken-flavoured vegetarian ham??

It’s fine with me if vegetarians don’t want to eat meat.

But why do they insist on naming their food after it?

Why don’t they just call it “Processed Plants” or “Packaged Edible Flowers” ?

Photo source unknown; found it on the Facebook. And the guy whose page it showed up on, he doesn’t know where it came from either. That’s why I try to put a © watermark on all the stuff I post there, for whatever good it does.

And You Think Photoshop Is Deceptive?

Check this out:

 

I can’t tell from the YouTube page what the software is, but it’s the most impressive portrait (and video?) retouching software I’ve seen yet.

Screen Shot 2014-01-24 at 2.28.27 PMWait a second… maybe I’m the one being deceived here.

In mean, I can’t even tell for sure if this is software… maybe it’s just a music video for a band called “Boggie” and this is their song “Parfum.” Maybe the vocalist is singing to us (in a language I don’t recognize) about the evils of photo-retouching.

For once, Google wasn’t much help.

I know… I’ll go check The Onion…

If annybody else who knows the secret… post a comment, please.

– – – – – –

Update 140126: I know the answer now. Popular Photo has disclosed that the video is, indeed, a music video for a Hungarian pop singer named Boggie. So me – and the friend who sent me the link in the first place, among the the fools.

You would think that if such software actually exists, I of all people would know about it by now.

What I’ve Been Listening To Lately – 140123 Edition

This album by Pat Metheny is perfect “whistling while you work” music:

I’ve been listening to it via Spotify because, well, that’s what I listen to mostly these days – because their library is so much larger than my own (by several orders of magnitude) and because the embed codes Spotify supplies make it easier to share what I’ve been listening to than, say, iTunes.

The fact of the matter is, I purchased this CD long and have it already burned into my iTunes Library. So the good news for Pat Metheny is that I’ve already paid for the CD, now he’s getting more cash from me to listen to the Spotify stream. Fractions of a penny, I know, but still, it’s more than he would have gotten if I was just listening via iTunes.

Oh and, yes, I know all about the new BeatsMusic service and I’m anxious to try it out, but Beats is built on the old MOG service; I was a paid MOG subscriber until about a year ago, but my free account still exists, and it’s entangled with the Beats login protocols. It recognizes my User ID – it even let me reset the password – but Beats crashes when I try to log in. Maybe I’ll have something to say about it if they ever figure out how to let me in the door.

Mayhem At The Movies and The Unsuspension of Disbelief

nogunsThis story about the guy who wound up dead after texting in a movie theater made the rounds of the social media networks last week. I let it go by the first couple of times I saw it. It seemed implausible at first, but now that I have digested the heart-wrenching details, it seems all too familiar.

I don’t know how you feel about people who light up their cell phones in a darkened theater, but my first thought was: “that coulda been me…”

Not the guy getting shot. The guy doing the shooting.

Because I’m the one who has too frequently had to ask the asshole sitting near me to put their cell phone away during a movie. Read More

Welcome to the “Weekly Digest”

Screen Shot 2014-01-21 at 6.16.42 PMThis is for the vast legion of subscribers to my e-mail list.

A couple of months ago, you started receiving an e-mail notification whenever I’ve posted something new to this blog/site – typically once a week.

Starting now, I intend to post a lot more to this site. Rather than giving all of my best stuff away on Facebook, etc., I’m going to post it here first, and then distribute to my social media networks.

So starting at about noon today – Wednesday January 22, 2014 – you’re going to be receiving one weekly missive from me with links to the seven or so best things I have posted in the previous week. Some of the items will be links and comments; hopefully there will be a weekly ~1200 word essay, you’ll get some photos, and maybe a link to some new music. Whatever strikes my fancy during the week and makes it through the Wednesday filter.

If you are unclear what you are subscribing to, read this.

Is Net Neutrality Dead?

LIstening to this excellent discussion of the issues around “Net Neutrality. It’s amusing to hear the guy from VerizonCast going through verbal gymnastics to make the case that more corporate control of the web is in the end-user’s interest. His organization is called “Free State Foundation.” A loving nod to Orwell…
http://ift.tt/1heemUM

Things We Take For Granted

finger
You really can’t appreciate how much you rely on the very tip of your primary-hand index finger until you nick it with the super-sharp blade of a brand-new food* processor, and can’t use it for a couple of days to swipe or type…

*the original version of this post had the word typed as “foot-processor.” See what I mean?

TechHive: Google is creepy, but you shouldn’t automatically fear it invading your Nest

This is a pretty even handed treatment of the Google/Nest acquisition, despite the seemingly inflammatory opening: “Let’s get it out of the way right at the top: Google is a creepy company that’s only getting creepier with its hideous camera glasses and driverless ghost cars… it’s a creepy exercise anytime you sit and think about all the data you just hand over to this face-cam-wearing company on a daily basis…. But once all the jokes on Twitter die down, this is a super smart move on Google’s part…”