August 18, 2008
August 16, 2008
California License Plate 2GAT123
Here is my “find out something new every day” for today courtesy of a post Dangerous Bill (Penrose) made to misc.writing.
Read the Wikipedia entry about California license plate 2GAT123.
(I knew about 555-0100 to 555-0199, but this license plate biz is news to me and news to his nibs as well.)
August 15, 2008
Film Terms and Definitions: chyron
Maybe the next time I have to look up chyron I’ll remember what it means.
(Three’s the charm.)
The Obama Campaign’s 40pp rebuttal to Jerome Corsi’s book
Unfit for Publication [PDF] – the Obama campaign’s 40pp rebuttal to the “facts” in Jerome Corsi’s book.
Reminds me a bit of Usenet. If someone spouts a bunch of stuff and you can see there’s at least 30% of it that’s wrong right off the bat, you go looking to see what other “facts” might be wrong.
Loads.
Corsi seems an odd duck.
Perhaps, though, I should volunteer as copy editor when the campaign is writing up these lengthy, smear-fighting essays.
e.g.
p2 As you might expect from the book’s shoddy foundation, many of its claims are also completely false. The Obama’s never gave a million dollars to a Kenyan politician.
misplaced apostrophe Maybe it started out as “Obama’s campaign” and morphed into “The Obama’s” without needed tweaking of punctuation.
p5 Obama Writes That His Father’s Third Wife Refused To Life With His First Wife
live
And so forth and on. I tuckered out about page nineteen, but I’ve saved the PDF and I’ll continue reading later.
August 10, 2008
new video: "Republicans and military men on John McCain"
This election has the internet (columns, blogs, newsgroups, sites, videos, commentary, Web2.0 electioneering) playing a huge part, for those who use the internet.
And even for those who don’t, if they read the papers or watch TV.
McCain’s ad comparing Obama to Paris and Britney didn’t have much play in paid air time, but it was on the Web getting a zillion views and MSM picked it up and talked about it and wondered about it and speculated about it and suddenly a fairly small media budget got a factor of n more traction than it would otherwise.
But it’s not just the videos produced by professionals and paid for by campaigns or major political parties. I am stunned by the brilliance of some of the non-campaign videos that are popping up. (And stupefied by the webisodes that were shot of John Edwards and paid for by his campaign, but that’s another story. …)
The younger nib grew up making videos and belonging to movie/video clubs and competing in movie/video competitions from his teen years as did many of the Y generation.
Those years of practice show up when professionals donate their work to the cause: will.i.am’s Obama ‘Yes, we can’ video and Paris for President.
Those years of practice show up too in the amateur videos made for YouTube distribution.
This morning I came across a link to “Republicans and military men on John McCain” in the comments tail of a Huffington post. Visuals. Captures. Background music. Amazing work from someone who seems to be the same age as the younger nib.
Director: Aaron Hodgins Davis, Skidmore. Uploaded 31Jul2008.
Orwell’s Diaries
The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.
Orwell’s ‘domestic’ diaries begin on 9th August 1938/2008; his ‘political’ diaries (which are further categorised as ‘Morocco’, ‘Pre-war’ and ‘Wartime’) begin on 7th September 1938/2008.
The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them. Where there are original spelling errors, they are indicated by a ° following the offending word.
[via Laughing Squid]
August 9, 2008
Found at Looney’s — Matt’s video
Watch Matt do his silly dance around the world from Thimpu to Timbuktu to the Giant’s Causeway to Rio.
Like Looney, I’d never seen this before, although it’s one of those viral things that swept the Web three years back. Where was I? Obviously not where Matt was filming his clips.
Looney said this was a happy vid and it is, but it also made me tear up a bit. All those places. All those people. Every one linked by Matt Harding and his silly dance.
Update: I figured what the tearing up was about. Matt and his dance reminds me of the younger nib, who will be “away” until June 2010 — dancing, like Matt, with people he meets along the way.
Update2: An earlier Where the Hell is Matt? and another.
Strothman Agency
The Strothman Agency (of which I’ve written before) dropped a line to say
“The Strothman Agency is moving. As of July 28th, we will be located at 6 Beacon Street, Suite 810, Boston, MA 02108. This will also be our new mailing address.”
August 8, 2008
LawyerWorldLand: GOV. McGREEVY’S DIVORCE JUDGMENT IS POSTED ONLINE! OBOY!
LawyerWorldLand: GOV. McGREEVY'S DIVORCE JUDGMENT IS POSTED ONLINE! OBOY!
Archer gives a summary of the divorce judgment which is online (lengthy PDF) for all to peruse.
The summary is Classic Archer.
And, yes, I trundled off to read the PDF (well, not thoroughly and not all of it) and Archer did indeed capture the spirit of the Judge’s decision.
Yipes.
(I confess that I’d forgotten who McGreevy was and then it was, oh, yeah. New Jersey. That Governor. The long suffering wife. The confessions of homosexuality. The aide who swore there’d been Friday night threesomes for years. Now I remember. Lovely.)
August 7, 2008
Twitter StreamGraphs
Oooh. Pretty! Then take one of the ribbons and click on it.
Say, search for “Obama” and click on “jobs” and see how the ribbon runs through it, what the tweets say, &c. and forth.
If you check “towse” (why would you?), you can see tweets I’ve deleted and re-written and you can get a feel for just how compul^H^H^H^Hnscientious I am.