After finishing Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, I dived into his collection of essays, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones.
Ok, so this daily blog writing thing has not gone so well, since my resolution.
Everyone remembers VHS don’t they? Remember when the video stores were all VHS? You know, the format before DVD? Also, quite a few people have home videos recorded into VHS-C (compact VHS) tapes or 8mm. You can of course go to a video transfer service that can do it for you, but it would not be cost effective if you have a lot of video tape. Note that it wouldn’t be cost effective to transfer VHS feature films, it would be actually cheaper if you consider your time to actually buy the DVD – not only is it easier, the quality is way better. Unless of course if you have a favourite movie (starring a young Virginia Madsen 24 years ago!) that is never coming to DVD (apparently).
When I first purchased the Playstation 3, I had an old Apple Wireless Pro Keyboard (the all white one, not the new aluminum thin ones) that I thought I could put to good use during Internet browsing sessions. At first, I thought that maybe my batteries were weak when pairing with the Playstation 3, as it kept coming up with errors. Frustrated, I abandoned all hope of using the keyboard with the Playstation 3, and hooked up a USB one instead. It was quite annoying, being tethered by the USB cable a few feet from my TV instead of sitting further away relaxed on the sofa.
No, it’s not a superband consisting of musicians from Aerosmith and Soundgarden, it’s Kevin Kelly’s site, Cool Tools. As its name implies, it is a treasure trove of cool gadgets that may or not be considered “techy” enough to be in Engadget. Here are some of the ones I like:
The LongPen seems to be a great device at first glance, but what about the social aspect of book signing? Imagine this, “Margaret Atwood, famous author, here to sign your book, but oh, she’s not actually here”. Do people actually go to book signings to get the autograph? Or is the primary purpose to meet the author? Also, this blurs the line of “authentication” of an autograph, is an autograph diminished if it was not done in person? Not that anyone can really tell the difference aside from having the latent fingerprints of the author on the book!
Good old analog methods, just like they used to do! No “Hollywood” style guy in a manhole outside the target, “hacking” the alarm system, and the like. Sometimes being in this (almost) all digital world, the classic methods are more exciting – to write about, at least.
For the past month, my wife, my sister, my mom, and two of my cousins have all departed from Vancouver to Singapore, and all on separate flights! That’s not the remarkable part – the remarkable part is in the packing.
As you can see, the last entry for this blog was about half a year ago. Of course the standard answer is “I’ve been too busy… bla … bla … bla…” but the truth is I have TONS of drafts just waiting to be published.
