Flickr Badge Revisited
Thursday, November 15, 2007 - 09:38 AM
Well, I ended up switching to the HTML Flickr badge due to the interference with the Lightbox effect. I tried updating to the latest version of Lightbox to see if it would fix the problem, since one of the revision notes said that it keeps Flash in the background, but it didn’t. I’d rather have the Flash badge, it’s just so much nicer, but what can I do? I’m going to write to the author of Lightbox, but who knows if I’ll get a response.
Creation Museum
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - 04:34 PM
Admit it, when you heard about it you wanted to go and see what it was all about. But you didn’t want to fork over $20 to these nut-jobs just to get a glimpse at their insanity.
Well, here’s someone who went, so that you wouldn’t have to:
John Scalzi’s trip to the Creation Museum
While perfectly safe for viewing at work, if you plan on reading through the comments (which I highly recommend), you’re going to have a really hard time stifling the laughter.
Enjoy!
Flickr Badge Issue
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - 11:34 AM
I just noticed a weird issue with having the Flickr “badge” over in the left column. If you go to one of the pages where I use the Lightbox effect (like the Posters page), and click on a graphic (initiating the lightbox), the Flickr badge stays on top of the lightbox! Does anyone out there know enough javascript to fix this? I’d really hate to get rid of the Flickr badge because of this.
Don’t Worry
Monday, November 12, 2007 - 12:53 PM
I had an interesting time brewing over the weekend. I stopped by the LHBS* to pick up the new Brewer’s Best Holiday Ale kit. (It’s a higher gravity spiced ale. If you’ve had any number of micro-brew “Christmas” ales, you know the style.)
So, Saturday afternoon I set about brewing the kit. It was pretty straight forward to begin with, but I ran into some problems later in the process. For some reason, when adding the spices I threw them directly into the boiling wort. I don’t know why I made this mistake, since I have a mesh “hop” bag that I’ve used for spices before. When it came time to transfer the wort into the fermenter, I had a problem. I couldn’t just pour it in, like I normally do, because of the orange peel floating in the wort. I tried pouring it through a colander, but the residue from the hop pellets kept clogging the holes in the colander. I kept having to un-clog the holes, or try pouring the wort gently over the edge so that I could pick out the orange peel bits before they made their way into the ferment (some of them did).
The whole thing was a major pain. Plus, one of the big dangers that brewers face is contaminating the batch. Foreign microbes can do bad things to fermenting beer.
Sunday, when I came back from rehearsal with Call it Karma, I checked on the fermenting batch. The top (plastic lid) of the fermenter was bulging up from pressure inside. The airlock was clogged. I quickly yanked the airlock out to relieve the pressure (although, I wish I had grabbed a towel to hold over it first, as foam from the krausen sprayed out and onto the wall of the closet where I keep the fermenter). After the initial “Phhwhhooshhh!!!” of air and foam, foam continued to slowly come out of the hole. I grabbed my siphon hose (after quickly mixing up some sanitizer and cleaning the hose) and rigged a “blow-off” tube.
The funny thing was, after I all of these problems, I wasn’t the slightest bit worried. A few months ago, things like this would have had me panicking and running to the online forums asking “Did I ruin my beer?”
They have a saying in the forums: “Relax, don’t worry, and have a homebrew.”
Basically, if you follow general cleaning practices, and keep your equipment clean and sanitized, it’s really hard to ruin a batch of beer. I’ve only had a couple of batches not turn out right. One was because the temperature during the fermentation got too high, the other was because I was experimenting with the recipe (although, some people did like that particular batch, I wasn’t that fond of it).
*Local Home Brew Supply
Next Great Band
Monday, November 05, 2007 - 10:27 AM
Okay, so I have to come clean and admit that I found a reality show that I actually like. Nobody’s perfect.
Anyways, if you haven’t caught it yet, you might want to check out The Next Great American Band. Why? Because the bands on there that are good are really effin’ good! This really isn’t just another “Idol” knock-off (even if it’s produced by the same people), there’s some real talent here.
I missed Friday’s show, so I didn’t find out who was eliminated until I checked the website this morning. I can’t say that I have any arguments with the choice of the two that were eliminated, neither of them made that great of an impression on me. But, I was kind of hoping that Denver and the Mile High Orchestra would be the first to get the boot. Followed by Light of Doom.
Denver and his crew are good musicians. Really, really good. But, they are nothing more than a wedding band. I’m not saying that to put them down; they could make a fantastic living just playing weddings, parties and corporate events. But that’s where they belong. They simply don’t belong on this show. They are not “The Next Great American Band”. C’mon! Brian Setzer already tried to bring “big band” music back into the American mainstream. It didn’t work. It was kind of popular for about five minutes, then it went away. Do these guys really think they can be the “next big thing” trying to capitalize on something that was a flash-in-the-pan fad a decade ago?
As far as Light of Doom are concerned, they’re nothing more than a novelty act. Which is too bad for them, because they really are very technically skilled musicians, with remarkable stage presence. The problem is, if they were to have an kind of success at this point, it would be brief. Nobody is going to take them seriously (again, novelty act). These guys could be a successful band, someday. They just need to wait until they are old enough to be taken seriously. They can spend the time getting even better at their instruments, and gaining some better taste in music. They need to drop the crappy 80’s metal. They’re better musicians than that. It just enforces the novelty act aspect to them - 12 year olds playing crappy 80’s metal. It doesn’t matter how skilled they are at doing that, who’s going to take it seriously? They need to go out and buy some Hendrix, Zeppelin, and maybe even some jazz records and learn what real music sounds like.
Who do I think is going to win? I have no idea - remember, there’s no accounting for taste. However, my opinion is that it should either be Franklin Bridge or Sixwire. They are easily the two best bands in the competition. Franklin Bridge, besides being good musicians and incredibly tight, have an unique, cross-genre sound (if you haven’t heard them, think of a mixture of modern R&B combined with 70’s funk and good old guitar driven rock). Sixwire, even though their sound is a little too on the “country” side of “county rock” for my tastes, are just phenomenal musicians.
We’ll see what happens.