Total Nonsense

When I saw Superman Returns (which is a film I highly recommend) I had no idea at all that the actor in this scene wasn't just a guy dropped into the shot somehow. But as this fascinating clip shows, he's been totally computer generated by the fine folks over at Sony Imageworks.

Youtube embedding has been really spotty for me of late, so go here to view the video.

Heres another pretty amazing clip from the same film showing how they more or less much brought Marlon Brando back from the dead. It seems that there was dialog recorded in '78 for the original Superman film that they wanted to use in the new film, but that they had "audio only" tracks. Thus, they had to take other footage of Brando and animate the "audio only" tracks with the 3D virtual actor they created.

One thing that's always bothered me about most FM radio stations is there incredibly narrow play lists. But it seems that a newer concept has been gaining strength in radio-land of late. The new format (called "Jack FM") eschews disc jockeys/news/weather/etc. and offers a relatively huge and diverse play list compared to what one would normally get on the FM band. (1200 songs vs. 300). It's interesting to me that they're willing to engage in the practice of playing widely divergent songs back to back, a practice that was thought before to anger people.

These days, my patience with "wacky" morning dj's has waned considerably and I'd gladly listen to any station that offers up a nice variety of music, leaving these "comedians" at home.

Wired News: 'Imitation IPod' Invades Radio

Defined by wide-ranging playlists and unusual combinations of songs from different genres and eras, Jack has been likened to an iPod set on shuffle. Jack is at the forefront of what is known in the radio industry as "variety hits" or "adult hits," programming philosophies centered on the belief that listeners want more variety and less repetition, but also like it when artists from completely different decades and genres are played back to back (think Pet Shop Boys followed by Mötley Crüe followed by Matchbox Twenty).

I added 3 watercolors and 2 oil paintings to my lovely wife's art section.

Check 'em out!

Ah, finally, some confirmation that one of my all time favorite animated shows will indeed be coming back from the dead.

Fox did their level best to kill this show while they had it because they simply didn't "get it". And the fact that creator Matt Groening owned it lock stock and barrel (which can't be said of the Simpsons) meant the show was less profitable for them. So they killed it by constantly preempting it, refusing to show all the episodes in a given season and basically never allowing it to find an audience.The show was a great success with excellent DVD sales and ratings of re-runs on the Cartoon Channel have been stellar. So the money men have opened up their checkbooks and are now giving us a minimum of 13 (perhaps more) episodes.

BACK TO THE 'FUTURAMA' By DON KAPLAN - New York Post Online Edition: Entertainment

June 22, 2006 -- 'FUTURAMA" is officially back from the dead. The quirky animated show from "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening was canceled by Fox about two years ago, but will return with at least 13 new episodes on Comedy Central by 2008.

Well, thanks to The Ghost Hours one can now hear a recording that Houdini did immortalizing his presentation of his famous "Water Torture Cell" escape. His voice was charimsatic (as I expected), but also had a sing song quality to it that somewhat reminds me of carnival barkers and street hustlers. My suggestion here is to load the video clip (flash based) and then fast forward past all the very dull stuff with the fellow and his ventriloquists dummy to get to the good stuff (i.e. the Houdini material).

..and predict some pretty egregious failure for this particular business venture.

These folks are going to offer Disney movies for download online, yet charge full DVD price for an extremely limited ability to use said download.

How limited you might ask?

The price of the download is expected to be $19.95,they cannot be watched on a normal DVD player. which is in line with current DVD prices; however, although the downloaded files can be burned to DVD to watch on computers,

Yes, you read correctly. They expect you to pay full dvd price for a download (which likely won't even be full dvd quality) that can't even be played on a standard dvd player! They expect you to either view it on your computer monitor, or copy them to "portable devices" via Microsoft's kludgey "media platform".

I have nothing against the idea of downloading movies on a commercial basis, but this is the best they can come up with? Well, maybe a few of these ventures need to fail before someone figures out the right way to offer video downloads at a reasonable price. And no, $1.99 for a single episode of a tv show (as one will pay on itunes) doesn't seem too reasonable to me.

A while back, juggler Chris Bliss got a lot of exposure via a video clip of him juggling to an old Beatles tune. The group "Fatboy Slim" evidently became aware of his viral video success and hired him to do the same synchronized juggling for their new song "That Old Pair of Jeans".

I know many of us are sometimes reluctant to use or day to day credit/debit card for on line purchases. It's no fun to have one's card charged fraudulently. Little did I know that the major credit/debit card vendors out there have created the concept of the temporary credit card. This works just like a branded credit card and is taken everywhere a seller would take a normal card. But the difference is that the card works sort of like a gift card. It's loaded with a certain amount of cash and cannot be used for more than that amount. And if something does happen, and the card is charged more than it should be, it seems most of the big credit card companies offer the same protection one would get from their normal cards.

Here's a nice article comparing various solutions solutions to this that I thought you folks out there might find interesting.

American Express is going a bit further , offering the ability to have disposable cards that are used with an anonymous internet connection. In other words, not only is the card protected (being disposable and all), but the connection itself has a layer of encryption above and beyond what would normally be there.

Here is a nice site exposing some often hard to find 800 Numbers.

In this case, customer service numbers for Amazon, Ebay, Paypal, etc.

Here's a small sample of what this site has. Well worth a visit if you're having trouble finding one of these!

I found the following site which I believe could be genuinely useful to a lot of folks out there. They rate all kinds of foods (including restaurant food) via three simple graphs rating each food in terms of healthiness / weight loss / weight gain.

Nutrition Facts & Calorie Counter

NutritionData (ND) provides a complete nutrient analysis for any food or recipe, and helps you select foods that best match your dietary needs.