Tiny Humans update #8: live capture?: "
Angus sez: Yet another development in the Flores Hobbits story. Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa claims to have captured one last month...

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago. 'They said she was very little and very pretty,' he says, holding his hand at waist height. 'Some people saw her very close up.'

Link (Previous tiny humans updates here.)

- Mark Frauenfelder
"

(Via Boing Boing.)

More recent Hobbit sightings.

My previous questions stand. Would we let them vote?

MarsEdit 1.0 came out today, and aside from the lack of (promised in post 1.0) atom posting support (required for titles on blogger), it rocks.

You haven't experienced the merits of offline blogging until you've started composing an entry online on blogger or diaryland, and have something sketchy happen when you try to post on the web site, or have your browser crash, leaving you minus a post that you might have spent some quality time on (laugh now.)

Also, through a post on boinbboing I learned that Fonts in the US do not legally have any copyright protections.

Rock. Who has cool fonts for me?

Tonight jeanne yulia & i saw Oceans 12. Lotsafun. My only regret was seeing it from the fourth row on a digital screen. Digital Screens Still Suck. The one at the theatre on 34th st & 8th Ave had the horrible screen between the pixel blocks showing up, which wasn't too bad for the most of the film. The problem seems to be related to the process used to digitize the film. The movie is worked on in post production and output to film, and then redigitized so it can be shown in theatres.

Now don't shoot me if I'm not describing the process properly, as it is entirely possible that the film goes straight from post processing to the theatre and never actually goes through an intermediary film stage. The problem with converting from digital to analog and back to digital when your target output medium is effectively another computer screen is best demonstrated when you blow up a movie trailer to full screen on an LCD monitor. The monitor doesn't exactly display the resolution of the movie trailer, so it has to interpolate the resolution of the movie to the resolution of the screen. So the trailer looks perfect when viewed in a window on your screen, but choppy when viewed full screen. The same problem seemed to occur for the film in the theatre tonight. Most of the movie looked good, especially since the natural grain of the film tended to smooth out over the grid of the projector. However, in cases where there was text that had been added in post production, (many many instances), the text looks choppy, as if you were looking at a closeup of a computer screen. The answer is pretty simple.

Render in post-production to the resolution of the projector in the theatre, and anti-alias text.

This shouldn't be too hard. Come on now, we've all used AVIDs.

-=-

Tomorrow, (err later today) - New Haven for the first time in a decade and a half.

Carnito's Way

The long awaited December trip to Peter Lugers is coming up next week.

And just a year ago I was a lad in the woods of epicuridom unaccustomed to the treasures of the kingdom.

Also, Yo La Tengo is playing 8 Hanukkah shows in Hoboken. I might try to make their show on Monday night.

Here's a bit of fairly interesting fun. Google for "african slaves" - and then note the sponsored advertisement on top. Vowe has a bit of explanation.

I just ordered software from the Ukraine.

Ain't globalization grand?

By the way, anybody up for a campaign to bring back ain't into general usage?

IT: PA Sues Online 'University' For Spamming
Spam
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 08, @07:57AM
from the can-they-get-to-university-of-phoenix-soon? dept.
CousinLarry writes "Online 'university' Trinity Southern University (Google cache of disabled site homepage) has been sued by the state of Pennsylvania." Besides spamming, this self-described school has, as another reader points out, "awarded an MBA to a cat owned by an undercover Pennsylvania deputy attorney general." I bet my cat could get a PhD.

A mouth watering review of what I'm calling Blade 3.

Who wants to go with me?

Eliot Spitzer is running for Governor of New York State in 2006.

www.spitzer2006.com

Rock.

His motto: "I want to fix what's broken. It's what I do best"

HTML for ♥ is

& # 9 8 2 9

An islander visits the center right, by which it is to be assumed that he leaves the island and travels far far away.

I have a headache and I am restless.

Money, christmas, new years, school, work, taxation, man's role in changing the face of the earth, and some deep primal desire to go on road trips haunt me.

Thanksgiving, instead of slaking my wanderlust, only made me realize how parched for travel I am. I don't want to get there, just enjoy the ride.

Northeast of Poughkeepsie, a small grocery store, with a minivan in the parking lot full of stuffed animals, had a woman in the checkout in front of me who spent thirty dollars, of which fourteen was spent on rub off a sordid assortment of instant win rub-off lottery tickets, the process of choosing which was, interestingly enough, mind you, a collaborative process between seller and sellee. "Why don't you get this one too?" went the conversation.

The subway stop smelled like olding clam chowder on Thursday. Now imagine the internalized requisite "smile & nod".

The station this evening had an a capella gospel group singing. Less Xmas schlocky, more Hallelujahish.

The trip up north was nice. A cabin in the catskills. Good food. Good wine. Satellite Television with the same collection of shitty channels everywhere else. A record player and tons of LPs to go through. The record player was a delight to play with. Antonia & I were in early twenties indie rocker bliss in finding icelandic disco/late seventies rock. And an excellent selection of country albums, including a collaborative effort with Kris Kristoferson and Kenny Rogers. Oh to have had the cables to record it onto a computer.

The only use of a computer the entire weekend was to search out a Hardees location in order to find the elusive 1400 calorie burger, yes, a passing fancy of mine. The closest Hardees, alas, turned out to be in either DC or western Pennsylvania. No deathburger for me today.

Sunday Dinner is at Jeanne's today. Cornish Hens cooked wrapped in bacon. No Meatards here.

mmm.

AND, Avigail's copious spice rack, an early purchase for our place, is getting much love.

Or is it the other way around?

"Over"