Year: 2010

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-28

  • had a lot of fun with his peeps last night! #
  • Feels better now that he’s washed the Milestone off him! #
  • Congratulations #CarolinaPanthers .. you have the worst record in #NFL #
  • Reason #3 Your Car Smells: That banana you “saved for later”. Enter Conan’s #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweepstacular @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Pittsburgh Steelers done wrong by NFL – NFL News | FOX Sports on MSN: http://soc.li/6PvnruO #
  • Reason #4 Your Car Smells: It’s haunted by pig farmer poltergeists. Conan’s #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweepstacular @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Mystery of song from Mad Men “The Beautiful Girls” SOLVED! “Lonely Girl” by Jay Ramsey! THANK YOU Robert Earle! #
  • NOT A SCAM: $3 free credit for Amazon MP3 store. Expires 11/29, one per Amazon account. More here: http://tinyurl.com/3926a5w #
  • Sir Edmond Halley’s is back! Wooo-hoooooo! #
  • has been busy raping the “free music” section at Amazon MP3. #
  • TFLN: “His drunk text included an attempt at quoting a Nyquil bottle in MLA format.” #
  • Reason #5 Your Car Smells: That clam juice smoothie spill. Enter Conan’s #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweeps @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Fox to cancel “Fringe”, “Lie to Me” and “Human Target”? There goes any reason for me to watch Fox! #
  • Love @JohnCleese but why are 95% of his tweets about leaving or returning to Twitter? #
  • TODAY ONLY: Amazon MP3 has “Contra” by Vampire Weekend for only $1.99! It’s a damn fine album! http://tinyurl.com/2v8sl9w #
  • Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! #
  • “Can you look at my PC? My IT guy worked on it for 2 hours and couldn’t fix it.” “I can fix it in less than 15 minutes”. Total time: 11 min. #
  • #MSFT just ruined a great product, for stupid reasons. http://tinyurl.com/3254pee #
  • Reason #6 Your Car Smells: Who knew loneliness had a smell? Enter the Chevy Cruze #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweeps @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Great dinner with an old friend! #
  • “All the way, turtle!” #
  • Reason #6 Your Car Smells: Who knew loneliness had a smell? Enter the Chevy Cruze #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweeps @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Album88 was hitting them out of the park last night!!! #

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APPLE FAIL: iTunes Edition

All I wanted to do was take some XviD rips of some TV show DVDs and put them on my iPod Nano.

I knew the files would need to be re-encoded, so I downloaded the latest version of Handbrake, since I hadn’t reinstalled it since I reformatted my computer. I installed it, queued up the files with the “iPod” preset, and let it do its thing. Within 20 minutes, the conversion was done. Hooray!

I went to iTunes and clicked File > Add File to Library and added the shiny new mp4 files to my library. Hooray!

I then clicked on “Movies”, highlighted the new files, right-clicked and chose “Get Info”. I clicked the “Options” tab and changed the “Media Kind:” to “TV Show”. iTunes moved the files from”Movies” to “TV Shows” Hooray!

Since the files had no metadata (and were just sitting there in the main “TV Shows” window), I clicked on each one and added the name of the show, episode title and season\episode numbers to each one. Hooray!

Continue reading “APPLE FAIL: iTunes Edition”

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A Mad Men Mystery Solved!

This season’s Mad Men had an episode called “The Beautiful Girls”. As I do in all my Mad Men recaps, I tried to get the names of all the songs used in this episode. However, I just couldn’t seem to get any information about one song in particular (for those in the know, it was in the second scene with Peggy and Abe at the bar, after the Swedish girls showed up at Joan’s apartment).

I wasn’t alone, either. As you can see from the comments section of the recap, folks were interested in finding out what the name of the song was. I emailed the Lipp Sisters, who didn’t know. They forwarded my question to Karl, their music expert, who also didn’t know. Other Mad Men fan sites were mystified too.

Well, thanks to a jimcofer.com reader, I can now say that the mystery has been solved! Reader Robert Earle was somehow able to contact the producers of the show, who told him that the song is called “Lonely Girl”, by obscure 60s artist Jay Ramsey. The song appears on an album called Cult Hits of the 1960’s, Vol. 2, which is available as a download from iTunes here and Amazon here.

THANK YOU for solving the mystery, Robert!

Mad Men s1 graphic

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Art News

A couple of interesting stories from the art world today:

– Henry VIII owned at least 55 houses that we know of. They range from modest hunting lodges to gigantic palaces like Hampton Court. But Henry’s grandest property – by far – was Nonsuch Palace (even the name, “none such”, tells you that there was no other property like it anywhere in England). Amazingly, the palace no longer stands; Charles II gave it to his mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, who had it torn down in 1682 so she could sell the building materials to pay off gambling debts. More amazingly, although the building was considered the greatest house in England, only one known image of it exists:

Nonsuch Palace

This watercolor, painted by Georg Hoefnagel in 1568, is not only one of the first watercolors ever painted in England, historians consider it the only reputable likeness of the palace. And it can be yours! It’s going up for auction next month, where it’s expected to fetch £1.2 million. The palace itself was said to “only” cost around £24,000… although that’s around $165,501,000 when adjusted for inflation and converted to dollars!

– Can you spot Chinese artist Liu Bolin in this picture?

Liu Bolin

What you’re seeing isn’t a camera or photoshop trick. Bolin studies a scene, then carefully paints his own body and has an assistant photograph him. Bolin got the idea for this because he’s often felt like an outsider in Chinese society. His art allows him to “blend in” with whatever’s around. Check out this article for several more amazing shots!

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TSA Follow-Up

My recent post about the TSA hasn’t generated a lot of comments on the site, but it sure has generated a lot of hits, especially from people who posted links on Facebook. I thought I’d take a few minutes today to clarify a few things and give you folks some additional links.

First of all, although most of you agreed that the TSA has crossed the line, it occurred to me that some of you might actually agree with their policies. After all, the old saying goes, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide, right? Well, allow me to introduce you to the concept of Israelification.

Israel has been dealing with terrorists far longer than the US has, and has been far more successful than the US in dealing with airport security. Back in the 1960s, Israel instituted pat-downs and other procedures at their airports similar to what the US has today… and the Israeli public freaked. In the linked article, Israeli security expert Rafi Sela, says:

“Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take shit from anybody. When the security agency in Israel started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for – not for hours – but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.”

By simply refusing to put up with the status quo, the Israelis came up with a much more efficient and less intrusive system. And there’s no reason why it can’t work here.

Continue reading “TSA Follow-Up”

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Quote of the Day

“He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that some sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.”

– Flannery O’Connor
“The Artificial Nigger”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-21

  • Hey look! I'm on FoodNetworkHumor.com: http://tinyurl.com/2dttak6 #
  • Dear God… it's 59-21 with 5:19 left in the 3rd quarter! At least the Steelers kinda showed up last night! #
  • Kid Rock is preventing his music from being sold on iTunes. To whom should I write to ensure this situation does not change? #
  • US airports are now a Constitution-free zone, thanks to the TSA! #
  • Free tacos at Jack in the Box today! Woo-hoo! #
  • OMG! The TSA is considering exempting MUSLIM WOMEN from body scans! Will the madness ever end? http://tinyurl.com/32ddvyu #
  • A £200 overdraft from Lloyd's of London generates £85.95 in fees. That's an APR of 46,450,869%. According to the Daily Mail, anyway. #
  • @AllSpiritsEve I'd still be against it, doofus! #
  • The Beatles are on iTunes? They've been on Bittorrent for years! #
  • How bad is it for the Carolina Panthers? Brian St. Pierre is their starting QB this Sunday. #
  • Reason #2 Your Car Smells: Carburetor mouse nest! Enter the Chevy Cruze #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweeps @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Anybody seen Guinness Foreign Extra for purchase here in Charlotte? #
  • Ben Gazzara is not dead. #
  • Reason #2 Your Car Smells: Carburetor mouse nest! Enter the Chevy Cruze #20PinetreeAirFresheners Sweeps @ http://bit.ly/an50kt #
  • Gordon Brown: create an economic crisis, then charge £60k a speech to talk about it.. .PROFIT! #
  • is not looking forward to next Saturday. 🙁 #
  • Berlin is dufte, hauptstadt der DDR #

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Quote of the Day

“Tanner was conserving all his strength for the trip home. He meant to walk as far as he could get and trust to the Almighty to get him the rest of the way. That morning and the morning before, he had allowed his daughter to dress him and he had conserved that much more energy. Now he sat in the chair by the window – his blue shirt buttoned at the collar, his coat on the back of the chair, and his hat on his head – waiting for her to leave. He couldn’t leave until she got out of the way. The window looked out on a brick wall and down into an alley full of New York air, the kind fit for cats and garbage. A few snow flakes drifted past the window but they were too thin and scattered for his failing vision.

The daughter was in the kitchen washing dishes. She dwaddled over everything, talking to herself. When he had first come, he had answered her, but that had not been wanted. She glowered at him as if, old fool that he was, he should still have had sense enough to not answer a woman talking to herself. She questioned herself in one voice and answered herself in another. With the energy he had conserved yesterday letting her dress him, he had written a note and pinned it in his pocket. IF FOUND DEAD SHIP EXPRESS COLLECT TO COLEMAN PARRUM, CORINTH, GEORGIA. Under this he had continued: COLEMAN SELL MY BELONGINGS AND PAY THE FREIGHT ON ME & THE UNDERTAKER. ANYTHING LEFT OVER YOU CAN KEEP. YOURS TRULY T.C. TANNER. P.S. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DON’T LET THEM TALK YOU INTO COMING UP HERE. ITS NO KIND OF PLACE. It had taken him better part of thirty minutes to write the paper; the script was wavery but decipherable with patience. He controlled one hand by holding the other on top of it. By the time he had got it written, she was back in the apartment from getting her groceries.”

– Flannery O’Connor
“Judgment Day”