TRUE FAN
Posted by: j_john
It has been brought to my attention that I am not showing enough love to my Minnesota Timberwolves as they fight their way through the NBA playoffs. I guess even my parents were worried a bit as a T-Wolves T-shirt arrived in the mail today. Well everyone, I need to make you aware of the recent Urban Honking group blog True Fan.
On TF you will find sports info and general musings from myself and fellow athletic enthusiasts Steve Schroeder, Josh Berezin, Andrew Peterson, and K. Mike Merrill as well.
A recent entry includes a short movie chronicling my highs and lows during a recent Timberwolves game that ending in sweet victory over the Sacramento Kings.
A special thank you is in order to Josh and Steve for waiting to watch last night's game until after I got done with work. T-Wolves without commercials and with minimal Magic Johnson and Ernie Johnson (but plenty of Ervin Johnson) was truly a special event.
Beat LA!
Smartness in Seattle, etc.
Posted by: j_john
I found this page with graphs that illustrate the answer to such questions as "What city has the highest percentage of educated people?" and "What National League stadium sells the most hot dogs?"
Well they sure didn't get smart reading USA TODAY.
McMovie
Posted by: j_john
It looks like the group blogs have taken my interest away from writing about videogames and sports here in sosodeep-land. However, since there isn't a film group blog happening yet, I thought I'd share my thoughts about the recent viewing of the new documentary, SUPERSIZE ME.
First, it must be noted that I actually had to pay to see this movie, and pay I did, since I went to the fancy-pants Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood where one reserved-seat ticket will cost you $11. You know what? It was worth it.
I knew quite little about the film before going, having heard some tidbits about a documentary dealing with the fast food fascination in America that peaked interest at Sundance in a way that seemed to echo Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine." Without revealing too much about the film, it does a good job at providing a narrative to keep you watching, as the subject of the film, Morgan Spurlock proceeds to consume mass quantities of McDonalds to gauge the effect it will have on him. Along the way we are presented with info about the popularity of fast food in our nation, and how it greatly contributes to our growing health problems, especially in children.
After the film I felt bad about nitpicking something that my friends seemed to want to appreciate for its refreshing, important message, allowing us all to think about the relationship we have with fast food. However, being a big fan of the documentary film, I couldn't help but take issue with some of the attempts to draw conclusions and narratives where there didn't seem to be much to go on. Also, there is one particular scene that appeared staged and over-dramatic--it bothered me to see a great concept resort to such tricks, potentially undermining the effect it should have on the viewer. Regardless of these issues, Spurlock is a much more focused, effective, and likeable guy than Moore, and his film will hopefully have a postive influence on McAmerica.
Pro-tech this
Posted by: j_john
I just discovered something that really bothers me about iTunes. Having recently acquired a number of songs from the iTunes music store, I decided I wanted to burn some of the music to listen to at work. After placing some of these songs into a Toast playlist, I augmented the selections with some personally encoded tracks. I knew that the music from iTunes would be AAC files, and as expected Toast transfered them into Quicktime files. What I didn't realize is that after burning the disc the iTunes music store songs wouldn't play, but the personally encoded ones would. I now had a CD with only a handful of audible tracks. Weak.
I'm assuming this happened because the iTunes music store songs are "protected AAC audio files" and therefore can only be used with iTunes. Sure enough, if I placed the same songs in an iTunes playlist and burned a disc, it played fine. iTunes support says it shouldn't be a problem if I have Quicktime 6.5.1 though, but maybe I'm missing something.
This situation is frustrating because I certainly prefer to use Toast for all my disc burning needs over iTunes because of a deeper amount of preferences. Anyone know something else I can do about this?
City Slicker 2
Posted by: j_john
I'm tired and am currently not looking forward to the Cinco de Mayo run tomorrow morning. Regardless, I owe a big thanks to Ms. Stapleton for helping me experience "The Great Outdoors™" the past two days while at Silver Falls State Park.
I can't speak highly enough of this beautiful area so close to Portland--there are 10 waterfalls that you can see in just a few short hours of hiking. Some of which you can walk behind, "Last of the Mohicans"-style. Jenny was dissapointed that we didn't run into any mountain lions, but I was content that the weather was perfect for my first camping experience since I left the Boy Scouts of America about a dozen years ago.
