asparaguspee

Here is a test of an embedded Flash-based slide show I rough-drafted over on Wix.com:

Free website - Wix.com

I just stumbled on a neat, free tool for embedding related web content easily into web pages and blogs called Apture.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

• “Bacon up that sausage, boy! Do it…” - Homer Simpson
• Tactile illusions from New Scientist - fool your skin!
• Survivor’s Yau Man rants on Oil Change Intervals
• Creepy Japanese Fasion Robot
• Very Cool, but the sheep were scared.
• House of Cards?
• Soul Pancake Blog… pretty cool.
• Were the Dead Sea Scrolls for real?
• Tommy Emmanuel - possibly the best guitarist I’ve ever seen.
• Time says South Park may be the most moral show on TV.
• Every Swear ever on The Sopranos NSFW (duh)
• Are nanobes a new form of life?
• The ‘Monty Hall Problem’ Revisited
• 100 Free Download Sites
• This is why you’re fat.
• Cool World Clock (Thanks to the Lady Janet!)
• Author of Jesus, Interrupted on NPR
• ‘Yes we Can!’ - Obama Inaugural on PowerPoint
• Check out these unique mirrors.
• PC World article about legal online drugs.

Jason Mraz turned me on to this friend of his (through an article in Rolling Stone - I mean, we’re not friends or anything). His name is Bob Schneider, and he’s brilliant - buy his stuff, listen to his stuff, promote his stuff. Here’s a free sample, and it’s extremely important that you listen to it, but it involves a little bit of work.

First, go to BobSchneiderMusic.com , then, click on “Menu” and select BobTunes… here’s a graphic of what that should look like:

.

Just click on BobTunes and a small player will pop up - select Batman, and you will have a very fun experience.

It should come as no surprise that I voted for Obama, and encouraged others to do the same. I didn’t go all super-activist or anything, but I did spend one Saturday morning calling 200 voters in Colorado, and I ordered a yard sign and a car magnet (no stickers on the new car!), and I argued a lot.

I also got to refuse to sign a neighbor’s Prop 8 petition and vote against that bad idea.

One of the things that amazed me over the course of the campaign, as well as post-election, was how many people felt compelled to step beyond the bounds of non-partisanship in weird contexts — the editor of some trade mag I get at work like Catalog Success wrote his whole editor’s page about why we should all vote for Obama. Likewise, the English weekly New Scientist was obsequiously pro-Obama because of his positions on R&D, renewable energy, global warming, stem cell research, etc. Even the hard-core IT stuff I get in print and online was all pro-BO™ about things like building infrastructure, increasing availability of broadband access, education, and pure research.

OK, enough said. I used to think (and say), “I don’t think it really matters who I vote for (I was so much younger then!), because, let’s face it, one man can’t make that much of a difference in my life (the only thing I cared about most of the time), because the systems are just too big.”

But after learning a bit from Mr. Reagan, then seeing a turnabout with Clinton, and then the master class we were handed by Bush & Co., I have changed my tune.

So, my poster child for change has got an awful lot on his plate, which I need not enumerate here. But I believe he can actually pull this off — he’s going to need a lot of help, but I really do have faith that he can inspire the citizenry to pull together and make a lot of it happen. Power in numbers, baby.

As our first big Green act of hope for change since we bought the Civic hybrid, The Lady Janet and I recently signed a contract with a local solar power firm to cover half our roof with PV solar cells. Depending on utility costs, it should reach break-even (the point where we save more on the electric bill than the loan payment) in about 10 years. More on this later.

Here are some interesting linky-doodles related to politics in general and Obama in particular, ending on a lighter note:

• Wonderful NYT Article by Judith Warner
• Paris Hilton for President Video (with my apologies)
• RealClearPolitics.com - Good general political site.
• The Onion - War for the Whitehouse
• Bush comes clean about Iraq (YouTube)
• Hockey Mom Palin Ad (YouTube Parody)
• Joel Achenbach’s Achenblog on Washinton Post
• The Edge - What makes people vote Republican?
• Emily as Hermione (Halloween costume)

• “Bacon up that ham, boy! Do it!” - Homer Simpson
• Tactile illusions from New Scientist - fool your skin!
• Survivor’s Yau Man rants on Oil Change Intervals
• Creepy Japanese Fasion Robot
• Very Cool, but the sheep were scared.
• House of Cards?
• Soul Pancake Blog… pretty cool.
• Were the Dead Sea Scrolls for real?
• Tommy Emmanuel - possibly the best guitarist I’ve ever seen.
• Time says South Park may be the most moral show on TV.
• Every Swear ever on The Sopranos NSFW (duh)
• Are nanobes a new form of life?
• The ‘Monty Hall Problem’ Revisited
• 100 Free Download Sites
• This is why you’re fat.
• Cool World Clock (Thanks to the Lady Janet!)
• Author of Jesus, Interrupted on NPR
• ‘Yes we Can!’ - Obama Inaugural on PowerPoint
• Check out these unique mirrors.
• PC World article about legal online drugs.

Well, I definitely didn’t do anything to make this happen — I was just putting ketchup on my burger (reminder: catsup is not a word) — and this just happened. I was trying to make a perfect Archimedes’ spiral, and we’re almost out of ketchup, so it sputtered and made this HAPPY FACE!

Sometimes our buns just know.

Yes, believe it or not, unrolling Scotch Tape emits enough x-rays to take an x-ray of your finger bones. (I guess if wintergreen lifesavers give off sparks in the dark, this isn’t really that weird.)