Month: February 2010

Media Maven

Thursday, I got a ride from my isolating Corporate Woods office with lousy bus service to the neighborhood-imbedded College of Saint Rose, using up most of my lunch break, to film what will probably be a 15-second segment of a promotion for what appears below. It’s too bad that I had to go back to work, because my ride took us right past my house.

I was supposed to say something profound about why I blog, on cue. Yeesh. Ultimately, I rambled on about something to do with being a librarian and wanting to share information. (I think.) I know they’ll be showing the compiled video at the event, but if it’s otherwise available, I’ll make a point to share it with you.

The guy who picked me up I hadn’t seen in four or five years. I’ve talked with him regularly and e-mailed with even more frequently. But when he picked me up, he didn’t recognize me, because of the vitiligo. Heck, sometimes I literally don’t recognize myself.

Oh, one other thing: with the sheer number of participants, and the time frame, I can’t imagine just how this thing is going to work.

The upcoming Media 2010 event to be held Wednesday, March 3, at The College of Saint Rose, has sold out. We currently are accepting names on a waiting list.

Event: Media 2010: How blogs shape the new conversation
Date: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (ET)

Location:
College of Saint Rose
Touhey Forum, Lally Building
1009 Madison Avenue
Albany, NY 12203

***
Speaking of blogging, I seem to be spending more time deleting spam from my blogs. Except for this one, the messages don’t actually GET to the blogs; I use comment moderation. On this blog, though, I don’t, but I get an e-mail copy of whatever gets posted; I click on the link and delete the rubbish forever.

There seems to be particular recurring themes with these of late:
*the guy whose girlfriend, he’s just discovered, has been sleeping with his roommate/brother/uncle/father, and so, of COURSE, he’s inviting you to see nude pictures of her
*various schemes touting particular software
*the couple touting Louisville, KY
Plus the usual scams and stuff written in Russian and Chinese.
But the ones I don’t get are the ones that say something vaguely complimentary that are signed by Anonymous and DON’T have a link to an e-mail or website. What’s the point, exactly?

ROG

ROG

Win 6 free months of blog/web hosting, own domain name

I’m a guy who likes to blog. I’m the guy who HATES having to deal with the technobabble that the task entails. I noticed that the backside of my blog was running slowly. Sometimes when I tried to schedule a post, I’d get an error message. 

WordPress specific utilities such as WP-CLI, LiteSpeed’s LSCache, and Imunify360 all contribute to an ecosystem enabling different types of wordpress hosting services to be used to its full potential. You don’t have to worry about WordPress updates, keeping the server updated, or PHP versions – we handle all of that for you, while keeping your site fully optimized for WordPress. KnownHost is a quality-guaranteed hosting provider that offers the best managed WordPress hosting solution.

My provider wrote:

“Our monitoring systems show that one (or some) of your user accounts may be making your web hosting account operate inefficiently. We noticed you’ve frequently hit the memory limits of your shared hosting plan over the last couple weeks. When this happens, our system automatically stops web processes which could be negatively impacting your server’s performance. This means your visitors may see errors or be unable to access your website at all for brief periods of time.”

I’m sure I tweeted about this before – back in the days when I used to actually use my Twitter account – but Rose DesRochers – World outside my Window has been having this contest where if you comment to one of her posts – or a whole bunch of other stuff such as tweeting about said contest, one gets points towards winning a WordPress blog hosting package from VisionThisHosting.com.

Unfortunately, tomorrow the 28th is the deadline.

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ROG

Oscar Pics QUESTIONS

Who’s going to win the big awards? I have no idea, of course, but I’ll hazard some guesses anyway, based on how watching the Oscars for decades has informed my opinions.

Best Supporting Actor:
*Matt Damon-‘Invictus’
Woody Harrelson-‘The Messenger’
Christopher Plummer-‘The Last Station’
Stanley Tucci-‘The Lovely Bones’
Christoph Waltz -‘Inglorious Basterds’
Who will win: Waltz. There’s always someone who the general public has never heard of who wins one of the supporting nods. Don’t think it’ll be Plummer, whose movie got only a so-so 68% positive in Rotten Tomatoes; on the other hand, he’s old (80), and the Academy likes old, plus it’s his first nomination. Could be Tucci, but I think that some of those Academy voters just aren’t going to watch his performance because of the subject matter.
Who I want to win: Tucci, who’s just an actor who shows great range.

Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz-‘Nine’
*Vera Farmiga-‘Up in the Air’
Maggie Gyllenhaal-‘Crazy Heart’
*Anna Kendrick-‘Up in the Air’
Mo’nique-‘Precious’
Who will win: Mo’nique. Academy loves to reward those who play against type. Bonus that she’s a minority, and Cruz got one recently.
Who I want to win: Farmiga, who lives in Ulster County, NY where I lived for a time. So I’m a homer; so what?

Best Animated Feature Film
‘Coraline’
‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
*’The Princess and the Frog’
‘The Secret of Kells’
*’Up’
What will win: Up. I mean it was a nominee for Best Picture.
What I want to win: The Princess & the Frog. While I LOVED the wordless beginning of Up more than I could have imagined, I liked the Disney flick more throughout.

Best Original Screenplay
Mark Boal ‘The Hurt Locker’
Quentin Tarantino ‘Inglourious Basterds’
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman ‘The Messenger’
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen ‘A Serious Man’
*Peter Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy ‘Up’
Who will win: Boal. I’m expecting a Hurt Locker avalanche.
Who I want to win: Boal, though it wouldn’t bother me if the Coens ot Tarantino got it.

Best Adapted Screenplay
*Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell ‘District 9’
*Nick Hornby ‘An Education’
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche ‘In the Loop’
Geoffrey Fletcher ‘Precious’
*Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner ‘Up in the Air’
Who will win: Reitman/Turner. This is Reitman’s consolation prize for losing for Best Picture and Best Director, an Oscar tradition.
Who I want to win: Reitman/Turner.

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges ‘Crazy Heart’
*George Clooney ‘Up in the Air’
*Colin Firth ‘A Single Man’
*Morgan Freeman’Invictus’
*Jeremy Renner ‘The Hurt Locker’
Who will win: Jeff Bridges, who’s been nominated four times without a win, and won the Golden Globe.
Who I want to win: Bridges or Clooney

Best Actress
*Sandra Bullock ‘The Blind Side’
*Helen Mirren ‘The Last Station’
*Carey Mulligan ‘An Education’
Gabourey Sidibe ‘Precious’
* Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia as Julia Child
Who will win: Streep. The pundits are making this a contest between Streep and Bullock. Streep, whose been nominated 16 times, and won twice (but not since 1982!) has been beaten by perceived stronger performances. The competition this year includes two novices (Mulligan, Sidibe), Mirren’s appearance in a so-so film, and a certain backlash against Bullock’s film. If not this year for Meryl, when?
Who I want to win: STREEP

Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow ‘The Hurt Locker’
James Cameron ‘Avatar’
Lee Daniels ‘Precious’
*Jason Reitman ‘Up in the Air’
Quentin Tarantino ‘Inglourious Basterds’
Who will win: Bigelow. I mean, a well-received film, directed by a woman, and not on what’s considered a “women’s film”. Perhaps her biggest booster is one of her competitors, her ex-husband Cameron.
Who I want to win: Bigelow.

Best Picture
‘Avatar’
*’The Blind Side’
*’District 9′
*’An Education’
‘The Hurt Locker’
‘Inglourious Basterds’
‘Precious’
‘A Serious Man’
*’Up’
*’Up in the Air’
What will win: The Hurt Locker. In a five-movie race under the “first-to-the-post” rules, this is Avatar’s, almost for certain. But I keep hearing that while Avatar is a technological achievement, its story’s weak.
What I want to win: Up In The Air, which I think in the future will be seen as emblematic of its time.

So what are your picks, for who WILL win, and who you WANT to win?
Links to your blogpost describing same would be fine.


ROG

ROG

The Lydster, Part 71: Hiding Less

Making her own kind of music

The daughter has had this habit of getting all shy, even around people that she has met repeatedly, such as folks in church choir and in church generally. We had hoped that she would outgrow this, and it seems to be starting to happen.

I wonder if it’s the ballet lessons she started taking last fall. Now, let me be very clear that Lydia taking ballet is strictly her idea. Her mother and I are rather agnostic on this issue; we certainly aren’t the kind of parents to push her into performing. The first time she mentioned it, it was merely talk, I think. But she persisted in asking, and now once a week for 45 minutes, she’s in a class with other girls of her age and experience. They had a “performance” a few weeks ago which I went to; it mostly involved showing a few positions and few moves, but it was a pleasant enough experience.

Coming in from the cold

The other experience that seems to have helped her in church choir. She and five other girls sang in front of the church just before Christmas. I would have bet money that she would have bailed, but not only did she stand there, she actually sang out.

It could just be greater security from going to kindergarten, but whatever it is, I’m in favor.

Time to go home – on the road again

ROG
First picture by Uthaclena
Other pictures by Sprylet

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Handle with Care


In the local newspaper a couple weeks ago , the health columnist Lynda Shrager wrote Making whoopee restores body and mind — honest. “Sex twice or more per week reduced the risk of fatal heart attack by half for men. Also, men who ejaculate frequently can decrease their risk of developing prostate cancer by, as the American Medical Association says, ‘clearing out the pipes.'”

“Clearing out the pipes”?

Then I found this article, which reads: “In 2003, research on middle-aged Australian men found that those who averaged at least four ejaculations a week had a one-third lower chance of developing prostate cancer than those who had fewer. ‘When you drain the pipes, as it were, you have less clogging,’ says Irwin Goldstein, MD, head of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital.”

Well, OK, then. As some of you know, my father died of prostate nine and a half years ago. While the general media touts those who have survived prostate cancer, I am reminded of those who did not. Here’s a mixed list.

Unfortunately, thinking about pipes, a popular Irish tune came to mind. I can just imagine men wooing their significant others with the tune to “Danny Boy”: “My darling dear, the pipes, the pipes are calling.” You can substitute “My darling dear” with any four syllables of affection (darling, dear, dearest, lover), including the beloved’s name. Or not. (The mind will go where the mind will go.)

Ms. Shrager talks about additional benefits of sex for men and women.
***
Oh, the pictures. I was looking for a visual for the F is for February post. So I went to the LIFE magazine archive, typed in the word February, and the picture above was captured. It’s for Thayers Patent Medicine, and the picture was taken in February 1949 by George Silk. The bottom picture I found typing in the word Thayers in the LIFE photo archive.

Interestingly, the product, a slippery elm throat lozenge is still being produced, “Trusted by tenors, teachers, tour guides and other types who trill, talk and testify.” Here’s a positive review.


ROG

ROG
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