Blankbaby

Video 2: A Pound of Dice

I ordered a Chessex Pound-o-Dice and then I made a video.

Here's the post explaining why I am doing this.

A week of videos

I've been pretty quiet on the blogging front (well, at least here, I've been blogging like a mad man for the day job!) because I was writing my second book (OMG! I know! I'll have more to say about this in the coming days).

However, the first draft of my book is done so I have a little more time for random crap (huzzah!). I was thinking about what I could do and I remembered I have roughly 14,000 video capable cameras in my possession so why not create a video a day for a little while?

The first video is embedded here, and I'm asking you to suggest some ideas for future videos. Come on, you know you have some great ideas!

Beam Me Up

Beam Me Up
Originally uploaded by Contrabass.

Photo by Thad.

Wedding Ring

The wedding is fast approaching, but at least I have my ring taken care of (Marisa is getting hers custom made... no they won't match but I'm told that is ok. Who knew?).

No new iPhone 3G S for me

 

As you might know, I like Apple products. Generally I upgrade to the latest and greatest as soon as it is announced, but I won't be doing so in the case of the recently announced iPhone 3G S. Why is that? Well, when I heard that you could get the 16 GB version for $199 I was ready to place my order. What I didn't consider was that AT&T is subsidizing that price, much like they subsidized the cost of my current iPhone 3G.

Since AT&T wants to actually make some money off the iPhone (the nerve!) I'm not eligible for the upgrade price of $199 until 05/12/2010. That leaves me with the choice of shelling out $400 for a new iPhone, or being happy with my current iPhone (and the free OS update that'll make it feel like a new phone).

I think I'll save the money this time around and buy whatever new iPhone is available in May 2010.

A New look

If you read Blankbaby using a feedreader you won't notice that I've changed the design. I'm using one of TypePad's built-in themes (called Journal). Let me know what you think!

Fork You: Beer here

Not only have I been slacking on blogging here, but I've been slacking on editing episodes of Fork You! Luckily, it has been decided that we are going to shoot some more Fork Yous set in our very own kitchen (since some people seem to prefer those), however, we still have a few Fork You Lives to get up on the site.

Beer Here was filmed during Philadelphia's 2009 Beer Week, and so it was fitting that we cooked a bunch of stuff using beer.

I should really start my own tech blog

Way back in November I posted a little video with side by side footage from a Flip Mino HD and a Kodak Zi6. No one reads my blog (let's be honest here, I haven't been a very good blogger as of late on here anyway!) and yet as of today that video is up to over 30,000 views. Clearly, I should start my own tech blog and live high off the hog like John Gruber.

That, or people are just really interested in seeing footage of both of those cameras compared.

Memorial Day with the Amish

What's that old saying, "Once is luck, twice is a fluke, three times is a tradition?" If that's true, then our little Memorial Day trips to Lancaster are fast becoming a tradition.

This year we (and Thad/Angie) stayed at Musser's Organic B&B and a good time was had by all.

I'll let the photos do the talking (you can see the whole set on Flickr):

The back of the B&B:

The backyard:

My favorite picture of the weekend, taken in the city of Lancaster:

Marisa at Central Market:

Would you believe this is the ceiling of the Quilt Museum:

We spent many hours looking at these:

I managed to eat ice cream every day for four days straight (enjoying a Dairy Queen milkshake in this picture):

And we went to the Train Museum as well:

All in all, a good time was had by all and my Canon G10 took great pictures (I left the XTi at home).

Moment of Zen

The sunglasses have landed

The glasses I mentioned here have arrived. I like 'em, what are your thoughts?

New glasses... kind of

I mentioned that I was in the market from some sunglasses and the kind folks at Shuron mailed me four pairs of frames so I could try them on my fat face and see if I liked them. Above you can see me modeling a pair (the lenses are just clear plastic). I'm going to put in an order for a pair with tinted lenses so I can use these as sunglasses. It'll be nifty, don't you think?

Twitshirt: no thanks

Just because the t-shirt is well designed doesn't mean it is ok to put my words (or tweets) on it without asking me.

Twitshirt is poop (no matter how well crafted it is), but you can opt out if you don't want someone making money off of your work (though they will give you two bits for each $20 shirt they sell... though they won't send you any money until you reach $20 in royalties, and you won't have ANY idea that this money is waiting for you unless you sign up for Twitshirt... but Twitshirt CAN sell shirts with your words on them without you signing up. Seems fair, right?) you can opt out*. I did, and you should too.

* A note about the 'Blacklist' functionality on the Twitshirt site. It doesn't offer you any feedback after you enter your Twitter username and password and click Submit. It just dumps you have to the Twitshirt homepage. Did I successfully opt out? I have no idea.

Update: I looks like the Twitshirt folks have heard the rumblings and are hard at work 'reversing the polarity,' which I can only assume they are going to make the site opt-in instead of opt-out, which really clears up all my complaints.

Phantom glasses

I have my glasses back, finally, which is a good thing (oh, the colors I can see! Well, I can't see all the colors since I am color blind... but I can see most of them). I did notice an odd thing over the course of the week I was glassless. Despite the fact that I was not, in fact, wearing glasses I would frequently motion to adjust them. The motion, I can only assume, was interpreted as some sort of odd salute to passersby.

I am bespectacled again once more

This post servers two purposes:

1. As a test for Tweetube.
2. To let you all know that I can once more see.

Hurrah!

I have no glasses and yet I must see

The lens in my frames were pretty scratched up, and since I just started a new job I thought I would take my benefits for a spin and get some new lens (not new frames though, since I totally heart my frames).

Off I went to Eye Candy which has a god awful Web site, but a lovely staff. Since I only have one pair of frames I called ahead and asked how long they would need to keep them to install the new lens. They said it would take a day, which didn't seem too shabby to me. Off I went to get my eyes examined (which always freaks me out because they put things far too close to your eyes for my liking), and take a look at their sunglasses (my future is pretty bright after all).

I was pursuing the sunglasses with fully dilated pupils when the guy behind the counter came over to help me. He looked at my old glasses and said, "So you like the retro look, huh?" Since I do, in fact, like the retro look (though in a non-ironic fashion) I nodded and commented that all their frames were pretty modern looking. I did, however, try on a couple of pairs but it seems I'm an ocular Goldilocks: the frames were either too big or too small.

I wasn't worried, though, since I have frames that I are totally my bffs. Once my eye exam was done (OK, sidebar here: Whenever I am looking through one of those machines with the different lens in it and the eye doc flips one and says, 'Better or worse?' I always feel like they know the RIGHT answer... and they are just testing me to make sure I'm not pretending to need glasses. Am I the only one who thinks this?) I returned to the clerk and said, "So, I guess I'll be back to tomorrow to get my glasses!" To which he replied, "Your insurance requires that we send all frames to their lab so they can make the lens. They'll be ready in a week."

What was I to do? I needed new lens, and I had gotten this far... so I left the store without my glasses and immediately walked onto a girder that was swinging from a nearby crane. How I survived that hilarious walk through that construction site I'll never know.

I should have my glasses back tomorrow though, which is a good thing since I've been hunching over all week so I can actually read stuff on my computer screen. My back is killing me!

Also, I'm thinking about buying these sunglasses. What say you, gentle reader? To the right you can see a very badly done rendering of what I might look like wearing said glasses. Pretty sexy, huh?

Americans love to shift the blame

We all know that American car companies (other than Ford) aren't doing so well nowadays. They seem to be baring the brunt of the American public's anger with this financial crisis for a simple reason: people understand what car makers do. They produce cars, it is pretty simple. If people buy those cars, the company makes a profit. Compare that to leveraged buyouts of bundled mortgages (if that's even a thing) and I can understand why people are blaming the car companies.

That being said, it is one thing to blame a faceless corporation and quite another to attack a model hired to look pretty next to said faceless corporation's product at a trade show and say this:

At Auto Show, Presenters Meet a Tough Crowd - NYTimes.com: "One G.M. presenter said a woman told her the company was responsible for the death of American soldiers in Iraq. The logic went like this: if G.M. made more fuel-efficient cars, the country would not need so much oil, and if the country did not need oil, United States troops would never have invaded."

That's pretty harsh, and downright stupid. The car companies kept pumping out gas guzzlers because that's what people wanted to buy (can you say Hummer?).

My point is this: get mad at the company all you want, just leave their models alone.

I'm artsy

Tweenbots

I've been Twittering lots of the last few months and that is where I've been sharing links and the like. However, I've missed blogging here at good old Blankbaby, and so I am going to try to step it up here (though I am starting another major writing project, so we'll see how long I can last writing all the time).

Tweenbots are getting lots of attention from the blogs today, and I can see why. Who wouldn't want to write about cute little robots that can only go in one direction and must depend on the kindness of strangers to get to their final destination?

Sometimes I feel like a Tweenbot myself, though I don't have an easy to read flag with directions printed on it.

Life is good, everyone just overreacts

I'm sure everyone knows about PostSecret (if you don't here is the quick rundown: you send an anonymous postcard to this address and every Sunday the best secretes are posted on PostSecret). This week's entry starts with the postcard above which I think pretty much sums up life.

If you enjoy PostSecret you should check out FMyLife, which is kind of like Twitter for embarrassing stories.