Recorded this last week, but better late than never to mention it here.
Not a whole lot of back story to this one other than the fact that I’m not feeling very well today, but not so much that I can’t put this six song out. It’s cool, rainy, and cloudy in Vancouver, so I went mellow for today’s theme.
42:09 minutes
radiozoom.net
I don’t do this often, but the RSS feeds picked up this post today regarding a Channel 4 news introspective about the media coverage going on in Iraq. I found it rather interesting to watch, albeit nearly 50 minutes long. A lot of what it speaks about is nothing that I hadn’t already assumed, but they put it into much better words than I ever could.
If you have the time, check out Iraq: The Hidden Story. It really makes me wonder what the generations to come will say about this conflict, especially looking at the lifetime process I have given to understanding past conflicts. Even more so, there is mention of how bloggers are vital at getting information from inside the country that major news agencies have no way of gaining access to.
I keep seeing these previews for Jim Carrey’s new flick, The Number 23[imdb]. I love the fact that he’s going to be in this creepy movie. A bit of a change, and I have to say that I’m curious to see it. Opening day? Probably not, but sometime thereafter.
In the preview, they keep talking about the significance of the number itself, 23. Long story short, you divide the 2 by 3 and it’s .666. Quite evil, don’t you think? Then there is all these various examples of how it’s portrayed throughout history. When you add all the digits together of 9/11/2001, you get the sum of 23. The tilt of the Earth at its axis is 23 degrees. So on and so on.
What gets me is that they say Kurt Cobain[wiki] died when he was 23. No, he died when he was 27, and Tony Pierce would beat you up for saying different. If you go to the website, it does make the case for the digits to the years of his birth (1967) and death (1994) each totaling that magical, creepy digit.
Maybe I’ve been seeing or hearing this trailer wrong, but I can’t find proof to back this up anywhere. Rebecca swears she’s seen and heard this as well. Perhaps they pulled it once they realized the error. You can’t simply say that Cobain died at the age of 23 when you meant something completely different. It’s like how the Texas Chainsaw Massacre[imdb] is “based on true events”. It kind of is, but the story actually stems from a crazy guy, Ed Glein[wiki], from Wisconsin that also fueled inspiration for Psycho[imdb] and Silence of the Lambs[imdb], just to name a few.
Still, you can’t bend the facts about Cobain’s death to help sell a movie. Maybe some one else out there can back me up or disprove this. I’ve ventured through Google and YouTube to find no trace of the trailer I’m seeing on TV. By the way, if you want more funny numbers things to check out, see this Wiki about the 27 Club.
I like my orange juice in the morning, but this is getting a little hard to swallow. Normally, the price per can is a dollar less than what we’re seeing right now. Granted that this is the big name brand stuff that you can see above, but that’s still quite a bit. At the same time, Vancouver isn’t the cheapest place to live, so I tend to wonder if this is simple price inflation because they have the excuse to do it. Maybe a little bit of both.
This has been a problem of mine for the past year. The internal speakers on my PowerBook G4 just stopped working one day, but the headphone jack still operates without a problem. There is the fact that this thing is nearly four years old and the first generation of the 17-inch models. You would think that they just broke and wouldn’t want to put out audio because its senior citizen status when it comes to the world of computers. It’s not the case, and long story short, it has to be a software problem.
I’ve done numerous things over the past few days. Actually, I’ve tried a few various times, mostly whenever I have the patience and courage to try some potential solutions. Still nothing works.
I’ve basically tried everything that I could find here with no success. You can even find a post there by yours truly, begging for answers.
My pursuit will continue, but I doubt that I’ll be successful. Dealing with a sinus thing over the past three days, I’ve given it a good try. I know, get something new. Wish it was that easy. This baby needs to last me just a little while longer.
Posted this morning.
Dave is another healthy scratch for this episode, but that doesn’t mean we like him any less. However, we did find another blogger who loves the Canucks as well, but you’ll also hear about the “other team” he follows. Sean, aka Zanstorm, from Waiting For Stanley joins us from Smithers, B.C. to discuss the last two games against the Blackhawks and Thrashers.
Record as of this episode: 31-21-4
Northwest Division: 2nd
Western Conference: 7thThe hunt for the playoffs is on, so we cover some of that ground after getting to know a little more about Sean. John and J.J. also report back on what they can remember about the Thrasers game at GM Place. Rebecca checks in with the ever intriguing players blogs, and we can’t help ourselves from addressing the trade talks.
49:41 minutes
The Crazy Canucks
I miss these guys, and this just goes to show that it’s amazing what you might find on YouTube on a whim. I haven’t heard from any of the TH boys in a while, but they’re still in my library.
There’s a very interesting discussion going on right now in the realm of hockey blogging. I’m a bit of an outsider when it comes to the “mucking and grinding”, but it’s no secret that I’m a hockey fan.
What’s going on right now is a discussion about Eklund, the main guy behind HockeyBuzz.com. I don’t know enough about the guy to say much about him as a blogger, but to know him is to understand that “Eklund” is a pseudonym, he never posts under his real name, and you never see his face. Anonymity is his “thing”.
In the blogosphere, there is an unspoken system of checks and balances that fellow bloggers go to work on in order to verify the integrity of what one person claims through their posts. Now that Eklund is to partner with Sportsnet (a Canadian variation of what FoxSportsnet or ComcastSportsNet is to the U.S.) for the hoopla of the approaching trading deadline for the NHL, various folks are coming forward to address this issue of his method and content.
The discussion seems to be expanding, but you can read what Kukla, Alanah, J.J., Zanstorm, and Eric are saying about this. You can say what you want about blogging, but there is something to be said about journalistic integrity. To me, this is what all this discussion stems down to.
I got a very interesting email the other day. I thought that this might make a good post for anyone else out there looking for similar info.
“i was looking for info on goalies w/glasses. did you wear glasses under your mask? i was hesitant to wear glasses because of perspiration factor & have never tried contacts. Any suggestions or advice? thanks”
– Neil
I’m not sure how this guy tracked down that I used to play goalie, albeit roller hockey[wiki], but the fact that he had some insight to the fact that I currently wear glasses. I also wear contacts, probably 70% of the time. I need to update my prescription and get new lenses, hopefully in the next three months. I probably played with glasses for the first couple of years because I didn’t even own contacts.
I also did what I could with just my two eyes, but the glasses made obvious sense. If you can see better overall, then you’re going to see the puck a whole lot better. Even though my nearsightedness, or myopia[wiki], isn’t as bad as some, it’s enough that correction makes the movie theatre experience better, have the newspaper headlines appear readable from ten feet away, and bus numbers are viewable from two blocks out.
When I started out playing in front of the net, it was your atypical group of Midwesterners not having a lot of equipment to play, not to mention a good idea as to everything that we needed. We just wanted to play, period. I started out with a catchers mask, of course, with my glasses underneath. If you understand anything about summers in Iowa, it’s hot and humid. Sweat constantly got onto my glasses.
Like anything else, you can learn to adapt. Those little beads of sweat do get into your field of vision, but you can only handle so much until you simply cannot avoid their distraction. A simple shake of the head can help, but avoid wiping with your fingers. That will only lead to smudges in your field of vision, yet another distraction.
I graduated from the catchers mask to a hockey helmet and mask/cage combo. I didn’t own this wonderful upgrade because I met some friends in college who would lend this to me, and it was those folks that taught me a huge amount about how to play the game, not to mention how to be a better goalie.
That cage allowed for a good amount of room for my glasses, but I realized how important peripheral vision was. When the game picks up pace and one-timers or redirects come into the game, you need that extra vision to pick up subtle locations of where those other guys are, as well as the guy with the puck at the point. On top of that, the helmet would trap heat and fog up my glasses from time to time, giving me no ability to see. Quite frankly, that’s bad for a goalie.
Needless to say, playing with a group of folks like that, in a handful of intramural tournaments in college, I wanted contacts. Continue reading “Wearing glasses under your goalie mask”
Allow me to rant some more about podcasting, but it’s something I haven’t done very much of. Regardless, I feel like I should get some more thoughts about this medium out there. I can be such an armchair warrior, telling Rebecca all sorts of different feelings and thoughts about the things I see and hear.
When it comes to the quality of your podcast, there is a correlation to the content that you are producing, or at least there should be.
For instance, if you are a major company providing audio podcasts for the world to hear, then make it sound good. This should be the number one thing on your list of priorities. The actual quality of the content should matter just as much, but if I can produce something that is audibly better, then you have a problem.
I have a nephew back in the states that fired up Garageband, all by himself, and recorded his own podcast, trying to be like his uncle. Sure, an eleven year old kid yakking about going to school and playing soccer isn’t the most entertaining thing for the rest of the world to hear, but the crisp audio quality of him using the built-in mic on their iMac worked amazingly well. What he recorded never reach the ends of the earth, but it amazed me so much that I ran some bits of it on an episode of RadioZoom[rz#71].
On the other side of this argument, give me brilliant content with questionable audio quality over the reverse, no questions asked. I’ll always be wanting something to improve, that’s a given. If you have something really important or worthwhile to share with the world, then crank it out there.
You should always strive to make things better, but if you are hunkered down in the middle of nowhere with a mic, laptop, and some form of internet connection, podcast away. Tell the world what it’s like to be alone and starving to death, but surviving on the heat of your laptop battery. That might be a tad bit extreme, and you should be able to at least IM some one for help in that situation. Stiil, if you have your laptop and a mic in your office at work, get what you can when the situation calls for some ghetto engineering, or in this case, ghetto podcasting.
I only mention this because I listened to some big company’s podcast today. It irked me because of the reasons I just mentioned. I won’t mention who it was for or done by, but it sounded painful. The content itself wasn’t up my ally, but even an objective view of it still makes me think that there is room for improvement. I wasn’t buying into their product when I went to the site in the first place, and you can bet that there is no way that I will in the future.
On another, related note, Matthew Mullenweg has started podcasting. The brainchild behind WordPress has a mic, a computer, and probably a lot to say. Only two episodes[#1, #2] and not the best sound quality, but I’m more curious as to what a major player in the world of blogging has to say versus how well it sounds when he says it.
