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February 27, 2005

Oscar Night 2005!

Congrats to Karim Amir for winning the 2005 Clontzville.com Oscar Pool! Some real surprises tonight -- good for Clint, no so good for Martin. Chris Rock did well. Melissa says Kate Winslet's dress was her favorite. Meanwhile, I got beat by my mother-in-law. I gotta get out more.

Thanks for playing along... see you next year!

The scores

Posted by Lee Clontz at 7:45 PM

February 22, 2005

Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall of Shame

Now I'm sure: there's a Web site for everything. I stumbled upon the Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall of Shame trying to figure out what Mull of Kintyre should actually sound like (as compared to the tortured version I've been attempting to pluck out). The site showcases examples of what's apparently known as the "Truck Driver's Gear Change." What's that, you ask?

It's when you have a mediocre pop song that tries to lift itself up toward the end by shifting up a key before it begins to repeat-to-fadeout. It's an exceptionally cheesy -- and yet, strangely effective -- method of making a mediocre pop song seem more transcendent (like when the violins swell during a kissing scene in a Dermot Mulroney chick flick).

It's a difficult technique to describe, but once you hear it, you'll laugh out loud at how many cruddy songs use it. According to the site, the definitive "Truck Driver's Gear Change" is "Man in the Mirror." Listen to the sample and you'll know exactly what a TDGC is and you'll start noticing them all over, especially if you've ever heard a Celine Dion song.

As an aside, the writeups for each song are really great. To wit:

This is, arguably, the definitive truck driver's gear change: fearsomely sickening in its intensity, and yet somehow inspiring in its audacity. Taken from the album Bad, most of the song would be quite innocuously boring if it wasn't for the constant and revolting fretless bass, which seems to operate on a frequency intended to dissolve your internal organs.

God, I love the Web.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 2:36 PM

February 20, 2005

Clontzville Oscar Pool 2005!

It's finally here! Prizes? We don't need no stinking prizes! Enter now!

Make sure you come back Sunday night for live scoring!


Posted by Lee Clontz at 11:19 PM

February 19, 2005

Wings... Why Did It Have to Be Wings?

Have been working on playing my guitar again. I've tried to learn to play it twice now taking classes at Evening at Emory, but each time I've lost my momentum. I'm determined not to let that happen, and I think I'm doing a good job at actually making it more of a habit, which is my goal. The book I'm using, The Complete Guitar Player, is pretty good, though I'm using a couple of other books to help supplement since it doesn't have much of a chord chart. I've also been spending a good deal of time in the Guitar section of About.com (hope my time there is worth your $410M, New York Times). There's some good stuff there, but it's just a matter of practicing enough so that every chord doesn't have buzzing or muffled notes. I'll say this, it's a heck of a lot harder than it looks.

It's a good, relaxing way to spend a half hour before bed each night. I do wish I could find a song that you could easily play with A, D and E chords, but there don't seem to be a lot. I'm getting pretty tired of Mull of Kintyre -- I mean, seriously, does my first song have to be Wings?

My hope, by the end of the month, is to be playing Wilco's Kamera, even thought the linked transcriber did a bit of a botch job on the lyrics.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 1:00 AM

February 18, 2005

Top 100 Gadgets of All-Time

Great piece in MobilePC about the best gadgets ever made. No spoilers, but Pez is No. 98, so you know the rest of the list is good.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 3:27 PM

Anything to Avoid Walking

I admit that I like to play games as much as the next guy, but this is definitely the next step. Fans of Sony's EverQuest 2 massively-multiplayer online game (commonly referred to as "EverCrack") can now order pizza in-game. Typing "/pizza" brings up a Web browser to order Pizza Hut for delivery. Because nothing works off a medium Meat Lover's like moving your fingers while sitting in front of a screen for eight hours.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 11:22 AM

J00r pwn3d by teh m4n, d00d

This is pretty funny. Microsoft has published a guide to l33t speak for parents to decode what their kids are saying. I'm not sure if it's the corporate Microsoft template or seeing a Microsoft definition of "m4d sk1llz ", but this link just struck me as funny. Or, rather, it rox0rz.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx

There's also a guide to dealing with "griefers" with some weird clip art photo of fencing. Classic. Seriously, I love this.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/griefers.mspx

Posted by Lee Clontz at 10:11 AM

February 17, 2005

Canon Digital Rebel XT

Duuuuuude. Okay, as much as I love my Digital Rebel, I'm having a major jones for it's just-announced successor, the Digital Rebel XT. It's smaller, faster and looks pretty schlick in its matte black finish (the photo to the right is the silver variety). There's no way I'm going to buy another camera right now, but it would be really tragic if I dropped my Digital Rebel and it broke in a way that couldn't affordably be fixed. Yeah, that'd be just horrible. I'd be heartbroken.

Suddenly I have a strong inclination have a photo shoot at a windy beach and do a lot of changing of lenses while sitting in the rain with sea gulls hovering overhead.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 11:33 AM

February 15, 2005

Behind the Scenes at FeedDemon

Nick Bradbury, who wrote the legendary HomeSite and now FeedDemon, made a really good post to his blog about the process behind his software development. FeedDemon's an RSS reader that I finally broke down and bought this week after trying a lot of freeware products and being less than enthusiastic. I've tried Pluck, which is cool but integrates awkwardly into IE and Sage, which doesn't organize large numbers of feeds all that well (and only works in Firefox). Nick's always seemed like a cool guy, and it's really interesting to see what the process behind the scenes is for a product like this. He says he's starting to dabble in C#, which should be interesting, as I'm trying to dabble in it myself if I get the time.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 9:44 PM

Dell has a new 24"

Dell has a new 24" widescreen UltraSharp monitor for less than $1,200! (Well, a dollar less than that figure, but still.) This thing is really tight. Four USB 2.0 ports, a 6-in-1 media card reader, VGA, DVI, composite, component, s-video. It runs at 1920x1200 which, humorously enough, is the same resolution as my 15" laptop. Still, I think that would be a much more comfortable size, as this laptop blows my eyes out if I try to read small text. No ghosting in games, good blacks... this thing is really nice.

Review: Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW Widescreen LCD

Posted by Lee Clontz at 5:34 PM

February 14, 2005

Happy 80th Birthday, Grandma!

Today's my grandma's 80th birthday. She's a great lady, and we had an excellent time at her surprise birthday party on Saturday.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 10:56 PM

2004 Box Office Surprises

Was surfing around Box Office Mojo today looking at the returns for 2004 and found some stuff that surprised me.

Nuts, man. Nuts.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 10:44 PM

Mac Mini? Maybe...

I've been thinking about getting a Mac mini sometime in the next couple of months. I've never personally owned a Mac before, but this guy is priced really well and is a really smartly designed and priced unit for people like me (who don't want an all-in-one and who don't want to buy a lot of extra stuff).

My main fear is whether the speed will quickly become an issue for me. I'd be using it mostly for the media software -- iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie -- and to play around with some development. I'm a little worried that I'll buy it and it'll feel slow from the first day since I have a G5 at work.

It's a tricky thing -- the same $800 (after upgrading the RAM and getting the BT/Airport module) would buy a pretty spiffy Athlon 64 machine and replace my aging desktop, an Athlon XP 2000+, but my aging desktop actually works pretty well now. On the other hand, if it works pretty well now, why buy the Mac at all, other than idle curiousity?

Apple's making some really good product right now and, for once, the pricing is impressively aggressive. Might have to go to the Apple Store this weekend and test drive the mini.

Posted by Lee Clontz at 10:28 PM