Todays Important Links and Commentary

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie review by Matt of X-Entertainment.com captures a lot of what I love about the movie. Maura and I had a great laugh reading it and remembering how totally true to the original is.

Rovang.org has more information about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers than you need. But not as much as you want.

RuinedEndings.com will ruin the ending of most any movie you want to see :-)

Black Ranger Rules.

Dear friends can make you happy.

Update

I really like my little studio apartment at 24th and Valencia in San Francisco. I commute to Cupertino 3 days a week and telecommute 2 days to Wavexpress.

I worked for Wavexpress back in 2000 and they hired me back this summer. We/they are still trying to make a video blog viewer that works a lot like television. I’m a little disappointed in the progress we’ve made, but I’ll keep plugging away at it because it pays the rent.

I have been doing my best to enjoy life… going to events like the Urban Iditarod, Kite Fight (although I have still never made it to a successful event, I have been trying now for two months… I am beginning to doubt that Rick really exists), Argentine tango classes, concerts, more concerts… I’m probably going to do Improv lessons at BATS soon.

For exercise, I’ve been running (occasionally). I feel good when I do it. I was thinking of going to Golden Gate State Park right after writing this…

For my commute to Cupertino, I have been carpooling with a coworker named Linden. Well, actually he works for Wave and I’m with Wavexpress (we’re just like Wave, only we don’t stop as much) We’ve been getting along splendidly. For the last month we have been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” on the way to and from work. It’s a fantastic book. Before that, we have been listening to podcasts that I have been downloading from the internet. over the last several weeks I have been watching the first three seasons of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit”. I feel like they might turn me into an atheist yet. At the very least, they have reminded me of how important personal responsibility is.

I still haven’t put any art on my walls. I don’t know… I like the clean lines or something. I’ve got lots of art from friends and my own collection… I should just put a nail in the wall and see what happens…

A coworker (well, she’s with Wave…) showed me a model airplane field thats 10 minutes from my office last week. I’m getting my planes ready to fly!

I was introduced to a friend of Jeremy and Fiz.. Charlotte. She lives in Boston right now but she’s moving to SF this summer. I’ll give further news as it develops.

And I continue to find it to be near impossible task to keep up with all of my friends blogs. I do apologize. I’m not sure if it’s crazy that it often takes me a week to get back to people via email. The backlog just never ends.

Tarot as a Meditation… and Power Rangers!

card70I give little creedence to the thought that Tarot draw upon supernatural powers (maybe a tiny bit of creedence, but certainly very very little). But they are certainly good as a meditation on a subject. It can be something that helps you focus your thoughts on a matter.

And then this comes along… This is the card Charlotte recently drew from the Voyager Tarot when meditating about her uncertain future and the thoughts of moving west.

This is the trust card… You may notice the Golden Gate bridge and the SF skyline… and it’s probably nothing but I mailed her a little plastic frog a few days before she pulled the card.

I’m reminded of the famous scene in the 1995 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie just after the Rangers got their powers. One is embued with the majestic powers of a giant mechanized crane, another gains giant ape powers. And Adam… well… Dulcea looked at the forlorn new Black Ranger Adam. She asked, “Adam, what is wrong?”

Adam responds with a sullen expression of frustration and futility saying, “I’m a frog.”

I’m glad I saw it in the theater. Heck it was way better than Star Wars I.

Orisinal fun Flash games

Orisinal

Very fun. Very cute. Kid friendly. I like em too.

Except for that “shoo the penguins with the ice cube gun to save them” game. It feels way too much like Duck Hunt.

Ben Stein, Anne Graham and Fear Mongering

I recently got one of those “forward this to all your friends” emails. It offended me so much that I wrote a response and sent it to all 100 or so people I found in the Forwarded by… list.

First the letter, and then my response.
Continue reading ‘Ben Stein, Anne Graham and Fear Mongering’ »

Firefox Shortcuts

Firefox has a gazillion keyboard shortcuts.

Here are the ones I use (or want to remember to use…)

Quick Search – Right-click on any input box (IE: the search bar on my blog). You’ll see “Add a keyword for this search”. You can make it so that searching my blog for fun is as easy as typing the following into the Firefix address bar “l fun”

My searches are:
g – google.com
l – lee.org/blog
w – wikipedia.org

Alt-D – jump to the address bar

/ – find ( ‘ and ctrl-f are other types of find commands)

Here’s way more keyboard shortcuts

Improv Classes

I’m thinking of doing Improv classes at BATS Improv Theater :-)

There’s a “Foundation I” class running every Sunday from April 23rd to May 28th.

Last week I caught a “Double Feature” long-form improv show at BATS and quite enjoyed it. I’ve always (I remember wanting to very badly in college) wanted to try improv.

:-)

Flying in Cupertino

Rancho San Antonio County Park is 10 minutes from my office in Cupertino and it’s a great electric model aviation field. And since it’s not someone’s official field, I don’t need no stinking AMA membership.

Model Aviation Wowness

I’m starting to think about model aviation again. It’s been a long while. I had promised Ma’at that I’d get her in the air at Burning Man 2006. It still seems like a great challenge. There are two big challenges I can think of. First, finding the right plane to put her on. The Trick 1000 didn’t work very well for a few reasons. The second challenge is safety. I want to fly her over the heads of Burners at night. What I want to do is put her on a platform that can (in a worst case scenario) hit a person and have it not hurt. I’ve been hit by my Zagi a few times and the EPP foam and rear-mounted motor made the strike a non-issue. I think it’s possible to make a crash-safe plane but it’s going to take some effort to get such a plane to be able to carry the 12 oz payload of Ma’at and her batteries.

My apartment is strewn with playa-dusty airplane parts as I begin to get things together. While I was looking online for some answers to my questions, I ran across an inspiring video. Give it a view and then tell me flying isn’t uplifting and beautiful.

(Article with video link)
(Video link), Mark Leseberg at Tucson Shootout 2003.

(local version) (26megabytes)

mark-video.jpg

Andrew Schinasi

On Friday I met Andrew Schinasi and his girlfriend at lunch in Boogaloos. He’s a jazz saxophonist from Montreal. It was cool meeting them and talking about a panoply of political subjects. If we could only stay on one subject, we might change the world.

I bought his VERY recently produced (IE, earlier in the day) “Andrew Schinasi Compilation 2001-2006” and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed. I’m usually not much of a jazz fan but it’s really good.

It’s all good, I tell you.