Snap Club has improved greatly. It auto resizes, looks better, and has tighter controls now. (No more manual work, just upload, and it takes care of the rest…I like that.)

Much, much laundry to do. I should get hopping on that… I don’t know if the ‘mat will be open on Easter, and I don’t have much left to wear. Plus, there’s no good breakfast food in the house… some grocery shopping is in order, too. Ah, the talk of a tasty breakfast has motivated me into showering and gathering my clothes together… I’m off!

Obligatory Newtie piccie

Here, make a sugarpaste hatching chick for Easter.

Stuff to look at – odd advertisements, packaging, cookbook covers, and (definitely my favorite) the Spanish board game “El Juego de la Oca”. Olé!

The Romanian tourism board is actually planning a Dracula-based theme park in Transylvania, set to open later this year. Is nothing sacred, or, um, the evil opposite of sacred, anymore?

A gallery of beautiful panoramic photography by members of the International Association of Panoramic Photographs, including one of Lolowai Bay, Vanautu that I wanted to point out as Vanautu is the island James Michener wrote about in Tales of the South Pacific. However, this particular shot of an old car is my favorite. It’s yellowish tint and flat, dry land remind me of something out of a Steinbeck novel.

Darkstar is a multimedia CD-ROM “game” that is more like a movie than anything else. At all times, the resolution will be ultra-hirez with special effects that better most film projects, not to mention other computer “games”. The environment is completely interactive as the player encounters strange rooms, and a few time-hole generated “ghosts”, remnants of the past. There is none of the “bitmapped” looking play, and it is NOT a shoot-em-up game. It’s an explorable world with a complex story that you are thrust into stone-cold. It’s like Myst or Riven, but less puzzle, more story. And more action… from the MST3k guys… , why didn’t I hear about this from you?

Ever since I was a little bear, I’ve had a major jones on for the cliffhanger pulps of the ’30s & ’40s, featuring characters like Doc Savage & The Shadow. Something about them… the stories, the characters, the aesthetic pushes my gee-whiz buttons in a big, big way.

It’s full of pulp goodness & pseudo-science weirdness. And it has a lot of similar qualities with another geeky love of mine, the comics written by Warren Ellis & others, published by Wildstorm Comics, all set in the same universe. The writers of these comics… The Authority, The Monarchy, The Establishment, & especially Planetary… have a great sense of the history of comics, as well as what makes superhero comics good.

It’s a fun genre to work with… dreaming up ideas about a secret history of the world, in which daredevils, adventurers, explorers, mentalists, and people with inexplicable super powers all work secretly to influence the development of humanity. A world of shadowy conspiracies, weird science, alien incursions, & evolution. A world of mystery, wonder, & strangeness. Not so unlike our own, if you believe that sort of thing.

Peep Research – Just in time for Easter!

I’m more than delighted with how simply the troll was squished flat in the hut. with usercodes, if he gets deleted, it might be tricky to get a new account now, too.

Yahoo! masters of unethical marketing, have, due to ‘changes with their system’, reset your preferences so that you will receive every bit of marketing they send out. Go into every Yahoo! account you own, click ‘account info’ and set them all back to no.

This should be illegal. We need laws that will go further than that. We should have control over our own information, and corporations should be required to wipe their databases everytime they change their terms of agreement, or honor the terms of the older agreements. I’m tired of corporations taking my personal information with promises that they will never sell it and then unilaterally changing their minds. For that matter, all marketing materials should be opt-in in the first place. bah!

Had nicer dreams last night, through restless sleep. I vaguely recall convincing my sweetie to go with me into a mini-submarine to visit an undewater city (sort of like sealab…) We had a room with a thick plexiglass wall that allowed us to see all the aquatic life, off the side of a reef. We were talking goofily to each other in mock french accents (Jaques Coustau-style, no doubt), about *everything*. in the room. “Behold, zee mayjezteek bafrhoom towellz-ah. Zheee how zhey arrrrrre zho fluffeh and Zhoft… Haw-haw-haw! (Maurice Chevalier laughter was our puntuation.)

That’s my baby is miniature horses… but the star of the show is an adorable little monkey of a girl named Cheyenne… about four or five years old, and so cute. something about a little girl and a pony. Simply adorable.

Another filly on the horsecam! I want the Ellie cam to come back! Some consolation is the panda cam, black rhino cam and the polar bear cam.

top keywords to get to my web pages yesterday (mostly gallery, but a few blog hits) the one in italics gets me.

3 Google her melons 18.75%
2 Google wench 12.50%
1 Yahoo monitor glasses 6.25%
1 Google 10 ways to sneak fabric into your house 6.25%
1 Google high-tech-fashion 2002 6.25%
1 Yahoo 84 diner 6.25%
1 Yahoo her melons 6.25%
1 Yahoo text to image vb 6.25%
1 Google scottobear s journal 6.25%
1 Yahoo her melons 6.25%
1 Google hanuman s baby 6.25%
1 Yahoo dictonary progress 6.25%
1 Google newtcam 6.25%

quick quiz before bed (I want to figure averages, and report findings later)

Thanks for helping! Nighty night!

I am leaving soon and you’ll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

I am leaving soon and you’ll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

Went home early today, feeling poorly, and little work was to be done.

rglad gave me a spiffy linkie for child safety here Those I really dig. The safety lock is sort of creepy though. I know that as a kid, if I had a bracelet put on me that I couldn’t remove… it’d get removed. (If I was over the age of 4 or so, anyhow.)

Retro recipes. I especially like the Creepy Cakes.

This guy made a huge bear statue out of ketchup packets, thinking it’d look like it was bleeding when he shot it. It didn’t quite work out. I guess the science of constructing ketchup-packet bears still has a ways to go.

Some animal words. In no particular order.

• Ursine: Bear-like.
• Vespertilian: Bat-like.
• Pongid: Like a gorilla.
• Murine: Rat-like.
• Discophoran: Like a jellyfish.
• Blattid: Roach-like.
• Aedine: Mosquito-like.
• Vespine: Wasp-like.

la-di-da… Danny’ll be here in a few to meet for breakfast. Sadly, I suspect that there won’t be time to get to the hobby store. I get to tell him today that I heard from Cathy Wu…*shudder*. There’ll be no shortage of conversation today.

I’m in a much better mood today… yesterday I had a real funk on.

It’s sort of funny… I’m seeing the bunny-link I posted a few days ago pop up all over the list of people I read. Meme propagation is neat to watch… like little mushrooms after a rainstorm. fifth and sixth

Minority Report looks cool, but it’s got Tom Cruise… I’m very tired of him.

there’s dan! I’m off!

Poem Tag project up to 68… a major update after 4/2. I’m going to have to boogie to catch up my gallery, maybe on Sunday, while my sweetie is entertaining her family.

Yet another Reason I love living in Florida. The Dali Museum. … check out the store. neat stuff!

Here, make an Easter bonnet entirely out of marshmallow peeps. Just stay away from places favored by birds and ants should you venture to wear it.

TV Land’s Retromercials provide somewhat bizarre but not entirely unpleasant 70s flashbacks, with video clips of a bubble-eyed, wooden clog-wearing Swiss Miss puppet telling us that we’d better not “add milk” to the cocoa powder, and of Mother Nature sticking her nose into a keg of Chiffon margarine, swooning over it, then screeching, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” Possibly sending the narrator guy to certain metaphysical or just plain physical doom.

“To test the lab-grown meat’s appeal, his team showed it to colleagues to analyze for color and fried the meat to assess its aroma. Benjaminson said most considered the fish meat appetizing, although no one actually tasted it since he hasn’t won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.”

If no one had the courage to actually taste this meat (which was, incidentally, concocted from the hopelessly funky combination of fetal bovine serum and goldfish meat), how did they come to the conclusion that it was “appetizing”? From smelling it as it was being fried up? I’m picturing all these wacky scientists standing around wearing “Kiss the Cook” aprons and big chef hats, frying this fake meat on a barbecue grill as they all exclaim, “Yep! Smells like chicken!”

PopCult’s website of the week is Secret Fun Spot. Great place to rediscover childhood junk you forgot you once had (like this, something I coveted for about five minutes in 1980) and enjoy the work of Marvin Glass, Michelangelo of plastic toys.

And now, I go to sleep.. but first, my views on todays dead celebs. nigh night, dear Journal. I look forward to happy dreams.

Milton Berle was one of the true innovators of television, even if it’s mostly crossdressing and pie in the face humor. Thanks for getting it started. Good journeys.

Why I won’t miss Dudley Moore. That’s all I have to say about that.

Yikes! I have breakfast with Dan tomorrow!

I should call and find out what time he’s coming over…maybe ask him to remind me to get some ellie-wood and to bring my ref manual into work tomorrow. I just know I’m going to forget. I know which army man Danny’d be….