Tour Germany with Sam Adams Beer Company #
A beer tour, hosted by Sam Adams Brewery, in Germany, the birthplace of beer? How badly do I want to do this? Pretty damn badly. At $2979 per person though, it's not happening. At least not this year.
June 22, 2009
Buffy Meets Twilight #
Amazing editing combining two vampires, using various tv and movie clips. (And if you've never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you really ought to grab it from Netflix or something. It’s from Joss Whedon, the fellow behind Dr. Horrible (and Dollhouse). I keep meaning to buy the complete boxed set.)
June 19, 2009
“Swing Shift Cinderella” (video) #
This classic cartoon has every Tex Avery trope in the book: from sledgehammers to corny jokes to wolf whistles—the latter two literally. It's great fun. It ends with Imogene Lynn singing, a treat in itself. (Here she is singing “Big Boy”; she has a gorgeous voice.)
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The “new” site
June 19, 2009
A quick note on my new posting style: These short “Clips” are things I read or watched, and found interesting enough to share with you.
It’s kinda like sending you a “hey, check this out!” email or iChat message.
If the headline or description intrigues you, click on the headline to go to the original site. My goal is to get you curious enough to read or watch the links.
I hope you enjoy the new style. It’s an experiment in short-form, near-daily posting.
If you find stuff I might be interested in, you can bookmark it in Delicious.com and then tag it with “for:jasonian”. It’ll show up in my Delicious Inbox. Or send it to me the old fashioned way via email or iChat.
I’ll still have more personal, longer-form entries too. And I’m working on a way to hide the Clips for those who don’t care for them.
Finally, I turned off comments on the site. Too much spamming. If you want to comment on something I wrote, I encourage email or a response and link back at your own site. The “#” symbol is a perma-link to each entry.
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Red Sky At Night #
On a recent walk, the evening sky had some amazing red tinting. I took a few shots with my iPhone camera; these aren’t very good shots, alas.
June 18, 2009
Piano version of “Flight of the Bumble-Bee” (video) #
Yuja Wang's fingers fly over the keyboard. Amazing dexterity.
Plan Wine Tasting Trips #
Great idea, with suggestions for day trips (four or five suggested tasting rooms in a region), and profiles of dozens of wineries. The search engine and GPS-tagged maps are very useful.
They are, of course, working on an iPhone app. It will use the new “MapKit” feature in iPhone OS 3.0 to show 650 wineries along with your current location. Sure to be a boon to regulars and tourists alike.
DEADLINE Post-It stop motion #
Awesome animation with Post-It notes. The soundtrack is the same one Mac OS X 10.5 uses on first boot (Röyksopp's Eple 
).
President Obama extends more benefits to Federally employed same-sex couples #
LGBT couples working for the Federal government are now discriminated against less:
[M]y Administration has identified a number of areas in which greater equality can be achieved under existing law by extending to the same-sex partners of Federal employees many of the same benefits already available to the spouses of heterosexual Federal employees.
The President also comes out against the atrocious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
Unfortunately, my Administration is not authorized by existing Federal law to provide same-sex couples with the full range of benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. That’s why I stand by my long-standing commitment to work with Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. It’s discriminatory, it interferes with States’ rights, and it’s time we overturned it.
And he plans more equality:
I am also proud to announce my support for an important piece of legislation introduced in both Houses of Congress last month — the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009. This legislation will extend to the same-sex partners of Federal employees the same benefits already enjoyed by the opposite-sex spouses of Federal employees.
Small battles lead to big changes. Slow but steady wins the race.
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Wrong Answer My Rear Bumper
June 17, 2009
I hate being wrong.
Well, I don’t mind being wrong, if I’m legitimately wrong. It’s a learning opportunity.
So more accurately, I hate being told I’m wrong when I’m not.
It happened today, while I was killing time on Facebook. (Why was I killing time on Facebook? A very good question I have no answer to.)
Anyway, I took the “Famous Logos” quiz because someone in my circle had taken it. I figured I’d get all (or at least the vast majority) of them right.
Unfortunately, the author of the quiz neglected to do his or her homework. Question 3 of the quiz was this:
See the problem? The right answer isn’t there. I was forced to choose a wrong answer, which resulted in this:
(I chose Toyota, because the actual right answer, Lexus, is the luxury brand of Toyota.)
The logos are so different I’m not sure how they could be mistaken for each other:
I ended up with 10 out of 13 correct, or 77%, rather than 11 out of 13 correct, or 85%, making me a little more “wrong” than I actually am.
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