Jun 30
Oyster is a travel site I’d never heard of.
They’ve just launched Oyster Shots. Rather than presenting a handful of staged photos provided by the hotels themselves, they send their people to hotels and take their own set of high-res photos. They cover the rooms, pool, restaurants, everything.
There are over 300 photos of The Montage alone! Terranea has nearly twice that amount.
Incidentally, I could live at either location indefinitely.
Jun 24
The Napoleon Dynamite animated series will be coming to Fox in 2012, filling the spiritual hole left by King of The Hill’s cancellation.
First look trailer:
Jun 23
A few years ago Orange County consolidated the radio systems used by every Fire and Police Department in the county into one gargantuan, hugenormous radio system called the CCCS (Countywide Coordinated Communications System). Instead of having thirty-four cities each with their own isolated radio systems, the CCCS created one huge, interoperable communications channel across the entire county. It’s a trunked system, of course, so it’s not like anyone’s fighting for airtime.
Los Angeles county has been trying to do the same thing but Raytheon and Motorola have been fighting aggressively for the contract and stalling the process. And it of course doesn’t help that systems like ICIS and the South Bay’s SBRPCA already exist within LA county are trying to do this themselves on a smaller scale.
The way things are going, LA-RICS (Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System) may never happen.
Jun 21
“Going Out of My Head” and “For Me” performed live in 1967 on ABC’s The Hollywood Palace by Sergio Mendes’ Brasil ’66. Complete with an introduction from the man himself, Herb Alpert.
Jun 18
I’ve been thinking about “the old days” and I wondered what happened to the cofounders of Sierra On-Line, Ken and Roberta Williams.
I found this 2006 Interview with Ken that lays it all out.
After they sold Sierra to CUC in 1996 the new management kind of made a mess of things and the company crumbled around them.
Ken and Roberta then got out of the software business, bought a boat, started sailing, and never looked back. Ken even wrote a book about sailing across the ocean.
It’s sad to see them out of the game and so resigned to the fact that Sierra and The Imagination Network have been gone for years.
Jun 17
Kai Krause, of “Kai’s Power Tools” fame, kind of disappeared over the last decade.
People know him for KPT, but he’s also the guy behind Kai’s Power Soap, Bryce, and a handful of other plugins and tools that helped popularize photo editing and digital imaging at a time when PhotoShop was years away from becoming a household name.
The good news is that he’s alive and well. Not working, per-se. Just reflecting. Thinking. Taking it slow. Savoring the little things in life. Enjoying the journey.
He’s basically doing what everybody should be doing once they’ve amassed enough wealth to get themselves through retirement and their kids through school. It sounds like he’s enjoying himself, and that makes me happy. He’s earned it.
Jun 16
BBC 4 just put together an outstanding documentary of the history of easy listening music. It’s on YouTube now.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
All the greats are covered, from Ray Conniff to Percy Faith to Bert Kaempfert and everyone thereafter.
Jun 15
Get drunk, not fat. Liquor broken down by calorie count and calorie-to-alcohol ratio.
Get drunk, not broke. Liquor broken down by alcohol content, and price-per-oz of alcohol.
Jun 14
Jun 2
The Top Five Regrets of dying people, culled from years of hospice care.
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Don’t go dyin’ until you’ve made peace with this list, okay? You’ll be much happier in the final moments before your consciousness fizzles out into nothingness.
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