The iPhone Paper Clip Stand

This is very cool. I just made one and it works great. Also works for the iPod touch.



Detailed instructions and template are here.

"Eagle Eye" is uneven but fun

My freelance review:

The new flick Eagle Eye, starring Shia LaBeouf, wants to be it all: a fast-paced, youthful political thriller complete with a message, amazing technical effects and awesome car chases. Oh, and a story that tugs every so often at your heartstrings and offers cutesy dialog during moments of extreme duress.

LaBeouf (fresh from the latest Indiana Jones flick) plays the twin brother of a recently-deceased government operative. He returns home from his brother's funeral only to find his apartment loaded with top-secret military weapons. A mysterious phone call sends him on a dangerous, prescribed run as a suspected terrorist. He's joined by a single mom (Michelle Monaghan) whose son has been kidnapped and whose actions are also being deliberately controlled.

Every move these two make is of the kind where the viewer's belief must not only suspended but completely thrown out the window. As our stars escape harm time after time, the surrounding violence and collateral damage is quite high, contributing to an uneven overall tone to the film.

Despite being about 20 minutes too long, there's still plenty of fun to be had with Eagle Eye, especially if you try not to think too hard about it. And this includes not thinking too hard about why they miscast Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton as an FBI agent. Someone like former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson would have fit the bill quite fine.

I have a feeling this will make for a great flick to catch on HBO some Saturday afternoon.

How we spend our days...

I received a wonderful little quotation book from my friend Amy for my birthday. It's called Enjoy the Journey. One of the quotes really jumps out at me:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

—Annie Dillard

Boogaloo

Discovered a great place to eat last night -- it's Boogaloo, a restaurant with Caribbean flair located in Maplewood.

It's a relaxed atmosphere with very bar seats at the bar that hang from the ceiling and swing. There's also more traditional seating, both indoor and in a screened-in patio. My ginger mojito was quite tasty and the following tapas -- with Cuban, Creole and Caribbean influences -- tasted as good as they sound:

• New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp with a sweet potato biscuit 
  
• Jerk chicken wings and garlic coconut rundown sauce
  
• Crispy crab empanadas and mango-mustard mojo 
  
• Plantain tostones with goat cheese & roasted pepper mojo
  
• Brazil nut encrusted manchego cheese with romesco and chimichurri
  

And as a special bonus for my vegan friends: The plantain tostones and the following two tapas -- as well as a number of items on the dinner and sandwich menus -- can be prepared vegan upon request:

• Curried chickpea hummus and Jamaican buss-up-shut bread
  
• Flat bread with wild mushrooms, pepper rajas, goat cheese & crispy onions
  

Highly recommended!

Apple's MobileMe is a mobile mess

A few months ago, I mentioned being excited about Apple's new MobileMe service. With MobileMe, your personal e-mail, calendar, contacts and bookmarks are all kept in sync wirelessly and in near real-time among your computers, iPhone and the web.

Parts of this $99/year service work for me. But, the web version of MobileMe on a Windows PC is very clumsy. And even worse, it's unreliable. I've had the message window go completely blank in the middle of writing e-mails. And now I'm finding out that a few e-mails that I'm sure to have sent did not actually send.

My recommendation to consumers: Don't get MobileMe if you'd using it from a Windows PC.

My recommendation to Apple: Fix this mess.

Just call me Baretta Hockey Palin!

Track, Willow, Trig, Bristol, Piper... Afraid that all the cool Sarah Palin baby names have been taken? Fear not, for there is help, courtesy of The Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator.

Each of us can now find out what our names would be if we had been born to Sarah Palin.  Just enter in your first name.  Time Magazine calls it "as simple as moose pie."

Click here to find out your name, and feel free to share here.

Abe Vigoda is still alive

Good news! According to CNN, Abe Vigoda -- who played the near-retirement Detective Fish on Barney Miller thirty years ago -- is still alive.

Something to keep in mind for those of you who do Trivia Nights... courtesy of your friends at scoodog's blog.

Happy Autumn!

Google's logo for today, the first day of my favorite season of the year:

Arrrrr!

I just found out that today was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. With only 47 minutes left in the day, all I can say is this:

Arrrrr! Me aut to get dis added to me calendar for next year, matey.

Microsoft's new ads: Made on a Mac!

It's not enough that Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, is a mess.

It's not enough that their recent ad campaign starring Jerry Seinfeld was pulled after two baffling commercials had aired.

But now it turns out that their latest "I'm a PC" commercials, which premiered Thursday night, were made on a Mac running Adobe Creative Suite software! Far be it for the commercials to have been made on a PC using Microsoft's own Expression Studio, which the company bills as software that "takes your creative possibilities to a new level."

This reminds me of when it was discovered that Microsoft's annual report had been made on a Mac!

Atrocious animal abuse

The following article has my blood boiling at levels it hasn't reached in a long while. Our world has really sunk low. Large companies don't care that "factory farm animals" are living horrible lives and are being severely abused. It's all in the name of profit -- goddamned profit, with ethics completely thrown out the window. Companies run these factory farms without concern for the welfare of the animals. Their goal is reducing operational costs to be able to sell their "product" at low enough prices to satisfy companies like Wal-Mart, who then turn over the savings to you and me so that we can "live better." So, we "live better" at the expense of the welfare of the animals?

Read on:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An undercover video taken at an Iowa pig farm shows workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods up into sows' hindquarters.

On the video, obtained by The Associated Press, a supervisor tells an undercover investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that when he gets angry or a sow won't move, "I grab one of these rods and jam it in her [anus]."

The farm, located outside Bayard, Iowa, about 60 miles west of Des Moines, is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minnesota. PETA wants to use the results of the investigation to pressure Hormel, the maker of Spam and other food products, to demand that its suppliers ensure humane treatment of pigs.

Hormel spokeswoman Julie Henderson Craven on Tuesday called the abuses "completely unacceptable."

The animal rights group also planned to send the video to the sheriff in Greene County, Iowa, seeking prosecution of 18 people on animal cruelty violations. According to PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, the video shows eight people directly abusing animals.

"Abuse on factory farms is the absolute norm, not the exception, and anyone eating factory-farmed meat is paying to support it," Friedrich said.

After getting a whistleblower complaint from someone inside the farm, PETA sent two undercover investigators to be hired at the farm and document its practices -- one from June 10 to September 8, and the other from July 23 to September 11.

At one point on the video, an employee shouts to an investigator, "Hurt 'em! There's nobody works for PETA out here. You know who PETA is?"

The undercover PETA investigator replies that he's heard of the group.

"I hate them. These [expletives] deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say!," the employee yells as he hits a sow with a metal rod. "Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! ... Take out your frustrations on 'em." He encourages the investigator to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.

Records at the Greene County Assessor's Office show the property was owned by Natural Pork Production II LLP of Iowa until August 18, and then was transferred to MowMar LLP of Fairmont, Minnesota.

Lynn Becker, an owner of MowMar, called the abuses on the video "completely intolerable, reprehensible. We condemn these types of acts. If any animals were abused in the brief time we've owned the farm, if we still employ these people, any attempt will be made to investigate and initiate corrective action immediately."

Becker said his company provided animal welfare training to the staff when it took over the farm.

Natural Pork Production II referred questions to AMVC Management Services, which managed the farm under its ownership. Mark Jones, AMVC's network manager, said the video showed "unacceptable practices" and that his company is working with the new ownership to investigate.

Craven, the Hormel spokeswoman, said the farm became a Hormel supplier only after the change in ownership, and that MowMar "shares our commitment to animal welfare and humane handling."

Craven said it was her understanding that the abuses took place before the change in ownership. But PETA's Friedrich said the abuses continued, and that the new manager abused animals by shocking and kicking pigs.

Dr. Jennifer Greiner, a veterinarian and director of science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council, said the industry condemns "willful abuse" of pigs and that the video depicts acts that are not acceptable.

"Our industry is committed to handling pigs humanely," she said. "My industry is full of good people."

At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren't healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.

Temple Grandin, a leading animal welfare expert who serves as a consultant to the livestock industry, said that while those are standard industry practices, the treatment of the sows on the video was far from it.

"This is atrocious animal abuse," Grandin said after PETA sent her the video. But she disagreed with PETA's contention that it was widespread in the industry.

"I've been on many good farms, and the pigs are handled gently," she said. "This was blatant, deliberate animal cruelty. These people are sick. They need to be prosecuted. There are certain people that enjoy hurting animals and they should not be working with them -- period."

One of the PETA investigators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his ability to do further undercover operations, said there was a culture of violence on the farm, and working there was an emotionally and physically exhausting experience that typically involved working 12-hour shifts and walking 15 miles a day.

"So many times, it took all of my willpower not to step up and do something," he said, adding that he also saw the supervisor shove a cane into a sow's vagina. "I was just shocked. What do you say to that?"

Whodathunkit? McCain helped create the Blackberry!

John McCain may not know how to use a computer, but...

When asked what work McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, a McCain adviser held up a Blackberry and said, "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."

So I guess McCain's even a bit responsible for... the iPhone!!

Curvaceous

That is the word I use to describe the new iPod touch, having visited the Apple Store tonight after work. The iPhone 3G is also quite curvaceous. My first-generation iPhone used to seem curvaceous.

I suppose everything's relative. Including curves.

I want one in every color!

Let's Rock

Apple is holding a special product announcement event titled "Let's Rock" on Tuesday.  My predictions of what they'll announce:

• iPod shuffle:  More memory for the money. 2 GB at $49 and 4 GB at $69. Some new colors.
  
• New iPod nano:  The tall form factor returns with a sculpted body and a widescreen when viewed sideways. Lower price points; more memory; some new colors. $99 for 4 GB. $149 for 8 GB. $199 for 16 GB.
• New iPod touch:  More sculpted body; enhanced iPod interface; GPS now built-in; lower price points. $199 for 8 GB. $299 for 16 GB. $399 for 32 GB.
• iPod classic:  Price reductions: 80 GB is $229; 160 GB is $299.
• iTunes version 8: Many new features and user interface enhancements, including the Genius playlist that automatically suggests combinations of your songs that will play well together.
  
• iPhone software version 2.1:  Enhanced iPod interface.
• And one more thing:  The Beatles are now on iTunes.

See the comments on Tuesday evening to see how good my predictions were.

Chuck Norris facts

My nephew Bernie got a Chuck Norris t-shirt for his birthday from his cousin Jaime. There was no other birthday gift that got him so excited. So why is Chuck so popular again? It's all in the name of satire! (I feel very late to this party!)

"This is where the end of cancer begins."

As my friend Colin states on his blog, "If you’re breathing, you’ve probably been impacted by cancer -- moms, dads, kids, sibs, friends… some still here, some not."

A new charitable services fund, Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), raises funds to put together "the best and the brightest minds in cancer research -- those on the edge of accomplishment -- investing in their projects and taking the bureaucratic obstacles out of their way."

I just donated in memory of my brother Jim and in honor of two cousins and a close friend who are currently battling cancer.

In SU2C's manifesto, they declare "this is where the end of cancer begins." May this be so!

Spit shine

This was a cute scene captured by the cameras during Sarah Palin's speech last night:

Scooters for Obama

My dog Scooter, namesake of scoodog's blog, likes this button, available for purchase here. Special thanks to my friend Amy for the tip!