Pictures of Screens – “Fatty Joins the Force”

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In jail, wearing a policeman’s hat and slouching against the bars of the cell, his face – a man-child’s written with petulance, frustration, and defeat – is streaked with dirt and the remnants of blubbering. He’s absurd, cartoonish, but also ironic; the recent turn of events that have landed him in prison must be weighing on him. He had been offered to join the force after he saved a young girl from drowning, even though he had always been courageously reluctant. That helpful push into the lake from his fickle lover was really at the root of why he dove into being a hero.

Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle in "Fatty Joins the Force" (1913), directed by George Nichols and produced by Mack Sennet
Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle

Twelve months ago I sat across from the man, Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle, trying not to catch weird reflections in the TV screen that I was photographing. Continue reading Pictures of Screens – “Fatty Joins the Force” →

Tablets, Phones, and Laptops

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About one year ago, I purchased an iPad. It’s been an amazing device. I read my news on it, read my email there, play games, and use it as a reference. I thought I would write blog posts, read books/pdfs, and create more with it. While I do some of the latter, it’s difficult at times. The iPad (and iOS) isn’t set up for content creation as I do it. I know that’s a bit of trope in the tech press: the iPad is for content consumption not creation. I think that it’s an unfair statement in general, but for me, it’s true.

Continue reading Tablets, Phones, and Laptops →

Services

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I’m a big fan of internet services. So much so that I am willing to pay for them. While most of us use and love Dropbox, one service that I actually don’t pay for right now, I’m not here to write about that. I’m here to write about the services that many of us are unwilling to pay for. For what it’s worth, the following three services work well on mobile (iOS) and desktop.

Email

Gmail rules the roost for most people. Even though I’ve had a Gmail account since the very early days1, before that time, I was paying for an email service for myself and Mike. Periodically, I overhaul my email setup.2. Recently I made another transition to Fastmail.

I can’t say enough positive things about Fastmail’s service. Unlimited domain names, aliases, plenty of options for aliases under Fastmail owned domain names, good filtering via sieve, and plenty of space. It doesn’t hurt that the webmail application is “not too shabby.”

RSS

Brian just recently made a large post about RSS. I love RSS as echoed during Brian’s post. I’ve been very happy with Feedbin as my RSS hub. It hooks into the apps I use, has good search and sharing options, and a responsive developer. I’ve used Feedbin for a couple of years now and I’ve loved it. RSS and email are my two most used services, so having a solid provider for them is advantageous.

Bookmarks

I’ve used various home grown methods of bookmarking web pages and archiving online content that I wanted a permanent record of. I haven’t kept up with most of the methods because they ultimately took too much involvement on my part. That being said, I think Pinboard is going to work for me.

It’s fast, simple, and affordable. It fits my working style. I like the archive option too.

  1. I got a Gmail beta invite from a friend mid-August 2004. According to Wikipedia, “Gmail initially started as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004[9] and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007…” ↩
  2. This is a habit that would repeat itself several times. I made a big transition after graduating from college and losing that address. My transitions midway through grad school were written about previously. I realized near the end of grad school I would need to transition off of my Princeton email address, which would be a much more painful process than moving on from my undergrad email. In preparation for that, about a year before I graduated, I started to consolidate my mail on our paid server account (protozoic.com). We used that service up until about a month ago, when I moved us to Fastmail. Parallel to all of this email provider movement, I’ve also moved email clients, from Eudora->Apple Mail->Mailsmith->Pine->Mutt. That is a story for another day. ↩

Soggy Dog

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I made a number of Vines over the Thanksgiving holiday, largely centering around my mother’s dog, Max. This Vine is perhaps my favorite because I am certain I could never reproduce this slurping, soggy dog sound near the end.

The James Spader Podcast 6 – “The New Kids” 11.9.14

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In the 6th, and very belated, installment of The James Spader Podcast, hosts Mike Gray, Chris Onderick, and Erik Pepple delve into the funland that is Sean S. Cunningham’s 1985 film “The New Kids.” Written by Harry Crews (yes, the novelist) and Stephen Gyllenhaal (yes, father to Maggie and Jake) and featuring performances by Shannon Presby, Lori Loughlin, and James Spader, “The New Kids” stands as a flawed but entertaining film in Spader’s oeuvre.

Download or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or your newsreader.

Review: Olympus WS-822 Digital Audio Recorder

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I recently purchased an Olympus WS-822 Digital Voice Recorder. I decided to write this review up for the device because when I was researching it, I could not find examples where someone actually played audio back from it. At the bottom of this review, I have an audio file that is a side-by-side comparison between it, a Zoom H4N, an iPhone 5s, and an Electro-Voice RE20. I explain the test in more detail at the bottom of this review.

Olympus WS-822
Olympus WS-822 on “The Dymrak Dread” module by John Nephew.

Continue reading Review: Olympus WS-822 Digital Audio Recorder →

Monday, 11:33 am, in the Apple Store

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I am looking at a table of three old ladies tapping away at iPads, while a heavyset woman breathes instructions into a lineman amplified over the speakers of a monitor that displays her own iPad’s screen. Between labored huffs, I catch something about time zones and geographic locations. Eyes peer over rims of glasses to clutched devices. There is some more wheezing into the microphone – why is it so goddamn close to her mouth? – no matter, Cupertino has just been name checked. A blue shirt whizzes by me, catches my scowl and spins. Earlier, I have made a mental note looking at another blue shirt wearing a woolen knit winter hat, that all employees must be encouraged to wear a piece of clothing that expresses a relaxed individuality, or faux-relaxed individuality, as I am sure Jobs in his jeans and turtleneck never put anyone in the room at ease. The blue shirt buzzing by my head now is a bookish, yet attractive female, sporting fashionable trousers.

Continue reading Monday, 11:33 am, in the Apple Store →

A decade

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Mike tells me that protozoic is 10 years old. We’ve been online at this location for a full decade. We had other internet homes before this one, but this one is the longest running one. I think we first established our internet presence with the original Chook site, which was sometime around 1996 or 1997.

The first post here was made on September 15th, 2004. We posted a lot more then. Hopefully we will continue in the future.

Operation: Red Chicken Disco Jesus – The Screenplay

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Here are the scans for the screenplay Operation: Red Chicken Disco Jesus along with some photos of the Wreck-Gar folder I found it in, which obviously protected the script from the elements at some point. Without Wreck-Gar, the script would have surely been lost to the annals of time.

Wreck-Gar Folder (Outside)

Disco Jesus - pg. 1

Continue reading Operation: Red Chicken Disco Jesus – The Screenplay →