Hodge Podge

Remember Photofunia? You know that Russian site where you uplaod yor photo and the site does some magic in the background and integrates that photo into a scene? Well here is another one for you, WriteOnIt. Their selection of images is not as diverse as Photofunia, but they do have a couple of other options that make it worth a peek – magazine covers and adding captions to some of there own photos.

Via io9:
Cartoonist Chris Gine has decided that he’ll draw three new robots (with… stuff) each week for a year, giving you a glimpse into just how much variety there is in the robot world. He is up to sixteen with 149 to go. Bots with Stuff. My favorite so far: #11, a robot with a really cool jetpack, but no friends to show it to. Although the very first one, a robot with a delicious groundhog is a close second.

Via Techdirt:
Sita Sings The Blues. Because the cost of obtaining the of copyrights on songs from the 1920’s, a weird mashup movie of that eras jazz vocals, the epic Indian tale of Ramayana and sumptuous animation couldn’t be released as a for profit movie, so instead, the filmmaker has decided to press 4,999 copies on DVD (just below a level to keep the royalty fees at the $50k she has already put up) and make promotional copies available for downloading from several web venues. These promotional copies are not subject to royalty fees or something. The filmmaker is going to rely on other ways of making money on the project instead of the whole find distributor Hollywood route, one of which is the “pay what you want” model by accepting donations. I’ve probably got a few details of this whole thing wrong, more info can be found on the filmmaker’s blog, Rogert Ebert’s blog and the films site. I’m downloading the torrent now and plan on kicking a few bucks Nina Paley’s way.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 143

Grandma’s Birth Control Pills

The doctor that had been seeing an 80-year-old woman for most of her life finally retired. At her next checkup, the new doctor told her to bring a list of all the medicines that had been prescribed for her.

As the young doctor was looking through these, his eyes grew wide as he realized she had a prescription for birth control pills.

“Mrs. Smith, do you realize these are BIRTH CONTROL pills?

“Yes, they help me sleep at night.”

“Mrs. Smith, I assure you there is absolutely NOTHING in these that could possibly help you sleep!”

She reached out and patted the young Doctor’s knee. “Yes, dear, I know that. But every morning, I grind one up and mix it in the glass of orange juice that my 16 year old granddaughter drinks…and believe me, it helps me sleep at night.”

Daylight Theiving Time

We moved the clocks ahead last night, somehow apparently stealing an hour of my time. Unfortunately for both of us, the now missing time was blogging time, so you will have to hope that I can somehow squeeze in an extra post this week so you can read all about today’s events. And trust me when I say this, they were doozies.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 143

Daufuskie Island

The main reason for ferrying over to this small barrier island off the South Carolina coast was to take a picture of the Post Office, we also wanted to enjoy a place that the primary mode of transportation is a golf cart. There are cars & trucks on the island, but only the full time residents, of which there are only around 200, are allowed to keep one. We also wanted to try and find the one and only cache there, Life of Leisure. It is a micro, which we aren’t having too much luck with, but listed as “not at all hard to find.”

I’m sure we were right on it and with the clue given as eye level, it should have been easy, but we couldn’t find it. The location is right near the 18th fairway of one of the Daufuskie Island Resort’s golf courses, so we had to dodge golfers and balls. There was a dead tree right on the spot that looked like it was a woodpecker buffet line with lots of holes that a micro could have fit in, but I didn’t see one, nor did I find one hidden under all the chips. Dang.

We were now 0 for 3 on micro caches this trip with the two failure to finds in Beaufort yesterday. Not only didn’t we find this cache, but we didn’t find a full size one on Hilton Head that we tried before boarding the ferry. We suck at this. But we aren’t about to give this up yet, instead of being discouraged by the failures we are now more set in our resolve not to be defeated.

The round trip ferry ride is $23 a person and a 3 hour rental of a golf cart is $50, so we crammed quite a bit of traveling into our day. The boat arrived on the island at 11:00 AM and we covered a bunch of ground before heading back to the landing for lunch at the Old Daufuskie Crab company. After lunch with not much time left until our return trip, we decided to stay until the 5:15 ferry, if we could keep the golf cart. We I asked if it was alright if we kept it over the 3 hour limit the fellow told me usually they charge an additional twenty bucks, but he said don’t worry about it, just be back by 4:00 PM. I’m sure his answer would have been different had it been high season, but I thanked him and we set back out to poke around in some places we hadn’t been yet.

Most of the roads in the resorts and planned to be resorts were paved, but all of the internal main island roads are dirt. Donna, who is normally driving averse, actually loved driving the golf cart around the island because with traffic being almost non existent and with a top speed of 14 MPH down hill, piloting the cart is a blast. We will definitely be visiting again, may not be for another year, but a return trip is going to happen sometime. There are lots of little stories to tell, but my fingers are getting tired from typing, so maybe another time. The island is only 2.5 miles wide by 5 miles long, so just look up at the attached picture and note the green line, that is our track from the GPS and some of those routes we traveled more than once. We covered some ground.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 142

Almost Half Bad Day

I hope after 458 geocaches we are as good at finding them as we are Post Offices. The Beaufort and St. Helena Island POs were crossed off the list in short order, but neither of the caches I picked out in Beaufort for us to find were found. I know we found the correct spots from the descriptions and or titles, but locating the actual item we were looking for didn’t happen.

What kept us slightly above the 50% find rate today was a second look at finding the cache in Hopeland Gardens right in Aiken. This time, like the first attempt, we zeroed in on where the cache was and even though we both had ideas where it might be hidden and now knew exactly what the cache looked like (thanks to looking at the online comments) we still couldn’t locate it. That was until I decided to check the underside of a small birdhouse, the cache wasn’t there, but while leaning down to look I noticed that the hole didn’t actually go through the wood, it wasn’t a bird house, it was a cache house. The side panel was hinged. Ingenious.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 140

The “My Album Cover” Game

Idea stolen from ted is preposterous:

To Do This
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit ?random?
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr and click on ?explore the last seven days?
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 – The original number five was to post the album cover to Face Book and tag others, but I’m still just an anti-social blogger, so the buck stops here.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 138

What Birthday?

My email to Geocities on Saturday, much to my surprise, generated a reply. They told me to call their Account Verification Department at 866-850-4303. After 5 minutes on hold I got a live one. The fellow who answered the phone was probably in India, but his English was excellent. To verify my status as web site owner the first question he asked me was my birthday, the very first question that the web site asked, and I told him I wasn’t sure.

I mean who doesn’t know their birthday right? Well, I know mine, but I don’t remember which one I used when I opened the account. I figured that one day I’d pass along the reigns of the web site to someone else and should use a date that means something to the bike club. The bike club was formed in 1980, so I thought I picked January 1, 1980. I was wrong.

When I guessed wrong the guy basically said that is as far as he could go and shipped me off to another department. More time on hold, but this time after 5 minutes I hung up. Somehow I’m figuring the whole birthday issue is going to be a problem.

I tried logging in again about a half dozen times trying various bicycling related terms as the password, I know the login: aikenbikeclub, but I have no recollection of what the password might be. after giving that up in frustration, I thought maybe I would try Plan B, I would report the ABC site for violated the Geocities Term of Service. After poking around a bit I managed to find the form for report this egregious violation. After filling out the form and hitting the submit button I ended up at a Page Not Found error page. Nice. I tried a couple more times with the same results.

Looks like I’m just going to have to change my home phone number…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 135