Random Recommendations

Occasionally, when I find something that I enjoy, I think "I should mention this on my blog". So, now I'm rounding up some of the things that I would recommend.

50FootWave - music
I doubt many of you have heard of 50FootWave. They are Kristin Hersh's new band (she fronted Throwing Muses, not that you've heard of them either). Her voice has gotten a little gravelly but I think it works well in the new band. Plus she still has a knack for writing music.

Anyway, they are giving away mp3s of their new ep "Free Music". So go give them a listen. I don't think this ep is as good as their other, "50FootWave mini-album" but after a couple listens, the songs are really starting to grow on me.

Also, she has a blog that is actually pretty interesting. She doesn't update it that often but when she does it is usually heart warming. I might point you especially to this post.

Ratchet and Clank - video games
Ratchet and Clank have easily become my favorite video game series. (It used to be Zelda but the later games, although very good (excluding Zelda 2 of course) were unable to rekindle the magic of The Legend of Zelda. I guess I'm to old now.)

R&C games are a wonderful combination of platforming and shooting but mostly they are just fun. So much so that even Arial has played it a bit.

Insomniac Games (the makers of R&C) really seem to care about the experience. In the second, they added the best Easter egg I've ever seen by putting in the Insomniac Museum. It was a place to look at all there concepts, play with some discarded ideas and generally learn a bit about game development. Mostly though, it was a nice extra bit to a really nice game.

The third R&C game "Up Your Arsenal" got rid of all the annoyances that other games seem to have. You can skip the initial splash screens, making it faster to just sit down and play for a while. They made "Load Game" the first option in the menu (rather than "New Game" which you use only once and then normally have to skip over every time you boot the game). To top it off they made purchasing ammo a lot easier by including a fill-all option (rather than having to buy ammo for each weapon individually).

I think the Ratchet and Clank series is great, mostly because they seem to care.

Microbe Hunters - book
This is a book that I'm currently reading (nearly finished). It was written in the twenties and is the story of the ground breaking scientists who discovered and studied microorganisms. It is a pretty amazing look at all the work and the pretty impressive steps of logic used to figure out what turned into the foundation of Microbiology. It details the discoveries of things we learned in our first semester of General Micro. It is presented in such a way that shows how impressive it really was to figure out simple things like growing bacteria on agar, things that are basic to modern microbiology (or at least what was modern when I learned about it).

I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone who isn't really into microbiology, but for those of you who are, I highly recommend it. I am finding it fascinating

Well, that's all you get from me today.

mwz

Disappointment

Today, I had a couple disappointments.

I was listening to Pandora and a song came on that I really liked. It was by a band called Glitter Mini 9. I went to their website and found out that they broke up three years ago. That is so sad. I had never heard of them and already they are done.

Then, on the way back from my swimming lesson, I was going to stop by our blockbuster to pick up Saw II for the weekend. When I got there, it was closed. Not just for the night but closed for good. All the shelves were empty.

Now there isn't a Blockbuster in walking distance of our house. That sux.

mwz

Frances now says "no" a lot. It can mean yes or no...

mwz

Swimming with Frances

Since I've been injured, I haven't been able to exercise. The one positive thing about that (other than the extra sleep) is that I was able to participate in Frances'' swim class.

The class is for babies and toddlers. It turns out that there isn't much you can actually do with young child in a pool.

You can:

1. Lay them on their back.
2. Lay them on their stomach.
3. Have them kick.
4. Have them splash.
5. Have them stoke their arms.
6. Have them blow bubbles (aka piss off your child by sticking her face in the water).
7. Have them "jump" in the water from the side (while you hold their arms so they don't drown).
   

Basically, everything we did was some combination of the above.

It was kinda fun though. Frances was really good at kicking and using her arms when I supported her stomach. Occasionally, I could even feel that she was providing propulsion forces.

When we started the class, they gave out toys. Frances of course wanted the big red ball. That made it difficult to have her splash with her hands but she kind of used it as a flotation device. She also seemed to like holding a kickboard. Even with the kickboard, I was still supporting some of her weight, but she looked just like she was supposed to look like while holding a kickboard.

She also seemed to enjoy "jumping" into the pool. That pretty much meant stepping into the pool while I held her arms. It was very controlled but she thought it was great fun.

All in all, I'm glad that I could to that with her.

mwz

Random

I was going through some old stuff (Arial wants me to get rid of some of it) and I came across an old camera of mine. My parents got it for me in high school. It wasn't top of the line but it took decent pictures. At the time, I thought it was sort of sleek. But now, it seems huge. It has about double the volume of my current digital camera (which isn't very small itself). I was amazed.

There is still film inside. I'm going to try to get the pictures developed and see if anything survived.

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We have a fireplace with a stone hearth in our living room. The hearth is about 2 inches high. Today, Frances had some fun with it.

She took the old keyboard that we let her play with and set it so half was on the hearth and half was off (orientation: the number pad was off and the caps lock was on the hearth). She proceeded to "surf" on the keyboard and tried to keep it balanced. It was interesting to watch.

Later in the evening, she took to jumping off the hearth. She was doing it in the same way that I used to jump down stairs. Since she's so little, the hearth is kinda like a small step. She seemed to find it great fun.

mwz

Hiccups

This evening,we were in the car after supper. I developed a pretty bad case of the hiccups. Hiccups every ten seconds, bad. After a bit, whenever I would hiccup, I would hear Frances making a hiccup sound from the back seat. She had a great time "hiccuping" with me. It almost made the hiccups worth it.

Oh, Frances said "up" today, meaning pick me up and let me touch the ceiling.

mwz

Subway and Project Runway

This is a two part post because neither thing is important enough to give individual posts to.

We went to Subway last week or so. They are doing this "instant win" game. They give you a card that you can scratch to reveal a code. You then have to go to their web site and register and then you can "instantly" win.

We got a couple cards. So tonight, I went there and actually entered my information like a good little customer and entered the first code. They have this really stupid (and computationally intensive) JavaScript thing where you virtually scratch off another card to reveal you fate.

I didn't win.

So I go to enter the next code and they tell me that I can only enter one a day. What's up with that? I'm not going to give them another email address for them to spam, so I'm going to have to wait till tomorrow. Arial pointed out that if they want you to eat lunch and supper there, then they should at least allow you to enter twice a day.

I like Subway and all but this promotion sucks.

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We have started watching Project Runway on Bravo. We liked last year's season and we are liking this year's too. I don't know why I like it, I just do.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting about this is because one of the designers, Santino, reminds me of J-Funk's husband. They sound pretty close to the same and have similar mannerisms. They could be long lost brothers except that don't look that much alike.

I think of that every time we watch the show.

mwz