Read an article and browsed through a few others; seems like an interesting publication to put into rotation?
Statuses
Dear Santa (TV Movie 2011)
Directed by Jason Priestley. With Amy Acker, David Haydn-Jones, Emma Duke, Patrick Creery. Beverly Hills 90210 alumni Jason Priestly takes the helm for this warmhearted romantic comedy about a die-hard party girl struggling to change her frivolous ways. Crystal (Amy Acker) comes from a wealthy family. She loves spending money. Her parent's money. When they decide it's time for her to make something of her life they give her until Christmas to clean up her act. Should Crystal fail to ...
The Christmas movie marathon continues. This one isn’t quite as sappy as one might hope, but a good up-the-middle heart warmer. The concept is actually much more interesting and subtle and not as lite-comedy fare as the cover image would belie.
It’s interesting to see some of Amy Acker’s early work. I’ve been a fan of hers from her many television series. It’s nice to see her playing the lead rather than playing 3rd or lower fiddle.
A Cinderella Christmas (TV Movie 2016)
Directed by Tosca Musk. With Emma Rigby, Peter Porte, Sarah Stouffer, Marc Barnes. Angie works hard to run her uncle's events business while her cousin Candace takes the credit. When Angie takes a night off to have fun at the Christmasquerade Ball, the mask and gown allow her to let loose, and she quickly catches the eye of Nicholas, a wealthy local bachelor. But then Angie has to go before revealing her identity, leaving Nicholas searching for his mystery woman in this modern take on the classic fairytale.
So, yeah, my sappy holiday movie marathon on the Lifetime/Ion networks continues. This one isn’t quite as sappy and dreadful as most and may be one of the better one’s I’ve seen in the genre. Despite a few small soft spots in the plot this one is relatively redeeming. Dare I admit I’ve seen it twice in almost as many days now??
As I look at the credits after the fact, it dawns on me that I tangentially knew the director back in the day through a friend at Hopkins.
Watched Barry on Netflix
A young Barack Obama forges his identity while dealing with race, divergent cultures and ordinary life as a New York City college student.
I wish I could say I liked this more, but there was no real drama or tension in the picture at all. The characters were all flat and seemingly one dimensional. I can’t even say it worked as an art-house film. Perhaps if I hadn’t known it was Barack Obama being portrayed and his signing the letter “Barack” at the end was the kicker, then perhaps it may have had some impact, but the whole affair was just flat.
Best of Enemies | Documentary about Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. Debates | Independent Lens | PBS
Best of Enemies captures the legendary 1968 debates between two ideological opposites: leftist Gore Vidal and neoconservative William F. Buckley.
What a great view into where much of our current politics and media coverage of it have sprung. I highly recommend this to everyone.
The 45th President | 60 Minutes (CBS News)
President-elect Donald Trump speaks to a divided country on 60 Minutes; and, Bill Whitaker reads mail received about a story Dr. Jon LaPook reported on legalizing recreational pot. First aired 11/13/16
Interesting to see the drastic change in rhetoric with respect to that of the campiagn, though it hasn’t seemed to have held with respect to the media he’s either putting out (or not putting out).
🎵 I’m Not in Love by 10cc
Written by band members Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, the song is notable for its innovative and distinctive backing track, composed mostly of the band's multitracked vocals. Released in the UK in May 1975 as the second single from the band's third album The Original Soundtrack, it became the second of the group's three number-one singles in the UK between 1973 and 1978, topping the UK singles chart for two weeks. The song was also the band's breakthrough hit worldwide, reaching number one in Ireland and Canada and number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, as well as reaching the top ten in Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.
📖 49.0% done with Fletch Reflected by Gregory Mcdonald
📖 49.0% done with Fletch Reflected by Gregory Mcdonald
This one immediately follows Son of Fletch, literally by few hours. It didn’t start out with the same type of bang that most of the Fletch series has, instead it was about 20% into the story before we knew quite what ride we were on. Now that’s it’s going, it’s as interesting as most Fletch tales.
📺 Crazy for Christmas (TV Movie 2005)
Directed by Eleanor Lindo. With Andrea Roth, Howard Hesseman, Jason Spevack, Yannick Bisson. On Christmas Eve, Shannon McManus (Andrea Roth) is stuck driving around a wealthy and eccentric client (Howard Hesseman) who is giving away large sums of money with the secret hope of reuniting with his long lost daughter.
What can I say, I’m a sucker for middling Christmas themed movies on the Lifetime channel at the holidays?
This is positively a dreadfully unexceptional movie. And vaguely entertaining for every minute of it.
The odd part is that I’m pretty sure I watched this either last year or the year before…
I’ve discovered a spectacular tool for owning my own bookmarks and replacing Pocket and InstaPaper!
I’ve discovered a spectacular tool for owning my own bookmarks and replacing Pocket and InstaPaper!
- It’s IndieWeb and POSSE friendly
- Does link forwarding in a flexible/responsible manner
- Allows for proper attributions
- Keeps tons of metadata for analyzing reading behavior
- Taggable
- Allows for comments/commenting
- Could be used easily as a linkblog
- Archives the original article
- Is searchable
- Could be used for collaboration and curation
- Has Readability integrated
- Has a pre-configured browser bookmarklet
- Is open source and well documented
Who could want more?! I want to experiment a bit with it, play with multiple configurations, and then document parts before rolling out–particularly as it wasn’t necessarily intended for this use case, but I’ll have some more details shortly.
📖 On page 95 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This
📖 On page 95 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This
Oh, if only more of my cookbooks had fantastic sentences like this one:
Now the flow of a liquid in a canal varies as the fourth power of the diameter.
Then there’s this lovely statement, which is as applicable to jellies and consommés as it is to our political leaders:
Today, as heirs to the (political) ancien regime, we all want jellies, like bouillons and consommés, to be transparent.
I’ll note that chapter 4 has some interesting recipes as well as one or two long-term experiments which may be interesting to try.
Owning my old Delicious Bookmarks… Sadly not today.
I thought I’d take a few minutes to go back and “own” the bookmarks I had put into Delicious since I joined on July 5, 2009, so I could have them on my own website. Sadly I ran into the following message:
We’re sorry, but due to heavy load on our database we are no longer able to offer an export function. Our engineers are working on this and we will restore it as soon as possible.
Hopefully they get things working properly so I can export them one of these days without resorting to more arcane methods to get the data back.
A New Microblog on Mastodon.social
Manually POSSEing my first post from my own site to Mastodon.social, a GNU social alternative. I have a feeling I’ll enjoy the increased character count of 500 before being truncated on a microblog. #firstToot
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López
The New York Times bestselling winner of the 2016 James Beard Award for General Cooking and the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award. A grand tour of the science of cooking explored through popular American dishes, illustrated in full color. Ever wondered how to pan-fry a steak with a charred crust and an interior that's perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge when you cut into it? How to make homemade mac 'n' cheese that is as satisfyingly gooey and velvety-smooth as the blue box stuff, but far tastier? How to roast a succulent, moist turkey (forget about brining!)―and use a foolproof method that works every time? As Serious Eats's culinary nerd-in-residence, J. Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more. In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new―but simple―techniques. In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes with over 1,000 full-color images, you will find out how to make foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, how to make the crispiest, creamiest potato casserole ever conceived, and much more.
🔖 The New Minority by Justin Gest (OUP, 2016)
It wasn't so long ago that the white working class occupied the middle of British and American societies. But today members of the same demographic, feeling silenced and ignored by mainstream parties, have moved to the political margins.