Archives: December 2001
Saturday, 1 December 2001 I have no links yet, but maybe I'll have some later today. These people, however, have links and stories aplenty.  Friday, 30 November 2001MacFixit is tracking coverage of what may happen to @Home's customers tonight when the lights supposedly go out (particularly Mac users, but much of it applies to PC users).Ex-Beatle George Harrison Dies at 58 [Washington Post] Beatle George Harrison dies [CNN] Wednesday, 28 November 2001Rafe vs. Rush really isn't a fair matchup, but somehow Rush is the one who gets published in the Post.Go, read. [Warning: Andy Rooney/grammar fascist rant ahead. I allow myself one a year or so...] I just read an article where someone used 'hoard' properly... this is noteworthy in itself, but the thing that really bugs me is that I've seen it used wrongly so often that even when I saw it used correctly my brain still automatically threw up a penalty flag. This depresses me. Hoard is not the same as horde, and horde should never be used as a verb. Everybody on the web got that? There. I feel better, anyway. As a side note, I find that web writers who regularly link the words in their own prose to their definitions when the definition is not what they're actually discussing to be ... oh, what's the word? The clear message [to me, he disclaimed] is "Observe what sophisticated words I'm using. Why, surely not everyone who reads me is smart enough to know what my advanced words mean, and surely such people are not capable of locating a dictionary on their own, so I'll just help out the poor souls. How big of me. Do you like my hair?" Especially when they're words that a fourth grader should know. Gosh, I feel even better now. Anyhow, back to topic A, are there things that look wrong to you now that aren't? How has that set of things changed since you started using the Internet? My main beef remains that I can't see "sneak peek" without having to check if it really said "sneak peak" because so many people have spelled it wrong that I expect it to be wrong all the time now, even on major sites with "editors". And its vs. it's is just about a lost cause for me by this point; I know the difference very well, but whichever one is used looks wrong to me at first glance now even if it isn't. How about you? Tuesday, 27 November 2001Been poking around a bit looking for a good guacamole recipe... the best guac we've had around here is at the Rio Grande Cafe, but we should be able to come up with something at home, right?Here are some decent-looking recipes I googled. They all sound pretty similar (and easy): mash some avocado, put in a little garlic, onion and any other stuff that strikes your fancy, and chill it for a while. (If it's so straightforward and easy though, why do so many restaurants' guacamoles disappoint?) No particular order here: http://www.evo.org/user/kumquat/recipes/guacamole.html http://www.justadequate.com/guac.htm http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/mexico/easy_guacamole_recipe.htm http://www.cooking-italian-food.com/guacamole.htm http://www.hubbardstreetdance.com/recipe.html http://www.yankeeharvest.com/recipes/recipe11.html ("Mexican style") http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2290/guac.html (pointers to several varieties) Got any favorite guacamole add-ins? Monday, 26 November 2001So we finally saw Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes since it came to the cheap-theater-with-food, the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse. I had heard mixed reviews, with everyone praising the costume design and people being forgiving to varying degrees of the plot.My own quick review: This was not just an ordinary tedious, plothole-riddled, lacking-basic-internal-logic bad film; this was every bad film I've ever seen. The tipping point for me was (and I suppose this merits a minor spoiler warning; skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know) when the stupid spunky human child got his foot caught in the stirrup, necessitating an unnecessary heroic rescue by the hero, just in case you weren't convinced he was the hero. It was Star Trek: Insurrection all over again, with Picard having to go back and endanger himself to save the stupid little boy-whose-presence-was-otherwise-pointless. Bah! The relationships between characters were straight out of nowhere (why on Earth was cipher Estella Warren so taken with Wahlberg? My guess: because he brings a fresh set of genes to the Planet of Inbred Descendants of a Small Population). The humans in the crowd scenes surely must have been psychic to understand what was going on since the main characters were speaking so quietly and only to each other yet no one out there in the hills had any questions, comments, or smart remarks. Or maybe the budget was too tight to spring for another speaking role. Tim Roth's General Thade was unintelligible much of the time, overheated all of the time, and was the primary subject of the bizarre, stupid ending that Slate tried and failed to justify (more spoilers behind that link, obviously). No real breadcrumbs were left along the story's random walk to imply any of the events that clearly must have taken place for that ending to be possible. Rating: 2 out of 10, and that's entirely for the costume design and the opening Danny Elfman music. This was Beastmaster bad. Agree, disagree? Comment already. |  | Links, exploration and synthesis from Steve Bogart  photo by my wife If you want to be e-mailed when there's new stuff here, say "add me." Archives by week
Older Archives: 2001 (Aug-present) 2001 (Jan-Aug) 2000 | 1999 | 1998 Medley/AllTooCozy Entropy Genehack rc3.org GirlHacker LarkFarm Search log since Aug. 2001: Ye olde Amazon wish list  How's my HTML? How's my CSS? |
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