Top 10 Tech Failures of 2010

1. Something from Apple that everyone loves
2. Something else from Apple that everyone loves
3. Your favorite cellular telephone
4. Something Facebook did
5. Something Google launched
6. A crappy tablet nobody has ever heard of
7. Microsoft’s latest initiative
8. Desktop Linux
9. Michael Arrington
10. Ping

via Marco.org – Top 10 Tech Failures of 2010.

So I decided to sing into it and give it a run for its money.  I was singing Trey Anastasio’s “Host Across the Potomac,” whose chorus is “The time has come for desks and chairs to be elevated.“  I sang the line several times, annunciating a bit more with each line, and here are the results:

• The time has come for desk send JS to be a little David
• The time has come by best chance to be added day babe
• The time has come for dad send chance to be added day again
• The time has come for desk and chairs to be inundated

Gotta love it; four times sung, four totally different results.

The moral of the story is: Dragon is great for dictation, but not so much for transcribing singing.

But she got marginally cooler when I found this Megan Fox quote:

“If you eat Chinese food, your farts come out like Chinese food. If you eat Mexican food, your farts come out like Mexican food. And milk, it’s like—you can smell the warmth in the fart. My wardrobe on Transformers always smells like farts, and I have no idea why.”

I’m not kidding.

When you don’t, as you can easily see, the flash is blocked from lighting the bottom of your frame, and you end up with not a black semi-circle, but rather, a shadow.

It only took about a hundred pictures before I finally deciphered this simple bit.  In the process, I removed my polarizer, changed my focus, and even tried the lens hood upside down.

I also figured out that while shooting in manual mode is fun, it’s almost impossible to quickly go from well lit to medium lit to dark without a lot of practice. I shot a small event (my sister’s wedding shower) as a favor, and it took about 10 minutes for me to surrender and shoot entirely in auto.

I wish I had the chance to interview Ms Bristol Palin.  As a newly crowned abstinence spokesperson, I’d love to ask her “So, are you saying that you wish you had waited to have sex and that having your baby was a mistake?”

Faced with this question, she has two outs: “No, it was right for me, but it’s wrong for you” or “Yes, I wish my kid was never born.”  It’s lose/lose, isn’t it?

Someone from my work thinks she’d play the religious right card and explain that “the Lord” put the challenge to her so that she would be able to share her experience and prevent further problems.  In short, according to him, “she’d find a way to blame God for it.”  By that rationale, is it fair for me to say “How about I smoke all the weed and then tell you all how bad it is?”

Unfortunately, due to legal restrictions, I am unable to say any more, but trust me when I say that most of my friends will have immediate use for this site!

Check back tomorrow for the details!!

Updated: For those who missed it, April Fools!

I wish people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Joe the Plumber, and Sarah Palin much success. They are the best thing to happen to the Democratic party.

by pintomp3, seen on Digg

Steve: Lame, But He Knows It, Thus, Cool

Lately, due mostly to Noggin’s schedule change, she’s been watching a lot of Blue’s Clues.  At first, I hated this show.  It’s about as dumbed down as a show can get, at first glance.  But lately, I’ve been realizing something: I’ve picked up a lot of sign language in passing glances. 

Blue’s Clues is not that interesting.  As a show, it’s really basic, and not very interesting.  Unlike, say, Sponegbob Squarepants, where after 40 seconds, if the kid walks away, I watch the rest, Blue’s Clues is completely boring.  I’ll happily shut it off.  And yet, when she is watching, I love that she’s getting the sign.  

I have to admit that I like Steve much better than Joe.  Steve  was natural with sign language.  And he seemed genuine, if possible.  He was a normal dude, just chillin’ with his animated dog Blue, who apparently, would only communicate via elaborate clues to a master puzzle.  The whole thing was very normal, in an “I have an animated blue dog who leaves me clues to answer simple questions which I figure out whilst signing and then track in a notepad for future reference” kind of way.  

Steve was also a very routine oriented guy.  Same shirt, every day: none of this new-fangled several colors nonsense.  Also, he didn’t grin all the time like a complete tool. 

Joe: Thinks He's Cool, Is Actually D-Bag

But Joe sucks.  Joe is always giving a stupid, goofy grin that deserves a slap.   Unlike Steve, who seemed generally laid back did a great job of hosting a kid’s show, Joe was a trying-too-hard pretty-boy who spent his time hosting Blue’s Clues living in Steve’s big shadow.  Aside from having a much more polished and “I wanna be an actor” finish, he was so effortful in his performance that it came off as both condescending and tiring.  His silly oversmiling and unnatural “side running” is so odd looking it leaves me wanting to take Steve out for a beer, just for not sucking so much.  

I think Joe is an actor thrilled to have a gig, trying so hard to be good at it, and yet, coming off as so desperate it makes me roll my eyes.  Every emotion is so overplayed I’m sure my 14 month old must mutter “What a sodding twit” under her breath. 

Either way, Blue’s Clues, despite being entirely blowsome as a TV show, is pretty decent as an education tool, largely due to the amount of ASL mushed into the show.  If your kid has to watch something, you could do a lot worse than Blue’s Clues, which is likely why a show that ran from the mid nineties through 2005 or so is still aired several times a day.