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CJL Fabrication - Home

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Dark Room | they.misled.us
Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.
Command & Conquer Classic | Command & Conquer

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Khan Academy

Latest comment spam

Mark — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:10:30 +0000

I’ve been blogging more in recent times. The increase in activity has brought me additional attention from comment spammers, I think. Most of my comment spam has been claiming to be from bloggers at Harvard Law School. I’m not even sure why that is. The e-mail addresses and URLs all appear to be legitimate, but the comments are all nonsense like I would expect from spam.

So, if you really are a blogger at Harvard, and you want to leave a comment here, shoot me a separate e-mail at mark [at] ask-mark [dot] com.

Chuck’s newest girl

Mark — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:56:19 +0000

It appears that my posts a few years back about Rachel Bilson’s guest spot on Chuck has been getting some attention since Kristin Kreuk has joined for a few episodes as Hannah.

I haven’t yet had a chance to watch this week’s episode of Chuck, so I can’t do much right now to comment and talk about Hannah. Rest assured that I’ll have more soon. Sorry for the delay!

Thoughts on LOST

Mark — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:11:08 +0000

I’m just going to vomit into this post my thoughts on the season premiere of LOST as I watch it (just a few hours behind). Thoughts after the jump (there will be spoilers).

Does Jack look older than he did in the pilot episode on purpose? Or is that just a continuity issue with Matthew Fox, the actor, aging six years since this all began?
The intro sequence under water reminds me of the credits sequence for Star Trek.
Oh, the eye!
Sawyer’s hair is longer than in the pilot. Interesting!
Juliet? wtf? Shouldn’t she be covered in earth?
I love that Dominic Monaghan and Sonya Walger are doing double duty for ABC on LOST and FlashForward.
It is striking to me that their experiences on the island are worth sacrificing just to return to lives that they weren’t necessarily happy about living in the first place. They’re always trying to go back.
Oh yeah, smoke monster!
See what I mean? They’re all so unhappy getting off that plane, except for Bernard and Rose.
Oh, Jack, why would you run through the tunnels?
Miles, are you going to tell him something?
Really? An ankh?
Jacob, the good god?
Oooh, and the Christ symbolism with Syid laid out like a cross when they took him out of the water…interesting. Just give him three days in a cave. He’ll be OK.
Is this whole series just about the ups and downs of Jack?
I <3 Emilie de Ravin.
Terry O’Quinn is pretty awesome.
What happened to Desmond?

Final thoughts on this premiere: I know there is almost an entire season of LOST yet to come, but I feel disappointed in the premiere. I came into the episode with a lot of questions, chief of which was, “wtf?”. I am leaving this episode with even more questions now.

What’s the story with Richard? What’s the story with the smoke monster? Has this temple existed on the island the whole time? How the hell did these people stay hidden? What’s the story with the magic water and the hour glass? Where the hell is Desmond and how did he get on the friggin’ plane? What happened to the elder Shephard? What’s Claire’s, Shannon’s, Michael’s, Walt’s, Anna Lucia’s, Boone’s, Mr. Eko’s, and Libby’s stories this season?

Oh, and finally, is ABC losing so badly to CBS and NCIS on Tuesdays that they had to bring the big guns to Tuesday night?

I can’t wait to see how this season is going to play out. They had better not screw it up.

Project 52 – 52 self portraits in 52 weeks

Mark — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:29:27 +0000

I’ve pulled the trigger. I am committing myself to this for 2010. I am going to take 52 self portraits this year, one each week, starting with this one:

I really want to put the T1i to good use, and I think this is a great way to do it. I hope to develop my photography skills throughout the year. I was inspired to do self portraits, rather than just general photographs, by Lauren Randolph and her 365 in 2009.

I have wanted to do Project 365 for the past couple of years, and I have failed miserably at each attempt (like this one). My failures were mostly rooted in forgetfulness and a lack of creativity. We’ll see how this goes. I think I have a much better chance at succeeding, needing to only come up with about 1/7 of the photos needed for Project 365.

Wish me luck!

United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop)

Mark — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:30:35 +0000

My friends don’t listen to enough pop music. So, here’s almost five minutes that will recap the year’s top 25 pop hits, according to Billboard. Enjoy!

DJ Earworm has also made the mp3 available.

This could have been us

Mark — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 03:49:36 +0000

A few years ago, on our way to a friend’s gig at Durty Nellie’s, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a Metra crossing gate. Tonight, the same thing happened to someone in Bensenville. Three people were reported to have suffered minor injuries. It was much less devastating that it could have because the train clipped the vehicle, rather than broadsiding it. Perhaps towns that have railway crossings should consider better management of the roads near the tracks when winter storms come through. I admit that I am a little more wary of my surroundings when I come across train tracks, but sometimes bad stuff can’t be avoided.

Near death experience

Holiday fun

Mark — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:00:09 +0000

The only problem with this video is that there’s one person missing:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

If only Christmas 2009 could be like this (plus me – I’m hiding in one of the boxes, yeah, that’s the ticket!):

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

We miss you, Pete! Merry Christmas out there!

Housekeeping

Mark — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:00:15 +0000

After upgrading the blog to WP 2.9, I decided to do a little virtual housekeeping. For cleaning up post formatting (and some terrible writing), I am done with posts through May 2003. That leaves me with just under 8,990 posts to finish cleaning up.

I have also cleaned up my tags and categories a bit. I have rethought how I will use categories. At one point, I had completely dropped them (with the exception of the general category) in favor of using tags. I think I am not going back to having a few top-level categories, and then I will use tags to add some more info to the metadata for each post. In cleaning up the tags, I have ensured that any tags consisting of multiple words will include spaces between those words; I am no longer going to use camelCase.

For now, I’ve got to put the housekeeping aside because I was supposed to go shopping for presents while Chris was out of the house. With that, I am leaving for Target.

If you’ve got a WordPress blog, you should upgrade to 2.9. And if you’re like me, and you’ve had a blog running for a while, you may want to consider doing a little housekeeping.

Aside: I was sidetracked for about an hour after editing my early post on West Wing. I started reading about the line of succession.

http://ask-mark.com/2003/05/14/west-wing-is-the-best/

5,998 tweets and counting

Mark — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:26:30 +0000

I’m approaching 6,000 tweets on my main Twitter account. I will probably blow it, like I did for my 5,000th tweet, and post some trite nonsense. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the next 24 hours.

Update: And so it has happened at 11:15 CST on December 15, 2009:

"If you received an F, this means that … your final case writeup was abysmal." – my Strategic Marketing Professor. #6000tweets

Sand painting

Mark — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:47:51 +0000

I’m supposed to be working on my take home final for my Strategic Marketing class right now. Of course, I have allowed myself to be distracted from that task, but I think this one is worth my attention.

My mother-in-law forwarded an e-mail to me about a Ukrainian sand painter named Kseniya Simonova. Simonova won the 2009 Ukraine’s Got Talent with her unique interpretation of the Great Patriotic War (as the Russian portion of WWII is known there). She painted scenes with sand on a light table, accompanied by various pieces of music (including Apocalyptica’s Nothing Else Matters).

Have a look at this video, followed by the body of the e-mail I received (after the jump):

Did you hear that? That was the sound of my mind being blown! That was pretty freakin’ amazing. Simonova shows such great control of the sand. It was like every grain was placed delicately, one by one. Yet you see that she is quickly, and at times quite vigorously, creating the scenes live.

And as promised, here is the e-mail forward I received:

First read the story…

This video shows the winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent, Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says:

"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment."

Please take time out to see this amazing piece of art.

I’m not completely sure about that last quote there. It doesn’t sound like that would have been said by Simonova, given that she says that "using sand and fingers is beyond me," but that’s what I received. I hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did.