First, it's Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing featuring Sesame Street characters in the form of Fisher-Price Little People figures. Mr. Hooper is Sal, Ernie is Mookie, my man Bert is Radio Raheem. My sick little mind anticipated Prairie Dawn as Tina (Rosie Perez) in the ice cube scene but they didn't go there. NSFW if you work in a an F-bomb free environment.

What do you get when you combine audio from a Boogie Nights trailer with footage from Stars Wars (from all three of the "good ones")? A mashup full of awesome! Luke is Dirk, Ben Kenobi is Jack (Burt Reynolds), Leia is Rollergirl, you get the idea. SFW, unless you work in a church.

When I was a kid, one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up was a LEGO Master Builder. I would have passed out at the site of Wall of LEGO found in these stores.

Like many from the LOS (LEGO Old School), I'm not happy with the proliferation of custom pieces in sets these days. However, some of the Star Wars sets are cool. This RotJ Death Star set looks amazing! Sure, it's ~$300.00 but it's 3449 pieces! That's less than 9 cents per piece! The Jawa Sandcrawler looks pretty great and comes with 11 minifigs.

Another cool development is the LEGO Digital Designer software. This is a free program that lets you design, in 3D, your own models using dozens of different virtual bricks. You can then save your design, take screenshots and share them, which is nice, but you can also order a custom set with all the bricks you need to make the model you designed! I'm sure the cost is significant but I think designing a model then being shipped the kit would be great for a kid.

Yes, I qualified that with "for a kid." While I'm still fascinated by LEGO, I don't feel that desire to build and play with them. All my bricks are at my parent's house and even when I had easier access to them, I didn't touch them (not that it would be okay to get rid of them!) I've moved on to other interests, including building things out of ones and zeros. But I don't have a good creative outlet, I need to find something that invokes the joy of creation as LEGO did.

Kottke went through it and made Kottke's list of the 102 "essential" movies he has seen. He's seen 40. I went through the list myself and found I've seen 86 of them. Many I saw in film classes I took as electives in college. A few, like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Singin' in the Rain (how's that for a double-feature?), I was forced to watch by my now-spouse (didn't like Aguirre, liked Singin'). A few I haven't seen I had to look up to make sure I knew what they were. For instance I thought Days of Heaven was "that Terrence Malick film" but I wasn't sure. I had never heard of the W.C. Fields film, It's a Gift before seeing this list. I don't think I've ever seen an entire W.C. Fields movie, I suppose that's a gap in my knowledge but I've never had much appreciation for him.

My list is below the jump. The plus signs (+) are ones I've seen, the asterisks (*) are ones Kottke has seen. Sorry they're not all linkified but the original article has links to Roger Ebert reviews for every one. I can understand not ever watching old french films but how can someone in their 30s (I think that's his age range) have missed seeing Jaws on TV at some point? Nevermind that it's awesome.

Even with the Apple provided drivers, not all Mac hardware is supported when running Windows. The biggest disappointment is probably no support for integrated iSight cameras but this may be a temporary situation.

Ultimately this will be included with Leopard, OS X 10.5, but I think this beta release will still stir up the rumors (as well has hopes & dreams) of support for virtualization, allowing you to run OS X and Windows side-by-side. Even if it does, it's possible it won't support true virtualization on the current Intel processors, Intel (and AMD) are coming out later this year with processors that specifically aid the operation of multiple operating systems simultaneously. Mac virtualization would be a nightmare for PC manufacturers because even if they (or Microsoft, perhaps using the now-free Virtual Server) could run OS X on their hardware, Apple's licensing doesn't allow it. Sure, some people would do it anyway but it wouldn't be supported by any major manufacturer or Microsoft.

Who would you rather have overseeing operations at U.S. ports?

     Arab-based ports company

     U.S.-based mafia

I'm accustomed to their poll questions having limited, poorly phrased choices where choosing either feels like a lie but this is takes the cake. The punchline? Voters pick the mafia almost 2-to-1! I didn't think the Dubai ports deal should get a rubber stamp but, hello? Mafia?

The poll was associated with a story about organized crime connections with the Longshoremen's union. Mafia on the waterfront? I never heard such a thing! What's next, wiseguys involved in garbage collection? Go on, pull the other one.

I've finally gotten sick this season and would like nothing more than to stay home to roll around a ball picking up tacks, matchboxes, mice, milk bottles, cats, fences, children, street vendors, trees, houses, bridges and clouds. Instead, I'll wear my manager hat, re-image PowerBooks, and herd cats discussing an upgrade to a major FileMaker database, all while trying not to drip on things. Today is definitely a no-tie day.

This story is a weird collision my early 90's interests. In college I wrote a crappy one act play called "Fruit Bat Love" which didn't really have anything to do with fruit bats but one of the characters did own one. A few years after college the ebola virus was making big, scary news and I was fascinated. I never read Richard Preston's book, The Hot Zone, but I did read his magazine article on which it was based. I used a picture of the virus as a background image on my first web site, a site which also hosted a copy of "Fruit Bat Love." That site is gone but a few other sites linked to the play (people who actually care about fruit bats apparently) and at least one of those pages still exists.

I still have a copy of that site, I should put it back up on Cognize. It's healthy to embarrass one's self periodically.

Update: I did it, my first web site is back up; bad design, bad writing, liberally garnished with broken links. Enjoy.

The most important piece, the dresser (or wardrome, chest, whatever), took the longest. I was initially inclined to go unconventional and get a pair of tall (the 79" not the even taller ones) and skinny Pax wardrobes and fill them with shelves to make the most use of vertical space. Ultimately we went with a large chest that matches the bedside table. It doesn't seem to be listed on Ikea's site but it's big, it has 4 half-width drawers and 4 full width drawers. It's the thing we needed most and I think it's our favorite from the trip.

The final piece of furniture was a desk for me. We went for a very basic and cheap one, it's not something worth spending a lot on. I still need a chair and there were a couple of good options but Leah saw one at Staples the other day that might be better/cheaper for me. We weren't seeking non-furniture but we did find a red comforter cover. We recently put up brown roman shades and after the green walls of our last bedroom, we were definitely lacking color.

Sunday was Day 1 of assembly, we managed to do the dresser, bedside table and the desk. The dresser was by far the most complex. The bedroom furniture is solid wood (pine, I think) except the back panels and drawer bottoms and the desk is a manufactured wood material. I believe the bookshelves are the same material as the desk. We'll probably get to the bookshelves on Wednesday.

Aside from a desk chair for me, what we still need are rugs, at least for the bedroom and living room. We looove the oriental (which never had a place for in the previous apartment) and currently have it in the living room but it's too small for that space. I tried it in the bedroom but it's too thick for the door to clear it. That may be a problem, I think I'll have trouble finding a rug I like that is flat enough. It's a strange problem to have. We saw some possible rugs a couple of weeks ago but didn't want to make any choices before we were better furnished.

What are the ramifications of this? Will I be able to hold down the C key to boot from a CD-ROM? Will I be able to hold down the mouse key to eject media? How will I netboot? And, perhaps most importantly to me, will this mean Target Disk Mode is gone? If there's no Open Firmware, what is in its place? Surely not the unpleasant BIOS found on PC hardware. Despite the fact that shutting down is not often necessary and somewhat discouraged, the Mac boot process and its capabilities are an important part of the Mac experience and not to be trifled with.

If Open Firmware is going, what other parts of the Mac are going and why? Does using an Intel processor necessitate such changes? Are Macs going to have not just Intel processors but Intel motherboards with only minor changes centered around keeping OS X on Mac-only hardware?