Online Home of Derek Meister
Apparently some guy in Granby, Colorado is going wild in a heavily protected bulldozer.
From 9news.com:
He drove through a cement plant, wiped out town hall, took out the newspaper office, said Schaffer. Schaffer said that the town hall building didnt completely collapse, but the other two buildings did.
Just got back from an early afternoon viewing of the third Harry Potter film and find myself agreeing with the critics that it is a much better film than the first two, which felt more like cliff note versions of the books with more emphasis on recreating events than taking care to show the relationships between the characters. The second movie in particular always seemed off to me in that it was about a boy learning to use magic in a film that really seemed to contain little magic of its own.
I do want to mention that I liked the fact that the actor playing Nevil Longbottom has lost most of his weight and has become something of a tall, lanky teenager, which has the unintended effect of making him better suited for the more pro-active role his character will take in later books.
I also am thankful for the deemphasis on Quidditch, Harrys involvement in by the third book had worn thin on me.
The very subtle hints to the growing relationship between Hermione and Ron, which went beyond the obvious hand grabbing scene to the way they stood around each other in other scenes was also welcome, as it puts more character development and relationship into the series.
Overall, definitely worth the admission price.
Ive seen a number of images popping up online that use the simple technique of taking a photo of an object and then another one moving the camera slightly and then creating an animated .gif file that flicks back and forth between them at high speed. The effect is very similar to that used in the creation of 3D images and movies that require special glasses.
I tried it myself, and while my first tries are far from perfect, it does work. First photo experiment.
The effect would be better if I had a tripod to ensure the same height between photos as well as measuring out a radius from the center of the car to rotate around. The biggest improvement would be to decrease the amount of distance between the images to make the change more subtle, but for now it works.
From USA Today:
Nothing is happening with depressing regularity between Japanese men and women these days. Marriages, births and hanky-panky are all spiraling downward with troubling implications for the nations future: A sagging birthrate means that fewer working-age people will be around to support a growing population of elderly; a social crisis looms.
Only in Japan would a popular weekly newsmagazine deem it necessary to exhort the nations youth to abstain from sexual abstinence: ‘Young people, dont hate sex,’ AERA magazine pleaded last month in a report detailing a precarious drop in sales of condoms and in business at Japans rent-by-the-hour ‘love hotels.’
More and more Japanese men and women are finding relationships too messy, tiring and potentially humiliating to bother with anymore. ‘They dont want a complicated life,’ says Sakai, who has written a controversial bestseller, Cry of the Losing Dogs, on the plight of unmarried Japanese thirtysomething women like herself.
President Bush spent the Memorial Day weekend thanking the nations veterans for their service, saying we acknowledge the debt [we owe them] by showing our respect and gratitude.1
… except this was mere hours after the Bush administration had announced new plans to cut $1 billion from the Veterans Administrations budget in a second term if it gets reelected2. The Administration has already tried to close several VA hospitals throughout the country3 in moves that have been criticized by veterans groups nationwide4. Recently 164,000 veterans have been cut off from their existing prescription drug coverage by the White House5, and the President has threatened to veto6 any bill that would allow veterans to receive both the military pension promised as well as any disability compensation they are entitled to.
Definitely not the best way to show your thanks to those whove served in uniform on this day.
Sources:
