The Middle Years (2006-2009)

Was reading an article about the attempts to turnaround Ford’s fortunes (well, shame on them for sticking so long to fuel-inefficient SUVs) and came across this quote by Mark Fields, president of Ford’s Americas operations:

So now people are carrying out revenge attacks on stingrays as a result of Steve Irwin’s freak death. Didn’t they even get the point of his conservation messages?

Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa guy, sells out. Where the phrase “hunka hunka burning love” comes from. I particularly like the titbit that “in 2005, an Australian woman stabbed her partner in the back, thigh, and shoulder with a pair of scissors because he played the song too many times. His injuries were classified as ’non-life threatening’”. Slate has a slideshow on various kinds of balustrades - this particular one links to I.M. Pei’s work at the National Gallery of Art.

Edit: Check out Keith Olbermann’s scathing commentary on the Bush administration’s response to 9/11.

It seems that they’re making a High Fidelity musical (via Stereogum). This sounds like it has the potential to be incredibly naff, a terrible travesty of a pop cultural milestone. Of course, I thought that when I first heard about the film version, but it turned out to be pretty good.

For various reasons, I’ve been thinking of the Frere-Jones brothers. Firstly, I got in a shipment of magazines from my aunt’s store including an old New Yorker that had Sasha Frere-Jones writing about Mariah Carey and how with the “Fantasy” remix with ODB she invented the whole “male rapper / female chorus” sound that’s so ubiquitous today. Which come to think of it is probably true, that whole sound is such a cliche now. He also writes glowingly about “All I Want For Christmas Is You” as one of the few worth additions to the modern Christmas canon, and it’s nice to know someone shares my opinion of that song.

I’ve written about Banksy before - I think his art work is great. This latest prank involving doctoring the Paris Hilton album in stores is a pretty subversive way to critique the whole weirdness of the cult of celebrity around Paris:

Just got off the phone with a very frustrating experience with the AppleCentre@Orchard people. Basically, last Friday when I took my Macbook in, they said that it was probably a logic board problem, and that logic boards were out of stock and would take 2 weeks to ship in. But they promised me that they would do the diagnostics, and if it did turn out to be the logic board, I could take back the Macbook for those 2 weeks while the thing was being shipped in, and then they would call me in to get the part replaced. And they promised that they would call me to tell me if the logic board was out of stock.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, yclept, um, “Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog”. I particularly like his attempt to be on Hot or Not: Plese uote for me and saye that ich am hotte. Peraventure my peynture may plese nat the moderatoures (for it is a manuscripte and ich haue but litel cleavage), yet lette vs yive this a trye!

Heard Mousse T’s “Horny as a Dandy”, the mashup of Mousse T’s “Horny” and the Dandy Warhols’ “Bohemian Like You” on the radio today, and decided to look up the video. Meanwhile, some random links.

Ken Jennings, Jeopardy champion extraordinaire, has quite a funny piece on the show on his blog: We were a bit of an item a couple years back, in all the papers, but I think we both know that was just a summer thing. The last time we saw each other…well, the magic just wasn’t there. That’s why I don’t mind when I see you with a new special someone. Or two. Nearly every night! … I’m sorry, is this sounding passive-aggressive? I don’t mean to badger you. I remember that, when we were together, it seems like all I ever did was nag you with questions.

My Macbook started turning itself off automatically on Thursday. No warning, no nothing, just an odd “click” sound and then all power goes off. Bleah. Gave it one day and hoped for the best, but by Saturday I had to take it into the service centre. Some logic board fault, most likely, they said. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re out of logic boards for about 2 weeks. Man, two months and it goes cuckoobananas on me. Oh well, while my Mac’s recuperating, I downloaded ObjectDock as part of turning my PC into a Mac. Mmm.

I have to say that I find hedgehogs inexplicably cute. So it’s nice to know the McFlurry is being redesigned in the UK to prevent trapping hedgehogs (however improbable). Here’s a pic of the original hedgehog-unfriendly cup…

The New York Times reveals the identity of “funtwo”, the guy playing Pachelbel’s Canon in that video above. Somewhere in the middle - around 3:30 or so - the playing gets really, really impressive.

China stops the practice of having strippers at a funeral. Ah, traditional Asian values. Beautiful people are more likely to give birth to girls, apparently. Kobayashi breaks another eating record. 58 brats! Obliterating the 2nd-placed guy (45 brats) and the world record (the dimunitive Sonya Thomas had held that with 34.5 brats). The guy’s so far ahead of his competition it’s like watching Tiger Woods in his prime. Knee Defender to counter those annoying people who recline their airplane seats too much.

Went to Confluence over the weekend - very impressed by the fact that this major conference was organised through sheer willpower of the students. (Plus I got lots of free stationery and other swag…) Then, helping out my alma mater, I was an expert reviewer for the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations held here this year in Singapore, and that was another major conference run entirely by college students.

One thing any Macbook user knows is that these babies get HOT. Was reminded of that by the new firmware upgrade for the fan which hopefully will cool things down. (Can’t say I’ve encountered the fan noise problem that some have mentioned.) In the meantime, here’s a funny pic of how the Macbooks are hot enough to cook an egg on:

Passed by this on the way to work - someone had gone to the trouble of making an elaborate banner to apologise to his girlfriend for an unnamed transgression. Man, and I’d just read in the papers about some guy who was standing around Scotts Road crying and holding a sign of apology. What’s with the public wailing and gnashing of teeth and wearing of sackcloth?

Well, some of you asked for photos of Bangkok - I can’t say I have that many (I actually did work there - not much time to see the sights!), but here’s one of the ferris wheel at Suan Lum Night Bazaar.

How do you rotate the thumbnails of pictures in Finder? Also - is there a good way to batch-rename files? Google throws up a variety of solutions, but what do people like?