July 2008

Lifehacker posted an article today about VidToMP3.com, a site which will convert any online video to mp3 format for you for free. How cool is that? Now there’s finally a way to get the soundtracks to Planet Unicorn and Show Me Your Genitals on your iPod. Radical.

5.4! What’s crazy is that I was on an elevator when it hit. The elevator in my building is constantly closed for repairs and people are getting stuck on it all the time, so I just assumed that it was the damn thing broken again. Then I stepped out of the elevator onto my floor and realized that it wasn’t the elevator, it was the whole building shaking.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - The University of Florida can raise a glass to another national title — best party school in the country.

The Gators, known for wild celebrations following national championships in football and basketball, wrested the party title away from West Virginia University and beat out the University of Mississippi and Penn State University, in the Princeton Review survey of 120,000 students released Monday.

The university has made the top 20 party school list for the past 15 years, but has never been No. 1.

“Jump the Shark” has totally Nuked the Fridge.

Across the street from the Groundlings on Melrose in West Hollywood is an adult toy shop with a nausea-inducing sign. (Click the photo for a larger shot, including my innocent Tacoma parked in front of the place. Note: I was not visiting the place!)
This is a store that sells … ahem … “adult toys” … and their sign proudly exclaims Sell - Exchange - Rent DVD’s.
No, it’s not the incorrect apostrophe that frightens me. It’s the idea that someone might exchange a used sex toy.

Brilliant: Easily Mispronounced Domain Names
Go Tahoe!

Warning! Do not be fooled by what you might read anywhere on the Internet. If you have been using Microsoft Money and you switch to a Mac, you are screwed. There is nothing comparable for the Mac. No … Quicken is not an option. No, there is no version of Microsoft Money in development for the Mac. No, there are no other software programs available which are even remotely similar. No, none of the other potential financial software programs will allow you to successfully import your MSMoney data. No, you are not going to find another financial software application that is freeware or shareware or open source that comes close to Microsoft Money. No, you should not believe any website that attempts to explain how to convert your Microsoft Money file(s) for use in any Macintosh program.

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I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Last weekend I hopped on a flight to Denver for my friend Bob’s 36th birthday party. His wife spent months planning “Bob’s Amazing Race 2008“; we spent Saturday as six teams of four people roaming around LoDo, barnstorming bars and looking for clues. It was a total blast.

The event was conveniently simultaneous with the first annual Mile High Music Festival, which featured a few dozen bands and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Dave Matthews Band.

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It takes four actions to enable Bluetooth on the new iPhone.

1. Click “Settings”.
2. Click “General”.
3. Click “Bluetooth”.
4. Click on/off slider.

Leaving Bluetooth enabled all the time drains the battery much too quickly, so it makes sense to only enable it when you are using it, and to disable it when you are finished. (The same could be said of 3G network access.) Hopefully in the next release of the software they’ll make it easier to flip these two settings. I mean, I know it’s not world hunger or anything, but four clicks is at least two too many.

My friends Bob and Gretchen were in town last night for the X-Files premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. I met them afterwards and we went to Citizen Smith for a late dinner. (It took me just under an hour to get to the restaurant from my house, even though it’s only about eight miles away, because a single block of Hollywood Boulevard was closed for the movie.) Just like every time I’ve been there, the food was delicious and the service was atrocious. We had a great time, though.

I read Carl Hiaasen’s comedy Skinny Dip on the flight from Denver to Vegas to Los Angeles on Monday morning at the suggestion of a friend at work. I don’t want to reveal too much of the story, but it’s basically about an idiot who attempts to murder his wife, who was the captain of her college swim team, by tossing her overboard while on a cruise ship. Needless to say, dark hilarity ensues. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, but Hiaasen is a powerfully funny author. I thought this novel was wonderful and I recommend it highly.

In addition to one of the standard Surgeon General’s Warnings, packs of Natural American Spirit cigarettes are labeled:

Made with 100% additive-free, whole leaf, natural tobacco. No reconstituted sheet tobacco. No processed stems. Up to 25% more tobacco than other king size cigarettes.

All of that would, in some convoluted way, probably lead a smoker to believe that these cigarettes are “better” for you than — one would assume — all the other brands of cigarettes. But the fact that these cigarettes profess to contain more tobacco than competing brands is somehow made to seem like a good thing. So the company helpfully adds:

No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette.

Their website is actually running a promotion right now asking people to send them “Smoker’s Stories”, cute little anecdotes about how much fun people have had smoking, sharing cigarettes, and loving the joy of being a smoker. Conveniently absent are any stories about not being able to climb a flight of stairs, bad hygiene, watching someone you love battle lung cancer, or wasting thousands of dollars on a terribly unattractive habit.

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It took me almost ten years, but I finally got around to watching The Big Lebowski. I watched it with my buddy Bob on Sunday afternoon in his totally awesome, tricked-out basement theater in Denver and I thought it was hysterical. Surreal, yes, to be sure. It was beyond odd. Like Swingers, one of my all-time favorite films, I think that much of it is completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t lived in Los Angeles for a while. But it’s definitely a great movie if you enjoy the Coen brothers’ stuff.