davidgagne.net

Pre-Recorded Late Night

dvg — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:06:32 +0000

During my morning commute lately I’ve been eschewing NPR one day each week and instead listening to Pre-Recorded Late Night, an improvised comedy podcast with “fake” guests. It’s sort of like The Daily Show, except it’s entirely improvisational.

Imagine a typical late night talk show … there’s a desk, a couch, a host and a sidekick. People are invited on to talk about their recent project or accomplishment. We’re doing the same thing, but the guest has no idea who they are until we introduce them. We record a conversation through Skype with different guests, and we all rely on our improv comedy training to make it through to the “goodnight, everybody.” We get separate audio tracks from everybody then mix and edit until the awkward pauses are scientifically adjusted to be just long enough.

You can subscribe with iTunes.

If You Hate Tim Tebow, You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

dvg — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:41:34 +0000

Alex Smith is quarterbacking the 49ers in the NFC Championship game this year, his seventh in the NFL. In his first two years in the league, Smith played in 25 games. He threw seventeen touchdowns and twenty-seven interceptions. He also rushed for two touchdowns. The 49ers went 11 – 21 those two years, and didn’t make the Playoffs either year.

Tim Tebow “only” got the Broncos as far as the AFC Divisional Championship this year, his second in the NFL. In his first two years in the league, Tebow played in 24 games. He threw nineteen touchdowns and nine interceptions. He also rushed for thirteen touchdowns. The Broncos went 12 – 20 those two years, and won a Playoff game.

Miss Me?

dvg — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 05:45:17 +0000

My son is now almost seventeen months old, in case you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting very actively for the last year and a half. The last two months have been an emotional roller coaster for me, for reasons far and wide (mostly unrelated to my boy) which I don’t have the time or desire to document here.

Combine that with the facts that (a) I’ve fallen into the trap of using Facebook to “like” the amazing things on the internet instead of posting them here and (2) Twitter is so tremendously awesome. Add the fact that I do, in fact, have a real job which consumes quite a bit of my time each week. There hasn’t been much time for blogging.

But a new year means turning over a new leaf, right? I’m going to try to get back to regularly writing here for aught-twelve.

If you’re not following me on Twitter, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Do it.

You should get a stellar.io account, too, while you’re at it. (It’s built by kottke, so you know it’s good.) Or at least occasionally check out which tweets I’ve favorited here. There’s really some fantastic stuff there.

Top Five Christmas Movies

dvg — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:32:45 +0000

A Christmas Story
Die Hard
Love Actually
Tie: Christmas Vacation / It’s A Wonderful Life
Tie: The Ref / Home for the Holidays

Sir Budrick the Lion-Hearted

dvg — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:22:43 +0000

Rest in peace, old friend.

Continue reading Sir Budrick the Lion-Hearted ...

Link Droppings

dvg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:47:33 +0000

News & Notes
- Couple married 72 years dies holding hands — from kottke.org
- Jason Kottke also published an epic round-up of all the best stories, comments, obituaries, collections, videos, etc. about Steve Jobs.
- Top Ten Misused English Words — from listverse.com
- 4 Personal Finance Principles That Would Make Your Grandfather Proud — from The Art of Manliness
- Stellar.io is just awesome. Seriously. Trust me on this one. (Let me know if you want an invitation.)
Apps
- Amazing Breaker is a fun (free) breakout game.
- Can anyone explain the difference between the Starbucks app and the Starbucks Card Mobile app?
Tech
- If you have an iPhone running iOS5, open the iTunes app on your phone. Click “More” in the lower right-hand corner. Choose “Tones”. You’ll see that there is now a new section of Star Wars ringtones. (I can’t understand how this wasn’t front page news.)
- See also: How to make custom tones for your iPhone — from macworld.com
- If I’m going to get a MacBook Air, then it looks like I’m also going to get a new Thunderbolt display. — via Shawn Blanc
- Incredible macro photographs taken with iPhone 4S camera — from campl.us
- Shit Siri Says Is, indeed, quite funny. (On Sunday I was upset when Siri couldn’t connect to the Internet and was unable to tell me the distance from Key West to Cuba. When I said, “Blow me!” in frustration, she said, “David! The language!”)
Sports
- Quote of the day: “… it’s clear that marketing people underestimated [Tim Tebow's] intangibles and popularity.” — Tebow’s Eye Black

How to Convert a Concert DVD to iTunes

dvg — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:14:33 +0000

A few years ago my buddy Bob gave me the fantastic Peter Bogdanovich documentary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream It’s pretty awesome and I highly recommend it, even if you’re not a die-hard Petty fan.

The four hour documentary, which spans two DVDs, comes with a bonus CD and a bonus DVD. The CD is the nine-track soundtrack to the documentary, comprised almost entirely of live in-studio radio performances, tracks from Heartbreakers appearances on Saturday Night Live, and stuff like that. The other DVD, though, is a complete recording — almost 30 songs! — of their epic 30th Anniversary Concert from the O-Dome in Gainesville, Florida.

Naturally I wanted to rip the concert DVD so I could listen to the tracks in iTunes without having to store them as videos. Doing that was a bit tricky, so I thought I’d explain the process for anyone interested in doing something similar with other concert DVDs.

Continue reading How to Convert a Concert DVD to iTunes ...

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: concerts, DVD, hacking, iTunes, media, music, SNL, Software, Tom Petty

One Week after September 11

dvg — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:59:07 +0000

Originally posted September 18, 2001

It’s been one week.

So this is the first anniversary of sorts. And next week it will be two weeks. And then it will be a month since. And then it will be six months. And then a year. And then five years. And then ten years.

When all the networks went back to “regularly scheduled programming” it felt wrong. I’m not trying to pick a scab or dwell or anything like that, but it seems like it’s still right here, y’know? It seems like it just happened this morning. I don’t like the idea of “getting back to normal”. I’m not talking about some demented, bleeding-heart, “the people that died can’t go back to normal” empathy. I just mean that it doesn’t feel right to “go back to normal”. What the #$*@ is normal? Nothing is normal.

Everything is a little bit “out of whack”.

Someone on mefi wrote something about the world feeling as if it’s shifted a degree, as if everything is a little bit “out of whack”. This is Bizarro World. I feel like I don’t live in my world any longer.

I used to read comic books all the time when I was a kid. Man. I loved Superman and Batman so friggin’ much. (I remember when I got to college and had a taste of having my own money, one of the first things I did was get subscriptions to all the Superman and Batman comics.) For those of you that don’t know, there are basically two universes in the genre of “the comic book”. There’s the DC universe and there’s the Marvel universe. The Marvel universe contains Spider-Man and the Hulk and the X-Men and always seemed a bit darker to me than the DC one. In the DC universe live Superman and Batman and the Green Lantern and the Superfriends. I’ll grant you that Batman has a pretty dark side, and there are always these dime-store tragedies about the Dark Knight and Batman carrying a gun and being a vengeful creature of the night. But in general the DC universe, to me at least, was a brighter one. Truth, justice, and the American way, y’know? The “good guys” almost always win in the DC universe. Spidey’s radioactive spider bite and the mutants of the X-Men … everything in the Marvel universe to me always seemed too comic-book-y. They’re all freaks, y’know? Some weird, strange thing happened to them. The DC heroes, though, always seemed like plain guys (like me!) who somehow became heroes because of some overwhelming desire to do good. Does that make any sense? Probably not. Definitely not if you weren’t the type to ever read a comic book. Regardless. Maybe you’ll see the distinction, maybe you won’t. Even Superman – strange visitor from another planet – was just good old Clark Kent from Smallville, y’know? And Bats – sure he was a multi-millionaire – but inside he was just a kid who saw his parents murdered and wanted to make the world better. Whatever, Dave! I know. I know. I’m sorry. None of that is my point.

My point is that in the DC universe, before about 1986, they had a little continuity problem. See, for some reason they felt the need to deal with the fact that Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent should have been like 60-yr old guys and yet they still looked like they were 28. Now … I personally didn’t have any problem with this. WTF? Y’know? They were comic book characters. I didn’t care that they were always young and strong. Anyway. They dealt with this conundrum by theorizing that there are (were?) an infinite number of universes. This universe, the one you and I inhabit, the one with no superheroes, actually existed. I think Flash was the first one to put it all together. He had to do something and was vibrating at super speed and accidentally popped into another universe. Universe B. Or Universe 2. Something like that. He realized he was on Earth 2 because there was another Flash there. So the theory went something like this: There are an infinite number of universes that all exist in the same place in the space-time continuum, but they all have different phases or something like that. All the atomic particles in each universe vibrate at a different speed so they are in the same spot really. And if you could change the vibrational speed of the atomic particles in yourself, you could shift into one of the alternate universes. Nifty. Time passes the same way in all universes, but events are completely different. Well. Not completely. They are very similar, but with an infinite number of them, well, anything can happen. I remember on one Earth the Germans won WWII. And on one Earth everyone was telepathic. Stuff like that. In 1986 DC Comics created a Crisis on Infinite Earths mini-series to bring all the universes together. It was pretty cool. If I remember correctly, Flash (from Earth 1) and Superman (from Earth 2, who had gray hair and had married Lois) gave their lives to save all the universes and combine them or something like that. And the whole problem got started when one of the original Green Lanterns looked too far back into the beginning of time or something. It was awesome.

I always liked the infinite universes theory, and have kind of adapted it for myself. I think that – and I feel very strongly about this – the universe in which I live (and you!) is infinite. There’s no end to space, y’know? You can’t go to the end of the universe. I know there’s all kinds of scientific evidence to suggest the universe is expanding and there was a Big Bang and all that. But, really. What’s on the other side? More universe, I tell ya! I mean … it can’t just stop, y’know? So. My theory is that since we live in an infinite universe, and since there is an infinite amount of space in this universe, well … jeez. This is kind of complicated. Time is infinite, too, right? I mean … even if there was a beginning and / or will be an end to everything … there would still be something, right? No matter if you believe in Heaven and God or whatnot. There can’t be an end to the universe. Even if we’re all at some point disembodied spirits in eternal paradise, we’re still something, right? And to be something we’d have to be somewhere. Get it? Okay. Well. If you’re with me so far, the rest is a bit easier. If there is an infinite amount of time, and an infinite amount of space, then the theory kinda proposed by Flash actually makes sense. You don’t even need all that crap about atomic particles oscillating at different speeds and time and space overlapping. There’s plenty of space (and time!) for an infinite number of Earths.

I keep hoping that I will wake up and realize that this is a dream.

Stay with me for one more sec? If there’s an infinite number of Earths, then anything is possible. But wait! It’s even better. Not only is anything possible, but everything actually will happen! (I feel like a Ginsu salesman!) There’s even more! Not only will everything happen, but everything has happened! And will happen again! Holy crap can you believe it?! Germany did win WWII somewhere. I’m a six-foot-four Arab somewhere! You have green toenail polish and a hair lip somewhere! Somewhere Johnny Carson was the foil and Ed McMahon was the host! On some Earth somewhere there are no people, only scrubbing bubbles that clean unused bathtubs! On some Earth somewhere all the dogs are vegans who attend monster-truck pulls and read Aristotle! Do you get it? On some Earth somewhere, everything, everything, every tiny little atom is exactly, ex-#$&*-actly the same as it is here except you, dear reader, have blue hair.

Is it crazy? Maybe. I don’t think so. I think it makes a lot of sense. If you have a better grasp or theory or explanation or anything for the concept of INFINITY then please let me know.

Now here’s my point: I feel as if I thought I was in one universe. And now I feel like I’m not in that universe. I feel like I was completely mistaken. I feel like the universe in which I live is not the one I inhabited before September 11, 2001. I don’t like this one as much. I know that somewhere in this infinity in which I live there is a planet Earth on which every single thing is exactly the same except that on September 11, 2001 not much happened. And I know that on one Earth somewhere everything is exactly the same as here except that on September 14, 2001 they found 5,433 people huddled in a Starbucks at the bottom of a pile of rubble, safe and sound and highly-caffeinated.

I keep hoping that I will wake up and realize that this is a dream. But I’m not so insane to believe that is true. But I am insane enough to believe that somewhere in this universe this never happened. Okay.

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 9-11, anniversary, Batman, comic books, infinity, Superman

Why’d You Put Your Quarter Down on Me?

dvg — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:41:12 +0000

At this point I’m simply trying to see how fast I can reasonably run five miles without injuring myself (dramatically). So far I’ve only collided with a single bus stop (in the dark) and skinned the outside of my left knee on a low brick wall. As I rounded Westwood last night, heading for home, I glanced at my trusty rusty Freestyle Shark and saw that I could theoretically beat my previous time by two minutes if I picked up the pace. So I was barreling down Olympic at full speed towards the end. I was so out of gas that I had to stand at the corner at the end of my street for two full songs before I could breathe easily enough to walk the twenty yards to my front door.

Last night I ran five miles in 42 minutes, 29 seconds, which astounded me.

Continue reading Why’d You Put Your Quarter Down on Me? ...

Scott Farcas Takes It on the Chin

dvg — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:43:01 +0000

You didn’t think I’d manage it again, did you? Joke’s on you, my friend. I, in fact, did take almost another full minute off my five-mile time last night. If you’re scoring at home, that also means that I ran twenty miles in seven days. Now I just need to do some P90X workouts on my non-running days and I might actually start to feel super awesome again.

Last night I ran five miles in 44 minutes, 14 seconds, which I thought was surprising.

Continue reading Scott Farcas Takes It on the Chin ...

Another Five Miles in Los Angeles

dvg — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:47:52 +0000

Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a broken record here, but I’m pretty proud of running fifteen miles last week. I did another five-miler right around sunset on Saturday night. At this point I’m going to do some research into the chances of a digital watch reporting time incorrectly, because I shaved almost a full two minutes between Thursday’s run and Saturday’s. I’m going to have to go look through my old notebooks to see what my best time ever is for five miles.

My legs were much less sore on Sunday. I’m going to do my best to get out there and hit the pavement again tonight.

It took me 45 minutes, 11 seconds to run the five miles, which I thought was amazing.

Continue reading Another Five Miles in Los Angeles ...

Five (More) Miles in Los Angeles

dvg — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:08:37 +0000

Even though I was still sore as hell from my run Tuesday night, I somehow managed to knock out another five mile run last night. I ran my standard “local loop”, which is east on Olympic to Beverwill, then south to Pico, and then west to Westwood back to Olympic. I almost thought that there might be a problem with my stopwatch when I finished; I ran the loop a full three minutes faster than I did two nights ago. (To be fair, though, I seriously attacked the devastating elevation change between Beverwill and Century Park E this time and I sort of lollygagged it on Tuesday.) I was quite literally dripping sweat when I finished, and there was a puddle on my front porch where I sat to catch my breath when I was done.

I somehow managed to knock out another five mile run last night.

I have to admit that I didn’t think I’d have it in me to get up to a decent speed so quickly after taking such a long break from running, so I’m rather proud of myself. I can barely handle a flight of stairs right now because my quads and calves are on fire, but I feel better than I have (physically) in months. Today is my 157th consecutive without Copenhagen, which is — by far — the longest I’ve gone since I switched from Marlboros to smokeless tobacco in ’95 or so. Yes, I’ve bought more boxes of nicotine gum than should be legal without a prescription, and my jaw is sore from constant mastication, but that’s better than the alternative, right?

One day I will actually take the time to finally compose some of the many essays that dance in my head while I’m pounding the pavement: What I’ve Learned from Running, Why Running in Los Angeles Is Unlike Running Anywhere Else in America, How the Lyrics of Eminem Compare to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, and Only Suckers Go Downhill Fast are some of the titles. And there are easily a dozen more that I never seem to remember until the lactic acid starts flowing.

It took me 46 minutes, 53 seconds to run the five miles, which I thought incredible.

Continue reading Five (More) Miles in Los Angeles ...

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: essays, exercise, fitness, Los Angeles, music, running, writing

Five Miles in Los Angeles

dvg — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:15:16 +0000

Last night I decided that I needed to get my butt in gear and start taking care of myself. I haven’t exercised in almost three months and it had been almost a year since I went for a run. So I grabbed my Nikes and my iPod Nano and hit the pavement.

The heat wave suffocating the nation hasn’t really affected my little area of West Los Angeles. (It’s been terrifyingly brutal in The Valley, where I work.) It was maybe 88°F but there’s always a nice little ocean breeze, even miles inland. I had to take a break pretty early in the run to help a Mitsubishi Eclipse (with Georgia plates) that was stuck in the middle of Olympic and Century Park East; poor guy was trying to push the car uphill to get it out of the intersection on his own. We managed to push it into the parking lot of the Century City Medical Plaza and then — after I gave him a hearty, “Go Gators!” — I got into a nice groove.

It took me just shy of 50 minutes to run the five miles, which I thought respectable.

Continue reading Five Miles in Los Angeles ...

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: exercise, fitness, iPod, Los Angeles, music, running

Why Your Stitches Cost $1500

dvg — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:13:58 +0000

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economics, finances, medicine, money, rants, United States

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

dvg — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:45:19 +0000

With the exception of my senior year of high school — when I was out of my mind with piss, vinegar, and hormones — I spent every childhood 4th of July in Bristol, Rhode Island with my dad. My son is (astonishingly) ten months old now and I have spent most of the day wondering how in the world my dad managed to do it. He was then almost exactly as old as I am now.

I have a wife, a baby, two dogs and two cats, and I spend most of my time feeling completely overwhelmed. It would not at all be uncommon on one of those 4ths of July in Bristol for my dad to be hosting two sons, two daughters, a wife, a dog, a mother, two sisters, a brother-in-law, at least a pair of nieces and nephews (if not three or four of each), a few cousins, a few coworkers and their children, and several neighborhood kids. I am telling you, anonymous reader, those 4th of July weekends were epic.

There are not many small towns in America that host a 4th of July parade worthy of its own Wikipedia entry. And the concert and fireworks at night in Colt State Park … There’s no way to describe how much fun we crammed into one weekend.

I remember one year — I guess I was 12 or 13 — my dad shook me awake at six in the morning. Everyone else was still asleep; there were Gagnes sleeping on couches and inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags scattered throughout 16 Fatima Drive. He’d already made a pot of coffee and I had just enough time to grab a cup and race out to the driveway to meet him in the car. (This had to have been my first summer of drinking coffee, a wonderful exotic drink previously only consumed by “adults”.) We drove to the ocean and went into a shack on a pier where the men had clearly already been awake for many, many hours. There my dad bought a dozen lobsters, a dozen littlenecks, and probably two dozen steamers. He paid by peeling bills from a big roll of 20s with a lit Winston dangling from his lips and laughing, always laughing.

The feast we had that afternoon was incredible. Corn on the cob grilled in the husk, chorizo from the Portuguese butcher, coffee mugs filled with melted butter, raw clams and steamed clams, gigantic lobster claws, more Budweiser longnecks than you’d ever dream one family could handle … The sights and smells and sounds of that summer float through my memories constantly now that I have a son of my own.

A 4th of July in Los Angeles is not quite the same as one a heartbeat away from the birthplace of America. But we’ll get to see some fireworks tonight, and I’ll blast the 1812 Overture and throw my son in the air in time with the cannons. And one day I will dance with him sitting on my shoulders watching marching bands and floats in a fantastic parade.

© David Vincent Gagne, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: America, family, holidays, My Life, Rhode Island

Our DVR Schedule

dvg — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:57:43 +0000

The DirecTV HD DVR in the master bedroom suffered some wacky hard drive failure a few weeks ago so we had to have it replaced. Before the guy came to swap it for a new one, I used my iPhone to photograph our scheduled program priority list so I’d be able to rebuild it on the new DVR. If you’re looking for something good to watch, or are just wondering what we watch, here’s a good list to get started. (I’ve starred my favorites.)

Continue reading Our DVR Schedule ...

Daily David

dvg — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:49:12 +0000

Declaration 1776 sells Revolutionary t-shirts celebrating the origins of our nation. (*These are badass.)
I used the free version for about a month and last night finally decided it was time to cough up the $3.00/mo for my Instapaper subscription. “What’s Instapaper, David?” It’s only one of the most brilliant apps EVAH! Basically it lets you save webpages to read later, but it’s so, so much more than that. You really need to try it for yourself. I use this every single day.
Color me shocked. A new study finds that all plastics are bad for you.
Everyone knows that you’re born left-handed or right-handed or ambidextrous. But did you know that you have a dominant eye? (And apparently there’s no such thing as ambidextrous sight.) It’s pretty simple to determine which eye is dominant. (Thanks, Shawn!)
TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) gave a glowing review of 3D4Medical.com‘s iMuscle, calling it, “a must for exercise aficionados.” Andy Faust wrote a much more in-depth review at AppAdvice, though, and let’s just say that he wasn’t quite as impressed.
Honestly I had no idea that at some time in the 1930s some Nazis built an elaborate compound in the hills around the Pacific Palisades.

Contains Quinine

dvg — Wed, 04 May 2011 04:05:23 +0000

Because I’m a man that enjoys a good G&T, I occasionally find myself buying bottles of tonic water. The chances of me ever pouring myself a glass of simply tonic water are only slightly higher than the chances of me ever pouring myself a glass of creamed yak milk. I’d never drink the T without the G.

Every single bottle and brand of tonic water in the carbonated beverage aisle at the grocery store has a surreptitiously disconcerting label noting that the product “contains quinine”.

Now. What the hell does that mean? If quinine was listed as an ingredient, its inclusion in my preferred early evening libation would never spend a microsecond of time flitting about my already addled enough brain. But as it is — practically screaming itself as a dire warning — it makes me nervous. A six-pack of Guinness has no note indicating that each bottle “contains hops”.

So what the hell is quinine and why must I be alerted to its presence? A quick trip to Google tells me that it’s an anti-inflammatory drug, sometimes used (but not recommended on its own) to treat malaria. Why this would be a key ingredient in tonic water is beyond me.

I’m not too — too — worried about catching malaria here in Los Angeles. And it’s — you have got to admit — a little bit strange to learn that the majority of my alcoholic drinks for the last few years are also helping to stave off inflammation. But. There you have it. Almost every gin and tonic you’ve ever had contains quinine. And now you know … the rest of the story.

Feed a Fever, Starve a Cold

dvg — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:44:51 +0000

I’m confident that’s the way the saying goes. If it was, “Feed a cold, starve a fever,” it wouldn’t have the alliteration and would be a bitch to remember, so I must be correct. I suppose I could Google it. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve been under the weather this whole week. (And what the hell does that mean? Wouldn’t orbiting astronauts be the only ones ever not under the weather?) I got a flu shot this year — for the first time in my life — so I have been pretty sure that I had a plain, old, ordinary cold. But I also had a raging fever. So what are you supposed to do in that situation? The fact that I was desperately hungry while not being able to stomach the thought of eating anything posed deeper problems.

A five-day, six-250mg-tablet course of the antibiotic azithromycin was having no impact on what had morphed into a painful, clogging sinus infection. And the doctor agreed that it was probably economically and therapeutically a bad idea to go through another entire box of Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold & Cough Formula. (That’s 26 times I got to sing, “Plop. Plop. Fizz. Fizz. Oh! What a relief it is!” to myself.) So now I’m taking 20mg of prednisone and 400mg of Avelox (moxifloxacin HCl) each day, and a double-barreled shot of Nasonex (mometasone furoate monohydrate) twice each day. Unfortunately I completely forgot to ask the doctor if I was supposed to be eating heartily or not, which means I’ll compromise and simply continue what I’ve been doing, which is eating two Reeses’ Miniatures and a baby Kit-Kat every time I walk past my son’s Easter basket.

Spoons and Forks

dvg — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:03:32 +0000

For some reason I have an irrational distaste for tablespoons. I don’t know why this is the case. They just seem too big to me, and there’s something pretentious about them. (Who needs to put that much of anything in his mouth all at once?) I’m a teaspoon man and probably always will be.
On a related note, however, I also can’t stand salad forks. Too dainty. If you’ve got something that needs stabbing to get it into your face, be a man and use a real fork.

Daily David

dvg — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:38:13 +0000

Fun Stuff
- Nick Holmes posts cute and funny things.
- I’ve always wondered exactly how potholes are formed. Now I know.
- Need some cool wrapping paper? Try rapping paper.
- Thinking about the Monty Hall Paradox always makes my head hurt.
- Do you feel like you’re too old to start getting into shape? Listen to Charles Eugster, who is a champion weightlifter: “I was already rowing six times a week, and there didn’t seem any harm in pushing myself a bit harder to rebuild my muscles. So in my late-80s I joined a bodybuilding club.”
- I, for one, am very happy to get to go to Mars. You can go, too.
Sports
- I love this photograph of a guy painting the hash marks on Florida Field.
- Agree +1 with this tweet from @drsaturday: “I like Tim Tebow but I don’t think I can convey in 140 characters the visceral hate I have for this commercial.”
Parenting
- The British newspaper The Independent has published a list of 50 books every child should read. YMMV.
- The website PoshTots has a section devoted to luxury playhouses, which cost upwards of $10,500. Comment unnecessary.
- Don’t Touch the Screen is a podcast for webnerds with kids. (iTunes)
- Ten Jaw-Droppingly Awesome Infographics on Education is exactly what it says on the tin.

This One Goes to Eleven

dvg — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:39:00 +0000

Yesterday marked the eleventh birthday of this site, and was pretty darn close to the six-month birthday of why I haven’t been posting much lately. If there ever was a valid excuse for not writing, he is it. If you could somehow take every single good moment, event, experience, and feeling of my life and combine them into one burst of energy, it would pale like a distant star’s twinkle compared to the supernova of happiness that is my new son.

I’ll get back to blogging eventually, but for now I am just enjoying fatherhood.

(And the word “infinite” is not enough to express how much I thank my lovely wife for the best gift ever.)

We Apologize for the Interruption

dvg — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:04:17 +0000

It has most decidedly not been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. I had a pretty good run of updating this website almost daily for over a decade, and then one little (adorable) change in my life sent this blog so far down my priority list that it disappeared.

Take heart, dear readers. There is more fun and exciting content coming soon.

Daily David

dvg — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:40:52 +0000

The Timeless Beauty of National Geographic is a wonderful article examining the stability of a famous brand aesthetic. (I used to love reading NG in my elementary school library when I was a kid and just last year decided to get my very own subscription. Every article in every issue is fabulous, just as they always have been.)
“The most well-known use of Spencerian script is, arguably, the Coca-Cola logo. The logo was designed in the 1880s by the company’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson.”
Repeat after me: Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime
National Public Radio is changing its name to NPR. (I guess that’s better than Dweezil.)
Finally! More photos of kitties in wigs!
“Losing friends is inevitable. Making enemies is not.” — from 35 Lessons in 35 Years
“This year is the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars sequel that many fans consider the pinnacle moment in a franchise that has pulled in $16 billion in box office and merchandising. But 1980 was also the year that Kurtz and Lucas realized the Jedi universe wasn’t big enough for the both of them.”
Technology is great, for sure, but you’ll never pick up your iPad and find a perfectly preserved, century-old press pass to a World Series game in its digital pages.
“Resizing my browser window to make sure it fills up my entire screen will not make me focus on your pretty pictures or admire your wicked design.”
If you’re looking for seriously advanced computer knowledge — like how to determine the size of an image of Robocop riding a unicorn — take a look at Unicorn Tips.

The Return of Wile E. Coyote, Genius

dvg — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:03:15 +0000

Oh, man! I don’t know how I am just now getting news that Warner Brothers is releasing new Looney Tunes cartoons. I freaking love Wile E. Coyote. I remember screaming at the television, “NO! NO! NO! That’s NOT GOING TO WORK!” I remember holding my head in my hands when that son of a bitch Road Runner got away yet again. That awful “beep beep” of his haunted me; I so, so wanted Wile E. Coyote to get him.

I also remember thinking that as soon as I was “an adult” I would get business cards that just said:

David V. Gagne
GENIUS

I think I shall do that right now.