A Scary Idea

This is a scary idea: Elephants to protect forests.

I can't say I disapprove, but training wild animals that are also fairly intelligent surely has the potential for a B grade horror movie.

Oh wait, here it is: thank you, Mr. Crichton.

Which leads to another rather bizarre idea I've had for some time. On occasion I hear about someone that's interested in attempting to bring back the mastodon. From what I've seen, we're confident they "disappeared" about 10,000 years ago in pretty sort order. It's also clear that we had something to do with it.

OK, other than the possibility that they were tasty, what if they were very intelligent and nasty. See, there's your next horror movie. A well meaning team of scientists bring back a huge heard, thinking them gentle giants, only to discover they have a deep, genetic hatred of man.

Oh, sorry, Crichton beat me to that one, too.

And while I'm harping about Crichton, please, someone, force an editor on this man. I have a feeling that there's a real writer in there, if only someone could tell him, "let's drop the first half of this thing and don't despair over the red ink, dear. It's for your own good."

Links-of-Interest

I check in here a couple of times a day: Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

They do find the most interesting things. I have noticed, however, if I read Fark and Metafilter I'll trip across the same stories again and again.

I used to read Plastic and post there as well, new stories are slow to appear and I lost interest over time. I do not post on Fark and tried to register for Metafilter, but it's registration is closed.

I am, however, a Senior Member on the AVSforum.

The Rich Have No Imagination

OK, this is what I want for Father's Day.

Don't you just hate that the super rich have no imagination? Sure, if I were rich as Bill Gates, I'd do all of the charitable good works, build a castle of a house, but then I'd take a few BILLION and have some real fun. Do you know that you could have a space shuttle built for only $4.5 B? And the launch is less than $200 million each time.

I'm actually kicking around a novel idea based on this. It would be in the format of a biography of just such a super rich man - someone with a real imagination. There's a subject that Alfred Bester could do justice too.

Remote Madness

I've been trying to program my very expensive super remote to easily operate all of the components of my home theater with one-button ease. I've always thought I was a pretty smart guy, at least with consumer electronics, but this thing is driving me nuts. I'm trying to figure out how to get a Home Theater Master MX-700 remote to switch the video source of my Hitachi 5500 SX projector.

I've "learned" the projector remote into the MX-700, but that only allows me to manually change the video source. What I want is to hit a macro button, for example, "Watch TV". I need the Denon AVR-4802 to switch to TV, the projector to switch to Video, and the lights to dim to setting 4. Oh, and the curtains to open to 4:3 mode. Right now I have to do each manually, or at least mostly.

Oh, and my IR repeater doesn't seem to work reliably. It did for a while, but now it's not. Sometimes. And I didn't change anything.

I'd like to do this myself, but it's getting to the point where I'd pay someone to just make it work. If there were anyone around here that could get me to 100%. It would be even more frustrating to pay someone and still only get to 95%.

Email blogging Weirdness

OK, don't use the blog by email feature of blogger - it's ain't ready for prime time. Submit, nothing happens - wait 48 hours, then post appears multiple times (something like a dozen).

Too bad - I like blogging from email - plus I get an offline record. Please fix it Mr. Blogger!

Obsession

I went a little around the bend yesterday. I don't often find myself in Walmart, don't really care for the place, but for some reason, there I was. Of course, I had to look at their DVD prices. I found a bargain bin, some were under $6, some under $8, and some other new releases for around $15.

Here's what I got:

• Ghostbusters
• The Green Mile
• Under Siege (I know, it's a Steven Seagal movie, but it is a pretty good one)
• The Poseidon Adventure
• The Truth About Cats & Dogs
• Godzilla (the new, US made one - another guilty pleasure "Man in suit! Man in Suit!)
• Jumanji
• 25th Hour (the best film I've seen this year)
• Dances with Wolves - Special Edition (nearly 4 hours long!).

I had also picked out Falling Down, but Diane put her foot down. I'll have to pick it up later. Oh, and earlier this week I also bought Adaptation, and Star Trek: Nemesis. And I've got a stack from the past few weeks sitting on my desk waiting to be cataloged.

God, I hope this format holds out for a LONG while.