Ryan’s Ramblin’

Spiderman 3 Teaser Trailer

Yeah, that’s right baby! I’m a hot shot producer. Ok, I just donated 10 bucks to The 1 Second Film to get a producer credit, but I’m sure that’s way less than many folk have paid to be producers on big hollywood flicks. Now, the question remains - do I shell out bucks for a headshot on IMDB? This one is particularly flattering. But I think it’s a BIT too pricey to be shelling out $30/year (or more) for the privilege of having a goofy picture on my IMDB profile. $10 to have it up there for perpetuity is fine for me

Well, they put in a good effort. And, as an 8th seeded (in their conference) team, I’m highly impressed that they made it to game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. But, sadly, the Stanley Cup stays in the states for now.

Sorry for the Fark-esque headline there, but I just found this ridiculous. Jay-Z has apparently taken offense to a recently-published interview with the managing director of the company that produces Cristal champagne. The interviewer asks him if he thinks it’s bad that so many gangsta rappers sing about it/associate it with their thug image, and he says:

That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.

Is that so bad? The interviewer is the one saying that it might be bad, not the MD, and the MD isn’t even really AGREEING with him. All he’s saying is that it’s a good question, and that they’re not making any effort to stop it. Jay-to-the-izzo is blowing this WAY out of proportion, and to me it makes him sound more like a whiny little biatch (that’s right, I went there!) than the hard rapper that he’s supposed to be.

That’s right! Since I got my new Ixus 55 for my birthday/Christmas, I haven’t had much need for my old Nikon 5400. That camera is an amazing camera, with tons of manual options, but it just doesn’t have the SLR punch that I’m looking for (not to mention, no interchangeable lenses). So, I’m auctioning it off (note, auction doesn’t go “live” for another 7 hours or so, and thus might not be viewable). I’m going to use the cash I make from the auction to put towards a nifty new DSLR camera. I’m still undecided as to which camera I’m going to get (as this Photojunkie Mailbag post will attest), but I’m leaning more towards the Nikon D50 with the kit lens that comes with the Nikon D70s. Except for megapixels, you get a bit more camera for your buck. So, if anybody is looking for a decent “prosumer” camera (lots of SLR functionality, no interchangeable lenses and much smaller), give my auction a peek!

Owwwww. I am SO SORE AND TIRED. Blisters on the insides of my arches, from where I think my shoes were pinching me… But I made it, dammit! Here’s what I ran:

2 minutes walking @ 5km/h (0.17km)
10 minutes running @ 10km/h (1.67km)
1 minute walking @ 5km/h (0.08km)
10 minutes running @ 10km/h (1.67km)
1 minute walking @ 5km/h (0.08km)
5 minutes running @10km/h (0.83km)
1 minute walking @ 7.5km/h (0.125km)
4 minutes running @10km/h (0.67km)
2.5 minutes walking @ 5km/h (0.21km)

Total distance travelled: 5.5km (3.42 miles)
Total distance run: 4.83km (3.00 miles)
Total distance walked: 0.67km (0.42 miles)

So, I made it! I ran a full 3 miles! Woohoo! But *man* was I ever sweating afterwards, holy crap! I can’t remember the last time I sweat like that. Good stuff though, we’ll see if I can make it through another 3 miles tonight and 3 miles tomorrow. That’s what the training plan calls for, but I’m really not so sure if I can make it.

I’m sure you’ve heard the story. There’s some sound (around 17000 Hz) that apparently only teenagers can hear, so to prevent them from loitering outside stores, owners are playing tones at this sound over and over to get rid of them. And apparently, kids are appropriating this tone into ringtones, to be able to use their phones in class. I call shenanigans on that part of the story, because wtf, kids are stupid but they’re not THAT stupid. Better to put the phone on silent and look at it from time to time, than to risk anyone overhearing the high pitched ring tone. So any way, in the metafilter discussion surrounding that story, I found a link to a site with mp3s of tones at various frequencies from 15000 to 25000. I could only hear up to 17000 - anything above that, silence. Now, of course, I’m not sure what the limits of my iPod headphones are, so maybe it’s cutting off at 17,500 Hz, but it was pretty dramatic at any rate.

(via Metafilter)

Last week, I decided that I am getting too doughy around the midsection. After faithfully going to the gym about 3-4 times a week, give or take, for the last 9-10 months, this is decidedly upsetting. Not OVERLY surprising though, as I haven’t been focusing very much on doing ANY cardio (5 minutes warmup, 5 minutes cooldown, that’s IT). So, I’ve decided to focus almost exclusively on cardio for a while, and attempt to train for at least the half marathon here in September, and possibly the full marathon at the end of October.

I’ve found some decent online training programs (most of them are for about 4-4.5 months, which is exactly the amount of time between now and the marathon… perfect! But my first attempts at doing some runs (on the weekend) were… shall we say… a bit disastrous. First of all, I haven’t really done any running at all in years and years and years. I’m talking, like, at least since high school. So that’s at least 10 years. Second of all, my allergies are in full-on crazy mode here at the moment (I have really bad tree allergies, and it seems like I’m even MORE allergic to the trees here than I am the ones at home, and the trees NEVER SEEM TO STOP!!!), and I’m out of allergy medication. So my cardiovascular fitness is shit, and I can’t breathe properly ANYWAY. Oh, and I have absolutely NO concept of what kind of pace I should be setting for myself, either, which meant that for my first run I started out WAY too fast (not sprinting, but definitely too fast to maintain with my current fitness levels). Therefore, my first run on Saturday, which I planned to be about a single mile, ended up being a “run for 1/4 of a mile, walk a little bit, repeat” disaster. I was disheartened, but dammit I refuse to give up! So on Sunday, I was determined to make it through the whole mile without stopping to walk. And I did it! I was exhausted, but I made it!

Today’s run, according to the new training thing I’m working on, needs to be 3 miles. There is no way in hell that I’m going to be able to run 3 miles non-stop, so I think I’m going to plan to run for 2/3 of a mile, walk for a little bit, and run again. All the training things I’ve read suggest stopping to walk when YOU want to walk, not when you’re absolutely fatigued beyond ability to run anymore, so that’s what I’m going to do. At least now I have a good new fitness goal, and dammit I’m going to reach it if it kills me!

This weekend, Liz was away on Saturday night (:(), and I’ve been meaning to do a Windows XP reinstall (and actually creating a disk image so that future reinstalls are much, MUCH faster), so I figured what the hell, why not spend a nice Saturday night in, backing up all my data? Which is exactly what I did. However, I had downloaded the Vista Public Beta 2 disk image, so I figured what the hell? Why not give it a spin, see what Microsoft has up its sleeve for the next release of Windows? (Despite the fact that it is reaching Duke Nukem Forever delay styles) Well, I popped the install dvd in, and did the install (very pretty, incidentally - no more “DOS Mode” in the installation at ALL), and it took a GOD DAMN LONG TIME. Finally finished, and went to reboot into Vista for the first time… Very exciting… BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH. “Cannot find Winload.exe, or file is corrupted”. Are you KIDDING ME??? I couldn’t be arsed (I love that expression) trying to figure it out, and with no other PCs to use to google the answer, I just went ahead and did my XP install. Now I have a nice and sweet 4 gig disk image sitting on my portable hard drive, so the next time I want to reinstall, I just have to back up my old stuff, and do a quick re-imaging of the hard drive. Lickety split, an hour of (unattended) install later, it’s done! But I found out with a bit of quick googling that that Winload.exe problem seems to be pretty common with this beta. Way to go, Microsoft! You’re not exactly inspiring me with the quality of your OS when the INSTALLER doesn’t even work. Seriously. (I should note that the recommended fix, booting up with the install disk and doing a repair, did not work. Grrrr)

Not sure what the purpose of this email is. Are they attempting to re-scam people who have been scammed in the “dude crashed in a plane, but all his millions are here in the bank and you can help me smuggle them out” scams?

From: Godswill Oyedele Signed-By: yahoo.com
Reply-To: oyedelecounsellor@walla.com
To:
Date: Jun 12, 2006 2:17 PM
Subject: BREAK THE SILENCE

DEAR SIR/MADAM

I USE THIS OPPRTUNITY TO INTRODUCE MY HUMBLE SELF TO YOU
I AM EVENGELIST GODSWILL OYEDELE,A SENIOR MANAGEMENT STAFF OF ECOWAS BANK OF AFRICA
IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANY AFRICAN BANK .
BRETHREN,YOU MUST JOIN THE SO CALLED inner carcus OTHERWISE CALLEDTHE OGBONI’S AND THE BLACK BRAS{the power brokers}
WITHOUT BEING INITIATED INTO THIS CULT GROUP/ORGANISATION,DO NOT THINK

IN YOUR MIND THAT YOU WILL EVER GET A GOOD RESULT FROM ANY CONTRACT OR BUSINESS IN AFRICA
WE ARE PREACHING THE FALL OF THSE GROUPS AND WE HAVE FOUND SOLUTIONS

TO THEIR EVIL TRECKS.
IF YOU ARE A FOREIGN CONTRACTOR OR HAVE DONE ANY JOB HERE IN AFRICA,OR YOU ARE REPRESENTING A DECEASED FAMILY AND YOU ARE YET TO BE PAID,PLEASE WRITE BACK TO US AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE ON E-MAIL ADDRESS———–.
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS CHAPTER NUMBER 6 VSE 16 SAYS THAT THERE ARE SIX THINGS THE LORD GOD HATES AND THE SEVENTH ONE IS AN ABOMINATION AND WHAT IS THAT SEVENTH ONE,
He that soweth in discord among brethren.
THANK YOU AS YOU WRITE BACK,ALL IN YOUR GOOD FAVOUR.
YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT,
GODSWILL MENSABE

Seriously. Check out the ad for this totally real toy. I can’t believe that there are millionaire executives who approved this thing without realizing how some people might interpret *pump pump pump* *squirt white goo*.