The title of this post is the name of a game that I played on the night of my high school senior prom in 1997. I took a friend (from our crosstown rival high school) to the prom, but promptly dropped her off at home after the dance. Being unencumbered for the rest of the evening, I joined the rest of my friends at a hotel room downtown to celebrate … something.

The guys were, for the most part, still in whatever they wore to the dance, though the suit jackets and ties were long gone and the shirts were untucked. The girls, however, had all changed back into jeans and t-shirts. The mood was light and the beer was cheap. A few bottles of actual liquor were here and there, some supplied by the parents of those in attendance, but definitely not mine.

At its peak, our hotel room probably held at least 30 people from my high school class, most of whom had gone to the dance for a little while and then to the official “afterprom” party at a local mall, as we had. I hate to sound like a “too cool for school” cliché, but the afterprom party was very, very lame. Which is why you had to have a hotel room.

At some point during the night, after the drinks had already been flowing for a while and people were strewn about the room in various states of consciousness and undress, my friend Gene asked me if I want to play The Vodka Game.

Gene was Russian by descent (his name was a slightly Americanized version of his Russian name). His parents spoke only Russian, and we always got a laugh out of watching him argue with them in their native tongue as he negotiated for a later curfew or had to explain why the trunk of his car was full of (illegal) fireworks. Gene often used his background as an icebreaker, especially with girls, and I don’t blame him. He preferred to drink straight vodka, though I always thought a part of that was just for show.

I had never heard of The Vodka Game, but I was already halfway drunk and more than willing to give it a try. Gene picked up two identical glasses off the bar and took them and a large (plastic) bottle of vodka into the bathroom. (Plastic bottle vodka is a lot cheaper and just as effective.) He returned a minute later with the two glasses, both filled to the brim, and set them in front of him on the counter. He instructed me to stand opposite him as some of our friends gathered around us.

“Okay, here’s how you play The Vodka Game. One of these is straight vodka and one is water. You have to choose one and slam it. You can’t get any closer to them until you’re ready to drink. No touching, no tasting, and no smelling. Whichever one you choose, you have to drink it immediately and completely. If you choose the vodka, you lose, but you can chase it with the water. If you choose the water, you win, and you choose the next person to play.”

I studied the two glasses from where I stood but couldn’t see any difference in their contents. It truly was a game of chance. Not one to back down from a challenge (and probably also deciding who I was going to choose for the next round), I decided on one of the glasses.

“Okay,” Gene said, “on the count of three, you have to slam it.”

1.

2.

3. I grabbed the glass on the right and rushed it to my lips, trying not to smell it. If it was The Vodka, I wanted it gone, quickly. It was The Vodka. Everyone knew it immediately because of the way I winced, and they all burst out laughing.

“Dammit,” I thought, “I lost.” I finished the glass and banged it back down on the counter. My face was red and I was gasping for air as cheap vodka burned my throat.

“Quick! Drink the water!” Gene yelled. It was the best idea I’d heard all night. I definitely needed something to wash the taste out of my mouth. I grabbed the other glass, still reeling from the first, and chugged it.

It, too, was vodka.

And that’s all that I remember from that night.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, internet.

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One day while on my lunch break, I was sitting in my car in the parking lot at work when I noticed a familiar-looking Chevy Cobalt drive by.

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Realizing I likely wouldn’t have another chance, I sped off after it, finally catching up with it at the stoplight, in the first photo above. I alternated between leading and following the Cobalt for about 5 minutes, before I broke off the chase. The other good shot of me is at the intersection below:

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And if you go backwards from the shot above, you’ll see me accelerate to catch up with the Streetview car, after making a U-turn when it ditched me at a stoplight. In the next shot “forward” or eastbound, I disappear, only to reappear back in my company’s parking lot.

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This happened on September 17th and I’ve been obsessively checking back every couple weeks, waiting for Google to update their maps. Today, my dream became a reality.

I’ve got lots of great photos from the concerts and the city, which I’ll upload when we get back home. Happy New Year, everyone.

Cooper – Cat Photographer

Cooper is a 3 year old American Shorthair cat living in Seattle. Once a week he wears a lightweight digital camera fastened to his collar, which snaps a new photo every 2 minutes.

I have a feeling that if Sonja and I did this with one of our two cats, all we’d come up with is a lot of photos of the bed, the kitchen, and the other cat’s butthole.

The show itself is a 700mb Quicktime mp4 file that lives on a 1-terabyte Western Digital external hard drive. That drive is connected via firewire to the iMac that sits on the desk in our office at home.

I created a reference to that Quicktime file in iTunes on the iMac by turning off the “Copy files to iTunes’ music folder” option in iTunes’ advanced preferences. That way, movie files are not added to the internal hard drive, saving space, but iTunes knows where they are and can play them when the external drive is connected. Normally, this “copy files” option is always on so that when I add music, iTunes organizes it nicely into the ~/iTunes/iTunes music folder.

But I don’t want to watch movies on my iMac at my desk, so out in the living room I’ve told my AppleTV to stream media from my iMac without syncing it to the AppleTV’s internal drive. So the episode of Top Gear that I watched took this path to get to my television:

Firewire hard drive > iTunes on the iMac > wifi network > AppleTV > TV via HDMI

Streaming playback over wifi from a hard drive daisy-chained to a computer in another room was painless, too. No skipping or stuttering, no dropped frames. The file might as well have been on the AppleTV’s internal 40gb hard drive.

But this isn’t necessarily anything new. People have been using computers and game consoles to stream media to their televisions for a couple years now. The part that wasn’t possible until just this year was that instead of using the little white Apple Remote that comes with the AppleTV, I used the Remote app on my iPhone, as seen here in a screenshot from the phone:

The black space in the middle normally shows the poster frame or album artwork, but since I didn’t create a poster frame for this Quicktime file, it shows a single frame from near the beginning of the file.

I love it when I’m able to use technology to do stuff like this easily without hours of frustration. There’s something to be said for a company that knows how to get all its products to work together so well, and it’s why I speak so highly of Apple’s products. When someone asks me why I prefer Apple to any other hardware maker, I use examples like this. By being in complete control of the hardware and the software that runs on it, Apple can guarantee that its products will work in harmony. I know it’s corny, but “it just works” is more than a commercial slogan.

Previous “How I Do It” entries:
#1: Auto-click in Safari
#2: Mouse button mapping using USB Overdrive

The motion tracking technology behind it is impressive, but completely unnecessary. Instead of making it something held by the commentator, why not make it a part of the news set? The way they implemented it in the above clip, it just comes off as CNN saying “Look what I can do!“

You are making this too easy.

Hugz,
- Sean

From CNN:

The campaign of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the Alaska governor was unaware of a visit by Russian oil officials to Anchorage on Monday.

Sometimes these posts write themselves.

If you miss the regular updates of the Perry Bible Fellowship (like I do), then you’ll like Thingpart.

Imagine if the Obamas had hooked up with a violently anti-American group in league with the government of Iran.

A brief article about Joe Vogler, leader of the Alaskan Independence Party–an Alaskan secession party–of which Todd Palin was a member, and the same party that Sarah Palin gave a “shout-out” to as recently as March.

Why is this relevant? Ask Sarah Palin. Joe Vogler was as much of a “domestic terrorist” as Bill Ayers, an activist in the 60s & 70s, who has ties with Barack Obama. Yet it’s Palin questioning Obama’s associations while conveniently forgetting her own ties to AIP, a group that is still active today.

From the Salon article:

Vogler’s greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States “tyranny” before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

(emphasis added)

I’m obviously not a fan of either Palin or McCain, but they seem to have forgotten the age-old rule that if you’re going to point out someone’s associations as a liability, make sure your husband is not a member of a secessionist party.

[via > via]

Well, today is a sad day because I just found out that Techspansion is closing its doors, and its three applications have been discontinued. This may not matter to anybody else, but it’s a big loss to the Mac software community, and especially to people who use a Mac in video production and found VisualHub to be an invaluable tool.

VisualHub handles video files with ease, rivaling bigger file conversion applications like Squeeze, Episode and Apple’s own Compressor. Take into consideration that VisualHub costs $23.32 (because of the developer’s fondness for palindromes), and it stands out as an excellent value.

While there won’t be any more updates to VisualHub, it’ll still be a useful tool on all my Macs for a long, long time. And goodbye, iSquint, VisualHub’s free predecessor. And though we just barely got to know each other, goodbye AudialHub, an audio file conversion tool that showed great potential even in its infancy.

“I’ve never fought a war on drugs. I’ve never done shit on drugs. Besides played Halo 2.”

Biden on debate: “I’m feeling good.”

After campaigning last weekend with Barack Obama, Biden cleared his schedule for debate prep. He spent the first two-and-a-half days of the week at a downtown Wilmington hotel, holed up with senior advisors and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who played Palin in mock debates.

Probably could have just used the Palin Interview Generator in her place.

From Rolling Stone, 11 Myths About Sarah Palin:

#2

THE MYTH: “We … championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.” — Sarah Palin, convention speech

THE FACTS: As mayor, employed a lobbyist who also worked for Jack Abramoff to secure $27 million in pork spending for Wasilla — more than $4,000 per resident. In her two years as governor, requested $453 million in earmarks. Alaska ranks first in the nation for pork, raking in seven times the national average.

#5

THE MYTH: “Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if we didn’t know that already.” — Sarah Palin, convention speech

THE FACTS: “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem.” — Sarah Palin, July 2008

Vote.

]]> http://www.seanblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=225 1 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=220 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=220#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:41:30 +0000 sean http://www.seanblog.com/?p=220 I love McCain’s reactions while Palin is speaking. He wants to speak up so badly, but he knows that he can’t. And later when he snaps at Katie Couric, he looks like he’s defending his kid in the principal’s office.

“Gotcha journalism” is not necessarily a bad thing. If you don’t consider the question first and then give a bad answer, it’s not the reporter’s fault that you come off looking like you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s yours. The Republicans are notorious for coming up with buzzwords to label media and opponents’ tactics, but they do it so often that it just comes across looking like they’re grasping at straws.

One last thing: Get registered now.

]]> http://www.seanblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=220 0 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=218 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=218#comments Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:35:04 +0000 sean http://www.seanblog.com/?p=218 It is going to be epic.*

*If she’s still on the ticket come Thursday.

]]> http://www.seanblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=218 0 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=212 http://www.seanblog.com/?p=212#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:39:38 +0000 sean http://www.seanblog.com/?p=212

Some people have never heard of tow trucks.

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