I came across these beautiful— images and videos of auroras taken from the International Space Station.
I’m thinking this particular aurora video must be a simulation, but either way, WOW.
Month: January 2006
The other day, my friend Kim Siever hit me with the four things meme. Apparently it started on LiveJournal and has spread across the blogosphere. Some of the bigger sites that I follow on my RSS reader have been participating too.
There is something particularly intriguing about the simplicity of the meme and yet it seems to derive answers that you might never expect. For instance, who would have ever thought that I had experience burying mines? (They weren’t live and they were for de-mining research purposes).
There are many more examples of the meme via google search four things meme.
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Television Interview
I’m going to be doing a television interview this Wednesday which will air during a live taping of CBC Newsworld’s The Hour on either February 6th or 7th.
Update: It looks like it’s going to air on Tuesday at 8:00pm MST on Newsworld.
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Four Things
Tagged by Kim Siever.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life
- Corn Packer at Eldorado Farms
- Pre-Press Assistant at the Medicine Hat News
- Mine Layer
- Lifeguard
Four movies I can watch over and over
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- Forrest Gump
- Back to the Future
- The Princess Bride
Four places I have lived
- Medicine Hat
- Salt Lake City
- Lethbridge
- Malaysia (6 weeks)
Four TV shows I love to watch
- Daily Show
- Boston Legal
- Seinfeld
- Clone High
Four places I have been on vacation
- Japan
- Hawaii
- Australia
- Israel
Four of my favorite dishes
- Pizza
- Balsamic Chicken
- Chicken Vindaloo
- Stir Fry
Four websites I visit daily
Four places I would rather be right now
- Australia
- Europe (perhaps Poland?)
- Vancouver
- Montreal
Four bloggers I am tagging
Categories
Toy Story 3 Shelved
It has only been a short time since Disney’s all stock buy-out of Pixar and already some big changes are under way. The Los Angeles Times reports that with this deal comes an end to quarrel over Pixar sequels.
In remarks made during a Tuesday conference call with analysts, Iger and Pixar Chief Executive Steve Jobs implied what other sources confirmed Wednesday: that Disney’s 150-plus-person Pixar sequels unit — which is housed in a Glendale warehouse and is already at work on Toy Story 3 — will soon be no more.
“We feel very strongly that if the sequels are going to be made, we want the people who were involved in the original films involved in the sequels,” Jobs said.
Iger sounded the same note.
“It was really important to me that the people who made the films originally, who had the vision, who knew the characters and the essence of these films get a shot at making any films that were derivative,” the Disney chief said.
“While Disney might have been able to make them, Pixar making them is just so much different,” Iger added. “Not to take away from the talent of other people who might have been picked to make them.”
The announcement isn’t a complete surprise since Disney making Pixar sequels (or not making them) was a major factor during negotiations. Still it’s nice to see that Disney will no longer be destroying classics as they have done in the past. And because Pixar is taking over for Walt Disney Feature Animation, I guess this also means no more Dumbo 2? (Yes, they really were thinking about it.)
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Enschede Fireworks Disaster
On May 13, 2000, in the eastern Dutch town of Enschede, a fire broke out in the S.E Fireworks depot. Twenty-two people died and a neighbourhood was destroyed.
Check out the awesome and terrible power of the disaster in the Enschede fireworks disaster video.
Also see the Wikipedia entry on Enschede fireworks disaster.
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Disney-Pixar Deal
I’ve been hearing rumours about Disney buying Pixar in an all-stock deal for a couple of days. Here is the lowdown:
The Telegraph article was the first one that I heard of announcing the deal.
Today the New York Times reports that Disney may announce their acquisition of Pixar as early as tomorrow. According to the Times, the deal would combine Pixar with Disney’s animation unit and give Mr. Jobs a seat on Disney’s board.
The LA TIMES article Walt’s Shoes at Disney Could Be a Fit for Jobs draws an interesting parallel between Steve Jobs and Walt Disney.
Harry Mccracken has a collection of interesting questions about the Disney-Pixar merger on his blog posting, Disney+Pixar=?.
Update: Over at Cartoon Brew they have a copy of an email from Walt Disney Feature Animation President David Stainton as he prepares to hand over the position to John Lasseter. Especially interesting is the comment from an anonymous Disney director.
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Canada’s New Prime Minister
The election is over and the votes are tallied. The conservative party didn’t do quite as well as some polls had predicted, but they still have the majority of seats and a minority government. Stephen Harper, leader of the conservative party and Prime Minister-designate will be sworn in as Canada’s 22nd Prime-Minister sometime in mid-February.
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Thanks Jay
I had a great time interviewing on The Jay Thomas Show this afternoon. For those of you that caught the show and came here looking for some more samples of backmasking, here is my backmasking page.
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Jeff Milner on the Jay Thomas Show
Today at 1:30pm (MST) I’ll be a guest on the Jay Thomas Show. I was just looking into who Jay Thomas is, and when I took a look at the google results I said to myself, “hey I recognize that guy—he was on Murphy Brown!”
I didn’t recall it right off, but he also played the zamboni smushed hockey player, “Eddie Lebec”, on Cheers (hilarious).
The following is a little bit of info from his bio:
Jay’s career highlights include acting roles on Cheers, Murphy Brown, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Mork & Mindy and The Education of Max Bickford to name just a few. Jay won an Emmy Award for playing Jerry Gold in Murphy Brown and was nominated again in 1992. Every holiday season since 1998 it’s a tradition on the Late Show for him to knock a meatball off the Christmas tree with a football (he briefly played pro ball in the World Football League).
As I’ve done more and more interviews I’m getting a lot more comfortable just going on and joking around with the host. This should be fun.