I’m doing some house cleaning on the website today. Although it’s not yet bug-free, I’ve added a “Photo Album” section in the Navigation bar (right side of site pages) and have changed the way images are viewed. In the past, portrait (vertical) images could not be viewed without scrolling, a less than desirable experience, and landscape (horizontal) images had to be reduced in size to fit the column width. So what I’ve done is allowed album images to be viewed in a “lightbox” screen requiring no scrolling.

Initially, this worked with Safari and Firefox on Macs, and with Firefox on PCs. However, it locked up in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) so I disabled it pending some reworking. Today, it appears to be working in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) but I’m not sure if it works in IE6 as I no longer have IE6 on my office PC. However, now I notice that, at least with Internet Explorer, portrait shaped images are being “squeezed.” That is, the aspect ratio is being rendered too narrow on vertical images.

So, I’d like readers’ help. Click on the albums, view the images and let me know if you experience any irregularities, whether with the portrait shaped images being squeezed or the whole thing not working with your browser. Then just let me know (Include your browser and platform. Thanks!

It’s Friday and I feel the need…the need to boogie!!!

This session was filmed live at Storyville Hall in New Orleans, June 5, 1986, and features Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis. That’s Late Night’s musical director, Paul Shaffer (with hair!) running things and Ron Wood on guitar. And if you look closely, I think you’ll spot Carl Perkins on guitar, drummer Steve Jordan and Buck Dunn on bass. If this doesn’t get your feet tapping, there’s just no hope for you! Sit back, turn up your speakers and enjoy a jam session with some legendary performers.

Davey sent this…

I think he may be on to something…

Hey, we haven’t had a contest in quite a while, so between now and Christmas, how about everyone drawing hand turkeys, email them to me, and I’ll post them. The usual valuable prizes will be awarded to the winners! And before you point it out to me, I shoulda coulda done this before Thanksgiving. So just think of it as a “holiday” turkey, okay?

For those of you who’ve forgotten how to draw a hand turkey, here’s an animated GIF from my old website to help jog your memories:

This nifty demo runs through the basics of My Location, a new service from Google now officially in Beta. Announced yesterday, it allows you to use Google Maps without having to type in your present location. If you have GPS, it immediately identifies your position. No GPS on your cell phone? Google triangulates your location based on nearby cell towers. This is a cool tool given that fewer than twenty percent of mobile phones have GPS (including Apple’s present iPhone!)

One day during the last few weeks (it’s all a blur) while Dawn and I were picking up mail at the Royal Oaks Post Office in Sacramento, we noticed a rental truck unloading packages and a news camera taping. We were in a bit of a rush, but I quickly snapped the five images below (click to enlarge) with Dawn’s iPhone and managed to get off one question before we had to shoot back to the office. The packages, they told me, were “for our troops.” I’d hoped to find out more after the fact but so far I’ve come up empty. So, if anyone knows the details - which troops, which theater, organizers - please let me know and I’ll post a follow-up.

In any event, isn’t it nice to know that Americans, despite our political differences, still find it in our hearts to remember and support our troops abroad? It’s part of our culture, part of what makes us Americans and binds us together. And it made me proud.

Did you watch the CNN-YouTube Republican Debate last night? If not, I’ve linked to YouTube’s handy video recap of all the televised questions and the candidates’ answers so you can do so at your leisure.

I found Question #4 and the responses from Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter particularly telling. See what you think.

The story floating around the blogosphere this morning, though, is about how many of CNN’s selected video questioners were apparently Democrat plants. Nationally syndicated Michele Malkin has been following the story:

“Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers…”

CNN introduced them all as “undecided Republicans.” Makes you wonder about their ability to perform simple due-diligence, doesn’t it? Worth following.

This post is the second of a two part series. Part 1 was posted October 13.

To refresh your memories, Dawn and I, along with friends Michael & Sisko and Doug & Candy, had jetted off to Las Vegas over the Columbus Day weekend to help Sisko live her long-time dream of racing an Indy-style race car. To bring her fantasy to life, Michael had given her just such a gift for last year’s birthday - the chance to attend the Mario Andretti Racing School program and race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway!

I photographed the event and had intended to post the images along with those in Part 1. But I wanted to give Sisko a photographic memory, an album, of her big day and didn’t want her to see the images online before she’d received it. I gave her the album as a birthday gift Saturday night and have posted a few of the images in an online album.

For those of you unfamiliar with Indy-style racing, these are 600+ horsepower, open-wheel, open cockpit race cars. In this abbreviated Andretti Racing School program, drivers are allowed to drive up to 145 mph - Sisko clocked 143 mph and, as you’ll see in the photos, waved for the camera!

It was a once in a lifetime experience for Sisko and we all enjoyed sharing in it.

On the heals of cooling conspiracy theories surrounding the ubiquitous The Da Vinci Code comes an unfolding real-life mystery concerning a secret that may actually be hidden in Leonardo’s masterpiece, The Last Supper. If true, it would be a signature touch by the Renaissance genius.

Discovered by an Italian computer technician, it’s a piece of music that resembles a requiem. According to Giovanni Maria Pala, the hands of Jesus and the Apostles, and the loaves of bread in the picture, represent musical notes which together form a 40-second composition. He says he made the discovery after superimposing a musical staff - the five lines used in sheet music - over that portion of the painting. The composition emerges when the “notes” are read right to left, following Leonardo’s own technique.

Pala published his findings earlier this month in the book La Musica Celata (which translates to “The Hidden Music”) in which he claims to have discovered nothing less than a sacred hymn and text, along with mystic symbols, in da Vinci’s degraded masterpiece.

The findings, explained in a Discovery article that includes video footage, are sure to spark renewed controversy.

Michael sent this improved version of Alan Becker’s popular stick figure Flash animation in his WeaklyWebWit email. I’d posted the earlier version on my AFP website a year or two ago, but this one does seem smoother.

As Alan describes the depicted battle, “An animator faces his own animation in deadly combat. The battlefield? The Flash interface itself. A stick figure is created by an animator with the intent to torture. The stick figure drawn by the animator will be using everything he can find - the brush tool, the eraser tool - to get back at his tormentor. It’s resourcefulness versus power. Who will win? You can find out yourself.”

Click on the stick figure below, then click “play” and enjoy.

Wicked fun, yes? Want more? Here’s the sequel. The first one took Alan three months to create; this one took five.

The Thanksgiving Day Run to Feed the Hungry is Sacramento’s largest “fun run” and a major fund raiser for the Sacramento Food Bank. Now in its 14th year, the event this year drew more then 21,000 participants who either ran the marked 10K (6.2M) course or walked/ran a 5K course through the streets of East Sacramento, raising more than $500,000 in pledges.

My 14-year-old grandson, Dakota, ran the 10K for the first time this year and finished 14th in his age group and 404th overall! He posted a very respectable chip time of 47:49.6 (48:21.0 gun time) and a pace of 7:43/M! Good job ‘Kota!

I think he plans to make it an annual event. And I don’t need to tell you how proud we all are of him. If I can drop some weight, I may train for next year’s run myself. I’ll be 65 then and who knows, maybe there’s one more 10K in these old knees of mine…

I’ve posted links to video of the entire race (in several clips) and overall race results. A new 10K race record was set this year by Alene Reta of New York City who posted a chip time of 28:37.4. Wow!

Congratulations and thank you to all the participants who dedicated part of their Thanksgiving holiday for this very worthy cause.

The crowds, the traffic, the utter mayhem. You already know all about the day after Thanksgiving, appropriately dubbed Black Friday. And although I’d vowed never to set foot in a retail store on that day, I found myself accompanying Dawn last Friday as we shopped for a few early Christmas gifts. But guess what - there’s another day for you to deal with. It’s called Cyber Monday.

Feeling left out of all the hoopla, online marketers (they prefer being called e-retailers) conjured up an ad blitz for the first work day after the Thanksgiving shopping weekend and even created a special web site. I suppose It was only a matter of time. In fact, I have to wonder what took them so long. Well, word has spread and now online marketers (oops… e-retailers) offer some real deals on Cyber Monday, everything from free shipping to one-day sales specials.

Shop.org claims that, according to its online survey, 72 million folks will shop online from work (hmmm… I suppose there will be a corresponding drop in business productivity) for holiday gifts, up 11 million from last year. And yes, Dawn and I keystroked our way to a couple of good buys, too.

E-retail believes that, with everything going high-tech these days, they’re entitled to their own traditions, especially those that also happen to turn a profit. I suppose it’s only fair.

Did you watch the YouTube debate in July? CNN and YouTube’s live forum featured video questions submitted to YouTube which were broadcast and answered by Democratic candidates on CNN. CNN’s Anderson Cooper moderated the two-hour debate and posed follow-up questions. The Republican counterpart is scheduled for November 28. For the first time in presidential debate history, user-generated video will have driven two unprecedented debates. I plan on tuning in.

There’s already been much debate about the effectiveness of the format. On the one hand, many believe it marks a new era in American politics, where citizen journalism gets its moment in the limelight. On the other hand, CNN is the sole arbiter of what videos are shown and questions asked. (I was a little concerned that at least four of the questions were posed by puppets.) And many feel the format marks a low point in American politics with serious discourse put in the hands of the same people who watched a video of a baby giggling 27 million times. So I suppose the ball is still in the air as to whether the whole exercise will prove to have been good for the American public.

If you watched the first debate, you’ll recognize the key players in this spoof. A would-be Anderson Cooper moderates.

Today marks the start of the Christmas shopping season with what retailers see as one of their busiest shopping days of the year and what many shoppers see as their best shot all year of snagging one of a handful of $400 laptops and other teaser bargains. It’s such a phenomenon, it’s been dubbed “Black Friday,” the day retailers say they expect to move from being “in the red” to being “in the black” for the first time all year.

But from where I stand, Black Friday should more accurately be called “Black and Blue Friday” as Americans across the fruited plain have been stampeding and, in many cases, fighting each other in the rush for  — “seasonal bargains.” And to be honest, there are some bargains to be had. Unfortunately, most shoppers lose perspective and become part of the feeding frenzy to grab anything and everything that seems cheap. Never mind whether or not they need it - it’s a bargain!

And that’s the biggest problem I see with the whole fiasco. Shoppers scour  myriad ads touting ridiculously cheap stuff — like the $400 laptop — and rush to grab one only to find that all eleven of them are already gone. But now they’re primed to get whatever bargains remain, often leaving the stores with carts filled to overflowing with crap they don’t need. 

Is this what Christmas has become? Who are these people? Have they completely forgotten what Christmas is about? Have they no common decency, courtesy, manners? Were they raised in a cave by wolves?

It’s sad on so many levels I don’t know in which direction to scream first. So, like many, most I suspect, I refuse to play. Sure, I’ll probably pay a little more for some gifts, but I won’t subject myself or anyone I care about to such lunacy. These folks may get some great bargains, but they’ll show who they really are in the process. And how they were brought up. And how they lack manners. And how the real meaning of Christmas has completely eluded them.

Do retailers really need this to make their annual nut? I doubt it. Folks would still shop — even these folks — if retailers simply agreed to quit feeding this annual frenzy. But retailers won’t…

While the madness continues, I should remind you that it’s also Buy Nothing Day. What’s that, you ask? Well, about fifteen years ago, Vancouver artist Ted Dave founded a movement, now celebrated on the Friday after Thanksgiving, to protest rampant over-consumerism. Since then, the movement has spread to some sixty-five nations. Has it had a major effect? That’s debateable, but if it’s done nothing more than cause shoppers to re-examine their spending habits, it’s served its purpose.

So were you one of the many who stood in line awaiting the 4 a.m. Target and other store openings? Did you elbow your way through the herd and grab one of the prize widgets on sale for half off? And, having made the big score, did you turn around and leave? I doubt it. Like most, you probably came home with a car full of crap you don’t need. Happy holidays.