OK, who turned on the snow?
Author: DOuG pRATt
From gays to gangs
After such a fuss and bother over gays serving in the military, it seems the armed forces must now deal with a real threat — gang members in their ranks. (A tip o’ the Dog Rat toupee to Denro for the link.)
It’s the great Charlie Brown, Great Pumpkin!
Thursday at 8 on ABC is my all-time favorite TV cartoon, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This one I just have to watch on broadcast TV, with commercials.
What do you get…
If you cross Andy Rooney with Gilbert Gottfried, you get Lewis Black.
XPerienced system
It was ten years old today that Windows XP went on sale to the public. Prior to its release I’d been running XP at work for a year in beta form, and knowing it would be a winner I bought a Compaq Presario 5300 desktop computer for Carol on October 25, 2001, as an early birthday present. Three years later, it became Eric’s system when I bought Carol a Compaq Presario 2210 laptop computer. Like the desktop computer it has 512 MB memory and a 40 GB drive, except the desktop came with only 256 MB and 20 GB.
Over the years I’d purchased two Dell desktop systems, and both suffered major motherboard failures, which means I’ll never buy another Dell. Meanwhile, both of the Presarios continue to chug along. Carol is still using the laptop and has no complaints and the desktop, with a USB hard drive attached, is in the basement ripping CDs and running Logitech’s free music server software.
Microsoft will continue supporting Windows XP through April 8, 2014. There are two Windows 7 64-bit systems in the house now, but I have never used Windows Vista at home. Having used Vista at work, I knew it was a clunker.
P.S. This is post number 2500.
Hergé today, gone tomorrow
Tintin is huge! Created by the late Georges Remi, aka Hergé, spunky and intrepid boy reporter Tintin is hugely popular everywhere — except in the United States. Way back in March 2007, I noted that Stephen Spielberg intended to produce a Tintin movie, and I posted a bit of video from the documentary Tintin Et Moi.
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Oct/Tintin.flv 400 250]
For some more background on Hergé and Tintin, watch this short video with Michael Farr, author of the excellent book, Tintin: The Complete Companion. I own a copy of the original 2002 edition. The book has been out of print, but it’s scheduled to be republished.
As things turned out with The Adventures of Tintin, Peter Jackson produced and Spielberg directed. The movie opens this week exactly where it should, in Europe. But even if it’s a blockbuster success there, will it catch on here in America, when it’s released on December 21?
http://youtu.be/nlE4kXKwG7Y
Despite excellent early reviews for The Adventures of Tintin I’m not a fan of this sort of motion capture animation, but seeing the name Steven Moffat in the credits gives me hope. Moffat is an outstanding writer, whose work on the BBC’s Doctor Who is some of the finest, most enjoyable television I have ever watched.
http://youtu.be/vY_Ry8J_jdw
BBC Radio 4 Extra is running audio dramatizations of Tintin adventures that you can hear at this link. And while you’re on Radio 4 Extra, don’t miss a repeat presentation of Brian Sibley’s outstanding adaptation of the Titus Groan books, by Mervyn Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore.