Category: Life with Pratts

Lights in the Sky, TV in the Mirror

The fireworks show in Boston last night was like a 1964 Beatles concert — short and loud. It was a big 20-minute display, which seemed like the right length. We were watching from the Cambridge side of the Charles River, on Memorial Drive in front of M.I.T. The blimp belongs to Hood, one of the bigger dairies in the Boston area. For a minute it looked like the blimp was flying into the fireworks, but as you can see it was a safe distance away.

[flv:/Video/2008/JUL/Fireworks2008.flv 440 330]

Another interesting sight awaited us at the hotel, down the road near Harvard, where the bathroom mirror had a built-in LCD TV.

[flv:/Video/2008/JUL/TVMirror.flv 440 330]

Boston Bound

Happy 4th of July! (Although I suspect that if I were living here in Massachusetts during Colonial times I perhaps would have been a Loyalist.)

We’re going to watch the big fireworks show in Boston tonight, and because it starts so late, 10:30, we’ll be staying in town overnight. So there won’t be anything new here until tomorrow night.

H.264 Test

If you see this, please ignore…
[MEDIA=12]

OK… so don’t ignore. Because the test works.

This is sort of an important post. First, I’m seriously considering getting an iPhone 3G, after the initial rush has passed. But I was going to get a full-featured FiOS TV set top box for the porch, and instead I went for the free digital converter, so maybe I won’t get an iPhone.

The point to this 10-minute video about the new iPhone is that it’s in an entirely different format than what I’ve used up to now. This is just the proof of concept, and the next thing to do will be converting one of my own video transfers into the new format. If this works, from now on the videos should be watchable in full screen mode.

Ringone

Ringo and His All Starr Band put on a super show tonight, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston! Nearly two and a half hours. I’m tired, and I have an early meeting, so I’d better hit the sack.

Five Dead In Iowa

Tuesday afternoon I saw my eye doctor, who gave me good news and bad news. Good news is my retina is healing fine from the laser ZAP! last week. The bad news is, it’s still healing, so I can’t go running for at least another two weeks. Running on the road, that is. I can get on a treadmill, so that’s what I’ll do, at the gym at work.

Driving back to work after the appointment, I went over the Zakim Bridge and past whatever Boston Garden is being called these days where, minutes ago, the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship. The last time they did that, 22 years ago, I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Melrose, Massachusetts, and Carol was a couple of months away from moving in with me. That was a very long time ago.

But I want to at least mention Iowa, because I feel so sorry for those people. They have a lot more to worry about now than $4.15 gasoline. What a mess out there. So many lives disrupted, and an entire region’s economy devastated. The Boston Globe has an excellent set of photos of the flooding in Iowa at this link. The first one, of a tornado, is terrifying, and looks as though it could almost be a special effect in a movie.

My buddy Dennis made some noteworthy comments about what’s happening in the midwest.

When bad things happened in New Orleans, those on the religious right proclaimed that it was “God’s Wrath on Sinful New Orleans.” So, what is this? “The Heartland” is facing the same wrath now. Maybe because Iowa voted for Obama? Where is the “They had it coming” and “Well, they built the city below water level” stuff? I’m sure that 50 years ago, most of the land flooded in this disaster was farmland and absorbed the water in time. Today, houses and buildings sit there, awash in a toxic sludge. Would someone say “They had it coming”?

Good question. Why is the flooding of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines different from the punishment that Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be for the sinfulness of New Orleans? I would add the question, why are so many who claim to feel the forgiveness of Christ so full of judgment, and lacking in forgiveness themselves?