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  • Whipping it. Whipping it good.

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    Wow, grade school kids redo the video for Devo’s Whip It. And it’s pretty cool! [via Boing Boing]

  • Wow. Just Wow

    My mom posted a link to a post at nola.com which has an account of the hurricane and its aftermath at Tenet’s Memorial Medical Center. Rene Goux, the CEO of Tenet’s Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, writes about hurricane and the flooding of the hospital (it’s pretty much at the bottom of the bowl that is New Orleans).

    Conditions at the hospital deteriorated rapidly. There was no plumbing; the toilets were overflowing. The stench was overwhelming. None of us had been able to bathe for four or five days. The smell of sewage was nauseating and it was unbearably hot. We started breaking windows to give our patients some ventilation. At the end, we were reduced to one meal a day. We had no power at all for the last two days. None of the elevators were working, so we had to carry patients up as many as eight floors to the helipad or down to the boats. [nola.com: Memorial Medical Center Evacuation]

    The people working at that hospital deserve some kind of recognition for the work they did. They work in an intense environment as it is and this just sounds insane.

  • Sekrits

    Twinkies
    Nick posted a link to PostSecret. A site where people mail in postcards with a secret on them. Pretty cool. I keep wondering if I have any secrets to share.

  • New Orleans Photos

    My mom’s been pretty much glued to the computer every spare moment she has trying to figure out just how bad the flooding is by my sister’s apartment. She came across some pictures taken by someone taking a boat ride through areas near the apartment. There’s something really eerie about it all. It made me realize that most of the pictures I’ve seen of New Orleans on the news are focusing on places with people. There’s a link to a slide show of pictures at the nola.com link.

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    My neighbour and I took a boat ride through Uptown flooded flooded streets yesterday morning. Our route was as follows:boat launch at Nashville and Freret. Travel north on Nashville to cross Claiborne into Broadmoor. Right on Rocheblave. Return through Robert and Octavia back on Nashville. I took over 120 pics of the streets. Overall impression: news aren’t good. Water 5-6 feet high on the street, every home is affected starting two blocks past Freret. Dead body floating at the corner of Octavia and Rocheblave. Our house at 4900 block of Rocheblave has 3 feet of water. We didn’t even go into it. Pictures cover our route:Boat launch at Nashville and Freret. Travel north on Nashville, cross claiborne. Go into broadmoor, take a right on S. Rocheblave (we live on that street). Head out back on Robert, Octavia and Nashville. [nola.com]

  • Just When You Thought Things Couldn’t Get Any Worse

    CNN reports that Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died at the age of 80. Time for even more chaos.

  • New Orleans

    I’ve been meaning to post something about New Orleans and the hurricane for a few days now. For me the big positive news is that my sister is safe. She got out of town Sunday and stayed with friends in FL. Now she’s up in the Baton Rouge area and trying to keep busy (she volunteered at the Red Cross the other day). My nephew is with her and doing just fine also. He’ll hopefully be attending school up there while they wait for school to be available around his father.

    As of right now, she still has a job at the Tulane Medical Center. Though there’s been no word about when she might be back at work. Something that’s true for just about anyone who works in NO.

    It also looks like her apartment may be safe. We can’t tell for sure, but it seems to be right on the edge of some flooding. Her apartment is on the first floor, but it is up a number of steps, so I think she’s got something like 4 feet before the water would get into her actual apartment. Our fingers are crossed.

    Also, via LJ user Tenzil, a really good article over on CNN about The Big Disconnect. Good, but a bit disturbing.

  • Living with Apple

    Dave Winer just got a mac and has been commenting about things he likes and doesn’t like about it. For example, he really doesn’t like Safari. Though he is happy with his Airport Express.

    He’s also been getting a bit of advice about software to use:

    This is the kind of advice…
    This is the kind of advice I’ve been getting from Mac users. Good stuff. You know, based on the rah-rah’s from developers who are probably too scared of Apple to say what they really think, I thought everyone else thought Apple was the perfect company and the perfect computer. That’s the downside of people being too scared to speak up, we get shitty information. How can we change this system, so that people aren’t so scared? Or can we get Apple to thicken up their skin a bit, and learn to not punish people who have the nerve to criticize them. Blogs were supposed to fix all this. Frankly I think it hurts Apple to just have rah-rah public discourse and commentary. [via Scripting News]

    Most people I know who have macs are more than willing to criticize them. The thing is, I find that the positives for me greatly outweigh the negatives. I’ve had no real problems with Safari. I think most of their software is designed for the casual computer user. It does the basics and tends not to get too fancy.

    So in my case I tend to praise Apple a lot since in general it’s been much less of a hassle than my experiences with Windows in its various forms. It’s definitely not perfect, but I’ve yet to find an OS that is.

  • TV on your phone

    Full episodes of cult TV sci-fi show Red Dwarf are being made available for fans to buy and watch on their mobile phone handsets.

    The Doctor Who special The Five Doctors, originally screened in 1983, is also part of the licensing deal. [BBC News]

    Okay, maybe I’m just a bit picky or something, but I really can’t see the enjoyment of watching TV on a cell phone screen. I think the smallest I could go is the PSP screen.

  • Snakes on a Plane

    I’ve started reading a few new blogs lately that I’ve found quite enjoyable. The first being Kung Fu Monkey, which is pretty entertaining. Today he points to a new screenwriter blog by Josh Friedman, the credited co-writer of War of the Worlds. Though it’s just a few posts old, it’s quite fun. My favorite post being the one about Snakes on a Plane.

    I ask Agent the name of the project, what it’s about, etc. He says: Snakes on a Plane. Holy shit, I’m thinking. It’s a title. It’s a concept. It’s a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It’s perfect. Perfect. It’s the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles.

    …

    Now out of both loyalty to the sacred bond between studio and screenwriter and also a serious desire to keep getting hired in this town, I will not give away any of the plot details of SNAKES ON A PLANE. But know this. As the great Sam Jackson would say: There are motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.

    What else do you need to know? How the snakes get on the plane, what the snakes do once they’re on the plane, who puts the snakes on the plane, who is trying to get the snakes off the plane…This is not for you to ponder. There are snakes on the plane. End of fucking story. [I find your lack of faith disturbing]

    Added bonus: comments from Samuel L Jackson on the movie.

  • You Are On The Global Frequency

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    After reading about the pilot for a TV show called Global Frequency over on Heath Row’s Media Diet my curiosity went into overdrive. I read up about it some on the net and then hunted down a copy of it. One of the best pilot episodes I’ve seen ever I think.

    But what is just as interesting is how this leaked pilot has really generated interest in the show. People are asking “how can we help get this show to TV”. The site FrequencySite has coverage of what’s going on with it (though they don’t suggest you go out and download the show, that would be bad :)). But imagine if a network were smart enough to use this as a way to promote a new show. Especially one that might be a bit of a risk (as this one may be). Then see how strong the feedback is, and they might get an idea of how successful it could be.

    Anyways, if you get a chance to see this, definitely check it out. I now kind of hope that it does actually get picked up after all.

    Now Playing: Love at First Sight from the album “Black Sea” by XTC