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January 31, 2006
Poor, poor Oil Companies
From the New York Times, January 30, 2006:
"Exxon Mobil, the nation's largest energy company, today reported a 27 percent surge in profits for the fourth quarter as elevated fuel prices gave rise to the most lucrative year ever for an American company, with profits in 2005 reaching $36.13 billion and revenue $371 billion.
January 30, 2006
NASCAR Coke
NASCAR Coke
Originally uploaded by jaboobie.
This one is for Phil.
January 25, 2006
Mac OS X Software: Photos On Your Desktop
Photodesktop allows you to arrange and display pictures on your desktop, independant of your background.
Ironic, Sad, or Just Canada?
I'm not sure where to place the irony tag on this story - is it the fact that a shoot-out happened under the Peace Arch at a Canadian/US border crossing or that the Canadian guards who are there to prevent someone getting into Canada are unarmed and "have the legal right to refuse to work if they believe they are in imminent danger." Either way, no one was hurt and the baddies were arrested and the Peace Arch is still standing.
Update: Looks like the new Prime Minister is set to make changes to this already: Conservatives to arm Canada's border guards. That didn't take long.
January 24, 2006
Pixar Gets Bought
Disney finally gets their Pixar - with Steve Jobs sitting on the Disney board of directors and Apple he's got his hands in just about every area of entertainment.
January 23, 2006
Anna and the King (Widescreen), 1999
by 20th Century Fox
The Story
A remake of 'The King and I' which is the story of Anna Leonowens, the English schoolteacher who came to Siam in the 1860s to teach the children of King Mongkut. She becomes involved in his affairs, from the tragic plight of a young concubine to trying to forge an alliance with Britain to a war with Burma that is orchestrated by Britain. It's based on a true story - though it is not a true retelling of the story. But you didn't really expect a movie to give you historically accurate fact, did you?
My Thoughts
I wouldn't recommend this to most folks. It's nothing spectacular as far as movie entertainment goes. The reason I enjoyed it is mainly due to the scenery and the way it was shot, not so much the acting or script. Chow Yun-Fat is superb in this, but Jodie Foster is not so they balance each other out I guess. If you've seen the play/musical 'The King and I' then it's interesting to see it played out on the big screen but it may not hold much interest beyond that.
CDN$ 16.98
January 19, 2006
Hooked On David Hasselhoff
Is it any wonder he's so popular in Germany?
January 18, 2006
iLife '06 Arrives
iLife 06 arrived today and so I'm quickly running through the new stuff. Most of it is related to podcasting, photocasting (Apple's new made up word for something most people didn't think they wanted) or videocasting.
Apple is getting blasted pretty hard by a lot of techie folks who're claiming (and rightly so) that Apple's new iWeb program isn't following a lot of the standards for web design and RSS feeds. It's a bit like stepping back to using Frontpage on Windows, only it looks a lot better - but still crappy under the hood if you care about the code you put on the web. Except Frontpage never made it this easy to put your photos/videos/podcasts on a website and tell your friends about it. Hopefully Apple cleans things up a bit - keep in mind this is only the v1.0 release of the program. Most of the other iApps are on their 4th - 6th release. It's web page creation for your parents. Or for those of us who don't care, we just want to be able to put a movie on a website and send it to your family.
Here's my iWeb site. I'll be playing around s'more with it once I get around to creating a podcast. My momma always told me I had a face for radio.
January 14, 2006
Pugs Want To Die
That's all they really want...
January 12, 2006
Mac Users - Download This Instead of Windows Media Player
Microsoft apparently is discontinuing development of Windows Media Player for OS X. In it's place they are offering a free download of flip4mac which actually allows you to view Windows media files in Quicktime or in a browser window.
Hopefully it'll help improve the poor perfomance of Windows Media files when played back on a Mac.
Coke and Fructose
U.S. Coke bottlers switched from cane sugar to high-fructose corn syrup in the 1980s to cut costs. Mexican Coke still uses cane sugar, though the coke down there sells for a lot less than it does up in the U.S./Canada - speaking from personal experience. Coke makes it illegal (or against company policy really) for Mexican bottlers to send their cane sugar coke up north - which the Mexican bottlers are trying to do becaues people want/demand the real sugar coke instead of the fake stuff we get fed.
The underground trade is costing Coke's 75 U.S. bottlers millions of dollars a year in sales to a motley crew of wholesalers, distributors and mom-and-pop retailers who are beating the bottlers to a lucrative market with their own brand.
Some quick numbers, on why Coke would use HFCS over sugar.
- Annual US Per capita consumption of Coke in servings: 411
- People in the United States: 297,890,000
- Servings of Coke in the US, per year: 122,432,790,000
- How much a 5 cent cost increase in sweetner, per serving, would affect the bottom line of Coca Cola: $6,121,639,500
- How much a penny cost increase in sweetner, per serving, would cost Coca-Cola:
$1,224,327,900
January 10, 2006
New Apple Stuff
Whole bunch of big Apple updates today:
- New Intel based iMacs
- New Intel based laptop dubbed the MacBook Pro - essentially replacing the PowerBook
- New versions of iWork and iLife - the biggest addition to Garageband being slick 'n easy Podcast creation and a new app called iWeb.
Google also did a little Mac update today - they've officially released Google Earth for OS X. There was a beta version floating around the net for awhile, but now you can get your earth viewing for real.
January 5, 2006
7 Year Old Takes Second at 550 Person Halo 2 Event
Behind the Curtain at Apple's Keynotes
With less than a week to go before another big Macworld keynote by Steve Jobs, here's a little behind the scenes look at what goes into preparing for these events.