The JimH Blog

The History of Sarah Palin's Hair

Introducing the JimH Crossword Blog

Do you love crosswords or just wonder why some people do? Check out my new blog at www.xwordblog.com.

Wow this blog has been abandoned for a long time. What have I been up to in the world of social networking? After all, it's my job to think about that. Starting this new blog is part of the answer. I've wondered what it would be like to blog on a single topic instead of random life philosophy. I'll find the answer at www.xwordblog.com.

Why crosswords? I don't tell many people but I'm addicted to the ones in the New York Times. Maybe you saw the film Wordplay? Those people (including Bill Clinton and John Stewart) didn't seem odd to me at all. :)

Check it out.

Holy Grail, Batman

The Da Vinci Code film opens this weekend and as a homage I offer this somewhat different and decidedly funnier complimentary story. It's from NPR's Selected Shorts: Chivalry by Neil Gaiman.

Me Like Hockey

How often have you sat around a bar arguing with some moron about which professional sport is the most intellectual? I know, I know, it’s enough to make you hurl your complimentary nuts, but let me settle this once and for all.

Many Americans claim that baseball is the obvious choice. The third baseman notes the count is 1 and 2, calculates the pitcher might throw a changeup which the right-hand batter is more likely to pull so he takes one step to the right. That kind of thing. Some might argue for cricket or soccer. Don’t even get me started about football.

The real choice is obvious and with the season getting ready to start after a very, very long summer, I’ll make the case right here. Or rather, I’ll let The Arrogant Worms do it for me. Click here to listen to the reason why Me Like Hockey. They approach the debate with true Canadian sense and sensibility.

Want to hear more? This probably should have been included in my earlier post on religion, but have you ever wondered what it must be like to be a relative of Jesus? Ok, that’s enough.

Oh what the hell, here’s one more: their loving ode to Celine Dion.

Want even more? Buy their best-of CD or visit their website.

Late political addition (perhaps my favorite): Carrot Juice is Murder

Bogey Vujkov - Comin' Up for Air

Bogey Vujkov's new CD "Comin' Up for Air" shows just what can happen when one of my favorite jazz pianists teams up with some of the best session musicians in Seattle and the music really starts to cook. It verges on commercial (hey, musicians got to eat, eh?) with lots of high-octane elaborate percussion but there are also moments of remarkable tenderness. Bogey has given me permission to include a couple of samples in this blog post. Click the titles to hear them and see what you think. Click the image to buy the CD.

Three Sketches is an original piano solo with a reflective style that seems to fit somewhere between Debussy and jazz.

Tune for Howard by Bogey's mentor Billy Taylor starts with a piano solo and then kicks into gear.

Will "Comin' Up for Air" be a commercial success? Selling music has always been a tough business and jazz even more so, but I really think this one has a shot. And remember, you heard it here first!

Religious Humor

The Times of London reported recently on a humor contest called “The Laugh Judgment” where readers got to vote on, among other things, the funniest jokes about religion.

Are the winners offensive?  It seems like they should be, especially in America where religion is taken so seriously and yet I don’t think they are. I love the top two in particular. The grand prize winner has the hallmarks of a classic joke. You’ve probably heard it before but even if you haven’t, the punch line is obvious about a third of the way in and the joke is still funny. It’s about the comedic journey, not the end gag. (There’s a recent movie about just that, but that’s another story.) Joke number two I had not heard and it’s stylistically opposite; the surprise punch line is delightful.

We could analyze these forever, but instead let’s just run the jokes. I’d admit right here these are not used with permission, but that’s the very nature of jokes, isn’t it? They’re meant to be passed on.

The Winner – Man on a Bridge

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

"Christian."

"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

The Runner Up – Whoever is Without Sin

Jesus came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death.

To calm the situation, Jesus said: "Whoever is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone."

Suddenly, an old lady at the back of the crowd picked up a huge rock and lobbed it at the young woman, scoring a direct hit on her head. The unfortunate young lady collapsed dead on the spot.

Jesus looked over towards the old lady and said: "Do you know, Mother, sometimes you really p*** me off.

Son, that's a Bald Faced Lie

Nine years ago when Bald Faced Lie first started making regular appearances in Seattle theatres, there was no sketch comedy in Seattle. They started a trend but no other local group has been so consistently successful.

They’ve just announced that they’re hanging up their whoopee cushions. After dozens of local shows, after headlining comedy festivals around the U.S. and Canada, after innumerable NPR appearances, it’s all over.

I have a soft spot in my heart for that whole gang. They hired me to Music Direct their first year on stage, and together we created a series of delightful Comic Operas.

You can hear their first-ever NPR show here. It shows their off-beat style was there from the very beginning and it still makes me laugh. Best wishes, liars, with whatever comes next. I’m looking forward to your first reunion show!

Where do you want to go today?

Can't decide where to go on your next trip? The world is full of so many options. Maybe a trip to the coast is in order. Perhaps finding a comfortable home high in the desert somewhere would be ideal. The JimH Blog is here to help.

The map below generates a random location somewhere on Earth. Since the planet you live on is mostly water there's a good chance you're stuck in the middle of an ocean. If that's the case, just drag the map around with your mouse to find some place more interesting, or hit the Random button and get a new location. You can also use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out or double-click to zoom in on a particular spot. Try the other buttons and you can navigate around from there too.

This map uses cool technology from MSN Virtual Earth.

Noise Canceling Headphones

On a recent long airplane trip, I sat next to a guy who seemed a little more relaxed than those around him. He was wearing headphones, but rather than tapping his feet or swaying to the music, he was just comfortably resting. A closer look showed the headphones weren’t plugged in to any sound source!

Eventually we started chatting and he told me his secret. He was wearing Bose Noise Canceling Headphones. He let me try them on. I put them over my ears. This alone helped quell some of the sound. Then he flicked a switch. At first nothing happened, but then after a few seconds the floor dropped out of the noise level. I hadn’t noticed how loud the engines were, but now that they were vastly attenuated I couldn’t believe that I could even keep my sanity with such a racket.

The headphones aren’t magic. It’s not like I was in silence, but it was the difference between an emerging headache and feeling suddenly at ease. Amazing.

Geeks will know that the secret is tiny microphones in each ear cup that feed a signal to a microprocessor which then adds an opposite phase cancellation signal to whatever the music source provides. To do it completely in real time is an impossible physics and computational problem even before you add in all the extra psycho-acoustic corrections, but the imperfect approximation was a major advantage.

Before my next long airplane trip I stopped by a music store but they didn’t carry the Bose model. I ended up with a pair of Sony in-ear plugs. Trying them at home was disappointing. If there isn’t a lot of ambient noise to cancel out, the circuitry can actually make the noise level worse. (The phones have an on/off switch for this reason.) Even on the plane it took a while to get it working right. I had to jam the plugs further into my ears than seemed right, but once they were properly situated, the magic happened again.

Here’s the big difference. On my first airplane trip with normal headphones, I could easily listen to audio books on my iPod, but music was tough, especially if there was large dynamic range as with jazz or classical. On my second trip, I could enjoy a cello concerto or a jazz vocalist as easily as I could listen to my eclectic collection of pop songs. From now on, I won’t fly without them.

Why stop at canceling sound waves, though? I can just imagine teams of Japanese engineers hunkering over their lab benches working on ways to cancel light waves, tsunamis, or life regrets. What a product that will be! Batteries not included.

Rotational Illusion

Have you seen those optical illusions where still images are supposed to look like they're rotating? Those sometimes work for me, sometimes not. It probably depends on your monitor size, whether you're staring at an LCD or CRT, or what you ate for breakfast.

Click the image on the left, though. This one freaks me out. I swear, it's not an animated gif. It's just a still image. Yikes.

An offer you CAN'T refuse

My previous post talked about how Google thinks ads about UFOs fit this blog, and being an alien myself with an official Alien Registration Card to prove it, I was thrilled.

My favorite ad appearing on this site so far was from an enterprising Texan at www.alienabductionprevention.com. He sells a device, guaranteed for life no less, that protects the wearer from Alien Abduction. Yes fear no more, friends. For only $5.25 + $1.50 S&H you can sleep easy knowing that you're absolutely protected from this particular fate.  Think he's joking?  Think again, bucko. He offers a 110% refund should his device ever fail!

What a brilliant plan. Suppose, just for a moment, that his device actually does nothing, that it’s completely ineffective against some or even all evil aliens. If the odds of abduction are one in a million (details behind this calculation available on request) then he would have to refund $5.76 for every six millions dollars in revenue.  What an incredible business plan.

But wait! The JimH Blog has an even better deal. Send me a certified cashier’s check for $10,000.00 and I personally guarantee that some time in your life you WILL be abducted by an alien. Should your lifetime end without an abduction, simply come to me personally with proof of an abduction-free life (I, of course, will be the sole judge of the validity of that proof) and I will cheerfully return 110% of your purchase price.

Whose is the better offer? Enduring an abduction can be inconvenient if it comes at the wrong time. There are the risks of anal probes, unquenchable desires to build towers out of mashed potatoes, and other humiliations to endure. Ah, but the upside is tremendous. You and you alone (well, you and my other customers) get the thrill of actually meeting a Being from Outer Space. You’ll zip around the sky darting this way and that accompanied by flashing lights and eerie sounds. There is no grander adventure, no greater thrill.

Don’t delay. Sign up now for this amazing offer today. You won’t be disappointed. I know I won’t be.

PS. Long time readers of this site will remember my first UFO-related blog entry here.

Google ads are more fun than I thought

It turns out I wasn't getting rich quick enough with the Amazon links here on The JimH Blog. I get a kickback every time you buy anything at Amazon if you go through my book or CD links, but the traffic volume hasn’t allowed me to retire quite yet.

Not to fear, I’ve upped the ante by including Google AdSense ads in the left-hand column right under Recent Posts. You start making money for me just by clicking on those ads. Signing up didn’t cost me a thing. What a deal.

But that's not the most interesting part. The Google engine uses sophisticated A.I. technology to decide just which ads to display. The goal is to provide ads that seem appropriate to the site. This makes sense. Google doesn't want to annoy the website owner by showing inappropriate ads. More importantly, Google wants you to click on the ad so, making the assumption that you arrived at this site because of some particular interest, it tries to show other similar items which, in theory, might also interest you.

What fun. My blog is all over the map, so what will Google choose? It might have changed by the time you see this, but as I type the ads have titles like "UFO Video – Is it Real?" and "Want to see Real Ghosts?"

What's going on, here? Well, a recent blog entry was about Satellite photography. Good try, Google. And what the heck, I’ve always wondered if ghosts were real…

The famous Apple skunkworks project

Click here to read the infamous story of the Apple Graphics Calculator.

Most commentary I've heard on this describes it as a saga of persistence against overwhelming odds. That's true, but to me it provides great insight into the nature of how software is created, how difficult it is, and what motivates the people behind it. Anyone who builds software for a living will understand exactly why Greg Robbins and Ron Avitzur did what they did.

Start a Rumor at Rumor City

Got something the world needs to know? Tell us all about it at Rumor City.

I wrote this as an internal toy for work last weekend. This weekend I decided to make it available to the world just to see what happens. I bought the domain name www.rumorcity.com and right now it's being hosted in my basement. If it uses too much bandwidth, I'll move it to a commercial hosting company.

Many years ago I wrote a similar Win32 program and was amazed and amused at how much fun people had with it. This web version isn't quite as cool, but it has the advantage of being available from anywhere in the world. Will the jokes be as funny? Will it descend into silliness or worse? Will it inspire? Or will it just be ignored? Time will tell.

By the way, right now the program needs a recent version of IE on Windows to work. I'll fix that if it turns out to be popular.

Ryan, ode to Ryan Larkin, wins Oscar

The National Film Board of Canada nearly owns the animated short category outright, and won again last night with Ryan. Watch it here to see why. This is amazing filmmaking. Note, you can right-click and zoom to full screen.