Wausau Urban Images

Here's some pictures I took around Wausau.

Railroad Bridge Looking West

Whitewater Rapids Course

Wisconsin River and Downtown Wausau

Downtown Shops

400 Block

The 2011 Rapture Day Film Festival

Since the heavily hyped rapture ended up not happening today (Saturday, May 21st, 2011,) I decided to at least pretend like it did by watching a bunch of post-apocalyptic movies.

The only rules I set out for this are...

#1 -  The film would would have to be one that I would want to see in the first place.

#2 - They would have to be available on Netflix streaming, and up until yesterday there was actually a category for this genre of movie.

Here's what I'll be viewing.

Carriers a 2009 film about four people fleeing a viral pandemic starring Star Trek's Chris Pine.  

2012 This 2009 movie about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of it's survivors stars John Cusack and is directed by the king of disaster films, Roland Emmerich.

Legion When God loses faith in humankind, he sends his legion of angels to bring on the Apocalypse. Humanity's only hope lies in a group of strangers trapped in a desert diner with the Archangel Michael.

Mad Max This 1979 film, which made Mel Gibson a star, is about a dystopic future Australia where a vicious biker gang murders a cop's family and makes his fight with them personal.

Water World Kevin Costner stars in this 1995 movie about a future where the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater.

So, there you have it, my list of post-apocalyptic films.  Maybe you'll celebrate judgement day by watching them as I will.

Personal Electronics Then and Now

I don't know what my problem is lately but more and more of these blog posts are ending up being strolls down memory lane; and this one is no exception.

The above picture is of the first piece of personal electronics that I ever owned.  It's a Mura Hi Stepper AM/FM radio.   To put some perspective on it, this unit is about 3 times the size of an iPhone and all it did was play the radio.  This became available around the same time as the Sony Walkman did in the early 80's but if my memory serves I didn't have very much money to spend.  And, anyway, all I needed was the radio.

I remember seeing it in a newspaper ad convincing my father to take me to pick it up at some weekend warehouse sale south of the Twin Cities.  Hearing Stevie Nicks "Edge of Seventeen" for the first time on the Mura Hi Stepper convinced me it was a good buy.

Later on when I got my first job washing dishes at Bridgeman's restaurant I purchase the below speaker unit which had an area in the center where you put your radio and plugged it into the speakers, kind of like a poor man's boom box.

I know that these days our smartphones and tablet computers can do so much more in a lot smaller packages but it's still nice to think back to simpler times when all we need was a device that did one thing.

My Short Photo Walk

Here's some pictures I took while on a walk along the Wisconsin River in Wausau tonight.

River bank

Walking path

Bridge over the River Wisconsin

New Shoes

This has became somewhat of a tradition with me, taking a picture of new pairs of shoes I buy.

They're blue Airspeed's from Walmart and cost me $18.

Re-Living My Childhood

During my childhood I was a big fan of the original Battlestar Galactica.  So much so that I ended up building my own Viper Fighter, which were the small ships those humans fleeing from the Cylon tyranny used to defend themselves.

The above is a picture of me circa 1979 wearing a helmet made from a plastic ice cream bucket and masking tape sitting in the pilots seat ready to be shot out of Galactica's launch tubes.

What if that pretend ship of mine had never been dismantled but instead was sitting in a garage someplace?  And, what if, as an adult I were to get back in it, then through some sort of magic, the Viper turned real and I was able to fly off into space to fight along Starbuck and Apolo?      

Well, that's the premise I hope to explore in the next blog story I'm going to write.  Maybe from there the fictitious version of me could land on the moon and serve alongside the characters from Space: 1999 then board the Starship Enterprise. Obviously exact names would change to avoid copyright infringement.

But first, this one needs to be finished http://ablogaboutstuff.com.

Weathering The Storm Clouds

As you may know, the Sony Playstation Network was just recently brought back to life after being forced to shut down for almost a month due to meddling hackers.  I am not a gamer, but can just imagine how frustrating that must have been to not have access to those multi-player games, movies and more.  I know whenever Gmail or any of it's related services like Google docs or calendar gets knocked offline I start pulling my hair out.

And people are becoming more and more dependent on storing their files on the Internet.  Over the past two months both Amazon and Google have announced cloud based music services and just this week at the Google I/O conference the Chrome Books were unveiled which virtually can't function without web access, although some local storage is included and a few apps will be able to work offline.

Which brings me to the point of this blog entry.  No matter how bad you want it, don't allow everything you own to live in the cloud.  For sanity's sake, make backups or keep the originals on a local drive because you never know when those storm clouds will threaten.

One last thought before I leave.  How about one of you super smart developers out there make an "umbrella" app of sorts.  For example, whenever I create something online there's also an automatic option that pops up to download it to the machine I'm currently working on.  Emphasis on the word "option!"

What do you think? 

Don't Sell Yourself Short

I've noticed recently that names and words are getting shorter.  

For example: TIL, POTUSOA and OBL.

The above are just a few acronyms that have been popping up online recently and, you guessed it, mostly on Twitter.  I love the micro blogging service as much as the next guy but the shortening of words is becoming ridiculous.  Between that, the # tags, the @ replies and re-tweets it sometimes feels like I'm trying to read a foreign language.  I know that shortening is sometimes vital to get under the 140 character limit but don't forget, you can get your message across in a series of tweets too.

Don't let your message get lost in translation.

Oh, I almost forgot, if you haven't figured out the acronyms yet, they were, Today I learned, President of the United States of America and Osama Bin Laden.

Thanks for reading.

Dave.

La Crosse in Pictures

I recently made a day trip to La Crosse, WI for a job interview and while there took some pictures in one of the city parks that's right by the river.  Here's a few of them.

By the way, these picture were taken using my iPhone with the Owle Bubo adapter.

Doctor Who Quotes

I only recently started watching the Doctor Who series.  My journey began with Christopher Eccleston's reign as the time lord in 2005 and has continued to the most recent portrayal of the doctor by Matt Smith.

You see, being unemployed and having Netflix streaming has afforded me the opportunity to catch up rather quickly.

At any rate, the show is very good at providing memorable quotes so here are a few of my favorites.

Series one episode "Dalek."


(The Doctor finds a Cyberman head)


The Doctor: "Oh, look at you!"
Rose: "What is it?"
The Doctor: "An old friend of mine. Well, enemy. The stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit. I'm getting 
old."


Series six episode "The Impossible Astronaut."
(River, Amy and Rory talking about the Doctor's death under the Tardis's control room while the Doctor is there alone.)


Doctor: "I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no one to stand around looking impressed, what's the point in having you all??"


2009 holiday special "Waters of Mars."

(Holding a gun pointing at The Doctor)

"State your name, rank and intention."
"The Doctor: The Doctor. Doctor. Fun."
Tarak: "What the hell? It's a man. A man on mars. How?"
Steff: "He was wearing this thing. I have never seen anything like this."
Tarak: "What did mission control say?"
Steffi: "We're out of range for 10 hours, with the solar flares."
Brooke: "You could cut the chat everyone."
The Doctor: "Actually chat is second on my list. The first being gun pointed at my head. Which puts my head second and the chat third. Gun-Head-Chat, yeh, I hate lists. But you could hurt someone with this thing, just put it down."

Series three episode "Blink."


The Doctor: "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."


Series one episode "End Of The World."


Doctor: "Tell you what. With a bit of jiggery pokery..."
Rose: "Is that a technical term, "jiggery pokery"?"
Doctor: "Yeah, I got a first in jiggery pokery, what about you?"
Rose: "Nah, I failed hullabaloo."

Here I Am!

Hi there.  My name's Dave and I put stuff on the Internet.  There are four or more sites that I currently run, a fiction blog, one about technology and another for my podcast network, but nothing like this.  I'm going to try to keep this blog a little more personal than the rest.  Maybe give you updates about my job or personal life, like you care about those things.  How bout some pictures or videos?

Who knows.  Just stop back again sometime and see what's developing.

Dave.