Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I found thanks to my RSS feeds.
Books
I've been reading a comic called Octopus Pie, volume 1 by Meredith Gran. It reminds me a bit of Scott Pilgrim which I find to be a good thing. Comics are a nice change of pace from more traditional books.
I'm close to finishing a biography of Tom Petty called Petty; The Biography by Warren Zanes, I'll probably finish it in a day or two. I'm a big Tom Petty fan and have been since I first heard Breakdown on the radio in 1976. The book gives insight into how hard it is to be a touring musician as well as how rough his early life was. I have new found appreciation for his music.
Music
Since I've been reading a book about Tom Petty, it's only natural that I was motivated to listen to his music. I enjoy the fact that there's a few full length concerts of his available on Youtube.
I'm currently watching a Youtube concert by The Cars mostly to cleanse my palate from a recent TV advertisement which plays a snippet of one of their songs. Having a favorite song associated with an ad always irritates me.
Television/Movies
Since Halloween is fast approaching, I've been watching more weird movies lately. One series I had been wanting to see again was the movies where Abbott and Costello meet various movie monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman. I discovered that they were available on the free portion of a streaming service called Philo but ended up having a terrible experience there. The first movie I tried watching had 11 minutes of another movie at its beginning and as a consequence ended without us being able to see the final part of our movie. I exchanged emails with their tech support to no avail which left me frustrated. If I had had more patience, I might have been able to explain it well enough to get the problem resolve but I spend too much time at work solving that kind of problem to want to do it after hours.
Fortunately TCM has been showing several Monty Python movies this month. We re-watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Somehow, it remains as funny as it ever was. If you're a fan and you've never been to one of Alamo Drafthouse's quote-a-long events, this is a good movie to start with.
Beer
My latest shipment from the Firestone Walker Brewmasters Collective was delivered today. Tonight I'm enjoying this very tasty beer as my first beer from this shipment. It's a triple barrel-aged ESB (extra special bitter). According to Wikipedia a strong bitter is 4.8% or higher ABV. Since this beer is 3 times that strong, it definitely qualifies.
Links
I had never heard of Dixie Chopper, the manufacturer of the world's fastest lawn mowers but now I'm kind of interested. Sadly they're going out of business.
According to this article, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used a physician named Joseph Bell as his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. I've enjoyed Doyle's stories featuring Holmes and have read them all as well as watching many of the movies and TV versions featuring Holmes.
NASA has selected Astrolab to create a lunar rover powered by a supercomputer running an AI model to do autonomous exploration of the moon. I'm interested to see how this performs in the harsh lunar environment. Radiation is a tough nut to crack and cooling in space isn't easy either.
One thing which Apple does which a lot of companies don't is small Easter eggs which pay homage to their history. Here's one which highlights the wonderful UI of their old click wheel iPod devices. I even found a Tom Petty song to play on this cool little demo.
This article about listening to audiobooks at faster speeds leaves me with mixed feelings. I enjoy audiobooks quite a bit. There are some books where I'm more interested in the story than in fully enjoying the prose. For those books, I don't mind bumping the speed up to 1.2 to 1.4 times normal speed. For books whose prose I enjoy and for narrators whose work I find pleasing (such as Wil Wheaton or Ray Porter), I opt for actual speed. The idea that it's wasteful to listen at less than 2 times speed strikes me as nearly as silly as the "maxxing" trend which I see so often lately.
I'm always interested in space missions. The updated lunar lander mission plans still baffle me though. The need for about 22 tanker launches to fuel the rocket seems decidedly less elegant than the Apollo missions.
It's possible now to create an invisibility cloak. I imagine they'll eventually be able to make this portable and power efficient enough to function as camouflage for soldiers.
Scientists were able to trace the positions of the stars in Van Gogh's The Starry Night to a specific night in 1889.
The fact that the oldest recorded joke known is a fart joke makes me feel better about my occasionally immature sense of humor. My wife might suggest that it's not as occasional as I believe it is.
https://wondereo.com/oldest-joke-in-the-world/
https://wondereo.com/oldest-joke-in-the-world/
The attraction of all you can eat buffets escapes me. Large quantities of mediocre food isn't a huge attraction for me. Apparently lots of thought goes into placement for the more expensive food items.
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