This car caught fire today outside our building. When they started to put out the flames, teh cloud of smoke was so dense, it looked like our building was caught in a cloud bank.
Luckily, John had his camera…
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Blog
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Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
lostinspacerobot.com => Robot B9
Now you too can own a life-size replica of the Robot from Lost In Space – that is if you want to spend nearly $25,000 for the privilege.
Personally, I think it would be cool – far cooler than that lame Robby the Robot – but $25,000 is a lot of money for something that would, for all practical purposes be something that would sit in my office and collect desk – not to mention eating up valuable floor-space.
Ah, the dreams of childhood crushed by the brutal reality of adult life!
Found via teamdroid.com
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Return of the Saint – on DVD
The Saint and Leslie Charteris Blog => Return of the Saint Extras
Fan’s of the 1970’s portrayal of Simon Templar by Ian Ogilvy rejoice! A bit, anyway.
The Return of the Saint on DVD is literally inching its way across the planet. Return of the Saint turned up months ago in Australia, complete with enough bonus DVD features to convince me it was a real release rather than some pirate set. I have resisted ordering it simply because it is such a hassle to transcode them into something watch-able on my own TV.
Now, months later, Return of the Saint has showed up on Amazon.com UK for release this month. Can a US release be far behind? (Answer: I have no clue, but I have hopes!)
“The Return Of The Saint – The Complete Series†(Network)Note: The above link is to Amazon UK and the DVD in question will, no doubt, be PAL and Region 2 – not normally playable by US DVD players.
Technorati Tags: Blog, DVD, Video
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La Grande Orange Pizzeria – Review
Well over a year ago, I became aware of La Grande Orange, an unlikely-named pizzeria in one of those neighborhoods where the people have too damn much money.
It happens to be within a short distance from my office and, you’d think, I would have managed to get down there at lunchtime to review them.
You’d think that.
Sadly, they don’t serve pizza until 4:00PM, long after I’ve gone home for the day.
It’s a curious place that combines a grocery, a coffee shop, a pizzeria, a gelato shop and apparently a bakery. (I was honestly unclear if the bakery is affiliated or not, but they seemed to have some crossover.) Although they aren’t open for serving pizza until 4, even at lunchtime, their small parking lot is always full. Not just full with ordinary cars, either. The combined value of the vehicles frequently tops a cool million dollars. It’s an upscale place with a capital “FRU†and another “FRU†for good measure. I wasn’t too surprised to learn today that they have valet parking in the back.
The review pizza was approximately 14“, the only size they have. As I was sharing it with my wife, we departed somewhat from a standard review pepperoni pizza. We choose the â€gladiator“, described as â€Schreiner’s sausage & pepperoni, premium cheese blend & house made red sauce.“
A brief aside about Schreiner’s Fine Sausage: Schreiner’s has been a small, family-owned business making handmade sausages in Phoenix since 1955. Coincidentally, they just happen to be next door to my previous place of employment, and I’ve purchased their sausages several times. Good stuff, all around.
As is custom, when I share a pizza, I don’t discuss with them until after I’ve formulated my opinion.
This pizza gave a whole new meaning to the word, â€subtle.“
My first piece was, I’d swear, flavorless, or near enough that I was immediately disappointed. La Grande Orange has had some strong reviews and several first hand recommendations to me, so I was expecting something immediately inspiring. The only thing I really tasted on the first piece was the sausage, which was a nice Italian sausage with a slightly unique flavor I couldn’t quite place.
I dissected the second piece. I tried a solitary piece of sausage, which was consistent the same as on the first piece. I tried the pepperoni, which comes in large slices. It was a good, solid pepperoni – not too bland, not too strong, but it was overshadowed by the sausage. The sauce tasted very fresh and had a strong tomato flavor. There was very little sugar used in the making of this sauce. The cheese, still very hot, had no flavor. Most disappointing was the crust. Thin and hand spun, it was the perfect thickness and texture, but without much flavor. It was also undercooked in the center.
I take a lot of the blame for the undercooked crust. To avoid what I anticipated to be an insane Friday-night rush, we arrived precisely at 4:00PM. We received the first pizza of the day and the pizzeria ovens are almost never up to temperature when they start cooking. I knew that going in and I’m not going to count that as a strike against them. Well, only a slight strike, they could turn the ovens on earlier.
Sounds like I didn’t enjoy the pizza, doesn’t it?
The funny thing is, the pizza got better the more I ate. The flavor of the sauce became more pronounced and the cheese took on more mozzarella flavor along with a slightly bitter taste that is the telltale sign of a cheese blend. The crust stayed the same though. By the end it wasn’t bad, but it still wasn’t a â€wow“ pizza.
I have two theories about why the pizza seemed to change flavor. The first is that, as the pizza, and particularly the cheese, cooled the flavors became more pronounced. I favor this theory because certain cheeses, particularly mozzarellas taste different when hot or cold. Usually mozzarella gains flavor when it is hot, but I’ve tasted other cheeses that were stronger when cold. It’s possible their cheese blend contained something that was stronger when cooled.
The second theory is that the pizza was just uneven; that the cheese blend wasn’t evenly distributed and, by coincidence, we started at the bland half.
Either way, this was a pizza that’s flavor came upon us in a subtle fashion. After we’d eaten, my wife remarked that the first slice she ate had little or no flavor but that the subsequent pieces were batter, confirming my impression.
All-in-all I’d have to give them a slightly higher than neutral rating, but I’d certainly like to go back later in the evening and try a pizza after the ovens have been cooking a few hours.
La Grande Orange
4410 N 40th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85018Cost: 14†Pizza, (Sausage & Pepperoni
* ) $14. ($0.09 per square inch)* For an apples to apple comparison, the price of a standard pepperoni pizza is also $14, so the cost per square inch remains the same.
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Sad and Depressing Cold, Part II
Things don’t look good for the trees.
I got more information today about just how cold it was. It was the coldest freeze since 1963. That takes us back a year before I was born and even just shortly after my father moved to Arizona.
He was telling me today how well he remembered the winter of ’63. It’s was 16ºF in Tucson and he wasn’t happy because he’d moved to Arizona from Florida thinking he’d never be cold again. (Apparently, the 40º temperatures in Florida were too cold for him, too.)
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IT Crowd Comes to US (in a good way and a very, very bad way)
BCI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Navarre Corporation (NASDAQ:NAVR), has licensed the long-term North American DVD publishing and distribution rights to programming from FremantleMedia’s portfolio of award-winning diverse television series and films including popular game shows The Price Is Right and Family Feud, the hit British sitcom The IT Crowd and the multi-million dollar Impossible Pictures’ series, Prehistoric Park.
The agreement offers BCI DVD publishing rights to various genres including:
Current British TV series, including programs such as:
The IT Crowd, the International Emmy-nominated comedy series from FremantleMedia’s UK production company, talkbackTHAMESI can hardly wait!
The article goes on to say something very scary, indeed! NBC is trying to make a US version of the IT Crowd. Didn’t they learn their lesson with Coupling and Fawlty Towers?
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Sad and Depressing Cold
This weekend, Phoenix experienced a very rare freeze. The worst since sometime in either the 60s or the 70s.
Temperatures plummeted into the 20s even inside the city.
The next morning, hundreds of “ficus†trees, popular throughout the city and normally green year round, were brown and dead. In one night, the trees died en masse. Even the nurseries, who prepared with heaters and fans, lost hundreds of plants and thousands of dollars of inventory. Everywhere you drive, the brown tried stand out jarringly.
That, in itself, is depressing enough. What’s worse (to me anyway) is that I have two of these trees in the front yard. Each one was planted within one week of the birth of each of my children. They were James’ and Michelle’s trees.
It’s sappy, but someday, when they were adults, I expected them to be able to come back and drive past this old house and point to those trees out to their children and say, “Your grandfather planted that tree when I was born.â€
I can replace them, but it can never be the same.
The nursery says there’s a slight chance some of them may survive. It’s just a question of waiting a few weeks to see if they can grow back any leaves after these fall off.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids, Natural Sciences
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Rocks and more Rocks…
National Geographic => Stonehenge Didn’t Stand Alone, Excavations Show
Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument.
One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle.
The new discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger complex, experts say.
Cool.
Technorati Tags: Archaeology, Blog, UK, Science
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Torchwood – End of Days – Reviews, Spoilers
End of Days
by Chris ChibnallAll that buildup, for nothing…
Synopsis
Due (presumably) to Owen’s opening of the rift last time, people from other times are being deposited all over the world. The loonies think it is the End of Times as prophesied in many of their various loony books. Jack, being from the future, knows this isn’t the end of the world. (And again we ask ourselves, “Without a Time Lord, is the past/future fixed?â€)
Visions of dead people peoples start appearing to the Torchjwood team, telling them they must fully open the Rift to fix the problem. Bilis Manger from the previous episode provides Gwen with a vision of the future – Rhys will be murdered. She locks him up in Torchwood for his protection, but Bilis (who can materialize at will anywhere in time) arrives and murders him.
Inconsolable, she joins the others in opposing Jack and demanding the Rift be opened. Jack refuses, so Owen kills him.
They open the Rift and everything returns to normal – except one thing. Bilis reveals that he used them to open the Rift and release Aberdon, the Great Devourer who was imprisoned beneath the Rift. Aberdon, turns out to be a Godzilla-sized demon-looking creature whose very shadow drops everyone dead.
Jack (who has again recovered from being dead) reasons that (A) Aberdon devours life and (B) Jack is immortal therefore if he lets Aberdon kill him, Aberdon will be destroyed. And so that comes to pass, but Jack appears to be really, really dead this time.
Gwen waits for days by his corpse to no avail. She kisses him goodbye and he revives afterall.
Jack reveals to Gwen that no visions had come to tempt him to open the Rift, and the only thing that could have tempted him would have been “…the right kind of doctor.â€
Moments later, Jack hears the familiar sound of an unseen TARDIS. With a huge smile on his face, Jack runs to the sound and leaves the Torchwood crew with a mystery: What happened to Jack?
Analysis
This episode rounds out the series with a final, last gasp of total illogic.
The devil (so to speak) in the guise of Manger, tempts each and every member of the Torchwood team into opening the rift all the way. In the last episode, he “engineered†Jack and Toshiko to be sent back in time and then made sure they only sent enough information to partially open the rift. The partially opened rifts resulted in the strange temporal crossovers that begin this episode. Couldn’t he have just arranged for them to open the rift fully at that time?
His argument is, if the rift is opened all the way, everything will return to normal, and, once his nefarious goal is achieved, everything does seem to go back – including Rhys being resurrected, even though his death really had nothing to do with the rift.
There’s a lot of tension between everyone else and Jack, who turns out to be right all along.
The notion that Aberdon would be killed by Jack being immortal is beyond stupid. Perhaps that sums up the whole episode.
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Alternative Medicine
I don’t think I’ve been ambiguous about my opinion of “alternative schools of medical thought†so my opinion on this should come as no surprise.
Now, I don’t deny that the possibility exists that some alternative treatments might prove efficacious, but all they have to do is be proved to work and they’d become mainstream medicine. (Don’t go on about the insidious pharmaceutical cartel that slaves tirelessly to prevent us access to effective but inexpensive and unpatentable treatments.)
Nonetheless, the problem with believing in these kinds of nonsense is that it causes peoples’ brains to rot. Take for example this following translation of a recent (completely serious) post on a Taiwanese website.
Lately, I don’t feel quiet right.
My period lasts unusually long.
Finally it was over; however, my left side got numb since yesterday.
I am worried that I might have a stroke.
My blood pressure and eating habits are normal, but I don’t know why I don’t feel well.
I kept wondering maybe it has something to do with the two rose bushes I planted in the front yard last September.
The rose buds were very ugly and kept eaten by bugs in the beginning.
However, the bushes have been blooming lately and the roses are very beautiful.
I think the rose bushes are interfering with my health.
Does anyone know something about it? Please help me.
If my condition gets worse, I might go to see a doctor.
I am so worried.Well, if the experts on an online parents’ forum can’t help you with some sage gardening advice about your possible stroke, as a last resort, you might try seeing a doctor.
Translated by my wife. For those who read Chinese, the original is below:
最近身體很差
一下MCç•™ä¸åœ
ç¾åœ¨å·²ç¶“解決了
çµæžœæ˜¨å¤©åˆå·¦åŠé‚Šè…³é…¸æ‰‹éº»
一直到今天左åŠé‚Šéƒ½æ€ªæ€ª
很怕自己是ä¸é¢¨çš„ç¾è±¡
但是我血壓æ£å¸¸é£²é£Ÿæ£å¸¸
也ä¸çŸ¥é“是為什麼
一直懷疑是9月10月的在家門å£ç¨®äº†å…©æ ªçŽ«ç‘°èŠ±çš„原å›
èµ·åˆçŽ«ç‘°èŠ±é•·çš„醜醜都會被蟲åƒ
但是最近花苞一直開
花朵也漂亮
所以在懷疑是ä¸æ˜¯å› 為種了玫瑰花
影響我的身體呢
有媽咪知é“å—Ž
拜託幫幫忙嚕
我想å†ç¹¼çºŒéº»ä¸‹åŽ»å¾—去檢查了
好擔心喔