Speaking of McCluhan

I've been wondering about how McCluhan would have categorized the blogosphere. Hot or Cold?

Wikipedia, help me out here:

Hot media usually, but not always, provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus. For example, print occupies visual space, uses visual senses, but can immerse its reader. Hot media favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photography.
Cool media, on the other hand, are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Therefore, according to McLuhan cool media include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons. McLuhan describes the term "cool media" as emerging from jazz and popular music and, in this context, is used to mean "detached." (See: CBC Radio Archives)
This concept appears to force media into binary categories. However, McLuhan's hot and cool exist on a continuum: they are more correctly measured on a scale than as dichotomous terms.

Blogging can be both Hot (reading passively) and Cold (interacting by responding), depending on your individual choice. And if you are choosing to be a passive reader of an interactive medium, does that make it a Hot medium?

Also taking up my time

I recently discovered that the games put out by Everett Kaser have finally been adapted to run on Macs.

I spent four days solving this:

Oh, and did I tell you that I'm red/green/brown color blind? That made the puzzle extra fun!

One of the things I've been up to

I've finally taken the plunge and purchased Delicious to help me organize all of my media.

It's been quite a fine time, going shelf to shelf and waving everything in front of my iCam and watching the item magically appear on my virtual shelf. It's also good for my upper arms, especially with the art books and DVD boxed sets.

The only drawback is the UPC codes for some of my things are covered up by store labels, so I have to peel the labels off so the computer can look them up.

This means that I have to decide the fate of my favorite Borders price sticker (On Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller):

Emil Sitka has a posse

Another in my long list of websites I've found my way to while completely forgetting about what led me there:

The Emil Sitka Fan Club

Wikipedia, can you tell us who Emil Sitka was?

Emil Sitka (December 22, 1914 – January 16, 1998) was a veteran American actor who appeared in hundreds of movies, short films, and television shows, is best known for his numerous appearances with the Three Stooges. . . He is remembered mostly for a line of dialogue he keeps repeating in the Three Stooges short, Brideless Groom, where he appears as the justice of the peace attempting to marry Shemp and Dee Green: "Hold hands, you lovebirds!"

If you want to see Brideless Groom, here it is at Google Video.

Towards the end of his life, "He was in demand at various Three Stooges conventions, and had numerous requests from Three Stooges fans to appear at their wedding to say 'Hold hands, you lovebirds!'" I haven't been able to find out if he actually agreed to do this. "Hold hands, you lovebirds!" is engraved on his tombstone.

More from Wikipedia:

Moe Howard asked Sitka if he could create a character to become the new "middle stooge" to replace the ailing Larry [Fine]. Sitka accepted the invitation and became an official member of the Three Stooges; publicity photos of Sitka in this capacity with Howard and Curly Joe DeRita were circulated. Sitka named his character "Harry" and thought of him as being extremely conscientious to the point of ridiculousness. Two feature film offers for this reconstituted Three Stooges were considered, but this version of the group never acted together on film. The Three Stooges officially ended with the death of Moe Howard in 1975.

Sitka's only appearance as a Stooge seems to have been for the photoshoot announcing that he had joined the trio.

USB Wine!

oh dear.

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Blue's Clues and Magnum PI. The story should use puberty as a plot device!

Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator

This Moment in Pod got in the house like a pigeon from hell

My plan had been to finish up a fair amount of behind-the-scenes blogging stuff before I left, and then when I came back I would be able to hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, I didn't finish up the things that I thought I would before I left, and on returning, I have been finding little time to catch up.

For the meantime, here's some songs that I just grabbed and threw into 8-tracks to see how it would work. There's no particular theme to it.