More updates.

It looks like the labels are not quite as stable as I would like, so for the time being don't trust them.

Update

All but one post from 2005 is back up, and I have at least one post up in each month of 2006. The missing one from 2005 is the one that I used to keep track of all the Comic Strip Presents episodes. In Blogger Beta all of the individual posts have different URLs, so all of the links have to be recoded. Because we now have labels anyway, I'm in no hurry to get that one up and running.

I'm also noodling around with the formatting - One of the things that I hated about this template was that boldface didn't show up very well. I think I've taken care of that.

I've put up a link to the homepage because the new drop menus have made the "current posts" button disappear.

I think I have the labels sorted - expect a few more later.

Amazon has been bitching at me because all of my links are gone. That will be fixed soon. Go here and get them off my back. (UK visitors can go here)

I have no idea why my profile says that I live in Afghanistan. I don't live in Afghanistan. But I'll leave it that way for a while because it amuses me.

meanwhile:

I am still in the job that I am getting laid off from. I am interviewing elsewhere, have some good leads, and expect to have some news in the next few weeks.

The room in my attic is almost completely empty and will soon be worked on. Then comes the unpacking and general woo-ha.

Keep an eye out. I've got some plans -- cool things will be happening here. But first there's a lot of clean up left to do.

What I learned this weekend

The thing I knew about celluloid film:

When 50 year old celluloid film stock begins to deteriorate, it gives off a peculiar odor.

The thing that I did not know about celluloid film:

Something about the peculiar odor given off when 50 year old celluloid film stock begins to deteriorate makes my cat want to piss on it.

The thing I can now conclude about celluloid film:

When you reach the point where you have to wipe cat piss off of your deteriorating film stock, your best course of action is to just give up and throw it all out.

One down already

It turns out that backdating posts is just delicate - There used to be a pulldown, and now you get to type the date and time in manually. Misformat just a little and it reverts to current time.

I'll bet he brought some liquids with him

Peter Sellers for TWA. Keep an eye out for Teri Garr as well.

Upgrade city.

There are two problems with the new beta that are throwing wrenches at me.

1. I'm having difficulty backdating posts. This is a probably a temporary glitch, because there is a field that you can use to enter postdates. ("Classic" Blogger defaulted to a time stamp of the moment that you hit the "create" button to open a new post. Now it re-writes the datestamp as the moment you hit the "Publish" button.) The change makes sense, but it means that I have to pay attention to the order that I actually publish posts in if I want them to appear in a certain order. I also can't do the "fake realtime" (as with my vacation from last year) or put up a post dated a few days in the future so that it always stays on top. Of course for all I know, there's a place deep in the bowels of the settings that can change this.
   
2. To take advantage of the new functionality (Like the labels and the pulldowns and so forth) I can't get into the html to tinker with the coding. Blogger help says that this is a temporary situation, but after all the joy I've been having to get this far, I'll probably hold off tinkering for a while. Not too much of an issue, as the templates are more malleable in the new environment anyway.
   

On the plus side, the new system is a lot faster and (frequently needlessly) slicker. The new features are helpful (even the ones that I won't use) and the upgraded spellchecker is a hoot.

We are Beta!

Try number five was a success. Now comes the clean up. Things are going to look sort of odd for a while.

The whole migration thing. It's getting old.

So after try number three I was locked out again.

So here's the plan.

I've set up two backups.

The first is on Blogger and is at this address. I have put a couple of posts up just to test transferring them.

The other is here. This is a Wordpress blog. The reason I have a Wordpress blog is that one of the functions is the ability to import other blogs on to their service. Which I have done with both blogs. It's sort of ugly. The pictures didn't make it in the conversion, and most of the posts came over four times.

Meantime, I've backed up everything on this account, so I am going to delete all the posts here (except this one and a copy of it on Citizen of the Universe), remove all the links, extra code and pretty much everything and try again.

Oh, and I'm at xeniusjones (at) yahoo (dot) com.

And try number two was a little better...

Thanks for your interest in the new Blogger in beta. An error has occurred that has prevented us from switching your account at this time. Our engineers have been notified of the issue, and your blogs and Blogger account should not be affected.

Please try switching again later via the promo in your dashboard, and please remember your Google Account information as you will need it to switch to the new version of Blogger. For now, you can still log in to Blogger using your original Blogger account.

Thanks for your patience,
The Blogger team

Well that was fun

The migration to Blogger Beta was unsuccessful.

The actual process seemed to go about ten minutes, but the account was then frozen for the entire weekend.

I am now restored as a non-Beta blog, and the best bit is that I have absolutely no idea what went wrong, or how to make sure that it doesn't happen again the next time I try.

So over the next few days I am going to be backing out of my new templates and making everything as unproblematic as possible.

Reconstruction time again

I am going to be migrating to the new Blogger upgrade, which was announced right after I finished putting my new layout together.

So from what I see on the message boards from folks who have gone before me, I need to brace myself for two things:

1. I will probably have to revert to a canned blogger template, at least for a little while.
2. I might get locked out of my blogs for a few days.

Wish me luck, and see you on the other side!

All the old familiar faces

I find that by far, the most depressing obituaries are the ones that make you say "Oh, yeah. That guy."

Earlier this week, Bruno Kirby and now Tony Jay.

I direct you to this post which is one of those strange, wonderful and rare things; an obituary that kicks ass.

Next Christmas is looking a little bit better

From DVD Times:

Universal Studios Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection for 21st November 2006 priced at $59.98 SRP. 7 discs hold seven of the eight films Preston Sturges made for Paramount Pictures during the early forties.

The films: The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Great Moment and Hail the Conquering Hero.

All are presented in 1.33:1 Full Frame with English Mono sound and optional English SDH and French subtitles.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 5

During the course of this project I've had a look at a number of travel companies. I've seen the ones for rich folks who want to be pampered. I've seen the ones for folks on a budget. I've seen the ones for people who want an adventure and will be happy to sleep in a ditch if that ditch is in an interesting place.

As near as I can figure with this bunch, I think we have a case where they had an internet forum early in the life of the open internet. So many people have logged in to discuss their wonderful vacation on the message board and stayed to chat with all the other interesting people who went on some other trip somewhere else that we have a nice little community of people who are happy to all hang out in the Maupintour space, wishing each other Happy Birthday, Bon Voyage, and perhaps planning to meet up, have a drink, take a trip together and, apparently in some cases, get spontaneously engaged to be married.

(The most recent engagement was a lovely couple named Mark and Erika. As Mark's account name was "Marry me Erika," this should not come as too much of a surprise, but still -- if she turned him down, I hope he would have been able to change the account name. If he couldn't, that would be awkward.)

Anywho, if you are a braver websurfer/travelnaut than I am, sign the heck up and go.

No word on the target demographic

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Eriq La Salle is reuniting with NBC for "The Four Next Door," an apocalyptic comedy project, which the former "ER" star is executive producing.

Written by Mark Legan, "The Four" chronicles the exploits of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who are forced to blend in and live among humans after arriving 10 years too early for the end of the world. The project has been given a script commitment from the network.

Muppet Munch!

One of the new features on the current season of Sesame Street is Law and Order: Special Letters Unit.

Go here for a bunch of screencaps, and gasp in amazement at how easy it is for Richard Belzer to be redone as a muppet -- even in the shots where you can only see a small bit of his face, he is completely recognizable.

Adventures in film appreciation

This guy liked Better Off Dead (US UK) so much that he tracked down the Camaro.

And one of the Pig Burger Hats!

I see a little silhouetto of a .... lego figure

From here. You'll be astonished to learn it's in Japanese.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 3

So if I am reading this right, it comes in denim colored leather. Somehow that says the 1970's to me rather than the 1980's.

Dooney & Bourke is still around, but they don't seem to have these Drawstring bags anymore. The bag that is featured on their website now is a funky little tidbit called a "Doodle." You could probably fit five Doodles into one of these Drawstring bags. That would be a fashion statement.

All put together

The layout is, for all intents and purposes, upgraded on both sides. I've set it up so that I can rotate the background on both blogs, much like I rotate the subtitle here.

Both templates were adapted from examples designed by Martijn ten Napel. The current background to both blogs is a picture that I took. I'm using it for no other reason than it has a lot of white space.

Keen eyed observers of this blog will also notice that today is one year from the earliest extant post. I suppose that's some sort of anniversary.

Wooo!

Tinkering around

I'm working on upgrading my blog layout, and am using my other blog, Citizen of the Universe as a sandbox.

In case you were wondering what I was up to.

This is the post where I'm dumping images to tinker with.

Clip of the day

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore send up Gerry Anderson.

Mark Helprin offers some advice on getting into The New Yorker

Interview here

We did hand-walking. We used to walk around the football field twice on our hands. Now that's a long distance to walk on your hands. But we were really strong. And when I went to the New Yorker, I'd show up out of the elevator on my hands. I'd show up at the reception desk and say, "I'm here" and the receptionist would say, "Uh, OK, I'll buzz you in." That was later, at first they didn't have a buzzer, a security barrier. And I would walk down the hall, go into my editor's office on my hands. So Mr. Shawn thought I was very peculiar, and that was good, he liked that. We had a nice relationship in that we never, ever talked or saw each other or anything like that because we were both too shy.

I also rappelled down the side of the office building once to get in. After they put the barrier in, my job was to sneak through in various ways. Dressed as a window-cleaner once, I got in through a window.

My favorite piece of Wikipedia vandalism

Jan 23, 2006. Article on Roald Dahl is changed so Dahl's first name is now "Ronald."

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 1

From the "History" section of the Bloomingdale's website:

In 1961, the Bloomingdale's team came up with the first designer shopping bags. Since then, many have become collector's items.

And here's a look at some of them:


The standard is the "Little Brown Bag" (also available in Medium and Large). These aren't paper shopping bags, but reasonably hearty vinyl. You can order a standard one ($18 plus S&H) from Bloomie's online store here. Want one with a spiffy limited edition print? There's a few on e-Bay. Good luck.

The Comic Strip, Part 40 - Bah.

"Jealousy" - May 27th, 1993

This is the last of the episodes to be a part of a series -- all the ones remaining are one-off specials.

The plot is that sitcom evergreen where a charactor's neuroses drive them to make ever escalating amounts of an ass of themselves. I hate that plot, it always makes me uncomfortable. I found this one to have a large vaneer of dull. It has Nigel Planer driving a bulldozer in drag, and that seems dull here. Perhaps I'm just not in the right mood.

The Comic Strip, Part 39 - And I laid traps for troubadours who got killed before they reached Bombay

"Demonella" - May 20, 1993

Before I say anything else, I have to say this: In this one Ade Edmonson gets to play Sid Vicious.

I repeat for emphasis.

In this one Ade Edmonson gets to play Sid Vicious. That's just too cool.


So anyway. This is one of those "sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for a hit song" plots that used to happen on The Monkees every six episodes or so. Robbie Coltrane is the poor schlub just lookin' for that hit. Jennifer Saunders is the Devil. I'm starting to think that they really like doing the musical numbers, because here's another one.


This episode was directed and co-written by Paul Bartel, and he has a marvelous time getting the feel of Tin-Pan Alley/Brill Building Manhattan (we can't actually tell when the episode takes place - some of the stock footage are vintage 1930's, but after his success, Peter Capaldi's office is in a modern glass skyscraper. This is not a detriment - I like the feel of the different eras existing simultaniously.)

Miriam Margolyes shows up as Capaldi's Mother. (It turns out that the Devil is after her recipe for chicken soup.) I don't know why, but she always makes my skin crawl, which helps to make the ending so brilliantly disturbing.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - Interior front cover

We start the January 13, 1986 issue with a subject that I know relatively little about. Makeup.

Near as I can tell, Estée Lauder no longer makes Night Repair. In fact, their remarkably extensive website makes no mention of it whatsoever (at least as far as I can find). This would indicate one of two things: either it was such a success that the Night Repair technology was introduced to the entire product line, or they couldn't really convince people that putting on make-up to go to sleep was a good idea.

An indication of which of these is more likely is the bed linen that our sacked-out spokesmodel is sleeping on - they look like they are made for a 10-year old boy's room. She doesn't trust the healing make-up with her good sheets, and snagged some trashable sheets from her kid brother's room.

+++++++

Update:

Forget what I said up there, it's still available - go buy some. It's "Advanced" now.

Another Update:

It isn't makeup, it's moisturizer. Told you I don't know much about it.

My hunch was right!

Dave from Cool Blue Shed writes in about my query in the previous post:

Ah, very astute of you. It's being used on an ad for Vodafone. You can see a free stream of it here: (click either the narrowband or broadband play options.)

The site that the ad is on is a clearinghouse of ads. You can download ads to your iPod, so you can interrupt watching whatever television show you paid to put on your iPod without ads and put the ads back. They also give you all sorts of info about the ad: agency, product info, song used (for this one they give the name of the song but not the recording artist - but it's obviously The Only Ones and not the Blink-182 cover version which I just now found out existed), location of the film shoot (left blank here) and production companies (Nerd alert - Post-production was done by the folks who do the special effects for the new Doctor Who.). You can log in (!) to the site to ad information and vote on your favorite ads.

This is the posted synopsis of the ad in question (remember, it's for a weekend cell-phone calling plan):

The advert starts with weird fantasy birds flying and then has two female friends skating on the ice, then a mother and a daughter are walking through a large and dense forest, then the daughter walks across a bridge and next to a waterfall where she is picked up by her flying boyfriend.

The advertising business always fascinates me.

A quick question

About a month ago I tossed up a post with a title using a lyric from a song by The Only Ones called "Another Girl, Another Planet."

In the last week, I've suddenly gotten a bunch of Google hits for the same lyrics, all from the UK.

Is someone using the song in an ad or something like that or is it just some odd coincidence?