Kitties a go-go

I've been pointed to a forum where there's been even more manipulation (and some amusing captioning) of those kitty pics. Enjoy.

Set the Wayback Machine for . . .

Well, I found something interesting, thanks to a Wired article. The folks at Alexa have finally opened their comprehensive web archive to the public, at this website; you can browse what the web looked like years ago, or see what your favorite pages used to look like, or whatever.

I had hoped that my Themestream articles would still be available via this service, but after searching on a few of them, I've found that they apparently only have the Themestream frontpage and not any of the actual articles.

Oh well. It's not like they'd earn me any more money at this point anyway.

"We eat ham and jam and spam a lot!"

So, I just put in the movie-disc of the new Monty Python and the Holy Grail special edition DVD, to check and see if what was said on the Digital Bits site was true--and it seems to be.

Finally this morning, a lot of people are reporting subtitle problems with Columbia TriStar's Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Special Edition DVD. It seems that on many players, the subtitles occasionally will not stay turned off. This is known to occur with many Toshiba and Sony players, along with a few other brands. We still haven't gotten our review copy of the disc, so we can't verify this, but a lot of people do seem to be having problems. There also seems to be a missing title during the film's opening credits. When the film's title appears, there should be a second, burned-in subtitle that reads: "Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Grãilen". It's not there. We've contacted Columbia to see what the story is, and we'll let you know when we hear anything.

And it seems to be true for my player, too--the Swedish subtitle wasn't there (which kind of spoils part of the joke of the opening credits by its absence) and the English subtitles would keep turning on unexpectedly.To make matters a little worse, someone on the Monty Python newsgroup indicates:

Hi. Me again. Just received this from Python producer John Goldstone. As you can see, he emphatically denies any problem with the DVD. From what I can tell, it seems to be more of a problem with a handful of DVD players, rather than the disc.

"The Swedish subtitles in the Main Title sequence are part of the original negative and so there is no way that they can not be on the DVD. I personally approved the whole DVD mastering process and would have spotted such an error which is not possible anyway."

Yeah, right.

On the bright side, I had forgotten how incredibly funny those credits were--it's been years since I watched the show, and I've only ever seen it once. I can't wait to show this thing to my Dad. And the bonus material was quite nice, too--particularly the Lego movie on the second disc.

And also on the bright side, Digital Bits did say this evening that Columbia Tristar was looking into the problem and would replace the defective discs. I hope it's a hassle-free process.

I suspect that the mysteriously self-activating subtitles may have something to do with their "follow the killer rabbit" feature--which apparently works like the white rabbit one on The Matrix. Wouldn't surprise me. I wonder how that Swedish subtitle got left off, though? Perhaps they used the wrong print? Or perhaps they had to compose a new title element for just that one frame and forgot to include the subtitle? Strange.

Of Computers and Coworkers

Today, one of my co-workers, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty (which is me) called me, twice, to ask for help. She called me a couple of times before, a couple of weeks back. The first time, it was to ask me...how to turn the computer off, so she could move it.

That's right. How to turn the computer...off. ("You click on the start button, then select 'Shut Down'--" "Oh, so you mean it's just like my laptop?")

Today, the first time, in a nicely symmetrical display, she needed to know how to turn the computer...on. (To be fair, it wasn't her fault this time--apparently in moving it, the power switch on the back had gotten jarred off, so the pushbutton on front wasn't working. She actually managed to figure it out by trial and error for herself, after we got off the phone--after she'd tried about everything else.)

And then, after that--just a couple of hours ago, in fact--she needed to know why the mouse wasn't working when she'd taken one out and plugged the other in. (Doing which is typically not a good idea, as I'm sure most folks reading this already know.) I directed her to shut down and restart--and she didn't know that she could access the Start menu by pressing the Windows key on her keyboard. That's right! One of MS's main "convenience" features--and she didn't even know about it.

I feel like I'm living in my own personal User Friendly comic strip.

I don't know what it is. I mean, I know she's not stupid. She's a professional employee working for a business firm; she does number crunching and writing that would be either difficult or tedious for me to do. I find myself facing the weird dichotomy of how someone can be so smart in one way...but know so very little in another.

And yet...my Dad is also smart. He has a Master's degree in Library Science, he repairs antique clocks for a living--and if he sometimes forgets what a "K" is, or has trouble understanding the difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-RW, well, at least he asks intelligent questions, and more often than not he can figure out how to do things on his own. He seems to have very little trouble working with the computer in ordinary situations. And he's probably at least twenty years older than this woman, too, and so should (in theory) be "further set in his ways" and "hard to teach new tricks."

I thought I had a point here, but now I can't find it. Oh well. To bed.