Cardinal of the Kremlin
Of course, the Kremlin has no cardinals, that's the Vatican. But it's a pretty good title for a pretty good book by Clancy. I was reminded of Le Carre a bit, although Le Carre loves the moral ambiguity of the spy world where Clancy doesn't really touch on it. But the book, despite its age, holds up pretty well. It was never made into a movie, so perhaps that's why it doesn't have the name recognition of Clear and Present Danger or Red October. (It's also not as good as October, I'd say, though I liked it better than Patriot Read more…
Roger Ebert’s new voice
He's been the go-to film critic for me for many years. His writing is just top-notch. And now that he's started twittering, I've been impressed at how good of a twitterer he is. Inventive, funny, and a good spotter of interesting links. Now that he hasn't been able to speak for the last four years, he's finally getting a chance to get his old voice back. A company in Scotland is taking footage from his show and working to put it together into a new voice. The results were debuted on Oprah this week. A pretty good result!
Census tonight!
I'll be learning all about the Census tonight. Should be interesting to hear about the redistricting and apportionment. Last time the Census came around I was tagged as a student in Minnesota. I'll be an official Tacoman this time!
Speaking of dropping services …
… I stopped using Google Latitude. I've been playing around with both FourSquare and Gowalla on my phone and I'm enjoying those a lot more than Google Latitude. It had potential, but it just didn't seem to go anywhere.
OK Go. This too shall pass.
I loved their previous video with the treadmills because I'd never seen anything like it before. This Rube Goldberg machine is pretty incredible, but it's still not as interesting as that was. But still. Very well put together. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w?wmode=transparent]
Has anyone actually found LinkedIn to be useful?
I’m in a bit of a social media purging mode right now. I’m always willing to try out a new opportunity, and I’ve been quick to try a lot of the sites–Twitter, Facebook, etc. But every so often, I decide that my life needs a little more simplification, and I decide to cut back a bit. Last year I deleted my MySpace account and have not a single regret. I’m considering deleting my LinkedIn profile. For the life of me, I cannot figure out a good reason to stay on LinkedIn. It wasn’t particularly helpful looking for a job … Read more…
Scorcese’s homage to Hitchcock
via scorsesefilmfreixenet.com I liked Shutter Island fine, although it wasn’t all that it probably could have been. Maybe it was the last 18 months of commercials (at least it felt that long). That said, Scorcese’s commercial above was a great blend of parody and homage to Hitchcock. If you’ve got some time, you might enjoy this above.
^