I’ve been offline for a little over a week, after a botched Century Link DSL upgrade at home. I’ve moved to a GoDaddy web hosting plan, and have gotten all of my websites back up and running last night. I still have some fine-tuning to do, but the basic content is back up now.
As reported in “Deadline” and other sources, actress Madisen Beaty, who played Joaquin Phoenix’s first love in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated “The Master” last year, is the first cast member to sign on to indie drama “The Measure of a Man”, according to Deadline. Terry Loane will direct the adaptation based on the novel “One Fat Summer” by Robert Lipsyte. “Measure of a Man” follows Bobby Marks, a chubby and often bullied teenager, who finds spending the summer at a family lake house sheer torture, until he transforms himself into a confident young man. Beaty will take the role of Michelle, Bobby’s sister who’s used to the spotlight and getting her own way. David Scearce adapted the coming of age novel for the big screen. The eighteen year old actress may be best known for playing Doris Solstad in PT Anderson’s “The Master” opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams, but Beaty made her feature film debut under the direction of a different auteur in David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” She recently wrapped up indie “Jamie Marks is Dead” with “Shameless” star Cameron Monaghan and has a recurring role on new ABC Family drama “The Fosters.”
Madisen Beaty Joining the cast of “Measure of a Man” Read More »
Watching our friend Madisen Beaty guest starring on “The Fosters” on ABC Family tonight. Madisen will be in (at least) the first seven episodes as “Talya.” Below is the text from “About the Show” from the ABC Family website: The Fosters is a compelling, one-hour drama about a multi-ethnic family mix of foster and biological kids being raised by two moms. Stef Foster (Teri Polo), a dedicated police officer, and her partner Lena Adams (Sherri Saum), a school Vice Principal, have built a close-knit, loving family with Stef’s biological son from a previous marriage, Brandon (David Lambert), and their adopted twins, Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) and Jesus (Jake T. Austin). Their lives are disrupted in unexpected ways when Lena meets Callie (Maia Mitchell), a hardened teen with an abusive past who has spent her life in and out of foster homes. Lena and Stef warily welcome Callie into their home thinking it’s just for a few weeks, until a more permanent placement can be found. Callie is quick to observe that the Fosters are an atypical family, and her blunt commentary hits a nerve with Jesus and Mariana who are struggling with their own identities. The twins have the opportunity to meet their birth mother, but they aren’t sure if they are emotionally ready, or if they want to share the experience with their adoptive moms. Callie also discovers that Mariana is harboring a secret that could land her in serious trouble. Brandon, a talented musician with a kind soul, lends
Madisen Beaty on ABC Family show “The Fosters” Read More »
After many months in the dark, I have recovered the last of the pieces from my old Mac Mini G4, so that all of my services — DNS, Open Directory, Email (Postfix, Cyrus, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, MailMan), MySQL, and Drupal with updated PHP, since Apple’s default PHP install doesn’t include any of the necessary modules. First my external drive for TimeMachine backups died… I replaced it with a new drive, but it had to complete a new, full backup. During the full backup, the external drive that the server was running from died from old age… After several partially successful attempts to recover the data using DiskWarrior, I tried to reconstruct the old Mini, but wasn’t able to get it to boot up… I thought that I had recovered enough of the data that I could use it to migrate to the new server, but the server migration wizard would die partway through. After manually rebuilding Mail under 10.7 with Server 1.0, I found that when I updated to 10.8 and Server 2.0 that the migration wizard couldn’t even move my data and configuration from 10.7… So I had to manually rebuild DNS and Mail once again… I have since migrated from an old 32-bit G4 Mini, to a newer 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo, with 8Gb of RAM. I’ve gone from OS X Server 10.5.8 to 10.7 and on to 10.8.2 Mountain Lion, with Server 2.2.1. I’ve had to manually install MailMan, since that is no longer included with Server.
We’re spending the weekend at our trailer in Buena Vista. It was too windy yesterday to ride our bikes that we brought up, so we decided to drive down Highway 50 over Monarch Pass down to Gunnison. This weekend has been my first chance to drive my new VW Jetta SportWagen TDI in the mountains, so I was interested to see how it handled the higher altitude and steeper grades. The 2.0L TDI makes plenty of power to ascend even a 7% grade at 11,000 feet. What I was even more impressed with, though, was how well the DSG transmission worked on the descent. I’d already noticed that when braking, the DSG will downshift to help slow down using engine braking. What I had not thought about was how nicely that would work when descending a 7% grade. When coming down from the pass, holding the brake for a moment would cause the DSG to downshift one or two gears. It would hold that gear until I touched the throttle again. It worked perfectly to control the speed coming down a steep grade. I know that I can use the Tiptronic mode to do this manually, and that it will even automatically match the engine speed, but I was impressed that in automatic mode it did this so well on its own. My previous vehicle, a GMC Sierra K-2500 truck with the Duramax Diesel and Allison transmission would do downhill engine braking, but I think only when it was in Tow/Haul mode. It also worked quite well to control the speed, especially
Driving in the Mountains Read More »
Last week I bought my new 2011 Jetta SportWagen TDI, the day before we took a 3,200 mile trip from Denver through Missouri to North Dakota, and back again. The TDI was the perfect car for the road trip, roomy and comfortable, and up to 43MPG on the highway. Based on fill-ups, my best mileage was 39.67MPG, with 486 miles on one fill-up and still a 1/4 tank left. My overall mileage has been about 37MPG, combined city/highway for the first 3,500 miles. There are quite a few things that I really like about the new Jetta: The fuel economy is fantastic. Even in the first 3,500 miles, I’m getting at least 30 MPG driving to and from work, and over 43 MPG on the highway, if I keep the speed down a little… The TDI makes plenty of power, especially for an engine that gets such great fuel economy. Although its only 140 HP, the diesel makes 236 ft-lbs. of torque, which is really more important. Plenty of power to accelerate onto the highway, or for passing. I’m anxious to get up into the mountains to see how it does at higher altitude. Even though the fuel tank holds only 14.5 gallons, with the great fuel economy that’s enough fuel for a range of about 500 miles on the highway, so you don’t have to stop to fill up so often. After much internal debate, I finally decided on the DSG automatic rather than the manual transmission. While my previous Jetta has a manual
VW Jetta SportWagen TDI Read More »
Like most of us, I’ve come to rely on Apple’s Software Update to tell me when new updates are available. It seems that most third-party software has its own built-in mechanism for checking for updates as well, so I hardly ever go to http://www.VersionTracker.com or http://www.MacUpdate.com to look for new releases any more. I’ve discovered in the past few weeks, though, that I’ve missed some updates, because the built-in updaters haven’t alerted me that new software was available. One of these packages is the Adobe Acrobat Reader, now just called “Reader.” I know that it has its own updater, but version 9 never told me that version 10 was available! I had updated Reader up to 9.41, but it doesn’t offer to upgrade to Reader 10, which came out back in October! I had seen an article on the web that mentioned that Reader X wasn’t susceptible to the latest malware attack. I didn’t remember getting Reader X, so I opened Reader, and checked the version number in the About box — 9.41. I manually ran “Check for Updates” and the Updater ran, and told me that I had the latest version. I went to Adobe’s website (http://get.adobe.com/reader/), though, and found that 10.0 was available. I had to manually download and install version 10 last week, but its told me today that version 10.0.1 is available (and its updating right now!). Another one of the other updates that I hadn’t gotten was for the “Flip for Mac WMV” plug-in that allows playing Windows-format video
So today’s big news from Verizon is the long anticipated announcement that they will begin carrying Apple’s iPhone. My reaction: Disappointed… As I’ve mentioned on my Android page, I gave up waiting for a Verizon-badged iPhone about a year ago, and picked up a Motorola Droid. Jeannette has also gone with an Android phone, the Samsung Continuum, but with a backup plan — we have another upgrade coming up in February. She’s been happy enough with the Continuum that she’s not sure that she still wants to switch to an iPhone, even though she uses a MacBook, an iPad, and an iPod or two… So why am I disappointed? When I saw that Verizon was starting to carry the iPad, I was certain that the iPhone was on their horizon. Since the rumors of a January announcement coincided with Verizon’s roll-out of there shiny new LTE 4G network, I assumed that the timing was intentional, so that Apple could be one of, if not the first, 4G LTE smart phone for Verizon. Since one of the common complaints from AT&T iPhone users is slow data network speed, I assumed that Apple was interested in expanding to Verizon’s market not only because of their large customer base, but also because of their network infrastructure, and their 4G network speed. However, in the details of today’s announcement were a number of disappointments. First, the Verizon iPhone would only be compatible with CDMA technology for Verizon’s current 3G network. In fact, Verizon has said that their 4G network is currently only for data, not
Since my son Eric has gone to college, and taken his Sony PS3 with him, I didn’t have any way to watch Blu-Ray movies any more. While Christmas shopping, I realized that Walmart had quite a few Blu-Ray movies priced as low as $8 each, nearly the same price for the same movie on DVD. I decided that it was time to buy a Blu-Ray player. After reading a few reviews, and shopping around a bit, I found a decent deal on a Sony BDP-S370 on sale at Sears. When I hooked it up, I realized that I was going to need another HDMI cable to get the full resolution. I had my previous DVD player hooked up using a Component Video cable, but that seems to only support up to 1080i, not 1080p that I can get using HDMI. I checked the prices on the HDMI cables at Walmart when I picked up a few Blu-Ray movies, and found their best deal was a 6-foot HDMI cable from Vizio for $28. Instead, I’ve ordered online from Monoprice. They have 6-foot HDMI cables for about $3 each. So I ordered 4 of them, in different colors, so that I can tell them apart when I hook things up. I also found they had a Component Video cable for Melissa’s WII for about $3.30, and one with Composite and S-Video for $2.72. Even with the $7.75 or so for shipping, the total for the order came to only $26. So I saved a couple of bucks over Walmart’s cheapest price, but I’m getting 6 cables
What Cables Should Cost Read More »
Last February, I gave up on the possibilities of either Verizon getting the iPhone, or any chance of our family ever being able to coordinate a switch to AT&T, so I bought Motorola Droids for Eric and I when Verizon had a “buy one, get one free” deal. I quickly decided that despite being an Apple fan, that I really like my Droid… Three things that I liked right away — the charging and data connection is done using a standard micro-B USB cable, which I was able to get extras from Monoprice.com for about a buck a piece, including a 6 foot cable that is actually long enough to reach when using the AC adapter. I also like that it has a standard SD memory card, so if I want to load more apps, music or video later, I can replace the 16Gb memory card with a 32Gb when the prices come down. Third, I like that the battery is removable and replaceable. Eric and I have swapped batteries several times when his was low, but he needed to go somewhere, and couldn’t charge it. The next two accessories that I picked up after some extra USB cables, were a Griffin PowerJolt dual USB 12v charger for the car, and the Motorola “Car Dock,” which is the suction cup windshield mount. The phone clips into the car dock easily, making perfect for navigating with Google Maps. I also found that the speaker phone mode works well enough that I
Updated Android Car Home Read More »
