Moe Lane

He was 56 years old.

Steve Jobs made magic toys – and I say that meaning nothing but respect; there are a lot of worse life paths to take. Because of him I have enchanted items that play songs and show videos and let me communicate with others: there are other toymakers out there, but none who were quite like him. And he will be missed by people the way that Jim Henson was and is missed; Steve Jobs was a creator, and we don’t have enough of those.

My sympathies and prayers to his loved ones.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

…the staff of Hooters, here: I’m pretty much ensconced at a table, it’s clearly my first time at this chain, and yet I’m more or less ignoring my surroundings. What I’m actually doing, of course, is hiding from my kids: the babysitter has them, which means this is my first time off in a week. So… a beer, a bunch of wings, and a blessed, blessed lack of situational awareness.

Which is just as well: I’m pretty sure that I’m old enough to be some of these girls’ father.

Moe Lane

PS: These breaded fried pickle things are pretty good.

This… makes perfect sense, really.  It’s all so obvious, now.

Dude.

Moe Lane

*Have I used that one before? I may have used that one before. It’s also a blast from the past, as it originates from something I heard in my childhood:

James Taranto over at the WSJ noticed this little scheduling oopsie that probably should have gotten more airplay back in June:

June 23, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — World leaders are gathering in Chicago next year for two international summits. Both the NATO and the G8 summits will be held in May.

It will be the first time since 1977 in London that two international summits will be held at the same time in the same city. Security experts say it will be a security challenge that no American city has ever had to face. Planning is likely to focus on the possibility of violent demonstrations.

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[UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  I thoroughly encourage people to check out oktopus74's YouTube channel, given that he was the one who did the video in the first place.]

Someone pointed out that other people might like to learn how to do it, too.  Short version: watch this video, which I finally tracked down after five months of looking (go, general research skills!).

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To give you an idea of just how laughably bad this Bloomberg hit piece (short version: the Koch Brothers are icky small-government people who have this big corporation that doesn’t give money to causes that the authors like is a evil lobbying corporation and here’s a list of bad things that they’ve done, including selling stuff to IranIranIranIRANIRANIRAN) was: not only did the notoriously neoconservative* house organ The Atlantic rip its allegations to shreds – Bloomberg probably didn’t want to see sentences like “Ironically, Koch Industries’ response to the article does a better job of laying out these allegations than the article itself.” – but the Bloomberg piece can’t even count on its own affiliates to have its back. To give just one example: Bloomberg Businessweek’s editorial board felt obligated to point out that the supposedly most damning portion of the original article – a subsidiary’s involvement in selling oil drilling equipment to Iran – concedes that Koch Industries was engaged in perfectly-legal activities that the company voluntarily ended when made aware about them. They also felt obligated to note that companies like General Electric – Hi, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt! Having fun working for the Obama administration? – and Caterpillar have also engaged in similar activities. (more…)

This, admittedly, does not look like much.

But it still represents victory. It is a video taken from a NON-Apple video camera that was successfully imported into iMovies, turned into a YouTube video, uploaded from an iPad, then published to this blog from the iPad via Blogpress. I even have the keyboard/case combo to actually type like a regular person!

APPARENTLY APPLE HAS PROBLEMS WITH ME DOING THIS SORT OF THING, BECAUSE THEY THREW UP EVERY POSSIBLE ROADBLOCK THAT THEY COULD THINK OF TO KEEP ME FROM ACCOMPLISHING THIS GOAL.

Am I ranting? Yes, I’m ranting. It’s just that… after a while, it just got to be a bit much, you understand? Just a bit much. But I’m better now! REally! I’ve turned my iPad 2 into an imitation laptop! It’s all back to normal now!

Honest!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Dagnabbit, I finally find a way to actually use iMovies and YouTube decides to go do some site maintenance.

The Waiting, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

That’s how you do it.

Mind you, it took forever for the latest OOTS to come out, but given the payoff – and the last line, which frankly thrilled my soul – I suppose that we’ll just have to let Burlew get away with it.

He apparently doesn’t find it all that fun to be in the minority again:

A key Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Tuesday that he would not run for reelection next year.

Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the panel’s subcommittee on Aviation and an 11-term congressman, will not seek another term in the House of Representatives next year, his office confirmed to The Hill.

No great loss, but good news for Illinois Republicans. (more…)

But that’s a rather dry title, don’t you think?  I much prefer BOOM goes the dynamite on Operation Fast & Furious.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3.

If you read my post earlier today on the subject, you already know what happened: but in case you didn’t, the gist is that Attorney General Eric Holder claimed back in May to have only first heard of Fast & Furious at most a few weeks earlier.  Unfortunately for Holder, documents have surfaced apparently showing that Holder had been briefed on the subject back in 2010 (which Holder’s spokesmen are currently denying: their claim is the risible one that the Attorney General doesn’t read all the memos sent to him by his assistant Attorney Generals).  Holder then claimed that he misspoke, which leads to this epic sentence:

[House Oversight Chair Darrell] Issa told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn’t understand the question rather than he didn’t know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.

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…into a real computer. This keyboard/case thing works, if a bit cramped; but no more so than if it were a laptop.

Now I just have to figure out how to get around the “device draws too much power” problem that comes from plugging a Flip Camera directly into the Camera Connection kit (which is a prerequisite to seeing whether the Flip really does produce video that iMovies will deign to recognize)…