More "Fun" with Fortune Cookies
Earlier this year I wrote a little piece about fortune cookies. Go ahead and read that. I’ll wait.
Back so soon? Okay, well, my daughter and I had lunch today at Chow’s Asian Bistro at the Cottonwood Mall here in Albuquerque. I know, I shouldn’t be surprised at anything that comes out of a mall restaurant, but cut me some slack. It’s not like they make the fortune cookies on the premises. No, these cookies, once again, are products of the Kari-Out Company, located in the Asian metropolis of White Plains, New York. Let’s begin with the one I opened for my two-year-old daughter. Two. Two years old.
Any rough times are behind you.
I’m looking forward to a very, very easy time as a parent. I’m not worried about her teen years at all, now. Given her little temper tantrum when we had to leave the mall and go home though, I’d say this one’s a bust. Hey, at least it was an actual fortune—unlike the one I opened for myself.
Customer service is like taking a bath; you have to keep doing it.
Apparently, the Kari-Out Company has an aspiring stand-up comedian working for them. I fully expect they’ve got such winners as "how about that airplane food" and "a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar" in a cookie somewhere, just waiting for some poor sap to open them.
Yes, they were invented in California in the early years of the 1900’s. No, they’re not actually Chinese. I get that. It just seems to me that if the Kari-Out Company is going to continue making the things, they might actually get their hands on some Chinese fortunes or prophesies and work from those. Couldn’t be any worse than what they’re doing now.
Help! Working with Home Movies
I’ve just spent half the day trying to find a solution to my problem, and wow, has it been confusing. What I want to do should be fairly simple - I think. Here’s the situation:
We have a video camera that we use to record home movies. It records directly to mini DVDs, in standard DVD format. I’m on a Mac, and I want to take each chapter off of each DVD that I’ve got, rearrange them, and burn them to full-size DVDs. Now, I know I can use iDVD to make great menus and such, and that’s cool, but I’m running into trouble getting my clips from the DVDs into some usable format.
One thing I’ve tried is to rip the whole DVD as an mp4 using Handbrake and importing to iMovie to set the chapters (since the chapters are lost as the contents are saved to a single mp4 file). From there, I expect to push the project into iDVD. The problem is that iMovie takes hours to import a simple 35 minute video clip and that’s unacceptable. I tried converting the file to DV format, and iMovie imported that in about half an hour, but it played at super-speed… unusable.
Incidentally, Mac the Ripper crashes on my machine when I try to load my content. It will load and rip a store-bought DVD just fine, but my home movie DVDs crash it.
Does anyone have any easy ways to accomplish what I’m trying to do? I just need to bring in several clips - chapters - from my many mini DVDs, rearrange them, and burn them to standard sized DVDs. Help!
The Cult of Apple!
So, I’m reading Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), and I had to mention this. In chapter 4, Colbert talks about various religions of the world. He sets up each section much like I set up most of my opinions here, with a graphic in the upper-left corner with text flowing around it. For each religion, he inserts a relevant graphic, usually the symbol of the religion. At the end, he talks about various "crazy" cults and the graphic he uses is the Apple Computer logo.
Priceless.
I haven’t finished the book yet, so this isn’t a formal review or anything, but I’m really enjoying it so far. Definitely worth checking out!
I love my MacBook Pro.
Art That Doesn’t Suck - October 12, 2007
This week’s featured art is One Second … by Anne Vis
I really envy anyone that can put together a really compelling fractal. I’ve tried without any success whatsoever.
There’s a cosmic quality to this piece that really works. It’s almost mesmerizing. The color is fantastic and the attention to detail is clear. Fractals are much more than simply letting the computer generate some seemingly random shapes.
The frame and mat are great, they really match the artwork perfectly. Like any art at Imagekind though, they can be customized by the buyer. Click on through for more information and to see a larger view.
Prices for One Second … begin at $58.49, subject to change.
New art featured weekly, courtesy of the artists at Imagekind.
Announcing Success with Imagekind.com!
It’s been hinted at, it’s been speculated upon—heck, there’s been a page here about it for a month now (I just never really promoted it and judging by my stats, that strategy worked!). But now…
It’s official!
Success with Imagekind.com is on the way!
The follow-up to the popular Success With CafePress.com focuses on Imagekind.com, the premiere site for custom framed artwork. The company is growing by leaps and bounds; partnerships with Snapfish and Flickr, among other things, are setting the stage for a major explosion in growth, and Success with Imagekind.com is going to be the approved and authorized guide to making the most of this phenomenal service.
The expected release date is not set, but the goal is the first quarter of 2008. Updates will be posted here at Daniel M. Clark .com.
Stay tuned - this one’s going to be big!
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