Silly me, thinking MS Office is completely useless (with this exception). Here are some useful tips for all of you out there.
Today’s quote: Steve Wozniak
After hearing that judge Bruno Tonioli of Dancing with the Stars said: “It was like watching a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade”.
I think it should be noted that Teletubbies aired for 5 years, had 365 episodes, and a #1 music single! I’d take that as a compliment.
You can watch Woz dancing like a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade in out previous post. Or just go vote for him.
Some dancing
Enjoy these two videos of highly skilled dancers: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in Dancing with Stars and The MKX® founder’s nieces at some Purim festival.
I watched the Watchmen
On a whim I decided to attend the Watchmen movie premiere last night. I read the re-print of the original 1986 graphic novel a few months ago and it’s great; it’s even listed as one of Time Magazine‘s best 100 novels of all time.
This is not your usual superhero movie based on a comic book character such as Superman, Spider-Man, or the X-Men. No, this is a self contained story with all original charaters. No prequels, no sequels, no series. Just Watchmen. The book’s plot is quite complicated and definitely not kid-friendly. You shouldn’t be fooled by the superhero premise nor by the hand-drawn presentation: Watchmen is for adults.
Safari 4 beta
The good people at Apple released Safari 4 beta yesterday. For those not in the know, Safari is Apple‘s web browser. According to the traffic analysis for The MKX® (more on that sometime next month), a large amount of readers are still using Internet Explorer.
At home, I’ve been using Safari for years. Before that I used Camino. At work, I had been using Firefox, but switched to Google Chrome a few months ago and liked it very much. Now I’m giving the new Safari 4 a spin both at home and at work. Call me a browser slut if you’d like, I’ve been known to use iCab and the now free Omniweb in the past, and even IE for Mac back in the Mac OS 8 days.
I like it so far. For example, on Windows I can make the fonts look like they do on the Mac: much better – but perhaps a personal preference… from someone with better taste. I also like the new tabs (heavily borrowed from Chrome) and the fact that it will sync my bookmarks with my home computers and iPhone through my MobileMe account.
You can download it and test it here.
Like the good ol’times
Diego and Joe were in town last weekend. Diego came to play at the UT MBA soccer tournament (4 games in 2 days). Joe came to exert his bad influence on me. For those not in the know, Joe and I were on the same ulpan program in Kibbutz Yehiam in 1995. Diego then joined us in early 1996 for the legendary Machon Le’Madrichei Chul in the City of Gold herself, Jerusalem. We all look exactly the same we did back then except we changed our haircuts.
100 best Iberoamerican movies of all times
Via Alejandro, I received this list of the 100 best Iberoamerican movies of all times according to a poll organized by NOTICINE.
I haven’t seen most of them. Those movies that I have seen have been usually pretty good or excellent, with a few overrated ones here and there (Y Tu Mamá También or El Crimén del Padre Amaro spring to my mind). My all-time favorite Mexican movie is in the list, of course: El Callejón de los Milagros – based on a novel by a Nobel price Egyptian writer, with a young and not yet internationally known Salma Hayek playing a prostitute, a recurrent dominoes theme, and a shocking bathroom scene. Some other films I saw a long time ago so I don’t even remember them that well.
Read more to see the full list. Use it for ideas if you’ve been wanting to see some non-Hollywoood cinema and/or are trying to brush up on your Spanish or Portuguese. I have made bold the movies I’ve seen. Feel free to post some recommendations in the comments. I expect Eva to re-publish the list shortly except with many more entries made bold and more insightful comments.
Pseudoscience
I just found out in the most obnoxious way possible(1) about Pseudoscience:
Pseudoscience is a comic published in The Tech, the official newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many posts are local to Cambridge or MIT, but others are not. All readers are welcome. First comic was published February, 2007.
Yes, this blog has been in circulation for two years and I just found out. [Update 2/18/2009: The blog is new, the material is not. I still think we are friends.] This offends me very, very deeply because I was not directly informed by the creator about it. I thought he was my friend. Now I know better.
In any case, this comic showcases what is the most useful application I’ve ever seen for Microsoft Excel. We all know Powerpoint’s main strength lies in porn distribution. Now we just need to figure out what Word is supposed to be used for.
I have added the link to the sidebar, immediately steering millions of websurfers towards Pseudoscience. I hope their servers can handle the traffic influx. It’s extremely funny stuff.
Austin UFO explained
By now the whole world has heard about the UFO sighted above the Austin skyline last Sunday during the Austin Marathon (first zombies, and now this??). The experts can’t or won’t, however, confirm what it was. The public too is torn. Read more for video footage and a scientific explanation.
Circus Oz
At the last minute, I got tickets to see Circus Oz last night at the newly reopened Bass Concert Hall. This is an Australian Circus, with all human performers. I didn’t know much about them nor did I know they were in town, but it turned out to be a great show.
For their opening act, all of the performers together took part in some impressive stuff along this large metal pole going up to the ceiling. Going up and down in every imaginable way.. it was incredible. I mean, I’ve seen some pretty amazing feats centered around vertical metallic poles at several… uhm… venues, but this was above and beyond any of that. In fact they were so good that I’m pretty sure that even I wouldn’t be able to do it. At least on the first try. No, really, it was really cool.
Compared to Cirque Du Soleil, which is the benchmark for fancy-schmantzy circuses in which there’s no risk of being peed on by a lion, Oz is a lot smaller in scale and the acts are less impressive. On the other hand, they aren’t nearly as pretentious, the music is better, they’re cooler (but not as cool as De La Guarda) and they try harder at humor. The humor part puzzled me though, because it was very simple, as if aimed at making little boys laugh (it worked)… yet it included some pretty off-color movements and poses (no, not during the metal pole act)… so there. Puzzling.
Highly recommended.