Caddickisms

The MASIE Center - Learning Lab & ThinkTank - PodCasting for Learning Call

I’m listening right now to this podcast. It’s got a slow start, but there are some good ideas in there. For example, around the 10 or 15 minute mark, they give some ideas for ways to use training podcasts. One example was a tour that a national park was giving. Tourists can download a tour that you stop and start as you drive around the park (in a prescribed direction). That’s not really a big change from yesterday’s technology: audio tours are not new, but using a podcast for the tour opens up a cheaper way to do it than the radio or cassette methods commonly used.

As I listen to this, the content is getting better, especially as the floor is opened for questions. Lots of good tactical stuff here. Give it a listen!

As an aside, I’m at the SkillSoft Perspectives conference this week, and Elliott Masie is the Keynote Speaker tomorrow. I’ve walked past him a couple of times, and made eye contact, but for some reason I haven’t talked to him yet. I didn’t really have anything to say to him beyond, “Hey, thanks for putting all this content and visibility out there for learning.” Seemed kind of lame to interrupt his pre-conference poolside relaxation for that (though now that I type it out, maybe it’s not so lame). Maybe I’ll catch him at the reception tonight. It’s interesting to me that I walked past him 5 minutes before I got the TRENDS email from him about the podcast above. He had sent it about an hour before. Nothing unusual about that, but I thought it was interesting.

Technorati Tags: elliott masie, podcasting, learning, education, corporate training

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Argh. I mentioned before that my site theme settings suddenly changed. Today I tried to fix it by upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the problem, but figured it might help if there was hacking involved. It didn’t. In fact, you may notice that my Blogroll is now broken. On the admin side, I’m also seeing weird things with my “Categories” (Blogroll categories and Posting categories are mixing up).

On the plus side, there seem to be a few cool features in this new version that I’ll have to check out later.

For now, I’m too tired to keep investigating either the good or the bad. All I can do now is repeat myself….. Argh.

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We’ve got a firm street date for the new Babylon 5 movie! In fact, you can start ordering now!!

As a reminder, here’s the early description from JMS, as I reported earlier:

This first DVD, entitled “Voices in the Dark,” covers the same 72 hour period of time as Sheridan travels on board a Presidential Cruiser en route to Babylon 5 from Minbar for a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Interstellar Alliance. One part of the story follows Sheridan as he picks up an unexpected visitor on the edge of Centauri space, Prince Regent Dius Vintari, and a warning about what will come afterward delivered by the techno-mage, Galen. The other part of the story is set aboard Babylon 5, as Colonel Lochley summons a priest from Earth space to deal with a problem that may have dark supernatural overtones. The two parts of the greater story intersect at certain key plot and thematic points, so that they overlap and complement each other while telling separate, but simultaneous, stories.

I can’t wait.

Technorati Tags: Babylon 5, Bruce Boxleitner, Peter Woodward, Tracy Scoggins, JMS, technomages

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Alright, I’m confused. How could my theme CSS have been reverted back to default? Does that mean someone hacked my site? If so, I guess I’m fortunate that only my theme was reset. Or maybe something weird happened in the DB? I don’t get it.

I’m kinda disappointed. My theme customizations were no work of art, but they were mine, and it took me hours to come up with that look. Now I gotta go through all that trial and error again, because I didn’t separately record the settings. Stupid me.

Argh.

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TheGoldenParachute.com: Think Dual Incomes is a Great Thing? Not Always

We’ve had discussions periodically in my house about my wife going back to work part-time. There are a variety of reasons why I’d prefer she didn’t, and none of them are financial. Financially, I’d always assumed that having some other income would help a bit, but wasn’t sure it would outweigh the other factors (the “soft” factors, as the linked post refers to them). That post puts some structure around that decision, though, that I thought was interesting. Depending on the numbers in question, the additional salary won’t add up to nearly as much as it sounds like it should on the surface.

To run your own numbers, the post points to SmartMoney’s Should You Go Back To Work calculator. Plug in some figures, then look at the “Cash Flow from New Job” result. Is the extra stress on the family worth that figure?

Technorati Tags: personal finance, returning to work, dual incomes, marriage

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I had over 150 posts from LifeHacker in my Google Reader that I finally parsed through over the last 3 hours. There were a few that I may post about in more detail later, but there were some that popped out as quick and/or cool. Not all the links below actually go to LifeHacker, because the posts didn’t have any significant additional information about the topic at hand. In those cases I’m just posting directly to the sites they were referencing (but thanks, LifeHackers, for the leads!).

Discover a Hobby
I just checked this one out on a lark, but I was surprised at how much there is on that site. The link above goes directly to the “Learn How to Compose Music” page, but you can find tons of stuff there on almost any hobby you can think of.

Get rid of that “George Costanza” wallet
Oh, the irony of me posting this… But there is a good idea in Point #8 for consolidating rewards cards.

The Perfect Nap
Now this is a post I can fully endorse.

Watch TV online for free
This service finds uploads of TV shows and makes them really easy to get to. Well organized, too. (Disclaimer: I have not investigated the legality of any of these offerings. I just know they don’t have anything for Dr. Katz.)

And I saved the best two for last….

Things your home computer can do while you’re at work
Legally download MP3s of current, popular artists, for example. I’ll be trying this one out.

Free Stuff!!!!
This list of 23 things you can get for free is pretty good. Books, MIT courses, cultural stuff… but my favorite is on page 4 of the article: Free Ice Cream (on April 17th - though I’d have to drive 60 miles to partake… DRAT!).

Technorati Tags: lifehacker, free stuff, mp3, hobby, free education, productivity, ice cream

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Michael Rosenbaum Talks Smallville — A JewReview.net Exclusive - Slice of Scifi

Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luthor on Smallville, gave an interview that reveals that next year’s seventh season will be his final season, and probably the final season for the show. He also gives a vague tease for the rest of this season, and the seventh:

This year is a big year, but next year is going to be the biggest year of all; it’s the final year and everyone’s going to see what Lex Luther is really capable of. All hell’s going to break loose!

Click the link above for more of the interview.

I think the timing is right for the show to end. They’ve been building the Clark/Lex story to a crescendo lately, and it’s time to finally let it loose. Plus, Clark is getting to the point where it seems like he’s on his final excuses to not take up his destiny and finally become the “Man of Steel” we all know and love. I’m sure they could keep coming up with excuses to keep him rooted in Smallville, and denying his calling, but I think anything else they come up with after he cleans up the “Zoners” and deals with the Lex/Lana thing would just seem lame and tacked on. (Of course, there are people who would say they’ve already passed that point.) I think the current storyline they’ve got going is a strong one, though, and when they finish playing it out I think I’ll be happy with the result.

Technorati Tags: Michael Rosenbaum, Smallville, Superman, Lex Luthor

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Dustin Hoffman plays a down-on-his-luck anti-hero who reluctantly saves 54 people from a plane crash, including a news reporter (Geena Davis) whose purse he steals in the process of saving her, before disappearing into the night.

John Bubber (Andy Garcia) is the homeless guy who gives Bernie LaPlant (Hoffman) a ride back into the city and becomes the only person to learn the true story of the crash and Bernie’s role. When a million dollars is offered for an interview with the mysterious “Angel of Flight 104″, Bubber steps forward and takes Bernie’s place in the spotlight (and the money). The media turns him into a national celebrity and heroic inspiration to all, while Bernie is forced, through various circumstances, to watch the growth of the pretender’s legacy.

Hero is one of the best movies that no-one seems to have heard of. It’s a well mixed dramatic comedy, with superb acting and a great script. It’s a simple story, really, about flawed humans: characters who can be heroic in one instance and deceptive the next. Plus it’s simply entertaining.

If it didn’t have such a prevalence of unsavory language from the main character, I’d recommend it unreservedly as an uplifting tale about the heroes in all of us.

I also love the poster - it does such a great job of conveying the media view displayed in the movie, and introducing the triumvirate of main characters. And the tag line sums up the movie perfectly:

We’re all heroes if you catch us at the right moment.

To those who can deal with the language, I highly recommend it.

Four and a half stars.

Technorati Tags: Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, Andy Garcia, Chevy Chase, Heroism, anti-hero, movie, review, plane crash

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Some of you know about the other site I had up, caddickscabin.com, that housed all my family pictures and some other stuff that less than nobody ever looked at. Well, the domain came up for renewal, and I just couldn’t justify keeping it, so it’s gone.

Instead, I moved the content over to cabin.caddicks.com, at least temporarily, until I can sort through it and figure out what’s worth keeping. Don’t get too excited… if you go there now all you’ll see is the former home page and one active link. The other two links are dead, including the link to the gallery.

The gallery is the first thing I’m planning on evaluating, and I think instead of migrating it en masse, I’m going to pick and choose from the hundreds of pictures and try them in some new gallery software: Coppermine.

So if virtually nothing is working, why bother posting about it? On the off-chance that someone looking for the gallery knows about this blog, at least they will know the pictures aren’t gone.

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Vampires and Lycans (werewolves) have been at war with each other for centuries. That war came to a head in Underworld. Both sides ended the movie under a world of hurt, with Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and the human/lycan/vampire hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman) uncovering a lot of duplicity and backstabbing, and pretty much cleaning house. Viktor, the leader of the vampires, was dead (permanently) as was Lucian, the leader of the Lycans, and very few of either of the bloodlines seemed to survive them.

Underworld: Evolution picks up right where the first movie ends. The heroes, Selene and Michael, go to a safehouse to load up on ammo so Selene can go back to the mansion and try to awaken and deal with the true original vampire, Marcus. Before she can do that, though, the few remaining vampires from the first movie get to the mansion and get slaughtered by Marcus, who learns what happened in the first movie by sucking their blood (and giving the audience a nice review in the process). That scene also set the tone for the violence and gore factor in the movie: high.

Marcus has a brother, William, who is the original Lycan. Their father, Alexander Corvinus (the excellent Sir Derek Jacobi), is the first immortal. William, driven to mayhem by uncontrollable rage, was imprisoned centuries ago. Marcus has a soft spot for him, though, and wants to free him so they can rule the world as brothers — but he needs the key, which Michael unwittingly has, and the location of the prison, which Selene unwittingly knows.

While the first movie is mostly about the undoing of the vampire aristocracy and Selene’s role in it, the second movie is much more about Selene learning the full truth about the past - her personal past and the origins of the two bloodlines - and how both she and the story evolve as a result of that knowledge.

The story is good, if slightly confusing at times. The Lycans seemed virtually incidental in this one. There was a lot more hand-to-hand combat, and a lot more gore this time around (though one should really expect that with a vampire/werewolf movie, it was a bit much for my taste). Despite the stepped up action and first-rate effects, though, I don’t think this movie was as exciting as the original. I enjoyed the first movie more than I expected. I enjoyed Evolution in that I got to learn more of the story, but I wasn’t nearly as engaged.

I will say that I think I would have liked it better if I had watched it immediately after seeing the original. But I didn’t.

Three stars.

Technorati Tags: Derek Jacobi, Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, vampires, werewolves, immortals, fantasy

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