If you find the story of the Titanic as interesting as I do, you will want to visit this site.

Click on picture to visit site.

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander

From IFC News website:

The Girl With the Foreign Language Franchise

How “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” became the year’s surprise arthouse hit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHTADX5nxT8

Of course now, I carry a corkscrew in my car at all times!

For 6 seasons now, I have been watching the Discovery Channel series Deadliest Catch. In case you haven’t heard about it, Deadliest Catch, puts cameramen aboard several Alaska crab fishing boats, and follows them as they fish the Bearing Sea for King and Opilio(or snow) crab. Of course the catch seasons are in the winter, on the Bearing Sea! That’s the coldest and worst weather time of the year. There is something fascinating about watching a bunch of men working at a job that most of us would never want to try. Yes, I had heard the stories about Alaska fisherman making a fortune for a few weeks of fishing. After watching this series you realize the truth, that it is hard, dangerous work, with no guarantees.

Part of the attraction of this series is that they have followed pretty much the same 4 or 5 crab boats over the seasons. As a result, you got to know the captains and crews of the boats. The camera work is breathtaking. And I’ve developed a strong respect for the (mostly) anonymous cameramen/producers who risk their lives and safety to get the shots The show has become a hit for Discovery Channel, and several of the captains and crew members have even appeared on TV talk shows. I’ve seen Captain Sig Hansen and his brother on Jay Leno.

One of the crab boats that has been a part of the show since season 1 is the Cornelia Marie, with Captain Phil Harris. Among the deckhands on the Cornelia Marie are Captain Phil’s 2 sons Jake and Josh. It was not a secret that Captain Phil died during the season. News of his stroke and eventual passing was in the mainstream media. It even was in the Local Las Cruces paper. Last night’s episode included Captain Phil passing away. Surprisingly, Captain Phil and his family allowed the cameraman/producer full access to the family, and the hospital. In real life, families are never polished and neat. They are usually messy and emotional. Phil’s family was no exception, and I find it amazing and brave that they allowed their emotional struggles to be filmed and displayed on the show. It was riveting TV. You can read an interview with Josh here.

Deadliest Catch is almost over for the year. I believe there is one more episode left. If you haven’t watched it, Discovery Channel usually repeats it, and you can watch full episodes at Discoverychannel.com. I strongly suggest you try to catch it.

EW.com recap here.

The site is called GraphJam.com and it is just a lot of graphs that illustrate some funny truths and the silliness of graphs. Take a look. Oh in case any Apple cultists take umbrage at the graph, let me just say that I don’t have anything against Apple products or Macs except:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=REp0cIecFHk

All right, what other pop artist could mention in an interview the Bau-Haus school of art, the impact of Beethoven and Bach on pop music, evolution, confronting ones own fears, and the problems and challenges of digital music? And speak cogently about all of them. There are some pop stars (Britney, Jessica?) who couldn’t even carry on a conversation, let alone know what was discussed in this interview! This next video is from 2005. At that time she was still Stefani Germanotta from New York, and a student at NYU. According to the description, this video is from NYU’s annual talent show. She would have been 18 or 19.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM51qOpwcIM

I don’t know about you, but I liked both of those songs. Seems pretty talented to me.

But, the mere fact that her appearance was treated as a major news item on a tech oriented web show, made me think it was about time to find out what this was all about. Truthfully, I had a vague idea of who Lady Gaga is, but most of my opinion of her came from those snarky celebrity sites that really hate all celebs. I knew she was a singer/performance artist, known for her outrageous and skimpy outfits. Well, to learn more, I turned to the medium that all good computer nerds would use for researching music and performances, Youtube!

There are literally thousands of Youtube videos posted of and about Lady Gaga. They range from the official music videos released by her record company, to TV performances, to live shows captured on cell phone cameras to parodies and mashups of various people lipsynching to her music. There were even a bunch of snarky vids questioning her gender. I never did find the end of the list. After searching on her name, I scrolled through at least 20 pages of results (with 20+ entries per page, many of them lists) and there were still plenty of pages I never got to. I watched quite a few videos of various quality. I saw the Barbara Walters ‘Most Fascinating people of 2009′ interview (and Bill O’Reilly’s usual uninformed criticism of Barbara’s choices), the Music videos, and lots of performance video.

So, after my exhaustive(?) research, do I have an opinion? Yes, I do, and surprisingly, I find that I like Lady Gaga. I was half expecting a Britney Spears type lip-syncher who used her costumes to mask her lack of voice or talent. Well, I was wrong. Much to my surprise, I found that she is a hard working talented song writer, and performer. Her music has a very engaging pop sound that quickly had me tapping my foot and enjoying. And, far from having no talent, she has a decent voice, writes her own songs and has written songs for (among others), Ms Spears and The Pussycat Dolls. In one interview I watched from British TV, the interviewer asked her how it felt to have her music recorded by performers who were less talented than she was (ouch!) Gaga (as her friends call her, I learned) was quite diplomatic in her reply.

It took a while, but I found one video from Youtube that I think is a very effective showcase of her talent. In this video she begins with an acoustic interlude where she plays the piano and sings by herself and then launches into her full electronic dance and singing performance. Her costume is not the wildest one I saw but is a part of the whole performance. So from ‘The Ellen Show’, this is Lady Gaga performing ‘Poker Face’:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=doO41ct2zvc

If you haven’t listened to Lady Gaga, I suggest you give her a try. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. By the way, if you are as disconnected from the world as I am, you may not know that there was some controversy about the lyrics of Poker Face. I had no idea of course, but Gaga explains here on this interview that aired on BBC (warning: strong language):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxHTtNWdAns

Swedish actor Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander

The character to the left is my new favorite literary heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Well, actually, the picture is of Swedish actress Noomi Rapace as the character Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish film Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men who hate women”) or as it was published in English ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘. I picked up a copy of that book on a recent trip to Costco. I had heard of it, but knew little about the book. I finished reading it (all 590 pages) in 3 days. Lisbeth is an amazing character. Despite being only 4′ 10″ tall and weighing 90 pounds, she can fight off the biggest man, has a photographic memory, a chess mind to rival Bobby Fisher, sleeps with girls or boys indiscriminately and is a wizard with a computer, considered one of the 65 best ‘hackers’ in the world. Of course Lisbeth is pretty anti-social and has numerous dark secrets from her past she prefers to keep hidden. While that may sound like a bit too much, if you can suspend your disbelief this is an exciting book to read.

The author of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson. Larsson’s story is almost as fascinating as the characters in his books. A crusading journalist and activist in Sweden, he founded and worked for the Expo magazine, not unlike his fictional Millennium magazine in the books. He started writing his novels in his spare time. In 2003, with 2 completed manuscripts and a third almost done, he found a publisher in Sweden. Before the first book was published, Larsson dropped dead from a heart attack. Conspiracy theorist have had a field day with Larsson’s death. This is not too surprising considering the books deal with the darker aspects of Swedish culture and politics and have a distinctly paranoid view of them. To read more about Larsson, there is an interesting Vanity Fair article about him. And of course you can always read his Wikipedia entry. Note, take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt, but do check out the reference material.

The three books that Larsson completed before his death are called ‘The Millennium Trilogy’. They get their name from the fictional Swedish magazine that the primary character in the books, Mikael Blomkvist founded and where he is the publisher.  The first book, ‘ The girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘, is a stand-alone crime drama. It introduces us to Blomkvist and Salander as they work together to solve a 40 year old mystery about the missing niece of a famous industrialist. The book is well done, with a satisfying ending that leaves you wanting to know more about the primary characters. After reading the book, I had the opportunity to see the Swedish film of the novel. Here is the trailer for it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlF-hk3IJQE

The second book in the series is ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire‘. In this novel, Larsson explains much more about Lisbeth’s background and history. this book is also a crime thriller with the primary mystery the murder of three people in one night. And, Lisbeth is the main suspect. The ending of this book is a cliff-hanger, with Lisbeth’s fate very much in doubt. It leaves you wanting to immediately read the third book, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest‘. Unfortunately, this book has not been published in the US yet! Arrgggh! Fortunately, one doesn’t need Lisbeth’s hacker skills to find a copy of the book via the internet. So, I have now read all three. The final book does bring some redemption and closure to Lisbeth’s story. But after reading it, you are left with the feeling that there is much more in store for Lisbeth and Mikael.  It left me hungry to read more about them. When Larsson died, he reportedly left outlines for a total of ten books in the series. Sadly, we will have to be content with the three he finished before his death.

Movies have been made from all three of the books in Sweden. I have not seen either of the second or third in the series, but their trailers are on Youtube. Here is the trailer for ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’, and a teaser for the final movie, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest’. They are in Swedish, but you’ll get the idea.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7XQHnSlhSE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8LTr51C-j0

Firefox 3.5

Well, after that nasty entry I wrote about Firefox 3.5, I thought I should post an update. I am now using FF 3.5.2 and my problems are gone. It appears that the problem might have been with my Usenet provider, although that doesn’t explain the issues with Customize Google plugin. Anyway, I installed the second update to 3.5 and all is well. I am now using Firefox version 3.5.2 on all of my computers… even my Windows 7 machine. Oh, I should also explain that I am using the Portable version of FF. I know it was designed to be run from a USB flash drive, but I have it installed on my hard drive. FF portable doesn’t add any registry entries, and it doesn’t store temp files in the Documents and Settings folder.

Oh, you may have noticed that I mentioned Windows 7. Yes, I am running Windows 7 on my old computer. I bought a new desktop earlier this year, replacing my 5 year old Pentium P4 system. That wasn’t a bad machine, but iit had Windows XP home version on it. I had upgraded the memory to 1.5GB and had added a second hard drive ( 1-160GB and 1-320GB). My new system has a multi-core processor, 3GB of memory and 750 GB of hard drive, and an EVGA graphics card with dual DVI. It is an HP small-business system, so it came with both Windows XP-Pro, and Vista-Business. And, it came with the full DVD’s! I will never buy a home machine again. The HP small-Business store sells PC’s that are similar to the consumer versions, and are close in price, and they come with full operating system backup DVD’s, not those useless recovery discs that virtually all consumer PC’s have.

Windows 7

I was cleaning up my old computer, un-installing software and erasing disk space. Once I had it pretty clean, it sat around for a while as I tried to decide what to do with it. I was thinking of installing Linux on it. I had tried Ubuntu a while ago on a ancient Sony laptop. But that machine just didn’t have the hardware to support it. I was reading about the Windows test program. It was possible to download an evaluation copy of Windows 7 from Microsoft. I didn’t download the beta version, but I did download RC-1 (release candidate-1). Since my old system was really clean (no software but anti-virus installed), it was simple to install the new Windows. I’ve been running it for almost 3 months now and it has been great. The first thing I notices was that the old system was running noticeably faster. Of course there are a couple of factors contributing to that, minimal software, and I haven’t installed and removed stuff, leaving a cluttered registry yet. But the most obvious change is start-up. The machine stats faster than XP, and it shuts down much faster. So far, all the software I use regularly runs just fine on 7.

There is one big problem though. To upgrade from XP to 7 requires a clean install. Actually, that is the preferred method for any upgrade, but when you have a lot of software installed on a machine, it is time-consuming to have to re-install it. Of course it is one way to clean up your system, cuz you only re-install what you really need. I’m pretty sure I’m going to put Win 7 on Irene’s laptop. I’m sure it will run faster. I’ll have to think about my main system. The RC-1 evaluation copy expires next year, March I think. So, I will have to either buy a copy, or install something else. Maybe I will try Linux then.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I like food. I love to eat, and generally I like all kinds of food. Since our move to Las Cruces I have begun to worry about America’s food supply. It was easy to ignore the obvious problems while living in the Bay Area of California. Because of the relatively high standard of living there our food choices were virtually unlimited. Not so here in the relatively impoverished southwest. Certainly our trip to Paris last year was an eye opening lesson in how differently France views its food supply. While the movie “food Inc” hasn’t made it to Las Cruces (and probably never will), this article from Time Magazine delves into the issues of our worst practices.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food