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Review: The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first saw the movie adaptation in middle school. The youth ministry pastor decided to share it with us. I fell in love immediately. When I came across it again in college, I…
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Today in It’s A Binary World Blogging History
One Year Ago Today: I discuss Disney Princess culture in anticipation of what will happen with Scarlett. Five Years Ago Today: No Post
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Listening Trends 2014 Q1
I started 2014 with a bunch of music I’d acquired in 2013, but which I still hadn’t listened to. So I created a playlist with a high weight on unplayed music from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014. I changed my Amarok settings so that instead of populating the next 11 items, it would populate the…
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Scarlett’s Second Halloween
I know this was months ago, but I started writing this back then and just got the opportunity to finish it recently. This year was Scarlett’s second Halloween, but the first one where she had some kind of a clue about what was going on. The previous year we’d dressed her up as Toad, but…
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The Continued Evolution of Scarlett’s Mind
I’ve mentioned before that I find Scarlett’s mental development utterly fascinating. As someone who’s always been fascinated with the science of cognition (You Are Not So Smart is my new favorite podcast) and psychology, it’s amazing to see her capabilities grow and change as long with her physical growth. Her most recent new ability is…
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2013 Video Games Report and Game of the Year
Civilization V (48.5 hrs): As is usually the case, spent a ton of time with Civilization this year. Played about 3.5 hours less than last year, but had way more fun by playing with Dan and Dave. Things have gone a little slower recently because we’ve all been away for the holidays, but I actually…
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Scarlett and Making her Toys Kiss
Scarlett first did this about three weeks ago before she started watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid non-stop. I was playing with her in the living room and she was making her various stuffed animals dance to the music. Then she took two animals – a dog and a cat or something and put their faces…
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Voice Acting on Children’s toys
When I really got into animation a few years ago, I started appreciating a lot of the aspects of animation that people don’t even realize took work. For example, in a live action movie the set designers can go buy chairs and lamps and lights. Everything in an animated work has to be created from…
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The Princess Who Saved Herself
Back around May I backed Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak’s kickstarter Code Monkey Save World. The ONLY reason I backed it is because of this stretch goal to have Takeshi Miyazawa draw a children’s book based on Jonathan Coulton’s song, The Princess Who Saved Herself. if you don’t see a “play” button below, click just left of…
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K-Pop and 10 of their Crazy Music Videos
K-Pop has been making a splash in America in a big way. Although they have nearly subsumed all music in Asia and are getting big in parts of Europe and the Middle East, K-Pop in the USA seems to be about where J-Pop was during the height of the anime/manga crazy in the last 1990s…
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Returning to Universal Studios
The last time I went to Universal Studios Orlando was nearly 20 years ago for Rock the Universe 1999. It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done – enjoying the park by day with all my close friends and then a series of concerts at night. Despite getting soaked by the night-time…
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Last.fm 2013 Q2 Listening Habits
For the second quarter in a row The Beatles have NOT made the list! But that’s easily explained: I have been listening to a lot of new music and a lot of playlists that don’t include The Beatles. But as you’ll see, they kinda snuck in sideways. This quarter I spent a lot of time…
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Spaceship Earth viewed through Marble
Recently I was listening to a Talk of the Nation interview with Jerry Brotton about his new book A History of the World in Twelve Maps. He mentions how the maps have a political reason for existing as well as having an effect on the viewer. He also mentioned how the map creator always puts…
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How Best to Rip and Manage Your Own (legally purchased) DVDs to create your own Netflix Instant
I had two reasons for starting this project: 1) my wife and I like to collect Disney movies from our youth. These movies are most likely to be watched by kids and kids are likely to damage DVDs. I’ve heard lots of anecdotes on the net from parents who are on their fourth purchase of…
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Top 200 Photos: #22
Another Otakon photo in this Top 200 Photo photo #22 is: This photo was taken on the first time I discovered Otakon in Baltimore. We were just walking around Baltimore and noticed cosplayers here and there. At first I thought it was just a strange group of friends. But when we kept seeing more and…