Category: Geeky

Randomly Monday night

It doesn’t matter how many times I look out the back door. There’s not going to be a cute orange cat there. And that sucks.

Happier thoughts and subjects:

  • I just booked my room for New York in January, although I may extend my stay by one more day since I got such a good deal. If anyone wants to hang out, please let me know.
  • Pondering my post-Christmas travel plans as well and whether I should continue my Virginia Beach tradition into its second year or opt for a different beach…or no beach at all. I really do like winter beach trips and Virginia Beach is a good choice because there’s a city there too, just in case I get bored. I opt for the cheap oceanfront room where I read all the books I didn’t have time to read the rest of the year.
  • In case you were wondering, I’ve had a really successful soup season this year. Okra seems to be the running theme.
  • For your amusement, the top twenty Toronto music videos of all time, at least by somebody’s count.
  • I’m finally getting back to the home video project. I finished digitizing all the analog stuff earlier this year and now I’m making MP4 derivatives from those masters for easy access on the Roku, etc. It’s much easier and “batchable” than the initial project was and I hope to be done by New Year’s. This will also make it easier for me to post old video on the site and/or YouTube if anyone cares (which I kind of doubt).
  • Despite my rotten state of mind Saturday night, my friend Jeff dragged me out to College Hill and other assorted destinations and I actually had a really great time. The secret to doing that in Greensboro is to remember never ever to go to the queer bar.

There are eight million stories

My new obsession this week is Naked City. I’ve been recording it off MeTV and now I have this (probably ill-advised) urge to buy the complete series on DVD in November.

It’s no big secret that I’m a sucker for old cop shows, specifically the ones that were shot on location in interesting urban areas, like The Streets of San Francisco (probably the best of the genre), Adam-12, Homicide, Cagney and Lacey, etc. Aside from being entertaining of their own accord, I love that they provide such a time capsule of what these cities really looked like at a specific time in the past, with diners and neon signs and dumpy furniture stores…and not an artisinal cronut stand in sight. It also helps that Naked City seems pretty consistent in its geographical accuracy; when they say they’re at Second Avenue and East Fourth Street, they really are. It’s always kind of a crap shoot on other shows.

Naked City is especially interesting, though, because it aired a good ten years earlier than most of my favorites and during a time when filimg on location was really unusual for a weekly TV series. It also has a sophistication that was lacking in most dramatic series of the time (it shared a creator with Route 66). All of this is making me wonder if it might actually be worth owning. I know you’ll be on the edge of your seats till November so I’ll let you know my decision as soon as possible.

Working for the weekend

Random thoughts on Canada, my new old neighborhood, food, etc.:

  • CanCon: The only reason any radio station still plays Loverboy.
  • The City of Vancouver Archives never disappoints me.
  • I’m warming to my newly rediscovered childhood neighborhood. It’s still not my dream ‘hood and I really hate the giant yard BUT I find that I actually have more useful stuff within easy walking distance here than I did in Winston-Salem–or maybe even South of Market, for that matter. I can walk to several decent restaurants and a supermarket (even if it is just an Aldi), and dropping my car off for its annual checkup this morning was dreamy. There’s hope, I suppose. And contractors next week…
  • Happy occurrence of the week: Buying jeans of a size that I haven’t purchased in fifteen years.
  • In case you were wondering, there is at least one German restaurant in the world that doesn’t sell beer and this is it. And yes, my friends and I were also amused by the idea of a German and Italian restaurant. Adding a few Japanese dishes would probably get it firebombed by Asheboro’s remaining WWII vets.
  • Cool thing of the week: This, via here.
  • Taking a four-day weekend next week. Destination suggestions? Anybody out there?

Close to the end

After more than two years and many starts and stops, I’m finally almost done with Phase One of my massive home video archiving project. This is seventeen years of video–nearly three terrabytes–that’s now completely digitized and organized into folders by date. It was no small task. I’ve shot lots of video over the years in multiple analog and digital formats. And I still have all of it, save for a defective tape from 1995 (shot in North Carolina) and one from 1996 (shot in Minneapolis and San Francisco) that I lent to an ex many years ago and never saw again.

I started working on this project right after Mark moved back to San Francisco and kept working on it off an on through the pretty thoroughly miserable two years of personal and family drama that followed. It may not have been the best timing since a virtual walk down memory lane was probably not exactly what I needed at the time. There were a few times when I stopped because things were getting too intense–I was in no mood to listen to romantic banter or my parents in healthier times–or because I didn’t have time, or I was experiencing equipment failure (e.g. the G5), or whatever other reason. All in all, it was sort of like watching my middle age unfold as sort of a documentary. And it wasn’t an altogether bad one, I suppose.

Phase Two will involve making MP4 versions so that I’ll have accessible copies in one consistent format. At that point, I’ll probably complete an index of sorts as well. Yes, I’m a geek and an archivist. If you didn’t already know that by now, you’ve obviously not been paying attention.

A few important realizations:

  • I’ve never been terribly social, but I’m even less so than I used to be.
  • I used to smoke a whole lot.
  • Radio used to suck less than it does now, but not by much. Particularly in places like Winnemucca.
  • I say incredibly stupid and repetitive things while driving.
  • When I look at video from the past few years, I can really see those forty pounds I’ve lost since September. I like that.
  • I hope that my love affairs with Pittsburgh and Los Angeles never go sour.
  • I used to be able to have my way (date, cavort, etc.) with lots of really cute boys. Not quite sure what happened there. OK, I have an idea what happened…

Geographically challenged 211 in progress

I regularly watch 1970s cop shows filmed on location (usually in LA or sometimes San Francisco) with iPad in hand, looking for current views of the locations on Google Street View. I know. I’m a big geek who has no life. We’ve already established that fact.

Sometimes, though, the geography on these shows is out of whack that it makes me laugh out loud. Even worse than a Streets of San Francisco where they make up streets that don’t really exist (e.g. Embarcadero Center being located on something called “Saint Andrews Road”) is the way some shows have used real street names with no regard to their actual locations. Tonight I caught a scene from Adam-12 that was allegedly taking place on Ventura, between Olympic and Washington, west of Melrose. I challenge anyone who’s familiar with LA to locate that particular bit of real estate on a map. It’s kind of like saying Detroit is on the Georgia side of Massachusetts, near Phoenix.

I realize that this probably amuses me more than you. I do not care.

Saturday night in the basement

It was a wonderfully gloomy, stormy day today. Nice background for a wedding, although the principals might not agree. Regardless of weather, it’s a happy thing to watch two people who so clearly should be married actually doing so. Congrats to Carroll and Lex.

Saturday was much better than Friday, which pretty thoroughly sucked in many most ways for me. Many thanks to Duncan for helping to temper the suckage for a while on Friday afternoon; you maybe don’t know quite how much I needed that. And my apologies to anyone else who came in contact with me in any way whatsoever, especially my parents and the poor folks at the Harris Teeter on Cloverdale. Enough said. I’m not joking when I say it was a pretty shitty day.

But now I’m contentedly in the basement, listening to Capitale Rock and working on Groceteria databases and (hooray!) on the last of the analog home video. I should be done with that by tomorrow. The digital stuff requires much less babysitting and I’ll finally have my home video archived to…um…archival standards very soon. That will make me very happy. Then I can start making MP4 access copies so I can easily watch it all on the Apple TV. Or not…

Saturday in the basement

I spent most of today in the basement digitizing video and playing with photos of vintage supermarkets and not eating very much. It was fun but I feel kind of gross now and my eyes are really tired so I probably won’t do it again tomorrow.

I still may buy a new computer, though.

DC is on hold for a week or two. I forgot about a previous commitment involving cake. I don’t like to miss engagements that result in the consumption of cake. Happy occasions for deserving friends are always a nice diversion as well. Especially if there’s cake…

What I’m gonna do now, though, is go to bed, wishing that I were in Canada and thus would have an extra day this weekend.

Jameson Avenue, 1958

The Big Step – First Apartment in Toronto 1950s from Tiki Films on Vimeo.

Aside from being really cool on its own, this is extra cool for me just because I walked down Jameson between King and Queen ogling these very apartment buildings last fall when I was in Toronto.

More random links I’ve been storing up and forgetting to share:

A camp for me

When I was a youngster, I was always terrified that my parents might at some point decide to send me to summer camp. The thought of all that outdoors crap and assorted male bonding centered around sports and leathercraft seemed like the closest I could have come to hell on earth (and it still does).

This camp, on the other hand, would have thrilled me.