Musings Before the Storm

With the “Super Tuesday” caucuses nearly upon us, I’ve been thinking about a few things while cutting out nearly three hundred ballots with a pair of scissors while preparing to convene one site here in Minnesota. Political volunteerism is far less glamorous than TV or movies make it out to be, what can I say?

The debate last night on CNN was stormy, uncivil, and the last before Tuesday’s big event. Rubio won it handily, to my surprise. More shocking was watching Ted Cruz not only fail at debating, but have a melt down while arguing with Trump. The pressure is clearly on and the tag team attacks on The Donald were unlike anything seen so far.

It is questionable whether or not this influences the upcoming vote, though it may allow Rubio a chance at Minnesota. He’s got more than a few supporters keeping quiet, I suspect. As it was, I’d expected Trump to win the state by a narrower margin than his previous wins with Marco coming in a close second. Now I really don’t know what to think.

Of course, predicting elections is more like gambling in a lottery than a science. The odds are always against you.

Impediments

So far February has been a troublesome month mainly due to transportation issues. An excellent example being how the borrowed pickup truck refused to start this morning, thereby forcing a rescheduling of Dad’s quarterly cancer checkup. Aiding and abetting all the annoyances has been the job of the winter weather. Aching bones are not conducive to rest or ambulation, I’m finding.

Limiting long range trips to medical or repair work has resulted in my not getting out to church in weeks. Again, the winter weather has exacerbated the situation since the driveway is a challenge for most drivers that I’d call on.

Still, one must trudge on despite all loose gravel, deep snow, and slippery ice in life.

Using scrap wood and old MDF shelves going unused, I’ve been rebuilding the old TV stand a bit at a time into something that better houses the HDTV, receiver, and disc players while making more room for the center speaker of the surround system. Having no workshop, there is only so much I can do while it is cold, so final finishing will have to wait until much warmer weather allowing windows to be open.

Feeling a little dizzy and generally unwell today, so the truck not starting early this morning may not be such a horrible thing after all. It has been charged and started, albeit after eating up all the travel and blood work time that was allotted. Wanted to get the rebuild of the TV stand done today – not going to happen.

Hopefully, notes will be taken for the next movie review this week as there are hopes of getting those rolling again.

A Short Comment on Last Night’s Debate

Updated: Yep, it cost him big time as my late friend Al would have said. Rubio’s support went over to Jeb, prolonging that campaign just a bit longer. All it took to stop Marcomentum was Christie, though neither did well looking at totals with 77% reported in.

Original post follows:

New Hampshire’s caucuses are the big moment for Marco Rubio to break out after his surprisingly strong showing in Iowa. Thanks to his wretched performance last night he may have blown that opportunity, though voters are always unpredictable.

Chris Christie has been dinging Rubio for using canned sound bites that are very rehearsed and not at all extemporaneous. When he went after the Florida senator, the response was exactly what the governor was mocking. Pundits have noted that Rubio is robotic in his responses and he sounded just like a vinyl record being stuck during that exchange.

Occasionally politics will present truly surreal moments that make one question the nature of reality. Now I’m wondering if Life Model Decoys developed by SHIELD are real.

Iowa Caucus or Iowa Circus?

Once again the first in the nation caucuses held in Iowa have concluded without leaving any definite conclusion as to who the eventual nominees will be. For those of us who follow politics, the relief from the sheer overflow of punditry and prognostications is large, to say the least. So much hot air, so much speculation, so much money spent… and rarely does the GOP winner go on to win the whole shebang.

Frankly, the Democratic Party results are more fascinating than that of the Republican record setting attendance. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

I live near the border of Iowa, so the results were of interest to me, especially from Winneshiek County. Trump beat Cruz 274 to 251 votes while Sanders beat Clinton 56 to 54 delegates in the Iowa Democrats very twisted methods of counting. Oddly, there is no secret ballot and the process is very peer pressure driven with little accountability.

Yet Another Deer Collision

Well, tonight went downhill quickly. My father hit another deer and the Ford Freestyle looks like it may be a goner. Unfortunately, the insurance policy wasn’t comprehensive so our options will be limited. We’ll know more tomorrow, but being without wheels with the closest town being twelve miles away is going to be a problem.

We never catch a break.

Cat Follies

At the beginning of the month, my father and I picked out a pair of kittens of mixed breed. At the time we and the people who had them thought the yellow and white one was female. Well three weeks later it turns out Toph was a late bloomer and is actually a boy.

To be fair, this was a hard kitten to sex until the past week. A large growth spurt has revealed all beyond a shadow of a doubt. It helps that he has developed into a lap cat and can finally be examined without it being considered a call to wrestle.

The Gorgon (1964) Review

Director Terence Fisher redeemed himself after the fiasco of The Phantom of the Opera with this gothic romance featuring a predatory woman with looks that kill. Featuring Hammer Films lurid use of Technicolor, it chooses to bring chills rather than scares compared to prior releases by the studio. Tragic love, severe calcification, and an ensemble cast combine to deliver the goods in this mostly forgotten movie.

Having bombed spectacularly with a remake of The Phantom of the Opera two years before, Terence Fisher was on the outs with Hammer Films. Fortunately for him and for horror fans, he was given another chance with a new property to direct. Stepping away from remaking old classic monster movies, Hammer took a risk by reviving a monster from Greek myth as the star villain. While the results looked silly even by the standards of the time, the rest of the movie almost made up for it.

Like many a Hammer intro, a matte painting of a castle on a hill opens the movie while serving as a backdrop for the title credits and a short crawl defining the setting. It is a strangely comforting indication that we’ll be getting one of their typical stories set in the 1800s filled with lavish sets, lovely women, and fiendish villainy.

Well, once the scroll finishes the story goes straight for the middle part, at least.

New Year, New Kittens

Having lost a cat last may that was one in a billion, I had no intentions of ever adding more cats to the household. Watching the vitality ebb out of our home and the remaining cats, it became apparent that something needed to be done. Watching my number one cat, Snooky, gain a massive amount of weight since Ragnar’s disappearance made me realize just how sedentary she had become without a male to show off in front of.

My sister’s quest for a long hair tiger tabby for the holidays ended up roping me into things including a visit to a pet store. Eventually she got a short hair tabby tiger after no luck.

Winter Mornings

 

It is a marvel how much clear skies and a morning sun transform the dullness of winter into something spectacular. Two mornings ago was such a day, so I tried to photograph the beautiful frosting on the trees around the property. Sadly, they photos were blurry messes thanks to me having a subpar day which even the autostabilization on the Fujifilm HS25EXR couldn’t overcome.

Second chances are far rarer than people would like to admit, especially when trying to capture a moment in time. Thankfully, today gave me such an opportunity.

From the Sidelines 2015 Review

Once again I wasn’t able to give the blog the attention it needs resulting is a steep drop off in traffic. In the collegiate world, it is said one needs to “publish or perish” and so it is also with blogs.

According to Google Analytics, there were 20,175 pageviews from 14,132 visitors from January 1st through December 29th. Statcounter disagrees and says the numbers were 15,048 and 10,033 respectively. Give AdBlocker and NoScript usage, I’ll guess that Google is more accurate and still missed some visits. People from all over the globe visited from more countries than I care to list with the U.S. only making up 47.43% of the traffic.

It amazes me that From the Sidelines has so many international visitors.

Looking at the ongoing web browser wars, Chrome was the dominant browser by far for 45.49% of the share. That was no surprise, however the second most used browser was. Safari was used for 22.61% of visits to the blog easily passing Firefox at 14.58%. This was rather stunning though I knew Firefox is in decline.

Some exotic browsers showed up at less than 1%, most of which I hadn’t heard of before: Iron, UC Browser, YaBrowser, Coc Coc, Maxthon, S40 Ovi Browser, MRCHROME, DoCoMo, JUC, Lunascape, NetFront, and YE. A few of those are state supplied browsers from countries where Internet access is highly monitored, so apparently I haven’t run afoul of their censors.

Aside from the home page, the following posts were the most visited in 2015:

1. Children Who Chase Lost Voices Review
2. The Invisible Boy Review
3. India’s Bantam Weight Fighter: The LCA Tejas Displays 
4. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Review
5. The Big Sleep 1946 and 1945 Review
6. Pacific Rim Review
7. Spirited Away Review
8. Battle of Britain Review
9. Dracula (1931) Review
10. Whisper of the Heart Review

The continuing traffic to the LCA Tejas post has turned it into an evergreen thanks to the horrifically (and controversial) prolonged development of the aircraft. Showing how much I know, the post was expected to fade into obscurity when I wrote it. It is pleasing that Children Who Chase Lost Voices ended up at number one for it is a movie deserving of more attention than it has gotten.

2016 will see more posting, or so is the hope since no promises can be made. It will be interesting to see if that stops the decline.

Windows Live Writer Is Dead!

Long live Open Live Writer!!!

As of December 14, 2015, Google turned off the old authenticator code again permanently crippling Windows Live Writer for usage in posting to Blogger. Fortunately, the promised open source version of Live Writer went live earlier this month and the latest revision supports OAuth 2.

Download Open Live Writer here if you want to keep having the Live Writer experience with Blogger.

This is only my second post using it, so I haven’t had a chance to evaluate all the functions. It does import drafts from WLW, so that is a big plus. On the downside, it didn’t import my categories, so I’m having to type them from memory rather than using the convenient check box system that used to be in place.

A leftover review that didn’t get finished for Halloween may be the first to test how it handles pictures, though I may come up with a project before that just for the purpose.

It is terrific that the application will finally get modernized again and I look forward to more features being added over time.

Christmas Gifts

It has been too long since I last posted mainly due to health issues along with an early holiday trip to Indiana to visit my sister and her family. As a result, the materialistic side of the season has already been dealt with so there should be no stress for once during Christmas itself. For a more spiritual point of view, I suggest checking out the new Featured Post section in the right sidebar for something I wrote five years ago.

The best gift received this year wasn’t even given to me directly, rather it was witnessing the incredible achievement of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch on the 21st. Blasting off and launching multiple satellites while having the first stage successfully land is historical to say the least. A longer video from the launch to the landing can be found here. Kudos to Elon Musk and all the technicians, engineers, and workers involved in the endeavor.

Thanksgiving 2015

It has been a long and painful month of my father and I suffering from an upper respiratory virus. While still under its effects, there are things to be grateful for.

Take today for instance. Thanksgiving dinner with friends featuring great food, good company, and better conversation made for a memorable afternoon. Not even badly damaging a tire on the way back was able to take away any of the good spirit engendered.

Having a roof over my head along with heat during cold rain turning to ice is not to be sneezed at too. On a more trivial note, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000's Turkey Day marathon featuring silly satire is something I appreciate. Only in a free country can something like it be produced.

That is something not so trivial, on second thought.

Gratitude is an amazing thing for it brings to attention things we take for granted. It is far too easy to lose that which we take for granted, so feeling grateful can inoculate us against that if we  but pay attention.

To all my fellow Americans I wish you a happy Thanksgiving!

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Is Coming Back!

I’ve already pledged my small amount to the effort and those of us who did in the first 24 hours pushed the Kickstarter over $1,000,000. So if you are a fan of the show, please help to bring it to a new generation.

Between this and the old episodes slowly rolling out at Rifftrax, a new era of MST3K has begun. Bad movies watch out, you will now have nowhere to hide!

Looks like I chose a good time to introduce the madness to children of my friends, now they can get in on the revival. You can too, please back the project so we can get as many episodes as possible.