Jul 16 2018

Prime Day Deal – Kindle Fire

Get this Amazon Prime Day Deal on a Kindle Fire$49.99, 38% off the regular price of $79.99.

I have one and I use it almost daily. It’s a fabulous device for consuming media. I watch Netflix, Amazon Prime and read comics from Marvel Digital Unlimited. The latter I had to side-load but that’s the nice thing about the Fire, it’s Android, so if there’s an app not in Amazon’s app store, you can probably get it from Google Play. Anyway, for fifty bucks? Great deal. Go buy.

Related:

Amazon Prime Day

 

 


Feb 24 2018

Life Lesson From Team USA Curling Skip John Shuster

John Shuster

Team USA Curling won a Gold Medal at the 2018 Olympic Games. Their skip (team captain, kind of) is John Shuster. Shuster had a pretty rough go of things the past several years, losing a lot of games and even being told to step aside in favor of another player. Then he battled back with a different group of guys and made it to the Olympics again. Once there, he wasn’t doing well. In fact, he was losing a lot. Then, after losing another game, this happened:

“This is silly,” he told himself. “I’m getting my heart broken, I feel like, by this sport — and this is silly. Seriously, this is the Olympics.”
He slept soundly that night for the first time in a long time. His team did not lose again.

His team did not lose again. Got that? They just won, baby. Why? Because their skip was LOOSE. That’s why.

Obviously that’s not the only reason why. But it’s hard to argue with the evidence. Feeling like the world is ending? LOSE. Having fun, feeling loose? WIN.

Move this to your life. Do you feel like everything is going bad bad bad? And as a result, ARE things going bad bad bad? Odds are, yes. Yes they are. So why not try to do like the shoo? (Ster.) Have fun!

Is it that easy? It isn’t. And yet… it is. Instead of worrying yourself into a hardened paste, loosen up. Then apply that looseness to whatever it is you were worrying about. Do you feel better? Is the thing you were worry about less worrisome? If so, rinse and repeat.

The article below, from the New York Times, is a fun recap of the Gold Medal game, which I watched on delay. The game aired at 1:30am EST, and while I am a big curling fan, I am not a fan of being awake at that hour if I don’t have to be. I did get up somewhat early so I could watch the game before looking at the internet and having the results spoiled. Congrats to the Team USA guys on a great win. And thanks for the life advice, John Shuster! Go cash in and write a book. I’ll read it.

Source: John Shuster and the U.S. Curling Team Win First Gold Medal – The New York Times


Jan 30 2018

Ant-Man and the Wasp Trailer

Black Panther is first (February 16) but come summer we get Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 6). Here’s the trailer.


Jan 04 2018

Paul Sorvino Has Words For Harvey Weinstein

I always wondered why Mira Sorvino didn’t work more as an actress after winning the Oscar for “Mighty Aphrodite“. Allegedly it is because Harvey Weinstein did everything in his considerable power to keep her off the silver screen.

Cover of "Mighty Aphrodite [DIVX]"

Cover of Mighty Aphrodite [DIVX]

TMZ asked Mira’s father Paul Sorvino what he thought of all this. Mr. Sorvino did not mince words.

Would you want Paul Sorvino pissed off at you? I wouldn’t. And yes, I know this is a scene from a movie.

One thing that has made me nuts with regard to the current wave of deserved firings and comeuppances of powerful men is the response some guys have made — “if it was my daughter/sister” etc. Actually… no. Whether or not you are related to a woman does not matter. No one deserves to be treated this way. Hell, if it’s true that Harvey Weinstein kept Mira Sorvino from being cast in movies because she wouldn’t sleep with him… jesus.

HOWEVER. If the woman wronged *is* your daughter, I think it’s fair to expect, shall we say, an extra level of outrage. Look at it like this — “imagine if it was your daughter”? No. It’s bad no matter what. But when it actually is your daughter? I don’t blame you for getting more mad. On the TMZ video, Mr. Sorvino is rather calm in my opinion.

Also, make sure to read through to part 5 of the tweet quoted above, which features video of Ms. Sorvino at a 2011 Senate briefing about sex trafficking. I will attempt to embed said Tweet here but as I admitted online I can thread a needle but tweets, not so much.

h/t Yashar Ali


Dec 29 2017

Adjust Volume Using Audacity (Tech Tip)

I’ve been podcast (listen!) and the episode I recorded today was too loud. My software of choice is Audacity because it sells for my favorite price – FREE dollars. Plus it works, and has a lot of high-end features. For example, you can fix it if your volume is too loud. That’s today’s DaddyTips tech tip.

Screenshot of Audacity running on Mac OS X Sou...

Screenshot of Audacity running on Mac OS X Sourced from: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Audacity has a tool called the envelope tool. It looks like this:

Audacity Envelope Tool

 

Hopefully you can see the arrow better than me. (I’m colorblind.) If you can’t, it’s the thing in between the Selection Tool and the Draw Tool. If you hover your mouse pointer over each tool on the toolbar it tells you what the tool is called. Ah, screw it. Here’s another screenshot, but this time the envelope tool is circled.

Audacity Envelope Tool Circled

Anyway, what you do is click that tool. That will select your track. Then you can drag a little bubble up and down and that will reduce or increase the volume of the track. There is probably a way to do just a section of the track but I don’t know what that is.

I got this info from WiredPen, a website by the extremely talented Kathy E. Gill, who is clearly cooler than me because she’s wicked smart and she rides a motorcycle. (Seriously, I mean that. She seems very cool.) Without this helpful tip my podcast would have been unlistenable.

Below are my podcast episodes. The one from 12/29/17 is here.

Listen to me early and often, especially now that I know how to fix the volume.

Aside: these were the suggested tags for this post. Some make sense and are used. Many of them, however, are bizarre.

Suggested tags Audacity post

Happy New Year!

h/t WiredPen.com by Kathy E. Gill


Dec 07 2017

NFL Should Not Be Convincing Parents To Let Kids Play Football

This article from ESPN about the state of the NFL under Roger Goodell had a line that made me go “hmm”.

NFL Convincing Parents To Let Kids Play Football? No

“How it will convince mothers that their kids should be allowed to play football.”

So… no.

First, is this article suggesting that fathers have no say in their children playing football? Or that fathers are throwing their children onto the gridiron whether they like it or not? I don’t think so. Can we at least start saying “parents” instead of “mothers” unless we’re talking about breast-feeding?

Second, and this is my main point — how the hell is it the NFL’s job to convince parents to “let” their kids play football? Answer: it isn’t. I suppose the idea here is that to keep a fresh supply of players in the pro league you need kids playing pee-wee football. (Pee-Wee!) To me, the NFL’s job is to make sure parents are informed about the dangers of playing football, and then parents can make their own decisions. If nothing else, the NFL shouldn’t be PREVENTING that information from coming to light, something they have almost certainly done.

Really though, is it the NFL commissioner’s job to “convince mothers that their kids should be allowed to play football“? Fuck no.


Jul 11 2017

Amazon Prime Day

It’s Amazon Prime Day, baby!

What the hell is Prime Day, you say?

Why, it’s a way to save money!

Why is it called Prime Day?

Because in order to get the deals from Amazon, you have to be an Amazon Prime member.

See? This is how they getcha.

That said, Amazon Prime is a pretty good deal. You get free 2-day shipping and access to a giant library of video. Basically it’s like Netflix but with Amazon. And Amazon has different shows in some cases, especially their own content, so if you want to be one of the cool kids and watch, like, everything, you need Amazon Prime.

Among the deals to be had:

Shop Amazon Devices – Prime Day All New Fire Tablet starting $29.99

That’s a sweet deal on an Amazon Fire. 30 bucks. You can watch video, read books and digital comics, and play with apps. Imagine getting an iPad for 30 dollars. Now forget about that because it’s not going to happen. But an Amazon Fire tablet for 30 dollars, that you could get, at least on… PRIME DAY.

So go check out what’s on offer. Here are a few links to get you started.

30% Off Select Amazon Exclusive Toys & Games

Shop Amazon Devices- Get up to $35 off Trade in your Kindle off a new one

Shop Amazon Devices – Introducing the All-New Amazon Fire TV Edition, starting at $449.99