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Showing posts from August, 2010

Sesame Street Old School

Ok so I finally watched the first episode of Sesame Street that was ever aired. The first major character we see is Gordon who still has hair. He introduces us to Big Bird who seems to be plagued with microcephaly which seems to affect his speech, gait, and even hormonal balance ( he threatens to lay an egg!). Gordon later introduces us to Oscar, who is so clean he is orange in color! Cookie Monster also had a part, even though it was essentially non-speaking and he had a taste for more oriental cuisine like frog legs. The 'commercials' were sponsored by two numbers and three letters who must have paid a pretty penny because there were repeat broadcasts of some commercials in that one episode! Also, a couple of commercials lasted up to 6 minutes! All in all, it was really cool to see how much of the pilot made it to the episodes I watched as a kid in the early eighties. Maybe someday I'll talk about Old School versus New School. Have a great week.

Quick One! Facebook Exam

You should have seen the exam Facebook made me take when it suspected that my account might have been hijacked. I was asked to identify my friends from images they'd been tagged in and I had to be 100% accurate. You should have seen me trying to figure out which of my numerous friends were tagged as cartoons, celebrities and various inanimate objects. What's crazier is that I eventually passed the test!

Quick One! NTSC PAL

In case you were by some freak chance, wondering, NTSC stands for the National Television System Committee, and is the analog television system used in most of the US. NTSC uses 525 horizonal lines of which only 487 make up the active picture. It's an inferior video standard compared to PAL (Phase Alternating Line) which uses 625 horizontal lines, of which 576 are used for the picture. In other words, it has roughly one sixth more resolution than NTSC, resulting in better color and sharper resolution. I guess the race really isn't 'unto the swift'. It's good to know that we're moving to digital now but also interesting to note that there has been some form of NTSC in use since 1941. What makes it so hard to change to new technology?

Quick One! What is your ‘NO’ No.?

What’s your ‘No’ number? How many times do you have to hear “No” before you give up? Some people have a ‘No’ number of 1; ie they give up trying after hearing “No” for the first time. Others have a ‘No’ number of zero; ie they don’t even bother to ask. A few have been known to have a number of 0< n <1…they ask but they don’t even have the courage to follow up for a response. Others yet have ‘No’ numbers that tend towards infinity. They either just don’t understand the word, or have a selective amnesia for it. I suspect such people also tend to be a tad wealthier than the rest. Do you know some people have a ‘No’ number of minus one? Yeah…they hear a ‘No’ even when the response is “YES!”. What’s your ‘No’ number?

Quick one! Next Planet!

The sun is said to be getting hotter and hotter. It's said that a mere billion years ago, it wasn't even hot enough to sustain terrestrial life on planet Earth, and sadly, in another billion years, it will be too hot to sustain such life. What I get from this is that man has a billion years to figure out how to transport it's entire population to mars and sustain a breathable life sustaining atmosphere there.