Dr. Horrible isn’t horrible, it’s fantastic.  I guess Dr. Fantastic wouldn’t be a really good name for a super villain though.  And that would be an even worse catch phrase then “I have a PhD in horribleness!”  (yes, it is a word.)

I just watched Dr. Horrible Act 1 and 2 again.  I can hardly wait for Act 3 this Friday night at midnight (9 PM PST - Yippie!)  It looks like I will be buying all three on iTunes, my first iTunes purchase ever.

First of all I really want to support Joss in making this available.  I want it to be so wildly successful that he and others will make more good quality programming available like this.  But probably more importantly, I don’t want to wait for the DVD to come out to see it again after Sunday when it goes offline. . . .

Besides the campy songs, catchy one-liners and cheese character names, the thing I really like is the complex Dr. Horrible character played by Neil Patrick Harris and the contrast with his arch nemisis Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillian.  We have a protagonist and an antagonist, but in this case, the protagonist is Dr. Horrible, the super-villain wanna-be.

In the first act we are introduced to the main character, who happens to be a “bad guy.”  We meet the good guy, but we are really rooting for the bad guy, and we are OK with that.

Interestingly, by the end of the second act we see that even though Dr. Horrible is on the wrong side of the law, he is the better man.  While Captain Hammer is good buddies with the mayor, he is really not a very nice guy.  So while we thought we were rooting for the bad guy, we were rooting for the good guy.

Now the only question is what will happen next.  Will Dr. Horrible prove he is evil enough to Bad Horse to enter the Evil League of Evil?  What will Penny think when she realizes that “Billy” is positively motivated, but willing to step outside the law to get there?  What will become of Captain Hammer?

At the end of Act 1, before I saw Act 2, I actually entertained the idea that maybe Penny was a secret plant from the Evil League of Evil, sent to observe Dr. Horrible.  After Act 2 I am pretty sure she is who she appears to be, but I am OK with being surprised in Act 3.

I just hope the sound track comes out soon.

Just watched Episode 1 of Dr. Horrible, and contrary to the name, it is actually very good.  The first 4 minutes were pretty slow, but then the music starts.  Although I must admit I like evil villain musicals in general, but I thought this one was the best one I have seen so far.  Check it out!

I am not really a cat person, although I used to be one.  I thought this was a hoot, and mostly I wanted to see if Jake still reads my blog.  Jake is a cat person and also a software engineer (like me!)  I caught him before with my Why Curiosity Killed the Cat post.

I think that video is a great example of ordinary people (well, engineers, which I guess is a handicap) making an educationand and entertaining video about an ordinary thing.  Maybe I will make a software developers guide to children. . . .

I could write about this in great detail.  It is something I believe strongly about, but there is just one point I would like to make right now.  I say this in full realization that such a statement could be considered self-referential.

Anyone who suggests that you are a victim of others, is trying to victimize you.  Attempting to convince you that the outcome of your life is solely the result of the actions of others is actually an attempt to trick you to give up your power of self-determination and independence so that they may the take it from you and determine the direction of your life instead.

The difference between my warning and those who would make you their victims is that if you do give in to their persuasion, you are responsible for doing so, not the persuader.  I’ve debated similar points to this before, and it continues to be a belief I hold stronger and stronger with time.

Eleanor Roosevelt said “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I would expand that to “Nobody one can make you a victim without your consent.”

Next time someone tells you that it is some 3rd party’s fault that you are in the place you are in, and that you should join them in doing something about it, run the other direction.  They are not concerned with acting in your best interests, but are instead concerned with you acting in their best interests.

History is full of examples of individuals rising to power based on the platform of a scapegoat, and convincing the populace that they were not responsible for their plight, but that this scapegoat has caused them this harm.  The most classic example that comes to mind is Hitler and the Jews in Germany, but it doesn’t stop there.  Witch-hunts and mobs are the result of when individuals give up their right to make right choices.

Well, that is enough for now, but I will most likely write on this again.  What do you think?  Have you seen this before?

Leo just IM’ed me about this new RV. He saw it on Top Gear, and the reason he was telling me about it is they incorporate my idea of a faucet that has an LED inside that changes color based on the temperature - red for hot, blue for cold and some shade of purple for warm.

Of course it has a number of other cool features, like stowing a car under the RV instead of towing it behind. That site doesn’t have the price, but Leo said it is about 1.5 millions dollars. I suspect it is a complete custom job though. I doubt it will sell retail.

I remember riding around with my grandparents in their RV when I was a kid. They towed a little orange hatch back behind it that my Grandpa called the “Orange crate.” We would spend a week in some RV park over summer vacation. My grandparents would head south in the winter though. Snow birds I believe they were called.  luxary

Thanks to Kevin who just introduced me to The FuMP - The Funny Music Project.  Basically it is a collection of daily funny songs, each released under creative commons.  I listed to a couple of songs and found this one particularly funny:

Robert Lund - Nuttin’ But Spam

My reasoning for finding this particularly funny is every now and again someone will send spam with one of my email addresses (yes, I have a few) as the source, and then I get all the bounces.  This is pretty much unblockable on my end since the content is incredibly diverse, and each comes from a different address.  It usually lasts a day or two, but this last time it lasted 2 weeks and I was getting 500 emails an hour based on some random sampling.  No doubt I lost some emails I wanted in my fight to control my inbox.  Luckily it finally subsided down to a managable 10-20 an hour, most of which my spam filter is catching.

I love optical illusions.  First of all, they are cool, secondly the good ones teach us something about the way our eyes and brains work.  One of the neet things about the internet is that it makes it really easy to share animated optical illusions.  Check this out out:

If you follow the pink dos with your eyes, then nothing too exciting.

If you focus on the black + in the middle, you will probably see a green dot that replaces the pink dot that disappears.  This is a negative afterimage effect (neon green being the compliment to pink).  I’ve seen similar illusions before.

Then the really cool effect is if you focus on the black + long enough, all the pink dots will disapear, and you will just see the green dot spinning around the circle.  If you move your eyes, then the pink dots will come back though.

Your eyes will see all this from the same animation.  The animation doesn’t change.  You might ask yourself what else gets distorted in your life when you are focused on one thing?  Do other things tend to disapear?  When is that a good thing?  When is it not?

My dad just sent me this video of Lorenzo : the Flying FrenchMan. . .

It is really cool to watch, but it got me wondering, is this an example of Naturalist Intelligence, or Bodily-Kinesthetic. My guess it is a strong combination of both. Naturalist allows him to communicate with the animals so well, while Bodily-Kinesthetic gives him the near acrobatic abilities. Very cool indeed. Watching it I was just struck with how much he must love those horses and how exciting it is that he gets to spend his time working with these horses he loves, and how much better the world is because we are able to marvle at his abilities.

Thanks Lorenzo!

I’ve never been much for gifts on occasion, I much prefer just giving people gifts, cards, etc. when I think about it or see something I think they will like.  Unfortunately I usually try to save it for the next appropriate occasion, and then just forget, or am unable to get it then.

So if I ever forget to send you a greeting / gift for an occassion you were expecting one from me, just realize that I actually was thinking about getting you something the other 364 days of the year.

When I was just out of high school I worked through a temp agency doing light industrial and clerical work. I think that is a great first job since you get to do a lot of different types of work with a lot of different kinds of people. Some of the assignments were short, some were long. Some were fun, others were miserable. Generally I always learned something though, and I think that is really what is important.

On one of my assignments I worked with a guy named Dave, and he was magic. Dave had long red hair that was kind of wavy, and a beard and mustache that was also red. He looked kind of like a wizard and he most always wore a hat. Not a wizards hat, but a baseball cap. I actually got a chance to learn some magic from Dave too.

Now if you never took the time to get to know Dave, you would have never expected him to be magic. In fact, most people may never meet him as he spends most of his time on another plane or even in a different dimension them most of humanity. Luckily for me, this otherworldliness didn’t scare me off. In fact, I had been to this realm before — I had worked the graveyard shift.

That’s right, Dave worked the graveyard shift. What did he do on during the middle of the night? Well, he cleaned your floors. Maybe not yours personally, but he cleaned the floors of a number of businesses around town. He had a schedule he rotated through. Typically showing up after everyone had gone home for the day. He had a key, and his own equipment. We would come in, sweep the floors, empty the trash, and then he would work his magic as he polished the floors.

Dave took a lot of pride in his work, and he did his best to teach me how to do a good job too. Unfortunately I never got a chance to run the big equipment, which was when Dave performed his serious magic. When he was done polishing those floors, he would always look at them and smile. He knew he had gotten those floors as clean and shiny as they could. I remember a few times he imparted bits of magical wisdom to me.

He would say things like “They aren’t scheduled to have a deep waxing this week, but I really think this floor needs it now, and since I have the time, I am going to do it anyway.”

Or other times, after he got a floor polished to an amazing shine, and he was showing me how brilliant it was he would say “Most likely no one will notice tomorrow, and after the first few customers come in with dirty shoes you won’t be able to tell, but doesn’t that just look amazing right now?”

So why take so much pride in cleaning floors? Why put that extra effort into polishing them just right, putting down that extra coat of wax, or running the buffer over the floors one more time? Especially when no one will notice, and people will just scuff them up in a matter of minutes as soon as they get the chance? Well, that was because Dave is magic, and he wanted to use his magic to do the absolutely best he could.

He probably could have gotten away with doing less then his best, and no one would have known, well, no one but Dave. I think that is what it really comes down to. Many us may consider cleaning floors to be brainless work that we never really give any thought too, unless we notice that our floors need cleaning. But when I was working with Dave, I realized that it makes no difference what you are doing, it is how you do it. You can bring passion, commitment and depth of skill to anything you do, and you can even bring your magic.

So what is this magic? I still don’t know that I completely understand it honestly. Dawn and I just finished watching Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.  Our whole family really enjoyed it.  In the end Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman) had to finally believe that she has magic in herself to save the store.  I think that is really it.  We all have magic in us, if we are willing to believe and use that magic.

So we all really have two choices:

1. Are we going to believe in and use our magic?
2. When we do, what will we use it for?

While not everyone can be fabulous at everything, I do believe we have a number of opportunities to express our magic.  We can choose from one or more of those opportunities and create magic and wonder, or keep our magic bottled up and never brighten the world.

I am glad there are people like Dave who enjoy cleaning floors, that isn’t something I enjoy, but I don’t discount someone who does.  A lot of people probably wouldn’t enjoy what I do.  I know people who think they might enjoy what someone else does, because it looks easy or glamorous - grass is always greener and all - but often times when they get a chance they find the ease boring and the glamor over powering.  Other times it is the person who is doing it who makes it look easy, or they bring the glamor to what they do.

Sometimes believing in ourselves, and then tapping into that magic can be scary.  That would seem counter intuitive that we be scared to accomplish our potential, but that has been my experience, that I worry I am not ready, or what might happen when I do.  This is why it is often easier for those around us to see our potential and encourage us, and while that helps, I don’t think that is ever enough.  To truly tap into our magic and our potential we must discover it ourselves.

I sincerely hope Dave is still out there working his magic.   I actually saw him years later.  I was out late one night, and riding my bike through a shopping center parking lot that was closed, and I saw him busy cleaning the  floor, making sure it looked marvelous.  When I think about him, I take a moment to look at the floors where I am and wonder if maybe he cleaned them, or maybe it was someone else just as magic as him, who took the time to make sure that floor looked great.

Believe in yourself, take pride in what you do, and what ever it is your are doing, do it well.  Focus on what you are doing and leave everything else to someone else.