James Whitt's Blog

While I was over Justin’s place this weekend, for some reason I remembered an awesome Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Preview Spoof that I had seen on Talk Soup on E!.  The preview was pretty funny and Talk Soup had turned it into a homosexual preview which was pretty funny.  Took me about 20 minutes, but I finally found it.  Decided to upload it to the site so others can see it.

Since we are going to be at a more permanent residence, we have decided to get a land line now in addition to our cell phones.  Called Cincinnati Bell up and they have turned the phone line on today.  Our house number is (513) 731-3562.  It’s active, but since we’re not living there yet, you probably will only reach us after work when we’re working at the house.  We’re taking our answering machine / phone there tomorrow so you will be able to leave messages for us.

Also, we finally picked out the colors for the master bedroom tonight.  You can download the pdf of the specifics here.  We decided to go with a blue color set for the bedroom.  The walls will be Morning Breeze Flat, ceiling will be Diamond Light Flat, trim will be Polar Bear Eggshell, and the doors will be Morning Breeze Eggshell.  We’re going to stop by Home Depot tomorrow to pick out samples to verify our choices, and if everything goes well, we’re going to start painting the ceiling.

Update (01/06/06):  Oops, through some little issues with Cincinnati Bell, the phone number is actually (513) 731-3562.  I also changed it above.  Pretty nice phone number for me to memorize since my cell is (513) 885-3562. 

Added the popular photo management software, Gallery, to my blog.  Spent a couple hours this morning getting it installed and configured.  This was not for the faint of heart.  I would say someone with moderate programming skills would be able to do this.  I have been working on the css of the photo gallery.  Not perfect, but good enough to add it to my blog now.

There is a photo link in the side bar now, so you can get to the album link from there.  Quick link to photo gallery. 

Kristin and I seen the Phantom of the Opera at the Arnoff last night.  The show was very very good.  We both enjoyed it a lot.  We were really impressed that they were able to keep a lot of the same show effects that they had in New York.  Really just a good time.  We were sitting close to the top of the theatre, but we could see just fine non the less.

I do have a minor gripe about a disturbance during the performance.  The problem was a woman that was sitting a row below us being on her cell phone.  She was not talking on the cell phone, but was constantly using the text messaging features.  Since we were in a dark theatre, it had the same effect of someone bringing in a flashlight and showing it around.  Very distracting and very bothersome.  If people really did not want to see it, then why do they come.  You could tell this was a family event, so I think she was being dragged along, even though she was in her 20′s.  It was so bothersome for the people sitting next to her, that they moved down the row to two open seats.

After that disturbance, I realized that there are more benefits to higher priced tickets than just a better view.  As I see it, the higher the price to go to an event, the less of a chance someone will be sitting in the seats due to the higher cost.  Earlier this year I thought that prices were a bit high for people to see theatre, but now I think I understand the price better.  In a perfect world, the price should be cheaper for more people to be able to see it, but in reality this would just create more circumstances of people coming that really don’t want to be there (mostly through families or groups).

As a lot of local newspapers have reported in our area, a pretty spectacular light show that someone put up at their house was recently turned off because of major traffic that it has caused.  He had about 25,000 lights.

The lights would like up (blink) to a song that he was broadcasting on a special FM frequency that could be heard around his house.  It was running every night from 6:00 to 10:00.  You really could not understand how awesome it was without watching it.  I happen to be working at the same company that he is, and he did send out a video of it (which happens to also be on some news sites). I also found another video floating around of a different song that was played.
Wizards of Winter Light Show in Windows Media Format
Jingle All the Way Light Show in Windows Media Format

I think an awesome alternative would be for the Cincinnati Zoo to bring this man in to do the setup at the Festival of Lights.  It would quickly become one of the Zoo’s largest attractions at the time.  As many people could see them, and it would really benefit the zoo.

The show took him about an hour to program each minute of the display.  I’m going to look into more on how he did it so I can post it so others can have fun trying on a smaller scale. 

Here are some of the additional articles about it:
http://www.wkrc.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=F329B3CF-EE51-41BB-95E1-43EF924CEA66
http://www.fox19.com/Global/story.asp?S=4211867
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/5482009/detail.html