Don’t lose your marbles (though if you do, there’s Pepto-MAX)

Dirty Jobs this week visited a marble factory. Yeah, that kind of marble—the little round things you used to lose by the dozens (and maybe even put in your mouth). Apparently there are marbles that sell for hundreds of dollars. Who knew?

Today I explored the creative possibilities of Windows Live Movie Maker, a pretty decent video editor not included in the default Windows 7 install because of the EU. I had had a few audio “commercials” kicking around from an English project I did last year, so I decided they would make a good excuse for me to try out WLMM. It was pretty easy to use, and the results are decent enough. It outputs HD to YouTube by default using a built-in direct-to-YouTube uploader, so that was pretty cool.

Anyway, here’s what I made:

These are nothing special. I just did some really basic image processing using the GIMP, which I’m finding more and more does everything for which I ever used Photoshop. If only they could get rid of that infernal toolbar palette—didn’t they learn anything from the hideousness that was Office 2004 for Mac (not from experience, but from many, many user testimonials do I know this was a nuisance)?

I’ve been spending more and more time in Windows 7; I thought I wouldn’t use it too much considering that Ubuntu works so well on this laptop. On the other hand, I’ve been spending more and more time here. I have to admit, Microsoft really hit it out of the park with this release. I’m no Microsoft basher myself, and though I prefered Ubuntu to Windows XP, that’s merely because the comparison was between an ancient OS and a very up-to-date one. I actually like Windows 7 and Ubuntu about equally; each has its strong points.

I think I’ll be saying in Windows 7 for a while at least. Maybe I’ll make some more videos of the other two remaining audio commercials. And remember, if you lose your marbles, be sure to take some Pepto-MAX.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: Oh, how I am glad to be rid of thee

I do this all the time: I leave papers until the last minute. Today was cutting it quite fine even for this habit, though: The paper was due at 5:00 PM, and I began it around 12:00 PM. I also took about half an hour off for lunch, though I only did that because I was reasonably sure I would finish the paper in time. I did. I got it in at around 4:50 PM.

To clarify where I’m coming from, of course I didn’t actually do the entire paper today. Most of the actual preparation for a paper (for me, at least) happens before a single word is written…er…typed. So I ended up reading Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener for the first time at about one o’clock this morning and thought for a while about the problem. I was still thinking about it before my alarm went off at noon today. I finally came up with what I was going to say relatively late, at around 12:30 PM. And, spending the rest of the time writing (excluding the half an hour in the cafeteria), I bloviated all about Bartleby.

I am so SICK of Bartleby! I suppose I felt sorry for him when I first read the story, but after paging through the thing looking for evidence, it lost a lot of its luster. Plus, it’s Melville, so it’s not like the thing couldn’t have been about a quarter its length without the actual plot suffering any—remember, it was Herman Melville who wrote Moby-Dick. After that, anything’s possible. I mean, there are some people who never finished that book before they died, and they started when they were infants!

Other than that, I haven’t accomplished anything of real import this week. I just wanted to have a go at Bartleby. Though if he were here, he would most likely say, “I would prefer that you didn’t.”