It's The End of The Year As We Know It, And I Feel Fine

The other day, I shared a link talking about which Beatles songs were streamed the most on Spotify. Today, I found a link for which ones are the least popular. I will give you a hint that the one at the bottom of the list is the last song on Abbey Road. And the one just above that is one Ringo sang on the Past Masters Vol 1 album.

A mountain scene in the middle of Florida swamps? A bit of Disney magic on display in Animal Kingdom.

And another mountain scene, this one patterned after the Himalayas.

Around the base of the mountain is a Himalayan village. Disney's attention to detail is amazing.

Disney may have their ways to make the world smaller (including It's a Small World), but Steven wright was correct when he posited, "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

BY the way, all of today's links were ones I saved from past days. I didn't find anything to share in today's Yahoo, or Buzzkill, or Vox, or Consumerist.

I don't know what you think, but to me, this is one ugly rug. Is it stained or something? Anyway, it is the Aberdine by Surya if you like it and want to purchase it at the bargain basement price of $175.

Are you planning on getting up early for your annual bake-a-thon on New Year's Day and whipping up some breakfast bread for your loving family? No, me neither. Just in case, though, I found an article on 12 Cinnamon Roll and Breakfast Bread Recipes to Make Your Head Swirl. Want some Chocolate-Almond Giant Cinnamon Bun Cake, or maybe some No-Knead Challah Cinnamon Rolls? No? OK, can I tempt you with Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Cream Cheese Icing? A little less sugary is the Cinnamon-Raisin Swirl Bread. Well, you can see all these and more at the link above.

I didn't share this before Christmas, but we all give gifts for different reasons throughout the year, right? This article has some ideas for various DIY gifts. Coasters, ways to use crystals you have laying around (really? A lot of people have those?), washi tape, custom hand-painted mugs. Anyway, the one I thought sounded interesting was no so much DIY as DIS (Do It Shutterfly). A custom phone case using a photo you select.

Wow, I am majorly late today. First, a final CoV for the year.

And finally, a wish for a great new year for you and yours, and a Tiny Tim-ish statement to close it out. "God bless us, every one!"

Submitted For Your Approval

In the Epcot area for France, you can guess that everything centers around the Eiffel Tower. Here, you can see it overshadowing the town as seen from a bridge entering the area.

And a little closer, you can see the buildings around the Tower.

Since we were there around the holiday season, there were several giant ornaments with city scenes in them. Here is one for the Eiffel Tower.

I liked the feel of this scene. It looks like a painting, but it was actually on a t-shirt.

Yesterday, I was on the way home from the auto parts store and I pulled in behind a car at the light. I hadn't noticed that it was a car with motorized side mirrors until.... I watched as the driver's side mirror extended and suddenly, the dude in the car was looking back at me with the mirror. I started laughing because it felt like a TV or movie moment where nothing moved except the mirror and suddenly, you see someone watching you. Well, I thought it was funny.

It's coming! You know what I'm talking about. The annual Twilight Zone marathon on SYFY on New Year's Day. Gizmodo has a list of all the episodes. As I looked through it, I saw one episode (out of 156) that I do not remember ever having seen (The Encounter). I may try to catch it.

After Christmas, don't you always want to play with the new toys that the family received?

In some sad news, did you hear that Meadowlark Lemon passed away? I know that the Globetrotters were (are?) still funny after he retired, but for me, the Clown Prince of Basketball was the best.

I am not finding many links today, and I don't want to prolong the blog post beyond our normal time together. I am sure we will be together again before the new year begins. Have a Tremendous Tuesday.

Star Wars, And More

We saw the new Star Wars flick over the weekend. It was really good. We wanted to see it before we heard any of the spoilers. If you plan to see it and enjoy any surprises that might exist, you'd better hurry. Yahoo rated it as one of the 40 best of the year. In fact, it was one of only two from the list that I saw this year.

And then, I saw this article about the worst movies of 2015 (according to Yahoo). I have only seen one of them (and that was on TV), and I haven't even heard of more than half of them.

There is apparently one movie that is perhaps the worst in history. It sounds like only seven people have ever seen the Jerry Lewis written and directed film The Day The Clown Cried. It has been donated to the National Film Registry. If you read the article, you will see enough to convince you that it is not a film you would want to see.

Have you ever been to Florence, Italy? No? Well, the closest thing to that around these parts would be either The Venetian in Las Vegas or Epcot at Walt Disney World. Personally, I would prefer WDW, but that's just me. First, I saw this shot of one of the little towers from across the lagoon (lake?).

We then made our way around the lake (lagoon?) to see the tower close up.

As we left the area, I looked back and caught that same tower with the building architecture below it and the reflection of the sun on the water.

$1 billion in 12 days? That's crazy. And it didn't happen 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." That reminds me, did I tell you that we saw Star Wars over the weekend?

For much less that that, a man in Switzerland spent one year and something less than $10,000 to build a 32 inch long model of the Millennium Falcon. You can see more photos here. This story reminds me to mention that we saw Star Wars over the weekend and liked it.

Last night, we saw Straight No Chaser, an a cappella group, in concert. You can hear one of the songs that they sang, Movie Medley, on youtube. We had a great time. Thanks for Saleman Son and family for this gift.

It is time to get to work. Oh wait, let's see this first.

NOW, it's time to do some work. I've got a meeting in less than an hour that I have not yet prepared for. We can visit more another day. OK? Oh, and go see Star Wars, if I haven't mentioned that before.

Stirring Up Memories and Stirring Up Today's Comic

One of the rides we most enjoyed at Epcot was Test Track. Disney is very wise in how the stage the waiting line for rides and this one is no exception. My favorite part was they moved us into a room when we designed our own car. Here, you can see us making some design decisions, including gas mileage, engine power, external body shape, etc.

Once you finish the design, you save it on your wrist band and it is used as part of the ride displays to see how well you did. This shot shows what our car would look like.

After that diversion, we were finally loaded onto the cars. The girls were so excited.

Following the ride, we moved into an area where you could use your designed vehicle to interact with various displays. Here, the girls are posing in front of their car in a winter wonderland.

How does it compare to Radiator Springs Racers in California Adventure? I like the Disneyland ride a little better because it involves a race between two cars, and the ride features several characters and scenes from the Cars movie. However, the Test Track race is a little faster, which is cool.

I saw a link I wanted to investigate, but my company blocked it. It suggested that a group of students signed a petition to block the radio from playing "White Christmas" because it is racist. I imagine you are saying, as I did, that the song is about a snowy day, not people. The creator of the petition notes that only white snow is acceptable. Yellow and brown snow is bad. I want to research this at home, It cannot be for real.

This Pull-apart Christmas Tree Bread looked so yummy in the photo that I brought up the article. And it is made from store-bought pizza dough. It is covered in butter and garlic. Yumm. Unfortunately for me, they say to put a small piece of cheese inside each ball. Now why did they go and ruin it for me?

Oh, I just came across a majorly cool page. You can see all the family's Christmas cards here, but they are all based on famous Beatles albums. Here are a few:

I know, right?

No, I STILL have not seen the new Star Wars movie. Of course, if you know me, you know that I will still use it as a subject for a comic. No spoilers here.

And with that, I will bid adieu. Oh hey. If you are ever in the Flagstaff area around Christmas, you might consider attending the North Pole Experience with your kids. My family just got back from it and they had a great time. OK, make it a Wonderful Wednesday.

What Was I Thinking?

In AZ, traffic signs have been influenced by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here is one example:

Another AZ sign read "Aggressive driving is the path to the dark side". In UT, one of the road signs said, "Be a rebel, not a clone, put down the phone". Another read "Texting and driving leads to the dark side". A third showed "Yoda says buckle up you must". And a fourth displayed "May the seatbelt be with you". Have you seen anything like those in your state?

During the holidays, do you light your own fireplace? I will admit that we do not. I cannot remember the last time we burned a fire in the fireplace. OK, so if you don't have your own fire, do you ever show a video or turn on a channel showing a burning fireplace? We don't, but I found some info about those yule log videos. They have been around since 1966, but they are constantly updated. Why? Better quality prints? New technology? Read the article to get the deets for yourself.

I found it. The perfect gift y'all can give me. Sure, it is a little far from family, but you could come visit whenever you wanted. Buttermilk Falls Estate in Rhinebeck, New York, about 2 hours north of NYC, is for sale right now at $9 million. It consists of 9 buildings including 2 guesthouses. You can all pool your money and I would understand if I only got this one gift. I can hardly wait for Christmas morning. Read more about the house here.

It is a clever concept, but the poor editing job detracted from the end result. What am I talking about? An article teased about photos of presidents with man buns in their hair. I have shown the Jimmy Carter photo below, but it includes Kennedy, Lincoln, Washington, Nixon and others. Whoever added the extra hair did a really bad job at blending it in to look real. Maybe they wanted to be sure you knew the bun was not original? I don't know. You can look at and judge the photos in the article.

Here is an iPhone show I captured while waiting in line for Big Thunder Mountain in Magic Kingdom.

And I liked this mining chart for the ride. Don't my arms look dainty?

I try to take interesting photos, and I almost always have a central focus in the shot, but I don't have any idea why I took this one. I suppose it might have been the geometric shape back behind the fountain. I guess it could have been trying for reflections in the pool. I share it today to show that my photo collection does include some duds (not that you would have doubted that anyway).

More Star Wars-related CoV is a great way to end today's post.

Thanks for spending some time with me here when you could have been out shopping during the last 2 days before Christmas. See you soon.

Christmas Countdown 2015 (T-Minus 4 Days)

Hurry. There may still be time to pick up the gift that will make everyone happy. The NoPhone. Read the details of what it does not offer here.

How will you pay for it, though? Fear not, I have got you covered. You were tired of your current job anyway, right? Check out the book I found on Amazon this morning.

On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. I took the family to that memorial one year and it was quite somber.

We have spoken before about how I save some images as inspiration. I liked this shot of the NYC skyline in these bright colors surrounded by the white of the canvas. No, I am not sure what I will do with it yet, but since it made me look twice, I captured it.

When Disney bought the Star Wars series a few years ago, did you think it was a good investment or a poor one. I thought it was a smart move, but regardless of what any of us thought, this weekend showed it was probably a wise purchase. Star Wars: The Force Awakens made over $500 million its first weekend ($238 million in the US). And they have the rights to make five more movies. I have not seen it yet, so now, the challenge is to avoid spoilers until I can get to a theater. Did you see it yet? What did you think?

MBH also wants to see the movie, so maybe we can catch it during the holidays.

This is kind of cool, although I would rarely take the time to capture all the needed shots. A photographer takes for photos for a couple of hours as day turns into night, or night turns into morning, He then uses slices from the individual shots to build a cool blended photo of the scene. You can see more examples here.

Hopefully, you had a copy of this bingo card for the Democratic debate this past weekend.

When we go to Disneyland, I always try to catch the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln animatronic show on Main Street. So, when we were at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, I knew I wanted to see the Hall of the Presidents, which has all 43 of the presidents on the stage. Clinton, George W., and Obama all recorded their speeches themselves. Washington and Lincoln did not. In the current show, only Washington, Lincoln and Obama speak. I enjoyed it, but I think the grandeur of the overall presentation is better at Disneyland.

I don't think I have shared a photo of our first meal at WDW. Mine was BBQ at it was pretty good. It came just like this, so I was a little surprised. No, come on. Of course, I had started eating when MBH reminded me to capture a shot. As always, even though a beverage was included, I grabbed a water.

And that gets up off to a great start for the week of Christmas, 2015. If you are not ready, you have just three more days, so see if you can leave work early today. Tell them I said it was OK. And I will be back soon with more things to share.

Inspiration Comes in Many Forms

Oreos. Either you love them... or you don't. I like them, but my eye was still drawn to the challenge of turning them into Christmas trees, or lollipops. It's worth checking out, even if you are not surprised. Maybe they will inspire you to dress up your Oreos.

Are any of you taking a statistics course right now? You should see if they will let you pick a topic to research, such as the use of The Force in Star Wars movies. Which was used more often? Light side or Dark side of the Force? Did you guess Light? That is true in all episodes except Episode III. And who used it the most? And which skills of The Force were most often employed? Read more stats about The Force here.

I don't see that I have shared this link about the making of Captain EO with you yet. I always enjoyed seeing that film at Disneyland. I was glad they brought it back for a while. Anyway, some good stuff here.

I've been counting down your shopping days, so you have no excuse if you are not ready in seven days. Here is a little shopping guide to help you. They include items like a Kennedy campaign pin, a Trump campaign hat, cookie cutters shaped like states, Lincoln logs, and other stuff.

Many people have Thanksgiving-style food over the Christmas holiday. Here is an article ranking how the traditional side dishes taste over time. It boggles my mind that brussel sprouts have stayed consistently in the middle of the pack. There are other rankings in the article.

Did you see that the federal government will now require registration of most drones. Are you getting or giving one this holiday season? Just warn the recipient about this new regulation. Now, how do you pick which device to purchase? This article can help you. They have models ranging from $14 to over $3,100.

I have mentioned before that I often take inspiration photos to consider ways to showcase my own photographs. We went to a store the other day (Michaels?) and I liked these flower photos. I don't have any specific personal shots that could work, but I liked the way these flowers were cropped, so the photos are meant to remind me of that option.

This one shows me a way to use a vertical diptych to complete the full image. Again, I don't' know how or when I might use the idea, but it will help me remember it.

We have one more concert this year in Chorale, I really enjoy the singing, but I won't mind a break, either. So, let's look at what I think is the next trend in conducting.

Another week is in the books. Only six shopping days until Christmas. Only six workdays left until 2016. Countless days left until the election is behind us and no more political ads. Have a great weekend, my friends.

The Thrill is NOT gone

Popular Mechanics magazine must employ some brave people. They have published an article describing why Star Wars spaceships make no sense. They skewer TIE fighters, Droid Control Ships, and others. It was especially painful for me because I thought it was all real.

Here is the recent birthday girl. Judging from the photo, she is either enjoying watching the flame of the candle, or thinking, "What? Is this all I get from this restaurant for my birthday?" This was at one of the places in the African section of Epcot.

Here we all are standing outside of the restaurant where birthday girl got her cupcake.

And here is the inside. I have never been to Africa, but it does look like some markets I have seen in Asian countries.

Did I remind you that Christmas is coming? I could tell because I saw a goose getting fat the other day. Anyway, let's hear from someone who really understands the true meaning of the holiday, Real Housewives of New Jersey star Melissa Gorga.
My kids always get, you know, over-the-top gifts for Christmas. If we couldn't do it, we wouldn't do it. But we can because it's for Jesus' birthday and I'm willing to spend the money.

Awww, yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

OK, I have been around for a while, but I am not this old. On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful man-powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, N.C. I only know that because I read it this morning. Why? Do you remember when it happened?

Was there nothing good on TV last night? (Not true for me since last night was the season finale of Survivor. I correctly predicted who that would be. See yesterday's blog). Anyway, if there is nothing on that you want to see, then your tastes must be very specific. Check this chart. It depicts just how many scripted shows are on TV nowadays. And the trend only goes back to 2002. Just think how many more choices there are compared to your youth. This chart does not include reality shows either. We like almost any show that features Alton Brown.

I read that Michael Jackson's album, Thriller, has been certified 30 times multi-platinum for U.S. sales, marking more than 30 million sales in the States. He is also the most selling artist of all time with over 100 million sales for Thriller worldwide and 1 billion total sales to his credit. The RIAA said this is the first time an artist has crossed the 30X multi-Platinum plateau. That's a lot of sales. Did you buy it? Back then or more recently? If you don't remember the song, you can see the really good video here.

Do you ever ask Google how to do something? A lot of people do. Here were the top trending "How to" searches in 2015, according to Google:

1. How to use the new Snapchat update
2. How to solve a rubix cube
3. How to get legendary marks
4. How to play Charlie Charlie
5. How to upgrade to Windows 10
6. How to get the new emojis
7. How to authorize a computer on iTunes
8. How to hit the quan
9. How to lose 10 pounds in a week
10. How to use Apple Pay

Did you ask any of those questions? I did not, although #7 is the closest to the types of questions I ask. I did ask how to copy songs from iTunes on a Mac to iTunes on a PC so I could load them on a new iPhone.

I do not actually have a water softener on the house, but I do hear advertisements on TV and the radio fairly often, so I think about them occasionally.

We have our department Christmas party today. No, that is not true. We have our Winter Solstice Celebration this afternoon. It includes desserts and a White Elephant gift exchange.

Listen, people. Enjoy this season and be kind to someone today. Have a Thrilling Thursday and I will see you soon.