Philip and Jenny Cain: InspiredMumblings

I’m starting to think that learning French for our Paris portion of the trip will be easier than communicating with the locals in London and Dublin. Did you know a pint of Guinness is often called an Arthurs?

• British English: It’s a balmy 21 outside. Grab your chum, get some wonga from the hole in the wall, toss your bag in the boot and go fill up the petrol. If you’re heading to the cinema, you’ll need about 7 quid.
• Irish English: It’s a soft old day at 21 outside. Grab your head, get a Danny boy from the drink link, toss your bagáiste in the boot and go fill up the petrol. If you’re heading to the pictures, you’ll need about 9 quid.
• American English: It’s a mild 70 degrees outside. Grab your friend, get some some cash from the ATM, toss your luggage in the trunk and go fill up the gas. If you’re heading to the movie theater, you’ll need about 14 bucks.

Don’t miss the Phoenix landing today (May 25) at 3pm Arizona time (6pm EDT). NASA is broadcasting it live on their NASA TV site, and I’m sure the cable news channels will be covering it. The Phoenix is attempting to land in the northern part of Mars (relative to Earth, think northern Canada). It is landing on the largest collection of ice outside of the Martian poles, an area that scientists have dubbed “Green Valley.”

The purpose of the mission is to search for evidence of microbial life, something that the rovers in the more arid regions of Mars haven’t found.

Link to NASA TV

A Flickr set of the late great Magic Carpet Golf just made an appearance on BoingBoing. It really is sad that it’s going to become a parking lot. There are some pretty good pictures in the set. I remember one time we climbed up to the top of the Tiki Head and dropped our golf balls, trying for par on the nearest hole.

Dianne Stevens says: “When I heard the Magic Carpet miniature golf course here in Tucson was closing, I thought about that big Tiki Head and wondered what would become of it. It looks like it’s destined for the landfill, but I thought you’d enjoy the photos.”

Flickr set (via BoingBoing)

I’m disabling the comment moderation feature. This means first-time commenters should be able leave a comment and it will appear instantly. I had been policing the comments because of a recent spam outbreak, but I think it’s under control now. So, no more waiting a few hours for me to check my email and see that you’ve left a comment!

Also, with the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, we now support gravatars in the comments. See their website for more details on how to have the same avatar display on all gravatar enabled sites.

What is the best course of action to take after getting salmonella food poisoning? Jenny had a caesar salad from Beyond Bread (the one on Speedway) yesterday. And then she felt like death for almost 20 hours.

Should we alert them? Should we sue them? Or is it so common that we should just not care? It’s not like she intentionally ordered raw food. She ordered a chicken caesar salad. The chicken appeared cooked, but if it wasn’t, that’s the fault of Beyond Bread. The other possibility is that they use raw eggs in their ceaser dressing, which I will protest if I find to be true.

The other half of the salad is sitting in our fridge, mocking us with its bacterial appendages.

This weekend I have the privilege of directing the worship services at Pantano. It’s a “Students Weekend” so there are teenagers everywhere, but I don’t mind! As director, I have to make sure everything is in its place and that everyone knows all of their cues. Not as exciting as directing Indiana Jones 4, but I think I can say tonight was fun. The Sunday services will be interesting because the student worship team has never had to deal with setting up in the very short amount of time available between our traditional and main services.

I have to say, I’m impressed with the professionalism exhibited by the student worship team. They came in knowing their parts, they rehearsed without a hitch, and I didn’t hear any complaining! As an audio engineer, it’s common to hear a lot of complaining… to be fair, it’s common to complain as an audio engineer as well. Hehe. The students’ attitudes and focus on worship was unmistakable.

It’s also fun be creative director because I have at least some final authority on the creative contents of the services. I let the students bring in their own epileptic-shock-inducing background videos to display with the lyrics. Fun times! I heard a little bird say that it was too loud, but I think that’s fairly absurd, considering I was mixing the sound as I mix sound every week, and nearly every instrument was digital/electric (which means I have full control of the volume). Even so, I pulled out the ol’ dB meter just to appease the masses.

It’s nice to mix things up; a lot of pieces to my job are mind-numbingly repetitive. I think that’s why I so eagerly accept web projects (that’s the other half of my job); there’s always something new to learn and some new technology I can utilize (the audio industry has new tech, sure, but most of it will definitely break the bank). Here’s to mixing things up!

I just found a fun site that shows real-time geolocated Twitter updates on a 3D globe. Says TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid:

TwittEarth, is eye-candy at its finest - a mesmerizing and mostly useless diversion that sticks you in space and whips you around the globe to see a new geo-located tweet every ten seconds. Tweets are accompanied by small, goofy icons that remain static on the map, eventually providing an interesting representation of usage distribution.

And I must say, mesmerizing is the keyword. What gives it the global chatroom feel is the ability to sign in and post your own geolocated tweets from within TwittEarth. Within seconds, you’ll (and any other poor soul wasting his time watching this stuff) will see your tweet popup from your location on Earth.

via TechCrunch

I’m sorry I had to expose you to that Christopher Walken hilarity, but he’s just so addictively funny. I just realized that, as of this month, I’ve been blogging on philipandjenny.com for 3 years. My first post (on April 1, 2005) mentioned the WordPress/Google-spam controversy, and my second post had this wonderfully sacrilicious quote:

But, in defense of my cool stuff, I use all of it for God’s glory some of the time, and some of it for God’s glory all of the time.

Wow, Phil. Very introspective.

The Past
Before InspiredElectrons, I kept a short-lived blog at blogger.com, but I think I hosed it at some point, and all future generations are left with is this mysterious post.

The Present
In January 2007, Jenny joined in the fun and we renamed the blog to InspiredMumblings, which I suppose was less technical (and therefore less scary?). Since then, it’s been fun mixing my random geek/tech/theology/political topics with her very much more sane personal updates and photoblogging.

The Future
Since I have no idea what the future will be like, I can’t accurately describe it; instead, we’ll do something completely random and make this section a tribute to the greatest hero of our time, Charlton Heston, who died Saturday. And who knows, maybe the future does hold something to look forward to, like being hunted by talking apes.

Hayee… you guyees… you’ll… NEvuh believe… the SNL clip… I suaw… on Hulu!

In other news, it’s great to see a comedian who’s comfortable enough to surround himself with several horrible impersonators.