Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

I ran my motorcycle’s gas tank dry again yesterday, and once again the “reserve” tank didn’t seem to make any difference.  I think there’s something wrong with the reserve fuel system in some way.

However, I did get pay close attention to how many gallons it took to fill the tank back up and how many miles I’d gone since the last fill.  It looks like I got 39.7 miles per gallon on the last fill.  I had been assuming I was getting better gas mileage than that, since I’d heard I should expect something in the 45 to 55 range for this bike.  Maybe I’m getting lower mileage because my riding has been all in the city, or maybe I’m more of a leadfoot (hand?) than I should be, or maybe the bike just needs a tuneup.  I’m not sure.  Regardless, it’s a whole lot better than the 15 mpg that our Dodge Dakota gets (on a good day).

It is nice to have a gas station receipt that’s smaller than 10 bucks, though.  It costs about 50 to fill up the truck these days.

This past Friday (June 22, 2007), I set new record bicycle commute times in both directions!

My home-to-work ride was 27:46, better than my previous best time of 29:52 (set in October 2006).

My work-to-home ride was 32:51, significantly better than my previous personal best of 36:13 (also set in October 2006).

I’m impressed with myself that I got “personal bests” in both directions on the same day. On the way to work, I had good light karma, and very little wind, and apparently lots of energy. On the way home, it was super windy, but for most of the ride, the wind was at my back!

The bike I built last summer for commuting is definitely a lot faster than my Giant Revive, too. That helps a lot. Regardless, I still want an even nicer bike. I’ve got my eye on a Trek 7.5 FX (shown above). I talked to the owner of the local bike shop this morning and tried to convince him that he should give away a bike for Bike to Work Day. He didn’t seem too thrilled by the concept.

And yes today was Bike to Work day. I’m definitely not setting any records, since I stopped at two different “breakfast stations” on the way to pick up free stuff. And they’re both out of my way. But the weather’s nice and cool, at least. Hopefully it won’t rain on me this afternoon.

I’ve had a really good weekend. Busy, but good.

Friday night I picked Beth up at a party in Denver (I didn’t really want to go) and then we went out to Limon Peruvian restaurant, which I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while.  I had scallops, and they were divine.  I love it when I find a restaurant that can make a really good scallops dish.  The food was reasonably priced, I thought, but the drinks broke our budget, that’s for sure.  I think we spent as much on 3 drinks as we did on our entrees!  Anyhow, we’d both go back.  (Oh, one side note, even though we had shrimp and mango ceviche there, it didn’t really satisfy my craving for ceviche and I’ve been thinking of trying to make some of my own.  I’d want to be sure to find some grade 1 fresh fish, though.)

Saturday, I went to breakfast at Dot’s Diner in Boulder (where I spent several nights working on a shoot for a short film called “Flat Dog Dreams”) and had huevo ranchero.  Just one egg.  That’s the small order, and it was plenty.  Then I went to an outdoor art showing, which was really enjoyable.  I think I was one of the first people there, but I knew it was going to be a hot day, and wanted to go see it in the morning.

After that, I had some time to waste, so I drove out to the Boulder airport and went on a glider ride!  You see, I’ve been thinking of getting back into flying again, now that I’ve got some money saved up in my rainy day fund.  And I wanted to see if I still enjoyed it.  I did.  Now I just need to decide if I really have the time to do it.  After my glider ride (where the instructor said it seemed like I hadn’t really lost my touch, even though it’s been 6 years since I was in the cockpit) I drove way the hell out to Watkins, where I took in an airshow.  That was cool, not literally (it was damn hot out on the tarmac), but nice to see an air show.  There were parachutists, aerobatics, and then I left when they brought out the F-15, which I believe is the loudest plane on the planet.

Then I drove home and played D&D with my geek buddies until about 10 PM.  Our esteemed game master, Chris, is moving to Utah and that was our next-to-last game with him.  Maybe he’ll be back again someday.  We’ll see.

Sunday I got up and rode my bicycle to the supermarket to get some stuff I needed for the day’s project, which was to shoot a new short film.  I won’t go into detail on the film yet, but it’s something I wrote months ago and am just now getting around to producing.  It may be some time before this one’s finished, as it’s going to include some animation and my animator has been very busy lately.  Then I watched a little TV, made some supper (bison and snow peas stir fry), and captured all the footage we shot today.  After mowing the lawn, I then made some potent mojitos, one of which I’m enjoying quite a bit right now.

So, I had a nice weekend, and did lots of fun stuff.  I hope yours was as good!

Roger Ebert noted that the AFI has published a new list of the top 100 American films of all time.  Here’s what Ebert has to say about the list:
:: rogerebert.com :: Commentary :: AFI 100: ‘Kane’ still number one (xhtml)

And here is the list, copied from his article.  I’d really like to make an honest and serious effort to see all the films on this list that I haven’t seen before.  But some of them I’ve never even heard of!

How many of the top 100 have you seen?  I’m at 53 right now, by a quick count.
AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE’S GREATEST MOVIES

1. “Citizen Kane” (1941)
2. “The Godfather” (1972)
3. “Casablanca” (1942)
4. “Raging Bull” (1980)
5. “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952)
6. “Gone With the Wind” (1939)
7. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962)
8. “Schindler’s List” (1993)
9. “Vertigo” (1958)
10. “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
11. “City Lights” (1931)
12. “The Searchers” (1956)
13. “Star Wars” (1977)
14. “Psycho” (1960)
15. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
16. “Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
17. “The Graduate” (1967)
18. “The General” (1927)
19. “On the Waterfront” (1954)
20. “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)
21. “Chinatown” (1974)
22. “Some Like It Hot” (1959)
23. “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)
24. “E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)
25. “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962)
26. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939)
27. “High Noon” (1952)
28. “All About Eve” (1950)
29. “Double Indemnity” (1944)
30. “Apocalypse Now” (1979)
31. “The Maltese Falcon” (1941)
32. “The Godfather, Part II” (1974)
33. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)
34. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937)
35. “Annie Hall” (1977)
36. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)
37. “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946)
38. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948)
39. “Dr. Strangelove” (1964)
40. “The Sound of Music” (1965)
41. “King Kong” (1933)
42. “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967)
43. “Midnight Cowboy” (1969)
44. “The Philadelphia Story” (1940)
45. “Shane” (1953)
46. “It Happened One Night” (1934)
47. “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951)
48. “Rear Window” (1954)
49. “Intolerance” (1916)
50. “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001)
51. “West Side Story” (1961)
52. “Taxi Driver” (1976)
53. “The Deer Hunter” (1978)
54. “M*A*S*H” (1970)
55. “North by Northwest” (1959)
56. “Jaws” (1975)
57. “Rocky” (1976)
58. “The Gold Rush” (1925)
59. “Nashville” (1975)
60. “Duck Soup” (1933)
61. “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941)
62. “American Graffiti” (1973)
63. “Cabaret” (1972)
64. “Network” (1976)
65. “The African Queen” (1951)
66. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)
67. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966)
68. “Unforgiven” (1992)
69. “Tootsie” (1982)
70. “A Clockwork Orange” (1971)
71. “Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
72. “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994)
73. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969)
74. “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
75. “In the Heat of the Night” (1967)
76. “Forrest Gump” (1994)
77. “All the President’s Men” (1976)
78. “Modern Times” (1936)
79. “The Wild Bunch” (1969)
80. “The Apartment” (1960)
81. “Spartacus” (1960)
82. “Sunrise” (1927)
83. “Titanic” (1997)
84. “Easy Rider” (1969)
85. “A Night at the Opera” (1935)
86. “Platoon” (1986)
87. “12 Angry Men” (1957)
88. “Bringing Up Baby” (1938)
89. “The Sixth Sense” (1999)
90. “Swing Time” (1936)
91. “Sophie’s Choice” (1982)
92. “Goodfellas” (1990)
93. “The French Connection” (1971)
94. “Pulp Fiction” (1994)
95. “The Last Picture Show” (1971)
96. “Do the Right Thing” (1989)
97. “Blade Runner” (1982)
98. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942)
99. “Toy Story” (1995)
100. “Ben-Hur” (1959)

My El Cheapo camcorder (the Samsung SC-D365, with an average Amazon.com rating of 3/5) has crapped out on me.  I can’t capture digital video recorded on it without losing timecode every minute or so, so whenever I try to capture a segment of video, I end up with lots of minute long segments separated by 5 to 20 seconds of gap.

Once I realized this, last Thursday night, I went to Best Buy and bought a new, much nicer, camcorder.  It’s a Canon HV20 (average Amazon.com rating of 4.5/5), and so far I’m extremely happy with it.  It can record (and, of course, play back) HDV.  And even though it’s just a one-chip imager, it’s got very nice picture quality.  It’s got a number of features my old camcorder didn’t have, too, such as a 24P mode and manual control over lots of things (like white balance, aperture, exposure length, etc.).  And it’s got a remote control which may be handy at some point.  Admittedly, it’s a little bit flimsy and lightweight, and it doesn’t have an XLR input for audio, but it’s a consumer camera so that’s par for the course.  I guess it better be a big step up since it retails for over 3 times the price as my Samsung.

I also decided to go for the highest end purchase protection plan (or whatever they call it).  The main selling point for me was that it lasts for 4 years, and covers accidental damage including things like dropping it by accident into the Colorado River.  Given that bad things seem to happen to my cameras, I thought getting some insurance for this purchase would be worth it, especially considering the camera cost almost as much as my motorcycle!  Usually the Best Buy insurance plan thing is a bad deal, but the last time I bought one it paid off.
I decided to shoot my latest documentary film on HDV 1080i, even though most people will watch it on DVD (which will waste most of those pixels).  But I figure a couple years from now, the BluRay vs. HD DVD war will be over, and my family will start to get HDTVs.  If not sooner.  Plus, the next generation, such as my niece Kristina, to whom this documentary will be dedicated, won’t likely know of a world prior to HDTV.

I also broke down and bought the upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2.  Not cheap!  It’s $500 to upgrade to the latest suite, but there are just so many new features that I think it’ll be worth it.  Besides, my film collaborators and clients will be using FCS2 eventually, and the upgrade price isn’t going to go down, so I’ve got to buy the upgrade sooner or later.  So I just bit the bullet and did it now.  A couple things I’m looking forward to playing with: the Color application, improvements to audio editing ease-of-use, and lots of new features in nearly all the parts of the suite.

This is the funniest prank I’ve read about in a while.  I’m tempted to send these guys some money to help them keep doing what they do.

Wired Science – Wired Blogs

Here’s a photo that shows one of the many things Beth and I did Saturday:

My coworkers and I were discussing this in line at Qdoba a couple days ago.  When I heard Libby had been convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison, I thought to myself, “Well, all his legal team has to do is draw the appeals process out long enough so Bush can pardon him late next year, near the end of his term.”

But an astute coworker pointed out that Bush appears to genuinely care about his “legacy” and think that history will smile upon him.  And if he’s really concerned about his legacy, he won’t commit any lame duck cop-outs.  We’ll see, I guess.  But my money’s on Scooter getting pardoned before December 2008.  Anyone want to take that bet?
When Pardons Turn Political – New York Times

I can’t say this really upsets me too much.  Personally, I like Wild Oats more, and I’m afraid that the merger with Whole Foods would make them suck.

FTC Objects to Whole Foods-Wild Oats Merger (Kroger Co. (KR), Wild Oats Markets Inc. (OATS), Safeway Inc. (SWY), Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), (US501044), (US931142)) | SmartMoney.com