Robert Ames (.com!)

Obama: He’s not an Arab

Heard this on NPR this morning.

Here’s an extended cut, the bite behind the sound-bite.

Thank you Mr. McCain for your decency and honesty. I sincerely appreciate it and think that a respectful “tone” like the one you demonstrated is one of the most important issues for this presidential election.

I don’t want someone who thinks that suspending habeus corpus is the right thing to do. Or that ignoring subpoenas is the right thing to do. Or that warrantless wiretapping is the right thing to do.

I don’t want someone who (through inaction) tacitly condones these types of actions. I don’t want someone who sets that type of example. I want someone who sees something that is wrong and says: “No way.”

I think that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden have at least talked about significant improvements in the tone or character of U.S. government. One video that did a lot to convince me of this was this one. It’s a standard “political promise” video but look at what the topics he chooses to tackle are. “I will put any bill that I’m going to sign online for five days before I sign it.” Who is asking for that? Why is he offering that? Do you want that? That’s what I mean about setting the tone.

Y! Cool Thing

I had forgotten all about ycoolthing and started reading back through it. When I changed out my work computer, I semi-intentionally dumped all my RSS feeds, and instead just check ICHC and Ajaxian on a daily basis.

But it’s a good thing I did find ycoolthing again because they have a little flash app that does insta-chat, no login required. It’s over there →. I had been thinking about putting the old messenger presence button ( ) in my contact block, but now I can skip the intermediary and put in a whole friggin’ chat program.

This wonderful technology has been brought to you by the internet and the letter “R”.

Home Sweet Home

I told you October was coming soon. Closing was yesterday, we have a key and the seller will be moving out in about two weeks (she needs some time to pack things up and we’re able to be flexible in that regard). Now we need to find a fridge. And some couches. And a lawn mower. One thing at a time.

GBC Pro-Click Binding Machine Video Review

I meant to post this a while ago. My mom was asking me what I wanted for my birthday a while back and I couldn’t really think of anything. She pressed, and on a lark I said “a spiral binding machine” so I could spiral bind my music books. If there’s one thing I hate(d) it’s having to use paper clips and stuff to keep a music book open to the proper page. Especially difficult with the guitar, because you kindof need both hands on the instrument 99% of the time.

The Pro-Click is not exactly a spiral binding machine but the Pro-Click binding shares a lot of the positive qualities of spiral binding. It uses these little clicky-fish-spine things and a multi-hole puncher that will get all your pages punched (approximately the same spacings as standard comb-bindings). Under light usage it’s a fairly secure system, although if you do pull on the loops they will break open. Perhaps they could be closed permanently with some glue or the “gentle” application of heat. If you can find some spiral stuff of the appropriate width, the holes would work fine with that too, although I believe most spiral binding is graded at a slightly smaller width / distance between each hole.

GBC ProClick Video Review @ Yahoo! Video

Thank you mom and brother, as you can see it is uber-useful, and has increased my quality of life immensely … now I no longer fear playing any of my music because I know that the book will lay flat and I will easily be able to turn the pages at my leisure.

So, the reason that I did this video review in the first place was because I couldn’t find a video review of how this contraption worked. As an FYI, I also posted this to Amazon’s video reviews, kindof neat to compare and contrast how their system works with the other video sites.

Now, you can see how this binding machine works and decide for yourself if you think it would meet your needs. And for you, my faithful reader of this website, I give you the story behind the story. If you’re thinking of doing this yourself, you have to be aware of one thing:

Music books are generally ~12” tall
This personal binding machine only accepts ~11.5”
You do the math

This personal binder works great, takes up very little space, is solidly constructed, fits standard 8.5”x11” pages with ease, but it does have some issues with the oversized music books. I ended up taking all my books down to Kinkos and having them “rip” the spine, as well as make approximately 0.25” cuts on the top and bottom of each book. There was a very reasonable charge of ~$1.50 per cut and I was able to get all the books cut in two batches, so like $9.00 for (($1.50 x 3) x 2), but I wouldn’t want to have to add $5 to the price of each book in order to bind it.

If you plan on doing this at home semi-regularly, make sure you have access to a paper-cutter that fits your original paper size and can chomp the pages down to be ~11.5” on the side you want to bind. Ripping the spines can be done manually with an exacto or something and then cleaned up with the paper cutter, but a good paper cutter will be a necessity for prepping music books.

Also, watch this space … October is coming soon!

Delicious, Refreshing!

The website formerly known as http://del.icio.us/ is now simply http://delicious.com. And just when I was getting good at remember where the dots go.

In the words of Monty Python - “Say no more!” Just go forth and bookmark. Them and Flickr give me tons of hope!