When the Mac Sucks ...

It sucks BAD.

So I bought a new camcorder. Took it with me to Seattle over the long weekend, and shot about 1 hour's worth of footage over the 4 days. I have been struggling with importing it into my Mac, for two reasons:

1. Final Cut Express HD refuses to recognize the camcorder. I mean, one of the things Mac ads boasted about (back in the days of the Switch campaign) was that no special drivers were needed for anything ... it was supposed to be literally plug & play.

2. iMovie does recognize the camcorder (thank the Gods!) but crashes if I import more than 10-clips (or thereabouts), thus forcing me to manually sop and restart capture every so often.

I've spent one hour just getting through all this, and have only imported the footage from Day 1! It's going to take me some time to get all of it in ... the good news is that once I've captured in iMovie, I can open the iMovie project in Final Cut.

What cumbersome process.

Vegetarianism and The Circle of Life

There was a bit of a outrage in the UK recently when Mars Bars went non-veggie ... specifically, they were going to have a bit of animal enzyme, rennet. The Vegetarianism Societies called on the public to protest, which they did (all 6,000 of them! Gosh isn't that a large number of people who won't buy Mars bars?) such that Mars apologized and pulled the plug on these new plans.

Now, I have nothing against vegetarianism ... people have the right to choose what they will, or will not, eat. One cannot expect a vegetarian to tuck into a bloody steak. But to protest a chemical found in an animal (and this isn't an isolated case - I know people who refuse to buy products because it'd contain traces of animal gelatin) ... this seems a little silly to me.

Cast your mind back to a fortune-reviving, animated production by Disney that gave us smelly warthogs, smart talking loner meekrats, an exciting soundtrack ... and the "Circle of Life". Simple philosophy on the surface, really - everything is connected.

So ... cow crap is used to grow plants ... ergo, plants can contain traces of that cow (and BTW, this is sometimes how diseases and evolutionary mutations can sometimes spread). Does that mean we swear off plants grown in the field, grown from manure usage? Let's all rely purely on pharma-fed produce!

Can anyone offer a rational explanation of this seemingly-ridiculous eccentricity vegetarians sometimes exhibit?

This is not about me, I swear.

I was in Kansas City the whole time.

Honest.

Achtung!

Friday is a holy day.

A Nonsensical Poem

I started this year
Enjoying better prospect
I modestly passed five fat calves
Then the farmer arrived
With three thin calves
I wait for them to become fat again

Edit: Changed "cows" to "calves"