Basilisk (by Ami Thompson)
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An American in Canada posting to a blog. Fascinating, eh?
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The Clockmakers /Les horlogers (by National Film Board of Canada)
"There’s a reason I haven’t visited Yahoo since about 2002: It’s incredibly busy and outdated. If Yahoo were a place instead of a website, I’d imagine it as a nursing home. If I get an email from a Yahoo email address, I assume (correctly, as a recent study showed) that they’re probably older and not very internet literate."
The Myth of Lincoln
What is it about Abraham Lincoln that has captured our attention so much? Abolishing slavery, his role in the Civil War and his assassination mystify many, but I imagine his signature look helps keep the hero in our culture.
While there are a number of books that speculate on his private life and sexuality, we live in the entertainment age where movies are king. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, a 2012 action movie, is now available on Netflix and Daniel Day-Lewis recently won an Oscar for portraying Lincoln in another film. I started thinking about other TV shows and films that brought Lincoln to life. No offense to Mr. Day-Lewis, but to me there is only one man to play the part, the late Robert Barron.
Robert Barron acted his way through the US in regional theaters, according to IMDB. He never really broke into Hollywood beyond roles in “the cheesiest of no-budget fly-by-night productions,” which he thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, Robert was in one major production that premiered 5 days after Lincoln’s birthday in 1989, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Abraham Lincoln struggled to bring a nation of people together with his thought provoking words and speeches. Robert Barron brought laughter & joy to the children of the nation. Aside from acting, he was writing English scripts for Japanese cartoons. The scripts & voice acting in the cartoons led to him being an executive producer at Saban Productions. You may recognize that name because they’ve produced just about every Saturday morning cartoon & show since the late 1980’s.
Unfortunately like Lincoln, Barron’s life was cut short and he passed at the age of 67. Which brings me back to my question above, what is it about Lincoln that has enthralled us all these years? Perhaps it was his determined desire to keep the Union together, to keep the people united and free. Like Robert Barron’s line from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition, which was true in my time, just as it’s true today. Be excellent to each other…and…
Party on, Dudes!”
Android Advice: Recovery
Previously, I discussed rooting your Android device. Sometimes when you follow the guide to rooting your particular device the instructions include the install of a custom recovery partition. Every Android device ships with a recovery partition on the hard drive. The stock recovery will allow you to factory reset the phone and install official updates to the stock Android OS it shipped with.
A custom recovery adds a few more options to this partitions. Installing custom ROMs, fixing permissions, performing or restoring backups, wipe battery stats and installing custom kernels are a few of the options available.
Just like rooting your phone, installing a custom recovery will be specific to your device. Thus, research carefully to find the correct recovery for the model of your phone. Again, obligatory disclaimer is necessary. Do your research and proceed with caution. You could very well brick your phone installing a custom software. Personally, I typically choose to get my hands dirty installing a custom recovery using a method that involves typing commands in a terminal. Automated processes, robots and wild boars scare me. Of course if you are lucky, a recovery for your device can be installed using an app like ROM Manager. Though I have personally never tried that app, I have recent used Goo Manager to install one on my latest phone( after I was rooted, of course).
Right now there are 2 developers of custom recoveries, ClockworkMod and Team Win Recovery Project. CWM has been around since Android started, the original gangsta. TWRP is the new kid on the block, but has become quite popular in a short amount of time. CWM has a touchscreen version, but mostly uses the hardware buttons on your phone (volume & on/off) to perform actions. It will make you feel like an old school hacker. TWRP is a touchscreen recovery and has a useful function that allows you to queue up to 10 files to install at once rather than installing them one at a time.
If you’ve come this far without bricking your phone the next part, a new ROM, is easy and I will cover that in a new post.
Previous Posts on Android:
--Tagged under: AndroidAdvice--