tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:51:00 +0000http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)Blogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-6525982167912286896Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:53:00 +00002010-02-17T22:53:51.660-08:00Well you see there is this grid of squares, some of which may be bombs, but some of which aren’t. If you click on a bomb, it lights up red and all the other undetected bombs appear as black spiky balls—and the little yellow face at the top of the Minesweeper window turns into a frown with X’s for eyes. You have lost. Click on the face to play again.But if you click on something that’s not a http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-play-minesweeper-or-my-dear-god.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-8165731932646655392Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:47:00 +00002010-01-31T12:37:23.798-08:00I have plenty of thoughts about this article by the NY Times Book Review's Jennifer Schuessler about boredom--I have been thinking about it off and on since I came upon it via the Daily Dish yesterday. I disagree with the article, but I am beyond fascinated with the subject, so much so that my first reaction when I came upon it was to tag it as "awesome!" and to write a breathless review of it http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-interesting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-9182210380605687127Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:22:00 +00002010-01-30T13:32:29.315-08:00Video courtesy of TED via The Daily Dishhttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/higher-calling-or-what-may-be-more.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-9082984850887887343Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:03:00 +00002010-01-30T12:48:36.689-08:00Okay, the idiocy of the title of this post is just an example of how our communication is changing, of how our world has changed. I am a would-be writer, but instead of excelling in long-form book-writing or pursuing one single idea for many pages, I am so sucked into the back-and-forth communication of the Internet, spend hours perusing it moment to moment, and am constantly trying to come up http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-need-to-get-paid-for-this.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-603922716585249706Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:32:00 +00002010-01-20T22:41:33.113-08:00I think the late-night wars peaked a few days ago with that hilarious Jimmy Kimmel spot on the Jay Leno show; now they are all taking pot shots still, but the climax has passed and we all know what's going to happen, and the only question is if/when Conan gets back on the air. Anyway, I was thinking that while everyone's raving about the stupidity of NBC in muffing this, the real stupidity is http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/latest-show.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-81607409700084972Sun, 17 Jan 2010 09:01:00 +00002010-01-17T01:10:22.461-08:00I never made it to yoga. Now it's 1 a.m. and I have been keeping myself awake with random Internet articles. I'll end with this one, from Chris Hitchens' twitter, which I have been plowing through at odd hours like this one. Leaving unanswered the question of whether I will ever again get off the Internet for long enough to read a non-electronic book.http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/you-know-what.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-1664507619389124336Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:13:00 +00002010-01-12T16:26:35.081-08:00Some cousins of mine started a blog called "Many Dittmers, One Blog" around the time of the last family reunion to keep tabs on what all the Dittmers are up to. However, as SportsCenter anchors used to say--that blog couldn't stop us, it couldn't even hope to contain us.I have just added about six Dittmer-related blogs to my "Friends of the Site" section along the left-hand side of my blog. (http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/hola-schla-moly.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-5191501286336628235Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:47:00 +00002010-01-12T10:58:07.779-08:00Football coach Pete Carroll may be leaving USC for an NFL job in Seattle. Which has LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke concerned about who is replacement is going to be. "This is a star job in a star town," he writes in one of his notorious one-sentence paragraphs, "and nothing less will do."Fair enough, except there's potential NCAA probation hanging over the school. Plaschke does acknowledge http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/au-revoir-pete-carroll.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-103383764828522842Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:07:00 +00002010-01-11T14:14:51.225-08:00A couple of new posts as well. Check it out.http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/redesign-at-kriewallcmo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-1689223989679259951Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:43:00 +00002010-01-08T15:30:34.398-08:00Andrew SullivanpoliticsI switched laptops at some point in the last year and seem to have lost the screenshot-maker I downloaded in the process. Now I am spending time trying to re-install it. I really will do anything to avoid lesson-planning for my little eighth-graders. (Although, in news less dismal for my future teaching career, I did stop by my old high school to visit my old social studies teacher this http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/bleh.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-6018053063180354318Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:10:00 +00002010-01-07T15:13:25.784-08:00Two years ago Conan was my favorite and this news (err ... rumor--it's on TMZ) would have upset me. But it's my contention that Conan started going downhill before he even made the switch to 11:30, so I've become a Jimmy Kimmel guy. And so I almost think everybody wins if Leno gets his 11:30 gig back and Conan gets the chance to go do something else--maybe a late-night show with another networkhttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/late-night-shakeup.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-926335715710413643Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:01:00 +00002010-01-07T15:16:24.203-08:00Mike Hoenig's coming over for dinner this evening; I talked to him last night. He's become more of a sports fan than any other friend I've got right now. Anyway, I talked to him as I was driving up the I-5 yesterday (just after I drove past Monica who was headed south) and he was saying that despite their crummy record, the Warriors are showing some potential this year (they did almost win two http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/mike-says-warriors-are-about-to-turn.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-3648640371019541478Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:43:00 +00002010-01-06T23:16:10.898-08:00Well, I may not yet be able to claim total victory over technology, as I had hoped to attach a photo from the titular family room, a picture I took with said iPhone. I can send the photo to my gmail, but mobile blogger sis not interested in searching this device's hard drive for photos. It only wants photos that have been uploaded to the web. I imagine, ultimately, that there's an app for thishttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/blogging-i-love-you-charlie-from-my.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-3446944121198734725Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:17:00 +00002010-01-06T09:51:23.891-08:00I have been spending so much time surfing the Internet lately, and so I was thinking that it might slow me down--and that might be a good thing--if I required myself to share every article that I read. I have a couple of places where I have already been doing this: at delicious and at freekraut. But it occurs to me that I could and should also do it here.And I haven't been sharing every http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2010/01/link-dump.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-3718336675457315312Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:14:00 +00002009-12-21T11:15:05.812-08:00metaOne of the reasons I oftentimes don't feel cut out to be a writer is that I am easily made to feel guilty about wasting time. So if I tell myself (as I did today) that I am going to spend an hour or three writing, and then I sit in front of the computer and surf the Internet, and write diaries of my Internet-surfing rather than more-ambitious stories. I feel guilty guilty guilty, which is to say http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/12/getting-down-to-business.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-2466024779343496901Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:20:00 +00002009-12-13T13:42:21.864-08:00So Charlie, your blog. I thought I had forgotten to stop by and visit, but no, I just stopped by and realized that I did try a couple of days ago. But I was met with: PHP Notice: A feed could not be found at http://www.dalailama.com/news_feed.php in D:\Inetpub\kriewall\wp-includes\class-simplepie.php on line 1681So, to paraphrase from a current musical SNL skit, "What up with that?" (It's a http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-up-with-that.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-5712449041534576788Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:20:00 +00002009-12-10T12:24:06.043-08:00Zero comments lately. Lots of posts, new gadgets that show Delicious bookmarks and twitter tweets, web video, you name it, but zero comments. I guess I've been kind of self-involved ... haven't reached out. Haven't talked to Monica in a while (I keep meaning to, but I never go out to Hollywood). Haven't visited Charlie's blog in a bit (I know there's a couple of new posts there; will head on http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/12/zero-comments.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-8255421603973270300Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:58:00 +00002009-12-02T15:18:50.013-08:00This is not Joe Posnanski's best article, but I'm glad he hit on what I first wrote about here--that there is something about the lyrics of country music songs that invests in them a lot of personality. Posnanski has his reasons for thinking so; me, I just think the lyrics are for the most part easiest to understand in country. But while Posnanski and I might not have the exact same take or http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/12/god-is-great-beer-is-good-wait-for-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-3176245929381664270Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:29:00 +00002009-12-01T23:23:45.116-08:00ObamaAfghanistanpoliticsI find I've been re-reading this article to anyone who'll listen, posting it as my status update on facebook, wanting to interrupt the TV newscast reviewing the Obama speech about Afghanistan when I should be, I don't know, worrying about my own life. So what--so a blogger named Andrew Sullivan made a really poignant criticism of presidential policy? And this excites me because ... well, why, http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/12/political-junky-returns.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-6474871771170359649Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +00002009-11-22T14:14:12.308-08:00rambleMinor e-mail etiquette pet peeve: Being unable to end a back-and-forth exchange. This can be difficult on the phone as well, which sometimes explains people's preference for e-mail over the phone--you can't just get off the phone mid-conversation by abruptly saying, "Okay bye." If you've run out of things to say, usually you don't want to say "I've run out of things to say." Usually I try to http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/fine-and-how-are-you-fine-and-how-are.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-7102039707848792052Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:12:00 +00002009-11-21T13:15:17.523-08:00I drove out to Moorpark last night for a football game. I have said that I like Thousand Oaks because I like the place name, but based on that same criterion, I would have every reason to dislike Moorpark, a place name that makes me think of swamps and the fat cavemen and cave-women from that cartoon “B.C.” But I went out to Moorpark last night with sort of a spirit of happy curiousity. I likehttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/moorpark.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-1273716554730289365Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:35:00 +00002009-11-18T02:39:38.370-08:00Or, umm, don't. But audience or no, I'm kind of proud of all the new media widget thingies (wouldn't you say that the word "widget" is only slightly more formal than the word "thingie") that now run down the left side of my page here ... and my favorite is now the Delicious feed of articles I liked that I bookmarked on delicious. I'm especially enjoying how, with the last two, I pulled out longhttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/wee-look-at-me.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-2107564434098762631Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:01:00 +00002009-11-12T10:18:27.659-08:00My cousin Ari has always known how to show me a good time. Whether he's beating me in a game of one-on-one or composing songs that end up capturing the essence of a family gathering, he's always been a great entertainer. Putting that skill to good use, I presume, helped him become good at his job: a theater director at a Jewish Community Center theater in Washington, D.C., Ari's name is often http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-cousins-more-forward-looking-than.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-8572854146388499743Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +00002009-11-12T09:54:31.412-08:00My editor to me: "Burbank at Burroughs of Burbank...it's a HUGE game .... Get there as early as possible, a crowd of 10,000 is expected." Awesome. Now I just have to find my way out there. http://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/procrastinating-and-looking-forward-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21798157.post-8628461898444909510Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:21:00 +00002009-10-27T16:35:29.352-07:00self-disciplinemetaI think it was in 1999, I found myself in the Downtown L.A. library doing a research project for my Urban Geography class; I was looking up zoning codes for the Westwood neighborhood and ... my research hit a little bit of a brick wall. I ran into some old sports archive and started reading it, and before I knew it I had wasted an hour.I was in the habit at that time in my life of getting furioushttp://booksmoviesandsports.blogspot.com/2009/10/some-time-in-20th-century.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mark Dittmer)0