Hung Truong: The Blog!

John Hodgman Reads “The Areas of My Expertise” Outloud For Free!

So John Hodgman is quickly becoming a major internet sensation. He’s the guy who plays the PC in those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads. He also makes me like the PC enough to keep using it.

He recently wrote a book entitled “The Areas of My Expertise” which makes a lot of nonsense. Actually, the full title is “An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled With Instructive Annotation And Arranged In Useful Order By Me, John Hodgman A Professional Writer, In The Areas of My Expertise.” It’s pretty funny, though. Actually, I’ve never read the book. Instead, I’m listening to John Hodgman read it to me, for free! The book is available free (for now) on iTunes.

Right now, he’s reading the table of contents. Apparently the book lasts hundreds of CDs, so the table of contents is really long. He’s joined by Johnathan Coulton, who sings the theme song for the audio book. Apparently, pairs of Johns are usually very entertaining.

Since this is an “annotated edition,” I’d actually think about buying the book (and reading it)! The book’s only like, $11 on amazon.com, so it wouldn’t be too difficult of a decision.

Classic Hung Truong Movie: Hellevator

Back when I was a media arts major (in 2002), I made a movie called “Hellevator.” It’s probably the crowning achievement of my career at UNM. I figured I should put it online for posterity, and include comments before I forget about what happened.

[flv:/blog/video/Hellevator.flv 480 360]

I skipped putting it on youtube, since the compression sucks. Here’s some of my director’s commentary:

The movie was actually based on a two-minute play that I and Brian Hesch wrote during drama class in high school. The idea was that the two characters would enter the elevator and then just “fall” for the entire thing. Needless to say, the script was reworked to make it more interesting.

New Camera: Casio Exilim EX-Z70

I got a new camera: the Casio Exilim EX-Z70. It was only $150 at Best Buy, which was a pretty good bargain. Since I was over at UNM yesterday, I decided to take a few test shots. They’re mostly okay, but somewhat grainy when seen at full resolution. This should probably be a 6 megapixel camera, not a 7.2…

Anyway, the video quality is fairly good. Better than my old Canon S50, at least.

Youtube video quality kinda sucks, so here it is in lower compression:

Humping Dog USB!

When I first saw pictures of the Humping Dog USB thing, I thought it was an ill-designed USB flash drive. Obviously people were laughing at it because it was dog shaped, and if you put it onto a laptop, it looked like the dog was humping it. I was wrong.

The device is specifically designed to look like a dog humping a laptop. Moreover, it is mechanical. Yes, the dog physically humps the laptop when you “plug it in.” The website (in Japanese) states, “Once you insert it, it doesn’t stop!”

I’m not even sure that the USB device has any memory, as the website says nothing about capacity. I think it’s just more of a desk toy than anything. It costs 998 yen, which is less than $10.

I don’t know if the best part of the video is the mosaic censoring of the dog, or “Believe” by Cher playing in the background…

Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head: You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

Yep, it’s time for another edition of “Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head.” This time, it’s “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To.” I heard it on Together, with Chet Baker and Paul Desmond, a couple of times before. For some reason, though, it’s become stuck in my head now.

What I really like about the tune is the chord progression. It sorta goes from minor to a major section, back to minor, so you can do a lot of stuff with the improvisation. At least, I think so. My theory’s not as good as it used to be…

Anyway, here’s the lyrics:

You’d be so nice to come to

You’d be so nice by the fire

While the breeze on high, sang a lullaby

You’d be all that I could desire

Under stars chilled by the winter

Under an August moon burning above

You’d be so nice

You’d be paradise, to come home to and love

There seems to be a lot of people in Japan who like this song. Perhaps because Chet Baker played it live there once upon a time?