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Archive for January, 2012

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Ch-Ch-Changes: Solution – Week #4

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Welcome back to Ch-Ch-Changes. It’s time to reveal the solution to the Week #4 puzzle:


The nine changes to this picture were:

  1. The friends are looking at an oven timer instead of their keys to the apartment
  2. The cabinets above the fridge have handles
  3. The light fixture next to the cabinets is gone
  4. Ross is wearing blue jeans intsead of khakis
  5. Chandler is wearing glasses
  6. Rachel is wearing a watch
  7. Monica is wearing a TGI Friday’s pin on her jean jacket
  8. Joey has a Lacoste logo on his shirt
  9. Phoebe isn’t wearing leggings anymore

Click here to see all of your guesses from the original post.

Congrats to all who guessed correctly. The scores after three weeks are as follows:

Player Correct Answers
Ilya 30
Michael Weinmayr 27
Konstantin 26
Jeff Porten 14
Joe Woods 5
Harlan Freilicher (via Facebook) 4

See you next Wednesday! And remember – comments on the puzzle post will be moderated, so you can all guess independently of each other!

Thanks for playing…

Categories: Ch-Ch-Changes | 38,364 Comments »

Through the Filters: If All the Debates Were Like This, I’d Watch Them…

Monday, January 30th, 2012

See, it still wouldn’t matter what they were saying, but at least it’d be funny:

Categories: Through the Filters | 756 Comments »

Ch-Ch-Changes – Week #4

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Welcome back to Ch-Ch-Changes. Here is the puzzle for Week #4:

See if you can spot the NINE things I changed in this final scene from FRIENDS:




(Clicking on the photographs will make them bigger, and arrow left/right will toggle between them when they’re big)


One point will be awarded for each correctly identified change. Answers will be posted on Monday morning. Comments will go into a moderation queue until the contest is over…

Good luck!

Categories: Ch-Ch-Changes | 5 Comments »

Ch-Ch-Changes: Solution – Week #3

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Welcome back to Ch-Ch-Changes. It’s time to reveal the solution to the Week #3 puzzle:


The eight changes to this picture were:

  1. The road sign on the left side of the road that says, “Caution: Beatles Crossing”
  2. The VW Bug parked on the left is light blue instead of light yellow
  3. John Lennon’s sneakers have Adidas stripes on them
  4. Ringo Starr has had his beard shaved
  5. The people on the sidewalks (both sides) have been removed
  6. The cars driving on the road in the distance have also been removed
  7. Paul McCartney is not holding a cigarette
  8. George Harrison is holding (Paul’s?) cigarette

…and NEW THIS WEEK: Click here to see, for the first time, all of your guesses.

Also, a minor apology: several people guessed that the two groups of people I removed from the sidewalks were two separate changes (I had counted them as one). In those cases, I e-mailed the contestants and told them they were missing one, just to make it fair. In the future, I will try to make each change “hang together” as one, obvious change. Ah well, you get what you pay for, right? And this thing is free… ;-)

Anyway, congrats to all who guessed correctly. The scores after three weeks are as follows:

Player Correct Answers
Ilya 21
Konstantin 18
Michael Weinmayr 18
Jeff Porten 6
Joe Woods 5
Harlan Freilicher (via Facebook) 4

See you next Wednesday! And remember – next week, comments will be moderated, so you can all guess independently of each other!

Thanks for playing…

Categories: Ch-Ch-Changes | 159 Comments »

Through the Filters: Obama Sings!

Friday, January 20th, 2012

I was very impressed with this:

This makes Obama only the second politician I can remember (after Bill Clinton) to do something musical in public and not come off looking foolish. I also love that he basically did it on a dare from whoever he’s talking to offstage.

Categories: Political Rantings, Through the Filters | 219 Comments »

In the news…

Friday, January 20th, 2012

I promised myself when I started blogging again that I’d stay away from overtly political posts, but I saw a couple of articles in the news lately that I found interesting in various ways, so I thought I’d share:

BP Makes Amends
When the oil spill first occurred back in April of 2010, environmentalists claimed the damage could last for years, if not decades. Economists predicted economic doom for the Gulf region, already damaged by past hurricanes and other natural disasters. But now, less than two years later, we read this in the New York Times:

BP has performed quite admirably in [the] aftermath. It has spared no expense in cleaning up the oil. It has set aside $1 billion to restore the environment and coastal ecosystem. It underwrote an advertising campaign to lure tourists back to the Gulf Coast. Today, less than two years after the spill, the beaches are sparkling, most fishermen are working and many of the hotels are full.

At the urging of President Obama, BP also agreed to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate anyone who could show that they

Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | 735 Comments »

Ch-Ch-Changes – Week #3

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Welcome back to Ch-Ch-Changes. Here is the puzzle for Week #3:

See if you can spot the EIGHT things I changed in this iconic album cover:




(Clicking on the photographs will make them bigger, and arrow left/right will toggle between them when they’re big)


One point will be awarded for each correctly identified change. Answers will be posted on Monday morning.

Good luck!

Categories: Ch-Ch-Changes | 5 Comments »

I’m Reading Life Signs, Captain!

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Perhaps the coolest announcement at this year’s Consumer & Electronics Show (CES 2012): a $10 million prize to the first person who invents a Tricorder:

The rationale behind the latest X Prize, known as the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, which was announced at CES today, and which will award a $10 million bounty to the first team that can create “a mobile platform that most accurately diagnoses a set of 15 diseases across 30 [patients] in three days.”

It’s very cool, but they should have gone for a transporter – then more people would have attended next year’s show. ;-)

Categories: The Future is Now | 92 Comments »

Ch-Ch-Changes: Solution – Week #2

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Welcome back to Ch-Ch-Changes. It’s time to reveal the solution to the Week #2 puzzle:


The eight changes to this picture were:

  1. The men are sitting over Chicago, not New York
  2. Man on the left is holding a Dunkin’ Donuts box
  3. Fourth man from the left is wearing a necktie
  4. Sixth man from the left is holding a MacBook
  5. Eighth man from the left is holding a cup of Starbucks coffee
  6. Ninth man from the left is holding the New York Times from the day Osama bin Laden was killed
  7. Tenth man from the left has a Nike Swoosh on his hat
  8. Twelfth man from the left (man on the right?) is Babe Ruth

Congrats to all who guessed correctly. The scores after two weeks are as follows:

Player Correct Answers
Ilya 13
Konstantin 11
Michael Weinmayr 10
Jeff Porten 6
Joe Woods 5
Harlan Freilicher (via Facebook) 4

See you next Wednesday! And remember – next week, comments will be moderated, so you can all guess independently of each other!

Thanks for playing…

Categories: Ch-Ch-Changes | 144 Comments »

Ch-Ch-Changes Update: Comment Problem SOLVED!

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Eureka!

After copious feedback from my small but loyal audience, I believe I’ve solved the “I can see everyone else’s answers so why bother guessing?” problem with my latest Photoshop contest.

WordPress has an available plugin called Comment Timeout by James McKay. It’s simple enough – it enhances WordPress’s built-in “all comments on or all comments off” functionality by allowing the administrator (that’s me) to specify an age at which posts no longer receive comments. But more importantly (to me, anyway), it allows me to override the setting on a post-by-post basis.

So, I’ve set posts to “timeout” at zero days old (i.e., immediately), which sends all the comments to moderation. But for all non-photoshop posts, I can override that setting with one-click at posting time. So now, most posts on this blog will allow (encourage!) comments as they always did, and the Photoshop contest posts will send them to my moderation queue. I’ll leave them hidden until I reveal the answer to the puzzle, and then people can click back & see what everyone else’s guesses were.

Problem solved!

Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 48 Comments »

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