Pluto's Neighborhood Gets More Interesting

I must be off my game since I just found out that scientists have discovered two more natural satellites of Pluto. Apparently, they were sighted many months ago, but I missed that news.

In case you're wondering, they've been named Nix and Hydra.

Don't get me wrong—Earth's Moon is totally awesome. But doesn't it seem strange that the tiny icy rock called Pluto now has three moons, and the best planet in the universe only has one?

Air 1 is now available in Oklahoma City

I've listened to K-LOVE for a couple years, but sometime I want a little more variety. When I've visited Wichita, I got to listen to K-LOVE's edgier sister station, Air 1. Many of the songs were unfamiliar to me, but the more I listened to it the more I wanted a station in my city. But I couldn't listen to Air 1 where I live ... until very recently.

In May 2006, EMF (the parent organization of K-LOVE and Air 1) bought KOKF (90.9 FM in the Oklahoma City area). Since Oklahoma City already had K-LOVE, 90.9 FM became an Air 1 station. I know that some people are sad that the old local-controlled KOKF is gone (oddly enough, the old website still seems to be there, though), but I think I'll listen to Air 1 a lot more than I listened to the old KOKF. I hope that the people who have listened to 90.9 for years give Air 1 a chance.

Glenn Beck's TV show to premiere May 8

Glenn, I get it.

On May 8, radio talk show host Glenn Beck brings his twisted humor to the tube on Headline News. On weekdays, the first run will be at 7 p.m. (Eastern) with a repeat at 9 p.m. The weekends will feature encores, also at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Oh, yeah!

Google now expected to take control of the Universe

Google isn't just a cute little search engine anymore. Besides being added to the English language as a verb, Google also has a popular e-mail service (the host of my current main e-mail address) and several mapping services (e.g. Google Local and Google Earth). Also, Google has gobbled up Writerly. I'm not sure what Writerly is, but if Google bought it, it must be pretty cool.

But it's Google's mapping service that seems to be going universal. On a ZDNet post, Garett Rogers mentioned that Google now has a service similar to Google Local (a/k/a Google Maps) called "Google Mars". So if you ever wanted to take a trip to Utopia Planitia (yes, I admit to be a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation), Google Mars tells you exactly where you need to land your spaceship. For people that want to stay a little closer to Terra, they can choose to visit Earth's own natural satellite at Google Moon. The Moon and Mars seem to be the only extra-terrestrial options right now as I couldn't find an official list and my other attempts (such as "http://universe.google.com/" and "http://europa.google.com/") returned "Server not found", but I bet more are coming. I'm not sure how fun Mercury would be, but I'm looking forward to checking out Venus.

By the way (and back on Earth), Google bought Blogger a while back, too. (That's service that I use to blog with.)

Glenn Beck gets a daily show on Headline News

Glenn Beck announced on his radio show today that he's going to have a TV show on the Headline News cable network. I think he said he expects it to start in March or April. It'll be on during primetime Monday-Friday (the exact time hasn't been decided and/or announced yet). It's not that I need to watch more TV every week, but I'm sure I'll check it out since his radio show is pretty good most days.

From "Radio Personality Glenn Beck Joins Headline News":

Known for his quick wit, candid opinions and engaging personality, Beck has attracted a devoted following since hitting the airwaves in 2001. In addition to his new Headline News duties, Beck will continue hosting his daily radio show, The Glenn Beck Program, syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. His radio show, currently heard on nearly 200 stations nationwide, is the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 according to Premiere Research/Arbitron.

When you hear that Glenn is ranked third, it might be useful to realize that Rush Limbaugh has the top-rated show, and the next highest rated show is Sean Hannity's radio program. Sean has been cross-promoting his radio show with his Hannity and Colmes show on FNC for years, and Rush Limbaugh practically invented the modern talk show format. Especially considering that Beck didn't go national until 2001, that's a good crowd to be in. I've been listening off-and-on since the beginning, and it seems like Beck's show continues to get even better every year, too.

From Glenn Beck joins CNN Headline News:

At Headline News, "Glenn Beck" will air out of New York and be an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring Beck's often amusing perspective. The one-hour program will include guests and produced packages.

"Having tired of the predictable left-versus-right debates in cable news, I am eager to offer a different take for Headline News viewers," Beck said in a statement. "I hope that people will come away from our show not only informed, but also entertained, in a way they're not used to seeing on cable news."

I wouldn't expect anything less than an "unconventional" show from Glenn Beck and his team. Glenn said today that he'd be surprised if his show lasted more than about 13 weeks. I for one hope he's surprised.

I Like Making Icons

I've been looking for a good free icon editor for a long time. Maybe I'm just too picky. Or maybe it's that I have no artistic ability, and it doesn't matter what kind of editor I use my icons will look terrible. Regardless of the cause of my lack of satisfaction, I've found some really nice editors in the past (such as LiquidIconXP, Ranfo Freeware Icon Editor, and Clic). But I keep on looking for a better program, and I stumbled upon a couple impressive ones a few days ago in a list of freeware tools.

Icon Edit stands out because in addition to letting the user edit icons, it also supports storing more than one icon in the same .ico file. This would come in handy when I come up with a good design for a large icon, but it doesn't scale down well so I'd like to add another icon to be used when a small icon is needed.

On the other hand, PixelToolbox doesn't seem to support multiple icons in a the same file (I could be wrong about this, I haven't studied the program in depth), but it does have an extensive set of editing tools, and it will even let the user import from another program. So even if I can't find the tool I'm looking for it in PixelToolbox, I could create the graphic in another program (such as my favorite vector editor Inkscape), and then import it into PixelToolbox. And if I wanted to combine it with another icon into a single file, I could probably use Icon Edit to bring in and combine icons created with PixelToolbox.

If I discovered that I could do this all in just one free program, I'd just use one program. But all of these programs that I've found have different strengths and weaknesses, so I just try to use the best tool for each situation. And I can typically edit an icon created in one program with another, so I have some flexibility. (I wrote "typically" because some icon editors are limited to manipulating certain color depths or dimensions.)

Even If You're Paranoid They Still Might Be Out To Get You?

My favorite source of Science Fiction entertainment news, Sci Fi Wire, recently added an article about Tim Robbins working on a new movie adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. I haven't read it recently, but I have a vague recollection Orwell's classic science fiction novel. Either Robbins remembers the book differently, or he sees the present differently that I do. (I suspect it's the latter.)

"In the book, Big Brother says we're not really concerned about 85 percent of the people, because they're so stupefied by poverty and overwork that they're never going to be part of the problem," Robbins said. "What they're really worried about is the other 15 percent."

Robbins added: "When we think about the authoritarian world that Orwell painted, the catchphrases are one thing, but when you read the book again, the specifics and relevance for now are stunning."

Robbins wouldn't tell the site whether he wanted to act in the movie. Whether the film actually happens is "really a matter of whether I can raise the money for it," he said. "We'll see if there's an appetite for it. Orwell may have been 20 years off, but I know that I find it incredibly relevant."

So the "specifics and relevance are now stunning", and he finds "it incredibly relevant"? How exactly does he find it relevant?

Does that mean that Robbins believes that 85 percent of our population is "so stupefied by poverty and overwork"? Maybe he thinks that only 60 percent of the population is stupefied. I'd agree that people are often hoodwinked, but that doesn't require them to be impoverished overworked. Being tricked only requires hearing a lie that sounds like the truth. Also being dazed and dazzled is much worse than just choosing the lesser of two evils. I don't view most people as being idiots at all. That's just me. But since I'm not a celebrity, what would I know?

I'm pretty sure that I'm neither impoverished nor overworked (and I'm pretty sure most other people aren't either), but I doubt I'll spend any money on a movie made by someone with such a poor opinion of the general public. If you think most people are either poor, so overworked they can't think correctly, or just plain stupid, I guess you should go see his movie. And if you're among the possibly 85% of the public that's stupefied, I'm sure you're too overworked or poor to be able to see it anyway. Sorry for getting your hopes up.

(For the record, I've always preferred Animal Farm to 1984, but that might be just because I read Animal Farm first.)