Hometown tragedy / Times have changed

There was a shooting spree at a plastics factory in my hometown of Henderson, Kentucky, this week that left six people dead. Details of the killer and his victims have been published in the Gleaner, the local newspaper, which now appears to be part of the Courier & Press, of neighboring Evansville, Indiana.

Tragic story. I wouldn’t be surprised to see crystal meth in the killer’s toxicology report. My mother says its use is rampant, though not perhaps to the same extent as marijuana. I was relieved not to recognize any of the names but surprised that so many of them were Hispanic. When I left Henderson, in 1989, there were very few Hispanics in the county. In fact, I’m not even sure I ever met a Latino until college, where I learned to say “Latino” instead of “Hispanic”. ( “Latino” is too vague for my liking but that’s a topic for another day.)

Picture this

On Monday I bought an Apple TV, a gizmo I had long eyed but could not persuade myself was necessary. I was sick at home over the weekend, searching in vain for anything slightly interesting on HD cable. One can endure only so many programs about house flipping and mega disasters before cracking. Since Time Warner Cable still isn’t offering any HD on demand programming, I felt the time had come for Apple TV. Synching up my limited video collection was an easy, if lengthy, process, and the quality of my non-HD iTunes purchases is decent, and certainly better than watching them on my laptop computer.

The true revelation of Apple TV is the photo browsing. Photos are far more compelling on a big screen, so much so that I have recropped a substantial portion of my iPhoto albums to the 9x16 ratio. Better still, the Flickr browser is astonishing. I have rediscovered my contacts’ photostreams, and I have a whole new appreciation for the efforts they’ve put into their photos. Those 500-pixel default views just don’t do justice to the photos. My only complaint is that the Flickr browser has no login authentication, as the YouTube browser does, so you can only view public photos.

Now I’m working on the slow and tedious process of ripping DVDs to MPEG4. Since my not-so-old DVD player kicked the bucket, I’ve been missing my AbFab videos.

Big. Easy.

The combination of a surprisingly cheap direct flight and very reasonable hotel rates made a trip to New Orleans over Labor Day a no-brainer. I’ve been really impulsive with travel this year. Now I just need some fabulous outfits and a friend or two to keep me company. The occasion, of course, is Southern Decadence.