Something fun happened Saturday afternoon. Actually, two fun things happened within five minutes. I was running around taking photos (moe.down offers no shortage of fun fan shots) when I was tapped on the shoulder by a guy identifying himself as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. He was writing a story on the moe.down (really!) and asked for me to send any good photos his way. I don't know whether it was the fancy looking camera, the VIP badge, or just the fact I was sober that caused him to approach me. We exchanged biz cards, so I knew he was legit. I thought this was a great opportunity - I've taken plenty of photos in my day but have never seen one published. I only had my 75-300mm lens with me, and this being the only daytime moe. set this weekend I wanted to get all the variety I could.

So I started a mad dash to the car for my 17-40mm (a Canon "L" lens - it is now appropriate to "Ooh" and "Aah"). Not even to the parking lot I run into one of our behind-the-scenes friends. I won't say who, just so thousands of moe.rons don't suddenly beg for my friendship out of some inclination I'd give out the secret to all moe. knowledge. Anyway, he says "Mitch, can you do me a favor and go on-stage and take a few photos?"

Now I should interject and say being on stage with moe. isn't something very new to me, but that's usually just from the side of the stage. I'm not in awe of the band as they're just regular guys to me who happen to play great music. But the opportunity for full run of the stage with 8,000+ screaming fans staring at me made for an amazing photographic opportunity. I still needed the wide-angle lens so my mad dash turned into a full-out sprint, and minutes later I was running across the rear of the stage.

So you know where I hoped this would lead, and it has. Sometime in the next few days the Christian Science Monitor will publish a story on moe.down, accompanied by my photo! It's one of those photos that as I took it I knew I'd captured something special. I won't show it here just yet - gotta keep up the anticipation. They're actually paying me for it too, which is a nice bonus. And it's a non-exclusive license so hopefully it can be used elsewhere by moe. or other publications.

CSM, if you aren't familiar, isn't a wacky religious newspaper as its name might indicate. They're a very solid, independent publication. They used to run a great cable news channel but folded that years back.

But just to place something here, here's one photo I like a lot but isn't the one they'll be using.

I won't bother listing every band at moe.down but I'll mention one very original act. Matisyahu, a Hassidic Reggae band. Really! And you know something? Fantastic! He had the biggest crowd of any act other than moe., and really had the crowd going strong. By my untrained ears I'd classify them more as rock than reggae. The story is a regular guy was searching for something, and found it in converting to Hassidic Judaism. But with music in his blood, he put this band together. The lyrics seem more story-telling and not too preachy. The lead singer, Matisyahu (his Hebrew name after his conversion) is full-blown Hassidim. The other guys in the band aren't, at least in appearance. A picture is worth more than I can describe, so:

After a while of running around in the hot sun, he did remove his hat and jacket, and you could see he was wearing a tallis beneath his shirt. If he's doing this as a gimmick he's taking it all the way.

Sunday at the moe.down was also my birthday, and after we returned to the hotel Alysa gave me a birthday blueberry pie (complete with candle), which was a great way to end the day.

If I ever get around to posting photos from last year's moe.down you'll see the hat I wore on my birthday both last year and this year. All I will say is any where else I'd be taken to a funny farm but here I fit right in.

So I've been thinking about some of our highlights from New Orleans, and what they're like now. All our photos are still online but here are some things I've discovered.

The KOA campground where we stayed is closed. A message on their web site says they're canceling all reservations. I'm not sure if they're flooded out or not - they're in River Ridge, just west of the city, but right along the Mississippi. I remember the campground particularly well because it was the first spot where I had to (yikes!) back in.

I haven't heard anything about this yet, but New Orleans cemeteries are above-ground. Basically each crypt is a family crematorium, and many go back generations. I wonder how these were effected by the risen water.

The French Quarter seems to have survived reasonably well. New Orleans has been described as like a bowl. The French Quarter is almost right on the Mississippi so at higher elevation. Preservation Hall was built in 1750. All their web site says is "Due to the recent hurricane, Preservation Hall will be closed indefinitely."

The Steam Boat Natchez survived the hurricane. According to their web site they brought the boat up to Baton Rouge before the hurricane struck. The company is continuing their employee's medical benefits, and are trying to get in touch with all employees.

The Aquarium of the Americas didn't do so well. While the structure is sound, most of the 10,000 fish did not survive the loss of power which runs the air filters for their tanks. This photo is a tunnel through a large tank. The sea otters, penguins, birds, the white alligator, and the 250-pound turtle are fine. Many staff stayed behind during the hurricane but were forced to leave due to the violence in the area.

This photo was taken from the steps of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Apparently the museum itself is ok, but all that you see here is flooded. Some of the outdoor sculptures were destroyed. One report described the museum as "looking like a castle on a hill with a moat around it." The museum's web site is currently down.

The National D-Day Museum escaped the flooding. One thing that struck me early on is whether this landing boat, built in New Orleans and used extensively on D-Day, could have been used to rescue people if still in use. It's meant for shallow water and can carry many people.

It's really nice to see moe. get this kind of press. They're a fantastic band, and everyone involved (on-stage and off) are just wonderful people. Pretty cool to get my photo and name in print too! :-)

Technorati Tags: moe, moe.down, photo, turin

Hitting 100,000 miles is still an event to be appreciated. I drove my car over the threshold last weekend. But up pops a sixth integer digit. Boring. 100,000 miles is roughly equivalent to driving four times around the globe at the equator. This is the first car I've had where I've driven all the miles (I often buy one-year-old cars to save the initial depreciation, but this came brand new). Did it sing a song? Did Lee Iacocca personally dance on my dashboard? No. But I still managed to memorialize the event with a photo - and a movie!. Never mind the speedometer... Sometimes you've just gotta get that shot!

Or the movie (click to play):

The first big test for the new toy is our home theater system. We have a nice system but not that far off from what others are buying these days. We've got a 61" rear-projection TV, a Tivo/Satellite receiver, a receiver/amplifier, and the usual collection of CD/DVD/VCR/tape/etc players. The Tivo is always on, as it is always recording. The receiver is always on as it's the main switcher for the whole system. The other devices are on when we use them - most often the television. So what does this all cost to use?

I also wanted to answer a question I've had for a while, which is how much electricity does the receiver/amplifier use when powered on, but not in use (volume down). When I wired the system I had to use the receiver because the TV I had at the time didn't have enough inputs. The 61" beast has plenty, so a viable option is to use the TV as the video switcher. What's the cost benefit?

So here's what I've learned thus far... If the TV is turned on 24 hours a day, it would cost us 76 cents a day or $22.88/month. With the TV off, that drops to 29 cents a day or $8.72/month. Remember, I'm measuring the whole system - not just the TV. So the system costs $8.72/month just to sit there.

In bare watts, the system uses 104 watts with the TV off, and 273 with the TV on. If I use the main amplifier's volume to get surround-sound, wattage goes up another 50-80 watts depending on volume (most often we just use the TV's speakers so that rarely applies).

Turning off the Tivo/Satellite receiver makes no difference. Even when "off" it's really on recording two simultaneous Satellite channels and/or anything we have programmed in. Powering it off saved a mere one watt. So leaving that on all the time is fine. I didn't measure how much it uses because I know we'll leave it on anyway.

Turning off the receiver/amplifier, though, dropped the 104 watt usage of the idle system almost in half. It uses 47 watts while powered on and idle. That's a cost of $4/month, or $47/year! So yes, there's a financial benefit in rewiring, especially because I have most of the cables I need.

The last 57 watts is apparently used by everything while powered "off" - many electronic devices, especially televisions, use power even when off. I suspect much of this is the Tivo - I'll figure this out later.

As a test, I turned everything on - two CD players, a DVD changer, a VCR, and a tape deck. 320 watts. With the amp's volume cranked half-way, just over 400 watts. Ouch.

What about cumulative actual use? I've had the Kill-a-Watt monitoring our system for 58 hours thus far. This 58 hours has cost us 99 cents. At this rate the system as-is contributes about $12.35 to our monthly electric bill. Once I remove the receiver/amp this should drop below $9.

Next up will be the laser printer (which is always on, often in "sleep mode") and my main computer which is always on.

Imagine the spreadsheets I'll be creating!

Technorati Tags: Electricity

Dear Mr. Cohen,

I am hoping that you are the same person that I am looking for. If so, I am a big fan of your work as an actor in the horror genre. I think you are one of the most talented men to ever be involved with the genre. I am especially fond of your work as "The Toxic Avenger". I was wondering if you accept autograph requests through the mail. If so, I was hoping you might tell me how I could go about getting an autograph from you. It would really mean a lot to me as a fan. Thank you for your time and your wonderful work. I hope to hear from you soon.

So I thought I should announce to the world that I am not the Mitchell S. Cohen that starred as the title character in The Toxic Avenger. The Toxic Avenger is a cult classic campy monster movie, that I've actually seen - simply because the video box had my name on the cover.

The same Mitch Cohen had a minor role in a movie I really do like, Clerks. He played "Leaning Against Wall." Really.

I'm also not Eugene Levy, who played a character named Mitch Cohen in the funny movie A Mighty Wind. In David Mamet's wonderful movie State and Main, Sarah Jessica Parker's agent is Mitch Cohen but he's never actually seen.

But first let me back up a moment. When Alysa convinced me to buy or make prints I had to do a little research. First, I considered and rejected printing everything myself. I have a little Canon 4x6 printer which is quite good but costly per print, and my Epson inkjet is better suited for larger sizes. Going out to a vendor was the best choice for the volume of print we needed. I selected about 25 varied photos and sent them to several vendors - Kodak, Snapfish, Club Photo, PhotoWorks, and a local photo store.

When all the test photos came back I compared the results - the details of which I should really post here as its own lengthy entry. Bottom line was Kodak won as overall best results. Kodak has two ways to receive your prints - either through the mail or picking up at a local CVS. The results are exactly identical (I tried them both as part of my testing). CVS doesn't do any of the printing, they're just a pickup spot. Kodak gets you for a small "convenience fee" but not shipping fee and the photos are ready the next day.

So with the results in, next up was ordering photos. Without going into detail I chose photos from early 2002 through mid-summer 2004. I'd already sorted through the photos in this range so there was no lengthy selection process. How many photos? 2654 of them. I found a coupon for Kodak's service that saved a little cash, so away I went. Total cost: $294.09. Not bad really, considering the time span that covers.

I got a good laugh from the CVS folks when picking up this order. I'd clearly set a record for them. But major kudos to Kodak who didn't miss a beat. They'd notified me of printing completion just a few hours after placing the order, and the next morning they arrived at CVS.

So I know you're all asking - exactly how tall is a stack of 2654 photos? Me being me I had to find out. The answer (including paper envelopes) is 24-5/8ths inches. Weight? 20 pounds.

Now lets see if we can really get these into albums!

I'm on my way back home from the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. While there I met three very interesting people. "Met" is overstating all three, but it's my blog and I'll embellish where I so choose. :-)

The first was Walter Murch, a fantastic film editor best known for Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain, Godfather III, The English Patient, Ghost, and a million others. He spoke, of all strange places, at the Filemaker booth. He's well known in the Mac community as having broke ground editing the first major motion picture (Cold Mountain) completely on Macs with Final Cut Pro. Turns out he's been using Filemaker (and its predecessors) for many years to help organize the many shots that go into his work. It was an interesting talk about the whole editing process. Other than being within ten feet of the guy I never spoke to him, but did enjoy the talk.

The second was Bob Weir, member of the Grateful Dead (now The Dead). This has a funny story. I can't quite explain why he was there, as it wasn't for a public performance or talk, but related to a nonprofit music foundation that has a presence at the expo. Alysa's a huge fan so this made her quite jealous. After taking a few photos I thought I'd give her a call to gloat. As I'm dialing Bob walks almost immediately next to me. So after a very brief conversation with Alysa I walk two steps to Bob and ask him to say Hello to Alysa! He was perhaps confused, but obviously a decent guy and went along for the ride. Alysa apparently was starstruck. "Ummm... Hiiiiiiii Bob........" and "My husband put me in a very awkward position!" were I think her comments. He was very kind, said a few words, and handed the phone back. For those who have known me a while know this isn't the first time I've handed a cell phone to a "celebrity." The same happened with Katie Couric perhaps a decade ago. But that was B.A. (Before Alysa) and this was especially cool since Alysa is a big fan of Bob's.

The third and final encounter was with someone I admire tremendously, former President Jimmy Carter. Friday morning before the show, I was flipping through some list of area events and discovered he was doing a book signing just a few blocks from the Expo, after the expo had ended. I knew this would be a fast-paced signing with no chance for chitchat. But being in the presence of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and perhaps one of our greatest former Presidents was truly an excellent experience. I was able to take some photos, behind lines guarded by Secret Service agents of course. (And I almost saw a guy get decked by an Agent - really!)

So I thought all of this (plus a never-ending flight home) warranted an airplane-written entry.

The show was great too. Apple introduced two now Mac computers based on a new chip. This will cause some short-term angst due to required software upgrades, but Apple thinks for the long-term and for the long-term this is a good move. I won't bore our three readers with technobabble, so enough about that!

Not to go unmentioned, I spent the week with Herb in Walnut Creek (driving/BART-ing into San Francisco for the show each day). We ate very well, including two of our usual spots - the Stinking Rose and Buca di Beppo. The former is a "garlic restaurant" with the motto "We flavor our garlic with food." And they're right. Good stuff. Buca is our place to eat more than humanly possible - it's a family-style restaurant with huge portions. Both highly recommended. Below is the Pepperoni pizza from Buca di Beppo.

(By the way I'm just writing this in the airplane - I'm not fancy enough to be posting from the air!)

So it being a reasonably nice spring day (with some current threat of rain) I'm on the hammock. It's in the woods, and easier to get to thanks to a path we carved out last December. The WiFi situation has improved so I'm online. If Heaven has a hammock and WiFi I'll have no trouble in the afterlife.

I just finished the first lawn-mowing of the season. It being May 20th that means the grass was a bit lengthy. We've seen significant rainfall lately which sure helped things out. After mowing I spent an hour or so adding seed in various dead spots.

In a bit of a scientific experiment I seeded three ways. One area got Scott's Patchmaster, this pastel-green fuzzy stuff supposedly containing seed and fertilizer in the perfect combination. I prepared the area per instructions, and applied appropriately. I've used this before and although it takes longer to grow than advertised it otherwise works as advertised. Sections two and three received a mix of regular grass seed and fertilizer (hand-mixed). Section two was raked in reasonably well. Section three is the lazy section; I just dropped the stuff on dry ground without any preparation. I'll report back in a few weeks on said seeding success.

We've had three or four major events since January worth blogging about on their own. I'll add entries on their own, but the brief stories...

February saw our annual pilgrimage south to Florida. We had great weather and did very little other than sit in the sun. The big decision each day was whether to sit at the pool with the hot tub, the pool near the ocean, or on the beach itself. Yeah, rough life.

In March we had a "puff-back" - there the oil furnace decides to run in reverse sending soot throughout the house. Everything turned a nice shade of dark gray. Including the cats. Everyone is fine, and after significant cleaning (thank you Commerce Insurance!) mostly everything is back to normal. We're still sorting out a few details but they'll be buying us new carpets, some new paint, blinds, etc. The soot also chewed up some electronics, something I didn't expect. The PowerMac G5 was running at the time and sucked the soot straight through the processors. Yeah, it's dead. I needed something quick so I picked up a nice new MacBook Pro. The Denon receiver also bit the dust (quite literally), and was quickly replaced by a new Sony 3100ES. A Mac Mini also found its way into our home entertainment system.

In February I made a major decision, that I'd run for Board of Selectmen here in lovely Douglas, MA. This wasn't a great shock - I've been involved in town government for years and have thought about it for a while. The whole process deserves a dozen blog entries. Long story short I was indeed elected on May 9th. There's more on this at www.DemocratsofDouglas.org.

We've got a few other interesting things to report but should save something for later!

Oh, along with the obligatory blog entry must come the obligatory iTunes report. Currently listening to Xavier Rudd's album "Solace". Which is good, but I like "To Let" quite a bit more.

It's suddenly become chilly and the music is cutting out (I'm on the older Powerbook G4 which doesn't have great WiFi strength) so time to head back inside. I believe rain is on its way. Not good for an outdoor hammock but wonderful for the new lawn seed!

Here are a few photos for your amusement...

Below, Debbie, Allison, Meesha, and Alysa at the clubhouse in Florida, February 2006:

Below, Simon posing with his sooty paw:


Below, Mitch on assignment (for real!) shooting for moe in Lake Placid, March 2006. Groovy gloves huh?

The hammock is roughly 100 feet into the woods behind the house. The camera is looking back in the general direction of the house. Below the camera looks the opposite direction into the woods:



Music at the moment is Glassbreaks by DJ BC. It's...curious. It's a hip-hop DJ sampling/remixing Philip Glass. Really.

I decided to run for the Board of Selectmen, and whaddaya know, the town was nice enough to elect me. For those in cities or elsewhere in the country, the Board of Selectmen is the senior policy-making board of a town in Massachusetts. The five of us meet twice monthly, discussing and deciding upon a variety of issues. I'll have to say some aren't that vital. My current pet peeve is that when someone wants to use town property for a meeting, they need to formally request permission and we need to vote to allow it. We're talking about Girl Scout meetings, a carwash to raise money for the school, etc. All important stuff but I'm hoping to make it easier for these groups by allowing the Town Administrator to approve requests directly. It'll also leave more time for the Selectmen to tackle bigger issues like the town budget and policies.

I'm not sure how much I'll blog on the Selectmen stuff. It might be fun and interesting to share the experience, especially with those in town. To do it right I'd want to blog often, which takes time. There's also the risk of misinterpretation - I'm one of five Board members and sometimes one member's opinion can come across as that of the whole Board. And snowball from there. I might say that I'm concerned about a particular housing project due to impact on education costs or traffic congestion. The next day I'd see a story in the paper on how the Board will prevent the project because it hates soccer moms, minivans, and construction workers.

I'm jesting a bit there. We're lucky enough to have good reporters covering our town. We have two papers regularly covering Douglas. The Telegram & Gazette is a Worcester-area daily with a Blackstone Valley section. The reporter generally covering our town referred to me as a "Longtime Town Politico" in the story on my election victory. I guess I've been doing this a while then! Steve "gets it" to a surprisingly good degree given the fact he doesn't live here, and covers more than one town. We also have a weekly, the Blackstone Valley Tribune. The primary reporter, Tom, has an incredibly in-depth knowledge of the history of the town. Sadly another good Tribune reporter has moved on to other things - he had a great interest in modern issues and how they relate to the Valley. He even interviewed me for a story on town and political web sites!

So what's it like being a Selectmen? So far, so good. We're currently in the midst of our first important issue from a long-term perspective, a 40B development. 40B developments are housing that offers some percentage of units (both townhomes and houses in this case) at a discount in exchange for the ability to bypass certain town regulations on the development itself. It's a big development - 120+ units in total, which could bring 200-300 new residents into town in a short amount of time. So there's a real impact on a town our size. It will likely happen whether we support it or not, but we have the ability to get a little more for the town by going through a particular process. So that's what's going on here. And for the record, I have no problem with soccer moms, minivans, or construction workers.

If you'd like to follow along, we post meeting videos on our town web site. Grab the caffeinated beverage of your choice and head over to the town web site to take a look.

So will there be a blog about Douglas politics? Let me know what you think. I'll form a subcommittee, hire a polling firm, test-market a few designs, hire a ghost-writer, and by the end of my term I'll give you my decision. :-)

I'm headed to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, a geekfest-extreme for us Macintosh types. If you think Cocoa is a drink or Leopard a cat, stay home. This is serious stuff. My first trip out to SF for this show and I'm quite curious and rather excited. While MacWorld is a big trade show with a few classes, this is a week of serious, intense learning. The plane, a Boeing 757, is probably packed with Mac users. Before boarding I chatted a short while with an editor for O'Reilly Books. It's an interesting show from his perspective. Monday morning The Steve announces new technologies and products. By the end of the week he assembles his team of writers to plan the titles based on all the new stuff.

Other than the keynote address the whole week is under non-disclosure. If I write anything too specific I'll prompty find a laser beam emanating from my laptop's iSight burning a hole through my skull. If I leak any source code then things get seriously hairy.

I haven't posted in a while. This usually happens when I have nothing of interest to say. This isn't so much the case. Besides, I find writing about cellophane-wrapped turkey sandwiches amusing. There are some earth-shattering things to write about, and have been for some time. I'll try to do some catching-up but one topic will have to wait. So all my readers, all two of you, I'm afraid you'll be left in minor suspense for a short while longer. Some other items of interest I'll blog about in the meantime.

We're over Ohio, apparently headed into bumpy territory and the seat belt sign has been reestablished. The sandwich cart has passed with few takers, and a beverage cart is on the way. The big question - do I go for a water or OJ, or straight to soda? Do I want to sleep the rest of the flight or get a little boost? Hmmmm. I often fly Southwest and can count on Dr. Pepper. Not sure if I can expect the same from American. Say what you will about Texas but they know their soft drinks.

So here I am, with my JVC noise-canceling headphones. Xavier Rudd again. Not sure why I keep listening to him when blogging. By the way, he's Australian and my sister Debbie is over there at the moment. She's due back this week, while I'm still out in SF.

Dr. Pepper it is! Three cheers for American Airlines! I obviously had the "flip photo" feature in the wrong setting but I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. If you can't read the can hold your computer up to a mirror. By the way, this is a new can design. Shocking I know, but if you've been to the Dr. Pepper Museum in lovely downtown Waco you'll see a full history of can and bottle design. If you find yourself a bit north of Austin check it out. And while you're there buy some real Dr. Pepper, made at one bottling company the original way with cane sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup that's wound up everywhere thanks to dazzling work by the farm lobby. But that's a topic of another flight.

Indianapolis is coming up on the left, so I'll call this an entry. Enjoy your flight.

Big news though, we've got a kid! Ariella was born Sunday, January 21, 2007, at 1:10pm. She's a smart little girl - she's got her very own blog (which she updates more than ours!). Check it out!

That's Ariella yesterday, held by my sister Allison.

They encourage everyone to pick up their badges (and free goodies) the day prior to the show. So earlier this evening I walked from my hotel to the Moscone Convention Center and handed over my driver's license. I was promptly provided a badge for "Mitch Cohen, Sony Pictures." Keep in mind I don't work for Sony Pictures. My badge should have read "Mitch Cohen, Proactive Interactive."

I am not the Mitch Cohen who works for Sony Pictures. [For other Mitch Cohens who are not me, read this earlier entry.]

The poor clerk was confused when I explained I was indeed Mitch Cohen, but just not that Mitch Cohen. After a bit of explaining, she said "Ummmmm... See those people down there in red shirts that look important? They actually work for Apple. They can help you."

The kind red-shirted folks were able to help, and confirmed my worst suspicions. There was indeed another Mitch Cohen attending WWDC, and he works for Sony Pictures. He checked in sometime prior to me. He apparently handed over his driver's license, and was promptly handed my badge. He either didn't notice, or thought it would be keen to masquerade as myself for the week. The trouble was, the Mitch Cohen of Proactive Interactive (that's me) was already checked in. They couldn't simply check me in again.

After some significant discussion amongst the kind red-shirted folks behind the table and a quick phone call for clarification from Steve Jobs (only kidding on that part) the Red Shirt In Charge decided the best course of action was to now check in the Sony Mitch (not me), and using a secret code word authorized the reprinting of the Proactive Mitch's card (that's me). Problem solved.

On a sad note, the kind red-shirted Apple folks will be killed off at the end of WWDC.

After some minor Googling I was unable to locate a web page for Sony Mitch. So if you know Sony Mitch, or are Sony Mitch, please drop me a note. Despite your apparent desire to be me for a week I'm sure you're a fine fellow. Perhaps we'll see one another at WWDC.

Just one more problem. With the exception of Steve Jobs' Keynote Address, the entire conference is covered by Apple's famous confidentiality agreement. So even in writing this story I may be threatening myself with legal action, bodily harm, or even the loss of Leopard Beta privileges (yikes!). But it's worth it.