Yet Another Day and Another Post

This morning I got up and within no time had a topic for blogging in mind. I set to work writing my brief introduction to the material that I wished to covered when I realized that it would be nice to embed a Google Trends graph into my WordPress Post. It seemed like so trivial to do. After all, Google nicely provided the javascript code to neatly embed it, but it  turned out to be quite a bit of work to discover how to apply it in the context of a WordPress blog.

It wasn’t nearly as easy or convenient as it should be. The WordPress editor appears to not give one the ability to insert just any old HTML and JavaScript into your post – which is inconvenient when one wants to stretch beyond the capabilities of its Visual Editor, but one doesn’t want to fully roll up one’s sleeves and get down to messing directly with the PHP code under the hood.

My first thought was naturally that some plugin had been written that would make this task easy. A customized bit of WordPress shortcode perhaps? Or maybe an editor extension with a popup field editor for receiving JavaScript to embed. But alas I searched through several plugin candidates and didn’t find any of them at all suitable other than one that was a “Lite” version supported for advertising, and I didn’t really wish to embed ads into my post.

By this point, I’d lost the opportunity to get an early start on my blog post, and it was time to get the day going with breakfast for Melinda and me. I made us some oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar (for me) and walnuts (for her) with our usual coffee. We then had a short while to get ready for the rest of the day before heading out to have lunch with my mother-in-law and her husband. Then, we returned home and spent over an hour gathering old clothing and unused kitchen appliances for Good Will. Finally, we also cleaned out a ghastly amount of junk and clutter that had been lurking underneath our master bathroom sinks – mostly under mine. It felt good to clear out all the space and put useful things back inside in a nice and organized manner.

Next, we headed out to Good Will, followed by a stop by Whole Foods where we picked up groceries for the week including the stuff necessary to prepare one of our favorite dishes from Alicia Silverstone’s Kind Diet receipe book – Rustic Pasta.

Rustic Pasta!

While Melinda was getting the pasta together, I played DJ via Spotify and Airplay and also tried to find some way around my problem of embedding JavaScript inside a WordPress post. I found some code examples for Google Maps and after several false starts through testing out plugins, I decided to get down in the dirt and write a tiny plugin of my own to accomplish exactly what I needed. In the end, writing a plugin to do it was quite, quite simple. I should have done it from the start, but really it shouldn’t have required me to write any code. Just because I can write code, doesn’t mean I should have to when using blog software.

Although my obstacle was now removed, I didn’t have time to write the post as dinner was about ready. We enjoyed our last bottle of wine that we brought back from our trip to France late last year. It was a 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin, and we both found it quite good – especially with our meal. Afterwards, we decided to get ourselves caught up with Downton Abbey.

We watched the Christmas Episode of Downton Abbey that capped season two and then watched the first episode of season three which aired on PBS just last week. I am pleased to say that we found that the writing has improved immensely and returned to its excellent from from season one. The Christmas Episode was quite wonderful in every way and the season three premier left us eagerly waiting for the new season to unfold.

However, we didn’t realize what we getting ourselves into and found ourselves staring at half past midnight when we finished up! Melinda was rather tired and I found myself once again trying to quickly pound out 500 words on this blog. I decided to hold off on what I had intended to write about because I felt that I could more quickly write something more descriptive and stream of thought than trying to write something more thoughtful as I had originally intended.

Fortunately, it will keep for another day!

Desperate Race Against Midnight

So it seems that I’ve slipped up today. I planned to continue trying to actually write somewhat less than random words today as the  beginning of this week had proven quite fruitful in terms of fodder for this blog. Imagine! I managed to get three days worth of blogging from a late night vet trip and the aftermath the next day. But tonight after dinner and some wine, we retired to the couch to finish up season two of Downton Abbey and as we only had three episodes remaining, we pressed on despite the hour growing late and my blog deadline drawing near.

I’m afraid that I’m rather disappointed with Downton Abbey season two. We thought season one was quite good and that the show was off to such a nice start. However, it’s hard to imagine that the same person wrote both seasons! The second season’s plot lines were often highly unoriginal, sometimes right from the pages of a bad soap opera, and too often drawn out in ways that sucked the drama from them like a hungry vampire sucking the last drops of blood from an anemic victim. There were times when I felt embarrassed for the actors involved in a few of the scenes. Despite it all, the shows still watchable. I just hope that the writer got some fresh ideas and better execution of them for season three otherwise this show is or shouldn’t be long for this world.

It’s sad to see formerly good shows turn into shadows of themselves. For this show, it took but a season (and seems like a sharp change to us as we only just first watched season one over the last two weeks). For others like our once cherished Dexter, the writers managed a good five seasons of high-caliber writing before season six descended into lots of bad writing with season seven resurrecting some good writing while killing off some bad plot points (but doing so in a jarring way that showed that either the writers changed their minds and the writers were changed themselves) and still running up against plotting landmines. I’m glad that poor Dexter will be put out of his quality misery next season although we’ll still be watching it because we want to see how the writers tie things up and the quality was enough to keep us watching the characters and actors that we had come to love watching.

Breaking Bad is one show that I’ve watched where there was no discernible decline over the course of its run. I’m thankful that the show will be coming to what will no doubt be a satisfying end this year because although I will miss such an amazing show, how can it be possible to go on and maintain such stellar quality?

So looking at the time, I appear to have slipped from Friday night to Saturday morning. Ah, but it’s close – so very close. And after all, it’s still January 12th somewhere in the world. So I’ll consider myself as having fulfilled my blog entry for Friday and remain in keeping with my 2013 resolution. Phew!

Dexter – The Best Show on TV

Two weeks ago, I was visiting the excellent horror film review site the Arrow In The Head and saw a round up of the newest horror, suspense, or just plain cool releases on DVD. One of the new releases caught my eye: the first season of the Showtime original series Dexter.  What about it caught my eye? Well, to start with the cover artwork surely did. But then I read about the premise and found myself instantly hooked. You see Dexter is a black comedy and crime drama that follows the life of one Dexter Morgan who works for the Miami-Dade police department as a blood spatter expert. He also happens to moonlight as a serial killer – one who only targets other serial killers.

From the product description on Amazon:

Dexter is based on the compelling novel “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” by Jeff Lindsay. Orphaned at the age of four and harboring a traumatic secret, Dexter Morgan (Dexter Morgan (Emmy®- and Golden Globe®- nominated actor Michael C. Hall from “Six Feet Under”) is adopted by a police officer who recognizes Dexter’s homicidal tendencies and guides his son to channel his gruesome passion for human vivisection in a constructive way – by killing those heinous perpetrators that are above the law or who have slipped through the cracks of justice. A respected member of the police force, a perfect gentleman and a man with a soft spot for children, it’s hard not to like Dexter. Although his drive to kill is unflinching, he struggles to emulate normal emotions he doesn’t feel, and to keep up his appearance as a caring, socially responsible human being.

I put Dexter on my Netflix list, but got impatient and so last Sunday, my wife and I rented the first disc from Blockbusters. My wife was worried at first because the show doesn’t flinch when it comes to showing the gruesome crime scenes left behind by serial killers; however, by the end of the second episode she too was hooked. Why? Because this show is truly a gem of TV. It is incredibly well-written. All the characters are very realistic and well-fleshed out with their own interesting story-arcs that mesh well together and with the season’s quite compelling overall story arc. The acting is top notch all around with a truly excellent ensemble cast. Special kudos go out to the incredible performances by Michael C. Hall as Dexter and Julie Benz as his girlfriend Rita – a damaged single mother of two kids.

The writers of the series have created a very cerebral and well-pieced together show that keeps you coming back for more. They make clever use of foreshadowing and metaphors to enrich the whole package while using the fascinating concept of the show to explore how people interact with one another and what masks we all wear to hide our true selves.

Speaking of which: it is truly fascinating and hilarious (in a dark and morbid way) to watch Dexter try to pretend to be a person with normal feelings and desires and to hear his inner monologues contrasted with his conversations with those around him.

My wife and I were so hooked by this show that we found that we couldn’t wait for Netflix to deliver each disc and instead wound up renting the last two discs from Blockbuster as well.

Now we’re doing the unthinkable (for people who have avoided premium cable for five years) and ordering Showtime – all so we can watch Dexter Season Two which starts on September 30!

Do yourself a favor and rent or buy Dexter Season One! It’s truly the best TV show I think I’ve had the pleasure of watching.