Walk-thru virtual tour


Outside deck, awesome views


Five skylights -- nice natural light and ventilation.

In these videos by 80-year-old geriatric1927 we once again get to listen to stories about his childhood. And the specific subject matter is fathers, and in his case, grandfathers.

But Peter -- geriatric1927 -- presents some philosophy on families, his ideas on independence within families, and he gives a loving tribute to his father with some lovely, detailed descriptions of his good times during childhood spent with his dad, a hard-working adventurous man who was willing to try most anything.

As always in his blog postings, Peter paints a really nice picture of his own personal history and about his father and who the man was -- and he sprinkles in some general history. Again, we're not only entertained with Peter's stories but we learn a little world history too.

If one is to relate seemingly banal information on one's family background and historical stories in a fairly plain, narrative form, you risk boring your audience. But Peter always makes history come alive. He always has something very interesting to impart to his (now huge) worldwide audience and always with detailed facts and anecdotes in a voice that makes you want to tune him in and tune out all your other ambient noise.

(Speaking of ambient noise, geriatric1927's videos have picked up an annoying high pitched background noise. Ouch! It is the video. Do not adjust your set.)

Labels: aitkins, blogging, England, family, fathers, geriatric1927, history, Telling it all, zimmers, Zipster08

An amazing clip from a 2002 documentary IMAX movie entitled "Straight Up", posted by simonjz05, which follows a high-wire utility worker as he is transported by helicopter which delicately places him on high wires so he can do repairs and inspections. The live power cables carry more than half a million volts.

Don't try this at home. By wearing a suit made of fire retardant material and stainless steel threading, this creates a 'Faraday Cage', then connecting a metal wire to the helicopter in flight -- which brings the helicopter up to the same voltage potential as the line -- the electric current arcs over and around them in their "cage" and the workers are protected from certain electrocution.

"A half a million volts pass around my body but I can work without interference from electricity," he says in the video. "There's such a hunger for electricity these days, nobody wants to take lines out of service to maintain them."

The scenery is beautiful (no indication of where this was shot), the heights staggering and the narrator's last words add some ironic humor as describes how he overcame his biggest fears in life: electricity, heights and women.

Labels: aitkins, cage, electricity, Faraday, helicopter, high power, high voltage, power lines, simonjz05

View the video here, and all videos by LisaNova

I'm not a trained therapist, but I'm good enough and I'm smart enough, and Gosh Darn it, my readers like me, so I'm gonna write a really really good review this time.

With apologies to Stuart Smalley, we always appreciate Lisa Nova's take on life and on the behavior of some of our odd friends and family members out there. We enjoy how she pokes fun at them with her serious way and with her tongue firmly in cheek. ("I do not need to vomit to feel good about myself today."

LisaNova has got a knack for making her points clear in her acting and very dry humor without ever having to push it in our face. Just enough so that we recognize her portrayals of the people we've all known -- and perhaps wish we didn't. If all it took was wishing it true then Donald Trump wouldn't need a massive comb-over and my Ferrari wouldn't look like Volkswagen.

Maybe these people aren't in any 12-step programs, but perhaps they should be. LisaNova captures the odd peeps who are creeping along that line between being way too sincere for their own good and being a tad insane. She takes it to the edge and most of the time steps over, then finds herself and comes back. Whew.. "We lost ya there for a minute Lisa. Now wipe that cake off your face and get back to work."

Yes, we've known people like this. Actually, I think we've seen them in the mirror.

If you're like me you see yourself in Lisa's characters. "I'm gonna stick to my diet and lose weight and and ... as long as there's no cakes or cookies in the house ... or in the coffee shop where I buy my coffee ... or anywhere within eyesight on my daily routine." Come on now, who among us hasn't eaten an entire cake in one sitting -- or standing over the sink -- because "this is the last of the sweets, really, no seriously, and tomorrow the diet starts in earnest. Seriously."?

Are there any 12-step programs to help one stop giving oneself affirmations? I know there must be, and if there are, I can join it and be successful and stop my constant affirmations. Yes I can, I know I can. I can and I will. OK, enough about me. On with the show.

Labels: affirmations, aitkins, comedy, exercise, karma, LisaNova, mad TV, madTV, sketch comedy, the paradox of choice, The Secret

Video the video here, and all videos by MNFIRAQ

Standing in a gray room with walls pocked with bullet holes, a quartet of U.S. Army soldiers trade fire with an unseen enemy perched off-screen.

"You've just got to aim a little bit higher, kid," one soldier coaches another firing what appears to be a grenade launcher at a building several blocks away.

"Whew, that smells good," the first soldier says.

The movie, "Battle on Haifa Street, Baghdad, Iraq," conjures comparisons to war films from "Apocalypse Now" to "Full Metal Jacket," but this grainy, jumpy short is not fiction. It is combat footage posted for the world to see by the military on YouTube.

It's one of dozens that the Army has put on the Internet since March in an effort to tell its side of the story about an increasingly controversial war in Iraq. Judging by the numbers -- the Haifa Street video has been viewed more than a half million times -- the Army has been successful in luring eyes to its story.

Clifton, N.J. firefighter Chris Struening spent more than a year in Iraq serving as a military policeman when his National Guard unit was called to active duty in 2004. He said Tuesday that he liked that the YouTube videos portrayed more positive stories -- like injured civilians being helped by American doctors -- about the war effort. The mainstream media, he believes, doesn't spend enough time on such stories.

He said he thought the combat footage was accurate and showed enough to whet the appetite of a public weaned on Hollywood action movies without crossing a line prohibiting graphic violence. To be credible, the military has to show some of the fighting that its troops face in Iraq, he said.

"It's not like the military can say 'Everything's fine and dandy over there.' The American public, they're not stupid," Struening said. "They know what goes on. What better way to do it than have the military release choice footage? Something that maybe doesn't show as much, but shows just enough to satisfy the public's curiosity."

Anti-war activist Madelyn Hoffman, director of the Montclair-based New Jersey Peace Action, said she found the combat videos offensive and disturbing. But she said that the graphic violence confirmed her beliefs about the horrors of war.

"In some ways, seeing the actual footage of what's going on is better than what we get on national media. At least you see it without censorship," Hoffman said. "At least people are seeing the reality of it. It is my feeling that if more people saw the reality of it, more people would understand how violent and brutal it is and how much at risk our soldiers are. Footage like this, you can't watch it for very long. I can't watch it for very long."

She said she worried that such videos might attract young people to U.S. armed forces facing wartime recruiting shortfalls.

"It's like a glorified video game. Here you are, you can root for your team," she said. "When they succeed, you can cheer and maybe a year or two from now, you can enlist and become part of that team."

Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, whose combined press information center in Baghdad launched the YouTube channel, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that recruiting was never part of the considerations behind it.

From the military's perspective, the benefit of posting videos to the Web directly is that it can bypass a skeptical and increasingly war-weary mass media to publicize the positive stories it considers overlooked. In one video, soldiers give gifts to Iraqi Boy Scouts.

"(On YouTube) you're not showing the carnage of the devastation of the car bombs of the day," Garver said.

"I don't need to, that's on every TV channel. That story is getting out. I don't feel a need to tell that story. Some of the other stuff is not getting out on its own."

Story by Tom Meagher, The Herald News. Originally published in North Jersey.com

Labels: aitkins, army, guns, IED, Iraq, Iraqi War, MNFIRAQ, shootout, soldiers