Creative annoyance OTD

If the rumors I'm reading on the internets are true, DVD-R discs and DVD+R discs are not the same thing. I had no reason before now to think that the choice of punctuation mark on a blank disc's label was the result of anything other than the typographical preference of whichever company created it, but nope.

I have been making MST3K archive discs by simply dragging the big AVI files onto them in the Finder -- about six will fit -- and burning. It works fine, but the resulting data discs require a computer with DVD-reading hardware and AVI-playing software in order to replay the movies. When rserocki reminded me that I do in fact have Apple's iDVD at my disposal, I became engrossed in making some good-looking, TV-playable discs... only to discover that the application didn't want to recognize the DVD+R discs I have. iDVD apparently only wants DVD-Rs, while the Finder seems to be happy with either + or -.

OTOH, it's interesting to learn how cheap the media have become in such a such a brief time. I got this stack of discs at Micro Center the other day for something like 50 cents apiece; the 2002-stamped messages I was just reading suggested that they were a bargain at six bucks each.

Communism!

Today's Doonesbury is great; very well-dropped reference to an instance of itself from long, long ago; sometime in the early 1970s, I imagine. (Someday I'll start collecting the collections.)

It's interesting how Trudeau doesn't really draw age on many of his characters (who are aging in real time). Ol' Zonker, as with most of the core characters, must be around 50 years old by now, but he doesn't show it. I imagine him "actually" looking (and sounding) quite a bit like Jeff Bridges' "The Dude" character from The Big Lebowski.

Trudeau can draw age, and does so with a few key characters: Joanie, among whose core traits is her being significantly older than the rest of the core; B.D., whose helmet was famously removed last year for the first time amidst horrible trauma, to reveal his graying hair; and Mike Doonesbury himself, the author's (correct me if wrong) stand-in, gray at the temples himself and starting to look a bit saggy all around.