With the Oscars coming up, I thought I'd list some of my favorite supporting actors. Some of these guys have held a lead role, but I think their supporting work is great.

• John Turturro - He was a star of O, Brother Where Art Thou, but he was also really good in Rounders and The Big Lebowski ("Jesus doesn't care if it's Saturday!")
• John C. Reilly -- He's also held the lead in Criminal and one of my favorite movies, Hard Eight, but his supporting role in Boogie Nights was great, as well as others including Gangs of New York and Good Girl
• Philip Seymour Hoffman -- He was the sleazy mattress salesman in Punch Drunk Love, how much more do you need? How about Boogie Nights, Almost Famous and Red Dragon?
• Steve Buscemi -- Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Monsters, Inc., Ghost World -- need I saw more?
• Luiz Guzman -- He was in (what else?) Boogie Nights, but also Traffic and Punch Drunk Love.

Normally I wouldn't do this, but I have to include a couple of honorable mentions: Don Cheadle, and William H. Macy.

The only camera I had handy on my recent visit to Florida was my Cell phone.

"Can someone get this thing off me?"*

Of course.

These guys were really friendly while we had food, but once we ran out, they couldn't really be bothered anymore.

Mmmm. 1,400 Calories of beef, bacon and cheese (not including fries).

* No parents were harmed while taking this picture.

Better early than never, right? I'm not sure if I'll be online tomorrow so I'm taking care of this now. This was actually a harder list to come up with than I thought. There's a lot of good stuff that I thought I could include, but a lot of artists who have great songs don't necessarily have specific one-liners (e.g. Aesop Rock, Deltron, etc.).

• "If she ever comes in, she won't stay over my place / Wake up with drool and boogers all froze to her face" -- Alaskan Fishermen, Cold Up In Here
• "We go through episodes, too, like 'Attack of the Clones'" -- Talib Kweli, Get By
• "We're only humans, girl, we make mistakes / To make it up I'd do whatever it takes / I love you like a fat kid loves cake" -- 50 Cent, 21 Questions
• "I ain't need Miss Cleo to reassure me that I gotta / Score big like the opening weekend of Harry Potter" -- The Grits, Be Mine
• "A shell hit my jaw, I ain't wait for doc to get it out / hit my wisdom tooth, I kuh-too -- spit it out" -- 50 Cent, U Not Like Me

Today I discovered a crack in the armor of my cell phone only policy: If I misplace my cell phone, I don't have a way to call and use its ring to help me find it.

Welcome to a (hopefully) weekly feature of North. (Approximately) each week on (or near) Tuesday I'll post my five favorite somethings. Visitors are encouraged to post their five favorite somethings in the comments (or suggest different somethings for future lists). The caveat here is that the top five lists only represent my five favorite somethings at the time of writing.

This week's Top 5 category: Soundtracks (in no particular order)

• Trainspotting
• About a Boy
• Garden State
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• A Mighty Wind

Instead of cleaning or doing laundry today*, I wrote an Applescript for Mike. The script is a folder action -- when installed it watches a user-specified folder for new files. When new files are added, the script automatically runs Audion and encodes the files using whichever encoder is set in Audion's preferences (MP3 is default). The files also get saved to the Encoding folder set in Audion's preferences.

Only files that are added to the specified folder will get converted. This means that if you have 15 aiff files in the folder already, and then you add ObamaDNCspeech.aiff, only ObamaDNCspeech.aiff will be converted, not all 16 files. The script will not react when files are removed from the folder.

Note: Ideally, if you attach MirrorOnAdd.scpt to Audion's encoding folder, you would be able to convert (compress) and upload audio files just by dropping them in a folder. Unfortunately, this doesn't work as expected because the MirrorOnAdd.scpt is triggered as soon as Audion creates the new file (well before the encoding is complete), so only a portion of each file will be uploaded. A script is coming shortly that will both encode and upload.

System Requirements
Mac OS X (10.3.7) - Will likely work with other versions of OS X, but hasn't been tested.
Audion 3 - It's free now!

Installation
Once you've downloaded and unzipped the file, put EncodeOnAdd.scpt into your Folder Actions folder. You can either use /Users/[username]/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/ or /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/.

Set Up
First, you need to turn on folder actions. You can do this by right-clicking (ctrl-click) on any folder and selecting "Enable Folder Actions" from the pop-up menu.

Second, you need to attach the EncodeOnAdd.scpt to whichever folder you choose. You do this by right-clicking (ctrl-click) and selecting "Attach Folder Action..." from the pop-up menu. Select EncodeOnAdd.scpt and click "Choose."

Step Three: There is no step three. You're all set.

Download zipped file

* At least I went grocery shopping

I really dislike doing laundry -- I might even go so far as to say I hate it. Fortunately, there's a laundromat a block from my apartment that provides wash and fold service. Drop off a bag of dirty clothes; pick up clean and folded clothes a few days later.

I normally spend $4 to wash and dry two loads of laundry. It takes about two hours total to complete those two loads (30 mins in washer, 60 mins in dryer, 30 mins for incidentals like getting clothes to laundry room, moving from washer to dryer and folding). At minimum wage (assuming $6), two loads cost a total of $16 (2 hours x $6/hour + $4).

It cost $12.60 at the laundromat -- clean, dry and folded.