coaxialflutter

An Update to the Pantry Door Warning Light

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 21:35:53 -0600

One thing I’ve learned from my pantry door warning light is that SD cards don’t last forever and it gets pretty old to build a fresh Raspbian install and set up my Blinkt light server (and Tailscale) whenever a card gives out. I kept looking for something that would let me easily build (and update and rebuild) a ready to boot image so that I could just flash a new SD card and be on my way.

Pantry Door Collision Avoidance System

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 15:37:58 -0600

We recently moved to a new house, and while there are a lot of things we like about it there’s one small thing that has baffled me. For some reason, the door leading into the house from the garage opens into a short hallway containing a pantry/closet with a door that opens out directly into the path of the door from the garage. As you can imagine this adds an unexpected degree of suspense to the the normally mundane task of getting a box of cereal out of the pantry, never knowing if at any second someone returning through the garage might slam the door into you.

30 Days Without Video Games

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 14:46:38 -0500

For my 30 day challenge in May I decided to go back to avoiding something rather than adding something. When I spent a month without using my phone at home I thought that was really going to be something hard to give up. Since I found that I could do that fairly easily, I decided to do something more challenging and see if I could go 30 days without playing video games.

30 Days of Writing Wrapup

Thu, 02 May 2019 21:13:33 -0500

As April comes to an end it’s time to look back at my 30 day challenge for the month: writing for 30 minutes every day. This challenge didn’t leave me with the same kind of immediate positive benefits that the previous one did. I don’t know that I’m coming out of it with any lasting changes to my routine that I plan to make. There’s still a list of things that I’d like to write about but I’m not sure if I will, especially as I move on to other challenges.

A Better Reminders Workflow with Siri on macOS

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 21:36:57 -0500

I live by iCloud reminders. On any given day I’ll probably create at least 5 reminders, both for things I need to do that day as well as further out in the future. Out of all the different task/reminder systems I’ve tried, iCloud reminders seem to be the most effective in getting me to actually complete things. Many tools send you a single notification when something is due and if you brush that off because you can’t do it as soon as that notification arrives then you won’t be reminded again.

Review: The Soul of a New Machine

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 22:38:57 -0500

After seeing glowing praise from Jessie Frazelle and Brian Cantrell for The Soul of a New Machine I decided that I had to give it a look. (And then I promptly got hooked by Amazon’s “buy this too” recommendations and grabbed Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Hackers for good measure. I guess I’m on something of a history of computing bender) These books were a great way to spend some of the extra time I found myself with during last month’s challenge.

How I Lost 50 Pounds

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 21:38:43 -0500

I actually have no idea. Given that I did it, this might seem odd but there it is. Well, I suppose I can’t say I have no idea. Tracking calories, eating less, and exercising were certainly helpful. But I’ve tried each of those things to some degree in the past. How is that this time I’ve managed to keep going long enough (8 months so far), unlike prior attempts that burned out quickly?

Full Circle to Static Site Generation

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 20:21:12 -0600

Half the fun of having a blog is nerding out over how the blog is built. When I started 18 years ago (that can’t be right) I used MoveableType, which generated static pages for publishing. It worked well enough, but I wanted a Real Website™ with a database and everything so I switched to WordPress some years later. Having better options for comments and more dynamic content was nice enough but really for a personal blog it was unnecessary.

30 Days of Writing

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 21:32:48 -0500

For my April challenge I’m going to be doing 30 minutes of writing every day. I’ve got quite a few topics that I want to write about here and I’m hoping to start a dev blog as well to write about software. The goal definitely isn’t to publish something every day. I’m not sure how many things I’ll actually end up publishing but I’ll at least make progress every day. Right now I feel like it takes me much longer than I would like to be able to organize my thoughts and put something together.

30 Day Challenge: No Phone at Home

Sat, 30 Mar 2019 19:34:22 -0500

I’ve finished the first of my 30 day challenges, so here’s the summary of how it went. For this challenge I decided to avoid using my phone while I was at home. I wanted to do this because I found myself using my phone to fill time at home that I really would have been better off doing something else with. Using my phone was a way to avoid doing not just things that I needed to do but also things that I wanted to do but that were more effort than just swiping through things on my phone.

30 Day Challenges

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 21:37:56 -0600

Fashionably late as ever, I’m just now getting around to something that I picked up on around the new year amid the annual torrent of resolutions for self improvement. Normally I give most of these things a hard pass but the 30 day challenge seemed like an idea that would be a good fit for me. This isn’t anything new, the talk is from 2011 but I just happened to come across it a few weeks ago.

Putting the blog back together

Sat, 23 Feb 2019 18:00:49 +0000

When I started blogging, it was a novelty to share personal information with the world. I loved to share things that I found online, music that I was listening to, little details about my life. After I moved from Ohio to Missouri, it helped me keep in touch with friends that had started blogs of their own. When social media started to eclipse personal blogs, I wasn’t concerned. Quite the opposite.

links for 2011-04-01

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:00:49 +0000

Solarized – EthanSchoonover.com (tags: vim color)

links for 2011-01-17

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:00:49 +0000

Setup Guide: Rails Stack with Passenger, RVM, Bundler, Apache, and MySQL on Ubuntu (tags: rails)

links for 2011-01-15

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 08:00:45 +0000

Git Immersion – Brought to you by EdgeCase (tags: git tutorial)

links for 2011-01-07

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:00:41 +0000

Representing Non-Unicode Text on the JVM (tags: jruby java strings character-encoding)

links for 2011-01-06

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:20:30 +0000

Ruby on Windows – The Last Frontier | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog (tags: ruby windows)

links for 2011-01-04

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:30:42 +0000

vertiginous/pik – GitHub RVM-esque ruby environment manager for Windows (tags: windows ruby)

links for 2010-12-31

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:00:55 +0000

VimGolf – real Vim ninjas count every keystroke! (tags: vim games editor)

links for 2010-12-28

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:00:58 +0000

Vim plugin makes Ruby blocks into text objects (tags: ruby vim) Comments Comment by yuneec on 2018-10-02 02:25:04 +0000 Hmm it appears like your site ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing.

links for 2010-12-26

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 08:20:40 +0000

Ubuntu, Ruby, RVM, Rails, and You (tags: ruby linux)

links for 2010-12-24

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 08:00:51 +0000

1k 3D Christmas tree in Javascript (tags: javascript) Building Modular Web Apps with Rack and Sinatra (tags: ruby rack sinatra) Free Icon Set for Web Developers: Coded – Smashing Magazine

links for 2010-10-01

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:01:10 +0000

Web Application Exploits and Defenses (tags: google security tutorial xss)

links for 2010-09-23

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 08:01:20 +0000

Coming Home to Vim / Steve Losh (tags: vim)

links for 2010-08-27

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:01:04 +0000

Pro Git – Table of Contents (tags: git book dvcs scm)

links for 2010-08-24

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:01:21 +0000

JSpec – JavaScript Testing Framework (tags: bdd jquery javascript testing)

links for 2010-07-02

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:01:34 +0000

Steam Community :: Steam Web API Documentation (tags: api steam tf2)

links for 2010-06-30

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:01:22 +0000

rest-client – Project Hosting on Google Code Java application to test RESTful webservices. (tags: java testing tools) Persistent environment variables on Windows « Python recipes « ActiveState Code (tags: python shell scripting windows)

links for 2010-06-03

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:01:15 +0000

Checking Your AT&T Data Usage | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer With AT&T’s announcement that new iPhone data plans will be capped starting on June 7, customers are wondering how much wireless data they’re using. Figuring out just how much data bandwidth you eat up each month is easy with a trip to the AT&T Web site.

links for 2010-05-18

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:01:58 +0000

Vimcasts (tags: vim screencast)

links for 2010-04-23

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:01:28 +0000

Vimium – Google Chrome extension gallery Vim keyboard shortcuts for Chrome (tags: chrome vim keyboard)

links for 2010-04-18

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 08:01:14 +0000

dotfiles.org | community for sharing dotfiles like .bashrc, .vimrc, and .bash_profile community for sharing dotfiles like .bashrc, .vimrc, and .bash_profile

links for 2010-04-16

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:01:13 +0000

JSONLint – The JSON Validator. JSON Lint is a web based validator and reformatter for JSON, a lightweight data-interchange format.

links for 2010-04-10

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:01:14 +0000

JSLint, The JavaScript Code Quality Tool (tags: programming javascript analysis) Javascript Closures (tags: closures ecmascript)

links for 2010-04-04

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 08:00:53 +0000

This American Infographic Infographic companions to This American Life episodes

links for 2010-03-29

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:01:02 +0000

Vim Tutorial Videos – Derek Wyatt's Blog (tags: vim screencast tutorial)

links for 2010-03-28

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:01:05 +0000

Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors (tags: programming bugs)

links for 2010-03-21

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:00:54 +0000

The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History (tags: bash commandline history tips tutorial) Top Ten One-Liners from CommandLineFu Explained (tags: commandline tips shell)

links for 2010-03-19

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:01:04 +0000

Hg Init: a Mercurial tutorial by Joel Spolsky (tags: mercurial guide hg)

links for 2010-02-14

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:00:57 +0000

Elliott Smith – The Complete Live Covers 51 live covers by Elliott Smith (tags: music elliott.smith mp3)

links for 2010-01-31

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:59:08 +0000

Project SIKULI (tags: gui automation scripting)

links for 2009-12-30

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:00:37 +0000

Using cURL to automate HTTP jobs (tags: curl http tutorial web tools)

links for 2009-12-23

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:01:25 +0000

AI Systems of Left 4 Dead (tags: programming games ai valve l4d)

links for 2009-11-07

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:38:22 +0000

WPtouch: Mobile Plugin + Theme for WordPress ↔ BraveNewCode Inc. (tags: iphone wordpress theme)

links for 2009-11-06

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:39:13 +0000

WPtouch: Mobile Plugin + Theme for WordPress ↔ BraveNewCode Inc. (tags: iphone wordpress theme)

links for 2009-10-20

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:01:37 +0000

How to avoid keyboard layout automatically changes on windows – Stack Overflow Well, this explains the seemingly random keyboard layout changes that I'd just been attributing to general Windows awfulness. I just can't understand why the default keyboard shortcut for changing keyboard layouts in Windows is something as easy to hit unintentionally as ALT + LEFT SHIFT. Especially since if you don't have the Language Bar enabled there's no visual indicator of what's happened except that you start typing gibberish.

links for 2009-10-12

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:01:23 +0000

How to Send Blog Posts from Google Reader to Evernote « Evernote Blogcast (tags: evernote, googlereader)

Gorman 2009 edition has shipped!

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:50:01 +0000

Although the news is already spreading its way across various social networking apps, it’s definitely worth recording here for posterity. Welcome to our family, son. We’re so glad you’re here and that you’re ok. I’m sure the surprise you gave us in showing up early today is just the first of many times you’ll surprise us as parents. In fact, I don’t think you’d be sleeping as soundly as you are right now if you had any idea at all just how little idea we have about what we’re supposed to do next.

links for 2009-09-07

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:01:35 +0000

ruby-mp3info-0.6.13 Documentation (tags: ruby mp3 id3 library) Ruby-taglib (tags: ruby id3 library mp3) TagLib Audio Meta-Data Library (tags: mp3 id3 programming library)

links for 2009-08-27

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:01:24 +0000

Evernote Blogcast » Blog Archive » How to Unclutter with Evernote and Rubbermaid in 4 Steps (tags: organization, evernote, tips)

links for 2009-08-22

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:00:52 +0000

Information Is Beautiful | Ideas, issues, concepts, subjects – visualized! (tags: visualization data statistics) Soup Up Your Homebrew-Hacked Wii – Wii – Lifehacker (tags: wii homebrew emulators)

links for 2009-08-10

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:01:29 +0000

Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Food-Lover's Guide to Kansas City The best markets, artisans, and shops for cooks (tags: food kansascity)

links for 2009-07-31

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:01:02 +0000

Source for "Google Reader to Instapaper" – Userscripts.org (tags: greasemonkey googlereader instapaper)

links for 2009-07-26

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:01:29 +0000

SKJM – iCam – Support (tags: iphone video babymonitor webcam) Air Cam Live Video for iPhone/iPod Touch (tags: iphone video babymonitor webcam)

links for 2009-07-17

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:01:01 +0000

How to Take Better Baby Photos – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com (tags: photography tips) Eclipse Dynamic Languages Toolkit (tags: eclipse ruby ide)

links for 2009-07-13

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:00:38 +0000

L4D Maps – Maps & Campaigns for L4D and L4D2. (tags: maps games left4dead)

links for 2009-07-08

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:00:55 +0000

Google C++ Style Guide (tags: c++ google tips)

links for 2009-07-03

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:01:09 +0000

Vimperator – vimperator labs (tags: firefox vim extension) Charles Web Debugging Proxy • HTTP Monitor / HTTP Proxy / HTTPS & SSL Proxy / Reverse Proxy (tags: http proxy monitor tools network)

links for 2009-06-29

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:00:37 +0000

Matthew B. Jones: XBMC / Boxee iTunes 8 Integration (DAAP) (tags: music itunes boxee)

links for 2009-06-27

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:00:50 +0000

viPlugin for Eclipse | … 'cause editing still is the way to code (tags: vim eclipse plugin ide) vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif (GIF Image, 1024×724 pixels) – Scaled (96%) (tags: vim vi reference cheatsheet)

links for 2009-06-26

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:00:43 +0000

Fitbit – Automatically Track Your Fitness and Sleep (tags: fitness gadgets)

links for 2009-06-24

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:00:56 +0000

raining ktula » Blog Archive » How to configure Google Calendar CalDAV in iPhone 3.0 (tags: iphone caldav google calendar)

links for 2009-06-22

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:00:44 +0000

Google Docs: Download (tags: googledocs script python) Hide toolbar – Vim Tips Wiki (tags: vim toolbar)

links for 2009-06-15

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:00:44 +0000

Recipe Software (tags: recipes iphone software windows cooking food) Recipes, Food Photos & Discussion at Nibbledish (tags: recipes opensource food cooking) 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will | Music | A.V. Club (tags: quotes vonnegut)

links for 2009-06-01

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:01:35 +0000

Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey Video lectures on Gödel, Escher, Bach for MIT OpenCourseWare (tags: video lectures philosophy mathematics)

links for 2009-04-20

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:00:42 +0000

GridMove – DonationCoder.com (tags: windows utilities monitor desktop widescreen) DisplayFusion: Multi-Monitor Taskbar and Desktop Wallpaper | Binary Fortress Software (tags: windows utilities wallpaper monitor desktop)

links for 2009-04-17

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:13:27 +0000

Left 4 Dead Console Commands (tags: left4dead console commands games)

It’s official: Gorman 2009 edition is now under development

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:34:12 +0000

{.flickr-image} []2{.flickr-image}After going this long without posting anything, I figured that I’d better wait until I had something really noteworthy to write about and, well, this is just about as big as it gets: we’re gearing up for the next major release of Gorman this year! This one’s a complete rewrite from the ground up with a lot of functionality we’re really excited about. It’s currently in alpha and as you can see from the screenshot we’re not quite feature complete but things seem to be coming together quite well.

links for 2008-09-16

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:00:35 +0000

ongoing · Characters vs. Bytes (tags: encoding programming unicode)

links for 2008-09-10

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:00:39 +0000

20 Useful Visualization Libraries : A Beautiful WWW (tags: programming visualization api library)

links for 2008-09-09

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:03:34 +0000

WebAIM: Blog – History of the browser user-agent string Pretty darn funny (tags: web useragent standards humor)

links for 2008-09-08

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:30:59 +0000

Marc Chung: Chrome's Process Model Explained (tags: chrome process architecture)

links for 2008-09-04

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:01:17 +0000

Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?" | 43 Folders (tags: productivity 43folders presentation)

links for 2008-08-29

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:30:57 +0000

Mythbusters draw a MONA LISA in 80 milliseconds ! at NVISION (tags: mythbusters video)

links for 2008-08-27

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:31:02 +0000

A List Apart: Articles: Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo (tags: usability software development interface azaraskin) Fuelly | Share and Compare Your MPG (tags: webapp gas fuel driving) Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Ubiquity (tags: web firefox commandline)

links for 2008-08-20

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:30:48 +0000

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know (tags: software development design)

links for 2008-08-18

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:30:49 +0000

Rick Steves' Europe: Rick's Packing List (tags: travel vacation tips packing) Rick Steves' Europe: Tipping Tips from Europeans (tags: travel tips europe)

links for 2008-08-13

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:00:29 +0000

Fantastic Contraption: A fun online physics puzzle game (tags: puzzle game physics) emacs-refcard-a4.pdf (application/pdf Object) (tags: emacs reference)

Launchy and Firefox 3 bookmarks

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:18:17 +0000

i’ve been a big fan of Launchy for quite a while. In fact, it’s probably one of my most used tools, especially at work. However a while ago, after installing Firefox 3, I started noticing that new bookmarks I added didn’t seem to show up. I didn’t think about it too much, until I tried to add a new bookmark for a Firefox quick search (my all-time favorite use of Launchy) and found that Launchy just wouldn’t pick it up.

New phone number

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 23:00:29 +0000

It’s been kind of nice having the same number for the past 5 years, even if it was with a Columbus area code here in Kansas City. However, thanks to AT&T that’s no longer the case (and I suppose Apple shares some blame for leaving me with no other option but AT&T) and now I’ve got to remember any important things I registered for with my old number to update it, not to mention getting it out to friends and family.

links for 2008-07-24

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:32:55 +0000

MetaCommunications Engineering – Projects – Boost Contains regression test reports for Boost library compatibility with various compilers (tags: boost c++)

links for 2008-07-15

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:33:20 +0000

RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS – Google Code (tags: music video radiohead data visualization)

links for 2008-07-14

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:32:40 +0000

protobuf – Google Code (tags: google c++ data format)

And we’re back

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:39:30 +0000

Ok, so I’m not sure why I switched the domain over right away instead of setting everything up on the new host and then changing the nameservers for the domain when I was done. But, here we are: coaxialflutter is now running on WordPress on Dreamhost. I gave both WordPress and Movable Type 4 a test drive, and while MT4 sure did look nicer than 3 I was more impressed with WordPress overall.

The system is (going) down

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:08:30 +0000

I’m currently in the process of switching the hosting for the site so it may be unreachable at http://coaxialflutter.com for some time. Also considering switching to WordPress on the new host so feed URLs may also be changing in the near future. In the meantime, http://willgorman.net will still point here until I redirect that domain as well.

links for 2008-07-02

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:34:41 +0000

Debugging Toolbox (tags: windbg debugging scripts) Windbg by Volker von Einem: Debugging reference count leaks (tags: com debugging windbg scripts) Comments Comment by Dana Costa on 2008-07-02 14:29:07 +0000 Mr. Gorman, how goes it? We’ve gotta catch up sometime soon. what’s the best way to get ahold of you nowadays? I’m easily found on my http://www.thecostaclan.com site but I was looking through old pictures on Monday and decided I needed to track a few people down 😉

links for 2008-07-01

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:33:54 +0000

The 11 Best Foods You Arent Eating – Well – Tara Parker-Pope – Health – New York Times Blog (tags: cooking food health)

Wikipedia is a strange and wonderful place

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:44:42 +0000

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Even after reading the article, I still can’t make myself parse that sentence correctly. I know how it should be parsed but something just breaks down after about the fifth buffalo.

links for 2008-06-30

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:33:25 +0000

Beer Cupcakes! (tags: recipe cupcakes guinness)

links for 2008-06-28

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 07:33:07 +0000

The Old New Thing : GUIDs are globally unique, but substrings of GUIDs aren’t This is really interesting. I always wondered how you could guarantee that two GUID generating algorithms wouldn’t sometimes generate the same id. (tags: guid)

links for 2008-06-27

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:35:10 +0000

The New Methodology (tags: software design methodology development)

links for 2008-06-20

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:32:29 +0000

Daniel Escapa’s OneNote Blog : Creating Toolbar Buttons in OneNote 2007 (tags: onenote toolbar addin) Carl.Kenner – GlovePIE download (tags: wii wiimote windows interface)

links for 2008-06-18

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:33:42 +0000

A conversation with George Hripcsak about electronic health records and clinical truth « Jon Udell (tags: healthcare information datamining) BodySurf // Wii Balance Board + Audiosurf + Motion Controls (tags: wii wiifit hacks audiosurf games) Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3 (tags: firefox bookmarks) Places query syntax • mozillaZine Forums (tags: firefox bookmarks query syntax reference)

links for 2008-06-17

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:32:33 +0000

Search Through Your Saved Passwords | Firefox Facts (tags: firefox passwords) Threadless T-Shirts – Playing God by Aaron Hogg (tags: threadless tshirt wishlist) Science! ~ T-Shirts on the Edge of Forever (tags: science tshirt wishlist)

links for 2008-06-16

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:31:41 +0000

Birch Street Computing – Last.fm WebServices Library (tags: last.fm python)

links for 2008-06-15

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:36:25 +0000

Mark’s Blog : The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes Nice, I didn’t realize the error reporting dialog kept a handle to the crashed process (tags: debugging windows windbg)

Magellan gasoline tank fire 002

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:46:27 +0000

Magellan gasoline tank fire 002 Originally uploaded by Chris in KC. This photo of the gas tank fire from last week in KCK is pretty impressive. That fire was probably still burning at about half that height the next morning when I drove by it on the way to work (driving directly under the gigantic plume of smoke far above the highway), and was even smoldering still the next day.

links for 2008-05-10

Sat, 10 May 2008 02:42:46 +0000

The Shoebox — Ruby-Processing (tags: programming ruby graphics visualization)

links for 2008-05-09

Fri, 09 May 2008 02:42:14 +0000

uweek.org | Game’s high score could earn the Nobel | University Week, Vol. 25, No. 26 | University of Washington (tags: games science)

links for 2008-05-05

Mon, 05 May 2008 02:42:41 +0000

Running svnserve as a Windows service (tags: subversion windows service svnserve)

links for 2008-05-04

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:39:56 +0000

Beanstalk — Version Control with a Human Face (tags: subversion svn hosting)

links for 2008-05-03

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:46:40 +0000

Microsoft Pro Photo: Geotagging Goes Mainstream (tags: geotagging photography software)

links for 2008-05-02

Fri, 02 May 2008 02:36:46 +0000

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: linux filesystem)

links for 2008-05-01

Thu, 01 May 2008 02:42:45 +0000

Regular expression tool – regex.larsolavtorvik.com (tags: regex tool development)

links for 2008-04-30

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:35:35 +0000

The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect : Bruce F. Webster (tags: work culture) Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (tags: c++ programming Tools scripting)

links for 2008-04-27

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:41:38 +0000

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody (tags: culture internet clayshirky)

links for 2008-04-26

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:41:32 +0000

GNOME + Do = Crazy Delicious (tags: quicksilver launcher ubuntu) The Old New Thing : User interface code + multi-threaded apartment = death (tags: threads com programming)

links for 2008-04-25

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:45:34 +0000

Anil Dash: The Windows Apps You Never Need To Install (tags: software tips windows)

links for 2008-04-24

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:41:54 +0000

David Weiss: Metacognitive Miscalibration (tags: programming learning essay) FOSSwire » Ubuntu Cheat Sheet (tags: ubuntu linux cheatsheet reference)

links for 2008-04-18

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:40:58 +0000

CodeClimber: “All I need is a Programmer” (tags: programming software development)

links for 2008-04-14

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:52:41 +0000

RegExr: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool (tags: regex programming tools)

Desktotopia

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:18:33 +0000

I decided to give the Windows version of Desktotopia a go this week after seeing on Lifehacker that the app was no longer Mac only. So far I’m pretty impressed. Not so much with the app itself since there’s relatively little to that but moreso with the quality of the wallpapers they’ve got available. I’m pretty picky about wallpapers (which I’ll grant is somewhat odd since 95% of the time they’re completely covered up by other windows) and so far I’ve only come across a few wallpapers on there that I didn’t like at all.

links for 2008-04-13

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:41:24 +0000

LibYAML – PyYAML – Trac (tags: yaml library programming c++)

FriendFeed

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:31:54 +0000

Feed reading types might be interested in http://friendfeed.com/willgorman for (mostly) everything all in one place. It’s pretty utilitarian visually, but that’s fine as it seems to be primarily intended for consumption in RSS clients. Feed producing types might also like to use this to save me the trouble of having to keep track of separate subscriptions to your various services because I’m quite lazy. Yes, I could use the “imaginary friends” feature to create my own aggregated feeds of your stuff, but please refer to the previous sentence.

links for 2008-04-12

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:41:55 +0000

“Stuffy” Dowding (tags: software development project estimates)

links for 2008-04-11

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:43:15 +0000

ACM Queue – Death by UML Fever: Are you (or your developers) sick? (tags: uml design software development) Cringe-Busting your TODO list | 43 Folders (tags: productivity organization)

links for 2008-04-09

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:37:53 +0000

Google App Engine – Google Code (tags: google hosting development python)

Just out of curiosity

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:39:35 +0000

What do you call the opposite of rickrolling? For example, if were to say: “Hey, check out this awesome Rick Astley video!” Comments Comment by Tobin on 2008-04-05 09:36:13 +0000 Oh, I just got Beared!

links for 2008-04-02

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:50:02 +0000

Slava Oks’s WebLog : Getting an exception call stack from the catch block (C++) (tags: programming c++ debugging)

links for 2008-04-01

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:40:50 +0000

A Single Place For All Your Notes! | EverNote Corporation (tags: notes)

links for 2008-03-30

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:35:12 +0000

What’s the best way to sharpen a kitchen knife? | Ask Metafilter (tags: askmetafilter knives sharpening tips)

links for 2008-03-19

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:32:47 +0000

eee-ubuntu-support – Google Code (tags: eeepc ubuntu linux)

links for 2008-03-15

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:29:41 +0000

Smart Eating at Work – Part 2 – Shifting Careers – Small Business – New York Times Blog (tags: food work snacks)

links for 2008-03-05

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:30:32 +0000

Heroku (tags: rails ruby development hosting ec2)

links for 2008-03-04

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:25:50 +0000

rufus-rtm rdoc – File: README.txt Ruby gem wrapper for the Remember the Milk API (tags: ruby gem rememberthemilk todo)

links for 2008-03-02

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:31:41 +0000

Conkeror Emacs-esque keyboard driven web browser (tags: emacs conkeror xulrunner browser keyboard)

links for 2008-03-01

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:31:59 +0000

EeePC – Community Ubuntu Documentation (tags: eeepc ubuntu linux howto install)

links for 2008-02-28

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:32:32 +0000

UESP: Oblivion Map (tags: games oblivion map)

links for 2008-02-23

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:31:17 +0000

Dr. Dobb’s | STL Member Function Adaptors | January 1, 2004 (tags: c++ stl algorithm functor)

links for 2008-02-18

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:32:31 +0000

Trying Zoom Player (again) « Project HTPC (tags: beyondmedia htpc dvd vob) [plugin] DVD Library (December 9 Update) – SnapStream Forums (tags: beyondtv beyondmedia plugin dvd) [plugin] Game Library – SnapStream Forums (tags: beyondtv plugin beyondmedia roms)

links for 2008-02-17

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:26:08 +0000

Timemachine PSP Firmware Hack (tags: psp hacks firmware)

links for 2008-02-16

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:32:05 +0000

Developing a Gadget for Windows Sidebar Part 1: The Basics (tags: programming windows gadget)

links for 2008-02-11

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:28:28 +0000

Beyond3D – Origin of Quake3’s Fast InvSqrt() (tags: programming math algorithms quake)

links for 2008-02-02

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:32:08 +0000

Sleep: Boost Your Morning Alertness Without Caffeine (tags: lifehack sleep tips)

links for 2008-02-01

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:27:10 +0000

Arc Forum | Arc (tags: programming arc PaulGraham) TripIt | Organize your travel (tags: travel planning tools organization) Feature: The Quicksilver-for-Windows Showdown (tags: Quicksilver tools Windows launcher) Screenshot Tour: Repartition your hard drive in Windows Vista (tags: vista partition howto)

links for 2008-01-31

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:39:07 +0000

The FAIL Blog (tags: fail)

links for 2008-01-30

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:45:52 +0000

Juanmi’s blog » Blog Archive » How to run standalone JavaScript files in Eclipse (tags: javascript eclipse rhino)

links for 2008-01-27

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:37:13 +0000

WinSplit Revolution (tags: windows software monitor utility)

links for 2008-01-26

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:42:21 +0000

Stevey’s Blog Rants: Emergency Elisp (tags: emacs lisp tutorial programming)

links for 2008-01-23

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:42:07 +0000

Real World Haskell (tags: book Haskell programming functional)

links for 2008-01-14

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:31:28 +0000

PaperMaker (tags: wallpaper generator)

links for 2008-01-13

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:33:01 +0000

WINAMP.COM | Forums – Activewinamp on Vista (tags: activewinamp vista com)

links for 2008-01-10

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:30:10 +0000

Pixel cookies! – a photoset on Flickr (tags: cookies food pixel)

links for 2008-01-07

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:29:08 +0000

AWS::S3 – Ruby Library for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) (tags: amazon s3 ruby gem) Markaby Documentation (tags: ruby markaby gem html) Comments Comment by Neal on 2008-01-07 14:43:43 +0000 For extra fun, pronounce “Markaby” like “Rockabye” and make up a song about it to that tune.

links for 2008-01-05

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:33:16 +0000

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen – New York Times (tags: cooking science heat) Ola Bini on Java, Lisp, Ruby and AI: Ruby Metaprogramming techniques (tags: ruby metaprogramming programming)

links for 2008-01-04

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:39:50 +0000

lesscode.org (tags: software development blog) Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Weave (tags: firefox web services platform)

links for 2007-12-31

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:29:45 +0000

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century (tags: Blog moustache)

links for 2007-12-20

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:37:17 +0000

RedHanded » MUD in 15 Lines of Ruby (tags: ruby MUD programming code)

links for 2007-12-19

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:33:42 +0000

Flight Stats Pretty cool real-time airline flight tracking and status (tags: travel tracking status airline)

links for 2007-12-17

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:25:51 +0000

RSpec-1.0.8: Home (tags: ruby testing rspec documentation development) Alex Miller – Patterns I Hate #1: Singleton (tags: patterns singleton programming)

links for 2007-12-16

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 01:25:39 +0000

Team Fortress 2 Stats (tags: teamfortress2 games statistics data visualization) Flight Wait (tags: travel maps tracking airlines)

links for 2007-12-15

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:27:25 +0000

Stats for your account | flickr.com (tags: stats flickr photos) Aquaria – Bit Blot (tags: indie games)

links for 2007-12-02

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:33:40 +0000

Black Mesa parking permit sticker (tags: wishlist sticker halflife2)

links for 2007-11-21

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:32:53 +0000

Daniel Escapa’s OneNote Blog : Creating a C/C++ Add-In which works with OneNote! (tags: c++ onenote plugin api) OneNote 2007 COM API (tags: onenote com api) Joshua Flanagan – OneNote DevPal (tags: onenote tools xml)

links for 2007-11-20

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:36:43 +0000

Haskell support in Eclipse (tags: haskell eclipse ide)

links for 2007-11-17

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:28:59 +0000

Hack Attack: Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 (tags: osx hardware hackintosh guide) Comments Comment by ash on 2007-11-19 01:49:48 +0000 hey! You only post from delicious now! What gives? Comment by Will on 2007-11-20 10:32:38 +0000 I’m all about the autoblogging. Until there exists a way for actual posts with actual content to be constructed automatically as a byproduct of my actions elsewhere on the web, it’s going to be 95% delicious links.

links for 2007-11-15

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:37:53 +0000

The Backtracking algorithm/method at DataStructures (tags: algorithm backtracking c++)

links for 2007-11-08

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:37:00 +0000

[10.18] What is the “Named Parameter Idiom”? (tags: c++ programming) The Ultimate Guide to Freezing Food | Former Fat Guy Blog (tags: food cooking freezing howto tips) Comments Comment by Tobin on 2007-11-07 20:56:41 +0000 Hmmm, that Named Parameter Idiom is kind of interesting. I’ve never thought about doing that before. Comment by Will on 2007-11-08 07:29:58 +0000 Yeah, that hadn’t occurred to me either and I thought it was pretty cool.

links for 2007-11-06

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:46:35 +0000

hackety org » My Complete List Of Substitute Names For The Maneuver We Now Know To Be Monkeypatching (tags: ruby humor programming) Bethesda Blog » Blog Archive » Developing in our spare time, too (tags: portal map games mod)

links for 2007-11-04

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 02:26:58 +0000

Windows Search Code Samples (tags: development windowsdesktopsearch api sdk)

links for 2007-10-20

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:38:02 +0000

Watch Daily Show Video Clips Online | Discuss Recent & Popular Videos | Comedy Central Daily Show video archive (tags: video dailyshow) Portal: Weighted Companion Cube wallpaper! – GameTrailers.com Forums The Enrichment Center reminds you that the weighted companion cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak. (tags: wallpaper portal)

links for 2007-10-19

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:34:20 +0000

xs.to – Hosting – papercompcube.jpg Weighted Companion Cube papercraft. I guess this will do until Valve releases the plush Weighted Companion Cube. (tags: portal papercraft)

links for 2007-10-18

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:41:51 +0000

chumby squeezable wireless beanbag computer (tags: wifi gadget)

links for 2007-10-17

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:39:44 +0000

Software Is Hard (tags: programming software development complexity essay)

links for 2007-10-15

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:30:22 +0000

Wilco + Wii = Wiilco Saw this at the concert last night, pretty clever (tags: tshirt wishlist wilco) Why Functional Programming Matters (tags: programming functional Essay)

links for 2007-10-12

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:40:15 +0000

Cover art for In Rainbows // journal // hicksdesign Quite a few excellent interim album cover options for the new Radiohead album (tags: radiohead music art cover)

links for 2007-10-10

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:35:54 +0000

:::…Lebowski Fest…::: The Dude abides. (tags: tshirt wishlist biglebowski) Comments Comment by Carrie on 2007-10-09 22:05:37 +0000 That is fantastic!

links for 2007-10-08

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:25:25 +0000

Screensavers – Best Of | Graphics (tags: screensavers freeware)

links for 2007-10-02

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:40:52 +0000

Outlook Tip: Create Outlook Task, Note, Contact and Appointment Shortcuts – Lifehacker Handy for making Launchy commands to create Outlook items (tags: outlook tasks tips email) Liquid Rescale GIMP plugin: Welcome content-aware resizing for the GIMP (tags: gimp graphics plugin) Comments Comment by Neal on 2007-10-09 09:35:36 +0000 That liquid rescaling thing blew my mind.

links for 2007-09-29

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:34:30 +0000

elitism diagram tshirt (tags: wishlist tshirt) coffee tshirt (tags: tshirt wishlist)

A brief summary

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:31:41 +0000

To summarize the Renaissance Festival experience: Turkey legs: good Scotch eggs: good Mead: good Swordfighting: good Doughy gentlemen in tights: not good Codpieces: no no no no no no no no no Comments Comment by Tobin on 2007-09-24 15:04:22 +0000 What about a codpiece with a Scotch egg in it?

Audiobooks coming to eMusic this week

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:19:55 +0000

Well, this news kind of takes a little of the sting out of losing Epitaph from the eMusic lineup. It looks like eMusic is going to start selling audiobooks. DRM-free, of course, and considerably cheaper than iTunes as well. It sounds like they’re going to have The Daily Show’s book so I think I’ll need to pick that up. Also, I heart David Pakman. From the article: “Our customers don’t steal music,” said David Pakman, chief of eMusic, of the company’s 300,000 subscribers, who pay from $9.

links for 2007-09-16

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 02:29:42 +0000

Featured Windows Download: Schedule Gcal Events with Launchy and the Google Calendar Plug-in – Lifehacker (tags: calendar google launchy)

Bring back my Tom Waits!

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:04:52 +0000

Bleh, just found out that Epitaph Records left eMusic. That’s a major disappointment, especially since I’d been planning on picking up some Tom Waits this evening. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come with other labels as well. It’s interesting to note from that article that apparently eMusic subscribers buy 20 times more music than iTunes customers. You’d think that would be attractive to labels but it seems like everyone is convinced that 99 cents/track is the only reasonable price for digital music.

links for 2007-09-15

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 02:36:26 +0000

WidSets Beta (tags: mobile widgets)

links for 2007-09-14

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:33:39 +0000

OneNote PowerShell Provider at OneNote PowerToys (tags: powershell onenote scripting)

links for 2007-09-12

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:33:58 +0000

PoshConsole – Home (tags: powershell console wpf) CrossSafe CrossSafe provides secure cross domain JSON requests and partially implements the JSONRequest specification (tags: json javascript development)

links for 2007-09-06

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:43:26 +0000

Jott.com – Developers (tags: jott speechrecognition) Firefox Extensions cause Memory Leaks and Crashes – CyberNet News list of problematic FF extensions (tags: firefox extensions tips bugs)

links for 2007-08-31

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 02:45:22 +0000

Last.fm – the Blog · Audio Fingerprinting for Clean Metadata (tags: music metadata lastfm tags)

links for 2007-08-30

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:42:42 +0000

Virtually Vista : Making Ubuntu 7.04 Work Under Virtual PC 2007 (tags: ubuntu linux virtualpc)

links for 2007-08-25

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 02:45:18 +0000

Holding a Program in One’s Head (tags: programming article paulgraham development) Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2007, Where the Engineers Are (tags: Engineering globalization) Comments Comment by Neal on 2007-08-24 21:30:40 +0000 Paul Graham++ Comment by Will on 2007-08-24 22:23:47 +0000 ((lambda (arg) (+ arg 1)) PaulGraham) If the world ever runs out of parentheses, that dude will have a lot of explaining to do.

links for 2007-08-23

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 02:42:48 +0000

Making Bioshock Work with SM2.0 Cards! (Work in progress) – 2K Forums (tags: bioshock patch)

links for 2007-08-18

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:43:50 +0000

Steam Extras – Ajax demo (tags: steam videogames community json)

links for 2007-08-17

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 02:41:49 +0000

Mere-Moments Guide to installing a Subversion server on Windows (tags: subversion svn windows howto server)

links for 2007-08-15

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:43:01 +0000

Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader (tags: wikipedia offline howto)

links for 2007-08-07

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:42:11 +0000

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 7 Tips to Get the Most Out of MS Word « (tags: microsoft Word tips productivity) XFN – XHTML Friends Network (tags: xfn social xhtml microformats xml) Print Version — Eloquent JavaScript (tags: javascript book)

links for 2007-08-06

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:39:03 +0000

eMusic Dozens – Essential Alt-Country (tags: emusic altcountry)

links for 2007-07-25

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:49:09 +0000

ACM Queue – API: Design Matters: Should the authors of lousy APIs be held accountable for their crimes? Why changing APIs might become a criminal offense (tags: design api development programming article) Best Wallpaper Websites | Lifehacker (tags: desktop wallpaper)

links for 2007-07-23

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 02:40:09 +0000

Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting (tags: ubuntu usb install linux howto) Installation/FromUSBStick – Community Ubuntu Documentation (tags: howto install linux ubuntu usb)

links for 2007-07-21

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:43:57 +0000

Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Movable Type 4.0 BETA A test instance of the MT4 beta available through Amazon’s EC2 (tags: movabletype mt4 aws) Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (tags: software group community collaboration psychology)

links for 2007-07-18

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 02:41:09 +0000

Dash: Power at the speed of thought! The new interface for windows! (tags: software windows launcher) Comments Comment by Tobin on 2007-07-18 22:07:20 +0000 Dash? $50? Seriously, when are you going to get a Mac and Quicksilver? Comment by Will on 2007-07-19 21:57:43 +0000 So it’s that obvious then, huh? Ok, I admit it. I’m insanely jealous of Quicksilver and I’ve never even used it.

links for 2007-07-14

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:42:27 +0000

Delicious! Delicious!: A Late Snack: Bierocks! (tags: recipe)

You call that XHTML?

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:52:05 +0000

After updating BBQueue for the 3rd time to fix it to work with changes to Blockbuster’s site, I decided that there’s got to be a better way to go than regular expressions for pulling the data from their pages. Regular expressions are super handy and great for a lot of things, but handling HTML whose structure might change at any time without notice isn’t one of them. What I really needed was an HTML parser, and having been greatly impressed with Hpricot for Ruby I set out to find a similar library for Javascript.

links for 2007-07-12

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:03:16 +0000

Making work in XML, RSS, and Atom – ChangeLog.ca – WebLog for Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc. (tags: xml entities) stereogum presents…OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer (tags: music radiohead covers) SOCKET POCKET – Get Organized (tags: shopping organization wishlist) Comments Comment by Neal on 2007-07-12 13:05:36 +0000 Ironically, the nbsp got decoded into a real non-breaking space in your blog post.

links for 2007-06-28

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:48:27 +0000

websvn.tigris.org (tags: subversion svn web php)

links for 2007-06-26

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:49:16 +0000

How to Sleep More Effectively, Starting Tonight at Personal Development with Ririan Project (tags: sleep health lifehacks howto)

links for 2007-06-12

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:56:54 +0000

Using the Rake Build Language (tags: ruby rake tutorial build development) Java Juice® Extract :: Java Juice® liquid coffee extract 100% organic, kosher, shade-grown, Arabica Beans. No additives, preservatives, and sugar-free. Made in America. (tags: coffee)

links for 2007-06-10

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:39:45 +0000

How to Repair and Prevent Wood Rot | eHow.com (tags: repair howto wood rot)

links for 2007-06-05

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:46:49 +0000

10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It | zen habits (tags: productivity motivation howto sleep)

Geocaching Round 2

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:15:04 +0000

Jolayne and I headed out on another geocaching trip this afternoon, since the weather was nearly perfect. We were initially going to try to find the Airplane Observation Cache up by the airport, but it turned out that the park it was near was overrun by Little League mania (since it contains several baseball fields) so we opted to pass rather than deal with the traffic and crowds. Instead we went with our backup, a cache named Trio of Fore, which was a multi-part cache.

links for 2007-06-04

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:27:06 +0000

Web Services – Garmin Developer (tags: garmin gps web api)

Ivy – Thinking About You

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 05:25:42 +0000

Ivy – Thinking About You

iTunes Plus

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 04:37:20 +0000

Not too long ago it seemed like the most unlikely thing, but this week iTunes finally made tracks available without DRM (aka iTunes Plus tracks. Ironic that by removing something from them they’re now better). It’s only for artists on labels under EMI but hey, it’s a start. It seems like a remarkably sensible move a record company, which is precisely why it’s so surprising. Hard to believe that it’s taken so long to grasp the obvious: that DRM only annoys honest consumers who find themselves hampered by the limitations that weren’t present in previous kinds of media and does nothing to slow the efforts of people that want to get it for free.

links for 2007-06-03

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:32:27 +0000

Common threads: OpenSSH key management, Part 1 (tags: ssh howto security rsa)

links for 2007-06-02

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:34:22 +0000

Subversion on 1and1 | Brett Coburn (tags: SVN subversion hosting 1and1) highlight.js (tags: javascript syntax highlighting) Subversion / TortoiseSVN SSH HowTo | TortoiseSVN (tags: subversion ssh svn tortoise)

links for 2007-06-01

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:49:36 +0000

Subtraction: Oh Yeeaahh! (tags: design grids layout css) Google Web Toolkit (tags: Google java programming web development sdk) Google Mapplets Documentation (tags: google maps API mapplets) Install your own ruby on a shared host (tags: ruby howto install hosting)

Last.fm bought by… CBS?

Thu, 31 May 2007 03:33:27 +0000

That Last.fm found a buyer isn’t really surprising at all. I’d been expecting that for some time, and if anything it’s overdue. They’ve been continually adding new features, like Events, that are always executed exceptionally well and they’ve built a huge community. Tens of thousands of people constantly and voluntarily submitting information about their musical preferences. What company wouldn’t be interested in that kind of marketing data? So the acquisition was a given, but CBS?

links for 2007-05-30

Wed, 30 May 2007 02:38:58 +0000

…And the Two Shall Become One at cKure This sounds brilliant. We’re totally going to have to try this. (tags: recipe bacon pancakes baconpancake)

The Smiths – There is a Light That Never Goes Out

Tue, 29 May 2007 05:37:27 +0000

The Smiths – There is a Light That Never Goes Out

Camera Obscura – Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken

Mon, 28 May 2007 17:00:52 +0000

Camera Obscura – Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken

28 Weeks Later

Mon, 28 May 2007 04:06:57 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised with 28 Weeks Later. After learning that it wasn’t directed by Danny Boyle and after seeing the trailers I was considering not even seeing it in theaters, a drastic reaction given that I’ll go for pretty much any thing with zombies in it. Upon seeing that the trailer featured lots of soldiers, huge explosions, and kids as the main characters I made the assumption that they’d taken things in the direction of Resident Evil with stupid, brain-dead (heh) action, and added a heart warming family element to make it more accessible.

links for 2007-05-27

Sun, 27 May 2007 02:34:51 +0000

Performance tuning Subversion (tags: subversion performance svn)

SongPost 0.1

Sat, 26 May 2007 21:36:13 +0000

Not infrequently while I’m listening to music the thought will occur to me that the song I’m listening to is so awesome that I really should share it with everyone. Yes, but how? Last.fm recently added a feature to let you embed a mini-player to any of the songs they stream (some as full tracks, some as 30 second clips), but getting the code and pasting it into a new blog post sounds like way too much effort.

The Decemberists – Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

Sat, 26 May 2007 21:18:44 +0000

The Decemberists – Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

Morrissey @ The Uptown

Thu, 24 May 2007 06:22:46 +0000

Well, there’s one more thing to cross off the list of things to do before I die. At the risk (ok, certainty) of sounding ridiculous: Wheeee! Morrissey! Whoooo! My throat is quite sore and I think I pulled a calf muscle from standing on my toes so much (note to tall hipsters: the tweed fedora, while stylish, is not the most considerate accessory for a concert) but it was totally great.

links for 2007-05-23

Wed, 23 May 2007 02:39:51 +0000

Crossing borders: What’s the secret sauce in Ruby on Rails? (tags: ruby rails metaprogramming article) HotelChatter || Best WiFi Hotels 2007 Not that I travel a lot, but its still good to know. Nothing worse than checking into a hotel and finding non existent or overpriced wifi. (tags: wifi travel hotel)

links for 2007-05-21

Mon, 21 May 2007 02:42:25 +0000

Posko (tags: blogroll)

Congratulations Jolayne!

Mon, 21 May 2007 01:39:22 +0000

Jolayne’s graduation Originally uploaded by willgorman. Here’s my favorite member of the class of 2007 at the hooding ceremony for her Masters in Social Work. It took a lot of work in the past year, so now it’s time for a little well deserved celebration. Congratulations baby!

Test posting from Ruby XMLRPC

Sun, 20 May 2007 04:54:47 +0000

This post was sent in 3 lines of code in Ruby because Ruby is nice enough to include XMLRPC libaries as part of its standard library. That’s just awesome. Comments Comment by Neal on 2007-05-20 07:02:55 +0000 Ruby is so nice. It’s the only language I know that really makes me want to do object oriented stuff right. One of these days I’m going to write something in Ruby.

links for 2007-05-20

Sun, 20 May 2007 02:33:08 +0000

xmlrpc: Ruby Standard Library Documentation (tags: ruby xmlrpc xml-rpc documentation) Six Apart Developer Documentation – XML-RPC (tags: xmlrpc movabletype api documentation)

That’s a lot of water

Thu, 10 May 2007 03:38:14 +0000

While it’s not even close to the huge flood Parkville had in 1993 the past few days have certainly been interesting. After getting a massive amount of rain on Sunday and Monday the Missouri river decided to annex English Landing park and was looking in the direction of downtown Parkville as well. The downtown area Parkville, about 1.5 miles from our house, was evacuated on Tuesday as the water covered almost all of the park near the river and started to fill the street that leads to the park, which is also the main street through town.

The Decemberists @ The Uptown Theatre

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:51:55 +0000

The Decemberists @ The Uptown Theatre Originally uploaded by willgorman. The Decemberists are all growns up. In the 2 and a half years since I last saw them at the packed but tiny Jackpot Saloon they’ve now gone on to be able to completely fill the Uptown Theatre, a venue probably 20 times the size of the Jackpot. It’s clearly no accident though, as they proved with their awesome performance last night.

GPS and Google Earth

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:35:07 +0000

Geocaching track log in Google Earth Originally uploaded by willgorman. One of the reasons I wanted to be sure to get a GPS that supported a data connection was that once you can get the data about where you’ve been off of the GPS there’s all kinds of cool stuff you can do with it. Of course, Garmin doesn’t go out of their way to provide any software for getting to the good stuff but fortunately there are several other options.

Geocaching in Parkville

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:48:59 +0000

Jolayne at the geocache Originally uploaded by willgorman. For the past couple of years every so often Jolayne and I would talk about trying out geocaching, but we just never got around to it. This was primarily due to my indecisiveness about picking out a GPS device, pretty much a necessity for the activity (barring a superhuman sense of smell I suppose). I didn’t want to get a low end GPS to use just for geocaching since we’d probably want to get something more geared toward auto navigation at some point anyway.

Yo La Tengo @ The Granada

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:44:30 +0000

Yo La Tengo @ The Granada Originally uploaded by willgorman. Yo La Tengo is now 2 for 2 in the category of shows I have seen which rocked above and beyond the call of duty. It’s always a pleasure to see them live, mostly for the simple fact that you can easily tell that they love the music and that making it comes so naturally to them. You just can’t watch Ira pummeling out such impressive layers of sound without thinking “Hey, there’s a guy that really enjoys what he’s doing.

live from the granada: some blogging and also yo la tengo

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:03:16 +0000

not sure how well this is going to work but what the hey i’ve got some time to kill. currently waiting for the show to start and since jolayne has enough common sense not to go out on a weeknight i’m all alone. so here i am, painfully typing away on a cell phone keypad. i was thinking of going for macworld style webcast updates, but man this sucks. forget this, i think i need a Palm.

Neko Case @ Liberty Hall, Lawrence KS

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 19:44:17 +0000

Unsurprisingly, the Neko Case concert on Friday night was sold out and completely packed. Liberty Hall is one of the larger venues in Lawrence and I’d imagine even someplace larger like the Granada probably would have sold out as well. With good reason too, as it turns out her voice is every bit as impressive and powerful live as it is on her albums, if not more so. The opening act was actually primarily composed of members of her touring band, including Jon Rauhouse and Kelly Hogan, playing a selection of Americana like “Prisoner of Love” and a version of the Perry Mason theme song.

Upcoming Shows

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:29:50 +0000

I don’t know what it is about the rock and roll but for some reason the good shows always seem to show up in bunches all at once. After a drought lasting since last fall there are no less than 6 shows in the next 2 months that I’m planning on hitting. 4 of those are weekend shows which is huge plus now that I’m Worky McWorksalot from OldFogeytown. To get me out on a weeknight anymore it either has to be a band that I just can’t miss (like Yo La Tengo) or be at a venue that’s really close.

Well, something’s outrageous alright

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:41:53 +0000

“It is outrageous, in a post-9⁄11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme” Sigh. Comments Comment by Carrie on 2007-02-01 18:34:12 +0000 You’re kidding, right? Its a genius marketing plan! Comment by Will on 2007-02-01 19:43:33 +0000 That was a quote from the mayor of Boston in the NY Times article, which I thought was completely, eye-rollingly ridiculous. Invoking 9⁄11 over objects that are obviously not bombs, at least any more so than any other random electronic device that you might encounter during a typical day, seems pretty brain dead to me.

Launchy 1.03

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 04:53:27 +0000

A new version of Launchy, one of my favorite time saving and convenient Windows apps, has just been released and looks like it’ll shave even more unnecessary seconds out of my computing routine. I haven’t touched the Windows start menu in months as it is since with Launchy I can typically start just about any program I need by just typing a small part of its name, 3 or 4 keystrokes usually.

Beyond TV Link

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:34:09 +0000

I continue to be impressed with SnapStream’s PVR related software offerings. A couple weeks ago it dawned on me that, wait a minute, Beyond TV Link might be pretty useful to put on a laptop. I mean, what if I want to watch TV or a recorded show but I’m too lazy to walk downstairs? What if I want to watch a recently recorded episode of Mythbusters while Jolayne watches Grey’s Anatomy?

Wash, rinse, repeat

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:36:45 +0000

The seven stages of a project: Phase 1: Uncritical Acceptance Phase 2: Wild enthusiasm Phase 3: Dejected disillusionment Phase 4: Total confusion Phase 5: Search for the guilty Phase 6: Punishment of the innocent Phase 7: Promotion of nonparticipants Comments Comment by Tobin on 2007-01-25 22:54:15 +0000 Haha. That’s too familiar.

That’s not what I had in mind

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:42:18 +0000

Here’s a fun fact: If you start to shut down Windows XP and then realize “Wait, no, I meant to Hibernate!” you may still have time to bring up the shut down menu again and select Hibernate. It will then appear that the system goes into hibernation instead of shutting down. However, when you restore from hibernation you will find that it didn’t go into hibernation instead of shutting down, it just went into hibernation while shutting down and will continue to complete the shut down process very shortly thereafter.

In the olden days

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:14:20 +0000

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that mankind had a much greater fondness and appreciation for snow before the invention of driveways and sidewalks.

A lesson learned

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:11:20 +0000

Just because Bawls Mints claim to be lightly carbonated does not mean that you can add several of them to a cup of water and end up with a fizzy recreation of the excellent code-fueling beverage from which the mints derive their name (but none of the quality). What you can end up with is a cup of mildly sweet, odd tasting blue water with chalky chunks of bloated, half-dissolved candy pieces.

Time for a change

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:03:17 +0000

Well, I figured it was about time to upgrade my blogging technology from early 21st century to… um, slightly later 21st century and jump to MT 3.33 (at the same time that someone else decided to jump ship). Actually, I’d gone ahead and done the upgrade last month, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it left all my templates unchanged and mostly functional (my recent tracks display broke down due to some conflicts with plugins).

That’ll be a mulligan, thanks

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:47:19 +0000

I recorded the OSU vs Florida national championship game tonight. What I intend to do is to loop Ted Ginn’s return of the opening kickoff for a touchdown over and over so that it fills the entire duration of the game, 30 glorious seconds at a time. In this game, we win by something like an unheard of 400 points. If nobody minds too much, I’d like for this to be considered the official version of the game, and for what the nation witnessed tonight to be dismissed as a humorous outtake, or perhaps a crazy alternate reality thought experiment.

What, already?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 04:20:43 +0000

New Year’s Resolutions for Coders Comments Comment by Neal on 2007-01-03 22:23:47 +0000 “I will not respond to requests for help by informing the questioner that they are not only asking the wrong question, but should change the language they program in and/or their Linux distribution.” That’s going to be a tough one.

Favorite Albums of 2006

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:02:02 +0000

Asobi Seksu – Citrus My Bloody Valentine-style swirly guitar squall with a more energetic, driving rhythm section and topped off with floaty Japanese female vocals. It may not be anything groundbreaking but it’s an excellent take on one of my favorite genres. Not a bad track on the album. Calexico – Garden Ruin At first it seems like a big departure from their trademark mariachi-tinged cinematic southwestern style, but the additions of alt-country and even rock are mixed in perfectly here, making this my favorite Calexico album to date.

Easter eggs in December?

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:52:20 +0000

Awesome, it looks like Flickr added a pretty sweet Christmas easter egg (er… wait a minute. Christmas egg? Eggnog?), Just add a note to any photo with “ho ho ho hat” or “ho ho ho beard” as the text and add instant Festivus spirit to the picture.

Maybe the internet isn’t the answer to everything

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 21:11:38 +0000

Having gotten used to the convenience of getting almost all of my music straight from eMusic, its good to remember every now and then that there’s definitely a price to pay for the ease of getting albums as intangible collections of bits. Some albums that go beyond the typical jewel-case and minimal two page liner just aren’t done justice by being purchased as files alone, even if I’ll only end up listening to them that way and not from the physical media.

Welcome to winter in Missouri

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 03:29:03 +0000

Car Damage Originally uploaded by willgorman. I think it’s about time that the people of Kansas City collectively sat down and reassessed their winter driving skills. They clearly need some work. Snow and ice seem to bring out the idiot in people in a way that I’ve rarely seen back in Ohio, and the first snow storm of the year is apparently some kind of grand jubilee for them.

Clearing out the cobwebs

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:55:00 +0000

Thanks to Neal for pointing out that comments were teh borken. I’m not sure what was up with that. MT Blacklist was blowing up with errors about the regexs in the blacklist and I thought maybe there had been a new version of Perl installed or something that was breaking it. For a moment I thought I finally had no other option but to finally upgrade to MT 3.x. And then I just reimported the blacklist, the exact same blacklist that it was complaining about, and it started working just fine.

End of the free ride

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:43:10 +0000

All good things must come to an end, including my 3 years of free hosting with 1&1. I’ve decided to stick with them and get one of their hosting plans though not so much because they had the best price or the most options (for example, no WebDAV, which would have been nice) but mostly because I’m just too lazy to transfer my domain registrations and data to another provider. I’d be interested to know how many other beneficiaries of their crazy 3 year promotion actually stuck around as well, and how long they have to keep a paying plan for 1&1 to not have lost money on the deal.

Geotagging goes prime time at Flickr

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:21:40 +0000

Ohboyohboyohboy! I’ve been waiting for this ever since Geobloggers closed up shop when Dan Catt went to work for Flickr. Flickr has finally rolled out their integrated mapping/geotagging functionality, so no more having to use 3rd party apps/sites for tagging/viewing and the best part is that it still recognizes the same geobloggers tags so all the pictures I’ve mapped before show up already. I’m obviously excited about geotagging pictures (perhaps a little too much so, you might think) but now that it doesn’t require any Greasemonkey scripts, extensions, or other websites, maybe geotagging will gain a bit more exposure and acceptance.

Initializing CComBSTRs

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:11:24 +0000

Anyone that’s done any programming in C/C++ knows about the dangers of using an uninitialized primitive data type. Nothing quite like performing a calculation on a double with a junk value or dereferencing an uninitialized pointer to some random block of memory that makes it past a NULL check. However, there are also cases where attempting to intialize an object that has a default constructor can cause you some trouble if you’re not careful (in addition to being unnecessary).

Again with the eMusic

Sun, 28 May 2006 00:00:36 +0000

I’ve already talked about them repeatedly, but there’s an article about eMusic I read the other day that I thought was pretty interesting. It confirmed some things that I already knew, like the fact that I’m pretty much the exact definition of their target market (the over 25 music fan that likes to check out new stuff on a whim and wouldn’t even consider buying music with DRM). However, there were some things I was suprised to learn, like that they’re the number 2 retailer of downloadable music behind, obviously, iTunes.

A better backup solution

Sun, 21 May 2006 23:16:10 +0000

Ever since Amazon announced their S3 online storage service for developers I’d been hoping that someone would come out with an app to take advantage of that service in a way that was aimed at end users rather than developers and it looks like that’s just happened. The recently released beta for JungleDisk is just such a program, providing an easy to use wrapper around Amazon’s storage service that adds no additional cost.

Not at all a bad way to spend a Sunday evening

Mon, 01 May 2006 06:20:19 +0000

Here’s something fun you can try at home. First, find a cool spring night. That could be kind of tricky depending on the time of year, but I just happen to have one right here that I’m going to use. Next, open up a bunch of windows in your house/apartment/whatever. Ideally you should be able to hear crickets, but if not, no big deal it’ll still work. Maybe turn on a fan or two and get a nice breeze going.

Our first anniversary!

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:22:46 +0000

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full year since the crazy, hectic wedding planning came to an end and our long awaited wedding finally arrived. Despite having to brave freezing rain and snow at the end of April (and of course it’s unseasonably warm at this time this year) it was without a doubt the happiest, most special day of our lives and a lot of that was due to all of our families and friends who were there with us.

The exciting world of operator precedence

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 04:54:32 +0000

I think it’s time we had a talk about operator precedence. Specifically operator precedence in C++ as it pertains to the bitwise “and” and “or” operators (& and |). (Ok, and let’s not forget the all too often overlooked “xor” (^)) One thing that it seems that people occasionally forget is that these operators are evaluated at a lower precedence than the comparison operators, such as == and !=. This means that the following piece of code doesn’t do what you might have assumed it would:

Orb

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:08:44 +0000

A while back when I was gushing about my new phone, I mentioned an audio/video streaming program called Orb that I thought was pretty cool. 3 months later I’m still just as impressed with how simply and conveniently it can allow my phone to function as a portable media device. I’m guessing it’s just a matter of time until something like this makes iPods obsolete (ok, but I’m not going to take a guess as to how much time.

Spoon @ Day on the Hill in Lawrence KS

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 05:16:09 +0000

Last weekend Jolayne and I went to Lawrence to see Spoon play at Day on the Hill, a music festival put on by KU’s student activies center. Apparently the festival was pretty big in the mid 90’s but had gotten progressively less impressive in recent years, and had been on hiatus since 2002. This year was an attempt to revive the festival, and having Spoon as the headlining act was definitely a good start.

BBQueue – A Yahoo! Widget

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 04:28:10 +0000

This has kind of been out for a while now and I meant to post about it earlier but it sort of got overlooked in the craziness of moving and whatnot, but I put together a widget for Yahoo! Widgets (the exclamation mark always seems like a little bit much to me) for checking up on the movies in your Blockbuster queue. It’s called BBQueue (Oh don’t worry, I’m already aware just how terribly, terribly clever that is.

The end of an age old debate

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 05:13:38 +0000

It seems that the whole time we were wondering whether pirates or ninjas were more awesome we were asking entirely the wrong question. The true winner of the struggle for awesomeness has emerged from the shadows and it’s… ATF agents? Despite the fact that ninjas are not normally known for being involved with either alcohol, tobacco, or firearms ATF agents recently detained a University of Georgia student who was dressed like a ninja as he was leaving a “pirates vs.

It’s harder than it looks

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:36:21 +0000

Contrary to popular opinion (and by popular I mean mine, previously) a house is not just like an apartment that you’re allowed to paint. It turns out that owning one is, to put it mildly, a fair amount of work. I mean, I’m sure it’s worth it, what with all the equity and whatnot but still a lot of work. At any rate, it’s certainly kept us busy over the past couple months.

Is that a broadband connection in your pocket?

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 02:25:48 +0000

Why yes, yes it is. Thank you for noticing. I recently just renewed my cellphone contract with Sprint and picked up the uber cool Samsung A900. This thing is a seriously impressive piece of pocket sized hardware. While its design obviously “borrows” heavily from the Razr, the A900 wins the technological superiority contest hands down. In a form factor only slightly larger than the Razr it manages to pack in an overwhelming list of features.

Take the Goldshire exit to Stormwind. Go 0.5 mi

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 03:14:47 +0000

Behold, the nerdiest use of the Google Maps API yet: a Google Map-ized view of the World of Warcraft. Impressive. But I don’t think it will really be complete until I can get turn by turn directions from Lakeshire to the Swamp of Sorrows, or search for trade good vendors near a specific zip code. Does Azeroth even have zip codes? They should probably get on that. One thing I hadn’t realized before was how completely ugly Azeroth looks from the air.

Magical Mystery Tour

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:51:04 +0000

And now, a video tour (50MB, QuickTime) of our house dorkily narrated by yours truly. Comments Comment by Brett on 2006-01-25 05:27:58 +0000 What, no Rush? I’m disappointed? Comment by Will on 2006-01-25 07:25:41 +0000 Crap, it does need a soundtrack, doesn’t it? Looks like your video remains the Most Rockingest New Home Video of all time. Comment by Ash on 2006-01-25 09:12:58 +0000 Whoa, that’s awesome. So its taking kind of a long time to download, Jeebus… 50MB!

New House Day!

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:46:16 +0000

Last night was the night that we finally got possession of our house. We met the former owners there, did the walkthrough, got the keys and then ran through the house giggling like schoolgirls. The last part was after the old owners had left though. Well, mostly. I think we still can’t believe that it’s actually ours. We just kept walking around through all the rooms trying to take it all in.

I think our parents are trying to kill us

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 19:21:38 +0000

Our parents are trying to kill us Originally uploaded by willgorman. That’s the only possible reason I could think of that they would send us back from Ohio with so much candy, cookies, and snacks. I mean, look at that pile. Can two people reasonably be expected to eat all that and not explode in an apocalyptic blast wave of blubber? You can’t even see it in the picture, but behind all that there’s a bread box stuffed with about six bags of delicious homemade cookies.

Ranting about ratings

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:14:12 +0000

Ok, so it’s a new year and I’ve decided it’s finally time to abandon the bloated and crapulent Windows Media Player as my tool for managing my music collection and return to the loving arms of Winamp. The only reason I’ve used WMP at all is because I’m somewhat obsessive about correctly tagging & rating my music. WMP does have nice integration with Allmusic.com for filling out tags automatically, and it had a plugin that would write the ratings into the ID3 tags of the files in order to back them up.

Happy New Year!

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 16:49:28 +0000

Happy New Year everyone! Was anyone else disappointed that they didn’t observe the leap second when the ball dropped in Times Square?

Back in Kansas City

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 02:14:49 +0000

Jolayne and I got back in from Ohio on Tuesday night after a drive that we definitely don’t mind only making once a year. Despite being bookended by long hours on the road, our trip was a good one. It’s amazing how quickly 10 days can fly by though. It would have been great to have had more time to spend with everyone, but at least I got to see a lot of people even if for just a quick visit.

Death Cab for Cutie/Psychedelic Furs/Hot Hot Heat/Alkaline Trio @ Memorial Hall

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 04:23:55 +0000

Friday was the night of the Buzz’s yearly christmas show and despite having to leave for Ohio first thing Saturday morning Jolayne and I had decided to go. In retrospect, maybe not the best idea. It seemed reasonable enough when we’d bought the tickets but by the night of when we realized that we still had a bunch of packing to do and a 12 hour drive the next day we decided that maybe we were crazy.

Iconified

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 06:18:33 +0000

I’d been wanting to create a favicon for the site for some time, but I’m a fairly inept pixel pusher, and using a stock icon just didn’t seem too interesting. Fortunately, I came across this site that will convert any image into a 16×16 icon that can be used as a favicon. Couldn’t be simpler. I used it to turn a screenshot of the site into an icon. Probably not the most creative route but hey, if I’d wanted creative I would have made one from scratch to begin with.

Here’s to getting it right the first time

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 06:13:24 +0000

It’s always nice to learn that you’ve been doing something the right way all along. In this case, it involves my choice of mp3 encoder and the vindication comes from this Wired article on audio formats. The article talks about how people sometimes decide to go back and re-rip their CD collections in a different format or level of quality and endorses LAME as a high quality mp3 encoding option.

One less thing to get annoyed with

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 02:28:53 +0000

The 1.5 release of Firefox seems to have changed a really annoying behavior of the previous versions where if it was set as your default browser and you clicked a link in another app (email, instant messenger) it would open in the currently open tab of the browser replacing whatever you had open in it already. With 1.5 it seems to do the civilized thing and open that link in a new tab instead.

Baby got backend

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 03:20:21 +0000

Notice anything different about the site? Hopefully not. Over the weekend I finally got around to converting my MovableType database from Berkeley DB to MySQL. Exciting stuff, I know. I couldn’t even tell you why I initially went with the BerkeleyDB when I had a perfectly good database just sitting there waiting. It’s embarrasing, frankly. Let’s never speak of it again. I’d been putting it making the change forever because I was convinced something would go horribly wrong in the process.

Router Troubles

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 21:00:40 +0000

A couple weeks ago I noticed one evening that our internet connection was getting a little flaky and then the following morning it was totally out. At first I assumed it was our ISP’s fault but a quick look at our router, an early model Linksys WRT54G (about 3 years old), proved otherwise. Its diagnostic light was on and all the other lights were flashing on and off together, and it wouldn’t respond to resetting the hardware.

Our new house

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 22:31:37 +0000

Our new house Originally uploaded by willgorman. As of about 10 am yesterday Jolayne and I are now officially homeowners. We closed on our house, a nice little split level in Parkville, MO (How about that, the Parkville community website recommends FireFox. That’s certainly a promising sign) It’s a nice town a few minutes northwest of downtown KCMO. One of the things that we like about it is that it’s not too suburbish and has its own little downtown/main street area with a bunch of local shops and restaurants (including the excellent Piropos) So yeah, we really like the area it’s in.

Cloud

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 05:34:28 +0000

It’s always good to see innovative, interesting, or just plain offbeat steps taking in the gaming world, and Cloud seems to be all three of those things. Cloud is a free game that comes from the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab and it certainly looks promising so far. In the game you control a young boy who can fly around and gather clouds. Simple enough. Some levels have you trying to create vast pictures in the sky out of the clouds, while others have you pitting the clouds you’ve gathered up against ominous black smog clouds in an attempt to clear the skies (doing so produces rainstorms and lightning).

Discover music

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 03:59:01 +0000

A new tool I’ve just stumbled across in my Galactus-like quest to consume more and more of the musical universe is Pandora, an offshoot of the ambitious sounding Music Genome Project. They seem to offer a different approach to the typical “recommend-if-you-like” method of comparing artists. Rather than trying to just say “this artist sounds like these other artists”, Pandora tries to go a level deeper and actually examine the fundamental characteristics of individual songs to more accurately help you find music similar to other music that you like.

Well, this is disturbing.

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 05:18:28 +0000

As a recently relapsed World of Warcraft junkie I was surprised and disappointed to find out that apparently Blizzard uses something called a warden client keep its player base honest. A warden client is something that will run along with the game and check out the other processes running on your machine in order to make sure that you’re not running any known 3rd party applications used for cheating. It then sends that information back to Blizzard.

Violent Femmes @ the Madrid Theatre

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 07:50:42 +0000

Brian Ritchie’s pick! Originally uploaded by willgorman. Tonight Jolayne and I went to see the Violent Femmes play at the Madrid Theatre as part of the 25th anniversary celebration for The Pitch, KC’s local alt-weekly paper. We showed up pretty early, well before the doors opened, hoping to get a good seat in the Madrid’s awesome balcony. Due to getting there just as they were starting a second line for entry we managed to be one of the first people in.

BBQ and Chocolate

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 01:21:11 +0000

It’s been good weekend for food. Last night Jolayne and I went to the American Royal BBQ over at the Kemper Arena. The American Royal itself is an annual month long rodeo/livestock event in Kansas City, but its first weekend is always a barbeque competition. We’d never been before, but this is only the second year they’ve had it set up to allow you to buy from the competitors. However, we were a little disappointed because we thought there would be a lot more sampling going on.

A cautionary tale

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 02:31:14 +0000

Bleh. Originally uploaded by willgorman. Maybe you’re like me and you find yourself unable to resist trying out the different novelty and seasonal variations of snacks and pop. Maybe if you saw candy corn flavored soda on a store shelf you might think “Hey, that’s worth a try” instead of shaking your head and walking right on by as any sane person would do. If that’s you, let me do you a favor with a word of advice: don’t.

With the right build I think I can get my Rumsfeld out on the third turn!

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:32:08 +0000

The recent, across the board, governmental screw up in handling the aftermath of hurricane Katrina has left a wide open opportunity for scathing satire. However, there’s no higher form of nerd satire that making a fake Magic: the Gathering expansion set out of current events. If you’ve ever played MtG (or similar games), you’ll probably find it to be pure genius, otherwise it may be somewhat confusing. There are a lot of awesome subtle bits of humor, like how the Dept of Homeland Security card is powerful, but useless without the Proper Paperwork card and (wait for it) there is no Proper Paperwork card.

Well, you know what I’ll be doing on November 9th now.

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 04:50:33 +0000

You pretty much know there’s no way I’m going to miss this. The Video Games Live concert has a bunch of new tour dates announced and it seems that they’re playing in Kansas City at the Midland Theatre on November 9th. At least I hope that’s right, because it’s not listed on Ticketmaster or on Midland’s site itself yet. While I’d probably rather see the orchestral performance of music from Final Fantasy I’m certainly not going to pass on the opportunity to enjoy a fine evening of geekery under the guise of a legitimate fine arts event.

Hardcore network administration

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 02:40:11 +0000

I don’t know whether to be amazed or to think he’s totally insane but there’s a guy that’s blogging from his company’s data center in the business district of New Orleans in the wake of the massive hurricane that left most of the city flooded. They’ve even got what is probably the only webcam in New Orleans set up, and a bunch of pictures of the aftermath of the hurricane.

Urban Dead

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 04:41:12 +0000

Lately I’ve been enjoying Urban Dead, a browser based multiplayer zombie apocalypse game in which you can either play a survivor in a zombie infested city or one of the infesting zombies. Or more likely than not, start out as a survivor and end up as a zombie. It’s a good deal of zombie-smashing/brain-eating fun and, unlike most multiplayer games, not too time consuming. That’s because you only have a limited number of actions you can take each day and once they’re gone you have to wait for them to slowly replenish.

Cell phone tower maps

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 05:25:38 +0000

Time once again for Yet Another Google Maps Web Application. This time it’s a map that shows cellphone towers and has reviews of the signal strength for the various providers in a given area of the map. It definitely seems like it would be a useful tool to check when considering places to live so that you don’t end up stuck someplace with terrible reception. The only downside is that generally the towers are owned by third party companies and so it can be tricky to figure out what provider a given tower supports.

Niangua River Float Trip

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 23:32:18 +0000

Our tent Originally uploaded by willgorman. There’s something magical about mornings when you’re camping. That moment when you first open your eyes and think “Oh crap, I’m still in the woods. What was I thinking? I need a shower and an internet connection.” Jolayne and I went on a float trip on the Niangua River this weekend with some friends from work, and despite the horrors of “roughing it” (ok, we did have an air mattress but that’s more of a necessity than a luxury in my opinion) we had a good time.

Probably no cats were harmed in the making of this, maybe.

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:24:28 +0000

I think I may have found a new hobby. StuffOnMyCat is website where, well, there’s stuff, cats, and pictures and you can probably guess where it goes from there. I think the only reason why it’s so much fun to put stuff on cats is that they look so pissed off but they (sometimes) put up with it. I’d really love to try this out with Cleo but there’s a slight problem.

PortableVNC

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:45:00 +0000

VNC Client for the PSP Originally uploaded by willgorman. Here’s another one for the more-cool-than-practical files. PortableVNC, a VNC client for the PSP. It’s amazing how well it works, even if it’s pretty awkward to try to view a 1280×1024 desktop on a 480×272 screen. The only major drawback right now is one that’s common to all homebrew apps that make use of the 802.11b connection. Apparently no one’s figured out how to get a connection using DHCP to work yet so they all require you to assign a static IP.

Nerds on parade

Thu, 21 Jul 2005 06:07:29 +0000

Kimmee has just posted an awesome video taken at the San Diego Comic Con featuring amazing footage of nerds in their natural habitat. (And yes Carrie, they even got Stormtrooper Elvis.) SPOILER ALERT: She meets the actual real honest to goodness Lando Calrissian and wins at life. Man, I’ve really got to make it out there one of these years. Comments Comment by Carrie on 2005-07-21 03:14:06 +0000 You MUST come to Comic Con sometime.

Geobloggers, now in 3D

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:53:59 +0000

Having recently discovered both Geoblogging and Google Earth, the immediate thought that came to mind was: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a way to view Geoblogger’s data in Google Earth?” And indeed there already is. It turns out that one of the more powerful but less advertised features of Google Earth is to allow what they call “Network Links“. What that means is that you can point to a remote source to display a point or set of points on the map, complete with descriptions and links to other content, just like a point from Google’s own data (like a result from a local search for a restaurant, for example).

Escape from L.A.

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 05:41:10 +0000

Hollywood Museum Originally uploaded by willgorman. We got back from L.A. Sunday evening, and as much fun as the trip was it was kind of a relief to be back in the calm, quiet, somewhat not insane midwest. Mostly for the driving. I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the traffic out here again (hah) no matter how much construction there is. Traffic in L.A. is crazier by several orders of magnitude.

Los Angeles, I’m Yours

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:13:37 +0000

Jolayne and I are heading out to LA tonight to go to a friend’s wedding this weekend. We won’t be there long but hopefully we’ll still get the chance to see some sights, get some good pictures, and possibly even hang out with Kimmee. It should be interesting since I’m totally the stereotypical paranoid midwesterner who’s convinced that LA is a gang-ridden, celebrity-infested, Mos Eisely-esque hive of villany, and that was even before I played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Mobile Google Maps

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 14:46:11 +0000

Mobile GMaps is a Java app for cell phones that displays maps and satellite images from Google Maps. Pretty cool, seeing as how I now consider access to Google Maps to be a basic element of survival ranking somewhere in between food and shelter. Of course, most of what makes Google Maps what it is is its responsive interface, somethat that would no doubt be lost as a slow loading cell phone app.

Commando Bear 2000!!!!!!

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 05:54:38 +0000

Commando Bear 2000!!!!!! Originally uploaded by willgorman. So Jolayne’s parent’s are in town this weekend and we’re taking them around KC and we happened to end up at the City Market today. We were looking around at an Asian market when I saw the most amazing thing in the world. Commando. Bear. 2000!!!! Holy crap. It’s an energy drink, obviously. No one’s going to name a fiber shake Commando Bear 2000.

Geobloggers

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 03:13:40 +0000

To me, Google Maps/Earth and Flickr are the 2 most interesting things going on with the web right now, so combining them would be just like mixing peanut butter and chocolate. That would make Geobloggers the new Reese’s peanut butter cup of the internet. Taking advantage of the open APIs on both Flickr and Google’s ends it’s a jaw droppingly cool combination that allows you to tag your Flickr photos with their coordinates on a map and then plots them as pins (with thumbnails even) on a Google map.

No further comments

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 05:00:50 +0000

As an additional measure to help fight the steady tide of comment spam, I decided to close off comments on entries more than 20 days old. While every now and then I do get a legitimate comment on an old entry from some random search, 99% of the time it’s spam. However since I haven’t upgraded from MT 2.661 and since I’m not using MySQL (I know, I know. I need to switch over but I’m lazy) I was having a hard time finding a way to close old entries as a batch operation.

Google Earth

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 04:48:59 +0000

Google released Google Earth today, and holy crap is it amazing. It combines the already cool functionality of the recently acquired Keyhole with the yellow pages and directions services of Google Maps. It’s definitely quite impressive. Granted, as a Windows only (for now) application, it does lose a little of the convenience factor of the browser based interface of Google Maps, but makes up for it with smoothness and style.

The Grokster decision

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 03:55:32 +0000

While I was intially dismayed to hear of the Supreme Court’s ruling against Grokster, after reading some of the details of their decision I don’t think it’s really as bad as it seems. If I understand correctly (and to be fair, there’s a good chance I probably don’t since I’m not a lawyer or anything) the ruling makes it illegal to distribute software that allows for copyright infringement with the intent of promoting it for those uses.

MIT Weblog Survey

Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:40:30 +0000

…and then promptly went out and blinded someone with it. Oh. *ahem* Right, so I contributed to the MIT Weblog Survey (which I heard about from Dave). It asks you questions about randomly selected links posted on your blog. I think the idea is to get a sense of what other content you link to and why, but the whole random selection thing means that sometimes it gets links that don’t seem to really fit in to the categories that they’re trying to assess.

Have ROMs, will travel

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 05:58:11 +0000

Today is the day that I’ve been waiting for ever since I got my PSP (which I don’t believe I mentioned before but Jolayne got it for me as the Most Awesome Wedding Gift Ever. She gave it to me the day before the wedding and its a good thing it didn’t come with a game or I probably would have been playing it at the altar). Anyway, it’s a gorgeous piece of gadgetry on its own merits and the screen is just amazing (no dead pixels on mine, thank goodness) however as with nearly all Sony devices it’s burdened with a ridiculous amount of DRM features, namely its restriction against running unsigned code.

Tetris!

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 04:23:09 +0000

A poignant tale of a lonely young Tetris block’s struggle to fit in. This and other hilarious blurrings of the line between video games and reality brought to you by Mega64, a bunch of guys that (and I’m going out on a limb here) may be video game nerds. It’s hard to tell. It is though easily the finest, and likely only, video game related public performance comedy sketch group in the world.

Everybody’s stalking

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 05:31:22 +0000

Have you ever wanted to control a webcam on the side of a building overlooking a construction site in Germany? Well, now you can (No, there doesn’t seem to be a machine gun attached or in fact armaments of any kind. Believe me, I checked.) In fact you can find any number of webcams in random places around the world with a simple Google search. I find it strangely addictive to see what’s going on at the University of Helsinki, or some town called Eindhoven, or this French parking lot at any given moment.

New neighbors

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 17:27:12 +0000

Mourning dove nest Originally uploaded by willgorman. When we got back from the wedding and honeymoon, we found that mourning doves had built a nest in the hanging plant on our balcony. At the time, the mother was sitting on the eggs and we didn’t have the heart to kick her out. Obviously this meant the end of our hanging plant as we could no longer water it.

The Decemberists Music Video

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 06:14:36 +0000

The Decemberists have a video up for their song “16 Military Wives” off of their most recent album. It’s for download with BitTorrent which is pretty cool, and they’re one of the first bands that I’ve seen use that approach for distributing stuff. Unfortunately, since it seems that this has been up for a while already and interest has faded somewhat the .torrent seems to have almost no one uploading on it.

You know what, I’m just not hungry anymore

Sat, 28 May 2005 17:52:56 +0000

originally uploaded by Chaos!. My inner 12 year old is in love with the Bad Signs photo group at Flickr. Also good: Stick Figures in Peril

Built to Spill @ the Madrid Theatre

Fri, 27 May 2005 04:47:36 +0000

Built to Spill @ the Madrid Theatre Originally uploaded by willgorman. Went to see Built to Spill at the Madrid last night. I was surprised they were touring since they haven’t released an album since I last saw them in 2001 (though apparently a new album may be out this fall). I certainly wasn’t complaining though; I was thrilled to see them again and definitely not disappointed to hear a lot of their older material.

Star Wars Episode 3

Sun, 22 May 2005 06:51:20 +0000

Revenge of the Sith may have been the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side, but thankfully it was something of a redemption for George Lucas. After seeing it tonight, I can almost forgive him for episodes 1 and 2. The movie was good, actually really good. Good enough to end the Star Wars cycle with some measure of dignity, which until now I wouldn’t have thought possible. It was suprising what a sense of closure it gave, even considering the fact that it ends on a darker note than even Empire Strikes Back.

The photoblog is dead, long live the photoblog.

Fri, 20 May 2005 04:54:45 +0000

A funny thing happened as I was getting ready to post some of my favorite photos from Hawaii on coaxialshutter — I found Flickr. I’d heard about Flickr before, but the idea of a web hosted photo organizer always sounded pretty absurd to me. Why squander precious upload bandwidth for something that there are perfectly capable local apps to handle. What would be the advantage of that? After giving it a brief spin though, I realized I had been completely wrong.

Back in GMT -06:00, a married man

Tue, 10 May 2005 04:35:55 +0000

Hard as it is to believe, the wedding is over and we’re now back in Kansas after a completely amazing honeymoon in Hawaii. Everything went really really well, and and I’ve never been happier, both to be married to Jolayne and that all the planning , preparation, and stress are over. The wedding itself was a total blur, and I’d been told it probably would be. There are a few moments that really stand out though, the most important of which being the moment I first saw Jolayne coming down the aisle.

This is it.

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:34:37 +0000

My last post as a single man. *deep breath* Just be glad you haven’t been Jolayne this week, and had to listen to me announce my last X as a single man over and over. (“Well, that’s the last time I’ll go to Burger King as a single man” or “Did you see that? Last time I’ll clip my fingernails as a single man”) I’m just hanging out at the hotel right now, passing the time.

Rehearsal Dinner

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 06:59:30 +0000

We had the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner tonight and they both went really well. Unfortunately, my mother ended up having to go the hospital today with really bad vertigo and nausea that just came out of nowhere. They’re not sure what it is, but tests haven’t shown anything serious thus far. Still, we’re all really worried, not to mention sad that she couldn’t be with us at the dinner. Hopefully she’ll have recovered significantly by tomorrow.

Mawiage License

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:03:29 +0000

Haha suckers, we’re already married! Ok, not really. Jolayne and I picked up our marriage license downtown yesterday. The official looking piece of paper Jolayne is holding actually only authorizes the solemnzing of the actual marriage license by the officiant on the day of the wedding. The actual marriage license didn’t have a big gold seal and wasn’t anywhere near as photogenic. We’re lucky we were able to get it though since someone (ok, me) forgot their social security card back in Kansas.

Wedding Music

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 05:34:05 +0000

Music is a pretty major part of my life, and it follows that Jolayne and I would try to make it a part of our wedding as well. Originally we were going to have some friends of ours perform some songs that meant a lot to us: “I Found a Reason” (the Cat Power cover of the Velvet Underground song) and “Such Great Heights” (the Iron & Wine cover [from the Garden State soundtrack] of the Postal Service song).

Wedding Update: 6 days and counting

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:56:39 +0000

Well, here we are. Jolayne and I are back in Ohio to get ready for the wedding this Saturday. Hard to believe that 10 months could go by so quickly. It’s really really exciting, but of course there are a few last minute details to get stressed out about. We’ve still got to get the programs done, meet with the DJ, and finish a photo slideshow. I guess it’s not too much stuff, but its going to be really nice just to have everything done.

How to properly traumatize a cat

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 03:17:05 +0000

I got a new roommate yesterday, the furry kind that eats a bunch of food, lies around all day, and doesn’t help out with the rent. Jolayne’s (soon to be our) cat Cleo moved in yesterday. We figured we might as well give her a chance to start getting used to this apartment since she’ll be here on her own for several weeks when we leave for the wedding and honeymoon. We wanted her to get comfortable with the place before then. It turns out that was probably a good idea, as the move was anything but comfortable both for the cat and us…

Completely Amazing

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 05:34:40 +0000

I had no idea this was even remotely possible, but here’s a technology demo for a first person shooter done with Shockwave. In a browser. Wow. I mean, I guess it’s just a proof of concept but it seems to be surprisingly well put together. It takes a while to load (I wouldn’t even want to think about loading all those textures over dial up) but once it got going it ran really smoothly for me.

The end of an era

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 14:39:46 +0000

So yesterday was apparently the last day that Subway will be honoring its collect-stamps-for-free-subs program. At least that’s what I found out at the local Subway where I often go from work. Last week they stopped giving out stamps, this week existing stamps are no good. So now I’m wondering, is this official or is this just some rogue loose-cannon Subway franchise? I mean, Subway has always had stamps, right?

Wedding Update: 2 months to go

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 04:18:53 +0000

Well, here we are at T minus 2 months and counting to the wedding. Things are moving along pretty well, but now I’m starting to realize just how quickly this is coming up. Of course Jolayne has known this all along, but now I’m finally starting to go “Holy crap, we’ve got to do stuff!” For instance, finding people’s addresses. We’ve been realizing that we don’t necessarily have the current addresses of a lot of people we’d like to invite, just because we’ve been out of Columbus for so long.

Modest Mouse @ the Uptown Theater

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 18:57:37 +0000

Jolayne and I saw Modest Mouse at the Uptown Theater tonight with Mason Jennings opening. Mason Jennings was alright, kind of like a less hippie-fied Jack Johnson singer/songwriter guy with a backing band. Not without its moments, but not great either. As for Modest Mouse, it was a good show, although not quite what I’d been hoping for after waiting so long to finally see them. For one thing, the sound was a little off (not too bad though).

A parent’s primer to computer slang

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:59:50 +0000

Thanks to Microsoft, now parents everywhere can learn l33tsp33k in a misguided attempt to relate to their wayward adolescents. “Hey Timmy, why don’t “j00” go “pwn” your homework to get “m4d sk1llz” so you won’t be a “n00b”. Way to go, son!” “Timmy! Where did you get these “w4r3z”!?” “I learned it by watching you, dad!” They also have a list of tips for dealing with griefers for gamers, but more useful would probably be a “What to do if your child is a griefer” guide.

Valentine’s Day Goodness

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:00:52 +0000

For Valentine’s Day yesterday, Jolayne and I skipped over the traditional flowers and gifts (and yes, it was a mutual decision. No, seriously!) and instead opted to go all out on a really amazingly good dinner out. We went to a French restaurant called Caf� des Amis in Parkville, MO a town which is home to quite a few other good restaurants as well. (We went to Piropos there for Jolayne’s birthday and enjoyed it too).

Best use of Gmail ever

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 05:11:53 +0000

So now that Gmail accounts have become more ubiquitous and less exclusive (I’ve got 50 invites sitting around on my account) the question of what to actually do with them begins to raise its head. Of course I’ve got one that I kind of use as a secondary email for convenience. But of course the promise of a free gig of space was much too tempting to get just one, and so I actually have several more than that just sitting around.

New Furniture Day!

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 15:32:07 +0000

A couple of weeks ago Jolayne and I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart and picked out some new furniture: a bedroom set, a table and chairs, and a new desk and chair for my computer. Well, that all got delivered to my apartment this morning, with the time range for delivery set at 7:00am-9:00am. Needless to say, I was hoping it would end up being much closer to 9, but of course they showed up at 7:20.

Moving Day

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 03:46:37 +0000

Well, after 2 years in the same apartment here in KC (I still can’t believe I’ve been here that long already) today I packed up and moved to a new place. Moving is always a major hassle but fortunately we had Jolayne’s uncle and cousin and my friend Ash helping out. That made the whole process run pretty quickly and smoothly, and I was loaded up from my old place and into the new in about 4 hours. We’d gotten a couple of inches of snow the night before, which was a minor inconvenience, but nowhere near as bad as the 10 inches that were on the ground when I moved out of Columbus. Hopefully this is the last time I move in the dead of winter for a while.

Well, at least its something

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 06:14:44 +0000

It’s time to talk about comment spam again, but this time its good news. Google has used their position at the top of the search engine heap to promote a new standard for helping to reduce the effectiveness of comment spamming on blogs and forums. They go into detail about this method on their blog, but basically it involves adding a new attribute, ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ to any link tags that should be ignored by Google when calculating its ranking of a page.

I learned the Spell of Mastery!

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 05:35:05 +0000

This might just be getting my hopes up for no good reason, but apparently there’s a site out there about the attempt to get a sequel to Master of Magic made. I was in nostalgic bliss a while back when I found the game available as abandonware, but the thought of a sequel finally being made is really really exciting. Providing it’s done right. (Master of Orion 3, I’m looking right at you.

The Get Up Kids/Murder by Death/Veda @ the Granada

Sun, 09 Jan 2005 08:28:27 +0000

Just got back from Lawrence where Jolayne and I saw the second of two nights of shows by The Get Up Kids, who were celebrating their 10th anniversary as a band, and also recording a live album. We got there about halfway through Veda’s set. They were a local band, and didn’t really do anything for me one way or the other, although there was a dude yelling into his guitar pickups at one point, which was amusing.

Happy New Year Comment Spam everyone!

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 19:55:41 +0000

Thank you comment spammers, for helping me hate humanity just a little bit more in 2005. Today I started off the new year with 573 spam comments from the same source having been newly added to my blog. What’s the point? My insignificant blog gets about 15 hits on a good day, and I’m sure my Google ranking is so low as to be nearly non-existant. I’d been ok with my average of 5 or so comment spams a week, but this is more spam in a day than I’ve gotten before total.

So long snow, hello spam

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 04:49:56 +0000

Early Monday morning Jolayne and I made our way out of the snowy barrens of Ohio and had a good (if rather long) trip back to KC. I can’t imagine making a drive that long without Jolayne along for company; I think I’d go crazy. KC hadn’t gotten any snow at all, and was well above freezing when we got back, which was a very nice change. Then when I finally got to check my email at home for the first time, I found this waiting for me.

Tuxedos and blizzards

Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:51:43 +0000

On Tuesday, Jolayne and I went to Columbus to pick out the tuxedos for the wedding. Fortunately, tuxedo options are pretty limited so it wasn’t too tricky. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t even show us anything in a powder blue with a ruffled shirt, tails, and a hot pink top hat but its probably for the best. I got fitted then also, as did most of the groomsmen too just to get it out of the way early. Afterward, I went to hang out with my old roommates Matt and Ben, and I was supposed to stay with them for a night before heading back to my parent’s in Dayton. And that’s how it would have happened, if not for the massive, ridiculous snowstorm that unloaded on central Ohio over the course of the next day.

Officially the lamest thing ever

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:47:41 +0000

After making the trip to Ohio and driving through a good bit of snow and road salt, its come to my attention that I need some new wiper blades for my car. The only thing is, I’m not sure what size wiper blades I need (I know, I know. I’m a total car maintenance idiot). I checked the manual and didn’t see it, so I decided to look online. From the main Suzuki web site, I found a link to Suzuki Pit Stop, their official site for maintenance related info and manuals.

Who needs a vacation?

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 05:46:49 +0000

Tomorrow morning Jolayne and I are going to hit the road and head back to Ohio for the holidays. We’ll be there for just a little over a week, which will be nice since its the first real vacation time I’ve taken this year. I’ve got about 3 weeks saved up now, but I can’t really afford to use any more since I’ll need to have a bunch of time off for the wedding next year.

Well would you look at that

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 03:58:55 +0000

There’s an interesting Technology > Circuits > A Comic Strip Takes Video Games Seriously (Almost)” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/technology/circuits/16comi.html?oref=login”>article in the New York Times today about Penny Arcade, which is far and away my favorite web comic. The article gives some some neat backstory about the creation of this comic who’s brilliance I’ve pretty much taken for granted for the past couple of years. However, seeing it featured in the Times is just about as bizarre as it is cool.

25 Random Songs

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 03:33:52 +0000

Ok, here’s an interesting little game that I stole from Brett. It goes as follows:

step 1: get your playlist together, put it on random, and play

step 2: pick your favorite lines from the first 25 songs that play

step 3: post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from

step 4: cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly

The playlist comes from a little list of my top 3800 or so favorite songs, so there’s quite a bit of variety in there. I’m thinking that given my low readership and the relative obscurity of a lot of these songs that there won’t be many answers but by all means go ahead and surprise me. Oh yeah, and no cheating. To clarify, Google is totally cheating. So let’s get to it.

You fail your saving throw against Blizzard’s Greater Bolt of Time Drain

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:27:17 +0000

Well, it’s finally happened. Blizzard released World of Warcraft on November 23rd, and with it went the rest of my free time. The quality of this game is rivaled only by its addictiveness (for me anyway). Ever since the days back in high school when I would play text-based MUDs I knew that it was just a matter of time until an online RPG came out that would be completely irresistible.

Home again

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 02:43:51 +0000

I got back from Springfield yesterday, and its definitely good to be back again. Contrary to what I thought earlier, even with working in an ER, nothing very interesting went on. Which is mostly a good thing in my mind. I actually spent most of my time in a back room writing code, as exciting as that is. In the time that I spent out on the ER floor, I didn’t see any major trauma.

Land of Lincoln

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:50:52 +0000

If you should ever find yourself in Springfield, IL I’d highly recommend trying out their local sandwich of choice, the Horseshoe. It’s a gloriously lard-packed open-faced sandwich that consists of a base of texas toast topped by a choice of just about any kind of meat (for instance, buffalo chicken) and then covered by so many french fries you can barely see the meat. On top of all that, a generous layer of beer-cheese sauce is applied.

Why I’m disappointed with the election

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 14:57:26 +0000

In the weeks and months prior to the election, I had thought that there would be two important factors that could help tip the close race out of President Bush’s favor. One was first time voters that were registering mainly because they disliked how the current administration handled Iraq. The other was the fact that there are likely a large number of mostly young voters that have only cell phones and no landlines and thus would have been left out of traditional polling.

Ah, the sweet smell of civic duty

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 03:09:25 +0000

Today, for the first time in my life, I voted. How about that. In retrospect, I don’t know why I waited so long. It was easy, and yeah it even felt a little good to feel like I was doing something important. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but at least for a little while I’m deciding to feel like it does. I had expected maybe there would be long lines, but that wasn’t the case.

RJD2/Hanger 18 @ the Granada

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 19:34:39 +0000

Jolayne and I made the trip up to Lawrence yesterday to catch RJD2 at the Granada. We got there around 5, because I had read online that it started at 7pm (which seemed odd and as we found out later was completely wrong). In the time before the show we walked around Lawrence, got dinner at the Free State Brewing Co., and I bought some cds. Afterwards we walked down to the Granada where we found that the show didn’t actually start until 9.

You can never have too much fiber

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:30:06 +0000

In the well-its-about-time department, it looks like Verizon is finally rolling out services that involve bringing fiber optics straight to your home. That seems like a good way to go about using up all that unused bandwiths laying around on the telecom backbones out there. Wow, my very own fiber optic connection is so close I can almost taste it. Its only going to be available in 9 states so far (and Missouri isn’t one of them) but I sure hope it catches on.

The Decemberists @ Jackpot Saloon

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 03:03:11 +0000

I went to go see The Decemberists last night, on a week night and all the way over in Lawrence (about an hour away). It wasn’t fun dragging myself out of bed for work this morning, but it was totally worth it. I ♥ The Decemberists. They played at the Jackpot Saloon, a small new venue which is unfortunately crammed into a storefront on the main “college town” street in Lawrence.

Death Cab for Cutie/Travis Morrison @ the Beaumont

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 07:04:20 +0000

Just got back from seeing Death Cab for Cutie at the Beaumont. It got out pretty early as far as shows go but it wasn’t really too short. It was just one of those odd shows that actually started on time and had a really short setup time between sets. Of course, that was likely due to the fact that apparently on Friday nights the Beaumont switches over to line dancing at 11:00.

Some helpful advice

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 01:42:36 +0000

They should probably make the following required viewing for anyone who gets on, or even thinks about getting on the internet. From the Steam forums: Posting and You. Comments Comment by Tobin on 2004-10-16 16:13:55 +0000 Haha, it’s funny because it’s true. Comment by Posko on 2004-10-21 13:34:17 +0000 They should make a flash movie about posting on forums… oh wait…

Fire in the hole!

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 02:24:05 +0000

This upcoming holiday season is just going to be crazy with good games coming out. It looks like Halflife 2 is finally almost here, because you can actually buy it now for download from Valve’s novel approach at a content distribution system, Steam. By buy, I really mean preorder although you can download all the content in encrypted form so it will be ready to go as soon as the game is officially released.

Yo la Tengo @ the Grand Emporium

Sun, 03 Oct 2004 18:25:59 +0000

Last night started off my month of rock with Yo la Tengo at the Grand Emporium here in KC. It was kind of an unusual show format, but one that I really liked. Instead of having any opening bands they’ve been touring with a rotating line up of members of other bands playing together as one big band. Last night they had Rick Rizzo, Doug McCombs, and David Kilgour. Instead of just playing Yo la Tengo songs, they played a mix of their songs and songs of the people they were touring with plus a healthy dose of covers.

They don’t call it Rocktober for nothing

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 04:13:01 +0000

After a more than year long unintentional abstinence from rock shows (which would have been unthinkable not too long ago) I’m about to get back into it in a big way with 5 shows that I’m planning on going to in October alone. They are: October 2nd: Yo la Tengo @ the Grand Emporium October 15th: Death Cab for Cutie/Travis Morrison @ the Beaumont October 17th: Sonic Youth/PJ Harvey @ Uptown Theatre October 21st: The Decemberists @ Jackpot Saloon October 30th: RJD2 @ the Granada So yeah.

What they don’t teach you in Sunday school

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:04:57 +0000

Apparently, even Jesus deals in unsolicited mass marketing email. Bummer. At least he’s not hawking HERBAL V1aGRA!!1! though. Comments Comment by Carrie on 2004-11-03 02:21:49 +0000 LMFAO

The poor man’s spy satellite

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 05:17:34 +0000

How to take digital photographs from a kite. (via Engadget, a fairly recent addition to my daily reads) This would clearly be the next most obvious step in the evolution of digital photography. I think with all gadgets as their intended uses become commonplace someone inevitably asks the question “Well, what can we attach this to?” Digital cameras and kites seem as good a combination as any. I’d really like to give this a try at some point.

The very meaning of quixotic

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:14:17 +0000

Well, chalk up another massive task of questionable value completed for me. I’ve finally finished going through and rating all of the tracks in my music collection. That might not seem like much, but with 8,000+ songs it takes a little longer than one would like. The problem that this was intended to solve is simple: I’ve got way too much music and even my massive highly-developed brain is having a hard time remembering what my favorite tracks are from the stuff I listen to less often.

You’re so vain, you probably think this photo-mosaic is about you

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 04:44:31 +0000

Today while sitting at work and thinking about something obviously important and work-related, this idea struck me: “Could I make a photo-mosaic of myself out of the album covers from the albums I own?” As it turns out the answer was yes, and fairly easily too. There’s probably some easy symbolism there about being made up of the music that you love, but I’m sure its been done before. Anyway, here it is.

Movies (pretty much) on demand

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 06:06:55 +0000

This evening I decided to test out one of the promising features of my media PC and try renting a movie using the Snapstream Spotlight software and Movielink. I was curious to see if getting movies over the Internet is at a point where it could reasonably compete with movie rentals from a store. I also wanted to see if the media center interface for Snapstream was useful for streamlining the whole process or not.

Wedding Plans Update

Mon, 06 Sep 2004 01:35:16 +0000

In the 3 months since Jolayne and I got engaged, we’ve made quite a bit of progress on our wedding plans. For example, we set the date (April 23rd) and I can’t help but feel that that’s a crucial step to take. I wasn’t aware of this, but even when you set a wedding date that’s over 10 months from the date of your engagement, planning begins immediately. Fortunately, Jolayne was aware of this (In fact, the same evening we were engaged we went to Barnes & Noble so she could get some bridal magazines).

Super Secret Movie Trivia for Nerds

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 07:15:37 +0000

On the DVD of The Ring in one of the scenes that was cut from the theatrical version, the babysitter is shown watching a few seconds of the first episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (“Rabbot“). I just noticed that, and as you can tell, am quite proud of myself and felt like sharing. Perhaps that’s already common knowledge, but I’d be surprised. Feel free to use the above fun fact to impress and amaze at parties, sporting events, and parole hearings.

Worlds of Wooohooooo!

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 02:06:27 +0000

I got back from Ohio yesterday to find an email notifying me that as a subscriber to Fileplanet I would be guaranteed a spot in the imminent Worlds of Warcraft closed beta stress test. So hopefully within a few days here I’ll be getting my first look at what is quite likely the most anticipated MMORPG ever. Of course like most stress tests it’s going to be brief, lasting just 7 days but I’m just eager to finally see everything I’d been enviously reading about from the initial closed beta testers.

By comparison I seem oddly dignified.

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:40:44 +0000

Ok, so I admitted that I was a scaredy-wuss while playing Doom 3, but at least I never did this (that often). (Windows Media, 7.8MB, screeching junior high boys) Jolayne and I are off to Columbus on a ridiculously early morning flight tomorrow. We’ll be there just for the weekend for her grandmother’s 80th birthday party and also to work out some of the details for the wedding plans.

D.I.Y. Tivo

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:20:29 +0000

One of the things I did last month was to finally complete the TV recording computer that I’d been collecting parts for forever. I’ve been using it for over a month now, and overall I’m thrilled with it. The software I’ve been running on it is Beyond TV which has a very good if not as good as Tivo user interface. In addition I’ve been using the Firefly RF remote from the same company, which can also be used as a mouse (somewhat, as you control the cursor with arrow keys which is fairly clunky) and the buttons can be customized to control just about anything.

Who wants some GMail?

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:49:00 +0000

I just noticed today that I finally have some invites to give out for GMail. I know its pretty late in the game here and we’re well past the point where having GMail was any sort of geek status symbol whatsoever, but hey who can turn their nose up at a free gig of email storage. By now probably everyone that wanted an invite to use GMail has one, but on the off chance that’s not the case mine are available, first come, first serve.

So this is what passes for news around here

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 04:38:39 +0000

I finally finished Doom 3. That doesn’t explain where I was for nearly all of July but it does pretty much cover August. I don’t think I’ve ever been as relieved to finish a game as I have with this one. I’m pretty much admitting that I’m a sissy here, but that was a nerve wracking game. Screenshots don’t really do it justice, conveying only the obvious fact that it’s really really dark.

Happy 4th of July

Sun, 04 Jul 2004 23:47:42 +0000

Ah, fireworks. The great cleanser of the American gene pool. Check out the hilarious fireworks related mishap in this video. (Windows media) Silly doggie! You’re going to need better aim if you want to wipe out your human overlords.

“Good for business, bad for the people”

Sun, 27 Jun 2004 08:19:49 +0000

Tonight I registered to vote for the very first time. That I did so in a movie theatre immediately before seeing Fahrenheit 9⁄11 should give a pretty good indication of my motives for doing so. After seeing the movie, all I can say is: WTF GWB. Seriously. I mean, Michael Moore obviously made the film to convey a point and as such I’m sure there are things that were slanted toward that point.

She said yes!!!

Thu, 10 Jun 2004 06:11:53 +0000

Alright this is definitely the biggest news I’ve ever been able to post, so here it is: Jolayne and I are getting married! How awesome is that? (A hint: it’s between very, very awesome and very, very, very awesome) That’s right, I proposed yesterday, and as you can tell, she said yes! Right now we’re trying not to think about all of the craziness and planning that’s bound to be coming up and just enjoy it. I have no idea at all what it takes to plan a wedding so perhaps that’s why I’m not properly frightened yet. Today was just crazy at work. I had the hardest time concentrating because I just kept thinking about it and smiling. A friend of mine (that I had told about the upcoming proposal, or “P-Day” as we like to call it) brought in two cakes, one of which said “Congratulations, Will” and the other which was blank. He and his wife were planning to have it say “Better Luck Next Time” just to cover all the bases, but didn’t know if anyone would think it was funny. Personally, I thought it would have been great. I’m still just really excited. Wow. Wow!

Good to know, good to know.

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 02:51:03 +0000

Just in case you were wondering, this is how quickly I would die in a cheesy zombie flick. No surprises here really. (via dklegman)

The storage whore strikes again.

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 01:34:10 +0000

I happened to be strolling around Circuit City yesterday afternoon when I stumbled across a 160 GB Western Digital hard drive that was on sale for $70! After rebate, naturally, but still that’s something like 44 cents per gig. Storage really is dirt cheap these days, and I love it. My justification for picking it up was for use in my long talked about but little worked on TiVo-esque machine.

No, I do not need your dubiously spelled prescription medication, thank you very much.

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 02:48:37 +0000

Brett’s recent post on the horrors of spam and the need for advanced filtering tools reminded me that I’d been meaning to mention my own spam filtering set up that I switched to several weeks ago. I’ve been using Popfile in addition to Outclass (which integrates it into Outlook 2002) and I love it. Previously I’d been using SpamFighter, which was decent but no longer had a free version, at least not one without ads.

In the future all communication will be by robotic blimp.

Thu, 27 May 2004 04:23:23 +0000

I predict the imminent death of email, instant messaging, faxes, and phones of all kinds. Someone working for HP Labs has developed a robotic helium blimp to deliever messages (in post-it note form) throughout an office. With something that cool, why would you need any other form of communication.? The way I see it, this might even replace talking. The coolest thing is that this wasn’t even part of his job, he just did it in his free time.

Why not call it the Dismemberment Promise Plan Ring? No?

Fri, 21 May 2004 01:27:21 +0000

Ok, my math’s been a little rusty since I left school but it looks like 2⁄4 The Promise Ring + 1⁄4 The Dismemberment Plan = Maritime. I’m not sure though, I keep thinking Planck’s constant should be in there somewhere. Whatever the formula, this is Eric Axelson’s (bass player of the Dismemberment Plan) new effort after the break up of the D-Plan. I didn’t know what to think at first since Davey von Bohlen’s (formerly of The Promise Ring) voice has always been kind of a love/hate deal with me, but I just listened to several songs on their site and he’s much better than I remember.

A cry for help

Tue, 18 May 2004 05:42:20 +0000

Ok, I’ve been having CSS issues for some time and I’ve decided they need to be resolved since its bugging the crap out of me. I don’t know if any of you using IE have noticed an issue where the text in the entries seems to disappear but will reappear if you highlight it or scroll the page. It’s as if the background color is being drawn on top of the text randomly.

Envy

Sun, 16 May 2004 17:10:57 +0000

If you had told me prior to last night that a movie featuring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Christopher Walken could be so completely and thoroughly mediocre as Envy, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But, as Jolayne and I found out last night, I’d be wrong and you’d be right. It had a few scattered bits of moderate funny, but mostly in just a quick gag or two. Nothing about the plot or characters was really that memorable or funny and in the last 5 minutes or so seemed to stop trying entirely.

Guess I’ll be putting off that upgrade

Fri, 14 May 2004 06:11:25 +0000

The developer release of MovableType 3.0 was announced today and it looks like there’s been a good deal of fallout about it, primarily around the new licensing structure. The new model would only still be free if you were limited to one author and 3 weblogs. Anything beyond that starts costing $$$. I’ve only got 1 author and 2 weblogs right now, so I could upgrade to 3.0 for free, but I don’t know if I want to.

How’d they do that?

Wed, 12 May 2004 05:00:38 +0000

.kkrieger is a pretty graphically impressive and very short on plot or explanation first person shooter game. Apparently plot is one of those things that you sacrifice to fit the game into 96 KILOBYTES!!!!!. Holy crap. The average FPS almost certainly has single textures bigger than 96KB, and here they’ve put the whole game in that amount of space. It does take a really long time to load up, so I’m guessing they must be pregenerating just about every texture on the fly.

Soon my death ray TiVo clone will be complete

Sat, 08 May 2004 03:40:07 +0000

I bought this case, slightly used, from a guy at work this week, for a little less than half of what it goes for new on NewEgg. Probably should have tried to talk him a little lower, but oh well. It’s a slick looking case and will make a fine body for my TV recording/game console emulating entertainment machine. The front usb ports should be perfect for hooking up game controllers.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, jerks

Thu, 06 May 2004 03:45:18 +0000

I picked up lunch today at Taco Bell to, you know, celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Below is the complete text of the email I sent to Taco Bell’s customer service department immediately following that. Based on a true story. “Today I placed an order at this location that included a Taco Supreme. When I got back to work, I found that I had only been given a regular Taco, not Supreme.

Day of Mourning

Wed, 05 May 2004 14:08:54 +0000

My number 2 (that’s number 2 as in secondary, not as in going number 2 although in this case that works too) monitor died this morning. Goodnight, sweet prince. Comments Comment by Tobin on 2004-05-05 07:49:59 +0000 My condolences. Comment by Sarah on 2004-05-05 14:39:43 +0000 What a way to start Cinco de Mayo. Comment by Carrie on 2004-05-05 19:33:12 +0000 Now you’re just a One Monitor Joe like the rest of us.

Refer Madness

Wed, 05 May 2004 04:11:45 +0000

Even though I already get site statistics, including referral information, over at SiteMeter I decided to install Refer from Textism just because it looked kind of interesting. As you can see here, it does just what it claims to do. Unfortunately, this also gave me my first encounter with referral log spamming, since random pr0n sites are popping up in that log. I’m fairly certain they don’t actually link to me.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise

Tue, 04 May 2004 04:14:18 +0000

I can’t stop watching this. Or this. Or this. Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy? What’s wrong with me. I blame you, Khaaaaan! Comments Comment by Kimmee on 2004-05-04 11:42:21 +0000 i can’t even handle the Jean-Luc Picard one. why are French accents so funny? Comment by Kimmee on 2004-05-04 12:07:16 +0000 http://jumptokahnclusions.ytmnd.com/ Comment by Neal on 2004-05-04 13:21:49 +0000 Normally I get annoyed when sites only work in IE, but after coming to work and firing up those sites I decided that IE users got the short end of the stick on that one.

Bring the rock home with you

Sat, 01 May 2004 20:30:53 +0000

Looks like that under its new ownership eMusic (see previously) has started to branch out. They’re starting a trial for a service that will put kiosks in rock clubs where you can pay to get mp3s of a show immediately afterwards. I’d heard previously of places where you could purchase a cd of the show, but this way you can just get the show on a keychain memory stick. That seems like a much better idea to me.

Well that’s just great.

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 05:36:10 +0000

Looking at the recent mass of identical nonsensical comments on my last post (which are soon to be deleted) it looks like I’ve become the target of MT comment spamming. I really thought I’d be too small time to get hit with comment spam, but I guess I underestimated the depths to which spammers sink. I guess they won’t stop until they manage to spray everything on the internet with a thick layer of crap.

Xbox + PC + router = Xbox Live – $$$

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 01:47:50 +0000

Even though I do 99.78% of my online gaming on the PC, I’m still pretty intrigued by Xbconnect, which was pointed out to me by a resourceful co-worker (one of the few people I know of at work that’s a gamer, which I find odd for a software company). Anyhow, Xbconnect is a program that tricks your Xbox into thinking it sees other Xboxes (Xboxen?) on a LAN when in fact they are on the inter-web.

Someday, I’m telling you, they’ll make a memory machine

Sat, 24 Apr 2004 06:47:22 +0000

Finally got around to seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Jolayne tonight, and not a moment too soon as it was only playing at one theater in the area anymore. Excellent film, made me wish I’d taken some cognitive science classes while I was in school. I just find it interesting, to try and imagine how we store data and even more interesting how we index and retrieve it.

That’s a pretty big mosquito…

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 04:03:38 +0000

Came across this page today for something called the ID Sniper, a modified sniper rifle that fires a GPS tracking chip into a target (without the target being aware of it) to allow tracking of the chip. Supposedly it feels like “a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second.” The idea is to allow law enforcement agencies to keep track of suspicious people. Sounds like [a valuable tool in the “War on Terror” || a Big Brother control device] depending on your point of view.

The Language of Corporations

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:24:21 +0000

Ok, so I was reading this article on MSNBC about the deaths of US contractors in Iraq and it got me thinking on a tangent. In the article there is a quote from Halliburton on the loss of its workers: “There is no road map for something like this and we are doing everything we can to assist the families as well as our employees to cope with this huge tragedy.

Unilateral Cowboyism

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 04:16:09 +0000

There’s a cool article from Lawrence Lessig in this month’s Wired on the potential for intentionally destructive technologies to arise and more importantly, the circumstances that would influence a group to use them. One of the reasons: “Our present course of unilateral cowboyism will continue to produce generations of angry souls seeking revenge on us.” While I’m not sure how plausible I find doomsday scenarios in general, I have little doubt that with the way our nation conducts its self internationally and the increasing amount of tech available to various factions that feel marginalized, a catastrophic event of that nature seems almost inevitable.

Insanity!

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 06:11:18 +0000

Tumiki Fighters is a completely and mind-blowingly insane side scrolling shooter based around the concept of adding the wreckage of other ships to your own as a power-up. Entire chunks of massive ships attach themselves to your ship giving extra firepower and absorbing damage. I’m also fairly sure that its entirely impossible, as it often fills the screen with ridiculous bullet barrages made even harder to dodge by the fact that you’ve got about 5 other planes hanging off of you at any given moment.

So close and yet so far

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 05:23:21 +0000

Having been overlooked for the initial round of World of Warcraft beta testing (no doubt due to a lack of 1337ness and h4X0Ring on my part) it looks like for now the closest I’ll get is this World of Warcraft Television site. By television they mean in-game screen caps updated every 20 seconds whenever one of 4 lucky bastards who actually got picked for the beta happen to be playing.

A Softer World

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:48:35 +0000

I just found out about this fine web comic, A Softer World. (via Carrie) It’s an interesting twist, using photographs instead of your regular hand-drawn comics. Often, the images work to give the comic that extra little poignant push from “Haha” into “Haha… Oh.” At other times, it’s more like just “Oh.” without the “Haha”. I likes it. Also they have a fine collection of over-the-top-with-cleverness cover letters, something that reminds me a little too much of the impulses I felt during my long job search a couple years ago.

So much for that.

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 05:05:00 +0000

Alright, so the Blogging Across the Midwest thing didn’t really pan out. For one thing, since I was driving the truck the whole way that didn’t really present too many opportunities to update. Also, since the whole trip ended up taking about 15 hours, I lost interest in lugging out the laptop at our stops. I don’t think you can blame me for that. The good news though is that the trip went well and that we got all of Jolayne’s things unloaded fine at her apartment.

Blogging Across the Midwest Update

Sat, 03 Apr 2004 22:22:35 +0000

Location: a Taco Bell in Indiana, about 41 miles from the Illinois border. That’s right, I brought a laptop into a Taco Bell. That’s enough to make me feel a little too dorky, which is obviously saying something. Jolayne and I are making good progress, or at least we were until I had to break out the laptop at lunch. We’ve got an unexpected extra passenger with us, her cat from home who she decided to bring along yesterday.

Greetings from beautiful Cincinnati

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 17:36:12 +0000

Jolayne and I are currently sitting in the airport in Cincinnati waiting for a connecting flight to Columbus. We’re going to Columbus because Jolayne is going to be getting her own apartment in KC after having been staying with her aunt and uncle, and we’re going to pick up a truck and bring her stuff out. And yes, I’m going be blogging the whole trip via cell phone modem in a piece I like to call “Blogging Across the Midwest”, just because I now can.

Sweet sweet mobility

Wed, 31 Mar 2004 06:58:06 +0000

I didn’t honestly expect this to work, at least not as well as it did, but I grabbed a data cable for my cell phone tonight and gave it a try for using my phone as a CDMA modem. But it worked! It really, really worked! The company that makes the cable made a big deal out of how it required their software (sold separately) in order to work, but I didn’t think it was worth having to get a cable and software.

I know, I know. Enough with the zombies already.

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 06:56:03 +0000

Ok this is going to be my last zombie related post for a while, really. I just wanted to point out that the original Night of the Living Dead is available in its entirety, for free, over at the Internet Archive. Apparently, when the film was first distributed there was a mistake made and the copyright notice was left off of the film, which meant it entered the public domain and George Romero never saw dime one for it.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:22:06 +0000

Jolayne’s finally back from her week long Disney cruise for her mom’s birthday. Not a minute too soon either, last week just kinda dragged by. Of course I’m thrilled she’s back, but it doesn’t hurt that she came back with gifts either. She picked up some coconut patties (shaped like Mickey Mouse, naturally) for me, and this book about Miyazaki from the Epcot center. It looks pretty interesting. Apparently she still feels like she’s on a ship and hasn’t gotten used to not having the ground moving under her constantly quite yet.

How to Make a Sequel

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 05:14:45 +0000

Take for example, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow which I just picked up today. The single player game has a just few minor improvements over the original, plus another captivating storyline (at least so far). The new multiplayer mode though is, well, awesome. Pitting 2 vs 2 teams of spies against mercenaries in a game of hide and seek with guns, this is the best application of stealth based gameplay I’ve ever seen.

Now Playing (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com)

Sat, 27 Mar 2004 05:02:28 +0000

When I initially switched to MovableType, I began using this clever trick with TrackBacks and the DoSomething plugin for WInamp to build a list of recently played tracks. Then I came across this tutorial for using some MT plugins and the overlib javascript library to display album info from Amazon in a hovering popup. I had to do a little extra work myself using the MTPerlScript and MTTagInvoke plugins though, since when I’m streaming my music from home at work it doesn’t send the ID3 tag info needed to search Amazon so I had to pull it out of the song title.

Best. Headline. Ever.

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 06:16:47 +0000

Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office. Now see, that’s one of those combinations of words that you never thought you’d see in the English language, much less coming from a respected international news service. And yet, there it is. Meanwhile, I’m now eagerly anticipating the release of “Shaun of the Dead”, which looks like its going to be a fairly clever and entirely British zombie comedy.

How not to make a sequel

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 05:03:11 +0000

One of my favorite games of all time is the orginal Deus Ex. It was a conspiracy theory riddled masterpiece that blended RPG and first person shooter elements plus stealth action in an utterly addictive way that I’d never seen before. Its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, has been out for a while now but due to hearing some negative reviews and also having completely no time to devote to it, I hadn’t gotten around to trying it until I rented the Xbox version this weekend.

Uh… Brains?

Sat, 20 Mar 2004 08:16:08 +0000

As most people who know me are aware, I loves me a good zombie apocalype. So given that a remake of Dawn of the Dead was released today, it’s none too surprising that I immediately went to see it. (Jolayne’s out of town on a cruise with her mom and grandmother for her mom’s birthday, so she lucked out of getting dragged along by my zombie mania.) Also not very surprising is that this was not a “good movie” by the standards that one would use to label a “good movie” (i.e. The Royal Tennenbaums, lets say). However, it was very satisfying. You see, there were shotguns. Also, it was great to see zombie mobs of a more epic scale than I’d ever seen previously. I’m just not sure though if I’d say it was a good remake or not…

Now with 30% more butt!!!

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 05:45:23 +0000

It’s good to know that deep inside, I am still apparently a 12 year old. As soon as I saw this in the Target pharmacy I made Jolayne give me her camera phone so I could record it for posterity. What would people do in the age before camera phones? I don’t think that words alone could do justice to the quirky charm of this obviously miraculous paste. And if you’re curious, no I did not purchase any Butt Paste though I was sorely tempted.

Think Geek strikes again

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 05:48:02 +0000

Once again, ThinkGeek has tormented me with their selection of wonderful geek goods at ridiculous prices. This may well be the best doormat idea ever, and is bound to perplex many a non-geek neighbor. But really, $50 for a doormat?? What with all the outsourcing going on nowadays, is there really anyone left of the sort of people that would be inclined to get this that has pockets deep enough to drop $50 on a piece of vinyl and carpet to wipe dirt on?

The system is up.

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 04:01:17 +0000

Perhaps you are the sort of person who frequently wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking “What if Will’s computer is running a little too hot right now!” (Ok, it’s a stretch I know) Perhaps the thought keeps you awake and torments you because you have no way of knowing. Perhaps you have other issues that this compulsion is merely symptomatic of. Regardless, you can now stop calling me at 3 am.

w.bloggar

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 05:13:20 +0000

w.bloggar is a neat little blogging app that acts as a front end for multiple blogging systems, such as Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType and a ton of other ones that I’d never heard of before. It’s an interesting idea. While you lose the flexibility that these blogging systems give you to post through just a web browser, it seems like it’d be mostly useful for maintaining multiple blogs on different systems from the same interface.

Snake Saturday

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 05:53:20 +0000

It’s been a while since I’d last seen a parade, and now I remember why. Jolayne and I headed over to North Kansas City today to check out Snake Saturday, which featured a St. Patrick’s day parade and BBQ competition. Maybe it would have been better if the weather hadn’t been chilly, grey, and threatening to rain. Still, the parade wasn’t really all that interesting, nor very Irish. After watching floats and marching bands for a little while, we went looking around for some BBQ.

Starsky & Zzzz…

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 21:45:52 +0000

Last night Jolayne and I went to see Starsky & Hutch, which was pretty mediocre. There were a few funny parts here and there, but overall it was just not that great and short on laughs. Chuckles, yes. But, considering that it had Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and the director of Old School, I really would have expected more from it. So while that was less than satisfying, the good thing about yesterday was that I did manage to score a memory upgrade for my machine at work.

I am not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 02:03:23 +0000

From time to time (because I’m vain) I like to google myself just to check if I’ve inadvertently gained any amount of internet fame. Doing so today, I learned that I have a doppleganger on google (a Googleganger?). It’s not so odd that someone with the same name as me has a web page, that’s not too unusual. What I do find disconcerting is that apparently we’re both software developers, and both familiar with the same languages.

Peanut Butter Terror

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 05:08:30 +0000

Below is the Terror Alert Banana who, unlike a normal banana that inevitably turns browner and brownerer, turns to whatever is currently the color of the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorist threat advisory. Sure, he may be dancing happily now but at any moment he could turn orange or even red, telling us that it’s time to run for the hills, stepping on and shoving past our loved ones, friends, and the elderly in a mad attempt to save self above all else.

“Am I ready to rock? Uh, could you check again on Friday? Thanks.”

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:50:18 +0000

Don Caballero is playing tonight in Lawrence, and I’m sitting here moaning about how I miss all the good shows due to work instead of rocking out like I should be. It’s not that there’s a shortage of good shows in the area by any means, its just that most of them are an hour away in Lawrence and on a weeknight. As much as I want to keep the rock alive, I just can’t see heading out there after getting out of the office and then crawling back in the early a.

My geek sense is tingling…

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 02:46:57 +0000

So there I was just minding my own business at work when I received an email notifying me that the beta version of Visual Assist X, the next version of Visual Assist was available. Visual Assist is a plug-in for Visual Studio that I’ve found to be pretty much indispensable at work. so much so that it convinced me to pony up the registration fee a while back. It makes my life so much easier, and almost makes working with MFC, dare I say it, fun.

Lawrence

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 20:12:37 +0000

Jolayne and I spent the day in Lawrence, KS yesterday, which is home to the University of Kansas. It was fun to spend some time back in a college town, though it did kind of make us feel just a little bit old. Well, maybe more me than her. It hasn’t been a full year yet since she’s graduated, but I’ve been out of school for 2 years now, which seems hard to believe. We stopped by an art museum on the KU campus and then spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around all the stores on the main street through downtown Lawrence. I picked up one of those old-timey Guinness ad posters, which I now need to find a frame for. We ate dinner at Zen Zero, which was really good but I don’t know if I liked it as much as Lulu’s here in KC. After all that we ended the evening by seeing Monster at a theatre there.

Photoblog

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 05:08:16 +0000

When I decided to switch to MovableType, I had the thought in the back of my mind of trying to get a photoblog set up. What I didn’t realize was that it would just take about 15 minutes thanks to the great tutorial and templates over at Quixotic Pixels. There’s currently a whopping grand total of 1 picture up there now. I’m hoping I’ll now be motivated to start picking up my sadly under-used camera and record my daily life, but I’m not sure how well that will go.

Wha happened?

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 05:07:37 +0000

So much for that dilemma. Movable Type it is. It was tough to finally leave Blogger behind, but the power and control MT offered won me over. I guess one of the biggest reasons I did it was to have control over my content (though calling it content may be something of a stretch) and not just the output. Now I’ve got the database of all my entries to with as I like, and wouldn’t be left with nothing but a pile of HTML should Blogger go teats up.

…and we’re back. Yeah, how

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 17:06:48 +0000

…and we’re back. Yeah, how about that. See, I’ve just switched over to a new hosting provider, 1 & 1, and so I thought that would be a good reason to, you know, actually do something with that. They were running an awesome promotion with 3 years of free hosting, but with all the fun stuff (like perl & PHP support and a MySQL database) that wasn’t free at my former host.

Here we go…

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:22:03 +0000

Testing out MT for the first time…

Wow, there’s really not much

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 01:19:29 +0000

Wow, there’s really not much better than spending an entire Saturday in the office is there. No, I thought not. At least I had one thing going for me making it somewhat bearable. That would be SLIMP3. Recently (thanks to eMusic) my mp3 collection swelled beyond the limits of my 20GB Nomad3 player. Since I’m somewhat obsessive about having access to my entire collection at once the obvious solution was to switch to streaming for getting my music at work.

Best idea I’ve gotten from

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 03:29:54 +0000

Best idea I’ve gotten from Metafilter in a while: Dear Verisign, I am unable and unwilling to comply with the terms of service for your new sitefinder service. Please advise me on how I may avoid accessing it in the future via a mistyped URL or invalid hyperlink. (Orginally posted on 9⁄23 but for some reason blogger wouldn’t let me publish all week. I keep thinking about making the switch to Movable Type …)

This has been one of

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 04:54:09 +0000

This has been one of the more entertaining weekends I’ve had in a while. Friday night Jolayne and I went down to The Beast haunted house and I screamed like a little girl. I’d never really been to any kind of haunted house before and always thought they were a little lame, but this was a lot of fun. It took up an entire four story warehouse and was pretty elaborate over all.

Wow, where did the last

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 06:20:00 +0000

Wow, where did the last month go? It’s just flown by, I think in a large part due to the fact that Jolayne is out here now! She’s been here since the middle of August and that’s been really, really great She’s staying with her aunt and uncle on the other side of town, but that’s much much better than 700 miles away. About a week after she came out, we went over to St.

Out of the 100 Albums

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 01:39:21 +0000

Out of the 100 Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately, I’m kind of suprised that I ended up as a pretty light offender. I’m currently facing 5 counts of musical manslaughter (I’m pretty sure that’s just a misdemeanor in most states) due to owning: 06 The Replacements – Tim20 Fugazi – 13 Songs32 Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin52 Mogwai – Come On Die Young58 Ben Folds Five – Whatever and Ever, AmenThere are a few albums on there though that I used to own (14, 17, 56, 61, 62, 71, and 72) and also quite a few that I’d still like to get despite their inclusion on this list of pariahs.

So when you think of

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 04:08:00 +0000

So when you think of World War II, what’s the first thing that naturally springs to mind? That’s right, circa 18th centrury pirate warfare. I can hardly believe it myself, but there’s actually a pirate based mod for Battlefield: 1942. It’s bizarre, yet strangely compelling. If only the developers could be convinced to add ninjas to it so that the real ultimate power of a ninjas vs. pirates battle could finally be made available to those of us not fortunate enough to have been born as a pirate or a ninja.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 04:59:20 +0000

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m a total hard drive whore. I can never pass up the chance to get more storage, and so when a co-worker decided to sell off a 180 gig hard drive I was all over that like a zombie on the sweet tasty brains of the living. This brings me up to 280 gigs on my machine with another 8 gb sitting around waiting for me to find something to do with it.

FLCL (aka Furi Kuri aka

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 03:55:21 +0000

FLCL (aka Furi Kuri aka Fooly Cooly) is without a doubt the most insane, incomprehensible, and entirely enjoyable anime I’ve seen in a long time. I caught the first episode of it on Adult Swim last night and was blown away. The animation goes over the top to riff on every manga-style animation gimmick imaginable in hyperactive rapid fire succession, and then throws in a ton of new tricks to boot.

“But we do ourselves a

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 03:52:06 +0000

“But we do ourselves a disservice by fixating on current income structures and not thinking about future possibilities premised on amazing technological advances, especially when the rights at issue concern the flows of ideas, something fundamental to free societies.” – Jonathan Zittrain (via Neal [thanks a lot man, I got in to work later than I’d wanted to today because I just had to finish reading this.]) Great article on the intractable state copyright law seems to currently be in.

Don’t copy that floppy. Holy

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 03:36:12 +0000

Don’t copy that floppy. Holy crap, this is the most amazing thing on the internet.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:38:16 +0000

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I’ve long thought that the

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 03:05:25 +0000

I’ve long thought that the current music ownership and distribution has rapidly become dated and unnecessary and that the first company to put forth a workable business model based on fair use and easy digital availablity would stand to make a killing and also nail shut the coffins of the monolithic dinosaurs of the record industry. I think that day may be getting closer. Robert Cringely has an idea that I’m sure is entirely insane, but may well be one of the best to date.

So apparently, while I wasn’t

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 03:06:13 +0000

So apparently, while I wasn’t looking Emusic got really, well… good. Last time I checked, it was a decent service it seemed, one of the only monthly fee music download services that let you have the songs in pure, unadulterated, DRM free, all-natural mp3 format. Unfortunately, the selection was pretty limited, at least for artists that I was interested in. Then today, in the middle of reading some articles about the pending RIAA civil lawsuits and mediocre new download services, I came across something about Emusic and went to give it another look.

28 Days Later

Sun, 29 Jun 2003 06:44:53 +0000

Last night I went out to see 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle’s take on the zombie apocalypse film. Let me just say that I’m a huge fan of the zombie apocalype genre. Give me a shotgun and a shambling army of the undead and that’s pretty much all it takes to make me happy. I’d have to say that I haven’t enjoyed a zombie film this much since Dawn of the Dead.

Time for another post about

Sat, 28 Jun 2003 02:02:43 +0000

Time for another post about music but this time about something a little happier: cover songs. It doesn’t get much better than coming across a well executed cover song, regardless of whether or not you even really cared for the original version of the song that much. As an aside, I’d like to point out that file-sharing systems are often the best place to find these covers many of which you’d just about be out of luck finding through more legitimate methods.

I just read Brett’s recent

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 07:05:00 +0000

I just read Brett’s recent RIAA related rant, and since the RIAA’s planned wave of legislation is something I’ve been thinking about a bit recently I figured I might as well have a rant of my own. I am an avid supporter of music as well, and I more than likely also buy more albums than the average person. However, I do fairly often download mp3’s from an album before I buy it.

Now there’s something you don’t

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 02:17:33 +0000

Now there’s something you don’t see every day. So I’m driving home from work today and as I come around a curve in the highway, I see a mass of wreckage on the side of the road. It doesn’t look like any accident I’ve ever seen, and as I get closer I see that it looks like lots of smashed wooden boxes. I look back at the road and SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP, I’M DRIVING THROUGH A SWARM OF KILLER BEES!

Congratulations Jolayne! This past weekend

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:29:41 +0000

Congratulations Jolayne! This past weekend I made a trip back to Columbus so that I could attend my girlfriend’s graduation ceremony. I almost didn’t make it as a delayed flight caused me to miss my connection in Chicago and resulted in an overnight stay at the always lovely airport Hilton Days Inn. My early am flight got into Columbus at 9:05 and graduation began at 9:30 but I managed to make it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 03:05:07 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, I now present to you the best news in the history of this universe or any other, including any universes that have yet to be formed, even artificial universes created accidentally or intentionally in the coming years as our scientific knowledge races ahead of our sense of responsibility. (What, too much?) Adult Swim is coming to DVD! Even though this makes my carefully (some might say obsessively) compiled VCD collection pointless, I’m still thrilled.

It’s just been non-stop rock

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 06:28:03 +0000

It’s just been non-stop rock and roll around here. Tonight it was Ester Drang and Starflyer 59 at El Torreon, south of downtown. In spite of a less than stellar sound set-up, the show was pretty good. I picked up an Ester Drang cd and a Starflyer t-shirt. It’s a black shirt. Because, you know, I was just so dangerously close to running out of black t-shirts. Good thing I’ve got a C++ developer’s class/workshop on memory leaks tomorrow at 7 am.

Last night I made my

Sun, 08 Jun 2003 23:37:08 +0000

Last night I made my first trip over to Lawrence, KS to catch Pretty Girls Make Graves playing at the Bottleneck. The band was minus one guitar player who had to leave the tour since he had a baby due, but they still were just as impressive as I’d been hoping. From the sound of what I heard their next album should be quality stuff too, so I’m looking forward to that.

The matrix has you. ZMatrix

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 05:10:16 +0000

The matrix has you. ZMatrix is a nice little variation on the Matrix-code style screensavers in that it runs continuously as your desktop background rather than taking over your entire screen. An extra nice touch is how it blends with your desktop wallpaper so that a matrix-codified version of the wallpaper appears after enough code has fallen. Fun stuff. I’ve been staring at it for a while now though, and all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead…

In the interest of making

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 05:17:55 +0000

In the interest of making up for lost time, here’s some completely spastic geeking out action: Sweet fancy Moses, do I love my phone!!! While I’m less than thrilled with Sprint’s apparent viewpoint that every single app, image, or ringer on my phone should be purchased through them, 3GUpload lets me get my own files onto my phone, which is the way things should be. Other websites are coming up with fun stuff to do with Internet enabled phones too.

So this weekend I just

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 04:09:23 +0000

So this weekend I just said to myself: “Screw it, I’m going to Florida!” Next thing you know, I’m getting off a plane in Orlando and driving over to Ormond Beach. Of course, it just so happened that one of my cousins was getting married there yesterday and the rest of my extended family was going to be there as well but either way you look at it, I got to spend the weekend in Florida on the beach.

I finally decided that rather

Wed, 28 May 2003 04:48:03 +0000

I finally decided that rather than trying to come up with a brilliant comeback post, a new design, or even just a clever reason for leaving things to collect dust here for over 3 months that I should just post something and be done with it. So I did. I wish that I could say that I spent the last 3 months building a supercomputer out of 70 PS2’s but that’s just not the case.

Now that I’ve got the

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 05:33:55 +0000

Now that I’ve got the rest of my stuff up here and my living room is slightly less bare I can start focusing on the real essentials of surviving in a strange city: finding the good record stores. I planned to hit up Recycled Sounds and Streetside Records in Westport yesterday, but it turns out that Recycled Sounds is closed Sundays so I’ll have to try that another time. Streetside was a pretty good store, not quite up there with Magnolia’s back in Columbus but pretty close.

Since I’ve just found myself

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 03:25:13 +0000

Since I’ve just found myself with some unexpected free time, I figured I might as well bring things up to date around here. I was supposed to be on a flight back to Columbus right now to pick up a U-Haul tomorrow and get the rest of my things out to Kansas City. That was the plan until some heavy fog showed up and got my flight cancelled. The next flight I could get on isn’t until 7:15 tomorrow morning so I headed back to my apartment rather than wait at the airport all night.

Alright, its time for a

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 04:16:48 +0000

Alright, its time for a road trip to KC! Except I don’t get to come back. Its kind of hard to believe, but I have no idea at all where I’ll be living 2 days from now. I’m finally taking my computer offline here after waiting till the last minute. Hopefully I won’t go too long without RoadRunner out there and I’ll be back on before too long.

mp3s stole my memories b/w

Sat, 25 Jan 2003 19:41:23 +0000

mp3s stole my memories b/w new car I noticed something when I was packing up all my cds the other day. Every time I grabbed an album that I had owned before I got an mp3 jukebox, I instantly got some kind of memory of a place, person, or event in my life from when I had been listening to that album. Even albums that I had never really listened to as much, I still could remember what had been going on when I bought them.

One might assume that nothing’s

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 03:30:39 +0000

One might assume that nothing’s been going on since it’s been almost a month since I’ve done anything here. One would be wrong. In fact, things have been pretty crazy. I would even go so far as to say that situation might be classified as full-on wacky. Its like this: I got a job. Ok, so I got two jobs but I could only accept one of them, which made me feel like a jerk but I’ll get back to that.

When I’m in the mood

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 01:56:51 +0000

When I’m in the mood to pound out awkwardly-strummed renditions of my favorite alt-country songs, (which, lets face it, is just about all the time) I’ve found altcountrytab.com to be just the thing I need. For those of us with poor ears, or that are just too lazy to sit down to figure out a song, (guilty on both counts) this is where it’s at. Let’s see, they’ve got Wilco, Johnny Cash, Whiskeytown, Neko Case, and… Jimmy Eat World?

Brett’s recent top 25 songs

Sat, 14 Dec 2002 06:37:42 +0000

Brett’s recent top 25 songs list naturally prompted me to throw together a list of my own. This is what I came up with. Top 25 Songs in the Entire Universe (as of right now and in no particular order) 1) “I Really Should Have Gone Out Last Night” – Dirty Three 2) “A Shot in the Arm” – Wilco 3) “Sunflower” – Low 4) “Folsom Prison Blues” – Johnny Cash

Remember that thing I said

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 23:46:06 +0000

Remember that thing I said the one time about wanting to be a software engineer? Scratch that. I wanna be in a Smiths cover band.

Time for some backstory, a

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 04:16:00 +0000

Time for some backstory, a little exposition if you will. In my entire life there have only been two things that I wanted to do for a living. Until I was thirteen, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Around the age of thirteen I began to realize two things. One was that I really wasn’t Air Force material and the other was that I really really liked making computers do things.

Back from my interview with

Thu, 05 Dec 2002 05:16:20 +0000

Back from my interview with Cerner. Kansas City was actually really nice, and I had a great time. It was also much less stressful than I thought it would be. Most of the time it seemed like Cerner was trying to impress the recruits as much as we were trying to impress them. If that was the case, it worked because I was really impressed with Cerner and I think I’d really like to work for them.

Alright, this is it. My

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 03:40:20 +0000

Alright, this is it. My only suit folded up as neatly as possible in my dad’s old garment bag? Check. Printed out my travel documents? Check. Sudafed and tissues to stop this cold from turning my head into a giant exploding ball of snot? Check. Song title related to trip in name only frozen in Winamp for the duration. Check. Wired nerves? Double check. I’m off to the airport way too early tomorrow morning to see what these new-fangled homeland security airport measures are all about.

Well here it is, Black

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 18:33:19 +0000

Well here it is, Black Friday already. While it may not technically be the biggest shopping day of the year, I’m sure it will still manage to move CompUSA down a few more circles of retail hell. I always swore to myself that I’d never work retail during the holiday season, and yet here I am. Granted, I never started swearing that until I started working retail, but I’d still really hoped that I’d get to miss out on this experience.

Ok, I know things have

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 04:00:59 +0000

Ok, I know things have been a little slow around here for a while. That’s due mostly to the fact that my life has been anything but slow for the past few weeks. In the past month, I’ve had about 8 job interviews, all through the OSU engineering career services. Thank goodness for them. I’ve still got nothing definite, but I did manage to get at least one second interview so far.

Who needs sleep? Today we

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:43:46 +0000

Who needs sleep? Today we started carrying Bawl’s Guarana Soda at CompUSA. We got in 75 cases full of wakey-wakey. Naturally, I had to pick up a case for myself and I downed a bottle at work. Bad idea. It was certainly stimulating, but the downside was that all the caffiene energy made it seem like time was passing at a crawl. Nanoseconds dragged by as I stared at the clock on my register.

So apparently, I’m considering switching

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 06:54:08 +0000

So apparently, I’m considering switching coaxialflutter over to an all ticket stubs, all the time format. I’ve just gotten to go to a lot of great shows recently, that’s all. Like Sigur R&#243s! And Sigur R&#243s! Then, there’s Sigur R&#243s! I enjoyed the show, in case it wasn’t apparent. From what I heard tonight, I think I’ll really like some of the stuff on their new album as well. It was a nice surprise that I got to go, considering the show sold out within a day or so of tickets going on sale back in October.

Wilco did an excellent job

Sun, 27 Oct 2002 07:29:37 +0000

Wilco did an excellent job of making my first trip to the Promowest Pavilion a good one. It was a great show, more expensive that most I go to but well worth it. The set was just about perfect, and I was pleased that they played nearly every song I was hoping they would. Of course it helped that they played for about 2 hours. That’s a nice change of pace from too many shows where it’s over after about an album’s worth of songs.

The interview wasn’t all that

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 16:18:25 +0000

The interview wasn’t all that great. I had the same interviewer as the last time, and he recognized me. Even though last time he had seemed fairly interested in me, this time there was nothing. Total time: 15 minutes out of a scheduled 30.There were only three questions asked and then I got the “Well, its a pretty slow year, but your resume is the system, etc, etc, etc.” I hate systems.

Alright, I’ve got an interview

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 23:50:36 +0000

Alright, I’ve got an interview with Raytheon tomorrow. Yes, I did just interview with them earlier this year, but no, this isn’t really a second interview. Most likely its because they’ve got a different recruiter on campus from last time, or they just didn’t remember that I already interviewed this year. Either way, they accepted me onto their interviewing schedule so I’m hoping I’ve got a second chance at a first impression here.

Yesterday at CompUSA we were

Thu, 17 Oct 2002 18:10:09 +0000

Yesterday at CompUSA we were blessed with a visit by Cowboy Elvis. Picture Elvis in all denim with cowboy boots and a huge belt buckle and you’re just about there. That alone would be fairly memorable, but what followed was really something. Cowboy Elvis bought a box of screensaver software. 15 minutes later, Cowboy Elvis returned the screensaver software, unopened. His reason? “I didn’t know you needed a computer for this.

So last night I went

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 05:38:15 +0000

So last night I went to see Clinic at the Wexner Center with The Standard and the Apples in Stereo opening. The show was actually held entirely on the stage of the huge auditorium there behind the curtain with the audience all on stage and then the bands on a stage on the stage. That was kind of cool, especially with all the stage ropes going up to the high ceiling lit up behind the bands.

Let’s talk about rock and

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 06:36:03 +0000

Let’s talk about rock and roll for a moment. Over the weekend, I picked up the first new albums I’d been able to get in quite a while. Employment does have its advantages. I’m particularly fond of one of the albums, Interpol‘s “Turn on the Bright Lights“. From everything I’ve read about Interpol, it seems that anyone discussing this album either has to mention the Joy Division feel up front or go out of their way to mention that they’re avoiding making any Joy Division comparisons.

I went to the last

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 17:31:18 +0000

I went to the last day of Oktoberfest yesterday with Jolayne and my roommates. I think we were all expecting some kind of huge open festival loosely centered at several locations spread around German Village. Instead, it was located entirely in a parking lot in the Brewery District near the riverfront. Another unexpected surprise was the $7 admission price, but I guess I should have realized it would have been like that.

Just got back from the

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 22:30:20 +0000

Just got back from the Engineering Expo on the OSU campus. I didn’t think I’d be allowed in since I just graduated, but its a good thing I checked since I need all the job leads I can find. As usual, I got some resumes out but nothing that seemed really promising. There were even fewer companies there than last year, and I thought last year was bad. The real bad sign though is that there wasn’t nearly as much free crap being handed out.

Yesterday Jolayne and I went

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 01:55:06 +0000

Yesterday Jolayne and I went to Cedar Point, and had ourselves a mighty good time. I hadn’t been up there in quite a few years. That place is really amazing. Its got more rollercoasters than you would really think could fit into a land mass that size. Looking at it from an elevated position (something you get more than enough opportunities to do, though usually not for very long) it looks like someone just dropped tons of brightly colored steel bars on it from above.

Tonight I went to an

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 04:19:06 +0000

Tonight I went to an art show dressed up in my best cowboy outfit. Why? Because, hey… um, cowboys, right? Am I right? Somebody? The truth is I just needed to wear my cowboy vest to something finally. I’d put it off long enough. And sometimes a man just needs to feel like a cowboy. Even if he’s a computer programmer with dainty sensitive hands. Oh, and the art show? Pretty darn good.

I may be a little

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 05:01:34 +0000

I may be a little late to the party, but thanks to�Neal I’ve taken a second look at�Mozilla and found it to be a really nice browser with some nifty web development tools thrown in as well. Its JavaScript debugger and DOM inspector are both handy tools that I can see being very useful. On top of that, Mozilla seems to be a very extensible platform as well. As an example, I’m writing

Audiogalaxy lives! Sorta. It seems

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 04:42:18 +0000

Audiogalaxy lives! Sorta. It seems that my dearly departed friend Audiogalaxy has risen from its grave as Rhapsody. It’s not entirely back to life though. It’s more like its joined the ranks of the undead, although without that troublesome appetite for brains. Rhapsody is a file sharing service with a $9.95/month fee, something I would have been more that willing to pay for the original version of Audiogalaxy. However, the new version only features tracks from artists whose labels have approved them to be allowed on the service.

At CompUSA, we sell several

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 08:02:06 +0000

At CompUSA, we sell several software packages designed to help people write their wills. Every time someone comes through my checkout lane with one of those, I just want to deadpan in a flat monotone: “Yeah, we’re all going to die someday huh? We could go at anytime really. Anytime. *sigh* Do you ever say to yourself in the morning ‘Forget this, I’m not even getting out of bed. Just going to die someday anyway.

One of the hardest things

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 05:52:01 +0000

One of the hardest things to deal with at work is with the near constant flood of crap spewed forth from the in-store “radio station”. Its unique brand of annoying songs and grating CompUSA ads really wears on you during a shift. I’m told that there was a time that each store got to choose from several different stations for store music. Then the corporate headquarters decided that there would be only one station, pumping the exact same thing into every CompUSA in America via satellite.

It was an exciting day

Thu, 19 Sep 2002 03:18:17 +0000

It was an exciting day at work today. We managed to foil a shoplifting attempt by a complete idiot. This guy came into the store carrying a laptop, which he showed to me at the customer service counter to make sure that someone knew he was bringing it in. He shopped for a while and then checked out, buying about $500 worth of stuff. Before he got out the door though, the front end security guy noticed that he had a laptop bag that we sold and it still had a sticker on it.

So it’s like this: I’ve

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:46:10 +0000

So it’s like this: I’ve decided that I’m not going to play any video games until I get my next job interview. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty serious commitment. I don’t know if I can do it or not (especially since the full version of Battlefield 1942 just came out), but I’m sure going to to try. I spend every shift at CompUSA wishing I was doing something else, but then just sit around playing games instead of looking for a better job when I get home.

They gave us all knives

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 03:56:32 +0000

They gave us all knives at work today. Maybe I should explain. Every so often when a company rep visits the store, they bring cheap little items emblazoned with the company logo. I guess it’s supposed to convince us to sell more of their products. Anyway, today our Hewlett-Packard rep gave us all little tiny keychain pocketknives. I don’t know if that was the best idea for workplace morale and safety.

Its been a while since

Sun, 15 Sep 2002 04:31:20 +0000

Its been a while since I found any cool toys on the web, but this NASA Java app made my day. It’s a 3D real time capable satellite tracking program. You can see a live updating display of over 500 satellites orbiting the earth. Pretty crowded up there really, from the right distance out the earth just seems to be covered with a cloud of dots. As I wrote this, COSMOS 1263 R/B flew just about right overhead and then on to Canada.

Ok, so I’m slowly starting

Sat, 14 Sep 2002 17:36:05 +0000

Ok, so I’m slowly starting to get adjusted to being part of the working world again. Aside from not being anything close to what I’d like to be doing with my life at this point, CompUSA’s not such a bad deal. I think I’m getting it down, and I haven’t kept anyone else’s credit card again so that’s a step in the right direction. And we do get access to new games the very moment they’re available, which is nice.

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 21:30:30 +0000

Wow, that was sure a

Fri, 06 Sep 2002 06:12:41 +0000

Wow, that was sure a long game of Battlefield 1942, huh? Yeah, I didn’t exactly mean to take such a long break, but it just kind of happened that way. I’ve been doing a lot the past few weeks, but unfortunately things haven’t really worked out as well for me as I was hoping. I interviewed with Accenture last Friday, and I thought it went really well. Technically, it was an office visit, 3 interviews, and a lunch, all of which I thought went well.

The multiplayer demo of Battlefield

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 17:12:29 +0000

The multiplayer demo of Battlefield 1942 has me all weak in the knees. My roommates and I have been playing for the past few days, and I can’t really remember if there’s ever been more shouting, yelling, and screaming in our house. There’s just something great about being able to drive an aircraft carrier, take off from it in a bomber, dogfight with another plane, strafe a tank and bomb it, bail out and parachute down, and then steal a jeep and drive it like a madman around an island all in the space of 5 minutes.

The Dismemberment Plan has a

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 02:50:37 +0000

The Dismemberment Plan has a video for their song “Time Bomb” on their site. It’s a pretty cool video, and contains some pretty slick high tech trickery. Then again, I guess it could have been done on an iBook with a copy of Final Cut Pro. I can never tell anymore. The point is, check it out. Rock. (edited to correct the link… whoops)

The Stradley Fo’ reunion this

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 19:43:34 +0000

The Stradley Fo’ reunion this past weekend went off without a hitch and was a lot of fun, although it was another one of the increasingly frequent reminders of how fast time seems to pass. I can’t believe that it was almost 5 years ago that I used to spend all my time on the 4th floor of Stradley hall. They were kind enough to adopt me (since my own dorm had nothing going for it), and countless wacky adventures ensued.

Rainlendar is the kind of

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 06:19:33 +0000

Rainlendar is the kind of program I’ve always wanted, but never had a clue how go about coming up with myself. Good thing somebody else finally did it, and did a really great job of it at that. Its a skinnable little calendar that can sit on your desktop with a transparent background and look pretty, like so. As if that weren’t cool enough, you can also add events to it that show up in a tool tip when you mouse over the date.

I’d like to give “propers”

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 19:03:39 +0000

I’d like to give “propers” out to my boy Neal. Not only has he just recently gone all out and starting kicking out daily updates of his site, but he’s serving his site off of his Playstation2. If that’s not the coolest thing that’s ever been done with a gaming console, I don’t know what is. Ok, so there’s this. Still, the idea of running a real OS on a video game machine makes the geeky parts of my brain all nice and tingly.

Well, I certainly had an

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 19:40:14 +0000

Well, I certainly had an exciting and eventful weekend. I finally managed to work up the courage to tell Jolayne that I liked her and had been secretly attracted to her for some time. (I don’t know why I keep operating under the junior high mentality that if you like a girl, the last thing in the world you’d want to do is let her know that you do.) Longtime readers of the flutter may remember her as my sparring partner and one time partner in crime.

Edsger Dijkstra passed away two

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 18:27:24 +0000

Edsger Dijkstra passed away two days ago. Since computer science is still so young and most of its legends are still living, it just seems very odd to have one of them pass. Dijkstra’s name was one of the first that I learned as a beginning CS student, and one that I would hear often during my classes. He was brilliant without a doubt and did so much groundbreaking work especially in securing the mathematical foundations of programming.

Back from Chicago, and I’ve

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 03:52:36 +0000

Back from Chicago, and I’ve decided that I’ve definitely got to move there at some point in the not too distant future. There are many reasons of course, but the clincher is that Chicago’s just the kind of place where Rob Zombie will hold the door for your grandmother on her birthday. Maybe. Let me explain. On Monday we took my grandma out to eat lunch at Ann Sather’s and on the way in we noticed a large bus parked out front.

Found some disappointing news at

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 23:33:30 +0000

Found some disappointing news at Pitchfork today. It looks like DeSoto Records, a really great label run by two former members of the much too underrated Jawbox, is going to be shutting down soon. This raises the question “What’s going to happen to the Plan?”. On top of that Burning Airlines, a post-Jawbox J. Robbins project on DeSoto is breaking up as well. Sad news for the rock and roll.

The latest release candidate of

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 04:33:53 +0000

The latest release candidate of Winamp3 is the first one I’ve really gotten excited about, and I do mean excited. After four previous candidates that just didn’t quite seem up to it, this one comes really really close to being everything I was hoping for. There are still a few minor quirks and things that I don’t know if I like, but at this point I haven’t found any real bugs to complain about.

I need to start getting

Thu, 01 Aug 2002 05:33:41 +0000

I need to start getting out of the house, badly. At about the one month mark in my unemployment career cabin fever has set in hardcore. As a result I’ve been watching way more TechTV than can possibly be considered healthy. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I think I’ve developed crushes on all the women on The Screen Savers and Fresh Gear. For those keeping tabs on coolness points, I’m down by about -50 or so at this point.

Today was the end of

Fri, 26 Jul 2002 05:38:09 +0000

Today was the end of my first 3 months of kung fu and I don’t if I’m going to re-enroll, but it doesn’t matter because I finally got my white sash today. Yes, that is the first level. Yes, it did take 3 months to get it. Yes, I did awkwardly fumble my way through the test exercises. But you know what? Watch it bub, because me and my white sash are in the mood to beat asses.

Drempels is a super hypnotic

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:43:12 +0000

Drempels is a super hypnotic desktop replacement/screensaver from OSU-alumni-turned-Winamp-visualization-&#252ber-genius Ryan Geiss. Its kind of like having a lava lamp on acid as your wallpaper. Can’t… stop… staring… Oh yeah, and Dave was right. This Marvel based, Clerks inspired Flash animation is nothing short of brilliant.

New domains are popping up

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 03:53:22 +0000

New domains are popping up like crazy these days from the good old SCC crew. George just picked up jorgeosu.com for himself and is currently in the process of adding content to it. I’m trying to sway him into adding a blog there because I’m always looking for more daily reads. Otherwise I might actually get useful stuff done.

I’m pretty impressed with the

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:23:21 +0000

I’m pretty impressed with the job Microsoft did with the ClearType font smoothing in XP. Its supposed to be primarily for LCD screens, but I was just playing around yesterday and turned it on and was really pleased with the difference it made, even on my CRT monitors. Even more fun are the Visual Styles[]2 for XP I’ve been trying out from ThemeXP. I never understood why Microsoft released XP with a full skinning engine but only made two skins (XP and Windows Classic) and then locked out the ability to add user created styles.

Sweet! Its about time, but

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 05:21:04 +0000

Sweet! Its about time, but Evangelion Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion are finally going to get released on DVD here in the States. The release dates are July 30th and September 24th respectively. After seeing only bits and pieces of low resolution digital downloads of fansubbed versions I can’t wait to get my hands on these DVDs.

“You have a fair stress

Mon, 22 Jul 2002 17:11:25 +0000

“You have a fair stress level One of the reasons for this is your conscious awareness to release your stress before letting it get worst. However when you come across many troubles at the same time, you might be unable to handle it. There comes the problem. For this type you better enjoy the green and wood. As long as you are in the natural environment, you will be peaceful to resolve any problems.

On the surface, the Columbus

Sun, 21 Jul 2002 05:45:06 +0000

On the surface, the Columbus Jazz and Rib Fest seems like a very simple concept: Listen to jazz while eating ribs. It doesn’t seem like anything could possibly go wrong. The only problem was the huge mass of people milling around making it nearly impossible to get anywhere. I’m aware that the point of festivals is to be attended by many many people, but its always nice to be able to actually get from one place to the other.

You know, there was a

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 05:33:38 +0000

You know, there was a time in my life where I could start a marathon viewing session of The State at 11pm and make it through all 3 seasons + the CBS Halloween special in one night. It would seem that those days have passed. Last night we kicked off a State viewing to check out my friend Derek’s recently acquired newer generation copies. However, we only made it through one tape before we called it quits and headed over to the Blue Danube for beer and deep-fried foods.

Normally, I’m not that big

Thu, 18 Jul 2002 04:22:21 +0000

Normally, I’m not that big on doing the kind of personal info surveys/quizzes/questionnaires/etc that get passed around by email and blog. Music surveys/quizzes/questionnaires/etc are another matter entirely though. Those have some strange hold over me, forcing me to complete nearly every one I come across. With that said, here’s a lengthy one that I stole from Kimmee.

Looks like Dave registered himself

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 23:04:21 +0000

Looks like Dave registered himself a domain. I present to you… klegmania.org. Oh. Ah, *ahem*, mind the Fist of Death there… Yeah, that’s probably going to swell up something fierce. Should have mentioned the fist thing sooner, sorry. I’ll just get some ice for that.

When you’ve got as much

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 20:44:32 +0000

When you’ve got as much free time as I seem to find myself with, you’ve got to come up with ways to fill it all. Like, for example, making themed mix cds. Here’s one I’ve been working on with a fairly obvious theme to it. Brandtson – January Les Savy Fav – Hide Me From Next February Blaster the Rocketman – March of the Macrobes Pedro the Lion – April 6, 2039 Belle & Sebastian – Mayfly Don Caballero – June is Finally Here Low – July Velour100 – Light in August ?

After watching The Prisoner, a

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 04:10:20 +0000

After watching The Prisoner, a Jackie Chan film, I feel slightly dizzy and disoriented. The film obviously comes from the school of thought that believes if you toss enough random things into a film a coherent plot will eventually emerge. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. You just can’t really judge a film like this by the same standards that you would something like say, The Royal Tenenbaums, that’s all.

I just got my Cornerstone

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 03:53:41 +0000

I just got my Cornerstone photos developed, and ended up with a few decent shots in spite of only having a disposable camera. About half of the roll went to both of the Havalina shows (like the image above), but the pictures I did get made me wish that I had a video camera there. Every time I see them play it always puts a big dumb grin on my face, especially watching Orlando, the bass player.

…and we’re back. It’s been

Sun, 07 Jul 2002 21:13:53 +0000

…and we’re back. It’s been quite a week for me and it feels good to finally be back at home and relaxing. I left on the 27th of last month planning on being gone for 3 days and instead ended up coming back 9 days later. The original plan was to meet some of my mom’s side of the family in Indiana and then return Saturday. Instead, I got completely sidetracked and ended up spending last week at the Cornerstone music festival in Bushnell Illinois with 3 of my cousins.

Man, I’ve got this whole

Thu, 27 Jun 2002 19:56:06 +0000

Man, I’ve got this whole unemployment thing down and it didn’t even take me a week. I’m so good at it I should put it on my resume and make a point to mention it at interviews. “Yes, I could do an excellent job working for your company, but I’d also be very good at not working for you. You win either way.” It goes something like this: wake up around 11, eat giant bowl of rice krispies, play Neverwinter Nights and/or Warcraft3, ignore nagging self doubt and sense of impending doom, remind myself that I’m looking for a job, briefly browse online job sites and find nothing promising, roommates arrive home from work, play Neverwinter Nights and/or Warcraft3 with roommates, sleep.

Minority Report

Sat, 22 Jun 2002 18:40:06 +0000

Since I have yet to hear back from CoreComm about finishing up my interview, I’m going to assume that they’re trying to give me a hint here. However, being notoriously bad at taking hints I still plan on giving them a call Monday just to see if I’m still in consideration or not. It’d be really nice to find out that I still have a chance, especially since I’m now in the last 5 hours of my employment at the Student Computer Centers.

The job interview yesterday was

Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:04:29 +0000

The job interview yesterday was somewhat disappointing. The manager of the position I was applying for, who was supposed to be one of the people interviewing me, got caught in a meeting and was too busy to make it. I found this out from an HR person immediately after I arrived. Instead, they handed my resume off to a couple of members of the software team and had them interview me on short notice.

I finally got a job

Fri, 14 Jun 2002 22:50:11 +0000

I finally got a job interview, after going for about 3 months without even one. Its with CoreComm, a mid-sized telephone and internet service provider, and its this upcoming Monday. The odd thing is that I never even sent them a resume, they came across my information through the Ohio State Engineering Career Services department. This after months of sending out my resume over and over again with no results. I’m not complaining though.

Last night I made my

Sat, 08 Jun 2002 17:33:59 +0000

Last night I made my way down to Springfest on the lawn of the Ohio Union, and tried to pretend like I was still a college student. I hadn’t been to one in a few years, and I really wanted to see Cannibal Ox. The whole thing was free, and I guess I got my money’s worth since I felt just about adequately rocked. I got there in time to see Milemarker, who I’d heard were pretty good.

This has to be the

Fri, 07 Jun 2002 03:33:57 +0000

This has to be the best job description I’ve ever seen, courtesy of OpenCola. Some highlights: Must be willing to shower and use soap on a regular basis Must be able to work within established practices, but challenge them when they don’t make sense, especially any movement to bring back Atari Must be able to communicate well and understand the value of communication, in a known language Special consideration for anyone who plays the French horn

Sevenplace is really cool new

Tue, 04 Jun 2002 19:29:26 +0000

Sevenplace is really cool new tech news/articles/forums site run by some friends of mine. They’ve got quite a nice setup over there, and they’ve even got a knowledge base (currently small, but growing). Its all coded by them too I’m pretty sure. Seems like its got great potential to be a really useful site.

A small piece of good

Mon, 03 Jun 2002 22:31:54 +0000

A small piece of good news today; I found out that I can keep working at the computer centers through the break between spring and summer quarters. That’s a week longer than I thought I could, which gives me just that much longer to find a job before being thrust out into the cold heartless world of unemployment. So yeah, its not much but its something. I’m sure that will be all the time I need to find a job.

Ok see, this is just

Sat, 01 Jun 2002 17:51:02 +0000

Ok see, this is just too much. Geekdom’s quest to caffeinate every single imaginable consumer product has just crossed that fine line between harmless amusing eccentricity and crazed obsession.

South campus is gone. Really

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:35:23 +0000

South campus is gone. Really really gone. Like “big-hole-full-of-rubble” kind of gone. Its so strange to see so many buildings I saw everyday when I lived on campus just gone. I guess it’s been gone for a few weeks now, but it didn’t really strike me until tonight when I was driving down Chittenden and realized I could see all the way down High street to 9th where previously there had been blocks of closed down bars and stores.

Answer these using the lyrics

Thu, 30 May 2002 01:28:35 +0000

Answer these using the lyrics of just ONE band/artist (from Kimmee) Band/artist: Modest Mouse **************** 1. Are you male or female? “Got a phone call from the Lord sayin� ‘Hey boy get a sweater. Right now!'” 2. Describe yourself? “I’ve said what I said and you know what I mean But I can’t still focus on anything” 3. How do they feel about you? “Well, you were the dull sound of sharp math” 4.

Pitchfork hit the nail on

Wed, 29 May 2002 04:13:34 +0000

Pitchfork hit the nail on the head with their review of Maladroit today by pointing out the eerie similarites between the new Star Wars movies and the new Weezer albums, both plagued by unrealistic expectations of slavish fans and both failing to live up to those expectations. Granted, I haven’t heard the album yet so I might not agree entirely with their assessment, but I just thought the Star Wars/Weezer comparison was pretty interesting.

Robocode (and for that matter,

Mon, 27 May 2002 04:43:52 +0000

Robocode (and for that matter, the entire Alphaworks site) is just incredibly cool. It doesn’t get any better than coding the brains for super death robots and then setting them loose on each other in an arena. Programming contests involving battling robots have been around forever, but this raises the bar by adding a nice GUI and built in compiler to make basic robot creation as straightforward as possible. Oh yeah, and its in Java too, another bonus.

Hot Property brought the rock

Sat, 25 May 2002 17:39:08 +0000

Hot Property brought the rock to Columbus last night, and I finally was able to experience the magic of their live performance. They certainly know how to put on a good show, and the choreographed dance numbers didn’t hurt either. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any other presidential candidates that can shake it like that (though I’ve heard that Ralph Nader can get his freak on like you wouldn’t believe).

My job search still hasn’t

Thu, 23 May 2002 03:04:52 +0000

My job search still hasn’t come up with anything promising yet, which is getting pretty discouraging. No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to get anyone interested in me. I don’t get it. I state very clearly up front that I’d be willing to kill for money if the job requires it, and yet no one ever gets back to me after I send them my resume. Its starting to look like I won’t find a job before the Student Computer Centers kick me out.

Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

Tue, 21 May 2002 05:09:49 +0000

I ended up seeing Star Wars episode 2 twice this weekend, one more time than I told myself I would. The second viewing wasn’t brought on by a fit of fanboy giddiness, but more out of hope that I would like it more than the first time I saw it. As a disclaimer, I probably should mention that I fall into the camp that thinks that even if a Star Wars film is bad, hey its still Star Wars.

Ahem Alright, now that I’ve

Fri, 17 May 2002 04:51:47 +0000

*Ahem* Alright, now that I’ve had some time to calm myself down and to test out the Nomad 3 I think I’m a little better shape to write about it. Lets just say it lived up to its expectations and then some. I would highly recommend this little beauty to anyone who has a decently sized cd collection. The sheer joy of just knowing that I can listen to any of my albums anywhere is great enough, but then I’m kind of a dork that way so it may not apply for everyone.

Nomad 3 mp3 player… finally

Thu, 16 May 2002 05:39:25 +0000

Nomad 3 mp3 player… finally here… guh… buh…. *gurgle* must stop drooling on keyboard, or it’ll br.,aksdalidll….dia

I’ve realized that I

Mon, 13 May 2002 22:21:35 +0000

I’ve realized that I just don’t take enough pictures. Case in point: the above pictures, just now developed, are from an incredibly rokken Havalina Rail Co. show… almost 2 years ago. Whoops. I’d completely forgotten about them until I finished off that roll of film at the AIDSwalk last week. I’d really like to take more pictures in general, and I’m leaning toward picking up one of these super compact digital cameras.

Spiderman

Fri, 10 May 2002 07:34:56 +0000

Ok, so it looks like I really should have given Sam Raimi a little credit. In spite of my low expectations from the trailers, Spiderman is now on my very very short list of good comic book to film translations. The computer generated Spiderman was much more believable than I thought it was going to be, save for a few brief moments here and there. Its a good thing the movie is doing well, because that practically guarantees a sequel which I’m really really hoping would have Venom in it.

I just got a prerecorded

Tue, 07 May 2002 18:50:59 +0000

I just got a prerecorded telemarketing call while working in a campus computer lab. That’s the most ridiculous thing ever, as if its not enough that there are 2 or 3 of them everyday at home. I’m imagining a dark near future in which the telephone is only allowed to be used as a marketing device, enforced by corporate law and upheld by a puppet federal government. Of course, if we know anything about dark near futures its that we’ll have Robocop out there sticking up for the little guy, so it won’t be all that bad.

Today I learned the valuable

Mon, 06 May 2002 03:31:54 +0000

Today I learned the valuable lesson that its ok to cheat, as long as its for a good cause, for example the Central Ohio AIDSwalk. It all started out innocently enough when I agreed to go on the AIDSwalk, but quickly degenerated into a web of deception, trickery, and flavored Gatorade “fitness water”. Jolayne and I planned to bike downtown to meet up with a group of other walkers from our church at the park where the walk began.

I feel all cultured like.

Sun, 05 May 2002 05:58:32 +0000

I feel all cultured like. I just got back from the gallery hop downtown in the Short North, which they have on the first Saturday of every month. We actually got there pretty late, and a lot of the galleries were closed but we still saw some pretty cool stuff. By far the most interesting work was an exhibition of some of the Obey Giant pieces done by Shepard Fairey. What started out as a campaign to cover cities with stickers of Andre the Giant bearing the cryptic message “Andre the Giant has a posse” has spawned a huge amount of baffling and very interesting Andre the Giant propaganda.

I went “extreme” bowling tonight,

Sat, 04 May 2002 08:41:43 +0000

I went “extreme” bowling tonight, with all the lasers and black lights and annoying music, and land mines. Ok see, not the land mines. In fact I’d say the actual level of extremeness fell somewhere between extreme doritos and mountain dew. In my mind, it would be extreme bowling if the balls exploded every now and then, and then there were giant swinging blades that would randomly take people’s heads off.

Yeah, so I left my

Fri, 03 May 2002 03:09:21 +0000

Yeah, so I left my lights on today when I went to work at 7:30 this morning, and for some reason my car wouldn’t start when I got off at 5:00. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Most cars make some kind of warning noise when you leave the lights on, and I think mine did at one time or another but over the years its just decided that’s something I can do without.

Oh goody. The Nomad 3

Thu, 02 May 2002 19:32:23 +0000

Oh goody. The Nomad 3 has been delayed by another 2 weeks. May 13th is now the expected shipping date. Urge to kill… rising… rising…

I’ve been looking for a

Thu, 02 May 2002 04:09:08 +0000

I’ve been looking for a coding project to work on for a while now, and it looks like I’ve finally got one but it may be too much of a project. Dana, Neal, and I are talking about working together on a game, just an old school side scroller Metroid style. We got together and talked about it for several hours tonight, and while I think we could pull it off, I’m still kind of skeptical that anything will come out of it though.

Absolutely horrifying. They’re spreading. What

Fri, 26 Apr 2002 22:45:33 +0000

Absolutely horrifying. They’re spreading. What is it with squirrels and college campuses? I guess taking over OSU wasn’t enough for the little furry bastards. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the squirrels were actually behind the latest wave of OSU riots. Sure, you could try to blame it on total idiots full of booze all you want, but I think its more than obvious that the real culprit here is the fuzzy gray menace.

Mirah’s “Cold, Cold Water” has

Thu, 25 Apr 2002 16:00:06 +0000

Mirah’s “Cold, Cold Water” has been on near constant repeat in my playlist the past few days. Its just that unbelievably good. This is easily going to be one of my favorite songs of the year, no contest. The night I downloaded it I must have listened to it at least 10 times. Its the greatest thing when a spur of the moment random download ends up being just way more incredible than you were expecting.

The job search is still

Thu, 25 Apr 2002 04:41:29 +0000

The job search is still going ahead here, but with only a month and a half until I become unemployed I haven’t come across anything especially promising. I just recently sent my resume out to Veritas, Lucent, and even AOL but who knows if I’ll hear back from them. Last week I got a message from some “recruiter” for a company that had found my resume on monster.com. I was more than a little skeptical, I mean I know I’m a hot job prospect and all but a company randomly calling still seemed a little questionable.

I’m sore. Lots of sore

Wed, 24 Apr 2002 06:09:04 +0000

I’m sore. Lots of sore going on here. Just one big pile of aching, out of shape muscles. Monday night I went to my first ever kung fu lesson. No, seriously. I am now an elite kung fu warrior of death, and just a few lessons away from being a ninja, which would be totally sweet. A while ago my friend Jolayne mentioned that she’d been wanting to try kung fu, and since I’ve always wanted to turn my body into an unstoppable weapon of destruction I decided to join in.

Are there any two more

Mon, 22 Apr 2002 20:34:33 +0000

Are there any two more beautiful words in the English language than “free food”? I think not. Last night I hit the free food jackpot thanks to my friend Dana. The Pizza Hut where his wife Kristin is a manager just completed remodeling and had a free food celebration for friends and family of its employees. Everything on the menu, free. Dana, Neal, Brett, and I decided we had no choice but to take them up on their kind offer.

Not being a student at

Fri, 19 Apr 2002 22:15:16 +0000

Not being a student at OSU anymore, I don’t really keep up with all the goings on around campus or even read the Lantern that much anymore, despite being on campus just about every day for work. Still, I was surprised today to see that Mirror Lake, that venerable campus landmark, had been replaced with a big dirt hole. Somebody stole Mirror Lake! Naturally, my first instict was to call Morrissey.

So here’s the thing: Last

Thu, 18 Apr 2002 15:56:06 +0000

So here’s the thing: Last week I preordered a Nomad3 jukebox from Dell, taking advantage of a couple of special offers and getting a pretty good deal on it. It was supposed to arrive today. Instead I got the next best thing, and by next best I meant worst thing imaginable. I got an email informing me that the shipping would be delayed until the 30th. Nooooooooo! After I stopped hyperventilating and abandoned the idea of trying to make my own jukebox by taking out my computer’s hard drive and jamming a headphone jack into it, I realized I’d just have to make the best of it.

I guess Google finally started

Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:32:21 +0000

I guess Google finally started indexing my page again, because as of right now I’m currently the top search result for “poo poo platter“. Wow. The thing is, I can’t believe how many hits I’ve gotten from people looking for that. Seriously. Also, this poo is cold. Look out! Monkeys flinging poo! I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder.

I finally got around to

Tue, 16 Apr 2002 03:28:56 +0000

I finally got around to finishing my MeFi Swap cd mix that I need to send out to five people ASAP. I haven’t recieved any cds yet, or heard from anyone that’s supposed to send one to me, so I hope people haven’t just lost interest, but they’re probably like me and just took a while to get around to making and burning the mix. I hope to pick up some padded envelopes and get mine in the mail tomorrow.

Today is the most beautiful

Thu, 11 Apr 2002 21:44:07 +0000

Today is the most beautiful day of the year so far. Its amazing outside, really. Wow. As I drove home from work at noon today, CD101 was kind enough to play Beulah’s A Good Man is Easy to Kill followed by Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life. I think I almost broke my steering wheel from pounding along so gleefully. I’m exuberant.

My fate is sealed. I

Thu, 11 Apr 2002 15:47:06 +0000

My fate is sealed. I have crossed the point of no return and stepped up to the ultimate level of geekiness. I have added a second monitor to my computer. Hey, at least I’m not trying to go for 3. Some people do that you know. Losers. Not like me at all. Maybe buying a second monitor sounds a little wasteful to you, but its all part of my brilliant plan.

Argh! I was all ready

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 17:13:16 +0000

Argh! I was all ready to go out after work today and pick up a 20GB Nomad mp3 jukebox, when I happened to find out that the Nomad 3 is scheduled for release “soon” (possibly later this month) I wasn’t even aware that this was in development, much less that it was near release. Looks like I’m going to have to wait for that to come out, especially since it has a much nicer battery and (joy!

Big Trouble

Sat, 06 Apr 2002 18:17:30 +0000

Last night I went to see Big Trouble, not entirely sure what to expect. I knew it had to be at least somewhat funny, I mean its based on a novel by Dave Barry so its got a lot going for it right there. On the other hand though, it has Tim Allen in it. But on the other other hand, it has Jason Lee, Janeane Garofalo, and Andy Richter (who, I should point out, has virtually the entire sum of his screen time featured in the commercials for the movie.

I didn’t think it would

Fri, 05 Apr 2002 04:05:46 +0000

I didn’t think it would be that hard to track down a Smiths guitar chord book, but now I’m not even sure if such a thing exists. Amazon, eBay and Google have all turned up nothing. Lately I’ve been working on improving what minimal guitar skills I have for the purpose of learning to play Smiths songs. Most of the tab that I’ve found on the internet has been either incomplete, inaccurate, or overly cryptic so I thought I’d see if I could find a real chord book.

As I was tearing into

Wed, 03 Apr 2002 18:56:01 +0000

As I was tearing into my Easter stash of lovely Cadbury Cream Eggs today, I suddenly became aware that I have an odd compulsive habit regarding them. I always, and I mean always, have to carefully remove the foil wrapper in one whole unripped piece which is often a time consuming and fairly tedious process. Why don’t I just shred it off quickly and devour the faux egg creaminess within?? I have no idea.

AIM+ is a brilliant little

Tue, 02 Apr 2002 19:10:53 +0000

AIM+ is a brilliant little piece of software that gives AOL instant messenger some much needed improvements. For one thing, it removes the ads and allows you to get rid of some of the useless icons in the program. As if that weren’t nice enough it keeps chat histories, allows you to run multiple copies of AIM at once and even throws in transparency settings for good measure.

Go quickly, Indietabs.net has an

Tue, 02 Apr 2002 03:36:43 +0000

Go quickly, Indietabs.net has an amazing April Fool’s page up. (good lord, I hope its an april fool’s page…) Only 2.5 hours left in April Fool’s day. Hurry up, you’ll kick yourself if you miss it. (Warning, emo boys in underwear ahead)

Let’s face it. You probably

Sat, 30 Mar 2002 17:29:58 +0000

Let’s face it. You probably spend hours every day fretfully thinking to yourself: “Boy, I’d sure like to know what Will’s listening to on Winamp right now at this exact moment.” I’m sure that some days it was almost too much to take. Well fret no longer, I finally figured out how to stick my currently playing Winamp song title into the page. Look, there it is right over there. I think that’s awesome, and by awesome I mean incredibly geeky.

Motivated by cool Winamp plugins

Sat, 30 Mar 2002 03:29:00 +0000

Motivated by cool Winamp plugins like SpyAmp (which actually runs a webserver out of Winamp and lets people see your current song and even download it… too bad it gave me a blue screen o’ death when I tried it) and MusicTicker I decided to have a go at writing a plugin to make your currently playing winamp song show up in your AIM profile. It seemed straight forward enough, but I hadn’t been able to track down anything like it and I wondered why anyone hadn’t made one before.

Today I went in and

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 04:48:26 +0000

Today I went in and picked up my diploma, thus officially ending my college career. Wow. That is one expensive piece of paper, let me tell you. For how much its cost me, you’d think it’d be able to do something neat like shoot laser beams and travel through time, or at least just sing and dance. Nope, it just sits there looking smug, reminding me how much college cost and how unemployed I’m about to become.

So if you were to

Wed, 27 Mar 2002 15:52:49 +0000

So if you were to ask me what I did last night, I would have to say that I certainly wasn’t playing a copy of a highly anticipated game that’s supposed to be in closed beta testing only called, I don’t know, lets call it the arcraftway eethray etabay. And it certainly wasn’t absolutely amazing. Wink wink, nudge nudge. I can’t wait until June. [Insert clever segue here] Kimmee‘s got a blog now!

Time to update my list

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:20:55 +0000

Time to update my list of links with some newish additions to my internet routine. Let’s see, we’ve got: Beans, Neal, McSweeney’s, Ftrain, and DeviantArt.

I hate to say it,

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 03:45:50 +0000

I hate to say it, but the Dismemberment Plan show last Thursday was kind of underwhelming. With the exception of one song, they played the exact same set that they did when I saw them almost a year ago at Bernie’s. They pretty much flew through the first half of the set, not stopping to partake in their usual banter and exchanges with the crowd until about halfway in. Also, being stuck off to the side in the rear of the club left me kind of distanced from the action, unlike the Bernie’s show where I was pressed in about 2 feet from the “stage” (Of course, so was everybody else in the room since thats about how big Bernie’s is).

Time for a little mix

Wed, 20 Mar 2002 18:10:37 +0000

Time for a little mix cd action all over the place. The Burn Baby, Burn! weblog cd swap seems like a really cool idea, and I’m on the verge of entering just as soon as I decide whether I can come up with a decent “summer themed” mix to fit the requirements. Receiving random music from total strangers should be an interesting experience. Meanwhile, a more generalized Metafilter version seems to be slowly taking shape, which could also be worth checking out.

That’s it. I’m done with

Wed, 13 Mar 2002 17:33:05 +0000

That’s it. I’m done with school. I just got back from my last final ever, which was actually fairly anti-climactic but I’m not going to complain. Nothing to do now but pick up my diploma in a little over a week or so. I’ve decided to skip the commencement ceremony though, and instead attend the Death and Dismemberment tour show in Cleveland, which I think is a much better way to honor my graduation.

Today’s Diesel Sweeties is so

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 21:53:07 +0000

Today’s Diesel Sweeties is so true it hurts.

Prepare for an Interactive Hypertext

Sun, 10 Mar 2002 18:32:12 +0000

Prepare for an Interactive Hypertext Experience&#153! Thanks to Brett’s generosity, coaxial flutter is now equipped with the latest in commenting technology. I’m leeching off of the PHP support at the site for his wicked cool band Hot Property who have a new album coming out soon that you all should go buy right away because its bound to be the best Rockin’ Ambient-Jazz/Movie Soundtrack album to come out this year, or ever.

Comedy gold, friends, pure comedy

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 07:01:53 +0000

Comedy gold, friends, pure comedy gold. Yet another Talking Monkeys show tonight, this time with some new skits and some stuff using video, which I believe was a first for them. Comedy was in no short supply, since the show ran close to two and a half hours, which even counting a 15 minute intermission is a long long show. I missed the first 30 minutes or so because I couldn’t get off of work early and apparently I missed a really good video bit.

“Then why don’t you go

Thu, 07 Mar 2002 22:50:28 +0000

“Then why don’t you go over to Cold Cabin Creek and ask Will Gorman for help?” “Woman, he’s the shystiest trader in these here parts.” What?

This just pegged the needle

Wed, 06 Mar 2002 23:26:21 +0000

This just pegged the needle on my geek-o-meter. I’m in love.

Well, it looks as if

Wed, 06 Mar 2002 18:01:46 +0000

Well, it looks as if we’ve been invaded by a mouse. I know this because as I was standing by the stove, it dashed out from under the stove, bounced off my foot, and shot like a rocket into the next room. No luck in finding it there, since that’s Matt and Scott’s computer room and the floor is pretty evenly covered by a layer of pop cans, software boxes, and fast food wrappers.

Good. Now my correction requires

Tue, 05 Mar 2002 02:47:18 +0000

Good. Now my correction requires a correction. The previous correction from earlier today is no longer correct as the situation necessitating the correction has been corrected. I’m dead again. Return to mourning and throwing yourselves onto my funeral pyre where appropriate. (Yes, I know I could have just deleted the correction and been done with it, but thats just not how things are going to work around here at coaxialflutter.com. Not while I’m in charge.

The indomitable Iron Chefs have

Tue, 05 Mar 2002 02:25:04 +0000

The indomitable Iron Chefs have nothing on me. For some reason, I felt the need to try to cook something today which is odd given that the only things I know how to “cook” come from Chef Boyardee. I flipped through a recipe book and decided to have a go at making spicy tofu stir-fry as it seemed a simple and safe choice. I was pretty apprehensive about how it was going to turn out, but it ended up being mighty tasty.

Unfortunately, yesterday’s post now requires

Mon, 04 Mar 2002 20:04:47 +0000

Unfortunately, yesterday’s post now requires a correction in order to make any kind of sense. The first post was a link to a web page generated here that you could use to create a fake CNN lookalike page with a story and picture about someone’s untimely death. Apparently sometime between yesterday and today they realized that it was a bad idea to let people go about faking deaths willy-nilly. It now generates a fake pointless news story, completely ruining yesterday’s dramatic announcement.

I’m dead. In fact, I

Mon, 04 Mar 2002 02:10:30 +0000

I’m dead. In fact, I have been for some time. I just thought it would be best if you heard it from me, you know? I’m sorry, this must be a difficult time for you. No, you can’t have my cds, you vulture. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about faking my own death scams after the one that backfired so horribly on me last year, but it seems not.

New domain, check. New name,

Sun, 03 Mar 2002 04:40:49 +0000

New domain, check. New name, check. New design… no.

For the past week or

Sun, 24 Feb 2002 19:25:44 +0000

For the past week or so I’ve been working on ripping my whole cd collection to mp3, a fairly daunting task. I finally figured that it was worth getting around to doing though, since storage has gotten to be really inexpensive. My collection of about 250 cds should take up about 15 gigs or so I’ve calculated. Not too bad. My final goal is to save up for one of these, and be able to take my entire collection wherever I go.

The Conspiracy is Real, or

Fri, 22 Feb 2002 22:50:30 +0000

The Conspiracy is Real, or so claims the most recent addition to the graffiti on the inner door of the elevator in the building where I work. I love campus graffiti. Frequently vulgar, entirely random, and more often than not unintentionally humorous, the graffiti on campus almost makes it worthwhile to go down there just to see what gets added. Until it was recently cleaned, graffiti also on the inside door of the elevator at work proclaimed boldly and entirely without context, ASSJACK!

A Tale of Two Casseroles

Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:49:56 +0000

A Tale of Two Casseroles or Why We’re Never Having a Vegan Over Again So now that our place has been a little cleaner as of late, we decided to try our hand at entertaining guests last night. Three brave (and genuinely classy) ladyfriends of ours voluntarily subjected themselves to our well-meaning hospitalites, against their better judgement I can only imagine. Ben was planning on making a chicken casserole from a family recipe.

Job interview with Raytheon went

Wed, 20 Feb 2002 04:04:05 +0000

Job interview with Raytheon went really really well this afternoon, and I was told that an on-site interview was likely but I’ve heard that before so I’ll just wait and see. Is it just me or are only defense contractors hiring these days? I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’m sure there are other things if I’d just look harder.

Its time to start thinking

Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:02:23 +0000

Its time to start thinking about where I’m going to move this page to when I lose access to the CIS servers after I graduate in a month or so. I’m pretty sure I’m going to register my own domain, and as much as I’d like to run my own server to host it I’m still clueless enough about security issues to make that not such a good idea for right now.

The DMCA and What’s Worse

Mon, 18 Feb 2002 19:36:26 +0000

The DMCA and What’s Worse I’ve always been uncomfortable with the DMCA, for a number of reasons touched upon by this article. It seems that we’re laying the groundwork to give copyright holders absolute control over any and all forms of their copyrighted materials at the same time that we’re increasing the duration of copyrights. I think this is really eroding the initial purpose of copyright laws, being to give the creator of a work a limited period of time in which to have the sole opportunity to profit from the work, thereby providing incentive for such works to be created.

Ghost World

Mon, 18 Feb 2002 05:24:12 +0000

Rented the Ghost World dvd last night, and though I liked it just fine it wasn’t really what I was expecting. Probably because my only previous impression of it was gathered from briefly flipping through parts of the graphic novel in a bookstore. I’d really like to read the comic now, because it seemed to me that it would be better suited at telling that kind of story and fleshing out the characters than the movie did.

Yesterday I hit up some

Fri, 15 Feb 2002 02:50:24 +0000

Yesterday I hit up some thrift stores with my friend BZ, but was disappointed for the most part. Its mostly “Stone Cold” Steve Austin or Planet Hollywood t-shirts and ugly sweaters (“That’s a Cosby sweater, a Cosby sweatah!“) I did find an incredible fleece-lined leather cowboy vest, but its one of those things that you have no idea when you’ll ever wear it, but you just know that someday the opportunity will arise and you’ll be ready.

So what have I been

Wed, 13 Feb 2002 05:18:04 +0000

So what have I been doing with all my hours and hours of free time since I dropped those 2 extra classes? To borrow from Office Space, I’ve been doing nothing and its everything I thought it would be. Only its not. Sure, its great to not be rushing around wondering how you’re going to find time to get everything done, but at the end of the day you’re left with the nagging feeling that you haven’t done anything useful all day because, well, you haven’t done anything useful all day.

Huh. Google doesn’t index my

Mon, 11 Feb 2002 02:29:27 +0000

Huh. Google doesn’t index my page anymore. What brought that on I wonder? I think I deserve better than that, Google. You still love me don’t you? Don’t you? Come on. Now where am I going to get my delightfully random search hits from?

When it comes to my

Sat, 09 Feb 2002 22:45:52 +0000

When it comes to my favorite video games of all time, Master of Magic would have to be pretty high up on the list, especially since I just found out its possible to get that old DOS relic to run under Windows2000. The game is over 9 years old and looks extremely dated, but I still can’t get enough of it. The only downside is that the game was always plagued with stability issues, and its age certainly hasn’t helped that.

So out of nowhere (well,

Sat, 09 Feb 2002 00:53:51 +0000

So out of nowhere (well, Utah technically) I got a call and an email from Evans and Sutherland yesterday. This from a company who I was well into a promising recruiting process with (I thought so anyway) when they suddenly stopped calling for 3 months. I even emailed them, but got no reply. I figured they must have just changed their minds, but all of a sudden it looks like I’m back in the running.

Winter Engineering Career Fair Stats

Thu, 07 Feb 2002 21:59:18 +0000

Winter Engineering Career Fair Stats Resumes handed out: 8 Junk: SGI pen, Microsoft yo-yo, Nationwide toothbrush (a toothbrush??), Northrop-Grumman calculator, EDS keychain light, Harris etch-a-sketch keychain, Lockheed-Martin notebook Interviews scheduled: 0 Atmosphere of desperation: heavy Definite change in atmosphere from previous career fairs, much less easy going. Company reps just seemed to be redirecting people to check employment opportunites on the company web page. I almost wonder what the point of going was, since the response I recieved most often was to check the web page.

We’ve had a guest at

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 03:51:36 +0000

We’ve had a guest at our house for the past few weeks, a blindingly bright yellow parakeet with a taste for human flesh named Chicken. Any finger coming in range of Chicken’s cage is subjected to her furious Beak of Death attack. Hell hath no fury like a little tiny parakeet. Fortunately, my bass-playing calloused fingers are immune to her attacks and she just chews on them ferocioucly but to no avail.

Surprise! Mr. Too-Lazy-To-Update-His-Blog finally gets

Sat, 02 Feb 2002 20:41:58 +0000

Surprise! Mr. Too-Lazy-To-Update-His-Blog finally gets around to posting. How lazy am I? I’m so lazy that I dropped the two classes that I didn’t need to graduate (graphics and holography) so that I could play Dark Age of Camelot full time. Let me tell you about the scourge of roleplaying, kids… I’m actually fairly disappointed with myself for not sticking with it, but I’m so relieved to not be worrying about my graphics labs anymore.

My advanced 3D graphics class

Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:59:43 +0000

My advanced 3D graphics class is looking like its going to be extremely unkind to me. Already I’m staring blankly at the first lab, the instructions for which pretty much amounted to: “Texture mapping. Go do it.” I don’t even need this class to graduate, and I’m intimidated enough to be thinking about dropping it. Unfortunately, that would make lose my full-time student status, which I believe would do several unpleasant things to me, such as causing me to lose my loans and health insurance.

I shot my first hologram

Thu, 17 Jan 2002 01:57:38 +0000

I shot my first hologram today, just a simple diffraction grating which produces lots of spectra in different patterns when viewed in the right light. The image didn’t quite come out looking like I had hoped, but honestly I was just thrilled that I got an image at all and that I didn’t break any of the equipment in the process. I was terrified of all the delicate equipment involved, but I managed to fumble through it alright.

New Pornographers Embark on U.S.

Tue, 15 Jan 2002 17:14:40 +0000

New Pornographers Embark on U.S. Tour. Stopping, naturally, in Cleveland and not Columbus. Why does Columbus always get the short end of the rock and roll stick? What’s so gol-darned great about Cleveland anyway? Its things like this that really make me wish I had a car that could endure the trek up to Cleveland to bring me to the rocking. I’m not all that jazzed about taking my 1984 Corolla, as I really really really need it to survive long enough for me to graduate and find a job so I try not to subject it to anything to strenuous.

Looks like I’m late to

Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:00:34 +0000

Looks like I’m late to the party again. How did I go so long without trying Audiogalaxy? To me, this seems like the only music sharing service I’ve seen done correctly and in a way that I’d be willing to pay for if necessary. Cross referencing by genres and similar artists, as well as displaying search results by popularity make finding new and interesting music and artists easy. I got sucked in for hours last night, looking up one artist and then following the genre and similar artist links around forever.

Another thing that happened while

Wed, 09 Jan 2002 22:53:15 +0000

Another thing that happened while I wasn’t updating this: I saw The Royal Tenenbaums. Twice. Easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. Ok, its the only movie I’ve seen this year, but it sets the bar pretty high.Also, as an indirect result of the soundtrack (which featured songs by both the Velvet Underground and Nico), I’ve realized that I could really stand to pick up a few Velvet Underground albums.

Apologies in advance for any

Wed, 09 Jan 2002 04:58:26 +0000

Apologies in advance for any spelling errors in this, my long awaited return post. Blogger no longer has spell checking, and I’m trying to type with gloves on since its so very very cold here at work. So far so good. I guess a lot has happened in the time that I haven’t been blogging. For one thing, it seems that apparently we have a new year, did you know that?

There were already plenty of

Sat, 29 Dec 2001 21:14:26 +0000

There were already plenty of good ways for me to waste my time on the internet (one quickly becomes adept at finding these things when you get paid to sit around in front of a computer with a fast net connection) but now I’ve gone and found another: watching a streaming real-time panda bear cam. Wake up sleepy pandas! Do something interesting!

I give you my strangest

Fri, 28 Dec 2001 22:39:36 +0000

I give you my strangest search request thus far: naked operation flashpoint. Yes, I do play Operation Flashpoint but never naked. Ok, hardly ever naked.

This was certainly something interesting

Thu, 27 Dec 2001 17:37:35 +0000

This was certainly something interesting to return from vacation to. Apparently Blogger was h4x0red the day after Christmas by some heartless bastard. No major damage, but since they may have been able to get all the stored FTP passwords I decided to go ahead and change mine. Since this also happens to be the password for my CIS account, I thought this would be a Good Thing. Needless to say, I don’t plan on storing my FTP password in Blogger anymore.

I’m back in Dayton until

Mon, 24 Dec 2001 03:05:58 +0000

I’m back in Dayton until Tuesday night for the holidays and what have you. Every time I go back to Dayton, I remember how glad I am I don’t live in Dayton. Reason #347: Dayton is a very nu-metal sort of town. Linkin Park, anyone? That just sort of grates on the nerves after a bit. Still, I’m glad I came home. I haven’t seen my family much this year, and I just realized that I hadn’t slept in my old room at all this year before now.

It’s stories like this one,

Sat, 22 Dec 2001 21:38:49 +0000

It’s stories like this one, about a computer tech at DeKalb Tech in GA who was fired and is facing criminal prosecution for running distributed.net on school computers, that are making me really think about joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More and more often, it seems like poorly designed, vaguely worded legislation intended to prevent actual computer crime is being wrongfully applied by prosecutors who seem to be woefully unaware of the issues and concerns involving computer security and even computers in general.

I just got back from

Thu, 20 Dec 2001 17:42:13 +0000

I just got back from clearing the last load of crap out of my ex-computer lab in Converse Hall. That’s right, I’m now a supervisor without a lab to supervise. A ronin in the feudal Japan that is the public computer sites if you will. (You probably won’t, but that’s ok. Its my lame analogy and I’m sticking with it.) The College of Business decided that they wanted to take over the site in Converse, and apparently the capitalist pig-dogs can take whatever they lay their greedy bloodstained fingers on.

I’ll freely admit it, as

Thu, 20 Dec 2001 04:10:32 +0000

I’ll freely admit it, as if it wasn’t obvious enough from my last post, I’m hardly a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan. I mean, I just finished the first book yesterday. Nevertheless, I was really excited about seeing the first movie today, and I wasn’t disappointed. Honestly, I can’t recall ever seeing a better book-to-movie translation. Almost all of the differences between the two didn’t detract from the feel of the book and were probably necessary to fit the different medium.

I’m off to a late

Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:51:20 +0000

I’m off to a late start, but I’ve finally started reading The Fellowship of the Ring today. I don’t have much time, but I just can’t go see the movie next week without having read the book first. It would be wrong.

Yesterday I found TrackMonkey, a

Wed, 12 Dec 2001 14:51:42 +0000

Yesterday I found TrackMonkey, a Winamp plugin that does just what I’d been wanting to do for a while now: send the song title of the currently playing song to a script on a server so that you could then do things with it, like add it to a web page for example. Unfortunately, after looking into it my suspicions about the OSU CIS servers were confirmed. No user CGI scripts allowed, no PHP either.

Ahhh…. Hear that faint hissing

Tue, 11 Dec 2001 15:14:57 +0000

Ahhh…. Hear that faint hissing sound? That’s the sound of my brain letting off all the extraneous knowledge I picked up this quarter as I approach my nearly-vegetative winter break state. Quick, ask me a question about the stress/strain properties of ceramics. I don’t know! Ask me something about the Motorola 68HC11 simulator. Not a clue! Yes, I’m having a great time doing nothing but rotting my brain with these crazy electronic “video games” the kids are so fond of these days.

Trisloth – The Jawbox Project.

Fri, 07 Dec 2001 02:57:00 +0000

Trisloth – The Jawbox Project. Here’s the deal: 11 Jawbox songs (well, 10 and a Tori Amos cover) arranged for the cello and recorded on 4-track. Brilliant! I’ve had these mp3’s for a while, found on Napster or Kazaa or something, but it wasn’t until now that I got around to tracking down their point of origin. I have no idea what would prompt someone to try something like this, but I’m glad they did.

My final on Monday morning

Thu, 06 Dec 2001 01:47:51 +0000

My final on Monday morning went alright, all things considered. We were allowed to bring a sheet of formulas, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s always one problem that requires a formula that you forgot to write down. So you’re stuck banging your head on the desk and trying to piece it together out of memory, which of course never works. At that point, the crazy idea occurs to you “Hey, maybe I can derive the formula starting from scratch!

Skipping class. You know, it

Mon, 03 Dec 2001 04:36:05 +0000

Skipping class. You know, it seems like a perfectly good idea until you realize that you have a final in 9 hours that covers at least 4 chapters of MSE that you’ve never even glanced at before today. Not that I’m talking about me here. I mean, I’m sure some people would do something like that, but never me. Whatever. Bring me the Mountain Dew! (That’s right, I’m doing product placement now and loving it.

I had completely forgotten about

Sat, 01 Dec 2001 19:25:04 +0000

I had completely forgotten about the Flotation Walls, until they played some of their stuff on CD101’s local music thing the other day. Now I really want to try to track down some of their stuff, since I thought they sounded promising the first time I heard them and then again on the radio. Last I heard, I didn’t think they had a full cd out, but hopefully that’s changed.

Aw yeah, two classes down,

Thu, 29 Nov 2001 22:11:49 +0000

Aw yeah, two classes down, two to go. Finished up everything today for my software engineering class and my electrical engineering lab. Feeling pretty good about both of those, at least grade-wise. There were things in both of them that I would have like to have gotten done but didn’t, but they won’t really affect my grade. Now all that’s left is a final for materials science (which isn’t even comprehensive apparently), and a take home final and final project for my graphics class.

Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:49:56 +0000

Thanksgiving in Chicago was excellent,

Tue, 27 Nov 2001 21:28:22 +0000

Thanksgiving in Chicago was excellent, well worth the massive amount of driving in a short period of time. Got to see my dear sweet grandmother in good health and good spirits, which was great since I haven’t seen her in the longest time. Also, there’s really nothing better than driving around Chicago at night. It was a pretty accelerated visit though, since we left Thursday morning and got back Friday night.

Off to Chicago for Thanksgiving.

Wed, 21 Nov 2001 22:36:48 +0000

Off to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Road trip! …sorta.

Ooh! Nice redesign for Obscurestore!

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 21:06:03 +0000

Ooh! Nice redesign for Obscurestore!

Time to get started on

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 20:51:44 +0000

Time to get started on my final graphics project, which means I have to learn a lot about BSP trees in a little time. I’m going to be doing real time shadows using BSP trees, or at least thats the plan. BSP tree FAQ Hey look, its fun to play with BSP trees. (java applet)

I’m not quite sure why

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 04:21:17 +0000

I’m not quite sure why I think Dead Man’s Switch is such a cool idea. It’s actually pretty morbid. The deal is, its a program with a timer that you have to reset periodically. If you fail to reset the timer because, oh I don’t know let’s say you’re DEAD, then the program can post messages to websites, send out email messages, and encrypt files on your computer. My only problem is that in the event of my untimely demise, I doubt my computer would remain on long enough for the trigger to activate, especially if it was set for weeks or months.

Last night was the best

Sat, 17 Nov 2001 16:34:20 +0000

Last night was the best night of live improv comedy that I’ve seen at OSU in, well, ever. Derek and the rest of the Monkeys rocked out for a full house, and hilarity ensued. Great skits, witty biting satire (even if they did take a few cheap shots, IMO), and far fewer awkward moments during the improv bits. Believe me, the last part is important if you’re a person like myself who feels painfully awkward seeing people being painfully awkward.

A brief list of arbitrary

Thu, 15 Nov 2001 17:24:29 +0000

A brief list of arbitrary and somewhat suspect judgements: Good Bad The New Pornographers regular pornographers Phong shading Gouraud shading Metal Gear Solid 2 MGS2 during the end of the quarter LAN parties cleaning up after LAN parties texture mapping implementing texture mapping DJ Shadow DJ Tanner

I have a new theory,

Thu, 15 Nov 2001 00:48:01 +0000

I have a new theory, arrived at after many bleary-eyed hours in the (relatively) new giganto computer lab in Caldwell Hall: By forcing the intelligent �ber-geeks to do their coding alongside the attractive business students working in Excel in the combined computing environment, the CIS faculty hopes to encourage a little mating action that will result in breeding a master race of hyper-intelligent, super-attractive coding geeks, who _can’t even figure out how to add a column in Excel_!

Fun with comix: Tiny Sepuku.

Wed, 14 Nov 2001 02:07:16 +0000

Fun with comix: Tiny Sepuku. Advice column meets Hello Kitty stylings? This is great, I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before now.

Back from a solid weekend

Tue, 13 Nov 2001 04:29:49 +0000

Back from a solid weekend of geekery. I spent all day Saturday coding for my graphics class, which has become a major time sink but I’m loving it. (Except when I spend the last 8 hours before a lab is due working on some mysterious bug that never gets fixed) Sunday was my very first LAN party, which involved transforming my place into a super geek lair. Between my roommates and I we had our own 4 computers, and then 6 other people brought theirs over and set them up in the living room.

I am not a blogaholic.

Fri, 09 Nov 2001 02:23:46 +0000

I am not a blogaholic. 36⁄100. I just use blog casually, recreationally if you will. I’ll only have a blog or two with some friends or a party. Sure, every now and then I overdo it and I wake up in an azalea bush wearing only a women’s bathrobe and mumbing incoherently, but I don’t have a problem.

The question presents itself: Is

Fri, 09 Nov 2001 02:13:33 +0000

The question presents itself: Is it worth it to pay Huge Rock Concert ticket prices to see a band who’s most recent output is subpar at best, even though their previous work was excellent and they’ve produced an album that you consider an enduring classic? Is it worth it if they are accompanied by the self proclaimed Greatest Band in the World, featuring the legendary Jack Black who will likely rock you into an unrecognizable pulpy mess?

Well, that was certainly a

Wed, 07 Nov 2001 04:53:51 +0000

Well, that was certainly a surprise. My devious little sister set me up with an actual, genuine, surprise party, the little dickens. No clue. None. I had just come back from gorging on wings at Quaker Steak with Matt and Ben, when… BAM! Nothing I could do but just stand there wearing a dumbfounded look and wing sauce. It was a great time and a brilliant plan on my sister’s part, but when I think about it, can I ever really trust any of my friends again?

happy birthday to me.

Tue, 06 Nov 2001 13:54:16 +0000

happy birthday to me.

Monsters, Inc – big thumbs

Sun, 04 Nov 2001 23:29:58 +0000

Monsters, Inc – big thumbs up. Star Wars Episode 2 trailer – thumbs down. All I know now is that it looks pretty (no surprise there) and at least 30 seconds of the actual movie doesn’t contain Jar Jar Binks.

Today’s bit of geek fun:

Sat, 03 Nov 2001 17:27:43 +0000

Today’s bit of geek fun: AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) The language is an XML language, and it makes for a way better chatbot than my previous Eliza bot did. The standard AIML bot that I downloaded comes with something like 47000 categories of things that it knows, and AIML makes it really easy to add more and personalize it. Plus, the server (written in Java) that runs the bot came with support for the AOL Instant Messenger protocol.

Unforgettably ridiculous imagery of the

Fri, 02 Nov 2001 03:18:26 +0000

Unforgettably ridiculous imagery of the day: Puff Daddy/P. Diddy swaggering about on stage waving an American flag during the United We Stand special on ABC. Take that Taliban!

I wonder what happened to

Thu, 01 Nov 2001 22:03:45 +0000

I wonder what happened to recordcollection.net. Its been down for a while now, but I just realized I can still get to my collection and wishlist through skivsamling.nu, the Swedish version of the site. Good thing too, considering all the time I wasted spent entering all those titles. I’m up to 217 now but apparently I still have a long way to go. Looks like I need to make a few more trips to Used Kids and Magnolia’s.

Something to play with: AmpTicker

Thu, 01 Nov 2001 01:53:55 +0000

Something to play with: AmpTicker Produces a .gif output of your currently playing winamp song info. Might be fun to figure out how to add it to a blog.

Few things really annoy me

Wed, 31 Oct 2001 07:29:44 +0000

Few things really annoy me more than not quite getting a programming assignment entirely correct. Example A: This is what the correct image generated by my lab should look like. This is what my program is currently producing. Its really probably some minor detail buried somewhere in there and I probably won’t even lose that many points over it, but it just bugs me to no end (geeky pun about bugs not intended, but left in for good measure).

Hooray for Sam Brown! The

Tue, 30 Oct 2001 20:13:05 +0000

Hooray for Sam Brown! The first book from explodingdog.com is finally available! I’m pretty sure I’ll end up getting it eventually, considering how much I’ve enjoyed explodingdog’s stick figure randomness. In celebration, a brief list of my recent favorites: i thought i could this is the only thing i have left it made sense to us at the time its a good thing i don’t exist … almost as though until i feel that i can do justice to what i’m sharing, i’d rather simply smile and share the fact that i had a great time and enjoyed the presence of people i love.

In which I air my

Mon, 29 Oct 2001 06:10:56 +0000

In which I air my dirty mental laundry. (found via Mike from Frantic.) Disorder Rating Paranoid: Low Schizoid: Low Schizotypal: Moderate Antisocial: Low Borderline: Low Histrionic: Moderate Narcissistic: Low Avoidant: Very High Dependent: High Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate — Click Here To Take The Test — How I manage to be both avoidant and dependent is beyond me.

And now the most personal

Mon, 29 Oct 2001 06:05:12 +0000

And now the most personal thing I’ve posted yet: My heart still beats faster whenever I see her name on the caller ID. This is no good.

New Dismemberment Plan and Fugazi

Sun, 28 Oct 2001 18:28:12 +0000

New Dismemberment Plan and Fugazi albums currently in effect here. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the D-Plan album, as their last output on Emergency & I is easily one of my favorite albums. Even though I knew going in that it was a much more sedate, spazz-less affair I thought it wouldn’t phase me. I certainly dug all the live material I’d heard from it. As of right now, I’m just not really feeling it and its not even because of the change of musical focus.

Just to clarify, I was

Fri, 26 Oct 2001 22:53:22 +0000

Just to clarify, I was in heaven. Low covered “Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me” by the Smiths. I really couldn’t ask for more, but the rest of the show was just as good. As far as I was concerned, it could have gone on forever. I still can’t place my finger on why such simple slow sad songs can make for such a riveting live performance, but they sure did.

Potentially useful someday: Sweetcode. (mostly

Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:48:54 +0000

Potentially useful someday: Sweetcode. (mostly *nix-y stuff)

Skipped MSE 205 today… again.

Thu, 25 Oct 2001 00:15:32 +0000

Skipped MSE 205 today… again. I really hope I’m not getting myself into trouble here, but its really hard to get motivated to go to a 200 level course as a fifth year senior. Especially when skipping it leaves you with nothing to do until 2:30 in the afternoon. There, I feel sufficiently self justified. In addition to skipping class, I’m not getting anything done at work due to this. Who knew a 404 error page could be so addictive?

Yesterday I finally picked up

Tue, 23 Oct 2001 20:00:35 +0000

Yesterday I finally picked up Low tickets for the show at the Wexner Center this Thursday. Bring on the rock! (very very slowly). Meanwhile, tonight I’m having dinner courtesy of Harris, one of the companies I interviewed with earlier. I’m not exactly sure what to expect from that, but I sure couldn’t pass up a free meal. I can only assume that they’re somewhat interested in me if they’re taking me out to dinner, but I hope they don’t expect me to put out.

I got my first odd/disturbing

Sat, 20 Oct 2001 17:51:27 +0000

I got my first odd/disturbing search request hit yesterday. Apparently I’m the fourth most popular site for ram+skull+forward. I can’t really say why they thought my site had what they were looking for, since the excerpt on Google showed that the ram I was talking about was RAM. Oh well. Hooray for internet weirdery! Posted it to Disturbing Search Requests.

I just fell in love

Fri, 19 Oct 2001 02:28:29 +0000

I just fell in love with the CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). Seriously. If it were a girl, I would marry it. I may anyway. Its got Perl modules to handle just about any job imaginable. For example, I took the Net::AIM module, and the Chatbot::Eliza module, stuck them together with a few lines of code and came up with BlastrBot2. I’ll leave him on AIM from time to time, so drop him a line if you see him on.

Success! It actually ended

Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:17:19 +0000

Success! It actually ended up being much easier than I thought it would be to produce the sombrero function from yesterday. What do you mean it doesn’t look like a sombrero? It kind of does, at least around the middle, maybe. A little. Don’t blame me, I didn’t do the math I just modeled it. If I have time I think I might go back and see what other height field images I can produce.

Hmm… didn’t seem to work

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:47:01 +0000

Hmm… didn’t seem to work quite like I expected. Never send a bot to do a man’s work I suppose.

Ok, if this works I’ll

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:39:04 +0000

Ok, if this works I’ll be beside myself with geekish glee. I’m trying to post via http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot“>BlogBot, using AIM. Yes, I know I’m a dork. Yes, it certainly seems insecure. But I still had to try it because, well, you know… geek and stuff.

The Standard Procedural Database is

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 20:51:29 +0000

The Standard Procedural Database is certainly fun, though I’d probably appreciate it more if I weren’t in a little over my head trying to figure out how to modify the sombrero function (which does what you think: it produces an output model that resembles a sombrero) to produce output that works with my CIS 781 lab. By midnight. It should probably be easy if everything works like I think it does, but that’s never the case.

Aaaaaargh! Should anyone like to

Mon, 15 Oct 2001 03:39:17 +0000

Aaaaaargh! Should anyone like to offer any suggestions as to what I’m doing wrong in my polygon clipping and backface elimination algorithms within the next 2 hours and 24 minutes it would be greatly appreciated.

I really need to learn

Sun, 14 Oct 2001 05:35:00 +0000

I really need to learn that when anyone says: “Come on over, we’re going to the movies but we don’t know which one yet” that I need to not go. It was my failure to realize this that resulted in my unfortunate viewing of Seredipity tonight, and Joy Ride last weekend. To be entirely fair, Joy Ride wasn’t really as bad as I was expecting thanks to the contributions of one Steve Zahn though I have yet to see him in a role as good as in Safe Men.

Disturbing Search Requests is an

Fri, 12 Oct 2001 23:27:43 +0000

Disturbing Search Requests is an interesting site if a little, well, disturbing. The basic idea is that whenever a blogger gets a hit on their page from a search query that has nothing at all to do with their page they can post it here for a laugh. The search requests tend fall into the categories of mystifying, horrifying, and bemusing. More often than not the hit is the result of the searched words appearing randomly in the pages and pages of weblog text, entirely out of the context that the searcher intended.

Sweet merciful crap!! The new

Fri, 12 Oct 2001 06:43:30 +0000

Sweet merciful crap!! The new Dismemberment Plan album is already available to order from Desoto Records! Must order now!

Excellent OpenGL tutorials abound @

Thu, 11 Oct 2001 22:56:50 +0000

Excellent OpenGL tutorials abound @ NeHe’s site. If I had more free time, I could spend hours there playing with the sample code. Unfortunately, most of my free time these days goes straight into Operation Flashpoint, the primary reason for yesterday’s impulse purchase of a new graphics card. So much for self-improvement. Meanwhile, I’ve got a graphics lab due and an MSE midterm on Monday. School is starting to feel like school again, and I remember why I wanted to get finished so badly before.

I’m stuck at work so

Thu, 11 Oct 2001 00:31:33 +0000

I’m stuck at work so I figured I might as well post since I haven’t done that in quite a while. Got a new graphics card last night, and getting it to work proved to be a 3 hour ordeal that ended with me updating my BIOS. Not fun. In addition, I managed to destroy my old graphics card in the removal process. Good thing the new one finally worked. Right now I’m currently in the middle of the interviewing process with Harris and Evans and Sutherland.

godspeed you black emperor! wow.

Tue, 02 Oct 2001 20:29:40 +0000

godspeed you black emperor! wow. I was going to post right after the show last night but I was just too tired. There ended up being an opening band, and godspeed played for over 2 hours so I didn’t get back till 1 am. Damn artsy types, staying up all hours. I’m old and cranky and I couldn’t skip my 8:30 class. The show itself was really amazing, especially the film aspects of their show.

Saw Zoolander tonight, and it

Sun, 30 Sep 2001 07:18:36 +0000

Saw Zoolander tonight, and it was definitely funny but not that often laugh-out-loud-funny which was a little disappointing. Of course, I’d already seen half of the punchlines over and over in previews so that probably had something to do with it. Between this movie and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I’m slowly starting to forgive Will Ferrell for his previous crimes against humanity. A little. (Insert clever segue here) I’ve finally made the decision to drop my mechanical engineering class and take another quarter of school.

I haven’t tried this yet,

Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:17:33 +0000

[]1I haven’t tried this yet, because it won’t work here at work, but Deskswap looks pretty cool. Aside from the horrible security liability of letting everyone in the world see what you left open on your desktop when you went out for some Kung Pao chicken that is. Meanwhile, I’m currently up in the air as to whether or not I should forge ahead and graduate this quarter, or back off a little bit to give myself more time for the job search and graduate winter quarter.

Fucinet is currently rocking my

Sun, 23 Sep 2001 05:09:43 +0000

Fucinet is currently rocking my geek world with episode downloads of Space Ghost and the Brak Show. Oh man, I’m in love. “And if you think you’re going to get any sympathy from the shark, well then you won’t.” The template picker finally started working again, so I’ve got this new look but I’m still not quite happy. I really want a more personalized template, but I’m just too lazy to work on it.

Where did I go? Well

Wed, 19 Sep 2001 02:35:44 +0000

Where did I go? Well that seems like a rather odd question, considering that if you’re reading this odds are that you’re me, because I can’t really see anyone else reading this. If you’re asking and you’re not me, well then piss off, its none of your business now is it? No no, I kid. The truth is that I haven’t posted for 4 days because I’m starting to question the need for this, as it turns out that my life really isn’t too interesting.

I’m still watching way more

Fri, 14 Sep 2001 22:52:09 +0000

I’m still watching way more television than I ever normally would, even though there are rarely any new events I still turn on the news any chance I get. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to watch and wait for every new development, but I remain glued to the news. What worries me is that so many people seem to be crying out for war and military action. While I totally understand it, and I myself think it would be satisfying if we had one visible foe that we could engage and defeat, that just doesn’t seem to be the case here.

As it turns out, I’m

Thu, 13 Sep 2001 05:05:57 +0000

As it turns out, I’m still here. All flights are still grounded, so there’s just no way I’m getting to Alaska. By the time flights resume, it would leave us with just about no time to spend in Alaska so we’ve decided to cancel the trip. Its just as well really, since this doesn’t seem like much of a time to take a vacation. Even in Alaska I’m sure we’d still be hearing constant reminders and incessant news reports.

Unbelievable. I’ve been watching tv

Tue, 11 Sep 2001 19:55:52 +0000

Unbelievable. I’ve been watching tv for the last 4.5 hours, and I just had to step away for a while. It just seems so impossible, but both World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon have been hit with hijacked airplanes. Even more unbelievably, both towers have collapsed. Watching the images replay over and over on the screen, I was struck with the magnitude of this, and the realization that I was witnessing pictures happening now that would surely be in the history books of the next generation.

“I’m going up to Alaska,

Tue, 11 Sep 2001 06:17:34 +0000

“I’m going up to Alaska, I’m gonna get off scot-fucking-free…” As of 4:05 pm today, I will be up out of here heading to Alaska. I’m all packed right now except for the most essential items: my cds, camera, and journal. I don’t know exactly what to expect from this trip, but I’m pretty excited right now. Internet cafes are supposed to be fairly big in Alaska (or so I’ve heard) so maybe I’ll post from there.

Just back from the Built

Mon, 10 Sep 2001 06:58:50 +0000

Just back from the Built to Spill show at the Newport. So good, so very very good. They played with a band called the Delusions, which has some of the people that helped out on the latest BtS album. The opening was somewhat confusing, as the very first act was just a guy who later played in both the Delusions and BtS’s sets. I never caught his name, or found out why he was playing first.

When I left Chemical Abstracts

Sat, 08 Sep 2001 02:55:12 +0000

When I left Chemical Abstracts today, they gave me one of those motivational desk plaques. I want to know who comes up with these things, and how they can do it with a straight face. I can only hope they have to at least fight back a snicker. Now this is more my style. Urgent request to self: Please, please try to find a more interesting job before you graduate. Follow up note to self: Does a more interesting job even exist?

Today I tried to buy

Thu, 06 Sep 2001 03:05:27 +0000

Today I tried to buy the new skull t-shirt from Diesel Sweeties, but I was denied because the computer parts I bought for my sister on Monday pushed me right up to the edge of my credit limit. Irritating! Oh well. It will be mine soon, yes very soon.

That’s right, I’m still here.

Wed, 05 Sep 2001 01:15:14 +0000

That’s right, I’m still here. Today at work, I spent most of the day plowing through the archives of McSweeneys. So much wryness, so little time. Very smirky & self deprecating, but that’s just my kind of thing. Hi-larious. Speaking of work, I only have 3 days left at Chemical Abstracts Service. After that, its off for a week in Alaska with my father where we will most certainly be devoured by giant bears or dashed against sharp rocks after falling from a great height.

Well, if nothing else its

Mon, 03 Sep 2001 07:30:49 +0000

Well, if nothing else its been interesting to finally play around with Blogger. Who knows if it’ll manage to keep my interest or not though. I certainly don’t know what I’m doing here. It seems like everyone who could ever possible have a blog already does, and while I hate to come late to the party, I figured I might as well give it a shot. I’m not really planning on compelling content or innovative design (I’ll be surprised if I ever get around to modifying the template), but I really like the idea of having a place just to record day to day occurrances.