I was looking at a life uncommon and noticed a link for 'The Pod'. Well, my curiousity got the better of me and I followed the link. I WANT THIS. I've been thinking about getting a little tripod for my camera, but this looks so much more handy!
March 2002 Archives
Tomorrow is the first of the month. Remember to say 'Rabbit Rabbit' first thing when you wake up.
(Thanks to the wonderful show Fruits Basket for reminding me of it. (The episode I just watched had a bunny rabbit in it)).
Well, I had to reinstall OS X today. I'm a little cranky about it, but it is something that is fixable at least. There is a hardware problem with my dvd drive that makes it so that sometimes CDs put into it won't mount. Instead just a loud humming/buzzing noise comes from the drive. I called AppleCare and they said I should be able to go into an Apple Store and just have it replaced there. This was quite good news.
The bad news was that my system had wedged with a drive in it and I had to powercycle. In doing that something on disk was corrupted. So, I had to first repair the disk, then copy off the files I wanted to keep (thank god for firewire) and then reinstall. As far as I can tell, I haven't lost any data, which is pretty damn cool.
Also, I am so sold on firewire right now. It is so easy to boot from a firewire device (disk or cd-rom drive) at boot time. Windows doesn't really have anything close to this. If I had been on a windows system I would have been screwed. Maybe not completely, but the amount of effort it took for me to fix things was much less then it would have been under a PC.
A big thanks goes out to the cool guy at AppleCare who sat on the phone with me for over an hour.
Sometime my TiVo records the scariest things for me. I woke up to find it recording Message from Space. I've been watching as I get ready to get some coffee and I have no given it three thumbs down, so that the TiVo never ever records it again.
On the plus side, it recorded Queen Emeraldas right before that. Even if it is dubbed it's getting something right. :)
Euripides. "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."
Well this bites. I woke up again in the middle of the night. Seems to be becoming a habit again. On a plus note. The weather yesterday was beautiful.
I remember when Yahoo! first came online. It was a cool place to look online for stuff. Having a directory by subject made it a little easier to find stuff then searching around randomly. In a kind of slimey move they reset everyone's marketing settings to Yes. I read about it over on CNET and various blogs. I quickly went to their site and checked out my account (I have one for yahoogroups). Sure enough, everything set to yes. Bah.
Unknown. "Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege."
Why can't developers take into account users who choose to protect their networks with firewalls or NAT? At the corporate level it's difficult to get large blocks of IPs. You're almost expected to use NAT by many ISPs. Unless you go through a long annoying process of requesting more and showing why those boxes need individual IP numbers.
Albert Einstein. "The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
Kuro5hin has an article about KaZaA being found legal by a Dutch court. Well, it's at least legal someplace. It should be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Here's a neat little OS X service that lets you search Google for terms you hilite in various applications.
From the web page: A simple background service to allow you to select text in (nearly) any application and press "Shift-Apple-G" to launch a Google search for that text. This release is context aware. When you select text from Project Builder, a browser opens up searching developer.apple.com instead of Google. You can define your own contexts (application-grain) and choose what URLs they apply to.
Pretty keen!
I'm playing around a bit with my site some and adding in some categories. The idea I have is that most posts will have a category, so they will go both in my 'global' blog page. The global blog page is my home page. But say I have a post to do with Radio, it will also be put into the radio home page. This enables me to quickly hunt down information that is tied to different topics.
Just thought I'd put out a few rambling thoughts about Radio.
The instant outliner stuff that is in beta for Radio is cool. I've started using it myself, but just am not sure how to make it fit in with work. I think it is doable, it is just figuring out the best way.
I'm also running into some stumbling blocks while thinking about work blogging. With Radio, you are really tied down to one machine. There are good and bad points for this. The good is that it gives you a lot more options for things you can do on your machine. The bad is that you can only do things from your machine. I have a job where I am always here and there. Sometimes I'll be offsite at our data center, sometimes in front of my desk, sometimes hiding off in a little room away from everyone to get things done.
One thing I'd really want is something that is a remote version of radio. Yes, I can currently attach to the copy of radio on my laptop from my PC via a web browser. But from that there is a lot of stuff I can't do. Moving Radio to my work desktop doesn't help either, because I use my laptop for more day to day work.
Are there other people in similar situations? How are they dealing with it? I'm toying with the idea just putting VNC on my TiBook and doing things via that. My other solution is that I will be running a separate copy of Radio for work, since I don't really like mixing work and personal stuff, even when they overlap.
Professional Forum Spammers. "They go out and find forums that are ontopic to a customers needs and they carefully spam the forum to acquire link backs, name dropping, and often direct url dropping to bring back customers. The problem? They are getting so good at it." [via WebmasterWorld] [via jenett.radio]
Yet another reason you shouldn't trust everything you read online. But how dangerous is it? One would hope that even if someone was forum spamming for a crappy product there would be enough people out there who would be able to counter their promotion with real information.
To collect the full share of good luck which is your birthright (but which to date has been withheld from you), you must cast aside your given name and adopt one of these three new super-monikers:
1. Freejoycrispfecundleapingflashdazzler.
2. Surgingsoaringfoxygeniuswhirlingrisktaker.
3. Buoyantimprovisingfearlesswideawakefunwrestler.
APRIL FOOL! It's true that you have not yet cashed in on a sizable share of the miraculous fortune allotted to you at birth, but nothing so superficial as changing your name will give you the power to pull it off. On the other hand, embodying the spirit of any of the three super-monikers above could do the trick.
<-- Courtesy of Free Will Astrology -->
I just noticed someone hit my site from google searching for "interstatial lung disease". No big suprise there because my old lung page discusses it. (Yes, I'm still waiting for a new one). I had started a blog on that page a while back thinking I'd keep track of how my health was going, but there really wasn't a lot to report other then: "Things still the same. Still waiting."
On a whim I went to google and typed in "interstatial lung disease. To my suprise I found that I was the top link. Well heck. Maybe I should start gathering more information and links on this condition. Reporting more things I find on it. This fits into the notion that has been floating around of blogs which are authoratative on certain subjects.
Note, I'm not the top link for Interstitial Lung Disease, the correct spelling. An interesting thing about the web, it promotes poor spelling. I believe when I searched online for what I have I only found it spelled as 'Interstatial'. I guess I didn't look deeply enough. (Though now maybe my work is cut out for me.)
Sir Winston Churchill. "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Blogs are affecting the ways people write. Or at least how they get their information. Dan Gillmor tells a cool story about blogging a session at a conference. He was corrected in almost realtime by one of the presenters.
Dave Winer has been writing about journalism and blogging a bit over on his site lately. I'm going to have to go back and find those old posts and read more on them.
I just caught the first episode of Scryed. As far as first episodes of anime shows go this one was pretty good. Giving you just enough to get you interested in the show. I think I'm going to have to download more episodes of this.
Ever wonder where all that lost luggage goes? Here's your answer. Yes, you read right, Alabama.
Thanks to Lukas for the link.
One thing that bites about living in a nice old building is that the plumbing tends to suck ass. During the winter, when the heat is on, the water temp in the shower fluctuates. It'll be just right for a minute then scalding hot the next, and it will just cycle back and forth. Once the building heat goes off for the summer, it's just fine.
The other thing that's come up lately is the faucet for hot water in my kitchen sink has started to leak. So now I need to call my landlord and get them out to fix it. Thank god I just did all my dishes last night.
Seen on CNN.com, Dudley Moore died of pneumonia today at the age of 66.
Update. Milton Bearle was also reported as dead today.
How should I handle my working environments. One thing I like to be able to do is keep personal work and work work separate. The primary way I do this is with my laptop. It comes everywhere with me. When I go into work I set it up on my side table and keep it on all day long. I peek at it every hour or two to see if I have new mail, but I don't do much more then that.
But now I'm starting to run into areas where the tools I use day to day and then tools I use on a personal level are starting to bump into each other. I want to start using Radio at work. I am more then willing to pick up copies of it for my co-workers to use, since the company I work for is watching every penny. But now I'm going to have two installations of Radio, and I feel like it is starting to get a little confusing.
One thing that would help is if there was a way to access more of Radio remotely. I'd love a way to update my Instant Outline from afar. That would solve a large part of my problems at the moment.
The O'Reilly Network has been running a nice series on how to use the Terminal application. For most of us unix folks out there a lot of this is old news, but there are some interesting. The latest one concerns term files, files that basicly start up terminal and run an application in them. I haven't realized you could do this. Looks pretty cool.
Due to being ill yesterday I didn't do much blogging, so maybe I will make up for it all today. One thing that I just read about this morning was an article on Microcontent News about Google pulling anti-scientology ads. The reason they gave was "Anti-scientology ads are disapproved per our policy of no ads that advertise "sites that advocate against any individual, group, or organization." All of your ads link to the same set of sites which are anti-scientologist in purpose."
So what's the solution here. Is it possible to make an anti-scientology site that isn't outwardly anti-scientology? Is it possible to play by their rules and still be heard?
It's off to work I go. I still feel pretty crappy, but I want to at least go into work for part of a day. We've got a deadline on Friday and while things are all going smoothly I want to make sure there aren't any snags.
This is something I hate about being sick these days. It's so hard to tell how much of it is honest to goodness illness and how much is just me being exhausted. This lung thing really does take a lot out of me. More then I admit to myself many times.
Alan Perlis. "The computing field is always in need of new cliches."
Well, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I now have an instant outline also. I'm such a lemming. But I like it.
As I get deeper into using Radio I really need to learn more about it. I need to look and see if there is a kind of Radio newbies page out there.
<%radio.outliner.macros.coffeeMug ()%>
Slept half of the day away today. I feel a little bit better. Tonight I plan on watching the rest of the Sherlock Hound DVD and getting to sleep early. This is the first time I've gotten really sick since I've been on Imuran. I've had little one day bug kinda things, but nothing where I felt this icky for a few days.
I feel like ass. I was feeling a bit better yesterday and went into work. That was probably a mistake because by the end of the day I felt horrible, and I feel worth this morning then I did yesterday morning. Today will be spent curled up on the couch in a nyquil haze. (In other words, any posts today may be incoherent).
Hermann Hesse. "When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."
I'm just big on the links today...
Pioneer Press has a favorable review of Radio 8.
There's a short article in the Boston Globe today about Evan and Blogger.com. Nothing real new here, just another sign of blogging making it into the mainstream. I've had two people I know tell me they'd started blogs recently because they'd read about it in print somewhere. So it is something people are coming more aware of.
Can you spot the hidden bird? [via CamWorld]
I noticed that Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web is due out this week. As with most things these days, there is also a web site for the book, complete with a few chapters. It looks pretty cool and I think I'm going to preorder a copy of it. Also, reading down the web site for the book I noticed it mentions zannah, pretty keen!
Oh, and spring, where the heck are you? I woke up to find a layer of snow on my car. wtf?
While I don't order from them offen, I do order from them now and then. The New York Times reports that Online Surpasses Catalog at J. Crew. For the first time, J. Crew's Web sales eclipsed its catalog sales in February.
It sounds like they actually have a system set up for online sales that is actually making them money. In a lot of ways, it makes sense that catalog companies like J. Crew (and probably Lands End?) are ones that are having a good deal of success with online. The methods for shopping online and via a catalog are very similar. Though I doubt the catalog will ever go away. I'm sure a lot of their sales come from people who have a catalog show up in the mail. I'd bet many people flip through the catalog, see things they like, then either shop online or go to the store.
Ken Olson. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
I keep waking up early on the weekends. Have I become a morning person?
I'm still fighting some kind of cold thing. I can't tell if I'm getting better or not, but I don't think I'm worse, which is good. The plan for the day is to get some breakfast first thing, come home, nap, then head to Satellite Records right when they open to do a little record shopping. I haven't been there in ages and have been getting back into the mode of spinning regularly since I have a gig coming up in a few weeks (and all of you in the Boston area are expected to show up dammit!).
Oscar Wilde. "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."
I boycott Starbucks fairly seriously. I don't like the way they do business. I think they have stomped the classic coffee house in being an endangered species. Well, now I have another reason. The Shifted Librarian reports on Starbucks joining the ranks of cluelessness by demanding Backwash to remove all links to them. Well, I can't say they are losing me as a customer, because they never really had me.
Adam is delving into the world of email again and mentions that Pine rules. I have to agree, but I'm not quite as quick to shrug off graphical email programs. I think one issue is that many mail systems are not set up for how people would like to use mail. In my case, I solved this problem by kind of rolling my own solution.
My email comes into my ISP and is downloadable via POP. This is their primary way of making email available to their customers. For most people, this would probably be fine, since they read their email on their home computer. For me, this was an issue. I have a laptop, I sometimes am home at my parents and dialing up there is a pain. Looking around I found the perfect solution for myself.
I have two Macs. I've got my TiBook, which goes just about everywhere with me. And a B&W G3, which sits at home and does all kinds of serverish things. OS X is installed on each of them. While looking around for solutions to my email problem, I looked over on Stepwise and found an article on Email Servers and Mac OS X. This was the perfect starting point. My system now loads email from my ISP using fetchmail, runs it through spamassassin, filters it via procmail, and then I can read it either with something like Pine from a terminal window, or I can use Entourage and read it via IMAP from wherever I am.
This solution kicks ass for me because it means that no matter where I am I can access my email, even if it means using ssh to get into my G3 remotely. Procmail and Spamassassin have done a wonderful job in filtering my email and reducing the amount of spam that gets into my inbox.
Last night I had put some laundry in the dryer and then forgotten about it till this morning. When I ran out to get it I noticed that someone had taken it out of the dryer. But what was so cool was that they'd folded it for me! I have no idea who did it, but thank you! That was so nice! I've lived other places where the people just would take your laundry out and leave it in a pile on the dryers, usually before it was fully dry.
Bertrand Russell. "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
I've got to recommend V.O.E. Anime Online (aka Vengeance of Excalibur). Lyn recommended it to me when I was looking for a good online store. I ordered from them last week and just got the CDs in today. Their service was pretty great (and they sent a really cool confirmation note).
Picked up more used CDs today. Someone needs to stop me. Today's purchases:
- INSOC - INSOC
- Meat Beat Manifesto - Storm the Studio
- Siouxsie & the Banshees - Tinderbox
One thing that always puts me in a good mood is getting my hair cut. My friend Renee does such a good job. I hope to have pictures up within the next day or so. I just need to find someone to take them.
One thing I love about my job is that I get every other Friday off. I work slightly longer days, but it is worth it. I can always get all the stuff done that I can't seem to get done other times. Today I get to have my hair done by my friend Renee, and we get to have lunch too. I seem to only get to see her when I get my hair done these days.
Tonight I'm debating going out clubbing to see John Acquaviva. I haven't seen him spin in ages. As of right now I'm planning on going, but a lot of it depends on finding things like parking.
Fred Allen. "What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?"
- What is your favorite time of year? Spring, definitely spring, followed very closely by autumn.
- What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? It's just how everything is coming alive again after being so bleak all winter. I get serious spring fever every year.
- What is your least favorite season? Hmm, something between summer and winter. I hate the extremes. Too hot or too cold just doesn't agree with me.
- Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? Indeed! I go out into the woods by myself and celebrate by racing with wild elk. (Okay, I don't do that, but I thought it sounded more cool then saying 'Nope. I don't do anything.)
- What's your favorite thing to do outside? I love going for walks in the spring and fall. They are the best times to just watch the world around you. Everything is in such a state of flux.
I haven't done a lot of record shopping lately. I've just been too busy. So today I stopped by my favorite online record store: Planet X. I promptly ordered about $100 worth of records before stopping myself from really going into a buying frenzy. Mmmmm... new vinyl.
We currently are up against a big deadline at work. Every day our graphics guy has been putting up a picture with a countdown for how many days left till the deadline. The pictures are usually from various pictures from TV shows or of celebrities with various employee's faces photoshopped in. I'd gone for about 20 days without being put into one of the pictures. Yesterday all that changed:
(I guess I deserved it, since I suggested he find a picture for CHiPs.)
Dawn writes that Amazon now has Amelie up for pre-order. The release date is July 16th. Yay! I'm quite psyched for this and have aleady preordered.
Dear Scorpio, I found a prayer floating around the Web that should be particularly helpful for you in the coming days. It has been slightly altered from its original version as a 12-Step affirmation. Here goes. "O God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to pull off hilarious pranks on everyone who pisses me off. Help me to be careful of the toes I step on today, as they may be connected to an ass that I have to kiss tomorrow."
<-- Courtesy of Free Will Astrology -->
The New York Times talks about "Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses. In most states, driver's licenses now feature bar codes containing remarkable amounts of personal information. While this may help prevent identity fraud, it can also land a driver's name on databases in unexpected places."
Things like this make me really nervous. I agree that it's nice to be able to do things like checking age for clubs. But I don't think that just because I walk into a club that they should be able to send me junk mail. Maybe I don't want them to have my address. Is there any way to prevent them from getting this information? With this system, someone could go to a lot of work to keep information like that private, and then give it out without ever realizing it. On the other hand, it was nice to read that some states are already limiting what information can be stored. I guess I'll have to look into what MA law says. I'm almost tempted to go to The Rack to see what would happen if I asked them to not save my personal information.
Tom Stoppard. "The days of the digital watch are numbered."
Apple just released a 10GB iPod and of course a part of me wants to upgrade. I wonder what the going price for a used 5GB iPod is. Apple also released a software update. I'm going to have to look into that now too.
I really really really want to find a copy of A Comedy of Errors staring The Fly Karamozov Brothers. It was aired on Live from Lincoln Center years and years ago. I used to have a copy of it on tape, but I lost it in my various moves. So now I'm feeling inspired and want to find a copy of it again. If anyone can help me track down a copy of this I'd worship them forever.
A friend of mine pointed me at the Godawful Fan Fiction site. The page for The Matrix had me shrieking. The FAQ is great too.
Cool news on the Radio front. Dave Winer announced this morning that you can now get a news feed from the New York Times within the Radio News Aggregator. This is pretty cool. And it gives me a way to actually keep up on the news of the day.
The News Aggregator is a really cool feature of Radio. You can subscribe to RSS feeds of various blogs and news sources. From the News Aggregator page in radio you get either the news story or a headline that is a link to a bigger news story. It's as much a tool for posting about news articles as it is a way to get news right to your desktop.
Now what I want is a page that is a little more pretty then the current page, something that almost is like reading through a newspaper or something. Yet another thing to add to my life of things I'd like to do with Radio.
On Sunday I mentioned a poll on Kuro5hin about comments on ads. I just thought I'd bring it up again, because according to a comment on that entry, they now have comments on their text ads. I haven't added any comments over there yet, but I have been checking out what ad shows up now and then.
My doctor hasn't called in my new perscription yet and I'm a bit annoyed. I have two kind of outstanding perscriptions and I'm getting little to no help on either of them. Oh well, I'll just have to call around and whine a bit more today
Janet Long. "Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy."
Is this really for real? I'm not sure who is worse, the people who came up with it or people who might try and use it.
Strictly Ballroom just came in the mail. I'm so psyched that this finally came out on DVD. This is one of my all time favorite movies.
Sushi for lunch.
Yum.
The stuff about RCS has been making me think about the whole concept of Instant Messaging. While I'm not totally up on what's going on in the IM world, there do seem to be some issues with it (IMHO). Currenly, the most popular services all revolve around everyone connecting into a central system (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ). So if one of those companies happens to go poof, or decide not to do it anymore, everyone using it is screwed. So far everyone's giving away their client and access for free, so I'm not quite sure how they are making money to keep themselves running. One of these days one of them will disappear and leave a bunch of people adrift.
A few years back a friend of mine had a company called Activerse, who had a cool IM product called Ding! With Ding! companies and ISPs would have their own local Ding! switchboard, that could host users. So instead of just having a screen name you had an IM address, like having an email address (it was actually in a url format). This way you could have a number of switchboards out there, and if one happened to go down it would only effect the people who connected to that one. Of the different IM systems I've seen out there currently, Jabber is the only one that seems to work this way. (Note to self, look into Jabber more).
There's been talk about a standard for Instant Messaging, but part of me kind of doubts it will ever really happen. Everyone seems to want to make a profit off of it, which means finding a common ground is that much harder.
Yesterday, UserLand announced Radio Community Servers (RCS). The idea behind it is that you can host your own Radio "cloud". If I understand this all correctly, the cloud does things like keep track of recent posts, manage comments, etc. It basicly lets you be your own entity (Dave Winer has a good post about the strategy of RCS).
So now I'm considering using this for work more to replace my work blog. I need to think it through, but I would be more then willing to buy copies of this for work on my own dime to get people using it.
One thing I like about RCS is that it lets the Radio community be distributed. You don't rely on one central place for everything. It's like email. Companies and ISPs run their own email servers. So RCS lets you do that with your Radio weblog. It's all pretty cool IMHO.
Well, we're still getting some weird mix of rain and snow right now. Up at work there's a tiny bit of accumulation, but down at home there's nothing. It is amazing the difference 7 miles makes.
In other news I'm doing lunch with my old boss/high school roommate today. He's the one responsible for my being out here on the east coast. Back when I was considering moving back out here he just happened to call and ask me if I wanted a job.
Robert Graves. "The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good."
So just how do I file the CD 'The Beat - Special Beat Service'. Does it go under B for The Beat, or E for The English Beat.
I've got a second picture up at The Mirror Project. I have a few others I need to go through and submit sometime.
There's nothing quite like getting a good nights sleep before starting a new week. I feel much more focused already this week. I just need to get a couple of things done today, the biggest of which is to call my gastro doc and get a new perscription for my Protonix.
The weekend ended up being fairly quiet, and very relaxing. I stayed in most of the weekend. Saturday night I met up with Keith and his girlfriend for sushi at Cafe Sushi (I'm pretty sure the people who work there must think I'm a sushi addict or something), then when I got home I got my turntables set up again and did a quick little netcast. I didn't tell too many people so it was essentially for the benefit of Chris, Lyn, and Tracy. It's always more fun practicing when I have a little bit of an audience.
Then yesterday I went into Harvard Square to run some errands and ended up getting a bunch of stuff I hadn't planned on. Isn't that how it always is?
A sausage egg and cheese sandwich on a toasted bagel.
(At least this morning it is)
Pablo Picasso. "There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun."
I just got done watching Cardcaptor Sakura - The Movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit. As far as anime movies go this is one of the better ones I've seen. The story has to do with Sakura winning a trip to Hong Kong. Of course, once she gets there some strange things start happening around her. This movie was really enjoyable. With the full cast of characters making appearances. We also get to meet a bit more of Li's family, including his mother and his sisters (who are hysterical).
An amazing job was done with this DVD. The video quality is amazing and the sound was kickass. If you have a system with 5.1 sound it really makes a difference. This one has 5.1 available for both the japanese and english versions. I haven't had a chance to check out the dub of this, and I probably won't do more then a sampling of it. The dub is done for the US version, Cardcaptors, so supposedly has all the name changes.
If you are a fan of CCS I highly recommend it.
Today has certainly been a day for much goodness. I stopped into Tokyo Kid today with the intent of picking up a Kenshin DVD, I wanted to pick up the movie. While I was there I was quite suprised to find that the Cardcaptor Sakura movie was in stock already! I don't think it is supposed to be out for over a week. I quickly pick up a copy of it and am just about to pop it into the DVD player now. I hope to give a mini-review later.
A lot of the CDs I've been picking up have been ones I used to have and during poor parts of my life have sold. So a lot of the stuff I've been picking up is 80s stuff:
- The Push Stars - Meet me at the Fair
- Thomas Dolby - Best of Retrospectacle
- Devo - Devo
- Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses
Evan Williams mentions a poll on Kuro5hin about text ads. The top thing people want is to be able to make comments on ads. Evan's thought about this, I think it sounds like an amazing idea. Imagine people being able to comment on a product or service they used when they saw an ad for it. My guess is you'd get a lot of extremes, people who either loved or hated the product. I think it would be great to see an ad and be able to instantly know what people think of the product/company.
Would it make a difference? I think it could. It could have a few side benefits, the least of which is letting companies know what people think of them. It could be quite beneficial. At least until companies started adding in comments of their own to praise themselves (but there has to be a way to work around that.)
Sir Julian Huxley. "Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."
Well, I'm pissed. I just got my first bit of spam mail on my new account. Though I guess it is somewhat expected. The change of mediaone.net addresses to attbi.com addresses is fairly well known at this point. I'm sure spammers just did a search and replace. It's still annoying.
and the world has turned around again.
On April 10th I'll be spinning again at the Phoenix Landing. This time I have the honor of opening for Steve Porter. I'm pretty psyched for this. I've seen Steve spin a few times and enjoyed him each time.
I finally set up my audiotron to play music from over the net. It can now play music from shoutcast, icecast, or windows media streams. Pretty slick. I've got it playing some Jazz right now while I do some cleaning.
A man in a Tampa, FL mall strolled around giving dollar bills to anyone who wanted one. He just does it to brighten people's day and spark some generosity.
Robert Frost. "Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
While out at breakfast this morning I ran into one of the hosts of the party I was at last weekend. It was cool to get to talk to her and chat about some of the issues with how the turntables were set up, since she has done some DJing also and related to all the issues I brought up.
The other nice thing was that one of the people who was at the party was there and he thanked me for spinning, saying he liked it a lot. So I'm feeling much more positive about it
I got a bunch of used CDs during lunch today. I went a little crazy.
- this is techno, vol. 4
- The B-52's - Wild Planet
- My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - I see Good Sprits, I see Bad Spirits
- The Housemartins - Now that's what I call quite good
- Haircut 100 - Pelican West plus
- erasure - Wonderland
- The English Beat - Special Beat Service
Well, it finally went up after all, so here are my responses:
- What's your favorite animal? I'd have to day dogs. We had a dog when I was growing up and I really miss having one. I won't get one till I live someplace with a yard though.
- What pets have you had in your lifetime? When I was born, my parents had a cat. But I got allergic to it and we had to give it away. I had hermit crabs for a bit. I also had a parakeet and the dog (stuffy) mentioned above. Stuff was a wire hair fox terrier, one of the coolest breeds ever IMHO.
- Is there any specific pet that you've wanted but never had? Why? Hmm. For a while I thought it might be cool to have a ferret. But I decided I wasn't around home enough to have a pet like that. They seemed like they would require a fair amount of upkeep. Plus I wasn't sure about allergies.
- Are you allergic to any animals? Cats. I can walk into a house and tell there is a cat even before I'm told by someone. It's horrible. What sucks the most is when I'm around a cat I want to pet it so badly, but that would just be bad. I think I'm also slightly allergic to other random furry animals.
- Do you have any 'pet' pet peeves (your pets or others')? People leaving pets in their car. I see it so often and it always upsets me. I want to leave a note scolding them for it.
The friday five is found at http://fridayfive.org/.
Kynn Bartlett drove down to San Diego recently to see Michael Moore promote his latest book. The night ended going up late and at the end of the night the police were called to empty out the auditorium he was speaking in. Moore posted a description of what happened on his web site. In return, Kynn posted a report of what he witnessed. As he puts it:
Because I was there, I feel I have to tell the story as I saw it -- as it really happened. Don't get me wrong, I am a big supporter of Michael Moore, I love his book, and I have great respect for his courage. But unfortunately I have lost some of that respect for him based on his actions on Friday night, and his rather incomplete (and inappropriately inflammatory) description of the so-called RAID. I think the public record needs more than Michael's view on events.
As far as the reports of the night went, I have to say that I was pretty disturbed by how Moore was presenting the events of the night. His writing was much more inflamatory And by reading his report you get a much different view then you do from what Kynn wrote. He seemed to be making a much bigger deal about this then was necessary. Yes, there were problems with how the night was planned. Yes, maybe it could have been better organized. No, the police probably didn't need to be called. But, it certainly didn't sound like a 'raid'.
Based on these two accounts of the night. Michael Moore comes off as being a bit self-centered and rude. I find it rude that he shows up to an event people invite him to, and then when it is time for things to be over doesn't respect their request to wrap things up. He doesn't respect the people who have to wait around for him to finish so that they can do their jobs. And in the end, he uses it to create specticle. This isn't about his politics, it's about how you treat other people.
One of my reasons for posting this was that it helped remind me of something I have a tendancy to forget. There's usually more then one side to a story. Question everything.
It looks this week will be without a Friday Five. The person who does it is having problems with her hosting service from the looks of it. Bummer.
Bobby Knight. "All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."
The future of toilet paper.
I really can't think of much else to say about this.
You know how there are certain things in your life that are both good and bad for you? Experiences that can both drive you crazy or make you wildly healthy? People who on some days bring out the best in you and at other times turn you into a snarling gargoyle? It's high time for you to deepen and ripen your relationship with these influences, Scorpio. I'm not saying this will render your connections any less paradoxical. But it will ensure that your reasons for being together are rooted in the spirit of the here and now, not in dead habit.
<-- Courtesy of Free Will Astrology -->
He'll slit your throat. Cut off your big toe.
It's almost Friday. I need Friday this week. I've been exhausted. I need to find a little *FUN* this weekend. As well as take care of some things I've been putting off (like getting my hair cut. I always seem to wait too long).
Tonight I'm having dinner with Susan. She just moved into a place around the corner from me, so I now have more people to have dinner with. I should burn off a CD for her, since she doesn't have any of mine yet.
I also have to rave again about how I love my Audiotron. It has been serving up just a wonderful selection of random music this morning. Everything from Howard Jones to NIN to music from FLCL. And I also found a stack of CDs I hadn't ripped yet, so I should have those in soon, adding to my music totals.
I'm becoming the anime pimp. I think that must be one of my official side roles in life. The most fun is finding something that someone who 'hates anime' or 'just doesn't get anime' likes. I think it is because many people make assumptions about what anime is.
Right now I'm pestering a friend to watch Noir. If that doesn't work I still have a few more tricks up my sleve.
Howard Scott. "Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
Here's one of my favorite recipes. I love making this for breakfast. I think it's perfect served with some sausage too. An additional note that this has to be made in a cast iron skillet. This is a great recipe to help season your skillet too!
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
dash of salt
4 tablespoons butter
- Set oven to 450 degrees F and put a large (12" or so) skillet in to heat.
- In a bowl, beat the eggs, flour, milk and salt together. (Mix in all together at once or it won't . The more air you beat into the batter the higher it will rise in the oven)
- When the oven is hot, toss the butter into the skillet and let it melt.
- Pour batter into the skillet and return it to the oven.
- Bake 12-15 min or until the pancake is ed and golden.
- Cut in half and serve immediately with warm maple syrup (and whatever else you want)
I added a link to Jon Udell's Radio Weblog. I've found myself over there reading things a bunch lately.
The BBC has an article about Google Bombing. A few sites have already talked about this some. I have to agree, yes a few people are abusing this, but I think the way google works is great. Many times weblogs are where I want to go to first. Look at examples like the 802.11b Networking News, this site is still one of the first places I go when I am looking for news on the wireless front.
Nope. At least not by the FDIC's definitions.. They feel that it isn't a bank and shouldn't be regulated like one. I thought that was pretty interesting. It seems like paypal deserves much more attention if it doesn't have to be regulated. If they were to pull their act together, I'd be happy to use them more often. It just makes me nervous when I hear the types of stories I have about them.
Henrik Tikkanen. "Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence."
A few friends over on LJ were posting this. You can find out yours at http://glitterstars.com/shescrafty/you/signs/lovesigns.html. Here's mine (sheesh this is long):
Cool Water
* are incredibly romantic
* are very sensitive to other people's feelings needs
* believe you need a boyfriend/girlfriend
* often find it hard to decide what (or who) you want
* are always daydreaming
* just love sappy books and slushy movies
* often find yourself going out with people you don't actually like that much
* are extremely touchy-feely
With your cute expression and soft nature, you create the impression of someone who needs to be looked after. You're actually perfectly capable of looking after yourself, but this doesn't stop more dominant personalities from being drawn to you.
in love: You're one of the most romantic elements. You write the best love letters and have even been known to pen the odd poem. You're happiest when you're in love, but you sometimes delude yourself that your partner is perfect and may feel let down when you find that they aren't. You need someone with an imagination as fertile as your own who will keep the relationship as romantic as possible for as long as possible.
watch out: Your own insecurities mean you may have some problems with jealousy. Also, you sometimes find it difficult to leave a relationship, even when you know it's not working.
advice: Try to realise that not everyone goes for the 'little boy/girl lost' type. In fact, they're more likely to be attracted to the real, more confident you.
cool water scorpio: People tend to view you as cool and mysterious, a belief you like to encourage as you just love to keep 'em guessing.
perfect match: cool water and cool fire
don't hold your breath: hot air
unrequited: cool air
flirt: cool earth
stay friends: hot fire
waste of time: hot earth
One interesting thing I found when looking at some of these. The whole perfect match, brief encounter, etc section is screwy. My perfect matches are cool water and cool fire. So, I pulled up a cool fire to see what it said and cool water was under don't hold your breath. Does that mean the perfect match for me wouldn't work well with me?
I finally finished ripping all the CDs I wanted to. The one test I need to make is to see how well the audiotron handles mix CDs. This has always been one of my biggest gripes with mp3s and mp3 players. They deal well with individual songs, but not with mixed songs. There is a brief pause between every track, which takes away from the flow of the mix. I'll have to test that tomorrow.
Current mp3 totals: 1425 songs, 6.04GB, 4:08:18:27
Wow. I just realized I've been blogging for just over a year. I missed the exact date that I started, which was March 8th, 2001. Thought I think my first couple of posts were kind of a rough start, I'm fairly happy with the way this blog has matured over the year.
Holy Heck. I just did a search on google for my name, Gregory Blake, only to find out that I'd been displaced from the top spot. But what is even more bizzare is that I was displaced... BY MYSELF.
When I first started using Radio, I had it publishing to the site at Userland. But I quickly figured out how to publish via ftp and was sending it to this page instead. I'm actually trying to figure out how that other page that isn't as up to date is displacing mine.
Hmm, now I have to figure out how to knock myself back out of the top position.
Testing now new title code
It looks like it works!
Cool Pictures
I think there should be a setting for this effect on my camera. Though I'm not quite ready to go through the steps this guy ended up going through to have it do that.
Pre-Spring Fever
I really want spring. I keep finding myself looking out the window at work wanting to see green leaves on the trees instead of brown branches. Having a beautiful day in the sixties this weekend just ruined me. I am so ready for spring.
I'm sick of cold weather that makes me cough.
Noir
I just finished watching Noir. I have to say that it was pretty impressive. This is a series I'll be waiting impatiently for someone in the states to pick up for distribution.
Still feeling tired
Well, despite my 11 hours of sleep I'm still feeling a little like the need for a nap. Fortunately work has been just busy enough today that the day is just zooming by.
I can always tell when I'm a little overtired because I get really crabby. The stupidest things always bother me.
Thinking about this last weekend
I was thinking a bit more about the set I spun this weekend, trying to get a feel for why I felt so disconnected. Of course, after a night of sleep it was fairly obvious: the setup.
When I got to the party everything was all set up. The DJ stuff was set up on a kind of balcony overlooking the main room. This has a few effects, all centering around me not really being able to hear what is going on well. With DJing you listen to what is currently playing and then in your headphones listen to the track you want to bring in. You can match up the beats that way. Now, if you don't have a speaker close enough to you the sound lag makes it harder to match up the beats. I get around this by doing most of my mixing in the headphones. I can also listen to the live channel in my headphones, it just makes it more difficult. As a result, when I was done I was exhausted. It is something I never even thought of there being an issue with really, since all the other parties I'd been right near the speakers. Live and Learn.
The second thing that caused me issues is more difficult to explain. When I'm spinning I get very focused on what I'm doing. I hate when people interrupt me constantly (interruptions now and then don't bother me as much). At the party I was in a fairly trafficed path. There were people always talking around me, interrupting me, etc. It just constantly pulled me away from getting fully focused. I think this was a bigger issue then setup actually.
Now, on the plus side. I think despite these things I did actually spin a pretty decent set. That was a good thing.
Sleep is good
Ahhh. I feel much better after a good 10-11 hours of sleep. Well, except for a small stomach ache, but I can cope with that. I'm still a little tired, but nothing some coffee can't help.
Fruits Basket
I really don't know what to say about this series. I just watched the first episode and I want more. Things just took a sudden left turn right at the end of the episode!
The animation quality was also really nice in this. Very slick looking. I'm hoping this gets picked up already because I want to see more.
Home sweet home
I'm home. I'm trying to unwind. I'm not quite sure what to think of last night. I didn't have a bad time, but it's very obvious that I've got some things I need to deal with sometime soon. With everything going on in my life I keep much too much bottled up. Unfortunately it takes mediocre nights like last night to remind me of this.
The party itself was actually quite good. Unfortunately, I really wasn't in the right state of mind to be around a bunch of people I didn't know real well. Add to that a feeling that I never really got into the swing of my set. Everyone said it sounded great, but it just wasn't what I wanted.
I'm going to watch the rest of North by Northwest and then maybe some cartoons.
Party time
I'm getting ready to head out to party tonight. I'm pretty psyched about this because I haven't had a chance to just get out and unwind in a while. I get to spin a three hour set, which will definitely put me into a nice state of mind. I've been flipping through my records on and off all day, trying to find things that fit my mood.
I'm also thinking of doing some experimenting with moods tonight. Really working on creating a mood with the songs I choose. To me DJing is a kind of joint job between DJ and the crowd. If they aren't able to sync up at all, then it isn't as fun for everyone.
Good morning world
Waking up to hearing Robyn Hitchcock definitely makes for an interesting start of the day.
Everyone says they love going out for breakfast. But for some reason I still can't make myself pick up the phone and call someone at 8am on a saturday morning to say "breakfast! now!" Probably because people would hate me after a while ;). Actually most people tell me, "oh I'm always up early on a Saturdays." But I just have this dread that I would pick the one saturday where they decided to sleep in.
I need to start calling people the night before. Oh well, I'm off to get breakfast by myself in a few moments.
Relaxed
Today was a good day. I hung out at home most of the day and watched a bunch of Angelic Layer with Chris. One thing I love doing with friends is watching a movie or listening to a CD online, where we'll both queue it up to start at the same time. Then we'll talk about it while other people are around and confuse them.
This afternoon I got my third roll of lomo pics developed. I think they came out okay. I'm going to scan in a few of them in next week. I also poked my nose into Tokyo Kid and they had the latest Cardcaptor Sakura in a few days early. They rule!
Tonight is a night for some spinning and resting up for partying tomorrow night.
Unexpected benefits of technology
Okay. I'll admit it. Part of the initial urge to get the Audiotron was a need for more toys. I'm starting to wonder if there wasn't a deeper urge there for more music in my life. Music and reading were always two things have always been very important in my life. But for quite a while they've both taken a bit of a backburner to the computer. More and more though I find myself closing the laptop and curling up to read. And as I've been re-ripping all my CDs I've been rediscovering all my music.
On that note. Kate Bush rules. I just listened to The Kick Inside for the first time in probably years and remembered once again what a good album it is. Now time for some This Mortal Coil.
WWKND
Yay! New WWNKD strips are up! It's been a while since I'd looked. I think I missed one or two.
Friday Five
1. What makes you homesick? When I lived in San Diego I would get homesick during the winter months. I didn't mind that it was in the 80s on December 24th, but it just made me realize how much I missed home. After 6 years I was homesick enough to move back to New England.
2. Where is "home" for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom& Dad's house, particular state/city)>? Oh my. I've had a few places I've considered home over the years. My parent's house in CT, NMH (where I went to high school) in MA, Pittsburgh (where I went to college), San Diego, and now Boston. Every place I've been has become home after a while (see next question :))
3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? Familiarity. Being comfortable with a place. The people I meet in a new place are very much a part of that. My friends are quite important to me.
4. Where is the furthest you've been from home, miles-wise? 3280 miles (5279 km). Boston to London. And I can't wait to do it again.
5. What are you doing this weekend? A friend of mine is having a party on Saturday night that I'll be spinning at. The rest of the weekend will be resting up or recovering from that :).
[-- Questions provided by The Friday Five --]
M&Ms
You too can help pick the newest M&M color. I voted for purple because I think the other colors just don't fit as well.
Mahoromatic
Way back in December, over on Megatokyo, Piro mentioned a series called Mahoromatic. I'd been hunting around for fansubs of it for a while and finally noticed them showing up on Kazaa. I'd been working on downloading copies of it and finally got the first episode. It's quite cute on first glance, but it was interesting enough to want to watch a few more episodes.
This may take a while...
I'm re-ripping all my CDs to mp3 and it is just taking too long. I'm up to Depeche Mode.
Also, speaking of mp3s, I had the audiotron on shuffleplay over last night and when I woke up in the middle of the night Sifl & Olly were talking to chester. It was most odd.
SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21) - Week of March 7, 2002
"Man in his present state has as much desire to urinate as he has to make vows to Artemis," says writer Edward Dahlberg. In other words, most modern humans have no relationship with wild female deities, nor would they ever conceive of a reason why that might be fun or sincere or inspiring. But my reading of the current cosmic omens leads me to suggest that you contradict Dahlberg, Scorpio. Artemis is not dead, I swear to you; she is not just a figment of the archaic Greek mind. She is a living archetype of fiercely nurturing female energy. Goddess of the ever-changing moon, strong protectress of the undomesticated soul, she gives sanctuary to all who prize liberated fertility. I dare you to make a vow to her.
<-- Courtesy of Free Will Astrology -->
Health Gripe
So last night was the 5th anniversary of Wednesday nights at the Phoenix Landing. This was the very first weekly I went to when I moved to Boston. I think I actually went to it within days of first getting into town. Over the years I've seen some great DJs play there, and even had the honor to spin there once myself.
Unfortunately, the Landing is one of the smokiest places on Earth. I don't think I've ever been in a bar that is so smokey. Even when I wasn't having health problems it was bad in there. It's like they don't have any ventialltion at all. So last night, on the night I would have loved to have gone out. I couldn't.
This is the stuff that I'm still having a hard time coming to terms with. Even when I do get a new lung I most probably won't be able to go out to places that smokey. When I lived in San Diego I got really used to smoke-free places. I wish there were more of them around.
QOTD
Groucho Marx. "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
Sleep Aids
I really try to avoid them myself, though as you can see, woke up at 4am anyways. Reading a friend's LJ I found this article on sleep aids. It's an interesting read. It also has a link to a little quiz to see if you are getting enough sleep.
Back to bed for this puppy.
HOT HOT HOT SHELLFISH ACTION
You know you want to see it. All kinds of nasty shellfish doings at http://www.prawnography.net/. Worksafe? You judge for yourself.
Letter Writing
I just wrote the first letter I've written in years. We're talking probably 8 years at least. It was pretty cool. Something I need to start getting into the habit of doing I think. Getting a real paper letter from someone is just much nicer then getting email.
Circle Journey Books
I can't remember if I mentioned these before, but Circle Journey books look really cool. The idea is that it is a way to write letters back and forth with a friend by sharing a book. Almost like a combination of letter writing and shared journal writing. Pretty Keen.
Weathermen suck
So just yesterday I was getting psyched because they said it would be getting warmer over this course of this week and that we'd have nice weather until sunday or so. Well, guess what. I see more white stuff coming down.
This sucks.
Lack of sleep
If I don't get enough sleep at night I cranky. Today, I'm really cranky. I'm waiting for someone to ask me for something stupid so I can rip their head off.
Audio Hijinx
So, yesterday I mentioned that my Audiotron had arrived. I'd mentioned this a few times lately and I'm very psyched that I finally got it. In some ways I was a little unsure when I got the box how much I'd use it. There are no doubts now. This is something I see moving up in usefulness to my TiVo.
So what's so special about it? Nothing really. It is just one of those devices that just plain works. I unpacked it and took a peek at it at work when it arrived yesterday. It's fairly thin, just over 1 and a quarter inches high I'd guess. The back is simple with a power connection, rca jacks, a digital optical jack, and ethernet. When I got home I plugged it in and it grabbed an address from the DHCP server and was accessible through a web browser immeadiately. Once I gave it a name and password to access my computer through it was able to scan the share there make the music available (It actually found the machine on its own).
One good thing about not getting sleep is that I've been re-ripping my CDs. I got about 7 done and had the Audiontron index those and start playing all the songs on suffleplay. I'm hearing things I haven't heard in ages. I feel like my CD collection has suddenly taken on a new life.
Not sleeping... again
Sighs. Two nights in a row I can't sleep. What the heck is wrong with me? It seems that a number of my friends are having problems sleeping these days. I know I have this underlying level of stress in my life, but not being able to sleep through the night is just not helping. The thing is, right now I'm tired. I know that once I lay down 7 o'clock will be here in moments. Feh.
Idiot move #432
So I was working on cleaning up my mp3s and somehow went and deleted them all. Actually, it was more a case of me not reading a dialogue box and clicking 'Yes' when I shouldn't have. Oh well. In some ways this is a good thing because I'd wanted to reorganize things a little bit.
On the other hand, my Audiotron rules. More on that tomorrow
Hackers against sexism
CNN reports "a hacker claiming to be a 17-year-old girl says she wrote a new worm targeting Microsoft Corp.'s .NET Web services platform to prove women are capable of creating computer viruses and make a statement against sexism, a computer security company said Monday."
I personally never really cared about the gender of people who write computer viruses. I just wish they'd just stop doing it.
Teddy Borg
Ooooo. Just what I always wanted. A teddy bear that is a network switch. I like that one of the eyes glows to show power. I see the potential for a whole new range of prodcuts here for kids.
Watching site traffic
I was looking at numbers for site traffic the last few days and yesterday my traffic just skyrocketted. I tried looking through my referers for the last day, but didn't see anything that jumped out at me. Weird.
On being impatient
I'm waiting for something to arrive from FedEx. And I keep watching the tracking, but it left at 8:50 this morning and hasn't made it here yet. Wahhhh. I think this is one of the worst parts of the web. You have access to all this information you didn't before.
BRRRRRR
DAMN is it cold out. I just don't get the weather this year. It was in the 60s on Sunday, and then it was in the low 20s (teens?) last night. That is just so wrong. At least they are saying that it will be sunny all week. I want spring!
Bad site crawling software
So there's some person who visits my site that just annoys me. Whatever they use to visit my home page crawls it, ignoring the robots.txt for my site. So, to whoever you are, your software bites. Whenever you scan my page you go and vote for and against every single post on a page, which seems like it would take a heck of a lot longer then just loading the page by itself.
QOTD
Voltaire. "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."
Morpheus
MusicCity recently released a new version of Morpheus that uses the Gnutella network. I know it is a preview version, but this program bites. The old Morpheus allowed you to search for specific file types much more easily. There isn't any of that. Also, from what I've seen so far, Gnutella is pretty crappy for video files (at least anime stuff).
Does anyone who reads this page get anime via Gnutella? If so, maybe you can help me figure out if I'm doing anything wrong.
Parental Extremes
A woman falsified her sons test scores to make him appear a genius. Is there that much pressure as a parent to have a kid who is the best? It is bad enough how hard some parents push their kids these days, but now they're just setting them up for disaster later in life. Sad.
Random Adam Sighting
I never watch MTV anymore. I sometimes watch MTV2, but if I'm going to watch a music channel I find myself on Much Music a lot. Last night after LFNY, I tagged along with Bree to have a drink with our friend Susan. At one point, we all looked at the tv to see Adam Curry in some show about the Headbangers Ball on MTV2. At least I think it was about the Headbangers Ball (there was no sound on the TV). This then led into a conversation of what people on the web have blogs.
Are you infected
This morning I got pointed at the human virus detector. I'm pretty hosed myself. Too bad they don't offer anything to do a brain cleaning.
QOTD
Dan Rather. "An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger."
LFNY
Wow. Once again Live From New York blew my mind. They are so good. I picked up a CD that was recorded at one of the last LFNY shows (I think it may have been the one I went to last).
QOTD
Mark Twain. "Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
Anti-Ecstasy Ads
The Partnership for a Drug Free America is gearing up for a new ad campaign, their latest target is Ecstasy. CNN had a blurp from AP about this which left me quite frustrated. The thing that irks me is that I've heard of very few people dying from taking MDMA. When the full reports come out it was usually that they were actually taking a mixture of substances, or they weren't actually taking MDMA (just something they were told was MDMA), or they didn't take care of themselves and do things like keep themselves hydrated.
I'm not saying that there are not risks associated with the use of it. There are, and it is not something for everyone. But I want to see more facts. What did the girl in the ad actually die from. Without giving more facts, the ad doesn't do much beyond upsetting people and making them think 'drugs are bad' for no reason beyond 'some girl died because she took ecstasy'. What I want to see is ads that give more facts. Don't just tell people drugs are bad, tell them what they do to you. Tell them the dangers of them. Give some equal time to other drugs that are even bigger killers. How much do you want to bet that alcohol is responsible for many more deaths then Ecstasy.
Nifty new site feature
Last night I added some code to the site that I got from http://littlegreenfootballs.com/. Over on my right nav bar is a link to 'Recent Referers'. My site now tracks the 30 most recent referers to my site. I've seen this on a few sites and finally got around to implimenting it on mine.
Rainy Sundays
It's Sunday and it's raining out, I've got some random Jazz stream from the net playing on my laptop, and I've got a craving for a cup of coffee. Days like this bring to mind this image I have in my head of my dream house. It's in on an unpopulated lake (heh, hey, I said it was a dream!), I'm sitting out on the deck, drinking a cup of coffee, reading the paper and looking out over the lake. I've had this image for so long I'm not sure where it came from. Someday I hope to have something at least approximating it.
Home Computer Appliances
Warning, the following contains some of my geeky ramblings about things that have been rattling around in my head, feel free to skip. :)
My friend Chris mentioned to me that news of TiVo's price increase had hit Reuters. I couldn't find the article itself, but it got her and I onto the topic of network appliances again. So I was thinking about this last night as I was falling asleep.
Now I love being able to use my computer for lots of things, listening to music, watching movies, I even at one point wanted to be able to watch TV on it. But as time goes on, I find that it isn't the best platform for all those things. It is like the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none." A computer is trying to be everything at once, a good stereo, a good tv, a good dvd player, etc. But, a computer has limitations. Even the fastest computer out there will have issues trying to do too many things at once.
The product that brought this into my head the most lately was WinDVR, which I mentioned a week or so ago. My friend Alan brought up some good points about some of the things it let you do, specificly archive shows to CD or share shows with friends. And as I was thinking about that, I suddenly realized the product's biggest weakness. It had no way to talk with my cable box. I have digital cable and the TiVo gets around this by being able to send IR (remote control) signals to my cable box. This enable the TiVo to constantly be changing channels and recording shows I may want to watch. It becomes an extension of your TV/Cable.
This topic has also been kinda hot in my head because I just ordered an Audiotron this weekend. This is another product that does the same thing people have been doing with computers, but does it in a better way (IMHO). People have been running audio cables from their PC to their stereos for a while. The computer makes a perfectly good mp3 player. The problem is, it means you need the computer near your stereo. With the Audiotron, you just need a home network. It'll play music that is shared out from any PC in your house, it will play audio streams from on the net, and it's got a cool web interface for managing it. It also has a remote control for me to add to my growing collection.
These days, my biggest goal when I'm at home sitting on my couch watching TV and reading is not having to get up and go sit at the computer to do something. That's one of the reasons I love my laptop. I can get things done anywhere. All of these products help me get to that point.
Oh, and I do think WinDVR is pretty cool regardless. It's actually got me thinking of ways to use a computer as a kind of 'dumb' VCR/DVD burner for archiving things and it might be an interesting stepping stone on the way to achieving that.
Oh... and I'm an idiot
I thought the LFNY show I was going to was tonight. But it is TOMORROW night. I really need to start using my datebook.
Never underestimate
The power of naps. Wow, I just was reading for a few minutes and put down my book to rest my eyes. Three hours later I woke up after having some very bizzare dreams. The one thing I remembered from before I woke up was that I had some kind of cool looking sword and was fighting bad guys and kicking their asses. (Does this mean I'm watching too much Kenshin?)
Running in Circles
There really are few happy mediums in my life. Either I spend all weekend curled up at home watching movies or I have 30 gazillion things going on at the same time and end up having things I don't get to do.
Tonight I'm going to see Life From New York, this group of singer/songwriters who are really amazing. If you're in the Boston area I highly recommend them. They're in town tonight and tomorrow night at Club Passim and there's a chance they won't be sold out.already.
I had a great offer to go to DimSum this morning, but wasn't sure if my friend Cheryl was going to be coming down today or tomorrow. But that was mostly due to me ending up with too many things planned at once. I did find out this morning that Sunday works for her, so I have today free. But I've woken up much too late to meet people for Dim Sum. I'd need a shower and I'm not even sure where they are meeting. But the shower would set me back quite a bit timewise.
Instead, I'm going to grab a yummy coffee cake muffin and watch a bit more Kenshin and see how the day develops until LFNY.
Nice Radio Review
There's a nice reviewof Radio over on O'Reilly's website. I think it gives a good idea of just how keen this software really is.
QOTD
R. Buckminster Fuller. "Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."
Can I just say again
How fucking amazing Kenshin is? I'm fairly deep into the Kyoto arc (Just finished watching episode 48) and it just keeps blowing me away.
I just had to share that with someone, so that someone will be all of you.
TiVo Blues
Okay. I love my TiVo, but sometimes the company just annoys the heck out of me. Their newest thing, they are raising the monthly price to $12.95 from $9.95. It's only $3, but I just don't like the trend. Also, they are currently offering a really good deal on a lifetime membership, but it is tied to hardware, not the customer.
I'm now considering actually getting the new model TiVo and just getting the lifetime membership, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to take that plunge. I'll probably just continue on, business as usual.
Friday Five
1. What's your favorite vacation spot? San Francisco. I've been there a few times and I have such a good time every time I go. I also have lots of friends there who I just never get to see.
2. Where do you consider to be the biggest hell hole on earth? Yuma. It's one of those spots in the middle of nowhere that you always stop at, but where there is just nothing but a reminder that you still have hours to go before you get to civilization again.
3. What would be your dream vacation? Oh. I'd love to be able to take a long vacation and explore Europe. Something where I could go with someone who knew all the places to go that weren't the tourist spots. And it would be one to two months long.
4. If you could go on a road-trip with anyone, who would it be and why? Good Question. I can think of a few people, but I'd have to say either Emily or my friend Heather. They're both good friends who I don't think I'd kill after being in the car with them for hours and hours.
5. What are you doing this weekend? Tonight just going to veg out in front of the TV. Tomorrow I'm supposed to hang out with my friend Cheryl on Saturday. We're talking about ordering a pizza and watching some movies. And then Saturday night I'm supposed to go to Club Passim to see Live from New York with Bree and Jill. Looks like it is going to be pretty busy!
[-- Questions provided by The Friday Five --]
Radio Musings
I haven't done an early morning ramble about Radio in a while. This morning I was reading through all the various RSS feeds I started thinking about the Radio community. RSS is way of syndicating content. For instance, I have that little orange 'xml' button over to the right. This is links to an xml version of my blog that people can subscribe to. There are then programs that pull down RSS feeds and let you browse through all the content from them. It really is pretty cool. I keep up with a few blogs and a number of news services this way.
But this morning I realized there is something about the use of it in blogs that doesn't quite fit how I read blogs. These days many blogs let you post comments to the posts in them. This is actually one of the things I love about blogs. People's web pages are not only providing content, but also have a level of interactivity. On more then one occasion people have even posted information to my blog correcting a post I had, which makes that content important.
To me, this doesn't quite fit with the whole RSS thing. Because with RSS you don't have to go visit the web page, which means you might not see comments that have been made to a post. What's the solution? I'm not sure. I see two possibilities. The first is to find a way to include a link to comments within your RSS feed. Unfortunately I don't know enough about RSS to do this. Another possibility would be to syndicate comments via RSS but that could get very spammy. Hmmm. What to do what to do.
A month of good luck!
I remembered to say Rabbit Rabbit this morning!
QOTD
Ambrose Bierce. "Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
Skipping a beat
So today my cell phone rang and once again it was from a number in the 617 area code that looked semi-familiar. When I picked it up it was the transplant clinic. For a second I couldn't breath, and then they said it was just to let me know when they had set up some tests for me. Sheesh. Maybe I should skip to decaf.
