May 2002 Archives

Browsing around today I ran into this post. The comments include news about Quick96 quickly ending.

I'm not sure if I should be amused or disturbed. Nari posted about a new radio station in Seattle. Their 'gimmick', they only play the best parts of songs. I tuned it in online and you'd hear about 5-10 seconds of a song, then a number (which corresponds to what the song is on their web site), then another couple of seconds of a song, and so on. Here's a bit from their press release:

(Seattle, Washington) · In a radical departure from mainstream radio formats, New Century Media has created a totally new approach to traditional broadcasting. Wednesday, May 29, 2002 at 6pm, 95-7 The Beat (KBTB-FM) changes its name and format to "QUICK 96" ...only the Best Parts of your Favorite Songs ". "QUICK 96" was designed to address the short attention span of today's busy music fan," said New Century Media President and General Manager, Michele Grosenick. "'QUICK 96' will feature an active library of more than 11,000 songs. 'QUICK 96' is truly the most variety of music ever heard on Seattle Radio. Each day you'll hear the Best Country, Top 40, Rock and Adult Hits and lots more of them," Grosenick continued.

After listening online for about 10 minutes I was ready to rip my hair out.

Lee Simonson. "Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian." [Quotes of the Day]

Semi-Insomnia strikes again, so I'm queueing up new downloads (new chobits!) and cleaning up my book/DVD list. Should be more up to date now.

Well, it looks like it's about to be time to pull out the old air conditioner. I'll have to wait till the next time my parents come up though so that they can help do it. It isn't too unbearably hot though. At least I was able to hold off until June. Hopefully it will hold off getting too hot until then.

snooze-Pri-Elf-Mal-Cha turned to stone in The Gnomish Mines on level 7 [max 8]. Petrified by a cockatrice corpse.

I haven't done a quiz in a while, and I liked how this one came out:

Before I become a geezer, I hope to eradicate all my "isms." I've made stunning progress at purging the sexism, racism, classism, and looksism I absorbed while growing up. I've still got a way to go with my ageism, egotism, and capitalism. And then there's signism, as in showing favoritism towards certain signs of the zodiac. I've worked hard to be absolutely impartial, but lately I've received e-mails from readers complaining that I'm way too soft on Scorpios. One Capricorn said my messages to you resembled "mushy love letters." All I can say in my defense is that I get turned on by anyone who devotes ingenious courage to dismantling their dogmas. Your sexy efforts in this regard have more than earned my mushy love letters. Please continue.

(-- From http://www.freewillastrology.com/ --)

I've been catching up on stuff these last few days. Here's some radom thoughts:

• hackSIGN 8 - I dunno what to say about this. I am still unsure as to how this show is going to end up. I love the music, I like the character designs, it just feels like it isn't really going anywhere yet. And supposedly there are only 12 episodes.

• Kanon - Another show I'm not sure on. I've watched through episode 10 and I'm still iffy on it. It isn't bad, it just feels kind of random. I guess that's kind of what you get for a game based off a dating sim.

• Abenobashi Maho Shotengai - This show is fun. Gainax is doing a great job with this. The basic premise seems to be that these two kids are getting bounced from reality to reality. They start off in their home, but then end up in the RPG realm. Lots of great jokes for anyone who has ever played any computer RPGs.

• Ai Yori Aoshi - Saved the best for last. I still love this show. I just saw the 6th episode and it is still working for me. At times it seems like it might start to get a little crazy, but then it calms itself down again. Though I think it would have more effect if they got rid of some of the fan service.

That's all for now. With the weekend rapidly approaching I'm sure there will be a new Chobits out very very soon.

I was just reminded that I wanted to post about this article I read in the NYTimes on Athanasius Kircher. He sounds like quite a funky guy. You've got to admire someone who did stuff like this:

One of Kircher's most daring acts was to write out a long list of Egyptian kings, proving that Egypt existed long before the world was even supposed to have been created. In a dry and sneaky way, Kircher planted the idea that the Bible was wrong. "Kircher found himself imagining deep time," Mr. Grafton said. And that was just the kind of thing that Giordano Bruno, the dogma-hating metaphysician, was executed for

The music industry has announced a new audio format to help cut down on pirating.

(-- shamelessly swiepd from zannah --)

So I started to wonder today, "Who leaves pancakes just sitting around in a dungeon? Wouldn't they get all stale and hard?"

(A sure sign I've been playing too much nethack.)

Jane Wagner. "The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool." [Quotes of the Day]

This morning while dreaming I found myself talking to an old friend of mine. I haven't actually talked to her since I moved out here from San Diego. I stopped by to see her in Arizona on my drive out here to Boston and I think I may have emailed with her once since then. So of course I quickly dug up her email and sent a message out. Gotta love the power of dreams.

I really wish I was better at keeping in touch with some of my friends. I sometimes feel that it is one of my flaws. I have a tendancy to be a bit of a flake.

In playing with making SVCDs this weekend I suddenly thought of a great use for them: Home Movies. My parents are fairly new mac owners. My mom got the mac because she wanted to do home video stuff on it. We've played with it a few times, but she keeps asking me "well, how can I send this to someone else". One solution I gave her was just saving it to a quicktime file and then burning that to CD.

Now that I know how easy it is to make VCDs or SVCDs I think I'm going to recommend that. The biggest reason is that a large number of DVD players can at least play VCDs. So now the next step is to come up instructions for her to do it on her own.

This Friday from 7am till Saturday morning at 5am. The Sci-Fi channel is having a Farscape Chain Reaction. They don't list what episodes they are showing, but with 23 hours of programming they're bound to have some good episodes. If you've been curious about this show at all, this would be a good chance to take a look (Though I think anyone who watches for 23 hours straight is probably insane).

In the grand tradition of Toastyfrog, someone has done a Cowboy Bebop Thumbnail Theatre. It's cool, check it out. All five seasons AND the movie are there.

Nari posted a fun link to a shockwave game where you are eating gummi worms.

I was able to get a score of around 4545 on level 9.

William James. "The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." [Quotes of the Day]

I'll post a bit more about later, but thought I'd share my morning wake-up and get going music this morning:

• Kiss Chase - Lush

• Fear of the World - ABC

• Nobody's Diary - Yazoo

• Honey (Bootleg)- Sam Shaber

• (shower)

• Ted, Woody, and Junior - Robyn Hitchcock

• Kissing the Day - Mandalay

• Rise & Shine - The Cardigans

• Perpetual Dawn - The Orb

Not too bad a way to wake up. Though the first part was a bit too random for me.

My friend Erin mentioned a site to me I hadn't heard of before: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/. They provide recaps of television shows with snarky commentary added in. I just got done reading the a recap of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode 'Villains. It captured the essence of the episode completely for me. Now they just need to release the recaps of the last two episodes of the season.

I just read about SVCD. Why oh why did I waste my time with just plain ol' VCD? I also discovered that I have one of the more kickass lower end DVD players out there. The reviews for my player are quite great. It looks like this thing will play everything I can throw at it.

The results are in! I can burn VCDs. Right now I'm watching the first episode of Read or Die on VCD. So far the quality of the picture is pretty damn good. It isn't perfect, but for things that aren't yet available over here it isn't bad at all. I can see it relying on how good the Divx file I'm using is, but these were really good transfers.

Hmm. Now I need to look into converting the Sifl & Olly episodes I have to VCD.

Right now I'm playing around with different video stuff. I've got a ton of divx files and mpegs and I've discovered that it is possible to burn them onto a VCD. And as an added bonus, my DVD player will play VCDs. I know the quality isn't perfect, but I'll be pretty curious to see how it goes.

Right now I've got the first episode of Read or Die converting to a format that I can burn to VCD. It's about 1/3rd of way done right now, but I'll report on the quality when I'm done.

This weekend I've been using Mozilla almost exclusively. They just put out their last release candidate before releasing a 1.0 version of the browser. I have to say I've been quite happy with it. Tabbed browsing was always one of my favorite features in Opera and I'm so happy to have it available in Mozilla. When I get back to work Tuesday I'm going to see how well it works for me to use on a day to day.

Okay, please, someone tell me if I am missing something here. Comcast is being sued over web recordings. I heard about this a while back, but didn't really read much about it. Now that I do I'm a little disturbed.

I'm not a huge fan of Comcast. I think a lot of their policies about how you can use your connection through them are lame. But, if I understand this article correctly it appears they are being sued for running a caching proxy server. I bet most large ISPs do in fact. For most companies it is a way to provide faster access to their customers.

Basicly, it's a kind of network service that watches all the web traffic on their network. Say you go to a web site. The proxy server keeps a copy of that web site in its memory. That way if you or someone else go back there within a short amount of time it can just give you the information out of it's cache instead of going back to the original web site. To the user, they see increased response time (since you don't have to go all the way back to the original site).

Back to my original question. Is there something here I'm missing? Is comcast doing something out of the ordinary here? Does this mean we all have to get rid of our caching servers? Anyone know what vendor Comcast got theirs from (or if they rolled their own)?

Rudyard Kipling. "Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves." [Quotes of the Day]

Last week Reuters ran a news story talking about defeating sony's "copy-proof" protection with a magic marker. NewsForge has an interesting article talking about how Reuters has just violated the DMCA by doing so.

Under the 1998 law's sections 1201.2(a) and (c), it's illegal to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that is primarily designed to circumvent a copy protection. That's in part (a), and Reuters and its customers might be able to argue that the story wasn't "primarily" designed for that purpose.

But Reuters would have a lot of trouble getting around 1201.2(c). It outlaws the manufacture, etc., etc., of any "marketed" product or service that allows users to circumvent copy protections.

There's no question that Reuters marketed the story. Selling stories to its customers is the way it makes money, and several copyright lawyers suggest the "bad intent" language of those sections can easily apply to news stories. Reuters would have to be massively na•ve to believe that hundreds of music-sharing fans around the wouldn't test the magic marker technique on Sony CDs as soon as they read the story.

Personally, I doubt anything will come of it. I do think it's about time for a really good First Ammendment vs DMCA court case, and this is such a great opportunity. And hopefully they won't come after me for posting a link to that article. ;)

A while back I noticed a neat feature over on s l a m called radioScan. The idea was that you could pop up a window that let you search the titles of posts in a blog.

While I thought that feature was kind of neat, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I wanted something that would include a list of recent posts on my web page. I dug into the code and figured out how to make it work. The hardest part was figuring out how to exclude posts that didn't appear on the home page. And, for people looking to learn more about programming Radio Userland, I found a great programming pointers page.

The Shifted Librarian has a cool post about back-blogrolling. It is when someone has written code so that if you want them to, they can see how often you visit their site.

I wonder if that would affect how often I view some sites. A lot of time during the day if I've got a spare bit of time I'll just cycle through my unmonitored blog listing. It might feel odd being so obviously monitored.

Here's a nifty little device.  You connect it to your mp3 player (or walkman) and it broadcasts the signal on an FM frequency that you can then listen to it on your car stereo.  I wonder how well it works.

Weird, the link wasn't there at first

I just got done watching Chobits episode 8 and while it started out a little oddly, it did get back to the same feel it had been before.  Along with just a hint of some interesting things going on in the future.  This really is becoming another of my favorite shows.  And a big thanks out to all those cool people doing fansubbing of this show (I think like 5 groups are doing it right now).

1. What's the last vivid dream you remember having? I remember that it was a pretty boring dream.  I was at work and the only thing that was really odd about it was that a lot of people who don't work here anymore where there.  My most vivid ones though, are usually the ones that feel like I'm in a movie.
2. Do you have any recurring dreams? Not that I know of.
3. What's the scariest nightmare you've ever had? My nightmares are odd.  As far as the scariest ones I never really quite remember what happens.  I just always find myself terrified and almost struggling to wake myself up.  Luckily I at most seem to get these every other year or so.
4. Have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? why or why not? I've thought about it many a time, but I've never actually done it.  One of these days I'll get around to doing it. I'm just too lazy.
5. Have you ever had a lucid dream? What did you do in it? Not as far as I know. I'd love to be able to.

<-- The friday five can be found at http://fridayfive.org/ -->

Steven Weinberg. "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." [Quotes of the Day]

Well, after waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to. Today's going to be annoying. The first part of the day is fine, rehab then work. But then around 1:30 I need to zoom home to wait for the cable guy. I hate having to wait for the cable guy, hopefully they'll be able to figure out what is wrong pretty quickly.

It is 2:30am, which means I've woken up again. This is where the problems start. On the bad side it's 2:30am and I'm awake. On the good side it means I discover that BBCA is now showing The Young Ones and it is on in 30 minutes. Though now I have to decide if staying up 30 min to watch it is a good or bad.

(Btw, if you don't want to read about some personal stuff, feel free to skip.)

So, it was a year ago tonight that I got a phone call at around midnight. I can still remember it now. The voice on the other line said that I was a backup for a lung. If they needed me they'd be calling within the next four to five hours. They'd call me if they wanted me to come in.

After that I made a few calls. I called my friend Emily, called my parents, basicly telling them all what had happened and that there wasn't anything to do now but wait. And wait I did. I tried to sleep, but I just couldn't. I tossed and turned for a bit got online, tried to talk to people online. In the end I just kind of freaked out for about five hours.

By the time they called me back I was a bit of a wreck. I basicly told them I couldn't do it right now. I needed time to think about it all. Looking back, I am kind of glad that I told them no. I don't think I was really quite ready to go through it all back then.

My biggest mistake back then was also thinking I could face it alone. Instead of having someone come over to my place to hang out and wait with me I told everyone I'd be okay. Needless to say, I was wrong. I have also since gotten over my stubborn streak and learned that it is okay to ask for help. Thanks to all my friends out there for being so supportive.

So here's to a wish that I get the call soon. Given that I've now been on the list about a year and a quarter, my time should be coming soon. Of course, knowing my luck I'll be getting the call tonight.

I can't type the actual name for the show because for some reason Radio likes to think it is a URL (I need to look into how do fix that).

Bandai has announced it has licensed hackSIGN. Pretty neat news.  It also sounds like they are going to be releasing the PS2 game(s?).  I've been kind of enjoying the series, but I'm still waiting for more to happen.  On the other hand, the game part sounds pretty cool too.

Could the occurance of a few weeks ago at the Phoenix Landing become something regular?  Supposedly there is a plan to make bars and clubs no-smoking in Boston and 11 surrounding communities.  While I don't have a problem with people smoking, I do admit that it bums me out that there are so many places I can't go to because smoke bothers me.

I finished Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger yesterday.  Overall I thought it was a really interesting look at the the web.  I actually think I need to go back and re-read parts of it sometime soon, since there were a lot of parts of it I agreed with.  His comments about how things link together and what people are like online were perfect.  One of the few times I've read something about the net and not been cringing.

Another recent book to check out is Lori Kendall's Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online.  It's either just out or due out any moment now.

From the NYT, Offering of Netflix Brings in $82.5 Million. Not too bad.  I've been using netflix for over two years and have been quite happy.  Lately I've been even happier because they opened up an East Coast distribution center about 30 minutes from where I live so I get my movies back within days of sending them in.

Finally a cool quiz.

It seems some of Pikachu's private home movies have made it out onto the net. At least jiggly is still pure.

(-- Link found over on vfc's LiveJournal --)

I want to learn more about xml and xsl and related things.  Can anyone recommend some good basic and intermediate books/web sites to get me started on my way?  I get it kind of, but I really haven't even worked with it enough to fully understand what I'm doing with it and how it all fits together.

I'm staring outside right now and it looks sooo nice out.  I know my allergies are going to go nuts when I head out for lunch but I don't care.  I've been needing to see and feel sun for a few days now.

I've been kinda quiet here lately, mostly because work's been kinda busy and I haven't had a lot to say.  I sometimes feel like just because I have this blog I have to at least post something every day.  Maybe I shouldn't feel that.

This weekend is another 'Cutting Edge of Campfire' at Club Passim.  I've written about it a few times before.  It's basicly a weekend of folk music by some of the best singer/songwriters in the (and from afar too I guess).  I first went about 2 years ago when I found out my friend Matt Asbell from CMU was going to be there along with my friend Michelle Nagy (who from the looks of her web page has something new coming up).  I had a blast and have been going ever since.  Hopefully that will boost my mood a little bit more.

I cleaned up my blogrolling stuff a little bit.  I also added a new person whose blog I've been skimming now and then.  I might do some more housecleaning later since there are some blogs I just don't seem to get to often enough.

A teacher displays porn during exam. Gotta love how common sense just seems to vanish when it comes to porn.

I caught the seventh episode of hack SIGN last night. I think it actually took me a little by surprise. They seemed to avoid almost anything to do with the main plot and succeeded in having an episode that I found kind of interesting.

Learn more about scripting in Radio. I've gotten kind of sidetracked from doing things in it and people keep doing very cool sounding things.

I took out the voting on posts part of my site, mostly because it never really got used.

AT&T Broadband offers spam filtering for its customers.  I don't use this feature becauseI do my own filtering when I pull my mail down.  But it seems that their filter is so good that it zaped its own mass emailings to customers.

Oscar Wilde. "I am not young enough to know everything." [Quotes of the Day]

Though not too far back. Just a year. Last year this time seems like it was much longer then that.

I'm having fun going through the archives of my blog as they show up. The feel of this blog has changed a lot over the last year. In many ways the big changing point happened just under a year ago. I've actually been writing a bit about it lately, look for a post on Thursday, since that is the one year anniversary.

[From Scripting News:]

Ed Cone nails it. A professional reporter gives blogging a try, and becomes a better writer for it. Bing! 

This is a really nice article about blogging.  It doesn't overdo it like some of the articles I've read.  And it has a link to the author's own weblog, which I bookmarked for later reading.

Well, after sleeping for more then half the weekend I'm feeling a bit more human.  I'm still not sure what hit me, but I'm still moving pretty slow.  Which for me means I'm moving at a snail's pace.  I'm also wondering now if part of my down-ness was a bit of depression.  Someone mentioned that to me last night and I hadn't even considered it before.

On the plus side.  The sun is out today, which at least brightens my spirits.

J.W. Schopf. "For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum." [Quotes of the Day]

Well, I has been a few days, so I think Lyn's brains have been eaten.  Come back from the light Lyn!  (Damn fanartist zombies!)

I just got my weekly mailing from CD Japan and noticed they were announcing availability of Sen to Chihro (aka Spirited Away). This is Miyazaki's latest release in Japan and friends of mine who saw it when it was screened in San Francisco said it was stunning.

Of course I preordered the moment I saw that it comes with english subtitles. (Btw, here's the details on the DVD)

I basicly slept most of the day today. Though I did get in a little bit of anime watching between naps.

• Chobits #7 - Um. Well, things certainly took a little bit of a turn this episode. I'm not sure what's going to happen next episode, but I'm still finding myself liking this show. Even if it is a little dark. I can certainly understand why it is shown at 2:30am though. I think I found this to be one of the more (or most) disturbing episodes of any show I've seen. 

• hack sign episode 6 - I'm very close to just giving up on this show. I love the look of it, I love the music, but the plot just has to go further. So far we've had six episodes of mystery with no sign of any real explaination of what is going on. And now the mucus blob seems to be out on its own causing damage.

• Kanon Episodes 3 and 4 - I would have watched more of this, but I think the files for episodes above four weren't fully downloaded. I'm not quite sure where this show is headed. I'm not even sure if I like it. But I'm curious enough to keep on watching.

• Lupin the 3rd - The Secret of the Twilight Gemini - This is the first Lupin release by Funimation. Up until now the only thing I'd seen was Castle of Cagliostro. This was quite different, but I still found it quite good. Definitely something to give a chance if you liked Castle of Cagliostro.

I'm thinking about checking out Full Moon wo Sagashite. Pasiphae mentioned it earlier in her blog, so I've queued up Direct Connect to download it.

Quentin Crisp. "Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster." [Quotes of the Day]

I've been sleeping on and off since about 4 this afternoon. I'll sleep for four or so hours, wake up, plop down at the computer for a few minutes then go back to sleep and repeat. I'm taking this as a sign of something.

On the other hand I feel really bad that I missed the bbq last night. Actually, I missed out on all the things I wanted to do last night since I was planning on going to a local college station to hang out with someone I knew back in San Diego while he was on the air. Plan for Sunday, sleep more, maybe I can kick whatever's making feel so icky.

Wow! Two mentions in one day over on The Shifted Librarian. For those of you who haven't checked out her site it's pretty cool. She often has links to very interesting news bits to do with libraries and technology. It's one of my daily reads.

If fact, I'm sure I've linked to posts of hers from here a few times here.

Hot damn, the Friday Five is back. And with a keen new look (It seems to have already changed colors since it came back too). And on to the questions!

1. What shampoo do you use? My preferences are either Paul Mitchell Shampoo One or Herbal Essences.

2. Do you use conditioner? what kind? Oh yes, it is needed since I do hilites in my hair. Lately I've been using Paul Mitchell The Conditioner. It's great because it's leave in conditioner.

3. When was the last time you got your hair cut? Just over a month ago I think. In fact, I was just thinking I need to make an appointment in another week or so.

4. What styling products do you use? I usually use a bit of gel. Lately I've found the Herbal Essences gel works quite well.

5. What's your worst hair-related experience? I haven't had any real bad ones. There was one time when some temporary hair color just wouldn't come out, but that's about it. Since I tend to keep my hair short anyways it wasn't that bad.

(-- The Friday Five can be found at http://fridayfive.org/ --)

I hit my limit today. I do okay for a while but when I hit my limit, I stop. I need to just pull or I start getting sick. Well, the last week I've been exhausted and been pushing myself a bit harder then I should have. This afternoon I hit a wall. I've been coughing, and I have no energy.

I'm kind of bummed because I was supposed to go to a birthday bbq this afternoon/evening. I'm gonna nap and see if I'm up for going later.

Seeing Chobits Episode 7 downloading at high speed.

http://www.ezoons.com/

life The worst.

Needless to keep

it was

updated by noon it

may 17, 27 18 AM | say something ]

Movie Day heading to

figure out but after Episode

1 56 04 51 AM |

say something ] Movie Day cookies:

0 ++/ ] [ 7 03:14/2002 gregory |

9:04:51 AM | comments 1 ] 31 AprJun

Stuff in to

www.ezoons.com cookies: 0 ++/ ] [

gregory |

8:05:10 28:07 AM | not unbearably so.

I did just a few hours and suddenly

my site what here Despite little dents

all my silly

thoughts.

This program was generated by Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator. It lets you put in a url and will generate poetry from it.

Lately I've started reading The Toxicology Weblog. I find a bit of the stuff over my head at times, but it is still quite interesting. Take this most recent one about Alcohol & pregnancy.

Steven Wright. "Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." [Quotes of the Day]

Whew. Yesterday felt like a full day. I'm kind of hoping I didn't overdo it.

I took the T to go see Episode 2. I have to admit that I wasn't sure what to expect from it. After Episode 1 I kind of expected the worst. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. It still had its problems, but I thought it was fun.

It was good to take the T too. Every once in a while I like being able to do something. I found that if I took things slowly and took breaks now and then I was able to make it to the theatre with no problems. On the way back home I even stopped off in Harvard Square to do a little shopping. There was one small glitch in my plans. I was a bit absent minded when I parked my car and missed the paper signs that had been posted indicating a temporary no parking zone.

So, the day was ended out with my friend Ethan giving me a ride to Pat's Towing and me getting my car and grabbing some food at The Good Life.

I'm heading to see Episode 2 today. I wasn't really planning on going, but I was able to easily get tickets and am going to be going with my friend Ida. I really wasn't up for going alone.

I'll try and post a review later when I get home.

You have an unusually repulsive personality, that's what my fortune is. You too can find yours at Bad Cookie - Real Web Chinese Fortune Cookie. It's like the real thing except you can't snack on the cookie.

Oh, and be sure to read their comments section to see what people think of them.

Let the rites of purification begin, Scorpio. Flush out the gunk in your sensitive psyche, the angst in your courageous heart, and the toxins in your beautiful body. In fact, purge and shun every influence except those few that propagate the jiggle and the hop in your soul. Only you know how best to perform the cleansing, but here's a goad to get you going. See if you can go seven consecutive days in which you never even glance at a TV screen.

(-- Brought to you by http://www.freewillastrology.com/ --)

After over a year of having the same IP number it finally changed. I was online last night late late and suddenly my cable modem dropped offline. I was a bit peeved, but was like, whatever. After a few minutes it came back online. When I logged into my unix box, I happened to do a 'w' and saw that my IP# had changed.

I'd gotten so used to the IP# I had. The cool thing is that DNS was updated by the time I woke up in the morning, so it wasn't THAT bad.

Over on one of the MUDs I hang out on someone yesterday mentioned a cool site called Lost in Translation. It shows the effect of sending text through numerous translationors and what you get from them.

For example, the text:

Back when I lived in Pittsburgh, I lived on ramen for periods of time.  I've only just been able to stomach the stuff again recently.  Now I find I like to mix stuff in to add a bit of stuff to it.  Zannah posted a link to Ramen City.  Your source for all your Ramen needs.  Though I'd love to see some reviews of the various kinds of ramen before trying some of these.

Becomes:

The sustenation, when I lived the Pittsburgh, I has lived ramen ignition for the periods.  Still the substance would know only total to the air line with the stomach of her recently.  The hour is as the substance to the mixture of the piece that internal I add it to a small substance.  Zannah announced a connection to the city of Ramen.  Its source for all its necessities the Ramen.  Exactly if I can see, that one the examinaci—n something of the last one ramen something before the examinaciones they diverse types. 

Maybe this can be a new art form, post bad poetry into it and see if the end result is any better.

The sun is out, but I think I'm either fighting some kind of bug or allergies are kicking in.  My head's all kind of stuffed up and I feel like I am in a haze.

I hate feeling like this because I find it so hard to get work done.  I just want to go down to my car and take a nap.

Woke up again and decided to answer email. Deep in the heart of a long email I suddenly felt like I was kind of floating. I've had this feeling before and it's really cool. It always happens when I'm sitting in front of the computer typing. I think it may be a bit of overtiredness plus just concentrating so much on the screen that I block out everything else around. But I just end up feeling like I'm floating.

(Ahh, the joy of late night blogging.)

I've been watching what feels like an insane amount of fansubbed anime lately.  So I thought I'd post a bit of a recap for those of you who are interested (descriptions of the shows are linked with the titles).

• Ai Yori Aoshi - Only the first four episodes of this have been fansubbed already (and I think only about 6 have been broadcasted).  The interaction between Aoi and Kaoru is quite well done.  I'm also finding Aoi to be quite an interesting character.  On one hand she appears fairly meek, yet I think she's actually a fairly strong character.  She's taken the most risks and in some ways has the most to lose.

• Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar - An horribly cute show about a young girl who meets up with an apprentice snow fairy named Sugar.  The show is very cute, but not unbearably so. I've only seen three episodes of this, so I'm still not quite sure where it is going.

• Onegai Teacher - I think almost every teenage boy must dream of having a teacher fall in love with them.  This one has a couple of twists on that in that the teacher is also an alien from another planet.  While I wasn't too sure what I thought about the show at first I'm finding that I like it more as time goes on.  I think it has done a fairly good job at avoiding a lot of the obvious types of plots one might expect.

I'll follow up in a day or two with some of what I'm watching on DVD these days.

Back when I lived in Pittsburgh, I lived on ramen for periods of time.  I've only just been able to stomach the stuff again recently.  Now I find I like to mix stuff in to add a bit of stuff to it.  Zannah posted a link to Ramen City.  Your source for all your Ramen needs.  Though I'd love to see some reviews of the various kinds of ramen before trying some of these.

SpamAssassin is this wonderful unix app that checks each email coming into my mailbox to see if it looks like spam.  Basicly it's got a list of common attributes that make up spam mail and each one has a certain point value.  If a message has a high enough score it marks it as spam and moves on.  I then have procmail filter those messages to their own folder.

The best thing about it though is some of the things that count as hits.  And every once in a while it seems like you get a message that just seems to hit just about everything that can be hit.  Here's the results for a particularly spammy message:

SPAM: Content analysis details: (36.84 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (1.2 points) From: does not include a real name
SPAM: Hit! (2 points) Invalid Date: header (no timezone)
SPAM: Hit! (1.31 points) Character set doesn't exist
SPAM: Hit! (1.77 points) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch
SPAM: Hit! (3.32 points) BODY: Doesn't ask any questions
SPAM: Hit! (1.57 points) BODY: Talks about direct email
SPAM: Hit! (1.6 points) BODY: Offers a full refund
SPAM: Hit! (1 point) BODY: Asks for a billing address
SPAM: Hit! (1 point) BODY: Asks you for your signature on a form
SPAM: Hit! (0.7 points) BODY: Contains word 'profits' in all-caps
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) BODY: Contains 'for only' some amount of cash
SPAM: Hit! (1.72 points) BODY: Talks about email marketing
SPAM: Hit! (3.46 points) BODY: Contains word 'AMAZING'
SPAM: Hit! (1.2 points) BODY: HTML mail with non-white background
SPAM: Hit! (1.55 points) BODY: Contains an ASCII-formatted form
SPAM: Hit! (1.56 points) Contains phrases frequently found in spam
SPAM: [score: 12, hits: all you, are you, broadcast]
SPAM: [email, check credit, city state, com subject,]
SPAM: [com with, credit card, credit cards, email]
SPAM: [address, email advertising, email from, email]
SPAM: [package, find out, for free, for only, for your,]
SPAM: [free bonus, free order, from our, increase]
SPAM: [sales, number exp, order form, order phone, our]
SPAM: [broadcast, phone number, product service,]
SPAM: [receive least, response rate, send out, state]
SPAM: [province, thank you, the internet, this email,]
SPAM: [this program, united states, web site, what you,]
SPAM: [when you, with our, with your, within days, you]
SPAM: [for, you not, you receive, you you, your]
SPAM: [business, your email, your name, your]
SPAM: [order]
SPAM: Hit! (3.33 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
SPAM: Hit! (1.75 points) From and To the same address
SPAM: Hit! (1.8 points) No MX records for the From: domain
SPAM: Hit! (2 points) Received via a relay in relays.osirusoft.com
SPAM: [RBL check: found
225.159.1.212.relays.osirusoft.com.]
SPAM: Hit! (2 points) Received via a relay in relays.ordb.org
SPAM: [RBL check: found 57.62.43.216.relays.ordb.org.]
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Received via a relay in ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org
SPAM: [RBL check: found
225.159.1.212.ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org., type: 127.0.0.6]
SPAM:

I highly recommend this app to anyone who's a unix mail user.  It even runs on my OS X box.

Harry S Truman. "If you cannot convince them, confuse them." [Quotes of the Day]

I get to bring the car in for it's 90,000 mile maintenance. This one is a major maintenance for my car, so I figure I should get it done. And since I didn't do it at 60,000. I was in the process of moving to MA around then so it just kind of slipped my mind.

I love my car, I have to say that it has been a wonderful car for me. It took me across the country when I moved here. Despite it's little dents all over it keeps on running and getting me where I need to go with pretty decent milage. It's a '95 Nissan 200SX, and I hope I'm able to keep it for at least a while longer.

ForbiddenLibrary.com is a guide to banned books.  It tells of some of the places books have been banned as well as the reasons for their banning.

Wilson Mizner. "A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something." [Quotes of the Day]

My friend Lyn writes about not being sure what she wants her blog to be about.  I think this is one of the aspects of blogging I find frustrating too.  I fluctuate between wanting to babble endlessly about my life and wanting to have something of 'substance'.  In the end I think it all boils down to this blog being bits and pieces of my life, complete with all my silly thoughts.

I also have to agree with her on the main character from .hack//SIGN.  I keep hoping for a bit more from this show.  Right now I'm watching because I want to figure out the mystery.  I figure either they'll come up with something that makes me go "wow! what an original idea!" or "AUGH, well that whole thing was a waste of time."

I woke up about 4:30 this morning and got all cranky because I realized that I had two choices. I could either crawl back into bed and try to sleep another hour or crawl back into bed and just slowly wake up. I decided for the second, since I want to get into work early today (and the first would mean I'd actually sleep another few hours and get into work late). On the plus side, I have a massage appointment tonight. It feels quite needed.

• Cold Sweat - Danielle Dax

• Pump My Body to the Top - Lords of Acid

• Learnin' The Blues - Frank Sinatra

• Yeah, Whatever - Moev

• Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails

• Single Life - The Rugburns

I'm looking for some more Jazz to put into my CD collection. Anyone have any good recommendations? I think I just need to go to Amazon and just start playing track samples.

I remember as a kid running around playing things like cops and robbers during recess.  Looks like even that isn't allowed anymore.  I'm sorry, but the world just keeps going more and more insane.  I think my favorite part of the article is:

 Even without the school policy, zero tolerance is the law in Colorado, considered at the forefront of the movement. Colorado law mandates expulsion for students who "carry, bring, use or possess a firearm or firearm facsimile at school."
     Nowhere does the law mention fingers, but Mrs. Mickle said the conduct code gives administrators the latitude to deal with problems as they arise. "It's definitely not spelled out in the district discipline policy because we can't predict what every student is going to do," she said. "That's what we're here for: to interpret those details."

Those damn finger guns.  I think we now need to just chop off kids fingers if they ever point them like a gun.

James Thurber. "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."

[Quotes of the Day]

A week or so ago i got a note from the Electric Company that there would be about a 15 minute interruption of service sometime between friday night and monday morning. No problem I thought.

Well, this morning I woke up at 8am. Not because of an alarm or anything, I just happened to wake up. Probably the sounds of traffic outside. It seems that sometime during the night they'd flipped the power. Did they have to wait till the time when nobody would notice in time for work the next day?

*Grumble*

John Kenneth Galbraith. "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error." [Quotes of the Day]

It's a rainy spring day out today. When i woke up it was overcast and by noon it was raining. Days like this always just suck all the energy from me. I want to crawl back into bed and do nothing. So today I did just that. It was quite nice.

Now it's four o'clock and I still feel all lazy. I'm not sure how I want to end out the day. I'm thinking I might be in the mood for a little bit of sushi tonight. Though the idea of leaving the house makes me go bleh.

Shamefully stolen from another web page (though it looks like it was pulled from yet another LiveJournal). I just had to share this image:

Ugs. I really should have slept more last night. I'm all cranky and headachey now. I forsee a nap in my near future. Especially since I have plans for the second half of the day.

On a more amusing note, I can now walk into my regular weekend breakfast place and say 'the usual' if I'm sitting at the counter and get just what I want. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

Redownloaded it from another person and it works! I'll check it out in the morning though. Been sleeping and waking too much.

So I notice that Chobits episode 6 is out and download it. There's something definitely WRONG with the avi file. I can play it bsplayer but there is tons of artifacting. Unfortunately, this makes it basicly unwatchable.

I really hope this gets fixed up. I'm all grumpy now.

So I saw the mouse again tonight. He zipped out of the kitchen and then suddenly saw me and vroomed down the hall. I turned to look where it went and it was GONE. I'm sure it's got a sekrit trap door that it is escaping through. One of these days I'll see it escape through it.

Here's a quiz I just took:

	I have an acute sense of style. And who wouldn't with a 12 foot wingspan? I can be a little cocky, but not without grounds. Mine is a battle of tact as well as strength, as flight won't win a alone. Like the archangels of lore, I have a sharp eye, and a keen sense of danger. I seek out injustice, and I stop it. From above. What's your superpower?

Wait till you see what happens when you translate the music itself into images.  Supposedly viewing a song by Aphex Twin with certain visualization software will show a nice spooky looking face.  Pretty cool!

Which means "I'm Hungry, let's go shopping".  Japanese Toymaker Takara have released a device that translates dog's barks. All I can think of is the Dexter's Lab episode where he creates something similar and the dog runs around babbling senselessly.

Oscar Wilde. "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

[Quotes of the Day]

The black water of Rio Negro and the yellowish brown water of Rio Solimoes converge near the Brazilian city of Manaus. For a few miles they refuse to blend, flowing side by side as if intent on maintaining their autonomy. This two-toned phenomenon happens to be the official beginning of one of the world's longest and sexiest rivers, the Amazon. I hereby name it your official metaphor of the moment, Scorpio. Will the unmingled flows in your life eventually mix, as the Amazon's do? Or will they remain separate indefinitely? That depends: What do you want?

(-- Brought to you by http://wwww.freewillastrology.com --)

There's now a multi-author weblog tool for Radio.  It's pretty damn cool, and an interesting way to do it.  I've been looking at weblog software that has the concept of multi-author blogs.  One thing I like about them is they provide a more interesting way for people to collaborate.  For instance if you have a blog for a product-line you are working on, you can have everyone involved have posting access to it.

Glancing at this tool, it looks like you could even have contributers to the weblog who aren't running radio, since it uses RSS.

The website for Tenchi GXP has been translated to english.  It's pretty nice, it includes trailers for various episodes as well as background information on the series.  This can hold me over until the 3rd OVA comes out.

The creator of smell-o-vision died recently.  Such a shame. I could see the next generation of home theatre systems having a smell-o-vision component.  So instead of 6.1 we'll have 6.1+S systems.

Heck, I'm surprised channels like the Food Network haven't pushed smell-o-vision for television.  Imagine being able to watch Iron Chef and smell the food as they cook it?

Voltaire. "A witty saying proves nothing."

[Quotes of the Day]

I fixed up some of my blogrolling links yesterday. Hopefully this means that some people that weren't being updated will start to be.

Over the weekend Star Wars was on Television. I still remember going to see it as a kid. I know I saw it at least five or six times in the theatre. I actually don't think I'd seen it since I saw Episode I. The scene where Vader takes out Obi-Wan just felt so different to me having seen a young Obi-Wan and Vader. I'll admit that I'm finally starting to get curious about Episode II. I do hope to see it sometime within the first few days it opens.

A year ago today: I finished my last mix, "I, Gregory" (available over on the "DJ" page).  I guess that means I need a new one up sometime soon.

Adam Curry has been covering Pim Fortuyn's assassination, and for me it's been yet another view into the world.  He sums up a lot of it in a post he made this morning.  Yet another reason the net isn't complete crap:  We have people like Adam who care enough to give us more of the story then we get from the standard media.

Last night as I was falling asleep there was something I kept reminding myself I had to post.  Now for the life of me, I can't remember what it was and it is bugging the crap out of me.

Last night I finished watching Fruits Basket.  This show very quickly moved into one of the top places on my list of favorite anime shows. The show has a fairly simple premise, but really ended up surprising me with its depth.  It has episodes that made me laugh out loud, and ones that had me in tears. I don't want to say too much or give anything away, as I have a few friends who read this page who are currently watching it.

Another bonus part of this is that Funimation is going to be releasing this series on DVD in the US.  Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for it.

From the LA Times, an article about high schools that is requiring students have some plans after high school to attend graduation ceremonies. I'm sorry, this is just lame.  You've gone through school, you should get to attend.  It is not like you did anything wrong.  And I don't like the arguments for why they are doing it.

I've resisted hacking my tivo for a while now.  The real reason is that I just am lazy and I haven't yet run into any hack that really jumped out at me.  Until now.  Someone's working on a way to set up a TiVo with 802.11b.  Yes indeed folks, wireless.  This would rock.  In fact, this is something I think TiVo needs to think about having as an option in the future.

I'll be watching this site for when full instructions and hardware becomes available.

Even with going to sleep early these days I still feel pretty wiped out when I wake up in the morning. I'm almost thinking a nap when I get home from work might be in order.

Vanderwal.net has a great little article about switching to OS X. This mirrors my experience with OS X also.  I had one meltdown, which was partly due to a hardware glitch, but it was a problem that could happen on any OS (I was once again shown why you don't just turn a computer off).

For anyone who is looking for a new computer. I do highly recommend at least looking at Apple.  I have been pleasantly surprised at just how much I don't miss my windows box.

I like doing this a bit. So I'm going to keep doing it every few days. My audiotron stalled sometime during the night, so I just restarted it. Once again, my morning music:

• Ain't That So - Roxy Music

• New Dress - Depeche Mode

• You Make Me Feel So Good - Book of Love

• Hush - Toni Childs

• Date Stamp - ABC

• Dial 9 Hitman - Big Audio Dynamite

• Lakeside Drive - Nitzer Ebb

There ya go. These lists are the order that songs are coming out of my stereo mp3 player. Currently I have over 2800 songs that I've ripped from my CDs in it, so there's a fair amount of music. Everything from Erasure to Meat Beat Manifesto to My Bloody Valentine to Frank Sinatra. It makes for some very odd mixtures of music at times, but I like it.

Emo Phillips. "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."

[Quotes of the Day]

I got a comment on one of my LiveJournal food posts. It seems that in IE if you type 'chickenpotpie' into the address line it brings up the search results for that word and my food blog is the first site. Yes, I am the master of the Chicken Pot Pie. Search engines are just too wacky sometimes.

Whew. This weekend felt really long. Friday was just me hanging out waiting for my Oxygen (which I never ended up getting, I may rant on that later). I went to see Spider-man and really enjoyed it. I thought it really felt like I was watching a comic book.

Saturday was me bumming around Harvard Square for a bit. Hit the used CD store and was VERY happy to find some Danielle Dax CDs. One of them being an import that I know would be very hard to find. I also found a promo copy of Steel Angel Kurumi on DVD. It looks to be a promotional copy for stores or reviewers, but it was under $15 so I picked it up. Then my friend Heather and I went to go see the Escaflowne movie.

I have to say that the movie didn't thrill me much. I am a big fan of the tv series and the movie just left me kind of bored. I hated the character designs, they just didn't look right. I would have much prefered a sequel to the tv series then a whole new story.

Today I woke up early and drove down to CT to see my family. My uncle and cousin were in town to visit with my Grandmother, who is currently in recovery from congestive heart failure. She's actually looking pretty well, though she's lost quite a bit of weight since I saw her at Thanksgiving. I could tell she couldn't wait to be out of the recovery place she was in. Hopefully she'll be out in a few days.

Now I'm off to sleep so I can go to rehab in the morning. I actually completely slept through my clock Friday morning, so didn't make it then.

It ends up my cousin and uncle did make it to CT late last night. I just decided moments ago that I should be driving down there to do to the family thing. As a result I'll be keeping fairly quiet today. I've got lots of things I feel like rambling about here, but I'll do it later (maybe).

I want episode 26 to be fansubbed! I just got done watching 25 and it just left off at a point where I want to know what happens next!

I feel like I'm zooming into the past. Tonight I was playing around with playlists in iTunes and realized I could burn audio CDs. Yeah, it is burning from mp3s so there's so audio suckage, but it didn't really sound that bad. Especially for something I'm burning to listen to in the car.

I used to love making mix tapes of the music I had. Not mix tapes/cds liked I'd do now as a DJ, these were just selections of songs to send to friends. They were a great way of sharing music with people. There was also a bit of creativeness in how you put together the tape. I always liked trying to make sure the tapes I made would flow from one song to another. Making mixtapes was the first step towards me being a DJ too. That same thinking about how the music flows from song to song is very important when you are actually mixing songs together.

So, back to iTunes. iTunes lets you burn CDs in both audio and mp3 format. With more and more audio devices understanding these I'm psyched to have this capability, even if I can't quite use it yet (though I do have my eyes on that code free dvd player that can, and it is on sale!). Looks like it's time for a new CD (just not a new DJ mix).

(Oh, and for those of you waiting to hear the set from the Phoenix Landing, I'm working on it.)

Clyde B. Aster. "When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty sure he's going to have a go at it anyway."

[Quotes of the Day]

There's only one thing better then coffee and a coffee cake muffin in the morning. That's vanilla coffee and a nice and WARM coffee cake muffin in the morning. YUM.

Once again waking in the middle of the night prompts the late night music selection. Brought to you by my Audiotron

• Cinderella Undercover - Oingo Boingo (<--i love this song)

• Hold On - Nitzer Ebb

• White Trash - OMD

• Pulp Culture - Thomas Dolby

• Now - Meat Beat Manifesto

• Close My Eyes - Ride

• Earl Grey - Gus Gus

All these songs actually did quite a good job of lulling me back to a state where I wanted to think about sleep. Nothing too hard. And they were mostly songs I didn't know real well.

I just got done watching episode 24. Wow. I'm still wondering where this series is going to end up, but I am enjoying the ride it is taking me on.

This weekend looks like it could end up being quite hectic. My grandmother has been in CT visiting my parents and checking out places for assisted living this last week, and while she was there ended up in the hospital with congestive heart failure again.

She has some pretty severe heart problems and the doctors are saying that she only has a year or two left to live. Basicly she'll be able to keep going on as she has been, but one of these days she'll end up in the hospital like this last week and not come out of it. Most of this I've known since around Thanksgiving, but the uncertainty is what makes it more stressful.

The good side of this is that she is now in CT to stay. The doctor does not want her travelling back to Virginia at all. This makes getting her into assisted living a bit easier (because she has not been thrilled with the idea). I think it really will be better for her if she doesn't have to worry about keeping a whole house together.

As a result of all this I'm probably going to go down to CT on Sunday if my uncle comes into town. I know he's trying to find a way to get out here and I hope he makes it. There's also a possibility that he'll be bringing my cousin who I haven't seen in years.

On the more fun side of things I'm hoping to see Spiderman tomorrow and then the Escaflowne movie on Saturday. Both are things I've been anxiously awaiting. And I have Friday off, which lets me get done all the crap I've put off for the last week.

When I got home from work tonight I was very tired, very cranky, and just had no patience for anything. After taking a nap I suddenly realized that this is why kids throw tantrums when they get overtired. If there had been anyone else around me I probably would have ripped off their head and shoved it down their neck the moment they opened their mouth.

But now that the nap is over things are much better. Though I have a craving for something sweet. Thank god there's some ice cream in the freezer.

It'll be a paradoxical week, Scorpio. You'll be simultaneously boggled and soothed as you witness the profound interdependence of apparent opposites. There'll be open secrets and genuine imitations and passive aggressions. You'll encounter clever fools and peaceful warriors. "Anarchy rules!" may be your mantra as you wade through an organized mess in search of something resembling toasted ice. New traditions will be born. Partial pregnancy may be an operative metaphor. Fuzzy logic will be de rigueur.

At least this time the weather reports had been saying today is going to be rainy all week. So I'm prepared for it. And tomorrow is my friday off. Anyone wanna go see Spidey with me during the day tomorrow?

Tom Stoppard. "It is better to be quotable than to be honest."

[Quotes of the Day]

I'll be offline for most of the day today. I've got a doctor's appointment in a few and them I'm zooming into work for the rest of the day. Hopefully I'll get to enjoy a little of this sun as I'm zooming to work.

The first day of May and already it feels different. When I went out to get coffee this morning the air smelled so fresh, so spring-like. It was just what I needed to help snap me out of my grumpy mood. I really do seem to be effected by the level of sunlight there is every day.

Oh, and I remembered to say \"rabbit rabbit\" this morning.