September 2002 Archives

Genki Hats has moved to a keen new site, and added a number of new hats! I like the Lonely Bunny Hat myself:

Are you a lonely bunny? Do you wander the city not belonging? Who are you really? This hat will help you discover your true self. (self discovery not guaranteed)

Now I just need to see if they'll do an Alien 9 hat for me. Though that would probably be hard with the wings.

As I slowly make my way through the X TV series I can't help but think that it really needs some kind of Toastyfrog-esque treatment of it. It just seems to scream for it.

I don't think that I could ever buy something called Elephant Lube. Even if it is "comfort food for the skin".

I just discovered a yummy snack. Pocky dipped in peanut butter. YUM. (ooops, got that wrong first try)

Mahoromatic season two has started! I was startled to see episode one show up on the list of the new fansubs out yesterday. I just got done watching it and give it a thumbs up (especially since the character I hate wasn't in it much). It will be interesting to see what direction they take things in this season.

Now time to see what other shows are due out this fall.

Glenn Fleishman from 802.11b News had an article in the Seattle Times about Bluetooth. It covers just what is so cool about this technology and the devices that use it. I can't wait for there to be more things I can link to with my computer.

Bluetooth starts to reach usefulness: My article in today's Seattle Times discusses how Bluetooth works and in which devices you can find Bluetooth support, or how to add it to existing equipment. My prognostication, implied in the article, is that once you have enough equipment shipping with Bluetooth built in, an extra $50 or so to enable your computer or laptop won't seem like much because of the additional utility. Cell data is the big motivator here: if I can get a 2.5 or 3G phone with Bluetooth that I can control entirely from my computer as a network connection, then why bother with infrared, cables, or other proprietary solutions? [80211b News]

I'd think that within a year or so Bluetooth will start being built into computers so that you don't need to go and buy something like a USB adapter for it. What I want now is something that will snap onto the bottom of my Palm IIIx to let that be bluetooth enabled.

Yesterday, Apple released the beta of iSync. For those of you not familiar with what Apple's been up to lately, this is their application for syncing address books and calendars. It is specificly designed to work with their address book and iCal. So far it provides support for syncing multiple macs, to cell phones (over bluetooth!), and Palms.

I downloaded it yesterday and promptly syncronized it to my phone, and it worked flawlessly. Gotta love it. Unfortunately, as with all beta software, there are little issues here and there. Luckily Apple provides a link to their knowledge base section on it. Overall it is pretty decent. The biggest complaint being that syncing between two computers requires a .mac account. I'm hoping that for the full release there is some kind of Rendezvous based syncing. Since it seems like the perfect place to use that technology.

Two nice cool mornings in a row. I can't wait till the leaves start changing. I love it when it's nice and cool at night. Even if this does mean the coughing will start to increase when I go outside. But it is such nice weather to sit outside and read some. Finished the first GN of Wish this morning while sitting on my doorstep. Not bad, but not amazing. The third Chobits is up next.

When I was in 7-11 today I saw they had Smack Ramen. What a wonderful name for a product.

Tom Lehrer. "I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" [Quotes of the Day]

According to a recent study in Germany,

Blondes will die out in 200 years.

Researchers predict the last truly natural blonde will be born in Finland - the country with the highest proportion of blondes.

Posted without comment because I am just kind of speachless:

Something completely different. Inscrotable! The always-hinky MichaelZ sends along this link to the Scrotum Gift Shop down under. [Radio Free Blogistan]

Another fun link to keep me occupied when I can't sleep late at night. This one found over on #!/usr/bin/girl is for Sand Art. I played around for a bit and decided I need to plan out more of what I want to do. I just wish it had some more colors.

Saikano episode 10 ends with the following message from the subtitlers:

A friendly warning from the team:

This is the end of happiness in Saikano. If you would prefer the anime to have a happy ending consider stopping here and pretending there are no more episodes. Continuing will only bring misery and pain. You have been warned...

Now, this is from a series where there is already a pretty hefty body count. I'm not quite sure how anyone could have been expecting a happy ending from this show. Of course, this just makes me think "You mean it gets more sad?" Once again, as much as I like this show I'm glad there will only be thirteen episodes.

I just finished watching episode 26 of Chobits. Very solid ending for the show. More thoughts on it later once I've had time to digest it more.

My friend Chris had been talking about a new game over on PopCap.com. Last night I finally gave it a try and am once again hooked. The goal is to make words using a large set Scrabble tiles. I was never really good at Scrabble, but I can't seem to stop playing this.

Sports Night was one of my favorite shows when it was on. Now it will be available on DVD. Anyone wanna get this for me for my birthday? huh huh? It's on my wish list already

I'm such a geek.

Anyone able to recommend some good sites for people who are just starting to learn to play Go? After watching Hikaru no Go I keep finding myself kind of curious about the game. But when I play the computer in the version I found I get my ass continually kicked.

I guess the other option would be to find someone who is a more experienced player to help me really get a feel for the game. Since teaching myself isn't working real well.

I keep thinking about writing my own updates to blagg. My two biggest complaints about it are listed as todo's but they are starting to drive me nuts. The first is that it only uses post titles to determine uniqueness. The second is that it doesn't clear out old posts that aren't in the feed.

The final thing I'd love it to do is have a way to update posts on LiveJournal when they change, but I'm not sure if that is possible. Right now I'm forced to go and delete the old post on LJ and have it repost.

George Burns. "I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty." [Quotes of the Day]

I keep waking up between 4:30 and 5. This sucks.

A friend pointed me at the SkyscraperPage.com which has diagrams of skyscrapers from around the world. You can sort them by a number of different properties like when they were built.

Holy Heck. I just read over on k-chan's page that the R2 release of Saikano will be be subtitled in English. I know what I want for my birthday now! This is great news (especially since nobody in the states has picked up this series yet).

It's been about a week since my last update as to what I'm watching. Here's a sampling of stuff from the last week.

• Witch Hunter Robin - Episode 12 looks like it gives us our first hints as to some of the greater story going on. I found myself surprised on a number of levels by some of the things revealed, and can't wait for the next one.
• Chobits - Episode 25 brings us to the second to last episode and things are wrapping up. Overall I've liked this series. There were a few too many recap episodes and one too many fluff episodes, but it will still go onto my DVD wish list.
• RahXephon - I just got done watching the fourth episode and this show still amazes me. I think it's got one of the best soundtracks, up there with Noir. It fits in with the show so wonderfully. I'm hoping the show doesn't become another Eva where you get to the end and you can tell they just weren't sure how to end it.
• Ai Yori Aoshi - This show started around the same time as Chobits, but has been taking a bit longer for them to subtitle. It's definitely a show I like a lot though. It does have its weaker episodes, but IMHO the strong episodes are really strong. Luckily it's getting away from the sillier episodes and towards the more serious ones for the ending.

Right now I'm waiting for Saikano episode 10 to finish downloading (and preparing myself for the tragedy level to go up some more). I'm also getting some friends together to see Spirited Away tomorrow night. Should be fun.

John Robb is having the same issues I have with AT&T. Here they are with a nice digital cable setup. With boxes that support things like S-Video and Digital Audio and they don't let you use either of them. The more I think of it how can they say this is better then normal cable (beyond having more channels).

I already know that at least some of the movie channels are broadcasting in 5.1. Since I have a stereo that supports that I want to be able to get the benefit of it. Anyone know if places like AT&T will let you use your own box? I'm perfectly willing to tell them I have it and give them whatever access they want to it.

Lyn's laptop died over the weekend so it looks like there won't be posts from her for a few days. It's funny (or maybe sad?) how much I look forward to reading some people's blogs, even if they aren't posting a lot these days.

Bismarck. "When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice." [Quotes of the Day]

Damn you Nintendo. You may not have the most hi-tech system out there, but you keep putting out games that look really fun and cool. Animal Crossing looks particularly interesting. Damn you Dom for mentioning it and feeding my toy urges.

It sounds like the RahXephon movie may be largely a retelling of the series as it will supposedly have 20 minutes of new footage. Bleh. I hate it when they do that kind of thing. Of course I still haven't finished watching the series, so I'm not sure how much there will be to tell after it is over.

I wonder how easy it would be to park the Skycar in my neighborhood.

Moller International has developed the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.

You've always known it was just a matter of time before the world demanded some kind of flying machine which would replace the automobile. Of course, this machine would have to be capable of VTOL, be easy to maintain, cost effective and reliable. Well, we at Moller International believe we have come up with the solution. That solution is the volantor named M400 Skycar.

I want one of these to zoom around in. 350+ MPH sounds just about my speed. As zannah would say: VROOOM. [link found at BoingBoing]

I just got done watching the season premiere of Buffy. Maybe, just maybe, there's some hope for this season.

BoingBoing has a link to a a Wired story about Horror writers against illiteracy.

Horror writers against illiteracy. The Horror Writers of America are hosting a charity auction on eBay to raise money for American literacy charities.

Among the items up for auction: a rare softcover advance copy (bound galley) of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs issued by St. Martin's Press in 1988; the first U.S. hardcover edition of Clive Barker's The Damnation Game; and a bundle of limited-edition prints depicting scenes from Stephen King novels such as Carrie and The Shining.

And here's a link to the Auction items. Some of them are pretty cool, if only I could afford to spend more money right now.

As I've been setting up this Radio to LJ mirror I've been getting more peeks into how LiveJournal does things. In particular I've been looking at how LJ formats its posts and what your options are for changing how it looks. LiveJournal is just horrible if you want to customize how your stuff looks. Radio, MovableType, and Blogger all have pretty good template systems that let you do anything you want quite easily. From what I could tell of LiveJournal it's not quite the same. It's like you have variables for different sections of the Journal that you set. I guess for me it isn't just a question of configurability either. LiveJournal feels much more closed. I'm more limited by what they allow me to do as opposed to what I want to do.

So why bother with LJ at all? Because I lot of my friends are there. And at least one or two have complained that they have to go someplace else to read about what's going on in my life. I also like the idea of bridging the two communities. So for now I'll experiment with mirroring posts. If it ends up not working then I'll just stop doing it.

Big thanks to Bryant over at Population: One for his help with the blagg and LiveJournal plugin stuff too.

This is a test post.

Holy Heck. After FIVE months of complaining to my landlord about the broken faucet in my kitchen sink it is being fixed. It's taken the guy litterally 10 minutes to do. Why did this have to take so long?

The NYTimes has an article on the 10 most beautiful experiments of all time.

...Most of the experiments -- which are listed in this month's Physics World -- took place on tabletops and none required more computational power than that of a slide rule or calculator.

What they have in common is that they epitomize the elusive quality scientists call beauty. This is beauty in the classical sense: the logical simplicity of the apparatus, like the logical simplicity of the analysis, seems as inevitable and pure as the lines of a Greek monument. Confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside, and something new about nature becomes clear. [New York Times]

I even remembered some of these from science classes back in High School.

This one comes from a mailing list I'm on. BookCrossing.com. It is kind of like Where's George for books. The idea is that you enter a book into their system and label the book with the BCID (BookCrossing ID number). Then give it to a friend, or leave it in a coffeeshop, or donate it to a charity. When someone finds the book they are supposed to go to the web site and make an entry that they found the book. One page I found interesting was their status page, which lists books that have been recently released or caught, and some other stats. My favorite is most travelled books:

1. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
2. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
3. The Paradigm of Uncertainty by Lori
4. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Personally I'd have a somewhat difficult time doing this because I don't like giving away books I've read. Well, unless they sucked, in which case I don't care too much. I should look around my apartment and see if anything qualifies.

Plato. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." [Quotes of the Day]

So earlier today I posted to my LiveJournal that I wish there was a way to mirror my posts from here to there. Almost immeadiately a friend there pointed me to someone else I knew who was doing just what I wanted to. So of course I had to look into it.

I now have it set up to post from my blog to LJ once an hour, adding any posts that weren't there yet. It's pretty cool. I used a tool called blagg along with a modified version of the LiveJournal plugin. So far it looks like it works okay. One thing I want to do now is have it so that my mirrored posts use the comments code from my actual web site, so that there is one master list of comments for any given post.

Thanks for bearing with the spam over on LJ.

From boxofficeguru.com is a report of a good weekend for Spirited Away:

The Japanese animated blockbuster Spirited Away sparkled in its North American debut grossing an estimated $450,000 from only 26 theaters for a vibrant $17,313 average. Buena Vista released Japan's highest-grossing film in ten major markets this weekend and looks to add another ten next weekend as it continues its steady rollout.

Machinegirl posted it first, then while I was typing this up I noticed /usr/bin/girl did also. This is the ultimate in fridge technology. I want one. But I don't think it would fit in the space I have.

Updated: Here's an article from techtv on it.

Soren Kierkegaard. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." [Quotes of the Day]

I've added a new site into my blogrolling list. There's now a link to the den of otakudom. It was one of those places I found while following from link to link on people's site. And then I recognized the name as being someone who posts on the Anime on Dvd forums a lot.

My friend over at sometimesblue.net has done a site redesign and converted over to MovableType. I really like the look of it currently. The other added bonus is that she now has an RSS feed that I can subscribe to.

Here's two fun links from her site:

• In Passing... - This is is "a collection of the random things I see and overhear on a daily basis."
• http://www.wemadeoutinatreeandthisoldguysatandwatchedus.com/ - A site with one of the best domain names ever. From the site: "The site dedicated to odd quotes, strange statements, bad writing and other oddities of the English language."

Let's hope she keeps posting regularly.

Looks like Adam is going to be on TV again:

The past couple of weeks have been really tough for me blogging-wise. Ever since the Osbournes' mega-success in the states (now world-wide) we'd been receiving offers to do a similar show in Europe. After the family (Patricia, Christina and I) agreed we would entertain the thought seriously, we started looking at the offers. Friday evening it boiled down to a green light on the deal. Starting this Christmas, RTL4 will broadcast 'Adam's Family' every week. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

So now one of the questions is, who's gonna encode it, subtitle it, and put it online? If the folks doing anime subtitles can get a show online in four to five days someone should be able to do this pretty quickly. Or maybe Adam will dub a version of it for us. ^_^

I seem to remember reading about this in someone's blog a while back and wanting to post about it. Toasty Bear Products are:

Adorable cuddly plush animals filled with buckwheat or flax seed and our soothing blend of 9 herbs so they will heat in your microwave and bring you years of huggable pleasure.

I think this is supposed to be like the aromatherpy beanbag thing I have. You put it in the microwave to heat it, it gets all nice and warmm and is good for muscle aches or stress. I should actually use mine more often. But the idea of a stuffed animal as one sounds cool. Plus I kind of love the idea of shoving a stuffed animal into the microwave.

A friend of mine just now told me the bears are great. But that whenever they warm one up the cats all want to just sit on it.

Also available is the Toasty Manatee (just what I've always wanted).

Once again proving that I should just make a link to this site in blogrolling, Boing Boing has one off the more interesting links today:

Fetish map. Check out this amazing map of fetishes, which attempts to relate all fetishes to one another. Link

(via Making Light) [ via Boing Boing Blog]

I feel so enlightened. Though there's lots of things in the map to just make me go 'Um. Ew.'. This seems like something that would show up on Graham Norton.

Unknown. "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again." [Quotes of the Day]

This sounds a lot like the movie descriptions in the print version of TV Guide. I used to love going through and seeing how they described some movies. Godzilla was something like 'Ornery Lizard stomps arond town' or something similarly strange.

I'm almost done with the first season of Galaxy Angel. What a wacky show. It's another one of those shows in the 15 minute format. This one is about a group of women/girls who are looking for lost technology. But it rarely seems to focus on that. It's much more cartoonish then a lot of things I've watched. And I think for the most part it works, though there are some episodes that I definitely didn't quite get the joke. The best episode is one that has to do with them helping out a pizza delivery service (Mint Rules!).

I think I heard that this show was picked up on DVD over here. While I find it funny, I continually get the feeling that there are a lot of jokes that I might get more if I were from Japan. It's always interesting seeing how they translate things like that. Anyways, I give the series a thumbs up overall and it's placed on my 'pick up on DVD if/when it's released over here' list.

I just watched the first episode of Joss Whedon's latest show, Firefly. I thought it was okay, but nothing to really write home about. I'll probably keep TiVoing it for the moment. I think they need to work on pacing a little bit, but that may have been because it was the first episode.

My pulse was racing. Lesson learned, don't let work get to you too much. When you go home, leave work at work.

Franklin P. Jones. "The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it." [Quotes of the Day]

A friend of mine invited me along to The Kendall Cafe last night. I had a great time. We were there to see Mike Viola, who was really good. It might be another CD for me to put onto my wish list.

Of course I also just found out that Steve Poltz, who is from an old San Diego Band called The Rugburns, is playing next week. I think I'll have to go.

Once again, courtesy of that cool guy over at http://freewillastrology.com/

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, music critic Joel Selvin panned the singing of Mariah Carey. Concerning her "relentless swoops, whoops and fluttering notes," Selvin said, "no less an authority than Jerry Wexler, producer of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, calls it 'over-souling.'" I bring this up, Scorpio, because you're close to doing the equivalent of "over-souling" in your own life. Please step back from the brink. No matter how cool you are, no matter how skilled or smart or attuned, don't beat people over the head with your magic and prowess.

Wow. I haven't done a Friday Five in ages.

1. Would you say that you're good at keeping in touch with people? Unfortunately no. I'm soso good. I seem to be good for a bit, then bad, then good, then bad. I really do need to work on it. But luckily at least a good chunk of my friends seem to be as flaky as me.
2. Which communication method do you usually prefer/use: e-mail, telephone, snail mail, blog comments, or meeting in person? Why? In general, it's a case by case thing. I like email a lot. Probably because it fits me being flaky now and then. But if I need to talk to someone right away phone is probably my best. I used to be the kind of person who could sit on the phone for hours and hours and hours every day.
3. Do you have an instant messenger program? How many? Why/why not? How often do you use it? Yes indeed. I have accounts with most of the major systems. Since I have way too many friends who will only use one specific system, and with each person it's something different. And I'm always on IM. I won't always respond to everyone, but I'm always on it.
4. Do most of your close friends live nearby or far away? These days I'd say more live nearby. Though I do have a lot of friends who live far away. I think part of it comes from having been online so long.
5. Are you an "out of sight, out of mind" person, or do you believe that "distance makes the heart grow fonder?" Somewhere in between.

And a big happy one year birthday to http://fridayfive.org/

jlist.com has all kinds of 'wacky' stuff from Japan. There are definitely some things that jumped out at me:

• The My Neighbor Totoro Backpack - Because Totoro just rules.

• Hello Kitty Microwave Coffee Maker - Does this really work??

• Hello Kitty Toilet Paper -- green - Because I certainly want to wipe my ass with Hello Kitty

• The Dog Toilet Paper - pink - or maybe a dog

• Hello Kitty Pink Mayonnaise Cup - For those times you want to carry around Mayonnaise?

• Puchi Onigiri Maker - So I can make my own Onigiri!

Top ten search words that people used to hit my site:

#reqs: search term

        

The New York Times has two articles online talking about Spirited Away and Hayao Miyazaki. Here's the links:

Boorish Gods and Sad Swine. Japan hasn't yet designated Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away") as an official living national treasure, but he does have his own museum in Tokyo. By Dave Kehr. [New York Times: Movies]

Conjuring Up Atmosphere Only Anime Can Deliver. The theme of the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic anime fantasy is dislocation. The movie could be considered Mr. Miyazaki's "Through the Looking Glass." By Elvis Mitchell. [New York Times: Movies]

Jean Cocteau. "We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?" [Quotes of the Day]

Today in my Amazon Gold Box. I found one of the best offers ever. I always get a kick out of the names on the power tools. Especially when I'm clueless when it anything like that. But when I looked closely I decided this was the funniest Gold Box offer I've ever seen:

What a bargin!

A friend of mine just pointed me to this article about a possible Hitchhiker movie. I'm not quite sure what I think of this. I think if they didn't keep true to Adams' feel they'd have a lot of pissed off fans.

Kingdom Hearts came out yesterday and it's quite amazing so far. I've only played for a few hours but I'm already very impressed with the production values on it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's the latest game from Squaresoft for the PS2. This time they teamed up with Disney to make a game that combines the worlds of Squaresoft with the worlds of Disney. They included so many Disney characters in the game, and most of them are voiced by the original actors (For instance, you have Chris Sarandon voicing Jack Skellington).

I'll give more updates on what I think of the game as I get deeper into it.

I've seen this one coming for a long time. And I don't blame it on Instant Messenger type things. All the rave mailing lists I've been on have had people typing in this way for at least 8 years. Bleh.

Nu Shortcuts in School R 2 Much 4 Teachers. As more teenagers socialize online, teachers are finding that Internet English is popping up with increasing frequency in school work. By Jennifer 8. Lee. [New York Times: Technology]

Video rental places like Blockbuster have long been known to (rumored to?) sanitize some of the movies they carry. But as technology gets better, companies are able to 'clean up' movies in more subtle ways. I personally find this disturbing. It's bad enough that networks have to cut things for time and content (how come they don't make those versions available). Oh, and the next step, digitally inserted product placements.

Hollywood Balks at High-Tech Sanitizers. Movie studios and filmmakers have decided it is time to get a handle on companies that offer sanitized versions of Hollywood hits to sensitive or politically conservative consumers. By Rick Lyman. [New York Times: Movies]

Oscar Wilde. "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." [Quotes of the Day]

Following in the tradition of the Hello Kitty USB Hub, we have Hubzilla. This time it's firewire. I want one.

And remember:

Charismac claims no responsibility for broken personal or business related property should Hubzilla go on a rampage. As always, a clean and fed Hubzilla results in a happy Hubzilla.

Paolo posted about iCal the other day. iCal is the calendaring software that Apple just announced last week. On first glance I was fairly underwhelmed with what I saw it iCal. But as I looked at it more and explored what Apple was doing with it I started to see where it could be a very useful application (It is still very much a 1.0 product and needs a bit of work though).

The biggest thing iCal lets you do is publish your calendars. It is set up so that once you have a calendar of events in your life, all you have to do is tell it to publish and it will show up on a web page. Here's one that I did for a club calendar. The cool thing is that it is that you can subscribe to calendars that are posted on the net. These each show up as a different category in your own calendar. iCal will even go and check to see if these are updated periodicly.

Upon further researching. I found that Apple used a standard file format for sharing their calendar informaion. Mozilla Calendar is another app that seems to support this. Searching around I found more information on the formats for calendars and contact information. Even MS seems to support these formats.

Now Apple just needs to clean up iCal a little bit more and things will be even better.

Oh dear

TV Commercial Degrades Ducks. "Please contact AFLAC Incorporated (a supplemental medical insurance company) and urge them to stop running TV commercials that represent ducks in dangerous, unnatural, and degrading situations." -- United Poultry Concerns

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Because we all know bad ducks feel when people make fun of them. Are these people against Daffy Duck too?

Sir William Bragg. "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them." [Quotes of the Day]

Last night I finally go to see Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I'd gotten tickets for an advance screening from Tokyo Kid a week or so ago and had been looking forward to it. I was also happy to have the company of my friend Emily who was able to come along on late notice.

Having seen the movie before, I just really wanted to see it on a big screen. Secondarily I wanted to see how the dub of it was. I have to say that John Lassiter did a wonderful job with this movie. I'll be happy if he can handle every Miyazaki movie they bring out over here from this point on. Daveigh Chase did a wonderful job voicing Sen, folks may recognize her voice as Lilo from Lilo and Stitch (she's also going to be in the US version of The Ring (aka Ringu).

If you live in one of the cities it is opening in this weekend I can't urge you enough to go see this movie. A short list of the cities where it is opening includes: LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Washington D.C., Austin, Philadelphia, and Denver. There are other cities, and it is due to open in more cities in the coming weeks. For a list of theatres, one can visit nausicaa.net.

Samuel Goldwyn. "Spare no expense to save money on this one." [Quotes of the Day]

One of the more interesting blogs to show up over at Salon Blogs is the reverse cowgirl's blog. She posts about a new fetish that I just don't get.

i spent the weekend in Vegas, but it wasn't until i was reading Daze Reader this morning that i learned all about tamakeri, a new fetish being featured in Japanese porn, wherein men get kicked in the nads.[the reverse cowgirl's blog]

No thank you.

Pasi once again pointed me to a very cool site. This one is called Hunkabutta.com: Tokyo Photos, A stranger's life in pictures.

Hunkabutta is a site designed to display the life and work of me, Mike Clarke. I've always enjoyed living vicariously through other people's sites, so now I feel that it's time to give something back, to share a little bit of my life in Tokyo with whoever might be interested...

I've thought about doing things like this more then a few times, but I just need to get better at taking pictures.

I made the mistake of stopping in at the used CD store as I made my way to dinner. While there I picked up a few cheap CDs:

• Lush - Gala
• bel canto - magic box
• the Breeders - Last Splash
• Bangles - All Over the Place

I think my best finds were the Bangles and bel canto CDs, especially the later. I've had my eyes out for them used for a while and hadn't seen them at all.

Adam Asks:

Is my blog Hot or Not? [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

I gave him a 9 (too bad you can't give fractions).

An article about what the recording industry is doing to try and stop pirating of music with review copies of songs:

Epic Records Takes Steps to Seal Its Newest Music. The Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music's being traded online with an even stickier solution. By Chris Nelson. [New York Times: Technology]

Why don't they just go lotech like tapes. People still might bootleg it, but it's not quite as easy to make an mp3 from a tape as it is from a CD. You might still get some people doing it, but I bet you'd cut down on a significant portion.

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]

Emo Phillips. "Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps." [Quotes of the Day]

I'm cranky.

From a few days ago:

Porn company wants to buy Napster. A public net-porn company has offered to buy Napster for $2.4 million. LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Francois de La Rochefoucauld. "Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example." [Quotes of the Day]

Here's a recipe from Dane Carlson (I'm reprinting it here so I have a record of it):

Roland's Teriyaki Glaze Pork Ribs: By popular demand, I'm sharing with you my secret Hawaiian recipe for teriyaki glaze pork ribs... a delightful island treat. Cook it over an outdoor grill, watch yourneighbors make a beeline for your back yard... :)

Roland's famous Hawaiian pork ribs in teriyaki glaze:

Couple big slabs pork ribs

Glaze sauce

• 1 cup soy sauce (Hawaiians say "Aloha Brand" soy sauce is best - can be found at Safeway)
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 heaping tablespoons crushed or grated ginger (mo betta if you peel the skin)
• 3 big fingers of garlic, minced
• 1.5 cups brown sugar (C&H preferably to support the workers on the 'aina)
• 2 tablespoons cooking sherry wine
• 3 cloves star anise (they sell in asian stores, kinda pricey but an important element)

Combine all sauce ingrients in a small pot, bring to boil then quickly turn to simmer, let the full flavors of the exotic ingredients meld, gingerly, full of love and aloha. (This might be a good time to put on a Don Ho album and down a couple of Mai Tai's!)

MEANWHILE, fill a big pot w/water and set to rumbling boil. Cut the ribs down to manageable portions and drop into boiling water. Let boil for an hour, oruntil the meat is tender. After boiling, remove from hot water and drain. Baste with brush with the sauce. Don't over coat with sauce cuz it will burn on the open barbeque fire... the sugar content is very flamable.

Cook on open barbecue, a low flame (let flame mellow first so its not jumping at your meat) for not more than 10 minutes or so - the meat is already cooked, the barbecue should just add a nice crisp and smoke flavoring to it. Baste with sauce using brush at least 2x during cooking time.

Finally, take majority of the sauce and thicken. Use 1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed into about 1/2 cup of water as a thickening agent... slowly stir this into your reheated sauce - only adding as much as you need to thicken sauce. (Heat the sauce to high - nearly boiling, then quickly reduce to simmer -- watch it thicken with the cornstarch...)

Remove ribs from barbecue, place in serving dish, add sauce as a glaze atop ribs, garnish with diced green onions (scallions)...

Remove and eat... :)

[From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

Thanks for posting this! I can't wait for a chance to try it out (mmmm Ribs)!

John Robb posts about a new search engine for things that go bumb (and squirk) in the night:

Cthuugle.  A Google clone dedicated to searching H.P. Lovecraft's public domain books.  This is brilliant in concept, but it still needs work in execution.  Why aren't all books available like this?  What a loss for society that they aren't. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

The Press Kit for Spirited Away has been posted to Nausicaa.net. I'm about halfway through reading it and it's pretty cool. I'm going to see it Tuesday night.

Years ago, MTV used to show The Young Ones. It was one of the better shows they ever had on it. When browsing on Amazon today I saw: The Young Ones - Every Stoopid Episode. I want! I want!

See over on a friend's LJ: The First Smiley :-). Why does it not surprise me in the least that it came from CMU?

A friend of mine emailed me to say that my page caused Mozilla to crash when she tried to post a comment. Something is definitely wacky. I think it might be with my HTML, but nothing was jumping out at me. This is the first I've run into something like this crashing Mozilla though. If anyone else is affected by this could they email me and let me know? You can mail me by clicking on that little envelope in the right navbar.

Has anyone else had problems with Mozilla crashing lately? It always seems to be happening when I'm doing things in Radio. Like clicking on the edit link for a post. It just started happening Wednesday morning. I just did a reinstall of Mozilal to see if maybe that would make a difference.

Images of an alternative world. Just what I needed to see at 3am in the morning.

via [Boing Boing Blog]

Looking through my logs. Someone found my site today searching for 'fraternity party sex'. I'm still not quite sure how that happened.

A year ago today I was stunned by what I heard on my way into work. I remember sitting in my car not wanting to turn the radio off before heading up to my office. I'm making my best effort to avoid turning on the TV today, because for me something just doesn't feel right about watching it.

On the other hand, land night I heard some of The Sonic Memorial Project on NPR. I found it very powerful to listen to while I was on my way to meet Emily for dinner. Here's the article on their site about it.

via [JCD]

Yet another reason Radio is cool:

From the Radio Userland license: "The Software is not fault-tolerant and is not designed, manufactured or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of the Software could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage ("High Risk Activities"). UserLand and its suppliers specifically disclaim any express or implied warranty of fitness for High Risk Activities." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

Some Apple-related posts from yesterday.

• 0xDECAFBAD talks about going mac and loving it.
• Apple released iCal their calendaring software. Though they haven't yet released iSync yet.
• Antipixel gives a mini-review of iCal. I have to say I wasn't sure what to think about iCal at first, but as I've used it more and more it has grown on me. I've done a couple of small calendars, like one that will tell me when they are doing street cleaning so I can move my car. And one for Changmian's club night (and maybe Boston club nights) that I published.

The Boston Globe had a great story on WiFi HotSpots in Boston. This still gives me hope that there will be a free hotspot in my area. I think there's definitely a market for both pay and free service though. If you are someone who is travelling a lot, the pay service would be most useful. Because you could more easily find a hotspot. I've found that finding free hotspots is a little bit more difficult because they aren't as heavily promoted.

One of my favorite hobbys:

Welcome to Adobe GoLive: "80,500 websites didn't bother to change the default title on the page they made with Adobe's Go Live software. [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

I'm always looking to see what the page titles are for pages. It's one of the most overlooked things when people are designing their sites. I've seen all kinds of really strange titles that let you see what they based their site design on.

Thanks to Zannah, I started thinking about the what to have done with my remains when I die thing again. I was thinking maybe I'll have myself made into a set of trading cards. And everyone who comes to the funeral gets a pack. And, in the theme of that blank card game I was also thinking maybe I'd make it into a CCG also.

Adam posted about this morning about something that I found a little disturbing

Senator Hillary Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event. [via InstaPundit] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Is it me or does this sound like something out of some science fiction movie. Reality is being changed after it happens, hopefully people will keep documenting what really happened.

Lots of Apple stuff today thanks to Apple Expo - Paris going on. One of the first things is iCal being released. I think this is their move to give users a fairly complete set of basic tools with their Macs. I'll be playing around with it a bunch to see how well it works. The big downside to this announcement is that iSync wasn't released yet. Supposedly there will be a beta out by the end of the month. This was quite disappointing. I was really hoping that I could completely switch over to Apple based apps for this, but until I can sync my calendar and address book with my Palm and phone it isn't as useful as it could be.

On other friends Apple announced that more vendors will be supporting Rendezvous. For instance:

"Apple and Philips share a vision for the future,"� said Gerard Kleisterlee, CEO of Royal Philips Electronics. "We both believe that consumers want devices throughout the home to talk to each other, so that, for example, the music stored in iTunes on your Mac can play through the Philips stereo system in your living room, or the photos stored in iPhoto can be displayed as a stunning slideshow on your Philips Flat TV. Rendezvous helps realize this dream. Philips is particularly pleased that Apple has adopted an open standard and architecture for Rendezvous, and we will support Rendezvous in future Philips products."

Pretty keen IMHO. There weren't any big hardware announcements, but I actually wasn't expecting any.

Forget having sex with buildings. The latest sex craze: sex with traffic cones. What's next? Vending machines? Via [davezilla.com]

Zannah had originally posted about this months ago, but I somehow missed it. Last night when browsing around I found a page about 1000 blank white cards, one of the more interesting cardgames I've seen in a while. Zannah also has her own blank card game page. Now I need to get some blank cards.

Posted without much comment for my friends who write fic:

Scooby Doo/Cthulhu crossover fan fiction. A fanfic crossover made in the nether-hells:

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our careers began in the late

sixties and early seventies when one of Fred's fraternity brothers tried

to sacrifice the entire fraternity and its guests to Shub-Niggurath during

a fraternity party. The four of us were forced to lock the doors and burn

down the building. It killed a few frat boys, but even Fred agreed that

frat boys were easily replacable.

Link Discuss

(via Fark) via [Boing Boing Blog]

Mmmmmm. Scooby Snacks.

I.B.M. to Run a Venture to Rent Films Over the Web. MovieLink, the planned venture by five Hollywood studios to rent movies over the Internet, has chosen I.B.M. to operate the service, which is set to begin by the end of the year. By Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Technology]

I wonder how popular this will really get. With the advent of DVD I know I'm much more aware of video quality these days. Unless I was able to download something that was at least of equal quality (both visual and audio), I don't think I would. I at least wouldn't expect to spend much on it.

Since I've lived in Cambridge my car has been broken into twice. The first time was very obvious, window bashed in and everything. The second was more subtle because they just broke the lock on the passenger side door. If my car wasn't normally messy I would have noticed (and there hadn't been much in there at that time. I mostly learned my lesson). But since then I make a slight effort to park the car where I might see it at night from my window.

This morning in a fit of wakefulness I wonder Just what the heck would I do if I saw someone out there in my car?. Would I yell? I'd probably call 911. But I'd feel so weird being a visible shadow in a window watching it.

Mae West. "I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." [Quotes of the Day]

Dr. Splatt teaches kids about roadkill. Students count dead animals along road  A dozen sixth-graders in this northeast Ohio town are searching for clues to life's mysteries in the form of squished raccoon, cats and other animals they find along the side of the road.  [Exploding Cigar] [jenett.radio]

Now why couldn't I have had more classes like this in school?

I have this urge to write something here today. I don't know what I want to write about really, but I just feel like something is trying to get out. Part of it is this whole being unemployed thing. It's hard getting momentum again. I kind of hit an emotional wall about a week after the layoff where I just stopped for a few days. And it just feels so hard to get moving again.

There's some consulting work on the horizon, but it isn't anything that will necessarily be taking off right away. So I still need to look for work. Well, I need a 'real job' anyways. Benefits are too important too me right now. The hard part is deciding what I want to do. Do I still want to live in the sysadmin world? The consulting stuff I've been helping on is more system design kind of stuff and I'm really enjoying it. Also, at the time I stopped working I was doing more management type stuff and less day to day things. I still did them, but I wasn't in the thick of it. And I'm not sure how much I like the idea of going back to the day to day stuff.

I think I need a road trip. Anyone got any suggestions on cool places to go that aren't more then 12 hours away from Boston?

Antoine de Saint-Exupery. "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." [Quotes of the Day]

FLCL on DVD is a good thing. And it is purty too! Synch-Point did a great job with this title. I want to go back and watch the sub now as I heard it was quite good. Then I wanna rewatch with the director's commentary.

I just hope we don't have to wait as long for #2

Well, this sucks. I just woke up from a nap to read that Farscape has been cancelled. In typical internet geek fashion I went and scanned around for other info on it. Slashdot has a bit about it, where I found a link to Caitlin Kiernan's Journal with a post about it:

I've surprised myself, getting so upset at the cancellation of a television series. But I am. I think maybe Farcsape had come to represent, for me, the hope that something good can come of the system, of the meat-grinder that is mainstream pop culture. Television is a wasteland. There's a clich̩ for you. It's as true now, or truer, than when Harlan Ellison was writing the "Glass Teat" columns back in the 1970s. The crap floats, the cream sinks. This is especially true for science fiction and fantasy programming. And, in the midst of that, we were lucky enough to get four brilliant seasons of Farscape, a series that has defied convention and expectation and has been truly intelligent, truly witty, at times profoundly dark and moving. In short, too good for television.

I caught Farscape from the 2nd or 3rd episode. I really wasn't sure to expect. The episode was "Back and Back and Back to the Future" and I was just kind of blown away by it (it's still one of my favorites). Yes, I did feel that this season was a little uneven. But I also felt like they were taking interesting risks with the kinds of stories they were trying to tell. From the sound of it we'll get to see the rest of the remaining season and it will end. I do hope to hear more official word about this. Right now it's real trippy to go to SciFi's Farscape page and see their gushing about how great the show is.

Oscar Wilde. "I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible." [Quotes of the Day]

Just to post an update of where things are currently:

• Inu-Yasha - I just finished episode 43. This show just keeps dragging me along helplessly. I personally think the writing on it is great. Every time you think you know where it might be headed there's a little twist thrown in. Currently I feel like they are continuously upping the tension every few episodes. I also watched the Inu-Yasha movie the other day. Very good I thought. It felt like a much longer episode, but told a very cool story.

• Hikaru no Go - Another one that I am still liking. I just got up to episode 40 the other day. The last few episodes have been a little slow, but have given a little more insight into the whole world of Go. There was one scene in particular where people were talking about their lives outside of Go as they were waiting to be tested. I'm assuming the show is fairly accurate as to the Go scene over there, and if so I don't think there's anything quite like it over here.

• Saikano - Anxiously awaiting episode 8. Though I love this show, it is so hard for me to watch sometimes. There's a level of sadness that makes it a little hard to start up each new episode. A friend of mine told me she heard the next episode is particularly harsh.

• Ai Yori Aoshi - I haven't been as thrilled about the last two episodes. Though the show is basicly a harem show, I find myself getting annoyed with them not focusing enough on Kaoru and Aoi's relationship. Instead they seem to be setting up all the other women to love him. While I like this show a lot, there's a level of unevenness in it. Though when it is good it can be REALLY good.

That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have more to add in the next few days.

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Take the href="http://www.wiredreflection.com/tests/pets.html" target="new"> "Which Anime pet are you?" test!

I was browsing through Apple's website and found two cool articles they just published about John Digweed on their news page. There's one about John Digweed and how he uses macs, and then the other is about the video work they did for Area 2. Both are pretty cool.

Today when I was at Tokyo Kid picking up my copy of FLCL I saw they had these little packages for Chobits and Onegai Teacher. Upon further inspection I discovered that they were buttons! So I now have four buttons: Yumi, Shimizu, Mizuho, and Mizuho's little sister (whose name I can't remember).

Well, it seems that my layout might have some issues on IE 5.5. The problem is. I don't have access to 5.5. And it seems that once you are running 6, downgrading is a pain in the ass.

So now I'm cranky and not sure what to do. Mostly I feel like saying, "upgrade dammit! and stop using IE and make the switch to Mozilla 1.1" Since things look just dandy in that.

Voltaire. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." [Quotes of the Day]

Okay, this is one of the cooler Google related things I've heard of:

Megnut's mom, who once was guest host on Meg's blog, has invented a new idea -- googlecooking. Meg says "My mother types whatever ingredients she has on hand into Google and then picks the most appealing recipe returned in the results." Smart! [Scripting News]

Hmm, I wonder what I should make this weekend.

I want one of these jackets for my birthday. Can someone please get me one?

I went out to dinner with my friend Patty tonight. She graduates in just a few more days and then will be moving back to NY. It feels like only yesterday she transferred here. I'm going to miss having her around.

We went to Dolphin Seafood and both got this huge seafood and pasta plate. When we went to take our takeout boxes we noticed the waitress had written 'man' and 'woman' on the boxes so we'd know to get the right one.

Adam confirms reports that several TV networks are in a bidding war for "Adam's Family". A docu-drama about his family and their life.

The Macintosh News Network reports that Snood 3.0 beta available for download. From the sound of it, the beta is still a work in progress, but will run on OS X. This game has sucked up large chunks of time on my PC in the past.

I'd just gotten through the first part of Utena. And finally more of it is due to be released in the next few months.

80211b News reports:

New Wi-Fi public hot spot listing site: Noel Jackson has started up OpenNodes.com, a site that will make an attempt at collecting self-reported design-to-be-open Wi-Fi nodes.

I keep hoping there are more options for me than just going down to Starbucks.

Speaking of LiveJournal, the NY Times has an article on A Site to Pour Out Emotions, and Just About Anything Else. It's actually a bit better then I expected. But it does briefly mention online Journals in relation to blogs:

All kinds of people maintain pages on LiveJournal, but the site's own statistics show that its users tend to be 15 to 21 and predominantly female. Many people who have pages at LiveJournal or similar sites like DiaryLand maintain that the form is distinct from Weblogs, or blogs. The journals tend to be more inwardly focused and offer fewer links than blogs, although the categories overlap.

I still maintain that online journals are a subset of the whole blog world. While a lot of the blogs that are popular tend to be full of links outwardly focused, there are also a lot that look a heck of a lot like an online journal. So I still don't feel that it can be considered something seperate.

The article also briefly mentions what I think is one of LJ's strongest features. The ability to have posts that only certain friends of yours can read. I've thought of having some kind of 'friends only' part of my site, but then I'd have to write all the code for it and I'm way too lazy. This is one thing a closed system like LJ lets you do.

Alan Woods. "Blame someone else and get on with your life." [Quotes of the Day]

Well, it's mostly done. I figured I'd put it up and online to help inspire me to keep working on it. My next step is making sure that the page fully validates for XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I may have to do some macro hacking (unfortunately) for the Radio parts of it that don't close img tags.

I have to say that CSS is really kind of fun to work with. There are still some things that I'm learning, but I can really see the power of it now.

Oh yeah, and I haven't gotten to anything beyond the main weblog. I'll slowly convert stuff over in the next few days.

I've been a little slow on the blogging lately. Mostly because I'm working on a new layout done with XHTML and CSS. I'm learning a lot of this as I go. The XHTML part hasn't been too bad so far. The CSS education has been provided by Sams Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours by Kynn Bartlett.

Also, since I know Kynn, here's a bit of a plug for the book.. If you're interested in CSS at all, or are someone like me who kind of figured out how they worked, this book is amazing. It's shown me where many assumptions I have about CSS are wrong. It has also helped explain a lot of the parts of CSS that I quite fully understood.

So, hopefully we'll be pushing a new layout sometime soon that is XHTML 1.0. My biggest problem right now is some of the Radio macros produce tags that aren't right (like img tags).

Adam recently started adding audio to his blog. It's something I'd actually thought of a while back when I was trying to define just what 'life - listed chronologically' was. In my case, I couldn't decide exactly how I wanted to do it. Yesterday, He wrote:

I tried to explain to Patricia yesterday that I'm not really sure what the value of audioblogging is either. It's more like an audio-book than radio at this point. I find myself actually trying to sound more like some of my favorite book-readers (I'm an Audible.com shopper). Can't explain why, it just feels right. Similarly, the feedback on the audio-postings is still 100% positive, so onward we go I guess! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

I can think of one value of audioblogging. It opens up how disabled people can experience a blog. While there are screen reader programs out there for blind web users, this would add a much more personal feeling to a weblog as opposed to just hearing a computerized voice reading out what it sees on the page. Or, going with the book-reader concept, I could download Adam's blog to my iPod to listen to in the car on my way to work.

William Gibson. "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." [Quotes of the Day]

Tom Stoppard. "I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity." [Quotes of the Day]

I forgot to say "Rabbit Rabbit" yesterday!

Friedrich Nietzsche. "It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!" [Quotes of the Day]

Cartoon Network aired the first episode of Inu-Yasha on Saturday night. I thought the dub was decent. I'd give it a 'B'. The worst dub was Kaede. I think the VA for her just didn't quite work for me. I'm curious to hear how viewership was. It will be interesting how many people this show picks up. It starts out fairly slow, but around episode 15 it really picks up speed.

I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't yet.

I was down in CT for a few days because my Sister and Nephew were in town. It was good to see them. Cameron is getting bigger each time I see him. He made me sit and watch Aladdin with him, then I made him watch Totoro, which is really liked. He kept saying, "I want to watch your movie again uncle greg!" So I gave it to him.

Time for a quiet night in doing some cleaning.