October 2002 Archives

I got my first Amazon Associates gift certificate this morning. Thanks to those of you who bought things by following the link below. I'm thinking this may end up helping to fund a Gamecube purchase (because I know I'll never be able to talk my parents into getting me one :)). It's kind of interesting seeing what people bought through me, I should share the report since it is fully anonymous.

I'm a little behind the times it seems. Today, Lukas pointed me at this network called G4 that I guess has been around for a little while. It's a cable TV network devoted to video games. That's right, seven days a week, 24 hours a day of programming to do with video and computer games. From their about page:

G4 is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week television network dedicated to creating a lifestyle brand that is the source of entertainment, news and information about the interactive entertainment industry, including video, computer, online and wireless games, for young adults (18-34) and teens (12-17).

I've watched about four hours of it today and their programming is really varied. They've got news and review type shows. I'm still not sure how they can fill a full 24 hours (they actually don't seem to have about 18 hours or programming or so).

I saw this over on /usr/bin/girl the other day and ment to share it. I used to believe is a site where people share things they used to believe when there were kids. In my case it was having an imaginary friend. My parents say first he'd be outside watching us eat dinner. Then he moved in at some point. I unfortunately remember none of this. I kind of wish I could have known what I was thinking at that time.

Laurence J. Peter. "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" [Quotes of the Day]

I love my TiVo, but many networks don't. They say the ad skipping feature will cause them to lose money. One new network is already working to fight back.

Network Tries to Foil Ad Skipping. The schedule of a new cable network, Fine Living, has been to set up to foil personal video recorders like TiVo from digitally skipping commercials. By Bernard Stamler. [New York Times: Technology]

I actually think this seems more annoying than actual commercials or plain old product placement. I'm actually waiting for companies to design ads that work at normal speed and at TiVo's fast forward speed. So that even if someone is speeding past the ad they'll see something.

I was at the Japanese market today and was looking at the different types of Pocky and discovered 'Men's Pocky'. I'm still not exactly sure how it is different from normal Pocky. It doesn't look any more manly than normal Pocky. And they didn't seem to have woman's pocky either. Anyway, here's a picture of the box.

Baltasar Gracian. "A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends." [Quotes of the Day]

The latest batch, a lot of okay stuff in this batch, but not a lot that is outstanding (except for the Nitzer Ebb CD I found that I thought I'd lost).

• L.A. Style - James Brown is Dead (cd single)
• Love & Rockets - Resurrection Hex
• Nitzer Ebb - That Total Age
• Lords of Acid - Lust
• London City Acid
• Living in Oblivion, 80s Greatest Hits, Vol. 4
• Living in Oblivion, 80s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
• Hakan Lidbo - after the end
• Shona Laing - South
• Kon Kan - Move to move
• KMFDB - Juke-Joint Jezebel CD Single
• The KLF - The White Room (w/bonus CD)

With this batch just over two shelves are done, two and a half more to go.

Someone's come up with a somewhat interestingnew idea for cakes.

Do you believe a birthday cake without the candles can create the same atmosphere? Biotechnology researchers in Taiwan think the luminescent cake they have developed can do so and believe that such a cake has market potential.

At a biotechnology development and planning forum held yesterday at Fu Jen Catholic University in Hsinchuang, Taipei County, a biotech company put several such birthday and wedding cakes on display, attracting overwhelming media attention and publicity.

The cakes - the first of their kind in Taiwan - have a beautiful luminescence because of their cream coating which contains a special protein acquired with the latest biotechnology from Taiwan's endemic red algae.

I dunno about you, but I find this slightly disturbing. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable eating a glowing cake. I mean, if I eat this will I glow too? (seen first over on boing boing).

This has been one of my more relaxing weekends in a while. Yesterday I ended up sleeping most of the day (much to my surprise). Then last night I ended up heading to Made by Me, the place where you get to paint pottery. I made another mug, because I want to kind of get a collection of them to use for my regular mugs. And I like the idea of them being kind of hand-made.

Today consisted of some Tenshi ni Narumon, some brunch, and too much Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross has definitely been a pretty good deal at $13 giving me already 34 hours of play, and I'm not even to the second CD. My only complaint is that sometimes I've felt like it doesn't really give you a good indication of where you are supposed to be going next. Probably one of those things they expect you to have a hint book for. On the books for tonight, an early dinner and early to bed so that I can hit rehab in the morning.

When I first saw this I was wondering why someone would bother, but after trying it out, it's pretty cool. I watched some of the Kingdom Hearts opening.

Watch QuickTime movies as ASCIImation. Apple has released a Quicktime-to-ASCII-mation converter for OS X. Open a movie with this app in your Terminal and you can watch any arbitrary Quicktime video in glorious text-based artwork. Take that, pewling smiley-mongers! Bow before my superior ASCIImation!

Link Discuss(Thanks, Wiley!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Now I think I need to play around to figure out what font is the best to use for this.

I'm not sure what happened to the day. I just went to take a short nap at 10am. When I woke up it was 4:15 in the afternoon. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. I'm still in that just woke up daze and trying to figure out if there was anything important I was supposed to be doing today.

I went out to check the mail this afternoon and found a box waiting there for me from Amazon. I tried to remembered if I'd preordered anything and couldn't think of anything it might be. I quickly scurried back into my apartment and opened it up. It was a book! Big thanks to Pasiphae for Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. I've got to pull it off my wish list now. Yay, my birthday's starting a whole week early! ^_^.

I read about this over at #!/usr/bin/girl. Supposedly teenage boys in japan are becoming hermits.

Teenage boys in Japan's cities are turning into modern hermits - never leaving their rooms. Pressure from schools and an inability to talk to their families are suggested causes. Phil Rees visits the country to see what the "hikikomori" condition is all about.

I knew him only as the boy in the kitchen.

His mother, Yoshiko, wouldn't tell me his name, fearful that neighbours in this Tokyo suburb might discover her secret.

Her son is 17 years old. Three years ago he was unhappy in school and began to play truant.

Then one day, he walked into the family's kitchen, shut the door and refused to leave.

All I know is that if I tried to do that with my mom's kitchen, she'd kill me. I joke with being a hermit, but this puts me to shame.

Somehow, A Blander Blog fell off my news aggregator when I wasn't looking. Luckily, thanks to the jenett.radio.randomizer I found it again. Here's a tasty tidbit from today.

Videogame Music Archive. Thousands of midi files from almost every video game ever produced.... [largehearted boy] [A Blander Blog]

I took a moment to groove to the theme to Toejam & Earl (one of the best games for the Genesis).

click it

You know you want to play the game.

I've wanted to do a group blog for a while. I'm not sure why, but it has just seemed like it might be interesting. And I'm always up for playing at community building. So I was fiddling around with Moveable Type and decided to just make a go of it. You can find it over here. At the moment there are just three of us. I'm trying to decide on a fourth. There's a good probability it will be my friend Chris, but I haven't decided yet. Partially because I'm thinking of finding some random stranger to throw into the mix.

For the moment the blog will be just about random anime stuff, though who knows, it may evolve. I hate setting rules on things like that.

Because I'm bored:

what fucked version of hello kittie are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I've really really slowed down on the CD ripping. Here's the latest batch:

• Jeff Mills - Lifelike
• Meat Beat Manifesto - Armed Audio Warfare
• Meat Beat Manifesto - Storm the Studio
• Meat Beat Manifesto - 99%
• Meat Beat Manifesto - RUOK?
• Messiah - Temple of Dreams (CD Single)
• Malcolm McLaren - Fans
• Sarah McLachlan - Rarities, B-Sides, & Other Stuff
• Manufacture - Voice of World Control
• Mandalay - Solace
• Mandalay - empaty
• Lush - Split
• Lush - Lovelife
• Lush - Gala
• L.S.G. - Into The Deep

So you should go here to feed me.

(blame zannah)

I've been using Mail.app for OS X for a while now. I switched when Jaguar came out because I was curious about its spam filtering. For the most part it works amazingly. One thing I want though is a bit more control. I want to be able to have a white list of people that are by default not spammers. I do have a number of newsletters from companies like CDJapan which it seems to really like to think of as spam. And, I'm afraid marking those as not spam will let through other stuff that is.

A post over at BoingBoing got me pointed to the Roomba home page. The Roomba is a robot that vacuums for you. It looks pretty cool and seems to work. I would love to have something like this that I could just let roam around my apartment daily. I'm so bad with vacuuming. And for this kind of gadget it's actually reasonably priced. I expected it to be at least 3 times that (as toys like this usually are).

What Type Of Anime Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I've been slowly working my way through RahXephon. It is definitely one of the more nicely animated shows that's been broadcast lately. On first glance it felt like just another Eva clone, but I think it's a better in lots of ways. The characters are likable (and less whiny then characters in Eva). The storyline also feels a little bit more cohesive, my one hope is that it has a better ending than Eva did. And, the soundtrack is amazing, one of the best I've heard since Noir. I've got it playing as I type this and it's just got this really funky kind of jazz feel to a lot of it. I can't wait to load it into my iPod.

I also just found out the same studio that produced this, Bones, was the studio that did Angelic Layer (mmmm CLAMP).

I just looked outside and there's white stuff on my car. I am so not ready for winter.

FFX was a pretty damn good game IMHO. I had a blast playing it and thought the storyline was pretty good. Now though, a sequel is due to it that just seems like a bit much. Here's a small preview of it. As far as I can tell it looks a bit like Tomb Raider, but with Yuna as the main character. I want to know when she went for the new look.

Easy off now has a special cleaner just for microwave ovens.

The product works in three easy steps:

• Place the pouch in the microwave and set on "high" for one minute.
• Pouch pops open and releases cleaners that coat the interior of the microwave oven.
• Wait for three minutes to cool, then wipe interior clean with the towelette.

Okay, so it doesn't really explode, but for some reason I get this image of it exploding in a mess of cleaning fluid when I think 'pops open'. Kind of like microwaving an egg. I'm sure it is nowhere near that cool.

Charlie McCarthy. "Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" [Quotes of the Day]

Well. I seem to be feeling a little bit better today. Still feel kinda run down, throat a little scratchy, but I don't feel as crappy as I did yesterday. I'm still going to work on getting as much asleep as I can though. I had breakfast with my friend Erin today, which was cool. She brought me to this cool breakfast place near here that served me way too much food. Now I need to do some work on a new website I want to make, and on the new blog I'm thinking of starting.

The new blog will be something I've wanted to do for a long time, a group blog. The initial purpose of it will be for me and other friends of mine to babble endlessly about anime we're watching, so that I don't bore everyone to death posting about it here. So look for some notes about that showing up soon.

Douglas Adams. "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." [Quotes of the Day]

Feeling a little bit better, but still really drained and achey. I'm doing my best to just sleep as much as I can, since that seems to help me feel better. The apartment is becoming a disaster area though, need to get some energy to finish cleaning.

I haven't posted about CD ripping in a few days since I've definitely slowed down. I've only ripped about 10 CDs since Friday.

• Plastikman - Sheet One
• X Static Vol. 4 - Radical Techno
• Network Sound Sampler, Volume 2
• Bill Nelson - Vistamix
• My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - 'Cuz It's Hot
• My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - I See Good Spirits and I see Bad Spirits
• My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife
• My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Kooler than Jesus
• My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
• Mute Tonal Evidence (usa)
• Peter Murphy - Deep
• Moev - Obituary Column Ha

Being sick has put a small damper my ripping. Bleh.

I went to make some soup and just discovered that the expiration date on all the cans of soup I had was like two years ago. For some reason I thought that soup had a longer shelf life. I used to always pick up a can or two when I'd be shopping because I figured it was always handy to have soup around. Thankfully, I just happened to pick some up last week or I'd be a very cranky Gregory.

Skimming through my news aggregator this morning I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who ends up cursing his web browser. It's enough to make one say sassafraggaragginbetasoftware. Lately this has been my one complaint with Chimera. It's crashed a bunch of times right as I'm posting stuff. One nice thing is that most of the time it actually ends up posting. I just can never tell if it will or not when it does.

I hate being sick. On top of it all I've been sleeping like crap. I'm hoping to get some good sleep and join some friends for brunch. We'll see how I feel in a few hours.

Bleh. I think I'm sick. I feel like ass. Mostly just sluggish. I bailed on hanging with people for dinner. I might get a call to go to the movies at midnight tonight, but I haven't decided if I'll go or not. Bleh.

I went wandering down to the Charles River this morning after breakfast to watch the boats. Didn't run into any alums down there, but it was still nice to go for a walk down there. Afterwards I wandered up to Harvard Square and found issue no. 2 of Found Magazine. I grabbed the first one after reading about it in vfc's LiveJournal a while back and was completely enthralled with it. So when I saw it today I had to pick it up. I also was browsing through Newbury Comics wasting time and saw the Lain in bear pajamas action figure and had to have it. It's now sitting on my desk next to Ryo-oki.

Remember that Microsoft switch ad that they quickly took down. Well, here's another one.

I got a copy of the first issue of Newtype USA today. I'm quite impressed with it so far. I'd flipped through the japanese version a few times, but of course could never understand any of it. It's just over 190 pages, printed on a heavier weight paper from the feel of it, and in a larger size than most US magazines. The cover price is $9.95, which might seem a little high at first, but isn't really considering things like the preview DVD it comes with and the quality of the magazine in general. Oh, and it also has some cool postcards with images from RahXephon.

On the content side, the magazine looks pretty good so far. Though, it's a bit odd getting used to the magazine being printed backwards. It is one thing reading manga that way as it was originally printed in that format. Oh, and for information about the magazine you can check out their web site.

Actually, my collection pales in comparison with the number of CDs some friends of mine have.

• Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
• Oingo Boingo - Boingo Alive (2CDs)
• Sinead O'Connor - The Lion & The Cobra
• Noir OST 1 & 2
• Nitzer Ebb - ebbhead
• Nitzer Ebb - Belief
• Nitzer Ebb - Showtime
• NiN - Sin CD Single
• NiN - Head like a Hole CD Single
• NiN - Pretty Hate Machine
• New Order - Substance
• New Order - Power, Corruption, & Lies
• New Order - Low-Life
• New Order - Republic
• Plastic Compilation - Vol 1

This batch has some of my earliest music loves. I discovered New Order's Power Corruption & Lies upon returning from Christmas break my sophmore year in high school. Just about the same time I discovered Tears for Fears' The Hurting. Those two records took me through much of the rest of that year.

Remember the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 that so many girls supposedly loved (I originally posted about it back in August). Well, Amazon seems to have removed ads describing the Magical Broom's Vibrating Appeal.

It still makes me wonder if there are any other amusing reviews like this hidden away in Amazon's database.

Over on boing boing, some info about new technology for phones.

Aromaphones from Scotland. A Scottish company is working on cellphones that can generate odors on demand, so that users can send each other smells, as well as getting stinky "ringtones" from their handsets.

Dr Dodd told the Glasgow Herald his plans include distilling and delivering aromatherapy products by phone.

Link Discuss(Thanks, Steve!) [Boing Boing Blog]

This brings up all kinds of questions. Can you transmit your own smells? How about have a different smell for each caller? I think I want candy smells. I was driving past the Necco factory last night and they were making candy. I think licorice from the smell of it.

Another thought. This brings turning off the ringer on your phone to a whole new level.

Robert Frost. "The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office." [Quotes of the Day]

A friend of mine was able to bring along a bunch of folks to an advance showing of The Ring. It was pretty damn creepy, possibly one of the creepiest horror movies I've seen. Though I really haven't seen that many. I tend to avoid a lot of them. I've seen a handful here and there. This one really caught me because of how the story was told. How the characters react to what was going on. The whole mood of the movie was really good too. I might almost call it mystery horror.

So, if you don't mind a well made creepy movie I highly recommend it. Hopefully I'll still be here in seven days.

Mark Twain. "The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." [Quotes of the Day]

I had a nice post about how bad this show is typed up and my browser crashed right as I was looking for some links to put up. So I'll quickly recap. The pilot was painful to watch, the first episode not much better. I'm still wondering why they bothered to call it Birds of Prey when the characters are so different from in the comics. Since when was Black Canary a teenage girl who can see the future? And even more curiously, when did The Huntress become a meta-human? Will they be able to write better episodes in the future? Who knows. I probably won't be tuning in to find out. Another reason I'm kind of disappointed with the show is that we've actually had some decent superhero movies in recent past. So I'd been expecting something with at least a little bit better writing. As a friend of mine said, "Finally a show that makes Mutant X look good".

On the plus side for the show. I actually think Mia Sara does a pretty good job as Harley Quinn. I didn't recognize her with short blonde hair at first.

One interesting thing about ripping my CDs is realizing just how much music I have. I'd never thought about it much till I just happened to look at iTunes and noticed that so far I have ripped 1134 songs, with a duration of 3.3 days. Over three days of continuous music, and that's maybe 1/3rd of my current CD collection. On the other hand it means that shuffle play does tend to give me lots of interesting random stuff.

Today's rips:

• Orbital - InSides
• The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (2CD set)
• Opus III - Mind Fruit
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Best of OMD
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Liberator
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Pacific
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Crush
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Junk Culture
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Architecture & Morality
• Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - Dazzle Ships
• One Dove - Morning Dove White

Can you tell I like OMD? I remember first hearing them back during my freshman year of high school and picking up Architecture & Morality on vinyl (I still have it somewhere). Joan of Arc was probably one of my favorite tracks on that. They've been a favorite ever since. Oh, and the One Dove CD is one of my favorite CDs of all time. If I was stranded on a desert island, it would be one I'd want with me.

While catching up on caterina.net I followed a link to an article on The Media Violence Myth. I'm only about two and a half pages in so far but it is really interesting. I particularly found interesting the idea felt that comic books were responsible for all kinds of evils many years ago. I'll possibly post some more thoughts on this later once I've had a chance to finish the article.

Sony's at it again, now you can get a skateboard for your Aibo

Dogtown: Aibo gets a skateboard. Sony gets ready to unleash a four-wheel scooter that will let its robot dogs skate around. Just when you thought you were rid of one dude... [CNET News.com]

Oh yes, and the pricetag? $249. Yikes.

Woo!

No more tears: "Onions that taste as good as the original but do not have you weeping over the chopping board are now a possibility, say Japanese researchers." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

I have a horrible problem with onions. If I cut some up I have to basicly leave the room until the essence of onion disappers. It's so bad that I tend to even avoid cooking with them most of the time.

Kilgore Trout. "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." [Quotes of the Day]

As it looks like Lyn is updating her blog again. Yay! Even though I keep in touch via email it's always nice to read her writings.

I stopped by Newbury Comics today during lunch and found a couple of steals. The first was Jeff Mills, Lifelike which was $3.99. And it wasn't even filed in the right section. Then I got a mix called Nature's Composition, which is all tracks off of the Seasons Recordings label (one of my favorites) for a whopping $.99. And last but not least was OMD - Liberator for $.99. The last two weren't even marked as being $.99 so it was an added bonus. I also picked up a Carl Cox CD (FACT 2) because it looked pretty good.

I love used CDs.

Netflix is one of my favorite dotcom companies. And one that seems to have survived fairly well. Because of this they've been getting more competition:

Wal-Mart cues up a rival to Netflix. The retail behemoth is testing a new DVD subscription-rental program, further clouding the future of Netflix and its Web-based mail-order DVD service. [CNET News.com]

The thing that makes netflix work for me is how easy it is. You don't need to go anywhere except to your mailbox to get your movies. It just isn't quite as easy for me to get to a Blockbuster (or a Wal-Mart for that matter).

Abbie Hoffman. "The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it." [Quotes of the Day]

I grabbed a program called Chimera Knight the other day. It is a program that will automaticly fetch the latest build of Chimera every night. Chimera is a Cocoa web browser for OS X that uses the Gecko rendering engine. For a long time it has been really flakey, but I've been hearing that the current betas are pretty stable. As a result I thought I'd give it a try for a week.

So far this browser is amazing. It is definitely still pre-1.0 software, but it hasn't crashed on me yet (knock on wood). It is one of the faster browsers that I've used for OS X so I'm really hoping they keep up the good work. It also seems to work just fine with Radio, which is a plus.

Here's the latest round of CDs:

• Quadrophonia - Quadrophonia
• The Push Stars - Meet me at the Fair
• Public Image Limited - Compact Disc
• PTP - Rubber Glove Seduction
• The Psychedelic Furs - Forever Now
• Propellerheads - Decksandrumsandrockandroll
• Pretty in Pink - Soundtrack
• Pop Will Eat Itself - This is the day...This is the hour...This is this!
• piekoz - narrativestructurez
• Pet Shop Boys - Please (remastered)
• Pet Shop Boys - Nightlife
• Parliment's Greatest Hits

This feels like it going to take forever. At least I don't have as many CDs as some people I know.

I love my Audiotron. It's one of the cooler network devices I have. As much as I love it though, I keep finding myself thinking about just using my G3 as an mp3 machine. There are a few reasons for this. First off, iTunes. Smart Playlists are one of the coolest things out there. I use them all the time for exporting stuff to my iPod. Secondly, there are tons of apps out there that will let me remote control iTunes on that machine via Applescript. Third, as cool as the Audiotron is, at times it feels a little clunky. I'm almost thinking I'd like to move it into my bedroom with a small set of speakers for music in there.

I'd actually love to find a way to get it set up for my parents, but their house isn't really wired for it currently. I may play around with having both set up and see which I end up liking more. What I'd really love is an Apple made device like the Audiotron that uses Rendezvous. That way it could just run some kind of version of iTunes that I could control remotely.

Seen a number of places, but jenett.radio has the most compact description.

Truth in advertising... NOT!.  Microsoft Tries a "Switch" Campaign. Twirlip of the Mists writes "There's a new page on Microsoft's web site that ... [Slashdot]
If one couldn't guess from the text, this is way phony/marketing. See the Stock Photo. Everyone I know here is either extremely disappointed or down right angry about it. [Doubt's log]

Slashdot updated the original article:  "Apparently, Microsoft has taken the page down, but Google has it." [jenett.radio]

I read through this and was wondering just what kind of drugs MS is on. This is one of the reasons MS gets the abuse it does. You would have thought they could have found at least one real person though.

Over the weekend I took in a number of shows that had just came out. There's some good and some soso.

• Haibane Renmei - This is kind of an odd little show, but one I like a lot so far. I'm not quite sure how to describe it yet. The main character is a girl who is born from a cocoon and grows some grey wings. She's taken care of by a group of girls who also have wings and they give her a halo. The animation style reminds me of Witch Hunter Robin in that it uses a lot of muted colors. I'm really curious as to where this show will go.
• Witch Hunter Robin - Robin has taken a pretty abupt turn with the latest episode. I don't want to to say too much about it right here, since I have friends who haven't seen it yet and I don't want to spoil them. I will say that I was really not expecting things to take the turn they did.
• Saikano - The end. I felt the ending to this series was just right. It was a downer. It wasn't has harsh as I expected, but it was definitely sad. I think this may be one of my favorite shows, possibly making it into my top ten.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The first episode of this didn't quite grab me, but with the second I'm finding myself liking it a little bit more. It feels episodic at this point, but it's only the second episode in. I'll keep watching it a bit longer.
• Gundam Seed - The latest in the Gundam series. I'm not sure what I thought of it. It felt like just more of the same. And I think the name is kinda lame.

Still up to watch: Kiddy Grade, GetBackers, and Spiral

H. L. Mencken. "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." [Quotes of the Day]

Wow. I haven't been in front of my turntables in a few months. Partly because I haven't had my headphones, but also partly because I haven't felt inspired to. I just got my headphones back today and spun a few tracks. Beatmatching is a skill you never quite lose, but I was definitely a little rusty. On the other hand it felt good. Really good. I felt all tingly afterwards, the whole thing can be kind of a rush a times. I think I'm going to take a nap then see what I can do. Maybe I'll do a broadcast tonight.

Tom Robbins. "If little else, the brain is an educational toy." [Quotes of the Day]

I took a day off from ripping, and now and working to catch up again. This current batch has some stuff I like a lot.

• Sedated in the Eighties
• Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche '85
• Sasha - airdrawndagger
• The Ruburns - Hitchhiker Joe (CD Single)
• Roxy Music - The Atlantic Years
• Read or Die OST
• Ride - Smile
• Revolutionary Girl Utena OST 1
• Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers & Queers
• R.E.M. - Life's Rich Pageant
• R.E.M. - Document

And with these latest ones I have the first of around four and a half shelves of CDs ripped.

A friend of mine pointed me at a cool article at the NYTimes about how "TV's Damaged Detectives Are Sherlock's Children".

THERE is an eccentric new generation of crime fighters in prime time ÷ brilliant, obsessed and, if not dysfunctional, then at the very least damaged. They are modern descendants of the detective story's greatest hero, Sherlock Holmes. And by reaching back to this early model, their creators have revitalized the genre, reclaiming it from several decades of psychic charlatans, grandmotherly amateurs and foot-weary plodders with booze on their breath.

I've become a big fan of both Monk and CSI in the past few months. I think CSI has better mysteries in general, but Monk has the more interesting character interactions. But in general, both shows have fairly intricate mysteries that are slowly pieced together throughout the course of the show. On the downside, CSI has spoiled me for some other shows. Many times I'll be watching and wondering how come the cops haven't done more of the hi-tech stuff I see on CSI.

I just finished watching the last disc of Princess Nine. I have to say this is a show that surprised me a lot. I initially got it because it was getting some good buzz over on http://www.animeondvd.com/. While I'm only a slight fan of baseball, I tend to enjoy baseball movies a lot so thought it would be a good chance to take.

While the show wasn't perfect, I really enjoyed it. They do a very good job with most of the characters and their interactions. I felt there were some weak points just past the middle of the series, but it pulled everything together quite nicely in the end. It reminded me slightly of Battle Athletes Victory as far as the feel of it (just without the psychotic characters and with some romance added in).

Saint Augustine. "O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet." [Quotes of the Day]

Damn. I just finished Kingdom Hearts. The last few battles are just insane. I mean really insane. There was one that I had to try a bunch of times, and it just ended up becoming really really tedious. The funny thing was, I was reading a FAQ that was like "This battle is so much easier then the earlier ones." I want to know what kinda crack that guy was smoking because he's just so wrong.

It was a good game. I give it a thumbs up. I wouldn't have thought Squaresoft and Disney could have pulled it off, but they did. Now I want to play again and find all the stuff I didn't this time around.

I've got one of those KFC/Taco Bells around the corner from me. It has to be one of the most horribly run places I've ever been in. Twice I've been in there when they didn't have any more chicken, and this time they had no steak or chicken for the taco bell stuff. Every time I go it's like a game to see what they actually have.

My past keeps returning to me at odd times. While going through the news aggregator this morning I saw this entry from The Shifted Librarian:

Bot Mots.

Lori found some interesting chat mates:

"Meet Julia, the bot, at http://www.verbots.com. She is an interactive virtual personality and she can answer what the meaning of life is, why the sky is blue, and if she does not know the answer, she brings up the term in a google search which appears on the screen. I brought Julia up this evening and had both children (Katie, 9 and Patrick 6) at my shoulder wanting to ask her questions.  Verbot came out with a public library bot at the Computers in Libraries conference, but the link which was sent to me does not work. http://www.talkie.com is very interesting too. My kids really liked Barkie, the 'talkie' at www.pets911.com, a talking puppy."

Unfortunately, the kids were already asleep when I got home tonight or I would have gotten their reactions, too.[The Shifted Librarian]

When I saw the bot was named Julia, I just had to go look. Needless to say, this was the same Julia that used to wander around TinyMUD long long ago. I'd heard that Fuzzy was doing stuff like this these days. Too bad she doesn't have her old database still.

Unknown. "Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." [Quotes of the Day]

More CD ripped, finishing up the S CDs.

• The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow
• The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
• The Smiths - Meat is Murder
• Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox
• Siouxsie & The Banshees - Superstition
• Siouxsie & The Banshees - Twice Upon a Time
• Sisters of Mercy - A Slight Case of Overbombing
• Shriekback - The Dancing Years
• The Shamen - Love, Sex, Intelligence
• The Shamen - On Air
• Sam Shaber - perfecT
• Eric Serra - La Femme Nikita Soundtrack
• Nakaido "Chabo" Reichi - lain Soundtrack
• Best of Techno - Volume 1

The Best of Techno CD was a great used find at the CD store yesterday, only $4!

The Sony Aibo is getting more cool:

Sony Aibo to spread more puppy love. Sony is planning to train Aibo, its robot dog, to recognize its owner's name, voice and face, and get all excited. [CNET News.com]

I want one! I don't feel comfortable having a dog in the small apartment I have, but I'd love to have one of these. I'd just have to figure out how to get it to fetch my slippers for me.

I'm becoming more and more captivated by the soundtracks in shows I've been watching. Rewatching Arjuna, I'm reminded that I want to have a copy of the soundtrack for it. I've also been really enjoying the music in RahXephon. It's got one or two tracks in it that are really nice kinda downtempo-y stuff. Now I just need to find someplace locally that has them.

On part of my drive home this weekend I was listening to the Noir soundtrack and was again reminded of just how good it is. The flow between the tracks is really nice, and they are all mostly a good length. A few of the soundtrack CDs I have are just lots of around 30 second to one minute long tracks that feel like just snippets of music. I don't like that as much.

Geek out time for Gregory. An article about Microsoft's new multimedia software got me thinking about computers as TVs and why I have issues with such things on computers.

Changing Channels, on the PC. Windows XP Media Center Edition is Microsoft's PC-based answer to digital video recorders like TiVo. But how well does it work? By David Pogue. [New York Times: Technology]

The article hits on a few things that caught my eye. The first of which is placement. Yeah, it's neat that you can have a device like the TiVo on your computer. But there are a lot of implications for that. First, the cable companies. They aren't going to give up their hold on things so easily. This is an issue with the TiVo also, but not as much of one.

The TiVo is designed to fit in with your current home entertainment system. It's the size of a standard stereo component. it has cabling to drop it into your video connections and even an IR blaster if your cable box can't be directly controlled by it. With a computer you'd have to either find someplace to put it right by your TV, or get a whole second cable box for it to control. Unfortunately, the cable companies seem to be quite resistant to the idea of you giving up those cable boxes. So it's potentially going to cost you some extra money each month to do.

The second issue for me is that with a TiVo it is a dedicated box. I don't have to worry that something else I am running will impact the programs I am recording. When I look at some of the games my friends are currently playing I can't see how one could assure that you wouldn't run into bandwidth issues. Especially when doing things like handling disk reads and writes while recording a show.

And, when it comes down to it, I just don't like watching things on a computer screen. I watch digisubs that way because I don't have any good way to watch them on TV (though I'm still eyeing that software for the PS2 that lets you). Now if someone were to take this software and incorporate it into a standalone box, they might have something. But then again, we already have TiVo and Replay out there (and don't forget the whole DRM and MS thing).

I gave in yesterday and got Candy Corn when I was at the drug store. I couldn't resist the pull of my addiction to it. Luckily I've got enough control at this point to not eat the whole bag at once.

I finally got around to looking at the Palm Zire. It's metal, kinda cool looking. But unless I'm wrong, it's still basicly the same as the model they've been selling for $99 all along. Now, if they'd made it a tiny bit more expensive, like $150, and included bluetooth, then they might have something. I still like my palm, though dealing with syncing has made it a little less useful for me. I keep looking at some of the fancier devices and they just don't seem like things I'd use too much.

I'm bored. I need to find a way to entertain myself some. Movies? Clubbing? Concerts? This is the part of being unemployed that is driving me insane. Anyone up for some late night coffee?

Because she mentioned Anna's and made me realize how much I was craving a steak burrito. Not quite as good as one from 'bertos, but still so yummy. Time to have lunch and catch up on some TiVo'd shows.

It is street cleaning day again, which means parking on only one side of the street. Luckily this morning I'm parked on the correct side of the street so that i don't need to move my car. But, I want my coffee, and I know if I move my car I'm going to lose my spot. It's days like this where I kind of wish I had a coffee maker.

I also have a craving for a donut for the first time in ages.

gregory is a rubber fish that hums incessantly! It can be bolted onto a belt buckle and squeaks. Who are you? Using my other nickname, snooze is a cufflink that catalogues its contents, has a human brain inside and is made of glass.

Seen over on Zannah's and Machinegirl's journals

Since I wasn't around today I only got a few discs done. I've got a bunch more queued up for tonight if I can't sleep.

• The Style Council - Confessions of a Pop Group
• The Style Council - Cafe Bleu
• The Style Council - The Cost of Loving
• The Stone Roses - Turns into Stone
• Jimmy Somerville - The Singles Collection 1984/1990
• The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

The only thing with ripping all these CDs is it makes me realize the holes in my CD collection. Now I'm wondering if I should just start adding everything that is missing to my Amazon wish list. Though that could end up being quite insane.

I had a meeting today for some possible consulting work. I won't know right away, but it would definitely help with giving me more time to find full time work. It would also give me some experience for my resume.

I haven't given an anime update in a bit. Mostly cause the last few days and over the weekend I wasn't watching much. There have been a few things though:

• Hikaru no Go - Caught up on this show. In some ways it seems to be in a lull at the moment. Though they are doing a good job of addressing some issues between the main characters. I'm definitely impressed that they are still keeping things interesting after 49 episodes
• Figure 17 - I just watched the first episode of this. I'd heard it mentioned before, but never heard any details. It was pretty cool. I think i want to watch an episode or two more before I decide what I fully thing about it.
• Saikano - As usual, this show had me in tears a few times and left me curled up on the couch whimpering. I love it, can't wait to get it on DVD, but damn I don't know how often I'll be able to watch it again.
• Tenshi ni Narumon! - Thanks to Pasiphae I think I have almost all the episodes of this finally. It's still a fun show, quite silly with some interesting moments that are a little more serious. Hopefully I can work through the rest of it in the next week or so.

So that's a snapshot of what's been up with the anime. I keep thinking I should do a Wiki of anime stuff I watch so that I can post reviews of individual episodes. Though I should look to see if anyone else is doing something like that.

Plato. "They certainly give very strange names to diseases." [Quotes of the Day]

Just in case you were all getting bored with this. Here's some more:

• They Might be Giants - No!
• They Might Be Giants - Istanbul, not Constantinople (CD Single)
• They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants
• The The - Soul Mining
• The The - Infected
• Talking Heads - Remain in Light
• Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
• Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition
• Superstitious Flights, destination USA
• The Sugarcubes - life's too good

This was a fun set of CDs. I found myself listening to a few of them since I hadn't in ages. Soul Mining is still such an old favorite.

I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. A big spider just ran across the floor by my feet and now I'm trying to figure out where it went. I've got a book to throw at it if it comes close to me again.

Brrr. I hate spiders.

Some other recent stuff:

• Xeni Jardin has been invited to join the Boing Boing team. I've enjoyed a lot of her posts and links in the guest spot while she's been there.
• The New York Times has an article about how a Rival to PokŽmon Keeps Market Hot, specificly Yu-Gi-Oh!
• The Haunted Mansion at Disney celebrates the Nightmare before Christmas (from Boing Boing)
• Ken Bereskin keeps posting cool things about Jaguar. The latest covers finding files with finder. I was quite impressed to see that it will index PDF files also (though this actually makes sense).

Catching up on a few days of being away and light blogging, here's some things that I thought were interesting. First we have some comments to about Microsoft's new design.

• Zeldman goes after Microsoft for their poor job on their redesign.

  When a W3C member company that helped create XHTML and CSS ignores or misuses those web standards on its corporate site, you have to wonder who didn't get the memo.

• He also points over to dive into mark, who also has some comments on the subject.

  The new design also fails even the most basic accessibility tests; the home page contains 80 instances of images without ALT text. This is the same basic failing for which the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games was successfully sued in 2000.

As I've been learning more about things like CSS I've started to become more aware of things like accessibility and the correct ways to use tags. I'm sure that there are still issues with my own site (it's actually one of my todo's after I finish converting all my old pages to the new style). But for some reason I'd expect a company like MS to do a better job of things. It's not like they don't have the resources.

Wilson Mizner. "A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions." [Quotes of the Day]

One 'good' thing about not sleeping well is I can pop another CD in to be ripped when I wake up during the night. The bad thing is that it's 9:30 in the morning and I am ready to crawl back into bed for an hour or two. I'm hoping to get a bunch of stuff done today, so can't afford to sleep much longer than that.

I took a few pictures this weekend and am hoping to get Gallery set up to handle pictures. I downloaded it a week or two ago, but haven't really had time to play with it.

CDs ripped since last time (in no real order):

• This is Techno - Volume 4
• This Mortal Coil - Filagree & Shadow
• Thompson Twins - Singles Collection
• Times Two - Cecila (CD single)
• Trio - Da Da Da
• Tones on Tail - Everything!
• 24 Hour Party People OST
• Pete Tong - Spring 1988 Essential Selection
• Sarah Vaughn - Sarah Vaughn
• Was (not Was) - What up, Dog?

As I'm re-ripping all this stuff it's still weird seeing things I haven't listened to in years that still hasn't shown up on any of my shuffle plays. I'm also going through and ranking all the songs I can as I rip these CDs.

I realized I didn't quite start at the beginning the other day, so here's what I've ripped so far tonight:

• Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
• Yazoo - You and Me Both
• XTC - Black Sea
• The X-Files: The Album
• X - Los Angeles
• X - More Fun in the New World
• Wham! - Fantastic

I was just reading up on a new anime show and discovered that the VA for Shindou Hikaru, Kawakami Tomoko, was also the VA for Sugar in Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Yikes, I can't quite seem to wrap my brain around that.

Decided to slip out for the weekend. Went to visit some friends in New York. The drive out was amazing. I went all the way to the end of the Mass Pike for the very first time. It was a beautiful time to drive. I got a few pictures, and wished there were more places to stop and get pictures of the leaves. They've just started turning and I bet they'll be amazing in another week.

Next time I go down I think I'll try and leave on Friday, things felt rushed this time around. Got to hang out with Lyn and Chris and her hubby. Got to watch Lyn play lots of Kingdom Hearts. I was afraid she wasn't going to let me take it home. I also got to inflict FLCL on Chris, I think between that and me bringing the PS2 down I was risking my life.

It feels good to be home though. I miss my bed when I'm away from it for too long.

I started ripping my CDs from the end of my collection going backwards. First batch:

• Vapourspace - Vista Humana
• Music from the soundtrack Valley Girl
• Utah Saints - Two
• Utah Saints
• Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
• Underworld - second toughest of the infants
• Ultra Vivid Scene - Rev
• U2 - War
• Edit Carey - Call Me Home

I hope to get in another batch after burning some Fruits Baskets episodes for Lyn.

Well. I just had my first hard disk failure in ages. I'm still not quite sure what happened. Fortunately, this wasn't data that was that important, though it was a bit painful. It was all my mp3s and anime video files. Luckily most of the stuff that was important had been already copied, but there were a few things that I'll have to hunt down again.

It also made me think about what the best way to do backups is. One of the annoying things about hard drives being so big and cheap these days is that backing them up is a pain in the ass. There's no real good consumer tape backup that is affordable. It's actually cheaper to just get a second rive to back up to. So, I think it's going to boil down to me investing in another firewire drive, probably a 120GB one so that I can do all my backups to that. But that will wait till after I'm employed again.

I also decided that I'm going to start posting the CDs I'm re-ripping as I rip them. Just to share my music collection with everyone.

Blore's Razor. "Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier." [Quotes of the Day]

Anime Daisuke is back! Or at least in some form. It lists the shows that are currently on and when they are airing. Though some of the info seemed a tiny bit off (Pasiphae, Didn't you say Gluhen had started? It lists it as airing in November). The thing that would make that site perfect if it had more information about the shows it listed. Big thanks to my favorite anime and news website for covering this.

I always have odd dreams when I nap. Most of the time I don't remember my dreams at all. Strangely, I remembered part of today's. I got a job. It was right around the corner, which was pretty cool. I can't remember exactly what the job was, but I was psyched about it. The weird thing was, everyone else who worked there was a demon. And for some reason this didn't seem out of the ordinary to me. I'm still kind of amazed at how fresh the memory of this dream is in my head. Maybe it was prophetic (at least the job part. I could do without demons in my life).

Dan Gilmore has a nice article about how Apple stands firm against entertainment cartel:

What's Apple not doing? It's not -- at least so far -- moving toward an anti-customer embrace with Hollywood's movie studios and the other members of the powerful entertainment cartel.

Yet another reason I like Apple.

Okay. I hate Gator. I think they are one of the most annoying software companies out there. But I'm not sure I agree with UPS here:

Gator ships ads to wrong Web site. Shipping company UPS has filed a lawsuit against Gator in the U.S. District Court of Atlanta, charging the online software provider with delivering unauthorized ads to visitors of its Web site. [CNET News.com]

When I was a PC user, Gator was always trying to install their software on my system. And at one time I even had their software installed without realizing just how slimy they are. But if I want to run a piece of software on my PC that shows me ads as I'm browsing the web then I should be able to. I haven't seen how Gator's software works, but my guess is they don't indicate when the ads are being served by them. This is probably their biggest problem. I don't think they make any effort to indicate that ads they are displaying aren't from the site you are visiting.

Oh, and a note to software makers. Please don't support Gator. Yeah, I know you like that you can give your software away for 'free' and still make money. I can think of at least a few programs that I haven't bothered with due to the inclusion of Gator.

Bluetooth is certainly starting to show up in the news a lot more these days:

Are These Folks Crazy, or Cordless?. Two new Bluetooth headsets for cellphones are likely to make wireless communications seem even spookier. By Adam Baer. [New York Times: Technology]

I know that I sometimes get really strange looks when I've got my bluetooth headset on. Even when I'm not using it. It kinda looks like some kind of secret agent gadget.

I did run into one weakness, and I'm not sure if this is a bluetooth weakness or one with my phone. The headset works great, and the phone works great when linked to the computer. But I can't have the phone talking with both at the same time. Which kind of sucks. Hopefully I can find some way around it.

Yesterday was a slow blogging day. I didn't quite feel that creative, so you were spared my normal rambling. Right now I'm feeling like I need a cup of coffee. I've got a bunch of things to post about this morning when I get around to it.

Hermann Hesse. "When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane." [Quotes of the Day]

I had this huge list of things I had to get done today in my head. And after my powernap this morning I can't remember anything from it. That's what I get for telling myself I'll write it all down when I wake up.

Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with the world.

Court rules up-skirt peep cams legal. The Washington Supreme Court judges said that two men who took surreptitious photos and video of women and girls using tiny cameras "engaged in disgusting and reprehensible behavior." However, the judges said they did not infringe on any reasonable expectations of privacy because the images were captured in public places. [CNET News.com]

That's right ladies, if you don't want people to take pictures up your skirt you shouldn't be wearing those scandalous things. You're just asking for trouble. Watch for the latest round of X10 ads to highlight just how good their cameras are for this.

In the 'too much time on your hands' department:

fuz.dk. >>  How many people do you know that would actually spend 30 hours "pixelizing" their apartment?  5 rooms, true-to-scale, done "one pixel at a time."  It's nothing short of astounding...  [Coolstop Daily Pick 10/1/02] [jenett.radio]

While I don't think I'd have the patience to do this it certainly is impressive.

From the reverse cowgirl's blog, you too can find out about fetishes you hear about on the news with the Deviants' Dictionary

There's only one thing better than getting coffee and a coffee cake muffin from Dunkin Donuts in the morning. That's going to Dunkin Donuts and getting your coffee and muffin and discovering the muffin is fresh from the oven and all nice and warm. mmmmmm warm muffins.

The NYTimes had an article about this a few days ago and I ment to post about it. To me this is just a sign of how low some companies will go to make a buck on the net:

New Kazaa stealing referral links:. "The newest version of Kazaa contains code which will rewrite URLs to sites like Amazon.com which allows affiliates to earn commission from sales they refer to Amazon. If you were to have this software installed and click through one of Lockergnome's book links to Amazon, Kazaa would end up getting credit for any sales that may have resulted from your visit to the site. [evhead]

I also dug up the story over at the NYTimes about this. It also includes some information on how to remove some kinds of this software. My favorite bit from the article is:

Mr. Petersen also pointed to a statement made in an online forum where the technology was discussed, in which a LimeWire developer characterized accusations that the software diverts money as "pretty accurate," but said, "While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users."

That's right, needing to be paid makes everything okay. It doesn't matter who you're screwing over. It's stealing, plain and simple.

Thankfully, nothing like this has shown up for OS X yet (and let's hope it never does). And also thankfully, the software I use doesn't have anything like this.

Galileo Galilei. "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." [Quotes of the Day]

Yay! I remembered to say "Rabbit Rabbit" when I woke up this morning! I need some good luck this month.