April 2003 Archives

BoingBoing has a post about paypal phasing out payments for adult items. I dunno, this just seems kind of lame to me. I mean, isn't the whole idea of paypal that it's to let you pay for just about anything (as long as it isn't illegal). Paypal seems to be making things difficult for folks too, one of the places I buy anime from is going to stop accepting paypal for payments due to some new policies they have (I wonder if it is related to this at all).

So I decided to re-rip all my CDs using AAC. And now I'm going through and filling out every bit of info for the tracks as I add them in. Including things like composer and the picture of the album/CD cover. Whee. Though I'm starting off with the CDs I haven't ripped yet.

Well, besides the usual of lookiing for work. I've been trying to spend my time a little bit better. Monday I met with my therapist. It went pretty good. I think this could be a really good thing. I tend to not write about it much here because I think most of you would be bored with it, but this whole unemployment thing on top of the whole lung thing is driving me slightly crazy (and we'll just leave it at that ^_^).

I'm also going through and resorting my records. I'm doing two passes, first pass I'm just ripping out stuff that I either don't play much, don't think I'll ever play out anywhere, or don't like. Second pass will be breaking stuff up a little bit more. I kind of want to separate things out to something like Techno/House/Trance. Or at least break out all the old cheesy prog trance I have (that I have left after the first pass that is).

I've started fiddling around with Boston Brunch again. It's currently not up at all, but I still have all the old data. I kind of want to redo the whole design of the site, use CSS for all the ugly font stuff I was doing, rethink some of the design, etc. So we'll see how that all goes.

So, even though I'm sitting around at home alone too much, I'm being somewhat productive.

Burning Sifl & Olly to VCD.

ROCK!

Unxmaal.com posts about XShelf. I actually saw this a few days ago in an article about OS X freeware and has been meaning to post about it. This program is so damn useful. It's already become one of those programs I can't live without. What does it do?

XShelf enhances drag and drop in MacOS X by letting you "pause" drag and drop operations, as well as have multiple drag and drop operations in flight at once.

You can drag files or folders from Finder into the shelf and they will sit there until you drag them out. Once you drag them out, the drag operation will finish as if XShelf were never involved. You may drag individual or multiple files or folders, as well as text clippings and URLs to XShelf. With XShelf, you no longer have to shuffle windows so that both the source and target of a drag and drop are onscreen at the same time.

In many ways, it is a replacement for the old NeXT shelf (and the Newton shelf, but never having used the Newton, I have to take this on faith :)[XShelf 1.0 for MacOS X]

A bit of Apple overkill here. But here are the new commercials. The guy singing Baby Got Back is too funny.

Dive Into Mark today talks about doing backups with rsync and ssh. This is one of the things I really love about unix and one of the reasons I'm so happy that it is at the heart of OS X. Not to bash on MS, but how easy is to do the same thing on Windows? Without having to go out and buy more software. I think you might be able to do some of it with cygwin, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to get working. Note, it isn't necessarily the easiest thing to get working in unix, but it is very easy to find help online on how to do it.

TidBITS has a nice rundown of Apple's service.

Clare Booth Luce: "Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts." [Quotes of the Day]

Derek runs into issues with sendmail. This is one of the reasons I switched away from sendmail. Sendmail is powerful, it can do all kinds of things when it comes with dealing to email. The issue is, most people don't need this kind of power. For most people, something like postfix works just fine. I switched about two years ago and I love it. It's insanely easy to configure and just plain works (and I just figured out how to do pop before smtp authentication with it).

Running iTunes 4? Want to let a friend running iTunes 4 to your music? I found some simple instructions over on one of the TiVo boards explaining how to do it.

This week at the Analog Lounge should be pretty damn cool. DJ Defixio, another of my favorite Boston DJs will be joining us this week, so all should be quite good. Also, just as a reminder to folks, next week will be our first non-smoking week. Anyone have any suggestions on how to celebrate? I was thinking maybe some candy cigarettes for the smokers who need to put something in their mouth.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*

The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in.
This week, we bring you longtime Boston DJ:

Defixio [Redlight : punkrocktechno] MA

(Read a recent article on DJ Kris Defixio in Stuff@Night).

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
May 7 - Lenore [ELEMENTS, Boston, MA]
May 14 - Mark Martini [Dubcoast Music, Source of Gravity UK; MA]
May 21 - Chris Barakat [Boston, MA]
May 28 - Chris VanWart [Boston, MA]

To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

This week downstairs at Anitya it's Peter Digital [digital structures-Sweden] and GAVIN [spectra-New York]. Should be pretty damn good!

As usual, if you're a Boston DJ who is interested in spinning, drop me a line.

Gizmodo is reporting that cellphones have gotten so cheap that "baseball fans no longer have any compunction about throwing them at the heads of players during games. Seriously."

Well, after close to a year of waiting, Apple finally delivered what I was waiting for: iTunes 4. What's so cool about it? Well, it supports rendezvous. What does this mean? Well, it means I can easily listen to the mp3s on my server from my laptop (as long as I'm on my home network). Yes, I could have (and do) share out the directory that my mp3s are in. But the thing that rocks about rendezvous is that it automaticly finds shared out playlists and makes them available. We also just figured out that you can share out your playlists so that you can listen to them from anywhere you have OS X and iTunes 4. I connected to a friend's computer and listened to music from it.

Apple also opened up its online music store. From within iTunes you can browse for songs and listen to them. If you like a song, just click on a button and buy it for 99 cents. I of course had to try it out and bought Rock the Casbah. Very cool. It also lets you burn CDs with the music you buy, which is even more cool.

Now, this is getting to where I want home networking to be. You should be able to just fire up a machine on your network and be able to access the music from wherever it is on your network. Of course now this brings up another thing I just thought of. With things like rendezvous it doesn't matter where the content on your network lives. So you could either have it on some kind of NAS box or on whatever machines you have. Hmmmm.

Oh well, off to rip more music (uh oh, AAC or mp3?)

William Blake: "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." [Quotes of the Day]

Finally got around to playing around with FOAF. Now I need to learn more about RDF. The more I learn the more I have to learn to understand it.

Kenneth Tynan: "A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping." [Quotes of the Day]

Seen over at Jen's blog. The Pisces Soap company, where you can get Bubblegum Soap, Cupcake Soap, and Breakfast Bagel Soap (to name a few). I just couldn't see walking around all day smelling like bubblegum.

A steak, mushroom, and cheese sub. A coke. And a cheesy movie (In this case The Cutting Edge (yes, the skating movie)).

Just making my way through NetNewsWire and thought I'd take some notes.

• Dave Winer is working on Trackback still. He's got autodiscovery stuff working. I'm wondering if they're also going to include a place to put in trackback urls by hand if the users want. I've been starting to do that when I have more than a few articles I'm tracking back to in a single post. Since the more things you have to autodiscover at post time means longer times for the post to go through.
• Dave also points to more comments about problems with CSS. This hits on my frustration point, but in a slightly different way. I'm pissed at MS about most of this, not CSS. How long has IE 6 been around? When was the last time there was a patch to fix how things were rendered. In contrast I watch Apple's work with Safari, where they are making every effort to make sure things work right. They even have a button on the browser to report pages that don't display right (I hope this stays there in the release version).
• BoingBoing made me laugh out loud this morning with a post about Senator Rick Santorum's Guide to Appropriate Sex.
• Population: One has a link to the 25 All-Time Greatest Covers of American Comic Books. Also included is the 25 worst (I thought the one for The Rifleman was pretty damn funny).
• Here's some cool OS X freeware.

Robert Frost: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper." [Quotes of the Day]

I want something sweet, like brownies. But I forgot to get eggs when at the store today.

Billboard has an article about Apple's soon to be announced music service. I'd heard some of these details on TechTV last night, but this gives a little more detail.

Label sources tell Bulletin that the service is an a la carte download store -- not unlike that of rival Liquid Audio -- that is built into Apple's iTunes player. No subscription is required for the service, and tracks are expected to retail for an average of 99 cents. Once purchased, tracks are transferred to the consumer's iTunes music library and are automatically synched to the user's iPod portable player.

Content can also be burned to CD. Credit-card information is stored on file in the store's shopping-cart system so the consumer does not have to re-enter the information for each purchase. The offering is expected to be made available initially only to users of Apple computers.

As part of its announcement, Apple is expected to unveil content-licensing deals with all five major labels. The Apple service is also expected to feature music from high-profile acts whose repertoire has not previously been available for digital distribution. [Billboard]

If this all proves to be accurate it could be pretty damn cool. And pretty dangerous for me. I'll have to stay away. I'm curious as to how much of each individual label's catalog will be online. This could be a great way to find older songs without having to buy full CDs. It would also be very cool if they offered various remixes of songs. Now, if they'll also release the rendezvous playlist sharing stuff too I'd be in heaven.

Heath (see, I got it right this time) posted about a bookstore in Ohio that was going out of business.

A bookstore in Ohio has come under fire for throwing away hundreds of unsold books when it went out of business. A local TV news reporter came across the overflowing dumpster and got upset that the books weren't donated to area nonprofits. The reporter became even more upset when she learned that taking the books out of the trash was illegal. [Heath Row's Media Diet]

He goes on to day that it's only selling books without covers that is illegal (and even then, not necessarily all books from the sound of it). I remember my grandmother used to always have lots of books with the covers ripped off. I wonder where she got them all. Maybe she was a black market paperback book seller!

I've had BBC America on this morning and I'd seen every single episode of Changing Rooms, Ground Force, and House Invaders that was on. At least twice. Help!

Looks like Michigan is having second thoughts on their Ultra-DMCA. Let's hope they do a good job fixing things up. [via jenett.radio].

The other day I was asking about plaintext email addresses in FOAF. Someone left a comment on that post about it, so I thought I'd pull that up to the top level here. There is a way to have your email address encoded. The FoaF vocabulary includes a foaf:mbox_sha1sum, which can be used as an alternative to foaf:mbox. Thanks to Morten, who left the comment.

A few years ago, when I was starting out spinning, I had this record that had wax dripped onto it by mistake. It had been sitting in the sleeve ever since then as I tried to figure out what to do with it. This morning I decided that I wanted to do something about it. After trying a few different things I discovered warm water was actually pretty good for removing it. Not so hot as to cause any warping, but warm enough to make the wax come right off. So, to celebrate I of course had to play it, which led to me mixing for a while, which led to me just having a great time playing songs for an hour or so. Mmmm, I need to do that more often. Maybe a nice netcast is in order sometime soon.

The only thing that made it better was that my friend Selma suddenly showed up at my window to say hi (since I thought she was out on the other coast).

John Robb asks if there is a TiVo-like device for radio. I've mentioned this to a few friends as something I would love to have as a standard feature in radios. So often in the car I'll half hear something that sounds kind of interesting and I'd love to be able to just hit a button and pause the radio, then back up a few seconds to start listening. Now that I think about it, I'd love to tell it to record certain shows when I'm not in the car. I'd love to be able to always have the latest Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell me, or Says You waiting for me to listen to. That would be so cool. On the plus side, I just discovered that you can listen to Wait Wait and Car Talk online.

Kind of interesting. I was just posting about supporting older browsers a few days ago and last night I read a post by Tim Bray about dropping support for it. Then I just noticed Don Park adding in some comments on the subject.

In other news, I fixed some of the problems with my site in IE6. The last one is a bit more strange and doesn't seem to happen consistently though.

Always nice to have my parents stop in. I've actually been keeping my apartment in relatively good shape so all they really had to do was take out the trash and help with some vacuuming. But we did go out to Casa de Pedro for lunch which was very reasonable and quite yummy (as usual). It was all nicely low key though since I'm still feeling enh. I'm thinking about a nap and then maybe trying to hit Dave Winer's blog weekly thing since I'm really interested in the stuff he's doing.

I almost wish he'd do something a little more advanced too. I think there's lots of neat things going on with the whole weblog world and things associated with it. Like I'd like a chance to learn a bit more about OPML, or at least be able to talk about it and ask questions. Add it all to my "look to learn about new things that might help make me employable" checklist. That and the stuff just sounds kinda neat (and I admit it, I'm a big geek).

Jeff Raskin: "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." [Quotes of the Day]

Been a bit quiet because I'm feeling a little under the weather. Hopefully I'll be feeling a little bit better today. Gonna try and get a bit more sleep though.

Just in case you ever wondered. Here are some Home Uses for Penguins [via Headphones Save Lives]

What's the cure for the mid-week blues? Why, a night out at the Analog Lounge of course. And to make it even better, add in a raspberry chocolate martini. They're like dessert in a glass. I think this week is gonna be pretty good. DJ Headrush has a weekly show on Friday nights at WBRS. Yet another college radio station I can't get. I believe we also have Mr. Peter Yagmin starting things off tonight and Mr. Peter Ellis doing the honors closing things up. Here's the official blurb:

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*

The relaxed side of things.
Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in.
This week, we bring you

DJ Headrush [wbrs : djheadrush.com] MA

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
04/30 - Defixio [Redlight : punkrocktechno] MA
To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge
This week downstairs at Anitya we've got Changmian DJ Bill Marshall. Who I'm sure will rock things pretty hard.

Kin Hubbard: "A good listener is usually thinking about something else." [Quotes of the Day]

Ian Hixie has a great post about IE6 and hallucinogenic drugs. Of course, now my question is, how much better is the Mozilla family of browsers? Opera? Safari? While I don't mind singling out MS, the issue here is browsers supporting things correctly. Now, from my own experience with redesigning my web site with CSS that Mozilla worked pretty much as expected, as does Safari. IE6 still doesn't seem to be displaying the section headings in the sidebar (does it for anyone?), and I'm not doing anything really fancy there. I set the font and the background and foreground colors and I don't think much else. I should check the site in Opera too to see how it looks.

Btw, for those of you use read this on LiveJournal, I'm talking about my actual home page, which is here.

Over on Dave Winer's blog, he's talking about new features coming into Manila. While the features are cool (yay! trackback!), I think what I'm finding most interesting is seeing how much his using Manila as a customer, setting it up for a real world situation, seems to be pushing development work along on it. I'm not sure if this is something he does regularly or not, though I get the feeling not. Already since he's been at Harvard they've addressed the issue of visible email addresses (something I'd commented on a few times on userland.com's discussion groups), and are now adding Trackback support.

How many developers turn around and actively use their products like this? Or how many end up having to go onto the next project and only really looking back when there are bugs to be fixed. Sometimes I think it's possible to be so stuck within a project that you miss everything else going on around you, or lose sight of how easy or hard it will be for the user to work with the software. Especially something as big as Manila or Radio.

In the past two weeks I've started to get hammered by spam offering to sell me cable TV descramblers. In fact, it has overtaken every other topic, including sex, for spam. Too bizzare. Is this the hot new item to have? Or is there just one guy sending out all the spam in the world and he happened to pick up a few thousand descramblers that are taking up way too much space in his garage.

(Hmm, I've mentioned sex two times in a row. Must stop thinking about it.)

Wendy writes about blogging and sex.

How many of us bloggers are getting some regularly? Or, shall I say, how many of us who blog EVERY DAY, multiple times a day, are getting some regularly? [The Redhead Wore Crimson]

Yikes. This hit a bit too close to home. So I wonder if I start blogging less I'll get some sex? Somehow I doubt it works that way.

I've been skimming around reading about FOAF, but I still have some questions. My biggest is to do with email addresses. All the foaf.rdf files I've seen include them in plaintext as far as I can tell. What's to keep this from being yet another place spammers can harvest for addresses? Anyone? (Sorry, I'm just overly sensitive about the spam thing).

Robert Scoble posts that

Sean Alexander just posted some news...

Sean Alexander just posted some news about the Windows Media Blogging Plugin (and other fun things).

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Okay, this may end up sounding a little snarky, but um, "yeah? so?" I read the post by Sean Alexander and it didn't wow me much. Or is the big news that you can now get the current playing track from Windows Media Player? Blogging clients have been doing this kind of stuff for ages. Most LJ clients I know can do this (at least with winamp). On the OS X side of things you can easily grab that stuff from iTunes via Applescript. And the cool blog client I've been using lately, Kung-Log, can do that too. I guess I just don't see what the big deal is.

If I'm missing something, please let me know so I don't end up sounding like an idiot.

Niels Bohr: "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

Well, after years of resisting, it looks like I will finally get my chance to play. When I checked my mail just a bit ago there was an email that started out like this:

You have been selected as one of the first participants in the EverQuest Macintosh Edition Beta test. If you are receiving this email, you are part of a group of people who will be the initial testers in the game. The feedback from this early group will be very valuable to us in deciding how to expand the test and focus our efforts from here, so we appreciate your participation. Please keep in mind that the product is going to have some bugs and issues at this point, and that is part of the nature of being in a beta test - if you'd rather wait for the completed product and not be subject to occasional unexpected results, we understand. Just let us know.

Should be interesting. I've never played the game at all, so I will really be just starting out. It's downloading now.

Over on a blog I just started reading there was a post about blogs that have absolutely no information about the people writing them. I have a little bit of information here and there, but had been meaning to write a page that gave some general information about me. So, tonight after a nice coughing fit I put up an about page. Just a few small details. If there's anything else you think I should have let me know.

Over on Apple's web site they have a cool article about Liam Lynch, one of the people behind Sifl & Olly. It seems he just put out a CD that includes "My United States of Whatever", which was one of the cooler songs on Sifl & Olly. Now, if someone can just help me get divx versions of all the episodes of Sifl & Olly I'll worship them forever.

Heath Row talks about Turn on the TV 2003. Which has an "exercise in living through our favorite appliance" in response to TV Turnoff Week. While I think turning off the TV isn't a bad idea (does that include watching movies or going to the movies?) I think people also need to be aware of just how powerful the media can be. Anyone else remember The Zen TV Experiment (referenced by the TV Turnoff Week page)? If you haven't done the experiment give it a try.

My TV will be turning on this week most probably, but lately I haven't really been ruled by it. I have about a week's worth of shows in the TiVo that haven't been watched. I'll most probably go through soon and delete 90% of them. I just haven't felt like watching much lately (though movies are another story altogether. I've got The Producers queued up to watch sometime today.

Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross are collaborating on a short short online called Unwirer. From the site:

This is a site where Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow are publicly collaborating on a short story for ReVisions, an alternate science fiction history anthology from DAW books, edited by Isaac Szpindel and Julie Czerneda. [Unwirer]

Neat idea. They've only just started it so there isn't much next. They also have an RSS feed so you can keep up with each new part posted as it appears.

Ron Nesen: "Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source." [Quotes of the Day]

Dave Hyatt posts about a test to figure out what kind of brain you have. You take two tests and look up the scores on a chart. My systemising quotient is 32, and my empathy quotient is 53, which means I have a type 'E', or female, brain.

I grabbed some cheese while shopping today, remembering I had tuna at home so tonight I made tuna melts that were quite good. The only thing that was missing was Spike. I tried to find some at the store today, but they didn't have any. Anyone in the Boston area know of anyplace that carries it? IMHO it's the best seasoning stuff, and putting a shake or two on top of a tuna melt before popping it in the oven rocks.

Frito-Lay now has 'Natural Cheetos'. From what I can see on the coupon this seems to be marketing to the 'all natural' crowd. But all natural Cheetos? I thought Cheetos were something that didn't exist normally in nature.

Last night was one of those nights that reminds me why I got into DJing. There's this moment when you just kind of become one with the music, where you know you're reaching people in the audience and just making them move. It's amazing and kind of intoxicating. I spun a great set. I usually finish spinning and and am kind of negative about my sets, this time it was just right. I've been spinning mostly mellow stuff in front of people lately and it felt soooooo good to just cut loose and play some harder stuff. Now I just wish it had been recorded.

One other odd thing, or maybe it isn't that odd. I've found that after I finish spinning I almost need to go off by myself for five or ten minutes to come down off of the rush. That and it freaks me out some when I have a bunch of people coming up to me to tell me how much they liked it. It just feels a little overwhelming.

This post going out to a few sources, including the anime blog.

Damn.

Character designs by Yoshitoshi ABe. Opening track by Juno Reactor (I've been waiting for a show to use some music like this for ages). Texhnolyze looks like it could be a winner already.

Um, wow. I just took in the first episode. I really hope someone does I high quality encode of this. The first episode of this show had almost no dialogue. Maybe 20 lines total. But visually I found it amazing. Very dark, parts very creepy. Lots of what the f*ck is going on moments. In the end I actually think I had a decent idea of what was going on (at least in part of it), but I'm still clueless as all hell.

Visually, the show has that dark Boogiepop Phantom/Lain look. And so far it seems to really work well (for me at least). This is one I'll be checking out more of.

I'm up way too early. My body is saying feed me. I think I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee and the newspaper, then go back to sleep.

In fact I'm up early enough that I'm posting all my entries to the wrong blog. Finally got them moved over to here where they belong. D'oh.

Damn, Enigmo is fun. Fun in the crack-like 'just one more level' kind of way. For now I've resisted purchasing it, but I wonder how long I can hold out. Enigmo is a game for OS X that is very much like The Incredible machine. But it's got funky 3D graphics. From what I've seen so far of the levels they all have to deal with getting little droplets of fluid from one place to another. It really is quite cool. I blame Kottke for this hopeless addiction.

Rod Serling: "It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper." [Quotes of the Day]

Hot Damn. ADV just announced that it will be distributing Azumanga Daioh. I actually didn't think they'd be the ones to do it, but I'm pretty psyched about it. Their web site also notes that they've acquired the rights for Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai. Also quite cool.

Some questions here. Why do people keep using old browsers that don't work well? I'm speaking here of Netscape 4. How many years old is it now? And as long as people keep including code in their pages to let them work with it there won't be much incentive to upgrade.

And I'm putting out a call for help again about my page working in IE6. I finally installed IE6 on my old 98 box that sits in the corner running DC++ and I finally saw some of the issues with it. The thing is. I have no idea how to fix them. As far as I can tell I'm not doing anything extremely fancy with CSS currently (at least not like in my last layout). So what's going on? In some cases IE6 isn't even rendering the letters on lines of posts fully (I'll see the tops halves of letters. Yet, when I hilite everything it is readable just fine. This almost seems more like a display bug of some kind. Anyone? If you live in the Boston area I'll buy you a drink if you can help me get this fixed (I'll try and get a screen shot later (hmm, how does one do that on windows?))

Oh. My.

Don't just listen to music, FEEL it! Audi-Oh (TM) is a revolution in stimulation technology for men or women. Sound is converted into infinitely variable pulses of pleasure. Audi-Oh* can use ambient sound, like the music in your favorite club, or direct audio input from devices such as portable CD players, MP3 players, your PC or home audio and video systems. You'll find a million ways to use Audi-Oh! [D]esigned to resemble a pager, its compact form and high-tech appearance allows it to be worn discreetly in public. [Audi-Oh] [via BoingBoing]

So now, when you see someone with a walkman on, dancing down the street you can wonder if they have one of these.

I also resisted clicking the "tips and tricks" link on the Audi-Oh site. I was too afraid.

Good morning folks. I've got my coffee, had some cinnamon toast and am working my way through NetNewsWire. Lots of stuff I wanted to comment on yesterday that I'll try to today. Everything from CSS to blogging. Ahh, I feel the (non-starborgs) coffee kicking in now.

Davezilla reports that You will be caffeinated. I must resist! I am not a number! I am a free man!

James Thorpe: "Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else." [Quotes of the Day]

One of the blogs I read regularly is Heath Row's Media Diet. He's always got interesting things posted and I've used links from his blog more than a few times. Now, thanks to a bit of research and some suggestions by me, he's got an RSS Feed. Welcome to the club! (Now I just need to dig those comics out of the bottom of my closet for you).

For those folks using Blogger Pro. If you can't seem to get your RSS feed working, make sure you have titles turned on. It won't put a post into the RSS feed if the post doesn't have a title.

Earlier this week I mentioned that I was pretty sure I was DJing this weekend at a party. The Circle crew is always throwing interesting events and this should be no different. I go on around 11:30 and will be closing out the night, so plan on being there early. I'm hoping to spin stuff a bit harder than what I've been playing at The Analog Lounge, so bring your dancing shoes.

Circle presents
SUNSHINE
Saturday, April 19th, 8:30 pm - 12:30 am
$7

featuring DJ's:
GREGORY BLAKE (special closing set)
MIKE ESP (techno pleasure)
SHWILLY B ("serious cornelius cornear")
BINARY (downbeat/dub/ambient)

At Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth St, Jamaica Plain (One block from Stony Brook T)
http://www.noiselabs.com/circle (-- map here)

So I decided to take a look at LiveJournal's RSS support this morning. It works like this. As a paid LiveJournal user you are able to subscribe to a feed. You give it a name and the url to the RSS feed. Once this happens the feed is pretty much out of your control. You can't do anything with it. It gets a generic template and to other LJ users can appear just like another user in their friends list (You can see how it does it here). Judging from some of my past experiences with some of their site I probably shouldn't have expected more from them than I got. Though I really only have one real gripe (well, two if you include that I hate how they format the posts).

My biggest gripe about it is how they handle comments. If your blog is subscribed to by someone on LJ, you may have a whole other set of comments for your blog over there that you don't know about. Because LJ has comments built into it, any feed that shows up on LJ has a link to comments on the posts. This is where I start to not like how they aggregate RSS feeds. Part of RSS is the <comments> item. This contains a URL where comments can be made on a post. If it is there you should use that for the comments link. That's what it is there for. I'd probably even argue that if there isn't a comments link LJ shouldn't let people comment. It gets more confusing too. If you look at some of the popular feeds there is more than one feed for some of the blogs (Wil Wheaton's for example). And each of those has comments on them.

LiveJournal also has an RSS feed that can be subscribed to for any LJ user. Just add /rss onto the end of their URL. So http://www.livejournal.com/~gblake/ becomes http://www.livejournal.com/users/gblake/rss/. LJ actually does a pretty good job here. In fact, they even support the use of <comments>. Just in case anyone reading the feed wants to read and post comments. How nice considering they don't pay attention to this tag when publishing other people's feeds.

So, they get it about half right. LiveJournal gets bigtime points for providing feeds of their users journals. But their support for subscribing to remote feeds has issues that annoy me greatly. It just feels kind of unfinished or not real polished to me. Which, unfortunately, is how a lot of things on LiveJournal feel to me.

John Russell: "Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting." [Quotes of the Day]

A bit of site admin stuff. Since I can never keep track of what episodes of what shows I've seen I've started an anime page here. It's just a list of shows I've seen/am watching. It is currently a work in progress as I add stuff I see and that I remember I've seen. In some cases I'm including notes on the shows too.

Looking to work out and get back into shape? Having a hard time getting motivated? Maybe you need the help of Slaversize. That's right, dominatrix led aerobics.

"If you don't keep up, you get punished," she warned her students at a recent class, which she oversaw with a nonstop string of insults and orders. "I don't want to hear any whimpering. You're here to suffer. [ABC News via BoingBoing]

This is just too funny. Xeni also weighs in on the subject over at BoingBoing, including a picture.

Heath Row mentions something I know I read about someplace recently called Art*o*mat. What is Art*o*mat?

Art*o*mat machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. Currently, there are 43 active machines in museums and various locations throughout the country.

How cool. There really needs to be one of these in the Boston area.

Just some random things as I wait for Dunkin to open so I can move my car:

• I just injured myself laughing after reading Davezilla's 20 Stupidest Pet Names. Number 19, a bulldog named Bitch Tits, put me over the edge. All I could imagine is some old guy, or even better some little kid, wandering through the neighborhood trying to find his lost dog. You'd hear "Bitch Tits! Where are you Bitch Tits!" and "BIIIIIIITCH TIIIIITS!" and "Here Bitch Tits! *whistle*" echoing out across the houses.
• Antipixel has spam we will never see. The sad thing is, I could see them using some of these actually. I mean, I've gotten spam recently that advertises that I'll be able to hit people with my penis (that one seems to be making the rounds again). I think the whole idea is to just get your attention any way possible.

• Boing Boing points to a report of minor sleep deprivation really screaing you over from Journal SLEEP

  Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14 consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks. [Journal SLEEP]

  This actually doesn't surprise me at all. I've heard a few sleep experts say they think we're all way behind on sleep in general.
• "Bad Girls Go To Hell" is no longer stuck in my head, but now "Belly of a Whale" is.
• Oh, yeah. Antipixel also now has a full RSS feed. Thank you! (I do actually still hit the actual pages on posts I like because I read the comments.)

Okay, time to move my car.

Evelle J. Younger: "An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attorney can delay one even longer." [Quotes of the Day]

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Turntables and Beer on here before. Every Tuesday night a bunch of us get together for beer, food, music, and the stealing of wireless bandwidth. I've taken pictures a few of the last times there, but am finally getting around to posting a bunch now. Nothing real incriminating here really. This last week's big feature was the giant metal hook.

The next two entries are picture related. This first one is from tonight at the club. It was lots of fun, some people were a bit out of control. I unfortunately missed all the really incriminating photo ops. Mario spun a really funky set. Unfortunately, the one pic we took of the turntables when he was spinning he seems to have escaped from. I'm gonna try and get pics every couple of weeks. The next one will probably be when my sister is in town.

I've been meaning to post this fortune for a while. It just took me a few days to get to it.

Appearance can be deceiving.
Remember endurance makes gold.

Here are a few pics that I just scanned in. I'm still getting used to the scanner. Does anyone have any good tips for scanning? Or web sites with good tips?

The first pic is one of me when I didn't want my picture taken. The second is of my old doggie. I miss her, she was lots of fun.

I saw this site called Dictary mentioned over on another blog and had to make mention of it because it looks pretty cool. What is a Dictary?

Probably the best and simplest answer is, a dictary is a search engine whose corpus is composed of literary texts instead of webpages. I don't know why this description never occurred to me while I was developing this thing.

Another good answer is: a dictary is like a good dictionary, but without the definitions, and with access to a great many quotations which can be selected based on various criteria...

Another pretty decent answer is: a dictary is like a concordance, but encompassing many texts and authors instead of just one. The ideal dictary contains everything that has ever been written - this one isn't quite there yet! [What's a Dictary?]

Let's see if I can explain it some. It searches texts for words you input. But you can say things like, show me where I can find these words within 4 lines of each other. Heck, even better, go there and check it out. It makes a bit more sense when you look at it and try it out.

I've been pretty bummed about the whole job situation lately so have been trying to find ways to distract me from stressing about it. One thing that a few people have recommended is finding ways to give volunteer help. Today while watching TechTV I saw a segment on a web site called VolunteerMatch. From their web site:

VolunteerMatch is the nonprofit, online service that helps interested volunteers get involved with community service organizations throughout the United States. Volunteers enter their ZIP code on the VolunteerMatch web site (www.volunteermatch.org) to quickly find local volunteer opportunities matching individual interests and schedules. This simple, effective service has already generated hundreds of thousands of volunteer referrals nationwide.

One cool thing they do is have a bunch of volunteer things you can do remotely (via computer/phone). Which would be a cool way for me to get started. I'd really like to find some school that I could help out at or something. I thought the web site looked pretty cool and that I'd share it.

One big peeve of mine is when movie soundtracks don't include songs from a movie that I really liked. I was just watching Pretty in Pink and had completely forgotten that The Rave-Ups are in it. What sucks is that the soundtrack doesn't include Positive Lost Me, a song I used to play way too much back when I was DJing at WESU in the summers (I kind of miss those days). The good news is I found the CD listed on Amazon, the bad news is that it isn't in stock. I wish listed it at least.

Oh yeah, and last night Ethan brought Final Scratch over to TTB and it was so damn cool. I'm planning on playing with it a bit more next week. Or maybe before than if I can :). I also tried playing with the CD deck last night for the first time. It's cool, but I don't like the disconnected feel I get. For me playing records is kind of tactile. When I slow the record down I can feel how much I'm pressing against the side of it as it spins, I know how much I'm slowing it. I'm planning on learning to use it more anyways, because I think it is a good skill, but I don't get the same enjoyment out of it currently.

Sometimes I think these things are too on target.

Scorpio, 10/23 - 11/21
Want to get the most out of your upcoming adventures, Scorpio? Then adopt an outlook that combines the objectivity of a scientist and the "beginner's mind" of Zen Buddhism. To pull this off, you'll have to suspend your theories about the way the world works. Realize that what you've learned in the past won't be a reliable guide to understanding current events. Be skeptical of your biases, even the benevolent ones. Try to see the naked truth, stripped of the interpretations that your emotions might be inclined to impose. [ via Free Will Astrology]

Is that it makes it hard to motivate to do things. One because my apartment is already getting ungodly hot (ugs, I can't afford to put in my a/c right now). Two, because it is just so nice out that I want to go out and play.

On the other hand I did get another resume out today for a job. I'm at the point where I'm applying for anything I have the slightest skills in that I can physically do. Ugs, I need to find something ASAP. Starting to panic lots (and trying very hard to not just start venting about it here).

Robert Morley: "Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work - I merely inflict myself upon the public." [Quotes of the Day]

Stretching out and reading, feeling the sun on the backs of your legs, falling asleep and waking up a bit later to feel a nice cool breeze. Ahh. Spring.

Aristotle:"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." [Quotes of the Day]

Time for that weekly ad. I'm psyched for things this week. Mario's one of my favorite local DJs. And the last time he played for us things were particularly quiet. Hopefully this time around things will be a bit more energetic. Once again there's no cover charge this week (how can we do this! we must be INSANE!), so you have no excuse to not come down and enjoy the night. You know you want to try one of those raspberry chocolate martinis.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*
The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in. This week we welcome back one of the very first DJs we had to the lounge. You know him, you love him, you wish you were him:

MJ [AudioDreamControl : Satellite : Galanta.net] MA

Also! For the second week in a row there is NO COVER CHARGE!
And that's not all. Downstairs you can enjoy Anitya with their special guest:
PAUL TAYLOR [Spun Records UK/Ibiza]

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya) (FREE THIS WEEK)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
04/23 - DJ Headrush [wbrs : djheadrush.com] MA
04/30 - Defixio [Redlight : punkrocktechno] MA
To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

We need more elected officials like The Great Sasuke.

Masked Wrestler Wins Japan Assembly Seat
TOKYO (Reuters) - Who is that masked man? One of Japan's newest politicians.

A professional wrestler who fought his way to victory in local assembly elections under his ring name and wearing his trademark mask has vowed the mask will not leave his face even after he enters the staid halls of Japanese politics.

"This is my face," the wrestler -- known as "The Great Sasuke" -- was quoted by the Nikkan Sports newspaper as saying of his black and white full-face mask with bright scarlet streaks and golden wings by the eye holes. [Reuters] [via BoingBoing]

Too Cool. It says he now hopes to demonstrate "superabundant power" outside of the ring. I want superabundant power.

Ever thought you'd make a good romance novel? Well now you can be a character in a romance novel.

At Torrid Romance, we offer personalized romance novels that allow readers to put themselves in our characters' shoes. We have all desired, at one time or another, to be somewhere else, someone different. Our goal is to tickle our readers by placing them in these fantastic situations they would not ordinarily be in.

Using the physical and material traits provided by you, the hero and heroine in the novel of your choosing are reshaped to your personal details - you are the characters. Our books are tasteful gifts between friends, family, and lovers alike and are equally suitable for many a varied occasions - a birthday, an anniversary, a wedding. [Torrid Romance]

Hey, they may be onto something here. I wonder if I could use this as a pickup line. "Hey babe, I'm a character in a romance novel."

I was just at the store and saw a large SUV completely blocked into by smaller cars on either side. The driver of the car couldn't get in. I was especially amused when I noticed that the parking spot was clearly marked 'compact cars only'. I guess since he didn't have the largest SUV he must have thought his was compact.

Too funny. Captain Christopher Pike's Livejournal. Thanks to Random for the link.

This morning Dave posted about using OPML for directories. This got me wondering, are blogrolls something that could be offered up in OPML? Would it make sense to do? Or would it be a kind of "why not?" type thing. (I'll probably email him and ask since I'm not sure he reads over here).

With my time off I figure it wouldn't hurt to look into stuff like this because I think it sounds kind of neat.

Updated:: Silly me. I know I should have gone and looked around online for stuff on this before posting. I found a few posts on it:

• Jake Savin: Blogrolling.com now supports OPML
• Brent Simmons: Blogrolling.com OPML files
• Loebrich Archives: Blogrolling and auto-discovery collide in my head

Needless to say there's a bit out there about it. One idea I have (that probably exists), is some kind of small web app that lets you start from an OPML blogroll list, and then lets you crawl through OPML enabled blogrolls (including links to RSS fields if possible).

As will be mentioned in countless places today. Apple released beta2 of Safari.. I've been using it for my morning browsing. So far it looks pretty smooth. And it does have tabs, and all sorts of other keen features (and it's still fast). Apple definitely seems to be getting it right with this little app.

James Reston: "This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim." [Quotes of the Day]

Phil Ringnalda asks Why do you tease me so?:

I love to hear everything you have to say. I do everything I can to be sure that I never miss a word you say, to find out what you think as soon as you want to tell me something.

I know you are beautiful. Remember, that was how you first caught my eye: you said something that caught my attention, I turned to look, and couldn't look away. I still think you are lovely. Every time you say something about a new look, I examine every detail. Whenever I say something to you, I look right at you, drinking in every detail while I speak. I don't really mind too much if you don't want me to have your pictures: just tell me when you have new ones, and I'll come over and look at them at your place. I understand, I don't mind at all.

But lately, it's started to chafe a bit, the way that you have to have everything your way. You just give me the tiniest hint about what you're thinking, and expect me to figure it out from that, and you say that if we're going to talk, it'll be at your place on your schedule, or not at all. I do what I can to accomodate you, but I've got a life and a schedule of my own, too.

So why the hell do you only give me a twenty word excerpt instead of the full post with the HTML in your RSS feed?

I'll tell you why. Laziness. Okay, not quite laziness. At least with Movable Type, the problem lies with the default setup. It is one of the few things that bugged the crap out of me with Movable Type. All the RSS feeds only have excerpts. I quickly went through and put in an RSS 2.0 template that had the full articles (and other RSS 2.0 goodness like links to the comments). The problem is that lots of people out there just don't know enough about all this to easily go and tweak it. I've really only just started seeing more and more mention of RSS over on places like ScriptyGoddess.com. I wonder if we can hope to see better support for this stuff in MT in the future.

Antipixel posts about about how to make yourself more marketable as a 'Gangsta Rap' artist.

An aspiring rap star who has been charged with murdering his roommate and eating part of her lung did so as part of his record label's plan to cultivate a "gangsta" image for him, the victim's mother charged in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles. [Sydney Morning Herald]

What a waste of a perfectly good lung.

Since I ended up sleeping most of yesterday I decided to get things done today. Did well. Taxes are set to be sent out tomorrow. Some bills paid. Unfortunately, this means I didn't make it to the movies today. But now that I've got everything done I'm going to treat myself to some delivery chinese.

Boston Common has a link to a story about a worse traffic hazard than talking on the cell phone while driving. See, I knew there was a reason it was bad to have TVs in cars.

I've been meaning to post about this for a few days, but haven't gotten around to it. jennett.radio has a link to a post by Jamie Zawinski of the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. It concerns the RAVE act and how it was slipped into the legislation for the "AMBER Alert bill". At least they seem to have taken out the wording that refered to bottled water and glowsticks as Drug Paraphernalia. Jamie goes on to say:

So look, if any of you jackasses were planning on trying to sneak The Drugs into my club, could you please show a little consideration and just fucking not? I couldn't care less what you do with your life, but I have no desire to go to jail because you can't leave your habit at home. Might I recommend something in a vodka instead? That won't get us busted, and (bonus!) causes our employees to get paid.

One of the things about this that annoys me the most is how the bill got passed. What is this doing in the middle of a bill about child abduction that has absolutely nothing to do with drug policy. Yes, I know it's a silly question because it is a fairly common thing to do stuff like this, but it still sucks.

Warning. The following is not for people who don't like blood.

This morning I woke up kind of early and slipped out to the couch to check email and skim some news before grabbing my morning coffee. While reading my the news I felt something on my nose and rubbed my hand across it and felt something wet. Glancing at my hand there was what seemed like tons of blood. In a state of slight panic I grabbed some napkins that were sitting by me. Unfortunately, they really didn't do much because it was just dripping continuously. I quickly ran to the bathroom and grabbed some tissues and pinched my nose closed.

I don't think I've had to deal with a nosebleed in, like, I dunno years? decades? I really wasn't sure what the proper way to deal with one was. Once again, the net comes to the rescue. Thanks to a Google and their ability to render pdf as HTML I found the answer:

The way to treat this is:

1. Pinch your nose (demonstrate)
2. If you are in a hot area, move to a shady area.
3. Pinch your nose for at least 5-10 minutes
4. Don't pick or blow your nose after the bleeding has stopped.
5. You can put a cold compress on it if the weather is too warm.

All I can say is: ICK. Hopefully I can go another decade or two without getting one.

Lyle Alzado: "I don't really trust a sane person." [Quotes of the Day]

While out grabbing lunch today at Mass. House of Pizza I ran into Shwilly B, who asked me if I'd be interested in spinning at the next Circle party, which is on April 19th. Not being one who can say no to a possibility to spin in front of people I of course said YES. I'm actually really psyched about it, the Circle crew has really good energy and really get into anything they do.

It's shaping up to possibly a busy weekend, as Anime Boston will also be going on (though I'm still wavering on if I'm going to go. Lyn, come up and go with me so I don't have to go alone!)

From dinner last night:

Hope exists. Let your worries loose on the wind.

Isaac Asimov: "Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." [Quotes of the Day]

N.Y. Seeks Ban on Liquid-Filled Yo-Yo

The state Consumer Protection Board asked stores Thursday to pull "water yo-yos" from their shelves and for the federal government to ban the potentially hazardous novelty items.

Sold in dollar stores, corner stores and on the Internet, the toy features a rubbery, liquid-filled ball of various shapes and colors on an elastic cord.

Children often twirl the toy around their heads, and "the cord can easily wrap around a child's neck," said Teresa Santiago, chairwoman of the Consumer Protection Board. [GoUpstate.com] [via jennett.radio]

Next thing you know they'll want to ban toy phones because the phone cord might strangle you.

Last year Piro from over at MegaTokyo and Merekat released the very cool Pirogoeth poster. I was lucky enough to get one from the original printing of it. It's nicely framed hanging on the wall behind me.

Well, this time the two of them have gotten together again to create a new poster just as stunning as the last. According to Piro's recent rant it comes out sometime around May. Yay!

Yesterday I mentioned Pyroto Mountain, a kind of trivial web game. I discovered today that the same people have another game called MultiMegaCorp. The basic concept is similar, but supposedly the trivia type questions are a little easier. With this one the whole concept is that you're starting at the bottom of the ladder in a huge company and have to climb your way up to the top. I only just started, but it's kind of fun so far. I can't wait to write my first memo.

I was meaning to post about The Analog Lounge all day yesterday, but didn't have a chance. Wednesday night was pretty damn fun. The turnout was really good. I'm sure a chunk of it was because of the guest DJ downstairs and the lack of a cover charge. But I'm not complaining about it at all. The more people who come out every week and have a good time is the more people who will be coming out as the weather gets better.

Big thanks go out to Frantic for blowing my mind again with how he uses the Pioneer mixer. I really need to remember where he said he shops online for when I can buy records again. One thing that was nice is there were some people who were there to mostly listen to the music upstairs, which I thought was really really cool. We even got some nice compliments. Now if we can just get all the residents to show up every week.

Bryant over at Population: One posts about and interesting web game called Pyroto Mountain. It's mostly a trivia game, but there are some interesting little twists. One of which is you don't have all the rules when you start out. You're also required to interact with the other people playing the game through bulletin board posts.

As you gain more power you can climb higher up the mountain's 512 levels. But there are some other catches you'll find along the way. I've only been playing for a few hours, but so far it's pretty fun. I think I'm hooked too.

Unknown: "In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it." [Quotes of the Day]

According to Ben Edelman, a fellow at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, it seems that Google's SafeSearch feature is a little too agressive when filtering out possibly offensive material.

He continues: "SafeSearch is intended by Google to block 'pornography and explicit sexual content,' but my research indicates that it blocks far more. SafeSearch is easily confused by ambiguous words in web page titles -- like 'Hardcore Visual Basic Programming,' a web page that describes intense programming for experts, without any sexually-explicit content whatsoever.

"SafeSearch also makes mistakes that are harder to understand -- like filtering the National Middle School Association (nmsa.org) and even the front page of Northeastern University (neu.edu), not to mention numerous sites operated by national and local governments." [Weblogs at Harvard Law]

Uh, oops? Maybe filters like this need to start using the same kind of technology as spam filtering, but in the other direction.

Tonight I went over to Harvard for Dave Winer's weekly weblog meeting. While it is intended primarily for people in the Harvard community to learn about weblogs, he invites readers of his blog to show up also. I thought it was really interesting. I'm not sure how interactive he wanted it to be, so I mostly listened. One thing I wish I could have done is gotten online while I was there and blogged some things as I was there. Instead you'll get some random thoughts of mine on the whole thing.

He gave a short intro to blogs, also covered making a post and simple things like uploading a picture. One thing I found most interesting was that it seemed like a lot of the people there were very much novices. There were a number of basic computer/web concepts that I felt there being a slight stumbling block on. This is something I run into with my parents a lot and when I was working I'd run into with co-workers. There are some basic ideas to do with computers that I think some people never really get taught well. My favorite example is folders. I think a lot of people get them somewhat, but don't really fully get how they can can use them effectively.

Anyways, people asked a lot of interesting questions. One topic I thought was kind of cool was the question of community. Just what is the community of a weblog? Who's going to be reading? Should you worry about Google indexing it? To an large extent these are things I don't even think about. Mostly because internally I think I've already made a lot of those decisions. I made them back when I was working. I knew I had other people at HealthGate who read my blog and so definitely had a level of internal censorship going on. I can easily see this being an issue for people who don't really get that part of the web.

One thing that kind of got my brain working was a question someone asked. They asked if it was possible to search groups of RSS feeds during the meeting. It got me thinking, wouldn't it be handy if your aggregator was also indexing things as it grabbed posts. You could keep a month's worth of simple keyword indexing to things. This is kind of also like how I wanted Net News Wire to have support for some kind of 'scoring' You could have keywords that you are always interested and ones that you aren't and let it hilite posts that might interest you. If you have a large number of feeds it might be handy for a first pass skim through a few hundred posts.

I thought the meeting was pretty interesting. One thing I like about blogs is seeing people who are new to the web discovering them and discovering what they can do. Especially once they get past some of the initial stumbling blocks. It also made me think about different tools for people doing web/blogging stuff. But I'll post about that tomorrow after I've slept on it.

John Robb mentioned a cool image resizing tool for OS X today called ImageWell. It's just a small little tool that resizes images for you. I'll have to try it out and see how good of a job it does. I love GraphicsConverter, but it sometimes seems silly to fire it up just to resize a single image.

Derek likes the new AOL 6 million dollar AOL guy commercial. I love this one too. The first time I saw it I was like, "hmmm? what is this?" and then almost fell over when I saw the AOL guy running. I like commercials that make me laugh.

Bah. I just figured out my taxes and for the first time in over a decade I owe money. Augh, it figures it happens while I'm unemployed.

The Shifted Librarian once again links to something insanely cool. A flash version of Tom Lehrer's The Elements. I have to say I really like some of the animation stuff people are doing with flash these days.

One year ago today I was spinning at the Phoenix Landing. I really do have the best friends. One thing I do love about the people I've met since I moved to Boston is they really do all go that extra bit when they can. In this case, it was making the smokiest pub in Cambridge into a smoke free location for a night. And with the exception of about 3 people everyone was cool about it.

Henry Kissinger: "The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault." [Quotes of the Day]

Ahh, spring. The time when twice a month I wake up to the sound of "STREET CLEANING. There is no parking on the *garbled voice* side of the street. Your car will be tagged and towed". Which usually means I bolt out of bed and look outside and try to remember where the fuck I parked my car. This morning I knew it was coming though and had parked my car in a safe place yesterday afternoon. I'm at the point now where if it's street cleaning day the next day I won't even go out the night before because parking can be that hellish.

What's impressive about all this? The tow trucks. I just watched them clear a block of parked cars in about 10 minutes. Those guys work fast.

Not new, but I keep forgetting the link, so I'm putting it here. Click on image to get full sized original.

Time for movies again. This time it is Lawrence of Arabia this Sunday at The Brattle. I'm hitting the 3:30 showing if I can get tickets. If you're interested drop me a line and I'll pick up an extra one.

Damn, the full length version of the Witch Hunter Robin theme is over ten minutes long.

Jane Wagner: "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." [Quotes of the Day]

Well, winter seems to be back, at least for a little bit. So I think that's all the excuse we need to have some fun Wednesday night. This week, the first person to find me after I spin gets a free martini. How's that for a deal. Not only do you get in for free, but one lucky person gets a martini. This is also the first of two free weeks in a row, so mark your calendars for next week too.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*
The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in. This week, we welcome back the one and only

Frantic [Suburban Groove Project] MA
(We had such a good time the last time he was around we just had to have him back.)

The night is also extra special, because there is NO COVER CHARGE. So come on down and check out Frantic upstairs and Anitya's special guest downstairs:
DIMITRI [G.B.U./twisted, Spun Records, Ibiza]
it should be a pretty kickass night.

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya) (But it's FREE this week!)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
04/16 - MJ [AudioDreamControl : Satellite : Galanta.net] MA
04/23 - DJ Headrush [wbrs : djheadrush.com] MA
04/30 - Defixio [Redlight : punkrocktechno] MA
To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

Also, as usual, if you're a DJ in the Boston area and interested in spinning some Wednesday night, drop me a line.

Anyone up for drinks on Thursday night? I was thinking about an excursion to Miracle of Science, since I haven't been there in ages. I just feel the need to go hang out and visit with some friends and blow off some steam. Wednesday nights are good for that, but I have to worry about club stuff so I can't fully relax.

Too busy running around today to do things I want to. First I'm not going to get to Harvard for Dave Winer's thing this afternoon. Hopefully I'll get over there Thursday (finally). Also, I'm going to bail on Turntables and Beer tonight since it's a street cleaning day tomorrow, which means parking will suck tomorrow (and I have a good parking spot now). Oh how I love spring in Cambridge (though they didn't street clean today due to the snow).

Last night I braved the cooling air and headed over to the movie theater in Harvard Square to check out the US release of the Cowboy Bebop movie. I'd downloaded a fansubbed version of it a while back and had seen it already, but I was kind of keen to see it with the dub voices that I enjoyed so much during the series. I also wanted the chance to see it on the big screen with better sound than the fansub I had.

Overall, the movie was good. Not great, but good. Probably even a bit better than good. Let's say very good. The plot was decent. In general terms it's about some bad guy who's got some freaky virus and is threatening to unleash it upon Mars. Of course, the crew of the Bebop get involved because there's a huge bounty on the guy (and Faye witnesses his first attack). I'd say my only major problem with it was the pacing. There were a few scenes that felt like they could have been trimmed slightly and tightened things up. But beyond that there isn't too much negative to say about the movie.

The dub cast is back for the movie and does just as good a job as they did in the series. The soundtrack is great (I've had the CD for months now). And some of the action sequences in the movie are amazing (there's an dogfight scene that's really cool, and I enjoyed the fight scene at the end a lot). Overall, if you enjoyed the TV series, you'll probably at least like the movie. I also think it would work well for someone who hasn't seen the TV series. I give it four out of five stars.

This is testing making a post via Kung-Log, a graphical front end for Movable Type. It's pretty cool from the looks of it, though it's missing some stuff to do with uploading files (not creating thumbnails).

I think the thing I find sad about the follwoing story is that it doesn't surprise me at all. I've run into more than my share of people on the net who aren't what they say they are. But damn, it isn't often you get to see someone caught in this way. It's nice to know there are still good people out there on the net.

How Joey's blog saved his ass
Joeey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla posted a blog entry last week about how great his new girlfriend is, how fine it was to be dating a programmer girl-geek with a CS degree and a sweet job running the Alliance/Atlantis site she had. His comments-section was full of encouraging notes from his friends, glad to see him so happy.

But the next day, a stranger emailed him with the news that his girlfriend was not what she seemed: a recovering addict who abandoned her children, a compulsive liar and identity thief, a chameleon who lied about her education, employment and technical abilities. Joey met with the stranger and got the whole story, and confronted his erstwhile girlfriend.

She denied it all, but couldn't even answer the most basic technical questions. Finally, in a fit of Columbo-like suspicion, Joey asked her a trick question -- a very, very clever trick question that I won't spoil for you here -- and realized that his whistle-blower was telling the truth. Joey got the hell out of the relationship, saved from involvement with this very broken and creepy person by his blog.

Link[Boing Boing Blog]

Just another reminder that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog

Happy Birthday, Astro Boy!
On this day, Astro Boy was created by Dr. Tenma. Happy birthday, Astro. [Antipixel]

Also of interest, a new Astro Boy show started airing just last night in Japan. I think they're just showing the first episode now and the series itself starts later this year. I never saw the original, so it will be interesting to see this.

Internet-enabled toilet roll

A whole slew of bizarre household gadgets the Ideal Home Show in London this past week, including an cutting board that can surf the Web and an Internet-connected toilet roll that can display current news and stock prices, and print out the information on, you guessed it, toilet paper. Certainly provides an innovative way for people to show their displeasure with bad news and market crashes.
Read

[Gizmodo]

I can just see people never leaving the bathroom because of this, not wanting to miss a single moment of news.

Samuel Johnson: "Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble." [Quotes of the Day]

I was reading Leo Laporte's recent blog post on spam filtering and decided I needed to get a little more firm handle on my mail filtering and spam filtering. I've been using the spam filter that comes with Apple's Mail.app program and it's pretty damn good. I'd say it finds about 95% of the spam I get. The nice thing is you can keep training it all the time.

I'm also experimenting with letting the mail program do all my filtering. I had been using procmail, but I think sometimes it would interfere with the spam filtering that Mail.app was doing. So we'll see how it works. I'm also taking this time to clean out old old old mail that really has no use. I want to get better at managing my email.

After a bit of a lazy day I'm off to enjoy a bit of the sun and wander in Harvard Square for a bit. Even if it isn't extremely warm out. I feel the need to recharge my solar batteries.

Oh yeah, and I am still hitting the movie tonight. I'm going to the 7 showing, so if you feel like meeting me, drop me a line (you can also send email to my phone from here). There will be a review later hopefully.

This whole skipping an hour thing always throws me for a loop. There's something about going to sleep at 10 and it really being nine. I always find that I'm staying up a little bit later at first because my body isn't used to the change and isn't tired. I'm going to force myself to go to sleep early tonight though.

Mornings I don't find quite as bad. Though I did sleep in this morning and it was very nice. Time to make myself a nice puff pancake.

Habeas Sues Spammers
Habeas, the company that aims to stop spam by embedding copyrighted and trademarked material in the headers of e-mail, is springing into action with cases against alleged infringers. [Antipixel]

I'll be watching this to see how it turns out. I remember hearing about Haebeas when they first appeared and thought it was an interesting idea. I actually just signed up this morning, and also set my mailer to colortag any message that uses it. I'm kind of curious to see who else is using this.

Mae West: "You're never too old to become younger." [Quotes of the Day]

While I was at my parents I wasn't able to check email through my mail server. Then, I remembered that AT&T lets you read email on their servers via the web (in fact, remotely this is the ONLY way to read mail. They don't even support using POP from a machine not on their network (bastards).

So I fire up the web interface and check my mail, delete everything and see I'm still using up 10% of my mail space. Looking around more I find a folder called 'screened mail'. Looking in it I see days of spam mail, including one real email. I was annoyed.

I actually think it is cool that they offer email screening. But, if you're going to offer it in this way I think you have to do a few things. (1) Make sure the user knows about it. And including information about it in an HTML is not good enough. Because I can't read half of what they include in it (I have HTML turned off, so all those promotional emails I get from them have these big blank spaces where there are images telling me things). (2) Offer the user more than one way to check the screened mail. The only way to check the screened messages is via the web. Come on folks, IMAP isn't new. At least let us use IMAP so we can easily check stuff like this. Or send it to a different mailbox that we can use POP with. What a pain in the ass.

I'd mentioned before that I got a Canon Scanoscan N650U a while ago (I think I got it around a year and a half ago). I was with my parents at the Apple store while they were buying their mac and asked the sales guy if the printer would work with OS X. He said it would. He was wrong. In fact he was so wrong that Canon is still only just barely supporting this printer in OS X. I checked back again to see if they had drivers for it and indeed they did. As I finished downloading them I started reading the documentation. The drivers they supplied, they only work with Photoshop. What the hell. Haven't they heard of things like TWAIN? My parents got an Epson scanner for Christmas and even though it didn't have full OS X support at least it had TWAIN support. Which meant I could use Image Capture (which comes with OS X).

So, I decided to check back into VueScan, a piece of software for OS X (and windows) that supports an insane number of scanners of all types (SCSI, USB, etc). I'd tried it once before when it supposedly first had support for the N650U, but it didn't work. This time. It did! I still feel a little weird spending any money on a scanner that was so cheap and should just work, but I've got a ton of pictures I really want to scan in. I have to say I'm really disappointed with Canon. I don't see why it takes that long to release a scanner driver.

So, I think I'm going to buy a copy of VueScan later this week and get to work scanning in a bunch of old pictures I have. I can then archive them off to CD so that I can have easier access to them on the computer.

Now, what I really need is a rendezvous enabled scanner. So I can drop something on the flatbed and go back to my laptop and do all the scanning from there. That would just plain rule.

I went down to my parent's place last night because some relatives were in town and everyone was going to be getting together for dinner today. Unfortunately, I completely spaced on the fact that the electric company was going to be doing maintenance and they were going to be cutting the power once or twice last night. I discovered this morning that none of my machines were online, something that made me a little worried.

I excused myself from things a little bit early so I could slip back home and make sure that there was nothing extremely bad. I had images of my apartment having been broken into the reason I couldn't get to any of my machines was because they weren't there. In the end it turns out that one of them was just off, and the other needed me to run fsck on a partition. Phew.

So I'm back now, the visit was good, though stressful. My parents are great, the provide a ton of support for me as I'm going through some difficult times, even if I'm a bit to bull-headed to ask for help. I really am glad they are there for me.

I'm in a much better mood today. I'd blame it on being overtired, but I really didn't sleep much last night. I seemed to have a bit of insomnia. When I did finally sleep it was like I was watching some show about someone flying an ultralight plane around their farm. But I was kind of in the show, and at the same time the one flying the plane. I never quite get my dreams. I keep thinking I should keep a pad by my bed, or maybe a small tape recorder and record them. But I'm too afraid that I'll discover that I am actually insane.

I have a craving for something sweet. I'm off to hunt through the house to see what I can find.

Dave asks: Does it snow in Cambridge in May?. Hopefully not. If it does I'm gonna go out and find the person responsible and hurt them. It's been funny this year. I have a few people I know who just moved here and I keep telling them, "It really isn't this bad usually!" Of course, the current weather is not helping me prove my case at all.

Starting the other day MDN:WaiWai has a short series of articles detailing Schoolgirls' Decade of Decadence, covering everything from selling panties to schoolgirls offering sex for a ride or train fair.

Where Eriko and Chiharu differ is that they exchange their filthy favors for things as simple as a lift to work, or for train fare. Spa! says they treat prostitution like an ATM with no limits, like a pot they can dip into whenever the funds run low. [MDN:WaiWai]

As is usually true when reading WaiWai, words fail.

Oops

Signs land seven in court
By CLIFFORD JEFFERY STURGIS JOURNAL

What started as an April Fool's joke involving bad grammar landed seven people in jail Tuesday.

Sturgis police arrested seven Sturgis men for placing more than 20 threatening letters on various businesses, schools, banks and at the post office. At least 12 signs were posted Monday morning. Another 20 were put up Tuesday evening, according to Sturgis police.

The letters all read "All your base are belong to us and you have no chance to survive, make your time." [The Sturgis Online Community]

(via Boing Boing)

Fran Lebowitz: "The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting." [Quotes of the Day]

Antipixel has up some beautiful pictures of the cherry trees down the street from him. Stunning. I can't wait till stuff here starts to bloom.

There's got to be a way for some of my unemployed friends and I to start some kind of business. I keep looking at my lack of success in finding work and wonder just what other options there are. Regardless of what I end up doing I think it would have to end up being somewhat related with computers (just not data-entry). I can't think of many other jobs I'd be even slightly happy doing.

On the good side, I did get my resume out to a few more places today.

I was just about to head out to my car to drive down to CT when I realized that I'd just called this morning about getting my phone replaced. They said it would be delivered in between 24 and 48 hours. Which now means that I can't leave till tomorrow night. Bah. I guess maybe I will be around this weekend after all.

I've posted a few times recently about the super-DMCA in the past week or so. Yesterday a Massachusetts legislative committee held a hearing on their version of it. I was aware of it, and thought about going, but in my true slacker sense didn't make it out. On the other hand, a bunch of people did go, and it sounds like they really may have made a difference. Freedom to Tinker has links to two sites with reports on it.

So, at the end of the day, one national lobbyist who hadn't apparently bothered to read the relevant Massachusetts law proposed a one-size-fits-all bill to a committee who then heard dozens of ardent opponents. The opponents were ordinary people who had taken personal days to voice their concerns. They learned about the problem through Weblogs, listservs, word of mouth. They came out in force. It was a great vision of the kind of democracy that the Net can foster. I even overheard one lobbyist whisper: "These guys all read the Weblogs." How subversive.

I hope this committee does the right thing. From what they said, anyway, this bill is in major trouble. It should be scrapped, not amended. It's a waste of good legislator's time. It's a special interest bill, plain and simple. [John Palfrey]

One side thing I caught form both of these blog posts was that people are becoming aware of weblogs. Both mentioned overhearing people mentioning them. Cool. Hopefully people in other states can have just as much success. I wonder if legislators in other states where this has passed will start to feel a bit foolish now that word is getting out about this.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: "Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all." [Quotes of the Day]

I'm going to take a break from my usual breezyness to be grumpy and annoyed at the world. And after posting it I'll probably feel like I shouldn't have bothered whining about it and get all self conscious about it, but I just need to get it out. Please take with a slight grain of salt.

The last two weeks at the club have been kind of dead. I blame it on it raining both nights, but I'm also kind of annoyed because so few of my friends come out to it. I know some have to work, but lots of others rarely if ever make it out (or say they will then don't). Heck, even some of the residents sometimes just don't show up without a word to anyone.

Mr. Ellis is always great throughout all this. He's always there, always willing to lend a hand. And that somewhat special Pete is at least considerate enough to drop a line when he can't make it. Bah, I'm just overtired and grumpy I think. Maybe today I'll just set up a perminant link to that post generator from yesterday.

I always thought these commercials were some of the worst. Thankfully:

WHITE HOUSE TO END DRUGS & TERROR ADS
Also Stops Study That Found Campaign Wasn't Working

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- The White House anti-drug office will end its controversial drugs-and-terror advertising campaign and, in a reversal, shift more of its $150 million budget toward children's media as it fights for Congress to extend the program another five years.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy will also cease a polarizing $8 million annual study that found the ads aimed at youth were not working and that pitted the drug office against the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. [AdAge.com]

I really didn't like those commercials at all. I'm so glad they are gone.

Found via blog I just started reading recently:

'War' singer Edwin Starr, 61, dies

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- U.S.-born soul singer Edwin Starr -- best known for his anti-conflict song "War" -- has died at the age of 61, his manager Lilian Kyle said on Thursday.

In a statement on Starr's official Web site, Kyle said the singer had died following a heart attack at his home near Nottingham, central England. []

I've more or less been doing nothing. Pretty much nothing noteworthy going on to speak of, but oh well. I just don't have anything to say right now. I haven't gotten much done these days. Not much on my mind , but that's how it is.

Current Mood: dispassionate

(This entry brought to you by the The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator.)

Boston-Online mentions the new Super DMCA bills that are showing up in various states, including MA. For more information, check out Freedom to Tinker's Super-DMCA site. The interesting thing is that the MPAA seems to be the one behind this horribly stupid bill. Bastards.

Broadcast message out to my friends (and anyone else in the area). This Sunday I'm planning on going to see the Cowboy Bebop movie at the theatre in Harvard Square (it's at the Loew's there). I'll be hitting the 7pm showing. If anyone wants to meet up let me know. I'm not buying tickets for people or worrying if anyone is there though. It's too much work ^_^. If you say you'll be there I'll try and hold a seat if I'm there before you. The movie is pretty good. I saw a subtitled version a while ago and it definitely has the feel of the show down perfectly. It also doesn't require you to have really seen the show. I think it would work pretty well standalone.

I was inspired by seeing this over on another blog, I decided to put up a list of what's now playing in iTunes on my web site. There's also a link to recently played tracks. The program I use for this is called Kung-Tunes, and works specificly with iTunes. I like!

The hardest part was getting japanese characters to display, but I think I handled it right by changing the character set to Shift_JIS. Any web types out there know if there is a better way to do it than this?

Hey wow, I have shares available on Blogshares. Pretty cool! You can view my site's page here (where you can also 'buy' shares).

I've heard it said that one way to survive in business is to concentrate on one thing and do it better than anyone else. Ellen (there, satisfied?) sent me a link to a story titled The Store sells rice pudding. Nothing Else

Mr. Moceo, who said he once owned a restaurant called Bally-hoo's in Smithtown, N.Y., originally wanted to open a sit-down restaurant featuring only rice dishes. After struggling with the concept for months, he said, he flew to Italy to relax. As he ate intensely flavored desserts in Florence's stylish gelaterias, inspiration struck.

But when he got back to New York and began researching rice pudding recipes, he said, "my friends didn't understand where I was going with this."

Worse, "landlords refused to rent to me, because they didn't see how I could pay the rent selling rice pudding." Mr. Moceo, who declined to say how much he has spent on the project, said it was "less than you'd think -- I did most of the work myself." He had "no partners, no investors." [New York Times]

I'm not a huge fan of rice pudding myself, but this article makes me want to give it a try.

Finally won the battle against my stomach. I think I slept for a good 18 hours of the last 24, so I'm feeling a bit energized. Though now I'm starving and my morning cup of coffee addiction is kicking in. Tonight, being Wednesday and all, is another installment of The Analog Lounge. This should kick off a month of what I hope is really good stuff, with a more variety than ever.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*
The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in. Golly! Is it April already? Tonight we kick off the beginning of a month of amazing talent. (You can see the list for the month below.). And to kick things off proper we're bringing you one of the circle crew:

Jeff Mission [Beatfix : Circle] MA

with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
04/09 - Frantic [Suburban Groove Project] MA
04/16 - MJ [AudioDreamControl : Satellite : Galanta.net] MA
04/23 - DJ Headrush [wbrs : djheadrush.com] MA
04/30 - Defixio [Redlight : punkrocktechno] MA

To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

This week downstairs at Anitya it's residents night. All the more reason to come out and have a ball.

Btw, if you are in the area and interested in spinning, please drop me a line (preferably with a link to a mix online or how I can get one from you). The only thing we really ask is that you keep it on the mellower side of things. Since ya know, it's a loungey kinda place ^_^.

Remember Columbia House? Back when I was a kid I remember they'd have ads in the paper every sunday. Now I use them for DVDs. I've joined up a few times thanks to the Columbia House DVD FAQ at DVDTalk.com. This falls into part of why I love the net. Everyone contributes what they've discovered and you get FAQs like this. When you join, make sure you get all expesive DVDs, and pick a plan that only requires you buy one or two DVDs before you can quit. Last time I did it, it worked out to $9 a DVD. Not bad!

From a mud I hang out on:

Percival | Q. How many indie rockers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Percival | A. I have that joke on vinyl.

Shared because I have more than a few friends who will appreciate it.

Bleh. Time for a bit of oversharing. I didn't post much today because I spent the day in bed. Something I ate last night just didn't really agree with me that much. I'm not really sure what it was. But as long as I'm laying down I'm fine. If I'm up and about for a bit I start to get the gas pains from hell. We'll see how I'm doing now. I was supposed to go out tonight, but I'm gonna blow it off. I'm afraid of just not feeling well when out.

Hmm, now what can I eat that won't aggrevate my stomach. Aha! English Muffins.

Carl Jung: "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." [Quotes of the Day]

Some random refridgerator poetry.

chain eat easy
cook love breast put think
shake but void like languid did

Late this afternoon my stomach started feeling unwell. I didn't feel like I was going to get anything it just hurt a bit. Then it started to hurt a lot, I ended up just laying down and going to sleep. I woke up after midnight, just a few minutes ago. I stumbled out of bed and sat down to check my mail and saw that it was the first and mumbled out "Rabbit Rabbit". Time for a month of well needed good luck.