Seen over on LJ originally. The goal is to to do a preset list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I think the hard part for me with coming up with 101 things. Maybe I should start off with 1 thing in 11 days, where that one thing is coming up with 101 things.
September 2005 Archives
Shining looks like it could rock. Check out the trailer.
A new beta of the OpenID plugin for Movable Type came out recently, so I thought I'd see if it would work better than the version I had been trying. After one try it was working just dandy. Even had someone else try commenting with it to make sure it worked (thanks again!).
For those of you who haven't heard of OpenID, it is something that was come up by the LJ folks at Six Apart. It lets people who have accounts on systems with OpenID post to remote blogs. I'd actually like to see the plugin I use have a list of trusted remote systems, since it really isn't an authentication system. I hope to post a bit more on this in the near future.
So just follow the instructions if you want to post here and not sign up for TypeKey. As usual, if it is abused, I'll just turn it off.
Here's a list of 1,159 naughty words according to the NFL. These are not allowed on personalized jerseys from the NFL Shop site. There are some interesting ones in there.
As seen over on Swirlychick's LJ, the ColorQuiz. Give it a try.
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Gregory+Blake took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Takes easily and quickly to anything which provide..." Click here to read the rest of the results. |
As usual with these quizzes I take things with a grain of salt. I think the one thing that really rung true for me was the line "Anxious to experience life in all its aspects, to explore all its possibilities, and to live it to the fullest." This has definitely been a big issue for me post transplant. And I'm still kind of rediscovering myself too, the whole experience has definitely changed me a bit.
Off to Boston to pick up some drugs, get my hair done, and maybe visit with some folks. I really should see who is in the cambridge/somervillish area during the day. Anyone up for lunch someday? Now that I'm feeling more mobile I am hoping to get up there more often (hopefully gas prices will come down some to help make that possible).
Joi's been playing quite a bit of WoW and has posted some of his observations.
As you may have noticed, my blogging has been a bit light these days. This is partially due to the rigor in which I have taken on my research into the World of Warcraft (WoW). I'm still level 36 (out of a maximum of 60) so I am still a "newbie" but I thought I might share some of my observations. [Joi Ito's Web]
It's fun watching others find various fun things in the game. Things that really don't do anything besides add atmosphere. Pets you can buy for yourself. Recipes for food that turn you into a ninja or a pirate. Potions that shrink you down to mini size.
I've actually been limiting my WoW time a bit. I used to be on quite a bit, now I try not to log in before 3 in the afternoon and not stay up late just to play. Though I have been having more fun again because I've been adventuring with friends more.
I will keep trying to get it set up for folks on LJ. When it works, it should be pretty slick. And it will make it easier for you folks to make comments (not like anyone comments on this blog anyways).
If this works, LJ users will be able to leave comments.
Trying again
With this blog today as I fiddle with plugins. You have been warned.
We need these in the US. Some of the other vending machines linked to are cool too.
Japanese lobster-vending machine
Cory Doctorow:
Earlier this week, I blogged a great collection of Japanese vending machines, but this one is even better, sporting, as it does, a coin-operated live-lobster vending machine! Link
(Thanks, GenkiGecko!)
Update:Here's a commercial supplier of coin-op lobster game/vending-machines (courtesy Daniel Drucker)
[via Boing Boing Blog]
AdRants has an post about people being upset about ads on Flickr. People seem to be blaming Yahoo! for this practice.
With Yahoo's purchase of Flickr, it didn't take too long for Yahoo text ads to begin appearing next to Flickr member's pictures. Unlike Google AdWords, Yahoo text ads, at least on Flickr, appear on personal Flickr pages whether or not the member wants them. Granted, Flickr provides the service for free which negates a non-paying Flickr member's ability to completely control what appears on their photo pages but one Flickr user, tanais, doesn't like the practice, commenting on an ad placement next to an image of, we assume, his dog, "I do not like my pictures being used to advertise a specific breeder (they may be excellent they may be terrible - that's not the point)... so I shall sit down and think about how best to AdBust this." [AdRants]
IMHO the people complaining are idiots. I've been a user for ages, and Flickr has always had ads for free accounts. It's been one of the big selling points for their Pro accounts. I'm not a fan of advertising, but you can't expect to get something for nothing.
Flickr is one of the few web sites that I think does get it right. And my Pro account has been a very good deal. If it's that much of a big deal pay for the service.
People have been pestering me to get crossposting working again so that my blog posts show up over on LJ. I finally got it working this morning after quite a bit of fiddling. I'm using the ljcrosspost plugin for Movable Type. It works fairly well, but took some fiddling to get it to work right. I should email the author and let him know the issues I was having.
Next step is to get OpenID working so that people over on LJ can log into my blog for comments using their LJ info.
One big gripe I have about MT plugins these days is that not enough of them work with dynamic pages. I've got 4000+ entries and rebuilding it all just for a new plugin really sucks (and takes forever).
Ugs. The family is going out for one of the few things that I cannot really have post transplant. Sushi. This sucks.
Another try
Recently the New York Times ran an article about Manga for Girls. In other words: shoujo manga. Even though I might nit-pick on a few points, it's a pretty solid article.
Shojo - the word means girl in Japanese - frequently involves a lovelorn teenager seeking a boyfriend or dealing with situations like entering a new school, being bullied or trying to break away from a clique. There are also action stories featuring girls in strong roles as scientists and samurai warriors. (The shojo genre has been called "big eyes save the world," after the characteristic drawing style of girls with saucer-shaped eyes who are sometimes endowed with supernatural powers.)
But parents and teachers, who are sometimes happy to see teenagers reading just about anything, might be caught off guard by some of the content of the girls' favorite books. Among the best-selling shojo are stories that involve cross-dressing boys and characters who magically change sex, brother-sister romances and teenage girls falling in love with 10-year-old boys. Then there's a whole subgenre known as shonen ai, or boy's love, which usually features romances between two impossibly pretty young men. [NYTimes: Manga and Girls]
From #!/usr/bin/girl, more flash game fun. Remember Grow? Remember Grow RPG? Well now it is an all new Grow, this time it's a cube!
Flash Fun: GrowCube
Here's a little fun for your Monday: GrowCube. I like to have something to distract me from the beginning of the week. [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
I've almost got it figured out!
Wow, grade school kids redo the video for Devo's Whip It. And it's pretty cool! [via Boing Boing]
Been a nice day for World of Warcraft. We got a new patch today with much goodness. Blizzard finally relented and put up two Role Play-Player vs Player servers. People have been asking for these forever and Blizzard had made it sound like it wasn't going to happen. On the downside, they only put up two servers and the wait for them was an hour last time I looked. I recreated my original RP character over on Emerald Dream and will be playing a bit there also. Look for Parfait if you go there.
And last but not least. A link Kynn paged me with about the perils of cybersex on World of Warcraft that made me laugh out loud.
Last saturday Naruto started airing on Cartoon Network's Toonami block of programming. For those of you who aren't anime fans, Naruto is one of the most popular shows to come out of Japan in the last couple of years. Cartoon Network has a really random reputation when it comes to treatment of anime. Sometimes deserved, sometimes not.
Given the above, I was kind nervous tuning in to check it out. I tend not to be a fan of dubbing, but realize that it is the only way that most shows will make it onto TV. In the end, Cartoon Network did a pretty good job. My biggest complaint was 'why bother changing the opening and ending?'. The ones for the show are pretty good as it is (and some of the later ones are great). The voices themselves were okay, I think the VAs may have to grow into them a little, but hopefully that won't take long. Very little editing. One minor thing that bugged me a little was that they edited out nosebleeds. Nosebleeds? They're an anime thing. When a character sees something naughty or has perverted thoughts they tend to get nosebleeds. No, I don't get it either, but I'm used to it.
I've got it programmed into my TiVo as a season pass for now.
Last night, in a fit of boredom, I deleted my wiki. Of course as soon as I had done it I wanted to find some new wiki software to run. I've played with tikiwiki and Moin Moin. Both were decent (and I'm leaning towards Moin Moin) but I figured I'd do the lazyweb thing and see if anyone out there had any recommendations. I think I'm looking for small and lightweight with access control, that has a fairly simple interface.
On another note, I was trying to edit something over on Wikipedia the other day and discovered that some control key commands were intercepted by the site. Kinda cool, but when editing a text field in Safari you can use emacs controls for moving around and editing. Works great till you do ^e and suddenly find yourself moved to another page because it's some wiki command. So the question is this. Anyone know how to turn it off? I tried searching around the Wikipedia site, but nothing jumped out at me.
My mom posted a link to a post at nola.com which has an account of the hurricane and its aftermath at Tenet's Memorial Medical Center. Rene Goux, the CEO of Tenet's Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, writes about hurricane and the flooding of the hospital (it's pretty much at the bottom of the bowl that is New Orleans).
Conditions at the hospital deteriorated rapidly. There was no plumbing; the toilets were overflowing. The stench was overwhelming. None of us had been able to bathe for four or five days. The smell of sewage was nauseating and it was unbearably hot. We started breaking windows to give our patients some ventilation. At the end, we were reduced to one meal a day. We had no power at all for the last two days. None of the elevators were working, so we had to carry patients up as many as eight floors to the helipad or down to the boats. [nola.com: Memorial Medical Center Evacuation]
The people working at that hospital deserve some kind of recognition for the work they did. They work in an intense environment as it is and this just sounds insane.
Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Game. I loved it. It was better than cats. I'm going to play it again and again. Require Flash.
Nick posted a link to PostSecret. A site where people mail in postcards with a secret on them. Pretty cool. I keep wondering if I have any secrets to share.
My mom's been pretty much glued to the computer every spare moment she has trying to figure out just how bad the flooding is by my sister's apartment. She came across some pictures taken by someone taking a boat ride through areas near the apartment. There's something really eerie about it all. It made me realize that most of the pictures I've seen of New Orleans on the news are focusing on places with people. There's a link to a slide show of pictures at the nola.com link.
My neighbour and I took a boat ride through Uptown flooded flooded streets yesterday morning. Our route was as follows:boat launch at Nashville and Freret. Travel north on Nashville to cross Claiborne into Broadmoor. Right on Rocheblave. Return through Robert and Octavia back on Nashville. I took over 120 pics of the streets. Overall impression: news aren't good. Water 5-6 feet high on the street, every home is affected starting two blocks past Freret. Dead body floating at the corner of Octavia and Rocheblave. Our house at 4900 block of Rocheblave has 3 feet of water. We didn't even go into it. Pictures cover our route:Boat launch at Nashville and Freret. Travel north on Nashville, cross claiborne. Go into broadmoor, take a right on S. Rocheblave (we live on that street). Head out back on Robert, Octavia and Nashville. [nola.com]
Thank you McSweeney's for providing me with such fun reading materials. Today we've got Things Hagrid the Half Giant Woudl say If He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter and A Letter from "The Power" to Public Enemy.
From the first:
"Speakin' of cups runnethin' over, laddie, mine's be gettin' a mite dry. How 'bout changin' this 'ere water into somethin' a bit more, well, frisky?"
"Why, if a fellow wanted ta get away clean, Peter-me-lad, all they'd have ter do would be ta deny they ever even knowed Jesus. Uh-oh. I shouldn't eh told yeh that."
And the second:
Dear Chuckdee, Flavor Flavor, Professor Griffin, and everyone else,
Hey, guys! What's up? Or should I say "what up"? Is that how you hippity-hoppers and homeyboys and gangerbangers are saying it now? Never mind. I'll get right to the point.
Do we have to keep fighting like this? Or, more specifically, do you really want to keep fighting me? I don't mind indulging you if that's what you guys want. It's not hurting me, of course, since I am The Power after all. But I just wonder if you might consider giving it up. I mean, this has been going on for a while and I'm still very much here.
Do you realize that you've been fighting me since 1989? (What a crazy summer that was, huh? Whatever happened to that funky drummer?) Now, that's 16 years ago. Babies born that summer are driving cars now! So much has happened since then. Presidents have come and gone, the Soviet Union collapsed. But not The Power! Honestly, guys, I'd really like to be your friend and hang out with you at your rapping concerts. It's time to put this behind us.
In the battle between animals. The squirrels shall rule the world:
Labrador loses to a squirrel
When Carl the labrador chased a squirrel into the woods, his owners' only concern was for his quarry.
But they should have worried about their dog. Because seconds later Carl re-emerged with the grey squirrel firmly clamped to his neck. [Telegraph.co.uk] [via Warren Ellis]
As my gnome warrior in WoW says, "Ya'know. Squirrels are deadly when cornered.
CNN reports that Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died at the age of 80. Time for even more chaos.
I've been meaning to post something about New Orleans and the hurricane for a few days now. For me the big positive news is that my sister is safe. She got out of town Sunday and stayed with friends in FL. Now she's up in the Baton Rouge area and trying to keep busy (she volunteered at the Red Cross the other day). My nephew is with her and doing just fine also. He'll hopefully be attending school up there while they wait for school to be available around his father.
As of right now, she still has a job at the Tulane Medical Center. Though there's been no word about when she might be back at work. Something that's true for just about anyone who works in NO.
It also looks like her apartment may be safe. We can't tell for sure, but it seems to be right on the edge of some flooding. Her apartment is on the first floor, but it is up a number of steps, so I think she's got something like 4 feet before the water would get into her actual apartment. Our fingers are crossed.
Also, via LJ user Tenzil, a really good article over on CNN about The Big Disconnect. Good, but a bit disturbing.
