April 2006 Archives

Yesterday was Boston day. I just had felt the need to get out of the house and be social. I had plans for brunch and then just planned to bum around and see who I could find the rest of the day. Hopefully using up enough time to make it to my friend Bree's going away party.

Brunch was great. We went to one of my favorite brunch places, Soundbites. And as usually it didn't disappoint. I even got to see the breakfast guy yell at a table for taking too long. It was classic. And I got some yummy eggs benedict too! Maybe I'll see about turning this into a monthly thing until I move back up there.

The rest of the day was spent in Harvard Square and Davis Square. Then I stopped in to see Bree, since I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it till 6. It was good seeing her, I hadn't seen her in around a year (when she came to visit me in the hospital).

I left there intending to go home, but I realized I really only needed to fill up an hour and a half till her going away thang started. So I headed over in the direction, parked and wandered around the Virgin Megastore for a while before heading over to the Otherside to find her. It was a nice time, got to hang out more, see other friends, and drink enough chai to be all revved up for the trip home. And I got to meet the Pennysaver guy!

Overall a great day.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists." [via Quotes of the Day]

Found today while wandering around the net. A funky video for a song by the japanese group Rip Slyme. It reminds me a lot of what videos over here used to be like. Really creative and fun.

Link to video at YouTube HERE

One of the odder items I've seen in recent past. It's a bunny, for your computer. It's ears move. It will teach you tai chi. Light up with different colors. But unfortunately, I don't think it will make toast. His name? Nabaztag.

So you are probably wondering if a rabbit can really be "smart"? Well this bunny can teach you tai chi, read your e-mail, report the weather or stock market, pull RSS feeds and tell you the time. We'd say that's pretty smart - but he's also got personality. Nabaztag can move his ears, play music, talk and whistle, and his body can show off hundreds of colors and special patterns of light. Sometimes he will even have his own random things to say, as long as you can put up with his moods![Thinkgeek]

Zefrank, the person responsible for me learning to dance, has recently embarked on a new endeavor. The Show is a daily vlog covering various current events in a way that only Zefrank could do. For a nice welcome to the show, check out yesterday's post.

Not to be missed.

(Thanks to Waxy.org Links once again.)

I've been meaning to post about this story for a while and this article seems like a good place to start. A book on manga has been pulled from a some California libraries because it *gasp* has some naughty pictures in it.

Irresponsible Pictures

Paul Gravett's Manga pulled from library shelf

One of the best books ever written on the subject of manga, Paul Gravett's Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics (Harper Design International) has been removed from the shelves of the San Bernadino County Library System after a parent complained about illustrations depicting sex acts. Her sixteen-year-old son had checked the book out and was disturbed by the graphic nature of some of the material presented.

After the Victorville branch initially declined to remove the book from its holdings, which was shelved appropriately with the adult holdings, Bill Postmus, Chairman of the San Bernadino County Board of Supervisors, intervened on the family's behalf. County library officials obligingly led Postmus through the library's reconsideration process that led to the book’s removal. Gravett's book will still be available to county patrons via inter-library loan. [Comic World News: Flipped]

It's so nice to see censorship alive and well.

Lala and the gang are back for some more Tiki Bar hijinx. Be sure to watch episode 15 - Legal Ease

For the next time you go on a date:

Get Out of Date Free Card

Oh, ho, ho, ho. What will small companies think of next to get a mention in USA Today and freak people out? Secure Networks is offering a free service called SecureSingles which allows you to punch in a few pertinent details about your next date and, if things don't go so well or your date chops you into small, tasty bits your friends and neighbors will receive an SMS, phone call, or email message after a certain time. Great for wrapping things up after he starts talking about his "kittens" and "wax paper collection."

...

Product Page [SecureSingles via USA Today] [via Gizmodo]

Just a reminder to everyone that tomorrow is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's. Unfortunately there isn't anyplace close to me to go for it. Big suck.

SFGate.com has an article about the 25th anniversary of Journey's ESC4P3 (early promoters of leet speak?).

Fantastic Journey

What do critics know? The people have spoken, and the verdict is the same as it was 25 years ago: Journey so rocks! A quarter-century after "ESC4P3" -- "Escape" to the straights -- took over the airwaves, it's high time to reconsider just who made the best music ever to come out of the Bay Area.

There have been hundreds of albums over the past few decades that were hated on by critics, only to sell millions of copies. That sentence pretty much describes the entire careers of Meat Loaf, Kansas and Jimmy Buffett.

And yet, what if there was a band, or even a single album, that was falsely persecuted -- the musical version of a Death Row inmate who didn't commit the crime? What if every 1980s critic was completely wrong about that album's alleged failings, a fact that becomes instantly apparent just by playing it again?

It's time to re-evaluate Journey's "Escape," or "ESC4P3" for those who prefer the prog-rock spelling of the era... [SFGate.com] [via waxy links]

I can proudly say I never owned a copy of the album and have no real thoughts on it. But I do remember the popularity of a number of the tracks on it. Still it's an interesting read about a much abused album.

Here's one way to warn people.

To call attention to pockpocketing, Brussels Airlines resorted to a sort of anti-pickpocketing campaign and placed fake, rubber hands inside un-attended bags. Aside from the fact most people would freak out and scream if they came back to their bag and found a hand inside... [Adrants]

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is reporting that Apple has introduced the 17-inch Macbook Pro. Still too big a machine for me personally, but still great as a portable workstation.

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

The other day I was driving around and realized that the clock in my car was almost right (it is usually horribly off). I never reset it for spring so now I'm trying to figure out who changed it. Are there people who break into cars and reset clocks? Hmmm.

Samuel Butler
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all." [via Quotes of the Day]

Not just bunnies. SINGING bunnies.

drive yerself nuts...
...with da little singin' bunnies (Flash). [crossmind.net] [via jenett.radio]

Ryan Holt, Vice Pres of student government at U of SC, got a bit bent out of shape when faced with a prank. Quick get this guy a sense of humor.

One of the finest examples of this is Ryan Holt, Vice President of the student government at the University of South Carolina, who is now immortalized in this video of him freaking out because someone had played a prank on him -- they filled his office will balloons. "Look at me being serious!" he yelled, not realizing that his rant would be turned into a domain name, lookatmebeingserious.com.

[via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century :: Joey deVilla's Weblog]

And don't forget. Air costs money!

Do you play Second Life? Are you looking for some action? Then check out SL Escorts for listings and reviews. Also see an article on 1UP on MMO Call Girls.

[via Waxy Links]

This morning I stumbled upon a neat looking program called MusicIP. It's a tool for analyzing your music library. Once analyzed you can select a song and make a playlist based on that song. You can also do things make a new playlist based on a current playlist (though that seems to require some form of registration that I haven't figured out yet).

The only thing that is a pain about it is that I have a fairly large library in iTunes (around 6,500 songs) and so the analysis phase will be going on for ages (fingerprinting the tracks will take about 20 hours and analyzing the tracks 42 hours!). But so far with just a fraction of my music processed it gave some good results. When I've gotten more of my library processed I'll post an example one

In celebration of my one year mark my parents are going to take me to see Spamalot. ROCK!

Today I celebrate getting my lung one year ago. Woohoo! It's been quite a voyage and continues to be an adventure every day. But things are going well and once I get this reflux stuff taken care of I hope it will be even better.

Tonight I have some friends coming by for a small gathering to celebrate. Should be a good mellow time.

Over on Inside Mac Games is a review of the MacBook Pro that makes a new Mac even more tempting. Though I still think I'm going to hold out for an iMac.

Niels Bohr
"Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."

[via Quotes of the Day]

A lot of people seem to be doing this meme to determine if you are spoiled. I got about halfway through it and got annoyed and punted on it. I gotta agree with the commenters on the above post that this was obvious written by someone young who doesn't have a clue.

It's that time of year where there are lots of new shows starting up in Japan. Here's a quick rundown of my thoughts on a few of them.

• Aria - The Natural - I know this isn't technically a new show, but the second season has started out quite nicely and by the second episode they've already done one of my favorite stories from the manga.

• Simoun - After one episode I rate this interesting w/potential. So far we've just got the slightest introduction to the story. But the animation is quite nice. The music is wonderful (includes some Bach I've heard). Yuri content. I can't wait to see more story.

• xxxHolic - One of my favorite CLAMP mangas finally gets its own series. So far I dig it, but will still wait to see how other characters are portrayed and stories are presented. Hopefully will be better than Reservoir Chronicle was

• Disgaea - Based on a PS2 game of the same name. This looks to be a fairly kid-centric telling of the story. Art and Voices seem to match the game. I'll have to look and see if the voices are the same. Not sure if I'll keep watching for long, but seems decent enough

• Strawberry Panic - Imagine Marimite, now suck out everything that was good about it. I always got a warm happy feeling when I watched it (well, except when it made me cry like a baby). This feels like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of it. There are high school girls, there is a yuri vibe, there is no heart. Next!

• Air Gear - Feels like a typical shounen series. Though I found myself drawn into it quite a bit as I watched. Kids with motorized inline skates who compete against each other for status. A fun looking series. I'll keep checking it out for an episode or two more.

That's it for now. Next time up I'll talk about Ouran High School Host Club, NANA, KIBA, Zegapain, Soul Link, and Utawarerumono.

Seen while hanging out on one of the various muds I spend time on:

My Son is listening to the exchange between me and the controller and wants to chime in on the conversion. I said to my son, "Just hang on; I will give you a chance". I never should have said that because now he is all excited to talk on the radio. As I start to turn inbound on the turn, the Approach control said "Contact tower when established on the localizer". So I told my young Padawan Learner "OK, when this needle gets here on the dial, push the radio button and tell the tower that 93 Romeo is inbound on the localizer".

Now imagine this, I am giving basic instrument instruction to a 9 year old. Before I can give him something simpler to say he keys the mike and says "REBEL BASE, THIS IS RED 5. WE ARE STARTING OUR ATTACK RUN ON THE DEATH STAR".

Now this was post 9/11, and before I can key my mike and say anything, the tower jumps on and says "RED 5, YOUR CLEARED FOR THE APPROACH TO THE DEATH STAR. REPORT HITS AWAY"

I'm still curious the source of this, so if anyone has seen it elsewhere let me know.

EDIT: Original story can be found here I recommend checking it out.

I went out for lunch today and by the time I got home I was sneezing my head off and all stuffed up. Spring is here, and with it the beginning of allergy season. Wah-choo!

Time for a bit of a health update. I'm coming up on my one year birthday on April 14th. Just to keep me from going too nuts celebrating, I'm going to be having stomach surgery sometime soon. The doctors think that I have continuing issues with acid reflux and are going to tie off my esophagus in my stomach. When they tie it off, it prevents the acid from coming back up. Though it doesn't keep food from going in (though at first I'll be limited to soft foods). While they are in there they will also open up the base of my stomach to help food flow a little bit better.

I'm actually not that nervous about it. Maybe having surgery as major as a transplant makes one a little jaded. I was more bothered by the other options. One was do nothing and hope for the best, no reason to tempt fate there. The other was one where I'd have a drainage tube from my stomach and a feeding tube into my intestines. With an added bonus of just not eating food.

No word on when exactly it will be, but I'm having a handful of tests next week in preparation for it. Including my favorite test, an endoscopy.

It will all be worth it though. The reflux is something that may have been the source of a bunch of health issues, including possibly my initial lung problems. I'll still probably never know for sure, but just having a possible cause is kinda nice. And I'd rather the reflux not cause issues with my new lung.

In some ways he's just arriving. This fall Voltron will be released uncut on DVD starting with the lion episodes (later on the vehicle ones will come out). This and Robotech were the two shows that originally made me notice anime way back when. I'm curious how much of the original was cut/rewritten.