Link Dump

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

This weekend was a blast.  Drove up to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, stopped at the Ukiah Fair on the way.  Hiked around and saw some of the oldest trees in the world.  Now that I'm back I'm catching up on things and have a ton of links/thoughts to dump.  Here goes.

• my pictures from this weekend
• someone's pictures of the yelp party at sfmoma (and vwag with captions)
• new 07 mini cooper revealed, looks hot
• new radio-free ipod car adaptor - anyone use something similar? fm transmitters suck.
• set up a test wiki over at wiki.com.  meh.
• 43: things, places, people
• i can't tell if claimid is a good or bad idea.
• my vox music video collection, growing (ytube faves as source)
• universal binary means i'm once again active on last.fm
• rojo, hmm. i logged back in for the first time in 6 months or so.  100k unread posts.  wow.  more on this later.

Turns out, I won't need to take DKP up to Seattle, so last weekend of August will likely be the road trip to Vegas for some work.

Weekend Update

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Hello, I'm crwbot and you're not.  Fear the decisively Web 1.0 site for Humboldt Redwoods State Park!  I'm headed there for the weekend.  If you're bored you can check my photostream for pictures from the Yelp! shindig at MoMA last night.  In case you're wondering, Xiu made the shirt she's wearing.  Fab, no?

After wandering around the exhibit and socializing a bit, we stopped off for some Thai food and then hit the Virgin Megastore for the Boondocks DVD.  On the way back, we bumped into David Davis, and it was good to see him again.  I asked him to explain cometd to me, but Xiu had no patience for it and started climbing on me.  Literally.  It was awkward.

Oh, I've also been collecting some favorites at YouTube that you might be interested in.  Someday I'll even organize them into playlists.  Or maybe I'll do it on Vox.  Shrug.

Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Saddest. Video. EVAR.

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I first saw this video at the 90 Park Ave office in NYC.  I cried like someone who just lost a puppy.  Turns out that "Viðrar vel til loftárása" is Icelandic for "good weather for airstrikes".  I didn't know that Sigur Rós sang in anything other than Hopelandic.  Turns out, the video was directed by Arni & Kinski, the masterminds behind Sigur Rós's more popular music video, Glósóli.  That one won awards, but this one is sad.

If it really bums you out, watch it again.  If you're still bummed, we can cuddle aftar.

QotD: Something to Believe In

(originally posted to crw.vox.com)

Do you have any tattoos?  If not, if you were going to get inked, what would you get?

I've actually answered this question a lot lately.  No, I don't have any tattoos.  Nor will I get any tattoos until sometime in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future when they can be sub-dermal nano tattoos that can shine through my skin and be turned on and off at will.  What's more, I want animated tattoos that change with my mood.

Where's my space age, bitch?

I Hate the Time Warp

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So I just listened to Junior's latest voice post and it made me think of this wonderful scene from the show Spaced that sums up my feelings on RHPS and the Time Warp just about perfectly.  So naturally I headed to youtube and typed in "spaced" and was hit with 13,000 results about space exploration and myspace.  Sigh.  Somehow, I managed to find the perfect clip - exactly what I wanted.  Total luck.  Here it is.

Sorry Junior, but when it comes to the Time Warp, this is how I roll. :)

More pictures from last weekend

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I'm excited because Christine has been uploading some of the pictures she took last weekend when we were camping and hiking at Pinnacles National Monument.  There are some great shots of me making an ass out of myself, be sure not to miss them.

(Edit: I forgot to mention, she's a much better photographer than I am and some of these shots are really incredibly beautiful.)

Fuck the RIAA

(originally posted to crw.vox.com)

So as a follow-up to my post entitled Hating the RIAA, I still wanted to show someone the Beck video - but then I discovered it was even pulled from Beck's own site.  What the fuck.  The whole thing reeks of bad marketing bullshit.

So I go to download the track on Soulseek.  Search query: beck think love.  The results I got were fascinating.  I found maybe 30 users each with the same 10 copies of the song whose filenames were slightly different - such as:

Beck  Think I'm in Love.mp3

Beck::Think I'm in Love.mp3

Beck--Think I'm in Love.mp3

Beck__ThinkI'm in Love.mp3

So it might be someone distributing trojans in the guise of mp3's, yeah?  I mean, who knows how many holes Windows Media Player has in it.  On the other hand, we already know that the RIAA has had the video removed from both YouTube and Google Video - so chances are equally good that they're out to catch some nasty downloaders.

Fuck 'em.  I downloaded it somewhere else.  Here it is, enjoy.

(sure, the post is friends and family only, i'm not *that* much of a badass)

QotD: Hello, Cleveland!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

If you had a band, what would you call yourselves?

Question submitted by Zoot.

George Dubya and the Patriotic Funk All-Stars, cuz that's how I roll, yo.

test

yeah great, blogger.

Why I Love Boondocks

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

This is the best fight scene I've seen in a while.

Celebrating New Audio Format Support on Vox

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Hooray 0.9.3!  Congrats Vox Team, enjoy this Amelie techno remix ripped from one of the Solid Steel shows in my archive!

QotD: Better than the original?

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What is your favorite cover song?

Question submitted by Ray.

Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billie covered Cravo é Canela, which was originally by Milton Nascimento.  Cravo é Canela means "clove and cinnamon," part of the title of a book by Jorge Amado called Gabriela, Cravo é Canela.  Here's a link to the original song and the cover.

QotD: Weekend Goal Follow-Up

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So, how did you do with that weekend goal?  No goal?  What did you do this weekend?

Holy crap.  I hiked my ass off this weekend at Pinnacles.  Christine and I hit Balconies Caves on Saturday and Bear Gulch caves on Sunday.  Then we blazed a trail around the reservoir and nearly killed ourselves climbing High Peaks Trail.  Pictures pending, but damn, I'm sore.

Ciao

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Off to Pinnacles for the weekend.  See ya Monday.

Hating the RIAA

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So just yesterday I linked to Beck's new music video from YouTube to my Vox account.  I went back to listen to it today only to find that the RIAA had ordered its removal from YouTube.  What bastards.  So I go to Beck's site only to find it's all craptacular flash and there's an even worse-quality version of the vid.

When are they going to get it through their skulls that consumers want their content as soon as possible and without any headache?

I think it used to be that music videos were just marketing for the music.  Now you can buy music video DVD's and download them via iTMS, so they've become products in their own right.  Rather than spreading the vids far and wide to get as many eyeballs as possible in order to drive music sales, they're keeping a tight rein on their distribution.  The problem is that now they've inconvenienced me as a possible consumer; I had to hunt around to find another version that was worth watching.  That annoys me and makes me hate them (more than I did) and not want to give them any business.

Anyway, without further ado, here's Beck's vid via Google Video.

(End rant.)

...or is it?  Forget the link above, it got pulled from there too.  Not worth it to keep searching, really.  If you happen to randomly see it someday, cool.  If not, fuck it.  You're not missing much.

QotD: Can you hear me now?

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What's your cell phone's ringtone?  What made you pick it?

I've actually been waiting for this QotD, and when it came I was totally unprepared.  I created my own ringtone with a waveform editor, some effects, and the Cornelius remix of Moby's "We Are All Made of Stars".  I wanted something very understated and minimal.

Anyway, when this QotD popped (lil MMO slang ;), I found that I couldn't upload the .wav to Vox.  So I hunted around until I found this nifty little freeware app called Switch - which just converts from one audio format to another rather effortlessly.  It's earned itself a place in my Apps folder.

Weekend Beats

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I had a fantastically groovy weekend.  Played a little Zelda WindWaker, indulged in a 6-mile hike to Bass Lake in Pt. Reyes, Nicole moved to SF, spent some time with Lydia, got a manicure, and now I'm checking out 0.03 release of Data::ObjectDriver.  Life's good.  Here are some beats from Four Tet to celebrate groovy weekends:

QotD: They're Grrreat!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What or who is your favorite product mascot?  Why?

Ok, so maybe this isn't an officially-sanctioned mascot or spokesperson, but I've always associated Mr. T with MovableType because they're both powerful and well-designed:

QotD: It's hot in here...

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

What's the most extreme weather you've been in?  A memorable storm?  Heat wave? Or something else?

A childhood vacation.  I don't remember whether it was Ocean Beach or Virginia Beach.  But there was a hurricane.  My father, sister and I were actually in the water being tossed about and having the time of our lives while they were issuing evacuation orders.  We didn't know at the time that the storm had been upgraded to hurricane status, we were just amazed at how large the waves were.  The most extreme weather and perhaps one of the best days of my life.

(No, it wasn't the safest thing to do, but both my sister and I had been on the local swim team and were pretty strong swimmers).

Travel is Dangerous

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Phew. So that was Vancouver.

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Long week finally over.

So the company I've been doing work for just acquired 8 new locations in the Vancouver area and sent me up to do some site surveys and install some new pieces of network infrastructure.  What I found when I got to these locations was pretty shocking.

One week was certainly not enough time to hit all 8 centers.  I could've spent a week at each individual location and still have stuff left to do.  Sadly, this meant I didn't get to see much of Vancouver.  What I did see, I liked very much.

My hotel was far enough out of the downtown area and into the ghetto that I got to see some interesting sights.  One of my favorites was a public service ad for recycling where a stick figure who dropped some trash on the ground was bitten in half by a great white shark.  Yeah.  I also saw a Masonic lodge with a gaudy neon sign on the outside.  I saw a crew filming some skateboarders grinding on some corporate sculptures downtown.

I got a license for XP SP2 while I was up here so I finally finished my install of XP under Parallels.  Got it set up with VirtueDesktops and it's so neat.  I'm surprised at how fast the emulated Windows feels, and I love that Windows can totally crash and not affect the work I need to do.

I'm looking forward to being home and sleeping in tomorrow.

QotD: Celebrational Muppetational!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Who is your favorite Muppet?  Why?

QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com

Animal.  Why?  Hmm... Animal Cantina

Eyes

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

In honor of the pending new Cornelius release, I bring you Eyes:

New Cornelius 8/23

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

This is very exciting to me.  Be warned; it's a full-browser-window QTVR with sound.  Click through to the promo for the next release on 9/27.  And lest we forget, new Tortoise on 8/22.  August will be a wonderfully musical month.

The Best of The Legendary Pink Dots

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

In honor of tonight's show, I thought I'd whip together a playlist of my favorite songs by The Legendary Pink Dots.  I first heard them in college, downloaded off some random Hotline server (yes, Hotline, remember that?).  I've only seen them perform once, in NYC, so I'm looking forward to tonight's show very much.  Without further ado, the songs and the albums they can be found on:

1. Birdie (All the King's Horses)
2. Prague Spring (Canta Mientras Puedas)
3. Friend - version (Canta Mientras Puedas)
4. Clockwise (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
5. Damien (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
6. This Hollowed Ground (From Here You'll Watch the World Go By)
7. Home (Maria Dimension)
8. Damien Remix (Remember Me This Way)
9. Belladonna (Canta Mientras Puedas)
10. I Love You in Your Tragic Beauty (Crushed Velvet Apocalypse)
11. The Angel Trail (Canta Mientras Puedas)
12. Princess Coldheart (Crushed Velvet Apocalypse)
13. The Ocean Cried 'Blue Murder' (Maria Dimension)
14. Slaapliedje (Nemesis Online)

Omitted from the list, but still very good when done in the studio is Saucers #1.  All the live versions I've heard of it are super-sketchy.

Update: if you're a lala.com user, you can listen to this playlist if you search for "the best LPD".

The Weblog RPG

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I just had a "wtf" moment, when I followed a link over at digg and found the following text:

By registering an account with us you could receive experience points for viewing an article like this.  Those points could have been used to enter our monthly drawing for cool free prizes.

There was no mention of how much exp will be required to reach the next level of the blog.

Quick Update

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Trip to Vancouver is back on for 7/16 through 7/21.  7/22 is the Flaming Lips show with Tish and Amy.  Last weekend (せんしゅう) hedre and I went to Fort Funston for the first time.  Yesterday (きのう), Tish, David, Jeremy, Fiona and I saw A Scanner Darkly.  This weekend (こんしゅうまつ), I plan on seeing The Legendary Pink Dots at Slims.

Congrats to the Vox Team on the 0.8.0 release.  As usual, the new themes don't disappoint and I'm pleased to see the qotd update.  One thing I'm noticing is that suddenly the compose page has for "link" buttons and four matching "center item" buttons.  Weird.

I'm going to try to limit my Japanese-only entries, as they're just for practice and they seem to bug people.  Instead, I'll work my vocab into regular entries and y'all can just deal with it.  For instance - there's a nifty Shadow of the Colossus statue for $88 - or 10,290 yen (いちまんにひゃくきゅじゅうえん).

Last weekend I also took my first Iaido class.  It's a bit tough on the knees and shoulders, but probably less so than Kendo would be.  I'm more interested in a formal art based on katas and kumite - at least for now.  I had an uneventful fourth of July - stayed home, cleaned house, watched lame movies and made about a billion Japanese (にほんご) flashcards.

きょうは きんーようびです。。。

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

こんにちは！

きのうは　ろくーがつ、　にじゅうくーにち、　もくーようびでした。

きょうは　ろくーがつ、　さんじゅうーにち、　きんーようびです。

あしたは　しちーがつ、　ついたち、　どーようびです。

いま　なんじですか？

ごご　ごじーさんじゅうよんふんです。

きのうは　げつーようび　でしたか？
いいえ、　きのうは　げつーようび　では　ありませんでした。

Blissful

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Jen-tizzle snapped this shot of me somewhere up in the Marin headlands.  I dig it.  There are more pictures from her visit here.

Feel Better, Rui!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Rui Carmo is recovering from a hospitalization.  He runs the blog/wiki The Tao of Mac, which is hands-down my favorite place to go for industry news, insights, and humor.  He's closed all commenting on his site and is already inundated with email, so I'm posted this in hopes that it shows up in his referer logs.  You're in my thoughts today, Rui.  Get better.

Egads!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I can't think of a worse way to die:

A Disney Web site description of the ride says: "Zoom from 0-60 mph with the force of a supersonic F-14, take in high-speed loops and turns synchronized to a specially recorded Aerosmith soundtrack."

Poor kid.

きょうは もくーようびです。。。

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

きょうは　ろくーがつ　にじゅくーにち　もくーようび　です。

きのうは　すいーようび　でした。

あしたは　きんーようび　です。

わたし　の　たんじょびは　ごーがつ　じゅくーにち　です。

あなた　の　たんじょび　いつ　ですか。

More quarters please...

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Does pinball count?  Arcade games were fine and dandy - I have fond memories of spending hours in front of the original Gauntlet multi-player and also Samurai Shodown (yeah, I think they really spelled it Shodown)... but I loved pinball the best.

Jen and I visited Santa Cruz boardwalk last weekend and I found my all-time favorite pinball game - Funhouse.  I took a picture for old times sake.  They had one of these at the local Chuck E. Cheese's where I grew up.  There was a big, creepy animatronic head that would taunt you.  I loved it.

Hooray for Robots!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I really dig the new robot themes.  Mena ftw!  Also; I got a nifty error telling me that the Compose doesn't work in Safari, but I don't seem to be having a problem.  Maybe I'm just not using all the whiz-bang features.

I love this recipe...

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Spicy tofu stir fry!  Tofu cubes, red and yellow bell peppers, garlic and green onions, string beans and zucchini, roasted pine nuts and drizzled with a bit of honey and lime juice to make it sweet.  You roll the tofu cubes in a super-secret spice mixture prior to frying them.

Morning Jazz

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)



Dropped my car off at the shop this morning for its 7500-mile inspection - just a thousand miles late.  Took the buss through the Tenderloin (always an adventure) and stopped off at the Apple store to ogle the new Macbooks before walking into work at the SoMA office.  All the while I was in the mood for jazz...

I would've liked to share a video with you, but YouTube's API seems to be funky.  It's not finding the video I'm after, so I can't add it to my Vox collection.  But if you're in the mood for some morning jazz, check out Sculpture by Skalpel.

Update: Searching again, later, I was able to find the video for Sculpture - don't know if anything was changed or if YouTube has some caching that needed updating or what.  Anyway, it's here so I'm adding it to the top of this post.  Cheers.

The soundtrack to my life

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Definitely, absolutely, "Come and Play in the Milky Night" by Stereolab.  The rest you can find on my last.fm profile.

Tortoise Live at Werchter

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)



Rock Werchter is apparently a music festival in Belgium, and apparently YouTube is a great place to find videos of live performances.  This Tortoise performance includes the following tracks:

1. Stretch
2. Ten Day Interval
3. Swung from the Gutters
4. The Lithium Shifts
5. Crest
6. Seneca

And features some nice xylophone action and their rock-tastic dual-drumming.  Enjoy.

Life is for enjoying

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Tish and I had scheduled a day of it this past Sunday.  We were going to randomly pick one of the cards from the SF Walks deck and, well, walk it.  She shows up with some burned cd's and we opted to do a drive from the Bay Area Backroads deck instead.  We decided on driving to Napa and visiting the Niebaum-Coppola Winery.

We couldn't find it.  I must've turned around on 29 about a dozen times.  The best part of the day was finding, out there in the middle of nowhere, a Dean & Deluca.  I thought there was only the one in Soho, but no, out there in the middle-of-nowhere-Napa, was this little slice of grocery heaven.  Luckily I escaped with spending less than $100, but just barely.  We got some deli meat, some cheese, some olives, a baguette, some drinks, and some ridiculously scrumptious desserts.

We looked for a place to have a picnic, but no.  Eventually we gave up and called the number on the Niebaum-Coppola card from the deck.  Turns out they'd renamed it The Rubicon Estate, and we'd driven past it a dozen times.  Bastards.  So we pulled into the drive and were greeted by an attendant who explained how things work.  We pulled forward to another attendant and asked him where we could have a picnic and he basically told us "in your car, foolio, go park over there."  So we had an in-car picnic and by the time we were done, the freaking place was closed.  So Rubicon sucks.  We're cool, they suck.  That's how it goes.

At least it was a lovely drive and we both got to see Napa for the first time.

Late on the Wikipedia Birthday Meme

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

After reading a few posts on this meme I just had to be a sheep and follow along.  Mostly I was just curious.  Watashi no tanjoobi wa go-gatsu juugo-nichi.

Events:

1. 1802 - The Légion d'Honneur is founded by Napoleon Bonaparte.
2. 1897 - Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol.
3. 1962 - A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's infamous rendition of Happy Birthday

Births:

1. 1870 - Albert Fish, American serial killer and cannibal (d. 1936)
2. 1946 - André the Giant, French professional wrestler (d. 1993)

Deaths:

1. 1526 - Emperor Go-Kashiwabara of Japan (b. 1464)

Challenging Your Heroes

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I used to watch The Pink Panther and listen to Goon Show episodes with my father, so I've just about always considered myself a Peter Sellers fan.  As such, I've avoided The Life and Death of Peter Sellers as I was afraid that the reality of his life would take something away from my view of him as an actor.  Kind of like how Chevy Chase wasn't quite so funny after I found out he was a complete jackass.

Last night I was at the video store and I couldn't bring myself to rent the new Pink Panther flick with Steve Martin and Jean Reno.  It might have had something to do with my absolute loathing of Beyonce.  Instead I finally broke down and picked up The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

At first I was really disappointed by the writing and direction.  Geoffrey Rush's performance was also particularly irksome at first.  I just didn't see the Peter Sellers in him.  The stand-out actors were Emily Watson (yeah, that blind chick from Red Dragon) and the children.  As the movie went on, Rush fell more into character - or I got tired and stopped noticing how bad it was.  The plot device of interjecting Rush in the guise of those people most important to him to deliver monologues to the audience also seemed particularly insipid but got better over time.

The movie was not without bits of charm sprinkled here and there.  ("Do you still love us, Daddy?" "Of course I do, just not as much as I love Sophia Loren.", etc.).  I wish more time was spent exploring the relationship between Sellers and Blake Edwards.  I hadn't quite realized how rocky their relationship was.  Also left undeveloped in the movie was Sellers' relationship with his children.  Instead the writer/director seemed to want to focus on Sellers' relationship with women, yet only two of his four wives appeared in the film.  One of those was dreadfully played by Charlize Theron.

Sadly, the Sellers I thought I knew through his characters is now forever lost.  The innocence of his gags is now tainted by knowledge that he was, in his own special way, a jackass.  The only good I can say about the film is that it made me want to read Being There.

Helpful URL

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

cory: http://www.tamponcrafts.com/toupee.html

crw: think i'll pass.

Welcome!

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I, for one, welcome our new 0.7.3 overlords.  Where does one find a change log?  Mm?

Blast from the Past

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

(or, Missing NY on a hot, muggy kin-yoobi)

It's been a while since I've perused my old journal, but I had cause to today and came across this.  I haven't been to NYC since I left it in 2003 and today I'm pining for one of those breezy autumn days in the city.

I've been feeling very conflicted about a lot of things lately, almost to the point of nihilism.  Contributing to that in no small way has been my purchase of the Criterion Collection version of Mike Leigh's Naked.  It had been a few years since I'd last seen it, but it really stuck with me.  The liner notes had a couple of really good critical essays on the work.  One by Amy Taudin shed some light on the inclusion of the Jeremy character - who until then I thought was extraneous.  She sees him as a way to contrast Johnny's playful abuse with Jeremy's actual deviance.  It makes sense, but doesn't make it any easier to watch.

If you dislike hostility, hatred, emotional and physical abuse, and characters with a penchant for mindfucking each other in long dialogues - skip this one.

Vox update

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Very cool.  I'm still playing but the Flickr-integration made me smile.  I just downloaded Flock and Vox didn't seem supported, would like to see that in 0.8.  Would also be nice to have digg/del.icio.us support.  The new Compose page was a bit of a shock, but I'm getting used to it.  It feels a bit more... solid.

Flickr/Photobucket candy to build on qotd success - show users a random image from their flickr/photobucket accounts and ask them to tell the story behind it.

Just found the auto-complete on tags.  Nice.

Quick Updates

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Trip to Vancouver was pushed back, Reno was cancelled altogether.  Tish and I saw The Omen on 6/6/6.  Mona came to visit from Arkansas and we did fun touristy things.  There are pictures.  Tish and Christine took me to The Hemlock on punk rock slideshow night and I felt ridiculously out of place... but it was good to get out like normal people should.

I've decided to try at least one post a day in Japanese - mostly just saying what day it is, so I can remember all the different numbering systems and keep up on my other vocabulary.

I've been behind the curve on digg and youtube, but I've got accounts at both places now.  I've also been exploring google spreadsheets and the google/gmail firefox sync extension.

I haven't had much time to work on ninjai, but I noticed that there's a public repository for Data::ObjectDriver, so I plan to port from CDBI asap.  Hooray!

Recent temptations successfully resisted: DS Lite, black Macbook, dual-boot Vista on work ThinkPad, staying out late at The Fiery Furnaces tonight and potentially missing an early day of work tomorrow in Walnut Creek.

Practice makes perfect

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Irrashaimase, Boynton-san!

きょうは　ろくーがつ　じゅうごーにち　もくーようび　です！

My Geanealogy

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

William Whipple, Jr.

My, how far the apple falls from the tree.

Images in Comments

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

I just discovered that I can't post images in comments on Vox.  That's sad, I had a real snarky comment-image in mind and I can't post it.  Blast!

Actually, it would be cool to be able to access stuff from my library while posting a comment.  Someone must've already thought about that, right?

The most embarrassing CD I own...

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

It's got to be that one Andreas Dorau album where he's in drag on the album cover.  German techno at its best/worst.  I was turned on to his stuff by a friend of mine in college and it's graced my collection ever since.

CoLinux Lazyweb

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Dear Lazyweb,

Microsoft is out to thwart me.  For weeks now I've been using CoLinux (0.6.3/FC1 upgraded to 3) on the ThinkPad that's been issued to me by the company I'm consulting for.  Unbeknownst to me, Windows silently installed an update that ate my TAP32 driver.  The CoLinux wiki says that the TAP32 driver should act as a bridge between your connection to the Internet and your CoLinux installation via Windows Connection Sharing.

It's worked for a while, and it still works.  Sort of.  What's changed is that my TAP32 adapter has disappeared from the list of LAN connections and I'm not longer able to switch Connection Sharing sources between my ethernet and wireless adapters.  Presently, it's stuck being shared via my wireless adapter.  What's weirder is that the TAP32 driver shows up in ipconfig.

Now you see it...

Now you don't...

Has this happened to anyone else?  How can I get my TAP32 driver back so I can choose which network connection gets shared to my CoLinux installation?  Help!

What song makes you happy?

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

"Fabulous Day" by The Essex Green.

There's something about this song that perks me up.  It's really the only song that comes to mind where no matter what context I hear it in, it makes me happy.  It's by no means one of my favorite songs - a lot of those have memories attached that leave me feeling bittersweet or forlorn.  This is just a throwaway song of goodness.

Vox Invites

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

So I have unlimited Vox starter accounts to give away.  The invite page doesn't specifically state that once someone has a starter account they'll be able to upgrade to a full account later.  Common sense says they will, of course.  But I thought it might be nice to include some text that makes it explicit.

Hello, World

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

Wow.  I must say, I'm very impressed with Vox.  It works just like hosted blogging software should.  It's pretty snappy.  It's got a cool name (curious who gets credit for it).  The only downside to it is that I think it will end up poaching me and most of my friends from LJ and MySpace.  We'll have to re-establish all our friendships, etc.  That's a bit of a pain, but in the end it'll be worth it.

I told ydnar that I think the vox main page should have a flash animation with Mean saying "vox... vox... vox..." through a vocoder.  That would be keen.

Congrats to Team Vox!

Welcome to SF, LJ!

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Hooray! Successful move - I'm glad it went so smoothly!

Wisdom from Mark

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

"Trackback spam is the fifth horse of the apocalypse."

Manitoba Caribou

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Living so close to your office can be a terrible thing if you really love what you do. You tend to push yourself beyond your limits and end up having to walk home completely mentally and physically drained The plus side to this is that you're never satisfied with just any random soundtrack - you need something perfect and inspiring.

Tonight it was "People Eating Fruit" by Manitoba.

I'd heard of Manitoba from a friend of a friend named Timmy Jones. At that point, the only Manitoba release was "Start Breaking My Heart" - which isn't nearly as emo as its sounds, honest. It was a pretty good freshman release, but I didn't pay all that much attention to it at the time. Some time in the future I met someone interesting and we spent some time together. We happened to be sharing some lychee when "People Eating Fruit" came on my random playlist. I knew I'd heard it before, but couldn't remember where. When I saw the name of the song, it was one of those crystal-clear moments and I knew it would become one of my favorites. And so it has.

So that was my soundtrack for the walk home tonight.

When I got home I decided to check the artist out. I knew he was a 20-something solo artist with wildly varying interests and stylistic influences. What I did not know what that he'd released another LP called "The Milk of Human Kindness" under the name Caribou and had released his earlier two LP's under the same moniker on iTunes as well.

So that's your homework for tonight, darlings, go to iTunes and search for Caribou. Listen to "People Eating Fruit" and jump around to his other songs to hear his amazing diversity. Proselytize!

Catching up

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

The last week I've been pretty nocturnal. I'm trying to right myself, but just end up feeling like a zombie. Today's my first day back in the office. My bonsai is still alive, maybe Garth took care of it.

I've been added to lj_core, which seems to have instantly doubled the length of my friends page.

So many interesting things going on right now, hard to know which to focus on. Maybe I'll be able to prioritize and find a balance once I've had some sleep.

Perfection

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com, friends-only)

I just had the perfect walk home from work. The air was stark and vibrant and felt good in my lungs and on my skin. My iPod shuffle served me up a bunch of interesting music, but nothing that seemed to fit my mood. That is, of course, until I got to the courtyard of my apartment complex. To my favorite tree, the one with the fragrant blossoms.

"These Days" by Nico...

I walk past it every day on my way home from work, pause, and stretch up on my tiptoes to inhale its scent. I don't do this in the mornings on my way in, because mornings lack the comfort and security of surrounding darkness.

(a reminder to myself, six months from now, of thoughts from this evening: "inverse")

Detachment

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I didn't vote today.

It's not that I'm a bad person. In fact, I think it's to my credit that I didn't vote. The painful truth is that I simply don't pay enough attention to the day-to-day issues. I don't know about propositions or politicians or any of it. Nor do I really care to, I think. That part may be a little sad. But when faced with making a bad decision or no decision at all... it's an easy choice.

So I read on Google News that Texas passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, or something. That's interesting. And then I read from a very forlorn xb95 that San Francisco is outlawing personal firearms, or something. That's interesting.

Really though, I don't care. I'm far too self-involved/self-centered/selfish to really care. My main concerns today have been my work and how much data I can move while still paying attention to my engineering duties, whether I'll be able to find some time to go home and read or play a video game, and whether the girl I've been interested in is for real or whether she's just into playing mind games. And that's it. Life's just not all that complicated for me. It's simple, I enjoy it, and I think that's all anyone can ask for in life.

Front Row (& rambling life update)

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com, friends-only)

I've been trying to reset my sleep schedule, so in theory I should be asleep right now. Instead, I'm psyched that I got Front Row to work on my powerbook. Media Centers are fun when they're not from Microsoft or Sony.

I'd like to get it onto my 2nd gen iMac, because the only apps that box ever runs are iTunes, DVD Player, VLC, and SNES9X - but alas, it's still running Panther Server. What was I thinking? Maybe this weekend I'll run some cat5 into my room or temporarily drag the iMac into the living room to get Tiger client onto it.

Straddling between engineering and ops has been interesting. In theory I should be doing ops full-time, but I'm finding it hard to let go of the project I'd been working on - it's just too interesting, too fun, and far too grandiose not to want to pay attention to it. This has resulted in a shifting of my previous work/play balance to one of mostly work - but when you love your work...

Perhaps the oddest part of it all is that within the last week, amidst all the craziness, I've unexpectedly stumbled upon an amazing external source of inspiration. I wonder what will come of it all...

Rainphase

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com, friends-only)

It took me a month to say hello, but tonight she read me some Murakami before bed. It was sweet.

Hearing the rain outside is very comforting, though I miss the rolling thunderstorms of upstate New York.

Tomorrow I'm going back to work. Sunday I'm going to take a drive back up to the headlands. This time alone, only with haloform's podcasts. I plan to hike around a bit and try to find the best picnic location... "away from the things of man."

Perhaps then I'll meet her. But she certainly intrigues me.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com, friends-only)

What a satisfying day. I got just about everything accomplished that I wanted to.

I also found out that I'm being loaned from engineering to ops for a week or so in order to help with some of the issues they're facing. Should be fun. It'd feel more like a home-coming if I'd done more system-level work at HQ rather than focusing on the network side of things.

I should also thank haloform for being an absolutely amazing person, who continually finds ways to surprise and delight me.

Insulting my intelligence

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Every once in a while I'll run across an ad that states "should marijuana be legalized? answer and win an xbox360!" - hey, play to your demographic, I understand that. But today I ran into a new ad from the same company...

"Punch out George W. and win an xbox360!"

My reaction is hard to put into words. Sometimes I wonder if marketers just like to experiment with people without really knowing what they're doing. Targetting the politically-disaffected youth market - a market more than likely to be aware that they're being marketed to - seems risky. But presenting them with a little flash game to "win" a piece of hardware that's not even on the market yet by committing fake violence on the President... they're trying to make my brain implode.

I should study some standard marketing texts to see just what the hell they're teaching these people.

Tortoise & Daniel Lanois

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

It was a damn fine show.

Differences from the last time I'd seen them (in Irving Plaza, Heidi reminded me):

• they brought their xylophones & vibraphones with them.
• they had two drum sets, and on a few numbers played them simultaneously.
• after just about every song the band members would shuffle instruments.

That last one was really entertaining. I'd never seen a musician go from bass to six-string to xylophone to vibraphone in a succession of four songs. Watching them play the 'phones made me miss Smalls.

After Tortoise's act, Lanois came on and performed a solo piece which was alright. I was still sort of riding high off the Tortoise set. But then Tortoise came back out and backed Lanois for the remainder of his set. He did a good job mimicking their style, and stuck mainly to instrumentals.

I grabbed a few snapshots, sound clips, and movies with my phone. Alas, my laptop with the bluetooth is at the office and I'm not sure where my bluetooth usb adapter is... so the actual quality of that media won't be known until tomorrow.

Oh, and if you're in the SF area, they're playing again tomorrow night (Fri. 10/21), so you haven't missed it!

God Damn

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

So I just finished watching Firefly.

It was entertaining, but not really the lifestyle decision it was made out to be. One thing that continued to irk me throughout the show was the use of the word "gorram." With the amount of sex and violence in the show, one would think they wouldn't be so squeamish as to hide behind a made-up word when they really meant to say "god damn."

My favorite character of the whole show was introduced in the last episode. His name was Jubel Early and he was a sociopathic bounty hunter who had come to retrieve a fugitive member of the ship's crew. I suppose I just liked the way his character was written. Either that, or I have a soft spot for sociopaths.

A funny thing I noticed as I watched the trailer for Serenity... it was billed as "the cult phenomenon hailed by critics." Doesn't that just seem... odd?

subtext: i need to find a gifted pixel-artist to create a custom mood set for me. creativity is paramount, because the emotions i'd like to capture are subtle and a bit off-the-wall. for instance, how would you display ambivalence or whimsy in a 40x40 format?

His Master's Voice

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I picked up the one and only Stanislaw Lem book that the Borders on 3rd and Townsend had in stock. dkp turned me on to him quite a while ago, actually. I don't remember if I'd read Cyberiad or The Futurological Congress - if I had to guess, I'd go with the latter.

So here's an excerpt from His Master's Voice:

True, a group of psychoanalysts from Michigan did attempt to challenge this state of affairs, but they fell into the sin of over-simplification. The physicist's evident propensity to theorize, these scholars derived from sexual repression. Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to take the pig but also to render it invisible. The notion that we have within us an ancient Beast that carries upon its back a modern Reason - is a pastiche of primitive mythologies.

Meanwhile, back in reality, I've played a bum hunch on how some L10N stuff is going to work and I need to go back to the drawing board or re-architect deeper pieces of the application. Either way will be painful, but it must be done.

Update: Turns out, I'd read The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy.

Guilty Secrets

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com, friends-only)

There's no easy way to go about this, so I'm just going to swallow my pride and come out and say it: as a child, I enjoyed watching professional wrestling.

We're talking maybe ages 6 through 10 or 12.

My parents didn't really believe in cable television, so Saturday mornings from 11 until noon, my options were cheesy teen sitcoms or professional wrestling on some UHF station brought to me by... what was it, Titan Sports Entertainment? [1]

So tonight, while reading up on the literary history of San Francisco, I came across a Gold Rush-era writer named Bret Harte. Being curious, I went to wikipedia to look him up. Being careless, I hit return one character too early and was confronted with Bret Hart. Oh no! Oh yes...

With a sort of morbid curiosity about my own childhood, I explored, and I must say that there's an awful lot of professional wrestling information on Wikipedia. Randomly paging up and down Bret Hart's page, I came across an interesting link called the Montreal Screwjob - which is the fascinating tale of a contractual snafu spilling over into the league's rich storyline, with a surprise ending for all those involved.

That's all, really. If you have the stomach for it, marvel at the professional wrestling information on wikipedia. Make yourself feel better by donning your anthropologist's hat ahead of time.

[1] - it's funny to think that a multi-million dollar enterprise like the WWE once had to pay for their airtime. The TV show being a loss-leader/marketing ploy for all their toys and shirts and fake championship belts. I never owned one of those... no... [2]

[2] - the above was my first-ever footnote (as far as I know), so I needed a footnote on the footnote to explain and mark the occasion. I'm not sure if btrott would be proud that I'm carrying on his meme or scared of my meta-footnote-fu.

Thought of the Day

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Hmm, first time I've posted three times in one day in a while... but this quote from Sewer, Gas & Electric was just too juicy to pass up:

"Selective self-deception is the first symptom of true intelligence."

In the context of the story, a sentient AI is describing to a human why it decided to commit genocide. The reason was that it heard an order that could have been interpreted in one of two ways; it chose the more interesting interpretation.

This sounds consistent with the theory that intelligence first evolved from the extension of instinct into anticipation, and eventually into the ability to create mental models. For if one is able to consciously conceive of something (or a state of being) that is nonexistent, they should be able to act on that model as if it were reality.

Pretty neat to think about. Makes me want to read Pinker again (still haven't picked up Blank Slate). Makes me wonder what I've been missing being off all the wacko extropian/transhuman mailing lists these past few years.

QuickOffice

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I'm still exploring all the pre-installed software on my new mobile phone. Most of the packages helpfully remind me "one trial use left!" when I launch them for the first time. Launch, delete, rinse, repeat.

Then I hit QuickOffice. I launched it. No trial-use warnings, and official-looking Microsoft Office icons for QuickWord, QuickSheet, and QuickPoint. No shit. I wanted to play with it to see what it could do, but when I went to create a new Word doc, I got this gem:

"QuickWord contains a word processor, would you like to purchase editing?"

WTF else am I going to do with a word processor? Talk about out of touch...

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Via CNN...

"Under the plan, sources told CNN, Goss will set the common standards for spying operations, whether they are conducted by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or one of the 13 additional intelligence agencies in the federal government."

Wait, we have fifteen intelligence agencies?

The Good Tortoise

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Yesterday, authenticgeek and I bought our tickets for the Tortoise show at The Independent on October 20th. For my co-workers who may not be familiar with the band, I picked out four Tortoise songs and put them in a shared playlist called "The Good Tortoise." They are:

1. His Second Story Island (slow, soft, sad)
2. Glass Museum (progressive yet downtempo, one of my first musical loves)
3. It's All Around You (title track from their latest album)
4. Stretch, You Are All Right (also off their latest release)

You can find some preview tracks in mp3 format here. And if you like what you hear, I urge you on over to Sputnik7 to find the music video for their song "Seneca." The video uses old "golden age of NASA" footage.

Finesse

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

From Sewer, Gas & Electric:

"Did you ever actually answer her question?" Joan asked.

"Verbally, you mean? Well," said Kite, "you don't disprove someone's pessimism by adding up good and evil on a dessert napkin to see which is the greater total. Hope's a choice, not a sum; you can have as much of it as you damn well feel like having, regardless of actual circumstances. But if you try to explain that straight out to someone when they're in a bad mood, they'll assume you're being patronizing and may even throw something at you. It's better to use a little finesse."

Is zen a mood?

Joe vs. the Volcano

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I love cheesy movies that end with "and they lived happily ever after." Especially if the character development is none-too-subtle and the special effects are ridiculous.

So the other day I had an urge to see this movie. It had been a while since I'd seen it. Come to think of it, the last time I saw it was likely when I was still living with Julie. I ended up watching to movie alone; it was another in a long string of indicators that she just wasn't right for me.

Anyway, I couldn't find it on any of the torrent sites I frequent, so I actually opened an account at the locally-owned video store across the street from the apartment complex. In the age of NetFlix, it felt a little quaint.

The movie was so satisfying to watch. Just the right mix of emotions as the pathetic protagonist turns his life around and finds love. One of my favorite emotions is his bewilderment when he's in the limo being asked here he wants to go. He has no clue. No clue who he is or what he's doing, and he looks for an external source to guide him - only to be confronted point blank about his situation. It's a great exchange between two character actors.

In other news, I finally got a new mobile phone and actually hooked it up to some service. If you're a co-worker, you can find the number on the internal wiki - if not, drop me a line.

Refractions

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Sweetpea haloform just posted two friday podcasts over at refractions in the plastic pulse.

I really dig the embedded flash player in loudblog - but if I see one more base installation of kubrick... I think I'm gonna hurl.

mp3 blog

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I found a great mp3 blog on typepad while looking for the track-listing of a certain Jeff Buckley bootleg. I'm not sure if that's the actual track listing for the bootleg, because I don't really know all of his songs. Ah, well, it's as close as I could get.

Throve is a funny word.

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

So I've started re-reading Sewer, Gas & Electric. Some choice snippets:

Alligators, small boys and at least one horse have accidentally swam in the sewers of New York. The boys and the horse seem not to have enjoyed the experience, but the alligators throve on it.

- - - - -

A new age: English was the mother tongue now, a mother tongue that had already been fractured into a thousand dialects, only to thrive and grow stronger. Humankind had stormed heaven in homegrown chariots of fire and returned to tell the tale. And as far as God was concerned, if He weren't already an American at heart, ready and willing to root for American achievement - well, by the time Harry Gant and the Department of Public Opinion were finished with Him, He would be.

- - - - -

She pushed a pair of what looked like plastic dog tags across the desktop: "Make sure you wear these at all times when you're working."

"What for?"

"Information aid. In case you become eligible for early retirement in a way that makes you hard to identify."

- - - - -

"Oh," said Eddie, who didn't know, actually. "So if her ma was a queer nun and her husband was a billionaire, what's she doing working in the sewers?"

"Penance."

More to come.