NOEXTEHO

I think they rhyme breakdance with shakedance.

2011-05-01T12:59:00.001-04:00

(via the always-awesome SOUND SHOCK! VISUAL SHOCK!)

A tale in three images.

2010-11-15T04:42:00.001-05:00

Lest you think I've neglected this place

2010-07-16T01:06:00.001-04:00

I offer a gem:

Seltzer from Noah Kalina on Vimeo.

A Return to Form

2010-03-24T02:48:00.001-04:00

And I'm crying tears of joy, I think.

My Only Post About Global Warming EVER

2010-03-21T14:38:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if I care one lick about Mr. Lagerfeld's clothes or not, but DAMN that's a nice iceberg...

photo from Café Mode

Sexy Turtles

2010-03-07T03:07:00.003-05:00

So, my computer's fan has been working a bit better lately, so I've been catching up on some youtube videos now that my computer is less likely to burst into flame. I was surprised to find that the most entertaining video I watched today was the latest Auto-Tune The News: #10: Turtles. (No, sadly, not referring to this.)

After watching this video (twice), I went back to doing some programming while rocking out to my iTunes library on shuffle. Less than a minute later, I heard something that perfectly complemented (and quite pre-dated) Auto-Tune The News: Sing Along With JFK. Thanks to WFMU's awesomeness, I first heard this so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it until this wonderful coincidence. (My favorite jam is definitely Alliance For Progress Bossa Nova.)

That's all.

Except for this: Another amusing Auto-Tune The News is #8: dragons. geese. Michael Vick. (ft. T-Pain). T-Pain!

A Very Important and Yet Hard to Define Genre of Programs

2010-03-07T02:25:00.005-05:00

I forget what exactly drove me to try it out again, but just a week or two ago I downloaded the latest version of Notational Velocity. I had tried it once or twice over the past few years, but never took to it (no tree?! what?!), but now that I've been adjusting to Evernote's search for about a year, I now know what I want. And Notational Velocity is exactly that. It's actually scary just how perfect it is for me.

Notational Velocity

There are three sections to the program: the search bar, the filtered note list, and the content of the selected note. The search bar and the note list together are the main navigation interface. Type in the search bar and then use any one of a few different keys to choose which note you want from the note list, if more than one even show up. Then hit any one of a few different keys to move to the content area, where you can edit to your heart's delight. Saving is always automatic, and it remembers where you are in each note.

I know, I know... That doesn't sound very exciting, does it? Well, it's not supposed to be exciting. It's fast. It's productive. It's... effortless. The exciting thing is just how well and how efficiently it works. I honestly can't imagine ever going to another notes program. Ever. (I suppose this means I better look into Linux and Windows clones of Notational Velocity, in case I ever need to use one of those OSes for an extended period of time.)

Also, one final plus: it's an open source program! Hurray!

...

Now, in case you're interested, here's how exactly I arrived at my current note-keeping (and proof of just how picky I am about it):

I take type a lot of notes.

At first, when I started doing this, I was using DOS and plain text files were the norm. I still have such fond memories of Microsoft's EDIT.EXE program! Even into the Windows era, I still kept my notes in plain text files, although instead of a few all over the place, I tried centralizing them into just one file. At first, this worked, but given the amount of notes I take, it quickly got out of hand. But I stuck with it anyways, until the end of my Windows computing experience. My move to OS X was partially due to massive hard drive failure (and no backups, of course!) so I couldn't take my old NOTES.TXT file with me even if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I was done with that. I was using OS X now... I felt like I had ascended to a slightly higher plane of existance. So, there must be a better way to keep notes, right?

MS-DOS Editor (aka EDIT.EXE) in German, so Dan can understand it

(Image lovingly borrowed from some site. I'll give it back, don't worry.)

Well, there was. And, in fact, I had been using it. You see, part of that last paragraph was untrue. I'm sorry, it seemed more poetic to lie... The truth is, at some point near the end of my Windows time, I had started using some program whose development had ceased, but it was similar to TreePad, a tree-based notes program. I loved it. I could organize my notes in a hierarchy! I could hide the deeper trees away when I didn't need them! It was pretty nice. So, being the note-keeper that I am, one of the very first OS X programs I went looking for (after Firefox) was a tree-based notes organizer. I had never actively looked for such a program before (having accidentally stumbled upon my previous program), and it was a hard search. There are a lot of names for these programs: personal data assistants, personal information managers, organizers, note-taking programs, note organizers, and so on. With so many names and niches, there were so many programs to choose from: Yojimbo, DevonNotes, DevonThink, OmniOutliner, are SOHO Notes are some that pop into mind right now. Trying to get as close to TreePad-like program as possible, I found JreePad, an open source, muli-platform sort-of-clone of TreePad. Unfortunately, due (I suspect) to its Java base, it was neither close enough to TreePad nor OS X-y enough to please me, instead resting somewhere in between. Yuck. So I settled on Mori from Hog Bay Software (now from Apokalypse Software) because it was the closest to TreePad while still being a wonderfull OS X-y program. And, without any adequate free options, Mori was about half the price of my second favorite choice at the time.

Mori

Mori worked great for my first year or so. I was happy with it. I loved it. But after about a year, I discovered that I had to pare my notes from time to time to keep it snappy. And when the developer updated its code for OS X 10.5, I had some lingering issues that no one else seemed to have. And although the developer kindly investigated and fixed some things, the issues were never resolved enough not to bother me. So I began my search all over again. Nothing was simple enough for me, though. Not that I couldn't use them, but they were all overkill, with features I wouldn't use but couldn't hide. And the few simple programs were far far too simple or too unstable. But then I decided to check out a program I had been ignoring: Evernote.

Evernote

I think I was ignoring Evernote because it was being discussed in just about every blog I read. But upon checking it out, I discovered that the free version would do what I wanted, for the most part, and that I had no reason to pay for the non-free version. So I started using it, and getting used to it. It's a tag-based program, instead of tree-based. But you could sort of make trees out of the tags, and it was really more for searching, instead of tree-navigating. After using it for about a year (I think), I'm still not adjusted fully to it, though... There are little bits that I just can't get over, or little annoyances that I just can't see past. So I've still been keeping my eyes and ears open for other programs. (Which leads to Notational Velocity.)

A Very Special Dedication....

2010-02-20T14:04:00.002-05:00

...to every single fucking person I know... past , present, or future:

Scout Niblett - The Calcination of Scout Niblett

2010-02-19T00:48:00.003-05:00

(It's been a while since I straight up did one of these...)

I should preface this with the fact that I was already a Scout Niblett fan before hearing this album. I had to get that out of the way so that I don't spend this entire post just talking about why you should listen to her stuff in general. So now I can focus specifically on this album. First, some comparisons... This sort of makes me feel the way that a lot of the older, sparser Cat Power stuff does... or some of the mellower PJ Harvey stuff.

(FUCK. I shouldn't have read that review beforehand that mentioned Cat Power and PJ Harvey, because now those are the only comparisons I can think of. FUCK.)

Since it's pretty evident that I'm not in my most descriptive mood right now, I'll say that this album has some SICK guitar on it. The opening song starts off with a riff that could have been by Earth (before they went doom-country or whatever it is they do now... which I love, btw). Some of the other tracks, too, have some awesome heavy guitar riffs. And the thing is that they work so perfectly with her melancholy songs. SHIT, DUDE... so perfect.

I think that, right now, my dream girl is one who loves this album as much as I do. Or maybe Ms. Niblett herself. She probably likes her own album, right? So, Emma, where you at? If you're at all into dudes who can't even write a decent album review of your album, you should get in touch.....

Un-Scientific Observations Made By A Non-Expert

2010-02-01T04:55:00.003-05:00

It's 4:56am. I'm awake. I don't want to be. So...

I want to eat zucchini bread. But I just finished my loaf.

(what sadness looks like)

This radio show I was just working on is called "future-pop" but it's turning more into "evil-future pop." So far, it goes:

Carouselle - Tim Exile
Black History Month - Saul Williams
Street Diction - Dälek
Forgive and Forget - Drumcorps
The Dead Of Night - Depeche Mode
Inertia Creeps - Massive Attack
Dry and Dusty - Fever Ray
Glory In Itself/Egyptian - Gang Gang Dance
...

(I'm trying to make it less dark near the end. Not sure if it's working.)

Yesterday, I bought a new mouse for the first time in 5 or 6 years. It's an Apple Magic Mouse, and while futuristic, I'm still undecided.

(My hand is bigger, and less comfortable, than that.)

I spent a large chunk of the weekend looking at things like this:

(kind of fun)

...and this:

(kind of boring)

...and I got nowhere. Oh, computers! So logical and yet so infuriating! I could never be friends with Data.

Dear Haiti...

2010-01-17T04:31:00.002-05:00

Before he died (not in an earthquake), Warren Zevon wrote a song about you:

(Thanks to Lin Swimmer for turning me on to this tune, long ago.)

Please, Follow My Instructions

2010-01-04T01:39:00.003-05:00

First, you must watch this video:

If you made it through that, or at least half way through that without skipping ahead, then you must watch the following video as well:

Well?

In case you need to cleanse your palate after that, feel free to watch this one.

Because I'm A Nice Guy... I'm Going To Destroy You

2010-01-03T13:27:00.003-05:00

Well, maybe not destroy you, but your productivity.

All with one simple link.

Edgar, can you enhance this?

2009-12-17T23:56:00.000-05:00

An Brief, Honest Look At The Bad TV Shows I Watch

2009-12-16T11:40:00.003-05:00

(coincidentally, these are almost all available on Hulu)

Legend Of The Seeker - I started watching this while unemployed. Now that I'm employed, I find myself not watching it. Meh. Epic fantasy quest, hot female companion (now two hot female companions), and that weird tall guy I will always remember from one of the Mad Max movies, and yet all I can say is "meh."

Stargate Universe - Not as schlocky as other Stargate shows, except in this case, that's a bad thing. As I've said before, it seems like they're trying to Battlestar Galactica-ize the Stargate franchise. Hell, it's practically blatant... A small group of people alone on a ship with intense struggles between civilian and military rule? Check. Did I mention that they're also constantly struggling with finding supplies to help them survive on their falling apart ship? Come on. The end of SG-1 took a decent dramatic turn, but like Buffy, it was a gradual change from schlocky comedy to drama. This might not be such a bad series were it not for the blatant Battlestar plot points, maybe... Or if they had started schlocky and slowly turned serious. Bah! It still has Robert Carlyle, and I'm still watching it...

FlashForward - Originally, I started watching this just because of John Cho. But I'm sort of into it. Sort of. What keeping me from being a real fan? Logic. I'm going to group this show into the same genre as Lost: a vaguely sci-fi mystery that slowly unravels over the course of the series, providing much drama. And, like Lost, the logic of the characters actions never fails to upset me. Now, the characters in this show do not seem to make as many stupidly illogical decisions, but they also have much less sci-fi mystery to deal with. So, it's a bit disappointing. I'll probably keep watching it at least until they kill off John Cho's character, though. And (not really a spoiler, due to it's vagueness) I was quite proud of the writers for adding the part where the FBI guy jumps off the roof.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - Very, very good. I frequently find myself laughing heartily at this show, and I'm pretty sure everyone else will too. Or everyone else does too, already. Everyone's always talking about how 30 Rock is the best comedy on now, but I beg to differ... This show is the best comedy on now.

The Office - It took me a while to view this as a completely separate show from the UK Office. The UK Office is a really good (if really bleak) comedy... One of the best ever, in fact. This show, however, isn't. This is but a sitcom. A really good sitcom, mind you, but still, quite different. But once you accept that, it's possible to enjoy both.

Parks And Recreation - A similar sitcom style as The Office, but with a slightly different sense of humor. At first, I was quite disappointed, but I've come to enjoy it. Although I'm not sure how much of my willingness to watch this is due solely to Aubrey Plaza.

Community - My friend Jesse wrote a much better bit about this show than I can, and I agree with it completely... a sincere show that is actually good.

30 Rock - I think this show used to be pretty solid, but it much more hit or miss lately. It's unfortunate, since this show has provided some of the best laughs I've ever laughed, EVER. But now I've gone entire episodes with only a couple of chuckles. Bummer.

Better Off Ted - I had never heard of this show until Hulu told me it existed, but I'm glad I know of it. This is a rather sincere comedy, like Community. This show isn't great, but it is always pretty consistent.

Outer Space Astronauts - Another show I had never heard of until Hulu told me. This one is sort of crude (visually and thematically) and rough, but as a pretty big sci-fi fan, it's nice to see such a niche show as this: a show for sci-fi fans that pokes fun at sci-fi.

Dollhouse - I admit: I'll watch anything Joss Whedon puts his name on. I'm quite enjoying this show, even if it has felt a little all-over-the-place. It started out slow, and I was up for a slow build, but then it seemed like they kicked up the pace due to sagging ratings or something. This, too, was alright. Then they had an episode on the 1st season DVD release that took place in a dystopian future (and it was AWESOME), and now that show has changed pace and is rapidly approaching that future. Yet another huge change, but still quite welcome. As long as the show either stays in the place it's at or makes another progressive change, I'll keep watching. It's fun.

Fringe - I figured I'd hate this one, but watched it for the hot girl (and, I suppose, for Josh Jackson). Over time, I've gotten into it. Very X-Files-ish, I think.

Lie To Me - Tim Roth. I'll watch anything with him in it. Some of the drama is too blah, some of the proceduralness is too blah, and the episodic nature is not my thing in a drama. But I'm still watching it. I thing Tim Roth is the reason. His characters always have a darkness lurking underneath (or on top, if the role calls for it), and I think the writers are slowly realizing that and writing some more bad-ass plots for this darkness.

Trauma - When I first saw the adds, I thought it was a joke: someone took all the dramatic tragedies from ER and made a show out of it! But I watched an episode anyway (thanks, Hulu), and now I've come to look forward to this.

V - I can't take waiting a week between episodes. I'm not sure if this is because I really like the show, or because the episodes don't seem to cover enough in each one, or what. I'm digging this so far, although there have already been a few times I've been disappointed with a main characters logic, so who knows.

Mad Men - I just started this. I wish I had it on DVD. My current method of watching it really kills a lot of the visual neatness that I can tell the show has. Maybe I'll take a break until I get the DVDs from Netflix. But I'm digging this so far. Not as much as lots of people in the world, but it's alright.

I was watching Dexter, but I gave up on that once Netflix Streaming didn't have any newer episodes. Same with Californication.

I hear there's another season of Party Down coming... Is this true? That would make me very happy. Also, I'm quite looking forward to the new season of Doctor Who. And I wish there would be a new season of Torchwood, too, but I fear that might be totally dead. Are there any Doctor Who fans reading this who can advise me one way or another as to whether I should watch The Sarah Jane Adventures? The brief cameo I saw of the show in either Doctor Who or Torchwood (forget which) made it look a bit juvenile, perhaps.

Anyone have any recommendations for shows I should watch instead of any of these?

This is for Lin Swimmer (and the state of California)

2009-11-21T22:47:00.000-05:00

What I've Been Programming Lately: Bash Scripts

2009-11-15T15:50:00.004-05:00

As if I wasn't already in love with POSIX shells, the more Bash scripts I write, the more I love it. Thank you thank you thank you, Apple, for including a (mostly) standard Bash shell in OS X!

One of the latest scripts that I wrote is simple but extremely useful to me. It moves the most recent file in my ~/Downloads directory to the current directory. Simple, and it sure started that way, but I've tweaked it to work quite nicely. The default behavior is to tell me what the most recent file is and ask me if I want to move it ('y' moves it and any other key cancels). This helps me if I forget that I downloaded some other things since the one I wanted to move. It also keeps track of a history, and allows for undoing the last move (if I do mess up). Also, it has decent error handling to ensure that I don't accidentally overwrite an existing file or such. This script is called mvdl, and I may post it on Google Code or Github sometime soon.

The other script I've been having fun perfecting is called backupwithgit. After my recent infatuation with Git, I've been versioning like crazy. backupwithgit helps me version not-too-critical directories, like my ~/random-textfiles directory. I can set a few options in the script, then make a symlink called backuptxt (or whatever I want), and then anytime I type 'backuptxt' in the terminal from any directory, it'll add and commit everything in my ~/random-textfiles directory. To deal with another not-too-critical directory, I set a couple more options in backupwithgit and then make a new symlink with a different name, and I'm good to go again. Like mvdl, this script will also be showing up on Google Code or Github sometime soon-ish.

I honestly don't know if these scripts would be useful to anyone other than myself, but I'm perfectly willing to share them once I clean them up a little bit. (Honest... just a little bit. They're quite nice as is.) If you're actually interested and can't wait for me to clean them up and post them, let me know and I'll hook you up, although they're pretty trivial scripts.

(If you've read this far through this post, then you might be interested to know that I'm quite disappointed with Stargate Universe. It seems as though they're explicitly trying to Battlestar Galactica-ize the Stargate franchise.)

Cucumbers! Cabbage! Chick peas! Tahini! Happiness!

2009-11-15T14:05:00.004-05:00

I honestly haven't much awesomeness to tell you about right now. Or at least no one shining bit of awesomeness. So, instead, I will mention many little bits of semi-awesome right now. And maybe a small rant or two. In no real order.

-----

I've been spending a lot of time playing with jekyll, a "a simple, blog aware, static site generator." With it, I can write webpages with Markdown formatting and then quickly generate a static site. First, I converted my internal websites into jekyll sites (I keep a few personal websites going on my computer for nicely formatted notes and quick references to things). But now I'm in the process of actually (and finally!) making a real "homepage" kind of website, which will be unveiled to the public sometime-ish. It's fun! So easy! And it's a fairly small and simple Ruby program, so it's a blast to mess around with the jekyll source code too.

-----

I really don't know why it took me so long to wrap my head around it, but I've finally started keeping my work version-controlled. For a while, I've known how to check out code with Subversion, Mercurial, Git, CVS (and probably other I'm forgetting), but that's about all I've been able to do. But now, thanks to a guide which was surely written with me in mind, Git for the lazy, I'm quite comfortable with all aspects of Git. Actually, I'm more than comfortable... I'm smitten. And since I keep as much stuff of mine as I possibly can in plain text formats, I'm able to keep so much of my stuff version controlled! This is definitely something I've always wanted, even though I didn't know it.

-----

Bad grammar has been a bit of a pet peeve of mine for quite some time, but normally I can overlook it. Hell, I used to participate in various forms of internet lingo way back in the day, and I still quite enjoy some of the turns of speech that come out of forums like 4chan. But lately, I've seen quite a few people I respect linking to articles with atrocious grammar. I'm not even talking about simply switching its and it's, but writing frequent needlessly-confusing sentence fragments and gigantic run-on sentences. Possibly even worse, there seems to be a rising trend of quoting tweets - as compressed and stunted as they are - verbatim on one's blog. My disdain of Twitter aside, take pride in your quotes, O Internet!

But what can be done? It seems as though when one attempts to correct someone's grammar, it's usually perceived as snobby or condescending. The corrector is derided as "grammar police" or a "grammar nazi." And it's been my experience that kind, private emails to the author are typically ignored. Every time that I think long and hard about this problem, the only solution I come up with is improved education in schools.

Just how horribly selfish is it to now care about school funding so that there are better blog posts for me to read?

-----

I may have mentioned this before, but after being mostly unemployed for almost a year, I now have a lot less free time than I had grown accustomed to. As such, I can't read all the feeds in Google Reader that I used to. This is a sad affair, this pruning of information. I used to be able to read it all - to know it all - but now, I have to pick and choose. To a certain extent, it feels like it did when I no longer worked at a music store and no longer knew what practically every single album being released sounded like. As someone who frequently forgets things, I loathe the feeling of not knowing, or more precisely, knowing that I would have known.

-----

I've completely forgotten how I heard of it, but my new go-to site for technology news is Hacker News, the communal news portion of Y Combinator, a venture firm. The site typically deals with web development news, but from time to time other bits of geeky news is thrown in as well. I quite love visiting the site itself instead of via RSS, since it has such a quick, minimal interface, and rather substantial comments.

Money In The Bank

2009-11-07T15:32:00.003-05:00

I have a new favorite website. It's call Bank Notes. It collects bank robbery notes. Most of them are transcribed, not actual scans, unfortunately, but it's still pretty damn awesome.

A Simple Video About Real Life

2009-11-05T11:38:00.001-05:00

(from the excellent source for disco-y videos and music, arawa.fm)

Love And Logic

2009-10-28T01:50:00.003-04:00

[This is not what I intended to write about, but I suppose something is better than nothing. This whole NOT-spending-every-waking-moment-online thing I've been doing lately really killed my drive to blog, apparently.]

The other day, I worked with an Icelandic girl. I've heard Björk's accent before, and the accents of a few lesser Icelandic celebrities, and I've always found their accents pleasing. But now that I've actually talked to an Icelandic girl in person, I think I can say that the Icelandic accent has officially become my new favorite accent for a girl. The Irish accent had previously held that title.

-----

The other day, I saw a girl who I recognized from having seen her photo online. I've seen her at my work a few other times, and yet each time is very, very awkward.

First, she's extremely attractive. That, sadly, always makes things awkward for me.
Second, the whole online thing is weird. Before nerdiness was as accepted as it is today, I trained myself to avoid talking in public of anything remotely nerdy. I'm untraining myself these days, but still, if you mention a webpage to me in public, you might notice a quick flash of revulsion. Don't worry, it's (probably) not you, it's me.
Third, she's not the one posting herself online. Her husband is the photographer. She's not the main subject of his photos. In fact, she's probably in only 5-10% of them, if even that. Only someone like me who's been following her husband's photography for a couple of years would really have seen enough photos of her to recognize her as quickly and certainly as I have.
Finally (and this is the kicker): in several of the photos, she's (tastefully) nude. She's aware that her husband is posting nude photos of her and she's OK with it, but still...

So, my interactions with her are simply: smile a little too large, point her to her book, quickly look away.

-----

I just realized that now that summer is definitely over, it's officially been over a year since I had a girlfriend. Unofficially, I'm not even sure if that one counted as a girlfriend, so it could have been an even longer time. But honestly, I don't think it really bothers me. This isn't a dry spell so much as it is disinterest. Or, actually, I suppose I've been interested, but I've just let logic get the better of me. Lately, the girls I've been most into have been totally totally wrong for me. The aforementioned photographer's wife. The ditzy, annoying blond. The model-hot party girl. The painfully naive girl I only talk to because I like her hair. The lesbian customer with the androgynous girlfriend. These are the girls I've contemplated asking out lately. What the hell is wrong with me? Either I need to get my logic synchronized with my lust, or I need to ignore one or the other. Until I start doing either, I'm fine being alone. Hell, I have been getting a lot of programming done lately, after all...

This Blog Is Brought To You By Germans Who Can't Pronounce Massachusetts

2009-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

Goth Day, part 2, perhaps? The fashion issue

2009-10-05T03:40:00.004-04:00

Holy shit. I'm kicking myself for not having thought of this myself:

(Photo from Café Mode)

Waders as fashion! So silly that it's super awesome! And she makes it work, with that awesome sweater. Oh, I suppose according to my brief internet searching, Prada may or may not have featured waders on the runway before. Bah. Whatever. I'm still giving props to this girl. Hmmm, also, according to slightly more searching, women in waders is a fetish calendar series. Fine, whatever. I'm STILL giving this girl credit, because until just now, waders, to me, had always been this:

This is what happens when I listen to industrial music for several hours

2009-10-05T02:58:00.003-04:00

Apparently, I make "art":

I think it started when I listened to the latest song posted on Arawa FM. And then I listened to it again. And again.... And again a few more times. Meanwhile, I was looking at every single photo on Rankin's website. Then, while still looking at Rankin photos, I happened across this Front 242 song I had never heard on Constant Siege. And I listened to that over and over too. And for some reason the concept of listening to Front 242 in a Camero stuck in my mind. Then I found myself listening to the whole Ministry - Twitch album. And then those ZYX and Front 242 songs again. And then I downloaded a few Front 242 albums.

Then, before I knew it, I had downloaded a ton of Camero photos and turned them into what you see above.

Yes, this is embarrassing.

Take that, INTERNET.

To Boldly Be Sad Where No Man Has Been Sad Before

2009-09-27T03:05:00.004-04:00

Well, not exactly. I suppose someone else was sad first, for they made the site: U.S.S. EXCALIBUR MEMORIAL.

Go there. Go there now.

But be prepared to be saddened, as I was, for that is a memorial site to dead Star Trek actors. At the top, it's got the biggies, like DeForest Kelley and James Doohan, but then it proceeds to list what can only I imagine is a complete list of everyone else who ever acted on any Star Trek series and is now deceased.

I dare any Star Trek fan to scroll through that list and not tear up. Especially you TOS fans.

What really got me, though, was the actors who you know mostly from other things, such as...

...Kevin Peter Hall

(who played both the predator in Predator and Harry in Harry And The Hendersons)

...David Graf

(who played Officer Tackleberry in the Police Academy films)

...Andreas Katsulas

(who played so many great characters, such as G'Kar in Babylon 5)

...Vincent Schiavelli

(who also has played many great characters, such as John O'Connor in The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension)

All dead.

On Vanity And Trackbacks

2009-09-26T22:50:00.003-04:00

[Note: This is a rant, instead of a triumphant return to blogging. Sorry, Lin.]

Have you ever looked at a blog's comments, only to see lots of comments that are merely quotes of the article, or quotes of another blog talking about the article? Those are trackbacks.

I've never really understood trackbacks. Sure, I get that it's nice to know who's talking about your blog and what they're saying, but do the readers have any interest in that at all? I think trackbacks are pure internet litter for everyone except the blog's author. Shouldn't the blog author(s)/admin(s) be the only one(s) who can see all the trackback junk? And even then, wouldn't it be more useful to have the trackbacks appear as some sort of RSS feed?

And, more existentially, how do the trackbacks even get there? Surely a blog doesn't spider the web for mentions. Do bloggers add trackbacks by hand, then? Or do the popular blogging systems just go and post trackbacks automatically? I don't think I like the implications of automatic trackback posting. Is there some way I can avoid doing that?

Trackbacks should be disabled on this blog. If you ever see one appear, tell me about it, please, because it probably means that I accidentally enabled it in one of my messing-around-with-the-site binges.

Fleeting Desires, Narrow Escape

2009-09-13T00:18:00.004-04:00

5 seconds ago, I almost deleted this whole blog. On purpose.

Then I didn't.

However, I still want to. I think.

What will the future hold?

...

On second (or maybe fourth) thought, fuck it. No deletion. This blog is still for people who know me well, or those who stumble across it and enjoy it. I briefly flirted with the idea that I wanted to have a nice and respectable and well-manicured blog that I could refer to in sentences like "Hey, you should check out my blog!" or "Oh? I just made a blog post about that. Go check it out!" But I don't actually want to say those sentences. So I think I'm OK.

This pointless post is now complete.

Hollywood Is Inside My Brain

2009-08-29T23:02:00.003-04:00

Sorry folks, I've got another video for you. This is a trailer for a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine. I can't decide if this is going to suck, or if it's going to be my favorite movie of the year (or maybe even decade). Regardless, I think I'll have to watch it.

Museum Of Animal Perspectives!!!!

2009-08-28T23:28:00.004-04:00

File this under things I never knew I wanted, but now I can't get enough.

Here's a video from the scorpion cam:

And here's a video from the tarantula cam:

See more at MAP's Flickr page. (found via kottke.org)

UPDATE: Try MAP's YouTube page instead of the Flickr one. Also, I've now changed the embedded vids to get them working again.

More dancing!

2009-08-16T20:18:00.003-04:00

In my efforts to transform NOEXTEHO into dance video blog, I present...... this:

You're welcome.

In fact, most of this person's videos are entertaining. For instance, some bass-playing talent:

Youtube, I still love you.

2009-08-09T12:54:00.004-04:00

Could this video possibly be as awesome as it's title ("Dutch Kids dancing to Hyper Bass!")?

Yes. Yes indeed.

(NOTE: Hyper Bass is now my second favorite musical genre name next to Speedranch. But Google just told me that Speedranch is an artist, not a genre (what?! I could have sworn...), so I guess that means Hyper Bass is my favorite genre name.)

Joe Meets Dubstep

2009-08-09T12:11:00.003-04:00

OK, so I've actually known of it for quite a while. (Hell, it was my job at one point to know about it.) But sooooo much of it is sooooooo bland. And that's before you take into account all the lame shit that someone made just because they wanted to jump on the bandwagon. So, for the most part, I've avoided it, except for some random outlier sort-of-dubstep/sort-of-not stuff that's walked right in front of me.

But recently I've had a change of heart. And it's all because of one blog post on Salacious Sound: 3 Dubstep Tracks That Give Me Goosebumps. Not sure how I found it, but that title grabbed me... That's what I need: a small collection of some truly awesome tracks. And that is indeed what they are. If you're at all curious, GO THERE NOW and GET THOSE TRACKS.

That day, I read many other posts on Salacious Sounds, only to learn that it was not actually an "awesome dubstep" blog. Instead, it's a Toronto-centric blog about dance music. But there were a couple other posts with good dubstep-y tracks: Rusko Roots Reggae and Recommended by Jayho. If you're feeling this, then you need to go get those tracks, too.

(Pay attention to this Rusko guy, btw. I know he's already pretty big, but damn... his stuff is usually soooooo damn good.)

Anyways, I got so swept away with this sudden group of actually good dubstep tracks that I went and made a whole radio show (mp3 download on that page) based on them. I probably played everything I just linked to, and then a whole lot more Rusko. But, you see, I mixed them together, a little bit, at least. Like a real DJ. So perhaps you should forgo all the Salacious Sounds links and just check this one out, instead.

Finally, if you know of any other dubstep I should check out, let me know. I need more.

The Perils of Food Porn

2009-08-08T11:58:00.003-04:00

I can not stop looking at TasteSpotting today. I took it out of my regular blog reading rotation for this very reason. But I've exhausted my regular reading, and (stupidly) decided to revisit TasteSpotting. (I blame Bitten's article yesterday in the NYT - which I read today. It reminded me that awesome foods can be slobbered over on the internet.) Now I have about 20 tabs open, each to a different desirable recipe. And I am sooooooo starving. All I have to look forward to right now is oatmeal. And bananas, too, I suppose.

TasteSpotting really is food porn, as folks call it, but it's sort of worse than 'regular' porn. 'Regular' porn doesn't make me go out and buy things. Food porn does. Either I'm going and buying the ingredients for a recipe (during a trip where I invariable end up buying another $20-$30 of food just because I'm in the mood), or I'm getting a quicker fix and dropping more money than I should on some pre-made gourmet-ish thing. Or sometimes I go nuts and drop $100 at Fairway and then eat that $100 worth of food in a shade under 48 hrs.

Or, perhaps even worse than that, I don't have any money to drop on anything. That's how I am today. My mind is racing, my stomach is pang-ing, and all I have to turn to is my oatmeal (and bananas).

Hot damn, it's a good YouTube day today!

2009-08-07T18:20:00.003-04:00

Why oh why did I not see this video of Ice-T destroying a Mac laptop the instant it was posted online?!?!

It's been a while since I've posted a good WTF video, right?

After researching the Ig Nobel Prize, I found this:

2009-08-07T15:10:00.004-04:00

the Wikipedia page for the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year

Being the nice guy that I am, I went and found some of the book covers for you.

Been a while since I've loved a music video

2009-08-07T13:48:00.002-04:00

But apparently there's a music video for my favorite track off Alva Noto's Unitxt (a truly awesome album! listen to it loud! and make sure you've got bass...):

I Need More Linkblogs

2009-08-04T13:59:00.003-04:00

As if I don't already read enough of the internet as it is, I want MORE.

Today I realized something... I no longer follow many linkblogs. (By 'linkblog' I mean a blog that pretty much just posts links.) Part of this is because I'm picky. I never really want just a straight link blog that's like LINK, LINK, LINK. I like ones that give about a sentence of context per link.

I used to read Metafilter several years ago (before they re-opened new user accounts), but it always had a bit too many posts per day for me. I would fall behind. And then they opened up new user accounts and all of a sudden the quality fell... so many mindless posts about a "cool" flash game... or a "cool" youtube video. NOT WHAT I WANTED, MeFi. Perhaps it was only a temporary slide, but I didn't stick around to find out, and haven't been able to go back.

I forget what other ones I used to read, but I stopped reading them all for one of two reasons:

There were too many posts per day.
The format changed from 'linkblog' to 'blog.'

Recently, though, I've discovered two nearly perfect linkblogs (for me, at least): Christian Neukirchen's Trivium and the O'Reilly Radar's Four short links. ("Four short links" is just an occasional feature on the O'Reilly Radar, but that's fine for me, since the rest of the Radar is pretty good too.) And to a lesser extent, I'm sort of getting into Grace Smith's roundups (also just an occasional feature), but this might just be because I have yet to find a truly good web design blog.

Now these are good, but not enough! I need more! So, if you're reading this, I suspect you share (or at least know of) my sensibilities. So if you know of any good linkblogs for me, please please please let me know!

(Oh, and I should mention that I am not looking for digg or reddit.)

Oh La Vache!

2009-08-03T02:31:00.004-04:00

I just noticed a short article on the NYT website about cows. Specifically, about how cows kill about 20 people a year in the U.S. That's about as interesting as that article gets. But it got me thinking about how amusing it is to view cows as dangerous. Sure, you've got the running of the bulls... and bull riding at the rodeo. But that's about it for real danger. Everything else is just sort of like accidental danger.

But my mind is sometimes pretty awesome with making tangent connections. For some reason, this brought to mind a story I read many years ago (possibly about 10 years ago). It was originally posted by a guy named Scott on the Ghost Discuss mailing list (ghost-discuss@aurora.cdb.com) but I found it linked to from somewhere else. It's a bit of a long read (for this blog) but I think it's pretty awesome, so I'm including it below. (And, inexplicably it still freaks me out a bit.)

Once again I am posting something that I've thought about posting ever since I first joined this list. I think you will all realize very quickly why I haven't posted it before this. To this day, even I'm not completely sure what is was that I saw. I know what it looked like, but I've found that it's better, for me at least, not to believe that it really was what it looked like.

This happened years ago. I really don't remember how old I was at the time, but I don't think I was more that about nine years old. That would put the time of this somewhere during the summer of 1984. My Grandparents ( My Mom's parents ) lived out in the country about fifteen minutes drive from home. I was spending the weekend with my Grandparents. The story that follows occoured on the Friday night of that weekend.

It was after dark. I was on the couch, turned around and sitting on my knees, looking out a large picture window. I was waiting on Grandpa to get home from work. Grandma and I were the only two people in the there at the time. As I waited, a dense for began to form. The fog began to grow thicker as time passed. Grandma was getting a bit worried. Grandpa was late getting home and she was afraid he'd have an accident due to low visability brought on by the fog.

Several more minutes passed. I was still kneeling on the couch, watching out the window for Grandpa. Then I saw what looked like two lights coming up the road toward the house. At first, I thought it the lights were from the headlights on Grandpa's car. Then I realized that the lights were not the right color. One light seemed to be a lemon yellow, while the other appeared pink. I watched, curious, as the lights moved closer. Then I yelled for Grandma to come to the window and look at them.

Grandma was busy preparing supper and didn't want to leave the kitchen. I took another look at the lights, which were still moving closer, and then went to the kitchen to try to convince Grandma to come and see them. At this point, the lights were still not much more than fuzzy colored blobs due to the thick fog.

I left the window and ran into the kitchen. I told Grandma that there was a pair of lights approaching the house. She said something along the lines of, "Good. He's finally home." I told her that the lights didn't look like they were from a car. I told her about the odd coloration. Finally, Grandma agreed to go take a look for herself.

Running, I got to the window before Grandma did. I resumed my former kneeling possition on the couch before really looking out the window. The light were still there, closer than before. They were just starting to take on a more deffinate shape, like something was imergeing from the fog.

Grandma leaned forward for a closer look at the solidifying shapes. I turned to her, asking what the lights were. She didn't know and was begining to act a bit scared by the sight. I turned back to the window.

The strange lights were almost to the house by that point. (**Thinking back now, I realize just how bright they must have been to have been visable at the first.** ) Then the lights finally took on a more tangable shape. (**This is the part that REALLY makes me doubt what we THOUGHT we saw**) What we saw looked to be two cows, both bulls, dancing along the road on their hind legs. (**No, this is NOT a joke.**) One was glowing yellow, the other was glowing pink. Each of the "bulls" had a front leg, "arm" draped over the shoulder of the other. They were heading toward the driveway.

At this point, Grandma fainted. I only remember giving her a quick look as she collapsed beside me on the couch, then I resumed staring in disbelief and shock at the sight outside.

The "bulls" danced along until they got to the driveway, turned as if to make their way up it to the house. Then both just faded away.

After some time (**I'm not sure how long exactally, but I don't think it was more than a minute or so**) I turned away from the window to Grandma. She was still unconcious. I had no idea how to revive her. I remember shaking her, as if trying to wake a sleeping person, and talking to her. I do not recall what I said. After a few moments, she began to stir. As Grandma woke up, she turned quickly back to the window. I told her that whatever we had seen was gone. I asked her what HAD we seen.

Grandma sat me down on the couch and told me that I was NOT to breath a word of what had happened to Grandpa when he got home. I asked why. Grandma wouldn't give me an answer. She just kept telling me to keep quiet about it.

A few minutes later, we heard a car door slam outside. Grandpa was home. Again, Grandma warned me not to say a word to Grandpa about what had happened.

Naturally, the moment Grandpa entered the house, I ran straight to him and told him everything that had happened.

Grandpa spared only a second to ask Grandma if she were okay. The moment she said "Yes" Grandpa retieved his shotgun and went outside. Grandma began to scold me, very loudly, for disobeying her orders.

Several minutes later, Grandpa came back in. He had found nothing.

To this day, neither of them will discuss what happened that evening.

If that had been the end of the matter, I would have convinced myself years and years ago that both Grandma and I had simply been hallucinating. In fact, not too long after the incident, I had convinced myself of that.

Several years after seeing the "bulls" at my Grandparents' house, a friend of mine who I grew up with came to me one day with a story. I'll call this girl "A". (**Both she and I were about twelve when she told me this**)

When I lived in Ohio this girl's Grandparents lived directly behind us. "A" lived mostly with her Grandparents during the summer months. Only a one lane alley seperated our two yards. Across this girl's Grandparents' yard was the railroad bed I've posted about a few times in the past. On the other side of the railroad bed was a small farm. (**We lived at the very edge of town**)

"A" came to me one day saying that she had seen something very strange the previous night. I asked her what she'd seen. "A" made a long speach about how I'd think she was crazy if she told me. I pointed out that she'd already brought up the subject, obviously, she wanted to tell me. "A" agreed.

She said that late the night before she had been unable to sleep and had been looking out of her bedroom window. It began to get foggy. In the fog, "A" claimed to have seen two glowing lights moving across the pasture back at the farm. One light was yellow, the other pink.

(**Please keep in mind that I had NOT told anyone about what Grandma and I had seen at this point.**)

"A" said that, as the lights got closer to the railroad bed, they began to take on solid shapes. At that point, I was starting to get cold chills. "A" said that she must have been seeing things and that she wouldn't waste time telling me the rest of her story. I insisted that she did. After a few minutes "A" said, almost in tears, that the lights took on the shapes of cows. Bulls. Each bull had a front leg draped over the shoulders of the other. Both appeared to be dancing along on their hind legs. They were moving toward the railraod bed. Toward "A" 's Grandparents' house.

"A" said that at that point she had turned away from her window and hid under the blankets until morning.

After "A" told me her story, I told her mine own, very similar one. As far as I know, "A" never saw the "bulls" again after that night. I've never seem them again, myself.

If not for "A" 's story, I would long since come to believe that what Grandma and I had seen was a hallucination brought on by the dense fog and car headlights or something like that. "A" 's story makes me think again. I don't know WHAT we saw, but I do know that we saw SOMETHING.

Anyone have any ideas?

Why I Am Still Awake Right Now

2009-08-02T05:43:00.003-04:00

I can not stop listening to several things:

#1:

Françoise Hardy - On dit de lui

# 2 & 3:

The chilling songs Fearns Foundry - Now I Taste The Tears and The Poppy Family - Shadows On My Wall, both available for download at The Devil's Music.

#4:

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - I've Been Down So Long (It Looks Like Up To Me)

Despite what #2, 3, and 4 might seem to imply, I'm in a good mood. I swear. (Mostly because of finding #1.) BUT I'll be in a better mood if some kind soul passes me an mp3 of that Françoise Hardy song...

The Annual Breakdown

2009-07-29T04:16:00.003-04:00

I'm weak. I tried so hard to wait to install my AC, perhaps to even go without it all summer. It was pretty warm today, but I didn't mind. Hell, I wasn't even sweating. But then my roommate (who already has her AC in) was cooking something in the oven so the kitchen was insanely hot, and she kept going in and out of her room commenting on how hot it was outside of her room every single time.

So I broke down and put my AC in.

AND I'M SOOOOOOO GLAD I DID! Not employed so far this summer, I had forgotten just how awesome air conditioning can be. Tonight, I will sleep awesomely, under my comforter.

Thank you, thermodynamics. I'm sorry for failing all my courses about you, a few times each.

It's always nice when music still holds up after 30 years.

2009-07-28T19:53:00.001-04:00

Yeah, this is another post directly from PCL Linkdump. So?

Isn't it ironic?

2009-07-25T15:23:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's so old and so lame, but I still love extreme ironing.

Also, I really wanted to show off this horrible misuse of "ironic" that just popped into my head.

workinonit

2009-07-23T20:37:00.002-04:00

If you happen to check here and notice some changes going on during the next week or so, well, don't worry. I'm changing things around, trying things out. Hopefully you don't check too often, or else the final product won't be nearly as exciting and surprising.

And yes, I do hope it will be exciting and surprising.

RSS and the future

2009-07-21T21:22:00.004-04:00

Lately, I've read multiple articles about how RSS isn't cutting it anymore. Some, like "Fever and the Future of Feed Readers" by Alex Payne, are what I would consider rational commentary. Others (which I refuse to link to) rabidly claim that Twitter bloodily murdered RSS (and Google!) in cold blood and that the world is a better place because of it.

Though, either way - rational or insane - I completely disagree.

RSS has not failed. Aggregators have not failed. We do not need a replacement for RSS. It's the readers who have failed.

I have yet to see any compelling arguments against RSS. Some frequent complaints and my dismissals/solutions follow:

too many feeds -- Unsubscribe from some! Or, better yet, don't subscribe to so many in the first place!
too much overlap across feeds -- Again, unsubscribe! Only keep the good, unique ones! If you notice that a lot of the overlap is just reblogged from one place, then unsubscribe from the rebloggers and subscribe to the source. (Or if you refuse to unsubscribe, then filter with something like Yahoo's Pipes.)
too many posts in each feed -- (you guessed it) UNSUBSCRIBE! Seek alternatives with less posts per day. Most high volume sites are not so unique that there aren't at least 30 alternatives.
not real-time enough -- Know this: it's not supposed to be! Do you seriously need it to be real-time anyway? Will the world (or your job, or your relationship, or... anything) end because you see a picture of a cute kitten as late as an hour or two after it was posted on the internet?
don't like Google Reader -- Well, you're on your own there. I've tried a lot and believe that Google Reader is the best, so it's kind of all I know. I've heard good things about Helvetireader (a "skin" for Google Reader), Fever (a web-based reader that you install on your own server that costs $30), Times (a slick non-web-based reader for OSX that costs $30), and NetNewsWire and FeedDemon (free, non-web-based readers for OSX and Windows, respectively). BUT I still think Google Reader is better than all of those. Depending on exactly what you don't like about Google Reader, this might be the only valid complaint. But this is a complaint about Google Reader, not RSS.

A lot of people (including Google) think that the future of RSS and the like lays in it becoming more "social." Maybe it does, but it should only be social by choice. Those who want to be anti-social should be allowed to be so. I personally read no RSS feeds which are chosen by popular vote (like Digg or Reddit). I would kill myself if I had to. I am not trying to be condescending (but merely truthful) when I state that my tastes typically do not match those of the general public. This isn't to say that they never match, but I'd rather a site like Buzzfeed or the random personal blogs I read to filter those popular vote sites for me.

Finally, I just want to make this absolutely clear: Twitter will not replace RSS feeds. Also, Twitter searching will not replace Google searching. I'm not slagging Twitter when I make these statements. They can (and will) all coexist peacefully, because they all do different things. (This goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways just in case you've never tried typing more than 140 characters at a time on Twitter. Or just in case you've never tried finding something more than 3 weeks old on Twitter.)

I've Now Got A Supplemental Blog With A Silly Name

2009-07-19T19:08:00.005-04:00

I wanted to wait a week or two before I posted about it, to make sure I stuck with it, since I have a bad habit of starting blogs and then giving up on them after 1 week or 5 posts, whichever comes first. But posting to this one has already become second nature (thank you, bookmarklets!), and serves a drastically needed function, so I think we're good.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my newest sillily named blog: exphostor

Exphostor, like noexteho before it, stands for something. In this case, it's less cryptic: external photo storage. And this is its function. Instead of downloading images, I can just post them to this tumblr blog. Over the years, I've adopted the policy of downloading any and every image that catches my eye. Nice, because I then have loads of awesome pics on my hard drive. Not so nice because then I need to organize loads of awesome pics, and because it takes up space, and because I rarely go back to them after I've downloaded them. So what if I could just quickly/easily put them online somewhere, like I do with my bookmarks (Delicious)?

After trying out a lot of different places, I finally settled on Tumblr for two reasons. First, when you post a pic via link to tumblr, they make a local copy of it, so it won't disappear when a link becomes broken. Second, as touched on before, they've got a sweet bookmarklet that lets me post exactly how I want. Third, I saw no explicit limit to how much stuff they'll host. (And, as an added bonus, they can handle animated GIFs, a guilty pleasure of mine.)

I want to point out that exphostor is not a blog, per se. Nor does it replace any aspect of this blog. There may be overlap, if I deem something I've posted there worthy of being posted here. It is just a raw feed for my personal use, which you can follow if you really want. I am not posting stuff there specifically for others to see. I am not commenting on the images, except to note the photographer, model, source, and how I heard of it, when applicable and possible. As such, I'm trying only to post things for which I have some sort of relevant information. (Tumblr is already too full of posts with gigantic reblog trees (uggg!) that never actually explain what something is or who's responsible.)

While not a blog, it is still personal. Like my Delicious stream, this is a mostly-unfiltered glance at my interests and my browsing habits. The content may vary wildly. It's not for everyone, and some may find some of the things I post offensive. I will state right now that there will be lots of pictures of "hot women" and occasional nudity. This is something that catches my eye. But, being that I only post what I would consider downloading, I try to make certain that I do not let my primal urges get the better of me. Most, if not all, of the images of "hot women" I post will be honestly good photos, or at least honestly interesting photos. I hope you, too, can appreciate the virtuous aspects of these "hot women" photos and see me for more than just a lecherous creep.

Now, in case you missed the link above, it's exphostor.tumblr.com.

2009-07-16T19:09:00.003-04:00

Just the other day, I noted that I had Easter and Christmas hymns stuck in my head for no reason at all. So it seems appropriate that I share this slice of awesomeness. (If you have a way to TURN UP YOUR BASS, do it now.)

Who want's the rewind?

A Request To My Reader(s) In Germany

2009-07-16T12:27:00.003-04:00

Keep your eyes peeled for vinyl by these guys:

Fuck it: Language Evolution

2009-07-15T13:36:00.006-04:00

I was originally writing a very long, in-depth post about how language evolves and specific words tend to become de-contextualized over time. But bah. Whatever. Someone who uses/overuses awesome so liberally has no right to complain.

So instead, I'll just briefly (yes, this is brief compared to what I had going before) mention that sexy (when applied to software, cars, mp3 players, etc) really bothers me. I think it's because it's original connotation is so readily apparent. It seems as though the awe in awesome can get somewhat lost. And brilliant hasn't been used to describe light in what now, a few hundred years*? (Not to mention the fact that its French base is obscured by the fact that... it's French.) But the sex in sexy is right there, taking up 3/4 of the entire word. It's unavoidable and hard to overlook. And I've never found a car or mp3 player to be sexually attractive or arousing. Software, on the other hand, could be arousing (see Strip Poker video games), but these are not the pieces of software to which sexy is commonly applied. Grrrrrr.

While I'm complaining like an old man, let me also say that I. HATE. THE. USE. OF. FULL-STOPS. AS. DELIMITERS. FOR. DRAMATIC. EFFECT. Seriously, what's wrong with ellipses?

* I kid. But still...

Wine + Icy Tower = a diversion I didn't need

2009-07-12T16:44:00.005-04:00

A while ago, I managed to get a free copy of CrossOver (legally). CrossOver lets one run (some) Windows programs on a Mac, without the need to install Windows. Sweet. But for some reason (I think I installed some incompatible version of X11) CrossOver stopped working for me. Not that big a deal, since I really barely used it. And I couldn't get most of the games I wanted to run to work with it anyhow.

For reasons I'm not going to get into right now, I decided to install Wine, the free (and open source) program on which CrossOver is based. I've been quickly trying out various Windows software on it, with some pleasant successes (SciTE, Notepad++, EnviroBear2000, Knytt) and some disappointing, if unsurprising, failures (Spelunky, You Found the Grappling Hook!, La-Mulana). That's the thing about Wine: in my experience, you've got to expect failures, especially from more complex programs... But still, it's free and it works sometimes, so it's cool. And maybe with a little effort, I could get some of the failures working.

My happiest success (so far) was Icy Tower. This is a game I've known of for years, and my love has never wavered... but it's never been ported to OS X, so sometimes I forget it exists. One could describe it as a platform game that distills the genre to its bare essentials: the platforms. A simple concept, but done so elegantly, and with just the right amount of flourishes, as to make this one of my favorite games ever. And they've released a new version since the last time I played it. The new version awesomely added loads of GTA-style achievements/stats. (The graphics might even be better too?) And it works in Wine, so I can easily play it again!

(Yes, my rank is only D. I never said I was good at the game.)

In case you're curious about using Wine on your Mac, I'll give you what advice I can:

(NOTE: Darwine and WineHelper, as described below, are no longer actively developed. Instead, there is just Wine. Still, Mike Kronenberg has released WineBottler, which includes a build of Wine (or maybe Darwine. I'm not sure, and it's not important) inside it, and does most of the same stuff I explain below, and some of it even better than his Darwine build. Soooooo, you might want to check that out instead. I haven't played around with it as much, so I'm not writing about it here. Yet.)

Although the best way to install it would be with a binary from the official site, I couldn't find one there. Instead, there are links to various pages about installing it from source code yourself, but this is rather complicated. So the easiest way it to use binaries that someone else has already compiled, like Mike Kronenberg's build of Darwine that I used. Go ahead, try it out... it's easy. Once it's installed, you just need to open Windows .exe files with WineHelper, and you're good to go.

Mind you, there's a chance you'll need to install X11. Easy enough, since it can be found on your OS X installation disc. (A worthwhile install, in my mind, as it'll also allow you to run the OS X version of The Gimp, a free image editor that is the closest free thing to Photoshop that exists.) There's also a chance that after you install X11, you might need to install XQuartz, a different version of X11, but that's easy enough, too.

Once you've got it running, you can, as I mentioned, open .exe files with WineHelper. Single executable programs (like Knytt) will just run, if they can. Installers (like Icy Tower's) will run, and you can just let them install to their default location. Feel free to let the installers add a link on the desktop, since it's one of the easiest ways to launch applications. You can always move the link into a different location afterwards.

Programs that don't have an installer can either be placed wherever you want, or, keeping it Windows-like, can be placed in the Program Files folder where the installers put stuff. With this build of Darwine, the default folder for this is ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ or, more explicitly, /Users/[INSERT-YOUR-USERNAME-HERE]/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ so you could create a directory and toss it in there, like I did for Knytt.exe. You're going to want to use either Terminal (type "cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/" and then to get a Finder window, type "open .") or Finder (use Go -> Go To Folder... and then type in the directory name) to get to that folder.

That's about it. Confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple.

Obama - Weathers

2009-07-06T11:56:00.002-04:00

Apt?

2009-07-03T03:42:00.002-04:00

No real grammar. No real reason. But whatever, this stuff's on my mind today:

1. Drumcorps (the artist) with a superb mix of jungle and hardcore or something like that

2. Venetian Snares doing a dubstep remix of Black Sabbath -- Come on, Chris. If nothing else warms you up to Mr. Snares, this should.

3. Pro tip: Season 4 of Doctor Who is awesome when drunk. Just so long as it's a good drunk. If I were totally lonely and/or heartbroken right now, I'd probably be crying every time he has to make a hard decision.

4. Fourth of July rooftop mini-golf. FUCK YES.

5. I can't believe I'm excited for an HTML specification. HTML/XHTML 5 FTW!

6. SERIOUSLY. Cake-in-a-mug will be the end of me.

7. EXTREME RICE!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!

and

8. (Swoooooon!)

A Meditation On Hair

2009-07-02T20:00:00.004-04:00

(via David Barker)

(via Allyson Kalie)

(via Luciano Noble)

(via Richard Billick)

(via The Ingoing)

Oops, I did it again:

My poor nose

2009-07-02T19:01:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, my room was full of the smell of gasoline (so much so that I couldn't sleep!). Today, it is full of the smell of deep fryer (so much so that I feel sick!). And even though the gasoline fumes gave me a headache and could have killed me, I prefer them.

Well, Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (formerly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen*) have a message for you, deep fryer smell:

(from The Boston Globe's The Big Picture)

(Damnit. This was kind of a rant, wasn't it? Well, I guess I lied, then, in my previous post.)

* Don't get me wrong - she's still incredibly beautiful.

I love Ruby but...

2009-07-01T11:43:00.004-04:00

...but I can't stand all the terminology. I've bitched about it before, yes, but I will bitch about it again.

[NOTE: This is a niche rant. My next post will not be a rant. I promise.]

Granted, some of the terminology that trips me up when reading about Ruby is due to the fact that I barely took any computer science classes in college. Also, some phrases, like "continuous integration server" are possibly industry-wide buzzwords, and not necessarily Ruby specific*. This is not really what I'm complaining about today.

What I'm complaining about today is the tendency for a lot of Ruby things to A) have stupid names and B) be based upon other Ruby things with stupid names and in turn be named with even stupider names. First and foremost we have RubyGems (commonly just referred to as gems). RubyGems is a package manager for Ruby that can distribute and manage libraries and programs. OK, fine. Package managers typically have dumb names (see Yum et al), but at least they all call the things they distribute packages. RubyGems (and the Ruby community on a whole) calls them gems. Gah.

Now, allow me to list what some of these gems are named: bishop, hpricot, cucumber, rails, paperclip, webrat, sass, capistrano, sinatra, moonshine, hanna, scruffy, nokogiri, prawn... And the list goes on. Now, I get not wanting to name your gem johns-html-parser or jacks-deployment-utility, but must everything be so whimsical? Must everything be some obscure reference or in-joke? Must everything sound so... Web 2.0?

Alas, it seems as though Ruby's close association with the whole Web 2.0 thing is probably (mostly) to blame. This worries me. I hope that this association does not drag Ruby down once the Web 2.0 trend fades. Ruby is a wonderfully fun language. It brings me back to my childhood when I would hand-enter BASIC programs from magazine articles (remember kids, this was before the world wide web had anything on it), and then subsequently mess around with that code. It brings me back to the days of modifying GORILLA.BAS with a friend to speed it up and make the explosions fill half the screen. It makes me feel like a wide-eyed kid again.

That, too, I suppose, is to blame for the whimsical names.

Finally, I will admit that the computer world has always had a high quantity of confusing and/or stupid names. I personally have typed ls and grep and sudo often enough that I occasionally forget these terms are not common terms that my roommates know. Fortunately, I have not actually completely replaced words in my vocabulary with such computer terms -- like "grep" for "search" -- as some programmers have. Then again, I firmly believe that google can be a verb. In fact, I believe that verb can be a verb. According to the Joe English Dictionary, to verb means making a non-verb into a verb (a process I love).

Perhaps I am simply yelling "Get off my lawn!" while standing upon someone else's lawn?

* Perhaps this silly naming trend is not Ruby specific at all. Do let me know. I guess I mostly read about Ruby, so I wouldn't know. But, thinking back to times when I did read in depth about other languages, I don't recall being so annoyed with the library names.

Imagine my disappointment...

2009-06-23T14:37:00.005-04:00

Imagine my disappointment to discover that the song Pop Goes The World off the new Gossip album is not a cover of the Men Without Hats song of the same name.

Continuing my mathematical illustrations...

Believe it or not.

Fortunately, I have fresh(-ish) Italian bread, extra-virgin olive oil, and some decent Balsamic vinegar to put me in a better mood.

And donuts.

(Speaking of the new Gossip album, I don't know how into it I am. I can still go back and listen to Standing In The Way Of Control anytime and enjoy it nearly as much as the first time I heard it. But... I don't know... Maybe it's the way that Gossip, and particularly Beth Ditto, blew up since then... I'm either having trouble objectively evaluating this new album, or it's just not as good as their previous. Any Gossip fans have an opinion on this?)

Math makes everything better

2009-06-22T02:37:00.003-04:00

First, check out my new favorite video, Fever Ray's "Triangle Walks":

Now, check out my hypothesis... The video is like a cross between The Cure's "Lullaby"*, The Cure's "Close To You" and Fischerspooner's "Emerge" (and maybe Fischerspooner's Sweetness, too), all of which are some of my favorite music videos**.

Hell, the song might even be a cross of all those, too.

Oh, and because math makes everything better...

* This song was partially ruined for me after reading this one-page comic. Now, the "spider" and the "eating"... remind me of horrible things, sometimes. (Warning: NSFW, and it might partially ruin the song for you, too.)

** Then again, I think I have about 349 favorite music videos.

Sometimes, the best parts of Wikipedia are the discussions

2009-06-21T17:41:00.002-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the talk page for The Human Anus.

Of particular interest: the contention over the article's images.

(There are no pics on that page. Don't worry. But it does say "anus" more times than most pages on the internet, so use your discretion regarding it's SFW/NSFW classification.)

Today, we celebrate!

2009-06-16T20:36:00.004-04:00

Instead of writing about my new half-guilty pleasure ("half" because I have a hard time objectively evaluating shows with so much sex in them, and I think this one might actually be really good, even ignoring all the sex) TV show (Californication, starring David Duchovny [swoon!] and Natascha McElhone [triple swoon!]), I'd like to talk about something serious (and with less parenthetical expressions).

I never thought I'd learn something I didn't already know about Star Trek from Buzzfeed, but apparently I was not aware of Captain Picard Day. That day is observed today, on June 16th, because I guess that's what Stardate 47457.1 translates to. To see what it's about, let's let Riker, Troi, and the good Captain himself discuss it:

(You can see some other celebratory clips - like The Picard Song - over on Buzzfeed's page about this day.)

Because I would feel really bad if this post were solely reposted Buzzfeed material, I found some decent Star Trek videos that neither I nor Lin Swimmer have yet posted.

So, here's a video glorifying Data's action-adventure capabilities...

And here I've saved the best for last. I dedicate this next video to EVERY SINGLE RYAN THAT I KNOW:

A Mathematical Fact

2009-06-14T03:16:00.003-04:00

The summerness in Washington Heights is directly proportional to the amount of bottle rockets (and other fireworks/firecrackers) being ignited at any given moment.

It's a fact.

A Not-So-Objective Evaluation Of Roisin Murphy's Fashion

2009-06-13T02:31:00.007-04:00

Roisin Murphy is awesome. I'm basing this solely on the following facts:

She's hot.
She's the singer for Moloko.
Her first solo album was produced by Matthew Herbert.
She wears some fantastic outfits in her music videos.

This post is mostly about that last point...

Moloko - Familiar Feeling (Youtube)

Moloko - Forever More (Youtube)

Moloko - Indigo (Youtube)

Roisin Murphy - Let Me Know (Youtube)

Roisin Murphy - Overpowered (Youtube)

I don't know who designs the clothes. I don't know if she actually rocks such clothes outside of the music video sets. I know absolutely nothing about her personally.

But it doesn't really matter.

(And in case I haven't mentioned it before, all of those (except Let Me Know) are some of my favorite music videos.)

I profess my love once again.

2009-06-08T20:18:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, I fucking love Apple. Today is one of those days. I read all about their WWDC keynote, and while they didn't talk about anything that totally blew my mind, it still made me feel good inside.

[WARNING: Possible pro-Apple propaganda ahead. Read at your own risk. And buy a Mac.]

Ignoring all the iPhone talk (owning one is still just a pipe dream for me right now), the upgrade of the MacBook line is nice. I've currently got a 1st generation MacBook (not Pro) that's running OS X 10.5, and it suits me wonderfully. I put more RAM in it once, and I'm thinking about getting a bigger hard drive, but other than that, I've got no issues AT ALL with this 3 year old laptop. (And it's been dropped a few times and I've definitely been known to sweat on it during the humid NYC summer. Neither causing issues.) But here Apple goes and updates the line again for the 3rd or 4th or 5th time since I got mine. The ones introduced today put mine to shame. Sure, I want a new shiny one, but I don't need one. And while this fact might piss some people off, it makes me really really happy. See, if I love my computer now, just think how ecstatic I'll be when I do finally upgrade to a new one?!

Also, in a similar vein, Apple's next version of OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard) is wonderfully practical. Instead of cramming in a ton of new features, they decided to iron out all the kinks in the current version and make it way faster and better and more stable. This suits me just fine, since I do not have any major issues with OS X. (And from reading the press copy today, it seems like most/all of my minor issues have been taken care of.) But they didn't stop there. I'm only part way down the Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page, and already I've seen enough new little bits of awesome thrown in to drive me to write this post. Like the new MacBooks, I don't need to upgrade at all, since 10.5 works just great for me. But unlike the MacBooks, Apple has priced the upgrade from 10.5 to 10.6 at just $29.00! The last piece of software I bought was a recipe program (MacGourmet, because there just aren't any good free recipe programs for OS X) and it cost more than that when I bought it, I think. Of course I'll buy the 10.6 upgrade, Apple!

Finally, I'm really sorry to have written such a fan-boy post, but I just absolutely love when the world works how I want it to work. And Apple, for the most part, does just that.

Facehunter is on fire lately

2009-06-07T13:33:00.003-04:00

(a.k.a. "Yes, Joe follows fashion to a certain extent, no matter what his appearance implies.")

Quick notice: If you're into fashion (or nice impromptu photos of people), Face Hunter* is a pretty good site. It's always been decent, with a couple real standout outfits/photos/people every week or two, but the past week has had several in every single post. The above thumbnail is made from a few standouts of the standouts.

* Much better than The Sartorialist... I'm saving that rant for another post.

Flash development, here I come!

2009-06-07T01:14:00.006-04:00

I hate Flash. I avoid it as much as possible. I don't mind good uses of it (YouTube, Hulu, some embedded music players, some embedded photo galleries), but by my highly-scientific estimate, there are at least 10,000 examples of bad Flash for every 1 example of good Flash on the internet.

Due in part to this, and in part to never really needing to make anything in Flash, and due in part to not necessarily wanting to learn yet another programming language, and in part to never wanting to have a copy of Adobe Flash/Flex/"whatever they'll change the name to next", I've never bothered to learn it. I've been blissfully ignorant. Even with most decent flash games, the fact that it's in Flash pissed me off.

But then I played Fathom.

Besides being a wonderful conceptual game (perhaps my favorite of the "arty" games), the game engine is excellent. I noticed this first because it didn't suck (unlike most Flash game engines) and then because of just how well it worked. It felt like I was playing a SNES, if a SNES were even awesomer than it already is.

And now the creator of Fathom (Adam Atomic) has released the game engine into the public, all free and open source like. It's called Flixel.

This is why I'm now taking the plunge into Flash programming (specifically Actionscript 3). Mr. Atomic even details how to get your Flash stuff compiling for free, from the command line! Yes! Just what I needed to push me over the edge.

So after spending all day learning some Actionscript, thoroughly dissecting Flixel, and goofing around with the included sample game, the picture below is a screenshot of what I've come up with. Not a game, but merely a stripped-down version of the included game where I've modified various parts of the mechanics (and the engine itself) and level generation and stuff. (I even switched in the Brinstar music from Metroid.)

Nothing pretty, for sure, but oh man...... I envision awesome things coming from it. I don't want you to get your hopes up, but don't be too surprised when I end up making your new favorite Flash game sometime soon.

Music phrases

2009-06-02T14:44:00.003-04:00

(a post without pictures)

Maybe you know me. Maybe I've mentioned how I don't usually listen to the words in songs. If I did, I'm sorry because this is not entirely true. I listen to the words, and sometimes I even pay attention to their meaning. But usually, I only listen to their sound and rhythm, ignoring any and all meaning.

Recently, Pitchfork* turned me onto Charles Spearin's The Happiness Project (you can listen to it if you follow that link), which just so happens to be an album of music made from the inherent musicality of speech. Considering the fact that it was from a Broken Social Scene member, I had my doubts**, but this turned out to be a surprisingly wonderful album. I think the Pitchfork review tosses around the word "conceptual" a few times (and compared to a BSS album, I suppose it would be "conceptual") but I would definitely put this more in the "musical" department over the "conceptual" one.

Anyway, got me thinking about what other music uses the musicality of speech. Two things popped into my head immediately: Paul Lansky*** and Boards of Canada. This is a great pairing, too, because Paul Lansky's work falls more in the conceptual (actually: academic) realm than Charles Spearin, while Boards Of Canada fall more in the musical (actually: pop?) realm.

First, let's check out Boards Of Canada, since you've probably already heard them. Not all of their songs deal with the music of speech, but a few do. Perhaps my favorite is Telephasic Workshop. (That link leads to a crappy Youtube video, but at least you can listen to the song.) This song extracts and manipulates the rhythmic nature of speech, working it somewhat subtly into the mix. And I love it to death.

On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Mr. Lansky. Here's a link to some samples of his work. If you haven't already done so, go there now and check out Now And Then. Unlike Telephasic Workshop, which fit the speech to the music, Now And Then fits the music to the speech. Or, for exquisite examples of songs that fit the speech to the music (or perhaps where the speech creates the music), check out Idle Chatter, Notjustmoreidlechatter, and Idle Chatter Junior. (By the way, if you like Paul Lansky's stuff, chances are high that you'll like Nico Muhly's Mothertongue.)

Now there are a few others who I think have dealt with speech and music in similar ways, but I don't know of very many, so if you've got any ideas, do please let me know!

* Yes, I still glance at their reviews from time to time. Old habits die hard

** Don't get me wrong... 7/4 (Shoreline) and some other songs off the self-titled album are TOTALLY guilty/not-guilty pleasures of mine.

*** I want to point out that Mr. Lansky made what might very well be my favorite song ever, Table's Clear, of which you can find samples on his webpage.

Here's to you, John

2009-05-29T21:39:00.004-04:00

Only passingly familiar with his work, I found myself for some reason (Zach Galifinakis -> Fiona Apple -> P.T. Anderson -> Boogie Nights) reading the Wikipedia page for John Holmes. It's an interesting story (obviously, since Boogie Nights was loosely based on him), but I only want to highlight one sentence:

Using his status as an informer [for the LAPD], Holmes systematically had his competition in the porn industry arrested, leaving him as one of the few free porn stars in Los Angeles.

I love it. What a brilliant business strategy!

Also, can anyone verify whether this aspect of his life was in Boogie Nights, and I've just forgotten it?)

Anyway, here's to you, John, not necessarily for your porno work, but for this amazing business strategy!

My destiny is clear

2009-05-27T14:19:00.006-04:00

(Photo shamelessly nabbed from The Big Picture. Click it. I dare you!)

I know now what I must do: chase a cheese wheel down a wicked steep hill.

It's my calling, I'm sure. I accept that I will probably break some bones (as many do). It is worth the risk, and the breaks, for the prize is the Double Gloucester round itself.

For more info, check out some sweet photos at The Big Picture, and some sweet video at BuzzFeed.

(Also, this post introduces a new tag into my cache called internet-popular without my help. This tag will now allow me to post stuff that has surely been around the block a few times already, without the need to apologize for posting such despicably trendy stuff. Rejoice!)

I think I love movie trailers more than I love movies

2009-05-25T12:54:00.002-04:00

This trailer for Hausu (a.k.a. House (not that House, mind you)) is wonderfully paced, so please watch it all the way through.

Why, photo galleries, why?

2009-05-21T00:44:00.002-04:00

Perhaps I've only seen a strange subset of online photo galleries, but it seems like almost every photo gallery I've seen will say there are (for instance) 19 photos. When I get to the 18th, the photo and its caption imply or indicate that it's the last photo. Then I click the 'next' button to go to the 19th picture, and it's just a page saying "Click here to view the gallery again." Why? Why do this? And more importantly, why do they all seem to do this? Do I really need the online photo gallery equivalent of a "The End" card?

I suppose this is a follow-up rant to this post by Lin Swimmer (and my follow-up to that).

I promise my next post will be non-rant-like. (I'm in a good mood, really. I fixed my DVD drive! My hard drive no longer claims to have zero bytes free!) I also promise my next post will feature videos and/or photos, for what it's worth. Also, it might be about Babylon 5. (Thanks, Mike Noble and Dan Feder!)

CSI, I don't entirely hate you anymore.

2009-05-13T02:53:00.002-04:00

(Just a quick note today.) Finally, some good has come of all those crime scene procedural shows that seem to flood network's lineups: kids are getting into science! For the whole story, see the NYT article that just ran about the growing popularity of forensics classes in high schools, but if you're squeamish you might want to avoid looking at the decomposing squirrel.

I've been doing it wrong

2009-05-09T21:49:00.003-04:00

All these times that I've needed to pre-game, so I just mix a bit of all the almost-empty bottles on top of our fridge together, I've been mistaken. For an easy (even in this recession) $2.50, my favorite of the millions of bodegas within a 2 block radius of me has 40oz High Lifes. This is a much much better option, even if I do have to deal with the wino who holds the door open for me, the aggressive corner guy (who assumes I'm a rich white kid who doesn't live around here) who starts calling me racial slurs while mockingly pretending to be my friend, and the rich white hipster kid (with the unfairly hot girlfriend!) who does not (in fact) live around here who tries to be my friend so the previously mentioned fellows don't bother him.

Fuck it. I'm drinking the Champagne of Beers. I'm going to see Star Trek. I'm using italics.

Yeah, fuck it.

Oatmeal cookies are the best ever.

2009-05-07T12:34:00.004-04:00

It's a fact.

Which is why I am saddened to report that Wikipedia does not have a separate page about oatmeal cookies. Nor does it have a "history" sub-section in the "oatmeal cookie" section of the general "cookie" page. In fact, it doesn't even have an "oatmeal cookie" section on the general "cookie" page!

(I suppose this means I will have to invent my own history.)

Being the scholar and baked goods aficionado that I am, I've been tasked with learning the history of the oatmeal cookie. What adventures lie ahead? Where will this road take me? Who would task you with such a... task? Without revealing too much, for this history is shrouded in mystery, I will say this much: preliminary investigations indicate that it was an accident, akin to LSD. Shhhh! I may have said too much already. Hopefully I'll be able to put in another installment of this series later.

And by the way, Vern, I ate one of your cookies.

Cinco De Mayo Census

2009-05-05T02:59:00.001-04:00

BTW, if any of my 4 readers has a problem with the amount of posts I've been averaging for the last week, let me know. Right now.

Otherwise, onward I go...

In today's episode of I Don't Care How Old Or Popular It Is...

2009-05-05T02:38:00.004-04:00

It's video time!

It seems only appropriate that I feel extreme love and hate while watching this video. I'll try to make this the only appearance of Ms. Hilton here ever, but I can't promise anything.

Sure, we've all seen Jizz In My Pants (I swear, this is almost a song I'd really listen to) and I'm On A Boat, and they're pretty good... but "vintage" Lonely Island is pretty good too, like this and Stork Patrol.

This one would totally break my heart if it weren't for the voice-overs.

Ah hell, since I've broken into the "animal video" realm, I might as well end with an animal video which NEVER ceases to amuse me. I'll be watching this one until I die, I swear.

EVERYONE NOT INTO POPULAR YOUTUBE VIDEOS: Fear not. The next post won't be as bad. And you really should watch the Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog one.

Pretty much everyone reads more books than I do

2009-05-03T18:30:00.004-04:00

And that's why I need your help. I'm curious about well-designed books. Basically, I'm interested in any aspect except the covers and the spine. Perhaps you know of a book that isn't all that well-designed except it has a wonderful table of contents? I'd like to know. Maybe a book you read has a particularly nice page numbering? I want to know. Or maybe you absolutely love everything about how certain book looks? You must tell me!

I don't care if you work in publishing or if you read even less books than me. I don't care if you own The Elements Of Typographic Style or if you've never even thought about design. I'll take your input, whoever you are. What looks good? (But Comrade Liu and Comrade Swimmer, I'm especially hoping for responses from you, be it here or in person.)

Finally, if you can get me a link to a picture of what it is you like, that would be super cool.

I guess I'll start it off.

Lessig

This whole thing started because I just downloaded Lawrence Lessig's Remix (available for free thanks to Creative Commons licensing) and I think I like the page layouts for the normal text, specifically the amount of text per page and the typography. I also think I like the typography of the TOC. But that's just it... I think I like it. I haven't seen it on a paper page yet, nor have I attempted reading it seriously, so I'm not certain of the extent to which I like it.

Tufte

Some book design that I am certain I like would have to be Edward Tufte's books on visual communication. Tufte, for those of you unfamiliar, has a very practical style. It is often mistaken for minimalism, due to his deft omissions of unnecessary visual data, even though he advocates maximizing the data-per-visual-area ratio. And I absolutely love his footnotes-in-the-margins thing. (Note 1: I am not one of his cult-like followers. I agree with some of his opinions and disagree with others.) (Note 2: I've never really read one of his books, so I'm a little unsure how much of the design of his books is his own doing and how much is a hired designer. However, his books tend to have a unique and consistent design, and he deals in visual communication, so I'm assuming he at least has a hand in it.)

Well, now that I've shown my ignorant book design knowledge, perhaps you'd like to share?

One Of My Biggest Weaknesses: "Nouveau" Alien Movies

2009-05-02T04:02:00.007-04:00

Maybe it's not really a trend worthy of a pretentious made up name, but I like them anyway. As panned as it was, I liked M. Night Shyamalan's Signs (see Fig. 1) a lot. It had a fresh perspective on the alien invasion situation, and it had some awesome suspense (and Macaulay Culkin's little bro, and a pre-crazy Joaquin Phoenix).

Figure 1

The recipe for Signs

While one viewing of Cloverfield was certainly enough, I still enjoyed it. Hell, even Spielberg's remake of War Of The Worlds was pretty fun. And although it was a remake, it was definitely more this-gen than last-gen. It didn't have any childhood nightmare-inducing scenes like the original's revealing of the aliens, but the destruction was harder-hitting than the original's soundstage-y look. (Speaking of remakes, that reminds me: I still need to see the remake of Day The Earth Stood Still... but, uggh, I really find Keanu (see Fig. 2) hard to stomach.)

Figure 2

Keanu now-and-then. Or then-and-now? Does it matter?

Hmmm. Maybe there's not really a nouveau trend. I also want to lump Fire In The Sky in with all these, and maybe even Independence Day. Maybe I've just got a thing for all alien movies...

Regardless, I'm really looking forward to District 9. Peter Jackson (see Fig. 3) has his name all over the ads and trailers (you can find a trailer here) and stuff, but I think the props should really go to Neill Blomkamp. Check out his short (or is just a trailer for his short?) Alive In Joburg for a pretty good preview of what to expect from the movie. If the movie strays from the tone and concept of the short, I'd be surprised.

Figure 3

Never forget: before LOTR, there was MTF.

Now, what I really wanted to talk about is how America (see Fig. 4) is handled in District 9. From what I intuit, it's going to take place in South Africa. That is definitely a refreshing change of pace for sci-fi. But from the trailer, I saw very few (if any) Americans. Now, I am definitely not America-centric, but America itself certainly is. So, if aliens were to visit Earth and hang out in South Africa, you can bet your ass the American government would get involved.

Figure 4

Typical Americans

So, how will District 9 handle America? Unless it just ignores the subject, I don't know how it could explain US non-involvement. Maybe the trailer was just a little misleading.

Sneeze, Dracula, Sneeze!

2009-04-30T22:58:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, I subscribed to Schott's Vocab, self-described as "A Miscellany Of Modern Words & Phrases," because I like miscellanies and words and phrases. However, I haven't been reading as much as I had planned, because it turns out that a lot of the phrases highlighted don't sound all that interesting. But one of the latest posts mentioned a phrase that I had to know more about: Dracula sneeze.

You could just go read the post right, but I'm going to make an already short post shorter: a Dracula sneeze is sneezing into the crook of one's elbow, to avoid spreading swine flu. And for some reason, I love the phrase.

Thus concludes my first post about swine flu. Someone got the song reference in this post's title, right? The (attempted) wit of the title was at least half the reason I wrote this post.

Sorry Mike Noble...

2009-04-30T18:26:00.003-04:00

...but you're not my favorite radio personality any more.

I didn't know about KFJC until the (awesome) WFMU/KFJC April Fool's prank in 2008 where they switched websites and radio streams. But ever since then, it's become my 2nd or 3rd favorite station, with WFMU as #1 and KFJC or Dublab constantly trading 2nd and 3rd places. By far, my favorite show on KFJC is Firebunker with Cy Thoth (Thursdays 2pm - 6pm). He plays a lot of metal. Particularly a lot of what is called "stoner metal." I love it. I really wish there were a whole channel of this. (If there is, you MUST tell me right now!) But as awesome as the music is, it is eclipsed by the DJ himself. He sounds like a pirate! He truly is the most PERFECT metal DJ personality ever.

Before I discovered that show, one Mr. Mike Noble (a.k.a. DJ Bike Wobble, websites here and here) was my favorite radio personality. His shows on WBAR and WHFR have all been quite awesome, and his mic breaks are incredibly energetic. And fun. He, too, is a DJ whose music I LOVE and whose mic breaks I love even more. But, alas, he doesn't sound like a pirate who loves stoner metal.

NOTE:

You may have noticed me specifying "radio personality" or "DJ personality" above instead of just "radio DJ." That is because, although I do love both of the aforementioned shows, neither is my favorite. That honor lies with Put the Needle On the Record with Billy Jam (Fridays 3pm - 6pm on WFMU). Billy Jam focuses mostly on hip-hop. And he tends to like to play around... be it with strange effects-laden mic breaks/interviews, weird mixes/remixes, or whatever else he feels like doing. So, because I love his show the most, I credit Billy Jam with being my favorite radio DJ.

On Microsoft Office 2010

2009-04-28T16:57:00.003-04:00

Normally, titles followed by 2010 are awesome. It's a fact. Like: Grilled Ham Sandwich 2010, or Mini Golf 2010. But when the non-2010 part of the title is "Microsoft Office," things are a little different.

Seeing the preview screenshot of said program on Lifehacker just now, I puked a little in my mouth.

I'm beginning to wonder: are there any well-designed Microsoft programs at all, besides Notepad? Hell, are there any well-designed Windows programs at all? I guess it's been so long since I've seriously used Windows that I can't even remember.

2009-04-22T19:52:00.003-04:00

Ah, bugger that. The video on my previous post disappeared already. Now, I expect them to disappear sometime -- maybe when they get to the 2nd or 3rd page here -- but not while it's still the first post! Da-amn, internet.

So, to avoid such embarrassment, I bring you this:

See? All better now.

Help me with a plot analysis

2009-04-19T11:25:00.003-04:00

...of a frozen moment. Watch this:

Philips :: Carousel campaign (Adam Berg + Stink Digital) from Designloops on Vimeo.

And then tell me if you think the cop at the end is supposed to be an escaped clown? Or is that removed clown costume near the end from the guy who's on the ground in the same room with the costume?

The plot sketchiness aside, I'm thoroughly impressed by this video. Such a story-filled frozen moment! I would love to see a full length movie that is just one big frozen moment... even if they didn't have such a tight, cohesive plot as this. Maybe they could do it like Slacker, and just have it jump from person to person. Directors- get on it! I command thee!

(And yes, I am fully aware that I'm helping spread a profit-driven commercial. I feel bad about it, I really do, but the apparently-escaped clown thing is really bothering me.)

Today, I Set Adrift on Memory Bliss

2009-04-19T00:35:00.006-04:00

Outside by Melon Dezign

The UFO Project by orange & nooon

Stars: Wonders of the World by nooon

(I forgot, but I'm pretty sure it's:)

Red by Razor 1911

I also made a cake-in-a-mug.

Note: If you want to run any of these, you'll need some form of DOSBox, so it might be best to just watch them on youtube.

I'm so embarrassed

2009-04-16T22:14:00.002-04:00

How is it that I had never heard Safari by The Breeders until today, when the (awesome) video was featured on Save Vs. Death??

This single song destroyed my productivity today.

I listened to it over and over, not focusing on anything else, just the song. And I searched down as much related awesomeness as I could find. My whole day was spend on Youtube and Mediafire. (AND my many crushes on early-90s Boston-area female musicians were all totally renewed... Kim Deal, Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donelly, Kristin Hersh....)

Somehow, while I was rocking out to all that 90s alt-rock, I started looking for representations of computer user interfaces in the movies. And that kept me busy for the part of my day that wasn't spend listening and re-listening to The Breeders. The standout finds on my quest:

Metafilter discusses the concept in general
Ben Fry (of Processing fame) examines the reasons for such ridiculous representations
I discovered the HP 9845C, which was used for the awesome graphics in War Games

So, although I managed to put off finding employment for yet another day, I regret nothing. (Just look at that War Games pic!)

Section 6 on Joe's Best Friend Application:

2009-04-13T17:03:00.003-04:00

6.1 What is a pajama jammy jam?

6.2 What is your proficiency at the following dance?

6.3 What is Martin Lawrence's best film?

(a) House Party

(b) House Party 2

(d) Bad Boys II

(e) Black Knight

(f) National Security

re: Photographs (and their web interfaces)

2009-04-12T01:27:00.004-04:00

[I'm trying something new here. I'm going to respond to someone's blog post assuming they read my blog. This is what blogs do, anyway, isn't it? I think maybe by doing this I'm becoming a better blogger! Yeah, that's it.]

My friend Lin Swimmer from Uncle Ofay's Good-Times Story Corner just posted about photographs, specifically photojournalism that appears on the web. He criticizes:

My only complaint is that we are still in a transitional period where not everyone is utilizing Flash gallery presentation to optimize slideshows for the web.

I couldn't agree more. Have you checked out The Boston Globe's Big Picture? In addition to the beautiful photography, the site (refreshingly) does not use flash for its galleries. It just sticks a lot of big photos on the page. While your NYT example is probably one of the better flash galleries I've seen, I'll take Big Picture's simple no-flash approach over it any day. I hate having to figure out a new interface all the time. (Not to mention the fact that most flash interfaces ignore the "Back" button in web browsers, the occasional loading issues, or the many other arguments against Flash. Hell, the phrase "hate flash" gets 14 million hits.)

The New York Times has several awesome people making great use of the internet. From Khoi Vinh's elegant (and standard-setting) grid-based layout of the entire site, to those in charge of the charts (interactive or not), to, well, just about anyone working on the website in general... they get it. I personally love On The Street with Bill Cunningham, where a sweet old guy narrates photos of style trends.

Back to the photo gallery interface issue, I do like how Burn lets you expand the images to nearly the full screen, but that's about all I like about the interface. (The photos, though! Oh wow. You should have told me about this the instant you discovered it, my friend.)

But my favorite galleries? Those that easily let me download all the images quickly, so that I can use my own choice of software (either OSX's built-in Quick Look or Marc Wandschneider's JustLooking) to view the images.

I posted too soon.

2009-03-24T01:33:00.003-04:00

I should have finished the article before posting! Later, in the Calloway article, is this fact:

In 1986 Calloway appeared at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s WrestleMania 2 as a guest judge for a boxing match between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Mr. T that took place Nassau Coliseum.

Wow.

My favorite moment of today

2009-03-24T01:27:00.002-04:00

...was reading the following sentence in Cab Calloway's Wikipedia entry:

In 1941 Calloway fired Dizzy Gillespie from his orchestra after an onstage fracas erupted when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with a small knife.[citation needed]

It's got everything! Spitballs, stabbing, and a citation needed!

Powdered wigs:

2009-03-17T14:45:00.001-04:00

It's about time for a comeback.

Does anyone listen to anything other than WFMU?

2009-03-15T17:22:00.004-04:00

...as far as internet radio goes, I mean. Sure, maybe you listen to Washington Heights Free Radio, but (obviously*) I already do too. So, when WHFR isn't on, I typically listen to WFMU. Sometimes, though, I need something else. So, then I listen to KFJC (which I know only due to the WFMU/KFJC April Fool's prank where they switched websites and streams), dublab, or SomaFM: cliqhop idm. When none of those will quite cut it, I'll check out BassDrive, another SomaFM channel (Space Station Soma or Drone Zone in particular), some DI.fm channel (d'n'b, breakbeats or minimal house, please), or SKY.fm Roots Reggae.

But I need more. I have various other sites bookmarked, but none of them are consistently good. Hell, some of them aren't even consistently on air from day to day. And there are too many strictly themed stations that have no real DJs. I'd love for more consistently good freeform radio stations with live DJs, like WFMU or KFJC. So, any ideas? Maybe a kick-ass local-to-you college station?

* My resumé (modestly?) lists me as the Technical Director of WHFR. (Shameless plug time!) If you don't already listen to my show, you should. It's on WHFR at 3pm each Wednesday, or you can download the archives from the website.

Worlds Collide, McNulty Is Nowhere In Sight

2009-03-09T02:06:00.003-04:00

My apartment just got done watching The Wire. We loved it. It was my second time through.

At the same time, I just got done watching Season 3 of Star Trek:Deep Space 9. Uggg. If I had any other sci-fi show to watch instead, I wouldn't have made it this far.

Now, imagine my surprise when I saw the following in one of the last season 3 DS9 episodes:

Rawls a Bajoran! This really explains a lot about why he was such a douche as Deputy Ops.

The Problem With Unemployment

2009-03-08T16:33:00.002-04:00

The problem with unemployment, as I understand it, is that delectable gets redefined to mean "the muffins available at the grocery."

In my defense, they have such flavours available as double chocolate (incredibly rich and moist) or pistachio (with awesome green-on-the-inside colouring).

Another Attempt To Apologize Which I'll Probably Regret

2009-03-08T07:43:00.004-04:00

Apologies for my ranting in the last post. To make up for it, I'm going to share with you my guiltiest pleasure of late.

Honestly, I'm as surprised as you are that my guiltiest pleasure right now isn't Star Trek:Deep Space 9. Believe me, that's guilty. But guiltier still: this video for Lykke Li's song Breaking It Up:

I don't know. I really like it. It's taken me a while to accept that I like it, too, but now I know that I do. Let's be honest here... it's full of awesome: weirdly cute foreign girl, strange-but-trendy clothing choices, heavy eye makeup (I'm a sucker, I know), slow-mo dancing, haziness... It takes several aspects of some other guilty pleasure videos (Moloko's Forever More (or, hell, even Familiar Feeling) and Paffendorf's Crazy Sexy Marvelous) and adds even more guilty-pleasure-ness to it, and a quirky song. But all those things aren't what gets me. No, what really gets me, each and every time, is the little stupid awkward tired dancing scene that happens around 2:40. (Fine, and the eye makeup.)

Also, since I'm on a roll here, I might as well admit that her whole damn album is a pretty big guilty pleasure.

Piracy Funds Terrorism; Piratebay Thwarts Terrorism

2009-03-06T06:41:00.003-05:00

First, I want to give a shout-out to the MPA and the RAND Corp. for titling a report Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism. Simple, to-the-point, and utterly ridiculous. I'm honestly jealous I hadn't thought of that title first.

As I understand it, the report is yet another attempt at taboo-izing film piracy. While I'm not necessarily supporting the illegal act of pirating a film, I am quite disgusted with the methods they are using to fight the crime. Perhaps some terrorists are, in fact, funded by film piracy. Does that mean that all the proceeds from pirated videos go to terrorists? Not by a longshot. A similar report could be made about the terrorists' favorite foods. Let's assume for the sake of argument that terrorist eat a lot of pizza. Therefore, pizza is bad! Outlaw pizza! Or maybe terrorists are generally poor. So outlaw poverty! If you're poor, you must be a terrorist!

Whatever the factual basis for a "piracy funds terrorism" report, the real problem is not the piracy, but the terrorism itself. If we actually manage to cut off the funds from piracy, terrorists will find other funding. They're not going to say "Oh, damn. No one's buying my shitty copies of Paul Blart: Mall Cop... I guess my faith in Western civilization is restored. No need to blow shit up anymore." (Actually, now that I think of it, that might actually restore my faith in Western civilization...)

Tangentially thinking, an argument could be made that by downloading pirated video for free via a bittorrent-based filesharing (like Pirate Bay) one is actively depriving terrorists of their funds! Terrorist would have to be horribly stupid to continue pirating films if there isn't any profit in it, right? So I say we should all do our part to help stop terrorism by downloading movies. You see, it's OK now, just so long as we don't pay anyone for it.

Lemmy Caution, etc

2009-02-27T15:40:00.003-05:00

Dear readers, I want your help! I want a gigantic list of names that are awesome like Lemmy Caution.

I mean the name itself, not necessarily the character. So Dick Dastardly works, too. Oh man, I really should have made this post a few days ago when I heard a real person's name that worked well, but now I forget who it was. So bonus points if they're real names, folks!

(World's Strongest Man fans: Magnús Ver Magnússon almost works, but that's a whole different kind of awesome. I'd like to stick with Lemmy Caution-style names for now.)

Comment away, please...

DO NOT tell me about a crappy trend when I'm sick, Internet!

2009-02-26T18:44:00.004-05:00

I'm sick. I'm not quite sure what I've got, but I think it's like a mega-cold or something. I'm also really pissed off. This I can blame very specifically on the rising popularity of datamoshing.

First, I hate that name.

Second, the "effect":

is incredibly easy to recreate
is incredibly hard to control
looks like a video compression error
IS a video compression error
makes me think about numerous messed up downloaded video files that I REALLY wanted to watch
makes me think about numerous messed up video editing projects on my less-than-data-reliable computer from a few years ago
has not been used well yet (except for maybe a few uses by Takeshi Murata)
has already been used to death in Chairlift's Evident Utensil video
has already been used to death in Kanye's Welcome To Heartbreak video (Really, do any trends survive Kanye's golden touch/kiss of death?)

Now don't get me wrong... I will admit that the effect has potential (or perhaps had potential, since I'm declaring that it's now been killed). I'm a huge fan of glitchiness of all kinds. I've participated in some glitchy electronic music scenes. I've watched satellite TV during thunder storms for hours just for the glitches. I love light leaks in photography. But this.... this datamoshing... I can't get into. Something just seems totally wrong about it.

I guess some of my anger might also come from fear... Fear that I'm becoming an old man... Fear that kids these days have such completely different ideas of aesthetics from me...

Then again, it truly is a shit effect. Even bad chroma-keying would be better!

BTW#1: I was originally going to complain about Kanye more in this piece, but I decided that I have more than enough on Kanye for a separate post. Maybe a whole series of posts. We'll see.

BTW#2: Sorry for the previous diary-like post. As I said, I'm ill.

Childhood memory or a dream?

2009-02-25T15:28:00.004-05:00

I was just listening to the Stan Freberg cover of Sh-Boom (found in a Sh-Boom mega post - 37 versions!), and towards the end, the main guy (Stan?) is yelling "Stellaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Now, I recognize this reference (Streetcar Named Desire, right?) through second- and third-hand knowledge only, but it brings back a very fond memory. I remember being at the beach with my family for a couple weeks, and I was hanging out with this girl whose name I've forgotten. We did a whole lot of floating around in inner tubes, and every now and then the current would start to drag one of us off a bit. We'd jokingly start yelling "Stellaaaaaaa!" Looking back on this, I realize that her and I were getting along swimmingly (pun TOTALLY intended) and spending loads of time together for those two weeks. And we had loads of fun.

But who was she? As a kid at that age (12? 13?), I pretty much only hung out with guys, I think. Girls were either uninteresting, or they were a source of great nervousness if they were cute. Also, at the beach, I pretty much only hung out with this one dude, Jon. We were both socially awkward and dorky. So, this is why I question the accuracy of this memory... Why was I hanging out with a girl? Where was Jon? How would I have even met this girl?

Finally, there's the fact that the song that brought back this "memory" is Sh-Boom (Life Could Be A Dream).

Open letter to Hulu's content providers

2009-02-19T12:19:00.003-05:00

[I don't care if this is a hot topic on the internet right now. I need to get this out there. I've already sent this to the four content providers listed in Hulu's About page (NBC, MGM, Sony, WB), and this is my (very poor) attempt to spread this to Hulu's other content providers. I'm lazy.]

Content provider for Hulu:

I recently read about how you asked Hulu to stop letting Boxee play Hulu content, and I'm very displeased. I can only guess at the reasons because you have not actually provided any. Maybe you were thinking that you licensed this stuff to be played on computers only. Maybe you think you're losing control of your content. Maybe you think that because you didn't expect this to happen, it must be wrong. I don't know. You haven't said. But what you HAVE said, to me and to everyone else that was WILLINGLY WATCHING YOUR CONTENT AND YOUR ADS, is that we're not important and you don't like us. I'm hurt. I'm disappointed.

And most importantly, I urge you to reconsider, and to embrace the future. You can and will fail if you refuse to embrace changing technology. Hulu is hands down THE BEST way to watch TV these days. You have a good thing going there! Don't ruin it by (to our eyes) crazy restrictions that insult your viewers! Please!

--j.m.

Fueling the fire I'm fighting: Twitter

2009-02-13T00:35:00.008-05:00

I Hate You

Oh, Twitter. You're made of the very essence of Web 2.0: style, simplicity & hype...

I do hate you, Twitter. I hate hearing about you all the time. I hate how much of the (internet) world is now devoted to using you, talking about you (I know, I'm now guilty!), basing things off of you, serving you, worshiping you...

So, to deal with this hatred, I've been ignoring you. Not thinking about you. Skipping pretty much any article that has the word "Twitter" in it. But, alas, the within a week of each other, two (Amanda & Cody, unrelated) of my highly-respectable friends started using Twitter, and upon investigation, I noticed that a few other equally-respectable friends were using Twitter, too.

This made me pause.

After several talks with these friends - some involving Bynars - I didn't hate it as much. Still, it struck me as something I'd never want to use. Ever. But then, one late night, I (drunkenly) signed up for an account and immediately posted (or twittered) several times in 10 minutes. What had I started?!

Thoughts and Theories That Others Have Probably Already Made

I'm proud to say that I've barely used it since that first night. But, unfortunately, I've been thinking about it a lot. Here are some quick highlights, because I feel like I've been too long-winded already:

- It's so banal. And I think that's the thing with twitter: it encourages banality. It might not be possible to do anything except banality with twitter. The limits on post length make certain that most posts will be completely pointless and/or uninteresting. Why not just use a blog where you can keep your posts to less than 140 characters if you choose, or, when the occasion calls for it, extend your posts as long as necessary? If your immediate answer is simplicity, well, my immediate response is tumblr. (btw, I refuse 2 use txt spk 2 try to fit more words in 2 my posts.)

- Twitter automatically comes built in with a certain percentage of 'noise' (in a signal-to-noise type evaluation). The method of addressing twitters (twits?) to other people with the '@' symbol is easy, but also a detriment. To the best of my knowledge (and correct me if i'm wrong) these messages to other people get broadcast to everyone following your twitter stream. So, unless you actually enjoy seeing your friends say things like "@jorge123: hahaha yeah. u r right" all the time, you're out of luck, because you'll see loads of these even-more-banal-because-you're-not-involved-at-all conversations. A simple solution would be if Twitter let you control how you see these @SomeoneElse posts. I would love change the settings on a person-by-person basis. But, alas, Twitter is about simplicity, and this necessary functionality (as we'll see later) apparently doesn't make the cut.

- Perhaps my biggest complaint, even though it is not really an issue just yet: friend creep. In case you haven't heard this term, this is what happens when someone you don't know very well, like a co-worker or classmate, adds you as a friend on a social network. You begrudgingly accept, so as to not offend, and then you try ignore that person's posts. This is why "no one" uses Friendster anymore (sorry Vern)... This is why MySpace is out and Facebook is in... Although still in its infancy, Twitter is indeed a social network, and it will inevitably fall to the same fate at the hands of friend creep. And unless they institute some good filters soon (see previous paragraph), they'll meet that fate sooner than most social networks.

- I will credit Twitter with being a little interesting at times... for instance: the other day, when US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River here in NYC, news and info spread incredibly fast about it, at least in some part due to Twitter. In turn, I read about it on a blog less than an hour after it happened. Alright. Go Twitter, this time. But the chain-reaction speed it can have is not always good. Think, for instance, about how those "Steve Jobs is dead/dying" rumors spread so fast and so pervasively each time Steve does just about anything these days. Ugh. Great. Twitter is a speed-of-light sewing circle. Grand. (I should point out that the crash in the Hudson is the ONLY time I can think of Twitter actually being useful in this way. Hell, come to think of it, I don't even know if anything would have been different that day if Twitter didn't exist. I would have seen and read the same stuff.)

- As it stands now, Twitter is a redundant service... A service that hasn't got a home... A service that is finding itself. From my point of view, it's main competitors (which were already somewhat redundant with each other) are Facebook, IM, tumblr and text-messaging:

Facebook essentially has the services Twitter provides already built in by way of one's status update and wall. Facebook is also a huge and powerful force, with an equally huge user base and financier base.
IM's away messages were most likely the inspiration for this particular service Facebook and Twitter offer. Facebook and Gmail (and so many others) have added IM-like chatting (and sometimes IM itself) to their own services, making IMing even more ubiquitous than it already was.
Tumblr is a relative lightweight when compared with Facebook and IMing, and perhaps even when compared to Twitter. But as I mentioned before, it, to me, seems like a much more practical implementation of Twitter's ideals. Short Twitter-like posts are encouraged, but not necessary. A post could also be just a photo. Or just a song. Or several paragraphs of text. But the interface is simple, as are references to other users. Compared to tumblr, Twitter is basically just text-messaging.
With growing popularity of smartphones (especially the iPhone) and, in turn, unlimited data plans, the line between text-messaging and IMing is blurring. The iPhones threaded text-messages is highly reminiscent of IMs. And smartphones' numerous IM applications let people IM from their phones instead of (or even in addition to) text-message.

- Related to the Facebook, IM, tumblr and text-messaging bit: I just want some of these to die off now. Reduce redundancy. Until smartphones (and thereby unlimited data plans) are more prevalent, text-messaging will not vanish. Facebook is too powerful right now to die. Tumblr is in its infancy and isn't causing as big a commotion as any of these other things did, as far as I can tell, so of these things, I'd say it's most likely to die. This would be unfortunate, as I think it's a better alternative than Twitter. As mentioned before, IMing is getting consumed by other services, so it seems to be the healthiest of all. Like the Ancients in the Stargate universe, it's transcended it's original medium and immortally thrives in a higher plane of existence. If Twitter does not die quickly, then this is the fate I wish for it. As far as I know, it can already be embedded into other things, so I just wish it would go and replace Facebook's statuses and walls.

For a while, Twitter's business model intrigued me (and is apparently a hot topic for many others, too). I have not read about it, though... merely speculated in my own head. At first, I assumed there was no business plan and they were just some folks who made this thing for fun. Then, when I realized how huge it was getting, I figured that there must be some sort of revenue-making planned. The first thing I thought of was ads. Maybe they'll take a cue from Google and have contextual ads along the side of the page. Maybe they'll piss me off and put the ads between the posts. But now, my current theory is that they're just looking to sell the service for a large chunk of money. I'm sure there are plenty of offers rolling in, and they're just holding out for a really big fish. As a fellow aspiring-web-entrepreneur (just you wait!), I honestly wish them luck with this plan (if it is actually their plan), and I hope they can sell Twitter before it starts losing its momentum (as I have stated (proved?) will happen).

The Power Of Love*

or perhaps...

Roads? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads*

In the end, though, as with most (all?) hot new technologies that I've initially resisted, I'll meet and/or date a cute girl who will cause me to warm up, because she'll use twitter all the time. First there was the cellphone, then MySpace, then text messaging... It's happened before, and it will happen again, no doubt.

(Thanks for reading this HUGE post, and please stay tuned for my next post about Twitter which will undoubtedly (judging by this article) be called 'Twitter' Is Synonymous With 'Banal.')

A friend of Iving's?

2009-02-08T03:41:00.002-05:00

(Just the screencap today. If you want the video, I'm sure you can figure it out. But it's not worth it.)

animation:tng

2009-02-07T14:21:00.000-05:00

I've had several conversations about various Star Treks recently. I'm feeling nostalgic:

(NOTE: These are supposed to be animated gifs, but Blogger isn't havin' it, I guess. So if you really want to see the animations, let me know and we'll figure something out.)

I think these all came from the animated gif board on 4chan. (WARNING: 4chan is one of the most offensive and NSFW sites ever. You need a strong mind and body to survive that website. I can't stress this enough. Sometimes you'll see funny things like these gifs. Sometimes you'll see horrible racism. Sometimes you'll see mutilated dead bodies. But most of the time you'll just see lots of porn. And this is the worst: Some of that porn will have funny but horrible racism involving mutilated dead bodies. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. You can not un-see something.)

Next step: software magnate

2009-01-31T20:22:00.002-05:00

A few nights ago, I stayed up until 8am working on a program. A seven line program. Yes, that means I wrote seven lines of code and called it a program. And no, that does not mean they were super-long complicated lines of regular expressions or anything like that. In fact they were very simple lines of Applescript.

These seven lines actually took just a minute or two to write and test to satisfaction. After that, I took a while to marvel at my creation. Then came what actually took several hours: I went to work on documenting and sharing this program (you can now find it hosted on Google Code).

Some of you might remember a post of mine from June where I professed my love for OSX 10.5's QuickLook feature. In that post, I complained about not being able to get into QuickLook's Index Sheet mode quickly. The typical process (select everything in Finder, hit space, click the Full Screen button, click the Index Sheet button) is not so slow as to be unusable, but it is just slow enough to not be "quick." And quickness is what QuickLook is all about, naturally. So this simple program I wrote solves my problem, for the most part. It takes what is at best a 3-step keyboard & mouse task and turns it into a quick two-mouse-clicks task. Ideally, I'll find a way to make it a one-click task, but for now, two clicks will suffice. This pushes it back into the realm of "quick."

I'm not going to reprint the copy from the Google Code page here, so if you're intrigued, just head over to the quicklook-fullscreen-gallery Google Code page. There are (fairly) detailed instructions there, along with the actual download.

And if you have any suggestions, questions, or fixes, then by all means please let me know!

P.S. This is my first official - albeit meager - foray into releasing open-source software. And hopefully not my last. I'm proud of myself. (Can't you tell?)