Edgar, can you enhance this?
December 17, 2009
An Brief, Honest Look At The Bad TV Shows I Watch
December 16, 2009
(coincidentally, these are almost all available on Hulu)
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?
What I've Been Programming Lately: Bash Scripts
November 15, 2009
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!
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
November 07, 2009
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
November 05, 2009
(from the excellent source for disco-y videos and music, arawa.fm)
Love And Logic
October 28, 2009
[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.]
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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...
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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...
Goth Day, part 2, perhaps? The fashion issue
October 05, 2009
Holy shit. I'm kicking myself for not having thought of this myself:
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:
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