June 2003 Archives

Well, things are now all up and happy on the new site. I've still got to get the site search working, but that'll happen tomorrow. There's lots of other little things that I'll need to fix up (like mp3s not being up yet), but for the most part everything works. If you find something that doesn't, let me know.

Well, since all my permalinks just changed yesterday I figure this is a good time to change my hosting. For the last 10 months or so, my web site has been sitting on the linux box in my kitchen. I've been meaning to start hosting with my friend Lukas, but haven't really gotten up the motivation. So, sometime in the next day or so, the official address for this site will change to just http://www.ezoons.com/. It will still be accessible through the current address for a while after, but most likely that will just bounce you over. Hopefully things won't be TOO broken when I move them over. This also gives me a chance to clean out all the crap I have in my current public_html directory (there's so much in there that isn't even used anymore), and I'm sure lots of graphics stuff will break initially, but we'll get that fixed up as soon as possible. Hopefully I'll be able to do that by the end of the week.

The other thing I'm going to do is make it so that people can't load images from other sites. I've got more and more people using images I have here for icons on web bulletin boards. Sheesh people, I don't care if you copy the image, just don't expect me to host it for you.

Robert McCloskey: "I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." [Quotes of the Day]

Halley has an interesting post up about why people blog.

The life and death bloggers aren't writing casually. They are writing for their lives. They are writing to stay alive. They are writing about what it feels like to be alive -- knowing that all that will be left behind is their words. They are writing because it really, really matters . Tony Perkins is not Anne Frank -- nor does he want to be, nor should he aspire to be. But like Tony, anyone who wants to join the party needs to be aware of the tradition of this medium --- enter this inner sanctum with head bowed, hat in hand. Tread lightly in this place. Show us your real self. We're naked here, are you? We're alive here, but we're also dying. Dying to tell you our stories. [Halley's Comment]

I definitely can identify with some of this. I don't write about my health issues often (because I hate to seem like I'm whining), but I do when it is important to me. For me blogging is partly about just getting stuff out of my head. And in some cases that's talking about how hard it was to breath on a certain day when the air quality sucked (others it might be why I'm annoyed with cheese). It's as much for me as for my friends who pop over here to see how I'm doing.

And yes, when I get the call to go in for a new lung you will all hear about it here.

So I figured out how to change my archives. Now I'm going around picking up all the little pieces it left behind. One thing this has gotten me thinking about is the guid for my posts (which is included in the RSS feed). Currently it is using the post id #, which really isn't anything permanent. I'm thinking I should just set it to be the permalink.

I'm going to put out a public apology to everyone who has permalinks to me currently. They already got all screwed up by my database corruption, and they'll probably be a bit unstable till I move my hosting. But once that happens I'm taking steps to make sure that everything remains clean. Btw, here's a pretty good starting guide to Movable Type. What's nice is it tells you about the archive format tags. I hadn't realized you could do that, very slick. It also means I can take a step closer to having my permalinks being being actual permalinks.

This is really kinda cool, and it ran great on OS X under Safari.

net.net
Priidu sez:  "It's summer. Go play some Tardis Tennis." [jenett.radio]

I was looking over at Antipixel today and I think he has a setup that would work for me as far as permalinks go. Archives seem to be stored in a way similar to how Radio does it in YYYY/MM/DD/PostTitle.html. I've sent the guy who does the site an email, so hopefully he'll point me in the right direction (if I haven't already figured out how to do it myself).

G. K. Chesterton: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." [Quotes of the Day]

Some people are very serious about their music.

A 25-year-old Filipino man has been stabbed dead for singing a Frank Sinatra classic out of tune during a birthday party. [smh.com.au] [via antipixel]

Note to self, you can't sing, so never sing any Sinatra when out in public. Results could be disastrous.

Nick got a publishing offer for Move Under Ground. Pretty cool. If you aren't familiar with him, you should check out his novella Northern Gothic, it's great.

Since the anime blog hasn't been fixed yet (it's still suffering from the issues this blog had this week), I'm going to post a bit about an anime I watched tonight called Brigadoon. It's the story of this girl Marin who ends up being attacked by aliens. And she stumbles on this other alien robot guy who protects her. The show is pretty silly, but it really worked for me. Marin has this very overactive imagination where she keeps imagining herself getting zapped into just a skeleton. It's pretty funny. And the last episode on the first DVD has the best alien bad guy ever.

Once again, my friend Lukas and his blog have been mentioned in a newspaper. This time for his coverage of a local Turkey. I guess he's getting lots of web traffic from it, so head on over and add to it.

I'm back!

Thanks to some help from Ben Trott I was able to recover all my posts. Here's the part that sucks though, my posts don't have the same blog item numbers. Because of this, the individual pages have all changed (and will likely change again if I go to move this to another site). The timing of this is somewhat fitting because of a recent post to Scripting News about Post IDs in RSS 2.0. The concept of having post ideas that are part of the export/import process makes a lot of sense to me now, since all my permalinks aren't really anymore. If I only had one blog running in my installation of Movable Type that might not have been the case, but I also use it for my anime blog (which is currently kind of offline till I can move it also). While RSS doesn't work that well for exporting and importing with Movable Type due to comments and trackbacks, the concept of Post IDs does make a lot of sense. There's got to be some way to make it work (though I could see issues with importing posts into a blog that already has posts, what do you do with conflicting numbers). Anyone have any thoughts on this? Possible solutions that will work when exporting/importing?

Lots of things all being kind of fubared at once is starting to get to me. I'd been meaning to upgrade my cable router because it's old and it's always had a few quirks that had annoyed me. So since I was having problems getting the voice chat on iChat a/v I decided that would be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I picked up a netgear one, since I'd had decent luck with their stuff before. It's the FR114P. It advertises itself as a cable/dsl firewall. It's got a great interface, but I'm really not happy with it at all. It seems to be getting confused as to where to send packets, it times out my outgoing MUD connections if I'm idle for more than about 5 minutes, and it doesn't work with the other switch I have. So I think I'm going to return it tomorrow and try the Linksys (If at first you don't succeed...).

On the plus side, I've sent off a help request for my Movable Type issues, and I'm hoping they'll be able to help me.

So, last night the partition MovableType lives on ran out of space. Because of that, something got a little screwed up in the database. Needless to say I'm a bit annoyed at myself, but I haven't given up hope yet. In the meantime, I thought I'd set up a temp page so I could ramble about whatever.

I also just registered my Movable Type installation, so I'm going to see what support can do for me.

So tonight I was IMing with my friend Selma and I came up with a great use for that clear neon paint I posted about yesterday. Next time you decide to move, you get a bunch of this paint, and paint your apartment with it. Go crazy with it. Maybe spray paint messages on the walls. You could do something like "THE MONKEY MAN IS COMING FOR YOU", "YOUR PARENTS ARE WATCHING YOU", or any number of weird and creepy things. The great part is, the person moving into your apartment could go forever with never seeing it if they don't have a black light. Heck, maybe you'll end up catching the second person who ends up moving into your old place.

Tonight there were going to be some interesting clouds thanks to NASA, but the mission was scrubbed for the night. Sounds like they'll be trying again tomorrow night.

So, I guess that last night the promo cards during Adult Swim said the following at some point:

A new anime is coming your way

It's only six episodes long.

But it's shockingly great.

Like Bebop

Big O

and Beef Logs

[adult swim]

Hmmmm... I wonder...could it be?

Anyone out there using an SMC Barricade who has gotten the new iChat voice chat stuff to work? I've tried opening up the needed ports, putting my machine on the DMZ and nothing works. Anyone got any other suggestions? Luckily these boxes are cheap enough that I can change brands or get a new one if needed (this is an old old old Barricade).

Yow. I feel like a switch went off inside me yesterday. I've been a bit more bouncy for the last 36 hours or so. I'm not sure if it's the Lexapro finally really kicking in or just the sun being out, but I like it. Had lunch with my friend Gabe today, might be getting some work via him. I'm gonna meet up with him and the people he's working with on Friday to see what I might be able to contribute. Then met up with my new friend Carolyn for coffee (Hi Carolyn!) And now back home relaxing. I think it may be an early night if I don't get too into reading.

It looks like zannah's playing with Trackback over on vox.machina.

Nintendo is releasing the GameBoy Player for the GameCube. It's a hardware attachment that lets you play all your GameBoy and GameBoy Advance carts on your TV through your GC. It looks pretty keen. And GamesDomain gives it a good review too.

William H. Mauldin: "I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages." [Quotes of the Day]

AUGH. The Orbulon level in Wario Ware is going to be the death of me.

So, over a year ago I posted about Heinz releasing some new types of frozen potato products called Funky Fries. Guess what. They were a flop. Is anyone surprised that nobody wanted to buy chocolate fries?

"Kids already like the plain french fries," said Marilyn Raymond, director with New ProductWorks, a Michigan-based product marketing consultancy. "Why try to make them more friendly to kids?"

"What bothered me the most were the chocolate fries," Raymond added. "What was Heinz thinking? Chocolate in french fries is so different that consumers found no cord of familiarity with it. There aren't even chocolate-flavored potato chips out there." [CNN Money]

This paint is transparent when you paint it on, but shine a black light at it and TADAA! Bright neon colors! Here are some before and after pictures:

NetNewsWire 1.0.3 is out and it's great. The newest feature is the combined view option, which i've already fallen in love with. It makes scanning for things I want to read much easier. If you're a user of NNW I definitely recommend the upgrade. Also, for new users there's currently a 25% discount on it.

George Price: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?" [Quotes of the Day]

Yay! New episodes of Monk! And hey, Andrew McCarthy was on this week's episode (spoilers for episode are there, so beware). I didn't recognize him at first, but the voice sounded so familiar so I had to go look.

Over on Surfin' Safari Dave talks about browser standards charts and why he doesn't like them. For example:

In a fit of honesty, I'll even give an example from Safari. Many standards charts have asserted that Safari supports min-width and max-width . How wrong you are. Safari only supports these properties on non-positioned non-replaced elements, but I fooled you, didn't I? I managed to implement just enough to pass the common test cases, because the feature wasn't deeply tested by those of you building your charts. Mozilla's support for this feature is superior to Safari's, but the two browsers have been ending up with the same "score" for min/max-width support. [Surfin' Safari]

I thought this was pretty interesting. I'd never really thought about how they tested browsers or even how completely. Now I'm going to have to pay more attention to such things a bit more.

Going through my aggregator this morning I found a link to Bryan Bell's web page where he comments on IE a few times.

I personally feel that IE has now taken Netscape 4's old position as the boat anchor being dragged behind the internet. So yeah lets start a badge campaign to complain about the lack of development/innovation in Internet Explorer. [Bryan Bell] [via Scripting News]

There's some nice notes in the comment for that post also. He also points some interesting points to do with IE no longer being standalone:

If IE truly does become an OS-only product, then the common web request of “Please upgrade your web browser” will become completely irrelevant. Instead, web developers will have to politely ask, “Please get in your car, drive to Comp USA, and purchase the latest, greatest version of the Windows operating system.” Ass-backwards technological progress. [Todd Dominey] [via Bryan Bell]

Woke up kinda early this morning and was kind of heading towards sleep again till I took my Provigil. That's helped me get through the day so far (though I do feel like napping right now). Emilily and I went to Soundbites for breakfast. It was her first time and I think she enjoyed it. Most people seem to. She got this big waffle covered with fruit. I had the 2^3 royale. MMMM, apple cinnamon pancakes. Then we made our way over to Harvard Square to pick up our copies of Harry Potter. I'm probably going to start reading tonight. Oh yeah, and I picked up Wario Ware for my GBA cause I'd downloaded a ROM for it and liked it a bunch (though the emulator is kinda jerky on my machine).

I know my smoking friends are probably not too happy about this, but on June 9th the Cambridge City Council passed an Ordinance Change to make ALL Cambridge workplaces tobacco smoke-free. It goes into effect October 1. Also, one passed in Somerville too! Happy Happy! I'll be able to go out in Cambridge again!

I haven't answered one of these in ages, but here goes this week's Friday Five:

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short? My hair is fairly straight and I tend to wear it short (except times like now when I've been lazy about making it to my hairdresser.
2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime? Oh my, in many different ways. It's been long before. It's been black, blond, red, brown. Short and Spikey. Normal. Asymetrical. I've done a bit of hair experimenting over the years.
3. How do your normally wear your hair? These days, fairly short, and I lately I've been dying it kind of mahogany.
4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like? Well, since I haven't been to the hairdresser in like two months (and I'm going on Tuesday finally). It would be short again and not look all scruffy like it does now.
5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened? Well it wasn't TOO bad, but years ago we were trying to beach some red out of my hair and it wouldn't come out and it just ended up looking horrible. It was kind of bright red and it took forever to grow out.

Hmm, so I definitely need to get a new lung soon so that I can start dancing some more again. Wouldn't want to suddenly start having dementia.

Scientists have come up with yet more evidence to suggest that keeping the brain active can ward off senile dementia. [BBC News]

Researchers in the United States have found that dancing, playing musical instruments, reading and playing board games can all reduce the risks of developing the condition.

So I took some of my s00per-cough syrup last night and now I'm still feeling all spacy. I think there may be some kind of interaction with one of the meds I'm on because I woke up briefly around 6am, checked my mail and was all set to get up and start the day and then I closed my eyes a moment and it was noon. Pretty trippy I must say. Of course now my day is half gone. Hopefully I'll be back to post more while I'm doing laundry.

Lewis Thomas: "The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." [Quotes of the Day]

The cops shut down a little girl's lemonade stand because she didn't have a temporary business permit.

A six-year-old girl was heartbroken when her small lemonade stand was put out of business because she didn’t have a temporary business permit. A neighbor called the police and her stand was shut down. [NBC2 News Online]

I personally think they should track down the neighbor and egg their house or something. That's just mean to do to a kid.

Bertrand Russell: "When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others." [Quotes of the Day]

Just what the hell are you doing down there yelling random things now and then and pounding the ceiling (wall? floor? whatever.) I'm having a hard enough time sleeping and you woke me up a while ago. My theory is he's actually banging on the wall to shut up a neighbor who must be noisy, because I'll be laying in bed reading and I hear this WHAM WHAM WHAM like you'd do if someone in another apartment was making too much noise. And since I'm making no noise (besides the sound of pages turning) it must not be me. The yelling part is what I don't get.

I really can't even have a single drink on Wednesday nights anymore. Only one drink and I'm having issues sleeping. The club was a bit quiet tonight, but I think lots of people were just sick of the clouds and rain and didn't feel like coming out. Their loss. I spun a pretty decent (and very eclectic) set. Made a new friend. And I was home by two. Now, I must finally get some more sleep. I've got a lunch meeting and I really need to be somewhat rested for it.

From /usr/bin/girl. A page that asks all kinds of difficult questions. The one on the page right now: A lunatic is cutting off your arms. You must choose: Chainsaw or Circular Saw. Definitely Circular, I think chainsaw would rip too much. (Note, there are lots of lame questions on this site too).

So everyone should come out to the lounge tonight for the return of Qi. Even though there really isn't that much room to dance upstairs. Maybe we can push aside the tables or something.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*

The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in.
This week's guest is making his second appearance at the Lounge. Come on out to see Qi as he rocks things upstairs.

Special Guest:
Qi [Boston, MA]

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
6/25 - Brynmore

To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

This week at Anitya: Takyon

Are you a DJ in the Boston area? Are you interested in playing out some Wednesday night? If so, drop me a line at lounge@ezoons.com.

Derek's experiences with the Apple Music Store are much the same as mine. I've had more than a few cases of finding myself humming a tune and wondering if they have it, only to find they do. Of course now I'd also like to see the list of what smaller labels they've extended offers to. I personally would love to see the TVT catalogs over there. That would add in a few artists I'd buy up lots of (like Elvis Costello).

H. L. Mencken: "It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf." [Quotes of the Day]

Walter Bagehot: "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." [Quotes of the Day]

Premiere Magazine has come up with a list of the 10 hottest movie love scenes.. Included in the list are scenes from Some Like it Hot, The Hunger, Mulholland Drive, and Last Tango in Paris. (I couldn't find a link to this Premiere's web site unfortunately)

Stolen from an LJ I read, we have a list of new entries in the OED. There are some great ones here like 'bitch slap', 'gaydar', 'loungecore', 'buggeration' and 'shitload'. Yes, we now have a definition of what a shitload is. Unfortunately I can't find out what it is without subscribing to the OED.

Wow, I hadn't seen this before. Dane Carlson has a page listing many many many (1485 to be exact) Which * are you? quizzes. Some of the links don't go to quizzes anymore, but it's still an impressive list. It includes such classics as:

• Which Squirrel Are You
• Which smilie are you?
• Which Sailor Senshi Are You?
• Which Marc Almond are you?

I love it.

For those of you living in the Broadway area in Cambridge, the Broadway Marketplace has opened up again after recovering from its roof collapsing due to snow. It's pretty nice in there, and a bit overpriced as usual, but it is really handy having it so close.

Or at least close to it [via Boston Common].

Thomas Carlyle: "What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." [Quotes of the Day]

(I've started posting the date with my QOTDs so that my LJ mirroring script will forward them over better).

For those local folks, I'm looking for suggestions on more places to try for pizza delivery. When I first moved here I used to order from Stefnai's all the time. But it seemed like their quality started to go downhill after a while (their calzones seemed to get more oily (as did their pizzas, it would soak through to the bottom of the pizza in the center). For a while I ordered from Chicago Pizza on Mass Ave because I could order online, but their pizza was a little random in quality. Lately I've been ordering from J&J's in Somerville, which just happened to deliver to my place. I've been most happy with them lately, but I'm kind of curious as to what's out there. And, like Heath, I don't like Domino's that much.

So those of you in Cambridge, specificly people in the Harvard Sq/Central Sq/Inman Sq areas, which do you recommend for delivery places? Oh yeah, I also ordered from Tommy's once, but they were so slow and inept I'll never order from there again (pizza arrived after 1.5 hours, then the driver didn't have change and had to drive back for it and didn't make it back for almost another 1 hour. I ordered at 10 and could barely stay awake to get my change).

Both Dane Carlson and Scobleizer ask 'Where's John Robb?'. I was actually just wondering the same thing a day or two ago and noticed he hasn't posted in ages. He always had interesting posts.

I found this cool little flash thing over on Lyn's LiveJournal. There just seems to be so much going on in it, I'm going to have to try it again and see what else I can find in it (look out for the boxing angel).

A. A. Milne: "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." [Quotes of the Day]

I've been so exhausted all day. I'm wondering if I'm just finally catching up on all the sleep I've missed over the last few weeks. Of course now I just hope I won't be up all night.

M. C. Escher: "My work is a game, a very serious game." [Quotes of the Day]

The Omni Group released beta 1 of OmniWeb 4.5 sometime recently (I think, I'm not quite sure when it came out). This one is special because it uses Apple's WebCore. So remember how slowly OmniWeb used to render pages, it is much better now (though still feels a little sluggish, but that might be because I'm eating up tons of bandwidth with bittorrent at the moment). The one issue... no tabs. I never realize how much I use them until I don't have them. Now I just wish Safari let me tweak all the options OmniWeb does. (Release notes and known issues can be found here.)

From a few different sources, MS has announced that it is dropping IE for the Mac. This actually isn't too surprising, since Apple's been working pretty hard on making Safari work with almost any web page (hmm, aren't we about due for another beta or a release?). The part of this I find amusing is part of MS's explaination:

Ho says that the decision has been made to make way for Apple's own Safari browser. 'Some of the key customer requests for web browsing on the Mac require close development between the browser and the OS, something to which only Apple has access,' she explained. [MacMegaSite]

Huh? Just what features are people requesting that require that? Camino, OmniWeb, and Firebird seem to be doing okay so far. What the heck are they talking about?

Here's more proof that Squirrels are evil. It's in a cute little pixel music video. It's a little odd, but make me smile in my sleep deprived state. [via /usr/bin/girl]

This morning as I was trying to sleep a bit more I had a sudden thought: cats are my kryptonite. I can walk into a house and tell there's a cat there without even seeing it. If I pet one I usually end up regretting it. So, what's your kryptonite?

Lee Simonson: "Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian." [Quotes of the Day]

Spike Lee was granted a temporary injunction against the Spike TV name.

NEW YORK -- A Manhattan judge on Thursday granted a petition by filmmaker Spike Lee and ordered Viacom Inc. to temporarily stop using Spike TV as the new name for its TNN network.

State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub said he was temporarily enjoining the network from using the name Spike pending a trial on the issue. He ordered Lee to post a $500,000 bond to cover Viacom's losses in case the company wins.

Lee said he sued Viacom to protect his name after he learned that the communications giant planned to change TNN's name to Spike TV on June 16 in what he saw as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and capitalize on his image and prestige.

Viacom announced in April that it would change TNN's name to Spike TV in an attempt to attract more men to an audience that is already about two-thirds male.

Spike TV, billing itself as "the first network for men," shows reruns of "The A-Team," "Baywatch" and "Miami Vice" and sports entertainment such as pro wrestling, "American Gladiators," "Car and Driver Television" and "Trucks!"

The network also carries an animated series featuring Pamela Anderson as the voice of Stan Lee's "Stripperella," an undercover operative who is also a stripper. [Newsday]

So, a network that is showing things like A-Team, Baywatch, and American Gladiators is trying to mislead the public just by calling the network Spike TV? I heard about this a day or two ago, but I didn't think he'd actually succeed. That's so lame. The judge compared Spike Lee to people like Cher, Madonna, and Sting. Um, and when were any of them called anything different? Sting didn't go by Sting Smith and then shorten it or anything like that. I've never heard Spike Lee called anything but that. Sorry. I don't buy it. IMNSHO, Spike Lee is just being a twit.

The folks who make Spike seasoning should look out. They may be next.

From CNN

(CNN) -- Actor Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of upstanding lawyer Atticus Finch in 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird," has died. He was 87.

Peck died overnight, spokesman Monroe Friedman told The Associated Press.

Finch was recently named the No. 1 hero in movie history, according to a survey by the American Film Institute. [CNN]

Hmm, maybe I'll have to do a Gregory Peck movie night now.

Everyone complains about the Xbox controllers. But here's one way to improve them a bit.

Xshok

There are a couple of ways to make Xbox more interesting. One way is to play people for money. The other is add an electroshock feature to the controllers. It almost seems like they're begging for a lawsuit, but TechTV has a guide on how to do this.
Read

[Gizmodo]

This would rock! I want to do this.

Lewis Carroll: "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." [Quotes of the Day]

From Lockergnome:

Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Consumers
Microsoft has quietly extended the support period for Win98 to Jan 16 2004 from Jun 30 2003 and has also pushed back the product's "end of life" date to Jan 16 2005. (Peter) [Lockergnome Bytes]

This is actually a good thing. I think I'm running 98 on the last intel box I have. I still haven't made the jump to xp or NT. Mostly because I rarely use it these days, but also because I have no idea if it will work on the machine I have. I guess I should give it a try eventually.

From tonight's fortune cookies:

You will be awarded some great honor.

Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.

Hmm. Cool.

I just found out a bit about my past life:

Your past life diagnosis:
I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern North Europe around the year 600 .
Your profession was that of a shepherd, horseman or forester .

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Revolutionary type. You inspired changes in any sphere - politics, business, religion, housekeeping. You could have been a leader.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
You are bound to solve problems of pollution of environment, recycling, misuse of raw materials, elimination of radioactivity by all means including psychological methods.

Hey, it's almost Wednesday, and the weather looks like it's getting nice again. Come out and celebrate the week being half over.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*

The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in.
This week we're happy to welcome longtime boston DJ, Paul Dailey. Come on out as he plays a special minimal techno set for us.

Special Guest:
Paul Dailey [Boston, MA]

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
6/18 - Qi
6/25 - Brynmore
To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

This week at Anitya: PENTA [redTribe] [spectral Concepts] [SF]

Are you a DJ in the Boston area? Are you interested in playing out some Wednesday night? If so, drop me a line at lounge@ezoons.com.

It's been kinda quiet here the last couple of days. I'm a bit behind on my blog reading also. Hopefully I'll get back up to speed in a day or so.

Last night we celebrated my mom's 60th birthday. It was lots of fun. Many of my parent's neighbors and my mom's good friends came by and celebrated. They went through about 20 bottles of wine and two six packs of beer. And the food was amazing. I think my parents need to have more parties.

I just finished watching the latest episodes of Shaman King that Soldats subbed (episode 56). AUGH. I must see the rest now. I'll have to see who else has subbed it now.

It's an Azumanga Daioh racing game! How cool! It looks like one of the cars is a kitty even!

Well, I've now run my Roomba in the kitchen and my living room. I have to say I give it two big thumbs up. After it ran through the kitchen I cleaned out the dustbin in it and it was pretty full. I was quite impressed. It picked up more than I do when sweeping. But the big test was going to be the living room. First I had to stuff the tassels on rug under so that the Roomba wouldn't choke on them. Once I'd done that and picked up all the clutter at floor level I set it loose. My rug hadn't been vacuumed in a few weeks so it was in pretty horrible shape. Now it's pretty damn clean, not perfect, but pretty close. The rest of the floor looks really good two. I actually emptied the dust bin once while it was cleaning because it had sucked up so much. The only time it had problems was moving on and off the rug now and then. I think I'm going to just cut the tassels off because I actually think it looks better without them. Then I'm going to look into taping the rug down so that the edges are a bit smoother.

Overall I'd highly recommend this if you're someone who hates vacuuming, or who has heath issues which make vacuuming difficult. It's definitely going to make a big difference.

The Hello Kitty Tarot. Must have. This one is at least fairly inexpensive compared to the other one I want (the Dali deck).

Today was a day of much cleaning goodness. It was also a day of some wonderful acts of kindness. First, Ethan came over to help me rewire everything under my desk. Now, if you haven't seen my place, imagine a mass of twisty wires all in a mess. Over an hour later and a bunch of wires less (there were more than a few that didn't plug into anything) my desk looks much cleaner than it has in years. Woohoo! Thanks Ethan!

Then, this afternoon around 3 I was napping and someone started ringing my buzzer. When I finally made it to the door it was the UPS guy and he had this HUGE box for me. I scratched my head as I brought it in, wondering what it was. I hadn't ordered anything. I tried to think of what my parents my have gotten me. I open up the box and inside I find a Roomba. After going BUH for a moment I grab the shipping label receipt to see who my savior was and found it to be someone I've known online for ages. So a big huge THANK YOU goes out to Andrew Molitor (If you're gonna do cool things like this you've got to accept the public praise). I'm getting it set up now and it has to charge before I can use it. I'm so excited! Pictures and a notes will be posted in a day or so.

People rule.

It's Wednesday, and this week it's a resident's night. So come on down and party tonight.

Changmian and Dubcoast present

*~The Analog Lounge~*

The relaxed side of things. Join us every Wednesday for a mix of music styles in the lounge at Vertigo, with lots of mellow mixed in.
This week we've got a special treat, resident's night. All four of us will be rockin' the house tonight so be sure to come on by.

The Analog Lounge with resident dj's
Gregory Blake (Changmian) Boston
Special Pete (dubcoast music) CA
Peter Ellis (ttb) Boston
Pete Yagmin (Changmian) Boston

Wednesdays
@ Vertigo (upstairs)
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277
10pm - 2am
21+ with ID
$5 cover (gets you into both the Lounge and Anitya)
No dress code
www.changmian.com
www.dubcoast.com
www.vertigoboston.com
www.mapquest.com (directions)

Upcoming Guests:
6/4 - Residents Night
6/11 - Paul Dailey [Boston, MA]
6/18 - Qi
6/25 - Brynmore

To view our calendar online (with support for you iCal and Mozilla calendar folk):
http://ical.mac.com/gblake99/The32Analog32Lounge

This week at Anitya: DJ JUNYA (t.i.p. records) (phantasm) (eskimo) (UK)

Are you a DJ in the Boston area? Are you interested in playing out some Wednesday night? If so, drop me a line at lounge@ezoons.com.

Ugs, my morning coffee intake has been slowly increasing. I think starting today I need to cut back and only get a medium from Dunkin, and not make a full post for myself when i make it at home. I was all twitchy yesterday and I'm sure the coffee was the reason.

Yesterday I had one of those "The net can be so cool!" moments. I'd posted a link to a commentary on Aliens that was over on McSweeney's a week ago. Someone posted a comment on it musing about Coulter's use of vocabulary, but that was it as far as comments on the post. This is fairly comment, I tend not to get a ton of comments. But then Yesterday I opened up my mail to see a notification that there was another comment on the post, answering the first comment. This is the part I found very cool, it was from the person who wrote the commentary: Tom Bissell.

Even though I've been online ages, nothing has really opened up communication like this as well as blogging has. First that the Mr. Bissell was able to find my post (though my blog does seem to have a fairly high page ranking), and then that he took the time to comment on it. It is a level of interaction that I just haven't run into much before online, at least on a personal web site (and I think it shows how comments can be a good thing on a blog). So I'd also like to send a big Thank You out to Mr. Bissell, and anyone else who ever comments on here. You've helped make this blog a little more interesting and informative. Now I need to look into having some kind of option that the author of a comment can choose to be notified when someone responds to a comment (kind of like how LiveJournal does things).

Oh yeah, and for people who enjoyed part one, part two of that commentary was posted a few days ago.

George Bernard Shaw: "My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity." [Quotes of the Day]

According to a post on MacNN.com Apple and Amazon are talking about making the iTunes music store available from Amazon. It would be a cool move. What I still want is for them to offer something where you get to download the music right away, and then get the physical CD if you want it.

The other day I picked up some Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate brownie mix. Oh my, this makes such good brownies. It comes with a packet of dark chocolate syrup that you mix in with the batter. Yum! I highly recommend.

After reading Joel on Software's comments on Firebird, I think I may have to check out the OS X version of it to see what I think. Also related is the news that IE6SP1 will be the last standalone version of IE. The part I find most humorous about this is the quote from someone at MS that was mentioned in an article over on C|net.

"Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1," Countryman said. "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS [C|net News]

Hmmm.

jenett.radio once again provides a pretty cool link. This time to a beginner's guide to Movable Type.

Resource for MT Users
Sugar found a cool beginner's guide to using Movable Type. [jenett.radio]

I read through it, quite nice. I'll have to remember this for when friends ask me about MT.

Simon Fell posts about one of my all time favorite songs. Damn, I didn't know there were so many versions. This means I'll have to start shopping around more. I still remember when I saw the video for this for the first time. I was one of those early "must have this music" moments.

Lewis B. Frumkes: "How to Raise your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children" [Quotes of the Day]

There's something about a rainy Sunday morning, coffee, a bagel, and some nice jazz and a good book (or manga is this case) that is about as close to perfection as can be. The only thing that would make it nicer is if the sun was out.

Rabbit Rabbit!