Movable Type 3.1 lets you now have subcategories, something that I'd kind of been wanting for a while. I'm currently using them and you can see some of the groupings of categories I have to the right. The code is after the 'more' link.
The fine folks at Six Apart have officially released Movable Type 3.1. I've been beta testing this for a bit over a week and it's pretty nice. They also released a pack of plugins for it that includes MT-Blacklist.
Wired has a nice article about three anime films making their way to the US in the coming months: Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, Steamboy, and Howl's Moving Castle. I'm pretty psyched about all of them. The trailers for Steamboy and Innocence look stunning, and i am hoping to find a copy of one for Howl's soon.
The Giants of Anime are Coming
In coming months, anime's three most prominent directors will release major films in the US. Oshii's Innocence will hit theaters in September. Soon afterward, Katsuhiro Otomo will debut Steamboy, an Indiana Jones-style adventure that takes place in an alternative Victorian age where turbo unicycles and pressure-powered jetpacks battle for supremacy. Then Hayao Miyazaki will deliver Howl's Moving Castle, about a teenage girl who flees a curse by hiding in a gigantic mechanical castle that prowls about on insectlike legs. In addition, Disney will issue three older Miyazaki films on DVD early next year, two of which have never before been released in the US.
The confluence of these films could finally put anime at center stage in a venue where success so far has been elusive: the box office. Even though Miyazaki's Spirited Away won the Oscar for best animated film in 2003, it didn't pack theaters. But unlike most previous US anime releases, these films have the backing of major studios. DreamWorks is distributing Innocence, Sony is handling Steamboy, and Disney is in line for Howl's Moving Castle. Anime enthusiasts have argued for years that the genre's fractured visions represent the most important cinematic movement since sex, lies, and videotape ushered in a new era of American independent film in 1986. Now multiplexers will have a chance to see what these fans have been talking about. [Wired News]
Of course Innocence doesn't even have viewing dates in CT yet. I hate this state at times, I'll be sure to be watching it up in Boston.
Radio 4 is re-releasing an old Hitchhikers game.
Radio 4 revives Hitchhiker's game
A Douglas Adams game is revived to mark a new Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy radio series. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
I really do wonder if this is the old Infocom game. I'll need to find some of that not tea I guess.
One of the cool new things in Movable Type 3.1 (which should be out pretty damn soon now) is the dynamic PHP publishing. Why is this a big thing? Because up till now if you'd changed a something like your individual archive page template you'd have to go back and rebuild your whole site. If you've got a large number of posts this tends to take a while. Now, it can just render the page when requested, which means doing a pushlish all will go much faster.
After a few rough starts, I got the whole thing running on this blog. The index page and the feeds are all static, but any archive page is built up on the fly. And you can even turn on a caching if you so desire. When you do this, a copy of the dynamic page is kept around for an hour so that if someone else visits that page again within the hour it doesn't have to rebuild it again from the database.
Setup for this feature was actually much easier than I thought, once you know a few things. One, it doesn't work if you are using Berkeley DB as your database. Which required me to convert to using mySQL. Which worked out okay overall, but I had to do a bit of tweaking since I seemed to have some odd corruption in my database. Once that was done I just had to turn on the dynamic publishing for the templates I wanted and create a templates_c directory in my blog's home directory. One republish later and everything was working just fine. It's pretty much transparent to the person browsing the site (which means your existing permalinks won't change at all.
It also lets you do caching of the dynamicly generated pages via the Smarty template engine. If you turn it on, dynamicly generated pages are cached for an hour by default (though you can tweak that if you need to). Pretty slick. While my site doesn't generate a ton of traffic, this is the kind of thing that could really be useful for a site that gets tons of hits a day.
One or two other gotchas. If you are using PHP you can't use opening tags in the format <?, you need to have them in the format <?php. As long as you do that you shouldn't have any issues. Also, this is supposedly not compatible with any other plugins (not an issue for me as I don't use any other plugins).
Another issue is how dynamic pages are built. I tend to do my template editing locally using cyberduck+subethaedit and I have my templates linked to a local file on my web server. I find it is much easier to edit them that way. The problem with this is that if you make a change to the local file, you need to go back into MT and save it there also for it to take affect. I personally think it should make a check to see if the file version has changed and load that one in if so.
Next thing to try: doing more with categories and sub-categories (You can see a bit of a preview to the right).
Skype is now available for OS X (It's been out for Windows for a while). Anyone I know using it? Drop me a line and let me know so I can add you. [via Joi Ito]
Just about everyone I know on LJ has been taking this damn quiz, so I thought I'd look and see how I did.
20 Questions to a Better Relationship
eXpressive: 6/10
Practical: 4/10
Physical: 5/10
Giver: 8/10You are a XSYG--Expressive Sentimental Physical Giver. This makes you a Sex Bomb.
You are sexy sex sex sex! The sexness! You are the sexiest, hottest and most charismatic of all types. You are a captivating speaker and a great dinner date -- relaxed, self-effacing, charming and generous. Your type probably has origins in something sad -- trying to keep the peace in a tough family situation, or an early heartbreak -- and you'll probably want to address and resolve that at some point, but in your relationships that heartache is pure gold!
You lie effortlessly -- not necessarily a bad thing. You can have problems with fidelity. You need frequent praise and validation, and in seeking it you can make decisions that aren't consistent with your general good judgment. In other words, don't cheat on your significant other just because someone is paying attention to you.
You strongly dislike conflict, and will avoid it. Like an XPYG, you give so much of yourself to your partner that you feel dismissed and unappreciated if you don't get the same in return. But you internalize your feelings more and have a hard time getting over them. You don't *want* to cheat -- you just keep finding yourself in vulnerable situations. But you'll stay with your partner in the long run from guilt and a desire to please.
Your sex life will always be hot. You are one of the rare people who can keep the fires of passion going forever -- if you find a good match. Find another XSYG and you will never need (or want) anyone else again.
Of the 33007 people who have taken this quiz, 9 % are this type.
Hrm, I'm not sure what I think of that quiz. I certainly would never use the term 'Sex Bomb' to describe myself. Though the parts about disliking conflict are very true. I think I might be an XSYG with RSYG tendencies.
Anyone else seen a bug with clear: both; on Safari? It seems like it is being a bit overzealous in what it is clearing. As you can see in the image here, it seems to be clearing the space from the <div> on the left, which I would think is out of the scope of that clear: both. It looks fine in Mozilla (and I believe IE).
Update: If you are looking at this at Safari you'll most probably see the behavior right now.
Wilson Mizner
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something."
[Quotes of the Day]
I have to say that I really like the look of the new iMac.
Update: Gizmodo has a really slick picture of them on the showroom floor.
E. B. White
"Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."
[Quotes of the Day]
Peter Sagal will be taking over Fanatical Apathy for the week (while Adam Felber flees the RNC).
Is this on? Hello?
[blows into microphone]
In the back, can you hear me? Yes? Okay. Good. Uh...
[straightens tie]
HAH! MINE! ALL MINE! MINE MINE MINE MINE! [Fanatical Apathy]
I've been working on a redesign for this site all day and think I finally have a home page at a point I like it. The only issue I'm having right now is that it doesn't seem to render right in Safari. I know it's an issue with the clear:both, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. It does render just fine in Firefox though. I've pushed the new style live so if anyone has any suggestions let me know. I also haven't tested it under IE (and I'm kind of dreading doing that).
Thomas A. Edison
"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."
[Quotes of the Day]
Cthulhu Plush Slippers. I wonder what sounds one gets from stepping on Cthulhu's face repeatedly. I wonder if anyone else carries these too, must look. [via Neil Gaiman]
Two interesting articles on anime related things.
An article on The strange but familiar world of a Japanese TV cartoon over at reason online. It's from May and is about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (One of my personal favorites of the last year or so). The author has some interesting notes on the subject.
"Depictions of shapely, scantily clad women are standard in Japanese comics and animations, and this series gladly provides them. But the message is subtly subversive: These bodies are literal commodities, shells their inhabitants can exchange if they feel like it. Kusanagi is female only in the sense that she wears female bodies, apparently to complement her favorite watch. No longer the key to identity, gender becomes a convention."
An article from Forbes.com about John Ledford, the creator of ADV Films. It tells of how the company got started and is a pretty amazing read. I especially like how Ledford got started by importing Japanese video game systems that weren't available here yet and selling them with an obscene markup.
Yesterday I set out for Newbury Comics in search of two CDs and I was quite happy to find that they had both of them. Usually I feel like I go off in search of CDs and never find what I'm looking for and end up buying way too much stuff because I start browsing. So, yesterday's purchaes were:
Make the Music go Bang! - X: I've been an X fan since high school and have about 3/4s of their CDs, but wanted to pick this up after reading a short article about the band on CNN.com a day or two ago. I've given a listen to the beginning of the first CD and still love their sound so much.
The Name of This Band is Talking Heads - Talking Heads: This is one of the Talking Heads albums I never got around to picking up. When I heard they were finally releasing it on CD I had to pick it up. The album was originally released in 1982 and had never been released on CD before. It has also been expanded with a bunch of unreleased material. I think this one will get its first listen today in the car, where I can turn it up really loud.
Possibly more comments to come as I listen.
My friend Ellen just got a new kitty and is looking for any advice people can offer. Drop her a line if you've got any recommendations.
News news and more...um...news.
...Now, on a totally different front, we got a kitty cat for Katie's birthday! Our first cat, so advice from cat owners is appreciated until I get tired of you all. ;) Here's a bunch of bad pictures, but at least a start. [Lumpy Gravy]
Update: Had to fix some links. Oops.
I like the idea of this a lot. It would be so handy to have a CD I could bring with me for setting up a machine with this stuff in one step.
Commentary: Project Idea: "IT Department In A Box"
It's dawned on me that a great many small sites (and possibly big sites too) would be greatly helped if someone made a single box that included:
- RequestTracker
- Some kind of up/down monitoring system like Nagios or BigBrother
- Some kind of capacity planning monitor like Cricket or MRTG
- TWiki or other Wiki, with a pre-built set of pages
- A serial console system like Conserver.com
- Bacula or other free backup system
While none of those are difficult to install for an experienced Linux person, the goal would be a system that the common "Mr. Fixit" kind of sysadmin that serves small sites would be able to load a CD-ROM and have the entire machine working very quickly. Each application would be pre-installed, and pre-customized. For example, the install procedure would ask for the IP address of a few key servers, and Nagios would default to monitoring it. The Wiki would have pre-configured pages that include add/remove/change procedures the above items (how to add/remove/change a server that Nagios monitors, add/remove/change a file system that Bacula is backing up, etc.). [Everything Sysadmin]<./p>
The thing I'd add to this is that the whole thing would come with a good set of docs on paper on how to use everything. While you can always go and print something like that off. I just like the feel of a real book for docs at times (I hate reading things on screen). I'd also even expand this idea some. How about a series of CDs for different purposes (firewall?). Tools like this would be really handy for people who are maybe doing part time sysadmin work for a small company (and as the post says, even big ones).
I had this game as a kid and loved it. It's one of those things that I wish was still floating around my parent's house somewhere. But here's a flash version of it. Now they need to make it networked and I'll be in heaven. Oh yeah, and it's loud.
It's flash! It's fun! It's a game. Dark Tower.
I actually have no idea what is going on in this game at all. At least, I didn't until I read the help a little bit. Oops. I liked all the noises and such, though, and I'm sure someone that got more sleep last night than me will like this game quite a bit! I would make up a better description, but I started a new job today and am sort of out of words at the moment. (I mean, there's only so many times one can say "Hi. Nice to meet you!" without completely losing some conversational power for the day. And trust me, I said it quite a bit. And I only remember approximately three names.) [#!/usr/bin/girl]
But either way it's pretty damn funny.
Cory Doctorow: This is a video of two teenaged boys playing Doom 3 -- you can't see the game, just their reaction. As Joey notes, these kids are screaming like hyenas as the boo-scareys lurch out of the Doom 3 shadows and leap on their characters. One of the kids actually gnaws a pillow when it all gets to be too much for him. Pretty cool endorsement for a game, actually. 7.8MB WMV Link
Mirror Link (Thanks, Quentin!) (via AccordionGuy) [Boing Boing Blog]
Someone stole The Scream.
Scream stolen from Norway museum
Armed robbers have stolen the iconic Edvard Munch painting, The Scream, from the Munch Museum in Norway.
Two masked thieves pulled the work and another painting, Madonna, off the wall as stunned visitors watched.
One robber threatened staff with a gun before the pair escaped in a waiting car, a museum officer told the BBC.
The Munch Museum says the two stolen paintings were among its most valuable - worth an estimated $19m together, according to the BBC's Lars Bevanger. [BBC News]
A LiveJournal user has used Google to figure out some stats about LJ users.
21% of people who hate their lives use Livejournal
[via] [Waxy.org Links]
From over at Waxy.org Links, one of the more maddening flash games I've ever tried.
Flash: The Invisibility Game
don't miss the ending to level 12 [via] [Waxy.org Links]
I've been trying out the trial version of Office 2004 for the Mac (and should have a real copy of it on the way very soon now). I have to say Microsoft has really done some cool things here. The project manager in Entourage rocks. It's the kind of thing that would be insanely useful to my ADDness. But there are a few things about it that I have to rant about. The first is that some kind of syncing between Entourage and Apple Address Book isn't in there. I read a nice post on this over at blogs.msdn.com by Dan Crevier that explains the reasoning, but it still annoys me. Thankfully there's a nice shareware app out there that does it called Sync Entourage - Address Book by Paul Berkowitz.
My next nitpick is one that I have with a few apps on OS X. In text fields, Cocoa uses emacs control characters for navigation. ^n, ^p, ^a, etc. Even ^k/^y. It's very handy for those of us who sometimes use those out of habit. The problem with Entourage is that it doesn't use these, and in fact those commands do other things altogether. I'd love to have a preference setting to turn that on if I wanted. I just find them much easier to use than the arrow keys. From a typing standpoint it doesn't require me to move my hand to another position at all.
Once I have the full version of Office I'll write up a bit more of a review, but so far it's pretty damn slick.
Maybe if I share this with the world it will get out of my head. Those wonderful wacky people at weebls have a little cartoon that I'm finding more addicting than Badgers. I mean, Everyone Love Magical Trevor. He makes cows disappear than reappear! I blame ladysissyphus
for my knowledge of this.
John Dodds of the Independent writes the first of two articles about switching from Windows to Mac. He's got some good to say, and some bad. The good:
A different issue emerged in setting up my Wi-Fi connection. (Apple calls it Airport). The absence of a confirmation message left me thinking I'd done something wrong, but all I needed was to unplug the Ethernet link: it switched over automatically. I had expected a Windows-style confirmation of success, but Apples don't prompt you when something's gone right, such as plugging in a disk or setting up a wireless router. They just silently incorporate it. That's a major difference in approach: Windows thinks it's a surprise worth telling you about when something works. Apple doesn't.
And some of the bad.
Also, when working with multiple windows it is sometimes difficult to find what you want, and the thinness of the side sliders of any window demands very accurate cursor control. I have often found myself working on the wrong documents or applications because they were already open or lying dormant on the desktop beneath.
Other annoyances include trying to get both time and date displayed, and the single-button mouse - no doubt there's an internal Apple logic, but it's still irksome. Much more annoying is the lack of a forward delete key. You can use a combination of keys, but I've still deleted the wrong text many times. Also, files downloaded from the web are all dropped into a separate folder, rather than one you specify. But these are minor quibbles. [The Independent] [via MacMerc]
I definitely agree with him on the mouse. It still kind of blows my mind that Apple doesn't use other mice. Almost everyone I know has bought a wheel mouse for their mac. I even have one that I use on my laptop when I'm at my desk. I'm curious to hear what hear what else he'll have to say in the second article.
Adam Felber gives us a transcript of an obscure event from the olympics. Here's a snip of the beginning.
Olympic Transcript [Obscure Event Edition]
TOM: Welcome back, and we're just in time for the 800 meter sideways cobblestick shuttlerun. With me, I have 1976 bronze medalist, Lucy Pinker. Lucy, what are we looking for today?
LUCY: Well, Tom, Hungary's Bidrai Malouva is the favorite in this event, having taken gold in Sydney.
TOM: He's more machine than man!
LUCY: Uh, well, sure...
TOM: But don't count out the plucky American, Morgan Hurren. He gave Malouva a real run for his money in Sydney, finishing a very close 7th, and he's been training exceptionally hard for this year's games.
[Cut to exciting video package about Hurren and his various trials and tribulations as he trained to rival the preeminent sideways cobblestick shuttlerunner in the world. Morgan turns out to be a startlingly down-to-earth kid, and you get the sense that maybe, just maybe, he's got a shot here. He's plucky.]
TOM: And there he is, the Kansas kid who has the whole cobblestick shuttlerun world abuzz. [Fanatical Apathy]
#!/usr/bin/girl once again alerts me to important news:
Freddy and Jason...and?
I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry about Freddy vs. Jason vs...Ash. [#!/usr/bin/girl]
My personal feeling? I will only allow this if Ash gets to kill them off for good. Or at least send them out to another dimension or something.
Those wacky animals are at it again.
Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground
SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.
"We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around," said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 km) northeast of Seattle.
The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds. [CNN.com]
I personally like that he was smart enough to avoid the Busch beer. He's even got taste!
Thanks to those fine folk at Boing Boing for this link. I may have to destroy you all for it.
So wrong: Something Awful re-captions selections from Watchmen.
Link
(thanks, Zed) [Boing Boing Blog]
So wrong, but so funny. Hmm, what other comics to re-caption.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
"Sometimes what's right isn't as important as what's profitable."
[Quotes of the Day]
Mark Pilgrim writes about how most developers are morons or assholes in a post about why specs matter.
Most developers are morons, and the rest are assholes. I have at various times counted myself in both groups, so I can say this with the utmost confidence. [dive into mark] [via The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty]
I believe this applies to sysadmins also, but there are probably one or two more groupings. I know I've fallen into both camps at one time or another. Though I tend to think that my time in the asshole camp was usually caused by dealing with a moron.
So scary I think I want one.
I would have posted this up about 5 minutes before now, but I noticed they only had three more in stock, so I thought I should get there before you punks. Because lord knows, there's nothing that goes together more sweetly than a distended Hello Kitty head and a light, battery-powered sucking force. And for $10, even! If this thing moves itself around by itself - something that I'm sad to say probably isn't the case - I would buy 24 of them and set them loose around the house. It'd be cheaper than a Roomba and at least 24 times as cute.
Also, have you noticed people saying kawaii a lot lately, too? I doubt they are doing the clap and giggle. You gotta do the clap and giggle.
Read - Hello Kitty Desktop Cleaner - Pink (Duh!) [Jbox via RedFerret via Engadget] More Hello Kitty yum yum links after the jump. [Gizmodo]
I also agree that they would be much more cool if they moved around on their own. And even if I did say kawaii, I'd refuse to clap and giggle at the same time.
Voltaire
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
[Quotes of the Day]
27 years ago today, at the young age of 8, I was attending a program for 'gifted' children at a place called the Talcott Mountain Science Center. I was taking an astronomy class and got to watch the first test flight of the Space Shuttle "Enterprise" as it was launched (somewhat) from the back of a 747. I remember them working hard to get a good tv signal and us eventually seeing a scratchy version of it on TV. At the time I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen, and it still ranks pretty high.
I can't even begin to imagine this happening at an event here. People would riot.
Olympic brand-whoring attains new, shameful low
The Interational Olympic Committee -- whose high-horse is well and truly elevated when it comes to lecturing atheletes about doping -- is policing spectators at the games to ensure that they aren't toting brand-marks for their sponsors' rivals. Penalties for buying the wrong product range from confiscation of your goods to being forced to wear your t-shirt logo-side-in. The worst of it is the steaming craopla from the IOC official who says "We have to protect official sponsors who have paid millions to make the Olympics happen." Oh, rilly? Or what? They won't sponsor the Olympics anymore? Earth-to-official: companies sponsor your games because they're important and lots of people watch them, not because they can be assured that Olympic venues will be swept clean of rival logos.
I wonder what the sponsors thing of this. I'm sure this is not the kind of publicity they wanted from the Olympics. I wonder if we'll be hearing comments from the sponsors on this now.
Jonas M Luster writes about a conversation he overheard at some cafe.
...On the table across me, a girl and an older woman. The woman listens, the girl lays on the decibel. She’s an intellectual she’ll have her counterpart (and the rest of us patrons) know. She’s educated, she has a job, and she knows someone who knows someone who lost a brother on 9/11. So she knows.
“Kerry,” she says, “Kerry is a douche. He is kissing UN ass. And he said something about a ‘more sensitive’ approach to war”. And all those lies about torture by US soldiers. Wrong, she says. Those Al Quaeda (she pronounces it “All Ksaider”) terrorists deserve a beating. And this Saddam guy, he’ll get what’s coming to him for killing Americans. Those Islamists shouldn’t be in America, and shouldn’t be in Iraq.
“She’s cute,” I think, trying for a second not to become entangled in her rant. I try to focus on the waitress, who’s even cuter and has yet to turn me off by yelling loudly across tables. I fail. My eyes wander back, and so do my mind and ears. She’s explaining welfare and abuse by “those Mexicans” of said governmental help program to the older woman. While I contemplate wether to order more coffee from the bottomless supply, we’re at gay marriages, prayer in schools, and SUVs. She hates SUVs. Only liberals drive those Tahoes and Trailblazers and Avalanches. [Jonas M Luster's blog]
I saw this great bit of news over at BBC.
Microsoft plans cut-price Windows
Microsoft is to launch a low-cost version of its Windows XP program to try to halt the rise of rival Linux software.
...Microsoft's new software - dubbed "XP Lite" - will feature lower resolution graphics and limited options for networking computers together.
It will also limit users to running three programs concurrently - a far cry from the full version of XP, where the only practical limit comes from the speed of the computer and the size of its memory.
It will be available initially in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and two other as yet unspecified Asian countries. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
So let's see, since this is supposedly to compete against linux let's compare. Linux gives me no real restrictions as far as how many programs I run and what graphics modes I can use. And with XP Lite I can run three programs.
Oh my!
He saw comet-tails on every pitch.
The LSD No-Hitter:[Off On A Tangent]When the subject of baseball and drugs comes up, the story of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis and his celebrated 'LSD No-Hitter' stands out above all others. On June 12, 1970, the 25-year-old pitcher was between starts, so he stayed back in his Los Angeles hotel while his team flew on to San Diego to play the Padres. Ellis invited his girlfriend over, and they dropped hits of acid around noon.
As he tells it in his autobiography, In the Country of Baseball:
'I had taken LSD ... I thought it was an off day. That's how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at 12 noon. At one, my girlfriend looked in the paper and said 'Dock, you're pitching today'.'"
(Should I be admitting this here...?) Back in my partying days I certainly never took LSD, and while doing so never ever spun out at parties. And I definitely never learned to spin records while tripping. Because uh, drugs are bad. These days I stay away from that stuff, the last thing I need is to be high when I get the call for a new lung (talk about a recipe for a bad trip).
Here's an interesting product designed to get your site more traffic. It's sad to see things like this becoming even this mainstream.
and the winner ...
...of today's Possibly-a-Big-Pile-of-Puppy-Poop Award is RSS Equalizer – and it's only $97! Could it be just a joke? I sure won't pay to find out. According to its Terms of Use, "While we try to include accurate stuff on the site, we're not promising you it's accurate. In fact, we're not promising you anything except fun and entertainment." Hmm... ;~)) [link via 0xDECAFBAD] [jenett.radio]
I'm still trying to figure out the 'fun and excitement' part.
Relaxation Combat Team Valerian, at your service! That seems to be the battle cry of these superheros in a new creation by CLAMP called Sweet Valerian. I personally think this is just further evidence of drug use on the part of people producing anime. This show is like the Powerpuff Girls on Acid and E at the same time. In the second episode they fight a cell phone monster and defeat it by drowning it in water. My brain hurts.
Further proof that they'll make a sequel for just about anything (and keep making them).
Though I have to admit, it's definitely original. I'm also amazed that there is still any life in the Chucky franchise. [via 
jwz]
I haven't been keeping up with this as much as I'd like, but I hope to be a little bit more on the ball for at least the next week.
For today we have For the Love of Life, by David Sylvian (mp3). Which is the ending song for the anime Monster. I've been a fan of his for a while and when I watched the first episode of Monster I remember thinking, "hey... this sounds like David Sylvian." And while watching the credits I saw it was! It's such a wonderful song to use as the ending to that show.
EDIT: OOps, forgot the link the first time round.
I thought this was funny.
Forbes thinks RSS is dumb
read the "Worst" section of the Standard review [via] [Waxy.org Links]
What's even funnier? Forbes.com has RSS feeds themselves. Which I guess don't really serve much purpose either
I decided to play around with iCal today and found myself entering all the upcoming anime DVD releases into it (through 9/7/2004) based on the information at AnimeonDVD.com. I published it so that it can be viewed via the web or 
subscribed to in iCal (I think Mozilla Calendar lets you do this also, but I'm not sure).
I'll try and keep this updated with around a month's worth of information.
LA Weekly has a cool feature on the history of the Internet Movie Database. The part of the article I was happy to see was acknowledging the early roots of the database.
That’s a bit of an understatement considering Needham ended up transforming a small hobby into an international business. But remember, back in 1989, terms like “World Wide Web” were totally foreign. Needham joined a movie discussion group on what was then the fledgling university-linked Internet. The members were almost all American male college students, and their favorite topic was — you guessed it — who’s the most attractive actress and what movies has she been in.
Soon, the guys volunteered their private databases and actresses begat actors, which begat directors, which begat writers, which begat cinematographers, which begat plot summaries. [LA Weekly]
I remember when I was at CMU hanging out on rec.arts.movies and people discussing THE LIST. Which was this list of actresses and movies. If you search on Google Groups you can find numerous mentions of it.
Once again that #!/usr/bin/girl finds the cool flash games. This time it is Shoot the Cliche. My high score was around 252, but I only played it twice. And remember. Spare the kittens.
I was going through my bookmarks, cleaning up things that I hadn't visited in ages or that were dead, and I ran into a link for The Monolith Game. Someday I'd love to try and set up a game of this, just to see if it were actually doable.
Another thing I'd love to try post transplant is the Tube Challenge.
Hmm. I wonder if I can use this service yet. I mean, if I had a date anytime in the next decade.
'Escape-A-Date' ringtones help you lie like an (unwired) dog
Cingular Wireless recently introduced an odd new tool for subscribers. "Escape-a-Date" is touted as "the perfect service to use when you are afraid that your blind date may not be just right for you." Users schedule a "rescue" phone call at a pre-set time which tells them exactly how to lie their way into speedy escape. Eight randomly-generated humorous scripts are offered, here's a snip from one:
[Boing Boing Blog]Hey, this is your escape-a-date call. If you're looking for an excuse, I got it. Just repeat after me, and you'll be on your way!
"Not again! Why does that always happen to you? ... Alright, I'll be right there." Now tell 'em that your roommate got locked out, and you have to go let them in. Good luck!"
I remember doing this kind of thing to get out of meetings that were driving me insane.
Tsk. Tsk. George. You know you shouldn't be blogging while on the job.
[via Waxy.org Links]
Alfred North Whitehead
"We think in generalities, but we live in detail."
[Quotes of the Day]
Tim Wu (over on lessig blog) has listed a bunch of Jack Valenti quotes from over the years. Here's a sample:
On the nascent cable industry, in 1974
“[Cable will become] a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.”On the VCR, 1983
"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault ... and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.
We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry ... whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR]."
"[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."On the public domain, 1995
"A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?"On the meaning of value, 1983
"Nothing of value is free. It is very easy ... to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled."And the Valenti slogan
"If you cannot protect what you own, you don’t own anything."
Over on Gizmodo there's a post about the new SMC SMCWRK-G, which is a portable wireless access point similar to the Airport Express.
SMC has announced a new portable wireless access point a la the Airport Express. They're calling it the "EZ Connect™ g 2.4GHz 802.11g Wireless Traveler’s Kit SMCWTK-G," but we'll probably just call it the SMCWRK-G or Dance Panda Mandy, as it suits us. For what it lacks in good looks it makes up in features, as the SMCWRK-G can do everything the Airport Express can do and more (save the iTunes streaming), including act as an Ethernet bridge. It might not be attractive, but it's $30 cheaper, ringing in at just $100.
Perennial Wi-Fi smart guy Glenn Fleishmann weighs in with a little more detail at Wi-Fi Networking News.
Read - SMC Offers Multifunction Traveling Gateway [WiFiNetNews]
Read - Press Release [SMC][Gizmodo]
The Airport Express is also a print server, which SMC isn't listing as a feature for this device. This looks like it is more useful if you just need wireless access when you travel. But for $30 you're losing a bit of functionality, and you need to carry around a power supply to go with it.
Today while looking for a wireless mouse I picked up an Airport Express. For those of you who aren't aware of this device, it is Apple's mini base-station, music streaming, usb printer sharing, network extending device. Currently, I have it set up downstairs hooked to the stereo and had it cranked up while I sat out on the porch. Currently, any mac in the house can stream music to it from iTunes. In some ways it's not a perfect solution, since in my parent's case they'd have to go upstairs to their mac to start iTunes. But for someone with a laptop or a laptop and a desktop it just plain rocks. And I'm not the only one who is loving it.
Here's where I think Apple was smart with this device. They've made it so easy to want more than one of them. I've already got one and can easily justify two more. The second I'll use in my room as a print server/wireless client. The third will go on the third floor hooked into the home theatre setup. At around $130 each it isn't something I'll pick up right away, but once I get my laser printer I know I'll be eyeing it.
Of course, then I may want one for when I'm on the road. MacMegasite has a neat article about using the Airport Express in a hotel room.
I'm sure they must have told me sometime before yesterday that they were going away from Tuesday till Friday, but I can't remember it at all. So, since my parents will be enjoying themselves on the cape I get the place to myself again. Except it is during the week. How boring. Maybe I'll drive down to see my friend Patty (who gets a big congrats for getting a new job!).
I just turned on comment moderation for people who aren't using TypeKey. I've gotten fed up with having to keep going and deleting comments. Sorry for any inconvenience. Real comments will still show up, though not right away.
John Perry Barlow has a good idea for something to do during the RNC
Dancing in the Streets:Revolution with a Smile
I spent most of my political life as a Republican. While that's a little hard to imagine now, I have sufficient experience to know that the commonly held view that Republicans either can't dance or won't dance is inaccurate. When I was a Republican, I was as dedicated to dancing as I am now and there were others like me, as I recall.
Still, part of what drove me from the party - aside from a categorical repudiation by the current administration of most Republican principles - is a dour dancelessness that crept into Republican "culture." It seems increasingly ironic to call the GOP a party at all...
...I want to dance in the streets.
I don't want to confront the Republicans. I want to discombobulate them. I don't want to argue with them, which would only convince them further, I want to throw them off their game. I don't want to be aggressive in my discontent. God knows there's been plenty of that on all sides. I want to be genial. But disconcerting.
So, to that end, I propose the following: I want to organize a cadre of 20 to 50 of us. I want to dress us in suits and other plain pedestrian attire and salt us among the sidewalk multitudes in Republican-rich zones. At a predetermined moment, one of us will produce a boom-box and crank it up with something danceable. Suddenly, about a third of the people on the sidewalk, miscellaneously distributed in the general throng, will start dancing like crazy and continue to do so for for about a minute. Then we will stop, melt back into the pedestrian flow, and go to another location to erupt there. [BarlowFriendz]
I can just see the headlines...
While I was in the midst of my search for Drive-In information, an article from the NYTimes showed up in my news reader about renegade drive-ins.
LIKE most cities in Silicon Valley's outer stratosphere, Santa Cruz has a district dedicated to an odd marriage of high and low tech, where lumber mills and cement factories squat beside gleaming software business parks. But the geeks and hipsters who parked their bikes on this slab of broken land and sneaked past the "no trespassing" sign were not here on business. They were going to the movies.
Few theaters consist of dead weeds and a mound of gray slag squeezed between a laboratory and an alloy manufacturing firm. But these movie buffs have brought their own theater with them. For three years, cult-movie buffs have been organizing "guerrilla drive-ins" in a number of cities, rigging together a nest of digital projectors, DVD players, and radio transmitters or stereo speakers, spreading the word online, and assembling on parking lots or fields to watch obscure films beneath the stars. [NYTimes:Technology]
This sounds just too cool. I wonder if anyone is doing anything like this in my area. I'm going to have to do some research. If not anyone wanna try to organize one in the Hartford, CT area? I think it might be easier to do here than in MA.
Recently I've gotten an itch to go to a Drive-In movie. I haven't been since I was a kid and it just seems like it would be a fun thing to do. In doing a bit of research online I found Drive-Ins.com. It is a guide to Drive-In information. Everything from reviews to QTVRs of drive-ins. It also has a fairly completely database of past and present Drive-Ins. The fun thing was looking to see how many were in the area I grew up. It almost seems like there was one every other town. And, I did find one that is open not too far away (That also has their own web site). Along with a review over on Mapquest that made me laugh and cry:
this place is awsome for 7 dolars u get 2 movies and u get to watch them in ur car!! thats better than that o wait when its warm out get some chairs and watch the movies and have a picnic its like dinner and a movie and ur not at home!
D00D!
Alton Brown in his Speedo TSB2000.
