Ego! Ego! Ego!: Geekiness Archives
December 18, 2009
My life is now completeIf you've ever watched The Colbert Report with me, you know that I HAVE to watch the Spartina logo at the end. You know, where the egret chilling by the pond gets eaten by a little fish. I always go "Heeee!" or "FISH!" or something. It's my thing.
I've been saying for AGES that I need an animated .gif of that.
Now I have one. Thank you Gif Soup and Adobe ImageReady.
And in handy icon/avatar size:
December 12, 2009
Weekend Update: Rhythm Gaming Hardware BadasseryThis is the weekend of rhythm gaming hardware badassery.
FIrst, I rewired my beloved Les Paul controller. Les Pauls are easily the best controllers EVER for Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but they have one major flaw: the way the removable neck connects to the body means that eventually, the fret buttons become unreliable. That means that even if you play a song perfectly, some notes just.... don't happen.
Well, some clever folks have rewired theirs and Twon found me a tutorial, so today I busted out the toolbox and the wires Twon had found at Fry's, and set to work. The process basically consists of opening the controller up, removing the connectors between the neck and base of the guitar, and hardwiring them together, then reassembling the controller. I managed not only to do it, but to do it right the first time! Woo!
The other item today was a bit more complicated.
September 15, 2009
"What Makes People Want to Play Rock Band and Guitar Hero?"So Gary Marcus wrote an article on Guitar Hero and Rock Band purporting to examine their popularity. He put my hackles up with his first sentence:
In some ways, Guitar Hero and Rock Band seem like the stupidest games on earth.Then he proved that he knows zilch about playing them at an advanced level:There's no need to strategize ahead (as in chess); no need for big muscles (as in basketball)...Clearly he doesn't know anything about competitive GH/RB. Star Power strategy is a key part of racking up points (and if you want to know just how deep that rabbit hole goes, go on the ScoreHero forums and search for "squeezing"). If he thinks the games don't require muscle, he should come over and try playing "Number of the Beast" on expert guitar. Antwon down-strums that monster. Or hell, he should play expert drums! That'll leave most folks sweating buckets.Then, of course, he makes the classic mistake:
Why mash buttons on a video game controller, when you could put Sgt. Pepper on your CD player, or learn to play a real guitar? ... Whether you buy that theory or not, the plastic "guitars" in Guitar Hero have little to do with real guitars; there are no strings, and no frets, there's no soundhole, and no jack to hook up to an amplifier, either; except for a bit of clattering, the plastic pseudo-instrument makes no sound at all. And there's no room for genuine creativity, as there would be with a real instrument. A real apprentice guitarist must spend hours and hours practicing scales and chords, and learning about the relation between melody and harmony; an aficionado of Guitar Hero skips straight to the songs, and may well never learn the difference between a major scale and a minor.It's "Play a real guitar, fag!" in long form. To which my standard reply is: do you tell folks who play Grand Theft Auto to run over real hookers and steal real cars? Should afficionadoes of Quake shoot real aliens?
But, he concludes, it's ACTUALLY about how stupid we are.
Games like Guitar Hero set up one of the most potent illusions of temporal contingency I've ever seen: if the player presses the button at the right time, the computer plays back a recording of a particular note (or set of notes) played by a professional musician. The music itself is potent and rewarding -- Keith Richards really knows how to bend a note -- but the real secret to the game is what happens is that fact if you miss the button, you don't hear the note.The brain whirs away, and notices the contingency. When I push the button, I hear Keith Richards; when I fail to push the button (or press the wrong button, or press it late), I don't hear Keith Richards. Therefore, I am Keith Richards!
Dude, what the shit. Seriously. Wuuuut.
Did he not read the lovely article on Beatles Rock Band in the New York Times a couple weeks back, where one of the Beatles said that Rock Band is a lot like the miming along to music he and the other Beatles did when they were younger? Rock Band (and occasionally Guitar Hero, but don't get me started on my rant of why GH is an inferior franchise at this point) is about creating the sensation of playing music in a group without having to put in the endless hours necessary to learn an instrument. And, most importantly, it's about HAVING FUN.
FUN.
Maybe Mr. Marcus doesn't remember how to do that.
July 09, 2009
Nerdcore is NOT Dead! Nerdcore is LIFE!MC Lars thinks Nerdcore is dead, apparently because some kids posted a stupid video on YouTube.
STOP THE PRESSES!
A genre has practitioners who are lame? It must be DEAD and OVER. Riiiiiight.
I think the problem is that MC Lars sees Nerdcore as defined by "home-produced beats and an awkward flow." That, to me, is NOT Nerdcore. Sure, a lot of Nerdcore has that feel to it, because a lot of practitioners started out that way. MC Frontalot is a freaking Nerdcore GOD and he often has a rather awkward flow.
But that's not what Nerdcore is.
Nerdcore is rapping about nerdy shit. Not the bullshit that comes out of guys like Jay-Z and Kanye (do not get me started on Mr. Anti-Literacy, seriously. Fuck you, Kanye).
Nerdcore guys rap about sci-fi cons and D&D and not fitting in back in high school. Shit I can identify with. They don't rap about how their "bitches" need to "get out the way." If they have a girlfriend, they tend to glorify her ("her name is Schaffer the Doctor, cos she's a Ph.D!" sayeth Schaffer the Darklord of his wife, for example).
Is Nerdcore a subgenre? Yes. Will it ever be mainstream? Probably not. That's fine by me. Nerds aren't mainstream either (except here in beautiful Silicon Valley, woo!). I'm going to keep buying Schaffer's CDs. And MC Lars'. And those of Beefy and the rest too. I'll download their songs. I'll keep pimping them to my friends as good music, because they are.
MC Lars bitching about Nerdcore and saying that he "cringed" when he was called a "nerdcore rapper." disappoints me. Not all of MC Lars' stuff is Nerdcore, true. He's a general, funny rapper first, and happens to do some Nerdcore stuff. But his talking about groundbreaking bands and whining that Nerdcore people should be doing the same thing just strikes me as pretentious.
It sounds to me like MC Lars doesn't just have the wrong idea about what Nerdcore is, but he also has the wrong idea about what it means to be a nerd. Nerds are passionate and do what they love regardless of what mainstream society thinks. Why do nerds have a rep for being unpopular and unfashionable? Because they care more about their passions than about being popular and keeping up with bullshit fashion trends.
I suspect that some fledgeling Nerdcore artists will quit upon reading MC Lars' blog entry, but that's okay. The ones who are passionate about their music will stick around, and those are the ones I care about. The ones who keep Nerdcore alive.
January 30, 2009
Notes from She's GeekyThis is my notes post for She's Geeky. Instead of doing a separate post for each session, I'm just going to keep adding to this post as I go to things.
October 28, 2008
Spammers = fail.Man. Some jerkwad is using ealasaid.com in the return headers of spam. I'm getting oodles of bounces and no doubt am now once again on a bunch of blacklists.
If you're someone I email with regularly, please be sure to put me in your address book or on your whitelist or whatever.
September 22, 2008
Rock Band 2!So. Antwon and I took a vacation last week.
Rock Band 2 came out last Sunday (9/14).
If you think these two items are connected... you are correct. The process went something like this: "Hey, we haven't taken vacation since our honeymoon. We could plan a roadtrip, but we're feeling pretty stressed out and burned out. Hey, how about we just take a week off and hide in the apartment? Awesome. Oh, and Rock Band 2 comes out 9/14..."
Rock Band 2 is awesome. It is made more awesome by the insanity we went through to get a copy at midnight on 9/14.
July 22, 2008
More on Dr. Horrible. Contains Spoilers. And swearing.OK, I finally watched it. It's online here.
Classic Whedon.
July 21, 2008
Dr. HorribleAfter reading this I am kind of annoyed that I didn't catch Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog while it was free. I don't want to pay money to watch Joss 'The Bastard' Whedon be all bastardly yet again. Sigh. For fuck's sake, Joss, you don't have to kill someone in every goddamn story.
Maybe I can rent the DVD from Netflix when it comes out or something. Or borrow it from one of my many Whedon-fan friends. :)
The post I linked above does a good job of starting to explain why I find Whedon's work so infuriating. Check out the comments as well.
June 30, 2008
Hi, Mike!OK, so I'm reading through Mike Birbiglia's old Secret Public Journal entries, and I found this one in which he says: "I don’t even Google myself anymore; I get “Google alerts.” Which means the Google Robot emails you when you’ve been mentioned on a blog or a website."
That kind of made me go, whoa! What if Mike has totally seen the times I blogged about him here? That would be awesome! Because I adore Mike. He and Gabriel Iglesias are my co-favorite comedians of all time (they are both too incredibly awesome to favor one over the other). He probably hasn't checked me out on account of he is probably blogged about all the time because he tours and is on Comedy Central and stuff, but hey, let a fangirl have her fantasies, okay?
So: Mike, if you're reading this, Hi! You are awesome!
And, if you're not Mike, hi anyway. And if you don't know who Mike is, I linked a couple of his bits from this entry, or you can get his special, "What I Should Have Said Was Nothing," from Netflix. Check him out.
June 17, 2008
Firefox 3!Well, I was a good little Mozilla fan and downloaded the new Firefox today. Apparently they're going for a record number of downloads, so everybody upgrade their Firefox!
I'm not entirely sure I like the new look, frankly, but I've always been a little resistant to change.
June 16, 2008
I Made This!We here at Youhaas Global take our fake music very seriously.
How seriously, you ask?
So seriously that we have seven fake guitars, and will be acquiring an eighth with the purchase of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in a few short weeks.
So seriously that I made guitar hangers for our fake guitars this weekend so they wouldn't just be piled up by the TV.
Yeah, you read that right.
June 10, 2008
Dethklok Show = BRUTALSo, I'm a fan of Metalocalypse. I saw the Dethklok show in Berkeley and had a great time, so when I heard Dethklok would be playing the Fillmore in SF, I had to go. Right? Right.
So last Thursday, I get all dressed up (ok, jeans, muscle-t, and docs dressed up, but still), get my shit together, and drive to the city. I find parking (eventually), meet my buds
BreakManXCody and Megs, and we go inside. The Fillmore has a full bar, so we all get drinks (which would prove to be a mistake) and find a good spot up near the stage.So far so good, right?
June 03, 2008
I am... an Iron Man fangirlWell, it's official.I'm an Iron Man fangirl.
The first time I saw the movie (for my review), I loved it. I was a trifle bored in the early bits, because it's paced like a drama and I had managed to get in an action movie mindset (courtesy of Tony nearly getting blown up in the opening sequence). But once Tony had become Iron Man, I was stoked enough to ignore how freakin' long it seemed to take to get there.
Then I saw it again with some coworkers, and I was blown away. The bits I had thought of as slow were suddenly full of nuance. This is a superhero movie with actual character development, wtf? I saw it again with my Mom for Mothers Day, and (as anybody who follows my Twitter or Facebook status knows) saw it twice over this last weekend. That brings me to a total of five viewings. And I want to see it again.
Oh, yeah, I've got it bad.
There's just so much detail in the film, it's amazing. Every time I go, I catch something new. My latest discovery was that the news crawls we see on TVs in the background are actually pertinent. That blew my mind. Jon Favreau is an awesome director, and I really, really hope that the other two Iron Man movies he wants to make get greenlit.
It's also put me on a Paul Bettany kick -- he voices Jarvis, the sentient (and rather sarcastic) computer system that runs Tony's house and helps Tony build and use his armor. You may remember him from films like Firewall, Master and Commander, and The DaVinci Code (which is a horrible movie, good grief). He was also the marvellous Chaucer in the delightfully fluffy "A Knight's Tale." Yay.
So. Anybody want to go see "Iron Man" with me? I promise not to mutter the dialog along with the characters... at least not too loudly.
May 09, 2008
GHIIIThis guy is spot on about how freaking impossible GHIII is at the higher levels. Also, very very funny. Kudos to Rich for the link!
May 06, 2008
Iron Man Rules! Also, review up.
My review, which I tried to keep my fangirlishness out of. I think I mostly succeeded.
I've been squeeing about it in increasing amounts since seeing it over the weekend - in true fangirl fashion, the more I think about the movie the more I like it, and the more I like it, the more enthusiastic I am about Tony Stark, who is a fantastically awesome character. Hot, flawed, funny, and smart as all hell. What's not to like?
It's nice to know that some things never change. I may be 30, married, and to all outward appearances a responsible adult, but I can still be turned to a squealing teenager by a fun movie.
NOTE: Somehow this got saved as "unpublished" instead of "published" and so didn't appear on my blog. Sigh. I am lame.
April 30, 2008
To Tweet, Or Not To Tweet, That Is The QuestionVia Earthdog, I read this piece on GapingVoid.com about why the author has quit Twitter. It gave me some food for thought. The conclusions of said thought are:
The folks who are talking about how useless Twitter is seem to be missing the point. A lot of them are the kind of Twitterer I try not to be: one who compulsively updates any time they change from their previous status, and one who reads the updates of every single person who has friended them or whom they've friended. Folks in the comments talked like Twitter took up hours out of their days.
I believe those people are Doing It Wrong.
I only receive by text message the updates of the cream-of-the-crop: folks who are very close to me or whose posts I find very interesting (or those who post less than once a day on average). I only read via RSS the updates of folks I like or find interesting. High post frequency usually results in my dropping a person from those whose updates I get on my phone, and a low post interestingness usually results in my dropping a person from my Twitter feed altogether (I may keep them on my Following list so I can check in occasionally, but I won't read their updates regularly).
I try only to post when I am (a) doing something interesting or (b) have an interesting observation to make. I do not always succeed (as you can see by my recent Tweet, "Running errands," heh), but I do try to post fewer than three times a day.
Twitter takes up maybe, MAYBE, 15 minutes of my day, if you include the time it takes to feel my phone vibrate, retrieve my phone, open my phone, read the message, and delete the message. I like Twitter, because it's interesting to me what my interesting friends/family/acquaintances are doing. I like when Earthdog tweets a question and I have an answer. It's a fun, quick way to communicate.
I genuinely believe the folks who think Twitter is evil and a waste of time are doing it wrong. Like a lot of things on the web, it can be a really useful and fun tool ... or it can be turned into a time sink. The trick is not to turn it into a time sink.
April 16, 2008
Dethklok is touring again! BRUTAL!I will be at the San Francisco show. WOO HOO!
April 03, 2008
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor Discusses her StrokeThis video is a must-see. It's nearly 20 minutes long, but worth every minute.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor woke up one morning to discover she was having a stroke. She discusses what the experience was like from the inside, knowing what she did about how the brain works, and explains what she has learned from her experience. Absolutely fascinating. The video and a transcript are available here, and I am cut-and-pasting the transcript below the fold for posterity.
March 31, 2008
Youhaas Global Brings the RockAs Antwon has already noted, he and I did the Endless Setlist in Rock Band over the weekend. Again. He sang on Expert, I played lead guitar on Expert. It was epic win.
Like last time, my shoulder is sore, but unlike last time it does not appear to be utterly destroyed (I was very careful with my Overdrive/Star Power activation moves). I'm taking the evening off from Aikido to be on the safe side and am really babying it. Here's hoping it recovers a lot faster than last time.
March 13, 2008
Sigh.
Someday I will learn that this is not a fruitful use of my time. As annoying as it is to abandon the field to idiots, it may well be better for my sanity. After a year or so of being fairly restrained, I gave in to temptation today. Wasted my time and that of readers of the forum I was posting on.
So annoying.
My one consolation is that it wasted the guy's time too ... though I think he might've enjoyed it, being one of those not-quite-but-nearly trolls. Feh.
Just another Goddamn Learning Experience, as they say.
January 18, 2008
BlogrollMan. My blogroll is getting outta control! Nevermind my actual RSS aggregator list. Feh.
So: NOTICE! I am cleaning out my blogroll, tidying it up so it'll be a bit more useful. For one thing, I'm taking out the list of Flickr feeds I subscribe to. You can see who I've got friended through Flickr by looking at my Flickr profile, so it's all there. No need to duplicate it here.
January 07, 2008
Journal vs. BlogFadethecat on why she has a journal, not a blog.
The journal vs. blog debate has been going on for ages, and I think she sums up the difference really well. Journals are like the journals folks used to (or in my case, still do) keep on paper -- accounts of what you've been up to, your thoughts, etc.
I have a blog because a blog is a bit narrower in scope -- it's your thoughts, usually on a particular topic. You don't have to catch up if you've been away, you just go back to posting. While I am happy to twitter on and off about what I'm up to in the moment, but the thought of having my journal online where anybody could read it gives me the willies. I do have an unusually open blog, but it's not as open as a journal would be.
As I often tell people when describing my blog, I have this blog because I used to send things out to my peeps in bursts via email, and the blog lets me avoid clogging their inboxes and possibly reach a wider audience.
December 13, 2007
Sad newsTerry Pratchett has Alzheimer's. He describes it as "an embuggerance" and says "Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet :o)"
Still.
It's a horrible disease and he is way too young (59!!) to have to deal with this crap. I was hoping we'd have a new Discworld novel every couple of years until he was in his eighties. I'm hoping that this is an early diagnosis (sounds like it is), and that all the exciting new tech they're working on for Alz patients will be put to good use on Pterry and he'll have a lot longer to be himself and keep writing.
December 11, 2007
McWhatNow?A new AIM bot has appeared in my chat program - McLovin12Four. Googling shows me nada, except that other people are Googling about it too.
Any of my readers know what this is?
December 07, 2007
Linguistic GeekitudePeter and I wound up talking for something like half an hour the other day about whether or not "Christmas tree light repairman" is a word in English. (It is one in German, which is how the matter came up.)
His blog entry explains things pretty thoroughly, I think. I do, however, still maintain that I'm right - "Christmas tree light repairman" is four words, not one.
Unnervingly enough, everything I look up to support my assertion is pretty inconclusive (see his dictionary samples) . For example: Quoth The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, "A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or abstraction. ... Compound nouns are nouns made up of more than one word: razzle-dazzle, bedroom, cream puff, toothache, bubble bath, nuit blanche, she-wolf, shadowboxing, guardian angel, gun control, amour-propre, white-collar worker..." So, "Christmas tree light repairman" is a compound noun (it names a person or an abstraction, I think). But is it a word? Well, it's made up of words, so it should be something else, right? But, a noun is a word and it's a word, so...
*headdesk*
This is why being a grammar/language geek is at once awesome and frustrating. Ultimately, this is all meaningless semantics, but I like closure. And since I have a strong appeal to authority, I like it when authorities (like dictionaries) are conclusive. But in this case, they're not. Sigh.
December 04, 2007
Further proof that I am a geekSome time before Rock Band came out, I mentioned to Twon that I should ping the guy who runs the music school I used to attend and ask for a drum lesson to help me out on drums.
Then we got Rock Band, and I kinda sucked on drums, so I emailed him to ask about getting a oneoff lesson.
He said yes!
Last night, I went to a music school and spent half an hour learning from a pro with forty years of teaching experience so that I can do better at a video game.
I am a geek, and I am proud of it!
November 20, 2007
How odd
The above photo has 1600 views on Flickr. My next most-viewed pic has almost 500 views (it's this crazy shot of Twon). What is it about those stickers that makes people want to view the photo? Is it that they want to enlarge it so they can read them? What's the deal?
Crazy.
Also crazy: my third-most-viewed shot is this one of me doing a makeup test for my Judy Nails costume. It's only five views behind the shot of Twon.
WTF, people. Srsly.
November 07, 2007
MC Frontalot in SF 11/25!!MC Frontalot will be at Cafe du Nord in SF on 11/25!!!
I am of course going. Who all wants to come? I have one person who's in so far. I'm going to order tix all at once to save on the fees, so ping me by the 15th and I'll get you one too.
November 05, 2007
Dethklok Live!Oh, mans. I had the best time this Friday.
OK, let me clarify.
I had a tremendously ass time. Then I had a time so metal and awesome that the overall experience was fantastic.
October 31, 2007
DETHKLOKDethklok opening for And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead at UC Berkeley This Friday!!!!!
Show at 7, doors at 6. Free show, apparently.
I am planning to bail on work early and rush over there to see it. Anybody want to come with?
October 24, 2007
Ju-Ju-Judy NailsSo I'm working on my Halloween costume this year: Judy Nails from Guitar Hero.
DAMN has it been a lot of hassle! No wonder I only do a new costume every 4-5 years. Geez.
Here's a shot of her from the game:
And here's how it's coming along...
October 23, 2007
Wheee!Still at She's Geeky. TOo busy running around from session to session and talking to cool people to blog properly. Heh.
She's Geeky UpdateDo-ocrazy Is a really interesting idea. Heather is leading a discussion/class thing about it here at She's Geeky. It seems like it requires a lot of energy and focus, but that's a good thing, right? Gets stuff done!
The Mercury news ran an article about the conference which is pretty shoddy, imo. It's focusing on about five minutes of one of yesterday's sessions, where gals were swapping horror stories of discrimination in the workplace and brainstorming ideas for dealing. But the dealing got left out of the piece entirely. WTF. LAME. I'm trying to figure out what to say in a comment on the story.
She's Geeky Day TwoI'm at the morning session here at She's Geeky. We're using the priciples of Open Space Technology here. They are:
In addition, we're using the Law of Two Feet (aka The Law Of Motion): If you are not learning or contributing, it is your responsibility to respectfully find somewhere you are. In other words, if you're not having fun, go somewhere else and have fun!
- Whoever comes are the right people.
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
- Whenever it starts is the right time.
- Whenever it is over, it is over.
Because this is an Unconference, we're setting the day's schedule RIGHT NOW. It's pretty interesting. I'm hoping it will work pretty well. We'll see. I'll try to blog more today than I did yesterday.
I'm really hoping Violet Blue will be able to present today.
Another random note: I'm slightly bummed - I missed out on the nifty coffee mugs that were made for the con because there weren't enough to go around (a bunch mor epeople signed up after the mugs were ordered) and I didn't get coffee right when I arrived yesterday. Poo. Not that I need any more coffee mugs, but still.
Anyway: watch my Twitter and this space for updates during the day!
October 22, 2007
She's GeekyI'm spending today and tomorrow at She's Geeky, an (un)conference about geeky gals. Unconferences are pretty interesting - the topics of discussion and whatnot are picked by the attendees. For example, the first event is a big lunch where everyone sits at "affinity tables" - tables with a topic. You pick a topic that looks interesting and sit at that table. If you're not interested in any of the topics written up on the table map so far, you make a new topic at an empty table. For example, when I arrived, none of the topics were particularly fitting for my interests, so I made my own - Blogging (Text!), to contrast with the Videoblogging table.
So far, nobody is taking me up on it. The beauty of the whole thing is, though, I can give up and go to another table, or change my table's topic pretty easily.
October 14, 2007
ROCK BANDCheck out what we did this weekend!!!!
We hit up the Rock Band tour, wooo! Twon's writeup is here. Rawk. Good times. Am now thoroughly psyched up for the actual release of the game next month.
October 05, 2007
Book -> Movie = angstThe Seeker:The Dark Is Rising is full of differences from the book it's based on.
As a long-time fan of Dracula, this does not surprise me. It does make me heave a sigh and thank my lucky stars I somehow missed reading Cooper's novels and thus can go into the movie without a lot of baggage.
I'm starting to think that the Harry Potter movies are spoiling young fantasy fans. They complain about so much with those, but hey, the author is heavily involved, the characters all have the right names, and the broad outlines of the plot as well as they basic characters' personalities are all there. It's the little details that are messed up. Ditto the Lord of the Rings movies, which are insanely close to the books about 90% of the time.
Let me introduce you to the travesty that is the average Dracula adaptation.
October 03, 2007
MoonlightHoly crap, "Moonlight" is a terrible show. This article is right, it's practically the platonic ideal of lousy television. Lousy acting, mediocre writing delivered in an overwrought style (and frequently in a back-and-forth patter that would be Sorkinesque if not for the fact that everyone seems to be working at it a little too hard. I knew from the beginning that it would probably be not-so-good, since I heard from a friend that on a recent convention panel, the creators of the show had never heard of Forever Knight, let alone seen it. WTF.
Sigh.
I love vampires, but not when they're in a show this terrible.
Maybe I'll get lucky and it will wind up full of campy goodness.
October 02, 2007
Live blogging the meetup7:05pm Woo, Peter showed up! The meetup is officially begun!
September 28, 2007
Woo!September 26, 2007
Jo-Ann Fabrics, You Have Failed Me For the Last TimeDammit. Wasted a lunch hour at Jo-Ann Fabric & Craft trying unsuccessfully to find fabric for my Halloween costume. Grrr. If anybody is feeling helpful, I'm looking for the plaid and stripey fabric in the pic below (and if you have a lead on stockings that look like that, I will totally be your BFFOMG!)
Creative Sync Manager and Tech Support SuckI bought a Creative Zen Vision: M recently to replace my beloved Neuros (which still works fantastically as a car MP3 player, but after several years of hard use has a battery life of about five minutes, and is no longer being made, so no replacement battery is available).
I love my Zen. It's beautiful. It plays perfectly, and the screen is gorgeous.
But its sync manager is a piece of crap.
September 13, 2007
Squee! I rock!
LOOKIE!!! I ROCK! OMG! YAY! My good buddy ETS totally nominated me! Squeee! She said very nice things about me, too:
Recently married and a Potter Purist, Ealasaid always makes me laugh, and she is terrific moral support in my ongoing efforts at weight loss. Sometimes I forget that we met while on the mailing list for the Vin Diesel Estrogren Brigade!Squee!Hm.My blogroll (and feedreader) are getting entirely too gigantic. Seriously. I have over three hundred feeds in there.
Let me repeat that: over three hundred feeds.
WTF.
Methinks it's time for some housecleaning. I have already implemented Inbox Zero protocols on my email, I think it's time to do something similar for my RSS situation.
September 12, 2007
Hacking the CueCat ScannerI guess this makes it official: I'm a bit of a hardware person. I just successfully hacked my CueCat.
August 23, 2007
More medical crapMy health as been sufficiently lousy lately (I have had the same damn headache since mid-June, and that's just the start of it) that my health team is running oodles of tests on me, including an MRI. One of the tests finally came up with something: H. Pylori, a nasty little critter that actually thrives in the stomach. Since it can handle stomach acid, you might imagine that it's hard to kill off, and you'd be right. I'm taking a course of antibiotics (three different kinds!) which is actually making me feel really lousy. 'course, that might just be the cold I've picked up - it's that coughing crap that's going around here. I feel like a dog with kennel cough. And of course, doesn't it just figure that I'd catch a cold while on these antibiotics - colds, of course, aren't vulnerable to antibiotics.
What's awesome is that I'm also taking Pepto-Bismol - it has high doses of bismuth in it, which H. Pylori apparently hates. I also just read that the little bastards hate green tea, too. Fortunately, I love the stuff. I'm adding that to the regimen. The antibiotics I'm taking are 85% effective alone and 95% when taken with Pepto-Bismol, but I'm happy to up the odds. I am not at all fond of this crap. Plus, maybe if we get rid of the little bastards, my body will be happier and the headache will go away. See, all stresses on my body aggravate my fibro, and I'd imagine that ulcer-causing bacteria count as stress. Since fibro can cause headaches, it kind of makes sense that the infestation might be the cause of the headache.
At any rate, that's what's up with me.
Well, that and Guitar Hero. Our party has re-invigorated me to work on my various GH goals. Between the two, I think it's likely that I will be somewhat incommunicado for a while.
August 21, 2007
WOOOOO!This weekend's Guitar Hero shindig was a smashing success. Behold!
We had a great turnout and everybody was heaps of fun.
Can't wait for the next one. :D
August 18, 2007
WOOOOOOOOO!SCOREHERO/GUITAR HERO PARTY WOOO!
Our apartment is full of people WAY better at Guitar Hero than me. It is awesome. We have tripled the number of consoles in the house (gotta have hacked PS2s to play custom tracks, after all) and there's also an extra computer in the den. RAWK.
August 17, 2007
Woo! A Winnar Iz Me!August 13, 2007
DammitNerdapalooza is being postponed.
Time to cancel that RV registration.
LJ: We Know DramaMan. SixApart has stuck their foot in it again. Since they bought LiveJournal they've just been messing things up over and over. The latest thing is that they're banning folks who've shelled out $150+ on the service, with no warning, for posting content which may or may not violate the very vague terms of service. That's bad enough, but now they're handling the reaction of their customers very, very badly. Oh, and they don't shut down pro-anorexia sites which tell gals how to starve themselves more effectively and hide the symptoms better because those are "support groups." (Link)
Sigh.
I have an LJ account (which I don't use except for commenting), and I read a lot of stuff on LJ. I also use a blogging tool created by SixApart. It depresses me that they're handling this so badly. Sigh.
Edited to add: useful tools for those thinking about leaving LJ
August 09, 2007
Nerdapalooza is Coming!Man. So psyched. Just made the reservations for an RV spot at Redwood Acres, where Nerdapalooza is happening. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING OMG! RAWK!
The details, since they're not posted in easy-to-find places for some reason:
WHAT: The biggest Nerd Music Festival on the west coast!
WHERE: Redwood Acres, Eureka, CA.
WHEN: September 22-23, 2007July 30, 2007
ZOMG IT'S HERE!
YAY!
Mind you, I promised myself that I'd finish the book I have to read for my tutoring student before starting HP7, but still. I HAVE IT! I now have the whole series. Go me.
July 26, 2007
Further proof that I am a huge geekI just paid a deposit on a custom-made belt and vambrace for my Halloween costume, which is a recreation of a character from Guitar Hero.
I am SUCH a dork.
July 25, 2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - pre-read musingsAs many of my readers know, I am a die-hard purist when it comes to modern books originating in the UK. I buy Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling's books through Amazon.ca so I can get the UK editions.
As a result, I always have to wait for a while before reading the new book. It's annoying, but worth it.
Especially because I don't have a big problem with spoilers.
And I especially don't mind spoilers of HPatDH because I have long expected it to be a fairly crappy book. I'm pleased to note that from the spoilers I've read, it seems increasingly to be exactly that.
Obviously, there are spoilers below. Duh.
July 02, 2007
NERDAPALOOZAZ0MG. Nerdapalooza. A Nerdcore/chip-hop/etc festival. This year. In Humboldt. I'm already posting on the forums and have three people planning to ride up with me.
This means if anybody else wants to ride up with me, I gotta rent a van or borrow Mom's truck or something.
SO AWESOME. I just love the idea of a whole crapload of nerds getting together for a weekend to celebrate nerd music. RAWK!
I am seriously about to pee my pants from the excitement or something. SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!
If you are interested in riding up with me, lemme know and I'll start looking into bigger vehicles.
June 29, 2007
I'm such a dork.I've signed up for several more networking-type sites. I blame CreativeSage. Anyway, I'm now on Mashable, Natuba, and Tumblr as well as all the other ones I was on before. Whee!
March 28, 2007
Blogging and OpennessI've mused about this idea before a little, but this post over at Molly's got me thinking about it again.
March 22, 2007
Aah, the life of a geekI have The Best Fiance Ever(tm). He got me a Palm Tungsten E2 for my birthday, to replace my oldass Palm IIIxe. It is a thing of beauty, it really is. Color screen, about a jilion pixels compared to the III, it's just... gorgeous. So cool. Eek! :) I've been having a blast finding software for it and playing with the features and everything. So cool.
In the annoyances-that-only-bug-a-geek category, I am finding myself very irked at FeedDemon - it's a totally kickass RSS aggregator program (which can handle friendslocked posts on LJ!) but it generates the most halfassed blogroll I have ever seen. I have over 200 feeds - having a blogroll which consists entirely of all the feeds in one alphabetized list is so stupid I lack words to describe it. I can put the feeds in folders in the application, why can't it generate a blogroll with the same damn folders? Bloglines generates a perfectly useable blogroll... but can't handle friendslocked posts. Goddammit. Guess for the time being I'll just use both. Sigh. Anybody know of an aggregator that will generate a good blogroll AND handle friendslocked posts?
February 20, 2007
I give up.I am going to have to stop using BlogLines as my primary RSS aggregator because it cannot handle friendslocked posts. I just have too many folks whose blogs I read who friendslock their posts, and Bloglines doesn't have the capability to log in and check those for me. Neither does Thunderbird, apparently.
Readers! Help me out! I want an RSS aggregator than can handle friends-only posts on Livejournal and Blogger, as well as regular feeds. What's the best one to use? There seem to be a bajillion.
February 06, 2007
Liveblogging the MeetupWoot, Blogger Meetup in da hizzy!
So far it's just Rich, j0nchan, and moi.
- Rich says none of the people he knows are Wikifamous (ie, have an entry on Wikipedia.
- Rich has never been to Disneyland. Geez. His family went when he was too little to go (13 months) and a family member who was 10 at the time broke a ride. Apparently she has a knack for that sort of thing.
- Antwon: Batman's superpower is having an R&D department.
- If Rich were in charge, anybody without actual powers wouldn't be a real superhero.
- They are firing ideas about weird superheroes back and forth and Antwon came up with Jazz Hands! Rich: he can break anything as long as he does it like this! (jazz hands movement) Awesome!!!
- I am having trouble liveblogging this because Rich is uploading photos and j0n is surfing MySpace. DAMMIT!
- Antwon says he can get me a steno pad if it helps.
- Rich is waiting for Court Reporter Hero II to come out.
- I'm going to quit liveblogging this because trying to do it is making me insane!!!!
10:00 pm Under orders, I am updating. Rich says I have to include this:
Antwon: At birth, your physician has a greater gravitational pull on you than Jupiter. That's why I don't really trust astrology.
Rich: So you were born under the sign of Horowitz?December 19, 2006
Well, I did it.I have swallowed my pride and am conducting an experiment. I have put Google AdSense on the individual archive pages in this blog. I'm adding it to the individual archive pages in my other blogs too. If they start raking in the dough, they stay. If they're only getting me a dollar or so a month, they go. I don't mind being a little bit of a shill if it earns me mad money (and I know I get a lot of search traffic. You should see the comments I get on ancient posts from people searching for random stuff... seriously. Some of these people are nuts. I AM NOT AN ACTOR ! I JUST WRITE ABOUT THEM! GOD!)
Anyway.
So if you hit an individual archive page and see an ad and go "OMG Ealasaid said she'd never put ads on her blogs!" remember it's just an experiment.
And that I have mad bills to pay. Freakin' student loans.
December 05, 2006
Liveblogging!Yay Liveblogging!
October 27, 2006
PodcastsI was chatting with a pal about podcasts yesterday. I have the 'casts I listen to linked in my blogroll, but nowhere do I talk about what I like about each of 'em. I also appear not to ever have blogged about the podcatcher I use, Juice.
October 10, 2006
ArghI clearly need a new hobby, right? Because I have too much spare time? Right.
The Show with zefrank is making me want to take up vlogging. I keep thinking about how the digital camera the fiance and I share has a video mode.
Dammit.
October 06, 2006
mcchris FTWI met MC CHRIS!
More pix and a real writeup to follow.October 02, 2006
White and NerdyWeird Al proves yet again that he is White and Nerdy - yay for a big artist shoutin' out the nerdcore love.
(via joiedelivre.)
Also, miniupdate: feeling much much much better, thanks for all the well wishes! I am about 95% back to "normal" (hee) now, so yay!
September 20, 2006
Liveblogging!We're hanging out at Coffee Society for the blogger meetup. Where y'all at?
(Note to those new to my liveblogging entries... just click "reload" periodically if you're reading this in real time to get updates live from the meetup!)
September 08, 2006
MiscellaneaDamn you, Emusic! I was doing so well getting on with my music sorting project, but now I've gone and downloaded nearly a hundred more songs from you! ARGH!!!! *headdesk*
Albums downloaded today:
- PJ Harvy, Dry
- Burning Brides, Leave No Ashes
- Brain Donor, Brain Donor
- Clannad, Dulaman
- Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Fetish
- John Lee Hooker, Boom Boom
- Mediaeval Baebes, The Rose
- The Coup, Party Music
So now I have more music, yay, but at the same time I am a lot further from finishing the damn sorting project - which I really want to have done asap so I can have all the newly sorted music on my Neuros when I fly out for Annie's wedding next week (NEXT WEEK OMGWTF HOW DID IT GET TO BE THAT SOON AUGH!).
*sigh*
Oh, well. If all else fails, I'll use some half-assed hack to finish. Like labelling all the ones I haven't sorted yet as "uncategorized" or something. Yeah.
File under: Geekiness, Linkage, Pure Ego!
Posted at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)August 21, 2006
Snakes on a Box Office!Check it out, "Snakes on a Plane" made 1.4 million Thursday night alone. Kick ASS! It was a totally fun flick.
Best moment of watching it (slightly paraphrased):
Sam Jackson, to Plucky Stewardess: Let's get these people some air!
Me and my Peeps: OMG ROFLOL!!!
People a few rows in front of us: Shhhhhhh! It's not funny!Who the hell watches a movie entitled "Snakes on a Plane" and takes it seriously? I don't understand people at all, I really don't.
My official review will be up later today.
July 28, 2006
The generation gap is not f'n metal.So, Rich has this awesome set of pix: Comic Con is F'n Metal.
I sent the link to my Dad... who asked about both "F'n" and "Metal."
Here's the explanation I sent...
July 26, 2006
Woooooooo!The power went out at work today, so we got to go home early. Woo! Two of my buddies from work, Rich and Peter, are now hanging out at Youhaas Global enjoying the AC and the alcohol, and playing PS2. Currently, we are playing Burnout 3, trading off (whomever loses has to give the non-playing person their controller). We're doing road rage, which is awesome. Yay.
Rich, in his ultimate geekiness, is alternating between playing PS2 and tagging his latest batch of photos on Flickr. hee hee hee.
Downside: I really ought to get some work done on Electric-bikes.com. Maybe I can alternate between the two...
July 20, 2006
CrawfishWell! Thanks to my awesome network of friends, I have learned the identity of The Critter in the Road. It's a Red Swamp Crawfish, and is listed as an invasive species here in CA. Thanks, Carolyn and Sarah!! Awesome.
And that's a reliable ID, because Sarah is a bio/critter expert and Knows These Things. Huzzah. I love my network of peeps!
July 19, 2006
Liveblogging!Yep, we're at Coffee Society, where are you?
The train of conversation that prompted me to pull out my computer:
- Aliens bursting out of people's chests
- Tom: "Why don't aliens bust out of other places?" ... like say, your nose.
- Twon: "or your carryon, or your cup of Sanka..."
- Everyone started miming various places aliens could bust out of and go "raaaar!"
- Me: "Speaking of things that go 'raar'..." I regale everyone with the story of the shrimp by the side of the road. (OK, it's probably a crawdad or something, I'm not an expert on aquatic insectoid critters.)
- Hank: "Speaking of things by the side of the road..." regales everyone with a deer sighting.
Scary aliens to deer in only six steps. Awesome.
Hah!I took this test, in which you must decide whether a series of names are web 2.0 applications or Star Wars characters. I got 37/43 correct. Go me.
I am such a geek.
Buscemi!YouTube documentary about Steve Buscemi in Europe. Apparently a clothing designer decided to use him as their model in a ton of ads. Awesome. My only gripe is that the gal wandering around Europe asking everyone if they know who he is can't pronounce his name.
It's Buss-ehm-ee, dammit!
July 18, 2006
The Dark Side's Real PullI've been wanting to link this entry by Anna Milton for ages but kept forgetting. Her LJ is friends-only, though, so I got her permission to reprint the gem that made me want to link it in the first place.
O Noes!Nate is closing his cafepress shop!
Now I have to actually decide between the READ! mug and the READ! bag. AUGH.
*headdesk*
I've been putting off buying either because... well, much as I love the art I don't really need another bookbag or another mug. But I love the cartoon (and the sentiment) too much to not buy either! It's hilarious! *sigh*
I'll figure something out. Maybe I'll just flip a coin.
July 14, 2006
Why Dan Brown SucksNate explains that he doesn't have to explain why Dan Brown sucks because Language Log explains it in detail already.
Now, I haven't read The DaVinci Code, largely because paging through it briefly once or twice convinced me that doing so would make me want to kill myself. Or make my brain turn to applesauce and drip out my ears. Seriously. The fact that Dan Brown is a published and bestselling author gives me great hope for my own abilities to sell my work (well, that or it makes me want to give up on my writing altogether because if they like his stuff, they'll hate mine).
BahahahahahaahahahaThanks go to my Dad for pointing this out to me.
July 11, 2006
Argh.I think I've finally fixed the HTML in yesterday's links entry. Sorry about that. *grumblemumblestupidhtmlgrumble*
July 07, 2006
Roomba Rools!
Many of my friends have asked me what I think of our Roomba.
Short answer: I love it!
June 21, 2006
Liveblogging!I'm liveblogging the Blogger Meetup. Go me.
Twon sez: "I'm a loud shut-in!"
Rich totally video'd me throwing the horns. I am the current video on his home page. Dunno how long I'll be there, so go look now!
My cousin Keith is chillin with us, and ... wow, now we're talking about Amish vampires. Elkit says it would be a great movie - Transylvania Dutch! It would star Bruce Campbell! And have a cameo by Weird Al! Awesome.
"That rhymes with T and that sounds like P and that stands for Porn!"
Collarity.com wants users to sign up for the beta test of their search engine... and they've cleverly found a way to make people vie to send them lots of feedback and get their friends to sign up and stuff. Heh.
Dood, people are totally ditching already, and it's not even nine o'clock! WTF???
Hillbilly Ghostbusters! "I reckon y'ain't supposed to cross the streams!"
One of Rich's friends used to be on Saved by the Bell ... when it sucked.
Whoa, a discussion of how to make the Olympics into extreme sports. Like, during the pole vault you have to shoot a bird while you're in midair. Awesome.
"Spider-Bat, Spider-Bat!" "He's got a secret identity... as a different bat!"
Rich and I threw the TiVo gang sign. It's awesome.
Whoa, I just used the phrase "true feminists" here at the blogger meetup. Crazy.
"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are: I fell on my keys."
We educated Keith about Naked Bea Arthur.
During a discussion which went off on a tangent about how to protect your drink from being drugged at a party, it was observed that gals should just drink out of a sippy cup so nobody could slip anything into their drinks. Twon: "Zima in a sippy cup, doo dah, doo dah!" Rich: "Yeah, if I ever have a daughter, I'll tell her she can go to wild college parties, but she has to drink everything out of a sippy cup."
May 17, 2006
Liveblogging!I'm at the weblogger meetup. I'm liveblogging the meetup, and attempting not to get distracted by all the various toys on my computer (games, chat software, stories I should be working on, etc). Wish me luck!
ETA: Interesting discussion of names and changing them (or not) when marrying. Rich feels just as strongly about it as I do, but on the other side. Interesting. Although, unlike me, his is a gut-level reaction while mine is an ideological one.
ETA: If Antwon got elected as a Senator, C-SPAN would have the best ratings ever. He would filibuster in the old style because he could and possibly use sock puppets to do so. Awesome.
ETA: Silvia is live photoblogging the meetup! Check it out!
ETA: Antwon: "I'm full of Thetans, and I vote!"Rich: "I need a bumpersticker that says that."
ETA: Now I'm live photoblogging it! Behold! Of course, it's taking forever over this somewhat slow connection, so... yeah. It'll be there eventually. Look down near the bottom.
ETA: I used StickerJunkie.com to make an "I'm a thetan and I vote" bumpersticker, which led to a discussion about what thetans are, which led me to mention Xenu.net (aka Operation ClamBake), which led Elke to ask me to blog the URL so she'd remember it, so here I am. Yeah. That made sense. But it makes more sense than Rich's notes about the meetup. :D
ETA: I got to show a bunch of folks some awesome pix they'd never seen before, check it...
May 16, 2006
NoteMan. I'm up to the C's of my collection in the grand mp3 recatagorizing project and just listened to my all-time favorite Chamber song: The Truth About Snow White. Anybody with a taste for warped fairytales must go listen to this (there's an mp3 as well as the lyrics there).
Chamber is an awesome group, by the way. Violin, viola, cello, guitar, and a goth sensibility; their stuff ranges from rock to folky to just plain weird. Very cool. Their front man was an actor on Highlander: The Series, which is how I know about 'em (he played Caspian in the Four Horsemen episodes).
May 05, 2006
ATTENTION LJ Users!It has come to my attention that the LJ feed of my entries does NOT save entries and comments. So, it only goes back a few entries. Please please please come over and comment on my actual site. I may ask Jeff to turn off the comments on all my feeds just to be on the safe side. I don't get notified when you folks comment over on LJ, so I may miss things. :(
Reason #601287 to love the internet: CraigslistMan. I looooove Craigslist.
In the last four days, I have managed to line up just about all the furniture the fiancé and I need for the new apartment, all for under $400. That includes: a wine rack, a large shelf unit from IKEA, a dining room table, a TV stand, a coffee table, and an end table.
'course, I have to drive to the following cities on Sunday to pick it all up:
Oh, and I'm swinging by Walnut Creek as long as I'm in Berkeley (it's only 20 minutes away!) to doublecheck that a sleeper loveseat I found is really as awesome as it looked in the photos.
- Burlingame
- South San Jose
- Berkeley
- San Francisco
I am also deeply grateful that my parents have a Suburban.
February 07, 2006
Woot!I'm blogging from the meetup! Yay!
I don't have much to say, though. :D So: Random Notes and observations!
Harold Pinter's Nobel Acceptance speech is apparently awesome. I'm too busy with the offline discussion to read it, though.
Hank sez it's a good thing Kevin Bacon isn't like Stalin, who killed everyone who ever knew him. He's right.
Elkit is blogging about the meetup too, hee!
Courtney is our Kevin Bacon, a statement which led to a riff on Courtney and bacon and was too disturbing to reprint here.
Apparently Persian is the third most commonly used language on the internet. Interesting, nu?
Threadless.com has totally kickass shirts. Please please please go buy some with my link so I can afford to buy myself more shirts. :) Because clearly what I need is more shirts. ;)
Ealasaid: Getting set on fire is bad. Rich: There's a reason people thought that hell was fire.
February 01, 2006
Podcasts
Le Week du Blog Sweeps continues, hooray. In honor of the "lists are good!" statement I keep seeing in other sweepers' blogs, I offer two lists: Things That Will Make Me Like Your Podcast and Things That Will Make Frown at my MP3 Player And Skip Your Podcast. Behold!
Note: These statements are made to the general "you", not aimed at a specific podcast. Though the second list is made up of things that have actually caused me to ditch a podcast in the past. :)
Things That Will Make Me Like Your Podcast
- Straightforward presentation - Informative and straightforward podcasts are my favorite.
- Listener feedback - shows that you listen to your fans. Hell, shows that you have fans!
- Interesting subject matter - I can get political talk anywhere. I go to podcasts for unusual or hard-to-find info.
- Catchy but brief opening music - I dig opening music, but keep it brief please!
- Quality sound recording - I will suffer through bad sound if the podcast as a whole rawks, but this has been the last straw on more than one podcast I've ditched. If you want advice on getting good equipment cheap, talk to Junglemonkey. :)
Things That Will Make Frown at my MP3 Player And Skip Your Podcast
- Unrelated, ubiquitous music - I dl'd your podcast to listen to your info/entertainment, not some random music. Unless your podcast is about music, skip it. Or at least put it at the end so I can skip it easily.
- Too much personal talk - Again, unless your podcast is about your personal life, can it. I don't want to hear about your four-year-old's latest exploits for five minutes unless they have something to do with the topic of your podcast.
- Low volume - I listen to podcasts in my car, which is not brand new anymore. There is road noise. If I have to crank my player AND the speakers all the way up to hear you, you come through garbled. Record clearly and keep that volume at a reasonable level!
- Excessive giggling / uhmmmming - There's this awesome editor out there called Audacity. It's free. It's easy to use. Snip out all that placeholding noise, please!
- Too many or repetitive ads - I know you gotta make a buck, but I shouldn't have to listen to the same ad twice in one podcast. Period. It's not like radio where you need to make sure people who tune in late hear it, okay? And more than two ads in a row? BZZZZT! NOT good.
January 30, 2006
A questionI have a zillion MP3s.
OK, only about 3000, but for ME that's a lot.
Anyway, I really want to reclassify their genres. I've been puttin it off but it's starting to really irk me the way I have my genres set up (basically, I only have about a dozen genres and all my MP3s are assigned to one of 'em, but some are too general and some are too specific). I would really like to hear some folks talk about classifying music. I can tell really obvious genres apart (say, classical vs. heavy metal) but some seem to overlap so much that I'm not sure how to tell what genre a track belongs to. What's the difference between trance, house, techno, and electronica? How do I tell if a song that's somewhere near the middle of the blues/rock spectrum is blues or rock?
I really wish I could assign multiple genres to one MP3, but since that's not yet possible, can someone offer some advice?
Sweeeeeps week!It's sweeps week, people! Wooot.
'course, I've been so busy that I'm not at all sure what to post for Sweeps Week. Photos of my cats? Well.... they're already available on Flickr. I'm not really into the whole posting-nekkid-pix thing. Hmmmm.
Ah! I have an idea. Now to figure out if I can make MT do what I want it to.
Stay tuned...
January 24, 2006
Blog Sweeps Week is coming...Blog Sweeps Week is coming! I've been fiddling around in Photoshop to make banners, and here are my early efforts:
January 20, 2006
Oh Em Gee!Last night I went to a dinner thing hosted by Scott Johnson (formerly of Feedster and co-author of O'Reilly's Essential Blogging). Dad and he go way back, which is kewl. There were tons of people there who work for awesome companies (including Nick G of Six Apart!) and I was slightly awestruck. I know, I fangirl out very easily.
But dood! Scott said I'm COOL! OMG! See!!!!!!!!!111one!!
So I guess I didn't need to feel sorta awestruck after all.
Edited to add: It's interesting to me that I get fangirly about Scott because he's worked on a book for O'Reilly, yet he's clearly Just A Guy (tm). I mean, he's friends with my Dad! I suppose the real lesson to get here is that the people I fangirl over really ARE just people. Fortunately, I am quite capable of fangirling over folks AND seeing them as human beings. I know these preople are regular folks, but that doesn't stop me from being a fan. After all, people can be totally awesome and still be human. Not all people are losers. Part of the point of my fangirling is celebrating the awesomeness of people who deserve it.
Wow, I sense an essay lurking here. Something to think about.
January 19, 2006
Dating geeksMy dad sent me a link to Maryamie's do's and don'ts of dating a geek. That led me to a handful of other places: Maryamie'sIn Defense of Geeks or Ten Reasons Why You Should Date a Geek, plenty more reasons to date geeks, 10 Reasons NOT to date a Geek (unless they don't follow this pattern!), Ten reasons it isn't always easy being married to a Geek, and Dating an Apple Developer. As someone who has been seriously dating a geek for three years (OMG three years already? How did that happen), I figure I'm pretty qualified to comment. And I want to comment because while these various pages got some things right, they also got some things really wrong. I'd go through each page one by one and take on each point but I figure that would be (a) a really long project and (b) incredibly boring. So instead, I present to you the top ten misconceptions about dating a geek!
January 18, 2006
WOOO!I am blogging! AT A BLOGGER MEETUP! OMG! Wireless internet RULES.
I love my new laptop.
LOVE.
Notes to self:
Post awesome pix (of Elkit punching Antwon and me punching Rich) to Punch in the Throat.
Make a banner for Blogs Sweeps Week.
January 17, 2006
Flickr faves
December 29, 2005
Geeky frustrationFirstly, my printer died. It was a Canon, and they felt badly that their tech support couldn't resurrect it, so they gave me a 10% discount on a new one. Yay! But when my new PIXMA iP1600 arrived, it didn't have a USB cable with it. Apparently they don't include a USB cable because, gosh, then they couldn't sell me one that fits my needs exactly! Grrrrr. So now I have to go buy one. Jerks. At least it gives me an excuse to go to Frys.
Secondly, I ordered a new laptop from Lenovo, makers of Thinkpads (for the curious, I'm getting a Thinkpad R51, which was on sale). This is all fine and good. But I ordered it on 12/12, and it still isn't here. Apparently it has been held up in customs. I really hope it ships soon because it will arrive at my house rather than my work (they only ship to the paying credit card's billing addy), and if nobody is here to receive it, I will wind up going down to the UPS office before work some morning to pick it up. Gah.
No doubt a large part of my irritation with this is due to the fact that I have a cold, but still. Grr. I want my laptop! I want my printer to work! ARGH!
But, as I said, at least now I have an excuse to go to Frys. Yay Frys, the Geek Mecca!
December 20, 2005
Oh, MT3.2, How do I love thee?Well, since moving to my new webhost, I have been using Movable Type 3.2.
I think I'm in love.
It's like they took all the things I wanted to be able to do with MT, and put them in 3.2. I can search and find/replace across all my blogs at once. I can manage comments and trackbacks across all my blogs at once. It has built-in comment/trackback spam filtering (which so far is working REALLY well, but then, I get so few legit comments/trackbacks that it's hard to really tell).
I must be checking on my comments 3-4 times a day because it's so freaking easy now. I used to have to go to each blog individually, look through the comments, and then mark by hand the spam I wanted to delete. SOmetimes if I wasn't careful, I'd delete already published comments, or real comments that I thought were spam because I was rushing.
Now I can just go to one page, set the filter to only show unpublished comments, eyeball 'em to see if they're junk, then mark them all as junk. Then I go into the junk folder, eyeball all the comments in there, and delete 'em (unless some are legit, then I mark those as real and publish them). So now comments the spam filter thinks might be real get eyeballed twice before deletion. Plus I can whitelist people - haven't had a chance to see how well that works, but I'm betting pretty well.
I am psyched. Ooooooh, MT3.2, you rock my socks. The team at Six Apart are my heroes.
November 28, 2005
Well, I did it.After over a year with my old webhosting, I have moved my site to Pair Networks. "But Ealasaid," I hear you cry, "I thought you got free hosting from your boyfriend???"
This is true. But his server, venerable though it is, is not quite up to handling some of the stuff I want to do... like, say, run Movable Type 3.2. Or be able to send email out on a consistent basis (the poor thing's SMTP server is sort of the equivalent of a slightly crazy uncle who can hold a perfectly normal conversation 97% of the time, but 3% of the time will utterly refuse to do anything but spin in circles and cluck like a constipated chicken -- usually at inopportune moments). This is fine for the bf, who does most of his email at odd hours of the morning when he has the focus to beat the server with a stick if it misbehaves and whose website is a coal-powered wall of ASCII, but it doesn't work so well for yours truly, who sends email constantly all day and would like all the bells and whistles, please. Plus, of course, doing the puppy-eyed "If you really loved me, you'd upgrade your server" routine seemed like overkill when Pair has a plan that offers me everything I need and a few extra bells for about $160/year.
So, after a great deal of hemming and hawing and griping about what a pain in the ass it is to move five blogs when your host server can't run TypeMover, I finally got everything moved over the holiday weekend. Huzzah. So far Pair is doing really well by me... but then, I haven't had any problems yet. I have no idea how good their tech support is. Guess I'll find out if/when something goes wrong.
November 18, 2005
Hm...Another wrinkle in the "Should I buy that laptop at WalMart" debate: I can get a Palm Tungsten E2 and a keyboard for less dough. And that would not only save me from setting foot in a Wal*Mart on Black Friday but replace my somewhat ancient Palm III PDA. Since I only use my laptop for NaNoWriMo, this might actually be a better use of my money.
Hm...
Or I could just wishlist the Tungsten and its keyboard and forget about the whole thing. :) Christmas is coming up after all...
November 01, 2005
It's that time of year again...Yep, it's November 1st. That can only mean one thing: It's National Novel Writing Month!
My NaNo blog is back in business and I am writing away. Rawk!
October 12, 2005
Go me.
Modern, Cool Nerd
82 % Nerd, 86% Geek, 26% DorkFor The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.
Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used
to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a
pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world
that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and
geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very
least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent,
knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing
computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one
you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one
up there, winning the million bucks)!
Congratulations!
Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 92% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 99% on geekosity
You scored higher than 36% on dork points
Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test October 07, 2005
Man, I am very cynical about the internetSo, as I have whined about previously, my RSS aggregator, BlogLines, doesn't show me friendslocked LJ posts.
That has gotten me thinking about the whole idea of a friendslocked entry. I am very much of the belief that putting anything on the internet in any form, or even on a computer connected to the internet, means it will get out to the people you would prefer not see it. Now, in some cases, that doesn't matter - I'd be embarassed if some of the fanfic I wrote back in the day came back to haunt me, but it's no big. But in other cases, it does matter - credit card numbers, photos of one naked, essays bitching about work, for example. Those are all things I would never put on the internet and would be hesitant to have on my computer at all.
The uproar in the past over friendslocked LJ entries being made public suggests to me that many folks who friendslock their LJ entries don't share my philosophy. I would be very interested to hear from those of my readers who are LJers and who use friendslocking - what's up with that? Why do you friendslock? How secure do you think it is?
(FWIW, I don't mean this as an attack on LJers who friendslock. I'm just curious.)
October 02, 2005
The only thing I don't like about RSS feeds...is that apparently the feeds from LiveJournal don't include any reference whatsoever to the existance of friendslocked entries. Because of this feature, I have been missing out on a LOT of stuff, apparently.
I see two solutions which will likely never come to pass:
- LiveJournal fixes its frickin' feeds.
- LiveJournal changes the way that the Friends page works so that I can use it without wanting to bang my head on my desk
The third possible solution is that the Awesome Perl-Coding bf and I figure out a little perl script to log in as me to LJ, look for friendslocked entries, and then display a page linking to the appropriate journals.
We shall see which solution comes to pass first!
September 23, 2005
This is KILLING ME!Help!
OK, I know I have like three readers, but still.
I VIVIDLY remember visiting a really awesome site in the last week or two. It let you do custom shirts, bags, hoodies, etc. You could get letters, words, graphics, etc printed on them.
I cannot for the life of me find the link to that site.
I looked in my URL history. I looked in some of my recent chat logs. I checked my recent email in case I got the link from someone (naturally I don't remember where I found the link).
So if any of y'all have ANY idea what I'm talking about, please please please tell me. It is driving me insane. A short trip, I know, but STILL! ARGH!
September 21, 2005
Oh, for crying out loud...One of the dangers of using my Amazon.com wishlist as a combination wishlist and "note to self: buy this some time" list is that it gets unbelievably HUGE at times. Also, I sometimes forget what's on it. Mind you, this leads to hilarity at gift-giving times when people buy stuff off my list and I find myself going, "OMG, this is AWESOME! Where did you find it?!", but it's also somewhat embarassing.
Now that Amazon supports multiple wishlists, maybe I should set up a separate "note to self" list. Hm.
September 12, 2005
Signs......that I am a geek:
I scored 48% - Super Geek on the Geek Test when I took it today.
I dig Klingon Fairytales
I got all excited at finding THREE pieces of Chernabog memorabilia at Disneyland/California Adventure over the weekend, and bought one of them specifically because it would be an awesome cubicle toy.Not that there's any doubt that I'm a geek, but sometimes it's driven home particularly hard.
August 18, 2005
Interesting idea...Now, this is an interesting idea. Rich has set up a Flickrpedia, a visual encyclopedia of things in his life.
Hm. I am now seriously tempted to do this. But then the question becomes, how personal do I get with this? Do I put up pix of the bf and say "this is my boyfriend" and his name and everything? I've avoided connecting his name and his status in my online life. What about my friends and my home and my car? How personal can one get before there's too much personal info up about one?
Flowers!Man.I am turning into SUCH a gardening geek!
I got a catalog from DutchBulbs.com and am SMITTEN. Check out these beauties which can grow in my area!
August 17, 2005
Holy crap, Sars really IS the best evar.For the second time now, I have half-written a long, complicated email to Sars for her advice column only to figure out exactly what I ought to do before finishing it.
That's some impressive advice-giving Chi right there.
August 03, 2005
Spammers beware!Whoa.
August 02, 2005
In other news:
ANANSI BOYS: THE TOUR! NEIL GAIMANAlso:
Wednesday, September 28 7:30 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO & BAY AREA
Keplers Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA
650-324-4321
Thursday, September 29 7:00 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO & BAY AREA
Michael Chabon & Neil Gaiman in Conversation
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA
415-927-0960
Friday, September 30 7:00 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO & BAY AREA
Codys
2454 Telegraph Ave.
Berkeley, CA
510-559-9500TERRY PRATCHETT brings THUD! to readers and will talk and sign at Cody's Telegraph Avenue on Monday, October 3.Burn it!I dig being a blogger. It is keen. I like blogging community stuff, like the Not-Meetup SouthBayBloggers group (Meetup can bite me), the Blogathon, and so on.
Once again I failed to get organized in time for the Blogathon (also, I am totally beat this week and thus lack the energy to actually do it), but I have decided to do another cool blogging community thing: Burn It!. It's a CD-swapping thing. I am going to start working on the track list NOW even though it's not due 'til August 24th, because I know I can be a slacker on this kind of thing if I'm not careful.
The theme this time around is music that makes you hot (as in, "whoa, that guy is hot! [fans self]"). I'm sure most of my CD will be cheesy/disturbing, but hey, that's okay, right?
And since I'm not blogathonning, here are folks I know who are:
I am going to be a good person and go make pledges for them now. I hope you guys do too - the minimum pledge is $1! Come on! Geez!
And next year, dammit, I am going to do it.
July 22, 2005
*squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*IT CAME!!! IT CAME!!!!!
Now I just have to find time to read it.
July 14, 2005
Damn.According to my snazzy book catalog, of the 334 books I've cataloged so far, 137 of them are ones I haven't read. That number won't change as I finish cataloging, since I long since took to putting all my unread books in one place.
So. 137 books which I own but have not read.
This is not good.
I guess I will have to declare a moratorium on buying myself books until I get that down to a more reasonable level. *sigh*
July 12, 2005
I'm on a roll today!This article on geeks (which I found via this entry at Geek Philosophy) totally cheesed me off.
Go read it, then read my letter to the writer.
*squeeeeee*I have a new icon!
I am so stoked.
It's by Peter S. Conrad, the guy who did Rich's new one.
Check it out:
Cool, huh?
He'll do one for just about anybody. You send him pix or otherwise indicate what you want, he draws it, if you both like it then you send him something you value as much as the icon (a poem, $50,000 in small bills, whatever).
Now I gotta figure out what to send him. Hmmm.
July 10, 2005
YikesI've said "I totally have to blog this!" about 10 times in the last three days.
Naturally, now I can't remember a single thing I was planning on blogging.
Dammit.
I guess I should go back to carrying a little notepad around - it's such a hassle to write in my PDA that it doesn't really count. Gah.
July 06, 2005
Nerrrrrrdcore!I <3 nerdcore. I've been listening to a lot lately, and since my last search turned up stuff that was new to me, I figured I'd share the links here:
- Wikipedia's Nerdcore entry - very informative.
- WebJay's nerdcore playlist - Lots of totally random crap here.
- MC Frontalot - originator of the term "Nerdcore"
- Wired article on Nerdcore - interesting stuff
- MC Chris
- MC Hawking - The original!
- MC Paul Barman
- YTCracker Gotta love a guy whose album is called N.E.S.
- Optimus Rhyme
- Lords of the Rhymes - I love these guys.
- Monzy - he's trying to start an East Coast / West Coast CompSci Nerdcore rivalry.
- MCPlus+
- - CompSci nerdcore. I don't get half the jokes but I still love it.
July 05, 2005
FanficThis entry by Anna lead me to this rant on the subject of fanfic by Robin Hobb.
Firstly, Anna's response is pretty frickin' funny.
Secondly, I would also like to take issue with Robin's argument. I don't knock her for disliking fanfic; many authors do, and that's their right. However, her argument seems to break down into the following sub-arguments, which I shall take one at a time:
She also says fanfic is analagous to digitally altering a photograph someone sent you and posting it on the internet as though it were the same photograph, but that's utterly irrational (come ON, nobody says fanfic is by the people the subject material is by! Fanfic authors are usually VERY good about claiming authorship) so I won't deal with it.
- Fanfic is a form of identity theft
- Fanfiction insults the original author
- Fanfic is a bad way to learn how to write
- Fanfic is copyright infringement
- Writing fanfic is analagous to being an Elvis impersonator
- Posting fanfic sullies the author's good name
June 16, 2005
Naked Bea Arthur!The blogger meetup was last night. It was easily the coolest meetup I have been to in quite a while. [comicbookguyvoice]Best. Meetup. Ever.[/comicbookguyvoice]
Items of interest:
- A song (nakedBea.mp3, 30 sec., 475.2K download) was created by Antwon and Rich. It's about Bea Arthur, sort of.
- It was determined that nakedbeaarthur.com is available, but that Rich finds the concept of nakedbeaarthur.blogspot.com more disturbing.
- I mentioned Kitty Cat Dance to at least a couple folks, thus spreading that damn earworm of a song (but the kitty is cute!)
- I got to use the new camera a lot, and practice fiddling with the exposure meeter. That was cool.
Others did great entries about last night, so go read them: Rich and Elkit.
I may have to crawl around on the floor to plug in headphones so I can listen to the song at work. It's a classic.
June 03, 2005
Geek!I am a huge geek. I knew this already, but sometimes things happen that drive it home. Here's the latest geekery.
June 01, 2005
Das UberkeyboardOMG.
I must have one of these. Maybe the fact that the force of each key is calibrated would make it more ergonimic and make up for the fact that it's a straight keyboard.
It is so awesome. SO AWESOME!!!
May 19, 2005
Netflix: 1; Wal*Mart: 0Yay! Go Netflix!
May 16, 2005
TiVo = YayGot my TiVo all set up in time for the weekend. Hooray! I have to say that my TiVo rocks my world. It is the bestest.
Now I just have to get enough things thumbed up/down so that it will stop being insane and randomly recording crap I have no interest in (it recorded the TV Guide Channel for an hour the other day. WTF?! And this morning it recorded the morning news on channel 4! Just because I like the Daily Show doesn't mean I like news, TiVo! Sheesh.)
Sorry I haven't been posting more; between being kind of depressed over Grandpa (thanks for all the comments of condolence, btw. My readers are awesome) and stressed at work I haven't got much to write about.
May 13, 2005
Infomania = worse than potInfomania makes us dumber, and the IQ drop is worse than losing a night's sleep or getting stoned.
Well, I could've told you that. I'm a complete moron after spending a couple hours doing email, surfing the web, and chatting online. It doe sindeed make ya dumber. I am MUCH sharper after an afternoon hanging out with friends or running around outside.
April 19, 2005
FlickrI'm a geek.
I am now on Flickr. Yay!
Now I just need a digital camera of my own...
The Meetup Saga ContinuesWell, after my letter, I got a formish-looking reply from Meetup talking about how they understand we are shocked and angry but this is just the way their company needs to go. I fired off another letter (which I worked pretty hard on - crafting a "dammit, I am PISSED!!!" letter is a rather pleasurable passtime), which I reprint below.
April 14, 2005
More about MeetupThere's an interesting little discussion (with side discussions that are kind of stupid) over at SlashDot on the topic of Meetup's policy change.
Most of them seem to think Meetup will go out of business, and that Google and/or Yahoo! will move in to fill the gap. I think that would be all right. I just like having it as a resource - I'm part of several meetups and run my own, and I really like them. Hanging out with people who are into the same stuff you are is a great way to make friends and have a good time.
*sigh*
Some of the slashdotters noted that Meetup has a HUGE bureaucracy, which is weird for a fully-automated service like that. No wonder they're charging so much - they gotta pay those salaries somehow. ;)
April 13, 2005
DisappointedSo Meetup.com has instituted an organizer fee.
I am not happy.
Here's the email I sent them this morning:
April 01, 2005
Reason #410 to love my Neuros MP3 playerI usually listen to my Neuros on the way to work, with my generic listnening folder set to shuffle randomly. This morning, my playlist turned out to be, in part:
- Funeral Song - Sleater-Kinney
- Cool to Hate - The Offspring
- Peter Lorre - Satan's Pilgrims
- Born to Raise Hell - Motorhead (with Whitfield Crane)
Going from "Funeral Song", which is really brilliantly written and sad and full of awesome metaphors about the end of a wonderful love relationship, to "Cool to Hate", which is a broad quasi-satire of people who hate stuff 'cos it's easier than making the world a better place, was pretty awesome.
February 20, 2005
Referrer logs = cool!I am a total dork. I got the bf to write me a log parser and now have a list of referrers. While surfing this, I discovered that a LOT of them are people hotlinking images from my domain.
I was not amused.
So now, anybody trying to hotlink my pix gets this instead:
Rawk.
Furthermore, I totally dug finding folks linking to me - folks I don't know! Folks like The Wizardly Knitter! Awesome! Most folks were just linking to the Very Secret Diaries, of course, but still. It's fun to poke around and see who's linking me.
February 15, 2005
A Geeky ValentineYou know you're half of a really geek couple when your bf emails you the valentine below and you not only get the joke but are kind of touched.
February 08, 2005
WOOT!I am the biggest geek ever. Seriously.
Biggest. Geek. Evar.
February 01, 2005
TrackbacksWell, Trackback has been disabled for the time being. I got swamped with trackback spam last night and am trying to figure out what to do about it.
I can't run MT-Blacklist on the server I'm on because apparently it requires BackgroundTasks to work properly. Grr. And to think that one of the reasons I upgraded to the new fancy MT version was so I could use the new fancy MT-B version.
Grr.
At least I got to go to the Cinequest Press Conference today. It was awesome.
January 30, 2005
BlogRollsSo I've been pondering my blogroll(s). I have my blogroll here, and I have my BlogLines RSS aggregator collection of Blogs I read.
They don't overlap much.
For a while, my BlogRoll was all the blogs I read on a regular basis, but now that isn't accurate at all. For one thing, it's missing a lot of the blogs I have in my aggregator. But my aggregator can't list non-RSS blogs, so anybody on Diaryland, for example, isn't on it even if I read them religiously. I also have some blogs on my BlogRoll and in my aggregator that I don't read regularly at all, they're just in there because I know the person through the Weblogger Meetup or something.
How do you, my fellow bloggers, decide who's in your blogroll? How good are you about keeping it updated?
Edited to add:I have now updated my blogroll situation by putting my RSS aggregator set here as a blogroll, and using my old BlogLines roll for just non-RSS sites I read! Wow, that took me about 20 minutes total, if that. Awesome. And now my links here are up-to-date. Sweet.
January 23, 2005
Drac-Drac-Drac-Drac-Dracula!"Dracula: The Series" was a great show. OK, a greatly cheesy show, but I loved it. It was on in the 1990-1991 season. it ran 21 episodes. I adored it.
It's out on DVD. And the fanfic list I run for it is heating up. Also, there are a couple of insane people pretending to be Lucard and Klaus over on Livejournal (here and here). I own the DVDs and now I have new fanfic to read. Life is good.
January 21, 2005
2004 Mix DiscSo Rich has this thing goin' on where you make a mix CD to sum up 2004. Well, two discs, actually - one of music new to you and one of music that just came out.
My life doesn't revolve around music all that much, so I don't really have enough stuff to make up a pair of CDs. I'm making one disc that's some of both - music new to me and music that's new. They're songs I've been listening to a lot that sort of sum up the year for one reason or another. Here they are, with comments. Yay me!
January 17, 2005
Yay and boo!Well, the TypeKey issue appears to be resolved, too. Yay! Let me encourage all y'all to go sign up with TypeKey - it'll make your comments show up faster.
On the "boo" side of things, though, it appears that MT-Blacklist can't run on my server. I am deeply irked and am investigating other spam-killing options. I mean, the spam comments aren't going to show up on my site because of the login/moderation setup, but they DO clog my Comments Pending list.
Gah!Sorry about the comments issues, folks. It seems I actually had TWO problems, one of which has now been resolved.
As soon as the other (using TypeKey) is resolved, things should work properly. In the meantime, comments DO work, they just ALL go to moderation... along with about four kazillion spam comments.
Once both issues are resolved, I am SO installing MT-Blacklist again. #$^*ing comment spam. It makes it take FOREVER to find legit comments in the queue and mark them "approved." *sigh*
January 14, 2005
Argh.Sorry my comments aren't working properly. When you try to comment it does go into my pending queue, so the comment isn't lost, but I do have to approve all of them. Apparently I did something wrong with TypeKey or something. I'm getting help from MT Support. Yay for tech support.
*sigh*
On the bright side, the new version of MT does make it a LOT easier to despam my blog than the original one did! (I decided not to install Blacklist yet since (a) MT isn't working right and (b) the Blacklist that goes with this version of MT seems to be a pain in the ass to install).
January 13, 2005
Just testing...I upgraded to the new MT and am checking to make sure that it worked.
January 12, 2005
iPod *snicker*, more like.I can't be the only one who thinks the new iPod Shuffle is kinda lame, right?
Sure, it looks cool, but when you examine it, it turns out that it's just a little iPod with no functionality except to shuffle your songs.
I mean, the bf just bought a teeny player with a bigger harddrive (like, three times bigger), an actual user interface (so you can see what song is playing and make playlists and whatnot), and playlist making/playing ability.
For the same price.
Fans of the regular iPods justify the high price by saying that they're super sleek and have the best user interface evar, but this one is just super sleek. What's so great about it to make it worth $99?
January 04, 2005
Meeeeeeeeeeetup!Groovy Meetup tonight! Three new people: Sandra (who is also here and here), Nicole, and Dahlia. Plus reglars Fling, Rich, Courtney, Antwon, Andrew, David, and Jon. Awesome. We missed Elke and Dad, of course. But it was still fun. We talked about everything from music (prompted by Rich's 2004 CD exchange challenge thing) to corpses. Rawk.
There guys, I posted the requisite "who was there?" post! Hah!
December 29, 2004
I [Heart] My NeurosOne great thing about my Neuros (out of the many) is that it has forced me to actually organize my MP3s and get them properly ID tagged. I have been doing this with two programs: Tag&Rename and MusicBrainz. The former lets me set a bunch of files to have the same Genre (or whatever), which is important since apparently the Neuros doesn't support folders (which is how I organize my music into types). The latter helps identify songs with mysterious filenames and little or no info in the ID3 tag (important for the files I ripped early in my career before I knew what the hell I was doing).
Awesome.
I am about to set my Neuros up to get all the songs that are ready - about 1500. Then I will go to bed, and hopefully when I wake up, my Neuros will be alllllll ready with all my music on it. Yay! I spent today driving around with just my Rock/Punk folder on it, and I am eager to get the other stuff on there!
October 26, 2004
Yes, I know......that the comments are broken. I tried to despam too many entries at once (goddamn comment spamming bastards hammered me over the weekend) and broke MT-Blacklist. I'm getting some help from a great guy on the MT-Blacklist troubleshooting forum and should have it back up soon.
I proved to myself last night that I am a huge, flaming geek by deciding to eat dinner while working on the blacklist issue rather than while watching TV or something (and it was an either/or proposition because I'd been out so late at Aikido class). Heh.
In other news, I am the proud webmistress of SoBaNaNos.org, home of the South Bay National Novel Writing Month folks. Go look!
October 18, 2004
Best Of Craigslist rulesI love this posting. Totally deserved "best of" status.
I'll copy it below for archival purposes.
October 11, 2004
NaNo Blog up and runningSeptember 24, 2004
Darth Vader fans, unite!IN the current issue of Premiere magazine, Virginia Madsen replied to the question "Who is your favorite Star Wars character?" with:
Darth Vader. I was a very young adolescent, and I found him incredibly sexually attractive. The evil, emotionally crippled one - I was so twisted as a child, already having problems with men! Nowadays, I'd be a Luke Skywalker girl down the line."Hee! Sounds about like my take on the man in black. 'Course, I'm not a Luke Skywhiner fan now. Also, I like to think that I got over being attracted to bad boys by lusting after them on screen - the guys I fall for in real life tend to be total sweethearts.Anyway. It made me giggle.
September 12, 2004
Bloggers expect to make money?According to this MyWay News article they do.
Good grief, people. Anybody who thinks they can make money off their website is on crack. It's like going into fiction writing for the money. Sure, some people get lucky but it's not something that you expect to get rich (or even support yourself) doing.
Somebody famous once said that you should only write fiction because you can't imagine not writing fiction. I think blogging is the same way. It should be something you do because you can't not do it. Not because you want to make a fast buck. Sheesh.
September 02, 2004
Dave Sim! Free Comics!Have you written Dave Sim for your free comic yet?
I did. Here's what I wrote.
September 01, 2004
Roy Zimmerman!OMG! Roy Zimmerman's official site is finally online! EEK!
Good looking or good booking?This is either pap or really clever. Maybe both.
Penguin UK has started a new ad campaign aimed at young guys: goodbooking.com has details. The gist of it is, if you are holding a book (preferably a Penguin UK book) it makes you sexier.
I will admit that guys who read are more attractive to me than guys that don't. This could be why I'm always giving the bf books as presents, but I'm not telling.
August 30, 2004
I'm a dork.My cats are now on Catster.
w00t.
August 29, 2004
Psychology Today sez...Found this in the latest issue of Psychology Today.
What can you learn froma personal Web site? More than if you met the person for a few minutes and about as much as from a glance around their bedroom, according to a University of Texas, Austin study. Subjects who rated the personalities of 89 strangers via personal Web pages most accurately assessed the person's curiousity, creativity and friendliness. Least apparent online: emotional stability.August 25, 2004
Blogger Meetup!Well, I'm going to be at the Blogger Meet tonight (if you didn't get an evite and you're a South Bay Blogger, go complain to Courtney).
I'll be late, though, as I'm going to Aikido class first. See y'all there!
August 24, 2004
I rawkI installed and configured mt-blacklist today. On the first try.
Go me.
I LOVE being able to do a quick search-and-delete on all my blogs at once. So spammers, kiss my pale geeky behind! Find another blog to spam.
April 21, 2004
1066Wow, this is my 1066th entry in this blog.
If you don't know why 1066 is important, go read your medieval history, ya lamer.
April 08, 2004
Awwwwwwwwwww.
adopt your own virtual pet! March 30, 2004
Scurvy of the soul"The surprisng claim that The Fisher King makes and, I think, proves is that the old motifs of myth and romance work, move and persuade audiences who have no previous knowledge of them, because they are, if not true, then in a deep way needed: if they are not present in the imaginative diet, then you will get scurvy of the soul, and all the sitcoms in the world won't cure you."
--Tom Shippey, Times Literary Supplement, 11/22/1991
March 25, 2004
Yay!I've updated to MT 2.661 and done a little amateur stuff to deter all the spam I've been getting in my comments lately. Woot. 'course, I can't get the plugin MT Blacklist to work, but hey, it's a start.
I'm feeling moderately studly right now. :)
March 24, 2004
Aw yeah! \m/My computer has been souped up, baby. Aw yeah. It has.
My new hardware:
200Gb harddrive
2.6Ghz Athelon processor
new motherboard
512Mb of RAM
DVD-ROM drivew00t! It's amazing how much faster my applications open!
Now to get moved out so I will have DSL for connection instead of dialup...
February 16, 2004
Golly!
This is my 1000th blog entry.
I find that kind of scary. Cool, but still scary.
February 11, 2004
Google RulesThis is why you should always Google prospective dates.
A suspected US fraudster on the run for a year has reportedly been caught after a woman checked his name on the Google website before meeting him for a date.LaShawn Pettus-Brown was wanted in Ohio for allegedly siphoning off city funds from restoration projects.
The woman found his name on an FBI arrest warrant after using the Google search engine and contacted authorities, local media reported.
February 10, 2004
Oh, how COOL!I want this.
A video game that teaches you biofeedback control type stuff? How cool is that?!
January 29, 2004
Questin'More geekiness.
If only Frodo and company had the internet, they could've used MapQuest, right?
PromoLinkin'OK, entries like this are why I still read PromoGuy, even though he doesn't do the Monday Mission anymore (waaah!).
January 13, 2004
#!/usr/bin/sillyI'm such a dork. But I wrote this up all by myself and hardly had to look at the book or anything! And I debugged it without calling for help or looking ANYTHING up, so I'm feeling rather pleased.
And geeky.
January 06, 2004
#!/usr/bin/geekgirlI'm such a geek.
No, really.
First I strongarmed Netscape 7.1 into recognizing my old email folders when my prefs.js file had been fux0red. (That was yesterday. Yes, I forgot to blog it. I was too excited at the time.)
Now I'm learning Perl.
December 15, 2003
Yay and argh!Yay: With the help of my wonderful and talented web geek boyfriend, I've managed to import all my old entries into my new Movable Type database. Woot! Thanks, baby! YOU ROCK.
ARGH: When I tried to import all my old blogger entries, using the file I made when I exported them back in the day, I got multiple copies of them. Like, four copies of them in some cases. This is most annoying. My CTS is acting up from hitting tab and spacebar over and over and over to check all the little "delete" boxes in the editing mode. *sigh*
I hope all this importing and deleting hasn't bolloxed up the numbering system terribly. 'course if it has... I can always export the entries, delete the blog, recreate it, and import them again... depends on how much of a perfectionist I feel like, I guess. :)
Still, it's nice to have my old archives back and searchable.
October 16, 2003
Woot!Well, the blogger not-a-Meetup thing last night rocked, open mic notwithstanding. :)
Also, I've gotten my NaNo Blog for this year up and running, although there's not much to see there yet.
I'm going to bed. *yawn*
October 15, 2003
Fed-Up!All right, kids. If any of you are Bay Area bloggers, get yer heinies down to Mission Valley Coffee for tonight's Non-Meetup.com blogger get together. We got sick of Meetup.com and are doing it ourselves! :D
More info here here.
October 13, 2003
It's that time of year againIt's almost November. How did that happen?
For them as don't know, November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). Last year I crossed the finish line with pride (and of course with much blogging). This year I have a new goal. I don't just want to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I want to write 50,000 good (or at least decent) words in the month of November.
October 09, 2003
Oh, my god.Corporal Joebot of the Phenomenauts commented on my site, in response to this post.
{insert fangirly squeals here}
August 28, 2003
BooklogFixed my damn booklog templates so they look pretty again. Woo.
A Perpetual Orgy: Ealasaid's Booklog
And yes, I know it's too wide for 800x600 screens. Sorry. I'm working on that. Gotta redo one of my graphics.
updateI've updated my booklog by extending the review of The Dragonbone Chair.
August 27, 2003
I dig him Maher than ever...Yay! Bill Maher has a blog!
He rocks. I'm stoked. Gotta blogroll him.
(link via Elke)
August 22, 2003
Man! I'm a slacker.I totally forgot to post about the Meetup.
As usual, it rocked. Thanks mostly to Antwon, we managed to discuss not only the gubernatorial recall election but the idea of various people committing bestiality with rabbits.
We're a weird bunch.
Anyway, it was cool. Elke wasn't there, probably because she still hasn't watched the tape I loaned her and was too ashamed to show her face. :)
August 21, 2003
hah!Aunt Marsden sent this to me:
Weta, Massey say no to SCO Licensing bill would run to six figures and more for Massey, Weta
Weta, for them as don't know, are the folks who do the special effects for the Lord of the Rings films. They rule. Here's hoping they continue to tell SCO to go to hell. Linux is open source, goddammit! :)
August 03, 2003
Searching made easier.I've installed a Google search on my main page so people can search my site easily.
I used to have a FreeFind search box, but it didn't offer enough data storage so people would search for stuff and not be able to find it because it hadn't been indexed.
Upside: better search functionality.
Downside: FreeFind send me weekly search reports of how many people had searched for what. For example, five people searched my site last week for "Antwon" - which is sad, since I think the only place I've mentioned him is here in my blog, which FreeFind didn't index. *sigh* Well, that's been fixed. Go search! Have fun! :)
July 29, 2003
Addiction Rears its Ugly HeadI am addicted to Castle. This game rocks my world, although I'm not entirely sure why.
July 17, 2003
MeetupAs usual, the Blog Meetup rocked the house. We had a dozen people last night, I think:
Me, Courtney, Twon, Mark, David, Rich, Jonas, Jonathan, Faisal, Elkit, and Kevin. And some guy whose name I don't know and couldn't figure out from the others' blogs because they either haven't posted yet or don't know either.
Conversation ranged from hockey to women who protest topless to the One True Definition of Blogging. Very cool. Lots of fun.
June 21, 2003
Pottermania Hooooooooo!So the new Harry Potter book is available today. Cool, yes? Well, yeah, except that I won't buy the American editions for reasons I won't go into here.
Spoilers ahoy, don't read on if you don't want spoilers. OK? You have been warned! MAJOR SPOILER BELOW.
June 20, 2003
Meetup!Dood, I forgot to update about the Meetup!
It was a lot of fun, even though it was at the stoopid Coffee Factory (overpriced, deserted, not cool) instead of at the Coffee Society (decent prices, lots of cool people, cool and comfy atmosphere).
Had most of the core crowd - Antwon, Courtney, Rich, Elkit - plus newbie Jonas
and another newbie named Jonathan who hasn't linked his blog from the meetup page yet. Dad was out of town, sadly.Topics of conversation included the Mr. Moto films, vampires, disgusting photos, bandwidth theft, and weird legal stuff (including a way that Disney could very well be about to lose its trademarks in spite of getting lawmakers to jerk the copyright laws around). I love bloggers. We're such a cool crowd.
June 18, 2003
Blogger Meetup tonight!Woot! It's that time of month again... oh, hush, you pervs. I meant it's time for this month's Blogger Meetup. Should be fun, although we're in a new venue. Stoopid Meetup didn't let us vote for our usual venue this month.
Still, it should be fun. I'll report on it later. :)
May 21, 2003
*sigh*Dood. The Blog Meetup is well underway by now. *sniff* I don't get to go at all this month 'cos I'll be off at a Red Elvises concert. Well, the concert will be fun. :)
May 14, 2003
Summer is FTP'ing in...Most people can tell that summer is on its way by conventional, boring things like, say, the weather, or increased sunlight, or the preponderance of ads on TV for swimsuits, sunblock, and other beach-oriented things.
Me, I can tell summer is on its way because my Mom asks me to check over the HTML curriculum I wrote for her learning center.
March 26, 2003
The last post about that damn computer, honest.Live and learn.
The computer at work is back on track. Turns out I didn't do the format right - you gotta delete the partitions first, then format.
At any rate, it is now working, so I can stop fussing with it and boring my readers with posts about it! Rah!
March 24, 2003
Argh!You may recall that I'm working on reinstalling windows onto a system here at work.
Well, everything went fine, right up until I tried to install Windows.
The computer won't boot off my Windows98 CD. It won't boot off a boot floppy disk created with Norton Antivirus. It claims both are "Invalid systems disks" even though both will boot the other computer in this room just fine.
So we're probably going to try replacing the floppy and/or hard drives and see if that works. Oh, joy.
March 20, 2003
MeetupWell, the Meet-up last night was fun. Had a decent turnout when I got there - about half a dozen people! Rah!
Now to get the rest of the SF Bay Area bloggers to turn up...
March 19, 2003
Meeeeeeeeeetup!Check it, yo: It's International Blog Meet-up Day! I'm gonna be at the one for my area... are you?
The SF Bay Bloggers crowd is fun. I've met some really cool folks through the meetups.
January 16, 2003
CooolMan, my fellow bay area bloggers are a cool bunch. The Bloggers Meetup last night was a success. Masses of people were there! Okay, like half a dozen. But still. It was fun.
Courtney is working on a website for SFBay Area Bloggers, and it'll be fun if it comes together!
Anyway. Had another 12-hour day today so I'm off.
January 15, 2003
Webloggers of the World, Unite!Time once again for a Meetup! Specifically, a Bloggers Meetup. Hurrah. Looks like I'll actually be there around 8 or 8:30 this time, yay. Fellow bloggers, sign up and join us! Join usssssssssss!
Ahem. Sorry.
Anyway. Hope to see a buncha folks there this time. I'm beat and will need a large crowd to cover for my lack of conversational skills. Working with middle schoolers for 11 hours a day will do that to you.
January 10, 2003
More Thoughts on BloggingIt's becoming common knowledge, at least in media-and-technology-savvy circles, that blogs have surprising power. For example, Trent Lott's recent downfall was due in part to bloggers. Here, of course, I use 'bloggers' to mean people who run sites updated daily with lots of links on a particular subject.
January 05, 2003
Woooo!I am now the proud posessor of a functioning CD-RW drive, thanks to my pals Jen and Dave. Dave, you rock.
Even cooler, I am now a smidge less intimidated by the idea of installing hardware. Not like I'm some huge hardware geek now or anything, but at least the thought of installing a drive no longer fills me with terror. Huzzah.
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