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04.30.02 in honor of mr. byron, memories and music genius, the newest mp3 is joni mitchell's all i want from the amazing, classic album, blue. # jon thought the smell was familiar. he handed me the book and i stuck my nose in it. sniff. yes, it was familiar. the book on my shelf smelled exactly like the first real book i ever read. in the second grade. it wasn't very big, but i was so scared of loosing my place. i think i dog-eared every page of that book. whenever i'd set it down, i underlined the first word of the line i was on, so i wouldn't loose my place. i wondered how adults kept from loosing their place. it smelled just like that. i remember how hard i tried to learn it at first. the words didn't make sense. they didn't look familiar, they didn't look right. i didn't understand how i could could make sounds out of these words. i remembered the panic when i first started reading. it took so long to sound out the words. i worried that i'd never read signs from the car. i remember the relief when i finally discovered i no longer needed to sound out the words. i remember reading with my sister, after my parent's had gone to bed. i'd sneak into her room and we'd grab a book off the shelf. sitting together, i would read aloud to her, still sounding out words sometimes, and she would look on over my shoulder. she read before she started kindergarten. i remember lying in my bed, counting with her. our rooms connected by a small hallway, and we'd talk back and forth at night. the doorway always stood open, for the bathroom light. every night, we would try to see how high we could count. how high did numbers go? i wasn't yet sure, and somehow i thought if we counted high enough, we'd eventually find the end of numbers. we were always asleep before 200. i think we only got there once. katy always forgot 16. 14...15...what?...17 yesterday she turned 20. twenty year's old! we're not so far apart, but she's my hourglass, without a doubt. i mark the passage of time not by my own days in the wild, but rather by her's. my first memory? the day she was born. i remember walking around the hospital heliport with my father. i remember going with him to meet my mom, and my new sister. i guess that's the day my life must have started. # 04.29.02 just this morning apple produced a speed bumped powerbook, including a slightly larger screen and a dvi connector. cool, but not news if you follow the rumors. the more interesting debut today was the "emac." apple has gone back, partially, to the old crt imac of yore, and rebranded it strictly for education. which ain't a bad idea. the desklamp imac just didn't seem like something that was going to stand up to sticky, penut butter coated 6 year old fingers hammering away at the keyboard and mangling the screen. here's the really cool thing: they stepped it up to 17" - and updated the housing design, which looks pretty nice. apple really is pretty mad for the education market. hope it pays off for them. # i downloaded some episodes of the now-defunct, live-action version of the tick. did anyone else enjoy this short-lived miracle of television? i have to admit: i really like it. a lot. the humor is subtle. which is not to say that the humor is subtle. more, i suppose, the humor take a while to set in. it's over the top. it's tounge-in-cheek. it's padded costumes and lycra. if you have access to some file-sharing goodness, look out for this one. it's worth a look. # 04.26.02 in case you missed it, wired ran stories yesterday about biodegradable plastics made from corn or potatoes and a drifting oil tanker. the burned out tanker has 60,000 gallons of fuel and oil still on board, along with a cute little puppy. c'mon, ecological disaster and puppies? what more do you want people?! # 04.25.02 wow, the latest feature at salon blasts what it calls the "wedding porn" genre (if you want examples, read the article) and take more shots at meg ryan than i could count. and it's not even a premium story, as most of the fun ones are these days. # there's an article at rolling stone about the dave matthews band's upcoming new album. they've rerecorded most of the unreleased tracks from the lillywhite sessions with two new tracks and the whole mess is coming out this summer. from the sound of the article, it promises to be a very interesting mess. # does anyone have any experience with extensis suitcase under mac os 9.x? i'm running os 9.2.2 and have been sucessfully running suitcase 10 for a long time now. suddenly, out of the blue, my machine froze. now it locks up during bootup. i've narrowed it down to suitcase's three extensions (Suitcase Extension, Suitcase FontEngine and FontEngine Lib) which are causing the freeze. i downloaded and installed version 10.1 of the app and still get this problem. any suggestions? # 04.24.02 toshiba has announced a bluetooth enabled pocket server - a 1.8-inch, 5 GB hard drive that acts as a wireless http/ftp server. the idea of serving data from your shirtpocket to any device within 30 feet is bizarrely cool... # ibm is working (still) on something called storage tank, a clustered server setup that translates a single storehouse of data for mulitple OS's to utilize. it would act in a network environment like just about any filesystem you want it to be, on the fly. (at least that's what i got out of it - most just washed over me) also, microsoft's cambridge lab is working on all kinds of cool stuff, including a self-organizing algorithm for p2p networks. # hey, wow, i can get a really cool dot u.s. domain name? that's so cool! now i can find an affordable way to distribute my private collection of waving-flag gif's and midi renditions of the star spangled banner! # kazaa is planning 1.) a new, subscription based, ad-free version of their software 2.) to roll out that good old sleeper-net they've got you all plugged into to push ads, etc. at users 3.) to include "some sexy applications" with the next release of the player, and they're going to it all from 4.) their new tax-haven headquarters. you know what? these folks are real good people. go out and support the cause by downloading that lovely revenue-free hack. # how does one write like that? how can i ever hope to craft words like that? these words, they are so fine and so delicate. these words fit together precisely. they form beautiful constructs, each sentence, each phrase. they have a texture and a smell, and they roll across the tongue, their sounds stitched together by their very lightness. these words beg only to be whispered, and i don't know how i can ever hope to write them. # And he tried to laugh, to match his tone to LeRoy's. But he did not really understand LeRoy's tone. What was wrong between them today? For it was no longer merely the world -- there was something unspoken between them, something unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired. And yet, on that far-off, burning day, though this knowledge clamored in him and fell all around him, like the sun, and everything in him was aching and yearning for the act, he could not, to save his soul, have named it. It had yet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. It had only a shape and the shape was LeRoy and LeRoy contained the mystery which had him by the throat. -- James Baldwin, Another Country # 04.23.02 it's time once again for a healthy geek news roundup. this time we're looking at mac-geek news. keep in mind that this is more-geek-than-you sort of stuff, so i've arranged it in decending geek order:
# 04.21.02 something i find myself wondering as i read baldwin: can a person really live in europe as a hip young expatriate, traveling from country to country and making a living off their youth, good looks and an occasionally befriended rich foreign eccentric? i mean, it makes poverty and prostitution seems so fun! # what better way to spend a breezy sunday afternoon then with the smiths? # 04.20.02 following the free music thread over at contrasts, i wanted to post this wired article that discusses, among other things, a hacked, lite version of kazaa which has been stripped of all spyware ad-ons. kazaa, of course, is screaming, so if you're interested, grab it while you can. (the site also includes a similarly lite version of audiogalaxy) another interesting mention in this article is the fact that winmx is built on top of old napster protocols. interesting, and probably faster than guntella clients like morpheus. update: two peer-to-peer mentions - if you run morpheus, do yourself a favor and switch the gnucleus. it's the same technology, but does not include advertising and pop-ups. some people claim it's a little faster. it seems however, that morpheus is planning a new version of their client, which would continue to support the open-but-slower gnutella protocol while including conectivity for the kazaa-run fasttrack network that morpheus used to utilize, which is faster, but more vulnerable to shut-down. [end tangent] # dated april 7, i suppose the story is a little stale now, but according to charlie B. (B, eh? could he be realted to the sluethful, mysterious B. Driscoll?) at here inside, the uk is currently experiencing a honey shortage. god knows this could send the fragile world economy further into the spiral. does anyone have any further updates on this pending crisis? moreoever, could this turn into a repeat of last the banana wars? #
with many, many thanks to darin for hauling me southward to take care of things and no small amount of relief, i can finally say that the car is dead. it took a lot of work today to get it all taken care of. i'm just glad this tiny nightmare is over. # 04.19.02 THIS BORED ELECTRIC NATION it's been one of those weeks. i've been posting a lot this week. posting a lot, not doing a lot. a convenient disguise. the week has been consumed by inaction. i feel as though i've been thrown to the sharks. the car keeps coming back to haunt me. i'm going to deal it a final blow today and end the whole nightmare. a book swallowed me up recently. that hasn't happened for a while. i'm enthralled by james baldwin's tragic another country. but perhaps the thing i love most about it is that it's a big, thick paperback book. i can hold it in my hand and it feel so solid and thorough. it makes me feel as if i have accomplished. simply by holding it. something's broken right now and i promised myself i wouldn't plaster that thought across this damned billboard. i've just felt...broken all week. not depressed or melancholy. nothing so solid and definable. just tired, hungry, weak. craving salty foods and a new kind of interaction. looking for a cure. these speed bumps, as i have come to affectionately think of them, exist in my psyche for a reason. they used to be big and torturous. now they're very small, serving their purpose to slow me down and throw me off course before i make a rut. and they pass, which did not used to happen. quickly. i mustered up the courage tonight to get out. it was my friend cat's 21st birthday. that's still a big deal around here. as well it should be. the bars were predictably terrible, but it was nice to just get out of the house for a few hours and be with people i know. this weekend is poly royal. it used to be a huge celebration, but there were riots one year and it has since become a more common kind of open house. it's a fun time nevertheless. and it draws a crowd. i'm excited because my friend yas is coming down to play. i haven't told you about yas before, but she's one of the most important people i have met here at cal poly. the time we spent together, before she graduated, was precious and special. seeing her will be good medicine. # MUSIC WEEK rounding out the week and hanging out with us for a while afterwards is the first single off the new moby album. it's called we are all made of stars and there's a link to the video somewhere below. go and get it if you want to hear. # you've probably already read it, but brent has a new piece of his continuing saga. he says it's going to end tomorrow. be sure to tune in. # 04.18.02 MUSIC WEEK here we are, thursday morning and we've only two song's left to go. hopefully someone has actually listened to a few of these throughout the week. anyway, i can't think of a peppy intro for today's track, so just go get it. today: hefner - when angels play their drums # 04.17.02 "I haven't seen this much senseless hipster carnage since the Great Sebadoh Fire Of '93," said rescue worker Larry Kolterman, finding a green-and-gold suede Puma sneaker in the rubble. best thing i've seen all day - 37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster! thanks onion, and thanks pj! # i've been rendered completely speechless, which in this case is ok, because there's almost nothing you can say about a painting of bea arthur wrestling dinosaurs. i mean really. {from dayv} # the surpreme court decided today not to uphold a 1996 law which bans even the apperance of children having sex (i.e. young looking actors/actresses, such as can be seen in stanley kubrick's lolita, steven soderbergh's traffic or last year's the deep end). {update: noah offers a solid counterpoint} ruling aside, you might find it interesting in this case to note the difference in reporting style between cnn, wired and the techie oddball register. elsewhere today in john ashcroft's crumbling empire, a federal judge knocked down and then proceeded to mercilessly kick and taunt the AG's attack on oregon's assisted suicide law. i heard judge judy was going to make johnny take down his titty curtains next... # MUSIC WEEK wednesday's rock and so does south. listen to the track paint the silence from their album from here on in and fully drama-rock wednesday. # 04.16.02 brent is going somewhere. wont you come along with him? # i think i cursed myself when i called tuesday a sad day. i was woken up today by the insurance company, calling about the accident. you see, it seems that i may not get anything from the insurance company, based on a wacky confluence of at fault policies related to multiple car accidents and the very minimal value of my car. of course it's too soon to tell on that front. but apparently it's not too soon for the yard where the car is stored to refuse storage of the vehicle. the insurance adjuster wants another 3-4 days to get the police report and inspect the vehicle, while the garage wants me to pay them or take the car away now. of course, the yard where the totalled car is located is almost two hours from here. which means its not gonna park in my driveway to wait for the snail-esque insurance company. so i'm left, baffled, wondering how i'm going to pay for the charges up to now, not to mention where the car is going to go to be stored as it waits for the adjuster to have her way with it. and let's not forget that i'm broke-as-hell. and i may or may not get any money from the insurance. i'm so fucked. at least if i'd gotten hurt i could cover these damned charges. wait, what's this kink in my neck? # remember that kid who flew a plane into a florida skyscraper last year in a copycat WTC attack? well, it seems that some sharky lawyers have convinced his parents that his acne made him do it. or, more precisely, his acne medication made him do it. # in case you missed the news, actor robert urich died today of cancer. he was 55. (this is particularly sad around here, as faithful readers will remember that his son ryan is in a band with my roommate dayv.) # MUSIC WEEK continuing the project, we're going to listen to a short, sad song, because somehow, even when they're good, tuesday's are sad. go to sound* right now to hear badly drawn boy's lo-fi shake the rollercoaster. it's a brief and wonderfully mellow, wanderlust minstrelsy. # 04.15.02 "When we first recorded Fake Plastic Trees it was terrible! It sounded like Guns n' Roses. It was awful! It was like loud guitars... you could envisage one of these dreadful hilltop, Grand Canyon-esque videos. It was long hair flowing." - ed i almost forgot - today is the birthday of radiohead guitarist ed o'brien. happy birthday, ed! # just a note: i've changed my IM screen name. if you'd like to msg me, please add prosaicdotnu to your buddy list. # i rode a bike today for the first time since i was sixteen. it wasn't that bad. i forgot what your body feels like after a good bike ride. noodle limp and just a little sore, windblown and chilled and very very happy. # PLOP PLOP FIZZ FIZZ recently, i've become a big fan of powdered gatorade. it's a fabulous invention, because you can have gatorade any time and you can make it as strong or weak as you like. it brings the power of gatorade into your kitchen. it's like the printing press of the beverage world. and it got me thinking. if the essence of gatorade can be distilled down to a fine green powered, what about other drinks? i've become one of the beverage-empowered, and i'm here to start your drinking revolution. why can't i make all of my favorite beverages from the comfort of my own home? enter the coke tablet. ever drink alka seltzer? it works just the same. take one pitcher filled with the appropriate level of water. drop in just one coke-tab and watch as the mysterious cake magically transforms your ordinary drinking water into caramel colored, sugar filled, carbonated delight! i was gonna make millions on this idea, but leave it up to those schmoes at coca-cola to invent it themselves. but rest assured - when it comes, there will be a beverage revolution! # it must be a slow news day today, because prosaic* is currently listed as number 23 at blogdex. it appears i owe it all to richard and his brief mention of this weekend's common sense post. not that i'm some kind of link-slut or anything, but cool. # in the interest of new music and cute boys, i'm gonna offer up a rather prosaic link (no pun, really) to some streaming music videos. why, you ask? mostly for the gomez video, but once i was there, i found the new moby video/single interesting and fun, if for nothing more than the shot of gary coleman. i also watched this video for dashboard confessional. i heard the song, which is guaranteed to be a pop-radio sensation, quite a while ago from kevin. i was originally underimpressed with the song as an mp3, but i could stare at the singer in the video for days. go ahead and watch it (more pics here). you'll like him too. {warning: vids are realplayer and they're big. smaller versions are available at the first link above} # i've long want to start a national organization for lecherous gay webloggers. i'd lead west coast activies. perhaps david is my man in the middle? anyone from the far east? # MUSIC WEEK ok, we've got a backlog of updating to do around here, and we're gonna start to fix that problem right here and now. first up is music. there's not enough of it around here! so for the rest of the week, we're going to have a new mp3 every day to get things going right. you can find them by checking into sound* daily. first up: regency buck. # 04.14.02 i can't begin to express my gratitude to those who's kind words found me after the accident. your phone calls, emails and hugs all meant so much to me. thank you all very, very much for your concern and your support. i completely lack to words to describe how it has made me feel. thank you. # brent is talking about six sigma. have you heard of continuous improvement? have you been taking your dose of the latest management rhetoric? it's a special kind of bullshit that they're making these days, really it is. because it's not bullshit. it's the fillet mignon of bullshit. a simple, understandable truth wrapped up in their crap. it's about treating the cause rather than the symptom, not total quality management. it's about trusting the people that work for you, not employee empowerment. it's about everyone being on the same page, not a mission statement. the mission statement is an easy one. they're useless. it's not a broken tool, it's a tool that never worked. all mission statements assert their respective company's desire to "provide outstanding service" or "be a leader in our field" or "treat out customers with respect." well no shit. every company wants to do that. every single one of them. because people want to make money and nobody makes money (for very long) by calling their customer/employee/boss dirty names. mission statements don't inspire employees to do anything other than make fun of them and the people who wrote them. they're generic, useless pieces of paper that serve no purpose other than to reiterate the obvious. did anyone other than the dot-com kids actually see office space? or read dilbert? regurgitating truisms to your employees and calling it "management" is both pointless and insulting. treating people like people, with respect and trust and honesty; when did it become passe? # 04.12.02 oh my. it doesn't get better than this. pam anderson is engaged to kid rock. no shit. # reading about the recent disapearing trend of freemails, i found a handy little site. it lets you log in, via the web, to any pop3 or imap compatable email account. could be very helpful if you don't have web-based email access. # hey look! a new album from elvis costello. and he's back with (most of) the Attractions. how fun! and there's more, with a new moby album on it's way soon. wired has a very interesting article on the man, his music and the marketing machine that he's built. the article paints him as the martha stewart of music. only, you know, nicer. # in a fast german car, i'm not really sure if i saw it or not. i know, from the sequence of events, that i probably saw the red lights flash. i know i reacted. but i can't remember if i really saw it happen. it was then that i felt the slide begin. that's when reality came loose. everything after that happened in altered time. the tail light's flashed. the brakes locked. the slide, all in fast-forward. the truck's taillight's rushed up to greet me. then the process reversed. time slowed down. i felt the vertical pull, the sudden jerk of the harness as the forces of physics bore down on the front wheels. in my mind, the car flipped up, tail into the air, completely vertical with the sheer force streaming through my leg onto the brake peddle. then time came unhinged, and i looked ahead and actually saw the car stop. just in time. i saw the hood standing still, millimeters off the bumper ahead of it. my mind flipped over, and i stared as the car crept slowly forward. glacially, monumentally, the front of the car slid under the truck's rear axel. the sun crawled across the sky as the front of my car began to push on the bumper ahead of it. fast-forward and the hood is crumpling, giving way to the body at rest and folding into itself sadly, as if it was resigned to this end. at that moment, the jolt came, an aftershock to announce the event's end. the blood curdling sound of metal on metal, crushing, crunching, bending, breaking, woven in and around these events, detached from them, a ribbon waving to the wind. i looked ahead, watching all of this pass by me, the tempo speeding and slowing in a constant state of flux. suddenly reality comes back to me and i'm sitting in the driver's seat, staring forward at the crumpled wreckage of my car. the second time, the sound came before anything else. i heard the crunch from behind me. then i felt it. my body lurched forward and i thought of roller-coasters, jerking you against your harness as they start and stop. at that moment i actually felt fear. and i heard another crunch, felt another jolt. maybe there was another after that. all i can remember was the taste of the panic, the need to cry and to vomit, the thought of being crushed within the inescapable physics of it all. and it suddenly felt so huge and so horrible, just as it was over. there were probably 6 cars involved, although there might have been 7. besides a good shaking, nobody was hurt. thank god. my car was totaled, the front end smashed in, the radiator laid flat. the rear end was mangled as well, the passenger side corner torn off down to the frame. the headlights were obliterated, the trunk bent in on itself. the back seat was blown off it's hinges and the engine block looked to have absorbed a fair amount of the whole train's momentum. i don't really know what happened. whatever it was happened in front of me, a car or two ahead. there was no time to react, no where to go. dense traffic and highway speeds, and everyone was lucky to be safe. darin and adam were beautiful and gracious enough to drive two hours to my rescue. a few terrible elephant-bar drinks with the UCSB crowd and we were happy again and on our way home. the hysteria had collapsed in on itself, leaving some kind of super-dense sorrow. i don't think there's any insurance money coming. the car wasn't worth much. it was almost ready to give up, having gone above and beyond the call of duty in its san francisco to san luis obispo rallys. but it was a good car and i'm sad to look out the front door tonight and see an empty space. # 04.11.02 from boing boing comes a story about a runaway airliner. it seems someone forgot to set the parking break. the picture is worth a laugh. # did someone say web services? here's one that might actually do something interesting, rather than just making rich tech company's richer: API's for google. now, who can tell us why this is cool? # one of the things i dislike about san luis obispo is the gay community. i don't dislike the people. they're really good people. they're fun and interesting. what i don't like is the proximity. and the size. it's a small community, or so it seems. people know each other. people know each other's business. and they talk. i've seen this before more times than i can count. i've been on both ends of it too. it's an annoyance, this gossip factor, but often it's little more than that. but today i ran into thomas and gabe. thomas and gabe are a couple. sometimes. at least that's what i've been told. the logistics of it doesn't really matter. the important thing is that they seem like really good people. they seem cute, fun and friendly. gabe always says hi, has some witty remark to make, and they both smile when they pass people. the more i see them, the more i think i'd like to get to know them better. but i feel confined. around here, everyone knows who they are. everyone knows who everyone else is. and people talk. am i friends with someone they don't like? do i have a history with anyone who they're not fond of? am i known to know someone who dislikes them? around here, people's actions serve as translucent veils for their feelings. it's not a simple process of reaching out to someone, as i found out after coming out. sure, there are some great people around here. but relationships within the community are so complex, so intertwined, it becomes impossible to navigate them. like a pit full of snakes or a bowl of pasta, the beginning and end, the direction and path of any given individual are impossible to distinguish. sure, i could ask a friend to introduce me to gabe and thomas. perhaps i might get a chance to hang out with them sometime. but which friend introduces me, who they are connected to, who i meet and who i'm seen with, ad infinitum for each individual i know, determines the collective perception of the individual. it's almost unbearable. so i stay out of the local gay scene. or at least hang around the fringes. i've got other friends, and i've got other places to go. it's a mess i don't need to get into. # i knew this day would come. they've figured out how to make an exercise pill. now i can sit back and start eating... # have i told you before about my friends? they're great. tonight, they threw a surprise (belated) birthday party. it was awesome. the space was decked in pink with dick-and-ball balloons adorning the walls. there was a penis party-hat, a penis coffee mug, beefcake napkins and best of all, a giant, pink, strawberry flavored, home-made penis cake. complete with frosting-pubes and whipped-cream jism. yeah. have i told you about my friends? # 04.10.02 apparently my new jeans have been manufactured to "withstand the demands of the american lifestyle." # byron and i talked today about changing majors. it's something he's been thinking about, and it seems like something he really wants to do. he's not the first person i've known to make this kind of decision. and yet i find myself opposed to the idea. no matter how much sense it makes, no matter the amount of rational thought that has been put into the decision, in my mind, i'm screaming don't stop now! finish what you've started! talking to byron wasn't the first time i'd encountered these thoughts. recently, change has been a theme. chris paul is thinking about quitting graduate school. dayv has talked about changing majors more times than i can count. why do i respond like this? it's not because of some convoluted concept of success, as defined by career path. that's much too simple, and it's not true. those are the ideas that make my professors scream at darin and ryan for staying here with their girlfriends and their happiness, for not pursuing one of the grand career paths they have such easy access to. no, it's more fundamental than that. perhaps jessie is right. perhaps i'm fundamentally opposed to the idea of change. it sounds so terrible to think of it. i'm a flexible person, i can adapt to new ideas, new ways of thinking and doing things. but somewhere, deep inside my psyche, i find myself irrationally insisting that a process be followed through to it's clear end. it's good to be committed to the things you've started. but what about when those things are simply wrong? have i allowed myself to become trapped into things simply because i have a need to see them through? as i stare down the end of my college career, i have to wonder - did i do it right? i love a lot of things. i especially like writing. but i didn't major in english or creative writing. in hindsight, perhaps that really was for the best. the people are strange. but i like other things too. as a matter of fact, i first heard about cal poly because i was interested in the horticulture program. i like plants. i'm not especially good with them - i just like them. they make me feel relaxed. why then, did i major in graphic communication? i guess i'm not sure. i like it. i enjoyed learning about it for the past four years. it's interesting. is it what i want to do with my life? i'm not sure. perhaps. or perhaps i was right on with my sidewalk confession to mark (see chapter 3: how to not sound desperate to potential employers). maybe i'm ok. maybe i really am on the right path. but maybe i'm just here because i can't fathom the idea of quitting, no matter how logical an answer. # i take back what i said earlier about a lack of apple news - there's a lot going on over at mac rumors right now, including (but not limited to) 10.2 talk and rechargable, two button bluetooth mice. # from jessie, a plugin for winamp that ftp's a list of most recently played mp3s to your site. is there anything like this for iTunes? matter of fact, are there any really cool plugins for iTunes? like broadcasting (a la shoutcast?) # 04.09.02 over the past few days i've been asking myself, what inspired my mobile provider to change their voice mail system? i bore the inconvenience of the changeover (shouldn't this be unnecessary? can't they do this sort of thing automatically by now?) and plodded through the process of resetting my password, greeting and general setup. i assumed there'd be a payoff. instead i've got a crappy system that wants me to punch in a zillion extra pound's and asterisk's. and it's buggy to boot. the talking lady starts talking too early, and not loud enough. the recording quality is shit. the voice mail insignia comes and goes at random. i don't understand why a nation-wide provider roll out such a mediocre, untested system? # recently i've found myself reading more and more from the blogs of tom tomorrow and hivelogic. then again, i haven't really been reading hivelogic, because i can't seem to stop staring at that damned beautiful page header. the pictures dan throws up there are some kind of visual-crack. # apparently, one of the spyware app's that's been bundled with kazaa is something called altnet, a piece of sleeper software that runs a distributed processing system. what's that, you ask? well, it's kinda like seti@home except that a.) you didn't give concent and b.) they could sell your spare resources. now, don't get me wrong. i almost think this is a good idea. there's tons and tons of spare processor time sitting, unused around the world on mom's computers everywhere. it could really be put to good use if something like this was included fundamentally (say, at the OS level). but that doesn't change the facts (see a & b, above). luckily, the altnet p2p network has yet to be switched on. the software is a sleeper at this point. which implies that you might still be able to delete the application, unless it's a fundamental component of kazaa. if anyone knows more about this, let's hear it. {update: remove altnet. via richard} # JUST LIKE SALLY STRUTHERS we've been getting a little bored here at prosaic* recently. one of the major tenants of this site was supposed to be news about our favorite subjects: radiohead and apple. but as many people might have noticed, there's just not much happening right now. and so we've been struggling to come up with things to entertain ourselves. such as speaking in the third person. and trying to style our hair differently every single day of the week (it's a personal challenge). but we've tried also to be forward looking. we've tried to assist in the growth of new content, such as byron, kevin, darin or jon. our encouraging gestures of emotional support, html and the general promotion of scholarship have helped to bring new content online, all for your pleasure. but these boys need more than our charity, they need your please, if there's room in your heart, give to these children. children like byron, who desperately needs a hosted comment system. or jon, who needs encouragement to keep updating. your simple gestures, like visits, emails and comments can help these boys to mature and develop as up and coming young bloggers. you too can help make them successful. please, if you can find it in your heart, give them your support. # 04.08.02 designer mark simonson, who has a fabulously clean website, offers a critique of typography in movies. he's not kind, and it's lovely. # do you subscribe to salon? if so, take some time out and read the interview with joe klein. it's a truely amazing assesment of the clinton administration. # it seems us april baby's keep good company. belated happy's to richard and a just-in-time for philo. go wish them happy. # 04.07.02 i woke up from a nightmare this morning. i haven't been able to shake that creepy feeling all day long. then again, maybe it's the time change. # 04.06.02 thanks to everyone for the birthday well-wishes. i really appreciate it. ya'll are really too swell for little old me. # 04.05.02 i saved a life tonight by putting out a fire. who knew? i just wanted to party... # what is it?! it makes even less sense when you watch more of them...i'm so confused... {via chrispaul} # 04.03.02 from aaron comes a salon editorial (is this old? how did i miss it?) about the kansas supreme court ruling which trips all over gay marriage, straight marriage and transexualism. if your gay, you can't marry. but if you're hetero transexual, you can't marry. the implication is that if you're gay transexual (does this happen? it almost seems like chasing your tail) you can marry. huh? # i'm a little miffed. i just got an email telling me that i've been chosen to receive some kind of award or recognition from my department. it's called, obscurely enough, the GrC Contributions to the Objectives and Public Image of the College award. apparently there's recognition given by each department for special contributions made to this or that aspect of the college and university. it sounds like the brown-nose award to me, and it should be noted that i was passed over for the award called "academic excellence" (ha!). regardless, this is sort of a high spot in the day. well, not as high as my beatles class was. but close. # school started back this week. i'm taking the last round of classes to finish out my degree, but i had a little extra time in the schedule to include a fun class: music of the beatles. wow, is this a fun class. we just met for the first lecture today and it's just awesome. plus, thanks to lord byron's kind gift of the beatles entire catalog in mp3, the class will be even more fun. # well wishers should send kevin a hug here. # from the next issue of wired comes an article all about the long bets foundation. the idea is that predictions and prognostications from pundits can be somehow held accountable. if some guru, expert or mediawhore in some field or another makes a prediction about the future of their field, technology, society, culture or whatever, dissenters can offer a challenge. with money. and then they both wrestle naked on prime time cbs. during the survivor timeslot. # i sat down last night after a long first day of school and reached over to plug in my trusty clamshell ibook. what do i find but tiny blue sparks to greet me? yes indeed, for the second time in it's lovely little life, the power adapter for my original ibook has begun to emit a tiny display of blue sparks from the cord. this time however, it is preventing the machine from charging. after carefully arranging the power supply in a strangely ceremonial manner. to encourage the flow of electricity and prevent the tiny blue sparks from killing me, i had to invert and elevate the yo-yo power supply in a highly precarious position. after browsing the apple forums, it seems that many people are having this same problem. and it seems apple is telling people "tough shit" as far as replacements. enough people that there's a class action suit brewing. it seems apple is now out of stock on these cables and is suggesting that users buy replacements themselves through third party's at costs up to $35. luckily, i've found a supplier who carries the part at $10 and ships next-day. which means i have to stretch this battery charge through the next two days. any mac users have suggestions for running silent? # 04.02.02 from sparky (read by Tom Tomorrow!) comes an article on google bombing. it seems that the very existence of weblogs is a corrupting influence to google. like a crackhead who just can't stop, the engine seems to be pegging us as purveyors of content whether we're right or wrong. # i almost forgot - there's a birthday here at prosaic* - today this site is officially one year old. yah! (the first post is here) # 04.01.02 this one looks like an april fools prank, but i'm afraid that it might not be. wired says here that some guy dropped his digital camera into a pond and now it's a magic camera, taking great, fun pictures that he is selling in galleries. they even claim he strapped it onto his car's windshield and drove it around. doubters? # it's amazing! the groundbreaking technology behind google, finally revealed! # the new yorker has a great review / commentary of the book the social life of paper. the idea is that the paper-office isn't such a terrible idea after all. in fact, paper acts as a very flexible, functional device for spactial memory and mnemonic recognition. the author argues that paper suppliments the computer masterfully as a quick and functional means of "offline" storage for our brains. a cluttered desk is a clear mind. # you probably noticed the countdown at the top of this page. it may seem a little dramatic for a college graduation but personally, i'm pretty excited that in 75 days i will no longer be a participating member of the academia. i've been playing along for 17 years now and i'm very excited to be in charge of my own direction finally. plus i like to watch the numbers getting smaller. it reaches zero on the same day as commencement. # i just did a very careful redrafting of the links page. there's a new subsection for those folks in my day-to-day reality, including the slo folks and the sf folks. (it should be noted that reality does not mean all the people i've met offline, just the day-to-day folks.) # it must be springtime. backend and front end, redesigns are in the air. everyone go and take a looksee - dayv is now served chilled and agitated. # « March 2002 | archive index | May 2002 » built with movabletype |
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