|
|
blog / about / archive | |
|
|
|
|||||
|
08.30.03 in case you've been asleep, like me, a handy recap of 2004 campaign action so far. it's hard to think about novemeber, 2004 when we've got our own impending election to worry about in california. # 08.26.03 finally caught the full trailer for carnivale, the Next Big HBO show. it looks totally amazing. # ok, this is silly, but i'm really excited because i just came from the dentist with a clean bill of dental health. i was really nervous, because it's been almost 3 years since i last had a regular cleaning or x-ray, but everything went fine. no cavities, no wisdom teeth (either, ever), no problems. yay for good teeth! # also from MIT (a friend sent this one to me), eigenradio is a constant audio feed of the calculated differences between all of the radio stations on the internet. you can tune in anytime to hear only the most unique sounds available. of course, it mostly sounds like white-noise and feedback, but hey, the idea's pretty cool. # from wired comes news of MIT's open courseware program. the initiative, which is scheduled to roll out 500 classes in september and slowly ramp up to 2000, makes teaching materials (lectures, videos, projects, etc) available for free online. (instructor and degree not included.) its a fascinating idea and may go a long way, especially if adopted by other universities, towards repopulating the internet's educational and research stockpiles. i can't wait to see if they're offering nuclear physics for the fall! # i saw starlight mints on sunday with byron and had a rather good time. i picked up their latest cd at the show and was pleasantly surprised. check them out if you have a chance. # since i always seem to get emails from people who are new to the mac and want to know how they can get on kazaa with their shiny new ibook, it seems worthwhile to mention a new website devoted to tracking p2p clients for the mac. have fun! # 08.24.03 there's a new worm going around now, only this one actually removes the other one and patches the user's computer. how nice of it! # 08.23.03 happy birthday matt! (for the record, i'm recording this on my calendar now) # 08.21.03 i. love. this. website. they have dr. nick sound clips! hi eeeeverybody! # you know what i like? i like ical. and webDAV. and phpiCalendar. i really like phpiCalendar. # stratford 4 is playing on friday, down the street at my favorite polk-street venue (the only one, natch) the hemlock. who's going? # i didn't sleep well the other night. but i should have known, drinking tea all night long. i was beginning to lose my voice, and i know from experience that hot tea is the very best possible remedy. i really hate losing my voice. though i should be used to it by now. it always happens to me, whenever i get the least bit sick. it was worse, once, my freshman year of college. 4 times in 1 year. that was such a totally thrilling, exhausting year. it would always happen, losing my voice that is, right before my radio show. once a week, i had a late-late show, graveyard, at the campus radio station. it was perhaps the most thrilling thing i did my freshman year. i loved doing the show, loved listening to so much music, having access to the stacks, getting to play new music, forcing myself to listen to things i'd never heard before; i even liked building a "music curve." but it was such a stressful three hours. i was never prepared, and i was always losing my voice. eventually i stopped doing it; i couldn't take another quarter working from 4-7 AM and i didn't have the confidence to move into a daytime show. i wish, in retrospect, that i'd taken that daylight shift, that i'd spent more time in the studio, that i'd prepared my shows in advance. four years later, i'm still losing my voice and i'm still not sleeping well. where's the progress in that? # the ratio of cute boys on my morning commute has almost doubled in the last two weeks — it must be back-to-school time at the academy. yum! # A slim white woman emerged from Dillard's department store with four shopping bags, a Burberry satchel, and, dangling from her wrist, a silver peace-sign charm. Kim suddenly grew still. "I'd like to be elegant someday, too," she said quietly. "But if I ever did get a healthy, wealthy life, I wonder if my children would grow up looking down at people like me." the latest new yorker has an excellent article on the marriage-initiative program in Oklahoma City, which is targeting lower-income single women and single mothers with the idea that marriage will help lift them out of poverty. it's really a pretty sick circle of logic, if you ask me, totally ignorant of reality. but the article gives a good perspective on the plight of some of these women, like kim above, and the physical and emotional hurdles that they struggle with every day. because, contrary to the always-popular belief, most people engaged in this struggle against poverty really do want to break the cycle. but it's never quite as simple as that. # 08.20.03 anybody ever have an instance in which your mac laptop picks up a signal and joins a network, but does not allow you to browser the internet? there's a small cafe down the street that offers "free wireless internet" and they say only that you don't need a password -- joining the network is simple enough. but once on that network, no browsers will connect. it's as if DNS calls aren't be routed. tried: reconnect, logout, reboot, renew DHCP lease and shut off/re-enable all ports. any suggestions? where should i look for this? # 08.19.03 guess who's got a new laptop? # 08.17.03 i think i'm sick. in case you're new, i hate to be sick. and i almost never am. i become a total baby when i'm ill. not in the sense that i can't take care of myself, but rather that i start to whine and cry about feeling crappy. it's a miserable thing to experience. so miserable even that a day or two of it might drive jessie out of the house and back to the office (!!). if i'm laid up that long, that is. i hope not to be. i hoped that lying around all day today, being mostly lazy and good to myself (lots of liquids, mom) would do the trick, but as the evening wears on, i seem only to be in decline. anyway, i hope to wake up in the morning and feel marvelous and rested and well. but i don't hold out hope. it's a shame too, because i think i watched all of my shows on the tivo already today. what will entertain me if i'm stuck here tomorrow?! # in new york, they even do blackout's better than we do. (*i was 16 when the western-state's blackout happened. it was summer and i was out of school and i sat out on the front lawn with my family and some friends and we drank the sodas and beers in the fridge until well after dark. some people on our block started a little street party, and we watched the dim lights and noise of a much bigger party going on at a farmhouse about a half mile away. i distinctly remember being surprised and awed by the realization that our electrical system was so fragile.) # 08.16.03
some may have trouble discerning between new and old, but i really like my new glasses. keen observers will notice that i did not get the anti-reflective coating. # does anyone understand the rules of persistent spell-check in safari 1.0? i noticed that i've got in in certain text-entry fields, but not in others. mostly, i'm too lazy to play around with this and figure out what the logic is. # 08.15.03 the best amazon.com reader review ever. thanks to matt (2/7). # thank you mp3; the next radiohead single has some great tracks that many had thought long-dead. go here for now. (you'll be as surprised as i was by my old favorite i am a wicked child) # 08.11.03 i'm terribly, terribly depressed by the democratic party in california right now. how in the world could they fail to produce one winning candidate in the recall? a brain-dead cow could figure out that gray davis, bless his poor dark heart, has very, very little chance of avoiding a recall. i mean, i understand that the party is trying to rally behind davis and focus the democratic vote on keeping the guv in office. but if that's the purpose, how did cruz bustamante get on the ballot? by not putting up a real, fierce candidate, and still allowing bustamente to run, they've effectively weakened the party vote and left a gap big enough that someone with the kind of star-power that arnold has can walk right through. and he will. the disgruntled democratic element (and there is one of those) is going to be likely to defect as they sit, totally ignored by their party. we're really setting the stage to lose california. i'm so ready for canada. # seemingly out of nowhere, i've become a major supporter of vanilla yogurt. almost overnight. so sweet, so smooth, so inviting. what's not to love? # 08.10.03 check out this really funny skewer of emo culture. don't forget to look at the t-shirts; the fetus is my favorite. courtesy of some livejournal that i've never seen before. # 08.08.03 i'm so shockingly excited right now, because tonight i'm going to see bjork! update: ok, so the show was predictably awesome. what did you expect me to say? she played at pier 30, which is basically a big open double-pier, so the theme was kind of "parking lot chic" — you know, big metal bleachers, old fair-ground-style fences, roped off beer garden. but the show, the show was pretty amazing. she was backed up by harpist Zeena Parkins, matmos and a Reykjavikian string octet of unknown heritage. the performers were great, though i am prone to agree with a friend who suggested that matmos might have been provided a little more musical leeway throughout the show. they did however do an amazing job of live-sampling and mixing bjork's vocals, filling out songs that would have otherwise sounded flat in comparison to their studio versions. surprisingly, the sound was amazing for an outdoor, acoustically-challenged venue such as the pier. and, oddly, there were fireworks and various pyrotechnics throughout the show. it worked in most instances, but seemed funny and out of place in others. the stand-out moment for me was a very dancy version of it's in our hands that a friend later told me was a soft-pink-truth remix. overall, i was delighted to find myself at this show, even if the evening's earlier margaritas were not. # 08.07.03 oh lord, we're so fucked . # 08.05.03 i know someone wants to buy this for me, finally on DVD. # mmmm, music. i saw adam green and the ultra-awesome libertines last night, thanks entirely to the coolest person i'd never met, tim. you don't know tim, but no doubt he knows you. but for my next musical conquest, i need someone to recommend the billy nayer show. they're playing here this week, but my only connection to date has been via the fantastic and strange film the american astronaut. so somebody's got to tell me, have you seen them, and are they worth it? # 08.03.03 this is a really fascinating article in the nytimes magagine about black thug-culture and gay identity. # « July 2003 | archive index | September 2003 » built with movabletype |
|
||||||
