1) People who recognize it from the first few bars, even if the arrangement/style is quite different from the album version.
2) People who recognize it as soon as the lyrics start.
3) People who don't recognize it until they hit the lyrics that include the song's title.
This observation is of no significance to anyone but me, but I can't help getting annoyed by the people in group 3 for some reason.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next few sentences in your journal.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
"The amount of money in our pocket will not change as we walk down the street, jostling it up and down; the number of books we have will not change if we pack them up in a box, load them into our car, drive one hundred miles, unload the box, unpack it, and place the books on a new shelf. All of this is part of what we mean by number."
- Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
(Lest anyone think I cherry-picked this to look smart, the reason this book was closest is that I'm on what must be the third or fourth attempt to read the whole damned thing. It's brilliant and there are parts of it I feel I really understand well, but there are other parts where I always bog down and end up not getting back to it for so long that I lose my momentum.)
So, hi. We were in general incredibly lucky. I'm somewhat convinced our house would have stayed totally dry if not for some ill-fated bird nests that ended up blocking our gutters for two days before we discovered the little waterfall next to the foundation. If our sump pump had failed (we don't have a backup, an oversight that we will be attending to soon) we would have been knee-deep in the basement in a matter of hours. As it is our neighbors across the street (whose back yard goes uphill into a largish cornfield) were still pumping water out of somewhere in their basement yesterday, and we're on the other side of the hill from the river. Most of the roads are passable now, and the main disruption to my life personally is that all of the good bike trails around here have significant stretches underwater which will probably stay that way for a while. (Aside: I got tired of my neck problems stopping me from riding, so I bought a recumbent and a trailer for Mikel, and it's been great fun for everyone.)
Mikel is doing great...we of course think he's a genius and the cutest kid in the world. I've been ridiculously bad at keeping updated pictures online, but will try to get something up soon.
My job is going well though I'm convinced we need a second network person just to keep up with everything. Next week I'm in Orlando for a conference, which will be a nice change although I enjoy those kinds of things a lot less since Mikel was born. This fall I may be going to another training in Monterey CA, and hopefully Miren and Mikel can come and we can do the working vacation thing.
Peace...
[BTW, even though I totally suck at posting lately, I do read my friends page faithfully and enjoy keeping up with you all...]
Oh, and, hi. I'm still alive. I haven't been this busy in a long long time. I was bored stiff at my old job. Now, not so much. Careful what you wish for, I guess.
Also, Mikel turned 2 recently, and apparently was informed of his duties as a force of chaos and destruction promptly afterwards. Good thing for him he's so damned adorable.
Peace.
- Mood:
tired
http://www.time.com/time/nation/art
"The first night they slept in it, she woke up with blood coming out of her nose. Then he started developing troubling respiratory symptoms — burning eyes, coughing, a constantly scratchy throat. One morning, they awoke to find CiCi, their pet cockatiel, half-dead."
- Mood:
infuriated
1. Yourself: wondering
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): complementary
3. Your hair: pointless
4. Your mother: driven
5. Your Father: thoughtful
6. Your Favorite Item: laptop
7. Your dream last night: forgettable
8. Your Favorite drink: coffee
9. Your Dream Car: Avant
10. The room you are in: cluttered
11. Your Ex: imaginary?
12. Your fear: miscalculation
13. What you want to be in 10 years? content
14. Who you hung out with last night? family
15. What You're Not? perky
16. Muffins: warm
17. One of Your Wish List Items: GPS
18. Time: fleeting
19. The Last Thing You Did: feed
20. What You Are Wearing: pajamas
21. Your Favorite Weather: crisp
22. Your Favorite Book: varies
23. The Last Thing You Ate: minty
24. Your Life: unexpected
25. Your Mood: transitory
26. Your best friend: sleeping
27. What are you thinking about right now? backache
28. Your car: new
29. What are you doing at the moment? quiet
30. Your summer: huh?
31. Your relationship status: fortunate
32. What is on your TV? Galactica
33. What is the weather like? brisk
34. When is the last time you laughed? Koppel
- Mood:
calm
http://www.sandbenders.net/strangeloop/
See you there!
- Location:Amici Espresso
- Mood: calm
- Music:Howard Jones I think
- Mood:
nauseated
Anyhow, here's the article.
For those who are loath to click through blindly, here's one of my favorite bits:
In an interview, Sheppard, who often accompanied Kinkade on the road, recounted a trip to Orange County in the late 1990s for the artist's appearance on the "Hour of Power" television show at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. On the eve of the broadcast, Sheppard said, he and Kinkade returned to the Disneyland Hotel after a night of heavy drinking. As they walked to their rooms, according to Sheppard and another person who was there, Kinkade veered toward a nearby figure of a Disney character.Classy!
"Thom wanders over to Winnie the Pooh and decides to 'mark his territory,' " Sheppard told The Times.
In a deposition, the artist alluded to his practice of urinating outdoors, saying he "grew up in the country" where it was common. When pressed about allegedly relieving himself in a hotel elevator in Las Vegas, Kinkade said it might have happened.
"There may have been some ritual territory marking going on, but I don't recall it," he said.
That being said, I will not be buying their new album, Switch. I was barely able to get through all of the 30-second track samples on the iTunes Store, it's that bad.
In fairness, I was not all that optimistic about this album. I watched, with a bit of guilt (but admittedly quite a bit of pleasure as well), the Rock Star: INXS television spectacle where they chose a new lead vocalist. The idea of picking a singer this way seemed (and remains) a dubious one, but I was surprised at the level of talent among the contestants. This wasn't American Idol with its obliviously untalented suckers being put up against their betters for amusement value; all of these people could sing. Not all of them were well-suited for the kind of music INXS does, but it was still good entertainment overall.
The person they ultimately picked, however -- a former Elvis impersonator named JD Powers -- was not the strongest performer on the show. Not even close. Even when doing INXS songs he at best sounded like a passable Michael Hutchence imitation, and at worst was really quite awful. He has a seemingly effective sex appeal thing going on with the young ladies, which I suppose has to be a factor from a marketing perspective, but in practice it comes across as silly, almost sad. Hutchence had such a powerful magnetism going on that it even came across to a straight boy like myself. I'm just sayin'. JD at the top of his game seems more like a PG-13 Chippendale dancer. At any rate, having a Teenage Heartthrob (tm) fronting a band full of guys old enough to be his father seems odd and ill-advised from a number of angles.
Back to the album, though. I'll admit that maybe the JD thing is too distracting for me to be objective, but with a couple of exceptions even the songwriting seems so weak and derivative of better songs from their better days that I can't help think they're just grasping at something that's better left in the past. The INXS fan in me who drove, lost in the rain, through the worst part of Chicago on Thanksgiving Day trying to get to one of their shows is disappointed, but there's a whole world of good music out there to listen to. Maybe I'll look up some of the "losers" from Rock Star and see what they're up to.
- Music:good question
I'm more interested with how it works, especially since my primary machine is still a 667 MHz PowerBook G4 that I bought just under 4 years ago. It's a testament to Apple's products, really, as it is still quite usable for most things, in stark contrast my 667 MHz ThinkPad which is always at some risk of being smashed against the nearest wall whenever I have to use it.
Anyhow, most PowerBook fans who are in the market for a new machine have been holding off in anticipation of this announcement, myself included. So how do the new machines stack up? Obviously comparing them to a 4-year-old model is ridiculous, but in terms of the G4-based models that are still on the market for now...
Pro:
- Significantly faster, especially as more applications convert to native code.
- Built-in iSight videoconferencing camera in the display bezel.
- Better video card.
- Double the standard RAM with twice the bus speed.
- Slightly larger and significantly brighter display.
- Slightly thinner and very slightly lighter.
- Cool magnetic power-supply connector to avoid the laptop getting yanked onto the floor by the cord.
- No more internal modem (an external is still available).
- DVD burner doesn't appear to be able to write dual-layer discs.
- Only one Firewire port, and no Firewire 800 at all.
- No PCMCIA slot (see Unknowns).
- I have so far seen no mention of battery life; if it is worse than the G4s people are going to howl in protest. Same thing with heat output.
- Instead of the PCMCIA slot it has a new expansion slot called ExpressCard. This is apparently something Intel is going to start putting on all their chipsets, so hopefully it's not a dead-end technology. The standard is wickedly fast, so perhaps there will be an add-on FW800 card that would go in this slot at some point.
At this point I'll keep a very close eye on the early reviews. I would like a new laptop, but I don't want to get Early Adopter Burn on what will likely be my primary computer for several years. If that means waiting 6-9 months, I'm okay with that. I also hope that developers get on the Universal Binaries bandwagon in a hurry, or the stated plan to have an all-Intel lineup by the end of 2006 is going to cause some issues for Apple and their customers.
On a similar note, I'm rapidly becoming addicted to the "Cinnamon Dolce Latte" at Starbucks. Being the best coffee shop within a several mile radius, they kind of get my business by default anyhow, but this particular drink is really good. It's like coffee cake in a cup, only not as gross or sweet as that sounds (all of their other sweetened drinks are way too sweet for me, but this one doesn't seem that way).
| Italy | 42 days |
| France | 37 days |
| Germany | 35 days |
| Brazil | 34 days |
| United Kingdom | 28 days |
| Canada | 26 days |
| Korea | 25 days |
| Japan | 25 days |
| U.S. | 13 days |
(source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.h
- Music:Wild Strawberries, "Waiting For The Future"
Having learned my lesson in the past, the data was safely backed up on an external drive, but we were still not thrilled to be dealing with this yet again. Still, we need a working computer so we braved the Evil Upscale Mall (whose parking lot was so full there were SUVs and minivans lined up on the grass across the boulevard from the parking lot) to take it back to the Apple Store. We went in, ready for a fight, but were happy to see that the Mac Genius on duty was a guy named Chad who we had dealt with in the past and found very helpful and knowledgeable. I mentioned that this was the third failure in a year, and the bulging capacitors on the midplane (did I mention that? about half of the capacitors on the logic board were bulging like little blue Jiffy Pops) and within minutes we were at the register exchanging the dead iMac for a brand new 2.1GHz model with a built-in iSight and other nifty things new to us. I was really expecting to have to argue just to get a refurb iMac of a different design than our current lemon-flavored Apple, but they must know about this problem (and from a quick Google search, it seems like they at least should) and have a policy to replace them if they fail enough.
So, thanks to the magic of RSyncX, the new iMac is back up with our data intact. About the only downside is that we can't use the 1GB stick of RAM that we'd added to the old one, as the new models take DDR2 memory, so I guess I can sell it or something. Thankfully the new one came with 512M so it won't be totally crippled until I can upgrade it. Another random benefit is that I was almost ready to give up Second LIfe due to a heinous bug in the way the old GeForce FX 5200 video card rendered textures (although now that I think about it, I wonder if this wasn't just another symptom of the impending hardware failure). The new one has a nice 128M ATI card so it should be far superior for time-wasting activities.
- Mood: satisfied
- Music:Coal - Michael Penn
- Mood:awake
- Music:Beth Orton, "Stolen Car"
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fleep513 derspatchel
and some other Eschwa folks were playing (I know it's not really a
game, but I can't think of a more appropriate verb). It's nice to know
some people in SL who are interested in something other than watching
their avatars dance in clubs or arguing about who makes the best naked
skins (don't ask).Anyhow, the Eschwans have a nice-sized enclave in the Acontia sim, and as they had an out-of-the-way plot still avaiable I joined the "land collective" (a great concept, btw - usually you have to pay a montly fee to be able to build things that persist) and have started construction on my first project. I've decided to build a traditionally-inspired Chinese garden (note the clever use of the word "inspired" to insulate me from blame for my ignorance) based on the Sun Yat Sen Garden in Vancouver that we visited on vacation this year. It's a truly fantastic place; if I lived in Vancouver I would go there constantly.
So far it doesn't look like much. I've figured out how to make blank walls, which aren't very impressive, and round doorways which are much easier than I expected. My biggest feat so far was turning a couple of pictures I took in Vancouver into textures of two of the intricate stone/brick/tile patterns that cover most of the open areas in the garden. I'll put in a hearty plug here for Graphic Converter for the Mac, for despite the name it is a very powerful image editor that did tasks I thought I'd need PhotoShop to accomplish. For $30 shareware it's an absolute steal. I was able to grab regions of the ground from photos, de-skew them to make them appear flat and square, duplicate enough of the patterns around the edges so they would tile properly and remove the seams, and scale them to a reasonable size in a couple of hours.
My next task is figuring out how to make patterns with transparency in them. The garden needs some fairly intricate woodwork on the railings and the traditional "leak windows" that would not only drive me insane to build directly but use up the collective's prim budget in a hurry. I'm hoping simpler shapes with transparent textures can give a similar look. I am also unsure how to handle the roof structures, as they're fairly complex shapes, but I've seen similar things around SL so at least I know it's possible.
I wonder how feng shui works in a virtual environment...
- Mood: calm
all decent men detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.
- Non-functional "shutters" that are often too small to cover the
windows they adorn even if they did feature things like hinges, and
which are virtually always installed upside down. (If the vanes angle
down when the shutters are open, they will act as little funnels for
rain when they're closed.)
- Tiny, yet very high overhangs above front doors which would only
provide protection from the rain if it were coming down in a perfectly
vertical trajectory. Which, in this Land of Eternal Wind,
basically never happens.
- Fake balconies over front doors. If you're going to put a
railing around your (flat - not such a great idea in snow country, btw)
overhang so it looks like a balcony, at least go in for windows behind
it that vaguely resemble a door in some way.
- Rows of perfectly identical mailboxes. Creepy.
- Neighborhoods with streets that form twisting mazes of dead-ends and cul-de-sacs, usually with only one or two ways in or out.
- Neighborhoods that are too swanky to have normal street
signs. Around here the trend is a concrete cylinder about 3' tall
and 2' wide with the street names (understated things like "King's Row"
or "Tenacity Lane"...yes, really) printed on the sides. They are
virtually impossible to read under normal nighttime conditions, and
have a fun habit of being completely buried in the winter. Our
city council is now pushing special flashing bulbs for porch lights
because emergency vehicles have trouble finding houses in these
neighborhoods. I suppose the tendency to use no more than three
distinct paint colors on a given street doesn't help either.
- Sidewalks that end abruptly for no apparent reason, when they
exist at all. If you're lucky it might start up again on the
other side of the street in half a block or so. Or not.
- Bike/walking paths that don't go anywhere. Most of our
trails connect one randomly chosen park or school with another, or
simply end at a street that you'd have to be insane to ride on.
It is not at all practical to use them for transportation since they
can more than double the expected distance to where you're going, and
they're neither lit nor cleared of snow and ice in the winter.
- A man-made lake, complete with a nice lit (!) trail going around
it with benches, etc. ...which has no water in it. Apparently
they didn't construct it properly, so it will only stay filled when
there are several wet years in a row and the incoming runoff exceeds
the rate at which water leaks out through the ground. Right now
it's a bunch of dried mud with some cattails at a low spot.
- Divided boulevards with raised grass medians that block drivers'
view of turning traffic (especially in the winter when there's 3' of
snow piled up on them) and force really obnoxious situations when two
people want to turn left past each other. Extra points for
decorative plantings that grow to 5'+ tall in the summer placed
strategically at intersections.
I'm sure people can think of other examples...
- Mood: grumpy
- Music:white noise
