A few important announcements...
The hot and sour soup at Flo’s Chinese is very, very good.
The dog came in from the back yard limping for no apparent reason. I of course promptly freaked out, thinking he might have a broken leg, and I was horrified the Diana and her mom were telling me to wait and see if it got better. They finally agreed to my taking him to the vet, though.
Three x-rays, 150 dollars, and two hours later, and they didn’t find anything. They sent him home with an anti-inflammatory and said to restrict his exercise. (I.e. no barelling around the house at 90 miles an hour.)
The next day he’s prancing around as if nothing ever happened. That was a waste of money. Guess the ladies were right.
Lenny is to the point where he demands one of everything in the grocery if you take him. I now hate - absolutely hate - any snack food company that makes a promotional deal with children’s television shows (Barney-shaped fruit snacks and so on).
Read more...Small freaking world...
I’m working on an idea for a media server app, and was trying to think of unique (potentially trademarkable) names for it. I thought of the server as a kind of glue which lets you access all your content via a single interface.
Hmm… “glue” is a common word - how about a unique spelling like “Gloo”? I Googled for the word to see if it was already taken:
Aaaghh! The first hit was for a media sharing app! How scary is that?
Read more...Music I'm not fed up with...
I’m having another of those days when I’m extremely picky about what I listen to. I went through my Winamp library here at work and made a playlist of all the songs that didn’t repulse me…
µ-Ziq - Bluff Limbo (disc 1) - 03 Gob bots Amon Tobin - Bricolage - 01 Stoney Street Amon Tobin - Bricolage - 02 Easy Muffin Amon Tobin - Out From Out Where - 06 Rosies Aphex Twin - _..I Care Because You Do - 10 Alberto Balsam Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash - 01 Seefeel - Time To Find Me (AFX Fa Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash - 02 Gavin Bryars - Raising The Titani Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash (Disc 2) - 01 Die Fantastischen Vier - Krieger Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy - 08 IZ-US Aphex Twin - Unknown Album - 01 Donkey Rhubarb Arovane - Atol Scrap - 04 Ambelio Arovane - Atol Scrap - 09 Amine Arovane - Icol Diston - 09 Acval Arovane - Lilies - 04 Cry Osaka Cry Arovane - Lilies - 08 Instant Gods Out of the Box Arovane - Tides - 01 Theme Arovane - Tides - 02 Tides Arovane - Tides - 03 Eleventh! Arovane - Tides - 07 The Storm Arovane - Tides - 08 Deauville Arovane - Tides - 09 Epilogue Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 02 Music Is Math Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 08 Julie and Candy Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 10 1969 Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 02 An Eagle In Your Mind Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 04 Telephasic Workshop Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 07 Turquoise Hexagon Sun Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 12 Aquarius Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 01 Wooden Toe Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 02 Swipe Width Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 03 Wiffle Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 04 Two Hum Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 06 Agony Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 07 Paz Suite 1 Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 08 Paz Suite 2 Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 09 Paz Suite 3 Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 10 Paz Suite 4 Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 11 Elodie 1 Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 12 Elodie 2 Delarosa & Asora - Crush The Sight-Seers (pear001 - OSSABAW Delarosa & Asora - Lily of the Valley - 03 Saigon Delarosa & Asora - Lily of the Valley - 07 Lily’s Theme Delarosa & Asora - slicker.remixes - 01 delarosa+devine Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 02 L’usine Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 03 Casino vs. Japan Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 07 Lackluster Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - a02. delarosa + asora_filth Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - And A Needle Mayb Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Draped Departure Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Smaze Words Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Uptown Ad One Enigma - The Screen Behind the Mirror - 06 Traces (Light and Weight) Enigma - Voyageur - 04 Page of Cups LFO - Sheath - 05 Moistly LFO - Sheath - 07 Sleepy Chicken Massive Attack - 100th Window - 02 What Your Soul Sings Massive Attack - 100th Window - 06 A Prayer for England Massive Attack - Mezzanine - 03 Teardrop Mike & Rich - Expert Knob Twiddlers - 05 Vodka Plaid - Double Figure - 07 Light Rain Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork - 05 Buddy Plaid - Unknown Album - Lilith (feat Björk) Portishead - Dummy - 11 Glory Box Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - 13 Female Demands Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - 18 Choking You Savath + Savalas - Folk Songs for Trains, Trees and Honey - 02 Transportation Theme Savath + Savalas - Immediate Action (Disc 2) - 05 John Hughes - Street Song (Savath Savath + Savalas - Immediate Action (Disc 2) - 08 Yesterday’s Throwaway and Reprise Savath + Savalas - The Rolls and Waves EP - 03 Folk Song for Cello Savath + Savalas - The Rolls and Waves EP - 04 Decatur Queen Shantel - Auto Jumps and Remixes - 03 O ze’ Shantel - Auto Jumps and Remixes - 09 Circle(blue) Single Cell Orchestra - Single Cell Orchestra - 04 Knockout Drops (200 proof mix) Single Cell Orchestra - Single Cell Orchestra - 10 Freefall Single Cell Orchestra - Unknown Album - Blessin’ Beats Skylab - The Trip Hop Test (Part One) - 04 Seashell Squarepusher - Big Loada - 08 Port Rhombus Tipper - The Critical Path - 08 Cable to Continue Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 01 Gone Forever Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 04 Monday - Paracetamol Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 05 Clear Day Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 06 Blumenthal Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 08 A Strangely Isolated Place Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 01 Knuddelmaus Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 02 Between Us and Them Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 03 … Passing By Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 05 Nobody’s Home Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 06 Molfsee Underworld - Pearl’s Girl - 07 Pearl’s Girl
Guess you could call it a list of songs that stand up very well to repeat listening.
Read more...Tried out Picasa 2 (the photo organizer software) last night… Damn this thing is nice, like an iTunes for photos. (I’m sure Mac users would say it’s like iPhoto, but us Windows folks have to take what we can get, ya know?)
It auto-scans your hard drive for images, takes note of their dates, file names, and other info, and plops thumbnails of everything in a huge list. How is this organization? Well, they’re separated by years, folders, tags, and other information, but the boundaries are much easier to cross (and therefore less tedious) that simply organizing everything by files and folders. Want to get to the wedding photos from the nature photos? Just scroll. Want to get to the 2005 photos from the 1987 photos? Just scroll. Or if that’s too tedious, just jump to the tag - it’s your pick.
It also has all the photo-editing tools one might actually need, just button-clicks away. It’s no Photoshop, but I only ever used a tiny subset of PS’s capabilities anyway. I prefer having all the important stuff (rotate, auto-contrast, saturation, red-eye removal) in one place.
Want to share? Select the photos you want, and Picasa can export to an HTML page with thumbnails, resize them and attach them to an e-mail, burn them to a CD, post them to (certain types of) blogs, and more.
Oh, and did I mention the whole thing’s lightning-fast? It can scroll through huge thumbnail lists, do smooth scaling while resizing an image, put up transparent windows, and fade images in and out during a slideshow, all with no lag whatsoever. (Pretty impressive considering the PC I ran it on wasn’t exactly top-of-the-line.)
Not bad for free software. There’s more, but I think that’s plenty. It’s exactly what my gigabytes of unpublished, unsorted, unedited, un-weeded-out photos need. Halleluja! In the not-too-distant future, you can expect some posts of photos that were thought lost.
Read more...Currently fumbling through Advanced Perl Programming to correct an obscure network sockets problem in a program I’ve had running in production for 3 years now. This bug potentially affects all communications the program makes. Needless to say, I’m a bit nervous.
Read more...Lenny has a toy called “My First LeapPad”. You place an ordinary paper book on the pad, and use a stylus to point at words and pictures on the page to have them read aloud or even play simple games. A cartridge in the side dictates how the pad will respond to the location you point to. You have to touch a “Go” circle at a unique location each time you flip a page, so that it knows which page you’re on.
Lenny has figured out that if the LeapPad starts responding inappropriately, it must have lost track of which page it’s on. He knows to touch the “Go” circle whenever this happens, to remind the Pad what page it’s on.
He figured this out on his own, and he’s two-and-a-half years old. This kid is SO going to be a computer whiz when he grows up.
Read more...Side note...
I’m sitting here in my cube at work, and I just pulled a pacifier out of my pocket. (I had to tuck it in there earlier this morning to hide it from Lenny, since we’re trying to wean him off them again.)
Read more...Every blog on Earth is probably saying this right now, but I want one of the new $500 mini Macs SO bad. Fortunately, I’ve just come into some money, so I think I can actually do it.
Read more...Diana went shopping for a cocktail dress last night for the upcoming employee party, and she’s considering some really fancy ones. She’s had me thinking about renting a tux, but a co-worker advised against it. Evidently the women always dress up for these things, and the men always wear whatever’s in the closet (a sport coat, in my case). We’re going to look pretty mismatched, though…
Anyway, she seems really excited about the whole thing. She’s lost a lot of weight, so this is her chance to go show off, and I’m not about to hold her back.
Read more...A year already?
Diana and I finally got out to the Roaring Fork restaurant last night, to celebrate our one-year anniversary. (We’d originally intended to go for our 6-month anniversary, but never got around to it.)
I would up dropping a total of $125 just for the two of us, but man, you get what you pay for. The service was fantastic - in addition to being able to recommend wines, our waitress knew the meanings of the bizarre code words the cooks were shouting in the kitchen when we asked. (“Fire 51” means to throw order 51 on the grill.) And the food - I had the bass, Diana the venison. Both were cooked to just the right texture, and had such marvellous flavor on their own that they didn’t need any garnishes (though the apples that came with Diana’s and the gravy that came with mine complemented them perfectly).
We can’t afford to do this all the time, but man, I’d like to do it again.
Read more...