Rock Star alter egos are growing in numbers "You're forming a fake band -- that's what you do," says Sadri, calling the game "the best part of karaoke, adding in a drummer and guitars."
The Magpie Developer Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer.
Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry. (Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that.
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood.
making vodka pills in 24 hours Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms.
Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz.
Cable and Tweed has a really good Thom Yorke solo show from the 2002 Bridge School Benefit up on the site. Most certainly worth the download. If just for the Young cover. I also have to agree with them and say it is a supurb quality recording. Makes me want to pull out some old RH live shows.
Cable and Tweed Update: Cable and Tweed posted set #2 today. Check it out here.
Bulldogs football fans who traditionally start their tailgate festivities on Fridays will have to settle for a site off campus this fall.
University of Georgia administrators on Thursday voted to prohibit tailgaters from campus before 7 a.m. on Saturdays and to limit parking spaces to one per vehicle. In addition, UGA will ban parking on sidewalks and grassy areas, and will tow vehicles left there by their owners."
Yeah good luck with that guys. They don't even have enough man power to direct traffic to get people out of Athens in a timely manner (although stuff they have implemented in the last few years has helped). For some reason all I see is dollar signs in tow companies and the city's eyes.
No early start for UGA tailgaters | ajc.com
At my job, I sometimes have to quantify natural human periodical data. I know I am being abstract, but this data usually comes from natural rhythm cycles of real people�s daily lives. Like search patterns during the work week/work day, or the analysis of advertising clicks during certain periods of the day (which is a moving target in the US because of EST -> PST) etc, and inclines and declines of those clicks during holiday periods. Basically I have to look at placing a number/value on something in the real world to describe its value. I find my self doing this a lot with news. I will admit I have not thoroughly research this, but it amazes me that:
Being good looking and News fodder, as compared to just being average looking in the U.S. court system is equal to ~ 4 years of human life.
I really don�t understand how someone who has sex with a 14 year old student (in a position of authority) doesn�t serve the same time (or more) as someone who has sex with a 17 year old student (in another position of authority over a person) who has to serve 4 years of their life in prison because they may not be as newsworthy (aka: as hot) as someone else.
Brainstorm it:
If this is true, you could commit any crime you wanted and you'd have to serve -10 years, you sexy devil, you.
So I have not really wrote about it that much, but I have fallen in love with last.fm It literally is a dream service for someone like me who constantly listens to music and also is always searching for new music. I tried pandora, it wasn't bad by any means, but I think the reason I like last.fm so much is that I know in a general sense what it is using to pick out any recommendations. The criteria is stuff I mark and tag, but also the plethora of music that I already listen to on a daily basis that I have. Also, I really enjoy the fact that if I forget to bring my ipod or laptop to work one day, or I just don't want to hastle with opening up iTunes I can just use their app to listen to the artists I usually listen to if I did have my music with me.
Honestly, if you want to know something extremely scary take a look at my last.fm profile and you can see I started using Last.FM to track my music on Feb 2nd, and I have already logged over 2800 songs. That is a bunch.
These people actually know how much Michael Jackson I listen too.
And that is just the thing this is really cool in the fact that I do get to see who I am listening to most often, even when sometimes there is a huge delta in who I THINK I am listening to a bunch and who I actually am. Here are some details about 3 albums I have picked up in the last couple weeks that I am really enjoying right now.
I Trust You To Kill Me � Rocco Deluca & The Burden So here is the deal, I am on episode 18 or so of the 4th season of 24 (The one with the nuclear problem, umm.. ok the one with the terrorists from an foreign country trying to detonate nukes on American soil� ok still not enough detail.. ummm.. Season 4, you know �BEEEEAAAroooooz�, ah now you got it. Note: Season 3 was known as �Clooooooouuuudddia� ). So when I heard that Jack Bauer was signing up bands for a new record label (for slower readers, Kiefer Sutherland is helping to recruit people for a new records label) I immediately decided to pick up the album just because Jack Bauer was on the case. It was a good purchase, this is a great CD with a lot of distorted slide guitar (which you don�t find often). Think G-Love with 2 half stacks, and a great bass drummer. Good stuff. A Definite recommend. This guy is going to get big. And soon.
On An Island � David Gilmour As many of you know I am a huge Floyd Fan, I own most of the solo Waters records, but in all honesty I pull them out every now and then to listen to them in full, but they are not on heavy rotation. You really have to be in a certain mood to listen to a Waters solo album in full, and be ready to let your mind wander. So when I heard Gilmore was coming out with a new album, I figured the music would probably be more ethereal than waters solo stuff. Well the music is VERY Floyd and the guitar is just insane. Think Hendrix blues, not Hendrix rock. Another great CD and a complete pass through CD (as most Floyd CDs are) where you can listen all the way through and not be let down. The man with the most wicked eyes in the music industry doesn�t fail, most certainly worth your $14.
Subtitulo � Josh Rouse First off, I got this album this morning and have only listened through it 2 times. Q&A: Do I think it is a good record? Yes. Is it as good as Nashville (which I loved as you can tell). No. Is it still better than most stuff that has come out in the past few weeks? Yes. Can you tell that Rouse has been living in Spain or somewhere in Europe? Yes. Is it worth the money? Yes. Does it sound like the Bedroom 2 EP? Yes.
I can't say enough about last.fm. Be sure to look me up if you join the site so I can add you as a friend and listen to what you are listening too.
Here is any album from last week that I listened to atleast 10 songs from during the week of 12th-18th in order by most listened too:
Brainstorm it:
Oh, man, I can't go one day without tooling around on last.fm. It's sick. I think I'm going to begin a support group, if you want in, let me know.
I have not been to the movies in a few months. Me and the wife usually wait for DVDs to hit netflix, but every now and then there will be a movie that I have been keeping up with for a few months (sometimes years [aka LOTR]) that I decide needs to get the full theatre experience. V for Vendetta was one of those movies. I still think that the Matrix trilogy was pretty decent film making even though the last ones got hell from people, I still enjoyed them as a movie experience. I personally had not read the graphic novel for Vendetta, but I knew the movie was going to have a large political tint to it because of what I had read about the content of the graphic novel. So I was eager to see if it was going to be overblown or just subtle innuendo. I was wrong on both accounts.
WARNING: I won't really give any spoilers to the movie here, but I will discuss certain scenes, if you don't want to hear ANYTHING about the movie, please don't read. But I am going to try not to give away too much of the storyline to anyone who has not seen the movie.
Let me start off by saying I really enjoyed the movie. It was a good movie pretty much all around in my opinion. I will have to admit that I certainly will need to see it again (and maybe a third time) to get all the jokes of the dialog. It was certainly one of the strong points of the movie for me. I enjoyed the following V's diatribes about as much as the action sequences. Seriously. It was extremely well written. Now do I think that this is the movie that people are going to walk out of the theater come to a new conclusion about where this country is headed when our Gov't wants to invade every aspect of our private lives for the sake of safety and also simultaniously figure out that our President is a colossal failure in pretty much all criteria of normal Presidential judgment? No. They won't. The movie's message, although fairly blatent at parts, still seems to exist only in a world where people are used to biological weapon attacks that kill 80k people. Like I said, I really think I need to see this movie again to catch everything and I think a lot of other people will too. It was a very fast paced movie ( not a bad thing ) and shows the progress over a period of a year in the movie.
The Political message is not that subtle, but does a fairly good job at bringing to light some of the Orwellian places that this country could be headed. A few things I really like about some of the scenes:
The (State Supported) Heavyset TV Anchor's Pill cabinet was stocked. I really enjoyed that.
V's 2 mins of V-dialog when he is introducing himself to Evie.
Portman did a really good job of acting throughout the whole movie, but I especially liked the hair chopping scenes. It actually seemed like it was rough on her.
V's sword fighting/movie watching scenes made him seem much more human.
The Hitler-esque Chancellor at the Pulpit scenes with banners vertically unfurled at his sides.
The slowmo sfx scene towards the end of the movie.
Fire/Water hand Raising Scenes.
And Finally I really enjoyed the one domino starting the chain reaction scene with the one domino left at the end. I thought it was a really good reemphasis on the circular storyline.
All in all I really enjoyed the movie and certainly will be buying it on DVD. I personally don't think it glorified Terrorism, it just gave a more intricate look at a certain terrorist's personal perspective, and how much the attacker's perspective is sometimes just as historically righteous as the victim�s perspective of non-guilt. I am eager to get my hands on the graphic novel to see how much the screenplay differed from the original writing. Do I think avg Joe's will enjoy this movie? Maybe. I think that the fight/sfx scenes will appeal to a certain audience that might not get all the nuances of the political underpinnings, but that is why Artists use Lies.
Brainstorm it:
If this post were a game of scrabble, I would make you take the phony "verbage" off the board.
Pre orders for LEGO� MINDSTORMS� NXT begins April 1st
Be among the first to own the new generation of MINDSTORMS. Pre orders for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT begins April 1st on www.LEGOshop.com. Although you'll have to wait a few months for your NXT build as sets are due to ship later this summer.
The central element is a touch-screen interface linked to Google Earth. Precise 3-dimensional maps, real-time traffic and route guidance updates and a search function set new standards in navigation technology. This so-called "open system" integrates the internet to meet the individual requirements of the driver and his passengers.
Did they leave out the part about being able to serve you geolocational ads based on them knowing exactly where your car is and exactly what stores are around you, and also knowing what video game your child and his friend were discussing in their Gmail conversation this morning, or what tools you and your friend talked about on GTalk? or what your significant other was searching for online last night? or party supplies for the party your hosting that you added to your CL2 calendar? or what neat products I have written drafts for on my blog [disclaimer: this blog runs on Blogger]?
At what point does it 'makes life easier' become 'Is it completely bat shit loco than someone I have never met has access to all this data about me?'
Here are 2 scary scenarios:
a.) What if Google bought one of the big three credit reporting companies DBs and was able to match you with all your recent purchases?
b.) What if some other entity took over Google? Do we get any say in where our data goes and who can use it? We gave Google permission to use it internal (our reciprocation for using their technology), but do we give that to anyone who might take over google? Would we have a choice?
Honestly, I am all for tech advances, and I like that Google pushes things forward in those areas, but I just don't know if I like one single company doing the pushing.
Volkswagen and Google develop revolutionary navigation system - Automotoportal.com
Virus hunters have discovered a new Trojan that encrypts files on an infected computer and then demands $300 in ransom for a decryption password.
The Trojan, identified as Cryzip, uses a commercial zip library to store the victim's documents inside a password-protected zip file and leaves step-by-step instructions on how to pay the ransom to retrieve the files.
I have heard of keeping data hostage before, but never on a mass level.
How do these people think they would be able to filter any money they recieve via some untraceable means? I assume that if this were to break into the mass that the FBI would (hopefully) be on it fairly quickly and able to root out who was receiving the ransom money.
Emphasis on "hopefully".
Also:
The instructions, which are marked by misspellings and poor grammar, contain the following text: "Your computer catched our software while browsing illigal porn pages, all your documents, text files, databases was archived with long enought password. You can not guess the password for your archived files - password lenght is more then 10 symbols that makes all password recovery programs fail to bruteforce it (guess password by trying all possible combinations)."
You gotta admit it would be much cooler if it said:
"Your computer catched our software while browsing illigal porn pages, all your documents, text files, databases are belong to us"
Great Choice Academy. Me and Lindz saw Crash around Halloween and basically I thought it was one of the best movies I had seen in awhile. So much that I wrote up a post on here about it, and added the link to the sidebar over under Read.Listen.Watch. I was very happy to see if get a nod for best picture, but I honestly thought that Brokeback would get it purely because of all the hooplah surrounding the movie. To be fair, I have not seen Brokeback, but probably will when it comes out on DVD. I think that a lot of the hype is because of a presentation of a new idea, rather than the implementation of the actors (aka it is Avant Garde for mainstream movie watchers). I will wait until I have seen it to pass final judgment. I am very happy that Crash won though. It was a superb movie with probably some of the best writing and characters I have seen in a long time.
�?Crash�? a surprise winner for best picture - Academy Awards - MSNBC.com
Brainstorm it:
I am sure Brokeback is a fine film, but the original with Eastwood and John Wayne will always be my favorite.
Travis - The Boy With No Name Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho.
Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross) One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake.
Feist - The Reminder I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice.
Catan - Xbox Live Arcade I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game.
Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say.
Beautiful Evidence (Tufte) Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting..
Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better.
Game of Thrones (Martin) I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more.
