They should probably make the following required viewing for anyone who gets on, or even thinks about getting on the internet. From the Steam forums: Posting and You.
Haha, it’s funny because it’s true.
They should make a flash movie about posting on forums… oh wait…
This upcoming holiday season is just going to be crazy with good games coming out. It looks like Halflife 2 is finally almost here, because you can actually buy it now for download from Valve’s novel approach at a content distribution system, Steam. By buy, I really mean preorder although you can download all the content in encrypted form so it will be ready to go as soon as the game is officially released. Steam seems like a pretty cool way to get games, though I’m still a little disturbed by not actually having any cds to hold on to. Its also a little annoying that the Steam client that you have to leave running is something of a memory hog. The upshot is that you can start playing the new version of Counterstrike that uses the new Halflife 2 engine right away. As you can guess, I totally did that. What I learned is that even with fancypants new awesome graphics, I still suck at Counterstrike. I’m out there getting totally 0WN3d by a bunch of 12 year olds no doubt.
d00d I PWNDZORZ j00!
Last night started off my month of rock with Yo la Tengo at the Grand Emporium here in KC. It was kind of an unusual show format, but one that I really liked. Instead of having any opening bands they’ve been touring with a rotating line up of members of other bands playing together as one big band. Last night they had Rick Rizzo, Doug McCombs, and David Kilgour. Instead of just playing Yo la Tengo songs, they played a mix of their songs and songs of the people they were touring with plus a healthy dose of covers. I really enjoyed their versions of Devo’s “Gates of Steel” and George Harrison’s “Behind That Locked Door”. The unusual lineup made for a pretty long show too which was great. I’ve always loved how Yo la Tengo mixes their melodic pop with drawn out fuzzy guitar squalls and having more guitars on stage = more noisy guitar freakouts. Can’t really beat that.
They were calling this particular tour the Swing State Tour because they were hitting all of the swing states for the upcoming election in an attempt to get people registered to vote and discuss political issues. That, I thought, was a little odd since on the scale of politically active bands one would generally imagine Yo la Tengo to be just above Steely Dan or something. There’s just not any hint of it in their music. I think its a pretty good indicator of the state of politics in the country that Yo la Tengo is now out there doing some pre-election political stumping. I always get a little uneasy when I hear that a band is trying to spread a political message. I mean, it seems to me like its probably going to be preaching to the choir for one thing. I could be totally wrong, but I get the impression that most crowds at small rock shows are generally pretty politically homogenous, and probably share similar views with the band. So even though I don’t know how effective it was, it was definitely low-key and not at all preachy so it was fine. And besides if a few people registered to vote, hey that’s a good thing.
After a more than year long unintentional abstinence from rock shows (which would have been unthinkable not too long ago) I’m about to get back into it in a big way with 5 shows that I’m planning on going to in October alone. They are:
So yeah. We’ll see if I can handle all that after such a long break from the rock and roll. Naturally, more details should follow after each show but I thought I should get the word out now so that if you don’t hear from me than you can safely assume that I’ve probably been rocked out of existence.
Apparently, even Jesus deals in unsolicited mass marketing email. Bummer. At least he’s not hawking HERBAL V1aGRA!!1! though.
LMFAO
How to take digital photographs from a kite. (via Engadget, a fairly recent addition to my daily reads) This would clearly be the next most obvious step in the evolution of digital photography. I think with all gadgets as their intended uses become commonplace someone inevitably asks the question “Well, what can we attach this to?” Digital cameras and kites seem as good a combination as any. I’d really like to give this a try at some point. Unfortunately, my digital camera isn’t quite old enough yet that I’d be willing to risk it like that. Also, I have no kite. Probably need one of those.
Well, chalk up another massive task of questionable value completed for me. I’ve finally finished going through and rating all of the tracks in my music collection. That might not seem like much, but with 8,000+ songs it takes a little longer than one would like. The problem that this was intended to solve is simple: I’ve got way too much music and even my massive highly-developed brain is having a hard time remembering what my favorite tracks are from the stuff I listen to less often. It also helps for easily figuring out what music to put on my portable player, since it only holds 20 gigs and I’ve got about 18 gigs of favorites alone right now. It’s nice to know that all the effort put in to rating won’t be easily lost since this Ratings Migration plugin for Windows Media Player will save the rating in the mp3 tag of a file and can be used to rebuild the ratings later on. I’m betting it wouldn’t be impossible to write something to import those ratings into iTunes or Winamp either, if I ever renounce my evil Microsoft supporting ways.
Today while sitting at work and thinking about something obviously important and work-related, this idea struck me: “Could I make a photo-mosaic of myself out of the album covers from the albums I own?” As it turns out the answer was yes, and fairly easily too. There’s probably some easy symbolism there about being made up of the music that you love, but I’m sure its been done before. Anyway, here it is. To get the whole effect, the full size version is available here. (~1MB) Bonus points for whoever can recognize the most covers. If anyone is interested in doing anything similar (or even not at all similar but still photo-mosaic related), the program I used is Foto-Mosaik. It’s freely available as postcardware, which apparently is basically freeware where you’re supposed to send the author a picture postcard. I hadn’t heard of that before, but now it looks like I need to figure out how much postage it takes to get a postcard to Germany.
I was stupid enough to think you actually did that by hand… just for a few seconds though. 
Very cool… and artsy too…
Hafta watch out though, too much of this will make you snooty. Soon you will be talking about how your golf game was off and how you only drink wine that has aged more then 20 years.
This evening I decided to test out one of the promising features of my media PC and try renting a movie using the Snapstream Spotlight software and Movielink. I was curious to see if getting movies over the Internet is at a point where it could reasonably compete with movie rentals from a store. I also wanted to see if the media center interface for Snapstream was useful for streamlining the whole process or not. I found that the answer to both questions was yes, and no. First of all, in terms of selection Movielink is good and has quite a few titles to choose from, including a lot of newer releases, but it doesn’t really compare to a Blockbuster and certainly not to Netflix. Pricewise, its about $5 for most new releases but more like $3-4 for older movies, which competes pretty well against video store prices given the extra convenience. The search functionality from within the media center interface for Movielink was lacking though, requiring you to scroll through long lists of movies one at a time with the remote. I ended up deciding on Hellboy, since I had been wanting to see it but hadn’t been able to convince Jolayne. It seems like a waste of time to drive to the store to rent a movie to watch by yourself, so I figured this would be a better way to see it. I registered with Movielink, which could be done using only the remote but goes much faster with a keyboard. Unfortunately, after registering it has to install some software of its own which pops up windows outside of the media center software that can’t be controlled with the remote and require a mouse or keyboard. That’s irritating, but fairly minor since it only has to be done once. After all that, the movie finally starts downloading, and this is the point where I found the biggest flaw. You’re supposed to be able to start watching the movie even as it’s downloading the rest so that you don’t have to wait. However, I found this was only possible to do within the media player in the software it installed, and not from within the main Snapstream media center software. On top of that, when watching it in full screen mode in their separate media player there was a status bar at the bottom of the screen that should have disappeared but never did, and was very distracting. Due to that, I ended up waiting until it finished downloading to play it in the media center. It only took about 30 minutes, which isn’t too shabby to download a full length film but probably longer than it would take to run to a video store. In spite of all that, I was still fairly impressed with it due to the quality of the movie. I may not have the most discerning eye, but to me it looked to be near DVD quality and certainly better than TV. Granted, I don’t have a very high end TV either but the quality of the video was much better than I was expecting. Overall I found the experience to be a little rocky getting started, but much smoother after that. I’m not ready to rip up my Blockbuster card yet, but given a bit of tweaking in refining the user interface and making sure its more seemlessly integrated this could definitely be a competitor.
Yes and someday our bodies will not be able to support the massive weight of our brains and we wont have to go to the fridge to get a drink. We just need to get it from the internet which we will have access to with our minds. Since our frail fingers will no longer be able to press keys for fear of breaking….. Is this the world you want for us Will? … Is it?
Hi Ben.
I demand you go get me a movie, Will! In my opinion, that’s movies on demand.
Of course that’s not what I want, Ben. The world I want has giant fighting kill-bots that can go get drinks from the fridge for our massive brains and hideously atrophied bodies.
And Matt, I’m sending a kill-bot over with that movie right now.
In the 3 months since Jolayne and I got engaged, we’ve made quite a bit of progress on our wedding plans. For example, we set the date (April 23rd) and I can’t help but feel that that’s a crucial step to take. I wasn’t aware of this, but even when you set a wedding date that’s over 10 months from the date of your engagement, planning begins immediately. Fortunately, Jolayne was aware of this (In fact, the same evening we were engaged we went to Barnes & Noble so she could get some bridal magazines). Not surprisingly, she knows lots of things about wedding planning that I was completely oblivious to. So in the time since setting the date we’ve booked the church and reception, gotten the minister, chosen invitations, she’s gotten her dress, we’ve gotten all of the wedding party lined up, planned the rehearsal dinner, (nearly) finished the guest list, and most recently chosen the flowers this past weekend when we were in Columbus. We’ve also begun our gift registry, which we both agree is probably the most fun part of the whole thing. Walking around stores shooting things left and right with the barcode scanner is pretty great. With all of that I can’t hardly imagine what we have left to plan, but Jolayne assures me there are quite a few things to do still. Its still so exciting to think of being married to Jolayne that time just doesn’t seem to be passing fast enough. I know I should enjoy it though, because I’m sure that time will resume its standard breakneck pace soon enough. When we were in Columbus over the weekend, we saw the church for the first time and we both loved it. Being in there was exciting and it really started to sink in that this was actually going to happen even though it seems so far away. It was also the first time I got a little nervous, as I pictured being up in front of a sanctuary full of people. I’m sure I’ll get stressed about that and other things as the date approaches, but since the end result is that I get to be married to the most wonderful, amazing person that makes it more than worth it.
Man. Tell me about it. We’ve (I use the term “we” liberally… I actually mean “Laura for the most part”) have only 6 months.. crap.. 5 months I have yet to experience registry joy, however. I have been informed that it is quite the experience.
I remember when you used to tell me that *I* was the most wonderful, amazing person.
Another announcement… Will would like the Groom party to wear their Birthday-Tuxedos. Not sure if that includes shoes, tie, and a cumberbun (sp?).
Will I thought you thought Morrissey was the most amazing person on the Earth. This post says your marrying Jolayne. What gives?
Dan – You bring up a good point about the use of “we” in contexts such as these. In my post feel free to s/we/Jolayne.
Matt, I believe the correct spelling is “cucumber bun”.
And yes, it would appear that I have some explaining to do to Tobin and Morrissey. Probably Björk too for that matter.
Chicks know way more about wedding planning then men EVER will.
We’re hard-wired to know this stuff … anything that involves being the center-of-attention/Pretty-Princess-for-a-day is passed to us in the womb from our mothers.
Yay weddings!