I need to start getting out of the house, badly. At about the one month mark in my unemployment career cabin fever has set in hardcore. As a result I’ve been watching way more TechTV than can possibly be considered healthy. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I think I’ve developed crushes on all the women on The Screen Savers and Fresh Gear. For those keeping tabs on coolness points, I’m down by about -50 or so at this point. Hopefully by acknowledging how bad it’s become I can shock myself out of it. On the other hand, I did find out about a pretty cool nerd toy from TechTV today. It’s called TouchGraph and it’s a Java app that uses the Google API to display a graph of how related websites connect via links. It’s basically a visual representation of Google’s “similar pages” search function. Unfortunately, coaxialflutter currently has no similar pages on Google so I couldn’t view it with TouchGraph. Still, it’s a really neat way to view relationships between sites, even if it’s not all that useful as a casual browsing aid.

Today was the end of my first 3 months of kung fu and I don’t if I’m going to re-enroll, but it doesn’t matter because I finally got my white sash today. Yes, that is the first level. Yes, it did take 3 months to get it. Yes, I did awkwardly fumble my way through the test exercises. But you know what? Watch it bub, because me and my white sash are in the mood to beat asses. You got an ass, ain’t ya? That’s what I thought.

Drempels is a super hypnotic desktop replacement/screensaver from OSU-alumni-turned-Winamp-visualization-&#252ber-genius Ryan Geiss. Its kind of like having a lava lamp on acid as your wallpaper. Can’t… stop… staring…

Oh yeah, and Dave was right. This Marvel based, Clerks inspired Flash animation is nothing short of brilliant.

New domains are popping up like crazy these days from the good old SCC crew. George just picked up jorgeosu.com for himself and is currently in the process of adding content to it. I’m trying to sway him into adding a blog there because I’m always looking for more daily reads. Otherwise I might actually get useful stuff done.

I’m pretty impressed with the job Microsoft did with the ClearType font smoothing in XP. Its supposed to be primarily for LCD screens, but I was just playing around yesterday and turned it on and was really pleased with the difference it made, even on my CRT monitors. Even more fun are the Visual Styles[]2 for XP I’ve been trying out from ThemeXP. I never understood why Microsoft released XP with a full skinning engine but only made two skins (XP and Windows Classic) and then locked out the ability to add user created styles. I suppose they were hoping to cash in later with their own proprietary styles. Well, no matter because with a simple patched .dll you can install your own visual styles and have all kinds of fun with your desktop. Or maybe something a bit more shocking (and potentially blasphemous to any rabid Windows evangelists)

Sweet! Its about time, but Evangelion Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion are finally going to get released on DVD here in the States. The release dates are July 30th and September 24th respectively. After seeing only bits and pieces of low resolution digital downloads of fansubbed versions I can’t wait to get my hands on these DVDs.

“You have a fair stress level

One of the reasons for this is your conscious awareness to release your stress before letting it get worst.

However when you come across many troubles at the same time, you might be unable to handle it. There comes the problem. For this type you better enjoy the green and wood.

As long as you are in the natural environment, you will be peaceful to resolve any problems.”

With Hello Kitty as my psychiatrist, I can rest assured that my mental health is in good hands.

On the surface, the Columbus Jazz and Rib Fest seems like a very simple concept: Listen to jazz while eating ribs. It doesn’t seem like anything could possibly go wrong. The only problem was the huge mass of people milling around making it nearly impossible to get anywhere. I’m aware that the point of festivals is to be attended by many many people, but its always nice to be able to actually get from one place to the other. After moving around glacially in crowds for the first 30 minutes or so that we were there, we finally found us some jazz. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many places to sit and watch the jazz. As it ended up, we just got some ribs (from the King of Ribs, no less) and sat on the steps down by the river to eat. The whole event seemed to be huge crowds, over-priced food, and very little actual jazz.

You know, there was a time in my life where I could start a marathon viewing session of The State at 11pm and make it through all 3 seasons + the CBS Halloween special in one night. It would seem that those days have passed. Last night we kicked off a State viewing to check out my friend Derek’s recently acquired newer generation copies. However, we only made it through one tape before we called it quits and headed over to the Blue Danube for beer and deep-fried foods. The newer tapes are a nice improvement though, especially in the sound department. I’m hoping that they may be of high enough quality to be able to do a decent video capture of. I’d really like to someday make a set of VCD’s of The State that are actually watchable. In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for getting my digital doses of The State in low resolution form from statemedia.

Normally, I’m not that big on doing the kind of personal info surveys/quizzes/questionnaires/etc that get passed around by email and blog. Music surveys/quizzes/questionnaires/etc are another matter entirely though. Those have some strange hold over me, forcing me to complete nearly every one I come across. With that said, here’s a lengthy one that I stole from Kimmee.