I know it's been out for a little while now, but I just tried the streaming service on Netflix tonight. It was pretty great. I have to hold out a little because my dsl at home is terrible and I was on their lowest of three levels for connectivity. So my picture wasn't that great and after 30 minutes or so I had to wait another 5 for the rest of the show to download, but still it was not bad.
I caught the first episode of Heroes in case you're wondering. I came late to the party and started watching shortly into the second season during the "Save the cheerleader, save the world" plot line. Which, by the way, was genius. That tagline was enough to finally get me to tune in. Now I'm starting back at the beginning to see what I missed while I wait for the writers strike to end and new episodes to start up again.
And while on the subject, the studios need to pull their heads out of their collective butts and give the writers their additional % for dvd sales and their internet residuals. Lamers.
One of the things I got for Xmas was a 365 day calendar of Mensa logic puzzles. I realized today I was a couple behind already and sat down to see if I could catch up. I flipped to today and got the answer fairly quickly. The puzzle for the 1st is going to take a little more time but basically because of iteration.
Anyway, the point of this post is that the answer for each day is on the back...... OF THAT DAY!!! What kind of lamer thought that one up? Put the answer on the question? Put the answer on the back of the NEXT day, or even... 2 days away. Just to prevent accidental spoilers. Fortunately I glanced at the back of the day I solved. But phew that was close. For a bunch of geniuses they really didn't do that one too well. Oh well, they say Einstein couldn't tie his shoes, who am I to judge?
Most of the stuff on YouTube is lame, but every now and then I find or get sent something BRILLIANT!!! Like this video mashup of Star Wars and Monty Python
Hey, that's neat. I was going to write a short blurb about how I had come home and wanted some mellow music but not super mellow and had seen Sheryl Crow in my collection and missed the copy of her first album I lost. I then hopped on Yahoo Music and found it and realized how much I really like this album.
Then I went to write the post and realized it was actually Tuesday!!! Co-incidence? I don't think so. So I think I'm going to write a blog post on Tuesdays and call it my Tuesday Night Music Club. Maybe I'll even link to some music. ( I hope Sheryl Crow doesn't mind ).
On a side-note, I watched the show Heroes last night (re-run) for the first time and found it intriguing enough to add to my dvr. Felt like something Fox would have aired, just with the kind-of glamoury feel to it and the young cast. But then Lost feels a lot like that too (although I haven't watched that one since the first season). And kudos to NBC for providing EVERY Heroes episode online. Too bad my home internet connection blows chunks.
I think I'm going to try and follow a pattern for music links. I'll have to always have some Van Halen, or Aerosmith, and then something from a musical or movie soundtrack. After those two I think I'll try for something a little off beat, not that much of my music is very off-beat, and then just something else relevant.
So here's the selection for the first post.
Soak up the Sun from Sheryl Crow's C'mon C'mon album. Sadly I don't have Tuesday Night Music Club in my collection and I'm not about to post music I don't own.
Could this be love, a lesser known track from Van Halen's Women and Children First album. ( Sail away with someones daughter... ) This one's for you Dave.
Cool, from West Side Story, maybe the greatest musical EVER ( it _is_ based on Shakespeare afterall)
And finally from Presidents of the United States of America, Nake and Famous. Some of my favorite lyrics come from their debut album. "Those lucky suckers, they don't have to work, make 3D billboards and big 30 ft. Smurfs."
I was reading a blog post talking about happy people and how some a-lister blog guy said he was going to hang out with happy versus unhappy people. The article went on to talk a bunch about happiness and mental health and stuff. Down towards the bottom of the article was a quote I thought was fabulous and had to post right away:
Remember the flight attendant's advice... you must put on your own oxygen mask first.
I really like the blog it came from and I highly recommend reading it. You can read the whole article over here:
creating_passionate_users blog
Spending some time cleaning up the den and happened to be restarting my computer a couple of times to install some updates. It seemed like a good time to drop a little post on the blog and wish folks a happy holiday for whatever holiday they are celebrating. And if, by chance, you aren't celebrating a holiday right now, Happy December and Merry Winter!
And who knows, maybe the New Year will see a trickle of activity in this space. I've been wanting to start making some Mozilla/Firefox/Songbird posts here or perhaps on my work blog so maybe I'll split them up a little and have some fun with it.
Comedy Central just had the Scientology episode of South Park on re-run. OMFG, too awesome. I didn't laugh as hard as I did at some other episodes, but I just love it when they take pokes at crazy movies stars. Plus anyone who works at outing Scientology gets a plus in my book. And the voice actor for John Travolta was so great, and his lines where so classic. Ah. Good times.
Weir has several other books and I'm surely going to be picking them up as they are well written and so fascinating. Who needs fiction when non-fiction is just as stimulating!
No, it's not the latest reality tv show. Just me trying to get more organized at home. I went out and got some plastic file cabinet thingies and found myself a keyboard tray (finally!) and am getting set up to try out some of the suggestions in the book I wrote about the other day ( Getting Things Done ).
I still need to get a new desk, but I've moved the current one around tonight and it feels like a better arangement so far. I already love the keyboard tray. It's not as sturdy feeling as the type I had at Netscape, but it's pretty good. I'm also looking forward to getting through some of my paperwork and getting it filed. These plastic file cabinets will be a great short term solution while I figure out what to do with my desk. They are 2 feet deep and stack on top of each other. They're pretty sturdy too and don't feel like they will be tipping over.
In the long run I still want to build my own desk and integrate a rackmount system with it. I even have the rackmount rails I scrounged from an old 6 foot tall rackmount case. I have some more design work to do for that and then figure out where to build it.
I've been feeling more disorganized, flustered and stressed out than normal lately. In particular I am finding it more difficult to focus and get my work done. I had been attributing it to my easily distracted nature and the new situation of working from home full time. There is just so much to distract me at home and no-one walking by to instill guilt in me ( they don't have to do a thing, just their presence can be enough). So I find it easy to get off-task and hard to find my way back. While I am sure some of my problem has to do with personal fortitude and willpower, I have found a book that has almost immediately had an impact.
The book is called "Getting Things Done" and the writer is David Allen. He is a personal productivity consultant and has worked for various fortune 500 companies and the government etc. His approach is pretty simple. Basically his view is that we need to unclutter our minds of all the things we think we need to do and get them in whatever form of organization works. But it has to be something that is written down and something we can refer to frequently. Then you make a note about the very next thing that has to be done for each task. I find it helpful to put a note about how long it will take to complete as well ( that's a personal growth thing for me since I don't estimate task time commitments well ).
I've only read a chapter and a half so far but his approach rings true with things I've heard before and with concepts that I have tried previously. I love to make lists but looking at the lists they don't tend to be things associated with actions (that's another of his things). Plus I make tons of lists and have the scattered all over the place and then never look at them again and never take any action on them. It's almost liberating to realize that lots of people have the same issues and there is a simple, straight forward way to fix the problem.
Anyway here is the link to the book at Amazon.com and yep, he has a website too: http://www.davidco.com/
In the past my alma mater has made headlines for such things as riots and lighting houses on fire when trying to heat the house with gasoline and students dying from drinking too much. And now we move on to more:
Dildo ring toss. Good Times indeed.
I've been reading the online version of the cluetrain book. I'm only in the first chapter and so far it seems like a lot of platitudes. He rants about marketing and corporate speak, but if you look at what he is doing it is just marketing at the people on the net. Anyway, I'll reserve more comment on the book until I read more than the first couple of pages.
But there was a GREAT quote I had to pull. Talking about the beginnings of the WWW he says the following:
heh, heh.... Norse Warriors,.... heh,.... quotation marks..... He really hit the nail on the head there. :-)
Weapons proliferation was bound to happen in Smurfland one day. Yahoo covers the story of the desolation of the Smurf village in this article
Gargamel may have just been reacting to provacation from the Smurfs. In this image we see the effects of Papa Smurf's lastest potion that causes the Smurfs to become giants. After taking the potion, Papa and Smurfette wandered into the local human town and started tearing the place apart. (notice the man in the foreground running for his life).
By 2015 I'll be able to recycle 95% of a new car. If I lived in Europe or Japan. Laws are going into place that will require new cars sold in those markets to be 95% recycleable, up from I believe 80% these days (or by 2007 maybe). Europe will also be requiring automakers to set up collection centers where consumers can recycle their car at no cost. And not just the new, nearly completely recycleable cars, but the old ones too. You can check out the article over at nytimes.com.
In other good auto news, SUV sales are down ( nytimes.com). The article also says that we are driving less. I was curious how high the gas prices would have to get for this to happen. I was just talking to my roommate about this yesterday. Our lives and culture is so centered around the ability to travel freely that it really is a big adjustment to lessen the amount of miles we travel in the car. I think what we will see more of is people getting more efficient vehicles so they don't have to change their lifestyle patterns so much. Apparently we are driving less for 4 weeks straight now, which is good news too.
Finally, I just want to voice my hopes that one fallout of the gas woes we are going through now due to the destruction caused by Katrina and Rita in the gulf is the hightened awareness of alternative fuel. CBS Sunday Morning had a segment last week about a truck stop that sold Willie-Diesel (check out the website). It's a biodiesel blend and he's selling it in about 6 places in Texas, one in California and a couple other states (there's a map on his website). I was very excited to see that bio-diesel made it to a national news magazine program, plus the people they interviewed who were using it said their engines were running better and they were getting better gas mileage. That was great news because I have read that mileage acutally drops a little, perhaps Willie just found a better blend. There are a couple of places in the SF Bay area you can get BioDiesel and it runs in regular diesel vehicles, no modification needed (in most cases). Google for biodiesel and you'll find lots of info!
Ugh. Just read an article over at nytimes.com ( this one ) about the upcoming energy/oil crunch. Bush actually came out and said if we can avoid going "on a trip that's not essential, that would be helpful."
First, this is an about face on his policy of not asking the US to conserve more. His stance has always been keep using what we're using, my buddies in the oil industry will make more. Now there is legislation in Congress about relaxing the current environmental restrictions to boost production. This would allow companies to build off-shore oil platforms in places that were banned for environmental reasons and allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. An interesting set off restriction liftings since none of this will help people with their gas bills this winter!
Secondly for the president to come out and be the one telling us to not drive so much looks ridiculous. Maybe I am underestimating the impact of oil disruption that happened because of Katrina and Rita. Maybe I just think the man is ridiculous and ANYTHING that comes out of his mouth is a crock of shit. It seems to me that if he truly thinks we should be worried he should have an energy secratery up on the podium talking about ways to conserve. Then he would have the time to introduce some legislation that encourages conservation instead of opening up more of our pristine wilderness to oil drilling. Or god forbid encourage oil companies (or ANY companies) to look into alternative energy sources.
I've seen a lot of ads from GE lately about wind and solar and even clean coal research. I believe GE has more wind power in Europe than anyone and Europe using a LOT of wind power. What is it going to take for Americans to realize we need to invest in this stuff, bigtime and right now!
We all know Bush is less than stellar at public speaking. I think the real problem is that when he doesn't have every last comment written down for him his true stupidity rises to the surface and he tries to banter. Here's another take on it: http://chipware.net/~chip/bushspeeches.mov
Pretty funny until you realize, Damn, this is our president.
What a crazy week last week was. It started off good for me, on the set of a movie. But after that came the hurricane in New Orleans and then the death of Judge Rehnquist. I donated some money the other day to the Salvation Army through Amazon.com. I thought if the government wasn't going to save the people in N.O. maybe I better chip in. And now I'm reading news articles about how the president and his senior staff only started showing concern when they realized the political fallout was looking grim. I certainly noticed how slow the Feds were in getting help to the region and I've heard Mayor Nagin's radio interview and read the articles. I have to say that I believe the reporters this time around when they talk about the motivation behind big W's turnaround aobu this event. It shows what an idiot he is without Karl Rove at his elbow telling him what to do or say. The jokes he made when he first landed in Louisiana about his college days were atrocious (sp?). Now he has is staff with him again after calling them back from their various vacations and it just makes me sad to think all their action now has more to do with political cover than compassion about the lives lost in the South.
The events of the last week constitute the last straw for me. I'm getting involved because I can't stand this jackass anymore. It's time to get educated and make a difference in our political system because the yahoos running the country right now are NOT doing it right.
Just got home from my second day on the set of the Will Smith movie Pursuit of Happyness, filming in SF. It's been grueling, but awesome. My call today was 6.00am and yesterdays was 6.30am. I get a break tomorrow, 7.00am. Put in 14 hours today. I love it though. Even though it is just background work, it's awesome being on the set. And Will isn't as tall as I thought he'd be. :-) 2 more days this week, then 2 more next week. Can't wait to see the film, I should be in it quite a bit. Yay!!
So as I noted in my previous entry I use winamp. In fact, just upgraded to 5.09 or whatever their latest is. I've been using it for YEARS! Sadly they went through a whole re-write fiasco much like Netscape did and jumped from 3.something to 5.0 and the release went flat, much like the Netscape 6.0 launch. I hope they can resurrect themselves from the ashes like Mozilla wound up doing (can you say Firefox?). However I doubt they'll manage to cut loose of the corporation that owns them (AOLTW) since they don't have an opensource audience to fall back on.
But I don't want to be all doom-and-gloom. I like their player and they have internet radio, tv (seinfeld, scrubs, xfiles, South Park!), and their own library of music videos (which I imagine is supplied by their parent. And now they are promoting EMusic.com. I hopped over to their site and it looks pretty cool. I think I'll probably give their 2 week free trial a shot and if it looks good maybe even become a subscriber. They are 100% independant and serve up their music in mp3 format. for 10 bucks a month you get 40 downloads. And just because their independant doesn't mean they only have Joe Buckwheat and the Lap-Sitters. I saw Green Day, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, the Pixies, Louis Armstrong among other big names.
I'll post more after I give their trial a shot.
So I realize Metallica recorded Whiskey in the Jar some time ago, and I'm sure the video came out around the same time (this would be several years back). I just watched it through winamp (yes they are still releasing a media player under AOL) (more to follow about them). I just have to say wow. The video was basically the band playing in the house while a bunch of trashy looking heavy metal groupies (who all seemed to have g-strings on btw) hung out and partied and went upstairs to get naked and make out, and drink, and smoke, and puke, and go to the bathroom. Basically it was like headbangers ball meets big brother meets Animal House. And at the end they trash the place. I'm really at a loss for words on this one. Stunning. And crap.
Yay, the space shuttle Discovery has landed safely! Take your pic of where you want to go read about it, every news outlet has something about it. It made me very nervous thinking about the possibility of a repeat of the disaster 2.5 years ago. But I guess everything worked out okay.
They clearly need to review their technology and methods. For my money foam doesn't sound like such a great choice for insulating against the heat of re-entry, but then it probably is a little higher grade then the stuff I get my electronics in. ;-) (update: I read that the foam is to protect against the tank icing up not against re-entry heat)
News stories:
Yahoo
CNN
BBC
NASA
Some folks say we should use the money we spend on the space program for other things. I don't know exactly how much NASA's budget is but I think it is money well spent. I'm sure the research and development that goes on at NASA contributes to the engineering knowledge of the US and the world immensely and who knows what we will find in space that will better the world.
Wow, well I've been back from Yosemite for quite some time now. I do have some pictures I'm going to post here over the coming days. It was a fabulous trip, my first to Yosemite. My friends had a nice littel ceremony at the chapel in the valley, in view of Yosemite Falls which was just going crazy with all the runoff. Went on several hikes along the falls and had a great time. Stayed at a very cute B&B outside of the park and it worked out awesome! Camping is fun and all, but at the end of a crazy day of hiking being able to go home and soak in a hot tub is _really_ nice. :-)
After coming back from the park I went straight into building and rehearsing Brigadoon and that ate up all my time. Which is the main reason I haven't been posting here lately. But now the show is open and my days are free and I can get back to working on my project and sitting at my computer all day. So there will be more posts and more content hitting my site.
About to head off to Yoesmite for a few days. Some friends are getting married and I'm taking the chance to do a little hiking and finally see Yosemite. I've only been in the state 24 years or something. Then it will be back on Monday and nose to the grindstone.
Okay, one more thing tonight before packing up and heading to bed. I saw Episode III Saturday night and then watched EpIV Sunday night. While I came of out Sith thinking it was pretty good despite having a bunch of nit-picky things that only true SW geeks care about or notice. After watching Star Wars the next night I realized how truly bad the 3 new movies really are. The sad part is that the stories behind the movies are still really really good. But they were contorted with a lust for computer animation and bad direction and mediocre camera work. Star Wars ( and Empire and less-so Jedi) was eye-candy. And it was witty and funny without being silly. You cared about the characters instead of thinking "When is the next sword fight?" Oh, and the sword fights had so much more style. I admit it was cool seeing Yoda whip it out and give some lessons, but there was too much hopping around and flips and the motions were too fast and it just turned into a blur. Episode I had a good one with the battle against Darth Maul. There was pauses and beats within the fight and it wasn't just let me wave my lightsaber around as fast as I can.
Anyway, there is my rant. Expect to see more about this subject in the coming weeks.
Caught the end of my finger on the angle grinder at work today. Damn that hurt. Didn't do much damage but grinding the tip of your finger leaves it pretty messy. Bled like a stuck pig too. I don't recommend trying it.
In other news I got back on IRC again today and it is good. Nice to log in after such a long absence and have people excited to see you (at least they _seemed_ excited). It was very helpful as I got to bounce ideas off people as I tried to fix some firefox build problems I was having. Getting back into the swing of things is tough!
My Ben Folds Five CD showed up in the mail today! I've listened to it like 5 times tonight. I used to be on Napster and that was one cd I would listen to again and again and again. I went to see him with some friends from netscape a couple years ago (kerz, juan, donner?, spitzer?) and was blown away. I highly recommend his live cd and if you can get out and see him by all means do so. He has some many more good songs besides "Brick".
Also got The Incredibles, which I haven't watched tonight at all. :-) Every now and then I get in a mood to just buy some stuff. And Amazon.com is always there to help. :-)
I think I'm going to use this site to organize my master's work. That way I can kill two birds with one stone, namely to update (and keep updated) my website and generate documents for my master's project. Because this site definitely needs some love.
Yup, I'm back again. Trying to finish that masters and therefore at my computer long enough to write a blog entry. May have to actually finish updating the site this time around.
I'm working at getting back up to speed with mozilla in the hopes that I'll be able to finally finish that masters thingy. I have until June 05 to wrap it up and I'll really feel lame if I don't get it done.
It's been a little easier to get excited about it with so much going on regarding mozilla.org and the firefox release. I just got emailed from a guy working on the firefox book about some web services apis I had been working on. I think I'll start looking at those first and see if I can't figure out a MS project based on or around those.
But now, it's to bed. Happy Turkey day everyone!
I have to say I am really enjoying my life right now. I am able to nurture all the different sides of my personality and still eat (for now at least). My tech theater job keeps me in the show world as well as feeding the side of me that like tools and building big things. My masters project is going to feed my inner geek that enjoys the challenges that programming provides, namely problem solving and logic and a sort of abstract construction. My upcoming job as tech theater teacher will be fun because I'll get to teach people what I know (and learn with the students as well). My association with the Foothill Theater program is stimulating my artistic side and I'm getting back into some drawing and some artsy design stuff. I'm working on designs for home rackmount systems for computers and stuff, and about to start looking at chainmail stuff again.
The only segment about to go un-nurtured is my athletic, physical side. And I think when the quarter starts I'll return to ballet class and maybe swimming again. In the meantime I'm going to start running again, something I've been meaing to do for some time now.
All in all, life is good.
Got back earlier tonight from a 2 night camping trip in the Watsonville area. In particular the Mt. Madonna campsite. We had a great site, close but not next to trash cans, bathrooms and dish-washing spicket. The hiking wasn't great, but there was a trail right behind our campsite that was actually pretty good. Unfortunately we didn't find it until late in the day on Sunday and so didn't get to explore it too much.
I find it neat that I eat better when I go camping than when I cook at home. I made jambalaya on the campfire and had burgers and smores, and bacon & eggs for breakfast. Awesome. I forgot to bring coffee though and miss it sorely.
Played some cribbage which was cool since the only other time I've played was about a year ago on another camping trip.
My thing is I want camping to be easier. Namely I want my preparation to be shorter and my time at that campsite simpler. The jambalaya was a great success for that. I just prepped it at home (didn't take long) and then through it all in a pot and put it on the campfire. I really like the idea of backpacking but really need to go on a couple guided backpack trips before I feel confident enough to do a trip on my own. As for car-camping, I've gotten to the stage where I have some dedicated supplies and I just pack them up in rubbermaid containers and throw them in the car, so that's getting easier. Food is still the hurdle, and I'm getting better at that.
I think the trick is to plan stuff that doesn't need lots of accesories. Sandwiches and not good for that - mustard, mayo, lettuce, onion, bread, chees, meat. Too many things to store in individual containers. Things you can prep at home and put into a container or two and just break them out and heat 'em and eat 'em are great. Fajitas work pretty good if you are willing to forgo the salsa, sour cream, guac. etc... and even with the sour cream it's not bad (fajita mix, tortillas, s.c.).
Also, things you can cook in the same pan one after the other work well. Like bacon and eggs. We had bisquick with us too which was cool because we made biscuits to have with the jambalaya. However the bisquick stuff needed milk and eggs. We had a full quart of milk and barely used any. 'Course we would have used more if I had remembered the coffee...
Anyway, it was a good trip, we hiked, played frisbee, sang My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, had some smores and played cards around the campfire. Good Times. :-)
Hmmm.... can I post more than once a quarter? I'm not sure anymore.
Currently, here is what is going on: Finished the run of 7 Brides for 7 Brothers, finished the coursework for my Masters in CS, am starting the work on my Masters Project, am taking a break from acting to do the afore mentioned work, will be teaching Theater Tech in the fall at Foothill Community college in Los Altos. That is the snapshot of my life right now.
There is, of course, lots more going on but those are the major highlights right now. Perhaps I'll write more later in the week. I will be spending more time at my computer in the coming months so the likelihood of that happening is actually quite good.
- cheers
