Oops
Posted 27 Oct, 2004 at 21:31 by matt in /System | Permanent link
OK, so tonight was set aside for four things: another round of edits on The Paper That Wouldn't Die; moonwatching; ripping numerous CDs onto Vista; and putting more cool stuff on this site. Well, three out of four ain't bad, right? It's a better ration than Meatloaf managed, after all...
The first plugin that I tried to install, you see, has a bad habit of messing up horribly. The first time I tried it, it messed up horribly enough to drag the whole web server down with it. Brent did some server stuff, and after that the plugin would only kill this blog. Still, once the blog was killed, more server stuff needed to be done before it was unkilled. I thought I knew what was causing this, but found out I was wrong... right after Brent left work.
And so, with the blog system down, it sort of put a damper on any other tinkering I might have tried tonight. Perhaps I'll have better luck tomorrow.
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Sweet Sweet Choppin'!
Posted 22 Oct, 2004 at 00:28 by kael in /Games | Permanent link
Since this is one of my first blog posts, I'm going to talk about one of my first loves (I'm kind of trusting that way... or is it vanity?)--video games.
I've been playing video games since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I was writing (albeit extremely lame) video games before I ever got a console or a computer. In short, I was hooked.
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Fun with iTunes
Posted 19 Oct, 2004 at 17:42 by matt in /Music | Permanent link
Ah, the wonders of the iTunes music store. While I haven't used it to buy anything yet, I do believe that that moment is coming... very soon. Here's what's currently sitting in my cart.
- Pressure Chief by Cake. The samples sound good, and while they can sometimes get a bit monotonous, Cake hasn't made a really bad album yet.
- Instinct, Not the girl you think you are, and Everything is good for you from Crowded House's Recurring Dream greatest hits album. At the time that this CD came out a few years back, I already owned all four of their studio albums on CD (and two on cassette), and so damned if I was picking up a $20 CD for the sake of three songs. Now they can cost me a mere $2.97. Huzzah!
- Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick, who I first heard last week when listening to KCRW online. Very like a sweeter-voiced Fiona Apple. I might not buy this one until the rest of the album comes out in a week or so.
- Someone to Tell by Ari Hest. I have never heard of this guy before he popped up in the "Recommended" list in my shopping cart, presumably because Ms. Nalick is currently touring with him as his opening act. His songs seem cool, still making up my mind about his voice.
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Advice
Posted 19 Oct, 2004 at 13:43 by wendy in /Chatter | Permanent link
Neil Gaiman posted this on his blog, actually written by his lovely assistant Lorraine: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/10/sage-advice.asp
Not that I think any of you need this particular advice, I don't think that you're likely to go sending random things off to authors via FedEx (or inviting them to conferences, or dinner, or the moon). But I'm really impressed that these things have all happened to him. Especially the sand.
(Wow...it only took me 4 tries to get the url to come out right...I'm pretty impressed by bloxsom)
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RIP Doug Bennett
Posted 18 Oct, 2004 at 14:01 by matt in /Music | Permanent link
Who's Doug Bennett? He's Doug
of Doug and the Slugs
fame. And
he died in a Calgary hospital this past weekend.
When I started listening to contemporary pop, at the age of 12 or so, I made a point of catching a programme on CFGO every weeknight called Up Front. (Remember when there used to be radio programmes on pop stations?) It was an hour of Canadian music every night. To this day I can rattle off a couple dozen one-hit wonders of the late-80s and early-90s Canadian pop scene: Alta Moda, Roman Grey, Brighton Rock... yes, two-word names were all the rage back then.
I remember Doug and his Slugs for two reasons. One was that they had a couple of very fine songs, somewhat in the same style as David Wilcox or Huey Lewis. The other is that, often when they came on the radio, my father would mention that he could remember them playing on the campus where he taught. And so I thought, I need to get out of high school. When you're in college or university, bands come and play. How great is that?
In other news, Marc Almond from Soft Cell (remember Tainted Love?) was critically injured in a motocycle accident earlier today. So all in all, not looking like a good week for musicians of the 80s.
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Mmmm Coffee
Posted 18 Oct, 2004 at 13:31 by wendy in /FoodDrink | Permanent link
I can't drink it in the morning...makes me nervous & jittery, but it's perfect for that post-lunch low. With enough sugar in it, it keeps me away from the evil vending machine. I really never thought it would come to this, I made it all the way through undergrad and one entire marriage without coffee. Now, I'm just asking myself why? What possible benefit did I think I was getting from avoiding it?
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Coloretto poker
Posted 14 Oct, 2004 at 14:16 by matt in /Games | Permanent link
At one of the many gatherings I attended this past long weekend, I ended up in the basement with some folks playing the game of Coloretto. At one point, slightly tired from having shown up too late for dinner, I started dealing cards out face-down; when questioned on this odd behaviour (which is at variance from the rules of the game), I made some remark about playing poker with the Coloretto deck. This is something that I referred to in the Nutshell a few months back, and it's high time that I followed through on my intent.
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More Joy of Cats?
Posted 09 Oct, 2004 at 07:41 by wendy in /Chatter | Permanent link
Mine is currently sitting in a corner enthusiastically chasing her tail. I've never seen her do this this before and it's really cute. When she actually does manage to catch it she starts cleaning it...apparently it's very dirty and under someone else's control. The best bit is when she's sitting there looking over her shoulder waiting for the lurking tail monster to appear. I think I need to start playing with her more.
Sorry to hear about your sofa Brent, that was quite a comfy sofa. One of my friends wound up buying a waterproof matress cover to put over her futon because the cat would sometimes choose to pee there. I hope I never have to deal with the incontinent cat situation.
Throwing a LAN party does seem like a really great solution though...
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Cats
Posted 07 Oct, 2004 at 09:48 by brent in /Chatter | Permanent link
First, some history. About the middle of the summer while my parents were visiting Martin (one of our two cats) took it upon himself to water the couch cushions. He was meticulous, one cushion a day rendering both couch and chair totally unusable. Normally Nature's Miracle is great for fixing these little mishaps you have with your cat however, this seems to have run deep into the cushions. Even after pulling them apart and using bleach on the matting they still stank. Well, last week we got rid of them. Called up 1-800-got-junk and they picked it all up and took our (used to be) really comfy furniture away. The living room doesn't reek anymore.
I've tried (and actually a few other people have suggested too) to convince Lisa to get rid of Martin, but she is adamant to keep him. The other recommendation was to make him an indoor/outdoor cat (more outdoor than in) but Lisa won't have that either. So instead we sequestered him into a little bathroom (slightly larger than a closet) with litter, food, and water, and did so for two weeks regularly changing the 3 necessities we had left him with. All on recommendation by the vet.
This little story doesn't end there. The vet also recommended he be put on anti-depressants. This is a f*cking cat! What's with that? You can't even be sure that they are going to have the same affect on them because their behaviour isn't as expressive as human behaviour for determining drug efficacy (since it is a personality directed drug). And of course I get to feed him since giving little pills to cats falls into the nasty category of cat maintenance. So now it looks like Martin is sedated all the time and only sleeps, lounges, sleeps, and eats. So our effort to reduce his weight may now be in vain. And the pills seem to have given him a runny ass. Little sphincter prints in his favourite sitting spots.
So now we have a vast amount of space in our living room which is at least going to be taken advantage of now twice with a mini-LAN party last night of Dawn of War (had some colleagues come over to give a pounding to PC players) and for Saturday when the horde that will descend upon this dwelling will indeed be large for City of Heroes and Dawn of War action!
Just have to clean up the sphincter prints before then...
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Multi-monitors
Posted 06 Oct, 2004 at 17:38 by wendy in /Chatter | Permanent link
I remember the days of having multiple monitors on my desk. One was a huge 21 inch...the other was only a piddly little 17 inch. Back in the days of CRTs. Desk space? What desk space? Who needs a desk? It's only purpose in life is to hold up these enormous monitors. Now I have to deal with my supervisor's old computer, which he replaced because it wasn't working very well. My friend who works downstairs has his own, personal, Beowulf cluster. Some people have all the luck!
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In praise of breadth
Posted 06 Oct, 2004 at 13:40 by matt in /Chatter | Permanent link
Widescreen monitors are the way to go. I can't imagine how I've gone this long without one. The ability to have a source LaTeX document and its compiled version completely visible at the same time -- or two completely different documents, for that matter -- is a wonderful thing.
I suppose one could get the same effect by having two monitors on one's desk. That's not as good a solution for me, mostly because I have too much stuff on my desk as it is. Another monitor, and I wouldn't have anyplace to work.
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The Spirit of English Magic
Posted 05 Oct, 2004 at 16:50 by matt in /Books | Permanent link
Last week I gave a talk to the undergraduate math club here, and was rewarded with a gift certificate to Borders. So last night I go to take advantage if it, and happened upon a novel that I've heard good things about: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Between the gift card and the discount coupon I had, the book was more or less free, so I figured why not?
So far it's a lovely read. I've got something of a weakness for pastiches of
nineteenth-century English literature -- as readers of my other blog have seen --
so I was predisposed to like this book. If I had to choose a single adjective
to describe the work, I'd pick meticulous
; Ms. Clarke is engaged in
writing a totally fictitious history, complete with footnotes and references
to other (nonexistent) works, and her attention to detail in this endeavour
is astounding.
Like Steven Brust's Phoenix Guards books and Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, the narrator is as much a party of the story as any of the characters, while not actually being part of the action. The witty comments about the characters and the action, dropped blandly into the narrative flow... the underlying assumption that much of what we're reading about, say, the Raven King (a magician who ruled northern England for three hundred years) is well-known fact, taught in schools... to me, these little touches are nearly worth the price of admission all by themselves.
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New to-do queue
Posted 03 Oct, 2004 at 21:37 by matt in /System | Permanent link
Yes, they'll be revoking my poetic license any day now.
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City of Heroes and Dawn of War
Posted 03 Oct, 2004 at 17:23 by brent in /Games | Permanent link
These are the two big games I'm playing of late. Both are excellent and dramatically different from each other. Both will be played on Saturday during a LAN party (hosted by yours truly).
City of Heroes
This is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG, MMORPG, etc). The premise is you get to be a superhero running around saving the city from villains. There are tasks and missions. You can form teams, supergroups, alliances, etc. You can't play a supervillian yet, that should be early next year from what I hear. If you are playing on the Liberty server you can look up Power Cycle (main character of many) or on Virtue with main character Cabernet.
Dawn of War
This is game is beautifully sexy. The graphics and animations are so satisfying they almost makes you feel dirty. It's hard to play the game without running into a moment where you say "Goddamn! My troops are being slaughted! But it looks so cool!" The way troops will rend other troops in half and munch on them, or throw their ripped corpses away after drinking the blood is just mind boggling. I've never played the table top WarHammer 40k, but you don't need that as a reason to check it out. The ingame campaign I hear is short, but then I've only played it multiplayer after the little training session included.
Finally for kicks I've set up a teamspeak server as well. It is password protected. If you run into me in CoH I can pass on the pwd for it so we can create a team online with voice (the way the game should be in my opinion).
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Cool Stuff in Science
Posted 03 Oct, 2004 at 17:12 by brent in /Books | Permanent link
I've really been enjoying reading lately. I've finished "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins which I really enjoyed. You MUST read the notes however since there have been updates in later editions about earlier comments (he has left in) that are now known to be erroneous.
Another book that I think is excellent is Pascal Boyer's "Why We Believe?" It really takes a hard stab at alot of the "explanations" used by non-religious people about why religious people believe as they do. Religious people aren't shutting off their minds or being brainwashed, etc, etc. You really have to look at what characterizes religions and then what makes them compelling to the human mind. From there you get a better understanding of why the human brain is well-adapted to picking up what are considered religious concepts (and not so good at picking up scientific ones). He also takes a tour through history explaining why having our minds adapt favourably in terms of religious thought may have benefited us throughout the ages.
Finally I've been reading two books by Ramachandran, "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness" and "Phantoms in the Brain". They are about the discoveries of how the human brain works by studying the exceptions. The exceptions include people experiencing phantom limbs (amputees who still "feel" the missing limb), synesthetes, and people who ignore the entire left side of their world to name a few. "A Brief Tour" is a bit of a subset but has also come after "Phantoms" so includes some more recent cases. Finally he does provide alot of speculation, but almost all of it should also be testable in a scientific manner and does not detract from the book in this regard.
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First Post
Posted 03 Oct, 2004 at 16:57 by brent in /Chatter | Permanent link
First time posting on the site. Thanks to Dr. Matt for getting me set up so I don't have to think about it <grin>.
Nothing to really post at the moment, I'm sure I'll come up with some angst or gripe (about the American political "system" maybe?) sometime in the future. In the meantime I'm going to continue trying to get the xbox live controller headset working on my computer so I can use the Halo 2 headset I have to use with teamspeak.
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So I ordered some groceries online...
Posted 03 Oct, 2004 at 08:50 by wendy in /Chatter | Permanent link
and a couple boxes of kleenex. I like having moderately decorative boxes of kleenex around...I often pick boxes with bright colours, flowers and butterflies. Except these boxes were chosen for me. One of them appears to be a Spiderman 2 advertisement. I'm thinking that this box should be reserved for squishing bugs.
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Pick the winner
Posted 02 Oct, 2004 at 15:33 by matt in /Chatter | Permanent link
A gentleman named Matt Miller writes about an idea I find surprisingly intriguing: turn elections into lotteries.
Consider this in the Canadian context: there's what, twenty-odd million eligible voters? Implementing a system where each vote cast entered the voter into a lottery with one ten-million-dollar prize and ten million-dollar prizes would cost less than one dollar per citizen. Since we only have elections an average of once every four years on the national level, I suspect that this wouldn't be a terribly difficult programme to fund. And I'm inclined to agree with Miller than this would serve as an excellent incentive for those groups that traditionally don't participate in elections to get out and vote.
Practically, of course, pulling off such a stunt would require a more
centralised system for running elections, to keep track of who all has voted.
But it's a neat idea. I think the most interesting aspect of it from a
theoretical point of view is that, if instead we set up a lottery
where
every voter won a dollar, more money would potentially be disbursed but it
would serve as much less of an incentive... despite the fact that from the
point of view of expected-value, you the citizen would generally do better
by taking the free dollar.
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The new baby
Posted 01 Oct, 2004 at 13:49 by matt in /Technical | Permanent link
I've now had my new office computer (codenamed Vista, in honour of Bell Canada's doomed experiment in network access over the phone lines twenty years ago) for about twenty-four hours. So far, I'm pretty pleased with it.