GlitchNYC.com

I'm Hooked.

Today was officially one of the strangest days of my life. That's becase today I was the emergency room oddity, sitting in the waiting room of the Urgent Care Center with little kids hacking up lungs, worried moms with babies and people limping and otherwise hobbling in, and I was at the bottom of the triage totem pole.

I can't say that I blamed them. I was in very little pain, didn't have a serious injury, and wasn't going to get worse as they let time go by, so I happily played my new Game Boy SP as others filed in before me, sitting there with a fish hook sticking out of the very top of my scalp.

I felt much like one of the people in the waiting room at the end of Beetlejuice, each with some strange affliction such as a shrunken head or being chopped in half, calmly waiting their turn.

How did I get here you ask?

Let's begin not with my journey, but with the trip the hook took on it's way to being embedded in some poor schmucks head in a waiting room.

Imagine you're a fish hook, happy to finally be free of the tacklebox you've spent most of the summer in and finally be used. You get cast out a few times, but the fish aren't really biting today, and after a while, it's time for you to go back in as a different bait comes out. But wait! Instead of making it back into the box, you're separated from your friends and stuck to a pair of jeans, embedded in the denim.

That night, you find yourself tumbling around with the jeans in the wash and the finally, in the dryer, you're free!

Until, that is, you're smothered by a great white towel. Instantly, your barb catches, and you're impossibly tangled in the terrycloth fabric. Once the tumbling stops, you're folded a few times, and finally find yourself in the dark of the bathroom closet.

So now, we've followed our friend the fish hook into its lair, where it waits for some unsuspecting prey to carry it to freedom.

This morning, I was that prey.

As Sara so wonderfully put it, "Thank god you dry your head first!"

As soon as I began to vigorously towel my head off, the hook sank its barb into the top of my scalp, hoping to ride me to the great unknown. The towel, which had by now grown quite fond of the little hook tangled inside it decided it wanted to come along too.

My thought process, as this happened, went something like this.

Huh, the towel is stuck. Must be gum in it. Who puts gum in a towel? Wait a second, it's really not moving. Huh, it feels like one of mom's quilt needles, yup, i can feel the head, and there's where it goes into MY head. *YANK*

OW ow ow. bad idea, bad idea. I think the pin must be bent. Time to call mom up. Wait. I'm naked. Towel first.

From there, we realized that it was actually a fish hook and proceeded to try to extract the sucker, but in trying to remove it by myself I'd set it in quite firmly.

Our stroke of brilliance was to go to the local Urgent Care Center rather than the ER, because I only had to wait an hour with the hook sticking out of me like My Favorite Martian, rather than the 6-8 hours I probably would have sat in the ER at a hospital.

Medi-call's doctor was great, and we all had a sense of humor about it so it really wasn't that bad at all. Kate called right after I'd done it, and we were all in hysterics.

"Hi, it's Kate. Is it Ok if we get there around 4:30-5ish? We're leaving now"

"Umm, well, here's the thing. I've got a fish hook in my head"

"What? I'm sorry, I don't understand"

"I've gotten myself stuck with a fishhook! It was in a towel, and now it's sticking out of my scalp. It doesn't really hurt at all, but I'm going to have to go to the ER, so I might not be back by then. Who knew this would be my first piercing?"

"... ... Ahhhhhhh hahhahahaha! I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but that's hilarious"

"No no, i know, I'm laughing too!"

"(Still laughing) Oh, my god, They caught a big one!"

When all was said and done, I got to keep the fishhook, we made it back before Kate and Doug even got there, and we all laughed so much it hurt. Worse things have certainly happened, and it's made this one holiday we'll never forget!

10:44 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Theme Park Nostalgia

BoingBoing ran a quick piece yesterday amid all the tsunami coverage highlighting a site that archives old maps from theme parks.

Of course I immediately honed in on the one from my neck of the woods and found a very nostalgic Great Escape map from the 1980s. For those of you that weren't raised in upstate NY, The Great Escape was the ultimate place to go when you were a kid. It had awesome coasters, decent theme areas, and great flume and rapids rides.

The park (which is now owned by Six Flags) is such a fixture that senior year physics classes from around the area go to the park and run around riding the rides while doing "experiments" like timing the pirate ship's rate of acceleration and the G forces exerted by the Steamin' Demon as their de facto class field trip for that year.

See if ThemeParkBrochures.com has a map from the Themepark of your childhood years

12:00 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 1 writebacks |

Follow up: Beastie Boys Photoshoot

Josh just sent me a quick email comparing the pictures I took of the Beastie Boys as they walked down 34th street back in October and their own blog. It's not one of the photos they were taking with the pro photographer, (still waiting for those to show up!) but it's cool to finally know what they were in town for.

The album where their clothes match is: 10.03.04: New York City, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom, VH1 Hip-Hop Honors

2:13 am | permalink | /life/nyc | 1 writebacks |

Ardvark The Aardvark: The Teacher

Just a mini-update today to keep the Ardvark the Aardvark work going. I finished the first concept design for The Teacher today. He didn't come out exactly as I'd pictured him in my head, but after looking at the actual adult vervets for a while I decided to keep him a bit closer to their actual form rather than just super-sizing the babies.

It's amazing how different the young of this species look from the fully grown. I think it's the fact that the babies are virtually naked, allowing their skin to show through their peachfuzz. That, and the fact that their heads are pretty much fully formed at birth, making their bodies disproportionately small (and so cute!) when they're young.

• Download the editable SVG

3:40 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Power Puff Girls / Dexter's Lab / Invader Zim / Amazing Fan Doujinshi

A while back I followed a link from Megatokyo to this incredible fan-produced manga (also known as doujinshi).

It's a clever mash-up of PowerPuff Girls, Dexter's Lab, Invader Zim, Samurai Jack, and many others. I don't know if I've ever seen fan work this professionally produced or drawn, and the story is actually quite engrossing.

I didn't post it at first because it just seemed like a novelty, but I've found myself going back to the site to check on the story a few times now and I figured it merited mentioning.

Cartoon network should hire this guy.

Bleedman's "PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi"

2:36 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Direct Line to Santa's Elves

Haven't had time to do a proper Christmas list to Santa yet this year? Here's your chance to speak directly to the elves and have them put in your requests right up at the North Pole.

Don't worry if you don't have a microphone, the flash technology they're using can 'listen' through your computer speakers, as long as you're loud enough. Give it a shot.




From Ze, the wonderfully demented mind that brought us Passive Aggressive Punctuation

12:42 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Firefox Ad Ran In Today's NY Times

So many people came out in support of the full page Firefox ad in the New York Times that they couldn't fit all of our names on one page. So today, the Spread Firefox team ran a mammoth 2 pager (pdf) featuring all of our names, a giant Firefox logo, and user testimonials.

Very cool. The press around the ad is worth it alone but the positive impression this will make on CIO's, business leaders, and "Joe user" when they see this ad is immeasurable. I'm proud to have been a part of this, and I've got the ad on my wall at work with my name highlighted. It's at once the coolest and geekiest thing I've ever had on my walls, and that's coming from a guy who's had anime murals and wall scrolls all over his room.

If by some chance you're still using Internet Explorer - Firefox 1.0 is here. It's time to see what you've been missing!

5:10 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Holiday Favorites!

Last year, my family tried a new project as part of the preparations for The Holidays: making "Chocolate Cherry Mice."

Basically, you coat a cherry with chocolate melted in the microwave, add a Hershey's Kiss as the face/nose, and stick on almond slivers as the ears. They're extremely cute and actually really tasty! You can add cake decoration gel as eyes if you're feeling really creative.

We had a ton of fun making them and I wanted to repeat the tradition this year, so I was looking for the recipe and other good ideas like that when I came across a great list, at mormonchic of all places!

6:11 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Missing the SingleWindow extension in FireFox?

If you're among the many people that have started using Firefox, you've probably noticed that links from other programs open over other pages that you already have open or open a new window entirely. This can be annoying if you didn't want to navigate away from the page that was open in Firefox, and middle clicking the link in your other programs doesn't open a new tab.

I've found it much more helpful to have links from all programs, as well as links that are programmed to open in "pop up" windows, open in new tabs. The SingleWindow extension filled this need until very recently, but mysteriously stopped working in 1.0

It turns out that Firefox 1.0 incorporates that functionality natively. Here's how to turn it on.

• In Firefox, open a new tab so you can keep this page open as well.
• In that new tab, enter about:config in your address bar
• change browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs to true (you can type part of the name of the configuration item in the Filter: box to quickly reduce the list)
• go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced
• Under Tabbed Browsing, check:
  • Open link from other applications in: a new tab in the most recent window
  • Force links that open new windows to open in a new tab

Firefox will now open a new tab for just about everything! You may also want to check "Warn when closing multiple tabs" so that you don't accidentally lose all the pages you had open by clicking the wrong thing. To avoid this, also try to get in the habit of middle-clicking the tabs to close them rather than clicking the red X.

Also, if you're running Firefox on Linux, Middle-clicking on tabs doesn't close them by default. To change this: In about:config set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false. This is less "correct" on unix, but it will make Firefox behave more like it does on Windows.

4:38 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Cheap Stingy Bastard

I was looking to buy some Sketchers online, and googled for the name. One of the first things that came up was a link to a blog that tracks coupon codes and provides them online. I plugged in the code, and voila! 25% off my purchase and free shipping.

I got lucky and happened to pull up a valid sale (many expire within a few days) but the front page of the Cheap Stingy Bastard blog, http://cheap.typepad.com, always has fresh coupons. Check it out.

1:23 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Update: Ardvark's Got a Wiki

I've created a page at WikiMedia for Ardvark. If you haven't worked with a Wiki before, they're really pretty neat. Once you register (free and quick) with WikiMedia,No registration needed! Just click edit at the top of any page. you're able to change the text of any page there and submit your own new information and artwork.

This is how most of the web should just work. You log in to a page, see a mistake or missing info, and simply fix it right there. Wikis have been most effective in bringing together knowledge bases like the open encyclopedia WikiPedia and technical manuals, but I'm very interested to see how this collaborative medium lends itself to a purely creative project.

There is an implicit trust in letting others have full access to edit your pages, and I'm excited by the idea of easily letting others make what they will of Ardvark, much in the same way that CVS lets developers easily tweak, change, and even fork projects. Inkscape, the tool I use to draw these characters, is the product of one such fork, splitting off from the Sodipodi project and quickly surpassing its progenitor. For security, the Wiki also keeps a comprehensive version list allowing you to restore the page if someone, for example, spams the page with links to Chinese Viagra to boost their google rating.

Ardvark The Aardvark, once completed, will be a fully paginated children's book that you can download, print, edit, share, and expand upon. To get to that goal, I'm going to need help. I need editors, artists, and writers, anywhere from amateur to pro, to work with me on the project and add their input.

If you're interested in helping out, take a look at the Wiki and play around with it a bit. You can directly make changes to book one, start on book two (or another branch of the story not related to this linear plot) upload drawings easily.

To add a new page, simply go to the address where it would be. For example, book two has not yet been created, but you can create it yourself by going to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ArdvarkTheAardvark_BookTwo. Just don't forget to update the main page to point to your newly created work! You can also leave notes on any existing page without disturbing the text itself by clicking the "discuss" link.

• Ardvark's Page at WikiMedia

4:56 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Of the Two Famous Foucaults.

We went out to dinner with Arden tonight, and she mentioned that she'd read the rough draft of Ardvark the Aardvark and had a suggestion: If I was naming the little vervets in the Ardvark story after great philosophers and thinkers, I may want to reconsider including Foucault (pronounced "foocau"). Her reasoning was that it may bring up several questions with the youngsters when attempting to explain who he was. His writings on sexuality and his notoriety for promiscuity aren't exactly on the grade school curriculum.

I stopped for a moment and thought "Oh, so THATS who the other Foucault was!" I'd seen a book by him at Borders just a week or so ago with Ali, but really wasn't sure who he was, aside from the fact that he was famous in 1980 instead of 1890.

The only Foucault I know is the one I learned about in Physics and Astronomy, the inventor of the aptly named "Foucault Pendulum"

It seems fitting that I'm learning so much while attempting to write an educational story! I've found good resources for both Foucaults.

• Learn more about Foucault's Pendulum - one of the founding proofs that the earth rotated about its axis.
  • Great illustrations and animations make this is a very fun site! The work of Jean Bernard Leon Foucault is presented in a way which makes the concepts accessible and fun.
• Read more about Michael (pronounced "Michelle") Foucault, prominent philosopher of the late 20th century who sought to understand the nature and history of the fundamental concepts of society and the author of The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception and Madness and Civilization : A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, among many others

12:41 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Ardvark The Aardvark - Book One v0.5

I've completed the rough draft of the story for Ardvark the Aardvark With the Back Leg Named Bumpus - Book One. I'd welcome revisions, edits, and new stories or drawings from anyone that wants to take a crack at it!

I'll be getting a wiki set up to facilitate content creation, but for now, send submissions to "Ardvark" here at GlitchNYC.com.

As I wrote, a few themes began to emerge, and I think they're good places to start for anyone who wants to contribute.

• The book should be fun. First and foremost, it should be an interesting, whimsical, and even eccentric read.
• The book should be fun to read aloud, both for kids and parents.
• Onomatopoeia, new words, and new concepts make books fun to share and talk about
• The book should be educational
• This doesn't mean it has to be stodgy or include anything quite so obvious as the classroom scene in book one. Instead, education and exploration should be intrinsic part of the book. To quote Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, "don't talk down to kids, just talk to them." Leave long words in, include advanced concepts of math, physics, astronomy, music, whatever - education begins with curiosity!

Ardvark the Aardvark With the Back Leg Named Bumpus - Book One

(Download the story as a .doc with some of the character designs embedded)

Ardvark was an aardvark who lived, as most aardvarks do, in the lush forests, great fields, and dry savanna of Kenya. Each day he would play in the dirt, happily romping from anthill to anthill in search of friends to play with and food to eat. Most days he found no friends, but kept himself company by having conversations with his back-left leg, which he had named Bumpus, for no good reason at all.

See more ...

3:31 pm | permalink | /life/art | 5 writebacks |

Google's Froogle, the "Any Store, Any Thing" Wishlist

Froogle is Google's massive search engine applied to shopping. You look for an item, and google turns up hundreds of stores and lets you compare prices.

I've done Amazon wishlists in the past, but I'm always thwarted by their lack of products outside of books, dvd's, and games.

So I give you my Froogle Wishlist, which is full of, well, books, dvd's, and games, ironically.

Want one of your own? Just go to Froogle, search for a few things from thousands of online merchants, and click 'Add to list' for any item you want to add to your Shopping List. You'll need to sign in to your Google account or create one if you haven't already (if you have a Gmail account or Groups 2 login, you already have a Google account). If you want to share items, just click the 'In Wish List' checkbox and whammo, you now have a web page of your holiday wish list to share with friends and family

Go make your own list! Be sure to click "show on wish list" for each item once you've put it on your personal shopping list.

Stolen from the Google Blog

3:43 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

A Link to the Past

I started work at Common Ground just over two years ago, and one of the first things I did was install a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) Intranet server running PostNuke. Until last week when I took the server down to put a new harddrive in, it had never been rebooted. It had run for 465 days without crashing. Hell, it had run for 465 days without being touched.

Logging into the desktop was strange. KDE looked ugly, Mozilla took forever to start, and the Redhat Package Manager desktop app crashed more than it ran. The fonts were jaggy and applications seemed boxy and mismatched, and it just generally looked like crap. I remembered, briefly, what Open Source used to look and feel like, just 2 years ago.

I'm an Open Source advocate. I say that freely and without hesitation, but that does not mean I am an Open Source zealot. As an IT professional, I've been keenly aware of what the problems are with Open Source applications and Linux, and what strides we needed to make.

When I first experimented with Linux back in 1999 (on this very machine serving Glitchnyc.com, no less) "Open Source" was synonymous with a web server, an OS for servers and supergeeks, and a clunky browser with too many parts. I remember when downloading an Open Source solution meant you probably had to put up with a crappy interface, half-there functionality, and lots of compiling and hand-tweaking.

In just the past 2 years, I've watched the open source software landscape mature so quickly it's almost unbelievable. The Gimp finally got GTK 2 support and went from a quirky, ugly tool to a slick, pro-level photo-editor, both on Windows and Linux. The two major Linux desktops, KDE and Gnome, went from interfaces that looked like windows 98 on a bad day to rivaling XP and even Mac OS X in sheer sexiness. Installing and upgrading programs has gone from has gone from ./configure && make && make install (and pray you've got the right libraries installed) or rpm dependency hell to point-n-click with apt and synaptic. Mozilla has completely reinvented itself and stripped the browser down to the 4 meg work of art that is Firefox, and Thunderbird, its solid mail counterpart.

The list of amazing applications continues to grow: Scribus gives desktop publishing apps such a run for their money that *someone* is quietly trying to squash work on the win32 version. Audacity handles audio like a pro, and is getting multi-track support the upcoming version. OpenOffice.org is pushing Microsoft out in more installations than anyone cares to talk about, and Inkscape is far and away the easiest vector drawing tool I've ever used.

Do I think Linux is ready for prime time? I don't know. I think there are a lot of hurdles there, but I do know this: Open Source software is ready for prime time. The Desktop application stack is here, and it's cross platform. I'm using the same programs on Windows at work and on Linux at home, and I love it.

Pretty soon, what OS you're running just isn't going to matter, because you'll know all the best applications in both places.

2:12 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Great Open Source Games

I've just completed a long article on the current state of open source software in general that will post tomorrow morning, but I wanted to split this small piece on games out into a separate post. Without further ado, I give you 4 great Open Source games which play on Windows and Linux.

• Battle for Wesnoth

• http://www.wesnoth.org
• The Battle For Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game. Aside from the default quest being quite entertaining and extremely challenging, there is also a lively community producing tons of downloadable quests and additional graphics.

  Game-play is straightforward and fun, and figuring out how many troops to recruit, how to use them, etc, has kept me up late quite a few nights recently.

• Liquid War

• http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/
• This one is the most original games I've played in years. You really just have to play it to understand it, but you control an army of tens of thousands of units, which move towards your cursor. Lead them in the right direction, and they'll surround the enemy and win. Leave their back or flank open, and you're in hot water. There's so many troops, they really do flow like liquid.
• JDuplicate
• http://jduplicate.sourceforge.net/
• JDupilcate, a Java-based scrabble clone. Would be great if more (any) people were on their server to play against.

• Neverball
• http://icculus.org/neverball/
• Neverball, which is a clone of Super Monkey Ball. If you've never played it, it's like Marble Madness + one of those wooden labyrinth games you had as a kid on speed. Very addictive. Be warned that this is 3D on SDL, which means you'll need either a modern graphics card or a really beefy CPU to make it run well

1:22 am | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

And Then There Were Three

I've finished the 3rd Vervet, Hypatia. She's named for the "earliest woman scientist whose works have been documented"

What stuck me funny as I came back to this drawing this morning after finishing it late last night was that I know these three characters. It was completely and utterly unintentional, but very obvious who they are when you look at the picture.

Does anyone else see it, or am I going crazy from too many hours of looking at monkeys and aardvarks? Leave your guesses in the comments

Download the editable SVG

9:57 pm | permalink | /life/art | 2 writebacks |

Aristotle and Galileo

Noticing a theme with the names yet? Ardvark meets these little guys as a class of little monkey scholars. There are about 8 of them in the pack, and then probably 30 in the class along with the fully grown Vervet teacher.

I want to complete at least 4 distinct designs for the babies before I start to place them on the page. Galileo here is number two, and I'm feeling a lot better about the process again. Now that I've worked out the basic design ideas for the Baby Vervets, it's a lot easier to turn them out without having to go through an endless draw-revise-redraw cycle.

I've got the first few pages of the book done in my head. I think i might try to put what I have into a fully laid out PDF "teaser" once I get the character designs I need done. The nice part about this project is that it's essentially a bunch of mini projects. SVG is completely modular, so I can use these exact designs in the fully composed page just by dragging and dropping. Each drawing I finish is another step closer to having a full book.

I can't wait to get Ardvark on the page with the baby Vervets - they're so tiny, they could ride on him like humans on an elephant!

Here's the Inkscape SVG: Aristotle and Galilelo

2:42 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Hold the Wine!

In my previous post, I mentioned firing up Wine to run old DOS games under Linux. Turns out that Wine is complete overkill. All you need is dos, (not the whole windows API,) so that's all you should emulate.

Enter Dosbox. This little program can run just about any old dos game with sound and "real mode" memory drivers, allowing you to run most of your old favorites in a window on Linux.

Best of all, it's a widely supported package, meaning that installing is as easy as doing quick

12:44 am | permalink | /technology/games | 0 writebacks |

Finding Some Old Favorites

Kel was asking me where she could find the DOS Classic Torus (OK, well maybe it wasn't a classic, but we played a lot of it) recently, and that sent me on a web-adventure of sorts. Along the way, I saw several things I wanted to blog about.

Of course, I have our official "Geoffrey Poole*" copy running around on my server somewhere, so I pointed her in its direction, (*ahem* /gamez/ *ahem*) but I was curious to see if the old game was online anywhere.

That led me to dosgamesonline.com where they host old games like torus, and a slew of others. They've got a rating system as well that lets the best games of old float to the top. Pushover sounds kind of neat. I might have to see if I can get wine running to try some of these out.

While I'm talking about great dos games, I have to mention Zelda Classic. It's a complete remake of the old NES/SNES game from the engine up. While you can play through the official quests, they've got different sprite-sets (skins) that you can apply to the games, and whole different maps and worlds in a user contributed quest database. Very cool.

Looking back at games from a few years ago is fun, but I'm amazed how many decent projects there were like this that have completely died out. Were they open sourced, many of these would have grown and morphed along with our operating systems and would still be available and easily playable today. Not to worry though! There are many great open source games today, and I've got a round-up of a few new ones coming soon.

8:22 pm | permalink | /technology/games | 1 writebacks |

Meet Aristotle, the Baby Vervet

I've finally completed the base drawing for the Baby Vervets, the first characters Ardvark meets on his little adventure.

All in all, the drawing wasn't that difficult once I'd worked out how to simplify the source photo down to match Ardvark's style, but I did have quite a bit of "artist's block" trying to get myself to sit down and work on him. I was afraid it wasn't going to come out, so I wasn't going ahead with it at all.

Now that I've gotten the first draft done, I'm pretty happy with it. I have to decide if I want to leave him with articulated hands and feet or if I want to simplify them down once more to "mitts" to facilitate drawing lots of these guys, but I think I'm going to leave them as is.

Meanwhile, for those of you interested in playing around with the source drawings, I've made a bunch of updates to the SVG's. Remember, you'll need the free and open Inkscape to open these properly. Here they are:

• All 3 Drawings of Ardvark laid out on one page.
• Aristotle, the Baby Vervet

11:57 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Everything Has a Personality

While working on the second character for the "Ardvark the Aardvark" book, I decided that I should look at some other methods of drawing eyes. In particular, with this character, I want to create that big eyed "cute" look that makes people go "awww." You know, like "Puss in boots" from Shrek 2.

So, being unable to think of a proper term for that look, I was googling for the phrase "googly eyes" (mmm... recursion) and came up with this site:

Everything has a personality! Just add eyes!

Not exactly what I was looking for, but pretty funny. This is why I love the web.

10:27 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Gulf War Syndrome Isn't All In Soldier's Heads

It appears that after 10 years of crack work, a congress mandated panel have finally put it together that an epidemic of multi-symptom illnesses in US soldiers returning from the original Gulf War might actually not all be in their minds.

I don't know which non-psychosomatic symptom tipped them off: the severe respiratory symptoms, the rashes, or the fact that they're all in a goddamn disease cluster, but it seems that the Army might finally be taking some of the responsibility for looking into their conditions. Exposure to Sarin gas (which only a few troops were potentially exposed to), anti-nerve gas agents (getting warmer), and pesticides (aha!) are all being named as possible causes. Left out in the article is the cocktail of vaccines, inoculations, and other crap we shoot our soldiers up with to protect them in the event the enemy uses chemical or biological weapons.

Potentially life-saving? Yes. Potentially the cause of 70,000 US Soldiers debilitating maladies and seriously degraded quality of life? Also yes.

Hmm. Wouldn't it have been helpful to figure this all out BEFORE we went back to the gulf? Somehow, even though Congress mandated this panel in 1998, it didn't even begin it's work until 2002 when it's members were finally appointed.

Next time you see one of those stupid Taiwanese "support our troops" magnets on someone's car, rip the damn thing off. It means nothing to say that now while they're over there and we can do nothing.

Instead, put it in a drawer and bring it out 4 years from now when all of the kids in the desert now are sick as hell and the government has forgotten about them and denied them disability.

That's when it's time to support the damn troops.

1:30 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

He's Totally Excited

I've done some more drawings of Ardvark and tried to give him that excited cuteness that he exuded in the original drawings. I do really like the slick look of the SVG's but he's got to convey emotions well to connect with any of the readers.

Bringing him out of a straight side profile is a bit challenging too, especially because my art training is extremely limited. I always opted for photography and video work when taking art in school, and it shows in my difficulty with bring objects into 3D space. This revision is my best so far, but at first, Ardvark's little stumpy legs in the "quarter turned" picture at bottom here made him look like a hybrid pig-dog.

It's amazing how much creativity can spill out of you in a 5 minute doodle, and then how much you can struggle to fill in the missing bits and really bring it to life. I can feel myself burning out on this project, but I'm determined to see it through to completion. The first draft story is coming along and about 1/2 done, and then I need to begin deciding where illustrations should go. It's already too long, and I need to make some cuts to make it feasible.

At the moment my real challenge is to stay true to the deranged whimsy that Ardvark was born from and not hammer this into a complete beginning-middle-end tale. We'll see how it goes.

12:55 am | permalink | /life/art | 2 writebacks |

I'd Forgotten about Headphones

I've spent the last 2 years listening to music on my computer speakers at work which are, admittedly, pretty crappy. They do the job though, and I can listen to them without bothering anyone else in the office.

Sara's new ipod made me realize that I've been hearing only the "top layer" of music; the lead vocals and loudest instruments, for quite a while now.

Strapping on my headphones for a bit has made me appreciate some of the music that's been sitting in my collection unplayed for a while, and I'm currently digging heavily on VNV Nation as ambient "New York Commute" music and even more enthused about the Garden State Soundtrack.

3:20 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 2 writebacks |

In Praise of the Tungsten E

News sites yesterday carried word that new models of the Palm wouldn't feature OS6 despite earlier promises that they would.

The major benefits of OS6 are supposed to be multitasking and multimedia support.

Right now, I'm listening to mp3's on my SD card and typing using my wireless keyboard. Meanwhile, my calendar application pops up a reminder to get fixings for dinner tonight. I'm doing all of this on OS5 with the economy model palm, the Tungsten E.

Don't listen to the hype. Unless you're one of the people who will actually use WiFi or bluetooth support for your palm, just get the tungsten E. It's more than enough machine for anything your need your PDA to do.

3:10 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

This Is Ardvark

As with everything else on the site, Ardvark here is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 License.

That means that you can do anything you like with him as long as you include a credit and release your work under the same license.

Here's the Inkscape SVG file

I drew this piece in about an hour during my lunch today, using the successor to Sodipodi, "Inkscape".

It worked brilliantly and didn't crash once. The tools just work like they should and every time I thought "Hmm, I wonder if I can do this?" it turned out that there was a tool for exactly that in the menus.

Get Inkscape, the Free and Open Source SVG editor, here

3:11 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Ardvark the Aardvark with the Back Leg Named Bumpus

I've just gotten an idea for a children's book while waiting for, of all things, windows XP SP2 to reinstall on a workstation at CG.

This, of course, warrants two separate blog posts, but as I've had a bit of blogging burnout (as just about my entire blogging community seems to have had the past 2 or 3 months), I'll just do a quick sum-up here.

First: SP2 is a serious pain in the ass. If the user has any problems at all, the rollout from software update services will completely bork the machine, and fixing it means about 4 hours in front of each terminal as you uninstall the hotfix, then uninstall the service pack, then reinstall it, then reinstall a bunch of apps.

Not fun. This should have been marketed as what it was: a full OS upgrade. I'm glad we didn't have to pay for it, but it should really be done on a PC by PC basis.

If you're thinking of installing it, be sure to clean your machine of spyware and disable your virus protection before you do. Don't forget to turn it back on once you're done.

So while I was waiting there in front of Arden's computer, I began to doodle.

I had written her a note explaining that it wouldn't be done until tomorrow morning, and had been to lazy to write out her whole name, just ending up with Ard.

Naturally, after staring at that note and her abbreviated name for another 30 minutes, I doodled an Aardvark. He was a cute little guy with a snout and a smile, and I drew a thought bubble up from him saying "Hee hee.... I'm an ARDvark."

Another 15 minutes passed, and I noticed that I'd misspelled Ardvark, and decided that that would be his proper name. The problem was, I'd already drawn a little arrow to him that said "This is Bumpus"

I amended the doodle to say "This is Bumpus. Not the whole aardvark, just his left leg. He likes eating celery with peanut butter on it, with little raisins on that. He's a vegan Aardvark. See, 2 a's on aardvark, but that's not how Ardvark spells it, that's his proper name. Ardvark the aardvark with the back leg named Bumpus. "

This medium, of course, does it no justice, but after 4 hours of watching progress bars, it was hilarious to me.

I'm picturing a whole book with little drawings of Ardvark the Aardvark, who is constantly talking to his back-left leg happily, even as other, angrier animals are teasing him for it. That, and for the fact that his name is spelled wrong.

"It's not misspelled, it's homonymic!"

Hmm... Maybe I'll merge it with my forthcoming SVG tutorial and make it a CC book. It'll be my nanowri-draw-mo.

3:13 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

SharpDevelop GNU .NET / Mono IDE

We're developing a small in-house database application again here at CG, and due to the fact that we're a nonprofit, we simply can't afford to migrate the whole organization to Office 2003 just to make my life a little easier while coding.

Working with Access 2000's "access project" link to mSQL is far superior to developing a straight access database, and as a quick and dirty Rapid Application Development platform it really does get the job done. The problem is that this is now a very old, VB6 based platform, and the rest of the world has moved on to vb.net. There were so many quirks and problems with the VB runtimes that the whole system was scrapped in favor of the .NET shared runtime and a new vb compiler.

Fed up with things simply not working the way they should, I went in search of an alternative to Microsoft's wildly expensive Visual Studio.net.

After a few minutes of googling for "Mono IDE" (mono is the GNU implementation of the .NET api) I came up with a few choices. For windows, which I use at work, the most mature seemed to be SharpDevelop, so I took the plunge.

I've worked with many IDEs over the past 7 years, and I don't think I've ever been as impressed with one as I am with SharpDevelop. It's quick, light, and smart, and the GUI development tools are right on the money. So far I've hit 0 bugs and effortlessly went from a little HelloWorld form to an MDI (Multi Document Interface) design complete with windows-style professional looking menus and functionality.

If you've been waiting to try out .NET because you don't have a copy of Visual Studio, download SharpDevelop now.

As a quick aside - VisualStudio comes on 4 CDs and loads your system with MSDN docs, the .net runtimes, and loads of other stuff you don't need.

SharpDevelop is 5 megs, most of us already have the .net runtimes (if you don't you can get them at WindowsUpdate) and google works a heck of a lot better for me than MSDN ever did.

3:57 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Please Let Me Be Wrong

I've had a surprising number of my ruminations about the direction of our country come true in the past 4 years, but this doesn't make me happy, it makes me scared. Among my predictions:

• We would go to war with Iraq (predicted at the onset of the offensive in Afghanistan)
• Abu Ghraib abuses were rooted in policy trailing all the way back to the White House
• The Democrats would nominate a lame duck to open the "Hillary" window in 2008 rather than 2012

For posterity, now that we are assured another 4 years of Bush, GOP dominated Government, and religious extremism, I am going to put my predictions for the next 4 years here. I hope more than anything that I am wrong.

On the war and terrorism

• Iraq will not only last 3+ more years, but we will also begin cold war style sanctions and non-military offensives against:
• Iran
• North Korea
• At least one other "terrorist center"
• One of these will blossom into a military confrontation
• The Draft will be reinstated.
• Here on the home-front, there will be another attack, this time with the terrorist cell claiming to be centered within the US itself.
• Patriot II will be pushed through, further limiting our Civil Liberties and permitting discretionary wiretaps on all citizens. Those who speak out will be on terrorist watch lists. Neighbors will be encouraged to report any suspicious activity.

On domestic policy

• Bush will appoint 2 more Conservative extremists to the Supreme Court.
• They will overturn Roe v. Wade
• And ban stem cell research
• Congress will uphold and expand the DMCA.

Get out your tinfoil hats - there's some doozys up there. Please, 4 years from now, let me look back at this post and say "Thank god I was a nutcase and none of that happened."

12:45 pm | permalink | /life | 3 writebacks |

Go Vote.

No matter who you choose tomorrow, no one can deny that the stakes are higher for this election than they have been in the past half-century. Some things to consider:

• Half of America did not vote in the 2000 elections
• Half of this year's "likely voters" polled are pro-Bush
• Citing a strong post 9/11 connection with Bush, these voters continue to convince themselves that certain things are true, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary:
• They believe there were weapons of mass destruction. There were not.
• They believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Al Qaeda. He was not.
• Half of them believe you can win a military war on Terrorism, a thing you cannot see, find, or kill. You cannot.
• Bush himself has publicly admitted all of these things are untrue, yet continues to wage war, spread fear, and allow these untruths to spread throughout his campaign.

In 2000, I didn't know who to vote for. The Republican and Democratic parties looked almost identical.

This year, I know one thing. I know who I'm voting against.

11:28 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Another 15 Seconds

Well, We're on the cover of Newsday's Real Estate section today.

Josh sent me a link to a writer looking for people in Long Island City who had fixed up their own apartment, which fit our description perfectly. I thought "What the heck" and contacted the writer, and next thing we know, Sara and I are doing phone interviews, photo shoots, and our faces are plastered across the front of the section in full color.

See a Slide show of the photos by Jori Klein [archived here]

Read the article by Susan Kreimer

10:22 am | permalink | /life | 3 writebacks |

Wedding Photos are Up

Our Wedding Photos are finally posted! We just wanted to make sure it was OK with the photographer before we put them up.

Anyone who attended the wedding, feel free to make comments on the pictures, and/or tell stories about your experience at the wedding.

You can enter your comments in the box just below each picture.

9:39 am | permalink | /life | 1 writebacks |

Jersey's Saving Throw

Zach Braff has redeemed New Jersey for me.

Garden State is a moody, poignant homage to the inherent beauty of all of life's various landscapes, physical and emotional. Even New Jersey's.

Critics have been laying praise on the movie for months, and it continues to play in mainstream theaters, so I won't go into everything that made the movie amazing for me, but I will say that if you haven't seen it yet, you need to see it on the big screen. It's not for everyone, but if it resonates with you, it will impact you in a big way.

The soundtrack is also so perfectly paired with a movie's varying moods and the feelings it evokes. I would probably never listen to most of the songs on the album on my own, but as I listen to the soundtrack now on the way home, I can't help but be drawn back into the world of the movie.

2:42 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 2 writebacks |

Degrassi Askew

Kevin Smith + Jason Mewes are making an extended appearance on Degrassi! This is big enough, strange enough news to make it onto my blog already, especially considering we've seen every episode of Degrassi:TNG since we got The-N with our first digital cable package.

What's really mind-bending for me is that this news has made it all the way up to BoingBoing! I thought we were the only ones that even knew about the show!

"It's like When Worlds Collide, y'know? I'm a big fan of things like when Spider-Man and Daredevil meet. I go ape-(bleep) and bust a nut," said director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), who is finally getting his chance to take part in the cult series he idolizes [See, we're not crazy!] by starring in a three-episode arc on Degrassi: The Next Generation.

In a hilarious and profane press conference here yesterday with past and present Degrassi cast, creator Linda Schuyler and her creative team, Smith confirmed that he and pal Jason Mewes (aka "Jay" from Clerks and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back) will start filming their parts next week through mid-November.

The episodes, which will air early next year, have Kevin Smith playing himself directing the next Jay and Silent Bob movie, "Jay And Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh?" In the fictional film, the slacker duo come to Toronto because they need to get a high school diploma and no school in America will take them.

Read the article where Kevin talks about his long standing crush on Caitlin Ryan dating back to the first Degrassi (Caitlin has become a recurring character in the Adult cast of TNG)

Stolen from BoingBoing who got it from Amanda

1:34 pm | permalink | /technology/tv | 0 writebacks |

Honeycup Mustard

Back in college, I went pseudo-vegetarian/raw-foodist for a year while on Weight Watchers, and near the end of my college education, I was eating nothing but salads. This was aided in large part by the amazing spicy honey mustard that they had up in the "Hawks Nest."

After leaving school, I found that I couldn't put my hands on that mustard, or anything like it, anywhere.

For most people, this probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but for me, this had been the thing that had made salads edible. Most other dressings are either nasty tasting or ridiculously bad for you, defeating the whole purpose of eating a salad in the first place.

Finally this year I stumbled upon that same amazing mustard - at Cosi.

Of course, you can't buy it from them by the gallon or even by the bottle, so I talked to the manager and got the name of their supplier.

After a few phone calls, I'd tracked down a distributor and ordered myself a case of Honeycup Spicy Mustard.

It's not healthy to be this excited about a condiment. I bring and buy baby carrots to work all the time just be a vessel for the stuff, and I've had to ration it heavily to avoid going through the whole case in a month.

The only problem is that they only sell it in cases of six jars for $30 or GIANT 9lb buckets for $60. I'm seriously considering getting the bucket next time.

11:09 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Who Watches the Watchmen

***Okay - before I begin... How the heck did I get this book? I honestly don't remember ordering it, and I don't see it on my accounts anywhere. I threw away the packing thinking "huh, must have bought this," but really I have no recollection of doing so. Was it a gift? I may never know.***

I've just finished reading the Graphic Novel, "Watchmen" by Alan Moore.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the genre, a graphic novel is essentially a really long comic book, Most times, the novel is actually compiled of many traditional comic books sewn together with additional material and/or art.

Now, I'm not a particularly great fan of comics. I read a few as a teenager and I have a sort of knowledge by proxy from having some friends who are much more into them, but I was never a comic book geek. A computer geek, sure, a sci-fi geek, yup, but not a comic book geek. There were a few reasons behind this, some of them financial, but more stemming from the fact that I simply don't enjoy the storylines of most modern comics once the initial premise is used up.

I was a great fan of the "XMen (minus the uncanny)" which was introduced when I was about 13. They took a comic that was at that time nearing it's 300th issue, and restarted it from the beginning, building upon the existing mythology. For me, that was the pinnacle of comics. The process of discovery, the allegorical context for each story, the first 30 or so comics went together like a well written epic, and indeed those books have spawned two movies, and animated TV series, and the rebirth of the superhero genre.

With all of this in mind, I opened Watchmen with some hesitation. It was a comic from before the reissue of XMen, and it was drawn with the characteristic 80's style, which itself was sort of a busy, dark version of the 50's "superman" style. Each panel is crammed with stuff to look at, and it can initially be overwhelming. I was regretting my purchase(?) already before reading a word.

Secondly, this book was thick. I didn't even really want to carry it around in my bag every day as I read it.

With all of these things going against it, Watchmen was one of the best books - let alone being the best graphic novel - that I have ever read.

Watchmen is a cleverly crafted tale, told from numerous points of view, and simultaneously portraying the storylines of several of the "Has-been" masked adventurers that make up it's main cast.

Being that Watchmen itself was written over 20 years ago now, and that it deals with an alternate history from 1950 to 1983 anyway, the world in which it is set can feel very alien. For me, this actually lent to the story, as if it was set in present time (as it was when written) it may have been harder for me to suspend disbelief.

The winding plot looks at the morality of superheroes, and the humanity behind those who would put on ridiculous costumes to fight crime. The one true "superhero" of the story is trying to decide if he even cares what happens to earth while the rest of the cast, simply people who used to dress up and try to fight crime, wrestle with their own demons.

All in all, it's a very good read. Let me know if you want to borrow it, but I'm warning you, if the shipping is out of state, it might be a lot of money! This book is huge.

4:19 pm | permalink | /life | 1 writebacks |

Firefox Ad Support Miracle

Less than one day ago SpreadFireFox.com made the appeal I featured below. Their ambitious goal was to reach 2500 donations (each of $30 or more) in 10 days.

As of 10PM EST tonight, they're 3 people away from their goal. With 9 days left, we might be able to run the ads in the 10 most widely distributed papers in the US. The support is amazing. It makes you wonder how many other projects have armies of people waiting and wanting to help in any way they can, even if they can't program.

10:27 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

We're Taking Out A Full Page Ad!

The Open Source community is banding together around 1.0 the release of the first true mainstream desktop application to come from our combined efforts. I've watched Firefox grow from a fledgling project based off of the monolithic Mozilla Browser into the premier web browser for security, speed, standards compliance, and ease of use.

Even technophobes who try Firefox out are quickly won over by the tabbed browsing and pop-up and spyware protection. It really is a world class user application, and it's about to become the #1 browser in the world.

To help it along, we're taking out a full page ad in the New York Times. I say "we" because I've already made my pledge. Join me, and contribute to the biggest event in open source software uptake since apache won the server wars.

10:10 am | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

The Deer List

Remember that "funny" shirt from back in the 90's, the "Road Kill Grill?" Well, it seems like it's coming true.

A friend of ours from down in Ohio just passed on a story about the "Deer List," which is basically a queue for people who are looking to pick up roadkill. When your name comes up, you've got 24-48 hours to go out and clean up the mess.

As ridiculous as this sounds, it turns out that there actually might be some merit to the idea. Deer (and other wild animal) populations have exploded in recent years due to hunting restrictions, and their encounters with humans, both in vehicles and not, have been increasing as suburban sprawl turns ever more of their habitat into backyards, parking lots, and strip malls.

The Deer list is actually an attempt by law enforcement to distribute the work, and the spoils (har har), to willing contractors, much like snow-plowers. You put your name on the list, and when it comes up, you go out, clean up the mess, and bring it to the landfill. In exchange, the local authorities pay you a monetary fee.

The idea is being picked up by more and more townships, and in many it's accompanied by the idea of a "Car kill tag," where if a driver hits a deer and wants it, the officer that responds can declare the roadkill fair game and let the unlucky driver take it home. For some, the compensation in meat lessens the blow of having to knock out their bumper. The roads are really becoming "kill it and grill it" territory.

9:17 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

You Can't Go a Day In New York Without Bumping Into Someone You Know!

So here I am, sitting in Chipotle eating my Burrito Bowl, when I see a big bouncer guy come and kind of "clear the street." He's got a few production assistants, but generally, it's a very low-key event. They don't make everyone move, just basically securing the area.

I'm kind of used to this. Between the movie/TV show shoots which seemed to always be going on at Wagner to living in NYC where a camera crew comes through Times Square about once an hour, it's usually no big deal.

Next thing I know, three guys in colorful shirts just kind of appear on the scene. I don't know if they just got out of a car or came up out of the subway or what, but it was surreal. The photographer was a few feet ahead of them taking pictures, and they walked right by the window I was looking out. And to think I almost sat facing the wall!

I think I knew who they were from the moment I saw them, but it was tough to convince myself that I was really sitting there with a pane of glass separating me from the Beastie Boys. I kept thinking that maybe it was a spoof - I mean, where was the mob of people, the adoring fans? Had they really managed a guerrilla photo shoot on 34th street without attracting any attention but my own?

Long before I'd made up my mind if it was really them, I'd had my camera out and was snapping pics. I mean, what the hell, it's digital. If it's not them, I'll have a good laugh about it later!

After I finished my lunch, I went out side and did a discreet walk-by. I was going to snap a few better pics, but I decided I didn't want to intrude, as they seemed to be getting away with the covert shoot and having a pretty good time. Two of them were standing with their arms up at 45 degree angles, palm to palm, and the other one was beneath holding his hands like a gun. Very funny stuff, and I wish I'd been quicker on my camera, but I have a feeling you'll be able to see that picture on an album cover or promo shot soon anyway.

That, and the security guy was about 3 times my size. Never the less, I had to go back the way I came to get back to work, so I walked right by them again, and looked right at them. Definitely them. It's funny how they can seem so young and full of life yet look so old at the same time!

Check out the rest of the (limited, crappy) pictures I snapped from inside Chipotle BeastieBoys.com

12:25 pm | permalink | /life/nyc | 0 writebacks |

Distributed Comedy

Okay, so some of this humor is only relevant if you've spent time on IRC on in other Internet chat rooms, but bash.org has bits of conversations which people copy from the chatter and post. The snippets then get modded up and down based on how funny they are. The best rise to the top and you can check them out here. Not all are work safe, but they're all pretty funny.

Much of the humor is topical and witty, with setups and punchlines that require a "gullible party" to walk into the joke. Somehow I have a feeling that lots of writers and comedians are looking to bash.org for inspiration.

#9322

<tag> Ouroboros: lets play Pong
<Ouroboros> Ok.
<tag> |    .
<Ouroboros> .    |
<tag> |  .
<Ouroboros>    . |
<tag> | .
<Ouroboros>      | .
<Ouroboros> Whoops

#5259

<reuben> somebody keeps jiggling the doorknob on my front door, then running away
<reuben> i don't know if i should call the police, or hook up some electricity to the doorknob
<cristobal> why don't you put ice on the stairs
<cristobal> and heat up the door knob
<cristobal> and swing paint buckets down from your two story foyer
<cristobal> then a few years later, fade from the public eye.....

12:33 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Often Imitated, Never Dupli-dupli-dupli-duplicated...

Finally! Disney is releasing the DVD that I've been waiting for since they came out with DVDs. Aladdin is at last coming to DVD on October 5th, and it's about time.

This was THE breakout film for Disney in my opinion. Hot on the heels of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, both of which were successful children's movies, came this pithy, endlessly funny film. It stuck close to the Disney formula but broke it in several very important ways.

Granted, I've been waiting for it on DVD for so long I don't even know if I'll like it anymore, but here's what I remember:

• This was the movie that made me love Robin Williams. He's brilliant, and they let him Ad-lib tons of dialog which made it a MUCH better movie. Eddie Murphy has tried to duplicate this phenomenon many times since (see Mulan and Shrek) with limited success.
• The story is engaging and not completely watered down.
• This movie had the best music of the second "Animated Musical" Renaissance. The songs rarely felt forced and worked well with the story, and aside from the obligatory "A Whole New World" ballad, many of the songs are up-tempo and funny.

When I was about 14, I had this movie on the same bootleg VHS as The Addams family and I fell asleep watching one or the other pretty much every night. I also, for no good reason at all, typed out the entire script on my computer (this was before the Internet was around for stuff like that).

Well, I'm embarrassed to tell this story for some reason, possibly for fear that people will find out that somewhere deep within me is a repressed Musial theatre dork, but I'd be remiss if I didn't relay it when talking about this movie.

Sometime around middle school I tried to put together a "Musical Youth Entertainment Group" of kids who went around performing in various venues. It was kind of a half-baked idea (mostly because we had no idea where we would actually do said performing) but it was something for me and my friend Brian to do. We were going to sing songs from Disney + other kids movies and distill the animated features down into stage productions.

I remember clearly working on the script for the stage version of "The Lion King" and Brian telling me it would never work. (Yeah, tell Julie Taymor that!)

We made flyers, got kids together and held rehearsals, and to think back on it, it was one of the first tastes of leadership that I ever had.

Of course, we all had the attention spans of gnats, so the idea came and went in a summer. We "grew up," and Brian started doing real High School musicals the next year. He'd gotten a role in Joseph as one of the "Chorus Kids," and watching it back on video, we were both hooked. It was like being part of a singing Hollywood, right in our own High School.

M.Y.E.G. became a memory, but a few things stuck with me.

The lessons I'd learned leading (and ultimately, failing to lead) that little group have served me endlessly as an RA, a newspaper editor, team leader, and in my job.

The memories of being 14 and all but uninhibited, belting out "Friend like me" over a crappy "You Sing..." Karaoke tape with my dad in the basement will be there forever. Sometimes the memories are bittersweet, as 10 years later, I look back and know that I may never be that completely uninhibited again... But hey, we're going to have kids of our own someday. I hope my dad hung on to a copy of that tape - somehow, I have a feeling he did.

6:05 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

It's a crime that I haven't blogged this yet

I really can't believe I haven't found a free moment to blog about this yet but I blame pokerroom.com and their free, Linux friendly Java client and No Limit Hold 'em tables.

When Jon was in town a few months back, he and I went exploring in the giant Toys R' Us in Times Square, the one that extends up AND down a full 3 stories in each direction from street level and has among other things, a Giant animatronic T-Rex and a Ferris Wheel inside. I have, of course,seen all these things before but it's always fun to poke around in there and see whats new, especially because Jon and I have visions of one day becoming DIY toy designers and making our fortunes.

While we were walking through the "Center display" where they feature the "latest mass marketing push" item we were stopped by a man dressed in a cross between a wizards robe and a "king" costume, deftly spinning the iTop. Of course I was impressed, mostly because the technology behind the thing had to be both pretty advanced and pretty cheap. They were selling the little device for $10.

I picked up the top and gave it a spin, and was immediately hooked. It was counting the number of times I spun it and displaying it in real time using the single row of 8 LEDS on the top. As the top whipped around, it flashed the lights in sequence, spelling out words and numbers.

Jon and I took several turns trying to beat the best score, but eventually we ran out of time and had to go.

A few months passed and I had all but forgotten about the iTop (I hadn't bought one since I was saving for the wedding) and I found myself needing to buy presents for my Groomsmen. I don't know about you, but I have no need for an engraved money clip. What I do have is an endless appetite for fun desk gadgets and challenging games.

When it came time, I bought one of the iTops for each of the Groomsmen and included them in a bag with The Open CD (which includes lots of open source tools we used to put the wedding together, like Scribus and Open Office) and a CD with all the mp3s we played at the wedding. I was worried what they would think about they toy, if they would like it as much as I had and if it was appropriate.

It turns out that I was worrying for nothing! By the end of the rehearsal dinner, we were all sitting around, trying to beat the best score and trying all sorts of surfaces to get the best spin. I think we'd just broken 900 when we finally went to bed.

The guys spent tons of their downtime playing with the tops, and by the time the wedding rolled around, they had figured out how to keep it going indefinitely by brushing their hand quickly along the edge, and had invented a new game where you spun it in the air to see how many times you could get it around before you caught it. The iTop was a hit!

The day after the wedding, we finally got home to Astoria to find a message on my cell phone. I listened to the panic inducing message nervously, as many friends were driving home that day, and with the tone of the message, I was worried that someone had been in a car accident.

"Ten" the voice on the message screamed. A chill ran down my back. I was confused by the message, but the voice was hard to read. Who was it from?

"Fourteen!" The message continued, again in that slightly panicked yell. I was sweating now. I didn't know if I was listening to a prank, if something horrible had happened, or what.

"Ten-Fourteen! 1014, new record on the iTop! Just had to call and tell you. We're up at college safe. Have a good trip."

Rye hadn't been up at school more than a few hours before they'd broken out the iTop and shattered the standing single-spin high score. He had called me out of excitement! I let out a sigh of relief and laughed. What a great little gift that had turned out to be.

Little did I know that in the week were on our honeymoon, Ryan's friends at college would make our standing records look paltry, inventing new ways to spin the top and spurring us to break the contest into separate events like the "Snap" method and the "Indian fire" method.

Meanwhile, back out in California, Jon was experimenting with different materials to spin on to try to get the best spin out of his and up in Rochester, Doug was showing his (slightly wonky one) off with his work buddies. I don't know, maybe we're all geeks in the same way, but for $10, that's one hell of a toy to me.

Way to go Irwin toys. Toys R' Us seems to be having trouble keeping them in stock in their NYC store, so I don't know if they're having trouble keeping up demand or they're just flying off the shelves. Either way, its good to see such a great product selling well, especially without a major advertising push or paying for a license to brand it with some kid-friendly logo.

If you buy an iTop:

• Beware that some of the tops are slightly off balance. So far, 2 out of 7 were just a bit wobbly. For $10, it's well worth the risk, and it's still a fun toy, but you might not beat the world record with it. Also, watch the packaging to make sure the "battery seal" is sill intact in back
• Check out the "secret modes". Switch to mode 1 and then hold both the play and mode buttons for 5-10 seconds. The flashing modes will do cool things like draw patterns and display a compass.

3:21 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Hitchhikers Guide Radio Shows for FREE!

Okay - I seriously love the BBC.

First of all, if you aren't watching Coupling already, it's one of if not the funniest show on TV. BBCAmerica runs it in syndication.

Second, they've just released audio streams of the new version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for free on the net. Each episode will apparently be available for 7 days after it airs.

I've actually never read the books. My only exposure to it was a game I played for the Commodore 64 (that's a link to a new version of the old game!) back in 1991 and some friends who were giant Douglas Adams fans. So far, I've listened to 8 minutes of this, on and off, and I've already laughed about 10 times as much as I did through the entire second episode of Father of the Pride. Not that that's any great bar to measure by, but that's apparently this season's best comedic offering.

I'm also amazed that they chose to do this as a radio play. As far as I'm concerned, the decision was a masterful one. My brain is filling in the effects just fine, and I don't have to worry about how crap the CG looks. I can just lose myself in the very funny story, and the production values of the audio are great. It's as if they took the money they would have spent shooting it for TV and poured it into creating cinema quality audio. Very nice.

• Audio feeds:
• Real or Windows Media
• And, good stuff from the Slashdot comments:
• Save the stream:
  mplayer -dumpstream mms://wm.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/h2g3_episode 1.asf
• Listen to "Primary and Secondary phase"
• Even though I don't know what that means, this series is apparently the Tertiary phase. So is this the third retelling, or does it pick up somewhere in the 3rd book? Or maybe it's just the third radio series? Whatever it is, it's fine to start listening right here as I did.

Ya, this was stolen from Slashdot, but it was too good to not mention again!

10:47 am | permalink | /life | 2 writebacks |

Like a Basket Full of Laundry

Thank you cards are the ultimate procrastinator-maker. If I'm not working on them, I can't bring myself to do anything else, (you know, like blog or post wedding pictures) because I should be doing thank-yous instead.

It's not that I don't want to write them, I've unexpectedly enjoyed writing them for the wedding as I've gotten to spend one last personal moment with each person through them and it's made that feeling of the wedding - the feeling of being surrounded by throngs of people you love - last just a bit longer.

The problem is, I can only write a few of them a night. I'm not just scribbling out a short "Thanks, love Eric + Sara" I'm having conversations with people here. To clarify the problem a bit - If I was writing thank you e-mails, I would be in a much better position.

You see, I can type like lightning when I know what I want to say (and have a spell checker to clean up after my typo's), but my handwriting has been downright awful since the first grade. I even changed to writing in all caps in 9th grade to try to clean it up a bit, but to little avail. I've settled for a script I like to call "stylized doctor scratch" and will only write with my easy-flowing Pilot G-2, but I rarely, if ever, engage in the actual art of putting pen to paper for anything other than doodling.

Beyond the embarrassing chicken scratch look of my handwriting and inevitable typo (write-o?), writing is actually physically excruciating for me. I just can't get my hand to move that way consistently. It's almost comical, seeing as nearly everything else I do in my life involves using my hands in some fashion, but for some reason the combination of deep thought, fine motor skills (the writing) and gross motor skills (the picking up of the arm to continue writing a line) has just always posed problems for me. I must either go so painfully slow that people have genuinely asked if I've had a stroke or have some other mental deficiency, or write like a third grader and throw in lots of big first letters and fancy strokes when possible to make it look like it's all supposed to look this way.

The funny thing is, about a year ago, my brother, father, and I all picked up pieces of paper and realized that our handwriting was all but identical, even thought my brother and I did not learn to write from my father. We all developed the "small-caps" style independently, and generally mix cursive and print in the same ways.

Weird. Maybe it's genetic? I've also found this specific pattern of writing to be an exclusively male trait. Anyone else an expert in "barely-legible-all-caps-big-T"?

12:55 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Missed Chuck Palahniuk, but Albany Folks Can Catch Him

I missed one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk, reading in NYC tonight because I was just too pooped, but anyone up in the Albany area can catch him tomorrow night.

His readings are famous for being raucous, with space monkeys or a local chapter of The Cacophony Society coming out to heckle him and/or faint as he reads, perhaps following an implied suggestion he probably now wishes he never made.

He's written seven books since Fight Club, but the lucid narrative and penchant for the fine details of the mundane and unusual alike is a theme throughout. Chuck is touring to promote his new book Diary, which I must now find and read. If you've still only seen Fight Club, make it a point to pick up the book. It's similar to but far superior to the movie, and the book Choke is even better.

If you go tomorrow, just a fair warning - he has a habit of throwing limbs at an unsuspecting audience.

11:15 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Artbots show in NYC this weekend!

I want to be these guys when I grow up.

I don't usually like to repost stories from BoingBoing but this crazy "build your own wacky robot and show it off" art show is going off in Harlem this weekend.

If you're an electronics geek and in or near New York this weekend, this is the place to be. With luck, I'll be there asking tons of questions about how they did stuff, as research for a new project I'm working on.

More details on the "project" after I clear it with my lawyers...

It.s an ArtBots invasion in Harlem! The Third Annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show will take place on September 17, 18, & 19 from noon to 6:00pm at The Mink Building on 126th Street & Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem. Featuring the work of 20 artists and groups from seven countries, the show celebrates the strange and wonderful collision of shifty artists, disgraced engineers, high/low/no tech hackers, rogue scientists, beauty school dropouts, backyard pyros, and industrial espionage that has come to define the emerging field of robotic art. Participants include robots that sketch, carve, float, wiggle, hum, ring, grow, wander, and sing, as well a number of works the form and function of which are not yet well understood.

2:01 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Interview with Ravi "The Scorpion Mystic"

During lunch a few weeks ago I got a chance to talk with Ravi, and he did a brief street performance in Times Square while I took some photos. He was fascinating to talk to, and I was struck by the similarities between Ravi and a profession