GlitchNYC.com

Pinging Technorati from Your Blosxom Blog

Technorati is quickly becoming one of the best ways to track what blogs are linking to eachother, which news items are being talked about the most, and who is linking to your blog.

Telling Technorati that you've updated your blog is fairly simple, and there's a multitude of ways to do it, from filling out a simple web form each time you update to using the XML-RPC API they provide to automatically "ping" the site.

This is already set up for users of LiveJournal and other popular blogging havens, but the "blosxom setup" section has been woefully empty since technorati came back online a few weeks ago. I finally decided it was time to "put up or shut up" and figured it out myself.

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1:52 am | permalink | /technology/web/blog | 0 writebacks |

Lex - Chapter 2

This is the rewrite of Chapter 2 of "Lex" - bound together from the vignettes I posted here while writing with some significant clarifications, additions and subtractions.

Once again, fair warning - depending on your definition, these may not be work-safe. Don't read if you or your boss is made squeamish by R->NC17 rated material. This story is going to be as gritty, vulgar, sexy, and real as I can make my twisted version the 25th century come across.

Chapter 1 (pdf)

Chapter 2

I awoke cradled in my new stripwear, comfortably nestled in its many arms, just outside the gigantic shining surface of the outside of a city node.

It's amazing how wakings can be so symbolic of change. I'd awoken twice now in unfamiliar settings in the outcity - both times in situations so far different from the staid life I'd lived until so recently. First inside the sleek, silver mobile doctor, feeling rebellious and anxious, and now here, in the waving grass and sun and wind of the wild, feeling calmer than I'd ever remembered feeling.

I began to rise, and the stripwear languidly gathered itself back around me, matching my slow, sleepy movements. I rubbed my eyes, and then my naked scalp, wondering idly when I'd dosed off. The last thing I really remembered was my guide taking me over the edge, and then... It was a blank to me. I chalked it up to my exhaustion, and the relief at the completion of my task. Both my guide and I were free of the Citiverse. Free, and permanently self-exiled.

See more ...

11:09 pm | permalink | /fiction/lex | 0 writebacks |

Yup, this about sums it up.

http://www.JohnKerryIsADoucheBagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com

Stolen from lvx23

5:44 pm | permalink | /life/politics | 0 writebacks |

Bush on Broadband

G.W. was all over the news declaring his new initiative to bring "Broadband to The People" today.

This is my reaction.

Download this image as SVG line art

Like everything else on my site, this is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, so feel free to distribute, modify, and use this image as you see fit, provided you link back to the site and that your own work is released under the same license.

Think it could use a little tweaking? Want to use the image of Bush for a zinger you've got in your head?

Go for it.

Sodipodi is a great, free tool for manipulating SVG files (just save often!)

I'd love to see a collaborative effort to create open licensed political cartooning come together. Political cartoons encourage thought and spark debate - it'd be wonderful if the tools to create them were one step closer to the politically, but not necessarily artistically, inclined.

12:32 am | permalink | /life/politics | 0 writebacks |

A Different Theory on Why People Stop Sharing Music

The net is teeming tonight with articles about a new survey that seems to indicate that the RIAA's "shock and awe" lawsuit campaign worked - one in seven Adults say that they are no longer sharing music now that individual file sharers are being prosecuted.

While this seems like a victory to some, I want to offer an alternate theory as to why many have given up the online music sharing addiction.

They've already got the music.

File sharing is game. In the first week, you accumulate 99 percent of the music you already own and want to listen to in mp3 format, easily accessible on your computer, IPod, or what-have-you. Beyond that, you probably pick up a few more artists that you have heard of and give them a listen.

Week two hits, and you're stuck. You have this NEED to horde more music, but you don't know what to get, so you're downloading whole genres and serving it back up, searching for long lost tunes, and downloading other sharer's whole collections.

This turns into a compulsion and before you know it you've filled your hard drive with gobs of music you'll never have the time to sort, let alone listen to.

Sure, RIAA ran some of these people off, but they didn't scare them away from the tunes, they gave them an excuse to step away from their compulsion.

Besides, they already had the music.

9:12 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Super Metroid Remix

I got a strange musical craving last Friday and never really expected to find what I was looking for: I wanted to hear the theme from Metroid, but done right.

OCRemix to the rescue! After about 5 minutes, I was eardrum-deep in an ambient techno, beat-driven remix of the Super Metroid soundtrack, collaboratively composed as both standalone tracks and as a whole, cohesive album.

I've listened to the album through a few times now, and I'll be damned if this isn't a pro-quality composition in an of itself besides being an homage to one of the best games of all time. When the new John Woo Metroid Movie comes out, they damn well better take come lessons from this crew.

Download the full album as .ogg (Like mp3, but more free. Don't worry: you can listen to them in Winamp.)

10:48 am | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Booted Up

Okay - My last pair of boots didn't go so well. Compared to the glowing accounts of most Doc Martens, my pair was flimsy, soft leathered, and slippery. I beat the hell out of them in about 6 months, and wore them for a total of 9.

I've just gotten a new pair, complete with extra stiff thick leather, steel toes, a thicker black sole, and more eyes. Lets see if I can ruin these.

8:22 am | permalink | /life/freak/garb | 0 writebacks |

Netting Kristen Orlando Bloom

Christin was posting today about how she could get her friend Kristen married to Orland Bloom. It occurred to me that she would need direct access to at least one celebrity, which she has!

So, in light of the fact that Christin has access to Whoopi, I did some creative "six degrees" work and crafted a plan which could actually work.

(Ripped from my comments on Christin's blog)

Remember that invitation to a Whoopi party you got on your cell phone twice before? Here is how it will work!

C goes to a Whoopi Goldberg Party, cleverly disguised as Christin (Hey, they did ask for Christin when they called didn't they? It wouldn't even be a lie!) At said party, she meets Demi Moore, who was in Ghost with Whoopi Goldberg

Hearing her funny "Christin but not Christin" tale, Demi Invites C to an LA party, where she meets Viggo Mortensen who was in GI Jane with Demi.

Viggo, who loves to play vaguely homo-erotic pranks on Orlando after 2 years of hanging out in New Zealand playing make-believe together agrees to stage a kidnapping on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which is shooting off the coast of Florida.

C, K, + Viggo sneak onto the set, kidnap Orlando, tie him up, put him in the trunk (for all of which he seems strangely willing, and keeps laughing) and the rest, as they say, is history.

What? It could work!

3:01 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Life's Minutia Through Sci-Fi Lenses

While out on my run tonight, I was struck by some incredible imagery, and this short story began to weave itself in my head. This is a work of non-fiction, but it's written in the style of my Sci-Fi prose.

Taking the daily details of 2004 and putting them to text would give any vision of the future from the seventies or eighties a serious run for its money. It's amazing what comes down the pike without any of us really seeing it coming.

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1:35 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

The First Real Hurdle

I haven't run in 10 days.

I ran for 4 weeks solid - perfectly, not missing a day. I felt great, I kept doing it, and everything was going perfectly. Week 5 hit, and I got sick. Really, down and out, nastily sick. Knowing you're not supposed to run like that, I decided to take some time off. That time turned into a week.

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

Crazy Bush Quote Poem

Dear god I hate forwards, but I appreciated this one enough to post here, and it's relevant to my earlier post about G.W.B. This poem is made up entirely of quotes from our President, completely verified by Snopes.com

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!

4:34 pm | permalink | /life/politics | 0 writebacks |

I've Figured out How Bush is Surviving all the Bad Press

Well, it seems G.W.'s poll numbers have held steady and are maybe even climbing, and everyone at this point is screaming "how in the hell?"

It seems pretty simple to me - if you already hated him, well, this just confirms it. If you were one of those people who was saying "He's not that dumb" back when he was still working on how to pronounce Afghanistan, this whole "Plotting the Iraq War" has you saying "You see? We told ya he knew how to plan!"

10:59 am | permalink | /life/politics | 0 writebacks |

Now I have to change my password

Well, I guess I have to change my password on my server at home. Crap.

Due to the ease of cracking passwords based on dictionary words, I have taken lately to finding easy-to-remember things from movies, novels, and the like and incorporating them into my passwords. Okay, so maybe I also got a kick out of using roughly the same password scheme as Dumbledore while maintaining decent security.

I kind of thought this was a good one, as it was just an obscure candy from the J.K.Rowling's world and "whizbee" certainly met the "not in dictionary" requirements. Now it's all over a nationally marketed candy.

Ahh well - I'll just have to dig through my memory and see if I can come up with another good one. I'm loathe to use some sort of generated password like K309s~lsOK# or some such nonsense. I'll never be able to remember it.

2:11 am | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

recommend to me...

1) a movie

2) a book or magazine or something else to read

3) a musical artist, song, or album

4) a LiveJournal user not on my friends list

5) a website

6) a comic

7) a game

8) a gadget or toy

9) a food, concoction, or cooked dish

10) a pretty or a shiny

Post your replies as a comment, then put this in your own journal.

Stolen from Christin

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12:14 am | permalink | /technology/web | 5 writebacks |

The Sunday Stew Is Back.

MTV is bringing back the Sunday Stew.

Wildboyz - Viva La Bam - Punk'd - Needless to say, we're excited.

11:02 pm | permalink | /technology/tv | 0 writebacks |

Note to Self:

There's no undelete in linux.

10:43 pm | permalink | /technology/linux | 1 writebacks |

Misused Word of the Day

I define 99% of the words I know through context.

You see, I have this horrible, swiss cheese memory for details, but abstract concepts, definitions, and the like tend to stick like glue. This came in very handy on the SATs - even though I couldn't write you out a proper definition of each vocab word, I could think of a sentence or situation where it could be used and infer the context well enough to make an educated guess.

Unfortunately, this can lead to trouble, as words don't often mean exactly what you expect them to given the context. I will, sometimes, hear a word used, assume the meaning from the context, and then store it away. The word gets pulled out later, for better or worse, using that same context-inferred definition.

The resulting malapropisms are occasionally hilarious (and, you know, mortally embarrassing.)

Well, one of my good friends called me out on this one the other day, and I have to admit, I was caught completely unaware.

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

Business Unusual

As the bomb scare finished and traffic began to flow back up 8th ave, there was a general feeling of "it never happened." The city went back to working as it does, traffic resumed its frantic, honking pace, and we all slowly returned to work.

Just then, an announcement came over the loudspeaker from the building super, in some sort of eastern european accent.

"This is building managment! All clear, business unusual..." (ruffling, mumbling heard in the background) "... Uh, umm. Normal business is resumed"

I've put up some more pictures from Rey, and cropped up some of Tate's gigantic 5 megapixel ones, including some of the one-man bomb-squad.

4:37 pm | permalink | /life/nyc | 0 writebacks |

Pictures uploading - bomb scare just a scare?

Well, it seems they're letting people through.

Funniest moment: they start letting people through, and Tate, hanging out my window taking these pictures, goes "oh boo! Boooooohhhh!"

1:54 pm | permalink | /life/nyc | 1 writebacks |

Live From the Bomb Scare

Well, my friend Josh is late for his interview here at Common Ground, and we know why! You can't get in or out of our building right now due to a bomb scare right across the street!

I was just out there getting pizza while they were closing the block. Weird.

Right now, 8th is closed from 34th to 36th, and there's a bag by a white van in the center of the 2 block police barricade. I'll post pictures and more news as it occurs.

1:36 pm | permalink | /life/nyc | 0 writebacks |

A Note to the Many Friends in Limbo.

Hey there - Welcome to your quarter-life crisis; my name is William, I'll be your guide.

"Who the hell is William?"

"I don't know, seems like a name he's just made up - just shut up and roll with it."

"Oh,... okey... But it's obviously Eric."

"OH Great. Ruin the surprise for everybody, will you just shut yer yap?!?"

"ak.... srry."

As I was saying, my name is William, and I will be your tour-guide through this personal hell known as the quarter-life crisis.

The lesser known, bitchy little sister of the mid-life crisis, the quarter-life crisis has become something of a phenomenon in the last decade as the baby boom-let (babies of the baby boomers) have finished school rife with world changing ideas, massive potential, and then found themselves doing..., well, just about fuck-all.

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10:00 am | permalink | /life | 1 writebacks |

The New Instant Messaging Battlefront

Anyone who was played a MMORPG while being online (which is, you know, the whole freaking point), knows that it's often a pain to IM while you're in the game. Either you have to relentlessly alt-tab, or you have to just live in the game-world or the real(online)-world.

The new Matrix MMORPG seems to be addressing this by embedding a mechanism for interfacing with AOL IM right in the game. This is brilliant, and a master move for AOL. The more games they can get to "License" their technology, the more users they will get to switch to their platform.

The sticking point is this - If Microsoft were to pull this with PC versions of their X-Box live titles, every anti-trust watchdog would be crying foul, saying that their monopoly was allowing them to leverage games to drive users to their Messenger service. AOL can get away with it because they're just giving the game makers a way to build it in, not doing it themselves.

Genius

1:26 am | permalink | /technology/games | 0 writebacks |

Windtunnel meme and 23 Skidoo

There's a bit of a meme going around discussing the windtunnel effect that skyscrapers create and the debris which flew off one of the buildings under construction in NYC this week. Brian W, posting in the comments on Gothamist brought up this little bit of history which I thought was facinating, seeing as the Prince George, one of Common Ground's buildings, is right near the Flatiron Building, mentioned below.

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12:37 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Anyone Else Notice The Doc Ock / Elton John Link?

I think Elton should have done the new movie. The big question is who stole who's look. Too bad there wasn't an internet back when Doc Ock first appeared for me to search. Anyway, decide for yourself.

3:31 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

It's going to be a good summer for movies

Wow. Just watched the trailer for Spiderman 2, and it's going to be freaking awesome.

The trailer is subject to some of the problems that the Hulk's trailer was - you can tell that they haven't put the final touches on the CG yet and it sometimes looks cartoonish. The good news is that they did the first Spiderman incredibly well, and they've still got till June 30th to tighten down the lighting, compositing, and other final details before the actual release.

Seems like they're picking up right where they left off rather than just going with a new "Doc Ock" plot and ignoring the tension between Harry Osborne and Peter. I'm already excited.

Thankfully, they're only making us wait a few months this time. I think I saw the first Spiderman 1 trailer, the one with the WTC in it, a full year before the film came out.

As an aside, I'd just like to note the fact that it's classy of sony to allow downloading of the trailer rather than making you watch it in a plugin. Media players on Linux are awesome, but Firefox versions of those plugins have yet work for me. If I can download and play, awesome.

3:17 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 1 writebacks |

So if you play "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" with yourself, which does that make you?

Well, in the past few days I've given myself a new haircut, manscaped the sasquatch-ness that was my body, and thown away a full third of my wardrobe. I've basically played both roles in the "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" show, and I don't really know what to make of that at the moment.

It's weird to throw out some of the old clothes - not really at this point because i'm going to miss them or even that there's any great sentimental connection. Tonight is more of a "holy crap... I wore that?" feeling.

On the bright side, there will be a very happy size 36 goth/freak kid at salvation army sometime next week. Some of these clothes I lived in for years, some of them I wore once or twice, but they're all in pretty passable condition, so I don't feel bad passing them off on the SA. I'm pretty comfortable that I'll never be pushing size 38 again, so it's time to let these go. I also feel pretty safe saying at this point that I don't know if I'll ever find myself in a black bowling shirt with leopard print faux fur stripe down the left panel again either.

Watch, 10 years from now, swing will be back *again* and that look will be hot. Too bad I don't have a gigantar closet.

Wait. I just pictured myself at 33 in said bowling shirt. The clothing purge tonight was a good thing.

8:11 am | permalink | /life | 3 writebacks |

Awesome Java Speedreader for Eastern Standard Tribe

I was checking my server logs, (as I sometimes obsessively do,) and noticed that my article about Remy and the growing impact of blogs on job-hunting had been picked up for its relevance to Eastern Standard Tribe. Of course, I surfed on over to see what all the hooplah was about, and noticed that my typo was intact in the excerpt! Ahh well, maybe people will really start referring to it as "the meatspace" now instead of just "meatspace" which is far more common. It had originally been "the real world" and I missed the "the" when going through for my final edit and adding the meatspace reference partially as a nod to C.D..

While there, I finally got to check out the Java Speedreader of EST. Holy crap if that thing doesn't kick some serious ass. This is the way I'd want to read just about every book if I could. I'm going to have to put together something like this for my daily use. I powered through his first chapter again in about 5 minutes using this thing. I've been a big fan of this concept ever since hearing about it as a speed-reading method, and had a feeling I'd be really comfortable with it as I spent several years of my adolescent life "reading" the TV by keeping closed captions on all the time. I figured it was more educational than just watching!

Anyway, we'll see how my little server handles being proxy-boingboinged. Thank god I didn't get linked from the main site, my poor box would have just fallen over!

6:27 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

The Trouble with Mohawks.

In retrospect, I think that the mohawk as a hairstyle in general works much better from the side and back than it does head on. I can't think of a better way to write this, so I'll let the image speak for itself.

In related news, I now am the proud owner of THE worst ID card ever. It's awesome. Depending on whether I can get to a scanner tomorrow, I may unleash its combination glory/horror on the world. We'll see...

1:48 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Me != Cool.

So, I was getting all excited about my 908 unique visitors last month and the fact that blogging in general, my job, my life, etc, were all going well.

By the time I stopped talking with my old friend Jason, I felt like I had some serious catching up to do! Holy crap has this kid been busy.

Just since I've talked to him last, he's done 3 things that are on my "must do before I die" checklist:

• Perform at Carnegie Hall
• Get Published in a Serious Tech Mag (online)
• Get Slashdotted for yet another article

He's always had an awesome edge by maintaining his status as a great MS beta tester, and it's certainly paying off now! Kudos to him!

12:48 am | permalink | /technology/web/blog | 0 writebacks |

The Clever Little Secret of Blogging

Something just occured to me while I was in the bathroom, much in the way that the flux capacitor came to Doc Brown, although I was spared the head injury and was allowed by the fates to substitue a massive bowel movement instead.

Bathroom humor aside, many times, blogs seem counter-intuitive to the the best interests of the blogger. Sure, they're fun to read for friends and family, and can sometimes build communities around them, but in general, employers frown upon the practice (especially if done during work hours), and they can be very personal yet are very much out in the open.

This is especially true when vying for employment. I can't think of any blogger I know that would willingly give out the address of their online journal to their potential boss. There's just too much real life in them - they aren't exactly putting your best foot forward. Imagine a conservative, critical hiring manager reading your recent hotheaded rant about the future of AI or going off on why you can't get any. It seems that anyone who HAS the jobs isn't going to be too keen about learning that type of information about a potential hire.

This is where the twist comes in.

See more ...

10:53 pm | permalink | /technology/web/blog | 4 writebacks |

The Geekout

I've just stumbled upon a little webcomic with a weird rhythm to it. It's not particularly 'funny' at the end of every strip, but it does have a certain something. I don't really know how to describe it - I guess it's kinda like a comic-blog. Anyway, take a look for yourself.

12:16 am | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Skipping a Week

Well, it's been a bit light on posts here at Glitchnyc.com and in my general corner of the blogosphere overall. I think quite a few of us have Icon at least partly to blame for this - who would have thought standing and sitting still in costumes could take so much out of you? I have a newfound respect for screen actors. There also seems to be a bit of "dead spring drag" which everyone is just sort of plodding through until it actually warms up and begins to act like pre-summer.

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12:03 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Funny New York Phrases

Gothamist linked to this page today when using the word metrotard to describe someone who can get their metrocard to work yet insists on trying, over and over, while you wait.

Big Mama'd is hillarious too: Big Mama'd (adjective): Being slowed on your exit from the subway by a large woman in front of you having trouble on the stairs.

Check out the rest of the terms here

12:26 am | permalink | /life/nyc | 0 writebacks |

Shot by Shot Comparison of Full HP3 Trailer

I decided to split this into a separate post because it's just so dang cool. The Leaky Cauldron has broken down the new trailer into 16 pages of frame-by-frame analysis, discussing the elements of the book each scene is drawn from. Fun stuff.

See a shot-by-shot comparison of trailer to book at the leaky cauldron.

1:32 am | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

Harry Potter's Time Has Come

I don't really recall the last time I was this excited about a movie before it came out. I know that I felt something like this while sitting in the theater watching X-Men, my heart beating fast, a feeling of excitement and apprehension in my chest.

As an almost rabid fan of the main X-Men characters and plot, I was very nervous what they would do to my beloved story. Would they cheez-ify it or water it down to make it more mass-audience palatable, or would they be true to the coming-of-age allegory of the X-Men? Would they make the discovery of each mutants powers something that you felt with them, or would it be stupid CG eyecandy? Most of all, would the characters be human, flawed and intricate and REAL?

If you've seen the first (and second, for that matter) X-Men, you know the answer to that question already. The movie was an incredible triumph, both for those of us that argued for the literate nature of the story, and for hollywood.

In contrast, the first Harry Potter movie was, I'll admit, dissapointing.

See more ...

12:58 am | permalink | /technology/film | 1 writebacks |

Petition to Save "Home Movies"

Sign the petition to save cartoon network's "Home Movies"

Sara and I have been recording "Home Movies" with MythTV since I finished the system around Christmas, and we both love the show. It's subtle and funny in a fantastically tongue-in-cheek way, and I'd put it up there, as many others have said, as one of the best shows on TV right now.

Anyway, online sentiment is increasingly becoming a potential sales barometer for corporate execs, and can sometimes make a difference, so this can't hurt.

1:12 am | permalink | /technology/tv | 1 writebacks |