GlitchNYC.com

Who Wants to Drive the Yarn Bus?

I just got this email from my friend Josh. $15/hr to drive around and be a sales person, yarn/knitting guru, and media spokesperson. Anyone looking to escape their cubicle, Office Space style?

A very, very cool job opportunity exists with one of my clients. Thanks in part to my PR brilliance (big grin,) Flying Fingers Yarn Shop, in Irvington, NY (21 miles from Manhattan) is quickly becoming the largest yarn store not ONLY on the East Coast, but in the entire country.

About a year ago, I convinced them that they needed to create a super cool way for people from Manhattan to shop their wares. Six months later, the Yarn Bus was born. This is the famed Yarn Bus that has been covered in the NY Times, AP, ABC, The New Yorker, and countless other media around the globe. It's known in knitting circles, and is quickly becoming one of the coolest promotions I've ever come up with for any client.

Flying Fingers is looking for a driver for the bus - someone who likes to have fun, but is responsible, and won't try to pull an Otto from the Simpsons on the bus. There will also be some helping out in the store, as well. If you don't know how to knit, trust me, you will by the time you take your next job.

The pay is $15 per hour, which, by the way, is what school-bus drivers make - so we're competitive. Plus, you'll get all the free yarn and knitting needles and knitting classes you could ever want.

If you're interested, send me an interesting cover letter, telling me why you'd be the perfect Yarn Bus driver. Enclose your resume, as well, either as a word doc or a pdf. Oh, and one other thing - be comfortable being on TV and in the news - because you will be.

Peter Shankman
peter AT shankman D0T com

1:24 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Pink Five

I just stumbled across this funny Star Wars fan-film which follows the untold story of a hapless x-wing pilot during the attack on the first death star.

"Hey Red leader, Pink five here. Wow, this is soooo cool. They totally don't usually even let me fly, but today they said everyone was flying..."

Watch the movie and its sequel at AtomFilms

5:12 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

Aftershocks

I was in a rare mood this afternoon.

There was really no reason for me to be feeling so foul, and it wasn't like I'd built up to it gradually over the course of the day. Things had actually gone pretty well aside from a miscommunication here and there, and I was generally in a pretty good mood.

It just hit me.

I suddenly felt like being violent, or crying, or something in-between.

Those who have been close to me for a while know that this isn't the normal state of things. I am rarely if ever genuinely upset or angry about anything, especially to the point where emotions outweigh my rational thought. It's just not my style.

Nevertheless, I found myself in that state around 5:15 today, and I was quickly out the door and walking down 35th street feeling very much like the festering, brooding teenager I once was.

I knew this feeling, this tension in of a sob stuck in my chest and the comic-book-like imaginary flashes of destroying things around me with my bare hands playing through my mind. This was familiar. This was sleepdep.

I've never been a true insomniac, but sleep-deprivation is an old friend of mine that comes to visit every now and then. Sleepdep is slippery little menace that can sneak up on you without you even seeing it coming. If your body needs 8 hours a night, and you're consistently giving it 4, that's going to bite you in the ass pretty fast, but even messing with the littlest details of the way you sleep can be enough to stop you from getting the R.E.M. you need to stay sane.

Don't believe me? Try this simple experiment sometime (preferably when there's no one you like around, as you may offend, or, you know, kill them). Sleep in your clothes, on top of your covers for 1 week. That small change lets you technically sleep, but keeps you awake enough to deprive you of the actual delta level rest you need. Soon enough, you'll be acting like you've been up 2 days straight even though you got sleep a few hours ago. Your nerves become frayed, your emotions hit peaks and valleys way out of your normal range, and your perception of the world changes. Suddenly, a quiet room becomes a dissonant cacophony of whirring computer fans and high pitched TV whine. The subway becomes a nausea inducing roller coaster. People walking the street go from smiling obstacles to grimacing oafs who can't get out of your way.

What puzzled me as I stormed down 35th street was that I'd been sleeping more than enough, but this feeling was unmistakable. I thought back to the previous night, trying to isolate what was keeping me from truly sleeping, and the images came flooding in - thousands of them in a millisecond. My feet faltered and I stopped to breathe the warm, damp air.

I'd dreamed last night.

Not only had I dreamed, I'd had some seriously messed up and intense dreams. So much so that I remembered them, and remembered popping in and out of sleep because of their vividness, only to be sucked straight back into them despite my best efforts to move around and come awake enough to switch dreams.

As I pieced together that night's images, I realized that the night before had been even worse, and the nightmare from that night took my breath away as I recalled making Sophie's choice, yet tragically saving neither person in the dream, only to be told in the depths of my guilt and misery by a good friend that what I'd done, the mistake I'd made was unforgivable. I remembered wailing away in the dream and wondered if I'd made noise in my sleep then, as I sometimes do when being vocal in my dreams.

I looked up at the grey sky above 35th street and breathed again.

Okay.

This was understandable. I was just human. These were just little aftershocks, coming out in ways I hadn't yet let happen while awake. This was natural, allowable.

My feet carried me to the subway, and I crumpled into a seat at pulled out my Gameboy, determined to not have to sit for the next 45 minutes brooding and bored.

I sensed, more than saw, a small... presence... find its way over to me and sit at my left.

"Is that an SP? What'cha playing?" I heard the little voice say.

The boy, who was the size of a seven year old with a face that scarcely looked 4, leaned right into me, peering over my shoulder at my game.

"Is that hard?" he continued, not waiting for me to answer his earlier questions, having answered them himself already.

"Not really" I said, and smiled to him, returning to playing my game while he happily watched.

"I don't really like Pokemon, I played it at my friends house, but I didn't get very far, I like Mario though."

I smiled to myself, partly embarrassed that the entire train now knew that I was indeed enjoying a rousing game of Pokemon: Fire Red, and partly amused at how quickly and utterly this little kid had pulled me out of my funk.

"Jimmy, let him play his own game." his mother said from across the train somewhere.

I leaned back, smiling, and half-whispered conspiratorially to Jimmy "I like Mario too... but I beat it already"

"Ohhhh. I haven't beaten it yet, I've only gotten about halfway through cause I don't have my own Gameboy I just play it at my friends house, but you know what game I did beat, I beat turtles..."

I smiled again at Jimmy, as I stood to give his mother the seat, now that the crowd had thinned and his sister had joined him as well. Jimmy never missed a beat, transitioning to tell his mom all about how he'd beat turtles because it was soooo easy. I'm sure she was thrilled.

The good feeling stayed, and I could feel my shoulders relax and my back release and straighten as I stood there clicking my game and listening to Jimmy prattle on. I imagined that I sounded quite a bit like him about 20 years ago, going on about Mario and Turtles. There was some comfort in the cyclical way these great franchises had been recycled.

Jimmy and his family got off at Astoria Boulevard, and I smiled at the serendipity of the timing. I've ridden the subway thousands of times, and maybe 3 people have ever just started talking to me like that. Jimmy will never know it, but that little reminder of reality, his sharing his gleeful perspective; that was exactly what I needed today.

1:37 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

One Bad Apple

Original Sin Hard Cider is arguably the best cider there is to be had here in NYC, and I've been a big fan for a few years now. Their name is clever as well, alluding to Adam & Eve's fall from Eden for eating the forbidden fruit.

Original Sin is pushing their product with an excellent series of edgy artwork by Rich Black (JBSFW:Just barely safe for work) with a campaign of "Sin Here" posters which have been running as full pages ads in local newspapers.

Known predominantly (until now) for creating promo art for musicians and clubs, Rich Black is a master of turning out super sexy fetish-inspired vector art while keeping it borderline-tasteful enough to pass in a mainstream newspaper like yesterday's AMNewYork. If any Original Sin marketing wonks end up reading this, I'll admit right here that I've gone from having a passing interest in their product to being a devout fan. Good stuff.

• Check out the Original Sin posters.
  Rich's incorporation of the OS "devil's tail" motif is brilliant in each of these pin-up style pieces.
• Lots more art from RBlack

2:20 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Banning "Bad Bots" in Apache Cuts My Web Traffic In Half

Well, it's a good thing I'm not advertiser supported, or I'd be severely conflicted over this. I just cut my web traffic numbers in half.

2 days ago I banned a whole bunch of bots from accessing glitchnyc.com to stop "referrer spam." Referrer spam is a way for morally flexible sites and site-affiliate programs to boost their traffic and google ranking by getting their sites into your web statistics pages. Many ISPs generate these statistic pages for their users, and I personally use awstats to generate my own.

To get their links into your statistics page, slimy site owners write an automated script, or bot, to visit your site hundreds of times pretending to come from a site like www.iFreakingLovePoker.com. (Note, not a real site, I don't want to link any of these !*%^#! sites any more here.)

Finally fed up with having 2500 "fake" visitors to my site every month screwing with my actual statistics, I decided to block all visitors with a referer* value that had any questionable words like poker, loans, and hold-em. To be sure I caught all of the sites and many I haven't even seen yet, I define the block-list using regular expressions to match all domains with these words in them.

(*note: "referrer" is misspelled as referer in the apache config file, so I will use the grammatically incorrect but technically correct version in any technical references that follow)

Now, these bots are all happily getting 403 Forbidden errors and regular users can still get my site! I'll have to do some upkeep to add new offending words when they show up, but thats as simple as adding a few more lines to httpd.conf (or .htaccess if I was on a hosted site)

Here's the sections of httpd.conf that blocks referrer spam for those looking to duplicate what I've done here.

First, I define a variable called bad_referers and add the RegEx's to it. Here's a sample:

Next, I block access to my site for those offending bots: (this is repeated for directory /cgi-bin/ and /var/www/html/)

To ensure that it's working, I add my own site to the list of bad referers and test. Surfing straight to my site brings the page up as normal, but clicking a link from my site to itself (which carries a referer value of http://www.glitchnyc.com) gives me a 403 Forbidden. Perfect.

To finish up, I remove my own site from the block-list and add some more keywords to match the rest of the spammers. Watching my logs, I still see the referrer spam, but now they're all getting code 403.

If you're trying this yourself, remember you'll have to restart apache to make the settings take effect!

1:06 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

St. Patrick's Day Funniness

AM New York had some funny toasts from StPatricksDay.com yesterday, and as a guy who has no idea what to say when raising my glass or saying grace, I got a real chuckle out of them. Here's some of the best.

May you be in heaven for half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

May the wind at your back always be your own

Here's to our wives and sweethearts!! May they never meet!!

I drink to your health when I'm with you,
I drink to your health when I'm alone,
I drink to your health so often,
I'm starting to worry about my own

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

Free Schwag With Incredibles DVD

From the Washington Post:

With the swirl of marketing surrounding the DVD arrival of Pixar's "The Incredibles," not buying it almost seems like a heroic act. Target is giving away free sparkling water with purchase; Circuit City tosses a kid-size "Incredibles" basketball to anyone who snags the coveted release; and some supermarkets are even offering gratis groceries. What's next? Complimentary awesome superpowers for the first 50 customers?

Umm, yeth pleathe. (say it out loud fast, it's funny.)

So yeah, everyone who went to the store got theirs yesterday AND got fun stuff.

Well, at least Walmart.com refunded my shipping.

12:24 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

"My Preciousssss" or "Making the Dell 2005FPW work under Linux"

I've gotten the Dell 20.1" Widescreen Flatpanel home and holy god is it gorgeous. I basically scored myself an Apple cinema display in black for 1/3 the price.

There were some headaches along the way and I figure that I'll log my work here for any googlers looking to get it running on Linux. For the rest of you, dear readers, I'll resume my normal ranting tomorrow (when the Incredibles finally gets here. What's the point of a preordering when it doesn't get there till the day after the release?)

---

Well, I'm staring at 1680x1050 pixels of linuxy goodness, so I can assure you that the 2005FPW does indeed work. The caveat is that since it uses a new (read non-standard) resolution, most videocards don't have the "modeline" settings for the native resolution built into their linux drivers yet. I have read about problems with the Intel i810 and other i8xx chipsets, and personally had a problem with the Via CLE266.

Although you can set the modeline in xorg.conf, it's worth noting that no amount of settings I could throw at the via chipset (which is the integrated videocard on my mini-itx board) would make it work. Some chipsets simply cannot handle this resolution or will not accept non-standard modeline without some crazy tweaking.

In the end, I simply threw a spare ATI rage 128 in a PCI slot, added the custom modelines, and voila, lots and lots of pixels. It seems that the ATI driver is quite tolerant of custom modeline settings. Read on for the xorg.conf lines you need to add to get this working.

Finally, if you're one of the unlucky few to get monitors with dead pixels or backlight "bleeding", don't despair. These anomalies are a normal part of the manufacturing process and Dell is quickly replacing defective monitors. Just call them if you have an issue, and be sure to keep your shipping packaging, as some people have reported pixels dying during or after the first few days of use.

If you've got a display with strange color problems and "blotches" and are ready to send the monitor back, try gently taking a paper towel and dragging the LCD "gel" that makes up the screen into the thin spots. You may find that you can salvage the monitor yourself and save the hassle!

1:45 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Rethinking Coffee Lawsuits

I've always had a negative opinion of the lady who sued McD for burning herself with their hot coffee.

After reading this to-the-point and well thought out post on Slashdot (yes, they exist,) I may have to change my views...

Re:Caveat (Score:4, Informative) by cat_jesus (525334) on Monday March 14, @04:36PM (#11936934)
The other problem with the McDonald's case is the coffee was hot enough to cause third degree burns. It is illegal to sell food in a restaurant that is inedible or dangerous. The lady in question knew she did a dumb thing but she suffered third degree burns on her inner thighs which required skin grafts. She could not afford to pay her medical bills(she was very old and on a fixed income) and asked McDonald's to pay. She was not seeking any compensation past her own medical bills. When the jury found out that McDonald's knew their coffee was too hot, knew people were getting injured and figured the number of people getting third degree burns was acceptable, they stuck it to McDonald's.

If anything, this was a case that demonstrated why we need to be able to sue the shit out of a company when it deliberately harms people.

The devil is in the details.

8:36 pm | permalink | /life/politics | 0 writebacks |

Sneak Peek at Incredibles DVD Extras

Pixar are no slouches when it comes to packing their DVD's with extras and from the early reviews, The Incredibles isn't going to be an exception to that rule.

Check out Yahoo's sneak peek at some of the included extras.

.	"DVD Extra: Storyboard To Life"  -- Director Brad Bird and Director of Photography Andrew Jimenez explain the importance of storyboards in the making of a movie.
.	"DVD Extra: Edna"  -- Director Brad Bird examines the transformation that the character Edna experienced in the drawing room.
.	"DVD Extra: Building Humans"  -- Character Supervisor Bill Wise, Producer John Walker, and Technical Director Rick Sayne discuss the difficult task of creating human characters.
.	"DVD Extra: Boundin'"  -- Academy Award nominated short film from Pixar about a dancing lamb.
.	"DVD Extra: Incredi-Blunders" -- Bad hair and several other animated character mishaps.
.	"DVD Extra: The Making Of The Incredibles"  -- Director Brad Bird recalls his first day on the job.
.	"DVD Extra: E-Volution"  -- Character Designers Teddy Newton and Tony Fucile discuss Director Brad Bird's interpretation of the character Edna.

10:21 am | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

Dorking out, Incredibles Style

I'm so ridiculously excited about getting to see The Incredibles again, I'm going to feature at least one bit of Incredibles info a day until I get my hands on the DVD (and then probably gush some more once I get it.)

With that, I give you my review, recently posted to IMDB

---

"The Incredibles" continues Pixar's amazing tradition of infusing every story they bring to life with an energy and vitality that 99% of movies, animated or not, lack today.

The storyline of The Incredibles is enjoyable in and of itself, but the real beauty is in the little moments of reality that are woven throughout. As an example, there is one moment when "Mrs. Incredible" is getting ready to pull off a particularly amazing feat. Instead of having her simply performing the stunt, she takes a moment to psych herself up, going "okay okay okay!" before she begins. These little reminders of their humanity are sprinkled throughout and make the characters extremely easy to relate to.

There are a lot of directions that this story and movie could have gone and it's certainly not formulaic in the traditional Pixar or Disney sense. There's moments of moral "grey" for the characters and the true heart of this movie revolves around the vitality of both the main characters as they enter middle age, and also the viability of their marriage as they "sleep" through their thirties and into their 40s.

Finally, the mini-story of the kid's acceptance and discovery of their powers (itself and allegory for coming of age) adds a real hook for the younger audience, who may not catch the nuances of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible's relationship. One of the notable strokes of brilliance of this movie is that the multi-layered story gives everyone in the audience a character to personally connect with.

I don't need to own many movies. This one, I MUST buy.

4:46 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

The Incredibles is Out on DVD March 15th!

Okay, I can't believe I didn't get back to see this movie in the theaters again. I've been dying to see The Incredibles a second time since the credits rolled at our first viewing.

I'm not a total geek about many things, but at this point I'm a drooling pixar fanboy. Every movie that make is infused with fun and life, owing much to the amazing environment they're created in. Sara, Jenn, and I watched Finding Nemo something like 13 times while we were visiting their dad in Virginia last year.

I'm definitely going to be watching this one over and over on the new widescreen display.

4:36 pm | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |

The Monitor I've Been Waiting For.

This is the monitor and price point I've been waiting for 3 years.

Bought.

Use the appropriate coupon code to get an AMAZING flat panel deal

Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor with Height Adjustable Stand - $487 After Coupon code JL6MK$330H9ZT4 (Exp 3/12 5:59AM CST or 2000 1999 more uses)

Stolen from Cheap Stingy Bastard where there's great deals on smaller monitors too.

4:53 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Fenton's Naked Mom

So, we were watching Home Movies last night, specifically the episode where Brendon walks in on Fenton's mom in the bathroom, camera running and all.

At the end of the episode, Coach McGuirk puts the video on and says "let's see what we have here." As the credits roll, you can hear a phone call where he's placing an order for fentonsnakedmom.com.

Needless to say, someone has registered the domain and linked to various sites and people involved with Home Movies, including Brendon Small himself.

Turns out Brendon is going to be speaking at NYU on March 22nd and it's open to the public. Anyone want to go?

11:35 pm | permalink | /technology/tv | 0 writebacks |

Audioscrobbler - Tracking your Tunes

Audioscrobbler is a combination website and plugin for your favorite music application which keeps track of what you've been listening to.

To answer the obvious "so what" question, once the site has a decent idea of what you've been listening to, it's then able to recommend other groups you may like based on what others who like the same music are listening to.

It also provides a nifty RSS or text feed of the songs you've listened to most recently linked to info about the music on Audioscrobbler, which you can include on your blog (check out the lower right of Glitchnyc.com). The realtime data will also allow them (soon) to keep charts that will put billboard to shame with its accuracy and speed.

The plugins are all free and open source, so you can download them without fear of becoming spyware infected or sending tons of personal data over the wire, and the data they collect is Creative Commons by-nc-sa, so you're free to redistribute it as long as you follow the guidelines of that license.

It's fun to look at the personal charts of what you've been listening to and see just how bad you are with certain artists (can you tell I've been on a Rilo Kiley kick all week?) Now I'll just have to remember to turn the plug-in off before going on my occasional "guilty pleasure" Avril binges.

10:47 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Gran Turismo 4 is Out

Well, GT4 is out (not be confused with the GTA series,) and I'm practically drooling.

GT3 was the first really amazing game for the PS2, taking racing simulation to a new level. Rye and I spent soooo many hours earning licenses, learning how to find the line and brake efficiently, and just generally beating the crap out of that game.

The only problem was that there weren't that many tracks, so after a while, it was more and more of the same thing. News of GT4 started making the rumor mill almost 3 years ago, and I've been excited since.

Now, after delays galore, it's finally on North American shelves. This time there's a TON of cars and even more tracks. Some of the stuff they threw in here is just crazy!

Looks like Rye and I will have to line up a weekend to go be kids and stay up all night playing this one again.

2:00 pm | permalink | /technology/games | 0 writebacks |

Cool And Eclectic Furniture and Fashions

A few months back, Sara went down to Virginia to see her dad and they went to this fantastic furniture and fashion store called "Cool and Eclectic."

Turns out that they've got a website, and aside from having a crappy flash+popup frontpage, some of the stuff they have on there is awesome.

Jump right to their catalog and avoid the popup.

12:00 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Remembering Superscript for the Commodore 64

My brother was down for a visit this weekend and we were reminiscing (and bitching) a bit about the "good old days" of watching Rad and working/playing on the Commodore 64 (moon patrol anyone? Summer games?)

As soon as the C64 came up, we immediately flashed back to writing papers on SuperScript, which was heaven compared to typing on a typewriter, and hell compared to WYSIWYG word processors today.

Looking back, SuperScript actually reminds me a lot of Nano (which I'm using to write this article), except for the fact that SS was trying to be a page-layout program as well as a text editor. Getting margins right, working with all the ctrl-key combos and remembering how to do stuff was sometimes nearly impossible.

Unfortunately, there's barely any good sites devoted to c64 applications (as opposed to games) online, but if you were one of us lucky kids to have "The Worlds Most Popular Personal Computer," check out Lemon64 for some serious c64 gaming nostalgia.

1:53 pm | permalink | /technology/nostalgia | 0 writebacks |

Cause' There's Thunder in Your Heart!

Okay - I don't think I've ever been as excited to own a single piece of clothing in my life as I am to get my hands on this tee. 1986's "Rad" was not, on the surface, fantastic movie, but my brother and I watched it something like 50 times over the course of 2 summers in the early 90's, stretched out on the living room floor.

We had it on a tape with Whitefang and 1 other movie, and somehow never minded watching them over and over. The music became the soundtrack to my life, and Preshrunk brings news of a recreation of the very tee that they all make and wear in the film so that the main character can afford to race in the final BMX competition.

The very first time I went out to a club in NYC, they played "Send Me An Angel" the hit from this very movie, and I went nuts. I've since made them play it every time I've gone out since (which I've since figured out isn't hard to do at Goth clubs, as it's on the standard playlist).

FROM: Preshrunk
So break out your Haro, load Real Life's "Send Me An Angel" onto your mp3 player and rock Cru's shirt. Maybe you'll luck out and find yourself a Lori Loughlin look alike before she goes and gets her meathooks into an Uncle Jessie. One can only hope...

$15.95 | PayPal | URL

8:47 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |