Jan 20, 2006
GlitchNYC has moved
After a long and sordid love affair with blosxom, my poor little 133 mhz
server decided it didn't want to run perl cgi scripts with lots of
plugins and tons
of I/O for every single user that visited this site. Blosxom finally
slowed to a crawl, and I needed to look for options.
Being a blogger interested in open source, it didn't take me long to
hone in on wordpress, and I've been happily using it for a few months
over at http://www.glitchnyc.com.
In fact, I was so happy with it that I also used it to power the sites
behind the GlitchCast,
a music podcast featuring new and independent
artists, the GeekQuiz, a
weekly quiz show for geeky podcasters, and the
Transit Strike
Podcast, which covered the events following the Transit strike in
NYC in December 2005.
If you're looking for new content, please head over to
http://www.glitchnyc.com
If you'd like to get in touch with me, please use the contact page over
at http://www.glitchnyc.com/?page_id=132
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Oct 07, 2005
Disappearing Flash in Firefox? A quick Adblock fix remedies the problem!
As savvy web surfers begin to upgrade to Flash 8, they're in for a bit
of a rude awakening. If you're using Firefox and
Adblock (which you
should be!) and upgrade to Flash 8, suddenly flash movies disappear.
Instead of the expected movie, you get simply blank space.
What's happening is a conflict between Adblock and Flashplayer 8.
There's no update yet from either Macromedia or the Adblock
developers, but luckily, you don't have to uninstall either tool to fix
the problem.
All you have to do is disable "obj-tabs", those
little "Adblock" tabs that hang off the edge of flash movies. These tabs
give you easy access to block annoying flash movies, since right
clicking on a movie will activate Flash's own context menu, rather than
the Firefox menu where your Adblock tools normally are for images.
In lieu of the obj-tabs, you can click tools->Adblock->"List all
blockable elements" or hit ctrl-shift-a to bring up a list of everything
on the page that Adblock can filter out.
Turning off Adblock's obj-tabs is easy. Just click
Tools->Adblock->preferences->"Adblock Options" and then uncheck "show
obj-tabs." Refresh your page and voila! Flash is back.
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Oct 04, 2005
del.icio.us links
Selections from my del.icio.us
bookmarks
Usually found by
watching the feed of what's popular with other del.icio.us members, Oishii!
Patek style tenor
banjo
Good
site for an alternative tuning and style for the tenor banjo. This style
should be more familiar to guitarists wanting to switch back and forth
between instruments
GTD
Introduction - PigPog Creativity Wiki
GTD
- Getting Things Done - is a book by David Allen, giving a series of
principles for managing the day to day tasks and projects we all have
to do.
Directions
for making Dried Apple Shrunken heads for Halloween
Peach
Saves Mario's Ass - Kotaku
New
mario game staring Princess Peach for the nintendo DS
Mario
Unleashed - Google Video
Live Action Mario,
Luigi, and Princess Peach take on the marimba.
NYC2123
An excellent cc-by-nc-sa graphic novel,
formatted for the PSP but also great for reading on the web
Tobby
Pachi
Fun
little flash game were you launch a little dog off a springboard to
collect gems and rescue the girl. His ears flap in the wind as you
launch him towards spikes and over obstacles. Cute.
Fluff
Radio
The Fluff
Radio Review - A live music, comedy, and talk radio podcast
created by the same fine folks that brought you Fluff In
Brooklyn - http://www.fluffinbrooklyn.com
Writerisms
and other Sins
A Writer's Shortcut to Stronger Writing by
C.J. Cherryh
Werewolf - A
free, simple, party game
Werewolf is a simple game for a
large group of people (seven or more.) It requires no
equipment besides some bits of paper; you can play it just
sitting in a circle. I'd call it a party game, except that
it's a game of accusations, lying, bluffing, second
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Sep 29, 2005
The Image to ASCII Converter
As a user of BBSes back in the pre-internet days, I have a special
appreciation for ASCII art. Back then, image files were a download you
needed to wait hours for (uncompressed bitmaps being prevalent) and then
open in a viewer program, either in dos or windows 3.1 if you were
lucky.
Instead, images were cleverly crafted from letters, numbers and symbols,
squeezing some semblance of UI and page design out of the text only
format of most BBSes.
Now, most ASCII art is relegated to .nfo files provided by warez
distribution groups. Amazingly, the artform continues to advance - I've
seen some of the most impossibly intricate designs weaved around text in
those files, despite the crude nature of using other text as images.
A few days ago I added the Image
To ASCII HTML Converter to my
del.icio.us bookmarks
(which you can subscribe to a
feed of
if so inclined). Today I finally got a chance to run an image through it
that's well suited to the artform. Without further ado, I give you the
"ASCII snakey worm thing!"
......................................................
......................................................
......................................................
........................... ...............
....................... :C@@@@@@@@@@@O: ...........
.................... c8@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@C .........
.................. c@@@@@@@8o:..c8@@@@@@@@@O. .......
................. O@@@@@@O :8. C@:o@@@@@@@@@8. ......
................ .8@@@@@@8 c@O .@o:@@@@@@@@@@O .....
............... C@@@@@@@8 .@O .8.c@@@@@@@@@@@. .....
.............. :@@@@@@@@@O o: :@@@@@@@@@@@@: .....
.............. o@@@@@@@@@@@8o::o8@@@@@@@@@@@@@. .....
.............. O@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@C ......
.............. 8@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8O8@@@@@@@O ......
.............. O@@@@@O8@@@@@@@@@@o8@8@@@@@@o .......
.............. O@@@@: o@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8c .........
.............. C@@@@8C. ::cccoocc. ............
............. C@@@@@@@@8O: .................
............ c@@@@@@@@@@@8 ........................
........ .C@@@@@@@@@@@@@@o ........................
....... C@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@c ........................
...... O@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8 ........................
..... c@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@. .........................
..... O@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@O .........................
..... 8@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@c ..........................
.... :@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@: ...........................
..... :@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8. .................
..... .@@@@@@@@@@@@@c ...... ..............
..... .8@@@@@@@@@@c :O@@@@@@@@@@@@@Oc ............
..... O@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@O ...........
..... :@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8 ...........
...... o@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@. ..........
....... :@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@c ...........
......... :O@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8c ...........
............ .............
......................................................
......................................................
......................................................
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Aug 26, 2005
Delicious Links
Over the past few years, I've changed the focus of this blog to match my moods and interests. I've also grown my own sensibilities about what
"personal publishing" should look and feel like and what I aim to do here.
In doing that, I've dropped many of the "cool links" I used to feature. There's plenty of blogs that do that
sort of thing (boing boing and slashdot spring to mind), and I
didn't want to simply repost their stuff with some added comments.
That said, I still find a handful of cool sites a month, and my bookmarks were getting really out of hand (and out of sync) between my work
and home copies of Firefox.
http://del.icio.us came to the rescue, and provided me with a way to archive and access all my bookmarks in
one place. It even integrates
with firefox through a very
unobtrusive plugin, so all I have to do is right click on any webpage
to add it to my list of cool links. I also "tag" the links I put up there so it's easy to search for them later without remembering exactly
what they were called.
When I post a link, it gets added to both my "home" and then general tally of what people are looking at. When sites are getting noticed and
bookmarked by a lot of people, they move quickly up the ranks at del.icio.us. Watching that feed through Oishii! has been fun, and I've found
some amazing sites for CSS web design, acquiring software and media, and other fun stuff. Because the Oishii feed tracks sites that are being
bookmarked now (and not just the most popular overall), the signal to noise ratio is just slightly better than random. Which is just about
how I like it. These aren't the sites that everyone knows about yet, but damn some of them are neat.
Because del.icio.us provides RSS feeds of just about everything, it was easy for me to syndicate into my blog. It won't show up in the feed,
so I may occasionally cross post some of these links here in the main story section, but if you go to http://www.glitchnyc.com and look on
the right you'll see a new "del.icio.us" links section that features the 5 most recent sites I've bookmarked.
To give you a taste of what's in there, here's my latest 5.
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Aug 03, 2005
Google for Dorky Teen
Hahaha... I was just looking at my webstats and I got a bunch of hits
for the search terms Dorky
Teen (no quotes). Turns out I'm #2 on google
for that search. Hahaha, well, at least its true. I mean, the dorky
part... Can I even call myself post-teen anymore? I'm going to be 25 in
a month and a half. Wow.
3:59 pm | permalink |
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Jun 17, 2005
Fluff In Brooklyn's 50th Comic Fiesta!
Colleen has already hit 50 comics of
her hilarious
stuffed-animal-roommate-comedy-biopic
Fluff In
Brooklyn. Zany Delta Burke infused humor abounds in episodes 1-50, who knows what the
future holds! The 50th comic came complete with a fantastic party in Brooklyn that the characters themselves attended. Check out
the
comic
and the
pics.
Congrats Colleen! You've successfully posted 47 more web-comics than your average web-comic-poster, and 48 more than I ever
managed. Here's to another 50!... And then another party. Wink wink, nudge nudge, NUDGE POKE PUNCH TACKLE... Oops, uhh, sorry about
that. Umm, here, let me help you up. Oh. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'll just... I'll just leave now. You sure you don't need.. okay, yeah I'm
gone.
step step step step... creak... cha-thunk.
creak. "it was a great party, throw another!" cre-cha-thunk.
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May 09, 2005
Aaaaaand, We're Back.
Well, this little server certainly isn't immune to some downtime here
and there, and last week it was down for a few days. The beauty is that
google felt so bad about my server being down that they decided to
take
their's down in a show of solidarity. If that's not nice, I don't
know what is.
11:00 am | permalink |
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Apr 25, 2005
How Ajax (and lots and lots of amateurs) are Changing the Web
Adaptive Path published a piece back in February about the way that smart
web applications are changing the web by
doing away with the
click-reload-click-reload paradigm. You only need to look as far as
Google
Maps to see why
this is a great thing. If you're a web designer or just entranced by how cool not having to wait for Google Maps
to
reload is every time you move the map check the piece out. It's fascinating.
A few days ago, Adaptive Path's CEO (who boasts clients such as the UN and Intel) busted out with a very "1999"-ish
prediction: the web itself is about
to change.
The catch here is that Janice Fraser was here in 1999. In fact, she worked for Netscape back in 1996. She's
intensely familiar with the whole "bubble" thing and isn't about to be sucked in by one cool new technology that
promises to change everything.
Instead, she sees changing coming from the outskirts of the web, growing like a tide. She sees our army of amateur
encyclopedia writers at wikipedia, our wannabe news-writers blogging away, our
hobbyist geeks churning out open
source code. And
she's not alone.
Combine that groundswell of truly innovative development power (in the way that only hobbyists can innovate because
they've
got
nothing to
lose) with the coming shift from click-reload to true web based applications - and suddenly, her predictions of
massive change don't seem that crazy. Speaking from my own experience as both a serious web-surfer and a
writer/web-designer, my habits have changed significantly in the past few months. I get most of my "web" fix through
my email client, thunderbird's rss reader. I've switched
back to doing most of my design in a text editor using php and
CSS+XHTML. The web is changing and the way you surf may never be the same. The user has more and more control
over the content they consume every day. Some people see the tides of change as
scary and threatening.
I say, grab your board - surf's up.
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Mar 08, 2005
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.
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Feb 25, 2005
REAL Ultimate Power - Now in Book Form
FROM:Real
Ultimate Power.net
Hi,
this site is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This site
is awesome.
My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about ninjas. These guys
are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill
people.
If you don't already know what RealUltimatePower is, you've got to go to
http://www.realultimatepower.net
and check it out. It's part of web history at this point.
The Big news? THERE'S
NOW A BOOK, which is awesome, and by awesome I
mean totally sweet.
This link stolen from my cool new lunch buddy
Jessie. And by cool,
I mean totally sweet. Is the joke dead yet? Have I killed
it? I'm a joke killer.
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Feb 22, 2005
Twenty Questions
My parents
introduced me to a crazy website this past weekend.
20q.net
is a game server that asks you seemingly random questions in an attempt
to guess the object that you're thinking of.
Skeptical, I picked Pyrite (aka Fool's Gold) and gave it a shot.
The thing had me at 13 questions.
The technology behind this (presumably a hash
table of answers to questions representing each object) is really quite ingenious, and the game
learns as you play, updating the hash value for objects as you answer
questions others haven't answered before. It also moves down through a
"tree" of relevant questions as you play, so that it narrows in on your
chosen object.
It's pretty fun to try to stump the machine - so far I haven't been able
to!
Try it yourself. They've got a
handheld version as well
which is pretty
amazing considering the thinking power in this thing.
1:34 pm | permalink |
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Jan 31, 2005
The Wikinews Crossword
While working at Wikinews
editing
an
article tonight, I came across the
Wikinews
Crosswords. Apparently someone is putting together daily
crosswords for free as part of the Wikinews project released, as all
wikinews content is, under a public domain license. This is brilliant!
There's a bit of discussion
as to whether it's appropriate for wikinews
since the wikinews is not a print publication, but I agree with many
others there that crosswords are often topical and related to current
news and repeat crossword users will also be repeat readers.
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Jan 25, 2005
Ice Pellets
This
is my favorite.
Every time there's a forecast for Ice Pellets I
practically pee myself.
Why am I so excited about Ice Pellets? Simply because the description is
above and beyond the call. There's no need for it, but there it stands,
proudly describing the weather in NYC tomorrow on wunderground.
Sara: Ice pellets? Why don't they just say Ice Rockets.
Or Ice Daggers.
"Cloudy with a chance of Ice Daggers tomorrow." You know some
stiff corporate guys were like "Oh, no, you can't say Ice Rockets." I'd
be fighting for Ice Rockets if I worked there. The guy's like "Fine, ok,
can we at least put Ice Pellets? (muttered) and if I slip and put Ice
Bullets..."
Why don't they just say hail?
Eric: I don't know, but that's the beauty of it.
Tomorrow, Thirty-two
degrees and Ice Pellets. Awesome.
11:58 pm | permalink |
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Jan 10, 2005
Placemat Art
Well, I
was going to paste up some of the doodles that we all drew
at Colleen's b-day last friday, but she beat me to it!
- Tons of Placemat
Art. Whoever brought the sharpie was a genius.
- Real
photos from the party.
- There's some freaking gems in here,
let me
tell you. I may have a new contender for the "Worst Picture Ever" of
me.
Colleen is FurboaJerboa
on LiveJournal for anyone looking to add her
there or here's her
rss feed
for fellow rss-loving nerds.
3:20 pm | permalink |
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Furboa Jerboa
Okay,
I love finding zany things on the net and I love pimping friend's
stuff, and today I get to do both at the same time. Both projects below
are products of Colleen Af Venable's wonderfully demented mind.
FluffInBrooklyn.com is a
new webcomic with a cast of 3 stuffed animals and a microscope. It looks
like it's going to be quite funny, and it's only in the 4th episode.
Check out the
characters
page to get a glimpse of what's to come.
(What do you mean you don.t know what a
JERBOA is? Man...okay, click HERE
and if you want to see a whole slew of um click HERE)
STALKING
AND MURDERING OF A CHILDHOOD GIRAFFE is a series of 250+ photos of
Collen with various giraffes.
2:05 pm | permalink |
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Jan 09, 2005
Sorry Everybody
My
good friend Alan pointed me to
SorryEverybody.com
the other day. The basic concept is that everyone and anyone can send in
a photo apologizing to the rest of the world for reelecting Bush.
Some of the photos are very funny and Al
himself is in there!
2:34 am | permalink |
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Jan 02, 2005
Audio and Video of Wil Wheaton Reading Just a Geek
I'm sure he posted this ages ago and I'm just behind the times, but I figured that I'd blog it now since I
just saw it.
Wil Wheaton has linked to free downloads of movies
and audio of him reading from Just
a Geek and Dancing
Barefoot. I'm pulling
down the video right now, and it's flying in at 685 KB/sec. It seems that when RCN rolled out their new
higher bandwidth services (7mbps to the home!) their other tiers of service got a nice boost as well.
His readings are supposed to be very entertaining, so if you're a fan at all or just interested to hear
some funny stories from a guy who's had a very interesting life so far, give it a look.
10:55 pm | permalink |
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Dec 28, 2004
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 |
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Dec 21, 2004
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"
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