The new episode of 0sil8 is almost nearing the point where I'm thinking about possibly getting close to finishing it. And then I'll probably put 0sil8 on hold for a couple months at least. There are a few things that I want to get done without worrying about feeling guilty for not updating. So yeah.
Today is "gang warfare day" on kottke.org. Go post something on this gangbangers' message board. It's easy and fun. And don't forget to visit the Mafia Crips homepage as well.
Some malcontent broke into my car last night, smashed my rear window, and made off with my piece-of-shit radio.
I love nostalgia...tomorrow sucks and last week will always be the "good old days". With that in mind, here are some screenshots of a bunch of old GUIs. A friend of mine, when he left his last job, wiped the drive clean on his machine and installed Windows 2.0 on it...just for kicks. It hauled on that Pentium.
Speaking of the olden days, before I put up 0sil8, I ran a site called "Some Web Space". One of the features on this site was a page with a bunch of alternate lyrics to Alanis Morrisette's Ironic (done by myself and two friends). Enjoy.
It's too damn hot today.
KALIBER10000 is sponsoring a contest to design a logo for a porn portal.
Saw the Blair Witch Project on Sunday. All the damn hype ruined it for me; I was expecting the scariest damn thing I'd ever seen...instead, it was just sorta mindtrippy. I wanted to kill that girl...ahhhh!
Started a new job yesterday as a Web Designer with a local Web developer. I'm anxious to get going on some projects.
My new chair rules.
It looks like Alex Massie is giving up the Web. Or something. I guess you can still find her here.
I really enjoy the PBS program Antiques Roadshow. For those not familiar with the show, it features experts appraising antique items that ordinary people bring in. During each appraisal, the owner and the audience learn a little bit about the item and the history surrounding it. Then comes the payoff: the expert tells the shocked owner how much their item might bring at auction. It's like a history lesson with prizes.
It seems like every group, religion, cult, fortune teller, soothsayer, and psychic has their own idea about when the world is going to end. What we need is a Web site that keeps track of these various apocalypses...with email notification. An "apocalypse of the day" of sorts:
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 12:30:44 -0500
To: [email protected]
From: kiss your ass goodbye
Subject: Today is a good day to die!
Today is July 23, 1999, and according to the Zoroastrians, the world is scheduled to end today at approx. 2:51 pm EST. If this turns out to be yet another false apocalypse (185 false apocalypses in a row...and counting!), your next chance to witness the end of the world will be on Aug 11, 1999. Have a nice day.
The Team at kissyourassgoodbye.org
I saw South Park last night. I spent 30 minutes laughing and an hour trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
A fan site: The Futurama Outlet. Episode guides and all sorts of other stuff. A worthy companion to The Simpsons Archive.
Saving RealAudio/Video files: several people recommended X-FileGet. Thanks!
I've grown weary of the whole iMac aesthetic. It was great once...they should have left it at that. What's next, glowing, neon-green routers from Cisco?
In case you were wondering how Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is doing against Titanic at the box office, here's a graph showing their overall box office takes by week (more info). Looks like Titanic is going to beat Star Wars by a good $150 million, if not more.
Of course, with all due respect to Titanic, the comparison is apples and oranges. Titanic was playing in the springtime with hardly any competition. People (especially the "mall crowd") went to see it week after week because there was nothing else out there to see. Star Wars, after the first couple of weekends, had to contend with Austin Powers, Big Daddy, South Park, Notting Hill, Tarzan (which took the huge kids audience away from SW), Wild Wild West, and the General's Daughter, all of which, save South Park are, or are on their way to being, $100 million movies. Titanic's competition? Tomorrow Never Dies...that's it.
I got a CDR yesterday. $99 on clearance. Timely bargains are great.
Does anyone know how to save RealAudio/Video streams off of the Web? Attempting to save the file just gets you the metafile that points to the actual RA/V file, and if you try and point to the actual file, it won't let you d/l that. Any ideas?
Fatboy Slim kicked ass last night. He spun for about 2 hours or so and played a lot of great music. The highlight of the evening for me was when he threw on Daft Punk's Around the World....I think I went nuts. Another great moment was his seemless mix of Rockafeller Skank with the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, which he then transitioned into the Beastie Boys' Body Movin'. He ended the set with my favorite song of his, Right Here, Right Now, followed by Praise You.
I'm very sore right now. And I lost about five pounds through perspiration last night.
MUST _READ. If you don't read anything else on the Web today, read this. This lady from Wisconsin is against Russians, Jews, goons, lasers, large oil companies, and just about everything else. She loves her WebTV, though. Lucky for her that the sputniks haven't taken that away from her...they can do that, you know. Pesky Russians. (via CamWorld)
I feel bad for taking all of Cam's links today, but this one was just too good to pass up as well. Steps in Overcoming Masturbation, a public service announcement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
"In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken."
Don't they have anything better to do? Isn't the second coming right around the corner or something? No pun intended.
Fatboy Slim tonight.
CitySearch has taken over Sidewalk.com from Microsoft. I think I'm the only person in the world who actually used Sidewalk...I hope this change doesn't kill all the good things on which I've come to depend whilst visiting the site.
Gack. Been working at the computer all day. Tired.
Well, after viewing the results of my latest poll and reviewing my own browsing habits, I've decided to take the target="blank" attribute out of all my links from kottke.org. This means that when you click on a link here, it will open up in the same window, not in a new window as before. However, if you still want to open links up in a new window (as I almost always do), you can do the following:
IE4+ for PC: shift-click on the link or right-click/Open Link in New Window
NS3+ for PC: right-click/Open in New Window
IE4+ for Mac: Ctrl-click on the link or hold-click/Open Link in New Window
NS3+ for Mac: Ctrl-click on the link or hold-click/New Window with this Link
iCab for Mac: Ctrl-click on the link
NS3+ for UNIX: Middle-click on the link or right-click/New Window...
And if anyone uses a browser that's not on the list (Opera, etc.) and can supply the new window how-to info, please do.
I'm glad the post-Star Wars movie drought is finally over. I hadn't seen a movie in weeks (save Summer of Sam, which was disappointing) that I've been truly interested in seeing. This weekend, a bunch of movies were out that I wanted to see on one level or another. I ended up seeing three of them:
While I didn't go opening night due to a slight scheduling irregularity (you know who you are), I saw Eyes Wide Shut on Saturday. As excited as I was to see this film, I was surprised when I wasn't disappointed. The cinematography and sound, as with all of Kubrick's films, were excellent. The story was good too, and despite the movie's length (2h.48m), it kept me occupied the entire time.
American Pie. Unless you're 18 or under, you should probably wait for the video. It's cheaper and you can use the rewind button to great effect in a couple of the scenes.
Run Lola Run. The best movie of the weekend. It's a different type of movie than most people are used to seeing. It throws a lot of information at you in a lot of different ways and at different speeds, much like, dare I say, the Internet. Even the subtitles, which were bothersome to read when I wanted to focus on the action, contributed to the media barrage. The music, of a techno variety, really drove the movie nicely.
The other movie I wanted to see this weekend (but didn't), Blair Witch Project, was sold out the entire weekend, doing quite well at the box office, despite opening in only 27 theatres. The buzz for this film among the indie hipster crowd, of which I am apparently a member, is deafening. Walk-up tickets were available for Friday's showings at the Uptown in Mpls., but by Sunday, all the shows were sold out by 5pm, most probably sooner. I predict that this is going to be one of those films that ends up at number one on a lot of people's all-time favorite movie lists, much like Pulp Fiction a few years ago.
Saw a story on the evening news about the first woman-commanded Space Shuttle mission. While I realize that it's good to bring attention to such stories, it saddens me that they are necessary at all.
Simply Porn got some play on ZDTV's Silicon Spin today....in a roundabout sort of way. If you want, you can even watch the entire show via RealVideo....or fast forward to 23:45 for the good stuff.
And if you're wondering what I'd look like as a woman, wonder no more. Thanks to an enthusiastic 0sil8 fan with too much time on his hands for this one. (Here's the original).
Eyes Wide Shut opens on Friday. I think I'm more excited about this than I was about the new Star Wars movie. At the very least, it'll be neat to see a new Stanley Kubrick film on the big screen, something I've never experienced.
I think I've pointed to the tale of why Harvey Keitel left the production of Eyes Wide Shut before, but it bears mention again because of its timeliness. Normally, I wouldn't believe this type of story, but in this case, I know the teller, and I do think it's true.
I have one basic rule when giving out my information online: can I trust this person or company with my information? Usually, this translates to "are they going to take my CC# and buy bootleg Tommy Jeans with it or not?" Usually, large companies can be trusted with such information...most of the time. So, can I use Microsoft's Passport service and trust that they aren't going to track where I'm spending my Web time and money? Probably not. Why? Two major reasons: questionable track record and that sort of information would be *extremely* valuable to them.
The Bill Gates Fan Club page contains Chairman Gates' Social Security number. 539-60-5125.
You know, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about XML. Then I read Jorn's First-cut Manifesto over at Robot Wisdom. Does anyone else think XML is not such a good idea?
Young girls can play soccer, but can't have orgasms? Can you say double standard? Good, I knew you could.
After futzing around with this font that I'm making, I have a newfound respect for people who make type. Also, if you have Fontographer for the Macintosh and want to help me out, email me...I might need some assistance converting my font when I'm done with it.
Edward Tufte on public speaking. If you are at all interested in information and design, and you haven't read any of Tufte's books (1,2,3), beat thyself with the nearest truncheon.
Summer of Sam. Spike, you had me, then you lost me, and then you had me again....but it was too little, too late. Take about 45 minutes out of this movie and you might have a good flick. And another thing....was the talking dog bit supposed to be the funniest part of the whole movie? I just about peed my pants I was laughing so hard...what on earth possessed you to stick that in there?
Ok, this is getting really weird. The results of my latest poll show that the "new window" people, after blowing an early lead (about 60% after ~30 total votes) and falling way behind (at about 30% after 160 total votes), have stormed back, closing the gap between themselves and the "no new window" folks. Are these seemingly wild swings caused by voter cheating, different audiences voting at different times (holiday vs. non-holiday, weekday vs. weekend), or is it just statistically insignificant noise? I'd take the time to analyze it, but arsdigita (as far as I know) doesn't keep track of individual votes. Forgive me for prattling on about this poll, but the math/stats lover in me just can't let it go.
Someone achieved a perfect game of Pac-Man (3,333,360 points) over the holiday weekend. Here's what he did:
"To get a perfect game on Pac-Man, the player has to eat every dot, every energizer, every blue man and every fruit up to and including board 256 — where the game ends with a split screen. This must be accomplished on the first man, too."
And I thought I was hot stuff back in middle school when I played Super Mario Bros. for four days just to flip the score over 10,000,000.
The local PBS station has started airing episodes of Doctor Who again. I couldn't be happier. As a kid, I would stay up late on Friday and Saturday nights to watch the adventures of the Doctor and his companions in his Tardis. My favorite Doctor? The 4th, of course, with the 3rd close behind. As for a favorite episode....they were all pretty good. Well, except for the last couple of seasons, when the show got a little too 80s.
Happy Independence Day. If you're into that sort of thing. Me? I just like the fireworks.
I love this greatly. Someone signed up Metababy for an "intimate and swinger personals" site called Adult Friend Finder. And people are responding to this 28 yo Asian who drinks a lot and is looking for "good hot safe sex". Fun fun!
Some weird results on my latest poll (view the results). For a while, the "new window" boosters were winning, but over the last couple of days, the "no new window" crowd has stormed back to take a commanding lead. What's the deal? Either someone is voting more than they should be or perhaps the poll is being listed on some other site I don't know about. Anyone know what's going on?
The French are kinda funny...both "ha-ha" funny and "strange" funny. Rather than accept the British Prime Meridian, the French are going on their own with the French Prime Meridian. Now, I'm all for challenging standards, but it helps to have a better reason than, "Hey, look at us! We're cool too!"
I got my copy of Rushmore on DVD today. Whee! Please, if you like films and you didn't catch this one in the theatre, do yourself a favor and see this movie. Rent it, buy it, whatever, just see it. It's funny, interesting, and smart in ways other movies aren't.
I know a lot of people find it funny, but I just can't laugh at Dilbert. Dilbert depresses me because big companies are really like that. What depresses me even more is all the managers out there laughing at it probably don't understand that they're the butt of the joke...which is, of course, the problem.
