By anders pearson 08 Nov 2001
watched monsters, inc. again last night with some people from work. fun little movie. pretty much everyone i’ve talked to that’s seen it has: liked the movie, really liked the short birds sequence before the movie, and been disappointed with the star wars trailer.
By anders pearson 07 Nov 2001
upgraded my workstation to mandrake 8.1. fairly impressed with it so far. nothing exciting but it’s nice to have the newest versions of everything all installed. still haven’t gotten my wheel mouse working with it yet (it worked fine in 8.0) but that’s about the only problem i’ve really had with it yet.
<p>playing with <a href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/">ion</a> as a window manager. very interesting. i’ll probably write something up about my experiences with it later for thraxil.</p> By anders pearson 07 Nov 2001
my first diary entry on thraxil. still need to customize my diary template.
<p>got my bed from ikea finally (i only ordered it in august). so no more sleeping on the floor for me. yay.</p>
<p>no work today (columbia gives us election day off). spent the day putting my bed together (the instructions recommended two people but i showed <em>them</em>). spent the evening migrating data from the old thraxil database to the new format. not terribly pleasent. some interesting differences between the versions of postgres on my home machine and thraxil.dhs.org. i know i’ll be spending all my free time for the next few days fixing the thousands of bugs that will show up on thraxil and finishing the last features. sigh.</p> By anders pearson 07 Nov 2001
it’s not just a new design. in fact, the design is just temporary.
<p>it <em>is</em> a new backend. with lots of new features. still not completed but there should be enough to play with for now. on to the new features:</p>
<p><strong>user accounts</strong>: if you login you can change all kinds of things. eventually (once i add some more themes) you can change the theme of the site. login, go to your user page click ‘edit your settings’ and play with stuff. if you had an account before, it’ll be the same username/password you had. if you’ve posted a comment before, check the list of <a href="users.pl">users</a> and see if you’re on there. for the next few days at least your password is the same as your username. change it. any accounts that haven’t changed their password in the next week i’ll set to garbage and you’ll have to contact me if you want to re-activate that username. if you’re not listed there, feel free to create yourself a new account. you have to be logged in to post comments so make yourself an account if you want to participate.</p>
<p><strong>diaries</strong>: you’ve probably noticed mention of “diaries” around here too. i’ve added a little diary feature that you can use if you like (i added it mostly because i want a place to put things that are too mundane for thraxil but still trying to keep myself in the habit of writing on a daily basis). the “edit diary template directory” link on your user page is another cool related feature. it lets you edit the template files and even add stuff to your own directory so you can change the look and feel of your diary. i’ll post some documentation for the format of the template files later.</p>
<p><strong>image upload</strong>: replaced “sketches” with a more general purpose “images” section. so feel free to post other stuff there besides just drawings (no pr0n or copyrighted stuff that will get me in trouble though or i <em>will</em> take the toy away). and now you can upload images to thraxil. it will automagically resize and thumbnail them so you don’t have to worry about that anymore (only handles jpgs,gifs, and pngs for now). </p>
<p><strong>keywords</strong>: the categories for bookmarks have been changed to a keywords system for maximum flexibility. in addition, you can mark any other post with keywords too to make things more searchable.</p>
<p>lots of other little changes too that probably are obvious that i don’t need to explain them. threaded discussions on the comments, preview and edit capabilities on posts, handy little menu of recent comments and recent diary entries at the top, limited ability to fix unclosed tags.</p>
<p>still to come: search, archives, complete editting (for images and bookmarks too), better diary management, more themes, documentation, and (don’t worry) a reworked markov.</p> By anders pearson 31 Oct 2001
so i ended up going to see Alice Cooper tonight. i figure he’s getting old and might be dead soon so i should see him now.
<p>he might be getting old but he still knows how to put on a good show. loud music, guillotines, lots of fake blood and women with whips. what more could you ask for on halloween?</p>
<p>the show had an asian theme even. chinese masks, samurai swords, kung fu and ninjas. </p>
<p>Alice finished off the night by decapitating britney spears and posting her head on a spike in the middle of the stage.</p> By anders pearson 30 Oct 2001
i’ve been patiently awaiting the new godflesh album for a long time. their last album with new material, Us and Them, came out in 1999. almost immediately after its release, there was word that godflesh was recording a new album. a year and a half later it was supposed to be out but there were apparently problems with the godflesh moving to a different label. for the last year, the album has been coming out Real Soon Now and fans have had to keep checking on its status. well, it finally came out on the 23rd. being the rabid fan that i am, i had mine preordered. then this whole anthrax scare comes along and the day it arrives columbia suspends all mail service while they bring our facilities in line with new CDC safety recommendations. naturally, they do this before i’ve made it to the mail room to pick up my cd. so after waiting for a couple years, i’m forced to wait for a week with it just barely out of my grasp.
<p>anyway, yesterday, they started delivering mail again and i finally got my copy of <i>Hymns</i>. after work i go straight home, get myself a beer and crank my stereo up. godflesh is a subtle band and their albums tend to take repeated listenings to really get the feel of. i’ve got my work cut out for me.</p>
<p>many of godflesh’s fans were unhappy with the more experimental direction the band took on their last couple of albums, adding in more and more techno and hip-hop elements to the sound. in the liner notes for the “In All Languages” compilation that came out recently, the band even stated that they were unhappy with “Us and Them” and pledged to return to their earlier, starker, heavier sound. and they have.</p>
<p>for those who are unfamiliar with godflesh’s music: godflesh is quite simply the heaviest band ever. it is the apocalypse set to music. when he was but 13 years old, justin broadrick (godflesh’s guitarist and vocalist) formed the band Napalm Death and recorded the album “Scum” which remains the fastest, most extreme, harsh, violent record ever recorded. it single handedly launched the entire genre of “grindcore” music and raised the bar for fast, complex, precise riffing among heavy metal guitarists. after he left napalm death he formed godflesh which is napalm’s total opposite. godflesh has a slow and deceptively simple style. consisting of a guitar, a bass, a drum machine and occasional screams, godflesh hypnotizes the listener while slowly crushing them to death. godflesh has a way of making a single note ringing out for an eternity into an intense, beautiful experience. it really bears almost no relation at all to “heavy metal” despite justin’s teenage project.</p>
<p>i personally really liked the last couple godflesh albums. i thought godflesh was creating some of the most innovative music out there. i still think that. however, i have to admit that they’re still pretty damn good at building weapons out of simple mechanical rythms, rumbling, bowel-massaging bass, and overdriven guitars punctuated with piercing harmonics and tortured moans/screams.</p>
<p>every godflesh album is a unique experience but Hymns definately bears more of a resemblence to their older stuff (Slavestate, and Pure in particular) than to their more recent albums. if you liked those, you won’t be disappointed. Hymns does have a few surprises though. on two of the songs (Anthem, and the hidden track), there are actual <em>clean</em> guitars and <gasp> justin even <strong>sings</strong>! they’re still unmistakably godflesh songs though. Antihuman features a one of the coolest electronic loops i’ve ever heard.</p>
<p>i’ve still got to listen to it over and over again a bunch more times before i can say anything much more concrete than that about this album. overall though, i’m very happy with it. godflesh has not disappointed. it was well worth the wait that i had to endure. if you want more detail, go read <a href="http://www.godflesh.com/hymns/thoughts/">this review</a> by slateman. and go buy the CD. if nothing else, it will sandblast the wax out of your ears.</p> By anders pearson 30 Oct 2001
emacs’ spell-checker amuses me. it doesn’t know ‘internet’, but it does know ‘munged’.
By anders pearson 30 Oct 2001
yesterday, one of my coworkers killed a fly that was sitting the number pad on my keyboard. it pretty much exploded all over it. i never knew that flies had so much stuff in them. he promised that he’d clean the keyboard for me later since he made a mess of it.
<p>i come in this morning and go to log into my workstation but find that the keyboard is unplugged. so i climb under the desk and plug it in. when i look at it, sure enough, it’s nice and clean.</p>
<p>a good 20 minutes later i happen to glance down at my keyboard while i’m writing some email. something’s different. my homerow is now a-n-d-e-r-s.</p>
<p>i’m glad i can touch-type.</p> By anders pearson 24 Oct 2001
i’m not much for working out, but i’ve discovered that the most effective abdominal exercise is as simple as getting a nice cold that sends you into prolonged, uncontrollable coughing fits.
<p>damn. i’ve got a sixpack now.</p> By anders pearson 17 Oct 2001
i just ordered one of these Ergo Audrey internet appliances. they used to sell for about $500 but 3com stopped making them and they’re being liquidated for $89 now.
<p>a friend of mine got one and spurred me into ordering mine. it’s basically a little web-browser/email device with a 640×480 12-bit colour touch screen and a wireless keyboard. it’s designed to connect via a phone line to a <span class="caps">PPP</span> account but with the right <a href="http://shop.store.yahoo.com/compuvest/nc-3c19250.html">adaptor</a> you can use it on an ethernet network (ie, you can use it with your cable modem or dsl). either way, just plug it in and it works. it runs the <span class="caps">UNIX</span> derived <a href="http://www.qnx.com/products/os/rtos6.html"><span class="caps">QNX</span></a> real-time OS.</p>
<p>the real joy of the audrey though is that it is pretty simple to <a href="http://www.audreyhacking.com/">hack</a> and make it do all sorts of other cool things. you can get a terminal, run <span class="caps">VNC</span> on it, play mp3s off a network mounted samba drive, and basically make it do anything that the <span class="caps">QNX</span> OS can do. </p>
<p>based on the response in my office (pretty much everyone who saw it went out and ordered one) i think 3com, sony, or any other company can learn something from this: internet appliances <em>can</em> sell, but they have to be reasonably priced for what features they have. 3com gave up on the audrey because no one was willing to spend $500 on one. sony recently dumped their internet appliance too because it was similarly high priced. if they could market a device with functionality equivalent to the audrey for under $100 i think they would have no problem reaching the consumer market who want web and email access but don’t want the complexity of a PC.</p>