Perfect Timing

So my motherboard came back today and I put it back in and presto, all working great again.. So happy. As soon as I was done with the pc and had it running for like 10 minutes the mailman dropped off a package from amazon.. Civ 4 has arrived! I'll be installing it tomarrow sometime..

Sorry kids, we're going to protect you from sexual predators

How sad and ironic and pathetic is this article? Essentially the kids in a catholic high school are being ordered to remove their personal myspace accounts (which they use at home) or face suspension. The reason they state is that they are protecting the children from sexual predators.

Takes a lot of balls for them to say they are protecting kids while they have priests who molest children being shuffled around every day..

NASA does a bunch right

NASA is a pretty impressive organization. They are underfunded and underappreciated, undertaking a mission that most of America really can't care less about, and yet they still accomplish amazing feats. Don't start giving me shit about the space shuttle. Is was only designed to work for a limited amount of time and the government extended the program with little more money or mandate. Even though, the shuttle is a pretty amazing piece of engineering.

Anyway, I'd like to point your attention to the Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit. These little guys were slated to land on the planet, take a few photos and then die. Well guess what.. they are still up there working great and that's pretty amazing. These things were engineered really really well and that's a good thing to know. It's good to know that people actually engineer quality products somewhere on this planet (had a good working cellphone lately?).

So, bravo to NASA and the team behind the rovers. If I could allocate my tax dollars I would give it all to you. Hey! That's an interesing idea no? Being able to allocate a portion of your tax dollars to the government agency or program of your choice.. hmn..

Geocaching Rules!

I've read about this about a year ago and thought it cool. I read about it again last week and decided to check it out some more. I'm glad I did.

Geocaching is a hobby that is practiced all around the world. The actual definition isn't really nailed down and it tends to change on occation, but essentailly it works like this:

1) You get a pair of Latitude and Longitude coordinates from someone
2) You use a handheld GPS to find your way to those coodinates
3) You search around the spot to find a cache which generally contains a log and some small items people have left there.
4) You note your visit in the log
5) You leave an item of your own
6) You collect one of the items in the cache
7) repeat, leaving the item from (6) in the next cache you find

This has been made all the more easy with the wonderful homepage/website for the hobby. Once you log in, you can search for all the caches in your area (or the world). You can keep track of them on your own personalized page and you can add comments to the cache pages when you fin (or don't find) them.

Like I said, it is constantly changing and now the site keeps track of caches that aren't fully caches, some are just logs and some are locations that you need to find. In all, it's a ton of fun.

I know this becasue I went out today on my lunchbreak to find one that was supposivly 2 blocks from my house here in the city. I took my GPS and walked to the coordinates and was rewarded with... nothing. I coudn't find the cache.. This wasn't going to be that easy.. Sure enough after about 15-20 minutes I figured out two important things: 1) altitude is relevant so even though you are in the correct place, the cache could be above or below you, 2) GPS resolution is only about 50 feet so even if you think you are at the location, you may be a tiny bit off.

Finally I determined the location and was sure the cache was nearby. I looked all over and was about to give up and then I saw something interesting. I looked over and saw where the cache was.. clever.. I ran to it and looked inside and sure enough, there was the cache.. it was super tiny!

I opened it up and unrolled the log, there were names from all over the place (farthest I saw was New Zealand). How cool that others had been in this same spot, probably looking for this very item like I was! I put my name in the log, snapped a photo with my phone camera and headed home.. All told 30 minutes.

Since I live in Philadelphia, there are a ton of caches to locate, I will find them all. I also plan on creating a couple of them.. I've got some great ideas.

In either case, I emplore all of you to check out this sport/hobby and give it a try. I bet you will have a great time!

Saturday Night Lance

Just saw that he's hosting SNL this Saturday.. should be interesting..

Good man John Densmore!

How often have you heard a commercial on TV and realized it was using the music of some band that you highly respected? How big of a shock was it when the Stones sold out or The Cure (sold "pictures of you" to Hewlett Packard)? It's sickening at times. For some bands it would be ok but for serious artists (especially ones with money) it's inexcusable.

That is why I full applaud John Densmore. For those of you who don't know, Densmore is one of surviving Doors. There was Ray Manzarek (who I thought was the most amazing musician I'd ever seen), Robbie Krieger and of course Jim Morrison. In either case, Densmore is the only one of the 3 still alive that refuses to license the Doors music to Cadillac and others. Ugh.. could you imagine?

Read more in the LA Times: ("Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire" by Geoff Boucher, Oct. 5)

Happy Birthday Dizzy

Today is the birthday of the amazing, the incredible, the great Dizzy Gillespie. Find something by him and listen to it. This man is one of my 4 pillars of Jazz (Monk, Trane and Miles are the others).. He would have been 88.

Ricky wasn't going to do it.

Yesterday I got a call from a friend at like 5pm telling me to turn on the news. Rick Mariano was going to jump off of city hall. That was exciting news and pretty incredible. Of course I was totally into it.

Today after reading the news I'm convinced that the guy had no intention of suicide. Usually I'm skeptical of the news reports since politicians have such great spin doctors but in this case I think it was the local TV news weenies who just went crazy. They had no real news other than what they heard secondhand. They just made shit up.

This guy was despondent and decided to go to the observation tower to look out on the city he served. Maybe he was just saying goodbye to public service. Who knows. But this tower is closed in and if he were planning on jumping, there were so many other ways to do it.

Now they say they feared he had a gun. Come on. So what. If he were going to off himself with the gun, why not do it Bud Dwyer style? No way, don't buy it. The local TV geeks just blew the story and we all know it. Losers.

(I'm sorry to you out of towners who have no idea what I'm talking about there. Normally I would add links to reference names and events so you can play along, but I have to get started on work. Google should work for you.. )

Klicky Keyboard

When played with my first IBM PC way back when it had this awesome keyboard. It was big andh heavy and the best part was that the keys had this cool clicky feel to them. The thought of that klicky keyboard brings back great memories. I have to replace my current keyboard. This is somehting I use probably 10 hours a day and this one is getting all crappy all of a sudden. The keys are sticking and it's dirty and, well, it's just time to replace it.

So I want a klicky keyboard to replace it. It has to be USB so I can plug it into my KVM switch. And so the search begins. The wonderful internet will probably fail me in my search, but I will begin anyway. We'll see what happens...

Don't Rebuild New Orleans

New Orleans is almost completely below sea level. When I visited there a few years ago, I was amazed by this fact. I was also amazed that other than the Quarter and the surrounding area (Garden District, etc.) there wasn't much to New Orleans other than some old mansions and very low income neighborhoods. Now, as we know, most of those houses are gone or abandoned and the displaced people will not all be coming back.

I've waited a long while to post my thoughts on New Orleans. As you long time readers know, during the hurricane days I had a ton of posts. It was then that I came up with my original thought and it's been since then that I've refined my thought a bit (with some ideas from friends).

My thought is one that I'm sure has been mentioned already and that is to not rebuild most of New Orleans. I think that the city, as long as it is located where it is, would be asking for trouble if it was fully rebuilt. Another storm could and probably will occur in the future, a ton of money would be spent on a city that probably won't grow as fast as expected. Face facts, a lot of people won't be coming back.

Now, it's important to preserve certain parts of the city. I'm talking about the ones that have historical significance like the quarter. I'm talking about Tulane. Places that weren't damaged. Places that are above the water line. These places should be preserved and a supporting area should be built for them as well. New Orleans could be rebuilt purely as a tourist attraction.

I believe that all of the coastal towns outside of the city that were mostly destroyed should also be cleared off and all the residents should group together with the displaced New Orleans residents that want to come back and a new city should be built in their place. Near New Orleans but above the water line. Pool all the rebuilding money to bring in the best city planners and start from scratch.

Think of all the wonderful design ideas you could come up with if you had a blank sheet of paper to design a new city. Highways, roads and streets could be placed in ideal patterns to eliminate traffic and congestion. Commercial and Industrial zones could be ideally located. New sewers and pipes and fiber and electric could be run perfectly. Whatever.. The point is that if you had the best and the brightest minds in America design a city from the ground up, it would be an amazing place.

To build the city, you do a novel thing. Use sweat equity. All the out of work people who lost jobs and homes in New Orleans and the surrounding area could be put to work building their future home. Like new homeowners who bought their home cheap because it needed work, these people could be paid a simple wage to do labor building the city but also get a credit towards purchasing one of the homes they are building.

This is just a simple idea, but one that if more people worked on it, could be an amazing opportunity to do something simply spectacular. The key is that we agree that rebuilding New Orleans is a mistake and that we also agree that all the displaced residents want and need two things: work and a new home. I bet we just throw some money into it for a while and do a half-assed job of it like most things our government does and as usual, I think that would be pretty sad.

Wilma is the biggest baddest ever

So close dammit!!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9710472/

update

so the computer is still down and out.. so no photos to post.. which means 2 posts aren't coming out yet. I should take a moment to comment on the weather. Wow.. this is the best fall I've ever experienced. It's cool, but beautiful.. unbeatable! Ok.. I'll get back to you soon..

Bummer of a storm

Well, it happened last week and I forgot to let you all know about it.. Hurricane Vince did exist for a very short period before it was downgraded to a tropical storm. No damage, nothing interesting.. Damn.. my big chance at fame...

Etherbeat kicks major ass

Oh yea.. there's no censorship so far on this channel.. I've heard all kinds of nice curse words so far.. been nice to hear music as it was intended

Etherbeat kicks ass

Well, see, normally when I work I have my music coming from my non-work computer. Since I have all my CD's ripped onto a server I can listen to any and all of my music all the time on my pc. This rules. I've got like 500 CD's on tap. The problem is that on my work pc, I can't get to my local network so lately I've been with no music. That's why I was loving the XPN deal for a while. Now that they stopped playing the 885 I had to find something else. I don't know how I stumbled onto Etherbeat, but I did.

Etherbeat is a streaming radio station that plays a bunch of Jazz, lounge, world, reggae, and hip-hop. It's been 3 days now and I'm yet to hear the same ong twice and more importantly, I'm yet to hear more than 2 or 3 songs I know. Even more importantly, the music is accesable and not overbearing. Most importantly, its quality stuff.

So, in short I found a place that is playing cool new music that isn't stressing me out. It's been a real find. I highly reccomend it.. even if you think you won't like it, I bet you find that you do. Oh and it even plays on a mac so those of you goofy mac people can enjoy it as a non-i-tunes alternative...

limited edition Steadman print for Hunter S. Thompson

Well, I didn't post about this until now for a good reason. Not that I have a lot of readers, nor do I feel I wield a lot of influence in popular culture, but still I had to keep this under wraps. See, the Hunter S. Thompson foundation is/was selling commemorative prints done by Ralph Steadman. The site is here. The reason I didn't tell you is that they are in a limited edition of 150 and I didn't want it to sell out before I could get mine.

My girlfriend and I each chipped in half and we sent them a check in the mail. Sure enough, it wasn't a scam and 2 weeks later we recieved the print. It's quite impressive in real life. All the signatures at the bottom are quite cool as well.

If you are a collector and a HST fan, this is something you should grab before it's too late (we've got #89). Good luck..

P.S. Be prepared to frame the print immediatly since it comes shipped in a tube (packed very well, but curled up in a tube none the less)

the DMCA is worse than I had imagined

Apparently since XPN will be playing the top 25 albums in their entirety, the DMCA says they can't play anything on the webcast so my experience of the top 885 is pretty much over. How sad. The top 25 albums, the ones I would most likely buy if I could hear them are silent to me becasue I want to hear them on my computer instead of on a radio. Sad, Sad, Sad.. fuckers..

Puzzle Pirates

Download and check out this game Puzze Pirates. (of course it's spyware and virus free so have no fear)

They give you a free 30 day trial and there is a way to continue playing for free, but I think I may still subscribe to this online game. It's kind of an MMORPG but really not. To do anything you need to play these tetris like puzzles. It's got a cool pirate theme and it's quite addictive. I bet you'd like it as a little diversion..

My characters name is Tug if you join up and want to find me..

the DMCA is retarted

Do any of you know what this is? You should. well, it's actually too late. I know I was complaining about this a few years ago. Little good that did since the act passed. This is an act that was rammed through congress by the record industry to attempt to stop pirating of music. As usual, the stupid fucks have shot themselves in the foot.

One of the negative impacts of the act is that webcasts can only play a small number of tracks by a given artist in a 24 hour period. This is directly affecting my listening of the XPN 885 greatest albums since there are a number of times where artists on the list have multiple entries. This will further affect things when we get to the top 25 (Starting at noon today). Once they hit 25, they will be playing the albums in their entirety, so I will have the stream interrupted over and over again. This isn't happening on the radio (where I should add I could get a better quality recording than this 96k stream), just the net.

Now I'd like to argue that while listening to this webcast I've added 10 albums to my amazon wish list. Stuff I would never have heard before. Stuff I wanted to have purely becasue I had heard it here. I suspect I'm not alone in this. This is why radio (and web radio) are such amazing tools for the record industry. I ask you, by forcing XPN not to play some music, how does that help them sell records? I can't wait until these idiots go bankrupt.

For further reading, here is the post on the XPN site about it:

ONLINE LISTENERS - PLEASE NOTE: During
the playback there may be times when we must switch
from the countdown
to an alternate music stream
in order to comply with the Digital
Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). This act restricts the
number of songs we’re
permitted to webcast from any one artist over a specific
amount of time. When this happens you can stay on
top of the current countdown by visiting the 885
countdown page here. You can
find the full text of the Act at the U.S.
Copyright Office Web Site. Here
is a direct link to the PDF file of the DMCA Summary Document.

Cursing on the Radio

So, I'm listening to XPN and the 885 albums and something annoying happens. Right in the middle of Pearl Jam "Jeremy" from Ten (#34) I hear the following : "seemed a harmless little neahamragh". Like they do these days on the pussy afraid commercial radio stations they altered the "offending phrase/word" and rendered it inaudible (but I'm sure they thought it was also more musical instead of a beep sound). I say, leave the fucking music alone fuckheads! It's really odd on XPN and independant radio stations when you hear it for a few reasons. First is that songs older than 1990 are all played free and clear, I hear all kinds of curse words in the older songs. Second is that it's not illegal to use most words on the radio. I suppose playing them can cause listeners to complain, but how many complaints would you get from XPN listeners? I mean this is a public radio/liberal/adult audience. I bet the only complaints you would get would be from people like me crying that the art has been soiled and shouldn't even have been played at all. It's like going into a gallery and seeing a famous painting with a big red dot over any nudity.. I mean come on!