Clearly. The best blog.

Independence Day

2008-06-27T08:14:00.005-05:00

While the FISA bill has passed the House, Feingold et al have at least succeeded in postponing a vote until after the Independence Day recess in the senate. This is the bill that would grant immunity to telecom companies who aided the government in violating your fifth amendment rights, by allowing them to eavesdrop on anyone without a warrant. Fitting that the senate will have the whole ID holiday to think about this, no?

And here's something else they can think about as well. While I don't agree completely with the Supreme Court's recent gun control ruling, I do enjoy this tidbit:

It says that the right to bear arms is partly "premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad)."

Happy Independence day.

Remember the Titanic!!!

2008-05-30T19:51:00.005-05:00

People in the movie industry do not seem to realize that people without penises see movies too. Not all blockbusters have to involve guns, killing, the hero (which is always a man, definitionally, if you didn't know(unless it's a sexy woman)) getting the girl, aliens, etc. Hence the title.

Now I'm not comparing Sex and the City to Titanic in any meaningful way, really. Just that they both appeal to the non-penis-possesing demographic, if different subsets of that demographic. I'm sure there's a better word for people like that... Women? Is that the technical term? Or is it girls? I can't remember what those broads like to be called these days.

Anyhow, on to the point. I was talking to a female friend of mine, who was complaining that she had just gotten back from going to see Sex and the City. Alas, it was sold out, so she did not get to see it. Looking online at various ticket sites, I find that most showings are sold out through like 10 PM, if there are any left (maybe they limit the number of tickets they sell online though). Yet, Indiana Jones has probably 1/3 to 1/2 more show times, and it came out over a week ago. Now it should not take a genius to figure out that TONS of people are going to want to see Sex and the City. If you're a Sex and the City fan, which in my experience, 100% of women are (I've come across some interesting womanist criticisms of the show, but even women of color still like it, despite its eurocentrism), you're probably going to want to see this movie. And you want to see it TODAY. It's like the Episode III for Sex and the City fans. Except it's not generally expected to be mediocre at best. And not only nerds like it. We're talking like all women. Because it was essentially the first show ever to simply be made just for them, where you have most other shows made explicitly for men, and the rest made for men just by default, due to the biases in our society.

And I've seen plenty of the show. And I like it well enough. I'm not a woman, and it wasn't made to appeal to me, so I don't go nuts over it. But it is good. And it was pretty obvious that this movie was going to be HUGE. Admittedly, I do have the benefit of hindsight, which theater managers and execs do not. But it seems pretty obvious that at least some of the 2 show times per hour of Indy at my nearest theater would have been more wisely devoted to SATC.

No more del.icio.us tags

2007-03-27T18:02:00.000-05:00

I'm getting rid of all my entries on del.icio.us for this blog, which means all my original links to those tags will be dead. I'm not going to edit all my posts to take out the links because I'm lazy.

Sorry Opera.

2007-03-26T22:41:00.000-05:00

In my last post I had said that I would end up using both firefox and opera. Opera when I mostly just need to do various searches, and firefox if I know where I'm going. This was because firefox loads pages faster, while opera has superior search functionality (or so I thought).

Alex pointed out to me a neat extension that comes close to equaling opera's awesomeness. It's not quite as good, but came awfully close. Then I realized that firefox has a feature almost exactly like the one opera offers. It was just hiding right under my nose. In opera, you can right click on any search field on any website, then click "add search". A dialog opens, you add a title for that search (such as 'google'), and a keyword (such as 'g'), and you're done. Now when you type "g (blah)" in your address bar, it automatically uses google to search for (blah). The same can be done not just for any search engine, but any search field on any webpage. In firefox, you can do basically the same thing. Right click on any search field, click on "add a keyword for this search", and a very similar dialog opens. Type in a name for the search, and a keyword, then choose where in your bookmarks to file it. That is the one down side. I like the way opera's works better. It's its own feature. In firefox, they have it tied to bookmarks for some reason. No biggie though, and still basically works the same. So now, you're ready to do the exact same thing as described for opera. Editing your various searches is a little easier in opera, I think. Go to preferences and click on the search tab. From there you can edit all the names and keywords for all your searches. In firefox, you have to go to your bookmarks menu, then right click on whichever search bookmark you want to edit, and click on "properties." I like opera in that respect a little better, but not enough to get me to stay with opera. So firefox it is for good now.

The winner is....

2007-03-25T21:38:00.000-05:00

Edit: This post is now basically obsolete. You can pretty much skip it.

If you read my last post, you know that I decided to try using Opera instead of Firefox for one week, or until I definitively made up my mind. I didn't quite need the full week. After using Opera for five days, you could say that I have definitively made up my mind. So what is my definitive decision on which browser I will use, you are probably wonder? If you know me well, you probably have noted that my use of the word "definitive" comes off as rather sarcastic. That's because my final, definitive decision is that I will continue using both browsers. Both of them have features that make browsing this crazy series of tubes much easier for me, and both of them lack some of said features that the other does have. Much of the time, I think I should be able to reasonably guess which browser will suit me better for a particular inter-series-of-tubes-web-nets browsing session. For the most part, my browsing sessions fall more of less into one of two categories. Either the type where a) I know pretty much exactly what page(s) I want to go to, or b) those where I don't. Before I explain which browser I will use for which type of browsing, and why, I'll explain a few more of my series of tube browsing habits for you.

The important thing to keep in mind is that I did not undertake this experiment in order to write reviews of opera and firefox for the everyman. I have particular preferences that are a bit quirky, so my goal was just to see which browser is better for me, not better in a more general sense of which one would win over more users if everyone had to give them both a fair one-week shot. The main thing is that when I use a browser, I hate having a bajillion toolbars showing. It's gotten to the point where really all I need to be able to do is see the menu bar (you know, file, edit, bookmarks, etc), the tab bar (I like tab browsing and I'm not amazing enough to go without it), and be able to search easily. To type in a location (notice I did not mention having the location field showing) I just hit ctrl+L (works in both FF and opera) to open the location dialog and enter my destination. It's a nifty trick. You should try it. That way, I have as much viewing space as I can get.

So I decided that when I don't really know where I'm going, I will use Opera. My first big problem when I switched what that you can't move the search box into the menu bar in opera, as you can in firefox, which results in having to have a whole extra toolbar if you want to be able to use the search box. That would have been a dealbreaker for me. But I quickly came across something that is sooooooooo much better. I almost pissed my pants at how awesome it is. In opera, you can use any search field you find on any website right from your location bar. It comes with google, yahoo, ask.com, and several other enabled, but you can easily add others, and may I stress easily. It works by assigning a short key sequence to each search. If you want to search google, instead of typing a website, you just type in "g [your search terms]. You can change the letters assigned to each search to any of your choosing in the options dialog. To add a new search, you simply right click on the search field on the page you find it on and click "add search", then assign whatever letter or letters you want to it. It is absolutely amazing. In firefox, I had to hit ctrl+k to highlight the search box, then ctrl+up or down arrows to highlight the search engine I wanted. That makes it very impractical to regularly use anything but the two at the very top or bottom of the list. Opera also has a few nice features worth mentioning. You can customize most keyboard shortcuts, though not all of them, a few of which I found annoying. If you try not to use the mouse much when browsing like me, that's pretty useful. Also, it's much easier to copy your location in opera as compared to firefox if you are picky like me and don't like to have your location field shown because it's a waste of space. I don't need to copy my location enough for this to be terribly important though.

As for firefox, its main advantage is that it is indeed faster. In cases where I knew exactly where I was going, I found that opera slowed me down a bit because it took longer for pages to load. It's not terrible, but sometimes it did annoy me. I also find firefox's options for tabs to be more flexible. When I have multiple pages open in various tabs, I find it much easier to use firefox. My computer isn't particularly old, and can handle the extra memory that firefox requires, so that is not really an issue with me.

Those of you who care about browsers as much as I do for some odd reason are probably aware of the great debate of whether firefox's plugin capability or opera's natively high flexibility, but inability to add plugins is better. I think it just varies from person to person depending on exactly what you need. Opera's base installation offers great functionality, and because they are controlling things from top-down, you know things will just work, and work well. With firefox, there are literally endless ways to customize your browser. It's just a matter of whether somebody has made a plugin for what you need (or if you can write them yourself). The drawback is that plugins are more bottom-up, and there is the possibility that one might interfere with another, or that if you add too many, they'll eat up tons of memory. In the end I might have to side with firefox on that one, because like I said, the possibilities are endless. It's just too bad I can't write plugins myself to do everything exactly how I want (like immitate opera's awesome search functionality. Hopefully someone will come up with that soon).

One week with Opera

2007-03-20T14:05:00.000-05:00

In the past I've preached a lot about trying different programs for different functions, or at least being aware that there are choices out there. Well I've decided that it's time to put my money where my mouth is. I switched from using IE to Firefox about a couple years ago, because back then IE really sucked hardcore. At the time, Opera wasn't free yet, so Firefox was the main other contender. I switched. I liked it. I got way too used to it. Then Opera started giving away their desktop browsers for free in hopes of drawing more people to pay for their mobile phone ones. Naturally I downloaded it to check it out. I definitely liked it, but I was too used to firefox. I had all my settings just how I wanted them. I had a bunch of neato plugins, some of which added functionality that opera couldn't match. There were certain things I didn't like about firefox, though. Primarily, it is a memory hog, especially with each additional plugin you have. Also, there are some things I just can't quite customize just exactly how I want them, and sometimes those things are quite bothersome. Also, in the intervening time, I've changed some of my browsing habbits, such that I can easily do without some of my precious plugins anymore.

So finally I've decided to give Opera a real try. I will be using it for one week, as much as possible. I will post again after the week is up, or whenever I decide that I've given Opera a fair shot and it blew it, whichever comes first, to let y'all know how I think it stacks up. I may post some updates before then as well, if I feel like it.

If you're using firefox, and have an old slow computer with not enough memory, I encourage you to partake in this experiment with me. IE actually got a lot better with 7.0, so it's worth checking out too (I tried it for a bit and decided to stick with FF). For now, my initial reaction is positive. I took a little time to learn all the keyboard shortcuts that I'm fond of using, which didn't take nearly as much effort as I've made it out to take in the past. It is a bit slower at loading pages, which is the common complaint about it, but we'll see if that gets to me. I'll let you know in a week or sooner how it's going.

Spring Break Travel Tips

2007-03-09T13:22:00.000-06:00

I'm on spring break now, and I know many of you are or will be soon as well. So in case you're going to be flying anywhere exotic and exciting, like San Francisco (like myself), Cancun*, or your parents house, here's the rundown on things you can and can't bring on an airplane. To see for yourself, visit the TSA's website.

First, you're probably wondering about this liquids thing. As you probably are aware, you can't just bring any liquid on an airplane anymore. Any liquids or gels you bring from your home, with a few exceptions, must be in bottles no larger than three ounces, and all those bottles must be inside a quart sized plastic zipper bag. However, you can bring prescription or over the counter medications in larger quantities, but they must be declared at the check-in counter. So make sure you accurately state how many bottles of KY jelly you are bringing to Cancun.

Remember, you can't bring knives in your carry on bag, or on your person. Please do not forget to leave your sushi knife in your checked luggage. However, you are now allowed to bring some personal items like nail clippers and files, safety razors, and the like. Also, you may bring s c r ewdrivers, wrenches, and other tools under 7 inches. Also, you wine aficionados will be glad to know that you can bring your corkscrew. Of course you'll have to leave all your wine in your checked luggage.

Of course it goes without saying that you may not bring gel shoe inserts. The only imaginable reason you might want to do that is to blow up the plane like Richard Reid. However ladies, don't worry, you are allowed to wear your gel bras or bring them in your carry-on, so that you will be able to attract all the finest frat boys at the bars.

In case you were wondering, explosives and flammables are not allowed at all. Also, anything that shoots some sort of projectile, including firearms, bb guns, and bows and arrows are not allowed in your carry on. However, you may bring aeresol cosmetic products in bottles smaller than three ounces in your quart sized plastic zipper bag.

Finally, you may not bring any martial-arts or personal defense type weapons. However, you may bring a walking cane. Because obviously you are much more likely to use the liquid gel shoe inserts you use for your back problems as a weapon than your cane.

I hope after reading this you fully understand the TSA's regulations on items you can and can't bring on planes. If you are found to be in violation of the law and declared an enemy combatant though, don't worry, I hear Guantanamo Bay Cuba is quite nice this time of year. It's no Cancun, but at least the government will be footing the bill, and you get to stay as long as ~~you~~ the government wants.

*It's that US enclave city inside Mexico. They have lots of cool stuff, like Mexicans, Moctezuma's revenge, booze, blonde blue-eyed white hotties, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and STDs.

Free (as in beer) Music

2007-03-02T14:52:00.000-06:00

Apparently, a few weeks ago, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne announced that Ozzfest will have free admission this summer. Now I'm not a huge metalhead or anything, but I also don't completely write off the genre as crap. There are definitely some great metal bands out there. So as long as at least one of said good bands is scheduled to play (and Ozzfest is scheduled to come to Minneapolis, which as of yet is not the case), I'll definitely try to go. If the tickets are free, then there's not really any reason not to, now is there?

The Osbournes said that the reason they chose to make tickets free is because they've actually been paying attention to the complaints of festival-goers that tickets are getting too expensive. I can see their plan backfiring though. Since tickets will be free, they're counting corporate sponsors and high merchandise and food sales to make up the cost. So my fear is that the food will be even more ridiculously over-priced than at your average summer music festival. And you can probably count on a ban on any outside food or drink except water. We'll have to see if people are willing to spend enough money on merch and food to support the cost of putting on the festival.

More Free Musics

2007-02-09T13:11:00.000-06:00

I've got some more free musics for y'all. They're from a band called Mombojó, which apparently is becoming pretty popular in Brasil. They won some award or something. I don't know. Their music is really good, especially their second album, Homem-Espuma (Foam Man). You can download both albums in their entirety on the downloads page from their official website here. Of course the website is in Portuguese, but the page consists of not much more than the download links, so you should be able to navigate your way to the good stuff. Also, notice that there is a link to the song "Nem Parece", which is creative commons licensed, so you can not only download it, but share it with anyone you want, and even remix it. If you don't want to download the whole albums, you can download each song individually here. I recommend "O mais vendido", "Homem-Espuma", and "Swinga", from Homem-Espuma, and "Nem Parece" from Nadadenovo. But really, I'd recommend you download the entire albums, especially Homem-Espuma cause they're the kind that are better in their entirety than any one of their songs.

Post-post____ism Post (part II)

2007-01-27T12:40:00.000-06:00

Part deux. In my last post I said that adhering strictly to one theoretical framework in critical analysis leads investigations and their results to be out of touch with reality, and thus irrelevant. Now I'll talk more about why pomo suxorz, because it discourages independent thought.

One of the things I dislike most about postmodernism is that it enables "scholars" to hide behind a bunch of meaningless jargon, and creates a sort of groupthink atmosphere where everyone just boosts eachother's meaningless crap up. See exhibit A. What you've just given up on reading after the first paragraph of useless jargon is a randomly generated postmodern style essay. Of course a reputable scholar probably couldn't get away with trying to pass one of those off as actual work. But that leads me to my next example. In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submited a pseudoscientific(wikipedia) article made up mostly of postmodernist nonsense (and I mean nonsense literally here, not in the sense that all pomo is nonsense) to the journal Social Text. He was testing whether he could get an article published simply by making it sound intellectual, making it appear to agree with the predispositions of the editors (though in reality it's mostly BS), and throwing in a few citations of the editors just to be safe. It turns out he could. And he certainly wasn't the first person to realize that postmodernism is largely nonsensical groupthink. In a somewhat similar situation related here, two computer scientists fed up with all the jargon and BS at an early conference about "cyberspace" decided to lighten up the atmosphere by beginning their presentation with a little lighthearted ribbing at said BS. In their case, they didn't intend to keep up the whole farce until someone cried foul, but considering that they were spitting purely meaningless crap at a bunch of "scholars," you'd think those scholars should have gotten the joke immediately. They didn't. Not until the presenters themselves could no longer keep a straight face.

So if people have been aware for so long of the potential of such strict adherence to some pumped up theory to cause such an atmosphere of groupthink, why do some social science and humanities scholars continue to adhere to some favorite theory, rather than, you know, thinking for themselves? I don't have a definite answer. It's really pretty puzzling. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it makes their lives a little easier. In some cases, I've had instructors and professors who I know will give me a better grade if my work reflects their pet theories exactly. Why risk submitting work that they might not agree with and getting a lower grade? And why put in the extra work to think for myself? I think it's basically the same when these narrow minded scholars get their work published. It's much easier to just find a circle that follows the same ideas as you, and proceed pumping eachother up and helping eachother to get work published, even when it's complete bullshit. And it won't be hard for some younger unestablished prof to get their foot in the door. Just throw together a paper that boosts the ego of a few editors by citing their work and agreeing with their BS theories. Why risk putting your own ideas out there? Other than that from day one we've been tought that the whole purpose of education is not just to fill us with facts, but to get us to think critically for ourselves.

Edit: I've decided to wrap things up here, cause I think I've covered most of the important parts. So here's my conclusion:

In conclusion, pomo obviously sucks. Hard. And like I said before, not just pomo, but anytime someone latches on to some framework and just won't let go. I clouds their judgement. It creates groupthink. It kills a bunch of trees and fills them with meaningless crap that will do nothing to help shape the world into a better place. Also, here's one amusing slightly non-sequitur observation of mine: post-structuralism (practically synonymous with post-modernism) is a freakin oxymoron. Structuralism was based largely on the idea that words are defined by everything they aren't. So here we have post-structuralism that is not even giving itself a real name, just stating that its not structuralism. Annoying! And the same goes for all the other post-isms. Why can't we at least have theories that claim to be something, rather than just saying, "I'm the result of moving past ____." So if you read these last two posts, thanks. Especially for reading this conclusion cause it's all just ranting. So to all my readers (so that's basically Alex, Michael, and Meghan (and Michael probably didn't bother to read all this stuff)) let me know what you think. Or not. Peace out.

Post-post____ism Post (part I)

2007-01-22T16:13:00.000-06:00

Post-post____ism: The Wave of the Future (part I)

Less than half-way into this post, I decided that I didn't want to write anymore, which is also a good sign that nobody would want to read this whole damn thing once it's done, so I'm going to publish it in parts. When I get around to it, I'll write the next part, then most likely one more part, possibly two.

Some people may tell you that postmodernism and the plethora of other post-____isms are dead. Oh, would that they were correct. It may be in decline, but it is still perfectly alive. Even worse, it could easily die but the world would be no better off, because the mindset among scholars of the humanities, and some of the social-sciences, would continue to insist that all analytical works ever in their field must be written within a particular theoretical/philosophical framework. I attack post-modernism as the main culprit because in my experience it is the single framework that has the most adherents, making it the one that is the most difficult to bear. If scholars would stop hiding behind their pet philosophical framework, not only would it make my life much so more bearable, but their works would simply be of higher quality, because they would be more relevant to the world, more unique as products of independent thought, and more accessible without sacrificing quality.

By writing an article, essay, book, or what have you from the unerring perspective of one pre-existing framework scholars are necessarily limiting their viewpoints, making them irrelevant to real world application. Rather than starting by taking a look at the real world and seeing what conclusions they can draw from their observations, they start by putting on their po-mo goggles (or whatever their preferred framework is) looking at the world, then formulating their fresh, unbiased conclusions (so long as they fit within their framework). Now I know post-modernism rejects the ability to perceive actual objective reality, but that doesn't mean they can just give up even trying to be objective and unbiased*. To continue with my point, though, as we all know (except the hardcore post-modernists**), starting with forgone conclusions gives bad results in investigation. It leaves us out of touch with reality, which is reflected in our results. Investigations that do not are not grounded in reality, and results that do not reflect reality are irrelevant. Consequently, those results will not help make the world any better for anyone except profs and grad students worried about their scholarly reputation. Now I'll agree with the post-modernists that nobody has complete access to total objective reality, but I think that objectivity in both perspective and results is a matter of degrees. If you try harder to be objective, chances are your results will be more objective and relevant. Otherwise there'd be no point to even trying, thus ... destruction of the world by global thermonuclear war.

*How to go about trying to approach some semblance of objectivity is not something I'm going to discuss, because this essay would end up being even longer than it already will, and I know already that almost everyone will take a look at this and decide it's way too long.
**I know, I'm basically creating a straw-man here, as well as an ad-hominem by villainizing the post-modernists, but I'm writing this for fun, so I don't care if my arguments are totally air-tight, especially since I don't care to take the time and space to make them so.

When I get around to it, hopefully within 3 days, I'll write about how moving past post-modernism (and other ridiculous preconceived philosophical/theoretical frameworks), post-post____ism if you will (hence the name of this post), will help foster independent thought.

FREE (as in beer, speech) Musics

2007-01-19T13:43:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are interested in free things, or the music of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil (I know there are so many of you out there), this post should be of interest to you.

I'll skip to the part about the free music first. You can get it right here. Yeah, I know, most of you don't speaka dje Portuguese. It's not that hard to find your way to the good stuff though. You'll see a bunch of album covers, directly below which is a link to the site for that album. Click on it to get to the info and free downloads. But first, you may notice that below the link it says "com as musicas:" and then a list in bold. That is a list of all the tracks you can actually download for free from that album. So go there, look around, download some stuff, and leave a comment to let me know how it is, cause I haven't gotten around to listening to all of it yet. I do recommend Eta Carinae's album Mirando a Estrela because 1) it's really good and 2) you can download the whole album.

Now I'm nearly 100% sure that all the downloads you'll find there are legit. I've not generally known this site to blatantly violate copyrights. Also, the scene in Pernambuco is generally pretty into the Creative Commons. The group Re:Combo even got the CC to name one of the versions of their liscence after them. And Brazil's Minister of Culture is a pretty strong backer of the Creative Commons. So I'm guessing most of the songs available there are under some form of the CC liscence, and if not, the site has probably gotten some form of permission to give away their stuff. And speaking of Brazil's Minister of Culture and popular singer/songwriter, Gilberto Gil, and the Creative Commons, you can get one of his songs along with various others from the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, and others here from Wired Magazine's CC liscenced wired CD.

Now onto some further info for those of you who speake dje portuguese and are interested in the music of Brazil. If you care to keep up to date on mangue beat or any other music from the city of Recife or the state of Pernambuco, RecifeRock! is definitely the place to go. You'll find information on a vast number of bands and artists under Guia do Rock. Snoop around and you'll definitely find plenty more free MP3s and videos (of varying quality). On the front page you'll find the latest news, featured bands, and other stuff you might expect to find on a front page. If you should decide you need to purchase a CD from one of the many bands you'll find there, and can't find it on amazon or some such (in most cases you won't be able to) I recommend gemm.com. In fact I recommend gemm.com any time you need to buy a cd and can't find it anywhere else.

The New Deal with Tags

2007-01-19T13:23:00.000-06:00

So since the NEW amazing (OMG) blogger ~~beta~~ supports tags, I'm gonna be using that feature now instead of the old del.icio.us greasemonkey system I was using before. On all my old posts, I went and edited them to put the blogger tags in, but I left the old delicious tags (except on the first one I edited before I decided to keep the old tags too).

I'm still here

2007-01-17T22:42:00.000-06:00

Alrighty, so I'm giving the NEW blogger a try. Seems pretty dece. Some nice new features like tags, and more customizable templates. Also, I've made it one of my goals to update more frequently, so soon's I think of something interesting for all two of my readers, I'll post something new.

(Second to?) last post

2006-10-16T17:05:00.000-05:00

Motherfucker. I hate comment spam. That is why I will be abandoning blogger. It was better than xanga, but it's just too popular for its own good. Too much comment spam. If I find a suitable alternative, I'll make another post so all 2.5 of you who read this will know where to find me. Otherwise, this will be my last post. I'll leave comments on only so that if anyone has any suggestions you can tell me (please don't suggest livejournal, they suck marginally less than xanga).

My last will and testament

2006-06-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

The number of death pacts or wishes I have that are related to comedy movies is sort of crazy. Well, it's not that many, but any at all is pretty weird, right? By the way, I'm totally serious about all of these. Totally. So here they are, in order of when they were made:

1) Nick and I decided that when we get way too old for our own good, we too shouldn't not die in a freak gasoline fight "accident." Screw MacArthur, we're going out in a bang.

2) Karin and I decided that we will have "Dust in the wind" played at our funerals. All the old people will be laughing, and the young'uns will be like, "Hey, that's my grandfather! You're so insensitive!"

3) While watching The Big Lebowski a few days ago, I decided that to top off my comedy movie related death wishes, I should have my ashes dispersed into the pacific ocean, transported there in a folgers coffee can. Dude, urns and coffins are totally rip-offs. Wow, I just realized that if I really stick to The Big Lebowski, I literally will be dust in the wind. And also in the face of whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing downwind. That definitely seals the deal.

I have a wallet with inlaid tinfoil

2006-06-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

Sad, but true. (What if people try to track my RFID parking pass!?) And as such, I found this (via metafilter) to be hilarious. At least I'm not quite that bad yet, so I'm allowed to laugh at it. Good stuff.

Filed in:

Tags!

2006-04-22T21:51:00.000-05:00

I got tags working again for my blog. I found a different greasemonkey user script with similar functionality here. It actually has some features the previous one I was using didn't. For instance, with this one, there's no need to go in and edit the script to link to your del.icio.us account, there will be a popup prompt the first time you make a new post it to add your account. Plus it works, which is always good.

Filed in:

Can't Afford Tickets to London?

2006-04-14T13:17:00.000-05:00

Not to worry. Os Mutantes are coming to the US for the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 30. I will be there. You'd better be as well.

Os Mutantes were one of the front-runners of the Tropicalia movement in Brazil. It fused anglo rock culture with various aspects of Brazilian culture, and a good healthy distrust for authority and the status quo. Os Mutantes' first show together since the 70's will be in May in London, followed up by just a few other shows. Unfortunately, Rita Lee, their original lead singer with a heavenly voice will not be with them, but they kept on going for a while without her originally and still sounded damn good, so this is still something you don't wanna pass up. Trust me.

P.S. Help! My tagging procedure is broken! I had to do them all by hand. The greasemonkey script I've been using to add them automatic-like doesn't seem to be working. Anyone out there know the script I'm talking about and why this is happening?

Survey time

2006-04-11T17:20:00.000-05:00

So I'm gonna break my no angsty personal diary blog rule, as well as my no survey rule. For future reference, this doesn't mean you can expect a response from me if you forward me one.

1. How tall are you barefoot? 5'9 I think.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin? Try mainline. Actually, no.

3. Do you own a gun? No

4. Rehab? No

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents"? Whose parents? My girlfriends? What girlfriends?

6. What do you think of hot dogs? They're kinda gross, but I eat them anyway.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song? The Night Santa Went Crazy

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? OJ

9. Do you do push-ups? No

10. Have you ever done ecstacy? No

11. Are you virgin? No

12. Do you like painkillers? I prefer sleeping pills.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex? If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret. Plus I'd be lying.

14. Do you own a knife? Yeah

15. Do you have A.D.D.? Quite possibly

16. Date Of Birth? 1984.11.26

17. Top 3 thoughts at this exact moment: Year.Month.Day is the preferred format for displaying dates. Girls are tricky and mysterious. School sucks.

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought? Some groceries, a pair of pants, and two dvds.

19. From where? Rainbow and Target

20. What time did you wake up today? 9:30

21. Current hair? Too long.

22. Current worry? Death and taxes. Actually I already did my taxes this year. Death and school.

23. Current hate? School.

24. Favorite places to be? B&N or Winstead's on the Plaza, Punch, BB's, River Road.

25. Least favorite places to be? Nowhere

26. Where would you like to Go? Salvador, Recife, Rio, Buenos Aires, Cape Verde, Cuba, Machu Pichu, Edmonton.

27. Do you own slippers? Yup.

28. Where do you think you'll be in 10 yrs? Somewhere I wouldn't guess. A lawyer hopefully. Married to my hot wife.

29. Do you burn or tan? I try not to do either.

30. Last thing you ate? Toffee Almond Bar.

31. Would you be a pirate? Fuck no. Pirates suck. Ninjas are way better.

33. What songs do you sing in the shower? I don't

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night? Aliens. Or more recently, myself.

35. What's in your pockets right now? Right front: my phone, left front, keys and a usb thumb drive, right back, wallet. Left back: some random pieces of paper.

36. Last thing that made you laugh? I don't remember. I haven't laughed today.

37. Best bed sheets you had as a child? I don't know.

38. Worst injury you've ever had? A cut the the skin between my thumb and forefinger on my left hand when I couldn't find scissors to cut the thick plastic bands off that water gun at Nick's house, so I used a knife, and when it went through, it went straight to my hand, and I was like, uhhhh.... Nick....

40. How many TVs do you have in your house? 2

41. Who is your loudest friend? Alex G. or Karin

42. Who is your quietest friend? Myself

43. Does someone have a crush on you? I hope so.

44. Do you wish on stars? No

45. What is your favorite book? The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

46. What is your favorite candy? Zours

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding? I dunno. "Baby" perhaps. THe version with Rita Lee.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral? Karin and I have a pact that we will have "Dust in the Wind" played at our funerals, and then all our old fogey friends will laugh, and all the young whippersnappers who've never seen "Old School" will be like, wtf, that's so insensitive.

49. What were you doing 12AM last night? Sitting in my room thinking too much.

50. Do you love someone? I love everyone. Some are harder to love than others. If true hate exists, I don't know what it feels like.

Aren't Mountain Bikes for... Mountains?

2006-02-09T09:21:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posting.

A lot of people think the Twin Cities are too cold (not this year, of course). But sometimes that can work to your advantage. Where else can you make your way through all of downtown without stepping foot outside? A few cities in the US come close, but where else can you race your mountain bike through downtown buildings, skyways, tunnels, and arenas?

New Post!: OO.o, Apple in the Press, Microsoft isn't All Bad

2005-10-20T18:08:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am making a new post. It's been a while, I know. "Big deal, wanna fight about it." Yeah, so I like to make unattributed quotes of popular shows and movies. "Big deal, wanna fight about it?"

On to the next point of discussion: OpenOffice 2.0 was released today. For those of you who didn't know, you are not bound for all eternity to using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office just beacuse everyone else does including all your teachers, colleagues, business partners, friends, etc. Why? Because there are other office suites and stand alone word processors, spreadsheet apps, etc. that can do just as good of a job. "But they don't read or save in Microsoft Office formats," you protest? Yes they do. Well some of them. You'd have to be a freakin retard to make an office suite or office application that can't read and write in Microsoft Office formats, because the reality is that they do hold a monopoly on the office suite (very unnecessarily). Now if you are looking for an entire office suite, I'll admit, your options are fairly limited. As far as I know, you're stuck with either OpenOffice (OOo, for OpenOffice.org) or WordPerfect, which may or may not suit your preferences/needs better than MS Office. If you are just looking for a word processor, though, you have more options. In addition to OOo and Word Perfect, I understand there are some other stand alone word processors, AbiWord being the main one I'm familiar with. Other than that, you'll have to look for yourself. Now as far as other stand alone office applications, I'm guessing they're out there, but I don't really care, so you'll have to find them yourself, you lazy bum.

Now, for those of you on the other end of the spectrum, in case you hadn't heard, OOo isn't perfect. Yeah, it's free which is sweet. It also works really well, on top of being free, which is even sweeter. It also does many things which MS Office does poorly, or cannot do, such as reading old MS Word formats (does poorly (which pretty much totally blows away the main argument as to why you just can't use anything other than MS Office. So what if everyone you know uses Word. If they have an older/newer version than you, you can't even open eachother's documents, even though they're made by the same freakin company. MS just wants you to spend money upgrading)), and exporting files to .pdf, among many others. Still, though, if you have a more sophisticated argument as to why you don't want to switch from Word than "everyone else uses it," I must admit, it is not perfect. With 2.0 it definitely is a lot prettier, and I'm sure they've fixed many things, but I'm not sure what they are. Anyway, my main gripe with OOo is their support for different languages. Yeah, when you download, you can choose to download packages for one of various different languages, so that's good. But once you've commited to your language of choice, you might remain somewhat in the dark as to how to make OOo compatible with producing documents in other languages (and in case you hadn't noticed yet, when I say OOo, I do theoretically mean the entire office sweet, but realistically, I'm only talking about the word processor since that's mostly what I use.) Now my first problem was how to type accents for Spanish and Portuguese. I was used to the MS Word shortcuts, which I admit now are really retarded (literally, they're quite inefficient, or slow). Anyway, I searched all over OOo's resources, and couldn't get a straight answer. Once I found it though, it was much simpler than I thought. All you have to do is change your keyboard mapping.
Don't worry. You can switch back and forth very easily. Unfortunately, this answer was not very easy to find. Then I was confronted with the problem of using spell check in different languages. Now, although OOo's support in this area is lacking, you could argue that it's still much better than MS, since they don't charge you for a freaking spell check dictionary which a damn 6th grader could compose. Still, if you don't mind paying money, Word's is much easier to install and use. Now I searched far and for an answer to this problem as well. It's not nearly as simple as it should be. Unless you are lucky enough to find the extremely simpler shortcut way which should be much better publicised but is not. Now, I'm not going to tell you the long way to do this, since it's pointless and retarded (literally, again). Here's how you do it. Once you install OOo, assuming you're in windows, go to c:-->Program Files-->Share-->Dict-->ooo. DO NOT TRY TO MANUALLY INSTALL DICTIONARY FILES. YOU WILL LIKELY FAIL JUST LIKE ME. Even if you know exactly what you're doing, there's a much easier way (oh and if you're in linux, you can probably find the equivalent folder, right? good. It's the same basic Process.) Inside said folderwhich I have directed you to, open the file called DicOOo.swx. Enable macros if prompted. Scroll down to the English part (unless you speak french). Click the button that says "Start DicOOo." Then click "retrieve the list" and select the spell checker dictionaries you want, then repeat for thesauri and hyphenation dictionaries. The rest should be obvious (I hope). Once it's done installing them, all you have to do is exit the OOo quickstarter. Now, even once you have your dictionaries of choice installed, it's still far from simple and not entirely obvious how to use them. On many sites I've read, they claim that you just go to tools-->options-->language settings-->writing aids, then click on the very top button that says "edit" and select your language of choice. This has not been my experience. Maybe I'm still not doing something right. I don't know. Anyway, before doing that, I've found that I must first go to ...-->language settins-->languages and select the language of choice as the "default language for documents" then go to the above steps. A) I don't know why some claim that the first step I mentioned (remember, though, the second step in the actual process) is sufficient. B) There shouldn't be two steps anyway. You should be able to select a particular language for a document, and it should make all necessary changes for you.

Now, despite this whole gripe with the spell check, OOo really is pretty good, so don't get me wrong. If you want to use it in just one language, you should have few problems. And if you want to use more than one language, if you do as I've instructed above, you should be ok (well, at least if you want to languages that use the latin alphabet. Still, I think the process of changing your keyboard map is basically the same even if you're using a different alphabet). So like I said, OOo is not perfect. I think that if they really want to gain a lot of users, they'll have to take care of the problems above, and other similar ones arising from a combination of poor design and poor support. Still, Word isn't perfect either. They feed off the fear that people have of using a word processor other than theirs, and they charge absurd amounts (any amount being absurd, IMO) for dictionaries (really just lists of words) that a sixth grader could compose. Literally, given the time, a sixth grader could make a list of words that exists in a certain language. It's not hard, and really not even time consuming if you split the task between people.

If you're still reading this, you're insane. Oh, there's more though. Gotta make up for weeks of not posting.

On to topic #2:
There was a post on slashdot today on an article by John Dvorak about how apple gets disproportionate coverage in the media because all the tech journalists happen to use macs. One blog post in response to this article expressed surprise that so many journalists use macs. Now, I did not have a specific idea that many journalists used macs, but I had long held the idea that macs had better software for publishing, design, print layout, etc. than microsoft. Judging by this /. post, I wasn't just imagining this. I dunno. Anyway, transitioning smoothly into topic #3...

So said articles carry the assumption that Microsoft isn't all bad and does deserve some coverage. Sure, it's obviously the largest tech company in the world, but it has a pretty bad reputation by now. I'm not saying it's all undeserved, just that there are some things which microsoft still does well. For instance, I've long thought that Windows Media Player is a mighty fine media player. PCworld seems to agree see #47. So despite all the MS bashing I've done on this blog, and in this very same post even, I must admit that MS is not all bad, just like OOo isn't all good. I just don't like that people feel that you have to be insane to go with anything else, simply because everyone else uses Microsoft. They do a lot of good stuff, just don't think you have to use Microsoft.

If you read this whole freakin post, you must love me a lot. Or you must be very very bored.

(I'm breaking my 4 tag limit because this post is obscenely long).

"Judging Is Different from Politics"

2005-09-30T18:16:00.000-05:00

These were some of the words (or something close to some of the words) of the new Chief Justice of the SCOTS, John Roberts, after being sworn in. Ideally, I would like him to be right, but the truth is something closer to "Judging should not be like politics." Politicians are accountable to the people. While judges should also be, to an extent, ultimately, their highest accountability is actually to the law and to reason, and putting the two together. Of course they will frequently be driven by their own opinions, idealogies, and public opinion, a good judge should, as much as possible, try to put those aside, and judge each case according to the facts and applying what they see as the logical application of the law to those facts.

I was listening to the and interview with retiring Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court today. She talked about how on the state court, there really are no blocks the way there are on the SCOTUS. On one case, a judge may side passionately with one side, while on the very next, completely different groups sharing opinions may form. This is not as often the case on the US court. You can bet money that over time, certain judges will side with each other, and given a number of cases, you can put money on what way a justice will vote on each one, and over time, you'll make money. I wondered why this is. To me, the answer seems to be that in Washington, judging has become too much like politics. Look at the questions that were asked of Roberts. So many of them were asking him to essentially pre-judge cases. They were asking him to state his opinions on certain issues before he ever took the bench. Sometimes, when asking about our most general and fundamenta rights, it is fine to ask a jurist where he or she stands. We don't want supreme court justices who will overturn the first ammendment because they aren't of the opinion that it is good, for instance. But for the most part, you shouldn't ask a judge about his or her idealogies. The senators asking those questions would claim that they were asking them to ensure that the candidate would not be idealogically driven, but in reality what they were trying to figure out is if the idealogy that would drive him would align with theirs or not. They want to see if the candidate will be on their sidw when they take the bench. This is the wrong way to go about it. It will only ensure that we do get judges that are driven by their personal feelings and idealogies. It ensures that we get judges who will not judge the facts of a case according to the law, but according to their personal opinions. While I don't know if Roberts will make a good justice or not because so much of the focus, in hearings and in the media, was on his idealogy, rather than his reasoning and his ability to apply the law disinterestedly, I commend him for refusing to give in to the sentate's desire to create an idealogically drive judiciary. I agree with his statement for which I named this post. I hope he sticks to it and keeps his idealogy off the bench as best he can.

Edit: Originally, the title of this post was "Judging Is Not Like Politics" Which turned out to be a misquote, as I suspected:

Roberts said the Senate's bipartisan vote for him was "confirmation of what is for me a bedrock principle — that judging is different from politics."

Not sTux with Windows Anymore

2005-09-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

I finally installed linux on my computer. After a few setbacks, I managed to figure it out. Odd that I should have had any setbacks since Ubuntu, the linux distro I decided to go with is often said to be quite user friendly. It even bills itself as linux for human beings. Anyway, I persisted, and managed to install it successfully on my computer. I haven't completely gotten rid of windows yet, though. I can now boot into either WinXP or Ubuntu. But now I am no longer stuck with only using windows. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I should be updating more frequently. I waited this long because I did not want to have to make a post without being able to proclaim that I had installed windows, as I had said that I was going to. So now that I have installed it, I can make all the posts I care to.

Rejoice

2005-09-01T23:04:00.000-05:00

After a brief hiatus, I am back. I attend school at the University of Minnesota and live on campus, and they decided that in order to use the internet, I had to get some updates. When I attempted to install them, I could not. I got an error message that said "access denied." Nothing else. So I spent a good couple days trying to get that to work. Then I figured something must be pretty messed up on my computer, so I had to reformat my hard drive. Then I spent a couple days getting my computer somewhere close to they way it was before. So now I am back.

It turns out that I had a bug on my computer. It is known as "Microsoft Windows XP." It turns out that there are many bug fixes for this problem. So anyway, in order to get the updates in question, service pack 2, to install, I had to reformat my hard drive. I considered just installing linux instead of Windows, or partitioning my hard drive to dual boo, but decided instead to just buy another hard drive and load linux on that. So I have managed to get windows to work for now, but I have my new hard drive, and will soon have linux on it, and will then no longer have to deal with this most ingenious of computer viruses, which infects the vast majority of home computers, known as windows, when I don't want to.