So As mentioned ealier I’m a bit of a music “guy” no I’m not one of the
guys who spend thousands on super high-fi speakers and pre-amps and all
that jazz, but I do have a deep love and respect for music of almost all
kinds. I must have a bit of an inflated ego to think that anyone else
would like to listen to the music I do because I have had a shoutcast
server up and running for a few months now. As a way to tie it into
blog-o-rific I wrote an extremely simple little plugin that reads the
recent tracks log file from MALTX (my mp3 player of choice) and makes the
most recent one availible to blosxom. I am widely know as a bit of a
wannabe programmer so I’m sure the code is fundementally broken and I deserve to be shot.
So do you if you use it. You can get it here. You
can also see it in action on the top of the page right below the banner.
Posts in month: April, 2003
Ok I have been bad and not blogged for an entire weekend. I spent it getting remarkably drunk and recovering from said remarkableness. So now for the content ™.
I have had a shoucast server up for some time on one of my work machines. It just plays whatever I happen to be listening to on any given day. In case you haven’t noticed I am a bit of a music freak so it’s playing something pretty much 24/7. I’d like to hear any feedback people
have about the music so give it a listen some time when you get a chance. I have also written a little blosxom plugin that shows whats playing, its up there in the header (It still need a little work and documentation so no source for it yet).
I was on the train the other day and headed up town on the red line I was
sitting next to two women. They were every inch the stereotypical “rich
girls” from the Gucci bags to the 200 dollar haircuts. Because the
batteries in my RIO were dead I sat there and
listened to them prattle on about, of all things, their shoe habits. One
just gave “about 40 pairs away to the Salvation Army- It’s ok though,
they were from last season…” I walked off
the train a few minutes later fuming. How dare these women talk like that, flaunting their wealth in that oh-so-casual-yet-extremely-annoying way? I
bet they spend more on shoes in a year than I make in a month, hell
probably more!
I headed down the street to a friends house where I am going to be subletting this summer. I checked out the place and chatted with the guys. After an hour or two of conversation I asked them what they were
doing for dinner (they had mentioned a really good Mexican place down the street, I was anxious to try it out). The looked at each other rather
sheepishly and one said “Well we’re really broke right now, I think we’re just going to go down to jewel and get something to cook.” Boy did I
feel like an ass, here I was doing the same thing I got so mad at the
shoe-people for.
So I bought them dinner. Think I ought to find those women and
see if they want to take me shoe shopping? Neither do I
In my never ending search to find the best deal on anything and everything I stumbled upon the latest invention from our good
friends at Google. It’s called Froogle. A
cursory look seem to indicate some real good deals might be found here. For instance I did a quick and dirty trial on a few
bits of electronics.
Fuji A 201 Digital Camera:
Froogle: 149.78
Pricewatch: 141.00
E-bay: 140.99
Geforce 4 ti4200 128mb
Froogle: 119.00
Pricewatch: 125.81
E-bay: 134.50
120 GB EIDE HD (any brand)
Froogle: 107.97
Pricewatch: 96.99
E-bay: 129.99
As you can see it hangs pretty well with the big guns plus it’s only in beta! There are a few obvious features that
aren’t included (namely sort-by-price and a way to filter out and/or convert foreign currency). My only concern is that once
businesses find out about it the GoogleBombing will begin in
earnest. Check out while it still.. works..
That is exactly what I was thinking when I opened my delivered dinner
from Happiness this evening. I thought I would try a new restaurant and
Happiness had received a high rating at ChicagoPride so I gave them a buzz. I ordered your standard beef
and broccoli and I said, “…toss 2 extra egg rolls in there”. Little did I know. I opened the package when it arrived to be greeted with three MONSTER eggrolls stuffed with all kinds of good stuff. Now I consider myself a bit of an eggroll connoisseur (some would say fiend or junkie) and these puppies were no slouch in the taste department.
The water chestnuts, cabbage, shrimp and veggies made a wonderful and extremely rich taste that could very easily be a meal by itself. Needless to say I am happily stuffed with leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow.
Happiness gets an Ian thumbs up from me!
I was pondering this morning and thought it warranted a blog topic: What happened to humor in the form of a written word? I remember in grammar school reading volume after volume of 101 great jokes! and other similar books. I loved them. Then as I grew older I picked up Douglas Adams, Tery Pratchett and P.G. Wodehouse.
Their zany characters and quick wit kept me amused for many a happy hour. So ponder this: when was the last time you read a joke? I don’t mean read-a-joke-with-a-picture-and-sound-and-animation, just a regular joke. I love flash animations and cute movies as much as the next guy but I hope we’re not going to lose the written joke for good. In honor of the written joke I will pass on one of my favorites, a Sven and Ole joke no less!
Sven and Ole went on vacation and decided to go fishing out on their favorite lake. They rented a boat and floated around on the lake looking for a good spot.
After about three hours of poor luck they found a good place and started catching fish. As fast as they could throw out their line they would catch another one. Ole exclaimed “Man Sven, this sure is a great fishin’ spot! I wish we could mark the spot so we can come back here tomorrow and catch more fish!” Sven nodded and thought for a moment then he laughed and reached into his tackle box, “I’ve got just the thing” he said. Sven produced a big piece of chalk and marked a huge white X in the bottom of the boat. Ole shook his head sadly and said “Oh that won’t work you big dummy! What if next time we don’t get the same boat?!”
I was getting sick of collapsed whitespace in my story blocks so I ripped off Robert Jone’s most excellent amps plugin to replace every instance of 2 whitespaces in a row with a whitespace followed by a non breaking space. It seems to work alright. If for some unknown reason you want to try this on your blog get the plugin here.
I was doing a little Googleing for open directories this evening. It is completely amazing what you
can find if you poke around a little. Todays top find has to be an
entire collection of bizzare and amusing shockwave files, complete with
two Mac/switch parody commericals (which I love). Check them out here and here.