JF :: Brain Farts :: Archive of May, 2008

Archive of May, 2008

"I Don't Remember Eating That..."

May 27, 2008:

Just as an FYI before I get back to my usual (non-)blogging: Getting food poisoning sucks. Getting food poisoning while you're 370 miles out of town and supposed to be going to a cookout, but are instead laying on a couch trying not to turn yourself inside-out, really sucks.

On the upside, I'm feeling much better now. On the downside, it looks like going golfing today (Monday) might get rained out. By pretty much the only rain storm in the country.

Long Weekend

May 23, 2008:

Since I'm up anyway (the dog and her bladder have no concept of "weekend") I'll just let you all know that I'm out of town for a long weekend. I'll get back Tuesday night, so the earliest post you'd see would probably be Thursday morning. But at the rate I go it'll probably be later than that.

New New Layout

May 20, 2008:

Well, after not even wanting to think about re-doing the site for several months, I finally sat down and cranked out a layout that I'm mostly happy with. Point yourself to the newest mockup and let me know what you think.

Things that still need to be done:

• Link up to the "good" favicon that everybody but IE can use.
• Make the translucent PNGs work in IE.
• Find someplace to put the search box.
• Create a print style sheet, just in case anyone ever wants to print this.
• Decide whether I want a sidebar in non-BF pages.

But other than that (and the only one that'll be a pain is the PNGs) I like what I've got so far.

Oh, and that whole thing where I totally rework the back-end. Cakewalk, right?

Since you can't tell from the mockup, the banners will rotate randomly. So sometimes you'd see this one (a piece of the fountain at the National Art Museum), sometimes you'll get Ginger, sometimes the Capitol, sometimes the air show from last weekend. Basically, any time I take a picture that looks good when you can only see 125 vertical pixels of it. For my definition of "good".

Edit: I see nobody ever got around to correcting the difference in image display between Mac and PC. On my MacBook Pro the banner looks great; on PC it's barely visible. I'm sure that when I get the banner to the point that it's viewable on Windows that it'll look washed out on the Mac. Seriously, the two platforms have been out for more than 20 years now; why is so much to ask that my images look the same everywhere?

Evolution

May 19, 2008:

When I take the dog for a walk, she doesn't maintain a constant speed. Sometimes she'll run ahead and pull at the leash; sometimes she'll stop to take a sniff.

She's kind of gotten into a pattern though: She'll run past me on the right, then walk directly in front of me once she's at the end of the leash. Then when she wants to slow down, she'll fall behind me on the left.

So if it weren't for the lack of opposable thumbs, she'd be ready to drive in Northern Virginia.

· Programming note: I went to the air show at Andrews AFB today, and it was great. Perfect weather (except for the part where I got sunburned), plenty of aircraft on display, and good demonstrations culminating with a Blue Angels set.

I'll have more once I can get back into my PC and get the uncompressed AVIs I recorded converted into FLVs. put the better of my videos on YouTube, since the power supply on my PC is apparently b0rked. Just give me a few days to get everything converted and to weed out the duplicate/crappy photos. But until I can get everything set up in my own photo album here, the pics I took at up on Picasa.

This is the Northeast?

May 13, 2008:

We had a pretty hefty storm roll through here Sunday and Monday -- it rained for about 28 hours straight. The boss referred to the storm as a Nor'easter, which I'd always associated with, y'know, the Northeast.

But Wikipedia bears him out; a Nor'easter is just a large low-pressure system, powered by cold air instead of warm, that sits off the coast of the Northeast. With the winds blowing the now-cold and moisture-rich air straight down the east coast, NoVA can get hit almost as hard as Boston. Surprised the heck out of me.

The system finally seems to have broken down and as of 9:30 PM on Monday the rain is pretty much over with. And it's even going to get over 60 -- high is forecast in the mid-70s -- tomorrow. Almost like what someone would expect for mid-May.

It's Not Nice to Laugh at the Guy with the Blue Ball

May 12, 2008:

Got in my first set of games with the new bowling ball on Friday. It actually went surprisingly well: A pair of games in the 170s bracketing pair of games in the upper 140s. I still need to work on the new delivery (you don't grip a fingertip-grip ball as tightly as a normal ball) but it looks promising.

In other new I've seen Iron Man twice now. It holds up surprisingly well on multiple viewings, so I'm going to give it a simple review: See this movie. See it in a theater on the big screen, and stay through the credits, especially if you follow the Marvel comic universe at all.

This Is Why I Love the Internet

May 09, 2008:

For the last several weeks -- as long as I've been using my Mac as my primary computer -- I've had the laptop plugged directly into the router, even though the router and Mac both support 802.11n. This is because that after a few minutes the router would constantly start rebooting itself.

I didn't really give it much thought. My router's a TrendNet, and they make the hardware for D-Link. My only experience with D-Link was with a friend whose router would randomly decide to start ignoring wireless and required a reboot to start listening again. So after giving the hardware company another shot at my place, I was just figuring: "Stupid TrendNet."

Then as I was reading JWZ's* LJ, I saw someone offer a possible solution for a problem he was having with SSH, or any other time he was hitting the network particularly hard: an overheating router. This makes sense to me now that I think about it... generating RF probably draws more power than just talking over Ethernet, and thus creates more heat.

So when I get home tonight I'm going to see if standing the router on its side to allow more heat-dissipation surface can fix my rebooting problem. If that fails, maybe one of those cheap little fans you clip to the desk. But thanks to someone else's completely unrelated problem, I may be able to use the wifi I paid for.

* JWZ is one of the original employees of Netscape, back in the pre-1.0 days. He's apparently known for being an arrogant asshole, which is probably why I enjoy reading his site as much as I do. Just one more entry in a list of people I've never met or even corresponded with, but whose blogs I read.

iTunes Wants

May 08, 2008:

I may be able to do these already but am ignorant of the interface. If so, please correct me.

· On-the-fly playlists. I want to be able to right-click a song and say, "play this next" instead of seeking through the list after the current song finishes. Every other player on earth lets me do this; I'm fairly certain that iTunes does too. But I don't see any kind of "Now Playing" playlist that I can screw with.

· Better "last played" logic. If I listen to all but the last few seconds of the song, mark it as played. I may have just gotten tired of waiting for the player to finish the darn thing. Let's say that if you've played more than 75% of a track it's played.

· Album art feedback. If the connection to iTunes Music Store bombs, or the store doesn't have the album art for some reason, let me know. Right now, about one of three album art requests just disappears into a black hole. Should I try again later (bad connection) or am I stuck with a 200x200 copy from Wikipedia (they don't have it)? It can't be that hard to tell me.

· Same for the podcasts. Really... not even the "connecting... connected" feedback I get from Mozilla. Just the orange spinny thing that sometimes results in a downloaded podcast and sometimes doesn't.

Harold & Kumar Make Another Damn Movie

May 06, 2008:

I just found out about the sequel to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle that's out now. I have nothing to say about the movie itself, since I haven't seen it, but it did remind me of a comment I made after seeing H&KGTWC. There's one accurate thing about that movie: The only way you could possibly enjoy a White Castle "burger" is if you're stoned out of your mind.

Bowlin' Braggin'

May 05, 2008:

Nothing else to write about, and I just bought myself a bowling ball over the weekend (reactive resin, the better to throw a hook with). This is where I try to convince it to help me the next time I'm out. Oh, and do a little bragging while I'm at it.

Best. Game. Ever.

8	/		X		X	9	/	8	/	6	/		X	9	/		X	X	9	/
20		49		69		87		103		123		143		163		192		212

(Just so you know, these are a real pain to type up in my no-frills editor. When I finally getting around to doing version 8 of this site, I need to give myself a "table class='bowling'" macro.)

It's also the only "clean" game I've ever bowled -- no open frames.

A few weeks later, I managed to put together some actual consistency. Game one:

	X		X	9	-	8	-	5	4		X	8	/	8	/	7	1	X	X	9
29		48		57		65		74		94		112		129		137		166

Not a stellar game, especially with the open frames, but the 166 is important in the grand scheme of things. On to game two:

	X		X	8	/	5	/		X	7	/	6	3	8	/	9	/	X	8	1
28		48		63		83		103		119		128		147		167		186

Now that's better. Game three, anyone?

9	/	6	/	8	1		X	7	/	9	/	7	/	7	-	9	/	7	/	9
16		34		43		63		82		99		116		123		140		159

Not the greatest finish, but adding them all up gives me a 511 series, my best ever.

Of course, Dave went out a couple weeks ago and rolled a 220 en route to a 548 series of his own. So, now I have a little work to do to catch up. I like it though, keeps me from getting complacent.

Oh, the "importance" of the 166 up there is that it's what you need to average to roll a 500 series. (Well, really 166.66, but that's just hair splitting.) So as long as the two other games averaged 166 or 167 I was good.

Putting Down Roots, Kind Of

May 02, 2008:

I just realized as I was trying to go to sleep tonight that I've been here for quite a while now. Not NoVA in general -- my 10½ years in Pittsburgh still dwarf my 3 here -- but this is the longest I've been in a single domicile since I was in college.

I was in the Loretta St. and Negley Ave. apartments for a year each, and the Alder St. apartment for about a year and a half. Before all that I was on Beechwood Blvd. for about two years and eight months.

In college I lived at the fraternity house for three years and three months (I'll ignore moving within the house since both internal moves were for a grand total of about 75 feet), which I'm very close to equaling right now... I'm at 37 months here. And before that I lived in the dorm for a year, preceded my living at my stepfather's house for about three years.

My lease ends next March 31st, and I plan on buying a house before then. Hopefully to move in right as my lease here expires. By the time I'm ready to move out I'll have been here for four years (maybe a little less). The only place I've ever lived at longer than that was the house I grew up in, from 1979 through 1991. (I have only a couple fragmentary memories of the duplex my parents lived in from before I was born until the summer of '79. I've lived here longer than I lived there, though.)

Assuming I stop moving around after I buy the house (and assuming, of course, that I buy a house), I'd have to live there until the spring of 2021 to match the time I put in at the house in Goodyear Heights (wow, you really can find anything on Wikipedia).

And that, my friends, is what it takes for me to keep a writing streak up for a week nowadays. I have a post on linguistics bouncing around in my head, but I doubt I'll be able to put finger to keyboard any time soon -- Iron Man opens this weekend.

Coffee Anon

May 01, 2008:

One of the neighbors I talk to frequently at the dog park just bought a Keurig single-serving coffee-maker on a recent trip to Costco. It makes a 7.25-ounce cup of coffee in about 30 seconds (hence the horrible pun in the title). I asked them to get me one if they were still there the next time.

Wonderful people that they are, they did. After a quick walk over to their place with checkbook in hand, I now possess one of my own. For $20 less than Keurig shows on the web site I got an extra 72 "K-cups," the one-serving packets of grounds. They're the size of overgrown creamer packets.

It doesn't make a half-bad cup of coffee, accounting for the fact that I haven't sampled all the types of coffee I know have. And it can be ready in under a minute. I think my mornings just got more tolerable.

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This page last updated Mar 19, 2011 6:53:22 PM.