Saturday May 21, 2005 - 10:25PM EDT
Here I am on Saturday evening writing a blog post. Just finished up a website update and I want to begin doing the redesign of the same site. I've been planning it for weeks and have a few pages of notes on how things are structured. I'll start off with something basic but powerful and continue to build in features based on what the website owener wants. Been wanting to do this redesign for a long time now. It will also help me make updates faster and hopefully bring more visitors to the site. Think I'll go see Star Wars first though. Right now.
I still need to add a few things to the blog. Image upload (have the code from other projects already), RSS feed link and WAP access and posting ability. Then I'll distribute it as version 1.
Saturday May 21, 2005 - 9:29AM EDT
"I think the work that's going on in this field is very exciting. The only thing I'm saying is you cannot sacrifice a human life, no matter how small, for the benefit of a third party. I think it's elitist medicine and utterly narcissistic. There are so many other adult stem cell alternatives available to find cures for diseases." - full article
I really can't believe these people who oppose human stem cell research using embryos on the basis of saving human life. That is the most hypocritical excuse I've ever heard. Why don't they stop eating because when you eat you are consuming living things. These same people probably support the death penalty. Even if they don't, basing their arguement on such a simplistic reason while they live the rest of their lives in direct opposition to that reason is insanity. They have this distorted view of what life is and most likely it has to do with their ridiculous religious beliefs and all that god created humans bullpucky. Clueless fuckballs. You see how this man says it is "narcissistic." That tells you something important. It tells you he has no good reason to oppose stem cell research and that his human life arguement is complete bullshit. He just thinks it is wrong based on previously formed opinions that have nothing to do with human life. Read his words, they contradict each other. He says "the only thing I'm saying is you cannot sacrifice a human life, no matter how small." But then in the same sentence he adds the remark about it being narcissistic. If he was just about saving human life no matter how small, the fact that is was narcissistic shouldn't matter at all. Yet somehow it becomes the crux of his arguement. A very weak crux. Fucking loser.
Friday May 20, 2005 - 11:04PM EDT
Damn I wish I had a Nintendo Revolution. Just to have a cool looking compact DVD player to replace the one sitting on my desk now.
Never really thought about this specifically before but I spend 95% of my waking hours in front of a computer. As soon as I wake up I check my email, do the usual morning ritual then go to work. Then I spend at least 7hrs at work on a computer. Then I come home and pretty much stare at a computer until it is time for bed. So out of the time I am awake, the only times I am not at a computer is morning ritual(30 minutes), work commute(30 minutes), gym(1.5 hrs).
I need some snatch.
Harvest of the Lambs - comments(0)
Friday May 20, 2005 - 7:42PM EDT
Julie Woodard, Hutslar's great niece, said she did not wish any harm to Johnson's sister. But if Johnson were allowed to donate the liver, she said, "He is going to be remembered more as a hero for saving his sister than for this brutal murder."
I am not sure what to think of this Julie character. With that kind of attitude that person is a bad as the one who committed the crime. Might as well harvest the man's organs no sense in letting them go to waste.
Friday May 20, 2005 - 4:17PM EDT
I just read a news story that said a lake in Russia disappeared. Sounds surprising but I've heard of this happening before. Usually a sinkhole to an underground cave system drains the lake at an alarming speed so that it seems like the lake just disappeared. The interesting part of the story was a quote from a village that went somewher along the lines that she thought that american had got them finally when she saw the lake had gone. That quote highlights the danger of ignorance so well. I don't know whether the journalist was going for that angle or not though.
Friday May 20, 2005 - 4:09PM EDT
I was just thinking that we can typically agree on mid-level achiement. We can agree most times on what is good. But high level achievment is always a judgement that varies from person to person. Greatness is interpreted differently by each person. The pinnacle of achievement never seems to be seen equally by everyone.
I'm really tired. I am glad it is the weekend. Although I have an assload of website work to catch up on. I have an idea for the software. It is regarding content analysis for lack of a better term. Maybe communication interpretation. What I am trying to refer to is the ability to narrow down the subject of what someone is trying to tell you through context clues. Sort of like a search engine but not taking the next step of actually presenting an answer right away. Simply taking the inital query trying to understand it and quering back to clarify the original query. We do it all the time in normal conversation. Most of the time it is transparent because unlike computer input human interaction has more simultaneous modes of input and the context of the situation is more readily apparent. Context is so freaking key to proper human communication. That is why search engines can be so bad. Because there is no way for them to deduce context except from the text you type in. When humans communicate context is not just held in the words they speak. It would be found in environment, past experience, personal relationship. Search engines try to mimic this but haven't done a really good job at it. I suppose search engines could gather certain environmental data, such as weather or currents events info and factor that into the result (they probably already do this). But I would like to see a search engine take one more step before presenting search results. The intermediate step of clarifing the original query. Like if you type "java" into google it comes up with stuff about the software not the country. You need to type be more specific with your query to get info on the country. But there is no reason the search engine couldn't first present selections so that it could further clariy your original question. I think people would appreciate that extra step. It would make a step towards more natural interaction with computers. I suppose serach engines do this to a certain extent with spelling errors but not really all that much to clarify context of searches. I don't even remeber why I started this rant. I really need to stop doing this. It is confusing.
Friday May 20, 2005 - 3:41PM EDT
This job is starting to really chew my chapped ass. I think I'll go see Star Wars tomorrow.
Journalism is such a farce. Somehow we have been lulled into believing that news stories are a way to get reliable information. But it isn't because news stories don't just present facts they present point of view. Many times irrespective of the facts. I'm an just not talking about sensationalism or crackpot journalism I am refering to the everyday basic news stories that we all take for granted as accurate. Journalist aren't taught to spew facts they are taught to make up a story based on facts(facts be damed sometimes). So when I hear peole decry the end of good journalism I say phooey, the journalism they want to refer to never existed. Fuck, textbooks even skew the truth. Reading as many news stories as I do on a daily basis you learn to not take any of them too seriously, no matter how "reputable" the source may seem. Nobody reports "just the facts ma'am", it would be too boring. Besides human thought isn't clean enough to be considered absolute. When you read enough news stories you begin to pickup how each source is skewing the facts or unevenly highlighting certain aspects for whatever purpose. I can't remember a time when journalism was objective. What someone actually did is boring (somtimes even in cases of the most heinous nature). It is the perception and interpretation that gets the mind going. News stories jumpstart that interpretive process for us. I don't think I have any particular point here. Just some observations I was mulling over.
Friday May 20, 2005 - 12:34PM EDT
I think I am all ranted out but then I have nothing to do at work so then the mind moves to something and more ranting follows. I am really hungry though. What to eat for lunch?
Friday May 20, 2005 - 11:23AM EDT
Job is starting to piss me off. Taking up too much time doing nothing. When I was a kid I got Nintendo Power magazine. I don't anymore, and don't really want to anymore. The only game I really play is Madden and Legend of Zelda games. And the occsional old school style RPG (Golden Sun being one of them). Advance Wars was also tight. I wish I had my gameboy right now. I'd be playing Mario Kart or Golden Sun. Sitting here doing jack shit is particularly agravating today. I want to leave right now. And I am hungry. I am trying to get rid of these speakers. I've fully loaded my 1GB MP3 player with 215 songs. I like putting in on shuffle and having random songs come up. I have everything on there from Stevie Wonder to Enrique Iglesias and Andrew W.K. I am using the Nickle Metal-Hydride recharable batteries in it now. They are holding up as well as the alkaline. I added an automatic random picture selector for the banner pic on the site. Now all I have to do to add a picture is drop the right size picture into a folder and it automatically adds it to the rotation. Oh yeah I started taking pictures of my meals so soon they will be apart of the rotation. I found replacements for the software I use on Windows for Mac OSX. Everything is covered there. Sitting here doing nothing is annoying. Particularly because I have a lot of things I need to do. Weekend will be busy no doubt. According to FedEx my Powerbook is still sitting in some Shanghai facility. Creep from Radiohead just finished playing.
I am really hungry. What am I going to have for lunch? I was thinking about a restuarant/fast food place that sold fruit and steamed vegetables. Also sides of meat and fish. I'd make it so that you ordered set meals with a variety of different foods. Like one meal would include, steamed brocolli, dates, jerk chicken breast and sweet potatoes. Another might include cantelope slices, strawberries, sashimi and a croisant. All meals would be combinations of discrete things in a plastic divided container. Basically what I am describing is my favorite types of things to prepare myself. A particular favorite is jerk chicken, baby spinach and grape tomatoes, sweet potatoes and a few dates. Another favorite is strawberries, bananas, cantelope and croissants. Another one could be sauteed string beans, brown rice, steamed vegatable mix and grilled salmon or those boneless spare ribs they have at Chinese restaurants. I also like dates with a bagel and cream cheese. Add some really high quality dried figs to that also. When I do cook it usually involves those things, mainly because they require little preperation. They are just simple. I still need to get that steamer. I don't even remeber why I started talking about this. Oh yeah the fast food join. All fresh fruit and steamed vegetables. Often times I want something to east fast and I could care less about the taste. I just need something to fill me up. This kind of place would be perfect because it wouldn't leave me feeling like I want to roll over and die. As what happens when I eat too much food that is too greasy. I do enjoy a hot piece of fatty meat though, but not too much, because then I feel like suck afterwards.
I was just thinking about this last night. I was thinking about fast food resturants and the waste they produce from their packaging. Coudln't they recyle just about all of the packaging they use in their resturants. The plastic from the straws, utensils and wrapping could be recylced. They could even put everything except burger wrappers in plastic so that you could have two containers in the store. One for plastic one for paper. I've read that you can't recyle paper once it has come into contact with food. But plastic is ok. Recyling is probably something that isn't look at as seriously as say, coming up with a new type of chicken nugget. I am trying to look at this as fairly as possible. Why aren't you given the option to recyle in-store plastic products? Japan has much stricter waste disposal and recyling laws I should research how their system works and its effectiveness. I do know that they still have big trash problems though.
Baffled Understanding - comments(0)
Friday May 20, 2005 - 12:22AM EDT
I read a headline that went something like, hollywood cringes as Revenge of the Sith hits the internet. Is it just me or are you baffled by the media's portrayal of the situation. I suppose I do understand not wanting your movie available for download illegalling. However with really large franchises like this, such illegal downloads have little if any affect on their ticket sales. I would argue that it might help them. Lets get something straight first. Going to the movies is an event, and outing. It is something to do. You are not going soley for the entertainment value of the actual content. If that were true Hollywood wouldn't make any money because most movies suck anyway. But you wade through the garbage and eventually you see something you like. Secondly the average person doesn't have 30 foot screen in their house and frankly no one ever will. Third, since going to the movies is an outing there are always going to be people who want to go to the movies instead of watching it in their homes. Besides it is a chance for funny interactions with other humans. I cannot stress enough the whole event value of movie watching. It is like going to a play. Ok maybe not exactly. Fourth, and this one may change in the future. The quality of illegal movie downloads can be freaking horrendous, unwatchable in some cases. Fifth since people are downloading them to their computers they are watching them on their computer screens which on an average are smaller than your average television. Who can enjoy a movie like that. One problem I can see that would be annoying would be illegal downloading that leads to illegal DVD distribution of the downloaded files. So when I hear that hollywood is supposed to be cringing I laugh. Especially with Star Wars. There is no way any amount of illegal downloads will prevent that movie from raking in record amounts of cash. These points can't be applied to music because music is different. But back to the movies.
So what to do about this downloading? I think I went over this is a previous post. I'll never fully subscribe myself to the arguement that pirating movies (or software) makes the companies lose a bunch of money. Mainly because such things as movies and software are not tangible objects but ideas. If someone stole a bunch of CDs or DVDs then then you would lose money because you put money into those physical objects. But someone downloading your idea is a gray area. On one hand I could be upset because they have something I want them to pay for but if I was a small time person maybe I would just be happy they were interested in my idea. So when I hear that whatever industry loses millions from piracy it is a perceived loss not concrete. How many of those which use pirated software or watch movies would have purchased them if there was a fullproof way to prevent such things? I would say that it wouldn't come close to the numbers quoted in piracy loss. For big companies piracy is mainly and annoyance and not a real problem. They still make substantial profits. It is a strange issue and it is not as cut and dry as the media and companies want to make it seem. It is as if the current system of commerce doesn't meld well with the concept of computer software or digital copies in general. Prior to digital copies much effort was require to make copies and often they were concrete tangible things. Now, a copy isn't concrete. It is like a thought, something without form, uncorporeal. I suppose the whole music download thing is kind of a compromise but not really. It is way to restrictive and really without the overhead of making CDs they could have much higher margins yet they are charging essentially the same price as CDs. Yes servers cost money, but not nearly as much as physical media production. I still don't know how they get away with that. It is a middle man thing probably. Since the music companies have to go through software companies to distribute their music. Still I can't believe that it cost more to serve up music on the internet than physical CDs. What was I talking about?
Oh yeah movie downloading. I don't even remeber why I starting writing about this. Ah well. I don't know what I would do. I'd like to think I'd do it differently if I made movies. But I'll just have to wait until I get there, if ever.
Thursday May 19, 2005 - 6:48PM EDT
I have come to the conclusion that most if not all memebers of congress are megalomaniacs. It is the attitude of the majority that they tell everyone else what to do and can solve all problems with the powers of legeslation. I think very few of them have the attitude that they are there to serve the people and not themselves. How else can you explain a career politician and the constant bullshit about neededing experience to be a politician. Seems like the more experience you have as a politician the farther away you get from the people you are suppose to serve.
"I really don't need a second-rate PlayStation game telling me the weather," wrote Paul Dixon, one of hundreds of disgruntled viewers who posted complaints on the BBC Weather Web site. - full article
I just read that and thought it was hilarious.
Not that it should be a surprise - comments(0)
Thursday May 19, 2005 - 5:47PM EDT
But I just checked the updated FedEx tracking info on my powerbook and now I know why they said it would take 12 days for it to get here. Currently my powerbook is at a local FedEx facility somewhere in Shanghai, China. Of course they make the computers in China why was I thinking it was going to be shipped from California. It is like the movie Castaway when you see Hanks training people at a FedEx facility in Russia. At least I get to entertain myself at work by clicking reload on the FedEx tracking page and seeing where my powerbook is on the planet.
Thursday May 19, 2005 - 4:06PM EDT
I think I emptied my head yesterday because I have nothing to write about today. My Powerbook shipped and should be here soon. Although it says it takes 12 days for the FedEx to arrive. Weird. Odly enough they haven't charged my credit card yet. Actually did some work today at work. Not a lot, but whatever there was to do I did it. Last night I saw some clown-ass in a polo with the collar turned up working out at the gym. I think noticing it actually robbed my perception of 10 seconds from the space time continuum. It was like those 10 seconds ceased to ever exist and all quantum states from that period were erased. Ultamite season starts up soon. Can't wait. This has been a bad week for getting website work done. Everyday this week after work I've had to do something and didn't come back home until late. I'm hungry. I found a new much faster way to get home from work. Makes the trip 10 minutes as it should be. That was the most exciting work realated thing to happen this week. I'm going to make the software under the GPL. In the coming weeks I'll modify the website to reflect that.
I am really hungry. Lunch was small as I had to go to the bank then home and only ate a banana and some sushi rice with tuna cake. Maybe I should get a swiss ball to sit on at work. I hear they are all the rage at progressive companies where teams of dumb asses bounch up and down in front of their computers. Nah, I'll probably stick with the "vertebrae mauler" that is my current chair. I'm all Nintendoed out until the next news directly from them. I'm not a violent person, but I want to inflict harm upon 90% I hear about. I don't like mess so Star Trek phaser vaporization would be best in my opinion. Just the though of that person not existing anymore is all I need. Haven't seen Star Wars yet, will soon though. I'll be on Margarita Island sometime in August probably. Never been to a tropical island though. I hope it is nice there. I want to retire to a little island in the South Pacific with white sands blue water and tropical fruit trees all over. I want to eat cantelope and build a spaceship while living in a little hut on the beach. Then to get away from the sound of crashing waves I have another little hut in the rainforest valley on that same island. And another little hut high in the moutains on that same island to see the whole island. Actually just one hut on the mountain would do. I can walk to the beach and down into the valley.
More Nintendo Revloution - comments(2)
Thursday May 19, 2005 - 12:14PM EDT
Basically my life has degenerated into Nintendo Revolution news searching. I found a rumor on the specs of the Revolution that says it is more powerful than XBOX 360 and even has a GPU unit that is more powerful than PS3. Though overall PS3 is more powerful. Supposedly it has 4 2.5 ghz G5 class PowerPC chips plus a dual core graphics chip developed by ATI. The dual core in the graphics chip would be the first dual core graphics chip in a console. I think the rumored specs are highly suspect as Nintendo has said Revolution is only 2-3 more times powerful than Gamecube. But then again what in the hell do those types of comparisons mean. How does one say that Xbox 360 is 10-15 times more powerful. I don't understand how they arrive at those numbers. While combing through endless fanboy chatter on message boards I really haven't found any real news. I do find it interesting that IBM makes the main processors for all three systems. They are going to cleanup regardless.
Nintendo Revolution Speculation - comments(121)
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 7:02PM EDT
I really can't stop thinking about what the Nintendo Revolution is going to do with online gaming and their new controller. FREE online gaming! And I still can't get over downloading old school games. I am trying to think of the possibilities. They still have yet to release their next succesor to the Gameboy system (DS is considered by them to be a new product line). What if for the next Gameboy system you could download games to high capacity SD cards (1-8GB) and play them in the system. That might be cool. The new controller though is what I am waiting for now. Oh yeah side note, they better just add DVD playback without the add-on piece. Doesn't make sense not to. It would be the coolest looking smallest set top DVD player on the market and that is bound to attract extra buyers. The non descript small black box would blend into any home entertainment setup. I'd replace it with the big ass silver monstrosity I have sitting next to my TV now. I am hoping the controller uses the spaceball and gyroscope ideas I talked about earlier. I personally never liked the controls in first person shooters. They were not that difficult but it takes some getting used to if you have never played first person shooters. The spaceball and gyroscope would just take that shit to a whole different level of precision and control. I can't even imagine the type of control I would have in first person shooters. I would be insane. I think I am going to do a 3D mockup of what I think the controller should look like. I have a pretty good idea of it in my head.
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 4:27PM EDT
Do I just gravitate towards companies that like to mess around and do jack shit? Or do they gravitate towards me? Maybe I am just being an ass.
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 1:38PM EDT
I was in the car listening to a CD and I nodded off into one of those dreaming awake states. They are fun because they are not full blown dreams with visuals but just intensely focused effortless thinking. That you remeber for a few seconds after you wake up.
DISCLAIMER:The following is for males or adventureous females only. Anyone else just wouldn't understand.
I was in the bathroom today taking a wiz at the urinal and I found myself playing around with aiming my pee. Doing circles, figure eights, bell curve, hitting the urinal cake, the urinal wall, etc. It is amusing. What I like most it hitting the urinal cake and watching it erode in a pink or blue stream of color. I see how much I can erode in one pee. And one day I will be able to reach to elusive eroision of the whole cake. It is elusive because you have to catch the cake when it is at end of days and give it the knockout blow.
I said something earlier about war veterns. I was thinking about that at lunch and figured that I should ease up a little. War fucks with your head and you can't expect clear logic from veterens. So they can be as crusty as they want, I just won't take them too seriously
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 12:01PM EDT
I keep thinking about a world with today's style consumerism. Where companies don't produce products to simply dupe you into buying them but to be the best that it can be. I love how some morons use the myth of competition to say that companies already try and produce the best. What a load of horse shit. Competition doesn't neccessarily make the producer make the best product it just makes them find the best way to remove dollars from your pocket. Somtimes it is through superior products but more often than not it is through superior marketing, which is not without some merit.
I'm all ranted out already. Enough nonsensical garbage for today. I'm kind of hungry now and itching to work on some websites. Also itching to get my new laptop and stop working at this job. Only a few more weeks. Weezer is playing right now. Need to reboot.
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 11:34AM EDT
Toyota is impressing me lately. I had said 10 years and all their cars would be hybrid. Looks like it may be sooner. Starting in late 2006 they will make their top selling car, the Camry in a hybrid version. And they already make the Highlander, Lexus RX400h and Prius hybrids with a Lexus sport sedan hybrid is on the way. And the technology can only get better especially battery life. I was just thinking. Hydrogen fuel cell technology could probably dominate in 5 - 10 years if there wasn't the obstacle of pertroleum companies. We could use the existing infrastructure of gas stations and make them hydrogen fueling stations. If is fucking senseless how companies survive by bleeding the consumer of their cash instead of just advancing technological process for the good of the planet and humans. Car companies should already be testing out fleet vehicles like public transportation with hydrogen fuel cells. Think about it. How cool would it be to have every bus in Philadelphia run on clean hydrogen fuel cells? It would be quieter for one reason. One cannot over look the noise pollution caused by vehicles. We have all gotten used to the incessant noise of the road but eventually that may be a thing of the past. Fuel cell buses, quieter, no more black soot while driving behind one. All these things are possible now but some fuckers like to mess around, make excuses and horde resources. I've been thinking about this lately. Having a lot of money in the bank. One could argue that putting money in the back helps everybody. Yes this would be true if banks operated in a fashion in which they themselves did not horde resources but facilitated the distribution of money among the populace. But they don't although they could and would be much more efficient at it than any government agency. I suppose that is the idea of a bank in its purest idealistic form but in reality their practices serve merely to enforce a class system that creates disproportionate wealth among a small percentage of the population. The rich get richer. But it is funny because there are mounds of evidence that monetary wealth beyond a modest point is essentially worthless. But yet somehow as a soceity the pinnacle of living is generally seen as large amounts of monetary wealth. The pinnacle for me is progress, innovation, exploration. I think it is for everyone else too. But the specter of our monetary system haunts those things. You can't blame the system completely and you can't blame the people completely. Modications are needed on both fronts. It is a freaking paradox, catch-22 or whatever you want to call it. You have to know where to make the modifications to be able to make the next one without throwing the whole system out of wack.
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 10:52AM EDT
I am stil trying to fathom how awesome downloading old school Nintendo games will be. They could make massive amounts of money. I hope it is free. But they could even just charge a yearly subscription fee for access and I would pay it. Or even a cheap per download fee of like 50 cents. It would be bigger than ring tone downloading.
Redefining term of backward compatability." It's a virtual console, able to download 20 years of Nintendo content. You will be able to Download NES, Super NES and N64 games. You can get every Nintendo game ever made
That is is from this article. I hope that means that all games, not just ones published by Nintendo will be available. Like Bad Dudes. Besides what previous publisher of Nintendo games wouldn't want to get in on that action. They would just be old games sitting in their libraries that noboy purchases anymore, why would they keep them locked up for no one else to ever play again. Now if they got Sega to publish their library of Genesis games on Revolution's download service I would shit my pants 4 times over. Dude, I just want to play freaking Punch Out again. Dude, I can't wait to see what they do with their online service. It better be good and not crap. I was just reading that Nintendo invested a while ago in a company that makes input devices that detect motion with gyro scopes. Gyration. But nothing on Gamecube ever used the technology. Nintendo's new revolution controller is suppose to be revolutionary. Maybe it is a two piece controller. Dude, what if it was a controller designed to use your wrist movement to control the game. Dude, what if it was two piece and in one hand you had an ultra accurate aiming device that used a gyroscope to detect your wrist motion while in the other hand was a Spaceball type input for movement. Think of the possibilities in first person shooters. It would make it so easy for someone to pickup the control scheme. You aim and fire with your right hand and move with the left. I would be very intutive. A Spaceball is this really awesome input device for controlling movement in 3D space. It is mainly by used 3D designers and never really caught on for anything else. I've never used one but I heard they are awesome and easy to used. It allows simultaneous movement in all directions of 3D space. I've done 3D modeling and I can tell you that the mouse can somtimes be a headache for navigating in 3D space because you can't move in all directions at once you have to stop and click a button then change direction. It slows things down a lot. I have a feeling Nintendo's new controller is going to use one or both of the things I've described. That would be interesting. How would one play Madden with something like that. Actually it could make all games easier to control and more accesible to all people. Maybe the days of just using your thumbs are over. Nah it will probably still have the same old thumb buttons for backward compatibility.