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Sun, 31 Oct 2004
Tonight Tim, Cindy, Matt, Casey and I went to Elysium's Halloween 80's Night Spectacular. Since it was more than a little appropriate, I went dressed as Devo. I must say, I was a resounding success.
Not only did the DJ play multiple Devo songs (and of course I danced on stage for each one), but I was asked to be in the costume contest, and took third place. (There were those who said I was robbed by Edward Scissorhands and the man dressed as Wonder Woman, but third place was fine for me.)
Tim and Casey were happy to have me along dressed as Devo, because the women in the place couldn't be kept away with a stick. Since I'm involved at the moment, I couldn't very well take advantage of my situation; I did, however, get my buddies the hookup (OK, I got Tim the hookup. Casey, if anything, needs fewer hookups—there were no fewer than six women at Elysium tonight who are in Casey's bag, so to speak). Am I a nice guy, or what?
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You asked for it; here it is.
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Scott wrote
Nice energy dome, dude.
gwax wrote
How's Germany these days Klaus? Also, your clothing is not tight enough; you are losing your German edge Klaus.
Sherv wrote
Who the fuck's that pencil-necked twerp?
Goddamn you're svelte, motherfucker.
Also, Tod Paulus is already well on his way to cult status in my circle of friends.
Kristin wrote
Holy shit Riad, when'd you get so thin?
Awesome costume :)
Whip it good.
May wrote
HOT DAMN!
Now if you only lost that engineer's tan, we'd be talking total pimp status.
hippo wrote
oh my god!
rofl! rofl!
Holloway wrote
Dude, where are the "guns"?
hippo wrote
you have a real job now. throw the milkcrates out and get some real shelves.
repak wrote
Thu, 28 Oct 2004
Re: guns: Oh, they're there, it's just bad lighting, though you'll still kick my ass lifting ('cept on legs, of course).
Re: milk crates: fuck that shit. I love my fucking milk crates. They go well with the Army of Darkness action figure.
I didn't provide a link to PosseBot when I first mentioned it because it lived on a computer inside SiLabs's network. Since then, I've moved it to positron so that one of our posse buddies who works for another company can use it. That also means that y'all can take a gander at it as well.
I'm sick. Sick, I tell you.
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Wow. They did it. It was hawsome.
Dylan got every game in HiDef and he's burning DVDs of them for me. Too bad I didn't think to have him do the ALCS as well—whereas the Sox just made the cards look bad from the 9th inning of game 1 onwards, the ALCS was real fucking BASEBALL. I'd say probably some of the most exciting-to-watch games, well, period. Nevertheless, I'm glad to have the WS on DVD. By the way, if any of y'all want them, lemme know and I'll burn you copies.
If you don't read Bill Simmons's column on ESPN.com, you totally should. Check out this awesome stuff. Also see Amrys's account of the whole #!—it's totally A-side.
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Tue, 26 Oct 2004
Mike is having a Halloween party this year, and of course everyone has to dress up for it. My first idea was to go as the combined Ignignoct and Urr from the original Mooninites episode where they fire the quad laser ("The bullet is enormous, there is no escaping!" See image, right.), but I decided that carrying around that much cardboard might interfere with my drinking agenda.
Next on the list would have gotten me "most tasteless costume" easily—zombie superman in a wheelchair—and was discarded not on that basis but because being in a wheelchair would suck too much. After that, I considered going as Rainbow Randolph from Death to Smoochy, but was completely unsuccessful in locating his sequined rainbow jacket.
Then the other day I was downloading a bunch of random shit from SuprNova and I happened to pick up the music video of Devo's classic hit, Whip It. My mission was clear: obtain an Energy Dome and Devolve. If you're so culturally clueless that you have managed to get this far in life without seeing the music video, well, you suck. The costume involves a black sleeveless turtleneck, black shorts, black shoes, black socks pulled up the calves, and, of course, the Energy Dome hat to top it all off (see image, right). Unfortunately, Club Devo was out of the red ones, so I'm going to get a blue one.
I just haven't decided yet whether to paint it or not.
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Kristin wrote
dude
You MUST post photos. :)
Mon, 25 Oct 2004
Devo is gay. But zombie superman in a wheelchair would be fucking AWESOME.
truculent eunuch: i think people can give up their religion when they are faced with death
truculent eunuch: ie, japan after nagasaki
scrap1r0n: and I think people hold tighter to it in such a situation
scrap1r0n: they didn't give up their religion
scrap1r0n: we killed God
scrap1r0n: there's a difference
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shazam wrote
So... Are you the eunuch or the iron?
repak wrote
Tim is the eunuch. I don't use ez17yroldgrl when I'm IMing at work—I figure a little tact on my part goes a long way.
Rodin wrote
Thu, 21 Oct 2004
You see, Buddha, I'm not very religious. So, to me, you're just a man. And I don't like you.
I guess the baseball gods decided to call my bluff and let the Cards take it away from the Astros. That's fine; I can handle setbacks. I probably won't be going to STL to watch the game; instead, a buddy of mine is recording the games in HD and we're going to make DVDs of them (oh yeah... it's gonna be hot). By the way, let me know if all y'all back there in Boston want a copy of the DVD set—I'm sure if I send one copy your way you guys can handle redistribution as necessary.
I guess to completely break the curse, we have to defeat an older evil than the Yankees, viz., the Cardinals, who killed us in 1946 and again in 1967. Man, this is gonna be a great World Series.
GO SOX
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Wed, 20 Oct 2004Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Sox just pulled off the biggest comeback ever. Between their bullpen midway through the series and their hitting staff in the late games, they pulled their shit together and rocked the fucking Bronx.
Now I have to pray that Houston wins tomorrow so I can go see the Sox play in the World Series without driving to Saint Louis (which I will do if necessary).
If you don't read Baseball Prospectus, you should. Start off with this gem from a couple days ago.
I can't say this enough:
GO SOX!
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Wed, 13 Oct 2004In what appears to be a trend, I've gone and made another software monstrosity for automating something that just doesn't need it.
At work, we go out to lunch every day; we call our lunch group "Posse." Many days, we end up going to the same place we went just a few days ago despite being within easy reach of many other good choices. To solve this problem, a former employee had what is jokingly known as "the C program," i.e., a program which would act as an oracle concerning posse location. That former employee, Joe, still goes out to lunch with us, because he now works at a different IC company here in Austin, but "the C program" was lost when he left.
You can see where this is going: I volunteered to rewrite it, and in the process ended up making it, ummm, awesome. First of all, it's now supported by a mySQL backend. Second, it's no longer an oracle; instead, it mails everyone at 6:30a with three choices and directs them to a website where they can vote on lunch. At 11:30a, the votes are tallied, the decision is made, and records are updated as appropriate in order to ensure that tomorrow's restaurant choices are sufficiently different from recent choices as to keep us going somewhere new every day. Of course, popularity figures in, too—a place that wins a lot is more likely to be trotted out for the vote than a place that's come in dead last every time.
The coolest part of all this is that in writing PosseBot, as I've decided to call it, I ended up teaching myself quite a bit of SQL. In fact, almost all the crunching is done by the database instead of by the perl scripts with which it interfaces—and yes, Jim, you're right, it's probably unnecessary, but Goddamnit it's cool to generate a PDF (not the Adobe thing, the 6.041 thing) in SQL.
For your amusement:
create temporary table tmp.tmp1
(id smallint unsigned primary key not null,
efftick float not null);
insert into tmp.tmp1 (id,efftick) select
id,log(1+tick) from restaurants;
set @y = (select type from history,restaurants where
winner=id order by day desc limit 0,1);
replace into tmp.tmp1 (id,efftick) select
id,log(1+tick/if(@y = 'general',1,10))
from restaurants where type = @y;
set @y = (select type from history,restaurants where
winner=id order by day desc limit 1,1);
replace into tmp.tmp1 (id,efftick) select
id,log(1+tick/if(@y = 'general',1,5))
from restaurants where type = @y;
set @y = (select type from history,restaurants where
winner=id order by day desc limit 2,1);
replace into tmp.tmp1 (id,efftick) select
id,log(1+tick/if(@y = 'general',1,2))
from restaurants where type = @y;
set @y = ((select sum(tot) from (select count(*)
as tot from history group by winner) as foo)
+ (select sum(winbonus) from restaurants));
update tmp.tmp1,restaurants set efftick =
(efftick + .25 * winbonus / @y ) where
tmp.tmp1.id = restaurants.id;
update tmp.tmp1,(select winner,count(winner)
as tot from history group by winner) as
foobar set efftick = (efftick +
.25 * tot / @y ) where winner = id;
set @y = (select sum(efftick) from tmp.tmp1);
update tmp.tmp1 set efftick = efftick / @y;
select tmp.tmp1.id,efftick,name,type from
tmp.tmp1,restaurants where
restaurants.id = tmp.tmp1.id;
I rule.
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May wrote
Wow
You do. You're also crazy. Loves it.
jim wrote
SELECT name FROM possible_cool_group_names WHERE name LIKE "pussy";
jim wrote
ps. your code is always unreadable.
gwax wrote
ah SQL
SQL is great stuff, though I think that you may be doing too much stuff in the database. Of course, that may just be me. Keep up the inane work.
Rodin wrote
SELECT mood FROM moods_of_jim WHERE mood LIKE "cheerful";
rm -f core
Gautham wrote
Mon, 11 Oct 2004
Bigtime's is more elegant. None of this voting or PDF bullshit. It delivers a verdict, and you better like it.
http://goatmeat.mit.edu/~mespence/perl/Restaurant.cgi
Yesterday was the best long-distance drive I've ever done. It went by fast, I didn't start falling asleep, and I actually had fun.
I think I've discovered a nearly optimal approach to long drives.
- I left early—I was on the road by 7:15a (I planned on earlier, but the best laid plans), so I got home by 10:30p.
- I brought along a supply of tea bags to add to my coffee cups and a couple sandwiches that I split up and ate gradually over the course of the day (keeping my blood sugar levels pretty constant, which helps a lot with drowsiness).
- I made a policy not to stop except for gas and to go until my gas tank was almost completely empty—keeping momentum is important.
- (This was the most enjoyable part.) I downloaded mp3s of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency book-on-tape (written and read by who else? but Douglas Adams) from positron while I drove. Books on tape rule, as does Sprint for its unlimited data policy with the Vision plans—the book is 180-ish Mb!
By the way, Dirk Gently was a good non-Hitchhiker Douglas Adams book. If you're going somewhere far away, grab it from positron. Alternatively, pick up a copy—even as a book-on-tape it is only 6 hours and 40 minutes, so it ought to take you a lot less than that to read it.
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wonder shaper wrote
Sun, 10 Oct 2004
I'm downloading it for my next drive home, and now Positron is ass-slow. You really need to use the wonder shaper..
-jim
Haven't blogged in a while. Why? I drove to Iowa on Friday (left at 4p, got home at 8a or thereabouts) and I'm leaving for Austin tomorrow morning at around 6a. I have to leave that early because I need to get back in time to go to 80's night at Elysium (yes, it's a Goth dyke club most of the time, but not on Sundays).
Upon arriving in Iowa, I talked with my parents for a while, then grabbed a quick catnap. I woke up at 1p and biked out to Badger (yes, that's the name of a town in Iowa). I'm now sure it's time to buy myself a road bike (as opposed to just hybridizing my Moab).
I hopped in the truck and immediately realized something was very wrong. Turns out, the outer brake pad on the front driver's side died a while ago and scored the fuck out of the rotor. Off to Advance Auto Parts for new pads and rotors (what the hey, I figured, may as well do both rotors). If I'd been thinking ahead, I'd have done the same for my sister's car, which needs it badly and now lives at home because she moved to New York and decided a car was a bad idea.
Of course, you already know that Boston clinched the ALDS in three consecutive games against the Angels. I didn't get to watch the final game, but I did have the unique pleasure of watching the box score on my cell phone while driving through Fort Worth. Yay.
My dad went crazy and set up a fucking awesome theatre system in the basement. I'm talking Integra Research and Definitive Technology audio with Sharp DLP. I'm watching Runaway Jury on it right now even though I should be sleeping. This movie ain't half bad, by the way. I wish Day After Tomorrow were out already—that would be awesome on this thing.
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hippo wrote
Wed, 06 Oct 2004
wow silver cyber slut eh?
Finally stretched my Picasso and put it up on my wall. Holy shnikes, Richard.
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If I were wearing jeans, I'd get lost in your couch.
woz wrote
looking good!
repak wrote
damn right!
denim couch = awesome. Just to clarify.
steinway wrote
photographee
more photos!! moooooooore!
... and what does he bust out with but this jewel:
- KrazyLlama: yes, I agree, it rules like Al Sharpton at a cupcake convention
Holy shit.
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Mon, 04 Oct 2004
holy motherfucker of God that's a lot of water
On the way home from work tonight, I got caught in a fucking torrential downpour. Normally this wouldn't be blogworthy, except that I was riding Rosalyn at the time.
Not only did I get fucking drenched (and cold, to boot!), I was actually worried for my life for most of the 20 miles I was in the storm. First, the Duc has Michelin Pilot Race H2s—which is to say hawt racing tires—that suck when it's just a little wet, and are unmentionably bad with half an inch of water on the road. Second, the thirty-ish foot visibility was severely reduced by the two layers of fog and water—on my glasses and helmet visor—such that at one point I was only staying on the road by following the taillights of the car in front of me.
But the worst part of all is that now I'm going to have to wax Rosalyn again...
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I can't believe you gave your motorcycle such a gay name.
you rate very high in sanitation... I've checked
I went over to Tim's house last night and watched THX 1138 along with Dylan, Cindy, and Casey. In one word: wow!
Dylan, being a highly technical film buff, was quick to point out that George Lucas remasters are always nearly perfect—there are never registration or framing issues. In short, it looks gorgeous.
Casey informed us that Walter Murch was on the sound production crew, so it's no surprise that the sound was incredibly well done throughout. For the remastered DVD version, Lucas took the original monoaural (according to IMDB) soundtrack and remixed it in THX 5.1. Tim's sound system (being among the nicest on the market) is at least somewhat responsible for just how good the damn thing sounded; nevertheless, it seemed to me that at least some of the credit has to go to the guys who did the rework, because they got it spot on.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Lucas remaster without some sort of meddling from him. In this case, there were some things that just looked too digital not to have been added in the new release, unless ol' George was able to bring an Indigo farm back to 1969 with him and tweak history a little bit. Don't worry, though—as far as I could tell, there was nothing as egregious as the Han-Greedo-who-the-fuck-shot-first Star Wars debacle.
Go out and rent it. Keep an eye out for Napoleon (he's hard to miss), Jesus (ditto), and the ultra-sexy room-full-o'-computer. Also, take a moment to ponder the total lack of scale in a brightly-lit completely white room.
...and consider watching it high the second time around.
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post torrent plz kthx
shazam wrote
Dude, Wally and I went to see THX at the Commons and were FLOORED. We walked out of there wide-eyed, exclaiming to the passers-by, "What ever happened to George Lucas?!" I went straight to Newbury Comics and bought the DVD (on sale!) that weekend.
The film is positively beautiful. Wally and I actually had a long conversation about Lucas's tendency towards continually remaking his work; I think he did a lovely job with THX, but I'd have to go back and watch the updated Star Wars films again to see how I feel about those. We did just watch Empire on DVD, though, and I barely noticed anything.
In general, I think it invites a larger discussion about the nature of creative endeavor and the right of the artist to make his work better (in his eyes, if not his audience's -- for whose opinion really matters?), rather than the way it's usually framed: Lucas "betraying" his fans or something like that. While I admit I'm not sure yet where I stand on the creator-having-forever-control issue (I have some sticking idea about the importance of letting-go, which I outlined once to Sherv, but which, after this conversation with Wax, I'm beginning to doubt a bit), I will say that the idea that Lucas has to bend to a crazy fan base is retarded. Just because we (I'll include myself in here, since circa second grade I was postively a nut when it came to Star Wars) have sentimental attachments to the film(s) as it (they) was (were) originally made (which, we are told, was not quite as Lucas had envisioned it, due to technical and monetary constraints) does not mean that the reissued films are worse. I'll entertain the idea that they may be worse on some other metric, but this is the argument usually put forth, and it's crap.
In the end, are we really to say to the creator, control-freak or no, "No, you are not allowed to go back and realize your vision"? I wonder if there can be anything more rewarding than seeing something you've imagined come to life AS YOU'VE IMAGINED IT. It must feel amazing.
I'm hybridizing Wax's arguments and mine, so forgive me if this is all over the plac. Another case in point, which Wally pointed out, is Eggers's novel "Sacrament" (originally "You Shall Know Our Velocity"). There are subtle differences in the books, but the changes Eggers made in the revision make it a better novel. (We'll not talk about the insertion here, though -- that's in some ways more in line with "AHWOSG"'s "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making" (though the latter doesn't interrupt the book the way
"Sacrament"'s insertion does, somewhat infuriatingly), and I'm not sure I want to get into a discussion of this seemingly compulsive need to go back and clarify, something which I find touching and endearing in Eggers, and which may indeed have a strong relation to the matter at hand -- but, like I said, I'm not prepared for that just yet.)
shazam wrote
Sun, 03 Oct 2004
Shit, dude, I gotta put paragraph tags in my fucking comments to get 'em to separate? What the fuck kind of blog is this?!
Now I'm really sorry for writing so much. Nobody's ever going to read that shit.
Sigh. End of the workday -- time to go home.
Last night I went with a bunch of friends to the Salt Lick, an awesome barbeque restaurant. Beyond having good food, the Salt Lick dining experience is informed by two other significant factors. First, since it's located in Hayes county which is (used to be?) dry, they can't sell alcohol there; instead it's BYOB. Second, one generally orders "Family Style" dining, which is to say, unlimited piles of ribs, brisket, and sausage.
So when all you fuckers decide to drag your asses down here and visit me, I promise we'll go eat ourselves stupid (especially you, Hippo).
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gwax wrote
like that's hardFri, 01 Oct 2004
I have on good authority that hippo can eat himself stupid on almost no food at all.
After getting the Picasso (see below), I'm convinced that I need more in the way of wall decorations. Problem is, I can't quite decide what to get.
I've got a few posters in mind. What do y'all think of these:
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shazam wrote
Dude, the Bugatti poster is the clear winner here. It's so awesome! And, I'd say, and damn sight more classy than the one you used to have on your door at Quuxfield. ;)
I like the cognac one as a runner-up. I really love the style of the forum one, but it just doesn't grab me as much.
Steinway wrote
Fabulous! I'm all about the three with solid backgrounds. My half sister went to Italy and returned to decorate her home with all such beautiful posters.
You're such a modern man.
hippo wrote
whaby why do you want your apartement to look like
a sterotypical italian restuarant. Pernis , Baroni and Bolig
are all over the place. If you must get one go for the bugatti or congac.
repak wrote
re: common
Hippo, you're right about some of them being all over the place, but the cognac one is pretty damn common, too.
In truth, I've never seen the Pernis or the Bolig anywhere, but I'm willing to believe they're fairly common.
Seems like the only real consensus is that espresso is in last place. Hmmm...
Scott wrote
You definitely want the Bolig one.
Canvas giclee reproductions are incredible, especially if
the original is photographed correctly. If you're into
paintings, there are some folks in Boston who are super nice
and do an excellent job. See http://www.museumreplica.com/
I go through their gallery all the time because the same
company runs the color lab that I use.
As for posters, there's a superb shop back home in Cincinnati
that specializes in preserving original posters from the
early- and mid-20th century. I could dig up their info if
you like. I'm not sure they have a site on the interweb.
Sherv wrote
I agree with Scott.
Bolig all the way. I also the like the Cognac.
gwax wrote
Espresso one is awesome
Damnit, I disagree with your consensus, the espresso one is awesome. The guy is totally hanging out of a fucking train to get coffee!
Also, the Bugatti one is cool.
I decided to buy myself something cool for my birthday, so a couple weeks ago I searched around and found 1st-art-gallery.com, whence one can purchase prints or oil-on-canvas reproductions of basically any painting at not-terribly-unreasonable prices. I decided on Picasso's Amant de l'Absinthe on canvas, and set about waiting the two weeks for it to arrive.
It arrived yesterday straight from China rolled up in a tight little tube with cellophane protecting the painted side of the canvas. I was surprised that it was rolled instead of stretched, but that's cool—I'll do it myself. Not on a Friday night, but perhaps tomorrow morning.
I'm sure you're looking forward to hearing how it goes.
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