Gregarius

Unread items (100)

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Decompiling a data file

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 1:25pm PDT by rolypolyman

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I am trying to reverse-engineer a data file comprised of various integers, strings, floats, and so on. Is there a good Windows tool that will help me group the records and start picking the fields apart? I'd rather not try this in a plain vanilla hex editor.
Good discussion board software?

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 1:20pm PDT by frykitty

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Looking for good web-based discussion board software. I'm currently using Vanilla, but it's difficult to manage, and a little too beta for my needs. Which are:
- Easy applicant approval and management.
- Easy pruning.
- Good compatability with a variety of browsers.
The board will have a lot of volume when the time comes, and the users will have a wide range of computer skill-levels.

I've used YaBB, which is decent but I'd love to hear it if there's something better. PhpBB is kludgy to manage.

Free is good, but at this point I'm willing to shell out a little if necessary.
iPod and iTunes: balancing the books

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 1:12pm PDT by vkxmai

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I have 90GB of mp3s on a hard drive and 27GB of mp3s on my 5th generation iPod. How do I determine which songs on my iPod are already present in my 90GB library, and which ones aren't, using a smart playlist? I read this thread: http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/34763 but really didn't find what I was looking for. Many of the songs on my iPod were there before I got my mbp and before I put all of my music into one library using iTunes.

I would like to find out which songs are only on my iPod so I can back them up to a hard drive and then use smart playlists and sync to safely manage the contents of the iPod.

Deadspin

For Your Saturday Afternoon Viewing Pleasure...

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 1:12pm PDT

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12:30, CBS: Senior Golf. PGA Championship, Third Round. Names in contention include: Peter Jacobsen, Jay Haas, Tom Watson, Curtis Strange. Keep that in mind for a second.
1:00, Fox: MLB. Regional coverage, including New York Mets @ Florida Marlins and Los Angeles Dodgers @ Washington Nationals. And I won't be able to watch a damn one of them on MLB.tv.
3:00, TBN: Kirk Cameron. Nothing to do with sports. I just find this amusing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4&search=kirk%20cameron%20banana
3:00, CBS: PGA Golf. FedExSt. Jude Classic, Third Round. Names in contention: Darron Stiles, Chris Smith, Tim Herron, Tom Pernice Jr., Brian Gay. I bet the FedEx people would switch line-ups with the Senior golf people, if given the choice.
3:30, NBC: Arena Football. Regional coverage, including Georgia Force @ Dallas Desperados, and Arizona Rattlers @ San Jose Sabercats. Taking a quick glance at the rest of today's line-up, you know, Arena Football doesn't seem so silly anymore, does it?
4:00, ESPN2: MLS. Colorado Rapids @ Real Salt Lake. RSL could post their first-ever three game winning streak. That would be so special.
4:00, ABC: WNBA Basketball. Detroit Shock @ Connecticut Sun. It seems like there's a lot of softball on the ESPNs this weekend, too, if this isn't quite feminine enough for you.
5:00, Comedy Central: Movie. Major League.

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Ask MetaFilter

Pimp my Huffy bicycle

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 1:11pm PDT by bjork24

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My wife and I have really started to get into bike riding lately - nothing extreme or long distance, just urban riding (10 miles or less). I have an old Huffy multi-speed that I'd like to dismantle, clean up, and repaint, but I don't know the first thing about bicycle maintenance and dis/assembly. Help! I could take it to the local bike shop down the road, but I'm a very DIY type of guy, so I'd much rather learn to do it myself. Could anyone point me towards some good online resources for newbie bikers (tips on maintenance, customizing, painting, etc.)? Gracias amigos!

YAYsports! NBA - Your source for no NBA news

Pat Riley has an idea

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 12:50pm PDT

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kottke.org remaindered links

Kevin Smith's report from the Cannes Film Festival, where Clerks II got an 8-minute standing ovation

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 12:45pm PDT by jkottke

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Kevin Smith's report from the Cannes Film Festival, where Clerks II got an 8-minute standing ovation. Harvey Weinstein: "In my thirty years of coming here, I've never seen a standing ovation last that long at a midnight show in Cannes. Ever."

Photos from flannelmouthed's contacts

Champagne chair

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 12:38pm PDT by rockity_roll

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rockity_roll posted a photo:
Blurred Gossamer

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 12:38pm PDT by moonbird

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moonbird posted a photo:

Deadspin

About Last Night...

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 12:26pm PDT

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• MLB: Mets 1, Marlins 5. Rookie Josh Johnson got the better of Pedro Martinez. And speaking of Pedro and johnson, check out the note here about a nude Pedro offering his boxing gloves to a couple of reporters yesterday.

• NHL Playoffs: Hurricanes 4, Sabres 0. It's the year of the unknown goalie. Someone named Martin Gerber, who hasn't started a game in a month, posted a shutout for the 'Canes. Rue McClanahan is scheduled to start Game 5 for Buffalo against Jaleel White and the 'Canes.

• NBA Playoffs: Suns 98, Mavericks 105. Just 98 points for the Suns. What a slow, ugly, grind-it-out game. 59 points combined from Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard.

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How Much Is A Picture Worth?

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 12:05pm PDT by cjw333

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How much is a picture worth? I recently received an e-mail from a well known publisher of travel books. The e-mail was inquiring about a picture that I took that they would like to use for an upcoming publication. The publication will run for 2 years with an estimated print run of 50,000 copies. One of the questions asked is how much I would charge for them to use my picture. I am not a professional photographer so I have no idea how much I should charge. Some ideas or a point in the right direction would be appreciated.
Folk/Bluegrass/Country songs that tell stories?

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 12:01pm PDT by jdroth

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What a surprise: I'm working on another music mix and would like suggestions. This mix features folk/bluegrass/country songs that tell stories. The less production, the less instrumentation, the more acoustic the better. Songs like Kenn Roger's "The Gambler"? Too produced. I'm looking for vocals and a little bit of instrumentation.

The inspiration for this mix was "Coyotes" by Don Edwards [iTMS] (which can be heard in Grizzly Man).

Other songs that fit the bill include "Cold Missouri Waters" by Cry Cry Cry [iTMS]; Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" performed by Dolly, Emmylou, and Linda [iTMS]; the acoustic version of "Dead Man's Hill" by Indigo Girls [iTMS of original version]; "Mama's Opry" by Iris DeMent [iTMS]; and so on. Not all the songs have to tell stories. I have Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" [iTMS] and Dolly Parton's re-make of "Seven Bridges Road" [iTMS] in the mix at the moment. And Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier" [iTMS].

So far this mix tends toward the somber, but that's certainly not a requirement. What do you say, Mefites? Can you help a fellow find similar songs?

Waxy.org Links

WEP key as living room artwork

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:51am PDT

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[via]

Another Day in the Empire

Denny Hastert’s Sudden Constitutional Conversion

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:49am PDT by Administrator

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It’s curious Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has excoriated the neocon controlled Justice Department for violating the Constitution. Bush neocons have trampled the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for years and Mr. Hastert has not said boo. Hastert is upset over an FBI raid of Louisiana Democrat Rep. William Jefferson’s congressional office. Jefferson is a garden variety Congress critter, corrupt from top to bottom, and on the take, as a videotape of him taking a $100,000 bribe from an informant for a Nigerian official reveals (other members of Congress, meanwhile, take legal bribes, known as campaign contributions, selling the nation down the river to corporate interests).

“The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case,” said Hastert in a statement released earlier this week. “Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress. Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years.”

“The Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a Separation of Powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any one branch of government,” Hastert continues. “They were particularly concerned about limiting the power of the Executive Branch. Every Congressional Office contains certain Legislative Branch documents that are protected by the Constitution. This protection-as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held-is essential to guarantee the independence of the Legislative Branch. No matter how routine and non-controversial any individual Legislative Branch document might be, the principles of Separation of Powers, the independence of the Legislative Branch, and the protections afforded by the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution must be respected in order to prevent overreaching and abuse of power by the Executive Branch.”

More specifically, it appears the Justice Department ignored the following, as enumerated Article I, Section 6, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution: “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

Again, it is curious Hastert is outraged about this incident and yet has remained mute over Bush’s other violations of the Constitution, from the obviously illegal NSA snoop program to ignoring the McCain amendment against torture. Hastert only recognizes tyranny when it touches his fellows. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” declared James Madison. “Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.” Unfortunately, this “universal reprobation of the system” is nowhere to be found in the halls of Congress, that is until it descends on the coven.

It appears, Article I, Section 6, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution not withstanding, a deal will be brokered. “What’s likely to result from the contretemps is that Hastert will receive some assurances regarding future potential FBI actions in Congress, Republicans will resume their bovine complacence toward executive branch steamrolling of the legislature … and no one will have any assurance that the FBI isn’t being or won’t be used to advance partisan or parochial executive branch agendas,” opines BTC News. Bush, or rather the fascist neocons, who at least in part base their view of government on the totalitarian philosophy of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, may continue to abrogate the power of the legislature and continue to trash the Constitution.

Recall Bush’s quip that if “this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier—just so long I’m the dictator,” a statement roundly considered a joke. Bush made this remark on December 18, 2000, while speaking with a group that included Trent Lott, Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and the recently outraged Dennis Hastert, all who had a good laugh. It is common knowledge Bush is not a reading man, but if he bothered to pick up a book on occasion, he might find solace in the words of Julius Caesar, as imagined by William Shakespeare: “When could they say, till now, that talk’d of Rome, that her wide walks encompass’d but one man?”

Bush is no Caesar, as the latter is considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, as well as an accomplished politician and one of the ancient world’s prominent leaders. Bush, on the other hand, is simply a cardboard cut-out, an alcohol and drug enfeebled wreck from a crime family guilty of collaborating with the Nazis. Dubya is nothing more than a front man for the Straussian neocon cabal responsible for the ongoing eradication of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As the neocons are Jacobin radicals, tutored in the authoritarian politics of Trotsky, Strauss, Schmitt, Plato and Machiavelli, all of this about as surprising as a fox slaughtering chickens upon gaining access to the coop.

this moment

Canzone 19 There are creatures in the ...

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:43am PDT by alan

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Canzone 19 There are creatures in the world with such other vision that it is protected from the full sun: yet others, because the great light offends them cannot move around until the evening falls: and others with mad desire, that hope perhaps to delight in fire, because it gleams, prove the other power, that which burns: alas, and my place is with these last. I am not strong enough to gaze

Global Voices Online

Indonesia: Earthquake in Java

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 11:37am PDT by preetam

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Fatih Sayud has a post on the earthquake in Indonesia. The 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Java island just after dawn and caused the death of around 3000 people.

Perfect Duluth Day

Greetings from Bulgaria

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 11:23am PDT by -Berv

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Photos from flannelmouthed's contacts

Sunset over South St. Louis

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 11:22am PDT by Oldtasty

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Oldtasty posted a photo:
Fairfield Las Vegas Grand Desert Resort

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 11:22am PDT by Old Shoe Woman

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Old Shoe Woman posted a photo:

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

1. Arriving in Vegas, 2. Fairfield Grand Desert on Harmon, 3. Carl Unloading & Taking Pic of Me, 4. Our Rental Mini-Van, 5. Our Master Suite, 6. Presidential Suite Dressing Room, 7. Our Patio at Grand Desert, Las Vegas, 8. Dining Room and Living Room, 9. Kitchen of Presidential Suite, 10. Dining Room of Presidential Suite, 11. Carl on Sofa in Living Room of Resort, 12. Garden Next to Our Patio, 13. Great Lounging Spot on Patio, 14. Jim Naps on Patio, 15. Our Patio, 16. Rooms Above Ours, 17. My Laptop on Patio, 18. Carl & Jerome's Patio Door, 19. Jason & Karen's Patio Door, 20. Grand Desert Towers Above, 21. Garden Railing By Patio, 22. Patio Doors to Living Rm/Our Room, 23. Me Lounging on Patio, 24. Tower One @ Grand Desert, 25. Back Home - Grand Desert Resort - Off the Strip - Las Vegas, 26. Each Tower at Grand Desert Has Different Foyer, 27. Me Having Breakfast & Checking Email, 28. I've Having Breakfast on Patio with My Laptop, 29. The Patio - My Favorite Spot at Grand Desert Resort, 30. Judy & Jim are on their way to Vegas

We will be leaving on Friday to return to our Las Vegas timeshare suite. Yea!
Tobakhopper

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 11:22am PDT by Thomas Hawk

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

I first met torbakhopper in college back in the years before the internet. I was a writer, kind of, and the editor for our college newspaper. torbakhopper was this super creative type who hung out with all the other cool kids I knew, you know, the English major types. With a bit of prodding, our Art's Section Editor Rudi was able to get him to phone in movie reviews. They were brilliant.

I still remember his voice on the answering machine with his review of the film Apartment Zero:

"The film picks up speed when border, Jack Carnie, played with alluring devotion by Hart Boschner, arrives out of nowhere claiming to be 'whatever you want me to be,' and then doing so with shocking viability. Thus begins a journey that is far above the standards of modern suspense and indeed strives to outdo any notion character intrigues set before.

So, if lines such as "I'll clean the carpet, I promise, " or "you're not going to let this spoil our relationship are you Adrian? " sound funny without belaboring the context, then this is most decidedly a film that you will regret missing."

After college when I moved to San Francisco in the early nineties for graduate school torbakhopper and I spent a few beautiful years running around the City as carefree as recent college grads can be. No real concerns except what kind of fun can be created today. And we had a lot of that. More than anyone he shared my love and appreciation for all the little ironies, inconsistencies and absurdities that life is full of.

But like all good things, those precious years were by nature temporary. You can't be a kid fresh out of college forever (or can you). People grow up, move on, get jobs, go to more school, start relationships, end relationships, get married, have kids, and the like.

And then every so often things come back around again for a while. Technology has been helpful for me with that. I still live in San Francisco but torbakhopper is down in Santa Barbara. A place I simply must visit more. But things like Flickr help people share and communicate -- even if not in the most personal and direct of ways. I love the technology for this.

torbakhopper has a zeal for life that is rare. Aware of all that is bad in the world he is able to address that but at the same time focus on all that is also good and right and beautiful, or as more eloquently put by him, "my goal over the past year has been to return to a state of patience without desire and expectation."

A few weeks back torbakhopper came to San Francisco and we were able to have lunch and spend the afternoon running around shooting the City. It was a really great time. He's also painted a few of my photographs and is working on another right now. I'm totally blown away and honored. And I love that a tool like flickr can act as the medium for us to share. I really wish I could paint, but I cant'. I can shoot, but I can't paint. To see something that I've created remixed and recreated by someone else is a great joy of life.
Danger of Sunlight

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 11:22am PDT by tomswift46

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tomswift46 posted a photo:

Ask MetaFilter

Any (lab) test? We're so discreet, we even use parentheses.

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:58am PDT by tegoo

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Billboards around town offer the service of "Any (lab) test." The companies offering the service vary, but they all include the word "lab" in parentheses. Why the consistent parenthetical? The service wouldn't really make sense without the parentheses, would it?

freedarko.com

The future belongs to others

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:57am PDT by Bethlehem Shoals

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If last year's Phoenix Suns had a more pronounced effect on attitudes around the Association, it was only because the '06 edition is so far ahead of its time. I've never thought it would be cute to call a basketball team "avant-garde," but here the cap fits the daughter; watching that game last night, I finally realized just how revolutionary this squad is. Not for the utter dependance on the

Ask MetaFilter

Connecting to VPN and Internet at the same time

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:52am PDT by Sharcho

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VPN on Windows 2000: I need to connect to both the VPN and the Internet at the same time. I need some IP addresses to go through the VPN, and others to go through my router's gateway. I need to access the following IP addresses through the VPN:
192.168.10.*, 192.168.20.*, 222.111.55.111
And I want to access everything else through my router's gateway (192.168.1.254).

I tried unchecking the "Use default gateway on remote network" option on the advanced TCP/IP setting of the VPN connection, but after I do that I can't access anything on the VPN.
Daily MT blog post for del.icio.us links with one specific tag

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:44am PDT by bevedog

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How do I get a daily post to my Movable Type 3.2 blog of my del.icio.us links with one particular tag? I know how to set up a daily post of all my del.icio.us links using the "daily blog post" in the del.icio.us settings (instructions are at Common Craft if you are interested), but can't figure out how to limit that to links with one specific tag.

Right now, for my blog, See Also..., I tag some of my del.icio.us links with "see_also," then use the del.icio.us linkrolls to display just those items tagged "see_also" in a sidebar on my blog. Then I use FeedBurner's Link Splicer to insert those same items to my RSS feed as a daily feed item.

This works OK, but I'd prefer to have them show up as a bona fide blog entry, integrating those links with my blog archives, allowing comments on those posts, allowing me to axe the sidebar, etc. I'm not prepared to switch from either MT or del.icio.us.

The Sound of Young America

Old Guys Doin' It For Theyselves

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:36am PDT by Jesse Thorn

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Busta Rhymes f. Stevie Wonder (Produced by Eric Sermon and Dr. Dre) - Been Through the Storm

It's about as good as you'd hope. Not at all embarassing for anyone involved.

(via Spinemagazine)

Ask MetaFilter

Getting new job but have kid issues

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 10:13am PDT by workinprogress

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I have recently been offered a position with a new company. I have kid issues... read on... My issue is that my partner has a child that has to be dropped off every 15 days, three hours away for visitation with the child's father. From time to time I alone do the dropping off if my partner is working late. It was not a problem with my previous job as I would come in early on that Friday, not take a lunch and leave an hour early. No one was checking up on me as the supervisor was very lax. I plan to do the same thing at this new job but would like to let the HR person know. I don't want this new company to see the child as a hindrance. I am very much involved in every aspect of the child's life with my partner. How do I tell the HR guy about this situation? I do not want to disclose that I am gay (I don't think it's anyone's business) and I'm afraid if I say he is not really my child then they will think I should not be able to get out an hour early on Fridays every 15 days to drop him off. What is the best way to handle this?
Suggestions for a Berkshires vacation.

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 9:46am PDT by alexmikayla

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Vacationing in the Berkshires this summer... My husband and I will be vacationing in the Berkshires this summer and need suggestions on what to do, where to eat, etc.

We love coffee, microwbrews, architecture and nature.

We actually were thinking of heading into New Hampshire and Vermont too because we will be in the Berkshires for 8 days. So, anything within a 2 to 3 hour radius is fine.

Any suggestions would be helpful.
Anyone remember this toy from the 80s?

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 9:37am PDT by Wild_Eep

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Help a geek find a long-lost favorite childhood storybook/gadget. Fisher-Price made a series of storybooks and upon every page were small (yellow?) discs. There was a battery-operated device you'd place over the discs, and the device (through a kinematic inversion, the head would spin around and around over the stationary disc/page) would play the discs like a record. The pages were laminated (I think) and bound with a 'comb binding'. IIRC, it was called the 'Read-To-Me player'. I must've had 3 or 4 of these books (and the player) and I'd love to find some pictures, or better yet, one for sale. This would've been in the early 80's, or at least, that's when I played with it. I think one of the books was a Disney story of some kind.

L'il help?
A question of zeppelins

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 9:16am PDT by DieHipsterDie

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Why is Hydrogen inflammable? And not Helium? What's in the chemical makeup of Hydrogen that makes in imflammable. How is it different than a gas like Helium or Nitrogen?

And why does gasoline go boom and not water?

Largehearted Boy

Shorties

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 8:49am PDT by david

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Southern Shelter is a new mp3 blog run by Sloan Simpson, a prolific Athens taper. The blog highlights tracks (and videos) from the shows he's taped (many of which are in my personal collection of lossless music).

The Toronto Star profiles local comic book artist Bryan Lee O'Malley, author of the Scott Pilgrim comics.

As it happens, Scott is rather two-dimensional — and that's not just his exes talking. He's the bumbling yet endearing protagonist of the popular Scott Pilgrim series, the brainchild of local comic artist Bryan Lee O'Malley. Drawn in black-and-white, big-eyed Japanese manga style, the series has taken off to the point that the third volume, Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, was one of the most anticipated graphic novels of the year when it hit the shelves this week.

The Globe and Mail offers a timeline to Pete Doherty's descent.

Suede's Brett Anderson has recorded his debut solo album for a January release.

Is Oprah dissing Ice Cube?

"For [my film] Barbershop, she had Cedric the Entertainer on, but I wasn't invited. Maybe she's got a problem with hip-hop," the sometime actor says. Cube, 36, reasons that he is as deserving as any sociopath to make an impression in Oprah's legendary couch. "She's had damn rapists, child molesters and lying authors on her show. And if I'm not a rags-to-riches story for her, who is?"

The Sun interviews the Handsome Family's Brett & Rennie Sparks.

EXPLAIN your relationship with traditional country music? For instance, do you like Dolly Parton?

Rennie: We sure love some of the songs she’s written . . . Coat Of Many Colors, Jolene . . . traditional country music is just a thread that leads backwards in time to the great river of song. Some of those old songs have been sung in some form for over a thousand years and have been polished down to diamonds.

One of my favorite critics (and bloggers), Douglas Wolk, reviews recent graphic novels for the Washington Post.

The Sun interviews Barry Hyde of the Futureheads.

People still refer to you as “that Kate Bush band”, does it bother you?

If people come to see us live and don’t enjoy it at all apart from that song, then they’re not fans of our music — just that song. People who are into the band will listen to the album.

That song did really well but we’re good enough to write other singles to do as well as that.

Swedish singer-songwriter Jose Gonzales talks to the New Zealand Herald.

From a 2000 issue of Vanity Fair, Elvis Costello lists the 500 albums you need.

The Ask Metafilter community offers suggestions for the best rock instrumental songs.

MP3netnewswire lists iPod killers for summer 2006, part one.

tags: music books
Bittorrent Brunch

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 8:24am PDT by david

Tags: [edit]

Dresden Dolls: 2006-05-26, Lyon [flac]*
Strokes: 2006-05-23, Birmingham [flac]*
BellRays: 2006-05-12, Hollywood [flac]*
Drive-By Truckers: 2006-05-09, Seattle [flac]*
Bob Dylan: 2006-04-03, Stockton [flac]*
The Fall: 2005-10-21, Northampton [flac]*
Arcade Fire: 2005-09-01, Sheffield [flac]*
Ani DiFranco: 1998-10-16, Davis [flac]*
Guided By Voices: 1996-05-05, Los Angeles [flac]*
Uncle Tupelo: 1991-02-26, New Haven (NTSC) [dvd]*

*registration required

see also:

2006 SXSW downloads
2005 Vegoose Music Festival downloads
2005 Austin City Limits Music Festival downloads
2005 Live 8 downloads
2005 Bonnaroo downloads

tags: music download bittorrent
Daily Downloads

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 8:13am PDT by david

Tags: [edit]
Acid Mothers Temple: 2006-05-16, Buffalo [mp3,ogg,flac]
- "Freeform Within a Lemon" [mp3]
Apollo Up!: several tracks [mp3]
- "Saw Her Standing There" [mp3]
Ditty Bops: 2006-05-24, Los Feliz [mp3,ogg,flac]
- "Sister Kate" [mp3]
Ditty Bops: 2006-05-23, West Hollywood (Ameoba in-store) [mp3,ogg,flac]
- De Novo Dahl: "All Over Town" [mp3] from Cats and Kittens
The Handsome Charlies: "Eighty-one" [mp3]

Orange Mothers: "Alien" [mp3]

The Planet The: "You Absorb My Vision" [mp3] from

Various Artists: tracks from Neurot Recordings [mp3]
- Final: "Confusion" [mp3] from Final, 3
Various Artists: tracks from Theory 8 Records [mp3]
- De Novo Dahl: "All Over Town" [mp3] from Cats and Kittens [mp3]
Vetran: one downloadable track [mp3]

tags: music download mp3

Ask MetaFilter

What to do for 2 hours in Chicago

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 8:05am PDT by I_Love_Bananas

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Michigan Ave in two hours? I will be accompanying my son on a school trip to Chicago in a few weeks and have an allotted 2 hours on a Friday evening for free time/shopping on Michigan Avenue. (The rest of the trip is planned to the Nth degree.)

What are must-sees for my son and I during that span of time? He's ten and has never been to a big city before.
i love bagels.

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 7:10am PDT by klwatts

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I work odd hours. I wake up at 4am, work in a warehouse doing physical work for 5 hours, go home rest for a few hours, then suit up for a 7 hour shift (15:00 - 22:00) as a security guard doing primarily stationary work. Because of the long hours my meal schedule is quite irregular and I usually over eat or binge eat. Any ideas on how I can start regulating my meals? A few years ago I lost 150lbs and since I started working two jobs I have gained back about 10-15lbs. I am horribly scared that I will gain all of the weight back and return to my old self. Any help would be appreciated.

Google Sightseeing

In Flight

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 6:00am PDT by James

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Here’s a plane in flight, here’s another one, and another. Ah, there’s hundreds of them - Boring! Now, here’s a School Bus In Flight. That’s much more interesting!

This is actually the City Museum in St. Louis. Built in an old shoe factory, the roof decor features two aircraft fuselages and a school bus.

Thanks: B.J. Olejnik

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oops....

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 6:00am PDT by pompomtom

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So I've just deleted a bunch of files which were held on an Ubuntu server, from my XP laptop, via a Samba share. Is there any way to retrieve them?

True Hoop

Dueling for the Future of the NBA

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 5:55am PDT by Henry Abbott

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It occurs to me that whoever wins the Dallas-Phoenix Series will become prototype 1A for how to build a team in the newest version of the NBA.It could happen in a lot of ways. For example, if Phoenix wins--which could...

this moment

[nt]

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 5:50am PDT by alan

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3quarksdaily

Vanessa Redgrave and Joan Didion, Working on a Merger

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 4:51am PDT by Azra Raza

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From The New York Times:
SOON after the announcement was made last December that Joan Didion would be writing a one-woman play based on her autobiographical book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," Ms. Didion had a meeting with Scott Rudin, the Broadway producer who first proposed the idea, and David Hare, the British playwright who will be directing the production. One of the topics was casting. It was not a long conversation.

Vanessa Redgrave, said Mr. Rudin, "was the only person we ever talked about. There was no one else ever discussed." And so after a phone call to Ms. Redgrave, the two women, among the greatest practitioners of their crafts, started the process of becoming, in a sense, one. "I said, 'My God,' and I couldn't speak for a long time," Ms. Redgrave, 69, recalled in an interview Wednesday afternoon in Ms. Didion's sunlight-filled apartment. "I'd read the book and given it to all my family."

"The Year of Magical Thinking" will be the first play for Ms. Didion, 71. It will not be a strict adaptation of the book, she said, because it will cover events that happened after it was published. The book, an account of the fear, despair and exasperation of bereavement, begins on Dec. 30, 2003, with the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, after a heart attack at the dinner table.
More here.

A Whole Lotta Nothing

links for 2006-05-27

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 4:06am PDT

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- HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource - TUTORIAL: tether your motorola/nokia/se phone to your mac with via BT! handy step-by-step to getting your nokia and sony bluetooth phones talking to your mac and being used as a wireless modem (tags: utilities bluetooth osx)

Open Source

Immigration and Development, with Amartya Sen

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:19am PDT by Chris

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[Booked for Tuesday, May 30, 2006] With the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, we pick up the question hanging at the end of our conversation on remittances and the flood of migrant workers. "
Amartya Sen [UC, Berkeley]
To wit: isn't the immigration crisis the flip side of a development riddle? What would it take to make the lives of Mexican farmers sustainable in Mexico? How does it come to be that there are more African-trained nurses and doctors working in Europe than in Africa? Under the heading of "flood control," what might the US be doing to address the tide of refugees from Latin America before they reach the Bush border fence? Amartya Sen, the Lamont University Professor at Harvard, is of course an immigrant from India -- in an America that he notes has always been hospitable to intellectuals and highly qualified specialists like him. Development economics is only one of his fields, and his technical studies are the least of his worldwide eminence. He is best known perhaps for the observed rule that famines simply do not happen in independent democracies with a free press; famines are invariably political and military "events," as he first suspected on the basis of his own childhood witness of the famine in Bengal in 1943 which took 3 million lives. He is a feminist exponent of the argument that the single most important stroke in development policy (and population control) is the education of women. His new book Identity and Violence takes apart all the easy labels of ethnic and national destiny and smashes the monoliths of East and West: "Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror." A courtly liberal gentleman of the world, Professor Sen seems to relish tests of wit and theory: recently with Robert Kagan, for example, on the "clash of civilizations," and on development aid with William Easterly, dubbed by Sen "the man without a plan." We are asking him for a reasonably grand synthesis here, and a primer on spreading out modernization and growth toward, as we say, "the next 5 billion."

deconsumption

The Times They Are A-Changing...

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by Steven Lagavulin

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On a beautiful summer holiday weekend I have to give props to a recent piece in which Phila at Bouphonia calls bullshit on Gregg Easterbrook over at the NY Times. I take notice when a gentlemanly writer like Phila says "Gregg Easterbrook is a Liar and a Fraud".

Easterbrook's "I'm now switching sides regarding global warming" piece has gotten a bit of play in legitimate eco-circles, but that should only remind us that it's crucial in this precarious age of psy-ops-cum-media to stay ever vigilant of the turncoats at the gate.

"Gregg Easterbrook wants us to know that it is now officially "reasonable" to be concerned about climate change.
Does this mean that people who previously denied climate change were not reasonable? Of course not! It doesn't work that way. The center-right position is synonymous with reason; as such, it can grant validity to other positions, but can't be invalidated itself."

Exactamundo. For my money this shows why Phila is--along with Ran Prieur and Jeff Wells--one of the webloggers who best represents the positive pole of the Gen-X revolution....possessing the intellect and character to convincingly say to the Boomer-Fascists of Corporatonia: "You know what, dude? I don't even buy into the preconceptual framework of your arguments anymore...".

Except of course they're not really saying it to them. They're addressing their own ranks.

[This piece presented with all due apologies to the venerable Boomer-Socialists of Humania]

Perfect Duluth Day

Members Only

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by Barrett

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Beginning immediately, PDD is taking extreme measures to keep the riff-raff (meaning spammers) out of the comments. This means an extra step for those who would wish to comment.

From now on, all commenters must register with TypeKey, an authentication service provided by Movable Type. Registration is quick and easy, and only needs to be done once. Once registered, commenters will simply sign in before commenting.
A sad day.

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by ian

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I heard a rumor and drove by the Norshor to confirm it....

The lower marquee now says "Live Girls". Anyone have some info?

Photos from flannelmouthed's contacts

Kusturica reloaded (English version)

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by Babsi Jones

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Babsi Jones posted a photo:

For those Yugo-lovers who commented here, or simply those who'd like to read about super-genius Emir Kusturica, my interview with Matthieu Dhennin has been translated in English (*thanks, P!*) and posted here.
Heidi & Pete at the Rainbow

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by OPHOTN

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OPHOTN posted a photo:
Drunk on absinthe

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by meganthefallen

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meganthefallen posted a photo:

--megan
me

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by rockity_roll

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rockity_roll posted a photo:
Bobby's Owl Tree

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by Thomas Hawk

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
(Untitled)

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT by Frisbee Girl

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Frisbee Girl posted a photo:

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Gamma-Ray Moon

Fetched: May 27th, 2006, 3:18am PDT

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Gamma-Ray Moon
Credit: Dave Thompson (NASA/GSFC) et al., EGRET, Compton Observatory, NASA
Explanation: If you could see gamma rays - photons with a million or more times the energy of visible light - the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! The startling notion is demonstrated by this image of the Moon from the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) in orbit on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory from April 1991 to June 2000. Then, the most sensitive instrument of its kind, even EGRET could not see the quiet Sun which is extremely faint at gamma-ray energies. So why is the Moon bright? High energy charged particles, known as cosmic rays, constantly bombard the unprotected lunar surface generating gamma-ray photons. EGRET's gamma-ray vision was not sharp enough to resolve a lunar disk or any surface features, but its sensitivity reveals the induced gamma-ray moonglow. So far unique, the image was generated from eight exposures made during 1991-1994 and covers a roughly 40 degree wide field of view with gamma-ray intensity represented in false color.

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How much is my iPod worth?

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 2:43am PDT by Four-Eyed Girl

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I plan on upgrading to a larger memory iPod, and I want to sell my 4th generation 20G iPod, but I don't know how much it's worth. My iPod is a simple click wheel with a black & white screen. It's doesn't play videos or accept photos. I've still got the original headphones (never used), the charger, and the thing that hooks it up to the computer. I've also got the Apple Care protection plan that I purchased earlier this year. I've had the iPod for a year & a half.

I know someone who wants to buy it, but I don't know how much to charge. I've checked eBay & numerous other places to find out how much I should charge, but the range of prices is very wide. I'd really appreciate any advice y'all can give on this matter.

Waxy.org Links

Doug Bowman hired by Google

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 2:13am PDT

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big congrats to both

[daily dose of imagery]

empty parliament

Posted: May 27th, 2006, 2:07am PDT

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parliament, south of king.

the dark corners are caused by using polarizer filter. polarizer filter on a very wide lens usually produces an uneven effect.

Waxy.org Links

Cory Doctorow on O'Reilly's "Web 2.0" trademark

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:40am PDT

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by encouraging ubiquity of the "Web 2.0" meme, O'Reilly diluted the proprietary meaning of the mark

sixteen days under the sundae

let's get sandy!!!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:38am PDT by Ridley Thunder

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Since I'm Rasp's Evil Twin Brother, I have known her for a while. But now that she's gone I can tell you a bunch of things about her you might not know: 1) She likes to tell people that she gives money to homeless people, but she doesn't 2) Raspberry is not her favorite fruit. It's problaby not even top 5. 3) She had black and she went back 4) Her favorite Beatle song is "Maxwell's Silver

Waxy.org Links

Video: Gnarls Barkley on Conan O'Brien

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:18am PDT

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electric performance; could they have been honoring Towel Day a day early?

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shittorrents

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 1:09am PDT by wfrgms

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Some of my bittorrents are stuck at 99.X% I have three bittorrents which are stuck. One is at 91.75% - and I think the seeder is dead... so I'm not so concerned about that one. The other two are stuck at 99.74% and 99.98%. I've read that a few different factors can cause torrents to behave this way including changed files, ratios, etc.

I've asked the seeders to reseed with no luck. Is there anything I can do with these torrents other than delete them? (Together they make up over six gigabytes and have been downloading for weeks... months even...)

My client is Shareaza.
Where can I find the John Basedow theme song online?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:46am PDT by spiderskull

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I'm shocked, horrified, and absolutely appalled that several people I know and love have not seen the John Basedow commercial featuring his new theme song. Where can I find this video or audio clip? The lyrics are, and I quote:

He's John Basedow.
He's gonna show you how
To reach your potential
And turn your whole life around

Fitness made simple!

The emphasis is on the song. Everytime I sing it, I'm met with confusion -- I'd like to rectify this situation, but my Google-fu is falling short.
My computer beeps continuously. What's happening?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:09am PDT by mordecai

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I noticed my computer starting to beep often about 2 years ago (I think) even when I'm just browsing the Inkernet. I have a feeling that's not normal. I'm on Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz system with 512MB of RAM. My motherboard is Asus P4PE. You can listen to the beeps here. I was scrolling up and down a page on AskMeFi when I recorded that.

When I'm doing something a little more CPU intensive (working on Photoshop, for eg) the beeping is more frequent. When I'm trying to edit a video, it progresses into a symphony.

I didn't pay much attention to the beeping all these years but now I'm quite concerned. Please help!

Global Voices Online

Guatemala: Video of Hurricane Stan and the Weekend’s Orange Alert

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 12:08am PDT by David Sasaki

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Patrick of the Guatemala Solidarity Network Blog has posted a 13 minute video of “what it was like in Panajachel when Stan struck last year.” In a followup post, he quotes a recent report that cited “current concerns include that the planting of this year’s crops will be affected by lack of suitable drained land for this purpose.” On an unfortunate cue, Rob Mercatante writes that President Oscar Berger has called a state of orange alert [ES] as the country braces for approaching heavy rains.
Peru: Cucho La Rosa’s New Restaurant

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:58pm PDT by David Sasaki

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Peru Food describes the new restaurant in Pachacámac village by renowned chef Cucho La Rosa.
Mexico: “Friki”

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:55pm PDT by David Sasaki

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“Friki [ES],” defined by Wikipedia as someone interested in or obsessed by a topic, is a must-know word for the reader of Spanish-language blogs. As Eduardo Arcos points out [ES], it’s also one of the most searched for words on Technorati. And who is the friki of the year?
Argentina, Chile: El Chaltén

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:49pm PDT by David Sasaki

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“Just when you thought nationalism had nothing good to offer the world, along comes a wonder like El Chaltén. A town with no conceivable economic or geographic purpose other than sticking it to the nearby Chileans, El Chaltén (Spanish for The Chaltén) is an accidental hikers’ paradise in what used to be one of the most inaccessible parts of southern Patagonia.” Maciej Ceglowski describes the mountainous border region between Chile and Argentina with typical skillfulness.
Argentina: The 25th of May

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:46pm PDT by David Sasaki

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Yesterday was Día de la Patria in Argentina, which From Bmore to BA explains commemorates the end of Spanish rule. Jeff Barry describes the rally held in the Plaza de Mayo as “clearly a pro-Kirchner political rally paid for by the government” and even remarks that “according to the news, these bus trips for yesterday’s event were subsidized by the government.” Conservative blogger Rubén Benedetti takes a stab [ES] at Kirchner’s call for “more plurality in Argentine politics. Javier has a thorough review of the day [ES] from all over Argentina’s blogosphere. Lovers Go Home offers up the Argentine National Hymn for download to commemorate the day and Martin Varsavsky says [ES] that good old Peronism has returned to the Plaza de Mayo.
Vietnam: Visiting Saigon

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:17pm PDT by preetam

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The blogger at Vietnamese God visits Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and compares it to Hanoi - the city where he lives. “Each time I come here it brings me a different feeling. It seems always new and things are changing very quickly which is good. I love wandering around the old part of Saigon and walking down to the zoo where I can see lots of beautiful old French style buildings and old trees along the street.”
Latin America: Poll Numbers

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 11:14pm PDT by David Sasaki

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As consistent as the sunrise, Boz has this week’s Friday poll numbers.

kottke.org remaindered links

"Web 2.OH, YEAAHH!!" tshirts...drink the Kool-Aid!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:57pm PDT by jkottke

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"Web 2.OH, YEAAHH!!" tshirts...drink the Kool-Aid!

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What do we need to See & Do in Newfoundland, the Gaspe Peninsula, & New Brunswick?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:53pm PDT by thebarron

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What are the "must see" places and "must do" activities when the wife and I visit Newfoundland, the Gaspe Peninsula, New Brunswick & possibly Nova Scotia in mid-July? If you have ideas for quaint, clean and reasonable places to stay that will provide lasting, fond memories, please suggest those too. If you have photos to post or link to, you receive bonus points! The trip will begin & end in Boston.
Severe weather = severe headaches?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:53pm PDT by aletheia

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Just before heavy rain/thunderstorms (especially so if lightning is involved) I get incredibly lethargic, fall in and out of sleep, get severe headaches, become panicky and restless and then after the whole spectacle is over, the horrible state I'm in vanishes. Why does this happen, and is there is a good way to treat/prevent it?
What are the odds that I'm such a loser?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:47pm PDT by TonyRobots

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Probability filter: How do you determine the odds of being extremely unlucky? I know I've seen this explained, but my google-fu fails me, as does my brute-force mathematical figuring. Here's my problem -- if there's a game in which you're supposed to win 12% of the time, what are the odds that after 150 plays you only win 3 times (i.e. 2% of the time)?

Global Voices Online

Martinique: Stabbing over 10 Euros

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:40pm PDT by Alice Backer

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“Yet another tragedy in Fort-de-France! [Martinique’s capital]” says (Fr) Bien Vu. “Two 20-year olds get in a fight over a debt! Of 10 Euros! The borrower did not hesitate to pull a knife and stab the [lender] several times. End result, the young man has been in the coma for 24 hours. (…) These are really rough times.”

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Good, basic HTML tutorial?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:25pm PDT by stefnet

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What is the best (preferably online) tutorial for teaching the basics of HTML (and CSS, although that's not as necessary)? I need to turn over a site that I redesigned to someone who has no knowledge of HTML or anything remotely website-related.* I'm having a heck of a time finding a decent tutorial site online. Many seem out-of-date (as in broken links), but I also feel that I can't adequately tell if it will go over the person's head or not. Do any of you have any recommendations for tutorials that have worked well for you in similar situations? I will only have phone/email contact with this person over the summer, otherwise I would just sit them down myself. Since I can't do that, I'd like to get the person up and running with the basics before explaining the parts of the site that need to be updated regularly.

Also, reworking the site with some sort of CMS is not an option (although it would solve some problems) as that would still require some sort of maintenance and, more importantly, the school's server isn't friendly to such things.

* It's a graduate student organization website and those with such knowledge are few and far between in my field, or so it seems.
How do you keep teeth out of the way when giving a blow job?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 10:01pm PDT by mintchip

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Should you or shouldn't you cover your teeth with your lips when giving a blow job? Basically, I always used to put my lips around my teeth for protection, but then I had a boyfriend who said it was much better and softer to just let your lips hang loose and to use your tongue as protection from your lower lips. (This is also how the porn stars seem to do it.) I've tried doing it like that, but I'm just so worried I'll make one wrong move and hurt him. So the question is -- to cover the teeth with my lips or not?? Which feels better? If you don't cover your teeth, how can you know that they won't get in the way--painfully!
Toronto Access Training Recommendations?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 9:35pm PDT by strangelove

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Nature abhors a vacuum; thus I need Access training in the Toronto/GTA area, any recommendations? Can anyone recommend any creditable Access training courses/programmes near Downtown Toronto or Woodbine Centre (or anywhere in between) area that offers study from basic to advance levels for a single person who wants to get knee deep in Access quickly? Resons for the recommendation would be great as well.
Thank you

bird on the moon

Not having figured things out...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 9:13pm PDT

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I suppose my new home is finally a new home, after all. I've had the housewarming, all of the required "firsts," and it's just so pleasant and groovy now.

Having accomplished the transition and cultivated a bit of a new routine, I'm having time to consider myself again. I've even had a bit of anxiety unlocking that identity door, with all of the dustbunnies and unknowns which lurk behind it. The self is profundly complex, so much so that it seems to prevent itself from catching it's own tail, thus, figuring things out. Distractions must exist solely for us to prevent ourselves from getting to the bottom of things, 'cuz once there, in that frictionless utopia of Having Figured Things Out, we're done. I don't anticipate such luxury anytime soon.

I'm going to take the bike out in a minute and do the whole night-ride thing, with that sense of adventure akin to younger years of being out late, collar upturned, and rebellios tunes hummed through lips of ever growing vocabulary.

Off I go...

I cite

Sniper Mom Parties On

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 9:09pm PDT by Jodi

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So my son's 11th birthday party began with a few setbacks. First, I was told that the party room I had reserved was somehow occupied and that the seven boys I was taking to laser tag would have to eat cake and pizza and then run around. I was less than delighted and expressed this with great vigor. So, they comp-ed the party and let us do one mission before cake and two after. I was prepared to pay for the third since they had already comp-ed the rest, but didn't have to. That was pretty great.

Other initial setbacks: when one kid arrived his mom said he had been throwing up all day but really wanted to come to the party. She advised me to bring a plastic bag in the car. He threw up before we left, nearly making the sink in time. Then he threw up right after we payed the toll. But he did great on his missions.

A third setback: one kid refused to go in to the briefing room because he was afraid of the dark (I wonder if there is any connection between this and the fact that his dad is in Iraq.) He finally went in and had fun.

I guess the heavy rain and fog shouldn't be included in the party checks and balances. You can't predict the weather. But, we had to drive over an hour, so I think we can put that in the minus column. On the other hand, Paul had a carload of boys who were no more distracting than Zizek was when Paul took him to the airport under similar weather conditions, so maybe that's a plus.

And, I'm not sure whether the great, great pleasure I took in being a sniper is a plus or a minus. Nothing like shooting kids and strangers with a laser gun in a dark maze. I was so intense about it that I got a really nasty blister on my trigger finger. My daughter, a tiny 7, oddly scored negative 27 points. High scores were over 300. I think this makes her a casualty.

I'd like to suggest this as something for faculty or student groups. But, they'll probably say its too militarist, too violent. Too bad. I love being a sniper.

Another Day in the Empire

NSA Snoop Program: All about the Neocon Enemies List

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 8:35pm PDT by Administrator

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National Review Online, the home of many a Straussian neocon, has posted an excerpt from William Arkin on its Media Blog page. Arkin, who writes a column for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post (the editors over there like to call Arkin’s Early Warning a blog), declared on May 16, in regard to the massive NSA snoop program, “there is no enemies list” and the “Bush administration has been arrogant and incompetent in communicating to the American public. It has cynically split the country into red and blue in order to give itself greater power to pursue a wrong-headed national security strategy that it claims is red, white and blue…. The Congress has also utterly failed in five months to get to the bottom of the NSA’s warantless surveillance program and thereby resolve its legality and assuage public anxiety.” In other words, it is simply more partisan politics and splenetic political manipulation la mode de Karl Rove. Nothing to see here, except a bit of unresolved legality. Please move along.

If you believe the Bush and the neocons in the White House and the Pentagon, as Arkin suggests, have not drawn up a comprehensive list of domestic enemies, and are not snooping them right now, I have a chartreuse pony to sell you.

It’s no mistake Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden was breezily selected, as predicted, by a large number of senators (78-15 in his favor) earlier today. Hayden will merge CIA and Pentagon covert and snoop operations and scant little of the work will concentrate on Osama’s cartoonish cave dwellers and the spurious boogieman known as “al-Qaeda.” William Arkin may trust his government to employ a colossal snoop program in a myopic effort to gain short term political gain, but those of us who take a look at not too distant history understand otherwise.

Verne Lyon, a former CIA undercover operative, wrote for Covert Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1990, that with “the DCS, the DOD [Domestic Operations Division], the old boy network, and the CIA Office of Security operating without congressional oversight or public knowledge, all that was needed to bring [Operation Chaos] together was a perceived threat to the national security and a presidential directive unleashing the dogs. That happened in 1965 when President Johnson instructed [John] McCone to provide an independent analysis of the growing problem of student protest against the war in Vietnam. Prior to this, Johnson had to rely on information provided by the FBI, intelligence that he perceived to be slanted by Hoover’s personal views, which often ignored the facts.” In order to “achieve the intelligence being asked for by the President, the CIA’s Office of Security, the Counter-Intelligence division, and the newly created DOD turned to the old boy network for help.” Lyon continues:

As campus anti-war protest activity spread across the nation, the CIA reacted by implementing two new domestic operations. The first, Project RESISTANCE, was designed to provide security to CIA recruiters on college campuses. Under this program, the CIA sought active cooperation from college administrators, campus security, and local police to help identify anti-war activists, political dissidents, and “radicals.” Eventually information was provided to all government recruiters on college campuses and directly to the super-secret DOD on thousands of students and dozens of groups. The CIA’s Office of Security also created Project MERRIMAC, to provide warnings about demonstrations being carried out against CIA facilities or personnel in the Washington area.

All of this should be familiar, as the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) kept a database on “a motley group of about 10 peace activists [who] showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton” in 2004, according to Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, in order to protest the corporation’s “supposed” war profiteering. “A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA’s database. It’s not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention,” muses the clueless Isikoff, about as tuned in to domestic spook operations (in the case of the CIA, quite illegal under its charter) as his colleague, William Arkin, who should know better. The CIFA’s activity in regard to Haliburton is reminiscent of Proiect RESISTANCE, a domestic espionage operation coordinated under the DOD, a fact discovered with a simple Wikipedia search (obviously, writers working for Newsweek and the Washington Post cannot be bothered with online encyclopedias).

Under Operation Chaos and Project MERRIMAC, the CIA went about violating the strictures of the Bill of Rights will customary zeal. The CIA “infiltrated agents into domestic groups of all types and activities. It used its contacts with local police departments and their intelligence units to pick up its ‘police skills’ and began in earnest to pull off burglaries, illegal entries, use of explosives, criminal frame-ups, shared interrogations, and disinformation. CIA teams purchased sophisticated equipment for many starved police departments and in return got to see arrest records, suspect lists, and intelligence reports. Many large police departments, in conjunction with the CIA, carried out illegal, warrantless searches of private properties, to provide intelligence for a report requested by President Johnson,” writes Lyon.

After Johnson left office, Nixon continued the programs. “In June 1970 Nixon met with Hoover, [Richard] Helms, NSA Director Admiral Noel Gaylor, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative Lt. Gen. Donald V. Bennett and told them he wanted a coordinated and concentrated effort against domestic dissenters. To do that, he was creating the Interagency Committee on Intelligence (ICI), chaired by Hoover. The first ICI report, in late June, recommended new efforts in ‘black bag operations,’ wiretapping, and a mail-opening program. In late July 1970, Huston told the members of the ICI that their recommendations had been accepted by the White House.”

If not for the Church Committee (the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975), the extent of crimes committed by the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon would have likely remained secret. According to revelations brought forth by the committee (see the Church Committee’s supplementary detailed staff report on Operation Chaos), during “the life of Operation CHAOS, the CIA had compiled personality files on over 13,000 individuals including more than 7,000 U.S. citizens as well as files on over 1,000 domestic groups. The CIA had shared information on more than 300,000 persons with different law enforcement agencies including the DIA and FBI. It had spied on, burglarized, intimidated, misinformed, lied to, deceived, and carried out criminal acts against thousands of citizens of the United States. It had placed itself above the law, above the Constitution, and in contempt of international diplomacy and the United States Congress. It had violated its charter and had contributed either directly or indirectly to the resignation of a President of the United States. It had tainted itself beyond hope.”

Of all this, the CIA’s blatant contempt for the rights of individuals was the worst. This record of deceit and illegality, implored Congress as well as the President to take extreme measures to control the Agency’s activities. However, except for a few cosmetic changes made for public consumption such as the Congressional intelligence oversight committee nothing has been done to control the CIA. In fact, subsequent administrations have chosen to use the CIA for domestic operations as well. These renewed domestic operations began with Gerald Ford, were briefly limited by Jimmy Carter, and then extended dramatically by Ronald Reagan.

According to the corporate media and the standard gaggle of neocon pundits, we have nothing to fear now that Hayden has won over the Senate. After all, as the neocons assure us, the CIA and spook operations emanating out of the Pentagon (and the NSA) focus on “al-Qaeda,” a shadowy group with unestablished and undocumented ties within the United States, and those of us worried about the return of Operation Chaos, Project MERRIMAC, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO are simply paranoid tinfoil hatters or worse.

Never mind the superabundance of material demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt consistent government complicity in not only denying American citizens the right to dissent and seek redress of grievances, but also employing harassment and violence against them. It appears William Arkin simply does not bother to read history and is woefully ignorant of government subversion and desecration of the Constitution. His assertion that the Bush administration and the neocons at its core are not interested in “enemies list” à la Nixon is, on its face, absurd and should be discarded as a dangerous fallacy.

Addendum

Allan Uthman writes for the Buffalo Beast (Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State):

If Bush’s nominee for CIA chief, Air Force General Michael Hayden, is confirmed, that will put every spy program in Washington under military control. Hayden, who oversaw the NSA warrantless wiretapping program and is clearly down with the program. That program? To weaken and dismantle or at least neuter the CIA. Despite its best efforts to blame the CIA for “intelligence errors” leading to the Iraq war, the picture has clearly emerged — through extensive CIA leaks — that the White House’s analysis of Saddam’s destructive capacity was not shared by the Agency. This has proved to be a real pain in the ass for Bush and the gang.

Who’d have thought that career spooks would have moral qualms about deceiving the American people? And what is a president to do about it? Simple: make the critical agents leave, and fill their slots with Bush/Cheney loyalists. Then again, why not simply replace the entire organization? That is essentially what both Rumsfeld at the DoD and newly minted Director of National Intelligence John are doing — they want to move intelligence analysis into the hands of people that they can control, so the next time they lie about an “imminent threat” nobody’s going to tell. And the press is applauding the move as a “necessary reform.”

Remember the good old days, when the CIA were the bad guys?

It should be noted, regardless of the witless declarations of William Arkin and his ilk, the military is busy at work ferreting out and monitoring terrorists, that is to say American citizens who have nothing to do with the CIA asset Osama bin Laden or the phantom “al-Qaeda,” the database.

“NBC investigative correspondent Lisa Myers reported that NBC News had obtained a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 ’suspicious incidents’ across the country over a recent ten-month period,” Barry Grey wrote last December. “One of the items listed as a ‘threat’ was a meeting held by a group of activists a year ago at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools. Myers said the Defense Department data base obtained by NBC News included nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests. Among them was an anti-war protest held last March in Los Angeles, a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston, and a planned protest last April in Fort Lauderdale, Florida…. A separate press report noted that the Pentagon data base also mentioned weekly protests at an Atlanta, Georgia military recruiting station and an anti-war protest at the University of California in Santa Cruz.”

These limited revelations in and of themselves reveal that the Bush administration and the Pentagon, with the collusion of congressional Democrats as well as Republicans, have pushed aside limits on military domestic spying that were imposed following congressional hearings in the 1970s on Pentagon spying against civil rights organizations and opponents of the Vietnam War.

In addition to the creation of CIFA, mentioned above, a “second major effort to expand the military’s domestic spying operations involves legislation being pushed by the Pentagon on Capitol Hill that would establish an exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about US citizens with the Pentagon, the CIA and other agencies, as long as it was deemed that the information was related to foreign intelligence…. In addition, each of the military services has launched its own program to collect domestic intelligence. The Post quotes a Marine Corps order approved in April of 2004 that states the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity will be ‘increasingly required to perform domestic missions,’ and as a result ‘there will be increased instances whereby Marine intelligence activities may come across information regarding US persons.’”

Of course, since there is zero oversight, there really is no need to make the fraudulent claim these operations will be conducted only if “related to foreign intelligence.” As the above indicates, the government is primarily interested in snooping and subverting its own citizens, who are more of a threat to their stranglehold on power than any number of phony “al-Qaeda” groups or other contrived Freddy Kruger scarecrows.

Ask MetaFilter

Memorization/self-quiz software

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 8:30pm PDT by sherlockt

Tags: [edit]

Does anyone know of good computer software for general memorization? When I approach a topic or realm of information, I find that I am a "top-down" learner - I need to master the big picture first before I can remember all the little details. I'm looking for a software program that can aid this process. . .specifically, something where I can enter an outline and be quizzed on the major points or subpoints. For example, if I were to learn about physiology, I would want something where I can put the names of the major systems, then subsystems, and so on. Then the software would quiz me at a high level ("what are the major body systems") and at a lower detail level (name the major areas of the brain) and so on down through levels of detail. Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

tonypierce.com + busblog

so guess whose summer vacation ...

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 8:15pm PDT by tony pierce

Tags: [edit]

so guess whose summer vacation just suddenly arrived?

mine.

hi tony.

hi vacation?

i didnt think i was going to have a summer vacation, and ive gotta say, i was a little jealous of a lot of bloggers out there who were all pumped that their finals were over or they were graduating, and that they were going to laze into trying to find a little job to get their parents off their back, but mostly work on hitting the sand surf and suntan oil.

why is it that may has found me unemployed two years in a row now?

because the Lord loves me? lets pretend that thats why.

who knows, its probably true.

mid october i started working at buzznet. immediately i was sent to nyc to attend the BlogOn conference with mc brown. we threw our first east coast Buzznet meetup party at Lolita in chinatown. ironically i was abducted by a couple of lolitas right after meeting jamie and his girl, and several other manhattanites, but i managed to escape in the morning. i also hung with AJ who i hadnt seen in quite a while, scott and tons of friends, hung with amy, met jeff jarvis, met my book agent, and even ate with anne ferris. and saw the daily show, thanks to jason ross.

as soon as we got back to LA we had a Los Angeles Buzznet meetup back when the office was sort of still a loft. i met so many buzznetters who i'd always admired, but never met. plus a lot of the girls from my old job at look-look showed up and i had missed them so that was killer.

that next week one of buzznet's biggest bands was playing at the wiltern. fall out boy. they were playing with panic! at the disco and motion city soundtrack. so i was sent down there to pass out flyers about buzznet and take pics of the kids in line. the kids were wonderful and now panic! is a top 40 band. i took over 100 pics.

i would have gone to the show but i had to run over to Tower on Sunset to take a bunch of pics of Tsar doing an instore. then i ate a burrito and hustled back to the strip to take a bunch more pics of tsar who rocked the roxy.

a few weeks later i was flown to vancouver, bc, canada where we had our first canadian buzznet meetup. i hung out with matt good and took tons of pics and from the best ones i made this photo essay. i met so many cool canadians it was ridiculous. i was treated like the queen. id be back.

i got back to LA in enough time to take over 100 pictures at the Doo Dah parade. and that night i went to see Juliette Lewis and the Licks play with Tsar. i took hella pics including that crazy one of juliette on the right, who i adore. tsar ruled too, fyi.

a week later i flew to chicago and for a thanksgiving Chicago Buzznet Meetup. among others i got to meet jessica and erin who partied with me and bob all night. as in All night. so fun. hi kids from oswego. hi brian and byron. the best part of the meetup was it was in the shadows of wrigley field. so rad.

the first week of december found me at the virgin at hollywood and highland for an inxs in-store. inxs was working with buzznet at the time so i got to take a bunch of pics for them for inxs.com and buzznet. it was an honor.

a few days later i shot a ton of pics of tsar at spaceland where they were just named one of the top bands in los angeles by the LA Weekly. my highlight was getting a half dozen pics of poison guitarist cc deville with rocket and tsar.

my mind is fuzzy but i think somewhere in december i helped buzznet have their biggest hit day ever, biggest hit week, and biggest day of signups. we all hugged each other and it was decided that i was the man, because i had used the guidelines given to me from the book buzzmarketing to create attention and news to our site.

to celebrate i drove up to san francisco where i hung out again with jessica and many other cool kids where we sang karaoke. by we i dont mean me. then i drove up through northern california to umpqua oregon and celebrated Christmas in Eugene. i pretty much worked every day of this so called vacation. not because i had to but because i wanted to. i loved doing what i was doing.

after Christmas i drove up through some rainbows to tacoma and actually sang karaoke with the pants who is far more beautiful in real life. the next day i drove through seattle to take pics of kurt kobains old neighborhood and his old house.

made it to vancouver again, had sushi with mr good again. turned around the next day, drove through oregon and tried to go down the 1 but there was super flooding happening. i saw a dead cow in an overflooded river. it was so sad. got stuck in southern oregon. worked from the motel. got up in the morning and took lots of pics.

got home on new years day and took pics of the rain coming down on the rose parade.

in the middle of january koganuts from virgin megastore started inviting me and buzznet to some of their secret shows. the first one was with giant drag. i took pics. i wasnt very good with the camera that we had bought. but i was there. i did what i could. a week later we were invited to the Coachella The Movie premiere. i took a bunch of pics there on the red carpet including my hero the cobrasnake.

near the end of the month i was on a date with a super hot chick when heather graham showed up to have her birthday party there. i took this picture which got linked by defamer. heather's way hotter than that but we had both been drinking for many hours at that point. me, i had been drinking for 6 hours by then. of course cobrasnake was there.

a few weeks later my true love Chris moved off to africa. i said let me take some pics. she said no. i said baby i work for a photo sharing community, i sorta have to. plus your cans look great in that shirt, i mean your eyes are so beautiful. she sneered and almost smiled. then she smiled. then she almost cried.

a few days after that, this is february by the way, i was sent to Amsterdam by the dutch government. i figured this would be a good time to have our first european buzznet meet up. i got to meet bicyclemark, the dude from americablog, justagirl and tons of other cool kids. it was cold but i took shittons of pics and even found some pics to put on buzznet that got us tens of thousands of hits. i know it may have looked like a vacation but i worked and produced and got buzznet some great attention. justagirl even got to hear me vomit. lucky babe.

two weeks after i returned i was being sent to Austin Texas for SXSW. i got to meet leah for the first time which was a thrill because we'd been reading each other since she was 15. i got to speak on two panels. i met sooooo many cool people it was retarded. i got interviewed a bunch. and me and marc saw tons of bands and took tons of pics and video. in fact almost every night i was at the red bull house, of which we were co-sponsors and i got us in the usa today blog pop candy.

i worked and partied every night till 3am almost every single night. asher was great, bunny was great, the pants, ev and robert, marc canter, dan and sara, the fajita prince, dooce and jon, halley and scoble - they were all killer. i even got to take a few hundred pics of one of our most popular Buzznet band, my chemical romance. far more pics of them than anyone on the web. plus i was blogging on the buzznet blog almost every day. oh and we got to hang with the texas roller girls, of whom i took buckets of pics.

despite all the hits i generated for buzznet, or all the kickass people i met, or attention i brought to them, probably my proudest moment were those ten days that we covered sxsw interactive and music. no other outlet covered it every day, took tons of pics, took tons of video, and wrote about it every damn day. not pitchfork, not mtv, not anyone. i was there even after it was over to see how the locals rocked. the best bands of the event? the bellrays, honkey, and the go! team.

it was there that i got sick and didnt recover until this week. exhaustion? burn-out? stress? who knows. all i do know is i got a day off when i returned and i was back at it the day after that and i wanted to be at it. i loved what we had done and coachella was right around the corner.

when i got home i took pics of Hard-Fi at the virgin private show thing. they were rad.

the next week i found myself in toronto slash waterloo for a one night only toronto buzznet meet up. i was there for 24 hours. just enough time to see toronto for the first time, catch a matt good show, and go to a strip club with pitt and chad and mikey and fil and raymi and a few others. i also got to meet the outlaw and several others who pulled me aside at the show to introduce themselves. oh canada, thanks for making me feel like a star. oh we also saw a baseball game at the dome. yes all of this in 24 hours. and we went to tim hortons.

every day for the month of april i wrote at least one pre-write about coachella in the buzznet coachella blog, i even asked fellow bloggers to run a free blogad to it and 30 of you were nice enough to do so, and then at the end of april we were there at coachella. i even blogged about that. some of the posts were silly, but the point was to do just like how we did SXSW - provide the best coverage BY FAR of any other outlet in the world. pre-writes, photos, videos, and post coverage.

buzznet was the official photosharing community for the fest. i got to do so many things but mostly i took pics and helped others upload their pictures onto buzznet. sometimes for the first time ever. it was hot. and at the end of the two day fest we had collected and uploaded nearly Four Thousand Photos. i think we had done our job.

oh and we got 128 videos, including some silly interviews i conducted with people who were camping out in the tents, the security chief, and a tour of the campground, among others.

madonna, matisyahu, kanye west, wolfmother, the yeah yeah yeahs, and cat power were my favorite bands that weekend. but the best part was working with my coworkers at buzznet: marc, lizy, mark, bree, bree's boyfriend and marks drummer. and the good people at coachella and the at&t blue room who both stoked us. there is nothing more enjoyable to me than to work with a great team of people who just work and get the job done. to me its all about results and the results of that gig mostly have to go to marc and the content team. flickr would have loved to have had our spot but coachella loves buzznet, and should.

still on the ride home i pulled over and barfed and told lizy that it was because i had a bad feeling that our results wouldnt be met with the love that it should. and sometimes being right will make you sick to your stomach.

when we got back i got us a mention in the usa today, defamer linked it, blogging.la linked to it.

when we got back i was tasked to start finding great content for a new project buzznet is slowly unveiling called big hombre, a blog of sorts for young men in the vein of maxim or fhm, mostly about hot babes, funny videos, and street fights and stuff. every day i was supposed to find a certain amount of content, write funny headlines, and post them. among other things that i did, when i had extra time i started giving people photography assignments in our forums. one forum discussion got over 500 posts in a few days.

all in all i was responsible for at least 13 million page views to buzznet in the seven and a half months that i was there. no one user had ever been attracted even 2.5 million hits, and that was the pretty boy bass player of the top 40 band fall out boy. i had one user account that got 9.5 million hits, another which is at 2.3 million, and my personal account went over a million hits just a few weeks ago, meaning not only had i been the only person to ever have two accounts to ever get over 2 million, but the only one to ever have three go over a million.

and to be honest, before i showed up no one even thought that anyone could get a million that quick, but one of my accounts did more than that in a week.

i took over 4,000 pictures and posted them, i wrote over 100 blog entries, i sent out over 50,000 messages to our users, and in seven months i hosted seven buzznet meetups in three different countries, most of the time at no cost to the company. i think i was a pretty decent community manager.

unfortunately not everyone saw it that way. which is why tonight im unemployed.

so my plan going forward is to try a few things. i want to send my resume to a few companies, but i cant see them saying yes. i mean the cubs will probably say, dude we already have a black manager and he sucks.

then i will probably get scared and compile a new collection of better-than-average busblog posts like what i did in How To Blog, and maybe that will sustain me for the summer, but anyone who flowed to my ipod fund knows i suck at mailing shit. in fact any one who didnt get what was promised should email me. i now have time to make good on your generosity.

and then come the fall i'll probably just start selling my ass on santa monica blvd while wearing a dress and a blonde wig at the del taco.

whatever i do, i think im gonna take a few days off from the busblog this weekend. in two years ive done on here what i did at buzznet, pretty much work every day. even when i wasnt asked to, even when nobody cared. have i even taken two days off from this blog in three years? i dont think so.

some people like to jump into things full force. im one of those weirdos. some people get freaked out by that energy. me, my best times have been when ive given 100% on things i really know about. i knew how to be successful at buzznet. that is, i knew how to make buzznet more successful. maybe i will have a shot at making some other company more successful. or maybe i will have to just try to do something myself.

right now i have no idea whats next. none. and thats not the best feeling. i know it could be, but i dont have a bunch of cash to sit on. ive gotta figure something out soon. sux. although this might be a good time to head to the desert and talk to the spirits. or to isla vista and talk to the bikini team. or to vegas and talk to the elvises. or i could sell everything in this junky house and see what it gets. and then write an autobiography and start a new slate.

i do know that you guys will be here, and that is a blessing that not too many people have, and for that im so grateful you have no idea.

Ask MetaFilter

Beetles are too cute to have dings!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 8:00pm PDT by ferociouskitty

Tags: [edit]

At-home autobody: Does anyone have experience with the ding king dent repair kit or anything similar? I got two small (less than quarter-sized) dings in my less-than-one-month-old (to me) car that are making me quite sad. Do they work? Is it relatively easy? Should I just pay the (insert large amount of cash here) and forget about trying to do it myself?

Global Voices Online

Russia: Ethnic Uzbek in Moscow

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 7:24pm PDT by Veronica Khokhlova

Tags: [edit]

Moscow-based LJ user gr_s (Grigoriy Sapov) hitched a cab and ended up having a conversation with the driver, an ethnic Uzbek (RUS):

An Uzbek Driver

Yesterday. The driver is elderly, respectable, speaks without an accent:

***

The conversation began when we were getting out to the embankment through Neopalimovskie Lanes.

- Take these garbage containers. Recently, in Grokholskiy, in the backyard, I found a Singer sewing machine standing next to a container like this. Someone put it out there and, interestingly, attached a hand-written note: “In working order.” I loaded it into the car - my personal car has seats that can be lowered, so it fit. Took it to my son - my middle son runs a small metal repairs shop, and one more son has chosen our ancestors’ way - he sews footwear, bags, and works with leather in general. So they cleaned it, installed an electric engine. It works well, sews through leather alright. And it says on it that it was made in 1928, by the way.

***

I have six children. Four sons, two daughters. The oldest one is in Malaysia, plays football. He was here in winter - bought us an apartment, two rooms in Mitino. At school my sons attended (and the youngest one attends still), they asked me at a parents’ meeting to talk about how I’m raising my sons so that they don’t drink and don’t swallow some crap. Maybe, they say, this is because you’re an Uzbek, not a Russian person. I replied to them that even though I am an Uzbek, I spent 20 years serving in the Soviet Army. So my answer about sons is simple: [I beat them]. They said, How terrible, and didn’t allow their children to play with mine. Now three of my sons have been long out of school, almost all their classmates have become drunks, some are drug addicts. There was a boy, everyone praised him for good grades, and he is serving his second sentence now. So it turns out that I was raising my sons the right way. And their way was wrong.

***

My wife says that the mother of our daughter’s friend called and asked:

- Is it true that your husband sells kvas [fermented non-alcoholic drink]?
- No, it’s not true. Who told you this nonsense?
- Your son, when they had a written survey, responded to the question on the parents’ work with “father sells kvas, and my daughter saw it.

I ask him in the evening:

- Timurchik, why did you write that I sell kvas?
- If I wrote that you are a driver for a Western company, and if I mentioned what car you’re driving, they’d jump on you, and would extort money and gifts from you, the way they do with other parents who earn well.

***

- Do you speak Uzbek or Russian ay home?
- Well, our children live here, go to school here. I send them to their grandmother for the summer, to Andijon, they get the language back and by the end of the summer can say everything in Uzbek, and they understand everything. Here in Moscow, they, of course, speak Russian with each other, and my wife and I speak Uzbek. That, we speak both at home.

***

- I’ve got give education to one son and marry my daughters, and that’s it.
- Is it important for you that they marry Uzbeks?
- (Thinks, roughly from Borodinsky Bridge to Novoarbatskiy Bridge) Yes, it is important.
- Why?
- It won’t work for them otherwise. It won’t be a family for them, it’ll be nothing but misery. (Fell silent again, as we were driving past the White House.) Strange things are taking place. I think that Russians have won such wars, and in general, they are a kind, open-minded people. And on TV they are being told to attack other peoples. It shouldn’t be this way.

tonypierce.com + busblog

princestaples centerlos angeles

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 6:45pm PDT by tony pierce

Tags: [edit]

prince
staples center
los angeles
5/26/04

dearly beloved,

if u ever want 2 get through this thing called life, make sure u go 2 a prince show at least once.

and if you go once, you'll be back.

prince popped up through the center of his stage last night at the sold-out staples center dressed in white. pure of any sin. and the definition of sexy.

an x marked the spot on the center of the arena. his gold microphone awaited him. his 8 peice band including horn section featuring james brown's legendary sax man maceo parker and blonde bombshell candy dulfer waited for him. and the screaming LA crowd who were amazingly on-time waited for him on this, the second night of an unprecidented five-night stand of los angeles's premier concert and sports venue.

home of the lakers, the grammys, the kings, and last night, of prince.

he owned it. he rocked it. he was it.

as a witness of hundreds of concerts, ive seen the best: the stones, springsteen, u2, miles davis, the jackson 5, eric clapton, van halen, tom waits, elvis costello, tsar, jane's addiction, and the beastie boys. but never have i seen one man seemingly never make a mistake, a wasted motion, or spin and twirl and pirrorette and be equal parts show-off and showman like that freaky little dude from minnesota.

and the fucker did it in heels.

he played his guitar like a kid would play a broomstick. it was an air guitar to him.

a total maestro he would throw his hand down and the drummer would accent the beat and stop.

a master controller he would tell the lighting man to bring up the lights and bring them down and the lights went up or down immediately.

when he grew tired of his guitar a well-dressed man would come out and take it from him and he pranced over to a couch on the stage and his keyboard player gave him a pillow for his feet and a blanket.

then he played bass. then he played bass with the bass player.

then he danced.

fuck did he dance.

all while throwing out classic r&b numbers like chinese stars, all written, produced, and performed by himself throughout the years.

upon entering the show the ushers handed out free copies of his new cd, musicology and one guy said to his buddy, "mick jagger never gave me anything for free."

and as much as i love mick, mick never played the guitar or wrote these sorts of songs, alone, or this sexy, or with this much funk.

what we got to be a part of last night kept us on our feet dancing for over two hours, and when he concluded with an extended encore of the title track of his best known album, purple rain no one wanted to leave.

except for the yuppies who wanted to somehow "beat" traffic. which, sadly was half the arena.

but whatever, prince had pummelled them. he had pummelled all of us.

if elvis had actually known a thing about showmanship and songwriting and guitar playing and dancing, the king would have been prince.

in my 110 years, this was the best arena concert ive ever seen.

i smiled the entire time.

zanti misfit + simpleton + xero 79

Ask MetaFilter

Beginning Film Hopeful

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 6:08pm PDT by theholotrope

Tags: [edit]

Where should I start for film directing? A friend of mine is interested in learning film and asked me if I knew where he could get some resources for that. I thought I'd ask you guys. From what I understand, he is not doing this as a career. He likes it and would like it to be a rich experience as a hobby and maybe as a semi-pro. Here is his question:

"Im interested in learning film directing. Never studied this, never
practiced it, but, I have always had this on mind. I would like to know :

-where to read about introduction to film directing.
-what skills are needed to start this journey.
-necessary equipment for beginners (cameras, computer)

These are the main things I'm searching on.

The most I've done in this matter is taped some 2 or 3 trips to asia, and
south america, edited them in Imovie, and started to use Final Cut Express.
I like editing and filming."
Appalachain Trail (Nantahala) guidance?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:46pm PDT by jruckman

Tags: [edit]

A group of my friends and I are looking to hike the first leg of the Nantahala area AT this weekend, and can't figure out where to park and enter. We would like to use the Cold Spring Shelter. I've read over this information, but can't understand what specific location on the river it is using for "miles from the Nantahala River", so as to determine where the shelter is located and where to enter. Does anyone have any idea? Any help is welcome.

If not, I'm absolutely open to other hiking and camping recommendations in the Jackson/Macon/Swain county area. We're going from Sunday to Tuesday morning, and a shelter is not necessarily required -- we have tents.

Waxy.org Links

Websites as Graphs

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:46pm PDT

Tags: [edit]

or try the visualization yourself with any site

Ask MetaFilter

hungry!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:41pm PDT by mustcatchmooseandsquirrel

Tags: [edit]

What should I eat? I am always either at work or in class or running around and not being at home. I've recently realized that this leads to poor eating habits like going 12+ hours without a meal then eating too much and feeling like I can't move.

I am almost never near a microwave or refrigerator, I don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or other overly sweet foods, I eat mainly vegetarian.

What kind of food can I just throw in my purse and eat during the day without any heating or cooling or preparing and have it still be at least vaguely healthy? I like Larabars but after a week of a mainly Larabar diet I get Larabar-ed out.

Vegan Lunch Box

Golden Carrot Nominations

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:15pm PDT by Jennifershmoo

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Are you one of the lucky few who enjoy a healthy, vegan-friendly school lunch program? If so, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine wants to know about it! PCRM is looking for nominations for its third annual Golden Carrot Awards, and thought Vegan Lunch Box readers might be able to give them a few leads.

PCRM is looking for "outstanding food service professionals working to improve the healthfulness of school lunches". The grand prize winner gets $1,500 plus $3,500 for the school. They're looking for programs that feature "vegetarian entrees, low-fat meals, fresh fruits and vegetables, and nondairy beverage items and that promote nutrition education".

Global Voices Online

Public Schools students coordinate Strike by fotoblogs

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 5:07pm PDT by Rosario Lizana

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More than 40,000 public school students (and now some private (ES) as well) have participated in mobilizations all over Chile in the last weeks. They are asking for free public transportation, free entrance exams, a revision of full time school classes, and the detraction of the Organic Law of Education. The entrance exams/a> (ES) cost US $40 per student (the minimum wage is US $240 a month). In some public schools there is not sufficient infrastructure to have dining halls for a full time classes and the Organic Law of Education (ES) is from 1980. They goverment has made changes to this law in 1990, but the general vision hasn’t changed that much.

They participate through marches, protests, and by occupying public schools, colleges and universities. They are also holding conversation workshops and coordinating with the mayor of each area. And also … by web sites, blogs and fotoblogs. It’s amazing that while authorities were asking how to coordinate nationally, they forgot to check the web. The pro-active student group has more or less 6.000 people and is located in the capital, Santiago.

One of the most traditional public schools, “Instituto Nacional” - more than 12 presidents of Chile have studied over there, last one was Ricardo Lagos- has its website . Another is José Victorino Las Tarrias’ fotoblog (ES). , Liceo 1 Javiera Carrera (ES), Liceo de Aplicación’s blog and fotoblog (ES), Barros Borgoño (ES) . Most use nicknames to refer to the name of the school such as “Carmelianas” (ES) , for example.

They post about the last information, convocation of strike, meeting and events, and also…a competition with all of the public schools fotoblogs in the list to vote for the best one. New leaders are emerging in this groups that in other situations, would probably be weighed down by bureaucracy, and blogs have become a window to make leaders grow and others students participate, sending photos, comments, voting and also emails.

Now, the major plan of the students is to hold a national strike on May 30th. They will not march, the idea is to have peaceful meetings among students. The right wing has taken advantage of this situation to criticize Michelle Bachelet’s governance. The Education Minister is working now with parliaments from the left and right wing to agree on the best solution to resolve the demands of the students.

Vegan Lunch Box

Tahinopita

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:59pm PDT by Jennifershmoo

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Today is a special "Field Day" at shmoo's school, with games, relay races, obstacle courses, and early release. So instead of a lunch box, I thought I'd share another recipe.

Last week the school asked volunteers to bake cakes for a "Cake Walk" fundraiser. The theme was "international", so I made Tahinopita -- Greek tahini cake!

I found the original recipe in a spiral-bound collection of "Popular Greek Recipes" compiled by the "Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society of Charleston, South Carolina" that I found in a thrift shop. I don't think I've ever had anything quite like it. It's dense and a bit crumbly, rather like a big cookie. If you leave off the sugar syrup glaze it tastes just gently sweet.

It's very satisfying and filling from all the tahini, raisins, and nuts, and on top of being vegan it contains no soy, margarine or oil. I think it could easily be made with whole wheat or spelt flour, so lots of healthy possibilities with this one. Enjoy!

Ask MetaFilter

Wireless-less

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:57pm PDT by Packy_1962

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Can I connect to my wireless internet? I live in an apartment with wireless DSL already set up and used by a mac, but I started trying to use my Windows machine with it, and it's not working. It's a wanadoo thingy with the service provided through France telecom. The signal is perfect, but everytime I try to connect I get the limited/no connectivity message. A physical address, IP address, subnet mask value are all assigned, but it gets held up at the default gateway. I don't know what a default gateway is. Our mac laptop is at the shop so I can't tell if the wireless network is working period. I don't know anything about networking, and all the manuals are in a foreign language. Please help!

Damn Interesting

Project Babylon: Gerald Bull's Downfall

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:55pm PDT by Anthony Kendall

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Gerald Bull is a prime example of a man who created his own luck–unfortunately for him most of it was bad. A brilliant and distinguished artillery engineer, Bull spent much of his life in the upper echelons of government-funded weapons research. Though his career took him down a convoluted and often difficult path, he devoted his professional life to a single-minded pursuit of his dream: to build a gun large enough to shoot satellites into orbit. Bull nearly single-handedly resurrected the science of supergun artillery, and in so doing played a major role in 2 wars. But Bull's confrontational style and brusque manner won him very few friends within the governments for which he worked. His poor networking skills combined with a near total disregard for the dangerous politics in which he meddled led to heavy fines, a short stint in prison, and ultimately, to... (More Inside)

MetaFilter

The Dark Side in the War on Drugs.

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:53pm PDT by Elim

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Caught on Tape: US cops torture US citizen
I know! News Filter, and Old news, but I guess it is relevant to all the torture and abuse being allowed to folks under the veil of authority.

"When Tennessee law enforcement officials showed up at the home of Lester Siler, who they suspected of drug use, they asked Lester's wife and son to leave. They didn't know that Lester's wife had turned on a tape recorder in the kitchen. "

Direct link to the Streaming MP3 (40 Mins till the tape ran out, the actual "visit" lasted two hours. And then we find out what unrestrained authority can and will do if allowed. Google "Lester Siler" for further local and blog coverage of this story.
Calvin and Hobbes

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:49pm PDT by afu

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Calvin and Hobbes

Deadspin

Week In Deadspin: "Get Away From Me, Carl Monday!"

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:45pm PDT

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• So we probably don't need to say much more about our new friends Mike Cooper and Carl Monday.
• If only people loved themselves as much as they love a horse.
• ESPN anchors are now GQ models. History will not think of us well, people.
• Careful of those trampolines, kiddo.
• Pat Robertson is packing himself a couple of rockets there.
• Jay Mariotti, full of hot gas.
• Well, if you have to hide cocaine somewhere ...
• The end of "Bonds On Bonds."
• Shit!
• Matt Drudge is Mr. Baseball!
• Pity the poor Royals fan.
• Hey, watch the nuts! Avery Johnson is around!

Wow. What more can we say here? Some kind of week. Enjoy The Mighty MJD this weekend, and make sure to check out Jalopnik this weekend for all your Indy 500 needs. We're taking Monday off for Memorial Day -- we're just kinda gonna hang out at the library a bit -- so we'll see you all Tuesday. Be safe out there, all.

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Ask MetaFilter

How to develop for Mac and PC

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:39pm PDT by Turtles all the way down

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How do I get a cross platform (Mac/PC) application developed? I've previously written an application using the scripting language of a cross platform database program. For various reasons it's getting difficult to continue down that path so now I'm thinking of raising some money to hire some 'real' programmers to do it right. What I can see right away as a problem is the market for this application is about 60%/40% Windows/Mac and I don't want to ignore either platform. So what do I do--develop it for one OS and port it to the other? Should I use something like Java? Any advice on this specific issue as well as on the other pitfalls that doubtless await me will be most appreciated.

Global Voices Online

West Indies: Cricket victory over India

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:35pm PDT by Nicholas Laughlin

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Today Trinidad and Tobago hosted the fourth match in the current West Indies vs India One Day International cricket series. Francomenz didn’t make it to the Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain to watch the match, but she followed it on the radio. “Too exciting!!!” she wrote when West Indies captain Brian Lara made a half century. When Lara was caught out, she wondered if she’d jinxed him. But in the end the West Indies won the match and the series; Francomenz explained just why this victory is so important.
Iran: Free Mana Blog!

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:35pm PDT by Farid Pouya

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Free Mana (Persian) is a new blog which reports all news about arrested cartoonist, Mana Neyestani.
Mana drew the cartoon which provoked riots among Azeri community.

Ask MetaFilter

Light-weight image browser?

Posted: May 26th, 2006, 4:34pm PDT by Korou

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A year or so ago, I happened across a single php file I could drop in a website directory which then enabled the browsing of image files in said directory. I have since forgotten its name. What is this application or any simple, light-weight image directory browser?

Gregarius

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