Filed under: Uncategorized
I was just browsing around Ryan’s pictures when this one caught my eye. Apparently it’s Jason’s iBook with what appears to be a picture of Derek and myself, and seeing it there is quite a bizarre experience. I’m guessing it’s EtherPEG, but that still raises the question of just who was looking at that image over the network? Mysteries abound.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Major new look over at blogrolling headquarters. I really dislike the new interface, nothing is more annoying than dropdown option boxes when you’re trying to get something done. I hope Jason rethinks this and brings back the list of links that worked so well before.
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These slides are not only quite informative about some of the new features of PHP5, they are laugh out loud funny. Houston really needs a PHP user group; anyone else interested? Every month the meetup fizzles because of too few people.
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Someone must have bumped the thermostat upstairs, because it has gotten quite chilly around here, at least compared to how the weather has been for the past few weeks. Time to closet the hawaiian shirts (and certainly the no shirt) and break out the sweaters again.
Filed under: Music
Today’s gig was painful in a way only a very special combination of lost music and missing people can make it. If it was a bad group I wouldn’t be so disappointed, but the group usually sounds a lot better than we did today. On the upside, there was free food afterward that was quite good, and I was asked to participate in a much nicer group starting next year when they have an opening in the sax section, and I’m very excited about that. That in addition to being in the UH jazz band should fill the musical void that’s been in my life this year. Time to shed!
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is not a post about the war. They’re doing something just like this in Houston, and I heard on the radio today that the two items really wanted over there are baby wipes and beef jerky. Now think about this a second, and tell me why when we’re spending billions a day we can’t get the fine men and women risking their lives for us some freaking baby wipes? Third party groups have to beg us for money for support operations when we already give gads of money to the government for the very same purpose? I’m sure there’s a good reason, I just don’t know what it is.
Filed under: Music
I’m going to be playing a big band gig on the Kemah Boardwalk tomorrow, Sunday, at 2 PM. Okay the gig is actually at University of Houston Downtown, and it’s going to be with the amazing pianist who won the Great American Piano Competition last year, Deanna Witkowski. There is more information here. I’m going to be playing lead alto and I have a couple of solos and we might do one of my features this week. I’m performing a lot less this year, but next year my schedule will be as such to allow me to participate in more groups with hopefully more performances like this.
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Well hot diggity, the lovely Christine has kindly posted an article I wrote called Compressing Webpages for Fun and Profit to the Bloggy-sweeping website Scripty Goddess. Go check it out and make your pages faster. Every time you gzip a page an angel gets its wings.
Filed under: Humor
Got this from my darling sister, enjoy:
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the “Axis of Evil”, Libya,China and Syria today announced that they had formed the “Axis of Just as Evil”, which they said would be more evil than the Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. “Right. They are just as evil . . . in their dreams!” declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. “Everybody knows we’re the best evils . . . best at being evil.. . we’re the best.”
Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. “They told us it was full,” said Syrian President Bashar al- Assad. “An axis can’t have more than three counties”, explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “This is not my rule, it’s tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and a secret handshake. Ours is wickedly cool.”
International reaction to Bush’s Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered.
Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the “Axis of Somewhat Evil”, forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the “Axis of Occasionally Evil”, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the “Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable”.
With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up,Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the “Axis of Countries That Aren’t the Worst But Certainly Won’t Be Asked to Host the Olympics”.
Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the “Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly Have Some Nasty Thoughts About America”, while Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the “Axis of Countries That Want Sheep to Wear Lipstick”. “That’s not a threat, really, just something we like to do”, said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren’t perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axis, although he rejected the establishment of the “Axis of Countries Whose Names End in ‘Guay”, accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges.
Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn’t want to join any Axis, but privately world leaders said that’s only because no one asked them.
Filed under: Personal
A remark was made to me the other day that there are scarce personal details of me on this site, a fact I can’t deny. This obviously means one of two things:
The jury is still out on this one. Anyway, so today I was eating a cheese sandwich…
Filed under: Uncategorized
Well I’ve had more spam getting through my previously perfect Spam Assassin wall so I’ve spent a good part of tonight teaching my personal Bayesian filter about my mail and what I think is spam. I’m feeding it all the good mail right now, because I’ve been deleting all the spam rather than saving it in a folder. In hindsight I should have been holding on, but my emotions got the best of me and that delete button feels so good. In the coming weeks I’m going to be posting a series of essays talking about improving your email, a subject I have given a great deal of thought to. These will be slanted toward average Joe hosted on a shared Cpanel server (like from Spyder Hosting or Blogomania) but they will be universally applicable to anyone technically minded. That said, I’m looking for one or two people to proof the articles and try these things out before I post them, so if you’re interested in taking control of your email and wouldn’t mind helping out, drop me a note and I’ll put you on the list.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today has been groovy because I finally got my ethics paper back and it got an 8, which was a little disappointing till I checked and remembered that this teacher’s grading scale has 7 and above as an A, so in fact I got a solid A. What paper you ask? Well it’s on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Argument, and the entirety is available online in PDF and XHTML format through the link above. Which reminds me I still need to make a system to highlight some past notable post.
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It’s that time again, where I’m forced to spend hours and hours reconfiguring everything and installing programs so I can be productive with this computer. I kept a list just for grins, and here it is:
Filed under: Uncategorized
Ever want to see those really cool leaflets that we drop from planes on countries we’re invading. Obviously the tactic is to horrify them with gratuitous Times and bad cartoons until they surrender. Hat tip: Typographica
Filed under: Uncategorized
Well, I finally got my laptop back. Yes, that laptop. My trusty GRX-570 is back with (apparently) a new motherboard, power system, LCD, and AC adaptor. So basically the keyboard is the same. It took them almost three months to fix it, which is the most ridiculous thing ever, but I must say that it feels quite nice to have it back in my hands and it’s running great. It’s going to take some getting used to a laptop that is at least an inch bigger and several pounds heavier than the one I used for so long though. I’m not even sure this will fit in my new bag! Time will tell though, and I must admit it’s nice to be at 1600×1200 again. If you haven’t visited the photolog lately, there are a couple of new days of pictures with some hilarious candid shots.
