The Indefinite Article.: 12/01/2005

All Hail the Uber-whore!

I’ve Clearly under estimated the power that is Barbie
and
…After assembling California Barbie…
Dare I say it? I love this bitch and I think I covet her life…I believe I shall have it and it make my own! She reeks of skin cancer…er I mean sunscreen…yeah that’s it sunscreen. She’s kicked that loser Ken to the curb and adopted these uber-whore quasi blonde streaks in her hair, but the best part is...

She comes with a BAR!

Woohoo! This set comes complete with coconut shell cocktails, highballs with umbrellas, and a blender! Lush-tastic Barbie has stopped pretendin and now fully embraces the lifestyle that will undoubtedly lead to "Swinging Sex Party Barbie", "Maybe skipping the condom wasn’t such a good idea Barbie", and lastly, "Genital Warts Barbie".
Be who you is, BARBIE…Be who you is….

*Note this shall be my last Barbie post of any sort. I aplogize for even doing this much, but come on y'all.. THIS IS RICH!

using setInterval()

I've been trying to wrap my head around setInterval() for the past couple of days. I was examing a little piece of java script that Pablo wrote for todd's BigSeason site. (To see what i'm talking about click the big season link and then view the page source. There is a bit of javascript in the head tag that loops through a series of quotations.) Looking at the source, i figured that i had to use setInterval() with a loop to get it to cycle through a function a certain number of times. I could get simple things to dwork:

function doThis(words:String) {
trace(words);
}
setInterval(doThis,1000,"trace this!");

But i wanted to control a whole series of functions: load a series of movieclips from the library, put them in a particular place, slide em in, slide em out on click... all sorts of stuff. I struggled with it in between phone calls at work and at todd's new place with a Dr. Pepper. Finally, today, while i was gnawing on a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken at my mom's(which i hadn't had in forever!) it hit me: setInterval() IS the loop. duh!

so i finally got three balls (draggable) to tween onto the stage. See the .fla file with the code here.

Paul & Adolph: could i get a coding critique?

Sex or Salad

"Sex without soul is like salad without dressing."
-Tom Robbins, from Villa Incognito

p.s. how do I send a blog invite to 2 of our friends from Southwest: Amy and Jeremy Chichester? Here are their e-mail addresses:
amychichester@mac.com
cycling74@gmail.com

Neato Burrito

My brother's music was used throughout a film that documents a film-maker's trip to Argentina
--> the footage is great, and the message is sweet and uplifting
---> check out part 3 here

A Passage (Un Paso), By Austin Lynn (Kovarova)

A Passage, Part 1
A Passage, Part 2
A Passage, Part 3
A Passage, Part 4
I was broken up into 4 parts to allow space for commerical breaks, as it was shown on television in Mexico...

Also, for all you Mac geeks out there, it was made with Final Cut Pro on a G5 PowerMac...

Best in New York 2006

Check out this very cool write-up in Shecky's, a travel guide to NYC that you can buy at Barnes & Noble locally:

AS SEEN IN “SHECKY’S BEST IN NEW YORK 2006”

BEST LEGAL USE OF GRASS
Star Gardens
http://www.plantladyland.com

You plantin’ for me? Chances are, your version of an “urban garden” consists of a half-dead ficus tree and an unidentifiable housewarming plant. Amber Freda, owner of Star Gardens – a landscape design and installation company – (and Robert De Niro’s personal gardener!), knows a thing or two about plants and pledges to “transform the concrete jungle into an urban paradise!” She offers private consultations to determine your particular needs (a two-foot slab of concrete that gets no light? Bring it on!), then installs, prunes, and presents it while you watch from the comfort of your sofa. Amber will return to your garden four times a year for seasonal maintenance so all you have to do is enjoy. (Although it’ll help if you water it.)

Letter to Santa

Happy Holidays from the Mountains!

Internet Marketing

I've been doing pay-per-click advertising on google for about a year now and have found it extremely frustrating, for while it does bring in a fair amount of traffic, it doesn't lead to a lot of actual work.... maybe my keywords are too general, or maybe I'm getting a lot of do-it-yourselfers who want to see photos they can imitate, and very few real customers. probably am paying even for my own competition to click on my banners...

so, i'm looking into other methods. site-targeted ads seem like a hit-or-miss proposition as well.

is it better to use the same keywords on each page of your website or to change the keywords to address the subject of each individual page? which leads to more traffic?

any other thoughts on marketing?

referrals still seem to be the best way to get customers -- free community bulletin boards have brought me more business than pay-per-click. if only there was a way to broadcast referrals to a larger audience instantaneously....

Freeport

While reading the NYTimes article about Freeport's mining operations in Indonesia, I came across this gem:

Freeport says it strives to mitigate the environmental effect of its mine, while also maximizing the benefits to its shareholders

I read such a sentence and wish that lighting-bolts would form in my hands...

Merry Christmas From Denver!!!

So far Christmas has been wonderful! First, the guys went to Mile High stadium to see the Broncos stomp the Raiders. I had not been to an NFL game in ages, and my oh my was it fun! I mean, the stadium fits over 70,000 people and it was packed and everyone was yelling and waving flags and such and then I ate this big huge hot-dog and some peanuts and then the game was over. Then, the whole family assembled for a Christmas Eve extravaganza dinner which featured the Mercado family's favorites: tamales, taquitos (flautas), rice, beans and for desert, a million different kinds of cookie. Oh, we all ate too much and then the neighbors came over for some egg-nog and beer and caroling and a swell time was had by all. This Christmas morning the babies got us all up pretty early and after a traditional waffle and lil' smokies breakfast we tore in to the presents. I walked away with some swell new books and a hefty gift-card to Target which I can't wait to blow on some premium Fruit-Of-The-Loom socks...

Tonight we are going to feast on a big huge turkey, which is great because I missed out on Thanksgiving this year...

I hope everyone is doing well, and I wish you all the best on this beautiful Christmas morning!!!

Happy Holidays From Handwire

So Todd, Diana and I went to the Handwire Holiday Party last night; It was loads of fun! The food was catered and tasty, the booze was plentiful, and the White-Elephant session was full of the happiness, joy and vengeance. I think Todd and Diana walked away the big winners with the Dish-Towel and 2024 hours AOL cd that they won. I scored a sweet Ponce DeLeon pen-holder. The other fought-over items were the Serentiy DVD, the Big Foot autobiography and T&D's cutely be-potted plant.
Alot of fun was had on the Karoake machine. As you can see from this foto, Todd loves him some Karoake--whatever the genre! I heard him sing from classic country to Motley Crue...

The Rock and Roll

I saw a rock and roll show at the Parish last night. First up was the Stellastarr, and their amazing wall of sound. All the molecules in the room were moved by their mighty wall of sound. It was fantastic.
Following them in the lineup (but preceding them by 10 years musically) was the main act, Austin's own Spoon. Wow. What a show. King Kong's troubled heart beats like this band does. Oh how my knees ached after the hours of swinging and swaying...

Strike

Well, I guess my Christmas shopping dollars won't be going into the NYC economy. Reading about all these people walking to work over the bridges reminds me a lot of the blackout. Except that it wasn't cold. And it was dark.

Amusingly, the transit workers have talked themselves into believing that New Yorkers will support them. I doubt this for two reasons. One, the pension package they are fighting for is far more generous than they would get anywhere in the private sector. So few people will be able to relate to it. And, two, whenever there is a fare hike people spit on and throw things at the MTA workers. If they do that over a fare hike, why would they have an opposite reaction over a strike?

enough snow for a sleighride!

sledding
Originally uploaded by shanedenson.

ID

So I was thinking today about domain names and whatnot and had the thought, "why doesn't everyone have a domain name and telephone number that is the same as their social security number?" Then I thought, "why does a social security number have the same number of digits as a phone number?" (It doesn't, yeah, yeah, yeah.) So my social security number is available. Should I register a domain with it? If someone else does, can they exert copyright over my social security number?

Bloggalysis part deux

So, upon reading Amber's post about Bloggalysis, an affliction we have all suffered from, I was struck with an idea: Why not service my bloglines addiction by doing what Blogger has so far refused to do: set up an RSS feed for the comments!

But how, pray tell? Well, it turns out that you can configure Blogger to send out an email alert when a comment is posted to the blog. I examined the format of this email and figured that it would be possible to strip out the good stuff, cram it into data-structure and make a feed out of it.

With a little bit of Ruby magic (about 90 lines), I managed to get the job done! I pointed an email address at a ruby script that parses the email, crams the data into an embedded database, and then writes out the most recent comments as RSS feed...

I present The Chunky and Conglomerated Chairjockey Comment Feed!

If you use Safari's RSS reader, here is your link..

If you use some other reader (like the aforementioned bloglines) just point your tool to http://odacrem.com/rss/chairjockey-comments.rdf

Enjoy the RSESSY goodness!!!

My first cartoon

The Movie Post

Alright I saw Brokeback Mountain. I loved it, and I’m secure enough to admit that I squeezed out a tear or two. The heterosexual couple in front of us were so broken up that they were actually consoling one another…This made me feel a little better about myself, because the breeder guy turned out to be a more of a woman than me. Some folks feel it doesn’t move quite as fast as they’d like. If that’s the sort of movie that they want…I’m sure there’s a movie about a Giant Gorilla that can accommodate them. This is a love story. It will most likely make you feel like sitting in the tub with a Pearl Light, piecing together all the places where they could have skipped off together, holding hands, to the land of happy endings…Yeah shut up…so what if that’s what I did…yes there were bubbles. We spent the rest of the weekend driving around listening to country music which I usually don’t have an ear for.

Anyway, great movie. This is the first movie that really addressed the plight that gay people had to endure in that specific environment. I’m not going to go into the particulars, but this movie is important and I recommend it to people over 18.

That said, I actually saw some guy take his 11-year-old (approx) daughter into the BBM and felt really uncomfortable with that…It’s a rated-R movie about two gay cowboys, it’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting into…
uh…inappropriate.
There’s a line when it comes to exposing your child to new things that just shouldn’t be crossed. I remember being in the same room with my mom and watching Dirty Dancing and feeling really really creepy…This I imagine made that experience look like an afternoon of ice cream and tickle-fights by comparison. That little girl was looking for the ejection-button on her movie seat. I think I heard her praying once.
“Dear Jesus…Anything, flying monkeys, gypsy abduction, anything!...Amen. ”
…poor little lamb, I wonder if she was told she was gonna see the Princess Diaries, and instead she got the Princess Mammaries. (That’s right, Anne Hathaway breaks out the twins.) I pray she was spared the “discussion” after the movie with her old man.
“Well honey, sometimes cowboys are secretly frequently fond of one another…and when that happens, one cowboy takes the other cowboy and…”
That therapy bill is gonna be huge.

Uptime

So I got really worried this weekend because I couldn't ssh into the-little-iBook-that-could up at the office. As it turned out, some vandal had pulled the master power switch for the entire building. After I found out about that I fretted that before power was restored the iBook would run out of battery because I still couldn't ssh into it, but I checked in on it this morning, was able to log into it and it kept running!

 9:54  up 627 days,  1:38, 5 users, load averages: 0.11 0.08 0.07

Woo-hoo!

Bloggalysis

I think the blogging experience could be greatly improved if you received some sort of an update on the list of current posts -- like, "this post has received 2 new comments since the last time you signed in." Because now I'm not sure if I should respond to JP in the comments section of my last post because I don't know if he'll click on it, or should I start a new post? But then, I wouldn't want to take up valuable public blog space with all the personal details of, "have you seen so and so? where'd you get that nifty haircut? who's frank? where out west are you going?" ..... etc., etc. ...

will paul really read his comments to see that I'm eager to catch up and see what new and wonderful creations he's devising with his life these days?

and will adolph ever go back to that "mountain livin' " post to read the long response I gave, or did I just type into the wind, so to speak? Am I the only one experiencing bloggalysis?!

Teh Suxxors: Quicken

So I thought I was going to do the right thing for once and get Quicken and get my financial stuff organized. Quicken sucks.

I have really basic needs and mostly track on three accounts: checking, savings, credit card. I haven't imported the retirement stuff into Quicken yet. The money goes in the checking account and out to savings and credit. All of my financial institutions offer .qif files for download and they import into Quicken easily enough. However, Quicken doesn't seem to offer a way to tie a withdrawal from the checking account to a payment in the credit card account. If I put the category of [Credit Card] in the withdrawal, an entry on the credit card account automagically appears and vice versa. Since I didn't read page 64 of the user guide beforehand I didn't know this when I went through and categorized the last year's worth of transactions and wound up with a year's worth of duplicate payments in the credit card account record. Then when I saw them in the credit card account record, I deleted them on the credit card side without realizing (b/c I didn't read pg 64) that the checking account entry would be deleted too.

For me this breaks a clear rule about how an application should work: it should not do stuff to a document (account) that the user is not focused on without user permission or at least a one-time click-through.

Additionally, this application behavior is useless to me because I want Quicken to be a vehicle for understanding what my financial situation is. The raw data comes from bank data, not data entry on my part (even though applying categories is very laborious). In Quicken I can't tie a withdrawal from one account on one day to a deposit on another account that may not post for another couple of days. The workaround would be to delete the payment entries in the credit card and savings accounts but this would defeat the purpose of the data imports--having the same records as the banks, only all in one place.

Other things about Quicken that suck:

Sorting transactions: doesn't work
Find: works like a word processor from 1999
User interface: bad blend of old-fashioned grids and "make it look like a web browser" underlined text

There are some decent things about Quicken, and I think that it is pretty tightly focused on the kind of person that regularly balances a checkbook and validates their own data entry against bank records.

Name or Marketing Slogan?

I would rather that pieces of legislation had neutered borg-like names, like Act 1234B, rather than names such as "Patriot Act" or "Healthy Forests Restoration Act" or "Clean Air Act". Most names assigned to legislation are pretty good labels, in that they seek to describe the purpose of the legislation. But some names are clearly devised primarily as marketing slogans. The name, "Patriot Act", for example, was clearly chosen for its marketing value. It feels creepy to have legislation marketed to me.

Rocketnaut - D3 in 3D!

As you can see D3 (David Fernandez) continues to accumulate mad skills out in San Diego. He did this one in Maya.

Mama Mexicana

Carol just left me a message in Spanish and I had no idea what she was saying!! ... that's after 4 years of spanish in school. i haven't used it since i left texas. one thing i miss SO bad up here is mexican food.....

anthony was amazed by all the mexican food restaurants in texas -- everywhere we looked there was mexican, mexican, mexican, and more mexican!!! yummmmmmmm ... i ate it for just about every meal while we were down there!

new york may have the best restaurants in the world, but in the entire city there was only one good mexican restaurant -- Mama Mexicana in the Village, where it's seriously gourmet (sort of a laid-back Fonda San Miguel where you pay at least $20/entree) ... yum, they have Pistachio Chicken, excellent mole sauce made with blackberries and chocolate, etc.

There are lots of these "fast food mexican" places that used to tempt me when i first moved up here. i would walk in, salivating over the prospect of a really good burrito for lunch, only to look behind the counter and see all asians working there -- hm, sort of strange, i thought, but i believe in giving everyone a fair chance, so i would order a burrito and wind up with something that tasted like stir-fry vegetables (i could even swear i tasted a hint of -- what was it? soy sauce? ginger, maybe?) with canned beans. Disgusting!

There are even fewer Mexican restaurants in Pennsylvania -- "God's Country," they call it, but I think if I were God I would have a chef that knows how to make salsa fiery enough to impress the devil!! You think the devil eats beef stroganoff for dinner? Nah, he knows Mexican food is the spice of life... I bet he'd have someone like Carol cooking for him every night -- now THAT'S real food!

They do make pretty good cheesesteaks around here, I have to admit. And if you've ever had a New York pizza, well Domino's just doesn't deliver after that! Ummmm, now I'm thinking about New York Italian food -- maaaan, Anthony and his dad make the BEST homemade meatballs -- I'll never be able to eat at the Olive Garden again ...

So, thanks a lot, Carol!! You ruined me for life with your kick ass cooking ... who knows, maybe if I'd been born and raised in New York or Pennsylvania I'd think Mexican food really was supposed to taste like stir-fry after all!

btw, JP, i always figured you'd wind up on the east coast someday. go figure. maybe i got it all wrong somehow. ever hear from radio randy?

Todd

Would love for you to do a re-design on our websites -- please send me an e-mail at ambant@earthlink.net

Thanks!!

Syntax Errors

I hate syntax errors.

UPDATE: Upon todd's request, i added a small reset button so that if you blow it up real big and then scroll around and then scroll back down and lose the iamge outside of the screen, it'll bring you right back to where you started.

I created a slider that would control the scale of a movie clip, but had some difficulty sending the scale value to a dynamic text field on the stage that was created at author-time. I kept getting a syntax error with this command:

//percent being a variale that holds the scale value
scaleText_txt.text = "Scale value: " + percent + " %";

Turns out that this works perfectly for dynamically placed text boxes, but not for text boxes that are placed there at author-time using the GUI tools. The correct syntax, it turns out, is:

scaleText_txt.text = 'Scale value: ' + percent + ' %';

Apostrophe's and not quotes? Is this subtle difference documented somewhere? cause i can't remember running into this before.

UPDATE: before the previous code, i had a trace command that would send the value to the output panel, coded as such:

trace('percent '+percent);

this has always worked. on a scooby-doo-like hunch, i changed the apostrophes to quotes and it still worked. so then i changed apostrophes to quotes in the scaleText_txt box and THIS TIME IT WORKED! so, the moral of the story is stay consitent. If it works, keep on doing it. This really throws me for a loop as i thought that all characters had a really specific function (i.e. square brackets as opposed to curly brackets as opposed to parenthesis) and couldn't be interchanged.

UPDATE 2: I updated the file so that you can now scroll the image once you enlarge it (up to 999%) and scroll around the body. Eventually, the user will bea ble to choose a body part/area and get some displayed information.

The Bearded Warbler

The Bearded Warbler
Originally uploaded by Pablo Mercado.

the bearded-warbler is warbled and bearded
he lives in thorny tree
he loves to sing and sing he does
his sing-songy song with glee:

"oh, i am the bearded-warbler
I live in a thorny tree
I only eat popcorn and nachos
anything else just won't meet with my approval

just kidding i like to eat bird food
like worms and seeds and such
but if you should feed me some nachos
I would not eat them

unless the nachos are cheesy
in a bowling alley or movie theater type way
because then I would eat them because I love those kinds of nachos

oh, i am the bearded-warbler
I live in a thorny tree
I love to sing and sing I do
my sing-songy song with glee"

Ape-Movies

When I am dictator of the Earth and all Allied Planets I will decalare that all Ape-Movies should feature an appearance by Charlton Heston. Ape-Movies that were created before this edict should be retro-fitted with Charlton Heston scenes.

If the science of cloning has not advanced to the point where we can clone Charlton Heston for the purpose of putting him in Ape-Movies, then it will be acceptable to merge old-footage of him into the film.

So it is mentioned. So it should be done.

Mountain Livin'

I always wanted me a mountain man ... and check out that quality kid, too!

Wow, I can feel the love in the room ... I miss you'se guys. When is the next reunion?? Why doesn't everyone come to see us in the Pennsylvania Poconos?? Man, we would have such a blast snowboarding/skiing/etc this time of year -- and NYC is only 1.5 hours away ... there's plenty of room here for everyone!! And in summer there are lakes and waterfalls and hiking since we're on the Appalachian Trail ...

Todd, I would LOVE for you to take our websites to the next level!! How much do you charge?? What ideas do you have? Please send us an e-mail at ambant@earthlink.net

I was racking my brain trying to think, who is JP?? Is that JP the old copy editor from The Star? And then I looked at the profile with the snazzy photo -- it's John Padgett!!! How are you?? You look great! Which advertising agency are you at -- not GSD&M with Jeremy Chichester?

Carol, do I still have a New York accent or is it Pennsylvanian now?

What's New

Hi everyone,

Long time no type! Now that winter has officially arrived here in the mountains, I have time to take a break from landscaping and catch up on catching up. I'm working on one very interesting project this winter -- a 40' tall by 25' wide completely vertical garden. It makes perfect sense in NYC, where all the horizontal space is taken at premium prices. So it's a challenge to get plants and soil mounted vertically, using a hydroponically-intensive drip irrigation system. It's for a hotel, so it could get some press and even possible become a tourist's destination of sorts....

Mountain living is just breath-takingly beautiful. The air is so clean here ... I wake up every morning and see the deer and turkeys frolicking in our backyard and the snow sparkling on the lawn (I've never seen snow so white! Well, okay, in NYC it would last about an hour before the morning rush hour dirtied it completely) ... I feel so alive here, so full of possibility and creative drive! Antonio feels the rush of freedom, too, as he can run and play in the woods, in the snow, on his sled, and to the lake in the summer. Anthony has become quite the mountain man -- he's so into being outdoors now and doing "yard work" -- he's even got a full mountain man beard!

Will write more when I have time to sit and think some more.

Check out what's new on our websites:

http://www.anthonyfreda.com
http://www.plantladyland.com

My first class

I wrote my first class following Moock's Essential Action Script. I've added a couple of extra functions (the alpha change on click and the 'dragability' as well as the text field on each that displays the height) and then ran the class through a for... loop in a .fla file, resulting in a series of randomly sized, randomly placed boxes on the stage. If you refresh your browser the box sizes/placement/text will change.

As of now, the randomly generated numbers are variables in the .fla file and not the class. I thought that putting them in the class would limit the class somewhat, but now that i think about it:

if( h == undefined) {
height = Math.round(Math.random*1000)/2;
} else {
height = h;
}

On to chapter 5: Authoring an Image Viewer class

Syriana

Todd, Ryan and I saw Syriana last night. I really enjoyed the movie. I think it stretched itself a little thin towards the end, but not enough to entirely break the thread of plausability. In addition to the entertaining and stimulating narrative I thought that the movie was visually and audibly pleasing. It had nice pace. The acting was superb. The popcorn was tasty. etc.

Sweet, Sweet Victory! Game 13 Versus Verity FC

This last game of the season was great fun! I played center-mid the entire first half, and managed to contribute to our lone-goal: a sweet 4 player, 4 touch combination...

With this victory we secured our first place standing and kept our 10 game unbeaten streak alive. It is a very nice feeling to part of winning team; all the more so because our victories were due to hard-work, rather than sheer dominance. I hope we continue to do this well in the State Cup and the spring season...

Tagging Systems, Ontology

Can't sleep so started reading about tagging systems, folksomononies and such. Came across this essay called "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags". Found it to be an interesting read. Has not helped me sleep though.

Well-managed, well-groomed organizational schemes get worse with scale, both because the costs of supporting such schemes at large volumes are prohibitive, and, as I noted earlier, scaling over time is also a serious problem. Tagging, by contrast, gets better with scale. With a multiplicity of points of view the question isn't "Is everyone tagging any given link 'correctly'", but rather "Is anyone tagging it the way I do?" As long as at least one other person tags something they way you would, you'll find it -- using a thesaurus to force everyone's tags into tighter synchrony would actually worsen the noise you'll get with your signal. If there is no shelf, then even imagining that there is one right way to organize things is an error.

Meaning is agreement. Most people disagree with the crazy person.

Italy and the Czech Republic? Yikes!!!

sweet looking World Cup ball (130 dollars???!!!!)

Am I right to be a bit weirded out?

I feel weirded out, and by weirded out I mean flippin grossed-out to the flippin max.
Here’s how it went down~
I’m doing my usual gym routine. I leave at lunch to lift heavy things, as is my habit. When I arrive, the charmingly underpaid and most likely underage person behind the desk lets me know that there are no clean towels and that I’ll just have to work out without one. Not overly keen on this, but it’s all I got, so I just won’t work out as hard as I’d normally like.
Anyway, so I get through my gym stint and I make my way to the locker room to find an Older Guy toweling off. It was definitely a gym towel, you can tell cause they have this blue stripe down the center that let’s you know they’re not yours. That said:

JP: Hey did they have more towels?
Older Guy: No. They had like four when I got here and I got one of the last ones.

He’s looking at me and continuing the “toweling”

JP: Ahh. Oh well.

OG at this point is really going at it. Toweling himself off, like the wetness just won’t stop a’coming, south of the equator not withstanding. He really got that part dry.

OG: Hey, you know you can use this one when I’m done if you want. I don’t think I got that sweaty up there.
JP: Hey, you know as tempting as that offer may seem…

I didn’t need to finish, Older Guy pretty much put it together that there are limits to the phrase “caring means sharing”.
Had I taken him up on the offer, I can’t imagine how much further to the opposite end of the spectrum from clean I would have felt. I venture to guess OFF THE SCALE!

What is it with older men and just “hanging out” in the nude? I guess it’s cool that they’re all cool with who they are and the way god made them and everything, but there comes a point where it’s just excessive. One of the older guy’s friends managed to bring a towel of his own and they were talking for couple minutes…just naked…as you do. Then, little friend excuses himself to the toilet, still nude, but with towel in hand, but dragging it behind him…on the locker room floor… and then into the toilet stall!
*wretch!* *urp!*
He dried off with it later…
Now I’m the farthest thing from a Germaphobe, but if I had to give prize for disgusting, that would take the soap cake.
Where are these people from, and why hasn’t their race died off from some feculent-ridden illness?

I’m so weirded out…
Someone please call my pharmacist.

My Lovely Robot Humps!

I read about the Black Eyed Peas "My Humps" song in Slate this morning and it had a link to this great robot remake of the video.

Jelly

I found this interesting tidbit whilst reading about the Giant Killer Jellyfish That Are Terrorizing Japan:

via boingboing

This post is composed of 100% Recycled Parts

24 ways

24 ways, pretty interesting.

Workspace Javascript

Often times I want to display similar but mutual exclusive information within a web page. For example, a view of an address and the form to update the address. Displaying the address in a form is functional but isn't very nice because it doesn't look great and the web page user can't select the entire text and copy it for use in other things. On the other hand, the traditional model of web pages would mean that you have a "view" web page and an "edit" web page with a form and so on. This isn't really great because the user is looking at a wrong address and then clicks "edit" to get the editing web page with the same data but different html markup.

I guess, you could get all fancy with AJAX and whatnot, but I already have something that will take an array of Javascript data and plug it into html. I just need something that will allow me to switch from the view to the update display without recoding in a bunch of onclick="changedisplay(edit_view)"'s. Enter the workspace switcher. Basically, you point it to where the workspace is and where the menu should be added and it seeks out the divs within the workspace. It hides the divs that don't have an attribute of class="active" and makes a menu with the ID attribute of the divs (capitalized and with spaces for underscores, rails-style). Very simple, very easy, now I can get back to whatever it was that I forgot about while doing this.

Type html in here and then click on Html Output to see the HTML:

Below is a second workspace within the Html Output element of the first workspace:

Somebody please...

slice open a Tonton and shove me in its belly! It's cold!

1 hour later...

I am not sure how accurate the widget is...it feels like it is minus a bazillion....

I recommend this silliness

to soothe the savage beast.

British people talking about monkeys. podcast

Lifetime Movie of the Week

Wow. I haven’t been this offended in quite some time…

Unbelievable…Lifetime movie of the week, aka “Burning Bed” pulls up into my cube and starts lecturing me about How EVERYBODY hates Texas.
As a native Texan I take offense. Granted, in my adult life, I’ve moved, and traveled around the globe and then moved back to Texas. I enjoy being a Texan. Until we got that numb nuts as President, people from all over the world would appreciate our eccentricities. Being a Texan stood for integrity and pride, and southern hospitality and knowing your neighbors, and playing outside until it was dark. Now it may not be the same place it was when I was a little boy, but don’t get up into my personal space and start trash-talking Texas. Especially if you’re not really a New Yorker anyway, you’re from South Carolina. Jealousy isn’t a color that suits you honey. She even rips on Austin, and says how much she thinks it sucks.
Then as if it ain’t enough to kick me where I sleep, she goes on to pontificate about Prop 2…A VERY sore subject with me…So tread lightly ‘cause I’ll mail your face to France to have it glued onto somebody else’s grill. For all of you who don’t know, Prop 2 is a bill that restricts same sex couples from getting married in the state of Texas.

“I overheard these two people in the grocery store talking about Prop 2. You know, there was absolutely no way Proposition 2 was not going to pass. I just wanted to pull those two people aside and tell them that there just wasn’t any way. I just felt so sorry for them. They actually believed they had a chance.”

She took this patronizing tone that begged for the tongue lashing of a lifetime.

We all have our own little hot buttons, these little clicks in our heads that go off when someone has taken you just one step too far and you’re gonna flip out and go Julia Sugarbaker on their sad self. You have absolutely no control over the carnage. The Incredible Hulk ain’t got nuthin on me. If this were a movie L7’s “Sh*t List” would be playing in the background.

I’m biting my tongue so hard I’m tasting blood. Breathe deeply JP. Now speak:
“But you do realize how important it is that people have this dialogue, right? You do realize how necessary it is that people like you, don’t open there mouths and discourage them from trying right?”

“It doesn’t change the fact that this is Texas. And it’s never going to change here.” She has this sort of Stevie Nick’s airy lilt to her voice that makes you want to serve her a beaker full of drano and tell her to gargle. Instead I come back with:
“My recommendation is that gay people all over the state should stop paying their school taxes. Gay people have no say in the curriculum and the state is clearly conspiring to keep these people from adopting any children of their own, so they shouldn’t feel obligated to pay those taxes. To put it into terms that the government can understand, fiscally cut them off. Yes it’s illegal, but it’s civil disobedience.”

She wasn’t even listening to me at this point. I could tell that she was merely thinking of the next clever thing she was going to say. I was looking for the trap door that maintenance was supposed to install. I put in request for it weeks ago. My eyes were quickly darting around my cube for the button…Button button…where’s the button? Crap! Still no trap door.

I told her I needed to go and…uh…do something and left. Good Lord, are you kidding me with this crap? No matter where you go, people are generally the same all over. At the core, and there are a few exceptions, there are no evil people, there’s just a lot of stupid people who don’t understand, or have been given bad information stemming from fear. Sure, Burning Bed may feel like the people in Texas are horrid people, but then I’m wondering if she knew this beforehand, did she move here to be with her own kind?

Toys For Tots, Booze For You

Some of the fellas on my soccer team have organized a Toys For Tots, Booze For You Holiday Party. You bring and an unwrapped toy (no toy guns!) for the kids, and in return you get to drink all the beer you want! The party will take place on the 16th, right close to Barton Springs Road and Lamar...

See here for details...

MF DOOM

So I payed 25 dollars and stayed up real late to see MF DOOM put on a show at La Zona Rosa. It was not worth it; He came on late and put on a lackluster performance. The entire set seemed hurried, and ended abruptly an hour or so after it begain...

It was not all bad though. Some of the tracks really bounced the place- particularly the stuff off his latest release, MM Food. But, all in all, I was disappointed and will be hesitant to make the effort to see him the next time around...

Game 12 Versus The Fire Monkeys

A tough game. The Fire Monkeys have made a series of smart acquisitions during the season, picking up a couple of fellers with South American accents, which, as we all know, adds a +3 to dribbling and shooting.

With the wind at their backs in the first half, the Fire Monkeys came out strong. Their constant pressure payed off and they managed to sneak a goal in off a corner-kick deflection...

In the second half we got our offense together and spent most of the game camped out in front of their goal. We were unable to finish very well, and only barely managed to equalize off a stroke of good luck on our own corner-kick deflection...

The Fire Monkeys did get some good counter-attacks going but our defense held pretty strong. In the cases where they slipped by, our keeper Adam made some amazing saves.

There is more game left in this half of the season. If we win or tie, we keep our first place position and get the invite to the State Cup. However, depending on the result of our rival's match yesterday (they faced a tough Babaganoutch side) we may already be a lock...

i am a child

i don't know how to bring this to life

HERE I AM, I SAY TO MYSELF

SO I FORGE AHEAD,
ATTEMPTING TO MAKE DECISIONS THAT SEEM CORRECT
AND AS I WAKE TO EACH DAY
SEE HOW WHAT I DO NOT KNOW
BUT MORE ACCURATE
WHAT I DO NOT DEAL WITH
HAS ITS FINGER IN THE WHOLE OF ME.

I FEEL BLIND AS TO HOW LIFE WILL COME OUT

I FEEL AS IF I AM JUST WAKING UP

FROM A SLEEP

THE KIND THAT YOU TAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY
ONLY TO WAKE UP THE SAME DAY
WITH THE REGULAR EXPECTAION OF MORNING

I KNOW I AM BEING VAGUE

I THINK IF YOU DO NOT DEAL WITH THE DIFFICULT PARTS OF YOUR LIFE
THEY BECOME LIKE CORAL
REEFING SLOWLY OVER MILLIONS OF HOURS
UNTILL THE ONLY WAY TO MOVE IS TO DESTROY

NOW AS DUST SETTLES

I AM WILLING TO SEEK OUT MY LIFE

INSTEAD OF WATCHING IT HAPPEN.

Puerto Rico

Todd Stop complaining.
Pablo Stop hurting your computer.
I hope everybody likes my new hat.

Deep In The Heart Of Texas

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal
Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled

washingtonpost.com

Ancient Art Of War

This was my favorite pc game ever. Next came this one.
Here is page dedicated to the game and why it was so great.

Try Ruby

For those of you who do the programming thing (even if it is only every once in a while) I recommend that you check this out (Try Ruby!). It is pretty neat introduction to ruby and programming in general...

Automobile-Sharing coming to Austin?

Flexcar, which already has a partnership with a nonprofit car operator in Chicago, will next go to Atlanta; Austin, Tex.; Boston; and New York City.

from: nytimes

A service like this would be great for no-car-having, taggart-and-todd-calling, bicycle-riding,foot-monkey like myself.

the snowman

the snowman
Originally uploaded by shanedenson.

We had snow over the weekend!

Memtest

Random applications have been crashing periodically on my computer (Safari, Textmate, Mail.app, etc). This prompted me to run the diagnostics (check permissions, check disk, etc) that uncovered the minor hard-drive problem that I posted about yesterday.

This hard-drive problem does not really explain the frequent crashes, however, so I decided to see if my RAM was ok. I found a pretty sweet utility called memtest that runs some tests against available memory. Sure enough it found all sorts of problems with my RAM. I pulled the 1 gig card that I had put in a couple of months ago and ran the tests again. The tests found no problems with the built-in 256.

Perhaps the problem is occurring because the built-in RAM speed is 266mhz and the chip is 333mhz? This seems unlikely because before putting in the gig chip I had a 512 333mhz chip that ran just fine (and runs, I assume, sin problemas in Todd's ibook).

Did I get a bum chip?

Did the bad memory somehow corrupt my hard-drive?

Online XMAS shopping

Saw this on BoingBoing. Has anyone ever had this sort of horrendous online shopping experience?

scholarship

Hi everybody, I haven't had much time to write lately. Just wanted to let you know I got the scholarship I've been sweating over for the past 5 or 6 months! The German National Academic Foundation is going to fund my PhD dissertation for the next two to three years, starting now!!!

The Indefinite Article.

Saturday, December 31, 2005