Category: tech

Talk about software, hardware, electronics, and a myriad of other sex-repellent topics.

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congealed lamb patties

Knee how. Shea shea.
I didn’t blog on Thursday because I upgraded my blog software and broke the formatting, I didn’t blog Friday because I was in the air headed to Taiwan. Well, now I’m in Taiwan and I downgraded the blog software and got my formatting back – so I have no excuses.

It’s hard to imagine a place as technologically advanced as Taipei, but still so busted. These guys design and manufacture some of the world’s leading-edge stuff, but they live in places that Americans would condemn as un-livable. Maybe they just don’t place much stock in “aesthetics,” ’cause this place definitely looks broke-down. There is so much artistic talent here, evident in the ornate temples and some buildings – but the majority looks like a slum (at least as seen through my land-of-milk-and-honey American eyes). Without dogging it too much, it’s a lot like any other big city. There’s a lot to manage, and I guess a lot falls by the wayside. Some places look great, others don’t. They do have a great subway system, and the tallest building in the world – so it ain’t all bad.

I’ve had a blast since being here. Some guy almost passed out on me on the flight over. About 2hrs out of Tokyo he decided he was gonna have a “medical emergency.” Without going into the whole story, we ended up making a really rapid descent into the airport with a prioritized landing and taxi – at which point paramedics boarded the plane and took the sick dude away. Paramedics and authorities in Japan remind me of Lego-people, blocky and rigid with bright primary-colored outfits. Anyway, it kinda spiced up the 15hr flight, which was, this time, much worse than what I remember from my last trip. Got in late, slept the best I could being 16 hours out of sync, and spent Sunday shopping and sight-seeing in the rain.

As always, the food has been interesting. On Sunday, Ben was keeping a photo-journal of all the meals we ate (I think it was Pat’s idea). So far I’ve eaten jellyfish, congealed lamb patties, shark-fin soup, some kind of orange “organ” served inside a scallop shell, and a barely-dead lobster. And actually, all of it was really good. The shark-fin soup surprised me, because I’ve always thought it would be disgusting – but it was actually quite good. They make the broth with other fish and crab meat, but the fin is the main attraction – kinda funny since I thought it was the least tasty part of the dish. We had the lobster at a teppin place where they cook in front of you. They brought out some whole lobsters which had been recently cut in half lengthwise. When the chef put them on the grill they were still moving. He cooked them very briefly and then served them up, orange-gook (which I think is brains and stuff) and all. The jellyfish, while a tad rubbery, was really awesome – I think it was pickled. They served it cold on a salad. If you’re not a seafood person, Taiwan is not for you. I mean, it’s an island, so it’s to be expected I suppose. Almost everything at least features seafood, there’s fish on the salad, there’s fish in the pasta, and even non-fishy things are often flavored with fish sauce. They also eat a lot more fruit than we do. There’s fresh fruit with every meal, either as a dessert or as garnish. I like that.

I haven’t had a lot of hotel-room time, but while I’m here I mostly surf the net and watch the Cartoon Network, since it’s in English and all. Cinemax is also in English, but the movies they play are super ghetto. Not just old, but like made-for-TV movies from the 80’s that just plain stink. I’m not sure if American stuff takes a long time to get here or what, but the driver that picked us up from the airport was playing a Lionel Richie CD that I think came out when I was five? you know, the one where Lionel all of the sudden got an accent and sang “Fiesta” or whatever. Yeah, try listening to that after 24hrs of travel, ugh. I never really realized how many singles old Lionel actually had from that album, musta been a breakthrough for him. If Germans love David Hasselhoff, then Taiwanese love Deep Purple. For real, two separate people at the customer site today asked me if I saw Deep Purple when they played in San Fran recently. Nope, missed it.

I wish I knew how to speak Mandarin, it sounds like such a cool language. I’m limited to “thank you,” “how much?,” and “restroom?” though. Oh, and “beer,” I can ask for beer. The people here have a lot of history, and a lot of beliefs that seem strange to a white boy like me. Just simple things like the thought that modeling buildings after turtles will make them more earthquake-proof, because turtles (and apparently buildings that look like them) have long lives. Like the rows and rows of fortune tellers who employ all sorts of different methods to make readings, from scattering rice to reading palms. But really, it’s no more silly than the customs of other people I guess – just more pronounced when you’re thrown into it all.

OK, I’m out for now. I’ve taken a bunch of great pictures since getting here – and I’ll try and upload some tonight if I get the chance. Until then, Dave is out.

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spam cometh now

I don't care, I still think it tastes good.
Listening to The Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters while I watch the streetlights snap on one by one, I’m sitting in the only lit room in my dark house. This album is perfect, a great winter album – cold and rainy. I’ve been alternating between this one and The Dears’ No Cities Left, which does OK as a winter album – but has a more “summer” tone at the core if you ask me. Both are well worth checking out, and as always I’m willing to send copies to whomever asks. The Dears are playing with the Stars sometime in the coming months, and I’ve been debating going more and more as the album latches onto my brain. We’re booked with Noise Pop and there have been rumblings about Coachella… so I’m not sure what the future concert landscape looks like right now. In the coming months, we are lucky enough to be taking in the following: The Notwist, The Unicorns, The Decemberists, Vanderslice, Pedro the Lion, The Wrens, Earlimart, and bunch of openers I’ve never heard of.

An era of sorts came to an end sometime last week. Seems like the spammers finally got ahold of my primary e-mail address. Up until now, all my efforts to keep my address off the web and out of the hands of spammers seemed to be working. Before last week I’d enjoyed three spam-free years of e-mail. I’ve always used my hotmail address for any web-related sign-up or registration, reserving my pharaohweb.com address for only direct communication with known people and places. Whenever I published my address on my websites, I always used JavaScript code to assemble the html mailto: string on the fly from substrings, so that any web-scouring robots couldn’t do a “mailto:” grep and extract it.

While my efforts seemed to have worked for a while, sometime last week my e-mail must have been sold and sold again. I’m now averaging about ten to fifteen pieces of spam per day. I’d like to thank all the webscription shops who are willing to sell me cheap herbal viagra, the online universities willing to grant me an MBA in three short weeks, the testimonials from people who lost 80lbs from some secret Egyptian mineral, and last but not least the well-represented penis-enlargement lobby, who by all means are soliciting the wrong well-hung gentleman. I’ve decided that I will send a grainy black and white photograph of my horse-sized-member to each and every one of these misguided marketeers in the hopes they will leave me alone once they realize they’re clearly barking up the wrong tree. Tree indeed.

Anyway, in an effort to combat the twenty-some pieces of spam I’ve been getting daily, I started looking for some blocker software. I’ve never really looked into it before, because I’ve never had a problem with spam. My Pop had mentioned that he just did a $20 trial of some shareware that was working great – but I’m all about freeware whenever possible. After a relatively short search I landed on Spambayes. It’s a freeware plugin for Outlook that uses Bayesian filtering to identify and trash potential spam. It builds a database and gets smarter as it goes, but I found it worked 100% of the time with little or no “training.” Plus, I like that it’s a simple Outlook plugin and not a standalone app, less overhead. So if you’re getting spammed to death, check it out – took care of my problem for sure.

That’s it for now. Remind me to write down the story of how Sharaun locked me out of the house tomorrow. Dave out.

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money and sex are all that matters

What could possibly be more offensive?!
Super Bowl was good, Janet Jackson’s teat was a surprise (link might be NSFW, and I don’t typically like Drudge, but he’s got a good article this time), but leave it up to MTV to come up with the halftime show and you’re bound to get a heaping helping of degenerate bullshit. Sometimes I wonder what the hell my kids will listen to on the radio. I’m sure that this generation’s parents thought the same thing when they heard controversial songs back in their day. But man, songs are so blunt now, just getting right down to the point that money and sex are all that matters – how much more can we debase ourselves? Following the current trend, I would guess that my kids will be listening to tunes with words much like a Penthouse Forum letter. Because really, that’s the only “next level” there is to take it to, right? Instead of clever code words or bleeps, they’ll just sing outright about clits and dicks and all manner of genitalia. I mean, how much does bleeping the word “throat” in a lyric about someone’s deep throat skills really obscure what’s being said? “…how I make a Sprite can disappear in my mouth?.” Yeah, that’s a real song.

Got plenty of sleep last night, which is a welcome change from staying up till all hours for no apparent reason. We were in bed by 10pm and it was awesome. It was one of those nights where I woke up a couple times and expected to look over at the clock to discover I only had a few more minutes of sleep, only to be shocked to see it’s only midnight. I love nights like that, where it seems like you’re sleeping for so much longer. I felt rested this morning when I woke up, but that didn’t make me want to come into work any more. I like work enough when I’m here, but it’s hard to leave in the morning, being warm and comfortable at home, imagining a day spent reading or working around the house or just being lazy. I’m tempted each day to use the “telecommuting” cover story to take a day back from the man. I don’t really ever do it, and when I have done it in the past I never make the day as productive as I’d hoped I would when I made the decision to not go in.

I watched a cool show on the Discovery, or one if the other indistinguishable “learning” channels, the other day about the NYC subway system. They went into details about how they service the cars and stuff, it was really interesting. I find the idea of a network of tunnels and trains moving the populous around really interesting. One thing they showed is what happens when a subway car is beyond maintenance and needs to be retired. The things are loaded onto a freight barge and hauled out to somewhere off the eastern coast, then dumped overboard into the ocean to become “artificial reefs.” The whole “artificial reef” concept is kinda fishy to me (ugh, excuse the pun). What I mean is, sounds like some flowery speech to take the place of “dumping trash in the ocean.” Hey, what a great idea. We don’t have to look at it if it’s in the ocean! Pile it in! I dunno, I’m admittedly ignorant on the details… but I bet we dump tons and tons of refuse in the ocean every day. I’m not trying to get all Greenpeace on your ass or anything, it was just interesting to me.

Taiwan in four days. For now, Dave out.

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i’m eating what now?

Ersatz butter: oleo.
Last night I did it. I went out and bought all the crazy junk you need to make homemade cookies. I got stuff like flour and salt and baking soda. I forgot the cream of tartar, but that’s ok because my recipe didn’t call for it. I still kinda want to have it just to say I do though. Anyway, I went about baking my first cookies ever. I whipped up some dough with the ingredients, mixed it all together, and formed some cookies. They were all right, but for some reason the chocolate chips didn’t want to mix with the dough – and they turned out kinda salty. I don’t know why, I used all the right amounts? but they still turned out salty. I’ll eat ’em tho, the recipe made like sixty freakin’ cookies.

During the whole cooking process, I got curious about another bit of food trivia. Namely, what is margarine? What is it made from, and why and when did it become more prevalent than real butter? To Google I turned, and found out that margarine actually has a kinda interesting history. I know food-facts are boring, but I’ve become increasingly curious about just where the stuff I eat comes from of late. I suppose, in the back of my mind somewhere, I’m preparing for my eventual shipwreck and being stranded on an island where I have to fend for myself. Then at least I’ll know how to make some margarine and stuff. Anyway, it’s good to know stuff. People think you’re smart when you know stuff.

Been listening to two new albums of note lately: Lesser Matters by Radio Dept., and the new one from Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days. At first the Iron & Wine album put me off, but after a few more listens I’ve come to like it a lot. It’s an early leak, some two months prior to street. Both of them are a little more “subdued” and quiet, but it suits the rainy winter weather and mood well. Good to have new tunes.

That’s it. Dave out.

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codes ‘n’ chemicals

There's gold in them thar base metals!
A good weekend. The brake light in the Ford is now off, since Pat helped me do a complete brake overhaul. I was pretty amazed at how easy it was to change brakes and rotors on the front and back of the truck. I mean, seven bolts per brake/rotor and you’re done. From now on I’ll do my own brakes I think, it’s stupid-easy. After working with the brakes, I got a little curious about how the whole braking system actually works. Since I never took a hydraulics course in school, I haven’t really had any formal introduction to how pistons and force works in a hydraulic machine. Anyway, it’s boring engineering stuff – but I can always count on howstuffworks.com to teach me these things. After a half hour of reading, I think I could build my very own hydraulic system.

Over Christmas, someone gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card (can’t remember who, Tyler maybe?). While cleaning out my wallet the other day, I noticed it had a “scratch-off” area for an “online use” PIN code. I thought that was neat, so I started browsing the B&N website for something cool to order. I love books, and I like to collect them. I like to just “have” them almost as much as I like reading them. Anyway, because of some recent interest on my part, along with the fact that I’ve always had my eye on it, I ordered a book which contains a collection of 17th century alchemical engravings. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been fascinate by alchemical ideas and history for a few years now, and the drawings, illustrations, and engravings related to the practice of alchemy have always looked so cool to me. Very mystical and interesting.

As I mentioned above, I have become somewhat re-interested in the whole alchemy thing lately. Mostly just the history associated with it. It all started when I stumbled upon a webpage that collects and lists unsolved “codes and ciphers.” Ever gradeschool, and then being fueled further by Astro, I’ve been really keen on cryptography. Secret codes and stuff have always intrigued me. So when I happened upon a link from the above page about the Voynich Manuscript, I was immediately engrossed. Some theories about the manuscript say that it’s an alchemical or astrological text, which got my brain on the whole alchemy thing again. Anyway, why am I writing this down? Sorry.

Also sorry for Friday’s lack of blog. I was kinda put out, mostly because I read this (warning, may be NSFW) and it made me feel dumb. Hey, I’m a sensitive dude. Before I go, here’s a cool site that lets you “mix” two webpages together. Taking the content from one and the layout of the other, it make a composite of the two pages. I thought it was kinda neat to see the blog formatted like CNN.

Until tomorrow, Dave out.

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meth-bread

Food eaters unite! Break your bonds of ignorance and eat with knowledge!
I was searching through some older tunes to find something nice. Ended up listening to some sigur rós for that ethereal relaxing vibe that sometimes helps quiet my mind. I like music without words, or even with foreign words I can’t understand. Sigur Ros different in that the dude sings in a language he invented. Yeah, he made up a whole language and he sings all their songs in it. There are even internet sites for fans to go and vote on different interpretations of the lyrics. Kinda cool, kinda strange. But above all the music is awesome so it really doesn’t matter to me.

Found out I’ll be traveling to Texas next week for a couple days, not really what I wanted to do – but the bossman ordereth so I comply. I’ll be giving another presentation. I can already tell you that I most likely won’t fully know the material, because I most likely won’t invest the proper amount of time into learning it. Doomed to repeat my viscous cycle of “getting by,” I’ll do enough to fare well and, over time, forget the sting of not knowing what I should have. I don’t really count myself as having a self esteem problem per se, but I do definitely have issues when I am to be perceived as particularly learned on something and I know I’m not. I suppose that’s more of a guilt thing, but there’s also the slight humiliation that goes along with it. Not that I have a right to complain when you consider it’s all my doing, and that I could bone up and become nearly bulletproof if I wanted to. if I wanted to. Anyway, all that aside – the timing kinda blows because I’m gonna miss an Ima Robot show that’s here in town. Bummer.

Benz informed me that the Notwist is playing at Slims in February, which is cool because counting the Decemberists show this month it looks like we’re off to a well rounded concert schedule for 2004. I hate it when the paragraphs in my entries are all big and then there’s on tiny one, so I’m adding this sentence to fill round out the size of the paragraphs on the screen.

The other night I got this crazy itch to bake some cookies. Not like the kind you buy in a plastic tube and slice off onto a sheet, but like the kid where you need flour and eggs and crap. So I started looking online for recipes, and I kept seeing these crazy ingredients: baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar. What the heck is that junk? I mean the words “baking powder” aren’t all that descriptive. Just what is baking powder? Well, since I was already on the internet, I decided to check it out.

Turns out that baking powder is a combination of baking soda and cream of tartar, along with some flour or something. Well great, a circular definition. The bottom line is, they’re chemicals; all chemicals that act as catalysts for the baking reaction that makes air and causes things to rise. Kind of like yeast substitutes. My question is, when did baking powder come into existence? Who first decided that adding some NaHCO3 to some KHC4H4O6 might make their cookies get all fluffy? Did people use yeast until that crap got invented or what? Anyway, I skipped the cookies, as it all took on some kinda “meth lab” imagery in my head. I envisioned whipping up a batch of peanut butter cookies (with fork marks) in my bathtub while wearing a chem suit, not too appealing.

Food trivia like that is really interesting to me. It amazes me how much I don’t know where what I eat comes from. So much history has gone into the way food is made that we just pick things off a shelf and take it all for granted. I mean, who discovered that you have to boil some poisonous root for days before it turns into delicious tapioca? Some totally hungry dude I’d bet. Where does yeast come from? I know it’s naturally occurring, but if I was stuck in the woods with nothing and wanted to make bread – how would I grow/harvest/cultivate some yeast?

Who first thought of all the crazy things we do to make inedible things edible? That stuff trips me out. What’s more, I like to think about things like “what is baking powder,” because in my mind it’s some small form of questioning authority. The authority that tells me “it’s baking powder, just buy it and use it.” Screw you baking powder conglomerate!! I’m onto you, I won’t be blindly fed your propaganda! Question authority!! Now, why is wheat brown and flour white…. they bleach it?!?! I have so much to learn…

That’s it for today. A fresh-written piece, not canned like yesterday. More cut-n-paste to come this week, but this flows straight off the dome.

Dave out.

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another thing to work on

The boy's got the devin in 'em and it needs to come out!
I watched the collectors edition five-disc version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Friday afternoon while Sharaun was busy at a salon of some sort. The additional scenes were absolutely excellent, and really aide in conveying the spirit of the story. I wish I could’ve had Sharaun see this extended version first, as it helps to explain things much better for those who may have not read the books. Though I doubt I’ll be able to convince her to watch it again now that she’s sat through the screener version I originally downloaded. Although, she did say she really enjoyed the non-extended version. Anthony and I have talked about having an all day marathon when the last dvd set comes out. Starting in the morning and watching until the end. I heard that the Return of the King dvd cut will clock in at four and half hours, that means watching all of them in a row would amount to something like eleven hours of movie. I’m up for it, and I think it’d be an awesome experience to watch them all in sequence as a whole. I know it’s because I enjoy the story so much, but I honestly think the films are some of my favorites; ever.

I’ve found my next frivolous project.

Friday night we also played some more DDR over at Anthony’s place, and I’ve got the totally busted calf muscles to prove it. I’ve been considering downloading the game for the Xbox and then buying a couple dancepads, since that’d be the cheapest option. However, during our Friday night DDR playing, Ben managed to find a few open-source DDR emulators online. A couple seemed really good, but StepMania seemed to be the best. So, Saturday I BitTorrent’d the complete DDR mix package for StepMania. With over 1000 songs, you get a lot more variety than just having the Xbox game. All you need is a computer plugged into your TV and some dancepads. I picked up some PlayStation dancepads and ordered a PS-USB converter so I can use them on the PC with StepMania. I’ve already started on the project, because it kills two projects with one stone. Lemme explain:

I want to create a complete console emulation machine. A small computer that plugs into the TV and has joysticks and can play all the old console games from Nintendo, N64, Super Nintendo, Genesis, etc. It’s actually a relatively easy thing to do, since the emulators and ROMs for most consoles are readily available and work really well. I’ve been messing with Nintendo and Genesis emulators since college, and am really familiar with them. Cool thing is, the emulation machine and the StepMania machine mentioned above can be the same machine. Throw it all in a small-form-factor PC case and hook it up to my wireless network, and maintenance becomes a breeze. Anyway, the emulation and output-to-TV parts are already working, and I just need the PS-USB converter to make the StepMania portion work. Now all I need is a pretty frontend menu system to choose what games you wanna play, and it’s done! All in a couple days, not bad.

Well, I wrote a lot over the weekend when we got back from vacation – so I’m basically just cutting and pasting a bunch of paragraphs per day of pre-written blog. I do “proofread” it and add up-to-date stuff here and there, but for the most part it’s canned for the next couple days. Sorry this entry comes so late, but at least it’s here.

Dave out.