Don't Stop

A small follow-up on my previous post, focusing on a subset.



Why is Fleetwood Mac so underrepresented?

New Years Weight

It's the end of December, the end of the year. Let's talk about how fat I am. :-P

Last year at this time, I weighed 244 pounds. This morning, I weighed 201 pounds.

I have ~17% less mass than I did a year ago.

Yay, me? ^_^

I still have the rest of the day to lose that pesky last pound to get under 200. Anyone know which appendages can safely be removed from the human body? Preferably something I don't use very often.

UPDATE:
Hooray, I made my weight goal! Also, penises grow back, right?

Axial Tilt Is The Reason For The Season

Follow me on this one, it gets twisty.

So, Kris Straub (you know Kris, he makes Starslip) retweeted Brian Denham's "Only 364 shopping days until Christmas." tweet. I don't know Brian, but I glanced at his feed and saw that he had retweeted a Richard Dawkins post about "7 Reasons for Atheists to Celebrate the Holidays".

Now, in that article, in reason #3 was the line "Axial tilt is the reason for the season!" I just love this line! A quick google search found a 2007 post on Bad Astronomy, and that points to a 2006 post by Lore Sjöberg (he who used to write Table of Malcontents for Wired), which is where the image on this page comes from. (Sidenote, I wonder if this product is affiliated, or a rip-off? It's clearly the same artwork.)

It's like... it's like all the people I follow on the Internet all know each other.

Anyway, the OLDEST post I could find for the line was way back in 2005, in the Pagan Prattle. I'm just hearing it now for the first time‽

Merry Christmas!

(via)

You guys! This is my favorite Warehouse comic.

Don't

I saw this image today, but I thought it could be better. It's not ordered by size, there's no correlation between order of the legend and order of the slices (important for those of us that are colorblind). Also, what do the sizes mean? Just random?

So I made my own, basing the sizes off of the number of hits on a Google Video search for each.

December 12th

Today is December 12^th, or as it is known in America, the 12^th of December.

Seriously, it's another non-holiday. And why not? It's the last x^th day of x^th month of the year!

It's also just a couple weeks before Christmas. Last Minute Panic Day? Hmm.

Suggestions?

Mars Needs Moms!

A while back, I found this Berkeley Breathed book at Auntie's.



Disney is making a movie version of the book now, which if you know Berkeley and Disney, is incredible.

You can find a bit more of the story here (along with more history between Berkeley and Disney), but basically it's this:

Milo (the son) doesn't much care for the way his mom treats him (making him do chores and eat his vegetables), but when Martians kidnap her, well he has to do something, right? So he stows away on the alien ship to try and rescue her.

Now, for those of you in the bookstore with me at the time, you might remember my reaction to the book's ending. But if you really don't want it spoiled, I'll hide it. Show/Hide
...although it's not much of a spoiler, considering how much of it is on THE COVER!

Milo (on Mars) trips and falls and breaks the helmet of his spacesuit. The air escapes and he passes out, right as his mom finds him. Seriously, it's ALL ON THE COVER. Anyway, next page is double-spoilered. Show/Hide
Milo wakes up to find he is wearing an unbroken helmet.



Yeah. His mom took off her own helmet to save him. Milo finally understands the depth of his mother's love for him.

Overall, a pretty good book, if a bit abrupt at that one point. I'm curious how they plan to stretch this tiny story over a full-length movie though.

Semi-relatedly, here's an article Berkeley wrote about modern movies.

Swarley

So, I saw this video on The Daily What. It's a mashup of Frosty The Snowman and Barney Stinson. Show/Hide



I love it. I love Barney. I want to change my name to Swarley. Which brings me to the main point of today's post.

I google'd Swarley because I wasn't sure of the spelling (-y/-ey?). One of the results was a wikipedia page that talks about all the tie-ins.

There are websites for Marshall and Lily's wedding (a bit ruined by the show plug in the top right corner), a Pro-Swarley-name site.

And then we get to TedMosbyIsAJerk.com. W...ow.

Yes, that *IS* a 20-minute song about what a jerk Ted Mosby is. It also ends with a reverse easter egg.

Wendy the Waitress is the MOTHER! (of the goat)

(also, random BSG reference at ~13:30 made me laugh)

Good Morning

Dear T-Mobile,

Thanks for texting me at 4 in the morning to let me know the balance on my account. Also, thanks for texting twice, in case I accidentally slept through the first one.

Stay super.

Sincerely,

A very grumpy tired Phoenix

Starslip

I recently ran through the Starslip archives. Totally worth a read. Often funny, but sometimes very touching. I'll show you a taste with bits of the Jovia storyline.

Spoilers ahoy.

Memnon Vanderbeam is in love with Jovia, daughter of the King of Jupiter. He saved them from an assassination attempt.


Later, a critical flaw is discovered in Starslip technology.


Eventually the flaw catches up with them.


Memnon starts the ships computer processing a Starslip path back to a timeline where Jovia lives, a process that will take many years. In the meantime, the storyline moves along. But every once in a great while, you'll get episodes like this:


Much later, the ship's computer tells Memnon that they can use the partially-computed Jovia path to end a war. Jovia would still have died, but the war would be over (or avoided). This would mean starting the calculations over from the beginning. Memnon refuses.

But later, when Deep Time sets a bomb to go off that will eliminate the entire timeline...


Like I said, worth a read.

Veterans Day

Today is November 11^th, or Veterans Day here in America, Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth, and Armistice Day in Belgium, France, and New Zealand.

In Commonwealth countries, it is traditional to wear poppies on this day, in remembrance of the end of World War I. Why poppies? Because of the poem In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

(McCrae wrote it on May 3^rd, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before.)

The poppies referred to in the poem grew in profusion in Flanders where war casualties had been buried and thus became a symbol of Remembrance Day.

(source)

Han Solo

So Han’s walking down the halls of Bespin with his old friend Lando. Leia’s there, and lookin’ good. Han thinks he’s off to dinner - maybe some wine, a little flirting, and then back to the ol’ guest quarters with Her Hotness.
But the door opens, and there’s Darth Vader.
Han doesn’t look incredulously at Lando; he doesn’t duck or run away.
What does Han do?
He starts shooting at the motherfucker.
He starts shooting.

Be like Han.

(via)

A Mother's Love

Retail | Spokane, WA, USA

(A pimply, overweight 18 year-old boy dumps a satin black flame-job man thong on the counter.)

Boy: “Uh, can I return this? My mom got it for me.”

via

Smoked

Convenience Store | Spokane, WA, USA

Me: “How can I help you, sir?”

Customer: “I want one single cigarette.”

Me: “No problem, can I see your ID?”

Customer: “What? Do I look 14 to you?”

Me: “No, you look 18, but unless I get ID I can’t sell them to you.”

Customer: “Why cant you sell me the beer and a cigarette?”

Me: “I am sorry, sir, but I could lose my job if I sold it to you without ID.”

Customer: “Oh, I am sure your job is sooo great and pays you a lot?!”

Me: “I’m not the one who can’t afford more than one cigarette.”

(via)

Fine.

OK, fine, here's a post for today. I'm at the programming contest right now, and we're not allowed a real browser. This one keeps crashing. Which is fine. People don't like long posts anyway. :-P

No Post!

No post for today! I'm *OUT* of forward posts! I've barely stayed a day or so ahead, but now I'm in Moscow-Pullman for the weekend. Will I post? Probably not!

So, tomorrow may be the very first day without a post since JUNE 30^th of this year! How truly sad.

Guess I didn't make it to Christmas after all...

Remember Remember

The fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...
Show/Hide

Primer

The recent XKCD has brought Primer back to the collective foreground.

I've seen many MANY people explaining the timeline in Primer, and with the exception of the 'birds nesting in the attic' (which I didn't catch when I watched it, because it was too far away from the Big-Reveal), they don't seem to add much to the conversation. The timeline didn't really seem complicated enough to need an explanation; it is internally consistent. The Big-Reveal follows the movie's logic. So, what's to explain, right?

So, is this an Internet joke? Like the 3-wolf-moon t-shirt reviews? It didn't occur to me until today, but is everyone just playing and I didn't get it? Like, if we all pretend that Primer is really complicated and unknowable, that makes it funnier? I kind-of get that.

Social Butterfly

This is a recent screenshot of my Gmail tab. Yes, that is five chat windows open at the bottom. I can't see enough of the screen to reply to the e-mails I'm getting.

SO, if you send me a chat and I don't respond right away, don't take it personally. There may be a line ahead of you.

V

Just watched the First-Look for the V remake (starts tomorrow), and I gotta say: I am underwhelmed.

There are so many problems here, I'm not sure where to begin. Yes, I know a giant spaceship filled with extra-terrestrials is not realistic, but I can suspend my disbelief on that. BUT, nobody is looking up until the thing is over a city? Really? It's presence comes as a huge surprise and nobody is ready?

That was a fine premise when the original V aired. These days, that shit would be all over Twitter before they got through the cloud layer, let alone navigated to the nearest metropolis.

(And of course there is also the problem of the terrible acting from 50+% of the characters we saw, but whatever)

So, bad acting + cheesy dialog + lack of realism? I predict blockbuster hit. And then weep for the state of society.

Honda U3-X

I briefly mentioned this on my Enicycle post (or, in the comments, actually), but a new video has surfaced so of course I had to share it. Show/Hide


RAMPANT are the comparisons between this device and those chairs from WALL-E. I don't get it. This is MUCH too small to support such weight...

Happy Halloween!

Another month with daily posts, AND not so many far-forward posts like before. (Of course, that leads to yesterday's random crap)

And because it's the end of the month, it's time for my cop-out. ^_^ Tomorrow I'll have something real to post (maybe).

....alright, alright here's something for today: Sexy Halloween Costumes: When Does A Costume Go Too Far?

Mental Floss

Recently ran across the Mental Floss shirts. Most shirt stores have a couple good ones (and because I couldn't think of anything else to post today*); here are some of my faves.

(in random order)

*and tomorrow is not looking too good either.

Things They Don't Tell You

(CLICK THE IMAGES TO PROCEED THROUGH THIS COMIC)

Ze Frank recently buzzed about this, and I thought it was interesting enough to pass along. For me, there were two pages in particular that I thought deserved a comment.

#1:

Aha! I'm normal, bitches!

#2:

Argh! No, no, no. Money is not evil.

It's the *LOVE* of money that is the root of all evil! This is an important distinction! Timothy 6:10, look it up!

Important Things

I recently finally got around to watching Important Things with Demetri Martin. So far I've seen 1.5 episodes, and I have this to say: Demetri Martin is a Genius.

This show is great. Part stand-up, part sketch, part philosophy, each episode tackles one important thing.

And to show you how great it is, here are some clips.

The first episode was about Timing.

Timing - Anger Scene Management Show/Hide

Unfortunately, you get just a tiny taste in this mini-clip. You can see where it's going though. Actually, it goes even further than you'd think. :-/ Guess you'll have to catch it on re-run!

...or you could watch this low-quality YouTube video.


Timing - Time Gigolo Show/Hide

Argh! AGAIN you only get a small snippet of the full scene. Notice how the time changes after you start playing the video? What's that about?

(sorry, couldn't find a YouTube version of this one)


The second episode was about Power.

Power - Parking Fight Show/Hide

Finally a full scene!

Removed

Here's another reason (of many) that I like Google:

If they block some results, for any reason, they will TELL YOU.



Right there at the bottom of the page. Not in tiny text either. They practically bold it and surround it by flashing lights.

Yahoo didn't. Bing didn't. And I couldn't find any results that they were showing that Google wasn't (because maybe they weren't asked under the DMCA to remove any results), but Google also shows more results on the first page (15 vs 10@Yahoo vs 14@Bing).

Character Tweets

@wilw brought to everyone's attention that the Big Bang Theory characters have Twitter accounts.

Penny
Leonard
Sheldon
Wolowitz
Raj
Leslie

I don't know who's running the accounts (I do know that they aren't officially affiliated with the show) but whoever is doing it manages to do a FINE job of staying in-character. Tell me you can read Sheldon's tweets and not hear his voice?

Rainbows

Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole 'IZ' 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' Show/Hide


Driving home from work today, I saw a rainbow.



Actually, that's not true. I saw the place where a rainbow was. I couldn't see the rainbow itself.

I'm colorblind. Whereas a person with normal vision sees a spectrum like this:

I can basically see two colors: Blue and Not Blue

Or maybe I should say: Blue and I-Don't-Know.

(I'm guessing on that 2^nd spectrum. I ran it through a filter, but since I can't really see the colors...)

When people find out that I'm colorblind, it inevitably leads to the game: What Color Does This Look Like To You? To save time, let me just say: Unless it's BLUE, I DON'T KNOW.

Another game is What Color Is _______? Look, I know Grass is Green. I'm colorblind, not ignorant.

I don't really get upset by these things anymore. It's human nature to be curious. People who can see colors want to know what it's like to be colorblind, just as I'm curious what it's like to see colors.

In my mind, I picture it to be like music. The different colors join together like notes in a song. Two notes come together and make a new sound; likewise two colors come together and make something new. Three notes can get you a chord, three colors combine to make up what a normal person can perceive*. Each spot you see, each patch of color is its own instrument in the orchestra of life. The world is a visual symphony.

*Some women have two distinct red/green receptors in their eyes, giving them FOUR-color perception. I literally CANNOT imagine what this is like.

Now, of course I know it isn't really like that. I'm overselling it because it is unknown to me. But I have to wonder if you appreciate it. Or do you take it for granted?

You live in a world that, to me, would be like a dream, but you don't even know it.



Driving home from work today, I didn't see a rainbow.

But I really wished I did.

Jack Ryan

So I'm only hearing about this now, and it's old news, but whatever. Barack Obama beat out Jack Ryan for his senate seat?

Now, I know that this is politician Jack Ryan (then-husband to 7 of 9), but the image that came to mind was:

Pi

(via)

Statements like this bother me, because intuitively they seem correct, but are actually wrong. Just because something is infinite and non-repeating DOES NOT mean that all possibilities are expressed.

For example, consider the infinite sequence: 17, 34, 51, 68, 85, 102, 119, 136...

It increases by 17 each time. It's infinite, and it never repeats, but the number 2 is never going to exist in this set. Or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, etc... 16/17 of all numbers will never be part of it. Infinity doesn't mean the same as everything.

UPDATE:
Well, now I had to make this:

(store)

Unseen Academicals

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go going when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel Unseen Academicalsis out now, and I've just finished reading it.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, as until three quarters of the way through it was my favorite Pratchett book to date, but it fell apart at the weak ending.

Still, before the ending there were a number of great and moving bits, some snippets of which I will share with you below.

Here the Patrician and the Archchancellor are talking about soccer:

'In my day we were all so... so relentlessly physical. But if I was to suggest so much as an egg and spoon race these days they'd use the spoon to eat the egg.'

'Alas, I did not know your day was over, Mustrum,' said Lord Vetinari, with a smile.

Here the mysterious Mr. Nutt talks to Trev (a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can) and Glenda (a maker of jolly good pies) about Trev's father, a soccer legend killed by the game:

'Your father loved you, did he not?'

'Wot?' Trev's face reddened.

'He loved you, took you to the football, shared a pie with you, taught you to cheer for the Dimmers? Did he hold you on his shoulders so that you could see more of the game?'

'Stop talkin' about my dad like that!'

Glenda took Trev's arm. 'It's okay, Trev, it's all right, it's not a nasty question, really it isn't!'

'But you hate him, because he became a mortal man, dying on the cobbles,' said Nutt, picking up another undribbled candle.

'That is nasty,' said Glenda. Nutt ignored her.

'He let you down, Mister Trev. He wasn't the small boy's god. It turned out that he was only a man. But he was not only a man. Everyone who has ever watched a game in this city has heard of Dave Likely. If he was a fool, then any man who has ever climbed a mountain or swum a torrent is a fool. If he was a fool then so was the man who first tried to tame fire. If he was a fool then so was the man who tried the first oyster, he was a fool, too–although I'm bound to remark that, given the division of labour in early hunter-gatherer cultures, he was probably a woman as well. Perhaps only a fool gets out of bed. But, after death, some fools shine like stars, and your father is such a one. After death, people forget the foolishness, but they do remember the shine. You could not have done anything. You could not have stopped him. If you could have stopped him he would not have been Dave Likely, a name that means football to thousands of people.'

Nutt negotiates with a dwarf:

'Her? The Dark Lady? She can kill people with a thought!'

'She is my friend,' said Nutt calmly, 'and I will help you.'

Nutt has a mantra about Being Worthy, leading to this discussion with Trev:

'It is a skill. It can be learned.'

'An' that makes you worthy?'

'Yes.'

'An' who judges?'

'I do.'

(Not entirely unrelatedly, I read this passage in The Little Prince today:


"Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "that is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom."

)

Some characters have undergone little changes (not sure how I feel about those yet), such as the teetotaler Patrician drinking a beer while telling this story:

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. 'I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.'

Nutt tells Glenda an interesting thing about ships:

'The interesting thing about ships is that the captains of ships have to be very careful when two ships are close together at sea, particularly in calm conditions. They tend to collide.'

'Because of the wind blowing, and that?' said Glenda, thinking: In theory this is a romantic-novel situation and I am about to learn about ships. Iradne Comb-Buttworthy never puts a ship in her books. They probably don't have enough reticules.

'No,' said Nutt. 'In fact, to put it simply, each ship shields the other ship from lateral waves on one side, so by small increments outside forces bring them together without their realizing it.'

(this is a metaphor about relationships; it even puns 'ships)

Glenda cleared her throat again. 'This thing with the ships…Does it happen quite quickly?'

'It starts quite slowly, but it's quite quick towards the end,' said Nutt.

If I could put smart in water...

'Can't you wizards do something?'

'Yes,' said Ponder. 'We can do practically anything, but we can't change people's minds. We can't magic them sensible. Believe me, if it were possible to do that, we would have done it a long time ago. We can stop people fighting by magic and then what do we do? We have to go on using magic to stop them fighting. We have to go on using magic to stop them being stupid. And where does all that end? So we make certain that it doesn't begin. That's why the university is here. That's what we do.'

Ah, punnery:

'We shall have to change our tactics to suit, then,' said Nutt.

'Are you nu—insane?'

Another thing I found interesting was that Amazon paired it up with And Another Thing...(the 6^th Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book) penned this time by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer. Of course, no one could ever replace DNA.

Threeway

Love that search engine.

So, someone recommended Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture to me recently. It sounded interesting, so I decided to check the Spokane County Library page to see if they had it.

I threw the title into the search engine, but forgot to set it as Title and it searched as Words or Phrase.

The first result was Threeway sex, whose only result was Triangles (Interpersonal relations), whose only result was a Vampire Diaries book.

Not... exactly what I was looking for.

The Worst Part of Censorship

Was browsing around and saw this:

(via)

Hey! I know that saying! In fact, I put it on a t-shirt over a year ago!


It looks almost identical to what I made! AND the earliest version of that image I could find was from May of this year, over a YEAR after I made my t-shirt! They're ripping me off!

And then I found this:

(via)

Not quite an entire year before my shirt. Almost identical wording as mine. :-(

I'm beginning to wonder if I have any original ideas at all. It's super-frustrating to think you're clever only to find out someone else thought of it before you.

Rainy Season

It hurts.

Many years ago, when I was younger and more foolish, a moment's horseplay crushed my right hand in a door. In an instant my life's path was altered. For about six months, my fingers wouldn't open up. I had a permanent fist. Couldn't type on a computer, couldn't brush my teeth or tie my shoelaces, and have you ever noticed how jeans are really biased against southpaws?

I played piano in high school. Did you know that? I imagine that many people that know me might not know that, as I don't play anymore. Sometimes I fantasize about taking the time to relearn how to play, now that I can move my fingers again, but I don't think I ever will. I doubt I could endure it.

Because it hurts. All the time. Sometimes, it's just a dull ache in the background of my mind, like a neighbor's too-loud TV: annoying and ignorable, but relentless. My hand makes popping sounds as I move it, and I can feel the strange sensation of tendons sliding over bumps that shouldn't be there. I don't take anything for this pain. What would be the point? There's nothing I could take every day for the rest of my life (healthily, anyway), and the pain itself is never going to stop. Ever.

Even when I sleep, it's still there. I often dream that my right hand has turned into a stone fist, because that sometimes helps mask the pain. Sorry pain, I can't feel you, I'm made of stone. Odd dreams.

But it's worse at this time of the year, when the rains come. I can feel the approaching storms, like a character in a novel I read in middle-school. I can also feel them leaving, which no childhood story I read ever warned me about. These days, a storm is always approaching or leaving, so the pain intensifies and never lets up, never lets go even for a moment.

I've felt terrible pain before, other than this. When I was in high school, I slipped on the ice and tore the ligaments in my ankle. Worse than breaking a bone, they said. When I was in my mid-20s, I passed a kidney stone. Not a smooth one, a jagged one that tore up my insides on its way out. Worse than giving birth, they said. So much blood was expelled that even my colorblind eyes could see it. That was bad.

Some days, though, some days this is worse. Believe it.

Often the entire tendon sheath becomes inflamed, carrying the pain from the injury all the way up to my shoulder, and the hand itself becomes a clumsy tingling ball of ache, and the right half of my body vibrates to some resonant frequency of torment. At these times, moving my arm at all is excruciating. Every breath I take seems to pull out more pain, and if I bother to hold my breath and still my body, the beat beat beat of my heart fans at the embers.

My right eye sometimes goes blind from the agony, white hot like staring at the sun. I just want to give up, curl up in my bed and dream of a different life that doesn't hurt so much.

Even just remembering this now makes it hard to type, hard to concentrate.

If ever you see me sitting unfocused on a cloudy day, please, just let me rest for a moment. Just a moment, let me regain my strength.

Right now, as I type this, a storm is approaching. I can feel it. The rainy season is here.

Bian shi tou. Please God, make me a stone.

Marriage (revisited)

A follow-up to my previous post on marriage. I saw both of these today:


(via The 8 Phases of Dating)


(via The 5 Stages of Most Relationships)

Google Voice

Google Voice lets me invite other people now? A couple invitations showed up in my inbox today.

Speaking of Google Voice, here's something I've been meaning to post for months now but kept forgetting. It's about sending texts from Google Voice:

Television Piracy

Here's why I don't think that downloading TV shows off the Interwebs is a real threat to broadcasters:

I can get better quality picture and sound for FREE over the air with a simple antenna. Plus, I can get THAT faster than I can download it (often before it is even available for download).

Downloading has some advantages, I guess, but I have a DVR to capture off the air, which gives me most of them anyway.

And yes, for quality one can download the hi-res versions of a show, but a single episode of House is about as big as every episode of Important Things with Demetri Martin combined.

Just an observation.

(Also, if you ARE a downloader, and you have a fast enough connection, check out Hulu. Some of their streams are faster and higher-quality than your average cap, and the commercials are shorter than over-the-air)

Piano Bar

So, Spokane has a piano bar‽

I don't know how it came up, but my sister and I decided to go there for our birthday this year. I'll give you a quick rundown of the evening, Twitter-style (but since I hadn't bothered to setup my phone for Twitter, these aren't actual tweets. God, I just used 'tweet' for the first time).

Anyway.

9:30 Dueling pianos played Billy Jean (briefly).
9:45 Night is young, girls already kissing. I think. Wish I had worn glasses.
9:55 Apparently, anyone can sing with the piano. Like karaoke.
10:03 Our party has taken over the bar.
10:08 Lenny sings dirty Happy Birthday to my sister. :-/
10:18 Wisdom from my other sister: Alcohol is Tylenol PM that costs $50.
10:41 Piano-man is singing Don't Cha. It's awesome.
10:55 I would imagine that the girls being loud in the bathroom don't realize we can hear them.
11:14 Sex on the Piano - My other sister's new favorite drink.
11:26 Piano-man is closing with I Kissed a Girl.
11:30 Piano-man is still playing. He keeps saying this is the last song (he was scheduled to stop at 11:00) but people keep requesting...
11:44 My birthday sister tries to surprise me with a dance. Now we're both embarrassed.**
11:48 Piano-man (whose name is Christan*) ends his set for real, with Hey Jude.
11:55 Apparently now it's time for another bar. Should have taken that ride home when I had the chance.

** even though we TALKED in the car-ride over about how my knees don't work (especially right now; the right-kneecap is bruised through to the other side, it feels like. It hurts as bad as my broken right hand***)

*** that is a lie.

I didn't have any notes after that (although my right nipple is fairly bruised for some reason). :-/

Anyway, Gibliano Brothers was a lot of fun. I'll have to convince my other friends to check it out some time (HINT, you guys!). It was a light crowd (well, it _was_ a Wednesday) and we almost had the run of the place. The piano-man did play Billy Jean again on his own, but didn't know enough Michael to sate the hungry crowd. It was a treat to hear Nine Inch Nails and .... man I can't even remember all the songs he played. During the really good songs, I was too busy listening to take notes. :-/ He never did play Baby Got Back (which was requested many times) although he did close out (for really real) with Fat Bottomed Girls.

*Spelled 'Christien' on their website. I must have misheard him. :-/

The Future

I turned on my Nintendo DS, and instead of the usual musical notes it played some high-pitched chimes.

What? Are the speakers broken? No, the sounds in the games work fine...

Yeah, this is a feature of the DS. It knows that today is my birthday, so it played a slightly different opening.

That's right, I was just wished happy birthday by a machine! In case you didn't realize that we're living in the future!

Great Balls of Fire

And I'm not talking about STIs (this time).

It was dusk when the first fireball burst from the Mekong. A glowing pink orb hovered over the chocolaty waters for a split second then accelerated noiselessly skyward, winking out some 100 meters above.

So begins the Time article Behind the Secret of the Naga's Fire.

I am of course talking about Naga Fireballs, a not-fully-explained phenomena that happens every year around October. In fact, here's a video from ONE YEAR AGO TODAY! Show/Hide


So what causes the mysterious lights? ^_^ I wouldn't dream of spoiling it for you.

Birthday Meme

Today is my BIRTHDAY. ^_^ Time for the MEME!

The instructions:

1. Go to Wikipedia
2. In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3. List three events that happened on your birthday
4. List two important birthdays
5. List one death
6. One holiday or observance (if any)

Three Events
1322 - Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence. (I'm partly Scot)

1789 - George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day.

1867 - The 15th and last Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan.


Two Birthdays
1894 - E. E. Cummings, American poet (d. 1962)

1927 - Roger Moore, English actor (That's right, JAMES BOND bitches!)


One Death
1977 - Bing Crosby, American singer and actor (b. 1903) (Yay, Spokane!)


One Holiday/Observance
World Standards Day (A holiday for NERDS!)

The End of Forward Posting

Soon (very soon) all the forward posts I've written will run out.

How did I go from several months of queued posts to nothing? Well, I have other outlets now.

Pictures get posted to tumblr. (I have ~100 pictures in that queue, even though it posts every four hours!)
Articles, Comics, and Blog Posts end up on Google Reader. Do you use Google Reader? It's awesome.
Short notes get posted to twitter. (Blog posts and pictures also double post to Twitter. Twitter is almost all you need.)

Long stories will still end up here (when I have time to write them).

Inhibition

Odd things about Phoenix:

This is the opposite of most people, but I find that the more I drink, the greater my inhibitions. What's up with that? Am I just naturally so uninhibited that a little alcohol pushes me out the other side?

Weird.

UPDATE:
Further experimentation has led me to the conclusion that a small amount of alcohol takes the edge off, but any more and I lock down.

Still weird.

Air

Sometimes it feels like I'm not getting enough oxygen. I find myself suddenly taking great gasping breaths. What the heck is going on there?

I'm wondering if it could be related to my abnormally low blood-pressure? Like, my lungs are bringing in plenty of O2, but the blood moves so slowly I run out?

I've no idea. One of these days, I'll have to bring it up with a doctor.

October 10th

Today is October 10^th, and ... there's really no holiday.

In Japan, this used to be Health and Sports day, but that was moved to the 2^nd Monday of October (this year, it is the 12^th). So... what do we do now? Make up our own holiday?

I could move my birthday forward four days, no problem. I could celebrate it as Phoenix Day! Yeah! It'll be like "The Christmas In September", only, like, in October. The Christmas In September In October? Kind of wordy. Phoenix Day* is much better.

What's really perfect about this plan is that it's also World Mental Health Day today! Mwahahahaha!

*Now, in a few years this search might actually return something! Hopefully not because Felicia Day had a kid named Phoenix. A daughter.

Motion Portrait

Big deal, right? Just another picture of Phoenix in a wig. Or... is it?

Actually, it's a Motion Portrait.

I uploaded a picture of myself, and it did the rest. Really, a static image just doesn't convey the effect, because on the site I'm looking around, smiling, blinking, etc. It's like the pictures in Harry Potter.



You can change the wig or facial hair and save a snapshot, although the snapshots they generate always put your face back to neutral (meaning, the same as the uploaded photo) instead of whichever way you're looking at the time. Oh well.

Some tips on the photo you upload:

• Straight-on head shot. Don't turn your head even a little. This affects EVERYTHING.
• Close-cropped or tied-down hair, otherwise it will poke out through the wigs/hats.
• No facial hair. It has trouble finding your chin through that forrest.
• No background. It needs to know where your head ends.

You can get a pretty interesting (if a bit creepy) effect. It's not quite as good as real-life (especially when it blinks), but it's getting closer.

18 Seconds

(Slightly NSFW [but hot] content that makes up a tiny portion of the video warning) Show/Hide
18 Seconds
There are a lot of things I like about this video. I like the mood, the small details, the snsfw bit... But the ending is extremely predictable.

Still, overall worth a watch.

Edit: Greetings from 2016. Old link is dead. Was this the video?

Nudism Revisited

As I previously mentioned, I walk around in my boxer-briefs a lot.

It occurred to me a moment ago, as I was in my kitchen making another cup of coffee, that my neighbors across the way can see me through the gap between my blinds and the side of the window.

Cheers.

The Ascent of Man

The inspiration for Carl Sagans 1980 series, Cosmos, Jacob Bronowskis 1973 series, The Ascent of Man, alludes to and seeks to somewhat challenge the notion of some of Charles Darwins conclusions in The Decent of Man. Over the course of thirteen episodes, Bronowski travelled around the world in order to trace the development of human society through its understanding of science.

Jacob Bronowski was one of a small group of men and women in any age who find all of human knowledge-the arts and sciences, philosophy and psychology-interesting and accessible. He was not confined to a single discipline, but ranged over the entire panorama of human learning. His book and television series, The Ascent of Man, are a superb teaching tool and a remarkable memorial; they are, in a way, an account of how human beings and human brains grew up together. Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden

If you haven't seen this incredible series yet, I highly recommend it. It has been mentioned on Screenwipe several times, and then on Ze Frank's Blog.

Here's a preview: Show/Hide


There's a full playlist at YouTube. Good stuff!

The Sneeze

I don't Twitter, but I do sometimes run across people that twitter (in my car, HO!).

Steve "The Sneeze" twitters. Here are some of the gems that you've been missing:

# I think I'm turning into my mother. I was just nagging the kids to make their beds. And then I had sex with my dad.
10:01 AM Aug 13th from Tweetie

# Told my son on 1st day of kindergarten they make you fight a gorilla. He didn't believe me. I should show up in a gorilla suit
8:22 AM Aug 17th from web

# So typical. I had no interest in buying Marvel until Disney did and now I'm pissed at myself.
10:43 AM Aug 31st from web

# My favorite part of going to the dyslexic bakery is when you order a dozen and they give you 31.
11:02 AM Aug 31st from web

# My wife always laughs when I say I have PMS, so this weekend I bled through my vagina. Who's laughing NOW?
2:17 PM Aug 31st from Twittelator

If you tweet (and there's really no reason why you should), and you can't seem to stop yourself, check him out.

My P***y Belongs To Daddy

Wanna see some random? So, there's this record...

(NSFW image warning, don't click this) Show/Hide

(via)

Here's some more info about the record. It could have been yours for only $22 (yeah, the eBay link will probably expire before you read this, so here's an image; Boogboo was the seller).

Want to hear it?

(imeem has one of the worst embeds I've seen)

Wow that's a lot of red links. Some day, I want to live in a country where boobs are OK at work.