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[Jul. 16th, 2008|03:06 pm] |
holy crap, i can post to my livejournal from google docs.
i don't know why that is surprising.
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| lolcoffee |
[Jul. 14th, 2008|11:17 pm] |
http://www.andiamnotlying.com/2008/murky-coffee-arlington-hold-that-espresso-between-your-knees
A lot of the comments are saying things like "Starbucks wouldn't be so popular if baristas like this guy weren't such dicks." I don't think that's true; I think it's popular because:
- They intentially prepare their coffee in a very specific way that makes their coffee taste very dark (i.e. burned). Like McDonalds food can never be mistaken for anything else.
- A lot of people seem to care more about familiarity than finding the -best thing- or -unique local thing-. I was shocked to learn that a friend of mine went on vacation and ate at TGIFriday's several times. Some people just like to do what they know, not trying unknown things. Also known as the Applebees Effect.
- Because it is more expensive than regular coffee.
For me, SB is still the best cafe outside the Uni simply because they are the only smoke-free place in Zurich. Lame. |
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| Adding a network printer in windows vista |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|04:43 pm] |
Adding a network printer in windows vista is a stupefying experience.
First the add printer wizard asks whether you want to add a local or network printer. Amazingly, you have to choose local, then create a new "local" port, which is actually the IP address of your printer.
You then have to choose the appropriate printer driver from a window that has two panes, make and model. Inexplicably, this window is tiny, so it only shows about 4 printers at a time and it IS NOT RESIZABLE. So if you're adding, say, an HP printer, you have to slowly scroll through the list of about 700 similarly-named printer models looking for the one you have. Then finally realize that they didn't include any drivers for printers that were made in the last 5 years, so you have to go to the manufacturers web site and re-download them manually anyway.
The thing is, this process is *exactly the same as in windows xp*. In other words, it *still* blows goats, as it has for many years now. No improvement whatsoever. |
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| computers are bunk |
[May. 26th, 2008|12:08 pm] |
adb: Computers are bunk. You should suggest to an alternative data-base
system: 1) data is written on bananas 2) bananas are hung in a tree 3) monkeys are trained to fetch bananas 4) monkey eats banana and drops the peel with desired data onto the person requesting data below. It's fool-proof.
ghort: unfortunately such systems provide very high parallel read performance but write performance is very slow. i think i would need to implement some kind of giraffe-based caching system to upload the bananas faster
adb: While the giraffe system is a definite improvement, their necks would undoubtedly be a bottleneck to data write throughput. After 1000 writes from the banana heap to tree-disk a giraffe would have to be replaced. Perhaps an army of squirrels? Their reproduction rate would alleviate the problems of wear and tear of data-running.
ghort: agreed; squirrel caching is much more advanced. i might be concerned about incompatibility between the squirrels & monkeys, but perhaps we could implement some kind of hardware-layer gorilla to insure transactional coherence. also, there's going to be shit everywhere
adb: compost heap, we can grow them bananas right |
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| aggregation blues |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|10:49 am] |
Man, what I really want is a text-only page that has all my friend notes, blog posts, tweets, twitters, status updates, status upgrades, photos, party invitations, dating/baby/wedding/divorce/settlement announcements, facebook shits, myspace posts (even though I don't have an account there), last.fm music history, moodblasted forget-me-nots, everything anyone I've ever cared about's google search history, podcasts, slashdot karma, geo-location, geo-cached, geoduck, shit-is-friendster-stillaround?, anything...
AND the thing is that when I think about all this traffic I know it's impossible to keep up with it all anyway. At least if I had that I'd be able to keep track of metadata such as "Can we find a correlation between Quarex listening to every Overkill song in alphabetical order and Erik getting engaged to Aqua Teen Hunger Force??"
I do lament the loss of k-rad aliases though. It's not as much fun now that people is using their real names. |
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| I'm on car talk! |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|12:43 pm] |
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At about 26:45 into this week's car talk they start talking about me. |
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| everything is not jake |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|04:27 pm] |
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Great, another dead macbook. This makes 3 from a batch of 10, about 1.5 years old. Second one that cannot find it's ethernet interface before dying completely later. I'm really unhappy with this crop of macbooks; the hardware sucks. |
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[Mar. 9th, 2008|10:50 pm] |
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After the news stories about the filipino monkey a coupld months ago, it occurred to me that recordings of the phenomenon could be what Pressurehed sampled in the song dead air. I've always wanted to know what that was from. So far I've found no definitive proof though. |
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| 2 years of no smoking |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|08:35 am] |
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Today makes 2 years of no smoking and my little hospital adventure. Sometimes I don't think I'm doing very well here, but at least I quit smoking. |
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| remote-o-vote |
[Jan. 30th, 2008|05:59 pm] |
I mailed my absentee ballot back to California yesterday; I voted for Obama. Hooray for voting for someone I actually kind of like. I'm not a 100% zomg-hes-the-bawm; sometimes he seems a little too slick. And being eloquent doesn't necessarily mean he'll be a good prez either. But he seems relatively honest, sincere, intelligent, and REPASENT ILLINOIS WHAT WHAT@(&%* There's really no one else now that Kucinich is out.
It's nice to be able to cast a ballot in a race that isn't pre-decided. In the 2004 presidential race California was pretty much locked for Kerry, so I didn't feel I had to vote for him. I was glad I got to vote for the Green party. I always feel dirty when I have to check that "I am a democrat and would like to vote in the democrat party primary." I found out too late that you don't have to do that. |
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| how to make the dock suck less |
[Dec. 11th, 2007|02:15 pm] |
open a terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning end
killall -c Dock
That keeps the trash can--the only thing in the dock I really use--in the lower right corner. |
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| Muppet Babies bootleg |
[Dec. 4th, 2007|07:22 am] |
At some point I expressed nostalgia for the Muppet Babies, so ADB ordered me dvds of the shows off some website, but they're totally bootlegged; the case was made on an inkjet printer, when you put the disc in it just says "SONY DISC MENU", and the video looks like it was recorded in analogue from a vcr.
Train of thought:
- It's amazing that someone would expend energy bootlegging Muppet Babies to sell on the internet.
- The reason someone would do this is that there is a market for it.
- I am a part of the illicit Muppet Babies black market.
Attention movie companies: this is how you Make Money On The Internet.
Incidently, the shows are practically impossible to watch due to the high pitched voices of the characters. :D |
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| Purchasing Question |
[Nov. 29th, 2007|02:34 pm] |
One time I almost bought a used mini cooper s in florida. They wanted 21k. I decided that the car was worth 18k to me, so I told them that was all I was willing to pay. The manager come out of his office huffing and puffing and saying he would give me 200 bucks if I could find them anywhere for that price, acting very upset. We left. My friend Deb told me she was proud that I made a used car salesman cry.
If a vendor is offering a buy one, get one free sale, does that mean that the margins are high enough for them to make money anyway? Or are they taking a loss just to get a foot in the door?
I'm inclined to think that they're not taking a loss, and I want to say, "I'll just take one for half price." Somehow I doubt it will work. I hate equipment negotiation. |
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| Java Job in Zurich |
[Nov. 28th, 2007|05:52 pm] |
There is a position open in my group (Grid Computing, Organic Chemistry Institute, University of Zurich) for a Java programmer. Take heed!
http://www.jobs.uzh.ch/jobDetail.php?jobID=1910
There is also a student position open (they actually get paid here) but I don't have a link. Email me for details. |
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| Office 2008? BFD. |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|05:29 pm] |
I'm subscribed to Mac Mojo; a combo blog written by the folks who make Microsoft Office for Mac. I don't read it very often because it's mostly ads in blog form or some other self-wankery, but today the headline caught my eye:
Office 2008 for Mac: BFD!
"HA!" I thought. They couldn't have expressed my feelings more accurately. Alas, they meant something else: "BFD! Big Friday Deals. Best Friday Destinations..." etc etc. Now that OpenOffice is Good Enough, I don't know why anyone would spend money on the MS one.
Yesterday I got to try Office 2007 for Windows, and my first impression was "Wow, somehow they managed to take up even MORE of my goddamn screen with bullshit menu bars!" Ctrl-Q. So if 2008 for Mac is anything like that, well, SMB. |
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| up yours lady |
[Oct. 30th, 2007|07:50 pm] |
20NOV 1255 ZURICH ZRH LX 008
1555 CHICAGO ORD ECONOMY
25NOV 1915 CHICAGO ORD LX 009
26NOV 1100 ZURICH ZRH ECONOMY |
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| Radiohead In Rainbows |
[Oct. 10th, 2007|12:24 pm] |
I just bought, downloaded, and am now listening to In Rainbows. So far it sounds like a Radiohead album. Not as weird as they usually are.
The album has 10 songs and is 42.5 minutes long.
http://www.inrainbows.com/
The way it works is that you pick how much you pay (I guess zero is an option), put in your credit card info, and they give you a link to download immediately. The whole process took about 4 minutes, including waffling on deciding how much to pay and reading the sparse "Terms & Conditions" document.
Things I wanted to know before I paid, but annoyingly could not find on their website:
- The file format is mp3.
- The bit rate 160 kpbs.
- How long will the download link be active after I buy?
- How many times can I download it?
- What happens if my hard drive crashes in 6 months and I need to download it again? 6 years?
- Does the amount I put down for the download count toward buying the FREAKING 40 BRITISH POUND (!!?) box set if I decide later I want physical media?
- What are the usage restrictions, if any?
I decided to pay 1 British Pound. There was a .45 Pound service fee also. This is about 25-50% what I think albums should cost these days. I decided not to pay more because if I like the music a lot I will have to buy it again on CD.
We're getting closer to buying the art directly from the artist. I kinda got the feeling I was giving my money to Radiohead itself, even though I'm sure they're not doing everything themselves. The store itself is hosted at a domain called xurbiaxendless.com. The confirmation page says, "This transaction will appear on your credit card bill as WASTE PRODUCTS LTD." Heh.
The lack of information prior to the download was annoying. My general rule of thumb about buying digital media is that I want this to be the LAST TIME EVER that I have to pay for this content. I would much rather download an .iso that I can then burn, rip, convert, do whatever I want with, etc. Some people might be annoyed that there is no album art, but I don't care.
Other Observations:
I get the impression this was as much as marketing gimmick experiment as it was an act of revolution. Which is fair enough; I'm still glad they're doing it. It may end up being revolutionary anyway. Maybe when other artists see how much freaking money Radiohead is going to make on this, they'll start putting up their own sites.
I tried the download from another computer, then again from this one, but got this error (yes in all caps):
I'M SORRY, BUT THIS ACTIVATION CODE HAS ALREADY BEEN USED.
IF YOUR DOWNLOAD WAS INTERRUPTED OR YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED ANY PROBLEMS, PLEASE CONTACT OUR CUSTOMER SERVICES:
<some@email.address> |
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| What kind of shorts do clouds wear? |
[Oct. 9th, 2007|09:09 pm] |
THUNDERWEAR!
- Only good Laffy Taffy joke I've had so far. And it was on a banana one. I'm sure that if Amorphis were here we'd all have a hearty guffaw that would turn into an impromptu jam that would turn into the title track on their next album.
RAAAWRRR |
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| KARA OK!! |
[Oct. 6th, 2007|07:29 pm] |
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You know what would be a great freaking combo concert? Elton John & Prince. |
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ghort's journal