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Wednesday, July 31, 2002
I put together a simple techno loop as background music for an interview sequence in a video project I'm working on. Just something I slapped together with Acid and some great sounds from analoguesamples.com.
Stupid fun: find out your wu-tang name with WuName.
Worth checking out: bradsucks.net (lots of info relevant to musicians).
[0 comments]
I put together a simple techno loop as background music for an interview sequence in a video project I'm working on. Just something I slapped together with Acid and some great sounds from analoguesamples.com.
Stupid fun: find out your wu-tang name with WuName.
Worth checking out: bradsucks.net (lots of info relevant to musicians).
[0 comments]
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Recent list o' flicks: Storytelling (a good idea but a failed effort), The Time Machine (ends up being an Indiana Jones-ish action picture. Still need to read the H.G. Wells story), The Brothers McMullen (really good Ed Burns movie), 15 Minutes (Ed Burns and DiNero in a Man Bites Dog-ish tough guy action flick with nice postmodernist overtones).
[0 comments]
Recent list o' flicks: Storytelling (a good idea but a failed effort), The Time Machine (ends up being an Indiana Jones-ish action picture. Still need to read the H.G. Wells story), The Brothers McMullen (really good Ed Burns movie), 15 Minutes (Ed Burns and DiNero in a Man Bites Dog-ish tough guy action flick with nice postmodernist overtones).
[0 comments]
Sunday, July 28, 2002
I spent part of the weekend in Little Rock with my friend Ben. We had a nice visit and ate some good pizza. Ben & his wife Meredith showed me around LR a bit. I feel much more comfortable than I had before about the prospect of living there (though that, if it happens, is still a long way off). While my wife and I were in town, we also hit the local Guitar Center, where I played a most impressive Pedulla five-string fretless bass (it's the red one in the picture). The fretboard is like glass. It has a delightful growl, a slender neck, and it plays effortlessly. Three grand. That's a lot of bank for a bass, but I guess you sometimes really do get what you pay for.
[0 comments]
I spent part of the weekend in Little Rock with my friend Ben. We had a nice visit and ate some good pizza. Ben & his wife Meredith showed me around LR a bit. I feel much more comfortable than I had before about the prospect of living there (though that, if it happens, is still a long way off). While my wife and I were in town, we also hit the local Guitar Center, where I played a most impressive Pedulla five-string fretless bass (it's the red one in the picture). The fretboard is like glass. It has a delightful growl, a slender neck, and it plays effortlessly. Three grand. That's a lot of bank for a bass, but I guess you sometimes really do get what you pay for.
[0 comments]
Thursday, July 25, 2002
Dov Charney, CEO of americanapparel.net is my new hero. He runs a successful garment factory in L.A. And he goes a long way to proving that you can run a successful business w/o exploiting workers or making their lives miserable. The L.A. garment industry is suprisingly third-world. Exploitation of all kinds and unsafe/unhealthy working conditions are par for the course. But it doesn't have to be that way. PBS did a nice short film profile of the company last night. It was refreshing. It gives me hope.
I finally finished a book! I've had the hardest time finishing a work of fiction since I turned in my thesis and completed my M.A. in English. After years of being forced to read, it seemed like the last thing I wanted to do (even though I've always loved reading and always loved reading the classics in particular). I've read a good book here and there, but most of my efforts have been focused on pragmatically useful things: like php, mysql, java, linux systems administration, etc. But I picked up J. M. Coetzee's novel Youth on Sunday and kicked through it in two days. I'm at the library right now, and I have his Disgrace with me (which won the Booker Prize in 1999). I'm looking forward to it.
I don't get it, some self-important "journalist" for an ezine posts a list of albums he (she?) hates and suddenly I find it blogged everywhere, with lots of lemming-like head nodding. It's like blogging that your favorite color is blue and that everyone else is confused if they like red. Sure, there's some crap on the list, but there's also plenty of good stuff that he's slagging just because the other hipsters will be too afraid of loosing their cred if they admit they ever liked anything popular.
[2 comments]
Dov Charney, CEO of americanapparel.net is my new hero. He runs a successful garment factory in L.A. And he goes a long way to proving that you can run a successful business w/o exploiting workers or making their lives miserable. The L.A. garment industry is suprisingly third-world. Exploitation of all kinds and unsafe/unhealthy working conditions are par for the course. But it doesn't have to be that way. PBS did a nice short film profile of the company last night. It was refreshing. It gives me hope.
I finally finished a book! I've had the hardest time finishing a work of fiction since I turned in my thesis and completed my M.A. in English. After years of being forced to read, it seemed like the last thing I wanted to do (even though I've always loved reading and always loved reading the classics in particular). I've read a good book here and there, but most of my efforts have been focused on pragmatically useful things: like php, mysql, java, linux systems administration, etc. But I picked up J. M. Coetzee's novel Youth on Sunday and kicked through it in two days. I'm at the library right now, and I have his Disgrace with me (which won the Booker Prize in 1999). I'm looking forward to it.
I don't get it, some self-important "journalist" for an ezine posts a list of albums he (she?) hates and suddenly I find it blogged everywhere, with lots of lemming-like head nodding. It's like blogging that your favorite color is blue and that everyone else is confused if they like red. Sure, there's some crap on the list, but there's also plenty of good stuff that he's slagging just because the other hipsters will be too afraid of loosing their cred if they admit they ever liked anything popular.
[2 comments]
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
The Minimalist Web Project from Textbased.com was cool enough to link to my site. Imagine a world with no blinking Gifs; it's easy if you try...
[0 comments]
The Minimalist Web Project from Textbased.com was cool enough to link to my site. Imagine a world with no blinking Gifs; it's easy if you try...
[0 comments]
Last night: Buffalo '66. A few days ago: Flirting with Disaster. Recently (didn't rent this one, just caught it at my father-in-law's house): Hart's War. Buffalo '66 is an experimental, edgy, but ultimately heart warming flick about an odd ex-con, his repulsive family, and budding relationship with a new girl friend. Vincent Gallo wrote, directed, scored, and acted in it, along side Christina Ricci. Both put in amazing performances. Flirting is a very funny comedy about an adopted son (Ben Stiller) who decides to find his birth family (hey, I can relate. Luckily, my experience wasn't quite as crazy).
Nintendulator a new Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for Win32. Dev-C++ is a Win32 IDE for developing C++ apps. It uses Cygwin as a back-end. A cool idea.
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Sunday, July 21, 2002
Ogg Vorbis, an open source alternative to Mp3 reaches version 1.0 (via news.com).
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Ogg Vorbis, an open source alternative to Mp3 reaches version 1.0 (via news.com).
[0 comments]
Friday, July 19, 2002
At Steve's request, I darkened up the text quite a bit in the zeldman theme. Improves legibility quite a bit. I have an sjarvis theme in the work, BTW. And I plan to do a dangerousmeta! one too. So far they're all just color scheme changes, but all the positioning is handled with CSS-P, so maybe I'll work up some more radical themes in the future.
[2 comments]
At Steve's request, I darkened up the text quite a bit in the zeldman theme. Improves legibility quite a bit. I have an sjarvis theme in the work, BTW. And I plan to do a dangerousmeta! one too. So far they're all just color scheme changes, but all the positioning is handled with CSS-P, so maybe I'll work up some more radical themes in the future.
[2 comments]
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Serious Geek Fun
![[x11 on win32]](http://www.wheatdesign.com/blog/pix/x11_on_cygwin_sm.jpg)
I recently updated Cygwin on one of my machines. Cygwin is, essentially, a Linux emulator that you can run on top of Windows. The latest version inclues Xfree86, which means you can run X Windows apps (either local ones that are part of the Cygwin distribution, or remote ones on Linux boxes). Here you see it in action (clockwise from top left): WheatBlog as redered by Lynx in a Bash terminal window, xclock, kview displaying a cool pic of an Atari 2600 (running as a remote X session from a Linux box), and the xterm window used to launch kview. The remote X session is running over SSH. It's pretty swank and suprisingly fast considering all the layers of abstration going on.
[0 comments]
Serious Geek Fun
![[x11 on win32]](http://www.wheatdesign.com/blog/pix/x11_on_cygwin.jpg)
I recently updated Cygwin on one of my machines. Cygwin is, essentially, a Linux emulator that you can run on top of Windows. The latest version inclues Xfree86, which means you can run X Windows apps (either local ones that are part of the Cygwin distribution, or remote ones on Linux boxes). Here you see it in action (clockwise from top left): WheatBlog as redered by Lynx in a Bash terminal window, xclock, kview displaying a cool pic of an Atari 2600 (running as a remote X session from a Linux box), and the xterm window used to launch kview. The remote X session is running over SSH. It's pretty swank and suprisingly fast considering all the layers of abstration going on.
[0 comments]
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
One of the things that sux about Windows 98 (don't get me started) is that you're stuck with the really clunky command.com shell rather than the much cooler (and more linux-like) cmd.exe shell that's standard on NT/2000. Well, no longer. Win95cmd.exe is the same cmd.exe shell recompiled so it will run on 95 (and 98).
Another handy trick to make your windows box more bearable is to add aliases to translate all your favorite Linux commands into their DOS equivalents. For instance, I am constantly typing "ls" to list files at the DOS prompt, which in turn responds "'ls' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file". The error message gives you the clue: create a batch file called "ls.bat" or "ls.cmd" and put it the root level of your c:\ drive. The batch file itself is just a text file and should contain something like: "dir /w" or "dir | more". Then you're set. The next time you type "ls" at the prompt, "dir /w" will be issued and you'll get to see your files rather than an error message. There's probably an easier way to do this, but this quick hack might save you some time.
[0 comments]
One of the things that sux about Windows 98 (don't get me started) is that you're stuck with the really clunky command.com shell rather than the much cooler (and more linux-like) cmd.exe shell that's standard on NT/2000. Well, no longer. Win95cmd.exe is the same cmd.exe shell recompiled so it will run on 95 (and 98).
Another handy trick to make your windows box more bearable is to add aliases to translate all your favorite Linux commands into their DOS equivalents. For instance, I am constantly typing "ls" to list files at the DOS prompt, which in turn responds "'ls' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file". The error message gives you the clue: create a batch file called "ls.bat" or "ls.cmd" and put it the root level of your c:\ drive. The batch file itself is just a text file and should contain something like: "dir /w" or "dir | more". Then you're set. The next time you type "ls" at the prompt, "dir /w" will be issued and you'll get to see your files rather than an error message. There's probably an easier way to do this, but this quick hack might save you some time.
[0 comments]
Sunday, July 14, 2002
Two nice, small-budget flicks from last night: Tape & Sidewalks of New York. Also recently watched Easy Rider (I'd never seen it).
Debate (not that it really rises to that level) has been pretty rampant in my home town (as in the country at large) over the whole pledge of allegience church/state issue. I'd like to remind (if they ever knew it) the debaters (if they merit that title) that the 'founding fathers' were deists, not southern baptists. As such they, in general, didn't believe in miracles or divine intervention of any sort (Jefferson didn't belive in the divinity of Jesus, though he admired Jesus greatly. And he didn't believe in prayer, either. He considered it akin to begging). So, while it is true that they were all christians, it is also true that they were christians of a sort that rarely exists today and has nothing in common with the fundamentalist sects who continually try to co-opt them as champions of a theistic state. They thought combining religion with government was a bad idea (and that they occasionally invoke the creator only shows that they believed in the existence of one, not that they wanted to create a christian taliban).
[0 comments]
Two nice, small-budget flicks from last night: Tape & Sidewalks of New York. Also recently watched Easy Rider (I'd never seen it).
Debate (not that it really rises to that level) has been pretty rampant in my home town (as in the country at large) over the whole pledge of allegience church/state issue. I'd like to remind (if they ever knew it) the debaters (if they merit that title) that the 'founding fathers' were deists, not southern baptists. As such they, in general, didn't believe in miracles or divine intervention of any sort (Jefferson didn't belive in the divinity of Jesus, though he admired Jesus greatly. And he didn't believe in prayer, either. He considered it akin to begging). So, while it is true that they were all christians, it is also true that they were christians of a sort that rarely exists today and has nothing in common with the fundamentalist sects who continually try to co-opt them as champions of a theistic state. They thought combining religion with government was a bad idea (and that they occasionally invoke the creator only shows that they believed in the existence of one, not that they wanted to create a christian taliban).
[0 comments]
Saturday, July 13, 2002
I upgraded the doc reader (CSpotRun) that I use on my Palm Vx. The new version has the one feature that was lacking: bookmarking. The author of the wonderful app has a blog now, I noticed.
I almost forgot to mention that today marks the two-year anniversary of WheatBlog! So happy birthday to us.
[0 comments]
I upgraded the doc reader (CSpotRun) that I use on my Palm Vx. The new version has the one feature that was lacking: bookmarking. The author of the wonderful app has a blog now, I noticed.
I almost forgot to mention that today marks the two-year anniversary of WheatBlog! So happy birthday to us.
[0 comments]
Sunday, July 07, 2002
July 13 will mark the two-year anniversary of WheatBlog! Since I'm sure to forget to mention it later, I might as well now. I'm not sure if this is a cause for celebration or proof that I'm wasting my life. :)
[0 comments]
July 13 will mark the two-year anniversary of WheatBlog! Since I'm sure to forget to mention it later, I might as well now. I'm not sure if this is a cause for celebration or proof that I'm wasting my life. :)
[0 comments]
Thursday, July 04, 2002
It's been a hard week for bassists. We've lost another legend, Ray Brown (via dangerousmeta!).
[0 comments]
It's been a hard week for bassists. We've lost another legend, Ray Brown (via dangerousmeta!).
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Wednesday, July 03, 2002
java.sun.com and memoware.com (a great site for PDA doc files) are sporting redesigns. In the case of the Java site, it's a vast improvement. I'm haven't played enough with the new memoware site to tell.
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java.sun.com and memoware.com (a great site for PDA doc files) are sporting redesigns. In the case of the Java site, it's a vast improvement. I'm haven't played enough with the new memoware site to tell.
[0 comments]
Monday, July 01, 2002
Movie update (past two weeks or so, in reverse order): The Shipping News, Monster's Ball, Black Hawk Down, Pay it Forward, The Bourne Identity, and Minority Report. Everything in that group was worthwhile except Black Hawk Down (I really thought Ridley Scott could do something with it, but he didn't. It's a big, cliche, Hollywood war movie) and Pay it Forward (which starts out fairly good but then takes a nose dive into sentimentality and melodrama). The Shipping News is a nice little drama with good acting and a good story. Monster's Ball is a heavier drama with fine acting as well. Minority Report is a solid sci-fi flick. And The Bourne Identity is a solid action flick (you wouldn't think of Matt Damon in this sort of role, but he pulls it off magnificently).
Vicki was in town the weekend before last and jumpstarted this recent movie-going kick by treating me to Minority Report and The Bourne Identity. Shouts out, as the kids say, to you Vicki. I know you read this from time to time.
[0 comments]
Movie update (past two weeks or so, in reverse order): The Shipping News, Monster's Ball, Black Hawk Down, Pay it Forward, The Bourne Identity, and Minority Report. Everything in that group was worthwhile except Black Hawk Down (I really thought Ridley Scott could do something with it, but he didn't. It's a big, cliche, Hollywood war movie) and Pay it Forward (which starts out fairly good but then takes a nose dive into sentimentality and melodrama). The Shipping News is a nice little drama with good acting and a good story. Monster's Ball is a heavier drama with fine acting as well. Minority Report is a solid sci-fi flick. And The Bourne Identity is a solid action flick (you wouldn't think of Matt Damon in this sort of role, but he pulls it off magnificently).
Vicki was in town the weekend before last and jumpstarted this recent movie-going kick by treating me to Minority Report and The Bourne Identity. Shouts out, as the kids say, to you Vicki. I know you read this from time to time.
[0 comments]
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