Plaidophile

Argh, moving's going to be a bitch. Also Spud quite obviously hates my place but he won't say why. I'm sure he has valid design-based reasons which in his mind override the fact that this was a place I could afford in a nice neighborhood and works for what I want to do with it, and yes it needs a lot of work but it's also starting out as a perfectly livable place.

Oh man. My Mini is only about 9 months old and I'm already thinking of upgrading to one of the new Intel ones, mostly becuase it has an optical output making it VERY compelling for an HTPC (right now I don't use it to its fullest because of the lack of optical out, meaning it's suboptimal for use as a DVD player). It also has an optical input, too. Wow.

Gigabit Ethernet also makes it exceedingly handy for use as a Logic slave processor, now that the Universal version of Logic is finally out.

And of course, it comes with Front Row and a remote, making it PERFECT for HTPC uses.

Oh man. Apple has finally made the perfect HTPC system, and then some.

Looks like someone was trying to DDoS my site for some reason. Lots of random accesses to weblog entries all generated by some user agent which used a referrer of "http://beesbuzz.biz" (which is not a reasonable referrer for any weblog entries), the same user-agent string, a long series of spaces after the "HTTP/1.1" in the request header (also not typical in legitimate user-agents), and came in at a rate of about 10 per second from 62 unique hosts.

So, Spud got me a few of those ridiculous-number-in-1 game packs from Hong Kong, but unfortunately they're now GBA-only. Even more unfortunately, most of the games on them are actually GBC games, which means they won't play on a DS or Micro. So, I finally got a GBA SP, the new one with the ultra-bright backlight (which really is a thing of wonder, especially next to a DS).

Right now it's charging, but the ridiculous thing about it already is the way it's packaged; it comes in a small, cardboard box, which is then entombed in a large, hermetically-sealed blister pack, which seems to only be there so that a retailer can hang it from one of those hangy posts, but every retailer which carries it keeps it either locked away or inside one of those anti-theft boxes, making it moot!

Good news: I'm getting $112 back on my federal return.

Bad news: I need to pay another $78 to the state of New York, because even though I only made a relatively tiny amount while I was there in 2005, they rate my (partial-year) New York income bracket based on my whole-year income.

Grumble.

All the papers are signed and the cashier's check was given to escrow. Now I just wait until Tuesday when I get the keys!

My job is still awesome. :D

Channel Frederator used my email as a bump (in episode 18). That made my morning. :D

Also, if you're not already watching Frederator, you should be. You don't even need an iPod for it (actually I prefer watching it on my computer anyway).

So, just searching for high-ASCII in id3 tags was finding a lot of false positives (because I do have a lot of valid UTF8 in my id3 tags), so now I've been doing this manually in a way which any idiot can do even though it's kind of tedious. I'd might as well document it here so others can follow in my footsteps if they need to.

This is how you can narrow down which file(s) in your archive may be causing your 5th-generation iPod (with video playback) to fail to boot (or, more accurately, start to boot up but then not get past the Apple logo, and then start over again).

So, the replacement for the iPod which refused to finish booting after syncing came today, and it has the same problem, so there must be something wrong with one of my mp3s. Rather than just arnt about it, though, I'm going to narrow the mp3 down so that I can send it to Apple so they can figure out how to handle it more gracefully.

2/18 01:00 If you want to solve this problem without writing an application, check out this handy guide.

I decided to finally switch over to the name-based permalinking that is so popular with all the kids today. I did it in a way which I think will be friendly and so on to everyone, and it'll also be possible to remigrate things again in case I decide I don't like this setup and don't mind even more cruft around, but yeah, this should help.

Oh and yeah I got tired of the white text on a dark patterned background, just as I got tired of the even darker one before it. Though in some ways this is a lot like my original style.

Posted to the internal for-sale/i-need mailing lists.

• iPhoto sucks at managing photos which I scanned in from negatives (it can't decide whether to display them inverted or not, and won't let me specify which way to display them)
• Aperture is goddamn SLOW and is actually worse than iPhoto for my particular image management needs (oh and thanks for providing a demo version so I wouldn't have to warez it to try it out OH WAIT YOU DIDN'T but don't worry I'm deleting it because no it doesn't actually work for my needs)
• My new 30GB iPod 5G fucking sucks (hey thanks for gracefully handling errors and maybe putting an explanatory message up on the screen OH HEY WAIT YOU DIDN'T) (2/18 01:00 If you want to solve this problem without writing an application, check out this handy guide)

• Didn't Image Capture use to allow the usage of the TWAIN driver's own user interface? because my scanner's TWAIN interface provides some pretty nifty bulk-scanning stuff which Image Capture doesn't, not to mention Image Capture doesn't understand 16bpc/HDR mode making it utterly useless for scanning film (and of course Aperture's idea of an "import" is "pulling stuff off a memory card" and choking when it tries to display the stuff "on" my scanner because it doesn't have a memory card OMGWTF, which was the whole reason I was even trying it out to begin with)

So, at work they bought me a Kinesis Maxim. It's actually quite comfortable!

At first I felt like the keyboard action was a bit mushy but actually it doesn't feel very bad at all now that I'm getting the hang of it. Also the actual shape of it is very comfortable and I don't feel nearly as much strain on my arms when I type on it, and also the shape is lending itself to me finally breaking some really bad habits with regards to which keys I press with which fingers.

(Currently listening to: Puce - Bioluminescence)

Your party gains 80 EXP

FLUFFY gains a level!

FLUFFY learns technique: RTFO

FLUFFY learns technique: EMO3

I am performing at Songfight Presents! LA on Saturday, February 4th. The show goes from 7pm-midnight at the SoundArena Showcase Room at 7712 Burnet Avenue in Van Nuys, CA. $5 cover or something.

Although you should really come see the whole show, rumor has it that my solo set will be at 8:00, and that Octothorpe will be at 10:30. So you need to come from 8:30 to 10:00 at least.

Today I looked at another condo, this one in Ballard, which is technically part of Seattle but it's across Lake Union/Salmon Bay and used to be a different city, and so there's still a strong "Ballard isn't Seattle" vibe. Downtown Ballard is pretty nice, very much like downtown Seattle but much lower-key (and more arty, less trendy), and the commute is pretty nice, as there's an express bus which goes from the center of Ballard directly to Pioneer Square, which is really close to where my office will be as of next week.

Anyway, the condo I looked at was in central Ballard (pretty close to the bus stop), in a dense but quiet residential area which isn't too far from downtown Ballard.

Via Neill I just found out that Desiree is going to be on The Amazing Race 9, teamed up with her mother. Everyone root for them!