my.bicycle

one-one-one - the blog is moving

2007-11-01T23:08:00.000+09:00

NONTRIVIAL ADMINISTRIVIUM; the b l o g : it will be m o v i n g... to hosting at blogspot, as it affords better access to new Google tools. So find me here:

http://brianwanamaker.blogspot.com/

When i started my.bicycle, I wanted a simple tool to put text and links up on my private domain here. It seemed like a good safeguard against data loss: I'd have Blogger.com's copy on their servers, another copy on my personal domain's servers, and whenever I wanted to I could make a local copy as backup, or for editing, on any machine I currently used.

Good grief, times can change. Blogger was a single, somewhat dubious option in the blog tools field, and it was unclear what Google was going to do with their new toy. Just as when SixApart bought LiveJournal, there is a trepidation on the part of users that their efforts are going to be gobbled up by the whim of some corporate decision to "take their ball and go home."

At this point my desire to have local backup in addition to Google's resources feels like utter hubris or stubborn foolishness. Google could still turn evil or selfish, but if that happens it seems like the worst of my problems would not be loss of access to these writings.

Anymore, Google appears to want all their services to tie in together, but on their own servers in some kind of oort cloud of data. There are blogging tools built into Google Reader (my currently preferred RSS feed aggregator) for auto-posting cool stuff, and lord only knows what it'll be like when they get their recently purchased Jaiku toys working with their existing blogging and instant-messaging tools.

Yes, thanks - I'll have some of that.

“for some reason...”

2007-10-29T12:10:00.000+09:00

captain james t. kitty

2007-10-21T17:49:00.000+09:00

Disney Rejection Letter, 1938

2007-10-18T14:47:00.001+09:00

Disney Rejection Letter, 1938, originally uploaded by sim sandwich.

My, how times change...

more boingo

2007-10-17T23:13:00.000+09:00

Boingo sells out, and manages to make an unfailingly BOINGOESQUE Budweiser ad:

Best. Beer ad. Evar.

And here's a great video for an under-appreciated album, I think it may have been their last one; I'm posting this because it's got great images of Danny in it. According to my dear friend Boneyard/Darth Bobo the rocket-riding redhead in The Gong Show post, below, is Richard Elfman - Danny's brother, and the band' manager at one point, IIRC.

“the oingo boingo”

2007-10-14T00:10:00.000+09:00

The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, a staple of my adolescence, performing on The Gong Show, a staple of my childhood. (KD Bryan)

Cheese Vader

2007-10-13T16:09:00.001+09:00

Cheese Vader, originally uploaded by mckibillo.

what if...

2007-10-12T20:19:00.000+09:00

From The Magazine : Radar Online : Cory Doctorow imagines a world in which Google is evil in Scroogled.

“Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.” —Cardinal Richelieu

“We don’t know enough about you.” —Google CEO Eric Schmidt

“Any idiot can face a crisis. It is this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

2007-10-10T11:04:00.000+09:00

- Anton Chekhov
(thanks, lauren mccubbin)

Deunan and Breiarios from Appleseed...

2007-10-06T16:14:00.001+09:00

APPLESEED_BEARBRICKS, originally uploaded by toysrevil2.

... as superdeformed, modular, bear figures.

Goin' back to Stilwater

2007-10-06T13:13:00.000+09:00

A mess of screenshots for Saints Row 2 are available. If you peer hard enough, it looks like Johnny Gat will be returning.

Jack Black has his own coffee in Japan.

2007-10-05T19:35:00.001+09:00

Jack Black has his own coffee in Japan., originally uploaded by chronovore.

LOLtrek

2007-10-05T19:32:00.001+09:00

We Has Troubles, originally uploaded by benchilada.

One More Paradigm: It's Just a Ride

2007-10-05T11:30:00.000+09:00

The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.'

And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha. 'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.'

It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.

-Bill Hicks

expensive toys

2007-10-04T11:14:00.000+09:00

It is sometimes said that a surprisingly tiny problem can ruin an otherwise sublime experience. A grain of sand in an oyster, a small amount of grit in some spinach, a smudge on a perfectly white wall,

While nowhere near as pricey as the Bose Quiet Comfort series of headphones, I'm pretty enamored of my pair of Er-6i Isolator earphones. Unfortunately they're somewhat fragile, it turns out. After a year of heavy use, staying plugged in to my iPod while traveling and bumping around in luggage, the wires at the jack became loose.

What's really stunning is that with as well as they isolate my ears, that feature just makes variation in sound quality that much more jarring and distracting. Here I was on a plane, getting ready for a 12 hour flight, and suddenly the music is cutting out in my right ear but not in my left. Wiggling the jack made it come back, but if I relaxed my hands, the position of the wire would change, and zzzap the sound would cut out again. Or cut in-and-out. Like that grit encountered while chewing spinach, the entirety of the moment changes from appreciating what one has, to what is going awry with the current experience.

A bit of begging to the IT guy, and a copious amount of hot glue and fumbling later, my earphones are back, usable, if not a little funny looking.

saints row - cleared!

2007-10-04T10:52:00.000+09:00

I finished Saints Row last weekend; I think it's the first game I've ever cleared to 100% completion, and I've scored all the Xbox Live Achievements except for the online ones.

Gameplay-wise, it really is the game that Rockstar should have produced as either of the sequels to GTA III. The crew at Volition managed to take what worked best in GTA III, then looked at the core actions a player engages in, driving, running, shooting, turret-gunning, managing wanted level (and divided that between law enforcement and rival gangs), item collection (cars, people, graffiti tags, and CDs) and went through all the permutations looking for compelling gameplay. I'm not sure how they managed to do it, but the difficulty curve seemed to follow a neat, flow-centric model.

Though the game is not without its problems:
Buggy Saints Row, The Musical

it's like an urban legend -- except that it's not.

2007-10-02T09:52:00.000+09:00

Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Arizona Boy - CDC: Cases Are Spiking In 2007
PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.
(...)
"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."
(...)
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.
People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.
Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.
"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," Beach said.
Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria, Beach said. For example, it seems that children are more likely to get infected, and boys are infected more often than girls. Experts don't know why.

(warren ellis)

sacrilicious!

2007-10-01T18:14:00.000+09:00

(boingboing and the other michael)

gemberling! - tron 1.1

2007-10-01T18:09:00.000+09:00

(thanks, The Other Michael)

I HAZ A COLOR FROM BEYOND SPACE - LET ME SHOW U IT.

2007-09-20T07:32:00.000+09:00

(Thanks go out to The Other Michael)

on aging

2007-09-19T15:43:00.000+09:00

My friend Ken sends me wisdom on turning 40, from comics writer Alan Moore:

When I was just about to turn 40 I was reviewing my options and I thought I could have a midlife crisis and just bore everybody senseless by going around saying "What's it all about? What's the point? What's the secret of life?" Or I could sort of just go spectacularly mad, which would at least be more entertaining for those around me. And more worrying. And that's good as well. So I started worshiping a snake and declared myself to be a magician. "I've decided to become a master sorcerer." You should have seen the look on their faces. Half of them were frightened because they thought I'd probably gone mad, and the other half were frightened in case I hadn't. It's been immense fun.

a lesson in 20/20 retrospection

2007-09-19T13:55:00.000+09:00

But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast. And Paul Graham gives them another 6000 boxes of instant noodles to eat, so they stay in business another three years perfecting things.

(...)

And while you’re not paying attention, everybody starts writing NewSDK apps, and they’re really good, and suddenly businesses ONLY want NewSDK apps, and all those old-school Plain Ajax apps look pathetic and won’t cut and paste and mash and sync and play drums nicely with one another. And Gmail becomes a legacy. The WordPerfect of Email. And you’ll tell your children how excited you were to get 2GB to store email, and they’ll laugh at you. Their nail polish has more than 2GB.
Strategy Letter VI - Joel on Software

william gibson thinks brad sucks

2007-09-19T09:52:00.000+09:00

William Gibson, during the writing of his latest novel, Spook Country, has found the beauty that is Brad Sucks music. Brad and I are BFF - or at least that's what his forum registration requires.

the real truth about “life hacking”

2007-09-19T06:58:00.000+09:00

Condense Your Day With the Life-Hacking FAQK:
So why is it called life hacking?
Because a new name makes it sound like a new idea. Geeks can't admit that anything worthwhile was invented before 1981. Soon, "making cocoa" will be called "milk hacking."

Does life hacking have any uses unrelated to the freshness of my appliances?
Oh, sure. You can apply the term "life hacking" to nearly anything to make it sound clever and hypermodern! In fact, that last sentence was itself a life hack! You know how sometimes you just eat the ramen out of the pan instead of pouring it into a bowl? Using the same fork you stirred it with? You're life hacking, bunky!

I AM IRON MAN

2007-09-13T23:52:00.000+09:00

A gorgeous, full trailer for next spring's IRON MAN movie is up at the official site. Robert Downey, Jr., substance-abuse-irony-jokes aside, was made to play Tony Stark. This looks really, really cool. (thanks, Sean!)