I'm looking for the Scion of Christ. Or the Order of the Knights of blah, blah, blah. Who knows what it is that IM Pei is trying to hide. I just think that these stories are just stories to tell our grandsons.
Went to the big Thanksgiving sale at my local comic shop. Picked up both hardcover volumes of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack at two for the price of one. I don't know about Tezuka. He's the godfather of Japanese manga, but his stories, especially the releases from Vertical, are pretty gruesome. The have cute characters, but then they feature gore. It's like a rated R cartoon with cute Disney characters. Disturbing.
I link to Danny Choo on occasion, because it is required of anime/manga/figure fanatics to do so. Here's an especially interesting way to buy anime porn. Funny.
"We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."
Forget their blue ray releases, here's something even more amazing from Criterion: online viewing. For $5, you can watch some of their movies online. I've seen at least two on the list, Sans Soliel and Cranes Flying. I would watch Cranes again, but I already got the other.
For Nozomi Sasaki, anime, short manga series, unending manga series, 2d girls, 3d girls, Nozomi Sasaki, Barack Obama, W leaving, I"s, 2008 Mini Cooper S, pen and paper, Mac Mini, PowerBook, software, the this pointer, C++, chown, chgroup, chmod, Nozomi Sasaki, girls, women, chicks, family, turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, with gravy, fish and chips, fried cheese, graduation, figure collecting, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, friends, community, the stars and stripes, bleu, blance et rouge, red, white and blue, cool nights, starless nights, full moons, the northern lights, sunshine, summertime, cycling, wind in your face, top down, windows down, beer, hot dogs, at the Yard, last inning home runs, 3 run home runs, Ichigo 100%, comic books, long boxes, the internet, having a job, needing a new job, resumé, movies, films, spain in the summer, autumn, leaves turning yellow, turning red, turning orange, unknown planets. Nozomi Sasaki. Afternoons, mornings, late nights. The world as it is...
"The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its Navigators, whom the spice has mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas, which gives them the ability to fold space; that is, to travel to any part of the known universe without moving."
"The chown command changes the owner of the file specified by the File parameter to the user specified by the Owner parameter. The value of the Owner parameter can be a user ID or a login name found in the /etc/passwd file. Optionally, a group can also be specified. The value of the Group parameter can be a group ID or a group name found in the /etc/group file.
Only the root user can change the owner of a file. You can change the group of a file only if you are a root user or if you own the file. If you own the file but are not a root user, you can change the group only to a group of which you are a member."
This should also be quote of the day, but since I've already got a quote of the in the queue, I'll just let it introduce the link of the day as it does in the link of the day.
In the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government's job description. Economic policymakers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.
Through this uniquely American lens, saving businesses from collapse was the sort of thing that happened on other shores, where sentimental commitments to social welfare trumped sharp-edged competition.
I'm in the middle of crafting my model of the IJN Yamato. I'm hitting a decent stride spending about an hour a night pulling the pieces off of the sprues, hitting them with some primer, and then painting them. I'm learning the ins and outs of this fine scale modeling thing and have found out some things.
First, put the pieces as you get them off the sprue in a easy to find place. I would usually put them on a sliver of masking tape. The small ones are easy to lose. I've already lost some. The small ones are also very fragile. I've broken a few pieces already.
Next, you don't have to follow the directions exactly. I really want to get the big parts connected, but unfortunately, there are too many small parts to do before I get to the big pieces. I just jump to their usage.
Anyway, I'm further along in this endeavor, but not enough to see some well done progress. Here's an awesome site about the Imperial Japanese Navy. I'm using this post as another of my infamous bookmarking sites.
This's what's great about those crazy libertarians. It almost looks like real, legal tender, but the government shouldn't be controlling the minting of currency. It's bad enough that the do it on paper, but their money doesn't have sound backing in gold reserves! What we need is to allow anyone to strike some coins as long as they're backed by some kind of precious metal.
So, I'm creeping up the hit chart on google for the search term "browser metrics." You can find the fake browser metrics at mozilla.org's wiki. They only showed up several years after I had coined the term. They are stealing my thunder which I should've trademarked or copyrighted a long time ago.
BTW, the story of the name BrowserMetrics comes from my time at Shore Studios. I was sitting around joking with my co-worker AT about how to know that the web sites we were building were optimized to load quick. Was the jpgs and gifs and html we writing going to be quick when served up? Remember this was the time of the ubiquitous dial-up and probably around the 24.4 to 56k crossover. I hit on a scheme to figure out the load time of pages. I was developing some mathematical formulas to describe each and every element on the page and how they contributed to load times. But then I quit that job and the internet became all about the broadband, so now its just the name of the blog.
Today's Thursday and I want to make you cry. Not some sad song of lost love or lost youth. Not some lamentation for a forgotten friend or for the young man cut down in the prime of his life.
No, I got some sadness that'll grow hair on your head. Make you crawl back to bed. Look to upping your Xanax dosage.
The US auto companies are asking us for their help.
A couple of years back, I was at Barnes and Nobles on a Friday night. There was a lady wandering the parking lot with a sad story to tell. She was crying, blubbering about her daughter. She asked me for some money for the bus to get to her. "Sure," I replied and gave her a five to help her on her way. The next week I run into her again. She's crying again giving the same spiel. "I heard this one last week, lady," I say angry that I was suckered the week before.
Just had to post this to continue with posting opening credits from the anime I am watching. You've seen Haruhi. This one is pretty stupid. I hate it too, but oh well.
I was wondering what your desktop looks like. Cluttered with files? Neat and pristine like the day you bought it? Weird desktop pics, funky icons, or a completely different theme? Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, commnad line?
Just show me your desktop.
So post a picture somewhere, flickr or some such, and put the link in the comment or on your blog. Let's see what we can see.
Because mutiny on the bounty's what we're all about I'm gonna board your ship and turn it on out No soft sucker with a parrot on his shoulder 'Cause I'm bad gettin' bolder - cold getting colder Terrorizing suckers on the seven seas And if you've got beef - you'll get capped in the knees We got sixteen men on a dead man's chest And I shot those suckers and I'll shoot the rest
It's Wednesday and I'll make it super kawaii for you. Check out this webcomic, and then go see Dr. Valar because it's so sweet that your teeth will hurt the moment you read the first panel.
As you can see, they're a bunch of amateurs. While I completely appreciate the fact that I can watch the latest season of anime from Japan in much the same time as the Japanese, I wish they would be more professional and take their time at presentation. Why is it that I can still read the comments one fansub member is leaving for another? Shouldn't this have been scrubbed out before the burn session?
Or maybe this is a problem with .mkv implementation in VLC?
Another big oops for the open source and fansubbing community. Why am I downloading .mkv? It's pretty much just nothing but trouble. Supposedly this video format allows better subtitling, but as you can see it's implementation in VLC leaves a lot to be desired. I wonder who's at fault here?
Quantum of Solace jumps right in where it left off two years ago. At least that's what I thought, because I have only seen Casino Royale once in the theatres many moons ago.
I like the Bond girl who fits the classic Bond girl mold, Strawberry Fields. She doesn't tell us her first name. She's against Bond at their first meeting like the loyal henchwoman of Bond nemesis of old. Yet, she hops into the sack with Bond, and fatally winds up metaphorically being dropped into the shark pit or killed by the bad voodoo. She learns that you shake your ta-tas at Bond then you'll take a dirt nap.
I really don't have much to say about it, but maybe I might watch this on DVD more than its predecessor.
Changeling is another Clint Eastwood flick that may be prestigious enough to warrant an Oscar nom if it was a better movie. It's another of his explorations into the darkness of man á la Mystic River or Unforgiven. Yet, it wasn't at first. It seemed to wander from theme to theme without a care.
I thought it was Angelina Jolie's annual Oscar entry. Then it became a police procedural focusing on the corruption of the LAPD. Was the LAPD really just a bunch of no good thugs? Are they still? Are all cops just criminals with badges? Then the movie became about the Mira Loma serial killings. What?
One thing going for this movie is that it was short for a 140 minute movie. I was intrigued by how all the themes were introduced then twisted away for the next theme. The director's slight of hand made it three films in one. It should've ended with the cowboy telling us the dude abides. We're all LA now.... Who is the changeling?
Role Models is too heavily steeped in Judd Apatow-isms.
You have one Paul Rudd as one of the leads. He's famous as being the funny, straight guy, second banana, good buddy in Apatow films. He's not a leading man, but a solid buddy to anchor the serious man stuff. You have McLovin'. Really, that's all he is -- McLovin'. He'll always be -- McLovin'. And that's what we'll always remember him as. Finally, you have the Apatow script of man-childs growing into responsibility as more manly man-childs.
As I watched the movie, I can't help but think about an Apatow flick. There was bro comedies before Apatow, but once he hit in the summer of 2007, there is nothing left but Apatow bro comedies. It's too bad as this would've been a really stupid fun flick to watch if not for the spectre of Apatow.
The one thing that this movie has that beats Apatow is a running time of reasonable length, and an ending that ended the movie.
Not to beat this thing to death. But to remind myself that there is no good ramen in this city. I myself am craving for it, and it may be cup noodles for me. Sadly, that's all there is here.
Just love looking at the ramen ya pictures on flckr. It's great to find some interesting stuff, because it makes marge at the FishTank hungry. Itadakimasu! ;p
This screenshot shows how amateurish is the open source and fansubbing communities are. What's the deal with overlapping subtitles? I can't read it. I wonder if they are okay in another player. Shit. I'll just download the mp4 rather than mkv with its wacked subtitling scheme.
Here's another take on what business needs to do to ensure better stewardship of our economy. Businesses should be focused on being good corporate citizens, take out greed from their motivating principles, and look to respect for their customers and employees. Good luck on that!
I like art. Last year on the España tour, we stopped at the Prado and the Reina Sofia in the same day. I remember visiting the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay. On the infamous cruise of the Baltic, CapitolSwell and I each bought a small painting of Talin, Estonia. Supposedly, they were done by student painters carving a living selling these 3x5 paintings to tourists like us. While CapitolSwell left his to me, I proudly and prominently display them in my home. Of course, my anime figures dominate them, but they are still to be seen.
I also have two Shag prints. I think they're authentic silkscreens. I've gotten one framed and when the crafts store finally has another of their custom framing sale, I will finally get the second one framed too. I'll also hang this one my wall, too.
This article is pretty much a damnation of the wizards on Wall Street. They don't know what they're selling. We don't know what we're buying. We're all dead in the long run.
I remember my one and only business class during my grad school studies. It was a class about ethics in business and it was filled with nothing but finance folks. They took the view that the bottom line was the first thing that mattered for a business. They didn't out right ignore the need for ethical entrepeneurship, but they didn't think that it was worthwhile. I took this class at the end of 2007. I wonder what happened to their world view.
And you just can't get enough of eight bit sound tracks.
Here's a really stupid flash game that makes the future feel like the past and the present a moment in time. At least it has the eight bit sound track.
"A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
President Reagan walking back a lie, March 4, 1987
Unfortunately, there's no good ramen within a fifty mile diameter from my house. So, it's the dried brick tonight. You're going to have to make it special.
There's no point in asking us you'll get no reply I just steam in but I don't decide I got no reason it's all too much you'll always find us Out to lunch! We're so pretty oh so pretty vacant We're so pretty oh so pretty vacant
Continuing on with the anti-anti-intellectualism from yesterday.
Anti-intellectualism is a standing beef I have with the Republican party. Thinking is a gift that God gave us to separate us from the other animals. Why not praise it? Pointy-headed nerds got us on the moon. What's stupid fucktard president got us? Rhetoric for going to Mars. Talk is talk. Nerds rule. And smart is sexy. It's great to know what you are talking about, and to be curious of things in the world. It sucks if your the political party against stuff like that.
Is it "populist" or "popular?" I can't believe that the Republicans would embrace populist stances. They know of populism, but being anti-intellectual they don't know populism. Theirs is more an rhetoric of populism. They are rather focused on an oligarchy that would do well and the populace to do only as the oligarchs deem allowable. The oligarchs would know what's best for you. Abortion rights? Christian nation? White people? No gays. No Catholics. No godless heathens. Only those who believe can be part of this cult.
I remember during the 2000 election season a muslim co-worker told me he was going to vote Republican. I wondered why? His skin was as dark as mine. He was doing it because of the conservative nature of his religion meshed well with the conservative nature of the Republican party. I often wonder how after eight years of W. he feels about his choice.
You cannot hew to the mindless without getting into trouble.
1.a. An elected officeholder or group continuing in office during the period between failure to win an election and the inauguration of a successor. b. An officeholder who has chosen not to run for reelection or is ineligible for reelection. 2. An ineffective person; a weakling.
Once again, the Onion is doing a great job of capturing how I feel, except I think I'm eight years on the burn out.
I remember election night eight years ago. I fell asleep with the television on, and in the late hours of the night waking up and catching the news of the confusion at who had won. It was surreal as I watched the news anchors scrambling to catch up with concession speeches and no concession speeches. Or watching them wonder where it all gone wrong. My anger probably started there. My resignation as well. As the years had progressed, either hasn't abated. But on Tuesday, that's all over. It's been eight years, but finally we have some hope to believe in. The future is bright.
"The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.
Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House."
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace," WSJ op-ed Nov 5, 2008
My mom is starting to bug me about my figure collection. It's just like Ladro, but cuter, cooler and fun. I need someplace to store and display them. These shelves look like a great idea. Does anyone know what the description says?
While trying to avoid the returns so not to jinx my candidate, let me tell you of my experience of casting the deciding vote....
I leave early or so I thought. But before that I dawdle a little at the house. I have a quick breakfast as it's been proven that having a breakfast can help you lose weight. It's nothing fancy, but it will jump start my day. Seven o'clock and I will be in and out in no time.
I pull around the corner by the polling place. There's cars up here? U-oh.
I drive by. Seven o'clock and the lines at least two hundred people reaching from the door to very close to the street. I go around the back and find a nice spot that my Mini can fit in; the very first time I experience the magic of having a small car.
It's ten after and I am in line. While it's not cold, the morning air is still chill and I put on my wool knit cap. I'm not awake and neither are the people surrounding me. Yet, the line slowly moves. As the front of the queue gets serviced the back of the queue accepts more people. The funny thing is the queue's length doesn't change. It ends at the same spot.
In line for ten minutes and someone walks by saying it will be another thirty minutes. I start a timer. The girl in front of me says her boyfriend is stuck in a long line also just up the road at the other polling place. She's texting. I'm texting. The Seed says, "suckas!"
A lady in front of me is a stewardess and another is a nurse with grandkids on her day off. The stewardess worries about getting to work in time. She's got to go to Dulles. The nurse worries about Obama's grandmother. She tears up. I tell the stewardess to vote yes on question one. Then she can stop by any precinct and vote. She could've gone to theSeed's polling place and zip out in no time. If we had mobile voting places and any precinct voting. It would be a help for those who have to work especially if we can't stay in line for hours at a time.
We make it inside, but they're running the hourly tally. The gentlemen in front of me needs some kind of provisional ballot. The stewardess wants to leave without voting because time's up, but the nurse persuades people in line to let her jump. The voting line moves without the stewardess. She's an elderly lady who must have seniority in her airlines because she only flies several times a month on a long haul out of the country. The nurse is jealous. I say the flying would suck. She's still jealous.
I vote for the winner. And some other dudes. I don't cast any for the judges. Who are they? My ballot has one red square. Yes on question one, just because the line was long. It could've gone the other way if voting was a breeze. No on question two because of my sense of morals not for any monetary gain. I think it will pass without my yea.
Click submit.
I wish I took a picture like Jay, but I take the sticker.
"I voted."
It was an hour to do, but well worth it. It's gonna be a very historic day. But work beckons and someone's got to pay for the billion dollar bail out.
I was looking for that figure of Melissa Seraphy. You really can't find it in any of the comic shops. I leave the last one, and she walks in. Seifuku and moe beyond belief. I can't stop but I turn around, keep going, and wish that I had a pony. I wonder if she'll find the figure she's looking for? Not my Melissa.
Shopping. I can't stand it, especially in the mall. You stroll around and around circling endlessly until you decide to call it a day.
Me? I like the internet. No hassles. Easy. You just can't touch what you want to purchase or get a good look. If it's a figure, then good luck. You'll have to go by the pictures, and those being from the manufacturer they'll be done as best as they can be.
Daylight savings time is over. I hope you've changed your clocks. There's a lot to change. Luckily, my computers are pulling from some time server somewhere, and my cell phone gets it from the carrier.
The others I have to change.
Like the one in my car. And in the other car. My wristwatch. The other wristwatch. My workout wristwatch with the heart monitor. The stove. The microwave oven. The alarm clock. The other clock in my office.
"You are witnessing something quite unique—a man who’s about to talk to you while he has his foot in his mouth. I made a serious mistake yesterday. I was quoted correctly. I wasn’t thinking when I said it—in fact, I was discussing foreign policy, and this was in that context. And I was just plain stupid."
I tried OpenOffice years ago. This was when you had to run it as an x11 application. It totally sucked. Why? First, it had a non-native interface. X11 is Unix apps with all the window-y, unix-y stylizations that that entails. Second, it was slow. On my TiBook it was still rather silly to launch, and menus just appeared with a noticeable delay. Third, X11. You probably don't run it. You probably shouldn't run it. You need admin rights to launch OpenOffice. You need to know some command line kung fu as well. It was just painful to use, and I am glad to be using Pages or Google docs instead.
That said, it looks like they are getting around to making it an okay app to run on OS X. Once it is out of open source/unix-y developers hands, it will take off.
