Rage Against The Mac

This is a great mashup from kokogiak. Be sure to check out the next one in the photostream, too.

Amazon.com: Health & Personal Care: Panasonic ER411NC Nose and Ear Hair Groomer

I’m slightly disturbed by Amazon’s option to buy it used.

Indeed…

Ian just got his. It’s pretty close in appearance to what mine will look like when it finally arrives in June (if all goes according to plan). Genie (for that’s what I’ve named mine, for now, anyway) will be Chili Red with a black roof and bonnet stripes and S-lite wheels. Ian’s has the chrome exterior package (grille and mirror caps) and different wheels, but that’s about all the visual differences. I even added the red and black cloth/leather interior to my order. Part of me feels like I’m copying him, but that part’s getting pounded on by the part that says “damn that looks good!”.

Good thing I’m such a patient kind of guy…

I was looking for a way to “listen” to the MWSF keynote coverage. There’s at least one group that will be covering it via IRC. I worked up a quick applescript plugin for Colloquy; it’s available here. Unpack the archive in your home directory (tar -xzf colloquy_speech.tar.gz -C ~/), start Colloquy, and subscribe to #mercworld. Then, in a terminal window, do:

tail -f ~/Desktop/colloquy transcript.txt | awk -F'|' -f ~/Library/Application Support/Colloquy/PlugIns/say.awk

The awk script calls “say” to speak the transcript.

An article on the IndyStar site features this insightful from the stoner owner of Matrix Imaging who apparently caught sight of a manhole cover farting in downtown Indy this morning:

“It was like, wow!” said Brian Freije, owner of Matrix Imaging, a business at 118 W. North Street. Freije said, “You saw this yellow, toxic stuff coming out.”

Freije said as many as eight explosions erupted from a manhole cover in front of his graphics business, shaking the building. The manhole cover flew 4 feet into the air as the blast threw off a bright yellow light and acrid yellow smoke.

I love it when the media tries to report on things still happening…

I know it’s silly—petty, even—but I feel a little dirty knowing Microsoft’s crawling my sites. I’ve been meaning to rid my access_log of requests to /robots.txt, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /

This will be a good test to see if our slimy little friend really supports robots.txt like they claim.

Got some cool CDs and books from the fam for Christmas:

• Ultra-Lounge Christmas Cocktails, Pt. 2—Some Christmas favorites, but without all that family-friendliness.


• It’s Christmas Man (Brave Combo)—Polka Christmas tunes; need I say more?


• DJ Logic presents Project Logic


• The Mirror Conspiracy (Thievery Corporation)


• Tear the Roof Off 1974-1980 (Parliament)


• Quality Control (Jurassic 5)—excellent. Power in Numbers is better, tho.


• Ether-Electrified Porch Music (Carbon Leaf)


• American Bungalow Style—some insight into our new house.


• How We Invented the Airplane: An Illustrated History—just over 101 years ago; amazing.


• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation


• Children of Apollo—great concept, but the author needs a copy of the previous book…


• KitchenAid A-9 coffee mill (Empire red!)—Finally, a good coffee grinder!


• Oregon Scientific WR102 weather radio—now I’ll know when to go to the basement.

I think my favorites so far are the J5 and Carbon Leaf CDs and the coffee grinder. I think I’ll be reading “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” and “Children of Apollo” together.

meme (n.)

A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

First 10 songs from the Party Shuffle of my iTunes library:

1. The Way by Fastball (KZON Collectables Vol. 6)


2. Demons by Guster (Goldfly)


3. Dead Flowers by Push Down & Turn (self-titled album)


4. Polyphonix by Greyboy (Mastered The Art)


5. How Could You Want Him by The Spin Doctors (Pocket Full of Kryptonite)


6. Back 2 Good by Matchbox Twenty (Yourself Or Someone Like You)


7. Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls (City of Angels soundtrack)


8. Empty Spaces by Pink Floyd (The Wall)


9. Chickahominy Fred by Keller Williams (Dance)


10. Shape of Things by The Jeff Healey Band (Cover to Cover)

Via The Tao of Mac...

I’ll admit to trying a couple of times to find the “best” shuffle; I decided that the Party Shuffle should really be shuffled once before making this entry, and just putting the main Library on shuffle doesn’t show the songs in the order they’ll be played.

Other stuff that would come up in the rotation I’m not too embarassed to mention:
O.A.R., Makka Sleuth, The Tribulations (now John Brown's Body), Dick Dale, and the White Stripes.

I am truly, deeply astonished by yesterday’s election results. How could half the country honestly, in good conscience, vote for Bush? And to hear on NPR this morning that of the people who chose so-called “moral values” as the top deciding factor for them choose Bush?! I guess this really says something about our country. I’m embarrased to be an American today.