Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

LiveJournal readers: help!

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Okay, here’s the situation. Right now, there’s 29 of you reading my stuff (or at least skimming it occasionally) through the LJ syndication account woody_eclectic, which I think is great. There’s just one little issue, though…and it’s one that I can’t (easily) fix on my own. Update: Never mind…looks like there’s no simple fix after all. More info below…

The big issue is that comments are turned on for each of the syndicated posts. Since I wasn’t the one to set up the account, though, I don’t get notification when someone leaves a comment though LiveJournal. So, if someone comments on one of my posts — as has happened here, here, here, and probably other posts in the past — I’m generally not likely to see it. Additionally, LiveJournal only stores the last twenty or so entries, so once they disappear, any comments associated with them disappear as well.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about this. I asked in a syndication-specific LJ community today, and it appears that while there is an option to turn comments on or off for syndicated posts, only the person who originally set up the syndication account can do that according to this comment, comments are on no matter what, and there’s no way to change that.

So…could whoever set up the syndication feed (assuming you’re still subscribed to it) do me a big favor and turn off the “allow comments” setting? Everyone reading my feed will still be able to click through to the original post on my weblog to comment there along with all my non-LiveJournal readers, so this won’t be entirely removing the ability to comment — it’ll just consolidate all the comments into one place, where they won’t disappear, and where I’ll actually see them.

I’ll give a few days or a week or so to see if this works (it may not, as it’s entirely possible that whoever originally set up the feed got bored with me and unsubscribed, leaving it orphaned and without anyone to change the settings). If it doesn’t, I’ve got a backup plan…it’s just one I’m not looking forward to implementing…but it looks like I’m going to have to go forward with a variation of this:

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Profile Pages

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In the course of updating my about page, I spent a little time cleaning up some of my profiles on other sites that I’ve picked up memberships in at one point or another over the years. Most of them I haven’t bothered to do much with after initially signing up, so it was interesting coming back to them and seeing the changes that have taken place.

The two most altered from what I remember are my Tribe.net and Yahoo! pages. Tribe has apparently undergone some rather major updates since I was there last, and Yahoo recently introduced their Yahoo 360 service. Amusingly, the two services now offer enough similar features that I’ve been able to nearly duplicate my profile on each one — everything from recent weblog posts to my del.icio.us links to my Flickr photos, all collected together on one page. Must admit, while I’m not likely to become a heavy user of either service, all the new fancybits are nice to see, and should be quite handy when connecting to other people who use them.

Feel free to check out my profiles and add me if you use either of the services. Or not. Y’know…whichever. ;)

iTunes “Da’Ale Da’Ale (Remix)” by Haza, Ofra from the album Just Say Mao (1989, 6:05).

Choices

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The Leaky Cauldron has been running an interview with J.K. Rowling over the past week (in three parts: one, two, and three) with questions posed by Emerson Spartz of Mugglenet and Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron. The whole interview is very worth reading — though full of spoilers, so I don’t recommend reading it if you haven’t finished the latest book yet — but one section stood out to me when I read it.

JKR: …because I think there’s a line there between the moment in “Chamber of Secrets” when Dumbledore says so famously, ‘It’s our choices that define us, not our abilities,’ straight through to Dumbledore sitting in his office, saying to Harry, “the prophecy is significant only because you and Voldemort choose to make it so.” If you both chose to walk away, you could both live! That’s the bottom line. If both of them decided, “We’re not playing,” and walked away… but, it’s not going to happen, because as far as Voldemort’s concerned, Harry’s a threat. They must meet each other.

ES: I remember thinking when I read “Order of the Phoenix,” what would happen if Harry and Voldemort just decided to —

JKR: Shake hands, and walk away? We’ll agree to disagree!

[Laughter.]

ES: What if he never heard the prophecy?

JKR: And that’s it, isn’t it. As I said, that’s what I posted on my site –

ES: I’m glad you put that up.

JKR: It’s the “Macbeth” idea. I absolutely adore “Macbeth.” It is possibly my favorite Shakespeare play. And that’s the question isn’t it? If Macbeth hadn’t met the witches, would he have killed Duncan? Would any of it have happened? Is it fated or did he make it happen? I believe he made it happen.

MA: If everyone would just shake hands and play a round of golf, everything would be fine.

[Laughter.]

Obviously, nothing necessarily mind-blowing in and of itself, but it’s a theme that I’m quite happy that Rowling has been using in the books, and expanding on in interviews. So many of the troubles people face, both on a personal and on a global scale, all just boil down to happening because one party or another want them to.

Obviously, the solution to all the world’s woes, then, is never to want to cause any sort of conflict whatsoever, so I’ll shortly be embarking on my daily routine of laudanum and thorazine to ensure I can do my own small part in making this world a calmer, less embittered place.

Erm.

Well, okay, maybe not.

iTunes “Movin’ On Up (Demrocked!’s Movinunbelievable)” by Primal Scream from the album screamixadelica (2005, 5:00).

Housekeeping

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I’ve finally gone in and made a few slight tweaks to my about page, adding a short list of other sites that I participate in and a few other bits and pieces here and there.

One change that is more major in my head than anywhere else is the addition of a paragraph about my identity as “the Microsoft blogger”. I’ve resisted this until now, as I’ve always felt that: one, it’s a very small part of who I am, and I’ve never been entirely comfortable with looking like I’m trying to capitalize on the fracas; and two, it was a dumb mistake on my part that I keep hoping will evetually disappear into the great bit bucket of ‘net lore.

However, given that the three primary posts about that event (the picture, the day I was let go, and my wrapup from a few days later) are consistently the most heavily trafficked pages on my site — lately, they’ve been getting a boost every time new information on the Xbox leaks out, as one person or another feels compelled to point to me during the ensuing discussion — I figured it was time to just shrug my shoulders and admit that yeah, that’s me, and point to the pages in question.

I’m still not entirely comfortable with that, but ignoring it in the hopes that it would go away hasn’t done much, and I’m not so determined to get away from it that I’d actually delete the posts in question…so, there they are.

At least I didn’t end up inadvertently coining a new term for getting fired — ‘djwudi’d’, ‘michael’d’, or ‘hanscom’d’ just doesn’t roll off of the tongue like ‘dooced‘ does, anyway. ;)

Podcast 06: ToriMix v2

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A little late today, but here’s number six in my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. Another “theme” mix, this is a forty-five minute mix of Tori Amos’ dance remixes. As a fan of Tori and bouncing around on the dance floor, this one was probably bound to come out sooner or later during my DJ days.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: ToriMix v2 (46m 37s, 53.36Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Tori Amos ‘God (Rainforest Resort)’

  2. Tori Amos ‘In the Springtime of his Voodoo (Hasbrouck Heights Club)’

  3. Tori Amos ‘Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’)’

  4. Tori Amos ‘Jackie’s Strength (Wedding Cake Meltdown)’

  5. Tori Amos ‘Talula (BT’s Synethaesia)’

  6. BT feat. Tori Amos ‘Blue Skies (Hot Tracks)’

Eclinkticism returns

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Assuming I’ve managed to figure out the right combination of shell scripts, SSI includes, CRON jobs, and other associated voodoo, the Eclinkticism linklog in the sidebar should be up and running again. As before, it’s just a dump of the most recent items I’ve added to my del.icio.us account, so feel free to add that RSS feed to your reader if you like.

iTunes “What’s Going On” by Lauper, Cyndi from the album Twelve Deadly Cyns…and Then Some (1989, 3:51).

Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers

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Bag'n'Pipe HoppersOne of the local street performers I enjoy running into is the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers. Actually two performers who team up together from time to time — Don P. Scobie on bagpipes* and Jesse Bishop (or Bishnutz) on drums — their combination of traditional Scottish piping and modern hip-hop beats is always fun to stumble across.

Last Friday evening while waiting for the Half-Blood Prince to come out, Prairie and I took a wander and found the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers playing at the corner of 4th and Pine. Their playing had attracted a small crowd of onlookers, including a few b-boys breakdancing beside them, so I grabbed my camera and recorded a few minutes of video.

May 2010 Update: Though the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers are no more, Don has gone on to form a new outfit, Nae Regrets. Worth checking out!

  • Prairie’s especially fond of running across Don (a.k.a. “the hot bagpiper guy“), whether or not he’s playing with Jesse. Her only complaint about the performance we saw was that Don wasn’t wearing his kilt. :)

Potter potter potter…

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The Box ArrivesOpening the Box
One copy out...Our copies of Book Six
Prairie, Arboretum, Seattle, WAMe, Arboretum, Seattle, WA

And with that, it’s done! Our copies arrived about 11am this morning. After opening the box, we packed up picnic supplies and headed down to the Arboretum, spread out a blanket under the shade of a Madrone tree, and got to reading right about noon. Amusingly, Prairie and I read at almost exactly the same speed, so we were within a page or two of each other the entire time — sometimes one of us would be slightly ahead, sometimes the other, occasionally stealing glances at the other’s page numbers to see whether they were giggling or gasping at something we’d just read, or something we were about to read.

Five hours later, we were both within a few chapters of the end, but our bodies had finally started to complain about having been camped out on the ground for the entire day. So, quite reluctantly, we marked our places, came home…and dived right back in.

By 7pm, we were done. Prairie closed her copy just a couple minutes before I closed mine, and waited for me to finish. A few minutes of talk about the final events in the book, and then — after our long, stressful day of lying around in the shade reading — it was time for a nap.

And now, a long, long wait for book seven to arrive…

iTunes “Who Do You Want to Be” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1983, 3:21).

Twelve hours to go…

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Potter Fully Processed…or a bit more than twelve hours, actually, for Prairie and me. Since we pre-ordered our copies (yup — one for each of us) through Amazon, they’ll show up sometime tomorrow.

Our entire plan for the weekend is to spend it Pottering: stopping by the release party at the Barnes and Noble near my apartment tonight, then once our copies show up, we’ll camp out somewhere (at a park if the weather’s good, here at home otherwise) and get reading.

Silly? Not in our world — for us, this should be a perfect weekend.

(Originally uploaded by michaelkpate.)

Playing with MT 3.2 Beta

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I’m spending a little bit of time playing with the just-released public beta version of Movable Type 3.2 on a separate weblog. While I was tempted to just jump straight into upgrading this weblog straight away, I figured that it would be best to wait for a bit when I saw the list of already known bugs that still need to be squashed.

Still, I’m quite impressed with what I’ve seen so far, and it’s nice to have something of a ‘test bed’ to play with while work progresses towards the final version. Feel free to stop by and say hi if you’re curious.

iTunes “Dream Induction” by Emergency Broadcast Network from the album Telecommunication Breakdown (1995, 3:20).