Renew! Renew! Renew!

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Well, I’m still here and kicking around, so it seems I didn’t go up in a fiery explosion in the ritual of Carousel. Frankly, I’m relieved — I’ve always said I wanted to go out with a bang, but not that literally.

Incidentally, for those who I may have entirely lost with my birthday post, I highly suggest you check out the movie Logan’s Run. Classic sci-fi.

Anyway, overall a good day yesterday. Wandered around town for a bit with Prairie, and went down to see X-Men 2 midway through the day. Very, very cool — I’ve never been a huge comic person, but I’ve read enough about the X-Men over the years to be very impressed with how they’re handling the movies. Accessible and fun action-adventure flicks for the masses, with a lot of intelligent nods to the fans and creative ties to established comic book canon while creating a new storyline. All in all, lots of fun.

Spent the evening hanging out with Chad and Prairie at the Bad JuJu Lounge and bouncing around at the Vogue. I’d tried to get ahold of Rick and Candice too, but never reached them. Was a little bit of a bummer, but the three of us had fun. I just got a call from Rick, though — he’s collecting Chad and heading this way, and we’re going to go find something to do for the afternoon. Woohoo! Off to go play…

Last Day

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Last Day: Taurus 3’s, Year of the City 2003: Carousel begins…

Last Day

Carousel was developed as a means for Body Retirement. When a person reaches their 30^th^ Birthday, their face begins to show signs of ‘aging’. They may notice some wrinkles under their eyes, they may notice that their eyesight is not as good as it once was. Also, they may begin to develop white hairs on the head, or worse — loss of hair (known as balding).

This is your body telling you that it’s time to transfer yourself into a new, fresh body — a baby’s body. A body that will take you through another 30 years.

Baby bodies are provided through ‘seed mothering’ — from the female citizens of our society. After being delivered, these babies are taken in by our nuturing Mother Computer and are then given the ‘souls’ of those Last Dayer’s who were able to reach Life Renewal on Carrousel.

Last Day?

When your lifeclock in the palm of your left hand begins to blink, your time is up in your present body. Upon blinking, proceed to our Headquartes on Nolan Street, 7th Floor, Room 1976.

There, you will be given proper ceremonial garb and final instructions for participating in Life-Renewal on Carousel.

Remember, the higher you are able to ‘fly’ while the Carousel turns, the greater your Renewal chances. Don’t let the fear of knowing that your old body will explode into a fiery pulp as you try to reach these heights hinder your efforts, or you may not make it to the Renewal Stage.

Carousel is meant to be an enjoyable, life-renewable experience. As you’re out there standing with your fellow ‘Renewer’s’, and with all your friends watching and shouting from the stands, by keeping a positive outlook on the process…

…YOU WILL BE RENEWED

I am…

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Michael is…

Why my friend Michael is a fine father
What Michael is looking for
Michael is cool
How Michael is doing
Michael is the most popular name in North America
Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate
Michael is da bomb
Michael is my friend
Michael is safely in Rochester
Michael is suing Granada Television!
Michael is devastated and feels utterly betrayed

Woody is…

Woody is online again!
Woody is thinking, while others fixate
Woody is getting worse
Maybe Woody is only seeing Dreamworks films
Woody is out!
Woody is bootable?
Woody is back
Woody is both knotty and nice
The Woody is coming to town
The Woody is a wooden bat with the feel and performance of an aluminum bat
Woody is wierd

Wudi is…

Wudi is an official clan already
Wudi is famous for its Chinese dates
Wudi is a certified public accountant
Wudi is a not-for-profit corporation
Wudi is a free, three episode bonus campaign
Wudi is a resident of Redmond
Wudi is said to have ordered a gilded bronze horse
Wudi is considered the most famous, influential Empror that existed
Wudi is so respected
Wudi is ranked 86
Wudi is a manufacturing arm in the Asia for you!

Who knew? ;)

'Recent Tunes' update

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Utilizing the iTunes Music Store linking hint I found earlier, I’ve updated the ‘Recent Tunes’ section of my sidebar. Before each artist, track, and album listing you’ll now see icons for Amazon and the iTunes Music Store — clicking on those will perform a search on the respective service for whichever line you clicked on. Nifty!

Some of the Amazon links are being a bit tweaky, and I’m not sure why, though. Sometimes they work fine, other times they get passed through with ‘"’ on either end of the search term, which confuses Amazon. I don’t know where that’s coming from, either — I can’t find that entity in any of the code on my side of things.

All the iTunes links work fine, however. The only caveat there is that they’re still building their selection, so the majority of my music probably isn’t listed yet. All good things in time, however.

Linking to the iTunes Music Store

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Excellent tip that I’m saving here for future use: how to create a website link that performs a search on the iTunes Music Store.

Link format (as a single line, broken here for clarity): itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/ com.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction/advancedSearchResults?

Immediately following the ending ? are any of four search terms, or a global search term:

  • songTerm= (song title)
  • artistTerm= (artist name)
  • albumTerm= (album title)
  • composerTerm= (composer name)
  • term= (global, search all fields)

Use & between query items if you are using more than one of the first four (non-global) querys, and replace any whitespace with %20.

Example: building a link to search for U2:

itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/ com.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=U2

Example: building a link to search for U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’:

itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/ com.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction/ advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=U2&albumTerm=the%20joshua%20tree

Many thanks to Jim, Fuse, Erik, and Bill!

I'm going to hell!

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Looks like I’m aiming for Level 7 of Hell, according to the Dante’s Inferno Test!

Guarded by the Minotaur, who snarls in fury, and encircled within the river Phlegethon, filled with boiling blood, is the Seventh Level of Hell. The violent, the assasins, the tyrants, and the war-mongers lament their pitiless mischiefs in the river, while centaurs armed with bows and arrows shoot those who try to escape their punishment. The stench here is overpowering. This level is also home to the wood of the suicides- stunted and gnarled trees with twisting branches and poisoned fruit. At the time of final judgement, their bodies will hang from their branches. In those branches the Harpies, foul birdlike creatures with human faces, make their nests. Beaond the wood is scorching sand where those who committed violence against God and nature are showered with flakes of fire that rain down against their naked bodies. Blasphemers and sodomites writhe in pain, their tongues more loosed to lamentation, and out of their eyes gushes forth their woe. Usurers, who followed neither nature nor art, also share company in the Seventh Level.

Bummer…I was kind of aiming for Level 2 (for the Lustful)! ;)

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful) Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous) High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) Moderate
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics) High
Level 7 (Violent) Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Very High
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous) Moderate

Take the Dante’s Inferno Test

(via D and Jim)

Electoral Map

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One of the things that really bugs me about our current governmental system is the Electoral College. When I was growing up, democracy (and, thus, the U.S. Government) was always explained to me as one vote per citizen, majority rule. This makes sense to me.

What I’ve never understood is the Electoral College (and, therefore, I may have the following summary somewhat incorrect — please correct me if so). Rather than tallying the votes cast by the American public in a presidential election, the EC votes are used to elect the President. The number of possible EC votes is finite, determined by assigning a certain number of EC votes to each state, based roughly on its population. Furthermore, when it comes to actually casting the votes, each state puts all of its votes behind one candidate, depending on what the majority of voters in that state voted for.

For instance, Alaska has a population of roughly 500,000, and gets three electoral votes. If just over half of Alaska’s voting population votes Republican, then as far as the Electoral College is concerned, all of Alaska votes Republican, as all three EC ballots are cast for the Republican candidate.

US map weighted by electoral votes

To the right you can see a map of the United States, with each state distorted as to how many EC votes it gets. (The graphic was taken from an excellent interactive electoral map that allows you to click on each state, seeing how many EC votes it gets and switching them from Democrat to Republican to play with election possibilities.)

I have never understood why the Electoral College system was considered a good idea when it was implemented, nor why it continues to be used. The Bush/Gore upset of 2000, when Gore won the popular vote but Bush took the Electoral College (and therefore the presidency), just made it more clear to me that this is a highly imperfect system for a “democracy” to use as its voting system. My grumbling isn’t going to get the system changed, but I’d sure like to see it changed — preferably to the very simple, easy to figure out, doesn’t cause problems, one voice equals one vote.

Internet Explorer .pdf files?

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IE .pdf's?

It’s the little things that get to me about Windows most of the time. Things like this — today, for absolutely no reason that I can think of, Windows has decided that Adobe Acrobat .pdf files should have Internet Explorer’s icon.

Why? Only Windows knows. I haven’t installed anything, changed any system settings, or done anything differently than the same basic things I do every day (opening, saving, printing documents). But it looks like this is what’s meant to be. At least until Windows changes its mind and either sets .pdf’s back to their original icon, or chooses something entirely different.

Butterfly alphabets, and much more

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Prepare to get lost for hours in all sorts of linky goodness! Start with Kjell Sandved’s butterfly alphabet, then spend some time in his of natural images, including all sorts of funny faces, and even penguins!

: http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/NatureImage/index.htm “Butterfly Alphabet Gallery”
From there, it’s well worth spending some time at iconomy’s weblog, filled with all sorts of interesting linky bits, from a gorgeous vintage mermaid gallery to the critters that live on our face, tiny chocolate handbags, and — one that I think Kirsten might really like — Jimmy McGrath’s photo portfolio, where mousing over the images switches between the photos and artistic renderings of the photos.

Have fun!

(via MeFi)

iTunes/www.applemusic.com

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Just some initial thoughts after playing around with iTunes 4.0 and the iTunes Music Store for a bit.

  • AAC: I’m sold. Through some very non-scientific, non-mathematical experimenting, I seem to be getting about a 40% reduction in file size with 128kbps AAC .m4a’s as opposed to 160kbps VBR .mp3’s. With a \~14,000 song, 75GB music collection, a 40% reduction in size is beautiful. Plus, they do sound at least the same, if not better.
  • iTunes 4.0: Basic functionality is still the same as previous versions of iTunes, which I was already quite happy with. They’ve obviously done some under-the-hood work, though — where I used to get “spinning beach balls” almost anytime I clicked around in iTunes, now the only time I get a wait cursor is when I’m getting info on multiple tracks at once. Much snappier performance — and on an aging 350Mhz blue-and-white G3, that’s pretty impressive.
  • iTunes Music Store: Again, I’m sold. Very nicely and simply integrated directly into iTunes, finding stuff in the store is a breeze. I’ve already purchased one track to replace a corrupted .mp3 file created from a scratched CD, and once the iTMS is tied to my .mac account, single-click purchasing works flawlessly. Could be dangerous, though — talk about instant gratification! The selection of music available could use a little work, though I suffer a bit in having more esoteric music tastes — the majority of the “big artists” seem to be pretty well represented, and Apple says that they’re constantly working on expanding their library. Can’t complain too much, though — I’ve even found some pleasant surprises that I’m thinking about picking up (lots of Bill Cosby, and even a fair chunk of Spike Jones albums!).

Excellent work, all around. As far as I’m concerned, all of the whiners at MeFi and /. can jump off a cliff — Apple’s got a good thing going here. The only downside I can see is that to take advantage of AAC’s smaller file sizes, I’ve got about 1500 CD’s to rip all over again…