Category: spoons

Not sure why I took so long in trying out blosxom
but it’s really neat. and easy. just set up a test blog in about 2 minutes. compared to about a whole evening for movable type.
🙂

.. which is, of course, “blogging” in
reverse. (couldn’t resist, sorry.) Seriously though, nifty idea..

Here’s a tiny variation: why not have it so more than one person can answer
the questions too? Kind of like an inverted community blog. Anybody can ask a
question and anyone can post an answer.
There could be two sets of posts: answered and unanswered questions, viewable by everyone
Attached to each unanswered question there’s an ‘answer’
button which lets you post a reply and change the status to answered.

Might need some control, so the answering, asking, and/or viewing privileges might be given only to some users. Kind of like TMOL (which is down, bummer) where anyone can ask a question and hope the gurus answer it.

Definitely possible with MT, I s’pose.

In the process of packing and hauling the rest of my stuff from my old apartment to the house we just moved into, I came across a note scribbled (by me) on a small slip of yellow paper:

p338 precambrian decorative cabbage

Apparently, this was a noteworthy phrase from some book I was reading … google (for once) was not helpful — there are only 10 pages on the web that contain all 3 words.

Update: Aha! These three words can be found together on page 338 of Cryptonomicon .. I’ll post the context when I’m back at home where the book is.

Earlier this evening, Natalie and I were experimenting with some digital audio recording .. ok, actually we were recording .wav files on my laptop. She was practicing a song she’ll be singing at some friends’ wedding we’re going to this weekend. (She sounded great, by the way 🙂

I was using Winamp with a line-in input plugin and the diskwriter output plugin to record so that she could hear her own voice. In between recordings, I accidentally switched from diskwriter output to regular, allowing us to hear a just recorded .wav file.

Unfortunately, I forgot to switch back before starting to record again. So instead of being quietly written to the harddrive, the sounds coming in through the laptop’s builtin microphone were played through the laptop’s builtin speakers, which was again picked up by the mic, ad nauseum.
Really — nauseum. The laptop started to screech, like when you pick up the phone right next to the answering machine while it’s taking a message. Only louder .. and harsher .. and much screechier.

It was hurting our ears, so of course I start yanking out cables (why I chose the ethernet cable, I’m not sure). Natalie said “ow” and the machine apparently agreed because it started repeating, half-lost in the shrieking feedback, “ow ow ow ow ow …” Natalie said it sounded like it was posessed … I think it was.

After what seemed like long enough to break our eardrums and the computer’s vocal cords (but was probably only 3 seconds), I hit ‘Suspend’ .. when I turned it back on a minute later, it started with the screeching again. I chose the mute button this time, and then exorcised the evil feedback demons – using the stop button of course. Not sure why I didn’t hit that first. The power switch seemed faster than using the mouse, I guess.

If I ever get around to it, I’m going to install some voice recognition software on my computer at home. Aside from being able to play a song just by saying the title, or turn on the lights by saying “illuminate“, I’d also have to hook it up to the phone (of course). And not just in the extremely-elaborate-and-unncessarily-complex-answering-machine way .. it would be more like a personal secretary.

I’m thinking this would work sort of like procmail — it would filter incoming phone calls based on certain keywords. Instead of a .procmailrc file, I’d have a .procphonerc. It would probably look something like this.

Of course, I could use it for more than just getting rid of telemarketers. I could call and talk to the computer when I was away. Turn on the lights, check my email, check the temperature in the house, turn on the air conditioning .. all kinds of completely geeky stuff. heh .. someday. Whenever I find some freetime 😉

Something was wrong with my car .. I’m not sure what it was, but it could only be fixed in England. I was still here in Austin, and the car was Germany. Why you’d take a Volkswagen out of Germany to England to have it fixed is a mystery. So anyway, this mechanic (who I remember as being not exactly British) drove my car from Germany to England. Once it was fixed, I got a call (I think) that it was done, but I’d have to come get it myself. I don’t why he couldn’t just drive it back to Germany where he got it in the first place. … and that’s when I woke up.

It took me a few minutes to convince myself that my car was in good working condition and parked in the lot outside my apartment.

in the parking lot, some guy on a cell phone:
".. yeah, I like the blue fuzzy one too .."

Grabbed lunch at Thundercloud today .. I love the signs they have up on the wall behind the counter:

If you’re on a cell phone, you’re not in line

.. and ..

Cell phones make you invisible

My brain works weirdly sometimes .. well, my memory anyway .. Last night I was reading this book by Kinky Friedman (good read so far, by the way) and I finally realized that when he talked about the “dumper” that he was referring to the can (crapper, john, comode, restroom, lavatory, toilet, etc) .. dumper is just one name I hadn’t heard.

But the word made me remember an old radio commercial I heard in high school. I thought it was hilarious at the time because it was so random .. and I’ve always liked randomness 🙂 Anyway, it was an ad for a nightclub called The Brick .. I think it was in Dallas .. and I think this is their website.

Sadly, my brain somehow contains the exact wording of the last few lines …

” …. and like always, here at The Brick,
we guilt pudding thermoplasty, like a dumper herring slicer sagweed.
Trench fondle repercussions — asparagus me.”

I was stopped at a light on my way to work and this van drives by on the cross street, and on the side in big letters it says COOL__ and something about insulation and then above that are the words

Heatilator certainTeed

I suddenly thought I was dyslexic …