Andy's Blog

More Thanksgiving pictures

I have posted some more pictures from this trip to my thanksgiving gallery, and will be posting more as the days tick by.

-Andy.

Snow in Chicago

I am home in Chicago for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and yesterday it snowed out in the western suburbs. A lot:

According to Tom Skilling, this is on only the 10th "white thanksgiving" on record (since they started keeping records). I got to do some good snow shoveling, but I didn't have the proper equipment (read: boots) in order to make a snowman or anything like that (but the snow was good and wet -- good for packing).

So far, I am definitely getting a good "welcome back" from Chicago.

-Andy.

L'Awesomea partie deux

So, after much shopping, soul searching, deliberation, and personal growth, Kevin finally decided on a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid, which he purchased on Saturday:

Actually buying the thing was about as much of an ordeal as I expected - we spent about 3.5 hours at the dealership actually buying the thing. And of course, the one that he wanted had to come from a different Bay Area dealership, so we had to come back 4 hours later to actually pick it up. But, this meant that they didn't have time to detail it, so Kevin had to drive back there the next day for that. But, the free detailing was worth it -- the car looks pretty sharp. I have posted all of the pictures that I took in the gallery.

-Andy.

The Awesoma RIP: Windshield

It is truly the end of an era: Kevin's 1996 Nissan Altima decided to make love with a pole making the exchange from 880S to 101S, on his way to work. I've posted two photos here (my silly iPhoto-to-blog integration made them two separate posts). Here is the windshield:

The picture that follows is more interesting.

-Andy.

The Awesoma RIP: The Body

When I went with Kevin to the towing place in order to clean all of his valuables out of his car, I managed to take a couple of photos of the damage. This was the most extensive damage that I saw:

The car was really hemmed in at the lot, so I wasn't able to get an wide shots. Also, Kevin claims that the car was rendered undrivable due the rear axle being damaged, but I wasn't able to get a look. Anyways, in a short but solumn ceremony, we cleaned out all of the important bits from the car, and said goodbye.

The accident happened on a rainy Thursday morning, on Kevin's way into work. So, we spent some time car shopping on Thursday night, and I skipped out of work a little after noon on Friday (those bastards owe me), and we did a lot of car shopping on Friday. Finally, on this fine Saturday afternoon, it looks like Kevin is pulling the trigger, and welcoming a new love into his life...

-Andy.

More about Delicious Library

So, after my last post about Delicious Library there are a few clarifications that I'd like to make. So, when I talk about posting the content that I add in Library to my blog, I'm not just talking about modifying the XML template that Movable Type uses to render my main blog page. Rather, I'm talking about spinning up a separate blog (a "stuff" blog), and having Delicious Library post directly to that. Then, insofar as I understand, there are ways in which you can integrate multiple blogs into one main page.

Looking at the Delicious Library XML data file, it seems like the main challenges will be harvesting out only the entries that are "new" since the last time the integration was run, and triggering the integration in an automated fashion. I think that the integration is either going to need to keep some local state (date/time of last successful run), or possibly it might be able to examine the state of the blog that it is posting to, in order to figure out which items in Library are new.

In terms of automation, it would be idea if Library had some sort of plugin API. I haven't looked too deeply at it yet, but it doesn't seem like there is one. :(

I am intrigued by Justin's idea -- of making library P2P-aware. There is definitely some fertile development ground there. But right now, I am feeling selfish, and want to work on getting Library integrated with my blog. :)

I read a kick-ass review of Library last night on Ars Technica (John Siracusa is totally awesome). Initially, I was thinking about only buying Library if I could get it integrated with my blog, but now after reading that, I think I'm just going to buy it regardless.

-Andy.

Delicious Library

So, Delicious Monster finally released their first application, "Library", today. I have been reading some hype about this application on the web for a few months now, so I was eager for a chance to check it out. Basically, it is a really slick way of tracking all of the movies, games, CDs, and books that you own in the physical world. The key thing about it is that you can use your iSight (or any other video camera) as a barcode reader, which simplifies that task of getting information about your stuff into the Delicious Library

So, playing around with the demo, I found that while the iSight barcode scanning does work, it is a little finnicky. Reading the FAQ, it seems like once you get the hang of it, scanning barcodes gets much easier. However, in my testing, I could have gone faster just by typing in the UPC #'s. But other than that, it works as advertised.

The only reason that I can see myself paying $40 for this thing is if I can somehow integrate it with my Blog. I have been fascinated with the idea of automating parts of my blog recently. My idea is that, as the physical objects drift into my life, I'll make some digital record of them, which will be tracked in my blog. In that way, other people can see what I'm buying. This could lead to better recommendations of other things that I should check out. And of course, lots of flames about my poor taste in music (Chris and Steve would vote for "Sleater-Kinney", for example). Also, it'll be easier for me to go in and do reviews of things (which I like to do from time-to-time). The ultimate extension of this idea would be if I were to imprint things that I was only thinking about buying. Then my peer group could comment before I commit, and potentially steer me either towards or away from the potential purchase.

As it stands right now, Delicious Library stores all of its data in an XML file. So, I would have to write some code that parses the file, and posts the interesting bits to my blog. The hard part would be in triggering my little machination -- it doesn't look like there is a way to have Delicious Library fire off external commands whenever you add a new item, for example. Maybe the Automator coming in MacOS X 10.4 could help me out here?

-Andy.

Death Cab For Cutie Fall 2004 poster

This is the poster that I bought at last night's Death Cab concert. I could probably do a better job at capturing it in my digital camera (I think more light would be good), but this is decent enough.

-Andy.

Like waking up from a bad dream

... Every time the realization hits me that George W. Bush won the election on Tuesday, it feels like I am just waking up from a bad dream. Like, I really want to believe that it didn't happen, and that Kerry won. But it didn't.

Damn.

-Andy.

Death Cab For Cutie & Pretty Girls Make Graves

Towards the end of bloggercon, the sleep depravation really hit me, hard. I had to get up really early this morning in order to make it to the conference, which combined with not sleeping well last night, meant that I wasn't running on much gas. So, I had to really persevere in order to make it into the city so that I could witness this concert. Well, I got my act together (helped ably by Kevin, who did all of the city driving), and it was really worth it.

I started "perking up" (i.e. getting my second wind) when Pretty Girls Make Graves came on. I had never even heard of this band before, save for Sara being jealous when I told here that I was going to see them open for Death Cab. Well, Sara was (of course) right -- they totally rocked. They sounded kindof like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, if you skewed more to rock than punk, and didn't suck. I'm sold on Pretty Girls on this point.... I tried to buy a CD after the show, but I think they were gone (or something). So, I will have to keep my eyes open.

Death Cab For Cutie was next (there was no 3rd band), and they were really great. Kevin wasn't too into Pretty Girls, but he was digging Death Cab. I am a johnny-come-lately with this band, but I am glad that I have been exposed to Death Cab -- they played a really great live show. I think that the lyrics (what I feel is the strongest aspect of Death Cab) came through quite clear. In fact, I was able to focus in on the lyrics on some of the songs more than I have on repeated listenings of the CDs. My only complaint is that they didn't play my favorite song off of "Transatlanticism", "we looked like giants". Other than that minor quibble, it was great.

I also bought a Death Cab For Cutie poster, a picture of which I will try and post later. As I trying to make the way through the crowd with my purchase, a random girl told me that it was hand silk-screened. I guess that is good, or something.

-Andy.

Pictures from bloggercon

I haven't taken any photos here myself yet, but other people have done so, and already posted them online @ flickr. I haven't really messed around with flickr yet, but it seems like a cool way to do photo blogs. Of course, if I take any pictures at this event, I'll probably post them on my own blog, not flickr. :)

-Andy.

Busy Day: Bloggercon and Death Cab For Cutie

I woke up entirely to early this morning in order to go to Bloggercon III. I registered late, but fortunately I was able to make it in to the conference. I just saw Lawrence Lessig and Dan Gillmor having a discussion on their way to get coffee -- so yeah, I think this is a pretty valid way to spend my Saturday.

After the conference ends, I'm going to drive to S.F. in order to see Death Cab For Cutie with Kevin. And after that, we may join Kalpana's birthday celebration which will already be in progress. So this is shaping up to be quite a busy Saturday, but also one which brings me a lot of fun and growth.

-Andy.

eMOTIVe

Chris alerted me on iChat tonight that A Perfect Circle is releasing a new CD tomorrow, entitled 'eMOTIVe'. Sonofabitch -- I had no idea this was coming out! Chris has already bought it off of iTunes, and he "lent" it to me via HTTP. So, I've been giving it a listen, and my gut-verdict is "good, but not great". But man, I have really be out of it lately. So, now I have to go to Target tomorrow after I vote. :)

-Andy.

Incendiary

I am not a big Eminem fan, but I just caught his new video for the song "Mosh" on the MTV. Here is a link out to a stream, so you can watch for yourself. Not only is the video amazing artistically (a mix of hand-drawn animation, computer animation, and live action), but it's hard to believe that anyone could actually vote for Bush after watching it. Right Mark?

-Andy.

I'm surprised that Tex hasn't blogged about this one yet.

My CWRU friend, Jeff "Tex" Puckett, has been tracking the bush-cheated-in-the-debates conspiracy theory, but I haven't seen him blog about this one yet.

(found via Joi Ito's blog).

-Andy.