Farsong Blog-o-Matic

In time, in time

2010-01-01T08:22:55Z

Rocking in a new year with a 25-year-old song digitised and streamed to a 3-year-old computer. Just comprehend the years of engineering that went into this for a simple song.

This is probably my favourite love song. This is a 12-min long extended promo cut of the music video, and it's as transfixing a video as David Bowie's “Life on Mars.”

Dexys Midnight Runners - This Is What She's Like
by Dexys-Midnight-Runners

I hope that in ten years I'll be in the arms of the one I love, cozy and happy at 33.

This is a sense of things to come

2010-01-01T06:46:46Z

Yesterday was the last day for prereg for FC, so I jumped on it. Now I need to properly secure lodgings/transportation. It sounds like I can get down there, and it's still early enough in the ~~semester~~ quarter that going won't fuck up classes. So I'm going to try to bust my butt to get down there by the end of January. I'll get to see people, too, which is good.

And really? I need to get away, to do a vacation, to have a change of scenery. Josh and I both agree that it's something I need, since I'm burnt out.

I'm spending the new year's eve watching sci-fi shows because I like them. I'd prefer a laid-back evening with friends and snacks and drinks, but it seems like everyone's going down to First Night, and I'm not in the mood for crowds/live music/stuff tonight. Drawing might be a good thing, too.

I also got 10.6 in the mail. I think I'm a bit of a typography/graphic design geek, since the first and second things I noticed after booting into it the first time were that the subpixel smoothing was smoother and the icons/UI elements were crisper than before (ie, the keyboard selection menu applet), respectively. I believe this is part of the resolution independence in the system. This feature is not yet active, but it's finally part of the design*, though it's not accessible for the average user. At least not yet.

The 10.6 transition was very easy, fast, and even freed up 25gb on my HDD. The core of the OS is 64-bit (finally) on my Core2 arch. I'm not going to say that it's "faster" than before, but it should be better. There were some issues with nonworking 32-bit apps when I first booted into the system, but those issues were fixed easily with app updates (thank goodness for sparkle!) since Devs have had 10.6 in their hands for a while. On the whole, there's not a lot on the top layer of the OS that's new or different, and it all works as it should — besides, this upgrade was all about the stuff under the hood.

Quicktime X is one such thing, replacing the creaky old QuickTime7, it was rewritten from the ground up (with a new UI to match — perhaps the most “new” and “different” part of 10.6). Other new things are the elimination of PPC binaries from the system (at least first party apps), which is one thing that freed up space.

By contrast, I installed Win XP on a creaky, noisy old P4 laptop (so old it has 256mb RAM and an 802.11b Prism2 chipset). The OS preforms well, considering it's limited to an old extra 5gb HDD, but it suffers from the usual Windows issues, as well as odd issues when resuming from sleep (ie, it sometimes it won't resume). I was impressed that WIndows found all the drivers it needed right. Its sole duty is to be a Windows terminal for the father, who has three websites he needs to access to do his job as a realtor, and which work in IE for Windows only.

Windows XP SP3 with IE8 is decent (the IE6 it came with is a positively primitive browser, the likes of which I haven't used in years), but for anything with at least 3/4 of a gig of ram (768mb), a 2ghz Celeron/P4 (or 1.3ghz Pentium M — aka “Centrino” or better), I'd actually recommend Windows 7. It's fast enough, as well as modern. It works decently and without headaches, finding all the drivers it needs easily when connected to a network, and actually running very well as a PnP system. You'll get better gaming performance on an older machine with XP, but if you're still using an old computer with a P4 chip for gaming, you're probably not playing Crysis. Here it is: I'm recommending that Windows users use Windows 7. If you bought a new computer in the last 8 or 9 years**, you can most likely run Win 7 on it, and you'd probably have a good experience.

--
* Resolution Independence was one of the features initially slated for OSX 10.4 “Tiger,” but it was pushed back, probably because of other, more pressing things. Still, it's no “WinFS” — it's been present in various stages since 10.4, but it's never been very user-accessible or fully functional.

But this idea of scalable UI is especially nice in this day and age with 2500x1600 resolution displays — the sort that are above and beyond 1080 HD resolutions with small pixel pitches — and for people who may have more difficulty reading screens.

** If it's a PII you have, you're probably better off sticking with XP or moving over to Linux — probably XFCE, but it can handle Gnome, because 7 on a PII is not going to be fun.

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg

2009-12-27T08:06:42Z

“The visuals are so stunning it really deserves being watched on a reasonable sized TV.”

Who's Ricky Gervais?

2009-12-27T07:59:08Z

A classic sketch if I've ever seen one.

Top 10: 2009

2009-12-26T13:22:03Z

Music hasn't been a priority this year. It's been good, but I've discovered a lot more old stuff than new stuff released this year (and a lot of trance and house musics). As per usual, this is a list of the good albums released in this year. Unlike in years previous, there is no ranking. I don't think there are ten, though, but that makes up for the years where there have been like twelve or fifteen.

Fanfarlo — Reservoir
This one has the “Harold T. Wilkins” track.

Röyksopp — Junior
The companion to this, Senior is due out in 2010.

U2 — No Line On The Horizion
Best U2 since Achtung Baby

Franz Ferdinand — Ulysses
Especially disc 2.

Ziggy Stardust Remixed
Bowie remixes with a haunting remix of MGMT's “Kids” that's better than the original.

Fireflies — Butterscotch EP
No, you're probably thinking of Owl City's “Fireflies.” This band is called Fireflies, has no relation to Owl City, and sounds a lot like Polaris.

Jens Lekman — THE SUMMER NEVER ENDS
This is the 49:00 of this year — that is to say, it is both excellent and obscure.

These are not all the new albums I got in 2009. Some of them just weren't amazing. Some simply do not deserve to go on the list. Others were compilation albums. So yeah. And it's not like I can pick any one that's best because they're all different.

And since it's 2009, aka the end of the decade and the start of a new one:
The best of the last 10 years (2000-2009, a period of great change); I didn't count them, I just put them here in no particular order. Also, if you ask pitchfork, they'll disagree with me. Also, there are no techno albums here because those are more like mixes and sets and playlists, so are harder to quantify as the artistic unit of an "album."

M83 — Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003)

Fleet Foxes — Fleet Foxes (2008)

The Shins — Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

The Envelopes — Here Comes The Wind (2008)

Modest Mouse — Good News for People who Love Bad News (2004)

Caribou — The Milk of Human Kindness (2005)

The Arcade Fire — Funeral (2004)

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

We Are Scientists — Safety, Fun, and Learning (2002)
None of that post-signing We Are Scientists here.

Argo — Jet Packs for Everyone (2003)

Tennis Pro — Happy is the New Sad (2004)

The Decemberists — Castaways and Cutouts (2002)

The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

The Decemberists — Picaresque (2005)

Modest Mouse — We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank (2007)

Youngblood Brass — center:level:roar (2003)

!!! — Myth Takes (2007)

Jens Lekman — THE SUMMER NEVER ENDS (2009)

Paul Westerberg — 49:00 (2008)

Daft Punk — Discovery (2001)
Almost forgot this one because it's so timeless.

LCD Soundsystem — Sound of Silver (2007)
The best album since the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin (1999), comparable to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. This is the best album of the last 10 years.

These dates might be fun to graph in a histogram or other something.

Star Wars.

2009-12-26T03:39:18Z

Star Wars was always on at christmas. That's when I'd watch it, and how I first saw it: all three, back-to-back, christmas day, on the home TV, and it always captivated me.

The Holidays are a time for traditions. They are positively replete with them. Maybe it's a movie you watch or a food you eat or something you say. Perhaps it's a decoration that you get out that really makes the holiday for you — but it's always something that makes the holiday feel real for you. This holiday hasn't felt real to me in that sense for a while.

But I got to thinking? Why Star Wars? Why Christmas? Why all the fuss?

No, not a “this is the history of christmas, as a Pagan solstice celebration,” because we all know that. I mean the fuss. It's pretty simple: it's because we love people. It's because we love that momentary gleam in one's eye when we think of the right thing for the right person. It's that magic in the eye.

But yeah, I don't think I've seen that spark in a while. I haven't felt the holiday. I just sort of dreaded trying to think up things to get for people to show that I care. I haven't liked christmas carols in a while, and I think it's become overblown and commercialised; an excuse for giving people shit.

I think at one time solstice used to be a time devoted to drinking and merriment in the dead of winter, when people needed the festival the most. I don't know what it is now. It feels like just another day, and the real meaning is spending time with people you care about. The people you choose to spend time with, they're probably the closest thing to family that we've got.

ATT

2009-12-12T09:58:22Z

Fake Steve on ATT:

“And when I say that “we” have a hit on our hands, I’m really giving you way too much credit, because let’s be honest, the success of iPhone has nothing to do with you. In fact, iPhone is a smash hit in spite of your network, not because of it. That’s how good we are here at Apple — we’re so good that even you and your team of Bell System frigtards can’t stop us. You know what it’s like being your business partner? It’s like trying to swim the English Channel with a boat anchor tied to my legs. And yes, in case you’re not following me, in that analogy, you, my friend, are the fucking boat anchor.”

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the only thing that's keeping me from snapping up an iPhone is ATT (well, that and the price while I'm sans employment, obviously). What matters is that I have no intention of leaving T-mobile any time soon. They've had the best service (in spite of my SMS snafu the other month), and I'd snap up an iPhone if it worked on ATT. As it is, I'll settle for a phone that doesn't suck, in this case, a T-Mobile Shadow, which I've been meaning to write about.

It's an HTC 2007-year used model I purchased from the esteemed kistaro when he upgraded to a newer HTC MyTouch. It's a decent phone, many times better than any of the previous phones I had, except the Nokia 3390. It's faster and more versatile than the Blackberry Pearl I had, has WiFi, is faster and has better battery life than the RAZR I was putting up with for a couple months (before losing — first time that's ever happened to me).

It's not perfect: It lacks a touch screen, and it does run WIndows Mobile, but it's far slicker than the Motorola M my ex used for a time. Also, my experience with WIndows Mobile has been downright pleasant. I do believe this is due mostly to the fact that I do have to even attempt to sync the phone with my Mac/Linux machine(s) — all the sync is handled by Google Sync through an exchange server. All my stuff is in Google, and it's a simple matter to sync my contacts to Google. So, the computer syncs to Google, and Google syncs to my phone. I make a change in one place, and it propagates to the other devices. I don't have to worry about syncing the two, because that's all handled automatically.

I imagine I'd be clawing at my scalp if I had to sync the phone to the computer, and thus the contacts would remain un-updated. Though, from using the phone a couple times with a Windows XP dev machine I keep around (a 2.53ghz P4 Northwood core), the Windows sync is even simpler than syncing through Google, almost as if Windows Mobile was made to sync with Windows …

In short, the Shadow is no iPhone, but it's not trying to be. It's enough phone for me; It's sturdy, pretty nice, it works well, and I can use it to read eBooks about Honor Harrington. I'd like to be snarky and say it “works well in spite of Windows Mobile” but the truth is that, apart from being a little sluggish sometimes, it's pretty decent and gets the job done (though Windows Mobile's Internet Explorer leaves a lot to be desired, and Opera doesn't seem to like non-touchscreens).

Comic: That kind of day

2009-12-04T07:39:45Z

I was a little surly this morning.

Are these wide comics any good, or should I make them more vertical? Horizontal scrolling is worse than the vertical sort?

I'm on Fire

2009-12-03T06:43:38Z

There's a reason I wait till the end of the year to put together a list of top 10 albums from the past 12 months. No, it's not finals. It's the fact that new and exciting music can come to light even in the last four weeks.

You'll find out what's on the list. But not yet.

In other news, I had a pudding today. Pistachio. In a small plastic cup. Now, it was not the best pudding in the world, but someone had taken the care to make it more than just a pudding in a cup. A dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of sliced almonds had been added. The thought made me all warm inside. Little things that people care about make me all gooey.

Chilling Conclusions

2009-11-30T21:35:32Z

The economy sucks. It's not a full-blown depression yet, but jobs are scarce. I'd know. But it's not just Spokane County or Washington State — it's the whole country that's hurting.

But don't take my word for it — look at this chilling chart.

The entire country is turning black.

That's scary.

Then just today, I stumbled across this one, about Food Stamps recipients across the country (it's about one in eight people who are on food stamps, and one in four children).

That's worrysome.

I saw the second chart and immediately thought of the first. This is the inevitable conclusion:

They line up.

Juxtaprudence

2009-11-26T04:36:10Z

I read Best of Craigslist when it updates. There are usually some gems. This month, there are a couple that I find really amusing because of their juxtaposition.

First there's these two: problem and resolution.

And then there's these: example, then rage.

The Helvetica of Breakbeats

2009-11-20T08:07:50Z

Influences

2009-11-20T02:25:16Z

siskmarek asked me about stuff I've read that's made a strong impression on me. Specifically, he asked me about online scifi stuff. I need to find some more of it, but here are some things that have influenced me (most are print):

Classics like:
Moby Dick
David Coperfield
the sound and the fury
hamlet

There was some LOTR

There was also:
Dune
Dragonriders of Pern
Honor Harrington
Ender’s Game
Artemis Fowl
HHTTG
X Marks the Pedwalk (I haven't been able to find this story anywhere on the web, but it was in an excellent sci-fi anthology we read freshman year; I read the whole thing)
The aforementioned anthology, of which I know not the name. It included an Eniac that could love and a story about a death game in an arena.
2001
2010
Crooked Little Vein
Neuromancer

There are other influences from things in visual formats like:
Babylon 5
Star Trek (TNG and Voyager)
American Born Chinese
Transmetropolatin
Aqua Leung
Flight anthologies
Blackadder
Mr Bean
Monty Python
Thin Blue Line
Dr Who (which is more recent an interest)

I can't say that these were all strong influences, but many I've liked or enjoyed. Many are comics, and those as much as anything contribute to the method of storytelling. The TV shows are about the world, characters, feelings from the settings ...

As far as online, here's some of the stuff I can find:

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Little Brother

Cory Doctorow's “Scroogled” (I'm sensing a pattern here ... this was a story I thought I had lost like the others further below; thank god I knew the author's name).

Recently, I've gotten quite into Freefall; I went through the archive in an all-night binge, the likes of which I haven't seen in a long time. I enjoyed it more than any comic I've found in ages. It's scientifically accurate (as far as future science goes) and also makes one think (which is what real sci-fi is supposed to do). I also love the somewhat bleak, isolated feeling that one gets in colonies like that, much in the same way that Speaker for the Dead captured the isolated “We're away from everything else in the universe” feeling.

There are a couple other stories that I read a while ago (two years ago, or there abouts) that kinda stick with me.

One was about a small souvenir shop owner who finds a fabricator (rapid prototyper) that prints things in carbon and can make most anything it can scan. I believe it was an interesting (very long, for a short) story about community and how free can really shake the foundations of things that depend on community (and how a community can thrive on that). I wish I knew the name of that one; it was several parts, and it was excellent.

Another was about a female lawyer in a world where people were charged with humming a tune and there was strict copyright on all intellectual property. It was dystopian, and it was a soceity in decline.

These last few stories feel the most important and significant to me because I can't remember them. Though, X Marks the Pedwalk seems significant, as well as the other stories in the anthology as a whole.

But the most important thing I learned — that which is most apropos of sci-fi — is how it normalises something strange and futuristic; people in sci-fi stories take things for granted. It's telling a volume of information in a simple sentence like “Every night before he went to bed, he took of his leg and plugged it into the mains.” (it's not verbatim, sorry; it's also not mine — I think I found it via Warren Ellis at least 100 years ago).

That tells you of routine and normalicy. It also tells you how things work, what's normal in that world, the level of tech, the infastructure, and that there's a lot of backstory.

Posit: A piece of the pie (Opinion)

2009-11-15T23:53:04Z

No president can give you anything unless they first take it from somebody else, and that is a formula for failure.

Or so claim conservatives. The reality is that freedoms and liberty are not taken. They are not something you can get by taking them from someone else. These things are given from one person to another and they are in abundance.

I've been reading and listening to arguments lately, specifically about nationalised health care, and it occurs to me that the conservative worldview is one that believes that in order to give freedoms to one group of people, they must be taken from someone else. For instance, in the health care debate, Michigan congressman Rogers says:

This idea that one group's liberties must be truncated in order that another group may be given them is patently false, but perhaps this is the source of wars and discrimination. Maybe this is a small part of the reason for the current resurgence of wars and Imperialism since the election of Regan. Wars: because the only way for Americans to have more freedoms. And, discrimination of any kind — most recently the argument against gay marriage and gay civil rights. I think they are worried that by granting rights to gay couples, then rights will be taken from them. Which is an utterly fallacious argument (it's simply granting everyone equal rights).

In fact, it really sounds a lot like bullying: oppressing others so one feels better about themselves. Honestly, I think they worry that they will no longer be "special" and hold a privileged place in society.

I think conservatives live in a bubble — that they think we don't have any help from the people and things around us. The truth is that no man is an island; we could not be who we are without those around us. To me, the idea that one person can make it on their own without the aid of others is a childish one. It's a self-centric view — and such a view is childish and represents an arrested development, as if one stopped developing in the later parts of adolescence. At 16, one's worldview is very self-centric; a teenager is the centre of his world; it's only by our 20s that we begin to realise the need for companionship, camaraderie, and community and how society needs real communities.

I suppose that it does make sense: they believe in economic theories that maximise their own profits at the expense of the labour force, not to mention the childish ideas of religion. The childishness encapsulated in putting ones self ahead of the welfare of all people, the future, and the planet. If we all stopped warring over artificial borders, the world would be a much better place.

Liberties are not something you can get by taking from someone else. The only people taking liberties are those who voted against R-71 (thank the west side that it passed) and those who proposed California's Prop 8.

On Discrimination

2009-11-12T20:45:56Z

[ … ] The archdiocese's statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

"Lets say an individual caterer is a staunch Christian and someone wants him to do a cake with two grooms on top," said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 6), the sponsor of the amendment. "Why can't they say, based on their religious beliefs, 'I can't do something like that'?" [ … ]

You can't do that because it's Discrimination.

It's the same thing as discrimination based on skin colour. Everyone knows it's not okay to say, “I don't want to serve you because your skin color is different than mine, and the bible says your skin colour makes you inferior.” And it's just as silly as saying, “I don't want to serve you because you're lefthanded,” (though that is a bit of a sinister example).

(via The Washington Post)

Euphamistically yours

2009-11-10T15:09:26Z

It occurs to me that our culture is based entirely around the evacuation of waste, but it's something no one wants to talk about it. More than religion, more than culture, the driving force behind technical innovation and growth as a species is finding new and different ways and places to take a poo, from a hole in the woods to an outhouse to indoor plumbing. If there is one defining thing we have as a culture, it is the fact that, at one time or another, we have all had to poop.

A table of places people have taken a poo:
• In the woods
• Behind the shack
• In the bathroom
• In space
• On the moon
• Around the corner
• At the Gas-station
• At a restaurant
• And many, many other places

If you think about it, even momentarily, it makes a lot of sense. Every building people like or work in has a bathroom — many have more than one — all for eliminating waste product. There are more bathrooms than churches and shrines — there are even bathrooms in churches, and every culture has created a toilet in similar fashion. Our buildings and culture are based around the need to evacuate waste. We have more toilets than churches.

More than that, cultures that are considered "higher" are the ones with more sophisticated means of pooping. The Romans were civilised and they had running water to get rid of their waste. The middle ages were a step back, and people lived in squalor and filth lined the streets. Modern plumbing has made cities possible, but it wasn't until indoor plumbing and toilets that carriers of disease and pestilence are almost completely eliminated — when a seasonal flu is all you have to worry about, life is pretty good and your society is clean.

Even our language is structured around it, but has built up the elimination of waste from our bodies — a very natural thing — into a taboo subject. The words "poop" and "pee" are hilarious to small children (don't tell me you didn't giggle at them, too, because you did). The words "shit," "piss," "crap," and "ass" have all become dirty words. People don't say that they are going to poop — they say that they are going to go "use the bathroom" or "go number two," as if they are ashamed of a perfectly natural process. The fact is that there is nothing to be ashamed of — it's natural and everyone does it. It's not good or bad — it simply is, and it's a commonality among all humanity, yet we still seem reluctant to acknowledge that any of us do it.

In fact, to make words for natural acts into taboos is to give power to these words and to say that these things are bad, when they're not. Even calling waste management "number one" and "number two" is silly. It also presents a layer of abstraction to the whole mess that is difficult for small children to understand.

Pooping is simply a fact of life. If you're alive, you poop. It's that simple. Let's not glorify it by making up fancy words or using euphemisms for it.

“I just wish that one of these days, instead of piling on more furniture, they’d clean up the place.

2009-11-09T21:08:54Z

“I did not mean to write an essay detailing all the ways in which slider controls in Photoshop CS4 reveal problems in the design, development, quality control, and management of the product; I really didn’t. I just pulled up the Smart Sharpen dialog one evening and, sighing at its hideousness for the nth time, decided to put together a little joke post. That was all.”

I know exactly how that is. Sometimes you just have to act on the feeling — you can't rest till you do.

Neven Morgen via Daring Fireball

Days on the infinity

2009-11-09T10:22:24Z

This quarter has been busy. Very busy. I'm taking 17 credithours. It's intense. And I've been busy outside of class.

Anyway, I got back to my room a couple hours ago after heading to town. I went to 1) drop of a disc of pictures, 2) get some new jeans! and 3) setup a computer for my dad.

The first is a series of pictures I took for a sculptor on the dedication of her statue, which looks something like this (I'm not good at making up names. Also, I think that the photos should stand on their own without needing a title, only a description of when and where):

Except for the above, the pictures in this post are unrelated to the content, simply recent uploads I want to share, so it's pretty as you scroll by, like the next one below (which I suppose is also the only other exception) and is larger because it is more stunning that way (seriously, it's more stunning the bigger it is; making it small gets rid of the Depth of Field):

The second are a pair of Levi 501s and a pair of 505s. Classic blue denim. They'll last a year each before the knees get holy like the pair they replace, like the pair that replaced the one before it, like the pair those replaced …

Three: My dad has a great MacBook Pro. It's better than mine, as well as quieter when running Flash. It runs OSX. He recently also started a job as a realtor, and many of the websites he needs to use are the sort that require IE. I tried every free option I could think of: I tried Safari, Firefox, Opera, and even IE for Mac (5.2; it sucked even back in the day when it was the only Mac OS browser). I tried spoofing the user agent strings. I even tried using WINE and running IE through that, but that didn't work either. It was crashy — too crashy for even me to use. I finally gave up after I was unable to get a virtual machine to do the trick, recommending Parallels as an option (I wanted it to be mobile, and there was no way in hell I was giving him back his old laptop — it was too slow and too loud.

I went home this evening to drop off the aforementioned disc, got two pairs of jeans, and a tasty salmon dinner. At home, I dredged up an old desktop machine (slimline tower), because this seemed like a decent solution. I had a computer in the basement, as well as an extra keyboard and monitor (one of my two 19" Samsung SXGA TFTs), so I set him up with a 2.0 Ghz Celeron "Northwood" running Win 7. I had a bit of trouble getting the first drive to boot, so I replaced it with something newer. It's an adequate, functional computer and runs 7 just fine, if a little sluggish — but it's better than XP by leaps and bounds. It'll do the job of printing and accessing ActiveX websites, and it was a problem taken care of with parts I had on hand.

Also a new addition, I got a replacement for my crappy RAZR (which was stolen). I used my backup Nokia 1208 for a couple weeks, but I now have a 2007 HTC T-Mobile Shadow, care of kistaro. It's a good phone, and my first experience with Windows Mobile (apart from playing with my ex's WM5 Motorola Q briefly a couple years ago, but that was a poor experience to say the least). It's slick, but it's been easy to get used to.

It has good battery life with an extra large 3rd party battery, wi-fi for email (my router's WiFi magically started working again, AND I got the G router I was lent working as an access point tied to my hub), and is a decent crossover device. Actually, it's much nicer than the BlackBerry Perl with which I started this contract — faster, more intuitive, more versatile, and more useful, and while it does have a little bit of chunky and clunky, I'm getting more used to the interface; it has its quirks, but it's nothing that I can't ignore as a developer. It's no iPhone, but it's not supposed to be — it does its job just fine, has no touch screen, and does my Email. It can even automatically switch from "normal" to "vibrate" modes based on my calendar.

Actually, I've found that the killer app for it is Google's sync. Google employs an exchange server to copy contacts, calendars, and send and receive email, so moving into the new phone was as easy as setting up Google as an exchange server and BAM! all my contacts and my inbox are there on my phone. I read a message and it marks it read in my inbox. Since I use Gmail's IMAP server for my desktop client, it means that all changes propagate across all devices. Even better than that is the fact that I have iCal linked with Google Calendars via WebDAV, and Address Book syncs to Google as well, so I add a contact on my phone, and he or she appears on my computer. Honestly, this is exactly how computing is supposed to be.

Additionally, it would have been an absolute nightmare trying to coerce Windows Mobile into syncing with anything non-windows-mobile, since I'm almost exclusively Mac/linux.

So, I've been using it to stream internet radio while I sleep (a laptop is overkill for this), and I've got an ebook reader installed on it, too (the Window Mobile version is much nicer than the BlackBerry one). It used to be so nice to be able to have books with me on the bus — especially since I don't like carrying many things with me, and when the Blackberry died, so did a lot of the reading I did for pleasure. Now I can finally fall asleep again reading stories about Honor Harrington and the Star Kingdom of Mantacore.

So, yeah, Windows Mobile doesn't suck — and this is coming from a Mac/Linux user and a design geek (so it's as close to a ringing endorsement as you'll get from me without torturing me with a BB Storm). Believe it!

This is what it's like

2009-11-03T16:13:42Z

You are very, very mistaken.

2009-11-03T12:44:39Z

“Do you think that is acceptable wolflike behaviour?”

The New Republic

2009-11-02T21:09:32Z

I've been reading a bunch of articles this afternoon on The New Republic and they're all smart and very well written.

• Rush Limbaugh and his Reverse Racism
Halp, white people are being oppressed!

• Quayle v. Palin: Quayle Pulls Ahead!
Even mister “Tomatoe” is better than Mooseburger

• The Worst Argument You've Ever Read For Banning Openly Gay People From the Military
Apparently, according to the Right, gay people are pussies.

• The Worst Case Yet Against Gay Marriage
If the last article talked about in the previous link wasn't bad, this one is.

• Assimilation and its meaning: The End of Gay Culture
And finally, we end with something sensible, about how gay culture as a subculture is disappearing and no longer the single defining thing about gay people.

A summary of what you need to know for Election Day: A primer for Spokane County

2009-11-01T23:42:37Z

It's voting season. Yeah, I'm late on this because they sent out the ballots a couple weeks ago, but if you haven't voted yet, here's what you need to know. Yes, this is a politically-charged post.

Vote no on I-1033. It's Eyman. You remember how he fucked up the budget with I-695? How it effectively broke the STA*? He's trying to do that again, this time capping the budget in the worst year on the books — a year we had to lay off teachers and cut programs.

The tl;dr is that it's proposed by Eyman. If that's not enough to make you vote against it …

Vote to approve R-71. It's about legal rights for domestic partners, including same sex couples and older pensioners who do not want to lose benefits by remarrying. It is not even a warning shot across the “institution of traditional marriage” — this is simply an issue of civil rights. (Full disclosure: I have a personal, vested interest in the approval of R-71).

The only other really important thing to do is to vote for Rocky Treppiedi and against Laura Carder in the District 81 Director race. Carder would bring crazy fundie creationism into the classroom. That's not science; don't teach it. Hell, even the Spokesman Review doesn't think Carder is a good choice.

These are the things on the ballot that really matter — for the rest, use you best judgement; I believe in you. Don't let your community down. And remember to turn in that ballot. The first two measures are not exclusive to Spokane County, either, so if you're in Washington, you know what to do.

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* Back in 1999, when the Spokane Transit Authority had just started their plans for a new and shiny bus transportation hub downtown, Eyman got I-695 passed. Car licensing was where STA got much of its operating funds. So, STA had just gotten a new downtown hub, paid millions for it, and now their funding was cut. They couldn't dip into the coffers because they just spent that money on the Plaza. So they cut service. Even today, STA is not as good as they were in the mid 90s. They are expanding, but that was a serious blow to those of us who do not have cars.

Also, I was mad because I-695 actually raised our tab fees for our car, because they went from a car-value-based equation to a flat rate.

Hallowe'enie

2009-11-01T13:01:18Z

I think I've had this blog for more than five years, now. I got it shortly before hallowe'en, back in senior year of High School.

Here are some sketches from the past few weeks that I'm actually pleased with:

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Yesterday, I hung out with a bunch of friends, watched some hallowe'en-type movies (not generally the biggest fan of gore or horror, but I'll make an exception around this time of year). It was one of those migratory parties that started in one place, moved to another (the second location quite different than the first — more of a nerd basement lair pit. With stuff everywhere (a stark contrast to the first place). There was also a fire. I will say that I'm jealous of people who can afford fancy quad-core computers and large flatscreen TVs and fancy new widescreen monitors — but I wouldn't use a TV much for TV, I don't play many games, and the computers I have work fine for me for now.

I did feel a bit awkward at times as there were several couples and only a couple people without someone else there. Josh apparently echoed the same sentiments about hallowe'en parties in his neck of the woods. Situations like those are only as awkward as you make them; just have fun and it's fun. Plus, meeting new people is fun. Still, I wish he were here. Or I there. Or something like that.

I probably should have sneaked in and stayed at home last night, but I felt like that would bring up questions and be awkward.

Though, earlier this week I went home to help out and see if I could help my dad access a website. It requires ActiveX, though — ergo, Windows, and he's using a MacBook Pro he got in late 2007 (it doesn't feel that old). He needs it for stuff it his new job, and spoofing the user agent string doesn't work (not in Opera, not in Firefox, not in Safari). Using IE 5.2 for Mac also didn't work — and besides, that browser is the worst one ever, even when it was considered "modern." IE in WINE is buggy and crashy, BootCamp is too much overkill for what he needs and a little awkward, and I'm not going to give him his old laptop back to run XP and IE on — that laptop is bad and loud and slow, and would give him an unfair view of Windows. Preferably, he should have access on his laptop so he doesn't need to worry about accessing what he needs.

I've come to the conclusion that he needs Parallels. I suppose we can find uses for Parallels for more than just IE after he gets it, but none of the other options are as elegant.

At least the trip into town included dinner and some cookies; it's also nice to see the parents once in a while, and it was a welcome break in the routine of life here; the week felt shorter.

It might also have felt shorter because I slept a lot of it (though, I was up all night Sunday through Monday and I was surprised to be as alert as I was for my group speech presentation). This week's sleep schedule has been all over the place, and while the Melatonin has helped some, I have to remember to take it. I also have to force myself to get into bed (unlike tonight), and if I try, I can ignore the tired feeling that the melatonin adds — it's a gradual, natural sort of falling asleep that it creates. I don't know if it's a physical effect at all — it could just be in my head, accepting that the remedy works, putting me to sleep by convincing myself that it works.

“We are a way for the cosmos to know its self”

2009-10-25T02:05:41Z

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.”

We are starstuff.

Approve R71

2009-10-20T21:34:04Z

It's a no-brainer.

From Spokane Skeptic:

"In the end, Referendum 71 is simply a matter of fairness and, if anything, will lead to stronger families in Washington state."

Vote to approve R71. It's not about marriage, but about extending legal rights to visit and care for loved ones in the hospital. It's about extending legal rights to a minority -- rights many take for granted.

Vote yes on R71.