Thursday, February 26, 2004
Snow!
Today is the first snow that my 2-year-old can remember seeing. This morning I pulled up the window shade and pointed out the window. "Snow! Snow on the trees! Snow on the cars!". When I went out to clean the snow off of my car, I build a one-foot-tall snowman outside our front window, and brought a snowball back inside to show to her.
Todays snow is very wet and slushy. It had already melted into a soupy mess on our front walk and in the street where my car was parked. Yucch.
Todays snow is very wet and slushy. It had already melted into a soupy mess on our front walk and in the street where my car was parked. Yucch.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
MAKE YOUR OWN PRUNO AND MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL.
(via Chet)
Pruno, a prison wine created from fruit, sugar and ketchup, is such a vile and despicable beast in the California state penal system that prisoners can't eat fresh fruit at lunch
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Beatles and Stones in one posting!
I just wasted a lot of time trying to pick out just one 74-minute CD's worth of songs from Beggar's Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. I can't do it. It's all too good. There's about two hours worth of stuff that I couldn't stand to leave off. No wonder there are so many different "best of" Rolling Stones albums.
My wife and I don't have nearly as many Stones albums as Beatles albums (everything except With the Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, Hard Days Night, and Yellow Submarine... except we sorta have those last two because we have the DVDs), but neither is the sort of band that you can appreciate without listening to hours and hours of. Their range just can't be summed up in a couple of dozen "hits".
I must say something about popular culture that some of the biggest albums in recent years have been by Elvis, the Beatles,, and the Stones. What, exactly, I don't know.
Don't even get me started on Elvis. There's something about that real 50's music that just.. plain... rocks!!! in a way that no punk kid revivalists have been able to match.
My wife and I don't have nearly as many Stones albums as Beatles albums (everything except With the Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, Hard Days Night, and Yellow Submarine... except we sorta have those last two because we have the DVDs), but neither is the sort of band that you can appreciate without listening to hours and hours of. Their range just can't be summed up in a couple of dozen "hits".
I must say something about popular culture that some of the biggest albums in recent years have been by Elvis, the Beatles,, and the Stones. What, exactly, I don't know.
Don't even get me started on Elvis. There's something about that real 50's music that just.. plain... rocks!!! in a way that no punk kid revivalists have been able to match.
TEXTFILES.COM
I'm pretty sure I've blogged this before, but here it is again just in case.
Net Gems
(from Chet)
The Gender Genie
Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Google Search: navigable aqueducts
Blogging search results to look at later.
North Georgia LEGO Train Club
Saw this at a train show recently. Very cool.
Friday, February 20, 2004
the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough. Eric S. Raymond
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
more GIMP practice
Before:
After:
After:
MacGyverisms
This is part 4 of the MacGyver FAQ.
For safety reasons, we strongly advise against experimenting with any of the combinations listed below. In general, the makers of "MacGyver" took care to omit key ingredients from MacGyverisms, especially where explosives, smoke devices, and the like were concerned. Attempts at reproducing these MacGyverisms are irresponsible and potentially injurious, and are not recommended. The writers, compilers, and distributors of this document are not responsible for any injuries or damage resulting from the attempted reproduction of any of the ideas or concepts contained herein. The purpose of this document is to inform and entertain.Looking over this list, it is obvious to me why the series was cancelled. They'd obviously run out of good hacks. One of the last "McGyverisms" listed is "Ran through sewer on socks to make less noise". Big honkin' deal!
safariexamples.informit.com - /0130320722/decompilers/
This is where I was able to find a mirror of Jad, as the main Jad page seems to be down. I found this by googling for "jadnt158.zip". I have idea what else might be lurking in this labyrinth of inscrutably-named directories. Appears to also be available via FTP. InformIT's main website doesn't seem to contain any explanation of this archive or mirror site running on their domain.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Sysinternals Freeware - Junction
Unfortunately, Win2K comes with no tools for creating junctions - you have to purchase the Win2K Resource Kit, which comes the linkd program for creating junctions. I therefore decided to write my own junction-creating tool: Junction.sysinternals.com has been one of my regular sources for free Windows utilities since the days when they were called ntinternals.com.
Symbolic links on Windows: why and how
In Win2K, MS introduced what they call "junction points" or "reparse points" for NTFS 5.0-organized disks. These are effectively the same thing as symlinks, though not exactly as they only map to complete physical paths as opposed to Linux symlinks being able to be set relative to their target and can even be set for files, not just directories.
bluedragon.blog-city.com
More work-related stuff.
Pixel Patchwork: A Digital Folk Art?
This is an academic research paper about IRC art and ASCII art in general. In a footnote on page 6 about the DOS "ANSI art" scene, it actually cites to the Evil Grinn ANSI gallery.
Where is DB2ConnectionPoolDataSource class ?
Help!
Vendor-specific data sources minimum required settings
Work-related Websphere stuff. Ignore if possible.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
And more!
Straight to Hell by Drivin' and Cryin'
Run Run Away by Slade
Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan (I've been told that the original Dylan version is G-D-C, which makes it I-V-IV. Clapton, Guns n' Roses, and Warren Zevon all play G-D-Am-G-D-C, though)
Run Run Away by Slade
Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan (I've been told that the original Dylan version is G-D-C, which makes it I-V-IV. Clapton, Guns n' Roses, and Warren Zevon all play G-D-Am-G-D-C, though)
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
More for the I-V-IV list
Already Gone by the Eagles
Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townsend
Love Stinks by the J. Geils Band
Badlands by Bruce Springsteen (intro: I V IV iv V)
Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townsend
Love Stinks by the J. Geils Band
Badlands by Bruce Springsteen (intro: I V IV iv V)
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
70' s - 80's Power ballads
This thread, from rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1970s, is much better than the one from the wrestling group but its also a lot longer.
What was the first "Power Ballad"?
Why do I find so many musical discussions in wrestling newsgroups?
I (and the rest of Usenet) tend to agree with the contention that "Love Hurts" is a fairly early "Power Ballad". Probably not the first, but certainly the Canonical "power ballad arrangement". There is some argument over whether it qualifies lyrically, since it is really a rocked-up country song.
I (and the rest of Usenet) tend to agree with the contention that "Love Hurts" is a fairly early "Power Ballad". Probably not the first, but certainly the Canonical "power ballad arrangement". There is some argument over whether it qualifies lyrically, since it is really a rocked-up country song.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Holy crap.. I just plugged "I-V-IV" into Google and it thought I was trying to do math with roman numerals!
Over and over..
I want to make a mix CD of all known rock songs with the chord progressions that start with I-V-IV. Yes, this list will be huge. It will probably fill up an entire CD. A start:
Crimson and Clover by Tommy James
Sweet Jane by the Velet Underground
My Sharona by the Knack (just the solo)
Do Ya by ELO
Baba O'Reilly by the Who
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet by BTO (chorus only)
Just What I Needed by the Cars (chorus only)
And there are of course other songs that don't need much of a change to get on the list, but it's gonna be long enough as it is.
I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles (I V vi V/vi)
Just what I Needed (verse, also I V vi V/vi)
The Spirit of Radio by Rush (I V I6 IV V)
Assuming anybody is still reading this, how far back does this thing go, assuming we are only taking about "pure" I-V-IV? (No, I-IV-V doesn't count).
Crimson and Clover by Tommy James
Sweet Jane by the Velet Underground
My Sharona by the Knack (just the solo)
Do Ya by ELO
Baba O'Reilly by the Who
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet by BTO (chorus only)
Just What I Needed by the Cars (chorus only)
And there are of course other songs that don't need much of a change to get on the list, but it's gonna be long enough as it is.
I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles (I V vi V/vi)
Just what I Needed (verse, also I V vi V/vi)
The Spirit of Radio by Rush (I V I6 IV V)
Assuming anybody is still reading this, how far back does this thing go, assuming we are only taking about "pure" I-V-IV? (No, I-IV-V doesn't count).
Ah, the endless wealth of knowledge that is Google Groups. This wonderful story is actual found at the end of a thread about the WWE.
Once many years ago I was at a Lou Reed concert where he talked about how happy he was with the chords to "Sweet Jane." He said someone asked him once why that was so, when all it consisted of was the chords to "Louie Louie" with one additional chord stuffed in there. "Exactly" said Lou proudly.
What the heck is going on with Yahoo and Mozilla? When I try to access any Yahoo page from Mozilla, it takes an unacceptably long time for the page to load, if it ever loads at all. In MSIE it works fine.
Texas U-Turn
|| <--Crossroad
/||\ <--(one way) Frontage Road
-------------------------------------------------------------------
/ \ || / \
/ | || | \ <--Interchange ramps
/ ---------- \ 'I-Route'
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------
\ ---------- / (Freeway)
\ ,---> | || | <---. /
\ | / || \ | /
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| \||/ | Frontage road (one way)-->
'Texas U-Turns' || |
| |
`------------------'
/||\ <--(one way) Frontage Road
-------------------------------------------------------------------
/ \ || / \
/ | || | \ <--Interchange ramps
/ ---------- \ 'I-Route'
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------
\ ---------- / (Freeway)
\ ,---> | || | <---. /
\ | / || \ | /
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| \||/ | Frontage road (one way)-->
'Texas U-Turns' || |
| |
`------------------'
Google Search: Corridor X
The (currently) first item reproduces a newspaper article that does indeed say that Corridor X must have both ends at Interstates.. I think they just mean that the damn thing has to be finished.
Interstates ending in one place
I believe I heard that a 2di has to have each termini at another interstate, which is what people are saying is delaying Corridor X from being designated. Why is this so? I-40, I-27, and I-43 are just a few examples.
Friday, February 06, 2004
I told ya wot!
This blog is too geeky and not wimpy enough. I need more content about music and poetry and things like that. Start expecting to see more of my own Amazon-style bullsh*t reviews of assorted albums from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Maybe original lyrics/poetry written especially for this blog.
To start things off, let me say that Captain Beefheart is a surprisingly easy thing to listen to while coding.
To start things off, let me say that Captain Beefheart is a surprisingly easy thing to listen to while coding.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Slashdot | Google Art Creator
How the heck did I miss this story the first time around?
Example of art: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=aa+ae+ao+ea+ee+eo&selm=3e0d404c.0207261202.a0246c1%40posting.google.com
Example of art: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=aa+ae+ao+ea+ee+eo&selm=3e0d404c.0207261202.a0246c1%40posting.google.com
Creating your own certificate for IIS 5.0
Using OpenSSL to create certificates for IIS.
Several more complex methods for accomplishing the (apparently) same thing:
http://bob.rasey.net/archives/000053.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/openssl-users@openssl.org/msg31923.html
Several more complex methods for accomplishing the (apparently) same thing:
http://bob.rasey.net/archives/000053.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/openssl-users@openssl.org/msg31923.html
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Yet more futile attempts to make my picture blend in with the color scheme of this blog..
Hmm.. the left one looks sorta like a backwards french flag, doesn't it?
Maybe if I tried to make it look like ASCII/ANSI art..
Hmm.. the left one looks sorta like a backwards french flag, doesn't it?
Maybe if I tried to make it look like ASCII/ANSI art..
Monday, February 02, 2004
Imminent death of net predicted
Apparently the original usage was simply "Imminent death of net predicted". Not "Imminent death of the net predicted, or "Imminent death of Usenet predicted".
Looks like it was a joke from the start. The actual early predictions being lampooned here never used that exact phrase, or else Google Goups would have them.
Looks like it was a joke from the start. The actual early predictions being lampooned here never used that exact phrase, or else Google Goups would have them.
Jews for Judaism
Resources for Jews to use when responding to Christian evangelical efforts to convert them.
