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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Political Geekery
I never talk about politics here, mostly because I never talk about politics in general. Mostly because it like totally cuts into my TV watching time!
But anyway, Howard Dean's weblog has some snapshots today of the behind-the-scenes computer geeks from the Bryant Park rally this week. My boyfriend and I came thisclose to signing up to help but in the end I had to go home and work on a (paying, whoo hoo) FileMaker commission so he went sans me and sans iBook.
I dunno why I'm mentioning this. I guess it's just cool to see PowerBooks in action. The volunteer signup form even recommended using Open Office over Excel, which warmed my nerdy heart.
Also, on a possibly passably Dean-related tangent, does anybody know anything about things to do in Vermont? We're going camping (um, ugh) in VT this weekend and visiting a law school for the bf in Concord NH. I need to know the scoop: are we dooming ourselves to several years of birkenstocks & batik & banana chips?
Posted at 02:07 PM | Comments (11)
Friday, August 22, 2003
Finally, a timewaster with some style
I was catching up on recent picks on Chez Mark today when I noticed Noiz2sa; it's a vertical flying shooter game with a really cool aesthetic. There's a screenshot here but you can't really get a feel for the motion and style without playing. It's mindless, but at least it looks good--unlike almost any other game I can think of. And the music is even kind of catchy. Go on, OS X kids, give it a whirl.
Posted at 10:25 PM | Comments (1)
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Your journey begins in a building designed to express apathy and lethergy. Where does it end?
(Lifted from Sylloge) Eyesore of the Month. Although I tend to be an apologist for Modern (capital M) design, websites like this remind me of how powerfully depressing architecture and the design of public space in this country can be. At least the comments are snarky and amusing.
Posted at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
Things that bug the living spit out of me today
1. Parker Posey is currently sporting a mullet.
2. It looks like the first live album we cut in the club after 13 years of being in business will be not J*ff B*ckley, not R*f*s W*inwr*ght, not the Inn*cence Missi*n or anyone of the other brill musicians who've passed through the doors. It'll be J*an fucking Riv*rs!
3. [nerd rant] Why can't I drag a URL from Safari onto the NNW icon in the dock to create a subscription? Will Exposé allow dragging into minimized windows? Window management is a frickin chore. Faxing in OS X sucks, too. And don't get me started on Services; could they be made a little more useless, please? [/nerd rant]
Sorry, this post is a little meaningless. Unlike, you know, all the others.
Posted at 11:22 AM | Comments (2)
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Gilmore nerdery
Yes, my boyfriend did make me jot down the t-shirt slogans from last night's Gilmore Girls. Yes, I did it quite willingly. Yes, maybe we'll make some. Yes, we will then hang our heads in nerdy shame. For the record (and the Googlers this post will inevitably attract), the three shirts read "babette ate oatmeal!" "faux poes foes" and "rory's going to yale."
I love summer repeats; since we chose Buffy over Gilmore Girls in TiVo priority, we've had a lot of catching up to do. An inn fire, dueling recitations of "The Raven," a cat named Papaya... what more could you want from television?
NB: The second Poe was That Guy from Popular! The one who was Every Generic Male Adult. I miss Popular. I'm glad That Guy is working, though.
Posted at 12:38 PM | Comments (8)
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Scher's Public Theater Designs
Speak Up! has some info today on Paula Scher, whose distinctive visual designs for the Public Theater have really defined the place in the last decade.
Unfortunately, the Public's style has really been swallowed by the crass billboards and other advertising that surround it in the NoHo (ugh) district.
Now that the Carl Fischer building's famous musical-note-clock has been trashed by the current occupants, wouldn't it be great if Scher did a mural of some kind in its place? I can't help but think it would be something of a reclamation of the area.
Update: Well, apparently Ian Schrager's set to build a hotel in front of the Fischer anyway. Photo here. So screw that.
Posted at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
Let's talk wireless. Or lack thereof.
So we spent last week in the hellish land of 6A traffic lovely Cape Cod town of Chatham. Also known as "the land of no internet." Well, OK, there are 15-minute terminals in the library that appear to run at approximately 25mhz & share a single 56k dialup line. And there's ONE "internet café" with a semi-broken PC sitting in the corner. And there's a girl working in the Barnes & Noble in Hyannis who *thinks* there's a Starbucks in Mashpee (don't get me started) that might have an AirPort network, but they don't have a phone book there to look up the number. Not that it would help, since the phone books on Cape Cod are inexplicably missing the numbers for *just about every business you might be interested in visiting.*
I just don't get it. A DSL or cable connection is like $40 a month and wireless routers are so cheap they're practically free at this point. The entire town of Chatham is full of absolute fucking tools yuppie scum laden with gadgets upwardly mobile types lugging laptops. Why isn't there free wireless on the town green? Why don't those little coffee shops that are completely empty all day except for the 45 minute mid-afternoon tourist-rush-en-route-to-the-beach make a little tech investment? It's frickin' ridiculous is what it is.
Maybe I'm just a spoiled New Yorker who is used to having at least 2 open, unsecured wireless nodes available at any given time in any given spot. Oh yeah, that's right, I am.
Posted at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Weakened.
Am currently on vacation from my vacation. Highlights of the vacation which necessitated this vacation from the vacation:
1. Presence of children. Children, I should note, are not just miniature adults! This was surprising and quite frankly rather an affront to my apparently Victorian sensibilities on the subject.
2a. Presence of sun.
2b. Non-presence of air conditioning.
3. Presence of tequila!
I feel sort of like a bloated, beached, sun-bleached whale skin at the moment. My fella is unconscious on the sofa. Hopefully the ribs I'm cooking for dinner will restore our spirits!
