10:26 AM
Seems like the traffic on the Blizzard site has let up a bit, and you can now get in to fill out a beta application for World of Warcraft. They stop taking applications on the 4th, so you should probably do it now before you forget!
11:40 AM Weaknees.com sells TiVo upgrade kits, and they're actually very reasonably priced!
I bet someone reading this right now is saying to themselves "But anyone can upgrade their Tivo! All it takes is a new hard drive and some time!" True!
Luckily, Weaknees also provides a do-it-yourself online interactive tutorial free of charge. That's nice of them!
8:32 PM
Tammy got her wisdom teeth out on Friday and has been in great pain ever since. So we've both been at home for a while now, but we're going back to work tomorrow.
The time away from work has given me an opportunity to buckle down and scan in our 400+ wedding photos. Our complete album is now online at tammyandbrett.com. We also received our wedding DVD a week or so ago, so I put some of that up there as well.
I wouldn't have been able to do it without PhotoShop Album. It made it so easy to auto-correct lighting problems and to organize all of the photos that I don't know how I would have done it otherwise. It didn't always get the cropping right on the scanned photos, and I wasn't about to go in and crop each one by hand, but aside from that I have no complaints.
PS Album also has an option to export an html photo gallery. It works really well, but the html templates are unfortunately un-customizable, so I had to rely on some random shareware tool that I found somewhere to generate the pages and thumbnails for me instead. Anyway it came out pretty well I think.
10:48 AM Adblock is the single greatest plugin for Mozilla/Firebird ever made. Properly configured, it will block just about all advertising content on the web. It can block images, iframes, and even javascript content.
It'll allow you to set your browser to look for certain strings in image URLs which can then be blocked. For example,
*/ads/*
would block anything like:
http://www.doubleclick.com/banners/ads/15.gif
or
http://www.bannermonster/ads/flashcrap.swf
Having something like an */ads/* wildcard will definitely work well, but I've found that most ad banners include their dimensions within their filenames. For example, using *480x60* would block any banner with 480x60 in its path or filename, regardless of what directory it's in or server it's on.
Once you install AdBlock, you can right-click an offending image to add a block rule to your list. It's super easy to set up, and it took me like two minutes to configure it with some simple blocking rules. Some good sites to test it out on are:
tomshardware.com anandtech.com cnn.com ign.com
I also messed around with another Mozilla extension, BannerBlind. BannerBlind filters ads by their dimensions and their dimensions only. Unfortunately it didn't seem to work at all with Firebird!
Prior to finding Adblock I had been using Siemens' free WebWasher proxy software to block ads, but that thing hasn't been updated in at least a year. I'm uninstalling that as we speak! One less program to run.
10:06 AM
Matt Ouimet is doing great things to Disneyland right now. Maintenance and upkeep procedures abandoned a decade ago when Paul Pressler came on board appear to be coming back in a big way.
Give them another year or two, and I bet Disneyland will be as fun to visit as it used to be in the 80s.
Speaking of which, our annual passes expire next week and we can't really afford to renew them. So I guess it's going to be a while before we're back in the park, which is sad. Who knows - maybe our tax refund this year will save us.
1:17 PM
I've always been a little curious about brandy, so Friday night after work I stopped at the BevMo by my house and picked up a bottle and two snifters.
Don't get me wrong - I loves my gins and tonicses. I doubt I'll ever tire of a properly-balanced well-mixed, G&T. But at the same time I'd like to see what's out there while avoiding the beer and wine that so many of the "commoners" drink.
I looked for something on the cheap side figuring that if I didn't like it at least I wouldn't be losing too much money. I walked away with a ten dollar bottle of Paul Masson VSOP.
I've never tasted kerosene before, but I've got a feeling that this brandy was not far off. With much effort I managed to finish off the glass I had poured myself. Throwing it down the ol' piehole was a little harder than I had planned on, but I was a trooper and stuck through it to the end.
I didn't feel the least bit buzzed afterwards, but I did wind up with a nice warm sensation that started in my throat and went all the way down to my stomach for about an hour or two after.
11:19 AM
If you live within their coverage area, DSLExtreme is offering killer promo pricing on a 6000/608 package. Try $60 a month!
If I wasn't stuck in a year-long contract with SBC, I'd jump on this. Of course your actual speed will depend on line conditions, but zippy and affordable DSL packages like this will really help DSL to get more competitive with blazingly fast cable modems.
9:51 AM
Last night I watched the Berlin episode of VH1's Bands Reunited. It was awesome.
The premise of the show is this - VH1 sends the host of the show around the world looking for the remaining members of popular 80s bands. He has seven days to convince all of the members to get back together for a reunion meeting - and then to do a one-night-only performance at a small venue in front of an audience.
You have to realize of course that when most bands break up it's not on the best of terms. In the case of Berlin, there were major creative differences and a divorce at the heart of the breakup. Luckily it all worked out, the band members managed to remember how to play at least two of their old songs (well!), and everyone was genuinely happy to see each other.
It was great! There are only 10 episodes of this show, so tune in before they're off the air. A Flock of Seagulls reunites tomorrow night!
3:18 PM
My dad's going in for hip replacement surgery tomorrow morning. He has been in pain for years and I'm glad he'll finally be able to get some relief. Unfortunately this means that he'll never ever have a smooth trip through airport security checkpoints again.
The procedure is usually over in just two or three hours, and he'll be out of the hospital in as many days.
9:42 AM
The Hyper Rescue Robot T-52 looks a little cooler than those yellow cargo haulers from Aliens. Click the links at the top of the page for images.
3:57 PM
This year I had the first real Christmas tree I've ever had. Living with my parents we always used fake trees and that's what I grew up with.
Tammy's family was the opposite though, and so I decided to try out a real tree for once for our first married Christmas.
It's not so bad. You have to keep it watered and it turns into a painful cactus-like plant somewhere around New Year's, but it smells nice and looks just like a fake tree...
Last night was trash day so I put it out on the curb for a pick up today. In its wake were thousands of little pine needles all over our carpet. That's where the fireworks began.
Last night I experienced the most fun I've ever had using a vacuum cleaner.
"SHHHHHHLITIKIKIKLITIKITIKITK!" went the needles as they jumped through the rollers of my vacuum, danced through the hose and into the bag. "SHLOOOOOOORP! SCHLISHHHHHHKIKIKIIK!" went the needles as I sucked them out of the corners of the carpet with the crevice tool. I swear it was awesome.
Pretty soon the vacuum started smelling like burnt pine tree, but no flames or smoke were ever seen, so I kept on going until the job was done. When it was all gone I had a profound sense of satisfaction.
It's one thing to vacuum a rug that looks mostly clean. But vacuuming up a pile of millions of little things as you hear and feel them get sucked away to their final resting place inside a vacuum bag is something everyone should try sometime.
I would like to take a vacuum cleaner to the beach one day. I'd go through bags pretty fast with all that sand, but I bet it would be a lot of fun. Then if anyone asks why I'm vacuuming sand I could say something like "This beach isn't gonna clean itself!"
"President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night."
He may not know how to handle illegal aliens, but when it comes to space aliens we'll be ready!
I actually think this is really freakin' awesome. I want to be able to look up at the moon and see human structures within my lifetime. I, like many others, can only wonder why we haven't been back to the moon in more than 30 years.
I don't even care if I never get to go up there. As far as I'm concerned, getting people living on the moon is like colonizing another planet, and that will be the most incredible human triumph...ever!
As far as building a lunar base is concerned, I bet it'd be a lot easier than building a space station or a shuttle. For one, there's a lot less space debris to worry about. Building long-lasting freestanding structures on an actual solid flat surface has to be easier and probably cheaper than building something designed to float around in orbit.
It's hard to not get too excited, especially since this won't happen anytime soon, but man. Screw Mars! Sending people over there is all fine and good, but let's do the easy stuff first so we know we've got our shit together ahead of time.
4:23 PM
I spilled paint on my shoes a few weeks ago, so I've been thinking about getting another pair.
Right now I wear Trekkers from Lands' End, and I've been really happy with them. I guess I've had them for exactly one year because I remember ordering them before Christmas of '02. They've held up really well!
I just checked out their site, and they're now $10 less than what I originally paid for them! You too can order your own pair for just $19.99! That is a freakin' hot deal my friends!
Go to http://www.landsend.com/ and search for 8111-1AG2. These shoes are great, and for twenty bucks everybody should have a pair!
Lands' End is really good about returns, too. The first pair I ordered were too big and it took me about two weeks of wearing them every day to realize it. They accepted the return and sent me a brand new pair of shoes in a smaller size - no questions asked. I felt like kind of a jerk for returning them in obviously used condition, but they let me get away with it and so now I think Lands' End is a really cool company!
One caveat - sizing selections on their site seem to be limited right now. That means they're either just low on stock from holiday orders, or that they're planning on phasing them out of their catalog.
If you're looking for a similar shoe with a better size/color selection than the Trekker, search for item #7377-2AG8. The "All-Weather Mocs" look almost identical to the Trekker but with a slightly lower cut.
I believe that Sears carries Lands' End products in-store, so if buying clothes on the Intarweb isn't your thing you do have that option too.
5:07 PM
Apple announced the iPod mini today. $250 for 4GB? Are they joking? Fifty bucks more gets you a 15GB iPod! $250 is way too much for way too little.
Honestly, I was counting on Apple to help destroy the market for flash-based and/or low-capacity mp3 players. As far as I'm concerned, tiny mp3 players like this are the scourge of digital music. I want a device that holds more music than I could ever reasonably hope to download or buy.
Take a look at the link above on the Apple site. See at the top how it says "Choose an iPod" and it shows the two models to the right of it? There's a big gap in the middle there that could easily hold a new model. It's so obvious you'd almost think they did it on purpose to psyche us out. Something new is on the way, and I bet it'll play video.
1:12 PM
I decided to make some quick-n'-dirty desktop images from today's big Mars photo. I use two monitors, so there's a 2560x1024 version there too.
Some people prefer a big sky, others like lots of land. Take your pick. It's the photographic "rule of thirds" in action!
It looks like the original photo is a pieced-together composite of several other photos. I didn't really feel like fixing the stitching, so there you go.
11:28 AM
The highest-resolution image ever taken of another planet's surface was posted on NASA's site today.
The Martian horizon is an 8 megabyte jpg with a resolution of 3498x3851.
It's weird how the media is getting so excited about this current mission, especially considering that they got just as excited back in 1997 for the Mars Pathfinder mission, which was effectively the same basic thing - land a wheeled rover on the surface of Mars after dropping it down to the surface within a pyramid-shaped balloon.
And remember, we took lots of pictures from the surface of Mars back in 1975 with the Viking mission! You'll never hear them talk about Viking in the news, though.
And yeah, it is exciting for sure! Having things like higher-resolution photos of Mars and more accurate soil analyzing equipment are worth getting excited about. I think the national media are just in it for the photos though.
We sure have dumped a lot of stuff on the surface of Mars. Apparently the surface is such a hostile environment that NASA only gave the Sojourner rover (from Pathfinder) a life expectancy of one week. (It actually wound up working for nearly three months!)
You know what would be hilarious? If Spirit sent back a series of photos of a hatch opening up underneath the soil, then pissed-off aliens getting out and flipping off the camera, holding up signs that say stuff like "HEY! ENOUGH! You wanna go crap up someone else's planet, feel free, but we try to keep it clean in the upstairs department, ya know?" That won't happen. But it could.
2:48 PM
I've noticed a trend in video game ownership that I will henceforth refer to as "Brett's Law." It states "The more video games one possesses, the fewer they will actually play, and the ones that they do play will rarely be played to completion."
I first noticed this back in the days of NES cartridges. By the time that console had died I must have had 50+ games for it, and I only really played a handful of them on a regular basis.
I fell into this trap again when it became clear just how easy it was to copy and play PlayStation (1) games back in those crazy college dorm days. I wound up with more shit than I knew what to do with, and I could only bring myself to finish Metal Gear Solid and like one other game because there was always some other game I wanted to play for 10 minutes before losing interest and looking for something better.
Now I own a PS2 and a GameCube - both totally legit with original retail games - and I have vowed to never ever let myself fall into the trap of owning more games than I will ever be able to finish. I think I have like three PS2 games and four GameCube games. With games costing what they do these days, it's not that hard to reign in the spending!
So far my theory is pretty accurate. I got Metroid Prime for Christmas (I know, I'm a little late on that one) and I've had time to explore all kinds of places. Basically I feel like I can take my time in the game and I don't have to rush.
And incidentally - Metroid Prime wins the award for coolest title screen/menu system in a video game EV@R~!!!!
I had a nice two-weeker of a vacation. I try to take two weeks off every year for Christmas/New Years, even if I don't have any plans to leave town. It reminds me of being in school, which honestly wasn't all that fun, but at least I always had that two week vacation to look forward to.
We spent Christmas eve and night at my parents' in Palos Verdes, and Christmas day found us in Glendora with Tammy's parents.
New Year's Eve was fun at Disneyland as usual. Stacy and Steve came with us this time. We ate at The Vineyard Room in the quiet-as-usual DCA before hopping over to Disneyland.
Tammy's gone for a week at CES in Las Vegas. We woke up at 5 this morning and I drove her to the airport. I'm gonna miss that kid.
Among other things, she's her company's trade show manager, so she's responsible for making sure their expansive (and expensive) booth gets assembled properly, sales materials are available, and that everybody's got a place to sleep. Try to imagine her level of stress for the past two months.
Between waking up early today and still being on my sleep-late holiday schedule, it's a miracle that I'm coherent enough to type this. At least I got here early today, so I can leave a little early this afternoon. You know those eyelid-holder-openers from A Clockwork Orange? I could seriously benefit from having a pair of those right onw.
10:00 AM
I took the last two weeks off of work and it's been fun.
Here's some links you might be interested in if you live in Southern California like me:
* SigAlert.com lets you check freeway conditions. (If you don't see a map, hit back in your browser and click the link again.)
* California ISO's list of any active rolling blackouts.
* California/Nevada recent earthquake maps.
And if you're into wonderfully old and forgotten music like I am, here are some sites you might want to check on a weekly basis:
* Basic Hip Digital Oddio * Bellybongo * MilwaukeeJohn's Featured Album * Oddio Overplay tries hard, but their compilation tracks often disappear from the servers on which they're hosted, and their picks are sometimes a little too eclectic for my tastes.
* Splogman's World will have new stuff every week of 2004.
And of course, the ever-growing releases page at Comfort Stand Records is the hottest of the hot. Release #3, "Mic In Track" is pure brilliance.
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