Category Archives: uncategorized

eWeek: Apple Inc. has sold its 100 millionth iPod in just over five years, boasting on Monday that the digital device was “the fastest selling music player in history” that appeals to both young and old.

Wow. That’s a lot of iPods. I mean, a whole lot of iPods. I came across an interesting comment on Slashdot about this: Let’s put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.

Yeah. It’s official. That’s a lot.

In related news, I now know one person who has a Zune. Heh.

I’ve recently become hooked on Tower Defense games.

It all started with Flash Element TD a couple months ago. After one game, I was hooked. It was a wonderful little diversion that held my attention, gave me a bit of a challenge, and was immensely satisfying.

And I wasn’t alone.

But it didn’t last long.

See, I’m a junkie.

I needed to move on the harder stuff.

So I eagerly awaited Flash Circle TD, the sequel to Flash Element TD. When it came out (like a month late, I might add), I was elated. But the excitement soon gave way to disappointment. As is the case with so many movies, the sequel simply wasn’t as good as the original (mostly because I couldn’t use my beloved Fire Tower anymore).

Time passed.

I went back, grudgingly, to Flash Element TD.

More time passed.

After a while, Jay Is Games provided a brief review of Desktop Tower Defense. This is, hands down, the best of the Tower Defense genre.

I am totally and utterly hooked on this game. In fact, I need only type “h” into Safari’s address bar, and it fills in the rest of the URL (it’s at handdrawngames.com, hence the “h”).

My only critique is that at 49 or 50 levels, it’s just not long enough. I always end up wanting more, even after those stupid flying bosses get past me every single time.

Anyway, go play it. It’s a ton of fun. I’m hooked.

So, I was about to write up a rundown of this year’s best and lamest April Fool’s Day pranks, when I discovered that Wikipedia (of course) has already done it. So rather than re-invent the proverbial wheel, I here present you with their much more comprehensive list. Keep checking, as the list is still being edited as I write this.

But I didn’t want to leave you completely prankless, so I decided it was time to write about the best April Fool’s Day I ever had.

Those of you who know me know that I was a substitute teacher for several years after college. I loved being a daily sub. No take home work, no planning, and I got to hang out with kids all day. Who could ask for anything more? Of course, there was no benefits package, and the pay sucked. And there was never any guarantee of work.

That last point seldom proved to be problematic for me. I established myself as a reliable sub for a couple of schools and wound up with lots of repeat business. In fact, I often had to turn down work. Being a regular at a handful of schools was great, because I got to know the faculty and the students pretty well over time.

But on April 1, 1997, I found myself at a school where I’d never taught before. I was teaching 8th grade English at Landisville Middle School. I couldn’t have asked for a better setup. See, the kids at my regular schools knew me, and they knew I could never resist a cheap joke, so April Fool’s Day wouldn’t have been as much as fun with them; they would have been expecting it from me. But at a new school, the possibilities were endless.

For my first period class, I went with the standard fake pop quiz. I even found some ScanTron forms and passed them out before I let the kids off the hook. They weren’t terribly pleased with me, but I thought it was pretty funny.

I soon enlisted their help. During first period, I got out my seating chart for second period, and I asked the kids who could take a joke. They discussed the matter and gave me a name. Then I gathered from them all of the information they could muster, from easily known and obvious things to ridiculous details that I could never possibly know. I swore them to secrecy, and they agreed (and as it turned out, they all kept the secret).

When second period started, I took roll orally. This was pretty much standard operating procedure for a sub, so it aroused no suspicion. But when I came to the victim’s name on my seating chart, I paused. “Hey!” I said. “I know you!”

The victim was confused. She had no idea who I was.

“Don’t you remember me?” I asked. By now, the other kids in the class were staring and wondering how I knew her. I started with the easy stuff. “Oh, come on! Your mom’s name is Sally and your dad’s name is Mark.” More confusion. That’s when I poured it on. “You spent July at the lake, right? And you were upset because you had to share a room with your cousin, remember?”

At this point, the victim was in shock. She could not remember me to save her life, and with good reason. So I finally dropped the bomb: “April Fool’s!”

The class erupted into hysterical laughter, and victim heaved a sigh of relief before laughing herself.

When the laughter died down, I produced my third period seating chart and asked the second period kids who could take a joke. Then I swore them to secrecy.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Amazingly, the 8th graders kept their secret all day long. In every period, I was able to take someone completely by surprise.

Ah, it was a great day. One of my best. Lots of good fun, and no one got hurt. And we even got our classwork done.

So April 1st rolls around again, but on a Sunday (Palm Sunday, to boot).

April Fool’s Day on a Sunday isn’t as much fun as a weekday. And in browsing the tech sites, it seems that everyone is either trying too hard, or not trying enough. For example:

According to Apple sources, OS 11 will move away from the BSD/Mach kernel used in OS X, and adopt the Linux kernel instead, allowing users to make use of a far greater range of packages and hardware components.

See, that’s not funny. Because a good April Fool’s prank has to be believable. That’s what differentiates a prank from just a stupid non-funny joke. Although, truth be told, I did enjoy this tidbit from that same article:

The tentative nicknames for OS 11 have also been leaked after Apple applied for their copyright. Whereas OS X naming was based on big cats (Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, etc.), OS 11 releases will be named after bears. Here’s the tentative list:
OS 11.0, “Polar”
OS 11.1, “Grizzly”
OS 11.2, “Panda”
OS 11.3, “Kodiak”
OS 11.4, “Sloth”
OS 11.5, “Sun”

I think 11.3 will rock.

I’ll try to post a more complete roundup of this year’s pranks tomorrow.

Click here for my original list.

1) When they show commercials during On-Demand programming. Come on, man. I’ve already paid for the content. If you’re going to show me commercials, then don’t charge me. Conversely, if you’re going to charge me, then don’t show me commercials.

2) People who let their kids run around like maniacs at the play area at Park City Center. If you can’t control your kid, keep him at home.

3) Speaking of the mall, people who ignore regular traffic patterns when shopping in stores. This is America. We drive, walk, run, and otherwise ambulate on the right. This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even a science.

4) Diclofenac. I’m currently taking this for pain in my right heel and I can’t say as it’s doing much for the pain. It’s doing a lot, just not for the pain. Possible side effects may include constipation, ringing in the ears, unexplained weight gain, fever, blisters, hives, difficulty breathing or swallowing, headache, dizziness, excessive tiredness, lack of energy, painful urination. Lovely. Fortunately, the only side effects I’ve noticed are a headache and some general lightheadedness. Maybe some lack of energy, but I’d be hard pressed to pin that exclusively on the medicine.

5) The bully who kept taking the ball right out of Grace’s hands during her basketball game yesterday. She’s one of about three girls in the whole league, and there’s no need to put the biggest, meanest boy up against her. Every time she got the ball, he walked right up to her and ripped it out of her hands. I haven’t seen her that upset in a long time. Anyway, this isn’t high-stakes stuff we’re talking about. They don’t even keep score. But some of the parents act like they’re watching their first and second graders in the playoffs.

6) The fact I barely ever play my Rickenbacker anymore. Although I hope that’s changing soon. Single coil pickups rule.

7) The fact that I still can’t figure out how to do ChordPro parsing and rendering in REALbasic. I’m sure it can be done, and I think it’s probably pretty easy, but every time I try, I can’t get my head around the problem. I should probably try it sometime when it’s not late at night and I’m all tired. Plus, I haven’t tried all that hard. Really.

8) All the stupid “Grow-themed” games that are popping up all over the net. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t get it. Games are supposed to be fun, not weird.

9) That The Shins played in Philly last week and I didn’t go. They are rapidly becoming one of my favorite bands.

10) A bug in Tangelo that’s making it eat images. It’s driving me nuts. I know it’s something simple and stupid, but I haven’t figured it out yet, and it’s really starting to drive me nuts.

How many of these stories can you correctly identify as real or hoaxes?

I got seven out of ten. Post your score in the comments.

PS: Using Snopes during the test is cheating.

This is brilliant: an automatic computer science research paper generator. Just fill in the author names, and this does the rest. Probably convincing for those that don’t work in IT, too.

Here’s a sample, entitled Towards the Synthesis of Vacuum Tubes:

We motivate a novel methodology for the refinement of write-back caches (Quip), which we use to validate that telephony and the UNIVAC computer [1] can collaborate to answer this riddle. This is crucial to the success of our work. The shortcoming of this type of solution, however, is that expert systems can be made “fuzzy”, random, and introspective. Two properties make this solution different: we allow neural networks to harness low-energy methodologies without the study of active networks, and also our application is based on the principles of cryptoanalysis. However, this method is usually adamantly opposed. Nevertheless, the study of link-level acknowledgements might not be the panacea that cyberneticists expected. Combined with multi-processors, it synthesizes new symbiotic theory.

So it looks I might be working on some music with the drummer from my worship team. That’s why I spent some time last night recording new versions of some of my older songs. I wanted to get them down in acoustic, stripped down fashion, with no effects or anything, just guitar and vocals. So these are pretty raw, but you’re welcome to take a listen if you’d like. I’m hoping to see these arrangements change pretty dramatically in the coming days.

There’s not much new here, although I think this is the first time “Dirty Little Secret” was recorded. Otherwise, if you’ve ever been to one of my shows, it’s a pretty good bet you’ve most of these before.

Why did I call it The Laundry Room Sessions? Well, a few years ago, David helped me record some songs in our office (using just a PlainTalk microphone) and we jokingly called that The Office Sessions. Since I recorded these in my laundry room (which is also my home office), I decided to keep the joke going.

Grab individual tracks in MP3 format here:
Strange Days
Waste
No Soul For Sale
Sorry
If I Fell
It Happens All The Time
Forever
Dirty Little Secret

Or grab a zip archive of all eight songs here.

Thanks to GarangeBand for making it easy.

PS: For bonus points, listen closely toward the end of “Strange Days” where I completely blow the rhythm.

Lately, three factors have converged to cause me to watch more movies. First, Jen haggled with Comcast to get us OnDemand service for less than our older service, complete with HBO. Second, as mentioned previously, I put in a home theater. Third, I’ve been sicker than usual this year, and many of those sick days have been spent watching a movie or two.

At any rate, I now present a list of movies I’ve watched recently, how they scored, and in which areas they gained or lost points. Not all of these are recent movies, nor are all of them movies I hadn’t seen before, so some of these are rediscoveries for me.

Little Miss Sunshine: 9.5/10
This was an awesome movie. I was expecting it to be good, but it blew me away. The whole “dysfunctional family goes on a trip and bonds” is tough to pull off, but they did better than it’s ever been done before. I especially liked the van and its issues. Earned extra points for Alan Arkin and Rick James. Lost points for a little bit too much swearing.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 8/10
This was better than I expected. Val Kilmer is always good, but Robert Downey, Jr., is something of a wildcard: when he’s good, he’s really good, but when he’s bad, he just sucks. Thankfully, he was good in this flick. Earned extra points for Kilmer’s insults to Downey and for having the guts to feature a self-aware narrator. Lost points for wanting me to believe that Downey and Michelle Monaghan are the same age. As if.

My Girl: 10/10
This has been one of my favorite movies for years. I remember watching this when it first came out and thinking, “Wow, Dan Aykroyd can act!” This was under free movies on OnDemand, so Grace and I watched it together when we both had strep last week. To my delight, she enjoyed it, although she didn’t really get that Thomas had given his life trying to find Vada’s ring. Earned extra points for still being able to make me cry after all these years. Lost no points.

Curious George: 5/10
I was really disappointed in this movie. They could have done so much with such a lovable character, but they threw it away on an awful plot and extremely weak characterizations. Will Ferrell should be ashamed of himself, as should nearly everyone involved, especially the Reys for allowing this to come to fruition. Earned extra points for Drew Barrymore. Lost points for sucking.

Fever Pitch: 7.5/10
Speaking of Drew Barrymore, this one was better than I expected. Jen and I watched it together a few weeks ago, and it turned out to be a really sweet romantic comedy. Earned extra points for not having Jimmy Fallon be a complete goofball (although it was close at times) and for Drew Barrymore. Lost points for the shower scene; that was just weird and unnecessary.

Domino: 8/10
I really dug this movie. The ever-changing plot (complete with rewinding!) was a hoot, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it had been written by Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame. Jen and I watched it together, and when it was over, she immediately went online to research the real Domino Harvey. Earned extra points for Kelly’s amazing plot and for inspiring Jen to research. Lost points for the arm thing (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, you don’t want to know).

Ali: 5/10
This movie sucked. I hate to say it, because I think Will Smith is a truly gifted actor and I’ve held Ali himself in high regard for the charity he’s done, but man, this one was a stinker. The editing was poor. The script was too disjointed to tell me a story, but too compressed to give me a full overview of Ali’s life. And what was up with the club scene with Sam Cooke at the beginning? Earned extra points for Will Smith: he did a good job with what he had to work with. Lost points for skipping so many interesting parts of the champ’s life and for sucking.

School for Scoundrels: 7/10
The review said it’s “Napoleon Dynamite meets Bad Santa.” Well, that reviewer certainly reached down deep to write from his soul, eh? At any rate, it was a good time. Not exactly high art, but it was what I expected. Earned extra points for point blank paintball carnage. Lost points for expecting me to believe that airline security could ever have been so lax, even before 9/11.

In Her Shoes: 8/10
Jen picked this one, and I was expecting a total chick flick. But I was surprised: it was a good movie and not really a chick flick at all. At least, I wouldn’t expect a chick flick to feature Cameron Diaz in a bikini quite so often. Earned extra points for Mark Feuerstein’s portrayal of the strangely confident Simon. Lost points for some sappy sentimentality, notably the e. e. cummings poem at the wedding. Seriously, e. e. cummings? Couldn’t they find something by a poet with proper capitalization skills?

Stargate: 8/10
Believe it or not, I had not seen this movie up until a few weeks ago. I’d seen clips of a few episodes of the series, but never the original movie. It was really good. Earned extra points for a reasonable if not completely accurate portrayal of linguistics in action. Lost points for Kurt Russell’s hair at the beginning and for having French Stewart in it (who at least, thankfully, didn’t squint annoyingly the whole way through).

Johnny Mnemonic: 7/10
Yeah, I really watched it. Not a great film by any objective standard, but it made it easy to see why Keanu Reeves was later cast as Neo. Say what you want, I like Keanu Reeves and I think he’s a good actor. The movie was enjoyable if you shut down your brain while you watch it. Earned extra points for Henry Rollins. Lost points for Ice-T (for crying out loud) and for Dolph Lundgren.

Unleashed: 8/10
Jet Li’s best movie, in my opinion. I really dug Bob Hoskins as the gangster. Earned extra points for Morgan Freeman and Kerry Condon. Lost points for the fight scene in the pit where Danny was fighting like five people.

Well, that’s about it for now. More later, since I feel a couple movie nights coming on later this week.

Nice to be feeling better and blogging again.

From order _Very_Well_Documented.aspx” target=”_blank”>Worse Than Failure: “You see gentlemen,” the general continued, “for such expensive program, we require at least eight meters of documentation.” He stretched his arms as far as he could to illustrate. Clearly, he was not joking.