Seven Things About Myself I need to Admit, nay, Embrace and Move On

I'm a firm believer in the idea that for every area of our lives that we fix a personal bug, there are ten where we can at best find a workaround. In the spirit of that, here is a list of things that I need to learn to live with rather than try to change:

1. I rarely dress warmly enough. I guess it's a vestige of my five-year-old self rebelling against my Mom's admonition to wear a jacket. But it's stupid, and it makes me uncomfortable and often cranky. Time to buy more sweaters.
2. I like listening to movie scores. I realize that's about as low-brow on the instrumental music scale as you can get, but we all deserve a few guilty pleasures. Movie scores are like show tunes for people who take themselves too seriously (no, wait—that's opera), but goddammit, I like them.
3. I am a geek. And I need to stop trying to impress the non-geeks on the playground with various stunts (like fast cars and big speakers) and start doing what makes me happy.
4. I need to make a budget. It's a bit like when I finally learned, after three and a half years of college, that I have to study. It's no fun, but as they say, sometimes we have to do things we don't like so that we can do things we do like.
5. I need to sleep a lot. At least nine hours in a night to feel well rested, which unfortunately isn't compatible with both having a social life and working for my current supervisor. Huh.
6. I'm hard on my possessions, especially if they're white and made by Apple. I just can't be bothered to put that little buttplug into my iPod's dock connector, and I'm not going to get one of those silly cell-phone holsters. There's a reason they're pocked-sized.
7. I have frustratingly incompatible tendencies toward perfectionism and impatience. Which means I always alternate between procrastinating and rushing my work. I'm not sure what the workaround to this one is. Let me know if you figure it out.

That is all. I'll spare you the story of my dream where an IKEA store was hosting a clothing-optional rave. Although that pretty much covers it, so I guess I'm not sparing you anything today.

Linksys WAP modded into Network Media Player

Here's a guy that modded a Linksys WRT router into a network media player. He's running OpenWRT Linux and using a USB audio device and a serial LCD. Very cool.

Tank LOVES Betty Crocker

Sometimes, the Best things In Life Aren't Planned

I don't think it'd be possible to come up with this other than by pure, brilliant accident.

Minor Annoyances, Part IV: The Right Click Trap

This one's for all you nitwits out there that trap right mouse clicks your a web pages. Instead of bringing up my contextual menu, I get a shitty little JavaScript finger wagging at me with some poorly-thought-out argument about why I shouldn't be able to save a copy of your image. Do the words "fair use" mean anything to you? Do you realize that I already have a copy of your image on my hard drive? Are you familiar with "View Source..."? Furthermore, how do you know I'm not trying to look up your five-dollar word in my dictionary? How do you know I'm not trying to, say, Google the product you sell so that I can purchase it? You douchebags can go fuck yourselves while I wget your precious little image files. You like apples? How 'bout them apples? An ongoing theme in this blog is my annoyance with childproof software and hardware. This is my word for products with security "features" that don't really work, but seemingly exist just to inconvenience me. Pretty much any DRMed product fits into this category. These sorts of un-features make me want to do everything in my power to a) circumvent them and b) avoid ever doing business with the person that's trying to feed me this bullshit. Don't get me started on how you won't let me fast-forward through the silly little copyright warning you put at the beginning of my DVD that I just legally purchased! Fuckers!

Minor Annoyances, Part III: The Quicktime Pro Tax

This one's been beaten to death, so I'll be brief. Apparently the friendly folks at Apple don't think that $130 is too much to spend for a point release of their operating system, and in some respects I'm inclined to agree. Typically they add a number of new features that don't exactly come for free, development-wise. But then they expect me to shell out another $30 to set a flag that enables some menu items in their not-really-any-better-than-Windows-Media-Player-which-is-free media app. That's annoying. Much like the worst crippleware shareware, $30 is just little enough that you feel like it's not really worth anything, and just enough that you can't really justify spending it on impulse. But then they have the gall to take their otherwise pretty nice Web browser and cripple it, too! Right-clicking on a link to a .mov file disables the normal "Save Target As" link and replaces it with a grayed-out save link that tells you that you must pay or you may not save ze mooovie. Fuckers! This is precisely the sort of childproofing that just annoys the hell out of me, and makes me want to circumvent it, not to mention seriously reconsider if I want to continue doing business with the vendor. And don't get me started on how you can't use iTunes to move your (legally purchased) music from, say, your home computer to your work computer using your iPod.

Another New Blog

This one is called 3WDM, short for Three-Wheel Dorkmobile. That's what I've been calling my hybrid skateboard/scooter EV project. But you can go ahead and follow the link to find out more than you ever wanted to know about the project.