celebrating

phil came back to town for a few days and he and bill came out and we grabbed some burritos and spent the evening at the ranch (local country bar/hip hop bar). ;)

i love it when you call me big papa

our 2nd daughter, Ava Elisabeth was born last wednesday night. I am finally getting around to posting some pictures. Not that we don't have hundreds so far, but I am just now taking the time to post some. ;)
Enjoy and Rejoice!

because I am sooooooo cutting edge...

I have just added an almost compliant ATOM 0.3 feed to the notebook.

where is La Dolce Vita?

I have been waiting to see this film for years, but it looks like I am either going to break down and buy a VHS copy (40-90 bucks) or just rent it from facets on icky VHS. Feh. I have been incredibly impressed with the volume of Fellini releases on DVD so far (La Strada, Juliet of the Spirits, 8 1/2, Nights of Cabiria).

But then I read this article from the New York Times, Sunday, December 14, 2003:

Sometimes, ownership is in dispute. Last February, a new video company, Koch-Lorber, announced that one of its first DVD's would be "La Dolce Vita" by Fellini. The company had bought the rights from a small company called International Media Films, which claimed it owned the movie.

But Paramount Pictures claims that it owns "La Dolce Vita." A legal battle is brewing. Koch-Lorber's DVD has been delayed. Paramount, meanwhile, is reportedly preparing its own DVD.

The Son of Perl Blogging Techniques + ChangeBlog update.

Jeremy Zawodny was kind enough to give my changeblog a nod, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to finally post my updated Perl Blogging Techniques presentation. :)
Download (788K PDF)

The changeblog is about to get some updates, as well. I have started to re-write the chatMonkey server for a multi-user gaming/chat application using POE. Fun!

Read his comments.

RESFEST LinkDump

RESFEST was simply amazing (again).

I will be updating this page with as many links to the content I saw at the show as I can. If anyone knows where I can get "Japanese Tradition: Relationships" I will be forever thankful. :)

Michel Gondry info and videos.
The Other Final: A story about a match between FIFA's 2 worst soccer teams. Great. Review 1
Mulit - an Absolut sponsored Bollywood parody. This thing is great. If not for the unfindable "Japanese Tradition: Relationships," Mulit would have been my vote for best film of that program.

I'll see what else I can dig up shortly.

Javascript Syndication Template

Inspired by a look at XML::RSS::JavaScript by Ed Summers, I decided to crank out an MT template to do the same thing.


Here are the short steps, more details (probably it's own page) to follow:


1) Create a new template file. I call mine "Javascript Syndication." Name the output file rss.js


2) Create a new MT plugin (I called mine mt-rss-javascript-encode.pl) in your MT plugins directory. The code should look like this:

package MT::Plugin::FormatForJavascript;
use MT::Template::Context;

MT::Template::Context->add_global_filter(js_encode => sub {
(my $s = shift) =~ s/'/\'/g;
return $s;
});

1;

That should just about do it. Then, to use it, give someone the following snippet of JS:

<script Language="JavaScript" src="rss.js" />

Here is an example:
Sorry. The embedded script in an entry was freaking out my RSS feeds. You can see the results in the "Recent Code Changes" section on the side of the screen.

RESFEST was excellent

I was glad to have RESFEST back in Chicago after a hiatus last year. The programs were all well attended so hopefully they will be back again next year.

I am going to try to dig up some links to movies/director/music info for you all and have a blow-by-blow of the fest. My laptop battery was not cooperating with me this weekend, so these posts are coming post-fest.

RESFEST

ResFest opens in Chicago tonight and I will be posting as I can scam wifi (thank you Apple Store!).

Nice to get out and about....

new coen bros film!

Just got back from a free preview showing (thanks wired!) of the new Coen Bros. flick Intolerable Cruelty. Short review: funny. Very, Very Funny. Clooney is slick, Catherine Zeta Jones plays a pretty gold digger. Eh. She fits the roll, so she is fine. Cedric the entertainer has a funny catch phrase.
Joel and Ethan are talented guys. My DVD shelf has many of their films. Despite my detest for Catherine Zeta-Jones, i had to see this movie.

Blogging Talk (take two!)

I will be giving my Perl Blogging Techniques talk again this coming Tuesday, October 14th @ the Uniforum PerlSIG (special interest group).

Check the Uniforum site for details and directions.

CPAN contributions

Just finished up some changes to HTTP::Recorder that I submitted to the author. Hopefully those should be rolled in to the next release.
The changes are:
1) Links are properly generated with the right index (ie, the 3rd link called "Download."
2) added checks so that only responses of type text/* are modified by the script (this lets images and other binary files come through OK).
3) Fixed a small problem where incorrect Content-Length headers would be sent due to the modifications the script makes to log everything
4) Added some space between requests in the log file and added a comment function.

CPAN ID

I am now an officially registered Perl CPAN developer. I have some web testing modules, some blogging modules and some other random stuff in mind (like contributing to the excellent HTTP::Recorder).

Hopefully my CPAN profile page will look a little more exciting soon(tm). ;)

sorry. i really should set up a testing blog. ;)

i promise that I will set up a test blog for all of my garbage postings.
This is an annoyance to all of you who read my site and expect quality. Real quality. Not some garbage from a guy that can't be bothered to set up a testing blog for his garbage. ha!

testing my console settings!

Well, shiver me timbers.
I wonder if this is really going to work. I would certainly like that.
Boy oh boy would that make my little heart go pidduh-padduh.

asdf

asdf

Damn you, HBO!

Just when I thought sunday nights were safe. Sex and the City has finished, the Sopranos are nowhere to be found and Six Feet Under is done for the wants to control me. I watched 3 hours of Carnivale last night (thank you, Tivo!!!). The story is nice, with a good mix of surreal and gritty realism.

voluminous crap

I like stuff. Books. Music. Movies. Comic Books.
To deal with it, I was pointed at Koha, by Ed from the local Perl mongers. Koha is a perl-based, open source (GPL) library software. It is young, though, and I am no librarian, so I am not sure exactly how much it will help me. I have installed it on my laptop though, so I will check it out. As long as it can help me keep track of my stuff, then I will be happy. I mean all my stuff, though. ;)

a list should not be a hack

My "iTunes, Therefore I Am" sidebar is based on a category dedicated to it, that accepts trackbacks. That is ridiculous.
Lists are so common that we need a simple way to make them. A list is different than an entry. Lists need to be their own thing.
A list needs entries that consist of a single item. To make things simple, we could leave the item up to the user, so if it was a link, it could be a link. If it was simply text, it could be simply text.
Simple.

schadenfreude!!!

tracey and I went to see schadenfreude last night at Arlington Height's newish Metropolis Performing Arts Center. The sketch comedy show is a recent addition to our local public radio station WBEZ's sunday night lineup.
I had heard about the show through radio spots, but on sunday nights my heart (and eyeballs) are generally with HBO. Well, that will probably not change from seeing the show, but I will at least set my mac to record the stream of the show down from the internet. ;)
Our friend Shiow works on the show as sometimes-director, editor, jack of all trades, and she invited us to see the live show. Having not seen any on-stage comedy since the last time we went to the Neo-Futurarium to see Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, i didn't know what to expect. I take that back. I expected more political jokes for some reason. No matter, the material was hilarious, starting right out with a sketch where the 3 characters are all acting crazy, dressed crazily and completely silent. Then they launch into a tirade about what a stupid idea it is to do a visual bit for the radio. ;)
Anyway, check out some of the streams from WBEZ to listen in for your self. Funny, funny stuff.

asdf

asdf

excellent homebrew games

Gameboy Advance Development just released a whopping set of homebrew games from their competition. For a small prize (1100 bucks, i think), these folks cranked out some great games!
I like Sushi the Cat, especially.

New tile floor!

Finally!
We have pulled the trigger and had a new tile floor installed on the first floor. Lookin good, despite the fact that I am a lazy photographer any more. ;)

Check out our new tile.

human clock

Jeff came over to help me move the appliances before the tile guys came over. While here, he showed me The Human Clock. His friend Niles (featured at the bottom of that page with a lovely girl in a red dress) showed him the site. Anyway, they have a photo for each minute of the day (multiple photos for many times). Load it up, pick your timezone and you are good to go!

foiled by verisign

well, i tried to send verisign's sitefinder a polite note and this is what I get:

[jason@tetsuo jason]$ telnet 64.94.110.11 80
Trying 64.94.110.11...
Connected to 64.94.110.11.
Escape character is '^]'.
FUCK OFF
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>405 Method Not Allowed</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>Method Not Allowed</H1>
The requested method FUCK is not allowed for the URL OFF.<P>
</BODY></HTML>
Connection closed by foreign host.

mrtg is a good thing

After reading unix-girl's post on mrtg, I remembered using it a long time ago for a job. This may be able to help me with isolating why the colo box reboots every now and again. If i can isolate traffic spikes or figure out if it is totally random, I will be happy. Of course, maybe if the host moved it to a better spot in the facility it may help as well, considering they once "accidentally" unplugged it.

I need a chart to demonstrate the uptime. Maybe then I can get to the bottom of this.

;)

blogging talk article and comments?

My talk at Monday's Chicago PM meeting went pretty well. There was some lively discussion, although I need to rearrange part of the talk.
In that spirit, I am starting work on converting the talk to an article or a set of articles. If anyone has any comments, please send them over. Also, thanks to everyone at the meeting for suggestions and questions!
Also, I will be giving a modified version of the talk at the upcoming Uniforum perlSIG at the college of dupage (details / directions).

Perl Blogging Techniques code and handouts!

Hi All.

I have finished up the handout materials and code samples for my Perl Blogging Techniques talk at tonights Perl Mongers meeting. The samples are available for downloading now. The handout is a PDF file.

First iTunes Music Store Purchase

I registered for the iTunes music store to enter their iPod a day drawing, but had no real intention of using it. Then I saw that there was a re-released 2 disc version of Sonicy Youth's Dirty. A couple of quick price checks later and i had purchased it from iTunes.
The files are the protected AAC files, but the sound quality is really nice and pretty much only listen to stuff on my computer or iPod anyway. Even through the stereo, I hook the iPod up to it.
I am worried at how easy it is to buy albums. Then i looked at the prices on some of them. $ for some albums, $13 for others. I thought there was supposed to be a savings. Oh wait. That is for the labels. The artists don't really make any substantial amount from this service, so I guess that is like the status quo.
Anyway, it is a great SY album. ;)

matchstick men

bill, tracey and I went to see Matchstick Men (salon review, ebert review) last night. It was not great, primarily due to the ending, but it had a great performance by Nicolas Cage (who I loved in Adaptation, as well). The movie reminded me of Peter Bogdonavich's Paper Moon, but it had less heart. The ending assumes the audience is too dumb to realize what just happened over the last 2 hours.

Apologies and announcements

Thanks for tolerating a few weeks of random, incoherent posts (most of which have been deleted).
In the process of wrapping up the code for my perl blogging techniques talk, i made lots of test posts which should have simply gone to a test blog. Ha! I am not that smart. ;)
Anyway, new content to expect here soon:

• Zelda: The Wind Waker extensive review


• Golden Sun: The Lost Age review


• Big Questions review


• Local gallery observations


• Photo galleries

Also, in an effort to organize my coding projects, I have set up changeblog. Changeblog will detail what I am coding. Exciting, eh? Anyway, check it out, hopefully it will be chock full of interesting goodies.

[SushiBubblegum CVS] CVSROOT

Update of /usr/local/sbgcvs/CVSROOT
In directory tetsuo.mengelt.com:/tmp/cvs-serv31277

Modified Files:
modules
Log Message:
Removed flaky build docs script from modules.

[SushiBubblegum CVS] chatmonkey

asdf

asdf

A few regexp's later and

A few regexp's later and I have less funky formatting!
The AIM bot is not bad. Ideally, I would like to translate some of the font formatting into CSS, but that is a big effort, and probably not worth it. The next thing I am thinking would be good for this bot would be to tie it to a POE: Perl Object Environment script so the blog posting was non-blocking.

Hi!This is &quot;Instant Messaging Jason&quot;

Hi!
This is "Instant Messaging Jason" comin at ya from my laptop. Aside from some odd filtering needing to be done to strip out some HTML code, the instant messaging bot posting interface seems to be doing ok.

Well, I have added a

Well, I have added a new use for some of my blogging code.
This post is the first from "Instant Messaging Jason" and the first posted via my AIM <-> blog script.
The script is based on an old sample instant messaging bot. The script could use some work.
Anyway, I took the AIM sample script and combined it with a Net::Blogger script and voila! A cool, useless posting mechanism!

Basic Scripts completed for Perl BLogging Techniques

I have finished the basic posting scripts thanks to Net::Blogger. The module is good, if poorly documented. I could write docs, I guess, but I am busy. ;)
Code samples and talk slides to come soon.

Learning Letters application v2

I have added 2 new modes (and better letter graphics) to the Learning Letters application.

Sounds by me and Juliana. :)

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Take that, Metroid Fusion!

I was never a big metroid fan. Never had anything against, it, but many other NES games kept me busy. Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Kid Icarus, Castlevania to name a few.
Maybe I never had time (or took the time) for Samus and her fight.
Bill lent Metroid Fusion to me last saturday and after 6:44 of gameplay and 51% of the items found, I have beaten the omega metroid.
The game is great, and not just because I have been playing it on my new GBA SP. The graphics are nice and the cut scenes have great 2D art and simple animation. The hardest thing about the game for me is the control of the character. I think i am just used to slower paced games, so when I needed to use the L button to aim diagonally, it was very very jerky. The beauty of this game, however, is in the patterns. Samus acquires new weapons and you need to learn some new moves. Bosses are like puzzles where the goal is to decipher the movements and wait for safety or move in to attack.

All in all, I enjoyed this game from the second I turned it on right up to the very end.

Technorati down. :(

Just when i was getting ready to open up Net::Technorati (assuming someone else hasn't started already), the Technorati servers are unreachable. Feh.

MT Plugin idea

For the talk (but useful in general, I think), I am going to make an MT plugin that looks for patterns that look like CPAN module names. If they are there, it will change them into a link to the homepage for the module on the CPAN.

Mech Hack script input prompt test post.

Ok.

I have hacked the WWW::Mechanize MT hack so that it properly follows the F(*$ing javascript redirects. It also asks for input. Yay.

I basically want a shell script so I can do this at a prompt (where i am most of the day):
mtpost
title
entry

Nice and quick. Nothing really to fire up except for perl, but that is lickety split here.

WWW::Mechanize hack (the saga continues)

OK. I think I nailed it.

WWW::Mechanize hack

How many javascript onload events do they need?!?!?!

TOO MUCH DAMN JAVASCRIPT

So. I am putting together the materials for my blogging talk and am reminded of another crappy thing about movable type.
When you post, the next page loads up a page telling you about your pings. Then it goes to another page that tells you about rebuilding. And so on.
All of this is done with onLoad events from the body tag. This makes the little task of posting with titles AND categories via WWW::Mechanize a little more difficult. After i make the post, I have to use a regexp to pull out the URL from the onLoad and then make a request and then use a regexp to pull out the URL. At least 2 more pages are needed to finish posting. That is ridiculous. The APIs do not let you specify a category without a separate request. Feh.

Anyway, here are the examples I was talking about:
WWW::Mechanize examples

WWW::Mechanize hack

How many javascript onload events do they need?!?!?!

WWW::Mechanize hack (from examples)

This post comes from Dan Rinzel's WWW::Mechanize MT hack. I want to integrate this with some of the XML-RPC interfaces to make a more complete posting tool.

metaWeblog extended entry test

I have so much to say...

that i couldn't fit it all in one entry.

simple newPost Really simple post

simple newPost
Really simple post using blogger.newPost (published this time, hopefully).

simple newPost Really simple post

simple newPost
Really simple post using blogger.newPost

Net::Blogger MT metaWeblog test

removed appkey param. should work no prob.

Net::Blogger MT metaWeblog test

post body goes here. A real version of this script would probably ask the user for some input, or at a minimum accept it from STDIN.

blogging talk outline v1

I have the first outline put together for my upcoming blogging talk.


Any comments are appreciated.

1. What is a Blog?

   
   
   
   

   1. Slashdot

      
      

   2. Use.perl.org
      journals

      
      

   3. High School Diaries

      
      
   
   

2. What software exists for setting
   up a blog?

   
   
   
   

   1. Hosted Services

      
      
      
      

      1. Blogger

         
         
         
         

         1. http://www.blogger.com/

            
            

         2. Now owned by google, integrates
            with Google Toolbar v2.0

            
            

         3. Can also post to your server
            via FTP.

            
            
         
         

      2. LiveJournal

         
         
         
         

         1. http://www.livejournal.com

            
            
         
         
      
      

   2. Services that can be installed on
      your own server

      
      
      
      

      1. Blosxom

         
         
         
         

         1. http://www.blosxom.com/

            
            

         2. Simple, no DB required and a
            single file can run the site.

            
            

         3. Template based

            
            
         
         

      2. MovableType

         
         
         
         

         1. http://www.movabletype.org

            
            

         2. Template Based

            
            
         
         

      3. GreyMatter

         
         
         
         

         1. http://www.noahgrey.com/greysoft/

            
            
         
         

      4. Slash

         
         
         
         

         1. http://slashcode.com/

            
            
         
         
      
      
   
   

3. How can I use perl to post to my
   site?

   
   
   
   

   1. Blogger API

      
      
      
      

      1. The original

         
         
      
      

   2. Movable Type Extended API

      
      

   3. Net::Blogger

      
      

   4. Net::Blogger::MovableType

      
      

   5. MT.pm

      
      
   
   

4. Alternative Interfaces

   
   
   
   

   1. Cell Phones

      
      

   2. Email

      
      

   3. Instant Messenger

      
      
   
   

5. What APIs are out there to find
   out who is talking about my site?

   
   
   
   

   1. Trackback

      
      

   2. Technorati

      
      

   3. Good Ol' Fashioned Google

      
      
      
      

      1. link:http://www.yoursitehere.com/

         
         
      
      
   
   

6. How can I syndicate my site or
   find out when other people have updated their sites?

   
   
   
   

   1. HEAD

      
      

   2. RSS/RDF

      
      
      
      

      1. 0.9.1

         
         

      2. 1.0

         
         

      3. 2.0

         
         
      
      
   
   

7. What does the future hold?

   
   
   
   

   1. Echo/ATOM API

      
      

   2. Syndication formats?

      
      

   3. Semantic Web?

      
      
   
   

8. Questions?

   
   
   
   

sonic youth video

i have finally posted the sonic youth video from the goose island fest. There is no sound because i shot this with my coolpix 990.
There are 4 versions:
320x240 sorenson
320x240 mpeg-4
240x180 sorenson
240x180 mpeg-4

Testing from Net::Blogger::Engine::Movabletype (again)

Testing from Net::Blogger::Engine::Movabletype (again)

goose island festival

Chad and I went to the goose island music festival last night. The concert was held at the A. Finkl & Sons steel factory. Right by the river @ Southport & Clybourn in Chicago. The lineup was Yakuza, the Waco Brothers, Bob Mould, Guided By Voices and Sonic Youth.
Yakuza: dunno. drinking.
Waco Brothers: eh. ok. drinking.
Bob Mould: I don't know of many performers that can hold together an entire show with just themselves on guitar (12 string acoustic, and then an electrict). His voice is amazing. Lots of performers sound like garbage without the studio engineers, but Bob's voice carried across the entire factory, sounding as good, if not better than his albums. I made Chad a Bob Mould fan last night. Oh, and also some drinking.
Guided By Voices: Great music. Robert Pollard is a total cock-rocker, though. I am not up enough on this band to know if he really thinks he is as cool as he wanted to be, or if he is just an asswipe. Some choice lines, "Are you ready to rock and roll?" "We are gonna fight on, right on!" "Maybe if you're lucky I'll take my dick out for you!" The band was really great, musically, but fuck that guy. We spent half of their set in the food tent eating quesadillas from Fronterra grill. And drinking. My flask was drained of all it's beautiful Knob Creek by this point.
Sonic Youth: I have waited 10 years to see them. I am a moron for not doing it sooner, but oh well. These guys are old (except for Jim O'Rourke, but he is knew). Lee Ranaldo has grey/white hair and a craggy face. But unlike when I saw Wire at the Metro a couple of years ago, or when I saw the Stones on HBO, their age does nothing to damper the sound or energy of the music. Songs I only kinda liked from NYC Ghosts & Flowers and Murray Street sounded better than I could have imagined. And some of the older material (Catholic Block from Sister and Expressway to Yr Skull from EVOL) were great as well. The show ended with a 15 minute version of Expressway. I couldn't have asked for a better night. Well, Teenage Riot would have been great, but they did play Skip Tracer and 100%.
Best $25 I have spent in a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Pictures and a 1 minute video clip of SY to come..........

pics of juli's new art kit

Here are the pics of juli's cool new art kit. She has been having a blast with it.
     

juliana's big win

I put juliana's name in to a raffle jar for a pretty nice art kit at the Bartlett Art Fair on Sunday. On monday morning I recived a call that she had won the kit! The contest was sponsored by kidzartIL, a national program that has a local branch here in Bartlett. The kit has oil paints(bad), acrylic paints(bad), watercolors (messy, but doable), markers (she loves 'em), colored pencils (great) and pastels (messy, but doable). She has been loving it. I will post some pics up in a bit.

Hi All!In my quest to

Hi All!
In my quest to improve my perl blogging talk, I have installed bloggerbot from http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot/.
It seems good, even if I had to fix a couple of bugs in the downloadable source AND install stuff to a mysql DB just to post. Annoying. But I guess if I have the wherewithal to set up an AIM bot to post to my site, then I probably won't have any trouble adding a db and some tables to mysql.

random postings

i will be testing out some alternative interfaces for movable type here, so bear with me for a short string of pointless entries.
And, yes, I am aware of my audience size, so Bill, this message is for you.

project greenlight is some funny stuff

I always had an idea about how much of a clusterfuck making a feature film really is, but HBO's project greenlight solidified it for me. Take some amateur/independent filmmakers, give them a million dollars, and tell them that they have to produce a sellable feature film in a really short period of time.
check out their site for more details, I won't rehash the concept here.
The production of The Battle of Shaker Heights seems troubled, if you watch the show. The movie also seems overly dramatic and cheesy at times. Last night, they showed a conference call with the Miramx marketing department that re-arranged the direction of the editing. The text from the marketing pitch sounds just like the trailer for the movie that is showing now. The trailer looks really, really funny, too. I am shocked. The humor seems to be going for a sort of Rushmore quirkiness.
The decision by commitee, the sheer amount of people needed to execute anything, makes me wonder why people go to all that trouble.
But then I watch a movie and I remember why. I love DV filmmaking, but seeing a magnificent film is like seeing nothing else. Not that the project greenlight film is magnificent, i'm just saying. I can understand why people go through all of this mess to make films.

hi there

hi there

(posted via Net::Blogger::MovableType)

bartlett art fair

i took juliana to the first annual bartlett art fair today.

It was your standard small town art fair. lots of landscapes and pottery.

However, the Bartlett High School photography department had a pretty great show. I spoke to their teacher for a little while and the program is pretty impressive. 6 levels of classes. I had to pretty much weasel my way into the newspaper at my school to get into the darkroom. Once I had the in, though, it was pretty sweet. I had a key to the darkroom and pretty much spent my senior year of high school in the darkroom.

I want to get the teacher at the Bartlett program in touch with the director of Flatfile, so the students can check out the gallery and talk to some "real" artists. Ha.

balloons - fixed!

Fixed the start position problem and added some really lame clouds. :)

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

perl blogging techniques talk

I am giving a talk next month at the chicago.pm meeting on perl blogging techniques.

The following topics will be discussed:
1) blogs as webservices
2) blogs for syndication (RSS/RDF)
3) mobile blogging (with kpix & the skog as examples)

if anyone would like to give me a second (or third) set of eyes on the talk before I give it, it would be greatly appreciated!

balloon demo 2

added some alpha channel goodness and real art!

There is still a bug where some images will "pop" on to the screen. not cool. working on a fix.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

weirdness with mod_perl

if i switch the site over to mod_perl I start getting errors about not finding modules. Different modules each time, too.
probably chalking this up to mod_perl ignorance, but we shall see.....

Blankets, by Craig Thompson

I just finished Blankets, by Craig Thompson, author of Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It was good. So good, that when I put it down after 250 pages last night, and tried to go to sleep, I had to get up and finish it. I will have to read it again, but for now, it is still all soaking in. The artwork is fabulous, the story is incredibly rich and touching and true.
The story flits between childhood and highschool, first love and Bible camp, and the fear of finding your own identity. There is no sentimentality in this book. The love is real, and passionate, and ultimately fleeting. The exhiliaration the main character feels leaps off the page and into the reader. The lows are crushing.
---------------------------------------------------------
I need to read the book again. Give it a little more time to soak in.
As an aside, I used part of Goodbye, Chunky Rice in the introduction to an article I wrote a coupla years back: Comics Vs. the Net: Can Comics as We Know Them Last Forever?. Not a bad article. ;)

Bill Plympton's Mutant Aliens

If you have never seen anything by Bill Plympton, that is sad. Unless you are easily offended. In which case it is a blessing.
Yesterday, I watched his Mutant Aliens. Ya gotta love a movie where the protagonist is forced to make an army of mutants in space to reap revenge on his evil boss..by having sex with discarded nasa space animals. Ah........nothing but class.
Plympton is working on a new animated feature called Hair High. There is a webcam on his drawing board, too!
I Married a Strange Person is great, too, with lots of funny songs and lewd jokes.

28 days later

i headed to the beautiful machesney park mall to see 28 Days Later. Actually, the machesney park mall is not particularly beautiful, but we did have some time to play marvel vs. capcom in the abandoned arcade. bill is good at fighting games. Me, not so much. He beat me with a controller that didn't quite work. That means I suck.
But, speaking of things that don't suck, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was much better than I expected. I had only heard one review (from Fresh Air on NPR - {archived show}) that said it had a little extra. That was definitely true. The gore was much less than I thought, and the horror came more from the humans in the movie than the zombies.
The first 6 minutes of the movie are up on apple's trailer site.
The DV look of the film is much better in the darker scenes than in the bright scenes as far as edges and detail goes, but the color of the film is a great mix of dark, bland, and bright light.
The alternate ending that was shown was ok, but didn't seem to keep up with some of the themes in the movie, but it was neat to see a DVD-ish feature in the theater. Well, maybe not neat, but interesting.

gordon's

note to self: Gordon's vodka is NEVER a good idea. Even if there is just a little left and you really just want to get rid of it.

ugh

27 days promo video

I finally located the promo video for my 27 Days: Self-Portrait or Stop Motion Still Life video.

The video was made from a webcam still shot every 30 seconds for 27 days. Tracey made a great soundtrack for the piece.

Here are links to the promo in mpeg-4 format:
small medium large

angel season one - not as bad as I remembered

tracey and I started watching Angel - Season One last night. It was not nearly as bad as I remembered. The trademark Joss Whedon humor is intact and the episodes are shot really well. I still don't like the Kate character (tough girl cop, with father/trust issues). The actress that played that role was pretty flat. Although the rest of the Angel gang doesn't file in until season 2 (Wesley's rogue demon hunter is classic), the set is pretty nice.

Oh. Note to fox. Label the DVDs so we can find out which episodes have commentary WITHOUT putting each one in the player and going to EACH AND EVERY STINKIN MENU!!!! The Buffy dvd sets are like that as well. The commentaries on the shows are great, so why make them that hard to find?

Learning Letters application version 1

I have started on a letter recognition application for juliana. It will have 3 modes, only one of which is active at the moment. ;)

Mode 1: When a letter is pressed on the keyboard, a sound for the letter will play and the letter will be drawn on the screen.
Mode 2: A letter will be drawn on the screen and juliana will have to press the right key on the keyboard.
Mode 3: A letter will be drawn on the screen and a sound will play for that sound. Then juliana will have to press the right key on the keyboard.

Juliana likes this so far, rough though it is. She keeps saying, "I wanna see da letters again! I wanna see da letters again!" Wudda lil ainjil.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Many thanks go to chuck for the excellent bitmap font and gui objects.

more testing stuff from Andy Lester

Yay! I couldn't make it out to Portland for OSCon, but Andy Lester's presentation is posted on the O'Reilly site. The talk is one testing large projects. Neat.

O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2003

movies

hmm.

thoughts to come on "Gangs of New York," "The Pianist," "Terminator 3" and "Adaptation."

Short reviews: great, great, ok, funny

Fellow Chicago.pm'er up on O'Reilly's site

Fellow Chicago.PM'er Andy Lester has this great little article on the O'Reilly Network site called O'Reilly Network: Process improvement on the sly [July 18, 2003].

At my last job, for a while I was a one man development shop and CVS was a lifesaver. Not only did I have a rich set of backups in case I lost (or a client deleted) some code, but a project manager or another developer could look in and get a history of the changes in plain language, not only in code.

Also, as a new convert to automated testing, Andy's first testing talk is a great introduction. I hope that he will put his recent OSCON speech up as well.

here come the SKOGS!!!

Now, armed with only a pdaphone, a server with sendmail, a free sketch program and a 40 dollar palmOS email app, you too can run your very own SKOG!
What is a skog you may be asking yourself? Well, step right up!
SKOG is a gawky combination of the words sketch and log. Kind of like BLOG is part of the word weblog (despite a weblog being, for the most part, an IIS or Apache log file and NOT a journal-ish, slashdot-ish site).
View the very first SKOG right here at multiply.org
http://www.multiply.org/mobilesketches/.
The SKOG setup is a variation on the moblogging stuff I set up for setpixel this weekend. As i clean up the source and add some basic security I will post it up for consumption here. If you are dying to get your hands on it and are comfortable with some perl, email me and let me know that you just gotta have that wacky code!

the legend of zelda: the wind waker

(side note: I guess the category "doing" will include gaming. :) )

a games category has been added (8/31/2003)

I finished the latest Zelda game less than 24 hours ago. I want to compare it to one of the best games of all time, "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time." I need a little time to gather my thoughts.

Short version: "The Wind Waker" is a fabulous game, but not on the level of "Ocarina of Time." Both games had great leaps ahead in terms of technology, but I think that despite "Ocarina" having the more difficult time (first 3D Zelda game on the first 3D Nintendo system), "The Wind Waker" lags behind it in several areas.

Hopefully i will have a more in-depth article tomorrow.

moblogging

I cranked together a little moblogging script last night that accepts pics and text via email and saves them out to a gallery. Very v0.1 but definitely a good start.

Anyone interested can email me for the code, but you need to have access to a sendmail alias file to make a mobile adddress that will post. Then there are security and permissions concerns. Ah well. It is a start. Email me if you want a copy of the script.

beginning balloon demo

please ignore the fact that there are no balloons in this demo. They are randomly sized grey rectangles.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Wkd update

Helped bill move
ate pasta
bought shirts
planning 4th festivities
procrastinating

mfop is where it is at!!!

mfop is a wonderful tool for
moblogging!!!
i will be putting this through it's paces this week!!!

hi from my phone!!!

Neato-keen!

strange coincidence

riding the metra in to the city this morning, I listened to a guy from a printing company talk about his trip to Tokyo. He talked about the cost of 2 BLT's at the Hard Rock Cafe ($70), the cost of 2 Kobe Beef dinners ($305) and how cool the bullet trains are.
He also had many nice things to say about how respectful the japanese are. Weird coincidence since Chuck takes off from O'Hare for Tokyo in an hour and a half.

punch drunk love

I saw this movie right after seeing a digital projection of Spirited Away at McClurg in Chicago. The movie itself is fabulous, but the projection and its dust and scratches really, really bothered me.
Anyway. That was months ago. Yesterday, tracey brought the new 2-disc DVD set home for me as a gift. Yay me. :) Combine that with my new laptop and I am a fairly happy guy. The DVD looks fabulous on the Wega. Mmmmmmm. I love the size of a movie screen, but few screens around here treat movies as they need to be treated. My wega on the other hand looks fabulous and I don't have to leave the house.
Anyway.....
The bonus materials disc is kinda thin (a fake commercial, 1 long form and 12 short form music videos or vignettes ["Scopitones"] and more artwork) but the film itself is worth getting the DVD.
I just now also got around to looking into who did the wonderful art for the movie. Jeremy Blake. Amazing digital animation and video work. This site is kinda hideous but has some good info. I will try to dig up more links later.
More Jeremy Blake Links:
Digital Utopia by Elisabeth Kley, from ArtNet.com

dismemberment plan final tour........

heading to the metro (first time in a looooooooooooong time) with alex (nano) to see the plan tomorrow night. yay me.
Hopefully i will have some pics to put up late tomorrow night or friday.
------------------------
well, i felt like shit thursday and came home, had a hot shower, some ibuprofen and laid on the couch. alex said the show was amazing. I will try to get some pics.
feh

bbq and balloons

I had a bbq friday night. It was fun.
This guy was not there. This guy was, though. What a prettyboy. ;)
Also, mike helped me scan a bunch of pretty balloon slides for my new piece, so hopefully it will shape up better than the previous sketch.

sketch for a new video piece

I have finally started on a new video piece. This is extremely rough, out-take-ish quality material, but that is OK. It is a start. I am working with some photographs of hot air balloons taken by my grandfather.

View the sketch:
sorenson
mp4

new projects coming soon...

hi all (all 2 of you. ha!).

I am working on some slick new director stuff with mr multimedia superstar himself and we are rapidly approaching cool demo stage. Yay. Look for it soon(tm).

Also, more game-ish stuff coming up, hopefully to be exhibited installation style next summer at flatfile, but shown up here on my site soon(tm).

Also, I just quit my day job so i have much more free time until I settle in to a new position. mmmmmmmm. imaging lingo here I come.....

ArtNet note

Nice.

In a blurb on yesterday's ArtNet news about Flatfile's recent expansion (congratulations, Susan!!!), my piece ORD 09112001 (quicktime required) was given a positive review.

Also, if you have not had a chance to make it to the new flatfilecontemporary space it is fabulous. Make some time to go over there and congratulate Susan, Aaron and David on their new space and great show.

Also, see my original posting about the piece and the show: ORD 09112001 @ FLATFILE April 25th

mobile test

hi from my phone!!!
actually, this part was written from my laptop. This is because the bookmarklets use javascript and lots of it. My phone uses Blazer 2.0 and doesn't do JS. grrr by itself, but the MT folks could get away with less JS. Or at least check for it. Some things can be done by refreshing the page and not relying on JS to do it for you.

art chicago clarification

let me clarify on the title of my previous post...
Art Chicago is "America's finest international exposition of modern and contemporary art." ... or so their website says.
If you have never attended Art Chicago, it is sort of like an insanely expensive flea market. Only, instead of old Playboys, comic books and shotguns, there are pictures of guys with boobs, old master paintings, crappy new media pieces and the occasional gem.

Art is a business. A big business if you have achieved a certain level of fame. However, I still (however foolishly) cling to the notion that art should provoke real thought and feeling in the viewer. A mall is not the ideal environment for this, but this is exactly the sort of atmosphere that Art Chicago fosters. In a single exhibition hall, you can buy work from all over the world. Yay. I guess that if Art Chicago was treated as a shopping experience, it is a huge success. I don't buy a lot of art, so I went to take the pulse of the international art scene. Seems pretty much the same as it was a couple of years ago.
I feel lucky that i can spend an afternoon and see what is happening in galleries all around the world. However, the atmosphere is so dry, and there is so much importance placed on the event, that it left me feeling angry and bored. Row after row of little booths all selling Art. Lots and lots of Art. Very little unique expression, from my viewpoint. Lots of unique expression from every dealer's perspective.
It is entirely possible that I am simply jaded with the scale of the art world. Why not? I am jaded by the scale of many other industries - music and film in particular. What is lost by aspiring to go global via the art industry? The very notions that one supposedly strives for as an artist seem to be lost or suppressed once a respectable level of gallery representation is achieved.
Art Chicago seems to embody this perspective for me. There is so much art, but so little context. The sheer amount of art being shown now is driving me away. Perhaps I want to feel a connection to the artist or the work. Trying to isolate a piece from the surrounding din at a major art event, however, makes this connection nearly impossible.

art chicago sucked it

i paid 12 bucks to go see art chicago. Out of an entire exhibition hall there was not a whole lot of interesting work happening.

korea was well represented (quality and quantity), US not so much.

I will have more details (and some pics soon).

chuck has some pics from our trip. I have started a draft of my thoughts on Art Chicago and some other art world issues in general. Look for that entry in a day or two.

i love chicago comics!!!

i missed the fabulous free comic book day, but one of the friendly folks at chicago comics said, "Were you the guy asking about the peanut butter and jeremy?" "no," I said. "Hmm. Well, i think we have some of the free comic book day comics left. let me get you one." "Cool. thanks!"
Yeah, that was cool.

Also cool is the bag of comics I walked out with:
Magic Boy & The Robot Elf by James Kochalka
Berlin #s 8 & 9 by Jason Lutes
Oddville! by Jay Stephens
Fantastic Butterflies by James Kochalka

Yay! Add to that pile of joy a good Thai dinner with Chuck and it has been a good evening. :)

VB.net book

doing another review for the chicago perl group. Up this time is Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition by Jesse Liberty.

I am about a third of the way into it and it is OK. I will have more thoughts as I finish, but the book seems to drag for the first 150 pages. Either that or I am just tired of another half-assed introduction to object-oriented concepts.

We'll see............

Mac OS X Hacks Full Review

I have finished my review of Mac OS X Hacks from O'Reilly.

The review will also soon be posted up on the chicago perl mongers site.

The full review is on the complete page for this post. The short version of the review is that if you want to trick out your Mac OS X installation or want to start digging into the unix side of your Mac (go on. you know you want to), this book is a must have.

Title: Mac OS X Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tricks
Authors: Rael Dornfest, Kevin Hemenway
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pages: 430
Reviewer: Jason Scott Gessner
Synopsis: A great collection of unusual and useful GUI, automation and unix tricks for your Mac OS X system.
Table of Contents:
Credits
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1. Files
Chapter 2. Startup
Chapter 3. Multimedia and the iApps
Chapter 4. The User Interface
Chapter 5. Unix and the Terminal
Chapter 6. Networking
Chapter 7. Email
Chapter 8. The Web
Chapter 9. Databases
Index
Rael Dornfest and Kevin Hemenway have put together an extensive collection of generally neat and genuinely useful tricks for a Mac OS X machine. The multimedia iApps are covered, explanations of Mac OS X's unix-ness are covered, applescripting and perl all get their place. Overall the book covers the topics given well, but the release of iLife and the updated iApps have made some of the hacks less useful and several important unix sections are either missing completely or woefully inadequate. Thankfully, there are only 2 inadequate sections and the rest of the hacks are well thought out and inventive.
The Good
Multimedia has always been a strong point with the Macintosh and the proliferation of MP3s, digital video and still cameras has made good multimedia software a necessity. Apple's iApps (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD) have been lauded as some of the best around. There are many tips in the book for integrating the iApps, but Apple seems to have pulled the rug out from underneath the authors. The recently released iLife suite contains updated versions of the iApps that already work incredibly well together. You can search your iTunes playlist from iPhoto for a slide show, or from iDVD for a menu screen. iMovie files can now be opened directly from iDVD. Useful tips include some freeware to manage multiple iPhoto libraries, utilities to change the metal applications to an aqua look and feel. brian d foy provides a great article on controlling iTunes with perl and even providing an apache module for that purpose.
The Bad
The sections on MySQL and PostgreSQL installations (Hacks 99 and 100 respectively) are probably the thinnest in the book. Not in terms of page count, but overall usefulness. Compiling, installing and initially configuring MySQL is covered, but testing it is described by creating a PHP script instead of connecting via the command line. The postgreSQL section does a more thorough job of this, covering database creation, command line connections and even JDBC connection settings.
Aside from the limited discussions of the databases themselves. I would have liked to see more uses for the databases on the system. Maybe a hack to send your iCal events to mysql for publishing on your web site, or your address book for a company directory based on postgreSQL.
The Missing
X11 is only mentioned in Hack 56, "Top 10 Tips for Unix Geeks," and then only in passing. This is a major omission from the book. Apple's web site is constantly showcasing scientists and other professionals who are moving to the Mac OS X platform because it can run all (or most) of their unix apps natively and any remotely, but the authors choose not to address it here. Apple's X11 Server is also a major advance for X11 on Mac OS X with hardware openGL support and great integration with the Aqua interface. Apple has also been working to integrate Mac OS X support with the XFree86 maintainers. Regardless of the relatively recent release of the Apple X11 server, the authors missed a great opportunity to showcase one of the many X11 server options available for Mac OS X and its usefulness.
Conclusion
This book is a must have for serious Mac OS X users. The hacks cover every aspect of daily OS X use and introduce many advanced unix topics to the unix newbies. While more coverage on X11 and more creative uses of the database technologies would have been welcome, this book is a gem.

chicago.pm SOAP talk

I just got back from my first chicago perl group meeting and it was a lot of fun.

Ed Summers gave a great introduction to SOAP::Lite and webservices in general. His talk is archived here:
http://ink.inkdroid.org/talks/soap/. Thanks, Ed! I would actually like to do a companion talk at some point to talk about the success of webservices for blogging. I should try to put something together.....

The group was an interesting bunch. For each, "I use perl for XYZ at my job" story there was a matching, "I used to use perl for ABC when I HAD a job...." story. feh.

All in all a good evening. Some ale, some code talk and some new contacts.

updated demo

I am starting to build a name builder.

This is as far as I have progressed tonight. gonna update my iPod and get some shut-eye

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

scrolling tiled background

oh yeah. this took me quite a while, but I did get it right last night. I can pass in any image and generate a tiled background that scrolls across the screen. horizontal and vertical offsets can be specified, as well as a blending level. i am happy. Not happy that it took so damn long to do, but that it is done. and it is good.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

mouse tracking demo #2

This is a new director experiment. The image will pan back and forth. Your vertical mouse position will affect the vertical position of the image and the horizontal mouse position will affect the blending (transparency) level.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Mac OS X Hacks

I am starting to go through O'Reilly's Mac OS X Hacks to do a review for the Chicago Perl Mongers.
So far so good. :)
Aside from some trouble getting a couple of perl modules compiled to run the examples, there are some great tricks in here. My G4 is very happy. ;)
UPDATE: I compiled perl 5.8.0 on my G4 and everything is peachy-keen now.

ORD 09112001 @ FLATFILE April 25th

My video piece ORD 09112001 (quicktime files coming soon) will be showcased in FLATFILE photography's project space starting April 25th, 2003 @ 5pm.

view the piece (quicktime required)

why kitties do dat?!?!?!

Poor Juliana. One of the kitties ate the hands off her doll. When I saw it I started cracking up but she started bawling!!! Tonight we found another one done in. Not quite as bad, but Juliana was quite upset about the whole thing.

mouse tracking demo #1

this is way lame, but it is a decent start for a sleepy evening.
Move the mouse around to cause little pixels to come up and slowly fade out.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

new titles (from the transmigration of timothy archer)

Maybe my mind would give up trying to solve problems in terms of recycled words. Used phrases, bits ripped from here and there: fragments from my days at Cal in which I had memorized but not understood, understood but not applied, applied but never successfully. (p 201)

My opportunity to change was offered to me and I turned it down; I am stuck, now, and, as I say, know but know not what. (p 214)

mug shot gallery.

juliana is a much better draftsman than I am. ;)

new titles (from the divine invasion)

Probably it was necessary that he not remember. Had he been able to recall into consciousness everything, the basis of it all, then the government would have killed him. (the divine invasion p 50)

At once she turned. And as she turned he saw her change. Her nose became different and instead of a girl he saw now a grown woman wearing a metal mask pushed bak so that it revealed her face, a Greek face; and the mask, he realized, was the war mask. (the divine invasion p 50)

Dancing certainly was the right answer; in his mind he could see her dancing, with all the troop, burning the grass beneath their feet, leaving it scorched and the minds of men disoriented. (the divine invasion p 68)

Now, as he sat leaning over her, he saw her eyes shine; he saw spaes beyond her eyes, and if he were looking into something empty, containing huge stretches of space. (the divine invasion p 93) [and should be as???]

Your world obliges you, and that gives it away for what it is. My world is stubborn. It will not yield. A recalcitrant and implacable world is a real world. (the divine invasion p 163)

"I don't mean to compound your troubles, but you are the most fucked-up human being I have ever met. And I see a lot of different kinds of people." (the divine invasion p 211)

"We will win. We have already won. We have always already won, from the beginning, from before reation. What do you take in your coffee? I forget." (the divine invasion p 237)

new titles (from valis)

what he did with the Xerox one, which really wasn't a letter in the strictest sense of the term, I do not to this day know, nor do I want to know. (valis, p 106)

And then as I wake up more I realize that I am living in an apartment in southern California alone. I have no wife. There is no such house, with the back garden and the high retaining wall with wild rose bushes. (valis p 114)

attempting to salvage something from the wreck of his life, had decided to go in search of the Savior. He would find him wherever he was. (valis p 123)

The lights dimmed; the audience of teenagers fell silent (valis p 139)

This means that good will make evil into what evil does not wish to be; but evil will not be able to make good into what good does not wish to be. Evil serves good, despite its cunning. (valis p 200)

image/asset handling

there is no browse function for images that you may already have uploaded. Likewise, there are no helper functions for flash/shockwave/quicktime, etc.

i will be trying to correct that once I start my movable type replacement. :)

more details soon.

tracey reading at the table

metra chemical agent incident document

And here I was worried that one of the largest commuter rail systems in the country wasn't looking out for me.

I found this pamphlet in the Western Ave. train station late last night while waiting to come home from seeing Cowboy Bebop @ the Music Box (more later).

Read the pamphlet here:

slaughterhouse five

not to build a list of what I have been reading to impress people, but to keep my head straight and to try to get more out of what i read.

sorry. disclaimer over.

i have felt like billy pilgrim a lot over the past few weeks. not because i have been unstuck in time. I think it is because I have been sleepy and I am shocked that we have not had any explosions here since the invasion of iraq.

i will add more to this note later. right now I am at work and very sleepy.

must...consume

i have been ingesting a lot lately:

Valis
The Divine Invasion
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Combine that with some truly excellent episodes of Six Feet Under and my brain is swimming.
More on the Philip K. Dick work will be coming soon, as this is one of the few works dealing with serious Christian thought that is not a preachy diatribe or a rally against its oppression. Well, they are that and great fiction.

<em>Blue</em> Opening @ Flatfile

Blue opens friday, March 21, 2003 @ 6pm at FLATFILEphotographyGALLERY in Chicago's lovely West Loop gallery district.

My piece

"Well, now," thought I to myself, "it is plain I must lie where I am, and not disturb the balance; but it is plain, also, that I can put the paddle over the side and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove or two toward land."


will be sharing space in the project room with some wonderful work by Monika Merva and Zandy Mangold.

Coraline

Just finished Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

The story was full of dark humor and some wonderful pen and ink drawings by the incomparable Dave McKean.

The story reminded me a lot of Clive Barker's The Thief Of Always, but nicer. And I believe that I liked Coraline's tenacity and straight-forwardness much more than the protagonist of Thief.

Despite the fact that the story is an "all ages" story, there is a lot of depth here. A fun scary read.

i have a confession to make...

it shames me to say this, but....

i put
Rift
on the cd player today and enjoyed it a lot. I haven't listened to this albums since probably 10th grade. damn.
ok. shame over.

krazy kat 1925-1926

bill blackbeard may be alienating or insulting as many people that may otherwise GET interested in Krazy Kat in his introduction to the fantagraphics book, KRAZY AND IGNATZ in "THERE IS A HEPPY LEND - FURFUR A-WAAY" THE KOMPLETE KAT KOMICS 1925 & 1926.

He decries the ignorant masses of the present day and editors of the 20s and 30s for not "getting" krazy kat. Ok. Fine bill. Act like the snotty dicks at the record store who are cooler than the customers because they know what albums are coming out. Instead of offering the reader something useful or interesting, what we get is a slight, bitter introduction.

feh.

This is a shame. The work itself is magnificent, the chris ware design for the book is very subtle and the reproductions are great. I was just left with an ugly feeling after the intro.

feh.

reading "After the Snooter"

Ahhh....
I have forgotten why Eddie Campbell is probably my favorite comics author. This book is reminding me.

One quick thing...... Eddie talks a lot about money in this book and it reminds me of some of the stuff Jello Biafra says on his recordings about how as a successful or influential artist, people have animosity towards him because of his success. This completely ignores all of the hard + art work that has been done for 20+ years to become an indie icon. Feh.

i love portfolio

well, I finally got around to re-indexing my image cds. I am done with 13 of 50+ and I have already found images for new pieces and old images that simply need to be printed.
Too bad Canto has been so damn slow with the OS X conversion. Oh well. Screw em.
Now if only portfolio had more keyboard shortcuts.
I still need to start on my own app to index video files and generate batch capture lists. The stuff I have seen for this focuses solely on logging and then capturing. I want to be able to search for subclips in my archived, off-line tape captures and generate FCP projects for those files.
Hmmm. This post is not particularly all together. Kinda scattered today.....

digging into movable type

aside from being a great way to keep a notebook/journal of my current state of mind, movable type is a great little perl application.

I am starting to break it down and see what makes it tick.

From a web design perspective, they have done everything right. XHTML compliance, stylesheets for the design, etc. I haven't looked far enough to see if the actual application is as flexible.

What I like the most about MT is that it is built around a set of custom modules. This is the model I want to look into more deeply. A mod_perl approach would be great, but obviously require more configuration when the application is deployed.

I will update as I dig into it.

Yay! Did it!!!

Allright, now we're talking.

I finally have php 4.3.0, MySQL 3.23.X, apache 1.3.27 and mod_perl 1.27 installed!

I ripped out the default perl install from redhat 8, as well as php, mysql and mod_perl, since they were all using the latest stuff. I, of course, only have books and tuts on mod_perl 1. grrr.

Anyway, I have some books coming from Sams for mod_perl and apache 1/2 stuff, so that should help out with that.

Tracey, Juliana and I will be heading out to do a little shopping here in a little bit, but when we get back, more Perl!!!!

Muhahahaha

lots of configuration

well, last night I recompiled perl 5.8.0 on my redhat 8 system.

It actually went pretty smoothly, but there were latin8->utf8 problems. I don't actually know what that means, but i had trouble compiling a bunch of modules. ;)