This dog is coping well with living in a tarantula.
I think I'm at a wine tasting in a tarantula, but I may have misheard.
Mark Twain came to Tustin this week. I had a great time at my first
+Charles Kiernan show.
I wish the president had just vetoed this crazy law when he had the chance. I'm glad the ol' checks and balances and taking a shot at reverting it.
I've been walking past these honeysuckles on my way to and from work for almost a year. Finally noticed them today.
Purty.
It's shocking how thought-provoking Tim Bray can be when he's not talking about cameras, boats, or bathroom fan timers.
I woke up this morning to a wonderful surprise--my former coworkers are on techcruch today! Congrats, you wacky Border Stylons!
How to Delete a Scheduled Google Analytics Email* visit
analytics.google.com* click on "sign in". I have to do this every time I visit analytics and it drives me mad. I'm already signed in!!1!... anyway...
* click on the domain name. you probably just have one, but in case you have more I mean the domain the scheduled email is being sent about.
* click on "admin"
* click on "assets"
* click on "scheduled email"
* click "delete" next to the email you want to delete
* click "delete" to confirm
First ubuntu install in a while.
So... you have to hold down shift to see grub on boot now. Mashing the F- keys like a madman does nothing... I hear.
Ramune and vanilla ice cream float.
I liked it so much when I had it at
http://www.yojie.com/ that I had to recreate it at home.
Crazy hair, or just crazy enough to work hair?
Drumcircle is a fun, lo-fi app for making looping music. I consistently disappoint myself when I try to make music, but in 30 minutes or so I was able to get some bleeps and bloops that made me smile.
via:
http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1626
My stream is full of Tom Robbins quotes for #philosophyfriday
Internet, we may need to break up.
Wish your hilarious tweets were indexed by Google? Wish your beautiful,
smiling face would show up next to those search results? Wish no more! This
post will walk you through how to get your tweets indexed by Google…
+Emily Kiernan found a chocolate-flavored straw at the bottom of a box of cereal, and decided to drink her Moscow Mule with it.
And the award for grossest "promoted" tweet goes to:
A few weeks ago I had a question about environment variables in GAE. Here's my writeup of the answer I found.
It is common for a web app to have secret keys: the admin password, the
twitter API key you use, the number of cat pictures you'll let a user upload
before banning them. If your project is open source, you'd like to keep these
secret keys out of the published source.
Unlike on a PaaS like Heroku
or Joyent,
it's not obvious
how to store secret keys on Google App Engine. This tutorial will walk you
through the method that works for me: using the datastore…
A great photo by Diana Arterian of a major (and majorly weird) Silver Lake landmark.
Today in life-changing command line tips, reptyr lets you move a process from one terminal to another. Helpful for moving things into screen, for example.
I've been having a little trouble with wrist strain, so I got a fancy keyboard and mouse to give my wrists a little help.
Still not as Space Age as
+Thomas Dunlap's desk, but I'm getting there. The man comes from actual Space--give me a little slack!
A great article on Critical Distance cataloging some weirder stories about video games:
http://www.critical-distance.com/2012/04/29/april-29th/I just got a copy of Anne Anthropy's
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, and it has me all excited about finding the personal and weird in video games.
Interesting tidbit I came across while reading Michael Moorcock's Modern Times 2.0: Texas has no state income tax. Digging further, neither does Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington or Wyoming.
I think that's disgusting. I live in a state with a fairly progressive income tax scheme, and I could easily, easily afford to pay more than I do.
Does anyone else in this haunted country remember that class in high school where they learned that sales tax is regressive? Does "regressive" sound like a good thing to you?
It's not strictly in the rules that I have to talk in a funny voice about "mah bunnehs" while playing Arimaa.
But it helps.
Diana Arterian's Death Centos are poems constructed from last words. Two of these poems are in Corium Magaizine, so you should read them.
+Soup du Jour's favorite spot to be scratched is right... there:
I always snort a superior snort whenever someone on Twitter is excited about something trending when it's really only trending in their tiny little town.
Here's a dumb question I should have thought to ask before: are trending topics on Google+ global, or based on where I live/who is in my circles?
Go to
http://www.google.com/reviews/tAdd "
http://w3schools.com" to the list of manually blocked sites
All your searches for CSS, HTML, JS are no longer filled with this awful misinformation/filler/spam. Results from Mozilla now reach the top, where they belong.
My pet
+Soup du Jour is upset that I've interrupted his reading.
Forget those Mad Men, I'm getting my fashion advice from Miss Fisher!
+Emily Kiernan made some amazing dumplings for dinner last weekend. Nom nom nom!
Speaking of Danielewski--more Danielewski!
In this post, Echidne quotes heavily from A History of Women: Silences in the Middle Ages on the subject of women joining craft halls in large numbers (and then being banned almost entirely) in the middle ages.
I normally skip over the middle ages as a total bore-fest, but this story is worth digging into.
As a unbearable MZD fan who has an unread copy of
2666, I'm precisely in the cross-hairs for this joke.
via:
+Emily Kiernan
Hard Truths about Mass Effect
There is no possible set of choices you can make in the character creation menu that will not result in David Bowie's cheekbones.
At Seaworld, I discovered the real American dream: riding around on dolphins like skis.
After watching a recent Microsoft video (
Googlighting), I just had to get this tie.
Drove past this beauty on my way home from San Diego. Not knowing the real name for this modern/gothic style of architecture, I will describe it as "Cotton Mather in Space."
Wise words from T-Rex:
"I want holodecks in my lifetime and I'm not afraid to enhance the timeline to get them."
Two of Diana's poems were just published on Two Serious Ladies. You should read them!
Spotted on my way out the door this morning.
Stayed up until 2am watching Ancient Aliens? I know that feel, bro.
My littlest sister and I finished Portal 2 Coop today. These are some clips from the final level, where we look pretty badass solving the "hard" puzzles, but I manage to fall all over myself on the final joke puzzle.
I still haven't picked up a copy (I'm still stuck on the first planet of ME1), but it sounds like by the time I get there the ending may be... well, different at least.
"Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April."
Personally I'm rooting for a DLC named "Buy a good ending to the game you already bought." That's the subtitle of the Fort Knox DLC for Borderlands, right?
My Roxio Gamecap arrived in the mail today. It refuses to look like a generic video capture device so I have to use it on Windows, it requires a serial key to install the drivers for no good reason, but otherwise looks fun.
I'm able to use it as an input device in a Hangout, so that will be fun.
Here's a quick test video showing me doing an awful job of picking a lock in Kingdoms of Amalur.
These little gremlins keep sneaking into my cubicle.
I was going to make a joke about them demanding I purchase accessories, when I realized it was a reference to this crazy radio broadcast about the dangers of addiction I heard when I was very young:
http://www.aiowiki.com/wiki/The_Twilife_ZoneConsidering how varied our cultural experiences are, it's a wonder if I'm ever coherent.
Good news! The insurance companies check got here and I was able to replace my old smashed car with a Mazda Protege 5. Not only is it the El Camino of station wagons, it's yellow!
I've been agitating for a generative music project for a few days. Thanks to the great intro at
http://epx.com.br/artigos/audioapi.php, I have a working (in Chrome) demo of generating some boring music from the string "this is a dog named jeff":
update: I've been fiddling with this with the volume turned very low, at normal volume my demo is crazy-loud. you have been warned.
Fear and Loathing in Amalur
This giant tree is nervous that I might be a psychotic killer instead of a hero, so it asks me to take care of a troll problem in a way that demonstrates my heart. There is only one way to complete this quest--running around like a psychotic killer stabbing all moving things--and that seems to have satisfied the tree that I'm a nice guy.
I've fought through all defenses and made it into the Kind of Holographic Witch's lair. Bad news--I'm overburdened with loot already and she says I'm trapped inside! Except when I turn around and walk back out the door... it's unlocked.
Fallout 3's addiction mechanics seemed cheesy, but games I've played afterwards seem really strange without them. Whenever a fight is going poorly, my character pops over 15 assorted uppers, downers, whippets and goofballs, with no long term effects. He can stop any time he wants to, man, he's just under a lot of pressure with this generic fantasy kindgom to save.
I've started going to the gym this year. It's been going pretty well, but I've been doing a lot of running in red Chuck Taylors. Don't get me wrong, anything John Nash likes to wear is fresh as hell, but these hightops have been killing my arches. I finally gave in today and bought some low-end running shoes with real padding. Ran 4.5 miles, and my feet feel great.
Moral of the story: don't be a vain hipster like me, kids--run in running shoes.
I wanted to write Zero and One slash fiction, but I couldn't figure out what it's value was...
Today's been pretty quiet, and it's a little chilly.
I appreciate the sense of space and quiet in this song, if that makes any sense.
This morning I noticed that my background image and it's thumbnail lined up just right. Fractals are pretty tasty:
My name did not make it through the account suspension, but as of this morning I am back.
Last night, I wrote a piece on my personal blog about naming and me:
My Nanny Nan and Pee Paw call me "Bubba."
My father and sisters call me "Bubby."
The people on my soccer team call me "Wolfy."
A friend from high school calls me "Rye-Guy…"
Whee, now my account is being threatened with suspension for violating the names policy.
I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to not include an appeal link in the scare message...
Good news,
+Argent Stonecutter's account is no longer being reviewed!
Keep it weird, Argent--let's show all of these people with "normal" names how it's done :)
Just found a tip about tying your shoelaces that is almost as exciting as that the tip for how to make Ctrl+S not do terrible things in my terminal:
Put This On, Episode 2: Shoes
Pictures from my first 5k, the LA Chinatown Firecracker.
+Emily Kiernan and
+Elyse Lattanzio (the coolest kids in the second picture) talked me into it, and I had a surprisingly good time. Eating at Brite Spot afterwards with a tiny medal around my neck: bonus.
My favorite online calculator has gotten uppity:
Oh, and they want me to register to unlock features like "copy to clipboard"? Hahahahano.
youtube fail
14 times in a row, I opened a video, this ad for the Droid RAZR (a shitty, lowend phone verizon is pushing way too hard) came on and I hit the "next track" button. 14 times in a row!
I have an android phone! it's nicer than the razr! It's signed into my google account! When I click away from an ad, don't show it to me again! surely there must be more than one advertiser selling videos on youtube today!
#LazyPlus
I was looking at normalize.css today, and came across some css syntax I did't understand.
What does the "*" in " *zoom: 1;" do?
A: David Lynch, Sparklehorse, and Danger Mouse.
Q: That's an easy one, Alex. What are my three favorite things that have been rolled into one delicious bundle of wonder?
Spotted by:
+Emily Kiernan
First day with the arrow keys turned off so I actually learn how to navigate with HJKL in vim. I am going to have the beefiest right pinky muscles ever after this.
Google+ Authorship: How Does It Work?Based on
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 , I have a link to my domain on my google+ profile. I have a rel="author" on every page on my domain pointing back to my google+ profile. The snippet validator likes my snippet:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=pseudony.msAfter all that, it still doesn't work!If I'm signed in to my account, I see a blue human torso next to results
http://i.imgur.com/qV7N5.png instead of my avatar and name. If I'm not signed into my account, I see no special icon at all next to my results.
Today I finally found
http://knol.google.com/k/google-rich-snippets-tips-and-tricks#Frequently_Asked_Questions which says:
"Currently, review sites and social networking/people profile sites are eligible. We plan to expand Rich Snippets to other types of content in the future."First off, knol is shutting down in a month so maybe don't use it for FAQs? Secondly, who do I have to kill to get my site added to the magical special exceptions list for snippets? John Resig's blog has some magical secret sauce I'm missing, but it's not written down anywhere.
While we're on the subject, why is there a magical special exceptions list instead of just letting everyone have access to the same advantages in search results?
Exciting news about that fancy-dancy Do Not Track header.
+Abben Maguire didn't you once express a positive sentiment about Metal? I believe that sentiment requires that you respond to all news about Metal--I demand a funny post about Dave Mustaine!
What do people use to record
console gameplay video these days?
I've been looking at
http://www.roxio.com/enu/promotions/landing/ac-rev/game-capture/console/overview.html but it might require me a have xp installed on a laptop just to record. Not a dealbreaker, but sad.
Ideally, I'd like a game capture card that "looked" like a generic usb webcam, so things like Google Hangouts or
justin.tv would just work with them.
Nice to haves:
* Splitting to TV (like the Roxio) so I don't have to actually play from the tiny laptop screen.
* Less than $300. I have only so much desire to fiddle with live streaming my feeble gaming attempts.
Things I cannot be made to care about:
* Video/audio quality. If it's good enough for streaming video, it's good enough for me.
CC:
+Min Huang
I accidentally hit Ctrl+S twice a day, and spend 30 seconds slamming random keys until I remember Ctrl+Q. No more!
+Andrew Pettit has been adding some pictures to his words lately, to great effect:
Slight delay on the ride home.
No one was hurt, and hopefully this means Papa just won a new ride.
All of you Pappy's fans can keep it--me and the Joshua Saloon are BFF.
The weirdest thing I'll read today: "Fun is about as good a life as it gets."
Not to brag, but I was in a presidential parade on my way to work today. It was pretty okay.
+Emily Kiernan is helping a blue hedgehog with some rings that need collecting.
My bull-riding is not very majestic, but it did take 10 seconds for me to fall off like some kind of eucalyptus-stoned koala.
I changed my google profile name today to FiveThousand Lobsters. I thought it'd be a good idea to explain the origin of this name, and why I changed it.
StorytimeWhen I started using a tiling window manager, I kept the default status bar. One of my coworkers made fun of me for sticking to the defaults, so to prove that I had opened the right config files and chosen to leave everything the way it was on purpose, I added the string "RYAN IS 5000 LOBSTERS" to the end of the status bar message.
When I left that company, I wanted to keep in touch with my coworkers, and the network they were most active on was twitter. When I needed to choose a handle on that network, I decided to use a name that would have special significance to my excoworkers. Thus,
twitter.com/5000lobsters was born.
Okay, but why here?There are a couple reasons:
* I am an internet kid, participating in a social network with a "normal" name feels like showing up at a pool party in a tux. I feel most comfortable identifying myself online by handles.
* I am interested in ensuring that people who want or need to go by handles on this network are able to. The best way to keep track of the way that group is treated is to put myself into that group.
* I'd like this community to have more handles and less common names. The message I hear often is that the preference for common names is a community standard, that it is what the people want. I want to cast my vote for a different standard.
Yesterday I learned that sacrificing my smartphone to the nameless mountain gods will ensure a bountiful harvest, but is insufficient to convince googlebot to index my blog.
+Emily Kiernan and I have been watching "Ancient Astronauts" on Netflix, for some terrible reason. In the current episode, the guy with the crazy hair has decided that all mentions of "giants" in ancient myths were really attempts to describe extraterrestrials.
Emily has decided that Dr. Suess's "Cat in the Hat" is really an attempt to describe an extraterrestrial sitting on top of another extraterrestrial.
On the plane ride home, I became convinced that the clouds I was flying over were hills and rivers, and that there was an entire Earth up in the clouds. When my plane landed at the cloud airport, I lost my luggage, but the helpful attendants were able to provide me with new cloud pants and a cloud computer. I took a taxi to my cloud home, and was please to note that their internet is devoted to pictures of clouds that are shaped kind of like cats.
Today I learned that I have some sort of moral problem with people hiring other people to drive them around on dogsleds.
Stay tuned to hear if I still have a hangup about this if the dogs are unionized.
Today I learned that "pulchritude" was not a word made up by MS Paint Adventures.
While we're on the subject, you should read MS Paint Adventures:
While in line at the grocery store, I learned that my neighborhood chain has a new policy where customers are not allowed to "borrow" each others' loyalty cards.
Oh Vons/Pavilions, how it slavers, how it bites and nips at my delicious data. Beware lest you reveal just how much I'm giving up!
JM just changed my life. If you are using directory symlinks and die a little inside each time you have to hit "TAB TAB," prepare for learning bombs:
I was running into some trouble last week trying to get node.js running on EC2's stock image. It's now a lot less exciting/dangerous than before, thanks to
+T.C. Hollingsworth!
I'm not very good at music: I was just asking my friends today if being cool meant liking Lana Del Rey, or if, in order to achieve coolness, I should think she was lame.
+Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal has time-traveled from 3 months in the past to suggest that there may be better questions to ask. Good call, Tracy.
Bug 02329: The phone system is basically made of ghosts.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Call the superior court of orange county's phone system: 8778722122
2) Press "1" as soon as the call connects and a robot starts talking.
3) Press "1" again once the robot pauses and starts talking about.
4) Press "1#" once the robot pauses.
Expected: The robot should suggest that I try again, as "1" is not a valid claim number.
Actual: Eerie, haunting silence.
I was almost hit by a hummer on my way to work today. It's not surprising that a burnt-yellow H3 nearly destroyed me on its rush to join my lane, but what is surprising is the bumper sticker that was attached to said shiva-waggon: NIXON NOW.
I get my news from the internet, but I'm pretty sure that Nixon has not run for president since that car was constructed. I have so many questions.
Looking for parking felt a little bit weird.
As of this commit, Nick is officially a node.js contributor. I'm super excited for him, and even if he's too cool to brag about it he can't stop me.
You can check out what he's working on (besides contributions to node.js, I mean) at:
spire.io
+Kenton Roberts's desk is kind of a magical place.
Why did the office have a MakerBot lying around? Science.
Dear Internet,
I hate checking my voicemail. It's like trying to talk to American Airlines customer service, except the machine is dumber and there's no music. Build me a service that will check my voicemail for me once a week and send me .mp3s of all the messages by email.
I will happily pay you $5 a month for this.
<3,
Ryan
According to a recent New York Times infographic, I'm in the n% (where n is between 2% and 100%). As a member of this particular social strata, I am required to adopt the following beliefs:
* Everyone in the n% is hardworking, and earned all of their wealth.
* Everyone in the (n-1)% is a fat cat who inherited all of their wealth, and their greed is destroying our country.
* Everyone in the (n+1)% is a freeloading drain on the welfare state, and should get a real job.
I use Latitude to automatically check in and out of my office, so
+Emily Kiernan can easily check when I'm heading home.
Recently, they started spamming my profile with these automatic check-ins, and there is no way to turn off this "feature."
Update: +Joe LaPenna points out (correctly) that this is not a recent change in behavior.
I've been casting about for a replacement, and thanks to
+Kenton Roberts I think I've found one: Tasker.
Tasker makes it easy for me to set up "entering the office" and "leaving the office" contexts, and to use them to trigger actions like HTTP POSTs (coming soon:
isryanattheoffice.com).
"Wait Ryan, but Tasker costs money and you don't buy things on the internet!"
True, but Latitude has annoyed me enough that I'd like to give someone else some money to say "It's not cool to spam my profile without my permission, Latitude" as loudly as possible.
My new ringtone.
Coworkers: I'm so sorry.
At the emergency vet reading wiki articles about Solipsism.
Or maybe I'm a butterfly dreaming about poisoning my dog with trail mix. Wake up, butterfly!
I got an email from rdio last night telling me my account had access to music again. I had a lot of luck using Rdio to discover new bands the last time I used it, but it just wasn't worth the $5/month. It looks like the free tier of accounts get a certain quota/month of listens now.
Rdio-using droogs (cc:
+Claire Armstrong,
+Daniel Hengeveld,
+Thomas Dunlap): how much quota are we talking about here? Is it worth logging in again?
Cubicle decorations are here...
Dear firefox for android,
If I click on a bookmark on my home screen, then go back to my home screen and do that again, you must reuse the first tab I opened. This is the difference between a working and nonworking implementation of home screen bookmarks.
Love,
Ryan
Snowed a little while my flight was waiting to take off.
Still counts!
Buttoned-up shirt, coke, smartphone.
There is no way to couch this in irony.
The menus are books with the first pages replaced.
Strangers intently pursue books by candlelight.
I order a mixed drink with gin, absinthe.
A man in a fedora at the coffee shop.
His laptop angles towards me.
He is shopping online for fedoras.
The first new Achewood strip since February. The hiatus is over!
We have stuck it out. We have made it to the promised land. I'm proud of all of you.
When I signed into Google+ today, I saw a few people who I was not expecting in Chat. After trading a few cat pictures, I decided to set things back to the way they used to be. Here is a handy guide:
How to Change Your Google Chat Privacy Settings
* Look for the "Chat" title on the left of your stream.
* Click on the grey arrow to the right on that title.
* From the dropdown that pops up, choose "Privacy Settings."
* On the panel that pops up, click on the "Choose who can chat with you:" dropdown, and select the option "Custom."
* Go through the list of Circles, removing any you would not like to chat with you.
* Click "Save."
I love permutations. 3d printing company Cunicode created 30 variations on the coffee cup:
http://cunicode.com/one-coffee-cup-a-day/My favorites:
* Klein bottle
* David's nose
* Low resolution
* Digitally eroded
Check out: Ripples and Creative Kit.
The screenshot for "Hangouts with Extras" is also worth a look, in case you've missed the recent changes there.
Apple product owners rejoice!
If you go to Profile -> Edit Profile and click on Gender, you should now be able to set visibility.
For the iPhone users in the audience:
While you're waiting for the mobile app, be sure to check out the mobile version of the website:
http://plus.google.com
Extension developers who want to overlay HTML on pages face two style-related
challenges: preventing page styles from affecting the added HTML, and ensuring
that the added HTML is visually over top of the rest of page. This blog post
will show you how to use XBL to add nodes to the page with style, complete
with a working demo…
Webspiders are fun, but the learning curve is awfully steep. Websites don't
like crawlers stumbling about where they're not wanted, and barriers as
simple as a login screen can stymie a beginner. Add in checks on user agents
strings and javascipt-heavy links, and your weekend is over before you've
gotten anything to work—side project over! This blog post will show you
how to turn your browser and LAMP server into a spider capable of taking you
straight to the fun…
