August 2007 Archives
In theory, it's great - it's supposed to be an inexpensive, fast, convenient method of traveling the North-South orientation of South Florida. In practice, it gets expensive, it's nearly always running late, and the 'convenience' of the stations is questionable at best... I mean, who puts a Tri-Rail station on Yamato road?
Granted, the whole location of the stations is (sort of) offset by the bus system in place, which is horrendously bad as well, but that's a whole different story. The point of taking Tri-Rail, for me at least, is to save some loot on gas. I can leave my Jeep at the station, go home on the train, then the next morning take the train to the car and drive on in to work. Sounds neat, right? Well, at $8 a day for the roundtrip ticket, that's not exactly the finest bargain in the world. Figure this - $8 will get you about 2.5 gallons. Even my Jeep, at 10 miles per gallon, will get 25 miles out of that. Now, the office is about 15 miles away (30 miles round trip.) These calculations are what got me taking the train in the first place, mind you. So, theoretically, I'd be saving myself about a half-gallon of gas a day. That's about a tank of gas over the course of the month, give or take. Not bad, not bad. $30-40 a month is nice little slice of the pie.Thing is, the amount of time lost waiting and dealing with the Tri-Rail is absolutely out of control. I'd pay $40 a month just to not be 2 hours late to work because of the trains. I'd pay more than that just to not have to sit in the sun for 45 minutes because a train is delayed for God-only-knows what reason. If I didn't have any place to actually be on time, then this would be a moot issue - I can burn time if needed - but it's awfully frustrating when you're already late, and then you call Tri-Rail (whose customer service is, admittedly, very very good) who tells you it'll be 15 to 45 minutes. That's quite a range!
It may be worthy for you, or it may be a big fat waste of time. Either way, the scenery is pretty sweet, and I do have to admit that it's nice to not have to deal with traffic or even to drive. I can read, get some work done, design something, sketch, whatever I can cram into the approximate 30 minute ride. That's almost worth it, right there, just to gain 30 minutes of my life back. Hm. I'm taking the Tri-Rail thing one week at a time. We'll see what happens next week. Maybe I'll finally get a new car and this strange obsession with riding a train will magically disappear. 
The second thing you feel (and it's unfortunate) is "this will never happen. Congress will never, ever, in a million years let this through." That kind of depresses me. If the government doesn't want something, regardless of whether the people do, then it just won't happen. Hmph. The government is so convinced that they know what's best for us that they treat us like children. The terrible part is that it seems that we've bought into that and just sit back and 'let the politicians politick." To me, that's on par with voting for a politician simply because that's the party you're registered to. Political decisions based purely on something so irrelevant as political party make me ill.
The democrats hate the FairTax act. It takes away the government's power to take away our earnings, which (potentially) threatens the resources available for all the social programs democrats love to dump money into. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I believe our government is so negligent and mis-manages resources so badly that any reform would be a positive step. Republicans don't seem all that pleased with it, probably for the same reasons. One thing I found amusing - politicians don't pay income tax. To me, any resistance to this act smells of greed - greed to keep a hold on that nice 30% of their income that we pay, yet they get to keep. That's a big sweeping generalization, of course. I'm sure there's plenty of legitimate reasons to resist tax reform. I just can't think of any. And the ones I've read about have traipsed all over the spectrum from ridiculous to well-thought-out, but misinformed. There's a lot of misinformation rolling around. One of the biggest is the whole 23%/30% tax proposal. Opponents to the FairTax love to say "They're trying to sneak a 30% sales tax on you." There's simply no shortage of explanations why that doesn't make any sense. Here's a really good one from their home page.
A few sites that I've found interesting and that may provide information for the interested (and/or merely curious) are: FairTax.org, Citizens for Alternative Tax Plans, and the FairTax Scorecard . There's no shortage of websites dedicated to being negative about the FairTax - here's an example. By all means read the information - but so much of it is uninformed and fabricated information that it just doesn't make sense. It reads like crazy survivalist propaganda.
It's really just a big propaganda battle. What can we do? Honestly, read the book. There's lots of interesting ideas, even if you're not into the FairTax act as a whole. It'll open your eyes to a lot of facts about the government that I guarantee you didn't know.
Guitar Hero 2 is the freakin' bomb-dizzle-dynamite. No, I know that it's been out forever (Guitar Hero 3 is coming in a month or two) and that everyone and their grandmother has been addicted to this game since the first Guitar Hero, but I was late to the party. Fortunately, this party is easy to pick up and instantly sound like a guitar god!
I mean, I'm already pretty much a guitar god, so it's totally normal for me to rock out, but wow, even T-Bone is rockin' out in high style. The control unit (i.e. the guitar controller thingie) is spot-on, there's no lag, the timing is accurate, the graphics (which are kind of irrelevant to the game, I guess) are still cool to watch, including the random antics of the guitarists when you hit super-sayan mode and start flipping out. It's just too much fun to play.
In terms of that fun-factor, this game is off the chain. It's a bit steep at $90USD, but of course that includes the controller. Is it worthy? Well, now that's a good question. 90 smackers is a lot of loot to dish out for any video game, but I gotta say: I'm glad I did it. I snagged my copy for the sexbox 360, so I got the phatty mcphatster Gibson X-Plorer with mine...and I recommend you do the same. Got the surround-sound hookup, and it's like being on stage... rocking out... makin' that axe wail... ahhh, guitar godliness is too sweet.And doesn't Lars Umlaut look kind of like Grog? There's only one person on this planet that knows the answer to that question, and if he's not playing this game, he's gonna get it for Christmas. Or Hannukah. Or Kwanzaa. Whatever works.
Holy guacamole batman, it seems like everyone's got him-or-herself a shiny new blog these days. The trick, of course, is actually writing in it. That's obviously harder than it seems. Anyway, without further ado, find Michael Koperwas and take a peek at that shriveled thing he calls his mind.
Cartoon blogger? Indeed. By the way, I love it when someone pronounces guacamole "wack-a-mole". I giggle.
While there's been a lot of speculation as to why Apple would make such a bonehead move as tie themselves to AT&T, I can kind of see how it works for them. For one, I'm sure that AT&T paid ridiculous dollars to become The Provider of Choice. Second, I'm sure that Apple was happy to have a carrier that would offer the whole supercool voicemail thing, which is one of the 'big' features of the iPhone. Third, why not? AT&T's wrangling of the Cingular network (which is actually the other way around - Cingular grabbed up the ATT mobile division and is using it to rebrand their unbelievably tarnished brand identity and reputation) makes it one of the largest (if not the largest) networks around.
So you alienate the poor jerks who are fighting the overpriced, bloated, horrible customer service companies and use T-Mobile (like me.) No big deal, we're a minority anyway. Locking the iPhone down to AT&T seems like a low blow though. Offering it primarily through AT&T, that's one thing. Locking it down? Low.
And everyone knows I'm a huge fan of Apple and all things Apple. Their product line, their philosophies (most of them, anyway), and their general Way has been something I've been preaching for years. This latest move doesn't impress me (and I know it hasn't impressed many others.) Unfortunately (and Apple knows this) the phone rocks. It's really impressive. I don't do first runs, I always wait for revisions, and I was sorely tempted to score one an iPhone. I hate AT&T/Cingular, and I was sorely tempted to get an iPhone. This lockdown crap had me up in arms, yet I was sorely tempted to nab one of these puppies.
So yeah, they're doing their thing, dancing with the devil, whatever. Their products still rule. Even though the process of unlocking the sucker requires 2 hours of skilled soldering and software manipulation (i.e. hacking this shit out of it), I'm glad it was accomplished. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there's a simpler, more easily accomplished solution or, like was mentioned in the article, the cottage industry of unlocking iPhones will spring up to provide the rest of us with phones. I think a lot of whether this cottage industry will thrive will depend entirely on how much more expensive the iPhone will get after the unlocking process. We'll see.
What'd be great would be to see Apple actually offering to unlock iPhones. Or heck, why not just sell unlocked iPhones to begin with?
How can you help but be impressed? This joins the ranks of cool stuff that I'll never have because it's too silly to actually use. But it's darned creative!
What I'm not a fan of is the $300+ price tag on some IDEs. That kills me. But I digress.
Anyway, while there's a dearth of completely free (as in beer? I keep running into that. Sounds like a Stahlmanism) software out there for blogging, there's another semi-commercial package that we installed on Sillysmart, and it's actually worth taking a longer look at. I say semi-commercial, by the way, because they offer a 'free' license for a less-feature-rich version of their software alongside super-expensive 'fuller' versions. Anyway, I'm talking about Expression Engine.
Installation was a breeze - easily as simple and straightforward as MT (although nothing, nothing in the world, is easier than Wordpress. It's like, two screens.) Getting started is a tiny bit rough - the interface is clean and fast, but the paradigm isn't the clearest. MT now has this big red "Write Entry" button that couldn't be any clearer. Oh, and did I mention it was fast? Yeah, extremely fast. As fast as MT3 was, as fast as Textpattern.
It's touted as being very flexible. I take this to mean a lot of things, but on a basic level, we'll see how tough it is to skin correctly (this'll inspire me to actually do something about my damn website. I keep putting off redesigning it.) I have to skin MT4 too, so I'll be able to draw some comparisons, no doubt.
I seriously considered throwing MT4 on Sillysmart, but I like this decision. Expression Engine seems like a very well put together, very forward engine that hasn't disappointed and (I hope) won't. In the meantime, I have a pb&j to scarf down. Hack the planet.
Anybody got an opinion? I'd love to hear it.
I exported all my entries. I blew away the MT directory. I did a fresh install into a fresh database. Then I went in and re-imported all my entries.
This method is not without its caveats. All my customizations are gone, my theme modifications are gone, heck, my themes are all gone. My images are all gone. That means I have to go through each entry that had an image associated with it and 'fix' it. Fortunately, I don't have that many images, since I only recently discovered the joy of adding pictures to my unbelievably engaging text. Still, it's a touch on the annoying side, for sure.
Now, on to The Good News. I've had a chance to give the MT4 interface a nice run, it's been put through some paces, and I've taken the opportunity to do a few things here and there. It's good. Really, really good. Significantly better than it used to be (and I kinda liked the ol' 3.3 interface). It's a good bit better than Wordpress or even Textpattern (which I love for its sheer flexibility). Oh, and the speed issue? Apparently the sluggish behavior of MT was due to my attempts at upgrading. Now that I've done a fresh install, I'm having no speed issues whatsoever. Oh, so very nice.
The final verdict: I take back all the nasty things I said about MT4 - well, most of them anyway. In the end, totally worthy. But be prepared to do it The Hard Way - there's no easy way to eat a Rhesus.
After even more bloody knuckle slugging with MT4, it's finally at the point where the theme is showing up. But wait, there's all these random tags all over it. Oh my.
Thanks to Sarah from the Six Apart forums for pointing me in the direction I needed to go in order to begin the warfare that is my experience with upgrading to MT4. Her direction got the theme working - my next trick is going to be figuring out how the heck I'm gonna get rid of all this extra tag crap. Argh, it's so frustrating. If you're on the fence at all about upgrading, I would say skip it. The fancy new interface isn't worth this pain.
After fighting (literally - my knuckles are bleeding) MT4 for almost a week, I finally stumbled upon the magic combination of setting that would allow the site to publish successfully to the right location, and produce the sweet sweet mental nectar you see before you now. I'm still not totally impressed (or especially happy) with MT4 - I think most people will want to wait on this update. Personally, I kind of wish I hadn't made the jump. But that's not how I roll. I actually like whippers. Woohoo.
MT4 is slow as hell. Okay, not totally fair - the front end of it seems fast enough. The back end is painfully, painfully slow. I've read all about people who are saying "MT4 is actually faster than 3.3". I call shenanigans on that monkey-business. The backend interface is slower'n molasses oozing uphill in the middle of winter. I've driven Hondas that were faster than this (ooooh, buuurn...). It looks nice, though - if they manage to figure out a way to speed it up, it's got definite potential. I see a lot of styling cues form Wordpress, so if you're riding the fence, you might consider giving WP a whirl first. In terms of performance, Wordpress has the definite advantage (as of this writing, that is.)
For my next trick, I'm going to try to figure out how to make MT4 actually look like its supposed to, rather than this ugly, unstyled grossness you're probably looking at now. Gah. Uncool.
That's right. You read that correctly. Now try reading it 3 times, really fast. This is actually a pretty horrible story, but one can't help but be amazed at the kind of shit that happens in the world. Read the whole story here.
So I migrated to Movable Type 4.
Ugh.
So yeah, the new interface is pretty sweet. Lots of good stuff going on there - a much-needed improvement (especially graphically) over the original. It's got lots of doo-dads. If you don't know what a doo-dad is, I recommend checking on Wikipedia.
The 'upgrade' is fairly painless - and I say fairly because the blog has only been down for two days. I'm a little frustrated with a lot of things, not the least of which is my 'mostly' working installation of Fedora, my inability to get LDAP working correctly, my inability to get Bongo working correctly, my inability to stop whining about my inability to do things. Last thing I really felt like dealing with is the MT4 upgrade process. I got it eventually, of course, but be warned - it sure ain't as smooth as all that. And worse: the new MT4 is slow. Eh.
Meanwhile, there's a Naruto marathon going on right now on Cartoon Network. Naruto is freakin' awesome. Go watch it.
I recently ran across an interesting photojournal. Seems this photographer has been riding around on trains and meeting all sorts of interesting people. Some of the shots are really good, some of them are simply okay, but they're all worth taking a look at. The quality of the shots aside, the subject matter is pretty interesting - I didn't even know people still rode around on trains, hobo-style. I suppose it makes sense... but for some reason I just always had a preconception in my head that involved... much older people. It's a culture of dirt and grime, and finding stuff, no doubt.
The only picture I didn't like at all (because it just seemed gratuitous) is the last one of the possum. The photographer has a couple of these photos in his collection - I recognize the impulse: "Controversy through shocking imagery." Taking photos of the animal in such a state of disrepair - dismembered as it is - just seems disrespectful. Granted, I have a photo of myself holding a fish I'd just finished spearing, but there's no photos of the fish half filleted with guts strewn out. It's a childish photo that brings down the value of the rest of the collection, in my opinion.
Either way, it's worth taking a look at and flipping through. There really are some excellent photos and images that will definitely impress.
This video shows why I love Jeeps, and why I want so badly for my Jeep to not suck. I mean, if only the gas mileage were a little better... and I had a roof... and maybe air-conditioning (although that's not really necessary... a fan would be cool though...)
Throwing me into the ocean armed, of course!
So this weekend's excursion spearfishing off the coast of Hollywood Beach yielded some seriously nice results. For the first time we kayaked out to the reefs, which is the highest level of luxury. Getting to your destination that quickly and with that little effort almost takes something away from the experience. Almost. Then again, getting there (and more importantly, getting back) without real effort is fantastic.
I met Gibran and Brian out on the ocean (I was running late, as usual) and they'd been diving for a bit before I got there. I missed one hogfish completely, but Gibran and I both came up with a pair of foot-and-change long hogs pretty soon after. Stoked by this progress, we headed out along a really sweet shelf of reef, looking for more. I'm really bad at identifying fish, so I was just poking around for hogs (they're the only fish I can definitely identify), but there some small grouper and some yellowtail rolling around too.
I floated around until I saw movement, swam down to investigate, and saw a really big fish. It was camouflaged, and I thought it might be a parrot or angel or something equally inedible, but then saw the telltale spines over the head... and realized it was a honkin' big hogfish. I floated the rest of the way down slowly, took aim, and scored a perfect killshot - there wasn't even a fight. Anyway, as you can see from the picture, he's a beaut.
After kayaking back and cleaning stuff off, we took the photos. Some weird crazy guy in tighty whities came strolling up asking to be in the picture. I wasn't terribly amused (as you can tell from this photo) at being next to some strange guy in his underwear.
Everyone knows I'm a big fan of the ICE:Link by Dension... I had one in my TT, and it worked pretty well. Integration was good, almost seamless, it charged, and it looked pretty nice. Monster Audio had its own version, and really, unless you were extra-super-ghetto and just connected AUX cables into the inputs on the back of your head unit, that was pretty much it.
Now there's a new player on the block. Integrated Mobile Electronics is promising to be the next generation of car audio docks for a variety of mp3 players (not just the iPod). The implementation looks slick enough - but it's not on the market yet, so we have yet to see what the real-world performance is going to be. Check it out, at least it looks superfly.
Wanna keep that iPod dry? Even underwater? Yeah, don't we all (especially if you drive a Jeep, right?) Well, check out the Drypod case. Apparently it's waterproof. Like, really waterproof. Not just mostly waterproof (like other cases we've tried...)
Ever want to fabricate your own parts to make, say... a watch? A gizmo or cool device you dreamed up? Pretty much anything? Well, now you can.
Check out the home fabrication system these guys came up with.
For a paltry $2300USD (and that really is paltry compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars fabrication equipment generally costs), you can put together all kinds of neato things. I'm duly impressed. I think everyone should have one. 3D printers are The Way Forward.
Anybody who knows me knows that I like to be at the forefront of the latest bleeding edge technology. Crapper technology. This is the sort of technology that makes me scratch my head and wonder out loud. A compost toilet...? I mean, is this for real?
Research on Wikipedia shows that it is, indeed, the real deal. Well, the concept is, anyway. Maybe it could work - personally I think the whole concept is a bit nasty. It's not the giant steaming pile of "humanure" (that's an industry term, by the way), but all the gross flies, gnats, and other winged fauna that make such a pile their home. That's just not right.
Somehow the proponents of this "green" technology/technique think that it's perfectly sanitary to do this. All I have to say is: Dark Ages and the Plague. They had shit-pits then, too, and look what it did for 'em. In fact, if I recall, it was the development of indoor plumbing that solved a whole lot of health issues (and I think it's also one of the basic tenets of civilization, along with literacy.)
This green thing is great, but don't ask me to live in humanure. I have enough to deal with cleaning up after our crazy skunk.
Still interested, huh? Well, here's more information.
Amazingly enough, this post isn't about flatulence, but it is about passing gas. Apparently, the Sierra Club has decided to judge oil companies and come up with a sort of 'rating system' to help you figure out which oil companies are the 'good' ones, and which are the horrible, mustache-wearing 'bad' ones. I understand that certain oil companies (i.e. Exxon) are exceptionally insensitive to the needs of the environment - but they are an enormous, enormous company, and they're not particularly well organized. They came about well before many of the newer companies, and their infrastructure doesn't seem well-designed to deal with the rigors of modern energy-conservation and environmental concerns. Companies like BP, on the other hand, have proven themselves to be agile and very market-driven. People want to feel less bad about driving 8 mpg Hummers, they buy BP gas.
But it's all hype, and it's all driven by their respective marketing departments. The BP logo is even a green/yellow sunburst flower thing. You feel greener just pulling into it. But if you read the Sierra Club's report, even though BP is the 'top of the barrel', they have plenty of black marks, including running the highest-polluting plant in the world. So really I just get the feeling that this report is less about empirical data, and more about 'how green is their marketing initiative?"
On the plus side, at least the oil companies at the top of the barrel are saying that they're gonna do something about it.
Read the Sierra Club article here.
In even more ecologically-enhanced news (I must be on some kind of green kick here...) check this out. I'm even thinking of submitting a design. Either way, take a look at the gallery, because there's some seriously neat designs there!
