January 2008 Archives

[Moozik: Gary Numan - I Die: You Die]

But, not really anyone else worth seeing. Bugger. Well, Love and Rockets perhaps but an overall disappointing lineup this year.

Still, nice to see Kraftwerk on the bill at a festival and I'm hoping they'll add some other concert dates for 2008.

[Moozik: Ministry - Scarecrow]

I'm sitting here after just watching Jo-Wilfried Tsonga demolish Rafael Nadal and can't help but think we're seeing the start of something special. Tsonga played some unbelievable tennis and at times all Nadal could do was smile. He's now in the Australian Open final and will play either Federer or Djokavic.

I'm really hoping Tsonga isn't just a one tournament wonder and we see him do well in other events this year. One thing's for sure, he won't be 38 in the world when the rankings come out.

[Moozik: Cop Shoot Cop - $10 Bill]

Arizona doesn't have any anti-gouging laws and with the Superbowl a little over a week away, it would seem local businesses are taking full advantage of that fact. Today's Arizona Republic had some interesting observations of prices during Superbowl weekend and then one week later.

Round-trip air fare from Boston to Phoenix: $2700. One week later, $363.

Four-day economy-car rental from Dollar: $432. One week later, $99.

Four-night stay at Hyatt Place Scottsdale: $2800. One week later, $796.

[Moozik: She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart]

So, it would appear money will be on its way for me to do my part to stimulate the economy.

Sources on Capitol Hill and at the Treasury Department said the plan would send checks of $600 to individuals and $1,200 to couples who paid income tax and who filed jointly.

People who did not pay federal income taxes but who had earned income of more than $3,000 would get checks of $300 per individual or $600 per couple.

[Moozik: The Mission - Chelsea Blue]

First trailer I've seen for The Dark Knight. Heath certainly portrays The Joker a little differently than Jack Nicholson.

[Moozik: Blancmange - Don't Tell Me]

The majority of Tennis commentators on ESPN this year are quite good. They occasionally offer some valuable insight, the odd tidbit of information, and some are quite a good laugh. Valuable insight though is one thing Pam Shriver does not bring.

Tonight while watching Ana Ivanovic beat Venus Williams, the camera panned into Ivanovic's box and we saw her Mum. One of the commentators mentioned that she was a lawyer. Pam offered the following sage like wisdom.

Boy, I don't know what type of lawyer she is but she looks like a real good one.

Oh yes, you read that right. Reunion tour 2008.

It's been really good going back to these songs after such a long while. Many of them have never been played live. I'm looking forward to performing them with Alison for all the fans who've enjoyed our music through the years but never had a chance to see Yazoo in concert.

And the dates themselves.

* Wed 04 June, Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
* Sat 07 June, Manchester Apollo
* Thu 12 June, Wolverhampton Civic Hall
* Sun 15 June, Brighton Centre
* Wed 18 June, London Hammersmith Apollo

[Moozik: Cop Shoot Cop - Surprise, Surprise]

The first week of this year's Australian Open is now over and as always I'm totally addicted. It's all Tennis, all the time in my house let me tell you. The past couple of days have had 3 amazing 5 set matches that have been an absolute treat if you're as much of a Tennis fan as I am.

Roger Federer vs Janko Tipsarevic - Federer finally coming out on top with a 10-8 win in the final set. For a while I thought Tipsarevic had a chance of winning. Both players were playing amazing Tennis.

Andy Roddick vs Philipp Kohlschreiber - Kohlschreiber playing the match of his life to win the match. Both players played amazingly well with Roddick serving 42 aces and Kohlschreiber hitting 100+ winners.

Lleyton Hewitt vs Marcos Baghdatis - Hewitt won this epic and historic 5 set match. Historic because they didn't start the match until 11:49pm. The final point was won at 4:34am with 9 thousand fans still in the stands.

I'm hoping next week's matches prove to be as entertaining as this week's. Best opening week of a major tournament I can remember.

[Moozik: Curve - Cuckoo]

I love my DVR. It has two tuners so I can watch live TV while recording another channel. Or record two channels while watching a third I'd already recorded. Which is all kinds of convenient. But it comes at a price. I now have more TV shows & movies to watch than I'm ever going to get around to watching in my lifetime. But at least there will be something for a rainy day or lazy Sunday afternoons.

I also love music videos. Being an MTV addict in the 80s will do that to you. So I usually record my fair share of stuff from VH1 Classic seeing as they're the only "music" channel that actually play videos these days. But this presents a problem because I like to keep certain videos permanently so I can watch them whenever I want. That takes up precious space on the DVR hard drive.

I read all kinds of warranty voiding solutions on how to get the content off of my DVR's hard drive and thought there has to be an easier way. So, I says to myself, why not just do it the old fashioned way? And I did. I hooked up an audio/video cable to the output of my DVR and attached the other end to the input jack of my LiteOn DVD recorder [0]. And lo, music DVDs are created. Oh yes, I'm the master of low-tech ;-) I'm sure there's some loss of video/audio quality in my approach but to be honest, I can't tell and hey, it works and sure beats removing the hard drive and ripping/transcoding the content on my computer.

[0] Which I also love because it's a play anything, any region, PAL/NTSC/Secam/Alien box of goodness.

[Moozik: The Mission - Father]

I'm now on my third pair of Sony EX71 headphones. My third pair in a couple of years actually. Of course I would much prefer a pair of Shure E3c headphones but I must admit that my headphones take quite a beating. So it's not so much the fact that I'm a cheap git as it is being afraid of breaking my expensive purchase.

For the most part I've actually been quite happy with my $50 EX71's. I usually have them in my ears for most of the day listening to my iPod at work. They fit rather nicely and my ears don't ache at all after usage. And while the sound quality obviously cannot be in any way compared to the E3c's, they are far and away an order of magnitude better than Apple's iPod headphones.

[Moozik: Siouxsie & The Banshees - Overground]

Websites that autostart music are the bane of existence. No really, they are.

I'm already listening to music, so shut the fuck up. thanks.

if your visitors want to listen to music they will listen to their mp3, your site is not a jukebox. In fact they most likely already are listening music and yours is only mixing with it, creating an unbearable and unwanted musical chaos.

[Moozik: IAMX - Heatwave]

Last night's first episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite good I thought. A couple of niggling plot holes but for the most part I found myself enjoying it. I'll certainly be watching the next episode tonight. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Summer Glau is in it ;-)

[Moozik: Boards Of Canada - Kaini Industries]

Last night when I got home I just had to snap a couple of pics.

[Moozik: Editors - When The Anger Shows]

I love the winter in Arizona for many reasons. Not least of which is that I get to order my favorite American cheese, Brick Cheese from Wisconsin. Sending cheese to Arizona from halfway across the country is not a bright idea at any other time of the year but works out well during the winter.

I've been ordering cheese from Cheese To Please in Wisconsin since 2002 (it was called Plymouth Cheese Counter back then) and can't recommend it highly enough. Don't be put off by the circa 1997 web site, the cheese and the customer service are second to none.

[Moozik: The Cure - If Only Tonight We Could Sleep]

Hey, there's nothing like being judged on academic merit. And this is nothing like being judged on academic merit.

A Cambridge University admissions tutor has admitted he checks up on students applying to his college by browsing their Facebook profiles. Dr Richard Barnes, senior tutor at Emmanuel College, confessed in the college magazine.

"This has been the year in which I joined Facebook," he wrote. "I have to confess that I actually joined to see what I was missing and also to check up (discreetly) on applicants for a college position. I had been alerted to the value of this by some of our members in the City."

[Moozik: Dead Or Alive - It's Been A Long Time]

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Darkest Star]

I found out yesterday that there's a chance my company will pay for me to go to this year's Open Source Convention in Portland. Which would be lovely as I haven't been since the 2001 conference in San Diego.

Of course, I've probably just totally jinxed it by writing this and as always, time will tell.

[Moozik: Lush - The Invisible Man]

I liked the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. I did. It was funny and pure mindless entertainment, nothing more nothing less. The second movie wasn't as good. As I mentioned last January it was amusing in places but seemed to go on forever and the plot was all rather confusing. Last week I finally got around to watching the third movie. Oh dear. I really tried to like it. I swear I did. Again though, far too drawn out and confusing. A hundred little things going on at once with no cohesion.

Love him or hate him, Mark Kermode doesn't do a bad job of summing up my thoughts. I disagree with him about the first movie, but he makes some good points about the third.

[Moozik: Girls Under Glass - Ohne Dich]

Rejoice, for the day I'd never thought would get here is almost upon us. Oh yes, season 4 of Lost begins on January 31st. ABC were showing previews last night and I'm so excited. Now, I wonder how many episodes they had in the bag prior to the writer's strike? This season was going to be a little odd even before the strike so I'm hoping they're not just going to show five or six episodes before going on hiatus.

Still, my Lost addiction has been somewhat satiated by the season 3 DVD boxset I got for Christmas. Actually it made it worse as I'm dying to know how things turn out. I don't ever remember looking forward to the start of a TV series this much.

Yeah, I know, you can't quite put into words how sad I am ;-)

[Moozik: The Cure - This Twilight Garden]

You won't find some of my favorite Cure songs on any album [0]. Over the years they've produced some really bloody good b-sides that, in my opinion, should have replaced the a-side and at the very least should have been on the album.

Harold And Joe. Featured on the Never Enough single. I'll be honest, I don't like Never Enough and I hardly played it. By accident I heard Harold And Joe at a friend's house and bought the CD single just for that. Just Robert, some synths and subdued vocals.

This Twilight Garden. Featured on the High single. Why oh why was this song not on the Wish album? By far and away one of the better Cure songs I've ever heard. To be honest, this is probably the song I'd give someone to listen to if they'd been living in a cave and had never heard anything by The Cure.

The Big Hand. Featured on the A Letter To Elise single. First heard the live version on my very worn copy of The Cure Play Out VHS tape. I must have rewound and played that song so many times. Again, why this was left off the Wish album boggles the mind.

[0] Studio albums that is, they all appear on the Join The Dots box set.

[Moozik: Clan Of Xymox - Stranger]

I dunno, going 10mph on a motorway seems like a perfectly safe thing to do if you ask me. Ahem. There's no minimum speed limit on a motorway in England so it looks like the only thing they could get her for was driving without reasonable consideration.

A woman has been banned from driving for seven days after she drove along a motorway at speeds lower than 10mph.

Stephanie Cole, 58, of Fishponds, Bristol, repeatedly braked as she straddled the hard shoulder of the M32.

When police caught her there was a sign on her car which read: "I don't do fast. If I'm too slow for you DON'T hoot just overtake!"

Mrs Cole, who admitted driving without reasonable consideration, was also ordered to take another driving test.

[Moozik: The Cure - Sinking]

I always have multiple books on the go. Perhaps I should actually finish one before picking up another.

Yeah that's the same Terry Pratchett book I've been trying to finish for the last year.

[Moozik: The Cure - The Big Hand]

Please provide more coverage of Britney Spears. Really. It's not quite annoying enough yet and you have much work to do.

[Moozik: Lard - Pineapple Face]

You live and you learn. You learn that in Iowa, Democrats vote with their feet, by raising their hands and moving to different parts of the room to signify their support for one candidate or another. It's genius I tell you. What could possibly go wrong with a system that doesn't bother with pesky secret ballots in favour of a process in which your mates help sway your vote?

Another thing I've learned about America after living here for 10 years.

[Moozik: IAMX - Nightlife]

Yesterday I decided it was time to acquire an OpenID for the first time. OpenID is a nice idea in theory, a decentralized single sign-on system that means I don't have to remember usernames/passwords. Blogs that require you to sign in before allowing comments often support OpenID so I figured I'd give it a try. I knew little or nothing about OpenID before deciding to undertake this little experiment so after reading more about it my next step was to choose one of the providers.

claimID was my first stop. The account creation process was as painless as it can get, and after adding the necessary code to my site here to delegate http://kevinspencer.org as my OpenId URL I was ready. I picked a MT4 blog (perlbuzz) that supported OpenId as my first sign in test. And attempt to sign in I did.

Firefox was awfully busy communicating back and forth between claimID and perlbuzz but after 5 seconds or so came back with a The page isn't redirecting properly error. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. Lovely. I must have screwed something up when configuring.

So, I sent a quick email to the support folks at claimID so they could tell me what I'd done wrong. I got a really fast reply from a claimID developer and to be honest, you can't ask for better support from a free service.

Hey Kevin,

Aye on this. I've been able to replicate the error and will be in touch with 6A's folks to see if we can't get it fixed. I'll be in touch.

Unfortunately I was still itching to get OpenId up and running. So, back to the list of providers I go. myOpenID was my next choice.

The account creation process was slightly more painful than claimID and after signing up I could find no mention of how you go about delegating your own URL. After my experience with claimID I knew what I needed to do but the fact that myOpenID doesn't provide that information in an easily accessible way was surprising. In fact I had to google their site to even find any mention of URL delegation. So, once I'd modified my site to use myOpenID instead of claimID I was all set to try that perlbuzz login once more. And login I did.

Success! Well, kind of. The perlbuzz login process was complete and I could now comment. But my commenter name appeared as http://kevinspencer.org instead of Kevin Spencer and you can't change it. Which looks all rather arsey. I had a quick peek around perlbuzz to see if anyone else had signed in with OpenID to see how it looked for them. Sure enough, I did see some URLs but there were the odd couple that did display actual names.

Hmm. So again, maybe I've configured something wrong. I sent off another quick email to the myOpenID support folks to see if they could spot what I did wrong. Again, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got a reply.

Kevin-

Your display name is left up to the site to decide. By default, the only information the site receives about you is your OpenID URL. Optionally, it can attach a request for your name, email address, or other information to the authentication request. (If a site does make a request for more data, myOpenID will always ask you for permission before sending it.) Then we'll send that information, and the site has the option of using it.

So I'm left slightly bewildered. Seeing as others have managed to comment via OpenID and their name is displayed correctly leads me to think that it's perhaps not the fault of MT4.

To be honest, this whole thing was a bit of a pain in the arse and 24 hours later I'm left unsatisfied with the outcome of my OpenID experiment. Sure I can try to sign into a non MT4 site with my OpenID and do some more research but at this point I'm a little underwhelmed and not sure it's worth the effort. I just want to comment on someone's blog, it shouldn't be this painful.

I dunno, I'll wait to see if I hear anything back from the claimID guys and maybe try their service again. In contrast to OpenID, I had the exact opposite experience with TypeKey a couple of years ago as that just worked the way I expected.

Update: Success! Again, kind of. It would appear that it's just a MT issue. I was able to sign in with my OpenID on a Blogger powered site and everything just worked.

[Moozik: Diary Of Dreams - She]

I'm thinking it would be awfully handy if Google Reader would tell me if a feed I'm subscribed to no longer exists instead of silently failing in the background. At least Bloglines would display a little red exclamation point next to the feed in question so that I wouldn't just assume the site hadn't updated in a while.

[Moozik: Hanzel Und Gretyl - Hallo Berlin]

Back in June of last year I mentioned the disturbing out of sight, out of mind attitude towards our plastic ocean. Here's another recent article I found.

Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered if the rumors are true. Are there really ‘continents’, or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. One plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas.

But if there are massive islands of junk out there, why doesn’t everyone already know about it, and why are we doing something about it? Well, there are several reasons. First, no one is keen to claim responsibility for these monstrosities, which exists in one of the most remote spots on the planet. It’s easy to ignore than deal with, at least in the short term. Clean up is nearly impossible at this point, so many have adopted the famous ostrich saying of burying their heads in the sand. Even so, this polluted, chemical filled junk is finding it’s way onto our dinner tables.

There's a map of the new trash continents.

[Moozik: IAMX - Song Of Imaginary Beings]

There's a really interesting discussion of RAII and Perl on the p5p mailing list currently taking place. The snippet of code that started the ball rolling is the following RAII idiom.

for my $host (@hosts_to_query) {
   my $lock = acquire_host_lock($host);
   query_host($host);
}

Perl will warn about that because $lock is declared, assigned, but never used. So if you're looking at that code for the first time you would (quite rightly) wonder what the heck $lock is used for if we're not, er, using it ;-)

Aristotle Pagaltzis explains.

Because `acquire_host_lock` returns an object which releases the lock when it is DESTROYed, and by keeping a reference to it in a variable you make sure that happens at the end of the block when `$lock` goes out of scope.

Ah, so the magic happens in a DESTROY block when $lock goes out of scope. Interesting, but let's be honest, that's not the most intuitive thing in the world if that code isn't commented.

Michael Schwern summed it up and made me laugh in the process.

My real problem with RAII in perl is that it's not transparent. The user must declare and manage a mysterious object that they really could not care less about and are likely to wonder at the purpose of, possibly forget and maybe even store somewhere.

Since the user of acquire_host_lock() isn't supposed to do anything with $lock it's just a little piece of technological fluff. Like some weird ritual.

"Here, hold this glass statue of a badger over your head."
"Why?"
"Don't ask questions, it just makes it work. Now turn 3 times widdershins..."

They're not supposed to do anything with it and it's bad if they *do*. Why are they holding onto it? It just leaks complexity and creates opportunity for breakage.

Update: Of course, I was a little off base here. It was proposed that Perl warn. It doesn't currently warn. Thanks Aristotle for pointing that out ;-)

[Moozik: Android Lust - The Want]

Photo find of the day. Makes me smile to see two old muckers together.

Photo credit erasureinfo.com.