Planet Yakko

Dan: NCUR 2009

Dan — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:44:49 +0000

On Thursday, I spoke at NCUR (National Conference of Undergraduate Research) about my neural network battery prediction model.

Me in front of the UW-La Crosse clock tower

Brian: Safeway Programs

endenizen — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:11:47 +0000

Safeway has far too many “special things” going on. My receipt for one sandwich is about a foot long. Here’s what we’ve got…

You have accumulated $151.59 of $600 toward a PowerPump Rewards Card.
You have accumulated $0.00 of $100 in Gift Card purchases toward a Double Gas Reward.
As of today, you have accumulated 5 of 7 toward your Free Signature Cafe Sandwich!
You have accumulated $15.96 of $240 towards a savings of 10% on your next purchase at Safeway. Now through 12/20/08

I suppose I don’t mind that all these things are going on. They don’t really affect me except in the off chance that I get something free from them. It’s not as if I’m shopping at Safeway instead of some other store because of all their great rewards. I shop there because it’s across the street. Or down the street (from work), as was the case today when I bought a sandwich for lunch.

Funny story, I won a free ipod shuffle from Safeway (when I was again buying a sandwich, like I do) during their “grand re-opening” on Church & Market. I didn’t even know it was the grand re-opening, much less that they were giving away free stuff. When my sandwich was swiped on the scanner and the register made a little beepy noise, I was more disappointed than excited because I thought something had gone wrong, which would inevitably result in me standing in line for a few seconds longer. Actually I did end up standing in line a few seconds longer because it seemed 10 other people won ipods at the exact same moment. This line I did not mind so much. I like gadgets. I have quite a collection. Let me show you them.

Brian: Adventures in Real Life

endenizen — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:52:48 +0000

Today I went to the library. The real library. With actual paper. It was my first time to any San Francisco library. I went to the main branch downtown in the big fancy building. It’s pretty awesome as far as libraries go. But then it should be seeing as how…

The Main Library is the resource center for the entire San Francisco Public Library system and the libraries of Northern California.

Cool, huh? So they have a lot of books. Today was just an overview though so I started out on the 1st floor and wandered through the Fiction/Mystery/Sci-Fi stacks. There’s something about looking at physical copies of books by my favorite authors. Perhaps it validates them in my mind as “good” authors. As if there are no books written by bad authors. When I got to the aisle where I expected to find all of Neal Stephenson’s books, I found some guy, maybe 65-75 years old, who engaged me in probably the most thought-provoking conversation I’ve had so far today. Maybe even this week.

We talked authors and sci-fi, and how it’s often a misunderstood genre, while I was pointing out that exactly one of Neal Stephenson’s books had made it to those shelves (there were a few more in plain-old fiction and perhaps others in even more generic or specific stacks). Then we talked real science and politics and technology and space. Hard to say where these things come from. I suppose many sci-fi fans share some interests in at least a couple of these topics. Sci-fi tends to be about the future. Whenever a story takes place, you can usually place it in your own timeline as something to seek or avoid. Many works can be found in the sci-fi stacks about cloning, space elevators, interplanetary travel and more general topics like morality, politics and religion. Orson Scott Card’s series that began with “Ender’s Game” starts out quite simple but by “Xenocide” and “Children of the Mind” becomes very philosophical. I’m curious to see where Neal Stephenson’s next book “Anathem” will be shelved.

So back to the conversation I was having. This guy wants to put floating habitats up in space, which is the topic of many sci-fi books, but he really wants to do it. He’s starting a political party with very forward-thinking ideas. IE: Set up organizations to measure the carbon effect of everything, make people and companies responsible and carbon-neutral, build houses in space, etc. Cool ideas, for sure, but that an everyday voter would even understand what he’s trying to do is quite far fetched. Take Sarah Palin, for instance. She’ll teach our children that the world is 6000 years old and that fact is not enough to stop her from getting into the White House. Either people don’t care enough about science, or they do, and they call it God.

Enough about that. Time to eat this delicious $5 footlong from Subway. Mmm. Toasty! It’s too bad I’m not popular enough to get it for free just for mentioning them in my blog. They also might not want me to use slogans from the competition. But I do what I want! If I want to say Subway is Mmm Toasty there’s no stopping me! If I want to say it’s 15 minutes can save you 15% or more then that’s just what I’ll do! For the record… the sandwich was actually $6.50. But then, I didn’t wait 15 minutes.

Chad and Melissa: Bucket o' Pop and Barrel o' Popcorn

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:30:09 +0000

Melissa and I went to the movies and played the Deal or No Deal arcade game. It offers points towards concession food. Melissa and I did pretty well on two bucks worth and earned two pops and a bucket of popcorn. We don't normally do concessions so I'm not sure when they got so big but they were huge. Afterwards, we weren't hungry for dinner and we hadn't even tried and finish the popcorn. No wonder concessions are so expensive, you're buying enough food to feed a small African country....

Chad and Melissa: Cheap electronics

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:09:32 +0000

A few years ago I broke down and bought a wireless router for my DSL back home. I do not own a laptop but I occasionally bring home my laptop from work. This only merits mention for two reasons. One was that I got it on clearance for five bucks. The other is that I saw my new neighbor for the first time when he was using my wireless internet around midnight on my front lawn. Weird. It finally died the other day and after a week or two of looking I finally broke down and went to buy a new one. I had hoped to get one that I could install my own software for more geek value. Those ended up being over fifty bucks so I resigned myself to a more run of the mill model. I hit various office supply and electronics stores and the best deal was at Sears of all places. I was going to head back there when I stopped at Meijer for a few groceries. I came out with a forty dollar router for seventeen bucks. :)...

Brian: WE’LL DO IT LIVE!

endenizen — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:34:44 +0000

I realized something today about blogging. Titles are evil. When I come up with a title. It sets the direction of the entire post. I always have trouble veering from that direction to write anything else that’s on my mind. Well, I shouldn’t say “always”… sometimes I write things that are quite random indeed. Anyway, I think without titles blogging becomes easier. If I just wrote short posts perhaps I could stay on topic, hit the post button, then move on. If I have more to say there’s no problem with starting an entirely *new* post. However, there’s a point at which one can post too many things. Perhaps an appropriate balance is the holy grail of blogging. Or, perhaps it’s all relative and I can post as much as I want without anyone even reading it in the first place.

I’ve been watching the olympics. Table tennis mostly. I don’t really participate in any of the other sports so I just kind of stare in awe when i watch things like swimming or gymnastics. Table tennis, on the other hand, is something I play quite a bit at work. So much, in fact, that maybe it should be on my business card. Perhaps the job title of “Software Engineer” underneath the text “imeem.com” presumes a certain level of table tennis skill and I should just leave it at that. Perhaps…

This weekend was quite a weekend in San Francisco. At least from where I was standing. Saturday the city performed a simulated terrorist attack in which many local and federal agencies participated. They even got some students to come out and pretend to be dead or dying from the adverse effects of said attack. Cool huh? I got pictures: simulated terrorist attack on San Francisco

After that, zombies started to take over the city. Starting at 2pm, zombies (and a few people wearing masks and fake blood) met at SFMOMA to begin terrorizing helpless citizens. At the rallying cry of BRAAAAIIIINNNSSSS, the zombies began following a predetermined path through downtown up to the Transamerica Building. At this point, the zombies saw a large group of scientology protesters and attacked mercilessly. I’ll leave out the gory details suffice it to say, there was a zombie/protester dance-off. Then the police showed up and the zombies quickly shuffled off to Chinatown.

Ah Chinatown. A few blocks of which are year-round tourist central. Turns out it’s actually a lot like China because actual Chinese people live here. But don’t mind that, there are plenty of trinkets and dim sum. I always wonder how much tourists have heard about San Francisco. Sure they’ve heard it’s a beautiful place and there’s a lot to do and so many cool things to see and the weather is always pretty good. Do they know about all the protests? The crazy homeless people? The Castro? I’d bet very few of them have heard of the flash mobs. They’re such a local thing and by their very nature, don’t exist for long enough for any big news crews to show up. Anyway, getting back to the point, a flash mob through Chinatown is hilarious. All the tourists, of course, have cameras so you’ll see them clicking away happily without a care in the world. Maybe they think something unusual is happening and it’ll be on the news later and they’ll be able to say “oh I was there, I have pictures!” Maybe they’re just confused and they need to take pictures so they can go back to their hotel and digest what has just transpired. They’re certainly not afraid that zombies are taking over the city. That’s rather unfortunate…

After Chinatown, the rallying cry came again and the mob continued through Union square, interrupting a Korean Day festival that was taking place and causing quite a stir among the attendees. For the final stop, the zombies proceeded to the cable-car turnaround at the end of Powell St where some performers were playing drums. Everyone got into the zombie spirit of things and… just stood there waiting in line for the next cable car. Oh well, at least we tried. Pictures are here: zombie mob

On Sunday, Barack Obama came to San Francisco and made a record $7.8 million. I didn’t make it out to that event (the $2,300 entrance fee was a bit high for me) but I did take pictures of the Gumball 3000 start just one week earlier at the same location: Gumball 3000 Pictures. Of course, the entrance fee to that event was $100,000 but they let people hang out and stare at the cars for free. I’m all about the free.

In other news, I’ve fallen somewhat in love. It’s going well. I was getting so sick of caring about myself all the time it’s nice to have someone else to care about. Perhaps there will be more on that later. Perhaps…

In even other news, they’re now selling absinthe at Safeway. It’s the good kind too: Lucid Absinthe Superieure from France. And the not-quite-so-good-but-still-absinthe-kind from Alameda (just across the bay): St George Absinthe Verte. I’m excited that people are catching on and actually stocking this stuff instead of being afraid that it’s still illegal or something. It’s good stuff, and quite a bit different than any other kind of alcohol.

In even other news, I’m reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It’s pretty classic (seeing as it’s 30 years old and #1 in the Genetics and Zoology categories on Amazon). I like it a lot.

In even other (looks like I’m running out of text-alterations) news, I’ve been working on a fancy perl script lately that makes Meevoos. You can see my most recent example here: Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy (Meevoo). The process involves extracting each frame from a video, then recreating each frame using tile-size versions of other frames. It makes more sense if you look at it. So, just do that.

Meevoo - Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy - Brian Ferrell

Since I’m running out of text-alterations, I’ll just treat this “other” news as a new paragraph. Hey, look at that, more news! I’ve been meeting with a local group of hackers called NoiseBridge. We’re trying to pull together enough money and people to create a sustainable “hackerspace” where people can go to be creative and make things using computers, or microcontrollers, or lasers, or anything really. The group will incorporate as a non-profit once we get the paperwork finished up and we already have a promising location to begin operations in the office upstairs from the EFF.

Well that’s probably enough news to keep you busy for a while. It’s certainly keeping me busy.

I’ll leave you with a cut off of Sting’s new album:

Chad and Melissa: Is it bad when the starter doesn't turnover?

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:21:02 +0000

It looks like I'm going to need a new battery. I was able to jump the car and get it working but it wasn't holding a charge. Good thing that my portable jump starter was charged. It did better than when the alternator went out a few months ago. It was back than I discovered the hard way that they need to be recharged every month or two even without use. They won't hold a charge for six or seven months. :(...

Chad and Melissa: Reading material... Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:16:04 +0000

Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott is a bit of a unique book but you really should read it. Hopefully, it will get you to think about things just a little bit different....

Chad and Melissa: A trip to the zoo

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:56:20 +0000

I've mentioned John Ball Zoo before so I'll skip the details. We went again because our membership to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum got us in free. It isn't huge but its big enough for the kids to have fun with and close by. We really need to get them out to Potter Park Zoo and Binder Park Zoo. I figure they'd get a real kick out of the Wild Africa exhibit. We'll see next year whether it'll be worth the drive or if they'll still be too young. The Detroit Zoo will definitely have to wait a while....

Chad and Melissa: Cousin's bachelor party

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:39:03 +0000

My cousin Andy's finally getting married and today was his bachelor party. I skipped the golf and the evening activities. However, I was able to kill part of an afternoon there. I knew a few of the people there but most of them were my cousin's friends who I didn't know. I gotta be honest, I hate being in those situations. I'm not out-going and it takes me a while to get comfortable around people. One of these days I've got to work on that....

Dan: Update

Dan — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:46:39 +0000

It’s been a long time since my last blog entry. I thought I would use this entry to post a few of the things that I’ve been doing over the Summer. I’ll keep it short and sweet and let the videos do most of the talking.

I spent the past month on the 2008 North American Solar Challenge. WMU’s car is called the Sunseeker. Here is a video of Alex, one of our drivers, doing a figure eight:

I am visiting my parents in China for the next three weeks, and I just got into Shanghai on Thursday. I spent my first whole day here yesterday. Here is a video from the window of the restaurant that we went to last night (Laris):

Laris was right on the Bund, and you could see Pudong from the windows. The lights on the buildings were unbelievable. Two of the buildings (on the right) turn into huge video screens at night. They also had video screen ads on boats. Here is another video from the window:

After having dinner, we went next door to the Glamour Bar which was built inside one of the original Bund buildings:

We plan on going to Pudong today. I’ll try to post some pictures or videos. Also, we are leaving for Beijing tomorrow.

Chad and Melissa: Whitehat's wedding

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:22:55 +0000

Interesting thing about the internet is that you sometimes meet people for the first time when you are invited to their wedding. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay very long at the reception. Melissa's parents were watching the kids at their house and we didn't want to leave them with the kids too long. If the kids get tired they can get more rambunctious than usual. It was fun though. I talk to a few people online who are members of the computer club at Western Michigan University. It was nice to match names and faces to people I usually only know by their handles. I also got a chance to talk to Tim who I went to school with but I hadn't seen in a while. Never actually got a chance to talk to whitehat or his bride but that's life I suppose....

Chad and Melissa: Home joy! Kid problems... not so much

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:26:54 +0000

There always needs to be balance in the universe. One one hand I am very happy to be home. On the other hand, the problems with kids at the daycare definitely bring me back down. Life is like that though....

Chad and Melissa: Almost time to go home soon

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:46:57 +0000

It is almost time to go home. Okay, It is a couple of days yet but I am really looking forward to being home. The classes have been okay. A few were good and a few bad and that is to be expected. Tuesday night they provided tickets to a Cardinals' game so that gave me something to do at least for that night. The rest has been boring. I went for a couple of walks, watched tv, and read the newspaper the hotel provides. I walked over to the arch but at seven bucks it really wasn't worth the glorified elevator ride. I looked at the brewery and stuff like that but they were either closed in the evenings or not worth the money. I suppose that makes me boring but what do you do? I've gone one more day of classes tomorrow and than an early flight. I figure that makes tomorrow an early night. I need to arrange a cab or see if the concierge knows of another way of getting me to the Hotel. The flight is at 6:30 a.m. so the shuttle and such won't get me there in time. We'll see what happens. Either way daddy gets to his kids soon and that's a lot better than the just talking to them over the phone....

Chad and Melissa: Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:53:11 +0000

I had figured I'd miss mass this weekend because of traveling to St. Louis and my own complete inability to plan ahead. However, I discovered that the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louiswas only a mere 4.1 miles away in 100 degree weather. I needed to clear my head so I went for a walk. I managed to arrive just in time for communion drenched in sweat. I suppose it was better than missing it completely. The Basilica, on the other hand, was beautiful. I grew up in a church that was functional. I'm not saying it was ugly. It just wasn't built for beauty in the same way that the Basilica was. St. Joe in Pewamo was nice but again it was built for functionality. The Basilica is completely different. It is the kinda church you think about as being Europe or something like that. It has the mosaics and stone you don't really see most places. I highly recommend stopping by if you're ever in the area. They do have tours and a museum but just go to one of the masses....

Chad and Melissa: A nice new laptop bag

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:48:47 +0000

I finished registering for PowerSchool University here in St. Louis. I brought a laptop with me but I also requested that they provide one as well. I'm glad I did. They had some stuff configured already saving me some time. The highlight was the stuff I can keep. They provided a backpack of reasonably decent quality that's setup with a pocket for a laptop. It makes me feel bad that I don't actually own a laptop to go with it. Hopefully, now that Melissa's done with school and working a little more, I'll be able to get one....

Chad and Melissa: Finally arrived at the hotel in St. Louis

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:27:59 +0000

In case you don't know. I'm in St. Louis this week for training on our student information system, Powerschool. I finally arrived at the Hilton at the Ballpark in St. Louis. In case you hadn't guessed, the hotel is almost on top of the Cardinal's Busch Stadium. Unfortunately, I don't have a view of the stadium from the room but the cityscape is still nice. The flight was from Grand Rapids to Detroit to St. Louis and a bit rough for my stomach. I'm glad it wasn't any longer or I might have had to use the "motion discomfort" bag. I got lucky in Detroit and ran into a few people I'd met at a previous Powerschool thing. The reason I was lucky is that I had no idea where the shuttle bus was once I got to St. Louis. It took forever getting to the hotel because we thought we paid at the bus and ended up at the back of a long line to get tickets for the shuttle bus. We could have bought our tickets while we were waiting for our luggage and saved a bunch of time. I guess its a lesson for next time. There isn't much to do today so I'll have to find something to do. Probably go for a walk and explorer the downtown a bit. I'm not sure though since its extremely hot for my tastes....

Chad and Melissa: Night without the kids

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:20:40 +0000

Melissa had some friends over last night so we had my mom watch them overnight. It was weird night. First, I can only really remember one other night where I was without the kids. Throughout the night I kept stopping and wondering where the kids were. Even this morning I still kept wondering why the kids were so quiet. Once we picked up the kids things began to feel normal again. I'm not going to pretend that its always fun dealing with how the kids behave but they mean well and it is what I'm used to....

Chad and Melissa: Satellite dish was finally moved

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:33:20 +0000

The satellite dish guy finally came out and moved the dish to get it farther from the tree. The funny part is we haven't been having any problems the last week or so. Regardless, I'm glad he's out and got it done. The receiver says the signal's a lot stronger so maybe we can go back to not thinking about it for a while. The best part was that the guy had to borrow our digital camera to take pictures of the before and after. It seems that after vehicle problems and scheduling problems he now had camera problems....

Chad and Melissa: Bad Business and ice cream trucks

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:37:47 +0000

I see plenty of things that I just do not understand. Today was a good example. There's an ice cream truck that goes through our neighborhood periodically. Today he was speeding down a residential street faster than I would drive. Obviously not looking for customers. We were in the driveway and couldn't flag him down in time. We really did want to get ice cream that day. Now, you'd think with gas being as expensive as it is that they'd be *desperate* for customers....

Eric: The Dvorak Layout

Eric — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:36:39 +0000

Well, I’ve spent the last 6-9 months typing in the Dvorak Keyboard Layout. A little history lesson for those who don’t know much about qwerty and why it sucks. Qwerty was developed as a standard typewriter layout to prevent the typewriter from jamming as often. This means the most frequented keys are spaced out so that they are in harder to reach spots on the keyboard. Of course, as we made the switch from the older typewriters that jammed often, to more reliable typewriters, and eventually to computer keyboards, the standard layout was never changed. Dr. August Dvorak had designed a more logical layout in the 30s, which focused on putting the most-used characters in the English language on the easier to reach keys, but people were already too adjusted to the qwerty layout for there to be any real push to switch. Dvorak’s layout is more ergonomic, meaning its easier on your fingers/wrist, which would mean a less severe Carpal Tunnel problem in the US. It’s also argued that since it is a more efficient layout, higher speeds can be achieved, and the learning curve isn’t so steep.

My personal experience with dvorak was a good one. With qwerty, I would occasionally get really stiff/sore wrists when I spent too much time on my computer, when i was using the dvorak layout, this didn’t happen once. I achieved a maximum speed of ~70WPM during the brief period I was using it, but that was still slowly increasing to this date. My maximum qwerty speed was over 100WPM, but that speed difference didn’t bother me. I’m quite sure if I had decided to stick with it, I would’ve been able to reach 100+WPM.

Alas, dvorak still has some minor setbacks, none of which are it’s own fault. All Operating Systems will support dvorak, but that doesn’t mean it will be a pleasant experience. Many shortcuts are set to the keys they are for ease of use (See Ctrl-Z Ctrl-X Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V). Those shortcuts are no longer in the lower left corner of the keyboard, but scattered across the entire thing. When gaming in dvorak, support is limited. It usually means a good 10 minutes of re-mapping keys to what they should be. The only exception to this that comes to mind right now is the Linux SecondLife client. It also raises the problem of when someone else uses your computer and isn’t able to figure out how to type. All of these reasons don’t bother me too much. Unfortunately as an aspiring sysadmin, I need to keep in mind that I will be on a lot of different pc’s and servers while I’m working, and it just isn’t worth the trouble to have to worry about keyboard layouts all day. To anyone that doesn’t hop around computers very often, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot.

So long dvorak, you’ll be missed.

Eric: Solaris 2008.05

Eric — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:28:50 +0000

Yep, there was a big hype about solaris 2008.05. One review even mention it as being ‘What Ubuntu hopes to be someday’. Sorry folks, I’m going to have to disagree. I booted the OS onto my laptop today, and spent the majority of my morning dealing with its various short-comings. The OS has finally evolved into a LiveCD, years after all of it’s Linux competitors have done the same. I was greeted when i first booted up by a console-login and no graphical interface, hopefully just a compatibility issue with the on-board graphics on my laptop, though the GUI worked just fine after logging in with a blank username/password. (I feel like I should be automatically logged in with a LiveCD, maybe I’m just too picky)

I’ve ran my share of CD-based operating systems in the past, I like to test out an Operating System and see what it has to offer over others. OpenSolaris has got to be one of the slowest live distributions I have come across, launching firefox and bringing up a local start-up web page took a good 30seconds, pretty disappointing. Since it was running so slow, I decided to jump right into installing it on the disk, I had already freed up about 20GB of unallocated space to install it to. Unfortunately, the Installer was bugged on my system, and I never made it that far. It recognized my root and swap partitions from my kubuntu install, along with the ~20GB of unallocated space. OpenSolaris has a minimum of 3GB diskspace, and a recommended 7GB. Trying to be generous, even for an OS I didn’t expect to get a terrible amount of use from, I tried to allocate 10GB to a solaris partition. Unfortunately, every time I tried to continue and write the partition to disk, the installer automatically changed my disk allocation to .1GB, and as a result wouldn’t let me install.

Next, I thought I’d try formatting the disk with fdisk and then running the installer. This requires becoming root on the terminal. My first thought was to ’sudo su -’, unfortunately it didn’t come with sudo installed. My next attempt was a ’su root’ and a blank password, which wasn’t the answer either (Probably for the best :-] ) Finally, I checked the sun docs and found that ‘pfexec su’ does the trick. I’m in as root, I can’t complain too much here, this was more because of my inexperience with solaris in the past. (On a side note, ubuntu will tell you how to run commands as root the first time you open a terminal in the livecd, something the opensolaris dev team might be wise to consider adding.

Next, I figured it was best to follow sun docs to go on from here. I started with the format utility, it recognized my drive and had me select it. After selecting it, it asked me how many cylinders my disk had, where I’m sorry to say I got fed up with the whole thing and gave up on opensolaris for the time being. I could’ve used prtvtoc to try and read a cylinder count from my disk, but I was too frustrated at this point to want to.

With the completely new design and advertising scheme for opensolaris, I hoped to see a more user-friendly environment. I’m sad to say that this wasn’t the case for me, I hope those of you that decide to try it yourself get a bit of better luck than I do.

Brian: Briefly

endenizen — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:08:32 +0000

Yeah, like underwear.

t’has been a while. Wow that contraction didn’t work at all. For more examples of strange contractions, see urban dictionary’s entry on “t’would”:

James: Wanna go hang out at the mall next week?
Jill: T’would be cool.

But I digress, it is my pledge to make a post with more substance than content. Or vice versa, whichever sounds better. Underwear aside… eh, let’s try again.

Hi, I’m Brian. This is my blog and it hasn’t seen the light of my thoughts (I’m conceited that way) in about… let’s see here… just shy of five months, all told. No doubt when I started I didn’t imagine I would suffer quite a dry spell all at once, but there you have it. I’ve gone quite inward about the whole thing. What is a blog? Why do I need to use it? Is it possible to swallow one’s pride, as it were, and still commit one’s thoughts to paper for everyone else to see? Maybe not, but I guess I don’t care anymore for I’ve given up seeking the answers to such questions.

I work for a company that recently bought another company and you can read all about that over here. I neglect the mention of specific names because that would mean SEO which gets on my nerves. I’ve been doing all sorts of neat work on new features, new designs, fixing old things, and staring out the window in anticipation of the massive crowds set to arrive on April 9th. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, let’s torch this joint!

“Olympic Torch” this joint, that is! That’s right, the torch is coming to San Francisco and I’m gonna be at ground zero when stuff happens. I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but if you’ve been watching the news recently, you know it will be worth a few photos.

Security heightened at Golden Gate Bridge
Olympic Torch Relay Descends Into Chaos
Olympic torch relay should be confined to host country says IOC official

Officials in Paris were today forced to extinguish the Olympic flame and carry it by bus when protesters against Chinese policy in Tibet tried to seize it.

Can a protest ever ‘win’? Perhaps in time, a ‘win’ can be felt. In Paris, a more immediate win was experienced when the Olympic flame, nay, spirit which travels the world for everyone to see, amidst thousands of security personnel had to be put out and confined to a bus. My friends in Paris, I say to you, “good show”. We Americans now have a protest to out-protest.

But I digress, (yes I did that twice. Don’t tempt me should you not wish a third.) there are other things on my mind as well. Doctor Who, for instance. It was recently revealed that Richard Dawkins would appear in an upcoming episode, as himself!

“People were falling at his feet,” says Davies, creator of the BBC’s flagship show. “We’ve had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.”

I guess I can’t imagine how Dawkins fits in to all of this but I hope it at least involves a turtle that can fly.

And on that note, Battlestar Galactica was good, if not a bit uneventful in light of all the promises made. I suppose that’s how they get you hooked for the entire season. Maybe I should just wait till the season is over. It’s much more fulfilling to watch a whole season over a few days than feel cheated at the end of each 40-minute segment. Though I suppose to make it a social occasion would be a good excuse to have “Friday night plans”. Oh who am I kidding, I don’t know anyone else who watches this show.

Well, back to my life, which, at this moment, includes me going to bed.

Tim: John McCain and the GOP’s purple McKoolaid

admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:17:15 +0000

It’s now certain that John McCain will be the Republican party’s nominee for the White House. He has secured the necessary number of delegates which he needed in order to get the nod on the first round of voting. What remains to be seen, of course, is who will be the Democratic party’s nominee, and I believe that will have to wait until the convention.

At least that should be entertaining to watch. I can only hope for a rancorous, angry DNC convention, since it would be nice to see both candidates thoroughly trash each other. That being said, John McCain will lose no matter who gets the nod on the Democratic side.

John McCain is proof positive that the Republican Party has basically repudiated it’s libertarian roots and is nothing more than another big government party. Of course, the style of big government preferred by the GOP is one of a warfare state with welfare being the few breadcrumbs thrown to the masses, while the Dems would prefer the welfare function coming to the forefront, with a still-healthy dose of warfare thrown in for good measure.

About the only thing that the Dems might do right is raise taxes. It’s not that I want to pay more taxes. In fact, with the new Great Depression of 2008 developing as we speak, it’s unlikely that taxes would do anything more than cause even more damage to an already dying economy. Still, the Republicans raised taxes as well, albeit in a very regressive way. Inflation is, after all, a tax on the poor. Imagine, if you will, a pyramid. Sitting atop the pyramid is the Federal Reserve, the big banks, and the government. At the bottom of the pyramid, we have the poor people, such as those on fixed incomes, welfare loafers, young people with no job skills, etc.

It is the people at the bottom of the pyramid that have been paying for the Bush Crime Family’s war in Iraq/Afghanistan. They pay also in blood, as so many poor people end up joining the military, having few other options. They end up coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan either dead or injured, whether spiritually, physically, or both. Many will suffer from exposure to depleted uranium, which is now causing horrible birth defects among the people who live there.

With the Dems in charge, the taxes will go up and the regressive tax will be replaced with a progressive tax, which of course will strangle the already sick American economy. The Dems will, of course, place blame on the previous occupants of the White House. It’s conceivable that the Democrats will control both the House, Senate, and the White House for the next 20 years.

But then again, there’s a new wild card in the deck: Ralph Nader.

Here he comes again into the race. Suppose Ralph does manage to draw off votes from the Democrats and cause McCain to win? Considering that McCain actually cheerfully sang “Bomb, bomb Iran” at a campaign rally, I think we know where a McCain presidency would lead: straight down the throat of Hell. Let’s hope that the voters of the U.S. send him packing (assuming that we even have an election in November.)

Tim: Perspectives on America from Spain

admin — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:08:40 +0000

I’m watching what’s happening back in my home country with a sense of dread. The election has now been pretty much decided for the Republicans, who have chosen to drink the purple Koolaid of a John McCain candidacy instead of the sensible choice of Ron Paul.

Ron Paul seems to me to be the only possible candidate that could steer America away from certain bankruptcy, but even that is doubtable. Either way, the U.S. would have to take some bad medicine. Like chemotherapy, the patient must get sick in order to get better.

I’ve come to believe that America is being steered by a shadow government that has as it’s objective the controlled demolition of America’s constitutional republican form of government and it’s transition into a totalitarian fascist dictatorship.

The process of transformation began long before the rise of the fascist rise in Europe during the 20th century. The foundation of the Federal Reserve made possible the acquisition of total economic control of the U.S. by the world’s wealthiest families. A few years later, the speculative excesses made possible by the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression, which then led to the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain and nascent, but unsuccessful fascist movements in France (which later became the Vichy collaborators), Great Britain, and the U.S.

Smedley Butler, a WWI general, was asked to participate in a fascist putsch against FDR during the 1930’s, but instead of aiding their rise to power, contacted Roosevelt with the details and the conspirator’s names.

Roosevelt chose, perhaps foolishly, to not arrest the traitors and instead to warn them that he was on to their game and they had best not try it. The conspirators were, of course, the richest men in America and he rightly feared that the fragile recovery then underway would be destroyed completely if major movers and shakers on Wall Street were to be arrested by the FBI.

Thus, the fascist coup in the U.S. never happened, at least not out in the open. Italy and Germany were later destroyed. I believe that the conspirators realized that they had no chance to take over the world and install a fascist world government if they didn’t fully control the U.S. They needed to wrap up the war and consolidate their power, having gained millions from the blood of the dead soldiers in Europe and Japan and having wrecked the major industries of the world.

The next target for the conspirators was the Soviet Union, itself a creation of the bankers. For information about this, read “The Creature from Jekyll Island,” by G. Edward Griffin. Meanwhile, through Operation Paperclip, many of the 3rd Reich’s key people were smuggled out with the help of the Catholic Church, which had already been compromised by the conspirators.

With the Soviet Union and the United States as opposing giants poised to fight it out over two different versions of totalitarianism, the newly founded CIA (filled with Nazi scientists and spooks) and the Air Force (filled with Nazi rocket scientists) proceeded to create numerous puppet dictatorships in Latin America.

I have gained a better understanding of this reality by studying the literature of Latin America, which reveals the struggle between communism and fascist-capitalism in Latin America. Many poets and authors, of course, chose to side with the communists against the fascist-capitalists, while the fascist-capitalists installed themselves in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and other Latin American countries.

The dark underbelly of the conspiracy has always been in touch with the occult. Indeed, I believe that the conspiracy has always been primarily an occult phenomenon. The economic aspects only serve as the fuel for this conspiracy. The drug smuggling, child pornography and sex slave trafficking, gun smuggling and money laundering which accompanies such trades are the lifeblood of this conspiracy.

While America slept, believing that the good guys had won, the CIA proceeded to perform horrific experiments on human subjects, including, according to some reports, orphan children from the U.S. and Canada. It is said that Nazi scientists were involved and even were able to continue their research that they had started in Germany. Psychiatric researchers involved in deprogramming these people have been uncovering some of the systems that these occult fascists have been using to create Manchurian Candidates that will obey even to the point of their own destruction.

Then we get to the case of Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and, more recently, Stephen Kazmierczak at Northern Illinois University, both of whom were under psychiatric treatment and on a cocktail of mind-altering drugs. Such traumatic incidents reinforce the sense of terror that we all seem to feel that the “end is near.” It doesn’t help that nearly all of the stone-age religions like Christianity and Islam speak of the “end times.”

The end times are indeed approaching, but the end is not ordained by God, but rather the devil and his children who are skulking about in the dark and planning for the fall.

Which brings us to the 21st century. 9/11 gave the nation a new enemy to hate: Islam. The brilliant horror of the World Trade Center bombing is the fall of the first domino, which will drop all subsequent dominos. The economy, now a shadow of it’s former self, lives off of communist slaves in China who make trinkets and toys for Americans who can barely pay their mortgage now that the factories that employed their mothers and fathers have closed.

The nation lives off of a pile of debt as the Federal Reserve does it’s part to bring the end to pass. The nation becomes embroiled in a war in the Middle East to secure the oil fields of southwest Asia and Iraq and, more to the point, depopulate the Muslim world. This conquest, understandably, has failed. It hardly matters.

According to escaped mind control cultist, Svali, the conspirators have been using the techniques that they perfected after the fall of the 3rd Reich to train hundreds of thousands of Americans on military tactics in preparation for the takeover. Alex Jones reports that FEMA is training pastors to teach their congregations not to resist during states of emergencies.

As G. Edward Griffin wrote in “The Creature from Jekyll Island,” all fiat money systems collapse, inevitably to be followed by a dictatorship. So far, it looks like history as it is unfolding will prove Griffin right.

Of course, just because I’m not in the U.S. doesn’t mean that I’m safe. The collapse may be a few years off, but even if it happens while I’m here, Europe will no doubt be embroiled in the collapse. I will also be vulnerable to poverty, since I have no job despite attempts to find one. Europe will likely see a downturn and the French riots have demonstrated that there is a wide gap between rich and poor which will surely get wider and lead to insurrection and violence.

Sometimes I wish I had never learned what I’ve learned. What use is knowledge if you have no means to escape the future? At least, I get to live in interesting times.

Tim: Spain again

admin — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:23:45 +0000

I got away from blogging primarily out of a little paranoia. There was something one of my professors said that made me think someone was actually reading this thing, so I decided to leave behind some of the more maudlin stuff. It’s especially important since I’ve got to think about getting a job pretty soon.

I have settled into a routine in Lleida. I’ve got a decent apartment, if a bit primitive. I actually have to turn on the gas (in a canister under the kitchen sink) and light the hot water heater (also in the kitchen) in order to take a shower or run hot water in the kitchen. I also have to open the gas to light the stove.

I also have no clothes dryer, and have to hang my clothes out. One day, they even smelled like smoke, so I assume I was the victim of some sort of air pollution. Fortunately, that seems quite rare.

The city is decent. It’s not touristy like Burgos was. It’s a very industrial city. Overall, it’s pretty quiet. I like it, more or less.

drc: Seeqpod mp3 leaching

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:30:10 +0000

#!/bin/bash echo -n "Arist name? " read artist mkdir "$artist" url="http://www.seeqpod.com/api/music/anonSearchPaginationFlash?n=1000&q="$artist wget -t 1 -T 150 -q -O /dev/stdout "`echo $url`" |sed -e 's#]*>#\n#g' |awk -F '' '{print $1}' |grep -v playlist |xargs -n1 -i{} wget -P "$artist" "{}" Enjoy -drc