function()
Posted on May 31, 2003
I just added a new subdomains gallery.gottahavacuppamocha.com. Over the past few weeks I have been trying out various PHP packages from HotScripts, SourceForge, FreshMeat, etc. I have tried probably around a dozen different image galleries before coming up with what I have now.
The gallery section is run by a PHP package called, conveniently enough, Gallery. I will probabaly have to do quite a bit of tinkering to get this to go with the site’s theme, but it has the features I wanted, such as galleries and sub galleries, auto-resizing, thumbnail indexing, image descriptions, and user comments.
Well, check it out and let me know if there are any problems.
There is a spoon
Posted on May 17, 2003
I was one of several people million who plunked down my money to see The Matrix: Reloaded this weekend. There is a lot that can be said about the movie, and many other people will probably echo similar things on their blogs (geeks are more likely to see …Reloaded and run a blog). Here is a quick rundown (with possible spoilers):
The basic plot of the movie is to rescue “The Keymaker” who has special information on how to destroy the Matrix/protect Zion (depending on how you look at it). Along the way, Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus have to battle “The Twins” and agents (BTW, the new types of agents seem a bit stupider than the ones in the first movie). As expected, the movie is packed with action. Not only does it have more action than the first one, it seems to be one long chase/fight, interrupted by brief moments of dialogue. Perhaps one of the most interesing things is the ending, which is a cliffhanger to segue into The Matrix: Revolutions. Where The Matrix and …Reloaded are months or years apart in time, …Reloaded and …Revolutions are supposed to take place days or weeks apart.
Agent Smith is back, but is an “exile” whom the other machines no longer trust. He is able to replicate himself by infecting others.
The Oracle is back and gives Neo some more advice. (I mainly note this because the actress who portrays her, Gloria Foster passed away during the movie’s filming.)
As the title of this story suggests, there is a spoon, but you have to watch the movie to understand the context.
We get a look a Zion and we get to meet other characters and people from other ships. One of the scenes in Zion gives new meaning to the term “underground rave.” :-)
At the other end, we also learn a bit more about the history of the Matrix and “The One.” We also get a slightly better idea of the conflict between the people and the machines.
Overall, I recommend the film, and I can hardly wait until The Matrix: Revolutions comes out in November. I also look forward to seeing this in a box set (maybe with The Animatrix as well) probably sometime in 2004.
New section
Posted on May 14, 2003
I just added a Journal section to the blog. I know it’s more or less redundant to have a Journal section in a blog, but some of the stories just seem more Journal oriented. The Jury stories are good examples of that, but they are not Journal articles because I didn’t have a specific section to put them in. Now I do.
Doing the Duty
Posted on May 14, 2003
Well, I had jury duty, and it went more or less as I expected it would. I showed up at 8:00, checked in, and sat…and waited…and waited. Every so often, they would call of a list of names, and bring them to a court for voir dire(sp?), which is where they ask the potential jurors questions and decide if they are acceptable for the trial or not. A little after 11:00, my name was called.
They took 18 of us up to a court where they were empanelling a jury for a civil trial. They only needed six jurors and I was Juror #14. They did ask me questions about whether I had ever been in an auto accident and whether a lawsuit came from it, to which I said yes on both. I told them I was hit by a car 20 years ago, we sued, but the case was settled. As it happens, the case that was being tried in regard to an auto accident. The plantiff didn’t have a lawyer, while the defendant did. Anyway, when it came time to make the selections, I thought I overheard “Juror #14,” but it was more or less irelevant because out of the first six jurors, they got rid of two, and added Jurors #7 and #8 to make a panel of six. I went back down to the Jury room, and they told us we could leave. Cool beans :-) I was out of there before noon.
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Jury Duty
Posted on May 12, 2003
I remember in grade school, when we were learning about the court system, we were told that it seemed like some people are never called for it, while others are called all of the time. I am in the latter category. Ever since I have been able to vote, I have made it a point to be registered to vote, even if I only vote in larger elections. This also puts me on the rolls as a potential jury member. Generally, every 2 – 3 years, I get a jury summons in the mail. However, they are usually from whatever place I lived previously. In other words, I moved, but for some reason or another , I get a jury summons. That makes it easy to get out of the duty, because I if I don’t live in the area, I don’t have to serve.
That’s not to say I have never served. One time I got a summons from a city I lived in. I didn’t have any pressing plans, so I thought it might be an interesting experience. We sat in a big room…and sat. Hurry up and wait, just like the military. They had doughnuts and pastries, but they charged you for them. I only had some change, and I missed breakfast. I stayed hungry until lunch. Since I had never been on jury duty before, I didn’t know what to expect. There was no TV. There were a few newspapers, but they were mostly being read by others. A little after lunch, they called my number to go. We went upstairs and waited outside a courtroom for about 10 minutes, then the clerk came out and sent us back downstairs. Apparently, the person decided to cop a plea. I never even saw what the person looked like. I remember they told us what the person was charged with, but I can’t recall if it was drugs or burglary.
Tomorrow, I will bring two books because I am almost done with the one I am reading now. I will also head to Starbucks before wandering over to the City/County building. I plan on being fairly bored, but at least occupied with reading and not hungry.
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Love and Rockets – Express [Reissue]
Posted on May 11, 2003
Love and Rockets is one of my favorite bands. It was started in the mid-80′s, following the breakup of Tones on Tail, which followed the breakup of Bauhaus. Essentially, Love and Rockets is Bauhaus without Peter Murphy, and with synthesizers. Despite this, Love and Rockets is (IMHO) underapprectiated considering their musical talents. But in an age of music-as-a-product (Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, etc), it nice to listen to bands that make music for the sake of music.
Express, originally released in 1986, was the band’s second album, after Seventh Dream of a Teenage Heaven. The CD was remastered and reissued in 2001. As a side note, I must be such a fan that I didn’t notice the CD was reissued until 2 years later. The reissue CD has a different track listing than the original CD, with one section titled “Express” that presumably corresponds to the original vinyl, and a second section consisting of bonus tracks. The bonus tracks section includes Angels and Devils, Ball of Confusion (USA Mix), and Holiday on the Moon, all of which were on the original CD (with Ball of Confusion being an Extended Mix, rather than a USA Mix). Additional bonus tracks include a cover of Syd Barrett’s Lucifer Sam, a remix of Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man), and two songs innocuously titled B Side #1 and B Side #2. Another change from the original CD issue is the inclusion of an insert with liner notes, which finally allows me to understand what the lyrics are :-)
Most of the songs are very rhythmically driven. The best examples of this are Kundalini Express and Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man), which includes some fantastic drum work from Kevin Haskins. To show a softer, slightly more melodic side, there is the simply titled ballad Love Me and an acoustic version of All In My Mind. While I wouldn’t call their lyrics deep, there is a far amount of sarcastic social commentary, as exemplified by Life in Laralay, An American Dream, Holiday on the Moon, and Ball of Confusion. The songs B Side #1 and B Side #2 are previously unreleased, and would probably been better off staying that way. While I am not very enthused about the B Side tracks and ambivalent about the subtle remix of Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man), I think the CD is still fairly worthwhile due to the cover of Syd Barrett’s Lucifer Sam. I thought it was interesting that they covered a song by one of the founders of Pink Floyd, since there are some similarities between the two bands, musically and lyrically, IMHO.
Overall, Express is one of the best albums/CD’s in the Love and Rockets catalog, and the reissue could be seen as good or bad. Ironically, I paid about $3.00 less for the reissue, than I did for the original CD years ago ($12.99 as opposed to $15.99). I think the album is worthwhile for a Love and Rockets fan if they can’t find CD singles of Lucifer Sam or the Ball of Confusion and Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man) remixes. It would most likely be cheaper to get them that way. At any rate, those songs are worthwhile for the fan. So the next time you are in a media (record) store, check it out.
Mikey likes it.
Posted on May 10, 2003
Not like anyone visits here enough to notice, but I changed the “look-and-feel” of the site today. Granted, I’ve done this many times before. However, this time, I think it actually looks cool, clean, and not like every other site out there. It’s still the b2 blog software, but I played with the CSS and index.php until I got what you see before you. I may still play with the colors a bit, but overall, I’m mighty pleased. Getting the sidebar to stay on the right side, while not being all the way over on the right side was a bear. I ended up pulling out an HTML book and setting up the main page as a table. This way, I was able to bring the sidebar and the articles “column” under the header image.
Now, that I’m settled (more or less) on the site’s design, maybe now I can add some functionality to it, like galleries, reviews, etc. I’ll worry about that later.
Behold…the future!
Posted on May 10, 2003
Okay, it’s a lame title, but what do you expect from and E/N page?
Next week I start taking I’m starting back to school. Since I work for IU, they have a cool benefit known as Fee Courtesy where they pay 100% of 3 cedits and 50% of the next 3 credits per semester. I’m going to be taking Beginning Japanese I. I took a class in Russian years ago and got a B in it while hardly studying, and besides, I’m thinking that learning Japanese will look good on a resume (particularly if I do well and stick with it). This class is 5 credits, so that takes up most of my Fee Courtesy for the Summer session. Right now I’m considered as a “Graduate Non-Degree” student, which means I have a bachelor’s degree, but I’m not enrolled in any post graduate program. This mainly means I am taking classes for “personal enrichment” and/or rounding out my bachelor’s degree.
Signing up for and taking classes has at least got me considering going for a master’s degree. IUPUI does have some good programs, too. The Kelley School of Business at IU is supposed to be one of the top 25 B-schools in the nation. However, right now (which means it could change in the future), I’m leaning towards the School of Informatics at IU. Informatics is sort of a multi-disciplinary school, with many of the faculty holding an appointment in the School of Informatics, and holding another one within another school, like Nursing, Engineering, etc. Of course, being a geek, the fact that they are building a new facility that will be connected to Abilene/Internet 2 is a big plus :-)
At the School of Informatics, I have been mainly looking at Human Computer Interaction and Bioinformatics. Of course, today I read this over at O’Reilly, which gave me some food for thought regarding Bioinformatics. It wasn’t too discouraging, but it did make me wonder whether bioinformatics is biologists with CS/IT skills or CS/IT types with biology skills.
HCI is interesting because it can (in theory) make use of my BS degree in Apparel Design. The advances in electronics are pretty interesting. There are ultrathin LCD displays that can be rolled up, and in the future, they may be able to be sewn into clothing and withstand laundering. The military is doing a lot of advanced research into pervasive technology and “smart clothing.” Not to limit myself, HCI can (again, in theory) also encompass artificial intelligence, robotics, speech and speech recognition, and so on. Apparently, the study of how people interact with technology is a Big Thing [TM]. However, on the less exciting level, HCI also encompasses web page and software interface design. I wouldn’t want to get a master’s degree if all I ended up doing was something that basic.
Bioinformatics (or even some of the other sub-disciplines like Chemical Informatics or Laboratory Informatics) is (or at least appears to be) a specialized form of information technology (IT). This major could pose a few problems for me though. First of all, most of the stuff I know about computers is stuff I taught myself. I’ve had a class in COBOL, a class in Paradox (DB software), and a general “Computers for Dummies” type class that most schools require of undergrads, but this might fall short of what the program requires. I don’t know C, C++, Java, or Perl. I do okay with HTML and MySQL. I can even handle PHP (with a PHP book within grabbing distance) and CSS (despite how my website looks :-) The other potential problem is the last time I had anything to do with biology in a classroom was in 5th grade, 25 or so years ago (damn, I feel old all of a sudden). In high school and at various colleges, I’ve never had any biology courses. I’ve had plenty of earth science courses, and even a few chemistry courses, but that’s about the extent of it (no physics courses, either). In the Fall, I will probably try to remedy this by taking an introductory biology course.It would be kind of pointless to try for a degree in Bioinformatiics, if I didn’t have any aptitude for biology. We’ll see.
