Older blog entries for ian (starting at number 46)

I think I'll try and wrangle venture capital to map the Web onto a block of gouda cheese.

sleeping constantly. not good.

I give up. Who knows who won the election? Certainly not I. Regardless, it's pretty damn cool.

Began sketching out a user interface based on eye tracking while waiting for a class. I'm really excited about it, though I haven't a clue how to implement it... yet.

Rather depressing reality check when I got home: the cost of a leading eye tracking development system? $18,000. There has to be a way to do it affordably. Also found out, as it so happens, that an eye tracking conference is going on right now... wish I'd known about it earlier--not that I would've had a way to get there.

Trying to motivate myself to do work... not succeeding by any stretch of the imagination. I should be thankful that one of my profs is letting me rewrite a paper, but it felt rather nice to have it over with a week ago.

Mainly writing to say congrats to lgerbarg on his first softupdates for Darwin code drop... I'm incredibly glad he's taken up the challenge.

feeling very tired and disconnected. trying to arrange my thoughts, and having very little luck at it.

just read "the untouchable" by john banville. really, really good. consequently, i've been looking for a picture of the "death of seneca" by poussin. i've all but concluded that it doesn't really exist. dunno, though.

The theme from You Only Live Twice is smooth, as is "Jung At Heart" by Master Cylinder...

Phish played a good set on the Austin City Limits season opener. Radiohead was decent on Saturday Night Live, though Thom Yorke's fetus-like flailing (hi, Stan!) seemed somewhat unnecessary. The only truly unfortunate part was having to sit through SNL to see it

Got a call from my mother yesterday--the family apparently experienced a problem (on Michelin tires) frighteningly similar to the horrid Firestone tread separation fault while in Minnesota for my sisters' medical appointments. Through a chain of events I'd consider nothing short of a miracle, they noticed it in a parking lot before driving off. The local dealer and Chrysler are now tossing the blame back and forth...

I'm going to call Public Citizen, the consumer safety organization founded by Ralph Nader, on Monday. They've been very prominent in the Firestone debacle, and I'd like to know if anyone else has reported similar problems...

I have a lot to write, and absolutely no motivation to do it. Think I'll braindump instead...

Saw a rather odd thing walking to campus the other day--a bright purple minivan with a magnetic sign on the side reading "US MAIL". That, in and of itself, isn't so odd. I suppose the postal service hires temps when it's shorthanded--makes sense. But below that, the magnetic sign said "ACME Services, Inc." and had a phone number. Huh. If it works for 'em...

Bought a TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 burner the other day. Works quite nicely within aforementioned FireWire case. The Yamaha 16x announcement gave me some pause, but it's limited to 12x on the inner tracks, and lacks the highly Boffo (and so poorly named) BURNproof feature. TDK's FailSafe name is much more apt than Sanyo's, IMHO. Still waiting on OS X-native burning software, but I didn't expect anything to be ready this soon, anyway. On the positive side, a Mac port of Nero has been announced.

Shopped around a bit on half.com. I'm really impressed--seems like eBay, only implemented better. Picked up four CDs and a hardcover book for $30, shipped. Also got the latest Gomez release elsewhere... finally includes their cover of "Getting Better", undoubtedly by popular demand.

Got High Fidelity the other day... the deleted scenes on DVD are great.

Hopefully, I'll stop hemorrhaging money soon.

OmniWeb, which has kinda-sorta-maybe grown on me, has no keyboard shortcut for "reload". Feh.

I wonder how Lao-Tzu would approach network security.

Ulff. Slept through my first two classes today (not by choice, I might add). By a stroke of sheer luck, something woke me up at 12:30.

The Storm Incident

[A preface for those unaquainted with Storm (a soft drink). Think Sprite or 7-Up with caffeine... unless it's procured from the fountain, where it has no caffeine. Yeah, I think it's strange, too.]

So my tired self stumbles into the hall where my class is held. I need caffeine, so I scope the options in the vending machine and see Storm. When was the last time I had that, I wonder? Never, it seems, so I take my chances and drop fifty cents and take the can.

Around the time I've downed half of it in class, I turn the can around. I'm greeted by... Jar Jar Binks. Beyond the superficial "ugh" reaction, I was pretty baffled. I mean, how long ago did Episode 1 come out... or at the very least, come out on video? All I knew at the time was, it'd been a while. Anyway, I checked the "Drink by Date on Bottom of Can" date:

Apr 17 00

Great. I've just consumed half of a six-month-old (at the latest) soft drink. I suddenly realized how horribly flat it was.

I suppose I could report this to the vending company, but that'd require me to admit that I actually bought a Storm.