We have the technology!
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| Octopus Hat We have the technology! |
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Friday, January 31, 2003 A wacky Week on the Web What a strange week it has been. Though I think my favorite story of the week broke yesterday. Evidently Pablo Escobar, the deceased notorious Columbian drug lord, has a pack of wild Hippos roaming his abandoned compound in Bogota. Read all about it. There are actually six hippos that were BORN in the wilds of Bogota. My favorite quote from the article, " At nightfall, the hippo herd leaves the lake and wanders about the ranch, grazing on the grassy slopes and making sorties to the stables, where they savor the salt lick..." brings images of a marauding posse of coke'd up Hippopotami terrorizing the neighborhood to mind. Escobar's compound has now become a "playground" for the local children, and sounds like a wonderful setting for a movie. Another fun link from this weeks huntings: www.trebuchet.com a site where one can purchase working trebuchet kits, and with links to other sites about the construction, and use of these medieval war-machines. Sounds like jolly-good-fun to me. posted by JMV | 1/31/2003 12:02:00 PM | Tuesday, January 28, 2003 Today I am Excited One of my most favorite things is seeing technology achieve the goals that Sci-Fi has set. I'm a big fan of near-future/Cyberpunk fiction precisely because there are moments of prescient tech within the pages of good cyber-punk. And I LOVE it when this tech becomes (or starts to become) reality. Take cloning. I get very excited when ever a news story on cloning breaks, because I WANT it to happen. I was our society to have to DEAL with all the grave and disturbing consequences. I just finished an article on Wired about a big tobacco exec who has created nicotine free cigarettes. Sure, they will still KILL you, but it is one step closer to "safe" smokes a la Transmetropolitan . Basically the exec has the Amish (yeah. the Amish) grow genetically modified tobacco plants which he plans to sell as a new brand of smokes called "Quest". Quest cigarettes will come in three "strengths" so that you can step-down your nicotine intake like the patch. The article is worth a read. It looks like the Quest Cigs are on sale.... But I've only been able to find them by the carton on-line... Regardless of if these succeed or if they work to help you quit smoking, I'm excited by the prospect of being one step closer to worry-free and harmless vices. I want my cake and I want to eat it too... posted by JMV | 1/28/2003 02:36:00 PM | Monday, January 27, 2003 Mondays Bite. And that is all I wil say on that subject... I'm far too frustrated to write the detailed entry that I had planed and had been working on, so i will give the distilled version here: War is hell, but it is a damn good dramatic device, and I think men are genetically pre-disposed to combat. And that the militaries of the world thought history have just exploited this aspect of the male genetic code. I will pose a question to you though: What, if any, are the benefits of war-games (be it old-school table top, Computer RTS, or Civil War reenactments), combat sports (think fencing, boxing, etc) and the glorification and hero-worship of military personnel? Speaking of war... The History Channel isn't ALL about war and combat. I saw 2 very interesting parts of a 4 part show last night called "Sex in the 20th Century." The two episodes that I caught covered turn of the century America to the red-scare era 50s. Really a well done series discussing the place of sex in the popular culture of the times. It could have spent a little more time on the development of queer-culture, but maybe it fill focus more on that in the second half of the series. So set your TiVos. Defiantly worth a watch! posted by JMV | 1/27/2003 03:51:00 PM | Saturday, January 25, 2003 Had an excellent night out at the bar, and when we returned to our appartment we found several large parties going on, so we joined one that our neighbor was having. It was like a flsahback to 1998... drinking with a bunch of 19 year-olds can really make you feel your age.... After the party, as I cruised the information superhighway while waiting to sober up enough to goto sleep, I came a across and intersting article on Cnet here. It details a group of MIT students who bought a whole bunch of used hard-drives and pillaged them for old-data. They recovered scores of credit card numbers, personal financial transactions, and gigabytes of p0rn. Which got me thinking about the yet-to-emerge field of digital-archeology... Today people dig in the dirt to find clues about how people lived in eons past, and in the future people will only have to analyse old data-storage devices to uncover massive amounts of data about "old" civilizations... Just think about that archives of "anchient p0rn" that will be compiled by scholars in like 2098 from all of our tossed out 100GB drives ... posted by JMV | 1/25/2003 01:40:00 PM | Friday, January 24, 2003 Well. Eds is back up, and running really well. So I will take this opportunity to post new pics taken on the road to and from OC/LA. You can check them our here. If you like any of the shots enough to want wallpaper shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you one in the proper resolution. In other news... Uh there isn't really a whole lot of other news. posted by JMV | 1/24/2003 01:02:00 PM | Thursday, January 23, 2003 Back to not-so-sunny Santa Cruz after a nice weekend in So-cal. But it looks like eds.org is down fo the time being. (but if you are reading this, then I guess it it back up.) I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things after the mini-vacation. I did score a whole bunch of new music from various people down in So-Cal. I ripped probably half a dozen CDs to the hard drive of "my" iBook as well as scored a CDR full of more MP3s. This file transfer meathod is called the "sneaker net" and was pretty much the only was to transfer any large amount of data back in the dark ages of 28.8Kbps modems. I'm sure that alot of people think it is a waste of time, but nothing beats $.10 CDRs packed full of data. Especially in the post-napster world with less and less good peer-to-peer file sharing, the Sneaker Net is one of the easiest ways to get gigabytes from A to B. But I digress... posted by JMV | 1/23/2003 01:13:00 PM | Friday, January 17, 2003 Well we made it to LA in quite good time. under six and a half hours! And that is with a brief stop as well as a really dense spot of fog on the 46 which foreced us travel at a only 35-40MPH... I took a bunch of cool-ish pictures on the drive down, which I may get around to posting at somepoint.... Andrews kick ass Pic from new-years has made me start thinking about digital photography a little diffrently... As I write this I'm squating on a non WEPed Wi-Fi signal. God I love technology... posted by JMV | 1/17/2003 11:19:00 PM | Julie and I are off to OC/LA today! I don't know what kind of omen millipedes are, but a big fucker ran through my office earlyer. I'm not usual squemish about bugs, but this one freaked me out... Take a look at it here. In more war related news, check out the poll on the Time Magazine site. What country do YOU think is the biggest threat to world peace in 2003? posted by JMV | 1/17/2003 01:08:00 PM | Thursday, January 16, 2003 Comments are back! So you should USE them. Also, if you would like to receive an e-mail when Octopus Hat gets an update/posted to (by me) send an E-mail with the subject "OctoHat Update Notification" or something similar, and I will send you an e-mail so you won't miss an update! How exciting. posted by JMV | 1/16/2003 02:22:00 PM | News Alert: "US greatest threat to world security"! Read all about it. Seriously... I dont know what to think about Iraq and Hussein's Regime. I mean the man is a megalomaniacal dictator in the worst way, but at the same time all of his energy goes to fighting "westerners" in the middle east. Can you really blame him? The Bush Administration is pretty fucking evil... People keep using "World War Three" to describe the possible outcome of the tensions in the gulf. I think "The Crusades 2" is a better name. "Will the Arab holy-warriors drive the European infidels from the holy-land once and for all? Or will the mighty American war machine steam-roll Sadam's forces leaving a broken and ruined shell of a country in its wake?" It might be a bad time to be in the tech business, but I bet all those people who just graduated with a BA in War-Mongering are stoked. posted by JMV | 1/16/2003 02:12:00 PM | Wednesday, January 15, 2003 Watercooler Update: On Fox's "Man Vs Beast" tonight, the Asian Elephant pulled the DC-10 for 25yards faster than the team of 40 Little People... You heard it here first! Dwarf-splotation is the next big thing... (in more happy news, the Kodiak Bear was able to out eat the little Japanese dude.) Sometimes I envy Gibson... posted by JMV | 1/15/2003 10:03:00 PM | Last week, I was very excited when I was reminded that William Gibson's new novel was being released on Febuary 3rd! For those who don't know Gibson is a Sci-Fi writer, who alot of people credit with the creation of the "Cyberpunk" movement. His works were greatly influential to alot of my own work, and the ideas of Cyberpunk tend to permeate many of the ideas that I have. It is kinda like a curse actually. "Pattern Recognition" is the new book, and I've heard that is a bit of a departure for him, which I am very excited about. I just hope it lasts a little longer than his last book which I devoured in like 3 days. Check out Gibson's Blog to how how it SHOULD be done. Daily updates that are meaty and SMRT! You would also do good to checkout his Bio. And for some cool new Cyberpunk-esque short fiction take a look at 0wnz0red! Good stuff. posted by JMV | 1/15/2003 04:10:00 PM | Well just let me say "fuck". All my work from the past two days was fuX0red lastnight somehow, and now nothing works... So I regenerated the basic template and am now back to square one. Oh well. At least I can POST to the site. Comments MAY come back, we will see. So far the only coments I've recived on the site in the brief few hours that it was up was "Keep the direct link to the pictures, " So i thought, maybe I will keep everything simple this time. Just the Blog with some links, and a pages for the writing snippets... Let me know what you think, though since comments aren't up yet you will have to use E-Mail posted by JMV | 1/15/2003 12:12:00 PM | --Explative Deleted-- posted by JMV | 1/15/2003 12:03:00 AM | Tuesday, January 14, 2003 There! Its done. Octopus Hat is up, working, and good to go (until the first redesign of course.) On the cool new jargon front, I was watching FoodTV and heard "Shoot a Wheel," which is what firefighters call ordering a pizza. I'm all for adoption of this! Mmmmm wheel.... Jules and I watched "Pulp Fiction" last night, and that was probably the first time I've seen it since like 1998. I had forgotten how GOOD it is. There was alot of Anti-Tarantino sentiment when I was in film school, though I'm not really sure why. I mean, sure he is derivative, but at least his Homage is FRESH! Some of his long-takes go on FOREVER, and the Vencent Vega shooting-up scene might be single-handedly responsible for the over use of drug-scenes in student films. One thing that I have always enjoyed is the anachronisims in the film. The world seems to be stuck yester-year, there is a reel-to-reel tape deck in Mia's house, Jack Rabbit Slims is steeped in iconography from the 50s and sixties, the settings are all old-LA. But then there little elements of technology, most notably the cell phones. I've always found it a little odd. posted by JMV | 1/14/2003 07:13:00 PM | Added comments to page. Just kick on the "coments" link after any post to post a comment. I don't know that I'm totally happy with the way it works, but at least it was easy to implement (thanks to Poster Child). posted by JMV | 1/14/2003 01:25:00 AM | I just caught one of the Penny-Arcade updates from yesterday that I missed. In which, Gabe tells my new favorite joke (as was first told to me by my Bestman, Matt Holohan, on the eve of my wedding. I don't know if I should be upset that my new favorite joke has now been told to millions (or at least a whole lot) of people, or If I should be happy that it has gained such notoriety. I think I am upset. posted by JMV | 1/14/2003 12:24:00 AM | Monday, January 13, 2003 we'll see if this is working.... BLOG! (really i will have much more concise things to say once i get past the word BLOG.) posted by Julie | 1/13/2003 07:59:00 PM | Ok... I think everything is working now... posted by JMV | 1/13/2003 07:51:00 PM | Dear Christ. That last template was one of the most hideous examples of HTML coding I have EVER seen.... It just needed dancing hamsters to send all who looked upon it straight to the firey chasms of bad-taste. This one is better... For now! But don't think that it get Mr Carle off the hook for helping me with a more permanent (and elegent) solution. Anyway. I'm open to sugestions for the site. Over the next few days I should hammer out what the blog section should be like. The main site should get launched this month... posted by JMV | 1/13/2003 04:33:00 PM | OK. lets see if this works. If so, I guess this post will be some kind of framed dollar bill of my on-line existence... posted by JMV | 1/13/2003 04:11:00 PM | |
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