कुक्कुरोवाच

Okay, so I'm reasonably well dug-in over here, and have no serious plans for using LJ significantly. I'll continue to read some others' LJ output, though don't count on me seeing anything that's posted as "friends only."

If, for whatever perverse reason, you want to continue to read me, you can go to the trouble of browsing to the site periodically, or, you can do something involving RSS.

What's RSS, you say?

43 Things suggests this introduction from FeedBurner. You can also, as always, go to Wikipedia.

The short version is, it's a way of keeping people updated regarding new content to sites. The feed for me new blog is: http://kukkurovaca.textdriven.com/gramarye/feed/

If you use Firefox or Safari, there's some built-in RSS support. (If you bookmark the feed, it'll show new updates.) I suggest Bloglines, which is a good, easy-to-start-with way to read feeds. There are also desktop apps available, though I don't know much about them, least of all which to recommend.

If there any paid users out there with a desperate desire to keep track of what I'm saying and a strong aversion to new technologies, you can do so by adding the feed directly to LJ itself via http://www.livejournal.com/syn/

If anyone does, please post a comment, on the off-chance some non-paid users wanted to get at it this way as well. (Free LJ accounts can't add new feeds, but can subscribe to existing ones.)

Happy stuff!

Okay, so I'm going to start cutting back. The Bliki functionality in PImki isn't really where I want it to be; however, I've found Wordpress to be reasonably user-friendly. I've got it set up here: http://kukkurovaca.textdriven.com/gramarye/ without any interesting posts and using a relatively tedious "theme" (I'm going to need to roll my own, I suppose).

Aha! Some of you may remember, either with fondness or disdain, the "Unlikely Glossary Project," my laboriously referential wiki, which has been more or less non-functional for months now.

I've finally got what will be the new UGP running over on textdrive (I'll be using "Pimki", a variant of "Instiki"); there's really nothing there yet, but give it a minute. In addition to "not being in StructuredText), and "not being on untrustworthy free zope hosting", the new Pimki-based UGP will also have some interesting todo-list functionality and a "bliki" (i.e., wiki-integrated blog), in addition to vastly superior handling of categorization/tagging. The end result should be easier use and maintenance.

Also, if the "bliki" is sufficiently appealing and/or if I also decide to get wordpress going on textdrive as well, I may have to let this LJ go....unless someone wants to do that thing where you import an rss feed into livejournal. (Of course Pimki will have RSS! Would I use a piece of software that didn't produce RSS?)

PS

Andrew, RSS is a way of letting people subscribe to updated web content.

Had work today--pretty quiet. After, bought a couple books at Moe's -- a 50-cent copy of Dhalgren, in the interest of taking a crack at finishing it, and a $4 copy of "Triplanetary" for which I was, mysteriously, only charged $1.

I was amused to notice that, during the course of an extremely slow session of Ragdoll Masters, a pair of my opponents lost interest in attacking me and instead decided to make like Andrew's mother. Unfortunately, a single still doesn't convey the fact that they were stuck together at the groin for a good minute or two at the minimum.

I can't really say why I spelled it "Ragdall", except that perhaps I was in the mood for Indian food...

I'm not a big fan of desktop RSS aggregation; Bloglines generally does what I want without the dinky UI getting too much in my way. However, I've occasionally speculated that it would be nice to be able to access the information offline; the trouble is, I don't really want to switch out of Bloglines, and using a desktop will put me out of synch. (NetNewsWire Pro actually synchs with Bloglines, but I don't want to shell out the cash.) I've found an app ("NewsMac") that will, however, automatically download RSS feeds as notes to my iPod, which seems like it might provide the sort of middle-ground functionality I need (Solving the, "I have the urge to check BoingBoing, but no connection," problem, or the "I want to reference that LanguageLog post I read this morning, but no connection," problem) without totally forking my reading practices. The program is pretty buggy, but it includes this functionality in the free version as well as the for-$ version, so why not? (Note: this is less useful for html-heavy feeds, since it doesn't know how to strip out formatting.

The other day, my sister and I were discoveringdiscussing some odd foliage that my mother discovered in her salad, or something; she was trying to describe the texture of the edge of a leaf; I asked if it possessed serrations or (jokingly) crenellations; Rosie then accused me of being racist; I asked what she was talking about, and it transpired that she'd thought I had said "Croatians."

Not sure what this says about us, other than that we're dorks...

Had the day off, for mysterious reasons involving California history, which I might know something about if I'd managed to make it to fourth grade. Went with Rosie to Crixa, which, as always, was an amazing experience, marred only slightly by the fact that I find the staff there totally unnerving for reasons I have, so far, been unable to make clear to myself or others.

Keep in mind that I'm not a cake person, and that a trip there for two people tends to run to the better part of $20 for cake and tea, and that I've been there twice in the last three or so weeks, and will probably go back semi-regularly. It's that good.

We kicked around Shattuck for a while, acquiring Burritos, browsing Barnes and Noble, buying some necessities at Walgreens (a very very cheap pasta-sized pot, some mounting squares, and a ruler),and buying a cheap backpack (me) and a cheap pair of jeans (Rosie) at Ross. Later, Rhonda informed us that Firefly and Alias S2 had arrived in the mail five days early (Ah, Amazon. I also pre-ordered Sin City, but that won't be arriving for a while yet). We watched the first few eps of Alias over some pizza, and then called it a night.

That's a day pretty well spent, I think.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/04/new_police_guideline.html

This is disturbing news, but I like that it references a "distributed war" and refers to wrongful death at the hands of police as "user error."

So, I went ahead and blew $5 on the registration. I've only been through six or seven of the game's 20 levels, so far, but I thought this one was kind of amusing; while this enemy isn't that difficult to beat, his proportions are impressive. The joke about Andrew's mother is left as an exercise to the reader.

I deliberately didn't stop by Moe's on the way home because I wanted to polish off the paperbacks I haven't read yet (including beautiful vintage Delany, Sturgeon, and Anderson); then I made the mistake of swinging by the weird little cave-based "Book Zoo", where there had been some new acquisitions and a price drop on their discount racks.

Haul:

* From Russia, With Love Ian Fleming
* The Island of Fu Manchu Sax Rohmer
* The Stardroppers John Brunner
* The Guns of Avalon (Third printing, trumping my existing sixth printing) Roger Zelazny
* The Black Throne Roger Zelazny, Fred Saberhagen
* Clouds of Witness Dorothy Sayers
* Gregg Shorthand Dictionary Simplified
* Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre Walter Kaufmann
* Call for the Dead John Le Carre
* Galapagos Kurt Vonnegut
* Death Before Bedtime Edgar Box (=Gore Vidal)

One of these cost $3, two cost $2, and the rest were $1 each.

Tasty.

Emeryville is an interesting idea. It's slowly transforming into one gigantic mall, and while I enjoy the occasional pilgrimage there, it's gotten a little less funky (the Public Market with its great, weird ethnic food court is not so much the paradigm any more -- the vastly overproduced and all too upscale chain stores at the Bay Street complex are setting the tone.

I had a number of vaguely formed goals, one of which was to find shelving that would fit on the weird lip that runs around several edges of my room; in this I had no luck. I tried Ikea, which turns out to be a far weirder experience in person than mediated by their catalog; the audiovisual assault and the human throng, coupled to shockingly low ceilings (it's massive space that I think they built themselves -- they couldn't have opened it up a little?) trigged an instant low-grade panic attack that made browsing less than fun; also, all their shelving was too deep. I tried a couple other places as well, but no luck on that front.

Among the vastly overproduced chain stores at the Bay Street complex, though, one can find an Apple store. And Apple Stores sell many delightful things, including the iPod mini I mentioned a while ago. Ah, the heady thrill of consumption. And the incredible ass-pain of having to charge your new consumer electronics.

I also located a copy of Cussler's Night Probe at Borders. wackyslav has been IMing me quotes from it, and it is indeed hilarious. Consider, and keep in mind that while Cussler is a horrible writer with an awful sense of humor, he doesn't usually (at least in the other novels I've read) have a particularly dirty style:

The bedsprings creaked as he stepped to the floor and padded across the carpet. He possessed a formidable body; the huge, swollen muscles, symmetrically formed layer by layer over years of disciplined exercise, rippled and strained beneath his skin. He reached up, ran a hand through his hair and removed it. The skull was shaven, as was every inch of his body. The legs, chest, and pubic area glistened bare and smooth. He took her head between iron hands and pressed her face against the bare pectoral muscles of his chest. She inhaled the fragrant musky scent from the light coating of body oil he always applied before they made love.

"Do not think of Charles," he commanded. "He no longer exists for you."

She could feel the bestial power oozing form his pores. Her head was swimming as a burning desire for this hairless animal consumed her. The heat between her legs flared and she went limp in his arms.

Also, and I think Andrew neglected to mention this when he explained the book to me, in the section describing a different sex scene between the hero and some female character (which he did quote from), the hero is described as completely undressing the woman, including her earrings, which I found a rather bizarre detail to include.

Of course, the historical subplot is exactly as cockamamy as usual for Cussler, but he seems to have thrown in an unnamed (and therefore theoretically non-infringing) James Bond, just for fun.

It's...impressive.

Earlier, by the way, I discovered an interesting fact: Shego on Kimpossible (that's the villain with the glowing green hands) is voiced by the same actress who did Joan on Clone High. Forgive me if some of you already knew this and/or had told me, but it came to me as something of a revelation.

For those of you who were shocked, awed, and smitten by the OLED keyboard I mentioned a while back, engadget has had a few more posts on the subject:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000437052405/

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000647052414/

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000873050764/

Okay, folks. It's time again for "determine Nick's fate." That is to say, I get paid soon, and I need to decide how to frivolously spend the portion of my filthy lucre which need not be directed immediately to room and/or board.

Amusing things

* An iPod device. Why? Because I can't play music on my iBook while the lid is closed, and I spend a good 1.5-2.5 hours a day in transit. The question is, which? I can afford an iPod shuffle, and I would probably be able to satisfy myself with its smaller volume, as I'm not *that* deeply into my music. However, I'm a huge annotation dork, and I like playlists and ratings. A lot. So, perhaps an iPod mini, which I can kind of afford. This has the added benefit of providing a bare minimum of PDA-like functionality, which could be useful. I mean, I won't be writing term papers on it like I did on my Palm III (which has been missing for a bout a year; perhaps it was in the vanished vehicle that claimed several of my other belongings), but I have great difficulty keeping paper calendars, even with my hipster variant. Of course, then I'll end up jealous of the color display on the new ortho-iPods, but I can probably live with that. And I definitely can't afford one of those.
* DVDs. Top of this list are Alias (Season 2) and Firefly (attributable entirely to an instant message exchange with Maggie which resulted in me downloading several episodes and finding myself re-fascinated).
* A VCR.
* Cable.
* A digital camera. I want one of these very much, mostly so that I can provide visual reference points for utterly unnecessary things -- which is not to say this isn't a pretty good reason, as my consumer reasoning goes.
* A scanner
* A pen. It's a little shocking that during this whole time, I haven't bought a single fountain pen. The obvious choice, given that the bulk of my pen-and-paper writing is at work on incidental forms, would be a new Namiki/Pilot Vanishing Point. (Technically, it would be a Vanishing Point II to replace my old bent-nibbed Vanishing Point I.)

Functional things

* A George Foreman Grill or cheap knockoff thereof. Mmm. Grilled cheese.
* A pasta-sized pot
* A Quesadilla-sized pan
* Dishes and utensils
* Pants (I'll get around to it eventually)
* A pocket knife
* Shelving

Books

* Everything Bad is Good for You

Comments, which I will doubtless ignore, are welcome.

Huh. It's an unusually LJ-based day. ::shrug::

Here's one more post:

http://www.ragdollsoft.com/ragdollmasters.html

Played this a bit on the bus today, and was rapidly enthralled. Gameplay? Hard to describe, except to say that the enemy's gate head is down....

This is absolutely brilliant: http://www.tagzania.com/user/kukkurovaca?map=1

Well, okay. It's a little slow, at least on my machine. And there seems to be no built-in way to add street-based rather than coordinate-based locations without using bookmarklets. But still, not bad. Not bad at all.

And yet another way for me to generate RSS...

Now, what would be really cool is if the Robot Co-op bought it and integrated it into 43Places...

Okay, I normally operate under the assumption that virtually no one reads this; "virtually no one" meaning mostly wackyslav, and occasionally californiarose and prettypithy. This is, of course, based on the frequency with which people comment on my entries and/or insult me using, or with regard to, LJ. However, every so often, someone will break out with a reference to something I posted on whom I would have bet good money not only didn't read the LJ but had no idea it existed, or else had forgotten all about it.

So, if anyone out there is reading this and I might be surprised to know that, chime in. Or, if I'm over-generalizing from a couple of chance episodes, everyone immediately maintain an eerie quiet, and nobody comment at all.