Page of Moss - Bloglet

Wow, he really is scum. _
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02:37:51 PM, Thursday 6 January 2005

Joe Biden just made my day.
Also, Alberto Gonzales is such a fucking weasely little shit.
Also, I think I'm going to have to admit that I'm kind of a political junkie. _
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02:09:02 PM, Thursday 6 January 2005

Hey, um, forgive me if there's something obvious that I'm just not aware of, but why do Democrats like Colin Powell so much more than the rest of the Bush administration? Or, alternately, why do they feel so much more betrayed when he isn't better? _
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10:42:55 PM, Saturday 1 January 2004

I think most of you who did the blogswap will have my disc by now, so I suppose I ought to post a tracklisting. A huge portion of this mix is stuff I heard on mp3 blogs, so if you like it, you should probably also start following Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again and Said The Gramophone, if you’re not already. Anyway, on with the music:

“Uncle Sam’s Yard“, Decibully – Going by the two songs I have heard, Decibully are deeply misnamed. But their songs are very pretty, and I want to hear more.
“Aging Spinsters“, The Magnetic Fields – This is just so sad and pretty and amazing.
“I’m Pop“, The American Flag – I have no idea where I found this and as soon as I listened to my Blogswap CD I regretted putting this on it. I think I did it to get it out of my head. But it certainly is catchy, and now that I haven’t listened to it for a while I think I kinda like it. Have you ever had a toy that was ugly but also sort of endearing so that you would feel bad throwing it away?
“Lover I Don’t Have To Love“, Bright Eyes – I always feel like Bright Eyes should be some kind of guilty pleasure, because they’re just so over-the-top with the miserableness, but I really like them, and sometimes I, um, you know, kind of like being miserable maybe a little bit. And what the hell, some of the People Who Are More Hip Than I Am seem to like them, anyway.
“I’ve Been Thinking“, Handsome Boy Modeling School with Cat Power – So. Fucking. Sexy. We bought the new album a couple of weeks ago, and it is great. The first album is also great, and very funny, complete with an appearance by Father Guido Sarducci.
“Hit Me Baby One More Time“, Travis – Yet another brilliant cover of Britney Spears. I’m not really sure where this is from, now that I think about it, but I imagine Julia knows. Also one of the many excellent songs discussed but never played in the recent remake of Freaky Friday. If the soundtrack to that movie had had even half the songs they talked about in the script, it would have been… um… better, I guess. Addendum: Says Julia: “It's played, it's just playing in the background when they're talking about it.” But I think the basic point still holds.
“Gates to the Garden“, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Some of the songs on this CD are live recordings, and some of those live recordings don’t have really great fidelity, and this is the first of those. Um, I’m sorry. But isn’t it luscious, though?
“St. James Infirmary“, Eric Burdon and the Animals – I went on this kick a while back where I tried to download as many different interpretations of this song as I could, and this one has the set of lyrics I like best, even though it’s not necessarily my favorite version. I gather some people don’t think very highly of the Animals, or as my mother put it, “we don’t have to listen to this, do we?”
“Troubled Friends“, Gogol Bordello – “We gonna introduce a new song. It goes ‘Troubled Friends‘. It’s probably about some of your friends, as we know for sure it’s about some of our friends.” Again with the fidelity, or lack thereof. But it poses a question worth pondering. And Gogol Bordello are amazing.
“Lord, Send Me an Angel“, The White Stripes – Great rock and roll arrogance. Which, um, I guess is originally great blues arrogance in this case, but whatever. You should totally go to a White Stripes concert, because if you are lucky they will sing the Boll Weevil song at the end, and it is great.
“Processed Beats“, Kasabian – I don’t know where I found this, but I like it.
“Post Modern Girls“, The Strokes with Regina Spektor – Her voice adds a lot to the Strokes’ usual sound. I think.
“Spider Eyes“, Dirty On Purpose – I really like this, but I find I have no idea what to say about it. Last night I hoped that I might have some idea when I got up. Nope.
“Here Comes The Summer“, The Fiery Furnaces – It’ll be so long until it’s June.
“I Fought The Law“, The Pogues with Joe Strummer – Okay, so they all sound drunk, and the recording quality is terrible, but it’s a lot of fun, isn’t it?
“Evil Hand“, Thalia Zedek – Sounds sort of like a gothier Patti Smith. I think this a good way to sound.
“The Catbird Seat“, The Silent League – I love love love this song, and Julia likes it well enough till the very end, but then she can’t stand listening to it because it reminds her of that awful Wham! song…
“Careless Whisper“, Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright – So you can see how, when I randomly found this online, I really had no choice.
“When The Springtime Comes Again“, John Fahey – I sometimes vaguely wonder if John Fahey is at all related to Kerne. Anyway, I like how this sounds, and I don’t listen to it much, so I thought maybe if I put it on here I’d listen to it more.

Not sure how well the commentary (essentially 19 paraphrases of “I like this“) turned out, but at least you know what the songs are now. Also, if anyone’s interested, I finally put together two or three long overdue mixes for the earlier blogswaps, too, and will send them to anyone that asks for them here, on two or three audio CDs or one mp3 CD with bonuses. It seems easier than trying to remember precisely who participated in the earlier blogswaps.

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07:01:57 PM, Saturday 1 January 2004

We were not home, because airlines suck almost (ALMOST!) as much as car rental places, but now we are home. And we are ready to chat. _
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12:20:30 AM, Saturday 1 January 2004

Coming soon to an intarweb near you: NewYear’sEveChat! Just find Julia or me on AIM tomorrow night, and it’s on! I am Platonism Elbow on AIM, if, um, anyone that would even care doesn’t know that already.

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09:44:21 PM, Thursday 30 December 2004

We tried to rent a car to drive home in.
We cannot rent a car, because we do not have a Major Credit Card.
Boo. _
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09:30:18 PM, Thursday 30 December 2004

I'm blogging from an internet cafe in Las Vegas. _
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04:04:16 PM, Tuesday 28 December 2004

I'ma be out of town for the next week, so I probably won't blog much, if at all. Not like, you know, usual. _
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08:34:30 PM, Wednesday 22 December 2004

Remembering the recommendations of various bloggers, I finally took some time the other day to read A Colder War, a story that combines the Cthulhu mythos and the Iran/Contra affair into a single even-more-horrifying whole. It was really excellent, in, you know, a terrifying kind of way. Also, the author, Charlie Stross, has what looks to be rather a good blog, in which he recently linked to this. _
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08:24:27 PM, Wednesday 22 December 2004

Mirabai wins! My number was 4,369,276,384 (I saved it on a file on my computer when I posted the entry, to be sure I wouldn't forget). _
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11:26:13 PM, Tuesday 21 December 2004

I am thinking of a number.

Whoever guesses closest to my number wins. _
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07:08:32 PM, Thursday 16 December 2004

New Apple Signature iPods. _
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06:10:46 PM, Tuesday 14 December 2004

See also this interview with Noam Chomsky about anarchism. _
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09:39:49 PM, Monday 13 December 2004

The idea of the “political spectrum” can be useful, but I think people make a big mistake when they equate political centrism with rational moderation and political extremism with irrational dogmatism. There are voices of moderation, reason, and clear thinking on the radical left and right, and likewise voices of dogmatic bias in the center.

Most often, those who argue for centrism as a guiding principle are trying to avoid the hard work of considering each idea on its own merits. They hope, by choosing the average of the most violently opposed opinions, to arrive at a compromise on which reasonable people can agree. Unfortunately, there is no such shortcut to substance. An idea can be judged only on its essence, not on accidents of history and popular opinion, and truth is found as often on the margins as in the center.

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09:23:22 PM, Monday 13 December 2004

We’ve been watching Dead Like Me. We started checking it out of Netflix, and it compels us to keep watching.

Either my defenses have been weakened by not having a television, or this is the most godawful thing I have ever seen. It is horribly, horribly written. It is built almost entirely on really dreadful cliches. It’s like the writers decided they wanted to do something “deep“—something in the vein of American Beauty, maybe—but they thought that “deep” was a style, rather than the product of actually working to make something good and intelligent. The characters are all one-dimensional caricatures of people, and there isn’t even a lot of range in the caricatures—there are five or six different personalities in the show, at the most.

Occasionally, one of the characters has what is clearly supposed to be a big revelation, which is usually about how everybody in the world is just as shallow and generic as the characters on the show, and how that’s beautiful in its own way, which might be interesting if it weren’t clear just how little the writers know about people at all, ta.

I could go on and on about everything that’s wrong with it—the annoying narration, the pointless toad motif, the way people who are meant to be wise come off as unpredictable assholes—but I wouldn’t know when to stop, and I would soon descend into a blathering stream of incoherent bile.

Hopefully the second season will be better.

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03:07:34 AM, Sunday 12 December 2004

Oh. My. God. Google Suggest is delightful. _
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03:42:07 PM, Friday 10 December 2004

This Ask MetaFilter thread is extraordinarily reassuring. Apparently everyone else gets as freaked out about using the phone as I do.

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03:39:50 AM, Thursday 9 December 2004

In Language Log, Geoffrey K. Pullum sets out to prove that Churchill's famous retort to the preposition at end rule is unfair (while acknowledging that the rule is bogus). As far as I can tell, though, what he accomplishes is an excruciatingly detailed demonstration of just why it is so funny.

(Which is to say, well, yes, all that he says there is true, but doesn't it seem like it's meant to be kind of over-the-top and absurd?) _
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04:29:39 PM, Wednesday 8 December 2004

I saw you today, driving along, listening to music from the looks of it... _
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07:51:09 PM, Tuesday 7 December 2004

ObjectDock is an OS X-style dock for Windows XP. It's pretty slick. _
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05:44:07 PM, Monday 6 December 2004

Ursula K. Le Guin says what needs to be said about the "Earthsea" movie.
[via Moira] _
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01:31:08 PM, Monday 6 December 2004

As Mike noted, my blog tracker stopped updating some time yesterday. I’ve now fixed the bug that was causing the problem, and it seems to work again. There was a weakness (okay, a bug) in the way my code was written, in that, if it got an error while collecting any BLT feed on its list, it would just stop and not bother collecting the others. This hadn’t caused problems before, which is why I hadn’t noticed it, but yesterday the feed for the teasmoke.net wiki stopped working (Kerne, you might want to take a look at that), and so my code just sat there squealing until I came in just now and fixed it.

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07:54:52 PM, Sunday 5 December 2004

And speaking of useful Mac applications, iPodDownload was the best way to transfer stuff off of you iPod: it gave you a source in iTunes that listed the contents of your iPod and let you drag songs into your library. Unfortunately, Apple shut them down, because, you know, letting people actually use their legally purchased hardware to move around files of their legally purchased music would jeopardize Apple's cozy relationship with the poor embattled RIAA. However, if you look around a bit, you may still be able to find a copy. _
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08:41:40 PM, Wednesday 1 December 2004

HistoryHound is a very slick OS X application that lets you search full text of web pages you have visited. Perfect if you know you've seen something but you can't remember where. _
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08:37:35 PM, Wednesday 1 December 2004

Two separate people on my buddy list currently have away messages indicating that they are downstairs.

Just, um, in case you were wondering. _
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07:47:02 PM, Wednesday 1 December 2004

The ability to fix minor annoyances in software you use regularly is one of the nicer things about being a programmer. _
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03:58:47 PM, Wednesday 1 December 2004

Ladies and Gentlemen: a G.I. Joe comic depicting a Diesel Sweeties shirt.

That is all. _
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09:43:36 PM, Monday 29 November 2004

Yet again: "The Republicans and Democrats spent so much time saying they're against baby-eating, they never really said what they're for!" _
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07:31:26 PM, Wednesday 24 November 2004

Straus Family Creamery has utterly the best milk at all, ta. (Or anyway, available in stores around here, ta). I don’t know why exactly I felt the need to blog about it right now, except that it seems like it ought to be recognized.

That said, I am not sure they were thinking of all the implications when they put this sentence on their website: “We are organic dairy farmers who make products with our own milk.”

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01:06:25 AM, Wednesday 24 November 2004

Understanding the naming conventions for Symbian C++ development makes everything much clearer. _
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08:12:10 PM, Tuesday 23 November 2004

WTF?!
This may only make sense if you've done any programming at all, but, um, trying to track down a bug, I just found the following bit of code in a library we're using:

public void setValidating(boolean b) {
    m_Validating = true;
}

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06:12:29 PM, Monday 22 November 2004

Go read Bridgie's latest post about the Puritan Dilemma, separatism, and the American left. Now. Really.
(That link is to the front page, because the permlink doesn't seem to work, but if the permlink does work at some future time it will be here.) _
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06:36:57 PM, Thursday 18 November 2004

Hey, if you know (or, what the heck, if you are) any smart college students interested in software development or software marketing, you should have them take a look at the Fog Creek Software summer internship program. Fog Creek is Joel (On Software) Spolsky's company, which almost certainly means it would be a great place to work for a summer. _
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06:20:41 PM, Thursday 18 November 2004

John Holbo: can Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by helpfully classified as Mary Sue fiction for history fans, do you think? _
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06:05:32 PM, Thursday 18 November 2004

I would like to endorse the following two expressions:
“beat like a redheaded mule”
“beat like a rented stepchild”

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03:32:04 AM, Thursday 18 November 2004

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