Monthly Archives: September 2005

Radar from Rita

I think this image pretty much speaks for itself:

In other news, I am in fact in Mandeville for the moment. I anticipate heading to Wash U in St.Louis before too long.

Just in case you’ve never heard this joke

A pirate walks into a bar with a swagger, partly due to the grog he’s been drinking, and partly due to the ship’s wheel prodruding from his pants. The bartender looks up as this pirate enters, looks him over, shakes his head, and says, “You know, as a bartender I usually mind my business, but I just have to ask — what’s with the ship’s wheel in your pants.”

The pirate looks him in the eye, throws up his hands, and says, “Arr… it be drivin’ me nuts!”

Happy Talk Like a Pirate day, ye scalawags.

Tryad and Your Local Library

I have for you today two points of interest. Yesterday was kind of a bitter day on Virtually Shocking, so today will be a bit more positive.

First point of interest: Tryad. Neat sort of ambient music, which varies in genre, really, all released under a creative commons license. The members of the group don’t actually play together. Their collaboration is via the internet. Their first album, Public Domain was released today, and I haven’t yet listened to the whole thing. However, what I’ve heard, I dig. I particularly like Dance of the Urbanite. Found via Lawrence Lessig‘s blog.

Second point of interest. I gather this is rather old news, but I just found it today via the 43 Folders top 10 clicked links post. The second item on that list describes how to create a “bookmarklet” in your browser.

“Brock,” you ask, “What does this magical bookmarklet do?” — I’m glad you asked.

Let’s say you’re browsing the site of a bookseller, maybe Amazon, and decide you want to read the book that you’re looking at. You click the bookmarklet. It pulls up your local library’s search with the book already searched for. It does this by ISBN, and it’s recommended that you use a hardcover ISBN, since libraries tend to carry them over paperbacks.

Brilliant. Instructions are here, on Jon Udell’s blog.

On an unrelated note, I switched my personal website, brocktice.com, over to MoinMoin wiki today. It used to run on QwikiWiki, but I wanted more power.

Damn you, Walter!

To quote The Dude in The Big Lebowski,

God damn you Walter! You fuckin’ asshole! Everything’s a fuckin’ travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the FUCK, has anything got to do with Vietnam? What the fuck are you talking about?

now, replace a few words here and there, and you have my sentiments on the President’s address from Jackson Square this evening:

God damn you Dubya! You fuckin’ asshole! Everything’s a fuckin’ travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about terrorists and weapons of mass destruction? What the FUCK, has anything got to do with terrorists? What the fuck are you talking about?

Why was terrorism brought up? I understand that, like a terrorist attack, Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of damage. We don’t, however, need to drag terrorism into the mix here. It’s like talking about Vietnam at the scattering of Donny’s ashes. I have mixed feelings on a lot of political things going on right now. I like to think that I consider things rationally, rather than clinging to a particular political party or agenda.

This particular issue, however, hit close to home. My roommate told me today that he got to our apartment through some trickery, (these aren’t the droids you’re looking for) and that most of our stuff has been flooded and/or fallen over and then been flooded. I’ve been living in various places around the country, none of them my home, for a couple of weeks now.

The last thing I need to see the President talking about in Jackson Square is some plug for the whole War on Terror (if you can wage war on an emotion…). It felt like a commercial product placement. I expect better, from both him and his speechwriters.

I feel so… used.