Category: Uncategorized

Devastating Shortcake

Another in what promises to be a long line of repurposed entries from the old Millionaire’s Holiday page. This one originally aired on October 23, 2005. Here’s what I had to say about this show:

A really fun show this week where we hear all sorts of novelty oddities with just enough beats to tie it all together. Particularly rare gems include rap from Strawberry Shortcake, an excerpt from Devastating Dave the Turntable Slave, and a few thrift store home-made cassette finds. Oh, you better believe this is goodbad stuff. You’ll also notice either:

  1. A lack of announcing and PSAs in the first half of the program; or
  2. A sudden loss of audio quality in the second half of the show.

Again the stream capture gremlins were out in force and I dropped the first half of the program. However, this time I was able to recreate it from the audio master files on the laptop thus you get the full show this week. Lucky you. . . Speaking of the show, you can either nab it using the podcast link on the right or grab the direct link to the audio file.

Playlist after the jump

Continue reading “Devastating Shortcake”

Cooks.com – Recipe – Curry Pumpkin Soup

I’m not exactly the king of cookery and I am hardly a recipe blog kind of guy, but this recipe is superlative. We made it little over a month ago to rave reviews and then promptly lost the paper it was printed on. Elz and I are using it as the opening gambit for our Joint Family Thanksgiving Spectacular meal so I had to do a bit of internet digging to rediscover the thing. Now that it is found, I will memorialize it forever here on the ol bloggy blog.

Cooks.com – Recipe – Curry Pumpkin Soup

A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
from: A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design

One could just link to A List Apart and be done with it. That would be short shrift to some excellent content though. A List Apart has damped the zealotry a bit in recent years and most of the preachy comes out of empirical observation these days. Take this article and its author for instance. Zeldman used to be all fire and brimstone but now measures his statements (somewhat). Where the article might have lambasted the designer who revels in brochureware, it now quietly mocks.

And underneath it all is a really good article on what web design is and why it isn’t like designing in any other media.

Reasonably lacking in fun

What passes for the mothership-in-law will be staying with us this evening.  Here are some ways in which this promises to not be fun:

  1. She self-diagnosed her sinus infection as a mini-stroke
  2. Incessant demands for all and sundry to “feel my forehead.  Isn’t it hot?”
  3. Requests to “just hold my hand” made almost as frequently
  4. Reportedly her attempt at a bath this afternoon lasted for approximately 120 seconds

This added to the fun of having to clean the house top to bottom, rearrange said house to accommodate a sit down meal for a baker’s dozen, and plan and shop for an elaborate meal in anticipation of hosting the first joint family holiday celebration.  Elz recently recovered from a bout with pneumonia and is now nursing someone with a raging sinus infection and getting increasingly run down from it all.  Thereby opening herself to further ailments and possible hospitalization.

I’ll save further editorializing for off-list conversations.  I will say that I’ve spent nearly an hour on the phone with Elz here at work calming her down.

Why do people insist that holidays are fun?

Intimidating Spam

Subject: FUCK YOU
From: “HEY YOU PIDAR!!” <order@carderproduct.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:55:23 -0400
To: me@mydomain.com

HI SHITTER

IF YOU WANNA BUY SOMETHING —>

GO TO http://www.carderproduct.com

FUCK YOU, SHIT!!!!

EVEN DONT THINK TO ABUSE FOR SMPAM!!!

If that doesn’t get me buying something, nothing will…

Ballads, Beats, and Bawdy

In an effort to boost production here on the ol’ blog, move my old content into this implementation, show some solidarity with the writers who are on strike, and bask in my faded glory as an overnight community radio DJ I’ve decided to repost my old radio shows. Ballads, Beats, and Bawdy originally aired on October 16, 2005. Here’s what I had to say at the time:

Podcasting too hep for an anti-hipster like you? Go ahead and use this direct link to download the audio file.

Got yer tunes lined up now? Good. Here’s what’s on tap for you this week:

Playlist after the break…

Continue reading “Ballads, Beats, and Bawdy”

Lemon Curry? No, It’s the Larch.

Is YouTube bad? Is it good? Would it exist if it strictly relied on user-generated content? Who cares?

Not me when you can find someone has compiled links to 150 Monty Python Sketches hosted on YouTube. Then again, you’ll have to act fast as many of the sketches have already been pulled.

Which, ultimately, is sad. It’s not like the grainy as all heck postage stamp sized video has any real worth besides keeping the sketch in memory where someone is more likely to drop the $X.xx it would require to purchase a damned DVD box set.

Word Bites, #483 in a series

How to control the page numbering in a Word document

This could also be titled “how to finally put to rest a stupid, recurring problem that plagued you all morning because a patron was trying to conform to some byzantine thesis submission guidelines someone else in your work place drafted.”

Not mentioned in this article as extra bonus stupidity: If you start numbering in a section in the middle of the document, it will bork it’s way back into other sections that should not be numbered. I could be wrong about this though as the patron’s document was so filled with page and section breaks by the time I got there who knows what flipping rules were being applied.

Which gets me on the brink of yet another rant about Word and the academic community. Suffice it to say, there are other, more appropriately engineered and time-tested environments for someone who wants to publish a bound manuscript. The fact that you need to learn an additional markup language is apparently sufficient enough barrier to 99% of all academics—faculty and student—these days. The pain and suffering that comes with corrupt files, capricious layout quirks, and multi-layered kludging are apparently more abstract than LaTeX.

But, as I said, it is a common rant if you happen to work near me. No need to spill over into my blog and the wider universe. So I’ll stop here.

But, fercryinoutloud, Word can feel so hemorrhoidal sometimes.