Uncategorized: September 2006 Archives
Each day I find more ways to plug myself even further into the web. My new obsession is RSS news aggregation. I know that Safari includes RSS reading, but its features are somewhat lackluster.
So now I've found a pretty neat alternative: NetVibes. Now I can organize all my RSS news feeds into one extremely customizable and ad/brand-free site.
I'm also trying out NewsVine, a social news site. There are a lot of features on this site that I haven't really taken advantage of yet, but it looks pretty informative.
There is so much fucking information available out there. To echo the cliche, I'm drowning in it. Things are moving along so quickly that I feel the need to keep up with it all, as impossibile as that is. I don't know why you're all wasting your time on Myspace or VH1 when you could be filling your head with useless junk that may actually help you understand the world a little better.
Don't bother reading it. Instead, go to killnick.com/text. That's where you'll find the real blog.
A new live NIN release. And I thought they were just going to play Doom 3 for the next five years.
If you're reading this from Facebook, then chances are you couldn't give a shit about Windows Vista. My profile is linked up to my blog, and you'll be able to see any new updates I write. So feel free to not look at this. Anway, my first hands-on experience with Windows Vista:
It sucks ass. I managed to acquire a legal and activated copy of Vista Release Candidate 1 from Microsoft. The installation went without a hitch, using a second hard drive. Microsoft is even gracious enough to include a boot loader with their software so I can dual-boot into XP or Vista. That means all my games and pornography are untouched. Thank God.
When I finally made it to the desktop, I was pretty excited to look around. I've read all over the Internet how Windows Vista will be a huge disappointment. And I'm sure it will. But I wanted to see for myself.
Well, my Internet connection doesn't work, even though Vista tells me I am connected. This prevents me from installing an updated nVidia driver, or even a sound driver. This means I have to sit through choppy visual effects and system BEEP BEEP BEEPing instead of listening to my speakers.
Windows Vista is also the most counter-fucking-intuitive thing on the planet. I tried to find my network settings, which is usually an easy thing to do with Windows XP, but in Vista I had to search through five different screens and confirm two warning dialogues (which is Microsoft's new idea of preventing malware from jacking up your computer. Ten minutes later I found a screen saying in big fucking stupid letters "YOU ARE ALREADY CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET." Lies.
I figured a quick restart might somehow fix my network problems, but apparently Vista has replaced the "shut down/restart/stand by" button with just a "stand by" button. Now my computer is sleeping and nothing appears to wake it.
I've used betas of Ubuntu and SUSE that work better than this trash.
Fuck Windows. Fuck Microsoft. Get your shit together. I had faith in you with the new Windows Live Writer, but your flagship product is a huge clunky hunk of ass.
EDIT: I think I've discerned the problem with my network connection: there is no pre-installed driver for my onboard ethernet adapter, but apparently Windows thinks there is. I've downloaded the Windows XP driver from Asus but I haven't installed it yet. If that doesn't work I'll probably blow up a supermarket.
EDIT 2: I've finally gotten the driver updates, and I'm currently in the process of installing all my essentially stuff (iTunes, Steam, etc). I've already had three or four program crashes (followed by a bubble reassuring me that "THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN FIXED IN WINDOWS VISTA RTM"). XP > Vista. This is all I can say. Maybe when January rolls around they will have somewhat cleaned up the act.
Oh yeah, killnick still looks like crap with Internet Explorer 7.
EDIT 3: Well hey everybody! Looks like you can download and install this craptastic piece of junk, too!
Boy: It's like that paradox of abundance. I'm up to my ears in culture and art, but none of it gives me any insight or creative spark to come up with anything somebody would like.
I mean, every time I watch a movie, every song I listen to, every news article I read, every quote I find, every web site I come across, every photograph I see, is like a little demon on my shoulder going "hey, you should do something like that. I bet you could." But when it comes time for me to sit down and actually think of something to write, there's nothing there. Most of my best thoughts go through my head when I'm driving home from work or as I'm falling asleep at night. I wish I had a thought-recorder that would keep all of my streams of consciousness. Some of them are really profound. I tried writing down a few, but the next morning I read them over and they seem childish and uninspired. I suppose it's because I'm not a morning person.
Girl: Maybe you should keep a journal.
Boy: That's a waste of time. Journals are so counter-productive. You could keep a journal for months; when you go back and look over what you've written, you're aghast at the feeble-minded bullshit you've managed to spew when you thought nobody was actually reading. It's the same with these weblogs and online journals. Most of them aren't written with the thought in mind that millions of internet users will actually be able to see and critique it. I need to bring something to the table and share it with the world, not just patter on in some narcissistic vacuum of self-doubt.
Girl: Pander.
Boy: What?
Girl: You said "patter on," but you meant "pander on." Either way, "pander" isn't the correct word to use in that context. I believe what you should have said was "prattle on." Yeah, that makes more sense.
Boy: That does nothing for me.
Here's another to add to your arsenal.
Deep thought: if I could somehow infuse my existence into little atoms of bytes and electricity, and make my home on the Internet, I would do so. I could float from network to network and maybe vacation to your sister's webcam. Sleep optional.
Hello, my faithful servants. There are thousands of people who don't know about this page, because it is not overtly linked from my homepage. This is partly my intention because I don't want just everybody reading my weblog, a stunning collection of awe-inspiring wisdom and whatnot, but it does make some things around here extremely dull.
On occasion I check my traffic logs and it's apparent that I make up for at least half of this website's traffic. This can be seen as a small blessing because it makes my hosting costs very manageable; about five dollars every three months.
However, it's sad to see that so much of my wit and intelligence has gone unnoticed. I must admit, I don't do much to make friends around the Internets and its next-door neighbor, the Blogoworld. The websites to which I link have no idea about my existence, but I suppose some of this has to do with my painfully insipid lifestyle.
I also spend little to no time spreading the word of this weblog's existence. Occasionally I leave comments on foreign blogs, a phantom reader, occasionally attaching this URL, but it rarely ever draws any eyes.
It's Friday night and I'm probably going to watch Truffaut's Jules et Jim. My dad's asleep on the living room couch. Apparently Good Night and Good Luck doesn't have enough action for him. Goodnight, world. Goodnight, Internets. Sleep in the comfort of a better, freer, globalized tomorrow.
I'm sitting in Starbucks. Just now, Ray LaMontagne's "Arms of a Woman" played, followed by a cover of "Two of Us" by Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. Both of these songs have sentimental value. A Russian man is currently yelling angrily into his cell phone. I predict an elephant will fall on my head today.
Look at this guy's work. It's pretty incredible.
Photos from the most recent Uke Skywalker & Tuba Fett show are now online. They aren't as good, in my opinion, as the shots from the previous show at modernformations, but chalk that up to my extremely amateurish photography skills. I'm still learning. Click and see.
Hey guys. There's a browser on the internets called Flock, which you may or may not know about. I think I've written about it before, but it's worth a second look.
Flock is basically Mozilla Firefox on steroids. It is fully-featured; maybe a little too fully-featured. It has a built-in bookmark organizer (using del.icio.us), RSS reader, photo uploader (via Flickr), and blog writer (which will work with Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal, and other stuff). Essentially it uses these robust features to merge with all of those neat Web2.0 technologies. This is neat in theory, but it can seem really overwhelming when you're as unorganized as I am. When I installed Flock, it imported a million bookmarks from Safari and I was charged with the task of tagging them and putting them into "collections" (little folders to organize your bookmarks).
I am a technophile, but Flock scares me. I think it wants to be my friend really badly, and I find myself coming back to it time and time again, but when it comes down to actually organizing my digital life, I find it extremely difficult to put things into its right place. I'd much rather have things floating around in my head than located in little folders with tags. But who knows? Maybe I'll grow to like Flock. It's only in beta now, but it's been surprisingly reliable for me.
Safari is still my default browser, simply for its speed and tight integration with OS X. But Flock is a very close second--and maybe, as I grow to be more fond of this Web2.0 crap, it will overtake Safari.
I've finally gotten the photos developed from the Uke Skywalker & Tuba Fett show a few weeks ago, and they're pretty disappointing. Most of them have a yellow tint that's hard to remove with Photoshop. I guess I should be using some sort of white balancing filter. They're pretty grainy, too, but that doesn't bother me. The scans even further my disappointment; they've turned out pretty blurry too.
They'll end up on Flickr eventually, but I'll probably have to re-scan and manipulate them again. I can't wait to move into digital. That new Canon 400D is looking tasty as hell.
