Again

My car got stolen. Again. Witness:

It Must be the Apocalypse

So my car was found. Only about 10 blocks away. And the only damage was to the steering column where they hot-wired it and the only theft was some CDs. This sounds good, except that it might be quite pricey to get the steering column fixed, depending on the amount of the damage. Here's a lesson - if you have a nice car, get something lower than a $1k deductable.

I present to you an exercise: determine what happened. Here are the facts of the theft. The car was taken sometime between November 30th at 11 PM and December 1st at 4PM. It was probably in the night since there was a good inch of snow on the ground when we looked at the parking place at 4. The windows were not broken to get into the car, so there was nothing on the ground - no glass or debris. When I looked at the car at the impound lot, there was no visible damage on the outside, and on the inside, the steering column had been broken into. The ignition switch thinger was open so that I could use most anything to get the car going. Now, it started with a little work, but the windshield wipers weren't working, nor did the electronic lock system. There were hand or glove prints on the windshield in a pattern that looked like they needed to wipe it off. The rearview mirror was set very low, as was the steering wheel. So, that's about all we have to work with.

Our theories - a) the car was taken a short distance to a quieter place to rifle through the goods in the car; b) they broken into the car, hot wired it, and then realized it was a stick as they drove away, only getting about 10 blocks away and ditching it; c) since it was snowing and they had broken the windshield wipers, they had to ditch the car since they couldn't see and/or it would be suspicious to have a car without wipers on the streets; or d) it was a couple of short kids (hence the mirror and wheel) that were idiots and took my damn car. Any other ideas?

Dear Jesus! Another Post?

It's an eventful week up here in the hinterlands. So, it appears that my car has been stolen. It's not totally clear that this is the case of yet, but it's looking to be the case. So, if anyone sees a 2000 Civic with Minnesota plates (MTG-412), let me know. Or, if one of you, my esteemed readers, stole it, I'd love to know. Anyway, that's the news at the moment.

Holy Crap! Something New!

That's right. There's something new going on. Mara and I have started a new project. When Sally Pwned Harry is our attempt to create a resource for couples who game together. It's still pretty rough, but we're slowly getting our act together and getting it organized. We're finding more and more couples that have a relationship where they actually play video games together. It's astonishing, really. Even more astonishing is the fact that there are zero sites out there writing to this audience. So we're filling the gap. Or at least attempting to. Well, really, we're just trying to get on the radar so we get free video games and stuff. Because free video games rule. So go check it out and comment or something. Because we love attention.

Thrice Yearly

Well this isn't going well. My whole publishing model based on 3 updates per annum (to use Seth's words) just doesn't seem too exciting. I mean, look at this place. The dishes are dirty, there's laundry everywhere, and some scientists have discovered 37 new species of bitrot in the archives alone. It's embarrasing is what it is. davehendler.com, my identity on the web, was even worse. Quick aside, hopefully in a week or so, when searching for 'dave hendler' on google, the first TWO results will contain the word 'bastard' - one in all caps. So what am I getting at? Not much. Basically, I don't update very often. So it goes.

The news of the moment, and, probably, in terms of import and pomp, the year, are these (or should it be 'is this'? Is/Are news singular or plural?): I'm moving and I'm shaking. New location in uptown with the lovely Schmara (her secret code name, I shall not reveal her real name on this website) and a new job on August 1 with Phi Theta Kappa (ptk.org (that's right - I used the domain name as the link instead of the name of the organization. It's my right as a web guru to break the rules and best practices (I may also be icredibly tired and somewhat loopy, hence the nested parentheses))) as a Programmer or somesuch thing. Which I'm stoked for. That's pretty much it, really. So, go read something more interesting now, like drug abuse among the extreme elderly or about proper cleaning procedures before consuming a baby - those are way more interesting.

Broadcatching and Media Centering on Mac OS X

So I've been taken by the urge to turn my old G4 400 MHz machine into a media center. Sure, it's not as pretty or as small as a Mac Mini, but it does have one major economic advantage over the Mac Mini: it's a sunk cost. I had a vision the other day of turning it into a video playing, TV show downloading, Nintendo playing machine. Here's a brief rundown of what's accomplished.

I got two Logitech Rumbly-Mumbly Gamepads for about $30 a piece and I've gotten them to work decently with a couple emulators so far. The latest version of SNES9X handles the controllers brilliantly - open up the controller config, map the controller buttons to the on-screen prompts and you're good to go. Joseph and I played a couple of rounds of Super Mario Kart just to make sure it worked - for scientific hypothesis testing purposes only, of course. SNES9x seems to drop a few frames and stutter every once in a while, but it's not too bad. RockNES's performance, ironically enough, is not as good. Well, the newest version (4.0) seems to run much slower than an older version I found (3.1.3, I think). Ah. A bit more reading shows that the newer versions are slower due to some perfectionist tweaks in the emulation. 3.1.3 works on my machine and that's OK by me. Anyway, I have yet to get my gamepads working with RockNES. The Emulator Enhancer package doesn't seem to want to recognize my pads. It also seems that it's easy to want to configure two controllers of exactly the same model as having the same keys assigned to the buttons. USB Overdrive (another good program that seems to be languishing due to some piddling annoyance like a child or some such thing) does this which is too bad since it seems like the best piece of software out there for this kind of stuff. GamePad Companion X 2.2 seems to offer what I want, but, again, I have yet to get it work correctly. I haven't played with the other emulators (Genesis, Gameboy, et al) yet. The message for my friends: come on over and play Super Nintendo with me.

I also spent a good deal of time tonight hacking up a buzzword: broadcatching. Now that I look at that term, the first thing that comes to my mind is not automatically downloading TV shows that other folks have digitized, torrentized, and RSSified. Perhaps it's just me. Anyway, Azureus seems to be the current cross-platform, vogue method of doing this. I've thought about doing that, but I figured a more Mac OS X-centric method would be cooler. And Apple's technical notes turn me on. And due a previous experience, Java generally makes me ill. The idea originated from a note that mentioned PulpFiction could be a part of solution in addition to Mac OS X's Folder Actions (the notes from Andrew Escobar). I started playing with that but soon ran into the problem that Safari doesn't always like to automatically download .torrent files. The torrents from btefnet in particular did not want to be seen as binary files. So I ended up making a Smart Folder in PulpFiction that would grab entries that looked appealing (as simple as rules like "Title contains Daily Show") and then have an AppleScript look for unread messages in that folder, curl the torrent file, and have the default BitTorrent app on the machine open up the torrent (the newer OS X version don't ask for a directory, so those are much better for complete automation). If anyone cares, here's the script:

tell application "PulpFiction" set myTorrentDir to "~/Desktop/torrents/" set myBroadcatchFolder to "Broadcatch" set articlesToCheck to every article in folder myBroadcatchFolder repeat with thisArticle in articlesToCheck if thisArticle's read status is false then try set myFile to myTorrentDir & my searchReplace(my searchReplace(my searchReplace(my searchReplace(my searchReplace(thisArticle's title, ":", ""), " ", "_"), "'", ""), "(", ""), ")", "") & ".torrent" set myURL to thisArticle's siteURL do shell script "curl -s -L -g " & myURL & " > " & myFile do shell script "open " & myFile set thisArticle's read status to true on error error_msg display dialog error_msg end try end if end repeat end tell on searchReplace(origStr, searchStr, replaceStr) set old_delim to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to searchStr set origStr to text items of origStr set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replaceStr set origStr to origStr as string set AppleScript's text item delimiters to old_delim return origStr end searchReplace

Now, I'm sure this is probably the stupidest piece of AppleScript evar. It's probably teh suck. But it was a quick hack that might be working. I'm about to cron it or use one of the random AppleScript schedulers out there to make sure this runs every hour or so. It's also certainly possible that I overlooked a feature in PulpFiction that would automatically trigger this script. But my copy kept crashing when I was mucking in that area and some of the UI doesn't seem to be very happy. So I gave up after about 5 minutes. But then spent an hour doing workarounds. Perhaps I need to reevaluate my software development methodology. And maybe it's late. Anyway, it would also be cool to check in with the torrent apps and cut off the seed after a few hours of Good Samaritan-ship to cut down on personal bandwidth usage. Unfortunately, the official BT client doesn't have any AppleScript capabilities and TomatoTorrent doesn't have a huge amount. I suppose I could probably just check the last mod time on the file and calculate from there. Regardless, I'm now hipper and geekier than you because I'm broadcatching. Bitches

So I've got games and TV shows. I can also watch other stuff on my machine as well as DVDs if I so desire. But I don't since I have a PS2 that has surround sound and my Mac does not. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that it would be awesome to have some valid and useful, er, use for the other toy I picked up - a little IR remote with the general buttons that exist on an IR remote. Basically, a simple interface for accessing downloaded material and games without having to use the Finder. MythTV is the ultimate solution on Linux, but I've already invested enough time in the OS X side of things and mucking about with Linux USB drivers to get my gamepads and seems to me to be equivalent to the 5th Circle of Hell. I pulled that reference out of my ass because it sounded good and makes me look smart (and I am - I did read Inferno in high school but recall very little about the details of the circles of hell) but it turns out that the 5th circle is basically a swamp, which reflects my feelings on Linux USB drivers quite well. Also, Mac OS X is prettier. So there. Anyway, the Mac OS X MythTV ports don't seem to be very usable right now (I tried, they crashed, probably because I read up just before the point where they say that you have to have a Linux powered MythTV backend running somewhere, but details are for wimps), so that sucks. People have talked a lot about EyeTV but a) it costs money b) I don't care about digitizing my own signal and c) it doesn't actually seem to solve the problem I have. Then there's a new project called CenterStage that's under development in response to the desire to make the Mac Mini into a media center. AHA! We've come full circle from the beginning of my post. Hopefully this turns out to be a cool project that isn't a resource hog. Because it would complete my setup. Although it does seem to be focused on much of the high end A/V side which I'm not too concerned about. I may end up throwing together my own hack to aggregate media in a nice remote control friendly app, but that sounds hard and I doubt many of the programs I'm using really want to talk to each other. That Mac software. They're all so individualistic and petty.

ANYWAY, that's what I've been up to. God bless Minnesota winter. Make it end. Please make it end.

Yes. I Am Still Alive

It's currently two degrees above zero, fahrenheit. And this isn't the worst it's going to get. I still fucking hate Minnesota.

Mara and I are quickly approaching the three month mark. Not too shabby. In fact, totally hot shit.

Just about fleshed out our web group at work. Also very cool. Maybe I will be able to get some real work done instead of constantly playing firefighter.

Got some super geeky, data-obsessive projects in the works. They aren't in a stage where I can do much on here but they do work on my laptop. I'll just tell you this much: between October 11th and November 11th, the average call length on my cell phone was 4.7751 minutes.

Going to Grand Forks tomorrow to hang out with Mara's friends Kit and Paul. The plan, as of now, is drinking, board games, and drinking. Got a brand new Jenga set to break in as well.

The laptop fought with the hardwood floors while I was home for Christmas. Needless to say the floor humiliated my laptop in the fight. Now, probably saying this will jinx what has happened so far but I'm going to go for it regardless. The logic board was crispy fucked (that's the technical term Apple used on the phone) and replacing it isn't cheap. The boards alone run about $700. Which is a lot. So I decided to go for it since getting him fixed is cheaper than getting a new one (and, yes, I briefly considered the possibility of going without a laptop but that didn't last long. Had I gone with that plan I wouldn't be able to work from a coffee shop like I am right now). So it gets back, all nice-and-fixed-up-like. Dude at the Apple store tells me no charge. I press him on that questionable statement. He stands by it. I'm currently waiting for him to be wrong and have a large bill in my mail. But is has not arrived yet, so I'm crossing my fingers but assuming it will come in due time. If it is a clerical mistake, GOD BLESS CLERICAL MISTAKES.

Movies seen recently: Closer (good date movie if you and your loved one are doing very well. An iffy relationship would not fare well in that movie), Style Wars (1982 documentary on graffiti writers and break dancers. Awesome), Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, and A Very Long Engagement (I am not a full fledged Jeunet fan), Sex and Lucia (beautiful, but Mara and I agreed that if this is "the most wonderous love story ever told" we've got some worldwide cultural problems with our view of what love is), Trekkies (fun little documentary. Spawned good conversation on how people deal with life and the ways that they find community. We decided that is Star Trek conventions are the best that these people can find, we might have some problems. The big caveat is that I don't think it's bad, it's just that there should be better structures in place for people to find companionship and meaning in their lives), Blade Trinity (totally schizo movie. Pretty good action though. And Ryan Reynolds' Van Wilder character does surprisingly well in a Blade movie), National Treasure (no one else in the theater laughed as much as we did. We're finding that a common occurance), and probably a few more. Good stuff.

Video games consumed: Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andres, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, little bit of the Tony Hawk Underground 2, and a little bit of Half-Life 2. Halo 2 multiplayer is super fun when you play with people you know, GTA always amuses me, KOTOR was great (and I've just started the new one which also seems very good), Tony Hawk is more of the same and I fear I may have outgrown these games, and Half-Life 2 is gorgeous and incredibly cinematic.

That's about the lot of it. Probably going to New York at some point to work with my sister and get her non-profit's website up and going. Otherwise, things are good.

Is that a decent enough post you guys?

Northern Lights

Hott Shitt

It's been a busy weekend. Some highlights:

My faith in internet dating is fully restored. Met an incredibly awesome girl and ended up spending most of the weekend together.

Got to go see a Super Happy Fun Machine show which was really good. It's always fun to see those kids play, especially when they have a great show like Friday night's.

Team America was really, really good. Throughout the weekend, when SHFM songs weren't stuck in my head, Team America songs were. "AMERICA... FUCK YEAH!" Good shit.

Saw RJD2 last night and he was incredible. Started out a little rough since it's probably a new-ish set that he's doing. The entire set was really, really good, but the most impressive moment was the end of the show when he came back on stage for one last song and picked up a guitar. For those of you not familiar, RJD2 is one of the preeminent DJ/turntablist/producer currently out there. So the crowd went nuts when he picked up the guitar, stepped up to the mic, and played an acoustic version of one of his songs from his newest album. Not only that, he was really good. I took a few videos of the show:

• During intermission, he put on a game of Name That Tune. I didn't record the first two, which were the theme to Entertainment Tonight and the theme song from the Legend of Zelda. I did catch the third (10MB AVI).
• Short clip of some live scratching (3.4MB AVI)
• Jamming on the sampler (9.6MB AVI)
• Beat juggling (6.8MB AVI)
• Live acoustic version of Making Days Longer (25.3MB AVI)

I've got to say that I love being able to take 3 minute videos on my new camera. It worked out pretty well last night. I was just able to catch all of that last song.

older posts...

previously on sollaires.net...