David's blog

Rap Canon

Speaking of Gainax, I haven't ripped my favorite song from Evangelion from CD until just yesterday.  It's hidden on CD2 of Symphony of Evangelion, and it's a Rap version of Canon.

04 弦楽五重奏&RAP

That CD has a couple of versions of Canon, but I really enjoy this one.  The CD is almost 10 years old now, but I love this tune as much now as I did when I first heard it.

Service, Service!

Misato

No, I don't mean that in a Gainax way.

It's just that I've noticed that my computer habits have changed over the years, and I don't know if it's because of the way I'm aging, or the way that technology has changed the lay of the virtual land.

Aside from starting out with video games, (fantasizing about Xevious and Tempest was the only thing that could keep me awake in church,) I first wrote the same simple single-user programs everybody else wrote on their first PET or Apple ][ computers.  An Othello game!  Wow!

Then, straight to a static website, almost ten years ago.

Shortly after that, a little blogging and screensaver making.

Lately, although I actually want to do other things, (I need to burn some home videos to DVD for the family, for example,) I keep writing little web-based services for myself.  Just for fun, here are some of the subdomains that have cropped up because of these services (and other things):

config.dlma.com - Notes on how I like my computers set up.
feed.dlma.com - A feed making service with no front-end.  (You can add pages too.  Email me.)
my.dlma.com - Old, tired blog.
observer.dlma.com - Old article on programming.
rps.dlma.com - A decision making service.
svn.dlma.com - A remote regressible repository.
task.dlma.com - A productivity service.
webdav.dlma.com - A service for tools like FoxMarks.  (I like to use my own servers.)
wiki.dlma.com - A test wiki that I decided to leave in place.

Of course, there's a weak portal at www.dlma.com, and there are other subdomains, too private to share here.  (Maybe I'll make a friends-only post?)

Webcam Hand Gesture UI

Michael Heilemann provides YouTube video of a new webcam hand gesture user interface.  Très Minority Report.

(Shoot, forgot to crosspost this to lj!)

Crossposting to LiveJournal is Awesome!

The enabling of cross-posting between vox and lj is going to make me explore vox a little more deeply.

I especially like the fact that in vox access can be restricted in a way that friends might see some posts that family can't, and family might see some posts that friends can't.

I had a friend who deleted a post at his blogger account because he'd written about humorous pornographic dream.  He was OK with friends reading the post, but his wife made him delete it because family might see it.  I should invite him to vox!

QotD: I Give It 5 Stars

What's your favorite restaurant?

I'll have to cast a vote for Georgio's in San Francisco.  I've never had bruschetta anywhere else that's quite as good.  And their New York style pizzas are tops.

And another for Bento Xpress in my hometown.  It's a rare treat to find such delicious and affordable Japanese food!

Both places are family-owned, and the personal service and attention you experience reflect it.

QotD: Kid Flick

What is your favorite children's movie?

It varies.  But today I'll have to go with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  It brings back fond memories for both my wife and myself of our individual childhoods.  And Dick Van Dyke's physical comedy and performances always make me happy.

Boo in Monster's Inc will always remind me of my daughter, especially her improvised song in the bathroom.

And the art style in Lilo and Stitch and in Mulan never fails to inspire me.  Hawaii's evidently a friendly place with no sharp corners or edges.  And China must be a beautiful, fluid, natural place where the presence or absence of symmetry is pregnant with meaning.

Silicon Valley Culture

Macross

I love the fact that when I'm driving around, it's not a surprise to find a license plate like:

VOID *

(Of course, nowadays you'll also find plenty of more appropriate object oriented plates.)

I love it when I see a car that's been modded to have the manufacturer's symbol replaced with the Macross logo.

I love it when when I see NERV stickers in the rear windows.

Nerv_small

This all happens within a two-square-mile radius of where I work.  Today I came across the car with the NERV sticker, after climbing with a guy in a Yoyodyne shirt.

I'm half-tempted to find a Blue Sun sticker, myself.

At least there's some place where people aren't afraid to let their inner geek out.

Zeitcode Back Back!

The passing of tensegrity.net left me with another dead link.

Instead of changing the markup to plain text, I decided to share into the creative commons my own slightly derivative work, and put the link to that.  (Jim, if you object, I'll take it down.  But I hope you'll take it as a compliment.  I'm re-sharing the old thing because I think it was very good.)

Zeitcode Back!

I've just finished porting my domain to a new server.  The one dead link I had was to Jim Flanagan's destroyed zeitcode page.  But during the migration, I found out where Jim hid the new page, so I can give him his due credit (at the bottom of the page) again!  Yea!

What LiveJournal Could (easily) Learn From Vox

I think everybody already knows about the more popular features that make vox a fantastic journal.  This feature is related to one of the pet peeves I've had with LiveJournal for a long time.

LiveJournal's friends pages have a "discoverable" rss feed associated with them.  But the actual feeds there are not feeds for the friends pages!  They're only feeds for the individual users' journals.

Vox's blog pages and its neighborhood pages both have discoverable rss feeds too.

Vox_feed

And they're what you expected and hoped for!  Yes, indeedy.  The rss feed associated with the blog is for the user's blog, and the one on the neighborhood page is associated with the neighborhood page!

Well done, vox!