I'm pretty excited about all the traffic generated by my SSH howto (part 1, part 2). I should've submitted junk to hackaday long ago!

Anyway, I'm doing my best to respond to all the questions posed in comments (and that's definitely the place to pose them). Here are answers to the two most common problems: restrictive work security policies, and mac ownership.

another mp3 for you: i'd never heard of the caribbean, a d.c.-based band, but some random msnbc article pointed me towards them. this song, "siamese sons," is kind of lazy, lofi, glitchy pop. i like it. their web site is clever, too.

stereogum's right - this clientele song is really pretty, and basically could have come to us directly from a wormhole from the 60s. give it a listen.

the onion is redesigned - and they've now got RSS feeds! hurrah!

WHAT. THE. FUCK. AGAIN.

ugh. via amanda, read an older hook article on how uva deals with rape. (hint: they punish honor code offenders much more strictly than rapists.) because, you know, rape, whatever, but don't you dare plagiarize that english paper!

UPDATE: WHAT. THE. FUCK.:

Kathryn Russell also believes UVA's process is grievously flawed. After her attack in February 2004, Russell says, she had to make repeated calls to Dean of Students Penny Rue's office before a hearing was scheduled. She says Rue delayed her request by, among other things, suggesting she enter mediation with her alleged attacker.

"I wanted him out of school," says Russell. "What did I have to mediate?"

Her Sexual Assault Board hearing brought her no satisfaction. After listening to hours of testimony and deliberating for three hours, the board returned a not guilty verdict against Russell's alleged attacker. The board offered no explanation, she says, nor did the school ever offer her any services after the trial.

Russell says they told the man she accused, "We believe you made a bad choice that night."

"I felt like I was drowning," she says, "the whole thing was so futile. So many months of my life, so much torture for nothing."

Her mother criticizes the training of representatives to the Board-- or lack thereof.

According to University literature, Board members receive special training, but Susan Russell's Freedom of Information Act request found that preparation to serve on the panel consists of a single session of "adjudication training."

"They don't have a good understanding of victims' psychology," she says.

Hylton agrees. She says Dean Rue also attempted to deter her from pursuing charges and characterized the Sexual Assault Board hearing process as being "about education, not punishment." Russell says Rue's first question to her daughter was, "Are you embarrassed?"

Wow. Sorry for the deluge of tech posts today, but this is too cool to ignore. Maybe you've already heard of it.

I knew that downhillbattle made cool t-shirts; I didn't know they also made cool software. But check out BlogTorrent — particularly their technical explanation. It lets you run a BitTorrent tracker on any website with PHP! Installation is as simple as uploading a directory! And users don't even have to have BT installed... it wraps downloaded .torrents in a BT executable that works on Windows or Mac!

Frankly, it's taking a lot of effort to keep myself from installing this right away, opening it to the world, and getting sued for millions of dollars. But it does seem likely to doom the RIAA's strategy of going after tracker sites — any jerk can anonymously obtain some PHP hosting (often for free), set this up, and become a mini Pirate Bay. For a few weeks, anyway.

Or maybe I'll just set up a private tracker to distribute important TV shows* to Catherine, Susan and the rest of the 05/06 DC blog diaspora. Either way: I badly wanna play with this toy.

* for which I have obtained legal distribution rights, of course

for those of you who were interested in the whole "art or not" aspect of the borf escapades, there's now streetsy, a blog covering street art and graffiti. (launched by gothamist guru jake dobkin)

check out these shots of the eye of hurricane katrina from a flickr user. it's such a shock that something so beautiful and peaceful from above could be causing such terror and devastation below. (cliche city, here i come.)

anyway, many more flickr shots of katrina and her aftermath can be found here.

Did someone say... HOLOGRAMS!?!

No? Hmm. I was probably just muttering it involuntarily, then. Happens all the time.

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. Sounds like their technology works by causing tiny droplets of water to condense out of the air, which are then used to diffract projected light. It essentially creates a screen of fog in midair, then paints an image onto it with light. Neat. With today's swamp-like DC air, I bet it'd work great here.

When last we left our hero — that'd be you — he had a functioning SSH server running on his Windows machine. You've poked a hole in your firewall and/or router, and maybe you've signed up for a dynamic DNS service. That, or you at least have an IP address. The bare minimum is the same: to proceed from here, you ought to be able to connect to your OpenSSH server with PuTTY when you're away from home.

The remaining tasks are pretty easy:

1. Install Privoxy on the server
2. Set up the SSH tunnel using PuTTY
3. Configure your web browser to use the SSH tunnel

i was planning on heading down to georgetown today for some window shopping and exorcist-stair-viewing (part of the d.c. to-do list). but upon checking weather.com, i'm not so sure anymore...check this out:

Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms.

Storms could contain tornadoes.

....okay.

so, like, how does a storm contain a tornado? it seems like it should be the other way around.

the last 40 minutes of red eye are so much awesomer than they have any right to be.

Yeesh. Via Atrios, check out this Post column, which is in the sports section, and about intelligent design. Cause, you know — athletes are impressive. Which means they're complex. Which means they're irreducibly impressively complex! I realize the argument is a little complicated, so I'll just cut to the end: Sally Jenkins is a fucking idiot. Q.E.D.

And she doesn't even live in the area! That's right, for the past several years she's been phoning it in from NYC. C'mon, Post editors. This column puts her well past "irrelevant" and deep into "embarassing" territory.

A little while ago I mentioned that I've been tunnelling my web traffic out of work and through my home connection. That post inspired a firestorm of public interest (one person emailed me about it). Here's the beginning of how to implement such a setup yourself. When it's working your boss won't be able to snoop on which websites you're visiting, or block them, or really tell anything about your internet traffic apart from how much of it there is (and that it's strangely hidden).

First, the big picture. I've explained the idea behind ports at least a couple of times. We're going to take our browser's web traffic — the stuff going out through port 80 — and send it through an encrypted tunnel to a PC at home that's running a proxy server. The proxy server will make an unencrypted request for the webpage we're trying to access (using our home connection) and send the data back through the encrypted tunnel.

We're going to need a few things. We'll need a PC that's at home and turned on at whatever times the link should be available. And we're going to need to make some assumptions. So this is going to be a Windows tutorial. All the software required is free and open source, though, and you could certainly accomplish this setup under OS X or Linux. In fact, in some regards it'd probably be quite a bit easier. But Linux users don't need my help setting up a proxy server, and Mac users are used to being ignored. If anybody with a Mac really wants this functionality, just let me know. I'll be happy to dig up the relevant links.

Finally, I'm going to assume you know how to open up ports on Windows firewall (or at least turn it off) if you're running a version of XP that has it installed. Same thing with ZoneAlarm, or whatever other software firewall you might be running. I can't account for everything, people!

So let's get started. In this post we'll take care of the software that supports the encrypted tunnel. This is the hard, but not that hard, part.

don't forget bluestate tomorrow night at saint-ex! i will be there, though fortunately it won't be the last bluestate i attend. that'll come at the black cat september 10th, the night before i leave. i already made NM promise to play a request of mine that night. mwahaha. y'all best be ready to break it down to "like a prayer." or "since u been gone." too tough to call.

seriously. what is up with yahoo's news photos accompaniment?:

mooning a hurricane, crude oil prices, same thing!

anyway, all my thoughts and prayers with the people in LA. i'm sitting here watching MSNBC, dribbling coffee and leftover chicken fried noodles from china express down my chin and shirt. i went to the dentist one more time this morning to get some final work done on my teeth, and he novocained me all to hell, and frankly, i can't feel my face. i also think my left eyeball is numb, but i am not sure. just watch me try to smile. i look like a retarded puffy penguin. er, or something. it's grotesque.

today looks to be slow. so i think i will make this.

Citizens of the internet: it's the last Monday in August. Shouldn't you be back at your desks, pretending to work? That's right, you should be. So why is my bloglines window empty? C'mon, people. Let's see a little hustle.

On Saturday I stumbled across MTV's The 70s House, a reality show in which contestants live in a seventies-themed residence, complete seventies-themed challenges, and irritate me in a distinctly seventies-themed way. Or at least, what I assume to be a seventies-themed way; I was born in 1980, so I'm pretty much taking MTV's word for all of the wood panelling and stupid haircuts. So are the contestants — most of them look younger than me. I'd be surprised if any of them were alive for more than a couple of years starting with 197.

Yesterday afternoon I had lunch with my mom at the Silver Diner in Clarendon, a chain restaurant awash in chrome, patriotically-themed desserts, and looping videos of Elvis. It's like an Archie comic come to life, except without the prurient Betty/Veronica subtext (and therefore totally uninteresting). Again, most of the people there were too young to have been alive for the time period being evoked.

Why do we participate in these ridiculously-themed charades? I realize that nostalgia is a powerful commercial force. But the people buying into these enterprises don't seem to be driven by nostalgia per se, because they don't have relevant memories to evoke. It's more like playing make-believe, but with an unusually boring premise.

I wish someone would inject just a little imagination into these synthetic eras. You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to have dinner in a restaurant devoted to, oh, let's say the 1240s, when people rode tyrannosaurs like horses in undersea cities ruled by a race of heatray-wielding alien vixens. I could see myself getting excited about ordering jalapeno poppers under those circumstances. It's not like I'd know any better.

thanks to ogged for pointing me towards GreatNews, an RSS reader that is, oh, about two billion times better than bloglines. i've become increasingly frustrated with bloglines lately - the interface sucks, it's slow as molasses, etc - but i didn't want to give up the capability to read my bloglines feeds from any computer (since it's browser based instead of a desktop application). amazingly, GreatNews has a feature that will synch your bloglines feeds, so you can read your RSS feeds through GN, but if you happen to be at another computer at another point, you can still check bloglines, and the feeds will be the same. it's awesome, and superfast, and i haven't found any major glitches with it so far. so, hurrah.

The Xbox360's $400 bundle will come with a wireless controller, but the rechargeable battery pack/charging cable kit will run you another $20.

aww, thanks to everybody who came out to my going away party and wished me well. you are all sweethearts, and i had an amazing time. i'm still in town for two weeks, though, so y'all better be sure to hang out with me at least once more. or i'll cry. bitches.

going away party photos can be found here. they're pretty much all of me. you've been warned.

okay, one more post before the weekend. can't help myself. i was putting on makeup to go out tonight, and listening to twin cinema, as i am wont to do lately. "the bleeding heart show" came on, and i was like, as i am wont to be, what an effing great song. they do anthems so well. and then i remembered "a testament to youth in verse" from electric version, and was like, huh. that was great, too. which one is better? i cannot decide. so i thought i'd post versions of both songs and let the readers go for it. i am pretty sure i know which one'll take it, but you never know. leave your winner in the comments, per favore.

"testament to youth in verse" is uploaded to the yousendit page here. (that link expires in 7 days and is subject to a limited number of downloads - not sure how many - but if it's broken just let me know and i will repost it.)

"the bleeding heart show" can be streamed from the lovely folks at npr at the bottom of this page.

i might try doing this with other bands/songs. any ideas?

just thought the sky outside the apartment looked neat tonight:

happy weekend, everybody!

gravelly point 003
Originally uploaded by CatherineA.

the mount vernon trail is very nice; you follow it along on the potomac and by the the navy-marine memorial (i took a few pictures of that as well for peter; it's the big memorial surrounded by red flowers of seagulls over a cresting wave).

after about 1.5-2 miles of biking along the trail, i reached what i presumed was gravelly point park and realized...holy crap, i've already been here! i've passed it several times on marine corps marathon training runs, in particular, the 21-mile run from hell that i did a few weeks before the actual marathon last year. i was just too busy not wanting to die/puke/pass out to realize that's what it was. (for anyone interested in reading my marathon experience, go here.)

so anyway, i dumped my bike, sat down on the grass (i was surrounded by several families, couples, and kids running around) and waited for a plane. at first, nothing was going on - you could easily see national airport and planes taking off, but they were headed in the opposite direction. about five minutes in, a little kid screeched and pointed in the sky, and you could see a pinprick of light headed our way over the trees. oh, cool! i thought. the plane got closer and you could see it was a united airliner. and then it got closer. and closer. and then it was like HOLY FUCK THE PLANE IS TWO INCHES ABOVE MY HEAD PLEASE DON'T LET IT SQUISH ME and there was an unbearable roar and i swear to god, the wind rippled the sky for several seconds after the plane landed safely. i literally had to fight the urge to throw myself to the ground and cover my head. a little kid near me was crying hysterically and being comforted by his kindly-looking grandfather, and i was like, uh, grandpa, can i get in on that? because that was TOTALLY FREAKY.

but after that, it was all neat. i watched several more planes land, and take off, and marveled at flight in general, because, seriously, how do they do that?

anyway, gravelly point itself is unremarkable - just patchy grass, some portapotties, and a picnic table or two - but the views are seriously cool. i can imagine at night that it's even better, and no doubt fairly romantic. you couldn't bike down there in the dark, but gravelly point is reachable by driving along the GW parkway.

more pictures can be found here.

I've finally gotten around to implementing the full-text RSS feed that was requested a while ago. Let me know if it works, or doesn't — I'm too lazy about this to download an RSS reader to test, and Bloglines takes a while to update.

The Australian embassy, located on Scott Circle, is one of my favorites. Not because it's a particularly attractive building, but because it's got this thing sitting outside of it.

This is the sculpture of a country that's comfortable in its own skin. What do you think of when you hear "Australia"? Weird animals. Also, some vague British bullshit. Maybe.

And that's exactly what they put on the sign outside of the building chosen to represent their country to the world (presumably the sculpture will be replaced with Paul Hogan's bronzed corpse when it becomes available). I admire Australians' forthrightness about this, because it's a quality that we're obviously lacking. You can bet there aren't any US embassies boasting sculptures of Yosemite Sam firing his pistols atop a McDonald's logo.

butterstick makes it to NPR.

i wish i were doing the 50 book challenge, but the way this year is going for me, it's more like the 10 book challenge, and it is sad. but that will not deter me from writing a review of one of the better books i've read so far this year (others beating it out include three junes, saturday, the songs of the kings and, uh, the half-blood prince): the historian by elizabeth kostova. brief review behind the cut (with lots of spoilers, just so ya know). i'll say right now that it's a perfect vacation book; don't be deterred by its heft. it's fairly quick and fun reading.

as i mentioned earlier, sommer and i headed to the hay adams bar, off the record, last night for some fancy drinks and a classy atmosphere. because we are nothing if not two classy broads. for those who don't know, the hay adams is one of the fanciest, most elegant hotels in the city; it's located on 16th and H streets, very close to the white house. the bar itself is incredibly classic and timeless looking: low lights, heavy, polished wood paneling, and a customer age average of about 55 - mostly men in suits. i had been told by fritz that john, the bartender, was amazing, and he was totally right. john made our night. he is an incredibly jovial guy who is smart, well-traveled, and a great conversationalist. not to mention that he passed out free drinks when he learned i was leaving for chicago. overall, sommer and i had a great time - a little too great of a time. if you know what i'm sayin. after four drinks each, a plate of fries, and some interesting conversation with our bar stool neighbors, we left the hay adams nearly five hours after we arrived. unfortunately, the atmosphere of the hay adams is such that it's not really conducive to taking photographs, so i didn't get any interior shots (except one of me and sommer in the totally awesome bathroom), but i will leave you with some of the area between the bar and the white house. it was a beautiful evening, and i was glad to have a chance to walk around the area.

To Metafilter users: first, sorry I can't respond in your own thread. I don't want to pay five dollars to post in a blog's comments. But I did want to clarify that I only started calling the form thingy a hack after others did. Yeah, okay, I do like the sound of it. But no, clearly this is sub-sub-script kiddie level trickery, not anything impressive at all. What can I say? A search for "butterstick" on packetstorm doesn't return any hits.

But it did at least appear to work initially. As Catherine pointed out in your comments, it's only today that it ceased to function. The whole thing is a testament to the zoo webdev's laziness, not my personal awesomeness.

Now I promise to stop talking about this, because, as mentioned, it's gotten way more attention than it deserves. The name is the thing, people. Butterstick. Say it with me. Make t-shirts. Spread the word.

It's been fun basking in blogospheric attention for an HTML hack that could be performed by any number of middle-schoolers. But, sadly, a commenter has pointed out that the zoo is on to us -- the butterstick submission form no longer works. I'll try to have another look at it tonight, but it's likely that there's nothing to be done. On the upside, this means that there probably were votes labeled "butterstick" making their way into the zoo database. Which is pretty great.

Catherine suggested explaining the hack, so for those interested, a rundown of the relevant webdev principles is behind the cut. The rest of you should start thinking about the next step in fomenting the Pale Yellow Revolution.

not that anyone else cares, but it could be kind of interesting:

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (publisher of Washingtonpost.com) has signed up Proteus to launch its mobile content offering…nothing too dramatic at the moment: a system that lets readers send “optimized search results for the Entertainment Guide’s shopping, dining and event listings to their mobile phones via a new “send to a phone” option” and a mobile photo contest, where readers will “have the opportunity to send or upload their favorite mobile phone snapshots of community events, and online readers will be able to vote on their favorite submissions”.

the send to phone option, pretty standard, but the mobile photo thing could be neat. at least, the concept is neat. the execution could be retardedly awful. the voting thing, for example. eh.

(via paidcontent.org)

a blog that tracks my favorite grocery store: trader joe's. it's what we all needed. i'm just happy to be within a few miles of one in chicago, instead of the 25 minute drive to the 'burbs one must do now.

So, as noted in Catherine's DCist post, Butterstick is not an option in the zoo survey. Well god dammit, we'll make it an option. I hereby present a modified name submission form. It'll post to the zoo webserver just like the real form (you might get a security warning). The only difference? We don't hate democracy.

Depending on how badly the survey is coded, there's a slim but real chance this will actually show up in their results.

UPDATE: as noted in comments and more recent posts, the zoo has wised up and fixed their form, making this one no longer work. Still, I think we got our point across.

UPDATE 2: Commenters are now indicating that it's started working again. Weird.

okay, so who sent me this washington post article on the naming contest for the already-unofficially-named butterstick? it was from a very cleverly-named butter@stick.com. too cute. i actually just wrote my own bit on it for DCist.

so, cheetahs are, for all intents and purposes, done. next up: drinks tonight at the hay-adams at 16th and H streets. please help me: what drink should i order? frankly, i know nothing about nice drinks. at bars, i almost always go with a gin and tonic because, well, i like it, and it's super easy and cheap. but i want a nice, classic drink tonight. tips?

so, this morning i bit the bullet (as it were) and went to dupont dental on 19th street to get my first checkup and cleaning in, oh, three years or so. i know, it's pretty disgusting, but i have a preternatural and oh-so-stereotypical fear of the dentist. i just always. have. cavities. like, 72 billion of them. no matter that i take better care of my teeth than most people; i unfortunately inherited my father's unusually weak chompers, so weak that a piece of chocolate cake will take root and cause decay, like, immediately.

but, lo and behold: this time around i HAD NO CAVITIES! this is the first time this has happened, ever. this might coincide with the fact that this year is the first time ever that i flossed more than once a week. flossing: it works! WHO KNEW? except, like everybody? i also have to give a shoutout to my good buddy advanced listerine mouthwash. i couldn't have done it without you.

other fun dental facts from catherine: i have only one wisdom tooth, in my upper left gum, which has not yet deemed to drop. dentists have told me this means i am more evolutionarily advanced than EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD, which pleases me to no end.

christ. i can't believe i'm writing about dental stuff. time for my afternoon drink. anyway, i'd highly recommend dupont dental. very nice, very kind regarding my retarded dentist fear, and very quick.

i've seen a meme going around in ye olde 'sphere, asking people to name the top 10 songs they're currently obsessed with. nobody tagged me to do it, but that's never stopped me before!

i've included mp3s where i could find them, and i highly encourage you to downoad them. so, in no particular order...

1. "use it," new pornographers
2. "bleeding heart show," new pornographers (i can't help it. those two songs are a mad one-two punch on twin cinema. i listen to them on repeat constantly.)
3. "don't i hold you," wheat
4. "coming going leaving," karmella's game. if you're running, and need a kick, just put this song on, and you will be be going at 7.5 in no time. it is crazy catchy.
5. "syracuse," pinback. unfortunately the only mp3 i could find was a 30-second clip, but it's still worth a listen.
6. "exodus damange," john vanderslice. all my friends should love this song because he namechecks dance dance revolution. what what.
7. "munich," editors. it can be streamed here. editors are so hot right now.
8. "please stand up," british sea power. pretty, ambitious pop.
9. "quelqu'un m'a dit," carla bruni. i've been obsessed with this gently beautiful french song ever since rae posted it months ago. mp3 courtesy of her.
10. "oh mandy," the spinto band. gonna have to go with miss seeking irony on this one.

i tag...anyone who wants to do this! if you do, just trackback to this post, because i'd love to see what you're listening to.

well, i went to the national zoo earlier today to try to knock off the baby cheetahs. not knock them off in a big game hunter type sense, but, you know, to check 'em out, ooh and ahh, and leave all happy and full of cuddly fuzzies. but it pains me to report that the national zoo is A BUNCH OF FUCKING LIARS. though their web site promises the babies will be on view every day from 8 a.m. till 1 p.m., today that was not the case, and i was only able to see the older batch of cheetah kids after having pushed my way through 23 million screaming children, perhaps knocking a few over in the process. oh well. i'm going to consider it crossed off anyways. i saw the last group of baby cheetahs when they were still tiny and fuzzy and squishy, and i spend enough time watching the baby cheetah cam that i think i can call it done. if you're interested, you can see a batch of photos from my trip to the zoo a few months ago here.

i wanted to stay longer at the zoo, but after seeing the papa panda and a few other close by exhibits, i hightailed it to the starbucks across the street, got a drink, and sat outside in the gorgeous weather for an hour or two reading my current book, the historian. it's really good so far - it mixes mythology, history, travelogues, and totally awesome vampires together in a lovely, suspenseful mix. hopefully i'll write a real review of it when i finish.

A new sleep wonder drug is making headlines after significantly improving the performance of sleep-deprived monkeys.

Color me unimpressed. Any number of stimulants can accomplish the same feat. The authors dismiss the equivalency of existing drugs by noting that caffeine and its compatriots

"...may be limited due to their potential for addiction and/or their potent stimulant actions, which can distort cognitive and sensory processes at doses required to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation."

But of course you can't ask a monkey whether the drug you just administered made him feel spaced-out. And despite its specific inclusion in the list that precedes this quote, Modafinil/Provigil is well-known for not producing any of those effects.

So basically we've got a novel stimulant that may offer advantages over existing drugs — but we don't really know that yet. I've got to say, the way the pop-science press chooses stories completely mystifies me.

no, matt yglesias is not a particularly sweaty man. this picture was taken after i, horror....threw a cup of water at him. no doubt he had said something VERY objectionable at susan's going away party, as any social gathering where susan and i are at lately turn into a raging, screaming debate about women, men, and why men are retards, but really. catherine. i have NEVER done something like that before. i mean, i hit a lot, and yell, but throwing water had, up until this point, been a line of incivility that i had not dared cross. oh well, too late now. actually, this could serve me well. i've always wanted to throw an alcoholic drink in a man's face after he does something particularly rude, and i think the water-throwing incident may help me gain courage towards that end. now i just need a particularly rude man to say something terrible to me in a bar where i am drinking a martini.

anyway, yes, we were at susan's going away party, and it pains me to write it, but she heads off to the wilds of georgia (republic thereof) tomorrow. the authors of this blog had thought about writing some sort of tribute to her awesomeness, but the inarticulateness sure to accompany it wouldn't have done her justice. but you should all know that if you haven't known susan, your life is probably lacking. we'll miss you, dear. make 'em eat shit and die in georgia!

The novelty's worn off, guys. I get that your boss will give you a better evaluation if your list of Q1 accomplishments includes "viral", "blog" and other words he wishes he understood, but this is getting ridiculous. Vis: Microsoft's latest website, which implies that something will be happening on September 27 at noon. Nobody thinks the Xbox360 will be out before November, so this is probably an announcement of a pending announcement. A metannouncement. Aren't you glad you paid attention to it?

In other XB2π news, you might have heard that two flavors will be offered -- one for $299 and one for $399. The pricier bundle comes with a removable 20GB hard drive, a wireless controller, a headset, and a bunch of cables and other unexciting shit. Disappointing, and irritating, but I'll cave: the nerds are worried that the system will be neutered without the hard drive (there'll be no backward-compatibility without it, for one thing). The most irritating part? Larger capacity drives will no doubt soon be released (and bought by me, should a modchip be developed). The smart money's also on some clip-on MP3 hardware turning this into a portable player.

IGN's got a story up that attempts to take the sting out of the gouging. Here's the only important part: a chart showing past console launch prices, adjusted into 2005 dollars.

Atari VCS launched in 1977 for $249.99	$811.21 in 2005
Nintendo Entertainment System launched in 1985 for $199.99	$354.91 in 2005
SEGA Genesis launched in 1989 for $249.99	$389.67 in 2005
NeoGeo launched in 1990 for $699.99	$1041.12 in 2005
Super Nintendo launched in 1991 for $199.99	$282.21 in 2005
Jaguar launched in 1993 for $249.99	$328.69 in 2005
3DO Interactive Multiplayer launched in 1993 for $699.95	$920.30 in 2005
SEGA Saturn launched in 1995 for $399.99	$497.66 in 2005
Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 for $199.99	$242.75 in 2005
SEGA Dreamcast launches in 1999 for $199.99	$228.09 in 2005
PlayStation launched in 1995 for $299.99	$372.01 in 2005
PlayStation 2 launched in 2000 for $299.99	$333.15 in 2005
Xbox Launched in 2001 for $299.99	$325.34 in 2005
GameCube launched in 2001 for $199.99	$216.89 in 2005

i'm a-getting the list a-started. and stuff. to do today: see the baby cheetahs at the zoo. to do wednesday: grab a cocktail with sommer (and anyone else who is so inclined?) at the hay adams. thursday or friday: head down to georgetown, probably on a run, do a climb on the exorcist stairs, collapse in sweaty heap. saturday morning, i might try to go to eastern market, but yall know what is saturday night: ME. and my party, that is. the going away one. you best be there. it'll get started around 9 or 10.

anyway, if i get all that accomplished this week, what i have left is: the byzantine monastery in NE, watching planes at gravelly point, and getting drunk by 6 pm at the 25 cent beer happy hour at asylum. if at any point you want to join up in the demolition of the list, let me know.

christ. i never thought i'd see the day where i wasn't annoyed by a "guerilla marketing" campaign. but apparently, that day has come.

I have a hunch that a lot of government contractors work near Crystal City. But of course it might just be my imagination.

I've recently started working as a subcontractor on a new (incredibly boring) project, and it's requiring that I spend a fair number of days in a cube farm at the prime's office in Crystal City. Worse, the people here actually have some technical savvy, forcing me to worry about my internet traffic (and vigorous daily blog regimen) being observed by folks for whom I'd prefer to maintain the illusion that I'm an industrious and conscientious worker 100% of the time.

As a result, I've set things up so that all of my personal internet traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel, back to our apartment, and then out to the internet over our DSL connection. Office snoops will see traffic going out, but have no idea what it is. And from Verizon's perspective I might as well be sitting on our couch right now.

All of this has gotten me thinking and reading up on encryption and security, as you might have noticed from the post I put up over at BTD this morning. But since it's been a while since I did something really techy over here, I figured I might as well write a bit more about it. And since it's a pretty meaty subject, I figured I might as well split it up across a number of posts.

So first things first: let's talk about how modern encryption systems work. And let's do it in few enough words that it isn't confusing, or too terribly boring. Movie and Xbox references behind the cut, I promise.

I have to say, last night's WWE payperview was surprisingly disappointing. The interesting matches were too short, and I was too out of the house picking up takeout during them. Nuts.

On the upside, the fact that both Ed Gillespie and Ken Mehlman were in last night's MCI Center audience is making me feel pretty good about the newly launched McMahon for President initiative.

the new pornographers' twin cinema gets a 9.0 from pitchfork today, an assessment that i agree much more with now than i would have when i first listened to it. as i said, it's definitely a grower, but i still think mass romantic and electric version are better. but i can't decide if that's because they're poppier and more accessible, and i'm just a slut for poppy, accessible music.

anyway, you can catch them at the 9:30 club on october 15. i'll be seeing them at the metro october 20.

Four facts:

1. Flickr Pro accounts have no storage limits.
2. Folks have lots of files they'd like to store.
3. But Flickr only lets you store images.
4. But steganography lets you hide arbitrary files in images!

See an exploit here? Of course you do. And so did this guy.

Related: use your gmail account as a hard drive.

It's a lazy Sunday morning, and we're watching Al Gore's Current TV venture. And it's not as bad as everyone's been saying. Since flipping it on we've seen an unnarrated collection of film shot in Gaza over the past week or so; an extremely affecting piece on Darfur from Doctors Without Borders; and a really interesting 1981 CBS News segment on the rise of the personal computer that featured some awesome CGA graphics and a very young Steve Jobs. All three were excellent pieces of content. And all three were immediately followed by some idiot in a Puka shell necklace robotically reading from a teleprompter. I suppose it's to his credit that he didn't even try to pull off the inevitable transition from pondering tragedy to namechecking internet youth culture. What can you do besides push through?

I get that the network needs some kind of framing device, but it isn't these folks -- they make the whole enterprise ring false. These VJs, or MCs, or Pod-people, or whatever they're called, are all culled from the same pool of rich-but-accomplished, attractive-but-not-vain, smart-but-not-interesting, and 100% earnest young people whose defining characteristic is that they're no fun to talk to at parties.

So Al, buddy: allow me to join the chorus of people offering suggestions while doomsaying. Put on some ugly but impeccably qualified people. Don't let the lightweights near issues that involve people getting killed. Cut to a tasteful commercial after every non-superficial segment. Better music wouldn't hurt, either. Remember the NPR rule: political earnestness is inversely related to a person's ability to select music that isn't godawful.

Really, it's not a bad start. But when a news operation's most credible presenter is a guy who shares half his genome with Deepak Chopra, it wouldn't hurt to keep tweaking.

UPDATE: Made two minor embarassment-reducing but content-neutral edits.

We're bad friends for not mentioning it sooner: you should go check out the now days-old (but still awesomely-named) blog of our pal Sommer. Sadly, puns on my name are only funny to drummers.

With Kanishka's help I wrote a SummerSlam preview for DCist, and accidentally got excited about it. So yeah -- we'll be getting the pay-per-view on Sunday, and it will no doubt be awesome. Would anyone care to join us? You don't have to know what a hurricanrana is to attend, but you have to want to know.

heh. you gotta love that radiohead has a blog. complete with photos.

i'm hanging out in my PJs, watching vh1 videos (it's just like summer vacation in high school!) and, UGH, the man who has made me more excited for the fall tv schedule than i have been since season three of buffy the vampire slayer is playing mariah carey's love interest in her video for "we belong together." this just seems wrong.

by the by, speaking of tv, i have to thank susan for heartily recommending veronica mars. i never watched it last fall, but i've been catching the UPN summer reruns and it's excellent. sigh. what am i going to do without tivo next year? i suppose a) study and b) get rid of tv brain rot. so sad.

UPDATE: could gwen stefani's video for "cool" be any more awesome? i have to say i didn't really like the song until i saw the video, and then it all fell into place, and it's the awesomest 80s song ever written in 2005. plus, she looks gorgeous as a brunette.

oh my god. i need a life. please help me.

holy crap. i just signed up for ohmyrockness chicago, an email listing of indie rock shows happening in chitown. and i love you d.c., and i'll miss you, but lordy, chicago gets a lot of bands. i feel my already-puny student loans slipping away towards tickets upon tickets...

unrelated, but i've been streaming "gimme fiction" all day, after having not listened to it in ages, and it's still true: spoon is so best, and i love me some britt daniel.

update: check out this stereogum spoon theory.

the washington post travel section readers' photos contest results are up. i love this kind of stuff. i've never submitted an image, mostly because a) they're not up to snuff and b) they rarely feature people, and almost all of the post's winners always have people in them. anyway, if i were having my own personal best travel shots of catherine, i would select the following (and i picked a lot, not cause i think my photos are awesome, but because i got on a whole retarded hugely nostalgic photo browsing thing and had to pick every one:

This is pretty neat: scientists at Vanderbilt have discovered that emotionally charged imagery can induce a split second of blindness. They've even got a flash application that lets you see for yourself.

I love this kind of stuff. Most folks have heard about blindsight -- it's intriguing, but I always found the complementary phenomenon more interesting. Blindsight patients aren't aware of the full extent of the information available to them; patients with anosognosia aren't aware of their limitations, which can include some pretty hard-to-miss deficiencies. Learning that you can go blind without knowing it made a big impression on me.

And hey, with that in mind, why not go do one of those blind spot experiments that you failed to pay attention to because of your furious preoccupation with Oregon Trail. Or, for a slightly more impressive but less relevant effect, have a look here.

okay, thanks to your input (esp kanishka's), i have a good start on a list of things to do in d.c. before i head out of town. and here they are!

We're back. I think. There's a great chance that things are still broken -- particularly links within the site (ie from one post to another). Odds of us going through and fixing them are pretty low (although if you point a specific error out to me, I'll take care of it). If for some reason you really need to find something, wait until Google reindexes the site, then use the search box.

In other news, I have an all-day meeting tomorrow that begins at 8AM. Right now the best-case scenario involves sustaining a serious injury between now and then.

you know it's been a bad day when you see this headline in your RSS reader:

and get really excited because you think somebody has written an article about the secrets of candy bar nougat.

photographic evidence of last night's madness (which started off at bohemian caverns and somehow ended with susan and me back at the apartment defending all of feminism from charles, tommy and kriston's oh-so-terrible attacks) here.

Okay, I'm switching the DNS. Now the site really *will* break. There's at least a decent chance things will be pretty fucked up tomorrow. Apologies in advance.

Oh, and any comments you leave from here on out will be lost. So save your insights for later.

I think this Flash game has a lot of potential for ruining Charles' life. The guy's already primed to spend hours playing Sodoku and other brainteasers — making a game centered around a dynamic that boils down to tidying has the potential to put at least sleeping and personal hygiene in jeopardy. If there was feature that let you gain experience points I'm pretty sure he'd be dead within a week.

when DC SOB left town for chicago, he spent a good chunk of time crossing off items on a list of things to do in d.c. before you go. since i've got nearly a month of unemployment before i head off to the windy city myself, i've been trying to create a list of my own. i've got plenty of time; my two jobless days so far have settled into a nice pattern of waking up around 9:30, going for a run, showering, eating lunch, then drinking wine and surfing the internet. anyway, i'm having a bit of trouble filling out the list. i've only got three items thus far:

NPR, I'm begging you. I can't take anymore. Please, try to refrain from airing the following:

• Interviews with authors who have written books about their complex relationship their mothers/fathers/disabled children/childhood sexual abusers.


• Shows about ethnic profiling or oppressive third-world regimes in which you take calls from the public. The people who feel strongly enough to call are always the crazy/bigoted/genocidal ones.


• Finally, and most importantly — for god's sake, no more coverage of politically and/or socially conscious hip-hop acts. Words cannot describe how awful these segments are.

Your prompt cooperation is appreciated.

Our hosting is running out in a few days, and we've decided to switch providers. More space, more bandwidth, less money, and an address in the US rather than Hong Kong. I don't want to just throw around the phrase "a new golden age for humanity", but, well, there it is.

But our old host appears to not want to give the site up, and I'm having a hard time downloading our data properly. We're gonna put a freeze on things while the data gets moved. Hopefully this will all be done by tomorrow.

Oh, also: I promise to change the site background soon. It's long past "gaudy", and the days of "fun gaudy" are only a distant memory.

UPDATE: Scratch that. I'll export the site at the last minute and rebuild it on the new server rather than moving over the total archives.

I finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age over the weekend. I'm several years behind, I know. It's not bad, and certainly a nice, imaginative exercise in what kinds of consumer goodies might be possible with omnipresent nanotechnology. That's all Stephenson's really any good for, though — leaps of imagination. Take some neat toys, throw them into a world in which all of our contemporary power structures have been subverted or transformed and Asian culture is ascendant. Then add some completely inscrutable characters. Four hundred pages later, conclude abruptly.

Which is fine. I like that stuff. But Stephenson should really spend an afternoon with Physics for Dummies. Energy seemingly comes from nowhere and for free; impossibly large amounts of it get stored in impossibly small spaces; a novel but pointless blood-based computer network is introduced but never justified (Stephenson seems obsessed with STDs); and he blithely declares that humans aren't Turing machines (or more precisely, can't be simulated by a Turing machine). If it was wrapped in even a little pseudoscience I'd be fine with this groundbreaking result being a central part of the story, but the justification basically boils down to "computers don't want to have sex with teenage girls". Searching for the apotheosis of that ineffable quality that defines our humanity? Look no further than the pages of Barely Legal.

And then there's this, which I first saw over at Articulatory Loop, and then at Slashdot. It's a urine-powered battery. Well, urine-powered in the same sense that your car's battery is water-powered. Really, nearly any liquid would do, including urine, if you really insist on it. The liquid just provides a medium for electron transfer between two dissimilar metals, not any of the system's energy.

Look, I'm as anxious to be brutally subjugated by robotic overlords as everyone else. But until we see how that eventuality actually unfolds, let's keep things plausible.

you can check out my vermont photos heah.

back from vermont, safe and sound! i'm trying to upload some pictures for your viewing pleasure, but goddamn photoshop keeps crashing my computer. i'll get them up later today.

vermont was nice, to be sure. the wedding was gorgeous - a plain white church on a wooded hill overlooking an incredibly lush valley, a tent and tables set up for the reception in a bright green field. the ceremony was lovely (although the somewhat elderly lady playing the piano/harpsichord played half the notes in a stuttered minor key, unintentionally, so that i was halfway in a fit of giggles as the bride and groom walked down the aisle to this lady's own personal rendition of "here comes the bride, totally out of tune."), the reception food was good, and i got a nice buzz going off all the magic hat. unfortunately it rained, loads, all sunday, so we didn't get out to enjoy the countryside. we caught "me and you and everyone we know" and read books in the 300 year-old house that tommy's relatives live in now (they also make lots of yummy organic food there; their quesadillas are to die for). other highlights included a mad run on the burlington bars on saturday night, an excellent sushi dinner, and the requisite stop at ben & jerry's.

there is one negative to vermont that i encountered, and it is this: approximately 75% of their cabbies are batshit insane. the hotel we were staying at was kind of out of the way, so tommy, his sister beth, her boyfriend adam and i had to take quite a few of them. the very first cabbie tommy and i encountered was an incredibly nice bostonian lady who picked us up at the airport and was meant to take us to the indian house, where we were meeting everybody for the rehearsal dinner. unfortunately, despite her being the friendliest lady in the world, she did not have an effing clue where she was going, the fact notwithstanding that downtown burlington is approximately 3 blocks large. highlights of the ride included stopping to ask for directions THREE TIMES (one of which she made me do because i was closer to the poor, unaware pedestrian) and arriving to the dinner an hour late. thanks, cab lady.

the second crazy cabbie was a more serious and tragic case, and i hate to make light of it, because it was so sad, but at the same time, this dude was totally bonkers. tommy, beth, adam and i piled into a cab at the hotel with the intention of meeting a bunch of people at a downtown wine bar and getting saturday night, post-wedding, started. as soon as we all got in the car, the cabbie asked how we were all doing. oh, fine, fine, we said, how are you?

him: well, i just found out i might have cancer. and i'm telling it to the world.

us: shocked silence, manage to emit a few feeble murmurs of consolation.

him: yup, my dad died of it, my mom died of it three months ago, and it looks like it's my turn now, doesn't it?

tommy, who got stuck up front: nodding, mutters something about "you gotta be positive," all the while darting his head around, wild-eyed, so that he looks for all the world like he's trying to figure out if leaping out of a 50 mile an hour cab would be a good idea.

him: well, i guess i'm goin' on to something better, ya know? *gets vaguely cut off by somebody on highway and suddenly transforms into cabbie of doom* "HEY, FUCK YOU, BUDDY. goddammit, i swear to god, nobody can FUCKING DRIVE. just the other day, this - and no offense to you ladies *gesturing to me and beth in the back seat* - but this DUMB BITCH cuts me off, and this bitch does NOT KNOW what she's doing. NOBODY can drive, these fuckers. MY GOD.

us: nodding vigorously, yeah, you were totally cut off. dumb bitches sure can't drive. also, please don't kill us. we just want to drink us some fine vermont beer tonight.

him (under breath, driving a little erratically): well, i'd rather die in a goddamn car crash than of cancer, that's for sure.

us: uhhhhh. immediately we all simultaneously open our car doors and do tuck somersaults out of the cab so as to avoid dying in the obvious murder suicide car crash which is coming our way.

just kidding. we make it alright to the bar, hurriedly wish the cabbie our best, and take off and drink copious amounts of alcohol to erase the entire terrifying event from our minds. sorry, cabbie dude. i hope you got good news instead of what you were expecting.

We're off to Vermont for my cousin's wedding. Unfortunately, it's supposed to be rainy. Fortunately, it's also supposed to be ten degrees cooler. Plus, summertime Vermont has been so ridiculously beautiful the last few times I've visited that I'm confident a little rain won't get in the way of its scenic onslaught.

Blogging and shitty cameraphone pics to follow.

two decidedly different views of the city from two smart, lawerly-type girls. amber has had a positive experience here; zoe, apparently, not so much.

i wonder how i'll feel about d.c. after i move to chicago and will have another american city (beside collegetown; who couldn't adore charlottesville?) to compare it to. right now, it's coming off pretty well, but i suspect that may have more to do with the people i choose to hang out with than anything else. i've been pretty lucky in that regard.

well, i'm done with work. i had lovely coworkers, and a nice office atmosphere, and i'll miss it, but i'm too excited about northwestern to be very sad.

anyway, here's to a month full of debauchery! susan and i both realized last night that we'll have at least a week where we're both a) unemployed b) bored out of our minds and c) hankering for some alcohol. so we decided we'll be all "ladies who lunch" next week, except it's more like "bloggers who get drunk and fall over and terrorize the city." you know how it is.

there's a thread on the 9:30 club forum about your top five favorite belle and sebastian songs. i was only recently reminded of how much twee ass this band still kicks (when i randomly put on dear catasrophe waitress) so i thought i'd jump in...though it's oh so hard. they have so many good songs.

in no particular order (except maybe the first)...

seeing other people
judy and the dream of horses
the boy with the arab strap
the state i am in
if you're feeling sinister

though i could easily probably pick 15 that i thought were excellent.

for kicks, i'm going to do this with radiohead too, except top 10 cause i can't just pick 5. don't fault me for my lack of post-okc songs. you know it's true in your heart.

the bends
just
stop whispering (the live version)
you
street spirit
paranoid android
let down
idioteque
how to disappear
my iron lung

what do you think?

veiled conceit is back, and better than ever!

does anyone ever get the feeling that lois smith brady, author of the wedding column that VC snarks, is writing REALLY BAD fiction in her spare time?

Ms. Reid, 48, grew up in Dongan Hills, Staten Island, playing lacrosse, wearing her brother's bluejeans in the most stylish way and lying under the copper beech trees in her backyard, dreaming of sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon at midnight, under a full moon.

and then this jem:

They were married on the Upper East Side at All Saints Episcopal Church by the Rev. C. Hugh Hildesley, the Episcopal priest turned Sotheby's auctioneer. The creaky wood floors and sit-up-straight seats were reminiscent of a schoolroom. Afterward there was a dinner party downtown at Balthazar, where the bride, in a sleek blue gown, slithered into each crowded burgundy banquette like a mermaid.

In recent days it has come to our attention that many are experiencing increasing difficulty when trying to distinguish between the newborn baby panda and Owen Wilson. In order to resolve any potential confusion, we present this handy chart. It should serve both to help you identify the subtle distinctions between the two, and to spot possible "trouble areas" that may cause confusion. Feel free to print it out and keep a copy in your wallet for quick reference.

	Baby Panda	Owen Wilson
Dairy-Related Appellation	Butterstick	Butterscotch
Girls' Opinion Of	Highly Favorable	Highly Favorable
Nose	Stupid Looking	Stupid Looking
Anal Regimen	Mother engages in prolonged licking sessions to stimulate waste elimination	Engages in prolonged licking sessions (motivation unknown)

i've finally found some info online related to my medill orientation in september:

* Fall 2005 Journalism Orientation
Monday, September 19, 2005
8:30 a.m. McCormick Tribune Center
1870 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208

Other information:
Photos: Remember we will be taking 2 photos of you upon your arrival at orientation, one for our Who's Who Directory and one for your Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) pass.

Attire: Dress casually and wear comfortable shoes!

wear comfortable shoes? what are they going to make us DO?

anyway, reading the info about the orientation made me get all fluttery on the inside, just like prepping for the first day of school in third grade. it was my first day at a new school (having just moved to the suburbs from d.c.) and, even as a nine year-old, i knew the most important fact of all: i had to dress AWESOMELY. i'm pretty sure i ended up wearing something with a pony on it that day, but this time around, i still know, as shallow as it is: you gotta dress right. in my deluded, fashion-and-appearance-obsessed head, there's a perfect outfit out there that will totally communicate to my new professors and uber-competitive (so i've heard) medill classmates that i am, without a doubt, the BEST J-SCHOOL STUDENT EVER. you know, my actual work, ideas, and reporting will not prove my worth; it'll be the cut of my jeans or the stitching on my shirt or my awesome dangly earrings. anyway, i don't know yet what i'll wear for orientation, but i have to say, i'm pretty sure it'll be TOTALLY necessary that it involve a new pair of shoes and this purse.

see? it happens all the time. phoebe also brings up another point that i wanted to make in the last enormous thread but didn't - why are men asking us to smile when, if we actually were walking around the streets, riding the buses, etc, all while having a huge grin on our face, most people would think (correctly) that we were insane?

unrelatedly, can i officially blast the staff of the nytimes fashion&style section into space yet? this article on heterosexual girl crushes is retarded. it's the equivalent of the man date article that took the blogosphere by storm a few months ago, except in this case, the phenomenon that this article discusses so breathlessly is EVEN LESS of a new trend. a "girl crush" is actually "WANTING TO BE FRIENDS WITH SOMEBODY." or, in this case: "Sometimes, though, a girl crush is so strong it makes the object of affection uneasy, killing the possibility of friendship" it is called "SINGLE WHITE FEMALE."

There are some blog posts that simply won't die. Over at BTD there's one about passive agression that has attracted an astounding (for us) 517 non-spam comments.

This site has an equivalent thread. It's got far fewer comments, but they continue to trickle in from google at a slow drip. Like the mythical Chinese water torture. The other difference: instead of bitter singles, we get Linkin Park fans. It's pretty awful.

some steven a. shaw argues in the times that tipping should be abolished (as it will soon be at fancy nyc eatery per se) in favor of a set percentage added to the bill. waiter rant responds.

what do you think? i have to say, i enormously enjoyed the lack of tips when i lived in italy, but then again, i've never waited tables.

Wow. So: August. Pretty boring, huh? I'm still avoiding caffeine, which certainly isn't helping, but the emptiness of my bloglines tab is making it tough to satisfy my self-imposed rule about posting something, anything, at least once per weekday. Needless to say, you guys are the big losers in all of this.

So here's all I can muster: why the hell is Comedy Central roasting Pamela Anderson? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the Friars Club institution of roasting was a way for old comedians to affectionately make fun of other old comedians with some of the filthiest jokes ever conceived. Pamela Anderson is not a comedian, nor is she old. And basic cable's always-improving filth quotient still leaves something to be desired.

I know, I know, other non-comedians like Frank Sinatra have been roasted -- but at least Frank must've brought an entertaining tenseness to the show, as everyone wondered whether he'd have his roasters mercilessly beaten afterward. Pam Anderson offers nothing but the most obvious jokes. She's a totally blank canvas, a sphinx with boobs. In fact, her career can be summed up in a recurring theme: complete failure in any endeavor not solely tied to her sex appeal. Seriously, if you had to write a joke to roast her, where could you go? Boobs, sex tape, commercial failures, hepatitis. We've heard all of it before. An hour of that junk is going to be more depressing than it is funny. You might as well invite Jay Leno*.

* Don't worry -- Jeffrey Ross will be in attendance, and he's not only cheaper, but also every bit as not-funny.

Look at this.

Then, look at this.

The first predates the second by several years.

Via Penny Arcade (obviously), from which, it must be said, I also stole the 1000 YEARS OF POWER thing.

i am completely idiotic in the ways of finances, etc, so: can somebody let me know what the hell you do when you leave a job and need to, um, roll over? your 401k? what are the best options? maybe even asking this question is stupid, but i NEED TO KNOW!

HOLY CRAP!

it is so fat and awesome.

(thanks to kanishka for the tip)

if anybody is looking for pretty desktop wallpapers (i'm obsessed with switching up my desktop for some reason, i dunno why), you can check out my flickr favorites page. most of the pictures on there are large enough to use as wallpaper. they're also mostly of italy, because, well, it's me. but i think they're pretty. this is my current one.

fyi, all who care: it has been decided (um, i think!)! i will be leaving the lovable d.c. area on sunday, september 11 and driving with my pops out to chicago in a fine, hott budget truck (or penske. whatever. just not uhaul. i've heard enough horror stories about them). i also might be throwing myself a going away party on saturday, august 27, though that's not definite. i wanted to do it a bit later, but the weekend after that is labor day and presumably lots of people will be gone, and then the weekend after that - well, i leave on a sunday, and i GUESS i could party it up the night before, but considering i'll have 700 miles in front of me, i'd rather not.

anyway, keep the date open if you can! i plan on sending myself off in style and on a mountain of beer cans.

What the fuck, Movable Type? Why do you keep killing all content on the home page? Jeez.

Well, I might as well mention that we'll be moving hosting providers soon (the site might even start living on the same continent as you!). This is likely to involve even more things breaking. Good times.

When I read this I couldn't help wondering how Jon's doing.

Kanishka sent this to me in email: Cliff's Notes for Trapped in the Closet. Why is Tina mentioned, anyway?

Charles managed to Tivo the complete music video this weekend, which includes a concluding chapter that my mp3 copy is missing -- an important addition. Before, I thought that the saga concluded with the discovery of the condom, leading me to wonder whether Kelly was implying a relationship between Sylvester's wife and her brother 'Twan, making the whole song a smoothly escalating instance of perverse-relationship brinksmanship. Turns out that no, it was just the cop. And nobody gets peed on! It's both a relief and kind of a letdown.

And the video has its own rewards: driving back from Cathy's house, believing his own wife to be cheating, Sylvester ponders "what [he's going to] do and who [he's] gonna do it to when [he] get[s] home", and a momentary flash-edit shows him drawing a gun on himself. Meaningful, dude.

I have yet to unpack any additional layers of allusion and narrative sleight of hand, but I'm confident they're there.

In other news, my tonsils continue to have some weird awful thing going on due to inhaling powdered deck, which is apparently a potent throat toxin. This prevents me from drinking the heroic amounts of caffeine necessary to produce interesting blog posts. So, er, take it away, Catherine!

A little more Xbox 2 news: it plays surprisingly nicely with the PSP. Okay, this is just on the developer machine -- but at least we'll know that if the retail version lacks this feature, it's because Microsoft specifically went out of its way to be a jerk.

In other geeky news -- well, not news, since it's a bit old -- but here's a PDF about what the Xbox 360's security architecture might look like, written by bunnie, arguably the biggest name on the Xbox cracking scene. It's all speculation, but interesting nonetheless (well, the parts that aren't incomprehensible). The first Xbox had a number of serious security flaws -- see here for a rundown of how MS managed to cram three serious backdoors into a mere 512 bytes of code. It seems likely that they'll do a better job the second time around. Nevertheless, I'm confident the crackers will ultimately win out. If nothing else, the preceding links prove that some very smart people are willing to waste time on this stuff.

Truthfully, though, it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't manage to beat MS this time. I've got the Xbox 1, and it emulates everything short of an N64 pretty well. It's a lot harder to rationalize the need for a modchip when I already have a perfectly good emulator/media player.

I'm very happy to see that Chrisafer, John and Michael are campaigning for DC's new panda to be permanently called "butterstick", a name originally conceived in this very apartment, and then forced on an unsuspecting world via DCist. Okay, it's not exactly an artifact of astounding creative genius. But cmon, it's catchy. And check it out: Michael's even gotten the Mandarin script for it

Alright, so the trailing "stick" after it on his blog makes me wonder if maybe that isn't just the Mandarin for "butter". Nevertheless! We've got a graphic, which means that soon CafePress will be disgorging butterstick promotional gear by the truckload.

Bloggers: do you need an exciting meme to fill that blank, taunting blogspot page?

Tattoo enthusiasts: are you looking for another bad idea to immortalize?

People with a totally humorless respect for Chinese culture: want something to get upset about?

Then come on! Butterstick: it's catching.

Besides, if we don't act now you know we'll end up with a bear named "1000 Blessings of the Wind" or some bullshit.

last night tommy and i dined at DC Coast, my second (and last) restaurant week meal. i had high expectations for dcc, mostly because it is owned by restaurant guru/chef jeff tunks, who also owns ten penh (asian fusion) and ceiba (modern latin american). we went to ceiba for restaurant week last january and had our best RW experience ever, so i thought DC Coast would hold up about as well. overall, it wasn't as amazing as ceiba, and the RW menu was a little more limited, but it was pretty darn tasty and we had a fine time.

so, DCist (specifically, me, ubergoddess that i am) broke a story (i think, anyways; we were at least the first media outlet to report it) about congressman bonilla wanting to rename 16th st nw "ronald reagan boulevard." 12:58 p.m.

come 7:09 p.m., the washington post has the story. on their front page. the part where they cite us?:

Rep. Henry Bonilla, co-chairman of the 2000 and 2004 Republican National Conventions, quietly introduced a 103-word resolution before Congress adjourned for summer recess July 28. As word spread in the nation's capital, neighborhood Web logs in the overwhelmingly Democratic city crackled with disbelief...

ummm.

okay.

I AM GOING TO FUCK YOUR SHIT UP, SPENCER S. HSU!

UPDATE: the story has moved from being solely on the site to being a metro section front page article tomorrow morning. nicely played, jackasses.

sorry if my rage seems excessive, but the Post has steadfastly ignored DCist (except for maybe two offhand mentions in non-major stories; this, even as they are constantly featuring other blogs). i KNOW they can't actually think of us as a competitor, so why the hateration? the fact that D.C. has the second-biggest site in the -ist network is a story in its own right. so many angles...

UPDATE II: not to mention they completely ignored our Borf coverage. i don't claim that DCist was the only place to ever recognize the value of the Borf story, but we OWNED Borf coverage long before the big post style section front page article on him. even then, we only merited a mention as "local blogs," etc. frankly, it's kind of infuriating. and frankly, i'm a little drunk.

anybody with a passing interest in beauty products should be reading Jolie in NYC, the latest in a long line of bloggers-who-are-fired for their mostly innocuous blogs...but she got a book deal and several high-profile media appearances out of it all, so i think you can say she's doin' alright. the author, nadine, used to be a beauty editor at ladies home journal and was heading to seventeen before her blog was outed. anyway, she's got a deft, humorous touch, covers celebrity gossip as well, and has the super inside scoop on tons of great beauty products. my repetoire of products is mostly limited to what i can get on sale at CVS, but i still like drooling over her suggestions.

on that note, a few of my latest favorite (yet affordable!) products:

turning the blog into a truly influential experience...any suggestions as to what i should have for dinner tonight?

for those not reading DCist, here's the latest in the GOP scheme to rename america the united states of reagan.

is it just me projecting my italophile viewpoint on to d.c., or are there suddenly a lot more vespas roaring around the city? is it just the way of the future; does it have to do with gasoline prices; or is the devious steve rubel behind it?

Am I the only one unfamiliar with the Church of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism? Maybe I should start reading those flyers I get handed when I go downtown.

continuing in the week's foodie theme...a couple of days ago newish food blog metrocurean had the scoop on al crostino, an italian place on U street that replaced kuna. then the esteemed susan had a glowing first-person email review that makes me want to go even more:

It's a new Italian place on U St. (it opened sunday) and we had a fantastic time. It's really small and cozy, our waiter was really nice and enthusiastic and warm, the prices were totally reasonable, and they did like this amazing presentation on Kriston's antipasti sea scallops which cost all of $7. The pasta dishes were very simple and they were good without being totally amazing, but the price was right, atmosphere was good, etc. The chef was walking around kissing people and made sure to wish us a good night when we left. Definitely left us with a good feeling. It's not super-fancy dining or anything but a very nice meal for a good price (and they did awesome crostini thingies with yummy toppings). You guys should try it!

straight from the source. that is not me. that is another blogger whose email i'm cutting and pasting. but sounds good, eh?

Turn your elevator into an express -- no key required. Anybody want to try this out at lunchtime?

well, just came back from a d.c. restaurant week at zola with several DCists (rob, kanishka, martin, becca, and scott, hemal and sommer WHO ARE PERSONAL-BLOGLESS, THE SHAME, YOU ARE ONLY HALF A PERSON IF YOU WRITE FOR LESS THAN TWO BLOGS), and i figured i may as well write it up while it's fresh in my mind. for the short, snappy summary-inclined: FABULOUS service, good drinks, great decor, beautiful bathrooms, and pretty good food.

1. Uneven boards! The job is doomed to be half-assed, regardless of the proportion of ass devoted to it.


2. A belt sander is just about the wussiest kind of power tool out there. It's not at all satisfying to use.


3. The belt slides around the sander, requiring constant adjustment. If I stop paying attention the belt begins to shred in a shower of sparks. Which is, surprisingly, still not at all satisfying.


4. I'm a renter, so hey: now I'm throwing money and sweat down the drain.


5. The arsenic- and diesel-infused dust I accidentally inhaled has made my lymph nodes swell up and my throat sore.


6. This is all just a prelude to staining the whole goddamn thing.


7. Everything not listed above.

Sounds like the Xbox 360 is going to be $300 -- that's $50 pricier than earlier rumors. D'oh. Worse, games are currently expected to clock in at $60.

(Modchip prices remain unannounced.)

there's a funny article in the san francisco chronicle today (SPOILERS! if you haven't read HPB yet. and if you haven't, what the eff is wrong with you?) about "shipping" in the harry potter universe. any buffy the vampire slayer fan worth their salt should know about the phenomenon of shipping: it has nothing to do with boats, but rather intense focus on characters' romantic relationships (and readers' beliefs or desires about who should be having/have had a romantic relationship). i'll put a little more discussion behind the cut so as to protect the innocent eyes of those who haven't yet finished the book...

Well, mark one item off my list: MochaSoft has a VNC client for PocketPC that works with VNC4, has built-in SSH2 support that isn't impossibly slow, and is unlimited shareware. Cool.

gotta love the post's front page

during its first exam. it's a boy.

cuddling with its mommy.

yay for the transformation from repulsiveness.

i guarantee your day will be a little brighter if you set this to be your desktop wallpaper.

(via one of the awesome new flickr features, interestingness.)

We had high hopes for TLC's Feral Children show, but it ended up being less like this:

and more like this:

Still, it was all relevant and cognitive scientastic, so I guess I can't complain. But did you guys have to bring out the wire monkey mothers, too? With the maladjusted monkey geeks avoiding eye contact with the cool monkeys and shuffling toward whatever side of the experimental apparatus most resembled a high school prop closet? Cause that was just upsetting.

well, i promised you reviews of my week of foodieness, and i'm gonna deliver. saturday night tommy, charles, charles' parents and i all went out to dinner at dino in cleveland park, and here follows my report. if you're not interested in reading the full thing, here's a summary: pretty good food, but nothing mindblowing; terrible decor; fairly bad service; great wine prices and selection.

okay, now i'm going to get all dcfoodies on your ass.

in addition to thinking that they have a right to only have to look at scantily clad 90 pound waifs with double D racks...they do this kind of shit and expect us to be okay with it (from the lovely and always hysterical natalia):

men will NEVER realize how fucking weird it is to be a woman.

every time i leave the safety of the heinz school, and i feel like i'm being harassed. forget it, every day of my life i feel like i am harassed in school or out. some men think they fucking own me. i was at a late night fast food restaurant the other day and this guy started talking to me and asking why i was dressed up. i said i just returned from a baby shower. (true.) he said, "oh babies. babies are good. with their strollers, rattles, toys ..." his voice trailed off, but in an effort to make a "joke" he said something about breast pumps and my breasts. something like, "yeah, those suction things you can put on your breasts ... those are cool ..." he said that as he looked at my breasts.

UM.

WTF?

ARE YOU FUCKING DRUNK? YOU ARE TRYING TO PICK ME UP USING A REFERENCE TO A BREAST PUMP?

i was kind of shocked, but played it off. this is the fucking point. you're not supposed to punch people in the face when you're a girl. that's bad! if i had a dollar for every guy that i wanted to (deserved) to be punched in the face, i'd own my own goddamn island by now.

i still chatted with him like he said nothing though. he asked me to party with him and said that i was hot and i probably had good dance moves. i gave him a small chuckle, stupid, curt, smile and took a step back. he and his buddies left. "maybe next time," he said.

yeah, maybe next time i'll actually punch a motherfucker in the face.

i dunno. i often expect men to harass you or say rude things or try to pick you up in disgusting and weird ways. what i don't get is why they are ALMOST ALWAYS shocked when you respond back in a manner that is not all giggly, "oh you're so funny you disgusting repulsive sexist slob, hehehehteehee!" like, they feel like they have a right to say whatever they want to you, and if you take issue with it, you are an uptight biatch. this is more clearly exemplified in a lot of cancer, baby's posts about men telling women to smile. i'm late to the discussion about this, but i come down on the side where i DON'T WANT SOME RANDOM DUDE TELLING ME ON THE STREET TO SMILE. it happens to me all the time. and i know why. it is because i go walking around, unconsciously, with an expression on my face that looks like my pet kitten was just run over and i'm thinking really really hard about how to best castrate the person who did it. it's just my lovely, natural expression. and i'm not going to walk around like a smiley doll to please some passing guy. like cancer, baby says:

I call these men Mood Oglers because the directives they launch at random female strangers accomplish the exact same thing that the actions of their gruffer yet more honest brethren, the Whistlers and Honkers, do: namely, to objectify women. But while the obvious nature of the Whistlers' and Honkers' motivations renders them laughable, the Mood Oglers' more clandestine tactics are maddening. Their behavior implies that women owe all strangers of the opposite sex a wink and a smile because by virtue of their gender they are mere anesthetized decorative objects whose dispositions and facial expressions should be rightfully dictated by the men who just happen to be looking their way. Indeed, when a random male passerby tells a woman that the circumstances of her life can't possibly inspire anything other than the appearance of obliging congeniality, he ignores that woman's humanity -- a humanity that is both capable of experiencing the full spectrum of mortal emotion and that doesn't owe any stranger explanation, concession, or modification.

and the worst part about it all is that i ALWAYS smile for the guy, and when i think about what i would have liked to tell him (something along the lines of "just wait till i shove my shoe up your nostril, THEN i'll be smiling") , i ALWAYS feel bad. and i shouldn't feel bad! why does some stranger feel like he has the right to expect that i should smile on demand? blargh!

sorry for going all feminazi on this site today; i am in fact appreciative of the fact that 99% of the guys i know don't act like these dipshits. but even one interaction with one dipshit is enough to ruin my week.

It looks like Wonkette has linked to my nerd utility belt post, making an already satisfying episode of girlfriend-humiliation into a greater success than I could ever have imagined. So, welcome. If you feel like poking around, adding to our traffic stats, and otherwise boosting our egos, here are some places to start.

• Catherine's masturbating vespa boy story. Nothing tickles the ribs quite like a story involving sex crimes.


• My Da Vinci Code parody. Friends agree: it's all been downhill from here.


• Shark versus Crocodile. Why this failed to take the blogosphere by storm is beyond me.

There. That should last you until you get bored and start another Sodoku. There are also, you know, amazing pictures of Italy, courtesy of Catherine. But linking to those might cost me precious, precious bandwidth, so you'll just have to find them yourself. The links that are clearly featured on the right side of the page, I mean. Just over there, see? Yeah, there you go.

my embarrassment knows no bounds. now that the ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS I AM DATING THE BELT RETARD.

excuse me while i go crawl in a corner and drink straight from a bottle of gin.

I got problems:

• Due to a major security hole in GM 0.3.3, my GreaseMonkey project has been delayed. Nuts. Competition from others within the project proper may derail it -- they're not doing quite the same thing as I am, but they are creating a situation where there are three or four sites that want to be the central repository for all GreaseMonkey scripts, anywhere, ever. Which would be difficult to maintain. I'm hoping when the rubble clears I can just make my database a periodically downloaded version of theirs.


• I've got VNC for the Pocket PC working; I've got SSH for the Pocket PC working; but I can't get VNC working over SSH on the Pocket PC. It craps out about a fifth of the way down the first screen refresh. What's going on? This is kind of a central function of this software.


• On the other hand, Skype has a Pocket PC version available for download. The only catch is that I can't think of any scenario under which Skype would actually be useful for me. Not that that's stopping me from gazing lustfully at bluetooth headsets for no particular reason.


• Our music server resets the sound card's permissions every time it reboots, making it impossible for the jukebox software to work without me logging in and fixing things. Unfortunately I'm too clueless at fixing FC4 to be able to fix this without wading through endless support forums. Sigh.


• And, perhaps most troublingly, I have no fucking idea how this flash game is supposed to be played. I strongly encourage you to try to figure it out. But be forewarned, it has sound (although it doesn't require it).

when did richard roeper decide it was okay to leap from his role as ebert's second-fiddle to pontificater on all things those craaaaaazy women do? including offending him with their fatness?

But the raw truth is, I find these Dove ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I'll go to Taste of Chicago, OK? I'll walk down Michigan Avenue or go to Navy Pier. When we're talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give me the fantasy babes, please.

If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist -- well yes, I'm a man. And I'll have to point out that most of the men who appear on billboards and in magazines and on TV commercials are just as genetically blessed as their female counterparts.

UPDATE: holy crap:

Really, the only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with bread crumbs on it (rim shot here).

I realize these ads aren't targeted to men. As a matter of fact, I haven't used a firming cream in years. But they are everywhere for everyone (including men) to see -- from L stops to buses to roadside billboards. And they are producing lots of chatter and water cooler talk.

Most men don't like the ads. For them, the ads are just showing a little too much -- literally.

people could argue forever about whether the ads are good or not, if the women are healthy or not, if they're attractive or not, but really - where did this entitled attitude come from? when did these ugly, balding, potbellied men decide that the advertising world - and women - exist solely to serve their desires?

UGH.

(hat tip chicagoist)