My SMS project remains in limbo — the Gammu project maintainer and I have been emailing back and forth, but I'm not optimistic about getting the software working with my phone. Most likely I'll have to buy a cheap, old, maximally-compatible model off of Ebay. Oh well. I'll give him another week.

Other projects are also frustrating: my VGA to NTSC converter has mysteriously died, putting the planned Linux reinstall on hold until I collect a monitor. I owe everyone a final Python tutorial, but more for the sake of completeness than anything else — I think I underestimated the scope of the project. I'm not feeling up to it quite yet.

So, lacking anything immediate that I can work on (or, more accurately, that I want to work on), I'm thinking about learning ActionScript, Flash's built-in language. Mostly I just want to screw around with Flashr and write something that talks to Flickr — a little slideshow for the sidebar that automatically grabs new photos from Catherine & my photostreams, maybe? That'd be kind of neat.

Anyway, in the course of looking through other people's code I came across SimpleViewer. It's not what I want — it's a full-featured photo gallery, not a sidebar widget. Besides, what I'm after most is a learning exercise. But it is a pretty slick slideshow app. And it's free! Any photographers out there (I know there are at least a couple) could do worse than to use this on their portfolio sites. Those of us unconcerned with publication rights and hotlinking ought to eschew the razzle-dazzle and stick with permalink-able formats, of course.

a few of my photos from the trip to d.c. are up, if you're into that sort of thing.

For some reason I'm watching Deal or No Deal at the moment. As you might imagine, it's approximately the stupidest thing ever. That's fine; gambling is basically about dressing up random chance in as elaborate a wrapper as possible. If some TV executive wants to spend his production budget on a fancy set and Donald Trump cameos instead of paying someone a pittance to design a "game" with "entertainment value", well, that's his prerogative.

But here's the thing that really blows my mind: tonight's show, at least, centers around the contestant choosing numbers to open suitcases. Assuming that the show's not rigged, this exercise is completely random. Yet the audience is offering suggestions! And the guy's listening! Carefully!

Well, good luck, moron. I hope you're good at guessing who's good at guessing.

UPDATE: JESUS CHRIST, THAT'S HOWIE MANDEL!?! Terrifying. At least he's found a good niche for his unique brand of talentlessness.

Weird, weird, weird.

Via Emily, Justin, Metafilter, Internet, France, etc.

this article is a couple of weeks old and probably many of you saw it already, but i just wanted to note it. it's about modern liquors, the liquor store a couple of blocks up from tommy and charles' apartment in shaw. and it is the best. the guy who works the counter there is the sweetest; they hold wine tastings every once in a while; and best of all, you don't feel like some shady, gross crack ho prostitute when you go in there to buy stuff. it's nice, and clean and well-lit. etc. a model liquor store!

but as the article shows, it didn't always used to be that way.

To make a living, Ed and Anna Fleming did whatever it took. When customers paid by pulling crumpled dollar bills out of their shoes, Ed and Anna would dip each buck into a big jug of green disinfectant. Half a dozen times a year, the place was held up. Anna had a gun pointed at her 15 times. Once, Ed was shot right through the groin. The bullet hole remains in the back wall.

Modern Liquors never generated the easy money associated with liquor stores. Not at Ninth and M streets NW. In the four decades since Ed Fleming bought the place, the city tore down blocks of rowhouses to build a college campus that never happened; homeless people were kept for years in trailers on a vast parking lot; the streets were closed off in the early 1990s to dig Metro tunnels; and the Flemings' block was turned into a construction site through the late '90s to put up the convention center.

Customers who managed to get to Modern tended to be winos and druggies. The bestsellers were 32-ounce bottles of King Cobra malt liquor, pints of Wild Irish Rose and half-pints of Velicoff vodka, Skid Row's finest.

Then, over the past few years, the storm surge of gentrification hit Shaw, just north of downtown Washington.

blah blah gentrificationcakes blah. anyway, modern liquors is awesome, so if you need to grab some booze while in that area (9th and M streets NW) i highly recommend it.

has anyone else's gmail chat function gone missing in the past few days? mine disappeared last week and I WANT IT BACK.

back and not really refreshed from a wonderful weekend in d.c. my flight left the district at 6:30 this morning, and as soon as i landed i headed to the newsroom for some fun and fabulous journalism work. as i'm sitting here brainstorming and tapping away, i had to take a blogging break to talk about what went on:

thursday night: unbuckled. dc9. olivia mancini and the housemates; the hard tomorrows. you saw the pictures here.

friday night: tommy and i decided kind of last minute to head to coppi's, a pizza and italian joint on U street. though dcist reviewed it back in november, we had never been there and in fact hadn't heard much about it otherwise. walking in at 7:30 on a friday night without a reservation, we weren't surprised at being sat at the bar, which turned out to be nice and cozy, with an excellent view of the wood-burning oven, and an attentive bartendress. we started off with some excellent calamari, a bottle of red and then two small pizzas - i forget what was on tommy's, but mine was prosciutto and funghi. though the crust was a little iffy, we both thought their pizza could easily place a very close 3rd in district pies, after two amy's and pizzeria paradiso. i can't believe we'd never dined there before. fairly reasonable, as well. (though that's always easy for me to say when tommy foots the bill, as he almost always insists on doing.) 1414 U street.

saturday: i hit up the glorious, glorious tyson's mall with my family. we ate at brio, which, for a chain restaurant in a mall, was actually pretty decent. then my mom bought me a pair of editors pants at express. discuss: editors pants from express, best pants ever? i own like six pairs.

for dinner that night, tommy and i went to queen of sheba, a recently-opened ethiopian restaurant. pluses: a block from the apartment; nice space; pretty great ethiopian food. minuses: no liquor license (though hardly their fault); about, oh, a FIVE HOUR WAIT for food. well, more like 40 minutes, which struck us as pretty ridiculous seeing that the restaurant wasn't even half full. maybe they're still just working out service kinks, but until they start getting their food out in a timely manner, i'd go to sodere or dukem.

UPDATE: man, MT fucked up the rest of this entry. i talked about the rest of saturday night and EVEN sunday, too, but it somehow ate it. quick recap: ellington party, fries at the saloon, sunday lunch at saint-ex, and attempting to convert tommy and charles to grey's anatom. which i don't think worked.