Cellar Door

Potential

2009-09-17T03:20:41Z

And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky
A human being that was given to fly

Ultra Deep

2009-08-14T03:32:10Z

We pointed the most powerful telescope ever built by human beings at absolutely nothing, for no other reason than because we were curious... and discovered that we occupy a very tiny place in the heavens.

The universe is frakking huge.

(via Pharyngula)

Two parodies for the price of one

2009-04-15T23:26:15Z

I am currently in The Comic Genius Connection: Stoppard and Durang, a pair of one-act plays that opens at the Greenbelt Arts Center next Friday, April 24. The two one-acts in question are The Real Inspector Hound (Tom Stoppard), and For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls (Christopher Durang). The first is a parody of the whole genre of Agatha Christie-style British drawing room mysteries (complete with the usual Stoppard-eqsue blurring of the lines between reality and make-believe), while the second is a specific parody of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.

The show opens next Friday, April 24, and runs four weekends. Performances are Friday and Saturday evenings at 8pm. In addition, there are two Sunday matinees on the two middle Sundays (May 3 and 10), starting at 2pm. Tickets are $15 general admission, and $12 for seniors and students. For directions and reservations, see GAC's website.

Raine Dog in the Newsreader

2009-04-04T19:21:19Z

I just started reading D.C. Simpson's newest web comic, Raine Dog, but I was disappointed to find it had no RSS feed. So, much as I did for APOD and Sinfest, I have crafted a Raine Dog RSS feed.

Spring

2009-03-09T05:54:55Z

Traditionally, the beginning of spring is heralded by the appearance of robins. But for me, it is when I can hear spring peepers at night.

Association distraction

2008-11-20T18:28:06Z

Reply and I will write something about you.
I will then tell you what song or band reminds me of you.
Next, I will tell you who you remind me of (actor, celebrity, etc.).
Last, I will try to pick a single word that I think best describes you.
Then you put this in your journal.

(via isiscaughey)

At last, pictures from cross-country trip #4

2008-11-15T21:44:34Z

At long last (read: about 18 months), I have put up the pictures from when I moved back east in the summer of 2007. The commentary on these is currently a little thin, since at this point I don't remember as much detail as I'd like. But if and when I do recall more things, I will be adding to that page.

Closing Weekend

2008-11-14T20:21:00Z

Just a reminder that this weekend is your last chance to see me in Sex Sells at Laurel Mill Playhouse. The final three shows are tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. The Friday and Saturday shows are at 8pm, and Sunday is a 2pm matinée. Tickets are $13 ($10 for students and seniors); reservations are encouraged, especially if you are coming to one of the evening performances.

A play reminder

2008-10-31T18:25:16Z

Just a reminder, Sex Sells, the play that I'm currently in, opens tomorrow, Saturday, November 1.

The show goes up at the Laurel Mill Playhouse, and it runs for 3 weekends; the show dates are November 1-2 (Sat-Sun), 6-8 (Thu-Sat), and 14-16 (Fri-Sun). Thursday, Friday, and Saturday performances are at 8pm, Sunday matinees are at 2pm. Tickets are $13 ($10 for students). This Sunday (Nov. 2), there will be an audience Q&A session with the cast after the show.

(NB: As you can probably tell from the title, this show is not appropriate for all ages, due to language and moderate sexual situations and dialogue.)

Have you seen this year's mall Santa Claus?

2008-10-25T17:58:52Z

Back in September, when I went to see wowbagger in a production of Much Ado up in Reisterstown, I was subsequently shanghaied into another show by Tori and wordmaster73. That show is Sex Sells, and it opens in a week.

It is a comedy about working retail during the holiday season. It is set in a CD store at a dying mall, and features crazy employees, crazy customers, and a crazy Santa Claus. You know, the essentials of any good Christmas.

It is running at Laurel Mill Playhouse on Main Street, November 1–2, 6–8, and 14–16. (That's Saturday and Sunday, Thursday through Saturday, and Friday through Sunday).

“I saw her eyes as she brushed his body passing in the aisle”

2008-10-07T00:29:53Z

Sometimes fortune is quite astute as to my moods. For example, just now:

A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely a coincidence. A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another coincidence. But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid, *that had to mean SOMETHING!*

(No, it probably won't make any more sense the longer you stare at it. That's kinda my point here. That, or don't watch Young Adam on an empty heart.)

Here spammy spam spam!

2008-09-30T22:04:47Z

Its odd, but since I set up some basic spam tagging for my email client of choice, I've been kinda disappointed by the relatively low volume of spam that I've actually received today. Not that I like being inundated with messages promising me cheap Viagra, Russian women, Nigerian money, and designer watches (really?), but I'd like to see the filter in action. Is this one of those "it rattles until you take it to the mechanic" things? (I dunno, but I'm not gonna complain too loudly, though.)

Which again reminds me, I've been planning to (in my copious spare time) put together a more detailed technical post about my email setup. Or maybe just write up something on my website.

A futile wish

2008-08-25T04:00:16Z

Bring me a storm to clear my head.

“Dann sinn wir Helden nur diesen Tag”

2008-07-11T02:30:27Z

I was in Borders this evening, browsing through their CDs, when I came across Apocalyptica's latest, Worlds Collide. Since it happened to be one of the ones available to preview through the headphones, I decided to give it a listen.

I had pretty much decided to buy it after the first couple of tracks. It is definitely more traditionally instrumented; there's vocals (on about every second or third track) and drums in addition to the basic four cellos. But the cello parts are still amazing. Plus, I've been on a bit of an Opeth kick lately, so I was definitely into the metal drums.

But it was track 5, “Helden” that sealed the deal for me. It started out slow, and then when the singer started singing (in German!), I discovered it was Till Lindemann of Rammstein. “Cool,” I thought. “I get a song in German, sung by the vocalist of another band I know” (Corey Taylor of Stone Sour is on track 3, “I'm Not Jesus”).

But then when it hit the line:

Ich
Ich bin dann König
Und du
Du Königin

I realized what song it was.

David Bowie's “Heroes”. In German. With cello.

Needless to say, I now own the album.

Songs for the asking

2008-07-04T01:05:29Z

From the “guess the song” meme, the answers that no one got:

Down on the corner and all around, all around the world, it doesnt matter where they're going, or wherever they've been —Meat Loaf, “Lost Boys and Golden Girls”

Someday I'll stop trying and I'll know how much time I've wasted always wanting more —Sarah Bettens, “Follow Me”
The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst out at you from their hiding place —Metallica (covering Blue Öyster Cult), “Astronomy”

Let it slide overhead, when I believe in you my soul can rest —Bush, “Inflatable”
Lost among the others, nothing matters now, it seems the sky will find me, it's coming right down —Clan of Xymnox, “Anguish”

They've given me a mission, I don't really know the game yet —Queensrÿche, “Speak”

Don't go there I heard her say, you can't stomach what you're going to see. —Seven Mary Three, “Water's Edge”

“Sing with me people, sing!”

2008-06-20T04:00:18Z

Put your music player on shuffle* and write down the opening line to the first 50 15 songs that come up. Post those lyrics, and have your friends try and guess the artist and song.

(~~Bonus points for naming the source of the title of this post.~~ The title of the post is from the intro to Great Big Sea's live version of “General Taylor” on Road Rage (points to i_knowkungfu on this one).

Down on the corner and all around, all around the world, it doesnt matter where they're going, or wherever they've been
~~The lunatic is on the grass, the lunatic is on the grass~~ —Pink Floyd, “Brain Damage” (robynjade13)
Someday I'll stop trying and I'll know how much time I've wasted always wanting more
The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst out at you from their hiding place (cover)
~~Open your arms to the lonely shine, lonesome as gold in a poor man's smile~~ —Chris Cornell, “Moonchild” (wowbagger)
~~Come all ye friends, I'll sit you down and sing a doleful ditty~~ —Great Big Sea, “Concerning Charlie Horse” (tdapenguin)
Let it slide overhead, when I believe in you my soul can rest
Lost among the others, nothing matters now, it seems the sky will find me, it's coming right down
~~I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off~~ —Pearl Jam, “Wishlist” (wordmaster73, with a partial to interdisciple)
~~I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail~~ —Simon & Garfunkel, “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” (isiscaughey)
They've given me a mission, I don't really know the game yet
~~Around the pyre, a circle of thirteen, thoughout these woods, ecstatic screams~~ —Type O Negative, “Be My Druidess” (gore_whore_5)
~~There's a beauty to soft woods with knots that untangle easily by chisel, easier by saw~~ —ilyAIMY, “Pine” (wowbagger)
~~Everything's so easy for Pauline~~ —Neko Case, “Maraget vs. Pauline” (tdapenguin)
Don't go there I heard her say, you can't stomach what you're going to see

(via wowbagger, et al.)

* Since the MP3s I can put on shuffle are mostly kinda obscure, I just went and picked 15 CDs at random from my CD shelf, and took one song from each of them. Another reason not to do 50 songs :-)

Questions for one and all

2008-06-19T22:37:18Z

Time once again for the interview meme. Comment for five questions of your very own!

These questions below come to me courtesy of isiscaughey. I have been very remiss in getting them answered.

Favorite song at the moment? “Sex Bandaid”, by Antje Duvekot (Big Dream Boulevard)

Open the floodgates,
put a sex bandaid
on my open wound.
Kiss me I will swallow my pride,
Swallow my pride.

When you come down
I will meet you out in the burning field
For another damn spin on your merry-go-round.
Spin on your merry-go-round
You live in the Firefly universe. What sort of person/profession would you be? That's a tough one. Part of me wants to say a badass like Jayne. But I could also (and more honestly) see myself working as a mechanic or engineer on a ship. Probably would have independent sympathies, but I doubt I would've actually fought in the war.
If you could play bass for any band for a day, what band would you choose (alive, dead, etc.)? Rammstein, for the pure Teutonic metal thump. Pearl Jam or R.E.M, for the more nuanced basslines. Gov't Mule would be fun as well, but very, very intimidating, since Allen Woody has some huge shoes to fill.*
What would you like your famous last words to be? I can't really imagine having any.
What's the craziest thing you've ever done? One of the stupidest is snorting vodka. That, and puching a locker and breaking my hand. In terms of crazy makeout/sex exploits, I've really been quite tame. The only one that comes to mind is from high school, making out with my girlfriend on New Year's Eve on the floor of her mother (the church secretary)'s office, and then getting walked in on by her mother!

* This is a subtle question (or at least, I'm making it one), since it's distinct from the question of “What band's bassist do you like?”. Although I did kinda collapse that distinction on the last one there.

(via isiscaughey)

Bologna Nom

2008-06-15T00:43:09Z

Anyone else think this cat looks like Bucky from Get Fuzzy?

Good Fortune

2008-05-14T04:35:40Z

“Fickle Fortune”, the 48 Hour Film Project film I worked on two weekends ago, is now online.

Thanks, cavenessity, for having me back on the team after two years away. It was just about as simultaneously fun and exhausting as I remember (and we weren't even shooting on a boat this time!).

Perl++; PHP--

2008-04-25T18:51:50Z

Things that make my life* easier: LWP and LWP::Simple

Things that make my life harder: the fact that:

map { "$_ = ?" } keys %query;

is spelled:

array_map(create_function('$a', 'return "$a = ?";'), array_keys($query));

in PHP.

* Where ‘life’ == my job

A mix for all seasons

2008-04-18T04:22:03Z

(Mostly for tdapenguin, cause she missed the previous one and she's champing at the bit.)

Comment with a topic or theme, and I will respond with a 10+ song mix on that theme.

Die Zerstörung

2008-04-06T07:13:08Z

I just wish there was something
That you could say
That could make me care again

—Godhead “Fucked Up”

Maybe I'm late to the party, but...

2008-03-28T23:23:54Z

Realization of the moment: the telegram is not gone, it has simply died and been reborn as the text message.

Turtles and Wikis and Perl, oh my!

2008-03-14T05:06:30Z

I'm not sure what's crazier: the fact that I'm writing my own Wiki/CMS, or that it's only taken me about 3-4 days (and just the evenings, really) to get a fairly nicely working system together. In the Perl community, it's said you know you've reached a certain level of proficiency when you try and write your own templating system. I wonder what it says about me that I'm writing a program that allows you to pretty flexibly combine a whole bunch of templating and markup systems (currently, Template Toolkit, TAL, Text::Template, Wiki markup, Markdown, and of course our good friends HTML and plain text).

The basic idea came from looking at PmWiki's use of a flat file database to hold its content, and thinking “How far could I run with that idea?” What I have ended up with is a system where everything (including the main site template and the page editing form) is editable through the browser interface. There are of course some dangers to this approach (e.g., screw up the page editing form and all of a sudden you can't correct anything through the browser anymore), but I'm really interested in seeing just how far I can push this idea.

There are three more major features that need to get implemented. One is some sort of authentication mechanism. The second is attaching binary content (mostly images, but being able to attach PDFs or the like could be useful as well). The third is some sort of versioning of the page content (so you can easily rollback changes; this is a must-have Wiki feature). For the versioning I plan to use SVN. Your set of pages is your repository, and when you edit a page, you get a private working copy of that page. This way, all the hard stuff about changeset tracking and conflict management is solved.

And the working title of this project: TurtleWiki. Because, you know, it's turtles all the way down!

Worst possible timing

2008-02-29T23:07:14Z

Of course it had to be the day that I am planning on bouncing to a bunch of different places all in one evening (thirdbase's housewarming, cacie and Rowan's show at New Deal, and notanarchangelj's CD release party at Perk) that my cell phone decides to stop working. It turns itself off, then on again, then off, then on, usw.

Upshot: If you need to get in touch with me in the next couple of days, try other means than cell phone.