I came to the sad realization the other day that in the 10-odd years since high school, I have gained a significant amount of weight. More importantly, this winter I stopped feeling like I was really all that healthy or active. Even more importantly, I tried on my kilt on the weekend and (*sob*) it did not fit. By about 4 inches. And I've lost about 18 pounds since Christmas.
I have decided that I am going to try to reverse this process…
I was exceptionally hungry this morning, so I partook of the standard bullring breakfast #1, which is an egg sandwich with bacon, cheese and tomato. I also had a large double-double coffee. All told, not particularly healthy, but I'm not planning on feeling guilty over it.
For those who are interested, standard bullring breakfast #2 is a bowl of instant Quaker Oatmeal and a large double-double coffee. Yes, I loves me my coffees.
It's been a while since I've been able to write about music for a variety of reasons. First there's the whole music
player scandal, which is still bothering me quite a bit. There are no clear winners thus far, only clear losers. The
only thing that's keeping me going is Pandora, but it's got a bit of a problem in that I can't just select whatever song
I'm jonesing to hear. So, once again, no music from my library. Problem the second: I've had the plague. It wasn't too
bad - sore throat, coughing, boils, rain of toads and the like - but I've been spending most of my time abed and not
listening to music or thinking about writing. When I got back from being sick, my time was spent equally between
catching up on 150 email messages and being excited about being able to go see (and open for) the Creepshow.
I'm not even sure I have the right competitors up there; I'm talking about AMD / Athlon vs Intel / Core 2 Duo, or some combination thereof. I just got a brand spanking new AMD 64 computer for work and I have been having a heck of a time getting Ubuntu to install on it. Right now I have Dapper Drake (for those not in the know, not the newest version of Ubuntu) installed, and I had to install that using the i386 version and net…
I used the term "baited breath" yesterday, which brings to mind a poem:
Sally, having swallowed cheese, Directs down holes the scented breeze, Enticing thus with baited breath Nice mice to an untimely death.
Baited breath is a silly idea - what does one bait one's breath with? (Evidently cheese if one is a mousehunter). Why do we say this?
Well, to start with, the word is all wrong. It …
For anyone who was waiting with baited breath for my latest edition of 5✭ Fridays, I apologize. It will likely be posted on Tuesday now. I'm still having some music player issues.
For those keeping score, we've got iTunes solidly scrapped and uninstalled (I still use it on my Mac, but mostly to play CDs). WinAmp is running a strong game, but the rating thing isn't as intuitive as I'd like it to be. I'm working on that. Right now, with a…
For a long time, I appeared to be immune to the terrible plague of spam which seemed to inundate everyone, all the time. Within the last year, however, my spam count has increased by approximately 72,100%. For the most part, my various spam filters do a fantastic job and I do not have to read any spam, and I don't mind tagging the occasional spam item that gets through, so this isn't going to be one of those posts in which the author bitches a…
These unplanned 5✭ Fridays are really entertaining for me - it's fun trying to pull an unplanned and slightly unhinged
article out of places that are best left unexplored. This week in music, we're going to go for the Hail Mary pass and
talk about Franz Liszt.
Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 - July 31, 1886), was the Elvis of his day, which is to say he was a bit of a sex
symbol. He gave autographs; he performed in front of thousands at a time; he slept around. He started out as a pianist
(and is probably most renowned for his work as such) and was, quite possibly, the best pianist there has ever been. Many
of his compositions reflect this - one must be a very skilled technical player to even attempt to play most Liszt
pieces, and to play them well, one must be intensely passionate.
I came to the realization that something was wrong with my site this morning, and while looking into it, I realized I had made the mistake of a rank amateur web designer.
I just reinstalled Ubuntu on my computer, and I have been customizing it to make it look how I want it to look. Among the customizations is the default text colour - it ended up being set to quite a light blue (my backgrounds are all dark in the theme I've created). I …
One of the big issues faced by geeks is what to name their computers.
Servers, for instance, all need specific names so they can be easily identified. Once upon a time, I had the pleasure of working with Tycho and Gabe our production and test servers for a website, respectively. They were an obvious tribute to Penny Arcade a webcomic favourite of mine. Those servers, by the way…