With My Eyes

Politics

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 19:31:24 GMT

You are a
Social Liberal
(71% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(76% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Libertarian

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Movies!!!

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:24:28 GMT

Being on a little vacation, I'm still working but also have an eye on the television all day. Here are some reviews of movies I've seen in the last couple days.

Whale Rider: Poor acting at times, poor direction, and poor editing. The movie relied heavily on the story itself and the acting of the little girl. I'll give it a 9/10. Yes, I thought that the story and that single performance were that strong.

Crash: I think this film was written and directed by the designers of the LA Museum of Tolerance. Some story elements didn't work no matter how dumb you think the characters are, and the racism was almost comical. I wasn't impressed with the realism.

The movie starts as a documentary about how all women are morons, and then redeems the characters. Other characters followed the reverse path. Much of the racism was pretty absurd, and it was sad that the Asian characters were never redeemed. 6/10.

Kicking and Screaming: It's not fair for me to review a Will Ferrell movie since I think the guy's funny as shit. I'll give it a 7 and say watch it. The 2' tall Korean kid with the lesbian parents is fun to watch too.

Kung Fu Hustle: I didn't like this movie. I didn't think it was funny, and the voices just sounded absurd with those characters. I really really hate a faked accent on a voice over, and I also hate trying to figure out what the characters "really" said, since translations are never very close at all. Maybe I'd like it subtitled better, or not.

The "musician" bad guys were a neat couple of characters, I appreciated the apparent homage to Tai Chi Master, and there was a surprisingly touching story about a little girl and a lollipop, but the jokes didn't make me laugh. At all. I even slept a little, and that was while playing poker at the same time. I really think they just wanted to get out the wires (for the flying stunts) and the computers at the same time and have a little fun. And they did, but I didn't. 4/10.

Memoirs of a Geisha: I left the apartment to see this movie, and I'm pretty happy that I did. Never having read the book, I had no expectations. I was hoping for semi-convincing performances from the band of Chinese women they hired to play Japanese geisha. I got pretty good performances, as the accents were done fairly well. Not perfect, of course, but better than they could have been.

It's been getting very bad reviews across the board, but seeing as how some reviewers are comparing it to Gone with the Wind, I can't respect their opinions. I don't give a shit if they thought that Scarlett O'Hara was a more interesting character - she's a completely different character. The only complaint that I agree with is that they used Chinese women to play Japanese parts, but it's a work of fiction anyhow. It'd be a very poor documentary, but if it were one they should have used actual Japanese girls.

I found it amazingly sad that a 9 year old girl was all excited about becoming a geisha just to be closer to some old man who was nice to her once, but that doesn't seem to be what anyone else thought at that point. I thought it neat that they portrayed the men as being pretty respectful (aside from the Baron). Even Jame Gumb didn't force himself on anyone, and he was playing the typical boorish American. He just didn't realize that a geisha wasn't a prostitute - an understandable error given that within the context of the film every "geisha" he'd have come into contact with had been a prostitute.

Overall I'll give it an 8, but it could have been better if it weren't so slow at times. Also, I really didn't understand the "Flashdance in the snow" performance, aside from trying to make Ziyi Zhang look hot but busted at the same time. You go from artistic dances with fans and umbrellas to a barefoot chick running back and forth in the snow flailing about like a retard. Apparently that's sexy, but I surely wouldn't have paid 15k yen for her Missouri, or Miyagi, or whatever they called her "first time."

Well, that covers all the movies I've seen this week, so it's back to work for me!

Giving up on the trackball

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 18:41:49 GMT

So a while back I was looking for a better input device. I tried a Logitech Trackman, which is a trackball that you move with your thumb. I then took the advice of someone else and got a normal trackball. I chose the Kensington Expert Mouse. The Expert Mouse is the absolute best trackball you can buy. My hand just can't adjust to it.

For the last while (I forgot exactly when I bought these things) my hand has been killing me. Half of the reason to go the trackball route was to save my wrists, and for the first time in my life I found myself in pain. My hand hurts every single day. And before it never hurt.

I'm going out on a limb and guessing that I got so used to normal mice over the years that I know how to use them without hurting myself. I'm also going to go out on the same limb and guess that for some reason I'm not using trackballs like anyone else does. For me, all they are is pure pain.

So if anyone wants a good deal on a Kensington Expert Mouse let me know. I'm sick of causing myself pain to try to "save my wrists." I need to save them the way that worked for the last 23 years.

On Vinyl

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:32:47 GMT

I picked up a turntable yesterday from Fry's, since I have over 1000 LP's sitting in the garage. I mainly wanted to get something to test them out with, since after sitting in a Vegas garage for 5 years I thought they may have melted.

Well, they haven't, and I think I finally "get" why some people prefer the medium. The music has a completely different depth to it. There are small errors, dust particles produce cracking noises, you get like 30 minutes per side, and they're huge. I don't even know how to describe what's good about them.

My ears can tell, though, and I think for certain types of music these old vinyl discs are the way to go. Maybe they're the reason why people went insane back in the 60's. It's hard to imagine an mp3 changing anyone's life, but these things have a power that I have yet to fully appreciate.

I'd pay for vinyl. Maybe the recording industry should just go back to this if they want to save themselves. If you want the mp3, then fine, take it and copy it to your heart's content. If you want to hear it like this, then buy the record.

CD copying

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:43:07 GMT

So last night I tried to make a backup of a game I got, and the game uses the Safedisc 4.6 copy-protection mechanism. What this means is that the disc produces read errors through block 10,XXX at varying intervals. And it's trivial to rip it with an old CD drive, but the newer ones hang up pretty consistently every time one of these read errors are encountered.

In the end, after you get the right software you can make the copy, but it took me 45 minutes to copy one disc. The first 10k blocks took about 43 minutes, and then the rest of the disc (over 90% of the data) took about 2.

At this point I have working images of the discs, but I'm pretty confident that anything I burn will not work correctly, until I figure out how to recreate those read errors.

It's a real hassle, and it's contrary to the idea of fair use. I hate it. I'm now in the market for an older CD drive that will skip the errors more quickly so it doesn't take forever.

In the end, it took me about 4 hours to figure out the exact issue I was having, and how to get around it. Now I can have the pleasure of getting rid of all the things I installed that were going down the wrong path. I hate having useless software installed.

Wirelessless

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:43:36 GMT

This is the post you've all been waiting for, and I think I finally edited it enough for general perusal. Now, let's travel back in time to when I was on the road...

...So for the second straight day I don't have an internet connection available to me. I'm at my grandmother's house in Dearborn, MI. There's one wireless network within range, but I'm not going to go door to door asking for passwords to sponge a signal. Thinking ahead, I grabbed NetZero and the local access numbers for this area. But my grandmother has no phone. All I needed was a dial tone, and I couldn't even manage that.

Obviously I'm not editing this online. I'm writing it in Notepad for posting when I get back to civilization. I should have installed more software because then I could edit it directly in my LJ editor of choice, and put it up later. Now I have to cut and paste and use an unfamiliar program.

One thing that I like to do periodically when I don't have a connection to the internet is to write some stupid program to pass the time. I can't do this, since I neglected to install any dev environment on this box before I hit the road.

And I can't work. I would like to be playing poker right now instead of wasting the time doing next to nothing, but I can't. This is teaching me to be a better boy scout than I have been in the past.

In other news, I grabbed a digital camera a couple days ago. It's one of the few Canon cameras that do not come with a rechargeable battery pack. It takes AAs, and oh does it take them! AA batteries : Canon camera :: plankton : blue whale. Every 40 pictures or so I need to replace them. Tonight I went to Best Buy (the store of choice for all my recent digital camera needs, since there was always one close to where I was staying), and grabbed 4 Lithium batteries. And a little camera bag. The bag is big enough for the camera itself, as well as a supply of batteries. I suppose I could fill it with extra memory cards too, but I have a 512 MB SD card. This is enough for about 1,497 pictures of pretty good quality. The memory card that it came with is a 16 meg MMC, which is good for another 40. I don't know if I should bother carrying that with me, but I see no reason not to since I already have it. It's fine in case of an emergency when I really need a picture, I guess.

The good thing is that my laptop has an SD card reader built into it. The bad thing is that while my camera can take either SD cards or MMCs, the laptop will not read MMCs. This is fine, except that 16 meg card that came with the camera originally is (as I said) an MMC. Not only does it hold an insignificant number of pictures relative to the 512 meg SD card, I need to have the camera on and plugged in to the computer to transfer pictures. As I say, I'm only keeping it in case my SD card breaks or something, and I need to take some pictures in the mean time.

The total cost of this camera project thus far has been:

$179.99 Canon A520
8.99 16 Alkaline AA batteries
11.99 4 Lithium AA batteries
39.99 512 meg SD card
17.99 Kenneth Cole Camera bag
-------
258.95

After various sales taxes (NM, OK, MI) I figure it's less than $300. And well, being able to share some of what I saw with others is worth a bit more than that. I definitely recommend this camera, though the battery situation is absurd. With a 16 pack of AAs I will run out of them before taking all 1500 pictures that I can before downloading them to my laptop.

The laptop is new too. It's a Dell Inspiron 9300, and I'm extremely happy with it. I'm really hoping that it has some longevity, though laptops are prone to mechanical issues. I'm going to be very careful with it, since I love being able to 4 table without overlap while on the road. And for $1102, it's not too bad. That's not the normal price, but if you wait for the online coupon codes you can usually get it right around there within a month.

The bad thing about it is that it's a Dell machine, and as one comes pre-installed with a ton of "show the user an ad every 5 seconds" programs. When it interrupted me twice while I was trying to enter the passcode to my wireless network, I had had enough and wiped the hard drive. I reinstalled Windows (with my own CDs, since they don't give you any), and went to my desktop to download (from Dell) the drivers for everything. I burned those to a CD after I had the complete set for use in the future. You never know when you'll decide to reformat or replace a broken hard drive. I also downloaded the Dell repair manuals for this machine, since I'll likely be adding RAM soon. I can get it for less than Dell would have charged me, which is why I went with the minimum RAM option.

The display is beautiful, and I love pretty much any laptop keyboard with the typical short-throw keys. I'd prefer a normal keyboard layout, but I'm a beggar in this situation. I have a DVI out for a second monitor, so I can reasonably use this as a desktop replacement. That will be great, since I'll be able to throw Linus and his OS on that machine and centralize my PokerTracker database. That makes sense for several reasons, and I'm pretty sure that I can have it listen on a port that my cable company doesn't block. Having access to that everywhere would be terrific.

A while back I was stunned when my buddy Vin actually had a lot of work done on 2 screenplays, and had written several programs for himself (mainly to learn .NET). I never pegged him as someone to actually get things done, and he said that he just didn't have internet access on his work machine. With an internet connection he said he was prone to chatting and otherwise screwing around all day. Now I'm without an internet connection and I'm forced into "content creation," since I can't sit there, do my mundane "job," and spend the day learning about anything and everything. If I could have a connection for poker only, I might end up finishing a book with the freed up time.

I don't feel "bad" about not getting a lot done outside of the poker-related work and income generation, since it's not like I'm not doing anything. I'm constantly learning, which is something that I never want to stop doing. But there comes a time when it's beneficial to do something with what you've learned, and I guess I was consistently skipping that step. I'd start a writing project and lose interest. I have read more about the process of writing than most published authors.

I really want to contribute a book to the world at some point, since I feel that I have at least one pretty good story to tell. I have disparate experiences in my life to draw from, and have experienced both the highest highs and the nadir. I've taken all the preliminary steps to becoming a writer there are, aside from just writing, and writing, and writing. Perhaps this blog entry will serve as a first step in that direction. If only it weren't a rambling assortment of divergent thoughts I could publish it as is.

I'm looking forward to getting back online as soon as possible so I get to share some of my recent experiences with some people that I care about. By people I mean person, and by care about I mean a bit more.

If you've read this far, then we're legally married in 17 states. Fag.

Dentistry

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:30:51 GMT

So I went to the dentist today, and lied about how long it's been since I've seen one. I said 3 years, which sounded fairly reasonable. I expected them to call me on it, as it's been about 9 years since I've set foot in a dentist's office.

"Well you're lucky! You're looking pretty good for not having been to a dentist in 3 years, but you shouldn't press your luck."

I have one cavity which will cost a whopping $85 to repair, and the rest is basically fine. They want to charge me $600 for some "deep cleaning" thing that sounds like a total scam, but I think I'll definitely go back and get the cavity fixed pretty soon.

If I had told them that it's really been 9 years, I think they'd have wanted to follow me around with a video camera to learn about my secrets to oral hygiene.

I have a very long post sitting on my hard drive that I want to edit a bit before I put up,and it's about my recent cross-country driving exploits. Until then, I'll be getting some contacts. I need to pretty myself up for my lady.

Knife of Dreams, audibly

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 08:08:20 GMT

So I'm currently driving around the US doing a favor for someone, and with that much driving I wanted an audiobook to play in the car. I grabbed the one for Knife of Dreams, since I couldn't make myself finish Crossroads of Twilight. Wanting to see the end of the series has me locked in, but if I had my choice I wouldn't be reading many of the connecting books.

Anyhow, the book is better than expected. Mr. Rigney must have a second job as an Instruction Manual writer somewhere, given his attention to detail and words wasted on meaningless (in the context of high fantasy) descriptions. I think he gets paid by the word too. The last 4 books could have been compressed into a half hour cartoon, and fell many a tree to be put into print.

There are more "good moments" than in the other recent books, and that's what I read for. A few powerful scenes amongst thousands of mundane and muddled ones is enough to keep me happy. Their utter absence from the last 4 books was what had my interest waning.

Halfway through the audio book, I find that I have been saying every single name incorrectly in my head when I read them. Not every one, but about 65% or so. There are a lot of characters, and a lot of names, and it seems that I "went the wrong way" every time. Taim is "Tah-eem" and not "Tame," but Bain == "Bane" and not "Bah-een." I guessed incorrectly on both accounts. Despite having an inconsistent interpretation of my own, I managed to be 0% correct instead of the expected 50.

I'm shocked at how different the characters seem with different names. I told my dad and he had a story of his own. When he was 7 he read some book where a prominent character was named Sebbasteen. He later learned that the name was actually Sebastian (that's how he read those letters at 7, apparently), and that changed the entire story for him.

Anyhow, that's that, and I'm going to sleep here in Bloomington, IL. It's 40 degrees out according to Google, and that is cold to me.

Prison

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:10:23 GMT

This morning I saw Martha Stewart on the Today Show. She's peddling a book where she talks about how to have a passion for whatever it is that you're going to do with your life, and referenced women in prison having a whole lot of time to prepare for what they want to do with the rest of their lives. She made it clear that the book isn't -only- for people in prison. I should hope not.

My 5 year old niece in kindergarten was telling me about some crazy kid in her class. He gets a "red card" every day. Apparently this is like getting your name on the board with 5 checks behind it. The teacher talks to the parents every single day, and the kid is still a nut. He choked out some girl for apparently no reason (this is the 10th kid he's jumped on and tried to kill), and the teacher had a hard time pulling him off.

My niece said that if he jumped her like that she'd just yell for the teacher since she doesn't want to get a red card for fighting back. I told her that if she got a red card for fighting with -that- kid I'd put it in a frame. I'm kinda worried that that sort of thing will only get worse. The kids will just get bigger, stronger, and probably less sane as she gets older.

It's sad that the only way to deal with certain people is through violence. And this kid likes to choke out girls. I should kick his dad's ass.

And what's with these red cards? Is it because the southwestern USA is basically Mexico, and the people here know soccer, but not that getting your name on the board is a bad thing?

North shore

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 07:13:19 GMT

This is an old movie, I think from the 80s, where a surfer gets all banged up on a coral reef, a "native" girl heals him with some aloe (straight from the leaves!), and he learns to surf from some supposed surfing guru. It's like Karate Kid on a surf board.

When he's learning to surf "for real," since he's already an amateur surfer, the teacher makes him learn on a longboard. It's just a really long flat piece of wood. No rudder (or whatever surfers call those rudder-like things on the bottom-back of the board), no nothing. After that he got to move up to the newer performance boards.

The point is that he started surfing on a bare piece of wood, just like Ralph Macchio started off by painting the fence, waxing off, and so on. It always felt to me like that was the right way to learn something. Start with the basics, really figure that stuff out, and then take advantage of new technologies to improve what you can do with that stuff.

In Karate (something I studied for 1/4 of my life) you don't start off swinging 2 swords performing aerial kicks. You learn how to keep your balance. Then you learn how to punch. Then simple kicks. Years later you can start to incorporate weapons into it.

That being said, I was shocked to find out today that some people run out and buy electric guitars to learn to play on. To them, I recommend watching Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and to listen to Ted:

"Well, how can we have decent instruments when we don't really even know how to play?"

Old School Games

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:39:17 GMT

So I took my 5 year old niece to Fry's last night and was trying to think of a new game type for her to play. She has driving games, platform games, 3d run around and do things games, Katamari Damacy, and so on. I figured that a game like Gradius V would be a good addition. Simple enough for a little kid to get the idea, and probably easy enough for her to play it without being frustrated.

The case shows some beautiful graphics in the game, and she was all excited about getting it. Until she saw a collection of old Namco games.

"GALAGA! I want to play GALAGA!"

She all but dropped Gradius V on the floor, and wouldn't let go of the box in which Galaga was contained.

Maybe games really were better back when I was a kid, and it's not just my imagination having a field day with memories of a better time. Fuck graphics. All you need is simply addictive gameplay.

1984

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 18:34:01 GMT

I managed to get through 28 years of life without ever reading this book. Given how I view the government, this may come as a surprise. In a way, I think I'm lucky to read it for the first time right now. I'm sure when it was published it was seen as a frightening future that would ultimately never happen unless the world did everything it could to make every possible mistake.

And I find myself replacing "Eurasians" with "Evildoers." I substitute the media's myopia and short-term memory for the blatant revisionist history. They screwed up the religion, but if you replace Jesusland with the complete dearth of it you find more common ground.

This book isn't the shocking warning to me that it must have been to the original readers. Instead, a few cosmetic changes and a title change to 2005 would make it a fairly accurate history of the present.

Goodbyes

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:59:31 GMT

I hate them. I just made one that I never wanted to make. Luckily it's not a permanent one.

Back to pokering and working on my manual dexterity. I also want to find a good thumb-trackball thing, so I'll scour the internet for my options. I want more buttons than they seem to usually have.

Dexterity

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:45:54 GMT

So I'm working on my typing, which for now consists only of left-hand work on the asdf keys. Yes, I know where all the keys are, but I'm trying to re-train the muscles in my hand to operate like they're supposed to. Drills with those keys are as good as any. I started with approximately zero dexterity in my left hand, and have been doing a lot of repetitive exercises to get that hand working correctly. I'm actually conscious of my left ring finger getting a bit stronger.

I wonder if this is anything like physical therapy after an accident. People talk about needing to re-learn how to walk, and this really feels like doing something that I have never done before. I figure it'll take me about another week and I'll be ready to do some time trials. I don't want to focus on speed just yet, though. Impatience had me capped at about 60 wpm for long enough.

Typistry

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:46:06 GMT

So it has been brought to my attention that I don't use all of my fingers while typing. For some reason I never noticed that. I know that I don't type "normally," but only using about 6 of my fingers most of the time is far from optimal. It's terrible when someone spends about 19 hours a day on the computer and types as poorly as I do.

With any luck I'll catch up to the rest of the world.

I hate poker

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 22:35:46 GMT

I hate poker