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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
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| Saturday, July 19th, 2008 | | 4:21 pm |
"It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway" This BUGTRAQ posting fails pretty hard. It seems to go from dumb (users with physical access to the machine can bypass the local security policy and shutdown the machine, oh no) to dumber (the shutdown process runs with elevated permissions and if there was a way to hook into the shutdown process someone could do bad things by pressing the power button) to incredibly dumb (if I got someone to run untrusted code I could access their sensitive files by …pressing the power button?¹). ¹ Note that if you get someone to run untrusted code, you are on the other side of the airtight hatchway, and you don't need to press the power button to access sensitive files. | | Saturday, July 12th, 2008 | | 1:26 am |
Rosegarden Funeral of ...Sore Feet? (Emo's doesn't have many places to sit) I've been to a few concerts in the last month but haven't gotten around to posting much about any of them. So I'll start now and maybe work backwards? This evening, Peter Murphy (of Bauhaus) played—well, sang mostly, except for some acoustic guitar—at Emo's. Peter Murphy's voice is a remarkable and impressive instrument, extermely deep but very articulate, and with surprising range. And tonight it sounded great. His backing band (guitar, bass, drums) also played well. The guitarist even did a pretty good job of mimicking Daniel Ash's guitar style on the few Bauhaus songs that they played. Peter's fans are not as goth as you think they—oh wait, I guess a lot of them are. On two occassions, a lady in the front row handed Peter a rose. Both times he proceeded to tear off the petals and scatter them in the air. (He went for several songs with a rose petal stuck to his forehead, oops.) "A Strange Kind of Love" (from Deep) was awesome, and then it really got strange: instead of the last verse, he sang part of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (Bauhaus) with the accompaniment from "A Strange Kind of Love". He did the same sort of thing with "Adrenaline" (from the new Bauhaus album Go Away White): in the middle of the song, he sang "Be My Wife" (David Bowie, from Low), then went back to "Adrenaline". "A Strange Kind of Love" (completely different instrumentation than the album version, except the acoustic guitar) Peter revealed that today (July 11th) is his birthday, and the band proceeded to lead the audience in singing happy birthday to Peter. Peter joined in at the end, exaggerating his singing style in self-parody. He then said "now for a happy song", and did an excellent cover of "Hurt" (by Nine Inch Nails), following it up with a funny story about meeting Trent Reznor at Coachella. "Reptile" (Peter Murphy with Nine Inch Nails; the same poster put up some other songs from the same collaboration) Other songs I knew/recognized: "She's In Parties" (Bauhaus, Burning From the Inside), "Black Stone Heart" (Bauhaus, "Go Away White"), "The Line Between the Devil's Teeth (And That Which Cannot Be Repeat" ( Deep), and two more songs from Deep for the encore, "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem" and "a special birthday hair metal version of 'Cuts You Up'," which was actually much better than the way it was described. "Cuts You Up" (not the special birthday hair metal version) I recognized less than half of the songs, but I really enjoyed the ones I didn't know (which I don't always do). And no, I only have two of his solo albums: Deep (which is still awesome after all these years) and Dust (which is slow and atmospheric but not the sort of album I can listen to over and over). I should probably try a couple of his other solo albums. The opening act, Ali Eskandarian, was pretty weird. He's an Iranian-American singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar and a big "afro" hairdo, who poses and postures (and sounds) more than a bit like Jim Morrison or Patti Smith, and his musical accompaniment was a dude twisting the dials of an army of droning, bleeping, whooping, (but mostly droning) synthesizers. It was definitely the sort of music you don't hear every day. | | Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 | | 11:58 pm |
Fake Plastic Drums I bought some DLC (downloadable content) for Rock Band, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to show up in the game, figuring that I probably had to play through all of the built-in songs in solo tour mode to "unlock" DLC. It turns out that I was missing step 3: - Buy song
- Download song
- Install song
- Profit (for Harmonix/EA/Sony)¹
You can perform steps 1, 2, and 4 from inside the game. For step 3, you have to exit out of the game, find the songs in the PS3 Xross Media Bar main menu, click on them, and wait for them to install. Umm, yay? ¹ Actually, they profit at step 1, whether or not you download and install the song. Current Music: Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees | | Sunday, July 6th, 2008 | | 4:24 pm |
Well, at least it's better than "Joust: The Movie" You awaken in a large complex, slightly disoriented. Glowing dots hover mouth level near you in every direction. Off in the distance you hear the faint howling of what you can only imagine must be some sort of ghost or several ghosts.
| | Friday, July 4th, 2008 | | 5:06 pm |
Economies of sale After playing Rock Band at ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) schlaeton's place yesterday along with baldnate, krlikyu, halalkitty, and more, I finally gave in and bought a copy of Rock Band. For the PS2. And the PS3. Why? The PS2 version of the bundle (w/instruments) costs $99 and the standalone game for the PS3 costs $59, so it's about $10 cheaper to buy those than it is to buy the PS3 version of the bundle. The instruments are identical between the two versions (in fact, the wireless guitar box is labeled "SONY PS2/PS3 ROCK BAND WIRELESS GUITAR" and the drum box is labeled "SONY PS2/PS3 ROCK BAND DRUMS"). And since I already have the PS3, it's considerably cheaper than buying an XBox 360 ($350) + wireless adapter ($99) + XBox Live subscription. But I don't get to use the Guitar Hero III guitar (which I don't own anyway). | | Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | | 10:03 am |
| | Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 | | 7:59 pm |
Guitar Hero V: Gas Pump Hero  From today's Statesman: Bands running on empty
Musicians rethink tours as gas prices devour profits.
Working musicians in 2008 face a bizarre paradox. The Internet revolution and the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace mean that an artist's music can go anywhere, often — for good or ill — for free.
Rising fuel prices mean that the musician might not be able to follow.
…
The up-and-coming Florida-based rock band Torche headlined Emo's small room in May. "Man, gas prices are just killing us," Torche guitarist Juan Montoya said. "The only thing we can do is drive with our windows open and not use A/C." Some believe this method saves gas. Some do not.
Torche will return Saturday to Austin to open for the Japanese hard rock band Boris at the Mohawk. The problem is that when a band opens for a larger act, there's no chance to make more than the guaranteed minimum, other than merchandise sales; the opener won't get a cut of the cover charge like the headlining band might.
…
| | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 11:58 pm |
Leaping lizards
I often see tiny little lizards skittering up and down the walls (and ceilings) outside my apartment, but today was the first time I saw one inside. It ran out from behind the curtains in the living room, and then clung to the wall right above my TV for a while. I tried to catch it with a Pringles can to take it outside, but it ran very quickly behind something where I couldn't reach it. (I had an unpleasant image of catching nothing but a squirming tail, but I wasn't even fast enough for that.) I'm not sure what these lizards eat (very small bugs?), but I doubt there's very much of it in my apartment. Six months from now, I will probably find a dessicated lizard corpse in my apartment, right when I least expect it.
Current Music: Sonic Youth - Skink | | Saturday, June 14th, 2008 | | 5:53 pm |
Maybe not?  ( Spoilers... ) Current Music: Godspeed You Black Emperor! - The Dead Flag Blues | | Friday, June 13th, 2008 | | 2:12 am |
And sleep is what the devil does
More on TKK later. | | Sunday, June 8th, 2008 | | 8:06 pm |
The Crappening? M. Night Shymalan's latest film, The Happening comes out this Friday. Maybe it will be good? I just rented Lady in the Water. Yeah, it wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it was better than one would expect from the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. And it wasn't a horror film, it was more along the lines of The Neverending Story or E.T.. As heavy-handed as certain aspects of the story were, it was still an entertaining film. You know what movie I found unwatchable? The Lost Boys. I recorded it off of cable. Now, Flatliners (also by Joel Schumacher) was okay, in that I could look past the stupid parts (Oh no, the graffiti in the alleyway is turning into leering, albeit brightly colored, monsters! Cue ominous shot of yellow wind spinner thing for the 47th time!) and enjoy the parts that were not stupid. But I ended up turning off The Lost Boys halfway through and deleting it. Honestly, the only part I enjoyed was hearing Echo and the Bunnymen cover The Doors' "People Are Strange". On the other hand, Near Dark, another vampire movie that was apparently overshadowed by The Lost Boys, was much better and was very much worth watching. On another note, the rate of Blu-Ray adoption is painfully obvious if you look at the shelves at Blockbuster. There is a Blu-Ray section, and there's a DVD section. The Blu-Ray section is three shelving units. The DVD section is the whole store, minus three shelving units. Oh well, it could be worse... Current Music: The Pixies - The Happening | | Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | | 7:57 pm |
Microsoft's ad campaign for Office XP must have been really effective: the message was basically "Office XP: goodbye paperclip". They even hired Gilbert Gottfried to provide the voice of Clippy in a few animated short movies promoting the new office suite: Current Music: Pink Floyd - Eclipse | | Saturday, May 31st, 2008 | | 11:37 pm |
I Am Lessened I think the writers/director behind I Am Legend (who are also responsible for classic movies like Constantine and The Cell) should do a remake of Soylent Green. Spoiler: in their version, the classic line is, "Soylent Green is made of... HOPE!" Maybe they can work Shrek into it somehow? The CGI was pretty impressive. They must have used an awful lot of computing power to render something that looks far less realistic than blue-grey makeup, carefully applied latex, copious fake blood, and a shirtful of pig intestines. Reusing the voice of the tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic Park was a nice touch, though. I think the last third of the movie was actually based on Stephen King's "The Lawnmower Man". On the plus side, the first half of the movie was actually pretty good, albeit as faithful to the original story as Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (i.e. not at all). Turn it off before Will Smith starts lipsyncing to Shrek. | | Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 | | 10:26 pm |
The Andromeda Stain Okay, just finished watching part 2 of "The Andromeda Strain" mini-series. Was not so great, actually. In retrospect, the first part hinted at the extreme silliness that was to follow, but the second part didn't quite add up or make sense. ( Spoilers... )One minor spoiler: slow-motion digit throwing is every bit as hilarious as evil flying cleavage-monkeys. Seriously, I can't stop laughing. Reading the IMDB message boards just makes me laugh harder and harder. | | 1:42 am |
The new miniseries on A&E based on Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain is pretty good, at least the first part (which aired tonight and will be re-run ad infinitum). It's not perfect by any means—some of the attempts to "modernize" the story are a bit heavy handed, the dialogue is not exactly brilliant (but for a miniseries based on a sci-fi novel, who expects it to be?), and the timing of some events is suspect (i.e. travel seems to be overly fast and convenient). But hey, it's much more entertaining than "Tin Man" (except the part where monkeys fly out of the wicked witch's cleavage—that was absolutely hilarious). Picture quality was good. I'm not sure whether it was due to 720p or to Time Warner giving A&E more bandwidth (like they seem to do for HDNET's movie channel), but there were a lot less noticeable compression artifacts than one would see in 1080i broadcast fare. Also, what is up with television commercials that try to tie into the content of the program? Some car company had a commercial about some people stopping in the town where the outbreak of the Andromeda strain occurs. They look around and say something like "gosh this is creepy, let's go back to the city," then they drive away and go to a crowded nightclub with valet parking. WTF? At least one of the KFC Law & Order commercials is sort of funny. There are a few office workers eating lunch around the break room table, with a TV playing Law & Order: CI in the background. One guy says in a low voice, "In the criminal justice system, this toaster wrap is lunch", and the girl suddenly chimes in with "duh dummmmm", imitating the Law & Order sound. Current Music: KMFDM - Mini Mini Mini (swinging samples mix) (Virus would also be appropriate) | | Monday, May 26th, 2008 | | 8:13 pm |
More songs about vampires¹ Peter Murphy (from Bauhaus) w/ Ali Eskandarian @ Emo's July 11, 2008 Note: Good thing the Emo's Lounge is separate, because the worst² band that I've seen twice live—the Fuckemos—is playing there the same night. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult @ Elysium June 12, 2008 Note: Tickets supposedly available from some place that doesn't actually seem to sell tickets over the web. Awesome! ¹ I only have a couple of Peter Murphy's solo albums, and neither one contains any songs about vampires. TKK has the one about Christian zombie vampires³, though. ² Maybe they're not actually the worst band I've seen twice live, but they seemed to be trying to be. The song in the YouTube video I linked actually isn't that bad for some reason. ³ One could make the argument that Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend is about Christian zombie vampires. Well, at least they're zombie vampires. Using <sup>1</sup> in Livejournal entry titles does not work. Let's see how ¹ fares. Sadly, there are no HTML entities for superscripted digits above 3, though I guess I could look up the Unicode. Current Music: Say Hi - Not As Goth As They Say We Are | | Saturday, May 24th, 2008 | | 4:14 pm |
The Most Dangerous Game... Adaptation IMDB's list of movies based on videogames definitely has its share of crap: However, there are a few surprises, movies that might possibly turn out to be not-crap: Me, I'm just waiting for a movie based on Mind Walker. Current Music: Say Hi - The Reigning Champ Of The Teething Crowd | | Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 | | 10:21 pm |
Peeve-V-R
Good: My SA 8300HD DVR has two hard drives (one is an external drive that I added). It also has two HD tuners, so it is capable of recording two HD programs simultaneously.
Bad: It always records programs on the drive with the most free space. It also doesn't seem to span programs from one drive to the other.
Ugly: It is possible to lose recordings when the drives aren't completely full (i.e. the capacity meter says 98%).
Theory #1: Drive A has room for 61 minutes of video and drive B has room for 60 minutes of video. You schedule two 1-hour recordings at the same time. The DVR records both programs on drive A because it has more room. It records both programs for 30.5 minutes, then stops recording because drive A is full. The other 29.5 minutes are not recorded. Brillant.
Theory #2: The last 2% of drive space is reserved for live rewind, but doesn't count towards the capacity meter. Doubtful, because I was watching one of the programs from theory #1 while it was recording, and it just stopped when I caught up to where the recording stopped.
Also: It has audio dropouts and video glitches. The closed captions sometimes start displaying with a big yellow or pink background that covers half the screen. I need to move it to a location with more ventilation, because overheating causes it to spew static over the HDMI output, even when it's in "sleep" mode. And the UI is next to worthless for recording television series because the recorded programs menu just displays the name of the series for each recording, repeatedly (you have to select one of the identical-looking list entries and hit the "info" button to see the episode titles).
But hey: At least it does the job it was designed to, 98% of the time. | | Saturday, May 17th, 2008 | | 3:10 pm |
The excitable little birds are back with another nest. They built it on Wednesday right before the big storm. I think they're cliff swallows. They sure like mud.  ( More pictures of swallows... ) Current Music: Hüsker Dü - Broken Home, Broken Heart | | Friday, May 16th, 2008 | | 12:31 am |
Random wows This video linked from Penny Arcade completely defies description. Wow. Tonight's CSI season finale: quality. Much less silly than "Grave Danger", and less drawn-out than "Living Doll" (then again, I was watching it via re-runs, and the commercials for the season premiere spoiled it). The writers of television crime dramas (particularly CSI: Miami (which is the dumbest show on Earth, but still oddly compelling) and CSI: NY) are always coming up with the silliest techno-jargon, but this quote from last night's CSI: NY was utterly hilarious: "He's blogging in real time. I'll create a GUI interface in Visual Basic to try and trace the IP." I'm sure their forensics jargon is equally accurate. |
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