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mark robinson's journal
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[ thu 19 may 05 ] | |
09:58a - Anniversary!
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3 years ago you changed my life. Thank you, sweetheart. I love you.
And I miss you.
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[ tue 17 may 05 ] | |
09:47p - Japan US Relations
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Man, lots of stuff to post about tonight. Here we go...
I picked up the 2-disc Criterion DVD for Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou this weekend. Actually, Ann got it for me, because she's awesome. It looks pretty cool, but one thing that annoys me about it is the fact that the artwork for the outer slipcase is vastly inferior to the artwork for the actual DVD snapcase, the latter of which was done by Eric Chase Anderson (brother of director Wes Anderson). So why does the shitty art get top billing? Who knows. My guess is that some focus group somewhere (hi Jason!) decided that the Anderson painting was too "weird", so Touchstone/Disney/whatever threw together the slipcase art. Blah.
I created a Flickr page the other day for the hell of it, since Flickr seems to be all the rage these days. Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. Maybe I'm just spoiled with my own domain and custom Gallery installation. I guess I'll keep the Flickr thing for the time being because it's fun to play with and I did take the time to throw together a buttload of sushi pictures for the it.
Speaking of photography, Ann and I broke out the old Polaroid SX-70 camera on Saturday (if you subscribe to my photojournal's livejournal feed, you might have already seen one of the pics that I took with it). It had been awhile since we used the thing (a year or more?) and had left a cartridge of film in there, which probably wasn't the smartest thing in the world to do. Turns out the chemicals started leaking and whenever we took a picture, they'd streak across the film as it came out of the camera. We sort of remedied this by wiping off each image before the gunk dried, but still, the finished prints ended up looking a little messed up. Oh well.
Separated at birth - Jason Giambi and Trent Reznor. What the hell, since when is Trent on steroids? Geez.
I've been doing a lot of reading lately. The book I started last night, Alan Schwarz's The Numbers Game, might possibly be the dorkiest thing I've ever read -- a history of baseball statistics. Like, not the numbers themselves but the various ways that those numbers have been measured throughout the years, starting with the invention of the box score in the 1800s all the way up to the advanced metrics used by websites like Baseball Prospectus today. Awesome.
So, there's a new Star Wars movie opening this week, have you heard? Apparently it's a pretty big deal. Seriously, though, I bought my ticket today and I'll be seeing it Thursday at 2:15pm. I can't wait to be disappointed.
Oh, one more thing, I finally got a haircut today. Hooray for me.
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[ sat 14 may 05 ] | |
10:24p - Mystery house...
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There's this old, run down house a few miles from my house that's always intrigued me. I could never tell if it was abandoned or there were actually people living in it. I never saw anyone around it, which led me to believe it was indeed abandoned, but it's located on a prime piece of real estate on a busy road that no doubt would have been converted into retail space years ago, so there had to be a reason it hadn't been torn down. A few months back, I noticed that work had begun on stripping the outer layer of wood from the outside of the house, but despite this, it still stood. I drove by the house again a few days ago and saw that there were words scrawled on the front of the house. The first time I went by I figured it was just graffiti, but the next time I saw it, I noticed that the writing was far too antiquated to be graffiti. Unfortunately, because it's located on a major road, I can't just pull over (or even slow down) and have a look. So today while Ann and I were out running errands and taking pictures, I decided that I'd get a shot of it to see if that would help me decipher what it says. Here's what I got:
Like I said before, you can't really slow down on the road that this house is on, so this picture taken at about 30 mph was the best I could do. If you look between the two lower windows, you an just barely make out the text. Here's the shot blown up and enhanced in Photoshop:
It's still really hard to make out -- Ann and I spent a good deal of time trying to figure it out and we could only figure out the 2nd word ("and") and the last few words ("By Daniel Kuntz 1854"). The first couple letters of the first word look like "Re" and it looks like it ends in "ed", but beyond that, we're stumped (especially with the 3rd word, which is pretty much unintelligible). Here's the original full-res image if anyone wants to take a look. Any ideas?
I'm going to try to go back there this week -- unfortunately, Ann's leaving tomorrow morning, so we won't be able to go back together. Maybe by the time she comes back in a couple weeks I'll have figured out a way to get closer -- maybe park somewhere nearby and walk. Hopefully the house will slill be there.
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[ thu 12 may 05 ] | |
04:56p - Optimistic
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Ann's coming up to visit tonight. And! I had a good appointment at Hopkins today. And! My back's feeling better. And! The new Star Wars movie comes out in a week. And! Uh... I think that's it, actually. Still, not bad, all things considered.
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[ wed 11 may 05 ] | |
12:45p - Another day full of dread
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Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper does not taste like Cherry or Vanilla or Dr. Pepper. It tastes like Diet. Yuck.
Palace Music: any recommendations? I really like I See A Darkness, so preferably something in that vein...
I still can't find any of those goddamn dark chocolate Star Wars M&Ms. I was at Wal-Mart last night and they actually had a display for them, but it was empty. Argh.
Does anyone have any idea why Windows is recognizing my DVD-R drive (a Sony DRU-700A, to be specific) as a CD-ROM drive whenever I put blank DVD-R media in it? Otherwise it's fine (for example, I can watch DVD movies with no problem -- and yes, I've tried different brands of media). This is annoying because, obviously, if it's fucking up whenever I put in a blank, I can't burn anything.
Oh well, I'm going to go watch baseball and take a nap. I didn't get much sleep last night (yay, stress!) and I was up early this morning, so I'm beat.
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[ tue 10 may 05 ] | |
10:15p - Complaint dept.
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Dear DVD burner,
I wish you would start working again. I'm sorry if my motherboard upgrade a few weeks back was traumatic for you. I also understand you're not too happy with my upgrade to Windows XP SP2, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Maybe if you could tell me what exactly is wrong I'd be able to help, but all of this ASPI driver stuff is kind of foreign to me. Thanks.
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Dear Phillies,
Why must you continue to frustrate me? You're supposed to be better than this. Last place in the NL East? What's up with that? I know you can do better.
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Dear Sinuses,
I hate you. Fuck off. Die.
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[ sun 08 may 05 ] | |
02:06p - Apply the strongest sunblock
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OK, so, ever since Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray died a few years back, during the 7th inning stretch of every game at Wrigley Field they have a different celebrity lead the crowd in a rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (Caray started the tradition, so basically it's to honor him). Yesterday's celebrity guest was Will Ferrell and, true to form, he did his Harry Caray impression as he sang the song. I was watching the game on the Phillies' station, so only saw a clip of it on SportsCenter, but it looked pretty funny. If anyone knows where I can find a video of the whole thing, please let me know.
Ferrell is hosting SNL next week, so it might actually be funny for once. Actually, last night's episode with Johnny Knoxville wasn't that bad, but I still think the show's gone downhill.
Anyway, today's one of those "keep myself busy so I don't think about what day it is" days. The Phillies game is about to start and my friend Ben is coming over, so perhaps it's time to get off the computer. Yeah.
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[ fri 06 may 05 ] | |
10:46a - The revenge of the teeth
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Ugh, I shouldn't be up right now (I'm a lazy bastard), but I've got a doctor's appointment in a little bit, so it would have been kind of pointless to go back to bed after breakfast. The Phillies are on at 3pm today, so after my appointment I'll veg out on the couch and watch the game and catch up on my rest then, no big deal.
I don't know if this is going to make any sense, but I came up with this theory the other night while trying to fall asleep about, of all things, the parallel between Star Wars and Nine Inch Nails. I was thinking about the close proximity of the releases of Revenge of the Sith and With Teeth (5/19 and 5/3, respectively) and I realized that there's a good deal of similarity between these new Star Wars movies and the most recent Nine Inch Nails albums (The Fragile and With Teeth) in that both have totally failed, in my eyes at least, to live up to the "originals". The first three Star Wars movies were an integral part of my childhood just as the first three NIN albums (Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, The Downward Spiral) were an integral part of my teenage years and now, however many years later, I've been disappointed by the new efforts from each. That said, I've still got this strange fascination with the new Star Wars movie and the new NIN album -- I'll definitely be seeing Revenge of the Sith and I've downloaded and listened to the new NIN (and was actually tempted to buy it even though it sucks) -- and I can't explain why. I know the new Star Wars is going to be a disappointment just like I knew I wasn't going to like the new NIN, yet I'm still interested in both. I find myself reading these Star Wars and NIN fan sites every day. It's weird. I guess the only flaw in my theory is that I can still watch and appreciate the first Star Wars Trilogy, but as far as Nine Inch Nails goes, I really can't listen to any of it anymore.
So anyway, does anyone know where I can find some of those dark chocolate Star Wars M&Ms?
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[ wed 04 may 05 ] | |
09:06p - My neck, my back
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I'm feeling a little less pain in my back today -- I just have to keep reminding myself not to bend, stretch or twist (or sneeze -- I did that yesterday and it hurt like a motherfucker) and I should be okay. I did manage to make it out of the house and go to the bank today, which is something I've been meaning to do for awhile now, so I guess that's good.
By the way, I can't believe I didn't think to use this subject line sooner. Heh.
There's a pretty good review of the new Nine Inch Nails album here -- "There's more to life than alienation, pain, despair and mascara - all that stuff teenagers affect to try to make themselves seem interesting - and more to music than the pummeling drum barrages, gut-wrenching bass growls and keening guitars that have been Nine Inch Nails' stock-in-trade for 15 years." I'd say that's a pretty spot-on criticism.
On a similar note, this video of New Order performing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on Jimmy Kimmell Live is wrong on so many levels. Where should I start? How about the fact that it's on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Ugh. Maybe they should do "She's Lost Control" on Jay Leno next. Or perhaps "Dead Souls" on Carson Daly. Can you tell I'm not a big New Order fan? Yeah. Actually, I can tolerate some of their older stuff, but whatever, that's another topic for another day.
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[ mon 02 may 05 ] | |
09:13p - Breathe in, put the bone back in
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OK, so it turns out my chest pain is really back pain, which is allegedly a good thing. I know I complain about a lot of things but, man, this really fucking hurts. Especially when I cough. Holy shit. Yeah, pain.
My back was actually starting to get better until last night. I was sitting in bed and reached down to pick something up off the floor. Now, my bed is elevated about 3 feet, so the floor is somewhat of a reach, especially when you're sitting up. So I did manage to reach the floor, but I also managed to stretch and re-aggravate whatever it is I had originally pulled. Pretty dumb.
I guess that's really all I have to talk about, unless you'd like me to ramble on about baseball for a few paragraphs, which I could easily do. Not much else going on around here.
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[ sat 30 apr 05 ] | |
09:16p - The frogurt is also cursed
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Fuck. My browser crashed and I lost an entry. I had the whole goddamn thing typed up and I was in the middle of picking a subject line when some fucking Java applet on another page killed Firefox. Argh.
So anyway, I updated the splash page for stubbornlights.org. Go check it out. The old splash will be resurfacing as part of Ann's website, which she insists is coming soon. We'll see. ;)
Quiet weekend so far. Ann is in Ocean City, my dad's on vacation and my brother's basically running the Red Rose Classic youth soccer tournament (long story), so it's just me here with my friends Mr. Computer and Mr. Television (with occasional surprise visits from Mr. Severe Chest Pain, my personal favorite) at the house. Blah.
My Scatology CD won't read anymore. Maybe it really is cursed.
I think that's all I really had to say -- or at least the condensed version. Oh, the Phillies are losing too, but that's nothing new.
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[ thu 28 apr 05 ] | |
09:42p - Are you shivering?
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[ wed 27 apr 05 ] | |
08:52p - 2 rights make 1 wrong
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Ugh, today was annoying. I had a doctor's appointment (just a regular checkup, nothing pressing) in Philadelphia in the morning, which means my dad and I had to get up early and brave rush hour traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. Not fun. And guess what? The doctor wasn't even there. Instead, we saw his "assistant", who assured us that she had called earlier in the week and left a message on our answering machine to tell us the doctor wouldn't be there (which she didn't -- and it's not like it would have mattered, since the appointment was scheduled 3 months ago). So I sat there and answered the usual questions ("What medications are you on?", "How have you been?", "Any changes lately?", etc) and she said she'd tell the doctor. I didn't even have an exam. So why the hell was I even there? I could have told her everything over the phone. The University of Pennsylvania Hospital is a fucking mess, don't ever go there if you're given the choice. Unfortunately, without going into any more details, I'm not.
So anyway, Ann was up visiting this weekend -- I never did write about that, did I? It was great seeing her but, unfortunately, I wasn't feeling too good. Saturday morning, for no apparent reason, I woke up with this horrible pain in my neck. If I tried to move my head the slightest bit up or to the left, I'd get these shooting pains in my neck and shoulder. So that ruined most of our plans for the day. We did manage to make it out of the house for dinner, which probably wasn't the smartest thing in the world to be doing since you shouldn't really be driving when you can't move your head, but whatever, I'm stubborn. We went to El Serrano and had really good Mexican food and it was definitely worth it.
Sunday, on the way down to take Ann home, we (my brother, Ann and I) stopped in Baltimore and got sushi at Shogun. The sushi in Baltimore is infinitely better than what we get here in Lancaster, and Shogun is probably our favorite place to get it. The place is amazing -- there's a large 3-page menu that's just for the sushi (and another 3-page menu for the kitchen). I went with the Alaska salad (salmon, crabstick, salmon roe and avocado over lettuce with a spicy vinaigrette dressing) and a chef's choice roll combo (clockwise from top left -- california roll, spicy tuna/avocado/ginger/cucumber roll, tuna roll, avocado roll). It was all incredibly good, although in hindsight I probably should have gotten some sashimi as well because I really can't get good sashimi up here. Ah well, next time.
On a totally unrelated note, here are some dork links:
There's going to be a live-action Star Wars TV series. Normally, I'd be pretty skeptical of something like this, but Lucas compared the upcoming series to the Young Indiana Jones series which, as I recall (although it's been awhile), was pretty good.
Images from the I Am 8-Bit art show in LA. These range from really cool to pretty funny to kinda lame, but overall it looks like a pretty interesting show.
Images from an abandoned amusement park. I think this is in China somewhere, but I'm not really sure. There are multiple pages of images, all of which are pretty creepy.
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[ tue 26 apr 05 ] | |
10:04p - Macaque!
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Finally, someone has solved the mystery of macaque! It's a good thing there aren't any images in that article, though, because I certainly wouldn't want pictures of macaque all over the internet.
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[ mon 25 apr 05 ] | |
09:18p - And we're sinking deeper
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OK, I've got the weekend to write about, but I'm too tired right now, so I'm going to put it off until tomorrow.
Today's big accomplishment: the CD list on my website finally works again. I know, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but since my web provider changed their security settings and basically rendered most of my PHP code useless a couple weeks back, I've been busting my ass to fix it. And now it works. Hooray for me.
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[ thu 21 apr 05 ] | |
01:53p - Rest proof clockwork
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Paragraphs like these are why I love Bill James:
Remembering a character as rich as Tony Mullane for something so simple as pitching with both hands is like remembering Bill Clinton as the President who once installed AstroTurf in the back of a pickup truck, but such is history. We don't have the time or energy to keep track of all the things that happened before we were born.
The Mullane family came to America from their native Ireland in 1864. Tony was five years old. Immigrating to a country engulfed in Civil War might seem odd, but in Mullane's case it was prophetic: conflict was true north to Tony's compass. The Mullane family settled in Erie, Pennsylvania. As a youth, Mullane excelled at roller skating, boxing, and baseball. In 1876, there being no professional roller skating at the time, Mullane signed to play baseball for a team in Geneva, Ohio, for one dollar a day plus room and board."
The excerpt is from The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, which I'm currently reading. Most of the text is devoted to cataloging a couple thousand (!) pitchers and the pitches they threw, which can get a little tedious, but there are also individual chapters focusing on various "interesting" pitchers that time has pretty much forgotten (like Mullane), which are great. Rob Neyer, whose writing I also enjoy, shares the writing duties, but I have to admit I prefer James. A year or two ago, James was hired by the Red Sox to provide statistical analysis and, surprise surprise, they won the World Series last year.
So anyway, today is a pretty boring day. The Phillies are playing an afternoon game, so I've got the radio broadcast playing over here on my computer. I should probably get out of the house and run errands -- go pick up the CD I have waiting for me at CI Records (the new Silver Mt. Zion) and make a stop at the bank, but I'm feeling a little sluggish today. You know that sort of tired, overslept feeling you get when you don't get enough sleep one night and then overcompensate the next night? That's me today. Blah.
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[ tue 19 apr 05 ] | |
08:43p - In ten years time, who'll care?
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Did you hear the big news? No, not the pope. Adobe is buying Macromedia. That's pretty crazy. It'd be nice to see some tight Photoshop/Flash integration, but, like, I'm not holding my breath. I mean, Illustrator and Photoshop aren't even that well integrated. The only thing that really works seamlessly with Photoshop is ImageReady, but come on, does anyone actually use ImageReady? The only time I ever run the program is when I'm trying to open Photoshop and I miss the icon and click ImageReady instead and I'm like, "fuck, I didn't want to open ImageReady, now I've got to wait for the damn thing to load before I can close it and open Photoshop." Then I screw up and click the wrong icon again.
So, yeah, speaking of the new pope, wasn't Joseph Ratzinger the guy that played Cliff on Cheers? Oh well, I can't complain, I think Cliff was my favorite character on the show. Either him or Coach, but Coach is dead, so he obviously can't be the pope.
Sorry if I seem a little loopy tonight, but I got about two hours of sleep last night. I made the mistake of drinking one of those bottled Starbucks coffee drinks (Orange Mocha Frappucino!) yesterday afternoon so I was totally wired last night. I have an incredibly low tolerance for caffeine -- I had one Frappucino at about 3pm yesterday at 5am my mind was racing and I couldn't lay still. Ugh.
Also, the Phillies are getting killed tonight. The Office is on later (is it just me, or is this show getting better?), so I'll probably watch that and head off to bed. Hopefully.
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[ sun 17 apr 05 ] | |
07:09p - Avec les dents
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Slow weekend, as usual. Realy the only thing of significance I did was go out for dinner last night with my brother and his girlfriend. We went to Tokyo Diner and (big surprise) I got some sushi. I had a roll that was really good and some sashimi that was really not so good. I think the roll was called a Spring Garden roll -- it was their weekly special roll and it had shrimp, spicy tuna, cucumber, seaweed and wasabi tobiko rolled in rice and then wrapped in some sort of green seaweed. Despite all the ingredients, it was sort of light, although it did have a kick to it (thanks to the spicy tuna and wasabi tobiko). The sashimi that I also ordered kind of ruined the whole experience, though -- it didn't taste very fresh and has sort of a cold, slippery feel to it. Ick. It really made me miss the stuff I get in Baltimore.
The new Nine Inch Nails album leaked on Friday so, of course, I downloaded it. Man, what a pile of shit. Seriously. It's not as horrendous as The Fragile, but then again that would be a pretty tough feat to accomplish. I should probably listen to it some more before I start heavily criticizing it, but I have to say something about the title track, "With Teeth", which is hilarious. The chorus consists of him repeating "with teeth" over and over, only he pronounces it like this: "uhh wi-thuh tee-thuh". Actually, I'm not sure if he's over-enunciating that first "th" in "with" or actually saying "uhh with the tee-thuh". Either way, it cracks me up.
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[ thu 14 apr 05 ] | |
09:33p - The somnambulist in an ambulance
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My brother was in New York City yesterday, so I had him stop in at Other Music and pick some CDs up for me. I gave him a pretty big list, thinking they probably wouldn't have everything, but they did. Oh well. So I added a few discs to the collection (this is where I'd link my CD list if my web provider hadn't changed their server configuration and fucked up my PHP code, but we've already been over that).
The first thing I opened up was the new Fantomas, Suspended Animation. The artwork for this CD is awesome -- the album has 30 tracks, one for each day in April, so the whole thing is packaged as a calendar (laminated pages, spiral bound at the top and everything). Each day features an illustration by Yoshitomo Nara and the artwork is pretty consistent with the music, which is sort of like cartoon music on crack. I've only listened to it a couple times, but I definitely like it more than the last Fantomas album, Delirium Cordia which kind of, uh, sucked. Oh, and the last track closes with a sample from "What's Opera, Doc?", so it gets bonus points for that.
The other thing I've been listening to today is Red Sparowes' At The Soundless Dawn, which is surprisingly good. I had downloaded mp3s of the album a few months ago, but I guess they were just demo versions or something, because this CD is sounding much better. They're on Neurosis' label, but they aren't nearly as heavy. In fact, the album is mostly laid back post-rock type stuff. Not bad.
Continuing this week's theme of financial irresponsibility (actually, I'm due a pretty hefty tax refund this month, so it's not like I'm running myself into debt or anything here), I ordered the latest Coil album today. It's a live recording of their performance at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2003, which was really good (not that I was there or anything -- I just have the mp3s). The title of the album, And the Ambulance Died in His Arms, is sort of ironic given John Balance's recent death, but apparently they picked the title before his accident.
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[ wed 13 apr 05 ] | |
04:09p - Upgrade your brain matter, cuz one day it may matter
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OK, so the computer upgrades are finally complete. I got my new motherboard and processor yesterday, so my brother and I installed them last night. The hardware aspect of it went pretty smoothly, but when I tried to boot into Windows, the system would reset itself before I'd even get to the Welcome screen. No luck with Safe Mode either. So I tried reinstalling, but when I did that, I'd get a blue screen of death about halfway through. It said there was some problem with "cdr4_xp.sys", which sounded to me like a CD driver, so I unplugged my CD-ROM drive and tried installing from my DVD-R drive, which worked perfectly. Weird.
Anyway, my new Athlon 64 is quite nice. It's a 3000+, which is a big upgrade from my old processor (an Athlon XP 1800+). I also picked up a new keyboard. This one has notebook-style keys (which basically means they're shorter and softer to the touch), so it feels a lot better on my frequently-bruised fingertips (thank you, Diabetes, and your half-dozen finger pricks a day). I'm tempted to get a SATA hard drive now that I have a motherboard that supports it, but I think I'm going to cool it on the computer purchases for now.
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