Steve Gets A Life

beastles

awesome.

dj BC presents The Beastles

supervillan

::uberGeek::Toons::Switch to Linux()

thanks to lambert for the pointer to this mac "switch" ad spoof.

college photographer of the year awards

some awesome shots here (obviously). take a few minutes and peruse.

59th College Photographer of the Year

Monsieur Incroyable!

saw The Incredibles with andria this weekend. awesome. go see it. very high cute factor, cool explosions and guns and stuff. fun for the whole family. very funny lines, probably even some sort of underlying message at the end. who knows.

and the best line is right at the beginning:

super ladies are always trying to tell you their secret identities. thinkin it will strengthen the relationship or something.

weasly is our king

doing a bit of non-work this afternoon, i ran across a few interesting potter sites regarding a theory out there named "Knight2King"

essentially, this guy claims that Ron is actually Dumbledore, sent back in time, grown older. it sounds quite outrageous, but the evidence gathered is interesting.

what is more interesting, however, is the analogy of the chessboard in the first book (more). the two chess games symbolizing the two wars against Voldemort.

there are, of course, some arguments and rebuttals (and more) and it's a bit far-fetched, but so is the idea of a whomping willow.

yes, i have sand

that is just my response to those stupid "got sand?" stickers that are on every bumper from Paso to Santa Maria. of course, they are referring to the Oceano Dunes, which Andria and i visited on sunday for our first real experience with these Sand People.

for my birthday, andria took me out to the dunes to go Sand Railing. we rented a Sand Rail, which is essentially a car frame made of metal tubes with an engine on the back and big ol' tires.

man, it was a blast. first of all, apparently sand dunes are incredibly steep on their far slope. the guy warned us, but i had no idea until we started heading over a dune and i felt like i was on a roller coaster, except i had a steering wheel. and as "the guy" said, the last thing you want to do when you're going down the back of a dune is turn, even if its your first instinct (cause you will flip and lose your $500 deposit).

fortunately we never flipped, although we did bottom out a couple of times and get stuck, requiring us to dig our way out and guide the car backwards down a dune to the bottom where we could get it going again.

i would go again in an instant. andria, however, might not. she was a bit freaked out by the possibility of getting stuck on the far side of a dune and some motorcycles flying over our heads. i guess i just didn't think that far ahead, as i was so overwhelmed with the torque under my right foot and sand in my eyes.

as for the community of "sand people," they were very much like lake folks. in most respects, the entire feel was much like going to a lake. everybody is camping, it looks like most people are full of cheap beer, and there are basically no rules governing safety besides the motto "try not to run into each other" .. so ya, it was pretty cool.

south park steve

kinda fun for about 5 minutes.

this is supposed to be me on south park. ... a show i haven't seen since freshman year.

bici bella

rode Monte Bello (in Palo Alto, CA) with Brian over the weekend. awesome. he kicked my butt to the curb (well, no curbs, maybe to the trailside) and back again. if you look at the graph, you can see we had fun going downhill, then it was a giant climb for over an hour (ok, some drops, but not much). note the drops in heart rate in the middle of the climbs. thats when i wussed out and had to stop cause i was gonna puke. to be fair (to me), i think we were going pretty damn fast, i mean i held 170bpm for 1.5 hours. thats pretty rough. anyways, enough whining. it was a great time, i really enjoyed riding a real trail with someone who can really push me (i hope i pushed back a bit too).

andria and i were up there for Karen's (Brian's fiancee) bridal shower. andria hung with the girls and did whatever it is they do, and brian and i went and got dirty and tried to kill each other.. what guys do.

note: the above graph is missing about 10 minutes off the beginning. so there was more downhill than you see there. which was nice.

poly canyon, finally

so i finally figured out that there is plenty of daylight left after work for a good ride up poly canyon. i also finally figured out how to get out past the barns onto the "real" trails. i think i rode up and back down the "dirty slide" (or something) trail. it was pretty fun, at one point a huge cow blocked the trail (on a single track, nowhere else to go), so i had to yell and make big arms at it. that was interesting. when i got back to campus (to meet up with andria) i felt so much better, having actually worked out (climbed about 600ft, total ride time was about 45 minutes). kinda scratched up my leg a bit on my crappy pedals (an unfortunate side effect of having giant calves). fell once (at about 2mph uphill), wimped out on one decent, and finally remembered how to ride a mountain bike again :)

awesome

dino visits australia

finally, an awesome HCI product for the masses

after looking around a bit for cool iSight related products (i didn't have to look too hard), i ran across ToySight. check out their video demo here.

i installed it and played the demo. pretty dang cool.

(by the way, HCI is Human-Computer Interaction, a branch of computer science devoted to getting rid of the mouse and keyboard ;) )

ichatting (AV)

we've had an iSight in the office for some time now, but its been sitting on an unused computer. just sitting there.

so today the professor who bought it (the local Mac zealot) said "you can just put the iSight on your machine if you want, oh and here's an attachment if you want to take it home and use on your new iBook"

so the image is my very first AV chat (with the very same prof). cool stuff.

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on iTunes: Yer Blues by The Beatles

oh yea

saw eternal sunshine last week with andria. pretty dang good. as andria put it, it was artsy, but not in that way that you don't know whats going on or anything. just enough.

i think a neat part of the movie was the fact that of the three or four big-name stars, each of whom is often type cast, none of them fell into their "usual" role. each was a little "weird," and really took on their character well.

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on iTunes: Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes from the album "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" by Beck

pretty awesome wallpapers

i found these images when looking for wallpapers for my new gentoo installation. i have 6 desktops and its nice to be able to distinguish between them on sight.
i must say, a transparent aterm over a stormtrooper is mighty cool. uh, right?

sand art

this movie is awesome. you'll need the latest windows media player to view it.

amazing, and a little crazy

if you want some adventure, just check out this site and follow their lead.
man, riding a bike cross-country. it doesn't sound that crazy, but i think it actually might be insane. or awesome.

sorta cool

apparently my chinese name might be "Mao Xiantian" according to this site:
Surname (first character): Mao

Given Name (middle character): Xian ("refined")

Given Name (last character): tian ("quiet, calm, tranquil, peaceful")
based on the questions asked, this is pretty much a random selection of characters, id say.

lost?

here's a map (as taken from the mars rover "spirit")

get your brightroom pics quick

attention triathlon-computer-geeks:
using a unix (OSX works if you install wget from fink) machine, you can automate getting pictures of yourself from brightroom.com. im only talking about the low-res ones on their website, not the real-deal ones you pay for, of course.
first, find the site with your pics on it. go to the main page, search for your event, then your bib or name. when you get to a page with your pics on it, run the command:
wget -nd -P pics/ -p --accept .jpg --span-hosts "PUT_URL_HERE" (of course, substitute the URL in).
for example, i used wget -nd -P pics/ -p --accept .jpg --span-hosts "http://www.brightroom.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=3426&BIB=942&PWD="

#include japanese.h

check out japanese for nerds. if you're a nerd. or japanese. or something.

crypto for kids

no really, im serious. or at least, the govt is.

steve learns math

smcgheek: burning a CD with iTunes' smart playlist functionality. very cool
smcgheek: random 80 minutes of music downloaded in past week
dem0nh00d: ah, cool. i still have money on my gift certificate for the music store. need to find some good tunes
smcgheek: ah
smcgheek: stupid. i just said "78 minutes" and it gave me 1.2 hours. so i cancelled it. then i realized im an idiot.
dem0nh00d: hehe

elephants, zebras, bride-zillas, and The Best Ride Ever

with andria's brother and sister-in-law in town (my soon to be relatives, wow. now would she be my sister-in-law-in-law?) we decided to take a trip up north to san simeon to see the elephant seals and their new babies. pretty amazing. half of them looked dead on the beach, while little cubs worked their way around the mothers looking for milk.
the sounds were amazing. they really sounded like little kids yelling. then the males would stick their head out of the water in the shallow surf and belt out the lowest roar i've ever heard.
on the drive home, as we passed Hearst's Castle, we saw zebra off the highway. right next to cows. obviously the rare centralcaliforniacoastus zebrius. a pretty dang cool sight, and an awesome day to say the least.
the next day we hit up the local wedding fair. now this was just ridiculous. there were so many vendors (photographers, reception site reps, caterers, musicians, bakers, and a freaking magician). we ended up concentrating on photographers and reception sites, met some cool people, got lots of advice, and really got a feel into how huge the wedding industry really is. we should have pictures up soon, of course.
then... the ride. here are some pics. ive got to say, it started out so-so, but after we climbed this big peak, we came back down it (across really loose rocks, scary) and then took a dirt trail down to the beach. and that trail, oh man, the perfect set of jumps, etc. it was probably a 10% downhill grade, a little bit windy (just enough so you couldn't see the next jump) and every 10 yards was a railroad tie buried in earth. supposedly a step for horses, but worn to the point where it simply became a large speedbump. perfect for downhill.
still jazzed about it. want to go back.

why jesus hates macs

"If you are using a new Macintosh running OS X then you probably have these "daemons" on your computer, hardly something a good Christian would want! This clearly illustrates that not only is Macintosh based on Darwinism, but Darwinism is based on Satanism."

check out this article to discover just how evil Macs really are. i mean, the devils, the bitten apples, the .. uh, the apples.
a few more goodies:

"Hypnotically encased iMacs trick unsuspecting computer users into accepting Darwinism"

"the new MacOS X contains another Satanic holdover from the "BSD Unix" OS mentioned above; to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?"

"the "e" in "eMac" ostensibly stands for "education", although it should be obvious to readers by now that it's really a cryptic tipping of the hat to their true agenda: "Evolutionism". eMac is also a referrence to "Emacs", a program that is a standard-bearer for the Communistic Open Source movement mentioned above and whose mascot is some sort of effeminate-looking, horned devil-man. Is there no end to this tangled web of evil?"

"Although called "Switch", this campaign is actually "Bait and Switch", luring the average, unsuspecting person with the false promise of "compatibility" (both with normal computers and Christianity) only to later foist acceptance of Evolutionism and anti-Christian values on them via the techniques discussed above."

"an industry standard connection for peripherals is idiosyncratically retermed "FireWire" (or should we just be honest and call it "HellFireWire"?) while the familiar Recycle Bin is given its new cult name of "Trash Can". Any "Switcher" trying to purchase equipment for their new computer or get assistance will be forced by this linguistic ghettoization into dealing with the only people that can understand the strange argot: brainwashed Macintosh users. It is then that the process of unbuilding the "Mac Newbie" and reshaping him or her into an Evolutionist begins."

just to top it off, here's this guy's take on our dear Ellen Feiss:

"I have been informed that the teenage girl in the "Switch" commercial was not on drugs at the time, as I had previously suggested. Apparently, her incoherent rambling was the result of something called a "reality distortion field" -- which, I'm assuming, is some sort of strong magnetic field generated by a device (similar to the one I reported on here,) that Apple Computers developed to assist in their mind control. My apologies to her and her family."

this guy needs a hobby.

segway

saw my first segway in real life today. inside, even. tried to get it with my camera-phone, but alas, out of memory. damn you t616. time to clear out all the lame preinstalled images.
the guy was downstairs in the art/design dept (fartsy) here at Cal Poly, and seemed to be enjoying scaring people. he ran right into the door after i prompted him on how he opens doors. my question answered. i also noticed many large scrapes all over the fenders. apparently this guy is a hardcore user.

segway

saw my first segway in real life today. inside, even. tried to get it with my camera-phone, but alas, out of memory. damn you t616. time to clear out all the lame preinstalled images.
the guy was downstairs in the art/design dept (fartsy) here at Cal Poly, and seemed to be enjoying scaring people. he ran right into the door after i prompted him on how he opens doors. my question answered. i also noticed many large scrapes all over the fenders. apparently this guy is a hardcore user.

just for fun...

"The spacecraft has apparently been taken over - "conqured" if you will - by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves." - Kent Brockman

literacy weekend

i read "The DaVinci Code" over the weekend. pretty good. a bit overrated though.
coming off of "Cryptonomicon," i suppose i was under-impressed (is that a word? err compound-word?) by the crypto/puzzles used in DaVinci. the puzzles were pretty good (mostly just anagrams) and often had several layers of meaning (all thoroughly explained, of course). the best parts of the book, in my opinion, were the insights into the real art, history, architecture, etc that the book covers. the bits about the prime meridian, the androgyny of Mona Lisa, etc were pretty neat. The whole idea of the goddess was interesting as well.
i think my dad put it well when he said that this was a good fiction book that might be taken as non-fiction. quite true. the idea of the secret societies, the knights' true quest, the meaning of the Grail were all very well thought out, and potentially quite based on real research. but im afraid people might take this as gospel (pun intended) and really start digging up cathedrals all over.
anyway, its a good, fast read. if you are planning a long plane ride, take it along. it had the holding power of a Harry Potter (for me, at least) without any real need to think too hard.
also, you can get it in softback for $8. not bad for a weekend's entertainment.
i have to gloat and say i called most of the surprises / puzzles in the book, but i have to admit that i didn't guess who the secret bad guy was. i guess im an idiot.

apple makes a bold move

now this is an excellent photoshop. check out the dual superdrives, g5 cooling vent, etc. appears to have two locking points though, thats an error i think. all in all, pretty good.

x2

got xmen 2 on dvd yesterday (thanks to a xmas dvd return). its a good movie, i love the "bampf" effect of nightcrawler. it reminds me of a squid/octopus' ink after it jets away.
one gripe: from what i could tell, most of the "extended scenes" were totally worthless. in fact, i could have sworn they aren't extended at all, but its been a while since i saw it in theaters i guess. i couldn't even tell if the scenes were longer than in the feature on the DVD. strange.
the added scenes are pretty good. one with the professor and scott escaping really should have stayed in the film, while "kid gets sick after bampfing" was just kinda funny (very short though).
all in all, it was worth trading in "Chicago" :)

the camera phone cometh

maybe i should add a new section for images from the new phone. so lets get started.

first off is andria at my desk at home. your standard "hey i got a new camera phone and i want to try it out" kinda picture

next up is the front steps of our apartment. for those of you who haven't seen it. its nice and 70's ugly/boring.

broken lizard

well, considering i thought that Super Troopers was gonna suck after watching its trailer (way back when), i hope that Club Dread will follow suit and produce something awesome from such a so-so trailer.
lets hope Bill Paxton doesn't screw it up.

holy christmas

this video is hilarious.
thanks to dhm for that.

skitzo

check out the last comment, at the bottom of this page. this lady(?) is totally whacked.
so i guess there's a downside to being a world-renowned security guru. crazies send you weird stuff like this.

awesome site

go check out metacritic if you haven't already.
it gathers reviews of movies, music, etc and compiles them into one place. for example, you can see that the movie Gigli reeeaaally sucked, while The Fellowship of the Ring was frickin awesome.

pulp tolkien

first found in a slashdot post, go check out some pulp tolkien

monty schwarzenegger

finally, the question "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (european)" has been answered

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also note an article on mapping CA governer votes done by the same group.

hip-i-tude

You are the Consummate Hipster. Newbies bow to
you, everyone else just stares, as you swagger
down the street with "Little Green
Bag" stuck in your head.

What Kind of Hipster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

secret stories

go check out this article about the "secret stories" of homeless kids in Miami (written in 1997). its an interesting read.

potter, baby

the trailer for the 3rd film is out

and dont forget to check out the error for a funny tidbit.

cool videos

check out what these landscape architecture students did with imovie.

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on iTunes: Gravity from the album "Thirteenth Step" by A Perfect Circle

ipod comic

a pretty funny comic regarding the price of iPods.

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on iTunes: Bigger Than My Body from the album "Heavier Things" by John Mayer

poly "P"

in the last few days, the big "P" on the hill has undergone some transformations.

on monday, it became part of the Beta Theta Pi logo (they turned the P into a B, added more)

on wednesday, it became "neo" in commemoration of the matrix release. awesome. (made the P into a lowercase "e"). there is a picture in the student paper, but the website isn't working right now, maybe ill get an image later.

by thursday, "neo" had become "rpc." or "ipo" maybe. ...or maybe nobody cleaned up the "neo" after the wind messed it up. nah.

dorky cool

how to get color on your Terminal without stupid window clearing and messing up your background color.

also, synergy rules.

Halloweekend: ninjas, marching bands, and margaritas

With winter finally in the air (as tobin said, "i think we just skipped fall"), a little rain and cold presented itself for halloween in SLO. i think this is the first time ever that i didnt dress up. we decorated the outside of the apartment and gave out candy... to two whole kids. the next-door neighbors (they were ninjas). talk about over-preparedness.

andria's parents showed up that night, as well. we went out to breakfast the next morning at Louisa's Place on Higuera St. Little did we know, this was also Homecoming weekend. So, while we waited for our table, we saw the band warm up and then begin playing and marching down the street. They were followed by cars, floats, dirt bikes, tractors, you name it. then it was on to breakfast.

a day of shopping and touring SLO and we made it to dinner. we hit up a mexican restaraunt about a block away from our apartment that andria and i had never even noticed. it was pretty good. id compare the atmosphere to that of Acapulco's in SB. we had 2 pitchers of margaritas across the 4 of us and it was a good thing we walked. hodang.

the next day, andria and i made breakfast (mmm orange rooollls) and we took it easy. we went to BestBuy and i picked out a game cube game for my belated birthday (got the sonic mega collection, includes 7 classic sega genesis "Sonic" games. awesome). then wished off Mary and Jeff. they had a rough time getting up here (traffic galore), but they got home without delay. which is nice.

follow the links

just a stab at a new idea. i think ill try to track links from article to article, blog to blog, that i take in the span of one browsing session. here goes..

• the growing trend of groom blogs [salon.com]
  1. questioning why men are characterized as "pot-bellied lemmings, willing to follow our fiancées off a matrimonial cliff as long as she lets us hold the remote"
     • the new trend of narcissitic men who are blurring the gay/straight line. most notable point: the acceptance of semi-pornographic, slightly homoerotic Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs in Frat Boy culture. this last article strays a bit at the end, i suggest just reading the first page or so.
  2. some other blog. not that interesting. maybe kinda funny..
  3. another groom, but talks about other stuff (sometimes)
     • boeing is working on anti-gravity. kinda makes you wonder what made them make that announcement. a leak? a breakthrough? the need for press? (im thinking the last).
  4. one more this time the guy's got a picture of himeself. not standard on blogs, kinda interesting. but not really.
• OS X innovators announced.
• Panther vs Linux from slashdot
• quantum computing breakthrough in japan
• the problems with the american medical system

so thats it. started out kinda interesting, i think i got burnt out. i gotta say, browser tabs really make web surfing a lot easier (open every interesting link, then read them at leisure), but that leads to burnout it seems.

anyways, please no comments about why i started on a groom's blog trend, it was just an interesting article ;)
i blame the combination of kung-log and NetNewsWire

eBay for divorcees

thanks for randall for this link

a good joke

taken from slashdot:

"What did the employed physicist say to the unemployed physicist?"
"Would you like fries with that?"

dot bomb

Watched startup.com tonight. Its a documentary of a startup gone bad, but mostly its a movie about how egos with too much power (money) ruin companies and friendships.
Pretty amazing how these normal guys (much like myself and many people i know) turn into such jerks and take on such cold, corporate identities when they have a company under their belts. Corporate espionage, backstabbing, etc. Scary.
Glad im working for the university right now.

notable link

here you can find swimwear for your next Quaker meeting or southern Utah family outing:

http://www.wholesomewear.com/page-4.html
(link thanks to sean)