This Day In History: 08/03
News will be in chronological order when it's relegated to the Archive, while the front page will have the latest at the top. Ain't democracy swell?
On another note, I've heard back from a surprisingly large percentage of Net friends that I lost touch with over the past three years. If Microsoft's spam basin, Haltmail, would stop deactivating old accounts, maybe I could find the rest of the old folks too.
I wonder how long I can sustain interesting daily updates before I succumb to the "One-Line Link" syndrome of many blogs I read. For the uninitiated, blog is the abbreviation for weblog, and it's something of a personal online diary that uses special software to make updating a no-brainer. This news page is coded by hand, so technically it's just a faux-blog. Feel free to refer to it as an o-blog, since we live in an age when the word, weblog, is too long for our collective attention spans.
My pool table lamp arrived, and I'll be setting it up with my dad this weekend. I also made the guest room livable for the endless flow of homeless tourists that I may someday face.
Work continues at its inexorable pace. I should have more time next week to start writing really updates again.
Doom 3 came out today. Mine's in the mail.
My excuse if I ever go to warI would say that Monday's 137 visitors counts as a Grand Opening success. People seem to enjoy my new style of updates, so I will continue in the same vein for the forseeable future. To horribly mangle one emailer's thoughts for the purposes of amusing yet inaccurate paraphrasing, my site bleeds sarcasm like a Ham and Cheese Hot Pocket left in the microwave for six minutes too long. The original sentence was "[you have] become increasingly sarcastic in your 25 years". Lame.
I also received several e-mails from people who have been around since the beginning, nine long years ago, when the URI! Domain was a single HTML page and I was being seduced on all sides by website talent scouts promising me Internet fame in exchange for "showing off my llama", as it were. One such missive was a note from my good friend, Holden, who's currently working at a company called Ziclix (see figure on the right). Please excuse the lack of punctuation in the subject -- since he was talking to my computer, it should have been "You, computer, are INFECTED", but Holden has never been great with all that grammar stuff.
Now anyone who has been on the "Information Superhighway" (sometimes called "The World Wide Web", or "Pop" in the Midwest) for more than a few years knows that spywire is a horrible nuisance. Left unattended, a spywire-infected computer can become an anchor point for KGB agents rappelling off the roof and into your office. This is not good for business. As a public service, I decided to download the award-winning Anti-Spywire software and do some benchmarks for the good of all my readers. I diligently followed the link in the e-mail and downloaded the "ho" edition of their software (though truthfully, I have always considered myself more of a pimp).
Installation is very straightforward if you follow the READYOU.TXT. After disabling your Antivirus and Internet Firewall, a double-click on the Installer loads everything up quickly to the default directory. There is an activation step at the end where you have to enter your bank's routing number as confirmation that you are who you say you are, which I think is a much better way to go over biometrics (since it means thugs will be less likely to want to chop off my fingers. You really have to prioritize which digits are more important to you).
To test the efficacy of the software, I sent personal invitations to Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Garner. Matthew, best known for his role as the live-action Inspector Gadget, declined and pointed out that Inspector Gadget does not need wire and would be able to infiltrate any secure office with only his helicopter hat. He recommended I try the "hot girls" from the episode of Fear Factor where they had to walk on a wire between two buildings. I bet the "ho" edition was tailor-made for people of their ilk, but as far as I know, none of them have ever played spies on TV. Jennifer, the actress behind Sydney Bristow on Alias also declined, saying that she can no longer do stunt work while spawn d'Affleck is leasing her womb, especially now that the bulbous protrusion has become a plot device for the next season of her show.
With no other star power in line and a deadline fast approaching, I put Booty on a zip wire with a listening device in her ear and sent her hurtling towards the computer. Before we even had a chance to go "radio-silent", Booty had wiggled out of her harness and abandoned ship, evidently very unnerved by the Anti-spywire software.
Final Recommendation: The software must really work as advertised. And since it also repels Booty, they should really market it as an anti-porn filter too.
Cheese in the Baie des Ha! Ha!
tagged as website | permalink | 4 comments |
A few weeks back, Muse released their fifth album, Black Holes and Revelations , which quickly became their second album to reach number one on the U.K. charts. I first discovered Muse in August 2004 when Butterflies and Hurricanes played on my XM Radio somewhere on the road between Philip Barbie's wedding and the Outer Banks, and I was immediately struck by how musical their music is, despite their hard rock stylings and occasional foray into the use of noise as a musical instrument. The first CD, Showbiz was a rough, noisy first stab with a few catchy tracks. The second, Origin of Symmetry sacrificed the idea of catchy singles for a cohesive concept album with a lot of electronic experimentation, and the third, Hullabaloo, was a forgettable live CD that only showed that bands who use lots of effects shouldn't be heard live.
Their fourth CD, Absolution, was the first CD I listened to, and is also one of my all-time favourites. Their music was characterized by pretentious melancholy lyrics, driving beats, distortion walking the fine line of chaos, and a serious, ridiculous air in each song that says, "This is obviously the most important song you will ever hear in your lifetime", a feeling that's quite familiar if you've ever listened to Kansas. I enjoy that their sound is chaotic, but perfectly ordered and clean, not just a random collection of cymbal crashes and grunts. In their fifth offering, the three person band has greatly matured their sound, trying out a variety of different styles (quite successfully) while maintaining their signature sound. If Origin was their artistic album and Absolution was their catchy album, Black Holes is the mulatto (tar) baby that also introduces a lusher electronic pad and vocal harmonies for the first time.
Reviews for CDs online are generally useless, because people who don't have the CD in front of them don't really know what's being discussed. The people that DO have the CD are probably fans, so the review will be immediately dismissed whether it's good, bad, or self-serving. For this review, I've included extended clips (of crappy quality) from each song so you can hear what I'm hearing -- something of a Virtual BU Experience on the Internet. Even if you hate Muse's style, you may find a couple of songs you like in this latest offering. So plug your earphones into your computer at work, give a listen below!
Take a Bow (694KB MP3, 1:28)Track one sounds like it could have come straight off the Origin album, and works well even though it's nothing new. The lyrics are a poorly disguised diatribe against our current President, since that's what all the "cool" rock groups are doing these days. Luckily no one really listens to the lyrics of songs anyhow, and it doesn't drag down the worth of the song at all.
Starlight (612KB MP3, 1:18)The first song ends with a crashing chaos of electronic sounds which makes the pure, simple sounds of "Starlight" twice as effective, because you don't expect it in the least bit. This almost-pop song is the nearest to a commercial single that I've ever heard Muse create and it's also my favourite song on the album. I've been listening to it ad nauseum for days now.
Supermassive Black Hole (639KB MP3, 1:21)Generally when you talk about the beat in Muse songs, you're talking about a driving, frenetic percussion that clueless teenagers can headbang to. This third song mixes it up by actually introducing a real beat, one of the "shake your big booty" variety from any song written overproduced for VH1 in the past three years. I half expected some bad trendy pop idol to sing the lyrics after the introduction to this song. After the initial shock, I liked it, right down to the grungy falsetto.
As if they were trying hard not to sing the same thing twice, the band's fourth song mixes a techno-dance beat with a thick electronic pad to create a song that'd be at home at any rave (or in any amateur video posted on YouTube). I say this with authority from my ample rave background, which ended after a tragic glow-stick mishap in elementary school. Harmless, but easy to listen to.
Soldier's Poem (268KB MP3, 0:34)This is one of two slow songs on the album, and although it's solid, it's not very memorable. Muse's slower songs work best when they evoke the angst-ridden, haunting quality of "Sing for Absolution" and "Endlessly" from Absolution.
Invincible (469KB MP3, 0:59)"Invincible" is one of those neat songs that builds up from nothing but it's definitely not the best song on the album. In fact, I think it only exists to showcase the electric guitar solo which sounds hard. My working knowledge of electric guitar is sorely lacking, ever since I was cut from the Heavy Metal Ensemble at Virginia Tech, so someone else will have to tell me if it is, in fact, difficult to play.
Assassin (480KB MP3, 1:01)To make the Absolution fans happy, this is the song that most resembles that album. I like it, but it's not as innovative as the others.
Exo-politics (630KB MP3, 1:20)This song tries to channel the vibe of 80s hair bands and grandiose rock operas and mostly succeeds.
City of Delusions (319KB MP3, 0:40)There's no bluegrass on this CD, but this is Muse's attempt at Spanish Rock. Spanish Rock is easy to write and easier to listen to, and no doubt this will be the first song transcribed for marching band when Muse goes mainstream. Look for it at JMU in 2009.
Hoodoo (423KB MP3, 0:54)This is the required "haunting Muse ballad", and is also the only time that Chris Bellamy shows off the heavy-handed piano riffs that made Absolution so unique. It's a good song, but not one of my favourites -- the tempo changes and style make the song feel like one big fermata, and I hate big fermatas. Your mother was a big fermata.
Knights of Cydonia (898KB MP3, 1:54)This song could have been pulled straight out of the 80s, and sounds like something that might have resulted from a Queen - Kansas jam session. It's a great way to close the album, and also reveals that Bellamy's falsetto is as unnervingly high as it was seven years ago.
Bottom Line: A perfect CD for Muse fans, and not a bad way to introduce yourself to Muse if anything piques your curiousity. The entire CD is forty-five minutes long -- long enough to get your money's worth without Muse overstaying their welcome. Couple that with the cheapness of the CD ($9 at Amazon) and you have a winner. Tell me what your opinions are in the comments section! (If you don't listen to the clips and subsequently reply, I will have wasted an hour of my life recording samples and I will cry like a little girl)
Colbert and Wikiality
tagged as music, reviews | permalink | 3 comments |
a clinically proven method of testing your mental acuity
♠ Ever since it flagged www.dooce.com as Pornography, I knew that the "learning" Web Filter at my job was a bit overzealous. My presumptions were confirmed yesterday when I tried to visit a Department of Defense site and found it blocked for my protection. I guess the filter is worried that I may be doing a Google search on semi-automatic weapons and bombs for a Postal-style operation. Luckily, I ordered the potassium nitrate from home.
♠ It's been another hot and dry week, which means I've spent lots of time indoors (a highly unusual occupation since I generally spend three out of five weekdays backpacking the Appalachian trail barefoot). You probably can't tell because I'm Asian, but I'm starting to a develop a tan. Thankfully, I have built in UVA protection, having gone to Tech.
♠ Last week, Emily bought me a new VT sticker to put in my back window which I can actually affix without Scotch tape. The stickers from FSU and T.C. Williams have long since curled into worthless husks of stickiness, much like cicadas run over by a bicycle.
♠ I have not yet ridden my biycle -- the first half the week was devoted to revamping the web site in such a manner that Beavis believed it to be broken, so another thing I'll do this weekend is to calibrate the brakes and do doughnuts around Booty.
♠ You may believe that doughnuts around Booty are cruel, but she can easily hold her own around baked goods with holes in them -- a fact I learned firsthand in Tallahassee when I left her alone in the kitchen at night.
♠ Mike, of Chompy and Mike, will be coming up next week to help Jamie move to D.C., and will get to see how big my Booty has gotten since he last saw her four years ago. Chompy will not be making the trip, but Booty hates Chompy anyhow.
♠ I'm not sure how much more mileage I can get out of this picture, but I'm sure it's good for at least ten more uses. Maybe Mike can wager "not using this picture anymore" when we beat him at poker next weekend.
♠ This weekend, I have a barbeque / poker extravaganza to go to in Centreville on Saturday, followed by a stop at the Suzanne-Biddick-Smiths to pick up the gay kitty brothers for another weeklong stay at Chateauri (title courtesy of Mike). They spend so much time at my house that I won't be surprised when they become latchkey kids and start doing drugs. It's all good though because I got a gift certificate for opening up my home to the kitties, which I promptly spent on the TV show, Freaks and Geeks, and two cheap-o CDs by The Darkness. On Sunday, I planning on filling out all my passport forms so I can go visit Paige in Spain next spring/summer, because the wait time for a passport is roughly fifteen years right now.
♠ In 2005, Paige went through my site and compiled a list of her favourite witty sayings. You may have noticed the ubiquitous revolving quote in the upper right below Big Blue (a feature suggested by Anna). If you have suggestions for quotes from this site or related somehow to this site, please let me know and I'll add them to the page!
♠ Have a great weekend!
They ranged from "It's fun" to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease".
tagged as fragments | permalink | 4 comments |
The URI! Zone turns 13 this month, so it may grow hair in unexpected places and become interested in kissing other blogs. If nothing else, my site will always be older than Google, and in another year, it will have outlasted the entire lifespan of Geocities, the free web host of the 90s.
The new changes for the Fourteenth Edition are minimal because I've been busy with work, writing games, playing games, and planning weddings. Most salient are new avatars for anyone that posts regularly, additional calendar pictures, and an updated banner at the top which is more artsy and less utilitarian. (It can double as a low-budget Rorschach test in a jiffy). I would also like to note that it is a banner, and not a masthead, simply because I dislike the word "masthead", which sounds like someone who's a big fan of playing with himself, and probably wears an giant, unfortunately-shaped foam hat celebrating his pastime.
Speaking of banners, remember the program, "Print Shop", from the 1980s which let you create signs that stretched across a roll of dot matrix printer paper? You could choose from a selection of three beautiful fonts, and then stamp the banner with a horribly pixelated graphic of a puppy that more closely resembled an acid-corroded mushroom. I was a master of Print Shop, even going so far as to make a 4 x 10 tile banner for the Student Government campaign of Allen Lutz in seventh grade (he lost).
As this year progresses, I'm going to try to bring back regular Memory Days (like the preceding paragraph), even though it's so much easier to write a list of types of sheep and call it a day. In order of effort, from greatest to least, I'd say my updates are ordered: Newsdays, Memory Days, Musedays, Weird Search Days, List Days, Fragments, Reviews, Weekend Wrap-ups, and finally, pictures of sunrises or Kathy's cats in a taquito.
However, 2009 will also see further interruptions in the regular schedule of giggles and vittles, since I'll be gone for two weeks in October to visit the noblest of the scantron race bubbles: The Pacific Islanders. They were always lumped in with the Asians on standardized tests, because there weren't enough of them to have their own bubble -- at the time, the two added up to one minority (much like stacking a major and minor second), and now we get to go to Hawaii and visit them in person. What this means for you readers is that you'll have to find another site to pass the work day while I'm sleeping in my deluxe oceanfront room with a sea turtle.
There really isn't anything else flashy to advertise unless I defrock, so I'll close by saying, thank you for making the URI! Zone (with its 1,993 news updates and 4,892 reader comments over the past 9 years) the number one BU-based destination on the Internet!
Stunts banned in India schools
tagged as website | permalink | 21 comments |
As part of this feature, which I started in 2007, I compose a very brief work (under 30 seconds) inspired by a randomly generated title from an online word generator. The composition can be for any instrumentation, and could even be a purely synthesized realization that might not be possible to perform in the real world.
I work on the excerpt continuously for an hour and then post whatever I've managed to complete, even if it's a poorly constructed slum of a song supported by a foundation of droning double stops and abused tubas.
Acerbic: (adj.) sour or astringent in taste
My Composition (0:30 MP3)This excerpt is written for abbreviated orchestra, which means that I had an orchestra in mind, but was too lazy to set up an actual full score in Finale, so I only used the instruments whose MIDI patch numbers I had memorized. It ended up being more shady than acerbic, not unlike a witch who was turned into a willow tree.
Tarantulas on the loose in Britain
tagged as museday | permalink | 0 comments |
This is Part II of my efforts to photograph a bunch of old crap in my crawlspace so I can throw it all out without guilt. Part I was a couple weeks ago.
In the olden days, you couldn't throw out your manuals, because there was probably a ridiculous set of symbols or questions hidden inside to prevent people from making copies of the games. As you can see, we had a marked preference for Sierra games in our house. |
I played this game for three months over dial-up when it first came out and was bored out of my mind. After all that time, I had made it to a level 18 BARD, and spent the entire time "kiting wisps", which meant allowing a specific monster to chase you around the map while singing a song that slowly killed it over the course of 10 minutes. Bards were too weak to fight anything directly, and I hated joining other people's parties. | |
At some point in the 90s, Sierra On-Line bought Dynamix, a company which had a bunch of off-the-wall games NOT afflicted with sequelitis. |
I loved the Quest for Glory series, and even owned the first one with its original name, Hero's Quest (before possible litigation from the makers of the HERO QUEST board game). These games fell out of my favour around Quest for Glory IV, which had a large number of impassable bugs. In fact, every Sierra game I bought in that year had these bugs, which is why I never bought another Sierra game afterwards. | |
The Game-Maker software purported to let you create your own tile-based games and then offered to distribute them for you at a higher-than-nominal fee. I was hugely disappointed with it, because I wanted to make Ultima, and it was really meant for platformer games. |
Jones in the Fast Lane was one of the games I replayed a ton as a kid -- you set goals for education, money, happiness, and job, and then tried to be the first person to reach those goals. There is now a Flash version available, complete with the original cheesy music. | |
Codename: Iceman was a different sort of Sierra game -- it was overly difficult, and required some knowledge of latitudes and longitudes, as well as a basic understanding of sonar. This was the game that taught me CPR, because you had to type it in from the manual early in the game. SHAKE AND SHOUT. CALL FOR HELP. ESTABLISH AIRWAY. |
I was probably the only person to own SimAnt -- the most useless Sim game apart from SimEarth. You dig a big ant colony while avoiding spiders and lawnmowers, then you get bored and flood it with a thunderstorm. |
tagged as memories, media | permalink | 3 comments |
We have now been to the Outer Banks Brewery for two separate meals.
tagged as day-to-day | permalink | 2 comments |
The URI! Zone turns 19 today having reached Nunavut's age of majority in style, and it can now drink and hump legally in Canada's northernmost territory. The fact that I moved it into THE CLOUD this year confuses the issue slightly, as it is now a card-carrying member of Websites Without Borders and transcends any earthly rules.
Here's how the URI! Zone looks by the numbers, for any statisticians in the audience:
The traditional blog has become a rare commodity since the heady days of Web 2.0, with actively updated blogs reduced to a trickle barely worth seeking out, and sometimes I feel like a miner freshly arrived in California in 1855, struggling futilely to recapture the magic that once was. The quality of this blog has ebbed and flowed over the years like the melancholy exhortations of a thrift store accordion, but it has always been a comfortable beacon of routine that you can count on for a few minutes of wasted time over coffee before you start your high paying jobs (weekend traffic is nearly zero).
My website has had a nomadic existence across institutes of higher education where I needlessly prolonged my adolescence and essentially "crashed on the couch" of any free web hosts available, until I cashed out into a software engineering career and could finally afford real servers and domain names.
By longevity alone, I win at blogging. I plan to abuse this tenure by reposting old content under the title "Classic URI! Zone" and posting one-liners about how I hate Mondays and love lasagna until I've killed all remaining goodwill, and then I'll simply post links to my latest quiz results concerning which Muppet I am like. My final post will either reveal that I've been dead the whole time or have become a secret lumberjack.
Regardless of quality, I definitely plan to keep the website going to hit the big 20 in a year's time, at which point you'll be navigating the Internet with your Occulus Rift goggles and going to the next page by mime-slapping the air in front of you. Thanks for your continued readership and friendship!
tagged as website | permalink | 3 comments |
Apart from being the fabulous setting of the second season of Fargo, 1979 marks the first year that a BU existed in the world. My parents always knew that they wanted to adopt a second child that would outshine the older sister in the number of As and merit badges earned. It would take almost two full years from the time that my dad wrote this letter for their order to be fulfilled, packed, and delivered:
Based on the thick packet of evidence in my possession, the adoption process (through a now defunct organization called Welcome House) was a tedious, expensive process full of bureaucracy, misplaced paperwork, and letters arriving weeks later after being dashed off on a typewriter. My parents would ultimately get lucky when I was abandoned at the Wooie Police Station in Seoul on September 15 and transferred into the care of Korea Social Services. I was given the name Soon Bok Yoon, which sounds DELICIOUS.
I spent the first three months of my life in an orphanage at 533-3, Ssangmun-dong, Seoul, South Korea, a location that currently resolves to a demolished building on Google Earth. I have no memories of this time, but the staff sent a few pictures of me to my future parents:
Based on its appearance, I presume that the stuffed animal was a superhero duck named "Bruises Easily". It did not accompany me on my journey to the US. There is also a creepy lock of hair in my file folder of adoption papers. I presume that the staff sent it along in advance so my parents could prep a voodoo doll in case I behaved badly. If I die in a freak volcano incident, you are welcome to use this old hair to reconstitute a clone of me like Dolly the Sheep.
Meanwhile, my sister, Ellen, was 3 years old and living the only-child lifestyle in the house on Pickett Street in Alexandria. The paperwork churned inexorably forward like a season of Bloodline played at half speed, so I did not get to meet my future parents until the 1980s were underway.
To Be Continued...
Other posts in this series: 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1990 - 1991 | 1991 - 1992 | 1992 - 1993
tagged as memories | permalink | 4 comments |
Maia is mere days away from being 13 months old, although she still weighs just under 20 pounds and can fit in many onesies in the 6-9 month range. She's had a pretty weird sleep schedule the past week or so, and sometimes will only sleep for about 90 minutes in a single nap midday (and 10 - 11 hours straight through the night). When awake, she's crawling everywhere and recently figured out how to get up into the rocking chair using her side-saddle leg methodology.
Maia is very opinionated now, quick to get frustrated if she isn't getting what she wants (Cheerios) or we take her away from a dangerous situation (picking her up when she keeps trying to crawl into the street at the park). She still isn't speaking, beyond calling everyone and everything "dada", but she's very vocal and has her own collection of grunts paired with finger-pointing to express herself.
She now likes a few of her stuffed animals, notably Two-ty the ostrich head (so named because she reminds us of Booty the cat, so it's Booty Two), Chippy the chipmunk, and Leeloo the llama, but her favourite at the moment is her nameless bunny head on a blanket that she takes to bed with her. Other regular activities include "reading" all the books on her shelf, emptying out lower drawers, library storytime with Rebecca, and afternoon mall walks with me when the humidity is too high for a park visit. She loves water-based activities but hates when I turn the water off in the bathtub because the environment is not as important as playing with running water.
On the parent side, we're doing well. We have the routines down pretty decently now and even squeeze some time in here and there for pre-baby activities like yoga and video games. A couple times, we even had friends over for real meals!
tagged as offspring, day-to-day | permalink | 0 comments |
The URI! Zone is 24 years old this month! There have been 4403 blog posts and 8853 comments since the beginning of recorded history. I haven't touched the code under the hood at all this year although I've learned a few new web tricks from my side gig that I may end up implementing here if I ever get bored.
Blogging is all but dead these days, as you can tell from this graph of visitors over the years:
That said, I'll still be here churning out tasty tripe for the last few brave souls from the Web 2.0 cohort every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday into eternity. Thank you for continuing to take time out of your day to visit!
tagged as website | permalink | 2 comments |
a selection of original cartoons from the business development Slack channel I maintain at work
Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII
You are currently viewing every post from a specific month and day across history. Posts are in chronological order with the oldest at the top. On the front page, the newest post is at the top. The entire URI! Zone is © 1996 - 2024 by Brian Uri!. Please see the About page for further information.