Archive for December, 2004

Christmas and white

Monday, December 27th, 2004

Hope everyone out there had a decent holiday. Good times were had on this end of the wire: getting to see family, Christmas with my sister and her fiance, getting in touch with friends and so on. I’m fairly sure you all had varying degrees of the same, so details will be left vague and pointless. Things were good, and I’ll leave it at that.

Snow paints the grounds outside, thought only in bits and pieces in my neighborhood and even that is mixed in with the grime and grit of the well-traveled roads outside my building. In fact, I think the snow is outdone by the masses of sand and road salt that were spread about. Two snowfalls of ill consequence and I’m left thoroughly disappointed by both so far. I won’t be satisfied this winter until there is a thick blanket of white covering the urbanity.

Honorable mentionings

Tuesday, December 21st, 2004

Conversational and informational fodder for you all to ponder and pontificate over. Dig in and fire up your comments, cause it’s big word Tuesday baby!

  • More reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Guantanamo, this time courtesy of the F.B.I. Seems as though the torturers are using the F.B.I.’s name to shield the blame from getting passed onto the Department of Defense. Sick, just sick. Does anyone else find it frightening that we’ve now lost the majority of our moral high ground when it comes to this kind of thing? For every “enemy combatant” left to defecate on themselves or pull their hair out, we give rise to two or three terrorists to replace them. Not the way to promote the splendors of democracy or ensure the safety of our nation if you ask me.
  • The long rumored MTA fare hike is now official. Monthly unlimited cards are to jump up from $70 to $76 a month, among other hikes. Great, there’s another $72 a year that I have to give over to someone else. This wouldn’t irk me so much if the MTA’s books were open. As it stands now, lots of nasty corruption rumors have been circulating.
  • The FCC has given the go-ahead to the use of in-flight broadband. Cell phone use in planes is also to be decided upon soon. Probably of interest to those who fly a lot, but considering my terrestrial nature this is just one of those curious policy things I like to make note of.
  • Just the mental image this one-line post creates had me laughing out loud at work.
  • The process is now officially underway for Turkey to be evaluate for entry into the European Union. There are many steps along the way. The process could take up to 15 years and there is no guarantee that they’ll be admitted.
  • Gizmodo has a picture of the Varioptic liquid lens that will add optical zoom and autofocus to future camera phones.
  • A write-up on how to build traffic to your blog. Not like having this personal indulgence of mine widely known has ever been a big issue with me, but maybe I can use some of this on another blog I get involved with.
  • Some Australian game has bought a virtual island for $26,500 in cash, and not virtual cash either. The slice of digitized land is in the online role-playing game Project Entropia.
  • First it was XM releasing their MyFi portable satellite radio. Now it looks like Sirius is gonna follow suit and raise the stakes at the same time: they are rumored to be talking with Apple about integrating a Sirius satellite radio into the iPod. It’s times like this that I wish O&A were on Sirius and not XM. That and their NFL coverage package.
  • Title how to get a budget out of a client. Hopefully I’ll get to use this tip some day on one of my freelance gigs.
  • Looks like we’ll be waiting until spring for the new season of Chappelle’s Show to begin. My funny bone is heart broken at the news.

And finally…

Antibalas after hours

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

What a week! I got home from work and was thankful to have made it through with my sanity intact. The chances of me doing anything outside of geekish coding didn’t look too good, but I did have the option of attending a midnight concert at SOBs. The band in question was one of my favorites: Antibals Afrobeat Orchestra. To be honest it was touch and go for a while there, but the picture below should be proof enough of the decision I made.

Antibals Afrobeat Orchestra at SOBs - Dec. 17, 2004

After sucking down some of that never say die mentality that would get me through the night, I began my adventure into the wintery darkness. I was in line outside the club by 11:30, lining up in queue behind a group of very energetic, French-speaking people. They were running amok on the sidewalk, groin thrusting into each other and taunting each other playfully in both French and English. And at all the times there were the chirping whistles they had brought with them, playing in line and giving it a very Carnival feel (the one in Brazil, that is). They were a show onto themselves and made waiting in the cold that much more bearable.

Finally got into SOBs and situated myself in the jam-packed mob surrounding the stage. The flow of people past me was non-stop. At some point I couldn’t tell if they were new people or just the same people wearing different hats to try and throw me off. Then I realized that no one would be out to screw with my head here so I should just write about the music, damnit!

OK, message received.

Antibals took the stage around 12:30, and the whole troupe was in fine form. The sound quality at SOBs is always good, and they were feeding the amps well. And for us living beings, there was lots of crowd interaction worked in as well. Big fan of the rhythmic clapping and sing-along sessions right here. They were playing lots of cuts from there most recent release “Who is this America?“, including “Big Man”, “Elephant” and an absolutely psychotic rendition of “Indictment”. In honor of the holidays the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch were indicted along with Bush, Condi Rice, Rummy the like. If that last line confuses you then give the song a listen. It’ll all make sense after that — promise.

Their encore was an insanely long version of “Who Is This America Dem Speak Of Today?”, which had to be in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 minutes. And this is after two hours of non-stop Anitbalas, mind you. The crowd just ate it up. My favorite reaction of the night came from one particularly well dressed black gentleman near where I was. He was dressed to kill: clean fedora, crisp suit, the whole nine. Now picture that man with eyes wide as saucers and his jaw dusting the tops of his dress shoes. That’s the kind of performance it was. It had to be after 3 am by the time the band left the stage for the last time, and I was lucky to still be standing after all that.

So what do I do? I take a breather on the subway and go galavanting around midtown of course! I was just not feeling tired and while it was cold out there was no wind, so I decided to do some tourist-free sightseeing. So much better to see Times Square without having to use a machete to cleave a path through the out-of-towners, especially considering my shell-shocked state. There were the usual cast of wanderers about, including the prerequisite drunken frat boys. They were assaulting the world with their singing and finding interesting uses for a traffic cone. Gee, who would ever have imagined that you could use a cone as a megaphone? And how about using it as a club to hit each other with? Brilliant! I laughed a little at their antics, but then realized that this is the kind of revelry that leads to wiper blades being ripped off of cars.

There was a Starbucks open and some hot chocolate sounded like a good idea before the night was ended, so I headed in for a brief reprieve from the chill and some liquified goodness. The corporate offices probably aren’t going to like hearing this, but the clerk gave me the drink free of charge. I was kind of stunned from the act of kindness and barely got the thank you out of me before wandering from his store and down to the Port Authority and a Sphinx bus home.

So to recap:

  • The city: God bless the nightlife!
  • The holidays: Don’t be too shocked by acts of kindness.
  • The booze: Some people could do with a little less of it.
  • The music: “Who is this America” should be required listening. Period.
  • The reporter: Dead tired and about to crash in his bed as he writes this line.

Two or three good pics and a few video clips on the way. Keep your fingers crossed that I get everything I want to done on Sunday and you guys will have new stuff to look at while “working” on Monday.

Christmas party survival

Friday, December 17th, 2004

Maybe there’s something to this “knowing your limits” crap after all. I’m at work, on time and seem to be quite functional; all facts that were highly in doubt going into last night and the fabled office Christmas party. The lure of the open bar was strong, but I guess my will to not have to work today with a hangover was stronger.

That’s not to say that I’m not feeling some battle damage. My innards are a wee bit drier than they should be — alcohol does such a nice job of dehydrating, you know. Then there is the general slow-motion feel to the whole day. It’s like trying to drive a car that can only get into third gear out on the interstate. Hopefully the grand recuperative powers of the human body will clear this all up by lunchtime. Still I’m miles ahead of where I was after last year’s party.

This year’s edition of the holiday extravaganza was great. The venue was the Falucka Lounge, quite the nice looking bar and lounge with a distinct Moroccan theme to it. Along with the open bar and the finger foods there were some unexpected additions to the mix, such as the apple hookahs that surrounded the establishment and the full fledged belly dancer that performed. Why oh why did I forget my camera?

For a smaller contingent of us there was an after-party party. We headed to the Pioneer Bar, arriving just in time to have the kitchen prepare a grand selection of fries, mini-pizzas and onion rings to satiate our drunken appetites while we continued blathering about this thing and that.

So far as I could tell, a good time was had by all. All you have to do is take a look around the office today at the bleary eyes, the slumped posture and the gingerly-made motions to know that. I mean, how can you come into work like that and not say you had fun putting yourself into such a state?

Hot and cold running topics

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

From the serious to the sublime….

  • Remember that grand missile defense shield that the Bush administration was so high on creating? Well, it still doesn’t work. It was supposed to be up and running by the end of this year. In my opinion, the money used to build this boondoggle would have been better spent on border protection, airport security and inspecting our ports — especially post 9/11.
  • Consolidation in the cell phone market continues. Yesterday Verizon made a secret bid for Sprint, which just anounced a merger with Nextel. At this rate we could be down to just 2 major cellphone companies by this time next year.
  • A great write up on five mistakes band and label web sites make. While a lot of this should be common sense, I’ve seen far too many sites that have all five of these issues. The net is primarily a tool to get or publish information, and that should be kept at the core of any design desicions. Eye candy comes later.
  • Mr. Barrett describes his run in with a subway Jesus freak. I’ve never had to deal with such an aggressive pontificator before, and sure hope I won’t have to in the future.
  • This editorial in USA Today asks if we should rethink our nation’s overreliance on standardized exams.
  • Did you ever wonder where those little orange XML icons came from? I’m sure some of you out there are wondering what they’re for in the first place. It’s all part of the joy that is web syndication — you should look into it.
  • Hollywood once again is going after the file sharers in the courts. This time it’s the MPAA going after BitTorrent. Good luck shutting down that one — BitTorrent right now accounts for around half of all internet traffic.

And finally…

  • With the owners and the players association further apart than ever, it looks as if this NHL season is lost. Sadly, I’m not even sure there will be a season next year at the rate negotiations are going.