The Prince of Egypt website has been updated now, with a complete story outline, downloads, etc. It looks like they'll be offering a straight-faced adaptation of the Biblical story -- God is part of the story, but no more. On the whole, it does look like a pretty good flick. The site is organized nicely, too, with links across the top of the page. It's clean, it's pretty, and it's easy to navigate. Impressive, considering commercial websites as a whole.

I also made a few updates to my VB website.

And suddenly, my web browsers die out on me. "Cannot locate server: www.yahoo.com." Sure. Well, that was always such a small, unused site.

Yahoo! has a very good category devoted to wearables. Then again, they've got a category devoted to building your own hovercraft (they're reeeeeeal cheap too, oh yeah, you bet).

And I want to announce two new addictions for me: The Red Green Show (of which at least one full episode has to be seen to be appreciated), and Red Dwarf (a humorous British SF TV show--'nuff said). They're both on PBS in my area, but catch 'em if you can anywa. Very funny, in very different ways.

My new-found interest in wearable computers has started me thinking about the realities of a wearable computer. I've decided that I would want to minimize the "Borg look" and go for something that's as invisible as possible (thanks to Tramm "Foo" Hudson's recent post to the wearables discussion list). A key-glove would be OK, with a computer system in a backpack (or possibly in a hip pouch, thanks to the new PC-104 standard). That takes care of the actual system, and input. I can't think of any kind of unobtrusive display, though, which makes me think that a text-to-speech system would be best. I've been looking into rsynth, in particular the web version, Say (you can read more about it).

Thing is, it would have to be very *very* well-thought-out. After all, you can't have a voice prompting you for input with "see-colon-backslash-greater-than." I'll see if I can't put together some thoughts on this and post it here.

I've also noticed that Wearables Central has a new showcase of wearable systems that people have built or are building.

Beyond this, I've been sick for the past couple days, so not that much new. As usual, I'm well behind on my Level II VB class. My floppy drive is still doing the Sinatra Shuffle and pushing up daisies. Always something with a computer, it seems.

Been reading The Jargon File lately (click on the Lexicon to go straight into the dictionary). I'm glad someone's trying to keep up with this online language. I particularly liked Godwin's Law.

I've decided to bag my organized tendencies and update this diary each day as I feel like it, rather than trying to wait until all the important stuff is done before updating. So, I may post half of an entry in the morning and half in the evening. Whatever works.

Well, I was finally able to put up a page for a celebratory effort for User Friendly's first anniversary, which is coming up on November 17th. I'm trying to get each of the fans to send Illiad (the creator of the strip) $5 on the anniversary day. Nicely enough, Illiad's asked that all the checks be made out to his favorite charity, the SPCA. We'll see how the effort goes.

I've been looking into Play-By-E-Mail games lately; games where you e-mail your commands to a game program, then get your results via e-mail. I like the idea, and am looking into playing a few games this way.

A potpourri of news today.

The first level of my VB class ended last night, with the next level to start next week, same time.

User Friendly is continuing apace, gathering more support and so forth. It's even got a very lively mailing list.

I ran across dice.com recently -- an online directory of tech-related jobs, searchable by part of the U.S., technology, experience, full- or part-time status; you name it. Very nice.

My work on the keyglove continues apace, though I have found out that soldering is not as easy as it looks. So far I've ruined one keyboard circuitboard by not having as steady a hand as I should. Well, this teaches a valuable lesson: Make sure you've practiced soldering before you try it on something valuable (or semi-valuable, as was this keyboard).

Finally updated The Library with my most recent read - Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors. Actually, I also read Robert Silverberg's Hawksbill Station several weeks ago, but as it's out-of-print, I can't very well link it to Amazon.com.

A week ago, on Monday, I had an entry regarding the book Digital Mosaics. Well, I read through most of it, and found a very interesting section where the author discusses what makes cyberspace unique. He suggests that we have to grok (sorry, completely understand) the properties of our medium before we can put it to good use. As he puts it, the digital domain is:

• Precisely reproducible - In the real world, a copy is never quite as good as the original. If I copy a file on a computer, the copy is exactly the same.
• Discontinuous - There's no requirement that we all take the same route to get to the information we need.
• Interactive - The digital world lends itself to interactivity much more than real-world counterparts. Yes, there are "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, but literature, film, TV, and so forth don't have nearly the depth of interactivity that digital entertainment can have.
• Ethereal and ephemeral - There's no "there" there. A three-dimensional model does not need to correspond to anything in the real world.
• Community-forming - This has only come to light recently, but the online world does seem to lend itself towards creating communities. Witness the thousands of people on IRC networks, the Java chat rooms, the Quake clans, Usenet, and so forth.

This opened my eyes to how we can use our medium. Most of the problems I have with website design are solved by looking at these properties; does the website allow discontinuous travel? Can it be more interactive? Am I tying myself down to a physical constraint? Interesting.

I also just noticed that the blueprint map's link to the Kennel wasn't set up properly; now it should work.

I've gotten very interested in wearable computers lately. It's not just SF anymore; these things are being built by hobbyists for not much more than desktop systems. The main issues are buying a display unit for the eye or to sit at waist-level, and battery life. They've been solved, but you have to be willing to sauder a few wires together.

In particular, I'd like to try building a KeyGlove, a glove with metal contacts on the fingers to simulate a keyboard. If I build it, I'd actually use both hands; otherwise some combinations get difficult to do on one hand. And heck, it only costs about $50 to build (besides the saudering iron).

I finally registered some of the shareware I've been using for years, shame on me. Being able to manipulate zip files with WinZip, without that annoying popup screen, is amazingly nice. And, hey, I just feel better now.

Just got finished reading (most of) Steven Holtzman's Digital Mosaics, a book about the aesthetics of cyberspace. The main gist of the book is about what, really, cyberspace is, and what it can do. Fortunately it doesn't go on about incredible technological changes and so forth (like another book I definitely didn't buy that predicted "Someday mice and keyboards will be replaced with voice-recognition technology!" Wow! Who'da thunk?! Ground-breaking!); instead, it focuses on the human and artistic aspects of the net. How will cyberspace change the way we think? I don't necessarily agree with every point he makes (in fact, I disagree with a fair amount of the book), but at the very least it makes you think about the underlying structure of cyberspace, or the structure we use within it, and what forms that structure is likely to take in the future.

I got the book off a bargain bin at an outside sale last night, along with two of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and a "lost novel" by Jules Verne, Paris in the Twentieth Century (one of those pesky books that predicted the future with alarming accuracy, and Verne's editor flatly refused for being too fantastic). The entire bill came to $20.86 for four hardbacks, two of them first editions (a tad less than what I would have paid for Verne's novel regularly). I tell ya, bargain-bin sales and used book stores are worth the trouble ten times over.

Last night I found my favorite feature on netgrocer - automatic, repeating orders. Every week (or two weeks, or whatever), you can have groceries automatically shipped to you and billed to your credit card. Sweet!

And now for something completely different.

Note: After future review, I'm unhappy with the following two paragraphs. It's unfair and untrue to schoolbus drivers. I wish I never posted it, but now that it's out here on the 'net, I don't want to remove it. So, it stays as a warning to others about regret.

Schoolbus drivers are the worst drivers on the road. That is simple fact. I've had them pull out in front of me and in front of other people, assuming we'll all have to slam on our brakes rather than ram into them. How many times have you seen a schoolbus run a red light? I saw a schoolbus run a red light, pulling out in front of and cutting off an ambulance today! This is ridiculous!

I'm betting the cops simply won't pull over a schoolbus. Well, they need to start. Or would they rather wait until one of these drivers makes another crazy move and kills thirty kids?

Went to see Antz, and I must admit I'm impressed. It's a PG-rated film; there's some swearing, some violence (a very cool battle scene, for instance), and death. The entire film is artfully done, there are no musical numbers (thank the heavens), and the story is blessfully free of "Look! Look! The moral of the story!" moments. Complex plot, but fun. It's kinda like trying to describe Babe; it's just not what you think. Go see it; you'll enjoy yourself. I'd have to add this film to my list of "Best CGI I've ever seen." Sadly, the main website for the movie (now defunct) suffers from pretentiousness, an odd navigation scheme, and too little content ("They had storyboards for this movie? Wow.").

Speaking of Babe, the trailers before Antz were interesting. Babe II: Lost in The City looks like your standard sequel to a blockbuster: enjoyable in its own way, but retreading similar themes and nowhere near as good as the original. I could be wrong, and I hope I am. Babe was a really good movie, and I'd like to see its sequel build on that rather than simply give audiences a The Lost World experience.

I also saw the preview for Prince of Egypt, a traditionally-animated film about the life of Moses up to the crossing of the Red Sea. Looks like it borrows rather heavily from The Ten Commandments, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. There's no mention of God in the trailer, though I imagine they'll have to in the final film (that whole burning bush, becoming a great leader after being a runaway outcast thing is rather hard to account for otherwise). I plan to see it anyway, if only to support films based on Biblical stories. Heck, no matter what you believe, it makes for great drama. For the record, at the moment the website (now defunct) only has information about two "inspired by" albums being released for the movie (the producers evidently took a cue from "Songs from the Pridelands", the mega-hit "inspired-by" CD following on the mega-hit The Lion King).

Interestingly, the music is being composed by Hans Zimmer, perhaps my favorite Hollywood composer. He's the one who provided the instrumentals for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and so forth. He was the one who had to take the great music and integrate it into the story itself. Remember the background music as Belle is exploring the West Wing? Or the innumerable background themes during The Lion King? All Hans Zimmer's work. I was sorry to see him not working on Disney's latest, so it's good to see him on Prince. The lyricist is the one who worked on Pocahontas. Is it just me, or are a lot of people jumping the Disney ship?

Prince of Egypt will have a standard cadre of star voice talents (mainly because recording an entire main characters' soundtrack takes about three days total, so they can afford top names). I have to ask: does it really matter that much? I always thought The Little Mermaid was voiced as well as Toy Story, though the former was peopled by nameless, faceless voices, for the most part. Well, Egypt features Val Kilmer as Moses (looks weird on print, but his voice was quite good in the snippets I heard), with Ralph Fiennes, Sandra Bullock, Danny Glover ("I'm too old for these plagues"), Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin ("Hey, we're two wild and crazy Egyptians!), Helen Mirren, Michelle Pfeiffer, Martin Short ("That Ramses is just great, I must say") and Patrick Stewart ("Plague One, Engage!") rounding out the cast. I'm going to keep an eye on this one.

I'm also going through the old diary entries and adding links, cleaning up italics and underline, and so forth.

Ahhhh, it's October, my favorite month of the year! The weather is turning crisp, the leaves are turning, and we're starting to think of Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Meantime, check out this bizarre log that Sci and I came up with today. Think Monty Python sketch.

Grrr. I've been trying for four days now to get my drug testing for my new job with PRC, and each time something's happened. Now I'm going to have to get up early tomorrow morning, on my long day.

Other than that, things are going well. There's a great storyline going on on User Friendly. My IBA work is winding down. I'm working steadily on getting a secondary system running next to me, running Linux. I'm having fun playing Warcraft. Nothing in particular to report....

Oh, I hope this one stays up for awhile. ZDnet has an article entitled Analysts: No market for a third browser. They're basically predicting that Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer will remain the only browsers on the market, because there "simply isn't a business model for a mainstream third browser".

Prediction: Back in the Dark Ages of the web, there was only Netscape, and it was a good browser. Then came Internet Explorer, and it's taken a long time for netizens to get used to it. Content providers have had to shift their thinking, users have had to get on one side or the other, and businesses have had to make some tough choices. Now, the web is pretty solidly used to Netscape and IE. Within the coming year, the idea of another browser will become much less alien, and Opera (and others) will take a much larger foothold. Opera's already had a million downloads. Netscape and IE will probably remain dominant in the short term, but they'd better watch out. Why download a 50 MB browser when a 1.2 MB one will work faster?

Forgot to get my book signed by Robert Jordan. Arrrrrrrrrg.

But I've done it -- I've quit my job at IBA and am accepting the job at Litton/PRC. I'll be doing primarly Unix C work.

The reviews of Half-Life look quite impressive. I think I'm gonna have to get a copy of it; I'll post my reactions here.

I'm thinking of doing some kind of semi-worthwhile content on this site, but I can't for the life of me think of anything that wouldn't require huge amounts of time. I'm perfectly willing to write something; do a weekly column, talk about game programming, upload a pic of the week, whatever. SF trivia of the day? If anyone's reading this, e-mail me with suggestions.

Interesting. I've been playing around with Mom's old computer lately, and I installed DOOM on it, of all things (it's a 486, 25 Mhz, 4 MB RAM. Not much I can do with it). And to my surprise, I ran all the way through it to my great delight, though I must admit only on the medium difficulty setting, and including some level restarts.

There's something about DOOM -- it's certainly a great program for short periods of time, when you just want to play a game but don't have much time to spare. It manages to combine action with a nice touch of strategy; you can aim for a barrel and take out several clumped enemies at once, or get them to line up and take each other out. It's just plain fun to play. But, of course, anyone who's played it knows that.

Wow. I've come across a *very* cool program recently, though you probably won't use it much. It's called SiSoft Sandra, and it's basically a system information program. It's a well-behaved little program that provides an icon menu of system pieces (motherboard, CPU & BIOS, buses, video, Windows memory, DOS memory; oh, I could go on and on), and will give you more information than you could believe on each of these bits. It'll even give you tips on speeding up your system based on your particular system information. Beautiful piece of work. Download it from download.com.

I finally got Opera registered. I have to agree with Brennen; this is the best browser for PC's. I'm running Opera and Netscape simultaneously right now, and Opera is easily loading every page faster than Netscape.

And I'm finally downloading the Star Wars Episode I trailer thanks to a list of trailer mirror sites on the web. Fri, 20 Nov 98 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

Well, I bought my first comic yesterday. Maybe this is normal, but I can't..stop...thinking about it. I'll upload more info about it when I get home, but it's called "Ax"--about the crossing of three civilizations and how each helps and hurts the others. Extremely well-written. I never could understand comics, but I think I'm getting the hang of them now....

My Mom finally got her ISP information today, so we'll be connecting her up tonight. Outlook Express did *not* display a partial list of newsgroups when we cancelled the download the other night, so we'll have to start that all over again. But I think she'll get a kick out of some of the newsgroups out there. Hmmm, I really should investigate that today and come up with a few I think she'd like.

No more work on Molly with the flying disc; I'm getting home too late in the evening to be able to train her. Hopefully, though, I'll work on her more this weekend.

I've lost interest in the keyglove. I'm afraid that it'll just fall by the wayside, when it could be a really cool thing. I have this awful tendency to lose interest when things are only half-done, and I'd like to finish this now while I still have some modicum of interest.

Still no reply from starwars.com on the Episode I trailer -- the download keeps timing out. Evidently a lot more people than I want that trailer. I'll keep trying. Meanwhile, some hilarious thoughts on what the world will be like when Episode I comes out.

Well, my entry for Tuesday is lost in the I-Forgot-To-Save-Often-Enough Void, so here it is in brief: the new trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is to be released to theaters tomorrow, though it already had a select engagement Tuesday. They now have a copy up on the official website in a whole slew of formats (various RealVideo versions, QuickTime, AVI). I'm trying to download it as we speak, though the server hasn't been responding for me.

They've also got a really cool poster now. Yeah, the one with the shadow.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com has a new video section. They've got impressive prices (better than blockbuster.com), including Stargate, one of my favorite SF flicks of recent years (I'm thinking of buying it). I love their review, too:

In this visually creative space adventure, a timid, glasses-wearing Egyptologist uncovers an ancient portal to another planet and is dispatched there forthwith--along with blundering, clodfooted government troops. The downtrodden populace they encounter, ruled by godlike, androgynous King Ra, must be led to literacy and freedom; Ra must be defeated; the intellectual must find his machismo; our boys must return to Earth.

I've got a job offer from Litton/PRC, for more money and a shorter commute than my current job. I wouldn't leave if it weren't for that hour-long commute. Ugh.

My Mom's turning into a geek! She's loving her new computer, and I set her up with internet access today. She bought a connection through my ISP, but since it hasn't come through yet, I let her connect through my connection tonight. I think she really had fun cruising the web and bookmarking some sites.

I'm really really impressed with WordPerfect 8; it's more intuitive than MS Word and has a lot of cool features. What I like the most right now is that you can have multiple people "review" a document, making changes, then the author can go back and review those changes, reviewer by reviewer, comment by comment. WordPerfect is much more of a geeky word processor. Unfortunately, t can save into a bunch of formats, but can't load anything beyond WordPerfect.

And according to the HREF="http://www.neutronet.com/">Neutronet people, the digital camera is on backorder for another two weeks at least. Arg. Still, I think I'll wait.

Updated the VRML Observatory today, so that it makes a bit more sense in terms of what works where.

Saalon (a friend of mine from online) came down yesterday to talk over a variety of things, including what to do with Daemonsong. We ran to a store and got two Pentium systems they were selling cheap, one for my Mom and one for a server. I was able to install Linux on the server, which was surprisingly easy thanks to Que's Using Linux, Third Edition. Good book, if you want to get into Linux. I also got a copy of WordPerfect Suite 8, and I'm curious to try it out and see what it's like.

Well, I finally added a VRML rendering of the Observatory to the site. VRML is basically three-dimensional HTML; it's supposed to be distributed over the web and have links and so forth. The latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer both have VRML viewers, I believe.

The digital camera is, unfortunately, backordered, and I haven't had a chance to work on the keyglove in awhile. Six snaps so far. Oh, and I've moved The Book of Gurney off the Hallway.

Don't tell anyone, but I bought a digital camera yesterday from Neutronet.com. It's one of the new generation of low-cost digital cameras; it's an Epson PhotoPC 550, with a list price of $300 (though I got it for $180). I'm curious to see what it'll be like, and if it'll actually be more convenient than a regular camera. There's no film to worry about, though you do have to download the pictures you take to your PC after you've hit the maximum storable (in this case, 6 in high-res mode, 12 in medium-res, or 24 in low-res). You can buy an extra storage unit which'll extend the number of pictures up to 147 in low-res, though I'm willing to live with that few pictures for the time being, as I don't snap photos constantly.

This little (!) purchase was made primarily because I've gotten in the photography mood lately. I guess it's because I've been seeing some stunning sunsets on the way back from work at Frederick for IBA. Anyvay, I'll post my opinion of the camera here.

Incidentally, I've been keeping an eye on Stargate SG-1 lately. It originally aired on Showtime, but is being shown on Fox, Saturdays at 4:00 in most areas. What I've seen so far has been pretty impressive, on the level of The X-Files -- dramatic, exciting, a visual feast, and ultimately quite entertaining, if somewhat uneven from episode to episode.

Two snaps sewn onto the keyglove. Whoopee. Oooh, and if you ever get a chance to see Dead Again (1991), a stylish little thriller, do so. I caught it last night on The Sci-Fi Channel--Emma Thompson has amnesia and is discovered by Kenneth Brannagh. He takes her to Derek Jacobi, who tries regression past-life therapy on her. Brannagh doesn't like the result, so he talks with Robin Williams, a therapist friend, while partially pushing out his best friend, Wayne Knight (the mailman on Seinfeld, Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park). It's definitely worth seeing if you can find it.

Meeeeeeanwhile, I'm embarking upon a quest to train Molly (our Golden Retriever) to catch a flying disc (a.k.a. Frisbee (TM)). Right now I'm in the very early stages of training her, so we'll see what happens. Sounds like the perfect sport for the both of us.

Well, Tuesday really blew me away--I had to drop off my resume at Litton PRC after work, then run to my VB class and grab dinner on the way. I left the house at 7:15 a.m. and got back at 10:45 p.m. Yuck.

Anyvay, I updated the library with my most recently-read book, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Worth finding in a (physical) library. I also added a link to my episode of Daemonsong. I'm working on another one, but it won't be released for another couple of months yet.

I finally got the metal snaps for my keyglove the other day, so I'm ready to start sewing them on. The only other thing I need now is a new keyboard. I'll upload a page with my progress as soon as I get something appreciable done.

Perusing the LucasArts webpage, I see they're finally making a new game in the X-Wing series of space combat simulators, letting players fly the Millenium Falcon! Looks like they'll finish up the series' plotline by ending the game with the assault on Endor, which ended the movie Return of the Jedi.

Not surprisingly, they're also working on a Tomb Raider-style Indiana Jones game.

They've also updated the official Star Wars homepage with a visit to the Leavesden Creature Effects Shop for a peek at what they're building there. The Episode I Preview Album has also expanded to include a few new pictures. The whole album is somewhat useless, though, as we don't know what any of these things are. Sure, OK, these are Theed Palace Guards. Are they good, or bad? Are they the "red-shirts" of the new movie? All we're given are random shots of different stuff. Ah well, I'm still anticipating the new movie.

Interestingly, in my perusal today for the sources of these links, I came across a page devoted to a totally unknown Star Wars craft visible for a few frames in the Return of the Jedi space battle scene, christened The Y-Head Corvette. Its configuration is radically different from any other known ship in the Star Wars universe, and raises some intriguing questions as to why we haven't heard about it before. It's probably just a spare model thrown in for visual complexity, but it seems odd that nobody involved in production ever mentioned it before -- no ship stats, not even a passing reference in a Vehicle Guide. Below is an image of the craft, as it heads towards the viewer. I've also got a link to a wide-screen frame which shows the ship; look below the Death Star.

For the record, I'm awaiting more work on the keyglove until I can find some regular, non-enameled metal snaps. Wouldn't think they'd be that hard to find, would you? And today I moved all my diary entries from September backwards to a Past Entries page.

Uploaded an article I didn't publish in The Washington Times. I should've; me bad.

We also rescued the truck, so you needn't worry any longer.

Well, it's almost Christmas. My presents aren't all wrapped (I do have them all, though). But I'm feeling in the spirit; we're going to have a white Christmas (beautiful carol, isn't it?), my family is safe, warm, and healthy, and so am I.

Which was actually a fact I was calling into question last night on my way home from work. Story time!

As I dressed for work that morning, I stood before my closet, agonizing over that terrible choice we all have to make: how much protective clothing to wear. Should I wear a heavy coat? How about gloves? A wool hat would just mess up my hair, right? What about a scarf? Finally, I decided on taking my medium waterproof jacket, and gloves.

Off I drove to work, spending a productive day. As I turned out of the Litton/PRC parking lot, marvelling at the beautiful falling snow, I thought, Hmmm. Should I take the nice, clear main roads that'll be clogged with traffic, or the messy, twisty back roads that will have slightly less traffic? Of course, I chose...the back roads. And as I drove merrily along, I realized that the snow was clicking on my windshield. Sleet. Great.

Now, I drive a 1995 Toyota Tacoma; it's a light truck, and at the moment I have nothing in the bed. Which means zero traction. Sure enough, I was soon a slippin' and a slidin' like an otter at play.

Finally, as I neared home, I realized the poor truck wasn't going to be able to take much more of this; it was barely getting up the hills as it was. Fortunately, I was near an empty church parking lot, so I pulled in, and as I was parking, my car phone rang. It was Mom, asking how I was (I was already 15 minutes late at this point). We worked out a quick plan: Dad was still on his way home in the nice, beefy Mercedes, so Mom would call him, he'd detour towards me, and I'd wait until he got to me.

So I turned up the heat, turned on the radio, and started pulling things out of my briefcase to read. Nothing to read. Fortunately, I realized there was a 7-11 nearby. Now glad for the medium jacket and gloves, I turned off the heat, turned off the radio, locked up the truck and strolled over there, buying a Washington Times and a Gatorade. Then back to the car, heat up, radio on. Hmm, traffic report. Seems there was a big accident ahead of me, and everybody's stopped. Hmm. Interesting. Dad's coming from that direction...Dad's coming from that direction!! Frantic attempts to call home. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Great; glad to know that Cellular One can't handle an emergency. And I can't remember Dad's car phone number, nor is it in the little directory in my glovebox where it should be!

Finally, Dad called from just up the road; he'd gotten through but didn't want to chance one major hill between us, because of the traffic. Would I mind walking? Heck no! So out I trudged, to meet Dad as he was helping some others get their cars un-stuck. Lemme put it this way: walking, I made better time than the traffic.

So we finally got home, and I took another car into work today. Roger's still sitting in that church parking lot; we'll attempt a rescue today or tomorrow. And today I brought a wool hat and scarf to work. Just in case!

Hmmm. I had a rant ready to go this morning, and now I can't remember it. Well, if it comes, I'll post it here.

Saw Prince of Egypt Sunday. The artwork itself was gorgeous, the voices were excellent (though Patrick Stewart can't help sounding like Patrick Stewart), the music was actually done right, and the Biblical story was kept faithfully, while adding a fresh vantage point on the whole thing (namely, the brotherly relationship between Moses and the Pharoah). If I ever make an animated film, I want this film to be my mold. I'm glad to see it was in the #2 spot over the weekend, earning $14.3 million according to Film.com (50% more than A Bug's Life, which vigorously tried to compete with it).

Interestingly, there were about two kids (e.g. under thirteen years of age, roughly) in the entire audience (which was only fifty or sixty people; 9:15 showing). I'm assuming all the kids were in bed, but I did find it interesting that a lot of adults came out to see this film.

I hope everyone's Christmas shopping is done by now, and that the holidays are going well. I still need to wrap some of my presents; was going to do it last night but was too tired.

I'm glad to report that Aberdeen, my favorite low-budget hardware supplier, finally replaced my broken speaker. Having stereo now is wonderful. :-)

Woohoo! My paychecks came in yesterday (one from IBA and one from PRC), so I ran out and bought a Sound Blaster 64, Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback joystick, Sony microphone, and a CompUSA 17" monitor (the latter for my Mom). They all installed flawlessly, and the joystick comes with a three-month subscription to Fighter Ace!

64-bit sound does make a difference; sound quality is much clearer and cleaner; you can hear more in the sound. Next, I'm going to buy a copy of BeOS -- hopefully I'll be able to install it without having to blow away my current system. Looks like I can, and run Windows programs thanks to Bochs. Unfortunately, Be has just come out with a new release that completely changes their binary format on Intel-based machines, meaning that all the software out there will have to be recompiled. So I'll have to wait awhile for any interesting software (they have DOOM ported to BeOS!). Still, might be wortwhile getting now so I can get used to it and any quirks, and to be fair this new version hasn't even officially been released yet. And on the gripping hand, I can always download the source code and compile it myself. >:-) Ahh, I love operating systems that come with their own compilers.

There's a story over on Yahoo! Daily News about a new programming language called Squeak. It's a child of Smalltalk (a highly object-oriented language), it's completely open source, and some of its proponents are talking about making it just as easy to use for a 5-year-old as a 25-year-old. It uses the same write-once-run-anywhere system of Java, with a Squeak virtual machine sitting there running the program. So it looks like an interesting competitor to Java. It's already been ported to Macintosh, Windows, WindowsCE, and a number of Unix variations. It's also free.

Well, Mom and I stayed up rather late last night playing "Ants" on Microsoft's Gaming Zone. A lot of fun, and she managed to blow me away with some unexpected tactics. They've put a good amount of thought into the design of this game; physics actually work quite nicely (if you attack another ant, which falls into a water tile, it'll drown). The maps are quite small, requiring rather advanced tactics because it's easy to sabotage other ants, and with 4 players all running around...whew! For a time-limited Real-Time Strategy game, I'm impressed.

Meanwhile, I've got a link to a Christmas tradition we have, called PianoVille. It's a little Christmas village, which I finally uploaded some pictures of. Enjoy!

Not much to report today. My Mom downloaded Ants, an online multiplayer game from MSN, and we tried it out (single-player) last night. Looks like a lot of fun, if not inordinately complex (though that could be a good thing). I told her I'd download it myself and play it with/against her next time she got a chance to be online.

I just realized that I need to make a good photo of myself so I can publish it here. Digital camera, here I come!

We're going to be changing around the look-and-feel of Daemonsong again; we've found a whiz-bang HTML'er with a great new design. Episode 2 of season 2 should be coming out in a few days, too.

And I have been doing some work on the RTS game, and might have version 0.0.0 out by this weekend (still, all the code I've found so far has refused to work. Frustrating).

I finally have a digital camera. I actually ordered one quite awhile back, but the manufacturer discontinued that model, so yesterday I ran out and bought one. Thus far, it's been very nice; just snap some photos, attach to the new wire I have trailing out from behind my computer, fire up the software, and download the pics. Hopefully, one day this week I'll set up a quickie photo shoot of my keyglove.

Daemonsong finally has a new look, and I have to admit I like it a lot. I still have to update a few bits here and there, but I'm very pleased. Check it out; it's a great little drama.

No work on the RTS game, either; I've been having enough trouble getting DirectX to work that implementing everything else looks like it'll be an even worse tribulation.

Finally moved all the October diary entries to the past entries page.

I've spent a bit more time on Furcadia lately, and in fact have been thinking about trying out the role-playing areas. Maybe after I've gotten a little more comfortable in the world.

Spent a bit of time on the RTS game, notably putting in the DirectX functionality so it can draw everything at a reasonable speed. It looks like I'll have to do this all on one form, which is a bit frustrating in that now I'll have to program in separate windows, dragging them around, and so forth (I want the player to be able to "dock" windows all around the interface if so desired). It's also frustrating that DirectX is very unhappy if the program doesn't terminate nicely, deleting all the appropriate objects. So it looks like debugging is going to be a big hassle.

I suppose I'm also starting to get a bit intimidated by this RTS project. So much to implement, and I'm having trouble doing the graphics? Ish. And I really don't know if VB will be able to handle the kind of processing required for this kind of thing. Ah well; better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. At the very least I'll be getting valuable programming experience.

Well. Goodness. Lots to talk about.

First off, I'm now officially installed at Litton/PRC, as an "Associate Engineer" (a.k.a. Junior Programmer). It's going well; I'm getting familiar with the environment and my duties quickly enough. Our target is a Unix C environment.

I've done some fiddling with the Real-Time Strategy game (I've got a few webpages up), and hopefully will have the map interface (scrolling, placed units, etc.) done by the weekend, though I'm hoping to complete the unit movement by then, too. Looks to be a very interesting project.

In other news....We now have two artificial Christmas trees (they look very nice, though), one in the living room and one in the foyer. If my digital camera order ever comes through, I'll snap some shots of them and upload them. I've been in the baking mood lately, probably brought on by the Christmas season. I'm steadily gaining more friends on Furcadia, though it's a bit frustrating when there's not much to *do* there (other than chat, which is the main reason for being there I suppose). No more work on the keyglove, though I am determined to do more work on it this week.

Over on Ain't It Cool News (a website for "geeky" film news, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, indie films, etc.), they're reporting on an attempt to make a big-budget version of Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein wrote the novels which inspired Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters, both successes commercially and flops with the fans. Should be interesting to see what they do with Moon, as the story is comparatively free of action -- there are a few action scenes, and no doubt they'll occupy much more of the film than they do in the novel, but still. I'll keep an eye on it.

Has anyone else seen less spam of late? I seem to have half as many unsolicited e-mails in my box over the past few months. Maybe that Washington State law against unsolicited e-mail actually scared away a few people. Huzzah!

Seriously, I don't really think of spam as any more of a nuisance than regular junk mail--granted I don't have to pay to download them as many in Europe do. But in any event, it's nice to see the flow abate somewhat (unless this is the calm before the storm; I can see stores really getting into the spirit as Christmas comes up).

Interesting editorial on Yahoo! News about the online music industry, or the lack thereof. The labels want to protect their profits, and there's really no *reason* for them to go online. The fans would want it, but it would be a big hassle for the labels, with no clear profits. IMHO, a few artists need to make their own label, right off the internet, and sell themselves exclusively from that. If they produce good, quality music, they could really shake up the industry. They'd get more profits, too -- fewer costs.

I'm getting a bunch of ideas for a Real-Time Strategy game, thanks to the good people on rec.games.design. I'll post my progress as my design comes together, but my current idea is for an SF-ish world with several factions trying to own land. The engine itself would be extremely customizable - extractable buttons, a scripting language, and lots of other cool stuff. When/if I get a chance, I'll code up a demo of some of the features and upload it here. If anyone has any suggestions, e-mail me.

In the midst of all that racial strife, the South Africans are still thinking. Welcome the Blaster, an anti-car-theft system that emits a ball of flame on both sides of the vehicle. Pretty good crime deterrent, don't you think? Would certainly make me think about a career change were I hijacking cars....Sadly, it's probably illegal in the States.

Regarding Papyrus, I had no idea setting up a corporation was so difficult. I really could've used a lawyer on this one, though the stiff fees scare me away from that one faster than Daffy Duck from a hungry Julia Child.

Ahhh, feels good to be back on schedule with this. Though of course, by saying that, I've doomed myself to forgetting for another week or two.

Lessee. I've been having lots more fun with BeOS, getting more familiar with coding. Well, at least, trying to figure it out. If I ever do, I'm determined to write a Visual Basic variant; the arrangement of all this C++ seems horrendously complex. I'm learning, though.

Learning and laughing, particularly at BeDope, a parody news site about BeOS news. They reported on an upcoming BeOS Super Bowl ad starring dozens of high-profile celebrities, and Michael Jordan signing on to be a developer for Be. Lots of cute stuff, and some real news in there. Also, BeForever is my kind of news site; straightforward and as comprehensive as it can be. Updated daily. I'd appreciate a bit more explanation on the news items, though.

It seems the X-Men movie is going to be a reality; Patrick Stewart is as close as close can be to signing on as Professor Xavier, the perfect match IMHO. There's evidently a lot of interest in Hollywood to sign on with this, and the casting indications so far are quite good.

It looks like Buckaroo Banzai will be a TV series, a mid-season replacement for FOX's next season (e.g., early 2000). For those of you who don't know, Buckaroo Banzai was a comic book (oops, "graphic novel") and major film, starring a group of nuclear physicists / jazz players / test pilots / adventurers that get involved in all sorts of wild stuff. Lots of good, plain fun; think Indiana Jones. There are also rumors of a DVD "special edition" of the film possibly to be in the works.

OK, as promised, more today. I actually have some thoughts on UPN, the struggling TV network.

First off, I hear that Star Trek: Voyager has stopped sucking this season. I certainly hope this is the case; I always thought Voyager had a good cast and a premise worth looking at. Sadly, they haven't done much with it. I'd love to see them start making some really kick-butt work in the coming seasons. And yet, here's the synopsis of next week's episode; could it sound any more schlocky?

When aliens from another dimension make First Contactwith Dr. Chaotica, Janeway must enter his domaindisguised as Queen Astria to prevent Voyager'sdestruction.

I also caught the last five minutes of one of UPN's longer-running shows, The Sentinel. It was a season finale, so of course some drama could be expected, but I was surprised that they killed off the main character's sidekick. You have to respect a show that's willing to do something like that.

On the subject of ballsy presentations, Ain't It Cool News has just started featuring a poll for the Coolest Film of 1998. At the moment Out of Sight is on top, followed by The Big Lebowski and Dark City, though expect those numbers to change.

And on the subject of cool news, I understand George Lucas was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight and told them that "the real" trailer for Star Wars: Episode I will be released in March. I've heard rumors it will run for four minutes. Yowza. (incidentally, the Episode I website listed up there has been updated recently, and boy does it look cool!)

More links: Star Trek: Voyager, The Sentinel, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Hoo boy. No updates since the 14th?! My sincerest apologies.

OK, late-breaking news. I'm going to start editing an SF/F fiction magazine on the web, called Papyrus. There's not much there yet, but hopefully over the next month or two it should start having regular content. The technical side of things should be ready in a day or two, the business side in a month, and the content during the same time frame. We'll see where it leads.

I've been spending a lot of time getting a kick out of Web Site #9's MiSTings Archive, an archive of just about every MST treatment on the web. All the spam, conspiracies, and bad fanfics, all hilariously made fun of, all in one place.

I'm a bit worried about User Friendly; it seems to be losing its direction a bit. It's still funny, but...I dunno, I'm just not as drawn to it as I was in the beginning.

I caught an episode of Dilbert, the TV show, last night. It was very cute, though it hasn't quite found its rhythm yet. It will probably take some time to figure out quite how it'll present itself, but I'm prepared for that. As a whole, the voices are better than I'd expected, though of course not perfect (who would ever find it perfect?).

More tomorrow!

Just remembered one of the things I wanted to mention -- I caught another episode of the Sci-Fi Channel's original series Welcome to Paradox on Saturday, and so far I'm rather impressed. They're actually doing dramatic, one-hour episodes, though they're having a bit of trouble stretching the content out to one hour (they feel like half-hour eps, hastily converted to one hour). But it is thought-provoking, and the two episodes I've seen have had real twists at the end that I really didn't expect.

My Mom really likes Lagged Off thus far, so I'm encouraged and will be adding more to it. It might turn out as more novella-length, but that should still be sellable.

Arg...I come across all sorts of interesting stuff and forget to update my diary. And subsequently forget all about the interesting stuff once I *do* remember to update my diary. OK, let's see if I can remember what I wanted to say.

I finally got some anime DVD's through Amazon.com, in particular Iria: The Zeiram Animation (the actual title is "Iria: Zeiram The Animation", as a result of direct translation I think) and Tenchi Muyo in Love. "What is anime?" I'm glad you asked!

Anime stands for Japanese animation -- no, don't yawn yet. Without getting into the whole history, I'll say that this is adult-oriented animation. Not "adult" as in XXX, "adult" as in involving plots, deep characters, that sort of thing. It's all done with Disney-quality animation, but with situations and characters that actually make you think. They really think about how to do animation, and take advantage of it.

Anime in particular tends towards SF/F stories, but have a rather unusual way of handling it: fast action interspersed with slower, dramatic moments, sometimes right after each other. I'm not much of an action fan, but this is action blended with true drama. Hard to resist, and in general excellently done.

OK, so enough about anime. Hmmm. I finally bought a good laser printer, and an Iomega Zip drive. I was a bit miffed to see that the Zip drive didn't come with any Zip disks; I had to buy them separately. I think it's now a matter of "Hey, we've got the market, we don't need to give out free stuff anymore." Grr. I also notice that Iomega sells a lot of Zip-ish products; small Clik! 40 MB drives, Jaz 1 GB and 2 GB drives, the super-huge Ditto drives (10 GB disks?!), and even Buz video editing software.

I notice over on Ain't It Cool News (news on cool movies) that there's going to be an X-Men movie. If they can bring up the very interesting social implications of the comic books and TV show, I'll be impressed. The dramatic tension between the "mutie haters" to the mutants, plus the mutants' uncertainty about their powers (and theiry sanity) have a lot of dramatic possibilities.

Regarding the "pretty big news" I mentioned last week: looks like it's going through, and I'll be able to unveil it next week. Nothing unbelievably exciting, but I think my reader will be interested. ;-)

And looking back over the Prince of Egypt box office standings, it's ahead of Stepmom, only made 20% less than You've Got Mail, and made 11% less than Patch Adams (though Stepmom and Patch Adams have been out for one week less than Prince of Egypt). It's kicking Mighty Joe Young's butt, and has made about half what A Bug's Life has made, and that in only half the time, without a re-release and special "blooper reel". Looks like the public loves Prince of Egypt. Sorry to harp on this, but I'm glad to see a truly beautiful film get the money it deserves.

Well, The Prince of Egypt has thus far made more than Star Trek: Insurrection, in less time. It's also made 85% of what You've Got Mail has made in the same amount of time, and as much as Patch Adams with only one more week's worth of sales. I'm impressed (this according to Film.com's box office report).

I spent about two hours last night talking to Eric (friend of mine, the guy who does Daemonsong) about some various and sundry productions we want to do. I may have a pretty major report to give here in a few days, about something I've been wanting to do.

Good things to say about Amazon.com's customer support: I called about my problem with the mis-order. They're sending Danger: UXB out next-day delivery; when we get that, we put the George of the Jungle tapes into that box, slap the included return-address label on the side, and put it in the mailbox, no charge to us. Now that's customer support.

I got some Civil War books from Amazon.com yesterday, actually, and I've been looking through them. I'm beginning to uncover some fascinating details just in what little I've read; lots of conspiracy-type things to think about. I'll post more as I get into more detail.

More links: Animated films, American Civil War

Wednesday already. Amazing.

I went out to CompUSA last night and bought both Half-Life and a Creative Labs DVD-ROM drive (plus two DVDs, Blade Runner and Contact). As expected for a Creative Labs product, the DVD drive installed flawlessly; my only complaint is very faint noise. I'll be calling them tonight. DVD is very nice; I can play movies on my computer (full-screen or in a resizable window), or hook it up to a regular TV. Plus, most DVDs come with interesting tidbits like trivia, behind-the-scene stuff, the trailer, etc.

Half-Life, though. Excellent game. It's a first-person shooter that actually spends some time building up tension and plot (you hav to play the game for 15-20 minutes before you hit the first baddie, and I'm not complaining). The gameplay from there is fairly standard, and thus far quite linear (more so than, say, DOOM). The AI for the baddies is thus far not particularly amazing; one breaks open a door, then stands there until you come into its line-of-sight. I also would have liked more NPC aliens; the alien equivalent of goats that have wandered through the portal, but aren't trying to eat you. Ah well. Still, very involving game, and I highly recommend it, even to those non-shooter fans out there (I'm not a big shooter fan, myself).

One of my parents' Christmas presents from Amazon.com finally arrived -- and mis-shipped. They were supposed to be getting the Danger: UXB box set, but instead got the George of the Jungle box set. Slight error there. Another phone call to make. Arg. I will say, though, that that's the first time I've seen a mix-up like that from Amazon.

I've been doing more work on my IRC bot Stevens, and in particular adding a Civil War simulation module. You can ask it to repeat a battle of the Civil War, specify your own strategies and supplies, and see how it works. Kinda interesting, and I hope to make it more interesting as time goes on.

More links: DVD, DVD drives, Half-Life, IRC bots

Well, goodness. A lot's happened, and I haven't been doing much typing.

My neices have been here at the house for over a week now (one's two and the other's an infant); we've really been enjoying them, though it'll be nice to have an empty house again in a way. The holidays are over, and I've got some great presents.

In particular, BeOS came. My review is in a past diary entry; basically BeOS is a new graphical operating system. It's fast, it's powerful, and it's oh-so-cool. The thing boots in 15 seconds flat, it's network-ready (for Windows, Mac, and Unix networks), it can read both PC and Mac files, it has PC and Mac emulators...oh, I could go on and on. Multimedia runs so smoothly it's frightening.

I've also finished the book Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein. It was simply excellent; see my review in the library for more details.

I got a recent order from Amazon.com, too: two books by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., and the Prince of Egypt soundtrack. I didn't fully realize how beautiful that music was until I heard it alone.

My online friends have suggested I write a book about my experiences at events.scifi.com, my old IRC haunt which I left dramatically several months ago. I've got an outline and a few pages written, so we'll see how it goes.

I've also moved my November diary entries to the Past Entries page.

More links: BeOS, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Prince of Egypt

Well, Papyrus is receiving fewer good submissions. I really need to submit it as a market to a few more places. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that tonight. Still, I have stories lined up for another week or so, then I'm in trouble.

I've concocted a fascinating little idea: writing a program that can write fiction. Starting off with a high-quality, low-variable story, and expanding it from there, I could come up with some unexpected variations on standard themes.

The Wheel of Time game is shaping up really nicely. They're taking a rather odd perspective to it; a FPS that makes you think (offense and defense are actually balanced). They've done some beautiful things with the Unreal engine; the Trollocs actually look much closer to having actual arms and legs, as opposed to Half-Life's block-people.

Sierra's Middle Earth, a massively mutli-player version of Tolkien's epic novel, has been updated lately. It's looking much more professional now. I'm still amazed at how *big* this is gonna be; 20 screen's worth in a room, and 20,000 rooms in the game. It looks like a solid design, in any event.

The bad news is that Sierra seems to be making a lot of unfortunate personnel decisions, asking the developers to all relocate to Seattle. I'm wary of Sierra now; they've made a lot of really poor decisions regarding releasing games and such.

Well, I spent last night laying in bed being read to, then falling asleep. Exciting, huh?

I did read over on the official Star Wars site that the running time of the new Episode I trailer will be -- get this -- two and a half minutes. Yowza.

Tanjit, I hate it when people don't bother to update their diaries during weekends and vacations.

Valentine's Day is come and gone. There's a new story on Papyrus, from the book's point of view. A lot of fun. I have two more ready to fire off in the coming weeks.

There's a new sentence on the incremental story. Two sentences, in fact.

I'll be leaving on Friday to go meet with Saalon, the guy who writes Daemonsong, and who organizes Daemonsong Productions. We'll have a lot to go over, in terms of business things, ideas, plans, etc. And I think we'll have fun.

I just started watching Tenchi the Movie 2: Daughter of Darkness. It's not the pure poetry that the first movie was; more of a good episode of the series. Ah well.

I also finished Joe Haldeman's The Forever War (at 2 a.m.; it's been a long time since I last did that), an interesting look at war when Einsteinian physics come into play. In an interstellar war, even travelling with the advantage of hypergates means you don't come back for decades, maybe centuries, even though you only age a few months. It's a good book; it's not the deep classic many have said it is, but it's worth reading, overall. I also updated the library to include my review. I'm also working on Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons, and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

I haven't forgotten you. It's just that nothing really exciting has happened.

Well, OK, a few little things have come up. Daemonsong Productions is now up -- it's a producer of original content on the web. Basically, if you have an idea for some kind of written show for the web, Daemonsong Productions will put everything together for you: web space, site design, banner ads, etc. Pretty cool.

I've also been going through a bit of an organizational crisis. I have a lot of projects on back burners, and I think I've decided to write up a list of what I'm working on, and officially drop all but one or two. Then do those. Not sure if I'll be able to do it, though. In any event, if I get enough courage to do it, I should start actually getting things done, heh.

The Microsoft anti-trust trial is continuing apace, and MS is doing as poorly as usual. It really ticks me off, too; every person MS has put on the stand has made moronic statements, or expressed moronic viewpoints, that have done nothing but stir up people's ire. What do they PAY these people for? I'm not saying they should hide evidence, just that this is extraordinarily unprofessional behavior for the employees of a major corporation. It's like MS is trying to wreck their public image.

Another sentence on the incremental story. I've gotta admit, it's kinda fun. Not as easy as I originally thought, either; I can't go back and revise later. Each sentence has to be right before I can go on.

According to a Reuters story, half of all U.S. homes have computers now. Wow.

I found a cool website for the new Wing Commander movie. Just about everyone's been re-cast, but it looks like a great bunch of people. I'm actually really looking forward to this one. The official website, www.wcmovie.com, sadly isn't set up yet.

The Dragon Naturally Speaking people have come out with a unique new facet of their technology: software that performs voice-recognition on *recordings*. Think of it as a web search engine, for audio clips. Type "I have a dream", and get back a list of all sound clips in your database that contain that phrase. This could suddenly make audio and video storage and retrieval much more effective.

Papyrus is going nicely; I've got half a dozen submissions already. Looks like this baby's going to fly, though granted it's not even out of the hangar yet.

I've finally started on the incremental story. At least one new sentence a day. Hope you all enjoy it.

Nothing else particularly newsworthy. Have a great day, folks!

Sorry for not writing lately -- there really hasn't been much going on. Except for one big thing.

I've put out a call for submissions to Papyrus, my new online SF/F magazine. I've already garnered one submission and several requests for more info, so it looks like this baby is going to fly.

I also have an idea for this one-sentence-per-day story; I'll hopefully flesh it out over the next day or so, and start a'posting.

The LucasArts website now has a complete spread on their upcoming game, X-Wing Alliance. It's their much-anticipated final game in their Star Wars space combat simulator trilogy; it will finally allow players to fly the Millenium Falcon. Looks like another cool one.

Sierra software has just recalled every copy if its NFL Football Pro '99 game, saying that it wasn't really ready for release. An impressive move, and one that I hope the comany will stick with. It has a history of releasing software before it's ready, and I'd love to see it commit to waiting.

On the other hand, gamers do have a tendency to demand that games be released yesterday, so perhaps it's not completely Sierra's fault. Heck, they've released some great games over the years.

I notice over on Brennen's Homepage that he's trying to think of more to do with his site. I've been having similar thoughts (no big surprise there), and have decided on something.

Carrie O'Kaye and Clay Boutilier are in the process of writing a manga-style comic book, and they're publishing each page of Aphasia on the web as they're drawn. They do approximately one page a week, though they're behind about a month at the moment. It's a beautiful comic book (GRAPHIC NOVEL!), well worth reading. In any event, I've been thinking about writing a story, one sentence (or more) per day. No matter whether it's good or bad, just something interesting, and one that will hopefully make this site a little more dynamic. I'll start thinking up a decent premise, and hopefully post something in a week or so. Thoughts?.

Speaking of online comics, I found a nice one in ArcMage, a modern tale of a journalist searching for "Real Magic." Straight-out good (IMHO, of course).

Not much happening lately -- I didn't get much done last night on anything, particularly as I watched Dilbert at 8:00 and that pretty much turned things around.

Work is still somewhat intense. Can't complain, though; at least I'm not bored out of my mind.

The new series by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, Crusade, has evidently been dropped by their channel, TNT. What's particularly grating is that TNT demanded a number of modifications to the program, including new shows, a new order for episode airings in the first season, new costumes, and so forth. The producers of Crusade have said that they don't expect to have any problems finding a new channel. I've already e-mailed the Sci-Fi Channel at program@scifi.com to encourage them to pick up Crusade if the possibly can. This looks to be an excellent series.

Sorry for no updates over the weekend.

While chatting with some friends online on Saturday, we were talking about the RTS design I've worked up, and it was suggested that I start with a text-based version. If I really believe my game is that much fun, making it text-only would be quite the test. I think I'm going to do it, too. Check back here for more updates.

I just stumbled across a site called Golgotha Forever, an RTS that's being developed for multiple platforms. Looks interesting, though the site isn't very good at overviews. Hard to tell exactly what the game is, how it'll work, and so forth.

Yes, I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, with some friends. Sadly, I had to skip the Trivia Blitz; the invitation came up rather suddenly.

I'm suddenly wondering what it would be like to experience an online Super Bowl party, where all the participants are internet chatting as they watch the game. I imagine it would be best when the computer is right next to the TV, so one doesn't have to turn around to see the picture, or go into another room. Still, it could be a lot of fun, particularly if you had a good organizer who could do trivia, little giveaways, that sort of thing. Of course, maybe this is just my massive geekiness showing through.

I also see that Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) is trying to beat back strong encryption laws (the ones that say that non-trivial encryption can't go out of the U.S. unless the government has a way to crack it). There's evidently been enough support over the past year or so that he thinks he might be able to do it this time (he's tried twice so far). This according to a news story on Yahoo! Daily News.

First, read this Star Trek soliloquy (sp?). Brilliant.

Well, what's up? A certain giant software company has recently taken to taking pot-shots at sites that parody it, notably User Friendly: The Comic Strip and BeDope. What's sad is, they know they don't have a leg to stand on, this being parody and all, besides the fact that they're attacking pretty high-profile sites that won't back down without a bit of a fight. Seems silly.

I'm moving forward with learning how to program the BeOS; it's not so complicated as I first saw it. The lack of proper explanations makes things difficult, though; it's so hard to understand concepts when you have to learn them through induction.

I've also done a solid update on my personal webpage here; links updated, personal info changed, etc.

I hear Orson Scott Card is thinking of casting Jake Lloyd as Ender in his upcoming adaptation of Ender's Game. In a way, this may not be a great idea: audiences will identify so strongly with Jake as Anakin (look at what happened to Mark Hammill). OTOH, Harrison Ford was able to break out of that mold, and actually so was Hammill after playing in the Wing Commander series. All Jake needs is a good role in another popular film, and heck him just being in another film will make it popular.

The SFC got in its ratings awhile back; for the last fiscal quarter of 1998, the SFC had a higher concentration of 18-49 year olds than any of the six major networks. Impressive.

I've been thinking lately about creating a really good word processor, after re-reading Robert J. Sawyer's article on WordStar. The way I currently see it, you need a word processor that's:

• Extensible -- users don't want to have to repay for a new version. Let them download a module that gives them the extra functionality they want.
• Keyboard-intensive -- don't make users use the mouse if they don't want to. This is a word processor, after all; users are using the keyboard or else they aren't getting much done.
• More intelligent with finger-mappings -- one of Sawyer's favorite features in WordStar is the fact that often-used commands are mapped to stronger fingers, namely keys used by the middle and index finger.
• Capable of rapid movement and cuts-and-pastes -- think about using a document. You can shuffle back and forth between pages quickly, add in text wherever you want to, add comments to the margins, etc. Why isn't this sort of rapid movement easy in word processors?

Ish, been gone for quite awhile. But honestly, I haven't had much of interest go on lately.

I finally got the BeOS machine on the net, and I got one of those switcher things, so with a flick of a button I can use the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse for both that and my regular Win98 machine. Though I have to admit, I'm using BeOS more and more as time goes on....In any event, the switcher is a useful little tool. It's about as convenient as physically rolling the chair between systems, and it's a lot cheaper than maintaining all that equipment (plus you can use the best equipment on both machines, so to speak).

Well, I ran across a very interesting website the other day: http://www.miningco.com/. It's somewhat like Yahoo!, except that every category has an identified (human) guide to pick and choose the links there. Even better, every guide puts up articles within their category, about the state of that hobby/industry/whatever, techniques for improving oneself within that category, and so forth. Wonderful informational resource. My only complaint is how busy the pages themselves are; too many buttons and banners and such for my tastes.

I haven't forgotten you, really. Just haven't been inspired lately, and Papyrus has been taking up a lot of my time over the past few days.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is being threatened with a second death; the Sci-Fi Channel has decided not to buy any more episodes after the current season 10 is over. Unfortunately, the fans are screaming and yelling as though the Pope had just been murdered, which is only fostering a poorer impression of MST3K.

The SFC also failed to get the B5 spinoff Crusade, though I'm glad to see it wasn't for lack of trying. According to JMS (the series' creator), the SFC people crunched numbers for two solid weeks, but they had already budgeted all their money and just couldn't come up with the significant capital they'd need for Crusade. At least they recognized what they had (and were reportedly desperate for it), and tried.

Nothing to report. Been very busy lately, and I'm honestly rather burned out.

I'm actually a bit depressed, which is unusual for me. I mean, I'm a pretty happy, contented guy generally. But I have just got *so* much to do, and Papyrus has been breathing down my neck...*sigh*.

Well, I did some training with Molly on Sunday, and it didn't quite work out as I'd hoped. I just don't have the experience and the patience to do something like that, it seems, and particularly not outside, where Molly can get distracted so easily. I've decided to hold off on flying disc training until I can handle it better. Ah well, maybe as time goes on.

I understand there's a major witch-hunt of geeks as a result of the Colorado High School tragedy. I don't even want to comment on it, it makes me so angry. Suffice it to say: "geeks" really are socially ostracized. Perhaps if teachers didn't look the other way when kids are teased and made fun of, and perhaps if this issue were actually addressed, we wouldn't have so many unhappy and depressed high schoolers out there.

I've got a new story up on Papyrus. Very cool setting; I wish more writers would work with non-standard settings. I'm getting kinda tired of pseudo-medieval worlds.

I definitely plan on spending some time with Molly tomorrow, on retrieving a flying disc. The competitions are amazing; check out this photo gallery for some shots of dogs in action.

Tonight, I hope to implement a very crude AI for my IRC bot's chess script. At the moment, only humans can play each other; I hope to add a computer opponent. Unfortunately, its strategy can be summed up as: Pick a random piece owned by the computer, and move it to a random valid spot. Hardly exciting, but I hear that that's actually a fairly challenging strategy to beat, in some situations. We'll see. :-)

There's actually quite a discussion over on Slashdot about illegal copies of movies available for download from universities and such. I find it interesting that people are actually willing to download and watch them; maybe computer-based movie watching is closer than we thought. It is true that universities tend to be on higher-bandwidth networks, but on the gripping hand, universities tend to have insanely slow networks.

I can't wait for the time when a person can put a full-length movie up on the 'net, and actually have it downloaded by large numbers of regular people. It could open up a whole new arena of film -- and just maybe one in which Hollywood doesn't call the shots.

Hmmm, what news to steal from Slashdot today? :-)

Seriously, work has been keeping me very busy lately. Which is fine, but it hasn't left me much time to do anything. Papyrus is a bit behind, too, a situation I will at least partly rectify tonight. *sigh*

I'm starting to do some more writing on my religious fantasy novel. I've got a good amount of notes, and in fact I'm trying a new system for writing: extreme design detail. I'm actually planning on writing an extremely detailed outline, almost down to the paragraph level, then I'll write the novel off of that. I think that'll work better for me than waffling around without a real idea of where I'm going. I'll post here how that goes.

And I do plan on spending some time this Sunday, training Molly to catch a flying disc reliably. :-) My Mom finally bought a 50-foot training lead, so I should be able to get some good work done with Molly.

Nothing to report.

I spent last night working on a chess script for one of my IRC bots. Seems to work nicely, except I haven't had a chance to test game-ending much. Still, now I can play chess with friends over IRC. Hmmm, I just thought about making a script that would display the board graphically. Not too hard, really.

The deer fencing seems to be holding up well. The dogs are happy, at least. :-) I'm also amazed at how hard it is to see the stuff; it's a tough black plastic netting, basically, which is held up by 4x4 posts and grey-green fiberglass rods (the latter blending into the forest background quite nicely). You can check out their website: Deerbusters. As you can see, it's not cheap. But for us, it actually lets us keep a sane garden; the deer eat absolutely everything.

Oh, and I'm not backing up the March entries, as there's little enough on this page as it is. *blush*

Well, I'm getting over my illness, but I've been busier than ever lately. My manager at Litton/PRC has just mandated 50-hour weeks for my group, besides the fact that I've started teaching another section of my VB class.

I also had fun this Saturday when I remembered that Sunday was the day the youth was going to take care of the church service, and I hadn't called anyone to remind them. I spent a panicky afternoon (on top of working 4 hours, and teaching all morning) calling people and trying to get it worked out. Fortunately, we all managed to make it, and the service pulled off much more smoothly than the last time we did it. Maybe everyone was particularly aware of things this time. :-)

I started spending some time on EverQuest recently; it's a very popular online RPG that actually manages to do a fairly generic online fantasy world right. And the more I play, the less generic it appears. I'm pretty impressed.

Yesterday was spent getting deer fencing up around our garden in the back. We still have some gaps in the ground to fill in, and a few other things to take care of, but it's nice to have it all up. It'll serve as a convenient place to let the dogs out, too.

I've also been thinking about the keyglove; I should at least sew a few more snaps onto it. I'll report more on this as time goes on.

And come to think of it, it's about time to start playing soccer with Molly (our Golden Retriever) again. We'll see how far we can go with her. :-)

Eeeeek! Sorry for not getting back to this. I've been sick over the past few days. More as I get back into the swing of things.

A new story is up on Papyrus.

Found a cute webpage the other day of Tolkien humor. Not only is the author obviously a lover of the series, he's fairly normal about his humor (very few obscure jokes). The casting call for the animated adaptation of Lord of the Rings, starring only established cartoon characters, is absolutely hilarious.

More Information: J.R.R. Tolkien

Lots of interesting things on /. today: a number of German ISP admins have declared AOL a rogue, and are discussing banning it. A scientist has made a breakthrough in warp bubble theory, showing how it's not only theoretically possible, but theoretically practical, in this paper. That stolen reel of Star Wars: Episode I has been returned.

And perhaps most amazing of all: CNN reports that a U.S. aviation company is testing a real life flying car. It lifts off like a Harrier jet (vertically), and has a top speed of, oh, around 600 mph. What blows me away is the price: it's being handcrafted for only $1 million. The car's inventor estimates that, with mass-production, it'd cost around $60,000. Heck, I'd buy one for that much. The only disadvantage seems to be the fact that you need a pilot's license to drive/fly it (though onboard computeres do most of the tough stuff; you just steer).

*sigh* I've been tired lately, and it caught up with me a bit last night. I pretty much lazed around in my bed all evening. Maybe I'll get some work done on it this weekend.

Not much going on elsewhere in my life. I'm currently shopping around for AWANA clubs in the area (I'd provide a link, but my web service is down so I can't find it). All the ones I've called so far require that you be a church member. If I keep striking out, I may have to call the Commander of one of these clubs and ask to be an exception. Seems like a rather silly requirement to me -- why should I have to be a member of their church to help out?

Nothing major happening. I'm planning to work on my book tonight, then get to bed early. Three-day weekend this weekend! Woohoo!

No updates lately -- I've been deperessed. I watched The Phantom Menace again Friday night, and I've been caught up in the story. I really feel for poor Anakin.

But, hopefully, no more waves of depression for me! It has re-awakened an old urge of mine: I used to be involved in a church club for 8-12 year olds. I've decided to get back involved in that, so hopefully I'll have more news to post on that end. It takes up one night per week during the school year, so it won't start until September anyway.

I did come across this interesting tidbit today: The Pump. They say that, based on descriptions of the Great Pyramid, it's actually quite easy to explain how it was built. It was a massive water pump, and the evidence really is quite striking. While a bit hard to read, the site's definitely worth looking through.

According to an ABC NEWS story, an entire 40-pound reel of The Phantom Menace was stolen from a Wisconsin theater over the weekend. I have to wonder exactly what they'll *do* with the thing; regulations for the film have been so tight that any violations should be plain as day (which, of course, was the point of the regulations). And Lucas has been very clear in saying that he'll prosecute to the fullest possible extent.

I've noticed that a lot of my updates here have to do with SF, so I'm temporarily putting all my SF news on a separate page, Cool SF. (Note: This page later went away.)

Tonight, I saw the new Star Wars movie, and I am a child again.

I am running down hallways, swinging a lightsaber. I am destroying starfighters in a mad space battle. I am making my way down an Imperial hall, firing a blaster at battle droids.

Even my room is different. I am seeing my world through a Star Wars-tinted glass.

I am 22 years old, and I am indebted to George Lucas for wiping ten years from my life. I am a delighted child once more.

Tonight, it starts. At one minute past midnight, Star Wars Episode I will start to flicker on screens around the country, and soon around the world. Roger Ebert has an excellent review (he gives it three and a half stars), in which he gets in a few subtle barbs at the other critics who've disdained the film. And watch the chronicles of two Star Wars nerds in RealAudio presentations of The Sci-Fi Channel's brilliant vignettes, Countdown to Episode I.

While we're at it, the SFC also has a brilliant piece of marketing: The Waiting Game, where you get to keep track of a virtual fan who's waiting in line for Star Wars tickets. Feed him and interact with him every day, and when the movie comes out, a few random folks with healthy, happy fans will get free Star Wars merchandise. Meanwhile, you have to muck around on their website, viewing ads and driving their hit count through the roof. Mon, 17 May 99 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

In case you'd like to try out that BeOS thing I'm always blathering about, go to http://gjeffrey.com/bevirtual/ and you'll get a browser-based demo of the operating system. Move windows around, activate menus, and in general see what BeOS looks like. You'll need at least version 3.0 of either of the two big browsers (haven't tried it on Opera yet).

Well, like I figured. No updates over the weekend, at lesat until now.

Just downloaded some of the TV ads / character bios off of starwars.com. They're really most impressive, and definitely worth seeing. They actually manage to be both trailer, and revelation of character.

Well, my friend Eric is coming down for the weekend this Saturday, so probably no updates for a few days. We hope to get work out better direction on Daemonsong and Papyrus, and decide what we're going to do on a few other projects. I'll have a complete report, don't you worry. ;-)

The Sci-Fi Channel has been showing a hilarious bunch of...well, basically, they're short-short-shorts, not really ads, about Episode I. If you can, it's worth turning on the station for a little while to see if you can catch one. I seriously hope they'll upload these things to their website.

And I'm pleased to see that the new X-Men movie seems to be casting up nicely. Ian McKellen has signed on as Magneto, an excellent choice IMO.

There's a serious effort started to create a BeOS-based emulator for Windows, Unix, etc. operating systems. This would mean running WordPerfect for Windows on BeOS. Very cool. Check out FreeMWare.

Joke spotted on Usenet, talking about the war on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine compared to the U.S. Yugoslavian one:

>Does anyone reckon that Starfleet does a briefing every day saying how well
>the war's going?


Only when they accidentally destroy the Klingon Embassy on Cardassia. :)


Woohoo! I'm off the 50-hour weeks, and my class ends this Saturday! I'll be back to normal in no time!

OTOH, I'm frustrated in that I've been trying to get Episode I tickets for the past two and a half hours, to no avail. All the phone lines and websites are busy/down. In a way I'm amused that nobody expected such a large response, while in another way...arg.

Update: 9:59 pm. Eastern

'Nuff said. :-)

I started work on a financial application for the BeOS last night, and it's coming along nicely. I have to admit: I'm enjoying figuring out exactly how everything hangs together, and I'm getting more and more impressed at the BeOS programming structure as I work with it. It's not that it's amazingly innovative; it's just so clean and straightforward, especially for a GUI language.

Anyway, I'll post more information as I progress on that.

There are also rumors that BeOS is getting into the set-top box / internet application arena. Several major BeOS supporters have been talking a lot about developing those sorts of systems, and in their recent IPO announcement, Be called the OS a media development and internet application operating system. Hmm. Will we see more of this?

I'm not sure if BeOS will do well in a set-top box, to be honest. I just can't see how a full OS can fit into a fridge or microwave application, programmer insistence on modularity notwithstanding.

Brennen has a very good perspective on Star Wars: Episode I, over on his diary. Oh, and a tip from a friend: the soundtrack contains major spoilers.

I see the seti@home project is building up momentum. It's basically a screensaver that downloads data from the computers at the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and performs some analyses on them. Who knows, you could be the one to discover that we're not alone. Only a Unix version is available at the moment, but a Windows version should be out in time for Episode I (they're also working on a BeOS version, surprisingly enough, but it's reportedly quite buggy).

Well, after a 14-hour day at the office yesterday, I was back today for 10 hours. This new schedule really kinda sucks.

I finally managed to update Papyrus with the new interview and editorial. Only five days late. Yuck. And I still have to pay for some of this stuff.

Erg, long day at the office. Don't ask. Nothing really to report.

Episode I is coming. It is near. Soon, it will be upon us.

Does anyone else find it humorous why popular media (and others) reporting on the Episode I frenzy find it so hard to comprehend? They're labelling all the rabid fans as...well, rabid fans. But why do people have a hard time understanding this? Movies are true experiences. The first three Star Wars movies were incredibly well-done movies (most people would agree). The prospect of another experience, this time using new technologies (and this time over two hours long), is a thing devoutly to be wish'd, to borrow Shakespeare.

I'm also curious as to why I've heard it called the "hugely over-hyped Episode I." Has somebody been seeing more commercials than I have? I don't recall a huge amount of hype. A lot of fan reaction and media attention, but not much hype.

Papyrus remains terribly behind. I hope to get the site updated tonight, and submissions caught up by the end of the week. I've already had a few additions to the announcement list, which is awfully flattering.

Ugh. That little sickness Saturday morning blossomed into a full-blown illness come noon. Rather than share the ugly details, suffice it to say that thanks to complete bedrest over the entire weekend (thus delaying the May issue of Papyrus even further), I'm pretty much back to normal. Work continues pretty well, though this schedule is starting to wear thin. With the market being the way it is, I just don't need to put up with this sort of thing. It's not so bad ATM, but should any more stresses come down the pike, I think I'll walk into my boss' office and say my farewells.

Just got in my state taxes...whew! Today was the deadline.

I'm feeling rather sick at the moment, so updates may be infrequent for awhile. Unless I get some more books read, which I'd *love* to do, but...Papyrus needs updating, I need to do some research for my VB class, and of course work takes chunks out of the days. I don't think I'll be going in to work today, as I usually do under our new schedule.

I hear that the actress who plays Lila on Earth: Final Conflict will be temporarily replaced (as she's gotten pregnant). I hope this doesn't spell more upsets for the show, which has been through enough as it is. Still, they have a history of being able to take cast changes well, particularly in the amazing "death" of the original star.

The crisis at work has passed, pretty much, so I'm back to a normal work schedule. I'm hoping to skip out early today and take care of a certain lost check book. :-/

Ooooh, incidentally, I set up a very cool piece of software called Fictional Daemon that acts as a telnet/FTP server on my home machine. This lets me telnet in to my machine at home and browse the files there. Then I can FTP files back and forth. Lots of fun, though I have to make note of my IP address every time I leave the computer. I'll see how useful it is.

I finished writing an article called Six Mistakes Short Story Writers Make, based on my experiences as Papyrus' editor. I sent off an e-mail query to Writer's Digest and will hopefully be submitting it there. Failing that, there are a few other similar publications I can try.

Basically, the article covers the major blunders I most often see in the fiction submitted to me. It's amazing how often these sorts of mistakes are made: completely bland protagonists, plots that take forever to start, plots that never go anywhere, stilted prose, and stories that don't fit my guidelines. There really is a lot to juggle in short story writing.

Well, I'm back on my feet, pretty much. I was knocked out for the whole weekend, though, pretty much.

What sort of excitement to report? Well, I was having a fun time last week trying to contact all of the youth at church (thankfully, there's only about half a dozen). We try to do a service where the youth run the entire service every so often, but I couldn't get in touch with anyone. It turned out OK; we were having a special time afterwards to honor a couple in the church (it was their 65th wedding anniversary), so the service ran short, so I just worked out a very short service with the regular people to do music and such.

The latest story at Papyrus was two days late; I forgot to update it on Friday. No screams from readers, though, so I think I didn't hurt anything particularly.

We're going out to dinner tonight, so I won't be able to do much tonight. I'm not sure whether I should write, or work on Papyrus business. Hmmm.

The flu fought back. I've been in bed for the past few days. Nothing to report.

I've been fighting off the flu for the past few days, thus no updates in that time. Not much to report on, as I've been laying abed evenings. Work's going well; I did some code revamping, resulting in a much cleaner product.

Ever have one of those weekends where everything looks free and available for use, then is suddenly filled up with things to do at the last moment? I was literally busy all day Saturday, then spent most of Sunday out (Father's Day, and all that). Come Sunday night, I was too tired to be able to do anything really useful.

So, I watched TNT's original movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. It focuses on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as they began their empires. Actually, it spends a lot more time on Jobs, and in particular on how much of a jerk Jobs was, evidently. Interesting to watch; according to the film, Jobs worked up a very cultish atmosphere at Apple. Quite frightening to see.

And Bill Gates was a complete dweeb. An incredibly brilliant dweeb, but a dweeb nonetheless. Fun to watch; particularly look out for the "computer virus at the airport" scene.

It was also odd to see how similar Gates was to the Bryce (sp?) character on Max Headroom, down to the hand motions. I don't think it was the same actor (if it was, he's changed considerably). And if you ever do get a chance to see Max Headroom, do so. It's quite a bit more impressive than you might imagine.

Oh, and check out the proposed 1988 Max Headroom advertising campaign while you're at maxheadroom.com. It is frighteningly like The Space Merchants (you haven't read that yet? Go do so! Go on!).

In other news, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is no-holds-barred excellent. Wow. I sincerely hope this becomes a classic.

I got BeOS R4.5 installed. Some nice changes, and I'm itching to get my network up between my Win and BeOS machine. This will also let me print across the network. Sweet.

I hear Anna Paquin (photo) has been signed on as Rogue in the upcoming X-Men movie. She looks like she could really do it right. Man, some great choices thus far: Patrick Stewart for Professor Xavier, Sir Ian McKellen for Magneto, and maybe Mel Gibson as Wolverine (Mad Max, anyone?).

#46 out of 136 and climbing on Team BeOS at SETI@home.

D'oh! I found out last night that I forgot to register my copy of BeOS, and unless I did so, I wouldn't be getting 4.5. Ah well, I registered, so hopefully my CD should be arriving in fairly short order.

I was working late last night, so I didn't get much done in anything. I've worked out a few features of my BeOS application, so hopefully I should have a fairly useful version done by the end of the weekend! Screenshots, etc. will be posted here (tip for screen captures in BeOS: hit PrintScreen. A file called Screen1.tga will be put in your home directory. Hit PrintScreen again, and get Screen2.tga [and so forth]. Then just load it up in ArtPaint, convert it to .jpg, and away you go).

Are you goint to see The Phantom Menace tomorrow? The fans are banding together for a Secondy Opening Day, which they plan to make as big as (or bigger than) the first. It's tomorrow. Be there. I will be.

Phew! Got a lot done last night. Papyrus is now back on-track, and I did some more BeOS programming. It's coming along.

I caught a very good movie the other day: Mr. Jealousy, about a guy who's so jealous about his girlfriend's past boyfriends that he not only follows one of them, he also joins his psychotherapy group. As someone else. Great romantic comedy that's Shakespearean in its twists, turns, misunderstandings, and revelations.

I have to admit: I love this sort of movie; one of those little films that nobody's ever heard of. Indy films have that ability to surprise you by being witty and funny and just plain good.

I'm impressed. Be, Inc. is sending a free upgrade CD to every single registered user of BeOS R4. Automatically. Very Cool.

I may be going to St. Louis on business in the next day or two, so diary updates might get screwy in the short term. And I won't have any time to do more BeOS development! :-(

I found some very nice apps for BeOS the other day: ArtPaint, a BeOS equivalent of PhotoShop that doesn't have quite as many features, but still does more than I could ever comprehend. AbiWord is a new word processor that has potential (it's in pre-pre-pre-release mode ATM). And there's a port of POV-Ray, a 3D raytracer. All available on BeWare.

And I'm now #61 (or thereabouts) out of 111 in Team BeOS at the SETI@home project.

Got a nice amount of sleep last night, so you all can stop sending flowers and condolence cards.

Programming for the BeOS is frustrating. :-) I don't have enough experience with GUI programming, so writing decent apps is not as easy as I'd ideally like. Which is normal for any programming language, of course. But still, arg.

I've been a bit depressed about Papyrus lately -- it's a lot of work, really. But I'm going to spend a few hours at it tonight, and should get properly caught-up with everything.

Been reading bits of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. He's an amazing writer, no question. I don't know how he can write in such a fragmented style, and make it so engaging. Besides the fact that he can make basic lectures fascinating to read, and just plain enjoyable.

Note to self: Get more than 3.5 hours of sleep at night.

I'm having loads of fun with BeOS development (and no, I'm not being sarcastic). My Finance application is getting sorted out, and I think I can make a rather nice program out of it. The idea is to make a polite, flexible financial application that lets people keep track of accounts easily and automatically (checking accounts, savings accounts, bills). It will also focus on projecting your finances into the future, with budgets and projected spending.

I've been thinking about "polite" software recently. Basically, when a user says s/he wants "user-friendly" software, what s/he really wants is software as polite and easy-to-use as a concierge at a hotel. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

Yesterday went swimmingly; we had a great time at Gunston Hall, then re-watched some of our videos from England, and sorta goofed off for a lot of the day. Today I'll be at my neice's 3rd birthday party most of the day.

Found out some interesting bits about George Mason: he came into his inheritance at the age of 10 after his father died in a storm at sea. He always conducted business himself, never using hired help to balance the books or haggle with businessmen. He was highly conscious of rights issues, and in fact wouldn't sign the Constitution because it didn't have a Bill Of Rights when it was drafted. He deplored slavery, but didn't want it instantly abolished because of the number of people's lives it would ruin (both free and slave). I found a pretty good biography of Mason online (ironically, hosted in the Netherlands).

Work on the Wolfenstein 3D-esque game is moving apace. I've got texture mapping and background music working, and there are now objects scattered about which you can pick up and use (OK, the only things I've actually done are keys and locked doors, but the basic functionality is in place).

My problem with the Wolf3D game now is coming up with an interesting premise and game idea. I'm tired of FPS games, and this certainly won't stand up next to Quake3. I'm thinking of doing a Ghostbusters-esque game that emphasizes fun more than intensity. We Shall See. Let me know what you think.

Well, we'll be going to Gunston Hall, home of George Mason, today. Evidently it's gorgeous there this time of year, so we're going to stop by for an hour or two. Haven't been there in awhile. It's about an hour's drive away, so I'll bring a book, and my trusty PalmPilot.

I've come to love my Palm. It's been great for three things in particular:

1. Keeping lists at work. I have half dozen test SSNs, which we use for retrieving documents andt testing out the system. Rather than keep them on paper and take that everywhere, I just pull out my Palm.
2. Keeping notes at work. I now take notes at meetings, on the Palm, and I can now refer back to what happened in any meeting, quickly and easily. The key here, though, is to stay organized: as that list grows, it'll have to be organized well so I don't have to search forever to find something.
3. Books on the Palm. Any time I'm not doing anything in particular (even when just waiting for my computer to boot), I can read a few more paragraphs of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

And, of course, the games don't hurt. ;-) Somebody actually did a (simple) FPS for the Pilot; I'm going to have to download that before we leave today.

I wrote up a simple little raycaster for BeOS the other day, using Wolfenstein 3D-era technology. It's not particlarly fun to run around in, but it does work. I'll post it here. I'm also working on an actual (very simple) game derived from that, with texture mapping and sound and all that jazz.

Programming this has been a lot of fun, too -- I'd forgotten how enjoyable it is to be working on a programming project, particularly one that actually works!

Got a copy of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon yesterday, too. This looks like an excellent all-around novel. I'll leave it to SFSite to review, for now at least. ;-)

I love 12-hour work days. I love 'em so much, I'm going to go home early today to recover from the one I had yesterday. :-)

Nothing else to report, really; obviously, I didn't do much yesterday outside of work, other than checking my e-mails.

Ugh, Wizard.net's servers have been up and down all week, which is why I haven't been updating more frequently.

IAE, I ran out to CompUSA the other night for a new case (I couldn't remove the power supply from my BeOS system's case, so I needed a whole new case), and surprisingly enough got one for USD$40. I swapped everything into the new case, and it booted up like it had been assembled that way. I'm officially happy. :-)

I wrote a simple Wolfenstein 3D-style raycaster for the BeOS yesterday, partially just to see if I could. It worked remarkably well. I'll be posting it on comp.sys.be.help, and here on a website, and hopefully garnering some feedback.

I'm now #80 out of 102 members of Team BeOS at seti@home! And for no really good reason, it seems to take my BeOS machine a quarter of the time that it takes the Windows98 machine to process the same amount of seti@home data. And the BeOS machine is slower, and the actual program is supposed to be worse.

I've been using Postmaster as my primary e-mail client on BeOS, and if you've got Be, I'd recommend you try this out. It has everything I need (multiple account support, filters, easy attachment handling), and it's quite simply a joy to work with. That's right, I actively enjoy using this program.

Good news and bad news.

The good news is that I've finally got my Palm Pilot working, and I must say I'm impressed. With CSpotRun as my text viewer, I'm reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey with gusto. The games are all as good as I'd expect. And once the software is set-up, double-clicking on any Pilot program automatically schedules it for transfer to the Pilot. Well done.

The bad news is that my BeOS machine refuses to boot now. I have no real idea why; it just sits there after I hit the power switch. I'm afraid it's a motherboard problem. I'm going to try to install BeOS on my primary system now, and see how that works. I'm horribly frightened I'll blow away all my data, but then why do I make backups?

In other news, I didn't buy the switcher last night ($180!), so I've got my two systems separated again. It's actually not so bad, particularly now that one of them doesn't work. :-/

Don't know how long I'll be able to stay connected here -- my ISP's telnet connection has been extremely flaky of late.

Well, my Palm III did indeed come yesterday, and it's working fine. The main problem is that, in trying to free a COM port for the cradle (so I can transfer useful apps onto the Palm), I managed to fry my keyboard/mouse/monitor switcher (which I use so I can have the same monitor, mouse, and keyboard for both of my computers). With that dead, I can't do much. I managed to wire up my BeOS system so I could do a bit of programming on that, last night, but I'll have to either buy a new switcher tonight, or if that's too expensive, set up both of them as separate systems again.

In any event, I'm reserving my judgment of the Palm until I can get some interesting applications onto it. I also want to try reading a story or two.

I think I'm slowly getting the hang of how BeOS programming works. I've got a very simple game that I'm putting together; it's a conceptually straightforward sidescroller that should bring in quite a bit of interesting stuff (music, sound effects, threads, animation). I'm rather excited.

I've taken to running seti@home during the day while I'm at work. It's worked pretty well thus far, though it does take over the system something awful. I understand the Windows and Mac versions don't have this problem.

Sorry I didn't update yesterday -- Wizard.net's servers were up and down all day.

I downloaded the seti@home software for the BeOS yesterday. I was a bit perturbed at seeing it suck up system resources like it did, but perhaps that was a matter of its first run. [shrug] I was glad to see I could kill the process, then restart it later with no apparent ill effects.

I just got confirmation from my Mom that the Palm Pilot arrived at the house this morning. Woohoo!

I'm getting a PalmPilot III tomorrow. These things look awfully cool, and (even more impressively), quite useful. I got it off PriceWatch for a mere $200 including shipping. If it goes well, I'll think about getting one of those new Palm VII's. I'll post my thoughts here after I get it and use it.

Well, I've made some progress on that fantasy novel I've been working on. The detailed outline is, oh, about a third complete, though the last two-thirds will be the hard part.

Funny how we never mention the really big things.

I'm home from work today, so I can have the priviledge of getting six wisdom teeth removed. "Into each life a little rain must fall," and all that.

No word back yet from my Accountability testers. If I don't hear anything more by the end of the week, I'm going to have to do a little prodding. ;-)

Sorry for not updating yesterday; I spent all day at work (11 hours), to make up for the photo shoot on Friday. So there's really not much to report.

Except that Sir Ian McKellen has been cast as Gandalf, and Ian Holm (great English actor, and the main priest Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element) as Bilbo, in the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie. Great choices, IMO.

I'm also just about ready to release my big misting, "Web Inversion." "Mistings" are...err...humorous criticisms of really bad writing gathered from around the internet, from fanfics to spam to sword-and-sorcery fantasy tales. This has been a tough one for me; it's a long existentialist philosophical treatise, and there's just not a huge amount to make fun of. In any event, if you want to taste a misting or three, Web Site #9 is an archive of pretty much all of them (over 1,000).

Nothing much has happened yet today. Lessee what else has gone on lately.

Oh, I caught the film version of Starship Troopers a few days ago. I was somewhat surprised to find that it wasn't as bad as I thought; there was a furor when it came out regarding its similarities to the novel it's based on. It's certainly nothing like the book, but it's a decent action/adventure take on the story, I think. And there are some nice nods to the novel here and there; they certainly didn't completely abandon the plot. The acting was spotty (Denise Richards was, for some reason, conspicuously bad), and there were some huge plot holes (cf. Denise Richards' character running around and acting normally after being speared through her chest with much pain and agony). Overall, though, it was pretty good. I wouldn't mind watching it again (much like my reaction to Wing Commander).

My Mom's been reading books by Dr. Laura lately. She hits the nail on the head amazingly well, though IMHO her reactions (ITO what she does and how she treats people) tend to be a bit extreme. But I think that what she believes and espouses is right, and I applaud her for sticking up for them.

I've pretty much finished up changes to the site. I still need to figure out what else I should put on the site, but until then I'm satisfied.

I spent much of the evening last night doing various errands, and to reward myself I sat down with a few manga at the local Barnes & Noble. For the uninformed, manga is a style of Japanese comic book that's targetted at an adult audience -- don't be surprised to find nudity and rather gory violence. But the books are so well-done; the violence and such is always (well, almost always) an important part of the story. If you get a chance, read a few at a local bookstore. They're usually very good.

I also watched Cube, a critically-acclaimed low-budget Canadian SF/fantasy film by Vincenzo Natali, about a group of "regular folks" trapped in a series of cubical rooms. Some are safe, some are deadly, and they don't know if there's a way out. But they're gonna try. It's a very good little psychological thriller, which illustrates how people react. What makes us human, both good and bad.

Oh, and the "youth" at my church took care of the service again this morning. It went quite well, actually, and that was at least partially due to Erin's suggesting we all get together after the service last week to go over what we should do. We probably won't get a chance to do this again soon, as most of us will be out of town next month, but this was really quite enjoyable. I hope we can do it again, despite the fact that I dislike putting it together. It's a big responsibility, even for such a small church.

Had an interesting adventure yesterday. A photographer came in to take some photos of me for a magazine I'm doing an article for. So I thought, Sure, she'll come in, stand me in front of a wall, take a few shots, and that'll be it.

My first clue was the two hours she expected to take in setting up. My second was when she showed up with an assistant. But that wasn't enough. I looked at the four-foot-tall luggage cart packed to overflowing with camera equipment, and only then did I realize I was in for a real treat.

First, she suggested setting up her little portable studio in the cafeteria. OK, she was right in that it would be a nice location. Except for one little problem...I didn't have permission to do any of this. I'd assumed this would be a small operation. So I asked a nearby cafeteria drone if it would be OK. I must be fair; she was great, and took me in back to her boss. I exlained we were doing a little photo shoot, and would it be OK if we did it to one side in the cafeteria? He smirked at me (taking me for a photographer, I guess), then said it was fine with him "as long as Terry's OK with it." Having no clue who Terry was, I simply thanked him and left. We weren't really getting in anyone's way in any event.

Then they started setting up, and the photographer's assistant Jay put up lights. Three of them. But that was too much light, so of course Jay started turning off the overhead lights. Not switching them off; he was actually unplugging the lights from their sockets in the overhead compartments. Nobody seemed to be screaming at us, so I figured this was OK.

About this time, Terry showed up. Big, authoritarian guy. One of those born sergeants. Fortunately, he had no problems with what we were doing, as long as he knew what it was we were doing, and we weren't actually impeding anybody. Phew!

So the photographer (Catherine) and Jay finally got everything set up, and the real fun began. Two hours of holding various poses. Catherine gave me lots of compliments about being very photogenic. Hey, it kept me in a good mood.

Once she was satisfied she'd had enough pictures, she released me from the spell, and they started packing up. I had to remind Jay to plug the lights back in. But we weren't done; oh no. She wanted to do one more shoot. Noooo!

This one worked out much more nicely: there's a hallway on the second floor that opens up into a sort of a balcony above the foyer, so we set up there and spent about an hour shooting. At least it was brighter there.

This was on top of the going-away lunch we'd had for a coworker that day. I worked a total of two hours on Friday. Well, I'll work late next week.

In other news, I sent out a test version of Accountability this morning. I hope to get feedback on it over the next few days, and get a stable version out by next weekend (hopefully sooner). Keep your fingers crossed!

You may have noticed that I redesigned my home page, adding some backgrounds and such. Hopefully the changes look a bit better. I plan to add a bit more of my stuff to the site in the near future.

Accountability is getting testers for its first release. I've been playing around with the idea of using dates rather than version numbers for each release. Dates have the advantage of immediately telling you how old the software is; having version 2.0 doesn't tell me that that version was released three years ago. OTOH, version numbers explain exactly what's changed from version to version -- bug fix, minor revision, or major revision. Hmm.

It hit me the other day just how much money I'm pouring into Papyrus. $500 a month. That's $6,000 a year. Six thousand. For no reward. And it's fun and interesting and all, but it really is a lot of mental effort for very little reward. I haven't gotten a dime yet from my little venture.

And now I realized I never explained what was going on there. It's funny; you never put the really major things in a diary. IAE, I've asked my friend Eric to take over Papyrus. He's looking to get a sponsor and take it over in a month or two. The whole thing is a bit depressing, and saddens me, but I really think it's the best thing for me to do. I'm getting tired of this, and I haven't reached my goals. This way, Papyrus will continue.

No, I haven't gotten Quake II yet -- I don't know how much I'd play it. I never really got into Quake. I don't really play computer games much anymore, though I don't really know why. I guess my life is full enough right now.

I've spent some time browsing Elfwood recently. It's an archive of work by amateur fantasy artists, and a lot of it is extremely good. I recommend the Top 250 list. I love fantasy art, and have done a bit of sketching myself. Don't be surprised; I'm not that good. But maybe with some practice....

We had a good time with my relatives. I was, of course, working most of the time they were here, but we managed to hang out together for quite a bit. It's nice to have relatives that you can talk to and have fun with.

I'm starting to get worried about my Be, Inc. stock -- at the moment I'm in the hole $45 on it. Still, I'm confident it'll make an upturn in a few weeks, or even months; it's being mentioned everywhere, from U.S. News and World Report to the AST home page.

I think I'm going to have to visit the doctor. I only got an hour's sleep last night, and I was awake up until I actually fell into Slumber-Land. Completely awake. Ugh. I feel OK at work today, but this has got to stop.

On the plus side, I used some of my copious free time last night to finish off Accountability. I'm hoping to send out a request for testers today, so I can make sure there are no major bugs before putting it up for download.

I bought 50 shares in Be, Inc. today, through DLJdirect. And made $60. Then lost $50. ;-) Seriously, I've actually been checking back on the price constantly today, like if I keep a really close eye on it, it'll be sure to go up. And I know (intellectually) that it's best to wait a few weeks, even on stocks you'd be willing to trade rapidly, before even worrying about their value. But it's like a video game -- will I make money? Won't I? If I sold half, would it be worth it? Should I stick with what I've won, or go for Door Number 3? It really is addictive, and I've only been using it for a day!

Oh, and I came across this today on The Onion (it's been edited a bit):

Wow! A lot's happened lately.

First off, Be, Inc. (makers of that BeOS thing I keep takling about) has gone public. It started at $6 per share and closed up 34%. I'm getting shares as soon as my check goes through DLJdirect, which should be tomorrow.

The good folks at iD released Quake II for BeOS, which is a good thing. It's a free download, but all they give you are the executable files; you need to buy the rest of it at the store. Which I'm going to do...tomorrow. I'm downloading the BeOS bit now. ;-)

I've put together an extremely simple demo animation using Lost Marble's Moho, and tossed a link to it on the Other Space home page. I've got a screenshot, and you can download it as a 367KB .avi file. I put it together in, oh, just under an hour. Imagine being able to put together an animation that quickly and easily. Cool.

My relatives (aunt and cousin) came in on Sunday, so there's not really much to report in my life beyond that. We've gone out to dinner, chatted, etc. Today we went in to D.C. and walked around the harbor and Georgetown. They've renovated the harbor, and all of the area is very nice to walk around in. 'Twas a lot of fun.

Goofed off today, pretty much. Only real thing to report is that MST3K: The Movie is very good (not surprisingly). I love how they MISTed their own credits.

Anyway, we've got some relatives coming in for the next few days, so I probably won't be updating that often.

I exercised and did weights last night, and worked on a few bugs in Accountability. I was hoping to get selected items working, but I'm having trouble. We'll see.

I bought three DVD's tonight after an evening looking around the stores in the area: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, The Secret of NIMH (considered Don Bluth's best film), and Spartacus. I watched the former tonight, and boy I have to admit it was very good. Wish I could've seen it in theatres, but sadly it was only playing at one, very far away. Sigh.

I also ran up to Home Depot to look for lightsabre parts, but I'm not completely sold on making one. I wouldn't really have anyone to show it off to.

Here we go...here's Wolverine in the new X-Men film:

Yesterday's update didn't update; Wizard.net's servers have been up and down lately. Their telnet server, in particular. I keep complaining, and it keeps coming down (hmmmm...maybe e-mails to webmaster@wizard.net automatically reboot the telnet server!).

You're gonna love this: the UN has "recommended" that governments start taxing e-mail. The equivalent of one cent per hundred e-mails, basically. My thoughts? It would discourage spammers, but that's about the only good thing. I wouldn't mind paying one cent per hundred e-mails I send, but I would mind paying taxes of one cent per hundred e-mails I send. Because it's only gonna get worse, and it'll penalize companies for their standard e-mail traffic (I, a low peon at Litton/PRC, get at least a dozen e-mails every day). And you know how good the government is at putting money to good use....

And...hoo boy. A page explaining how to Build Your Own Lightsabre. And according to the author, it should only take a few hours and USD$30-$40. I am very tempted.

Well, I got a horrible night's sleep last night, and the night before too, so I'm not exactly running on all eight cylinders today. Forgive any slips of the fingers.

I started fiddling with BeOS R4.5's demo of Moho, a 2D animation application that exports to standard movie formats. Myself and a friend have been coming up with an idea for a humorous short piece I can animate and have fun with. I've got a great concept, so watch this page for further developments.

Ran across some very cool Palm stuff today: the Bumper, a $40 protective, water-resistant carrying case for your Palm (so you can take it with you jogging, biking, hiking; whatever), and smallTalk, a piece of software that's intended for travellers who need complex translations quickly. It handles several languages, and looks extremely useful. Unfortunately, it costs $80. Ouch.

Actually, I'm writing this ast 12:36 a.m. July 12th. Well, close enough. Insomnia has struck (the entire family, actually -- everbody's up).

I finally got my hands on Disney's The Black Cauldron the other day -- the last copy that Costco had. The Black Cauldron is a little-known Disney film that draws from a series of fantasy novels by Lloyd Alexander, and are highly recommended (particularly for the younger lot).

It's a pretty good film, despite the story itself sucking rocks. Any film adaptation has to cut-and-paste the original plot, but this was ridiculous; they found a long-forgotten, amazingly powerful magic sword down the hall from the dugeon cell the protagonist escaped from. And which he shouldn't have been in in the first place; isn't the Horned King completely ruthless? Why didn't he just kill Taran, who is of absolutely no value to him?

And Taran gives up the sword at the end? No, that sword was supposed to stay with him, as a reminder of all of his dreams, and the realities. The Fair Folk were all just way too cute, though they added one or two that didn't look like Santa's Elves rejects into the crowd scenes, just to show you how interesting they could have been.

Plus, the actual characters were much too Don Bluth-ish, particularly the three witches, who were supposed to be mystical (if slightly screwball) guardians of time, but turned into witlesss busibodies...oh, tanjit, I'm ranting. Oh well, not so bad as this guy complaining about Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. And boy, does that one sound like it needs complaining about.

Anyway, don't let me discourage you completely; as I said the film is pretty good. The animation itself is excellent, and the direction really impressive. Different emotional elements are handled with aplomb, particularly the gwythaints (dragon-like creatures). I'm not one to cry easily, but my eyes were brimming with tears at the emotional strings pulled at the end. This could have been a kick-butt, Secret of NIMH-level masterpiece, and is instead entertaining enough with flashes of brilliance. *sigh*

It's a pretty good film, despite the story itself sucking rocks. Any film adaptation has to cut-and-paste the original plot, but this was ridiculous; they found a long-forgotten, amazingly powerful magic sword down the hall from the dugeon cell the protagonist escaped from. And which he shouldn't have been in in the first place; isn't the Horned King completely ruthless? Why didn't he just kill Taran, who is of absolutely no value to him?

And Taran gives up the sword at the end? No, that sword was supposed to stay with him, as a reminder of all of his dreams, and the realities. The Fair Folk were all just way too cute, though they added one or two that didn't look like Santa's Elves rejects into the crowd scenes, just to show you how interesting they could have been.

Plus, the actual characters were much too Don Bluth-ish, particularly the three witches, who were supposed to be mystical (if slightly screwball) guardians of time, but turned into witlesss busibodies...oh, tanjit, I'm ranting. Oh well, not so bad as this guy complaining about Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. And boy, does that one sound like it needs complaining about.

Anyway, don't let me discourage you completely; as I said the film is pretty good. The animation itself is excellent, and the direction really impressive. Different emotional elements are handled with aplomb, particularly the gwythaints (dragon-like creatures). I'm not one to cry easily, but my eyes were brimming with tears at the emotional strings pulled at the end. This could have been a kick-butt, Secret of NIMH-level masterpiece, and is instead entertaining enough with flashes of brilliance. *sigh*

Accountability is coming on strong. Basic checking account functionality is there (adding a check, adding a deposit, having the total balance out properly), and before I came in to work this morning I got a window to auto-save its position between opening and closing the window. And you can restore it to defaults simply by deleting the file. I'm very pleased. All that's left is to display money properly (as it is it just displays the amount, without two decimal places at the end), and deleting a transaction after it's been added.

I just ran across a very interesting webpage that basically offers up a solution for paying an author for whatever works s/he authors, in a world of free and instantaneous copies (e.g. the internet). It suggests that the publisher (or author) set up a system whereby people can donate a certain amount of money to a fund, and if that fund hits a certain limit, the author will release more of his/her work. If the fund does not reach that limit by some date, all donations are refunded. There are other refinements, but it sounds like it's worth thinking about.

Well, so far the Lord of the Rings movie has only a few actors signed on. Sounds like this film is shaping up quite nicely.

Boy, I almost typed "1998" in that datestamp above. Frightening.

I got some TV in last night, between compilations of Accountability (my BeOS financial app). I finally caught an episode of Crusade, which was basically a below-par episode for an established series, but pretty good for their first season. It definitely has more of a swashbuckling, Star Trek: The Original Series feel than Babylon 5, which is undoubtedly refreshing. Some good old-fashioned space adventuring is an awful lot of fun.

I also caught the last half of an episode of Spawn, HBO's fantasy series. I have to admit -- I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Gritty, but gritty done right: gritty as a part of our lives, gritty as an actual world-view. The animation was not absolutely perfect, but then it's obvious that much more time is spent on the static images than the animation itself. Highly impressive series. At least movie-quality. Wow.

I'm trying to install Linux at home. Linux users insist that Linux is easy to install. Using fdisk to repartition your hard drive, then rebooting several times with various boot disks, and re-formatting your hard drive, is easy? Arg.

Work's going pretty well. I'm a bit tired of it, though. Not surprising, I suppose -- work's supposed to be, well, work. A friend suggested I stay at least a year; he says that a lot of technology companies will dump on the new guy to begin with, to see what happens, then dole out a big bonus when it comes time for the yearly review. So I think I'll stick around at least a little while longer, as I've only been with Litton/PRC for six months.

Wow. It is hot out there, no question. The heat index is 115 degrees Farenheit (sp?) today, according to the weather people. Welcome to Arrakis!

Well, I spent a total of 8 hours at work over the Independence Day weekend. It looks like I will get comp-time for it, though, so I can take a day off some other time. Maybe in a week or two.

The BeOS financial app is pretty close. So far, you can open up a checking account, write a check, and have that check saved back to the checking account screen. Pretty darn exciting. ;-) Next major functionality: saving and loading data.

Ugh. The main application I've been developing isn't working as expected, so I had to go in to work yesterday, and I'll have to go in today, too.

Work on that BeOS financial app continues. It's pretty close to working properly; now I just have to make it look right, save all of its data properly, etc. Pretty cool.

Well, work on my BeOS financial application is continuing apace -- I've got half of drag-and-drop implemented, and basically all of the main pieces in place. Maybe, in a few days, I'll be ready to release it.

I'm trying to think of a good way to release this application, in terms of making money. I'd love to be able to release it for free, and make money through some other aspect of the program. Pegasus, the e-mail client, is released for free, but you can buy full-scale manuals. I like that idea, but I'm afraid it would lead to skimpy on-line help. There's got to be some way to do this without resorting to shareware (which I don't mind, but I firmly believe there's a more elegant alternative to).

Oh, and a new story is on Papyurs. I'm getting tired of doing Papyrus, I must admit. It's costly and time-consuming.

Boy, that was exciting -- we had the power go out last night, right as Mom was preparing dinner. It stayed off for a couple of hours, too. We went out to Boston Market for dinner, and fortunately the power was back on by the time we returned.

I had to make some pretty major changes to one of my programs at work, which meant I stayed a bit late. It also means there's a potential for bugs, and that I might be called back in over the weekend to fix it (the customer wants to start using it Tuesday). Yuck.

American Independence Day is coming up. What are your plans? We'll be attending a lot of parties (unusual for us), and skipping out on doing fireworks for this year. We won't be able to follow the advice of The Simpsons' Abu: "Celebrate the independence of your country by blowing up a small part of it."

The Palm keyboard is very cool, though not hugely convenient. I can see it being perfect for a train ride, or a car ride with a platform to rest it on. It might be particularly useful at work, for taking notes during meetings and so forth. The keyboard's a little loud for that, but who knows....

Have you heard of GeoCities' new license agreement? It basically gives Geocities' owner, Yahoo!, complete rights to use any content uploaded to a GeoCities server. Legal, and causing a furor. I can see this killing off a lot of their business.

And I've moved all of my June diary entries to the archives.

AUGH. I just found out that I lost all of my August diary entries. Arg arg arg arg arg arg arg. This is very painful.

*sigh* That'll teach me not to trust myself. I went to a local Barnes & Noble last night to participate in a roundtable discussion of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Turns out it was scheduled for Monday night instead. I'd even written the correct date on my calendar. I just hadn't double-checked it. Arg.

Good to see that Brennen's homepage is back to normal. He reviews Ender's Shadow, and it looks good.

A couple of new pics on You Must Be Kidding Me. I've started putting larger photos on there so you can really see the detail.

I've updated yesterday's diary entry to explain what happened that day. Today, I'm at work, and feeling mostly better; I'm still kinda weak, and I cough occasionally, and my throat's kinda sore, but other than that, I'm fine. :-)

I spent Saturday morning watching cartoons, for once. I caught the premiere of Xyber 9 on FOX, which is a future-fantasy that combines traditional animation and CGI into a rather uneven but ultimately enjoyable show, plus the new Transformers show Beast Machines, the sequel to Beast Wars in which the heroes finally make it back to a strangely empty Cybertron (I hope they somehow manage to bring back Shockwave, who was one of the coolest characters from the original show). I also saw another episode of Digimon, which was predictable but quite enjoyable (and at least the heroes of the show are nicely animated; I'd be willing to hang up a cel of them on my wall, unlike Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, or many other anime shows).

Ugh, yet another late update. Sorry again; I had a relapse (current symptom rundown: dry cough, nausea, general unwell feeling).

I spent most of the day watching the directors' commentaries on the DVDs of Antz and Prince of Egypt; both were well worth listening to. In particular, the directors of Antz were entertaining to listen to, besides being extremly informative about changes in the scripts, things they'd made sure to emphasize in certain scenes, elements they'd had to fudge on, etc. It's enlightening to see how the directors look at the films they make.

Then, since Dad had never seen it, my parents and I sat down and watched The Prince of Egypt all the way through. What an amazing, powerful film. Those bits of paint and plastic act.

I had to leave just before Moses parted the Red Sea, so that I could go to our doctor's office. Of course, I hadn't been able to get an appointment for that day, so I had to go in for their "open door" hours from 5:00 to 7:00. I found out this really means that if you get there at 5:00, you'll see the doctor by 7:00. No joke -- I spent an hour and a half sitting in the waiting room, reading Entertainment Weekly (which had an excellent article on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer) and watching perky newspeople squeal about the latest proctology medicine on the nearby TV, before I even got inside to the office. Once I was seated, of course, it took another 20 minutes before the doctor could come in.

Fortunately, our doctor is a very friendly guy, so we chatted and he looked me over, and after visibly recoiling at the lump of mucus hanging down the back of my throat, explained that I have a cold with sinusitis. So now I'm on two medications (which only cost $60 [!]), and should be all better in a few days.

Arg, another late one. Sorry; I'm still sick in bed, and not much has happened. What can I say? I apologize from the bottom of my heart.

I do feel bad about not updating; I've certainly been well enough to do so. It just hasn't been at the forefront of my mind lately, what with Mom and Dad recovering and all that.

And, of course, watching TV all day. ;-)

Caught a bit of the new CGI Voltron today; it was alternately good and poor, I must admit. A shame. Anyway, I promise a much larger update soon.

Sorry about not updating yesterday; I caught a cold and spent the day watching TV. I'm back up to about 75% healty now, and I'm at work today. I'm also making progress, thanks to an idea I had when I woke up yesterday.

While watching TV, I did manage to see a few interesting things. Digimon is a Pokemon rip-off that has much better artwork, but looks obviously rushed to America (the voice work is occasionally horrible, and they don't even translate a lot of text in the show to English). I also caught several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, including the season premiere. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was rather poor; there were a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies. Ah well.

My Dad came home from knee surgery yesterday. In fact I had to drive him home, though that was easy enough. Amazingly, he should be able to walk and drive come Saturday.

I stumbled across a website called Space Future on Tuesday. It talks about civilian space travel, and explains that nothing is preventing us from building space hotels and such, other than initial cost. A space hotel would certainly pay for itself; it would just be initially expensive. It's a shame nobody thinks that it's viable, when the person who does eventually put the money forward stands to make very large sums from this.

Cool! I've now got a web-based interface to my diary, so I can update it wherever and whenever (provided I can get a web connection).

Not much else to report. My Dad's going in for knee surgery tomorrow. My Mom's health is improving, which is good.

I've added a new photo to You Must Be Kidding Me -- go at it!

Personal flying devices. I want one! Just wish they'd give an estimate as to the final cost (as much as they claim it'll be 'affordable,' I have to wonder).

Two more pictures on You Must Be Kidding Me. Keep at it!

There's a new poll on the sidebar. I briefly put up a poll about current movies, then switched it after hearing about Patrick Naughton being arrested. According last week's poll, a little over half of you evacuate a couple of days before a disaster is supposed to strike, and the rest don't evacuate at all.

Also, as a quick side note, I found that my counter script at the bottom of the page wasn't working right, due to permission problems on the counter file. Me bad. Fixed now.

(Boy, a lot of updates today.) I've also re-organized the library, and added The Princess Bride (with a mini-review) to the list of books I've read.

You Must Be Kidding Me is doing great! Keep commenting, folks!

Looks like I'm going to have to redesign a large chunk of Informant. I was originally going to keep a Settings window within an abstract Settings object, but now I think I'm going to have to keep both separate. It'll take time, but it's the only way to do it. *sigh*

I'm going out on a limb tonight. I was an AWANA leader for a number of years (AWANA is a Christian youth club), but haven't participated ever since leaving my old church. Now, tonight, I'll be going to an AWANA club at another church. I will be completely friendless. I don't even know what anyone looks like. Here goes nothing....

Update: 9:19 p.m.

I don't normally do updates like this, but it's enough new stuff thta it makes sense.

The AWANA meeting went well. I had a good time, though I was dismayed at the lack of emphasis on Bible memorization. Even so, it was a good start. I've got a few suggestions for the leaders. :-)

I've restructured Informant, but unfortunately the Settings window refuses to open. I'll have to do some more fiddling; I must have forgotten something simple.

Mom's doing better -- she's not recovering extremely quickly, but we're seeing definite improvement. She's started to eat normal food again, too. Now tomorrow I'll be feeding the dogs and taking them out in the morning, and my grandmother will be taking care of them during the day. It's a bit of a pain, but it could be a much larger inconvenience.

And it's neat to see that Brennen's proposal may go through after all. Cool! We need more classes (and students) like that.

My Dad's knee is getting worse. Looks like I'll be taking on more duties around the house as a result.

I'm working on the settings window for Informant (the BeOS newsreader) -- it turns out to be more complicated than I'd expected. Progress is being made, though.

I've also been thinking of starting a BeOS (print) magazine, cheaply-made. I don't think I'll do it, as I simply wouldn't have the time, but it's worth thinking about. Maybe I can suggest it to somebody.

James Marsden has been cast as Cyclops in the new X-Men movie. Evidently he's been babbling away about how cool it is. Which I like; it's nice to see an actor who absolutely enjoys the coolness of a role.

In other film news, there are reports that Disney will be making a Pearl Harbor film that they want to make "more expensive than Titanic." Excuse me, but I hate it already. The point is not to out-spend each other, people! I despise this whole idea that, if you make the movie more expensive or more explosive or more effects-laden, it will automatically be better than another film that's less expensive. Titanic was expensive because it had to be. There was no other way of telling that story than to make it expensive. Saying that you're making a movie just so you can spend money puts my teeth on edge.

OK, enough ranting. I started and finished The Princess Bride (the "good parts version") yesterday, and sure enough it's better than the film, and the film's a rare gem. The film is a retelling that is extremely faithful to the book (except for excising one or two bits that would have taken up a lot of screen time). Even so, the book is better, mainly because of those bits which would have stretched the film to two and a half hours. Highly recommended (hey, it's not often I read a book cover-to-cover in a day).

Tonight I hope to get working on Daemonsong Productions -- there are a number of advertising and general business details to take care of. DSP is a site dedicated to helping web-based fiction productions get off the ground...basically we take care of the business and monetary side of things, while the author(s) take care of the writing. Drop us a line if you're interested.

And hey, I got some fan mail today! Check it out:

I must be getting popular! Thanks for the feedback, J.

You Must Be Kidding Me is getting some great comments! I added two more pictures today, one featuring Microsoft chairman Bill Gates with a rather...um...interesting expression.

I'm home from work today. It looks like Hurricane Floyd won't be as bad as they predicated, at least in this area, but I'm playing it safe nonetheless. I brought some work ome with me, so I can at least claim that....

My Mom's back from surgery, which went well. She's in quite a bit of pain, and she hasn't regained her appetite, but those are the only troubles. She looks great, and it'll only get better from here.

Here's that screenshot I promised:

Huzzah! My newsreader (pretty much) works! Well, it can only view messages that are already on the system, but at least now the user can navigate through newsgroups, header lists, and messages. I'll upload a screenshot next time I get a chance.

And my Mom's going in for surgery today at 3:00. It's a gall bladder removal, and it's a standard operation, so she should have nothing to worry about. But she will (wouldn't you?). :-) The good news is that, after this operation, she'll be able to take care of herself again, eat normally, and in general get back to a normal life.

I got into a mini-argument with my friend Eric last night, about the relative cost of animated films vs. live-action ones. I hold that animated films tend to be cheaper than the live-action films that Hollywood puts out (not that they are always cheaper, just that they tend to be), and he insists that it's not the case. Finally I just dropped the conversation. I hate it when we argue like that. It's not like it was a big deal. Ah well.

I tried to do some sketching last night, to improve my meager skills. It was very depressing, mainly because I tried to do a fox furry head, and I have no idea how to draw that sort of thing. I really should concentrate on "normal" stuff until I can draw well enough to attempt more difficult stuff.

I'm enjoying reading Having Everything, a modern tale about a bunch of people who, through their own selfishness and outlook on life, sabotage themselves and others. There's a lot of swearing, and some kinky bits, but it's excellent writing and it contains tables' worth of food for thought.

And there's a new photo over on You Must Be Kidding Me. Start commenting, people!

I've got a new poll, relating to evacuation and government disaster warnings. Whee!

And, inspired by my little exercise yesterday, I've created a new section on the site: You Must Be Kidding Me, a page where you can instantly caption photos from the news. I've added a few new ones, plus several of yesterday's pics.

I worked out quite a bit of that newsreader yesterday -- I know how the settings will work, and how the network connection will work. Hopefully on Thursday I can do some more work on it. I found out that I'm not the only person working on one, so I'd better get it finished soon.

It's been a rather slow day. Not much happened yesterday, other than a bit of work in the paddock. I've been sketching out a few ideas for my BeOS newsreader.

And thus, I present to you the First Ever Brent P. Newhall News Photo Captioning...Thing. Enjoy.

(Indonesian President Habibie speaking about East Timor)
"I'll have an iced double cappuccino, please."


(Our President in a meeting about East Timor)
Should I have the tuna salad or the salami for lunch?


(Sara Jane Olsen, accused of blowing up police officers in 1975)
"I care this much."


(Showing off a computer model of projected Hurricane Floyd damage)
Their $13 million computer BSOD'ed again.


(Models applauding Rebecca Taylor's Spring 2000 collection)
Models applaud the new fashion of saran-wrap pants.


(From starbucks.com)
"Instead of flipping burgers, I can now make over 10,000 different kinds of coffee! It's great!"


(Rare John Coltrane album cover, a mere $50 while supplies last)
Zzzzzzzzzzz

What do you think?

Cool! You'll find my mug (it isn't my best pic, unfortunately), plus my opinions on BeOS, on page 132 of the October issue of PC World, which should be delivered to subscribers right about now.

Yesterday went quite well -- I got my shopping done, with enough ingredients to make dinner tonight. I've been in a baking mood lately, particularly after my Cornish Pasties came out so well. Tonight we'll be having Chicken Honey Mustard Pie, courtesy of Pie Recipe.com.

I was amazed to see Pokemon stuff everywhere. Not that that's a bad thing; it's just that everybody was selling something Pokemon-related.

One neat thing to see was at a cart selling anime-related merchandise in the middle of a shopping mall. Two women in their late 20's were poring over Pokemon trading cards, excitedly debating which ones they had and which ones they really wanted. Maybe Japanese animation really is becoming popular in America. Cool.

I've put together two window's worth of my newsreader, Informant. It's not much, but I know exactly what functionality to put in there. Here's what it looks like:

I'm planning to spend a good part of today doing errands -- I have a few birthday presents to pick up, plus some groceries to get, and I haven't bothered to get the battery in my watch replaced for months.

Following Brennen's suggestion, I've decided to suspend my work on a discussion board. It would have been fun to implement, but he's right -- I'd need more traffic on this site first. And I certainly have other things to work on.

Speaking of which, I've begun work on that newsreader, tentatively named "Informant". It's shaping up nicely (wish I could say the same for Accountability, which just plain refuses to compile).

But enough about me. Descent has been ported to BeOS, and Shogo: Mobile Armored Division is being ported. The Shogo engine is purportedly freely available for others to use in their games, so if Shogo gets ported well, it should put a very nice 3D engine in the hands of BeOS developers. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of that.

Ahhhh...finally free for four whole days!

I've decided to start work on a BeOS newsreader, one which is both attractive to look at, and reasonably full-featured. I'll post screenshots as I work on it.

As I researched on newsreaders, I came upon newsreaders.com, which provides information about and rates various Usenet news readers. They even have a Good Net-Keeping Seal Of Approval, which is only given to newsreaders that encourage good netiquette and posting practices. Interesting.

Don't have BeOS yet? Order a demo CD from BeDepot for a mere $10 (which includes shipping).

I hope everyone's Labor Day weekends went well.

I'm finally finished with my screen resolution changes at work. Just a few more things to fiddle with, then I can take some time off. And hopefully now I can do a more diary updates.

Regarding my text adventure game: I've been thinking of writing a few rooms and just posting that, adding to it over time. My original plan was to wait until I got a "critical mass" of a couple dozen rooms. Hmmm. Thoughts?

I'm also thinking of writing some discussion board software for this site, letting y'all voice your opinions on current events, polls, and such. Whaddya think? (I don't get any e-mail from you guys.)

Plans change rapidly when the power goes out.

I'm working again today. Fortunately I only have a few more things to do, then I'll come back in on Monday to do some testing.

Church this morning went well -- I sang The Old Rugged Cross and In The First Light (the latter being a song by Glad). I always get nervous before singing at church, even though we only had 50 or so people there. I figure I have a "good" voice; not excellent, but a little better than average. I got a few compliments, anyway, so I can't have done too poorly. :-)

FoxTrot has been running a hilarious series of strips about the iMac (or as they call it, the iWhack...I wonder if Bill Amend reads User Friendly?). Check 'em out.

Also note the new poll, regarding SF films.

Well, I spent 12 hours at work yesterday trying to finish up this screen resoltuion thing. Looks like I'll be working today and Monday to complete it, though the advantage is that I'll be saving up time to take later. I'm thinking of taking next Thursday and Friday off work.

As you may have noticed, I did go to see The Iron Giant on Thursday. It wasn't absolutely perfect for me, but it was extremely impressive nonetheless. I cried.

I also saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which was terrific -- I was the only one in the theater ('twas a 12:05 p.m. showing), and it was like going on your favorite roller coaster one last time before leaving the park. I cannot wait to get that film on DVD.

"I am not a gun."

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see this movie.

Ahhh, a fresh new month and a fresh new diary file.

Looks like I'm not going to be a deacon after all, at least not soon. The church was going to hold a meeting to elect deacons (my name being one of the ones suggested), but several people voiced their concerns about how the church isn't really following the constitution properly. The meeting's been cancelled until that whole mess is hashed out.

But nothing can keep me down -- thanks to my working 8 hours over the weekend, I'm taking tomorrow off work. I plan to spend the morning doing some light chores around the house that Mom hasn't had a chance to do (she's feeling better, BTW; not up to her regular routine after spending six weeks in bed, but at least she's not feeling nauseous [sp?] anymore), then spend the afternoon at the movies. Iron Giant (very cool retro website, BTW) and The Phantom Menace are still playing at a local movie theater, so I'll go to see them, and maybe see Mystery Men in the evening.

Work's gone well today -- we've fixed the major problems we've had with the resolution change and are moving forward, which is always a good thing. It'll still take a few days to wrap it up, though.

Be has released BeOS Release 4.5.2, a mere month after their previous bug fix (well, it's mainly a driver update). Impressive. There are rumors of a 4.6 release in the works, too, besides the release of R5 around the turn of the millenium.

I've moved all of my past diary entries to the archives.

I've been doing a fair amount of thinking about my text adventure world. I want to do a lot with it, and unfortunately I'm having trouble keeping it all in my mind. I'd love to find a good PalmPilot app that lets you create maps and such; I really should create a separate Memo category for world notes. PilotGear is so slow as to be unusable (literally; the server refuses to serve the entire page).

If all goes well, my About.com site should go live tomorrow. I spent last night writing up extra articles for it, faxing my contract, and e-mailing them a photo of me. Cool, huh?

I also received my Iron Giant DVD from Amazon.com yesterday, and I finally got my parents to watch it. I'm glad to report they loved it ("Not that there was any doubt" -- Saalon, when told of this). What a great film.

No real Informant work lately. I have been receiving some help on a few problems, though, so I should be able to implement them when I get a chance.

I finally won a Sun Type 4 keyboard and mouse on eBay. Hopefully I'll be able to hook up those Sun workstations I bought and get at least one of 'em working. I'll post my progress here.

I'm thinking of joining a Be User Group (a.k.a. "BUG"). The NOVA BUG is relatively close to me, so I might just pop in at one of their meetings.

Others were out of town over the holiday weekend, and couldn't update their websites as a result. I, on the other hand, have no excuse. :-/

I didn't really get much done on Informant; I've hit another one of those troughs in the development cycle. I'm getting help with a few things, though, so I should be able to get a few more things taken care of relatively quickly.

My parents spent a large chunk of the weekend putting up Christmas decorations. The house looks great; I'll have to upload a few snapshots.

I, on the other hand, spent a large chunk of the weekend talking with Saalon (writer of Daemonsong and CEO of Daemonsong Productions). We worked out a few goals for us to push towards in terms of getting popular, plus just chatted in general.

I finally got a CD I bought on eBay and had to wait several weeks for the guy to ship: Panime's Best of the Best. A collection of anime music, including one song that I consider my personal theme song. Coolness. I ripped that track and sent it off to Saalon for him to listen to. I'd upload it here except that that's sort of illegal.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May you truly be thankful for every great blessing in your life.

The holidy was excellent over here. The meal itself was excellent; everything tasted like a king's banquet. Well, everything except the rolls; for some reason, you could have used them to build a wall with. So we used 'em as dog biscuits.

Uuuuugh. I feel like Rice Krispies left in the bowl for an hour.

I stayed up waaaay too late last night. First it was talking to Saalon. Then it was talking to Brennen. Then it was working on Informant. I only got something like 3 or 4 hours of sleep, on top of shaving hours off of my sleep for the past week or so. Tonight, I plan to eat dinner, and go straight to bed.

On the plus side, Informant continues to improve. I've got it so that it's close to printing out messages properly (it's got a slight bug in reading the body of the message, which I can fix easily enough). It's very close to being functional, which is a frightening thought. Of course, then I'll have to work out all the little details like header sorting and dynamically-displaying fields and resizing windows and so forth and so on. Still, it's a good feeling.

In part of my talks with Saalon, he suggested an excellent pricing scheme: the first version will be cost USD $10 (a special deal for the first release), and all registered users can buy future releases at half-price. That means that registered users will get a good deal, but will also have to pay for further features. It also means that registered users won't have to pay full-price for a version far down the line, as is the situation with common "registered users only get minor updates free" methods.

Lots of cool stuff happening today, though.

There's a very cool Geek Gift Guide on BeDope. There are some things on there that I'd never heard of. Hmmm, a couple of more things to go onto my wish list.

Star Wars Episode I will be re-released this December for one week, and every cent will go to charity. Now that, I like.

Australian engineers are working on a functioning exoskeleton that works basically just like the one used by Sigourney Weaver in the movie Aliens, according to a story on SpaceDaily. NASA's also working on a full-scale human waldo, e.g. a robot that's the same size and shape of a human, controlled by a human operator simply by moving his/her body. The human makes a fist, and the robot makes a fist. It'll be used for extravehicular activities when it's inconvenient (or dangerous, or too slow) to send out an individual.

(The term "waldo" comes from a science fiction story by Robert A. Heinlein, for what it's worth.)

Eeeeeeeek! No updates in four days! My apologies.

Two major events: One, I've been accepted as the BeOS Guide at About.com. :-) Tonight I plan to fully update it with all of the appropriate links and content, and it'll hopefully go live in about a week and a half.

Two, the head of my project at work has recently decided to overhaul his leadership style, and get more actively involved in the project. He feels he's been more of a manager and less of a leader, and he has a point. He hosted a lunch with me and two of my co-workers on Friday, in which we all hashed out a number of ideas. He likes the idea of having an internal website with documentation and such, so I'm going to suggest a small dedicated server running BeOS. I can but hope. :-) There are a few other little initiatives that I can suggest, which I won't comment on here until I discuss them with him.

Informant is progressing steadily, though not as steadily as I would have liked. Part of the problem is keeping me dedicated to the project; I just get tired of it. I'm fairly close to having a beta-ish version, though. My current plan is to send out an imperfect, not-fully-implemented version to a small group of User Interface Testers, and then incorporate their ideas into a beta version which will go out to beta testers, and then take their bug reports and incorporate them into the first version. The first version will probably be minimally functional from a newsreader perspective, but all of the underlying important functionality will be there.

Stumbled across Microsith, a refreshingly non-vitriolic spoof of Microsoft, and its similarities to the Empire in a certain galaxy far, far away. Very well done (particularly the mock interview with Gates, and the annoying pop-up Darth Paperclip).

Last night was rather interesting -- I had planned to spend a lot of time on Informant, but the computing editor at About.com wanted to chat about my progress. Looks like I'll be accepted as their BeOS Guide! Cool beans.

The upshot is that I stayed up far too late into the night trying to solve a few Informant problems. I didn't fully resolve them, but I did make progress. It'll now download a list of newsgroups, except that because of limitations in variable size it dies out after a certain number of newsgroups. I'm going to have to do quite a bit of more work on that. Plus I tried to implement windows that will save their positions; unfortunately, for some reason, BeOS is returning back some VERY odd numbers regarding the actual size of the window. I'll have to get help on that.

All that, and two new photos on You Must Be Kidding Me! Life is good!

My sister called my Mom this morning and had a long chat. Everything seems pretty much back to normal, though my sister has taken the criticisms in the letter to heart, which in a way is a good thing.

I'm six verses into my memory packet. I want to have eight done by Sunday; I think I should make it. I hope. I wonder if I'll be self-disciplined enough to keep up with it over the coming weeks and months.

And BeOS stock seems to have stabilized at around $12 per share, double its opening price. I really need to pour cash into some stock market investments. Mark my words: the market will go down prior to Y2K, and will go up afterwards. Now's the time to invest (DLJdirect has no minimum account balance).

Well, that little blow-up of yesterday seems to have calmed down; my sister called me today at work, and was fine on the phone. She just wanted to apologize if she'd offended me (which she hadn't). We had a pretty normal conversation, and that was that. Hopefully this won't cause any major relationship problems.

My work on Informant has heated up, mainly because somebody else released a beta BeOS newsreader last night. I spent all evening working on Informant, and got a load of work done. At this point it's a fairly usable reader, though you can't post messages through it. Hopefully tomorrow night I can start on message posting functinality, plus the ability to download the complete list of newsgroups. Huzzah!

We had a big family to-do today; Dad sent off a letter to my sister that basically flamed her for the way she acted last week. Which wasn't a big deal; she hadn't been feeling well at all, and as a result was sort of distant from everybody. But she didn't tell us that, and so after agreeing that she had acted oddly, Dad sent off this letter. It really upset my sister. *sigh*

Wow. Singing this morning at church was fantastic. I got a lot of compliments from people. I guess the Lord does bless things that way.

I started out with a song for which I had a cassette tape accompaniment. When the time came, I bounded up to the little stage, pressed "Play" on the tape deck, and prepared to sing. The music began to play...at about ten decibels. So, with a grin, I stopped singing, stopped the tape, turned up the volume, and hit "Play." The music swelled, I began singing.

I was singing well, too -- my voice melodiously telling the story of Christ's birth, until the second verse, at which point I promptly forgot what to sing. *blush*

With an even bigger grin, I stopped the tape, rewound it to the beginning, and hit "Play" once more. With an off-handed comment that I'd have to try something else if this didn't work out, I began again, and this time the song went swimmingly. Breathing a thank-you prayer, I left the stage.

After the announcements and the offertory, it was time for my second song. This one was even less complicated; an a capella version of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. The song came off surprisingly well, though; my bass voice did the song justice, and I think the congregation appreciated being able to concentrate on the words. Cool!

After church, Mom and I went to a store called Mrs. McGregor's Garden in Alexandria. Mrs. McGregor's is a wonderful little garden and Small Shiny Objects store, named after the gardener in Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. Lots of neat stuff there, and in fact just enough stuff for a little project I've been wanting to try.

Awhile back, I saw an episode of a gardening show which explained how to make a small tabletop fountain. I described this in detail in a past diary update; basically it's a terracotta pot, with a terracotta dish atop it, with a terracotta pot upside-down on top of that. The dish is tiled with small pieces of plain old tile (just as though one were tiling a floor, only with much smaller pieces), except that a fancy design can be created. A hole is drilled in the center of the dish and the top pot. The bottom pot is filled with water, and a pump placed inside it. The pump hose is then pushed through the hole in the dish, and through the hole in the top pot. Turn it on, and water splashes down the sides of the upside-down top pot, into the dish, and then runs under the top pot and down into the bottom pot.

In any event, while at Mrs. McGregor's Garden, I bought the pots for that project. In fact, the cashier asked me what they were for, and was so impressed she started discussing it with the other cashiers working there. That gave me enough impetus to definitely want to get the fountain done. I'll probably put it at work on a bookshelf.

AWANA was a lot of fun, too; it was a standard night of club, which is nice for a change. I also grabbed a Bronze Memory Packet (60 verses to memorize, in sets of 4), which hopefully I can start memorizing as the days go by.

Well, Mom and Dad were out all day at a Boundaries seminar, which they enjoyed greatly. I spent the day basically watching TV and taking care of the dogs, plus doing a few little computer things. I was hoping to get some work done on Informant, but hopefully I can work on it tomorrow.

I also picked out a few songs to sing tomorrow at church. Earlier in the week, I was asked to do the music for this Sunday, so (like a fool) I agreed. I don't really have much; just a GLAD song that I sing fairly often, plus an a capella version of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. I hope it goes over well.

Got quite a bit done on Informant yesterday evening, which is a Good Thing. The Compose window now pops up correctly, with headers and all that all filled out. Now I get to figure out why the quoting code I downloaded from newsreaders.com is choking on a simple bool variable ("true undefined"?! Huh?).

I watched some of WWF Smackdown yesterday, since Arnold Swartzenegger was on. Unfortunately, they spent most of the show blathering on about other wrestlers and vendettas and the terrible things they do. Even worse, the wrestlers that they had on were not very good; they would take long pauses between each move, not even shifting their weight. It just really looked fake, and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for professional wrestling. Arnold was relegated to being an announcer, which wasn't that exciting -- I wanted to see him kick butt. A wasted opportunity IMO.

OK, I think I need to get this off my chest. Ahem.

An open letter to Microsoft:

Dear sirs,

What with the Department of Justice ruling last week, and the negative press Microsoft has been receiving lately, I would like to suggest that Microsoft re-align its strategies and aim for a new market. You certainly have the resources to do so, and this would open up a new set of opportunities for the company. As it stands, customers are becoming increasingly unimpressed with Microsoft as a company. This needs to be addressed, and I think it could be addressed in one fell swoop.

Microsoft should start selling hardware.

Microsoft mice and joysticks are considered among the best in the industry. High-quality hardware inspires loyalty, has less of a tendency to be error-prone, and is easily tested. Selling hardware puts all of your cards on the table; either your hardware performs better than the competition, or it doesn't. And, most importantly, Microsoft hardware does perform better.

Microsoft needs to re-make its image. Unfortuantely, that image has been eroding for years, and it looks like this trend will only get worse. If Microsoft were to move into a new market in which it has already established itself as a maker of quality products, it could salvage its integrity and return to its position as a respected technology firm.

To quote Dennis Miller, "Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."

Didn't get much of anything done today. I spent the night listening to Christmas carols and waiting for Saalon to come online, except he didn't and so I went to bed.

Exciting, huh?

To quote a recent Volkswagon ad: Well, that was interesting.

A recruiter at Litton/PRC caught me in the hall on the way out the door, carrying an armful of computer equipment (more on that later) and asked if I would help her recruit potential new hires at George Mason University. On Tuesday, today. I said I'd be happy to if I could get approval from my manager. After getting home, I called my manager and he was nice enough to let me go for the day. So after a quick call to the recruiters' celphone, I was ready to go.

Sadly, I didn't wake up to my alarm clock. It went off on time; I just didn't wake up until forty-five minutes later. *sigh* So I rushed around getting ready, fumbling with a tie for the first time in many moons (OK, I take that back -- I wear a tie to AWANA). I got there later than I would have liked, but my first potential hire wasn't scheduled until about the time I got there, so that worked out OK. Thus began the Day Of Interviewing.

It was enjoyable, but I wouldn't want to do it every day. Evaluating people for eight hours (with a one-hour lunch) is much more tiring than I expected. By the time I got home, I felt like the Dilbert character who had his life force sucked out of him so he turned into a limp dishrag.

As to why I was leaving my building with armloads of computer equipment on Monday, a guy in the building sent out an e-mail advertising that he was giving away computer stuff. I trudged up a flight of stairs to the 5th floor, followed the signs, and lo and behold there were two Sun workstations sitting there for the taking. No joke. CPU's, external hard drives, monitors, cables. After trying to lug one of the 80-pound monitors down to my truck, I grabbed a rolling chair and over several trips managed to get two Sun CPU's, two Sun monitors (one with a remote control!), three external Sun hard drive units, and one standard 14" monitor (to replace the one I own which has developed a bad case of the Plague). Coolness.

Did a bit of work on Informant, but not much. I hope to get BeTalking working tonight, then maybe I can work on Informant over the rest of the week and the weekend.

And I finally got my second Tenchi cel. I'll probably go and get it framed soon.

So Microsoft's a monopoly. I probably should look through the finding of fact over on the U.S. DOJ's website, since it seems a bit difficult to prove. Hmmm. But hey, Be's stock has more than doubled. I can't complain. ;-)

No updates over the weekend, for no particularly good reason. I did come down with some nausea on Sunday, if that helps at all.

Saturday morning was spent helping my Dad move firewood. Our next-door neighbor had a few trees taken down, and had said that we could take whatever we'd like from the remains. I spent some time learning how to split wood, which I am unfortunately pretty good at.

Sunday I awoke nauseous, and decided not to go to either church or AWANA. Instead I stayed home and did some reading and a bit of cartooning. My cartoon bodies kinda suck, but I'm keeping with it for now. Come to think of it, I should upload an example of my work for you all to laugh at.

I did manage to catch an episode of Futurama. 'Twas the one where evil aliens come to Earth and destroy things because they never got to see the end of the season finale of Ally McBeal (that site contains a big Shockwave animation; beware). Some great scenes, and a terrific shot-by-shot spoof of the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars.

That's about it. I got some work done on Informant, which is shaping up nicely. No major breakthroughs yet, but it's close to being functionally usable, which is a Good Thing.

Oh, and there's a new photo up on You Must Be Kidding Me. Cows have so much comedic potential.

Work is going reasoanbly well, getting a few things up to speed. I found a used coffee pot in a corner of our lab, and on a whim cleaned it up and set it to make some coffee. We'll see if anyone actually drinks/uses it.

Not much else going on in my life. I did a bit of work on Informant last night, plus a bit of cartooning. No major breakthroughs.

Marco Nellissen was nice enough to help me troubleshoot a problem I was having playing music in BeOS. I was only getting some of the tracks in .mod files, and I figured it was a problem with my BeOS configuration. Turns out one of the wires was loose on my speakers. *blush* Now I'm getting great sound, though.

I know, I know; this is a rather pathetic update. Can't think of anything to say.

Ugh. I haven't been sleeping well lately. I hate coming in to work when I don't even feel like checking my e-mail at home.

I learned that Marion Zimmer Bradley, famed author and editor, died September 25th. Her level-headed editing and wonderful writing will be treasured by many.

And does anyone know what happened to Elfwood's Most Popular Images page? I've been skimming around there recently (it's where I heard of MZB's passing), and that was a wonderfully useful page.

Cartooning is going reasonably well. My bodies are improving.

I didn't spend much time on it last night, though; I spent most of the evening out at the local craft store. I'm getting my Ryoko cel professionally framed, which is very cool. They're going to "float" it, which means the cel will be between two panes of glass, so that it will look like it's floating in space. Very cool. It's costing me $80 (!), but it'll look great and it'll last a long time.

I also bought another Tenchi cel, as below. A little pricier than the Ryoko cel ($22.50 plus shipping), but then this one is actually from Tenchi Muyo in Love, one of my favorite anime films of all time. I'm happy. :-)

Tenchi himself


Ryoko!

Well, things are pretty much back to normal on the diary front. I downloaded wget, a GNU tool that downloads web pages to a local machine, and wrote a little shell script to use that to back up my personal website. I'll set up a few more to back up other pages I have scattered around (e.g. the STUN Software sites, my CGI scripts, etc. etc.). Then I'll copy all of that to tape once a week.

I've got also got another new photo up on You Must Be Kidding Me, this time a shot of an arrested professional football player (like that narrows it down). Have fun with it!

The cartooning thing is going reasonably well. I practiced heads last night, which are pretty easy until you have to do non-standard things with them (e.g. profile and 3/4 shots). I also need to work more on hair. Even so, it's a lot of fun, and easy to practice for a few minutes.

Of the two cartooning books I bought yesterday, I was struck in particular by one of them. It was How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema, and what struck me was what it had to say about figures. One of Marvel's trademarks, which I didn't realize existed until they had explained it, is to over-dramatize the body's positioning, particularly for super-heroes. It's fine to draw a character tensed, ready for action, but if you over-extenuate the position that the character is in, the drama is heightened. It's subtle, but definitely has an impact on how you react to the drawings. Very interesting.

Well, that's that. My October diary entries are no more. Gone. Kaputskied. Mostly due to impatience in saving an update.

Well, hopefully this will teach me to back up more often and more definitely. I'll keep a closer eye on my backup procedures from now on.

Well, what new has happened? Daemonsong Productions may be allying with Super Thin to provide more web content exposure. Yesterday I read through the entire archives of the hilarious (and occasionally touching) comic strip Kevin & Kell. I bought two books on cartooning, which is a hobby I'm thinking of taking up (no, I'm not very good at the moment). I had a great time at my local AWANA club's Halloween night (I got some gumballs!). I haven't done much on Informant lately, partly due to my not feeling well lately, and partly due to a lot of stuff going on lately at home (relatives coming over, chores to do, errands to do, etc.).

I finally received the anime cel of Ryoko (note that there's a nude image of her on that page, but her naughty bits are covered) that I bought on eBay. I'm going to get it professionally framed, which will take some time -- the place I went to warned that it would take about two months (!). I'm going to try one other framing place that's a little farther out, and hopefully won't have as long of a wait. There are several interesting framing options: a special no-glare glass, and/or a special "double-hung" option which puts the cel between two panes of glass, making the cel look as though it's hanging out in space. Hmmmm.

Work is OK, but rather slow at the moment. I'm stuck in one of those situations where I've got to wait for other people to get back to me on a variety of things. Grrr.

And Princess Mononoke is coming to theaters. It's time to overcome your fear and ask your friends and family to go see this movie. This could very well be the movie that will prove to be a pivotal turning point for anime. Not only could anime become mainstream in the U.S., if America were to suddenly become a serious market for anime, we could see an explosion of new titles being made and released. But only if the anime fans get up and politely get as many people as they can to get into those theatres. AFAIK the movie has only been released on the West Coast so far. Keep your eyes peeled.

October entries missing due to operator idiocy.

Well, Christmas went well. Among other things, I got a Sony CD player/tape deck/radio for work, a bagel toaster for work (I eat a lot of bagels at work), various nice dress shirts for work, plus other paraphernalia (sp?). I'm truly grateful.

In other news, I've been trying to get NAT (Network Address Translation) working on my main BeOS machine. It would allow me to share one internet connection with all of the machines on my home LAN, but none of the other machines seem to be seeing it. I've posted a request for help to comp.sys.be.help, and will get some sort of useful response soon.

Sorry for not uploading yesterday; I had some problems with the web interface to this diary file, and was afraid it might blow away the diary by accident. I think I'll be OK, though.

...In fact, it just happened. Yuck. I hit "save" and my diary was annihilated. Good thing I'd copied it to the clipboard beforehand. Now I'm editing via telnet, which is much more stable. *sigh* Time to look at my web interface code again.

My BeMachine is on the network now, thanks to a higher-end PCI card. I FTP'ed all (OK, most) of my mail, sounds, etc. from my old BeOS machine, so now I'm pretty much running fully. Cool.

I found an excellent job at The Motley Fool that I'm thinking of applying for. It's right up my alley; a technical instructor of sorts. We'll see what happens there.

Ahhhh, bliss. My BeMachine arrived yesterday, ahead of schedule. A combined 900 Mhz of raw computing power. Unfortunately, after running out to buy a modem and Ethernet card, I'm having trouble connecting it to my home LAN -- I can ping the loopback interface (127.0.0.1), but the "network interface fails to initialize." I must be using the wrong driver. And SMC's website isn't responding (they make the network card, and I'm hoping beyond hope that they have BeOS drivers). Still and all, I've got most of my major applications installed, including Postmaster and SETI@home.

I've been reading some of The Motley Fool recently, and boy am I impressed. Not only do they make personal finance easy to understand (no small task), every article is enjoyable to read.

I just uploaded updates for the past few days. Sorry about that.

I checked the UPS website, and they don't actually process packages on Saturdays, so my BeMachine won't arrive until tomorrow. I can hardly wait!

Well, church went well this morning. Dad finally resigned as Sunday School teacher (effective after the last class he teaches, on January 2nd). He feels so good about being free of that responsibility. It's not so much that he despised doing it, it's that he finally feels free to leave the church. Which has been feeling remarkably dead -- nobody really does anything spiritual there. Sure, they'll debate theological points in Sunday School, and they'll tithe a bit to the church. But that's about it. And it's sad.

In any event, I had to cancel going to AWANA because we had a Christmas concert to go to. It was a collection of Ralph (prounced "rafe") Vaughan Williams music, and boy was it beautiful. They had two full-scale choirs plus a children's choir. Beautiful music.

I also finished wrapping all of my Christmas presents, which I'll send out via UPS tomorrow. I'm pleased, too...I managed to get good stuff for everybody on my list.

Had my weekly breakfast with Dad this morning, at IHOP. Pretty good food, though not much better than many other places in my area.

Afterwards Dad and I went shopping at a new local shopping mall. We both picked up several good gifts. We also ran into Mike Minter, the pastor of Reston Bible Church. He was a good friend of ours, until the church started getting...very weird. We had to leave as a result of the really terrible stuff we'd found out about the running of the church. But that's a long story for another time.

I also ran out later in the day and got the bulletins for the church printed. This week: pink paper, in celebration of Christmas.

While at Office Depot waiting for the bulletins to be printed, I picked up a copy of The Motley Fool Investment Guide ($10.40 at Amazon.com), which is an excellent collection of investment suggestions from the guys at The Motley Fool. No "get rich quick" schemes, either; their plans only come to fruition after decades of planning. But boy, do they come to fruition. They run the numbers and show how to turn $10,000 into about $7 million in 30 years, with about an hour's worth of work every three months. It is possible.

I also grabbed a copy of If I Knew Then What I Know Now ($10.40 at Amazon.com). CEO's and other sucessful people were asked "What do you wish you'd been told 25 years ago?", and their answers are collected in this book. A lot of excellent, and occasionally surprising, wisdom. My favorite thus far is "Open your mail at 4:30 p.m. every day." As the author explains, this way, you come in to work each day and have the day you planned to have. Then at the end of the day, open your mail and use it to plan the next day.

Well, we had our annual Christmas party at work. Much fun was had by all, particularly during the White Elephant gift exchange. I got a tin of chocolate-covered pretzels and butterscotch candies, which I cetainly can't complain about, considering that I gave out a basket of nuts.

I also made Caramel Apple Bars, thanks to a recipe from CookieRecipe.com. They came out excellent; the best dessert I've ever made. Delicious stuff, and amazingly easy to make.

YES! My BeMachine was shipped today! I should get it by Monday, at which point I'll squeal in glee all across these pages. :-)

Went to lunch at Maggiano's today, a local Italian family-style restaurant. A co-worker was getting married, so we treated her to lunch. Fortunately, we found a bug in the salad, so we got free coffee and two free desserts! Woohoo!

Wow, not even an update on Tuesday. Yikes.

I've added a new Networking section to my BeOS About.com site. I must admit that I'm rather proud of it, though it definitely needs an introduction page.

I've started designing a game for the BeOS Game Coding Competition. It'll be a bit like a top-down version of Privateer, only not nearly as pretty. :-) I plan to use simple unfilled 2D polygons to display each vehicle, except that each vehicle will be built out of distinct segments (engines, weapons, cargo containers, etc.), which should make the game interesting. The game will start just after your fleet is mostly destroyed by an unknown force, leaving your father dead and your ship the only survivor. The rest of the game will focus on you building up your cargo-hauling business while finding out who killed your father. I hope. :-)

Informant's chugging along. I've really got to test whether it can post to newsgroups.

I see that Charles Schultz is retiring at the beginning of the new year. Sad to see him go, though I certainly appreciate his decision. We'll miss you, Chuck.

I should just resign myself to not updating my page on the weekend. How embarrassing (sp?).

In any event. I spent Saturday Christmas shopping, and Sunday relaxing. Church went well, including my leading the congregation in a set of Christmas carols. AWANA was a lot of fun. I need to remind myself to double-check on getting some extra-special Pokemon stuff for the kids.

I also spent some time IRC chatting on #gamedev on AFTERnet. #gamedev is GameDev.net's official chat home, and it has a good group of people. I'm looking forward to having some interesting game design discussions there.

I re-ran across the MacQuarium plans today; it details how to turn a Mac into an aquarium (Aquaria by Jim is also a good resource). Very cool stuff. I'd love to do that to an old monitor one of these days. If one or the other of my Solaris monitors turns out to not work, I may very well do it.

Well, I did it. I ordered a dual-processor P3 with 128 MB of RAM from BeMachines today.

[poor imitation of Tim Allen grunting]

That's about all I can report. This is Brent Newhall, signing off.

Well, I've decided on the path that I'm going to take with Informant. I'm going to concentrate less on releasing it as soon as humanly possible, and more on increasing its featureset. It's OK that there are other newsreaders out there; Informant will be the most powerful (eventually). I'll just have to stay in the race longer than any of the others.

As a result, I've started to spend less time on Informant. I'm going to start writing and sketching and all that good stuff again, while still spending time on Informant. At least the pressure's off, so to speak.

In the meantime, I've come up with an interesting way to fix the bugs that I'm having particular trouble with. I'm going to sponsor a contest: I'll post the code somewhere, minus the important bits that actually talk to the news server, and invite people to download it and try to fix a particular bug. The first person who does so will win $20. I think it'll work nicely.

Not much to report. Last night's episode of Dilbert was cute (appropriately enough). I got a job offer from NEC (which I don't think I'll take; it's too far from where I live). I got a bit of work done on Informant. Blah.

I woke up this morning a bit depressed. I don't really know why. It's pretty much passed now, though.

If you're at all interested in web page design, check out Dan's Web Tips. It's an excellent overview of the various "tricks" that you can perform with HTML, and reasons why you shouldn't (or should) use them. I tend to agree with his basic philosophy on how to think about websites; that the web isn't about pixel-by-pixel control over the final presentation of your site. There are way too many browsers (and too many combinations of view settings) to guarantee that a meticulously-designed site will work on every browser out there.

I mailed out my payment for the Sun keyboard and mouse the other day. As soon as I receive them, I'll try to hook up the workstations I got from work, and see if they're at all functional.

And I just came across something that tickles me every time I think about it. Galaxy Quest is the upcoming movie that basically spoofs Star Trek -- not only the show, but the fandom empire that the show spawned. The official website is on Amazon.com, but that's not what tickles me. It's the fake fan page that they've put up. It's supposedly from a fan of the original show that (according to the movie) aired in the 70's, and is a cryingly funny spoof of fan web pages in and of itself. It actually includes plot summaries for the series, shots from the original series; the whole shebang is right there. Not only am I impressed at the level of detail, but it's a whole lot of fun to just surf through the site. Kudos!

Uh-oh. There's a new BeOS newsreader out there, namely Gossip. It might blow Informant away.

Which is not necessarily a terrible thing; I was spending huge amounts of time on Informant and was really struggling with it. This might be an opportunity to work on something different, like BeSpy (a GameSpy for the BeOS), or an intelligent agent I'm thinking of developing. I'm hoping to download Gossip tonight to see how it is.

Though now that I think about it, this might give me the impetus I need to make Informant better than Gossip. Informant still has a few bugs that I can't solve, but what's to prevent me from hiring out a BeOS guru to fix them, for a one-time fee? Then I could concentrate on making Informant better than all the other newsreaders out there.

My About.com site, Focus on BeOS, is coming along nicely. I'm slowly filling out the actual content with some various and sundry sections, including networking help and information about BeOS games. I'm having more fun than I expected, perhaps because I'm providing a service that people would find interesting.

I also spent last night talking with Saalon (the man behind Daemonsong) about becoming the About.com Guide to web-based fiction. I verified with the Computing Editor that About.com doesn't have a section like that yet, so hopefully Saalon can corner that particular section at some point. We hope. I know he'd be great at it, and I think this would be a good opportunity for him.

And here's to hoping that the Mars Polar Lander is contacted. If not, this could spell major restructuring of the space program. Which is stupid, because they should expect this sort of thing to happen. It's space travel, after all; I'm surprised more people haven't died and more equipment hasn't been lost yet. Space ain't forgiving, folks. Live with it, and let's keep on exploring that cosmos.

Informant's coming along slowly. I hope to have a decent version ready by the end of the weekend.

I had breakfast with my Dad this morning out at a local Silver Diner. It was nice to just spend some time catching up and chatting. Not that we don't talk as it is, but we don't have all that much time alone with each other.

Not feeling too hot this morning. Had trouble getting to sleep.

But my About.com site, Focus on BeOS is now live. I have a lot of plans....

I did manage to implement "Post New Article" for Informant last night. I'm trying to implement one feature or major fix per night. We'll see where that leads.

Came across a very interesting article called Edit This Page yesterday. It suggests that editing a webpage is mcuh harder than it should be when you have to FTP it. Why not let you edit the page in-place? Just include an "Edit" button or link at the bottom of the page, which pops up the page in an HTML textarea. Hit "Save," and it's saved. Boom. One CGI script takes care of the whole thing.

*sniff* *sniff* Ahhh. A clean new diary page. ;-)

I went to bed early last night, after talking with Saalon about an idea I had for an intelligent agent who would basically maintain your computer. If something goes wrong, you can ask it later on for an explanation. You could ask it to pull up an application or document that you use often ("Pull up the book I'm working on in Gobe."). Lots of interesting stuff.

This was prompted by a browse around some very interesting sites yesterday that talk about intelligent agents, particularly this guy's work.

I've moved all of my November updates to the Past Entries page.

When Saalon last came down here to meet me, he gave me a copy of the first half of Serial Experiments Lain, a anime series that recently won the "Best Anime of '99" award by a major anime magazine. Since I fell ill this morning, I dragged myself into the den and watched everything he gave me, front-to-back. I was extremely impressed. Lain is one of those disturbing, brilliant sorts of stories that keeps you awake at night, going over each scene in your head. And I cannot get the theme music out of my head.

Find Lain, and watch it. I guarantee that you'll get pulled in.

I was out late last night at the grocery store, buying a few things for work and home, including some bird food (which we haven't put out for months). As a result, I didn't get a chance to work on Informant.

The good news is that Informant does indeed seem to be posting properly; the messages just aren't showing up when I load the newsgroup that I post to. Neither does Deja.com seem to show any of my test messages from Informant. Very odd.

Tonight I publish my next interview on Focus on BeOS, plus update the site with a few more reviews and things. Cool. I've also been asked to be an editor at BeGames.

Not a huge amount happening here, thus the lack of udpates.

We had a huge snowstorm yesterday -- true blizzard conditions. The area got about a foot of snow, which I have to admit I liked. We don't usually get much snow around here.

I am happy to report that the chains and tires that I bought last week have helped me tremendously. I have no problems getting around now, whereas before I worried about any snow at all. Small rear-wheel drive trucks have their disadvantages.

So I stayed home from work yesterday. I did some work on Informant and read a bit of The Beekeeper's Apprentice (an absolutely stunning book about further cases of Sherlock Holmes, during World War I).

It's nice to get back into the reading spirit. Ever since college, I've been out of the habit of reading books. I would rip through novels like a cheetah hunting a gazelle before then, but college presented too many stresses and deadlines to let me actually enjoy a book at a pace shorter than one complete novel per month or two.

I've started to look at Focus on BeOS as a site that should be updated daily, and have been following suit for the past week or so. Every day, a little something goes up there, whether a news story or a re-organization of a few pages, or some such. I've started organizing interviews with well-known BeOS personalities, which has been a lot of fun. My "Hard Numbers" section isn't doing so well, mainly because both of the computers that I want to use for the testing are not what you'd call average -- one has a pitiful amount of RAM (meaning that my tests won't be very useful), and the other has an unsupporte video card, resulting in very poor graphics performance. *sigh*

*sigh*

Well, it's been quite a day!

We've already got three inches of snow, and another three are expected. I got to work fine, thanks to my efforts yesterday.

Be's announcements (e.g., a free edition of R5) have the Be online community in an uproar. A lot of people are kinda going nuts and making very far-ranging speculations based on very little evidence. Extremely frustrating. I'm half-expecting people to complain about my relative sanity on the whole issue.

Basically, the whole thing is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Be will be releasing two editions of Release 5: A slightly stripped-down free edition that can be installed like a normal application (or on a separate partition, as usual), and the normal R5, which they're referring to as an "enhanced edition". Nothing all that horrible.

Meanwhile, my About.com site is growing steadily. I'll be posting an in-depth game review of Hopkins: FBI today (done by Irfon-Kim Ahmad), along with an interview with Chris Herborth. I'm also working on more programming tutorials, plus a new section of the site devoted to hard-edged comparisons of the BeOS vs. Windows.

Came across this today:

Salon Magazine recently had a contest to determine a motto for Silicon Valley.The winner was:

"Where quality is Job One-Point-One"
-- Maurice Herlihy


Some Honorable Mentions:

Artificial intelligence -- when you just can't get the real thing
-- Nancy Ott
Sleep is for the weak
-- Robert Zazueta
I came, I saw, IPO
-- Andy Halushka
Public or Perish
-- John R. Wodziak
If at first you don't succeed, go for a second round
-- Rex Hill
Where the world comes to pay more for housing
-- Dana Spradley
Give me your contract-hired, your poor-before, your not-so-subtle badasses
-- Kimberly Green
Spinning sand into gold
-- Sue Clark
"It Compiles. Ship It."
-- Doug Sheppard
Lies, damned lies, and market caps
-- Alex Strasheim
Silicon Valley: commute, compute, commute
-- David Kenney
Come for the overtaxing work environment, stay for the unaffordable housing prices
-- Richard Kairis
Silicon Valley: It happened here first, yesterday
-- Kyri Sparks
Thank you for holding. Our next available technical support representative will be with you shortly
-- Kurt Gray
The other white industry
-- Eli Neiburger
God bless the early adopters
-- Eli Neiburger
Go public or get out of the way
-- Jack Lizmi
Upgrade or perish
-- Allan Ross
We don't just make your computer, we make your computer obsolete!
-- Steve Roche
Silicon Valley Population: 110010101000101010010101000001110010101010101011
-- Karin Newton

It's been quite a day. I woke up this morning with a sore throat and severely upset stomach, so I spent the day in bed. I was lucky enough to get an Amazon.com order, though, including a CD of cartoon theme music. Lots of fun there.

But a major winter storm's coming, so I had to go out at 3:30 to get new tires on my truck, plus chains, and a few bags of sand for the back. I went to a local Costco first, and after standing in line at their tire service for a good ten minutes, was informed that they were all out of tires that fit my truck. This, despite them having signs out advertising tires that fit my truck. *sigh*

So then I ran down to Merchant's Tire and Auto to buy four new tires. That went swimmingly, except that (dummy that I am) I just bought the four all-weather tires and left the store with the tires in the back of my truck. As I was driving down the road, I called Mom and she gently pointed out that there was no way we were going to be able to install those tires ourselves. So I called Merchant's back and they confirmed that they'd be able to install them tonight. Great! I went to a local Super Trak and grabbed a set of chains, then dropped my truck off at Merchant's.

I wandered over to a local Giant's, bought a copy of PC Magazine and Yahoo! Internet Life (which had two articles by Jon Katz, frequent /. contributor), then ate dinner at McDonald's while I read my magazines. Then I wandered back to Merchant's, where they were behind-schedule. Fortunately, they had a TV on, so I was able to catch an episode of CBS' City of Angels (it stank -- fair to poor acting and cliched storylines). I didn't make it home until 9:00, at which point I put on the chains, put the truck away, drank a mug of hot tea, took a shower, and went to bed.

Been entertaining Saalon all weekend. We got quite a bit done on a game design idea we've had, plus lots and lots of chat about science fiction and Star Trek and anime and all sorts of other stuff. Loads of fun.

I hear that Be is going to be shifting its focus to internet appliances, and that Release 5.0 will be downloadable for free. Kinda. The downloadable version won't have all the features of the "full" edition, which you'll have to buy. And, it looks like the free edition will work as a shell rather than an actual operating system. This does not look good, folks.

Yes, this could work. But why take chances?

As you can undoubtedly tell by the frequency of these updates, not much has been happening of late. Saalon will be coming down this weekend, which is very cool. I've been taking care of initiatives at work. I've been thinking of writing a "Learning C++ for BeOS Programming" book, which explains how to write apps in the BeOS, starting at ground zero (e.g. no programming experience necessary). Might be worth splitting it up into more than one book, in fact.

Note the spiffy new poll. I've also added a random quote from a Be employee to the bottom of this page. Hit Reload to see another one.

Light. I am not updating this as often as I should.

Not much has happened lately. I went to an AWANA Olympics line judges' training session on Saturday, then completely forgot to go to the brunch and seminar hosted by the founders of The Motley Fool. Lost $70 on that.

I did go to the Kennedy Center on Saturday night for a performance of Gustav Mahler's 7th symphony, which was cool. A bit non-melodic for my tastes, but still very enjoyable to watch.

Mom and I tried to catch Toy Story 2, but the theater was sold out. Impressive, considering the movie's been out for two months now.

I've updated my shelf of recently-read books with two new entries, The Motley Fool Investment Guide and If I Knew Then What I Know Now, both of which are excellent books worth reading.

And I've pretty much convinced myself to hand Informant over to another developer. I haven't picked anybody out yet, but I don't think I can handle Informant any more as it is. The fire has definitely gone out of my belly in terms of developing on that end, and I figure that I'm better off concentrating on other BeOS projects.

Work's been going pretty well. I had an offer to switch to another sub-contract within my group, which has its appeal. I wouldn't be working as directly with everyone else in the group, though. And that's what I like most about working here; the people I work with. I also am hoping to get a job interview with The Motley Fool. I'll have to think about this.

Not much going on with Informant; I'll have to devote some time to it...sometime. I'll be busy this weekend, what with an AWANA line judges' meeting on Saturday, then a Sunday brunch / lecture from the Gardners, founders of The Motley Fool.

I'm home from work today. I had a bit of a sore throat this morning, so I decided to stay home and do a bit of research for work.

On Sunday, I implemented a scripting engine for Baxter, a BeOS IRC client. I'm very pleased; it can do quite a lot more than I had initially feared. This is another one of those cases where lots of design beforehand resulted in a surprisingly smooth programming effort.

For the non-geeks out there, perhaps a few definitions are in order. A scripting engine is a piece of software that takes programming code (e.g., "/msg $chan Hi, my name is $nick and 1 + 2 is $calc(1 + 2 )") and translates it into the intended result (e.g., "/msg #newbies Hi, my name is Rick and 1 + 2 is 3"). This will be part of an IRC client, or a program that connects to internet chat servers ("IRC" = Internet Relay Chat), and lets users chat on that server.

So, between watching cartoons, I implemented a few more features of the language. I hope to have user-defined variables set up soon, too.

Ugh. An order came down from on high to fix a bug by the end of the day. As a result I worked feverishly until 6:30 p.m. to get it out the door. I hate to rush software development.

Oh well. I had a looong phone conversation with Saalon (the guy behind Daemonsong) about a variety of things. We've had an advertising offer, though it's for a site that provides some soft-core porn. Moral decision time! We're going to look into it and see what can be done to use that money to fund Papyrus.

Well, we all seem to be alive. Y2K has yielded no major problems. Mot even any minor problems.

Nothing major's happened this past week. I was off on Friday, and spent most of the day either working on Informant, or chatting on the internet. I also saw Galaxy Quest, which was excellent. Very impressive.

I'm hooking up with the maker of Baxter, a BeOS IRC client, to write some event scripting code for him. My code will, hopefully, let people write simple scripts to act on various events. It'll be based on mIRC's scripting. We'll see how it goes.

Informant's stalled again. I may have to contract out some outside help to get all of the little bugs and things fixed. Blah.

I've set up a 1999 archive page with all of my 1999 diary updates, too.

Wake from thy nest, robin-red-breast,
  Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each hill, let music shrill
  Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
  Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow!
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves
  Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
    To give my Love good-morrow
    Sing, birds, in every furrow!
-- T. Heywood, Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day

It's a beautiful day here around the nation's capitol. The air is still chilly enough to make you feel alive, but it'll be warming up to the lower 60's as the day goes along. And it's not even March yet! We are, indeed, fortunate.

Fixed a few little bugs in Informant last night. More details on that at its homepage.

Other than that, I had to return a book to one of my AWANA kids (he'd left it behind at the church), then stopped by the grocery store to pick up some dog food. That pretty much took up the evening, though I was able to record a few thoughts for that short story; mainly just what I mentioned yesterday. Next week I'll work on a scene-by-scene outline for the story.

I'm thinking of turning the little yard outside my room into a bird garden. I've been trying to collate a list of plants that birds like. They're particularly attracted to plants that provide cover, and ones that bear fruit or nuts, but I'm more interested in flowers. Ah well. About.com's Birding site has been a good starting point for me.

Give me a pen of steel!
  Away with the gray goose-quill!
I will grave the thoughts I feel
  With a fiery heart and will:
I will grave with the stubborn pen
  On the tablets of the heart,
Words never to fade again
  And thoughts that shall ne'er depart.
-- George Pratt (1832–1875), A Pen of Steel

Well, now that I sound completely arrogant....

Eeek! No updates in quite awhile. Informant has been taking up quite a lot of my time lately; I released PR2 to BeBits yesterday. PF2's more stable than PR1, and a bit more feature-rich. I'm pleased. My next project is a BeOS virus scanner, and then PR3.

On Saturday, Dad took out one of his many power tools, and drilled a hole through the closet ceiling in my room. We then passed that blasted network cable through the hole, plugged one end into Mom's computer upstairs, and the other end into my hub. Voila! Mom has a solid 56kbps connection, whenever I'm online, plus she knows how to connect my computer to the internet whenever she wants to.

I spent some time chatting with Brennen yesterday, about an impressively cool idea he has for a science fiction/fantasy book. I won't reveal too much here, but it could be one of those great, deep, psychological, thinking person's novels. I certainly hope he tries to write it.

AWANA goes well for me; the kids are gearing up for the "AWANA Olympics," which consists of a set of running (and other) games, to be held in mid-March. They'll need to shape up quite a bit for that, and unfortunately I'm not the sort of person who likes to push kids that way. I was talking this over with our game leader, who pointed out that if you challenge the kids, only then will they have a chance to grow. Now I feel better about being a little harder than usual on the kids.

Meanwhile, tonight is writing night for me. I'm working on a short story involving a young woman whose (wired) house gets hacked into. In a sense, it's a story about vulnerability; the protagonist has often been mildly discriminated against because of her gender, and the cracker in this case knows she's a girl, and taunts her with that sort of "girls can't really do computers like boys can" attitude that's so prevalent on the net these days. It'll requires some delicate balancing, because she needs to make that decision to fight back fairly late in the story; once she's made the decision, it's simply a matter of making sure that she actually does the deed. She'll probably go through a set of reactions throughout the story; fear, outrage, mistrust of herself, and she'll probably be mostly reactionary through most of the story, until she finally makes that decision to prove the cracker wrong. We'll see. It should make for an interesting writing exercise, anyway.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.
-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Remembrance

As you can see in yesterday's entry, we've been trying to install a network cable, so that it will run from my room, to the room above it. Both rooms share a cavity, so we thought we'd drill a hole in the wall next to one cavity (in both rooms), drop the cable down the hole in the upper room, then use a wire to grab the cable in the lower room.

After about an hour of dragging the wire about the lower cavity, we took a plumb bob to the top cavity, taped the free end of its string to the network cable, then tried to drop the plumb bob down.

There was a floor in the way.

It turns out that when Dad built the house, he built it such that the floor went all the way through the cavity, to the outside wall. Of course, that was over twenty years ago, so he hadn't remembered. Arrrg. We put everything away, and tomorrow will just drill a hole through my ceiling and the upper room's floor, and pass the cable through that way.

On another, rather more interesting, note: I posted Informant, Preview Release 1, today. Check out its website, or the entry on BeBits. Huzzah!

The launch didn't go off without its problems, however. The icon that I had put together really really sucked, so I asked Saalon if he'd be good enough to create a new one. He graciously assented, and provided me with a workably decent icon (by both our standards).

I then told everyone in #beos on EFnet about it, at which point several people downloaded it and kindly pointed out a few crash problems. I made a quick fix of those (except for one which I cannot figure out), and re-posted the file. That seems to have made people happy.

Ah! then let Misers bury thus their Gold,
  Who though they starve, no farthing will produce:
But we lov'd to enjoy and to behold,
  And sure we cannot spend our stock by use.
-- Katherine (Orinda) Philips (1631-1664), To my Lucasia, in defence of declared Friendship

I might have been done better for myself by burying my Gold today. More on that later.

I spent much of the weekend working on an application that downloads a particular weather webpage to a computer (thanks to wget), then reads through the webpage, extracts the weather information, and displays that information on the screen. I'm going to be running that on a spare computer in my room, and my plan is to wall-mount the monitor on one of those TV wall mounts.

So I ran out to the store to buy a grand total of four things: a TV wall mount suitable for 14" monitors, a monitor extension cable (when the monitor's mounted on the wall, the cables will probably need some extra slack), a computer power extension cable (ditto), plus a 50-foot 10-Base-T cable. That latter was for a little experiment of mine: now that I have Network Address Translation running on my network, I can feed my one 56k internet connection to all of the machines. I wanted to hook up Mom's computer, which is in the room directly above mine, to my LAN, so that she could feel that power.

Now, I'm trying to save up for my retirement. I've decided to try to put USD $10,000 into the stock market, using The Motley Fool's Foolish Four. At that rate, I only have about USD $200 to spend each month. No sweat, I thought. I had about USD $80 left to spend.

I bought only the items listed above (well, plus a Twix bar). The total came to USD $120. Eek. There goes my budget.

Ah well. We ran the networking cable out the window, and down into my room, and BOY did it work well. Now to figure out a way to install it inside the walls. Dad says that we can run it through a convenient cavity that runs next to both rooms.

The cherish'd fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.
'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current.
-- James Thomson (1700-1748), The Seasons: Winter

An ice storm has invaded the D.C. area. Most of the roads are drivable, but the trees' nude branches are shining with newly-formed ice. And, of course, the ever-present Virginia red clay is staining sneakers as we I type this.

I came across an interesting website, if a bit heavy-handed: MutantWatch. What do you think about this growing problem?

Two more photos on You Must Be Kidding Me: Bill Gates and some guy lighting a bunch of candles. Post away!

Also, check out the latest Cool SF news.

Brennen also mentioned Peanut Press, which is trying to sell e-books. That's right; books that are electronic-only, and which you can download to any Palm device. Excellent idea, and they're offering actual, current books, but they're expensive: seven bucks for an average book. I don't know about you, I'm not about to pay about as much as I pay for an actual paperback (which won't accidentally get deleted).

You Must Be Kidding Me is back, and better than ever! Wield your sharpest with at the latest real news photos. You can now view any number of past photos, though a lot of the older ones have already succumbed to link entropy.

I had volunteered to organized a lunch of Chinese food for my co-workers today. It's the sort of thing that, normally, gets me hyped out and worried. This was no exception, though I determined to follow through no matter what happened. It turned out really well, and we had a good time.

I'm feeling a bit tired at the moment, though, so I'd better finish up this update. Ummm. That's all I can think of.

Came across a very cool study of traffic patterns, where a regular guy studied traffic jams for about a year, and tried to find ways he could ease them or break them up. It's written in a very straightforward style, and makes for some fascinating reading.

Heard of the 6-year-old genius? He's in college now, and he has a great webpage about stopping age discrimination. Now, as soon as I can find the stupid link, I'll post it here. :-/

I spent some time last night sketching. At my Dad's suggestion, I took a pencil drawing of a house in England, and started copying it. It won't look as good as the original (which was drawn by my Dad's mother, incidentally), but it'll be good practice.

I also started to put together the distribution package for Informant. I bought www.stuns-software.com, and when that goes live, I'll post Preview Release 1. That should give me a few days to put the package together.

I noticed something very interesting about Jake Lloyd recently. Check out Cool SF for more details.

And I wish I'd found this report on the most recent COMDEX earlier. It's collapse-on-the-floor hysterical. Brought to you by Conspire.com, "Pixelated Paranoia-Plus!", a website devoted to all the greatest crackpot conspiracy theories out there. Well worth reading; these guys have the acerbic with of an MST3K episode.

Rob Rosenberger has a terrific commentary on the media circus surrounding the recent Denial-of-Service attacks against Yahoo!, eBay, and others. As he puts it, "Today's woes don't hold a candle to the damage caused by Good Times mass hysteria. Gullible email users launched devastating 'distributed denial of service attacks' on numerous occasions."

I was also pleased to find a link which will tell you the Navy's current INFOCOM status: www.infosec.navy.mil. "INFOCOM" is a digital equivalent of "DEFCON," measuring the Navy's current alert status on any computer attacks or dangers. It's a bit silly, in a way: all it does is measure how worried Navy people are about virii and website hackers, neither of which will cause a war any time soon (I hope).

I did a bit of writing last night, after going out to dinner with my parents. I have an idea for a near-future story about a cracker that decides to pick on a young woman, but it was late enough that I was only able to put together a very broad outline.

I spent some time this morning updating Cool SF, which was meant to be an Ain't It Cool News for everything science fiction, from films to books to TV to music to computer games. Perhaps I'll actually be able to put in the time to update it now. Or maybe not. :-)

I didn't give blood yesterday, mainly because they usually don't let you if you're not feeling in good health. I'm sorry I didn't, because I've tried to give blood religiously since I started working. It's one of those things that's easy enough to do, and saves lives. Why not?

Oh, and I caught the rest of Bubblegum Crisis over the past week. The last half of the series was very good, and the last episode was as good as many movies I've seen. Highly recommended.

I didn't go to the Be User's Group meeting, since I was sick as a dog on the day they planned to meet. Well, maybe next time (their next meeting will be in eight days).

OK, I haven't udpated in a very long time, but that's mainly because I've been fighting off a virus of the physical sort. It first attacked nine days ago, on the fifth, then returned last Wednesday. After taking it easy over the weekend, I've returned to relative health, except for an occasional cough.

Brennen's weblog took some time to mention...weblogs. They're basically like my diary entries, except that they're heavier on collecting links and lighter on personal life commentary. Reminds me quite a bit of my sadly outdated Cool SF page (I just don't check up on the SF world often enough to keep up the site). Brennen mentions a bunch of links that are worth checking out.

I'm hoping to release Informant as soon as I can get the documentation together; in other words, in a few days. Once that's done, I've designed a BeOS virus checker that I'll write up and post. There are no known virii for the BeOS yet, but we might as well have a line of defence set up before any virii rear their ugly heads.

I've bought a filing cabinet for my room, and have spent quite some time cleaning up. I might finally get my room organized in the next few days. What a thought.

I'm hoping to update Focus on BeOS soon, now that my nose is dry and my stomach not complaining.

And I'm giving blood today. Yippee.

Eeeek! No updates for a whole week! I've uploaded Monday's and Tuesday's news; you might want to check the 1999 page for Monday's entry. We've had a lot of snow lately, so not too much has happened.

I've made quite a bit of progress on Informant, though. It's pretty close to being releasable now, and I plan to release it this weekend, if I can. I have a few more glitches to fix, and then I should be able to give the world a newsreader that's at least minimally functional.

I also plan to go to a meeting of a local Be User's Group next Wednesday. I'm anxious to see what it's like.

I was back at work today, but I left early to pick up a few packages that the postal serivce was good enough to not bother to deliver (I guess they feared bands of thieves roaming the countryside in the middle of a blizzard; who knows). I then spent the evening watching the anime that was contained inside those packages.

I caught the first five episodes of Bubblegum Crisis, a respectable action/adventure series set in a cyberpunk-ish year of 2032. The first few episodes offer little in the way of originality, though they have their moments. It's epsiodes four and onward that really start getting interesting; plotting gets to be much better than average. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it.

I then watched Tenchi Forever, the third Tenchi Muyo! movie, the acknowledged sequel to Tenchi Muyo! in Love -- in fact, the title "Tenchi Forever" is only the American one; the Japanese title is Tenchi Muyo! in Love 2 -- and "officially" the end of the Tenchi universe (though rumors have been flying about other series being in the works).

In any event, Tenchi Forever feels quite a bit different than the rest of the Tenchi series. As Shidoshi puts it in his (excellent) review, "Tenchi Forever! pushes the Tenchi mythos into a new level of maturity." This film is serious, and deals with its characters seriously. Every characterization is nailed perfectly, but these are characters who are dealing with a drawn-out, stressful experience; namely, Tenchi disappearing six months before the story proper takes place.

Besides that, the animation and artwork in TF are beautiful. Just about every frame of this film is a work of art. I treasure the time that I spent just looking at this film, much less enjoying the story and character interactions. How many other films can you say that about?

Well, enough about Tenchi for now. I also watched the first few episodes of Record of Lodoss War, which is essentially a long, transcribed D&D campaign. Just about every cliche is there, from elves to dragons to evil witches. Still, even though I have a major gripe about orginality, I can't really fault this series; it's cliched medieval fantasy, done the way it should be. Lodoss War has cool spells, blood-pumping action scenes, mysterious elves, and everything else you'd expect. It's fun entertainment.

Well, the free Personal Edition of BeOS R5 has been released, and it's been a zoo. I logged onto EFnet this morning to check in with the IRC'ers on #beos and #beoshelp. The channels were hopping with folks eager to download the new file. I logged into ftp.be.com and kept checking the /pub/beos directory for the files, until finally at 8:32 the files appeared. Unfortunately, they weren't downloadable yet, and finally I had to go to work. Since then, my work net connection has refused to connect to any websites or FTP servers. Arg.

I did get a call from an About.com person, who's going to try to get me interviewed by a few reporters, about R5. I talked to her this morning, and will call her back once I get a chance to download and install R5, and upload a use guide to my About.com site.

Interestingly, I had a good talk with Glenn, one of the technical administrators at the Sci-Fi Channel. He wanted to know my reasons and thoughts after leaving the SFC's chat server (events.scifi.com), so we had a nice long discussion. He agrees with my assessment that events could be a powerful community, if it had administrator backing, and that the admins need to have some rules applied to them. Hopefully he'll be drafting some regulations, plus a web page, which will greatly improve the server. Once he does that, I'll be free to return to events.

OK, my apologies for not updating lately. I sort of fell out of the habit. Don't really know why.

Before I go into a full update, let me get something off my chest.

Ain't It Cool News, one of the few movie news and reviews sites that actually offers sane and realistic reviews, is running an article from its European news reporter. I quote: "'The Fifth Element', one of Europe's biggest productions and a hugely underrated movie abroad (a lot of people claim this is better than [Star Wars Episode IV:] A New Hope). Not highly original, but original enough to have created a small landmark in sci-fi movie history."

"Original"?

Now, I liked The Fifth Element. It wasn't incredibly deep or thought-provoking, but it didn't have to be; it was a fun sci-fi action-adventure flick. A classic Saturday afternoon adventure.

But where is this originality? The underlying conflict (getting the Chosen One to the final destination, where s/he can save the universe) is highly cliched, as is the basic plot (unsuspecting hero is thrown in over his head, and muddles along as best he can). The ending wasn't just cliched (The universe is worth saving, because of love), it was rather weak in my opinion (the genetically-engineered savior of the universe refuses to save it because people aren't always nice to each other?). Even the weapons and alien make-up were pretty much standard fare.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that Star Wars was more original than The Fifth Element; it wasn't. In fact, Star Wars was probably less original. And I still consider The Fifth Element to be a fun, enjoyable film. But I can't think of one element in The Fifth Element that was original. It gets even worse when I compare it to anime; were The Fifth Element to be made into an anime film, it would slide into obscurity next to many, many other anime films that are just like it.

Sorry; had to get that out of me.

In other news, I've managed to squash a few major bugs in Informant. It's now much more stable, which is of course a good thing. I should be releasing Preview Release 3 tonight or tomorrow night.

I've also been working on my side garden. I have a little strip of yard and woods, approximately 59 feet long and 36 to 49 feet wide. I plan to upload a site describing the garden in some detail, including what I'm going to plant there, and nice pictures of the plants and the garden, as time goes by.

The budding twigs spread out their fan
  To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
  That there was pleasure there.
-- William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Written in Early Spring

Been busy lately, with work and the weather. The weather has been gorgeous all week, with rain predicted for Friday, so I've been trying to spend as much time as possible outside in the fresh air. I managed to rake much of my side yard, and get mulch down over the area that I raked. The rain should clear out over the weekend, so hopefully after that I can plant a few things.

I'm updating Cool SF with any SF news that I come across. I must admit to being proud of myself; I'm keeping up with it pretty much every weekday. Unlike my diary.

Oh, and the free version of BeOS will be released on March 28th. Interestingly enough, I entered a contest to guess when it would be released, and I said March 28th, at 00:00:01. Hey, maybe I'll win something. The Grand Prize Winner gets the full version of R5, ArtPaint, BShisen, Civ:CTP (which I've already bought), Corum III, FAMe Accounting, InSite Designer, JuggleSaver, Gobe Productive (which I already have), and a choice of any two of Moho, Postmaster, Visual Be++, Squeezer, InternetSuite, or a gram of e-gold. Even if I don't get the Grand Prize, they're still giving away copies of the above software. So I should get something.

I've also moved all of my February diary entries back to the archvies, so this page should be a bit quicker to load.

Though you be absent here, I needs must say
The Trees as beauteous are, and flowers as gay,
  As ever they were wont to be;
  Nay the Birds rural musick too
  Is as melodious and free,
  As if they sung to pleasure you:
I saw a Rose-Bud o'pe this morn; I'll swear
The blushing Morning open'd not more fair.
-- Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), The Spring

Well, I just had a very pleasant weekend. Saturday was spent basically relaxing and catching up on my reading, while Sunday was spent on our first volksmarch. What is volksmarching, you ask?

As they put it in the Volksmarching FAQ: "A volksmarch is a non-competitive 6 mile (10 kilometer) walk. It's not a pledge walk, it's not a race, it is a fun activity you do with a club, with your family, with your pet, or all by yourself." Walking trails are set up in the area; they can be through the woods, around town, or pretty much anywhere. You simply go to the starting point, which is typically a visitor's center of some sort (one walk starts at a 7-Eleven; I'll be they do nice business!), which will have a small chest in a corner. The chest contains directions, plus assorted documentation and such. If you're taking the walk for credit, you fill out a card, then at the end of the walk, deposit a small fee, and take a patch with you to commemorate your finishing the event.

In all, volksmarching is a really fun thing. 6 miles isn't a terrifically far walk, particularly when you're seeing the sights along the way. Ours started at the Old Fairfax Museum, then wound through the Old Fairfax city, through some very pretty residential areas, and through a large park. We took the dogs with us, so they were able to get their exercise, too. Very, very cool.

After work, I drove over to a local dump and got some mulch for my side garden. I'm hoping to transform it into a little woodland shade garden. I'll post info to my regular website as that happens.

I was also happy to see that my DVD's finally came; I ordered them on Wednesday, then one was shipped on Thursday, and the other on Friday, both via UPS Next Day delivery. Do you see something wrong here? In any event, I got Young Frankenstein, Dominion: Tank Police (a classic anime series), Venus Wars (a classic anime film), and Macross Plus (a new classic anime series, based on an old classic anime series). Had lots of fun reviewing them; they're all as good as I remember them.

Heard about something interesting this morning: PayPal, a system which serves as a proxy for money, with this twist: you can send and receive money in many forms, and the other side is notified via e-mail. You sign up for a PayPal account, then you can use a credit card to "send" an amount to anybody; if they're not on PayPal, they get a temporary account. They are then notified by e-mail, at which point they can log in (creating a permanent account), and they can withdraw the money via direct deposit to a bank account, a physical personal check, or a credit to a credit card. This is extremely useful for eBay-style transactions.

What else exciting has happened lately? Well, I watched Cartoon Network's Campaign 2000 last night, in which a number of cartoon characters are campaigning for the presidency. They're running faux news bulletins and election commentary, all of which is terrific fun. They've got some great campaign slogans, too ("Yosemite Sam: Yer Darn Tootin'", "Scooby-Doo: Your Candidate is Over Here", and "Elmer Fudd: A Man with a Pwan").

Also, check out this excellent article about open-source, and how it's not financially viable (at least, not in practice, yet).

I've also uploaded my first cartoon. Yes, it sort of sucks, but I have to start somewhere (it's also scanned from cheap paper, so it's a tad grubby). In particular, I need to work on my lettering, I see. :-/

I woke up this morning with an upset stomach and sore throat, so I stayed home and relaxed. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed myself a lot; it's great to have a day with no worries, so to speak.

The Hauppauge WinTV card that I ordered came today. It came out of my About.com check, mainly because the cel that I mentioned yesterday was sold before I could get a chance to grab it. I was extremely disappointed; I felt like I'd lost a pet. It was a terrific cel. I still mourn the loss of it every time I think of the auction. :sigh:

I tried to drown my sorrows by buying another Washu cel, but whoever had a bid on it had an extremely high maximum bid on there; I bid the thing up USD $20 before finally giving up. Well, cel collecting is a waiting game; I'll find another Washu cel sometime.

(I'm also comforted in the knowledget hat both of these cels were bought by the same person, whose eBay user ID is the name of one of the characters in the series. Obviously, this is a serious Tenchi collector, so I probably wouldn't have been able to match the user's bids anyway.)

I did manage to get some drawing in yesterday. I'm practicing my pencil sketching by copying a pencil work that my grandmother (on my father's side) made. I'm...slowly coming along, and learning a few things. I also finished up a cartoon, that I'll post on my personal website as soon as I can scan it in.

Not too much to report. I finally got my Weather Tracker fully installed. It's great, except that the monitor is slowly but surely freaking out on me. I'll post more on that soon.

Now, as some of you might be able to guess from reading this diary, anime is one of my passions. As such, over the past few months I've been collecting anime cels, or the actual original artwork used in the series. I've collected all of the cels that I want, except one: I want a cel of Little Washu from Tenchi Muyo!. Well, I found one on eBay. Unfortunately, it's currently going for USD $155. It's also, in a word, perfect:

As you can see from my March 2nd update, I don't have too much cash on-hand to spend. Sure, I could spend USD $150 on this cel and have $50 left over, but that $50 would have to last me for three weeks. I have several anime series that I want to try out, too, and that'll cost money. Arrrrgh.

Well, in other news, I've been building bird houses lately. I want to do a lot of bird-oriented stuff this year; I plan to build several bird houses, and maybe put up a suet feeder or two. About.com's Guide to Birding has provided a great place to start.

And speaking of About.com, I just got my latest bonus check. I'm getting about USD $500 a month from them now. Not half bad.

I did run across a fabulous spoof of Slashdot, ApostropheColon. It hits the /. nail on the head.

And I've got new photos on You Must Be Kidding Me, incidentally. Thu, 02 Mar 00 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

Ugh. I lost yesterday's update due to a random lock-up in Windows NT. I normally save pretty early and pretty often, but this one caught me unawares.

Fox Trot (the website for the comic strip) is running a terrific faux advertising campaign spoofing the new iMac. The strip had a series that followed the launch of the "iFruit," a computer that's so trendy it causes Beanie Baby-style fanaticism in adults, and changes wallpaper to be more attractive. The actual wallpaper in the room. In any event, the website lets you buy real iFruit T-shirts, in Mango, Huckleberry, and Plum -- and at $14.95, they're not expensive at all.

Meanwhile, it's March, which means I have money again. I've been trying to save up a retirement nest egg, and to do so, I wrote up a spreadsheet and have been limiting myself to $200 per month. Now, I'm ready to spend money again. :-) I'll probably wait a week before making any major purchases, though.

Well, I'm an uncle again. Today, my sister gave birth to her third girl, Megan. Everyone is healthy and happy.

My parents drove down to my sister's for the birth, which meant that after a long day at work, I came home at 7:15 to an empty house. We'd had a neighbor come over to let the dogs out at 3:30 or so, who then locked them into one side of the house. Unfortunately, that particular neighbor had also given them lots of water to drink, so Lexie (our English Setter) wet all over the hallway when I came in. I couldn't blame her, though, so I cleaned it up and let them both out. No more problems thereafter.

I tried to do some sketching in the evening, but it didn't work out so well; I just wasn't really inspired by anything. So instead, I watched an episode of Space Island One, then Angel.

Space Island One is a cool little dramatic British TV show, set 20 years in the future on a privately-funded version of the International Space Station. It has that wondeful Babylon 5 style of plotting, in which each episode builds on events in previous episodes; the characters in the second season will act quite differently than they acted in the first, based on what's happened to them. It's really an impressive show. The acting is occasionally spotty, but I can forgive them that. Unfortunately, I can only find the show on one local public TV station.

I posted PR2 of Informant on Sunday. PR2 offers some bug fixes, plus a few extra features not seen in PR1. I'm already nailing a few bugs for PR3.

And here I was, thinking I was updating this diary often.

I've gone on a bit of a streamlining binge. I'm starting to cut a few things out of my life, including maintenance of the comp.sys.be.help FAQ, and Cool SF. Now I'm trying to find a few other things that I can get rid of.

My DVD of Project A-Ko (check out this excellent website for summaries and such, particularly the FAQ and in-jokes) -- the anime that's a spoof of anime -- came yesterday, so I took some time to sit down and watch it. As hilarious as I remembered, and it has some truly above-average space combat-ish scenes, too.

I also finally watched the first episode of Macross Plus, the first two episodes of which I bought on DVD awhile ago.

Wow.

This is incredibly good stuff. Not only is the action/adventure animation literally jaw-dropping, but the drama and character interactions are done well too. It's perhaps not the greatest anime of all time, but it's definitely getting high marks from me.

Meanwhile, I had one of my old church friends e-mail me and suggest that all of us church "kids" get together sometime. I e-mailed her back with an enthusiastic assent; hopefully something will come of that.

And the NOVA BUG seems to have slowly slipped away. How annoying.

Oh, thought I'd mention this: In researching about the truly incredible anime series serial experiments lain, I found out that the Cyberia Cafe is a reference to a book called "Cyberia" by Douglas Rushkoff, a non-specific writer (he writes about cyberculture, sexually-transmitted diseases, live-action role-playing, and lots of other stuff, as well as a syndicated monthly column in the New York Times). The entire text of Cyberia is available online, and it makes for a rather interesting read. Evidently, the book explores how computers are changing the development of the human species. And it's excellently-written, to boot.

Updated Cool SF.

I went to the dump last night and got a load of mulch. In the rain. I actually enjoyed it; I was the only one there, I was able to enjoy the weather, and heck...what's a little rain matter?

When I got back to the house, I was amazed to see that my parents had already sanded and painted my French door. The door itself still needs one more coat of paint, but other than that, they did an incredible job. It looks like the door has been part of the house since it was built.

I then did a little work on my About.com site, as requested by my editor. I've come to realize that the organization of the site could be a lot better than it is, so I'm hoping that I can spend some time this week re-organizing the site. I think the whole site will be much better as a result.

I spent some time talking with Saalon, about anime and Tenchi Muyo! and such. He finally saw Tenchi Muyo in Love today, which he loved. It's hard to go wrong there.

I also did a bit of work on Informant, my BeOS newsreader. I think I've got it to where it will use killfiles appropriately. And thanks to some help from #bedev, I've got keyboard shortcuts working nicely; I just need to put in more of them.

In the grey summer garden I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.
Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:
And I shall know the sense of life re-born
From dreams into the mystery of morn
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there
Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.
-- Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), Idyll, from Picture-Show

It's a rainy day in the nation's capitol. After a beautiful Sunday (sunny and in the 70's), God has decided to water his garden. But hey, all of the flowers and shrubs are getting nice and drenched, so they'll be only the more beautiful in the coming days.

I got my federal tax forms in this morning, just in time. The good news it that I should get a refund of USD $1,100. Of course, now I have to worry about state taxes....

I've been invited up to spend the weekend with several online friends, around the end of May. The only problem is that they're meeting in Toronto, which would mean a plane flight. Still, I'm sorely tempted.

Arrrrg, I lost yesterday's update when my work computer froze up. I managed to re-constitute it today and post it.

Anyway, not too much going on. I've spent some time this week going over my taxes, in preparation for actually calculating them out tonight or tomorrow (ideally tonight). Thanks to my huge losses in the name of Papyrus, I should get a sizable refund.

Meanwhile, I've been pretty faithful to my nightly schedule, which pleases me. Background: Because I tend to try all sorts of things, I've decided to apportion out my nights so that I do something different every night. Monday night is writing night, Tuesdays are for drawing/sketching, Wednesday night is music night (piano and violin, plus composing if it ever comes to that), Thursdays I work on my About.com site, and Friday I get in some reading time. I can't always follow the routine fully every week, but I try to get in at least a few minutes of the appropriate thing every night.

Hmmm, haven't much felt like updating lately.

My French door is finally in. All that we have left to do is sand and paint the walls and trim. Ta-da. As a result, I've been spending much more time in my side garden.

I stopped by a local Borders books last night. It was the first time in months that I'd actually wandered the aisles of a brick-and-mortar bookstore (I usually prefer Amazon.com), and I have to admit that it was a lot of fun. I picked up a Tenchi Muyo! manga, Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan (based on Brennen and Saalon's rave reviews), Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth, and a large compendium of science fiction art. Infinite Worlds, I think it's called. Anyway, it has a terrific introduction by Ray Bradbury.

Well, I planted some West African impatiens, bleeding hearts, and...something else in pots in my garden last night. I don't exactly have a wonderland yet, but it's improving. The impatiens, particularly, look good.

Meanwhile, I've been gearing up to drive up to Saalon's over the weekend. I don't expect to update this diary until Monday or so, as a result. We hope to spend the weekend watching the Tenchi Muyo! OAV series, then the Tenchi Forever film together. Should be fun.

BeOS stock has been rising steadily, after being beaten down steadily to 14 (from 20 or so). Once it gets back up to something over 20, I'll sell some of it and toss my first $2,500 into the Foolish Four. I'm also going to take this opportunity to switch my brokerage from DLJdirect to Datek Online. DLJdirect costs USD $20 per trade, which is just too much for me, compared to Datek's USD $10/trade. And DLJdirect doesn't offer anything special (not that I'd need it; I just want to buy and sell stocks! I can get financial data and evaluations and such elsewhere).

Saalon tipped me off to a new Sci-Fi Channel show: Exposure. It's an hour-long showcase of original short film, in the SF/fantasy/horror genre. Impressively, out of the five shorts used, only one was sucky. Tim Burton's short piece "Vincent" was hilarious, as was "Robotic Showdown" (?). Good stuff, well worth watching.

Saalon was online as the show played, so we got to watch it together, in a virtual sense. It fired up my imagination so much that now I want to make my own short film. Perhaps, with some creativity (and Lost Marble's animation package Moho), I can put something together.

Meanwhile, Dad and I finished up a few things on my French door. We got the brick molding in, added insulation where needed, and put up a piece of drywall. Now all we need to do is finish up the electrical work for the double switch next to the door (one to control the outside lights, and one to control the fountain). Tonight I'll pick up the rest of the supplies we need, set up the five pots that I bought, and plant the flowers and plants that I bought.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately; the scripts on the site went screwy and I was afraid I might lose my diary file if I updated it through my web interface. That, and I had trouble telnetting/FTP'ing in. Ah well.

Page views on my About.com site have skyrocketed, increasing ten-fold from previously. Be has counted over half a million official downloads of BeOS, and the actual number from unofficial downloads probably puts the number at well over a million. Meanwhile, Be's stock continues to go down (to be fair, along with the rest of the NASDAQ).

We finally bought and installed a French door in the side of my room. That will allow access to the side yard outside my room, which I am now in the process of making into a full shade garden.

OK, the web-based interface is back in business. I hate it when that happens.

I spent all night last night on the phone with Saalon, chatting about Star Trek: Voyager and Babylon 5 and Tenchi Muyo! and short films and digital camcorders and all sorts of other cool stuff. I've been tempted to buy a Canon GL1 (check out the CNET review); it's pricey at around USD $2,000, but it's a professional-quality camera.

I've come up with a couple of extra ideas for my "reverse-lain" idea, including a working title: Wine For Those In Anguish. Dark, huh? ;-)

And now the web-based interface to my diary is eating my updates. Lovely.

Went to a graduation party last night for Erin Smith, a friend. After the main party we played Nurts (a multiplayer solitaire game), went out to see Keeping the Faith -- which I liked quite a bit, incidentally -- and went to Don Paulo's for some Mexican food. After having surprising difficulty explaining that I wanted chicken in my tacos ("I'll have chicken." "You get three; what do you want on them?" "Chicken." "Yeah, but you get three. How do you want them?" "With chicken." "On all of them?" "Yes, chicken." "Oh, OK."), I explained about Mad Cow Disease having entered the country, and managed to scare everyone else into changing their orders to chicken as well. Ha!

On Saturday, my Mom and i went shopping, and stopped by a local nursery, where we found several cool plants. Then, Target was selling some very nice pots of impatiens, so I grabbed four of those, and plopped the cool plants in pots in my side garden. I'll buy more posts to hang the pots off of soon.

I also spent some of the weekend working on that BeOS board game. It'll now display the entire board layout, in all of its sucky glory. I'm not very good at this sort of artwork. Hey, check out a screenshot.

Meanwhile, I stumbled upon www.iahome.net, the "Very UnOfficial Home" of Internet Appliances. It's got a good bunch of information on net-connected devices, presented in a very pleasing way.

Spent a bit of time last night in my garden, putting in a third post and hanging pots from same. I also dug out a few old stumps in the area that will be a pool, as soon as we run electricity out and I buy some extra pond liner. I even managed to yank the skin off of a blister I didn't know I had. Hey, it's a red badge of courage.

I also -- finally -- e-mailed all of my Informant source code, documentation, etc. to the new developer. He wants a contract that explicitly states what we're doing, which is fine by me. I'll have to draw something up over the next few days.

Meanwhile, I bit the bullet and bought the complete original Ranma 1/2 OAV (direct-to-video series) on DVD, the first five episodes of Gundam Wing on one DVD, and the first two (?) episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion on DVD (all anime, in case you hadn't guessed). I've already seen much of the last half of Gundam Wing, but Ranma and Eva are completely new to me. I'm looking forward to seeing 'em.

Hmmmm, only one week between updates. All righty then.

The BeOS board game is progressing nicely in the design stages. It's based on the rules for Combat Chess II, but modified a little bit. We'll see how that progresses.

I've been informed that I may have to work over the weekend. Ugh. And I just got my pond kit in the mail, and my Dad wanted me to help him stain the hosue. Lovely.

Last night's Exposure was quite good. In particular, I liked Red, by Gary (Robin Williams' Jack) Nadeau -- it's a short about childhood, and how we let those joys of childhood live on. Or don't.

I sort of hesitate to mention it, because it's a rather private idea, but I've been toying with an idea for a direct-to-video anime sort of series. Not that I would have any way to do it, but still. It's a sort of serial experiments lain-type story, in reverse. Kinda hard to explain. I'll post more when -- and if -- I flesh out the story to a decent depth.

Also note that I finally moved all of the March and April upates to the archives.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
-- Andrew Marvell, Thoughts in a Garden, from The Golden Treasury

I've finally completed the majority of the gardening that I wanted to do, though of course, There Is Still Much To Do. I've put up two posts with hanging baskets on them, installed screens in my French Door, planted a few plants in pots on my deck, tried to get a pump working in my fountain (unsuccessfully; turns out I have a bad pump), and other bits and pieces. I'll have to post photos here at some point.

The gardening has been eating up a lot of time lately, though. Now that that's going to be less of a priority for me, I'll be able to get back into my routine (writing, drawing, practicing the piano and violin), and start work on some other projects. I've been meaning to try to write a BeOS board game for awhile now.

Two-week gap? What two-week gap? I don't see...oh.

Seriously, oops. For some reason I totally forgot about this page. Or, when I was remembering it, I didn't actually bother to upate it (hi, Brennen!).

I've been watching a lot of anime lately, for some reason. From Gundam Wing at midnight on Cartoon Network, to Macross Plus on DVD (volumes 1 and 2), to formulating ideas for an anime-style direct-to-video miniseries. (Yes, I know that that latter is just a tad ambitious -- it's just a story. For now.) I've even been watching some of the ridiculously over-the-top Dragonball Z, as well as downloading some anime music (I particularly recommend Myung's Theme from Macross Plus -- gorgeous).

The good news is that a friend of mine is putting together a review site, where I, him, and perhaps a couple of other people can toss out in-depth reviews of whatever catches our fancy. The two main strengths of the site will be our emphasis on analytical reviews (not just "This was cool"), and the ability to read multiple reviews of the same work. And I figure I'm always doing mini-reviews of stuff on this diary, so that'll be a nice outlet for me.

My parents went on a mini-vacation last weekend, which left me alone with the dogs. I can't report on any major problems; the one big excitement happened on Sunday morning, when we were visited by a new dog in the neighborhood (a Bull Mastiff, I think), and I had to go out and corral (sp?) Molly, our Golden Retriever.

I've been spending some time gardening, of late. My side garden is slowly improving; tonight I'll be putting up two posts which I'll hang baskets of flowers from, plus planting a few herbs in pots on my deck.

Ran across one hilarious site the other day: Final Cut, a collection of movie reviews that show an amazing lack of basic comprehension. The site's down at the moment; otherwise I'd paste in a few examples. Whew! A good site just for laughs.

AWANA is ended for the year; we had our awards ceremony on Friday. Now all we have left is a lock-in, where we'll eat pizza and play dart wars. I've already bought my weaponry: A Star Wars bowcaster dart gun, a small Nerf pistol, and a larger Nerf pump-action weapon which I probably won't use.

Oft have I caught, upon a fitful breeze,
Fragments of far-off melodies,
With ear not coveting the whole,
A part so charmed the pensive soul.
While a dark storm before my sight
Was yielding, on a mountain height
Loose vapours have I watched, that won
Prismatic colours from the sun
-- William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Written in a Blank Leaf of MacPherson's Ossian, from The Complete Poetical Works, 1888.

After some last-minute worries, it turns out that Brennen will be flying down here next weekend, for the weekend. Huzzah!

Meanwhile, myself and my parents went to a lovely outdoor concert at Reston Town Center, sponsored by WGMS 103.5. Beautiful music wafted on the breeze, with the only interruption being a crotchedy old lady from a nursing home who kept wailing, "For WHAT?" ten feet away from us. Fortunately, she was led away by a nurse of some sort (I think she came with a group).

I've also managed to update my About.com site pretty often over the past couple of days. Hopefully I can get into a regular routine of doing that now.

Had a long phone conversation with Saalon last night, about writing among other things. We agreed that we're both kind of scared about fiction writing right now. It's like we don't know exactly how to approach things. We're trying to find our voice, and trying to get back into writing after a (comparatively) long hiatus.

I've decided that I what I need to do is come up with some large, epic story, then write a small part of it. Just a short story, set in this big universe. I think that that's what I need to build my confidence.

It was back to work today after a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend. I am still a little angry at myself over yesterday afternoon, though: I decided to watch afternoon cartoons, and ended up watching TV for a good seven hours. It's amazing how easy it is to get sucked in by the television. Or the Great Glass Teat, as AICN's Moriarty likes to call it.

However, I used the opportunity to watch some of The 1900 House, a show about the three-month experiment that a family spent in a turn-of-the-century-era house. They had to dress and act as much like the times as possible; everything they bought had to have been available at the time. It's a very interesting story as they learn to cope with the lack of modern conveniences, and the huge amounts of hard work. In this week's episode, the mother explains that she gets a lot of visits from friends, who just adore Victoriana and talk about how much they love it. But now she's realized that they've romanticized Victoriana; they really only want the pretty bits. Even if they coo over how much they'd love to live in a house like this, they don't really want to live in it, and by that I mean clean it, walk up and down its ladder-like stairs, smell the bathroom, or stumble around in it after dark (no electricity, after all). Very interesting.

I hope to get some more work done on my garden this week, hopefully having the pond done by Sunday night.

Just finished an excellent book named Tommy and Me by Ben Stein. Check out my review on my Read Books page.

Saalon came down with some sort of nasty cold/flu combination, and thus didn't drive here for the weekend. It worked out well, though; I've gotten a lot of things done, and he can come in two weeks. Even better, last night we cooked up the idea of Brennen coming too. It just might work, too.

On Saturday I saw Fantasia 2000 and Gladiator, both excellent movies in their own ways. Both of them highly recommended. And there's really nothing to worry about in Gladiator. There's quite a bit of blood, but no gore or severed heads or anything like that.

I was about to excuse my lack of updates by saying that nothing really interesting has happened lately, but whenever I say that I end up having a monster update describing all sorts of things.

Nothing interesting has happened in my side garden, except that I bought that portable fireplace/grill through the internet, and it arrived on Tuesday. The fireplace, not the internet. It looks good, too. We put one of those store-bought logs in it, and it burned nicely. Cool beans.

I also stumbled across NieA Under Seven, the latest anime series from the director of Armitage III and the character designer of serial experiments: lain. It's a nice, calm story about a group of children (all girls), living in what appears to be a vaguely post-apocalyptic world. It focuses on two characters, the shy Mayuko, and the bouncy, blonde, elfin NieA.

What's interesting is that they're posting each episode of the show online, as RealVideo streams, at this place. So you can watch a whole (half-hour) episode, including beginning and ending credits (the latter has been running through my head for a while now).

Saalon's coming down for the weekend, which is cool. We have a lot of anime to watch (Project A-Ko, Tenchi The Movie 2: Daughter of Darkness, the second Tenchi direct-to-video series, some Ranma, and possibly Grave of the Fireflies).

Which reminds me, I bought Grave of the Fireflies on DVD. Supposed to be one of the greatest anime movies ever. Pure drama, about two siblings who lived in Hiroshima. In 1945.

I was also thrilled to be able to catch the 60-second Tenchi Muyo! ad on Cartoon Network, for their upcoming showings of the series. I'm tickled that they're actually showing a show that I've liked for a long time. It's sort of a validation of my taste in anime, I guess. :-) And it's a wonderful ad. Perhaps my favorite line, said in a bombastic, overly-dramatic announcer's voice: "The universe needs a new hero! Tenchi...just needs some peace and quiet. Good luck."

Meanwhile, work has begun to truly suck. We're gearing up for Release 5 of our software on July 7th, and typically for a software project, that means we're operating in crunch mode. Which we shouldn't be. But everyone's been expecting things to go more smoothly at the end. Now that we're putting everything together for the first time, that is. Ha.

Well, today was devoted mostly to chores. My parents are still away, which has been pleasant. Not that I dislike their company; far from it. Rather, it's nice to just be alone and have to take care of onesself. No interruptions (or very few).

I ran out to Home Depot around noon, then stopped in at a nearby Friendly's for lunch. Big mistake. Turns out they were having a spot of trouble with the kitchen staff. I ordered a chicken platter and a Fribble (which is like a chocolate shake); they didn't make the Fribble, and the rest of the meal was lukewarm. At least mine came out relatively quickly; it took the folks next to me about an hour to get their food. There were two separate walk-outs in our little corner of the restaurant alone. They sure lost my business.

I found it interesting that the folks next to me were excusing this behavior by saying that it's so hard to get good kitchen help these days. I should have spoken up, because I disagree: I think there are plenty of good people, it's just that restaurants are slow to fire bad people. They'll find employees who are OK, and keep them on until there's some sort of major problem. No! You have to remember how much a single employee can cost a company in lost revenue, and how much revenue another employee can gain. Be quick to fire; maybe the next person will be a lot better.

I had an upset stomach for the rest of the day too, now that I think about it.

But other than that, the rest of the day went well. I did some more casual gardening, and came up with a great new idea for my side garden (a brick patio in one corner, with one of those portable cooking fireplace stove things, like the Coleman 5065-700 fireplace and grill). In the evening, I set out a few things for a surprise for my parents tomorrow morning. >:-)

Oh, and I posted a review of Neon Genesis: Evangelion, as promised, on Points of View. Fri, 02 Jun 00 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

My parents are away this weekend, going up for my cousin's graduation. I would have gone, too, but somebody has to take care of the dogs....

The morning was spent by first driving up to a craft store and asking them to frame a Washu and Tenchi cel that I won on eBay (picture forthcoming), plus deposit some checks. Unfortunately, the craft store doesn't open until 9:00 on Saturdays, and I got there at 8:30, so I walked down to the Target at the other end of the strip mall and bought a copy of Galaxy Quest on DVD. Terrific film.

By that point the craft store had opened, so I walked in and explained what I needed. The nice young woman behind the counter looked at the cel, smiled, and said "Oh, Tenchi." Turns out she's an anime fan herself, having seen some on the Sci-Fi Channel with her brother, then branching out to buy videos at a local Suncoast. We chatted a bit about our favorite anime series, which was very pleasant. Nice to find someone else who actually knows what I'm talking about.

When I got home, I straightened up my room a bit, then worked out in the garden before calling Saalon. I had hit a point where I needed to talk to him about my anime direct-to-video series idea, so we'd scheduled to talk around noon on Saturday. Not surprisingly, it ended up being a 4.5-hour call which wandered off into discussions of serial experiments: lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and movie-making.

I spent the rest of the day pretty much relaxing, watching TV and sitting out in the garden. Very pleasant.

Eeek. Been awhile, hasn't it?

I've watched the first four episodes of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. This thing is, in a word, amazing. I'll post a full-scale review later on; suffice to say that it's a wonderful, moving, exciting series. Those episodes just came out on DVD; if anime catches your eye at all, check out Eva.

I also bought and watched a collection of direct-to-video episodes set in the Ranma 1/2 universe. Ranma 1/2 is a screwball romantic comedy about...oh, just check out Dar-Long Chang's tribute. I couldn't put it any better myself.

I also got the first DVD of Gundam Wing, and watched the first two episodes. Good, rousing action stuff with a very serious undercurrent. Its strongest facet is its attention to political machinations; nearly everyone has some sort of agenda. Impressive.

I also wrote up a website for Saalon, called "Points of View." It'll be a general review site, reviewing...pretty much anything fictional. Books, movies, TV shows; you name it. Saalon's also working on a terrific column series. Should be interesting.

Now close the windows and hush all the fields;
  If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
  Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
  It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
  But see all wind-stirred.
-- Robert Frost (1874–1963), Now Close the Windows, from A Boy's Will, 1915.

AICN has an excellent review of serial experiments: lain, that anime series that I can't stop talking about. If you want to know what it is, I haven't read a better description yet.

I should be picking up my Sun keyboard and mouse today. So hopefully I can get a Sun workstation wired up and working in my room.

And, according to the Keirsey Personality Sorter, it looks like I'm a Rational (NT), leaning towards the iNTj "Mastermind" personality. Huh.

Two weeks since my last update. Yeeeeeesh.

The relatives left. We had a good time.

I've made some minor updates to the space opera diary.

I've been updating my About.com site. A little.

X-Men was a great movie. So was Gladiator and Fantasia 2000. Check out my reviews of same on Points of View.

I'm going to Otakon 2000, a major anime convention held in Baltimore, August 4-6. Should be a lot of fun. They're doing a serial experiments: lain theme. They've even got Boa, the band that did the lain theme song ("Duvet").

I'm still putting together my cel collection. I have a bunch that are currently being framed.

Been watching Tenchi Universe on Cartoon Network. Great to see this show on the air. And Pioneer has announced they're gonna do a new Tenchi series, which is very cool.

Also, I finally bought a Sun keyboard and mouse, so I should be able to hook up my Sun workstations and see if they actually work. Grabbed 'em off eBay, so they're coming in to my post office box. Should be able to swing by there on Wednesday (I've been working late and doing dump runs for the past couple of days).

And the website for that guy who draws like Yoshitoshi ABe? Turns out, that is the website for Yoshitoshi ABe (yes, he prefers to have his last name spelled "ABe").

Work is going fairly nicely. I certainly have plenty to do, and it's all well-defined. I'll also be meeting with the head of PERMS tomorrow to talk about improving documentation.

I got home around 6:45 tonight, and spend about an hour updating Focus on BeOS. Then I was able to shoot the breeze on #beos on EFnet, and just generally relax for a little while. My parents and relatives were at my grandmother's house, so I had the house all to myself.

I'm going to try to spend about an hour each night working on that About.com site. I really need to get it up to speed, and there's no other way to do it. And heck, I'll be making money....

Work is starting to get heavy again. I'm actually at work, now, to do some testing. As a result, I'm missing CardCaptors (a.k.a. Card Captor Sakura). :pout:

I've been terribly behind on doing stuff for my About.com BeOS site, and with working today, I won't be able to get much done on that. Maybe on Sunday, but I like to take that as a day of rest. Arg.

I'm spending some time fiddling with an idea for a space opera novel, or series of novels. I've uploaded a diary of my thoughts, as I get them.

My aunt and cousin are coming up for the weekend. They stayed at a hotel Thursday and Friday, then will be arriving at our home some time today and staying with us through Tuesday. They're good folks, so that'll be cool. I'm actually planning to go see X-Men with my cousin tonight. I'm anxious to see how the movie turned out.

Well, I had a great time with Brennen and Saalon this weekend. We came up with a fantastic idea for a massively-multiplayer online world that would be way too ambitious for us to be able to fund. But we'll probably put together a design document and post it somewhere.

We also got the chance to watch Project A-Ko, Galaxy Quest, and Tenchi Muyo in Love together, all of which we enjoyed.

I spent some time on Saturday with the Weblint Gateway, a site which checks any given webpage to make sure it's got properly-coded HTML. You can think of it as a compiler for HTML; if there are any syntax errors in the code, they'll be nicely flagged for you. Includes fussy and not-so-fussy options.

And meanwhile, the human genome was mapped. I don't really feel like posting a trumped-up rant about how this will change our lives. It will. Let's start dealing with it.

It's time once again for your favorite game show, Spot the Looney. Now our first segment comes from an online description of the latest issue of the magazine FHM:

In an age when 10-year-old kids use the F-word more often than Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas," America's innocence seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. FHM is here to tell you that innocence isn't extinct; rather, actress Alicia Silverstone has a monopoly on it. Whether an elephant is attacking her or she's snuggling with her dogs, Silverstone is always a pure, tasty piece of cutie pie. Also in this issue: Total sex! (7-8/00)

A new episode of NieA Under 7 is up. Also check out this guy's page; I don't know who it is, but s/he draws like Yoshitoshi Abe. Beautiful stuff.

I went to work yesterday, along with practically everyone else on PERMS. This is not a good sign. I'm planning to have a little talk with the head of PERMS tomorrow.

We had a lovely dinner last night; I grilled a steak for the first time on my new fireplace/grill thing. It was my first experience grilling; fortunately, the back of the bag of charcoal briquettes had good instructions, and nothing went wrong.

Well, I went out for a job interview at Intersect, a local start-up software company. They offered me $15K more than I'm maknig now, plus stock options. I'm kinda trying to think of any reasons not to take it. Basically, I really like the people I'm working with now, plus I'm getting to the point where I have some real expertise. OTOH...I'm not exactly happy there. Well, I'll think and pray about it, then we'll see.

But on the way back from the interview, my faithful truck conked out on me. I was fortunate enough to be about fifty yards from a gas station at the time, and they picked it up for me while my Mom came in her car. I drove her home, then went on to work. Then proceeded to try to arrange for something manageable wit Geico, the gas station, finding an auto body shop, and working out a rental car.

I didn't do so well on that last front, but I have worked out a schedule where I'll take Mom's car to work tomorrow, we'll work out something with transporting the truck to the auto body shop, then getting a rental car on Tuesday (Monday being Labor Day).

As a result, I had to spent a VERY long day at work, not leaving until 8:00. And then I had to go to Home Depot and get my Dad's birthday present. In case he's reading this, I'll wait until later to reveal what it is.

I definitely had a full day of work today. Several of the program managers at the sites we support came in to our facility to watch us go through a few of our major test procedures. It was my job (along with Kim, the other tester) to demo those procedures, explaining the changes to the system and how they affected various pieces of PERMS, as well as demonstrating that these new pieces actually do work. We were all very amiable, but I was in Presentation Mode all day, so I got home tired.

I decided to try to jump on IRC, but couldn't connect to anywhere except events.scifi.com, so I relaxed my ban on that server (long story there) and chatted with some good old friends there for awhile. 'Twas a lot of fun. I hope I can re-join that server at some point.

I actually just shot off an e-mail to one of the higher-up admins there, to see if they can't get some conduct rules in-place. It's something I've been arranging for a long time; we'll have to see what happens. It's not exactly fertile ground right now, but I'd be willing to do till some soil if need be.

Other than that, I had a nice long chat with my folks about upcoming vacations and such. Nothing major, just a pleasant conversation. I need to spend more time with them, actually.

Posted massive updates for the weekend.

I watched the first three episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena late Sunday night. And I'm finding it...very weird. I'll post a full review to Points of View soon, but basically I've found it to be VERY solidly-written, pleasantly drawn, and interestingly plotted, but with several glaring and disturbing problems. I just can't enjoy it yet. Interestingly, this sounds a lot like how Saalon thought of Neon Genesis Evangelion before reading plot descriptions for that whole show. Like him with Eva, I just can't enjoy watching this show yet. Fortunately, there are six episodes on this DVD, so I still have some more to get through.

I overslept on Sunday and told my folks to leave for church without me. After they did so -- reminding me to keep an ear out for our dogs, who would probably need to go out at some point -- I woke up, grabbed my Bible, and padded out in my socks onto my deck. It was about 72 degrees with low humidity, and the birds were singing to each other from the ancient oak trees nearby. I sighed contentedly, read through Proverbs chapter 27, then decided to go grab breakfast before reading more. I put my hand on the door handle, pushed, and...it was locked.

I was locked out of the house.

My beautiful new French doors were definitely locked. I knew that my parents had probably locked up the rest of the house, but I had to try everywhere else. So I gingerly stepped around to the front of the house, over our gravel driveway (not fun when the only protection that one's feet has is a thin membrane of sock). Sure enough, that was locked. A quick trip across the gravel, then along the side of the house to the back confirmed that the basement door was likewise locked, as was the back door. Lovely.

There was one alternative, though. There is a small balcony on the second floor of our house, off of a large bathroom. It's just big enough for two people to sit comfortably and share a card table between them -- perfect for a cup of tea on an autumn day. The view through the woods is spectacular.

In any event, a sliding glass door provides access to that balcony, and if fortune was smiling on me, it might be unlocked. Unfortunately, the balcony is on the back side of our house, and due to the slope of the ground, it's effectively two stories up from there. So I trudged back to the garage at the front of the house (more gravel!), got the extension ladder, hefted it all the way back to the back of the house, manhandled it into position, and climbed up.

After precariously clambering over the balcony railing, I stepped up to the door, took a breath to steady my all-too-hopeful heart, grabbed the handle, and pushed. It was locked.

Great. So I climbed back down, put the ladder away (gravel! gravel! ow ow ow!), and went back to my deck. I looked in balefully at Lexie, our English setter, who was whimpering and jumping about. She needed to go out. This was just getting better and better.

It was at this point that I heard the thunder. The sky had been cloudy all morning, and rain had been forecast. Fortunately, it seemed a long way off, so I sat down to think for a few minutes. This was like a puzzle in an adventure game, I decided. My character had to get into the house. What tools could I use? All of the doors were locked, and all of the windows were closed. I couldn't pick the locks, I wasn't about the break the windows. Meanwhile, Lexie continued to whine. I frowned to myself, thinking about how she got frantic when she need to go out. She'd leap up, trying to get our attention, sometimes knocking into things....

A crazy idea was born, and clung tenaciously to the base of my brain. If I could get either of the dogs to jump up in front of the door, they might put their paws on the latch, and then the weight of their bodies would push the latch down, opening the door. My chances were slim, but I was getting desparate. And I thought I felt a few drops of rain.

After stowing my Bible in the garage (thank goodness we'd put a door in the side of the garage, connecting it with my side yard), I grabbed a stick and held it up outside the door. Both dogs had an immediate missile lock on that wonderful, tasy, mouth-sized piece of wood. I held it near their noses, then lifted it up, calling out "Up! Up!" They eagerly stared up at the stick. "Up!" Lexie began to get agitated. "Up! Up!" She leaped, straight up, about six inches off the ground. A good start, but only a start. "Good Lexie! Up! Up!" She looked at me quizzically.

This continued for several minutes. Neither of the dogs got more than a foot off the ground, and since they never got the stick, they soon became bored with this strange little game, and just stared at me and that mouth-watering hunk of wood. Even a new stick was only enough to keep their attention for half a minute. 'Twas a lost cause, sadly.

Finally, I followed in the footsteps of many great men. I went into the garage, climbed into my truck, stuck my foot out the driver's side window, and slept. Or, more accurately, I dozed heavily, catching up on Friday's terrible night's sleep.

I snoozed without incident until my parents came home. Fortunately, they did not go out to lunch as they had debated doing, and Lexie had had no accidents in the meantime. And the weather had been pleasant, the rain changing its mind and wrapping itself up behind a ceiling of clouds until later in the day.

Later in the afternoon I went to an AWANA leaders' picnic at a local park, where some of the clubbers came. We had a really good time, and talked about some ideas for the coming year, including concerns about how we do shares. Right now, the kids get shares (a.k.a. "AWANA dollars") for finishing sections, coming to club, wearing their uniform, etc., and then a couple of times a year we hold an AWANA store where the kids can buy a trinkets and such. Sadly, that's caused a lot of greed and ill-will (really, more from parents who ask "Why don't you have thus-and-so? You had it LAST week! My boy wants thus-and-so!"). So maybe there's a solution; we'll be thinking and praying about it.

I caught the second episode of Escaflowne on Saturday, as well as a few episodes of Digimon (nothing particularly amazing), and a bit of the "fundamentally sucky but with occasional flashes of greatness" Transformers series Beast Machines. I like Escaflowne quite a lot thus far; it has a pleasant balance between rousing action/adventure and quieter moments. And the characters are all non-trivial, which is refreshing (I cannot tell you how tired I am of cliched character archetypes -- the Wise and Noble Leader, the Wisecracker, the Seductive Female).

I then got a late e-mail informing me that the dcMetro gang was meeting down at a local golf range/putt-putt course place at 8:00. So I ran down there, played the batting cages ("Boy, did you!" scream my aching shoulders), and played a round of putt-putt golf. And waddya know, I won by a single stroke!

Well, Roger (my truck)'s been banged up a bit. I was in McDonald's having lunch, when a guy parked opposite it dropped an ice cream cone in his lap, thought the car was in reverse when it was really in drive, hit the accelerator, leaped the divider, and rammed the front of Roger. Thank God, it's still drivable, and the other driver found me and we traded insurance information. And a quick call to Geico has taken care of the whole thing. I'll be taking Roger in for an appraisal this afternoon.

I had another one of those long phone conversations with Saalon last night. Besides our normal anime discussions, we brainstormed about Aria, my research agent. We've got all sorts of neat ideas about where to go from here, like being able to search the results that have been downloaded. He described an excellent application for Aria: research papers.

I also caught the second-to-last episode of Tenchi Universe. Tenchi defeated Kagato, rescued Ayeka, and...? We'll have to wait until next episode to find out what's next.

Which, of course, means that Tenchi in Tokyo starts Friday. We'll get to see Tenchi going off to college and finding a girlfriend (Sayuka?). Should be interesting.

Meanwhile, the family has been planning a European vacation for early October. I arranged for doctor's appointments (routine physical, etc.), and I'm trying desperately to get my passport renewed. Thankfully, the State Department's Travel Deparment has a wonderful passport section, including a renewal form. I should be able to get my new passport in a couple of weeks.

I watched the rest of the first Battle Athletes: Victory DVD last night. It's a fun little anime series; definitely a comedy, but with nice moments of character development. I'm impressed; I'll definitely be grabbing the rest of the series.

I also caught one of the last episodes of Tenchi Universe on Cartoon Network. Wow. The plot is darned impressive. Ryoko kinda died.

Last night was pretty much a wash otherwise, though. Work is tiring me out a lot now. Hopefully I can finish wiring up my outside electrical stuff tonight.

Had dinner with my Grandmother last night. It was kinda sad, actually; she's not doing well mentally, compared to the Grandmother that I know. Not that she's anything approaching senile; she just has a bit of a hard time remembering things, and keeping a train of thought. :sigh:

It looks like I may be starting a local Be User's Group, which would be cool. I got an e-mail from a local Be-er, who wanted to get involved. Since my local BUG has sorta petered out, I figure I might as well organize everyone.

I wonder if User's Groups couldn't be a very effective presence in the community, providing demos of BeOS to other local UG's, talking about BeOS usage with businesses or non-profit organizations (since Be is free, non-profits might see some real benefit from it), organizing software development efforts, and so forth.

I've been trying to keep up with my About.com site; it's hard for me to keep coming up with content every week. My recent series on Adamation's personalStudio has helped, but it's still...well, not always fun.

Yeah yeah, I know, complain complain.

Just finished Brenda Laurel's book, Computers as Theatre. Wow. Very interesting stuff. I'll have to post more about it later. Basically, her idea is that our current viewpoint of software as tools is inappropriate, and that we should start to think about software as agents that help us to complete a task. Which sounds like splitting hairs, but it's a fundamentally different point of view, that changes how software is designed.

I've added Computers as Theatre to my list of read books, along with Think Big, a very good book by Ben Carson, M.D. (a pioneer in the field of emergency brain surgery for critical cancer patients).

Well, last night I went to dcMetro, an interdenominational youth meeting for 18's to 30's, focusing on outreach. The music and general "feel" of the meeting was not exactly what I'd like; it felt like people were trying to hype themselves up so that they could feel God. And, IMO, that's not really appropriate. God's everywhere, right? It shouldn't be a matter of trying to sense a mystical energy force.

But that said, it looks like they're going to try to do some really cool things. Next month they'll be handing out food to the homeless in D.C., and they're looking to do some outreach during the upcoming AIDS walk (sorta to counteract the "GOD HATES FAGS" people...ick). So I'm going to start praying about it, and see if maybe God wants me doing that. AWANA will be starting up in a few weeks, so that will be keeping me busy, too.

I did some work on my side garden this weekend, and just spent some time sitting on my deck reading. It's so wonderful to have a peaceful little corner of the world where you can sit down, sip a mug of hot tea, and truly relax your bones.

I also came up with a brilliant little idea for a series of fantasy books. I wanted to talk it over with Saalon -- who is amazingly talented at coming up with fascinating twists and directions on an idea -- and e-mailed him with my thoughts, but he was selfish enough to be offline most of Sunday. ;-) So, I popped the first DVD of serial experiments: lain into Tramp (my main Windows computer), fast-forwarded a few minutes, dialled his voicemail, and when it came on, hit play. Alice said "You really should check your e-mail at least once a day. It's best, y'know," and I put the receiver down. When Saalon came online later that night, I was satisfied to hear that it was a very creepy experience.

I've also uploaded video clips of the opening and closing credits sequences of one of my current obsessions, NieA_7, to my NieA_7 website, UFO Dreams.

Putting in lots of extra hours at work now. Not too bad, though; I'm doing things that I know how to do. Which is amazingly satisfying.

I had a brief interview with Intersect Software yesterday. Actually, it took two hours; I just expected it to be brief. Anyway.

I'm not champing on the bit to jump ship from Litton/PRC, but I'm certainly not happy. We're not documenting anything, and we're having to put in lots of extra hours to get our products out. These are really bad signs. Intersect sounds interesting; unfortunately, it's a small start-up that expects long hours. I'm going to schedule another meeting with them, after thinking it over, at which point we can get down to the specific offer.

Hmmm. I've stumbled across a few cool websites, but can't remember them now. Gundam.com is very good.

I have got a good amount of content up on UFO Dreams, the first English NieA Under 7 fan website. I'm pleased with that. I hope to be posting announcements to the various anime sites soon.

If the weather holds off, I'll be putting in the pond in my garden tomorrow. Huzzah!

Work.

Sucks.

We've been finishing up work on Release 5.0b of our product, and it's been requiring a lot of long hours. Ah well; we finished up system testing yesterday, which is a very significant milestone. And we did it on-schedule, too! Much as my boss was worried that we wouldn't....

Meanwhile, I had a late night Tuesday night, doing errands. To reward myself, I went to the local Suncoast to grab the first Revolutionary Girl Utena DVD, but they were selling it for the full retail price. So instead, I got the first Battle Athletes Victory DVD, discounted to USD$15, and when I got home I ordered Utena off of Amazon.com (it'll be cheaper, even with shipping).

I watched the first two episodes of Battle Athletes; it's a cute little show.

Work is very busy lately. Lots o' stuff to do. Not much fun.

I finally got my final Tenchi cel yesterday. It's cool, too; a shot of Tenchi himself looking lost and confused (as usual). I'll have to post a photo of it.

I just realized that I never summarized my TECspedition 2000 speaking thing. Basically, it went well; I gave a demo of the BeOS, using one of my own machines ("Tramp"), and a large TV monitor. Some folks asked questions. I got to meet Chris Heschong of TheWireCo.net, who hosts a bunch of BeOS-related websites. Cool stuff. My Dad came along, and drove both ways, which was a huge help.

We had a big 1.5 hour deparmental meeting yesterday, and found out that PERMS is going to have to perform better than last year, with an 11% reduction in budget. Neat.

I've gone through and cleaned up this whole site. Also note the new poll, if you're looking at this page in a frame.

Oh, and I stumbled across a manga retelling of Revelations (as in, the book of, from the Bible). It's only gone as far as the great earthquake, but what they have so far is an impressive 27 pages of images. It goes for a literal interpretation of the book, and manages to toss in some humor too (a few of the angels are oddly cheerful about pronouncing the heralds of doom).

I got my Sun keyboard and mouse today, and eagerly set everything up, only to realize that the Sun keyboard doesn't have the right jack for the port in the back of the CPU. Arrrrg. I'm just gonna have to break down and ask for help on this one. There must be a Sun newsgroup somewhere.

And wow again.

I just read Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. It talks about the way record companies work, and how the new digital economy holds the awesome potential for changing things.

Here's her evidence: take a band that nobody's ever heard of, that suddenly rockets to the top. It gets a huge 20% royalty plus a million-dollar advance, and their album sells a million copies. Y'know how much each member of that band would have left to live off of for the next year?

$45,000.

Because, as Love explains, the record companies are the sole means of delivering music, and so they control artists. They can afford to squeeze money out of artists, because where else are the artists going to go? Nowhere, until the internet appeared, and that's why the net and Napster frightens them so much.

Love goes on to say that all she wants is an intermediary that will get CDs published, and t-shirts made, and concerts scheduled, and mp3's made, and what-have-you, but that will respect the artist. That will give the artist a decent amount of profits. Do they deserve huge amounts of cash? When you've got a couple million fans, each shelling out $17 per album, heck yeah.

So, what if a company started small, only publishing mp3's using Stephen King's recent system (e.g., a shareware-style honor system, where a certain percentage of downloads must be voluntarily paid for, or future content isn't delivered)? A company that could quickly branch out into t-shirts, and one-off CDs for fans, and so forth and so on. And what if that company gave artists an upfront cut of profits? Would they find artists?

Oh yeah.

Would they find fans?

I bet they would. Remember that we're not talking a mammoth, expensive infrastructure here; an e-commerce site needs only cost a few hundred dollars a month or so these days.

Interesting.

Wow. It's been quite a weekend.

Saalon and I went to Otakon Friday through Sunday. 'Twas all sorts of fun. Here's pretty much what happened, as well as I can remember:

I picked up Saalon at BWI on Friday at 12:30, then we went straight to the Baltimore Convention Center. After wandering the streets for a few minutes, we finally found the center, which turned out to be literally across the street from the garage where we'd parked. Duh.

The first day, we attended a panel on digital animation, which was very interesting. Scott Frazier, the guy who lectured and answered questions, has been doing anime for quite awhile in Japan, and was obviously very knowledgeable on the latest stuff going on there (he has a great article in the current edition of Ex). He demoed a software suite that takes scanned images, figures out the various lines, lets you color it intelligently based on the lines, then lay all of those images out on a backdrop and animate them. Even better, you can do that in batches, so making a change in one image will affect the rest of the images.

We then looked around the Dealer's Room, and each grabbed a copy of visual experiments: lain, the artwork for serial experiments: lain. Then we checked out a few miscellaneous video rooms, including some music videos (anime clips arranged to music), until finally watching Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz with several hundred other screaming Gundam Wing fans. It was the first time that the dubbed Cartoon Network version has ever been shown, AFAIK. Boy, was THAT cool. We were going to stick around for Mystery Anime Theater 3000, but the line was long and it was getting late, so we decided to head home.

Saturday morning, we went to a panel with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe, the creator/producer and character designer of lain, respectively. They got to talk a bit about their involvement with lain, answering ssome questions on style and meanings. Two smart guys there, though ABe seemed very shy. Both of them spoke through a translator, though Ueda knew a bit of English.

Next was a panel on character creation, with Yoshitoshi ABe and Kunihiko Ikuhara (of Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena). 'Twas interesting to hear about how they approached things from a character-creation perspective. In particular, ABe presented 10 or 11 notebooks full of sketches to the lain animators, whereas Ikuhara submits three pages' worth per character.

Then came a panel with Boa, the band that created Duvet, the lain theme song. That was fun because they all know English (they're British), so the panel was much more lively than the previous two. They talked a bit about how they think up songs (through evolution, mainly), and their plans for the future.

We also paid another visit to the Dealer's Room, where I grabbed a translated copy of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga, volume 4, which picks up where my DVD leaves off. They were having a "buy 1, get 1 free" sale, so I also picked upa Maison Ikkoku manga for the heck of it.

On Sunday, we had nothing in particular to see, so we just wandered around the Dealer's Room. Saalon found two Tenchi manga, which I bought, and that was about it. We looked around in the video rooms a bit, then I drove Saalon to the airport and came home.

heh. By doing a Google search on Yoshotishi ABe, I see that this very page is the 5th highest-rated. Guess I talk about the guy a lot, don't I?

Which shouldn't be surprising. His designs are unbelievably gorgeous.

Well, I'm sitting here at a computer terminal in Wytheville, VA (in the extreme southwest), waiting for the first group of people for the BeOS demo I'll be giving here at "TECspedition 2000."

We had a good trip down: It took about 5.5 hours, which was actually better than we expected. My Dad came down with me, and has been an incredible help. Not only did he drive the whole way, he helped load and unload stuff from the car, and has just generally given me a hand wherever I needed it. Thanks, Dad.

We stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, which was actually quite nice considering that this is not exactly a center of urban activity. Pictures will be forthcoming, once I get home.

OK, sorry about the lack of updates. I've been truly incredibly busy, plus Wizard.net's servers got migrated over to Frontline.net this weekend, which locked me out of my account for several days.

So, what's new? Well, I've been asked to be a keynote speaker at a technology conference in southwestern Virginia. I'll be leaving Wednesday afternoon, to speak on Thursday morning/early afternoon, after which I'll come back in time for Otakon on Friday. My Dad has volunteered to come along with me, which will make things much easier.

Meanwhile, The Sci-Fi Channel has posted a new teaser trailer for their upcoming Dune miniseries. The first time I saw it, I thought it sucked. Upon re-watching, though, I realize that I'm watching a few seconds (at most) of characters from a four-hour epic story. There's no way I can judge them based on that. It actually looks better and better the more I think about that.

Points of View is slowly building up content. We should be able to launch it within a few weeks.

And my garden is coming along as well. More info is posted on my ever-unfinished garden site.

I've also archived all of those July diary entries.

Ever since Be announced their "focus shift" towards the Internet Appliance market, the community has heard lots of complaints that that's stupid, nobody will buy IA's, it's a tiny niche, etc. This morning, I opened up our paper, and was greeted with a full-page color Compaq ad for their new "iPaq" IA (they even call it an Internet Appliance). Sure looks like a doomed market to me.

Sorry, just had to gloat there.

Spent a lovely morning in my garden, doing my devotions and planning a bit for the future. Next year, my garden should be filled out reasonably. It's good to have a project like this; gardening is a joy, and a mental relaxer.

We at Intersect are now talking excitedly with several large companies ("large" as in "tens of thousands of employees") about partnering on technological issues. As usual, they're very excited at the prospect of our software. Now there's a nice feeling: knowing you're involved in a project that is exciting people.

Anyway. I watched the first two Cowboy Bebop DVD's today. CB is a sci-fi pulp adventure anime series with a darkly humorous edge. High-budget, beautiful, and just cruise ships full of fun.

And hey. Wanna play Hangman? I've written up a little script to let you play. Pretty easy to use. The image of the hanging guy really really sucks, but I'll try to scan a little cartoon guy soon. Though hanging a cute little cartoon dude may be sort of macabre. Eh, whatever.

Ooooh, just stumbled across an Ain't It Cool News tidbit that has me drooling. There's a rumor that Warner Brothers has tapped, for the role of the aged Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Batman Beyond film...none other than Paul Newman. Wow. Newman would be perfect; he has that weathered look to him, like he's really been places, done tough things. And he can pull off a gruff demeanor easily.

I decided to toss out being actually productive last night, and instead watched TV. Tenchi in Tokyo is downright amazing; the sucky comedy of the earlier episodes is giving way to powerful romantic drama. And not sappy romance; Tenchi and Sakuya have a mature, deep, loving relationship. And then she dies. Sorta.

I also caught reruns of the American Whose Line Is It Anyway, as well as the Babylon 5 episode "Soul Hunter," and some of The Powerpuff Girls. Sure, sure, huzzah. Who cares. What can I say; Powerpuff Girls rock.

I zipped around the net looking for more Niea Under 7 content, but was not rewarded. Not many people are talking about this show, though I'm getting hundreds of hits on UFO Dreams (thanks mainly to my AniPike listing).

An online friend asked me to help him code a MUD. I don't know why, but I really found it difficult to say "yes;" I'm doing all sorts of things these days, and just won't be reliable. I can help out now and again, but that's about it. I have this sinking feeling that they're going to count on me to do all sorts of stuff. Being the most experienced coder in any project can have its downsides.

I've been contemplating how to make this site better. I still like the frame on the left, but I need to integrate more content, I think. I want to make this a bit more like SpinnWebe. Maybe I should bite the bullet and make this whole thing a CGI-based scripted thing. Though that will require one of two things; huge, hard-to-remember URLs like http://www.other-space.com/cgi-bin/display_homepage.pl?p=h&r=10, or rebuilding all of the HTML files through a server-side program every time I modify the site. And since Frontline.net has shut off my telnet access, the latter is not an option for now. What do you think?

Oh. And check out SpinnWebe's discoveries in The Schumin Web. Ouch. I was amazed to find that when you try to right-click on anything on that site, a JavaScript pop-up informs you "Thank you for right-clicking The Schumin Web!" Totally preventing you from, say, saving an image, or using ANY right-click menus. Brilliant.

Frontline.net has been having some problems. They turned off telnet access for all of us old Wizard.net customers -- without bothering to inform us of the fact. I just suddenly couldn't log in. They're working on a virtual server that will give us telnet-style access again, but it's not ready yet. Gee, thanks.

Saalon and his Mom came over on Tuesday, and we watched the season premieres of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Both of which were quite good. I invited Saalon over for some other evening, but it didn't work out.

Meanwhile, I and my parents are gearing up for our trip to Europe next week. Should be fun.

Updated my resume.

And meanwhile, the corporate website for Jones Soda made me laugh out loud. Several times. It's wonderful. If I drank soda, I'd buy a case.

What's wrong with my stomach? Glad you asked. According to my gastro-enterologist, I've got a "compressed colon," or something like that. My insides have this nasty tendency to clench up, which means I can't eat a whole lot at any given time, and that I can't, for example, drink a full can of soda unless I space it out over a couple of hours (the carbonation gets stuck, kinda). The upshot is that I've started taking little orange pills that should relax my stomach muscles. Of course, the pills have side effects, including drowsiness. At 9:00 p.m. I'm about ready to collapse, whereas normally I'm wired until at least 11:00 (midnight is not an unusual bedtime for me). But if it'll let me eat a whole meal without feeling like I've just ingested a table saw, I'm willing to give it a try for a while.

What's weird is, I'll be in Europe in just about 8 days. It hasn't really hit me yet.

In preparation, I went out to Target tonight to grab a few things, among them a heavy-duty backpack that will double as my suitcase for our trip.

While in Target, I was gratified to see the Corel distribution of Linux on sale. The penguin really is getting mainstream.

They also had actual Pokemon manga there. Like, not silly adaptations of the TV show; the translated manga from Japan, complete with interesting plots and moral dilemmas. I was impressed. You just don't see that sort of thing a lot.

Saalon just left the house. We definitely had a successful weekend.

Saturday morning was spent cleaning, then finishing my pond. Yep, it's done -- all that I want to do now is add a few more rocks around the pond to make it look a little more natural. Then Saalon arrived, and after working out directions for his Mom to go down to a relative's to stay, we watched various episodes of Cowboy Bebop (a very fun action/adventure space opera-ish anime series) and Burn Up W (an annoyingly cliched and oversexed action/adventure cop anime show), and all of Tenchi the Movie 2: Daughter of Darkness (the weakest of the three Tenchi movies, but still a fun time).

The weather was comfortable for Sunday and the Maryland Renaissance Fair; somewhat humid but with a nice temperature. A few minutes after I woke up, my parents left for church, then I fully got up and went upstairs to rouse Saalon, who had just woken up. The trip to the fair was uneventful, and nothing particularly noteworthy happened at the fair. Saalon had a huge turkey leg for lunch ("to complete the experirence"), and I spent 45 minutes waiting in line to do a wall climb. That was fun, though; everyone got three tries, but amazingly enough I made it up on the first try. It's somewhat difficult, but not as hard as I expected.

Then we came back to my house, where we watched chunks of Battle Athletes Victory (a fun show about Olympics-style sports competition in the future), Sakura Wars (an incredible alternate-history SF/fantasy show, impressively deep and character-driven), and Record of Lodoss Wars (which can best be described as a transcribed AD&D campaign), before watching the first half-hour of Venus Wars (check out my POV review for more on that). Then Saalon's Mom showed up, and they left for their hotel. Myself and my parents chatted about a whole bunch of stuff before finally wandering off to bed (we were all pretty tired).

Saalon and I also got a chance to compare notes about J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars comic book series, which is a very impressive dramatic story about superheroes who act very human, in a very human world. We're each getting different issues and telling each other what happens.

Back to work tomorrow. I'm starting to get into the swing of things now. And we'll be bringing in a User Interface company to help us out this week. I half expected to violently disagree with them on a lot of issues, so it should be interesting.

Work is picking up. I have actual work to do, which is nice. It's mainly little fiddly things that I've noticed about the interface that will make the whole experience a little smoother for the potential user.

Meanwhile, I spent some time yesterday mucking about with creating a WinAmp skin. It's surprisingly easy-to-do; a skin is just a .zip file or folder with a bunch of .bmp files in it. You just edit the .bmp files and you've got a new skin. Of course, the skin I've been working on sucks, mainly because I'm making all the classic rookie mistakes. But that's OK; I expect that. I'll try to finish up this one, then start from scratch on a new one which will probably have a few major mistakes because of the sheer scale of doing it right, then the next one after that should be pretty decent.

I also found out that my initial deposit to my BUYandHOLD.com account was already placed in there; they just never notified me. Arg. Still, I've placed my first order, so that should be good.

What BUYandHOLD does is let you buy stock, then will hold and automatically re-invest your dividends back into that stock. So, you can just accumulate money. The focus is less on day-trading and more on making it cheap for you to acquire stock and hold it for the long-term.

Not too much to report. Saalon will be coming down this weekend, which means even fewer updates to this page than normal.

I did manage to get a pretty nice little message board set up on UFO Dreams. Particularly, every message that's posted to that board will get e-mailed to me, so I can keep up with what happens there. Pretty cool, I think.

Spinnwebe still doesn't have his site back up yet, but he's posted a wonderful chronicle of stuff he's found in the interim. The Schumin Web has got to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a weeks (next to the Saban Sailor Moon promo). Though his e-mails from the Soil Scientist are worth reading in and of themselves.

I'm getting set up here at Intersect Software, learning the ropes and how everything fits together. Everything seems to be going well thus far.

I had a very successful day off yesterday. I wanted to go shopping, and got all sorts of good stuff: a good black suit, new shoes, new jeans, and a few Christmas presents.

My pond is almost done. All I need is a few hours to put the rest of the hose in-place and put a few rocks atop that.

Woah, it's been way too long. Not a good sign when Brennen outpaces me (that was a joke, Bren!).

I've quit Litton/PRC and will be going to work at Intersect Software from now on. It's a start-up that's doing some cool enterprise-scale Java-based intranet software. I think I'm gonna have fun. I should be working on detailed development, as well as user interface design and documentation. And they pay well. :-)

I stumbled across Toonami: Digital Arsenal yesterday; it's an archive of Toonami promos and sequences, including the fantastic Tenchi Muyo! promos ("He's coming..."). It even has what is possibly the scariest video I've ever seen: the Saban Sailor Moon Promo. Be very afraid (and laugh your eyeballs out).

Meanwhile, I'm kinda annoyed at Right Stuf Anime -- they made me call them to verify my shipping address. So my anime DVDs still haven't arrived. I consoled myself by ordering the first DVD of Bubblegum Crisis 2040 from Amazon.com. At least they were very nice on the phone, and were kind enough to modify my order after Saalon pointed out I already bought Gundam Wing Operation 2 at Otakon. And they had Sharon Apple (the virtuoid idol from Macross Plus) on their hold music, so that was cool.

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to the Maryland Renaissance Festival with my parents, plus my sister and her family. Should be fun. I'll probably costume up.

I've updated UFO Dreams, the first English-only NieA_7 shrine, with the lyrics to the ending theme (Venus and a Small God), as well as some other miscellany.

Moved all of the August diary entries to the archives.

I bit the bullet and bought a bunch of anime DVD's yesterday. Gundam Wing Operation 2 (episodes 6-10), the first DVD of Burn Up W! (a modern-day crime-fighting comedy; think of a comedic NYPD Blue), the first DVD of Sakura Wars (a turn-of-the-century big mecha story, based on a wildly popular series of Sega Saturn games), and I think the second Battle Athletes Victory DVD.

Other than that, not much is going on. I'm contemplating that job offer from Intersect.

A very good issue of Ex was just published.

And this is fascinating.

Been getting quite a bit of writing done on Wine. Well, not a lot, but significant amounts every day. Which is always a good feeling.

I managed to capture some video from my camcorder, and assemble a quickie presentation with it, so that part of things works nicely. Now I need to figure out how to resize a video (not resizing the play window; resizing the actual video data so it's, say, 160x120 pixels instead of 640x480). A 50-second .mov at 640x480 came out to over 20 MB, which is rather impractical for web delivery.

I still haven't heard back from Network Solutions regarding the DNS change for other-space.com. I'm tempted to call them, but their hold times are horrendous.

And meanwhile, there's been some FUD over on BeNews about some recent sad news about some BeOS companies. BeOS is gonna die. Yeah, I haven't heard that one before.

Not too much to report. Stopped by the Jacksons last night, for Pastor's 90th birthday. I say this because one day I'll be reading this diary, and will tear up when I see the name of Pastor Jackson.

I ordered a four anime soundtrack CD's yesterday; the first soundtrack CDs for Gundam Wing, Battle Athletes Victory, Tenchi in Tokyo (Sakuya's theme is beautiful), and Cowboy Bebop (one word: Tank!).

I also found out that Fox Kids is putting Escaflowne on hold. It's not a cancellation notice, but the reporter did point out that shows that are put on hold are rarely brought back off of hold.

If Fox does indeed drop Escaflowne, I just pray they sell it to Cartoon Network.

I fiddled around with my camcorder the other night. Didn't do much, but I recorded some test shots. I had to install my digital video card -- which took a total of three minutes in BeOS -- but didn't have the Firewire cable available. I'll have to go grab it tonight.

I also talked with Saalon about anime and stuff in general. The poor guy's working 40 hours this week (and 40 hours next week). Which, no matter how you slice it, is a lot for a part-time job.

I'm eyeing two beautiful Sakuya cels on eBay: one is a nice face shot, while the other features a very nice full-body pose. It's hard to choose, and I don't really want two Sakuya cels.

Of course, the admin contact was at Wizard.net, which has now been bought out by Frontline. So the admin contact information NS has is outdated; they're never going to get a response. And when I try to change the contact e-mail address, I run into a similar problem (though I don't quite know why).

On top of that, when I try to call Network Solutions, I find that I'm not put on hold; when all of their "representatives" are busy, I'm just told to call back later. Now that's service.

Waiting for my parents to get here, so we can go to lunch. Meanwhile, the company is having a spontaneous picnic for lunch today. Poor timing.

Not much else going on. Saalon got himself an apartment in Boston, which will be good.

other-space.com still hasn't propagated to the servers here at work, at least. Maybe it'll take a few more days, or something, but I would have expected it to be done by now. :frown:

Nothing else going on in the world that I know of. No major crises, except for that whole Mideast peace process. Which has pretty much been a laugh for the past few millenia.

Well, I'm up live over here at WebMages. I'm very pleased thus far. Now, I just have to wait for the DNS information to fully propagate across the internet.

As a result, the message board on UFO Dreams (my NieA Under 7 website) is back online. I'll post all of the messages that were sent during its downtime in a day or two, hopefully (they were e-mailed to me, but never actually posted).

I ordered a Sony DCR-TRV900 digital camcorder today. Cool. Being shipped UPS ground to my home address (which is unusual for me; I like to have everything I order on the net sent to my P.O. box...but this is special). A very cool camcorder. And it should be BeOS compatible.

Meanwhile, I've been doing some behind-the-scenes stuff to get a new Daemonsong Productions production made, namely, The Once And Future Man. The idea is to sell each chapter for USD $1 online, using the shareware principle -- e.g., you don't absolutely have to pay for it. Yeah, sounds crazy, but just wait'll you see it working.

I'm going to be meeting with Karl this Sunday afternoon, which would be fun. He's a good friend of mine who has moved to the midwest, working on automobile engine development. Cool stuff.

I've set up this new diary system, which is more automated than my past diary. With this system, it will be much easier to search through the archives, and I'll be able to merge this diary with other diaries, should I want to.

Every year, I and my parents try to get up to Skyline Drive, a park in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today is our day, and we drove up with the puppies in the back of the SUV. The day was as crisp as a glass of cold water; the temperature cool but not chilly.

We left late, and didn't get to the main lodge until about half past noon. Since we planned to leave just after dinner, we only had a few hours there. We made the most of it by taking the dogs on a couple of very short nature trails around the lodge, then put them in the SUV while we relaxed for a few minutes in the lodge (leaving the windows cracked and the vehicle in the shade, of course; I don't think they even started panting). Then we brought them back out and sat with them outside the lodge, looking out on the Shenandoah Valley.

The Valley is a sight to behold. It's as though a quilt made of a hundred different greens is spread out before you, and a dozen miniature model railroad towns have been scattered across it. The landscape is dotted with tiny farms, complete with a red barn and white silos; it's enough to make you believe that farms come in kits. And surrounding it all are the densely-wooded Blue Ridge Mountains. This is where Stonewall Jackson first made his name during the Civil War, leading raids on Union troops that were hopelessly outleagued in the Virginia woods. This is where deer and foxes still make their homes, unmolested (come up for only a day, and there's a good chance you'll see a deer). This park alone consists of 280 square miles of land, 95% of which is native Virginia forest.

All in all, we had a perfectly relaxing time. After putting the dogs back in the SUV and having dinner at the lodge (where prices have increased noticeably -- dinners are now USD $10-$20, whereas we've been used to all of the prices being $5-$10), we drove back in the light of a full harvest moon that smiled down at us from behind a few whispy strands of cloud.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

We had a date for a free candlelight tour of the Robert E. Lee Mansion tonight. Wow.

The house is a majestic neo-classical house that sits in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. Driving through a massive cemetery, at night, on Friday the Thirteenth, with a full moon out, staring out the window as row after row after row of fallen soldiers zip by next to you, is an experience I will not soon forget.

The mansion sits atop a hill, across the Potomac from D.C. From the front porch, one looks right down on Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial, with the Wasington Monument next to it, and the Capitol not far away. All of them so close, you feel like you could just reach out and touch them. It's fantastic.

The house was mostly open to walk through, at least a dozen volunteers were dressed in period clothes and standing around the premises, eager to share their knowledge of Lee and his family. Poor Lee.

And then the formal garden outside...it's nothing nearly as awe-inspiring as the house or the view, but it's a lovely symmetrical collection of native Virginia flowers and shrubs. I had to smile; the Lees were genteel, powerful, upper-crust. They simply had to have a garden.

It was...wonderful. Amazing. It was one of those historical experiences where you suddenly want to live in those times and talk to those people. I wanted to know how Lee felt about the war. He'd fought for the South, not because he believed in the South's causes, but because that's where he was from. After Appomatox, he spent the remaining years of his life championing re-unification and the strenght of the Union. And in return, the Union turned his beautiful home into a graveyard.

How did he feel?

Both Saalon and Brennen are officially on-board my Wine To Those In Anguish project. Woohoo!

Now I have to actually write script....

I've decided to buy a digital camcorder, partly for my own use, and partly for Daemonsong Productions. I was going to go with the Canon GL-1, only to discover that BeOS doesn't recognize it. Fortunately, Sony offers the DCR-TRV900, a nice little camcorder with all sorts of features. It's expensive, but it looks like it'll do professional-quality recording. It can even record in widescreen.

Not much to report today. Worked a bit on my About.com site and my anime project, Wine To Those In Anguish, last night. I should put together some sort of gaming room on my personal website here; I've already got Mancala, Hangman, and Blackjack.

Ooooh, I just realize that I never got a chance to talk about those anime DVD's that I got last week. As I was sick and lay abed, I watched pretty much everything that I'd bought. It helped that I bought DVDs 4 and 5 of Battle Athletes Victory (there are only 6 total), and the first DVD of Bubblegum Crisis 2040.

Battle Athletes Victory is much better than it deserves to be. The story is about athletic, Olympics-style competition in the year 4999; thousands of girls the world over compete to be the annual Cosmo Beauty. While partly a comedy, BAV deals with sport and competition on a lot of impressive levels. The heroine, Akari, struggles with low self-esteem throughout the entire series, while the other girls have their faults as well. As each girl loses -- or drops out -- you feel for them. Wow.

Dual (or, more precisely, Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure) is a bit harder to define. It was heavily inspired by the acclaimed anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, but tells a lighter story than Eva's gritty intense one. Dual chronicles the story of a young man, Kazuki Yotsuka, who sees giant robots battling in the streets of Tokyo -- except that it isn't real. He posts descriptions of these battles to his website, which attracts the attention of Mitsuki Sanada, a popular girl at school, who seems genuinely interested in his stories. She invites him home, where he finds out why: her father is a dimensional physicist, who is convinced that Kazuki is somehow seeing visions of a parallel timeline. He promptly tosses Kazuki into a dimensional transporter which, to everyone's surprise, works.

Kazuki finds himself in the middle of a giant robot battle, but his favorite robot, Heartxenon, is damaged. The cockpit hatch opens, and a beautiful woman collapses out of it. When he runs up and tries to help her, the cockpit closes around him, and he is forced to finish the battle. He does so well that he is drafted into service as a robot pilot in the Earth Defence Force.

Dual is not exactly a parody of Eva; it has too much of its own plot for that. The characters are similar to those in Eva, but again, they go off in their own directions. Dual strikes me more like a show that was inspired by Eva, and rather than try to hide the Eva references, lays them out in the open for all to see.

Either way, I got a real kick out of Dual. It's a fun show, with a great sense of comedic and dramatic timing (not surprising, considering that the creative force behind it was Masaki Kajishima, creator of Tenchi Muyo!).

OTOH, Bubblegum Crisis 2040 is, thankfully, an example of "realism" anime -- there are no extreme facial expressions, no hammerspace, no facefaults, and no sweatdrops. It feels like a show that could have been shot exactly the same live-action. The storytelling is impressively-structured, too; the whole first three episodes deal with Linna getting herself drafted into the Knight Sabers (silly name, I know). And they've managed to turn Nene into an overenthusiastic 18-year-old who acts precisely like one, without getting annoying.

And it doesn't hurt that the action scenes will get your blood pumping, every time.

Well. I'm not in Europe.

Of all things, I came down with a really nasty cold on Tuesday. We got together and discussed our options, then decided to postpone our trip to Europe until early spring. Fortunately, neither the airline nor the hotels imposed penalties for backing out. It looks like we'll be making our trip in the last week of March and the first week of April, 2001.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a bit of gardening. Most of it was cleanup and maintenance, but even that is a calming, focusing experience. I've got a bunch of bulbs to plant now, too, which is cool.

I've worked up a quick game of Blackjack, which is still in-development, but at least works a little bit. I've also updated Mancala with a little routine that will look for good moves to make. It's not exactly a strategy; but at least the computer opponent will go for a capture if it sees one.

In keeping with my creation of Hangman the other day, this morning I spent two hours and wrote up a complete simulator of the ancient African board game Mancala. It even has a computer opponent (whose strategy is summed up by the phrase "choose a random move," though that can be challenging in-and-of itself).

If you're not familiar with Mancala, you can check out my handy-dandy rules page.

Ahhhh, my favorite month of the year. October. When the air is crisp, the apples are tart, and the leaves are the color of gold and fire.

Also, it's the time of the month when my main diary page is mercifully short, because I've moved all of last month's entries to the archives.

We didn't go to church this morning, electing to stay home and go over plans for our Europe trip, which begins with an Air France flight Tuesday evening. Should be quite an experience; we'll be seeing Paris, Brussels, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg in the space of two weeks. Which is packed sorta close, but what can you do.

I also managed to fertilize our side lawn after we got back from dinner at my grandmother's. Haven't done too much online, other than download an mp3 of the Cowboy Bebop main theme, "Tank!". I've been trying to find Sakuya's theme from Tenchi in Tokyo, but nobody seems to have an mp3 of it.

My DVD of Dual (a Neon Genesis Evangelion parody, partly) was shipped yesterday, along with the second and third Battle Athletes Victory DVD's. 'Course, I probably won't get them until after we get back, but that means I'll have them to look forward to.

Thanks to E-Mail.About.com, I came across SpamCop.net, a site where you can paste in a piece of spam, and their software will find out whom you should e-mail to report the spam, and will e-mail them for you (prior to your approval of the addresses they come up with) with a complete report on the spam. I've reported a handful of spam today, and plan to do it as much as possible from now on. You can also forward spam to spamcop@spamcop.net and use their e-mail based interface to report spam.

Called a friend of mine tonight about coming with me to Intersect's Holiday Party (a formal/semi-formal affair at the Dulles Hilton). Hopefully she can make it.

I also gave Saalon a call, where we fumed about the thorough raw deal Batman Beyond's getting, and anime and the online community in general. He's settling in to his new apartment in Boston pretty well, which is always good to hear.

The AWANA meeting last night went well. My Dad came along, and there were a lot of good suggestions all around. It was held at the new building, which formerly belonged to the National Wildlife Foundation (is anyone else vaguely annoyed at how much wolves are used as ecological poster children?), and boy is it huge.

Meanwhile, I see there is now a CowboyBebop.com, the official homepage of the show and the upcoming movie. Cowboy Bebop is a fantastic anime series that manages to be funny, exciting, and dramatic, all at the same time. Cool stuff.

I'm signing up at a Gold's Gym near work, thanks to a free membership from my employer (Intersect Software). I'm sort of tired of being a 98-pound weakling. I'll let you know how that goes.

Tue, 28 Nov 00 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

Wow. I recognize every category listed on the user profile page at SourceForge. And most of them are pretty geeky. That's very cool, actually (I love their example for strongest leadership skills).

I've posted a couple of reviews to Points of View, of the second Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin DVD, and of Photon. That last pretty much sums up my feelings on Photon, as alluded to in an earlier update.

Tonight I have a planning meeting to attend for McLean Bible Church's AWANA program. They're ordering chicken in, which is awfully nice of them.

PC World has a very glowing article on Be and BeIA at Comdex. Good to see more mainstream coverage. (But, of course, BeOS is dead. Everyone's been saying so for ten years now, so it must be true.)

Just got home from a 10.5-hour workday. I should start getting used to this, I think.

This morning I ordered Dual volume 2, Evangelion volume 2, Wings of Honneamise, all on DVD, from Right Stuf Anime. Should be fun; Wings of Honneamise looks terrific, and I know I'll enjoy the other two.

Let's see, what else. Lots of interesting stuff has been posted recently on rec.arts.sf.composition, particularly regarding feminine and masculine characters and the "more-masculine-than-a-man heroine" phenomenon. The main consensus seems to be that femininity and masculinity are highly cultural, which makes the distinction very complicated.

I see on AICN that a new poster for the intriguing A.I. has been posted. Harry also suggests that Ron Howard should direct an Ender's Game film (better hurry; Jake Lloyd isn't getting any younger).

And it's very hard to write fiction when one is so tired. In fact, it's hard to write notes about the fiction, which is what I've been trying to do for the past hour or so. And I can't bag it and take a shower, because I'm waiting for Mom to get home with the groceries and Dad's in the sitting room so he won't hear. 'Course, I could just tell him I'm going to take a shower, so I won't be able to hear Mom coming in.

In fact, I'm going to go do just that right now.

(Thanks to Michael Jacobsen for pointing out some errors in my diary entries, and pushing me to keep emphasizing text. It's great to have readers who care.)

Had a very nice morning at The Falls Church (gotta love a church whose website contains multi-year archives of past sermons). Reverend Yates gave a sermon on the authority of Scripture, and how important it is to spend time in it to strengthen one's personal beliefs. Then, in a class on classic spiritual literature, we talked about Cardinal John Henry Newman, an Anglican in the 1800's who converted to Catholicism after a lot of intense study. While I can't necessarily agree with his decisiion, I am forced to respect his deep moral sense -- and incredible personal database of things spirtual -- which convinced him to change his faith.

Meanwhile, I've begun programming a MIDI composer application that I've been designing sporadically for the past month. It displays sheet music, and adds notes to the sheet music when the user clicks on it. I used an old Windows 3.1 shareware application which did this, that has since been lost. Hopefully I can work out a good design; I've been trying to follow Steve McConnell's advice, to refrain from coding things "just to see if it works;" I should have designed it well enough to know that it will work.

I've also been downloading Christmas mp3's from Mp3.com's Seasonal/Holiday section (which is annoyingly hard to track down).

OK, I just got the weirdest spam I've ever received. The message is empty (it looks like their HTML-based newsreader messed up), but the subject says it all:

Now you can advertise on hubcaps!

And I called Dane Scott at BeOS Radio, and we did a little interview, where I talked about About.com and Focus on BeOS, as well as how I got started in the BeOS community. Cool. He says it should air this Friday (December 1st).

OK, a lot to get through.

Thanksgiving yesterday went well for me. My parents and I were alone this year, which resulted in a very relaxing holiday. We had a traditional meal (turkey, stuffing; you know the drill), and the traditional mountain range of leftovers.

We spent today putting up the Christmas trees and Pianoville. Both of our trees are artificial, a situation which I personally find suboptimal, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than buying live trees every year. It's nice not having to water them constantly, or worry about them falling over.

I uploaded diary entries for the past couple weeks. I've also started highlighting key phrases in my entries, making it easier for you readers to skim the paragraphs for relevant information. Just 'cause I'm so nice.

Tried to get Mom and Dad to watch Gladiator tonight, but it was too bloody for Mom. We may try again later, fast-forwarding through some of the gladiatorial fights. A shame, really, 'cause we're all loving the film. But then Mom's been on a big "garbage in, garbage out" kick lately after reading a book on the subject.

More later. The Presidential ballot recount's fun, ain't it? I heard that one of the recounts was showing that Gore was losing votes...so they stopped counting. How nicely unbiased.

At Saalon's insistence, I watched the last two episodes of Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin (the OVA, not the TV show) tonight. It punched me in the emotional gut, while it never became preachy or cheap or melodramatic. Tears were fighting for escape from my eyes during the denoument (which is, arguably, the best part of the series). There was this moment where Kenshin just stares off into nothingness, and a number of emotions play over his face: loss, regret, determination. And this was done by simple ink brushed on clear acetate.

I also watched the final six episodes of Battle Athletes Victory. Actually, the last three felt very tacked-on, whereas everything else up until that point has a smooth arc of plot and character development. And whereas the rest of the series had evolved into a dramatic sports show with a comedic twist, the last three episodes were mostly comedy with touches of character development and drama. So that was sort of disappointing, but the rest of the show was so good that I couldn't help loving the series as a whole anyway.

I haven't described my reactions to the other shows yet either, so let me do that while I'm thinking of them.

Trigun is a wonderful comedic/action show that hinges on the lovability of its hero, Vash the Stampede. Vash is alternately kid in over his head, goofy comedian, and kick-butt action hero. Slick as butter, he slides from one personality into the other, leaving you (and his opponents) wondering: "Just who is this guy?"

Key: The Metal Idol is the closest thing to serial experiments: lain that I'll probably ever see, and while thus far it isn't as good as lain, I'm content that it's a serious show that covers similar territory. Key is an android who is trying to make friends, and trying to find within herself what it means to be human. She is innocent and inexperienced in the ways of the large world, but neither naive nor stupid. It's fascinating to watch her, mostly because you don't know how much of her quiet demeanor is shyness, and how much is observation and reserving of judgment. This is definitely a thinking man's anime.

Photon...sucks in a terrible way. More on that later, I think. It's hard to put badness of this stripe into proper words.

Work's been stressful (not demoralizing; just a matter of 11-hour days and such), so I splurged today and bought The Fantasia Anthology, the next Battle Athletes Victory DVD, and the first Key: The Metal Idol, Photon, and Trigun DVDs, as well as the second of the two Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin OAV DVDs. Expect reviews of same to appear on Points of View in relatively short order.

My trip to Saalon's was a complete success. The first thing we did was watch the final DVD of Cowboy Bebop, the fantastic action/comedy anime series. It managed to wrap up both Faye's and Spike's past in respectful ways, and finished out Spike's arc in the only way it could have, really. But man, I had to take a deep breath after the end there. It's powerful stuff.

Then I got to meet Lumox (sp?), a very cool guy in seminary who wants to be an actor for us. He and Saalon have been good friends for awhile, roleplaying together and such. Neat guy.

Saalon and I then watched the first two episodes of Samurai X: Rurouni Kenshin, a four-episode OVA (a.k.a. direct-to-video) anime series based on a particularly violent time in Japanese history. It was extremely violent at times, but then the story dealt with our reaction to violence, and how we should be horrified by violence. Really good stuff.

Saalon and I also finished the last halves (?) of Venus Wars and Dominion: Tank Police, making it a very successful trip from an anime persepctive.

We also made a highly juvenile video of ourselves using my new digital camcorder, which I should upload an mpeg of to this site.

It's my birthday. No, really, don't flood me with gifts. I don't deserve it.

I got a nice sweater and a gardening book from my aunt, and a Dilbert desk calendar from my sister. My parents are taking me out to Mr. Smith's of Georgetown tonight, then giving me free reign in the bookstore, their treat. A dangerous move on their part.

Saalon just called (I'm still planning to drive up to his place over Veteran's Day weekend, BTW), and the new Tenchi Muyo! Ryoko figurines are in, for a measly USD $10. If Borders has them (very iffy, but possible), you can bet they'll be part of my purchase. Even if not, I'll be buying one ASAP.

BeOS Radio is on the air now at http://216.32.166.90:10154. Very cool idea; any music that has anything even remotely to do with the BeOS is played, along with ads and BeOS news. The music's pretty good, too; mostly instrumental pieces.

(And you've gotta love their tagline: "All-Original Music, for All-Original Listeners".)

I'm still fighting off whatever illness this is. Sore throat, nausea. Fun.

Just watched the first DVD of the El Hazard OAV, and I'm impressed. It's certainly at a Tenchi level of enjoyment (both series were made by the same people), without re-using any characters.

(OK, Shayla-Shayla and Ryoko have their similarities, but so do many characters. Underneath the surface, these two are very different people.)

I also grabbed some video footage for what will probably be my next anime music video: Iria: Zeiram the Animation footage to Duel of the Fates. I'm planning to use exclusively footage of Iria and Zeiram, emphasizing their duel (appopriately enough...), but I only grabbed suff from the first half of the series, so I'll need to get all of the shots from the finale before I can edit it together. Maybe some other time.

Didn't do much else today, other than church. I hauled some wood down to the woodpile; we need more than expected due to the unusually low temperatures of late (rarely do we need the stove going during the day in December, except this year when we've been doing so for most of the month).

Ha! I am so COOL!

I've been so pumped by the fantastic anime music videos at Aluminum Studios that I decided to try my hand at making one. I took the theme song to The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest and set it to clips from Gundam Wing. I've put it on its own page, and I have to admit I think it came out extremely well.

It was so amazingly easy to make; it took a total of about three hours (after which I spent another couple of hours experimenting with different formats and codecs), including finding and capturing the source footage from the DVDs. Wow. I want to make a whole bunch of these things.

Meanwhile, I've created a website directory, called All Anime Music Videos, of the anime music video sites that I've found. It's the only directory of anime music videos that I know of.

During lunch I went over to Suncoast and bought four anime DVDs: Princess Mononoke, the second volume of Trigun, and two DVDs as gifts for Saalon. Heck, it's payday, and I can afford it. Though I certainly have lots of other anime that I should finish watching before moving on, but oh well.

Unfortunately, I then found out that Saalon bought me a Princess Mononoke DVD for Christmas, which is en-route. And I already opened my copy of Mononoke. Well, I told Saalon about it, and he suggested I return his copy when it arrives. That'll work.

Still. What a generous, thoughtful gift. Wow.

I hear that the next Toonami show will be Outlaw Star. And here I thought it was going to be Trigun. Ah well. According to an Ex review, Outlaw Star's a pretty good show. Fair enough; I'll see what it's like when Toonami starts showing it.

I've been downloading more anime music videos from Aluminum Studios. I love "Try" and "Larger Than Life," while so far, the others just don't grab me much. "Dreams of Red" is very very nice, though. I'd like directly to download pages for these, but all of the pages on Aluminum Studios explicitly ask that people only link to the homepage. As much as I'm irked at the idea of only linking to "approved" pages, I'll respect the request in this case.

Work is very very slow. A good two-thirds of the company is taking the week off, so it's rather hard to interface with people. And it's amazing how hard it is to push oneself to work hard when nobody's watching or caring.

A big blizzard is supposed to come in tonight. I must admit, the idea of being snowed in for a few days is highly appealing. I can just write and code, write and code....

Last night, I e-mailed the artist behind the online comic strip The 'Any' Key. I had a few suggestions on how he could improve his drawing style, which he was very open to.

It reminded me that I've always wanted to do cartooning (not necessarily be a cartoonist; I just want to be able to draw a cartoon), and indeed have practiced a bit of cartooning in the past. I really should spend some time practicing that, just occasionally. Maybe today or tonight, I'll sit down with a pad and paper and work on drawing bodies (my current major weak spot).

I watched the final two half-hour episodes of Key: The Metal Idol two days ago, and the first half of the first "movie" yesterday evening.

The final episodes of Key blew me away. I consider it to be among the best climaxes (well, anti-climaxes; Key's story isn't over yet) that I've ever seen presented in anime. I was as powerfully moved at Key's 13th episode as I was with the end of Macross Plus episode 3, which is saying a lot. This show goes places.

The first movie has thus far been almost completely exposition. It's finally time for the backstory to be explained, and so we have multiple simultaneous conversations that do just that. It's well-written, but there's so much of it that lasts for so long that my attention tended to drift. I concentrate on anime, too, so making my attention wander is not an immediately easy task.

But, I'm still impressed. This episode is explaining everything, including technical details of exactly why certain things are done they way they are done, which is a refreshing change after serial experiments: lain's loose plot threads (though lain was made with the expectation that its viewers would actively investigate and solve loose plot threads, so that's not really a criticism).

Meanwhile, in my search for Key: The Metal Idol music late last night (Key has three fantastic songs -- all of which have been dubbed into English -- while the rest range from mediocre to poor, IMHO), I stumbled across Aluminum Studios, the website of an anime fan who makes anime music videos. I started an overnight download of one of them, then fired it up this morning, and fell in love. It was "Larger than Life," and it's a fantastic presentation of a particular character from Cowboy Bebop. I'm grabbing all of the videos now (I have one transfer going at home, and I'm downloading them here at work to watch them before going home). Wonderful stuff.

I heard on WGMS this morning that Crown Books is having a gigantic sale, so I headed over there this morning and bought a Norman Rockwell calendar, a copy of Gray's Anatomy (USD $16, hardback, unabridged!), the latest issue of Writer's Digest, Michael Palin's latest travelogue (I didn't know what a fantastic writer he is), and a book on whether the Bible stands up to modern scientific evidence.

In the wee small hours of the morning before falling into bed last night, I added a page to my Homepage's library, describing the anime titles that I own, and which ones I'd like to buy in future. I figure this will be a good way for me to keep track of what I have and what I'm looking for.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the theory of kipple-ization from Philip K. Dick's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the basis for the film Blade Runner). It's interesting to see what I thought I remembered from the book, compared to what's actually there.

What I remembered was the idea that all things eventually devolve into little messy things called "kipple," like all the junk scattered around the floors of an abandoned house. And mankind's great purpose in life, what he does as his place in the universe, is to fight against kipple-ization. So, we must build and maintain, while destruction only furthers our devolution into kipple.

But here's what Dick actually wrote. The conversation is between John Isildore, a somewhat dimwitted man, and Pris, an android who has just taken up residence in the same apartment building that John lives in (they are the only two tenants, thanks to mass migration to off-world colonies).

"...This building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized."

" 'Kipple-ized'?" She did not understand.

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."

"I see." The girl regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.

"There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. " 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple."

"So it has taken over completely," the girl finished. She nodded. "Now I understand."

"Your place, here," he said, "this apartment you've picked -- it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But--" He broke off.

"But what?"

Isildore said, "We can't win."

"Why not?" The girl stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her; arms folded self-consciously before her small high breasts she faced him, eager to understand. Or so it appeared to him, anyhow. She was at least listening.

"No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal prniciple operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization."

-- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)

Not quite what I remembered, is it? Either way, I'm tickled by the idea of kipple-ization, and I agree with the idea that mankind's greatest purpose is to decrease kipple. I've started keeping my room tidier than usual as a result, and I'm surprised to see that I'm proud of it. I like having a clean room, especially when I have a reason to be clean.

Oh, and I bought a nice shiny new 19" monitor today. Ain't I special?

I just got this from the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation the other day, and had to share it. My comments are italicized.

Dear Friend,

  There are two very important reasons why I hope you will accept this special invitation to become a Founding Member of the Clinton Presidential Library.

  The first reason is that becoming a Founding Member [do those upper-case 'F' and 'M' annoy you, too?] is an opportunity to honor the work and accomplishments of an extraordinary leader.

  The second reason is that the Clinton LIbrary will be the focal point of President Clinton's ongoing efforts to address some of the most important oplicy issues facing our nation and our world.

  Throughout his presidency, you have been one of Bill Clinton's most loyal friends and trusted supporters. [I'm mostly a Republican, and other than voting, one of the least politically active people I know.] So, it is only fitting that you be among the first to help him prepare for the post-White House phase of an extraordinary career in public service.

  Before I tell you more about the plans of the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, let me remind you about some of the accomplishments it will help celebrate.

  We shouldn't let our familiarity with Bill Clinton stop us from appreciating t he depth and range of his accomplishments as President. [This is what spurred me to post the letter. What they're saying here is that we shouldn't let our knowledge of who Clinton really is get in the way of erecting a shrine to him.] His leadership has truly transformed America. [You can say that again. Before Clinton, people actually respected the Presidency to some degree.]

  Think back to October, 1991 when Bill Clinton declared his candidacy for president. [Shouldn't that be "P"resident?] The nation was in economic distress, [huh?] social decline, [?!?] deep political division, [Oh yeah, that's changed] and deep cynicism about the role of government in our lives. [And Bill "Cigar" Clinton's made us less cynical about government?!?]

  Now, in the eight year of the Clinton era, [I dunno; "era" just isn't quite pretentious enough...how about "epoch"?] we are in the midst of the longest economic expansion in the history of our nation. [...which started in the 80's; look it up] We have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, and the highest home onership in history. [Thanks to Silicon Valley. What, exactly, did Clinton do to lower poverty rates?] We have the first back-to-back balanced budgets and surpluses in 42 years. [Thanks to Congressional efforts, not Presidential ones] And we're on a path that could elminiate the debt within the decade. [Ditto.]

  But, President Clinton has done more than strengthen our economy, he's strengthened our society. While the economy got better, [through no fault of his own,] the air got cleaner, the water got cleaner. [and literacy dropped, evidently, as they forgot to put an "and" in there. And Clinton didn't push through any major clean-air or clean-water efforts that I know of; those were artifacts of previous administrations.] And Bill Clinton helped set aside more land in protected areas than any President in history with the exception of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. [I'll admit that this is nice, but it's hardly worth a Big Gold Star on his report card.]

It goes on like that, talking aobut how Clinton's "personal leadership...ended ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo." Gee, CNN must have forgotten to cover the complete and total ending of hostilities in Bosnia and Kosovo. Amazing, isn't it?

Well. I shot an e-mail to Avram this morning, explaining that I want to quit my About.com job. I realized last night that I'm not enjoying really any part of the job. There are some parts that aren't bad to do, and the pay is fantastic, but I really don't see the point in continuing, especially when I have such difficulty making myself keep up with it. So, we'll look for a new Guide, then I'll transition out of the way.

Did some errands this morning, but didn't get anything particularly fun, other than a book on identifying birds. I'll use it to update the list of visiting birds on my Side Garden site.

Meanwhile, one of my monitors pretty much died. The picture got all fuzzy, and it would be OK if I banged on it, but would stubbornly return to fuzziness after ten or twenty seconds. This was the monitor that I have mounted in a corner of my room, displaying the weather 24/7. I think I'm going to buy a nice new monitor for my main machine, and shuffle the other monitors around. I've already put my other 14" monitor onto the weather machine, and that seems to be doing nicely.

Merry Christmas!

Recorded for Posterity, here's what I got:

• From my parents:
  • Several nice semi-formal dress shirts
  • A sweater
  • Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan, the ninth and most recent book in the Wheel of Time series
  • A CD of Christmas music (from M&M's...)
  • A fantastic cedar garden bench
• From my sister:
  • The Everything Mutual Funds Book by Rich Mintzer
  • Star Wars: The Power of Myth, a trade paperback that explores the mythical elements that Star Wars draws on (Luke's fight with the Rancor being similar to Beowulf's fight with Grendel, and his face-off with the Emperor being similar to many heros' descent to the underworld)

Plus, I got cards from Brennen and Erin (another online friend).

It's been a quiet Christmas. We leaned back on the couches in the living room and poked through the wrapping paper, eventually revealing the treasures within, occasionally glancing outside at the snow-covered ground. This is how to celebrate Christ's birth.

We were invited to a get-together at a friend's house this afternoon at 2:30, but we aren't planning on joining them. It's too much trouble, as selfish as that sounds. Though I must admit that the idea of joining a group of friends to share some holiday cheer appeals to my Old World sensibilities.

I also spent some time today updating this diary script so that it would display the names of holidays wherever it knows of the holiday name. Like today, for example. :-)

Then I worked on my Side Garden site. I have this little pocket of land off of my room, which I've been slowly improving and turning into a full-scale garden. I haven't updated the site in months, so I finally revamped the site a little bit, and added a section for birds.

I finally edited together the mockumentary for work, and recorded it to a VHS tape. It took a total of about two hours to do the main seven minutes f footage, which only needed tweaking, and about one hour more to edit together the bloopers. This editing stuff is getting really easy for me.

My sister and her family (her husband Jeff and three young daughters) have all come over for the night. They'll open their Christmas presents from us tomorrow morning (Christmas Eve), then in the afternoon they'll drive to his parents' house and they'll do the Christmas thing there, then drive home and have their own Christmas morning. A pretty good way of arranging it, I think, though Jeff pointed out that it makes the holiday very busy and fragmented. Still, they feel it's the best thing to do, and I can't argue.

I spent much of the morning mulling over an idea that Saalon and I had for a massively-multiplayer world. We wondered if the basic concept behind Gnutella couldn't be used to manage chunks of digital real estate. Rather than keeping an entire world on each server, the job is shared by all of machines connected to the game, whether explicitly servers or also client game machines.

Here's how I'm thinking it would work: Each machine would be a server, and each server would be part of any number of "rings." Each ring is a connected group of servers that are all responsible for a given chunk of the world (I call a "chunk" a "domain"). So, you might have one server that is part of four rings, one ring for domain 3, another for domain 12, another for domain 33, and another for domain 38.

These rings act sort of like hive minds. All of the servers on the ring co-operate to:

• Check up on the status of rings for domains that are connected to the current ring's domain in the world (so that a player, wishing to travel from this domain to another, can be transferred as quickly as possible)
• Contact an orphaned ring if all connections to it are lost
• Broadcast requests for extra servers to join the ring if the ring needs them
• Share player connections fairly with respect to the bandwidth of all of the ring's members

Right now, I've got a lot in my head, which I need to get down on paper. Then, I'll have to draw it out and bang on the design from many angles and see if there are any obvious holes. If not, I may code up a test and see if it's practical.

One interesting idea that strikes me about this, is that it should be possible to give the servers the ability to automatically expand the world. Given a reasonable terrain generation algorithm, servers could add new domains to the world without player intervention. Hmmmmm.

The big news is that Intersect has moved. Well, only one building over, to a much larger office space. We have cubicles now, which is better than nothing ("nothing" being what we had before -- literally, a bunch of desks sitting in a big warehouse), and the new place is very bright. My new space is next to the windows, with a lot of visibility to the outside, which I like an awful lot.

Ravi (a member of the management team) came up to me yesterday as I walked in to the old building, and suggested that I videotape time-lapse footage of the move. Brilliant! I ran home, grabbed my camcorder, drove to the new building, entered, and looked around for a suitably high place. The best solution was a very high set of scaffolding on wheels, so I pulled it around to a suitable place and took a video. I'll post the video somewhere once I export it into a format suitable for Windows (.avi, probably).

What else. Several months ago, I bought several dozen little glass votive candle holders. What for? The plan was to wrap candy in cellophane, tie it with a ribbon, put the candy in the candle holders, and give one out to each of my co-workers.

That's all well and good, but I realized that, since Monday is Christmas Day, tonight is my last chance to assemble these gifts. And, what with the physical labor inherent in hauling tables, chairs, computers, etc. to the new building today, plus my (admittedly, waning) illness, I'm tuckered out. Maybe I'll give them out after we get back from the Christmas holiday, or something.

:sigh: I'm always doing this: I come up with these great ideas, and then never finish them on-time. Do I have too many projects going at once, or am I mis-managing my time so that I'm not working on what I should be working on? How can I tell?

I came down with a nasty cold yesterday. As I was sick and lay abed....

Today I watched The Wings of Honneamise, a 1987 anime film about space flight (Roger Ebert has a typically excellent and respectful review), and episodes 4 through 11 (!) of the anime series Key: The Metal Idol. I'm going to mostly eschew the embolding stuff for this, as it's not really appropriate for reviews.

I was blown away by Honneamise. It is beautiful, complicated, deep, fascinating...Light, I hate reviews like this. All glowing praise. I need to provide a reasonably intelligent review here.

Imagine the movie Apollo 13, but set on an Earth with a different societal evolution. This is an Earth where automobiles evolved differently, where airplanes evolved differently, where clothing and razorblades and scythes and money and restaurants are all different; not different as in "utterly alien," but different as in "oh yeah, that is another way to do it." And this is an Earth which suffers from true hyper-population, with many billions living in close confinement.

Within all of this, lies the ludicrous Royal Space Force, a pet project of the Royal Family. The Royal Space Force, a motley assortment of failed fighter pilots and aging engineers with just enough money, maybe, to shoot the first human astronaut into space. And within the Royal Space Force lies Shirotsugh Lhadatto, the man who will be that astronaut.

Does he want to be that astronaut? Not to begin with. Does he have aspirations? Does he want to see the stars? Not to begin with. But he does.

And that progression is what drives The Wings of Honneamise. That ever-so-subtle change, from shiftless quasi-soldier to pilot of Man's First Flight Into Space, is what makes this into a great film.

Though there are certainly a great many other elements to this story. Shiro's relationship with the highly-religous girl Leiquinni Nondelaiko forms the strongest sub-plot. She believes in prayer and trusting God, a premise that Shiro simply can't comprehend. And she isn't perfect, either; her tendency to be neither in this world nor of it often brings her pain.

So. I consider Wings of Honneamise to be one of the greatest films ever made. Enough said there, I think.

What about Key?

I was impressed with Key: The Metal Idol before, and it turns out that I stopped watching it just before the first major plot twist of the story occurs. I'm much more impressed now.

Key is, first and foremost, a dark story, but "dark" in the sense of the Brothers Grimm. There is evil here, yes, and even some perversity, but these elements are never over-presented, nor are they inserted merely for shock value.

The plot of Key is a variation on Pinocchio: Key is a lifelike android with the body of a 14-year-old girl. Though she is fully functional in every physical sense, she has no real emotions, and goes through life much like a shy 4-year-old would, always passively observing.

But then Key's creator is killed, and he leaves a message for Key telling her that she can actually become human. But to do so, Key needs to make friends. A lot of them. Actually, about 30,000.

Obviously, this is a dually fantastic notion: that Key can become human, and that she could ever make 30,000 friends. But she does want to be human -- in part to make up for the teasing that she received at the hands of her classmates in school -- and so she heads to Tokyo to somehow make friends. Key is lucky enough to stumble across her only friend, Sakura, who herself moved to Tokyo some years back. Key stays with Sakura and thus the story begins.

This sounds like a pretty traditional story, and it pretty much is. This is the plot of the first two episodes, and the third is the episode in which we are introduced to the major pop idol, Miho. Her concerts are attended by tens of thousands of fans, a fact which gives Key an idea: perhaps she can become a pop idol too.

This would be fodder for a decent enough anime series without the events of episode four, which I will not spoil for you here. Suffice to say that episode four accelerates Key into the realm of a metaphysical journey, in which the viewer realizes that Key holds within her fantastic powers which she herself does not understand or even remember using. So, the question quickly becomes, what exactly is Key? And what will happen if she does make 30,000 friends? The Apocalypse?

Also, this series is not content to present simple characters. Sakura, for instance, who is helping Key as her "manager," is plagued by entertainment insiders who are impressed at her figure and want to hire her. Sakura isn't willing to sell out like that just yet, but...it's awfully tempting for a girl who's working part-time at video rental stores and pizza parlors.

And nobody really thinks that Key is a robot; they all assume that she's delusional or traumatized in some way. They go along with Key's claims -- out of sympathy -- but their underlying disbelief shows through in an impatience with Key's inability to, for example, sing. And Key realizes that she's being an imposition or displeasing them in some way, which hurts like crazy every time you see it.

And that's what impresses me so much about Key. After a handful of episodes, I felt these characters' pain. And beyond feeling their pain while watching the show, the show stayed with me after I watched it. As I walked down the hallway to bed, I imagined Key at the other end of the hallway. I imagined her standing in my room. The show worms its way into your head and makes you think, in that same disturbing, wonderful way that serial experiments: lain gets into your head.

Whew. I think that's enough for now. I have two more half-hour episodes to watch, then the two 90-minute final episodes. I can't wait.

Just added a permanent link in the kitchen to MegaTokyo. I'm seriously falling in love with this strip: it's well-written, and it's gorgeous. I just wish Fred Gallagher were getting paid for this stuff somehow. I'd gladly buy a book. OTOH, he does sell merchandise, so maybe I should grab something there in support.

I just re-organized my updates for the past few days, so that each days' activities are reported on that day. Makes things a little more sensible.

I spent about an hour this morning re-editing the video clips we took for the mockumentary at work. I'm hoping to re-create the video, and record it to regular VHS tapes which people here at work can take home.

Oh, and this is cool: BBspot does mock news about computer geeky stuff as well as The Onion spoofs traditional media. Check out New Linux Kernel Will Increase Intellectual Superiority and Obtaining Porn Not Challenging Enough for Kids for particularly biting examples. A shame that BBspot doesn't seem to have a lot of writers.

Today was an attempt to be busy pretty much all day. We stayed home from church in the morning, but had about 9 hours' worth of concerts and parties to go to starting at noon. Unfortunately, three days' worth of lack of sleep caught up with me, so Dad dropped me off at home around 5:00.

I changed into the luxurious comfort of sweats, laid back in bed, and watched a bit of TV. Then I gave Saalon a call, where we talked about Trigun and Gundam Wing and Key: The Metal Idol and Rurouni Kenshin and upcoming Disney films (Lady and the Tramp 2?!? The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2?!?) and Kingdom Come and Guy Gavriel Kay and Spider-Man and Christmas presents. A very productive conversation, all told.

What a day.

This morning I ran my Christmas packages over to the local Parcel Plus. This is a wonderful little store in downtown Great Falls, probaby just large enough to fit four customers with packages. It's always spotlessly clean and run with the efficiency one can only expect from foreigners. It's owned and operated by an Indian couple; the wife puts together packages in the back, while the always-helpful husband mans the register and works with customers. Compared to the cranky mobs of humanity at the post office, this is heaven.

Next, I headed in to Intersect to finish up our mockumentary. Julian still fiddled some with the Windows 2000 server, but we were able to make some progress before I had to leave at 2:00. They promised to finish up.

I returned home in time to change clothes, and we drove to the National Cathedral in D.C., where we had tickets for a choral concert. If you've never been to the National Cathedral, it's worth seeing. It's a full-scale cathedral; on the small side as cathedrals go, but still massive. And built in the 20th century, which is just plain cool.

It began with the choir standing up, and...just standing there. The organ played a prelude, then...from far off in the distance...a woman's choir sang, "O come, O come, Emmanuel,/And ransom captive Israel,/That mourns in lonely exile here/Until the Son of God appear: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel." As the voices floated to us, we began to realize that they were getting closer...entering the cathedral from the back. The organ played a few more bars, and from somewhere beyond came the voices of men: "O come, O come thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan's tyranny;/From depths of hell They people save,/And give them victory o'er the grave: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel." And they began to get closer and closer too.

Then they began marching slowly down the center aisle of the cathedral, and the main choir joined them, singing the rest of the carol. It was glorious.

We spent about an hour and a half enraptured by the magic spell of this music, but then had to leave so I could pick up my friend Nadine from her house and drive over to the Intersect Christmas Party. She was such good company in the car, chatting about her job and the church she's helping to start, that I completely missed the turn for the Dulles Hilton. But we made it just in time for the last half of the magic show that they'd booked, which was followed by a sumptuous meal of chicken, salmon, herb bread, and strawberry chocolate cake.

The party itself was beautiful. The whole room was decked out with a gold theme. Rich yellow tablecloths lay underneath glistening white silverware, while innumerable little votive candles cast a warm glow on the smiling, confident faces around each table. We could feel the vitality of the company.

We were then treated to a dual premiere: David, Intersect's CEO, filmed himself and Ravi coming up with the idea for Intersect, and chatting about it at the local Taco Bell. It was very well-done.

("So, what is the product?" "Uh, it's gonna be this...virtual reality...three- dimensional...project planning thing. Look, we'll worry about that after we get the funding.")

The other premiere was our little mockumentary. The others didn't get everything done, but they got the really good stuff: the interview with the tentacled Illithid ("So, I understand you did some work at the state department. Can you tell us a little more about that?" "Well, mainly I implanted my young in the minds of your leaders, as a prelude to the conquest of your pitiful little planet."), the Aaron the Moor interview ("So, can you tell us a little about what you like to do?" "Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves, and carried their bones to their dear friends' doors, and with mine own knife carved with Roman letters, 'Let not thine sorrows die, for I am dead!' Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things as easily as one might kill a fly, and my only regret is that I did not do ten thousand more." "Well, here at Intersect, you can!"), and the footage of one of our senior engineers, reminiscing from the back of a pick-up truck as it drives around a parking lot. The film went over quite well, with a lot of laughs. Next time, though, we'll do a little more planning.

That's the big thing I've learned from this mockumentary: set up a schedule for actual deliverables (e.g., a script, shooting raw footage, editing together the footage into scenes, etc.), and give everyone a distinct job to do. One person works on the script, one person shoots footage, one person edits, etc. With this, we had too many people trying to do too many things, with one person trying to edit when somebody else had already done editing, and one getting footage while another had already set up stuff with the same people.

I think this has gone on long enough for one update, though. I don't have any interesting news from the world at large, other than the fact that nVidia just bought 3Dfx, which should create all sorts of anti-trust concerns, and it seems that Bush Jr. will be our next President. Finally.

I have to admit to finding this funny: check out this scanned image from the latest Superboy comic, and look at the poster behind Superboy's head. heh. Also note the Pokeball in the corner, several familiar video game consoles, and a (inactive?) Fuchikoma robot from the anime film Ghost in the Shell.

I got home around 2 a.m. yesterday. Or rather, this morning. But the "Dave's Speech" footage came out very well. This morning, I got together footage of our Friday lunches, the CEO explaining that they were too expensive to do every week, and employees sitting at a nice table saying "What does he mean by too expensive?" "I dunno. Oh, waiter? I'll have the lobster."

Right now, I'm pretty much just sitting here at work, getting some work done, as well as I can. Tired, but I can live with it. I just have to make sure I don't get short-tempered from this lack of sleep.

I downloaded Netscape Navigator 6 the other day, just to see what it's like. The default settings are pretty horrible (and I don't want to hear people say that you can always change the default; the default should be the best choice, and most people don't bother to change defaults anyway). You can change the UI, thank goodness; the UI that it starts out with compares poorly to that of a $99 VCR. I'm tempted to write a full-scale UI critique of it.

And I'd forgotten how slow Netscape is, compared to other browsers (even IE). It takes a very long time to load up, though its page rendering seems to be faster than I remember it being. Still, Opera blows it out of the water, he said without testing it.

So here I sit at my desk at Intersect, alone, at midnight, while my home computer sits next to me, busily moving and rendering digital video footage that we've shot over the past two weeks. We decided to make this mockumentary of the company's history, and we want it done in time for the company-wide Christmas party on Saturday.

For video editing, I offered personalStudio on my own computer. The guy who's spearheading this effort really wanted to set up a Windows machine with Adobe Premier and do a side-by-side comparison. This is a great idea, but we haven't done much work on that up until now, and we spent most of the night tonight trying to get a Windows 2000 Professional machine set up properly. This is time that, in my opinion, could have been better used doing actual video editing.

But, y'know, that's why we have chains of command: so that people can make decisions without making everyone vote constantly. And maybe the payoff would have been worth every second of time we put in. personalStudio certainly isn't the most feature-complete video editing suite ever.

So why am I still here, alone, worrying about crazy people wandering by and trying to get in (I've locked all the doors)? Because I volunteered to stay. I wanted to get some editing done on this thing; I'd already done a first-draft version of "the Dave speech" (which intersperses our CEO speaking about our product with shots of people asleep and Fremen screaming "MUAD'DIB!").

But I'm still asking myself: Why? What good does this do the company? What good does it do me to be sitting here at the keyboard at 12:25 in the morning, obssessively putting one shot in front of another? I've always wanted to do movies, but this?

Well, yeah. This is what I like to do. This is a pretty cool experience, and it gives me the challenge of working out shots that I personally never thought of. The editing has to work with the footage we've got, and it really is surprising how much of it is good, and how much more of it we could use. But, again, it's a learning experience.

I guess what I'm really worried about is that this will become The Video Thing That I Do. On future projects, I'll tell people "Hey, I've done editing before," and then I'll become the Editor by default. And while I certainly don't dislike editing, I don't want to be pigeonholed either.

But y'know what? That's a boundaries issue. If I let myself get pigeonholed, then I'll be letting myself be pigeonholed. I can just say "I've done editing before, but I really don't want to do any editing on this project." And that's that. If people cna't respect that, that's a good sign that I don't want to work with those people.

So, really, I'm sitting here at my desk, with the temperature heading rapidly towards Ben and Jerry's, worrying about nothing.

WebMages hiccupped yesterday, and so this page (as well as numerous others) were inaccessible for part of the day. Sorry that that happened.

(Yeah, right, like I got any number of hits at that time....woah. I just checked, and I got 15 hits yesterday on this domain, not from me. That's kinda scary.)

More work done on Mozart, fixing a variety of interface issues, though I haven't uploaded new screenshots in awhile. Maybe I'll do that tonight.

"It's another blustery day in the Hundred-Acre Woods," he said lamely, after trying to find the actual opening sentences of the famed Winnie the Pooh story. Evidently, said text is not on the net yet, and won't be until at least October 21, 2021, thanks to lobbying by our good friends at Disney. If I think of it, I'll crack my copy of the original book at home and quote that (which falls under fair use).

(Basically, from what I understand, up until recently, the copyright on a work stayed in effect for 75 years after initial publication, with minor variations depending on the exact nature of the work. After that, the work is/was in the public domain. But when Steamboat Willy, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, was about to go into the public domain, Disney lobbied hard to have the copyright period extended, and it is now 95 years for any works that were under protection as of October 27, 1998. So now all sorts of great old books can't be distributed or converetd into e-text because they're languishing under some ancient rights to a publishing house that's forgotten they exist. Fantastic.)

And pardon the rant, but I was dismayed to find out how many Winnie the Pooh sites are devoted exclusively to the Disney animated versions, totally ignoring both the books and the artwork done by others (e.g. the original illustrations). I expect some of them to, but it looks like the vast majority of Pooh sites don't even acknowledge that the original books exist.

Sigh. On to other things.

I've been fiddling with Doc++, a program that will take Javadoc-compliant C++ files and create Javadoc-like documentation. Unfortunately, Doc++ thinks on a file-by-file basis, making it difficult to correctly document a set of C++ files, and its cross-linking seems to be wonky (a lot of the generated links go precisely nowhere).

What else. AWANA is now on Christmas break (well, we won't be able to make it next week, after which the break officially begins), which means I should have weekends free for about a month. Coolness. Not that I begrudge the time spent every Sunday, but it is nice to have an extra several hours on Sunday. We should start at the new National Wildlife Foundation building (the church bought their building) in January.

Funky Winkerbean has been running some very impressive stories lately dealing with Littleton-like issues, as well as alcoholism. I'm amazed that Batiuk has been willing (and been allowed!) to write stories about issues like social outcasts and their punishment from both peers and authority, but without insulting either side of the equation.

Oh, I've been getting quite a lot of traffic on UFO Dreams, my NieA Under 7 shrine page. I've had several people e-mail me about it just this week.

Ooooh. And Brennen's written a spoof crossover fanfic, which is horribly, horribly accurate. Except, as he points out, the grammar isn't bad (it really should switch tenses more often), and it's not nearly long enough. But it's still fantastic. :shiver:

Sheesh, lots of miscellaneous stuff today. But this had me laughing out loud. It's sort of a computer gaming in-joke, but what the hey. More people should read that strip anyway.

I've abandoned the short film. The stop-motion features of my camera just don't end up looking smooth, I'm afraid. So, I'll have to think up some other way of doing a short film. Anyone have any use for about two pounds of green Crayola clay?

What else. Mozart is improving.. I added support for opening recent documents today (and I just realized I should also put them off of a menu somewhere), as well as improved the documentation.

And work goes well, which is a refreshing change. I'm ahead of the game, for once.

I brought my PC in to work again, though we don't seem to be setting things up for video. I might vidcapture some footage before I leave, though. Dunno; I'm typing this from work as our application compiles in the background, and I'm feeling pretty tired.

Dual volume 2 rocks, unsurprisingly. It's not quite as...I dunno, it doesn't have as many hilarious scenes as the first DVD. But the humor is pretty much up-to-par overall. And it has two really excellent scenes, the ends of episodes 5 and 7.

My only complaint is that the disc only contains three episodes, and it costs a full USD $25. I mean, it's still good stuff, and I'll still buy it, but...ouch. Battle Athletes Victory DVDs only have three episodes apiece, and they only cost USD $15.

You thought the original Dune movie was weird? Check out the French version (it was never made). Imagine Salvador Dali playing the Emperor Shaddam IV. That's not what it would have been like; Salvador Dali was going to play the Emperor Shaddam IV.

The mind doesn't just boggle; it liquifies.

What else. I brought my computer in to work, to show the guys doing this video what BeOS is like. I hope they like. It's sort of hard to work, actually, with my BeOS PC sitting right there, waiting to be used. I want to get on it and code, or web surf, or make a Moho animation, or something. It's just so much more fun to use, relatively speaking.

More to follow.

Woah, nearly forgot to mention. December 7th, 1941. A date which will live in infamy.

Light, I was just doing some vanity surfing and stumbled across a reference to this diary page, including the META tag description of this site: "Information about and links that interest me, Brent P. Newhall." I had forgotten how sucky that was; it sounds like something from The Schumin Web (sorry, Ben).

I found that as part of OpenHere's diaries listing, a massive list of online diaries. Amazing how many sound really contrived and uninteresting.

I also came across a diary listing (scroll to the bottom) that caught my attention. The diary writer is described as "a beautiful, opinionated and very strong woman." Weren't the strengths of online diaries and webpages supposed to be the concept that beauty doesn't matter? Really, what does personal beauty have to do with making me want to read a weblog?

And much as I annoy myself by posting nothing for the longest time, then dumping great mountains of thoughts onto this site, I just really like this, from the weblog How I Was Made:

He loves me so much "it hurts" he once said. I knew exactly what he meant. Not being with him is just painful, and the uncertainess of what will happen in the future is just scary. What happens when he wants to go to university? I've never needed anyone like this (I hesitate in writing that because of Joey, though). And as terrible as I sound trying to get this mess of thoughts down on paper, I now know what everyone is singing about.

Mozart continues to progress. I'm doing nightly builds and screenshot uploads on a reasonably consistent basis. Next up: Drawing the current song as sheet music. Making all those little note graphcs is gonna be time-consuming.

I'm working on a short film, but more about that later.

Meanwhile, in a fit of ridiculous one-upmanship after reading a lot of good diary titles out there, I'm titling this one. See? It's titled now.

Personal rant time. I drive along a stretch of semi-highway on my way to work (it's not like a four-lane divided highway that cuts through the wilderness; just three lanes that meanders past shopping malls and houses). This road has been under construction for awhile, so now that the road is temporarily complete, the speed limit has been decreased from 55 mph to 45 mph. So, I drive between 45 and 48-ish.

I wouldn't be particularly annoyed if a lot of cars passed me on this stretch of road. I wouldn't even be annoyed if most of the cars passed me. Every car passes me, all of them going at least 55 (often 60 or 65). It's not like the new speed limit are easy to miss; new ones have been added, and they're larger than their predecessors. People still blow through like there's no tomorrow.

What's even more infuriating is that there was a cop sitting on the side of this road a week or so ago, and everybody slowed down to 45 or 40. So people know what the real speed limit is; they just can't be bothered to follow it.

In other news, I should be getting Dual volume 2 and The Wings of Honneamise within a week. After actually ordering them a week ago, I called Right Stuf and found out that the Evangelion volume 2 DVD that I had ordered along with them is seriously backordered. So, for an extra $4, they'll ship it separately.

Meanwhile, I've been getting horrible sleep at night. I've been watching the Dune miniseries on The Sci-Fi Channel, plus trying to work on Mozart, which has resulted in bedtimes closer to 4:00 a.m. than the 11:00 p.m. I try to hit.

And for what it's worth, I liked the miniseries. It had its moments, and it had some cheesy bits, but overall it respected the source material and adapted the story to film quite well. The ending was probably better than I could've made it.

And here's an excellent article that sums up the Gor community very well, for those not familiar with it and/or wanting to know more about it. As background, John Norman wrote a series of fantasy novels set in a society where (nearly) all women are totally enslaved to men -- and that postulate that this is the natural state of the sexes. This has created a startlingly large online community, which the author of the article explores in detail, and has the courage to repudiate when its rhetoric gets downright wrong. The author interviews a few Gor fans and advocates, and explains their beliefs in the context of current psychological beliefs.

Mozart is going well, though my brain has been so happy to have a cool little programming project to focus on that I've been staying up to the wee hours of the morning to work on it. Getting to bed at 3:30 a.m. doesn't help the ol' brain the next day. But the app is progressing nicely.

In fact, I've started doing a nightly build. Every night before I go to bed, I re-compile the app from scratch and run through a handful of basic functionality tests. I'm going to also start taking screenshots and uploading them to the brand-spankin' new Mozart webpage I've created.

I see that Mars probably had lakes of water at one time. The exciting thing about that is that it suggests Mars can support water easily enough, and thus it should be relatively easy to terraform. We really don't know all that much about Mars' habitability, having only sent a few probes there.

And...yeah, this is kinda powerful. Christopher Lee, who is playing Saruman in the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies, said recently in an interview: "I want to live long enough to see all of The Lord of the Rings come out -- that's 2003, by which time I'll be 81." LOTR is keeping Christopher Lee alive. That's just plain cool.

And now, a little something I've learned based on comments that others have made based on watching me juggle (dropping lots of balls in the process):

Sufficiently-advanced practice is indistinguishable from talent.

I have no innate talent for juggling; it took me weeks and weeks before I could juggle three balls for more than one or two throws. Even now, after months of practice, I drop balls occasionally (and that's just with a very basic three-ball shower pattern). But when people watch me juggle now, they say, "Hey, you've got talent."

Excellent. I just won three eBay auctions, for three anime cels; one of Haruna from Tenchi Forever!, one of Sakuya from Tenchi in Tokyo, and Key from Key: The Metal Idol.

The cel of Key is in itself a "key cel," which means it is the first or last in that particular animation sequence. "Key cels" are usually drawn by the head animator, and thus generally higher-quality and more valuable.

Yesterday (Saturday) was surprisingly productive, considering I worked from 9:00 to 6:00. Full-scale testing begins tomorrow, so I had to get my fixes in. Fortunately, they're in there.

I've been coding a BeOS MIDI composer app called Mozart for the past week or so; should've mentioned it sooner. It's pretty functional now, though it's only got about 50% of what I want to have implemented when I release it.

The idea is to make it easy for neophytes to compose music. Music composition on a computer should be easier than scribbling notes on paper, but all of the apps I've found have been either poorly-designed, or designed for the professional musician. I want to be able to compose music as flexibly and easily as I can compose a document.

And fortunately, BeOS makes it really, really easy, provided I design the app right.

This is also going straight to the kitchen: an English-to-leet translator, converting normal English to the favored dialect of self-important script kiddies everywhere. Spawned by a gorgeously-drawn anime comic strip from FredArt.

I'm having lunch with my Dad today, after which (or before which?) we're going to check out the Gold's Gym nearby. My work will pay for memberships, so we're going to try meeting there regularly to work out.

Heard about the tragedy of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker? Read the breaking story, and the follow-up from AICN.

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
  The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
  With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), from "Chorus from 'Atalanta' "

Man, this is insane. I just installed a hit counter thingie that I wrote on stun-software.com, only to find out that Informant has been downloaded an average of three times a day for the past several weeks; more than that earlier in the past. The program hasn't been updated in months! And it's still a buggy pre-release!

I found a French site that has a bunch of Yoshitoshi ABe artwork. In particular, I really liked this piece with Alice and Lain, this rather pleasant shot of Lain, and this really weird shot of a young Lain (maybe 8 or 10 years old) awake in bed.

Lessee, what's been happening in my life. I attended the final "Discovery" class at The Falls Church tonight, which went well. One of the speakers kinda over-emphasized the whole "get involved working with ministries as soon as possible" side of the church, which sadly rubs my family the wrong way at the moment. Other than that, though, we have no complaints. Looks like a very healthy, safe place to worship.

When I went out for lunch today, I stopped by Suncoast to look for the latest Dual! DVD, only to find that it hadn't come in. So instead, I bought the first DVD of the Rurouni Kenshin TV series, as well as the third Neon Genesis Evangelion DVD. Didn't know that 0:3 had come out so soon.

As I chowed down on a disappointing Blimpie lunch (their "subs" don't deserve the name; they're no more than a few slices of meat slapped onto a slightly unusual roll), I finished reading Is the Bible True?, a summary of evidence for and against the Bible. I've got a review on my read books page.

Then, after working out at Gold's Gym after work, I spent some time trying to get Tramp back up and running. The primary hard drive started to die about a week ago, I guess, so I've been meaning to pull it out, put in the replacement hard drive, and re-install Windows.

This whouldn't be necessary with an OS like BeOS, of course, but what can you do? Tramp has my printer and scanner attached to it, and there aren't any BeOS drivers for those yet, that I know of.

I also got my twelve-pack of sodas from Jones Soda. They're fantastic, and you can order them right off their website. You can even pick and choose which flavors you want in your set.

AWANA is up and running in the new National Wildlife Federation building. We had a very successful night last night, despite low numbers due to the Superbowl.

Afterwards, I went to a Superbowl party at a friend's house. Had a really good time, particularly since I wasn't rooting for either team. There were a few folks from work there -- this friend works at Intersect too -- so I didn't feel totally alone. I'm not usually very good at parties.

I did spend a bit of time on Wine last night too, which is a good thing. I've been converting the scripts to prose form because of the greater detail that I can write in prose, but Saalon's been pushing me to keep it in script form. That's probably a good idea all around.

I fiddled a bit with Informant, too, trying to get it to compile on R5. I'm having weird problems with constructing BMessages, which has me thoroughly confused.

The reason I'm working on Informant again is a rather sordid story. Saturday night, I received an e-mail from Eugenia Loli -- a major force in the BeOS community -- about Mozart and Informant. It was a combination of a bug report on Mozart's side, and a request that I fix Informant because Max, the guy I'd given it to, didn't have time to work on it.

This pushed a lot of my buttons. The Mozart bug report was worded such that it insinuated that I was taking shortcuts with my code, which I'm not to my knowledge. And the Informant request was just plain strange, because I'd given Informant to Max. It wasn't mine to fix.

So, I replied to Eugenia's message and explained what had happened with Mozart, and a promise to check in with Max about Informant. Sure enough, he doesn't have time, so I'm working on Informant again. Eugenia replied with a very apologetic and encouraging e-mail, which cleared up that whole business. So that's the scoop there.

OK. On to other things.

I updated the script that displays this diary. The table of contents now displays each month in a calendar format, making it easier to browse past diary entries. I still have some kinks to work out, but overall I'm pleased thus far.

And I sketched up a little cartoon character that I was rather happy with, and tried to take a picture of it with my digital camera. It looked horrible, but I was later able to scan it in properly, so here it is:

I have a deskless computer, which means that the keyboard is wireless and the monitor is mounted on a TV stand. As a result, I can use my computer from anywhere in the room; my computer desk, my regular desk in the other corner, etc.

I never could find a cordless trackball, though, so I had to use a regular trackball on an extension. Until yesterday, that is, when I found and bought a cordless trackball at Circuit City.

The trackball is fine, except for the fact that it's unusable when it's omre than, oh, two feet from the receiver. I'll have to fiddle with it to see if I can get it work better, because that's ridiculous. But I saw this in the user's manual, and had to chuckle:

See the User's Guide Installed on Your Hard Drive!

For PCs

• From the Windows Taskbar, select Start, Programs, Logitech, MouseWare, then User's Guide.
• The User's Guide displays automatically.

Ummmmm...exactly how is that "automatic"?

Well. Last night, I accidentally wiped out a significant chunk of the code for Mozart, my MIDI composer app. I can re-write the code, but it'll take awhile. It's also pretty crucial code (it's the part that displays the notes in the song). :sigh:

And it was a stupid mistake, as usual. I dragged the files from the "Mozart" folder over to the "Solar Conquest" folder (Solar Conquest is the new name of the 4X space strateg game I'm writing), which of course moved the files instead of copying them. For some reason, I was sure that that action copied the files.

Well. Life goes on. I'm not about to let myself into a funk because of something like that.

I did some work on Solar Conquest last night, getting the planets to display themselves in the proper alignment. I still have to make them display things like actual planet graphics and such, but at least the planets know where to draw themselves. More as it develops.

Cool! First I discovered the emotional power of MegaTokyo, then the comedic offerings of SinFest, and now there's another new online comic, neobaka. It's intended more for anime/manga fans, but the appeal is pretty generic. It also has the impressive ability to include Monty Python and other pop-culture references as part of the strip, instead of as blatant attempts to insert geeky humor.

I've decided to abandon my current novel attempt, which I just realized I've only mentioned in passing on this diary page. My idea was to write a serious, character-oriented drama set in a fantasy world, focusing on the royal cryptographer. The cryptographer in question has a lot of issues which I had planned to explore. Unfortunately, both the story and the characters have refused to gel into anything coherent, so even after writing about ten pages' worth of miscellaneous scenes, I still don't have a novel.

But that's OK. That project sort of re-awakened my writing muse, so it served a purpose, and heck it was good practice. The main thing now is for me to find something else to write, and for the time being I think I'm going to focus on Wine To Those In Anguish, the animated series that I want to produce. I still need to write out a lot of the scripts.

What else is happening. Well, Brennen, Eric, and I are hashing out a design for a 4X space empire building game, for the BeOS. The emphasis is on a strong design rather than pretty graphics, which is good because none of us have any talent in those sorts of graphics. The working title for the game is "Second Empire."

Lessee.

'Twas going to go to Discovery last night, but had to work late and I felt sick so I just went home and lay in bed. I slept pretty well, and feel fine today, so I guess it was just a temporary thing.

Since I pretty much killed all of the plants I had at work (well, except for the cactus), I've been buying large amounts of fake plant foliage for work. When I put the stuff in pots, they look quite nice, and having a whole forest motif for my cubicle is pretty darn cool. Here's what the plants look like:

I'm sure there's some other stuff I should talk about, but I really can't think of a thing, other than that whole "fame and the internet" rant, which I honestly don't feel like posting right now. So, all of my fans will have to wait. :-P

It's 2:44 a.m. Any sane person would be fast asleep right now but no, Brennen and I have just spent the past three hours installing, configuring, and ultimately playing Quake2 deathmatch against each other.

It took forever to work out a way where we could connect, what with inconsistencies in maps and unsupported network configurations. Once we actually did, we had to run the server off my 56k dial-up connection, which meant that I was running at about 2 frames per second at best.

And I loved every minute of it. :-) Brennen showed me a great time, and I can't wait for the next time that we play.

Update at 3:20 p.m.

OK, I need to rant here.

Last year, in the AWANA program I help out at, I offered to get the kids Pokemon merchandise (cards, posters; whatever) if they memorized their verses. The kids got really motivated and did a lot of memorization.

But with the Pokemon craze growing, a lot of kids had started playing Pokemon during choir practice, and just generally disturbing the peace. One of the commanders explained to me that the church had decided that Pokemon stuff would have to stay outside the building, for organizational rather than spiritual reasons.

Unfortunate, but understandable. I agreed to stop providing Pokemon stuff to the kids.

But a few weeks back I had a brain storm: Why not order the Pokemon merchandise, and have it shipped directly to the kid who wanted it? The merchandise need never touch the church building. I e-mailed one of the commanders, and this was her reply:

the short answer is no, and here's why. In the past we've had some rather upset parents over the Pokemon issue. It's just an area we would rather stay out of altogether.

She then went on to suggest some other things that I could try, particularly a Christian collectible card game (and because it's Christian, it must be OK). A pleasant exchange overall, but this has me furious.

What she's basically saying is that some parents were upset over Pokemon, and so the leadership decided to just abandon the whole issue. We can't upset parents, after all.

I want to know what these parents are upset about. I can understand them not wanting their kids collecting Pokemon, if those kids are getting obssessive. But that's not cause for complaining to us for selling the stuff.

I'm betting that they believe Pokemon Is Evil. I did some research today, and sure enough there are all sorts of odd opinions in the "Christian" community that purport that Pokemon is occult. No, it doesn't have any occult terminology or imagery, nor do you act out any occult practices, but it's occult, because it's made by a company that bought the company that made D&D. And maybe kids will start thinking that Pokemon are real, and that they can exert power over them. Huh? This is marketed to 12-year-olds, not 2-year-olds.

That whole debate is infuriating enough, but what I think really frustrates me is the reaction of the commanders. They've decided that we won't provide Pokemon, for political reasons instead of spiritual ones. It just makes things easier that way.

Please, tell me who has trouble with this. Let me talk with them. If they don't like Pokemon, that's fine; I won't give it to their kids. I am very spiritually sure that Pokemon is OK, and I can see how much of an incentive it is for these kids. I don't like being told that I can't provide it, especially when...

...OK, the leadership is caving to special-interest groups. That's the problem.

I think I've run out of steam. I'll e-mail the commander later today, once I've calmed down enough to write a kind, rational message.

I've been approved for that speaking engagement at Comdex. This should be cool.

I have a nifty thought about the internet and the nature of fame, which I'm going to have to save for later because I came up with something else to share during the drive to work this morning.

Let's look at Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story. Buzz, and all his paraphenalia, is meant as a parody of all those Saturday morning sci-fi action/adventure kids' shows. He was meant to be a summation of every silly sci-fi cliche.

What has Disney done with Buzz Lightyear? They've made a Saturday morning sci-fi action/adventure kids' show. Animated, no less. This is really no different than deciding to make a real weekday afternoon Wild West puppet show with Woody.

Think about it. If I were an executive at Disney, and someone proposed this to me as a serious idea, I'd say "Y'know, I'd be afraid people will think we didn't get the joke with Toy Story." It makes Disney look like a bunch of brain-dead corporate zombies who want to turn every possibly marketable character into a franchise.

Evidently, they are, and they do.

We got a solid 3.5 inches of snow last night. Pretty, isn't it?

We decided to stay home this morning, instead of attending The Falls Church. Which, honestly, has me sort of annoyed. Three inches is a fair amount of snow for this area -- and we're on a gravel road with deep ditches on either side, so we can't take snow too lightly -- but I think we could have made it in. Heck, our Pathfinder has four-wheel drive.

Part of my frustration lies in the Christian Classics class that I'm taking. We're reading the writings of all sorts of amazing people: A.W. Tozer, Martin Luther, St. Augustine, J.B. Philips, and many others. It's been fascinating to see how these people approach faith.

This week, the class was reading a very difficult passage written by Phoebe Palmer, a 19th-century activist. I and my family had read it to each other last week, and were pretty thoroughly confused. It sounded like she was saying that she wanted to feel like she was a Christian, like God had to give her some emotional sign that she was going to heaven.

(And I was frustrated then, because I was having a difficult time with her relatively archaic prose, and before college I read a whole lot of classical literature and would have been able to read this Palmer writing in a snap if I'd only kept up with my reading.)

But I re-read the passage last night, and everything fell into place; I was pretty sure I'd figured out what she really meant. And now...I won't get an opportunity to discuss it in class and find out if I was right, and I won't know what everyone else thought.

But then, when my parents suggested that we stay home, I was secretly relieved. I didn't really want to go to the trouble of going to church. Why? Is it because I've gone to so many churches that didn't feed me, and I've been trained like Pavlov's dogs to not want to go to church?

Now that I'm writing about it, I think that a lot of it has to do with my parents. My Mom hasn't been gung-ho about church attendance for many years, and my Dad was really burned by several churches starting, oh, seven years ago. So I've spent quite a few years listening to them talk about how they're "really not looking forward to church this week."

And I don't mind that aspect of their personalities; I totally understand. That's just how my Mom approaches things, and I completely appreciate my Dad's attitude about it; if I'd been treated similarly, I would have said the same things. It's just that that's been a part of my environment for so long, and though I don't really agree with it, it's become part of me whether I like it or not.

Which, now that I think about it, is a frightening statement. That something as simple as watching two other people react to an aspect of your life can so completely affect your own opinion.

I should have learned by now that it's dangerous to put little ideas in my head.

I stayed up untli the wee hours removing the frames from my website, and adding a navigational bar to the top of all the pages. It gives the site a much more structured feel, though; I feel like I know my way around better now. And, as useful as frames can be, I don't think they're particularly suited as basic site navigational aids, at least in the way I was using them.

I also added a sitemap, which is surprisingly handy.

More later.

Well, Scot Hacker is looking for someone to speak about BeOS at the upcoming Comdex in April, and I volunteered. He replied that I'm currently the #1 candidate, but he's keeping it open in case somebody else volunteers. That would be cool. The panel's on Tuesday morning, so I may be able to fly up there in the morning (or maybe the night before) and come back that afternoon or evening.

The problem is that I and my parents are thinking of leaving for our European vacation that week. We'll try to work out something, though, 'cause Comdex would be cool. Nice to have "spoke at a panel at Comdex at the age of 24" on my resume.

We had our Friday lunch today at work. We ordered Chinese, but were kind of stiffed: we ordered enough for 60 people, and they brought in way too much. Our "enough noodles for 15 people" translated to four heaping trays of the stuff, where 15 people could barely share one tray. And, of course, they charged us for it. Lunch for 60 people cost us USD $800.

However, that meant that there was a huge amount of leftovers. I hauled three trays of rice, General Tso's chicken, and noodles to the trunk of the car (I took Mom's Celica instead of my truck today, so Dad could use the truck to haul some brush). My parents stopped by, then we went over to Gold's Gym and exercised together, which was very nice.

It's amazing how much more pleasant it is to exercise with other people that you know. It doesn't make the exercise any easier, at least for me, and I don't find it more fun than exercising alone. I don't quite know how to describe it; it's like some part of my brain says "Yes, this feels good."

In any event, we all drove home and dove into the Chinese food, and ate about a sixth of it. The rest went into the freezer.

The Wacom Intuos 4x5 graphics tablet that I ordered from McGlen.com came in, so I tried hooking it up. I spent about an hour downloading fiddling with different tablet drivers until I found one that worked.

As frustrating as that was, it was easier than it would have been in Windows; I never had to reboot. At all. After plugging the tablet in (with the computer running), I'd install a driver, restart the input_server, try the tablet, and repeat. In Windows I know I'd have had to reboot every time, though I wouldn't have had to search for drivers in Windows' case. Still, when the worst situation on BeOS is still easy to work with, I'm happy.

In any event, the graphics tablet is pretty cool. You can use it like a mouse -- that's what I've been doing -- or switch it into "pen mode" for applications that support tablets. Just in mouse mode, though, it can be used in drawing applications, and I can get a feel for what it's like to draw with it.

The feel of the tablet is more natural than a mouse, but a little awkward for me. It's still imprecise, though I get the feeling that a little bit of practice will greatly improve my accuracy. I can foresee this becoming a really useful drawing tool (I beleive that Illiad draws User Friendly with a Wacom tablet).

What else. I'm thinking about getting rid of the frames on my website. Fortunately, that shouldn't be too difficult; the main bit of work will be putting a navigation bar at the top and/or bottom of each page (you knkow, "[Home > Library > SF Books]").

At the Discovery series last night at The Falls Church, a local priest explained some of the history of the Episcopalian tradition. One of the explanations fascinated me.

Have you ever wondered why Catholics, during Communion, don't actually pick up the bread that they eat? The priests put the bread into the partaker's mouth. Why? Because the people didn't understand what Communion really was, and would pocket "the body of Christ" and go home and feed it to their cattle, or plant it with their crops, figuring that since the bread was holy, it would make their cows better or their crops grow faster.

That's not what I found interesting; what snagged my attention was the church's response. Instead of educating people about what Communion is really for, the priesthood wouldn't let people touch the bread, instead putting it directly in their mouths.

Sure, it solved the problem. But it eased the symptom of an underlying disease that was still festering, and which would later cause people to clamor for Protestantism.

OK. What else.

I found this on the site hosting fansubs of Kodomo no Omache, and thought I'd copy it and put it up here. Just typical kids at lunch.

Fanboy Entertainment, the company that will be distributing the new Yoshitoshi ABe manga "Essence" in America this spring, has posted an image from that manga (click for a larger, high-res image):

As luck would have it, I have a pretty long update today.

I found a site that hosts RealVideo files of fan-subtitled episodes of the anime comedy series Kodomo no Omache (a.k.a. "Child's Toy"). I was introduced to Kodomo through Kodomo no Evangelion, a pair of spoof videos that put the theme songs for Kodomo to original animation of Neon Genesis Evangelion characters. I then did a bit of searching online and was intrigued by the descriptions I read of Kodomo.

I really like what I've seen so far (namely, the first episode). It is a very high-speed show, both in terms of animation and humor. A lot of the humor is conversational, and the comments can fly by so quickly that you're not done even comprehending one by the time another is completely delivered. It's a lot like the comic stylings of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when those folks were at their best.

The characters are certainly well-presented. Sana, the main character, is a somewhat hyper girl who is also a child TV star. She switches moods with impressive speed, but generally stays positive. Meanwhile, there's her bodyguard Rei, an unflappable man who always wears sunglasses and Sana calls her "pimp." He's a great foil for Sana's general insanity. Meanwhile, you have Sana's mother, who is cool as ice in all situations, and tries to instill in her daughter a sense of decorum and grace (to which I say, "Good luck"). Combine this with Sana's classmate Hayama, who is cold and cruel, but seems to be less than totally evil, and you have a cast of characters who really bounce off each other in interesting ways (much like the cast of, say, Tenchi Muyo!).

There are really only two things I can complain about. For one, the drawing and animation styles are both less than stellar to my eyes. The character designs are occasionally quite pretty, but often somewhat ugly. Related to this, the show often drops its drawing style into a simplified style that really doesn't look very good to me.

Secondly is an issue which deserves some perspective. Anime series tend to leap from scenes of drama to character development to humor to action much more quickly than Western movies or TV shows. This is an aspect of the anime genre that one simply has to get used to.

Unfortunately, Kodomo jumps from comedy to character development to drama to who-knows-where much more quickly than most anime series. I found it to be so rapid that it was almost jarring; I needed at least a few seconds to mentally transition from comedy appreciation to drama appreciation. Kodomo at least continues those scenes long enough for me to appreciate them before leaping again, but I would have preferred at least a little transition time between certain moments in the episode I saw.

But even so, I found Kodomo no Omache to be hilarious and very entertaining in many ways. Though it's certainly not for everyone.

What else. Hey, I found an online comic with good art, and the comic stylings of Bill Watterson (the Calvin and Hobbes guy). It's Sinfest, and while there is some occasional foul language and mature subject matter, it makes a lot of good points and is often quite hilarious.

Heh, life is odd. Saalon and I talked the other night about the viability of mechs (e.g., large, piloted humanoid machines) in real life, whether they'd actually be worthwhile to construct. We concluded that Earth-based business or military applications would probably be relatievly minor, but they'd be very useful on other planets doing construction and the like. Want to build a large colony-type structure? A mech is basically a mobile crane, just to mention one use.

Then, I read a BBC report that the US military is funding research into building exoskeletons for soldiers. They're basically looking like primitive versions of the ExoSuits from ExoSquad; you strap yourself into one of these machines and it enhances your leg movement, how much you can carry, etc. An excellent idea, I think, and it opens the door for more interesting and far-ranging applications, like...mechs.

There's evidently going to be a new anime series called "Lingerie Fighter Papillon Rose" (?!?) that will be streamed on the web like NieA Under 7 was. In this case, though, the series will evidently be exclusive to the web (they're calling it an "Original Net Animation," as opposed to "Original Video Animations"). You can download the trailer as a small or large MPEG file.

Based on the promo, the show looks like Sailor Moon with older protagonists, whom all wear lingerie instead of sailor uniforms. :blink: I seriously hope that this is meant to be a parody.

Let's see, what else. I made a big anime order at Right Stuf today, all VHS tapes that they were selling for cheap. I got AD Police Files #1 (a dark spin-off of the original Bubblegum Crisis), Ayane's High Kick, Mighty Space Miners (never heard of it before, but it looked intriguing), My Dear Marie, and the complete You're Under Arrest OVA (a modern-day comedy about two female traffic cops). All of it's dubbed, except for My Dear Marie which is only available in a subtitled version. Should be interesting.

I also went to the first installment of the "Discovery series" at The Falls Church (Episcopal). The Discovery series is a set of three nights where the staff of TFC explain to potential members about TFC's structure, history, goals, etc. It was very interesting to hear how people looked at The Falls Church, and its place within the Episcopal church.

One of the things that really caught my attention was what a priest said about the Episcopalian view of personal faith and religion. He explained that the Episcopal church won't tell you what to believe, beyond the basics (the basics being: There is a God; He sent His son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins; accepting Christ's death for your sins pays the price for all of your sin and guarantees you a place in heaven; etc.). The church may have opinions on these things, but it won't proscribe those opinions. More importantly, the church tries to actively encourage people to think about their religion. They want people to use their reason to come to their own conclusions. How many religions or churches will say that?

Arrrg. Windows NT locked up hard a moment ago, losing my diary-entry-in-progress. Which, to be fair, has happened to me in every OS I've used, but...I dunno, you'd think such things would be rare after forty years of OS development.

I worked until 11:00 p.m. last night, trying to get a particular date to display itself correctly. Ugh.

I did get a chance to talk to Saalon, where we chatted about Fear. Specifically, we both feel about writing that we don't have the skill to put our ideas on paper accurately, and even if we did, our ideas basically suck. And as Saalon put it, it's a stupid mindset, because you can always go back and fix a badly-written story or script or whatever. But it's the fear that keeps us from writing. Truly, "Fear is the mind-killer."

But on to some news. AIC (the animation company responsible for Tenchi Muyo!, El Hazard, Ah My Goddess, and many others) has announced that Masaki Kajishima (the creator of Tenchi) is now working on a new Tenchi Muyo! direct-to-video series. Pardon me while I leap for joy...there. More information is available in the interview with Masaki Kajishima.

I also note on the new English AIC website, that they're opening an online shop in February. But interestingly, the "coming soon" page is decorated with rough pencil sketches. Might they sell original works from the actual production of AIC shows? ::drool::

Meanwhile, as I cruised around the AIC site, I found a Dual wall scroll (at least, I assume it's a wall scroll; the page is in Japanese) for 1500 yen (about USD $15 right now) which, I must admit, I'd love to buy. Unfortunately, I can't, since I'd have no idea how to order it in Japanese.

I updated my Idiotic User Interfaces page with an error I got using RealPlayer for BeOS. I also expanded my critique of WinAmp.

Windows NT refused to boot this morning at work, its winsys.dll file evidently being corrupted. Now, after re-installing NT, I get to re-install all of my applications. Wonderful.

I downloaded a beautiful anime music video the other day, one that married the Rurouni Kenshin TV show with the Backstreet Boys' "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely." It made the show look a lot more similar to the super-dramatic OVA than I had known the TV show to be.

And now I have to do some actual work.

This morning I stopped by the post office, and collected a few things that had been delivered to my P.O. box there. Besides the usual spam, I got my copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion 0:2 DVD (it's been back-ordered for a month), and my Kimiko long-sleeved shirt from MegaTokyo. The shirt is quite nice; Cafe Press does a good job. Plus, I like having a long-sleeved shirt, since it can be worn both in warmer and colder weather.

Had a very good day at work. We've officially started planning out our user documentation, which is my job. I'm really looking forward to getting started on that. It'll be a tough nut to crack, but I think we can have an elegant system.

We also had tea at 4:00, an excellent tradition that was started when our Friday lunches went to twice a week. The administrative assistant runs out to the store and buys scones, biscuits, cookies, bread, cream, and many different kinds of tea, then everyone makes a cup of tea and munches as desired. It's a wonderful way to spend half an hour.

When I got home, though, the stress of the past week -- and a lack of sleep last night -- caught up with me. I felt like I might benefit from a quick lay-down on my bed, and promptly slept like a rock for two hours, still wearing my coat, no less. But I woke up somewhat refreshed, just in time for my sister and her daughters to leave (they'd come for the day). :-/

Ugh. As I write this, I realize how poorly I'm constructing sentences, and how confusing the narrative is. Forgive me; I'm looking longingly at bed.

But I do want to mention that I watched the first 1.5 episodes of the Evangelion 0:2 DVD, and I'm actually a little more impressed than I expected to be. The show seems to be hitting its stride, and is toning down the HUMOR and obscure plot elements in favor of solid character development and more understandable storytelling. I just hope this keeps up. And I can't wait to meet Asuka.

Oh, and at work, I also tweaked POV's message board system. Saalon and I discussed a major overhaul of that board, which should make it more powerful and easy-to-use. We want to emphasize on making it very easy and natural for people to post to our boards, which is not an immediately obvious problem on today's web. You need to be powerful, too. We think we have some solutions, though.

Today was the deadline for our alpha product at work. I didn't get everything done, but I got all of the crucial functionality implemented. Management has decided to push the schedule back one week, giving us time to implement the bugs that we've found over the past few weeks, so we have some breathing room now.

But as a result, my brain's kinda fried. That, combined with number of hours I'm putting in, means that I don't really have much to talk about.

Actually, I do have one thing: Brennen, Saalon, and I all came up with the idea of making a short animated piece (less than 5 minutes long), as a "first test" of Otherspace Productions. Seeing as our first production is a 120-minute direct-to-video opus, that sounds like a good idea to me. The plan is to find original music on the net, and ask the creators' permission to use it in this way. Suggestions?

Work's going well.

I was determined to get out of the office at noon, even if I didn't eat anything, just to clear my head. I drove over to a nearby mall and sat in the food court, a pad of paper on my knees and a mechanical pencil in my hand, trying to improve my drawing skills. I tried to draw a man who was eating near me, but it didn't look very similar to him, and he ended up looking skinny when he should have looked fat. Ah well. I also practiced drawing a couple of hands, which helped I think.

I had loads of fun with Quicktime for Windows. When I tried loading a new anime music video, it informed me that it needed to download a new codec. I fired up an internet connection on that machine, and was rewarded with an unannounced 5 MB download, commencing about ten minutes before I had to go to work. And of course, once I get home it'll probably be cowerering in a corner of the screen, asking me to push a button to continue with installation. Grrrr.

But meanwhile. I found an amazing video at Toonami: Digital Arsenal: an operetta summary of season 3 of the action/adventure TV show Reboot, sung to "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from The Pirates of Penzance. Hilariously, brililantly funny.

Tanjit. I must have lost my original entry for today.

Work's been sucking, but it's been my fault. To be brutally honest, I've been procrastinating about working on my parts of the application, and as a result I've managed to stress myself out. I've been feeling under immense pressure, and like I'm very behind, and what's my reaction bee? To surf the 'net.

I got so fed up with myself that I ranted about it to Saalon, who kindly offered his ear, then gave me some excellent advice: (1) Get out of the office for a little while to clear your head, and (2) break your work down into sub-problems; don't look at it like it's Project Wooly Mammoth.

I followed his suggestions, and made great strides before knocking off at 9:30 p.m. to get at least a minimum amount of sleep.

But on to other, more interesting things.

I've been skimming the forums at MegaTokyo, and have found a whole bunch of really neat people who love to talk anime and (more importantly for me) how to draw. I've begun to post some messages there, and just generally make myself part of that community.

And since I've been trying to practice my drawing lately, I bought myself a Wacom Intuos 4x5 drawing tablet off the internet. A drawing tablet is a tablet thingy (plus a pen) that lets you draw digitally. E.g., every stroke of the pen is drawn on the computer screen, so I can draw a sketch directly into the computer, without having to first draw it on paper, then scan it in to upload it. And since I don't really need paper sketches for any particular reason (if I need to assemble a portfolio, I'll print the computer files), this works.

On a completely different note, I got something very interesting in the mail today that I wanted to share. It's a CD-ROM that lets you assemble photos into a photobook, complete with titles and captions, then lets you upload the file to a website. At that point, your book will be professionally printed as a hardcover "coffee table" book and mailed to your door, all for USD $25. Not bad.

Last night, I finished my second anime music video, "One-on-One." You can get it at my Anime Music Videos page.

Then my body refused to go to sleep, and so I read about 50 pages of Cold Mountain, which is turning into a pretty good book. Ironically, I'm beginning to like the female protagonist more (now that she's not stumbling blindly towards certain starvation), and the male protagonist a lot less (now that it's becoming clear how much he hates the universe in general).

Work is slow and somewhat painful, but acceptable.

And I've mentioned this before, but MegaTokyo is really, really impressive. Last week's strips just plain hurt like the dickens, and I like that.

heh, I found out I've been neglecting two things recently: One, I haven't received any of the e-mail sent to my regular e-mail address since the transfer of other-space.com to WebMages, and Two, I never posted a bunch of NieA_7 screenshots sent to me for UFO Dreams. I resolved both of those problems tonight.

But alas, I didn't work at all on the fantasy novel I'm working on, nor did I practice my drawing. Ah well; I was kinda tuckered out anyway.

Yeeeha! other-space.com is now finally hosted on WebMages.

Based on my experiences with rendering my Iria anime music video last night (every attempt to render the final video came out screwy), I'm thinking about upgrading my computer. I could replace the motherboard and CPUs with dual P3 800s, and add a 9 GB SCSI hard drive and controller, for about $1,200. I could afford it, too. :-)

I shouldn't have spoken quite so soon, though; when I got home from work, I realized I had a bunch of extra video taking up space on my main hard drive. After deleting those and re-rendering, the rendered movie came out just fine. Now I need to "debug" the bits of the video that can be improved.

I got my Christmas presents from Saalon today; Princess Mononoke on DVD and a model of Vash the Stampede from Trigun. I've been looking for these! Thanks, Saal. You're the best.

(As discussed earlier, I traded in Mononoke since I already have a copy, for the second Bubblegum Crisis 2040 DVD. Eeeexcellent.)

As I walked around the mall after returning the Mononoke DVD, I glanced at a display in Chesapeake Knife and Tool and saw, to my amazement, an authentic replica of the Pilgrim's Cross from the Wing Commander movie, on sale for USD $23. I couldn't resist; I bought one. It's awfully cool, though I don't think I'm going to wear it around my neck. The blade is removable, but unfortunately it doesn't extend and retract.

Ooooh, and UMJAMS reports that Yoshitoshi ABe (serial experiments: lain, NieA_7) is going to release a 48-page manga in America this May, telling the tale of two twin girls living in a post-apocalyptic world. Man, do I want a copy of that. I also note that AB's updated his homepage recently with new CG works.

And...uh...anime South Park (you'll have to dig to find it). What's really odd is that they look fantastic.

And while we're on the subject of cool anime art, I want this to be the cover of a fantasy book I write, if I ever do. It's part of this website.

Been having a lot of fun downloading anime music videos lately. I've created this site, All Anime Music Videos, which is a directory of anime music videos (duh). There doesn't seem to be any one-stop list of them. I also incldue my own personal reviews and descriptions of the videos that I've downloaded.

Interestingly, I've been finding that there are very few bad anime music videos. Most of them are simply mediocre, while quite a few are excellent.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, I've been creating some music videos of my own (check it out). I've already done one, a Gundam Wing action video, and spent some time tonight on an Iria: Zeiram the Animation video. It's surprisingly easy with BeOS and personalStudio.

It's also rather frustrating, since it's difficult to time them just right, and my PC has trouble rendering the video. I have a dual P2/450 machine with 256 MB of RAM, but that's just not cutting it for complicated videos, it seems.

Well. After a long struggle to move my domain name from Frontline.net to WebMages, and Network Solutions verifying (by e-mail) that the changes were made, it looks like other-space.com no longer resolves to anything. Great. I get to spend another half an hour waiting on hold with Network Solutions. At least their representatives are pleasant and helpful.

I and my parents spent some time last night going over plans for our trip to England in two years. We'll have visited much of the southern half of England, so we want to focus on the northwest. We have some ideas now regarding where to stay: Felbrigg Hall (immortalized in Cobwebs and Cream Teas), Acorn Bank, and somewhere else between them, maybe in York or Lincoln, or maybe Fountain's Abbey.

MegaTokyo is starting a really interesting storyline. Largo and Piro are lost in Tokyo, and Piro just did something quite unexpected. Houston, we have a drama! Man, this makes me want to make a comic strip of my own. Not that I have anywhere near the time for it.

Today as I entered work, our secretary asked if I'd be interested in going to a rock concert on the 20th, in which her son is playing. It looks like it has very hard-core rock, which isn't my thing, but I'm sort of tempted to try it out. I've never done this sort of thing before, and it would be an experience. I can always leave if I don't like it.

At lunch, I needed to get out of the office, so I went to the bookstore and bought -- pretty much on a whim -- a book of quotes, and a book on comedy writing. I also browsed through the store's books on cartooning. None of them apealed, but they were certainly inspiring. Cartooning is fun.

I worked a bit on my fantasy book when I got home, then video-captured some footage for my next anime music video. Once 10:30 rolled around, I didn't want to go to bed, so I started assembling the video. I really got into it, though, and had most of it done by the time my Mom stumbled in at 1:30 a.m. to ask if I'd ever eaten anything for dinner (I hadn't). All I had left to do was find a static clip for early on in the video, and complete the climactic 15 seconds (which will consist of 1-second shots of Iria and Zeiram fighting each other, in the same order they fight in the actual series), so I decided to wait until the next night, when I'd be fresh.

Last night, I watched the rest of Key: The Metal Idol.

I won't try to say whether it's better or worse than other anime series, even in my opinion; it's useless data. I will say that I've reached forward, grabbed this series, and hugged it close. This is a treasure.

The plot is incredibly tight, as tight as any plotting I've seen. Not only is everything explained -- down to every memory, metaphor, and element of the backstory -- there are still multiple possible interpretations of events (the explanations given may not be totally correct). And it is an extremly complicated story; as much as I thought I understood, there were forty years of backstory that I never saw coming.

And...blood and bloody ashes, this series hurts. And not in the "how can we hurt you most," Evangelion sense. Every emotional high or low point is an integeral part of the story of Key. Nothing is ever wasted.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the music. While the score is forgettable and Miho's rock songs are as ho-hum as those in most anime series, there are four songs in Key that are absolutely gorgeous. Two of these are the opening and ending credit songs, surprisingly. Worth tracking down and owning as mp3's (the English versions were never released on CD or such).

Do I think Key: The Metal Idol is perfect? No. It's a darker series than I personally like, and several of the character designs are poor IMO. Other than that, though...wow. After the final 90-minute episode, I spent two hours just pacing the floor of the den, hashing out the experience I'd just had. My mind couldn't quite grok it, and I still can't grok it all.

Anyway. Other things.

After a group lunch at the local mall, I ran over to Suncoast to see what they had in-stock. I had a good discussion with an anime fan (one of the "action" genus of otaku), where I recommended a few things, then I proceeded to buy a whole bunch of anime, namely Cowboy Bebop volume 6, a Tenchi Universe DVD, and a Tenchi in Tokyo DVD.

I like shopping at this particular Suncoast because everyone working there is a big anime fan. Some of them lay more on the Dragonball Z side than the serial experiments: lain side, but I can always rely on them for a good review.

And as a result, I don't buy anime online much at all anymore. I prefer to pay much higher prices to get my anime immediately, with the knowledge that I can get a recommendation from the staff. That's a powerful thing. Suncoast is making a significant amount of dough off of me, pretty much exclusively because of these particular employees.

So I guess the moral of the story is: How important are you to your customers?

I and my parents went to an engagement party for some friends of ours today (I know her through her brother, and he got me my present job at Intersect). It was good, except that I don't usually do very well at parties. My natural shyness gets the better of me, and I can never think of anything interesting to say or ask. My slight speech impediment doesn't help, either. So, it was sort of lonely.

It wasn't helped by the fact that one of my teenage buddies was there, and even though we hadn't seen each other in years, he barely said "Hi" to me. He wasn't really rude; he just was obviously interested in doing his own things, meeting other people. This is only the latest manifestation of something that's been going on since college, though, so I wasn't particularly hurt by it.

Added a new pic to Treetop, my art gallery. Nothing amazing; just a head shot of a female character.

Been thinking about what to put together for an anime short, as Otherspace Productions' first official work. Saalon, I need to talk to you about montage. I want to do a montage about importance of existence (I'll explain that later), and I need some basic terminology and grasp of montage to know what to do.

I'm also assembling a final version of "Deathdance," my Gundam Wing music video, to submit to Otakon's anime music video contest. Should be fun to see it there. The con will also provide a copy of all the music videos at the con if you send a blank tape along with your music video, so I'm definitely going to get that.

As I set up "Deathdance," I'm musing ideas for my next anime music video. I'm thinking of setting Respighi's "Pines of Rome" to Mighty Space Miners, but I need to listen to the music more first.

What else. Oh, work continues to be busy, though not terribly so.

Oh, now I remember. I wanted to show y'all this. This is from a book that came out in 1994. Remember that, a mere seven years ago, the following statements were completely accurate:

Sheesh, it's amazing how busy one can be when a friend's over.

We watched Mighty Space Miners Sunday night, only to find out that they only made the first two out of three episodes. So we reached the climax of the plot, only to be left hanging. Arrrrg.

Still, Mighty Space Miners is an excellent little series, dealing with very realistic relatively-near-future asteroid mining. Very enjoyable, despite the suckiness of the title.

This morning, Saalon went in for an interview at Intersect, as a software tester. He didn't have an opportunity to talk to Ravi (the executive who usually gives the "big picture" to prospective hires), but he believes he carried himself well at the interview. I drove him back to the airport, where he caught a flight home. Now to wait to see if he gets a call back.

Speaking of Intersect, FYI work is very heavy for me at the moment. I'm consistently pulling 12-hour days, though that's usually with an hour or two's worth of meals and breaks. We're behind, but we're all behind due to waiting for server pieces to be ready, so we're all in good spirits. But you probably won't see me on ICQ/IRC much for a few days at least.

In other news, NieA Under 7, one of my favorite anime series, has reportedly been optioned by Pioneer Animation for a U.S. release. NieA is a beautiful short TV series that's rather hard for me to describe. I experienced it first thanks to some RealVideo streams off of the official website, which I must say is a fascinating way of advertising one's series.

I also stumbled across an official website for the Toonami-edited release of Tenchi Muyo!, and it's not part of Toonami itself. A very nicely-made site, really.

Saalon's down for the weekend, and we're having a great time. After I showed him around Intersect, we watched a bit of anime: Photon, Rurouni Kenshin TV (the whole DVD, actually), Princess Mononoke, and Tenchi Muyo! TV (between watching anime music videos and my video footage from Katsucon).

Princess Mononoke is breathtaking. It has a complex plot that really defies easy analysis -- there's definitely a lot of action scenes, but there's also a lot of drama, but the character interactions are complex, while there's a deep romantic element...I could go on. It reminds me a bit of Watership Down, in terms of being very hard to nail down to a single theme or style.

Either way, I loved Mononoke (my first Miyazaki film). Absolutely loved it. I'm looking forward to watching Castle of Cagliostro (another Miyazaki) as soon as I can.

Eeek! Haven't updated in awhile.

I finished my Katsucon report, by posting a bunch of pictures from the con. I'm very pleased.

Saalon's coming down for the weekend, in preparation for a job interview at Intersect! Isn't that cool? If he gets the job, he and Erin will be moving down here.

While he's down here, we may work on an anime music video. More info on that coming later.

Meanwhile, I asked my boss at work if I could move away from coding, and onto documentation as much as possible. It's not that I hate coding; it's just not much fun in this particular environment. And I want to beef up my writing experience.

That's about it. Weather's been screwy with a sudden, big snowstorm last night, but it's mostly melted away now. Nothing major except for a 100-car pileup on Route 1. Yes, a 100-car pileup. Ouch.

Bought three new anime DVD's today: The Castle of Cagliostro (a Hayao Miyazaki film), Digimon: The Movie (now that should be interesting to review), and the fifth Cowboy Bebop DVD (which includes "Boogie Woogie Feng Shui," an episode I've been itching to re-watch lately).

And I decided that I'm going to stop buying anime for the next thirty days. That means that I won't buy any more anime DVD's or VHS tapes until March 23rd. I've already got at least ten tapes or discs that I own but haven't completed (or even watched, in some cases). Why should I spend more money when I have so much to see?

Meanwhile, work continues to be heavy. I'm pulling twelve-hour days pretty regularly now. Fortunately, I'm keeping a good attitude about it. The product itself is keeping me going.

And it's not like I'm in love with our product, either. I think it's great, but that's about it. But the product is managed so well, and designed so well, and coming together so well (despite glitches), that I don't mind putting in extra time on it.

What else. BeOS now has DVD support. Windows XP is behind schedule, which could be a major problem if Microsoft can't get it to retailers in time for Christmas. Which means MS will probably rush XP to market despite major bugs. Great.

Ugh. I didn't get to sleep until 3:00 a.m. this morning, but fortunately I feel pretty good anyway. Such is life. I was able to use the time to post those things I mentioned in yesterday's diary entry. I also posted a piece of artwork to MegaTokyo's Art and Drawing Forum, mostly just because anyone who critiques there is supposed to post their own artwork at least once.

I've been talking with Saalon about Wine to Those in Anguish. We've identified some pretty significant problems with it, and I've decided to re-write most of the scripts. The story lacked internal conflict, and I think I've come up with some intriguing ways to fix that.

And y'know what's funny? After spending over $300 at Katsucon, I didn't buy any actual anime.

A new server is now up and running at WebMages (which hosts this site), which explains why these pages may have been unavailable over the past few days. Everything seems back to normal now.

I'm back from Katsucon. I've posted a complete set of diary entries on this new site.

I've set up a little gallery site called Treetop, where I've begun posting my artwork. I have three little drawing so far, mostly cartoons. Nothing really pretty yet.

This is cool: Geocaching. People hide waterproof caches of miscellaneous stuff on public property, then publish the GPS coordinates on this website. Once you can find the cache, you can take something but must replace it with other stuff.

Had a very good day at work. I'm actually not as far ahead as I'd like to be, but after a status report one of the higher-ups took the time to say how impressed he is at my status. It's amazing how much that encouraged me to work.

I then went to Katsucon. However, rather than describing that adventure here, I'll point you to my diary of Katsucon 2001.

WebMages is moving over to a new server, so this site may be periodically unavailable over the next day or two. I must say that it's been a very pleasant transition thus far.

I've been gearing up for Katsucon this weekend. I may not update this site much over the weekend as a result of spending a lot of time there.

It looks like the family vacation to England will have to be cut short, since Intersect doesn't want to authorize a four-week vacation in the middle of releasing our product. Ah well. There's a whole story there, but I really don't have the energy to relay it right now.

Went to Friendly's for lunch today. While the food was great (Chicken Pot Pies are one of the great culinary inventions of all time), they were having one of those Management Days, where local bigwigs were introducing themselves, and new employees were being trained, and there was a lot of hustle and bustle as people tried to look as important as possible.

This wouldn't annoy me, except that it was going on in the middle of the restaurant. They were conducting all this business right out where other people could see and overhear. And it's not that these meetings and greetings and explanations were loud; it was just very unprofessional of them to conduct all of this infrastructure business out where all of their customers could see and hear them. It would be like installing software on a new programmer's PC as you have a meeting with a client.

Watched another episode of My Dear Marie last night, which is quite the enjoyable little romantic comedy. The series has a keen sense of how to tell a story; each episode has interspersed enough plot and comedy with little tidbits of sweetness to keep me thoroughly entertained. And the character designs are just lovely.

It's link day!

Y'know, we've all had our bad days. Especially in college, we've all had assignments that truly sucked, and that we had a really tough time completing. Even so, it would have to be pretty bad to submit this sort of report.

Meanwhile, I came across this incredible report on how much the media really, really sucks. There's some really eye-opening information there on how reporters view the world (from their own lips, even).

I put together a little site called AB Watch, which links to websites that feature Yoshitoshi ABe's artwork. I figure, I love his work so much, I might as well keep track of it.

I also added some links to my Comics/Art website.

After a rather slow day at work, and a bad day at the gym (the running machine insisted that my heart was beating 190 beats per minute, which is insanely high, so to be safe I just jogged), I tried my hand at super-deformed drawing. Both of the drawings that I attempted turned out quite badly, even by my standards. One was so bad I scratched pencil marks over it, a gut reaction that I regretted almost instantly.

I then read some more of Cold Mountain, a Civil War-era novel that my parents have been insisting that I read. Problem is, I dislike both of the protagonists, whom have extremely bleak perspectives on life. My parents have argued that this is appropriate for the characters, and while I agree, that doesn't make the book any more enjoyable.

However, despite my opinions of the book, I've been sucked into it. I spent several hours reading it tonight, which I have not done to a fiction novel in years. I've been out of the habit of reading fiction ever since college, and my hope is that Cold Mountain is helping to pull me back into the fold of Lifelong Readers, to which my membership has lapsed.

Well, it's been a very productive day. I went to work in the morning, where I set up Lady (one of my computers) next to my regular work machine. Why? Eh, just for the heck of it, and I want to see if I can get it on the network.

On that machine, I found some code I had written to make a Wolfenstein 3D-like engine in BeOS. Saalon and I chatted (via ICQ) about how to an engine like that could be used for administrative uses, but couldn't come up with anything beyond that DOOM-like process controller that was written for Linux.

I added a new page to the library today, namely, a listing of all the SF books I own. I've had trouble keeping track of which books I own and which I don't, so having a "master list" will be useful. I'm also thinking of breaking Chapterhouse down into individual reviews, and then linking to each one separately, so I can have all of my book reviews in a logical structure (including ones from the recently-read books page).

Though now that I think about it, I may want to put all of my books into a database, and set up some sort of Perl/PHP thing to keep track of them all. That way, I can have listings of SF books, fantasy books, non-fiction books, etc. without having to manually update everything. Hmmmm.

I also re-encoded my Gundam Wing anime music video, "Deathdance", and re-posted it to my Anime Music Video site. I think it'll play in Windows now.

I also did a bit of work outside, just generally cleaning up my garden. More about that on my garden site.

I realized the other day that I could put up a couple of wallscrolls at work. For those not familiar with them, wallscrolls are "posters" made of cloth, that are usually used for anime promotions. I have no wall space in my bedroom to hang any, but I could put up one or two, tastefully, at work (no hentai wallscrolls, obviously, even if I watched hentai).

So, I've been thinking about either this serial experiments lain wallscroll from Anime Castle, or this Cowboy Bebop wallscroll from AnimeNation. Heck, maybe both.

Yes! Project A-Ko OAV's 2, 3, and 4 are coming out on DVD! They'll all be published on one disc. This is, AFAIK, the first time that these OAV's have ever been published in the U.S., and finally brings us the entire A-Ko franchise (up until now, only the original film and the final one, Project A-Ko vs., Battle Blue and Battle Grey have been dubbed and released over here).

I was considering not posting this here because it's news of pretty limited appeal, but...heck, I don't get that many readers, and most of them have watched Project A-Ko. Besides, this is news that interests me, and if I can't post that here, what can I post?

I got my big VHS order from Right Stuf anime today. Watched some of it, and I like it all thus far. Ayane's High Kick is traditional anime, which is not a complaint. My Dear Marie is a wonderful little romance with the twin advantages of knowing when to chuck realism where appropriate, and gorgeous character designs by Kosuke Fujishima of Oh My Goddess fame. And Mighty Space Miners is an incredible find -- a real hard SF action/adventure flick, for which I can't really think of a similar American film.

Meanwhile, congrats to Saalon for finishing his final episode of the online fanfic show seaQuest: 2047. And it's a fantastic script, I must add. I'd post an URL, but the episode's not up yet.

I've also started working on an idea for a short animated film. It would be the first production that Otherspace Productions does, and I'm thinking about hiring Fred Gallagher of MegaTokyo to do the character designs. We'll see; I want to talk it over with Saalon and Brennen first (they haven't been online yet tonight; I'd call it some sort of record, except that I know Saalon's at work, and Brennen's probably in class or studying or doing something productive. Right, Bren?).

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), "Moon"

It's well-written. It's well-drawn. It's another cool online comic strip: Ozy and Millie, a childhood-oriented strip that Brennen turned me on to. Cool.

The Apple IIe computer arrived today. Unfortunately, it came without any software, which makes it rather difficult to use. So, I grabbed some system disks via a fortuitously nearly-ended eBay auction, and will be ordering some games from these folks shortly. The thing evidently has BASIC in the ROM, which should be fun itself. If I can find some 5.25" disks to use as storage.

Had a good run at Gold's Gym after work. I ran at a sustained 7.5 miles per hour (an 8-minute mile) for most of the time, but was able to push myself up to 11 mph for about a minute and a half near the very end. My goal is to eventually run a 5-minute mile, which is evidently world-class running. We'll see what happens; physically, there's no reason that I can see why I can't.

I also ordered a copy of Fluxx, the card game I described in yesterday's diary entry. Should be fun to play with my parents.

Got home from work at 10:15 tonight, but that was mainly because I spent about an hour playing card games with some friends at work. They were both...interesting.

The first is called "Lunch Money," and it simulates 8-year-old girls fighting tooth-and-nail on the playground. You have cards like "Kick," "Poke in the Eye," "Combo Attack," "Block," "Dodge," etc., all accompanied by bizarre, artsy images of little girls. It's played like a fairly traditional card game, and each player has fifteen health points, which are decreased as the various attacks connect. Most of the fun lies in the verbal attack descriptions and insults.

We also played "Fluxx," a game in which the rules change as you play. In fact, some of the cards themselves change the rules (ITO limits on the cards in each player's hand, how many cards you draw per hand, etc.), or the win conditions, or other things. The game doesn't devolve into total chaos, mainly because all of the cards are laying out on the table (so you can see all the rules that apply at any given time), and you can only have one particular type of rule card in play (as a new card of that type is played, the old one is discarded). It's insane, and relies a lot on the luck of the draw, but there's still some strategy there. A lot of fun, really.

Lessee. I also bought some wooden lattice at a nearby Home Depot, in preparation for a particular gardening thing I'm gonna do. I've updated my garden page with more on that.

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray,
  On the lake below thy gentle eyes;
The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,
  And dark and silent the water lies;
And out of that frozen mist the snow
In wavering flakes begins to flow;
      Flake after flake
They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come
  From the chambers beyond that misty veil;
Some hover awhile in air, and some
  Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.
All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,
Meet and are still in the depths below.
-- William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), "The Snow-Shower"

I had good success with some work on Mozart last night. The program will now open and save projects, and the musical notes are drawn (crudely, but definitely drawn) on the Sheet Music window. So that feels good.

I've been trying to be more productive at work. I've been goofing off here and there, and I don't want to be. So, I re-committed myself to trying to be as productive as possible while I'm at work.

Unfortunately, that's been a rather difficult goal at the moment, since we on the client team are waiting on the server team to finish up modifications to their side of things. OTOH, I'm hoping that by being extra committed now, it'll be easier to be committed later.

So. What did I do today? After helping my Mom write query letters for the articles and mystery book she's written, I watched the first two episodes of the Rurouni Kenshin TV series. I liked the show a lot, though it's rather hard for me to write a concise review right now. It's a lot like Buffy or Tenchi Muyo!: good comedy, good drama, and good characters, with occasional flashes of brilliance. I'm looking forward to more from this show.

Oh, and a happy 19th birthday to Dave from Neobaka.

OK, so last Monday at work, we had this big meeting at 9:30 a.m. I like to be ready for meetings well in advance, so I walked into the conference room 15 minutes early. Being the only person in there, I got bored quickly.

I slid around to the whiteboard, wiped off whatever was there, and drew a cartoon on the board, mainly for practice. This cartoon has sadly been lost to posterity, but I'll explain it here: two guys are talking. In the first panel, the first guy says, "...yeah, we really think we'll revolutionize the engineering market," and the second guy replies "Wow, that sounds really good." In the second panel, the second guy asks, "So, when do you plan to be ready?" and the first guy replies, "April." The third and final panel shows the second guy laughing his head off, and the first guy just looking peeved.

A few folks wandered in as I finished, and chuckled at what I'd done. We had our meeting, left, and I thought that that would be the end of it.

At about 2:00 that day, my boss Tina sent me an e-mail titled "Stop by my desk when you have a chance." I swallowed hard, then walked over. She ushered me over to the empty part of the office, as dire thoughts ran through my head.

"Did you draw that cartoon?" she asked. Oh, great. I said, "Yes," and she explained that the managers had held a meeting and discussed it. Oh, great.

She went on to allay my fears: nobody minded the cartoon itself; they were worried that the engineers may be thinking that our April deadline is ridiculous. I assured her that that is not the case; what I drew was just the first joke that came to mind. She was relieved, and that was all she wanted to talk about.

That wasn't the end of the story, though. A little while later, I decided to take a walk, and as I was walking through the office to leave, I strode by the conference room where I'd drawn the cartoon. An evil thought entered my mind, and I slipped into the room unnoticed. I quickly changed the last panel, so that both guys had perfectly neutral expressions, and the second guy said, "Yes, that seems perfectly reasonable." I hoped at least one of the managers who had discussed the cartoon would see the changed one.

I went for my walk, and returned to my desk. Tina stopped by a little later, smirked, and said, "Now it's even funnier." Turns out that all of the managers had happened to have a meeting in that very conference room after I'd changed the cartoon. When Tina entered, everyone was pointing out the change in the cartoon.

So, it all worked out. I'll keep drawing cartoons here and there, without fear of reprisal from management. And, evidently, they think I'm funny. :-)

Well, I just had the loveliest brunch I've had in years.

Through various and sundry contacts, I signed up to be part of a book reading club that meets on Saturday mornings. They just started, and they're going through Charles Haddon Spurgeon's All of Grace, which is a wonderful salvation tract. Today was their second meeting, but the first one that I've attended.

We met at The Tea Cozy, a charming little British-style tea shop in Old Town Alexandria. Nobody showed up except for me and Suzie, one of the co-creators of the group, but we chatted happily for two hours anyway, munching on delicious scones (with real Devon cream, no less), sipping tea, and shooting the breeze about politics, college life, our spiritual beliefs, and all sorts of little things.

This was particularly delightful for me as a result of some personal issues I've been dealing with lately, having to do with my inability to form really deep connections with people at work. I've been wanting to get to know people, but I've had real problems with starting and maintaining conversations with them. Today, I discovered that I actually can keep up a conversation like this, so at least that's not the fundamental problem there.

After brunch, I fought traffic all the way back to the post office, where I mailed a Be T-shirt to Eugenia Loli (who helped me out a lot with Mozart) and Saalon (who can use a few now that he's doing the About.com BeOS site). I also bought a bag of bird food and five cakes of suet for my side garden. I'm definitely a birder at heart.

Updated Idiotic User Interfaces with a critique of Microsoft Office Online Help. Which doesn't suck, IMO, but has several really odd "features."

I also split up the kitchen. Links to my favorite online comics are now on their own page, along with a new list of art sites that I've found and like. I've also created a separate page for the websites I've created, and updated that list with a few sitse I hadn't mentioned.

And boy, now I realize how much I need to re-organize the library, which has devoled into a junkyard of pages and links. Ugh.

I took this interesting little self-test that assesses one's spiritual gifts the other day. I scored most highly in Administration, Giving, Faith, and Leadership, while I scored lowest in Evangelism, Hospitality, Knowledge, and Shepherding. Odd about that low Knowledge score (traits are "inquisitive, responsive, observant, insightful, reflective, studious, and truthful," all of which characterize me rather well, I think), and I don't consider myself to have a whole lot of faith. Then again, this is just a paper test; nobody's suggesting that it's perfectly accurate.

It's 4:00 in the morning. I just spent several hours trying (unsuccessfully) to get a networked game of Quake2 going with Brennen. If Saalon had been online, we would have played off of his DSL connection, but he hopped offline just before we tried to play.

I then spent several more hours working intermittently on Mozart and Solar Conquest. And hey, I have a screenshot:

Time passes....

OK, it's now very late in the day, so now I can safely describe the events of the day.

I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon tonight, with the company. I was surprised to discover that it's not really an action movie; it's more of a romance (two romances, in fact) with characters who happen to be action heroes. Which is not to trivialize the action sequences; they were fantastic. Smooth, fast, deadly.

Unfortunately, only one other person came with me to the theater. I've been trying to organize regular movie nights for the company, but very few people have shown up whenever I've tried to do so. I'll keep plugging away at it (one person mentioned that a lot of people had probably already seen CT,HG, which has been out for awhile).

As I was passing by a library on Thursday, I stopped in and got an audiobook of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, one of the all-time great treatises on warfare. It turns out to be a translation with a lot of commentary and a very long introduction (the introduction has chapters). I'm about halfway through it now, and I'm enjoying it greatly. I've already read the book twice, but it's worth reviewing every so often.

The sleepover last night went well. Pursuant to The Art of War, I wore my black trenchcoat -- unbuttoned, so it flared open impressively -- all during Nerf Wars. It seriously intimidated everyone I ran into on the other team, and keeping our team together created a serious fighting force, compared to the other kids who just ran around in random pockets of one or two boys.

I then had a lovely pot of tea (China Oolong) with Suzie at The Tea Cozy in Alexandria. We were the only ones there, and we chatted about chapters 11 through 13 of Spurgeon's All of Grace (as well as all those little things that one gets sidetracked into discussing with a new friend, such as musical tastes and how we treat books). One of my favorite quotes from All of Grace: "How can we obtain an increase of faith?...We waste time in discussing methods when the action is simple. The shortest way to believe is to believe." Deep words.

When I got home, I made some brownies (and drizzled some caramel over the top, but it all pooled in the center of the brownie cake...heck, it tastes good), then spent much of the afternoon chatting with Mom and some online friends.

I'm going to be very busy over the coming week or so, so bear with me. Here's my itinerary:

• Friday -- A deadline at work, followed by a sleepover at McLean Bible Church, with the AWANA kids.
• Saturday -- The sleepover ends, and I go to Coffee and Classics at 10:30 a.m. to discuss more of Spurgeon's All of Grace. I have a respite Saturday afternoon and evening, leading into...
• Sunday -- Church in the morning, followed by Lauren (my niece's) third birthday party in the afternoon. Then I have AWANA club that evening, and a Daemonsong Productions meeting starting at 8:00 p.m.
• Monday -- Work, then I fly out to Chicago at 7:45 p.m. Fortunately, I managed to get a round-trip flight for only USD $410.
• Tuesday -- A speaking engagement at COMDEX in the morning, then I fly back here, getting in around midnight.

I didn't realize that COMDEX was so soon. This is a common problem with me, though. Last night I got fed up with it, and set up a new calendar system at home: I pulled my current wall calendar apart and posted two months' worth of pages at once. Every month I'll re-shuffle the pages so that I can always see two months' worth of engagements at once. I may add a third page, actually.

So, what else is going on. Anime news: Nadia and the Secret of the Blue Water (a classic Gainax TV series about a 14-year-old girl and boy, set in a vaguely 20,000 Leagues under the Sea-ish world) is coming to DVD in June, as is the sweet romantic comedy series Ah! My Goddess/Oh My Goddess!. Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure (a semi-spoof of the angsty mech epic Neon Genesis Evangelion) continues to see delays, with the fourth and final DVD not scheduled until April 10th.

Points of View, the media review site that I intermittently post reviews on, has moved to its own domain: http://www.points-of-view.net/. I'm still getting the kinks worked out, but it's exciting to see. I'll have to post a few reviews there.

Your quote for the day: "Video games do *not* effect kids. Take Pac-Man for example, if that were true all we would do is run arround munching pills and listening to repetive musi...wait!"

I see that Neko Neko Wai has been officially set up. The whole phenomenon is hard to explain...I proudly display a NNW sticker on my truck's rear bumper, despite nobody really knowing what NNW is supposed to be. But that's what phenomena are like, I guess.

I see that UMJAMS Anime News has moved to a new URL. Their old page simply returned a "You do not have permission" error, and only by checking AnimeNation's news page and clicking on thier UMJAMS link did I find the new page. Rather annoying of UMJAMS to do without letting anyone know. Ah well.

There's now an online trailer for the upcoming anime film "Metropolis," based on Osamu "Father of Anime" Tezuka's manga, which was in turn based on Fritz Lang's 1922 science fiction film. Looks quite interesting, in a very very retro way.

These past few days have been quite slow, Big Events wise, other than Pastor Jackson's passing. I'll be going to his funeral this afternoon.

Oh, but I just found this article, in which a student decided to find out just how much modern universities value free speech. Fascinating.

Woah. I see that Toonami has got a new Reactor area, which will eventually contain a persistent online world centered around Toonami content. They're kicking it off by streaming episodes of Dragonball Z and Star Blazers.

That's right, Toonami's going to show Star Blazers, a.k.a. Space Battleship Yamato. Streaming. Free to watch. Cooooool.

What's even more amazing is the feedback form. Particularly, they ask "What classic action shows would you like to see on Toonami Reactor?" Among the choices are Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. CN may be seriously considering showing Eva. Wow.

AIC English has just posted the third part of their interview with Masaki Kajishima, about the new Tenchi Muyo! series he's working on.

Spent a lot of time with Saalon and Brennen last night, discussing the new character designs for Wine. They liked designs that I didn't, and the ones that I liked, they didn't like. And while it is my project and ultimately my choice, I've asked for more designs to look over before deciding.

Wine is progressing nicely, though. The character designs are getting very close to what I want, and they look gorgeous.

What else. I hear there's going to be a new Babylon 5 movie, which will serve as the pilot for a possible new B5-based series. This world could use more B5.

As part of a new initiative at McLean Bible Church, their AWANA club has started carrying a collectible card game called Redemption. It's based on Christian themes, with the advantage of being quite well-designed. I'm learning the basic rules of the game (which are similar to those of Magic: The Gathering), hoping to play the game a bit with some of the AWANA clubbers.

I'm getting seriously addicted to playing Quake 2, now that I've found the glory of bots (bots with skins, too). Right now I'm playing with CRbots that look like Battle Angel Alita, a battle droid from The Phantom Menace, a Valkyrie transformable fighter from Macross/Robotech, Priss from Bubblegum Crisis (original) in her hardsuit, and Soundwave (the Decepticon Transformer). Man, is this fun.

Meanwhile, last night I got the idea in my head to write a deathmatch-style game, using an overhead perspective. Would look very simple, but I think I have some interesting ideas on how to spice up deathmatch play, like a destructible (and constructible) environment. More details to come as I write my ideas down.

And I really need to write a few anime reviews for Points of View. Which should be moving to its own domain soon, if we can get all of that worked out.

Oooooh, neobaka t-shirts. I want one. Certainly should wear one the next time the small army of neobaka crew gets together, which should probably be at Otakon (Eeek, which I should register for before I forget).

I also stumbled across this very cool site: PC Mods. They sell ridiculously geeky things for computer cases. They've got windows (actual windows in the side of the case, that is), applique labels (I like the biohazard signs), and case lights. I really want a case light, either the neon or the cathode bulbs ("Seeing the hellish red glow radiating from your system's window in a darkened room is simply stylish."). Too bad they're so costly (USD $40-$50).

Wow. Some guy is trying to make his own SF series, and boy is he...ummmm...optimistic. He seems to think he can cast every single crewmember on the ship (and keep them cast), and produce it for PBS.

Meanwhile, I got up early this morning and worked on my garden for almost two hours before heading in to work. What is it about gardens that would make me, a guy who considers 10:00 a.m. a reasonable time to wake up, set my alarm an hour ahead of normal so I could scrub down a pool liner? Dunno, but I enjoyed myself tremendously.

Had a really long day at work today; I got distracted doing a variety of things, though much of it was reading through Portal of Evil, a site dedicated to the really bizarre side of the internet.

After getting home, I wrote some extra bits for Wine to Those in Anguish; I'll leave it to you to read the complete updates page on that site, if you're interested.

Wow. I have an eBay auction going for some old computer games (Quest for Glory I through III, specifically -- great games, but I don't see myself ever playing them again). Remind me to take down that link when it inevitably succumbs to rot. But anyway, it's three old games. How much could I expect to sell them for?

The current bid is USD $20.50 already (less than two days into the week-long auction), and that's with a $5 shipping charge extra. Wow. Maybe there really is some money to be made on eBay.

Meanwhile. I had a really good talk with my Mom a couple nights ago, where we talked about my mind. Specifically, I complained that I've noticed myself to be working at less than 100% efficiency for months now. I can't think as quickly, or concentrate as fully, as I could a couple of years ago.

Worse, I haven't been able to write well in a long time. I haven't had any ideas for stories in years, and what I have written has been...OK, not terrible, but I've had very few moments of getting into "the groove."

Why? My Mom pointed out that I have been working very hard lately, either at home or at work -- I had to back off on a lot of my projects a couple of months ago, then things got really busy at work. Maybe my brain is exhausted, and needs some time to recover.

I think she's right. In any event, I'm going to focus on less brain-draining activities for the time being. If that lasts for a really long time, I'll start worrying, but maybe I need to let my brain recharge for awhile.

I've also been fiddling a bit with the layout on this page, specifically adding <BLOCKQUOTE> tags before and after each diary entry. I think it helps break up entries nicely.

Was going to write a long entry today, but since I just managed to fall asleep for several seconds, I think I'll go to bed instead, and summarize the weekend in tomorrow's entry. Sat, 17 Mar 01 00:00:00 -0500 Miscellaneous

If I feel like it, I may flesh this out into a full-scale retelling of events, but for now I'll record that I rushed in to Alexandria this morning to take part in "Coffee and Classics," a bi-weekly Christian book discussion. Myself and three others discussed the first ten chapters of Spurgeon's All of Grace, which addresses many facets of salvation and faith.

(I also mentioned some religious discussions I've been having with a friend, and was pointed to Letters from a Skeptic, in which a solid atheist argues religion with his son via snailmail. Very interesting.)

I then wandered around the many shops in Alexandria, ultimately splurging and buying an honest-to-goodness pocketwatch. I've wanted one for a long time, and as I was leaving a jewelry store, glanced down and saw several on display. I'm having it monogramed, so it won't be ready until next week, but meanwhile I'm excited at the purchase.

After returning home in the horrendous traffic (why is traffic so thick on Saturdays all of a sudden?), I wanted to do some more prep in the garden, but a short spring rain had muddied it to the point where that wasn't particularly appealing. So, I got a few mundane things done and left it at that.

Some interesting things are in the works for Daemonsong and Points of View, though I really shouldn't reveal what yet. More info to come.

I see there's a new episode of Otaku Television up. And they've got a new host, who manages to be silly-funny without being silly-funny-stupid. Not an easy task. The episode itself consists almost exclusively of Katsucon footage and interviews, but then that's not a bad thing.

Had an interesting idea yesterday when talking to Saalon, about writing a fantasy novel. I'd like to get one written in the next six months or so, partly to improve my fiction writing skills, and partly to cash in on the big surge of fantasy interest that I think we'll see in the next year or so (thanks to the Lord of the Rings films and Harry Potter).

My problem is that I can't htink of any ideas for novels.

Well, last night I took the plunge and finally had a long religious conversation with a friend of mine online. He feels a lot of hatred towards God because of some unfortunate stuff that happened to him as a child, and I've been trying to show him that that stuff wasn't exactly God's fault. But it's difficult for me, because he's hardened his heart, and I've realized lately that I try to win arguments like this. I've been trying to remind myself that it's not my job to convince him; just show him the path.

So, that's been psychically exhausting. Might explain why I woke up at 5:30 this morning. But I was able to enjoy a good hour in the garden as a result, laying path just as the sun was rising. Spring is beginning to take hold, with steadily warmer days.

Meanwhile, work is going very well. I'm now in charge of both "Intersect University," a set of internal company classes on topics like how our server is designed, as well as a new push to get our paper documentation organized and set up in a centralized location. I wrote a custom BeOS app to handle software checkin/checkout, and put a spare computer running it next to the new bookcase I put together today.

As mundane as that may seem, it's incredibly exciting to have responsibilities like that. I feel...I feel like I'm contributing, which is odd because up until this point I've been writing code, which is the most critical responsibility in our company (if our app doesn't get written, we don't succeed). So why do I feel so motivated now that I'm organizing classes?

I'm also excited because I just finished a book called The Gifted Boss by Dale Dauten, which provides a fantastic argument for how to be a legendary employer and employee. I'll just link to my review, once I write it.

Spent most of today in my garden, cleaning and prepping for spring. Working in a garden can be so...freeing. It's an odd feeling, one that I don't really get from anything else.

We had company for dinner, so I cleaned my part of the house very very thoroughly (it needed a spot of spring cleaning anyway), then curled up in my room with the TV on. I rarely watch TV anymore, but a few good things were on: Alien, and an episode of Earth: Final Conflict. I hereby submit that E:FC is the successor to Babylon 5. Not as good, IMO, but it comes closest to doing those things that made B5 great.

Oh, and I spent a good part of Friday night cleaning up in the basement, and I came across a bunch of computer games, which I'm now selling. If you're interested, check out this page for a complete list of titles, and e-mail me if you want to buy any of them. USD $5 each, plus shipping.

Meanwhile, you can see how wonderfully well my portfolio is doing:

OK, so I stumbled across this at Target a couple of months ago, and was so dumbfounded that I had to share it.

Batman Beyond is an action/adventure animated show set in the relatively near future. It's very edgy, aimed at an older audience than most American animated shows (specifically, young teens), and emphasizes a sleek techno future.

Which makes it ideal for valentines, don't you think?

I remember all the mushy cards I had to use for valentines. Well, now kids can trade heartwarming sentiments like these:

What's most bizarre -- for me, at least -- is that the package also comes with this (they're stickers):

Well, I'm starting to organize some of the animators for Wine, showing them my notes and just generally getting them up-to-speed on the project.

I stayed up way too late last night, poring through a book I own about writing 3D space combat-style game engines. I've been itching to write a computer game lately, and I'm tempted to write up something. Not a 3D game, just yet, but maybe a simple top-down shooter.

I left work early today, thanks to a couple of doctor's appointments. But I ended up coming home early and spending some time in my garden. More information on my garden site. It was the first time in a long time that I was able to spend some time relaxing in and enjoying my garden, purely for what it is.

I also drew my Sketch O' The Day, though it's just the outline of a woman that I tried to draw from a fashion magazine. heh. My Mom was watching me struggle with the drawing, then suggested that I squint my eyes as I look at the photo, to get more of a fuzzy idea of the general shapes rather than seeing every detail. Which is just what Piro (of MegaTokyo) suggested a few weeks back.

I'm trying to get back into exercising. Unfortunately, I've been working really long hours at work recently, and so I haven't had the energy to exercise (which shouldn't be an excuse, since exercising gives you energy; in fact, I really should exercise most at this time, when I need as much energy as I can get). It's been a couple of weeks since I went to the gym.

So, I went to the gym today, and went quite slowly and easily. I did my full set of weight exercises (particularly paying attention to my stomach, which needs a lot of toning...aren't online diaries amazing? You get to read about my stomach muscles), but only ran for about 15 minutes.

I started to get annoyed at myself about this. I mean, really, how hard is it to jog for 20 minutes? And at one's own pace, no less.

But then I realized that I was exercising. And I hadn't exercised in weeks. Should I really expect myself to exercise as strongly as ever? 'Course not. I need to stop being so hard on myself.

("STUPID! Stop being so hard on yourself! You're so STUPID for being so hard on yourself! Stupid stupid stupid....")

In any event, suffice to say that things are looking good in my life right now. And they'll look much better once today's over (we have a deadline).

Woohoo! The character designer's agreed to do the work for Wine. Life is GOOD.

I've also been spending some time on alt.fiction.original, which is a place for posting and critiquing short fiction. There's a fair amount of truly bad stuff, but some good things too, and I'm enjoying the community there. I recently got some very generous compliments about my editing abilities there, which has spurred me on to spend more time on the group.

It's amazing how much one little note of encouragement will change my perspective on things. I'm twice as committed to alt.fiction.original now than I was yesterday, all because of two complimentary messages.

I'm going to have to encourage people more. Encouragement has immense power.

What else. Intersect's gone on a semi-hiring freeze, which prevents them from hiring my friend Saalon. :-/ But that will change in a few weeks, so we'll have to wait and see what happens there.

Arrrrrg. This has to be one of the most frustrating experiences in recent memory.

I have this animated series that I want to make, called Wine to Those in Anguish, out of my own pocket. I've found a terrific character designer. He expressed cautious interest, but wanted to look over my ideas first. I pointed him to my online repository of scripts, episode summaries, etc.

He kinda freaked.

The problem is that I put in a couple of rather grotesque things. The story is about a girl who had totally given up her sense of self-worth, and I wanted to show how far that had gone. So I had written in two elements to the story: One, when she's strapped into this particular machine to do her work, she's nude, and totally unselfconscious about it. Secondly, there's a small probe thing that's attached to...her.

When I thought about it, I realized that the probe really was unnecessarily extreme. But as for the nudity, I had always planned to do that very very carefully; the scene would be put together such that you'd never really see her nude; you'd just see her from the shoulders up, or the knees down. Anyone who knows me knows that I'd never do that in any way other than extremely tastefully.

Unfortunately, the character designer doesn't know me. So when he read that stuff, he was afraid that this was all low-brow stuff, and probably assumed that I'd just show this girl fully naked. When in reality it'll be very tame, and indeed the nudity is meant to disturb the viewer. It's not a matter of, as a friend put it, "Hey, let's have her take her shirt off."

So now I've got to e-mail him and assure him that Wine won't be a low-brow series, that I'm going to remove the whole probe thing, and how I approach questionable subject matter like nudity (I don't even plan to show her butt, much less anything else). And hope that he'll understand.

It's such a delicate process, too. I'll have to phrase my e-mail with extreme care, so that I don't come across as willing to compromise my work, and to try to change his mind about what I'm trying to do here. Which is extremely difficult to do via e-mail.

Seems I forgot to mention that I posted a review of the first DVD of the Rurouni Kenshin TV series. Which is a really cool show; it manages to combine cool samurai action with a light romance plot and a lot of rather bizarre humor. I like it a lot.

I'm heading back in to Intersect today. I have a few more hours' worth of work to do, unfortunately. I figure that by the end of today, I'll have worked a 70-hour week. Ick. I'm glad that I'll be shifting to documentation work soon. Which may require some long hours, but spending a day banging away at code is different than spending a day writing documentation. And I do like writing documentation.

I've updated some past diary entries with information on Max Kim, who may be doing the character designs for Wine.

Meanwhile, my parents are at a first birthday party for one of my nieces. It's a 90-minute highway drive down to my sister's house, so my parents weren't exactly thrilled at the prospect. But they went.

We chose this weekend to put up Lexie, our English setter, with a friend over the course of Saturday and today. It's very nice having her out of our hair for a couple of days. She's a dear, but she's very clingy. And Molly (our Golden Retriever) is so much better behaved.

So, what to talk about? I feel like examining the latest Napster developments today.

Here's the latest: Napster is going to block access to certain filenames (ones representing copyrighted songs, presumably). Because nobody will ever misspell a filename to get around the filter.

Seriously, it's an extremely limited measure that anyone can compromise if they give a moment's thought to it. Even if this filter was implemented it now, it wouldn't stop the trading of mp3's. The tide might shift by a few percentage points, but it wouldn't last.

And meanwhile the RIAA is making millions of enemies. Don't count out the power of that issue; as that number grows, so does the number of powerful people in that group. The common opinion will eventually be "the RIAA sucks," and when everyone believes that -- including the people who do business with the RIAA, much less lawmakers -- the RIAA will suddenly find itself in serious hot water.

And really, the RIAA is saying "If we don't fight this, sales will plummet," with no data to back up their statements. People have a tough time taking them seriously.

What's most ironic, to me, is that the RIAA is fighting a war that's already over. People aren't going to stop making mp3's. And once made, they're going to be distributed. And in today's electronic world, there are many many ways to distribute mp3's.

If I were the RIAA, I'd say "OK, make mp3's. We'll make that legal now. Just please, buy the CD's, too. And if our CD sales plummet, we'll deal with it. But this is too big for us to fight." And if sales do plummet, they can have hard data to fight with, which will impress a lot more people.

All it takes is a leap of faith. But the RIAA doesn't have the guts, does it?

And that's exactly the belief that the RIAA is fostering in the public with their inane mp3 fight. Smart way of doing business, isn't it?

Not only may I have an animator for Otherspace Productions, I may have a character designer. His name is Max Kim, and his website is full of fantastic artwork.

In other news, Saalon isn't getting a job at Intersect just yet; they went on a hiring freeze. Arg. I'll try to get him a job somewhere down here, though. Maybe at Litton/PRC, where I worked before coming to Intersect.

I'm also going crazy with work. I really need some time off.

Brennen, update your diary now. ;-)

Work continues to be intense. I realized today that I'm suffering from pretty classic burn-out. I can't stand to look at any more code. Which means that I'm not very happy about work, which means I'm going to be more tempted to look around for another job if this keeps up. Fortunately, this release should be over by the weekend, which will take a lot of the pressure off.

However, I had a very nice lunch with the new documentation team, which now consists of four people (two full-time and two half-time). I'm really looking forward to being able to work with them in the coming weeks. Writing can be annoying, but it should be more fun than coding.

I also had a chance to mention to Janet (our project manager) how I really don't want to work on more coding if possible. She made it clear that management would respect that as long as I tell them what I want. A very good thing.

Still no word yet about a job for Saalon at Intersect. He only interviewed last Monday, but he and I are starting to get a bit antsy. He'll call in this Monday if he hasn't heard back yet, to see what's up.

I came across a very cute anime/manga spoof comic strip called Okashina Okashi ("Strange Candy"). Updated three days a week. I've updated my comics/art page with a link.

In other news, I may have an animator for Otherspace Productions. I'm talking to an artist I saw on MegaTokyo's Art and Drawing forum. I've given this particular artist a Cel Test: to choose any anime cel currently selling on eBay, figure out the next frame in that sequence, draw it, and send me the result. That should give me a good idea as to the artist's talent in doing in-betweening.

Unfortunately, I've been having to watch myself in my dealings with this artist, because of recent dealings with a friend. A month or two back, I asked her to do some drawings for my personal website -- paying pretty well, too, I think -- and as of tonight, she still hadn't done them. And now she's swamped, and has no idea when she'll be able to draw them. I understand her situation, but it's extremely frustrating for me. I'm thinking of telling her to forget it, and finding another artist to do it at this point.

Well, after looking around for a simple link verification program, I couldn't find one that suited my needs. So, I wrote one. It's a little Perl program that looks through a directory, takes every file it finds, and scans it for links. It then checks each link to see if it's valid, and prints out messages based on what it finds. Pretty useful little thing.

However, it's exhibiting a very annoying bug. Maybe one of you can help me. Here's the code snippet:

  $found = 0;
$linecount = 0;while( $linecount < 10 ){$line = <$sock>;if( $line ne '' ){$linecount++;chop( $line );if( index( $line, '404' ) >= 0 ){  $found = 1;  $linecount = 1000;  }elsif( $linecount == 1  &&  index( $line, ' 302 ' ) >= 0 ){# Redirection!$found = 2;$linecount = 1000;}} # end if line exists} # end loop

This code is executed after sucessfully connecting to a particular server, and sending it a request for a page. Nothing is sent back from the server. The problem is that the program hangs on that $line = <$sock>; line (which requests a line of data from a server), and I have no idea how to make that particular line of code time-out. Any ideas?

In other news...I worked 12 hours at work today, meaning I didn't get home until 9:00 p.m. After a really good talk with my Mom about some issues we're dealing with, I answered e-mails and collapsed into bed. Highly unproductive.

Listened to a very good sermon by John Yates at The Falls Church this morning, then did some gardening before heading off to AWANA at McLean Bible Church.

I'm still fighting off the pollen, and my Mom thinks I may have a cold. So, I didn't get much done Sunday night; just lay in bed and chatted on IRC, watching TV. Something cool happened, but I'm not totally sure if I'm free to talk about it, so I'll wait.

Went to the final official meeting of "Coffee and Classics" this morning, where we finished talking about Spurgeon's All of Grace. We're planning on keeping the group personal, and moving on to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress in two weeks. Next time, we'll meet at Suzie's house, instead of at The Tea Cozy.

Unfortunately, I was low on cash -- not unusual -- so I limited myself to only ordering tea. We got out fairly late, and I was running seriously low on energy. Considering how upset my stomach's been lately, this was not a very good situation.

So, I bought a couple of magazines (they had Rising Stars, but not a recent issue) and slipped into this fantastic Chinese restaurant nearby for brunch. I had the best Kung Pao chicken I've ever had as I flipped through a special edition of Writer's Digest and the latest PC Magazine (John C. Dvorak's column on Napster was particularly good), then drove home.

But my parents had invited over friends for company, so I had to get through some chores. As much as I hate cleaning, I realized how crucial it was for me to get that done early, so I cleaned the house right off. Then my Dad had already got a jump-start on mowing the lawn, so I finished that up.

I wandered back to my deck to chug a Gatorade, and my stomach began to flash these lovely images of upchucking to my brain. I was starting to feel seriously nauseous. Fine; I went to the kitchen and snagged some crackers and cream cheese around my Mom as she worked on dinner. After consuming a few of these delicacies on my deck, I had enough energy to plant the Kirengeshoma I bought and at least water the plants that needed it desperately.

But I never fully recovered; I spent the rest of the night somewhat nauseous, laying in bed. While my time might've been better-spent at least chatting online, I did get to see a couple of really cool things on TV: a biography of comedienne Margaret Cho, Wakko's Wish (an Animaniacs feature), which was even better than I expected, and Dave, which I'd seen before but was glad to re-experience.

Um. That's about it, in terms of actual events. The guests evidently had a good time, but I only saw them briefly.

Meanwhile, I've been spending some nights going over the scripts for the first two episodes of Wine, polishing them in my head. If I get some spare time tomorrow, I'll try to clean them up.

I've also been thinking about splitting this diary into several different diaries, and displaying the entries from different diaries programmatically. So, you could elect to see only the General and Writing-related diary entries here, but not the Gardening entries. I'll think about it.

Now this is cool. Cardcaptors (a.k.a. the American dub of Card Captor Sakura) may be showing up on Toonami soon. This is actually not all that surprising; it's a beautifully-animated show that's already been dubbed, and has an existing audience on American TV. Very cool. I'll probably never get a chance to watch it even if it does show up on Toonami (I don't catch The Big O as it is), but I'd try.

Meanwhile, MegaTokyo is being hammered by site requests. Sort of a friendly DoS attack. The site has been slow lately, though; maybe they'll upgrade to a new server soon.

Nothing else going on in my life. I had a really bad day yesterday, illness-wise, so I didn't get anything done. Basically just watched The Screen Savers, a wonderful show on general technology (how-tos, cool gadgets, interesting websites, etc.), on TechTV.

We found out just the other day that we get TechTV on our cable service. It's really a very good channel, in terms of interesting, tech-related content. It's pretty much by geeks, for geeks. I only wish that John C. Dvorak's show was more interesting. Very dry, which I didn't expect from him.

According to my website statistics, my domain is more popular than I had thought. All Anime Music Videos is getting dozens of hits a day, and my own music videos are being viewed every day. That really makes me feel good. People like what I do. Or, at least, are mildly interested in it. Vhatever.

When I went out for lunch today, I stopped by the bookstore to look up parenting magazines (I've written on article on the nature of anime, which I want to submit), and walked out the door with Drawing on the Artist Within by Betty Edwards. It's an amazing, fascinating book, that talks about the nature of creativity, and how people actually can draw well; they just haven't been trained to think as artists. I'll post a more coherent review when I'm not feeling sick from the pollen.

Which is another newsworthy item. The pollen count was higher than it's ever been yesterday, at a full 1,500. Yowch. Everyone around here's been complaining of sore throats and runny noses.

I've got a very simple version of Intersection, which is an attempt to do an extremely pared-down version of what my company is doing, up and running. I'll be testing it out over the next few weeks, trying to use it as part of Daemonsong Productions.

Ugh. I'm making no sense. I'd better attack this entry later.

Ugh. Just lost today's diary entry, as the domain name was shuffled around. I'm glad it was, for reasons I'll explain in the next paragraph, but it is annoying. Let's see if I can reconstruct it, here....

The sysadmin who runs the server that this domain sits on e-mailed me the other day, letting me know that other-space.com, stun-software.com, and chriscarrepair.com are using about 1 GB of bandwidth per day. Ouch.

It seems to be mostly the fault of two anime music videos I'm hosting, one of which is 70 MB and the other is 40 MB. While those don't seem horribly large to me, imagine 50 hits each on those files. That's about what I've gotten, over the past few days.

This leaves me with an interesting dilemma. These music videos won't last forever. Should I leave them up, and upgrade to an account with more bandwidth? Or should I just ride the wave? I've e-mailed the maker of the videos, to see if he can at least find some mirrors, so for now I'm waiting to see what comes out of that.

What else. AnimeMusicVideos.org is up and running again, and Light, does it have a lot of videos. Massive site.

I also re-ran across Supermegatopia, a site that archives the vast city of Supermegatopia, Kiwi Capital of the World. A city best known for its eclectic superhero population, particularly Weasel Boy, and such great coalitions as the Men-Men and the Offenders. Seriously, this site manages to spoof comic books without being asinine. Watch out for the fairly rampant nudity, though.

Otherwise, I'm feeling sick. The super-high pollen count has given me the sore throat to end all sore throats, and I've had...uhhh...the runs, I believe it's called.

But tonight's music practicing night. And maybe I can sketch something. Or write. Or something.

OK, so maybe I should be a little less definitive when I make statements such as "I don't see Be, Inc. getting bought out any time soon." Specifically, Be, Inc. is now actively looking for ways of getting bought out, or otherwise rescuing themselves from totally running aground. They still have six months' worth of venture capital, of course, but still.

:sigh: Well, if Be goes down the tubes, then the world won't come to an end. I'll still use BeOS, as long as I can. And I can move over to AtheOS, or Linux, or Windows, or whatever. It will have been fun, anyway.

It's a gorgeous day in the nation's capital. It's about 80 degrees, with a near-constant light breeze. I wish I could spend the day puttering around my garden, inhaling the sweet scent of the flowers and just generally goofing off.

But there's work to do.

Oooooh. Toycom is coming out with new Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin figurines, featuring figures from both the OVA series and the TV series. Figures.com has a complete photo series. Man, those look cool. From the OVA, they've got Kenshin and Okita (the young, sorta-equivalent of Kenshin on the "other side"), and from the TV show, they've got Kenshin, Kaoru, and Sanosuke. They also have a character named Hajime, whom I'm not familiar with.

No work on Wine recently, though I did work out some ideas for the ending during my ride in to work. I'll have to note them down somewhere. Basically, since the series revolves around pity (true pity), the ending really needs to deal with that issue. So, I'm planning to have Sarah show pity on one of the scientists. During my next writing session, I'll try to get that written.

Today is the first day of TV Turn-off Week. And while I get somewhat frustrated with some of the rhetoric used in it, their Zen TV Experiment is worth reading.

I went back and added some content to diary entries of the last copule of days, just generally fleshing out areas that I hadn't finished earlier. Other than that, I spent much of today fiddling with things (like adding a couple of reviews to the library.

I did, however, spent about an hour and a half writing an article on anime. The idea is to provide parents with a fair summary of the anime genre, particularly in terms of what they should expect in terms of nudity, sexual content, vulgarity, etc. Obviously, I can't tell them with certainty what they'll find in any given anime show, but I can at least give parents an idea of what anime is really like.

In any event, I wrote almost all of it, except for the conclusion. It's still very rough; I'll have to refine it at least once more. Once that's done, I'll have to start looking for places to submit it.

Hmmm. I should also mention that I subscribed to an e-mail discussion list on Friday. The list is concerned with creating anime music videos. The signal-to-noise ratio is worse than I'd like, but I'm having fun reading and posting to it. As expected, I'm already throwing my opinions around several times a day.

It's a gorgeous day; 80 degrees and partly cloudy. An occasional breeze stirs the newly-growing leaves in the trees.

I spent most of the day outside. We decided to skip church again this morning, and instead listened to an excellent tape of Dr. Norris from Fourth Presbyterian Church. Afterwards, I wandered the garden, then mowed the lawns and cleaned the house (or rather, the part that I have to clean).

Then, it was off to AWANA. Only a few more weeks of that, before the end of the year and a summer full of free Sundays.

I had hoped to get some writing in afterwards, but Saalon, Brennen, and I chatted for most of the night about all sorts of things, as usual.

I did manage to send off a query letter to Writer's Digest, though. Awhile back, I wrote an article on writing, based on my experiences as editor of Papyrus. Writer's Digest only accepts queries for those sorts of things, so we'll see how that goes. More details on my writing pages.

Speaking of writing, I was struck by something I saw on TV the other day, and wanted to mention it. I was watching a biography of Steve Martin, and there was this clip of an interview he gave, just after his first book was published. In a subdued, almost bashful voice, he explained, "Well, I've always dreamed of becoming a published author, and I'd heard that one of the ways of doing that...was by writing a book."

The audience laughed, as I did, and then I realized how often writers have trouble with that. If you want to be a published writer...write a book. Focus on writing the book; get it done. Then worry about getting published.

(Or, write some short stories. Or some articles. Whatever; the same advice applies.)

Network Solutions sent me an e-mail a few days ago, informing me that I can now get domain names that end in .ws. Yippee.

Who the heck wants a domain name ending in .ws? It doesn't roll off the tongue, and everybody's going to ask what it stands for ("WebSite"). I'm not interested in grabbing www.other-space.ws. And why did they roll out .ws before, say, .web?

Anyway.

Saalon and I talked last night about writing and getting published. We've both decided that it's time for us to start seriously trying to get published. As such, we came up with a little contest: whichever one of us gets published first (in a paying, non-online market) gets free dinner the next time we get together.

This is rather silly, as every time we get together we're constantly buying each other meals. But the idea should give us a little further impetus to write and submit stuff, and why not keep it low-key?

I had a good day today. After waking up, I ran to a local nursery to take advantage of a sale, and got a whole bunch of plants (more info on my garden site). Then I went to the post office to mail my Otakon music video entry, only to realize that I hadn't put the right VHS tapes in the mailer.

I then ran home, in time to meet up with my parents. We then walked around Alexandria, first having brunch at a little English teashop called "The Tea Cozy", then just wandering in and out of shops.

We came home, and I was feeling a little light-headed. I rested for awhile -- reading more of The Lions of Al-Rassan while doing so -- then planted everything I'd bought at the nursery. We ate dinner out on my deck, and chatted for several hours afterwards.

That pretty much blew out the rest of the night, so I worked on cleaning up a few files on my personal website here, and then went to bed.

Disney's coming out with a Kiki's Delivery Service DVD later this summer. Oh yeah. Finally, more Miyazaki on DVD (for those of you reading this entry many moons after it was written [Hi!], only two Miyazaki films have been released on DVD in America thus far: The Castle of Cagliostro and Princess Mononoke).

I've started posting particularly cool anime art on my cubicle wall at work. First up was this gun-toting girl by gunnar-chan. That reminded me of this panel from a fantastic comic strip by Merekat Creations (you can also check out the first panel in that series, or the first panel of the strip itself). I've got them both on the wall, and will add others as I come across them.

I suppose I should mention that "Second Empire" a.k.a. "Solar Conquest," that turn-based strategy game that I was working on, seems to be pretty much dead. At least, Saalon and Brennen haven't worked on the design at all, so I figure they're not interested. Which is OK; I have other things to work on.

I've added a thingie to the front page which displays the first line of my diary, in a little box on the left. I think it's pretty cool. Also, check out the new poll box widget thingie on this very page!

And I've created a new little online game: Colony. I'll explain its workings in more detail later.

That's all for now.

I'm learning something interesting about myself.

I can multitask. This isn't the interesting thing that I'm learning; I've known that I can multitask for awhile. I can carry on multiple online conversations simultaneously; I can read a book while I'm managing a bunch of donwloads; I can formulate a speech as I garden, while occasionally checking on drying paint.

I'm learning that I shouldn't multitask.

When I multitask, I split up my concentration between all those things I'm working on. As a result, I'm constantly distracted, as I leap from one job to another, juggling to keep all those balls in the air. I can't focus my full attention on anything for any length of time.

I've been learning this as a result of putting myself on a regular schedule. Every night, I divide out my evening into discrete chunks. There's time for dinner and socializing with my family, and time for my devotions, and for catching up on e-mails. And depending on the night, I may set aside time for writing or musical practice or anything else that I don't do every single night.

And while I can't do many things at once, I can concentrate on whatever I am doing. As a result, in the past week alone, I've gotten more accomplished in my writing and musical life than I had in months previously.

So, while I occasionally feel frustrated at my new schedules, they are definitely worthwhile. Now, I have to face the more dangerous question: Will I keep this up?

In other news...Saalon is going to try to get a regular income from his writing duties. Best of luck there. Be announced Q1 earnings, and they're getting some nice revenue from their recent IA push. Now we can hope to see the stock rise above $1/share. I've been adding Cascading Style Sheets to my personal website here, and cleaning up the files as I come across them.

Oh, and I got a bit of writing done on a short story, set in a modern setting. It's about relationships, and the silly things we do to each other while in them. More on that as I write it.

And after reading some of my earlier diary entries, Hawk pointed me at LiveJournal.com. It's a site that'll let you set up an online diary with tons of customization options. Very nice. Plus, it seems to have a very flexible search engine.

Well. After pleasant conversations with online friends last night, I stumbled into my bed, only to re-awaken at 3:00 a.m.

Was there a noise? Had I had a bad dream? No, I just...surfaced from the lake of dreams. After puttering around a bit, I got on the computer and worked on Mozart until my Mom stumbled into my room at 5:00. At that point, I realized that I was fully awake, not in that "It's a brisk Saturday morning and I've just had my cup of coffee" sense, but in the sense of that inevitable assurance that all of those sleep endorphins have been thoroughly cleansed from your little grey cells.

I had reached the limit of my creative energies, though -- a lack of sleep does have its effects on me, no matter how awake I may feel -- so I continued to index my books, into my virtual bookshelves. I ended up indexing most of what remained since my last attempt, leaving only two shelves, the books stacked up next to my desk, and all of the books I have in the basement. In total, though, I only have somewhere in the range of 50-100 books to go, which should push me to nearly 500 books all told.

Let's see...considering the prices of most of these books, that's probably an average of USD $8 or so per book, at least...so, I own about USD $4,000 worth of books. Wow.

Where was I? Oh, yes, I'd gotten tired of indexing books, and finally settled on some reading. I got another chapter done in The Lions of Al-Rassan. Oddly, I'm not enjoying the book as much as I'd expected to, and I think it's mostly because of the odd lack of focus in the novel. The point-of-view keeps jumping from one character to another in a very, very large cast...not only with main characters, but als with characters that don't last long either. I've seen things from the perspectives of well over a dozen characters by now, which seems to be keeping me from investing much attention or sympathy in any character's perspective.

Anyway. I ended up coming in to work early. Well, early for me, that is; I left the house at 8:00. I figured that I can take a quick nap midway through the day, and still leave in time to work out at the gym with Dad at 5:45 without cutting in to my eight hours. I usually work through lunch, so it should be do-able.

Oh, I do have some Cowboy Bebop tidbits for you. I came across an excellent interview with the English voice cast (making some fascinating points about the whole thing), as well as a pair of columns in which I agreed with the first column, then read the second, disagreeing column...and agreed with that one.

And I see that Lost Marble has just released version 2.5 of Moho, and the new functionality is quite impressive. A person could make a full-scale cartoon with this now, though it's much more suited for something like Mike, Lu, & Og or Ren and Stimpy than, say, Gundam Wing. Still, it has definite potential.

I'm afraid I don't have the energy to give you a full-scale commentary yet today (it's 8:42 a.m. as I write this). I could be writing about the (brief) discussion I had with my Mom about her and my Dad's sex life last night, but I think I'll spare you that. I wonder if it wouldn't be worth trying to put together a short animated 'toon based on an online comic strip.

I'm going sort of crazy.

I've got over 300 books catalogued in my virtual bookshelves now, and I'm only about two-thirds of the way through, and I'm trying to go through and add abstracts and reviews for them. And when you're like me, and try to accurately represent every single book, it's a mind-numbing job.

Which, of course, it isn't. Provided you look at it the right way, it isn't, at least. I'm looking at it as 300 little jobs, each of which is pretty easy. Each job says: "Write a paragraph or two about this book." Not bad at all.

Though it is hard to write a cogent review of things like comic strip collections. How do you describe The Far Side Gallery 3? Maybe I shouldn't try, and should focus on fiction, or nonfiction that isn't drawn.

I notice that Neil Gaiman has an online diary, which focuses on his new book American Gods but generally talks about the life of a book after it's been published, before it gets into the hands of eager readers. Fascinating, very well-written (gee, what a surprise), and pretty regularly updated several times a week.

I needed to get a few basic personal items -- socks and such -- so I wandered into a nearby bookstore and grabbed the latest issue of Marie Claire, which is still the only "fashion" magazine I can find that doesn't exclusively contian "I'm too sexy for this outfit" photos. Lots of good material that I'll use as drawing references. I also bought the latest issue of Writer's Digest (with a nice interview with Ursula K. LeGuin), the latest issue of Animerica (please note the URL...animerica.com is a hentai site), plus a Time-Life book on garden design (on sale for USD $8). A pretty good haul.

The issue of Writer's Digest includes a list of 101 writing websites. Of them, the most interesting for me was The Burry Man Writers Center, in which I found a wonderful article about Just Writing. In other words, if you want to write, stop worrying and spend serious amounts of time every day (or every week; whatever) actually writing. No excuses. It's good advice, and not just for writers.

Dangit, I just can't end today's entry. Came across Culture Shock, a website which lets you choose from a set of images, each potentially unsettling/offensive in some way, and asks if you think it should be used on the front page of their site. Then it presents a barrage of opposing arguments, no matter which you choose. So, if you think it's good, you'll get a bunch of reasons why it may be bad. And vice versa. And flip-flopping your opinion doesn't help. Fascinating.

Oh, and on top of the rant about people's perspectives on rich people, remind me to talk about Steve Martin's comments about getting published.

'Twas going to complain about a general lack of updates on Brennen's diary of late, but then I realized how hypocritical that would be if I didn't do a diary entry myself. But now I am writing a diary entry, so can I complain now?

I decided I'm not going to.

But I already have.

Went to an explanation of stock options at work today, and I'm starting to grok the bare essentials. I'm going to explain it here, mostly because I want to record it.

Stock options are just a contract between you and your company, allowing you to buy stock from the company. You don't have to buy it; you're just agreeing that, yes, you can have this certain number of shares at this certain price.

And that's the power of stock options; you're buying stock at a certain, very low price. You pay that low price no matter how much the stock is actually worth. So. How does it work?

There's one major restriction, namely, the vesting date. The vesting date is just a date which specifies at what point you own the stock. If you try to buy the stock before the vesting date, then the company will hold that stock until it vests, and then give the stock to you. If you buy the stock after the vesting date, the stock is yours, end of story. But there are tax issues with doing that, because of how your income is calculated based on if you buy before or after the vesting date.

Then, it gets really complicated, so I won't go into that. Suffice to say that those are the basics. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my options....

I spent some time during the day cruising for online diaries. Nothing really grabbed my attention, though there are definitely interesting diaries out there. This happened to lead to a discussion with Brennen later on in the day, where we agreed that the strongest online communities these days seem to be between online diary enthusiasts. And how there doesn't seem to be any Yahoo! equivalent for online diaries, and there really should be. It could be done more as an indexed database, or like a topographical map of connected, related sites.

In the evening, I purposed to follow a schedule: Dinner from 7:00 to 8:00 (after exercising at the gym), devotions/e-mails/sketching from 8:00 to 9:00, and then writing from 9:00 to 10:00. Writing proved to be the hard thing, as I don't really have any stories burning in my soul at the moment. I did hash out a very nice idea for a story, though, which I can attack later in the week.

I did manage to draw another practice sketch, though, based on my practice fashion magazine. My attempts to copy real human poses is helping me a lot with understanding basic proportions and shadows, as well as the amount of detail that can go into a sketch before it becomes over-burdened. The sketch came out quite well, IMHO, and I uploaded it to my gallery.

Hmmm. I have a rant about economics and rich people and taxation based on a conversation with Saalon (and a recent entry in his diary, which he's started using now), but I think it'll wait for another day. I have other stuff to talk about for now.

I woke up this morning in a very sturdy funk. I couldn't drag myself out of bed, which meant that I couldn't go to church with my parents. On today, of all days. Easter Sunday.

And to make matters worse, I surfaced briefly to hear Dad say, "I guess you won't be coming with us this morning. That's really disappointing; I was looking forward to having all of us there." Now, that looks really mean-spirited here on the page; it wasn't meant to be that bad, and he said later he wasn't trying to guilt-trip me. But it did hurt.

So, I spent most of the morning puttering around (never even thinking that I could go to a later service myself), adding entries to my online library, until I started skimming through an omnipresence in wired, an artbook for the anime series serial experiments lain. And that's when it happened.

I was struck by how similar the early lain artwork is to the character designs Max Kim is creating for my series, Wine to Those in Anguish. I really am doing what the lain crew did.

An incredible feeling of vindication and joy washed over me. We have this tendency to put people on pedestals, and even though I am pushing forward with Wine, still there's a little voice in the back of my head, warning that I'll never really fly that high. I'm just some guy, some 24-year-old programmer, who's still living with his parents. I can't really achieve anything remotely like the greatest TV series I've ever seen. Who do I think I am?

Well, guess what? I can do it. I am doing it. Nothing can stop me, except the fear of failure, which is far more insidious than I'd given it credit for.

So. This was a good thing. I'm feeling more personally committed to Wine now.

I've also re-structured my library, into a much more sensible layout. It could probably still use some tweaking, but now it's a lot easier to wander through.

And at the very bottom of this diary page (part of the little italicized boilerplate), there's now a little counter to see what sort of accesses this page gets. It's extremely trivial, but it'll be interesting.

(Hmmmm, a lot of stuff happened today.)

I've been very good at my promise, and indeed haven't bought any anime series in well over a month. So, to reward myself, I ordered Bubblegum Crisis DVD 3, an episode of Slayers (it was on sale), and Essence (a new Yoshitoshi ABe artbook) off of Right Stuf, and the new Cowboy Bebop band score from AnimeNation.

On the subject of that "White Reflection" video. It occurred to me that, for some odd reason, I feel a kinship with Two-Mix (the band) after watching that video. Why?

I think it's because of the nature of the video. In it, anime-ized versions of the members of Two-Mix see a glowing ball of light, and follow it across the U.S. As they travel from town to town, they are shown writing the song "White Reflection."

I feel like I've shared that experience with them, like I know what they've been through. Which, on the face of it, is silly; the actual members of the band never saw a glowing ball of light, and they never followed it across the U.S. I know this, intellectually. But I still feel like I've been given a glimpse into an experience.

The lesson? In art, we're often told to "give of ourselves." We tend to interpret this in an extreme, that we should impart some deep, painful part of our soul. I think the "White Reflection" video shows that this doesn't need to be the case. One can affect people strongly by providing them with a personal experience, even if that experience is not deeply personal.

Been downloading a slew of new anime music videos. There are a lot of good ones out there. Particularly, "She Blinded Me With Science" set to Washu footage, Weird Al's "It's All About the Pentiums" seto to lain (oddly enough, it's effective), and the theme to "Fat Albert" set to Street Fighter II. There's also "Two Mix - White Reflection," which looks like an actual music video, just animated in the anime style. Now if I could just keep a network connection at work long enough to transfer all of these to my machine at home....

I'm gearing up to do another music video, too. I've decided to take the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" mp3 song and make a comedy video out of it. It'll start with Tenchi Muyo footage, lip-synching Tenchi and Yosho as the Captain and the Pilot. Kagato (OVA) will appear as the "All Your Base" villain, all lip-synched (I hope!). Then it'll transition into a montage of anime villains, lip-synching to the chorus ("All your base. Your base. Base. Base. All your base. Are belong to us."). Should be fun.

Don't know how long it'll stay up, but there's a job opening advertised at HeadHunter for anyone with...above-average powers. Very cute.

And now I realize that I should really skim back through my past diary entries and clean out any dead links. Now that'll be a job; this diary is already two and a half years old.

Lessee. I watched Digimon: The Movie last night. It was...OK, with a few good moments. Unfortunately, the narrative was really broken up oddly, such that most of the movie was spent telling the backstory to the main event. And there were some really interesting things in there, under the surface, but they never really went anywhere. It's sad. But I did enjoy myself; the character interactions were very well-done (as usual), they stuck to their infamous off-beat humor, and there were some pretty darn cool fight sequences.

But it's annoying. Digimon was always strongest in character development and character interaction, and they could have made a movie about that. With fight sequences, sure, but...I mean, they already had a plot where they could insert fights around a character-driven story. The fight scenes could still be cool, but they could also be part of a larger, more impressive movie (like Tenchi Forever or Akira or The Road Warrior). :sigh:

Heck. Read my review of Digimon: The Movie at Points of View.

Well, I see that Cowboy Bebop.com has been updated with a new site design, and new content. Unfortunately, it's being hammered by site requests, so it's rather difficult to explore today.

Meanwhile, there's not much to report. I made a lemon cream pie last night, but it didn't mix well and will probably come out lumpy. But that's OK; cooking is like that. I'd like to attack something else soon; maybe donuts. And I definitely want to make something for Easter.

I've been grabbing new anime music videos off of a Hotline server lately. I'm getting tempted to set up an archive of these things on my site.

I've been writing a bit on Wine lately, though that's slow going. It's really just a matter of banging away at it, though. Oh, and Points of View has moved to www.points-of-view.net.

And I just got finished watching ... thanks to fansubs downloaded off of that Hotline server (don't worry; none of these series are available over here) ... a whole bunch of anime. ::cracks knuckles:: Time for a little reviewin'.

• FLCL a.k.a. Furi Kuri -- The latest show from Gainax, creators of Nadia and the Secret of the Blue Water and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In fact, I think this is their first series since the ground-breaking Evangelion. In any event, it's very very VERY unique in terms of style and storytelling. It seems to take bits from serial experiments lain, Niea Under 7, Evangelion, and Akira (not to mention fragments of Bubblegum Crisis). And all the while, it leaps from one animation trick to another; several minutes are spent panning a doujinshi (comic book) version of what's going on. Very weird, and yet very enjoyable. And, because it's Gainax, the animation is better than most OVAs'.
• Gundam X -- Done by the same character designer behind Gundam Wing, this is a more adventure-oriented show than GW, taking place 15 years after orbiting space colonies were dropped on Earth, decimating nearly all of the planet's population. Thus, it's sort of like "Mad Max meets Gundam Wing," with scattered towns having to deal with roving bandits who steal and sell old Mobile Suits. The main character is a boy who is more or less Duo Maxwell, both physically and emotionally, who gets caught up in an attempt to re-vive the super-powerful Gundams.
• The Candidate for Goddess -- A more kid-oriented action/adventure show (borrowing heavily from Evangelion technology), Candidate follows a young boy as he trains to become a pilot for one of the five goddesses, giant piloted robots that fight off mysterious alien invaders who have captured all but one of mankind's inhabited planets. It's relatively light fare, but it's well-enough presented that I never got bored with it. This is evidently going to be showing up on Cartoon Network at some point. I can't wait to hear their version; the Japanese dub is pretty bad.
• Inu Yasha -- The latest series from Rumiko "Goddess of Manga" Takahashi (creator of Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and others), this is a more fantasy-oriented tale, in which a 15-year-old girl is sucked back in time 1,000 years, 50 years after an ancestor's death. She also has the supernatural powers of her ancestor, which become very useful when she's attacked by a centipede monster. She releases Inu Yasha, a half-goblin, to deal with the monster, but it turns out Inu Yasha isn't exactly a hero himself. The series (eventually) focuses on the relationship between Inu Yasha and the girl. It's very good, and it's nice to see Takahashi attack a different genre than her usual modern romances (this feels sort of like a cross between the samurai epics and Tenchi Muyo!; in fact, Inu Yasha looks to be heavily influenced from Ryoko).

I also caught three of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. One is a shot-for-shot remake of the Card Captor Sakura opening, but instead of animating it, it uses Japanese men in cosplay outfits. The second is a music video of "You Always Hurt The Ones You Love," set to 70's anime shots of people getting shot, run over, etc. And the third...wow. Somebody re-subtitled the entirety of the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but inserting low-brow humor throughout the whole thing. The NERV manual handed to Shinji is re-labelled as a doujinshi named "Hot Geisha in Bondage."

Woke up nauseous this morning, and didn't go in to work. Nothing really serious, though; I should be fine by tomorrow.

So, I re-watched Mighty Space Miners to find footage for the anime music video I wanted to make out of it, only to realize that there's really not enough footage there for the video I wanted to make. I was really disappointed, as MSM captures the feel of real life in space better than really any other anime series I've seen, and I really wanted to give people that experience. But I don't think it'd work.

Mom and I wandered around my garden for a little while, doing a bit of touch-up work here and there (watering a few plants, etc.). And we chatted, for quite awhile, about all sorts of things. And we watched the birds hopping about near the bird feeders. It was unseasonably warm today -- over 80 degrees -- so we enjoyed it as much as we could.

I then watched The Castle of Cagliostro, an early Miyazaki film. It's an adventure flick, in a similar vein to the Pink Panther movies. I loved it; it was a lot of fun. Lupin is a blast.

A big storm swept through in the evening, so I and my parents sat up in the sewing room with the windows open, letting the cool breeze envelop us as it blew through. It passed within a few hours, giving us time to talk about Bible churches, and movies, and trusting people, and what it really means to be a church pastor (living a life, not just walking a walk and talking a talk).

Then Saalon shamed me by writing half a teaser for an online webdrama he volunteered to do some work on, on top of chatting with me for much of the day and working a full day at the video store. And here I haven't written a word on Wine in days. I must purpose to be more productive like that.

I've also been thinking about some things about myself that my Mom pointed out last night. Namely, that I have a very good opinion of myself, and as a result I'm lenient on myself because I see myself as being a good person. It's sort of a weird cyclical delusion: I see myself as being a Good Employee, so I cut myself a lot of slack, which makes me not a Good Employee. And then, when I fail myself, I'm very self-condemnatory.

Plus, I have a vanity problem. I need to work on these things, to see myself for what I truly am, as well as what I want to be.

Well, I couldn't go to sleep last night, so after working on the library, I finished reading Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant. It was, of course, excellent; Sam Vimes goes to Uberwald, a land of werewolves and vampires, to act as an ambassador. And, trained cop that he is, he doesn't go over very well. Great stuff.

So, I slept until 1:00 p.m. (missing church :-/ ). Right now it's 1:30; I'm debating whether I should go to the store and get the rest of the Cool Whip &tm; I need for my pie or not. I have to leave here at 4:00 to get to AWANA early (I'm going to be teaching the kids how to play Redemption), so the pie would definitely take up the rest of the afternoon. Or, I could divide the hostas in my garden. Hmmmm.

Hey, Glitch just pointed me in the direction of 1/0, yet another online comic (at least this one's not anime-related). The writing is amazingly deft, particularly in its current storyline regarding faith and homosexuality. And from there, I came to Freefall, a furry SF strip that I've only just begun to read. Very, very nice, though, and also well-written.

Woke up at noon today (thankfully, since I've been low on sleep lately), and immediately recorded Deathdance to a VHS tape, in preparation for sending it to Otakon's music video contest. I also spent a little time re-watching some of Mighty Space Miners, looking for footage for my third anime music video (set to Respighi's Pines of Rome).

Spent a bit of time reading <>Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card. It's excellent; I'd forgotten how good of a writer Card is. And much of Chapter 3 happens locally to me, which is really very cool. I'm only 50 pages into it, but I can hardly put it down thus far.

Oh, you want the plot? Yes, of course. It's about Quentin Fears, a boy who lost his only sister in a car accident when he was 11 and she was 15. He never really got over it, and lucked into complete financial independence, at which point he realized how little he'd done with his life. He'd pretty been waiting for his sister to come back to him. And then he meets a woman who helps him to heal amazingly well, and he marries her. And then things start to get weird.

I've also been working some on the infrastructure of the library. I'm creating a database of all the books I own, as well as the ones I've read recently. Soon, I'll have the database available in a nicely-categorized fashion, so you can browse my complete library, in many ways (including some nifty search capabilities). Including mini-reviews.

What else...did a bit of maintenance gardening, and went to the Old Brogue Irish pub with my parents for dinner. Also got the ingredients for a pie, though I found out I'll need more Cool Whip for that.

I've been getting more in a mood to do some baking of late. I've been occasionally trying recipes for years now, and I've gotten to the point where I can make a pretty good dessert. I'll make this pie tomorrow, and also do something for Easter Sunday, when my sister and her family will be coming over for dinner. Perhaps Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake? Or the simplicity of a Sweet Pie? Or even some Butterscotch Fudge?

Finally! I got on Hotline today and was able to connect to bakaserver.dyndns.org, a Hotline server run by a member of the neobaka crew. He has a whole slew of anime music videos on there, so all during work I was jumping back to Hotline to grab another file. Though there were so many people trying to download that I just spent most of my time uploading my own videos.

Hotline's a pretty neat service; it's not completely revolutionary, but it's one of those ideas that just makes sense. Sorta like IRC; it's not causing any revolutions, but it's a very solid design and implementation.

All Hotline is, is a service that lets you share files and chat, all on the same server. So it does something similar to, say, Gnutella (thanks to Brennen for the explanation last night of exactly what Gnutella is), but localized, so you get more of a sense of place, of locality. Somehow, it works.

I came back from work, to help Mom finish assembling this massive wedding cake that she's making for a wedding shower on Sunday. Three layers, with all these elaborate sugar flowers. It's undoubtedly the most complex cake she's ever tried to make, and boy does it look amazing. I took pictures and videos, so I'll upload something once I get a chance.

Despite the coarse language, I laughed out loud at these outtakes (now defunct) from Thundercats and Silverhawks. Sometimes you just can't stay serious when doing these sorts of things. # 7, # 5, and # 9 had me going particularly. And Silverhawks #8 is quite good.

I also stumbled across Only One (now defunct), yet another anime-style online comic strip. It's, honestly, not very well-drawn. But it's also really good, in ways I can't explain.

I only got a few hours of sleep last night, but not because of staying up late -- I went to bed at midnight (I don't get up until 8:00 in the morning, so that's a decent bedtime), but sleep refused to come no matter how hard I tried. So, I spent some time re-working the library, which really needs an overhaul. I think I've got something that will do very nicely.

I also came up with some thoughts on how to re-write the first episode of Wine. I know now what I want to get across, and in what directorial style. I'm hoping to get that written in the next couple of days. Well, ideally, I'd write it tonight, but I can't be sure that I can get to it.

Today I finished up my COMDEX report, adding in the pictures I took. I'll be cleaning it any niggling little problems over the next few days. It greatly increases the amount of time it takes to load this page, but graphics make webpages look so much better. Now if only I could get into the habit of adding borders to my pictures.

I've been working on an intriguing little game design: Hover. It's played from a top-down perspective, but is designed as a multiplayer deathmatch-style game. Plus, I have some interesting little strategic ideas. And it'd be fairly easy to write, provided I designed it properly. Will have to see where it goes.

Pretty much on a whim, I picked up a book-on-tape reading of Sun Tzu's The Art of War last week. I finished listening to it today -- I'll post a review soon -- and skimmed the library for something else interesting. I found a Terry Brooks stand-alone modern fantasy novel called A Knight of the Word, which sounded intriguing. I've never been impressed with Brooks' writing, but I figured I'd give him a chance.

So, I listened to the first few pages' worth of A Knight of the Word on the way back from work. I'm very disappointed; I'll be taking the tapes back to the library tomorrow. There's just so little use of the language; almost all of the descriptions I heard were nearly cliches. They have a copy of Robert Jordan's A Path of Daggers, which I still haven't finished reading; maybe I'll try that instead.

That's about all I have to report at the moment. I've spent much of today getting back up-to-speed at work, and cleaning up stuff at home.

My alarm squealed into my ear at 8:00 in the morning, so I got up and began preparing for my day. My panel wasn't until 10:15, so I had plenty of time.

I decided to order room service for breakfast, figuring that it would be one less thing for me to worry about. I ordered two eggs, hash browns, toast, and orange juice, which worked out to $11. Not bad. I ironed my pants and Be shirt, dressed, and left.

The shuttle service to COMDEX was a bit confused; the first bus was almost full, and there were probably seventy people waiting for it. A few frustrated Linux advocates (or so their shirts proclaimed) hopped into taxis, but I got a bus within fifteen minutes. Ten minutes later I was stepping into the McCormick Center.

This was big. The center was so massive that it was hosting other conventions at the same time. In fact, we had to be careful not to wander into the Waste Expo. Yes, it is what you think.

After spending some time trying to figure out where to sign in, I got my badge and headed off to the speakers' lounge.

:sigh: They didn't even get the company name right.

I arrived at the lounge just in time to head over to our actual panel room, and chatted with Andy Gore of MacWorld on the way over. Very nice, straightforward guy.

I arrived, sat down on the podium, and pretty much just twiddled my thumbs. The room was not unlike a large classroom in a university, and a few people trickled in. I was asked the order in which I'd like to go; I opted for last (it would give me the opportunity to respond to the other panelists' presentations). Finally it was time to begin.

The vast audience that we addressed

We only had about twenty people there, which was a bit of a shame because one of the Linux advocates just happened to be Larry Augustine (founder and CEO of VA Linux). Everyone gave their speeches (I'll post more on that later), there were a few questions about .Net and the installed base of Mac users, and that was that.

I then wandered around COMDEX for awhile. It really is incredibly gaudy. Mercedes-Benz was there (?!), and they had a giant spinning Mercedes-Benz logo in the center of the main exhibition space...and it was hard to pick out. One vendor had a bubble machine, blowing bubbles everywhere. HP had built a little Formula-1 model and put a printer atop it. People were giving full-scale presentations to small audiences. It was really weird.

As I shouldered my way through the crowds, I stumbled across some IA's, and couldn't resist updating this page. So, I posted this:

Hey, I'm at COMDEX, writing this on a Compaq iPAQ in the National Semiconductor booth. My panel went well; I was sitting next to Andy Gore of MacWorld and Larry Augustine of VA Linux. Kinda hard to get used to that.

I'll also have to scan my access badge, which is...most interesting.

But anyway, the big thing is that everything has gone extremely well, by God's grace. And this keyboard kinda sucks (why rename "HOME" to "BEGIN"?).

Chicago from McCormick Center

I'd seen all I wanted to see by 1:00; I didn't really want to stick around for the various panels. I grabbed a "What To See in Chicago" book, skimmed it, and decided to visit the Art Institute of Chicago Museum. So I went outside, grabbed a cab, had a lovely chat with the cabbie about faith and God and knowledge, and went into the Art Institute.

Turned out this was "Ford Free Tuesdays," where the Ford Motor Company sponsors the museum for the entire day, and anyone can go in free of charge. The crowds were fairly thick, of course, but not bad at all (five or ten people per room). They had Seurat's Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte, which was wonderful to look at. I actually chatted with a lovely college girl who was sitting next to me, and we just chatted about the painting and life.

Just a random building; I thought it was a nice shot


There's this little memorial to Abraham Lincoln near the Art Institute (Honest Abe was born in Illinois). I was struck by the odd contrast of this great statesman of old, looking very traditional, with all those skyscrapers in the background.

My flight didn't leave until 9:00 p.m., so I still had plenty of time to kill. I walked over to the Field Museum, where I saw Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever found, and viewed the stuffed remains of the man-eating lions of Tsavo, upon which the film The Ghost and the Darkness was based.

Another shot of the city


Lake Michigan

At this point I realized that I was low on cash. This was a real shame, as I'd wanted to eat at an authentic Chicago pizza parlor while I was there. Ah well; I caught a taxi back to Chicago O'Hare and ate a fantastic steak and cheese sandwich at a Chili's there.

I still had several hours before my flight, and I wanted something light to read, so I pulled out Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant and got about halfway through it before boarding. I decided against reading it in-flight; due to high humor content, a Pratchett book in a small space can be a dangerous thing.

The flight went very smoothly; we disembarked, I walked to my truck, I gave my parents a buzz to let them know I was back safely, and I drove home. After being debriefed by them (and giving them some souvenirs), I went to bed at 2 a.m., the day an unqualified success.

Well, today I left for COMDEX. Had to drive to Baltimore-Washington Airport and leave my truck in the parking garage, an expensive mistake.

My plane taxi'ed out to the runway just as evening was giving the watch over to night. It took us a little while to reach the runway, then....

I hope I never tire of the thrill of take-off. Feeling the surge of raw power beneath you, and knowing that you are about to defy the technology of a thousand generations, who said that it is impossible for man to fly. Your back presses into the cushion of your seat, and your ears pop, and you can feel yourself tipping back, and back, and back...and you're airborne. Actually in the air, with nothing beneath you.

I looked down, and the magic of flight overpowered me. Streets and houses blurred into spiderwebs of light, soaked with rain and glistening. Soon they became like butterflies, spread out and pinned down so that we could appreciate the intricate patterns of neon and flourescent lighting.

Chicago from the air (click for a larger, detailed view)

Then the clouds shouldered their way into my view, partially blocking the ground from my sight. But I happened to glance up. Oh, how with that one glance, my disappointment was shattered like thin glass. I looked up, and I saw space.

We've all looked up at the stars on a warm summer night and, with our mouths hanging open, amazed ourselves with the thought that that's space. I was not feeling that sort of awe.

I sensed, deep within my soul, the nearness of it. Space -- our last frontier -- was right there. I recognized the cliche even as I thought that I could almost reach out and touch space. It was close. So immediate.

The plane ride was successful, with no major mishap. Though as I was reading the time from my new pocketwatch (for, perhaps, the twentieth time that evening), my fingers slipped and the watch fell underneath my seat. We had just landed and the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign was still on, so I had to fidget in silence for a few minutes before being allowed to throw off my seat belt and hurl myself under the seat. Fortunately, I retrieved the watch without problem.

An underground tunnel at O'Hare


The same, from further down the tunnel

I exited O'Hare airport (leaving through a tunnel bedecked in pulsating waves of neon and shifting electronic notes), grabbed a taxi, and soon found myself in the Essex Inn of Chicago, a much larger place than one might expect from its name. I noted a lobby placard proclaiming shuttle service to COMDEX, and went to my room.

My room


The beds


The lovely artwork

The room was perfectly serviceable; somewhat battered, but clean and well-stocked. After taking a shower -- which, as expected, calmed my nerves -- I called home, then watched a bit of TV. The only notable thing I caught was the last few minutes of an episode of The Big O, which is certainly arresting, if quite odd. Then I turned the lights off, forced myself to follow my routine for sleep, and dropped off into the land of slumber.

Well, I woke up late this morning, so I didn't get to church. I did get to my niece's birthday party, which was very enjoyable. I videotaped it, which gave me something to do.

We got back late, so Dad dropped me off at AWANA, where I told the kids I'd be arriving early next week to teach them how to play Redemption. That should be fun, particularly now that I've found out that the church is going to be scheduling tournaments.

I then tried to hold a DSP meeting, but Saalon didn't show up. Turned out he had company, so Brennen and I chatted very pleasantly (as always). Then I finished packing and went to bed. Exciting.

Woke up this morning to find my stomach an aching pit, and my mind searching for ways to bail out of the trip. The human penchant for nervousness can be an annoying thing. I'd gotten over it by the afternoon, though; by then, I was just excited. Excited-nervous, but excited nonetheless.

After going over my e-mails, I went outside and pulled out the lawnmower. I had decided to cut the lawns shorter than usual, so as to have that much less to wrestle with when we get back, but that created such a vast sea of grass clippings that I had to rake it all up for fear it'd kill the living grass underneath it. I ended up mowing the upper lawn short, but mowing the rear lawn at the regular height. Well, so much for that idea.

I then ran to a deli to get sandwiches for Dad and me (Mom's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, so she didn't want to eat), and after a satisfying lunch of Philly Chicken Cheese subs, I drove to my bank to swap out backup tapes at my safe deposit box (it feels so good to have regular backups stored off-site; I never expected to feel so reassured), then to Best Buy for some spare DV tapes.

I'd planned on bringing my digital camcorder to Europe. I was somewhat afraid that it'll be stolen, but really wanted to record the trip as much as possible. Since I had a bunch of stuff on my current three DV tapes, I wanted extra tapes. So, I had two blank 60-minute tapes ready to go.

Mom had been feeling nervous for days leading up to today. It was nothing too bad; nothing more than a general sense of uneasiness had settled over her frame of mind. Nothing she couldn't handle.

So, we packed, and finished up all those last-minute chores that seem to hide for weeks before popping out at you unexpectedly. I cleaned the house, mowed the lawns (rather too short in my desire to mow them as low as possible), put a backup tape in my safe deposit box, and stopped delivery of our mail. We finished everything with a bit of time to spare, giving us time to relax before a friend drove by to take us to the airport.

The trip to the airport was pleasant and blessedly uneventful. Mom and her friend chatted amiably. We arrived, hauled ourselves into the airport, found our way to the incredibly long Air France line, and waited.