Jim's blog

Space Shuttle Discovery STS-116 12/9/2006 night launch!

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:10:29 +0000

Here's a video I captured of the shuttle launch. It happened at about 8:46pm EST on Dec 9. The video was captured 6 miles from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, using my old Canon PowerShot A75, which unfortunately handles only 30 seconds per video clip. So, this video is stitched together from two such clips. Also, the first clip doesn't have audio, so the first half of the video is silent. Ah well. You'll probably also notice that the first half is especially jittery. That's because I was busy destroying my vocal cords cheering.

Praise "Bob"

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:04:51 +0000

What's new? Let's do a bulletted list.

Developed a little bit of a collecting habit. I'm not quite the anime fan that I used to be, but I have always had a soft spot for transforming toys, especially ones with such a perfect transformation sequence.
Went to the huge nerd-fest, Archon in Collinsville. The after-party was incredible. It was almost a Fear-and-Loathing-in-Collinsville-type experience. It was essentially one of the most exuberant Halloween-style parties I'd ever been to, with a strong geeky pride to the whole thing. It was all about getting drunk with fellow nerds, sci-fi fantasy nuts, rivetheads, and other people who get it.

Ate sushi per the assignment

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 00:12:20 +0000

It's been much too long since my last login.

The Century Building is no more. Tonight, the remainer of the building falls. I'm not happy to see such a stately, historic building hit the ground, but at this point, I'm through mourning - just hurry up and be done with it.

I think I'm going to have some sushi tonight. I need something healthy after all the burgers and cake at work this afternoon.

Time for stereotypical blog behavior

Tue, 18 May 2004 04:30:29 +0000

What Irrational Number Are You?

You are π

Of all the irrational numbers, you are the most famous. You have many friends and fans. Like many people, non-Euclidean geometry makes you feel uncomfortable. You are involved in so many things that it seems like it would take two of you to make ends meet.

You are particularly close to the rational number 22/7. However, you and e have been called "remarkable."

Your lucky number is approximately 3.14159265

Shiny Lemur Take the Quiz!Straif's Blog

And in other news - The move is mostly done. Now we just have to go through the tenant-maintenance checklist and maybe do some really minor spackling.

Thought bites

Sat, 08 May 2004 03:18:39 +0000

The Move is 98% complete. Only the contents of the fridge remain.

I love this house and feel an almost moral obligation to keep it in good shape. Michelle and I are in the process of very gradually taking things out of the boxes and straightening up as we go. Having a lawn to mow is somehow satisfying yet weird.

Saw Stereolab at the Pageant back on Apr. 8. Definitely a fun show, and they made good use of background video for a few of their songs. I'm also glad that they've managed to keep their sound and spirit since Mary passed away.

Josh and Jessica, what's your new phone numbe

Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:57:19 +0000

I finally saw Mr T's Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool. Words cannot describe it. I don't think I could get away with gathering people and showing it to them, even if I got them horribly drunk beforehand. Somehow it transcends most levels of badness. Even Britney Spears' Crossroads can be drunkenly made fun of, whereas BSBSF cannot. Imagine Mr. T dancing around, singing, and attempting to rap (complete with cheeseball 80's echo filter) and attempting to show kids how to respect themselves. It's a trainwreck. Mr T doesn't even throw anyone, though I would love to see him toss around some of those annoying kids. Anyway, if anyone cares to drunkenly watch it or otherwise have a b-movie night with me, let me know. I've been aching for one.

Here's a couple links:
Star Wars Battlefield 1942 - This is a great mod.
Retrocrush - lots of weird retro crap.

Not even time to sit down

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 05:55:55 +0000

Here's briefly what happened:

Because there are NO SOUNDS TO HEAR!

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:27:42 +0000

What's new, one might ask? My response would be, "This house hunt." Here's a quickie on the houses so far:

It's in Olivette, not too far from Olive and 170. It's a ranch house with a front porch and a really small back porch. The lawn isn't that alive or big, as the right picture shows. The house looked alright on the inside, although we didn't get to inspect it as thoroughly as I'd have liked.

Another ranch in Olivette. It has a larger yard and a smaller porch, but we didn't get to sneak around the innards.

That kind of reminds me of the days when I was 7 or 8, and my neighborhood friends and I found that one of the unoccupied houses for sale down the street was unlocked. We just barged right on in and had a blast rampaging through the house. It didn't stop the house from being sold, but in retrospect, I'm sure someone had to pay for cleaning up the dirt we were constantly dragging into the house. It took several months of this before the house was finally fully locked up.

Some entertainment

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 03:25:29 +0000

Saint Louis is awesome. You know you live in a great town if it has a real vampire resource zine. It's for real vampires. Makes me want to dress up as Bela Lugosi - "Good eeeeeevening." Also see St Louis Gothic. Someday I'm going to infiltrate one of their age 21+ events.

The Matmos album I'm currently rocking out to: The Civil War. Matmos - Matmos is now downloading. I love emusic.com. I love Matador for offering so many albums on it.

Yes I need to upload images of the houses I'm looking at. That will be done shortly.

Yes I need to look at more houses. That will be done shortly as well.

Email me to get my cell number, if you're interested. ARGH! The Cingular lady forgot to activate my voicemail account.

A verifiable plethora of nonsense

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 00:51:57 +0000

The concert and party in Rolla were quite fun. Pictures are now up here. The Uptown ain't that great of a music venue on account of one thing: The horrible accoustics. Vocals were muffled / difficult to understand, and there was just a lot of nasty noise. Apart from that, it would actually be pretty good. The bands played pretty well I thought, despite the CPB folks thinking that they didn't. Spooky Daily Pride was awesome. CPB was awesome. So far from talking to people who were there, people seemed to enjoy CPB a bit more. Maybe that's because CPB didn't demand that the KMNR sound guys turn up the monitor speakers, resulting in loud feedback. Oh well, I enjoyed it.

Does the uptown do something sneaky with their beer? The Shiner Bock pitchers tasted odd. I think the plastic dixie cups had something to do with it.

The afterparty - lots of fun and walking around, talking to people buzzed-out. Watching Richard indirectly punching himself in the head was pretty funny. I should've had a bit more to drink.

One thing about the pictures - the camera itself is actually pretty good. The image storage algorithm tries its damnedest to keep the images under 50KB and will not trade space for quality. It seems to intentionally limit the image quality pretty low. If you look at the miscellaneous gallery, you can see what I'm talking about.

Oh, and I'm really digging Matmos lately.

No time for loaf, Dr Fuzz

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:20:27 +0000

Okay, now comes the hard part of looking for a house... Actually looking. Do I really want a house? Am I ready for the responsibility? Such are the questions that I'm now facing. Honestly, it's a good investment, possibly even better than the stock market right now. I just need to get off my butt and actually check the houses out.

This weekend was excellent, going to Rolla, seeing CPB and Spooky Daily Pride, and partying at Jimmy Nelson's place. I'll be uploading pictures soon. It was the kind of weekend that made me wish I could go back and relive the college experience. Again, if there's anything I truly regret about college, it's that I didn't get involved with KMNR and start drinking/partying sooner.

I need a kick in the ass for not going to the Asian horror film fest here. There's one showing left, on March 2. I must go. And speaking of Asian horror.. Here's my little tribute to Ring:

ROAR

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 00:32:14 +0000

Looking for a house is going to be interesting. The first hit on my real estate agent's search was for a gutted, 90 year old, hardcore fixer-upper, 140k home in Richmond Heights. The others all look pretty decent, none younger than 50 years old, some have flooding problems or perhaps questionable basements. I think I'll have to take a good weekend to drive around and check these places out.

There's a Livejournal meetup tonight, and Michelle's definitely going. I'll likely tag along. Putting actual faces to people that, from one's perspective, had only previously existed online is always weird.

Time to eat.

I swear to god, I heard someone moaning low.

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 05:00:00 +0000

music - Ladytron - Nuhorizons

Sorry if this page looks like ass in IE, I might be tempted to test it out, but it won't install on my machine unless I also install some Outlook
Express ActiveX bullshit. I can do without the security problems. Sometime in 2003, Microsoft announced a re-commitment to security. Yet somehow
I don't think that this means the end of ActiveX.

The birthday party thing was fun - thanks for coming, folks! Far and away the most embarassing thing was accidentally spending $12 on Hyperbowl.
Good thing I didn't have to play a 4-player game by myself. Warning note about Hyperbowl at Dave & Busters: If it isn't saying 'insert more
credits for more players,' then DO NOT insert more credits - they will count for the next game!

LAME is an excellent mp3 encoder. Windows users should use WinLAME. LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder, as they say, which also is an incredible lie.
On my 1800+, it can encode high-quality variable-bitrate MP3's well over 2x realtime.

Kit and I went to the big computer sale in Wentzville this past weekend. It seems like with every successive sale,
a greater percentage of laptop retailers show up. It seemed like almost a quarter of the retailers were laptop dealers, and as such, had a very tempting effect on us.
I used to laugh when people would take laptops to coffee shops or out anywhere and do anything with them. Now I understand, and I honestly believe I would update this
page way more frequently, and do all-around more interesting stuff with my programming/online time if I could take my computer someplace where I could get seriously
caffeinated and creatively stimulated. At any rate, I came somewhat close to dropping $1000 on an impulse because of that. Apart from that, the sale was a let-down on account
of the tiny venue.

Okay, I give. I'm now firmly convinced that I'd be more likely to update frequently if I didn't have to crack open index.html every time I want
to update. That's worth giving up the page's design for. Plus, there's no reason why I can't just continue to create specialized pages with this design. It's not that
hand-editing the html is hard at all; It's just that there's a subconcious weight attached to hand-editing everything. Drupalize me!

Had this been an actual emergency, the preceeding scream would have been followed by many more just like it

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 05:00:00 +0000

music - TRS-80 - Cliff Evans

Michelle and Erin get an A+ for effort on bugging me to update the website. I've gotta get better at this.

Skiing was a blast, I love Copper Mountain. It actually wasn't terribly cold half of the time. In fact, at the base lifts, you almost had
to open up your coat. The trails were fine for the most part. The West side of the mountains were a little bare, and some runs had vegetation
or rocks poking up out of the snow. The vegetation was a lot nicer to deal with because you could actually ski on it. The rocks, not so nice,
especially to the undersides of skis. Fortunately I'd rented my skis this time, so I didn't have to repair any gouges. The groomed trails were
definitely the nicest of them all, though. On the warmer days, the trails had a tendency to get icy, especially as it became colder in the
evenings.

Unfortunately, the ice led to a collision. I was on a steep black diamond slope when this guy in front of me decided that it would be
a good idea to cut across and stop in the middle of the slope. I dug in as hard in an attempt to stop quickly, but thanks to the ice, my skis
slammed into his and I managed to clock my head pretty good against this guy's arm. It didn't really hurt much, it was mostly just bruised
ego. Managed to scratch up my brand new goggles in that one too.

After the first day of skiing my sister got me to go drinking with her, so we hit Endo's. Endo's is a kinda typical ski resort bar / resturaunt,
and we had a drink there and chit chatted about life, the universe, and everything. From there we moved onto Pravda, the premier Communist
Russian vodka bar of Summit County. I'll upload the pics as soon as they're developed. It's definitely a very hip bar / night club with an excellent
selection of music. If there's anything Copper Mountain really needed, it's a place like this, where 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings can go drink,
listen to music, dance, and bask in the Communist red light of the hammer and sickle. (No kidding, this place would've been burned to the
ground 30 years ago) Of course the place and none of the people are Communists, but the imagery was massively appropriated. Anyway, I proceeded
to have a couple too many jack&cokes and got trashed. The hangover lasted a day and a half, with a very sensitive stomach that
couldn't handle any more than saltines, toast, and small amounts of water. Damn altitude. Fortunately I was able to return to the slopes
afterwards.

All in all, Christmas went well. Gift-wise, it was good. Got clothes, Castlevania - Lament of Innocence, some neat Japanese dishes, a gift
certificate, among other random stuff. I had more fun giving presents this time around actually. My dad nearly suffocated himself laughing
at The Onion book I got him, Dispatches from the Tenth Circle. Yeah, I know, not exactly a family book, but it paid off to see him laugh.
Michelle flipped out with the new 120 GB HD and GeForce FX 5900 XT. They weren't that expensive actually, and when they arrived yesterday,
I immediately demanded that we do gift exchange. I couldn't wait to see her reaction when she realized that she got a 5900. It was definitely
worth it.

Been getting increasingly active on The Ring Forum. Here's
my contribution to Ring fandom. As I said on the forum, as I was capturing that pic, it felt like my eye was about to fall out. It's
not easy to keep your eye open as wide a possible while looking as far down as possible. At least people seemed to think that it was one of
the better Sadako impersonations.

I am officially obscessed with getting a Motorola v600. My thinking is this..
I intend on getting a phone that I can use for a long time, it should have all the bells and whistles in addition to having excellent
signal and sound quality. It should be a quad-band GSM phone and easily unlockable, so I'm not eternally forced to use it in any one particular
region. I also want to support my fellow US tech industry peeps (I hate that word, why did I just use it?), so it should be engineered
domestically, and that means Motorola. The v600 sounds like The One Phone.

Thank you Agent Tremble

Sun, 30 Nov 2003 05:00:00 +0000

music - Tortoise - lost somewhere in Standards

The relapse was no joke. I wrote a routine that creates and positions a chain between two arbitrary points, with an arbitrary mass, thickness, and
number of links. If anyone wants source, just ask. Too lazy to go through the trouble of packaging it up alone. I think I'm going to try making
weird vehicles next.

Another turkey, few pumpkin pies come and gone, and are we really thankful? Well, kinda. I'm thankful to my parents for dinner and the piles of
leftovers. What an odd holiday. We stand in solidarity in our struggle against turkeys! It's too bad that the turkey day MST3K marathons
were cancelled, though. That was one of the higher points of turkey day for me for years.

Watched Run Ronnie Run at Josh and Jessica's place with them, Jessica's sister, Jason, and Edna. It had some good laughs, although I think I enjoy
just regular old Mr Show a bit more. Run Ronnie Run is a movie based around a skit on Mr Show. Typically movies based around skits go nowhere, but
this one was definitely above average.