April 2005

2005-04-30T11:01  Every once in a while I'll post classic chessthecat.com content for the benefit of my RSS feed.  Let's start with  If I Were President. 

2005-04-30T08:16  I've walked by Bryant Park on 5th and 42nd (right behind the Public Library) a hundred times.  What I didn't realize is that it's a free wireless hotspot, has a public bathroom that was voted the best in America, is not taxpayer funded, and dates back to 1686.  This park really is incredible: chess tables, movable chairs, and a reading room!  People are encouraged to make the park their office.  Only in New York. 

2005-04-30T08:09  Amazon compiles lists of what Early Adopters are buying.  Pretty neat when you're looking for electronics or music.  Not so interesting when you're browsing houseware.  Seems hipsters love the Rubbermaid 18 cubic foot storage shed.

2005-04-30T08:07  Wickedly cool satmap of the US Air Force's airplane graveyard. 

2005-04-30T08:03  Some cute screenshots from the Hitchhiker's Guide BBC show which I'm ashamed to say, I haven't seen.  After seeing how they handled Zaphod I'm ready to snap this baby up today.  At least they didn't cop out on the second head issue like the producers of the movie did.

2005-04-30T08:01  Google's homepage circa 1998 courtesy the Internet Archive.

2005-04-30T07:56  CBS needs to update the Survivor site already.  (And yes, I understand you have to add the season number but Google doesn't which is how I found the link.)

2005-04-29T18:04  I was watching Star Trek the other day and it was the one where Data said he had an ultimate storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits.  But what does that mean exactly?  Thanks to the Google Calculator I now know it to be 90000 terabytes or 88 petabytes.  Not too shabby.  That's a lot of MP3s.  For comparison the Internet Archive is currently at 1 petabyte and grows at the rate of a LOC a month!   Why does Data need all that space?  Don't forget, he held the memories of all those people.  So then, how much data can I store?  Turns out, the human brain has been estimated to be able to store 100 terabytes of information.  Others believe its capacity to be functionally infinite.  In other words, you can always find space to squeeze in more information. 

2005-04-29T06:56  Monster 20 page review of OS X Tiger.  Check out video of the Dashboard.  Gorgeous screenshot here.

2005-04-29T06:52  American Idol hopeful  Bo Bice was arrested for cocaine possession in 2001.

2005-04-28T06:15  A nice collection of comic book ads.  Remember the Polaris Nuclear Sub ad?

2005-04-28T06:14  How's this for a band name:  No, It's the Good Swastikas.  And you've got to read the writeup.  "The reinvention of walking through walls."  Nice.

2005-04-28T06:09  US Mint believes third time is the charm; is getting set to try again with a dollar coin.  This time it may actually hold because they'll feature every president who ever served.  Gotta catch 'em all!

2005-04-28T06:07  Darth Vader gets pulled over for not wearing his seatbelt.  With a lol pic.

2005-04-28T06:05  How could Constantine get voted off?  My reasons for watching American Idol are quickly disappearing.  Is there a conspiracy afoot to ensure that Scott wins it all?

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2005-04-27T22:35  Won't someone help this poor beast? 

2005-04-26T17:55  From last night's Garbage show.  Stars snapped the pic.

2005-04-24T22:42  Wasn't going to post this originally but now that I've played it I feel I have to.  "Guess the Google."  It's a game where you have to guess the GIS search term that produced the given results.

2005-04-24T19:36  You knew I had to post about this mess.  The logo for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.  Now, I'm pumped about the games coming to Canada.  Stars and I may even head down there and try to see something.  It'd be great.  But what's not great is this lame logo.  I thought the games were in Vancouver so why are they busting out this Arctic-themed logo?  It's crazy.  Wouldn't a stylized totem pole have been more appropriate?  There's tons of great art to steal from the Haida and the Tlingit.  That way you'd still be able to illustrate the idea that these are Canada's games but also represent BC and Vancouver.  Don't get me wrong, I love the colors and the logo for what it is; I just don't think it's suitable.  I dunno.  Call me crazy but choosing an Inukshuk is like choosing to open the Calgary Stampede with poutine instead of steak.  And what's with that name?  Ilanaaq?  Oh yeah, the kids'll love that.

2005-04-24T14:04  Finally dug into Viva La Bam! Season 3. The best episode so far has been "Fort Knoxville" because it features Johnny himself.  He's been away for so long.  Is The Ringer ever going to be released?  Anyway, the episode opens with Johnny using a reciprocating saw to convert Bam's Hummer into a convertible which provokes an inevitable Prank War.  Officially, it ended in a tie but if it were my call I'd give it all to Johnny.  "A Tacky Wakeup" alone wins it for me.

2005-04-22T08:29  I love shopping online.  I love the convenience.  I started thinking "What have I bought online?"  A half dozen books, a load of DVDs, CDs, 45s, and Gamecube games. I've bought comics, tickets to see the Yanks and Jays, and software like PSP and CuteFTP.  I've bought 5 domains, an ethernet card and a router.  I've booked car rentals, hotel rooms, and airline tickets.  I've bought tickets to see concerts, a barcode scanner, and a brochure on how to survive the atomic bomb.  I've even had digital photos developed through Ofoto.  Finally, I've bought around 20 chicken dinners and a dozen pizzas too.  My point?  I really like to compose lists of things.

2005-04-2208:14   Remember the "Credit Card Prank?"  Well, now's there a part 2.  He finally manages to get someone to check his signature too.  It only took buying three plasma TVs to do it.

2005-04-2208:10  Remember how cool the G4 Cube was?  Here's how to turn your G5 into a G5 Cube.  Super cute.

2005-04-2207:49  Transparent duct tape!  There has to be serious pranking potential with this product.  I only wish I had this before I "repaired" my wrist rest.

2005-04-2106:50  Straight from the tag-board to my blog:  Doc let me know that McFarlane Toys has acquired the action figure license for Napoleon Dynamite.  Sweet!

2005-04-21T06:49  Can't remember if I mentioned Shoot Me An Email before.  If you need a reminder they'll send you an e-mail.  It's really handy; I use it quite often.

2005-04-21T06:46  Peter Hirschberg's home arcade will make you weep.  He's even got a bill changer.  And Sea Wolf!

2005-04-19T17:21  lol.

2005-04-19T17:18  Habemus papum!

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2005-04-18T06:59  Hee hee.  Bostons used to be a lot bigger than they are now but they still think of themselves as big dogs.

2005-04-18T06:45  On a blind date and need a rescue call?  Now you don't even need a friend.  Your carrier is happy to get you out of a jam with a phony call.

2005-04-18T06:44  Loband will turn any website into text only.  Apparently it's a big hit in third world countries where broadband hasn't exactly taken off.  I guess they've haven't heard of Lynx.

2005-04-18T06:43  The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Guide to Blogging Anonymously.

2005-04-17T16:02  All 200 new features in Mac OS X Tiger.  Check out the Font Book.

2005-04-17T14:40  Kasparov was hit over the head with a chessboard in what he's calling a politically motivated attack.

2005-04-17T08:05   Me:  "I'll have a small Coke."   Not Me:  "It comes in a bottle or a can."   Me Thinking:  "Determine which is the smaller size and give me that one."  It's almost like saying you want a small chocolate milk and being told it comes in 250ml or 500ml.

2005-04-16T09:37  T1 General:  Revised.

2005-04-16T07:39  CNN posted an interesting article about what's on iPod One; the President's iPod.  First off, he's got a 20 gig iPod but only has 250 songs on it.  I guess he just missed the Shuffle.  Anyway, he took a little heat because he didn't have any ethnic artists, only one woman artist, no Beatles, and no music older than 25 years.  Which got me to thinking.  What are the demographics of my playlist? 

2005-04-15T21:36  Ruby hurt her paw and she had to go to the Emergency Clinic.  So I drew this picture of her waiting for the doctor.  She's sad.

2005-04-15T21:35  Look at this picture of a Boston's skull I found in a book.  LOOK AT IT!

2005-04-15T09:24  My days of camping out at my postal box ended Tuesday when I received my package from Marcy.   After dusting off the white powder imagine my delight to find not a bomb but all three volumes of Jay's Days!  These books are seriously great.  I'm not just saying that because Marcy's my pal either.  Honest, if I didn't like the books I just wouldn't post about 'em at all.  Jay's Days are reality comics in the vein of American Splendor but with more emotion, more honesty, and more neuroticism.  Be honest, you think Harvey Pekar's kind of boring.  You're right.  (I'm sure Jay is annoyed by the comparisons to Pekar at this point but Pekar is a convenient shorthand for "Reality Comics" for those who may not otherwise be familiar with the genre.  "Chelsea" and try not to cry.  You can't.  And Jay's depictions of drunks, anxiety attacks, and guys getting clocked comprise some of the best artwork ever set to paper.   The only problem is that I stayed up that night reading until 1:00am and now I need more.

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2005-04-15T21:23  Found these on Flickr by searching for "Tivoli".

2005-04-15T21:22  A fan at last night's Yankees-Sawks game posts pics of Sheffield from his camera phone.  Thanks Waxy.

2005-04-15T21:22  Why China has a long way to go before they can even think about being number one economically.  I'll save you the suspense: it won't happen in our lifetimes.

2005-04-15T21:20  Dead pixels are a huge problem with the PSP.  But Sony telling customers to live with them is a bigger problem.

2005-04-15T17:15  A-Rod busts it out like Spiderman and saves a little boy's life by pushing him out of the way of a speeding truck.

2005-04-12T18:36  My favoritest video games...ever!

2005-04-12T06:54  In Japan, you can watch a cartoon version of real baseball games on your cellphone.  The games are converted to animations to save bandwidth but are accurate as to what's happening on the field right down to the crowd noise.

2005-04-11T17:15  Here's a guy who claims to have written a program that allows you to drag and drop MP3s onto your iPod Shuffle.  I haven't tried it because according to the author it may screw up iTunes in such a way that it will no longer recognize your iPod.  (Besides, iTunes is already a great way to load music onto your iPod.)  It was a chore getting my Shuffle to work in the first place but if you're brave and want to try it you can download it here. 

2005-04-11T07:03  Gunner Palace.  A documentary about the soldiers in Iraq sans politics.

2005-04-11T07:01  The NHL plans to up the number of teams that make the playoffs to 20.  What's the point of the race for the Cup if 70% of teams make it?

2005-04-11T07:00  What is the origin of the term Devil's Advocate?

2005-04-11T06:58  Everything I ever needed to know I learned from professional wrestling.

2005-04-11T06:56  Revenge of the Sith to be the first Star Wars movie rated PG-13?

2005-04-10T14:37  Corollary to the below:  chessthecat.com now provides an RSS feed for your subscribing pleasure.  Who knows what fun will appear there?

2005-04-10T13:54  RSS in plain English.  No need to thank me.

2004-05-10T07:55  Things that aren't in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.  Also includes two discouraging reviews.

2004-05-09T07:29  The Hitachi "Get Perpendicular" song.  Only for the extremely geeky.

2004-04-09T06:51  50,560 fans packed the Rogers Centre last night for the Jays' home opener against the Sawks.   Wisht I was there.

2004-04-09T06:45  I can't believe it.  MGM and UA sold.  Both studios dismantled, their libraries stripped and distributed to the likes of Sony's affiliates.  Half my movie collection is MGM titles.  It's the end of an era. 

 
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2005-04-07T17:59  Here are a couple of snaps I took of the demolition of the Tivoli.  I worked in that building for 3 years.  There's a roll up door in the second photograph.  I stood in that archway for hours at a time talking to Jeff, Ken, and Marcy.  Good times.  Sorry about how dark the first photo is.  There's no way my dinky flash was going to light that up.  Looking through the front door is like staring into the Titanic.

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I can see my house from here!
Industrial piers	My old grade school

2005-04-07T17:39  Some interesting satellite images courtesy Keyhole which, unfortunately, was recently acquired by Google.

2005-04-07T17:38  Carl the Garden Gnome on vacation.  Stars' sister gave us a garden gnome to take with us to England last year.  The plan was to photograph him on vacation with us as a present for their dad.  Unfortunately, we didn't get too many shots of the gnome.  But being the enterprising people they are, Stars and her sis decided to photoshop him into our holidays.  Better than I could do ladies, and I took 2 years of Photoshop.  lol.

2005-04-07T17:37  Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from Lego.

2005-04-07T17:19  More nonsense from Google.  They've launched Google Answers.  Give it a try!  lol.  What a joke.

2005-04-06T22:53  AIEIEIEIEIEIEIEEEEEEEEE!  I promise to take a ton of pictures!

2005-04-06T22:11  Anyone else notice that Google is broken?  I tried searching for the band the Stars and couldn't find anything.  Then I tried to find out who wrote Mandy and same deal.  It's because Google has been neglecting their search engine to work on junk like Google Suggest and Google Weather.  It all started after the IPO.  Remember when Google focused on their search engine technology?  Yeah, me neither.  Ah well, at least we have Google Sets!  Google's turning into a jack of all trades and master of none.   A collection of party tricks.  Back to Yahoo! I guess.  Update 2005-04-07T07:29  So I got to thinking:  Are Yahoo!'s search results still powered by Google?  Turns out they are but they do display the results differently and they also blend the results with their own.  At any rate, I searched Yahoo! for the Stars and not only found their website, but found this article by a guy who had the exact same problem I did:  Google couldn't help find the Stars.  The only difference being he sees the solution as having bands name themselves "something Googleable" whereas my solution is to fix Google.  As I say, Yahoo! found the information I needed no problem or else I wouldn't be writing this now.

2005-04-06T21:53  A remake of the Bad News Bears?  I don't know.  There's no way it can be better than the original.  And it can't be half as dark.  I mean how many movies feature a guy throwing a beer in an 11 year old girl's face in anger? That movie rocks so hard.  I'll probably end up seeing the remake anyway. 

2005-04-05T07:25  I noticed the Litany of the Saints was performed yesterday as they brought the Pope's body into the Basilica.  I love the Litany of the Saints.  Of course, until yesterday I had only ever heard it in English; not Latin.  You can find it in English and Latin here.   The CNN announcer said "This is where they name all the saints."  lol.  Yeah, all 10,000 named saints.  That's what they do. 

2005-04-03T07:10  So the Yankees spanked the Bosox 9-2 last night on Opening Night.  Watching the Sox now, it reminded me a bit of Who's the Boss.  You watch Who's the Boss and the whole time you want to see Tony and Angela together.  But when they finally did get together the show stunk and viewers tuned out.  Now that the Sox have a World Series under their belt the fans realize that they've lost something too.  Be careful what you wish for.  Ah well, they're not scheduled to win again until 2090.  I'm sure by then Red Sox Nation will be back in full force.

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2005-04-02T22:08  Listen up true believers!  How many people can say their comic collection has Stan Lee Presents...The Pope!  I bought this when I was probably in grade 4 or 5 from the Cathedral of Christ the King.  And according to the cover it cost me the princely sum of $1.50!  Dang, I was buying issues of Uncle Scrooge for like a quarter!  It really is a good book though.   If I get some time I'll scan the whole thing.  Excelsior! 

2005-04-02T20:01  The NYC itinerary is getting a little crowded: We've got the D-Rays at Yankees, Kramer Reality Tour, Yankee Stadium Tour, Conan (might not make it in; standby only at this point), and comedy at Stand-Up New York (I've seen some great comedians there).  Then you've got all the shopping of course: Manhattan Portage, the 2 storey Apple Store, the chess shops down near Washington Square, the Colony, all the vintage shops in the Village and SOHO, FAO, and whatever other shop you may see on the street.  Then you've got your eating to cover.  I like diners personally so I'm sure we'll hit Monk's while we're visiting St. John the Divine up on 112th, then there're all the restaurants on 9th Avenue, Mars 2112 for a laugh, gotta hit the caf' at the W63rd St. Y for a little room service, Little Italy for some spaghet'.  Sis is seeing the Get Up Kids before Stars and I even arrive in town.  I'm gonna get blackfoot for sure.

2005-04-02T19:57  "In the glorious year of 1982, we took the bold step of getting permission from England to amend our constitution so we could amend our constitution--without getting permission from England.  Let freedom ring!  Now the only remnants of the tyrannical rule of Queen Elizabeth II are an appointed "Governor General" who represents her in Canadian governmental affairs.  And the Queen is still officially our head of state.  Plus she's on all our money.  And when we take a government job, we have to swear a loyalty pledge to her.  All in all, a small price to pay for an independence achieved without bloodshed, violence, glory or independence."  Samantha Bee explaining the Canadian system of government in America: The Book.

2005-04-02T19:19  Pope John Paul II 1920-2005.  An amazing man and one of the greatest popes who ever lived.

2005-04-02T08:56  lol.  Just came in the mail.

2005-04-02T07:14  The average price of a Manhattan apartment has topped $1.2 million.

2005-04-01T17:14  What is the purpose of Pepsi?  Seems to me the only reason for it to exist is so that when you ask for a Coke your waiter can say "Is a Pepsi alright?"  No, it dang well isn't alright.  I always respond with "Do you have Root Beer?"  How many times do these restaurants have to hear "No" before they realize maybe it's time to make the switch?  And it never works the other way:  "Is a Coke alright?"  The worst is when they don't ask, assume a Pepsi is okay, and just send one along.  Then you take a sip and realize you've been had.

2005-04-01T07:27  Bettman resigns.  Gretzky to succeed?