Learning Letters application v2
I have added 2 new modes (and better letter graphics) to the Learning Letters application.
Sounds by me and Juliana. :)
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August 31, 2003
August 30, 2003
Take that, Metroid Fusion!
I was never a big metroid fan. Never had anything against, it, but many other NES games kept me busy. Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Kid Icarus, Castlevania to name a few.
Maybe I never had time (or took the time) for Samus and her fight.
Bill lent Metroid Fusion to me last saturday and after 6:44 of gameplay and 51% of the items found, I have beaten the omega metroid.
The game is great, and not just because I have been playing it on my new GBA SP. The graphics are nice and the cut scenes have great 2D art and simple animation. The hardest thing about the game for me is the control of the character. I think i am just used to slower paced games, so when I needed to use the L button to aim diagonally, it was very very jerky. The beauty of this game, however, is in the patterns. Samus acquires new weapons and you need to learn some new moves. Bosses are like puzzles where the goal is to decipher the movements and wait for safety or move in to attack.
All in all, I enjoyed this game from the second I turned it on right up to the very end.
Technorati down. :(
Just when i was getting ready to open up Net::Technorati (assuming someone else hasn't started already), the Technorati servers are unreachable. Feh.
August 29, 2003
MT Plugin idea
For the talk (but useful in general, I think), I am going to make an MT plugin that looks for patterns that look like CPAN module names. If they are there, it will change them into a link to the homepage for the module on the CPAN.
Mech Hack script input prompt test post.
Ok.
I have hacked the WWW::Mechanize MT hack so that it properly follows the F(*$ing javascript redirects. It also asks for input. Yay.
I basically want a shell script so I can do this at a prompt (where i am most of the day):
mtpost
title
entry
Nice and quick. Nothing really to fire up except for perl, but that is lickety split here.
WWW::Mechanize hack (the saga continues)
OK. I think I nailed it.
WWW::Mechanize hack
How many javascript onload events do they need?!?!?!
TOO MUCH DAMN JAVASCRIPT
So. I am putting together the materials for my blogging talk and am reminded of another crappy thing about movable type.
When you post, the next page loads up a page telling you about your pings. Then it goes to another page that tells you about rebuilding. And so on.
All of this is done with onLoad events from the body tag. This makes the little task of posting with titles AND categories via WWW::Mechanize a little more difficult. After i make the post, I have to use a regexp to pull out the URL from the onLoad and then make a request and then use a regexp to pull out the URL. At least 2 more pages are needed to finish posting. That is ridiculous. The APIs do not let you specify a category without a separate request. Feh.
Anyway, here are the examples I was talking about:
WWW::Mechanize examples
WWW::Mechanize hack
How many javascript onload events do they need?!?!?!
August 27, 2003
WWW::Mechanize hack (from examples)
This post comes from Dan Rinzel's WWW::Mechanize MT hack. I want to integrate this with some of the XML-RPC interfaces to make a more complete posting tool.
metaWeblog extended entry test
I have so much to say...
that i couldn't fit it all in one entry.
simple newPost Really simple post
simple newPost
Really simple post using blogger.newPost (published this time, hopefully).
simple newPost Really simple post
simple newPost
Really simple post using blogger.newPost
Net::Blogger MT metaWeblog test
removed appkey param. should work no prob.
Net::Blogger MT metaWeblog test
post body goes here. A real version of this script would probably ask the user for some input, or at a minimum accept it from STDIN.
August 24, 2003
blogging talk outline v1
I have the first outline put together for my upcoming blogging talk.
Any comments are appreciated.
Any comments are appreciated.
What is a Blog?
Slashdot
Use.perl.org journals
High School Diaries
What software exists for setting up a blog?
Hosted Services
Blogger
http://www.blogger.com/
Now owned by google, integrates with Google Toolbar v2.0
Can also post to your server via FTP.
LiveJournal
Services that can be installed on your own server
Blosxom
http://www.blosxom.com/
Simple, no DB required and a single file can run the site.
Template based
MovableType
Template Based
GreyMatter
http://www.noahgrey.com/greysoft/
Slash
http://slashcode.com/
How can I use perl to post to my site?
Blogger API
The original
Movable Type Extended API
Net::Blogger
Net::Blogger::MovableType
MT.pm
Alternative Interfaces
Cell Phones
Email
Instant Messenger
What APIs are out there to find out who is talking about my site?
Trackback
Technorati
Good Ol' Fashioned Google
link:http://www.yoursitehere.com/
How can I syndicate my site or find out when other people have updated their sites?
HEAD
RSS/RDF
0.9.1
1.0
2.0
What does the future hold?
Echo/ATOM API
Syndication formats?
Semantic Web?
Questions?
August 21, 2003
sonic youth video
i have finally posted the sonic youth video from the goose island fest. There is no sound because i shot this with my coolpix 990.
There are 4 versions:
320x240 sorenson
320x240 mpeg-4
240x180 sorenson
240x180 mpeg-4
August 20, 2003
Testing from Net::Blogger::Engine::Movabletype (again)
Testing from Net::Blogger::Engine::Movabletype (again)
August 16, 2003
goose island festival
Chad and I went to the goose island music festival last night. The concert was held at the A. Finkl & Sons steel factory. Right by the river @ Southport & Clybourn in Chicago. The lineup was Yakuza, the Waco Brothers, Bob Mould, Guided By Voices and Sonic Youth.
Yakuza: dunno. drinking.
Waco Brothers: eh. ok. drinking.
Bob Mould: I don't know of many performers that can hold together an entire show with just themselves on guitar (12 string acoustic, and then an electrict). His voice is amazing. Lots of performers sound like garbage without the studio engineers, but Bob's voice carried across the entire factory, sounding as good, if not better than his albums. I made Chad a Bob Mould fan last night. Oh, and also some drinking.
Guided By Voices: Great music. Robert Pollard is a total cock-rocker, though. I am not up enough on this band to know if he really thinks he is as cool as he wanted to be, or if he is just an asswipe. Some choice lines, "Are you ready to rock and roll?" "We are gonna fight on, right on!" "Maybe if you're lucky I'll take my dick out for you!" The band was really great, musically, but fuck that guy. We spent half of their set in the food tent eating quesadillas from Fronterra grill. And drinking. My flask was drained of all it's beautiful Knob Creek by this point.
Sonic Youth: I have waited 10 years to see them. I am a moron for not doing it sooner, but oh well. These guys are old (except for Jim O'Rourke, but he is knew). Lee Ranaldo has grey/white hair and a craggy face. But unlike when I saw Wire at the Metro a couple of years ago, or when I saw the Stones on HBO, their age does nothing to damper the sound or energy of the music. Songs I only kinda liked from NYC Ghosts & Flowers and Murray Street sounded better than I could have imagined. And some of the older material (Catholic Block from Sister and Expressway to Yr Skull from EVOL) were great as well. The show ended with a 15 minute version of Expressway. I couldn't have asked for a better night. Well, Teenage Riot would have been great, but they did play Skip Tracer and 100%.
Best $25 I have spent in a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Pictures and a 1 minute video clip of SY to come..........
August 14, 2003
pics of juli's new art kit
Here are the pics of juli's cool new art kit. She has been having a blast with it.
August 13, 2003
juliana's big win
I put juliana's name in to a raffle jar for a pretty nice art kit at the Bartlett Art Fair on Sunday. On monday morning I recived a call that she had won the kit! The contest was sponsored by kidzartIL, a national program that has a local branch here in Bartlett. The kit has oil paints(bad), acrylic paints(bad), watercolors (messy, but doable), markers (she loves 'em), colored pencils (great) and pastels (messy, but doable). She has been loving it. I will post some pics up in a bit.
August 12, 2003
Hi All!In my quest to
Hi All!
In my quest to improve my perl blogging talk, I have installed bloggerbot from http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot/.
It seems good, even if I had to fix a couple of bugs in the downloadable source AND install stuff to a mysql DB just to post. Annoying. But I guess if I have the wherewithal to set up an AIM bot to post to my site, then I probably won't have any trouble adding a db and some tables to mysql.
August 11, 2003
random postings
i will be testing out some alternative interfaces for movable type here, so bear with me for a short string of pointless entries.
And, yes, I am aware of my audience size, so Bill, this message is for you.
project greenlight is some funny stuff
I always had an idea about how much of a clusterfuck making a feature film really is, but HBO's project greenlight solidified it for me. Take some amateur/independent filmmakers, give them a million dollars, and tell them that they have to produce a sellable feature film in a really short period of time.
check out their site for more details, I won't rehash the concept here.
The production of The Battle of Shaker Heights seems troubled, if you watch the show. The movie also seems overly dramatic and cheesy at times. Last night, they showed a conference call with the Miramx marketing department that re-arranged the direction of the editing. The text from the marketing pitch sounds just like the trailer for the movie that is showing now. The trailer looks really, really funny, too. I am shocked. The humor seems to be going for a sort of Rushmore quirkiness.
The decision by commitee, the sheer amount of people needed to execute anything, makes me wonder why people go to all that trouble.
But then I watch a movie and I remember why. I love DV filmmaking, but seeing a magnificent film is like seeing nothing else. Not that the project greenlight film is magnificent, i'm just saying. I can understand why people go through all of this mess to make films.
hi there
hi there
(posted via Net::Blogger::MovableType)
August 10, 2003
bartlett art fair
i took juliana to the first annual bartlett art fair today.
It was your standard small town art fair. lots of landscapes and pottery.
However, the Bartlett High School photography department had a pretty great show. I spoke to their teacher for a little while and the program is pretty impressive. 6 levels of classes. I had to pretty much weasel my way into the newspaper at my school to get into the darkroom. Once I had the in, though, it was pretty sweet. I had a key to the darkroom and pretty much spent my senior year of high school in the darkroom.
I want to get the teacher at the Bartlett program in touch with the director of Flatfile, so the students can check out the gallery and talk to some "real" artists. Ha.
August 9, 2003
balloons - fixed!
Fixed the start position problem and added some really lame clouds. :)
perl blogging techniques talk
I am giving a talk next month at the chicago.pm meeting on perl blogging techniques.
The following topics will be discussed:
1) blogs as webservices
2) blogs for syndication (RSS/RDF)
3) mobile blogging (with kpix & the skog as examples)
if anyone would like to give me a second (or third) set of eyes on the talk before I give it, it would be greatly appreciated!
balloon demo 2
added some alpha channel goodness and real art!
There is still a bug where some images will "pop" on to the screen. not cool. working on a fix.
August 4, 2003
weirdness with mod_perl
if i switch the site over to mod_perl I start getting errors about not finding modules. Different modules each time, too.
probably chalking this up to mod_perl ignorance, but we shall see.....
Blankets, by Craig Thompson
I just finished Blankets, by Craig Thompson, author of Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It was good. So good, that when I put it down after 250 pages last night, and tried to go to sleep, I had to get up and finish it. I will have to read it again, but for now, it is still all soaking in. The artwork is fabulous, the story is incredibly rich and touching and true.
The story flits between childhood and highschool, first love and Bible camp, and the fear of finding your own identity. There is no sentimentality in this book. The love is real, and passionate, and ultimately fleeting. The exhiliaration the main character feels leaps off the page and into the reader. The lows are crushing.
---------------------------------------------------------
I need to read the book again. Give it a little more time to soak in.
As an aside, I used part of Goodbye, Chunky Rice in the introduction to an article I wrote a coupla years back: Comics Vs. the Net: Can Comics as We Know Them Last Forever?. Not a bad article. ;)
Bill Plympton's Mutant Aliens
If you have never seen anything by Bill Plympton, that is sad. Unless you are easily offended. In which case it is a blessing.
Yesterday, I watched his Mutant Aliens. Ya gotta love a movie where the protagonist is forced to make an army of mutants in space to reap revenge on his evil boss..by having sex with discarded nasa space animals. Ah........nothing but class.
Plympton is working on a new animated feature called Hair High. There is a webcam on his drawing board, too!
I Married a Strange Person is great, too, with lots of funny songs and lewd jokes.
28 days later
i headed to the beautiful machesney park mall to see 28 Days Later. Actually, the machesney park mall is not particularly beautiful, but we did have some time to play marvel vs. capcom in the abandoned arcade. bill is good at fighting games. Me, not so much. He beat me with a controller that didn't quite work. That means I suck.
But, speaking of things that don't suck, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was much better than I expected. I had only heard one review (from Fresh Air on NPR - {archived show}) that said it had a little extra. That was definitely true. The gore was much less than I thought, and the horror came more from the humans in the movie than the zombies.
The first 6 minutes of the movie are up on apple's trailer site.
The DV look of the film is much better in the darker scenes than in the bright scenes as far as edges and detail goes, but the color of the film is a great mix of dark, bland, and bright light.
The alternate ending that was shown was ok, but didn't seem to keep up with some of the themes in the movie, but it was neat to see a DVD-ish feature in the theater. Well, maybe not neat, but interesting.