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Louis' Blog has Moved (RSS too)

You can still get to my blog via blog.fallingbeam.org, though the actual URL is different, if you even know what that means you'd know how to find it out, but then, you don't need to. My RSS feed has changed to: http://newblog.fallingbeam.org/blog/index.rdf

You can get my new Klip here.

All the content on this site has been imported over to the new blog, so this site will slowly become more defunct. I even managed to import all my blogger.com entries, so everything I've written online in this format is now at the new place. How groovy.

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Buoy

I've been spending the past couple of hours playing around with Movable Type 3. Long story short you can have a look at it here. The annoying thing is that I'll probably not move over because the month archives don't come out right - also I still don't have formatting tools in Opera (*Firefox* does though) which is embarassing since even Blogger has got them now for Opera.

And honestly, I don't see that much of a difference, other than the new styles, which I have to hack rather relentlessly for them to be worth a damn, and which are otherwise quite limited. Thankfully security isn't an issue since I don't bother with comments.

After that I had the pleasure of finding out more about how X-Lite and Phoneconnector don't kiss nice. I'm sure Phoneconnector's tech support are going to get right on it. There's a workaround, but it's annoying and repetitive.

Race

This is from a few days back, but it seems to me that most of the narratives I've seen that deal with kidnapped babies tend to deal, in some way or other, with the narrative of the Lindbergh Baby. Not to mention Donna's dirty secret.

The thing with Will Bailey and Donna is getting me a bit flabbed.

Mininova.org

Because of my recent penchant for posting banners etc. here's one for you:

Unfortunately, if you use Proxomitron like I do, you'll see a blank space.

I weighed whether to make my Opera buttons (which now also occur at the bottom of every page) point to a page other than the "buy opera so they pay me licensing page", but then I figured that the banner in and of itself is advertising already, so the link isn't that big a deal.

Edit: I've noticed a bunch of hits coming in here looking for Mininova, so I thought I'd point you to a post that lists the better torrents sites arond, post-Suprnova/Lokitorrent

Fictional State

Okay, so the West Wing is trying its best to tread as lightly as possible between "keepin it real" and ga-ga-land fantasy. It's okay, and it really does seem like such a small step to take.

I'm now officially wondering whether VOIP is worth it. The problem with BroadVoice and X-Lite is that it requires a hell of a lot of bandwidth, so I effectively have to shut down Azureus just to get decent clarity - though apparently it does end up being the best voice quality possible. The problem with Skype and Phoneconnector is that it's not as idiot proof, even though it does seem much more efficient and probably more forgiving of bandwidth sqeezing.

I might give Skype the chance of running without Azureus - but there's still the issue of the USB port fucking up.

But having now discovered that rates have gone up to 10c a minute to the US, all this just seems like teeth.

Way

I wondered to myself for just a moment before being safe and registering with Do Not Call regardless. There's actually a rather happy way to find out my phone no. without asking. Just hover. But yes, Louis did a little broadside html hacking to put advert links more prominently. I suppose I should move the Klip link higher, but I figure it's fitting where it is, and people who don't read beyond the first entry aren't likely to be bothered anyway.

Sygate Begone.

Ok, so I'm not saying that Sygate is Evil, I'm just saying that it can fuck more things up than it really fixes. As usual any security issues I thought I had was just so much paranoia. At some point I think I'll uninstall ETrust, but it's supposed to be harmless. The MS Spyware detector is okay, so whatever. I've just left Sygate off, so I can be paranoid in the future. And yes, it was Skype that opened up port 443, god knows why it chooses that.

The real problem with Sygate on was that CPU usage spikes. But more importantly it fucked up the latency for VOIP, so Skype was fucking up (it's not so great anyway) and then it led to BroadVoice fucking up. Lots of fucking up for paranoia. The XP firewall is admirably admirable.

I'm getting too happy with drama for headlines. Thought the next logical step is outre Inquirer-land. Smurfing... hilarious.

Broadvoice

I've signed up, so I now have a US telephone no. which you can have if you ask. Haven't had much time to fiddle with it, but it works, so yay. You can use this link if you want to sign up yourself. There's a referral program, but the buttons they have available are really annoying so I'll probably put a text link somewhere when I can be bothered. Apparently that link only works with Firefox and IE. I've complained to Broadvoice about it, as well as about their inadequate browser sniffing.

Aztec, Two-Step, Turandot

Someone clever decided to post a list of overlaps between Sports Night and West Wing. I'm gonna e-mail them with ones I think they missed. Eventually.

Fighting about "going to the hot club"

In both series, relationships break up over the guy being too boring/serious, and the woman wanting too much to be exciting, and go out, be seen, go to the right club etc.

In Sports Night this is what breaks up Natalie and Jeremy in Dana Get Your Gun. On West Wing, this is the background story of Sam breaking up with his fiance Lisa Sherborne in 100,000 Airplanes.

This other one I need to tidy up:

With regards to fathers' adultery as discussed here there's also another theme that runs through boths episodes, that both episodes mention maritime, or celestial navigation (a theme repeated in the title of the WW episode "Celestial Navigation"). Both episodes refer to finding out about the father's adultery as changing everything, and this is compared to something as fundamental as maps changing, or in Jeremy's case, wanting to find out how something happened. This is echoed in Natalie breaking down to Isaac ("And the Crowd Goes Wild) about Jeremy wanting to get his stuff back, and giving the tape to the police, as violating a fundamental principle.

Sess

And so Louis is not crazy, and Diane Warren did write a song for Chicago based on her overhearing a divorced couple (or some such). Look Away. I'm just wondering now who "Don't Turn Around" was originally written for - I suspect that it's Ace of Base, but that blows my mind, and Aswad?

Die Mac Mini, Die.

Since I'm doing this for Eugene right now, I offer this to all comers. A cheap, small, reasonably fast computer. The idea is to offer something that will keep people from the delusion that is the Mac Mini.

AOpen SFF system: $365

Sempron 2600+: $149

2x256 DDR 400: $140

250 gig hard drive: $260

BenQ DW1620 DVD-Writer: $130

This is a pretty good recent generation processor (like the G4), but with double the RAM, 6x the storage, and DVD writing. Software, of course, is free. All for about $895. A mac mini costs $928. If you added the ram, added a much slower Superdrive, and got a mere 80 gig, it would cost $1348.

In both cases you'll still have to supply a keyboard, monitor and mouse.

The AOpen is one of the prettier SFF systems - but best of all it has built in graphics, GeForce 4 MX, granted (which is less powerful that the mac mini), but that just means you can tack on more later. And it's so cheap I could spit. IGP means that you can't clock more than 333mhz, and unfortunately that's what the Sempr0n is at already, so if you want to overclock, you'll have to get a discrete graphics card. If you want to get similar performance to a Mac Mini, you can try this:

GeForce 5500 128ram DVI/Tv-out $105 (This can go much higher, depending what you want)

But remember, the IGP already comes with dual monitor and S-Video. You could even go for more RAM instead of better graphics, if gaming isn't the biggest issue.

Caveats include the fact that you can't add extra internal hard drives, but that's the same with the mac. No DVI with the IGP.

Louis takes no commission. This is a public service. I'd probably charge if you were a friend of a friend though.

MSN Messenger Beta

I hate nothing more than people who use their "usernames" on MSN to put anything other than their name. Thankfully, the new beta shows that Microsoft feels my pain. You can actually broadcast a headline along with your username, as a kind of subtitle. Hopefully, i won't need to keep having to view contacts by e-mail address. You also get more integration of the avatar into the contact list, so you see thumbnails which can be small or large. I enlarged my contact list just to take advantage of this - it's a nice touch.

These are links to places that will give you everything you need, the installers, and patches to get rid of all the crap. This is a leaked beta, and you should know what you're doing if you want to install it. www.mess.be www.mastaline.com

MPAA FUD-spreading liars: who knew?

Paranoia begone.

Scratch

Getting more convinced that DVD rips aren't the same quality as HD rips. Finding Aphex Twin rather convincing. Ambient thing seems rather enjoyable, and quiet without being melancholy, which is a plus. Now starting to wonder if getting Boomtown was a mistake. More and often. Perhaps. Some things, however, are just too scribbly, and you get the feeling that you're just scratching.

My Wedding Day

I suppose I could write about the vague watchability of Boomtown, mostly because of the parables it spins. Just tad. I've just said that I've been trying to watch funnier things recently, and that's pretty true. The noodle place people recognise me now. It's probably worse at night with no people and no activity. And if I shower now, I won't sleep for a while yet, which doesn't seem so attractive to me. But my Lacey Chabert's grown up into a babe hasn't she? Less distinctive features, but such come hither hair. Though really it just might have been the same strategy as Mary McCormack, being Mary Louise Parker. Bonnie Hunt just seems so rife with insecurity, an ooze of vulnerability.

Totem: Drink my daddy's wine

Come behold Prudence

Inadvertent

I just realised there's probably a reason that the MPAA put its prints all over lokitorrent.com and torrentstop.com (the subsidiary), but you just get a plain old 404 on mufftorrent.com.

Slashdot: Opera Fastest Browser

Gasp. Where have all the Firefox Fanboys gone? To bite my shiny metal ass.

RSS and Economist

Just to inform people who don't already know, RSS stands for, amongst other things Really Simple Syndication. It basically allows you read newsfeeds, to view headlines and some extra text, normally with a link to the full story etc. That's not it's only use, it does many things, including notification of new torrents/blog posts etc.

The RSS feed for my blog is this: http://blog.fallingbeam.org/blog/index.rdf

Though you could have found that at the bottom right of the main blog page, under syndication.

A convenient way to read RSS feeds is to use Opera, which uses its mail client to read feeds. 8 Beta even notifies you in the address bar when a page has a feed. Personally I prefer Klipfolio, made by Serence. I even have my own customised Klip (also linked on blog and site front pages). You can add any feed url you want to Klipfolio by making copies of Feed Viewer. Klipfolio has tonnes of preset and ready made klips for things from weather, stocks, news, to Hotmail/Gmail inbox feeds etc.

TVtorrents, at www.tvtorrents.ws (currently, they keep moving), has its own custom app to auto download and launch torrents, TVTAD.

The Economist has added it's own RSS feeds just recently. I wonder if the ad-viewing free full access is still in effect.

Suspicious minds think that CNY has proved that cable speed/latency is dependent on the number of users, because there's been quite a bit of crawling from people being home, which alleviates in the wee.

Very Not Laura Nyro

It's just that she uses her sentiment like a bludgeon. Fair enough it's not Alanis, but still annoying. That and the gameshow music.

Wedding Bell Blues

And so the mysticism of Laura Nyro. From what I can hear she seems to be the Carole King of something, her renditions just quiet, sincere, clenching, not the same kind of spunk you hear with the ones that hit. It's probably not more than inevitable that the picting of it should come about, Amy Sherman and Aaron Sorkin, like a ball. It's a kind of plaintive wondrousness to discover these tiny stitchings, when the fabric is blanket and wrapped to everyone else perhaps. And particularly that the scriptor would have been obscured herself by aforementioned spunk. It's a kind of tugging, a kind of happy happy tugging, glad. I suppose a mention of basket weaving would not be out of place in all this. Layers and reusing of old whiskey to retain consistency. Listening with your spine.

Bang the Gong

Sophia Bush and Kristen Bell really look spookily like each other. If only it was called Hermione. Foghat rocks. Seoul Raiders was pretty awful. And like I told Winston, second day's a charm. Someone really needs to assure me that it's not the bloody drivers, and that the underclocking is making things better.

Bite The Drama

Oh my. Marti Noxon must be as concerned with ratings as much as she is with comedy. There's only one word to describe how bad it is. Charmed.

The girl girl dynamic isn't even as interesting or arresting as Hex. The non-blonde one is even slightly better than the locus, but they're all too pretty and blank.

Louis got pwn3d

It was probably the naughty beta (the one that was withdrawn) of MSN messenger 7.

Bang

How many times to they need to get shot? How much trauma do they have to go through? Someone must really have realised that the most fun you can have is people shooting each other up.

Leaving

Ok, wow. They really pulled out all the stops for these guys leaving the series. The Doc thing is absolutely breathtakingly distancing and powerful. Bang. Though really, all the people who are good looking enough to still have a career must have decided to leave.

But really, somewhere along the line someone must have realised that there's only so much you can do with fire, so now it's a cop show with paramedics.

Call for Help

Well, apparently there are reasons why some people get to executive produce. Edward Allen Bernero is now interesting to me. The episode was really rather good, not exactly real-time, but done in extended long shots, nicely timed for the ads. Very detective fiction, a really rather lovelily put together. I suppose if I have to show anyone an episode of Third Watch, this would be it. I wonder if they ask very conscientiously for the actors to retain some fashion of how they speak, because the actors seem to talk a particular way, particularly pronounced with Davis and Monroe.

This really did seem to have a kind of lyricism about it, not surprisingly it felt very much like Before Sunset. What I'd take issue with is the symmetry of the dialogue, too neat, too closed off, too bookended and deliberately and contrivedly rambly - like the establishing and closing shots etc.

Yeah, apparently they just needed to get their stride back, took them till mid-season though.

Oh, and Mimi Leder's episodes of Jonny Zero (actually, most of that show so far) has been so absolutely disappointing. Especially for the fact that they're trying to be Angel, with Burly Guy in need of Redemption, Mouthy Sidekick, and Rescued Girl. The direction relied too much on very blarey music, and felt too much like an action film.

Lost

5th season third watch is a bit poor. I'm going to say they do rather unearned things, and that they try to "dig deep" in to the concept - but just for perspective I used to say that about Aaron Sorkin's West Wing season premieres. It's nice though, following through on a big narrative, a very large tattoo.

I suppose I shouldn't feel funny about people feeling sorry for me - I feel sorry for me :P. I really shouldn't start writing when I'm going to be distracted.

But really, after you hear John Wells (or whoever) talking about how after a while you have to stir the pot, it makes the stirring a bit contrived. And you'd think that there should never be such a thing as a transitional season, though that's what West Wing 5 was, that's what this season feels like. Also the meshing is starting to get really contrived.

Maybe it's just the start of season blues, along with the new, and not terribly engaging, characters. Tia Texada was much more fun when she first came on, and Nia Long is just so yawn inducing it's not true. Also the police storylines can begin to feel like they dominate, probably because they have that much more scope in many ways.

Mary McCormack was really rather fun on Celebrity Poker Showdown. She, like Mary Louise Parker, have people to thank.

Oh, and Jennifer Paige may be coming out with a new album eventually, having moved to the south etc. Yahoo search is good in that they tend to return the official page first.

It's spelt with an E

I get the feeling it would have been an interesting and probably fittingly dramatic feature project, but as a series it seems to stumble quite badly. Sabrina Llyod is still quite fetching, but...

Shippers

I've just discovered this lovely site devoted to the Yokas-Boscorelli relationship. Apparently these people refer to themselves as "shippers".

Yahoo Search isn't bad. It's currently replaced my default search from that other search that's getting backlashed as of now. Opera's editable search.ini is a god-send, as it the search.ini editor - both of which are easily searched for. I'm tired of opening movable type in IE, so I've taken to using Opera's notes to manually edit links.

The Doors

So just to say, if people want to find solace from Chinese New Year, they're welcome to come over. Just remember that you will be required you to bring oranges to bai the stately and matriarchal Prudence. One in each paw. Plenty of prata and mee goreng.

Castles of Sand

I like Faith being special. I suppose it's all a lot more entertaining that I gave it credit for, as long as you get into it. Carlos was pretty Peep Show, but he was undoubtly effective, and not just a little funny a lot of the time.

SOTU Taunting

Those fingers were gloating, not the expression of anything other than spite and bile. Whether wagging of flipping. It's honestly almost obscene that they should feel the need to abuse symbols in this way.

Gryphon House

The gadding tourists abound Beach Rd make me wish I was back in Boston.

Minky

I just had a dream about the Britney Spears dating reality show. It seemed to be a continuation of something. I wasn't doing too well. My father was there somehow trying, on the train, to get his laptop online. I had an overly intellectual conversation with her and it seemed to go really badly, particularly when she didn't quite get me and she didn't know the word "visceral". Apparently Harvey Weinstein was the one producing the show. I also kept being castigated for not taking out my sheets in the morning, so much that I was fined for it later. I had left for some reason and come back to the midst, only find things had changed, and I had to catch up on my journal writing for her. After dozing I went to get paper from the room. In doing so I stumbled upon one of the guys making out with another girl, probably part of the show, an assistant of Britney's. I persisted, however in getting the paper, then told them to carry on. Later I realised that there had been a sock on the door and I had been too sleepy or something to notice. The guy got kicked off. Reminds me of barging into the greek guy's room with his hot girlfriend naked under the sheets, trying to get rizla. The bizarre shift was when we were suddenly in a kind of forum or tribunal questioning a killer, when the guy next to me said, I'm gonna kill him, kill you, then kill myself. I didn't quite hear him, so I asked him to repeat himself, and while he was doing that I wrestled the gun from his hands.

This probably goes up there with the -- as slayer dream.

Sniffy

My apartment smells like fabric softener.

Pretty flowers

And so perhaps Louis should do a kind of TV diary for each day, since that is what Louis does the most each day here.

Currently in freeze frame is the SI Swimsuit Model Search, the (probably) penultimate episode, and I find that they're making me root for Alicia - in a way that says to me this is the choice they want me to make, by stating that clear preference and portraying her narrative as the most compelling. And in such a way that doesn't make me think it's a fake-out. And looking at the shoots, I probably agree.

Project Runway isn't online, but the pictures on the website paint quite nicely the USPS thing that happened, and Austin making his model debut.

Just to mention though, that Louis has reorganised his room, so that the dining table is now right next to the bed, ready to be pulled out for mahjong etc. and the couch is now nearer the kitchen. Most important is that now the route to the toilet is no longer one that has to be traversed with such care.

State of the Union was a bit too showy for me, too much staged, which made the moving portions all the more alienating in retrospect. Immigration is something he seems genuinely to be standing up for, and he did a good job of articulating the need for Social Security reform. The vision of smaller government came out well. The layout of the Democratic response was a bit bizarre.

I'm considering whether to go for another 15" LCD, or should I already be thinking the prices of the 17s are good enough. I'm looking at the entry level 17" DVI from Viewsonic at $469 (all in Sing), or the 15 from Acer at about a hundred dollars less. It would seem to make sense to go for the 17, but first I have questions about how the desktop would span between resolutions, and really, if the S-Video will just clone, whether it's worth it at all to go ahead. Though I really should RMA the CMV one before it's too late. I'll probably just go and take a look at them and make a decision.

Just in passing, Last Train was a bit too reliant on it's OTT scoring, and was very radio watching. Third Watch season 3 similarly.

monkeysgotufty.com

Peep Show

Apparently someone's discovered that self-immolation is funny. All MS all the time. TV Tome, and Channel 4.

How fucked up is the American version going to be?