Speaking with a friend of mine via the venerable AIM internet teletype service, we got to speaking about the computer acronym SAN (Storage Area Network). As per usual, I throw that term into Google. I pull up various and sundry unrelated links, but do see a “Sponsored Link” on the side for Broadcom — a network microchip manufacturer. The text of said “Sponsored Link” is as follows:

SAN Solutions

Free e-Book download: “Architecting Next-Generation Networks.”

www.broadcom.com

Architect.
ArchitectING?
“What do architects do?” I wonder aloud. They clearly don’t fricking ARCHITECT. They DESIGN, but they sure aren’t ARCHITECTING all damn day long. Man. I swear. I know that our beloved English language has morphed into what it is by relatively similar idiot moves, but here is to hoping that this unfortunate mutation of turning nouns into verbs gets EVOLUTIONED into EXINCTIONING itself.

…i apologize to you, Led Zeppelin. i had forgotten the rock that you brought by not listening to you in some time.

Just listen to the rhythm seciton on “Celebration Day” and tell me that John Bonham wasn’t the greatest rock drummer of his day and John Paul Jones the greatest rock bassist of his day — perhaps only matched by Keith Moon and John Entwistle from the Who.

this is quite geeky, but i’ve just completed a set of benchmarks for the webserver that this (and a few other) domains run on. I use Apache and PHP as the scripting language, and so I thought I’d try out Turck MMCache, a PHP optimizer. It did a good job with some of the slower sites on this box, like Louisville Soaring, but only showed marginal improvement on thelocust.org. Lost In Louisville is the reigning champ for speed, tho’, as it is completely static HTML.

Check out my results.

or so the internet would have you believe. kelly has recently become quite fond of The State alum Michael Ian Black, and whilst watching Queer Eye, I told Kelly that he was, in fact, “as gay as the day is long”. Of course, it now being winter, that was a complete and total lie. But, I figured I’d do my due digital diligence, and did a little research. Here is what I found:

Interview @ Kittenpants.org – a good one, too!

Michael Ian Black’s articles @ McSweeneys.net – McSweeneys is a great site, and the title of Black’s latest article is “Have You Ever Eaten a Baby?”.

Finally, go and check out StateMedia.net, where they have EVERY sketch by The State, organized by episode, and you can even download the stuff. Awesome. Also, the Kittenpants article hints at a DVD set! Oh my. I’m excited.

Oh, and Black *isn’t* gay, but he did play one on TV. Kelly just likes him because he looks like Jeff Davis, anyway, which is just weird, ’cause Black is WAY HOTTER.

(btw, did you notice that i said “played one on TV”. that’s an odd turn of phrase, really, like being gay is a profession or akin to being a different species)

I have made a short film entitled “the transformation of the dirtiest of hippies”. you may view it, if you’d like:

Smaller (181k)

Bigger (681k)

enjoy.

…so, the other day I decided to whip my MP3 collection back into shape with a better organization and naming convention, and to put good ID3 (v1 and v2) tags into them. The organization/naming convention I chose is as follows:

Artist/

 Album/

  Artist – Album – Track# – Title.mp3

Various Artists/Compilation/Soundtrack albums pose a different problem, so this file-level naming convention is a bit different:

Album – Track # – Artist – Title.mp3

I think that works out well. Any ideas?

I haven’t posted in terribly too long, but it’s been the holiday season, and I’ve been busy with family and work and some freelance stuff, and of course flying RC sailplanes! I just recented discovered slope soaring, and have had a blast the last two weekends down at the Frankfort slope.

I’m going to get a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40 gig MP3 player for Christmas, and I’m psyched! My nearly 4 year obsession with portable jukeboxery come to fruition!

Things coming up include my and Kelly’s Christmas Day Oasis at our house, and Gary returns from Japan for a short while, and I think I’ll HOPEFULLY be launching the newly redesigned thelocust.org soon. Don’t hold your breath, please.

retrieved from the WayBack Machine Archive of LostInLouisville circa Nov 2003…

incomplete, and in no particular order:

OutKast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
If only for the line “I don’t want to meet your daddy / I just want you in my caddy / I don’t want to meet your momma / I just want to make you cumma”. I can’t agree more with Rocko that Andre 3000 is the next incarnation of James Brown, Rick James, and Prince — but for my generation. I never felt much of a connection to any of the former — they were all fairly epic and troubled characters as I was growing up, but I heard echoes from long ago of guys that loved everything about women and made everyone dance and fall into freaky-ass love. Then they were either in jail, torturing hookers, or prostletizing. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to our man Andre 3000. Big Boi’s album “Speakerboxxx” provides and a good counter-weight to Andre’s “The Love Below”, and these albums don’t get old when set on shuffle. (Side note: I love “She’s Alive”. It’s a love-letter to his single mother, I think. Nonetheless, it’s compelling and well-placed)

The Postal Service – Give Up
When folks ask me what this sounds like — I say “emo lyrics with electric beats”, and you’d think I’d just stepped on their toe and shoved a herring in their now-gaping maws. Seriously — this stuff is really great — so great that the real Postal Service has forced them to change their name.

The White Stripes – Elephant
I don’t need to tell you how much I love this album, you already know it. I will say this — I’m glad they are sticking to their guns and keeping up the whole red/white brother/sister thing. I really am. There are plenty of people out there who think they need to add some depth to their albums, or change their setup in some way — and while I think that has some merit — I think it would ruin this whole wonderfully concocted image they have. Jack has mentioned that they maybe have one more album in them, and I hope they do call it quits after that. The whole two-person thing doesn’t scale real well in big venues anyway.

Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlantacism
First, I love the album cover. Birds are great. Secondly, Gibbard is genius of giving good hooks to his music — so much of what other lo-fi sensitive-boy music is lacking. I envy him. See also: The Postal Service

My Morning Jacket – It Still Moves
My first real exposure to these local lads. All that forced listening to Boston and Kansas in my youth was not for naught! “It Still Moves” makes me realize what was good about that music. And you laughed at me for liking Lynyrd Skynyrd!

Skip James – Today
I’ll admit that the first time I heard a Skip James song (actually sung by Skip James) was while watching Wim Wender’s The Soul of a Man — one of the films in PBS’ The Blues series. This record was one of Skip James’ last records — recorded shortly after his surprising re-appearance at the 1964 Newport Folk festival gives new meaning to the “High and Lonesome”. His falsetto singing style and his solo style lend such depth to these remarkably clear recordings.

Anyone else? I’m looking for new stuff to listen to.

i’m in the process of getting thelocust.org’s DNS registered with a cheaper, faster company that eNom, so we may experience some discomfort in the near future!

I fooled around with jpg2asc (jpeg to ascii converter) today, and also with manipulating the output with CSS to make it look right… well, here are the results. pretty cool stuff, tho’ the original image is 6k and the asciified version is 25k!