A couple of years ago, at the urging of Najati, I read Joe Sacco’s account of life in the Palestinian state, aptly entitled “Palestine”. Sacco is an award-winning journalist, which is kind of odd because his medium is not newspaper or television or even radio, but rather the graphic novel. “Comm-ick books” you might say, but if you’d give over an hour or two to read “Palestine,” you’d think differently. “Palestine” details the day-to-day struggles of the ordinary people in the Palestinian state in the early 1990′s (before the most recent intifada) with unusual detail — gritty, gruesome, and often comic.

This time, he has published a short 8-page report from Iraq alongside American troops, entitled
Complacency Kills (32meg PDF). Again, he manages to detail the real-life details of war and its effects on the average person with stark detail and wry humor. Well worth the read.

If you are interested in any of Sacco’s stuff, I highly suggest good ol’ Fantagraphics. Also, here is a good interview with Joe Sacco.

“Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” — Harvey Pekar.

So, I sat down this morning to read through the
>Radio Controlled Soaring Exchange emails that I receive on a daily basis, and noted that there was an obit for a guy named Jef Raskin. His connection to soaring is that he was one of the first guys (perhaps the first) to kit an all-foam “slope-flyer” plane called the “Anabat” in the early 80s. Foam and tape planes are now extremely common in the hobby, and the Anabat was, up until a few years ago, still manufactured.

However, upon reading the press release on his passing I found that he also was an Apple employee (the 31st), and among other things, he invented the “click-and-drag” inteface that we now take for granted. He also apparently named the “Macintosh” after his favorite variety of apple (the McIntosh). Raskin also recently (2000) wrote a book called “The Humane Interface“, which has apparently been well-received as a textbook for interface designers.

Again, this hobby of mine never ceases to amaze me by the amazing people that it attracts. For a great article/interview with Raskin check this out: The Macintosh at 20: Interview with Jef Raskin, by Berkeley Groks, a weekly radio science program in Berkely, CA.

update: Forbes has a nice little article on Raskin — Who Can Really Take Credit For The Mac?, and here is a great link for all-things-Raskin: http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/index.html. That also includes a page on his model airplane designs. Early use of CAD!

further update: Geoff would like to mention that Raskin was also a HAM, as evidenced by this photo with a HF transceiver in the background. A man of many, many geeky hobbies!

As much as I hate to do it — I’m putting my Fender Performer 650 guitar amp up for sale on the eBay. One of my first big purchases ever, I bought this thing when I was 17 new with the help of my mum. It was hell-of-loud, and never turned up past 3 (maybe even 2 1/2). Anywho — doing some research on teh intarweb shows that it was and still is a very well-liked amp, being that it’s so loud and only weighs some 40 pounds, has an effects loop, and has TUBED distortion. Tubes! In this day and age! Of course. Nothing beats vacuum tubes when it comes to powering soul-crushing rock machines.

I found a bunch of reviews for it online, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was and is well-liked, well-reviewed, well-respected and maintains a decent resale value. By the way — if anyone within driving distance (50 miles) of Louisville wants it, let me know. We’ll make a deal and forgo the shipping.

Meanwhile, I want this and one of these.

What it is, cats and kittens! I know I’m posting late for Fat Tuesday, but I made this hell-of-tasty Chicken Sauce Piquant dish for work’s Mardi Gras luncheon last night, and I had to make sure it was a winner before I went public with it.

ben’s chicken sauce piquant

ingredients

• 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/2 cup + 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 2 chopped green bell peppers
• 2 tablespoons minced jalapenos (more or less to your taste)
• 4 regular cans of diced tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons thyme
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• 6 bay leaves
• 2 quarts of chicken stock (either from liquid stock or bouillion cubes)
• salt
• creole seasoning to taste
• crushed red pepper to taste
• fresh ground pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons parsley

Step one: Make the chicken

Put the 4-6 chicken breasts, 2 quarts of chicken stock, 1tbsp thyme, 1tbsp garlic, 1tbsp oregano and 3 bay leaves into a large pot.
Bring to a boil, and then simmer over low heat for an hour, or until chicken juices run clear.
After the chicken is done, remove the breasts from the stock, and shred roughly with a fork.

Step two: Make the sauce piquant

In a sautee pan, heat the 4 tbsps of olive oil over high heat.
Add the onions, green pepper, jalapenos, garlic, thyme and oregano.
Season with salt and pepper to taste (I prefer the pepper).
Saute for two minutes, or at least until the onions turn clear.
Stir in tomatoes, bay leaves, Creole seasoning to taste, pinch of crushed red pepper and 1 quart of the remaining stock.
Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.
Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and transfer this mixture to a blender and drizzle the 1/2 cup of oil into the mix while it’s running.
Transfer to crock-pot or whatever vessel you choose and stir in parsley and chicken.

Voila!

I loosely based this on an Emeril recipe for sauce piquant, but despite my loathing for that guy, I did think in my head “BLAM!” as I threw in the jalapenos. Note: yes, I know he says BAM, but BLAM is much more awesome.

I knew it would come to this some day, but not so soon and in such a form:
Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy (namely chimeraea).

To quote the article: “What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?”

Me? I say NO RIGHTS ONLY WORK. Hunter agrees:

HunterDixon: NEW SLAVE RACE
HunterDixon: giant posters with Darkseid on them
HunterDixon: exes over the eyes
HunterDixon: WORK IS LIFE

So the other day, I was contacted via AIM by a guy named “Jerrod” in Orlando, Florida, asking my permission to use a photo I took of a performance of the “Lysistrata” (with Nick Smith and Ken Troklus of the world-famous Project Improv). Well, today he sent me a PDF of the photo in use on the front page of the indie, the “arts and entertainment section” of the University of Central Florida newspaper. Thanks Google Image Search!

So Kelly and I got new cell phones for Christmas — it had been a long time coming for me, as I was stuck using Kelly’s old phone which, while trust-worthy was feeling quite brickish as of late. So, we got new Motorola V265 phones from a Verizon retailer in Oxmoor Mall. They are cool, small, have long battery lives, and also have little, crappy cameras in them. I’m most pleased with the usability and the battery life of it, but the camera is a nice touch. All that, and we are only paying about $10 more a month and we have beaucoup minutes now. Huzzah!

Now, here’s the rub… (There is always a rub). Verizon had locked down these phones so damned tight! You couldn’t get your photos off of your phone unless you paid Verizon $0.25 to send them via email from your phone. And if you wanted to transfer a background image to your phone, you had to go the same route. You can’t upload games or ringtones or any of the things that you might expect a futurephone such as this would allow. Verizon has that locked down and would like to sucker you at $0.25 a pop. Me, being the meddling user/client/customer that I am did a little research….

Turns out there are a number of pieces of software that can help you with your phone woes — but first you need the phone-to-USB data cable. I found one on eBay for about $8 shipped. Then you have to find a copy of Motorola Mobile Phone Tools (normally $50). One would assume that with the data cable and Mobile Phone Tools, you’d be able to get at your images, right? Wrong! Thanks Verizon! After just a little bit of searching around, I managed to find a very nice walkthrough for getting your photos from a Motorola V265 phone. It requires two further utilities, P2Kman and PST Phone Programmer, which you can also find with a little searching. It requires hacking the software on the phone only slightly, but then you can use Mobile Phone Tools to get your photos off of your phone and upload MP3s for ringtones, image files for backgrounds, etc.

I followed it, only had a little bit of trouble, and eventually got my photos off of my phone and put them into my futurephone image gallery. I also uploaded an image from Achewood as a background image, and as planned, I found and uploaded an MP3 of Kenneth Branagh’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V as my obligatory ridiculous ringtone. Enjoy.

I don’t know why I haven’t made mention of this sooner — but Geoff has released his newest Flash game onto the web. It’s entitled “Urban Chopper Rescue” and is somewhat like Choplifter, except you have to put out fires started by meteorites and save people from burning buildings. It’s rad (and I helped)! I made the chopper noises (we recorded them at his desk), helped out in the scoreboard area, and I did a lot of play-testing as you might imagine. Hence, my awesomely great high-score! Geoff really outdid himself this time. Go and give it a play, whydontcha?

The flight-model on the helicopter is kinda hard, but you’ll get used to it. Here’s a hint: fly fast, and put out as many fires and rescue as many people as possible in each round, but try to finish the round with at least half of the time remaining!

I spent a good deal of my Sunday afternoon engaging in a sport that I’d like to call “toilet wrestling”. We had some issues with our master bath toilet constantly running as if the little valve in the tank wouldn’t shut off. An inspection of “the works” revealed that it was in fact the “filler valve” that had gone bad. (see illus.) Luckily, I had replaced one of these before, so Kelly and I went down to Home Despot and picked up a new one.

Get back home, turn off the water, drain the tank, install new FluidMaster® Anti-Siphon Fill Valve 400A, turn on water, fill tank, flush, HUZZAH! Triumph and exaltation. A smattering of applause. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone, could I? I noticed that when the toilet overflowed (as it would on occassion), it really overflowed. So I wanted to lower the water level in the tank, thereby saving a bit of water per flush. This required me to lower the fill valve, which required me to cut the overflow tube down to the recommended height. The fill tube on this toilet was from the original 1950′s installation, and was metal. So, I ran downstairs to fetch my handy hacksaw (everyone should own one with an assortment of blades). I had had the fill tube on the other toilet crack off in my hand when I was replacing the flapper valve, so I tried my best not to disturb this overflow tube, and make light strokes with the hacksaw, keeping my hand on the top of the tube. Perhaps I was a bit overzealous, perhaps this toilet was nearly 50 years old, but in any case, it snapped off in my hand. Dammit. Now I was going to have to take off the tank and everything.

So, to Home Depot again to get another FluidMaster® Flush Valve kit and a new tank/bowl gasket. Return home. On the bottom of a toilet tank there is an obscenely large nut that holds the flush valve/overflow tube in place. Since this was the original 1950′s installation, it was metal and hell of corroded and just plain funky. To top it off, they had apparently used some sort of plaster substance to seal/level the tank on the bowl. Following the advice of Chuck P., I used my rotary tool with a cutoff disc to cut the nut in half and lay waste to it’s holding power. Considering I had to borrow a giant monkey wrench last time, this went much, much better. I then installed the flush valve, and also installed the new tank/bowl gasket. Reconnect water. No geisers of water! What, wait a minute — minute drops of water around the hold-down screws. Dang! Repeat that process (with the leaks and all) maybe half a dozen times, and then I finally break down and slather silicone sealant on anything I think might be leaking. I sit on the couch and take a twenty-minute nap to allow the sealant to harden a bit, and put the tank back on the bowl. Tighten screws, turn on the water! Looks pretty good so far, but what is this? Now the line from the shutoff valve to the toilet is leaking! Dang! One problem leads to the next. But at least the hard part of sealing the toilet tank is done.

So, I short, I spent most of my Sunday with my arms wrapped around a toilet — not as a penance to the porceline goddess per se, but in something that appeared to be greco-roman toilet wrestling. Who was the victor? Me. (maybe).

One of my favorite British rock bands, Mclusky has called it quits, much to my dismay. I did not get a chance to see them when they played Cincinnati last year, and now they’ve gone and broken up! I think it’s only appropriate to post the lyrics to their song “Fuck this Band”. After reading you should read my previous post about Mclusky, and then hit their own site, mclusky.net.

Fuck this band
And their demon seed
Cos if they burst out
You're responsible

Yeah fuck this band
Cos their clothes don't fit
But their dancing clowns
Are incredible

Keep your passport near
There is no other disappointment here
There is no other disappointment here
There are no other obstacles

Fuck this band
Cos they swear too much
It's an obvious ploy
And irresponsible

Fuck this band
Yeah fuck their holes
But if they split up
You're responsible

Keep your passport near
There is no other disappointment here
There is no other disappointment here
There are no other obstacles

Fuck this band
And their foolish pride
Which lets them think
They can get away with this