I’m thinking of moving our blogs to private hosting on WebFaction, partly because I like WordPress, and partly because the sale of LiveJournal to SUP makes me uneasy about paying LJ any more of my money. I’ve been hacking on a Python program to crawl my journal and re-emit it as a WordPress XML export file, suitable for slurping up into WP with just a few clicks, and it’s pretty much done. I just have a few decisions to make (should I keep userpics attached to all my exported entries?) and then I think it’ll be time to pull the trigger.

At work, we’ve wrapped up our first big run of cafeteria-free lunches (58 straight lunches, of which we had a repeat-free streak of 56 lunches before hitting some of our “greatest hits” before the end of the year). Naturally, we’re blogging it so that we remember where we’ve gone.

Claire continues to grow and change. Having just passed the 100-day mark, she can now sit in her Bumbo chair, enjoys standing practice, and is really excited about grabbing her toes. I continue to shoot and post tons of cute photos.

We’ve been doing weekly videoconferences with my parents instead of phone calls. They get to see Claire, and Claire gets to stare at my screen and be confused. Plus my parents get to be the envy of all other long-distance grandparents that they know, who are in awe of their “technical savvy.” So, kudos to iChat for making it stupidly easy.

I am in love with Rock Band and want to marry it. If that’s not possible, I’d settle for going over to my friend’s place to play it on a regular basis. (Turns out that after a couple beers, I am pretty decent on vocals–scary!)

Egad. I have almost 8 GB of music (over four days’ worth!) in my “new and unrated” playlist needing review. When am I going to have time for that?

Last night we watched Paprika, the latest film from anime director Satoshi Kon. I’m utterly blown away by it. The coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a little bit Dreamscape, a little bit Ghost in the Shell. Good, good stuff.

Not sure if it’s the kid (probably) or what, but I’ve fallen off the deep end of the Christmas season and am starting to scare Liz with my sunny holiday cheer. Usually I’m pretty down on the consumerism and not too hip to whatever religiosity seeps through the month-long shopping orgy of December, but this year things are different. I’m giggling as I wrap presents for Liz and Claire, and–much to Liz’s annoyance–bouncing off the walls waiting for the big day to arrive. Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet? IS IT CHRISTMAS YET???

Speaking of Christmas, I’m happy that I managed to get the annual card produced and out the door relatively on-time. One of these years, I’m going to have inspiration and time in November so that I can get full-bleed, professional printing done, but I’ll take what little victories I can get. I may post the images or a PDF at some point if I get motivated enough. (Here’s your opportunity to convince me…)

Finally, if it’s at all possible, I’d like to be your personal penguin.

Okay, enough of this foolishness. Time to go be Dad for awhile. Cheers!

About a week out from the big day, I put together four discs (two short ones timed, roughly, to the distance between our house and the hospital assuming a moderate amount of traffic and red light interferences). It was a surprisingly emotional task (then again, I am a big ol’ wuss), and I’m quite pleased with the smoothly-flowing results (with seamless and carefully crafted DJ edits because harsh segues won’t cut it for any kid of mine):

Now You’re In the World

One: En Route

1. “Prelude” - VNV Nation
2. “In Your Eyes” - Peter Gabriel
3. “Speed of Sound” - Coldplay
4. “I’ll Fall with Your Knife” - Peter Murphy
5. “Airships” - VNV Nation

Two: Post-Delivery

1. “Your Song” - Craig Armstrong
2. “Heaven & Hell Part 1: Movement 3″ - Vangelis
3. “It Is Accomplished” - Peter Gabriel
4. “Concerning Hobbits” - Howard Shore
5. “Funeral/Rebuilding Serenity/Prep for Flight” - David Newman
6. “Passacaglia” - Bear McCreary
7. “Voices (Cello Version)” - Yoko Kanno
8. “Everloving” - Moby
9. “Avril 14th” - Aphex Twin
10. “Over the Rainbow” - Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
11. “Here Comes the Sun” - The Beatles
12. “Love Song” - The Cure
13. “Solitude” - VNV Nation
14. “Imagine” - John Lennon
15. “Halcyon + On + On” - Orbital
16. “Deja Blue” - Yoko Kanno

Three: Hanging Out

1. “MLK” - U2
2. “Celestial Soda Pop” - Ray Lynch
3. “Blinking Lights (For You)” - Eels
4. “Moments in Love (12″ Mix)” - The Art of Noise
5. “Dream in an Open Place” - Vangelis
6. “The Grey Havens” - Howard Shore
7. “As It Fades” - VNV Nation
8. “A Warm Place” - Nine Inch Nails
9. “Knee 5″ - Philip Glass
10. “Love Song for My Mom” - Moby
11. “To Sheila” - Smashing Pumpkins
12. “Wish You Were Here” - Pink Floyd
13. “Stairway to Heaven” - Led Zeppelin
14. “Let It Be” - The Beatles
15. “Kingdom Come” - Coldplay
16. “The Ballad of Serenity (Big Damn Movie Acoustic Version)” - David Newman

Four: Coming Home

1. “Battlestar Galactica Main Title (UK Version)” - Bear McCreary
2. “Now We Are Free” - Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard
3. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” - The Proclaimers
4. “Love You ‘Till the End” - The Pogues
5. “Clocks” - Coldplay
6. “Breathe Me” - Sia
7. “Rainbow Connection” - The Muppets

I considered jotting down why I’d chosen each track and its placement, or the significance of particular selections, but decided against that in the interest of keeping the Internet that much less banal. I am of course willing to be persuaded otherwise if anyone is really that morbidly curious.

So ordinarily, I’d be psyched about how much I’d be able to get done this weekend… Except that the stupid Harry Potter book is showing up in the mail tomorrow, and that basically means that it will consume every waking, lighted hour until it’s done. I love the books, I really do, but it’s really putting a crimp on my Python geek-out sessions. But I have to be done reading by Monday, that’s for sure, or else I will have to gouge my eyes out to avoid spoilers. My predictions: Snape dies (he’s obviously been set up for a hard-core double-agent redemption arc, so he’ll probably save the day somehow), Harry lives (and will be the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher ever), and Ron and Hermione will finally succumb to the powerful call of teenage hormones and romantic comedy conventions and hook up in a major way.

Oh, yes, and I’m going to see Howard Shore conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in performance of his Lord of the Rings Symphony tomorrow night, so that knocks out a couple more hours of potential coding time. Which I guess I can live with; enjoying some of my favorite music, conducted by its composer, performed by one of the world’s foremost orchestras, under the night sky, with a picnic and a nice glass of wine… Should be a real treat.

…

Tonight marks 24 hours since the arrival of the Apple TV. So far, I’m very, very impressed. I have modest needs, primarily to replace an aging SlimP3 that’s prone to chronic buffer under-runs ever since I replaced my dying firewall, and it solves all of my most common use cases with total aplomb. I’ve been delightfully impressed by its streaming performance, which, even with an 802.11b/g setup, is nothing short of freaking amazing. I’m also very satisfied with the image quality out of the component video cables (chosen since our altar to the television gods predates HDMI by a generation or so). My advice so far, to any prospective owners, boils down to two points:

1. Don’t do your initial sync over wireless if you don’t have 802.11n hardware. Wired ethernet is your friend by orders of magnitude.
2. Its case serves as its heat sink, which is to say it gets hot like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t set it on top of your DVD player or other hardware (unless you want to cook your gear), and make sure that it gets plenty of airflow. Honestly, I used oven mitts to bring it upstairs to wire it into my switch to finish the initial sync. Yikes!

Beware of the YouTube integration; Liz and I must have spent an hour tonight watching videos of cats doing stupidly cute things. It is a powerful and addictive time-sink.

…

Finally, I’m happy to report that the first of two freebie poster-size prints from Shutterfly arrived today and it looks great. I picked up a 50mm prime lens for my Canon (Digital Rebel XT) recently, and the folks at Amazon threw in a coupon for one free 11×14 and 16×20 print. The 16×20 (which I expect sometime Saturday or Monday) will probably end up framed and in our dining room, next to some other wine-related art, and the 11×14 (which showed up today) will probably find a home in our living room. I’m really quite tickled–I’ve never printed any of my work larger than 5×7 before–but I fear that I could start going poor making prints of my better photos. Oh well; Liz said I should find a hobby….

As a side bonus, I’ve also been plowing though a bunch of the music that I’d ripped but not really gotten around to listening to. I finally picked up a copy of the Cranes latest disc, Particles and Waves, which for the past couple of years has been import-only or completely unavailable (and which now seems to finally have some stock in the US). It’s mellow and quite enchanting, and I’m really digging it.

Meanwhile, Liz and I are fighting a desperate battle to get caught up on library DVD’s… Last weekend we watched For Your Consideration (better than I had expected) and Stranger Than Fiction (quite good but definitely not a comedy, no matter what the trailers would have you believe).

Thursday we watched Children of Men, which (in my estimation) is possibly the best science fiction film in the last ten years, and easily the equal of Blade Runner and Twelve Monkeys. Michael Caine’s performance (apparently inspired by John Lennon) was a particularly nice surprise, a ray of sunshine in an otherwise grim and gritty world. I was especially amazed by some of the very, very long shots–including a nine-minute shot during an ambush and chase early in the film, and a mind-blowing six-minute shot near the climax (this article discusses the VFX work involved; use BugMeNot to skirt the mandatory registration). It’s a bit heavy, so it might be some time before I can rewatch it, but it’s so richly detailed that I think I’ll definitely have to see it again at some point.

Last night was This Film Is Not Yet Rated, an entertaining, infuriating, often-humorous, strongly biased, and somewhat ethically dubious documentary that attempts to penetrate the veil of the MPAA’s super-secret and rather arbitrary movie ratings system.

Tonight’s film was Curse of the Golden Flower, a stunningly beautiful (and rather melodramatic) family tragedy that unfolds in the early 900’s within the Imperial Palace. Truly, this is a movie with everything: Swords! Poison! Rebellion! Incest! Revenge! Ninjas! Embroidery! Betrayal! Gong Li’s boobs! Suicide! Horticulture! Moral ambiguity! Janitorial staff like nothing you’ve ever seen before! Good stuff.

Unfortunately, in between photos and movies today, Liz and I took a two-hour nap, and now it’s almost 0200 (again) and I’m wide, wide awake. I always have a terrible time readjusting to Eastern time after being out west, but this is really starting to hurt…

Bad: Had to miss the holiday party at German class in order to get there, so no Sekt and no beer for me.

Good: It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! We have the tree up and decorated, presents wrapped, and I cashed in some iTunes credit to pick up the new Twisted Sister Christmas CD (so deliciously, horribly addictive, it transcends awfulness, leapfrogs novelty, and lands, perhaps a bit teeteringly, just within the realm of totally kick-ass). Here’s what I’ve basically been doing since then: \m/ >_< \m/

Bad: Thanks to global warming (or a giant cloud of liberal claptrap, take your pick), it sure doesn’t look like Christmas… It’s December in Cleveland; should we be having temperatures close to 60 degrees? I’m not the biggest fan of snow–especially when I have to deal with idiots who don’t know how to drive in it–but do we really only get one week of winter this year?

Good: The Lost Room. Check it out in reruns or the inevitable DVD if you missed it.

Bad: The Lost Room left the door wide open (yes, a deliberately awful pun, deal with it) to become a full-fledged series. I’m not sure I have time to be obsessed over another long-form serial.

Good: New firmware for my router, maybe it’ll solve my streaming audio throughput issues!

Bad: New router firmware makes streaming audio around the house even worse. My (admittedly venerable) SliMP3 now chokes after 9 seconds instead of 37. Bah, humbug!

Good: My tire was repairable, and still under warranty to boot, which means it was free! Yay!

Funny: I got a job offer from a headhunter today, very excited that I had Python experience. Turns out he’s trying to place me into the company where I already work. (Woops!) After quite nearly LMAO, I shot back a polite rejection. I wonder what my boss would say if a headhunter slipped her my resumé…

Speaking of my resumé… where exactly should I list being named Time’s Person of the Year?

So! Laura braved the increased airport security, water bottle fascism and all, and arrived last Friday. Liz picked her up, and after getting settled in at the house, took us all out to lunch at Phnom Penh; to my amazement, Laura loved her loath chha! That evening we hit our local Winking Lizard and then went out to Will Farrell NASCAR movie (hilarious, recommended), got ice cream on the way home, and stayed up far too late playing Munchkin. Saturday we caught up on “Monk” and “Psych”, then went out to friends’ for their Wild Game BBQ, where there was much delicious food, frosty beverage, and wacky croquet fun, then zipped down to Blossom to chill out under the stars and experience the Cleveland Orchestra playing the scores to Bugs Bunny cartoons (and incidentally seeing a lot of folks that we don’t always bump into). Sunday we had brunch downtown, spent a few hours at the science center (note to self: don’t try the “virtual hang-glider” right after eating…), tried to get Laura hooked on “Firefly”, and played a lot more Munchkin and Apples to Apples.

Laura was up and out the door early on Monday to get to her flight on time; by all accounts she made it back home safely. I’m still trying to wrap my head around her pronouncement that I’m “an awesome uncle,” but for the most part I guess that’s pretty cool. The entire experience has left me a lot more optimistic about the idea of being a parent, a mental paradigm shift that is simultaneously comforting and scary as hell.

First off, how about 101 versions of “Stairway to Heaven”? And if your ears aren’t bleeding too much from that, let’s chase that down with the best 50 video game ending songs.

While we’re on the subject of “top-N” lists, check out the top 10 strangest Lego creations; Han Solo frozen in carbonite looks pretty badass to me. (Now where could I put that?)

Thanks to some clever video editing, we can finally settle the debate about how it’d go down if the Enterprise tangled with the evil Galactic Empire. And even though Gnarls Barkley isn’t really my cup of tea, I have to say that Chewbacca on drums totally kicks ass.

Liz had to work for most of Saturday, so I used the time to knock a bunch of things off my to-do list, including a trip to the library to refresh my influx of new music, and a half-day of being able to work in peace in the office. Saturday night, she took me to Grovewood Tavern for dinner, which was utterly fabulous (I had the “Quackitori”, seared duck breast yakitori style, and I highly recommend it, especially paired with the Parallel 45 Cotes du Rhone). After dinner, we hit the Velvet Tango Room for post-dinner cocktails, where I was introduced to the shimmering delight that is the French 75. I totally dig VTR’s vibe, and I got an especially geeky thrill from recognizing Winchester ‘73 playing on the TV by the bar. VTR is a bit pricey, but the experience–especially on the weekend, where your lady friend gets a perfect rose–is worth it.

On Sunday I managed to get more stuff on my list done, and then we hit the local movie theatre for a matinee of Thank You For Smoking, a cheerfully subversive little movie that anyone with two brain cells and a sense of humor should see as soon as possible. Seriously–run, don’t walk; it’s that good. My only issue was with the quality of the audience, as we seemed to be seated directly in front of, next to, and behind people who insisted on sharing their running commentary, explaining jokes to each other, and so forth. Sorry, folks, but if I wanted the commentary track, I’d buy the DVD, and you wouldn’t be part of it. Though it was almost worth it to hear the person next to me try to explain a joke and then, verbally, loudly, not get it… (Seriously, she didn’t understand why it might be funny that the firearms lobbyist set off the metal detector at a security checkpoint. “Must be something metal,” my next-door Ebert observed.)

Monday marked a return to workplace madness, but it ended early as Liz and I had picked up tickets to see K.T. Tunstall at the House of Blues. It was a pretty much spur-of-the-moment decision a couple of weeks ago when I realized that she was in town. I admit, I’m a total poseur, and it took her solo appearance on NBC’s “Today” show for her to arrive on my musical radar… I wasn’t sure what to expect from seeing her live, but I figured I wouldn’t be disappointed, and the ticket price was pretty fair, so I figured there were worse ways to spend a Monday night. We had a nice dinner at the HOB (assisted in part by a small parade of happy-hour mixed drinks), and then proceeded to be completely blown away by her live performance. She’s touring with a band to back her up, which helps fill out her sound nicely, and there were particularly nice bits featuring various band members soloing on drums, keyboards, trumpet, guitars, and cello. Mellower tracks had a nice dash of psychadelia that reminded me of early Pink Floyd, while the more raucus, upbeat numbers struck me as the perfect soundtrack for blasting down a desert highway, windows down and stereo cranked. In short, even if she’s getting mainstream radio (and worse, grocery store!) airplay, K.T. is the real deal, and you should check her out, especially live. Seriously good times.

I’ve graduated from being assigned weird shifts for monitoring the farm during Val to being on call 24×7 for the duration; I’m not sure if this is an improvement or not, but it allowed me to attend the Lord of the Rings symphony on Saturday night. Liz and I met up with friends for dinner at the Severance Hall restaurant (tasty, though I had the world’s dullest steak knife) and then marvelled at how tight the symphony had gotten since we’d first heard it. The Cleveland Orchestra brought their “A game” and really rocked my socks; I got all weepy-eyed in all the right places. Beautiful, and a great early Valentine’s gift to ourselves!

I spent a bit of time today fixing up some geeky things that have been bothering me. I twiddled pirnat.com’s CSS a bit to be better behaved in IE, moved my IE-specifc hacks into a separate stylesheet to help get me ready for IE 7. And I finally managed to hunt down the bug in feedparser.py that was causing it to mangle content so badly (any “<br />” ended up getting doubled twice by its “cleanup” routines, and some bits of nearby text and other tags would get similarly repeated). I filed a bug with a very simple patch, so hopefully it’ll get folded into the main release at some point, so no one else will have to suffer. It’s amazing how different <(\S+?)\s*?/> (bad) and <([^\s>]+?)\s*?/> (good) can be.

Other than that, nothing exciting (other than watching the Canadian women’s hockey team annihilate pretty much everything in their path). At this point, I’m just hoping to survive the next two days!

Art of Noise x3
Mike Oldfield x5
Firefly/Serenity x9
Princess Bride x17

Art of Noise
(because I had no music-related icons)

Mike Oldfield
(because I had no music-related icons)

Firefly/Serenity
(because I just can’t get enough)

The Princess Bride
(in honor of Valentine’s Day)

Typical LJ netiquette applies–please credit me in your userpic keywords or comments if you snag any. Enjoy!

Chunk Norris Facts will teach you all sorts of interesting things about Chuck Norris; for example, “the chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.” Not to be missed.

Learn all about sushi with the Sushi Eating HOWTO. (Kind of self-explanatory.)

Can’t get enough “Firefly?” I certainly can’t. Check out Escape Key’s “Mal’s Song”, an expanded version of the “Firefly” theme. It’s a bit filkier than my tastes usually run, but I’ve gotten it stuck in my head anyway. Plus, if you didn’t fill your belly with sushi (see above), you probably have room for a tasty Fruity Oaty Bar!

When you’re done watching the Fruity Oaty Bar video (and putting the MP3 on a loop for a few hours; don’t be embarrassed, it’s perfectly normal), some of you might be amused by IBM’s Linux cartoons. While I was entertained, my inner shareholder wonders how much they paid for those.

Transformer di Roboter present “Stranger in Moscow”, a musical gem that uses the Macintosh startup chord as its bassline. No, seriously!

Retrievr lets you search Flickr by sketching. It’s wickedly mind-blowing!

I hooked up my new keyboard (a Christmas present) today to see how effective I’d be at typing without any labels on any of the keys. It turns out, with the exception of well-formed (aka tricky) passwords, I’m quite good with it. I also really like how different regions of the keyboard have different resistance to touch, so your hands get a good feel for what keys are what as they are being struck. The only thing that kind of pisses me off is that the Scroll Lock and Caps Lock lights don’t seem to light at all (the Caps Lock would probably be helpful, don’t you think?), and the Num Lock light seems to be flaking out–typing causes this LED to flash and sometimes go completely dark. I guess I wouldn’t particularly miss these if they went away, but they are kind of annoying and really detract from the overall quality of the keyboard. Alas, I think my search for a new “perfect keyboard” must press any key to continue… (Time to find someone who makes a USB equivalent of the old Apple Saratoga keyboard.)

Finally, Minifesto is a cute tool for making animated icons out of your favorite snippet of text, suitable for generating excellent customized LiveJournal icons.

So Liz wins first prize this Christmas for dropping a pair of new headphones in my stocking. I’ve been dubious of in-ear headphones for a while, but I have to admit that these have really surprised me with how much I’m enjoying them. They sound great, and the bass is shockingly full. They seal out the exterior world quite nicely–I find the office’s white noise to be almost deafening when I remove them to head off to a meeting–and I’m able to turn the volume way down and still enjoy listening. They’re comfortable enough that I can wear them for most of a day and not feel any fatigue or discomfort. Plus, Target had them for a price far lower than what’s suggested on Sony’s online store.

As a consequence, I have been listening like a fiend this past week; highlights include:

The Signal, a podcast about “Firefly”/Serenity that I’ve subscribed to but haven’t listened to for several months. If you’re turning into as much of a “Firefly” geek as I am, then you’ll probably enjoy this–news, interviews, music bits, episode reviews, and even lessons on useful Chinese phrases (such as “the explosive diahrrea of an elephant“). And it’s strangely shiny to have my usual mish-mash of NIN and VNV Nation interrupted by an hour of sci-fi geekery.

Seu Jorge - The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions. Seu Jorge, from the cast of The Life Aquatic, covers David Bowie songs, translated into Portuguese, and plays acoustic guitar. Yeah, exactly. This is a transcendantly interesting record, its excellent novelty value far surpassed by how downright good it is.

The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan. Every now and then, I break down and pick up something “popular” and “mainstream,” and this is one of those occasions. I must confess, I hadn’t even heard the White Stripes until their recent “Daily Show” appearance. This album is warm, bluesy, raw, and a damn lot of fun, and I never expected a glockenspiel to rock so hard.

VNV Nation - Pastperfect. Okay, so this hasn’t left my iPod since I originally fell for it, but the live version of “Electronaut” came around on shuffle play on Friday afternoon, and with the deep bass and sealed-in feeling I get from the new headphones, it was mindblowingly awesome at a level only second to being at the live show last summer. This track sounded so good that when I closed my eyes, I was transported to a place of serious ass-kicking goodness, a sort of glorious EBM nirvana. Most excellent!

Okay, enough for now — I have to get up early for jury duty in the morning (whee!).

…

After I managed to almost ruin a sweater last week, we finally got fed up with the door closer on the screen door in the garage and its wanton spree of greasy terror. You will be pleased to know, should you ever have the opportunity to avail yourself of this door, that we have purchased and installed a replacement closer, and you shall travel safely across that threshold without fear of horrible black marks on your back. Huzzah!

…

It’s now officially winter in the Pirnat household–tonight we prepared the first gigantic pot of chili, guaranteed to warm your spirits (as well as various other parts that come into contact with it). The fun part is that it’s a bit different every time; this batch has a deep, round, smoky heat that I find reminiscent of barbeque, but without the sweetness. Of course it needs a day or two to really mature correctly, so we’ll see how it develops.

…

Walk the Line… We intended to see the new Harry Potter but ended up at the Cash biopic instead when Potter was sold out. Walk the Line was perfectly serviceable, and a fine film, just nothing that really blew me away. It seemed to lack some of the cinematic expressiveness of films like Shine or Ray (the latter of which really blew me away). I was quite impressed with the vocal performances (who knew that Phoenix and Witherspoon could convince me that they were just lip-syncing to the originals?), but I was bothered by the story structure, which seemed to imply that Johnny Cash’s life was over, done, and of no more interest after June finally relents and agrees to marriage, which seemed like a bit of a cop-out to me. And I would have really liked his cover of “In My Life” over the end credits, but I can’t have everything.

…

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire… Entirely too many shows were sold out, so I it took a couple days before I got around to it, and at that point I found myself largely disappointed. Sure, it’s pretty, and it’s spooky and dark, and there are some really great bits… But it seems to have fallen back into the too-literal feel of the Chris Columbus Potter films. Also, it’s about time that Harry got a full three hours (or more) or got serialized into multiple parts ala Kill Bill, because the amount of discarded material is really starting to detract from the filmed stories. In this case, the film might as well have been …and the Triwizard Tournament, because just about everything else during the school year is just plain gone.

Miscellaneous other gripes… The confrontation with Voldemort was completely and totally devoid of tension or scariness; and Voldy really comes across as a poorly-costumed wuss in bad makeup; he’s just silly, and not even remotely terrifying. Cedric Diggory’s death? Nowhere as effective as the book, since we didn’t spend nearly enough time getting to know him. I never would have expected a girl named Cho Chang to have such a thick Scottish accent; I’m not sure what I had imagined, but it wasn’t her. There wasn’t nearly enough done to establish the budding sexual tension between Ron and Hermione. I didn’t remember the British retro-punk band at the Yule Ball, but it has been a few years since I read the book. Dumbledore’s performance seemed to be all loud and shouty, merely a phoned-in cariacture. Oh, and excuse me, but there was nowhere near enough Snape.

…

I’ve been ripping a huge pile of CD’s that have been building up on my desk for a couple of months, mostly stuff that I either haven’t listened to in forever, or that I never gave enough of a proper listen in the first place. It’s really a treat to rediscover a lot of this stuff! Some of the real winners have been:

• My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed by a Make-Believe Lover… ‘Cuz it’s Hot
• Juno Reactor - Bible of Dreams
• Warren Zevon - Mr. Bad Example
• Various Alan Parsons albums
• Vangelis - Oceanic

…

CSS geeks might enjoy learning how to create bar graphs with CSS. Now I just need stuff to graph!

…

And remember, kids, if you’re giving it up, you’re going steady with Hitler!

gieves

1. Gordon Lightfoot - “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”
   Still beautiful and haunting despite the number of times NPR plays it on the anniversary of the eponymous tragedy.
2. Thievery Corporation - “The Heart’s a Lonely Hunter”
   With groovy rhythms and lyrics like “Welcome to my spaceship! You’re beautiful forever!” is it possible to go wrong?
3. The Magnetic Fields - “I’m Sorry I Love You”
   Raucous, upbeat, bittersweet, twangy; the kind of song that insists you sing along, loudly.
4. Gorillaz - “Kids With Guns”
   Actually all of Demon Days is pretty infectious (in a good way); this album worked great as a soundtrack for my commute as the weather turned grey.
5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - “Supernaturally”
   A couple months ago I would have said “Nature Boy”, and before that “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”, but this has clawed its way into my brain and won’t leave
6. VNV Nation - “Perpetual”
   Still gets cranked super-loud when driving to muffle my attempts to sing along; burning up my CD player for months!
7. The KLF - “Last Train to Trancentral”
   Blame its inclusion at the conclusion of Blue Man Group’s “Tubes” show in Chicago (egad! two years ago?!?) for the rekindling of my KLF addiction; its only failing is that it’s over too soon.
8. Special bonus song (because it just came around on the old shuffle play): Air - “Lucky and Unhappy”

Tragically, the new Mike Oldfield album (Light+Shade) is overall somewhat mediocre; though definitely an improvement over Tr3s Lunas, I am starting to agree that he’s on a trajectory that will never take him to another Amarok, Hergest Ridge, or even Tubular Bells sequel. Of course, it could be that I’ve barely listened to it and it hasn’t had much time to grow on me yet. We’ll see.

Takk…, the latest Sigur Ros album, however, is excellent, but it fails to make the list because I’ll be damned if I’m going to figure out how to correctly enter any of those wacky Scandinavian moon-letters in HTML. At least the tracks on this one have names…

I got chastised a bit the last time I followed through on the “tag X number of people” part of a meme, so I shall refrain from doing so tonight. Post your songs, don’t post your songs, who cares! Be free from obligation, and enjoy!

Long day at work, followed by Beer School at Great Lakes. Despite not liking beer very much, found Beer School to be highly educational and well worth my time. Interesting to see how my palate has evolved to the point that I can clearly identify what I do and don’t like in the beers (which were quite good, once I correct for the horrible hops taste that I hate so much).

Prepped music for the long drives ahead — made copies of a few new CD’s that I want to listen to, as well as seven discs of mostly-random mixes. Consequently, did not get more than about 30 minutes of sleep (d’oh!) before…

Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings (thanks to gieves for the link)

Das Keyboard, which I think I might want to try out.

Sloganizer (thanks to supercarrot for the link)

The Victorian Sex Cries Generator, stumbled upon through Neil Gaiman’s journal. Mildly NSFW (some “naughty language”).

Speaking of Neil, I ought to read We Can Get Them For You Wholesale at some point soon as the link is supposedly only good for this month or so.

I downloaded some nice Beethoven MP3’s from the BBC.

On Friday I ran across this very cool online version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide text adventure game, a highly excellent way to waste time at work.

The setlist:

• “Breathe” (including the verse from the reprise at the end of “Time”)
• “Money”
• “Wish You Were Here” (beautiful, heartwrenching, perfect performance)
• “Comfortably Numb” (absolutely scorching, fantastic)

While I was delighted to hear anything performed at all, I was a bit disappointed by the absence of some would-be uncannily appropriate songs, such as “On the Turning Away”, “High Hopes”, or Roger Waters’ “The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)”. Of course, all of these songs were written after Waters had split from the band, so the setlist definitely reflects an attempt to minimize conflict between band members. And of course any of those would have been dead giveaways and possibly bordering on cheese. But still.

I would have preferred a longer set as well, but you can’t have everything, now can you? I guess I’ll just have to pray my heart out for a reunion tour.

…

I never watched any of the original Live Aid concerts when I was a child, and now I feel a strange mix of hope and cynicism. The blue state dreamer in me hopes that this mass of humanity coming together through music has some positive effect on the upcoming G8 summit, but the jaded cynic thinks that the most powerful leaders of the world don’t really give a rat’s ass about a bunch of people putting on a big concert.

Still, it’s a good cause, and I hope something will come of it all.

I wonder how many tokens I have to insert in order to get a ticket…

Also, finally got off my butt and ordered tickets for VNV Nation (June 7 at the Cleveland House of Blues, in case anyone feels like being social in a bouncy EBM-synth-industrial sort of way).

Also also, this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day!

Excitement abounds! Excelsior!

Last night I made one of my favorite “it’s sort of Indian” dishes, a mess of tomato and chicken and curry and toasted almonds, which I haven’t done in far too long. It was kind of like visiting an old and long-distant friend.

Part one of our Jamie Foxx DVD marathon last night was Ray, which was completely and totally amazing. I will try to refrain from gushing; suffice it to say that if you enjoy movies, this one should go on your must-see list if it isn’t already there.

We slept in today, almost decadently late. To make up for it, we got cleaned up, had a delightful lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches (prepared on Liz’s new griddle), and got industrious in the yard. The weather was gloriously mild, so it was the perfect day to clean up the herb garden, cut the mint back to acceptable levels, get a head start in our battle with one of the more exuberant bushes, and rake up the last of the fall leaves that had been trapped beneath mounds of snow all winter.

Yardwork complete, we popped up to the lake for a quick walk around. I took some photos of what’s left of the ice, and Liz had fun listening to the creaks, cracks, and pops as large sheets of ice melt, freeze, melt again, and butt up against one another.

After that, we did some quick errands and visited the library, where I scored a handful of CD’s to “appreciate,” including “Halloween Hootenanny,” a favorite from my WRUW days.

Back home again, I installed a new dimmer switch in the dining room while Liz did some touch-up painting in the room-which-is-not-yet-but-will-someday-eventually-be-the-baby-room-but-must-not-be-called-such-yet-since-we-don’t-want-to-give-anyone-the-wrong-idea. I really like how the paint turned out–the room looks really sharp, and it will only be better when we get the new light fixture dealt with. And I like my dimmer switch, which, with a single button-press, fades the lights up or down delightfully. It’s magic!

I completely missed the boat on buying U2 tickets, completely forgetting about them until after we had gotten home from dinner, at which point Ticketmaster claimed to not be able to sell two seats together, so I think I will just have to give them a miss. I’m not spending over $100 just for the two of us to sit on opposite sides of the arena, facing the back of the stage… Lame!

But that’s okay, because the cats got to smell their first spring breeze today. The looks of intrigue, confusion, and excitement on their little faces were utterly precious.

Overall, a really great weekend so far. Valetine has just hopped up onto my lap to demand attention, and to tell me that it’s movie time… So, away I go!