I have never been much of an iced-tea drinker, especially after what happened to my cousin. But lately I have been drinking a delightful beverage that is composed of some parts iced-tea and some parts lemonade. I think the drink is called an “Arnold Palmer”. Here we call it a “Nate Wilcox”. Anyhow, it is very tasty and refreshing.
Also, I managed to get into town to see my brother. It was fun!
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I never really listened to Metallica before. And then, for some reason, when I started working here at the P-A-C, I began listening to Master of Puppets non-stop. I found that the music was perfect for programming; the wall-of-sound sound drowns out the constant politco-babble that surrounds me, and lulls me smiling into a proper code-trance.
So after wearing the Master of Puppets mp3s thin I decided to pick up another album. There was some controversy as to whether I should get Ride The Lightning or Kill Em All. I chose the former, and it kicks ass.
Anyhow, I picked up the album at Best Buy because until today Metallica was not available on the iTunes Music Store
Next paycheck I am going to reward Metallica by picking up another album…
Y’all remember 3Jam, fantastic group SMS service I mentioned a while back? Well they have launched a beta website that puts the final piece together in their preparations to launch as a full service.
The website is simple and clean. Once you have signed up and activated your account, you can add your contacts simply by entering a full name and mobile number. You can also organize contacts into groups.
The group functionality is particularly slick. I wish I had used it during the World Cup to jeer my friends who were going for Brazil, and cheer my friends that were going for France…
Anyhow, once everything is all set up sending a group sms is sencillo. For example, I am fixin to send y’all a sweet 7 a.m. text message and it is as easy as typing: chat Texas wake up suckers!
I wonder how long before 3jam ends up on Tech Crunch ?
My brother will be playing with The Black Heart Procession @ the Parish on Monday. Y’all should check out the show if you get the chance!!!
My brother is the dude in the band who looks like the ex-leader for Chechen rebels
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I have made several forays into D.C. (it is about a 30 minute bike-ride) and each time I seem to end up spending part of the day in the Museum of Natural History. It has been difficult, but with a little bit of discipline I have managed to restrain myself to only visiting one or two sections at a time. So far the sections that have amazed me the most are the sections on the Origins of Life (cool models of molecules and such!), and the exhibit on the Ice-Man dude that they found in the Alps the other year (the Ice-Man had a back pack full of sweet survival gear!). Anyhow, the museum is a lot of fun because there is so much to learn and marvel at, but also because it is a swell place to the drawing…
For example, say you want to buy something for 100 Pounds Sterling. If the exchange rate is 1.81 USD = 1.00 GBP, you'd pay about $181 for the item. Later, you are shipped the item and find it's defective, so you complain. The seller, being a right old chap, agrees to refund your money. He takes the 100 GBP he got, exchanges it for dollars, and sends it back. Due to rate fluctuations and the margin, the exchange rate is now 0.60 GBP = 1.00 USD, or 1.00 GBP = 1.66 USD - which means you'd only get $166 of the refund back. So international trade carries some risk, even under the best conditions.
I've been in a similar situation where a lady in Australia made a contribution in US dollars for what she thought was Australian dollars. When her credit card converted it, it wound up being much more than she thought it would be. In trying to rectify the contribution, I found the above to be true in that either she would not get the full refund she wanted or her contribution would be smaller than she intended.
I bet casas de combio and Western Union make a mint on currency flow from the US to Mexico.
I sat in a Flash Advanced Design class for three days last week filling my head with all the simple wonders of actionScript 2.0. The class was held at Alphaware Training Centers right off of Bellaire and 610, so i wasn’t too far from the hospital, adolfo’s school, or the Galleria. The class was small (there were only three of us – the other two guys were co-workers at Schlumberger in Sugarland) and the room was pretty boring. The instructor, Drew Shefman, was very thorough and managed to answer some of my questions, even though many of them fell beyond the scope of the class.
And while most of the lessons were familiar to me, it was great to see how all the individual pieces worked together to complete a project.
Things got a little confusing in the XML lesson, but i’ve got the book and i took notes, so i’m looking forward to posting some mini-projects soon.
Speaking of, the one thing he did help me out with was some random tree generator code that i had copied out of the Flash Hacks book. As pulled out of the book, the code was meant to be put straight into a .fla file, but i wanted to put it into a class file which made things a little more complicated. Naturally, for him, the solution was simple. The following morning he emailed the code:
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var owner = this;
segment.onEnterFrame = function() {
owner.grow(this) };These couple of lines represent the solution to my problem. Once again, scope. The explanation escapes me again, but i’ll take a stab. The ‘owner’ variable set equal to this refers to the class instance (the tree), and the ‘this’ passed into the grow function refers to the particular movie clip within the class i want the function to work on. I swear i understood it better while i was in class. A weekend and a couple of days at work later, it’s mushy.
For those of you who are interested and have Flash 8 (adolph?) the Alpha Version of Flash 9 is available (as an extension to Flash 8 only) for download if you want to tackle ActionScript 3.0.
BBC Radio Five Live asked for help from a deaf lip reader, Jessica Rees, who read the words phonetically to an Italian translator.
She deciphered the insult as being "you're the son of a terrorist whore" - a translation also carried by many national newspapers in Britain on Tuesday.
The BBC's Ten O'Clock News also called in experts to study the television footage of the incident and determined the following:
Materazzi's first word to Zidane was "no" before he then told him to "calm down".
He then accused him of being a "liar" and wished "an ugly death to you and your family" on the day the Frenchman's mother had been taken to hospital ill. This was followed by "Go f*** yourself".
Zidane's agent, Alain Migliaccio, has hinted that Zidane will soon reveal exactly what was said by Materazzi.
Piara Powar, national co-ordinator for the anti-racism group Kick It Out told Five Live, said: "If there was a racial slur then Fifa needs to act."
Keith Hackett, head of referees in England, said that if it can be proved that Matterazzi racially abused the Frenchman, then Fifa should take retrospective action for "the good of the game."
Four assailants who cut the throat of an aspiring politician from Britain killed him and tried to rape his female companion early Sunday in the driveway of a Georgetown mansion, police reported, after the couple had returned from a night at the movies.
The victim, Alan Senitt, 27, a Jewish activist and volunteer for former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, died at the scene. The woman, whom police declined to identify, was not injured
I met Todd and Diana and Taggart and Liz over at the Tavern on West Grey to watch the French go down in flames despite their incredible performance throughout the game. It was a pleasure to see them lose. It was poetic.
but enough about the world cup. I Promised Diana these links a while ago:
Bad Doctor and the Shtick Doctor.
...such an incredible upset! Italy beats Germany 2-0 in extra time!? Amazing!
My predictive powers triumph!
So who now who will face Italy in the final??? Portugal? France? I’ll bow out of calling this one as i didn’t expect France to show. Regardless of who wins, what an unexpected outcome!
Classic Zidane action! He is so amazing!!!!
So Killy’s predictive power broke down; but who could have imagined France beating Brazil???
Kick one:
Portugal scores on their first kick! England misses! The goallie blocks!
Kick two:
Portugal misses! Bounces off the left goal post! England scores!!!
Kick three:
Portugal misses! Petit totally misses the goal!! England misses!! Blocked by the goalie!!!
Kick four:
Portugal scores! England misses!! the Goalie blocks it again! (after a shady surprise try that was denied!)
Kick five:
Portugal scores and wins!!!!!!!!
Prediction three right on target!!!!!!!!!
