Povert

I’ve caught some flack from some friends for not updating this blog. Honestly, I haven’t had much to write about, aside from a draft post I wrote about Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5. After I wrote it, though, I didn’t care to publish it. I wasn’t saying anything interesting; I was just bitching. Anyone who has been around be since GH5’s release has heard it from me anyway, and the rest of you can guess.

Anyway, I guess I’ll just say what I’ve been up to.

I picked up a turntable about a month ago. I went through my parents’ basement and found some good records (including some that were mine), so I figured I’d pick one up. It’s got a USB output, which is handy.

So I’ve been picking up vinyl here and there. I pre-ordered the vinyl remaster & cd of Nirvana’s Bleach (that should be here mid-November). I’ve grabbed a few John Lennon records, a Marvin Gaye and some 45s from Half Price Books in Apple Valley.

Vinyl doesn’t sound particularly better to me than CDs — a lot of them sound worse due to wear, in fact. They are fun, though. Keep in mind that I’ve got a fairly large iTunes library. I’ve ripped/digitized nearly all media under our roof. DVDs, VHS, CDs, cassette tapes, photos, you name it (except books — I’m not completely insane). I’m in the process of re-ripping my CDs in a lossless format (though I’m looking for a seamless way to transcode it when syncing to my iPhone or streaming to my Apple TV). I appreciate the convenience once this media is in my library. Still, it’s fun every now and then to put a record on. And I’m planning on digitizing at least some of them (my George Carlin records in particular).

We also finished mounting our plasma and installing speakers in the ceiling. My receiver can do 7.1, but the room was wired for 5.1. I may run some more wire eventually. But it’s otherwise great for now. Great, except when Kelly is trying to sleep upstairs in our room, conveniently located directly above the living room. So it’s loud as hell up there.

Not much news on the Flapping Crane front. I was furiously working on a DVD set, but it turned out to be too hard on my right wrist. I’ve had to do a wrist brace, painkillers, wrist exercises, all that. I wanted to have something ready for November 22nd, which is five years since we launched flappingcrane.com. That’s probably not going to happen though. We’ll see.

The new website is pretty much ready to launch, though. I’m just delaying it because I know that I’ll have to spend about 3 days fixing previously-missed bugs, and my aforementioned wrist is holding it up in committee.

Finally, I’ve been itching to do something. Not sure what. Some music, some Flapping Crane stuff, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just build some shelves.

I threw this together for some extra-curricular activities at work. Figured someone may find it useful.

I put it under a BSD license, so feel free to do what you want with it.

yGetMan is a simple queue manager for YUI’s Get.script. If you request a script that’s already been loaded, it doesn’t attempt to re-load that script. Whether this is useful to you depends on your environment and circumstances.

See it in action here.

Here it is: yGetMan. Also, minified. Comments in there explain usage.

Also, if someone creates a mascot — a Get Man, if you will — I will make a big deal out of this and celebrate with a big plate of spaghetti.

Been working all day (and now night) on the Flapping Crane DVD. Here’s the thing: we shot over 4.5 hours worth of material. We want to put everything on DVD (except Skate Justice, the master of which is lost and I don’t much care) and we want to do commentary. The problem is that unless I find someone quick who is a wiz at DVD Studio Pro (or similar), this is gonna be a freakin’ four DVD set.

It really only should be a two DVD set. So if you know anyone, let me know. Soon.

Anyway, I’m kind of inspired to do this because late November will mark 5 years since flappingcrane.com went live. To put that in perspective, Youtube did not exist then. I was still in my mid-twenties, and people still referred to me as “El Conquistador” (not true at all).

Granted, we’ve slowed down our pace in the past couple years, but we’ve still got skits in the works. Eventually I’ll edit X-Lax 2000, Lazy Time Traveller, etc. There’s talk of a new Reicher. And, to top it off, we plan to relaunch flappingcrane.com this year. A big-ass new design that will probably piss people off, much higher-quality (near DVD-quality) versions of every skit and even some new skits (secret hint: one involves a squirrel).

So it’s kind of a fun time. We’re doing the disc 1 commentaries this Friday.

I’ll probably start putting up unreleased material in the coming months. Some of it is pretty good. Two songs of note which I may link to: “Professor Willoughby” and “Half-Jew in Love”.

I found my geek code circa mid-late 1990s.

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GL/CS d- s: a-- C++>+ UL++++ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N+ o?
K w-- !o M V PS+++ PE Y+ PGP+ t 5- X++ R-- tv b++(+++)
DI-- D++ G e h r% z+
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

So, for fun, I put together my current one, though the geek code parameters are sorely out of date:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GL/P d-(--)?>+ s: a C++(+++)$ UL*+++ P+(++)>+++
L+(++) E---(--)>- !W+++$ N>+ !o-- K>- !w-- !O M++
V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5 X+ R-> tv b+ DI D+ G e++ h---
r+++ y+++>+++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------