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March 31, 2005

The Familial Expression of Civil Disobedience

I'm sure, or I would have thought, that people would have notices the irony of something. That Bulimia is about control, often a reaction, probably from early on, to family, and their desire for control, for dominion - such that I've ever written about it as the familial expression of civil disobedience. And the irony therein.

Posted by subtitles at 5:51 PM | TrackBack | News

If you saw some silly fucker in Burger King pissing himself

If you saw some silly fucker in Burger King pissing himself, that was because after playing Britney's 'Do Something', the silly woman on the radio couldn't help but unconsciously follow the inflection of the song when saying the title. So yes, pissing himself.

Posted by subtitles at 1:21 PM | TrackBack | News

Brideshead - the House of Blind Justice Sticks

There's always something special about watching the beginning of Brideshead. I think I don't even quite remember the novel quite as well as I do the series. Regardless, it does well, as far as I'm concerned, or at least I think so, watching the beginning again. It's now available where you'd expect it to be, or not. But regardless, here.

I wish I could talk about them at length every week, but I like Blind Justice and House. House in particular of course, but Blind Justice is doing well, and as always, I'm even more well corrected into liking Rena Sofer. So it's only with peroxo-boy that striking looks gets in the way of talent. I really need to do a real search for some talent when it comes to making up titles.

Oh, and Life on a Stick is still a bit too gaggy, but all in all still pretty funny, sticking with it.

Posted by subtitles at 12:19 PM | TrackBack | Television

March 30, 2005

La Forza Del Destino

How much more wrenchingly awful can the diegesis that Shameless presents get? Which is to say that it's a wonderful series, and moving. Unfortunately RealWorld doesn't have the best rips, for that you'll have to get lucky with UKNova. The performers, and their performances, are wonderful.

I really can't quite get over how subtly and joyfully moving it is, just the montage of Lip in his newfound sanctuary of his own improvement, and Debbie's little shop and evasion. I can't believe I held off for this long. I suppose I just expected it to not be as good. Apparently some people know better.

Posted by subtitles at 2:12 PM | TrackBack | Television

Tree-Hugging Hippie Crap

Well, for starters, you don't live in a country where there is no meaningful sense of civil liberties. At least you have a democratically elected government that won an election that was vigorously contested. You are a Republic, you elect the people who make the laws, if you're not happy with the laws, then there's actually a chance that you can elect people who can change them, or persuade those people, or people who have influence upon them, to change their minds.

Personal disagreement does not abdicate your responsibility in upholding the rule of law, so you can apologise up your own ass. I can't be the only one to find people apologising for things they're enforcing but don't disagree with annoying, can I? In all likelihood, the people who are most likely to get the law changed are not going to be you. You have no vested self-interest in the thing itself. Spunk. There are however, people for whom this means money - it means money because fewer people are applying, fewer qualified applicants are bothering, and fewer outstanding graduates are entering the markets that require them.

It’s a problem for me that satire is effective through being distancing, but that it seems to be evinced by anything but. And also that to be effective, satire necessarily relieves itself of a certain level of sincerity, or inquiry, or intelligence.

The will towards democratic empowerment does not divorce you from the requirements of access - the baseline of which is validation. Flash, and Frames, are a bane upon the Interweb.

Posted by subtitles at 1:40 PM | TrackBack | Personal

March 29, 2005

It's the Static, not the Waves

I keep thinking I need to remember to even just mention it, so that people on the way to Coventry can step the fuck off. The leader (subscription) and the article (not).

Posted by subtitles at 7:34 PM | TrackBack | News

the great romance of the 20th century

The feeling of things happening while you're not there, after you come back. And this is so important, I feel can't stress it enough, and I'm clinging not to forget. It's peculiar, people looking at you 'you're back', and going off. Newfound confidence all round, place not having burnt to the ground. It's disappointing. It makes you wish you were all alone in the world unhappy. I'm resentful, for we're strangers when we meet. TV warming up in the cold.

I'm watching comedy connections now, and the goodness gracious me, and there's something tremendously sad about it, but then so many thing are when you wake up at midnight. In a sense in seems that you never quite got to glimpse at all the incredibly intellectual and eloquent people that participated, if only because the discourse they were stuck in precluded that - made it middle-brow. In the way you never quite got with the public school boys doing comedy. And perhaps as much if not more so than the Beatles, Monty Python is the great romance of the 20th century.

Posted by subtitles at 6:12 PM | TrackBack | Television

March 28, 2005

Grey's Anatomy Pilot

The drama doesn't help. Funny-guy is funny. Katherine Heigl is fun. For a pilot, it's not bad. Central character isn't as bad as she looked she would be. Oh, ok, now you get that they should have just stuck to the comedy - the drama sucks ass. And annoying woman who wasn't being so annoying? Annoying again. If not for Katherine Heigl and funny guy, this would really suck. And bitchy chinese one - it's nice they're trying something original. So yes, stick to the funny. You'd think it'd only get better.

Posted by subtitles at 12:31 PM | TrackBack | Television

March 27, 2005

Swansong - LAX, Medical Investigation - Life On A Stick and Sucking

It's a bit wrong, but watching the swansong episodes of LAX is making me miss it a bit. It really wasn't as bad as it initially allowed itself to be - I'm hoping I didn't just summarily delete them all, though I probably did. If it comes to that I could always get it here. Louis is sentimental that way.

Which explains the twinge (slight) at the end (pretty much) of Medical Investigation. I'm not sure if Susanna Thompson quite made up for Peroxo-boy being dissolute *yet* again. But I've always liked Sasha Barese, and still to this day hold out hope that I'll be able to find Run of the House.

Life on a Stick isn't awful - the unaired pilot was leaked as Related by Family, and it's supposedly by Mel Gibson's production company. Thankfully the change of title might mean they reconsidered putting too much emphasis on the family bits. Step-sister is quite comely though. Evil boss is pretty wrong, as are so many other things. We'll see how things go.

Posted by subtitles at 7:48 PM | TrackBack | Television

How To Link Back To Here, Because So Many People Do.

If you want to display this lovely button:

You'd paste this code on your site (if you don't want the image loading lag, you might want to save the image locally and link to it that way):

<a href="http://blog.fallingbeam.org"><img src="http://www.cowpimp.com/ButtonMaker/button.php?outerBorder=666666&innerBorder=ffffff&barPosition=25&leftFill=8FABBE&leftText=Bog&leftTextColor=ffffff&leftTextPosition=5&rightFill=999999&rightText=Subtitles&rightTextColor=ffffff&rightTextPosition=29" border="0"/></a>

If you want a text link like this:

subtitles

You can paste this:

<a href="http://blog.fallingbeam.org">subtitles</a>

The button was made with this. The instructions on how to display code can be found here. An idiot-proof-ish code generator can be found, referred from the last link, here.

Posted by subtitles at 7:35 PM | TrackBack | Site Updates

Search Blues - Opera, MSN, Yahoo, Google - The Importance of Width

I've been yoyo-ing about what search to leave as default and I'm still pretty flux-y about it. I was doing my best to use Opera Search, which you can get to via search.opera.com or the more expansive portal.opera.com. It's good - according to Haavard they use Overture, but it lacks features like image search, languages etc. But it also lacks ads. Unfortunately the main issues are that it's not customisable in that I can't get it to show more hits per page, though I'm sure it could be handled easily with a tweak to the url and it doesn't group hits by site; more importantly though, it's width limited, which annoys me.

Many pages limit how wide the content can be so that it will a) display the same to various monitor resolutions - ie the designers were just lazy b) they want to squeeze more ads in to less content - which I have not too much problem with, except it leads to squeezed content strips which are annoying. I suspect that in certain ways column paragraphs are less intimidating, though it might lead to the wish to format shorter paragraphs otherwise.

But getting back to the searches, MSN I like because the layout is pretty, and so is the butterfly icon. The annoying thing is that the paid searches aren't filtered out by Proxo. Yahoo I'm getting very fond of because it has tended to find the things I want to find - it's also doing a good job of indexing my site, especially my broadvoice sucks post (as is Opera, but not quite as well). The customised Google search is cut down and a bit annoying - I'll eventually upload a fixed custom search.ini. I think I'm sticking with MSN for a bit, but Yahoo is again climbing the charts, despite being a bit plain. But yes Google also tends to limit widths.

I make it a point to format this site to fit variable widths - and testing is easy, just zoom with Opera and you can see how it'll look. granted I have menus on the right with the main page, but that's mainly for navigation - if you read via the RSS feed, you'd never really need to see it, and you get full width pages - the MSN notification thing I still find pretty fun, more so if not for the frames. Not to say I'm able to fund the site on ads (yet), but prospects look promising, despite me not going crazy with them.

I'm considering moving back to the cheaper broadvoice plan. If only to spite them.

Posted by subtitles at 6:07 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

To See If I Can Make It Not Ugly

I'm pretty damn sure that installing graphics drivers is going to piss me off. To be fair, I saw behaviour with Nvidia drivers that I wasn't too wild about, but I can't imagine how things could ever be quite as bad as with ATI - and the process is annoyingly painful. Makes me wonder if a clean install would even fix it. I think there are good reasons why I've become lazy about clean installing, not least of which is that it's a pain. I'm ever so slightly disappointed that no one's tried skypeing me via my link, I've even hooked up my telemarketing gear.

And so I'm getting ever closer to removing most of the ads from my site - the search boxes are annoying me now, and to be honest, their search is pitiful - unless it's just that indexing the site too difficult - the built in search is much better. The ring tones will be gone - I'll just stick to the adsense ads, maybe even cut out the economist link, or at least the image link, along with the other bits from CJ. The buttons I'm also getting annoyed with. Basically I'm just concerned at how long the page load for the main page is.

And so it's done. The old site I can't be bothered. I'm thinking of getting rid of the forum and auditioning WordPress, to see if I can make it not be ugly. I'm also reminded now that my junk fastmail address is starting to piss me off, so I might move to another one and abandon that one. Anyway it shouldn't really matter to anyone other than me, since I tend to send mail and give the address that is personal, and the e-mail link on the site will always be active.

Posted by subtitles at 3:43 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff , Site Updates

I fart puckabees (what do you want from me?)

And so much biting. Naomi Watts is lovely. And she's good. She either gets the better lines, or she just does them better. Film is an absolute load of annoying me. Another strand of american masturbation that makes me wish I owned a baseball bat. But really Naomi Watts seems to be able to really carry off that very deft being of faffy and sincere. Nice lookin' too. Have I said it's annoying? Granted the activism is meant to be more or less peripheral, but there's this mallet and tongs and a sign that hits you on the head.

It's just disappointing that smart intellectual people seem absolutely incapable of getting out of their political lockstep - from Tracey Emin to Morrissey, it's all blah blah blag blag, no nuance, no complexity, just justification and buttress like a tree. It's like an inability to think, encouraged by this bent educational echo chamber. I look forward to shouting.

For whatever reason, webcam is broken in the latest leaked builds of MSN.

It appears to have something to do with scrolling in IE while video is playing - I think I shall disable smooth scrolling and remove IE from my list of optool browsers.

Posted by subtitles at 1:35 PM | TrackBack | Television

Oh My God Is There No Escape From Countdown

I wonder what is more interesting to me, the fact that people post Countdown, that I downloaded it to watch, or that it's broadcast in HDTV. They posted it because it was an 8 year old kid who appeared in 3 shows, presumably winning twice. It's not quite as fun when you're not baked, but it's okay. Not the worst thing I could watch, I'll give it that. But also very very wrong. You do realise I'm going to end up watching Dr. Who for Billie don't you?

Well that explains what happened to Mel C. Still quite fetching isn't she? And Avril is similarly fetching - though it might just be washed out look the show seems to go for.

Posted by subtitles at 10:39 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 26, 2005

"the office" - absolutely gut-wrenchingly motherfuckingly assholerippingly bitchfacedly awful

Again I'm surprised that I never wrote about it when I first watched it, but there you go. I'm sitting here, watching what I didn't finish watching of this cycle of Sports Night, and it occurs to me I've never told you how absolutely gut-wrenchingly motherfuckingly assholerippingly bitchfacedly awful The Office is. And just to be clear, I don't mean that the American version is bad while I would gladly give the UK version head. I'd rather be raised by my left testicle up a flagpole while imagining that over-enunciating anti-biotics is clever.

Anyone who lauds any or either is going to have me mocking them to their face like the cockmunching intellectual midgets that they are. If I'm not wrong I might have written about how the opening titles alone of 6 feet under can make me want to stab myself - and so the title song of the office makes me want to turn green wearing pants.

American comedy is often deeply and endlessly flawed - SNL in particular epitomises all that is wrong with american comedy, and after watching Mean Girls, I think Tina Fey should be shot - slowly. All this is nothing to the fact that american comedy presumes to itself that it can transpose comedy. But when you compound that sick fancy with the inability to discern what is absolutely gut-wrenchingly motherfuckingly assholerippingly bitchfacedly awful, you get a glimpse into why there are times when you think american comedy should be left on an island with a gun containing only one bullet.

It's an awful show. Why would I want to watch something that even in the original was offensive, pathetic, masturbatingly contrived, and - wait for it - about as vaguely amusing as a poke in the eye. Watching it made me want to hit things. Honestly, to the people I know who admit watching it to me - I will fuck you up.

Posted by subtitles at 5:12 PM | TrackBack | Television

Appears Very Deliberate

I can't quite bring myself to muster up to write anything worth anything about Extraordinary Machine (which I'm listening to again right now) and Psycho Beach Part (which I just finished watching). Fiona's growing on me, though I think I prefer her light touches, her aggressive stuff sounded more convincing in When The Pawn.

Psycho Beach Party I never quite realised isn't quite as trashy as I imagined it to be, apparently it's by a reasonably prominent queer/drag playwright, who's responsible for Die, Mommie Die - not that I know what that is. Amy Adams didn't get much of a role, which is unfortunate - I'm sure that Lauren Ambrose being red-headed like the drag self-image helped her in inhabiting the role. It's a pity the number lost to the pit that's 6 feet. I suspect that the episode I like so much of crazy Buffy owes something to this. It's interesting in any number of ways, not least in the narrative framing, which appears very deliberate.

I'm now satisfying my Go-Gos craving - very very much like early REM. I'm now remembering it was brought on by missing Rich Girls. UKNova is working out rather handsomely. I'm always digging myself holes with not burning things. I hope I'm not getting I Heart Huckabees for the umpteenth time.

Posted by subtitles at 2:20 PM | TrackBack | Personal

Chicken Chop Fried Rice @ Shaw Towers Food Court

It's good. I've been going there rather a lot he past weeks, and it's good. The eponymous dish is particularly worthy, their chicken chop is really rather nice - but it's chicken chop bits rather than one big hunk. And there's something about the over-poached egg on top of the fried rice that's quite pleasing. What I also really like though, is the noodles they have, sort of fettucini like, but mixed in a kind of soy-sauce based gravy which is really quite nice. They pair the noodles with chicken cutlet and pork chop (deep fried), which are good, especially at the starting price of $3. Honestly, it makes paying almost double that at the Ramen place seem a bit silly. I just had the deep fried pork chops, and the outside is just nicely done, not crispy, but sort of glisten-ny and nice. There are other permutations available, but mostly with similar bent to what I've described above - I must endeavour to try the fish the next time.

Posted by subtitles at 12:25 PM | TrackBack | Food Diary

March 24, 2005

The 3-Headed Monster's Back

I don't know why, but it's important that you know that I've moved back to using the classic theme for XP, ie the Win2k theme. It's just cleaner, and if Win2k had a slightly expanded feature-set, I'd seriously think about moving backwards. Opera is back using Oxid, since the toolbars are so much more convincingly compact. The panel button will eventually annoy me enough. The black skin has great icons, if only it wasn't black.

I wonder if I could keep a promise to myself not to build a new comp till Longhorn comes out. It would mean that by then dual core would have become more commonplace, and the various platforms would have stabilised. And also it'd always be nice to be able to make use of all the UI features that they ask you to have a higher end graphics card for. I'm so going for Athlon 64 though, because I doubt Pentium M is going to make it to the desktop so convincingly in that time frame.

Makes me think I should go for a cpu upgrade on my shuttle - wait till the 3.2 gig P4s for my socket become dirt cheap. Oh, and the 3 headed monster is back - CMV still makes shitty panels - the backlight luminesence problem is still as pronounced. I can't put my finger on it, but my samsung looks cross hatched - it's probably just me being paranoid - and the zap was probably the dvi connector rather than the internal ones.

Posted by subtitles at 4:31 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

TypeKey Registration

I'm just sick of having to moderate anonymous comments, and to be honest, I've still not recieved a comment that's made it all worth it, so from now on, you need to go to TypeKey.com and register before you can post - it's not a big deal and you can then comment on any typepad or MT blog that uses this. And so far I've not had a spammer who bothers to sign up, so yay. The easiest way is to just follow the link when you're at a post, it'll ask you to 'sign up'. Any grammar geeks out there can now enlighten me on the circumstances under which you use "" rather than ''. But yes, I allow registered users to post and it'll show up immediately, so no more moderation in that sense, though once you're banned, that's it.

Posted by subtitles at 4:25 PM | TrackBack | Site Updates

They're Going to Make Bartlett Vice-President

I'm not saying I'm going to go and watch MASH right this minute, but Alan Alda is good at what he does. But yes, I now know it for a fact that they're going to have the former/sitting president be the nominee for the Vice Presidency, as Clinton teased. It would help the next season in so many ways, most important of which is that Martin Sheen would have carte blanche to recur. It would explain Santos' win, and it would make it easier for all of the cast to stay the same.

Now obviously none of this is true - they wouldn't do it just because it'd cross the line, even for the, in terms of stunt politics - it would rob them of a meaningful debate by the start of next season between the two candidates; which would allow them, again, to dig deep into the ideology of how even at its best, the Republicans are going to get pwn3d by the Democrats. I wonder if they brought Bruno back to prove a point, and whether no one on the regular cast would talk to him.

So yeah, they realised that they need really strong episodes to end out the season, so break's over. Good episode. I hope Mary Louise Parker appears again. Oh, and clarification on nummy status - supposedly Jennifer Connelly is marriagable material and endlessly sweet and heartbreaking, rather than out and out nummy. Though Career Oppurtunities might cause that to be revised.

Posted by subtitles at 4:10 PM | TrackBack | Television

March 23, 2005

The Way I'm Most Comfortable With

So yes, the Andorians are really cute, and having watched one of the few Enterprise episodes that I unreservedly like, I must say they are one of creations of the series that I think entirely successful. I'm sure the episode wouldn't be quite as resonant if you didn't watch the one about P'Jem first, but I remember this episode serving well, even when I first watched it. It makes me think it might actually be worth it to watch the Andorian episode in season 3, even though that's the season that quality forgot. I can't quite explain why I'm watching early seasons of Enterprise when I could be watching say the Shameless that I haven't yet, or even Spaced or My Life in Film again. Perhaps I find the simplicity of their guile-less representations comforting. I wonder whether the misdirection, or lack of, in the Stigma epsisode, is an alienating part of their insidious liberal agenda.

Speaking of which, Daily Show's been good the past few days, I think they respond well to crap being hefted. I'm sure you realise I just can't bring myself to respond to certain kinds of crap when it gets saturated, my previous post to this one covers at least one of the pertinent events in the way I'm most comfortable with. I don't know if it was Billy Campbell listening to Debaser that set it off, but I've been cramping up my hand trying to get down Here Comes Your Man and Headache.

I can't help but say that Enterprise isn't very good, even though I like it enough to watch it - and it'd help if my season 2 rips were worth a damn - this must have been back in the day when FOV and SFM were still ripping in analog - yikes. The Daily Show, and House for that matter, was good for my rage. I promise, I really will fuck them up.

Posted by subtitles at 5:23 PM | TrackBack | Television

Hands Wringing

I refer you to this.

Posted by subtitles at 1:38 PM | TrackBack | News

Isn't House Wonderful? - I underestimate Rena Sofer's appeal

They must really have had the backs up - they're pulling out all the stops, using the notes and running. The thing between him and Cameron is unbelievably good, and the rest of the cast is really showing off rather well - especially Cuddy and RSL. They represent commercialism is the most crass manner possible, and I think they mistake the person for the ideal, and they have no conception of what 'Good Management' is. I can't say enough about how good a series this is, and how much you should be watching it as opposed to other crap (you know what I'm talking about). But the actor isn't bad.

And So Definitive Guide to getting House. Torrents found here, get them while they're still seeded. The rest you'll have to get via Donkey, here.

If you put any faith in my sense of taste, and ability to smell, shower or not, watch it - and why not? Often enough it comes on after American Idol.

Oh, and Blind Justice is becoming more and more watchable, there are many good things about it. I underestimate Rena Sofer's appeal, and I actually really really like the titles. And it's unashamed of just being a cop show. At the moment, everything's still available.

Posted by subtitles at 11:22 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 21, 2005

Generation - Button, Mail - Wordpress

I've discovered how to make those lovely buttons that have been popping up all over the place, and I've spent 5 minutes making one for here. The generator is here. I think I like the second one better.

Speaking of generators, I can't remember if I've already mentioned that you can make e-mail buttons here - like so:

I've also been looking enviously at WordPress, especially since it specifically works towards valid XHTML and CSS - I'm probably too lazy to change over, but it looks cool. I'd have to figure out how to use MySQL properly someday though - and the idea of dynamic databases like that frightens me. Obviously I'd just like to be in a position where I could pay someone to do all the hard stuff for me.

Posted by subtitles at 6:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Omnibus, With Lesbians - Go Down - Opera Search

Burr Steers does good work. Apparently he's decided to really embrace the whole of the camp potential they've been going for. Really brought things out of the people - Bette being an ass. He's good. I'm sure I'll never quite get over Igby Goes Down.

I think I've come a bit tired of writing like this, part of me is really starting to think that I need to do some real work and finish something - I'm not going to be that guy who writes short stories - that's just silly like floral curtains.

Opera search is rather fine - it uses Overture, which I'm not sure how to differentiate from yahoo, but the searches aren't identical. Regardless I've decided that I should use it as default, the MSN butterfly isn't *that* pretty. If nothing else, it doesn't seem to include ads at the moment, which is nice - they probably don't expect massive traffic, but the layout is reasonably pretty, and it's by a brand I like, so why not.

Posted by subtitles at 4:00 PM | TrackBack | Television

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine Released Now Online - Get It Here

There will be no proselytizing here, it'd be just too silly to say too much, go find a news service worth a damn and read it. Get it here - live torrent link - ed2k link - another ed2k link. None of these are verified yet, I'll correct the post as necessary.

I'm ashamed by the fact that apparently it leaked since the beginning of the month, so I'm just another johnny-come-lately, but whatever. The torrent file is intact, but the sound quality isn't spectacular, I'm wondering if the donkey links are better. I'm now wondering how I missed this on isohunt. Ok, the second ed2k link completed, and the sound quality is *much* better - it's all in 192kbs.

After getting all of them, you'll realise that the second ed2k link is the best - the torrent is awful, the first link is of variable quality, the second has them all at 192. The "bonus" track with the first ed2k is just the alt mix of Better Version of Me - not worth it, though get both, since, well, it's free.

Posted by subtitles at 3:10 PM | TrackBack | News

Mahjong Night - Thursday 24th, Day Before Good Friday

It's strange not having no future any more. It makes buying a mahjong set and table seem almost rational. But yes, Mahjong night is on Thursday - Su-lin requests dinner. If air-conditioning is required, as I assume it is, the pasta place or ramen place at Shaw Towers spring to mind - though with the former we might need to make reservations. I'm assuming expensive japanese food is too expensive. No air-con we can just get hawker stuff from the place just at the start of Liang Seah Street proper - the one I keep telling people gives me bad vibes.

Do people want to come with me to buy the stuff? It's always more comforting having moral support - I'm just worried that if I put it off for too long, it'll end up being closed on Thursday or something. Anyway, tell me if $60 is too much to spend on a set, and that same amount on a table. The date of the event puts my holy grail reference in rather sharp perspective I think. I no longer have no future, yay me.

And really, this requires both Delwyn and Dion, if not there won't be sufficient hardcore people to play. Eugene has said he would come, but that'll depend if he flakes like last time. Any and all are welcome - edel? clarissa? (is she even back yet?). I wonder though if Delwyn's day of jubilee has yet arrived from the UK, and how that will affect all this. I don't have great hopes for Under the Sea, but I can now play most of Frank Black's Headache.

I now wondering if I should get another gmail invite from someone so that I can get a shorter username - and one that's not misspelt.

Posted by subtitles at 9:45 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 20, 2005

Not Quite as Bad as Dialectic

It appears that all this time I've been misspelling the word - it's supposed to be weltanschauung, rather than weltenschauung. I wish someone would have told me, not that it would have made a lot of difference. But I could have sworn that that was how it was spelt in the narrative texts I read - misprinting or me being silly? Oh well, not much I can do about the e-mail addresses I have with it. I was considering putting up a button with my gmail address, as seems to be the rage, but it's just free advertising isn't it, for a service that I really don't use - and whose pop service seems to be flaking on me. Bugger, it turns out that I'm just the leader in following instructions - it's not my fault they don't provide screenies for the advanced screen and make sure you turn on SSL - bastards. But yes, the misspelled word above is my gmail address. But apparently the buttons aren't gmail produced, you can find the generator here. I suppose it's useful in that you can use the smtp for fastmail :). I still think IMAP is a more useful protocol, especially if you have as many accounts as I do.

The Frank Black version of Hang on the Your Ego is incredibly apt for him.

Posted by subtitles at 5:18 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff , Personal

Let the Mahjong Commence!!

It's like finding the holy grail, only not holy, and with cupholders rather than a chalice. It's a place near to OG on the way to Sim Lim, and it sells a range of tiles properly, as well as a not entirely shabby looking table. Now the downside is that the nicer set of tiles costs $60, which I'd be willing to pay, as long as I knew someone was going to buy it off me at the end of the day when I leave (since I'm pretty much definitely leaving now). The table is $60 as well, which I don't mind, since I'd get a smaller bedside table in the deal. Chips for poker aren't that pretty, and $500 worth is about $7, so I'd get say 2 or 3 packs? Enough for about $15 worth of chips, with plenty of change.

But yes, drawers in the table for chips and extendable cupholders. The only thing holding me back is that the rim might be too high if I want to put my notebook on it. The felt looked pretty nice though. This is the Hong Kong supposedly good stuff, as opposed to the cheap ass China stuff. Get back to me on what you think, and as and when someone shows up to help me carry it to the cab on the way back - we're in business. I'd call people out today, but last minute appeals don't seem as effective as the once were.

Posted by subtitles at 4:26 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 19, 2005

How Incredibly Not Worth It is That Crappy-Ass Email Service?

Pretty damn - would be the answer to that question. There's a long documented saga of how that silly company seems determined to use things that break in Opera, the beta forum is full of people complaining. And really, I need another e-mail account like I need herpes, or an Alanis Morrisette/Coldplay album. Honestly, if you want free IMAP, I recommend, as I always have, FastMail.fm - I've used them for years now, and not a single piece of spam that I didn't deserve. And their free accounts ask you to use long usernames, so all the better to frustrate dictionary spam. SMTP is an issue, but you can use your isp or any other smtp server. If it comes down to it, you could get a fallingbeam.org account if you wanted, just contact me - no strangers need apply, sorry. And please don't become a spammer, or I'll turn you into your father's sperm. I have about 90+ accounts on my domain with my hosting plan, so go crazy. Oh, and I'm not not mentioning names because they otherwise advertise on this site, I'm just tired of hear the tripping whine that is branding hell - and I think it's actually unlimited accounts if I'm not wrong.

Posted by subtitles at 3:31 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Opera's Nobody's Bitch

I get the feeling Opera's decided that they want to stop getting creamed, and have a much more effective PR strategy. It's just crazy the amount of headline news they've been getting in the past couple of days alone. Someone must being doing something right in their PR department. Whatever the case, I can only assume that this is the blitz before the big launch of the soon to be named not-Opera-8. And every big headline gives it more exposure, which for them would translate almost directly into downloads and sales. So no more being slapped around by ugly sister, it's moving day - graduation. So far no reals signs of "big thing badly".

How could you love me and leave me, it's only, your first time.

Posted by subtitles at 3:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

March 18, 2005

The Factual Thing Itself

And so when I tell a lie I feel the need to make that lie be real - to tell the lie to others who I don't need to tell the lie to, and be convinced of it as I persuade them of the fullness of the factual thing itself. I suppose that that would that mixture of extraordinary and unremarkably natural. Though really I've not had the chance, nor the inclination, nor the circumstances under which, to lie on that scale and need for say 5 years?

Posted by subtitles at 8:47 PM | TrackBack | Personal

Louis' Definitive Guide to Buying CDR - Idiot-Proof Version

The simplest I can make it is this: look for 50 disc spindles that have a grey base and a flat edged top. That means getting spindles that look like this

rather than this

which has a sharp edged top and a black base. The brands that normally have the former are TDK and Maxell. TDK tends to have both (as evidenced above), so pick the right one. Maxell I've only really seen having the former. Beyond that, brand really doesn't matter. You should never be paying anything like $30 for 50 discs - the benchmarks should be that 50 shouldn't cost much more than $20. If you go to Sim Lim, you can get it for about $18 - $20. I recommend Z-Nix upstairs 6th floor, turn right as you get out of the lift. If you ask them for "Ritek" discs they'll tend to know what you're talking about.

End of Simple version. I might do more detailed versions if the need arises. That version would include the fact that Ritek manufactures the former, CMC Magnetics the latter. Also that these manufacturers make CDRs for many many brands - and brands don't always stick to a particular manufacturer. Manufacturers, however, stick to their own unique packaging - hence the diffentiation between spindles. Ritek happens to be the good (and compatible) of the cheap.

Posted by subtitles at 7:13 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Tempting Fate

I'd try to find and post the quote from Toby, but it's funnier when you watch it - Election Night, 4th season, directed by Lesli Linka Glatter. So I should be writing 2 speeches, one, yay computer, the other, I'm sorry for your loss. Apparently Eugene was asleep at home, so it wouldn't have been a good idea for me to have just gone over and tried calling him there. I'm bringing popiah, which is happily halal (there's a sticker on the wall), though there's one less than there was because I was hungry.

I'm currently reinstalling Neverwinter Nights, since I've discovered the new campaigns, I hope they don't suck. If only the DVD versions weren't all in Italian or spanish. The side glare of the panel is much better now that they changed the panel, and they'll get back to me about the colour issue. Not all that bad, them coming over, and prepared to do the swopsies on the spot - but still plenty of annoyance to get there. Tech repair people are so meek and unassuming, I wonder what that's about.

The Maxell discs I bought (well, eugene bought) are fantastic, especially with the Benq - exceptional in fact. I'm very tempted to replace the Lite-On, but then I wouldn't have pretty scans anymore. At least not on this box. I'm being stubborn about restarting but I really should, so my mouse gets turned back on and the monitors work properly again.

Posted by subtitles at 10:42 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff , Personal

March 16, 2005

House - Rescued from CSI

That was a rather superlatively good episode of House I just watched. It was written by Lawrence Kaplow, who's apparently written quite a few of the episodes of House that I think are very very good. The director Randall Zisk is also a familiar name, but to not so much that I remember him, nor is his long filmography *that* striking. But my it was a good episode. New nemesis is good - very very amped up presentation of the premises of the show, more drama than usual - you can tell it's the beginning of a new story arc from having had more episodes ordered. No end of interesting, knowing more about the production process and the way the episodes have to be batched.

Nina from 24 was the patient, good guest stars always raise the game. But yes, Lawrence Kaplow makes me now want to watch Hack, which I hope I can find somewhere. But apparently not. And thankfully they've rescued Baba O'Riley from CSI. Also the mentions of control and shame are really rather good in the presentation of Bulemia - I really liked it. Cameron was good in the episode as well, heartrending vulnerability does that, aussie boy was fine, Omar Epps is still annoying.

I will burn House DVDs for anyone who promises to stop watching DP.

Posted by subtitles at 4:11 PM | TrackBack | Television

Bittorrent Sites after Suprnova/Lokitorrent

My old bog has been getting a bunch of hits from people looking to find Mininova.org, so I thought it's about time I provided a list of good current torrent sites:

Open Sites (No Registration):

My favorite is ISOHunt - probably the broadest search and aggregation site I know of, and the RSS feed allows you to view by category. If you want the search bar in your Opera Personal Bar, look here. It's best for searching and monitoring via RSS, the listing UI isn't great, for which you might want to try MiniNova, which is sort of subsidiary of ISOHunt, or:

TorrentSpy, another very good indexing site which I tend not to use because it's main "torrents for today" page is split into different pages, but otherwise it's very "Suprnova-Like". Didn't have RSS last I checked but that might have changed.

For TV, there are 2 main sites, which amongst others are also indexed by the above sites - TVTorrents, and BTEfnet. I prefer TVTorrents because it has an autodownloading application via RSS (TVTAD). Also TVTorrents tends to only post proper files, and well seeded, whereas BTEfnet tends to just go for prompt releases. I monitor both though, since sometimes one has something the other doesn't.

Registration Required:

The big ommission above regarding TV is UKNova - it requires registration, which means that if they're not taking new members you're sunk, and your ratio actually matters. But it has what the other TV sites lack: UK TV in spades.

Filelist.org does very high quality releases. They only release "scene" stuff, so mostly it'll be things in 15mb rar files - but they'll be the proper stuff. I go there to get good quality games and movies, especially movies that otherwise aren't available in WideScreen. Oh, and pr0n. The download rates, as long as you're a member in good standing, are off the charts fast, because of their very sensible ratio system.

Notes:

There are plenty of other sites, but these are the ones I use most often, and are most familiar with. There are many many more sites, especially niche sites and wannabe sites - feel free to add them as comments and I'll be updating this post as and when anyway. In particular there are a lot of new registration sites - but it doesn't make sense to join too many of those if they aren't comprehensive though. These are only BT sites, I'll do a seperate post on post-Sharereactor/Shareconnector sites later. I personally use Azureus as my client - be sure to do a clean install of the latest Java before you use it. If you're looking for NFO's, this is the place to go. When I have time, I'll hunt down the RSS links for you guys, especially since some of them aren't very prominent.

Posted by subtitles at 1:44 AM | TrackBack | Definitive Posts , P2P , Previously Pinned

March 15, 2005

Soon to be Superceded by the new PowerMac - The President's Voice

Oh my fucking god this is awful - the fuck-faced idiots also did a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody - Freddie Mercury is absolutely spinning. Wet bastards - twats basically, tossy little white boys. I never quite realised how much talentless gimpy trolls got featured on CD:UK, but I suppose that's as much my fault by now. Busking with My Sweet Lord was fun, and I think there was Neil Young song once that I liked.

Scott McClellan always seems so baby-faced, though recently he's begun to look more and more tired and worn. You can watch the press briefings on C-Span, which I do every once in a while. The latest briefing is normally on the front page. I went there because Fox News Online has more silly headlines about the new China law. When news organisations say so and so says this, doesn't it strike you as somewhat disingenuous?

So it's true, Jem - like Beth Orton, only nowhere near as good.

Posted by subtitles at 12:12 PM | TrackBack | Television

To Which Belong Her - Jennifer Connelly in Career Oppurtunities

A lovely inflection of awk-wardness. The proliferation of google search boxes on Blogger blogs is comic to no end. I never realised that Pooh-Bah was derived from a character from the Mikado. I wonder if Colin Goh knew this.

Watching Career Oppurtunities now, with the immensely lovely Jennifer Connelly. For those that don't know, she is counted as one of the nummys, to which belong her, Mary Louise Parker, and Poppy Montgomery. I'm sure there's more, but can't remember right now. Anyway, the film is written by John Hughes, and it's pretty good, I must say. Makes me want to get more of his oevre than I already have. I wonder how much Target paid them. I'm now suddenly impressed that the director (Hughes only wrote it) directed a whole list of tv stuff that I like, including Sports Night and Freaks and Geeks. Immense. And really, so far it's an absolutely lovely film.

It was recommended by being ripped off on the OC, in a portion that I had ignored.

You can get it here: Career Opportunities - Jennifer Connelly.avi. The rip requires Zoom Player to properly display the aspect ratio though. I suppose all this isn't quite television, but I'm treating it as such, as I should. It's really really good.

Jennifer Connelly is *so* lovely. And the music's great. The white tank-top is I can't get my eyes off, her moving is so fetching with the hips, it's not even true. Oh, and the unbelievable riding of the horse. I can't get over how wonderful it is.

Posted by subtitles at 8:57 AM | TrackBack | Television

Lesbians on a Sunday

Mia Kirshner looks nice being coy. She's less annoying this season, allowed to be more vulnerable and happy - so as to be an attractive draw for the show - no doubt that explains the bare breasted shot of her in the credits.

On a mildly related note, Dion sent me a bunch of pictures of the Nikon Booth Babes from the IT show, which makes me feel so much like a dirty old man - unabatingly lubricious.

Don't look, it's naughty.

I was saying that not since the Wire was on, have my sundays' downloading been so active - Deadwood, L Word, Simpsons, Arrested Development. I wonder if it's all just a response to the fact that DP has revealed the untapped potential of Sundays? I'm trying to think of a show to keep people from watching Arrested Development. Not that it's as bad as DP, by any means, I still watching if there's nothing left, but it's flawed in a bad way, and it's also annoying in a bad way. So I came up with Scrubs, Daily Show, and 2.5 Men - the good ones are good, much better than Arrested Development which really, just isn't visceral enough.

Lilac wine, is sweet, and heady, like my love...

Oh well, I'm putting it down to Mia Kirshner was just ill-used in the last season, because she's really good in this one - especially her getting her hair cut - incredibly lovely.

Posted by subtitles at 7:00 AM | TrackBack | Television

Whipping Cocks is Coldplay

I just remember Melissa Etheridge, when the whole pedo-lesbo-pop thing was around with that russian girl band (tatu), saying that well, in the past you'd never have thought saying you're a lesbian would be good for your career. And so music trivia abounds watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I actually got a couple of Once and Agains posted, though the rest were rejected for lack of sources - eventually then. I'm so gratified that another of Mark Lamarr's whipping cocks is Coldplay, incredibly gratified. I can't say listening to the radio is quite my thing though - I'd like something more talky, but obviously funnier or as laid back as Showtalkers. And yet again I'm in a quandary about what to eat, and whether I should just finish watching.

Posted by subtitles at 2:19 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 14, 2005

You're So Fucking Special

Granted I don't think Radiohead are worth much, but they deserve better than this. Some fuck-faced idiots (named after a generation of mac processors) are doing an operatic cover of Creep. They didn't even have the decency to swear as appropriate, just stuck filler in where they were supposed to be. Oh my. The UK, the land of nothing being sacred. Grave turning self stabbing dig your own eyes out with a spoon. They don't even have the decency to express at least some smidgen of unseemly irony. Eli's Coming. That's what you get from downloading TOTP - thanks UKNova. It must have done something to me, because I now actually quite like the Britney single - Do Somethin' - she's pretty effective being squeaky.

Posted by subtitles at 4:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Television

China, Taiwan, All Your Base Are Belong To Us - and The Arbiter of All Meaning

Just because I keep seeing things talking much alarmist about what's happening with China's anti-secession law to stop Taiwan from declaring independence - I point you to the arbiter of all meaning. It's a law enacted mostly to appease the nationalists - meant to leave the administration with plenty of wiggle room with regards to what actually warrants what and what actually counts for what. Move along, nothing to see here.

Posted by subtitles at 12:27 PM | TrackBack | News

Sketch Show Doesn't Suck

It's surprising I know, but it's actually better than some. And they do a very good job of making Mary Lynn Rajskub of 24 fame, look very convincingly hot. There's also another pretty blonde woman. It's flawed in that it's american, but other than that it seems to be trying very hard, and is very gaggy, which is a good thing. The insistence seems to be on keeping it short, but the interspersing of stock clips is a bit annoying - I preferred the Smack The Pony drifting off. Very contrived, but still funny. Very Methodical. TVTome.

Posted by subtitles at 11:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Television

'Creation'-ism

That headline sounded so much better when I was thinking about it on the way back here.

I eat quite a lot at this place called Creation - just opposite me in Shaw Tower. It's close to the Burger King, before the corridor leading to the food court. It's good.

Basically it serves pasta. I think it has a couple of other dishes, but mainly pasta. I personally prefer creamy pastas, which they do pretty well - they have a workmanlike salmon alfredo, the seafood version is better, but the one I keep going back for is the spicy thai cream sauce with seafood (I can't remember the actual name). The tomato sauces aren't too bad either, the meatballs are particularly good, and I just tried the italian sausage, which wasn't bad. The spicy crabmeat would be great if it wasn't so messay, and the carbonara is a bit uninspiringly plain.

The best thing about the place though is that it serves small portions - just right as far as I'm concerned, especially if you want to have dessert after. But even if you don't, by the time you walk across the street and start writing your review entry, you'll feel sufficiently full - and this is me talking, after having arrived there practically tackling the guy to order. The ordering system is DIY, which is fine. They serve cold water, which is always a plus. I'd personally stay away from the set meals, since the soup is like creamy water and the brownies are ho-hum at best. An ala carte pasta is at most about $10.

Part of my problem with them though is that they, with great economic sense, close when it's not peak meal times, so I have to go there when things aren't chocked up with lunchy bastards, but not so removed that I miss it. In those instances I tend to go next door to the Ramen place, which I actually am rather fond of - open without gaps. I'll write about it when the occasion call for it, but it'll be a favourable review.

Posted by subtitles at 10:23 AM | TrackBack | Food Diary

Straits Times Protects the World... From Having to Read The Straits Times

Apparently the venerably institutionalised, jingoistic, navel-gazing press release that is the Straits Times has decided that it could no longer stand the scrutiny of a public audience, just as the government it pimps for can't stand the scrutiny of an un-gerrymandered and properly multi-party election. So from now on you're going to have to pay to read bad writing, wire copy, dick-headed windbags, whiny forum cock-heads, and the gaping abyss that is Life. So if you want to lose the will to live...

I got the story from the Inq.

Posted by subtitles at 9:42 AM | TrackBack |

The Giant Sucking Sound that is Broadvoice

I've updated my Broadvoice post to reflect my recent problems with the scum sucking bastards, you can find it here. I was going to do a proper write-up on my issues, but got lazy and annoyed so I just posted the latest e-mail with the attached history of e-mails. Hello Broadvoice employees - your service, and your customer service, SUCKS ASS.

Posted by subtitles at 9:35 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

And Love Her

I knew there was a reason I keep reading Su-lin's boggling. It's because she's intelligent and clever, and actually knows how to write - which is always nice. It's the kind of thing that it's nice to wake up to, to discover a tiny narrative of happiness or little vignette of a happy occasion, evoking perhaps the shared memory of the future while exercising the will towards nostalgia and the romantic desire for companions. I'm rather ashamed that I ever chastised Su-lin for not making her prose more interweb friendly by using short paragraphs as I do for the sake of plate-spinning attention. I think it has a lovely pith to it that reminds me (not in terms of pith necessarily) of the picnic in Brideshead. The perhaps unfortunate effect of the passage though is to render the character of the author as a vaguely marmish and scoldingly fond woman - one that is held in such regard by those that love her. And love her in an almost dismissive Sports Night manner. Just because this is what I'm doing right now I might as well confess that I've probably thought in the past, and likely think now, that Su-lin and I are probably not the best or most natural of friends, but happen to be people who despite that try very hard at working at it, for whatever reason, to attempt to make it work. The silly romanticism of Louis early in the morning. That requires the shame-laden indecision of a dismissive and vaguely comically rendered and protractedly convoluted retraction and disavowal. With that easy shame of shrugging of shoulders, 'I don't know'. I suppose I do subscribe to the notion of reading with the spine, but every so often, the sentimentality of the gripping of the chest is a rather fine way to judge and experience narrative. You can find the entry here.

Posted by subtitles at 2:29 AM | TrackBack | Personal

Pyramid Aliens Selling Time-Share

It's the two of us going for no discernable reason to a farmhouse, in response to a dubious ad to make money, except that there's a twist to why, which is that they are supposedly supposed to be hiding the fact that they are aliens. Actually now that I think of it it's as if they come onto our farm and proposition us as a family to start the production, careful to say things out of place, like bodies when it's supposed to be plants or something. We both sort of know that it's theatre because I'd heard about it before, from hearing about it online, that they pretend to be aliens to hook you in, but it's really just a pyramid scheme. It ends with me after a while having been at their place, and they've finally managed to steal my wallet which they almost seemed obliged to do, and there's my IC in it so I go back to at least try and get it back. Which I think is still a good ending. Obviously throughout there's an amibavalence as to whether they are really aliens or just actor salesmen or the the professional troupe the conspiracy hires - all kinds of incongruities as to how they can afford to run the scam on the scale for small pyramid selling etc. And the children. Just as you leave the house is when they have the hooded people in black carrying a black shrouded body and mistakenly leave it for you to pull back the veil, but we don't bother. Perhaps that's part of what occurs when I go back. Perhaps they're asking us to move to the country and get others to do the same - as if they were asking us to join the troupe. Stilted formality and slips of mentions of violence and harvesting. I could work in the bit from Big Train where he asks people to give him money and they do as long as he promises that it's not for a time-share. I'm sure I could work Pixley in somewhere.

Posted by subtitles at 2:05 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 13, 2005

Dan and Casey's Dance Fever

Two speeches, tempting fate on Sports Night, but for the moon landings, no spit. I love Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Again, UKNova is the bomb and while I suppose it'd be nice to have more, or a longer half-life via ed2k, it's great that they have it at all. I wonder if they do Nigella.

Apparently a new season of Family Business has started, it's not exactly classic, but fun enough for a single viewing. I'm listening to Mark Lamarr on BBC radio now, it should be fun.

Numb3rs is becoming increasingly background viewing - more will they won't they drama with entrance of old girlfriend - they must teach a course in TV storylines 101 somewhere. Somehow they make Sabrina Lloyd look less diminutive, but she seems to have gained gravitas with age.

Posted by subtitles at 7:35 PM | TrackBack | Television

Troubleshooting Narrative

Not surprisingly, I credit with a kind of wistful holding the half an hour I spent at the computer fair before the thronging, and the fire, and the jumping. I would walk and see them eating before, the dressing applying the final tart, primping and smiling and hiking, groups in huddles going through the ritual of preparation. And me, walking away with CD sleeves and - oh what was it again - a $500 Samsung monitor.

The Benq that Eugene got as quite a steal at $99, and I'm sure the Analog version of my monitor that they bought will do well. At some point I'll post the quote of what I'm getting for them, again to all comers. I don't really feel like telling the story so they mixed up and gave me the wrong monitor, I got a $1000 LCD TV instead of a monitor, but I gave it back because I couldn't stand the though of having to come back to get a monitor after all the drama and effort.

There's a whole troubleshooting narrative to accompany this, but what I choose to mention now is that the cloning of monitors appears to have made the old CMV look sultry. At the moment I'm still finding it endlessly useful, so all of the non-existent offers can now stop. Unless you're a vintage CMV collector.

Posted by subtitles at 7:13 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Without The Rough Boys

I'm sure I'll get around to doing a more informative post about the state of torrenting, but right now the big news for me is UKNova.com. Everything that's good about living in the UK without the rough boys. It's absolutely heavenly, so that I'm now able to get at all the shows I had gaps in, not to mention the iching rips of Shameless Season 2.

The RSS feed is a bit tricky, but have a look at the forums and you'll find they did pretty cool things with it - and bothered to document it properly. Now if only there were an agnostic tool for harvesting torrent links from feeds. I'd link to everything, but unless you're registered, there's no point, so register (if they're still offering memberships) and go bananas.

Posted by subtitles at 6:20 AM | TrackBack | P2P , Television

Titties and Beer

I can't seem to keep the break of Innocent Man by Billy Joel out of my head - 'I am, and innocent man, oh yes I am, an innocent man'.

I really like the recent episode of the Eric Rice Show - honestly, if I might be so bold: yes, no doubt your advertisers like short packaged shows that are about something etc. but the show is at it's best when it's flabby and you're just hanging out, messing about. It's not about whether or not you're pimping something - though I'm sure the act of pimping affects things regardless - it's just the feeling of people being themselves and goofing off around stuff. There's an accompanying video, which you can find here. They look like it tastes like ass.

So yes, they can be entertaining as they once were, but not a post will go by about them that I don't mention the absence of Esto-Jen, who is now knocked up Rice's fuckbuddy-child, locked in a basement, doing nothing but getting baked.

Anyone who can recommend me a podcasting tool that doesn't suck (iPodder was just pointless) will have erected for them bonkers scaffolding. But honestly, just having the feed on Klipfolio seems to do me pretty well - it's only a minute or so away once the headline shows up. I don't listen to them on the move because I don't move, so it's all on my spacious sound system - and if I do move, that's what the Economist is for.

Fire. And please, if you want to watch the series, just go here and get it, since it's aired on Sky in the UK already. Though the HRHD rips might be nice.

Posted by subtitles at 4:45 AM | TrackBack | News , Television

March 11, 2005

Strangers When We Meet - Whoever You Want Me To Be

I maintain, as I should, differentiation from the things that nominally enforce themselves as similar. That is not this, and my protestations are not anything other than the desire to point out that that I am better than all of you, that I know more, understand more, am more.

I'm starting to think that the reason Sally was moved was because it was originally planned as the end of the 12/13 episode initial run - something surely intrigues me beyond all understanding.

Alicia Coppola: On both Sports Night and 2.5 Men, not to mention Lisa Edelstein as Bobby Bernstein.

The extreme close-ups of Sports Night's DOP?

I'm in clover, for... That's what the end of more self-reflexive OC will do to you - I'm downloading the Jennifer Connelly/John Hughes thing it refers to as we speak.

Posted by subtitles at 10:53 AM | TrackBack | Personal , Television

How Much Do You Love Me

And so I've succumbed to watching Sports Night again - and not skipping straight to Pixley for Megan Ward. I think it was discovering that the episodes aired out of sequence, and that I now have the chance to correct that egregious error. I'm starting with Mary Pat Shelby because Su-lin already had a disc of the first 4 episodes. Sabrina Lloyd looks so fresh faced and pixie-like compared to Numb3rs. I think I've never quite realised how good Thomas Schlamme actually is, and how adventurous he can be. How did Felicity Huffman move to such crap from this. It's like when the camera pulls out, it quivers with a kind of uncertainty, as if it could topple over at any moment, ducking and weaving.

So now it occurs to me, remembering that Josh Schwartz was in Dead Poet's Society, that he's on the show at least in part because he's able to convincingly play being in crisis. Troubled and riddled with doubt.

Posted by subtitles at 7:09 AM | TrackBack | Television

Customised Google News - No Sniffing, No Wowing

I suppose I should breeze past the fact that it doesn't seem to be as compliant with Opera as it should be, and hence there are at least some things that can't be done if you use Opera, and talk about how underwhelming it is. The biggest thing you realise is that it's nice to have gotten rid of some of the crap there that just didn't interest you. Without the pictures it's just boring.

Every other news service has offered customisation - Yahoo, MSN, MyWay - and for the first two, you can even add my RSS feed as a headline box (see under syndication on the sidebar). So let the day of jubilee commence. Really all I do there is browse headlines, loose interest, and perhaps click on a couple of the Reuters links.

You can apparently also share your customised page with your friends, who can then choose to mock or worship. Step One. I'm going to get my Big and Tasty.

Posted by subtitles at 3:19 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Laundry Day - It's an Allusion to a Bus

So again, my apartment smells like fabric softener, and I'm trolling about in my one pair of jeans that, honestly, are rather comfy - for jeans. Now if I could only stop waking up at 7 every morning. I forgot to put my towel in, and am wondering if I'm neurotic enough to change my sheets just so I can wash my towel. Of course you'd ask where my other towels are, to which my response would be - have you not *met* Louis? But if it ever happens, shower curtain, bedside table, new shoe rack, and uncontrollable weeping.

I just did the rather silly thing of checking how many episodes there would be in this season of 24. Wait for it. This also means that I can now test out my new firmware.

Apparently there's some computer fair thing on tomorrow at Suntec, and all are welcome to join me and Eugene - I must warn you though, that from my experience, these things are designed for one thing only - to clear old stock before new products are launched or price cuts announced. And I can build you one much cheaper and better - though I'm starting to think I really should charge.

Eugene seems to be wanting to help g/f to get new comp, and I'm just wondering whether it'd just be a better idea to go for a cheap socket 754 processor, and put some ass-indentations in Athlon 64. Though I'm wondering whether it's just not worth it if there's going to be no overclocking - the rated speeds are pretty low for the cheaper chips. And the whole SFF thing is making me wonder if it's a good idea. Well they can have a look at the crap being offered, then they can come crying back to clever Louis.

Posted by subtitles at 2:48 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff , Personal

Sermons in Stones, Books in the Running Brooks

I suppose I'm getting a little disillusioned with Adsense - there seem to be a whole bunch of other smaller players getting into the market - I wonder what they compete on. Basically my problem is that the ads they serve aren't exactly that relevant, and not surprisingly, because I have so much new content, it doesn't tend to show relevant ads straight away. And the empty banners are always a bit annoying. Though now that I think about it, a lot of things use adsense but mask it - the other players tend to be those annoying smart-tag-like idiots.

So I'm a little obsessed. I've also pinned the UK DVDs to the bottom of the page, though I'm sure most of the clicks I attribute to my phantom audience were probably mine. To be honest I'm sure I'm a bit happy that people (by which I mean random people) aren't reading this, because gauging by what people are writing on these things, that's not company I want to keep. My delusional mind views this more as me being responsible and maintaining at least some form of historical record.

Oh and despite the fact that I found the W3Schools guide to XHTML totally useless, I'm still proud of the fact that at least I'm not a pansy and am able to set dynamic widths on my pages - people who stick to the assumption of 800x600 are just lazy. I'm not saying you don't test at that resolution, because you should, but as evidenced, some people think 1600 is a good idea, so there's the future waving the ride.

Bite the bullet baby, bite the bullet.

Posted by subtitles at 2:24 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

March 10, 2005

Where's Heat When You Need It?

I'm finding right-click scroll rather useful in my quest to scam BlogClicker, something useful to do while trying to not watch too much of Dr. Who. I mean, Neverwhere can't have been that much more expensive, but it was hell of a lot better. Maybe they should bring back Greg Dyke, if only because he hated this crap.

Though really, I get the feeling I'm the one getting scammed - at a rate of 2 clicks to 1 view, it's sustainable (I suppose) but not terribly worth it for me yes/no? And really, who are these cocksuckers who keep getting impressions - don't tell me they actually paid to get on. Though this is pretty sad too. It's not actually pyramid selling, but I'm sure there's a name for it somewhere.

If only Billie could be on something worth a damn. She's supposed to start singing again, which might be fun. You just hope she doesn't stray that far. And yes I'm reminded that I don't read Heat anymore.

Posted by subtitles at 3:36 PM | TrackBack | Site Updates , Television

Not As Good As Puppet Angel - Talia Balsam

I suppose it's just because I've never watched the previous series of Dr. Who, but oh my god it's a cheap-ass show. Puppet Angel was *so* much more fun, not to mention more convincing. Even invisible fighting would be that bit better.

Can't seem to find Canterbury Tales (the one with Billie in it) online, I'm sure it'll turn up eventually or something. Sorry to anyone who was expecting me to follow through on ripping Murder One, I'm just useless like that.

Oh, and someone else who's been catching my attention recently is Talia Balsam, who aside from having been married to George Clooney at one point (by the way, Blind Justice guy used to be Juliana Marguiles' beau at one point), she's plays Anthony LaPaglia's wife/ex in Without a Trace, where she has been remarked upon as being very earth mother - like she's very nurturing. K-Street has her as rather a different character that uses her physicality in a similar way, but this time to emphasize her sexual appetite for Mary McCormack. Interesting evolution of roles, and pretty effective actress in them. She's now married to John Slattery who's now on Jack and Bobby.

I'm still quite convinced by my talking about the inability to see the central figure in Blind Justice, if only because being blind, he does not interact as people normally would, he doesn't look at people, and people don't really look at him - and he always gives the impression of sensing, so you look around rather than at him. So you look but you don't see. Aren't I just clever. And I've just been thinking, that there's a case to be made for the show, or at least the pilot, being at least in part preoccupied with circumvention - making the scene where he walks around the furniture in the station house all the more interesting.

And I just felt the need to say it but not necessarily to put it in a seperate post: Louis doesn't do weddings, whatever my interest in Laura Nyro.

Posted by subtitles at 2:39 PM | TrackBack | Television

Billie's Pregnant, Stop Being Such a Lez - John Stewart and Momma Stewart

I swear it's really not just my imagination, Billie does look downright chunky in Dr. Who. Pregnancy rumours may now commence. And yes, it only makes her more fetching (you knew that was coming, surely).

It occurs to me that I've never really written about the Daily Show with John Stewart, which I've been watching ever since it's become so religiously uploaded, and really since the election coverage. I find it easy watching first thing in the morning, not something I have to consider watching or not - so like I said, easy.

Also it's mercifully short, which other late night shows aren't terribly, which probably why I don't have an archive of Conan - also he's not as assiduously torrented. Regardless, Daily Show is endlessly funny, despite being a bit strained at time - they do take the easy route, but I can believe it when they say it's mostly about finding the funny. It's not unproblematic, but I think the key word, which is why I'm now repeating it again - show = easy.

I've been noticing this actress called Jane Lynch recently, who does rather good things for the shows that she's on. She's currently on L Word as Bette's (or is it Tina's - yes, Tina - hot pregnant one from Angel) divorce lawyer, which is going somewhere so obvious with the uber-assertive thing. But anyway she's really good in her roles, especially as the psychiatrist towards the end of 1st season 2.5 Men - it's all in her surprisingly leg length film/tv-ography as provided above.

I wonder at the L Word using Lesbian stereotypes, ie she's being such a lesbian, that's so lez etc. I suppose that's where comedy comes from, I'm just wondering if it isn't also meant to be politically progressive in that rather roundabout way queer things can be.

Did Billie get divorced? So it's either pregnancy (the fun kind) or it's the aftermath of too much ice-cream and sympathy? More as I find more dish to filth. Apparently they split up about a year ago - I'm sure I must have known, and just forgotten or something. Ah well.

Posted by subtitles at 1:16 PM | Television

Mahjong and Monitors, Suede and dEUS

I think I know what I'll be playing in the background the next time there's a bridge game at my place. And I know that I've not gone out for weeks and many many weeks, but that's because I'm focused on not thinking, is what I'm thinking. Maybe it would do me good, but I think at least at the moment, that would require too much moral support. Mahjong and monitors will have to wait.

The Suede videos I want because of the first disc, the early stuff before they got rid of the good guitarist, apparently the videos are to be mocked, I don't think I'd actually recognise them except for Animal Nitrate anyway. dEUS is more promising in that respect, and I don't think I've even ever seen the videos in question, except maybe the dancing one that came later. What I'd really love is to get that live set of them on MTV - I can't even remember the show now, it featured a bunch of great alternative bands of the period doing rather raw live shows - if someone could illuminate me.

Posted by subtitles at 11:52 AM | TrackBack | Personal

Deadwood Season 2 Premiere

So in the second season the whores have to look that much more glamorous? No more persistent grubbiness? The formality of the letters is quite refreshing, contrasting well with the otherwise squalid nature of the reality that confronts them. Similarly with Alma Garrett. Maybe I have to get used to it again, but the vernacular is still pretty indecipherable, though the swearing has mitigated somewhat.

They seem more contrained that they used to, perhaps success has cursed them with the need to also be successful, and certain compromises necessitate from that. The handling of the telephone poles was okay, though I would have expected it to be better than it was. Doesn't seem quite as good so far as the previous that I remember, but no doubt it'll pick up as things progress.

I wonder if it's just natural that the prettier whores are the ones that are featured. The house and the description of the house is rather nice, and the sexual affair is quite gratifying, though the attempt at wryness doesn't quite wash. The women, other than the amping, remain rather appealing. But not the best episode; waiting for better.

It wasn't as depressing as I thought it might be.

Posted by subtitles at 2:59 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 9, 2005

Amy Acker and David Mamet

Promising casting, despite Scott Foley, for a new pilot developed by David Mamet. The show's called The Unit, it'll be about a special forces unit - I hope Amy's not just one of the family members. Apparently Mamet's writing the pilot, which should be good. He's working with some guy from the Shield, which I've never really watched, but never found terribly impressive.

I watched the episodes Mamet directed, and the ones with Rebecca Pidgen; again, it's difficult to transcend the series - hopefully it's better when he's the one starting it all off. It wasn't till recently that I found out that he had written for TV earlier, for Hill Street Blues (well, one episode) - though he did start out in theatre like I thought, but was confused about for a bit. His IMDB page is more informative in that respect. Rebecca Pidgen's quite comely. His films are really rather good, so here's hoping. I've always thought Amy Acker flitted about particularly well, so promise all round.

Posted by subtitles at 11:09 PM | TrackBack | News , Television

Blind Justice Pilot - Revolves Around

Watching the series premiere of Blind Justice. I think it'd be a bit inevitable that I'd find it a bit disappointing that it doesn't start off the with same kind of arch wryness that Murder One was able to convey. That said, the tone is pretty accomplished, nothing to complain about. You'd never be able to tell that Rena Sofer was on a spectacularly failed sitcom previously, and she looks better than she did when she was lighted so harshly as sitcoms do. And yes, the dog is sort of cute.

Maybe I was wrong - because the dog, he can't drive. And obviously he would be assigned to Hot Partner Lady. Looks better on the show. The aural visualisation is pretty impressive, very gamelike. I think I really like the partner.

All in all very promising, I think I like it more than others do. It's not doing anything fantastic in terms of inventiveness or innovation, but the quality of the work stands out - it's a good pilot, most pilots aren't this good. I do get the feeling they're really more pushing forward than holding back, setting things up for a short story arc to finish the season. The best thing about it though, is that it seems to be something where it can very quickly move beyond the premise and not get weighed down by it, like say CSI, or Numb3rs. The premise is incidental to the show, not what it revolves around. And the female lead really looks like she's going to be able to step up. I get the sense that I tend not to look at, or tend not to see or pay that much attention to, the blind guy - it's a strange realisation. It's like the show revolves around something/someone that's not there.

Get the torrent while it lasts.

Posted by subtitles at 1:23 PM | TrackBack | Television

Chica Vampire Piper Mugsy Ward

Is it Vampire Sperm? So yes, not a bad Gilmore Girls at all this week. Someone decided they were funny again - oh and Lorelei is particularly fetching in the new dress, and her yelling at Emily is always a crowd-pleaser - though you always wish she could swear and kick.

I still can't seem to get myself to watch Deadwood, I think it's just the anticipation of all the drama that's putting me off. Tried 24 just now, but couldn't do it - it's now on the radio. Much buzz about the leaked Dr. Who, I wonder if it's worth watching, pudgy Billie and all. Not that I think she's in any way unattractive pudgy, but it's just not typical. Though really it could just be that I'm not used to her already normally quite wide face-shape.

I know she's Mugsy no. 2 on 24 right now, but having seen her on Boomtown makes me want to look at Lana Parrilla with new eyes on the show. I'm now a bit lost without an immediate show to goto, I'm thinking the Megan Ward episodes of Sports Night, but I'm wondering whether that's entirely healthy.

I suspect she might have been coming off pregnancy in those episodes, but obviously I have no insight beyond speculation. I'm pretty sure downloading Dark Skies would be at least something of a mistake. But apparently I'm going to do it anyway. I must have forgotten that Sans Un Trace's Bob Saget was in that too.

Posted by subtitles at 11:03 AM | TrackBack | Television

Apace

I have to admit, the livebookmarks feature in Firefox is pretty cool - it lets you bookmark the automatically detected RSS feed you've found and view the headlines in a bookmark folder. Opera should do that. In case you haven't noticed, Louis has been incredibly bitchcakes for at least a day or so - I've becomes obsessed with traffic - but I've resolved to calm down and deal with it. I think I've tweaked the sidebar quite enough so that I won't fiddle with it for at least a day or so.

My ad clicks seem to have disappeared, so that means it was my fiends being curious - or someone who's lost their poor interweb cherry to the hunger of adsense. At some point I'll stop talking about my obsession with things you do thing with like nipples - and write about something vaguely interesting - as is my wont.

The construction outside my door is progressing - there are now doors to the lift area, and there's a little balcony with a railing to fall off of while you figure out that the chute is there.

Posted by subtitles at 9:24 AM | TrackBack | Personal

I Am Not A Blog

Breaking news everyone, apparently, I, subtitles, am not a blog. Well yes I do refer to myself as a bog, or the act of me as boggling, but now I've heard it from a higher power. The almighty BlogExplosion. This is what I sent back to them, what they sent me is below:

Below is the mail you sent me telling me my blog is "not a blog". Well, it uses Movable Type, and the top post is the latest, so I don't see what you're going on about. If the top few posts were there mocking your service, well, that's not unearned now is it? Kindly look at my not-blog again and get your editors to stop smoking crack on the job.

This was what I recieved from you:

Your site was denied for not being a blog. We only allow blogs or
blog related services to be added to blogexplosion.

Site reviewed:
subtitles
http://newblog.fallingbeam.org/blog/

Sincerly,
BlogExplosion Team

This is the link to my trouble ticket. So what? Even when they cut and paste their responses they can't type properly? Sincerely is spelt with and 'e' (well, more than one). I get the feeling they were right, and BlogClicker *is* better.

Posted by subtitles at 8:33 AM | TrackBack | News

Mind 'Boggling'

I should really do a post about the various bog directories and search engines - so much crap so little time. I'm also thinking of moving all the buttons etc. to the bottom of the page or something, cuz they're really starting to piss me off. Cruising people's little boggling endeavours is enough to make me want to stab myself - and not in a fun way.

Okay, I've done my lovely compromise and everything is tucked away that the bottom of the sidebar.

This is now going to become the post of retired code:

Vote for our site!

Search Amazon.co.uk:

Search Amazon.com:

Web fallingbeam.org newblog.fallingbeam.org

Web fallingbeam.org
newblog.fallingbeam.org

TOP POLYPHONIC

TOP MONOPHONIC

Manga Site

Posted by subtitles at 5:59 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

Mariah's New Video - It's Like That

It's nice to have a Mariah single out - not exactly like Christmas, but it's fun. The video isn't bad - she looks good in it, though my only complaint is that excessively straightened hair isn't exactly the way I'd go. Very flattering shots of her though. This is what i got, there's another version I saw, but the quality's not quite as nice.

Mariah_Carey_-_It's_Like_That SVCD (tulare).mpg

If you want, I also saw a bunch of Making The Video bits floating about, so that might be fun for you, I'm just not that in to the process as I would have been. It's in SVCD, so if you're like me and your WMP keeps locking up - I advise you to play it in powerDVD or whatever DVD software you have. I also wonder where they're releasing all this - and where the torrents are - it's likely that video releasing has stuck to using ed2k, since with smaller files the wait isn't that much longer than with a torrent, especially when people are swarming.

Yeah, and also wanted to get rid of that god-awful banner at the top of the page.

Posted by subtitles at 5:37 AM | TrackBack | News

Blog Explosion

Believe it or not this was the least annoying banner I could find of theirs.

So they pay you to read other people's bogs - by making other people read yours. Fun huh? So not the fun kind of payment. Anyway, if you sign up by clicking on the banner (or the button), or even this link, I get part of the fruits of your labour. I was even conscientious enough to do the same for the guy who commented on my post - which is how this whole pyramid thing works, in case you were wondering.

It's pretty painful trying to do it with 8x6, and really it's pretty painful regardless because of the frames. I'll have to see how's best to scam it - it'll be better than obsessing about my ads. Though now my pagess seem a bit empty when I see one with proxo and can't see the banner ad.

But yes, if bog-smurfing is your thing (it's not mine), and also an attention whore/slut (like me, though I'm not sure which is more appropriate - hence the /) - then this is just the drive-by colonoscopy you were looking for all your life.

I'm really loving the LiveMessage Alerts by the way - very prompt and effective - though I think you have to be slightly less aggressive with your ad patching if you want the alerts to show up in your contact list.

Posted by subtitles at 3:44 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

An Old Flame With a New Wick

It probably says something that Teri Hatcher was so much better in 2.5 men than she was on DP (I'm now referring to it in the past tense, and not mentioning the name in case I summon it and it eats me). And she looks so dolled up - they must have particular template for slutty over there - she's very much like Prudence, who was otherwise on the Help. I wonder if she's any good on Hope and Faith. Oh, and if anyone ever gets a hold of Run of the House, I'd be ever so grateful. I suppose there is something presumptuous about titles that refer to content - like the Wire and 2.5 Men, and subtitles himself, but it's sort of fun anyway. And it helps when you're *that* good. In high school, the word was 'hello'. It was a circus.

And there it is - Miaow-fe-chuh: My Doctor has a Cow Puppet.

I got a random person with a comment today, how gratifying. It was for the thing on Google.

Posted by subtitles at 2:21 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 8, 2005

Sometimes God does good work too

The 'I understand' episode is a must: If They Do Go Either Way, They're Usually Fake. I suppose this the season I should recommend to people, it'll give me an excuse to burn the DVD again without the auxiliary CD of things I forgot (again, sorry Winston). I must also remember to later annotate the miaow-fe-chuh episode. Also note that the airing sequence juggles things around (not too much, it's not Fox), but the TVTome episode list, as always, will set you right. Sometimes God does good work too. 'How do I suck?' 'Like a fox'.

I'd probably blow off rehearsal and start chugging from the blender. It's like having my own robot army. The songs in the industrial revolution pageant episode are hilarious - Twenty-Five Little Pre-pubers Without a Snoot-ful

Posted by subtitles at 7:21 AM | TrackBack | Television

The Economist - Medicaid Budget Reform, Medicare

In many ways I treat American Politics the way other people might treat Sports.

So it's only right that I provide a primer of sorts for some of the issues - and I say provide, rather than write, since that's what the Economist is good for. I mean, honestly, I didn't even know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid till I read the article. It's pretty short, and is just an incidental piece on the likely upcoming battle over the the Medicaid Budget - but it serves well as an informative piece on the principal political and economic issues.

I sometimes wonder if I should refer to myself as subtitles - as in 'when subtitles was young', or some such - much as the Economist does; particularly their columnists. Now if you learn anything from watching the West Wing, it is that referring to yourself by something other than your proper name is a distancing gesture - put simply, you'd sometimes be better off thinking of yourself as the office or the function or the magazine or the column, rather than the person.

The Economist does not tell substantive stories about individuals - they leave that to the hacks at the BBC and those other rather disreputable organisations. There is an obsession with the particular that can move to the point of being inaccurate. People who are more willing to tell you stories of people they've met than to, at least part of the time, tell you about statistics of change, can and should be subject to the phrase caveat emptor - buyer beware, be careful of what they are selling. The individual at many times can be subject to so many tugs and pulls and can with such finality be swayed by something other than what is right - which is why at times being a person is just less than helpful. If you can help more people than you could before, that has to be a good thing, especially if you otherwise do no harm to anything except people's predjudices.

Perhaps it's not the best idea to blog policy - but again, that's what the Economist is for. I'm reminded of the image of the ship in Golding, and the mast, dipping sometimes into darkness. As Mr. Clements said.

Which my way of delaying you reading the article till I post the link at the end - Narratives, Stories, The Particular, are things that can affect us to an undue extent (take it from someone who watches as much television as I do), and I'm not one to romanticise the aggregate, the mean, the statistical and mathematical - it can only truthfully be thought of as dismal. But the will to move contrary to instinct and at least some of the time to be rational and detached, is, and you would think, has always been, a force for material progress, for general wellbeing, the inching towards less bad.

It takes great mettle to write communicative prose about subjects that are otherwise dismal, arcane and inflammatory. I'm not saying this is the acme of that, I'm just feeling the need to tell you why this won't be the last time I link to articles like this.

Posted by subtitles at 6:21 AM | TrackBack | Articles , News

Women Women and Men Women - Loopier than the Cereal

I've just noticed that it's only the women women who are the straight men in the the show - the manly women - ie those like Charlie, are the ones who get to engage in comedy and be foils; the most striking examples being Bertha and the Mother. The rest of the women are stooges, the ones who conform to the stereotype of needy/hateful women with little self-respect or a struggle of it. Melanie Lynsky I would think exists rather outside the simple duality - put simply, because she's nuttier than a fruitcake. I'll have to think more about this, but it seems pretty accurate.

Casual Sex is one thing, but this is just lazy.

Posted by subtitles at 5:38 AM | TrackBack | Television

It's Maple Maple Maaa-ple-licious.

I would have thought I'd written this before, but I think I keep getting muddled between what I write and my conversations. Like inscriptions in the air, crackles and clicks. I rather like the depiction of Jake and his relationship towards advertising - I suppose you could call it wry, but also diffusing in a sensible way. That and the songs are funny. Much contrasted with say the deadly earnestness of Sarah Polley's denunciation on My Life Without Me. And so it's like getting back on. That or like a stave.

Posted by subtitles at 5:30 AM | TrackBack | Television

allaboardgloria@aol.com

My aversion to watching films is getting a bit pathological. allaboardgloria@aol.com Well aren't you a good sport.

I'm wondering what buttons to tack at the bottom of the individual pages, but I'm starting to lean towards none. But with no ring tones, what *will* I do. Last thing you want is to wind up with a hump. At least when the formatting fucks up in Opera with the LiveMessage frame, it's easy to break out. Ok, I take it back - someone in Norway just bought a ring tone!! How sad is my pathetic excitement.

I tell you one thing, I am *not* paying for dinner. Great - you broke him. Yes, we get it, Pavlov's Bar.

I have the sudden urge to webcam. I'm also wondering if certain sex sites are linking to me, since I keep getting referrals off them. Someone signed me up? They hacked into my super-sexy webcam? Can't quite get an inkling of what that's about, so I've decided to ignore it - I'm sure all I get are horny disappointed people. I get the feeling though, that somehow my stats are being spammed - god knows how - as my old bog is full of referrers from poker sites.

Holland Taylor does the tartness just right.

Abrupt skip to a few seconds of Dr Who, where you realise Billie has learnt that being rich-married means you don't have to be aspiringly svelte any more.

Krista Allen is pretty okay in 2.5 Men - manages to be pretty straight/funny. Very commited - and the slitty eye thing was good.

Posted by subtitles at 3:53 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates , Television

Google Increasingly Irrelevant

I suppose I've noticed for a while now, that Google's searches have been returning more and more irrelevant search pages and links. (by the way, I'm writing this on the back of a Burger King tray liner - damn this dagger pen is useful)

I mean obviously I can't offer more than anecdotal evidence, but it's noticeable and I'm sticking with that. The wonder then turns to why. Maybe it's the product of google indexing *everything*, that now their previous strength, breadth, is now coming to bite the thing that's handed to them. And especially with idiots like me entering as much text as I do - and not just in easily closeted off domains like blogspot or livejournal or typepad, I wouldn't wonder if they're starting to get a bit swamped.

The other problem is no doubt the fact that they are still the market leader in online search, or since I lack figures to back me up, they at least have the largest mind-share. That would mean that most sites would be trying their darndest to optimise/fineagle their way into an improved google ranking. Personally I just skew my site to cater to the traffic they were sending my way anyway.

For better or worse, the fact that *I* get as many referrals as I do do off of google searches can't be the best thing yes/no?

I can't wait for it: "we're the market leader, so of course we'd be the most open to exploitation etc. etc.". Let the Microsoft schadenfreude begin.

Now this isn't to say that google sucks at everything - Google News is still by far the better new search service (compared to Yahoo news at least) - and honestly until MSN gets the stick out of its ass and starts being more standards compliant, it knows where the sun doesn't shine.

But all in all, my personal endorsement (as I've stated before), goes to Yahoo search. The only reason why I don't put that as my default search in my customised search.ini is that google pays me. The searches have been more consistently relevant, especially in certain instances. That and I find the interface fresher.

MSN search is the worst, cluttered interface, ugly and annoying - espcially compared to Yahoo after proxo has done its work. In terms of search relevance I'd have to get over a couple of bumps before I even find that out. You have to admire Google for making it profitable to have their search boxes and branding all over the fuck-shop, though it might get hairy eventually. I have to mention that MSN only recently began crawling my site (I didn't submit it I suppose) so I might check in and see if that leads to a rise in their referrals.

In many ways, the various blog search engines are the ones most likely to send me traffic - there are a bunch.

Oh, and Opera, as of 8 beta 2, now supports multiple ed2k links on the page being passed directly to eMule. Happened at the same time the started fully supporting Movable Type.

Posted by subtitles at 3:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Articles , Computer Stuff

The World's Smallest Violin - The Gates of Hell

First season 2.5 Men. A Rubenesque 19 year old girl? I have to admit, it's best the first time around, but the writing is still great and snappy. Makes me want to have a beer at 10 in the morning, but other than that. Why would I want to go to their kingdom? Oh and thank god for Holland Taylor, Blythe Danner was absolutely, horrendously, terrible. Melanie Lynsky just has that aura of savage intensity. Happiest place on earth - my snow-white ass.

Posted by subtitles at 2:10 AM | TrackBack | Television

Hack Me

Of all the advertising I get, I think I like the political advertising best. If I see another ad for boggling paraphenalia, I'm going to boggle *you*. I'm also wondering if I should get rid of at least one of the lower banners on the individual page - I'm wondering if it makes it less likely than it already is that people discover the comments. I resolve that the next time I fix code, I'm getting rid of the ring tones. Directory still needs to be done, and I get the feeling I should concentrate more on the google ads and less on the amazon links. The amazon stuff is probably more useful through the customised files I make.

I get the feeling that it's not so much my ads being more effective, but more that my friends now understand the nature of them and are doing me a favour - am I wrong? Or are they just paying more attention?

The LiveMessage updates are sort of fun - though the frames annoy the fuck out of me. A lot of these services have a bunch of customisation options, but I really wonder if I can be bothered to pretty them up unless specifically requested. I wonder when I'll capitulate and start using all Feedburner all the time - I take Rice's point that it's probably good to have stats for your feeds to help track traffic/subscriptions for advertisers - but, well, I'll burn the bridge when I get to it, as I always say.

But getting back to the politics thing, it really does encourage me to write more about politics - such an interesting phenomenon, capitalism, in how it directs so subtly our responses. Or some such.

Posted by subtitles at 1:46 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

Now he's just screwin' with me

Memories of family dinners, getting dressed up, going to tables with big restaurants, and running around up and hiding under tablecloths, playing with cousins and undoing whatever grooming went in to the past few hours. Watching Charlie dressing up Jake reminded me.

Posted by subtitles at 1:15 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 7, 2005

I'm a Fool to do Your Dirty Work

I don't think I'll ever quite be able to communicate to people the extent to which the knowledge of shame overwhelms my remote negotiation with the world. And by that I mean I wake up, head stuffed with thoughts that have recurred so many times they are like the apparition of jousting that I remember from my most fevered spellings. I think the extent of it feeds into my digression, my evasion, my awkwardness - it makes me lose control over the directness of language - and you can well see demonstrated. It's no surprise that this should come at a time when other big thoughts play in me like a big mansion. There's a reason why I'm avoiding watching Deadwood, and why I'm so tempted to got Sports Night crazy again.

Oh and I'm taking back what I said about discussion and technology - after awhile, what this chattering needs to do is shut up. They're squeezing a bit too tight.

Posted by subtitles at 10:43 PM | TrackBack | Personal

Fate Telling Me

For whatever reason it seems that the ads on my site keep disappearing in Opera - despite my having added my domain to the bypass list. It works find for a while, but when you refresh the page (any page) from then on the entire site stops showing the ads. The only way to turn it back on is to disable the proxy via Opera settings, refresh, and then enable it again. In IE it seems to work as it's supposed to. I might post on the MyOpera forums, since it does seem to be an Opera issue. Otherwise I can just take it as fate telling me that people who actually listen to me are not fated to view ads on my site.

So now I have to go to IE to see it with ads - I suppose I could have another installation of Opera and use Optool to move between.

Been listening to talk about Marqui - I want to agree, but some of it is *so* annoying.

Posted by subtitles at 3:43 PM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Feeds Feeds Feeds - How to add Useless Crap to clutter up your sidebar

I've just added a bunch of buttons for feed readers/feed aggregation services. All of which seem to about as useful as painting the ceiling. Which brings me to the question - who uses this crap? So far the MSN and Yahoo ones are fine, they do what you ask, it adds it to your personalised portal page as another news source, which you can push way higher as it fits your unseemly desires. Newsgator, Feedster and Bloglines are super-duper incredibly opague in actually showing feeds so the question again is who the fuck uses these absolutely cock-addled pit-holes. LiveMessage sounds fun, but they don't seem to be able to send me the welcome pack. Idiots. Okay, now they've sent it and it seems to do what it says - it sends updates to messenger - which is pretty cool.

I did this so people could use whatever they wanted to syndicate the site, basically to make it all easier - so there. Honestly, the most straightforward way is to just use the RSS icon in your Opera address bar, or use the URL for "Syndicate this Site" - that's the default Movable Type feed. There's Atom and RSS 2 - but you know what those are I'm sure you'll know where to find it (Opera's address bar, again, does a bang up job of it, by the way).

Below are the various button making pages for the various services, in case you're interested, MSN I couldn't find and just figured it out.

Skype
Yahoo
NewsGator
Bloglines
Feedster
LiveMessage Alerts

Well I've since figured out where all the buttons were found in one easy place - FeedBurner does it for you under "publicize", giving you code for all the various services you can shove feeds into. The stats feature makes me consider FeedBurner again, but really I'm only interested in hits for the advertising aren't I? Or for people to post comments or whatever nonsense. When my paid site-manager appears in the future, I could get him to do it for me, in the mean time, Rock'n'roll.

Posted by subtitles at 2:32 PM | TrackBack | Definitive Posts , Site Updates

China Power - VeryCD.com - BritWhere?

Obviously if you've ever searched for movies on eMule, you've bumped into VeryCD.com, the only drawback (for me at least) is that it's in Chinese. The titles are frequently in english though, so that helps. I recently got Clean from there, which is downloading like bitchcakes, so China Power really knows how to spread 'em. The subs are in chinese, so I'm assuming the film won't be. But they release like Sharereactor used to, so worth keeping an eye on - I think people are even releasing TV over there, which is nice.

If anyone can tell be where the hell they're releasing a lot of the british stuff, I'd be ever so grateful. I can find them via search, but they're not spreading well, and I don't get notified. I'm looking for, or been getting things like Ideal, Shameless and According to Bex. Shameless gets on the-realworld, but otherwise.

This also inaugurates the P2P section, and I'll eventually put up definitive posts, probably one about Mule, another about torrents etc. Also about choice of clients I suppose, and how to clean install Java.

Turns out the copy of Clean is encoded with the french subs, which sucks, and there are no english subs for the french bits of dialog, so more sucking, but otherwise pretty much as advertised.

Posted by subtitles at 8:52 AM | TrackBack | P2P

Save Estro-jen

Ok, so maybe the EricRice show doesn't suck so bad. I think it helped that he wasn't being podcast crazy. Did I just miss these the last time? This one was the one before the latest one. Really, I'm not really that in to some of the things he talks about, like cars right now, but he's got a pretty good radio voice. Yeah, now getting the past episodes, and I'm getting pretty into it, so here's me biting it. I'd want to write more, but I'll save it for later. Still wish Estro-jen was back.

Posted by subtitles at 5:31 AM | TrackBack | News

Lone Quest for the Grail Wolf - 23

And so waking up and thinking of Lone Wolf. Perhaps there was something cosmic in moving from 1 to 350. I was dreaming that as Lone Wolf, I was telling my army that the only way to spread things round here was by decree and I was enjoining them not to more or less make porn in a particular place. Apparently though it was good for morale, it just wasn't quite right. I wonder if they ever considered making series with Kai Ladies - though that doesn't sound quite as cool as Kai Lords, to be sure. I wonder if it was subject to the same predjudices that JK Rowling described. Perhaps the first draft was Hermione. Am trying muster up to write about the pie place. Am now thinking about Grail Quest, and that one where you kept ending up at 23 or whatever. I should really try and get access to those. Lone Wold always seemed like a particularly visceral occasion of fantasy, more oozy and drippy to be sure. The blondeness of it is probably a bit disturbing now though. And yes, they never really showed you that much of a portrait of yourself - self-actuation then. Am starting to miss Boomtown. I never quite remembered to mention that is was And Jason Gedrick, which was pretty cool. I really need to shower.

Posted by subtitles at 4:20 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 6, 2005

The Party of Abortion - But Not Every Day

Most likely the Democrats decided that they had to see what their opponents did well, compromise, and try at least some of it. Think Ten Words/Game On. Hence Anti-Abortion Democrats getting more play.

That's one of the softenings that Dean's been bringing up again and again when he was stumping for DNC chair, and now you know why. I think it was a good-ish move - your core base is just going to have to trust you that you're not going to sell them out (and you won't) but it gives you a national profile of compromising on the issue - though really only allowing a few to go off the leash if their conscience wants them to.

I think it's an effective way of stopping the Democrats from being seen as the party of abortion. And me, I'm a sucker for Howard, so when he says that he respects Pro-Life Democrats, and that there are ways to bring them into the party, I believe. He talks about them being people of conviction, which I think he believes.

And he's got a good line to sell it, that these are people who want to look after the children after they're born as well as before. He wants the message to be more on the Democrats terms - talking about health care, social programs etc. Makes me wonder if a big Medicare overhaul push is going to be part of the mid-term blitz - if only to counter the Social Security thing they're fighting against.

All this reminds me of what I said when I first saw the ad for the birth control patch. 'Yeah, I've really got to quit that bad habit - babies'.

Posted by subtitles at 10:45 PM | TrackBack | News

Gah, Trackback

Still can't quite figure the whole auto trackback thing - for some sites it does it automatically, but most of the times not? And editing causing pings? That's just annoying. How would I make it automatic for mine I think is the real problem. So, well, sorry about that, but 2 pings do not spam make yes/no?

Posted by subtitles at 10:22 PM | TrackBack | Personal

Ricecast

There's a new Eric Rice show, actually the first I've heard, and instinctively it's probably not as good as BuffyRadio, but just remember that he's much better on the air than he is writing. Evangelising shouldn't be just so much about blagging. podcastpodcastpodcast. I'm still holding out till he manages to get Estro-jen back on, but so far 'it doesn't suck'. High praise huh? It's just that the slickness of the show (and the set pieces) betrays a desire to approach a kind of professionalism that is a bit distancing if you're looking for sincerity.

Part of me thinks that his site/content is too much weighed down by the industry and commericial side of things and cuts out the 'him' in all of it, which is what I was lauding in some other places. Too much pimping. And it's not even about the commercialism (I'm me after all), it's just that the almost unseemly enthusiasm makes people look at you funny. Much like Scoble going on about RSS feeds - I know he doesn't mean it, but it makes him sound like a crank.

Spatula phone is fun though. And the flickr splicing thing on his feed was what really got me to stop subscribing - annoying as fuck. When you get a new headline you expect there to be content, not piccy-snaps. That's what convinces me that advertising on the feed proper is desperately unwise - the feedburner amazon links at the bottom thing is okay, but it only works in IE, and as I said before, boo-yah be-atch.

Just so we're clear about this - I'm Nobody.

Posted by subtitles at 9:56 PM | TrackBack | News

Send

Yay, Lesli Linka Glatter episode. This isn't her first widow episode. And of course this would be when Velvet would come back. Idris Elba was on - accompanying the other Wire guy. I'm now wondering if their 'loft space' isn't the Angel set, and hence the homage. But another episode that seems to prove you can't transcend the series.

Sonja's sister got pwn3d.

Posted by subtitles at 8:55 PM | TrackBack | Television

Cop Coach

Ortiz acting very much like faith, the same set of face - interesting, maybe the same cop coach or something. Was more open and appealing as a paramedic. Second season boomtown is pretty different - they decided to make it just another cop show - ditching a lot of the narrative interlace, which, in hindsight, makes it much poorer show. Miss the lovely reporter. Is that always the resort? Amp up the action? Vanessa Williams and her soft focus. They must really have lost the will to live in the last episode - such twaddle - and Virginia Madsen unfortunately was rather too convincing at half-baked washed-up actress.

Posted by subtitles at 4:21 AM | TrackBack | Television

March 5, 2005

Create New Entry

Obviously I feel a bit self-conscious about posting so many pictures, but I figure it's like having a little holiday from the pressures of endless text. It seems a 450 pixel width thumbnail (loosely called) is the just right dimension so that things at least look okay on 800x600.

Eugene flaked, but so far at least Su-lin, Dion and Zhi-Xian are coming, which is probably about right - though if Delwyn were here it would more justify the platter proposition. Thus the first Curry Night. I'm thinking Muthu's Curry would be the next on the list.

I'm very tempted now to post that picture of Prudence, but I figure that I should do it when there are fewer pictures on the front page. It's a real pity that MI idiot is in so many ways mean to be such a central figure in Boomtown. Oh, another of the CFL lights blew - I think there might just be something wrong with that lamp.

The newer Blogger.com templates aren't too shabby IMO, though my custom MT one is still cleaner and nicer. Very spunky. Oh, and I'm in the midst of reworking my front pages to make them use the style sheets from MT 3 - it's just a matter of pasting content and deciding what I want to keep really. Eventually.

Posted by subtitles at 9:09 AM | TrackBack | Personal

Mariah's New Album - Inlay Picture - Mugsy

Found this on Mariah Daily.

Oh, and mugsy's back on Alias, for all of one shot. Wonder if she'll be back.

Posted by subtitles at 5:21 AM | TrackBack | News , Television

Grey's Anatomy - Katherine Heigl

The lovely Katherine Heigl is gonna be in this new series that's coming out soon, supposedly premiering on ABC on March 27. Read more about it on TVTome, the ABC site, and Katherine Heigl Online - where you can find all things Katherine Heigl. The image below is provided courtesy of them, you can find more in their gallery for Grey's press kit.

If you notice, the tags they wear all say SGH, but, well, probably for Seattle General Hospital. Mmmm... Katherine Heigl... in a labcoat... Is anyone else wondering why her name in this series is so similar to the one in Roswell? From Isabel Evans to Isobel Stevens. Inventive.

Posted by subtitles at 4:16 AM | TrackBack | News , Television

All friends shall taste/ The wages of their virtue, and all foes/ The cup of their deservings.

Okay, let's just make this clear - I consider, and have from the beginning, considered myself as a diarist, and was concerned that this endeavour serve that purpose. If I hear another thing about the political significance of whiny partisans, I'm going to stab myself. The reason I don't have an "issue" bog or don't use it to boggle about something in particular like technology or boggling itself, is because that would be, to me, contrary to the purpose of this as I set it out. I'm not hearkening back to some pure idea of what boggling should be, I'm talking about my conception of it. It's about the person and the ideas, and the way that they intersect.

Sure there are many other uses - they collate information - collectively so; but content management systems have been doing that for a while now, esp things like Neowin, or even Slashdot for that matter. Actually one of the channels I do sort of approve of it for is as corporate communication with its customers. Yes, it's always nice to be able to interact with a human face rather than a corporate website, but that makes sense to me, to individualise the notion of the corporation - as long as it is sincere in its desire to communicate and allow discussion. A certain amount of chatter is always good.

But especially because these bogs are about humanising the thing by showing the people, it is imperative that long technical posts that reveal aspects and justifications of things that you work on be accompanied by personal posts - about the things around you and your thoughts and interests. It's not a thing about at thing, it's a thing about a person. The example I found here, it pointed to here. Then scroll up and read the post after.

Journalism blah.

Now people who do this as vanity work - I really do like that episode of Buffy with Michelle Trachtenberg writing into her diary (Real Me) - but mostly because it's a caricature of what that kind of writing is. At a certain age, that seems to transform into pretentious twaddle. Which is fine as long as you move on. But really, some of the face tilting towards the sun is insufferable in the extreme.

Gah.

Posted by subtitles at 3:39 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 4, 2005

Pimpy McPimp

Economist seems to really know how to pick their cover pictures. Personally they seem to be able to be particularly wry and particularly evocative. Not to mention their writing manages to discuss things that good prose sometimes finds difficult to discuss. I think the shirt says "Betty Boop".

As a headline though, I must say this one was particularly good, as I mentioned previously.

If I'm not wrong, most (perhaps all) off the stories they post on their RSS feed should be free to ether.

Posted by subtitles at 6:25 PM | TrackBack | News

That One Thing

Megan Ward. The desire to grasp, to hold, to *create* certainty. How is that kind of testing not morally bankrupt? It boggles me that I haven't written more extensively about this, especially in relation to the Doll's House, and how horrendous I found the insinuation of the test - of the finality of it and the edge of revelation and tipping it seemed to encompass within it. Of all the things I remember about the play, that is the one thing that resonates to me, without question - how the momentous is at best fetishistic.

I'm suddenly thinking about the scene in Royal Tenenbaums, where the tennis player loses it on court.

So 3 down.

Posted by subtitles at 12:20 PM | TrackBack | Personal , Television

Who Reads This Crap?

This will be another of those posts that posits the question: who reads this crap? I've been browsing my site stats, and I apparently have up to 217 unique visitors for the first 3 days of this month. Now sure, I obsess and constantly load pages but that would all end up being from my one IP address.

Googlebot and other crawlers fine should generate quite a lot of traffic per IP - but again, all from one IP. Next would be the mufftorrent chatboxed I pretty much spammed (sorry bout that) - some are from my forum posts, no doubt thinking I'm anna paquin. What amazes me is that supposedly about 20% take the action of bookmarking or adding to favorites. Out of 217?

What makes more sense is that the majority end up here for all of 30s or less - these would be the ones who realise I'm not hawking subtitles for Jack and Bobby, Unscripted etc.

I would hope that at least the people who come looking for Broadvoice stuff find what they're looking for. Also I wonder how these stats deal with things like tabbed browsing - would that account the the amount of direct requests - ie with no referrer?

I'm now realising that my long titles aren't perfect for pinning on top, annoying. Well, looks like they didn't turn out too bad. Just in case you can't find pinned posts you saw before, the category (ta-da) is Previously Pinned.

Posted by subtitles at 11:16 AM | TrackBack | Personal

March 3, 2005

MSN Messenger - Charlie Sheen getting Divorced - Post Roundup

New Beta of MSN Messenger, build no. 7.0.632, you can find it at the usual locations. It's another leaked beta, and mastaline's patch apparently still works with this one.

For those who missed it, I've got a rather informative ICQ patch posting on how to get rid of the ads in the new ICQ/ICQLite. Also I've noticed people are actually downloading/trying out the proxo/opera/economist stuff I've been uploading - unless that's just the search bots.

Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards getting divorced - looks like no more cameos. I must have forgotten that Sheen was in Ferris Bueller as the punky guy in the police station who hooks up with the sister.

Posted by subtitles at 11:31 PM | News

"When You In It, You In It"

Kelli Williams was on Scrubs. She's perty. Playing yet another Jordan really. Nice to know Desperate Housewives boy managed to makes sure he was free when real work came his way. Haffley was alway supposed to be a more fun character though. I can't stop looking at him like a ham anymore now.

Have I already mentioned how well Scrubs does its montage sequences?

It's interesting that they've done the same turn around false narrative about self-deception twice, and both using Brendan Frasier. I think they do it spectacularly - about the construction of reality. Suck it Turk. Oh, but I really should also mention the JD Elliot episode that splices the future into the day - also really good stuff. The first season episodes were both directed by Lawrence Trilling, who also did the Back to the Future Episode of Felicity (and hence the casting links), and while the first Brendan Frasier episode was by Bill Lawrence, the second one wasn't.

Posted by subtitles at 9:30 PM | TrackBack | Television

Got Krista Allen?

Something must have stuck in watching Unscripted - and by the way, what I said about Peep Show applies to that as well, only less funny - that I'm now rooting for Krista Allen having gotten, well, another pilot. It's not like Unscripted wasn't going to launch careers yes/no?

What's more interesting is that she was in 2.5 Men, as Olivia during an episodes with one of my favorite titles. Did You Check With the Captain of the Flying Monkeys? Hopefully 2.5 Men can keep from sucking for what's left for a season and never let the first half of this season ever happen again.

Posted by subtitles at 9:21 PM | TrackBack | News , Television

No One Expects the Fantastic Four

Is it just me, or do the Fantastic Four trailers look pretty damn shite? The Human Torch bit was okay, but please, the Michael Chiklis (Thing) being funny? That was just wrong. Even Reed Richards looked pretty off - and while I had thought that Jessica Alba would be okay in it, it's starting to not look so good. For the record, The Hulk is still be best film of the genre to date - this looks incredibly potboiler.

Broken inside.

Posted by subtitles at 7:49 AM | TrackBack | News

And so of course

Lana Parilla being very fetching in a baseball getup. Lam is not exclusively a Vietnamese name now is it - the silly buggers.

What's up with the pissing down outside?

And so of course Boomtown would stumble on the whorey chestnut of people acting out their private traumas as self-righteousness. You wonder if the american experience, as it's so popularly displayed, precludes the idea of conviction. They can embrace religion but belief is too big a leap? It really must be incredibly insulting to presume that people act and react so solely out of damage and definitive definition, that the broad choke of existence must lack any slat of self-awareness - "what is this really about".

Neil McDonough is so awful it's not true. Kelly Rowan at least gets to do better drama than she does on the OQ.

Posted by subtitles at 6:06 AM | TrackBack | Television

Worst Tau Sar Pneah *Ever*

There's a stall that sells it on the way from Bugis to my place. I've only tried it once, but suffice to say, never again. It tastes like dry chalk, by which I mean it tastes like chalk - only more dry.

Is it possible that by not looking at my bog and staring at the ads all the time, that I end up boggling even more?

Posted by subtitles at 5:37 AM | TrackBack | Food Diary

Higher Love - Economist Special Report on Higher Education

This rather warmed my heart when I read it, so I thought I'd point you to it. If you subscribe, you can read it here. Or else you can get this nicely produced pdf. And yes, printing to pdf from Firefox is still the prettiest, even more so than using the Adobe IE toolbar.

It's on Higher Education, and it appeals to the lash not-in me. But nonetheless incredibly sensible, and should make the mortified chew hard.

Posted by subtitles at 3:57 AM | TrackBack | News

Screen - Personal Jesus

What an assfaced Scrubs christmas episode. Just to relive my surprise, the host of Fear Factor used to be Joe Garelli of NewsRadio. No wonder they weren't worried about putting him in Las Vegas. Really extending his on-screen personality though.

Also, I've figured out that if I switch PCAnywhere to file transfer mode, it won't try and display the video, so cpu usage on the host won't spike - clever me. I'm really not particularly able to watch anything other than Scrubs at the moment, foundering in first season. The hour-longs just don't seem to be doing anything for me - other than the big guns. Need to find more series to download - sex and the city floated by for a second, but really really no. Seeing so many Felicity cameos on Scrubs makes me also say no to that. Suggestions anyone?

Oh yeah, and I decided to get Garden State. Oh, and I never knew Sarah Chalke replaced Becky on Rosanne.

Posted by subtitles at 3:36 AM | TrackBack | Television

Shade of Winter

It's probably been haze season again recently, not that I even really remember what it used to be like, but yes, pretty erratic weather and being incredibly hot at times and sort of smoggy in the night and mornings. Not so I'd have really noticed, but some times, a bit not so missable. Went on a convenient quest for pocket tissue. Apparently Watsons has decided to diversify their range, segmenting their market if you will. Also their branding doesn't seem to be quite as important to them with those products. Oh, and rambutan trimming.

Ah, I see - their branding is now reserved for the upper end of their market.

Posted by subtitles at 2:53 AM | TrackBack | Personal

Hacking ICQ/ICQ Lite - Getting rid of the Banner Ads

It's really so easy. Shut Down ICQ. Go to the ICQ directory (usually C:\Program Files\ICQLite\) then go to the "LiteDataFiles" directory. You'll find a file called "banners.xml". Delete the file, and then create a new directory and name the directory "banners.xml". Restart ICQ.

As Michel commented, this is artful hacking 101, where you make sure the offending file can't be replaced - ie they can't copy over a new banners.xml so the ad spaces have nothing to serve.

Take note that doing this won't get rid of the space where the ad used to be on the contact list - that'd involve more hacking which I have no access to. But most important it gets rid of the banners/banner spaces on the message windows. I got this from the forums of a site called www.icq-4u.com - check it out. They tend to keep up on happenings in icq world, and the last time I got an advanced patch, it was from there. Not sure how it's doing, haven't been there in a while.

Huh, apparently, they've been busy, so look here for the amped up crack. It'll send you here. This crack is absolutely superb, it gets rid of everything - kudos. Manual hack was fun, but this is sweet. It not only gets rid of the banners and the banner boxes, it also gets rid of the silly google search box. Really really, it makes the interface *so* much less cluttered.

Oh, and if you have problems using your centre mouse button to double click contacts - turn off tooltips: they're what's causing the problem.

If you're looking for patches for MSN Messenger, you can refer to my post about general MSN freakness, including where to get Beta releases - they generally also post ad patches etc.

Posted by subtitles at 2:01 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Bandwidth Left

Apparently blog pimping, even on the now defunct mufftorrent.com, is ever so slightly frowned upon - even if you were helping peeps out to find new places. Not that having an account there would mean anything now. People actually came round though and some guy posted in forums. I don't know, I can't say it's not fun having strangers manhandle my site, it's probably lonely and wants to be touched. The traffic on comments.cgi makes me worried that people are trying me to spam, but hopefully movable type's not that silly. Well, whatever it is, there's still plenty of bandwidth left, so bring it on.

Posted by subtitles at 1:54 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates

March 2, 2005

Ball, Get It?

Okay, so other than the extras, why would you buy this in September, when you could get this all now. HRHDTV is really, really nice. It should make DVD quality curl up and ball. Huh, babies are *funny*.

Posted by subtitles at 3:26 PM | TrackBack | Television

Distraught Chasing House - Terse Bughumming

Hey, it's Tracy Middendorf on House, I wonder if she's going to be distraught. I mean I'm sure people are sick of her doing that, she's only done it in Angel, Alias, Medical Investigation, so this time I'm sure it'll be different and she'll be happy and skippy and do pretty things.

She's very clearly graduated to doing mom roles though. Something about her feels very Spooks. I'm sure her presence is pretty significant, as well since if I'm not wrong this would have been the finale of the 13 episode order - though Detox had the feel of a bookend episode.

I won't go on too much about Fox messing with running schedules, since from the way they pick them, they can clearly tell which are the better episodes, but you'd have though if they were going to be so naughty they'd have tried to be naughty more pre-emptively.

I'm sure if it was my Vicodin, I'd talk to it so lovingly. Hey daddy. So yes, give characters big story lines in chunks, so the audience doesn't have to flit too much. Is it really that transparent a strategy? Apparently words can hurt. In many ways a template episode, charted progression, but if nothing else the better actors seems to do well - Chase drama is really fun. Fits in with the topping off episo-pothesis. Calcutta General. House's not so secret fetish is drama? Would explain the soap. How could one not like how RSL's turned out as comic straight guy? Foils. Philips machine appears to be gone.

Well, not *so* distraught, just concern really. Close, but no wafer. Kick during naptime. I just like knowing stuff. Did they bring him on *just* so he could ape an aussie soap?

Gilmore Girls: Blah. Logan is so mugsy. No Paris. Humbug.

All of this begs the question. Who reads this crap? Homelesschange.com. Apparently House isn't the only one that insists on character consistency - or perhaps just getting rid of the actor.

Posted by subtitles at 2:03 PM | TrackBack | Television

What Have You Been

Having nothing better to do - by that, obviously meaning that all this is very much writing around - I submitted my blog to a bunch of aggregation services that do Singapore blogs. I think it's funny too.

These seem to be pretty small communities, which will be nice in terms of readership. I'm just saying this to be disclosive to people who have come here to watch the audition. I don't actually read very much of other people's writing - if you don't like it, bite me. If you want to read this, yay for everyone, but there is no quid pro quo unless your superbly illuminating comments don't make me want to stab myself. Welcoming enough?

Who doesn't enjoy a healthy ambivalence?

Posted by subtitles at 12:40 PM | TrackBack | Personal

Who Needs to Go to Sim Lim - Monitor Shopping

Louis has resolved to get his lovely new monitor, and perhaps a side table. But Louis, as always, is shy and retiring and needs to be squired about. Louis welcomes all takers. I'd link to my monitor post, but I can't be bothered. Make me an offer on my LCD - if the whole dual monitor thing doesn't pan out, you can have it for cheap. Perhaps we could go before that dinner on Saturday that no one seems to have replied about. I remember rumblings of a Sheng Siong outing. I was also promised a play-date to disabuse people that Six Feet Under is anything but tosh.

I must stop being obsessive about the display of ads on my site. It's driving me completely bitchcakes and bonkers.

Posted by subtitles at 10:42 AM | TrackBack | Computer Stuff

Heather Graham's Back on Scrubs!!!

Scrubs is so much more convincing now, with a deeper sense of sincerity, a more eloquent unfolding of feeling - the montage of JD and Kylie was pretty fantastic I thought, which is unexpected for me.They've really worked out the form well, and been unashamed to stick to it. Obviously they know this, but they're probably more like a conventional sitcom than anyone would think. I'm still liking what I wrote about the broadcast of music and TV, and I'm reminded of it again.

Heather Graham's lovely, and seems endlessly willing to get her kit off, which is always appreciated. That and she can be hilarious just by standing there and reacting. She looks luscious in a very "I'm pregnant" fashion, but that might just be me. Though the way she looked really did remind of Mary Louise Parker in 5th season West Wing.

The episode being directed by Zach Braf now makes me think perhaps I could watch his film. Though there really is so much room for the writing to go tits up. Janitor is pretty good as well in the episode, and I like the whole thing with Blonde Doctor. The whole Fugitive thing was pretty funny back then.

Posted by subtitles at 6:01 AM | TrackBack | Television

Loving

Aspiration. The footage of Christa Miller's wedding is incredibly moving. Easily one of the most moving sections I've seen on Scrubs. And I suppose all the move ambivalent for the fact that it occurs in the context of Cox's divorce. It is very very loving footage of her I must say.

Early Scrubs feels a bit anomalous, when either they hadn't quite found their way yet, or they were being made to do things a particular way, or they had yet to be made. It isn't till about 5 episodes in that it starts to feel like it would come to feel. Back then they probably felt they had to deal with the big stuff, which is a pity really.

It suddenly occurs to me, I never annotated that I thought Secretary was the most convincingly romantic film I had ever seen when I saw it - whenever that was.

Posted by subtitles at 3:33 AM | TrackBack | Television

Do you think Invisible Hands get RSI?

I'm looking at my old bog and it really looks incredibly awful to me now. New one is *much* prettier. I've pretty much inundated the old one with ads, just because that's what it should be good for now. There are links to this place, and a link to the subtitles post, so as long as they're not blind, hopefully they'll move over.

I've put ads in the banner here, only because the space kept staring back at me, so it had to be done. It was a bitch of process, but at least now I know more about CSS - really very good fun. If I say so myself, at least my ads are conscientiously laid out. All the spaces aren't showing ads all the time, which is mystifying, but I assume it has to do with the need for more crawling etc.

I'm wondering when I'm going to stop obsessively clicking through the site - most of the ad serving is me being *really crazy*. I'm also quite taken with the whole thing of my personalised ad-serving Opera. I don't think I'm too cheeky to put this site in the exclusion list for my custom proxo - that's the way it is on my setup, and anyway it cuts out the "ads by google" bits.

Silly OC shop declined, which is probably all for the best. I keep telling myself to get rid of the ring tone ads, but I suppose I should just give it all time. I keep seeing articles recently on how huge the market for ring tones is. A bit mortified at the idea su-lin might have actually though I was serious about asking her to buy ring tones.

Been very conscientious about exploring the ads on RealWorld, if only because they're now the only real repository for TV, and I think this whole experience has been an empathising one, much like seeing 24 woman on Boomtown.

I realise I'm being endlessly repetitive, but I suppose that's what happens when you're doing that much writing in such a short period of time. I'm probably going to change back to 2 days on the main page.

Posted by subtitles at 2:29 AM | TrackBack | Site Updates , Television

March 1, 2005

Opera Customised Search.ini - Tutorial

I've uploaded a copy of my customised search.ini for all to use. It will give you more searches via the drop down search box, and you can add more searches to the address bar. Furthermore, if you enable your personal bar (right click on the address bar - customise), you can put a whole bunch of searches there.

In the interests of full disclosure, the search box of Google sends you to my customised Google search page, so that I recieve the advertising from the paid links in your searches - normally Opera would be the one recieving them (no longer true, but it now defaults to Yahoo Search). Similarly for Amazon.com and .co.uk searches. I personally don't use Google any more, since Yahoo seems to have more accurate results. Also, you won't be able to set the number of searches per page through the Opera preferences.

Instructions:

Just download this (Updated for Opera 8.01). UnRar to your Opera Profile Folder (*not* the root Opera folder that has opera.exe in it) the exact location of which is explained here, or you can also refer to this. This will ask you to overwrite the existing search.ini - say yes. If you have problems, the default search.ini can be copied over from the root Opera folder.

Start Opera.

Simple huh?

Suggestions/Shortcuts:

If you updated Opera to either 8.0 or 8.01, they might have overwritten your old customised search.ini - but it'll have been backed up to something like search.001 or something in your profile folder - if that happens just close Opera, delete the current (new) search.ini and rename the old one, editing the new search.ini to change the version number to the current version - currently 6, as of 8.01. Or just download the file again from above.

If you want to know how to enable the personal bar look here. If you want more screen real-estate as a result, you can turn off the menu bar by pressing ctrl-F11 (this might change in Opera 8). And so it has, you now have to customise your keyboard shortcuts in advanced settings - use the Unix shortcut of Alt-F11, if you ask I might bother to post a download you can put in your profile folder.

To add more searches to the personal bar, right click on it and hover over "show searches". To move the search boxes around, press and hold the "shift" key while dragging and dropping. That's also the easiest way to move search boxes to the address bar to complement the drop down box. The other way is to right click and customise - the searches are under "buttons" category "search".

Press shift-F8 to highlight the drop down search box, shift-F7 to go to the first personal bar search.

Your right click menu is also enhanced so now when you right click after highlighting a word or phrase, your "dictionary" will be dictionary.com and "encyclopedia" will be wikipedia. All the available searches are also available under "search with". The default "search" will send you to Google, or the last thing you "searched with".

If you want to find out the various keywords to search in the address bar with, go to Preferences (Alt-P) - "search". There are examples in the preference menu to explain further.

When pasting something from your clipboard into a search/address field, you don't have to press ctrl-v and then enter, just press ctrl-d.

List of Searches:

Google, Yahoo, IMDB, Dictionary.com (ad-blocker advised), Wikipedia, TVTome, Isohunt, Shareprovider, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Google News, Neoseeker, Urban dictionary.com, Chicago Reader Short Reviews, Allmusic.com for Artist/Song/Album, Pricegrabber, Pricewatch, Ebay, Cracks.am, Astalavista, Yahoo Bizfinder in Singapore. (there, have been changes, have a look at the trackbacks)

Further Reference:

All this was done with the Opera Search.ini Editor.

To move between different browsers, try Optool.

Also feel free to download the companion Customised default bookmarks, and Customised Toolbar Setup. Or all of these together as one file, together with the Opera Not So Compact skin, to unRar into the profile folder. These are also for me to customise peoples' setups when I install Opera for them. (This is too old now, you'll probably just want to get the search.ini provided above)

Note: if you want to keep up to date with this, you can comment, and then check the box to subscribe to changes to this post. I'll be tidying up the search.ini as I find the effort. It is now tidy - most hotclicked items are near the top etc.

Posted by subtitles at 10:07 PM | TrackBack | Articles , Computer Stuff , Definitive Posts , Opera Guide , Previously Pinned

And Melora Walters

Really, worst premise pounding intro sequence *ever*. Pretty amped up, I'm wondering if Melora will make up for it. Desperate Housewives boy is particularly piss-poor. And the dialog can be pretty horrible. Yeah, lots of torture going on in Indonesia, eh? Apparently they've also just cracked the super-duper codes for the snap-lingo that is *jpeg* files. Nice hearing Melora being a bit squeeky. Yeah, training camps in Malaysia. How stupid are these people? Stupid enough to get cancelled apparently. Flophouse.

Posted by subtitles at 6:55 AM | TrackBack | Television

Doing a Line - Girls Rock

I think charming women smacking people around always seems to work for me, always seems to make me want to keep watching. So getting the rest of what's left of Line of Fire, might as well. I'd gotten it because of Angel woman, Eve - Sarah Thompson. Not a huge role so far, but she recurs for a number of episodes, so. Leslie Bibb is okay, a bit straight ahead. Julie Ann Emery as southern belle mommy seems to have caught my attention most though - always fun when your loose cannon is a woman. They seem to want to pit the good women vs. the evil crime men, I wonder where it goes. Very striking gathering of the crime goons, sausage fest like you'd never seen. How progressive public service can be.

Posted by subtitles at 5:25 AM | TrackBack | Television

Anna Paquin in Steamboy

I've never watched Akira, but apparently this is by the same guy who did that. Steamboy has Anna playing the main character from what I can see. Apparently all Japanese boys are necessarily effeminate sounding. As always, this is where I get all my Anna updates. I'm just wondering if I'll end up being bothered, and really whether it'd just be too weird. Alfred Molina and Patrick Stewart are in it too.

Posted by subtitles at 4:15 AM | TrackBack | News

Freaktown Bites - Tin-Foil Hat

Boomtown's sweet. And blazing guns jumping from the roof seems to play that much better with me on television, if only because of the incongruity of the ordinary and the aspiration of the eventful, of the heroic. How big a deal can it be if after that you're just going to have to do it again, or not do it again. Good television I think transforms and is transformed by music, by its appeal to the sentiments with which it shares its airwaves. Perhaps the transmissions fill our heads, which is why things become so familiar. Tin-Foil Hat anyone? I've probably said this before, but having to write titles was a good innovation if ever.

Posted by subtitles at 1:25 AM | TrackBack | Television

Proxomitron Made Simple/Idiot-Proof - Advanced Ad-Blocking

I'm uploading a copy of Proxomitron for you to download - it's my own setup, based on JD's filters. But what that means for you is that it'll cut out ads - so aggressively your head will spin.

Just download, unRar, preferably into Program Files or something. Then run Proxomitron.exe when you want it to be on - remember to set up your proxy settings in your browser to point to "localhost", port 8080.

In Opera this means Alt-P, Network, Proxy Servers, under "http", add those values. It also works with FF and IE.

If you need more details, the help/installation files are included as a directory of html files. If you want proxo to startup with windows, just create a shortcut to it in your "startup" folder in your start menu.

I'm doing this, at least in part, because proxo can be difficult to set up properly and tweak till it's useful - this way you just unpack it and you're ready to go. The best thing about these filters is that the pages still end up looking nice and nicely formatted, and you'll start to realise how much ads can mess up site layouts. I had problems with a couple of sites, but I just added them to my blocklist and they work fine.

Again full disclosure prompts me to say that I've added my own domain to the blocklist, which means ads will show on my site. I put a lot of effort into making my ads fit the look and feel of the site, so I set it up so that I can monitor them when I browse myself. If you want to delete the entry, the file is in the directory called "Lists", "Bypass Lists.txt". The entry is [^/]++.fallingbeam.org/ - just delete it.

I'll probably make this post definitive. Hopefully it'll be part of my series on advanced Opera techniques. There are a bunch of files in the directory that don't actually need to be there, but I can't be bothered to figure out which those are, so there.

Posted by subtitles at 12:34 AM | Articles , Computer Stuff , Definitive Posts , Opera Guide , Previously Pinned