• Fruit: cucumber. Yes, it’s a fruit, and I can’t stand their smell, texture, and taste. I like dill pickles, though. I’m not keen on watermelon, either. Maybe it’s their texture.
• Vegetable: pumpkin. Is that a fruit, too?
• Meat: liver. Maybe brain and kidneys, too, but I haven’t tried those.

Foods I Love To Eat:

• Fruit: blueberries and cherries.
• Vegetable: potaoes. So versatile! And onions. Lots of others.
• Meat: ham.

How about you?

My Timer program is self-explanatory. I don’t think I’ve ever used it. I doubt Phillip even used it.

I have to update the email address in its About screen.

Downloads:
- Zipped up version of Timer (292k).
- Non-zipped up version of Timer; just the executable (581k).

Once — A unique film about a singer-songerwriter in Dubln who works at his dad’s vacuum repair shop and spends the rest of his time busking on a street corner with his guitar. He eventually meets a girl and tries to make more of his music, and that’s pretty much the whole story. The film has been described as a musical because whenever the guy sings a song, we hear the whole thing. If you like the music, the full songs will work for you. I’m not going to go out and buy the soundtrack, but I still got into everything about this movie because it looks and feels like a documentary with characters who seem like real people. The plot (if you want to call it that) doesn’t feel contrived. You meet these people, you like them and you want find out what happens to them. It’s a simple equation that works on a nice, quiet, genuine level. It’s not a visually spectacular movie, but it doesn’t need to be. Once — once it gets noticed — is likely to become a favourite of independent singer-songwriters everywhere. (May 3/08)

Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead — Directed by Sydney Lumet. If you think you have problems or that your family is messed up or that your life hasn’t turned out the way you hoped it would, watch Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead and you’ll be grateful for everything you’ve got. It’s difficult to talk about the plot without giving away the story, but it involves two brothers who plan a heist that goes all wrong. And that’s just the beginning of their troubles. It’s the kind of story that only exists in movies, but the people feel so real, their reactions to the extreme circumstances so genuine, that it works. It’s completely engaging. The entire cast — Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney and even Ethan Hawke — couldn’t have given better performances. When you see acting on this level, you quickly realise how mediocre most actors are and what a challenging profession it really is. (Marisa Tomei has a major role, but they don’t give her much to do except take off her shirt.) It’s not a happy movie (though I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all from time to time), but it’s so over the top and compelling, it’s difficult to look away. (May 5/08)

Eastern Promises — David Cronenberg gets off on showing close-up shots of gruesome things like people getting their faces blown off with a shot-gun (re: A History of Violence). In a world where beheadings make the news at least every other month (and can be viewed online if you know where to look — which I have no intention of ever doing — and photos of which are often published in national newspapers), showing two separate scenes of people getting their throats slit is unnecessary. That’s one aspect of Cronenberg’s style I could do without. If you don’t like that kind of thing, just close your eyes for the few seconds when it happens, because the rest of the movie is excellent and well-worth watching. Eastern Promises tells the story of a doctor, Naomi Watts, who delivers a baby from a woman who works in a brothel. The mother dies and the doctor tries to track down the baby’s family and subsequently gets tangled up with the Russian Mafia — and those guys don’t fool around. Viggo Mortensen, as one of the Russian henchmen, has sympathy for her and tells her to go home and forget about it. But she doesn’t. And from there on in it’s, Oh, jesus, what the hell’s going to happen now? I was surprised at the emotional and moral complexity of the film. I guess you could say it’s a thriller with a conscience, and the best I’ve seen from Cronenberg. (May 3/08)

Iron Man — I enjoyed Iron Man more than any super hero movie that has come out in recent years. It’s well-acted and it tells a good story that doesn’t exist just to show off special effects. Had the producers gone heavy on the CGI, it could have easily slipped into mind-numbing territory like Transformers. Instead, it’s in a league of its own, presenting us with real characters and a compelling origin story that doesn’t feel childish or cartoonish but is still entertaining and full of really cool stuff. (May 4/08)

28 Weeks Later — The sequel to the apocalyptic zombie thriller 28 Days Later. That movie, which fell a little short of being great, scared the crap out of me and is worth watching because it presents such a convincing last-man-on-earth scenario. 28 Weeks Later gives us all-new characters and then brings on “the infected” (or the zombies) in full force. It effectively re-creates the run-for-life elements of the original movie. The ending is stupid, but it’s passable, creepy entertainment. (May 2/08)

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem — Even with some occasionally impressive cinematography, AVPR is unwatchable for anyone with an IQ over zero. It’s not even passable as a B-movie. Thank gods for the fast-forward button. (May 1/08)

All these commentaries are posted on Mud Songs, along with comments about every other movie I’ve seen in the past few years.

If this goes anywhere, I’ll update the image — and change the date of this post (so the permalink is garbage) — after each move. If I can’t update the image while I’m at work, my opponent’s moves will be written in the comments.

Thank you, thank you.

I started playing

Once you reach level 70 you can participate in end-game content, requiring groups of 25 players, or simply do daily quests, exploring, PvP combat, and lots of other stuff, which I’ve done.

There are three types of game-play you can choose when you create a character, two of them being available regardless of how you choose to play:

1. PvE - Player versus Environment: Players fight against computer-controlled creatures.
2. PvP - Player versus Player: Players can attack other players from the opposing faction, in addition to computer-controlled creatures.
3. Role-playing in PvE or PvP: this is the D&D-type (Dungeons and Dragons) mode, where players are expected to behave as if the virtual world is real; that is, all communication should be about that fantasy world - no facet of reality should be mentioned in-game.

The game has an annoying learning curve. It comes with its own language used by players in addition to having too many acronyms, along with theories about how to play your class effectively, which isn’t officially documented well; you have to go to independent websites like wowwiki or wowhead to learn the finer points about how to play the game optimally.

The good points about it:

• The virtual world is huge.
• There are a good variety of play-styles from the classes you can play.
• The tools (chat, audio) that allow you to interact with friends make the experience more enjoyable.
• The PvP competition is challenging and fun, if you’re into that kind of thing.
• The ambient music is excellent.
• The graphics are very good; it works well on low-end machines (PCs and Apple).
• The story-line and lore is exhaustive.
• Its open environment allows you to do anything you want; that is, you don’t have to follow the story-line at all - you can do whatever you want.
• Patches are introduced every few months that deliver new content and bug fixes.

The bad points:

• Once you’ve leveled a character to 70, starting another from scratch can be tedious: there isn’t too much variation in quests and environments, even if you play a different class and faction.
• It’s learning curve is long and difficult; you’re always learning something, which could be good, I guess.
• It has a reputation of being addictive, where people don’t know when to quit, neglecting real life obligations.
• There’s not a lot to do after you reach end-game content. Creating a character with a different class and faction introduces some variety, but the variety of game-play doesn’t change much: you have to complete quests, do instances, and participate in battlegrounds. Some people will never see end-game content that requires 20+ people for an instance, missing out on character rewards and a lot of the story-line.
• The game’s story-line is too exhaustive; I stopped caring about it because there were too many characters with unpronounceable names in its history. A lot of it is silly, too.
• You have to pay about $15 per month to play it.

I haven’t played in the past three months. Now that I’m in end-game content, I got bored with routine tasks. I’m in a guild that’s progressing well towards the final goal, but it’s often frustrating: you have to learn how to kill certain bosses and mobs, along with organizing the group in the first place. I did play for a couple hours last night, but afterwards I thought: what the fuck have I done or accomplished tonight? I played a game. Great. I felt dissatisfied with spending my time playing the game when I could’ve been doing something productive, although I probably wouldn’t have done something productive; that is, I probably would’ve read J-Walk.

Summary: it can be a fun game, especially if you can immerse yourself into its fantasy world and have friends to play with, and you can play responsibly.

I play a couple of characters (for variety-sake), but my main character is Scarcheek, a level 70 Horde (the “evil” faction. Alliance is the “good” faction) Warlock.

Blizzard, the game’s manufacturer, claims there are over 10 million players. Not all of those exist in one virtual world. There are dozens of servers, each split up by global region (eg. North American servers) and the style of play (as described above).

Related Posts:
- WOW: The Noob Who Pwned
- My comment about purchasing the game in October, 2006.

The roof rack costs $195 (Canadian) plus tax at the dealer. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. although I priced them an other stores a couple months ago and I remember that price being competitive (despite being from a dealer).

My household could (should) put those tips to practice: they’re logical and easy. The one tip I like a lot is Designate a home for everything, and be fanatic: every item should have a storage place - bills, books, receipts, manuals… find a place in the house to store different types of crap and ensure the items are placed there.

I’m always looking for ideas on how to simplify and organize my life, although reading about the ideas and then implementing them takes the most discipline.

I was never breastfed (obvious, I know), but my kids were.

Someone posted a slightly amusing (and expected) comment about it on digg:

The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, ‘What would you like to talk about?’

Oh, I don’t know’, said the stranger. ‘How about nuclear power?’

‘OK’. she said. ‘That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first: ‘A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat grass, the same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?’

The stranger thinks about it and says, ‘Hmmm, I have no idea.’

To which the little girl replies: ‘Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don’t know shit?

(Thanks to Chris)

• Google results for firefox addon development.
• Building an Extension tutorial.
• Your First Firefox Extension
• Firefox Extension Development Tutorial
• Getting started with extension development
• Make Your Own Firefox Extensions

Since I’m the geek in the family, I tend to be called by family, friends, and friends of family and friends to diagnose and repair computer problems. Fellow technophiles know what I mean:

• How do I email my photos? And why are they so big? (Solution: Install Thunderbird and explain how digital photos are stored.)
• How do I open this document? (Solution: Tell person to set their default file type to Office 2003 or earlier, not the Office 2007 format (i.e. .docx))
• This window keeps on popping up when I’m on the internet. (Solution: Install Firefox and hide Internet Explorer)

I DO have a computer repair kit (for hardware and software problems), but I’m aware of my technical limitations; if there’s a problem I can’t figure out, I admit it and provide a recommendation.

I sometimes fix hardware problems. Trouble-shooting is most of the fun, but one has to know one’s limitations, although I’ve never taken a computer to a shop to be repaired. I’ll buy replacement hardware instead.

Related posts:
- Fixing God’s Computer
- Watch A Hard Drive Work
- Cooling A Computer With Oil
- There’s A Bee In My…
- Building A Computer
- How CPUs Work

So what did she do? She bought a front-loading washer.

Front-loading washers have the reputation of requiring less water and energy to wash clothes, although they tend to be twice as expensive (at least in my neck of the woods). My only incentive for getting that kind was their good energy use; but even so, I wasn’t willing to pay twice as much as a top-loading washer. I also read that they’re less reliable than top-loading.

We’ve always been a top-loading washer family. The appearance of front-loading washers in the past five years appears to be a fad, yet they’ve always out-sold top-loading washers in Europe, according to Wikipedia. And you never see laundromats with top-loading machines, which must be an indication of the reliability of front-loading washers.

I read they also require a special kind of soap, which will probably cost twice as much as regular clothes washing soap. It requires soap that generates less bubbles, I think, I’ll just try using less soap.

The front-loading washer is being delivered to our house today. I know you’re all anxious for my opinion about it, so I’ll post my opinion after I use the washer a few times.

Computers haven’t been publicly available before now?! Silly communists.

The original audio has been removed because it was nothing but wind distortion. I replaced it with some generic stormy wind sounds.