Archive for the ‘Signal Noise’ Category

Presto’s Disappearing Act

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Presto is sick. Very sick. Cancer.

The outlook is grim, while we don’t have much hope, we are trying what we can.

I’m randomly breaking out into tears over this and while I may risk shorting out the keyboard, I want to write down the things I’m going to miss.

Presto, as expressed by the person at the Humane Society, is a “spitfire”.

Constantly getting into trouble, picking at stuff, Presto generates strong emotions. But when he snuggles, is playful, you can’t help but love him.

So I want to make a list of every little thing I’m going to miss about Mr. Presto so that I’ll never be able to forget.

  • The thick feel of his fur.
  • The way that he comes when I whistle.
  • The rolling purr he makes when it’s time for his wet food.
  • The way he likes to drink from a running faucet.
  • He follows you everywhere you go.
  • The way he lies against you by practically shoulder charging in to you.
  • He lies on my legs when I go to sleep.
  • In the summer time he’ll lie on my legs and rub his head on my heels. It feels like velvet. Better then velvet.
  • How much he loves to chase his puff.
  • He’ll play fetch with his puff.
  • The way he sits at the window like a little boy.
  • You can’t pull your hand away from him without him grabbing at it.
  • The way he holds your fingers gently with his teeth.
  • The way he grooms magic.
  • The way he will be at the front window pawing at it when we get home.
  • How he will run from anywhere to beat you to the top or bottom of the stairs.
  • He sometimes misses his jumps.
  • The strangest things will scare him and he’ll jump about two feet up.
  • The way he sits in the corner of a chair like an old man.
  • The little white patch on his throat.
  • How he’ll nap by his water dish.
  • He’ll climb on top of the cabinets and nap.
  • He’ll look out the window with Magic and have no idea what she’s looking at.
  • He’s just so damn lovable.
  • If you brush his fur back he looks like a little lion.
  • The way he knows exactly which wires to chew on to get a reaction out of us.
  • How he made “Damn it, Presto!” a thing.
  • He digs for China in the laundry basket.
  • He’ll scratch the headboard on the bed next to me to wake me up.
  • He won’t go down to the food dish in the middle of the night without me, I have to walk with him down.
  • Bowling for Presto
  • He helps in everything you do. “Presto’s helping!”
  • You can touch his paws all you want, but you can’t touch his belly.
  • He’ll chew, but not eat, cardboard boxes. Leaving little bits everywhere.
  • He likes to get in large paper bags from The Works.
  • We bought a house because of him.
  • He’ll steal balled up socks from the laundry bin as we’re folding.
  • I can pretty much voice what he’s thinking.
  • He doesn’t do anything half way. What he does he does full blast.
  • He’s Anita’s “Special Little Guy.”
  • He’ll knock the toilet roll off the holder with his tail and not even notice.
  • He often goes by “Pesto” or “Señor Fluffybutt”.
  • He will walk in the room, drop his puff and cry until you throw it. But sometimes he’ll look at you like “Why did you throw that, I just brought it in!”

I plan to keep adding to this. I may be adding to it for the rest of my life.

Last Night’s Fortune Cookie

Monday, February 7th, 2011

You will soon be honored by someone you respect.

Wait, is this someone I really respect, or just pretend to?  ‘Cause there’s a lot more of the second.

The Heat of the Summer Sunshine

Monday, September 13th, 2010

The autumn sun feels like a friend, the summer sun, an enemy.

This week’s Fortune Cookie

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

You love sports, horses and gambling, but not to excess..

You don’t know me at all, do you?

I learned about MJ’s death via Twitter.

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

I’m living in the future.

Ease on down the road, King of Pop.

Today’s Fortune Cookie

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

Sing and rejoice, fortune is smiling on you.

Why?  Is my zipper down???

Today’s Fortune Cookie

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Your heart will skip a beat.

This wouldn’t have anything to do with Swine Flu, would it?

Getting Songbird To Sing Beyond The Cage

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

Worse case scenario happened.  The laptop I was using for a Songbird powered stereo had a sudden and massive hard drive crash.  Nothing is recoverable, the drive isn’t even recognized.

It’s not the end of the world, I keep all the actual music files on a Drobo connected to a server in the basement.  So those are relatively safe.  But all the intangible stuff, like the meta data for ratings and playlists are gone.  With over 18,000 tracks they’re not easy to get back.

But what to do now?  I’m taking this as a sign to do something better.  I’d prefer not to have a laptop just sitting in the living room any more.  In the realm of Network Music Player there are only a few real choices:

And they all have their problems.  (And the Sonos is too expensive to even bother talking about.)

The Squeezebox hardware is pretty pricey and I don’t have an audio system on the main floor that could take advantage of the fidelity that they put out.  Only one package has anything other then a text based screen with an IR remote.  Ug.  It also requires a service running on a computer somewhere.  I tried installing it on the PowerMac I’m using as a server but it refuses to start.  Not even an error message in the console to explain why.  I’ve been able to get it running on other PC’s and the service interface is UGLY.  The only playlist management is through reading an iTunes database.  Ouch.

The Roku seems to be very tied to iTunes as well and the Firefly media server feels really bare-bones.  After their new video player, I think this is being forgotten about.

The Airport Express is a nifty little device, but it’s specifically designed for iTunes.  And if you want a controller for it, you need at least an iPod Touch.

I’m a very committed fan of Songbird, but I’m not left with many options for it.  There’s a Songbird Remote for the iPod Touch, but Songbird still can’t “speak” through the Airport Express.  Unless I get Airfoil as well – which will allow any app to pipe it’s sound through the Express.

Sounds good, right?  Well then there’s the issue of Songbird not having a PowerPC build anymore.  There was someone who was producing their own PowerPC package, but I don’t know if it’s still being maintained.  Then there’s the question if all the extensions and addons will work with it as well.

I picked up a Airport Express to try out and so I’d be able to play something on the main floor.  It’s streaming from iTunes on a everyday laptop for now, but it is working.  And it gives me Wireless-N to boot.  But it’s still not Songbird and all the flexibility that comes with it.

So, to get everything working just right I need a PowerPC version of Songbird, an iPod Touch, Airfoil, Songbird Remote iPod app and Songbird Extention.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

*sigh*

Banhammered!

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Last November, Adam Frucci of Gizmodo put up a post about a Japanese robot to train doctors for ER patients.  And he referred to it looking less then realistic by describing the robot as having “a bad case of the Downs“.

"A Bad Case of the Downs"

"A Bad Case of the Downs"

I thought it was in incredibly bad taste, and I said so:

And it still isn't.

And it still isn't.

It’s not a brilliant retort, but it certainly got the point across.  I’m still surprised that Gizmodo let the original post’s language through in the first place.

Well today Adam put up another post where he specifically points out that he’s the “token jackass” of Gizmodo:

Shameless Jackass

Shameless Jackass

As long as he was talking about how much of a jerk he is, I thought I’d remind him of his past: gizmodo-adam-4 Maybe to the folks at Gizmodo that seemed a little out of context or they just want to ignore it, ’cause not too much later I noticed:

Banhammered!

Banhammered!

No one is going to miss my presence on the Gizmodo comments and nothing I do is going to change things, but I still think it was worth it. It’s gotta be pretty bad before I think about taking a stand on something, even this small.

Oto-Wa Taiko: 20th Anniversary Concert

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

We went to the Oto-Wa Taiko concert Saturday night and I had a really good time.  Unfortunately we were running late and I didn’t get a chance to bring my camera.  I was so jealous of the photographers who were shooting the event.

I’ve been to a number of these concerts over the last five years and I’m starting to recognize a lot of the pieces, but I think they’ve added a few for this showing.  The dragon head was definitely new and some of the sets didn’t feel that familiar.

It was also the first time I caught Dagaku.  Which is the children’s drumming group.  I guess it’s like a farm team.  I was surprised by how good they were!  Some of them were the proverbial knee high to a grasshopper but they performed really well for their four sets.  The final piece they did ended with a beat and a pose and the kid on the far right of the stage dropped her stick on the pose – it was so cute it could have been on purpose.

My one concern of the show was the…  um…  Big Ass Drum in the back.  If I remember correctly, I should have felt bodily fluids shake when it was hit.  It seemed to have been producing the right tone, nice and deep, but the power didn’t seem to be there.  And they were whaling on it – the stand was shaking – but much lighter strikes on drums at the front seemed much louder.  Maybe it was the raised platform it was on, maybe the position on stage, maybe it was that I was sitting farther back then before – it just seemed a little odd.  Weird acoustics I guess.

Watching the show I got the idea of a type of performance I’d like to see:  Imagine a Taiko version of Devil went down to Georgia.  Two groups in a challenge/response give’n take with the beat.  With the idea it’s a battle over their very souls, each round should get a little faster and a little more frantic like the music I’m use to from home.  Of course, that’s more or less an excuse to justify what I like to hear.  But I’m ok with that.

I’ll definitely be going to future concerts.