mmm music al dente

"With Teeth" the new album by NIN is available in it's entirety as a stream on the NIN site at myspace. It's very listenable typical nine inch nails, fairly mellow like the rest of the recent stuff. It's no pretty hate machine, but it's great to loop in the background while working, and of course there are periodic great lyrics interlaced with super cheezy ones.

15 songs to take the edge off

It's been a while since I've put down a playlist, so I thought I'd throw down my current 15 favorite songs (not in any strict order). These aren't my all time favorites, but the first five have been on the list for a long time. It definitely makes for a great shuffled playlist while waiting to board a flight. I'm sure this is a pretty heavy rehash of many of my other playlists, but I'm a bit of a creature of habit, and these always seem to make the grade.

Dave Brubeck- Take Five

Soul Coughing- Screenwriter's Blues

Santana- Oye Como Va (Sorry tito)

U2- One (everyone needs that one depressing song)

Beck- Deadweight

Cake- Comfort Eagle

Warren Zevon- Warewolves of London

INXS- I Need You Tonight

David Bowie- Golden Years

Bobby Darrin- Beyond the Sea

Stealer's Wheel- Stuck in the Middle

Outkast- Bombs over Baghdad

Ben Lee- Aftertaste

Johnny Cash- Burning Ring of Fire

Duran Duran- Hungry like the Wolf

Grant Robinson : Guess-the-google launcher

Grant Robinson : Guess-the-google launcherYet another CoDvG. I was really lucky on my first try and got a respectable 356. A couple successive attempts were a dissapointing 300-310 (I missed "land" twice. There aren't many sets, so after a couple times your score will just start improving consistently and it stope being as fun becuase it's just how fast you type. The surprising one for me was "hate", it seems the less you think about this the better you'll score. I highly recommend wasting a few minutes playing with this thing.

Oops I Did It Again: The Original

Oops I Did It Again: The Original A lesser known fact, Louis Armstrong originally sang this song back in '32. Now from supermasterpiece it is available on the web ( thanks screenhead). This is hilarious, the real question can you get someone to believe it?

Reverse dictionary

OneLook Reverse Dictionary- I've been waiting for this kind of tool for ages, this is another one CoG ( Courtesy of Geeta). It's not fantastic but it's a step in the right direction. I'm hoping to see all kinds of contextual search tools become available on the internet, also of note are kartoo and google sets. This stuff is developing pretty quickly because the information provides a huge amount of contextualized material just based on word proximity. By linking with dictionaries, the DMOZ, encyclopedias, blogs and wikis there're a lot of links to be made. The real dificulty comes in evaluating validity of the information based on the source. This is definitely an area I see developing quickly

More doom and gloom - [Sunday Herald]

Odac warns of global shortage of oil after 2007 - [Sunday Herald] Okay guys, time to ramp up my cult/commune formation, this oil consumption stuff is beginning to hit the mainstream. If you know anyone who's charasmatic and interested in being a figurehead for my cult, leave a comment. It looks like there's some real potential here.

My favorite gadget, and my gadget bag

While I'm in the US, my nokia 6620 is my favorite gadget, but while I'm traveling I'd say my favorite is a music player. I love my ipod, it has a fantastic interface, good simple features, and it synchs really easily with itunes, it's not my favorite gadget. For long trips it's definitely what I use for music, but if I only take one player with me somehwere, I take my archos gmini400. The thing plays video, right now I have an episode of scrubs, garden state, an episode of reno 911, a couple invader zim episodes, some southpark, and the hudsucker proxy. It also plays games, the thing is bundled with a couple crappy little games, but they're great airport time killers. It is of course also an mp3 player with passable interface, not a real ipod competitor but definitely usable. The most useful thing about it is that it's an external usb hard drive and it stores it's music and videos as normal files within a mac and pc accessible filesystem. This means I can swap files with anyone (without having to use 3rd party software), and keep backups of all of my important work docs on the thing. Finally, it has a standard hardware interface. The same cable that I use for the archos can be used to synch and charge my blackberry, or to power my portable speakers, one less thing to carry on little overnighters. The one gripe I have with the gmini is that it won't charge from the usb port which I feel is fairly boneheaded but overall it's the favorite thing in my gadget bag



Travel Gadget Bag

• IBM Thinkpad T40- before I got one from the office I never would have considered it, but with it's reasonable weight, exceptional battery life, ease of connections ( wifi, bluetooth, IR, gigabit ethernet, usb, even parallel), awesome res (14000x1050), good trackpad, and great keyboard I'm completely sold on the thing
• Blackberry 7290- longest leash in the world, but I'm completely addicted. I get my email instantly and full downloads of the directory from the office. All that and bluetooth connectivity.
• Nokia 6620- I opted for the flat internet plan so when I'm in the states I use this thing obsessively, I've even got putty on it for when I absolutely, positively need to access a host remotely. I slapped a half gig MMC into it and I use the camera and video recorder all the time. For multimedia I have a couple tracks, games, and tv episodes on the thing for when I'm stuck. Hell in a pinch I can use it to backup files over bluetooth, usb, or just a mem card reader. If I had a good international plan and it was quad band this would be my one gadget to rule them all, but as stands it's second fiddle to the gmini
• Archos ArcDisk 20- this extremely slim portable hard drive has been a lifesaver. completely powered off the usb port with a usb2 interface it's great for moving massive files back and forth, but also great for general backups. That and it's pretty
• Minolta Dimage x20- pretty basic slim 2 megapixel camera with AA batteries. I'm not much of a photographer, I just needed something small and basic where I could take decent quality pictures. Despite often having it with me I'm terrible about taking pics
• Apple iPod 15gb 3rd gen- needs no description
• Creative laptop speakers- I don't remember the exact model, but these usb/battery powered speakers have been great with the ipod and for watching movies on the laptop. A great addition since I have no tv in my current apartment
• Archos gmini400 -see above

The one thing that's really missing is some sort of portable projector, but mitsubishi's pocket led lit projector due out this summer will soon be part of my kit for sure. Other things I'm watching for are an apple handheld of some sort, or the archos pma430, cause my phone screen really isn't ideal for full web browsing

Beck's new video and diggin simple ascii

I  r e a l l y  dig Beck's new black tambourine video. Watching it makes me remember bbs ascii art and anarchist cookbook files that never worked. I think that may be part of the reason why I use a black background on this blog. However, I think I am beginning to appreciate simple black text on a white background. Particularly when it's in a clean serif-less font with the occasional word with spacing inbetween the letters for e m p h a s i s without SHOUTING _



btw for those of you with a netscape/mozilla browser I feel that my use of the blink tag above was perfectly justified

Googling for comedy

Aloha all,
in the nasty grad student catagory of news we have the following URL. http://www.pacm.princeton.edu/research/Lohman.jpg Use google to find out exatcly what's funny about this guy, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But his picture looks exactly as you'd expect after you find the relevant articles

Nice walk for a saturday

Nice walk for a saturday
Originally uploaded by hkarmark.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I took a walk along via appia antica ( an ancient roman road) and took this picture down a private driveway. It was a great walk and a nice little change of pace getting out of the city. After I got back I met some friends for a pizza and drinks. Then sometime between 11-12 we heard about the Pope. Some people walked over to view the spectacle at St Peters' it was quite a sight, the huge mob in mourning, the reporters scouring for an interview subject. Given the nature of the event I think I'll hold comments that might be misiterpreted as callous. Maybe I'll post on it later.

Io con una barba

Io con una barba
Originally uploaded by hkarmark.