My wife and I were lucky enough to be gifted a 1/2 seasons worth of tickets to the Cincinnati Symphonic Orchestra. We really love going to these shows. Not only is dinner included in the ticket price, but it brings me back to my high school days, when I would wail away with some Holst on my baritone horn.
Sadly, tonight is the last night of our season. We would love to purchase tickets for next year, but they are kinda damn asspensive. I guess we are doomed to live the life of the rest of you common folk. At least I got to pretend like I was a fancy gentleman for a little while.
One of my instructors at DAAP, @artiekuhn, had told us that scores in a game should always be large enough to make the player feel like they are accomplishing something. I agree.. getting +100 every time you kill a bad guy is much more rewarding than getting +1.
The scoring system in Dishwasher: Dead Samurai takes this notion to the extreme:
This was the final parts list for my new MythTv server. It will house 2 HVR-1600 capture cards, which will allow me to get 2 analog captures and 2 Over-the-air HD captures.
The total cost was a little more than I was hoping, but I payed to futureproof the machine. This will have much more power than i will need right away, but it will need to be able to serve up to three frontends in the future. I figured it would be better to pay more now for less headache in the future.
Apparently if I was feeling super adventurous, I could try to hack the bios for the processor and unlock the dormant 2 cores, turning it in to a quad-core machine, but I doubt I will be getting that crazy.
My father was complaining that everyone was ohhing and ahhing over videos of my cousin’s son on facebook. He wanted us to start adding videos of him, because he says he is much more interesting than a toddler.
My wife found this hotel for us to stay in when I had a job interview in Louisville. She thought it would be fun to make a weekend of it, and even though the interview wound up not happening we thought it would be fun to head down there (plus were weren’t getting our money back, so I couldn’t stand to not use the room we payed for).
Since this is my mini-review, I’ll make it short. The hotel was really neat, but I don’t think I would stay there for more than a night, and only if I could stomach the cost. It was pricey. The restaurant was really good, but the grit/Eggs Benedict thing wasn’t as good as I was lead to believe it would be. The walls were really thin, we heard the couple in the next room going to town. Like, really heard them.
One of the many Chandeliers. This one made of scissors.
If your finger is anywhere near the pulse my finger is on for the interwebnets, you will have noticed there was a lot of uproar about the Diggbar that was released a little while ago. If you arent familiar with the Diggbar and why it is an affront to Bob, look through Daring Fireball. There are more than a few posts on why it is bad.
Back? good. You can see why the Diggbar is bad, but there are other sites out there that don’t seem to gain the same ire that digg did. The one I have been noticing lately is ow.ly I am not going to get in to the whole “link shortner” debate.. I use them, you use them, if you want links to fit in twitter, you have to use them. Fine. My gripe is there is another service out there that frames content with their bar.
My guess is ow.ly slid under the rador with the whole Diggbar fiasco because they are much smaller than digg. To me, they look like they do the same thing.. digg frames content with their url, ow.ly frames content with their url. Apples to fucking apples.
Is this something I have to worry about with my site? In reality, no. I know I am putting on this horse and donkey show for my amusement alone. It is the concept that riles me up. That, and the fact that I want to be the first to complain about something for once…
From what I can see on twitter, today seems to be the National Day of Silence. I used to participate in high school, and if I remember correctly it was a day where you would be silent to bring attention to those that have to live their life in silence for fear of repercussions. While the concept is nice, I always felt it was a little flawed. The people that really need to be reached by this movement are probably too close-minded to realize what is going on. The people that are indifferent won’t really care, and the people that understand what the day is trying to achieve are most likely already involved.
The other problem I have with the Day of Silence is that silence is apparently a very subjective term. Back when I was in high school, people wouldn’t talk, but they would sit there passing notes all day. It eventually got to the point where people would “participate” so they could have, in their minds, a day off from school. Now, on twitter, I am seeing people who in one tweet say they are participating in the day of silence then turn around and send out a bevy of their normal day-to-day tweets. I am sure Myspace and Facebook are the same way.
What really constitutes silence? Is it simply the act of not talking for a day? I am sure that for some people that is really difficult, but if the only change you are making for a day is not talking, yet still communicating, is the purpose of the day really getting through? If you are still writing notes, tweeting, sending texts, writing blogs, and doing everything you would normally do in a day, are you really doing anything different?
Maybe it is just because I was raised Roman Catholic, but I feel like there needs to be some sort of struggle and sacrifice for something like the Day of Silence to have meaning. While the main goal is to bring attention to the silence some people have to live in, I feel that it should also remind the people participating of the difficulties others have to live through day-to-day. To me, silence means just that… silence. No communication.
