Top 5

Idea stolen from inever

If I could only hear five songs for the rest of my life, these are the ones I would pick:

Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Morning Coming Down
Gandharvas - First Day of Spring
Mojo Nixon - Redneck Rampage
The Cure - From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Katamari Damacy OST - Cherry Blossom Colour Season

What would you guys pick?

I'm dizzy, I had a bad fever last night, and my tooth is abscessed.

But at least my joysticks are ordered (along with a bunch of extra buttons.)

Pew pew..

I've been trying to get together the parts to build an arcade stick for the PC. I've got some cheap buttons, crimp-on connectors for the wire, and a PC controller to cannibalise. I'm afraid that the controller is a bit too complicated, as it has analogue inputs and too many digital inputs for what I'm doing. I could probably find a cheaper, simpler one for half the price I paid for this one and simply use this one as a PC gamepad until such time as I feel confident enough to hack the analogue inputs. I get the feeling that the controller acts as a mouse when the analogues are in use, which suits me fine. 

I still need:

a soldering kit
a tiny screwdriver set
a joystick
MDF cut to size
to dig out my drill
a 1" drill bit
a 1-1/8" drill bit
a lot of 18 gauge wire, possibly smaller (I've heard it's easier to work with than barely sufficient gauges, for this kind of thing)
possibly a simple, ten digital input USB gamepad
a terminal strip
some kind of project enclosure

The buttons I've found are not what I will be using on my next stick, I just want to get something together that works before ruining some really nice, vintage parts. I may need to order my joystick online, which from what I've seen, might be a bit difficult or a little more expensive than what I wanted.

to do by Saturday:
get the wire
order my joystick
figure out which controller I'm going to be using

It's kinda rainy out this week so I'll save the legwork for next week. I've never done anything involving electronics before so it might take me longer than it would if I were familiar with the basic parts and processes that I'll be using.

Would you believe me if I told you that I was back from hiatus?

This iconic picture immortalizes a historic precedent. In a huge, choreographed mass around the world, the internet showed up on Scientology's doorstep to sing 80's songs at the injustice of capitalistic religion. In virtually every major english-speaking city, drothes of masked 20-somethings proclaimed that their Thetan power level was OVER 9000! I am proud to see my internet bretheren so boldly take up a torch and mob the over-happy denizens of Xenu, I only wish I could have been there. With numbers as high as 300 estimated at certain gatherings, (and as low as 1 ((BUT BIG BALLS)) in Tokyo,) these champions of free speech have lashed out against the seemingly joke-cult of a mediocre sci-fi novel writer. I don't know how to express how awesome this is.

With real-life raids taking place, anonymous "chan" sites have found a new power within themselves. They have figured out that they can go out there and make news, say things with a unified voice. I really wonder what Moot thinks of all this. 

More info at The Project Chanology Wiki.

BTW: Code Monkey AMV

I've been playing Halo 3 on multiplayer campaign mode. The design of the game reminds me of Alien in a vision of a futuristic pragmatism in war sort of way, except that the ringworld is absolutely beautiful. It's worth mentioning that Halo is based on the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. I have yet to read them, but I may just order them from Amazon sometime soon.

The combat NPCs aren't absolutely retarded except if they're driving and you're shooting. They seem to hang back a bit too far, which I think is just an over-caution to make up for a lack of any real intelligence, and to make you feel like they are, indeed, the Master Chief's followers. I like shooting them in the back of the head with a grenade launcher and laughing when one of the survivors utter, "he was on our side :("

The enemy, the Covenant as they are called, seem to be following a crazy leader bent on the annihilation of all life, or something, so they fight with a religious zeal that is actually kind of impressive. My favourite enemy in the game, so far, has been the giant mechanical spiders that come lumbering over the sides of oddly-shaped buildings firing their huge lasers at your tanks. I had a hard time pulling those things down even with a friend helping me. 

I always thought that Halo was a silly, shallow series with awkward controls that was made for the lowest class of gamer, Madden fans. I've come to discover: It is that, but that blasting these shrewd bugs is actually pretty fun. I'd like to get a four player campaign going, I've only experienced two player, so far, so that I can crank the difficulty up to 11. Anyone interested?

Br0n has never been out of our supervision except for a few babysitters, times at friend's houses for sleepovers, and a short-lived daycare experience. I remember my mother telling me about dragging her brother around since a time when she was fairly young. I know that I wasn't allowed to roam the streets freely until an age of several years after the age that my mother fist began to go out with her friends unsupervised. I know we will afford Br0n much less personal freedom than I was afforded in that regard. In our changing times I worry that more and more parents are clutching their children as we do ours, affording them less and less freedom with each passing generation. I understand that with more people there is more crime and with more crime there is a greater risk to our children, but I also understand that paranoia plays a big part in parenting, these days. 

Personally, I've always been oblivious to danger, and it may bite me in the ass one day. I'm worried that children will never see the dangerous world in which we live until they escape through their window when they are 16, at an age when a child can do the most destruction to themselves. 

A few days after we moved into our new place, there was a shooting on the corner and an officer's strike at the nearby jail. These are real dangers that Br0n should know are there, if she were ever to find herself without her parents. Not only because of her personal safety, (because I don't think she's going to walk into a jail riot or that a gangland shooter will target her specifically,) but also so she can understand what is going on around her at any given moment and take action in an appropriate manner ~on her own.~ Shielding her from situations like these will not give her this capacity. 

I see children at 11 and 12 only just ebing able to walk to school by themselves in a reasonably safe neighborhood and worry if those children's lessening sense of freedom will ultimately damage humankind's future.