Archive for December, 2007

Favorite albums of 2007

Monday, December 31st, 2007

1. Icky Thump - The White Stripes
2. Sound of Silver - LCD Sound System
3. Boxer - The National
4. Into the Wild (Soundtrack) - Eddie Vedder
5. In Rainbows - Radiohead
6. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
7. Person Pitch - Panda Bear
8. The Con - Tegan and Sara
9 The Shepherd’s Dog - Iron and Wine
10 Untrue - Burial

I’d put up a top 10 movie list, but there are still a bunch of 2007 movies I’d like to see - Michael Clayton, The Darjeeling Limited, Once, Ratatouille for example. Guess I’ll make my list in February or something.

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+1 Point for Prototype

Friday, December 28th, 2007

I just replaced 4,650 lines of javascript with this

var myRequest = new Ajax.Request(’ajax/get_product_data.php?’, {
method: ‘get’,
parameters: ‘product_id=’+$F(’product_list’),
onSuccess: function(transport) {
var product_data = transport.responseText.evalJSON();
$(’category_list’).value=product_data.product_category;
$(’unit_cost’).value=product_data.unit_cost;
}
});

You read that correctly - 4,650 lines.

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Merry Christmas

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

It’s been nice to have a few days off to relax. The weather warmed up enough to play tennis the past few days, but now it’s cold and rainy again. I’ll be back at work tomorrow, so that’s not too much of a problem.

Lisa and I went to see a couple of good movies over the weekend - I am Legend and Atonement. One sci-fi movie and one romance. Not hard to guess who picked which movie, but we both enjoyed each of them.

Fantasy Football finished this week. I finished 2nd in the league with my friends, and 4th in my public league. I’m fairly happy with my luck this year.

Finally, congratulations to my brother Andrew, who became engaged on Monday. I’m sure it will be a Christmas to remember.

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for December 14th through December 19th

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

These are my links for December 14th through December 19th:

Danger

Friday, December 14th, 2007

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for December 13th

Friday, December 14th, 2007

These are my links for December 13th:

My del.icio.us bookmarks for December 10th through December 12th

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

These are my links for December 10th through December 12th:

A Nice Weekend

Monday, December 10th, 2007

Saturday Lisa I started the day out watching Beowulf - great movie.  The only review I heard was on NPR a couple of weeks ago, the guy was bashing it because of the excessive violence.  In my mind, the violence and the action didn’t get in the way of a great story.  I loved their take on the story, making Beowulf out to be a flawed hero.

Later that night I caught The Ultimate Fighter Finale, it was fantastic.  I always make picks on mmaplayground.com and the first 3 fights went exactly as I had picked, which is a rarity.  The 4th fight featured Jared Rollins vs. John Koppenhaver, which was, up to that point, the fight of the night.  Both guys were aggressive standing and on the ground, looking for knockout or the submission.  Half way through the 3rd round, both guys looked absolutely exhausted, and when Rollins took the dominant position, I figurered he was about to pull off a victory.  Suddenly Koppenhaver pulled off one of the best sweeps I have ever seen, threw a few elbows and scored a KO.  It was amazing.

The next fight was the “season finale” or whatever, with the winner getting awarded a UFC contract.  History shows that they also give anyone who gave us an exciting fight a contract as well, so it was just bragging rights.  I had picked Tommy Speer to win a close decision, he had shown time and time again he was as tough as nails, getting out of several very sticky situations during the show.  But Mac Danzig proved to be a lot more skilled than anyone else he had fought so far, and scored a submission very quickly.

The final fight was Roger Huerta vs Clay Guida.  Both of these guys fight every fight full blast, so I knew this would be good.  It was back and forth the whole way, Huerta dominating the stand-up, Guida scoring takedowns and working Huerta over on the ground.  I would give Guida the edge up to the third round, as he seemed to control the fight more.  Then Huerta connected with couple of knees, knocking him to the canvas, then took his back and submitted him.  I was in the basement and Lisa heard me cheering 3 floors away.

Sunday we went to see The Golden Compass.  It was ok, but I wish I had waited for the video.  There really wasn’t that much character development to speak of, so I really didn’t care about the story.  Towards the end, I was thinking I could read the book, it would probably do a better job.  But during the credits, some idiot who sat right behind us was blabbing on and on about the book and really turned me off to the whole idea of reading it.  I gave a snide comment as we got up to leave, he just ignored me and kept blabbing on.

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for December 4th

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

These are my links for December 4th:

Gmail + Aim = Crazy Delicious

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

You can now log into AIM in Gmail. How cool is that. The only problem I have with it so far is organization of contacts is difficult impossible.

Google also recently announced their plans for 2008. I could care less about Google Sites, but the fact that Google Gears will allow offline gmail, google docs, and google calendar is huge.

No wonder M$ is so worried about Google. Once this is working, there will really be no reason to use the buggy, exploit-prone mess that is Outlook. I switched over to using Gmail a long time ago, I used to use Thunderbird, but there was really no point in keeping a mail client open since I had my browser open 100% of the time anyway.

Word and Excel are another story. How much do you trust Google with your personal documents? I would guess 90% of everything people put into Word and Excel they consider private, or private to a company. I can see people having privacy and security concerns, even if they don’t have the same concerns about email.

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Car Commercials

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Why do car commercials have the best music? I was watching the football game yesterday and some car commercial came on, featuring Band of Horses “The Funeral”. The past couple weeks I’ve been seeing another one featuring a song by Hum. I remember a lot of band I like featured in car commercials - The Dandy Warhols, Death in Vegas, and Modest Mouse (before their commercial success, no pun intended). Why is that the automobile industry shares my taste in music?

As a side note, I don’t remember any of the cars they were trying to sell me.

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Looks like I’m going to need a little luck

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

in fantasy football this week. In the league with my friends, it appears I will be finishing 4th, putting me in a matchup with Cash Money Icons. I’m not to worried about that matchup, I squeaked by him once this year, this time around it won’t be so close. it’s in my public league where things are interesting.

I need to make 4th place to make the playoffs. I’m sitting in 3rd right now, but if I don’t win, and the 4th and 5th place teams do win, I’m out. As luck would have it, they play teams in 6th and 7th place, while I’m playing the 1st place team. The first place team has Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and Adrian Peterson. What a beating.

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