Blogger Upgrade, Tags, Site Feed

I just recently upgraded my blogger account to Blogger Beta, which lets one add tags to blog posts (among other new features). I've been slowly going through and adding tags, but when I do that it seems that the RSS feed considers it a new entry. So if use use a reader, sorry about that.

Middle-Aged Man

Of course I'm kidding. I fully expect the life expectency to hit 120 by the time I'm officially old. So when my good friend Callahan turned 30 yesterday, I hope he thought of it start of the second quarter.

And what better way to celebrate the big 3-0, than to start your very own blog? Or, at the very least, publicize the blog that you started back in January. But maybe I should give Cal a break - the guy is freakin' old, he probably just forgot until recently that he had started it.

A Bad Week, plus This Week at the CCB

It was just one of those weeks. Sixty hours of work (and with my commute, it seemed like much longer), a $2900 plumbers' bill, and allergy season finally hit as well. Needless to say - evidently not - blogging wasn't a priority, it was barely an afterthought. This week has to be better though, and I've got a lot to catch up on. A preview of this week:

• new links! to two upcoming Baltimore events in creativity and engineering, and to the oddest and geekiest ipod accessory ever
• new sidebar! with links to the podcasts I listen to regularly
• music review! of songwriter extraordinaire & podcaster Jonathan Coulton
• peep jousting! photos, and possibly videos, of the newest Easter tradition in our family, started this past weekend by Amy & Jenny

An ambitious agenda, to be sure, but I think I can handle it - stay tuned!

Falling Behind, Night Watch

Where have the posts gone? Well first off, I can't remember the last time I was this busy at work, so that certainly doesn't help. When I'm staring at a screen for 9+ hours every day (trying to get a simulation calibrated), I just don't feel like coming home and writing even the shortest entry. The other factor is, there hasn't been that much going on, that I've felt suitably inspired to write about. Let's see, I had back to back commutes this past week where I sat on the train next to two foul-smelling men - first, it was a guy who had every communication device known to man, but seemed to forget that communication can be olfactory as well, and thus deodorant should have been part of his arsenal of devices. Then the next day, it was the two packs a day smoker, who also snored! Talk about a winner.

Speaking of winners, that excludes the Terps, who are out of the NCAAs for a second year in a row after providing their own special brand of stench in a loss to Boston College a few nights ago. Maybe next year, who knows?

Jenny and I went to the cinema last night and saw Night Watch, a Russian sci-fi film and part one of a trilogy, that was more popular than Lord of the Rings in Russia. According to the Wikipedia entry, it diverges a great deal from the book that it's based on, but I could have told you that just by watching the movie - it was very...uneven. The sub-plot that the main plot has to work around is ridiculous and full of holes, the characters have some fantastic powers that you barely get a glimpse of, and one of the neat concepts that the film introduces, the Gloom, barely gets explored - a book with that many problems never would have been made into a movie. Even with that list of complaints though, I would still recommend it, especially if you're a fan of innovative filmmaking, or of that whole 'cosmic struggle between good and evil' schtick. Even the subtitles are cool (you'll have to see them for yourself, it's hard to describe). Wikipedia also says that the third movie - the second has already been released in Russia - will be made in the U.S., with an English-speaking cast. That would be a shame, because these actors were very good, and the 'look' of the all-Russian cast really meshed with the look of the film. Besides, the special effects were awesome, and with a film budget of only $4.2 million. What do you wanna bet that Hollywood will surely screw it up by over-doing the FX and casting Keanu Reeves in the lead?

Charm City Blogger, One Year Later

It's been one year (to the day) already, and I'm still not bored with this whole blogging thing! Amazing. Actually, I'm having more fun with it now than I was back when I started, believe it or not.

Every Once In a While...

...he comes up with something where all you can really say is, "whoa dude, that's some really cool shit!" For those of you who don't check out Grau's blog as often as you should - which is to say, every time you're sitting in front of a computer - don't miss his recent entry, yet more evidence of the Mad Genius of Ryon. Fair warning though, the last photo may be inappropriate for kids, red-staters, small woodland animals, Decepticons, and insecure dudes.

Google Blog Search

I'm just messing around on the computer before bed, so I head on over to blogsearch.google.com , which I've never used before. I type in underchuckle, pultoblog, and a few others I know should be in there. Greg's blog checks out fine, as do a few others; the most recent posts show up. But for some reason Charm City Blogger isn't indexed beyond September 5th. What gives?

The real reason that I was testing Google's blogsearch, is that I found an intriguing new Firefox extension that shows which blogs are linking to the web page that's being visited. So if you're reading an article about our remedial president's speech last night, it will list all the blue-stater blogger rants and red-state raves, all in a convenient pop-up window (easily disabled) in the lower right corner! Neat-O.

Our Latest Export

I would be remiss if I went any longer without mentioning spankledelia.com. For those of you who know Mr. Grau, neither his site's artistic merits nor his...engaging and um, enlightened prose should come as a surprise. He's recently unleashed himself upon London disguised as a mild-mannered (bwaahhahah!) art student. Well, maybe unleashed isn't the right term; it's not quite like the classic Godzilla/Tokyo relationship, because he's not nearly that tall. Anyway, good luck to all involved.

Seriously though, how much damage could he do over there? With what they already think of us thanks to our remedial president, Ryon may actually raise their collective opinion of the U.S.! You know that we live in a very fucked-up world when that last sentence is actually true.
(image from spankledelia, used without permission - I'm married to a lawyer, go ahead and sue!)

New Orleans Blog

Thanks to my brother, who sent me the link for this blog, which is operating from the downtown New Orelans Central Business District.

Avoiding Blog Spam

I've changed the blog settings and made it private, in the hopes of avoiding the comment spam that I've had a few problems with recently (last post - 8 spam comments). The private setting just means that it won't show up on any blogger.com searches, and it won't show up on Blogger's front page in the recently updated blogs section - I think that's where the real problem lies.

Do I Smell Bacon? Jump on the BlogWagon! Time Off.

Lots going on recently, and not much time to write about any of it. I guess it's not that surprising that in an office of 10 people, if one of them gets fired 1 or 2 people are going to have a lot more work to do. That's been my situation lately (more work; I didn't get fired), which is good in that I'm certainly not bored, but which leaves less time for everything else. I've gotten to the point where I'm going to bed at night thinking about work, something which I usually try to avoid at all costs because it just doesn't seem healthy.

Our esteemed president has lost his battle with pork. So much for being a man of principle, not wanting to waste taxpayer money. The linked article talks primarily about the new highway bill, although the new energy bill is also full of pig product. Not only is he giving up on fighting pork, but in a concession to Congress, George is expected to name Miss Piggy as his new Secretary of Transportation in the near future. Seriously, you'll see it in the news over the next week or so.

More blogs in the house! (the house being the Internets) Wethotamericanmatt: he has 23 friends according to his site, which of course made me start counting my friends - no, I don't have that many, don't be ridiculous. Also he seems fond of penguins, and really who isn't? Colarama, I suspect, will be an artistic and far-ranging blog that puts most others to shame, kinda like Pixelfish's. Time will tell, I suppose. No audioblogs/podcasts or videoblogs yet, at least not by anyone I know personally. Maybe the next ipod, rumored to have video capabilities, will change that.

Taking tomorrow off and heading to the beach for the first time in over a year, so it's doubtful I'll post until next week. Unless I kill any sharks or dolphins with my bare hands, then I'll make sure to post the photos.

Sordid Tales: The Return of Pultoblog

A few of you (well at least one person) may have noticed that I removed the Pultoblog link from the sidebar last week. Greg is back online though with his first post since March, and it's an entertaining and scandalous one at that. But is he back for good, and will it be enough to restore the sidebar link? I think I need a few more posts to be totally convinced, but hey what else are blogs for than to link to friends' blogs and perpetuate the vicious ego-feeding cycle?

Who Is PixelFish?

Several people have already asked about the new blog link that I added just this morning: she is Lis, Jenny's childhood friend from Utah (that sounds so picturesque, doesn't it?). She and her b/f Lee are both artists who currently reside in the artisit-hippy utopia that is San Fransisco.

She's also into these newfangled online communities more than anyone I know. Of course, since I don't know too many people who are blogging, forum-posting fools (that's a compliment, Lis), I'm not sure how much meaning that has. Seriously though, rumor has it that our esteemed president was ready to give Lis her very own Internet, but then he found out that she wasn't exactly his biggest fan.

Bah, who needs his internets anyway?

The Artist In The Family

These are some glass tiles that my sister Em has been working on recently. I would have to say that my favorites are the one in the top right corner, and the one in the first column, third row. Although they're all quite groovy.

As you can see, I've finally figured out how to include pictures in posts, using a Google-affiliated app called Hello that links directly with Blogspot. The Hello icon is that little white and blue box above. It's primarily for sharing pcitures without using a website. If anyone starts using it, let me know; eventually I'll be adding more photos to my Hello profile (name: underchuckle).

Is It Stuffy In Here?

I re-read each entry after I post it, and usually go back and do some editing on every post. Most of the time, it's to attempt to make the post friendlier. I have a tendency, especially with serious topics like war, politics, the president (oops, I said serious, so that excludes that asshat), to write like I'm writing an essay for an English class. I don't necessarily think that way, nor do I use that extensive a vocabulary every day - I much prefer grunts and snorts as means of communication - but I re-read some of these entries and wonder what the hell I was thinking when I phrased a certain sentence with 6 commas, or went out of my way to avoid a contraction. I can't promise that I won't lapse into the heavier prose on occasion, but from here on out, I'm really going to try to be more conversational. Well, as conversational as one can be when writing a monologue.

In other news, I re-designed the page layout a bit (mostly link colors, more colors=cool) and added more sites to the LINKS section. I'm also looking to add more sites to the OTHER BLOGS sidebar, so suggestions are welcome. I have a few in mind, but need to ask the owners first. I'm also thinking about removing an inactive blog that's rarely updated (you know who you are) - gotta clean house occasionally.

New Blog Link! plus, an ipod mini Battery Test

Slow Friday at work, so I have time between the simulations I'm running for additional posts. No need to thank me, loyal readers!

I finally added a link to Jenny's long-running blog! I'm sure she'll be thrilled. But she's been doing this blogging stuff for years, so it's no big deal to her. I only recently discovered this facet of the Internets, so it's still new and exciting for me.

I think the plan is for us to see Sin City tonight or maybe tomorrow night. Naturally, a review with follow. This evening at 6:30 I have a live fantasy baseball draft for a league I just joined a few hours ago. I've never been as unprepared for fantasy baseball, I've done no research whatsoever! It should be fun, but I'm not expecting that this casual approach to the draft will extend my 2-year league winning streak. Ah well, all good things must come to an end. And I'm sure I'll still draft better than my hometown Orioles!

Right now I have my ipod mini sitting in my desk drawer running through its songs. Or rather, I'm seeing how long it will run through said songs - I'm doing an un-scientific battery-life test, for what it's worth. There are a number of potential problems with this test, the first being that the battery has only been 100% charged once. I'm not sure if it's true, but I've read that the battery needs 3-4 charges to be 'broken-in'. The second issue is that the mp3s that are loaded onto it were encoded using a number of different settings and bit rates, few of which are what I'm currently using to rip-and-encode my CDs. I'm using the LAME mp3 encoder at alt-preset-standard settings, which produces a VBR (variable bit rate) file with an average bit rate of around 200kbps. It's certainly more quality than I need when listening to songs through headphones, so I suspect I'm being a bit of a audiophile snob. But I swear I can hear the difference on certain CDs, especially jazz recordings and electronic music. Who knows, maybe there's a placebo effect at work there. But when every yuppified home has a media receiver that will wirelessly access all mp3s, video files, and photos from home computers, I figure it will be nice to be able to pump high-quality mp3s from my home stereo (which has great-sounding speakers). The downside is that bigger mp3 files - and VBR files to boot - will drain mp3 player batteries quicker than smaller, lower-quality files encoded at constant bit rates.

So time will tell (literally!) whether my current test will yield battery life close to Apple's 18 hour claim. Then for part II of testing I'll see what kind of a hit the battery takes playing my newly-encoded audiophile-snob files. Currently, the battery indicator looks to be at about 60% and I'm at 5 hours of play time. I will provide updates on the test later in the day. Hopefully, much later.

Comment Settings Changed!

No, unlike the enemies of our great democratic nation, I don't hate freedom. With that in mind, I have changed the comment settings, so that anyone may comment to posts. You no longer need permission from the Great and Powerful Underchuckle to comment to my infallible musings. You may now proceed to lavish my words with praise.

A Friend in the Blogosphere

It's always nice to have company - I've just learned that my friend Greg has started his blog, Pultoblog. And not to steal any thunder from his future blog entries, but this is a great example of quality parenting in the 21st century (check out the sponsor).

Changes for the Better

Ah, much better. Baltimore is now the City that Reads, and I've also changed the link colors so that they're hopefully more pleasing to the eye. A link from the last post, from the web site truthaboutduke.com, still doesn't seem to be working, but the whole site is down at the moment so that may be the problem.

Many thanks to Ma and Pa Underchuckle for their helpful comments and discerning eyes!

C'mon, EVERYONE'S doing it!

Seriously, they are. Or at least they're hoarding all the fun URLS on blogger.com. This address was my fifth choice! Anyway, we'll see how long this lasts. Judging by the many abandoned blogs that are out there, I wouldn't hold my breath. This site could begin and end with an audience of one, but hey it's free!

I'm not going to attempt to describe what this is going to be about, because I don't quite know. It's certainly NOT going to be limited to specific topics, places, or persons. Stay tuned...