kisrael.com | archive | last weeks
smart monster 2010.03.11 
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--I always wanted this kind of look for the Honda Civic Hatchback I had in the 90s or my current Scion xA... that, or just mad hydraulics to go jump, jump down the street.

via Archmage's Friday Pix, always a nice weekly read.

beeracer time trials 2010.03.10 
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beeracer TT - source - built with processing
OK, at first glance it looks like I already posted this - BUT - if you do a lap, you'll notice that you now have an opponent: you get to play against the ghostly recording of your best lap. It makes it a much more fun game, and kind of with the psychological/learning aid of my previous try, I ended up to get well under 10 seconds...

Made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
  ...of the moment  
http://www.slate.com/id/2246107/ - liked this piece on the big red EXIT vs. the international running man, esp. the Japanese vs. Russian variants.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/58280 - sigh, the dot com bubble. Heh, they mention Palm - guess I'm glad I didn't go w/ "invest in what you know + like" idea.
Finally got the hypersensitive "tap to click" disabled on work laptop by installing Dell utils... incidental thumb brushes were turning into rough equivalent of butt dialing.
Happy to see Nomar Garciaparra retiring with the Red Sox if only because "NOMAHH!" is insanely fun to say in a townie accent.

what's the big todo 2010.03.09 
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Five years and one day ago I posted my "big project" Todo list. A year and a half ago I went back to that page, crossed out the stuff I had gotten done, italicized the stuff that didn't matter to me any more.

Time to remake that list! Now organized by site/field of interest.

kisrael.com
  • ambed an online doodle/sketch and start adding more doodles to my "of the Moment" section
  • harvest quotes for the quote-o-matic viewer
  • make a "tags"/tagcloud system and replace the "best of" (which really was just a tag-like organization to find stuff I've done)
  • clean out comments spam
  • redesign front page, more focus on projects etc, less on random historical stuff
random projects
  • elecronic music - I said a project for my 30s is to get all these beats and basslines from way back transcribed and in like mp3 form - halfway done with my 30s, not much to show here
  • get a timeline of my life: where I've lived, where I've worked, whom I've loved, major events
  • Make and publicize a version of good old pixeltime.
  • remake insideu.com (long term project with some former coworkers)
games
  • start using my PC USB control pads with Glorious Trainwrecks style games - especially multiplayer stuff with Amber etc
  • idea: get a Klik N Play multiplayer Mario Party like joint production going
  • reinvigorate my regular video game get-togethers. Tougher and tougher to do, as friends move and/or have kids!
loveblender.com improvements
  • "favorites"
  • duplicate comments about poem on poem itself
  • avatars/bio pages
  • decide if i want to grow traffic back to former levels, or am ok with smaller, cozier feel
  ...of the moment  
ATT slogans for Bos/Camb: "might as well get the iPod touch" "5 bars, no service", "works in more places like ScrewYouiPhoneExclusiveIstan" (Actually, it's weird: popular sites seem to load OK on 3G, obscure ones time-out. Wonder if AT+T just has retarded server problems.)
ATT slogan: "Cannot Open Page Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding."
"RE @ATTNews #ATT recently released a new study into causes and solutions for the dropout crisis: http://go-att.us/e556 -oh SCHOOL not calls-"
Man- earbuds are a bit gross, even for the reasonably well Q-tipped. On the other hand, dunno if I wanna be "that guy" w/ the DJ headphones.
Just finished "Look Me in the Eye", an Aspergers memoir. Two thoughts: A. These folks are "logical" but miss enough details that they're not always 'rational' B. I think I would be good at explaining things to people with Aspergers.

playlist: season_2009 4 winter 2010.03.08 
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Like I made after last summer and the fall, here is a list of the music I discovered or rediscovered and added into my collection over December through February.

(I like putting the new music in really heavy notation for a while, so it becomes more a part of my life than it would otherwise before going into the mix with the 2,000 other songs I deem iPod-worthy.)

So, most interesting is the (fairly?) new music I ran into: 3 cheers for Shazam and its ability to ID a tune, and 3 cheers for friends who keep me in mind in their own musical journeys and send me sugestions - or sometimes it's just "making the rounds" online. So there was a bunch of music that I remembered from my past: either I used to own it in a different format, or it wsa the 1990s and I liked the song but not enough to look for it on CD, or it's just something I wanted to own. And a few songs that I remembered from hearing them in "Boogie Nights"..
  • Sunny (Rhett Miller) - couldn't find a video - I guess this wasn't the original like I thought it was, but it's nice
  • Sunny (Boney M) nice disco version is what the movie had...
  • Brand New Key (Melanie)
My UU covenant group did a Valentine "pick a song you find most romantic" deal... (I thought it was going to be a difficult pick for me but then Amber reminded me of First Day of My Life. Duh.) So I burnt a copy of the play list for everyone, and these were 3 songs I added to my regular rotation... for some of these it was as much the description the group member gave than the song itself. So, probably the lion's share of songs came from Amber and I watching the 5 hours of the VH1 Top 100 Hip Hop Countdown Then I had some CDs that I had missed ripping... when Zune was introduced, one of the very few sample songs they included was from a group called Bitter:Sweet -- interesting future lounge feel to this. Then, jeez, Eminem's "Curtain Call". It was like 1/6 of the songs on this list, but it felt like even more. And then there was that DJ Santa outside of Macy's with good sounding remixes of Christmas standards -- basically an exercise in my theory that any song is better with a big old beat behind it. Couldn't find much information online on the cd I bought from him, but it had something to do with the slightly overly corporate DJBeats4Sale...
  • dance of the sugar plum fairy (santa)
  • jingle bells (santa)
Finally, last but not least, semi-famous artist Harvey James and his girlfriend do a lovely haunting duet... no video, just a link to the MP3...
  • Beyonce (HARVEYJAMESTM ft. Mary Burgers)
Pretty good season for music!
  ...of the moment  
"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."
--James Thurber
iPhone's Visual Voicemail raised the bar, but if Apple was really smart they'd stop showing a separate "missed call" if the caller left voicemail-- it's annoying to have to check two lists. Heck, even an answering machine knows better than that.
"It occurs to me that when my cat licks me, I don't know whether that means I'm delicious or filthy."
--http://twitter.com/loresjoberg
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html - B.F. Skinner, patron saint of video games. Scary stuff, I don't feel so bad about playing so few games these days. Plus, I know "novelty" is what I'm really looking for. Well, that, and the ability to fly a helicopter around.
I guess twitter gmail et al. are my skinner boxes of choice. At least their pellets are based on novelty!

did you mean: alright 2010.03.07 
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I'm weirdly captivated by the "makes me a big deal. Ha ha." part of this add for Palm at South Station.


In a similar note, I'm both amused and alarmed at what I've been teaching my iPhone auto-correct...


I went with Amber and Kjersten to see the Alice in Wonderland. The "lightshow" they do beforehand is kind of boring (but where else is one going to hear Big Bad Voodoo Daddy these days?) so we made our own fun with pictures.


Kjersten apparently had a lot of trouble getting just the right shot of me and Amber so I made a montage of this series...



smal gif cinema version:
  ...of the moment  
fanpop.com is gaming Google! Google (no quotes) "wikipedia alice in wonderland" - the 1st link that says (2010 movie) (3rd in all) is fanpop
I know I'm tempting Murphy and His Law but- the sandals are back!
"Machines take me by surprise with great frequency."
--Alan Turing
It's kind of weird how every Oscar is "for" someone else, at least according to the person receiving it.

the ape in someone else 2010.03.06 
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The other day I was wondering around and found a used book store in the basement of the Old South Meeting House.... I picked up a book, "The Ape in Me" by Cornelia Otis Skinner. She's a bit like Thurber and Dorothy Parker with a touch of Erma Bombeck, writing here in the late 50s. Anyway, in the entire book, a single passage was outline in pencil (with "hell") double outlined:
It's usually into the outer hallway where, after bustling into wraps and coats, they come to a dead halt. And there they linger because they all at once recall an anecdote they've forgotten to tell you, or they feel obliged to repeat some of the ones they've already told you, and there you stand on one foot, then the other, trying to make polite response and hoping that the wan leer on your face is concealing the ardent wish in your hear that they'd get the hell on out.
I just like the rage and frustration expressed in choosing that particular passage...


...also I was a little surprised at the amount of breastage on the cover.
  ...of the moment  
The Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D.... not too bad but I found the bandersnatch to be insufficiently frumious.
How low could cellphone rates be if we all got phones online and didn't have mobile stores like Starbuckses? Seriously what justifies 'em?

spidercon 2010.03.05 
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spidercon - source - built with processing
This game actually came before "beetimetrials", but seems more complex.

Actually I modified it from the Pirate Kart version; originally the control was just like beetimetrials, where you used the dial to control the direction and thrust of the bee. Now, however, the control is relative to the current position of the Bee, which means you can use the mouse as a rough form of aiming. (But you have to watch out and not gain too much speed, lest you go crashing into the spider you're trying to take down.)

Made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
  ...of the moment  
http://ie6funeral.com/ - IE6, the Netscape 4.7 of our time.
http://gizmodo.com/5354422/commodore-64-iphone-app-approved-removed - Apple removed an C=64 app because of BASIC?? But is there anything stopping a Safari/Javascript mini-programming IDE?
The knack to using a ToDo list w/ due dates is don't sweat pushing forward dates that don't matter- better to push then to drown in "overdues"
Found out that the best way to Google for next-gen iPhone rumors is "iPhone 4G" even though that name is 98% sure to be inaccurate and misleading. 1267838238

rocket dorkicus 2010.03.04 
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rocketdorkicus - source - built with processing
So, yeah, this is just the "grab all the blocks" 2-player-only fun of Dorkicus with a new control scheme. Actually it predates regular Dorkicus, except I went back and added rocktes, since driving paddles like they were rocketships didn't make much visual sense.

With both versions of Dorkicus, it's interesting how it feels like it would be a very different game if the goal was stated as "shove blocks at your opponents side" vs "bring blocks to your own side". (I didn't have a good idea for the color coding for the former case, so I went with the latter... also it feels like more complex of a goal somehow.)

Made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
  ...of the moment  
[photo: 2 'Clearblue' tests w/ 'Pregnant']
"Your crazy! Very happy 4 u!!!!
R u having twins????"
--http://www.lamebook.com/the-unexpected
http://www.cracked.com/article_18443_6-famous-movie-wisemen-who-were-totally-full-shit.html - Cracked on would be gurus.
@burntbythesun RE: "Admiral Akbar: fish or mollusk? Discuss." - Admiral Ackbar vs Admiral Adama in a knife fight - who wins?
Wow. #ATT 3G service is so crap in Boston the iPhone just knocked itself down to Edge.
Left thumb is starting to ache- violated my usual rule about not reconfiguring keyboards and remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl. Feels pretty good!
http://www.cracked.com/blog/your-3rd-grade-science-textbook-as-written-by-gary-busey - the URL pretty much says it all.

beetimetrials 2010.03.03 
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beetimetrials - source - built with processing
This is probably the best single player game I made this weekend, even though it's just "Rotatin' Rocket Race" with a differnt control scheme and some of the graphics from "beebash" -- still, I like the little dial controller, and it's pretty easy to try and beat your time.

I wonder if it's possible to beat ten seconds? The best I can do is 11-12.



Made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
  ...of the moment  
South Station was all iPod Touch, then plus some Palm, now all Palm- go lil' guy! Weird to see hand sized devices shown bigger than a person...
http://www.thebigmoney.com/slideshow/faces-behind-famous-hands - heh, hand models. Megan Fox has REALLY ugly thumbs, never would have guessed but a few seconds of Googling shows it.
http://metrics.admob.com/2009/06/ipod-touch-users-younger-than-iphone-users/ - A. those are the worst pie charts I've seen - someone really needs to read their Tufte. B. 46% of iPod Touch users are 13-17, but only 6% for iPhones. My guess is the Touch is a "first computer" - interesting if the iPad furthers that.
Don't usually bother with Google's frontpage unless I need "Language Tools"- I guess they're trying to split the difference of the traditional "just a logo and a search box" with their new features by making everything else on the page slowly fade in.
So for a while I've been using "softly, softly" to help me spot notepad++'s poorly-defined icon on the taskbar. Googled and realized the full phrase is "softly softly catchee monkey" which is probably not the most enlighted thing. Ah well.

moobak 2010.03.02 
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moobak - source - built with processing
It's the opposite of Atari 2600 "Kaboom!"... you have to toss bombs down and try to get them past the buckets. 90% of this is from the Java Advent calendar... It's also not a very good game.

Made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
  ...of the moment  
One small argument in favor of Intelligent Design: at least toenails grow a lot slower than fingernails, eh? 
"Everyone check under your seats! You all get gum!"
--http://twitter.com/wonderella
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/ - on Google's algorithm. Damn, that's some smart stuff.
Deep-rooted abandonment issues leave most orphans highly susceptible to shame-based psychology (for a complete list of opportune moments to obliterate the esteem of test subjects, please consulting Training Video #89-D, "You'd Perform This Test Better if You Had Parents")
--BBS reality game entry for new Portal? http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62575
Objective assumptions in English-"it'd be The Cake Is 'A Lie'", vs 'The Truth'. We can have "truisms", but kinda assume there's one "Truth".
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/01/petition-to-make-hel.html - I support making "hella-" the official prefix for 10^27
Heh - David "Pitfall!" Crane's "2600 Magic" iPhone tutorial gets Atari playfield graphics a bit wrong- it oversimplifies the bit order! (see http://alienbill.com/2600/cookbook/playfield.html ) I guess it's "teacher's license" so as to not confuse things, but it's good to feel smarter than David Crane if only for a moment.
I love to juxtapose the Sony "Y2K.01" bug with 'Sony commits to PS3 for next decade" from http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/9699.cfm

beebash 2010.03.01 
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beebash - source - built with processing
A silly little game for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER. We made over 500 games!
  ...of the moment  
http://cyberneticzoo.com/ - neat old robots. Man I remember being fascinated by that stuff as a kid.
My life makes a little more sense now that I recognize I've kind of been mixing up "Ron Paul" and "RuPaul". Just a bit.
QUIZ! Do you know which years are leap years without looking? Amber was surprised I knew, I was that she didn't. A programmer/Y2K thing?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554 - heh - on the one hand it's easy to mock the cyberskepticism, on the other, 15 years is a LONG time...
"Commercial videogame development is architecture. Hobby videogame development is making pillowforts from anything in reach."
--http://twitter.com/ChrisDeLeon
"Let's admit that dialog is emerging as our generation's way to develop and share knowledge."
--Andy Oram, http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/pew-research-asks-questions-ab.html
"If I could change one thing--this is going to sound stupid--but if I could go back in time and change one thing, I might try to interest some early preliterate people in not using their thumbs when they count. It could have been the standard, and it would have made a whole lot of things easier in the modern era. On the other hand, we have learned a lot from the struggle with the incompatibility of base-ten with powers of two."
--Guy Steele, in "Coders at Work"

dorkicus 2010.02.28 
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dorkicus - source - built with processing
A two player game made for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER. (You can see the resulting list of games)
  ...of the moment  
It makes me feel weirdly good that the second Google hit for "atan2" is the Processing.org site.

rotatin' rocket race 2010.02.27 
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rrr - source - built with processing
My first entry for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER. (You can see the current list of games)
  ...of the moment  
Amber caught me multitasking: standing eating pizza, petting the cat, dancing to music, and THINKIN' ABOUT WRITING GAMES! http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/437

turtledoodle 2010.02.26 
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Guess this requires Microsoft's Silverlight plugin... this was made in Small Basic, a cute little IDE/language not entirely dissimilar form my beloved Processing - a less powerful language but a much slicker IDE. (Ha, nice to see them port the old QBASIC classic Gorillas.)

It was cool that they threw in a Logo-ish turtle... but it's funny how this compares unfavorably to Atari LOGO, with its 4 turtles and collision events and all.

this page seems to be a decent starting point for Small Basic.
  ...of the moment  
http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-tools/microsoft-small-basic-for-.net/ -
Small BASIC. I often lament how computers don't boot into BASIC - that was important for where I am now. Guess this could in theory help.
I liked PocketC, little IDE for writing/running stuff on Palm. Wonder if I could make an iPhoneable Javascript-based clone-ish thing.
Cnn.com says "Massachusetts was averaging 22 inches across the state". Boston: zero inches. Someone in MA must be getting a LOT for that avg.
http://brenelz.com/blog/firebug-in-ie-a-dream-come-true/ - firebug lite for IE... a bit glitchy, but better than nothing
"I took a Meyers-Briggs test. Turns out I'm a "Briggs.""
--http://twitter.com/loresjoberg
Just a few weeks until Daylight Savings - hooray!