SRSLY. YAY FOR HAMS

Baby Comma Cry

2008-05-14T20:07:10Z

It was a decent show, fun, pretty standard as Broadway shows go - especially good dancers actually. I'm kinda glad I didn't pay to see it though...

WHY??

2008-05-14T17:26:39Z

WHY IS OUR GOVERNMENT BANNING THE IMPORT OF Abbaye de Citeaux CHEESE???

FUCKING CHEESE HATING REPUBLICAN ASSHOLES!!

Cheese does not come from TERRORISTS, you pricks. Why aren't you doing your job instead of leveraging political advantages for multi-national corporations???

Why Am I So Lucky?

2008-05-13T02:49:52Z

I went to the PIT tonight to see Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's 21st century protest music played on old Casios and game boys. I was one of five audience members... and three of us were actually staff / members of the PIT. It was kinda funny, kinda not, a performance art kind of thing. I give the guy lots of props though for playing to a five person audience.

Anyway... so I go there, get there about a half hour early, and the ticket guy walks up to me - right up to me - and asks me: "Hey, do you want a free ticket to go see Cry Baby? Tomorrow night at 7:00p.m."

And this is where my great-grandfather's advice comes in handy - "Whenever someone offers you a gift, you take it and say 'Thank You.'" So I say, "Why yes, thank you!" And he says, "Here, take two."

So there you go. I go out to see a show, and I come home with over a hundred dollars worth of tickets.

And Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's will probably be sitting next to me, because he got free tickets from the PIT too.

Some days I feel like the dude from Intacto (rent it, watch it, love it). I'd almost say that I should start buying lottery tickets, except it never really works that way... so I need someone to surreptitiously follow me around and drop lottery tickets on the ground in front of me so that I'll randomly pick them up and they'll be winners...

Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's It Is Then

2008-05-12T18:01:06Z

If anyone wants to join me in a little comedy tonight, I'll be at The PIT (W 29th btwn 6 and 7) from 6:30p.m. until 9:00p.m. (I'm going to stay for the show after Dr. CCM)

Your Chance For Democracy

2008-05-12T14:18:17Z

View Poll: What Do I Do Tonight???

FWIW, I did do work on the third option this weekend, so it's really a question of working *more* on that stuff than I already have...

mikecap @ 2008-05-12T09:06:00

2008-05-12T13:09:18Z

When I really enjoy a meal, especially one with a delectable sauce, I always use a piece of bread to clean the plate. I consider it me giving a complement to the chef when I get every last morsel off like that. This was pretty much a learned behavior on my part, something everyone in my family just did.

I didn't realize though that there was a term for it in Italian: "scarpetta", meaning "little shoe".

I really do love having a rich heritage that celebrates food so much. :)

Carbon Footprint of your Food

2008-05-12T01:51:46Z

It turns out that beef and cheese create a much, much worse carbon footprint that even eating produce imported from overseas. Because ruminant animals (cows, bison, sheep, goats) create methane gas and nitrous oxide from their excretions, those greenhouse gases combined with the CO2 produced from grain growth and fuel usage actually add up to WAY a lot more (from this past week's Science Friday on NPR).

Obviously the best thing is still to eat locally grown produce - but it also turns out that if you ate beef and cheese from a local grass-fed cow, you're actually doing an even worse thing than eating corn-fed beef imported from halfway across the country... because grass makes the cow produce MORE methane and NO2.

The suggestions are basically to avoid red meat and cheese as much as possible, and switch to non-ruminant livestock like chickens and pigs and fish for meat. Vat-grown meat would also immediately fix this problem too, but that's a way off.

This makes me really sad, and makes me rethink my penchant for enjoying cheeses imported from France and Italy. Those are actually the worst possible carbon footprint foods I can eat, and that's depressing.

Check out this "food carbon calculator": http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/Carbon-Calculator.html

LOST spoilage

2008-05-10T04:30:56Z

I knew the island fucking moves. I KNEW IT.

I can't find the LJ post where I wrote that right at the moment, but I totally called that one like two seasons ago, way back when they found the plane from Africa.

So what... the island has a warp drive?? It can displace itself in space and in time? Wacky.

ONE CUP OF COFFEE KEEPS ME AWAKE

2008-05-09T21:19:57Z

You know you haven't been sleeping enough when the dulcet tones of Ira Flatow on Science Friday are carrying you off to La La Land.

See, I Knew The Market Was There

2008-05-08T20:05:35Z

You missed your shot on the streaming iTunes thing, Apple!

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/stream-itunes-p.html

Why Buy Mac?

2008-05-08T16:45:58Z

I guess there's some truth to the saying about the people being hardest to convert becoming the fiercest evangelists. I'm now a very rabid Mac enthusiast, and there honestly are a ton of good reasons to be one right now. Don't take my word for it either - Consumer's Union, publishers of Consumer Reports, are also in agreement:

http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/05/07/consumer-reports-gets-it-right-at-last/

To be totally honest, I really do think that Mac has reached critical mass in terms of applications and ease of use, and have delivered a superior product. I think that if you sat down the average PC user and asked them what their common problems are, you'd get something like this:

"It crashes a lot. I have to reboot often."
"My data gets erased all the time. It's hard to make backups."
"Things don't work the way I expect. I don't understand the behavior of the PC."
"I can't find what I'm looking for."
"The computer doesn't have the software I really need - or it's some kind of pre-installed trial version and I have to pay more for it."

Apple has addressed all these issues with the stable Unix-based OS, Time Machine one-button backups and restores, maintaining intuitive user interface standards, Spotlight search integration with all files regardless of type (also integrated with Time Machine for searching DELETED items saved in your backups), and totally free iLife software that does 80% of what most home users care about (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband)... how can Apple lose here? This isn't even counting the tight and clean ecosystem-like integration with the most popular mobile devices in the world (iPod and iPhone).

I suppose one argument against Macs is always going to be price. Well, frankly, you get what you pay for! People would never argue that it doesn't make sense to pay more for the advantages of an Audi versus a Kia, or for a BOSE sound system over a Wal-Mart brand. People I think are just used to the commoditization of computers and PC clone computer parts, and expect everything to be cheap and interchangeable, as if that somehow gives them "control" over their computer or something. This to me makes about as much sense as picking McDonald's over filet mignon for dinner - McDonald's is cheap and commoditized, sure, but it has a bad aftertaste and is extremely bad for you.

I truly believe the only things propping Microsoft up now are momentum and monopoly. They'll have to completely gut themselves and radically transform to get anywhere near where Apple is going.

Stoopid Guberment

2008-05-08T13:08:40Z

I'm supposed to have gotten my stimulus check by now. I filed before the deadline, like a month before, and my SSN digits indicate I should have gotten my cash direct deposited. Other people have gotten their money... WTF yo??

Chronotron!

2008-05-08T04:24:30Z

I am now addicted to this great little puzzle game called Chronotron on Kongregate. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of Lemmings or any of the Rube Goldberg type puzzle games.

If you like the Kongregate site and decide to sign up for it (I like it so far, fun and free)... do me a favor and do it through this referrer link?

http://www.kongregate.com?referrer=mik3cap

Cosmic Rays and bacteria?

2008-05-07T21:08:13Z

I was listening to a story on NPR where they said that kim chee on a space station exposed to cosmic rays could become toxic.

Wha???

Apparently it has something to do with bacteria? Once the bacteria were neutralized by irradiation (but cosmic rays make it toxic??) it was safe to bring onto the space station.

Any of you biologically inclined folks have any idea what the heck they're talking about?

Iron Man

2008-05-07T03:54:15Z

They should have called it "AWESOME MAN" but I understand the whole licensing thing and whatever...

It was very well done. It wasn't quite the same level of blockbuster for me that Spider-Man was; somehow it just didn't have the same directorial joie-de-vivre and depth that Sam Raimi injected into the Spider, but Jon Favreau gave it a good go and treated the character with a lot of respect. Kudos also to the screenwriters who managed to put a lot of fun into one of my favorite comic characters.

I will say though that it would have been nice to have some darker moments; maybe Tony's alcoholism will rear its ugly head in the sequel, or even the third film (I'm sure there'll be a third). Mandarin is totally the bad guy in the second movie.

Also, if they somehow pull off an Avengers movie, that will be fucking amazing. Ed Norton and Robert Downey Jr. and whomever ends up playing Thor? That'll be just mint. It looks like The Ultimates is totally making the big screen transition. I'm hoping they throw in Hawkeye too... maybe they'll fight Ultron?? That'd be fun, just a totally different story instead of what's in Ultimates.

So, let's see... we'll have a Thor movie, a second Iron Man, and then The Avengers - or will they call it The Ultimates? At least three more movies in the pipe!

Today's moment of zen

2008-05-06T21:18:17Z

what if everything around you
isn't quite as it seems
what if all the world you think you know
is an elaborate dream
and if you look at your reflection
is that all you wanted to be
what if you could look right through the cracks
would you find yourself
find yourself afraid to see

what if all the world's inside of your head
just creations of your own
your devils and your gods
all the living and the dead
and you're really all alone
you can live in this illusion
you can choose to believe
you keep looking but you can't find the words
are you hiding in the trees

(brought to you by Trent Reznor)

New NIN album

2008-05-06T13:47:24Z

So Trent has released the latest album for free... I greatly respect that. I have of course been a fan of Trent's almost from the beginning. However, I also think that he's being ridiculously smart. By supplying a download in various formats in exchange for identifying information, he gets to figure out exactly who his discerning and dedicated fans are, and can target them explicitly in the future. He even gets to make decent guesses at some demographic data.

For example, I chose to download the album in M4A format via torrent. That makes me an exceedingly technically advanced and discerning user of Trent's products, as it's a large download of high quality recordings and I need to know how to use a peer-to-peer system. It also means that I most likely have an iPod. Also, if he sets up a number of servers as torrent seeders, which he undoubtedly has, he can track the kind of traffic and usage those torrents produce.

Once his project here is over, he'll have a huge list of uniquely identified people that he can very specifically target; next step, if I were him, would be to try to somehow tie those unique identifiers to locations so he can figure out where to tour. He may already have a bunch of data from other fan club stuff with email identifiers that he can try to merge. Anyway, good on him - he's doing the right thing, and providing a decent exchange for the information he's getting in return.

My Moment Of Zen For Today

2008-05-01T17:03:27Z

I work across the street from the building that houses the billions of dollars of oil revenue from Iraq.

Programming Wave of the Future

2008-04-30T16:59:49Z

It looks to me like the demand for Cocoa (Apple application) development is on the rise, and will only continue to move upwards. Mac hardware continues to sell despite poor economic conditions, and iPhones are going to take over the world the same way iPods did.

Right now I'm on a path to learning Objective-C, which is basically a superset of C with some object-oriented conventions added to it, a la Smalltalk. Once again proving that C is the language that all programmers should learn first! I'm very glad my education started with Unix and C, and not Windows and Java (both of which are on their way to becoming dinosaurs, IMO).

I'm even considering going to this year's Apple WWDC in San Francisco... maybe I can convince Robert Half to pay for some of the trip or something?

EDIT: I figure a trip to SF will run me around at least $3000.00... with my current savings and rate of saving, plus that wonderful tax stimulus package, I'd have about half that amount by the time the conference rolls around.

After-action Advance Wars

2008-04-30T14:51:23Z

I'm finally at the last campaign mission of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. It is RILLY FUCKIN HARD. You're basically fighting a giant mothership with five lasers (two fire each turn) that do 8 points of damage and the equivalent of a missle strike that does 5 points in an area of effect. The objective is to blow up the five lasers. Oh, by the way, the mothership can produce two of any unit it wants each turn. It's a big giant shaftola up the pooper.

Despite being at the last "storyline" campaign mission, I still haven't unlocked all the side campaign missions yet. The Advance Wars games are always such a huge freaking value for the dollar, there's so much replay potential.

Tribeca Movie Mini-report

2008-04-29T16:30:56Z

John Cusack's "War, inc." is what Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" should have been.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT From Grand Poobah Caprio

2008-04-28T22:54:07Z

It gladdens me to announce that, on the twenty-second day of Augustus in the Year of our Lord two thousand and eight, there shall begin a festival of EXTRAORDINARY proportion. Behold the linke below:

http://www.dancesofvice.com/DOVFII/index.html

Yes, my friends and esteemed noblemen and women - there will be a masquerade ball on the day of my birth that also coincidentally celebrates the adventures of the also beloved Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, great explorer and statesman and killer of Turks, whose escapades nearly rival mine own.

I highly suggest that you make plans now to attend this grand soiree, and help me to once again, in fine fashion, properly aggrandize my entry into this world.

Well Fuck.

2008-04-28T12:32:16Z

Apparently LJ is now autoscreening comments for "obscenity". Comments that **I** am making in my own journal. Comments that include language like "dick" and "vagina". Perhaps these words are somehow "offensive" to Russians? All I know is, I did not enable any setting to automate censorship on MYSELF.

The second I have an alternative to LJ, I am fucking off. Also, LJ gets no more of my money.

SKIN & SKULLDUGGERY

2008-04-27T02:54:44Z

	SKULLDUGGERY Wanton ladies ogle the strangely compelling stage acts
	SKIN Lascivious na'er-do-wells pay women to dance!
	WITNESS SEE how depraved the audience members have become!!

One Question

2008-04-24T19:49:47Z

Is it exceptionally gauche to be standing in a gay men's bar holding a balloon vagina? As in, a vagina made out of balloons.

Like a balloon animal. Except, you know, a vagina.

Gauche?