So I'm changing platforms again! May be a temporary shift (as before), or maybe a longer term deal, but I think I'm ready again to take matters under my own hands. Here's how it's different this time though:

• All public LiveJournal posts and comments have been imported in-tact to the new site. Yep, all 570-something posts and 318 comments accumulated over five years.
• I have lots of neat tools already installed, including OpenID, meaning you can still post with your LiveJournal account, with an account from one of the many OpenID-ready vendors, or (and this was important to me) anonymously - whatever floats your boat.
• Search that works. Fast!
• Aggregates stuff from my other networks for me (i.e. Flickr, Twitter, Facebook [maybe]) so there's a better chance that there'll be some new stuff up there.
• Ad-free.

It costs me about 50 cents more a month to lease my own host than it does to remain a paid LiveJournal member (gets rid of the ads and makes the journal less fugly), but I can do so much more with it that I think I'm going to test the waters with the now-matured Wordpress platform once more. (And hey, if it goes bad, it's not an ordeal to import the remaining stuff back.)

Also... as much as I hate to admit it... I'm using Twitter now. I had a low opinion of the service, not at all helped by the technorati's (god, did I really use that phrase.... ugh....) inability to shut up about it.... but if you can't beat 'em...

So the new stuff's on dragaroo.net, and I'm dragaroo on Twitter, and everywhere else. (It's nice to have an unpopular name!) 

Look at this thing:



Medicom makes toys for Japanese markets that are well-regarded by collectors. I looked at Jeff Pidgeon's review of this guy's smaller cousin months ago, and even made a failed attempt to buy one from an importer, only to find them sold out, and the price jacked up to $80+.

Well, he's back. Only, as part of their Life Size Vinyl Collectible Doll series. And sitting tall at a foot-and-a-half, 3x the size of the original, he is literally taller than my Ikea LACK coffee table. (And he only costs about 9x more than one, too.)

It begs a few questions: (1) Just WHO is buying these things? (2) Where could you possibly have room for one (I own no bookshelf large enough to contain a coffee table-tall object)? and (3) ... can I haz one?

Then again, I am planning on taking up a mortgage in about three months....

Maybe I'll just stick with Sam & Max: The Statue.

Seriously. (Are you getting this Sting? More calypso!)

Stopped at the Apple Store after training today to nab a copy of iLife 09. And for my purposes, it's awesome.

Two-way sync to Flickr, tags, descriptions and original image sizes, automatic syncing on update. It's quite literally effortless. I AM STUNNED.

Since I'm sitting on about 800 unprocessed photos (that's 10 GBs from three sites) right now, this thing is going to be an absolute lifesaver.

The other features, I didn't think I would care much at all about; I don't need face recognition for big cats. But the thing is, (for people,) that face recognition stuff actually works. And well - very well. And that's really kinda cool.

And the places? It's only geotagged photos from my iPhone (as I don't carry a GPS tagger along with my DSLR), but it's funny to see the pins spread across the map and realize, oh yeah, I did snap some shots in the San Diego airport...

I'm surprised to hear myself say it, but I'm actually no longer that excited about Picasa Mac...

I let my Hostingrails account expire this weekend. I still have my domains for a couple months, and they're set to auto-renew so I'll keep holding onto them for a while longer, but it'll be a while longer before I push a site again.

Design is hard - harder than scripting. When I have a coherent design plan, I'll consider relaunching.

Until then, this'll do. I've got other things on my plate.

On an unrelated note, I 'played' Home on the PS3 today at the insistence of someone I ran into on LBP. It's... really strange. Really, really strange.

Even with Second Life, I've never really had a desire to play myself in a fake world with people playing themselves. It just seems surreal... in the bad sense. Huh.

Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way... or maybe I'm just not used to chat rooms.

I think I'm finally going to pull the plug on XM. It's been kind of fun to get new stuff like BBC1 with the Sirius merger, but the more I analyze my listening habits, the less value I'm getting out of these days. I just don't care for most music, as it turns out. And the channels I do end up listening to inevitably are the ones that have ads. Yech!

So, in lieu of the $6-something I managed to weasel my subscription down to, I've decided to start buying music again. Which works nicely, since iTunes is finally largely DRM-free (it's not there yet, but it's closer than ever before). And based on what I've found so far, damn, am I glad I did.

( Read more... )

So, that should give you some idea of why when people ask 'who's your favorite band', I can't even fake an answer. But what else should I be listening to?

Attractions in Colorado I've visited (in no particular order):

• Colorado Springs area
  • Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
  • Seven Falls
  • Helen Hunt Falls
  • Garden of the Gods
  • Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center
  • Cheyenne Mountain State Park
  • Pueblo Zoo
  • Royal Gorge Bridge and Park
• Denver area
  • Wild Animal Center
  • Denver Zoo
  • The Wildlife Experience
  • Downtown Aquarium
  • Denver Center for the Performing Arts
  • The Colorado Convention Center
  • Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science
• To Do
  • Big Cats of Serenity Springs
  • Mission Wolf - summer
  • Wolf Sanctuary(?) - near Ft. Collins
  • Cherry Creek State Park
  • Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Pike National Forest
  • Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
  • Butterfly Pavillion(???)
  • Kangaroo Conservation Center (GA)

I escaped to Keenesburg, Colorado on Saturday to check out the Wild Animal Sanctuary, one of (if not the) largest wild animal sanctuaries in the United States hoping to get a shot or two of a cat, and also to a lesser degree, to test out our sophisticated new European license plate toll for the Expressway E470. (Theoretically, I should be getting a bill from them in about a month. And if it works, honestly, I don't see why this isn't already implemented everywhere: ESPECIALLY YOU BAY BRIDGE.)



Many of the animals are retired from the entertainment industry or otherwise abandoned (or confiscated) from private owners who weren't capable of caring for them. As a guide at the visitor center informed me, they facility has been here, in a generous patch of Keenesburg surrounded by vast farmlands for nearly 30 years, though it's only been open to visitors for past 5, presumably as a means of helping to cover some of the costs of an $800,000 annual food budget required sanctuary currently running at capacity.



The visitor center and its observation decks (the only areas on the grounds that visitors can actually view the animals from) are unique in that they consist largely of ramps and platforms which put you high above the grounds, so you find yourself looking down at most of the cats, with only wooden slats separating you from certain death. Unfortunately, for the cats closer to the rotunda, that presents the challenge of not only shooting a subject from a near-vertical angle, but also combating the shadows casted by the neighboring mesh; not a great look if you're not expressly going for the 'captive cat' angle.



There are more than just countless tigers though. Leopards, wolves, lions and a bear can be seen also, but as their existence is expressly not one of a zoo, your ability to view (and or photograph) them will depend heavily on their inclination to roam closer to the visiting platforms or its surrounding fences, and a powerful zoom lens (300 mm minimum).

Unlike most zoos, there are no explicit photo restrictions either (at least that I was made aware of), so next time I'm bringing a tripod. (I brought a monopod on this trip, but really found it almost useless at stabilizing a shot with the longer lens). Best times to visit are feeding, 9-10 AM Tues/Thurs/Sat or mornings/evenings in the summer. More info on their website. Go!

Full set here!

And Happy New Year! Only 11 days late on this one... not so bad right?

Anyway, I returned to my apartment today to find a note on the door from a not-so-anonymous neighbor who has been filing noise complaints against me for "loud music and bass" from late night to early morning (2:30 AM). And I could not have been happier to have seen it. Why?

Half of the reported 'incidents' of said loud music and bass occurred over two weeks during the holiday when I was in another state. Score!

I tried to bring it up with the unsigned neighbor (banging on the wall at unsung hours of the night is a clear giveaway folks), and gave them a few moments to respond, so that I might have a chance to explain the fallacy of their accusation. But as no one showed, I went down to the renter's office and left the incriminating note, with all sorts of curious annotations (i.e. loud noise at 6:30 AM this morning... though I wasn't awake until nine...) and with any luck, this matter, which has dragged on for several months now, I might add, should resolve itself, insofar as I'm concerned.

It's too bad though. In a sense, I feel sorry for them; the kid is nice enough - he greets me unfailing whenever I run across them (which is more than I can say for most of the people in this complex), and despite my current war of attrition with his mom, I've done my best to stay neutral and exercise the same degree of courtesy I would for any person of forced proximity; in the midst of all this, I even let them know when they'd accidently left their keys in their front door, and would have been open to talking about the more pressing situation, had she not sheepishly thanked me and closed the door.

But hey, if that's the game they want to play, by all means. With any luck this new evidence should be damning enough to put the final nail in the coffin.

So I gots me a new MacBook Pro now, and I got to say... it's a pretty nice piece of kit. (The MacBook, once it gets back from iResQ with a new keyboard assembly, now goes to my sister, who may have better luck than I at not destroying the thing.)

I also scored Areas of My Expertise, along with Dark Night and Serenity on Blu-Ray, plus a kick-ass fuzzy logic rice cooker that I'm dying to try out. Not bad, not bad.

And I'll be taking my mom and sister to Phantom of the Opera down in the Orpheum on Wednesday. So, on the whole, this 'forced vacation' thing isn't really all that bad.

A belated merry christmas, winter solstice, and whatever else you may or may not observe, to all.