udim is sometimes:

Mon, 28 May 2007 10:27:53 GMT

[written: 2003/02/17]

I hear a lot about people being depressed, having nothing to do that's worth while - people that don't have a meaning in their lives. What they mean to say is that they have nothing to do. More to the point, they don't have a reason to do anything new. They have "free time" but won't lift a finger in order to make good use of it.

Like I am right now: given a lot of free time (it's the second day of the semester) and feeling extremely sleepy, even though I slept more than 10 hours last night (also due to free time).

Laziness begets more laziness. The more you think about something in the sense of not doing it, the more likely you won't do it (and vice versa). Understanding wants is not what the wants want (well, at most one of them wants to). You are always doing something. If you don't choose, then the path of least resistance will choose for you.

The problem with these people is that they are already meeting the minimum requirements for living. They are used to what standards of living they have and they don't feel like exerting themselves to improve, because nothing bad will happen if they don't, but mostly because it's hard.

What makes it hard (in no particular order)?

1. Fear of hurting your ego. This shouldn't be a problem.

2. Being used to "taking it easy"; being used to not working hard. This shouldn't be a problem.

3. Having to give up/sacrifice lesser activities. The problem arises when these lesser activities require less effort than what you're trying to do and you're lured back to them as a result of numbers 1 & 2 above. The end result is that the lesser activities end up taking all the time. This shouldn't be a problem: stop doing the lesser activities and in time you'll realize just how much you don't need them.

Speaking of time, sometimes you are doing things you must do, but end up without any free time left. This is the norm. If this is something you hate doing or won't finish until the end of the day, then you should make time in the middle of the day for doing other things. The more things you do, the less time they take.

[In hindsight, I was completely off the mark. The real problems were not in this list.]

bye bye edimax

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:32:14 GMT

The edimax BR6104K "broadband router" sucks ass.
Since I moved to using my computer to connect to the internets, there has not been a single disconnection and I no longer have to wade through its damned slow web interface to find these two words:
"PPTP Diseonnected" [sic].

And the connection is faster now, too. I guess its poor little heart couldn't cope.

Tiny Mix Tapes to ATOM

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:28:02 GMT

The ATOM feed: http://stuff.pulkes.org/tmt2atom.php
php source

So I wasted a Saturday creating a website-to-rss php script for sites that don't have rss. Anyway I went back and forth between trying to use the XML parser, writing my own HTML parser, and trying to find an already written HTML parser:

Trying to parse HTML as XML doesn't work. Even if you strip most of the tags and add a dummy enclosing tag. XML is just too anal (at least PHP's) and most HTML is buggy (unescaped &'s for instance).

html tidy wasn't compiled in with dreamhost's php, and when I tried rolling my own I found they didn't have libtidy installed and I decided to give up on it.

Writing my own parser, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I was reinventing the wheel. Also, it didn't take long (only a couple of hours, but I have MANY hours to spare) to reach the first hurdle: PHP is SLOW! And then I remembered that PHP's XML parser uses libexpat, which is written in C, and it all went downhill from here.

I saw the light when I gave up on making a general script that could fit any website and resorted to old-fashioned regular expressions. Much faster, and it still ended up being a general script.

Now I just have to wait for TMT to update to see if it really works.

Update: 1. It works. 2. JWZ already did this a long time ago.

keywords: atom, rss, feed, tinymixtapes, tiny mix tapes, tmt2atom

the software frontier (all your betas are belong to us)

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:42:03 GMT

New Linux versions:

Firefox 2.0beta ("bon echo") - built-in spelling checks, external rss aggregator support, but no sessionsaver support (or is it built-in? I couldn't understand if it's always activated), search engine suggestions
details

Gaim 2.0beta - bigger tooltips (buddy list), status messages, and more general eye-candy goodness, NO MORE AWAY WINDOW (and there was much rejoicing)
details

last.fm player 1.0.0.1beta - more information about artists, better interface (tag radio is the default interface). try the "bad" tag for bad pop, MJ's bad album, and all those polarizing new hyped-up singles

skype 1.3.0.53 - ALSA support!

flash 9beta - ALSA support and audio-video sync! (plus all those flash 8 sites work) Audio may die the "audio loop (DMA zombie) death" under medium CPU load (just reload the page).
devel blog entry

liferea 1.1.7b (devel branch) - very buggy (1.1.6 regularly destroyed the main feed list, now just interface bugs and crashes) but it uses a separate config dir, now has a built-in flash player and better Firefox integration, worse notifications (they look like a "speech bubble" coming from the trayicon, which is at the top of my screen - very bothersome, and they have less information than before)

rockbox (19.10.2006 daily build and onwards) - last.fm/audioscrobbler support!
details and setup instructions

People Like Us and Kenny G - Nothing Special

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:55:40 GMT

באופן כללי People Like Us נשמע לי כמו גרסה מוסיקלית של עיתון mfm (לא שאני בא בביקורת על mfm), אבל בשיתוף עם Kenny G זה יותר ברור, יפה, ומובנה:

People Like Us and Kenny G - Nothing Special

הם מצליחים ללכת על החבל הדק של סימפולים ווקאליים ע"ג סאונדסקייפס מסומפלים, מבלי לאבד את השומע (יותר מדי). שיר 5, שהשמיע נימוי לאחרונה כשהייתי באוגנדה, לוקח מנגינה מוכרת והופך אותה למעניינת מחדש: מערים עליה עוד מנגינה דומה ומוסיף קריז סוכר מעל.

How to drink vodka and stay sober

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 20:01:30 GMT

How to drink vodka and stay sober

עכשיו הבנתי את הראש. לזכור לפעם הבאה שהולכים לשתות עם להבקרח.

Dead Shark Eyes by Clark

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 08:15:08 GMT

New mp3 by Clark:
http://www.throttleclark.com/2006/09/04/download-number-2-dead-shark-eyes/

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 17:38:55 GMT

This week:
vadik and anna and others @ the lab (7.9.2006)
I don't like the place but, whatever.

Also:
It seems that pacotek is dying! Is the 15th of September the date of their last production?

אוסף: The Kings Of Jazz

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 04:11:30 GMT

- איזה עונש!
בטח קרה לכם. באתם למישהו הביתה עם המוסיקה שלכם, שמתם אותה בַּסְטְרֵיאוֹ, והחברה שלו מעבירה את המגבר לרדיו (רדיו!).
- אה!
הרדיו מנגן והיא מהמהמת.
- לָה לָה לָה!
טוב, אולי זה לא נשמע בדיוק ככה -- קשה לכתוב המהום.
- המְ המְ המְ!
גם לא. בכל אופן, המנגינה "עושה לה טוב". היא אפילו לא שמה לב שמה שניגן מקודם לא היה רדיו.

תמיד ידעתי שאני אוהב ג'ז, אבל ביליתי את רוב הזמן שלי בעינויי מוסיקת עולם, מוסיקת רוחניות, אימפרוביזציה טהורה (מוסיקה צריכה מבנה, שלד), או סתם אינסטרומנטליזם חסר השראה. אז שמחתי כש-Giles Peterson (שבכלל לא הערכתי עד עכשיו) הצליח לעשות אוסף טוב של ג'ז הנותן נקודות מוצא רבות:

The Kings Of Jazz (Compiled By Gilles Peterson And Jazzanova)
גם Jazzanova מפוצץ בדיסק השני, עם גרסה שקטה של Inner City Life (בניגוד לDnB של Goldie) ושאר איכותִיִים מהצד הזה של שנות התשעִים.

ויש אנשים (כנ"ל) שהאוסף הזה יערער את שלוות נפשם. YMMV

הם תמיד משקרים

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:28:08 GMT

התחלתי לראות את House לאחרונה, והדבר הראשון שעשה עלי רושם היה שהגיבור, דר' האוס, סולד מלראות את הפציינטים שלו "כי הם תמיד משקרים," כהגדרתו.

ואני רוצה להוסיף: משתמשי מחשב תמיד משקרים.

The Cycling Rainbow Pool

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 17:21:47 GMT

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:39:08 GMT

גלים ותדרים משחקים תפקיד חשוב במוזיקה. היצורים הקטנים האלו מדברים בשפה פשוטה של תדרים וגלים: צהילת חזירים של טרנזיסטורים.
Bleeps And Bloops from Thingamagoop (bleeplabs): http://www.bleeplabs.com/movies.html

ההפקה ברמה גבוהה, המתכונים למשקאות אלכוהוליים לא בשיטה המטרית (ואני גם ככה לא שותה קוקטיילים), וזה משעשע אם אין מה לעשות (ובואו נהיה כנים, אין).
Tiki Bar TV: http://www.tikibartv.com/tikibar_episodes.php

זה אמור להיות ה-ספר למי שרוצה להציג מידע סטטיסטי בדו-מימד. משום מה רק הספר השני שלו נמצא בספריה איפה שאני לומד.
Edward Tufte - The Visual Display of Quantitative Information: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

המקורות שלי לוידאו (rss):
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/system%3Amedia%3Avideo
http://www.videobomb.com/rss/index

Absolutely

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 08:21:20 GMT

Having switched recently from eyeglasses to contact lenses and back to eyeglasses and back to contact lenses, I became very critical of the quality of my vision. Having used eyeglasses for about 18 years already, I was disappointed with the artifacts (dryness, intermittent lack of proper focus, etc.) when I first switched to contact lenses. Then I switched back to eyeglasses and realized that my vision never was perfect, that I just glossed these things over. I never actually saw anything wholly and perfectly in my life -- the mind just thinks it does.
When you realize that you never absolutely saw anything, the thought hits that maybe it wasn't absolutely there in the first place.

מוזיקת חורף

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 09:15:06 GMT

‫ישן, אבל רק עכשיו גיליתי: Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle
התעוררתי הבוקר לגשם ריחני, והשיר הזה מצויין לבראנץ' חורפי.

ע"י: חוקנ'רול