I'm sorry I haven't posted dahlinks - been a stressful week (how is it that a four day week feels more stressful than a whole week?) and course work is sucking all my free time.
Anyway, on to the business of the day:
Track Of The Week:
Tits On the Radio, Scissor Sisters (from the album Scissor Sisters)
Cause you can't see tits on the radio
I'll give you five fingers for a one man show
Fasten those pants for the lap dance
Take a shot now this may be your last chance
OK, these guys are going to be huge, take it from me. They have all the right ingredients for pissing off Bush-era Middle of Road-Lets Not Upset Anybody-plastic-rock. Although their lyrics have a certain amount of shock value, there's a retro 70's-80's camp attitude that owes more to Elton John than the Tubes, but don't let that put you off. Standout tracks on the album include the slow-prom-dance disco ball ballad Mary, Lovers In The Backseat which could come straight off a Wang Chung album and a totally surreal version of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb (imagine the song sung in Bee Gees falsetto to an Eye of the Tiger back beat and funky disco guitar and keyboards. I shit you not! It took until the chorus for the fact to register that the title was was not just coincidental). Now Scissor Sisters are neither revolutionary or evolutionary but they kick ass and that's the key for me. If fact, I would say go buy the album (they have it on Itunes with a bonus track). Anyway, Tits has that special quality, that 3:00am can't sleep going through your head quality.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
GAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
There are times when life is sweet and then there times that life blows chunks. This weekend was a positive vomitorium. First, I inadvertantly clicked yes instead of no to a "Do you want to install the spyware that is going to fuck your PC, and therefore your life, for a long time" dialog because I was trying to do too many things at once - do schoolwork, fix my son's PC and watch TV. With that one fatal click, my life was ruined for basically 12 hours. Because I clicked yes instead of no, I ended up with a pile of useless crap installed that I couldn't remove, some of which seemed to be removed but then came back on reboot. But worse, much worse than that, was that Explorer wouldn't connect to anything. In fact, if I hadn't of had my son's PC next to me, I would have been royally shafted because I ended up having to donwload stuff on to his PC and then copying it to mine.
I ran my virus software but it takes way too long to do a scan and I'm not convinced how good it is with Adware/spyware crap anyway based on last nights experience. Fortunately, Microsoft's new Antispyware program, which is currently in a public beta and free, is suprisingly good at cleaning up this crap (it found 47 additional dubious bits of code in my son's PC despite all the other stuff I tried saying it was clean). Sure enough it removed everything and a couple of bouts of restarts proved that stuff wan't reinstalling. BUT still no explorer. EYEBALLS ... BULGING. After searching on the web, I found instructions on how to potentially fix the problem by re-registering dlls (didn't help) or rescanning the entire system to make sure that the stuff that was installed was kosher microsoft (also didn't help). TEMPLES ... THROBBING. As a last resort, I found a couple of suggestions, neither of which were particulary attractive - reinstalling explorer or repairing the windows installation. I tried the first but that proved tricky because its almost impossible to remove explorer, espescially if you have SP2 installed. I managed it but it did no good, same problem as before. So I pulled out my XP install disk and tried the repair installation route. Twice. It crashed the first time after 40mins. MUST ...UNCLENCH......FISTS.
The second time it ran all the way through. I logged in. I loaded Explorer. It still didn't connect. MUST ...l NOT ... SCREAM ....SCARE....SPOUSE. Now I am a great believer that no matter how obscure a problem is with Windows, most if not all have been experienced before you and most likely solved. So back to Google and I eventually found a random comment in an obscure forum that mentioned something called winsockfix. God bless the persons or people who made this obscure little app because sure enough, back came explorer and all the other stuff that had slowly stopped working. Of course, since i reinstalled windows effectively (I take issue with Microsoft's definition of "repair") I am back to pre-service pack 1 so I have spent pretty much the time since 10:00am this morning re-installing XP patches (I am now up to SP2). RUBS...EYES...LIKE...A...LITTLE...GIRL.
So, my wife is in the shower and I am walking down the stairs that lead from my office to the yard (our house is two stories but seem like four when you're going down to the yard because we are on a hill) when I hear running water. Now the sound of running water round Bozz Manor is not unheard of the last couple of weeks, what with the incessant rain and all, but it hasn't rained for a couple of days and this sounds like a water flowing river-like down the hill. I look down and what do I see? Raw sewage flowing out of the bleed hole and down the hill in said river-like motive, which means the sewer is blocked. Bad but not too bad - we have a home warranty which covers such things so I call them and they contact a plumber. He comes, takes one look and tells me he needs the guys with the heavy kit and they'll be out tomorrow (Monday) morning. Still Ok. They turn up and start snaking the line and here's where things start going bad. Firstly they pull up a big clump of roots. From the sewer line. Now I may not be Handy Andy but I know that roots and sewer lines do not mix. However, he tried one more time to at least clear the line down to the main sewer but just keeps pulling more and more roots up. So not only in the sewer blocked, its obvious that its comprised beyond just a simple snake. Now I have hordes of guys with picks and shovels digging a nasty long trench down my yard.
Update:
They have left for the day - sewer is still not fixed but they have the ditch dug so hopefully it shouldn't be too long tomorrow. Its 5:15pm and NOW I have to work on the two assignments that I was going to have done tomorrow.
Like I said, GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
There are times when life is sweet and then there times that life blows chunks. This weekend was a positive vomitorium. First, I inadvertantly clicked yes instead of no to a "Do you want to install the spyware that is going to fuck your PC, and therefore your life, for a long time" dialog because I was trying to do too many things at once - do schoolwork, fix my son's PC and watch TV. With that one fatal click, my life was ruined for basically 12 hours. Because I clicked yes instead of no, I ended up with a pile of useless crap installed that I couldn't remove, some of which seemed to be removed but then came back on reboot. But worse, much worse than that, was that Explorer wouldn't connect to anything. In fact, if I hadn't of had my son's PC next to me, I would have been royally shafted because I ended up having to donwload stuff on to his PC and then copying it to mine.
I ran my virus software but it takes way too long to do a scan and I'm not convinced how good it is with Adware/spyware crap anyway based on last nights experience. Fortunately, Microsoft's new Antispyware program, which is currently in a public beta and free, is suprisingly good at cleaning up this crap (it found 47 additional dubious bits of code in my son's PC despite all the other stuff I tried saying it was clean). Sure enough it removed everything and a couple of bouts of restarts proved that stuff wan't reinstalling. BUT still no explorer. EYEBALLS ... BULGING. After searching on the web, I found instructions on how to potentially fix the problem by re-registering dlls (didn't help) or rescanning the entire system to make sure that the stuff that was installed was kosher microsoft (also didn't help). TEMPLES ... THROBBING. As a last resort, I found a couple of suggestions, neither of which were particulary attractive - reinstalling explorer or repairing the windows installation. I tried the first but that proved tricky because its almost impossible to remove explorer, espescially if you have SP2 installed. I managed it but it did no good, same problem as before. So I pulled out my XP install disk and tried the repair installation route. Twice. It crashed the first time after 40mins. MUST ...UNCLENCH......FISTS.
The second time it ran all the way through. I logged in. I loaded Explorer. It still didn't connect. MUST ...l NOT ... SCREAM ....SCARE....SPOUSE. Now I am a great believer that no matter how obscure a problem is with Windows, most if not all have been experienced before you and most likely solved. So back to Google and I eventually found a random comment in an obscure forum that mentioned something called winsockfix. God bless the persons or people who made this obscure little app because sure enough, back came explorer and all the other stuff that had slowly stopped working. Of course, since i reinstalled windows effectively (I take issue with Microsoft's definition of "repair") I am back to pre-service pack 1 so I have spent pretty much the time since 10:00am this morning re-installing XP patches (I am now up to SP2). RUBS...EYES...LIKE...A...LITTLE...GIRL.
So, my wife is in the shower and I am walking down the stairs that lead from my office to the yard (our house is two stories but seem like four when you're going down to the yard because we are on a hill) when I hear running water. Now the sound of running water round Bozz Manor is not unheard of the last couple of weeks, what with the incessant rain and all, but it hasn't rained for a couple of days and this sounds like a water flowing river-like down the hill. I look down and what do I see? Raw sewage flowing out of the bleed hole and down the hill in said river-like motive, which means the sewer is blocked. Bad but not too bad - we have a home warranty which covers such things so I call them and they contact a plumber. He comes, takes one look and tells me he needs the guys with the heavy kit and they'll be out tomorrow (Monday) morning. Still Ok. They turn up and start snaking the line and here's where things start going bad. Firstly they pull up a big clump of roots. From the sewer line. Now I may not be Handy Andy but I know that roots and sewer lines do not mix. However, he tried one more time to at least clear the line down to the main sewer but just keeps pulling more and more roots up. So not only in the sewer blocked, its obvious that its comprised beyond just a simple snake. Now I have hordes of guys with picks and shovels digging a nasty long trench down my yard.
Update:
They have left for the day - sewer is still not fixed but they have the ditch dug so hopefully it shouldn't be too long tomorrow. Its 5:15pm and NOW I have to work on the two assignments that I was going to have done tomorrow.
Like I said, GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Its TRACK OF THE WEEK time
Let Go by Frou Frou (from the albums Details and the Garden State Soundtrack)
It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow
Inclusion of this track on the Garden State soundtrack has raised Frou Frou's visibilty somewhat in this country. Frou frou are Imogen Heap and Guy Sigglesworth: Heap is better known as a solo artist, at least in Britain - she has a new album due out this year and a track from it was featured on the OC before Christmas. Clip from it here. Sigglesworth has had a number of gigs, musical director for Bjork's live show, co-writing credits with Seal and Madonna, but this is his first major personal collabaration. The stuff they do as Frou Frou is classified as trip-hop but that, to me, is like calling Tori Amos solo vocal and piano - at one level yes, but at so many other levels it misses the point. Although computers play a major role in the production of their albums, they are used as a way to enhance the instruments that they both play rather than dehumanize them. This is smart stuff - at first listen it seems like trippy bubblegum pop, but you find yourself revisiting it time and again and then it buries into your unconcious, annoyingly popping up at 3am running around your brain. Something like Vertigo by U2 but without the beneift of Ipod ads.
Let Go by Frou Frou (from the albums Details and the Garden State Soundtrack)
It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow
Inclusion of this track on the Garden State soundtrack has raised Frou Frou's visibilty somewhat in this country. Frou frou are Imogen Heap and Guy Sigglesworth: Heap is better known as a solo artist, at least in Britain - she has a new album due out this year and a track from it was featured on the OC before Christmas. Clip from it here. Sigglesworth has had a number of gigs, musical director for Bjork's live show, co-writing credits with Seal and Madonna, but this is his first major personal collabaration. The stuff they do as Frou Frou is classified as trip-hop but that, to me, is like calling Tori Amos solo vocal and piano - at one level yes, but at so many other levels it misses the point. Although computers play a major role in the production of their albums, they are used as a way to enhance the instruments that they both play rather than dehumanize them. This is smart stuff - at first listen it seems like trippy bubblegum pop, but you find yourself revisiting it time and again and then it buries into your unconcious, annoyingly popping up at 3am running around your brain. Something like Vertigo by U2 but without the beneift of Ipod ads.
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