Alright, so I was reading the latest issue of National Geographic and in it I found where I want to live. It is Poundbury in the UK. Why, you may ask, do you want to live in a cold, dreary place like England? Well, here is a brief list:
- An emphasis on pedestrians not automobiles. (Down with the auto!) Many of you know that I hate driving and that, in an ideal situation, I’d walk everywhere. This emphasis includes making roads twisty-turny to keep speeds down and encourage people not to drive them regularly
- Interspersing places of employment with housing. This means… wait for it… no strip malls! Woo! People can walk to work and people can walk to shop. I’d also think less drunk drivers (but more people pissing on your flowers) as you can also walk to and from bar.
- Did I mention England is going smoke-free? Well, sort of.
- A de-emphasis on lawn (both front and back!). I’m not the biggest fan of lawns… they end up being a pissing contest with black Labradors being the main victim. Anyway, the homes are built with smaller lawns but close to large public recreation areas. Woot. Team sports are more fun… which reminds me, I am still having no luck with finding some place to play soccer.
- Affordable housing is integrated into the community. There are no projects so there can be no ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality about social class differences. In addition, lower income individuals will, hopefully, not feel as ostracized or shit-upon and thus be able to make a better life for themselves. Either that or you can walk to you drug dealer.
- All in all it encourages a sense of community, because you know everyone from working, shopping and playing with them. I could call this the opposite of a gated community. A good summary of what the community is trying to be can be found here.
Now I just have to stop brushing my teeth and punch myself in the face over and over and over again, and I’ll be able to fit right in. NGM article is here. (note that you will, “Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.”) Dan if you happen to be heading out that way check it out… assuming you actually read this before or while you are out there.
Also, if you are interested in reading a well written editorial in our local news paper check out End-of-year testing doesn’t reflect growth found halfway down this page. Found by Heidi and about a topic that most of can agree on (though maybe not the conclusion); our education system is fuck. [Hehe… I did notice that fuck should past-tensized but the mistake amuses me somehow.]
I’m going to continue to play with the look of the page until I like it. And no, Old Man, my page does not look like this.
Err… let me know what you think. 
Okay so I told Dan I would write up a thing on how to put a picture in the header. So here it is, but first the Revolution (name) is no more.
- Find or make a picture.
- Add the following to the “table.columns td.header” in your CSS.
background-image: url(link to your picture);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: left; (top left, or top center, or top right… or look here for a description of background properties)
- Now you should have an image up there… assuming your image url is correct.
- No try again… that image suck.
Heidi is singing back a bad song about me. ‘Mikey wont you poot. Mikey wont you poot.” e&c.
Anyway, the trying to get everything to look right is so annoying especially when it is a bunch of crappy trial and error (save, save, save). I used this plugin for firefox which allows you to update the style sheets without actually saving anything, which helps but it’s not an ideal solution especially if you want to significantly change around the look of the thing. Wargh, back to it!
Shit. You should all watch this. It is funny and the fact that GE NBC edited it out of all SNL reruns must mean something… It seems like there have been a lot of interesting conversations going on over here. Unfortunately, I have not been able to chime in even though I had all of yesterday and Tuesday off! Stupid, stupid Hilton family hotels. Always nickle and diming you ($6 for Internet! F’ that! I got two beers for that price!). This, of course, reminds me of the Hilton HHonors program, which, in turn, forces me to ask, “what the fuck is that H doing there?!”
The trip north was excellent. I was able to spend much of Tuesday afternoon sitting in a bar with my cousin Dave which was both relaxing and enjoyable. We ended up, as almost every conversation does now-a-days, talking politics. What was discussed will remain undisclosed at this time but I believe the consensus was ‘if we give the crazies less of a voice everything would be better’. And by crazies I mean franatics (i.e. Christian Coalition, PETA, George Bush, e&c [My example not his]). And below is little Willa eat Cookie Monster as if he were… well, a cookie. Take that you blue bastard.
“Cooki…mephfg.”
[Update] I had to change the title. I did have it as ‘Koncho!’ but that seemed inappropriate for an article with a baby picture.
This will be quick. I think I’ll be able to find a lot time tomorrow to write about:
- How to use images in the Header (for Dan),
- My disappointment in the NHL playoffs,
- Why saying nothing is better than saying something that means nothing,
- and, How, though politians tell us it is so, there are few simple answers. We as a culture (and me as an individual) need to stop being afraid of the complex, starting with science.
- The Muddy Moose. The pain. The suffering. The cool tee-shirt!
Now I work and feel inspired by the fact that I will not be here tomorrow.
Last night was nice and relaxing (minus the laundry but I somehow got out of folding it). We sat around on the couch and read, which is something I haven’t done enough of lately, maybe because I keep trying to read books that make me fall asleep. Currently I am reading a mildly insane book about a well-equiped reincarnated (cloned?) messiah type figure with pyschic power and no memory lost in a futuristic dystopian. Very snow crash-esque. I takes amusing jabs at the Christian Crazies Right and social stereo-types, and, as a bonus, I really have no idea how it will end.
I should have spent part of last night applying for jobs. I have a list of them but reading and playing brain age completely distracted me. Crap. Maybe I should just do that now…
Sunday is the Muddy Moose. I should be painful though not as painful as last year. Look at the mud! [more photos]
Me at last year’s race. Why am I smiling?
Jared at last year’s race.
Alright so our new network is up and it is faster and smaller. 1 box instead of 2. b/g instead of a/b. 1000Mb/s instead of 100Mb/s. That reminds me… I should be at work. Haha haha. I am currently check to see if I can connect with my DS. Haha! Success! Off you go… I will not be tempted to thromp people at Mario Kart.
And if you are interested there is a pseudo poll over at Heidi’s new weblog. Hello Scientist.
To work! But first a hair cut.
A new report on how bad Bush’s tax cuts are.
Heidi and I went out with my parents, my brother and Nikki (hello.). We wandered around Portsmouth and went out to dinner at the Portsmouth Brewery, which was delicious as always. I had some mushroom thingy and a couple of beers. After dinner the family headed back home (sans one pair of reading glasses) and Heidi and I headed to Quigley’s for a pint before taking in a showing of “THE BIBLE: THE COMPLETE WORD OF GOD (abridged)” performed by the Reduced Shakespeare Company at the Music Hall. The show was greatly amusing and I applaud Heidi for finding it. The second act (New Testament) was a bit short and it did include a long rendition of ‘Old McNoah had an Ark’, which was a bit disappointing. It seems like they were trying not to piss off the majority too much by primarily satirizing the Old Testament. Eh, it was funny so why complain?.
So far for my birthday I have received the following (with much thanks):
- A tool box with new screw drivers, a saw, a funky utility knife, some pliers that do not suck and more from my folks.
- A tea pot for steeping tea from Heidi.
- A new router/AP which will hopefully allow me to play my DS online from Matt and Nikki.
- Dinner (see above) from my folks.
On an exciting side note I’ve finally figured out how to get the photos out of my phone! Thank you MotoModders.net and fuck you Motorola for trying to make me buy software for something as simple as downloading photos from my ridiculously expensive phone. To prove that it has been done here is a bad picture of Itty Bit.
Land of Nod is not a word.
(1) Not have a broken flag. Example, one of the guys here at work add the following feature. His code spits out ‘I am so SMRT. I am so SMRT.’, ad naseum, when you press the ‘C’ button; this keeps happening until you reset the board. Awesome.
(2) Not set the broken flag by default. I’m testing a pile of shit! Damn it! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Now that that is out of the way. If it interests you check out this article on why the DMCA is a bad, bad man. It’s not too long and it gives lots of examples! Up with Fair Use!
I road my bike into work today but I forgot lunch! I figured I could just get something from the Cafe downstairs but apparently the fucker’s get the day off. While I do not particularly care to celebrate the cruxification of anyone, I would like a day off. Heck I can even take of a day to celebrate someone else’s martyrdom. How about June 6th? The day Debs was sent to prison for violating the Sedition Act of 1918. Or maybe November 5th, it’s Guy Fawkes day and Debs’ birthday! (The Sedition Act is a pretty scary part of our history! You should read it.) Rant aside, Ack and I went to the store and picked up food, some of which, I will now eat.
If you have gmail check out their online calendar thing. I’ve not played with it that much but it has potential! You can make you calendar public or share with certain people and you can subscribe to other people’s calendars! I can’t keep track of what is going on around me so if you people can do it for me that’d be nice.
Where I'd like to live
