nanovivid

Why isn’t anybody online to talk to? I’m at my parents’ with slow internet (at least I have my PowerBook) so maybe I’ll just go to bed. At midnight. On a Friday night. Meh.

♫ Spiritualized - Don't Just Do Something

It’s been a bit since I’ve done a "What I’ve been listening to" entry, so here we go. Sigur Rós, Coldplay, The Smiths, and Fischer’s Folly have been in heaviest rotation recently. Of course, I only got Parachutes (Coldplay’s first album) two days ago… I’m so behind the times! I see why people love that cd. It’s so quality. Spies is a favorite:

I awake to see no one is free
We’re all fugitives
Look at the way we live
Down here, I cannot sleep from fear, no

I said, which way to I turn
I forget everything I learn
And the spies came out of the water
But you’re feeling so bad cos you know
And the spies hide out in every corner
But you can’t touch them, no
Cos they’re all spies

Ney gave me Ágætis Byrjun (the first wide release Sigur Rós cd) as a grad present and I’ve been loving it (duh). While ( ) feels like a single composition, the songs on Ágætis Byrjun are much more varied. Ný Batterí and Hjartað Hamast are major highlights.

And for some reason, I’ve been listening to Fischer’s Folly a lot. They were a Lynchburg-area college band back in the day and I bought their cd. It’s very rough in some places, which I think actually works well. Every so often I like listening to music that isn’t all super studio-polished. There’s something very personal and real about that album that I really enjoy.

I enjoyed The Matrix Reloaded even more this time. Already knowing the story let me enjoy the ride all the more. I think there is much more depth to that movie than its detractors are finding. And for the record, I like the Zion temple scene. :-P

This entry is partially in response to Dan’s complaint that I don’t seem to update as often. Two entries in one day, Dan! Booya! (Um, did I just say booya? Sorry about that).

♫ Fold Zandura - Ultradust

Tonya came to visit last night, that was so fun! We really don’t have enough chances to hang out. We went to Dave’s Taverna for dinner and sat at "our table" and ordered "our pizza"… basically it was exactly the same as last time we were there without the distracting hot guy sitting across from us (I can’t remember whether I’m allowed to tell that story or not… oh well, too late). Then we went back to my apartment and hung out, watched some TV, and then talked for a long time. Of course, we ended up staying up way too late and then at like 2 she went to Courtney’s where she was spending the night. Sorry about that, Ney. :-)

I’m going to see Reloaded again tonight, this time with Dan. Wheeee!

♫ Coldplay - Spies (I love this song!)

So this morning I wake up and it’s 9am and I’m like WTF? How did I sleep through my alarm? I got plenty of sleep last night. Ugh. That is why I am going to sleep very soon.

I really don’t have much to say at the moment, other than I’m kinda bored and none of … hey wait, I’m not quite so bored anymore. Andy just IMed me with the link to The dullest blog in the world. It’s quite entertaining. With titles like "Looking at my watch" and "Pulling my chair a few inches towards the table,", how could it not be great?

Um, yeah so enjoy that. And I’m going to go to bed. Man… worst. entry. ever. I guess I’m going for second dullest blog here. :-)

♫ Electric Light Orchestra - Ma-Ma-Ma Belle

I finally got around to tweaking the site design to address most of the little things that have bugged me about it. I stuck a border at the bottom of the content box to work around the height bugs in IE’s CSS implementation. I also reorganized the right column so that it now only appears on the main page and the main navigation links are always at the top. I’m happier with it now.

One day I’ll learn to not stay up so freaking late on the weekends. Sure I will. Once again, it was a worthwhile staying up though. I got to work on the design and I had a great conversation with Courtney. Sleep is for… people who are lucky enough to get it.

♫ entheos - da smooth funkin'

A Mighty Wind was excellent! Very very strange and funny, which was just what I was hoping for. :-) If you like your comedies a little different, go check it out.

In totally different news, Firebird 0.6 was released yesterday. They aren’t kidding when they say that the OS X build is still really really rough around the edges… come on, cmd-click doesn’t even open the link in a new tab yet! But it’s nice to have around for those times when Safari fails (those times are getting less and less though :-).

I’ve been really enjoying my PowerBook (of course). I recently found a couple apps that address my frustration with the lack of keyboard shortcuts for controlling iTunes and launching apps and such. PTHiTunesNotifier has a great onscreen display for when the song in iTunes changes, menubar controls, and keyboard shortcuts. What more could you ask? Then Keyboard Maestro lets you add keyboard shortcuts to launch apps and do a ton of other stuff as well as adding better task switching with option-tab for changing apps and ctrl-tab for changing windows within apps. They’re both free too (Keyboard Maestro’s Lite version is free anyway).

I’m off for some Saturday night funado action.

♫ Lode - The Sky Is Falling

Don’t read the next paragraph or the article I’m linked in it if you don’t want minor spoliers about The Matrix Reloaded.

Great article at The Register about the hack that Trinity employs in The Matrix Reloaded to bring down the power station. It was very cool to see hacking that was fairly realistic as opposed to the usual graphical junk.

I have a new picture of me! While I was packing for moving one night, Steve was randomly taking pictures and I held up this crate to the camera and we decided it looked cool so he took some shots. You can check out the original without the spotlight too. Better with, n’est pas?

We’re going to see A Mighty Wind tonight at 10. That should be good funny stuff, according to Julie’s 2904804926042 Reasons Why A Mighty Wind Kicks Ass.

Tonight for dinner, Andy and I made lemon pepper chicken tacos. We went a bit overboard on the lemon, so it was über-lemony, but still tasty, and quite unique. :-)

♫ Kursk Advanced - Breathe

Ain’t It Cool News has a review by "Moriarty" that I agree with a lot. It seems to have been written from a similar perspective to the way I approach most movies… I’m just not as good at expressing it as he is.

♫ Psalmistry - Something About Your Love

That’s right, tonight I saw The Matrix Reloaded. Wow. Wow wow wow. Definitely an enjoyable ride. Of course it wasn’t perfect, but I sure liked it. Being left hanging at the end with a "to be completed" is frustrating but it’s only a few months. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you wait around until the end of the credits: there is a trailer for The Matrix Revolutions (and it’s sweet).

I do have a few complaints. One big one is that I don’t think the soundtrack was nearly as good as the first one. The music during the Burly Brawl (where Neo is fighting 100s of Agent Smiths) just didn’t do it for me. There were some sweet songs though, like the one during the Zion… um… temple… thing… and during the big car chase. And I guess if I had been looking to find visual flaws, a few of the CG parts looked a little off. But the story was overall very well executed and I’m willing to suspend being ultra-anal about the visuals.

I don’t want to spoil anything for people who haven’t seen it, so I’m not going to say anything else.

I REALLY AM going to go to bed now. I stayed up until 3am talking to Dave so work was a little rough at parts today. Thank you caffeinated iced tea! I don’t regret it though, Dave and I hadn’t connected in a while and talking to him is always a positive and growing experience.

Tomorrow is Friday. Cooooool.

♫ Sigur Rós - Hjartað Hamast

I’ve been so dang non-active lately… it’s not good. Sunday I went running for the first time in about three weeks, but that’s all I’ve done recently. After getting busy with moving and then being sick my exercise schedule has pretty much gone out the window. Definitely need to work on that.

After tonight’s Zeldafest we watched Best In Show. Very, very funny movie. It definitely makes me want to go see A Mighty Wind.

Well, I told people I was going to go to bed so that’s what I should do.

♫ Massive Attack - Special Cases (Luomo's Casing)