nanovivid

And while I was sick, Bry did a wonderful job of taking care of me. He’s an angel.

♫ Radiohead - Optimistic

This past weekend was one of those I will remember as being slightly less enjoyable than many other weekends. That is to say, my body was invaded by the flu virus from hell. Friday I felt a little achy, but nothing serious, so I ignored it. Bad idea, cowboy. Somewhere around midnight, I woke up with a serious case of feeling cooler than being cool. No, not ice cold. I was chillin’, and it was not so much wiggedy whack as just the normal type.

I eventually made it through that, and slept a lot on Saturday with a nice little break to spend some quality time kneeling in the bathroom. By that evening I was feeling a little better, thanks largely to the magic of Zesta crackers and ginger ale. However, Saturday night I had another lovely episode of the chills, accompanied by a fever of 102°.

Sunday morning I was still feeling crappy with a high fever, so I went to the Emergency room, where the doctor told me it was probably viral and I would just have to wait it out. Great. However, he did tell me to take lots of tylenol and ibuprofen, which has helped.

I skipped out on work today because I’m still not 100%, but I’m getting there. Ooh, it’s time to take more drugs. Zesta!

♫ Radiohead - Treefingers

Recently John Gruber posted an entry entitled Dive Into Markdown, which explains the reasons for not writing blog entries in (X)HTML. His main point is that while it isn’t hard to write in HTML, it’s also not the easiest way to compose prose. That totally resonates with me, so I went ahead and grabbed a copy of the Markdown Perl script and integrated it (along with SmartyPants) into my site’s code.

Now instead of having to remember to properly open and close all my paragraphs and escape every &, I can just write. It’s incredibly refreshing, even moreso than I thought it would be. If you’re using MT, Markdown is a plugin. If you’re using a custom solution or something PHP based, here’s a function you can use to throw things through Markdown before posting:

Note: You don’t have to do this anymore! Get PHP Markdown instead.

Markdown’s syntax is fairly intuitive and easy to learn. You can use HTML inside a Markdown document without having to escape it or tell Markdown that you’re using HTML. I’m impressed, and totally liking it.

To see Markdown in action, check out the demo. Go forth and markdown!

♫ Milk Inc. - The Sun Always Shines On TV

KFC has a new(ish) commercial where this lady won’t stop calling the chicken “kitchen.” What you probably don’t know about this commercial is that the idea was stolen from a 3 year old (and Courtney and me). It’s a sad story, full of broken dreams and skewed perspectives, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the infamous bagel mixup of ‘56.

One time last summer, Courtney’s nephew Jared was trying to say “the kitchen,” but couldn’t pronounce it right. So instead of “kitchen” he said “chicken.” Now, KFC’s commercial uses the converse of this, but at this point, calling “chicken” “kitchen” is so 2003. Courtney and I were doing that for months back during the summer. Thus, not only is KFC a bunch of crooks, they’re also uncool crooks, which is twice as bad. People only like cool, hip criminals such as Ocean’s 11 and Martha Stewart.

My plea to KFC is that they stop this outrage of a commercial now, or at least give some monetary compensation to those from whom they’ve stolen. If nothing else, how about a piece of kitch… er, chicken?

♫ BT vs Sasha - Remember Magnetic North

NASA has developed technology to interpret subvocal phrases. Very cool.

And this iPod³ trailer (17 meg Quicktime) is really neat. Fake, but neat.

Yeah, I know I need to write real updates, shut up and be patient.

♫ Sigur Rós - Flugufrelsarinn

I’m not dead.

I got a cell phone today, after talking about it for months and months. It’s through SunCom, and they have this neato plan (called UnPlan) where any calls made/received from your local area are completely free and unlimited, and then outside your area (roaming) you have 300 minutes per month. I’m thinking it’ll work pretty well for replacing a land line.

I got the Nokia 3100 as my phone since no truly cool phones are available. It’s little and cute, and the interface is most excellent, so I’m happy.

♫ Mister O feat. Sierra - Let's Say (Jask Thaisoul Vocal Mix)

Really. I do.

Thus ends filler blog #358.

♫ AP2 - Heroin Hate