The blog that's gotten one comment ever! Thanks mom!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happy Earth Day

Despite our culture's renewed emphasis on living green of late, it seems like every year Earth Day gets more and more irrelevant and forgotten. However, J's company offered this year the service of recycling employee's old PC's and monitors for free. I just took advantage of it, recycling three old PC's that were no longer worth the trouble of trying to make work again. Of course, I was more interested in getting these beige monsters out of my basement, but hey, at least this way I don't have to worry about whatever hazardous chemicals they contain leaking into a local landfill. Unfortunately, they'll probably just end up doing the same in China.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Next year in Jerusalem!

What a great weekend. Our friends Brose and Bex invited us to Santa Fe to share the Passover Seder with them, and to meet their newest child Chloe. We drove down Friday, taking a half day off at work to get down there in time for supper, which was at Diego's, a local favorite. Played a bit of Rainbow 6 with Brose before we crashed late.

Saturday was spent primarily in preparation for the Seder. Brose and Bex wanted everyone to be involved, even us gentiles, so we ran off copies of a script describing the various cups that must be drained throughout the ceremony.

This sort of thing is really interesting to me. I'm not overly religious (sorry mom and dad!), but I also don't think religion is a bad thing. It can provide people with a much needed baseline to compare their moral compass against. And most religions do a pretty good job of setting that compass to a heading that works in the real world. Not all, but most.

In any case, the Seder was great, the food and company was wonderful, and I was introduced to a wonderful version of the Hillel sandwich. We stayed up until two playing games and laughing enough to keep up those who had proceeded us to bed.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Band names

New band names:

Properly Sauced

Gunch Punch

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Eureka 7

So, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm a dork. I like my anime, and although I'm hardly obsessive, when I find a good one, I want other folks to know. I just finished my second watching of Eureka 7 last night. No spoilers here, I don't want to ruin it, but it's become one of my favorites.

Mecha anime (cartoons featuring giant robots) has long been a favorite of mine, probably starting with Voltron and Robotech (I know, it's really Macross, but I didn't know better for years). Eureka 7 deals with a group of rebels called Gekko State, and their battle to save the world. Sound over the top? It is, from the combat to the love stories to the music. But that's what I love about it. This cartoon seems tailor made to manipulate me, and although it can be extremely cheesy, and I can recognize that, it doesn't stop me from cheering, laughing, and tearing up a bit.

Eureka 7 has aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in the past, which is how I've caught it (thank goodness for Tivo). It doesn't seem to be available through Netflix yet, though I've put in a request that they carry it. Highly recommended.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The new cans


My new headphones came in today. Here's Audio-Technica's page on em. First, they sound better than any headphones I've used before, but understand that this isn't saying much. The best headphones I've ever owned were a pair of Shure e2c's, and while nice earbuds, it's hard to get the same kind of sound out of something like that. The cable on the new cans is incredible, thick and burly, with a spring on the connector end to help protect it from breakage, plus a coiled section to help prevent sudden jerks ruining your player's connector.

All that said, this is my one gripe. They don't go all the way around your ears. When I researched them, they were listed as circumaural. My thought was this meant that they went around one's ears. These sit on cartilage, and no matter how good they sound, that's going to get old after a while. Jer's Sony's actually do fit around the ears, and so you basically don't even realize you're wearing headphones after a while. I'll give these some time to break in and see if I can live with em, but if it stays uncomfy, they're going back. As with the Shure's, if listening to music makes your ears hurt, I tend not to do it, and that sucks.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Anime industrial design makes me buy things

Stupid cartoons. I've watched them all my life, and some have had more than a small impact on my sense of aesthetics. Take, for example, the Mach 5 from Speed Racer, or Mach Go Go Go in Japan. To this day, it is my perfect car. Not so much for the gadgets (although I must admit a little thrill at the number of buttons on the steering wheel of my Prius), but for it's lines, it's look. I must admit to severe misgivings about the Wachowski siblings' live action version. Not least because they've changed the Mach 5.

Now, the Prius has built in bluetooth. This pretty much takes care of the only instance in which I would need a bluetooth headset. But I own a bluetooth headset anyways. Why? Which Hunter Robin. I haven't even seen the entire run of the show, just the few episodes I caught back when it aired on Adult Swim. But the headsets they had were fantastic. At least the one I bought was inexpensive.

My most recent failing at the hands of cool looking cartoon tech is a pair of Audio-Technica headphones. The villain in this case? Eureka 7. All of the pilots wear extremely cool looking headphones when flying their mecha about.

So what does this say about me? It means I take my fashion cues from a bunch of cartoon characters. I suppose it's not all that bad. Everyone wants to look like their heroes. Some people buy ridiculously expensive sports jerseys, with their favorite player's name on the back. Others buy designer clothes they've seen their movie and music idols wearing. I, on the other hand, want to look like a mecha pilot. Now if I only I had a huge robot to drive around. I've already got the headphones...

Have you read my blog?