10/4/08

10/6/08

What's that? I haven't posted since Thursday? What a friggin' slacker I am! And now that I am posting, the only thing I have to say about these comics is that Jake Ellington should really learn to plunge forward less awkwardly...cause Jake, you look absolutely ridiculous with your arms at your side like that!

So here's the scoop: With the impending arrival of my first offspring (that I'm aware of) some time this month, my blogging schedule is naturally going to be a bit erratic in the near future. So uh...if I drop off the planet for a few days, don't be terribly alarmed. I promise I'll be back eventually. However, if anyone out there in "This Week in Milford" land is way too motivated for their own good and wants to be a guest blogger on this site for a couple weeks, drop me a line. (Just think, it could be as glamorous as filling in for Marty Moon when he's too drunk to go on his TV show broadcast out of his basement!)

Tras el ligero descenso en los meses veraniegos, Septiembre terminó con el mayor número de visitantes. Las suscripciones al feeds a través del lector Google Reader ascienden a 84.

El Top 10 de las palabras clave por la que llegaron visitas desde los principales buscadores fueron:

1. megaconstrucciones
2. caterpillar
3. autocad 2009
4. megaestructuras
5. golden gate
6. metro granada
7. caterpillar 797b
8. santiago calatrava
9. discovery channel en español
10. 797b

Por enésima vez, gracias a todos los que siguen este humilde blog.
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• Meta-post: Resumen y estadísticas del año 2007 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Enero de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Febrero de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Marzo de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Abril de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Mayo de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Junio de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Julio de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Agosto de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»

Technorati Tags:ingenieria, miscelanea, resumen, septiembre, 2008, estadisticas, post, visitados, metapost

Mas eles deram motivo. E quem está falando isso não sou nem eu, é o Marco Aurélio Canônico, do Ilustrada no Pop.

Ao que ele disse, eu só acrescento o seguinte:

* celebridades Z não são sinônimo de sustentabilidade.
* difícil acesso não é sinônimo de sustentabilidade. (A fila para SAIR do estacionamento durou exatos 60 minutos. E provavelmente só eu desliguei o motor do carro nesse intervalo. Será que eles estão contabilizando essa fumaça nas emissões de carbono do festival?)
* comida "orgânica" e não-traga-você-mesmo-seu-próprio-alimento... afe, que tiro no pé.
* a "ambientação" com informações sobre sustentabilidade até que estava bem feitinha. O que eu gostaria era de ter encontrado alguém que leu e aprendeu alguma coisa sobre isso.

Ainda bem que o show do DMB foi ótimo.

PS: EU SEI que estou devendo umas coisinhas sobre a Amazônia, sobre a minhocasa, sobre tudo. Desculpem a ausência. Semana passada foi de muito trabalho, mas agora as coisas vão caminhar. Me aguardem.

It's kind of hard to think positively about a decade that kicked off with the murder of John Lennon (a sign of the terrible things to come?).   Some of it was truly bad.  Prime example:  "We Built This City (On Rock and Roll)." Some of it was pretty good.  I've gained an appreciation for the Talking Heads and the Clash as I've gotten older.  A lot of guilty pleasures remain in my iTunes music folder (Journey, ABC, Toto (oh, God, Toto...).

And I don't care how much the gang at All Songs Considered decries this song as among the worst of the '80s.  Whenever I hear it, there's a part of me that's still six years old and gets excited every time it's on:

Edit: Upon further review, the crime here is not the over-synthed sound.  It's the really.. uh... fancy dancing in the video.  And maybe Deniece Williams's hair.

Additional Edit: The video got taken down ... but a search for a replacement video inspired a new post.

I've gotten very lax about setting the alarm at night (even though I still freak out over random noises), especially since it started to require that I bypass the panic button every time I turn it on. (I believe the panic button is probably out of batteries, but since I have no idea where it is, there's not much I can do about that.)

My landlady, however, will care that it gets turned on. And once there's regular noises in the house, I will also care, since the alarm being on will reassure me that they're coming from people who were already in the house and not people who've come into the house in the night.

So my new thing this week is remembering to turn on the alarm before I go to bed at night.

Here were some of my hopes and goals when I made the move:

• Escaping the heat & humidity of Virginia and return to lovely four-season weather ¹
• Resume my identity as a New Englander ²
• Live in a city and enjoy the cultural benefits therein³
• Make good use of public transit and go car-free⁴
• Continue my career in history museum education⁵
• Live among a more liberal populace⁶
• Form a circle of friends⁷
• Find love. Get married.  Raise a family⁸

So I pretty much got that all covered.  Pretty good considering that I moved here with no job prospects, not really knowing anyone, and saving money by staying in a tent at Wompatuck State Park while looking for places to live.

Anyhow, it's been a good ten years, and may the next ten be just as good.

Footnotes:

¹ Virginia seriously has only two seasons: Summer which consists of 90° / 90% humidity from March to October and the rest of the year where it just rains. Of course, I didn't realize that in Boston, Spring doesn't start in May or that fresh snowfall is immediately packed down into bumpy and sooty ice formations, but at least it's only hot for like two weeks in the Summer.

²People in Boston apparently do not consider southwestern Connecticut (where I grew up) to be New England. Screw them, I say.

³Check.

⁴Check.

⁵I did get a job offer at Plimoth Plantation but they were offering $8/hour, the same pay rate I made in Virginia where the cost of living is half that it is here.  So I went into libraries and haven't looked back.

⁶Massachusetts isn't as liberal as I imagined it to be, but I'm probably not either.  Also now Virginia elects Democrats and is now considered a swing state.  Go figure!

⁷They say it's hard to meet people in Boston.  I found it easy to meet lots of people, extremely difficult to make lasting connections.  But persistence pays off and I've met some of the best people ever, mainly through work, volunteering, church, and alumni groups.

⁸None of this happened remotely in the way I imagined it would, but I wouldn't change a thing.

Previously:

• So Long Somerville
• Come Back to Jamaica Plain

(eu estava enganada sobre o blog, mas acho que na época que eu li o post do No Impact Man eu realmente deveria ter mandado a dica para ela :))

(fica aí o serviço da minhocasa para vocês. obrigada, tia!)

Minha família é mei doida mes... Mas eu não troco não. Tia, quando seu minhocário chegar vou aí fotografar pra mostrar pro pessoal. Isso é, se não for muito *eca*. Quem sabe eu não compro um pra mim também?

:D

Pois, uma das coisas mais legais de Mamirauá são as pessoas. A gente conheceu um tanto de gente simples e generosa, que nos deixaram entrar em suas casas, responderam às nossas perguntas estranhas e sorriram para nossas fotos. E a gente pensou que o melhor jeito de agradecer a essas pessoas seria mandar de volta para elas algumas das fotos que nós tiramos. Eu já subi algumas no Picasa, para depois editar com a Ju e mandar imprimir. As mais legais estão aqui. São só as minhas por enquanto, porque a Ju ainda não subiu as dela, e são só das pessoas por enquanto. Depois eu subo as paisagens, as comidas, as bizarrices, as histórias.

Tem pano pra manga, viu?

Bueno, pues no.  Ese post lo encontraréis en otros blogs.  Aquí tenemos cosas que contar ;-D, así que ¡más madera y al tajo!  Tenemos posts pendientes sobre más cosas frikis llevadas al escenario, más instrumentos musicales frikis, comics, videojuegos y, en general, cosas con las que ocupar el tiempo libre cuando uno tiene dello en abundancia (a este respecto, no se pierdan el próximo post: Exin Castillos the RPG).  Hay posts que se quedarán para siempre en el limbo, como los comentarios osbre la spelis del verano (Iron man es cojonuda, Hulk está muy bien, Batman... hmmm, a ver si de ésta si habrá post)

Permanezcan en sintonía.

Daqui a pouco eu conto tudinho. Deixa só eu arrumar a casa a limpar a galocha.

:)

I have about five albums in various draft stages, and I do intend to get around to finishing them eventually, so I beg your indulgence and hang in there with me; hopefully I'll get this thing going soon.

for those interested i my previous blog, you can find it here.

I eat a lot of carbs, a fair bit of fat, and not nearly enough protein. This is my conclusion from a little over a week of pretty heave tracking of what I eat. And the tracking itself has an observation effect on what I eat, so I shudder to imagine what the proportions probably looked like before I started tracking.

I think if I work on getting the protein up and the fat down, the carbs will take care of themselves somewhere in the process. I bought some very lean kolbassa, and a skinless chicken, as thing with more protein than fat, but what other food suggestions do people have with a good fat/protein mix? I like things that don't require a lot of thought on my part, especially for working lunches.

I believe I'm going to continue with the Daily Plate at this point. I like the usability of Gyminee, but the public profile is lame and the food database is also lame. CalorieCountPlus has its good points, too, but its key winner, the recipe analyzer, is something I can continue to use even if I use DailyPlate to track stuff. I'll dump the recipe into CCP, and then copy the nutritional data over to the Daily Plate as a 'user-entered food' rather than a recipe (because DailyPlate's recipe function is completely unfunctional, as far as I'm concerned.).

There's one other site I've come across, "My Food Diary", but I don't think it offers public profiles at all, and it requires a credit card to even try the site. I might take a look at it and then cancel, just to complete my comparison chart, but I don't think I'm willing to pay over $100 a year to track my calories, especially if it has no public profile. I'm going to go back to SparkPeople and FitDay to try and complete some of the comparison chart entries on them, as well.

Second gayest Ramones T-shirt ever now available in the Milford Catalog o' Varsity Stuff*. (First Gayest here.)

Stacie sure has some wicked short arms, eh? Might be the first time Whigham has drawn hands way too small.

Editor of the Trumpet? The good news here is that this means that piggy-pants loser Rick Bozich has moved on. Additional good news is that you can play tic-tac-toe in the third panel while enjoying the playful interactions of these two heterosexual buddies.

*Man-boobs not included.

9/8/08

We interrupt this story that hasn't really started yet to inform you that I've now been been blogging about this comic for fifty years! Or wait, maybe not, it just feels like it sometimes...

In celebration of this exciting occasion, not only do you get an awesome close-up of old-school Gil's feathered hair, but several articles and press releases throughout the web-o-sphere (including at least two that at press time could not spell "Thorp" properly in the headline): a Chicago Tribune article, another Chicago area article, and an interview of Gil by Marty Moon!

Additionally, Take Five Press, our favorite publisher of Gil Thorp books, has announced a new compilation entitled, "Tales from the Bucket" Check out this press release for more information! But remember, don't let anyone all but force you to go the the Bucket, you have to want to go yourself.

After two days, DailyPlate is the clear winner from that group -- it had the most food items, it had a decent if busy public profile option, it tracked many of the things I'm interested in and it has robust options for frequently eaten foods and groups of foods. It's not perfect -- there are a lot of unneeded clicks in the workflow, and it's waaaay overestimating the calorie burn on my workout -- but of the three, it's clearly the best.

I really liked the look and feel of CalorieCountPlus, but the lack of a public profile, the inability to easily adjust portion sizes and the relatively paltry food database did it in.

FitDay, well, it seems like it might be the best of the bunch -- I especially liked the clean, non-myspacey look of the public profiles. But the devil is in the details, and on that front, there were just way too many annoying things about it, starting with the fact that I got logged out between every visit, even if I never closed the page. Little things that shouldn't be broken, like the tab order when entering a new food, were also annoying. Plus, it doesn't have much of a database of packaged / fast foods.

So, having given up on two of my options, but not quite in love with my remaining choice, I decided to add SparkPeople and Gyminee back into the mix. I opened accounts on both and attempted to catch them both up to my other calorie trackers.

SparkPeople is already out the door. It's a shame, because I do like their add food interface quite a lot, but overall navigation was a pain in the ass, and it was just a little too perky and tied in with their ideas of what you should be doing for my tastes.

So that leaves DailyPlate and Gyminee in the running. I'll keep with the tracking in those two for the next few days, and see how it goes. Comparison charts for all 5 sites are in the sidebar under "...I would know who I am".

I'm not so much in love with how much prominence this template gives to dates rather than titles, but it's the best of the variable width templates in terms of lightness and generally fitting with the mood I'm aiming for, so giant dates it is.

The candidates are:

• FitDay - Here's my public profile.
• CalorieCountPlus - Doesn't seem to offer a public profile.
• DailyPlate - Here's my public profile.

If you're looking at these public profiles, do try not to pay too much attention to the fact that I had lemon cake for breakfast, kay?

First glaringly noticable difference amongst the three? FitDay calculates my Curves workout as 378 calories burned. CalorieCountPlus counts it as 628 calories burned. Daily Plate calculates it as 834 calories burned. That's an astonishingly high set of differences.

The main character(s) fake(s) being poor so Jimmy Carter and Habitat For Humanity will come and build a new house. Hilarity ensues.

Las suscripciones al feed a través de Google Reader, que es la única que puedo controlar, asciende a 84 suscriptores, también en aumento.

Gracias a todo/as los que visitan/leen/comentan el blog.

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• Meta-post: Resumen y estadísticas del año 2007 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Enero de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Febrero de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
• Metapost: Resumen y estadísticas de Marzo de 2008 en «Ingeniería en la Red»
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Technorati Tags:ingenieria, miscelanea, resumen, agosto, 2008, estadisticas, post, visitados, metapost

Sou Newrimar, The Master Zero. Vivo no mundo dos átomos e domino o mundo dos bits.

Espero que possa trazer muita informaçao a meus amigos internautas. Sempre que possivel darei recomendações de varias coisas, desde sites e progamas até livros e filmes.

Antigamente qualquer mercadoria util era valor de troca, depois era o ouro, passando entao para as terras de acordo com sua produtividade, indo ao papel moeda. Hoje praticamente está sendo desutilizado o papel moeda e o dinheiro se tornou impulsos eletronicos e a mercadoria de maior valor é a informação.

Ready for a rambling and long-winded introductory post? You are? Great! Here we go!

My name is David Allen Jones, and my main gig for over five years has been my (mostly) comics blog, The Johnny Bacardi Show, although I've had other outlets for my restless fingers along the way such as the Johnny Bacardi LiveJournal Show (for stuff I didn't want to put on the main blog- memes, etc.), a short-lived sketch blog, and one in particular which is most germane to this one- my classic-Elton John-themed Solar Prestige A Gammon, in which I took a entirely subjective look at the individual songs that made up what I considered to be the peak years of Mr. Dwight's career. It was kinda fun, and I got a lot of swell feedback, but by its very nature it was destined to come to an end...and that end came quicker than I expected. I was inspired to do that blog by a handful of other writers that had been doing similar work at about that time, screenwriter Todd Alcott's looks at the solo work of Paul McCartney as well as his series (still in progress) on David Bowie, Matthew Perpetua's excellent R.E.M. blog PopSong 08, and Curt Holman's R.E.M. posts also, and while I don't think SPaG held a candle to theirs, I am kinda proud of it nonetheless.

Here's the thing- while I still like writing about comics, I also like to write about music. And since I decided to focus on comics on the JBS, my music writing (outside of the SPaG blog, of course) has kinda fallen by the wayside. I occasionally make music-related posts at the LJ, but I don't seem to get half the readership there as I do the other (not that I would know- I have yet to figure out a way to track hits on an LJ)...so I do want to continue to do some sort of regular (or semi-regular) music-dedicated blog. Now, for a couple of years there I did a semi-regular feature on the JBS that I called Johnny B's Mondo Vinyl-O, inspired by the purchase of a new turntable about five years ago (still working, knock wood!). I would write a paragraph of varying length about whatever long-playing 33-13 RPM vinyl record album that I would reacquaint myself with in the wake of the purchase. I'm proud of many of those, about six all total I think, but they were often a bear to write- and I think it was because I was trying to do ten at a time or so. What I want to do here, then, I think, is continue the spirit of the Vinyl-O's, but not limit myself to vinyl from my collection- which means I'll be writing about albums that I have on all media: vinyl, CD, Mp3, hell, maybe even cassette and 8-track if I can find any. Rather than do individual tracks a la SPaG, or multiple albums in one long post, I'll do one album at a time, and try to run down each track on the album with what I hope will be interesting commentary on each. This will not be something I think that I can just dash out, so chances are I won't be posting something every day- and I hope this doesn't put anybody off visiting anyway. Just add me to your feed reader and that way when I DO post, you'll know.

I suppose at some point I should establish my bona fides, such as they are, and this is as good a point as any. I was born in 1960, January of same to be exact(er), and I know this makes me (probably) a great deal older than many of you reading this. To some, I suppose this matters when dealing with popular music, which is, after all, best appreciated and served by youth- or so some think. Myself, I have never subscribed to this theory. But anyway, more on that later. While neither of my parents were musicians, they both loved music and had no problem with buying me 45s to listen to on my little plastic record player I got when I was a toddler. Probably the first record I ever owned was a 45 of "Apples, Apples, Apples" ("Winesap and Jonathan and by gosh, Golden Delicious and Macintosh") b/w "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" by one Dennis O'Day, so obscure that I can't find anything via Google Search about him. as well as a 45 of Louis Armstrong's hit version of "Hello Dolly"...but it was not long after that two absolutely seminal pieces of plastic crossed my path, and I was never the same- my Aunt Lavana's (more on her later) copy of Meet the Beatles, and the 45 of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". The influence these records had on me was immense. In fact, I got a lot of my self-taught musical education from dear Lavana, still with us to this day- she came of age in the 1950s, loved music, and had a great deal of the classic singles of the era such as "Wake Up Little Susie" by the Everly Bros., "To Know Him is to Love Him" by the Phil Spector-produced Teddy Bears, Dion's "The Wanderer" (still a favorite), "Poison Ivy" by the Coasters, and many others, which I would play on her single-speaker (but bigger than my little one at home) record player when I stayed with my grandparents while my parents were at work. They all, god bless 'em, saw how much I loved the music so they let me listen as much as I wanted. Upping the ante a bit was the jukebox at the bowling alley  where my Dad was a league bowler- there were tons of great songs on that thing, and Cash's "Ring" was one that grabbed me and didn't let go. I was probably 4 or 5 at the time, and for all I knew it was about a house on fire or somesuch (in fact, that may be one way of looking at it, sorta)...but all I knew was that I couldn't get enough. My Dad got tired of me bumming dimes off him to play it so he bought it for me, and I wore that thing out, along with the Beatles album that my Aunt (who wasn't as crazy about it as I) had broken down and given to me. And that's how it went for the next 3 or 4 years, in which I'd hear something on the radio perhaps, or my folks would bring it home, and once in a while I'd get a 45 if I really liked it. Of course, I kept up with the exploits of the Beatles, who were #1 in my heart...I had the bubblegum cards, saw the movies on TV, would make it a point to see them when they'd appear on this or that show (in fact, one of my earliest childhood memories is of seeing the Fabs on the Ed Sullivan Show, first or second appearance- I forget- and being all "wow" and my Mom saying "...so THAT'S the Beatles."). Of course, other musicians popped up in my radar as well but being 7 years old during the Summer of Love, other than the paper I just didn't really have any way to get info about them. I mean, I knew who Dylan, the Kinks, the Stones, and the Byrds were, but I did not really go out of my way to try and coerce my folks to buy their records for me. Fortunately, my parents (while somewhat conservative, as small town Kentucky parents tended to be) were at least open minded, and (I think) knew I had a restless, spongelike mind so they didn't discourage me from reading and listening to what I could, and eventually I started getting an allowance of sorts...and that's when things got under way.

Another early influence on me and my listening habits was my next door neighbor, Russ Butler. Now, he was several years older than me, and was listening to early 70's juggernauts like Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zeppelin, and he was nice enough to loan them to me so I could listen too. I also joined the Columbia Music Club in early 1972, obtaining many excellent 8-tracks and LPs through them for at least 10 years. Other friends had other records, that they had gotten from older brothers or whatever- first heard Jethro Tull that way, via classmate Mark Branstetter, or Rod Stewart via my friend Teri. It was catch as catch can for a few years. At about this same time, I made another major discovery: music magazines. Now HERE was a way that I could combine my love of reading and my love of music, and find out about new albums and the artists that made them to boot! CREEM, Crawdaddy, Canadian music mag Beetle, Circus, Hit Parader, eventually Rolling Stone,Musician and much, much later MOJO...all fed the fire. My parents would drive north to Louisville to visit friends for several years when I was a teen, and gave me money to shop. I'd buy a paperback book and an album, and this went on for a good 4-5 years. Also, I discovered the used record and tape stores on the Bardstown Road up there, in particular one called Rivertown Records which was STUFFED with fantastic albums of recent late 60's-early 70's vintage, and I made many excellent purchases there because they were dirt cheap. Oh, if only I had a time machine. Anyway, that's the way it went for many years- buying LPs, 8-tracks, and getting tipped off to interesting artists by reading. I also had developed a fascination with the output of one label in particular, Warner Bros./Reprise- they had many fascinating acts on their label, as well as a package design that grabbed the eye as well as the mind of this young creatively-inclined boy. To this day I seek out late 60's-early 70's albums by acts that appeared on those labels. Then, as I became mobile, I started driving myself to record shops in Bowling Green (30 miles south), Nashville, Tennessee, and Louisville, and meeting people like Jeff Sweeney, who's managed most of the decent record stores in Bowling Green, and Bill Lloyd, who recommended many, many excellent late 70's-early 80's albums to this impressionable young man when I'd see him working at Tunetown aka the Emporium aka I'm sure many other names in BG back then. And that's been pretty much the way I've kept up with and discovered new and old music, on through cassettes, CDs, and now the not-as-fulfilling-from-a-creative-standpoint (no packaging!) digital Mp3 format, which compensates with its convenience, when paired with iPods and iTunes and other devices. I can honestly say that my tastes have not calcified over the decades; while I remain devoted to the music of my formative years, especially that from 1970-1975, I have discovered and come to love music from the Eighties, Nineties, and on into the current decade. It's not as easy now as it once was, though, due to the fractured and fractious, not to mention segregated and segmented, music business today...it seems like there are more and more new bands popping up every day, none of which last very long and a good 3/4 or more of them, when I hear them, remind me of other groups that I'm well familiar with and are better by comparison. Whatever this blog becomes, I don't want it to be an exercise in nostalgia, so there will be looks at releases from current musicians.

Whew! I know, that was long and winding but take heart- we're near the end. Anyway, despite my lifelong preoccupation, I never really went anywhere with it- I took only the minimum college English and music courses, and only one Journalism class. I remained a listener only- until I started blogging. I started my first blog to write about stuff I liked, be it film, music, TV, sports or comic books...and indeed spent a lot of time writing about all of them until the birth of the Comics Blogosphere led me to narrow the focus a bit in favor of comics above the others. I have never really considered myself a music critic per se, just an amateur who has absorbed enough Robert Christgau (the Dean, and probably my biggest influence), Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Billy Altman, Lester Bangs and others to be able to regurgitate a reasonably coherent simalcrum.  And that's what I'm going to do here. This is going to be the music blog that I never thought I had the sand to write. I don't plan on doing a lot of current events-type posts, or interviews, or anything like that- it's just going to be my opinions and observations on albums picked at random from my collection. I'm not saying that I will provide anything you can't get in far more polished and thorough places on the Web, but hopefully I'll be able to at least hold your attention and get across what I think about the subject at hand.

I hope you'll all dig it. Look for the first one in the next few days, with any luck. And no, the one I'm holding at left isn't it, although I'd like to get to that one someday.