Technology, politics and the rest

This wordpress theme doesn’t seem to list the tags for a given post anywhere. I guess I’ll need to dig into the theme source to change that, since I’ve just started tagging my posts. Maybe I’ll look into some other theme changes while I’m in there. There are a couple of broken navigation links in the theme. Any other suggestions?

For a while, I’d been having a problem where firefox would beach ball (aka hang) a lot on my mac. It wouldn’t be hitting the CPU, which seemed quite confusing. This behavior was much more pronounced when I was on a high-latency connection, like the ones on the shuttles to/from work. Sometimes, the problem wouldn’t happen at all.

Last night I finally decided to look into this, and found this bug: if you’re using a proxy configuration from a PAC URL, the browser hangs when it resolves DNS queries (it’s the result of some apple weirdness). So, my workaround is to not use the PAC file whenever possible (I only need it a few times a day). I guess this is only a workaround in a certain sense, but whatever. Since I made the change, I haven’t had any beach balls.

I’ve installed the switchproxy extension to make switching the proxy on and off really easy.

This morning’s song is All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem from their 2007 album “Sound of Silver”. I’ve been listening to it a lot in the last week for some reason. It’s really good music for walking or jogging because of the steady repetition. It’s one of my favorite songs of last year.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDRLW748j68)

There’s a music video for this on youtube, but that’s a shorter version and the video is not enjoyable anyway.

There’s a cover by Franz Ferdinand that I didn’t like quite as much:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tagO7EL6siQ)

So, I joined Twitter mostly on a whim a while ago, not expecting to really use it for anything, but I find that the more I use it, the more I enjoy that form of communication. I wish more of my friends were on there (hint!).

My profile page is here.

Dear Everyone,
Stop telling me how great the Batman movie was. I get it. Everyone already knows it. I won’t have a chance to see it for another week, and you aren’t making this wait any easier.
Kind regards,
Matt

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Awesome.

Inserting extra quotes like that is a practice I’ve never understood. Why do so many people do this?

A while ago, I mentioned that I was moving to San Francisco at some point. Well, that point was last Sunday. Girts, John and Chris helped with the move, which made it relatively easy. As with just about anyone who moves, I found that I owned more things than I realized. I need to control that a bit better.

Anyway, things have been pretty good so far. It’s rather cold out, especially since I’m not here during the day. I was in a jacket and jeans and shivering on my way home tonight (partly because of wind). The commute isn’t difficult, but it’s time-consuming. Lately I’ve been leaving the apartment at 7:30 (AM!) and getting to work a little after 9. I’ve been getting home after 9pm, which has made for some rather long days. I’ll probably change this up sometime, but I haven’t quite decided which way.

The shuttle is a pretty good deal, though. I do a lot of my feed reading, emailing, video watching, etc on there. These are things I used to do at home in the morning and evening, so in reality this schedule isn’t all that different.

I’ll hope to explore the area a bit more this weekend and maybe do some photo walking and/or urban hiking, so I’ll post an update then.

… but I have fixed grammar in several signs at work.

(photo from jfhatesmustard on flickr)

Here are some things from the internet that I’ve found interesting or amusing…

Results from the Google query “biggest regret”:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_IrqTbpTeA)
Reminds me of PostSecret a bit.

Demolishing a building floor-by-floor:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwf9LoS9Xt8)

Cornstarch + water + a huge subwoofer… I thought this was fake at first, but it’s really cool:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9jcA4decA, via)

A rendering of Starry Night in Second Life.. it’s oddly mesmerizing and enjoyable to watch:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVDVggLqsA, via)

A really clever video of “stop-motion spaghetti”:

(http://view.break.com/534274, via)

More later..

I’ve had this song in my head since hearing it at dinner last week:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=602F1Db-uLY)

Not my usual fare, but it’s pretty catchy.