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November 30, 2004

Goodbye, Ken

Ken Jennings is about to lose on Jeopardy! Here's what's going to happen:

Ken is smarter than everyone else. I don't mean that he knows more answers, but he knows how to play Jeopardy! better than anybody else. He's not perfect though. He gets a lot of ridiculous answers right, but he can come up with better, more logical guesses than most players when he doesn't know the answer. It's always a gamble when he has to do this. More often than not, this pays off (literally), but when you gamble, you eventually lose.

I think that Ken's going to miss a Daily Double or two. That won't kill him because he's smart about his wagers. If that doesn't happen, another player, who will have to be pretty smart in the first place, is going to aggressively bet on the Daily Doubles, which will get them close to or ahead of Ken.

It won't be over until Final Jeopardy, when I predict somebody will barely edge out Ken when they are within half of his dollar amount (more likely closer than that). Ken won't be able to keep himself safe if they have more than half of his amount.

One of two things will happen: 1. Ken won't bet enough to keep himself safe even if he gets it right or 2. He'll get it wrong.

I think the former is more likely, and one of the other players will bet it all, and come out with enough to beat Ken. I've been saying all along that that's all somebody needs to do if they're within half of his total. Only 21 minutes until I find out if I'm right. I'm putting my money on the kid.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

More half-assed feats of technology

Well I finally got something done today that I had been meaning to do for months. I finally successfully installed Gallery. Now, in addition to reading my pointless and poorly constructed ramblings, you'll be able to see my pointless and poorly constructed photography. It's really useless, but it's fun for me, and I know that "totally lame" generally passes for "oh my God, I wish I could do that" on the Internet.

Following the necessary instructions to put together a basic Web site is pretty much comparable to baking a cake. If you're so dumb that you you would burn down the house by putting on the frosting, then you should probably keep your distance from projects like this. If you're halfway literate and can follow simple written instructions, then you can probably handle installing Gallery. That doesn't go very far in explaining why I managed to mess things up quite so royally in previous attempts, but there are sometimes circumstances beyond your control, like a faulty oven in the aforementioned cake-baking analogy.

I do take some solace in the fact that I did manage to get Gallery working on the first try, the first time I tried installing it. You can check out the results of that little experiment on Danielle's site.

I had some problems with this attempt, but I safely place half the blame on CuteFTP, which I used to upload the files during my lunch at work today. Some of the files for Gallery ended up in the wrong directory. The other half of the problems come from old configuration files from a previous attempt to install the software. They were pointing to a directory on my old domain. Everything took about ten minutes to fix, so I wasn't terribly upset. In all fairness, following the instructions will only get you so far sometimes. Even if you do follow everything, there can still be problems.

Remember the cake? Suppose you get that caked all done and it looks good enough to bury your face in, but when you do, it tastes like bad fish. Obviously there's a problem, but fixing it won't be easy. That's sort of how I feel with some of the problems I'm having right now. It's installed, but some things, like creating a gallery from an existing folder of images, just won't work. When I try to do it, I get a bunch of php errors that don't make much sense. I can still use the form interface to upload photos, but I'd rather use FTP when I can. It's just one more thing on my list.

Gallery could definitely be better about letting you fix stuff during the setup process. Every time there was an error when I tried to submit the changes I made to the configuration, I was stuck starting from scratch, hoping no new errors would appear when I was finished. It wasn't a huge problem in the end. Like I said, halfway literate is all it takes.

If you try setting up Gallery for your own site, you'll probably agree with me that the configuration pages could use some serious work. I find that I have the same gripes about a lot of open source stuff. Some programs, like Adium, could not be more polished. I'm always sort of surprised that a bunch of programmers working together with no budget can put together something so nice. Others, like FileZilla, are an absolute mess. The interface is absolutely horrible. How bad? Bad enough for me to voluntarily continue to use CuteFTP over it at work. That's pretty bad. Gallery falls somewhere in the middle. The configuration pages are a maze, but once you get past the initial setup, things seem to run pretty smoothly. So far, I have no major complaints about the interface of the actual software, and I love to complain. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that version 2.0, which isn't too far off, will add some of that Adium-style polish to Gallery.

So far, so good with the installation. The software seems powerful; at least as powerful as Movable Type for what it does. I have yet to see how customizable it is, however. Creating a gallery using the default template is simple enough, but I'd eventually like to make one using custom styles. The default templates generate HTML 4.01, which is pretty weak in this day and age. I want to get something together that's a little nicer to look at both on the outside and under the hood.

I plan on using Gallery for this site and Funk 'n' Gumbo as well. It'll be mostly for showing pictures of drunks to the drunks in the pictures for both sites. The main difference being that the drunks on my site will be friends of mine while the drunks on Funk 'n' Gumbo's site will be people at the shows. Another difference is that my drunks are considerably better looking, and that's not saying much.

I know I'll get a disappointed look from Colin for not jumping right into Flickr, but this suits my purposes. I do intend to dig deeper into Flickr in the future, but I'd like to get things taken care of quickly here and then maybe look at learning about some other options. Gallery is open source, so I get that initial warm and fuzzy feeling for using it, but time will tell if it'll wear off. If it does, Flickr or something else may be the way to go.

Before I forget, here's my photo gallery. You can also find a link to it in the top navigation menu. Enjoy!

Posted by Chris Coleman at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2004

Scratch one more

So I tried to get creative and set up Kung-Tunes to list my current iTunes track. I don't know what the deal is, but it was having some issues. The program itself was running extremely slowly on my computer and it was sending the updated files to the site with errors. At one point, it said the current track was H�i�t�s�v�i�l�l�e� �U�K by AC/DC, when I was listening to Hitsville U.K. by The Clash. That was my cue to dump it for now.

I'll give Kung-Tunes another shot when everything else is squared up. If I can't figure out what was causing the problems, I'll try looking for another solution. In the meantime, suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

Remember me

I can add one item to the list of things to do for the site redesign and then scratch it and another.

I didn't manage to get anything done over Thanksgiving, but if you read below, you'll see that I was obviously preoccupied. Besides, the reason I bought a new computer was because I could never get any work done on my PowerBook, and that's all I had to work with for five days.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 06:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2004

Some stuff

Thanksgiving. What a fun time. I spent most of it giving thanks for cheap beer in Forest City. I have decided that if I had the money, I would buy Maxey's. I have also decided that if I had the money, I would pay off my credit cards. I hate you Bank One. I hope you burn in the hottest part of credit card hell. MBNA, you're next.

Best Buy card, you're only slightly less of a filthy usurer. It is my solemn vow to pay that card off and then use it every month, but pay it off before I get hit with finance charges. That'll show those assholes who's boss.

I also gave thanks for violent video games. Because I went on so many bloody rampages, I am now officially a hitman with many different guns, all of which can be found at any corner Ammu-Nation store in the state of San Andreas. My skill on a motorcycle is second to none. I have zero percent body fat and both women and men on the street comment on my bodybuilder's physique. I drive fast cars and own several properties.

I'll give up on life entirely as soon as Rockstar finds a way for me to buy Maxey's in a video game. I'm probably not going to hold my breath for Grand Theft Auto: Keystone.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 11:49 PM | Comments (2)

November 22, 2004

New design

Happy days are here again; the redesign is up and running. Sort of.

It's almost finished, I swear. Still left to do:

I plan to get to the first few things on the list before the end of the week. Once that's set up, however, I have to redo the Funk 'n' Gumbo site before I get back to things over here. This redesign was basically a test run to see how much work that will take. That's going to be a little bit more complicated, but the XHTML is finished for the most part, and it's just a matter of creating a new style sheet and putting the Movable Type code where it belongs.

Should be fun times.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 08:54 PM | Comments (5)

November 20, 2004

This is a test.

This is a test. I want to see what happens when I ping my own site.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 11:01 PM | Comments (3)

Get your science face on

Getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk is all well and good. Getting drunk for science benefits everyone.

These guys are absolutely brilliant: Practical Applications of the Philosopher's stone. For drunks.

In case you're too lazy to read it, they took a bottle of Vlad and ran it through a Brita a few times. Surprisingly enough, it eventually started to taste good.

I'm fairly familiar with good vodka, which makes me even more anxious to try this little experiment. I've thought of running all kinds of things through a Brita just to see what would happen (would orange juice become water?). The stupidity of what I've actually wondered about shows you how little thought I've actually put into it.


I've already got the Brita pitcher -- with a fairly new filter, no less, as well as dirty glasses. Now I just need to get 1. the Vlad, 2. a science funnel, 3. science crackers, and 4. a new science pole.

To paraphrase those brave scienticians: If this doesn't kill me, it will certainly kill innocent bystanders.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 01:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 19, 2004

Comments

Comments are now turned on. Let the spam begin!

Edit: Comments are now closed!

Posted by Chris Coleman at 05:43 AM | Comments (4)

November 18, 2004

This'll shut you up

It will shut a great many of you up to hear that I am working on a design for this site. It's going to be quite possibly my greatest work yet. Also, I promise to update on a slightly more regular basis. Oh, and maybe I'll get comments working.

Give me a few days...

Posted by Chris Coleman at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2004

More on the shadiness

Keith Olbermann smells it too.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6368819/#041107a

The stuff that went down in Ohio and Florida with the optical-scan machines is ridiculous. If this doesn't get investigated, I swear it's never even going to be worth it to vote again. Why can't everyone agree on having an open and fair election?

Posted by Chris Coleman at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2004

So you wanna be president?

I get the feeling that after this election, no senator of any party can run for president anytime soon. Bush'c campaign banked on the average idiot's ignorance of how legislative process works, and won.

Ludicrous Example:

A bill is proposed that would help turn around and fund under-performing public schools. Everybody loves it. Senator Smith loves it.

A rider is attached to provide funding for daycare for the young children of working parents, to be provided by NAMBLA.

Scenario 1: Senator Smith knows those schools need the money, so he votes for it.

Scenario 2: Senator Smith doesn't want child molesters near children, so he votes against it.

Outcome 1: Opponents say that "Senator Smith voted to make sure that your children are taught by child molesters! He hates America!"

Outcome 2: Opponents say "Senator Smith voted against education funding! He hates America!"

Outcome 3: Senator Smith knows this is a loaded issue and begrudgingly abstains. Opponents say "Senator Smith didn't even bother to show up to vote for education funding," or "Senator Smith didn't show up to vote against entrusting children to boy-hungry pedophiles!"

2008 should be fun.

Posted by Chris Coleman at 05:19 AM | Comments (0)