I’m such a sporadic blogger.

So spring break is going really well, which is to say, I’m getting tons of sleep and a lot of relaxation. John Paul visited me on Sunday-Monday and we hung out, went caving, listened to some fatty DJs, and watched Unbreakable.  He showed me this video that was really awesome... it’s 10MB, so basically if you’ve got broadband it’s no problem, and if you don’t then it’s out of the question.  Anyway it’s called "Timber" by coldcut... it’s sort of a music video, but not really... so download it.

I rewrote this whole messageboard script from scratch, and wrote it "nicely" with functions and few globals.  It’s just about done, and will be online soon, though you might not even notice.  But on the backend it’s much nicer and handles messages in a much more logical way, allowing complete style-reformatting without having to modify the content itself.  Anyway now that this script is all nice, I’m thinking of offering it for download.

I finally got around to checking out some Norah Jones like I’d been meaning to, and I’m glad I did.  Her music is just so pretty.  It’s "jazz" which means modern jazz, which is nothing like Louis Armstrong / Duke Ellington jazz of yesteryear that I like so much.  Norah Jones isn’t that at all, but that’s a good thing.  And her music is beautiful.  Butterflies, Come Away With Me, and What Would I Do are my favorites so far.

I think there was more that I wanted to say, and it escapes me now.  Oh yes, the 22-foot-wingspan unmanned "drone" aircraft discovered by weapons inspectors in Iraq last weekend, and that Hans "the jellyfish" Blix tried to hide.  The one that could potentially deliver chemical and biological payloads.  Now it’s one thing for France and the rest of the Weasels to be anti-American.  But for the weapons inspectors themselves to be less-than-upfront about their findings is just blatantly biased and unacceptable.  If Saddam isn’t a threat, when why do we continue to "find" these weapons, and if "finding" these weapons really is progress then why is Blix trying to cover it up?

Going into J4 cave. Please send help if I don’t reply to this within 12 hours.

These editorial cartoons are pure genius. Go see them all right now.

Bill’s got a photo online, a photo of him flying a jet. FLYING A FREAKING JET.  That is so cool.

So I was chatting it up with a friend of mine, and he mentioned something about someone being arrested for wearing a peace shirt. So after a little digging, I came upon this little tidbit.

Lieberman (executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union) said another sign of the times was the arrest earlier this week of a lawyer at a public mall near Albany, New York. The lawyer was charged with trespassing after refusing to take off a "Give Peace A Chance" T-shirt he had just bought at the mall.

Personally, I am all for attacking our enemies, when they present a clear and present danger.  However, I don’t feel Iraq does that, unless you count them not exporting any oil to us as attacking us.  Aren’t we still after whats his name?  You know, that guy... that one responsible for 9/11?  What was his name again?  I haven’t heard it mentioned in forever....................

Ok, so 9:49 AM isn’t exactly the middle of the day, but when you’ve been up since 3 AM it sure feels that way.

So I did a little redesign of the oao site and I really like it. Compare the new theme to the old one and see what you think.  While you’re there, hit up the sounds/words section and listen to 2 tracks from their second EP, due out soon... they are really rocking.

So my man Sean just pointed me to a band called Evanescence.  They’re a techno-rockish band with a semi-retro feel, but then they have some pretty piano songs... and I like them.  The vocalist is female, and sounds like Tori Amos mixed with Sarah McLaughlan on some of the tracks.  My Immortal especially -- this song is amazing. [Update: peep the lyrics.]

And my friend Ben, who not only takes cool photos and cool photos but also listens to awesome music, recently introduced me to the movie Donnie Darko.  This movie was apparently in theaters for a couple weeks a while back, but I had never heard of it.  So Ben was like you gotta check this movie out, and I was like ok... and then I heard a review of it on NPR and they were saying how awesome it was, so I was like man, I really gotta see this!  So I did, and well, it was really really good.  It’s a deep and semi-confusing movie about such things as space-time, schizophrenia, and giant bunny rabbits, with choice quotes like "how did you feel being denied these hungry hungry hippos?"  Although it’s hilarious, it’s not a comedy, nor is it a silly/stupid type movie.  What I really love about it is that Donnie is real.  He’s not some sissy hollywood actor playing some cheesey role, he’s just a normal (albeit psychopathic) person.  And he’s so stinking cool.  Anyway it’s one of those movies you need to watch a few times to catch all the details and put it together, and I can’t wait to watch it again.  From a Christian perspective, it was a little heavy on the cursing, but not any worse than real life, and there’s no sex scenes or nudity or anything like that.  Rock!

Oh, and I said that Ben listens to awesome music... he got me into two bands in particular that are just amazing.  A Static Lullaby are like a mix between Thursday and Taking Back Sunday.  They are just so good.  The do the semi-punkish hardcore with emo singing and screaming in the back thing, and they do it beautifully, better than most stuff I’ve heard.  The second band is In Pieces.  This band is like a more raw, more emocore version of Thrice, and they are really really good.

Garrett over at LinuxArt just posted some photos from last fall that are very nice... they make me wish all this snow would go away... and I love snow!  This one is my favorite.

Finally, I made a new theme for my site too.  It’s a very plain, old-school-internet type theme and I rather like it.  It’s called retro, and you can select it by clicking the link in the very top left-hand corner of this page.

So the other night I was up pretty much all night. I was working on a VHDL project, and in order to draw the x-window display of the signals in this component, the server had to "enumerate" all its fonts into a cache file.  There are 2241 fonts on the server.  It took THREE HOURS for this ridiculous process.  It just sat there going

  1 . . . . . . . .
61 . . . . . . . . . .
121 . . . . . . .

all the way up to stinking 2241.

This started at 1 am.  The project itself took less than an hour.  But I had to wait 3 hours to even do it.

Argh.... so I watched a movie while it enumerated that nonsense.  I have to say that "Being John Malkovich" is easily, I mean, far and away, the weirdest movie there ever could be.  It was interesting though, I liked it.  It wasn’t action-packed or anything, but towards the middle/end when the real John Malkovich sneaks in to "JM, Inc." and starts freaking out... that part was awesome.  John Malkovich is such an awesome actor, he’s so powerful and angry, and I was scared.  But anyway, I mean the movie had Cameron Diaz and John Cusack in it, but they were both nearly unrecognizable... Cusack had long, ratty hair and a beard, and Diaz had long permed dark hair and just a dirty look to her skin.  Neither of them looked like themselves at all.  But the movie was incredibly original, the script is unlike any other I’ve ever seen, just the whole idea was strange and neat.  And there was a monkey in the movie, and I mean he played a semi-significant role, so you know it’s a good movie.