Rounding out the 3 day movie hat trick was Shaun of the Dead. I always hate to repeat myself, but once again this film fit nicely into my state of mind at the time and provided some much needed simple entertainment and comic relief. To be totally honest, after all the rave reviews I expected this film to be even funnier. It certainly has some really funny moments, but I was suprised at the number of serious and dramatic moments where they really were not trying for comedy. Regardless, it's entertaining and worth a watch.

Friday night I saw The Motorcycle Diaries which really matched up with the bit of depression I was feeling after getting the report about my torn acl. This film does a wonderful job of staying focused and not trying to be more than it needed to be ... 2 friends travelling accross a continent just for the experience. This film also strikes a chord with me because I consider myself a traveller, and so any film about the journey and discovery involved in travelling just gets me excited. I really shouldn't say too much about this film though, it's one of those "just go see it" type of films.

Finally saw this last thursday with a couple friends. The funny thing was that neither of my friends were really fans of anime and they both really liked the film, while I have been a huge anime fan for years and felt that the film was just ok. My 2 gripes with this sequel is that 1, it was a bit slow for me and 2, i think some of the 3D animation was over used.

Both of my fellow viewers felt the exact opposite, that the pace was fine, and that the visuals were totally amazing. And while I do agree that the animation was quite amazing, I guess I just prefer less of that polished 3D animation feel. Anways, it was a good watch despite my crits.

Just can't seem to get enough Miguel Migs stuff these days. Here's his latest release, a nice 2 disc compilation.

Miguel Migs - 24th St. Sounds

The first cd is a mix much like you would expect on a compilation like this. The second cd then features a good selection of NRK works from 2000-2004 ... also very good. Not as unique as the stuff Miguel produces himself on his Naked Music label, but still well wortht the purchase.

So one little quirky feature that I've wanted to add to the website is a way to dump the contents of my iTunesDB file somwhere and make it browsable. Ultimately it seems like a fun thing to do to see what songs/playlists people have on their ipod, plus see how people rate their music.

After poking around a little I was disappointed to find that nobody had really written just a basic iTunesDB library package in java just for reading/writing the itunesdb format. There are a few applications that seem to be able to do it, but nobody has actually just packaged things as a simply library, so I decided to start such a library.

It's a bit crude right now, but it works. I'm also not too convinced that it handles all the options available in the current iTunesDB file properly, but that can be adjusted as time goes on. For now, here it is ...

libitunesdb.jar | source code | javadoc

This was done using these iTunesDB format specs.

There is still quite a bit of stuff left to do, mainly implementing the ability to write back to the file. If I can i'll put it up on sourceforge sometime and hopefully keep tweaking it a little here and there to keep it up to date with the format specs.

3 new albums this week ...

Bent - Ariels
Flunk - Morning Star
Various - Park Hyatt Chicago: On the Seventh (King Britt)

I've been waiting for the new Flunk album ever since I discovered For Sleepyheads Only and it's a good follow up. I think I prefer more of the electronic sounds from the first album a little bit more, but Morning Star offers some nice downtempo accoustics. The Bent album is yummy and very different from their last album. So, now something to listen to ...

Flunk - On My Balcony  |  Home  |  Buy

Bent - You Are The Oscillator  |  Buy

"Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation."

So it seems that every where you go these days you hear about some new electronic social network which supposedly "everyone is on." Friendster is still the original, but it seems like there is a new one every week or two.

My sister recently joined thefacebook.com which attempts to network people together starting with their university connections. You start inside the network of people from your school but can add friends from anywhere. After browsing around a bit it seems like it's a new trend mostly populated by those still in school now, but it does offer some cool features like the ability to lookup/contact ppl via an sms messaging service.

About a month ago I found out about dodgeball.com which takes the network into your phone and uses proximity software coupled with SMS messaging to tell you where/when prospective friends are nearby. Basically what you do is create an account and add friends as usual, but the twist is that when you go out you are supposed to SMS the dodgeball servers where you go. In turn the dodgeball servers lookup all friends and friends-of-friends who are within a certain proximity, and it notifies them about your location. Pretty slick. The one catch is that it's only available in certain metropolitan areas at the moment, sorry suburban folk.

Both these options have their merits, but i am still yet to see any of these services really do what they promise. maybe i just don't have the personality for it though :|

For a little while now I've been contemplating the idea of posting actual mp3s here on the blog and really the only thing that has kept me from doing it is the *possible* legal ramifications. I seriously doubt anyone would have a problem with me throwing a few mp3s up on my site to try and promote good music and artists I enjoy, but who knows. Should it become a problem then I'll deal with it then, but for now ...

Federico Aubele - Postales from the album Gran Hotel Buenos Aires. Listen, then Buy.

"Now is the time to try something new."

So here's a new catagory for listing links to any random blog that I find interesting, amuzing, or in this case a bit freaky.

Die Puny Humans comes from writer Warren Ellis who has written some of my favorite comics/graphic novels including Transmetropolitan. Check out the books, check out the blog.

ended up seeing this with my roommate last night and thinking back i don't really know how i feel about it. It was an incredibly slow and boring film for the most part, but then at the films climax you are actually thrown into a bit of a whirlwind. I'll elaborate for a sentance or two.

The whole film is about a guy on the road back from the east coast to L.A. and all you really know about him is that he is a very timid and quiet person who is undergoing some kind of psychological struggle related to a girl named Daisy. When he is finally back in L.A. Daisy shows up for 1 real scene and all is revealed. The film is very slow and would bore most people right out of the theater, yet it does have that quiet intrigue that will benefit the patient viewer who can wait 'til the films climax. I guess I would say that this is the type of film that is good to see, but not to sit through. hmmm.

A week ago today I was on my way back from Munich, and after being sick this week, dealing with my busted leg, and just the normal stuff associated with returning from vacation, I am just now finding the time to post something about the trip here.

It was a truly amazing trip in countless ways. Thanks *so* much to my new friend Michael Loebmann for hosting me at your house for a couple nights ... hopefully I can find a way to repay you some day. Cheers and godspeed to all the different travellers I met during my stay, it is always a pleasure and may we meet again some day.

As for photos, well, all I can say is that I am a pretty lame photographer. I think my biggest problem is that I consider it a hassle to stop and take out my camera to use it as well as carry it around all the time. Despite that I did manage a few photos here and there which are in my Munich Photo Album.

It really is my greatest joy to travel. Read on for more details if you like.

!!--

Okay, so here's some more details about the trip.

Itinerary:

Sep.23 - Depart OAK @ 8:30am
Sep.24 - Arrive MUNCHEN @ 9:00am
Sep.24-25 - Home stay with Michael ... you're the best!
Sep.26-30 - Oktoberfest ... yes, I went every day ;)
Oct.01-02 - Sun World Cup 2004
Oct.03 - Depart MUNCHEN @ 11:00am ... Arrive OAK @ 8:30pm

Oktoberfest stats:
[ 1 beer = 1 liter (1 liter ~ 2.1 pints) ]

# beers drank ~ 22 (roughly 6 gallons or 45 pints)
# beers drank in 1 day ~ 7
biggest night - Sep.29, Sep.30 (too close to tell)
# mornings with pounding headache - 2
# of days off from drinking - 1 (ah c'mon, it was for the tournament)
latest night ~ 4am

*Note that stats represent 6 days starting on Sep.27 and all quantities are conservative estimations compiled days after the fact.

Summary of Events:

Okay, so the trip started off with a rather reasonable flight from CA to MUN where I arrived on a Friday morning. From there I proceeded to the Sun Munich office to meet Michael, hang out a bit and have lunch, and eventually catch a ride back to his place. I was pretty tired after the flight, but managed to muster enough energy to go into the city for a bit and walk around.

Saturday and Sunday were my big tourist days. I had heard that the Oktoberfest is overcrowded on weekends and so I figured I would lay low and do the touristy stuff over the weekend instead. So I did all the main museums, churches, and walking tours over my first weekend.

Monday was my last real touristy day where I spent all day doing more touring, and then that night began my Oktoberfest. So, beginning monday night and through the week my level of intoxication could basically be viewed as a sin graph with various levels of amplitude peaking on Wed & Thurs nights.

Tuesday was a very cool day because I joined the Sun Munich office at Oktoberfest for a number of hours when they had a reservation, then left the Oktoberfest to go immediately to the FC Bayern Munich vs. Ajax Amsterdam Champions League game.

Wednesday I don't really remember what happened, but I know that I met a group of people at the hostel next door and spent the night with them & many, many beers.

Thursday was my longest day at Oktoberfest, starting at 2:00, where I went with Markus and Axel. It was a bit tough to get started that day, but it was well worth it. To make the day even more classic we ended up at a really killer bar after the festival where I met a couple of girls who were excellent dancers, very fun.

Friday I rested for the tournament, so no beer, then on Saturday I messed up my knee in the first game :( Then as usual everyone from the tournament went out together on Saturday night and had a great time, luckily it wasn't too late of a night.

Sunday I was up early and on my way to the airport. Then to make things interesting I realized about half way through my flight home that my whole leg was swollen and gross and had to get a bunch of assistance from that point on to get my leg elevated. It was a pretty shitty day.

So that's the summary. I'll leave all the really good details in my head where they belong ;)

Just yesterday I heard about the new Google SMS Service which allows people to send google sms messages using their cell phone and get responses about all kinds of useful stuff. So far the service is supposed to include the ability to lookup local buisness listings, phone book entries, froogle price quotes, dictionary definitions, and calculator.

Note though, I've been trying to use it all last night and this morning and I can't seem to get a response. Dunno why, but the thought of such a service is very intriguing.

Over the course of the day I have been creating quicksearches from sites that i know i search periodically ... here's a few more which i find pretty handy.

Amazon.com/CDNow CD search
url: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=music&field-keywords=%s&store-name=music/002-3744742-0628811
keyword: cd

Amazon.com DVD search
url: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=dvd&field-keywords=%s&store-name=dvd/002-3744742-0628811
keyword: dvd

Internet Movie Database
url: http://www.imdb.com/find?tt=on;nm=on;mx=20;q=%s
keyword: imdb

Tv Tome (info about tv shows)
url: http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/Search?searchType=all&searchString=%s
keyword: tv

enjoy.

I was playing around a bit with my browser bookmarks tidying them up and such, when i came accross the Quicksearch feature which I had never really investigated before. This is specific to firefox or mozilla, which you should be using already anyways ;)

So here's how it works. There is a folder under bookmarks called "Quick Searches" which holds bookmarks to sites such as google or anywhere else that does searches and allows you to access these searches easily from your browser address bar. All you have to do is find the actual search page for that site and bookmark it, then just change the part of the url that contains your search parameter to "%s", and finally define a keyword which triggers this quicksearch.

Here's an example. I am constantly using dictionary.com as a resource to lookup words that I either don't know the meaning of, or have trouble spelling. So, to setup a quicksearch for dictionary.com I simply went to the site and did a search. Once the results came back I bookmarked the page into the "Quick Searches" folder, then went to edit that bookmark. I first substituted "%s" for my search term, and now the url stored in the bookmark looks like this "http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s". The keyword that i decided on is "dict" and that's it, save and you're done. So from now on at any time I can go to my browser address bar and type "dict <some word>" and it will automatically go and search dictionary.com for the word i entered. very cool!

Here's an email I just wrote to Kinkysweet records ...

I'm so pissed off right now I don't even know where to begin. I just happend to buy a couple cds that came from kinkysweet records and I am appalled at the DRM you have embedded in these cds. I really don't understand why you would try and make things harder on the people who actually buy your cds.

I buy music every week and all i want to do is take the new cds that i purchased in full and rip them to mp3s for use on my portable music players, but you guys have to make that impossible. well fuck you guys. i refuse to have you decide how i will use the music i purchase.

first off, you will never stop music pirates with DRM ... ever. second, what good is DRM if it drives away your valid customers? gawd ... get a clue.

sincerely,
Allen Gilliland a.k.a someone who will never buy from Kinkysweet ever again.

"Being alone and being lonely are two different things."

well, let's hope that 3 is my lucky number, cuz saturday was the 3rd time that I injured/re-injured my knee and right about now it looks like a big ugly water balloon. It really sucked because in the back of my mind I knew that my knee wasn't fully recovered and ready to play, but at the time the team was short on players and I had made the trip all the way to Munich in order to play, so I was going to give it a shot. 10 minutes in ... ughh.

it's sad irony how we often put ourselves in situations where we just could not make the decision we know we ought to make. oh well, that's just being human i guess.

as for me ... at least 4 more months on the bench. sigh.