Various - Rewind! 4
Various - Destination Lounge: San Francisco

And because of stuff like this i'm gunna hold off from postin' more files until i have it setup a little different.

Been a busy week and I almost forgot ... Oscar nominations are out.

I still haven't seen a couple of the big ones like Sideways and Million Dollar Baby, but this looks to be a pretty tough year. Lots of excellent films to choose from, unlike some other years :p

"Widsom is aquired by experience, not just by age."

Originally uploaded by geezer87.

so here's one of a handful of pics from the first couple days of my figure drawing class. I'll try and take better quality photos next time.
there's more to see in the gallery if you're interested.

Here's a fairly simple bit of code that I was suprised did not come up so quickly when I tried to search for it recently ...

So the idea is that you want to perform some level of processing/logic before allowing someone access to a download. You don't want to do the logic, then redirect them to the download, because a smart user could potentially discover the url directly to the download and bypass the logic. So instead, you serve up the file directly from your perl script in this case. Here's how ...

my $q = new CGI();

# perform any logic you need to do

use constant BUFFER_SIZE => 4_096;
my $buffer = "";

print $q->header(-type=>'application/download',-attachment=>'[filename for download]');

binmode STDOUT;

local *FILE;
open FILE, "[path to the real file]" or die "Cannot open file: $!";
while ( read( FILE, $buffer, BUFFER_SIZE ) ) {
    print $buffer;
}

close FILE;

to be more thorough you would set some other http headers, like the content length, etc.

Originally uploaded by geezer87.

As part of my effort to work on my drawing skills a bit more I'm planning on doing a simple still life once a week or so. Here's the first one.

Finally something new to listen to ... it's been a while.

Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place
Vanessa Daou - Make You Love
Daddy G - DJ Kicks
Kings of Convenience - Quiet Is The New Loud
Massive Attack - Danny the Dog OST
Various - Paris Under a Groove
Four Tet - Rounds

Lots of variety here so I'll just throw out a couple tracks for right now and keep adding. So far I am really digging the Ulrish Schnauss and Paris Under a Groove.

Ulrich Schnauss - On My Own  |  Website  |  Buy

St. Germain - Prelusion (Paris Under a Groove)  |  Newhouse Records  |  Buy

As mentioned in a Slashdot article this morning, the record industry is now trying to predict hit songs using software.

I think this is the ultimate example of why *pop*ular music is such junk these days. To think that you need a computer to tell you when a song is good or not is so totally ridiculous it's hilarious.

It's almost as if they shouldn't actually call it music anymore because it's only purpose nowadays is entertainment (read $$$). Anyone who thinks that Britney Spears (or any other pop icon example you prefer) is a musician is an idiot, she is an entertainer, and a good one i'll admit, but she is no musician.

Ick. Had a bit of the flu this weekend and it was not fun. The thing I hate so much about the flu is that when I get it I always get really sore all over my back and neck and it's just so damn uncomfortable. bleh. I'm glad it's over now, but I still have a lingering cough to deal with :(

It's 3 days later now and I am still feeling the vibe, that's how intense it was. 4 days of pure art frenzy ... learning, sharing, enjoying ... ahhh.

I'm not sure why, but I somehow didn't expect nearly as much from this workshop and even after the first day I was totally blown away at the level of creativity that was all around me. The whole event was too great to put in to words and I can't wait 'til the next one. In the meantime I gotta hit the books (sketchbooks that is) and work on seriously improving my skills.

As soon as I get my scanner back I'll make my sketchbook available online.

Oh, and if you are ever in the mood for some good artwork ... check out conceptart.org

it took about 3 weeks, but i finally got my flickr api key. the new gallery section will work now without me having to change the key every day.

"The constructive use of riches is better than their possession."

Seems like firefox extensions are multiplying like rabbits these days. Here's a couple new ones I just added today that are convenient if you use gmail or like to lookup words while you browse.

Dictionary Search - lets you simply highlight a word then right click and select "search dictionary". in true form, when you do this is opens a new tab in the background which searches whatever site you decide.

Gmail Notifier - this handy extension shows a little box at the bottom of the browser indicating how many new emails you have in your gmail account. this is very handy for me since i usually have a tab open to gmail at all times and this way is much easier.

Auto Copy - this is a nice one for non-*nix folk who don't have this by default. with this extension, everything that you highlight in firefox goes directly to your clipboard, meaning you don't have to hit "ctrl+c" first. This is one of those pet peeves I have about windows, the whole ctrl+c, ctrl+v thing is so wack. *nix style copy and paste is about 100 times more efficient and useful, why can't they change it?

Originally uploaded by alleng4.

Ick! stuck in traffic :-(

You would not immediately think this is possible, but I have found out the hard way that it is true. I suppose that "over massage" may not be the best way to explain my experience, but oh well. The fact is that last wednesday after physical therapy i had a massage, and since it had been a month since my surgery and i was feeling good i asked the masseur to go a little harder. Well, maybe that wasn't a good idea. I felt normal on wednesday after the massage, so no big deal right?

Well, as thursday and friday passed I started to notice my knee feeling a little weird. Nothing painful, just a hint of laxity which gave enough of an unstable feeling to make me a little worried. I also noticed a slight throbbing or pulsing sensation mostly on the outside part of my knee. By saturday and sunday I was really worried that things didn't feel like they were getting better, and still come monday morning I was sure I would get to physical therapy and find out that I had somehow inadvertantly torn my replacement ACL.

I described this to the physical therapist as she examined my knee and I was figuring the worst. Luckily she told me that nothing was wrong with my knee and that it wasn't anything to worry about. After making it through the whole work out (some parts a little more shaky then they had been before) she told me that it was most likely that after the massage my muscles had relaxed a little too much. Combined with some decrease in swelling over the weekend and my still current lack of strength, the instability was simply a result of a sudden lack of tension (nothing too severe, just enough to make a difference).

So the moral is ... don't over massage when you've just had surgery and you aren't strong enough to make up for large decreases in tension.