the simple things

March 17, 2004 by Eric Richardson

It's funny, now that I've got support for Markdown syntax, the thing I'm most excited about is now I'll actually have my paragraphs wrapped in p tags instead of via my ugly excuse for turning line breaks into
tags. The simple things...

Kathy and I just picked her parents up at Union Station. They rode the train out here from Chicago, a trip that started Wednesday. They enjoyed it. After dropping their luggage in the car we walked across to Olvera St and ate at La Golondrina Cafe. I had carne asada tacos and enjoyed them.

It's way too nice to be inside, but that's where I am. You can't have everything, I guess.

ahh... formatting made simple

March 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I'm putting this post in place of the test post I had because I'm not testing any more... The new code's now in place.

Yesterday Brian Tol was showing me the new version of http://wiremine.org, running on his new bliki system. I still don't think I quite understand exactly what he's getting at, but he's a smart guy so I'm just goign to wait and see what happens. What I did think was cool, though, was the wikiformatting stuff he's using.

That got me thinking, and today I was talking about formatting stuffs with Shmuel. He mentioned Markdown, which struck me as cooler and more natural than the other things I was looking at. Tonight I took the markdown code, made it into a module, and added support for it into eThreads. Now I can get all the formatting I want through a nice simple syntax. Very cool.

I need to think harder about how to integrate format hooks into the code better, but it's up and running after I only heard about the thing this afternoon, so I really can't complain that much.

the always helpful error message

March 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I just got this beauty from Perl:

Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at eThreads/core.pm line 226.

It fails trying to require a module. "Unknown error" really helps out your debugging, now doesn't it?

hazy days

March 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I woke up today and the LA haze was still in full effect. Even driving through it downtown was blurry. But then I emerged into Pasadena, and the air was clear. I'm still not used to LA's crazy differences in weather that depend solely on which side of the hills you're on. Yesterday it was 15 degrees warmer leaving work than it was twenty minutes later riding through downtown. It makes sense if you look at the air flow and the hills and all that, but it's still kind of weird to me.

Sunday was really nice, even downtown. Kathy and I took the DASH up Fig and walked around for a bit. We at lunch at the Angelique Cafe, wedged in the split of Spring and Main. It's only open for breakfast and lunch (unless you eat dinner before 4, I guess), but it's cheap, good, and the sandwich I got had a lot of turkey on it. Kathy made note of authentic French touches, I just liked the food.

long live the clunkers

March 14, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The mouse on my desktop gave out the other day. I was sad to see it go. Originally it came with an SGI Indy in 1994 or 1995, so it had served its time well. My keyboard is still one of the old Indy clunkers, and aside for an Insert keycap that I broke off somehow, it's still the only keyboard I'd want. You hear of people having Model M obsessions, but I think this thing holds its own. If it ever dies I've got another sitting at home ready to replace it.

tense... and release

March 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

It's a little after midnight, and I'm on campus. In sixteen hours I have a paper due. In thirteen hours I have to be ready to present code on a conference call for a contract job I'm doing. In a little over nine hours I'm supposed to go in and get my stitches out. And right now, sitting here, I don't want to do any of it.

It's amazing how quiet it is. There's a fountain nearby, and I hear that. There's a low rumble that might be from air-conditioning in a building somewhere. Occasionally I can hear a car, far away from here. Other than that, nothing. The other night we could hear birds chirping outside our apartment. It was one in the morning. No birds here, though.

Freshman year I could write all night. I would start papers after midnight and turn them in the next morning. Then I went home for the summer, came back, and couldn't be productive past two. I don't know what changed. Now I write in the day, but not this time. I wonder if I can even do it.

And then I take a look at the syllabus and wander to the section on late papers. What do I see? An automatic five day extension, that's what. Amazing. I'll sleep tonight after all.

and it's back

March 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Standing on my balcony today you can barely see downtown.

Downtown is about 2 miles away from here, so that's something that gives you a little pause. Just a few days ago I could see the mountains, which are probably at least 60 miles away. That's quite a swing. Downtown and the Hollywood sign are our apartment air quality guage. Can't see the Hollywood sign, but downtown's pretty clear? That's a moderate air quality day. Both looking good? That's good air quality. But downtown's disappearing? Uggh.

they're coming for you

March 10, 2004 by Eric Richardson

In what was probably just a stroke of programming luck, Howard Stern's movie Private Parts was on Cinemax last night. I watched the last two-thirds or so of it and was struck by how topical it seemed. As you should know by now, Howard's in some hot water, as usual, but this time it looks like it could be the last straw. BuzzMachine (via blogging.la) has a good recap of the situation, and takes the controversy to its logical frightening extension:

But here's the doozie, folks: By a one-vote margin, the committee defeated an attempt to extend FCC censorship to cable and satellite.

Listen: The First Amendment should prohibit what the FCC already does to TV and radio but, of course, its regulation and censorship is kept in place by the flimsy tissue of the idea that these are the scarce "public airwaves." Well, cable and satellite are not public property; they are private property. If the government goes in to regulate and censor what happens there, then there is nothing stopping them from regulating and censoring books, music, concerts, comedy clubs... and the Internet.

My favorite radio station is KCRW. They've been in the news recently for their decision to fire Sandra Tsing Loh for profanity in a recorded broadcast (ummm... if you ran a radio station, wouldn't you have someone listen to pre-recorded segments before airing them?). I'm not going to get into here whether or not that was a justifiable move. But how long will it be before voices like KCRW realize that their radio license isn't that important? KCRW broadcasts three 24-hour Internet streams: simulcast, all music, and all news. They're popular enough online that they've taken to sponsoring concerts all the way across the country in New York City, solely on the strength of their online listening audience. How long before that audience is all that matters? How long before the FCC clamp-down gets so obnoxious that such a move is the only one that allows you to keep your principles?

It's going to get ugly, but it's going to get interesting.

mystery solved

March 09, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Yesterday I took a picture of a building getting demolished at the corner of Vermont and Washington. I had wondered for a while what was going in there, but today I finally figured it out. After wasting time on google for a while, finding nothing, I eventually made my way over to the City of Los Angeles site. There I used the very cool Automated Zoning Information System to take a look at information for the plots around there. Hidden deep in there was the info I was looking for... The plot will be the site of Central LA Area New HS #2.

I really should have expected that. LAUSD is building everywhere. It'll be interesting to see the site develop over the next two years and see how they fit a school into the surrounding neighborhood.

I guess the real moral of the story is that there's a lot of cool stuff on the LA site.

wifi: Casey's Downtown

March 09, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The official opening is April 8, but I just noticed in this downtown news article that the revamped Casey's Irish Bar & Grille will have wifi. It sounds like a very cool place. It's in the 600 block of Grand, so only a few blocks west of where I'm looking to hang my hat starting this summer. Definitely somewhere I'll be checking out.

from the office of...

March 09, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Ping-pong (or "table tennis", if you prefer) was on ESPN when I woke up this morning.

Current conditions? 87 degrees. Humidity, 26 percent. A nice variable 6mph breeze. No disrespect to those of you in other climes -- 'cause that's your choice and all, and I respect that -- but, why? Saturday I was waterskiing and wakeboarding. Yesterday I spent the afternoon getting work done at the beach. Today I'm hanging out in the shade, sportin' the pulled down low baseball cap to keep my gash from scarring, and it's amazing. In the shade you get that magic temperature where you really just sort of forget that there's weather around you. It's not hot, it's not cold, it just is. Then you get a breeze, or a little burst of a/c from an opened door, and it reminds you that you haven't lost all feeling and it really just is that nice outside.

I do have a midterm today. I do have to figure out what classes I'm taking next semester before I have advisement tomorrow. But you know, it's a whole lot easier to not worry about those when it's this nice outside.

ok, so apparently...

March 08, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Apparently the lag is traffic to the webcam. The "streaming" version is actually a reloading jpg straight off the webcam.