....who realizes that his or her power comes from a mandate by the people, and that it isn't the states business to speculate whether or not "rights come from God."

As far as I remember it, western liberty (such as it is) came about from the aristocracy fearing M. Guillotine. Meanwhile the agents of the Christian god at the time were more or less willing to go along with the state... so I don't want to hear about how my rights come from any god, given that whenever I hear from a religious leader today they tend to want to be taking rights away, not hand them out.

CNN.com - Bush: Pledge ruling 'out of step' with America - June 27, 2002

Bush said the ruling from a panel with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ignored the fact that the Declaration of Independence acknowledged "we receive our rights from God." He said the court's decision was proof of the need for "common-sense judges" who "understand we derive our rights from God."

Antares has released this r33t and l33t new thing called kantos 1.0 audio controlled synthesizer.

You feed it an audio signal and it reacts by spinning audio synthesis around your input, and you can choose whether or not to mix in the original signal or not.

The page linked has some interesting examples...I suggest em to any electronica wannabes like myself, just to make you want this thing more.

So I went to see Peter Singer at the White Dog Cafe last night.

I was pleasantly suprised by the talk, because I had gone into it thinking of him only as the author of Animal Libereration but not as an ethicist.

He has an interesting philosophy of ethics, which is based in the basic assumptions that pain and suffering are bad, and that an individual is responsible for both their actions and inactions. All of his ethical assertions seem to follow from this basic assumptions, and seem relatively reasonable when viewed from this perspective.

I was taken especially by the fact that he was almost wholly uninterested in the concept of "rights," mainly because while convenient in a discussion of a legal nature, they are not as supportable as an ethical framework.

The big suprise of the evening was a brigade of protesters in wheelchairs, whom I originally thought were protesting the White Dog Cafe's relatively wheelchair unfriendly layout (they do have an accessible entrance in the rear, however) but they just wanted us to know that Peter Singer was a nazi bioethicist and that they were not dead yet.

They were soaked, however.

If you haven't read the news about the runaway robot, maybe you should.

It's interesting that we make something with only the faintest glimmer of artificial intelligence, and it responds by trying to get the hell away from us, nicht?

Must...control....inner...12...year...old...nerd....

So, I got Neverwinter Nights. Is it everything I hoped and dreamed while verbally deriding it? No.

Is it good? Yeah, it is. I don't think it's quite the revolution story that most people seem to be slavishly deluding themselves with, but it is good. You can make DnD adventures yourself and play online with friends, and all of the rolling crap and rules accounting is more or less taken care of by the computer.

Of course, this completely obliterates the social aspect of rpgs, plus gets rid of most of the reading, which I don't really approve of, especially when rpgs are viewed as an activity for children (hey, people can say rpgs are mindless, but I knew the basics of feudal government and the difference between an oligarchy and a patriarchy when I was 10, because it was covered in the Dungeon Master's Guide).

Anyway, I'm working on a campaign with Matt, and I'm sure Mike will get involved shortly.

I'm gonna try to sell them on my old Sumer campaign.

Kat: "You are not as funny as you pretend to be."

Peter: "What?"

Kat: "In your blog. You misrepresented events to take credit for my joke. So you seem more funny."

Peter: "What are you talking about?"

Kat: "In the insurance joke. I said that I needed more content. I made the joke."

Peter: "Okay, I'll post a correction."

Kat: "This is how you trick me."

Peter: "What?"

Kat: "This is how you trick me in to saying more funny things, so you can put them in your blog."

So, Kat comes home tonight and tells me she looked here today. "You didn't really add much," shes says. Next she'll be sayingmy website doesn't have enough content.

What can I say? It was a boring day. I just felt all droopy at work, and then I went and picked up the dry cleaning and came home and tried to finish up the work for my crit tomorrow. Boring.

Scott and Janna got back from Michigan, I think. At least Scott started sending me emails...he wants me to review the lyrics of einstuerzende neubauten for some reason...all of them, when I get a chance. /shrug

I wonder what that's all about.

So my jalopy stalled out last night at 6:00 pm on my way home from work. I didn't even mention it last night because I was too bust taking my aggressions out on Kat. Thank goodness for AAA...

That's all. I think it's the fuel pump or something.

Like I have any idea.

Kat: "Put this powerstrip somewhere that's not my desk"

Peter: [puts the powerstrip where Willie, the cat sleeps]

Kat: "That is Willie's desk"

Peter: [puts the powerstrip on the edge of Kat's desk]

Kat: "That is my desk."

Peter: [puts the powerstrip where Willie, the cat sleeps]

Kat: "Somewhere that is neither my desk nor Willie's desk."

Peter: [waves the power strip at Kathy pantomiming a baby complaining]

Kat: "Why don't you just put it where you intended to put it?"

Peter: "I don't remember what I wanted it for...."

Kat: "You've been wanting one for six months! How can you not remember where you wanted to put it?"

Peter "I'm getting sick of your attitude."

Kat: "I'll tell you about being sick of attitudes..."

Peter: "I'll show you...I'm going to write in my blog about how I'm sick of your attitude."

--with a nod to Ben and Mena

I felt really terrible about that missing "L" in Miscellaneous, so I fixed it. Happy?

Yeah, I really don't know actually. I just installed it at the Instructional Support Center where I work. Todays been mostly about installing software and otherwise configuring my new work pc.

Photoshop 7 and Painter 7 are pretty much the coolest, and I got one of those Audigy EX sound cards, which came with a bunch of decent lite versions of software, including Fruity Loops which I thought was relatively righteous.

In case you were wondering, yes I know I spelled miscellaneous incorrectly. It's just a pain to fix, and I working on getting up the gumption to reexport the slice...which I realize will take all of 2 minutes.

The above paragraph should shed light on why at 30 I'm still trying to decide on what I want to do about graduate school.

Let's see.

Oh, apparently Neverwinter Nights came out today, which is pretty cool. I'm wondering if it will be another Everquest for me -- or another Heavy Metal FAKK 2000.

The above paragraph should also shed some light on why at 30 I'm still trying to decide on what I want to do about graduate school.

Ta ta for now.

Saw it. It was decent I guess...I liked how it sort of stuck to the Spiderman mythos or whatever (uncle ben, aunt may &c.), but the writing was fairly bad, especially any meaningful dialog between the characters, and certainly his beginning and ending narrations.

Kat and I had fun guffawing at it though, and as every one is aware the special effeccts were fantastic...I think probably the best human cgi animations I've seen. Harry becomes the Hobgoblin in the fourth movie, right? After James Franco is replaced by an even weaker James Dean wannabe in the seccond or third movie?

My bet is the next villain is none other than Harvey Keitel as the Rhino. Think about it...it would be decent. Or maybe Elton John as Dr. Octopus. Huey Lewis as the Sandman?

Got a new computer at work today to replace the now ancient PIII 500 that was regularly grinding to a halt on my desk. I got a Dell, dude. Unfortunately there was no speccial offer to punch the delldude in the head, or electric shock him or something.

I would pay money for that.

oh well, as Zebadee would say: "Time for bed."

...that the Death Star is now fully operational. Woot. I got the illovich.com domain working full steam, moveable type smooth and silky, I got a hyper-text editor to go with my hyperreal lifestyle and photoshop is like milk and honey over in my neck of the woods.
That really doesn't make any sense, but I just wanted to post something since I've been trying to get everything working for the last couple hours or something. This cgi/data driven webpage is--as Barbie might say when you pull her string-- "hard."

Oh great, now Kat's saying "bed. midnight. bed." over and over again.

Oh great, I forgot to watch Adult Swim again.

Oh great, I have to go to work tomorrow.

Great.

Ok, well. Today 5 of my cousins are graduating from high school, or there's a party or something. Tomorrow is Father's Day. Hoo! Luckily I don't feel too tense about my class, because if I did I would be FREAKING OUT. Hey, how is that class going, anyway? I have to remember to stop at Sears on my way to the party to see if they sell 1/16" aluminum wire.

Kathy can't go again, because of course she has two 50 page papers due on Monday, like she does every weekend.

Safety tip: Do not take 2 grad classes in the summer session in order to get through faster, It's just no fun if you also have to work full time. And she's taking a web design certificate program for the summer too, which is great because it makes sure she's got one more night where she is busy from 8 am til 10pm.

Why? Because I spent way too much time today working on this:

I'd let everyone who deosn't know me guess which one is me (which is no one reading this site, I'm sure), but I'll give you a hint:

Peter & Kathy

Stop Laughing!

By the way, this is the coolest thing, and how I made all the south parkish style characters:Planearium

Did you think I could draw? LOL.

So I just finished watching Pay It Forward on cable. I know most people who would watch it probably have already, but I just saw it, and that's why I'm talking about it now...because for me, it's new.

I guess I liked the movie, at least the premise. Except that I think in the end it's a creepily American movie of dubious goodwill and moral rectitude.

Here's what I mean. It starts out with this kid, wanting to do something that will change the world, so he comes up with the idea that you do something good (as in huge, life altering) for three people., and then tell them to "pay it forward" instead of paying you back...in other words, they do the same for three people.

Great, and without spoiling the movie for you, which is overdramatic and overly complicated in that way where it all somehow comes together for the last half hour, it ends up that he creates a "movement" that sweeps the nation without him even being aware of it.

Here's the problem. He ends up being famous for it, and when he is (inexplicably, ridiculously, implausibly, absurdly) stabbed to death at the end of the movie (and it didn't look fatal to me, either) he is mourned by thousands who spontaneously show up at his house for a candlelight vigil.

Need to catch my breath a minute.

Okay.

That's where's it's creepily American...because I get the feeling that the movie would not have been deemed "satisfying" if the fame aspect hadn't been thrown in. I don't know, maybe I'm just grumpy because it's late and I can't sleep, but why does it have to end up that he spawns a "movement" and he ends up getting famous.

I suppose that someone somewhere is going to suggest that he's a Christ figure. Nope. He's not. He just wants the world to be a better place, but he doesn't die willingly for the redemption of humanity. He just gets stabbed to death by a kid who was hitherto satisfied with knocking the class asthmatic on the ground, but was suddenly consumed with a bloodlust for Haley's stomach.

And what happened to the junkie taking the woman out for coffee? I wanted closure on that "forward payment" right there!

Stupid junkies.

I'm not sure if I should be concerned or not that getting MT up and running took me over 24 hours. I guess there was that bit about the perl modules that I wasn't real clear about, but still...I think messing around with the templates was the hardest most annoying part.

Oh well, it's done well enough now. I guess I should figure out ghow to migrate this off of this box and on to a server that I feel relatively comfortable letting the world look at.

And I'm sure the world will want to have a look.

So....that's what I did on my day off? What next, root canal during my summer vacation?

Well, MT is starting to look good. A few more tweaks and I'll be satisfied, I think. Whoopie.

Oh-bah-kay-bah, now we're talking. I think we're about to get to some quality blogging now.

Movable Type is like, just about almost set up. Woooooot.

Yucky. I'm finally making some progress on this verschluggner thing, and it doesn't seem to want to look good on windows. Stupid browser differences, they'll get you every time.

Well, here we go. I went over to movable type. Whoopie. I still have a bit to play with....for example, how the hell do I get this part on my front page? I may have erred, installing into this MT directory.

oh well.

Also, I can't seem to change the templates.

Blosxom is nice and all, but I want a form based blog that I don't have to ssh to my machine to use, or fire up bbedit for. Plus I'm to lazy or too perl-deficient to figure out how to make a blosxom post form for my machine.

Plus, I still have no idea how to make that hashmark-thingy at the bottom of each post do anything. Rael said something about it to me, months ago, but I didn't understand what he was talking about, and I was too, I don't know, embarrassed or something, to ask him what he meant.

Boy do I feel like a global village idiot.

I wish i felt more like a l33t H4x0r economist. I bet you didn't know 413x4nDeR h4Milt()n was k0R3An. (originally seen on Breakfast of Champions. Thanks, dharmaqueen.)

Ok, blosxom is updated. happy happy joy joy. I guess the next step is to install syndication, and then figure out why the form I'm making to post blog entries (in a browser not bbedit) isn't working. Or I could just keep working on my f'in photo class, which is what I should be doing. The again, maybe I'm doing enough for my class. or maybe not.

Why would anybody want to read this?

I think I need to update blosxom. I installed it right after Rael released it, and never looked back. Let's see if an update is available.

Yup. 0+4i coming right up.

So I just dusted off my webserver, and it still works!
Aren't you glad? This is my OSX box on my desk. I just make things when I want to play with things, so back off. If you want to look at something fun, try here. If you were looking for my fonts or something else, and ended up here somehow, try here. Oh yeah, I've done a lot of other not-very exciting stuff, much of which is linked here.

Remember: If you don't click a link now, the terrorists have already won.