The Monkey King's Domain

SSH over my phone!

Rock on!

Make your own Grail Diary!

The Grail Diary, made by Indiana Jones´ father, Henry Jones Sr.  from "Last Crusade", was actually what got me into this hobby. Late on e night I was surfing the Net for a bullwhip, when I stumpled over a webside all about this diary. My first thought was "Gee, what a bunch of nerds", but somehow the idea of making a diary of my own became more and more present.

(Link courtesy of Moleskinerie)

Michael Moore, reporting from the RNC

"Political conventions have become predictable rituals, four-day cheerleading sessions for both parties. So USA TODAY is offering readers an alternative perspective. Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, is writing daily from the Republican convention in New York. A month ago, conservative National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg weighed in from the Democratic convention."

(Link courtesy of BoingBoing)

New Apple iMac

It's just so pretty....

(Link courtesy of Slashdot)

Las Olas Art Fair

I just want to let everyone know that Christine (my wife) is going to be showing and selling her work over at the Las Olas Art Fair in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend (Labor Day).

Those who are interested be sure to stop by and say hi!

California to open Car Pool lanes to Fuel Conscious cars

My Anti-Ford ranting continues....

Mr. Schwarzenegger does not drive a Prius, still preferring his signature Hummer. But the governor, a Republican, is poised to do something equally unthinkable - and calamitous, some detractors in the American automobile industry insist, because their vehicles do not compete with the fuel efficiency of the Prius.

Aides to the governor say he will sign legislation approved on Thursday that could allow up to 75,000 hybrid drivers, mainly those behind the wheel of a gas-sipping Prius, to use car pool lanes even when taking to the road alone. The governor hopes the perk will encourage more people to buy the cleaner-burning cars, but by doing so, he will give the Japanese-made Prius vaunted status in a state where nearly 30 million registered vehicles compete for every inch of open asphalt.

Opponents of the law, who include the Ford Motor Company are asking the Govenator "to veto the legislation because no American-built vehicle would qualify" and that the law "puts our workers and stockholders at a competitive disadvantage precisely when Ford is entering the hybrid market with a family-oriented, no compromise S.U.V."

Oh and...

that last post was #200 for me.

I rule! Everyone shake your asses!

To celebrate...why don't you go ahead and buy my comic.

Or check out my new one (coming out soon)!

Ford Sucks....

So it was a fairly simple procedure, I dropped my Escape off over at the Ford dealership for service, something I've done many times before. I got called a couple hours after the drop letting me know the car was ready, I told my service guy that I would pick it up today (Sunday), which was fine with him. We end up over at the place today, I pay my bill (why are brakes so expensive?) and are told that the car will pull around in a minute.

Thirty minutes goes by.

Christine and I head back into the service center to find out what's going on. It turns out that they lost my keys. Can't find them. They apologize and let me know that they are hunting for them.

20 minutes goes by.

They come to the realization that they don't have my keys anywhere, so they let me know that they will make me a new key. They tell us that it will be another 20 minutes.

30 minutes goes by.

Here's where the story gets truly enjoyable. They realize, that the key making machine is locked. And they don't have the key. Let that sink in. The machine...that makes keys...is locked...and this huge multi-million car dealership which is owned by a multi-billion dollar car company...only has one key for the machine that makes the keys so you can leave with your newly bought car (or newly serviced car that needs new keys after some jackass loses your keys).

So they let me know that hopefully they can get me the car back on Monday or Tuesday. Wonderful.

So I'll never buy a Ford again, never recommend their cars and will never head back to the Greenway Ford store or service center again (Well I have to pick up my car). Now you may say, "That's a bit extreme for only losing your car keys", well I would say..."THIS ISN'T THE FIRST TIME!!!!!" Yes, it has happened to Christine and I before, we must be gluttons for punishment. The service center has also pretty much sucked ass for quite some time so this was what pushed me over the edge.

Here's a link for you all.

So in conclusion, Ford sucks, don't buy from them and if you must buy a Ford don't buy one at Greenway Ford in Orlando.

Thanks for reading my insane ranting.

The Buzz Guru

At the time, Fairey had just split with a longtime creative partner and founded his own marketing design firm, Studio Number One. After the conference he and his wife, Amanda, would visit Japan, where a couple of shops sell clothing that features his imagery. Then he would return to Los Angeles, where he is based, to finish preparing for his latest gallery exhibition, titled "This Is Your God," which juxtaposed his signature graphics with dollar bills. He would also get started on Studio Number One's first projects for some very large corporate clients who hope Fairey can help them connect with a much-sought-after demographic.

Shepard Fairey's company - Studio Number One

Tilting at Windmills v2 #7

"If you were to ask me what the single biggest problem facing the Direct Market was? That one is easy! Not enough Direct Market stores."

Coral: The New York University Distribution Network

CoralCDN is a decentralized, self-organizing, peer-to-peer web-content distribution network. CoralCDN leverages the aggregate bandwidth of volunteers running the software to absorb and dissipate most of the traffic for web sites using the system. In so doing, CoralCDN replicates content in proportion to the content's popularity, regardless of the publisher's resources---in effect democratizing content publication.

Touch of Death Website (through Coral)
Rose from the Ashes Website (through Coral)

(Link courtesy of Slashdot)

Protest at the Plaza Hotel

"...two men hanging off the side of the building on ropes, with tons of police cars below. So I go into my building (which is directly across the street, the FAO Schwartz building) and up to the 10th floor where I work and tell everyone what is going on. We all run to the window and watch as these two men are dangling outside the Plaza trying to hang an anti-Bush sign. The cops were reaching out the window after them, it was quite a scene!"

Hollywood, FL man burns self and Marine van

A distraught father who had just been told his Marine son was killed in combat in Iraq climbed into a Marine Corps van and set it ablaze Wednesday. He suffered severe burns.

Slow Food

Slow Food, founded in 1986, is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction.

(Link courtesy of my brother, Steve)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Those Rockstar folks sure know how to make a nice looking website.

Vintage Postcards

Hundreds of vintage postcards from the 19th and 20th centuries, organized by country and topic.

Postcardman

(Link courtesy of BoingBoing)

Origami Bowl!

Now we can have people over.

Fear Itself

Learning to live in the age of terrorism

(Link courtesy of Metafilter)

Touch of Death #2 Limited Print!

I'm selling number a limited print of the Andrew Robinson's cover from Touch of Death #2. The print is 13 inches by 19 inches, on archival paper and numbered 1 of 20.

eBay Auction

Car Safety information now off-limits to public

"The federal agency that oversees auto safety has decided -- based largely on arguments from automakers and their Washington, D.C., lobbyists -- that reams of data relating to unsafe automobiles or defective parts will not be available to the public."

Republican Congressman caught pulling up lawn signs of competing Democrat

Great Story! It's got lies, police reports and a grown man driving around town in the middle of the night pulling up yard signs.

(Link courtesy of Eschaton)

Bunny movies

30 second movies...with bunnies

Alien

Jaws

(Link courtesy of MetaFilter)

MMMMM....sure

From the Athens 2004 Olympic website...

"For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site"

(Link courtesy of Metafilter)

Drawn Together

New animated show on Comedy Central, watch with caution, it's....mature.

Drawn Together

Blair Witch cameraman dies

"Cinematographer Neal L. Fredericks, best known for his work on "The Blair Witch Project," was killed Saturday while shooting the independent film "Cross Bones" in the Florida Keys. He was 35. "

Magazine Art

A visual database of magazine cover art from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Here

We are back...

and boy what a mess!

We've been away at Christine's brother's wedding in Boston, during that time a hurricane decided to kick Orlando in the ass. If you've emailed me in the last couple of days I would recommend trying again. We are back, safe and the house is intact, with electricity and internet!

If you can, please donate blood and to the Red Cross for the folks who weren't so lucky.

PhotoStamps

Photo Stamps! Upload a Photo make it into an official stamp!

Here

(Link courtesy of BoingBoing)

Destruction by a giant wave

Scary stuff.

(Link courtesy of Fark)

English to American Dictionary

Here

Whoo hooo!!

I finally fixed webmail on the new server! Whoo hoo!

What?

I'm a computer dork....I get excited over the silliest things.

"These aren't the droids you're looking for...move along...move along..."

(I probably hacked the hell out of that quote.)

San Diego - Thursday - Day 1

Myself, my best friend Ramiro and my youngest brother Marc, arrived in San Diego unscathed. I've come to realize though, that of the very few airports I've flown into, Denver is one I just don't enjoy. We had to stop there for a layover (and I stopped there before on my honeymoon) and it just blows. 1) Nothing to do 2) Every-time (ok it's only been 4 times) there's seems to be some sort of bad weather over that airport, that paired with my nervousness regarding leaving the earth via manned vehicle doesn't make for an enjoyable experience.
After landing I was pretty impressed with the San Diego airport, it's clean and modern looking which is always a plus, we grabbed our bags and headed off to the taxi stand. A short cab trip and we were dropped off at our hotel, The Westin Horton Plaza, excellent digs I whole heartedly recommend staying there. Actually....scratch that, we need hotel rooms for next year, find your own place!

Anyway, it was about 5 (PM) when we settled in, so I decided that instead of schlepping all our crap to the convention center and setting up, that we should just grab our badges and walk around together for probably our only time for the weekend. We grabbed a cab down to the hall and checked in. It was during the checkin that we realized that there maybe something wrong with our registration.

"Brian Kirsten, Brain Scan Studios I'm checking in for our exhibitor badges."

"It says here that we never got your California Temporary Sellers Permit."

(Temporary panic, then realization that I brought it...but it's at the hotel)

"Well I'll have to go back to the hotel to get it, so you all never got the faxed copy from last Friday?"

(Semi-quick note: I waited WAY too long to fill out that paperwork, I literally got it at the last possible second.)

They pull out a folder with my company information and lo-and-behold there was the permit, someone just forgot to enter it into the computer. OOOPS. We ended up getting everything settled, walked over to another line to get our badges printed (what's up with that?) and enter the majesty that is the San Diego Comic Con. We wandered around for an hour, during that time I told myself I wouldn't purchase anything until Sunday (more on why that was a dumb decision later) and just enjoyed ourselves. Due to our East Coast to West Coast time change we headed back to the hotel, got room service and passed out.

Day One Completed (Yes I know, it wasn't all that exciting, but it was mostly plane trip, what do you expect? And you know what? I was at Comc Con! So Thursday ranked in the top 4 of the 4 most ass-kicking-est days of the 4 day trip....).

Rose website finally updated!

Finally I've gotten around to updating the Rose from the Ashes website. Not a whole lot (preview pages and more detail about the project), but it's something!

Check it out here.

Historic American Sheet Music

Pages from sheet music 1850-1920, examples of some great looking old designs.

Here

Instead of blogging about San Diego....

I'll blog about computer problems! So I got home from San Diego on Monday, heading back into a hectic work week. Sometime mid-week the server that had been running this site and a couple of other sites started making a clicking noise.

That's never good.

It sounded like the hard drive in the machine was on it's last legs. I removed the machine from it's closet home (in my bedroom), opened her up, dusted it out and moved it to my office. It ran for about a day, then seized up again. Nothing. She was kaput, dead as a doornail.

So on Saturday we combed Orlando ("Comb the desert!"), for an inexpensive machine I can throw Redhat on and rebuild into a bigger, better webserver. We found one at the Computer Builders Warehouse near my work, a barebones unit, that we just had to throw a hard drive and cd-rom into. And that's what is serving these pages right now. Hooray for linux!

I'll get to writing about San Diego soon...I swear!

test

test with new server