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July 24, 2007

And I'd have gotten away with it too...

If it weren't for those meddling kids.

Scooby Doo: Ripped from the Headlines?

Score: 100% (10 out of 10)

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 10:32 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 23, 2007

I Can Has Twofer?



Your Score: Lion Warning Cat


62% Affectionate, 59% Excitable, 42% Hungry




You are the good Samaritan of the lolcat world. Protecting others from danger by shouting observations and guidance in cases of imminent threat, you believe in the well-being of everyone.



To see all possible results, checka dis.


Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
How to Win a Fight With a Conservative is the ultimate survival guide for political arguments

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Shallow Thoughts

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July 03, 2007

The Coolest Thing Evar

(Warning: Will Suck Your Time)

The Attractors

Shallow Thoughts

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June 21, 2007

I need to say "crap" more.

What's My Blog Rated? From Mingle2 - Online Dating

Mingle2 - Online Dating

Shallow Thoughts

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June 06, 2007

I'm down with DSLB (Yeah, you know me)

Doolwind's Game Coding Site: Programmer Personality Test

Your programmer personality type is:

DLSB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.


You like coding at a Low level.
You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.


You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.


You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 10:33 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 09, 2007

ZUT ALORS!

As a followup to this... I tried to take a picture of the actual goose in question, but my camera was uncooperative.

NE VEUX PAS

Also, I have no idea what compells me to use French for this exercise. It just feels right. Maybe they're Canadian Geese.

Shallow Thoughts

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May 09, 2007

Le Foie Gras

Ross a fait une promenade au bord du lac. Il y avait une oie sur la route qui etait au bord du lac. Ross a marché sur la route. L'oie a dit, <<Gonk!>> Ross a continué à marché. L'oie a dit <<Hiss!>> Ross marchait encore L'oie a couru à Ross. Ross a couru loin.

FIN


(With apollogies to my high school french teacher.)

Shallow Thoughts

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May 07, 2007

On The Road

This past weekend, Leah and I went up to visit her family and friends in NJ. Here's some observations...

  • We watched Children of Man. There's a featurette on the disc showing how -- at the risk of a spoiler, I'll spoil you only this much: there is a baby in the move, and it was added using CGI, which is why it looks like Gollum -- they did the baby. At one point, the caption said "Rendering the layers of baby." Johnathan Swift would be proud.
  • Friday night as I was going to sleep, something made my eye hurt. It was red in the morning, and has been watering ever since. I think I am allergic to New Jersey
  • Many years ago in Maryland, there was a supermarket chain called A&P. They are now called SuperFresh. In New Jersey, I saw a "Super A&P". It's as if the name-change had just hit that town, and something caused it to tragically halt halfway through the transformation.
  • There was a stretch of highway on the way home called "The Concrete Mile". It was made of asphalt just like every other highway.
  • We passed a shop called "Andy Ferrigno's Equipment". The jokes to be made may well be endless. I'll start you off with "Don't make fun of his equipment: you wouldn't like it when he's angry."
  • When you enter most states, there's a big sign welcoming you. Often, the sign will remind you of local laws: on the Delaware/Maryland border, the sign reminds you that right turns are permitted on red after stopping. In Delaware, it reminds you that shopping is tax-free. In New Jersey, it reminds you that you need to wear your seatbelt. And right below that is a greeting from Governor John Corzine. I assume the sign was erected by the New Jersey Department of Irony.
  • There's a town, it seems, in PA called "Schrodinger". I didn't get a good look at the sign, because my brain insisted that the sign should say now "Next Exit, 10 miles on left", but "The town will not exist until you get there."
  • Unrelatedly, I once took a class in public policy from Heisenberg's granddaughter. The class was taught by Distance Learning, because, unlike her grandfather, she could not be in two places at once.
  • Billboard: Close deals between laps
  • There is a section of US 222 in Pennsylvania called "MIA Highway", but we couldn't find it.
  • Sign by a dairy farm in PA: Registered Holsteins. Thank god PA has cracked down on illegal cows.
  • A sign at a gas station gave prices for "Regular", "Plus", "Super", "Deisel" and "Kero". For just a second, I read that as "Karo", and thought that it would be a truly wonderful day if we could make our cars run on high fructose corn syrup. Of course, the fumes would probably send me into a diabetic coma.
That is all.

Shallow Thoughts

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May 02, 2007

Random Thoughts

A roundup of things I've noticed or thought of lately...

  • The squirrels used to like ot taunt Sarah. Being a small game dog, she'd have liked nothing better than to chase them. To my knowledge, she only ever got the chance once, when she was a puppy and managed to wriggle throuigh the railing around our pool deck to go after one. The squirrels seemed to work out that she couldn't get through the plate glass window in the dining room, and would congregate in the back yard, running up near the window and teasing her as she cried at her inability to go after one.
  • The exercise regimen I've adopted to help control my diabetes involves a lot of walking, mostly on the network of pedestrian trails through Columbia, MD, where I spend most of my day. There's a jogger whose path I cross a lot. He looks just like the lovechild of William H. Macy and Jon Voight.
  • The office park where I work consists of three buildings in a sort of triskelion configuration. A few months ago, a crew came through and gave one of the other buildings a good power-washing scrub. The sandstone exterior was left so bright and shiny that when it caught the light, it was almost blinding to look at. I can't help thinking that this is possibly the closest I'll ever get to knowing what it was like to look at the great pyramid of Giza when it was new.
  • Once upon a time, I was walking Sarah in the back yard, and we came across a tiny little frog. Sarah and I followed the frog for a bit as it hopped along its way, Sarah with her nose to the ground, studying it. Suddenly, just as it landed after a hop, Sarah reached down and scooped it up in her mouth. A few seconds later, just as I was peparing to chastise her for eating the frog, she opened her mouth, and the tiny little frog hopped out and continued on its way as if nothing had happened.
  • Another man I see a lot looks just like the love child of Wilford Brimley and Martin Mull
  • Walking along the trails, you see a lot of strange things. I keep seeing bicycles, half-submerged in the stream that runs alongside the trail. I can understand how they got there, but why were they abandoned there?
  • I'm going to a Cinco-de-Mayo party this weekend. My girl wanted to have a pinata at the party. Since I don't like candy enough to eat it in spite of my doctor's admonishions, I suggested a route that would allow me to take part in the pinata-y goodness: a meat pinata. She told this to her friend via instant messaging, and was asked "Do you mean a pinata made of meat, or a pinata full of meat?" When she indicated the latter, the response was "YES!!!!!!!"
  • A few days after cleaning the building I mentioned earlier, the crew went back over it for a second go. The building ceased to shine, and actually looked ratty and dirty. The windows looked particularly streaked and spotted. I found myself wondering the the University of Phoenix had failed to pay its bill, and the crew was sent back to re-dirty the building.
  • I also see a lot of abandoned shopping carts along the trail. These mostly belong to the Safeway about a half mile down. But some of them are for other stores which are nowhere near here
  • There is a small man-made pond across the street from the office. During certain parts of the year, geese congregate there. About the same time, there are two geese who wander around on the far side of the parking lot of the office park, across the street, with the building between them and the pond. Are they lost, or have they just slipped off for a romantic stroll?
  • At one bend in the stream, a shopping cart has gone off the edge and into the water. It's been down there a long time, I think, because silt has built up around it. The process of sedementation has done its work, and there is, right now, an island forming around this cart.
  • I saw a blue heron last week. But I don't want to say where. When I was a kid, if you saw a blue heron somewhere, you could be assured that within a week, you wouldn't be allowed to go back there, as the area would be cordoned off to protect the heron. It's quite a pleasant spot, and I don't want it being destroyed by a big chain link fence to keep the heron safe.

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 10:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 28, 2007

Kids Say The Darndest Things

Every once in a while, the little girl who lives across the alley from me will try to strike up a conversation. This is usually a little uncomfortable for me, because, while when you're a kid, you're always warned not to talk to strangers, no one ever tells you, as an adult, whether you're supposed to talk to strange children. But I guess technically we're not actually strangers: we're neighbors. Maybe it's just a symptom of the times that I should think there was anything at all unnatural about being on conversational terms with the children of the people who live across the alley.

But anyway, the reason I bring it up is to relate this conversation:

Her: (Talks a bit about her love of digging up bugs and worms)
Me: (Polite interest)
Her: What do you love?
Me: (after thinking) Well, I like video games. And movies. And I love my girlfriend.
Her: You're lucky you have a girlfriend.
Me: Yes I am
Her: If you had three girlfriends, you'd be the luckiest man in the world
Me: (after a bumfuzzled silence) I think one is about all I can handle.

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 09:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 24, 2007

Compare These: A dictator for all seasons

Just found this lying around in a pile of pictures I had saved for a day when I needed the funny.

Compare These

Saddam's parting message: "Be fair and don't hate. PS. Death to America." A politician to the end.

Shallow Thoughts/Compare These

By Ross at 09:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 22, 2007

The Blog of Death

So, regular visitors may have noticed some strange error messages last week. Those should be gone for now. I was spammed so hard that the database which runs this blog broke, rather severely. I've managed to recover almost all the data to a new database, but the comments table was completely trashed. This means that old comments have been relegated to the status of "ghosts", and will vanish in the event old pages ever get updated.

How do other bloggers deal with spam? I've got spam filters, but those don't really help: a million spam comments an hour pouring into the Junk folder breaks the DB just as bad as a million a day going to the page -- and it's not just the spam being received that causes the problem: just by the act of hammering the server with their spam, they suck up my bandwidth -- and I do mean suck.

Anyway, I've got some redirects in place now to divert suspicious activity away from the comments pages. It's possible that you might accidentally fall into one -- make sure you never navigate your way to a page called spider-trap, as you'll fall permanently into my list of banned IPs.

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 04:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 15, 2007

Cancelled after ten seasons? I can deal.

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate). You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body.

SG-1 (Stargate)
94%
Moya (Farscape)
88%
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)
88%
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)
88%
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)
75%
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
75%
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)
50%
Serenity (Firefly)
50%
FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)
50%
Enterprise D (Star Trek)
50%
Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)
50%
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)
38%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Shallow Thoughts

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April 06, 2007

If I only had a heart... (Happy 200)

In honor of my 200th post, I thought-- well, okay, this has nothing to do with it being my bicentennial; I just noticed it when I clicked on "Entries" and saw the number 199 next to it. So, anyway, on with the post...

You may not know the term, but you've probably seen a CAPTCHA by now. The acronym expands out to the not-really-meaningful-unless-you're-a-CS-guy "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". A bit of background:

Alan Turing, one of the founding bigwigs of the whole theory of computers as we know them, had this theory: If we stick a human being at a terminal of some sort (This was Turing, back in the fifties, so he was thinking of a teletype, but IM would work just as well) and have him chat for a bit with two other entities, one of which is a computer and the other one is a second human, if the guy at the terminal can't tell which is which, the computer has demonstrated actual human intelligence, or, at least, something close enough to it to be interesting.

So, in a nutshell, a Turing Test is when a human tries to tell whether something else is a computer or a human. This is fairly easy (The human is less likely to say "BZZT! DESTROY ALL HUMANS!" if you annoy it). A CAPTCHA, which is sometimes ambigiously called a "Reverse Turing Test" is when a computer tries to tell if the entity it's talking to is human or another computer.

That is to say, it's one of those things you get when you sign up for something on the internet and they show you a picture of some distorted random letters and ask you to type them in.

This is actually a pretty hard test. It's comparatively easy for one computer to convince another computer that it's a computer ("Perform these six hundred hard math problems in under a second" is a pretty simple way), but how do you convince it that you're human? The computer conducting the test can't measure your capacity to love, or detect if you have opposible thumbs or anything like that -- in fact, the reason that it's so easy for a human to distinguish computers and humans is that humans can perceive a lot of things that computers can't -- which, of course, means that that distinguish a human (taking the test) from a computer (taking the test) are things that the computer (giving the test) can't perceive.

So, the way to tell the difference is to generate the sort of problem that humans are good at solving and computers aren't, and ask the test-taker to solve it. Fortunately, a computer can indeed generate problems it can't solve itself. Or, a human can provide the computer (giving the test) with a crib sheet. The most common kind you see is the kind I mentioned above. Computers are pretty good at reading written words, but not if they've been distorted. So you print some letters in an image, mangle them a bit, and ask the test-taker to read them. This is doable, though it's not all that easy: mangle the letters too much and a human can't read them. Don't mangle them enough, and a computer can. Most of the letter-based CAPTCHAs you see on the internet aren't all that good, and throw up manglings that a very clever computer could work out, though there are some very good letter-mangling CAPTCHAs out there. Also, CAPTCHAs can often foil humans with vision problems (Like my color blindness).

Another CAPTCHA you see sometimes shows you several images and asks, say, "Which one is a puppy", since that's a hard thing for a computer to deduce. This works pretty well, but, unlike the letter-mangling test, the computer taking the test can't generate new pictures of puppies, so unless it's got a huge stockpile, the computer taking the test could just poke at random until it got in purely by coincidence.

I read a paper about CAPTCHAs back in grad school, and there was a really neat point they made. Unlike all the rest of computer security, if a CAPTCHA is broken, it's basically great for mankind. Let me explain: You've by now probably heard of the animated cursor bug in Windows. No good can come of exploiting the animated cursor bug. There aren't really useful things you can do by hacking an animated cursor. It's good for exactly one thing: compromising systems to the owner's detriment. Cryptography is largely based on number theory. Until modern cryptography was invented there was no practical use for number theory. People studied it purely for love of math. Aside from its mathematically interesting properties, the only practical use for the RSA algorithm is to encrypt data. Which means that if someone discovers a problem with the RSA problem, RSA encryption is broken. The problem itself has no positive use value, beyond breaking cryptosystems. This isn't the case for a CAPTCHA: if a computer manages to foil a CAPTCHA, it means that the computer can do something which computers are historically bad at. If it can consistently find the puppy, then we have created a computer that can identify puppies, and puppy-identification is a skill with unlimited commercial application. If our computer can consistently read mangled words, then the next generation of business card scanner software will be able to tell that the business card you ran through it isn't for "Lockheart Martini".

But this is just a comically longwinded introduction to what I want to show you. Woe be to all of us the day a computer learns how to break the new Hotness CAPTCHA. It uses AmIHotOrNot API to ask users to identify which of several pictures shows the hottest person. Personally, I think they missed a great oppertunity by not calling it amibotornot.com.

The other CAPTCHA I'd like to show you comes to us via Defective Yeti: Internet Access CAPTCHAs. This one is designed to tell whether the testee is a human, a computer, or an idiot. What's neat about this is that it's much more likely to be foiled by a clever computer than a stupid human.

Welcome to the internet. Enjoy your porn

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 10:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 01, 2007

Ross vs the Tivo, Round Two

As you may already know, I've had some trouble with my TiVo over the past few years.

Tonight, I had to reboot it; it locked up while I was deleting the jumk it had accumulated. Upon my reboot, I found that Something Was Wrong.

Specifically, whenever I pressed one of the arrow keys, the thing would go crazy, scrolling to the bottom of the list and then making the "You're at the bottom of the list. Stop pressing down, stupid" noise until I pressed something else. So, thinking maybe the remote was jammed, I stuck my hand over the business end. No joy.

So I googled. No joy.

So I reset the tivo again. No joy.

I reset the TiVo remote. No joy.
It was fine until you pressed a button, then it went crazy. Finally, I noticed that the yellow "I'm receiving an IR signal" light was staying lit. (I should note at this point that I'm colorblind, and only know that the light is yellow thanks to information I've found on-line; it looks the same color as the green "I'm connected to a power source" light to me). Whenever I hit a button, the light would stay on. Sometimes it would go off as I gesticulated angrily at it.

I replaced the batteries in the remote. No joy.

I tried standing up and placing my hand over the IR receiver. The yellow light went out. I tried zapping it from inches way. That worked fine. One down key, moves down once. Yellow light flashes then goes out.

I tried from further away. Yellow stays on. Key keeps repeating.

I got it into my head that maybe my ceiling fan (being reflective) or some other light source in the room was creating some sort of weird feedback loop. Turned off everything. No joy.

What I did find was that if I waved my hand in front of the receiver, the yellow light would switch off. This worked at close range only. At greater distances, I had to gesticulate more wildly.

I sat down, resigned to the fact that my TiVo was once again borked.

And then I worked it out.

Here is my reverse-engineered algorithm for how the TiVo remote control subsystem works:

if ((x=incoming tivo keypress))
 while (tivo is receiving any sort of IR signal at all)
   do x

You see, I wear ankle weights most days, in order to beef up my exercise regimen -- which turned out to be a double-edged sword, as I will explain in a later issue -- in the hopes of keeping my diabetes in check.

You're probably wondering at this point what this has to do with, well, anything at all. What it has to do is this: When I got home tonight, one of the first things I did was to take off my ankle weights. I set them on the couch beside the very spot which currently contains my ass. I set them on top of a small pile of paid bills that I have to file.

What I didn't know was what was under those bills.

The remote control to my DVD player.

You see, my weights had pushed one of the buttons on the DVD remote. That signal, on its own, was not enough to fool the TiVo. However, whenever the TiVo saw a legitimate signal from its own remote, the fact that it was still seeing an unrelated signal kept it going. When the remote operated normally at close range, it was because my body was blocking the spurious DVD remote signal. When I gesticulated angrily, I was cutting past the beam from the remote.

Hopefully, googling this will help future generations. That's why I'm adding the following gibberish, it being things I tried googling in order to find out what the hell was going on:

tivo yellow light
tivo doesn't respond to remote
tivo remote light stays lit
tivo extra button presses
tivo remote spurious presses
tivo arrow buttons
tivo scrolling goes crazy

(Kind folks at Google: Please don't mistake this for a shameless attempt to pad out my page to attract hits. This is what I googled for to try to find the answer to my question, which means that it's part of the story about what I did to solve the problem. Thanks)

Shallow Thoughts

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February 10, 2007

This is Mii

Mii

Shallow Thoughts

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December 29, 2006

Random Top Ten Cover Tracks of Ever

So, last night I caught part of VH-1's Some Number of Greatest Cover Tracks. I missed the end, so I don't know if they failed to acknowledge the proper winner or not. I had a look on teh internets, and found that the always-reliable retroCRUSH has a list of their own, which includes a few that I know in funny places and a lot that I don't, so it got me thinking, and I decided I ought to produce a list of my own.

I've decided to avoid noting more than one cover of the same song, since otherwise this list would consist of five covers each of two songs. I have also in some cases allowed cultural importance trump my personal preference.

10. The Boys of Summer, DJ Sammy covering Don Henley (The Ataris nearly take this one, though, because they included those nifty guitar seagulls)
9. Ol' 55, The Eagles covering Tom Waits
8. Blue, Sarah McLachlan covering Joni Mitchell
7. Because the Night, 10,000 Maniacs covering Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen
6. Layla, Eric Claption covering Derrek and the Dominoes (Yeah, I know, it's cheating. But still)
5. Love Me I'm A Liberal, Barenaked Ladies (ripping off Mojo Nixon) covering Phil Ochs
4. Along Comes Mary, The Bloodhound Gang covering The Association
3. When the Stars Go Blue The Corrs and Bono covering Ryan Adams
2. Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley covering Leonard Cohen
1. All Along the Watchtower, Jimmi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan

Shallow Thoughts/Music

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December 20, 2006

You can call me anything you like, but my name is Veronica

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=94511

After 60-someodd years of looking like they were supposed to, the Archie comics are getting a facelift in order to look more hip, cool, and, well, crappy.

And another bastion of distinctiveness hits the dust.

Shallow Thoughts

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November 01, 2006

We Hardly Knew Ye

So, after quite some time, I finally clicked around on my blogroll and saw what was up.

As a result, Happy Palace is no longer listed. Happy Palace used to be this weird daily collection of pictures of strange things, like the covers of pulp novels of the 30s, or pages from instruction manuals, or whatever. Today, it's an ad for perfume. Anyone know what happened to the Palace, and if it's still around somewhere?

On the other hand, I've added mamster's excellent food-and-toddler blog, Roots and Grubs, and Stephen Granade's excellent physics-and-toddler blog, Live Granades (The links are actually on the blogroll, and not repeated here, in order that you will have to actually look at the blogroll to find them.). I've also updated Mike The Mad Biologist's address, and I've redirected the Woot link to the Woot main page, because while I feel slightly dirty for linking something that isn't a blog to my blogroll, linking to woot's blog instead of the actual item of the day just feels really, really stupid now.

Anyway, enjoy.

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 09:56 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 15, 2006

It's the gray hair, isn't it?

Perhaps you've heard about the ultrasonic ringtone? It's one of those neat synergies that James Burke would be proud of. A few years ago, someone discovered that the range of human hearing narrows with age, and deduced that there were, therefore, tones that teenagers could hear which adults couldn't.

The initial use of this was something very different than what we ended up with. The first thing that came to mind was that they could play this tone in front of convenience stores, annoying the hell out of teenagers, and thereby discouraging them to hang out there, while being inaudible to good-natured adults. Of course, the tone wasn't physically painful or anything. Nor was it even really that annoying; it was just bothersome enough that it made te front of the store a place you wouldn't want to go unless you had a good reason.

But it didn't take long before the teenagers worked out a way to use their superhuman hearing to their advantage: these frequencies, rendered into a ringtone, would allow them to receive calls which adults would not be able to hear. (Now, before you point out that the technology to make a phone indicate that an incoming call without alerting anyone else nearby already existed, I'm going to remark that I called my beloved on her cell phone the other day, and she had to rush off to answer it. The cell phone was set to vibrate. And inside her car. Halfway across the parking lot). This is a boon to kids who want to receive calls in school, where such things are forbidden (Where I went to high school, being caught with a cell phone was an expellable offense. You didn't just have it confiscated: you were sent to the office and the police were called in to arrest you. This was a silly outmoded law dating from the days when owning a pager was considered a 100% perfect indicator of being a drug dealer).

Anyway, I went to a webpage and listened to some sounds, and it guessed my age:


You're a little frustrated that you can't hear all the tones that the young 'uns can but will be more than happy if it means you don't have to listen to their damn ringtones on the bus anymore.

The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 14.9kHz
Find out which ringtones you can hear!

I imagine I should be a little offended.

Shallow Thoughts

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August 05, 2006

Random X

1. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes, Elvis Costello
2. When It's Over, Sugar Ray
3. Crash Into Me, Dave Matthews Band
4. Down Under, Men at Work
5. The Ballad of Chasey Lain, Bloodhound Gang
6. Bad Day, Daniel Powter
7. Hot In The City, Billy Idol
8. Layla, Derek and the Dominoes
9. When the Stars Go Blue, Tim McGraw
10. Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 11:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 25, 2006

Ten or so in no deterministic order

Lord have mercy how'd she even get them britches on?

1. The Bad Touch, The Bloodhound Gang
2. White Wedding, Billy Idol
3. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, Starship
4. Go Your Own Way, Fleetwood Mac
5. Down Under, Men at Work
6. The Ballad of Chasey Lain, The Bloodhound Gang
7. Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon
8. Layla, Eric Clapton
9. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
10. Glycerine, Bush

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 02:41 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 22, 2006

Randon Several

1. Sussudio, Phil Collins
2. Bad Day, Daniel Powter
3. Dead Ringer For Love, Cher & Meatloaf
4. White Wedding, Billy Idol
5. Hungry Like the Wolf, Duran Duran
6. Turn the Page, Metallica
7. Free Bird Lynyrd Skynyrd
8. D'yer Mak'erLynyrd Skynyrd
9.Down Under, Men at Work
10. Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Neil Diamond

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

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April 29, 2006

Ph33r My 31337 R4ND0M F1\/3!

Then Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight, and Benito Musselini, and the Blue Meanie, and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk, Darth Vader, Lo-pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan, all came out of nowhere lightning fast and they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass.

Okay, so there's no karaoke tonight. Thus, you get your Random Ten early. But you also only get half of it.

1. One Headlight, The Wallflowers
2. Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry
3. Glycerine, Bush
4. Down Under, Men at Work
5. When I Come Around, Greenday

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 03:06 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 29, 2006

Fixing the Internet's Shortcomings

I wanted to show this to someone the other day, and I quickly found that google could not find me a copy of it.

When the logo for the new Doctor Who series was first announced, there were a lot of complaints that it was "clearly" an attempt to capitalize on the Lord of the Rings franchise by making a logo that could not possibly be anything other than a rip-off of the eye of Sauron.

Doctor Who 2005 New Series Logo

Now, as it turned out, in context it looks almost nothing at all like the eye of Sauron, so the naysayers were wrong. All the same, I don't find this logo all that great, certainly not as good as the logo used by the 1996 TV Movie:

Doctor Who 1996 TV Movie Logo

But what seems to be very hard to locate on the internet is the newest Doctor Who logo. It was done by the Scifi channel, and only appears on their commerials. It's a shame, because check this out. It's a really cool logo.

Doctor Who Scifi Channel Logo

And now, it's on the internet for all to find

Shallow Thoughts

By Ross at 02:17 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 21, 2006

I am a sucker for the meme

So, normally I don't go in for the net.forward.memes, but my beloved thought this would be fun, and it was. Aside from the humiliation.

Here's how it works: Stick all the yummy digital music you have on shuffle, and repeatedly take the next song served to answer the following questions.

Obvious caveat applies: I haven't really updated my digital music collection in about five years. Damn you, RIAA.

  • How am I feeling today?
    • White Wedding, Billy Joel
  • Will I get far in life?
    • Drops of Jupiter, Train
  • How do my friends see me?
    • Wish You Were Here, Radiohead
  • Where will I get married?
    • All along the watchtower, Michael Hedges
  • What is my best friend's theme song?
    • The Remedy (I Won't Worry), Jason Mraz
  • What is the story of my life?
    • The Prayer of St. Francis, Sarah McLachlan
  • What is/was highschool like?
    • The Ballad of Ed's Shirt, Barenaked Ladies
  • How can I get ahead in life?
    • Bittersweet symphony, Barenaked Ladies
  • What is the best thing about me?
    • Peacekeeper, Fleetwood Mac
  • How is today going to be?
    • Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer
  • What is in store for this weekend?
    • When Doves Cry, Barenaked Ladies
  • What song describes my parents?
    • Fastest Man on the planet, Barenaked Ladies
  • What song describes my grandparents
    • Sleeping Satillite, Tasmin Archer
  • How is my life going?
    • Come Back Tomorrow, Quiddity
  • What song will they play at my funeral?
    • If I had a million dollars, Barenaked Ladies
  • How does the world see me?
    • Morning Glory, Oaisis
  • Will I have a happy life?
    • Black, Sarah McLachlan
  • What do my friends really think of me?
    • Captive, Sarah McLachlan
  • Do people secretly lust after me?
    • Silence, Sarah McLachlan
  • What should I do with my life?
    • Leave Virginia Alone, Rod Stewart
  • Will I ever have children?
    • i'm my own grandpa, Homer and Jethroe
  • What is some good advice?
    • Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd
  • What is my signature dancing song?
    • You're No Good, Wild Orchid
  • What do I think my current theme song is?
    • I ain't marching anymore, Phil Ochs
  • What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
    • Lullabye, Shawn Mullins
  • What type of men/women do you like?
    • When she loved me, Sarah McLachlan

Shallow Thoughts/Music

By Ross at 09:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 16, 2006

Random Whatever

Lying here in the dark, I hear a siren's wail. Sombeody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail.

1. If You Leave, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
2. Champagne Supernova, Oaisis
3. When I Come Around, Greenday
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
5. Down Under, Men At Work
6. 100 Years, Five For Fighting
7. Love is All Around, Wet Wet Wet
8. If I Had $1,000,000, Barenaked Ladies
9. Glycerine, Bush

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 02:39 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 09, 2006

Random 010 (ask a geek)

They say that I have the best ass below fourteenth street.

1. The Sound of Silence, Simon & Garfunkle
2. Bubbletoes, Jack Johnson
3. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
4. One Night In Bangkok, Murray Head
5. Dead Ringer For Love, Meatloaf & Cher
6. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
7. She's Like The Wind, Patrick Swayze
8. Another Day In Paradise, Phil Collins

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 06:09 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 02, 2006

Random Ten Returns

One part the fuerher, one part the pope, it's the inevitable return, baby, of the great white dope

1. Sex and Candy, Marcy Playground
2. Hook, Blues Traveller
3. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
4. Calling All Angels, Train
5. Another Night, Real McCoy
6. Champagne Supernova, Oasis
7. Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits
8. If I had $1000000, Barenaked Ladies
9. Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty
10. Joy To The World, Three Dog Night

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 02:54 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 20, 2006

Random Ten

So, it's Monday I guess. Better late than never. I think you readers will understand by now that you take a backseat to the woman I love, who was in town for a glorious three-day weekend.

I Just Called To Say I Love You Stevie Wonder DK18-10
Crazy For This Girl Evan & Jaron MM374-12
Love Is All Around Wet Wet, Wet DK333-8
Time of your Life, The Green Day PH518-3
Sex and Candy Marcy Playground PH518-5
Brothers In Arms Dire Straits HC523-4
Glycerine Bush SC524-5
If You Leave Orchestral Manouevers In The Dark HC523-1
Wonderwall Oasis SC524-6
Love Is Williams & McKnight MM377-2

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 04:43 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 05, 2006

Yadda Yadda Ten Yadda

Wild World Cat Stevens SC250-3
I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight The Cutting Crew MM380-1
Remedy (I Won't Worry), The Jason Mraz THM356-17
Rock This Town The Stray Cats SC307-7
Bed Of Roses Jon Bon Jovi SC450-5
Cowboy Kid Rock SC429-5
Stacy's Mom Fountains Of Wayne SC480-6
Time of your Life, The Green Day PH518-3
Sex and Candy Marcy Playground PH518-5
Hook Blues Traveler SC519-11

Shallow Thoughts/Music/Random Ten

By Ross at 03:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 29, 2006

Back To Your Regular Not-Really-Random Ten

You might have noticed a new feature down the sidebar, M&M Karaoke MySongs. See, I'm the webmaster of the website for the Karaoke show I frequent. Hey, Blogtimore readers, if you're ever in the neighborhood, come check it out. http://karaoke.trenchcoatsoft.com. Their entire collection of songs can be viewed on-line, and, thanks to a clever little feature I built into the site, every time you visit my page, you'll see a random assortment of ten songs from my own personal favorites list. It's the closest thing to a proper random ten you're liable to see around here, last week notwithstanding.

Anyway, you can check out my own personal list in its entirety at http://karaoke.trenchcoatsoft.com/mysongs.php?u=rraszews. If you decide to become a regular (or, for that matter, just like fooling around), you can make a list like this for yourself and avoid all that tedious looking things up in the printed songbook.

In the mean time, though, here's this week's ten:

1. The Boys of Summer, The Ataris
2. Cradle of Love, Billy Idol
3. Straw Hat and Dirty Old Hank, Barenaked Ladies
4. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
5. Making Love out of Nothing At All, Air Supply
6. Crazy for this girl, Evan and Jaron
7. Someday, Someway, Marshall Crenshaw
8. You're an Ocean, Fastball
9. In a Big Country, Big Country
10. Superman, Five for Fighting

See you next week.