Category: Stream of Consciousness

Rellenos and Republicans

2012-09-27, 8:55 pm
Categories: Games, Politics, Status Updates, Stream of Consciousness

Still can't quite get this beer batter thing right. 4:1 ratio of beer to flour is just runny liquid; 2:1 is pancake mix again. I'm thinking maybe next time I won't mix the flour in, I'll just dunk the chili in the beer and egg and then roll it in the flour.

I really do love that the Senate Conservatives Fund decided to say, "Hey, remember that guy who said that really offensive thing that made our entire party look bad who we said we wouldn't give any money to? Let's give him three hundred grand and see what happens." and he immediately turned around and said more crazy misogynistic shit.

First of all: instant karma is the best kind of karma. After all, if you wait an hour before you whack your dog on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, he will not make any connection between what he did wrong and the fact that you are punishing him. This way, even the dimmest conservative organization can't possibly help but think "I just made a huge mistake."

Second: It's always better to see right-wing organizations throw their money down a bottomless pit than contribute it to races where it might actually help their candidate. (Like all that money Sheldon Adelson threw at Newt Gingrich. You know, for a casino magnate he's really pretty terrible at predicting odds.)

And speaking of candidates who they could have helped, that brings us to #3: this is actually hurting other candidates who they've endorsed in close Senate races. The Dems in Massachusetts are calling for Scott Brown to give their donation back and they're going to try to hang it around his neck until the election.

(Now, in point of fact, I don't especially dislike Scott Brown; I think he may very well be the only Republican left in the Senate who might actually be willing to compromise to get laws passed. And I wouldn't be devastated if he were reelected. Nor do I want him to lose his seat because I care unduly about the numbers game -- the Democrats couldn't pass shit when they had 59 seats plus Lieberman; there's really not a hell of a lot of difference between 45 Democrats and 60 Democrats, thanks to the automatic filibuster.

But Elizabeth Warren is legitimately my single favorite person running for office this election, and I would love to see her win, not because she's a Democrat but because she's Elizabeth Warren.)

Playing: Decided to take a crack at Soul Blazer. So far it's pretty neat!

Setting Up MikG on an Evo 4G

2012-09-26, 7:41 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech

As recently noted, I finally joined the twenty-first century and got me a smartphone. It's an HTC Evo 4G, purchased from friend and Brontoforumgoer TA, and I'm rather enjoying it. But it was a bit of a pain to set up, and, as I am wont to do when I find myself banging my head against the wall over a technical problem, I'm inclined to write up a little howto. (My #2 most popular post is the one about filesyncing with Unison. And because I know you'll ask, the #1 post is the one about FF7 mods.)

The first hurdle was that the phone was running Cyanogenmod. (So, first of all, it was already rooted. This is not a rooting guide; my phone was already rooted when I got it.) Now, from all appearances Cyanogenmod is great -- but what TA and I didn't know is that you can't activate your phone with Cyanogenmod on it.

The guy at the Sprint store suggested I unroot the phone and restore it to factory default. As I found out from a helpful thread on XDA Developers, you do not have to unroot your phone to activate it. You do have to flash it with a Sense-based ROM. (Sense, BTW, is HTC's UI.)

I found several recommendations for Sense ROMs, many outdated (and many of those unavailable for download since MegaUpload's been taken down). One that is recent and still available, and which I saw recommendations for all over the place: MikG.

Now, guides to flashing your Android ROM are legion (here's one from Android Authority), and recovery software varies, so the exact menu options may be different from one to the next. But here are the basics:

Download the MikG ROM.

Copy it to your phone's SD card.
I actually found that I couldn't mount my phone as an external drive on any of my computers when it was booted to Cyanogenmod for some reason; fortunately I was able to mount it when I booted to recovery mode -- see next step. Copying the zipfile straight to the sdcard root is probably the easiest way to go -- at any rate, don't unzip it.

Boot to Recovery Mode.
If your phone is already rooted and already has a custom ROM, like mine did, then you've most likely already got a recovery boot enabled. Shut your phone down, then power it back on, holding the Power and Vol- buttons. From here the touchscreen won't work; you'll only have access to the Power button and the Volume rocker. The rocker moves the cursor up and down, and the power button operates like the Enter key.

Back up your shit.
There should be an option to back up your system. Do this, because you're about to wipe everything out and you're going to want to be able to restore if anything goes wrong.

Wipe userdata, cache, and dalvik cache.
Seriously, this is a necessary step; do not skip it or it will fuck everything else up. Just don't do anything stupid like wipe your SD card in the bargain; you need that.

Flash the ROM from zip. That'd be the zipfile you copied to the card earlier.

Troubleshooting: Kubuntu lies. I just couldn't get the thing to flash; I kept getting errors. I found that the zip's checksum on the SD card didn't match the one on my computer, I copied and tried over and over again and even reformatted the card -- long story short, don't trust Kubuntu when it says the file has finished copying or when it says it's safe to remove the device. I don't think it's a KDE problem per se since I had the same problem using Nautilus, but at any rate -- start the filecopy and then go do something else for a little bit; give it more than ample time to copy. Just in case. I did the same thing with the unmount -- after I'd let enough time pass that I was sure the file had copied, I clicked Unmount and then waited awhile just to make sure that had happened cleanly. Patient waiting and the file finally copied correctly; MikG installed and was running.

But I still had to actually activate the thing.

Rather than take another trip to the local Sprint store (which would likely have been easier and taken less time, in hindsight), I did it through the Sprint website.

The first bit's easy enough: assuming you've already got a Sprint phone, you just deactivate that and tell them to move your number over to the new phone. You'll need to enter a serial (which you have to remove the battery from your Evo to get at), and they'll send you an E-Mail.

Follow the instructions in the E-Mail, not the ones on the website. They are not the same and the ones on the website are incomplete.

The E-Mail looks something like this (I've redacted my personal information):

You may need to enter the following information in your new phone to complete the activation process:
6-digit programming code: [...]
MDN (Phone number): [...]
MSID (IMSI): [...]

If you are programming a used phone, look in the manual programming instructions for your steps. If you don't find the instructions to program a used phone, follow the steps below to clear or reset your phone to its factory settings. Important note: This will remove all personal information, including texts, pictures, contacts, applications, etc.

To program a used phone:

  1. On the dial pad, press ##786 followed by an additional # symbol
  2. Follow any on-screen prompts to Reset your phone
  3. Enter the 6-digit code
  4. Select Reset
  5. Confirm any on-screen Reset to default messages
  6. After the reset, press ## followed by the 6-digit code, followed by an additional # symbol (Example: ##123456#) Note: The last # entered will not show on the display

It's easy enough when you do it like that; my problem was that I followed the guide on the website. Which didn't quite work right.

Anyhow, hopefully I've saved somebody somewhere some trouble -- maybe it'll be my new #2 most popular post.

So far I've stuck with MikG, for a couple reasons. One is that Sprint's data plan is ridiculously overpriced and I'm tempted to jump ship to Virgin Mobile or some other Sprint reseller -- and it'd be nice to still have a Sense ROM on there so I can activate.

But another is that I'm really kinda digging the design of Sense. It's fast, it's straightforward, most of the built-in widgets are actually useful and the ones that aren't are easy to remove, and if you had asked me if someone would be able to convincingly pull off a smooth, intuitive seven-workspace layout on a damn phone screen I would have told you you were out of your mind -- but damned if they didn't do exactly that.

I'm a tinkerer by nature, so I may not stick with it. Maybe I'll switch back to Cyanogenmod. Maybe I'll fuck around and install Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean -- I'm not really that concerned about watching Netflix on my phone or using the front-facing camera, and Sprint doesn't even have 4G in my state.

Food for thought, anyhow.

Tooms

2012-09-25, 8:28 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

Tooms is a great example of how an episode can be fucking brilliant even if it's riddled with plotholes.

First, there's Tooms himself. Last we saw him he was preparing himself a new nest. No reference to that, and indeed his psychologist doesn't even know about the nest thing and is legitimately curious when he sees him making strips of newspaper late in the episode.

Now look, I can totally see the shrink dismissing Mulder's accusations out of hand. I get that. But he should at least be aware of them. His reaction at the end of the episode shouldn't be "Oh, I didn't know you were interested in art"; it should be the slow and horrible realization that all that crazy shit Mulder was saying is actually true and this guy is about to eat his liver.

(Why Tooms is finally unable to resist the urge any longer at this moment? Plot convenience; no other reason.)

Plenty of other things like that throughout. Tooms travels through a sewer but then he hides in a closet and nobody notices the smell. The key to the mystery is a body he hid because it could prove his identity, which they ultimately do based on dental X-rays. So does he not ordinarily use his teeth when he rips people's livers out? Does he ordinarily use a knife or his fingernails or something and he just used his teeth on this guy for some unexplained reason? Was he in a hurry? If he was in a hurry, how did he manage to hide him in concrete? Were dental records even a typical crime investigation tool in the 1930's when this murder is said to have taken place? None of it makes a lick of sense.

And that he gets let out in the first place -- look, I don't care how fucking crazy Mulder's "he's 100 years old and can elongate his body" story sounds, the dude has a room full of serial killer trophies and tried to murder an FBI agent. Guys like that don't just get discharged after a few months.

I could go on -- his frameup of Mulder's pretty half-assed too, and there are any number of other false notes. But all of that? Fuck it. Because this is still a great episode. Tooms continues to be one of the greatest monsters in the entire run of X-Files. He, Mulder, Scully, and the supporting cast are all in truly fine form here. And the direction -- wonderful, creepy stuff, building toward a claustrophobic climax and brilliantly creative, satisfyingly violent resolution.

As far as mythology, this is the episode that introduces Assistant Director Walter Skinner -- essentially another government bureaucrat standing in Mulder and Scully's way and trying to shut down the X-Files, but played so ably by Mitch Pilleggi that he would later become a major character. Really, you can tell that by watching -- this guy is a one-off but Pilleggi is just so damn good that he turned into something else entirely.

And the Cigarette Smoking Man is back, hanging around Skinner's office, being sinister and not saying a word until he gets a single line at the end of the episode, Silent Bob-like. I think my favorite part is that Mulder and Scully never even acknowledge that he's there. There is no "Excuse me, but who the hell is that guy, anyway?" Hell, if you just saw this episode you could easily believe that he was a figment of Skinner's imagination.

So, in conclusion: Tooms is awesome, even if the script is really kind of a damn mess.

TV Computers are Stupid

2012-09-24, 5:17 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech, TV

Last night I watched the first episode of Alphas. It's a decent enough setup; there's potential there despite its heavy reliance on an Idiot Plot.

But there was this one scene -- okay, they're watching a video. And then it cuts out. And the autistic computer expert kid goes and fiddles with some stuff behind the TV and fixes it, and then explains "It was the VGA display port."

Okay, first of all: nobody computer-savvy, least of all somebody with autism, would use the phrase "VGA display port". Because while VGA is technically a port for a display, DisplayPort is the name of a completely different interface.

Second: How the fuck could it be a problem with the VGA port if the video was working fine and then cut out? Did somebody step on the cable and accidentally yank it out of the TV? If so, how the hell come we don't see that happen and nobody makes any reference to it?

Third: VGA is only video. If the VGA cable got unhooked, why did it cut off the audio, too?

(The one thing that is perfectly plausible: a room full of people who are so dumb that they need a computer genius to check whether a cable is unplugged. That, sadly, is perfectly true to life.)

It's a little thing, and not really important to the story. But it's just so damn weird. Why is it in there? And why is it nonsense? Why couldn't it have been something that actually made sense? "You changed the channel instead of turning up the volume; you have to switch it back to VGA In." Something like that. Easy.

Here's the thing: fact checker is an actual profession. There are dudes whose whole job is to make sure that the physics on Big Bang Theory or the biology on Bones is more-or-less plausible.

And yet Bones clearly straight-up does not give a fuck whether its computers behave plausibly.

Last year had an episode where the new Moriarty character booby-trapped a skeleton so that when Angela scanned it into her computer it would load a virus onto it and make it catch on fire. (In last week's episode, Angela could not even pronounce "parameterized" correctly.)

Now, I get that, for a variety of reasons, TV shows and movies may not want to actually show Mac or Windows interfaces, and instead do some kind of MofOS mockup. That's fine and understandable. My complaint isn't "That's a fictional computer interface", it's "That computer interface does not seem to operate on any kind of rules or logic." Indeed, it's entirely possible to design a fictional computer interface that looks and behaves more or less like a real computer should; my recollection of last season of Dexter is that they did a pretty solid job of this, with only a couple weird moments.

Another thing I don't get is how they still get away with this nonsense in an age where everyone has a computer.

It was one thing in the '80's and '90's when you could pretty much bullshit computers doing absolutely anything and most of your audience would be none the wiser. But in this day and age even your most out-of-touch viewer most likely owns a computer and has used Facebook.

And knows that when you look for a person, your computer does not say "SEARCHING ..." in a giant stupid angular font that takes up half the screen, then start cycling through black-and-white photos at a rate of several per second while making stupid deet-deet-deet noises until it finally finds the person you're looking for, then make more stupid beeps in time to the giant red flashing "MATCH FOUND" text across the screen, then pull up a page with white all-caps text in the Spider-Man font against a black background.

People own computers. They know what computers do and how they behave, at least on a basic, cursory level. So how come TV shows still depict computers as these flashy magic boxes?

I'd kinda like to write an episode of some TV show where a guy comes into one of these offices and then starts turning around with a quizzical look on his face every time a computer makes a stupid noise. And eventually starts asking people what the hell is wrong with their computers. "Why does it keep making that noise? Ugh, how can you stand being in a room with that all day? Jesus Christ, how can you read that all-caps, weirdly-spaced font?"

Independent

2012-09-20, 9:07 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Well, I did it. I filed the paperwork and I'm not going to be a Democrat anymore.

I've swung back and forth from Democrat to Green to Democrat, but I've always considered myself an independent and any time anyone's ever asked me what my political affiliation that's what I've always said. Sometimes I've qualified it -- "liberal independent", something like that.

I never really wanted to be a Democrat; I only ever registered as one to vote in primaries. (Arizona passed a ballot measure in 1998 allowing independents and people registered to third parties with no primary to choose a major-party primary to vote in, but due to a technicality it was interpreted to mean "any primary except a Presidential primary". Which is stupid, because obviously everybody who voted in favor of the initiative intended for it to apply to Presidential primaries because it's not as if independents and third parties were really champing at the bit to vote in the primary for sheriff or Congressman, but that's what we wound up with.)

It's a technicality and I don't suppose it really matters. In four years maybe I'll switch back to (D) to vote in another primary. Or maybe I'll go (R) for a change and try to get the least-crazy Republican candidate nominated -- I may not be wild about guys like Huntsman or Johnson, but I think everybody would be a lot better off if the Republican Party went back to being helmed by candidates who weren't completely fucking nuts.

But, truth is, I was never really comfortable calling myself a Democrat, because I really cannot stand the Democratic Party. The Republicans are odious but they're doing what they're supposed to do; it's the Democrats who talk a good game about reining in special interests and respecting civil liberties and then turn around and piss all over those promises.

I knew Obama was going to disappoint me in some cases, but I never expected him to disappoint me so much. I thought worst-case scenario was that he'd be another Clinton. Instead, he's like Clinton without the political acumen.

His signature achievement has been the passage of a healthcare bill designed by the Heritage Foundation -- without a single Republican vote. I'll grant it's better than what we had, but that's a pretty piss-poor campaign slogan.

He backed off his support for due process before he was even elected President; in '08 he said he'd filibuster any attempt to grant immunity to the telecoms who aided the Bush Administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program, then he turned around and voted for telecom immunity -- and when the liberal base that had gotten him nominated complained, he affected that condescending air of his and said we had misunderstood and he had never said he would oppose telecom immunity.

He's certainly proven, since becoming President, that he's not so concerned with due process after all. Indeed, as the EFF's Trevor Timm recently observed, the Democratic Party Platform of 2008 explicitly condemned warrantless surveillance, and the 2012 platform dropped that language entirely. I guess worrying about due process makes it harder to order drone strikes against American citizens and soak cancer survivors in urine while searching for nefarious objects like 4-ounce bottles of liquid.

So I've been wrestling with myself for months about whether I'd grit my teeth and vote for Obama a second time. (Third, counting the '08 primary -- though I'd have probably voted Edwards if he'd still be in the race. Now there's a politician who's become a massive disappointment for reasons that have nothing to do with policy.) And I think the last straw was the Justice Department's recent announcement that it wouldn't be filing charges against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Not only did they announce they wouldn't charge him, they announced it before the November election. Polls are showing a tight race between Arpaio and challenger Paul Penzone (with independent Mike Stauffer polling around 5%) -- it is entirely possible that the Obama Justice Department just got Sheriff Joe reelected.

Maybe if I were in a swing state I'd grit my teeth and vote Obama anyway -- I have to admit he's better than Romney and, under the circumstances, I hope he wins.

But my state's votes are going to Romney, period -- even the pundit class has pretty much given up the "maybe Arizona will be a swing state!" nonsense they pulled the last three elections.

Absolutely any vote I make is going to be a protest vote. And under the circumstances, I'd rather my protest vote go to someone who I actually like.

If only I could figure out who that is.

Kabuki

2012-09-18, 9:15 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Cut the crap.

Democrats, news media: quit pretending that it is some kind of shock or revelation that a Republican candidate believes half the population is made up of lazy good-for-nothings who just want handouts.

Republicans: quit pretending that that hasn't been the core of your party platform since the Reagan Administration.

This is not new. Bring up welfare or the Affordable Care Act in absolutely any political discussion and see how long it takes for somebody to espouse the very beliefs that people are pretending to be surprised to hear coming from a Republican.

About the only guy who's not being utterly disingenuous here (for a change) is Romney. Because he's refusing to apologize for being an amoral mercenary with absolutely no sympathy for anybody with less money than himself.

You know, a Republican.

What Now?

2012-09-17, 9:53 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech, Work

So today I got the old "Well, the project's almost over and we don't know what that means for you" talk.

As per usual, if it were up to the discretion of people I have actually met, I'd have the job. But, as per usual, I am at the mercy of west-coast bean counters.

The thing about that: when you complete a project weeks ahead of schedule, the people who have actually met you think, "Hey, maybe we should keep this guy around." But the bean counters tend to think, "Oh good, that means we can cut him loose that much sooner." Here's hoping the people who value me win the argument for a change.

Apparently I've got, at the very least, two weeks left. Which could mean I become unemployed just in time for my thirtieth birthday. I don't think it'll be that soon, but man that would be a fun little extra coincidence.

So it goes. I'm sanguine, I guess. I'd like to keep my job -- it's a good gig, it pays fairly, I'm settled and I like the people I'm working with -- but you know, if I'm forced into another change of scenery, I'll make the best of that too.

If nothing else, there are plenty of companies that could still use a guy who can handle a Windows 7 migration.

On Suspension of Disbelief

2012-09-14, 8:35 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

I just watched the Darkness Falls episode of X-Files.

Here's the thing.

Aliens? Yeah, okay, I can work with that.

Scary Martian faces that possess people? Well, okay, I guess.

But bioluminescent bugs that can't stand light? That doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense!

And that's before we get into some of the finer details, like how when the gas is low and they don't think the generator will make it through the night, nobody even mentions trying to light a fire.

One line would be all it would take. Maybe say the ground's wet -- it looks wet enough in the last act of the show, even though it's sunny out when they're having the generator conversation.

Or just say that a little bit of light isn't enough to keep the bugs away. That could tie together with the climax, where the dude gets eaten by them despite being right in the headlights, and then Mulder, Scully, and Ranger Guest Star all get swarmed and nobody tries to open a car door to make a light come on.

This shit would be easy to handwave, but I as the guy in the audience shouldn't have to do it myself!

That Time Again

2012-09-11, 8:47 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

I guess they call this Patriot Day now?

I wrote about it when it happened. The first 9/11. Well, not the first 9/11, but the one we commemorate every year 'round this time.

I don't really need to reread it. I lived those moments enough times on the date, and the days, weeks, months that followed. And I'm not even a New Yorker -- didn't even know anybody who was affected.

I think I'm a patriot. Here's some patriotic shit I'd like to see our government do in honor of 9/11. In no particular order -- I do call this a Stream of Consciousness, after all.

  • End the war in Afghanistan.
  • Bring our troops home.
  • Actually care for our troops once they're home.
    • That means acknowledging the suicide epidemic.
    • And all the TBI's.
    • And all that other shit we're not helping people with.
    • Seriously. Veterans should not be begging on the street or killing themselves.
  • While we're at it, how about caring for the 9/11 first responders?
    • That includes covering the ones who got cancer from inhaling the fucking towers.
    • "No proven link" my ass. Fuck you. I don't care if they coincidentally got cancer from chain-smoking; they're fucking 9/11 first responders. Pay for their goddamn healthcare. Raise Mitt Romney's taxes if you have to.
    • And if any of them are illegal immigrants, give them citizenship. Don't you go telling me there is a single damn 9/11 first responder who is not American enough to be a citizen.
  • Close Guantánamo Bay.
    • Give the inmates the same chance at a trial that Charles Manson got.
    • Throw the guilty ones in a stateside prison.
    • Let the innocent ones go. They're innocent.
  • Dismantle the TSA and replace it with something that is not a goddamn joke.

This is America. We can do this.

Fuck, we can at least do some of it, can't we?

Bissette on Ditko

2012-09-10, 10:08 pm
Categories: Books, Comics, Stream of Consciousness

Bissette's got a post up today about The Creativity of Ditko, Craig Yoe's latest gorgeous, thoroughly-documented collection of Ditko's work. I picked up a used copy of The Art of Ditko a couple months ago and I share Bissette's sentiment: it's incredible, but it does have a bit of an uncomfortable undercurrent, knowing that Ditko receives no money from these volumes and wishes they didn't exist.

Bissette covers Ditko pretty regularly. In this piece he links to a couple of previous essays, one of which is a response to Bob Heer's interpretation of the famous story of Ditko using original art as a cutting board. (To summarize: Greg Theakston once told a story of seeing cut-up original artwork in Ditko's apartment and pleading with him to stop using it as a cutting-board; Ditko refused. Heer believes that Theakston is not lying but that he misinterpreted the situation -- Ditko didn't cut up the artwork himself, it was probably returned to him in that condition, and, Ditko being Ditko, he didn't correct Theakston's assumption. Bissette adds that it's very unlikely that Ditko would have been using heavy enough paper stock in those days to serve as a cutting board, and that publishers used to frequently cut up original art after they were done with it.)

And Bissette reminds us, where Yoe doesn't, that Ditko is still active and still publishing through Robin Snyder.

The work is obscure because Snyder is a small publisher and doesn't use the Internet, but Bissette makes the reasonable point that the reason Ditko only works with Snyder is that Snyder is the only publisher who ever treated him right (other than the long-defunct Charlton Comics).

Bissette's covered Snyder's catalog in the past, too; he wrote a great post last year, in the wake of the Marvel v Kirby judgement, about everything Ditko's published about his years with Marvel. He references a long run of magazine articles Ditko published, around the time the first Spider-Man movie was released, which are still available through mail order. I keep meaning to check with my local comic shop and see if they can put in an order for some of those issues -- I'd be happy to order directly from Snyder, but I also think my LCS might be interested in stocking a few extra copies -- but money's been too tight. Still, one of these days...

Update 2012-09-12: Bissette has a followup post up; go read it!

It includes a response from Craig Yoe himself; among other things he disputes the claim that Ditko is opposed to the existence of these books -- Yoe says he's been in touch with Ditko and, while he's chosen not to participate or profit, he hasn't objected to them either, and approved Paul Levitz's introduction to Creativity. (No word on whether he approved Stan Lee's introduction to Art.)

There are also some fantastically thorough posts by Rob Imes in the comments section; one is a list of recommendations for Ditko's more recent, Snyder-published work, and another is a lengthy rumination on collections like this that do not compensate the original artists.