13 posts tagged “help”

So, I'm coming back to Canada on June 4th, for my best friend's wedding that weekend.  However, because flights are asstarded, I won't be arriving in Toronto until like, 10:30pm, at least (probably later, as my flight from Newark to Toronto NEVER leaves on time).  Anyone in Toronto got a couch they're willing to let me crash on that night?

Then, I need to somehow get back home, to the Hanover/Chesley/Tara/Owen Sound region. Anyone wanna gimme a ride?

Then on June 10th, I need a ride back. Any takers for that one?! I'll need a couch again that night. Anyone?

Meh, it was worth a shot.

Anyone want to gift me with your frequent-car-rental points so I don't have to sell a kidney to rent a car? :D?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

(note: I tried to post this to the Firefox Forums at Mozillazine, but I had to register, so I registered, and logged in, and then typed this up, and then clicked the post button, and it asked me to login again, and I did, and it told me my account was inactive, and I should bugger off, sooooooo maybe you guys can help me instead.)

Sometimes, I'll just stop being able to browse. My internet is fine, as is evidenced by EVERY OTHER PROGRAM working (IM clients, FTP, etc), but Firefox will just keep loading a page forever.  When I close Firefox (using the red X) and re-open it (using the link in my toolbar), the chrome appears (the outside frame, the menubar, the minimize/maximize/close buttons), but nothing else.  Clicking the X to close it several times pops up a Vista "This program has stopped responding" window. The Mozilla Error Reporting Agent never appears.

After telling Vista to close Firefox, and then trying to open it again, it works fine, and will browse normally.

At first, I thought it was being caused by putting the computer to sleep (as that was the only time it would present); however today it has done it several times without warning, and without being put to sleep.

As I said, this has only been happening since 2.0.0.14.  Additionally, I'm not having this problem on my XP SP2 installation at home, only on my Vista Ultimate laptop.

The add-ons I have installed are as follows:
4chan 0.4.5.9
Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4
Better Flickr 0.2.1
BoxedUp 1.22
Canadian English Dictionary 1.1.0
Download Statusbar 0.9.6.1
East Asian Translator 1.1.2
Japanese-English Dictionary for rikaichan 1.06
Names Dictionary for rikaichan 1.05
Personas for Firefox 0.9.2
Rikaichan 1.01
Stylish 0.5.6
Talkback 2.0.0.11

I'd appreciate any thing suggested.  Thanks :)

Hang on while I brain-dump for a bit.

I've been trying all day to organize this in some way that would be coherent; I've failed, again and again, so I'm just gonna stream-of-consciousness it out, and maybe go back later and fix it.  If I come off sounding like the TimeCube guy, I hope you'll forgive me.

We all know that there's something wrong in the world. We all know, either through experience, or just intuitively, that something is wrong, and that worse is coming.  When asked why, we may point to specific events, but we feel that it falls short of it all. Yeah, war and recession and high prices... they're examples we'd point to, but in our guts, we feel that they're merely symptoms of something else.

In the news these days, we see stories of rising food prices, food shortages, food riots... but these are never in our neighbourhood, and they're never top stories.  We see news of climate change, but climate change stories are so plentiful that they just blend into one another, so that even the important-seeming, unusual ones slip under our radar... They're background noise, footnotes to the day.

If life were a movie, these are the stories that would come on the radio or the TV, or be on the page the newspaper is open to, as the camera pans to it for a split second before cutting to the next scene. "Why should I care about that? What a strange segue, sloppy filmmaking at it's worst," we think.  But it stays with us, sitting idly in the back of our minds.  Later, suddenly, these bits of noise and fluff become incredibly relevant, and we think to ourselves, "Pfft, I really should have seen that coming."

In a movie, it's fine. We can look back, and think about how it shaped our perception of the film, and discuss the clever foreshadowing with our friends at the pub after the film... but in real life, isn't it more likely that we'll laugh bitterly as we witness everything we know pass away?  "We should have seen this coming," we'll say, "It's too bad we weren't paying attention."

Do you ever... uhhhhh, how can I put this...

In the past, great advancements could be attributed to so-called "Renaissance Men" -- that is, people who were multi-skilled, had many interests.  These people had broad knowledge and broad experience.  The breadth of their knowledge, coupled with their skill, their intellect, and a bit of luck, allowed them to make connections between disparate fields, form unique thoughts, and thereby bring humanity forward by small steps or huge leaps.

Today, breadth is frowned upon.  We don't want people who are good all-round, no matter the subject, no matter the problem; we desire specialists, people with an incredible depth of knowledge, but who are incredibly narrow.  These people aren't stupid, they're not even average -- they're incredibly bright people.  The problem is that, because their knowledge is limited, it is impossible for them to make the kind of broad connections that are necessary.  Think of it as data-mining, if you will.

Data-mining allows us to go through huge stacks of data -- any kind of data -- and find relationships, recurring patterns, and make inferences from them that guide our decisions.  Data-mining doesn't work if you have a very tall stack from one source; data-mining works best when you have many stacks from a variety of sources, even if they aren't as tall as as the single stack.  Today's specialists are the tall stack; the "Renaissance Man" (and bear in mind that I may not be using that term in an accepted way, but it's the only way I can articulate what I'm on about) is the many stacks.

Who needs breadth when we have computers to do our data-mining for us? you ask.  Computers need to be told, "Hey, check if there's anything interesting if we look at these two variables."  The person running the operation (undoubtedly, a specialist) still has to formulate the questions, which I'd argue they are ill-equipped to do.  A Renaissance Man will first feel the connections, the relationships.  It will nag at him, "There's something there, but what?" It will bother him so much that he'll start looking into it, not based on a statement he could write down, or input into a computer, but on a gut feeling.   He'll have to solve the problem, because until he does, every piece of it will sit in his mind, cluttering it all.  Tetris blocks that fit together somehow, but that he can't quite arrange to get a line and disappear.  It's through this intuition that the relationships are uncovered, and well-informed plans can be formulated.

Now why am I rambling on about depth/breadth/data-mining/Renaissance Men?  It's going to sound egotistical, and I really don't mean it to be... I've never been good at articulating exactly what's on my mind, and my English has gone downhill the past few years, so I trust you won't hold it against me.

It's an extremely long build-up to this: sitting here, being bombarded by these tetris pieces, they're cluttering my mind.  There's something there! I know there is!  And every once in a while, things will shift into alignment for just a moment, and I'll get this flash of clarity, of true understanding; then pieces shift again and the clutter returns.  The brief flashes of truth though... they're unsettling. 

Something is coming, and it's not good, at least not in any way society today can understand.  I know this makes me sound like some sort of hippie "the sky is falling" douchebag, but try to understand what I'm on about, even though I'm not making a lot of sense.

The world moves faster. Things change at a faster rate than they have in the past.  There are more new things every day (and by things, I don't just mean objects -- I mean 'thing' in the most generic sense possible, objects, experiences, utterances, what have you).  Fractal time, Timewave Zero, the end of the Mayan Calendar, the singularity -- whatever way you choose to frame this increase in novelty, there's no escaping that it is happening, and that none of us are ready for whatever's coming.

While all this is roiling in my brain, there's also other things: expectations for the future that I've held for as long I can remember, and the thoughts surrounding them... I think about things like global defence against killer asteroids, the sort of thing that Arthur C. Clarke described when he wrote about Spaceguard in Rendezvous with Rama; interstellar travel, off-world colonies... I think about those things, and how essential they are in the long-term.  Then I think about the steps required to get to those stages, and then I think about the steps involved in those steps, and I get overwhelmed, and then I think about how no one has any interest in pursuing any of that, because they're too goddamned busy fighting about bullshit that doesn't actually matter in any way in the long-run. "Hey, let's fight these people, because they were mean to us/mean to their people/believe in a different imaginary friend than we do." "Hay guys, these people choose to structure their government and economy in a different way than we do, we must annihilate them because they are dirty wrong people and we are right."

Petty bullshit in the grand scheme of things.

No one sees! No one cares!  The people who do see and do care aren't taken seriously. "Fringe elements", "hippies", "crackpots".  I mean, looking back over this post, I know you'll lump me into those same labels -- if I was reading this as an outside party, I'd do it too.

I suppose I need to end with a tl;dr summary point.

Change is upon us. It's here, and it's coming faster every day. Change is good, but we're not ready to handle this change -- we cannot comprehend the level of change that's coming.  We'll look back on these days, and say, "Yup, it was already too late then, but still, we could have prepared better than we did."

This change is not the change I've expected and looked forward to all my life.  The people with money and power are too busy getting more money and power to pay attention to the important things -- they're too busy demonizing the manufactured "other" for their own personal gain; we've all lost our bright future because of them.  Preparations for our long-term future need to be made, and they need to be started now, but no one besides me cares.  Preparations for our short-to-medium term future should have started decades ago, but we've all become lazy, and now that future is almost here, the CHANGE is almost here, and we'll all be thwacked righteously by it.

The future ain't what it used to be.

I've been meaning to post this for the past several days and I keep forgetting.

There's lots of birds in my neighbourhood. Most of them are loud annoying squawky starling-esque birds (i dunno if that's what they are, but it's what they make me think of).  There's also the giant dodgy black crows just hanging out waiting to pick up an elementary school kid and carry them away.

But this week, I've been hearing this new bird every once in a while. I haven't seen it, though, and the song is unfamiliar, so I have no idea what kind of bird it is.

Listen to this, would you, and tell me if you know what bird it is?

これは鳥の鳴き声です。しかし、それはどういう鳥ですか? 私はそれを知りません。あなたは知っていますか?

Today is Sunday. I had to work today, though, because it was "The PTA Thinks They Are Important, And Thus Will Fuck Everyone's Weekend Up Whenever They Want To" day.  There was a "You Worked Hard On a Sunday; Let's Eat And Drink" party afterwards that I wasn't invited to. When they started collecting payments in the afternoon, one of the teachers asked me to pay, and i'm like "uhhhhhhh for what?" "The party!" "What party?" "... OH!"  20 minutes later, I Was invited, and initially said yes, but then thought better of it. 5000yen is a lot of money when i'm broke and trying to save money.  I changed my mind and told them I wouldn't come.

After work, I went out looking for plants. You see, yesterday I got this idea that I should try growing plants this year on the windowsill in my living room. It doesn't get much light (only about 40 minutes of direct sunlight in the afternoon), but I figured I'd give it a shot.  Went around to a bunch of places, and they all suggested I go for herbs, since they're the most tolerant of such shitty conditions -- also the most useful.  After stopping at several stores, I finally ended up coming home with: Tuscan Blue Rosemary; Hot Lips Cherry Sage; Silver Lemon Thyme; Sweet Basil; Wild Strawberries; Peppermint; 鷹の爪 (Eagle's Talons, aka cayenne); a rubber tree; and 4-Leaf Clover (or, a good luck plant, depending on where you look).  I doubt the cayenne will fare very well, since they want full sun; the clover, too, will be a bit dodgy.  The rest of them, though, should live well, I hope.  Just have to make sure I actually use my herbs now :).

Do you have a kitchen garden/windowsill garden?  What do you grow? What are the conditions like? Do you have any advice to give? よろしく～.

Tomorrow is my substitute holiday for working on a Sunday, but I can't really relax. I have to go to Toyama City and have the immigration people move my visa into my new passport, and then to the driver's centre to get my international driving permit.  Nothing difficult, but it's time consuming (the immigration stuff can be done 9-12, 1-4, but the IDP can only be done 10-11 or 2-3, sooo -_-).  Assuming I don't get back too late, I'll take some pics of my plants. :)

And now, because it is THE WAY, here's a music video.   This is Made In Japan, what I believe was V6's second(?) single, from 1996.  My favourite part is the rotoscoped flashes of light.

I find that, when I'm taking short trips to cities I've been to several times, I either don't take many pictures, or I do, but they're sort of random and pointless.  I've been thinking that, this time, I should try to make myself a sort of project, so keep myself focussed, you know?

I'm going to Tokyo this weekend for 4 or 5 days, and would like to come back with something of interest.  My first idea was one I saw in a thread somewhere here on flickr a while back: basically, rock up to a place with a bunch of people; chat someone up, and ask them where nearby they'd suggest you visit; get them to write the name of the place on a big notebook, and hold it up, while you take their picture, placing them at your current location; go to the place they recommended; lather rinse repeat.

And while it could be good, I kind of want a back-up if people aren't all that chatty when I'm there, you know?

Soooo any suggestions?

Guys, hey guys! I have the most AWESOME video to show you. It's hilarious. I laughed soooooo hard watching it. I'm still giggling about it periodically now.

Problem though: I can't upload it to Vox.  Vox has decided to do THAT THING that it does again.  Last time it was with mp3s, this time it's with videos apparently.  I'll upload them, and then they'll be like NO WHAT NO THAT FILE CANNOT BE ACCEPTED.  Or I'll upload, it will accept the video, and then it will give the "This video is still being processed" message on the page for it... FOR FUCKING EVER.  And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not having a hissy fit because processing took 10 minutes instead of being instantaneous.  I uploaded a video two fucking weeks ago, and it's still "being processed". Fuck off.

Tonight, I uploaded two videos. They both appeared to be fine, but then sat at 'being processed' for hours, and I knew what had fucking happened. I decided I'd try it again, so I deleted them both and tried to upload again.  "We cannot accept this file" Vox says. Why? It doesn't say.

I'd address this in a support mail, but I'm 100% certain I'd get the same useless answer I got when I asked about the similar problem I was having with certain mp3s, ie, "Make sure your files conform to our recommended formats guidelines ^_^".  HI. (1) THEY DO, (2) THEY'RE THE SAME FORMAT ALL THE OTHER VIDEOS THAT HAVE WORKED ARE IN, SO CLEARLY THAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

So yeah, I have the most fucking hilarious video to show you guys, if Vox ever stops dicking the dog.

And yes, I realize I'm being unnecessarily harsh.  Don't take it personally, any vox-staff who may read this.  It's just ridiculously frustrating, you see.

I've been searching all bloody night for icons to go with my new windows theme, and I think I've finally come upon a decent enough setup, but there's just a couple things missing: I want to customize a couple of folders' icons, and am looking for the appropriate icons to do so.

On my desktop, I have one folder, which is just my super-quick go-to (aside: dictionary people say hypens aren't fashionable, and are an affectation in this day and age [day-and-age!], but I think they've just become a bit addle-brained by all the txtspk idiot children who aren't taught any better are using [idk my bff jill?] -- but I digress) folder that I toss stuff in so it's handy, and it turns into a bit of a junk drawer. There's quite a bit of chaos involved.

So I decided I'd give it a delightful Sacred Chao icon.  Now, you'd think that since Discordianism and Geekery are joined at the hip, there'd be a good selection of Sacred Chao (and Golden Apple) icons in a variety of sizes just waiting for someone to come along and use them in their riced-up desktop.

Yet, I CANNOT FIND A SINGLE ONE.  How is this possible at all?  Oh Eris, you minx.

So, if anyone knows of where I may obtain Discordian symbology in Windows .ico format (for WinXP, not Vista), in sizes of 64x64 at least (higher values are alright so long as the 64x64 one exists in the file), be a pal and let me know?  Hail Eris!

itunes' "get info" window has a spot for BPM, the tempo of the song. If all your mp3s have the bpm filled in, you can then go ahead and use it when making smart playlists. Like "Hmm, when I jog, 160bpm music would be great, so let's make a playlist of all my music in that range, how convenient!" as an example.

Problem is, music never comes with the bpm filled in, not even stuff you buy from itunes. Additionally, none of the plugins that allow you to EASILY set the bpm manually in itunes work in windows. For mac, there's plugins that sit at the side of the window, and you click the button in time with the music, and it'll autofill the BPM field from the value it derives. No such luck in windows, you apparently have to go to some other such program (or website, as I've been using), then go back to itunes, open up the get info window (because you can't just click on the bpm field and have it turn editable like you can with genre, title, artist, album), click in the bpm field, type in your number, blahblahblah, it takes fucking forever, and with 12000 songs? gimme a break.

There's programs that claim to automatically determine the tempo of a song through acoustic analysis... when these programs are right, they're very right, but when they're wrong, they're oh so wrong, and they're wrong about half the time.

So, how can I fill in the tempo on 12000 songs relatively accurately without it taking 8 years and without wanting to kill something?

Or rather, one thing.

If you use last.fm, you should uhhh check this link out.

Try as we might, we all have some mp3s that are mistagged, and we either don't realize, or we have so many that it's nearly impossible to fix.  There are services like Musicbrainz that aim to fix your metadata, but sometimes they're a bit dodgy.  Last.fm is looking to start a similar service, but to start with, they need to get audio fingerprints of songs -- as many songs as possible.

So download the tool and share your audio fingerprints, and help make everyone's metadata not suck ass. :)