spectral54

I was just reminded of LJ tonight through a series of coincidences, so I came to check it out and prune my friends list. I'm down to < 20 now I think, just by using the criteria "who has not posted in 2010". I actually fail that myself, but I don't think I can unfriend myself. I don't really plan to post here much more than I have in the past (I typically just use buzz on my gmail account), but I still find it useful to have something like this around. *shrug*.

My last update was kind of a bummer, huh? I might write more later (in a friends-only post), but things were a lot better this year. :)

If you read this on RSS, you might not see it since it was friends only. http://spectral54.livejournal.com/93761.html

So, I appear to have 20 invites to Wave. If I know you, IM/email me your @gmail.com address and I'll send one your way. If you don't know my IM.. I probably don't know you? Or you just lost track over time. It's obvious: my LJ name without numbers @ gmail.

So, it almost feels like I got a new bike. Having everything tightened, loosened, flushed, refilled, inflated, adjusted, etc., and having the "pour gas all over my crotch" valve sealed off, it rides completely differently, doesn't leave me smelling like gasoline [in the crotchal region and everywhere else], and is so much more awesome than I already thought it was yesterday. So glad I did that, instead of attempting to just get by on changing just the oil myself. I need to check the carbs sometime since it was sitting for so long, but it rides very well now, and doesn't need excess choking to get started.

Pictures eventually. ;)

So I decided sometime around early July to get a motorcycle. Casually mentioned this to one of my guildmates and he had a Ninja 250 available, which was honestly the bike I was probably going to get anyway, and had a lot of good information on what to do to actually get in to this sport. I took his advice, went to the MSF course in August, got the bike in early September and my license endorsement the next day, and have been riding off and on since. I've put almost 500 miles on the bike already, and I've only been on the highway a few times - the rest was all parking lots and local roads.

I had to bring it in for service today. It's had a rough life: it's been dropped twice, had a bunch of mods made to it by people who should not be dealing with anything electrical, had the tank replaced by someone who didn't know what they were doing, etc. Even though I haven't ridden it in almost a week (it needed more oil and I had no idea what was in it so it needed a full change, and I hadn't had time to do it), not having the _ability_ to ride it is really bothering me. I miss the silly thing. I'll get it back tomorrow most likely, but I want it now.

Perhaps it's just the overabundance of caffeine in my system (I've not been drinking caffeine for the past few months, but figured a mountain dew flavored pain reliever might solve the headache I've had since Sunday), but I'm really hyper right now, and really want my bike back.

I really should get some pictures of me and the bike sometime soon. Loving the fact that in California I can easily ride in November. It's 60˚ right now, if I just put a liner in the jacket and the pants, I'd barely notice. And yes, I'm being careful. I have a proper motorcycle jacket, motorcycle gloves, motorcycle boots (that look like sneakers, but still have ankle protection), helmet, overpants, etc. I took the safety course. I do most of my riding on well lit roads, after hours when there's little traffic, with my highbeam on, below 40 MPH. My jacket's reflective in parts as well. And it's still fun as all hell.

I fully recommend everyone should take the MSF course, even if you don't plan on getting a motorcycle. You need leather gloves (gardening gloves work), boots with ankle protection, a 'sturdy' jacket and a pair of jeans. They have loaner helmets and have bikes for you. Mine was 10 hours split over two days, and was a lot of fun. Then you'll realize you need to do this more, and go and get one. ;)

They discontinued the vanilla bean coolatta. I have no reason to go to DD anymore.

So, I've been pretty quiet lately, decided I should say something here.

I'm moving to California. In less than two weeks. I don't yet have a place to live, but I do have a place to stay if I need it, and I'm hoping to not need it by finding a place to live two days from now.

I've started up playing warcraft again, got to L56.. then I went to a work event for a week and didn't play, and haven't really played since. What I have done, is gotten halfway through Book 11 of Wheel of Time (the last one published), and spent many an hour watching tv episodes and working on my various personal projects. I watched Coupling yesterday (yes, all of it), and it was decently good. I have no complaints.

Personal projects: Front Row is always on the primary monitor. I've made it so that it isn't, by spending many, many hours in a debugger figuring out how it does what it does, and then many many more hours reverse engineering the API for it so that I can write a plugin for it to show stuff. Wouldn't have been nearly as easy (and I probably would have given up) if the BDK didn't exist, but I find it's never been up to date with front row from leopard (just the stuff from the apple tv), so it wasn't too useful besides a couple pointers in the right direction. I can't release it yet, as there's a lot of debugging cruft and stuff that doesn't make sense in there, but I hope eventually to clean it up and release a binary. The amount of random stuff I had to do to get a working copy of the headers and stuff going is a bit staggering, I don't know that I could really release the source and ever have anyone else compile it. :/

I'm now running the only known browser that's capable of passing both objective criteria of the Acid3 test. WebKit nightly r31356 is pixel exact, 100/100, and running on my machine.

Opera claims they got to 100/100 first (but then the test changed on them), but they didn't provide any test builds, and they very obviously were not pixel-exact (",a" ftl), and we haven't heard from them since. WebKit offers up builds on a regular basis, which means I was able to download the 100/100 (not pixel exact) build, and just now download the pixel exact one.

I don't know why I'm so happy about this, but I think it's honestly a pretty big testament to the quality of the webkit/khtml code. Congratulations guys! :)

Today we went to Akihabara. Not much to report yet, the day's not over.. but we're sick of standing/walking, so we're back here to recuperate and drop off all of our warez.