Recently in links + misc Category

Listening to "Up Around the Bend" by Hanoi Rocks. Finland produces more than multimedia mobile devices... ;o)

The same weekend of CES and the porn convention thingy (sorry, I don't pay attention to acronyms at the best of times, let alone the beachballtits acronyms) in Las Vegas is always the weekend of the American Football finals weekend. Thus, my brother, his good buddy Mike and Mike's dad make their yearly pilgrimage to the Sports Book at Caesar's Palace to spend the weekend drinking and betting and getting sick from the smoke & viruses brought to the sports book room by all the folks who are in there. Got to love Las Vegas.

Now listening to "El Matador" by The Spores. Molly rocks harder than you.

Whether you go to CES, the porn thingy, PRB, VLV, or any other reason to go to Lost Wages, you will come home with the Las Vegas Flu. The LV Flu is worse than anything you pick up in an airplane. First off there are a wider variety of folk from more ports of call in any given casino in Lost Wages than in any airplane. Then add onto that the canned, recycled air, and SMOKE. Did I mention the extra, pungent, oxygenated smoke that is recycled in Vegas? Add that to at least 243 viruses and you have SICK. Real quick.

Now listening to "Beat Surrender" by The Jam. If you haven't guessed, I have iTunes on shuffle.

Sin City nothing. More like Sick City. What goes on in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. It comes home with you. If you are a mild mannered (me) or a medium mannered (brother) Hanen, it means coming home sick with a nasty head cold which can develop into more. Now if your manners aren't mild or medium, then wrap it. I don't want to hear what you picked up.

So, my brother spent all last week at home with bronchitis, conjunctivitis, and sinusitis. The CL said he had an extendo hangover, but today (10 days later) was his first half day back at work. Hardly a hangover.

Up now? "Not a Crime" by Gogol Bordello.

I felt mild twinges of tummy flu last week but squelched it. I woke up this Saturday for our first day of the Punk Rock Bowling Tournament #10 with my nose dripping at an alarming rate and I was COLD. I am never feel cold. I like 45F. I like skiing. I like cold weather. I run hot. But I have been cold ever since Saturday. I currently have the heat on in my apartment. Shocker.

"Toast of the Town" by Motley Crue from the remastered "Too Fast for Love" cd. Thanks, Alex!

Don't know if I was getting a bit sick before leaving for Punk Rock Bowling, but within 12 hours I was very sick. Now this makes for a boring weekend. I was in bed by midnight and waking up at 10am. No real drunk, but lots of cold medicine. Bah. How can one flirt with hot 40-something punk men when one's nose is dripping and one has a sore throat. Really.

Speaking of the Crue and Ikki Nikki Three & a Half... if you have a copy of the original Leathur Records "Too Fast for Love" contact me. That is one of the best punk/metal albums of all times - Dead Boy-esque. The 1981 EMI version is just metal. Bah.

Ha.ha.ha.ha... In your mind you are thinking, "Ms. Jen must be sick and a bit loopy, she just wrote 'hot 40-something punk men'!" Yes, it was true. But flirting whilst sniffly never is very effective so I have no news to report. But the men were hot.

"Family Tree" by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. Love the TSPO. Love 'em.

I hope I don't get as sick as my brother, as I have WAY TOO MUCH TO DO before departing for the Nokia Urbanista mo-pho adventure on Feb. 6th. Like finish two client websites, update the barflies.net's CMS, and put together all of the Punk Rock Bowling photos (334 of 'em) into a mammoth photo essay.

"Leavin' Here" by Lars Fredricksen and the Bastards. Other than Gordy (the Unknown Bastard), none of the other Bastards or alumn Bastards were at Bowling this year. Hmph. Oh, Craig Fairbaugh, where are you? Did you fall off the planet?

Speaking of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries, how did Devin visit Punk Rock Bowling for most of Saturday but he did not post a single photo to the Nseries website? Enquiring minds want to know. I know he got some good photos, as I was with him when he was shooting and talking to the ladies with leopard print Sidekicks.

"Do the Devil" by the Amazing Royal Crowns. No websites for the Crowns, other than MySpace and all my old articles and other bits. Hey look! Someone put up a wikipedia article on the Crowns. Yeah!

Actually, I do know why Devin couldn't post his photos from the Sam's Town Bowling lanes... if one can't get a GPS signal than Nokia's Sports Tracker won't post the photos from the route taken. Why are we using software that is not working while the first of our four mobile bloggers is already out on the road? If Nokia would just add geotracking to Lifeblog and toss the Flash interface into the can, it could have worked out of the box.

iTunes is now playing "I Can't Get It" by Hanoi Rocks. Even though I have 1648 songs in my iTunes Library, it keeps coming back to Hanoi Rocks, The Jam, and Sigur Ros. Odd.

Well, to stop the cold induced brain dump now, I will say this, I can't get it why the world's premier mobile phone manufacturer insists on using Flash for their website. Ironic when one considers that most mobiles can't get Flash and Flash Lite is not so great. Gotta agree with Finland's other export, Hanoi Rocks, right now. I don't get it at all.

Hi all, I have many blog post ideas for your reading pleasure, but I promised myself that I would finish (at least iteration #1) my Ruby on Rails app before I blogged several of the big posts living in my head. In the meantime, I present TidBits:

1) Yes, I am working on my first real live Ruby on Rails app. It is an art / image management system that will blog and manage both images and text. I am doing it specifically for artists Dan Callis and Ryan Callis, but we will see if it will be useful for other artists and photographers. I also finally made the decision about what hosting company to deploy my rails app on, the aptly named: Railsplayground.com.

2) NY Times has an excellent article on Gluten-Free dining: For the Gluten-Averse, a Menu That Works

3) Struggling... Since January, I have been struggling with the return of migraine headaches. I have had them in cyclical bursts in the past, but changes in allergy diet or environmental factors have chased them away. But instead of going away with the elimination of chocolate, caffeine, fluorescent lights, and other triggers, the migraines have stepped up frequency to every week or two. I have brought my art table and chair out of storage, as both are very adjustable, for the best ergonomic set up while working. All efforts to no avail. The headaches keep showing up.

I went to my primary care physician at Kaiser and she just put me on Maxalt but did not have the time nor interest to help me figure out what the new triggers could be. Maxalt works great and will clear the pain away in less than 30 minutes, but I can't drive or really work on my computer for a day or two upon taking it, as it makes me dreamy and unfocused. Being dreamy and unfocused when trying to code does not really work.

In the past my headaches go away and stay away for years, if I eliminate allergen foods out of my diet. To that end, I have an appointment with Dr. Lena Kian N.D. tomorrow.

4) If you are out and about and need to calculate a tip, Aaron Gustafson has created a great little mobile app: Tipr

Somehow I surfed / researched from the BBC's 100 things we didn't know last year item #32* to Behind the Name.

At Behind the Name, I have discovered that the good, solid, stoic, old fashioned name of Alfred, means Elf Counsel in Old English. This makes my day.

Furthermore, Algar means elf spear, Alvar means elf army, and Alvin (or Alwyn) is elf friend. Please name your boy children accordingly.

During my year in Dublin, I got very used to the convenience of the purple Morphy electric hot water kettle in my apartment's kitchen. I found a variety of uses for the less than one minute to boil hot water that the Morphy cooked up beyond just a cup of tea, like unstopping a drain, boiling water in the kettle quickly and then making pasta which reduces prep time, pouring the boiled water over chopped veggies in a strainer for insta-blanched veggies to go over rice, etc.

Since returning to Calif., I have missed insta-hot water and have looked around at various stores for a hot water kettle only to be very surprised that Ranch 99 carried a variety of rice cookers but not a single water kettle. Yesterday, I went to Long's Drug Store near my brother's house for some cleaning supplies and in walking to the cleaning supplies I walked past the electric home appliance section and found two different brands of kettles.

Both types of kettles are of thinner plastic and do not seem to be as sound as the Morphy brand in Ireland, and the one I did end up buying is not quite as fast as the Morphy. But the good news is that the above kettle that I did buy is a lot better than attempting to boil a cup of water in the microwave and then buring myself as I try to get it out of the microwave. Yes, I do have a metal kettle for the stove, but it is in a box in the garage, somewhere...

From Mommy Needs Coffee - Ice Cream, Wine, Midol, and Tampons all while educating the nice youth of America:

“Jerry, take a look in my basket. Go ahead. Look.”

He glances in the basket and then nervously back at me.

“Jerry, what do you see? Go on. This isn’t rhetorical. Tell me what you see.”

Jerry is looking a tad bit freaked out by me and is trying to nonchalantly glance around for a manager, but he answers me anyway.

“Uhhh...Midol, Ice Cream, tampons (serious blush for him), a magazine and a big bottle of wine.”

I look at him hard. “Very good, Jerry. Now tell me, does that look like the basket of a woman you should really be messing with right now.”

*blank stare*

“Tell me, Jerry, do you have a girlfriend?”

Photo of St. Brigit's dog by Ms. Jen, Nov. 2004.

I love a good internet black hole on a Sunday afternoon. Start with an idea or site one wants to find (Today: info on the Ballad of the Lady of Walsingham) and end two hours later up at a great academic resource page (USC's Matrix Home) whilst looking for the historical St. Brigit, opposed to the mythic St. Brigit.

I am currently reading Robert Graves' The White Goddess : A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, and his breakdown of the ancient Indo-European-Greco-Celtic-Biblical myths on the Goddess, The Muse, Poetry, and Myth is is engaging and a good read, if not more than a bit confusing for those of us who are not scholars of Greek and Indo-European gods. While Graves does not address, at least so far, his contemporary Jung's theories on myth - the concepts dovetail nicely.

I have been googling names of books and ballads that Graves' references to build his case, and thus found myself in the Martrix. Scruffy is chasing spiders along the top of the couch. Welcome to a June gloomy afternoon in Orange...

Maybe Anne's wouldn't, but mine would.

I have 23 midterms to correct and Anne's idea is tempting...

Meg? Julie Wanda?

Gail linked to the Belief-O-Matic quiz. I took it and guess I should be a Quaker, does it count that the Vineyard came out of the Yorba Linda Friends (Quaker) church?

Your Results: The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1. Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2. Seventh Day Adventist (88%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (86%)
4. Roman Catholic (86%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
6. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (81%)
7. Liberal Quakers (64%)
8. Hinduism (58%)
9. Orthodox Judaism (54%)
10. Unitarian Universalism (54%)
11. Bah�'� Faith (50%)
12. Jehovah's Witness (45%)
13. Islam (45%)
14. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (42%)
15. Sikhism (42%)
16. Reform Judaism (40%)
17. Neo-Pagan (36%)
18. Jainism (35%)
19. Secular Humanism (29%)
20. New Age (28%)
21. Mahayana Buddhism (25%)
22. Theravada Buddhism (23%)
23. Taoism (22%)
24. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (19%)
25. Scientology (17%)
26. Nontheist (16%)
27. New Thought (13%)

I have had a few liberal Quaker friends over the years, but no Orthodox Quaker friends. I thought I would tip out on the traditional Anglican before Quaker... hmmm....

Funny thing... many of my friends have departed from evangelical or charasmatic churches for Eastern Orthodoxy and a few for Catholicism over the last ten years. A few of us have hung in there at a Vineyard or similar church have migrated to small bible studies or to small groups of arts oriented folk.

I have been burnt out on all things evangelical ever since Bush's first run for office in 2000. Just hearing much of the rote American evangelical party line gives me a case of the hives. Out of fear that Lance and the Vineyard Anaheim would promote the Reds, I stopped going to church for a good month or so before the election and today was my first sunday back. Chicken, I know, but I was just not up for it. It was enough to be teaching a class at Biola on election night. balk, balk, balk, balk...

[Side note: Does it strike anyone, besides me, funny in a good ironic way that after 40 some-odd years of rabid anti-communism that the Republicans are now proud to be "Red" states? Pinkos.]

Oh when will the chilly 75 degree weather come? As Bill the Cat would say, "Ppphbbttt...."

1) Last night I sat at the door at Alex's making/forcing/kindlyasking folks to pay $5 for a surprise Zeke show. People are cheap and they frequently complain about paying $3 or $5 bucks to see three bands or more. If you can't afford $3 or $5 for a great band, why even leave your house? Why not just stay home with a 40 ouncer of some scary malt liquor that costs less than $5 at your local liquor emporium?

2) Legends and old stories are frequently discounted by the "Everything Must Be Tested In A Rigorous Double-Blind Experiment" set as merely myth until some intrepid person sets out to prove the legend true, the famed example of this is the discovery of Troy. Now DNA testing proves true the tale of the old legend that Irish celts originated from northern Spain.

3) Sorry I have been MIA here not just the last week, but on and off in the last month. My sister broke both of her arms in late July. I have been trading off helping her with my mom. Between working two and a half jobs (Alex's, web design clients, and teaching), I have been too beat to think clearly let alone post.

4) As the last note, have I mentioned how evily hot, humid, and smoggy it has been here lately? Ugh. Erika asked me yesterday if I want to go on a spontaneous lark trip to Ireland, I say yes as long as Ireland promises to rain and have temps under 60 degrees....

Filter Time... Here are a few links to blogs and other essays questioning, answering, and riffing on blogging and the results thereof that I would like to recommend from the last few days worth of blog-reading:

First off, Meg questions why she blogs and what it means in "The Aims and Modes of Blogging".

Second, Apophenia points us to Kate Baggott's essay, "Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs".

Finally, BoingBoing points to Danny O'Brien's post on "how famous do you want to be?" While Danny is writing on bands, his concept of middle class of fame can also apply to bloggers, artist/photographers, and website publishers.

A "Fun Internet Black Hole" is a website that you trip on by following a link to another, then another, and next thing you know... it is hours later. Here are a few that have SUCKED me in recently due to the large number of links or large amount of content that can't be ignored:

Megalithomania - Four Winds Tour of Ireland 2001 - 2004

BBC News: Scotland: "Your Pictures" Photo Gallery

The Online Medieval and Classical Library (via Making Light in a round about way)

The Day After Tomorrow - Be sure to play the animations of the ocean currents at the Woods Hole Site.

Roots Web

Craig's List

The Tate - Will someone(s) please sponsor a trip to London for me?

Last but not least, a four year time suck... Alaska Volcanos - make sure you visit the Atlas section and look at the lovely pictures of volcanos.

Good luck in finding your way out...

1) I have decided that 2003 has been the year that Ms. Jen walk(ed)s down the path through Mirkwood. I am VERY much looking forward to getting out on the other side and seeing the proverbial daylight. I have been sincerely praying that 2004 will be a much better year.

2) If you are the praying sort, please do send a prayer or two or three up for my Grandma Grace. She passed out last Sunday morning while making coffee in her kitchen and has been in the hospital ever since. After a battery of tests, the doctors have ruled out heart problems or stroke, but can't place a finger on the source of her dizziness and inability to walk. They think it may be her previous flu that caused an inner ear infection last summer combined with the new flu. Please pray for her full recovery.

3) Of the two Adolescents shows this weekend at Alex's Bar, Friday night was the best overall band show and Sat. was the best actual Adolescents' show. Photos to come later this week.

4) Today has been a day of big news and lots of blog commentary, Veiled4Allah hits the nail on the head in two sentences.