Archive for October, 2005
Death From Above
October 17
OK, I found something scary about living here in the Retirement Capitol of America. The oak trees. Well, more the acorns than the trees. You see, these suckers are huge and heavy.
Not only are they huge and heavy, but they come hurtling down at breakneck speed (I swear I’ve heard a sonic boom or two) due to the trees being ginormous. The wind throws these miniature cannonballs onto our porch where they bounce and careen off the rails and table/chairs out there, throwing them into the glass door and scaring the living bejeezus out of Elaine and I.
I wonder how many squirrels and birds have met a nutty death this year?
Hosting? Hosting? Who’s Got the Hosting?
October 14
It’s less than a month away from NaNoWriMo and I still have a lot to do. And I don’t just mean for my novel, which is going to be about zombies (you’d neve have guessed that, huh?) this year. I’m trying to get an a new online application up and running for it.
It’s not a commercial app and it’s not anything important or special, just a little something to help those of us who have literary pursuits. I built it over the last couple of days (it’s not complete by any means, but it’s a viable alpha/beta) in Ruby on Rails. Oh, by the way, if you’re developing in Rails on OS X, you need Locomotive. It makes launching and managing your Rails application infinitely easier.
Anyway, I’ve built it and it’s running fine here, but here doesn’t do anyone out there any good. Right now it uses as PostreSQL database, but thanks to Rails and Migrations, it can easily go to whatever system I end up putting it on. The only strange requirment is the acts_as_taggable gem. It lets me do nifty folksonomy-type things. Those things, by the way, won’t be in the app until next week, probably.
So, anywho, if you have a bit of spare space on your Rails-enabled host you can lend me, I’d be most appreciative. Or you could donate to the DropCash donation page if you want to fund my goal of putting this up on DreamHost.
The Truth in Horror
October 4
I love horror movies more than a lot of people I know. Just today I sat and watched Re-Animator (and on a side note, if you look at the source code you’ll see a perfectly valid use of the <i></i> tag, since movie titles are supposed to be italicized). I have serious problems, though, with this recent trend in remaking the horror “classics.”
I think the worst offender lately is The Amityville Horror which came out this year. I didn’t watch it. I don’t watch remakes (for the most part). Especially not ones where the producers didn’t even do basic research.
Research? For a horror movie? Normally I’d say that’s overkill; after all, who doesn’t love a good, mindless scream? But for America’s most famous haunting/demonic posession (at least of a house), you need to do at least a couple inches of digging. Namely you need to realize that the book behind the movie is a fiction novel. Yes, I know it originally (and may still) say “Based on a true story” but the authors have admitted to making the story up with the lawyer of the guy who murdered people in the house. If you don’t believe me (and why should you?) here’s a Snopes article and one from the Wikipedia. Oh, and for one final nail in the coffin (no sort of pun intended), how about a link to the documentary exposing the story as a lie? Here it is Notice that it came out 5 years before the new movie was made.
Anyway, just wanted to bring that to people’s attention. It’s all a lie and wasn’t based on any truth other than the fact that people were murdered in the house. This is a lot like The Exorcist in people’s belief that it really happened. Yes, there are really cases of demonic possession (or at least people who believe they are possessed. Whether they are or not, I can’t answer). But the actual events in the story are made up and aren’t based on any fact at all. Still, a damn good book and a truely scary movie.
I’ve Failed You All
October 1
So yesterday I got a call and my Sproutit.com contract has been terminated. The project just wasn’t moving as fast as they wanted. I understand and I’m OK with it. I knew I was going kind of slow (having to search for information, learn someone else’s code, and my anal-retentive triple-checking for the best method), and I kind of had a feeling it wasn’t going to go well. But, things will move on.
Last week John (who needs to start blogging again) and I went to see a lawyer about getting Gigantuan Studios legally up and running. For a reasonable price we can have articles drafted and filed in the state of Arkansas and get our logo trademarked. We both know that we don’t have to have the logo trademarked — it was copyrighted to John the moment he finished drawing it — but it’s a lot faster in court if it is. Not that we ever expect to have to go to court for our logo! Those of you who have seen it know that it’s not very likely to be copied.
So, yeah. I’m a little sad and down on myself for losing the job, but I learned a lot of good development and Rails knowledge for the month I worked on it. It’s going to be a very interesting product when it gets released and I hope everything works out well for Sproutit.
But, in better news, John and I are throwing an Xbox LAN game today! About five people are coming over and we’ll have two projectors for the screens. Do you know what that means? That means two 90″+ screens! Yes, it’s “Haloween”. If you want to see the t-shirt or poster, I’ll upload them to Flickr later on. I’ll also post pictures of the gaming, so you can see how awesome of a set up it is. If you’re near us (northwest Arkansas) and you want to play, let me know and I’ll send you an invite next time we throw one. We’re trying to do one a month or so.
Anyway, game starts in a few hours and I haven’t finished cleaning up the house, so I’m out of here for awhile.