Author: matthew

The Creation as an Infocom Game.

What. You think when I post a link as the first line, there’s actually useful content afterwards on that “read more” link?

Tonight, on the way into work, I was flipping through the stations on my XM Radio…

• Highway 16… naw, I don’t want to do country tonight.
• Mix… Too homogenic for my tastes tonight. It’s just… bland pop music.
• Seventies on Seven? Meh… It was Led Zeppelin, again, followed by some Rush and CCR. I mean, I like that stuff, but it didn’t reach out and grab me.
• Well, maybe it’s a talk radio night? America Left, America Right. No politics, just car shows and this dumb music show…

Waiddasecind.

Who’s this Dean Martin guy they’re talking about?

Huh. He’s got a dang fine voice. When’s that music from? 1946? Huh.

(thumbs on radio, ignoring traffic around me for a second)

“Forties on Four”.

Holy crap! That’s some butt-kicking Big Band music! Wow! That’s really good!

So here I sit, a few hours later, STILL listening to the Forties on Four. Man. That’s real music. These aren’t just golden oldies, these are MOLDY OLDIES. Right now, it’s barbershop… actually, it’s not forties, but it’s Acoustix singing songs from the forties.

I feel decidedly strange, but, oddly musically satisfied.

The people in the parking lot at Wal-Mart sure looked at me strangely as my butt-kickin’ sound system blasted big band music. And you thought rap had deep bass.

Sorry for all the comment spam, folks. I upgraded my Drupal to the latest version, and forgot a couple of custom patches.

Not to worry, I’m remedying it right now. I caught it in time, but had to disable anonymous posting entirely until the patch is done.

–Matt B.

After googling for the solution profusively, and trying various recipes over the last few months, I finally figured out the most straightforward — and simple — solution to registering a Linux box on a Windows 2K or Windows 2003 Dynamic DNS server.

On my Ubuntu box, it was this simple: 1. As root, open /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf using your favorite text editor. 2. Add the following lines to the configuration file, where “MYHOSTNAME” is the name of your machine as you wish it to appear in DNS:

send fqdn.fqdn “MYHOSTNAME”; send fqdn.encoded off; send fqdn.server-update on; do-forward-updates;

3. Save and close the file. 4. Restart networking; on my ubuntu box, it was “/etc/init.d/networking restart”.

Voila! Just nslookup your hostname, using the Windows 2000 or 2003 server as your DNS server which you registered on with DDNS, and your host will appear within whatever domain is configured on that server.

(Note: If your DDNS server is configured to only accept GSS-TSIG updates, this won’t work. Have your domain admin allow RFC-compliant updates; it’s just a check-box in the DNS server configuration dialogs.)

All I gotta say is that chick did it live. Dude. I’m floored, that rocked!

http://www.myspace.com/weirdal

That’s all I have to say about that. Go and buy the CD right now just like you know you should!

Given that it’s Sunday, and I’m sitting at home in sweatpants after having just woken up while the rest of the family got dolled up and went to church, Robert Kirby’s latest column seems appropriate (click the link for the full article, it’s short and entertaining):

Two weeks ago, a kid got up in church and announced to the ward, “I’d like to bear my tithing.”

He meant to say, of course, that he would like to bear his testimony. But it’s such a small LDS gospel distinction that nobody bothered to call him on it. …

…I think it’s a bit disingenuous to push kids to say they know something when they don’t. It’s OK to encourage them toward public gratitude and the like, but I wonder about the efficacy of insisting that a kid be truthful everywhere but in church.

If you’re going to fib in church, I think you should wait until at least you know what you’re doing.

OK, I know you’ve probably heard of World of Warcraft. It’s the single most popular massively-multiplayer online role-playing game ever made. With over 5 million subscribers, it’s simply… massive. There is no other way to describe it, and the high-level game is all about players vs. players.

I uploaded a copy of this video “Big Blue Dress” to my server. Hope you get a kick out of it.

http://barnson.org/matthew/media/BigBlueDress.wmv WARNING: 50 megabyte file! This may take a few minutes to download on a high-speed connection, and about 3 hours on dialup!

Here are the lyrics as I could transcribe them:

I’ve been kickin’ ass since the dawn of time. I’m just a killing man that’s reached my killing prime.

I burn and I plunder as it suits my desire. The weapon of my choice is great balls of fire.

(Chorus) So why, I ask — this doesn’t make much sense — that a man of my stature should have to wear a dress?

I mean, what, may I inquire were you thinking on that day when you conjured up for a man like me a robe that looks so gay?

Ahh… Say bye-bye and your troubles melt away. Ahh… He uses fire but his robe looks so gay. (End Chorus)

I was taught my craft at the dawn of pain. You may not like my methods but you’ll surely know my name.

I just think incendiary thoughts and my hands burst into flames. A few moments later, and you’ll never be the same.

(Chorus)

(Instrumental Solo)

So if you’re embarassed and you hang your head in shame, and you’d like an opportunity to redeem your worthy name,

well just remember this when next you look to kill that a man who’s truly skilled can look quite good in twill!

(Chorus)

AOL released search records for 650,000 of its users. This has become a treasure-trove for search aficianados everywhere. Read about the seven types of searchers.

I want to sell T-shirts on cafepress which read “i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life.”

Yep, you too can create your own motivational posters! For your consideration, I submit these Star Trek Inspirational Posters. My favorite is “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.”