Author: matthew

I ran across an interesting utility in a post on kuro5hin.org. It’s called Instant Gratification. What it does is, if you’re running a weblog, and someone visits, you get sent an instant message to your IM client! This gives you the opportunity, if it’s a logged-in user or someone on a related weblog (like LiveJournal, Blogger, and others share user accounts among thousands of blogs — but I run Drupal, so it’s just among a few hundred and whether the user logs in is totally up to the user to decide, rather than involuntary) to actually send IM’s to your visitors to determine whether they liked what they saw, what improvements you could put in, etc.

I dig it, and I think I’m going to use it. Now to hack my HTML code to allow it!

There’s another cool utility on that page called Blog Change Bot What this little bot does is allow people to receive Instant Messenger notifications when a blog entry on your site is updated.

Now, I already track users IM addresses (once again, on a purely voluntary basis if they decide to provide them), so converting this to a Drupal module should not be a big deal. I think the two could provide some really useful little utilities to Jon’s, Paul’s, and my blogs. Those are the three I really check every day 🙂 It would be nice if I could avoid checking them at all, and just get an IM when they are updated so I can check them when that happens. I track them on my site cloud anyway, so I kind of get a delayed-reaction notification when they change. It would rock to be notified within moments if they change — that way I can log on, leave a comment, and even fire them off a Private Message while they are still online! Or do similar things when Justin or Sam leaves an entry up here at barnson.org.

Download TightVNC here if you want to remotely administer your computer from somewhere else. I dig it.

This blog is mostly for my father-in-law 🙂

I recently discovered a very interesting website called blogosphere.us. I discovered them by analyzing my referrer log. Apparently, their program reads some 150,000 blogs to discover what the current “buzz” is, and links to those trends and articles that are causing a stir across the blogging world.

Talk about your grassroots journalism, that’s pretty freaking cool.

Today marks the first day I’ve been simply “overweight” rather than “obese”. The Body-Mass Index still says I’m obese (at my height and age, I won’t graduate to “overweight” until I go below 224 lbs), but my body fat percentage, according to mybodycomp.com is now 22.54% — a really nice reduction versus the nearly 30% I was at the start of November. I’ve also put on, according to them, 7 lbs of lean muscle mass in that time from my exercise program.

I’m consuming around 2,200 calories per day, which with my moderate exercise (3-5 days of light exercise per week) puts my caloric burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 3200 calories per day. If I’m totally sedentary, my burn rate is around 2600 calories/day. It’s actually really difficult to reach 2200 calories a day when low-carbing at 25 grams or less of carbs per day. I basically have to eat till I’m full (not stuffed!) six times a day. If I reduce my calories too much below 2040, though (my Basal Metabolic Rate), it could put my body into fat-conservation, a.k.a. “famine” mode where it becomes really, really tough to lose.

Here I was thinking that I was in trouble, because I thought I’d “stalled” right around 228 lbs, when in fact I was still dropping inches (about half an inch from everywhere significant), except in my shoulders where I added nearly half an inch (I guess those deltoid exercises are doing their job!).

Eating less, exercising, and following a low-carb eating plan has finally given me the energy, feeling of “satiety”, and diverse diet I’ve been needing for years when I’ve failed at low-calorie diets. 12 pounds down in my first month! If other people’s history is any guide, that will probably slow down to about 4-6 lbs per month over the next few months. As I pass 200 lbs, I will probably find the pounds trying harder to stick around — I’m thirty now, not twenty-one any longer like the last time I was less than 200 lbs! And at that point, I’ll be transitioning into pre-maintenance and maintenance on my weight, trying hard to make the weight loss such a slow drop that, realistically, transitioning to my “normal” diet won’t be more than a tiny adjustment to my eating habits once I’m at a level where I want to maintain.

My wife says I’ve put on a lot of muscle in the last ten years (carrying babies around in one’s arms, and coping with household duties tends to do that a little), and so she thinks once I get below about 200, I’ll probably be very comfortable with my proportions. I guess we’ll wait and see where that goes… I’d sure love to be my high-school weight. I remember that, even then, I saw some “pooch” on my belly in the mirror with which I was dissatisfied.

Anyway, if you’re into tracking your stats to see which way you’re going (and heck, I’m unemployed right now so I definitely have the time), this page really helps to understand one’s stats. mybodycomp.com and fitday.com aren’t perfect sites by any means, but they are really helpful in getting a realistic picture of where you are health and diet-wise.

As managers are so fond of saying, “that which cannot be measured cannot be improved”…

Hope ya don’t mind the rambling about weight and stuff. I generally get obsessive over my new hobbies, then my interest dies off after a few months as I simply make it part of my routine rather than an important focus in my life. It’s happened that way with everything else I do; I figure this won’t be much different. Rest assured, within a few months, weight changes won’t be the center of my world…

Well, my job hunt is still proceeding. I’m getting 20-30 jobs in my inbox every day from dice.com and other job sites I’ve registered for, and I diligently respond to the ones that match my skills. So far, the returns from my resumes have been very, very rare, and the interviews nonexistent.

The online route has failed to pan out for me. I’m now into the “desparate cold-calling”, “lots of networking with people,” and “hitting the want ads” phase of the job-search, plus the “look into self-employment options while we still have money in the bank” phase. If you happen to know of an employer looking for a systems administration expert with a specialty in the integration of various operating systems, let me know!

With the demise and/or commercialization of several online music sites (*cough* mp3.com) into near-unusability, what options are available now for the aspiring musician to get feedback on his/her music, and maybe some exposure to producers? I’m serious, where do you go, other than creating your own web site?

Well, the only heavily-populated site I know if is Garageband. Apparently, my little blog on my day-after experiences with GB have ended up tops in Google searches for "Garageband reviews". The high rank of that page (no, I have no idea why Google thinks that should be the top link!) arounsed the ire of an anonymous poster on my board, so the weblog has started seeing some discussion about my derogatory review of what GB is about. I encourage you to check it out and comment, or post comments here about where you think aspiring musicians can go for exposure now that most music sites are making themselves even less accessible to casual listeners.

Note, if you’re not logged in, your posts will be as “anonymous” and I’ll have to approve them before they can be viewed. Spammer-control is what that is 🙂

Ran across this article on a newsgroup today, and I thought it would be of interest. It’s an AP story, found a link to it on CBS (though, of course, being Associated Press, it’s probably carried by several hundred local papers).

Article here: Was Atkins Right After All?

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something like this comes knocking on your door…

In celebration of Thanksgiving, I give you… The Whipped Cream Games!

Yep, it’s fun party games you can play with whipped cream.

Here’s my favorite idea:

The Race
Each player starts with a full bowl of whipped cream. All players start eating the whipped cream at the same time. To signal that you have finished, you hold the bowl upside-down over your head; if anyone does so, the other players must do the same whether or not they have finished eating.
The winner is the first person to invert their bowl above their head,regardless of whether they actually ate the contents.

People actually do this stuff???

I was seventeen. I was in love with some girl I can’t remember now. I was young and cocky. I wore T-shirts with slogans on them, put on button-up shirts overtop of them without buttoning anything and left the whole thing untucked. I wore friendship bracelets on my wrists. I blow-dried my hair with my head hanging upside down so that my hair would be really tall.

I ate Kellogg’s Raisin-Bran for breakfast. I had a Snickers bar and a Dr. Pepper for lunch. I usually skipped dinner due to extra-curricular activities. I worked at the drugstore to make money to drive my 1980 blue 4-cylinder Volvo Stationwagon with a rumble seat in the back.

I was a cheerleader. I was into theater. No, wait, I was pretty arrogant about it, so I wasn’t into theater, I was into theatre. I was a musician, and in my own band. I was in the school jazz band. I was that annoyingly cheerful guy who did the morning announcements over the PA system, and did my best Robin Williams imitation by beginning the day every day with “GOOOOooooooooooOoOoOoOoOoOOOOOOOD MORNING, Quince Orchard High School! Today is (mumblety-mumblety) and these are YOUR morning announcements!”

I thought I was cool once, darn it.

My favorite “hello” phrase to good friends, then as now, was “How’s it hanging, dude?” In today’s politically correct environment, it sometimes earns me reproving looks. That’s just too bad for the overly sensitive political correctness police without a sense of humor, isn’t it?

One day after cheerleading practice in the late afternoon, I’d changed back into my bracelets and untucked T-shirt. I encountered Dr. Thomas Warren, the Quince Orchard High School Principal, in the hallway. He and I had always gotten along cordially, since I’d never been sent to his office for disciplinary problems. His vice-principal, though, was pretty well-acquainted with me. Anyway, we’d always been very stiff and formal, and in my heart I thought he was totally, assuredly, 100% un-cool:

1. He had the nickname “Dr. Warden” because of his sometimes security-guard approach to being principal.
2. He was really tall and slightly balding.
3. He wore a suit to school.
4. He had shiny shoes.
5. He addressed students as “Mister” and “Miss” So-and-so.

He was so-ooo definitely not-cool. Not cool like me.

But today, something was different. His hair was slightly mussed. His tie was undone a little bit. His suit looked slightly rumpled. It looked like he’d had a long, hard day at work. Just the kind of state of mind of a person my overly-cheerful self liked to pick on.

“Yo, Doc Warren, how’s it hanging, dude?” I called as I approached him.

Dr. Warren turned his head slightly in my direction as he kept an eye on maintenance workers through the cafeteria windows. “Short, shriveled, and always to the left,” he replied in a deadpan voice, cracked a wry grin at my open-mouthed holy crap my principal just said that! stare, turned on his heel, and began to saunter toward his office.

I recovered my voice after a few seconds of stunned silence

“Yo, Doc Warren!” I shouted toward his back as he walked away from me. He turned slightly and cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Doc Warren,” I continued, “you’re cool, man.”

“I know,” he responded.

He turned back the way he was going, and swaggered off towards his office.

Yep, by popular demand (OK, two people) I’ve uploaded The Right Of Way. This was Wayward Sun’s second album, and number seven on Justin’s list of what it’s about darn time for. I’ll be putting a bit more history up on my weblog regarding the making of this album later, but for now, here are the songs. Special thanks to Justin Timpane for going through the painstaking effort of ripping, fixing, de-noisifying, and encoding these files.

I’ve also linked these from Matt’s Music Page so people can get two-click access to these tunes.

The Right Of Way: This link allows you to stream the entire album from start to finish. Requires WinAmp, xmms, or compatible mp3 player and a broadband connection.

The links below allow you to download the songs individually; they are generaly 5 to 6 megabytes apiece (You do the math to see how long they’ll take to download on your computer). Right-click and “save as” if you want to save it to your hard drive instead of play it immediately.

1. Compulsive Fire: “You’re telling me lies… so shut up and die!”. Yet another rebel tune by Sammy G, master of angst, anger, and attitude.
2. All Over Again: Growing up, Matt Barnson’s family had a habit of picking up stray people and letting them live with us for a while. Two of them were beautiful girls who, of course, the prepubescent Barnboy got a crush on. This was written for them. The author no longer has a crush on either one 🙂
3. Leave It All Behind: Written by Matthew Barnson, it was supposed to capture the essence of making it big in the music business. It ended up being kind of a lengthy, boring, almost-metal wannabe tune.
4. Afterlife: OK, if I recall correctly, this one was by Sam and Ben? Correct me if I’m wrong guys. And after years of only contemplating the meaning of this song when I was really, really bored, I still haven’t figured out exactly what it’s about. “We float about on pencil tips searching for the end of the torture that we suffer”? Hmm, Ben, you didn’t tell us about any psychoactive substances in your high-school years…
5. Chica’s Rag: Ode to a fangirl of the band. Her real name was, erm, Cathy, I think. She was very nice and quiet, but devoted. The song started as a jam session, with everybody kind of goofing around. Kevin was enjoying a new beat he’d made up, Sam was just barely learning bass and began a pretty simple riff, I decided to play some seventies-style “Wokka-Wokka” on the guitar, and Ben figured out a chord progression. Then one day Sam strutted in with some lyrics, Ben fleshed out the harmonies, Kevin elaborated on the drums, I stuck with the “Wokka-Wokka”, and Chica’s Rag was born.
6. House Of Dreams: The intro is a piano duet that nobody remembers how to play. Another Sam & Ben collaboration, combining Sam’s angst with Ben’s meaningless but elegant lyricism. It makes for a powerful combination saying… something 🙂 The first of our tunes where the guitar actually seems to be both prominent and reasonably good-sounding. The execrable “Leave It All Behind” doesn’t count :).
7. Kevin: Obviously, Kevin had no idea this song was going to go on the album until the last minute. Dani Haslam sang vocals, and it was a totally synthesized song. If I recall correctly, Kevin had been going through one of many crises at the time we were laying down this album, and this was kind of a “pick you up” tune. Some love it, some hate it.
8. One Man: This song by Matthew Barnson is best noted for the fact it has been remade at least four times. The first time was on Sam’s T-1 synth, sequenced in memory. I lost that copy. The second time was this album. The third time was on “No Further Questions”, the album the band did after I moved. The fourth time, I did it, and you can hear it elsewhere on this web site. Still not entirely done, though some people think the latest version is fine as it is.
   Anyway, I wrote it, as with most my songs, to impress a girl. This girl was named Jenny, whom I hadn’t seen since fifth grade. She was a pacifistic-type person, thus the line “Some would say the use of force is letting Nature run its course; they can’t see time passing them by”. She loved it. Too bad I can’t remember her last name.
9. Breathless I was goofing around with an introduction that I was trying to make a song from. Sam asked, “Hey, Matt, mind if I borrow that?”. Since I hadn’t managed to make anything meaninful out of the chord progression yet, other than a noodle, I said “sure”, and a few weeks later, Sam came out of the recording study at UMBC with this tune.
10. Don’t Let The Song Pass You By: Mucho Thanko to Juli Graber for providing the “Aye Aye Aye Aye” part of this tune, the most memorable thing about it 🙂 Ultimately written by Matthew Barnson, but with lots of input from other band members, and a gaggle of partially-drunk party-goers as well.