Guess who just released another... release?

A smallish one this time, as I wanted album #9 to have 9 tracks. Free download as per usual:

Sadly, as it turns out for the easily outraged, Amazon.com does not hate gay people.

"This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection," Drew Herdener, communications director at Amazon, told the Times.

"It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles -- in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica."

If Amazon were anti-gay they would have been so before now, wouldn't they? And if they changed their mind overnight, I'd think they would have made some sort of statement saying so rather than saying it was a glitch.

Amusingly enough, a few years ago there was a different, less publicized glitch. That one caused their recommendation system to decide I was a lesbian for about a week.

[EDIT: the reason I post this is justice, really. All over the place I see outrage and mentions of boycotts, but I had to go looking to find the explanation behind this. I would rather see people outraged at actual injustice than misdirected ire toward a company that doesn't deserve it. That sort of thing hurts credibility.]


In unrelated news, the Veticare by the office is closing down. Toby has a 100% success rate in closing veterinary offices... :/

After read/skimming Sustainable Energy - without the hot air, here's what it boils down to:

POLICY:

-- We can get off oil, but it won't be easy.

-- We HAVE TO get off (dirty) coal.

-- Clean coal sucks. We may need it anyway, as a stopgap and not a primary solution. It's less energy-efficient than old methods, though it keeps some of the carbon out of the atmosphere.

-- Nuclear, given today's technology, should not be considered renewable. It's not a long-term answer to our energy problems. We may need some of it anyway, but as a stopgap measure and not a primary solution.

-- Fusion would be SUPER SUPER AWESOME and might totally solve our energy problems. But we can't count on ever being able to make it work.

-- We cannot get off of non-renewable energy without saying YES, PUT THAT IN MY BACKYARD to something. Wind farms, solar farms, wave farms or the like.

-- We have to INCREASE energy production if we want to clean up the carbon mess we've made, because sequestration in less than 1000 years is not free.

-- We need better public transportation, better support for bikes and pedestrians, more energy R&D and a lot for energy infrastructure. The US can easily pay for what it needs to do if it stops fighting wars for a while. :P


PERSONAL:

-- The absolute best thing you can do to help: don't take plane trips.

-- Next: if you can't bulldoze your house and build a new one, see to its insulation, glazing, replace heat/AC with heat pumps.

-- Moderate your thermostat (whether you're in a leaky old building or not).

-- Drive less (unless in an electric car).

-- Buy less stuff in packaging.

-- Eat less or no meat (although frankly, mostly replacing cows with chickens in your diet does a lot to help... I don't think scientists are going to develop a more efficient cow)


POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS NOT DISCUSSED:

-- While overpopulation got a mention in passing, there wasn't any serious suggestion to consider policies which encourage people to have fewer children, nor was "have fewer children" on the list of personal things to do. Too personal, maybe?

-- No mention of methods to cool the atmosphere that don't involve carbon sequestration. I know these are being studied.

-- No mention of Daylight Savings-like means to reduce energy consumption,although possibly these just can't ever work. A national two-hour siesta might be a really nice way to attempt to save energy... :D

-- No mention of "victory gardens" or choosing local goods over distantly produced goods, but perhaps this falls under "buy less stuff".

-- No analysis of city living vs. suburban living. Cities tend to be more energy efficient themselves, but require transportation to supply them.

-- No mention of telecommuting except in passing, though this could fall under "drive less" and "don't fly."

-- No mention of really radical technologies like programmable matter superconductors, although I can't blame him for that :D

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

Free book in PDF and HTML forms, or you can buy a hardcopy from Amazon. I've only just started reading it, but from the description on BoingBoing and the first bit, it seems like a must-read. It's about cutting through BS with actual numbers and practical solutions, in terms of energy production, efficiency, carbon and so on. Even about useful things individuals can do to help, not about sacrifices we can make to feel less guilty without having any real impact.

Like the BoingBoing review says, this is like Freakanomics for the environment. And if nothing else, it deserves an award for best use of the word "codswallop" in a science book.

And there are gems like this:

Some “sceptics” have asserted that the recent increase in CO2 concentration is a natural phenomenon. Does “sceptic” mean “a person who has not even glanced at the data”?

and

hang on: I hear a persistent buzzing noise coming from a bunch of climate-change inactivists.


All the energy saved in switching off your [phone] charger for one day is used up in one second of car-driving.

NVIDIA used HeroEngine as their demo platform for their Apex physics.

Hero's Journey is going to have the greatest capes ever.

I'm amused that somebody thought it was in LOTRO though... pretty consistent with the value of YouTube comments as a whole :P

I finally set myself up on last.fm... partially anyway. I've uploaded just one track so far, since most of my MP3s are VBR and need to be re-encoded to be compatible with their stuff.

But here's Necris, the latest thing I did.

Anyone familiar with perl substitution? Regular expressions?

I'm trying to write a filter for Privoxy which kills the obnoxious new "Highlights" thing on Facebook. It's all within an html div block. What I want to do is search for <div id="home_sidebar">, and delete that and everything until its matching </div>... including any other divs that happen to be contained within it.



I could lern (heh) perl, but that seems like more effort than I really want to go through to fix a minor annoyance.


EDIT: got it:

FILTER: facebook Highlights sidebar

s@</head>@<style type="text/css">\n\

\#home_sidebar { display: none !important; }\n\

</style>\n$0@

Instead of the substitution I was thinking of, it's just inserting a style that says "don't display this". It's all still there in the HTML, just not cluttering the page visually.

Poll #1356060
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

"Fear and Respect Escalators!"

New release from Falls A Star!



Yep, I changed the name from the tentative "Sustain." The "Ode To Autumn" treatment is really my favorite thing on this release, and as I started looking into it more, I found an excerpt from one of Keats' letters, almost poetry itself.

So here it is, the belatedly autumn-themed release made in December and January. Why not? It's my favorite season too.


(Might require a cache clear if you're getting the purple/teal/gold background... for some reason I always have this problem when I update my CSS include file.)

Hilarious Obama action figures.

(linked by wintersweet)


EDIT: I couldn't help it, I had to take a couple quotes from his inaugural speech and apply them...

Poll #1332280 Keytars
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Roland just announced a new "shoulder keyboard." Keytars:

Now would be an excellent time to back up your LJ.

- somewhat alarmist post discusses LJ techie layoffs.

- JournalSpace was recently lost due to failure to properly back up their servers.

So while I'm not really preparing for LJ's demise, it doesn't hurt to have a personal copy or two of one's writings just in case.

I think if LJ did fall out of the sky, I might go back to writing privately, with the occasional facebook or twitter for links or inconsequential things. That might not really be a bad thing, come to think of it.

Tetroid 2012 is a computer game and an album of (mostly experimental electronic) music. (The exception: a cover of the Tetris theme song by The Ambling Band.)

It's very, very, very trippy, like "turn your brains, and maybe your stomach, inside out" trippy. I played it for a while and now I have a nosebleed -- coincidence??!! The game interacts with its soundtrack, distorts the image in various ways, and throws extra gameplay modes out there that Tetris never had.

Consider this a recommendation, unless you're annoyed by weirdness and/or prone to epilepsy...

(The dude really needs a blue outfit too.)

Upstairs apt, pipe burst, nobody home.

Downstairs apt, v. wet. Too near computer.

Took an hour for maint guy to show up and turn off water.

Now 5:20 AM. tired, hungry, angry, frustrated, waiting. Water turned off but nothing done yet about flood. Hoping computers, music gear, books, furniture not damaged.

edit: 7 AM. Tireder, hungrier, more frustrated. Apt maint guys called away for another pipe break. Carpet cleaning crew still not arrived. Place is a disaster. I suspect I have a touch of OCD or something given the random things that are bugging me.

More: Ate. 3 mega blowers are going. No space on bed. Will be like this for a day at least. :(

Between NaSoAlMo, the track I wrote today, and some other work I'd done earlier in the year, the new album is ready.



Download Instill at fallsastar.com.

My mom's recipe for sweet potato casserole. I haven't found anything like it online, but then, our connection is kind of rough at the moment.

I use much more cinnamon, and I sprinkle some on the top as well. I think the main casserole itself would work with less butter, and some of the sugar could be substituted -- but I wouldn't mess with the topping.


Sweet Potato Casserole

2 large or 3 medium cans sweet potatoes, drained & mashed
3/4 stick butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk

Melt butter, add eggs. Add sugar, milk and cinnamon. Pour over
sweet potatoes. Bake uncovered 30 minutes at 350 degrees.


Topping

1 cup cornflakes
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter

Melt butter, crush cornflakes, add and mix. Spread mixture over
sweet potatoes and sprinkle with cinnamon. Return to oven for
15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Tent Cities, USA

If you think "spreading the wealth around" according to Obama's plan (*) is a bad thing for America, what is your opinion on the 60,000 foreclosures per month in California? More and more people living in tent cities, which the cops then come through and destroy?


(*) also Bill Clinton's plan. ANd also John McCain's plan, back when W. lowered taxes for the rich.

Obama came to St. Louis today, and I couldn't make it there. The North Hanley station -- the farthest from the Arch, except for the airport -- was full. A "LOT CLOSED" sign tried in vain to discourage people from seeking a parking spot; crowds gathered on the platform; a bus came to help the trains with some of the load. There were more pro-Obama bumper stickers, window paint, etc. in that parking lot than I've seen anywhere else.

The train system wasn't nearly that crowded for Mardi Gras. Stations closer to the Arch would be worse if anything (nobody would be able to get on!) and downtown it must have been absolute madness.

I'm reading on news sites now that the St. Louis police estimated the crowd at 100,000, perhaps the largest political event in St. Louis history.

[EDIT: here's more on the rally. "Politico and MSNBC estimate that the crowd was 100,000! Here's hoping that's not a typo! If that's true, St. Louis is now officially the most "Anti-American" area in America (sorry Oregon and Colorado)."]


I went to the mall instead. At the bookstore, I overheard a couple of employees chatting, and one of them wondered if the Obama rally was the reason for having fewer than normal customers that morning. ;)

Apparently McCain is also coming to St. Louis, but on Monday morning at 7 AM. I don't think he'll get quite as enthusiastic a turnout...


Oh, and for anyone out there who still somehow thinks Democrats are bad for their personal fortunes:

Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants

Would you rather a $10k investment turn into $11k, or $300k? If you said the latter... vote Democrat.


[EDIT: Also, McCain vs Obama Tax Plans.]