get out my page!

I'm not sure what category this falls into. Perhaps excellence in amusing broken-english online dating profiles?

This I would hear from you. And depending what you offer, I would know who you are. Again, loser get out my page! All this baloney about hot dogs and walking under moon please leave for cheap ugly idiots, who do not know what they worth. I am a rare diamond and do not want cheap metal surround my rareness.

robot banning

Last night I implemented the strategy that Mark Pilgrim recommends to stop badly behaved robots.

Some of his recommendations, particularly the IP-address blocking, if widely followed could cause a "previous owner" problem if they were to get reassigned from a spammer to a person, like, say, me. All of a sudden I'm getting banned from 5% of internet sites because one year ago my IP address was owned by a really bad spammer.

It beats maxing out my download quota because of robotic downloaders, though. My site's been up for less than a week and already has been hit by a good number of these guys, as well as 36 worms and vulnerability-hunters, plus 33 requests from robots.txt-friendly bots.

time machine travel, inc.

Post lunch discussion today. You have a friend who owns the world's first and only time machine travel company. For your birthday, he's giving you two tickets to any event in the twentieth century. You will be there for three hours. What are your choices?

It came up over a playing of Nirvana's unplugged recordings... but I'm not sure that would be on my list. For me, it would probably be Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, and Stu Ungar's first World Series of Poker victory.

Maybe a more interesting question is, if such a ticket was available today, and cost $50,000, what would be the most requested events? Off the top of my head (not necessarily things that interest me, but that would be popular):

shameful RPS ignorance

It blows my mind that people could be so ignorant of the greatest decision (and money) making game in the world. Look at the photo linked to below. Note some of the quotes:

"curious about the sign language window one..."

"I'm curious about what it says, too. Anyone speak ASL?"

Absolutely shameful. The photo is excellent though. Link

ice ice baby

the weather in Austin has been insane over the past 24 hours. On my short drive home from work last night, the hill at spicewood springs rd looked like a scene from mad max on ice. Cars littering the shoulder, abandoned by their owners. I managed to get home without sliding out too much, until I drove into my driveway of solid ice and my car slid over the edge of my driveway and into the drainage ditch, which is also solid ice. Nice.

Looking for something creative to do while stuck at home? Try an ice sculpture. Link

durer woodcuts

I really like Albrecht Durer's woodcuts. In 1996 I moved into an apartment in Philadelphia and found a print of The Four Riders of The Apocalypse in my closet, left behind by someone. I had never seen it before but instantly liked it. Here is an excellent overview of Durer's series The Revelation of St John (which includes The Four Riders). Link

gramaglia

Chatting with Flicker's Cory Ryan today and she mentioned she had never been to ifilm.com. I recommended she start by watching Gramaglia, which is quite an amusing short.

four hours in austin

The topic for Austin Blog Day is "What to do with four spare hours in Austin".

Let's start with what I did with four spare hours in Austin -- got this site up and running. And if you have a few hours to spare and want to start a blog, that would be a good thing to do. Then next time there's an Austin blog day you can post your own info instead of just living vicariously through others while you sit at home in tighty whities, eating cheese balls and chocolate-covered plums and talking in haiku.

Now what do you think I can no longer do with four spare hours in Austin? If you said sing karaoke downtown on weekends, you were right. As of last week, Bob Popular Karaoke (aka Crocodile Rocks) is shut, after being sold. Apparently it's going to become yet another vanilla-flavored bar, like there are not enough of those. It looks like my karaoke consumption for the foreseeable future will have to come from the one- or two-night a week places that are so hit and miss.

Chip Rosenthal lamented that live music downtown has been replaced with drunken bush sisters and a cheap jello shots party scene. My thinking is more along the lines of: if there happens to be a cheap jello shots party scene with drunken coeds, it can at least feature one decent karaoke bar. It may not technically qualify as "live music", but it is music and it is live. Karaoke is direct democracy; a musician on a stage is a dictatorship.

I've spent a good chunk of my friday and saturday night time over the past four years at BPK and am going to miss it. The place wasn't the most excellent karaoke bar I've been to, but it was the most excellent one in Austin. The KJ's were really friendly, loved what they did, and were good at their jobs. The drinks were cheap and the bartenders knew what their customers liked. If it wasn't for the fact that the management of BP did not understand or properly promote karaoke (including barely adding to the song list in 4 years), it could have been a really great place.

What amazes me is that more places downtown don't feature karaoke. There is occasional karaoke at ocean's eleven and club deville, but I'll go on record as saying that downtown is way ready for a well-done, full-time karaoke bar. Karaoke is not a passing fad, it's a hugely popular, growing worldwide phenomenon and it's here to stay.

While the folks at Common Interest wouldn't probably be too psyched if a kickass karaoke bar opened downtown, anyone contemplating opening one should stop by CI any day of the week. There aren't too many bars that are packed every single day. This is a town that likes to sing, and we have a huge shortage of places to do it in.

I'm looking forward to checking out the thursday night karaoke at Sake on Sixth once the warm weather picks up and they start doing it again. Apparently the KJ has like 10,000 songs on his list, which is pretty rare in this town.

What to do if you have four spare hours in Austin on Monday (2/24): go see "Karaoke Fever" at the Drafthouse Downtown, followed by "The Backyard".

is your stock up or down?

Fun with names: Jeremy went from the 41st most popular baby boy name in 1990 on a linear decline to 89th in 2001, at the same time Jeremiah's stock steadily rose from 165th to 91st. Meanwhile, some highly questionable names like Tyler and Madison have experienced meteoric rises to fame while kickass names like Floyd and Otto (50th and 99th in the 1900s) are face down in the muck (964th and >1000th in 2001).

Best boy and girl names from the 1900s list? I'll go with Wyman and Dominga.

Maintaining these stats is what Michael Shackleford aka The Wizard of Odds used to do before he decided to become a full-time gambling pundit.

I've thought of at least five games to play with this data, mostly involving money. Mission of the day: become a baby name hustler.

all's working in love and casino war

I am now a blogging bloke. What is my mission for love and casino war? Well, I can say for certain that its importance is exceeded only by its mystery. Current nominations: