3:18am: This is why I dont go to bed early

I went to bed tonight at 10:30 in preperation for a big day at the office tomorrow. I am going to get up at 6 to get there early. I woke up at 12:30 and havent been able to get back to sleep. Ive been tossing and turning thinking about work, girls, money, etc. And im hungry.

A piece of toast and back to the sack.

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali, originally uploaded by Zack Sheppard.
Learn more about Diwali.
Learn about the Bhopal disaster.

Referential or experiential

There is a great entry on Jason Kottke's blog about the different types of bloggers. I have more experience with referential blogs (ex. Boing Boing). I love collections of new and odd things and am a spectacular researcher so it makes sense that my blog would be more referential. As much fun as this to me I would like to add more to the blogosphere and I endeavour to become an experiential blogger.

Many of my initial stabs at this will be boring, and trite. There may be potential in the experience but a failing in the text. This will sometimes be because of a lack of time but more often a lack of practice. Referential posts are a good place to start conveying meaning in a small amount of text. There is a difference between posting a link and making a post that makes someone want to click on that link and invest part of their day in exploring it.

Im excited to find my voice. I wonder, will i become a grammar Nazi? I have always been opposed to grammar Nazism. Especially on the web. Do we really need the ' in Im? We all know what we mean! But there is a point at which it's harder to read. I do enjoy being a contrarian but its like my friend Davis tells his son about giving high 5s, gotta have a reason.

Zombies Arrested

I previously posted about Zombies in San Francisco. A fun little event where people dress up as zombies and wandered around downtown SF.

Well the zombies in Minneapolis were arrested for counts as wild as simulated WMDs.

When we got to the 1st Precinct, Sergeant Ed Nelson said, "I don't give a goddamn about your f*king constitutional rights!"

bender

I am browsing through my "Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang A-G" to try and find a better URL than quikbeam. It's a fun book to browse through partly because of the fun terms and partly because the etymologies are awesome. I'll share at least part of some of them in posts and todays is

bender n. 1a. [poss. from Scots dial. bend to drink, esp. to drink hard or greedily...a draught of liquor', and bender 'a drinker'; see EDD I 244] a carousal; a spree. -usu. in phr. on a bender

1845 Corcoran Pickings 62: I was on an almighty big bender last night. 1846 in Lowell Poetical Wks. 176: "I won't agree to no such bender" 1847 in Dolph Sound Off 392:
At Buena Vista I was sure
That Yankee Troops surrender,
And bade my men hurrah, for you're
All going on a bender

The definitions and etymologies go on to fill a whole column.

You're watching Let's paint, excercise, and blend drinks TV. Im your host John Killduf

I cant leave for the weekend without a new post. Here is a vid of a guy that does a little show in LA called "Let's paint, excercise, and blend drinks TV"

Its entrancing he does everything the title suggests and runs on a treadmill the whole time. Oh yea, also, he takes called and apparently the only people up are gang bangers.

TaaAAake me, to the magic of the moment,

On a glooory night
(a GLORY night~a!)

Where the childern of tomorrow dream awaaayy,
in the wind of change...

So two weeks ago my old friend AG stayed with me for a few days before he moved out of town for good. I haven't really been drinking anymore but I only had a few nights with AG so we had a few together. On the second night he was there, a mysterious stranger dropped of a CD of the Scorpions "Crazy World" album featuring Winds of Change.

AG and I sang it a couple times. Then my brother called to tell us he got to shot a 50 cal. sniper rifle that day (and it was awesome) so we sang him Winds of Change.

Then we called AG's brother, D Double Bad Ass Dan, to tell him that my brother got to shoot a 50 cal sniper rifle. We talked about how fast the bullet flies, what company probably made it, decided that it was bad ass, and we all sang Winds of Change.

Then AG and I watched Transformers the Movie while drinking a couple beers and flipping our knives open.

Repeatedly.

I love GeoTagging like Ninjas love killing.

So I recently went on a trip to Southern California. I took some pics and GeoTagged them when I got back. This is a feature that both Zooomr and Flickr have that lets you place your photos on a map so people can see where they were taken.

I GeoTagged all of my photos from my trip and you can see the whole thing or make it more interesting by looking at certain places. For example, here are all the pics I took in Disneyland. Or for even more fun here are the pics I took while on the Lost Palms Oasis trail in Joshua Tree National Park. (map above)


You can actually see the trail in the satelitte images. In the pic the sucession of images (the pink dots) are the trail I was on. It's fascinating because I can actually see little landmarks I remember on the map. See the other trail that crosses mine in the lower right of the pic? I remember walking through that (when you are actually in it its easy to get lost and take the wrong trail) and used it to figure out where my pics were taken and how far I actually traveled in relation to those. Right after the crossing trail you can see a dark spot. This was a grove of trees that I passed though and came out on the other side to the start of the sunset and a pretty young cactus.

Zooomr uses Google Maps and Flickr uses Yahoo. Yahoo has much much more detailed images of rural areas so it is better for us Nevadans. Googles are better in urban areas and all of California. One neat side note is that they both have amazing images of Burning Man. Yahoo! has sat pics as the event is occuring (double-click map to really zoom in!). But Google's is even more interesting. The Burning Man event was actually moved slightly this year to help reduce desert scarring. On Googles map you see both an image from a previous year when it was being built AND an image from this year while it is occuring! (I better save that one in case they fix it). I wonder if they purposefully take a pic during the event.

For even more GeoTagging ideas check out the Flickr blog. They have geotagged maps like lighthouses of the great lakes, all the pics tagged with self-portrait, pics of the tube in London, etc.

P.S. Also, to check out one of the coolest sat images yet, Google's new pic of the Eiffel Tower

Peepers

Peepers, originally uploaded by Zack Sheppard.

I just thought this would look good here on black. My friend 'Peep's

Don't fucking call me tonight...

...between 9 and 10...

...I'll be watching LOST.

Ever wanted to go to Berkley?

I have gone into college bookstores and bought the books for a class that I wasn't in just because I thought it sounded interesting. I highly recommend books in Dr. Harvey's classes at UNR. A student of Marxist social theory, brilliant dude, and the best, most engaging instructor I ever had.

Well Berkley is bringing this to the web, its doing it for free, and it's doing it in style with RSS. Berkley is posting mp3s of lectures from some of its classes. Some of them look awesome "Drugs and Behavior", "Introduction to Non-Violence", and my fav "Physics for future presidents".

Gotta run, Im off to my Foundations of American Cyberculture class.

Note to self: From Dr. Harvey's profile it looks like he has been doing work bringing Chaos theory to sociology! I will have to contact him for some literature!

They turned their camera on

I love this vid.

Much better than a couple dudes/chicks lipsyncing in a dorm room ;)

Inside Space Mountain

Ever wondered what Space Mountain looks like with the lights on?

Space Mountain Skeleton Hosted on Zooomr

Yahoo! Answers vs. Wiki's

As I was driving back to work today I was wondering what the 33 in Club 33 represents. I immediatly thought next that I would check to see if there is a Wiki and Im sure it would be there. This also mase me think about Yahoo! Answers which was specifically designed as a fun place for you to designate yourself as an "expert" on something and then answer questions that other users pose. These other users would be experts on other matters, etc. completing the community.

Yahoo! Answers was killed in its first incarnation as Yahoo! Experts and has been brought back but still hasnt taken off like Wiki's have.

They are both repositories of communal information and with a good user base can both have answers to the little questions that it is hard to find other places.

So why are Wiki's popular and the Answers format not?

1. No way to know which is the right answer on Yahoo! Answers. Often when you look at a question you get different answers and there is no way to know which is right. If you knew, you wouldnt have asked. In a wiki there is only one answer and you are taking it on faith that it is correct but there is a trust in the community that you assume when you find the information. Granted that trust may be misplaced, but because you dont have to question it, it seems more reliable (and quotable).

2. Your part of the solution - On a wiki whatever little bit you add feels like your making a contribution to a larger database of information. This may be partly due to the media attention or the fact that it is related to an encyclopedia. But when you answer a question that is one of a jumble of 100 other questions asked about Mickey Mouse, Days of our Lives, or particle accelorerators it doesnt become part of the main body of knowledge like in a wiki and seems less important. If you edit the Mickey Mouse wiki, something you wrote might come up in result #3 on a search for that term!

3. You dont have to do all the work. If one person lays out the main body of a wiki other people can add little bits or change little bits later. It seems less daunting to get in there and contribute.

4. Your helping everyone, not one person - When I started using Yahoo! Answers in its first incarnation as Yahoo! Experts some of the questions would be very involved in researching or explaning and it was hard to make time to write to some random person when someone else might ask the same question 3 weeks later because they didnt search past questions. In a wiki when you add information or correct information it is there for everyone to see (and there is no nagging for your time/expertise).

Answers does have the advantage that if you cant find it anywhere else you can ask there. Also, the different format lets it house information that would not be found in Wikipedia. For example, I found a question and a fwe answers on how to get out of traffic tickets. Unfortunatly the answers were as varied as you would find if you asked 10 people at a party and about the same quality.

Both of these sites are trying to bring together information locked inside peoples minds to form a larger communal knowledge base. But Wikipedia has taken the next logical step and organized and presented this information better. As nice as FAQs are they are not a very useful repository of knowledge. You may find an answer but it is usually not exactly what you are looking for. And you cant explore it.

You will never get lost and fascinated in an FAQ like you will in an Encyclopedia and its "(See Vol.4 Ch.19 Pg.877)" references or the more immediate satisfaction behind the underlined blue text leading you to more knowledge in a Wiki.

Khan Noonian Singh

So I have been watching the original Star Trek while I have been editing photos from my trip.

In the episode I watched last night they introduced Khan Noonian Singh also known as Khan.

This was extra fun since I know where this will lead. Also, finding out his full name made me wonder if there was a connection to Data's creator Noonian Soong. I very exciting prospect since TNG is my absolute favorite.

After a little Wiki research here is what I found out:

In the Eugenics wars Khan Noonian Singh was one of the (and the most successful) supermen who took over the world. For more info on him go here). People revolted and Khan and 72 other supermen escaped in a hibernation ship where they slept for 200 years.

During his sleep is when all the Arik Soong stuff happened on Star Trek: Enterprise.

Next, Khan was thawed out and left on a dangerous planet by Capt. Kirk.

Because Arik saw Khan as a pinnacle of human development the Noonian name was passed down (supposedly).

Now I have to put my fear of bugs in ears away and watch Star Trek II again.

Young Joshua Silhouette

Young Joshua Silhouette, originally uploaded by Zack Sheppard.

One of my favorite pics from my trip last week.

Gogol Bordello

So, the incresingly musically incomperable Morsa has turned me on to another great band, Gogol Bordello.
Check them out on the Hype.

I also found a great 5 minute NPR interview with them. From the interview:

Gypsy musicians is always invited to top the party and kinda make it the ultimate haywire. Go nuts, bonkers, buckwild... I always wanted to take it farther to more people. To make it feel like they been stricken by lightning.

(really, you have to hear it with his accent)

And for the ultimate in modern fun, here is a YouTube video of my favorite song of theirs "Start Wearing Purple"...
If they showed stuff like this on MTV, I might actually watch!

World War Z

No, this is not about my neverending Jihad against all things not me. It is a new book by Max Brooks about the Zombie war. Its first person accounts of survivors of this fictional war. Sounds awesome.

NPR had a great segment with the author and Neil Conan discussing the war as if it had actually happened and the callers played along. I kept having to tell myself, wait this isnt real. Great radio in the tradition of War of the Worlds.

A sample question from a long time listener, first time caller:
"Im wondering about the possible threat of international terrorist forces joining with the zombie hordes creating an unstopable Islamo-zombie threat."

Its worth it just to hear Neil ask a caller if he is ready to "do what needs to be done" and kill his brother-in-law.

Link

Thanks Oscar

I went to Oakland this weekend to see one of the great jazz pianists, Oscar Peterson. Check out his Wikipedia entry for a little history and a list of some of his co-horts.

Oscar is 81, he needed help getting to the piano but when he did he didnt need any help at all. He played from about 8-11 at Yoshis. He played one song twice accidentaly. Apparently there was some guy complaining about it in the bathroom because when I walked in there was some other guy at a urinal saying "So you got to hear Requium twice. Shut the fuck up you're lucky to be here."

It was a lot of driving and a hefty ticket but we dont have many of the old great jazz artists left and I decided this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was worth it.

This vid really does not do it justice but here is a little corner, of a little snippet, of that night, take it Oscar...