John’s Crawlspace

I’ve gotta say, it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen installation art that actually interested me. Mind you, I don’t go out looking for it on the web (or elsewhere for that matter), but I do my fair share of browsing, and people are still constantly sending me links to all types of stuff that they found interesting, and art makes it’s way into there more often then you’d think. That being said, these street installations are pretty damn cool. The dudes name is Mark Jenkins (the X’s on either side of his name in the domain name are hardcore) and he has some other stuff on there that’s worth checking out as well, but I definitely really liked the street installations.

Are you a complete idiot? Are you looking for a computer? You should probably read this guide, and follow the advice given. You’ll probably need to spend around $500,000 on your new computer.

Wow… This photo really gives you an idea of how effective Apple has been in integrating the iPod into different cultures.

Oddly enough, I recieved this link by way of spam. The site, Idioteq.com, isn’t half bad though, if you’re looking to download some albums and/or music videos. Tons of files hosted there, though the majority of the music is mainstream-ish alt rock, metal (or what tends to be passed of as metal these days), and a heaping spoonful of that stuff people like to call “screamo”. Let’s not talk about genres anymore. Anyway, some decent stuff on there if you’re into bands such as Glassjaw, Deftones, He Is Legend, The Mars Volta, and the like. Oh yeah, and there’s tons of Radiohead too, if you didn’t guess that after seeing the domain name.

When you want to make a URL small, sites like TinyURL and DwarfURL are great. But what about all those times when you’ve thought to yourself, “Man, this address is just entirely too short… I need to make it longer”? HugeURL is here to save the day.

I graduated from Shippensburg last December, but I still know a good amount of people that go there. Last Thursday (the 19th of April) I got some IMs telling me that classes had been cancelled for the rest of the day due to a suspicious package that had been placed outside of Wright Hall. This was later on in the day, probably around 4 or 5 pm, so most people had already finished classes anyway, save for those who have the dreaded night classes. Anyway, I didn’t think much of it. I heard later on that evening that the University had identified the package as nothing more than a box of papers. This was after they called in the local and state police, as well as a bomb squad. Now I understand that as a university they can’t just ignore things like this. But after reading the details of what happened, it’s a sad story nonetheless - Read the story from the P.O.V of the individual (a professor at the school whom I’ve never met) who placed the box outside the building, and you’ll discover what actually happened. It’s definitely a shame, but how can these things be prevented from happening? It’s definitely not an easy question to answer.

That’s all I have for now. Been pretty busy lately with work and all that. I was gonna wait until I had more to post, but I figure this is better than nothing. Ugh… I really need to get a new layout on here, this one is too… White? Anyway, have a great weekend.

I’ve seen some great iPod ‘hacks’ over the years, but I think this one takes the cake. I was about to type ‘Not Safe For Work’ after that link… But why would I do that? This site has never been safe for work. Although I guess over the past 2-3 years I’ve cleaned it up a lot. Don’t worry, I’m working on a lemonparty wordpress theme that will absolutely blow your mind… Is he serious?

Speaking of iPods… I’ve been thinking about getting the Nike+ iPod running kit thinger. I ran a decent amount while in college, but it was never consistent. I’d take drinking over running (or anything remotely health-related for that matter) any day, but now that I’ve graduated, the opportunity to get hammered at 2:30 pm doesn’t present itself nearly as often. So anyway, I run pretty much every day, and for whatever reason, the Nike+ iPod thing really appeals to me. I love the fact that there is a WordPress plugin for it too (here) that lets you display your running stats on your blog. I wouldn’t expect any of you to give two shits about how far I run, I just like the fact that someone made that. Anyway, it only works with the Nano, which I’ll hopefully be getting soon from the good folks over at iPodSweepstakes (more on that here). I don’t think I’d want the running kit as much if you had to purchase Nike shoes in order to use it. Naturally, someone came up with a way to use it with any shoe - Check out the 99-cent DIY shoe mod. I don’t expect to have inspired anyone in any way with this post, but if any of you happen to be in the market for one of these Nike+iPod Sports Kits, the cheapest price I found is $23.51 at Provantage. If you come across a better deal, let me know, since I’m not buying this thing until I get my Nano.

I was going through my links today making sure the sites were still up, when I decided to check on LameKing. Anyone else remember that site? I am sad to say that it looks like Spooner (the webmaster) gave up on the site, as it now redirects to an SEO/Marketing blog. I hadn’t checked the site for awhile, so this may not be news to any of you. He may have even made an announcement that he was done with the site. Either way… That sucks. I used to visit that site all the time, and it was definitely hilarious, he had some very original content, and didn’t rely on other peoples content to make visitors laugh. If you never saw the site before, he definitely had some hilarious stuff on there - If you have some time, check it out.

I was gonna post more but I’m heading to Shippensburg for the weekend. If anyone wants the new Nightwatchmen (Tom Morello of RATM’s band) you can grab it here. Have a good weekend everybody.

In keeping with the tradition of ruining everything technology-related or otherwise expensive that I own, I totalled my new car. I went to fill up my gas tank during my lunch break on Tuesday (I work in Jersey and gas is cheaper there than in PA). I was on my way back to work, when I sneezed. My face exploded, and snot went everywhere. I was looking for a tissue - I looked down for 2 seconds, 3 max, and when I looked back up, there was a FedEx truck in front of me. He was pretty much at a complete stop, because he was trying to turn left. This was on a pretty busy road, the speed limit is 40, and I was probably going about 35 when I hit him. I didn’t even have a chance to slam on the brakes. I’ve been in accidents before (this is my second one this year, for those of you keeping score, right?) but I’ve never had an airbag deploy on my ass before. Not literally on my ass, you know what I mean. Luckily I wasn’t injured, I definitely could have been if I didn’t have my seatbelt on. I had a case of CDs on my lap at the time, and I’m not exactly sure how, but probably about 10 of them more or less exploded - There was literally ’shrapnel’ from CDs all over the interior of the car. The accident was my fault, even though I obviously didn’t hit the dude on purpose. So my new car that I’ve had for less than two months is now more or less totalled. Check out the damage…

   

Anyway, the cops weren’t exactly nice to me, but if you’ve been here before, you’d know that I wouldn’t expect them to be. I had a bottle of vodka in the back of the car from this past weekend, so naturally they were giving me shit for that, and they asked me at least 3 times if I was drunk. Here’s the confusing part. I switched insurance companies on Monday. The accident happened Tuesday, so obviously I didn’t have the paperwork for my new insurance provider. Not only was I more than a little shook up from the accident, I was confused about the whole insurance thing, and these cops couldn’t have been less patient or understanding with me. I was on the phone with my dad to see if he could go online and get my new insurance policy info, and while I was on the phone, the cop was yelling in my ear, “you do realize I am gonna cite you for this, right? You know you’re getting a summons for what you did, right!?” My dad actually said to me, “who is that yelling at you?” Anyway, the whole experience was pretty ridiculous, and now my premium is gonna skyrocket. So I’ve got that going for me. Shit.

I can honestly say that I’ve never watched an episode of American Idol. I’m aware of the garbage that the show produces, however, and I’m not big on all that prefabricated mainstream radio crapola. That’s a genre, if you didn’t know. Anyway, before I totalled my car, I’d listen to Howard Stern once in a while on Sirius. They talk about the current season (I believe it’s season six) of American Idol a lot, and they are doing all they can to get everyone to vote for the contestant who they think has the least talent. I’m sure most of you know about him already, he’s some Indian kid named Sanjaya. Anyway, they’re constantly plugging the Vote for the Worst website, and I’m pretty sure Howard has enough fans (some of who vote 500+ times per session) to make this kid the winner. Apparently Simon, the host of American Idol, has stated that if Sanjaya wins, he will quit the show. So Howard more or less feels like he has taken control of the show, and is tearing it down from the inside. It’s quite entertaining. Anyway, I came across this today:

“Sanjaya War Dialer uses your computers modem to automatically dial the American Idol voting number over and over and over again until you tell it to stop. Automatically cast hundreds or even thousands of votes for Sanjaya with the click of a button. Make Sanjaya win and help us ruin American Idol.”

Such a great idea. I am amused by all of this, but I don’t actually care enough to make an effort myself. Anyway, you can get the Sanjaya War Dialer here (at Download.com, of all places). Wow, I haven’t heard anyone talk about a War Dialer since… A long time ago.

I never have time to play video games anymore. If I did though, I’d inevitably waste a whole lot of my time on Nintendo8.com. Choose from a veritable dickload of classic NES games. Come to think of it, I’d probably just load up an emulator, since I have multiple gigs of ROMs somewhere. Either way…

I wouldn’t say I’m a sucker for Apple products. I definitely love my iPod(s) and wouldn’t be likely to buy a different MP3 player, but other than that, I’m no more “loyal” to Apple than any other brand. But I’ve been hearing a lot about Apple TV lately, and it looks pretty damn cool, especially with some of the ‘hacks’ that I’ve seen. I haven’t done a whole lot of searching, so there might be better sites out there, but for an idea of what I’m talking about, check out AppleTVHacks.net. From the look of things, it doesn’t seem like Apple is doing a whole lot to stop people from “hax0ring” their Apple TVs, either. Other companies (*cough* SONY *cough*) should take a hint… Allowing a ‘homebrew scene’ of sorts to thrive really isn’t detrimental to the success of your product. If I didn’t make it clear enough, I’m referring to the fact that Sony seems to release new PSP firmware every other week with the tiniest improvements, only to stop people from running unsigned code. Anyway, I’m getting off topic here. But I guess that’s sort of my thing, isn’t it?

I saw Down at the Electric Factory this past Sunday. It was my second time seeing them live, and they were just as good as the first time, if not more so. I won’t go into details because I doubt many of you are Down fans, but it was a great show. If you’re not familiar with the band, here’s both of their albums: “Nola” and “Down II“. Down is: Phil Anselmo on vocals, Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity guitarist and vocalist), Kirk Windstein (Crowbar guitarist), Rex Brown (Pantera bassist), and Jimmy Bower (Crowbar drummer and Eyehategod guitarist). If you’re already a fan, there’s a couple copies of the new track “I Scream” floating around - They’re all from live shows, so the quality isn’t great, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, or something like that. Anyway, you can check that out here.

Sometimes news articles are worth checking out just for the headlines. This news article is a perfect example.

I dunno how many of you are Nine Inch Nails fans, but you can listen to the upcoming album “Year Zero” in it’s entirety right here - It’s in the top right hand corner. While on the topic of MP3s and all that… Check out Papaiti - It’s another MP3 search engine, but for people like me who want to listen to music at work but aren’t ballsy enough to start downloading torrents there, it’s pretty nice.

Wouldn’t it be great if all advertisements were as honest as this one?

ImgRed.com seems to have come up with an interesting way of hotlinking images without hurting the person hosting the image. Apparently all you do is add ‘http://imgred.com’ before the URL to the image. Check it out - It’s what I used to post the ‘Down’ image seen above.

I never thought I’d use ‘origami’ and ‘badass’ in the same sentence. This page changed that. I’m gonna go get a tribal tattoo on my neck now. Keep it extreme!