Happy New Year’s

On the 9th, it became the Year of the Rooster on the Chinese calendar. Chinese New Year is upon us and it is a good time for all.
I took the girls down to Chinatown in LA for them to get a little taste of their heritage. The parade started around 2 two o’clock on Satuday and we were lucky enough to but into friends and get seats on the curb.
This is a close to a small town parade as we get in LA and the mode was fun and casual. I forgot my regular camera, so you get my phonecam photos.


There were a few floats paying homage to the Rooster.
Among them were several floats with Chinatown Queen/Princesses, but the images were crappy.

I have to give props to the Teo Chew Association for their spectacular float.

The people on the float tossed out candy & red envelopes to the kids.
Zoe was lucky (and fast) enough to get a red envelope with a lucky quarter in it.

The highlight of the parade was the dragons.
They danced around the street with the drums beating.
Beautiful colors and designs on the dragons.

This dragons came in for a close look at the girls.

I highly recommend a visit to Chinatown. The food is cheap, the bargains are plenty, and it’s the complete opposite of the ‘planned shopping environments’ popping up across the Southland.

Chain

Sean Bonner posted some sort of chain email/post thingie, what the hell:
1. What is your full name? Michael August Pusateri
2. What color pants are you wearing? Tan
3. What are you listening to right now? People talking outside my office
4. What was the last thing you ate? Melted cheese on chips
5. Do you wish on stars? No.
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Forest Green
7. How is the weather right now? Cool & clear, not cold.
8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My wife
9. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Yes
10. How old are you today? 37
11. Favorite drink? Orange Bang
12. Favorite sports? Baseball
13. Hair color? Black
14. Do you wear contacts? Yes
15. Siblings? Matthew
16. Favorite month? July
17. Favorite food? Italian
18. What was the last movie you watched? Hellboy
19. Favorite day of the year? My birthday
20. What do you do to vent anger? Curse
21. What was your favorite toy as a child? The chemistry set
22. Summer or winter? When the leaves turn in autumn and green appears in spring
23. Hugs or kisses? Hugs
24. Chocolate or Vanilla? Dark chocolate
25. Do you want your friends to email you back? Yes
26. Who is most likely to respond? My brother
27. Who is least likely to respond? My wife
28. Living arrangements? Home with wife, daughters, toad & fish
29. When was the last time you cried? When Columbia was destroyed
30. What is under your bed? Dust bunnies
31. Who is the friend you have had the longest? My fraternity brothers
32. What did you do last night? Blogged and played World of Warcraft
33. Favorite smell? Tie between clove cigarettes and baking bread
34. What inspires you? People liking what I do
35. What are you afraid of? Heights
36. Plain, buttered or salted popcorn? Light butter
37. Favorite car? Not a big car guy, but a 60s Mustang Convertible would be nice
38. Favorite Flower? Orchid
39. Number of keys on your key ring? Two, one for home, one for work
40. How many years at your current job? Coming up on 10 years
41. Favorite day of the week? Saturday
42. What did you do on your last birthday? Quiet dinner with my family
43. How many states have you lived in? 2
44. Have many cities have you lived in? 3

Omni Magazine

Back in the 1970s, Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse Magazine launched a new magazine called Omni. Omni was devoted to science, the paranormal, sci-fi/fantasy stories, and technology in general. My parents would pick up copies regularly and so they became fundamental objects in my childhood.
Omni Magazine was the Wired Magazine of the 70s & 80s. Everyone from Nobel Prize winners to UFO crackpots were interviewed. News of new and fascinating inventions and ideas were a regular part of the magazine.
Recently I thought about a story I read in Omni at this time and wondered what ever happened to the magazine. I did a quick search on ebay and was happy to find plenty of copies.
I bought the 12 issues from 1982, my last year of junior high school, when I was intrigued with computers, BBSs, girls, and the science in general.


As I flipped through the pages, the old neurons flickered to life as I recalled many of the images and stories as if it was only yesterday when I last saw them.
The fiction is from well known authors such as Connie Willis, Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Greg Bear, Isaac Asimov, Fredrick Pohl, Dan Simmons, Frank Herbert, and Ben Bova. Hell, the July 1982 issue has Burning Chrome by William Gibson in it. Omni Magazine was THE place for the launch of the internet age. The same people that were cobbling together usenet, the internet and building BBSs were reading Omni Magazine every month.

Here’s and ad for the revolutionary service, Compuserve. Twenty-three years ago, they were trying to reel in customers with promises of online finance, travel info, games, and images. Not much different from what AOL offers today. In some ways the world hasn’t changed much.

The funniest part of the magazines is looking at the ads. Ads for booze, cars, and cigarettes are bascially the same as today. But the technology ads are blast. Seeing the IBM ads for their computers starring their the Charlie Chaplin lookalike are incredibly dated.
Check out the ad above about the Panasonic knockoff of the Sony Walkman. It should be a reminder to the iPods fantatics as to what lives ahead for Apple’s current hit product. Back in the early 80s, the Sony Walkman was the defacto standard for personal audio, bouyed by Sony reputation and great product, but as the market matured, Sony any semblance of an edge and personal audio player were completely commoditized, made by the cheapest vendor.
It won’t take long for the iPod’s currently huge marketshare to drop once the the inevitable market forces (and the Walmart factor) take hold. Seeing the ads for Betamaxes, cassette players, and cordless home phones remind me that whatever today’s hot tech items are, they’ll be on sale for $20 in a few years at the local discount mart.
Back to Omni, I’m glad I took the time to look into the past. Once I’ve read the fiction, I’ll probably put the magazines back up on ebay for someone else to read.

Four more

In the last few weeks, I finished a few more books. Here’s a brief review of each.
How to Blog – Tony Pierce
Not so much a instruction manual, but a retrospective on Tony Pierce’s writings. Tony is a blogger in Los Angeles. He’s young, witty, handsome, and all the fly women are making a fuss…
Part poetry, part prose, Tony writes about whatever flutters through his mind, women, baseball, politics, even his digital camera. I found his book a refreshing and funny break from my usual sci-fi or history book diet.
Help the guy out and buy a copy, it’s worth it.
The Zenith Angle – Bruce Sterling
Amazingly, I saw this book before it was published in Bruce’s office, in his house at last year’s SXSW party. Sterling’s work has ranged from future sci-fi to steampunk to cyberpunk over the years. In The Zenith Angle he gives us his take on America’s spooks and the role of cyberspace in national security, and a taste of space warfare.
The book was a tasty treat that I consumed rapidly. You don’t always know where the author is taking you, but the road is great. Scenes of the different worlds that Bollywood actors, dotcom billionaires, and government agents occupy are tantalizing glipses of lifestyles we mere mortals don’t encounter often.
The book is a good thriller with enough tech tossed in to differentiate it from the typical DaVinci Code style book.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief – Bill Mason
I heard about this book from Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-gram newsletter as a good lesson in security. The basic idea -> “Nothing works more in a thief’s favor than people feeling secure. That’s why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets.”
The book is the story of Bill Mason, a noted jewel thief in the 70s and 80s. This is the story of his criminal career from start to finish. Fairly well written, you begin to feel for the guy as he breaks into places and steals pillowcase after pillowcase of jewels from the rich.
At one point however, he does lose my sympathy as he describes his antics in Florida as he was on trial from one of his crimes as he continually taunted the police and judges. I really couldn’t relate to this. I could relate to his problem solving methods and the way he concieved solving the security issues, but acting like a jackass and treating his family badly was disconcerting.
Worth a borrow from the library, but not worth a new hardcopy purchase.
The French Admiral – Dewey Lambdin
This is the second book in the Alan Lewrie storyline, another Age of Sail hero in the tradition of Horatio Hornblower. I read the first book and thought it was promising. I stumbled into this book at the library and checked it out on a whim.I’d like to say I found the novel fantastic, but it was just OK. The continual use of endless anutical jargon about staysails and other details really doesn’t do much for the tale.
It was interesting to ready about the American Revolution from the British side as Alan meets up with loyalists from North Carolina and tries to escape the Battle of Yorktown. Not many sea battles, but and few good descriptions of land battles and skirmishes.
The book does clear up quite a bit of Alan’s history and the reasons behind his banishment to sea by his father. The look into Britsh marriage law and inheritance rights is fun and makes me glad not to live under the British system of family property.

Daytripping

In about a hour I’ll get in a car, head to the airport, fly to New York, arrive at 6:30 AM, wait for a meeting that runs 9-6, get back on a plane and fly back to LA, arrving at Midnight.
There is a meeting I ‘must’ attend, or so I am told. I fear it will be powerpoint hell.
Modern business travel is amazing, silly, and tiring all at the same time.

Budweiser Extra

When time permits, I try to take Michele for coffee in the mornings after the kids are off to school. She likes 7-Eleven coffee, so that’s where we go.
I’ve taken a break from caffeine for a bit and today I was wandering around while she made her coffee/hot chocolate concoction. Scanning the fridges, I saw this:


Yep, you read it right. Beer with caffeine, ginseng, guarana extract, and natural flavor.
Yes, Budweiser Extra has hit the market. Why? I have no idea, but someone at Anheuser-Busch thinks America needs caffienated beer.
Of course, you can count on the Cruft Labs to test this out for you.

I poured a tall glass of ‘B to the E’ and took a nice swig.
In a word, it is foul.
Truly a triumph of conceptual marketing over common sense. Bud Extra tastes something akin to beer with a Flintstone’s vitamin ground up in it. An amazingly terrible taste that is nothing like beer.
Avoid this product at all costs, except if you want to play a practical joke on someone.

Speed up Firefox

A fraternity brother sent me this tip. It may be old news, but for me, it worked great to speed up the already fast Firefox browser if you have broadband.
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.
Sites that loaded slowly in the past pop up quickly now.

Off-air

Here you can see HDTV being recieved the way it was meant to be, with rabbit ears antenna.


Yes, the picture that good.
Yes, regular TV sucks in compairison.
Yes, I’ll have more to say once I get the DirecTV HD setup running.