2003.2

Mike Allen of The Washington Post reported yesterday that during George’s visit to Iraq, he attended a Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. The published photo of him holding a turkey has been in literally every news magazine. However, this photo is a fraud. Bush’s camp has stooped so low as to use a prosthetic turkey to make their photos look better than they really are.

I’ve been annoyed with Bush’s usage of words behind him as he speaks but this new tactic takes the cake. Throughout his presidency, Bush has put up signs of “Mission Accomplished” or “Economic Recovery” behind him while speaking in a not-so-subtle attempt to burn these messages into the sub-conscious of the viewer. Now with the turkey blunder, isn’t it time to give it up?

President Dean wouldn’t do something like that…

I’m having trouble motivating myself to study for finals. It’s tough to come back from the lab after a whole day of work and then blow your evening reading up on Genetics. Oh well, I guess that’s how I’ll spend my weekend…studying. Maybe I just need some caffeine. Peace.

Booya. I snagged a copy of Z-Trip’s latest release (limited edition press of 5000 CDs). If you want one, you had better buy it fast!

W32.Spybot.Worm has mutated to a new form that affects AOL Instant Messenger. Users have reported that the virus takes over the chat window and will periodically post a hyperlink in the current IM window. From what I’ve heard the virus is difficult to remove and all it is known to do is annoy AOL IM users. If you get the virus, follow Symantec’s removal instructions. Note that the removal of the current version may differ slightly than what Symantec currently reports because the new form just appeared a couple of months ago. Security Forums also has updated removal instructions for getting rid of the AIM variant. If you can’t get your system running after infection, then reformatting is the only way to go. The virus doesn’t infect your boot partition so a quick format should work. If you still have problems, then use a low-level format as a last resort.

The virus is already spreading at UCLA. I’ve seen a couple of people with infected profiles. The virus is activated when you click on the link and Internet Explorer is open. I don’t believe Mozilla can be infected by just clicking on the link.

If you see a link in somebody’s profile to buddypicture.net, don’t click on it. That is a virus site. You can only get the virus if you are using Internet Explorer. There are some great updated removal instructions located on Feedster. Check it out if you got the virus. The current variants insert “Whoaaa…Look what I found, click here” or “I can’t believe I found” into your profile.

My Thanksgiving was great. I drove up to Mill Valley Tuesday night and chilled the next day at home. That night, I had dinner at Piatti, a quaint little Italian restaurant that overlooks the marshland. Olympic track star Michael Johnson was having dinner at Piatti that very night. It was cool to see him, but I left him alone. I figure, Michael already knows he’s the man. Me telling him so wouldn’t do much good, so why interrupt his meal? On Thursday, our family friends, Flavio and Jean, came to the house for dinner. Flavio made cheesecake, which was excellent. The parents made the traditional meal, which was great as usual. It included turkey, two cranberry dishes, five cup salad, sauerkraut, stuffing, and much more. Then on Friday, Courtney flew up from LAX. She went with me and the family to see Cirque du Soleil’s new show, Alegría. As always, the show was excellent. Cirque du Soleil is expensive but worth the price. Over the weekend, I tried to go to Union Square but there were so many people that the parking garages were full! I bought some chocolate at Ghirardelli and then headed home since the city was just plain crazy. On Sunday I drove down the 5 with Courtney and my friend Dani. The drive was hell. It took me eight hours instead of the usual six. A car broke down in one of the lanes which made traffic slow to a crawl. They had to merge the 5 down to one lane for a little bit. Magic Mountain was sluggish as usual. The drive put a bit of a damper on the week but all in all, a great vacation.

I purchased Office 2003 Student and Teacher edition at the UCLA store the day it came out. So far, the product has been great. Microsoft has even revamped the Office Update site for the 2003 edition. The site downloads fast and looks great; however, when I tried to download the critical patch just released through the automatic updater, it failed repeatedly. I know this is not a problem with my machine since I just clean installed Windows XP a few weeks ago and installed Office 2003 fresh on the new XP install.

If you run into this same problem, I did find a work around that solves the update issue. Visit the KB828041 update page and download then run the .EXE manually. The patch will be applied successfully. I’m sure Microsoft will fix this issue in the future, but for now, it doesn’t work for me.

ABC News ran a feature last night entitled “The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiaracy,” one of the best new reports I’ve ever watched on television. Peter Jennings hosted the show, which featured new 3D animation of the assassination based on the Zapruder film. The 3D model can be rotated and slowed down to show that indeed it was one bullet that killed Kennedy. Also, the show disproved the Grassy Knoll theory by demonstrating that the acoustic footage was invalid. The acoustic footage showed that there were four bullets fired that day, but the accuracy of the footage depending on the positioning of a police officer who had his microphone turned on. However, it turns out that the police officer was in fact in a different spot, effectively invalidating the acoustic footage.

It was Oswald, and he acted alone. Case closed.

Sit back and marvel in its beauty

I mentioned on November 10 that Winamp has a number of features that kill iTunes. I forgot to mention my personal favorite, MilkDrop! MilkDrop is a free visualization plug-in for Winamp written by Ryan Geiss. I can run this plug-in full screen on my machine at 1280×1024 resolution (72 Hz) without a hitch. Let’s see iTunes do that.

The recently relaunched Lockergnome floored me when I saw the new design. Foofy did the redesign and it’s one of the best CSS layouts I’ve seen on the web. You can customize the site’s colors and which side the sidebar appears on with a simple click. The site is bright and easy to read. This is why the W3C exists and why guys like Zeldman write books and blog about web standards. Cheers to Chris Pirillo and Foofy for such a great remake.

I downloaded Apple’s iTunes the day it came out. Steve Jobs hailed it as “the best Widnows app ever.” Sorry Steve, but it’s far from the best. I agree that iTunes has a lot of great features — the smart playlists are nice, you can rank songs, and it syncs to an iPod. However, there are too many shortcomings in the program for me to use it on a daily basis.

Importing songs and managing the database in iTunes is a nightmare. There is no option to remove duplicate entries, and you can’t have the program rescan a folder for new songs without it importing all the songs in the database. Winamp does this without a hitch.

The crossfading support is sketchy. Yes, it will blend the songs together and the default setting is five seconds of crossfading, but there is no gapless output support. If you set the crossfading to zero, iTunes doesn’t remove the half second gap between songs like a CD player does. You can easily set this in Winamp by configuring the DirectSound output plugin to buffer 150ms before the next track and opt to cut silence at 40dB. Apple needs to introduce this feature to stay competitive.

iTunes’ support of ID3 tags is also far from impressive. I tag my files in ID3v1.1 with Lyrics3 v2.00 because it saves the track information at the end of the file. This has been common practice among audiophiles for quite some time because it is easy on your hard drive. When you update a song with ID3v2, the whole file is rewritten to the drive whereas with ID3v1.1, it just rewrites the end of the file. Your hard drive will live longer as a result. iTunes doesn’t support Lyrics3 extended tags at the moment.

Also, you can make playlists in iTunes, but you can’t export them to a common format. iTunes will let you export a playlist as XML but no other player out there that I know of lets you import XML playlists. Once you make a playlist in iTunes, it will only work in iTunes. The programmers need to add .M3U support.

I like the native support for MP4 (AAC) in iTunes, but the program’s ripping ability is limited. The codec works great but you can’t choose how you want to name files on the system. Apple clearly wants you to only use iTunes when accessing your music, so file names don’t matter, right? Wrong. Nero, Exact Audio Copy, and Easy CD-DA Extractor all support MP4 and they let you manage file names.

Sorry Apple, iTunes is nice to play with, but I’m sticking with tried and true Winamp for my everyday listening.

Microsoft recently expressed interest in buying out Google, the world’s most popular search engine. Google has initially declined the offer, as reported by The New York Times. Google is going to IPO in a couple of months in what is expected to be a big boost to Wall Street. Without a doubt Google is going to become publicly shared first and then possibly acquired by Microsoft.

Google is making a smart move by opting to IPO before even really talking to Microsoft about a merger. The IPO will boost the company’s net worth, which would make a merger more expensive. Money isn’t really an issue for Microsoft since they have billions and Google would be a solid buy. However, I’m not sure how this would affect the web. Google is the starting place for almost every web user now, especially Mac aficionados. If Microsoft purchased Google, it would cater to Windows users and integrate Google search features into the OS. This would be great for file searching, since Microsoft would probably use Google’s algorithms to improve its local searches.

However, if Microsoft bought Google, it would truly control the web. Internet Explorer is still the Web’s most popular browser. Around seventy-five percent of the traffic directed to my site is from Internet Explorer, with Mozilla clocking in around twenty percent. While other search alternatives exist, such as All The Web, Overland, and various others, Google is the king of search engines. Microsoft is king of the desktop. A Google, Microsoft merger would form an unstoppable 800-pound web gorilla. Pay careful attention to this possible deal because it will have a huge impact on the future of the Internet.

It’s raining outside my window right now. Personally I like it when it rains and right now, Southern California desperately needs some rain. However, the rain does hinder safe trick-or-treating, which is a shame. I hope most of the kids in the area were able to hit up a few houses before the rain picked up. It started to come down around 9:30 so kids probably managed to get some candy. I’m not really up to anything at the moment because it’s raining. I thought about heading over to West Hollywood, but the dark clouds persuaded me to stay home and watch “Pulp Fiction” instead.

Have a happy Halloween!

I’ve lived in California all my life. I grew up in Orange County and moved up north to the Bay Area when I was 13. I have a lot of friends who live right in the heart of the wildfires, and they’re going through a really tough time, as you can probably imagine. I know people at UCLA who are from San Diego whose parents can see flames from their porches. My Dad’s friend Chris lives in San Diego and you can see the fire from his backyard. A couple of the guys in my Counter-Strike clan live less than five minutes away from the fire. Sabrina, one of the grad students in the Bradley lab lives near Magic Mountain and she told me that if the wind reverses, it will most likely get her house.

Keep these people in your thoughts and prayers. As I write this article, the Santa Ana winds are thankfully dying down. Maybe this catastrophe can be quelled in the next few days.

I’m still wondering how these fires got started. Last time I checked, there were around ten separate fires that all developed around the same time. Is it an act of terrorism? Probably not. An act of sheer stupidity? Definitely. Copycat crimes? It’s a possibility but let’s hope not. The disaster is going to cost California hundreds of millions of dollars. Ironically, the fine for littering cigarette butts in the San Bernadino mountain range area is only $1,000. Let’s think about raising that fine in the future.

Rod Roddy, the 20-year announcer for “The Price is Right,” died today from cancer at the age of 66. Rod was diagnosed with breast and colon cancer two years before his death. He chose to keep working for CBS even though he knew the illness was fatal. What a great guy. He’ll be forever remembered for his trademark “Come on down!” “The Price is Right” has always been my favorite game show because it is one of the few shows out there that really gets the audience involved. It truly is the most “American” of American game shows and in my opinion CBS’s best show.

However, I’m ticked off at CBS for not showing Roddy a little more respect. He didn’t make the front page of CBS News today nor even the top of the Entertainment section! Instead, he got beat out by a tasteless story on Pamela Anderson’s fight against KFC, Princess Di’s Butler, and the “Ziegfeld Follies.” Rod got mentioned near the bottom of the page as the third headline. This guy worked for CBS for 20 years and made them a lot of money. In turn, they stick him at the bottom of their news site. Simply tasteless. Their write-up on him is decent but the placement of the article was tacky.

Well, Rod, I’ll miss you and your loveable catch phrase. The show just won’t be the same from now on.

This week is crunch time. I have my Spanish midterm tomorrow at 11 AM and Life Science 4 on Wednesday at 5:00 PM. I think I’m pretty well prepared for LS4 but we’ll see. I’ve liked Professor Jacobsen’s lectures so far and his practice midterm seems straightforward. Luckily this quarter I only have one round of midterms during week 5 instead of the usual week 4/week 8 debacle. So I guess I shouldn’t complain. Back to studying…

I’m shocked at how badly the baseball postseason has turned out this year. At the start of the season I called Giants vs. Red Sox in the World Series. The Giants got edged out by the NL Champion Florida Marlins and the Sox by the AL Champion New York Yankees. After the Giants lost, I was hoping the Cubs would make the Series since they haven’t won since 1908. That would have been a great match-up, the battle of the underdogs (the Red Sox haven’t won since 1918, almost as long as the Cubs).

I hate to say it, but it looks like the curse of the Bambino is alive and well. Man, I hate the Yankees, but they won the series fair and square. I’m not going to watch the World Series. It’s a waste of time in my opinion now. I’m guessing the Yankees will win yet another title, and it will be a boring finish to a great year of baseball. What a shame.

I’m also appauled by the tasteless media bashing of Steve Bartman. Yes, he made the terrible mistake of trying to catch a ball that Moises Alou would have caught. However, he didn’t lose the series for the Cubs. They lost it on the next few plays, giving up eight runs. That is unacceptable, and you simply can’t blame that outcome on a fan, however stupid his actions were. It really made me mad when I opened up yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to see that they had a prominent article on Bartman as well. The poor guy had to disconnect his phone number and call in sick at work for a few days.

All in all, not a good year for baseball. Maybe next year will be better.

According to Adelphia tech support, PowerLink, their cable modem service, is down throughout California right now. The problem is due to “sun interference.” Tech support claims that the sun is in just the right angle to cause interference with their satellites that run PowerLink. I have one question for tech support. If that is the case, then how can you explain the outage all through the night last night, when the sun isn’t even directly shining onto the satellites?

I drove over to Orange Country Friday night to help Drew, a long time family friend, celebrate his 16th birthday. Drew, his brother, Ryen, and I went over to Costa Mesa to play a round of golf. The weather was nice out but the course was a little wet in some spots. I hadn’t played in quite some time and I hit some ugly shots as expected but some good ones as well. All in all, I had a pretty bad round compared to the way I used to be able to play, but we didn’t end up keeping score anyway.

We actually had more fun messing around with the golf carts. I figured out how to power slide them in the gravel spots on the cart pathway. We also found that if you push a cart into reverse and back it into another cart that is moving forward, the carts will keep their tires spinning churning up dirt without moving anywhere. Another time, Drew hit the brakes really hard going down the concrete part of the path and he actually left foot-long tread marks.

Afterwards, I took Drew out to dinner at El Torito, where I ordered a good size dinner consisting of a crispy taco, enchilada, chile relleno, and tamale. Then we hit up the Dairy Queen. After Dinner, I schooled him in FIFA Soccer 2003.

On Wednesday I went to the UCLA Store and bought the latest version of Flash with an academic discount. I figured the extra $50 was worth it for the features that Flash Pro includes. I really need the ability to create forms with flash, and advanced video editing is always nice.

So far, I am very pleased with Flash MX 2004. The install worked perfectly and the program is much faster than Flash MX. I installed Flash Player 7 for Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera on my machine and the player loads in under half the time and runs smoother. This is the case for every browser I’ve tested. The Flash Player is now very responsive. If only Sun would get their Java VM to load this well.

I haven’t had time to use the program extensively yet but I just wanted to let the web designers and creative types out there know that if you’ve been thinking about buying Flash, I recommend getting this version. It is very easy to use, especially with regard to animation. The Macromedia team has introduced a new panel that includes common animations that you can set up very easily — no more tweening on the timeline for a simple fly-in.

To the Macromedia team: Thanks for making such a great product. I’m very happy with the current release and look forward to spending some time over the next week really exploring its new features.

Also, Todd Dominey has recently written some excellent Flash commentary. Definitely check out what he has to say.

I was lucky enough to attend the Coors Amphitheatre show in Chula Vista, CA on Sunday. As usual, Radiohead was awesome (I first saw them in 2001 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View). They’ve switched up their show a lot and I liked the new changes. My favorite was the introduction of a camera on Thom’s piano that zooms in really close to his face. They used this for “You and Whose Army?”. During the song, when Thom sang, “Come on…,” the camera would zoom in almost right up to his eyeball and he would wink at the crowd. It was hilarious. Another cool introduction was the video screen they used for “The National Anthem.” The video had a red backdrop and a distorted orange image of Thom with a ticker in the bottom right that showed the current time down to seconds. It was very apocalyptic.

Supergrass opened for Radiohead and they were all right but not as great as the Beta Band, who opened for Radiohead back in 2001. However, I hadn’t really listened to any of Supergrass’ songs prior to the show so I really don’t know enough about the band to judge them. They didn’t floor me at the show though.

At Ease has an excellent recap of the show as well.