FuzzyCo

Okami is, if nothing else, the most gorgeous video game I've ever played. It's based in Japanese folk tales and the entire game is in a brushwork style. There's a lot I could say, but I think the 93 score on Metacritic says most of it. Awesome game.

Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke

There's code here and there on FuzzyCo that goes back to 1994 or so, when I built my first webpage by hand and hosted it on my personal account on schenectady.ecn.purdue.edu (try typing that five times fast). And HTML 1.1 served me just fine for the next 10 years. Right around the time that I would have probably needed to really dive in and modernize things around here, I moved much of the site over to MovableType, which took care of enough that I could put it off for a little bit longer. But there are things I want to do with FuzzyCo that are going to require that I get up to, say, 2003 web design standards. So I'm slowly getting up to speed on the current state of web design.

This book is not a beginner's how-to level book to CSS, and so I didn't understand half of how I would actually implement the examples given. But I really glad I read it first, because it gave me a lot of great ideas about how to approach the workflow of redesigning my site(s), rather than just diving in and replicating my old tables structure with a bunch of divs and calling it a day.

So Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager made his Chicago debut this weekend. I'm happy to say that I got a couple good spits, including a photo-finish double-spit on the final round that Sasha called on an audience judge (hi Tom!) to adjudicate. Erica came along and took a bunch of photos, so you can catch every odd grimace I made.

The good doctor will be making his next appearance at the May 5, 2007 Don't Spit the Water.

Tricia has the deets from my father-in-law's latest tests. The short version is: things are still bad, but not as terrible as we all thought they might be.

Congrats to my awesome wife, who has made the cast of WNEP's latest Soireé DADA show.

FuzzyCo fave Kate O'Leary has submitted a design to Threadless. If enough people vote that they like the design, she'll get paid and the shirt'll get made.

Kyle and I have plenty of friendly arguments about audio gear, because he's a straight-up audiophile and is always looking for the best gear, while I'm a lot more interested in the best-cheapest. For a long time I've standardized on Sennheiser MX 400 earbud headphones, because they're a reasonable-sounding headphone but they're only $12 or so at the Virgin Megastore down the street from my office. Which is good, because I'm always leaving headphones droop out of my bag and then stepping on the earbuds. Oops.

(The MX 500 is the same headphone, but with an on-cord volume slider. I actually find the slider annoying, especially when biking, because invariably the slider will get trapped under my bag strap and shoved down to 0.)

When I started watching video on the train on my iPod and PSP I found that the train was just too noisy to hear dialog (especially on the notoriously quiet PSP). The real solution would be a pair of Ear Canal Headphones, but those things start at $100. So I got a pair of faux ECHs - Griffin Technology TuneBuds (known as EarThumps when I bought my pair) with three sizes of squishy silicone baffles that cut out a fair amount of background noise. Enough, at least, to hear dialog on the train.

But the TuneBuds turned out to be terrible for biking. With the baffles tight in my ears, I felt like I was too insulated from background noise -- I take the calculated risk of wearing headphones while biking but I'd like to be able to hear shouts of "the bridge is out!" or such. And (un)fortunately, the baffles don't stay down in my ears -- the motion of riding makes them slowly work their way out of the ear, whereupon they add a terrible wind-whistle to the mix.

So I headed over to Virgin at lunch to pick up another pair of MX 400s... and they were out of stock! Horror! I decided to get a pair of JVC Gumyphones (model HA-F120) because a) they were only $10 and b) they came in cool colors like pink and green. I got the coolest of all colors -- black. But what the packaging conceals (and oddly enough, was the impetus for this post at all) is that whatever color of earbud you choose, the cord is a unappetizing mix of dirty grey and dusty pink. With it's titular "gumy" feel and these terrible colors, the cord looks like I've got a toy's intestines stretched between my ears and my iPod. Gross.

Dorian hits it pretty much right on the head with his "if the Globe Theater had had a message board":

"WHERE DO YOU GET OFF KILLING OFF ROMEO AND JULIET? Clearly, you have no conception of how drama is supposed to work, since you won't let your characters be happy!"

"It was a total rip-off of the sub-plot from Midsummer's Nights Dream anyway. Talk about unoriginal."

"I'm still waiting for WS to explain the continuity errors in Antony and Cleopatra. There is NO WAY that both AAC and Julius Ceasar can take place simultaneously!"

Kate and Dan, why didn't you tell us about Ninja Warrior? It's your job to scout us crazy Japanese stuff like this! But thanks to the Telfer-Kallays' description and a single epsiode from Tivo, we're hooked on this slice of insanity.

On Ninja Warrior, one hundred contestants try to make it through an incredibly difficult obstacle course. But they're not all athletes -- they're comedians and dancers and gas station owners, too. And they all wear the outfit for what they normally do.

The show is on it's 18th season in Japan, and I think we're seeing the 17th season on G4. I think I could watch all 18 seasons.

Dan got the new cathead accessory for his XBox 360. I'm waiting for the wireless one.

Batman Begins (2005)

After so many cartoony Batman movies, it was great to have a -- I almost said "realistic", but we are still talking about a guy in a bat suit -- thoughful one. With actual, if brief, character growth. Erica and I agree that there could have been a lot more of Bruce Wayne learning his skills. But overall, quite a good superhero movie.

TMNT (2007)

I would have been impressed if this was three episodes of a Saturday morning cartoon, but it just didn't feel like it was worth a movie. Oh, and, hey, movie, we get it. "Family is important." Thanks.

And does the first "T" now stand for Twenty-something? These guys are old. Hmm... they have MySpace pages, maybe they are still teenagers.

(Anything you found amusing in this post, Erica came up with it.)

Happy Birthday to my sweet, sweet, dangerous love.

Inspired by this guy. Dialogue by Erica.

MC Frontalot was as great as I had hoped. MC Lars had one fun song (If I Had a Time Machine, That Would Be Fresh) but otherwise was as much of a tool as I expected. We were late and missed Optimus Rhyme because of a birthday dinner, and were told they were awesome. (Bought their CD -- awesomeness confirmed.) Ran into Nate Sands, K-Rock, Roger* and Greg, so comforted that we are not the only nerds in Chicago. Took pictures.

* Who disagrees on the toolness of MC Lars. So, hey, maybe I'm wrong. (I'm not.)

We had a bit of a scare there for a few days, but in the end it was good(ish) news for my father-in-law.

It's rare that I simply present a music video here on FuzzyCo, but this new video from Feist just makes me gosh-darn happy. Happy Friday the 13th, y'all.

The Belmont Burlesque Revue was reviewed by CenterstageChicago and they liked it: "the troupe's charm and salacious enthusiasm make it well worth the price of admission."

Erica and I will be appearing in the April 28 show as Gerdes & Reid, our vaudville-esque comedy duo (at the Playground, 3209 N Halsted). They've also got a special show coming up on May 5 at Martyrs' (3855 N. Lincoln Ave) with the Steeltown Sirens of Ontario, Canada (Erica and I will not be in that show).

Comedian is one of Erica's favroite movies and I needed a movie tonight that I could listen to more than watch, because I needed to do some computer work. The computer work fell by the wayside as I was drawn into the rhythm of this documentary. I didn't learn as much about the craft as I thought I might, and Orny Adams bugs the hell out of me, but it's still a fascinating movie.

Who died and made you in charge of what are legitimate names? I didn't want to sign up for your stupid collegy thing anyway, but Foresman sent me this stupid link and grumble mcgrumbley grumble.

Anyway, I'm now EF Gerdes on Facebook. If you wanna, what the hell do they call it, Face me or whatever.

After encouraging words both here and in person, I've signed up for the Chicago Marathon. I'm not signing up for any of the formal training and/or charity groups, but I will be relying on some friends to get me through the weekend long runs on the training program I'll be using. My goal right now is to get up to a comfortable three miles so I can do the first run on the chart in June. To that end I've bought some new shoes and run 2 miles of intervals* three times. I am old, and slow, and can't breathe. Oh, and my knees hurt. I can't wait for October!

* Intervals is a fancy way of saying "run until I get out of breath, and then walk until I can breathe again".

After our last disconnect, I finally saw Foresman in person for the first time in, what, like 8 years? Wacky. Anyway, good food, good times.

A quick reminder for my north-eastern Indiana, northern Ohio, and southern Michican friends -- we'll be performing the critically acclaimed film/improv hybrid The Neutrino Project at the Big Show of the Oberlin College Improv Conference in Oberlin, Ohio tonight (Friday) at 8 pm.

Now that I've started running, I'm trying out listening to audiobooks. The first one I listened to is Rude Mechanicals by Kage Baker, released as free audiobook by Subterranean Press.

The book is in Baker's "Company" series, about time-traveling immortal cyborgs, but this one is a stand-alone comedic adventure, set in 1930s Hollywood. It was delightfully read by Mary Robinette Kowal.

I agree with everything Dan wrote about how G4 is squandering Ninja Warrior. It's a testament to how awesome the show is that we love it despite G4's editing.

(And, hey, Dan -- can I help you set up some real blogging software so I can, say, link to individual entries and leave comments and all that fun stuff?)

And congrats, Steve and Becky.

If you'd like to be our Wii friend, we're 7826-9314-1734-1853. Which is to say, we got a Wii!

So, the Playground Theater's 10th Anniversary is coming up and as part of the festivities the theater hired Johnny Knight to take photos of all the member ensembles. My ensemble, Pastor of Muppets, dressed up like a ska band, sorta, just because, and we took a bunch of our photos in front of a blue screen. We picked a more normal roof-top shot for the one that will be displayed in the theater, but those blue screen ones are letting us do things like the above (whipped up by Dan).

I loved the Golden Compass books and I didn't realize there was a movie coming out. Of course my Daemon would be a chimp:

(via Devin)

photo by Dan Telfer

So Dan decided he wanted to add "stand-up comedy" to his already-varied theatrical resume (playwright, actor, improvisor, solo performer, what else, Dan?) and in a "if we all look foolish, none of us look foolish" sort of mentality began bugging a bunch of the PoM/Blewt crew to come out and do some open mics with him. I started toying with the idea of jumping in and started a page in my little moleskine called "Comedy Ideas". Erica and I went out a few weeks ago just to cheer Dan on as he did his first stand-up performance. It went great and he was immediately invited to do some more gigs.

Thursday, the word came out from Dave Odd, the organizer of the open mic at Pressure that ABC7's 190 North was going to be going to be filming that night and that comedians should get there early to sign up. I had six bits, or ideas for bits, written down on that page so I decided it would be a great time to start.

Dan and I, with Vicky and Erica in tow for support, showed up pretty early and signed up for slots 7 and 8. The crowd was pretty large with a definite "we're gonna be on TV and get famous" feel. It turned out that they weren't doing a story on the open mic per se, but rather on Pressure as a whole, and so they didn't film that much comedy and didn't stay that long. (A note to my fellow performers: having been on both sides of this equation, yelling "thanks for not filming" at the camera crew as you finish your set really doesn't help anything.)

So by the time Dan and Rine-Stone and I got up, the crowd had thinned back out to it's usual couple-dozen and the mood was pretty chill. I'm happy to say that I got a few laughs -- not bad for my first time doing real standup¹. I did learn that I'm going to need to write better notes in my comedy notebook. Evidently there's something hilarious about "sleeping on the train", but damned if I can remember what it is.

¹ I've done stand-up as a character before, but I don't count that, especially since that character, by design, never finished any of his jokes.

I wrote this up for Dan, so I thought I'd share. Most Sony digital still cameras can also record movies, which is great. The only problem with the videos is that they are multiplexed ("muxed") -- the audio and video are intertwined in a way that iMovie doesn't understand, so you get a silent movie if you try and edit it. After the jump, a workflow to get editable footage from a Sony digital camera using only free tools:

For her birthday, some of Erica's friends got together to get her a house-call massage (from an old friend of hers, as it happens). And Erica figured that since Nia was going to be at the house anyway, that she'd give me a nine-month's anniversary present of a massage as well. So what could be better than waking up on a warm and sunny Sunday morning to get a massage in your own living room? Well, I'll tell you what's better -- I'm not really a fan of that standard wind-chimes-and-flute music that's common to the massage and spa world, so I asked Nia if I could pop in something of my own and I got my massage to the Kings Of Convenience's Versus. Remixes of gentle Norwegian pop is, seriously, one of the most relaxing things I can think of.

Possibly the only thing better than a picture of a picture being taken is the picture of the picture presented with the picture that was being taken.

Through absolutely no effort on my part, FuzzyCo is now is a green-hosted ("carbon neutral") site. Yay!

Heaven - Season One by Mur Lafferty was recommended by Boing Boing and I listened to it as an audiobook over the course of a couple runs and bike rides to work. By chapter 8 I was not very interested, but I kept going just to finish the narrative. Which, as you might expect from a book subtitled "Season One", ended on something of a cliffhanger, so I wasn't even satisfied there.

FuzzyCo rating: eh.