'Tis late (or rather very early in the morning now), so I'll keep it short. I've been tinkering with getting my DVD library inventoried on the web. It's at http://www.adg.us/dvdlib/ for now, in beta mode. I still need to get check-in/check-out stuff working so I can keep track of who has borrowed what. Other than that, it seems to be working fine. It's much easier than typing the information in a single big flat file like I used to do. I can even scan the barcode from the DVD with my CueCat (I had to port a perl decoder I wrote a long time ago to PHP) directly into the database, and it will automatically query the public UPC database at http://www.upcdatabase.com/ to find the DVD title. Perhaps I'll add automatic searching of Amazon.com next.

Good night!

Okay, it's just after 8:00 PM, the sun will be setting soon. I'm going to take a walk. See ya later. (8:07 PM is my departure time.) More when I get back...

I'm back! It's now 9:18 PM. That makes the walk just over an hour, and that fits with my estimation of about three-and-a-half to four miles walking distance.

It was very pleasant! The air had cooled a bit, so it was almost the perfect late springtime evening temperature. Flowers in various yards I passed were in bloom. Along one yard, tall oleander bushes were covered in white, dark red, and pink blossoms, and the air was fragrant. Normally I don't consider oleander to be an attractive plant, but I must admit this evening, in the fading light, these were beautiful.

I need to do this again. At first, my foot injury from December was a bit sore, but after I warmed up, it didn't bother me at all.

This is just a quick note to say how much I love Gustav Holst as a composer, in particular, how much I enjoy Frederick Fennel & The Cleveland Symphonic Winds' rendition of the Chaconne from Holst's First Suite in E Flat. I love the sound of the brass in particular, but the entire ensemble as a whole is marvelous too. It's pure, distilled joy. Yummy!

I'm annoyed and frustrated at Sprint PCS.

You see, I use a Sprint cell phone for work, but text messages/pages don't seem to be working for my phone like they should. This is a problem because I need to be alerted when there's a networking problem.

So what did I do...

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On a whim, I perused my web server's access and error logs. I was surprised to note some requests for documents that don't exist on my site. The requests asked for the following files...

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Thanks to Slashdot for the link to a very fascinating story from Wired titled Super Organics. I love reading well-written science articles that explain things to us, the unwashed masses, in terms we can understand but also don't just gloss over the technology or science. This particular article piqued my interest because it involves something I find casually fascinating: genetic engineering and organic breeding of food plants.

This isn't really much of a blog entry. I'm just trying out some trackback stuff on this site and on Cassidy's blog (online here).

Amazing!

When I installed Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9 on my Windows XP box, I absolutely hated it. It was bloated and ugly. I had to spend a lot of time reconfiguring it so it was more minimalistic, switching to the "Corporate" skin, and thoroughly checking all the preference settings to turn off things I did not want the media player doing (and the media player had no business doing). Holy Banannas, Batman!

I just barely installed Microsoft's Media Player 9 on an Apple Macintosh running Mac OS X. Wow! Amazing! This is what a simple media player should look like! The install was easy and quick, and the player was very nice looking, simple, clean of form and line. It looks great, and isn't hideously bloated-looking. Nor is the functionality bloated. The preferences are simple and concise. Nice.

So how come Microsoft's Mac design and programming team got it right, while the Windows team screwed it up so badly? I just don't get it.

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Reading Slashdot I ran into these two web pages today:

http://www.interactivetools.com/staff/dave/james_office/

UPDATE: It appears the above page has since been taken down. Here's Google's cached copy of the page sans photos--and the pictures were what made it worthwhile! The page below still works as of 26 June 2004.

http://www.interactivetools.com/staff/dave/damons_office/

They're both hilarious! And they look cool, too!

For the heck of it, here's a link to a software synthesis rendered version of my as-yet-Unfinished Quartet or Quintet.