September 2005

Posted by Daljit of NORN on October 8th, 2005 filed in Diagnostic Reports

09.26.05 | There is only one true god…

…and he is noodly.

Behold the Flying Spaghetti Monster and see the truth! I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and am now a Pastafarian.

RAmen!

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 04:46 PM

09.04.05 | I broke it again

I’ve been wanting to migrate this site over to WordPress for a good long time now. The first time I tried to do it, I got the install scripts from the WordPress site, tried to install it, and broke everything. You remember that huge blackout that affected a large part of the country a few years back? Yeah, sorry about that.

I tried it again some months later, with similar effect. Luckily, no blackout this time. Still no WordPress, however. I gave up for the time being and became sad that I’d have to live with this rebuilding nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, Movable Type is great, but the rebuilding and waiting and tomfoolery after each entry is just a pain. I pined away for a working WordPress, or something similar.

It would seem my pining would not be in vain. Dreamhost, the best goddamn website hosting company evar!!!1 decided that they would (once again) read my mind and give me what I want. They made some widgety doodad thing in their web admin control panel that let me install WordPress in one fucking click. Really, it was more like 4 clicks, but that’s a hell of a lot easier than CHMODing shit and causing massive blackouts cause you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

But alas! My short lived victory would be all for naught!

The first time I installed it through Dreamhost, I screwed up some database thing and WordPress died. The second time I installed it, I fucked up the templates so bad, I wish I didn’t fuck up the templates so bad. Of course I forgot to keep a spare. WordPress died. The third attempt had me set up WordPress and do everything right, but then I accidentally deleted a file in the FTP thing and guess what? It seems WordPress didn’t like that so much.

WordPress: 5 – Me: 0.

Then I installed it AGAIN, and got everything working just fine and all was good. I was just too lazy to fix the template how I wanted it right away. Then it started languishing, then I got hooked on WoW, and here we are, 49284 versions of WordPress later. So I figured, “Why not just start over with the latest version, since I didn’t really do anything with the older one.”

WHY THE FUCK WOULD I THINK THAT?!

Score so far? WordPress: 7 – Me: 0.

But goddamn you, I’ll not let you win. The NORN Collective beat back “Rhode Island” after many glorious battles and I’ll be damned if I let WordPress wtfpwn me. So I’m sitting pretty with a new database for the new WordPress install. It’s not quite ready yet, but it will be. And then I’ll install it, import my old entries, and then it WILL fucking work. Why? Because I’m The Imperious Leader of The NORN Collective. Furthermore, I’m The Enforcer. And most importantly, I’m The Chief. How can I lose when I’ve picked up that many aliases? It is completely unsuportable! Infamy in the highest order! WordPress will be my bitch!

I hope. :(

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 09:48 AM

09.03.05 | Music is Good 2: Electric Boogaloo

In the true style of World of Warcraft I embarked on a quest earlier today entitled [62+] Thorium Plated Aucostomatic Audioblastic Amplifier. The details of said quest can be found in my previous post. (Translation: I went to get a new car stereo for a variety of reasons.) I am happy to report that I completed my quest and recieved quite a fine quest reward. What was this illustrious quest reward, you ask? It was a this. I should note that I didn’t get any subs or amps installed, nor did I switch out my speakers for some sort of neon lighted monstrosities. I don’t need to rattle my brain, and honestly, I like my stock speakers. They have an impressive amount of power and they give me all the soundy goodness I want.

I could rant and rave about how the sound quality is markedly better, or how sweet it looks, or any number of things, but I shall instead give you a bullet point list of why this new stereo is teh r0x0r my s0x0rs.

* The old stereo has made this annoying fucking buzzing sound for years that the VW dealership claims they don’t hear, even though the higher you make the volume, the louder the buzz. This new stereo has eliminated that buzz completely.
* My CD changer, currently located in the trunk, does not support mp3 CDs. Nor does it work reliably more than 40% of the time. This new stereo is able to play 1 CD in dash and it can read mp3s. While this isn’t of the biggest use to me, its nice to have the option.
* Cars that don’t have the old skool 31″ metal antenna use a small amplifier to beef up the signal the stubby little antenna recieves so it doesnt suck. The new stereo comes with a MUCH better amp that seems to give me a clearer signal and is able to recieve signals better than my old stereo could, even with my antenna unscrewed!
* This is purely a nonfunctional thing, but this new hotness is all rounded and shit and compliments the curves of my Beetle quite nicely. I was a little worried about how it would look, but it looks great.
* It comes with a wire dealy that hooks straight into my iRiver with no fooling around with any excess wires/parts/etc. and plays it as an external audio source. As the kids say, that shit sounds tight. Or something. But really, it sounds excellent.
* If my new Sony stereo thing was a woman, I would probably marry it.

So there you have it. My new stereo is a resounding success. My commutes to school will be so much nicer now that I dont have to fiddle with the stupid super cheap FM transmitter I had. That shit was ok when it worked right, but it got really annoying at times with it just deciding to drift between frequencies. I should also be able to save an assload of battery now since I don’t have to crank the volume on my iRiver just to hear it.

Now I just need someplace to drive to.

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 10:17 PM

Music >> You

So I enjoy music. Specifically, I’m into electronica, but I’ll listen to just about anything that’s good. Recently I heard about a radio station in Brooklyn that has a live feed here. It’s some crazy island music or something, and there’s some stuff on there that I really like. Some of it is kinda blah, but they’ll have these stretches where they play this crazy good stuff that I’m now realizing isn’t why I’m typing this shit.

So yeah, I like music. What I don’t like, is the craptastic radio station junk. I also don’t like my nearly non functional car cd changer. What does this leave me with? A car stereo that I don’t really use. So I had an idea. “Hey, I have an mp3 player,” I said. “Why don’t I get one of those radio transmitter things and listen to it in the car?” So I got one. And it was good… almost. There’s this annoying fucking buzzing sound that I can’t get rid of. Also, the signal from the transmitter seems to “drift” in that it’ll start getting more and more static till I readjust it, and then its ok. But even then, it’s not really ok. It just pretends, cause whenever there’s a hihat hit or a singer says something with an “s” sound in it, the high end range breaks up. Sometimes I can fix this by switching stations and settings, but usually this is a futile effort. Not only that, but it really is a pain in the ass to be messing with this while I’m driving.

And so it was that I came to a decision. In a few moments, I will be heading out to a car audio shop to see if they can jimmy my current car stereo to replace the CD input with a set of RCA inputs, so I can hook my iRiver H-340 (which has sadly been discontinued by the manufacturer) directly to it. Failing that, I’m gonna have them replace the head unit with something that had RCA jacks. I know such things exist, cause I’ve been in cars that have them. Nissan Sentras actually have a radio that does this that comes standard with the car. So this is my plan. I may not have the pimpingest stereo in the world, but goddamn, I’ll at least be able to listen to my music in a trouble free manner.

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 10:13 AM

And the wheel keeps turning… (or, Froogle is Scary: Part 2)

So yeah. I wanna say that I don’t really know what happened, but we all know that’s a lie. I always update a few times over the course of 1-2 months, then completely forget about the site for a million years, only to later remember “Oh yeah, I have this website thing.” So that last entry… uh… well, i don’t really know what I was planning to write for it. But if I had to guess, I’d say this:

(Note that the numbers below corrsepond to the numbered items in the picture)

2 (paraglider): OK, come on now. WTF? Who buys a fucking paraglider? I see crazy fucks do this on their vacations, and I have to wonder if they’re just trying to commit suicide and don’t have the balls to do it the real way.
3 (food dehydrator): Are we fucking astronauts now? If you’re buying so much goddamn food that you need to dehydrate it to store it (as that’s one of only two possible uses I can think of for this thing), than you’re even more of a fatass than me, and I assure you, that is no easy feat. If you’re one of those filthy hippies that thinks food tastes better when dehydrated, then you just need to turn in your tastebuds, then lay down and die.
4 (sundial): I don’t even know what to say to this. Who buys sundials? Don’t we have digital watches now? I seem to recall reading somewhere that digital watches were the pinacle of human ingenuity. Its probably some asshole buying it as a lawn ornament. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate people?

Edit: Holy shit, it’s been almost a year since I updated. I don’t think I’ve ever gone that long before. It might have something to do with this abomination, who’s clutches I just recently freed myself from.

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 12:03 AM