Monthly Archives: January 2006

Following Up

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Since I've been so busy/sick lately, and recently started my Stone Rain Project blog, I've had little time for ULev.  My bad, but it's not as if I haven't wanted to post.  Sorry!  As a way of warming up I'm going to follow up on some earlier posts…

Juliet – Random Order

You may remember me complaining about this content-protected CD.  At the time I noted that Amazon had a version which was not content protected?  Well I got the disk from Amazon, and it's the same darn CD, content protection and all.  So I said, heck with it, and used Exact Audio Copy to copy the tracks to my machine.  I paid for it, it's my music now, and I'm not giving it away to anybody.  Tough winkies.

Celestial Seasonings

I noted (or rather lamented) some time ago that Celestial Seasonings quit making Harvest Spice tea, my favorite tea of all.  Well I contacted the company begging them to go back to making Harvest Spice.  A couple weeks ago I received a letter from “The Hain Celestial Group (Boulder Offices)” which is apparently located at 4600 Sleepytime Drive in Boulder, CO.  Their customer response rep thanked me for my interest and told me that my comments were forwarded to the product manager, saying “The more comments we get the easier it will be to get the product restored.”  So if you like Harvest Spice and you want it back, let them know.  As an added bonus the letter they sent me contained 2 coupons for free boxes of tea, and 3 for 50 cents off on boxes of tea.  Cool!

As a total aside, I must confess, I love the packaging on Celestial Seasonings teas.  It's so colorful and interesting.  It's not hard to understand why people collect Celestial Seasonings tea tins.

New Horizons Launched!

As I've noted before, my childhood dreams of a mission to Pluto have been revitalized in recent years by the New Horizons probe.  Well, New Horizons launched on Jan 20, amid a flurry of coverage on various space-oriented blogs (Wolverine's Den for example.)  Good luck New Horizons… safe journey.

Pandora & New Music

Still using Pandora and having a blast!  I bought a bunch of CDs on Amazon because of songs I heard and liked on Pandora.  Some of these CD's turned out to be very disappointing, mostly because after getting them it turned out that most of the songs on them weren't at all like the one track I had heard on Pandora and had liked.  Still many were pleasantly surprising, and I was very happy with a number of them.  I'm going to post a bullet review of those soon.

Musical Insecurity

Okay, I'm going to admit something here, a number of somethings in fact.  This isn't a followup of any previous specific article, just something I've been thinking about lately.  The first is, although I try to convince myself otherwise, I definitely worry a great deal over what people think of me, particularly people I respect.  And a number of times in recent months I can recall saying I didn't like something because I could tell my friends thought it was crappy, and so forth, and I didn't want them to have a low opinion of me.  But I hate not being honest and not being able to be myself… and my friends should go on liking me even if I admit that I like Ace of Base.  There I said it.  I think Ace of Base is peppy and fun to listen to and I really enjoy songs like “I Saw the Sign” and “All That She Wants” and “Cruel Summer”… etc.  I even own two Ace of Base CD's.  I know Ace of Base is one of those bands you're supposed to dislike, but I like 'em… so tough winkies.

Admission #2: I like some of Britney Spears' music and I think she is reasonably attractive.  Those are two things I lied about out of insecurity in recent memory. Britney may be a vapid ninny, but that doesn't mean I can't like some of her songs.  Most of her stuff I just can't get into but I do like some of her work (“Overprotected” and ”I'm a Slave 4 U” on the album “Britney” to name two).

Admission #3: I like t.A.T.u. (and not for the reason you think).  I realize that either  as a modern male I'm supposed to dislike the Russian teen girl band that perform in underwear and make out on stage, or as a medieval pig I'm supposed to like them for the same reason.  Yes of course it is titillating to see them perform, but that isn't why I like them.  I just plain like the music.  A number of the songs on their album ”200 km/hr In the Wrong Lane“, in my opinion, kick ass.  Great stuff to dance to.  I thoroughly enjoyed “Not Gonna Get Us” (and the Russian version “Nas Ne Dagoniat”), “All the Things She Said” (and the Russian version “Ya Shosla S Uma”), “Show Me Love”, and “30 Minutes”.

So there!

Rolling Divisions

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So I've been way too busy to blog lately, but worry not, stuff is coming eventually.  I'm actually working on another blog which will run concurrently with ULev.  Not going to give anything away yet as to what it is about (because it isn't anywhere near ready) but I did want to share this little bit of HTML I puzzled out this morning…

Suppose you wanted to display a series of things on a webpage, pictures let's say, which were going to include caption text above and below?  The most common way to do so would be to use an HTML table.  Tables are great and will allow you to accomplish some really amazing layouts.  But a couple years ago I had to settle for a table because I couldn't figure out how to get HTML to do what I really wanted.  The problem with a table is it basically has a fixed number of columns.  If I choose to put 3 pictures per row in my table, that's all you get, even if you've got more screen space available off to the right.

What I really needed was a “smart” table that would add more and more columns to a single row and “wrap” to the next row when there was no more screen space available.  Change the size of the window, and the number of columns in each row changes too.  This would allow me to have a semi-regular that used as much of (and only) the space that was available.  But I couldn't make it work.

Until this morning.  By experimenting with CSS, I came up with a series of “rolling divisions” (inline <DIV> tags) that create the effect I was going for.  Except it doesn't work in all browsers… of course.  It looks great in my copy of IE.  But in my copy of mozilla, the rolling divisons all overlap and cover each other up.

Here's a sample… what does it look like in your browser?  Try changing the width of your window around and you'll see the divisions wrapping, in theory:

Here's an example rolling division <DIV> tag:

<div style=”display: inline; border: 2px outset gold; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px; width:266; height:120; color: white; background-color: #DD9900;”>I am rolling division number 1.</div>

If anybody knows a better way to do this, or a way that will play nice with Mozilla and other browsers, please let me know!

 

It Lives…

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I'm back from the dead thanks to prednisone and antibiotics, and I am happy to report that I do not have pneumonia.  Yay!  My health is not the only thing back from the dead, unfortunately.  It appears a bug that I shook off more than 2 years ago has suddenly latched on to me again with a vengeance.  Witness.

Blech

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I apologize for the lull in posts here.  There are a number of things I'd love to chat about, but truth be told, things are crazy in my life right now because I am (a) sick as a dog, (b) trying to work from home, and (c) unable to get much sleep due to the coughing.  Last night I became alarmed when I began to feel a familiar pain in my left side that I associate with pneumonia.  I have a doctor's appointment today so soon I'll know for sure.

In the meantime, thanks for your concern and just keep me in your bloglines.  I'll start posting again soon. Honest.

January Thaw?

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Anybody noticed a slight uptick in temperatures over the last couple days?  Usually, where I live, the January Thaw comes around January 17… it feels like it's come a few days early this year.  I'm not looking forward to the inevitable end of the thaw when it gets very cold again!  I've always wondered what causes the January thaw… apparently so do meteorologists–at present the January thaw remains unexplained.  So if there are any aspiring young meteorologists out there… here's a mystery just waiting to be solved!

Name That Movie #59

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Okay, that's long enough… time for another name that movie!  You know the drill…

Below is an image from a movie.  If you can guess the movie via that one image, do so, if not, links to further images will be posted throughout the day.  The second image should be more obvious, and the third image even moreso, and so on.  Please try not to read the comments before you guess!

NTM is JavaScript driven and will automagically make the images available at the listed times. Once you've got the page open, you can refresh the image links just by clicking the refresh button below, this will check the clock and enable further images as appropriate. Times displayed should be in your local timezone. (Yes, obviously you can cheat either by viewing the source, or simply changing the time on your clock.)

The image links will replace the primary displayed image when you mouse over them.  This way you can view the images right in the article without having to open up new windows.  You may have to wait a second or two for the new image to download before it will replace the primary image.  The original primary image will return when you mouse off of the image link.

I will, as time permits, also post the image links in comments for those of you whom cannot run javascript.

That said, here's the first image…

 

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

EDIT: By the way, you can recap all the previous Name-That-Movie posts on Unbecoming Levity, by use of this neat little page.

Aviatic

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I just purchased my first indie-band CD!  The name of the band is “Aviatic” and they are based out of the Los Angeles area.  I found one of their songs on GigaTracks (great source for indie music btw).  The song was called “Goodbye Beautiful Day” and I was really blown away by how much I liked it.

Here's what GigaTracks had to say about this song:

'Goodbye Beautiful Day' is a mid-tempo electro-acoustic track from a four-piece outfit called Aviatic, formerly known as Beat And Path. It's loaded with great harmonies, a good melody and a beautiful piano component. The texture and atmospherics really go a long way in setting the just the right tone for the entire track as well. I'm also drawing a bit of a blank here is terms of who these guys are similar to. I can see components of bands like Radiohead or Coldplay, and also acts like VAST as well. But they have a pretty unique sound on this track, so do yourself a favor and give them a try. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Currently two of their songs are available online for free MP3 download.  I would happily recommend them to anyone.  You can stream Goodbye Beautiful Day from here.  Or if you want to download the songs:

You can purchase their CD from CDRAMA, although that site requires you use PayPal to pay.  I'll post a review of the CD when it arrives in the mail.  Goodnight all!