Pikamac year in review.

New Year's resolution 2006: complete. One post a day for the entire year (although I'll admit that I wasn't able to post every day). Since I started keeping track in September I've been averaging about 15 unique visitors a day (spiking up to 40 from time to time) and a total of around 400 readers in that time. That's way more then the friends and family I know, but certainly not in the blog-superstar range. Still, to harken back to my previous "state of the blog address", this isn't a proper niche blog. The niche is so tiny (people who like Erik Johnson) that large amounts of traffic is an unreasonable expectation. By that metric, I'm doing fantastically well: drawing in readership from all over the world:

The Google Analytics tech is a bit wonky, and I know there's readers on continents that aren't represented here.

My most popular post was one of the earliest: January 16's regarding the Aiptek 5100 camera. I'm one of the only reviewers of this "camera" on the internet so I get all the traffic. Which is fine... it's a good post. I would like to have a more general low-end photography blog at some point. It would be incredible fun.

New words coined in 2006 include: oblogation, herptoavionics, aforeblogged, lordiest, psychospectral, automoblogging, monomonopoly, nundinaenym and Pelosimania.

Of the Years:
Game: Lumines 2
Movie: The Departed
Book: Making Comics
State: Colorado
Album: Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
Tech: MacBook (Runner up: Wii)

I'm torn on posting frequency for 2007. On one hand, I've already committed to a daily posting on another project and if I try to do two things every day I may drop both of them. On the other hand, prior to 2006, if I didn't post daily I didn't post at all. So likely sporadic posting in 2007 (with frequent conversation in the message board (good user names still available)).

Finally, a big thanks to Pikamac.com readers. I would not have made it this far if I didn't know someone somewhere was reading it.

Quick notice.

Craigslist and Freecycle are the greatest inventions ever.

Coming soon: pictures of my new apartment! Extremely small, but quiet, and all utilities paid. That includes internet, and various other nonessentials like cable tv, water and heat. I'll invite everyone over for a party (only, one guest at a time please. I don't think three people would fit. It's a very small apartment).

Current snowstorm pictures

By popular request, this snowstorm I left the house to take pictures. The wide angle lens lent itself nicely to snowy weather: empty ground and empty sky means action on the horizon.

Full resolution and more on the flickr.

...I am your father

Hi Dad
Originally uploaded by tashland.

Luts Delf El

Jamie and her companion at Sushi Zanmai.

The creature on Jamie's lap is a Luts doll, specifically a Luts Delf El. It's a one-third scale doll that's way down on the other side of the uncanny valley. There doesn't seem to be a wikipedia entry for Luts dolls, at least none of the terms I searched for. The aforelinked site has all manner of bodies (of either gender), heads, clothes, wigs and (not safe for Erik) eyes. I'm also told that one can purchase replacement boy-parts as well.

Jamie's boy feels fairly substantial (the approximate weight of a 1/3 size human), is sharply dressed and is only vaguely threatening if his hands are placed in the "Mr. Burns" position.

Thirty Days Hath December?

It's thirty one? That "hath" mnemonic is dumb because there's too many months that rhyme. I know I said posting in December would be spotty, but I've been doing well so far. But it's the end of the year and if I had a job I'd be filling my days with surfing the net and goofing off. Ironically, that's prime blog fodder material. I've been spending time with family, getting plates for my car, shoveling snow and job hunting. That's bad blog mojo. Also, I've decided "blog" is too pretentious and have taken to calling pikamac.com my personal information portal. That's way less pretentious. Anyway, here's a couple of interesting bookmarks that I've added over the last couple days:

Make your own "most expensive chocolate in the world" and save!

Like flickr for words

Table to Chair concept

Free Stock Photography

Mark Rosewater (Head Designer - Magic: The Gathering)'s Life Lessons

If For Better or For Worse had just one more panel

The only reverse-lookup HTML Color Picker I could find.

Isn't Harris's Hair Long?

isntharrisshairlong
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

The second batch of photos are up on the flickr. This batch was taken with my favorite camera (the iZone) with my favorite kind of results (mixed).

Making Angels

angels
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Boulder, CO

Xevoz are here.

I noticed today Hasbro is no longer selling their remaining Xevoz sets at a reduced price. Boo! But the sets I ordered arrived despite the recent snow emergency. Yay! Even at retail, these are awesome figures. Observe!

Where the stock image is "fancy wizard vs. hammer dragon" the figures I built are more "rookie adept meets lizard monarch". And I haven't even broken out the monkey yet!

Free time over Winterween? Not anymore.

I'm sure all the pikamac.com readers are super-busy over this Winterween season, but just in case, here's two entirely too amusing webcomics I came across while prepping for the impending secret ASBM relaunch:

Dresden Codak: Lavishly illustrated, fantastically funny. Probably my favorite thing on the internet right now. And I live on the internet.

Not quite as favorite, but much longer, and more Lego-y is Irregular Webcomic a daily multi-threaded strip done (mostly) with Minifigs. Like xkcd.com (which is also a recent addition to my "favorite webcomics" category), IWC isn't afraid to go for the obscure, utterly technical joke... but IWC isn't afraid of explaining one's own jokes either. In the wrong hands explaining a joke can kill it, but sometimes its what makes a classic. Plus, there's over fourteen hundred IWC strips to catch up on. I'm a fan, but I still have more than 1000 I haven't read yet!

Edit: In accordance with LEGO ®'s Fair Play Guidelines, I meant to say that Irregular Webcomic is more Lego Brand Building Brick-y. Apologies all around. (Actually, The Lego Group is being pretty reasonable with their copyrights and quite understanding of the importance of fan community to long-term commercial success in the internet age).

New Pikamac.com Message Board

Is there not enough room in the comments to tell the world how you really feel about the posts on pikamac.com? Do you want to talk with pikamac.com readers all over the world, again in some way not supported by the comment system. Tired of... uh... entering in those damned random letters for each comment?

Well then check out the all new Pikamac.com Message Board. Registration is free, of course. Join now before all the good usernames are taken!

Snowstorm Aftermath: Boulder, CO

2006 Storm
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Sagan-o-rama

To mark the Carl Sagan blog-a-thon two things: first the aforeblogged Radio Lab episode featuring Sagan's widow talking about how she and Carl fell in love.

Secondly, my brother and I always assumed that Carl Sagan and Bruce Jenner were very close friends, despite having very little in common. My research shows that the two met on at least one instance: on The Mike Douglas Show of September 14, 1977. In our minds, they were inseparable (though it was clear it was a non-sexual relationship). Ten years ago today was a sad day for Bruce Jenner, as it was for all of us.

Shattered Misconceptions

So last night, the conversation turned to squab. (Dead pigeon cooked up real fancy—I knew that.) One of my companions told a funny story about how a local restaurant was selling “Quail Enchiladas” that were actually made out of squirrel. Not because of any malicious, misleading intent, but due to circumstances involving a debt, a trunk full of frozen squirrel meat, a dictated menu, and a very heavy accent. When the health department found out, they promptly put a stop to it. The restaurant owner was outraged and perplexed: Why couldn’t he sell squirrel meat? He could sell bear meat. My companions and I started thinking about it.

R: How is squirrel different than a pigeon?
Me: Well, it is a rodent. But then again, people eat ground hog.
R & L: People eat ground hog?
Me: Yeah! They sell it at the grocery store.
R & L: ?????
Me: Ground chuck.
R & L: (giving me the crazy eye)
Me: Ground up wood chuck. Also known as ground hog.

Turns out I was wrong. Ground chuck is made out of cow. Who knew? (Apparently, everyone in the world except me.)

Glad I didn't buy the paperback

Ironically, the "PC" character in the PC versus Macintosh ads is the literate, well read and hilarious John Hodgman (while the "Macintosh" character is some actor). Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise
had me laughing out loud in Barnes and Noble, but even the paperback costs almost twenty bucks.

However, the audiobook is currently free from the iTunes Store.

(via)

Now you're playing with fire

The Nintendo Wii's controller is a marvel. It has accelerometers that measure movement in three dimensions, a rotation sensor, a tiny embedded speaker and a sensor to determine which direction it's pointed in. This last feature requires a sensor bar to be placed above or below one's TV. Unlike the sonic-based sensor bar used with the Power Glove or the Samba de Amigo maracas, the Wii's sensor bar doesn't actually "sense" anything. It's a pair of infrared emitters from which the Wii remote is able to determine the direction it is pointing. There's nothing special about this light, any source of infrared light would work. A pair of candles, for example.

I think it's awesome that a modern game system can be run with a technology five thousand years old.

Shout out to the Post Secret

Everyone knows about Post Secret by now, but I liked this postcard so much.

Probably not even the worst thing about the game

I don't do PC games. Even though I have a machine that's technically capable of running PC games, rebooting is tedious and boring. I also haven't gotten swept up in the whole "Left Behind" phenomenon. So it's a given that I'm not going to play Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

Without getting too much into the premise of the game (convert or kill the heathens) I'd like to focus a relatively minor, though telling, detail of the game. The player's avatar is a male character. I prefer games that give the player a choice of genders at the beginning of the the game, but can respect that the narrative nature of some games dictate the gender of the protagonist. In Eternal Forces, the hero is able to recruit follower to join him in his quest. A follower can help fight, build fortifications, work as a medic, as an entertainer or recruit other followers to join the side of the righteous. That is, unless the follower is a woman. In that unfortunate case, the only roles available are in the medical and musician fields. So player who want to base a post-apocalyptic Y: The Last Man scenario will be unable to complete the game.

Luckily, judging by the review, not many other people will be playing this game either. GameSpot gave the game a 3.4 (out of ten) The IGN review mentions "mild traces of sexism" but PC Gamer tells it like it is: "This is the very definition of bigotry, or more specifically: misogyny."

Gender in videogaming has always reflected the flawed social structures of the American (and Japanese) developer's cultures. For every Samus Aran (a capable professional who happens to be female) there's a thousand Xtreme Beach Volleyball games.

By popular request: iPod Conversion How-to

There's a couple of new video iPods out there in the wild and not everyone wants to download their videos from the iTunes store. There's a couple of free solutions to the rescue.

For short video clips Videora is a well-regarded free program to translate mpg and avi files to iPod format. Although a legally murkier area, Engadget has a good guide to convert a DVD to iPod format. Both these programs run on Windows-based PCs.

On the Mac side, a couple of free solutions exist (my favorite is iSquint), but the one I actually use is the $23.23 VisualHub, because it converts just about any video format to practically any other format (though not, as of the latest release, the motion jpg format the Nintendo Wii prefers).

Somewhere in Eastern Colorado

Somewhere in Eastern Colorado
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Super Xevoz Sale

Hasbro's online sales arm, the Hasbro Toy Shop, seems to have tired of having a warehouse full of Xevoz and is dumping their stock at super-low prices. The two figures pictured below are four bucks for the pair and the monkey is three dollars. If you want to snatch these guys up with additional Winterween toy shopping shipping is free on orders over fifty dollars.

Or you can do what I did and buy six of each. These may be the last retail Xevoz for forever.

Fixed'd!

Yay! I fixed the problem Blogger was having that was not letting posts be posted. Some tweaking of the FTP paths did the trick. Expect roadtrip documentation tomorrow and sporadic posting through the end of the year. Blogging will not be the highest priority for the remainder of 2006.

Edit: Well, posting is fixed, but the archives are broken. But the search started working... so I've got that going for me, which is nice. Also, my plan to migrate to WordPress hit a snag related to the "not letting posts be posted" problem. I'm going to leave it well enough alone for now.

delhat

delhat
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Such a pretty puppy!

Nineteen Fifties Party

fifties
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Saran and Sputnik in the house!

panrobot

panrobot
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

It's that robot made of cooking pans again. He's everywhere!

Traveling Again

On another mega roadtrip. Upon its end, normal updates will resume until the end of the year (and backdated to include all these missing days). All the pictures I've taken have been with the iZone and I forgot my scanner.

See you on the highway. I'll be the one hopefully not broken down.

Buried Treasure

Today I came across the name of Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, considered to be the father of the modern time capsule. The article referenced his Crypt of Civilization, a encyclopedic snapshot of the world of 1938 containing encyclopedias, histories, scientific works, special editions of newspapers, travelogues, travel talks, cinema reels, models, phonograph records, and similar materials sealed in time-resistant packaging. Sounds fascinating, but the article didn't mention where the Crypt was located, which can be a problem for citizens of the future. The internet to the rescue: It's in the basement of Phoebe Hearst Memorial Hall in Georgia's Oglethorpe University. If you're around Georgia in May 8113, check it out when it's opened.

Kit Up

Kit Up is a spiritual relation to Cool Tools and that page's direct ancestor, the Whole Earth Catalog: posting about tools. Not tools of the hacksaw and hammer variety, but high and low tech solutions to daily problems. The twist is Kit Up offers tools endorsed by military users. These are gadgets, methods and resources that are, quite literally, field-tested. The blog is only a month or so old, but there's a slew of neat tools and gadgets for the outdoor or nomadically inclined. Great reading!

How Do You Do?

Something I like about the internet is the ability to get the song stuck in my head stuck in everybody else's head too.

That new car smell

I finally found the dream car I was looking for: a brand-new (to me) two thousand and two Pontiac Montana Extended Minivan.

It looks white in the pictures but it's a classy silver. It's the first car I've ever owned that was manufactured in the decade I drove it in. Yay! And I got it cheaply enough that even if it needs major mechanical work I'll still have gotten a good deal. I like those odds!

indexed

Indexed is a blog that makes Venn Diagrams (and sundry other graphs) fun. How many pages can you say that about?



Well sure, you could say it about any number of pages but Indexed makes it true.

via

windsor

windsor
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

I'm working on a few new techniques for "developing" color negatives with a flatbed scanner, but nothing's better than just setting the negative on the scanner with the lid open. Results of the latest batch are on the flickr.

The best of Pitagora Suicchi

The best of Pitagora Suicchi

Have you got thirteen minutes to watch fantastic Rube Goldberg machines? I think you do!

Homebrew sitcom

Wow, this is actually pretty good (and funny). A pilot for a homemade sitcom that's rather Arrested Development-eque. Hope there's more.