Life is Like a Safari

Three's a crowd (of exciting things)

2008-07-19T17:20:00.002-04:00

That would be three websites which you may or may not find as exciting as I do.

For starters, there's Derek Webb's NoiseTrade.com, which is an excellent place to find some cool new music, for free! Or, even better, you can pay whatever you want for the download, and 90% of the money you pay goes directly to the artist.
My personal recommendations? Derek's The Ringing Bell album, Sandra McCracken's Gravity | Love (which includes a cool tribute song to George Harrison), Sixpence None the Richer's new EP, My Dear Machine (that's right, they're making music again!!!), and Katie Herzig's Apple Tree album (I hadn't heard of her either, but the album is EXCELLENT).

Secondly, there's DrHorrible.com, Joss Whedon's new (and very temporary) Internet mini-series. It's a combination musical/superhero movie/comedy/tragedy, and as such is incredibly fun to watch. There are three Acts, with a total of about 45 minutes. It's being pitched as a proof-of-concept for the production and distribution of low-budget, high-quality film/TV. I really think it accomplishes that purpose quite well. There will probably be a DVD release eventually, but it's streaming for free now, at least until tomorrow at midnight. Check it out.

Thirdly, apparently there might be a second season of Firefly in the works. Since this is the most exciting thing in TV news since....
I've been sitting here for two minutes and can't figure out how to complete that statement, so I'm just gonna abandon that track.
Anyway, check it out at Firefly Season 2 website. Sounds promising, and maybe if enough of us express an interest, something will happen.

For those of you who are counting, this is post #96

2008-07-12T21:54:00.004-04:00

Wow. Jurassic Park is SUCH a good movie.

How do I know this? Because I usually just can't really enjoy movies a second time, because I already know the storyline, and what's most important to me about movies is the story.

But I'm sitting here watching it, mostly because there's nothing else to do, and...lo and behold, I find myself actually INTERESTED. As in, eyes glued to the television. I know what's going to happen, but it's still just that good.

And for the record....Die Hard is the same way, only even better. And even better with a good beer in hand.

Also for the record....almost ANY movie is a good movie with a Chimay Bleue in hand.

That is a newwww state record!

2008-06-10T15:02:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, I ran through three states.

United states, in case you thought I was trying to be tricky with the word "states".

It was definitely absolutely 311 degrees outside at the time.

Mario Brothers theme song

2008-04-16T14:49:00.000-04:00

Played on wine bottles. 'Nuff said.

Star Wars according to a 3 year old...

2008-02-28T17:48:00.001-05:00

I have to post this, given how happy it makes me every time I watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=the funniest + cutest thing you've ever seen on YouTube

The shiny guy always worries.

Caedmon's Call

2008-02-28T00:56:00.005-05:00

Well. I went to two Caedmon's Call concerts this weekend, and both were amazing. I stuck around after both and talked to pretty much every member of the band except Jeff Miller (what do you say to a bass guitarist?) (oh wait, he's also a computer programmer. Duh. Crap.). I also saw Bryan Allain again, and met the famous Geof Morris. The concerts were fairly amazing, even if the crowds weren't all that into Caedmon's, particularly. Andy O's guitar solos were insane.

I got some pictures, none of which were amazing, but a couple of which were at least worthwhile. They're all here, on my Google Photos thingy. And I guess I'll put a couple here just so you have something to look at:

Can life be much better?

2008-02-21T12:50:00.002-05:00

I mean, honestly. Can it?

Hey, I'm sorry I forgot to update people on the novel. It didn't exactly turn out the way I had thought it would, so I think I'll be leaving it for a later date. Maybe I'll have a fresh perspective on things later that will enable me to write a more awkward ending.

Super Bowl 42

2008-02-07T01:21:00.001-05:00

Roman numerals are stupid.

Well, maybe not. But they seem kinda pretentious when affixed to the end of the title of a sporting event.

Anyway, I just watched a recording of the Super Bowl. I was doing more important things at the time of the game; in fact, my first knowledge of the victory was when I got home late at night and my mom said "Well, it was a good outcome." I couldn't really believe me ears. So yeah, I was totally thrilled. And I'm just glad the Patriots made it as far as they did without a loss, because the taste of this defeat is almost infinitely sweeter because of it. Back to the recording: it was a good game. Obviously, "The Play" was pretty unbelievably cool. But just in general, the quality of play on the part of the Giants...yeah, there were some dropped balls, and a couple of blown coverages. But for the most part, the Giants played lights-out. I don't know what that means, but it's a common enough phrase. The Patriots, on the other hand, with the exception of Wes Welker and maybe the Patriots' secondary, were flat almost the entire game. Tom Brady had a particularly poor game; I know this was partly because of a lack of support from his offensive line (that is to say, total dominance on the part of the Giants' defensive front), but honestly, he missed waaaay too many passes - some of them easy - and did not look at all like "the best player in the game", and all of the other superlatives heaped upon him before and during the game.
The coverage of the game itself was reasonable, but frankly pretty boring. I was thankful that it wasn't too over-the-top, but honestly, why did it seem like the announcers didn't even realize how important the outcome of the game was, at least in the world that is the NFL? Still, underproduction is better than overproduction, and though very few insightful comments were made (my heart did, however, skip a beat when the analyst pointed out the delayed rush from Kawika Mitchell - in my opinion, the sweetest play of the game - with about 7:45 left in the first half), at least I didn't have to listen to a trillion references to how the Patriots were the best team ever in the history of the so-far-explored quadrant of our universe.

I'm sorry that last year's game wasn't better, though naturally its outcome was even more fun than this year. But I'm quite thorough in my dislike of the Patriots, and there really couldn't ever be a better "second-best" outcome to a Super Bowl.

Rubber-band minigun

2008-01-16T18:05:00.001-05:00

For those of you who like guns, big guns, huge wooden guns with 24 rotating, rubber-band-firing barrels, or any and all of the above, check out this post on Engadget.com, with a video of something that you're definitely going to like.

The end of the RIAA?

2008-01-11T12:19:00.000-05:00

I know that I'm being sensationalist; if you read the article, it's not necessarily likely, or even exactly what's being contemplated. But it's worth hoping for, anyway, and this is the most hopeful news I've heard in this vein, ever. =)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080111-under-pressure-from-emi-riaa-could-disappear.html

authorship, continued

2007-12-21T00:19:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to update my public on my book. I appear to have discovered the perfect, smashup ending for the story of awkwardness. I can't really say much now; I don't want to give anything away. But it's definitely coming together.

Goodnight.

I guess this really just goes to show...

2007-12-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

...how much I hate the concept of "global warming". Anyway, here's the obligatory link to another group of scientists saying that we're not causing the Earth to get warmer. Please note how the article spends the first seven paragraphs talking about the well-accepted theory of global warming, before actually getting to the story. I just love Yahoo! news....they're so unbiased!

for THE RECORD

2007-12-15T01:46:00.000-05:00

No matter what happens, I want to be able to look back and know, absolutely without a single doubt, that, at one point in my life, I, Peter Gaultney, was happy.

Further proof...

2007-12-09T01:30:00.000-05:00

...that Satan was intimately involved in my choice to attend UMBC. The *exact* route that I travel to school every week can be found at this link: Google Maps. Note carefully the distance between my house and my apartment at UMBC.

Yeah.

I should have been an author...

2007-11-26T09:57:00.000-05:00

One day, when I grow up, I want to write a book. This book would be the ultimate story of awkwardness. Awkwardness is fun to read about, because it allows the reader to build up his own resistance to feeling awkward without taking any real risks, or putting himself in an awkward situation.
Anyway, I'll give you some hints about the plot. The story would be about a boy, who had a good job with Uzbekistani Package Shippers. One day, he got a weird email about a job with a company called Peter Allen Hamilton. He wasn't looking for a job, but he decided to interview anyway. Although he almost got arrested by federal police on the way to the interview (because he accidentally went down the road towards the Nation's Secret Agency and made an illegal U-turn since they wouldn't let him make a legal one), the interview went really well, and they offered him the job right then and there. A few weeks later, they specified the terms of the job (which wouldn't be starting until after he had graduated from the U. of Made a Bad Choice), and he decided to accept it. At this point, he realized that the Uzbekistani Package Shippers deserved to know that he was planning on working for a different company after he graduated, so he decided to tell them about it. At the same time, however, his workload at school was getting really intense, so he decided that he needed to ask for a week's leave from work at the same time that he told them the bad news about the other job offer. They granted this week off, and he was already starting to feel pretty awkward, when things suddenly took a turn for the Even Worse. On his way to work, after having been off for a whole week, he got into a car accident about 300 feet away from work, and had to send in an email that night explaining why he hadn't come into work that day, and couldn't come in until the next week.

That's actually as far as I've gotten. It doesn't have a grand finale yet, but I'm working on that part as we speak. I'm guessing it's going to have to do with needing to take off yet another day or two from work just to get more schoolwork done, and perhaps even a spectacular failure to complete one or more term papers or end-of-semester projects.

I found my first Googlewhack!

2007-11-13T00:32:00.000-05:00

If you don't know what a Googlewhack is, you should look it up on Wikipedia. Basically, it's a Google search query consisting of two words which only turns up one result. It's harder than it sounds.

After changing my away message this evening, I decided to look up the definition of one of the words I was using. Somehow, the idea of a Googlewhack came to mind, and I put in one other word, and whammo! I had myself a Googlewhack.

Now, the funny thing about Googlewhacks is that they cease to exist as soon as you post the two words on your blog, because then Google indexes your page and you become result #2. Since this royally sucks, I'm not gonna do that. However, I'm going to take a screenshot of the occasion and post it here, so I have permanent proof of the accomplishment. If you want to verify the results for yourself, just look at the image. However, I do request that you not forget the nature of Googlewhacks in your moments of virginal Googlewhack delirium. Please do not post these two words in plain text on your own blog/website/internet dumping ground. I thank you in advance.

that was fast

2007-10-09T14:10:00.001-04:00

I signed on here to rant about the fact that it's October 9th and it's 92 degrees outside.

Somewhere in that process I realized that, funny or not, I am actually forgetting that this isn't my world, and that I should be thankful for what I'm given.

Though I can still be funny by tagging this post 'global warming'.

cool new desktop

2007-10-03T21:51:00.000-04:00

Using Windows Sidebar (I originally tried Yahoo! Widgets, but it lost the position of my frames every time I restarted my computer...odd, because it didn't lose track when I only had one...), I have a new, fancy, useful, and pretty desktop, consisting of 20 picture frames which each select a random image from my hard drive every 60 seconds. They don't all change at the same time, either. The effect is quite literally amazing. I could now sit and stare at my desktop for hours on end.

Click on the preview to see the full-size, full quality image.

no more DRM

2007-09-27T09:22:00.000-04:00

For those who don't know what that means...well, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. And "no more" stands for "I won't stand for it any more". Which is kinda confusing.

Basically, I've gotten tired of iTunes. I've gotten tired of the fact that it is slow and quirky on my beast of a desktop PC. I've gotten tired of its uninspired (though still quite serviceable) interface. More than that, I've gotten tired of the fact that I'm locked in to it. As the owner of one of the best mp3 players ever to come to the market, I have to use my iPod with iTunes. Or so I thought.

Recently, I found MGTEK's dopisp, a bizarrely-named program that allows you to synchronize your iPod (almost) completely painlessly with Windows Media Player. Now, many of you may think what I used to think about WMP - isn't it ugly, difficult to use, and generally worthless as a media management system? That's what I thought too, but I was wrong. The (relatively) new version, WMP 11, is not only a vast improvement over WMP 10; it is also better than iTunes 7.4 for Windows. I have a couple of gripes with its interface - most notably the lack of customization options available - but for the most part, the application looks just as clean, is prettier than iTunes, and works a whole lot more smoothly.

Back to dopisp (the program that appears to have been named by a random string generator) - there's really only one problem with it. Well, two if you consider the fact that it costs $15, which is enough to make the average prospective user think twice, thrice, or maybe four times (they do offer a free 30-day trial, of which I made good use before deciding to buy it). But the real problem is not the cost - it's the inconvenience. See, like most of you, I started building my music collection years ago, and I built it with iTunes. I bought into the "iTunes has a format for your music that's better than .mp3s" sales pitch, and as a consequence, all of my music was encoded as 128 kbps .m4a files. dopisp only allows you to sync .mp3 files to your iPod through WMP.

Now, this wasn't such a big deal for me, as about 90% of the music that I own comes directly off of an actual CD that I bought (I just re-ripped all of that music into WMP as 192 kbps .mp3s). However, for a period of about six months (a year or so ago), I started buying music off of the iTunes music store. Now, I'm not really sure why I believed that I would be OK with using iTunes for the rest of my life, but apparently I did, because that's what iTunes sells you. They use the aforementioned Digital Rights Management to restrict you to using the music that you buy from them only with iTunes, and only on the original computer (with some nuanced exceptions). This meant that my Nickel Creek, half of my Derek Webb (and y'all know how much I love my Nickel Creek and Derek Webb), and various others bits and pieces of my music collection would not transfer to my iPod through WMP.

As it turns out, of course, I can find this music through various other channels. Some of it, I got back from CDs which my friends own. Some of it had to be downloaded "illegally" online (if I had been caught, it would have been considered illegal; as it was, of course, I had bought the music and feel that I have every right to listen to it even if I'm not using iTunes....the feds would probably disagree). Other bits and pieces I've still not done anything about. Best of all, there are programs out there that allow you to convert protected iTunes files (.m4Ps - the "P" stands for "protected") into DRM-free .mp3s. This conversion is a messy process, but it does work, and someday I'll probably go to the trouble of doing it with all of my protected music (again, the feds might not be too happy about this, but the whole issue of copyright law and "fair use" is one that I might deal with in a later post).

However, I've said all that to say this: Amazon.com, or more precisely, amazonmp3.com, is now selling 256 kbps, DRM-free .mp3s. What does this mean? Well, for one, it means better-quality sound. I don't pretend to be an audio expert, but most information I've seen indicates that almost everyone can hear a difference in quality between 128 kbps (iTunes) and 192 kbps. Of course, this also means it'll take up more space on your hard drive and on your iPod - twice as much, actually. For another, it means you'll be able to use the music that you purchased with *any* audio player or electronic device, for the foreseeable future. No promises that .mp3s will still be in use in 2040, but I'll guarantee that you'll be fine until 2015, and probably much longer than that. A lot of "better" music formats have come and gone since .mp3s were created, and that doesn't look to change any time soon. Maybe most importantly, it means lower cost - Amazon has implemented variable pricing, so some albums sell for as low as $6, and none for more than $10 - similar schemes apply to individual songs. I think the average is around $9 for an album, and 90 cents for a song. I could be very wrong.

I don't do a lot of free advertising. I don't even like wearing brand-name shirts, because they often put these gigantic logos on them ("does this make me look cool?!"). But I'm sick of iTunes, and sick of the lie that they're the only good online music store around. Amazon is making a strong bid for your attention, and it'd be worth your while to check them out.

And yes...you can still use iTunes with the Amazon music. If you must.

_ __

2007-09-02T00:07:00.000-04:00

I would just like to say...that I can't say...the things that I would like to be saying right now.

In any case, Tennessee just finished losing to California, 45 to 31. It would've been closer had it not been for 3 really bad pass interference calls by the horrible Pac-10 refs, but we still would've lost. Our offense just needs some polishing, but our defense...we can't tackle worth beans. And "Worth beans", at least as far as I know, are easy to tackle.

So, I am starting a cruel, bloodthirsty, and all-around disturbing tradition for this year of college football. I am going to start the all-season Dead Vols Squad. You make it onto this team by committing multiple bad mistakes throughout a game, or simply making one horrible, game-destroying mistake. I reserve the right to select anywhere from 0 to 99 players per game; I will kill those, and only those players who merit death during a particular game. I will NOT resurrect players later in the season, no matter how amazingly they may play on the television, because as far as I am concerned, they are no longer really alive. And yes, there will be a trendy 3-letter abbreviation for the team - DVS. With that said, I unreservedly take the life of #7, Jerod Mayo, whose inability to tackle, pursue, or even use his brain in a useful or helpful way during tonight's miserable loss has earned him the first spot on my 2007 College Football DVS. Jerod Mayo - R.I.P. Not.

On slightly more pleasant notes, Chris Brown showed potential this evening, and Erik Ainge was mostly amazing. Wendy and I were thinking about how cool it would be if Peyton Manning could play quarterback for the Vols, but Erik Ainge isn't bad himself. If our defense showed as much poise (not to mention talent) as he did this evening, we would've destroyed those silly Bears.

It's past my bedtime. Tonight's game did not help to improve what has been a mostly lousy, worthless week (as far as I am concerned). Mayhap this week will be better, but...I doubt it. Goodnight.

Overdressed - you can still get the pre-release if you hurry!

2007-08-25T00:17:00.000-04:00

http://www.caedmonscall.com/

I'm so sorry...I've been incredibly remiss in not mentioning this, but Caedmon's Call's new album is coming out on Tuesday, so I think you can still get in on the special limited edition pre-release version until Monday. You SHOULD, because it has two extra songs, one of which is probably worth $5 in itself. The pre-release costs $12, and you get two full copies (that is, the case, CD, liner notes, everything) for that price. An amazing deal, and a very, very, very good CD. I've been listening to it all day today - no, really....like 10 times through - and it's worth your money.

Quickly, now!

On an unrelated note, I spent the evening with Tim Milligan and Julian Spiegler, singing along to their excellent guitars. We hit some songs that I haven't really listened to in years, like the Newsboys' "Lost the Plot", as well as one of my ALL TIME FAVORITES, "Elle G.", also by the Newsboys. Just those few minutes singing probably qualify as my favorite of all the things I've done this summer. =P Thanks, guys.

today's must-see Dilbert

2007-07-18T11:48:00.001-04:00

Not only is this one a perfect example of stuff that actually happens in the workplace, but it reminds me of the way parents act sometimes as well. I love you, Mom and Dad....but I have mentioned this before, haven't I?
Aaaannyway....

For more Dilbert, click here.

A partment

2007-07-11T20:34:00.000-04:00

I have a partment, and I moved into it on Monday. It's definitely reasonable - the room has a nice view of a soccer field and such - in fact, I probably have the best view of any of the Walker Avenue partments (yes, I'm having fun leaving off the 'a'...). I can even kinda see the sunset/sunrise (don't ask me how that's possible from one window!). My sheets don't fit the bed (this will have to be fixed), so currently I'm wrapping myself in the fitted sheet, which actually works reasonably well.

More excitingly (for me) is that the parts for my new computer are (should be) arriving tomorrow! I can hardly wait to put it all together and see what happens (hopefully, a gentle hum, and a working computer....I didn't see fireworks on the 4th of July, but I'll wait until next year, thank you very much)...it should be screamingly fast, and certainly screamingly faster than my working but often painfully slow Ferrari (ha....now THAT's good for a laugh) laptop. I'm sure I'll post pictures and specs once I have it working.

Which brings up another topic - I guess I'll have to borrow Dad's camera if I want to take any pictures, because my lovely camera died a little more than halfway through the Tennessee trip (which brings up another topic). I sent it in to Canon for warranty repair, and hopefully it will cost me nothing (i.e. they don't decide that it was water damage). But that won't be returning to me, poor me until 7ish days from now, I think.

Yeah, so - Tennessee. It went well, though we were all awfully tired by the end of the week. No airsoft took place; in fact, we spent basically the entire first half of the week building a raft on Cherokee Lake - we started on Monday and didn't get it actually finished until some time on Thursday. It was definitely a good time, though I personally needed a vacation from that vacation (thank goodness - rather, thank God for July 4th....)

Work is going pretty well, I guess - I seem to have a reasonably good feel for how to do most things, and there are enough helpful people to manage. The 20-minute commute from my partment (oops, I did it again) is a LOOOT better than the 1:30 commute from home....and I can subsist on sandwiches and milk for a while....

Oh...lastly, Wendy and Dad were in the area today for Wendy's orientation at UMBC. She signed up fer classes an' ev'r'thing. Also, she discovered that the great Iain Roush's younger brother, Griffin, will also be attending UMBC starting this fall.

Soooo...yup. That's life for the past few weeks. Oops, almost forgot to mention - the Rebel, she leaketh not. Or, rather, she leaketh not much. Maybe a few drops of transmission fluid here and there (and everywhere), but the oil leak is down to a bare minimum. Which is probably good - I think the Maryland Department of Transportation has kinda been counting on me for the last year or so, you know, to keep the asphalt well-conditioned with fresh motor oil. (I've been using almost strictly Quaker State 10W-40, guys, don't you worry! I'll be picking up my check at some point in the near future when I get the time.) In any case, it's nice to be able to drive for a whole three days without having the red oil pressure light start lighting up my world every time I take a fast turn. Or stop. Orrr.....go. Yeah...I think that pretty much covers it.

I have a craaaaazy sleep schedule these days - you know, getting sleepy before 10, that sort of thing. So I should probably go obsessively track my UPS/FedEx packages for about half an hour, read my Bible, and get to sleep. I hope at least one of you made it all the way through this post. Waaaahahahahahahahaaaaa.....riiiiiight.

Hey guys: Wut 'n the wurld!?

not enough energy to post...

2007-06-21T21:18:00.000-04:00

Ha!

After what I said about posting a lot, the follow-up must have seemed a little underwhelming. However, I was not entirely delinquent. As it happens, the qualifier on my prediction was that I would have lots of free time on my afternoons and evenings. It did not turn out that way.

In fact, I spent my first two weeks of work commuting an hour and a half each way, and working on my car's engine all night until I fell asleep. Starting on Saturday the 2nd, and proceeding through Friday the 15th, every free moment that wasn't a Sunday night (and except for Friday the 8th, when some relatives arrived that night) was spent either disconnecting the engine from all its myriad attachments, pulling the engine out of the car, taking the engine apart, fighting with the engine's rear main seal, inventing ways to remove the top bearings, checking the bearings, inserting a new rear main seal, putting the engine back together, cleaning the engine's exterior, buying paint for the engine, taping the engine, painting the engine, putting the engine back into the car, or re-attaching all of the engine's myriad attachments.

Oh, and then trying to get it started once it was all put back together.

As if that wasn't enough, I left for Cape May on the night of the 15th, arrived on the morning of the 16th (1:30 AM, give or take), and then spent much of that Saturday either attempting to fix the transmission fluid leak, washing the car, waxing the car (OK, actually, Richie, Kathryn, and my beloved Lauren did the waxing while I did more attempting), driving to get a wrench to fix the transmission fluid leak, buying a pair of needle-nosed pliers to fix the transmission fluid leak, removing the exhaust pipe, using two wrenches and my new needle-nosed pliers (in series, not parallel) to fix the transmission fluid leak, or re-attaching the exhaust pipe after fixing the transmission fluid leak.

I have some photos of the process, which I intend to post here once July rolls around. Why so late, you ask? Well, that would be because I am leaving on Saturday morning to go to Tennessee with a bunch of great, fun (, responsible.....* cough * cough * cough *) guys, to spend a week camping on Grandpa and Nina's farm. And those pictures haven't been organized or improved yet, so they're not fit for posting tonight. Plus, I need to clean up my room somewhat before I can go to sleep tonight - I haven't seen my lovely carpet for about five weeks now.

Well, as you can see, all it requires to get me to post is posting a comment saying "I think you should post" and poof, it happens. That should be encouraging. We here at Life is Like a Safari take our readers (mostly) seriously (sometimes), as has always been our firm policy.

Goodnight, and good luck (...good providence, for those of you at the family conference).

(not enough intelligence left to come up with a title)

2007-05-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

in fact, I don't really have enough intelligence left to come up with a post. Other than to say, like the 43 million other people posting on their blogs during the last week or so...I'm done with school. I am officially (ok, not officially, but officially unofficially) a senior in college. I am exhausted. My finals all went very well (I think) except for my Databases final, but...I could not care less about that blankety-blank class. It did not deserve my time, effort, or...anything else.

I also have been offered a job. More on this later. I will probably be posting a LOT on this silly thing once the summer starts...since I won't have much else to do with my evenings and afternoons. Yay for blogs.

Also, yay for God. And I don't mean that irreverently. That's kinda like a post-modern Praise the Lord!, or at least, I'm pretty sure it is. If it weren't for Him....I am nearly 100% positive that I would've completely given up on my Databases and Physics finals.