iPodliness is next to Godliness

It only took me 24 hours...but now I have Pandora on my iPod touch.

I had to download iPod touch software 2.0. I accidentally downloaded it twice in my excitement so the next time I see you Ffaelan, I have software for you. So I paid twice...tres stupide. But no matter. I forged on. I hooked up my device for syncing. Then the computer (laptop) tells me that since it has less than a gig of memory left on it, it cannot back up my iPod stuff so it's just going to go ahead and delete all that m'kay? Uh, hells no!!


The last genious time I did that it took me four bleeding hours to get everything back the way I wanted it. So it was time to make room on the computer. I have several movies and tv shows on here that I've always meant to burn to dvd, so I thought I would go ahead and do that and delete them off the hard drive.


Problem. The only DVD burner I have on here evidently is iTunes. Which will not import the video files into it's own format. Why? Not enough memory on the computer. Ack.


So I figure I will just take photo files off the beast to make just enough room for the iPod to do its thing. We have 1 gig stick drive. I hook that bad boy up. I open it up. I open up the photo file. They crash and freeze the computer. This happens for 3 hours. The virus software is running and refuses to halt despite all my foaming at the mouth. Alex tries. It works for him, and then crashes on me. We are watching Beowulf and I'm beginning to really sympathize with Grendel as he rends beefy thanes limb to limb.


Finally AVG hands back control of the hard drive but I'm too exhausted to make more than a token effort. I go to bed. On awakening manage to get AVG to quit (why it needs to scan the hard drive for 12 hours a day is a real mystery to me). I move a gig of pictures and video files over to the stick drive. Success!


An hour of futzing around and I get 2.0 installed on the iPod. I download the Pandora app. It won't work.


By now I am calm. After four fruitless tries, I uninstall and reinstall. Success!


Yes, Pandora is worth all that.


That is all.


MPK

I promise I'm not going to turn this into a video blog...

Jon Stewart Interview


Blogger's hating the embed code so follow the link to hear how David Sedaris quit smoking.

I saw this broadcast on The Daily Show during "Week 2" of my quit. I'd heard of David Sedaris but naturally like everything else, I am the last one getting around to him. This broadcast was the only thing to put a smile on my face that week. I just bought Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and finished it pretty fast. I bought myself some books to celebrate Month 3. I also got Steampunk (edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer) and Collapse by Jared Diamond.

MPK

Our Town

The Oakland Police Department has a neat little widget that allows you to create an interactive map of anywhere in Oakland, by crime and location. Here is MPK ground zero for the last three months. It's like a TV crime drama writ in JPEG.

Yay!

Two months today of not smoking!  I am so proud of myself!  I had a really horrendous crave episode on Monday night, but I had some Habitrol which really helped.  Someone was smoking outside and the smoke just wafted in everywhere.

I was gasping for a cigarette and I was afraid I was never going to get past this stage.  The whyquit website resets people's counters back to day one when they break down and smoke "just one" or take a replacement.  But this is my website so I'm going to celebrate!  I hate being addicted to it.  I've missed so much in life because of smoking.  Being so anxious over at visits to friends that I couldn't enjoy myself because my whole day was timed around the "first one".

Not going to places because I couldn't smoke there.  Being foggy and ill with constant sinus problems.  Not being able to be fully creative in my studio because of the background concern of lowering nicotine levels in my brain taking up unconscious and then conscious mental space.  The fact that I don't have health insurance and smoking is like russian roulette for someone with my genetic background.  (My poor grandma was so sick with cancer, her cancer had cancer, practically :( )

Now I'm back to my childhood addiction.  Eating pretzels in a ritualistic manner that involves carefully nibbling off the round parts and then eating the remaining triangle.  

Anyway.

Thanks for letting me share.

MPK

W00t!!

A great day for human rights! Link

Just woke up

A dream about my last day of class this year. Of course, odd changes...class is outside on picnic tables and I have a super talented kid who is a mutant that only has hands.

For some reason this year I had considerable anxiety about the end of the year. I had a lot of seniors and I felt like I hadn't done enough for all of them before they went off to graduation. I'm frustrated that my class sizes are so large that I can't spend more time with each student. I'm afraid my shyness will make it impossible for me to ever be able to speak before a large room full of people.

I guess this is why I dream about it, to try to get it right in my mind.

It was a fantastic year actually. I think I just didn't want it to end, even though I was very tired and was tottering around like a little old lady. I was also functioning under the thinnest veneer of humanity since I had just quit smoking.

I'm rambling. Maybe I'll post a link to some pictures from this year later today.

They're Made Out of Meat

A good lunchbreak read

Here's an article that looks great just from the first few paragraphs. It's from The Agony Booth, which is a sort of MST3K/Rifftracks inspired website, only with longer (humorous) analysis. This one is about the Incredible Hulk Movie of 2003. I've only seen bits of that one and that was enough to keep me clicking through the channels.

The Agony Booth is one of my favorite distractions. I don't always agree with their choice of "bad movies" but the writing is clever. It's actually inspired me to seek out some of the "worst" offenders and a couple I've actually enjoyed. But maybe that just means I'm one of the few people who can count themselves a member of the "Zardoz" target audience.

Anything to distract me these days.

I quit smoking. There, I said it.

I've been trying to compose some deep, meaningful insights into this process. I even considered blogging the whole quit from beginning to...hopefully, never smoking again. I don't think I'm there yet. I've isolated myself because my personality is still in free fall and I'm snapping out at things like a psychotic 8 year old. The physical side effects have been an affront to dignity. The mental ones were expected but still dismaying.

There's a scene in Iron Man where Tony Stark is fighting to get that part out of the glass box in his workshop, sweating and emoting and grabbing blindly at stuff to get stuff going so he can keep breathing...that's pretty much where I was a month ago.

Now I'm just living on cough drops and 4 hours of sleep a "night" hoping to get to some version of normal soon. I know I should be getting busy, getting in touch with friends, and exercizing. I'm not ready for all that yet. I pretty much had to quit drinking coffee as part of this thing. Not a happy camper.


Anyway. The new Hulk looks pretty cool.

Oops forgot this one

My brother and I used to don blankies and act this out in the living room.

80's cartoons

I had some students today raving about "Speed Racer". I thought I would post a movie or two of other cartoons we enjoyed from that era.

MPK

otaez in alameda

buffet $10
wireless $0
blogging over a mimosa with one finger on an itouch: priceless
--
Michelle P. Kern
http://mpkartist.blogspot.com/

high land, hard rain

My awesome parents gave me an "after Christmas gift" this year. I got all I wanted for Christmas so I was mystified when they told me I had a surprise waiting back in San Mateo. It was a USB vinyl converter to MP3. I've wanted one of these since I heard they existed, but felt a little guilty about spending shiny gold rocks on one. I love my vinyl records. All 50 of them.

Maybe not quite 50.

Still and all, I was thrilled and finally fired it up today. Right now as I sit here typing I am ripping a copy of "high land, hard rain" by aztec camera into digital format. I am in full nostalgia mode. Not just from the music and the rain storm outside but remembering how it was I used to make mix tapes around 1982-87. I had an old record player of my mom's that got a lot of use. It was "portable" inasmuch as it had a handle and hinged speakers that folded up like cabinet doors and could be hooked together. It weighed about 50 pounds and I crushed my instep a time or two from moving it around my room. It finally took up residence next to my desk on the floor.

It played vinyl. That was all. No output jacks for taping. My dad was an early adopter of the Sony Walkman, so I had one of those. (The size of a brick, would drag your pants down about 4 inches when hooked to your belt. Battery lasted for three tapes.) So I needed to make tapes of my records.

I got a hold of a tape recorder and a mike. I wish I had taken a picture of this setup back in the day, but it seemed perfectly normal to me. I would tape a note on my door: "No noise, do not disturb." Then I would carefully set the microphone down on the floor by the turntable. I put my fingers on play and record on the tape recorder. I then carefully turned the lever on the turntable that would start the needle going in. Push play and record on the tape recorder. And then take a deep breath. And hold it. Backing. Away. Very. Quietly.

This was my sound rig for at least 5 years. I even taped mix tapes this way. I don't think I bought a real stereo until 1987. I remember how revolutionary that seemed. Not only taping my records while going about the room making noise but taping tape to tape. Then I could use my recordings off the radio to augment my tapes (the Quake, fm 99 "Rock of the '80's".)

I switched to buying cassettes and then finally CDs only adding a record or so every year. In a fit of embarrassment I got rid of all my Duran Duran records (including 12 inch rarities that it kills me to think about throwing away now) and the Smiths records. I'm not sure why the Smiths got the boot, except at one point I got into a heavy Mojo Nixon/Dead Milkmen/Dickies rotation, and for some reason I guess I thought rock musicians could read my mind.


I was hoping to craft a post that came to more than "Wow, technology really makes things easier now!" but I'm not seeing the angle at the moment. I guess I could just say that this record pleases me just as much as it did back in 1985 when I finally bought it and it's just as fun even knowing that just an hour of work on my computer will bring it to my ipod Touch. I could have bought it on iTunes, but this is better. I even get a little burst of adrenaline watching the needle on the record so I can click "next track" in time.

Speaking of Mojo Nixon, here's my special edition colored vinyl picture disc of "Get Out of My Way!" Burn Down the Malls coming up next boys and girls...

MPK