January 2006 Archives

So, Matt leaves for Australia soon. The fraternity house won't be the same until next academic year. It's kinda hard to believe, I don't even think it has hit me yet. That's my problem, is these things don't hit me as quickly as most people, so I don't do the whole spend-as-much-time-with-them-before-they-leave thing until its too late.

But the good news is we can all keep track of Matt (or at least some crazy photos) at his new blog, Matt vs. Australia. As you can see, he'll be using this as a place to drop all those group emails and webshots llinks instead of ... well, actually using webshots or sending any group emails. I think that's considerate of him for not clogging our inboxes. Plus, blogs are the new way to communicate anyway. That's why I keep mine as impersonal as possible because otherwise it gets creepy!

So cheers to Matt for being the newest member of our circle. He's definitely got the coolest domain of any us. http://ilovepuddinhos.com. Awesome. Very definitive of Matt.

Oh, and it's really time one of us gets around to editing the default template of moveable type, or else I'm really going to start getting confused with all this blue business.

Here it is!

Got this from Max.

Apparently you do this with iTunes or Windows Media Player. Thing about iTunes is it doesn't have all my music, just what I put on my iPod. I normally use winamp, but for this survey I did it in iTunes/iPod (using 80% of my music) because Winamp can't answer a lot of these questions.

How many songs: 8490
Sort by song title:
First Song: Boards of Canada - " '84 Pontiac Dream " (off "The Campfire Headphase")
Last Song: Ladytron - "Zmeyka" (off "604")

Sort by time: (I threw out zero length tracks on Dave Matthews and John Mayer albums)
Shortest Song: Nine Inch Nails - Let's Hear it for Nine Inch Nails [00:03] (Track 11 off "Head Like a Hole")
Longest Song: DJ Shadow - Funky Skunk [1:06:18] (off "Funky Skunk" which is one track of a whole bunch of remixes streamed together ... is this one cheating too? wondering if I can throw it out... if so, Ima - Sasha's Voyage of Ima [42:45] off "Ima CD2")

Sort by album:
First Song: Dismemberment Plan - "Survey Says" (off "!")
Last Song: DJ Crush - "Paradise Bird Theory (feat Sunja Lee)" (off "Zen")

Top Five Most Played Songs: (keep in mind, this is only based on iPod usage, not Winamp in my room)
1) The Fiery Furnaces - "Straight Street" (off "Blueberry Boat")
2) Radiohead - "2+2=5 (Lukewarm.)" (off "Hail to the Thief")
3) Radiohead - "Go to Sleep. (Little Man Being Erased.)" (off "Hail to the Thief")
4) The Fiery Furnaces - "Quay Cur" (off "Blueberry Boat")
5) Marumari - "The Wolf's Howl" (off "The Wolves Hollow")

Recently Played
1) Iron & Wine - "Grey Stables" (off "Woman King")
2) Iron & Wine - "Woman King" (off "Woman King")
3) Jack Johnson - "It's All Understood" (off "Brushfire Fairytales")
4) Jack Johnson - "Losing Hope" (off "Brushfire Fairytales")
5) Jack Johnson - "F-Stop Blues" (off "Brushfire Fairytales")

First song that comes up on Shuffle:
Rusted Root - "Cat Turned Blue" (off "Cruel Sun")

Search the following and state how many songs come up: (I searched title only, not album or artist)
Death? 19
Life? 59
Love? 144
Hate? 14
You? 494
Sex? 10

So in reference to my other post from today, I just wanted to say how amazing perfectly competitive markets are. At least for the consumer, that is.

Economics teaches us that in a perfectly competitive economy, price-taking firms will set their prices equal to their marginal costs (the cost to produce one additional unit of a good). Total economic profit for a price-taking firm will be zero. Now you never actually have this situation, because what firm would want to enter a market to make zero profit, but the principle stands as a fairly solid theory.

The web hosting industry is certainly competitive. It's probably not perfectly so, but the fact remains that it's overcrowded with firms and possibilities. The fact that I was able to get three years of free hosting definitely shows just how competitive it is. When I signed up, I got 500MB of webspace, 50 50MB email accounts, and a 5GB/mo transfer limit. Over the summer, the package was up to 4GB of webspace, 1,000 1GB email accounts, and a 100GB/mo transfer limit. Now I get 30GB of webspace, 3,000 2GB email accounts, and a 1,500GB/mo transfer limit. I can't imagine what they'll give me in a year. My own server?

Today I upgraded the hosting package for all my websites. Up until now, everything was hosted for free. I signed onto 1&1 hosting my freshman year, and got a really sweet deal for three years of free hosting in what they called their "1&1 Professional Preview Package." After the three years (a little less than a year from now), I would have to pay $20/mo for that package. Thing is, since it was a preview package, they kept adding more and more to be included with the "Linux Developer" package. Upping the webspace, number of email accounts, etc. But my package stayed the same, and I was growing out of it so to speak:

Professional Preview Package
FREE Domains (.com .net .org): 0
Support: E-mail only
Web Space: 500 MB
Monthly Transfer Volume: 5 GB/mo
E-mail Accounts: 50
Mailbox Space: 50 MB
Mail Protocol: POP3
Dedicated SSL Certificate: None
Future feature upgrades: None
Virus Scanners: For 1 account
Spam Filters: None

But recently they offered me a sweet deal. I could purchase their "1&1 Premier Professional Package" which is the Linux Developer package but for only $9.99/mo (they give it a different name because of the price difference and because they only offer it to people presently signed up on the professional package preview). For $9.99/mo I now get:

Premier Professional Package
FREE Domains (.com .net .org): 5
Support: Toll-free Phone plus E-mail
Web Space: 30,000 MB
Monthly Transfer Volume: 1,500 GB/mo
E-mail Accounts: 3,000
Mailbox Space: 2 GB
Mail Protocol: POP3 or IMAP
Dedicated SSL Certificate: 1 Included
Future feature upgrades: FREE
Virus Scanners: For all accounts
Spam Filters: For all accounts

Also, that "Future feature upgrades" is important, because as they increase the number of gigs of one thing or another, I get it. Over the summer the Linux Developer package only had 4,000MB of web space with 1,000 1GB email accounts. Now it's up to 30,000MB of web space and 3,000 2GB email accounts. Pretty sweet, huh? Now I have to convince Max and Joanna to keep their 30GB porn collections off our server.

Switching to Moveable Type was nice. It's made the whole blogging process extremely productive particularly for administering other blogs such as Joanna's or Max's.

The problem lies in this newfound obligation (or I guess motivation) to keep my own blog updated again, and the bigger problem on top of that is lack of inspiration or creativity to do so. About the only option that keeps most blogs alive (and interesting) is when people talk about their own lives. Readers usually tend to be either friends, like Steve or Joanna or Marc, or they tend to be stalkers, like Marc when he doesn't know the author. Anyway, they go for the juicy stuff. And my problem is that I try to keep as much personal stuff off my blog as possible. Why would I keep an online diary for all to read if I would hide a handwritten one if it existed?

Besides, most of my life is boring. How many times could I really log in here and type out "oh, I went to class A, then B, then club C, club D, watched show E, and went to bed." It would really only be the stories about my girlfriend that people would want to read, but those I know I would keep as nondiscript as possible. So again, who would want to read "oh, I went over to Shelly's last night."

For now, I'll still try to think of a good way to balance things. Perhaps some comments, both encouraging and suggestive, could help me out.

Last night my dad went to the hospital. Apparently he was working in the attic, lost his footing, and fell where their weren't any floorboards laid out. He apparently went through the floor of the attic slash the ceiling of the kitchen. I found out from Jimmy late last night after he had just heard that everything would be okay. That was a relief not to have to spend any time worrying about him. I can't imagine what it was like for my mom and brother. I guess he broke three ribs, and he didn't have to stay at the hospital that night. Thank God everything is okay. Apparently there might be pictures of the ceiling damage taken by Jimmy.

According to the OC (season 1 episode 14 "The Countdown") the way you spend New Year's Eve is the way you'll spend the rest of your year. What did you do? I watched only 3 minutes of New Year's Eve coverage. I think that's a good sign. I drank half a bottle of champaigne and ate an assortment of French cheeses ("fromage"). I wonder how this will relate to the sage wisdom the OC has instored in us.

As for my year, it is getting off to a great start. I'm really excited about getting a fresh start on classes, work, extracurriculars, this website, and just life in general. I'm leaving behind all of the dreariness from Fall Quarter.

In other news, welcome back Joanna! Should I change this layout? I kind of like it, too, and maybe just a few color changes? But then everyone will notice I use Moveable Type (which isn't a bad thing) and that I'm too lazy or unskilled to alter the default layout (a little worse). For now, I say screw it.

Happy new year.