anime art
last edited on 09 Mar 2010 at 18:48:28
Bottles of tequila I’ve “completed”
Tequila, my drink of choice. Here are the bottles I’ve completed, categorized by age. I’m by no means a true connoiseur, so my descriptions are probably incomplete or naive, but hey. I’m still a fan.
Blancos
Blancos are unaged tequilas that are usually clear, or “white”. Also called Platas (silver), or more pretentiously “platinum”. These tequilas have distinctive tastes, which I think are more playful and can more easily carry the character of the brand. In my experience, they have more distinct flavors than their aged counterparts, but are also less smooth.
| don Eduardo | Kind of bland for a blanco…but it IS triple distilled. Very drinkable, but smells more like alcohol than agave. | |
| El Tesoro | Easily my favorite so far. This stuff is good. I taste a hint of an olive-like flavor. | |
| Cazadores | A friend told me this was the brand of choice when he was in Mexico. He was talking about the Anejo though. The Blanco’s not bad. | |
| 1800 | My introduction to Blanco. Not impressive at all. | |
| El Jimador | Disgusting. I couldn’t even use it satisfactorily for cooking. | |
| brand | thoughts | |
|---|---|---|
Reposados
Reposados are “rested” in oak barrels at least 2 months and usually less than 1 year. The resting process mellows and adds flavor. These tequilas are golden in color, but are not to be confused with the cheap “gold” tequilas, which are usually just artificially colored.
| Herradura | They say Herradura invented the reposado. | |
| Milagro | Fancy bottle. Otherwise don’t remember too much. | |
| El Tesoro | ||
| Cazadores | ||
| Calende | ||
| Jose Cuervo Tradicional | Not to be confused with Jose Cuervo gold, which is disgusting. Nevertheless very reasonable in price, this tequila easily has the highest quality/price ratio of the tequilas I’ve had. | |
| brand | thoughts | |
|---|---|---|
Anejos
Anejos carry the true “aged” tag, and are kept in oak barrels at least 1 year. These tequilas can be very smooth with sweet flavors. They are usually even darker than the Reposados. In my opinion, Anejos are the easiest to drink, as they are elegant. But they are without the spunk of the younger Blancos.
| Cazadores | Recommended by a friend to whom it was recommended during his stay in Mexico. While the lesser Blanco and Reposados have plastic twist-caps, the Anejo boats a nice wood/cork top upgrade and a fancier bottle. | |
| Milagro | ||
| El Tesoro | ||
| Tres Generaciones | Not as smooth as some of the others. | |
| Herradura | ||
| Calende | ||
| Patron | The only time someone’s gotten me a gift of liquor! | |
| 1800 | When I didn’t know better. | |
| brand | thoughts | |
|---|---|---|
last edited on 01 May 2010 at 20:10:29
Transcribed music
Here are some pieces of music I transcribed. For example, there are some tracks from super nintendo games (Chrono Trigger) that I liked enough to listen to with more realistic instrumental voices. “Poor Faye” is from the anime “Cowboy Bebop” and doesn’t have very high sound fidelity. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a muted piano voice, but it’s ok.
| Chrono Trigger (game) | manoria-snes | manoria |
| Chrono Trigger (game) | peaceful-days-snes | peaceful-days |
| Cowboy Bebop (anime) | poor-faye-lipcream-orig | poor-faye-lipcream |
| Corpse Bride | (no original) | victors-piano-solo (from corpse bride) |
| source | original | transcribed |
|---|---|---|
last edited on 06 Mar 2010 at 00:18:56
Dock.app background
Dock.app in Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6 (Leopard and Snow Leopard) have a ugly 2D docks (if you turn off the “fancy” dock when its position at the bottom, or if you position the dock on either side of your screen). They have a thick border and rounded corners that make for an over-sized looking background.
Luckily, these borders are just .png files inside the Dock.app resources, so I’ve sharpened the appearance of the dock by thinning the border and squaring the corners, like so:
modified dock
and to make it easier to do the mod every time i re-install mac os, I’ve put it all in a script:
download: dock-mod.zip
oyaji drama and “i’m not in love”
for years i have been plagued by not being able to find the cover of “i’m not in love” that was used in the japanese drama “oyaji” (old man, or dad)…it’s played in the background of the bar where hiroshi tries to talk suzu into eloping, while convincing her he’s not gay…
here is the audio clip
man, now that i am reminded of it again, it’s driving me crazy!
travel log
travel log 17 june 2009
hotel refuses to take me to the airport earlier than 500a for a 630a flight. austin is laid back, smooth, and quick, they say. you should have no problems.
515a arrival to AUS, check in. where’s the boarding pass for my 2nd leg? oh, frontier doesn’t do that. over to us airways counter. oh no, this says its a us airways flight, but its actually “physically” on a united flight, so we can’t check you in. united line is prohibitively long, since hotel had convinced me to cut it pretty close. i guess it’s up to luck in denver.
security check point. ridiculous line. tsa agents standing around shooting the shit looking smug, let’s say 1/3 of the security lines are in operation.
flag down idle tsa agents to inquire regarding concerns of a flight that’s leaving; preempted by said agent “i know i know, flight’s about to leave right? i can’t move people”. fuck you.
40 minutes later finally on the plane at about departure time. delayed due to more people being stuck at security. about 95 degrees and humid. sitting next to bitch who through a shit fit when flight attendant touched her bag in overhead compartment.
in the air, cold as balls, stuck in the middle seat, miserable. but i guess that’s all flights.
denver. at least the flight attendants asked denver-bound folks to stay seated while people with connecting flights got off, since we are late.
deplaned, asked the connection liaison about the us-airways/united flight to minneapolis. she asks “us airways or united?” hey lady, you tell me. i say both. whatever, they tell me to go to concourse C. you have to take a train. I don’t believe her, but concourse A doesn’t seem to list departure gates not at A. brilliant, denver-ites.
concourse C, finally a comprehensive list of departures. the flight leaves from concourse B.
back on the train, 10 minutes to departure.
concourse B. gate 58 is at the end of the concourse. huff and puff. still haven’t checked in, so waiting for the plane to board. someone else shows up needing to check in. you come in from austin? yea. they took me to C. yea, they did that to me too.
IDs? Here. You’re not even in the system, and there are only 2 seats. Really? Really. Do you have your reference number? Let me dig it out. The other guy had his, and she let another lady on. uh oh. no dice. neither of us were “in the system”. i have my reference number…no, sirs, all i can tell you is that you have to go to customer service near B-84.
great…at the very tippy tip of the concourse.
ID? Here. Did you just miss your flight? No, i was there, they just told me to come here, and the plane left. CS: Is the plane still here? Me: …no, i think it just left (at least surely in the time that it took me to walk here). CS: because you’re right here in the system. did they leave? Me: yes…
At least they put me on another flight to minneapolis leaving 2 hours later. ok. gate B-21. Holy god, on the opposite end of B concourse.
Finally made it to B-21. flight delayed. Yesssss. (but inexplicably now scheduled to land earlier due to “airport operations scheduling change”).
imageDistortPerspective()
This is a script that uses gd2 and imagemagick to remap a rectangular image to a trapezoidal one, a la cover-flow. I originally made it to go with a modified version of imageflow. The function is intended to post-process a thumbnail .png image saved to the server by some other scripts, which already have given it a border and a reflection.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 | function imageDistortPerspective($src,$dst,$direction,$box,$params) { // takes a box of dimensions $box ($box[0] = width ; $box[1] = height) // and transforms it into a trapezoid // $direction = ['left'|'right'] sets which side is shrunk // amount of vertical shrink is set by $params[0] // the box is also shrunk horizontally to maintain ``aspect'' by $params[1] // the image is centered onto the original canvas by shifting it by shrink*w/2 // // xL,0 // -------- // | NW --------- // | ------- < xR,y1 // | NE | // | | // | SE | // | ------- < xR,y2 // |SW --------- // -------- // xL,h // $pinch = $params[0]; $shrink = $params[1]; $w = $box[0]; $h = $box[1]; $y1 = round($h * $pinch); // these are caretesian coordinates $y2 = round($h * (1-$pinch)); // see comment picture above for $xL = floor(($w * (1-$shrink))/2); // which corners on the trapezoid $xR = $xL + round($w*$shrink); // they correspond to // the corner coordinates of the ORIGINAL box (rectangle) $NWo = "0,0"; $NEo = "$w,0"; $SWo = "0,$h"; $SEo = "$w,$h"; // the corner coordinates of the NEW box (trapezoid) switch($direction) { case 'left': $NW = "$xL,0"; $NE = "$xR,$y1"; $SW = "$xL,$h"; $SE = "$xR,$y2"; break; case 'right': $NW = "$xL,$y1"; $NE = "$xR,0"; $SW = "$xL,$y2"; $SE = "$xR,$h"; break; } // set imagemagick operation tags $op = "-matte -virtual-pixel transparent -distort Perspective"; // shell-execute ``convert'' (imagemagick) exec("convert $src $op '$NWo,$NW $NEo,$NE $SWo,$SW $SEo,$SE' $dst"); // chmod($dst,0775); // chmod to g+w so i can have write access // since imagemagick seems to create a larger png files than GD does, // we re-import and re-save with GD (overwrite) // $tmpimg = imagecreatefrompng($dst); // imagesavealpha($tmpimg,true); // imagealphablending($tmpimg, false); // imagepng($tmpimg,$dst); // imagedestroy($tmpimg); } |
wish list for mac os features
Finder needs some power features. For example, the spotlight search bar shouldn’t be for spotlight…spotlight is system-wide, so why have a box for it at the local finder window level? That search box should behave like the iTunes search box or the Safari search box, as more like a display filter.
Or how about a terminal command box at the bottom of finder to do quick commands in the local folder? Maybe this would be a non-issue if I were more savvy with context menus and things…
In short, it would be nice to have Finder be more integrated into the unix sublevel.
Oh, also, bring back the Tiger behavior for Finder windows remembering their last view-mode! On what planet is it logical to make every subsequent instance of Finder behave like the previous window, regardless of location??
what a long day
i’m such a procrastinator. Jorge Cham (phd comics guy) said it was ok, but man, I take it to a new level. Midnight deadline for abstract submissions? Check…starting 3pm that day! Don’t know if I’m allowed to submit certain things? No problem…easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, right? Using people as authors without asking? Sure thing. And the stress associated with that? Evidently I live for it…or simply am too stupid to learn my lesson. I don’t understand how other people just grow up and become responsible. At least I have somewhere to rant now, without bothering people on IM. I think maybe my friends will like me better now. I still don’t know where the publish button is on this thing.