An excellent message. It is unfortunate that the use of type was so weak as to distract from it.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 7:44 AM on June 17, 2008

spicynuts: the world is a mess, and it has been since life crawled out of the ooze. Which doesn't mean there aren't ways to make it better.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 7:47 AM on June 17, 2008

I think it's better thought of as two levels of ten stages each.

Super fun! Level 2, stage 1 is quite pleasing.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:06 AM on June 13, 2008

wicked. I'll be in town from vancouver that day. See you there.
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 8:33 PM on April 16, 2008

oh no. Really sorry to hear that, miss lynnster.
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 7:43 AM on April 17, 2008

So I missed my flight the next morning by sleeping in. I got to LA eventually though, it just meant a couple extra hours of hanging out at the airport, yay.

That was a great meetup, the bar was super fun, as was the afterparty at the fabulous residence of loquacious. Glad to have met you all, hopefully I'll be in town for another one some day!
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 5:00 PM on April 21, 2008

Count me in with the typography and design nerds that find this overly pedantic.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 12:26 PM on March 2, 2008

The last thing this thread needs is more links, but I'm gonna do it anyway: Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg vs. Grease. A hell of a toe-tapper, this one.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 4:05 PM on December 9, 2007

Oh man. Nobody had a bigger influence on the way I cook today than James Barber. I saw his TV show a fair bit, I saw him live at Expo 86, and I still refer to his Urban Peasant cookbook. It was through him that I came to understand that cooking was not about slavishly following recipes to the letter, but instead could be improvisational, flexible, and fun. Thanks James!!!
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:43 PM on December 3, 2007

I can't believe they thought it was a good idea to base their study on recognition of the letter "W". It's possibly the most politically-charged letter of the alphabet they could have chosen.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 11:52 AM on September 11, 2007

This is the first time I've heard the original, and I gots to say that the K&D remixes are far better. This despite the fact that I was a big fan of the DJ Food track that the bassline on the original was ripped from, and I generally approve of that kind of reappropriation.

The K&D Sessions? One of the best albums ever, at least in the "throw something on when people are over for drinks" category.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:45 AM on July 10, 2007

The verses are a little slow, but that anthemic chorus is going to be with me for days.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:05 PM on June 7, 2007

Count me in the 'like' column as well. It's certainly got energy, and is original and memorable.

BTW, I initially took it to be a stylized map of europe, with the "london" label in the correct spot. On further examination, it's also pretty suggestive of a world map.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:57 PM on June 4, 2007

The project required no additional funding from Ottawa, but was contingent upon $100 million over 10 years from the existing CSA budget being redirected to the program by restructuring priorities and cancelling or postponing other projects

Describing this as "requiring no additional funding" strikes me as a bit odd.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 11:53 PM on December 14, 2006

I'm not defending the decision. It's just that if you have to cancel other programs to pay for this one, it's pretty misleading to say that it requires no additional funding.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 4:07 AM on December 15, 2006

i've got a class until 9 tonight in burnaby, but I'm hoping to make it by for a drink afterwards. Unfortunately, my beard will not be attending.
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 5:08 PM on October 19, 2006

wow, i totally missed this. And I'm practically a regular at the black frog.
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 9:01 AM on September 7, 2006

this is awesome.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 11:18 PM on April 19, 2006

I'm in a very similar situation. My plan is to study graphic design for a year, and then figure something out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jeffj at 7:32 PM on March 20, 2006

great post, great timing. Perused while snacking on crackers and cheese, just before bed.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 1:06 AM on March 8, 2006

oh no, not the sun tower!

I used to work on the top floor of the bottom section of that building. Awesome caryatids outside our windows, which you can just make out in the movie. The coffee shop on the ground floor has some of the best sandwiches around.

The last building that disappears behind the tank when it drives over the camera is where robin williams' character lived in The Final Cut.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:03 PM on February 7, 2006

Ah, that answers a question my co-worker posed ("why does he delete the 2nd building?").

Oh, I meant the right-hand building in the first shot after the titles, when the tank drives directly over the camera.

However, a good friend of mine lives in the deleted building that you're referring to.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:35 PM on February 7, 2006

So YOU were the bastard shooting at that utterly awesome steam tank! How could you?

fucker deleted my friend's building.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:37 PM on February 7, 2006

preliminary googling suggests that there is no mechanism available for the recall of an elected MP. :(
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:17 PM on February 7, 2006

count me in, pending logistics. Both of your venue suggestions sound good.

thanks for the heads-up in the election thread!
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 8:52 PM on January 23, 2006

smiley's is great, but I'd vote against moose's down under.

I couldn't make the 28th, I might make the 4th, but I'd prefer a friday, say, the 3rd.

solid-one-love - it weren't me, the closest i've lived to victoria is nanaimo, for one summer many years ago. It was a pretty good summer though!
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 1:45 AM on January 24, 2006

i bet he was hitting refresh.
posted to MetaTalk by jeffj at 11:30 PM on December 8, 2005

I've been a vinyl DJ for 8 years or so, and I'm a couple months into my transition to digital, using ableton. Totally pleased with it so far. The members of MefiSwap Teal will be the lucky(?) recipients of my first mix CD put together with ableton.

I've used it at one real party (~300 people) so far, with great success, though it did make it clear to me that I have a lot more work to do in perfecting my controller mapping - I do still spend too much time on the mouse!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 12:05 PM on November 14, 2005

flaterik, with regards to your comment earlier in the thread - amen. I will absolutely miss those things, and can only hope that new tactile experiences will arise to take their place. One small reason for optimism is that there is now much more capacity to customize one's performance gear than there was before, though it's difficult to see how the sheer physicality of flipping through your crate and pulling out *the one* can ever be matched.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:28 PM on November 14, 2005

As I DJ in Traktor I find myself struggling to remember what tracks are where and how they fit into my collection of tracks as a whole.

Ironically enough, this is both something that I struggle with as well (in ableton), and one of the reasons that I wanted to go digital in the first place.

Physical records, by their nature, can only be organized in a single linear arrangement. With a bit of grouping and labelling, you can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:55 PM on November 14, 2005

My biggest problem with this is I'd often remember that the one with the half yellow label on one side with an eye on the other side went great with the one on siesta with the green side when moving up-energy, and so on. I have lots of visual memory cues, and that just doesn't translate well to pure text.

yup. When I write my DJ database software (ie. never), the interface will be mostly visual, and then it will be time to scan all my record covers.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 4:45 PM on November 14, 2005

I've been using the iMic for a few months, and it has performed admirably. It does, however, still use the 3.5 mm stereo miniplug adaptors, which are a fundamentally dodgy technology. One of these days I'm a gonna spring for something with real plugs. For casual use, though, it's fine.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jeffj at 2:34 PM on November 14, 2005

To answer your original question, though, yes, what you are looking for is an external soundcard, but, as metaculpa said, they do just look like another set of inputs and outputs to the OS.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jeffj at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2005

I was a teenager watching it on TV (CNN probably?).

They showed some early helicopter footage of the collapsed freeway, which the announcer breezed past with the comment "There's a freeway showing a bit of buckling". I was all like "buckling??? That's a collapsed double-decker freeway right there!". The TV people didn't figure it out for another 20 minutes or so.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 5:28 PM on October 17, 2005

I want to know how the hell that thing can let you play the old games. That might lessen the experience a bit, relearning controls.

You rotate it by 90 degrees, making it more or less equivalent to an NES controller.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:17 PM on September 15, 2005

Overall, I have to say, whoah. This has a lot of potential. It will spawn entirely new genres. Also, super-intuitive for non-gamers.

I was getting worried about how long nintendo could stay in the hardware market with sony and microsoft, but this will fortify their niche immensely.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:40 PM on September 15, 2005

wow, it's a puzzle made by EINSTEIN? It must be HARD!!!
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 5:29 PM on August 4, 2005

great stuff, thanks warbaby.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:17 PM on June 22, 2005

safetyfork, I was also camping with my family when it blew, in the Skagit Valley in BC. We didn't get any ash, but we were all woken up by the sound of the explosion. Which, for an 8-year-old, is pretty much the awesomest way to be woken up on the day after your birthday.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 11:23 AM on May 19, 2005

I suspect that I would also be somewhat unimpressed with this trailer if I didn't know anything about it.

But, as it happens, I'm just about halfway through watching the first season (er, THE season) of Firefly, and it is a pretty great show, mostly on the basis of excellent characters and terrific dialogue. Sooooo, yeah, color me happy too.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 2:23 PM on April 26, 2005

That one game in Wario Ware - where you had to time your use of a stick to poke blocks through onto your opponent's side - now that was fun. Surprisingly deep gameplay from an extremely simple single-button (per player) game.

The basic problem with single-button input is that you are more or less limited to controlling the timing of something. Most of the projects on that site so far seem to use the timing mechanism at face value, to directly control something in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 3:58 PM on April 21, 2005

i've been agape over this for the last hour. my god. It had just occurred to me - "I wonder if this is on metafilter yet?"
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:07 PM on April 4, 2005

this image of vancouver seems to have been taken during the molson indy. The white structures above and below the east end of the body of water are the stands and pit areas.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 10:50 PM on April 4, 2005

Who'da thought that The Smiths to The Rapture would take 20 steps and go through Eric Clapton? Also, it's interesting to note that if you reverse the order of the endpoints, you can get a slightly different route. Though I suppose it would be harder to design an algorithm that DIDN'T have this property.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 11:10 AM on March 17, 2005

Why, oh why do the kitten heads not bob in time with the music??????
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 12:39 PM on March 6, 2005

It seems the messagewatch was not a victim of y2k hype, but of actual y2k bugs in their transmission system that they were unwilling to spend the money to fix.

Or maybe that was just a good excuse to stop supporting a system that wasn't selling them many watches.

done in by bugs
not just hype
or perhaps
the bean counters
stingy brutes
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 9:31 PM on February 7, 2005

Neither the main list nor the also-rans includes what I found to be the most disturbing scene in Robocop: the death of the hapless executive in the boardroom. "Put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."

Perhaps the nascent programmer in me was aghast at the idea of giving guns to a robot with such poorly-tested perception systems.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 8:00 PM on January 25, 2005

The cold sun comes and goes but stays fixed in one spot across the valley; shadows do not move. Your carpet fades in a precise stripe leading to the window. One evening, there's a town hall debate about moving dawn an hour later.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 1:37 PM on January 21, 2005

I half expect that within the next few years, Apple will make Mac OS X run on IBM's POWER architecture (the chip from which PowerPC was derived)

They're way ahead of you. The G3, G4, and G5 are all PowerPC processors.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 12:55 PM on January 14, 2005

wow, great thread... which of course makes me feel rather guilty for going so off-topic. I'll likely be in Oaxaca in a week or so - as a non-spanish-speaking traveller, what should I be planning on doing there?

Besides the obvious, of course, ie. human sacrifices and head binding and so on.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffj at 6:03 PM on December 21, 2004