therobots.org - select * from robots

Here's a video I captured of the shuttle launch. It happened at about 8:46pm EST on Dec 9. The video was captured 6 miles from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, using my old Canon PowerShot A75, which unfortunately handles only 30 seconds per video clip. So, this video is stitched together from two such clips. Also, the first clip doesn't have audio, so the first half of the video is silent. Ah well. You'll probably also notice that the first half is especially jittery. That's because I was busy destroying my vocal cords cheering.

What's new? Let's do a bulletted list.

• Developed a little bit of a collecting habit. I'm not quite the anime fan that I used to be, but I have always had a soft spot for transforming toys, especially ones with such a perfect transformation sequence.
• Went to the huge nerd-fest, Archon in Collinsville. The after-party was incredible. It was almost a Fear-and-Loathing-in-Collinsville-type experience. It was essentially one of the most exuberant Halloween-style parties I'd ever been to, with a strong geeky pride to the whole thing. It was all about getting drunk with fellow nerds, sci-fi fantasy nuts, rivetheads, and other people who get it.

It's been much too long since my last login.

The Century Building is no more. Tonight, the remainer of the building falls. I'm not happy to see such a stately, historic building hit the ground, but at this point, I'm through mourning - just hurry up and be done with it.

I think I'm going to have some sushi tonight. I need something healthy after all the burgers and cake at work this afternoon.

And in other news - The move is mostly done. Now we just have to go through the tenant-maintenance checklist and maybe do some really minor spackling.

The Move is 98% complete. Only the contents of the fridge remain.

I love this house and feel an almost moral obligation to keep it in good shape. Michelle and I are in the process of very gradually taking things out of the boxes and straightening up as we go. Having a lawn to mow is somehow satisfying yet weird.

Saw Stereolab at the Pageant back on Apr. 8. Definitely a fun show, and they made good use of background video for a few of their songs. I'm also glad that they've managed to keep their sound and spirit since Mary passed away.

Josh and Jessica, what's your new phone numbe

I finally saw Mr T's Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool. Words cannot describe it. I don't think I could get away with gathering people and showing it to them, even if I got them horribly drunk beforehand. Somehow it transcends most levels of badness. Even Britney Spears' Crossroads can be drunkenly made fun of, whereas BSBSF cannot. Imagine Mr. T dancing around, singing, and attempting to rap (complete with cheeseball 80's echo filter) and attempting to show kids how to respect themselves. It's a trainwreck. Mr T doesn't even throw anyone, though I would love to see him toss around some of those annoying kids. Anyway, if anyone cares to drunkenly watch it or otherwise have a b-movie night with me, let me know. I've been aching for one.

Here's a couple links:
Star Wars Battlefield 1942 - This is a great mod.
Retrocrush - lots of weird retro crap.

Here's briefly what happened:

What's new, one might ask? My response would be, "This house hunt." Here's a quickie on the houses so far:

It's in Olivette, not too far from Olive and 170. It's a ranch house with a front porch and a really small back porch. The lawn isn't that alive or big, as the right picture shows. The house looked alright on the inside, although we didn't get to inspect it as thoroughly as I'd have liked.

Another ranch in Olivette. It has a larger yard and a smaller porch, but we didn't get to sneak around the innards.

That kind of reminds me of the days when I was 7 or 8, and my neighborhood friends and I found that one of the unoccupied houses for sale down the street was unlocked. We just barged right on in and had a blast rampaging through the house. It didn't stop the house from being sold, but in retrospect, I'm sure someone had to pay for cleaning up the dirt we were constantly dragging into the house. It took several months of this before the house was finally fully locked up.

Saint Louis is awesome. You know you live in a great town if it has a real vampire resource zine. It's for real vampires. Makes me want to dress up as Bela Lugosi - "Good eeeeeevening." Also see St Louis Gothic. Someday I'm going to infiltrate one of their age 21+ events.

The Matmos album I'm currently rocking out to: The Civil War. Matmos - Matmos is now downloading. I love emusic.com. I love Matador for offering so many albums on it.

Yes I need to upload images of the houses I'm looking at. That will be done shortly.

Yes I need to look at more houses. That will be done shortly as well.

Email me to get my cell number, if you're interested. ARGH! The Cingular lady forgot to activate my voicemail account.

The concert and party in Rolla were quite fun. Pictures are now up here. The Uptown ain't that great of a music venue on account of one thing: The horrible accoustics. Vocals were muffled / difficult to understand, and there was just a lot of nasty noise. Apart from that, it would actually be pretty good. The bands played pretty well I thought, despite the CPB folks thinking that they didn't. Spooky Daily Pride was awesome. CPB was awesome. So far from talking to people who were there, people seemed to enjoy CPB a bit more. Maybe that's because CPB didn't demand that the KMNR sound guys turn up the monitor speakers, resulting in loud feedback. Oh well, I enjoyed it.

Does the uptown do something sneaky with their beer? The Shiner Bock pitchers tasted odd. I think the plastic dixie cups had something to do with it.

The afterparty - lots of fun and walking around, talking to people buzzed-out. Watching Richard indirectly punching himself in the head was pretty funny. I should've had a bit more to drink.

One thing about the pictures - the camera itself is actually pretty good. The image storage algorithm tries its damnedest to keep the images under 50KB and will not trade space for quality. It seems to intentionally limit the image quality pretty low. If you look at the miscellaneous gallery, you can see what I'm talking about.

Oh, and I'm really digging Matmos lately.