ishkur has put together a really nifty interactive electronica guide. he has a flash map of genres and subgenres, each with a sound clip and snarky comment. (i like 2-step)

hmm, i’m sure i’ve linked the electronica primer before, but it’s the place to go for history of music genres, as well as a nifty timeline and links. hyperreal’s music resources are also good for more digging. miningco, excuse me, about.com has some really good stuff too both at matthew chinn’s rave/house/techno section and jennifer warner’s dance music section.

oh my, a Macintosh Color Classic G4

for those living on a tight budget, i definitely have to recommend making tuna tacos. i’ve been doing it a lot over the past few weeks. it takes less than 10 minutes to make and has very little cleanup. basically, heat up (medium to low) a large nonstick pan, take a can of tuna, and quarter it. then lay down a tortilla, sprinkle cheese one half, and put the tuna on the other side. i also like to put some canned corn and sometimes some dressing. when the cheese starts melting, fold it up, put it to the side and start on the second one. basically, when you finish assembling one flip the previous one over. the great thing is that it tastes great and is relatively healthy, and of course, it is cheap. here’s a little breakdown:

4 yummy tuna tacos

item	calories	cost
4 corn tortillas	260	$0.04-$0.06
1 can of chunk light tuna	150	$0.33-$0.59
1/2 can of corn	140	$0.30
1/4 cup of shredded cheese	100	$0.33
2 tbsp fat free honey dijon	50	$0.20

not bad for a buck and change.

this guy tweek has two really nice summary-type sites on western and eastern buddhist thought. pretty neat links.

• metaphysica – the history of western metaphysics
• vulture peak – buddhist philosophy and belief

i was also spending some time looking at some of those javascript password programs. when i get a few hours of free time, i think i’ll write a cracker for it (just need to write a basic reverse hash and decrypter i think). anyway, obviously i was procrastinating when i decided to look that up. (actually, i was randomly looking at student homepages for some reason)

i was catching a snippet of the new survivor season, and it looks like they are having the fire problem again. granted, the show producers wouldn’t want survivalists on the show (what fun would that be?), but you’d think at least one of the contestants would be prepared to make fire (unless the producers screened against anyone with any useful wilderness skills at all. this is conceivable, among the contestants, i see both a shoe designer and an internet project manager).

• equipped to survive – site with all sorts of info. here’s their firestarting guide
• making fire by bow drill – with pictures
• making fire by hand drill – also with pictures, looks hard
• primitive ways – besides the previous two, the site has 8 other methods for firemaking and tons of other fun stuff.
• the fire plow – takes intense effort, but mechanically simple, from the society of primitive technology’s site
• caveman to chemist projects: fire – some chemistry and a lot of notes on firemaking. part of a more comprehensive survival guide. same thing here, firemaking split to separate page.
• nature.net thread – on starting fires w/o matches
• primitive, survival, wilderness living skill links – looks like links to lotsa useful stuff
• survival school store – fun looking products

in my searches, i also came across a site on poi and fire twirling. wee!

hmm, if i get money soon, i might go to sxsw.

this nytimes magazine article on the aids crisis and how pharmaceutical manufacturers and us trade officials are leveraging against other countries without considering the health consequences (real peoples’ lives!) is stupifying. good lord, how do these people sleep at night?

google search: satellite ecm emulation. interesting matches: alt.dss.hack overly asked questions, telecode and tech books, pirate’s den ecm reports

pretty interesting stuff.

hmm, so i haven’t done much today. woke up and ended up having to deal w/ a minor ant infestation (really really disgusting). and then browsed the net some for some cheap computers in the recycler.

one bbc article that caught my attention was that puppy dog kyle, 18 inches long and 18 inches tall, had swallowed a 15 inch serrated knife. the pictures of the xrays are great.

also, i finally got to a day or two old /. article on the directv ecm last week. apparently, over a period of months, directv had been slowly uploading code to hacked cards, which dynamically assembled into a trojan that permanently disabled the boot sectors of the cards. pretty clever, and seems to gotten a lot of news coverage, although apparently dtv got some help (also, articles reporting hexed “GAME OVER” messages seem to be bunk).

none of the major news sources seem to be mentioning collateral damage, to dealers and customers (oops). also, it seems the current crop of hacked cards were supposedly unhackable. here’s a short summary. also, looks like there are workarounds developed already, resucetating dead cards. emulator users were also apparently unaffected.

while reading the comments, i also came across this fascinating post on the old c-band dishes

hmm, looks like canada will be getting the new u2 walk on single next month, but still nothing for the us.

total recorder is one of the virtual sound card utilities that lets your record any audio streams.