SourceForge: Get Services for NetHack

Sometimes SourceForge is spot on with it's service-based open source marketplace approach. I can think of lots of examples where I'd want to buy help (e.g. complicated database, application server, or load balancing systems). Sometimes, however, SourceForge isn't so spot on:

But then again, I barely make it to Minetown most games...

Roland Satterwhite's Improvisation #1 from Ptolemy's Guitar

I've got the bad habit of browsing del.icio.us/popular-- it's the ultimate procrastination tool. Well, it or Laughing Squid. Sometimes truely great things turn up, which is why this is an awful self-reenforcing habit.

Recently Andrew Sloat's 22nd Amendment video surfaced. Sloat's work is an amazing mix of video and typography, but it's the underlying music that makes it pop for me. Completely ignoring everyone's politics, 22nd Amendment's music is just phenomenal.

Sloat used a song called Improvisation #1 from Roland Satterwhite's freely available album Ptolemy's Guitar. There are other instrumental-only works on the album, but #1 catches me the most.

Satterwhite's violin in that composition is just beautiful. I'll admit that I am fiending for that particular sound— Radiohead's new album In Rainbows, though good, just doesn't have the same cold, crisp, richness that was Kid A.

Entertaining professor statements thus far...

Just a couple of fun, stream of consciousness things that professors have said in class over the last six weeks...

1. "Blame Cauchy for that."
2. "That means I've gone to infinity, wherever the hell that is."
3. "Let's take the 2 norm. We're all nice and cozy with the 2 norm."
4. "I look at exams as an opportunity to learn, not as a hazing experience."
5. "It' much better when you talk about other people's mistakes."

Armadillos, Leprosy, The Clash, and Rock the Casbah

At a Star Franchise Association conference in San Antonio this week, I had the chance (priviledge?) to race armadillos. I'd mainly only seen them as roadkill (which turns out to have a very good explanation because these suckers jump when they're scared). My wife mentioned this to a friend, who decided to freak her out by telling her that armadillos carry leprosy. Which apparently they do.

It also turns out that The Clash used an armadillo in their song Rock the Casbah. Small world, they also shot the video in Austin, Texas which explains where they got the little critter to begin with.

If you watch closely, proto-downtown Austin appears in the distance at least once. The capitol dome is clearly visible. Man, things have definitely changed here and continue to change.