Essential OS X Apps

A pretty good list of essential OS X apps.

WoW Tips from Apple

Apple writes about World of Warcraft and includes tips for my new addiction.

The people behind Deadwood

Metafilter uncovers links on the major and minor real life folks that make up the HBO series Deadwood.

Near term goals

Step 1. Get a job Step 2. Find a temporary place to live.

Todo Step 3. Buy a house

Amanda left today to move to Baltimore. Dallas is going to be a lot lonelier without her. I miss her. I’ve never really come clean with how much I count on her to connect me to the world because I’m all aloof and shit. The past two days I’ve been very angry and irritable. I had a lot of stuff welling up inside but no idea how to say it. This has been a very rough setback to my ten year plan to live in Dallas.

What did they plug into your ears/That had killed you by daylight on Monday?

A Salon piece about Sylvia Plath’s therapist, Ruth Barnhouse. Devastating and deflating article with insights into psychoanalysis, Plath’s relationship with Barnhouse, and the crippling depression that chased Plath to an early grave.

Converting ISO 8601 YYYY-WW to unix time

I recently began work on a small project that involves displaying a weekly view of a calendar. I want to use a url like /index.php/weekview/2004/04 where 04 is the week number. There are many standards for calculating which week of the year one is in. Microsoft even has their own ideas about calculating weeks.

The W3 recognizes ISO 8601 as the standard for most date and time formats but not the 8601 Week format specifically. Still 8601 is as good a standard to use as any. It turns out that working with the 8601 week can be quite involved. J R Stockton’s page about calendar weeks is hands down the best online resource about the topic I found.

LJ ghetto claims another

I wonder what friend’s only posts Rachelle Waterman made before she had her mom murdered. Hooray LJ! More details in the AK police press release.

Bride of Chucky (spoilers galore)

I finally got around to seeing Seed of Chucky. While it’s no Bride of Chucky it is a worthy addition to the Chucky series. Seed of Chucky fails at exactly what Bride of Chucky did so well. BoC is an examination of the slasher genre using the conventions of the slasher genre to explain itself, while at the same time advancing the Chucky story a great deal. One can watch BoC as a deconstruction of the very genre that it’s part of. Seed of Chucky doesn’t have the same coherence of purpose and falls back to the more pedestrian slasher/Hollywood satire of say the Scream trilogy.

Giving thanks

I spent last Thanksgiving with a friend’s family. I came into this Thanksgiving holiday with no plans. This Thanksgiving, in typical Matt fashion, I decided I’d just be alone and go somewhere else till the holiday was over. (I’ve never liked the seemingly unnecessary interruption in productivity that holidays bring) Camping became a non-option because of most Texas campgrounds being closed due to flooding and freezing temperatures at other nearby spots. I kept thinking about one miserable Thanksgiving that involved eating at McDonalds. But this one won’t be like that.

I didn't know jello could type

Sweet sweet nectar! I’ve reintroduced my body to the White Rock YMCA, and conveniently all my workouts were still in the system. I picked up right where I left off. Sadly my body wasn’t right were I left off.

I can’t hold the cell phone to my head too long without my arm really hurting. Rock on! I gave up World of Warcraft for this tonight.

Oh happy memories, the Fitlinxx website still measures my workout in VW Beetles lifted, gummy bears burned and FitPoints.