To keep me busy until then, because it’s Spring and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t ID all the bird calls I’m hearing in the park, I’ve ordered Birding by Ear and it’s companion More Birding by Ear, which I should have in two days thanks to Amazon. Yes, I’m soo many different kinds of nerd it’s crazy, I know.

Current news is that my bitchass 6 year old PC died last weekend and I’ve been obsessing all week over what I should do about it. Currently leaning toward (read ‘drooling over’) getting a whole custom system. I really want to be able to play some of the pretty games that I couldn’t play on my old box (HalfLife2, Farcry, Doom3, Age of Empires 3, WoW with all the settings turned up, etc). Maybe I’ll go buy it today… ;-)

Since my last post, I’ve been on two bird watching walks led by the very friendly and knowledgeable Robert DeCandido and Deborah Allen. I’m already better at identifying some birds, and I’m certainly noticing a lot more birds when I’m out in the parks now than I ever did before. I can’t wait for the Spring migration to start; my brain will get overloaded trying to identify multitudes of warblers, vireos, etc. Oh yes, and the warmer weather will be most welcome. Sure, we’ve had a warm winter so far but still, cold sucks.

Also, I started playing World of Warcraft again, which certainly explains some of my lack of posting in the last month. Yes, it’s been very fun playing again, probably because I took a couple months off. However, it’s starting to loose it’s fun value yet again. I think mostly because it boils down to that same formula of running around and killing things. Don’t get me wrong, killing virtual baddies is fun, but as your character grows stronger, so do the baddies, so sure, it’s fun to be able to stand up to monsters that I ran from when my character was younger, but the game play experience doesn’t change much. The only thing I really really like is exploring the new areas that you get to go to as your character gains strength. Blizzard has done an amazing job with the art direction in WoW, and it’s very cool to explore as much as you can. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I want to keep hacking and slashing just to get the chance to explore more areas.

And then, maybe because I’m on a synthetic worlds kick right now, I tried out Second Life the other day. Sure, it’s definitely not as polished as WoW, not by a long shot, but it’s lack of a unified art direction vision is also part of its greatest strength: all of the content in Second Life, from the architecture of buildings to the design and clothing of the avatars, is user-created. If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash then this will sound a little familar to you; SL is definitely the Metaverse version 0.1a. I’ve been spending my time in SL trying to see if I can get flocking behavior to emerge in objects based on a few simple rules. SL has a not-terrible scripting language available, and it’s been a fun exercise. I promise to post a video capture of my flocking objects if I’m successful in my endeavor. Related: Evolving Nemo. Basically, I’d like to do something similar in SL, but for birds. We’ll see…

• Saw Serenity. *GUSH* Pretty much one of my best movie experiences in recent memory. Unlike the Matrix sequels, Serenity delivered all the way. Also, I bought the Firefly DVDs (there’s already a waiting list of friends who want to borrow them).
• Went to Vegas for a company retreat / planning meeting. Lost $80 in 4 minutes playing craps at the Bellagio (most expensive gin and tonic I’ve ever had), but made it back playing blackjack right before I left. Also, the Bellagio water show is awesome (I expected it to be tacky).
• Started hacking a little with Ruby on Rails. So far, pretty fun. I don’t know if it’s still a little rough around the edges or if I’m just not doing everything the Rails Way, but it’s getting easier to work with without opening Agile Web Development with Rails every 10 minutes.
• Almost done with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Pretty fun game, although a little repetitive at times; at this point (90% done), I just want to finish it.

• Toad, one of our African Dwarf Frogs died. We think he was sick when we got him. Frog, the other one, is still living happily
• I started playing World of Warcraft and am now starting to dislike the direct correlation between me playing WoW and me not posting to my blog. I haven’t played much lately
• My Mom got married to Jerry and we took a trip to the boundary waters
• We finished version 1.0 of the software I’ve been working on at work
• I laid w00t to rest
• I redesigned avantbard.com

I promise to try and post more regularly once again.

Estimate the total number of books you’ve owned in your life. My best estimate is probably around 1,000 +/- a few hundred. I used to own a lot more than I own now, but that’s because NYC apartments don’t afford gigantic libraries. This is probably a good thing for me.

What’s the last book you bought? The Great Book of Amber (The Complete Amber Chronicles, Books 1 to 10), by Roger Zelazny – this is one of my favorite books to give out as gifts.

What’s the last book you read? Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. – A Christmas gift from a close friend.

List 5 books that mean a lot to you. - The Great Book of Amber (The Complete Amber Chronicles, Books 1 to 10), by Roger Zelazny. – Granted, it gets pretty out-there toward the end, but it’s still an amazing world with a ton of great characters (the names of which are my current method for determining new hostnames for computers). Also, it was good enough to spawn the venerable rogue-like game Zangband.

• The Dark Tower Series (Books 1 to 7), by Stephen King. – Hands down, this is my current pick for the best fiction I’ve ever read. Mysterious, immersive, and so damn fluid.

• Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson. – In my opinion, this is Stephenson at his best. In my obsession with virtual worlds, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Metaverse.

• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. – I’ve read almost everything Heinlein wrote, and this is definitely his best. Heinlein shaped a lot of my early teens.

• The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. – Probably the most deserving title for “Best Science Fiction Book That Most Sci-Fi Fans Haven’t Read.”

Tag five people: I’ll post links to pals if/when they post their own write-ups.

Total volume of music files on my computer: - 16.6GB

The last CD I bought was: - Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain

Song playing right now: - I’Am – L’Ecole Du Micro d’Argent

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me: - The Avalanches – GiMix (ok, it’s not a song, but the best damn dj mix ever) - The Postal Service – Such Great Heights - Billy Joel – Only the Good Die Young - Orbital – The Box - Jay-Z & DJ Danger Mouse – December 4th (off of the Grey Album)

People to whom I’m passing the baton: (will link when they post)

With that in mind, I sent him a text message asking for the code for free songs and got back a list of codes for things like: add X free credits, add the selected song to the front of the queue, clear the queue (screw people out of all the songs they paid for that haven’t played yet), and skip currently playing song. Armed with the seekrit codez, I went to town.

A man on a mission, I punched in code after code, giving me free credits and bumping my songs to the front of the queue. At a bar that’s known for its amazing music collection in its jukebox, I had a lot to choose from. So, I played a bunch of old favorites (Radiohead, the Beasite Boys, the Postal Service). It’s really quite satisfying to hear your song selections come up immediately.

I’m sure I pissed off a few people who weren’t hearing their songs come up. But, I must have pissed out my morals along with my drinks, because right before we decided to leave, I prepped the jukebox for maximum annoyance: the same Moby song, nine times in a row (I like Moby, but ‘Honey’ can get really annoying after the second play in a row). And, to polish it off, three shots of Beck’s ‘Deborah’ for good measure.

Then we high-tailed it outa there, but not before I left 9 free credits in the machine as one last surprise for those we left behind scratching their heads.

• Part One
• Part Two

Whatdya think?

I’ll post a video tour of the new place once we get enough unpacked to make it half-presentable. In the meantime, please excuse me for my lack of posts (lots of apartment hunting led up to our move and I’ve just been way distracted/busy). More love soon, I promise.