no peter, I'm not being your mother | 3:49 PM >

I have this tiny USB box for my laptop that allows me to download pictures without having to find the creche and cable for my camera -- I just pop out the memory card and plug it into the device. Turns out that all this time it's been a USB 1.1 device, not USB 2. A few days ago I installed a USB multi card reader / floppy drive in my tower only to discover that reading camera images off of it is like flipping channels on TV. Such are the trials of 7.2 megapixel shots.

Anyway, the above shot is one I took while out with Phoebe a few weeks back. For all my complaining about my camera, sometimes it really does take some nice pictures.

So let me get my geek out before I settle into the real post. First, this/ really takes the cake. I don't know which cake, but it's pink. Then there's this amazing image, a recreation of a famous memorial museum in Japan. John linked me to this marvelous list of what not to do in games -- I'm actually going to print it out and put it on my wall next to the list of what makes games great that was written by Accursed Toys. (If you haven't read it, you can only get it inside some screens in Boppin, an old-school game from the Apogee days that's now available free for Windows.)

Web designers who are asked to do e-commerce site stuff might want to check out ZenCart (thanks to Mike for the link). I haven't tried installing it yet but I will eventually; it'll increase my marketability. Also on my web watch list (also from Mike) are Moo.FX and Rico.

Okay, so on to other stuff.

One hell of a week, wasn't it? I know someone who was at Virginia Tech (an old friend's brother, whom I also consider a friend) during the shootings. He is fine. Another friend knows someone, who knows someone, who died. My first reaction in situations like this is always: How can we prevent this in the future?

Chris Rock did a standup routine once in which he suggested that we solve the gun issue by making each and every bullet cost $5,000. Funnily enough that's not a terrible idea, save the fact that making bullets is very easy. So are guns, for that matter-- most folks don't remember zipguns, but I do. They were made of wood and used elastics to fire bullets at a decent enough speed to kill someone, back in the 80's. But the bottom line is, procurement of weapons isn't the issue. Sure guns are easy enough to get, but someone who really wants to kill a bunch of people has no limits on how they could do so. So what do you do?

Basically this comes down to mindset. Few other places on Earth have the same kind of violence, to the same degree, as the U.S. That says something about the underlying culture, not the availability of weapons. Without attacking the problem of why people keep going postal we'll never move past this issue.

On a completely unrelated note, I made two great acquisitions this week. One was the Buffy Season 8 comic, which was pure awesomeness. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading it, filled with that warm sensation you only get when you realize that out there, someone thinks just like you. And Xander is my hero. The other thing I got was NIN's newest CD, Year Zero. I've listened to the CD back to back a number of times by this point. It's not quite as good as With Teeth, but it has its moments, and right now it's available for $10 in Toronto at HMV, so I definitely feel like I've already gotten my money's worth.

It covers a lot of ground that other people have already said, with marginally less cursing. Also, it feels like every album since Still has gone farther and farther away from the new sounds that were developed in The Fragile and honed in Still. At this point it feels like Reznor has basically gotten all the mileage out of the angry industrial sound, and despite the acoustically new parts of Year Zero that come in, surprise and delight you, and fade away, I think it's time for him to start working on a new topic and moving NIN forward towards a new evolutionary epoch.

At the same time, there are some promising parts near the end, particularly in the last two songs on the disc, In this Twilight and Zero-sum, that feel like a step in the right direction. Anyway, Year Zero is no The Downward Spiral, but it's enjoyable and a nice Halo addition for NIN collectors out there.