And now for a short message from our sponsor…

To celebrate my newly finished keitai mail plugin, I will be moblogging tonight’s party at bar tokyo. Expect to see a lot of pictures of drunken people.

got waken up at 3pm by some guy, hand-delivering the 1,160 yens (not even 10 bucks) we overpaid at Tokyu Hands when buying furniture a month ago. funny part is: I went to pick up that money two weeks ago already. Maybe they’ll start sending an enveloppe every month

a few pics from last month’s trip to europe that I never got a chance to post

Just a small party announcement to tell you that tonight I’ll be playing at Bar Tokyo for their closing party.
Komei was told two weeks ago by the owner that the lease wasn’t gonna be renewed and this week-end is their last one before inventory and handing the keys back.

Bar Tokyo was one of the only enjoyable place in that massive suckage that is Roppongi, one where I could still stand to set a foot despite my general hatred of all things roppongi… unfortunately its being gone only goes in the overall direction taken by the neighbourhood (more suckage, if that is even humanly possible).

Anyway, Ian, Atsushi and myself will be playing there all night… making sure to leave on a high note! so if you are around, feel like getting down tonight, come by and say hi: there will be great fun to be had no matter what.

Bar Tokyo is located on Roppongi Crossing, 6F of the bookstore building across from Almond and the Koban (round the corner from 1st Kitchen)

Resuming Keitai log

At long last, Friedrich speaks his mind on the blogging world…

Just came across this oh-so-timely paragraph (line-breaks inserted for clarity purposes, emphasis mine):

Einsamkeit lernen. - Oh, ihr armen Schelme in den grossen Städten der Weltpolitik, ihr jungen, begabten, vom Ehrgeiz gemarterten Männer, welche es für ihre Pflicht halten, zu allen Begebenheiten - es begiebt sich immer Etwas - ihr Wort zu sagen!
Welche, wenn sie auf diese Art Staub und Lärm machen, glauben, der Wagen der Geschichte zu sein!
Welche, weil sie immer horchen, immer auf den Augenblick passen, wo sie ihr Wort hineinwerfen können, jede ächte Productivität verlieren! Mögen sie auch noch so begehrlich nach grossen Werken sein: die tiefe Schweigsamkeit der Schwangerschaft kommt nie zu ihnen!
Das Ereigniss des Tages jagt sie wie Spreu vor sich her, während sie meinen, das Ereigniss zu jagen, - die armen Schelme! - Wenn man einen Helden auf der Bühne abgeben will, darf man nicht daran denken, Chorus zu machen, ja, man darf nicht einmal wissen, wie man Chorus macht.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Morgenröte - 177

Unfortunately, any online version of the English text I could find somehow skipped many paragraphs (including this one), so I will have to give my own weak attempt at a translation. Bear with me, as I have no claim on native-level fluency in German:

Oh you poor fools living in the metropolises of world politics, you gifted, tortured by ambition, young men, who consider it your duty to give your word about every passing events – and there is always one!
Who, when you have made much dust and noise that way, think you are History’s driving force!
Who, always on the lookout, always waiting for the moment where you will be able to slip your word, lose any real productivity!
No matter how much you yearn for major accomplishment, the deep silence of maturation never comes to you! The day’s news chases you like a chaff in the wind, while you think you are the one chasing it – you poor fools!
When one wants to play the Hero’s part onstage, he should not think of being in the chorus, he should not even know how to speak in chorus. (Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak also known as the Dawn - 177)

[if any of our dear Saxon readers has any suggestion for improvement, please go ahead]

Du fühlst es nicht,
wie einsam ich bin…

Warum…

Warum ?!?

Have you ever wondered why there wasn’t more German love songs out there?

Well, wonder no more:

This song has rocked my high-school years, been the staple of many a drunken late night with friends and is overall single-handedly responsible for destroying any illusion in my mind that German could ever be used for anything beyond Kantian philosophy and Organic Chemistry textbooks.

when I think some people expressed indignation at my reserve toward that oxymoron called German poetry…

UPDATED 07/24/04 18:02 JST
Super Geeky entry on Blog migrations… you can safely skip if you do not have any idea what the names “WordPress” and “Movable Type” stand for. [I also added 100% WP stuff down there]

A temporary entry on the work in progress that is my move from Movable Type to WordPress.

I ported a bunch of scripts and plugins I was previously using with my MT installation. Also hacked happily through WP’s PHP sources…

Not completely done, but here are already a few usable hacks (I would not quite call them “plugins” given the amount of tweaking required to use them):

1. mt2wp: Redirecting old MT entries to WP entries

   This script will not only redirect your old Movable Type archives (both categories and monthly), it will also redirect direct entry permalinks (e.g. “000123.html#000123″).
   To do the latter, you will need to have your old ‘mt_entries’ table in the same database as your current WP tables (you do not need the full MT install, just this table), but you can still have archive redirection by date and category even if you have thrown out your MT tables.

   Please read the instructions for more details on how to install and use.

   Overall, don’t forget to:

   1. Edit the script (mt2wp.php) with your blog archive’s URL
   2. Upload the script to your WP directory
   3. Edit your index.php template file
   4. Edit your .htaccess file
   5. Optionally edit your css file (usually wp-layout.css)

   Sources - Zip File

2. Picture Glue: Image Posting Plugin

   A port of the small plugin I had written for MT. By far not the most advanced picture import plugin for WP: there are better and nicer plugins out there doing roughly the same. But I needed backward compatibility and after all, it’s a convenient lightweight plugin to seamlessly upload and insert pictures in an entry.

   Picture Glue automatically looks in a predefined location for folders containing pictures (presumably uploaded through FTP), generates thumbnails and insert HTML code (with css tags) at the top of appropriate postings. Each picture folder must contain the ID of the post it is to be inserted into and must be writable by anybody (for thumbnail generation). This plugin updates the entry content in the DB once and for all, instead of dynamically filtering, thus creating less runtime overhead.

   To use, upload the php file in your plugin folder (located in WP wp-content directory). Read the plugin instruction for details.

   Sources - Zip File

3. Updated! wp-Filterz: Dynamic meta-filtering of your main content

   This plugin lets you define a bunch of meta-filters controlled by checkboxes. Checking/Unchecking boxes will show/hide entries dynamically. You can try it by going to the left bar of this site and playing with the boxes under the “Filterz” section.

   Now supports both IE and Mozilla-like browsers.

   To use it:

   • drop the plugin file into your plugin folder (located in WP wp-content directory)
   • edit the sample preferences with your own categories (you will need to know the ID of the categories you want to filter by)
   • upload the pref file to the wp-content directory (*not* the plugin directory)
   • edit your index.php file to include <?=filterz_class()?> inside the class declaration of your entry divs. Your template should look something like this: <div class="storycontent<?=filterz_class()?>">
   • use <?=$filterz_html_code?> in your template to output wp-filterz’ checkbox list
   • BTW: make sure you activate the plugin in WP’s admin tools.

   Plugin Source - Prefs file sample - Zip File

4. wp-Mood-Quote: Random quote matching your mood (codeveloped with Masquerade)

   This plugin lets you define a list of quotes/taglines/sentences to be displayed randomly when people load your page… with a small extra feature over the countless other random quote generator: this one will let you assign a “mood” to each quote and will then try to match the random quote with the current mood of your blog (using the last “mood” tag you set in one of your post). See docs for more details. (docs wiped out from Masquerade’s server, following some infortunate adventures in shell scripting involving the use of ‘rm -f *’ and no backup whatsoever).

   Zip File - Tar Gz File

5. New! Getting the “updated links” feature to work

   Not a hack. Just a little bit of help to those who might be confused on how to get that sort-by-last-updated feature to work in WP.

   Supposedly, WP lets you sort links. But simply following the instructions and calling get_links() with the proper parameters won’t suffice to enable that feature. To enable it, you must also:

   1. include (before calling any link output function) the file links-update-xml.php as such: include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/links-update-xml.php');
   2. if you have upgraded (and still possibly if you have not), you must make sure you have a file named links-update-cache.xml in your wp-content folder and that it is writable by the server (chmod 666). caveat: it looks like previous versions of WP used a slightly different file name (link-update-cache.xml: mind the missing ’s’), make sure you have the correct filename.

   Of course, you must also set the parameters in your function call correctly, as well as the options in WP-admin option panel.
   As an example, here is the code I use to output the bookmarks section on this site (it uses a list of IDs for the groups of links I want to display there). Feel free to adapt to your needs and reuse:
   
<?php
include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/links-update-xml.php');
foreach (array(2,3,5,9,7,8) as $this_cat)
{
echo "<li>", get_linkcatname($this_cat), "<ul>";
get_links($this_cat, '<li>', '</li>', '<br>', false, '_updated', false, false, -1, 1);
echo "</ul></li>";
}
?>


6. More will be coming… including:

   • a patch for MooKitty’s show_category plugin to generate a side blog from a specific category (the patch adds date synchronization between the main entries being displayed and the sideblog). it’s already being used on this very blog, I just need to clean it up and write a blurb for it.
   • small snippets that display smart navigational bars at top and bottom of the page… need to put these in a plugin and will release.
   • a patch on wp-mail plugin (allows posting of pictures through email) to use my Picture Glue plugin and generates thumbnails automatically (doesn’t do it at the moment). Actually, I made a whole plugin to do that (and more), it’s there: Keitai Mail Plugin
   • probably other stuff as I come across it…

The Vaterland Sicherheit Homeland Security Agency has just come up with a brand new idea to protect you.

Choice quote (emphasis added):

In his letter, Soaries pointed out that [...] “the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election.“

Soaries wants Ridge to ask Congress to pass legislation giving the government such power, Newsweek reported in its latest issue that hits the newsstands on Monday.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Rochrkasse told the magazine the agency is reviewing the matter “to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election.“

Source: Yahoo News via BoingBoing

So let me get this straight: a member of the current executive branch (whose very election is itself a point of controversy) is considering asking the legislative branch to pass a law, that would in effect put the decision to renew the executive branch into the hands of… the executive branch.

Yea, if that sounds like a lot of executive branch in the same sentence, that’s because it is. Somehow I get the nagging feeling this plan doesn’t go in the overall direction of more Check and Balance.

Just remember people, War on Terrorism is Peace, Slavery is Freedom and who needs a goddamn election anyway?