Actually, they just mentioned in passing that there is another serious security hole in Internet Explorer and that the US Computer Emergency Reponse Center (Cert) recommends that you should “use a browser other then MS Internet Explorer until the current vulnerabilities in MSIE are patched.” That sounds logical – switch to a browser which hasn’t been compromised (such as Firefox – because it’s actually good) and then switch back to IE once they’ve given you some tape to patch it.
I was messing around with some tools that you let you easily edit your blog and I’m still a bit undecided. I tried w.bloggar and I’ve been using Zempt for the last few months and it’s been fairly good. The only drawback was that it wouldn’t let me insert the song I was currently listening to in iTunes (it insisted on using Winamp or [gasp] Windows Media Player). Enter Ecto a descendant of the much-praised Kung Log.
I’ve been playing with it for about half an hour now and it’s working pretty sweetly – the interface is great, the features are cool – apparently you can even edit images (I’m assuming I’ll need ImageMagick server-side tho, because it doesn’t work right now). The only problem I had was when I crashed at startup after giving it a bad API End Point address, but a simple restart sorted that out.
Bobbing my head to Funkstorung:03 Chopping Heads:Disconnected[3:47]
I’ve just finished uploading my pictures from the trip to Japan. Check them out here.
I’m going to be in Japan from 1 – 15 of June 2004. I’ll be presenting my Pierrophone (page no longer available) and Stranglophone musical interfaces at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in Hamamatsu.
Here’s my dates:
2-5 – NIME Conference Hamamatsu
6 – Anti-Gravity performance in Roppongi
9 – Lecture at Tokyo National Art University in Geidai
Alright, I’m a lazy globber blogger. i’ll admit it readily. below is a message that was distributed a while ago. don’t hate me for publishing it.
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hello far flung friends, relatives and people that I might have met at a party somewhere..
excuse the mass email format – just think of it as your own personal little message from me.. or not..
new york is the shit! it is soooo coool!! and soooo expensive!! aaarrgh!! there are so many awesome shops, things to do, people to see, things to eat – everything – it just makes you want to be a capitalist piggie!!!
I arrived on saturday morning after enduring a 17 and a half hour night flight, it’s all night, so just when you expect the sun to rise, it stays black.. very sucky. we had our own little entertainment systems – which was quite cool, and the time passed pretty quickly after watching a couple of movies and chatting to the christian missionaries from zanzibar who’d invaded the flight..
we got off to a rollicking start and after the seemingly endless night, I made a deal with them to let me sit at the window seat for the touchdown in new york. what a useless view that was. atlantic ocean, then eastern seaboard – like little bits of crappy coastline, then lots of little boxy houses, some mansions, and then the airport. I was so disappointed. didn’t even see manhattan skyline or anything. phoey. slept about all of two hours on the plane.
spent the first day – saturday – hanging out with Simon and Suyen (my mildly suffering hosts – big ups to Andy) who took me to this amazing vegan / vegetarian restaurant where they make every single thing on the menu with the most amazing soya stuff I have ever tasted. It was brilliant – we had like cajun chicken to start, and then I had black pepper encrusted beef with teriyaki sauce. You don’t understand how yummy it was – it was amazing. I can’t describe it more – the textures were unreal – I’ve never tasted anything like it. And another thing – I could finally eat anything on the menu!! ha ha!
afterwards we walked around washington square park where we checked this guy with a ‘I’m with schizo shirt’ who was performing some mesmerising street theatre, balancing bicycles on his chin, juggling knives upside down and the like. also checked out some old hippies playing speed chess and a lot of black homey drug dealers..
we ended up drinking margaritas at this mexican place across the road from simon’s place when my biological clock caught up with me and showed me who was boss. Luckily I managed to stumble across the road into bed before my world came to a grinding halt..
sunday was more chilled, went for a run in the morning along the harbour and saw the world’s largest procession of harley davidson breakfast thugs slowly idle past. it took them about 45 minutes just to drive past us, there must have been around 5000 enthusiasts ranging from the die-hard live-the-harley-dream types to your average schmo who’s just discovered that he can have fun with both hands at the same time..
if there’s one thing I can say about NY, manhattan in particular – its like you see in sex in the city – only a few hundred times more intense. on that note, the stars of sex in the city are regarded as demigods, being seen as living the new york dream and consequently idolised. it’s pretty common to see shops posting huge signs like “Thanks to our star customer and wonderful friend – Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex in the City” or advertising themselves in an upcoming episode. Indeed, started watching the new season on sunday night and its turned into a bit of a commercial with krispy kreme donuts and fedex deliverymen the subject of the show… oh well it was inevitable I guess..
yesterday I finally took a walk to the place which I signed up for – NYU. the NYU campus isn’t really a campus in the sense that most of us are used like a closed off area like Wits or UCT – its more like a sprawling collection of about 45 buildings all located in the same 40 block radius.. and don’t be fooled by those evil dinky maps you see at home – most self-respecting blocks in manhattan are a good km or two long…
The main area of NYU is set around Washington Square – and it’s beautiful.. also they are extremely organized – I suppose I shouldn’t really be amazed – but it’s a nice change. My school – Tisch is actually just off Broadway and was preparing for new admissions. I went up and saw some really great student and professor projects – like greg shakar’s lightning organ – which generates notes by using eletrical sparks across these huge tuning fork things – and danny rozin’s wooden mirror – which acts as a regular mirror by moving small little wooden panels to create an image..
afterwards, caught the subway uptown to 48th street, where I gawked in utter amazement at the enormous ads urging you to go see Anne Heche’s latest broadway show or check out FCUK. I am nursing a strained neck and severely damaged ankles after tripping over myself so many times. laugh if you will, but I dare you to be nonchalant when you hit broadway or times square for the first time..
ended up meeting an ex-south african in the lower east side, then checking out this great free jazz band at Frank’s in Brooklyn, they were great, but I’ve never really seen a band which has drums, hammond organ and two lead saxophones.. hmm..
and that is that for the moment – its about 9 in the morning here – about three in the arvie your time and although I have just woken up, I feel like I have been gang raped by a herd of extremely horny bull elephants so I think I need to take some guronsan..
love to all
[:]michael sharon
[:]signatureless… again