it's a faithful reproduction

nature is awful

The parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles lays its eggs, about 80 at a time, in young geometrid caterpillars. The eggs hatch and the larvae feed on the caterpillar's body fluids. When they are fully developed, they eat through the caterpillar's skin, attach themselves to a nearby branch or leaf and wrap themselves up in a cocoon.

The caterpillar, still alive, behaves as though controlled by the cocooned larvae. Instead of going about its usual daily business, it stands arched over the cocoons without moving away or feeding.

The caterpillar – now effectively a zombie – stays alive until the adult wasps hatch.

Janssen and colleagues at the Brazilian Federal University of Viçosa noticed that when they moved a paintbrush towards parasitised caterpillars, the insects would thrash about, apparently in an attempt to protect the cocoons.

twitter is the new blog

broad street run splits

unofficial finish of 1:29:02.

1. 9:17
2. 8:59
3. 9:01
4. 8:47
5. 8:41
6. 9:08
7. 9:01
8. 8:57
9. 8:48
10. 8:18

i don't have anything witty to type here

top 10 jackie chan stunts

i'm pretty sure i like it

the schedule

saturday april 5 (track 1)

• 2:45: pistoleros (prince)
• 5:00: the pixar story (prince)
• 7:15: the deal (prince)

sunday april 6

• 9:30: confession of pain (prince)

monday april 7

• 9:45: storm (prince)

tuesday april 8

• 9:30: soo (ritz east)

friday april 11 (track 2)

• 7:00: the forbidden kingdom (prince)
• 10:00: timecrimes (ritz east)

saturday april 12

• 2:15: young people fucking (prince)

monday april 14

• 9:30: vexille (prince)

every episode of arrested development is up on hulu

THIS IS NOT A HUGE MISTAKE.

who wants to buy a used forerunner 305?

just finished mass effect

review coming later. now i can move onto ssb.

will arnett sex tape

link and video is not safe for work.

interest check for jonathon coulton at the world live cafe

"re: your brains" is pretty awesome.

will arnett and cod4

what kind of bs is this?

i didn't know that amex tacked on an extra 2% when i used my card overseas! wtf.

five miles

i ran five miles on the treadmill on monday night and my knee felt fine. there's about two months until the bsr. i'm planning on starting my training plan on monday. four runs a week for nine weeks. ugh.

i'm also planning on the clean air 5k.

no, i'm not talking about the illmatic

i'm talking about network attached storage. DO WANT!

azureus and x86 opensolaris and webui

ok, here are my notes about how i got x86 opensolaris running with azureus running in headless mode with a web interface as an smf service. i'm hoping that this might help somebody out there. i'm running nevada b81 by the way. also of note is that i have limited unix/solaris knowledge so i'm not really sure what i'm talking about.

the first thing you need to do is to get pkg-get from blastwave.org going if you haven't already done so. you'll need to install wget, nano if you're not a dork, and screen. once you have those packages installed, download the azureus 2.5.x binaries for solaris x86 via wget or whatever. unzip it and copy the azureus directory into /usr

in order to get the web ui working, we need to get the azureus command line ui working first. the azureus cli requires log4j and commons-cli in /usr/azureus (or whatever your home azureus directory is). both jar files can be downloaded from here.

before we get into the shell scripting part, create a new user called azureus with a home directory of /export/home/azureus (make sure the azureus user owns it!). add the azureus user to whatever group you want and you should grant ownership of the azureus home directory to azureus via chown -R azureus /usr/azureus. to get azureus running, we need to edit the /usr/azureus/azureus script that actually launches azureus. first, make a backup copy of the azureus file because you might want to use the gtk ui later. second, change PROGRAM_DIR="/usr/azureus" near the top. third, change this part at the end that actually launches azureus:

echo "${JAVA_PROGRAM_DIR}java -Xms16m -Xmx128m -cp \"${CLASSPATH}\" -Djava.library.path=\"${PROGRAM_DIR}\" -Dazureus.install.path=\"$PROGRAM_DIR\" org.gudy.azureus2.ui.common.Main --ui=console '$@'"

${JAVA_PROGRAM_DIR}java -Xms16m -Xmx128m -cp "${CLASSPATH}" -Djava.library.path="${PROGRAM_DIR}" -Dazureus.install.path="${PROGRAM_DIR}" org.gudy.azureus2.ui.common.Main --ui=console "$@"

i had problems getting java -jar working so i changed it to invoke the main class directly. and don't forget the --ui=console. i found this to work well for me but your mileage may vary.

ok, you should login or su over to your azureus user and try running the ./azureus script. with luck, azureus should start and spitting all sorts of text to the console. it should also tell you that a newer version of azureus is out but you don't have to pay attention to that. we need to set two configuration parameters via this command line to set azureus to download files in certain directory (/export/downloads in this case but you can do whatever you want. i have mine going into a zfs pool) and where to save its working directory (in this case, i think because of the default data dir setting, it will be in /export/home/azureus/.azureus and you need ls -a to see it)

set "Default save path" "/export/downloads" string
set "Use default data dir" true boolean

once that is set, let's go back and download an azureus web interface plugin. i've had good luck with this swing-based webui plugin. get the 1.6.10 version as we are using a 2.5.x azureus. the installation instructions are pretty straightforward. just unzip the archive into /usr/azureus/plugins/webui and restart azureus. you'll know if it works if you run show options and you see Plugin.webui.* properties in the list. try connecting to the swing ui via a web browser on port 6883. hope your browser has the java plugin! ok, we now have azureus up and running in the command line and serving up a web interface, which is perfect for a headless nas box. we just need to get azureus running as a daemon that starts running on boot. the first step towards this is a bash script that uses that screen package that we installed earlier. i made a slight derivative of this awesome script on the azureus wiki. create it in your azureus home directory and call it azureus_script:

 #! /bin/sh

#The user that will run Azureus
AZ_USER=azureus

#Name of the screen-session
NAME=azureus_screen

#executable files in the following paths that are perhaps needed by the script
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/opt/csw/bin

#your path to the azureus directory, where Azureus2.jar is located
DIR=/usr/azureus
SCREEN=/opt/csw/bin/screen

#Description
DESC="Azureus screen daemon"

case "$1" in
start)
   if [[ `$SCREEN -ls |grep $NAME` ]]
      then
      echo "Azureus is already running!"
   else
      echo "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
      cd $DIR; $SCREEN -dmS $NAME ./azureus
   fi
   ;;
stop)
   if [[ `$SCREEN -ls |grep $NAME` ]]
      then
      echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
      $SCREEN -X quit
      echo " ... done."
   else
      echo "Coulnd't find a running $DESC"
   fi
   ;;
restart)
   if [[ `$SCREEN -ls |grep $NAME` ]]
       then
      echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
      $SCREEN -X quit
      echo " ... done."
   else
      echo "Coulnd't find a running $DESC"
   fi
   echo "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
      cd $DIR; $SCREEN -dmS $NAME ./azureus
   echo " ... done."
   ;;
status)
   if [[ `$SCREEN -ls |grep $NAME` ]]
      then
      echo "Azureus is RUNNING"
   else
      echo "Azureus is DOWN"
   fi
   ;;
*)
   echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart}"
   exit 1
   ;;
esac

exit 0

the original script called su azureus -c "stuff" and i found that it didn't work out for me at all so i got rid of the su's. don't worry though, the azureus user account that we created will still come into play later. test this script with ./azureus_script start, ./azureus_script status to see if its running or not (try loading the webui too!) and ./azureus_script stop to shut it down. ok, this last final part is to integrate this daemon script with smf. we'll need manifest file that describes this shell script as a smf service. i used this example here as a template. create this meta.xml file in your azureus home directory.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE service_bundle
  SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1">

<service_bundle type='manifest' name='azureus_headless'>
  <service
    name='application/azureus_headless'
    type='service'
    version='1'>
    <create_default_instance enabled='false' />
    <single_instance />

    <dependency
      name='multi-user-server'
      grouping='optional_all'
      type='service'
      restart_on='none'>
        <service_fmri value='svc:/milestone/multi-user-server' />
    </dependency>
    
    <exec_method
      type='method'
      name='start'
      exec='/usr/azureus/azureus_script %m'
      timeout_seconds='60'>
      <method_context>
        <method_credential user='azureus' />
      </method_context>
    </exec_method>

    <exec_method
      type='method'
      name='restart'
      exec='/usr/azureus/azureus_script  %m'
      timeout_seconds='60'>
      <method_context>
        <method_credential user='azureus' />
      </method_context>
    </exec_method>

    <exec_method
      type='method'
      name='stop'
      exec='/usr/azureus/azureus_script %m'
      timeout_seconds='60' >
      <method_context>
        <method_credential user='azureus' />
      </method_context>
    </exec_method>

    <property_group name='startd' type='framework'>
      <propval name='duration' type='astring' value='contract' />
    </property_group>

    <template>
      <common_name>
        <loctext xml:lang='C'>
          Azureus in headless mode
        </loctext>
      </common_name>
    </template>
  </service>
</service_bundle>

i think the method_credential_user does the equivalent of that su. "svccfg validate /usr/azureus/meta.xml" in the command line to validate the smf manifest xml file. if it all checks out, run svccfg import /usr/azureus/meta.xml to load the smf manifest. try svcs azureus_headless and the service should show up unstarted. to start it, use svcadm enable azureus_headless. try svcs azureus_headless as it goes from unstarted to running (it might take a few seconds). if it doesn't start, try svcs -x and take a look at its log file to see what's going on. that should be it. happy torrenting.

the last union town

looks like some union goons, and i do mean goons because that's what it sounds like here, were messing with my local five guys. this is a pretty good article:

A few days earlier, a couple of blocks away, the same electricians union had been outbid for a job repairing a bit of wiring at the Five Guys burger joint. The electricians are headed by John Dougherty, one of the city’s most vocal and visible union leaders, who has a reputation for rough tactics when it comes to union business. The union — Local 98 — sent picketers who insinuated that the restaurant was unclean due to a vermin infestation. The restaurant manager posted a small bill on the storefront, titled, "What is Really Happening Outside?" It said there were no vermin anywhere inside and never had been; also: "We are being picketed by members of the electrical workers’ union (Local 98) because they are upset that a Local 98 subcontractor didn’t win a contract. ... The Local 98 bid was three times higher than the bid by the winning subcontractor."

check out the comments too for laughs. why can't the city just have unions compete with everybody else for work without resorting to goon tactics? isn't competition and capitalism the basis of america?

silent library 3

by way of ksk

looks like that situation resolved peacefully

how weird is this?

the giants had a chance there

this lamb sells condos

i'm being torn between conan and colbert

new burnout

sweet jesus, it's awesome. now i wish i had picked up my own copy.

D-DAY on a budget

how 3 graphic designers created D-Day on a shoe string budget for the timewatch program "Bloody Omaha"

cloverfield was disappointing

i will list my thoughts:

• shakey cam was awful. i have a headache now. i'm drinking ginger ale to settle my stomach.
• jj abrams, you like flashbacks. yes, you do. yes, you do.
• for a jj abrams production, you'd think there would be some substance or meat to the plot. oddly enough, there isn't.
• the monster was ok. godzilla would've whooped its ass though. i think they could've done more with the "others" though.
• the "narrator" was annoying.
• the cameraman spent a lot of time looking at female legs. (i didn't mind.)
• the special effects were cool, when you actually saw them.
• the movie was way too short. only 80 minutes.
• a very similar movie was the host. i think the host > cloverfield.

good idea but subpar execution. if you're looking to see manhattan explode and blurry shakey shots of a monster, then knock yourself out. if you're looking for a great film, don't bother. it is what it is. 2.64/4.

i need this book

oh seven in review

running results 2007

• 04/21 5k run for clean air - 24:56
• 04/28 5k to overcome ovarian cancer - 24:01
• 09/16 philly distance run - 1:57:23
• 09/30 parkway run - 25:56

conan and rock band

that terminator show

ain't bad. first episode is up on yahoo.

magic turtle

megaman rock opera

hoooly shit, this is awesome. part 1

hong kong and macau pictures

late but...

orchestral final countdown

differences

in taipei, people have a higher level of common courtesy and are generally non-confrontational. they'll say excuse me, sorry, etc. in manhattan/philadelphia, people will do that most of the time or sometimes. in hong kong, they'll throw you an elbow, keep going, hock a loogie and spit, and then kick your dog.

jumbo kingdom

we ate dim sum on a floating restaurant boat. we had to take a boat to get to the boat. for reals.

final taiwan youtube blowout

• SYS Memorial Hall Honor Guard Change Ceremony: the two honor guards that are stationed in front of the sun yat-sen statue remain absolutely still for an entire hour. they get relieved every hour by two fresh honor guards in a very elaborate military drill ceremony.
• Classical Chinese Music Played in SYS Memorial Hall's Upper Art Gallery
• Louise is sassy and tells it like it is

taiwan photoset is now complete

oh yeah

the wedding on saturday was fine too. it was held in the international ballroom in the taipei 101 (5th floor).

what happened

on our last day in taipei, we went to brunch at a japanese buffet at the taipei 101 called wasabi. before that actually, we passed by city hall again where the 2007 ing taipei international marathon was in its 4th hour. i stood about 40 meters from the finish line on the side cheering on runners for about 20 minutes. a few of the runners were jarred to hear english words of encouragement being shouted at them.

after brunch, we went down to the taipei zoo to ride the maokong gondola. if i had known that waiting to get on the gondola would take an hour and a half, i wouldn't have gone. if you would've told me that you have to line up again for another hour to return after you get off in maokong, i definitely would've done something else. but hey, you know because of my suffering. and there is really nothing in maokong to see.

this morning, we jumped on an early flight to hong kong and landed after about an hour and a half in the air. the airplane had personal headrest entertainment units where you can watch a movie, select music, or tool around on the gps map. i watched the first half of superbad. after clearing customs and etc, we took the airport express into hong kong station. like taipei, it was really clean, fast, and efficient.

initial impressions: it's very much like manhattan. it's way more western than taipei.

here in hong kong

it's like manhattan but with chinese people. also i'm sitting here watching a show on tv called "quake republic." a show about quake 3. for reals.

subway

oh boy it is clean over here. the subway doesn't smell like urine either. according to the billboards, the taipei mrt is the most reliable in the world, 3 years running.

you can read more about it at the wiki page. all you really have to know that it is super-modern, clean, reliable, and well designed and laid out. i have to wonder if philadelphia had the same hardware, what would we do with it? can we actually have nice things and not ruin them?

danshui, for reals this time

so the day before, i thought i was in danshui but i was really in taichung. and i'm not so sure i was really in taichung anyway.

anyway, i checked the map and i really did go to danshui today. it was a 40 minute subway train ride down the ride line or something. we took a bus down to fisherman's wharf which was closed and empty because they don't really open during the work week. oh well. we saw some fantastic scenery though.

after that we got back into danshui's night/day market where wares were sampled and consumed. i tried this ginger tea that opened up my sinuses. we got back to the danshui train station and rode back into town.

pretty quiet day, relatively.

it's pretty scary at first

getting swarmed by turning mopeds while crossing. the below is taipei, a few hours past rush hour.

patrick danshui-zy

UPDATE: i wasn't in danshui afterall. i think i was in taichung and whereabouts.

i went running around the park this morning. i think one lap is close to a mile and i did about 5 laps i think. i'll be sure to take some video of what a taiwanese park looks like in the morning.

we went up to taichung today. it's nice and very touristy. we went to the national palace museum which was almost just as good as the nyc met. one of its most well known exhibits is the jade cabbage. the garden also had some of the biggest koy that i've ever seen. you can feed them too.

after that, we went into taichung proper to the shin kong mitsukoshi department store for lunch (fried breaded pork with cheese inside?). the weather started turning hostile then, so we caught a bus back. the bus we ended up taking however was a department store sponsored bus that would ferry people between the subway transfer station and the department store area. i also spotted my second chili's.

we ventured back out later to the cks memorial hall which was super huge. also nearby was taiwan's presidential office building, like the white house but red. we went a little bit into the night market-ish area and got dinner.

mayo

today, we started the day with a common local breakfast: coffee and bread. of which yonghe city is apparently known for.

we went down the northern coast of taiwan to see the coast on our way to the gold ecological park in jinguashi. the coast is quite magnificent and an imposing defensive predicament for any attacking force (i'm looking at you china!). a small force can execute holding actions in the mountains until reinforcements arrive, but i digress.

we also visited the night market in keelung where i ate and sampled a lot of weird food that i had no idea what it was. we also visited another night market but i don't think it was a night market because we were all up in there around noon (updated: actually, it was jioufen).

we also visited a fish market that was pretty neat. there's a row of restaurants adjacent to the fish market that has solicitors out front trying to get you to patronize their establishment. they're rather persistent in an annoying way.

i'm working on getting pictures uploaded... my upload rate is slow over the hspda connection that i have. tomorrow, we're supposed to be going to danshui.

here

i survived the 20+ hour flight. it helps when you break it into two halves and it becomes more manageable. i didn't have a watch on me so i lived in a realm outside of time and space for a while. fading in and out of consciousness and getting fed every x hours. that sony portable dvd player that i picked up on a whim the day before i flew out was a godsend. so far i watched the new futurama movie, and the british office seasons 1 and some of 2. anyway, i got to go up to the observatory deck in the taipei 101 building. the lower level is a shopping mall that is nearly unrivaled in the high-endedness that they are offering. and the elevator gets you 90 stories up and down within 32 seconds.

itinerary

• SUNDAY (12/9) 9:55PM @ JFK TO TPE @ 6:30AM TUESDAY
• MONDAY (12/17) 10:00AM @ TPE TO HKG @ 11:45AM MONDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 1:35PM @ HKG TO TPE @ 3:10PM SUNDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 4:25PM @ TPE TO JFK @ 8:30PM SUNDAY

jeez

what happened to this place?

dmx verus... ghostbusters?

not work safe cause x gonn give it to ya.

chuck norris approved?

posting this

just to push that purple octopie/rock band video off my front page.

just because

if you've grown up in philadelphia and turned on the tv on a lazy sunday afternoon...

well this is kindof cool

let's talk about what i want in rock band dlc

the slow buildup and climax of only in dreams, and the frantic wall of sound and group shouting of laika. harmonix, you can already have your way with my credit card. just make it happen.

novemberfest and das boot

unaired 24 pilot from 1994

the cosi at 4th and chestnut has the worst wait staff

putting this contact information down in my post so google will index it so maybe somebody will be deterred from going. you're better off going to the pagoda inn by the ritz on second street. or eulogy. or national mechanics.

4th & Chestnut
325 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-399-0214
Fax: 215-399-0216

i don't want to get into typing about what happened now, but service on a monday night with only a handful of patrons should never be this horrendous. how bad? like genocide-level bad. i'm surprised that THE COSI ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE RITZ AT THE BOURSE hasn't caught on fire and burned to the ground due to employee neglect. this place should be avoided like VD.

purple octopie

maybe you should watch more 30 rock

alec baldwin doing... everything.

arcade fire, before they were famous

While cleaning out his archives, Gawker's Jim Lehnhoff unearthed some video that he shot of the Arcade Fire all the way back on April 11, 2004, at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. (They were third on the bill, playing behind the Unicorns and freakin' Chromeo, and in front of The Ponys.

in honor of robert goulet

stolen from ksk

new michael cera movie

a minor part in a movie called juno.

24 season 7 premiere

wait... i thought he was dead?!

so...

i can't wait for stop-and-frisk

"Shooting, stabbing, killing, whatever it is -- whatever you gotta do to survive," he said.

"Anything goes -- anything."

yup. can't wait to get these jackasses off our streets.

12 player online mario kart on the wii?

hell yes.

well if it wasn't weird, then i would be concerned

neon bible interactive music video.

another crazy halo grenade stick

ignore the awful music.

touring here and soon

• Architecture in Helsinki - Oct 10 2007 8:00PM Starlight Ballroom
  
• Of Montreal - Oct 11 2007 7:00PM Trocadero
  
• The Stars - Wednesday October 24th, 2007 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
  
• Menomena - Nov 7 2007 8:00PM First Unitarian Chruch (with Illinois)
  

the phils are so un-clutch

top to bottom.

now, this is what you call a stick!

halo ds

4 reals

these mile splits can't be right

finished in 25:56 according to my watch. my second and third mile split can't be correct though...

1. 9:05
2. 10:09
3. 6:41

halo 3?

never heard of it.

oh you're talking about this medal around my neck

yes i did run and finish the philadelphia distance run this past weekend. thirteen point one glorious miles in 1:57:23 (go here and search for bib 10150). three months of training and about three hundred total training miles. here are my mile splits that i kept on my stopwatch:

1. 9:52
2. 9:20
3. 9:22
4. 9:08
5. 9:07
6. 8:55
7. 8:35
8. 8:35
9. 9:02
10. 8:45
11. 8:35
12. 8:24
13. 8:31
14. 1:12 (0.1 mile, also this is probably off because i forgot to immediately stop my watch after finishing)

i'll post more about it later. i need to get to bed now that this phils game finally wrapped up in the 14th inning.

a review of my blog!

"Clean and simple. Its so understated that it screams in your face," raves Anthony of Anthony Heisler.

UPDATE: "willvuong.com... too much manliness for my wireless router to handle!" proclaims Anthony Heisler.

god, the eagles suck

so much.

so i heard that there is a game called halo

summaries of the story so far: halo 1: part 1 and 2; halo 2: part 1 and 2.

giant interactive halo3 diarama

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

SANTA MONICA, CA— "I played in career mode for hours and kept feeling like I was playing the same annoying circus tune over and over," complained a disappointed gamer.

god, the phillies suck

so much.

halo 3, a slurpee, and a big bite

yeah, i reserved my copy at the 7-eleven down the block this morning. surreal.

his face got totally pranked

click and watch the video

the best part is when the arm extends for the goal line

ban hammer

Taking advantage of an exploit that allowed an unidentified friend to deliver to him the Halo 3 "Epsilon" test version, former Xbox Live user "Scar" found himself on the receiving end of the Live banhammer. After six hours of Halo 3 heaven, his brief flirtation with the unreleased game came to an end. He was hit so hard, his account won't wake up until the year 10,000 AD, at which point, he'll have fallen so far behind in his achievement grabbing that he'll... well, he'll probably be dead.

liebot

chaos theory

the office summer vacation

wii beer pong

The object of ping cup is to use the Wii remote to throw a ping-pong ball at a pyramid of cups.

so that's how they got danny devito for season 3...

not work safe video

cool

tracing over a video clip to generate 3d models

first guitar hero, now jam sessions on the ds

don't say cocaine ideas near this kid!

oldie but a goodie

play the video. it gets crazy awesome in the second half.

comments on the internet

first

bioshock

• Game Informer (100/100): "Even if you play games strictly for the difficulty that they bring, BioShock is a title that needs to be played, simply because you will never look at an FPS the same way again. Of the 15 to 20 hours of gameplay that it delivers, there isn't a second wasted. Once you finish the game, there's little chance that you'll take it out before playing it again to see the second ending."
• IGN (97/100): "To call this game simply a first-person shooter, a game that successfully fuses gameplay and narrative, is really doing it a disservice. This game is a beacon. It's one of those monumental experiences you'll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured."
• 1UP (100/100): "The sounds of the vending machines, the demented rants of a housewife who has long lost her sanity, the ability to craft your own ammunition, the level design based on some beloved touchstones of horror (medical experimentation, a garden of evil, the performing arts), the optional photography research, the color palette, the scratchy rendition of "Beyond the Sea," the fire and lighting and water effects...everything is in its right place."

i wasn't planning on picking this one up but damn...