Allen Day’s Blog

I was watching a Spike and Mike DVD this evening and was introduced to the Happy Tree Friends work Milkin’ it.

Totally made my day.

Also of note on the DVD – Dr. Tran – Here Comes Dr. Tran! from Lone Sausage.

Hot Dickings! Just passing ‘em out.

Priceless.

I saw Hiromi Uehara’s Sonicbloom at the Jazz Bakery Saturday. Wow! I’m now a fan.

Check out this bootleg of Hiromi’s covering Gershwin on YT. She played this one last night.

I noticed my blog has been really technically heavy lately. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I took a position as a “Computer Scientist” at BiggerBoat recently, and I’m on a very steep learning curve of new technologies (Hadoop, HBase, Nutch, Mahout to name a few).

I’m beginning to see this blog as really being about documenting/recording what I’ve been doing so I can remember later. Who knows, maybe even some friends/family are reading! Technical HOWTOs and pasted scripts fit the blog manifest nicely, but so do some other things like:

• Having Sing and Chih Fen as house guests for the last 2 weeks
• Going to a Brian Wilson Concert (+ fireworks) at the Hollywood Bowl on the 12th. Synopsis: Beach Boys music is still awesome. Brian Wilson has a lot less energy than when I saw the Beach Boys at Tivoli Gardens in 2001 and needs to be put out to pasture.
• Checking out the Steve Kuhn/Steve Swallow/Al Foster trio at the Jazz Bakery on Friday. Also went by Father’s Office (next door) for the first time. Really enjoyed the Woodchuck Cider. Need to go back to try the Kanpachi Ceviche.

Check out some of Ling’s and Sing’s recent photos on Flickr. I haven’t been running with them too much (working), but they’ve been having a good time.

Some photos from the Getty Villa in Malibu:

Remember how awesome Hampster Dance (sp) was back in the pre-YouTube, pre-Star Wars Kid, pre dot-bomb late 90s? Well I have found an up-to-date, even geekier version!

Check out the AJAX Activity Indicators.

Personally, I think we should all just use the hamsters instead of spinning wheels.

[via coliss.com]

7872. It’s either my most recent score, or a lower bound on the number of minutes I’ve spent on Desktop Tower Defense. Take your pick, just don’t tell my dissertation committee

Play here, or check my mazes. Warning, it’s addictive if you like puzzle/realtime strategy games.

I was so psyched when Marc told me this was coming out on Xbox Live! Arcade. I’m a HUGE fan of Mr. Driller 2 coin-op version, and I was hoping this would be an Xbox, HD version of that.

They let me down. The XBLA Mr. Driller is based on Mr. Driller 1, which is not nearly as good because the width of the playing field is only 9 blocks, while the width of the field on Mr. Driller 2 coin-op is 15 blocks. The wider field makes the game more complex, a lot harder, and therefore a lot more fun and playable.

Oh, and did I mention the XBLA version online multiplay sucks donkey dick?

I have tried every version of Mr. Driller I can get my hands on, and none of them except the coin-op are any good. I might just have to start making space in my garage unless someone gets the MAME ROM working.

Managed to connect with Russe11 on Xbox Live! yesterday. Finally, another person in my friend list who plays Tetris Splash and is ranked higher than a bazillion.

Ling tells me her cousins in Taiwan like to play too, so maybe I can make some new friends and practice my Mandarin before we head over there.

Crazy, okay. So I was just searching for “Tetris Splash” to get an image to go with the post. Whose blog shows up in position #4 on Google? Russe11 again! Are there really no other NPR-listening, Tetris Splash-playing, mobile-web-developing night owls out there?

Check out a good review of matching/puzzle games here