Close your eyes. Clear your heart. Cut the cord.

So it's been 3 month since I unceremoniously dropped my grey cable box off at the Time Warner office, and it's been pretty great. Basically I looked at my pretty sweet Boxee set up on my mac mini and I decided I wanted to try and see if I could replace my expensive cable subscription with free offerings from the internet made available through Boxee. I already don't watch that many shows, so it really wasn't much to cover.

Official Sources
Hulu
SNL clips
30 Rock

CBS.com
How I Met Your Mother

Comedy Central
South Park

Joost
Adult Swim
United States of Tara

Netflix
(this basically takes the place of flipping through channels bored).
L&O reruns
Weeds back season

The rest of the shows are filled in via bittorrent, namely TVRSS which is sex on toast.

Unofficial Sources
Bittorrent
Gossip Girl
Big Love
Entourage

[UPDATE: I decided to take some pretty screenshots]

Once you find the feed you like, put it into your boxee profile (I have separate search feeds for each tv show I like. The metadata such as the image url is automatically added by boxee.


Select the episode you want to download. This list updates as the search feed adds info.


You can monitor all your downloads in a separate screen. This can happen in the background while you are watching other shows.


Once the show is downloaded, provided the episode is named in a conventional manner that boxee can recommend, it can automatically add metadata such as an episode title, number, description, and screengrab.

I like problem solving. I like looking at each unretrieved show as a project that can be quickly remediated. So here are the remaining issues I'm still working on:

Unresolved issues
Live events such as the Oscars or sports
Small market unsyndicated content

So the biggest gap for me personally has been small market shows that don't have enough traction to get torrented and seeded, and are not on distributed channels. This basically includes The Soup and The Millionaire Matchmaker. Try as I might, I can't find any channels to get my Patti fix. And that's a DEALBREAKER, ladies.

How to Conjugate Final Fantasy Spells

an excerpt from my unpublished book: 101 Final Fantasy Spells.

Final Fantasy spells are a synthetic language with a moderate-to-high degree of inflection which shows up mostly in the spell conjugation.

The Final Fantasy spell system is separated into 3 distinct inflections indicating the degree of the spell. Final Fantasy spells represent a pro-drop language, as the object of the spell is generally limited by the intention.

A large number of spells are irregular. The rest fall into one of three regular conjugations, which have -rx endings (where x represents any vowel or affricative consonant sound.

The basic -rx ending typically indicates a single target, while the advanced ending -ra typically indicates a more powerful single target (formal). The multiple target ending is -raga, and the most powerful (although uncommonly used) suffix is -raja. If a spell name is longer than 8 characters then the -raga and -raja endings are frequently shortened to -ga and -ja.

yó/tú	usted	nosotros/vosotros	ustedes	notes
BasicSpells
Fire	Fira	Firaga	Firaja (uncommonly used)
Cure	Cura	Curaga	Curaja
Blizzard	Blizzara	Blizzaga	Blizzaja
Irregular Spells
Thunder	Thundara	Thundaga	Thundaja
Esuna	N/A	Esunaga	N/A	As Esuna has no qualitative measure,only the single target and multiple target versions have any distinct inflection.
Break	N/A	Breakga	N/A	As Break has only a binary reaction, there are no qualitative modifiers for it. It should also be noted that "Breakga" is a stupid name.
Quake	N/A	Quakega	N/A	The augmented power inflections for quake were never established, probably to avoid offending quakers. It should also be noted that "Quakega" is a stupid name.

If I ever create a pop song that will have a corresponding dance craze, it will be called "Do the meteo now".

Rumor Control: Hipster Grifter and Swine Flu

My friend's cousin told me the hipster grifter started the swine flu in order to be able to pass freely around brooklyn in a mask.

Pass it on.

My Weekend in Flickr

There were a billion people in Central Park this weekend, each with less clothes than the last.



Then I got to relive the college experience I never had when my friend (who is like 33 or something) bought a beer pong table for his patio...



This is unrelated but the highest number of views for any image in my flickr photostream is for this photo at 31,532. The next highest is like 4,000. I think I should find a way to partner with xkcd or something...:

Musicology: Single Ladies

p = you liked it.
q = you should have put a ring on it.

p	q	p -> q
T	T	T	You liked it and you put a ring on it.
T	F	F	You liked it and you did not put a ring on it.
F	T	T	You did not like it and you put a ring on it.
F	F	T	You did not like it and you did not put a ring on it.

∴ If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it. Q.E.D., bitches.