christopher's lives (v5.3)

first, the various…

Ender’s Game
“Intruder Signal” on 40 Meters Remains a Mystery for Now
Creepy crawly blanket
apod: Above the Eye of Hurricane Ivan
me with my LaserDisc evangelist hat on

karl sent me these months ago… yes, i am just now getting to them…

MetaSpy
OpenDiary.com
Web FTP Client Version3.5.0
Phone Phreaking Trips [RealAudio]

these links with descriptions are copied from three RefDesk’s Site-of-the-Day email newsletters i have had sitting in my inbox, meaning to check them out…

MIT OpenCourseWare
   ”Welcome to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare: a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. With the publication of 700 courses, MIT OCW offers educational materials from 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT’s schools.”

Time Capsuler
   ”To begin your trip in this Time Capsule enter a date. You will be presented with your own customized page that includes all the information you’ve chosen, plus typical consumer prices from that year, Academy Award winners that year, etc. Site has data online for the years 1800 through 2002, although data for the years 1800 – 1875 is probably spotty.”

The Yahoo! Buzz Index Weekly
   ”Check out the top 20 search subjects on Yahoo!, complete with a sardonic round-up of all the newsmakers that are moving and shaking web traffic this week.”

and i am posting these specifically for members of my family…

one for mary, one for mom, and one for jeff (i have been meaning to point this one out to him for something like three years)…

real world radio…

BBC – Radio 4 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – The New Series
21st Century – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy new BBC Radio 4 series 2004 – 2005
Audio Theater – What’s Up?
Index of /misc/HGTTG Radio Drama
Directory of /pub/.arch-download/hhgttg

virtual world radio…

PSX2.com | Features | Lazlow Interview
Grand Theft Auto III – FAQs & Guides – GameFAQs [scroll down to "Chatterbox Dialog Script"]
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Talk Radio Q&A at GameSpot

weird news item and great fark thread about it…

BBC NEWS | Americas | Potter film hope for disabled dog
FARK.com: Comments (Avantgo version) (1116065) Two-legged dog that has learned to walk like a human being considered for role in the next Harry Potter film. Dog reportedly considering new agent. (with scary photo)

so, yesterday morning, we looked out our bedroom window, and discovered that our beloved little corner of upscale paradise was in the news…

to explain, here are the three articles google news found, and there is video at the links…

Woman’s body found in vehicle at apartment complex

A man walking his dog today discovered the body of a woman in a vehicle at an apartment complex in northwest Albuquerque.
Albuquerque Police Department Lieutenant Trish Ahrensfield says the woman’s death is being investigated as a suspicious death.
She had no further details.
Apartment complex resident Kelly Baste says he noticed a smell from the vehicle yesterday but thought it came from trash.
He says this morning, his dog wouldn’t leave the area around the vehicle.
He says he went back to his apartment and told his brother he thought the dog had found a body.
Baste says he brother checked and noticed flies around the windshield.
They then called police.

Woman’s Body Found Inside SUV

Police are working to develop leads in connection with a body found on Albuquerque’s west side.
A man walking his dog Thursday discovered the body of a woman in a vehicle at an apartment complex in northwest Albuquerque near Cottonwood Mall.
APD Lt. Trish Ahrensfield said the woman’s death is being investigated as a suspicious death. She had no further details.
Apartment complex resident Kelly Baste said he noticed a smell from the vehicle on Wednesday but thought it came from trash nearby.
Baste said his dog wouldn’t leave the area around the vehicle alone, and that he went back to his apartment and told his brother he thought the dog had found a body.
Baste said he and his brother checked it out and noticed flies around the windshield; they then called police.
“I kind of knew already (Wednesday) something was in there, but I was too afraid to go look inside of it. So, that’s why I had my little brother look inside of it this morning,” Baste said.

APD investigating death of woman as suspicious

Albuquerque police were calling the discovery of a body in a car Thursday morning on Albuquerque’s West Side suspicious.

The woman’s body was discovered in the back of an SUV parked at the Cottonwood Ranch Apartments near the Cottonwood Mall.
Kelly Baste, who walks his German shorthair dog Nickel in the area, says the dog has been alerting him to the vehicle for several days. Thursday morning, Baste had his brother look into the car, and the body was discovered.
Homicide investigators were called to the scene, but APD spokesperson Trish Ahrensfeld says the incident is being treated as a suspicious death.
Police say the body may have been there for days, or even weeks.
Neighbors had reported smelling an odd odor for days.
One said that he had searched a nearby ditch because of the odor, but found nothing and concluded that the smell must have been from decomposing garbage.
When police pulled the woman’s body out of the vehicle, they asked nearby residents to stay inside because of the disturbing sight.
Police have towed the vehicle in for investigation.
The woman’s identity will be released after an autopsy Friday.
Eyewitness News 4 has found that the vehicle is registered to a woman who has been missing since June 23, but it’s not known whether she is the woman whose body was found inside the vehicle.

the suv:

i took a couple dreameye pics, but, they are awful as usual… i only bothered to take two, because i knew they would not show much, especially because the big ugly stupid tree in front of our bedroom window that we hate so much blocked most of the view…
i might as well post them, no matter how bad they are, though, i used the visualpark software to try to make some sense of what they show…

if you compare with the news pic above, you can pick out the suv… the suv is light grey, then, there is a darker vehicle parked next to it, closer to the foreground, then, a little grey car and a couple empty spaces…

then, in this one, the suv is behind the tree leaves, you can only really see the two closer vehicles, but, this also shows one of the APD patrol cars, and the mobile crime lab they brought in…

needless to say, there were plenty of police, onlookers, and tv people… the entire area was blocked off, from further left than you can see in my pics, including the dumpsters (the little walled area in the foreground of the pics, the trash referred to in the articles), to just beyond the mobile crime lab…
and yes, we had walked past this vehicle more than a couple times in the last few days, though, we never noticed any smell that we can remember…
this entire thing started early in the morning, and, in the early afternoon, they were still waiting for a warrant to open the vehicle… it was getting to be evening when they finally opened it, we stopped watching so closely then, we already had a feeling this event might be making guest appearances in our dreams, no need to add more details…

speaking of horrific events that haunt us, someday i will have to post the story of the last time death was right outside our front door, some six years ago or so in california, when it was a guy attempting to gun down another guy running away from him across the parking lot, and mary right there in the cross fire, with me inside, peeking out the window desperately trying to figure out where she was in all the action…
for that matter, i could relate the time in dallas when we were going out the doors of fryes electronics, just as the three masked gunmen were coming in…

but, those stories can wait until another day…

UPDATE – July 20, 2004

KOBTV – Authorities identify body found in SUV in Albuquerque
[thanks, google news alerts]

and we have been noticing how hesitant people are to park in that spot and it is now marked with a wreath… i will take a pic and post it…

UPDATE – July 23, 2004

ok, i guess “wreath” wasn’t correct, but, here it is…

i would just like to call attention to this link, since i get a daily kick out
of it…
over there on the menu on the left of this page, under “Links”, is a link that
says “My LJ Feeds”…
this is part of the “Friends Page” features on LiveJournal…

for those not familiar with the concept of feeds, it is a way to gather
content from a site, without going there… this blog of mine has an atom xml
feed, so, you could get my posts in your favorite “feed aggregator” (along
side feeds from other sites), rather than stopping by to see if i’ve posted
anything new or signing up for the email notification…
at livejournal, people set up xml/rss/etc. feeds for various sites, or use
feeds already offered and you can add those feeds to your lj friends page for
a public online aggregator… there are hundreds of choices, everything from
daily comics like garfield and dilbert, to news, weather, movie reviews, all
sorts of stuff…
you just have to see it to appreciate the sheer coolness of it…
since i have few lj friends, i fill it up with these feeds and then i get
stuff from sites i would not otherwise go to everyday, in one convenient
trip… so, you can see the stuff i am interested in and, if you share those
interests, it can make for a good daily visit…

here are the feeds i have on there currently…

some post several items a day, some once a day, some once a week or once a
month, some post rarely, which makes it even handier to have it appear on my
feeds page… and some may be broken, so, i am still waiting for them to post
something…

firstly, i get posts at “syn_promo”, where people publicize cool feeds they
have found or have made…

astronomy photo of the day

ask yahoo
answering trivia and imponderables, using yahoo

blog of death
sort of a big, far-reaching obits page

boingboing blog

coming soon
a movie news site

dictionary.com’s word of the day

engadget
gadget news, reviews, etc.

filmadd
news of movies added to the Internet Archive

filmtease
an unusual movie trailer review site

found magazine’s find of the week
unusual objects people find

aaron swartz’s googleblog
a blog about google

googleblog
the official blog of google.com

penniphile
the writings of penn jillette, mostly new entries to “road penn”

word spy
dealing with new terms, slang, etc. as they enter the language

quote of the day
not as good as refdesk.com’s quotes of the day, but, they have more than one
per day, so it sort of balances out

snopesrecentadd
one of my favorites, posting urban legends as they are added to snopes.com

thinkgeek
various merchandise of interest to those involved in modern technology

and wordsmith’s word of the day

oh, and almost forgot, i also get “ljnifty” where people post various fun
things you can do with livejournal, such as adding feeds to your friends
page…

and i add cool new ones as i find them… and occasionally remove the ones
that get annoying or boring…

anyway, if that sounds interesting to you, as i said, the link is on the menu
on the left side of this page… “My LJ Feeds”
i stop by at least once a day and it is a pretty good collection at this
point, after some tweaking…

now if only i could get scifi.com’s “today in sci-fi history” on there, which
is almost always interesting to sci-fi buffs… (there is a link to this, as
well, over there on the left…)
i would add the fark.com feed, but, it does not have comments links and the
comments threads are at least half the fun of fark…

btw, geez, it seems today is list day on my blog…
admittedly, i am trying to come up with posts to make so i can knock that huge
“april pics” post off the front page…

i thought i had seen it all…

SeeMeRot.com

SeeMeRot.com :: Live Coffin Cam :: Now with New image every 10 seconds!

yes, folks, a live webcam inside a coffin, pointed at a dead person…

just want to say first, the pic there is nothing, just looks like someone sleeping…

um, as of this writing, anyway…
(i was going to link to the pic to display here, then decided that might turn out bad in a few months, since i cannot edit these posts…)

and, btw, refreshes every 10 seconds???
wtf?
seems very little is likely to happen…

ok, a few things from the site…

from the source…

<meta name=”keywords” content=”six feet under, coffin cam, dead body, coffincam, webcams, dead, live, pictures of the dead, sick pictures, real pics, true, terror, life after death, is there a god, motorcycle, insurance, six feet under”>
<meta name=”ProgId” content=”Live Coffin Cam – Six Feet Under and Still being seen! Six Feet Under Ground Body Cam”>

and then there is this…

We hope you find SeeMeRot.com a fascinating place to visit over the coming months.

indeed…

and then, as if this needed a punch line…

Should you wish to discuss plans for your own ‘Coffin Cam’ for family and friends, please contact us for pricing details.

you see, the page with the image on it is called “cams.html”, as in they apparently anticipate a gallery…