So, this book has its ups and downs. It started off strong. About half-way through I wasn't feeling it, but pushed through. By the end I was satisfied with the book, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about getting other people to read it. If you like what he has to say in interviews, then I would recommend the book though. He goes into some depth regarding his philosophy on how markets should be governed.
The other night I was looking for something to watch. Specifically I wanted a movie where I could smoke a joint and really just sit back and relax, and get a lot of enjoyment out of the movie. I started off the search looking for a wuxia film. I came across The Assassin which stars Shu Qi, who I recognized from The Transporter... Maybe I should have smoked before checking out the first 10 minutes, but I wanted to make sure it was going to be worth it. While it might be a good movie, it was a bit too artsy for the GLP Tango I would be smoking.
After that I decided to go back to an older movie that I hadn't seen in a while that I knew would match the metal space. I found Planet Terror on Tubi. The opening sequence includes a trailer for a movie that Robert Rodriguez hadn't made at that time, Machete. I remembered very distinctly watching the movie with director commentary and listening to Rodriguez say that he wanted to do a trailer for a movie that didn't exist. When I went looking for the trailer from the beginning of Planet Terror to share with my friends, I found out that Rodriguez had in fact made not only Machete but a second one as well! I was sold at that point, and Machete was the movie I watched. I immediately knew it would get added to my list of favorite movies of all time. Thus, this list was born.
This is a common question that I feel a lot of people face every day, from season vets to newbies looking to learn something that might be useful elsewhere.
One thing I can say, from what I've learned, is that the framework isn't really all that important, it's the fundamentals that matter. When I was younger and and the commercial internet was still in its infancy, the big saying was “RTFM,” read the fucking manual. Which is still true to this day. If it doesn't have good documentation, move on.
As far as a language, I'm sticking to JavaScript. I like it. I was never hardcore into programming like all of the Rust and Go people out there. I just want to be able to do stuff. If I ever hit a point where JavaScript isn't doing what I need it to do, then I'll move on.
Thought I would try something a little different. I never noticed that GoodReads gives you the option to copy and paste your book reviews (until now), so I figured I would take advantage of that.
I've been working on a project that I'll get online relatively soon... I don't think it's really ready for primetime right now. It's just more of a “yeah that's cool.” It's not really a full app yet, and I've been playing around with some different ideas. Technically it is already online if you follow my github commits you can probably guess what I've been cooking. Needless to say, it's tarot-related.
Not too long ago, one of the members of the Pixel Pints shared with us a simple webapp that he found for building top-whatever lists, called Topsters.
I decided to play around with it a bit, and, as I mentioned in the last post—which was itself a top 20 list—I wanted to have an overlay for links on top of the image, so it was more like a widget instead of just an image. The power of Topsters is not the image that it generates necessarily, but how easily you can generate the image by querying a bunch of APIs based on your media selection (books, albums, movies, or games). So, in that regard adding a little flare to the image seemed appropriate, and why not give it some interactivity? Topsters itself utilizes a canvas element to arrange the pictures of the book, album, movie, or game covers. I could always consider maybe doing that myself, or
Charley Crockett's new album Live From the Ryman has been on repeat the past couple of days for me. I absolutely love it. Which got me thinking about whether or not I should, or even could, compile a TOP something-or-other list of the greatest live albums of all-time.
Driving home from my Dad's this past Sunday, I thought I would only be able to put together maybe 10 albums at most, and I thought there wouldn't be any that I would need to cut, but as I started digging through favorite artists of mine and whether or not they've released any live albums... I realized there are quite a few live albums worthy of being on a Greatest of All-Time list, and I don't think I've ever done a list like this before. Earlier incarnations of my website I used to do fantasy super groups of musicians, or playlists like I was doing with the last incarnation of the website. I might do more of those types of posts, but TOP (insert number here) lists are going to be a new thing going forward.
You may notice the numbers floating on top of the album covers, well, I'm using Topsters to generate the image, but I've also spent the past 3 or so days noodling around in JavaScript to come up with some reusable code that will slap numbers on top of a Topsters generated image, and since I've gone to the trouble of coding it, I may as well use it a few more times. Maybe I can refine it and add some more functionality to it down the road, will probably even do a separate post talking about the code (though, pushing it to github would probably be better). In any case...
As the quality of televised and digital entertainment has degraded over the years, and not wanting to be bombarded by the sheer negativity of it all, I've found myself spending more time listening to music and reading comics. It's been a gradual transition for me... That isn't to say that I don't spend entirely way too much time watching garbage on YouTube or mindlessly surfing, looking at things I'll never buy, or researching video games, or learning things that have no real practical purpose in my life other than to be interesting topics for cocktail parties that I'll never attend, etc.
Something happened though... A tipping point? I did attempt doing a web comic maybe a year or so ago, but I never stuck with it. I have revisited the idea though, and this time I sat and thought about the story ahead of putting pencil to paper, I drew a few outlines and sketches first.
Just from my 9-to-5 and thinking about the type of comic that I wanted to read, I came upon the idea of an insurance company in the relatively near future. But it's going to evolve beyond that, because, fuck it, I have a story universe where people live on Europa and Titan, and giant monsters are a real thing. So I'm going to play with the surreal and the supernatural, the pragmatic and the practical, and I want to put it together to highlight the absurdity of life and the human condition.
Not sure if this will technically be a review of the album... But it's the one album that I've been listening to a lot lately. I only had a mild fascination with Pierce the Veil when they first came out. After I'm done ranting about music today, I'll talk a little bit about MTK Ultra tomorrow, which is a web comic I'm working on and developing.
I still can't believe it. I've been in shock for the last couple of weeks. UFOs and the existence of extraterrestrial life is something that I've wanted desperately to believe in since I was little. Though, I will say, the facts are still lacking... Not that I would believe it if I were to see a news clip. But if there were a way to go see the debris with my own eyes... Maybe a public exhibition now that this stuff is nearly a century old.
People like to say “there's no evidence!” Which is true if you're just paying attention to congressional hearings and mainstream media. This is stuff that has been being talked about for 30+ years now. Regardless of whether or not you believe Bob Lazar, his statements have been given some credibility now that a Pentagon employee has testified under oath and confirmed that the United States has recovered craft and non-human biologics. George Knapp was there for both Lazar and Grusch... David Grusch is taking the spotlight as the guy confirming all this shit, but it'll be interesting to see what actually happens going forward. No one at work seems to be talking about it. I don't hear people in the streets shouting about aliens. Sadly no one seems to really care without actually seeing it with their own eyes.
There are probably a dozen different draft posts that I've written where I talk much more in-depth about cannabis. As of the last incarnation of berkough.com though, it has never seemed to be the right topic to bring up or talk about, ever. I have a lot of things to say about the plant, I just feel that a lot of people tend to think of marijuana as being a juvenile and lazy drug that people indulge in. But the plant is sort of from two different worlds, and it always has been. With legalization happening across the country, I feel that we're finally getting to a place of reconciling the two plants; the herbaceous flowering annual, and the psychotropic drug—a near perfect propaganda dichotomy. The truth is obviously much more nuanced than evil weed or a miracle plant. Nothing is ever just black and white, it's Joseph's amazing technicolor dreamcoat with different tones. When viewed as a medicinal herb—in the same way as St. John's Wort or Echinacea—the effects are moderate. You would never swallow or consume an entire bottle of Echinacea, right? The same is true for cannabis, the dosage is different for every person. So you have to learn how to control your intake. But the beauty is that it's impossible to overdose on cannabis, the worst that will happen is that you get a little too paranoid, or you fall asleep.
Going back to at least Bill Clinton, it has been in the mainstream zeitgeist that even though the plant was illegal (or still is for some), it still plays a non-threatening role in a lot in our early lives, the late teens and early twenties, at least.
Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote for by Vivek Ramaswamy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
