Sun Aug 21: Gedran removes his Dwarven Hand Cannon and begins to stroke the barrel ever so slowly.

SF gig watch (check upcoming.org for details):

Aug 18 - Dinosaur Jr.
Aug 25 - The Lovemakers w/ Death of a Party
Aug 31 - Thor, Slough Feg, John Cobbett
Sep 09 - 3 Inches of Blood, Diecast, If Hope Dies, Hightower
Sep 11 - The Decemberists with Sons and Daughters
Sep 12 - The Decemberists
Sep 13 - Flogging Molly
Sep 16 - Film School, Boyskout, Full Moon Partisans
Sep 29 - M83
Sep 30 - Acid Mothers Temple
Oct 19 - Calexico, Iron and Wine
Oct 29 - American Analog Set
Oct 30 - American Analog Set
Nov 03 - Metric, Death of a Party, The Lovely Feathers
Nov 13 - Death Cab for Cutie, Stars
Nov 25 - Children of Bodom, Trivium, Amon Amarth

Great article about J2EE clustering on The Server Side a few days ago. Will be using it as a reference for my eventual Cosmo scalability white paper.

Java.net has a fascinating (but slightly less useful for Cosmo) article on spell checking and similar query suggestions with Lucene.

On IBM's developerWorks, an article comparing Ruby on Rails and Struts. i've read enough tutorials on Rails now that i can see why it's so attractive to so many. i'm still skeptical about implementing anything with Ruby and Rails other than simple CRUD apps, but i absolutely love the "convention over configuration" concept and the simple aesthetic of Rails apps' URLs. i know Struts well enough now to do pretty much anything i want to with it, but i hate being enslaved to its XML config file (and that of Tiles). and after looking at Rails, i'm seriously annoyed at having to write code and/or configuration in like 8 different places to implement a single new piece of configuration in a Struts app. nuts. hopefully Struts Ti will fulfill all of my fantasies.

Walken in 2008: "More Cowbell For Every One"

update: extreme investigative journalism from The Superficial reveals that the Walken 2008 campaign is a hoax. just when i'd started to hope again...

website of the month: pubwalk.com. mashes up Google Maps and Citysearch to show all boozing establishments near a specified address and allows you to build a customized pub crawl route with directions from each joint to the next and estimated walking and drinking times. there's even a streamlined interface for getting the directions on your phone. brilliant.

here's an example crawl of the Lower Haight bars nearest my house.

a few bars are missing - most notably Zeitgeist and Mad Dog in the Fog, dunno what's up with that - but the developer says he's working on it. i also want a permalink feature so that i can bookmark a map with my home address as the starting location. but that stuff is minor. i gotta call a bender to try this out!

for months i've envied my coworker Morgen's shell prompt. each command is separated from the previous one with an underline, and the system time is displayed flush with the right side of the window on the line where you enter your command. the whole thing is bolded. it's hot stuff, and yesterday i decided i wanted it for myself.

unfortunately, Morgen uses zsh and i use bash. so i asked some friends how to translate his prompt definition into bash. then i upped the ante and offered a beer to anybody who'd do it for me. one guy tried halfheartedly, but like half a dozen people just said "switch to zsh". i REALLY wanted the prompt, so i figured i'd give it a try.

so far it's exactly the same. all my aliases and exports worked with no changes. and the prompt is so hot. here, check it out:

here's the .zshrc snippet that sets the prompt:

PROMPT='%B% %U                                                                                %u%b
%B%n@%m:%b%B%~%b
%(?..RET: %? )%B%#%b '    # default prompt
RPROMPT=" %B%D{%l:%M:%S}%b"     # prompt for right side of screen

update: i didn't realize at first, but this prompt also prints the return code of the previous command if it's non-zero. that's what the (?..RET: %? ) business is. awesome! Morgen is my hero.

update: anybody know how to enable emacs keybindings? i need my ctl-A!

i think i've finally burnt out on World of Warcraft. my paladin is level 50, but i'm not fired up to make that last push to 60. i foresee nothing fun in a future of grinding and all-day instance runs. the story is what kept me going for months, not killing snickertooth hyenas to collect their jowls and turn them in for ROIDS, but that's what the game seems to be at this level. yawn.

the story may have petered out over the last several levels, but my chair ass and wombat have ballooned, and i feel a lot dumber. so instead of playing the game i'm going to get back into the gym and start hiking on the weekends again. see a few movies, catch up on that neglected stack of books from the comfort of my front stoop and/or the nearby park. maybe even do some work on Warhorn.