. . e p h e m e r a l e u p h o r i a . .

02:41 pm - Well.

Today is my birthday. It doesn't really feel that great though.

I am lucky enough not to have much experience with loss in my life. Three of my grandparents have passed away, each death affecting me in its own way. Although none of them were ancient, each had lived full lives.

On Saturday, my friend Ben's life was cut terribly short after he was hit by a car in Brooklyn.

Ben introduced me to so many things in my life. We weren't particularly close, but a lot of my current identity can be traced back to him. More important than his effect on me are his relentless contributions to the world at large, and particularly the arts. The world lost somebody that was truly making it a better place, and whose ability to influence the change he wanted to see was only growing.

I feel so much for his family and friends. I feel frail myself. I will never have his spirit, or his courage. He is deeply missed.

http://www.g-rad.org/benner/memorial/
[Gaper's] [Newcity Art] [Kimya] [GR Press]

05:06 am - people with the need to know

I am in grad school at Loyola, as a MS in Comp Sci candidate

I work downtown, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, doing programming in financial algorithms most of the day

I live in Streeterville, around Ontario and St. Clair

I still miss spinach.

I just got back from a concert. This will be the year of many concerts for me.

01:57 pm

I love spinach. I'm so bummed.

02:35 pm - Ethanol

This is something that I've always figured was true, and so dislike the recent advertisements from car companies promoting Ethanol: http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

I'm all for alternative fuels, but I don't think ethanol is the most appropriate avenue to pursue.

09:44 pm - skype

I encourage everyone who reads this to try Skype out.

As someone with only a cell phone, I see it having a lot of potential. I month or two ago I made a crisp, clear phone call to an acquaintance in Australia in the middle of a weekday. I made the call with my computer, and it didn't cost me anything, because we were both using Skype.

Skype is not the end-all solution to Internet telephony. It is not a package like Vonage and others provide, supplanting normal telephones. It does have exceptional rates if you want to call people using regular phones, but I haven't tried this yet (I am a cheap college student). It is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so I see no reason why it can't grow to the popularity of AIM and the like.

If you would like to add me, on Skype I am michael.greene. I am always connected, though not always available. If I recognize you though, I'll attempt to return your call.
As always, cross-posted to my blog

04:30 pm - Xanga RSS Feeds

Have you ever heard of Xanga?  It is another blogging / community system, like LiveJournal.  In my opinion, it is worse than LJ, and I don't like how it is closed-source, but that's not important right now.

I have made a script that will let you get an RSS feed of a Xanga account.  What this means is that you can now:

Syndicate a Xanga feed on LiveJournal: If you have a friend with a Xanga account, you can go to livejournal.com/syn and add
http://ephemeraleuphoria.com/xanga/rss.php?username=THEIRXANGANAME

This will get LiveJournal to check the person's Xanga account on a regular basis, and when it updates, add their posts to your friends page.  Pretty cool, right?  You can only setup a syndicated account if you have a paid/permanent account, but after it's setup any free account can use it.

Add a LiveBookmark to Firefox (or similar in Safari): If you use Mozilla Firefox, as I highly recommend, you can now add a LiveBookmark for the Xanga account if you would like.  This will let Firefox tell you when the Xanga site is updated.  Chu Yeow's Blog has some more information on this. (or you can ask me how to do it / what it is)

Add a Xanga site to any feed reader: You can now keep a Xanga updated in FeedDemon, Bloglines, NetNewsWire, or any of the other popular feed readers out there.  They can be set to automatically grab the latest headlines from thousands of news sources which offer RSS feeds, and now you can set them to grab the latest Xanga posts too.

As mentioned above, the RSS feed of someone's Xanga site can be found at

http://ephemeraleuphoria.com/xanga/rss.php?username=THEIRXANGANAME

If you would like to see the code--It is licensed under the GPL, and is written in PHP)--it can be found at

http://ephemeraleuphoria.com/xanga/index.html

I hope someone gets good use out of this.  I got ceejamblues to syndicate my friend's Xanga account on LiveJournal, and it worked beautifully. (Thanks again)

Now to do some homework, instead of just programming...

Current Mood: geeky

02:34 pm - Who knew programming was this fun?

Dear LJ Friends,

Could someone who has a paid account please do me a favor? I have done some less-than-rigorous programming recently, but I think it has been very fruitful. I need to test it before I put it out there though, and well... I need to see if someone can add it as a syndicated account on LJ.

Can anyone add

http://www.ephemeraleuphoria.com/ xanga/rss.php?username=gazoombo

as a syndicated account for me? I would be very appreciative... you can do so at the bottom of http://www.livejournal.com/syn/.

Let me know if you can, and thank you again.

Current Mood: accomplished

05:42 pm - Firefox

Seriously, it's about time you all switched. There are thousands of reasons out there to use Firefox as your browser (or at least Mozilla or Opera) instead of IE. Do it.

11:42 am - oh man, steak is good.

12:51 am - Nomad Jukebox 3 (aka the Thwacked Fish)

So... about a month ago, I let my little brother use my Mp3 player, namely a Nomad Jukebox 3 (a very cool Mp3 player, especially notable for its advanced recording abilties in comparison with others in its class). It hasn't worked since that day.

My particular Nomad has always been slightly buggy with its battery difficulties, but I had intended to remedy that by purchasing a new (or possibly additional) battery. However, this was indeed a dire situation. The Nomad still booted up, but in "Rescue Mode" (vaguely analogous to the BIOS Setup on a PC). Options are Clean Up, Format All, Reload OS, and Reboot. Clean Up does nothing. Format All displays a dialog box that says Formatting... for quite some time, but never actually does anything. Reload OS gives a screen that says "Hard Disk Problem" (yes, I know, an immediate "uh oh"), and Reboot... well, that one works; but it doesn't help me.

So tonight, with the help of articles from nomadness, ( I decided to take my JB3 apart )

Current Mood: tired

01:46 am - New LJ User

Well, it looks like I'm now a LiveJournal user like the rest of the world, thanks to Cheryl. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, because I already procrastinate enough via trading, theJMTP, and the multitude of other message boards out there. Hopefully though, this site will let people see a little more of me -- especially if they've never seen me at all, or if I've recently moved three hours away from them.

Await the next entry.