Where’s the peanut butter?!

Ryan once said I needed a hobby and by golly, I’ve got one now. I
recently mentioned that I got a Nabaztag ( href="http://www.psoul.com/index.cgi/computers/mrbun.html">Mr.
Bun) and tonight I spent a little time hacking href="http://nabaztalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=342">the API and
finished my first application which (to no one’s surprise) is Yet
Another MyBus wrapper. Of the
various things you could do to a cute electronic bunny to completely
suck every last ounce of appeal right out of it, I think “make it tell
you in a dull electronic voice whether a bus is on time or projected
to be late” has got to rank pretty high - but I’ve done it!

The setup is pretty simple
• Start with a location and bus that href="http://mybus.org/metrokc/avl.jsp?id=5506&route=48">you ride
  somewhat frequently

• Then whip up some php to scrape that page and parse out the
  buses going in the right direction, the scheduled time, and the
  estimated time (and maybe the route in case you’re visiting a page
  where href="http://mybus.org/metrokc/avl.jsp?id=5506&route=71&route=72&route=73">more
  than one bus can get you to your destination)

• urlencode() the resulting message and send it through Violet’s API
  to your rabbit to make your rabbit tell you whether some buses are on
  time or not.

• Set up an at job to make your computer hit that page
  whenever you’d like your rabbit to announce that the bus is coming.

Et voila! Now you have somewhat a somewhat ambient announcement
letting you know whether you need to hustle in the morning or not.
I’m satisfied with this test but not incredibly excited about it
because I already have a bunch of other mechanisms for getting that
data - but I am excited with the relative ease that I was able to add
this new small piece of practical functionality to my rabbit. They
recently also added a fix that allows shoutcast streams to be played
indefinitely (or, it seems, until another announcement preempts it),
which is also really cool. I love my bunny.

Over lunch I read on jwz’s blog about a href="http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/16586892.htm">sex
offender in Florida winning the lottery and was somewhat surprised
by the ad syndication offering pictures of sex offenders. “Who wants
to see a bunch of pictures of sex offenders?” I thought. Mail order
brides are one thing, but who’s into sex offenders? Then I had this
epiphany about my obvious bias against almost all kinds of advertising
and realized “hey, this could actually be useful and isn’t just about
helping me hook up (like most of the online advertising).” This was
an interesting observation.

So I clicked the link and got to some page that had nothing to do
with sex offenders or seeing where they are in my neighborhood.
Thankfully, my fragile world of stereotypes about ads and marketing
didn’t completely come down around me.

But I was inspired enough to do another quick search and find two
useful resources for finding sex offenders in Seattle near various
neighborhoods. This isn’t really anything I’ve thought about much in
the past (in spite of hearing stories from Moshe about the notice he
received when a level 3 sex offender moved into his neighborhood), but
now that I’ve got a dog and Tanya and I spend a decent amount of time
taking him for walks, I’ve realized it might be helpful to know which
sections of town are best avoided.

One resource is the from the href="http://www.metrokc.gov/sheriff/services/sex_offender_search/index.aspx">King
County Sheriff’s office sex offender search which lets you search
for level 2 or 3 sex offenders by zip code or by name. Another, more
useful, page is the href="http://ml.waspc.org/SearchAround.aspx">Washington State Sex
Offender Information Center which also lets you search by similar
criteria and presents a map showing where sex offenders and has links
to mug shots. The especially creepy thing is that there are 21
registered sex offenders with valid addresses within a few miles of
where I live, 18 of them live on a similar perimeter which follows the
border of the University of Washington.

Monday night was music night in Seattle and I was really excited for the show at Neumos. Camera Obscura headlined with Portastatic opening. Part of me wants to dislike Camera Obscura and not for the usual reason (that is, they aren’t generally popular) with their semi-disinterested Scottish ethos, but their melodies are just irresistable and in spite of my inner grump, I can’t deny they sounded really, really good. But it was Portastatic I was really excited to see. I wasn’t sure how the format would work since I only ever see pictures of Mac as Portastatic. This turned out to not be too far from how they roll as a band - on stage it was just Mac with an acoustic guitar and a violinist. The arrangements sometimes seemed a little sparse but I thought it worked. Every time I’ve seen Mac has been a treat - a couple years ago he was in town as part of Lambchop’s ensemble (which felt very close to what i’d expect from a backcountry hootenanny) and Superchunk always played with a confidence and energy on par with the best shows i’ve seen (like the Pixies). Overall, it was a great night.

Now I’m trying to find someone to go to the Thermals show next week. It’s hard when you’re twice as old as the kids going to the shows and none of your friends are into the same bands, sometimes…but The Body, The Blood, The Machine is too good to pass up. The last time I saw them was a couple years ago at the Showbox with David Cross and the cast of Tinkle. Eric came along to that show and I’m now reminded how sad it is that he’s not around - I probably could have talked him into going next week.

If you have one or more of the following characteristics:

• Addiction to cute (symptoms: you check cuteoverload.com >1 times daily, you have submitted pictures to stuffonmycat.com)
• Chronic adopter of new gadgets (e.g. Roomba owners or those waiting impatiently for the Chumby)
• You have about $180 burning a hole in your pocket

Then you should immediately order a Nabaztag/tag and add “MrBun” (that’s me) and “Thoppy” (that’s Tanya) to your burrow.