So, I'm at CFUnited 2008 at the Washingto Convention Center here in DC. Its always a nifty experiance to be at CFUnited, and this year has thus far been no exeption, even though its just getting started. I'd bore you all with notes from the keynote presentations from Michael Smith of TeraTech and Ben Forta and Adam Lehman of Adobe, but I'm not sure many tech people even look at the blog, so I wont bore you.

Ok, so this is probably the single strangest thing about me... I've discovered that I have a love of propaganda posters, at least of the WWII variety. They carry a sense of urgency and importance that seems almost comical when paired with phrases like "Save waste fats for explosives".

I like the heavy-handed artistic style that seems to be common in a lot of them: simple color schemes paired with dire imagery. Its very utilitarian and inspirational at the same time, and I find them beautiful in a way thats hard to put a finger on.

Any way, if you too wish to browse some propaganda posters, you can find a couple of nice repositories on Flickr:

War Posters WWII posters

And I've included my favorite with this post.

see more crazy cat pics

I think this is the second time that I've used that headline... *sigh*

What am I up to that I'm so busy I can post? Nothing... nothing really interesting is happening, heh. I think I'm done playing World of Warcraft again, so back to programming and trying to keep up with weight lifting.

The weekend before last I got a nasty flu bug that put me down for the count, and its now refusing to leave. Colds suck in general, but having one linger on and on is even more annoying.

The only good thing that came out of it is that I lost like 12 pounds in a week due to not eating and other flu symptoms.

And yes, I feel better now that I've complained in public :)

Last month I spearheaded the start of a weight loss challenge at my job place. With money on the line to see who can shed the largest percentage of body weight, I've been counting my calories and working out. Add in my Lent resolution to do without eating out at restaurants, and I've become a lot more aware of what I consume in a work day.

More

Sometimes, a cultural change makes itself very obvious in a very strange way. One such example is with a recent Levi's jeans commercial that mixes things up in a very odd way. I've seen this add a hundred times or more on TV:

Fairly normal jeans commercial fare... and last night I saw this one:

Thats not a joke, but a real live commercial.

As the Christmas season stalks up on me like a thief in the night, I've come to think a lot about some of the people I don't see as often any more. I had a ton of friends in high school that I now hear from like once every few months, and ones from college that I hear from even less.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Best Wishes to you all. Sorry I'm bad at returning emails, picking up the phone, and in all other ways getting back you you.

If you know me (which you probably do since your at my site), drop me an email. For once, I promise that I'll reply, and in short order.

Sorry for the down time yesterday, but there was a complication moving my site to a ColdFusion 8 server. Very soon I'll be able to get some demos of the image effects set up and running, and a number of others as well.

My friend Anthony has put up a display to capture random spam messages from bots. You can check out some of his weird results here: http://experimental-playground.com/messages.php.

Over the past three days, the comet Holmes has brightened from a 17th-magnitude to around a 2.5 magnitude brighteness: bright enough in fact to be seen with the naked eye. According to Sky & Telescope this isn't unprecedented; this is how the comet was found to begin with, 115 years ago.

As of tonight the Sky & Telescope article has an update:

Using Alpha and Delta Per as comparisons (magnitudes 1.9 and 3.0), MacRobert estimated the comet to be magnitude 2.8, just a trace fainter (more similar to Delta) than two nights ago. In stabilized 10x50 binoculars it looked just the same as before only bigger, with all its salient details easier to see.

I'm no astronomer, but that all just sounds weird. This thing flares up by an insane amount and although it has stablized in brightness, its features are just getting bigger... sounds like its headed at us, heh.

Some people are simply skilled in ways others can't understand. This is one of those people.