Tiki LAB Blog

iTunes Dead Tracks Easy Fix

2007-10-06T02:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a fix to the dreaded iTunes "Missing Tracks" problem:

1. Make a smart playlist called "All Files" with this rule: "Artist" is not "123456789" (or any nonsense name that won't be in your library).

2. Make a static playlist called "All Live Files".

3. Make a smart playlist called "Missing Files" with these rules: Match all of the following rules, Playlist is "All Files", Playlist is not "All Live Files"

4. Select all the files from "All Files" and drag them into "All Live Files". The dead files marked (!) will not copy over.

5. "Missing Files" will contain all of your dead files. Select all and delete. Voila, a nice clean iTunes library.

I have these three playlists in their own folder. Whenever I gather more than a couple dead tracks for whatever reason, I delete all the tracks in "All Live Files" and repeat steps 4 and 5.

(I originally posted this hint at simra.net.)

Blondie In Phoenix

2006-05-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Going to see Blondie tonight with Martin from LA. Should be fun...

Then tomorrow I go to Las Vegas to see Blondie on Friday. I'll be staying with Justin until Monday.

Twilight

2006-05-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

I used to love twilight, but it's no longer mysterious
The blur makes everything flat, two dimensional
The fading light used to be vibrant, now it's indistinct

Glitchy Wednesday

2006-03-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

We had a server glitch on Wednesday night and may have lost about 30 minutes of data. Please repost if you think you lost any messages during this time. The monkeys and I apologize for any inconvenience.

Frappr Update

2006-03-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

I've updated the Frappr... made the map a little bigger, zoomed out so you can see the world and not just Phoenix on initial load, and added the Frappr pictures to the bottom.

Mighty Mouse Won't Scroll Up Or Down?

2006-01-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Turn it upside down and move the ball a little, as explained by guests at stevenf.

Google "Failure" Search

2006-01-14T03:07:00.000-07:00

Search for failure on Google. Check out the number one result.

Schoolteacher Dream

2006-01-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

I'd been hired to teach Algebra at an adult school in London, which is odd because I am not very good at math.

Kevin Nealon from Saturday Night Live came into the classroom and I stopped the class to introduce him and chat. He brought sticky donuts. Somehow the donuts got all over my face and glasses, and I said I'd be right back so I could go wash.

There were no washrooms in this school, so I crossed the very busy street looking for water. On the opposite corner was a residential neighborhood. Coming out of the brick fence of the corner house was a spout with water coming out. I saw the owner on the other side of the fence and I asked if the water was clean. He said "Yes... why?" and I said I wanted to wash my face. He said "Oh no, come around the fence and use the hose, that's draining from the garden". I came around, washed my face off, thanked the neighbors, and tried to walk back to the school.

I got lost. There was a huge multi-story mall that looked slightly Japanese. The sun had gone down. People were out for a night on the town. I saw several women dressed up walking or hailing cabs to nightclubs.

There was an underpass. It ended up looking like a long subway tunnel. The walls were white with rounded edges, like dull porcelain. I walked for about 1/4 block and realized the passage was getting smaller. The further I walked, the closer the walls got. I reached the end, and there were two portals, up or down. I tried up. That didn't work too well, as it continued to get smaller as I went up, so I couldn't fit through any of the upper portals. I tried down. Now this was strange. It was like a washroom, but all fake. Shapes like a sink, toilet, etc, but not functional. And all made of this white porcelain-like material.

I came back out and looked around. A woman was there wondering where to go just like me, I told her don't bother with the portals as they went nowhere. Then we saw a door behind the portals that had been previously obscured. It was a sliding door, like you'd see in department stores, that automatically opened. I noticed a sign. It said the white coverings were an exhibition done by Virgin and that the walls would be back to their normal, red selves next month.

I walked out and talked to two valet parking attendants at the mall. They pointed towards the school... not far at all.

As I was walking, David Bowie came out of a shop and started walking next to me. We exchanged hellos and David said there was something poking his back. I said yeah I feel that too, and then a woman came by and slipped her hand into his pocket and extracted a ticket. I then realized she was not a pickpocket but instead was his assistant, and I had one too, and she came up and did the same thing. We agreed the assistants were annoying. I said goodbye and continued on.

As I was approaching the school, the phone rang and I woke up.

V330 As Modem

2005-12-29T02:15:00.001-07:00

Instructions on how to turn my Motorola V330 cell phone into a pretty speedy modem, courtesy of Stacking Fault.

MacOS X 10.4 + Motorola V330 + T-Mobile = 115kbps

Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas... thanks so much everyone for the cards and emails. :) Have a great New Year and I hope to see you all in 2006!

Check out my Christmas dinner... traditional Mexican tamales. Quite good, quite good.

Lasik Eye Surgery Update

2005-12-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

I didn't really want to do this update. Thinking about my eye problems is depressing. But I want to document what's happened in 18 months. I don't ever want anyone to have to go through this, so I feel I should be as public as possible about it.

I saw the doctor that did my Lasik surgery in October 2005 for the last time. He said I was fine and that the "flaps look good" etc, the whole speech he usually gives me, and said I didn't need to see him again for another year. I complained about my dry eyes again, and he said to keep using drops. I had the surgery in April 2004, and I have used drops in my eyes anywhere from a few times to literally once every hour a day since then. Buying new corrective lenses every six months would have been cheaper than keeping me in drops nowadays!

He had no answer for my sleeping with my eyes open, and said that this is not a result of the surgery. I know it is, but I guess that's my word against his.

I don't wear glasses at home much, which of course was the goal of the surgery. However, my eyes are still quite blurry without glasses.

I can see the computer fine, but I have some trouble with the TV set. If I'm watching CNN I need glasses, because I can't stand to see the newscrawl go by and not know what it's saying.

Daily activities are still impaired. I still need glasses to read the signs in the grocery store. I cannot see well enough, with or without glasses, to drive at night. Note the pictures I uploaded... approximations of what I saw before with contacts and after the surgery. (It's really hard to show what I see on a static, 2D picture. The blurs are really too "soft", but they obscure about the same area as what I actually see obscured. This is about as close as I can get.) My eyes are "20/20" but all that means is I can make out the sign in the picture. Would you feel safe driving with these "20/20" eyes?

Dusk is awful. It used to be my favorite time of the day, when you'd get those soft lights and shadows. Now my pupils dilate to let more light in, the contrast is next to nothing, and consequentally the streetlights look like flashlights shining right at me. I stay indoors now until the sun's gone down completely.

The worst part, however, is waking up in the morning. My eyes feel like leather and I can't see. I immediately reach for my drops to lubricate them enough to let them open and close. It's painful to open my eyes enough to get the drops in, but once they are in, I can see enough to get to the bathroom. I wash them out with tap water, and then add some more drops. In about 15-30 minutes I put my first Restasis drops of the day in.

I know this routine can't be good for them, but since my surgery my eyelids just don't close when I'm sleeping. My boyfriend has verified this, and I can only imagine it's pretty creepy to watch! They aren't wide open, but just enough that you can see the bottom of my pupil. I have blacked out windows, so the sun won't come in and hit me in my unprotected eye while I'm sleeping. When I have a good night, I'm able to wake up several times during the night and put drops in. On a bad night, I'm too tired and sleep right through. So depending on how long I've slept, my eyes have gone anywhere from two to nine hours open, without blinking.

Restasis has slightly increased my tear production during the day, but no amount of tears can offset the eyes being open all night long.

All this because I thought it would be easier to not have to wear contacts. If I only knew, I would have stuck with contacts and glasses 'til the day I died. Sure, I can see now without them. But the trade-offs absolutely are not worth it.

Sometimes when I think about what happened I feel like a chump. Sometimes I just feel very, very angry. But mostly I feel utterly depressed about the situation, because I know no matter what happens in the future, my eyes have been permanantly damaged. This surgery was the worst decision I ever made in my life, and not coincidentally a quite uninformed one as well.

I urge anyone considering this surgery to first read LasikDisaster.com, LaserMyEye.org or SurgicalEyes.org. Your eyes are too delicate, too precious, to take this surgery at all lightly. Please get the facts before you do anything.

PS: I have removed all contextual advertising from the blog section of my site due to Lasik ads popping up.

All Night Dancing

2005-07-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo, I just finished up an all-nighter working on the Blondie site. Behind the scenes for now, but hopefully soon Chris will have a more interactive experience going. Yay. :)

New Server!

2005-07-03T04:49:00.000-07:00

The move for Tiki LAB is complete! Everything's on a new dedicated server (Duckwood Falls). This should speed up things and help with any remaining delayed email issues. Woo hoo!

50s Collector Lady & Son Dream

2005-06-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

I think I was about 19 in this dream. I had this great loft type space in the house I used to live in back then. My loft had a small square hole in the wall over a hallway where I'd go in, like a hole in a tree for a squirrel, with a very hard to navigate thin foldable staircase (almost like one of those stairways that comes out of a UFO). I had all kinds of cool stuff in there like a nice stereo and my own bathroom, an adjoining room over the garage, a patio out back, etc.

My dad brought this guy home that he worked with one day so I could meet him. I think he was trying to fix us up. It was David Arquette (about 19 in the dream also).

So we went over to David's house which was across the street. His mom was there. He also had a younger Japanese sister. Lots of people were there. They were having some kind of birthday party or something. I introduced myself around.

Somehow I got to talking with the mom, who's name was Jaclyn. She was just wacky but very charming. She collected old furniture, mostly 50s but some 40s, 30s, and even turn of the century. She's have alcoves decorated with all matching furniture. The house was huge, like a museum. I went into one alcove and posed a la Barker's Beauties, she laughed and did it too. She was a 50's housewife herself.

David was following us around too, he and I were really enjoying watching his mom show off her furniture.

There was a weird statue in one alcove of two naked Romanesque soldiers fighting, one with a fire sword and one with a water sword.

Jaclyn had sheets up on rods to keep out the sun, which was odd. She had old dresses hanging on hangers as decor.

David measured how tall he was on a ruler that was hanging on a wall in an L shape, with a little platform to stand on (weird), but when I tried it I was 6'4". I knew I was 5'7" in real life, so after David made a joke about how I had to stand in the back of team photos (?) , I said well, I'm not really that tall.

Then Jason text messaged me (in real life) and I woke up.

Lasik Nightmare

2005-06-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

Every day I wake up with sore, bloodshot, extremely DRY eyes. Why? Because when I got Lasik surgery, the machine they put me in, which manually opened my eyes so the laser could "fix" my eyes, stretched my eyes so wide open that it literally broke apart the nerve endings in my eyelids, and the suction they use to stabilize the eye killed the nerve endings in my corneas. My eyes can no longer sense when they are not closed when I'm sleeping. This is not unusual. It's a common side effect of Lasik surgery:

"A recent study by the Mayo Clinic's Department of Ophthalmology (Rochester, Minn.) showed that the number of subbasal and stromal nerve fiber bundles in the corneal flap decreases by 90 percent immediately after laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK). During the first year after LASIK, subbasal nerve fiber bundles gradually return, but by 1 year the number remains less than half of the number before LASIK." (SOURCE: Lee BH, McLaren JW, Erie JC, et. al. Reinnervation in the cornea after LASIK. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 2002;43(12):3660-64.)

What's worse is that I cannot get a good night's sleep because I have so many paralysis dreams. The body paralyzes itself as it sleeps, but since my eyes are open, quite often I actually know I am asleep when I'm sleeping, and I can't move. It's literally a nightmare.

I urge anyone considering this surgery to please reconsider. The risks involved are NOT worth it. I still have to wear glasses to see clearly, and I now have added problems such as halos, lack of depth perception, lack of contrast, and the afore mentioned eyelid problem.

No lawyer would take my case when I said I was not told about these side effects. They say all these symptoms are normal. If this is normal for Lasik, then why isn't performing Lasik considered a crime in this country? I would not inflict this kind of punishment on my worst enemy.

The circumstances I find myself in are so extremely frustrating, I feel the only way I can do anything positive about it is to warn people. So please, don't do it!

A Month In St. Pete

2005-06-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

I travelled to St. Pete, Florida on May 9, 2005 to visit my sweetie Lee Duval.

Being out of my usual element (i.e. away from my computer) seems to have given me a big spurt of creativity. I started some paintings. They are coming along nicely. I may get to show these at Star Booty.

Lee and I have been working on our 1925 house (which is near the Salvador Dali Museum y'all), picking stuff like vanities, cabinets, flooring, paint colors, and the like. The plumbing is done, wiring is almost done, two walls need to be completed, then drywall, then painting... landscaping, etc. Our idea for the decor is kind of period 1930s as seen through midcentury Disney Adventureland.

Went to a wedding yesterday. The bridesmaids dresses were all black which looked cool. Speaking of which, Lee wrestled with one of the bridesmaids. At the reception.

Lee and I are collaborating on songs for an album and a possible tour.

I am also working on some Swivek material for Brad Jacobson.

Finally, Lee and I took a two week road trip with Dave Haberkorn to record Arcade Inferno's first full length in Gainsville. Arcade Inferno are Lee and Dave. I came along for the ride, pizza, whistling and bad hand claps, all of which prolly won't make the final cut. The songs came out great. I would say sort of a scary, evil punk dish with some Television and maybe a lil Replacements flavor, but only in the sauce.

Hell In A Handbag Productions - Blog

2005-05-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hell In A Handbag Productions has a great blog, but where's the RSS feed, David?

RSSexy

2005-04-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Well, Tiger is out and it's got that Safari RSS thingie, so maybe that will up my blogging ratio some. But prolly not.

Celebrity State Fair Club Reunited

2005-03-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

I dreamt I was on a VH1 reality show. It was being filmed at the Arizona State Fair. I had to get to the state fairgrounds (in Phoenix) from Flagstaff, or Prescott, or Sedona, I forget which. Getting there was hard. I along with thousands of other people were being herded along a long freeway/aquaduct type road, on foot. It was crowded and there were lines for stuff, like checkpoints, that reminded me of the passport lines to get into the UK from the US.

Graham Jones, Nick Heyward and Les Nemes from Haircut 100 were on the show. So was Barry Williams ("Greg Brady" from the Brady Bunch), although he seemed to be on a different "team". This was all taking place in a little "break room" type of room with refrigerators etc at the fair, very cheap, with a section of the room designated the "stage". Haircut 100 (or at this point, Haircut 50?) wanted to play a song, so they did "Tell Me How", a vaguely Haircut 100 sounding song I'm sure I made up in my head, but in the dream it had been a huge solo hit for Nick.

They finished, but they needed more players to do the next song "Love Plus One"... there were only three after all, and the other guys weren't there for some reason. Finally Courtney Love said she'd jump in. I thought she'd play guitar or somthing but she ended up playing cowbell (!).

They started. Her part was coming up (the chorus) and she was busy chatting with Cathay Che (the writer) so I had to physically get her started on the cowbell. The second time she started she was way off, and the band lost their footing and it ended up sounding wonky.

Barry Williams apparently had enough and forced them to stop, so he could perform on of the Brady Bunch songs with a hired band. The Haircut 100 guys were perturbed at this turn of events and our team all left to eat, or go out drinking, or something.

I was disgusted with their shabby treatment and I cleverly wrote on a wall "VH1 sucks". Simon Pegg (recently from "Shaun Of The Dead") was with me and he laughed when I showed him. I think Simon went off to find the rest of our team at this point. I went back to our barracks and showered (possibly feeling very dirty from agreeing to participate in a VH1 reality show), then went to bed.

I woke up at 2:30 AM and had to write this down here before I forgot it.

2004-11-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I'm in St. Pete, been here three days. Weather is unusually cool and dry for Florida according to all local pundits. Lee is a 100% supasexy living doll and a perfect host. Today we're at his work Star Booty and I'm getting a quick dye job by hairdresser to the stars Mimi Peterson... oops gotta go get my hair rinsed... more later.

Forum Back Up

2004-10-31T04:59:00.000-07:00

The forum's back with two updated "looks" and one "new" basic look to choose from. Check it out: http://www.tikilab.com/forum/

Cat. I'm A Kitty Cat.

2004-10-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

It's an ulcer. Apparently I will live and it should be cleared up by the time I get to Florida. YAY.

Not that she could tell. Diagnosis pending further tests but my doctor does not anticipate major problems. Whew. :)

Now watch the Kitty Cat Song bySteve Ibsen.

Love And Pride

2004-10-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

The forum will be up in a day or three. It takes a while to set up and we're on a new server. Apologies for the wait.

I have an appointment at 3 PM today. I'll let you know what happens.

Trip to Florida is two weeks away, whatever happens, it's gonna be done in two weeks!

Back From The Emergency Room - I'm OK (Relatively)

2004-10-23T01:39:00.002-07:00

At first I thought I was having a heart attack. I was having chest pains, heartburn, dizziness and everything.

They ran tests... blood work, an x-ray, and an EKG.

Not a heart attack, but most likely an ulcer. Possibly bleeding.

No treatment tonight, other than a drink that was a mix of Maalox and some numbing agent for my heartburn. I need to get checked by my regular physician and schedule more tests.

I don't know what would cause me to have an ulcer, but if that's what it is, the treatment would consist of medicine, a change to a blander diet (ick) and much less stress. Apparently I'm under a lot of stress, although I don't feel it like that.

It's good that it's not a heart attack.

What do I have an ulcer from? Life, I guess.

Once I got home, I watched this video and it cheered me up, even though it's supposed to be sad. It's pretty amazing:

The Sad Song

It's pretty, and the video is incredible. The video was created entirely using 15 second jpg movies from a Nikon still camera! What a novel idea. It reminds me of the Circlevision movies at Disneyland.

Crazy Streets

2004-08-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

15% Of US Population Has At Least One Personality Disorder

This supports my oft-repeated proclimation that everyone is a little crazy. At least 15% are crazy enough to hit the charts.

(No offense to anyone, I'm sure I'm just as crazy as you.)