This might seem like a ridiculous idea, but I’m fascinated by the World Chess Boxing Organization.

Holmes and Watson storm troopers. Coming soon to an Archie McPhee near me? I wouldn’t mind at all.

Via AlertNerd, who also recommends checking out the tragedies which tend to ruin the lives of various stick figures, and the dangers of the Nintendo DS Lite.

I really had no choice but to install Windows XP on the MacBook. I got really tired of firing up the old hoover of a Pentium IV laptop just to do a few silly things, and I was curious about how it would work on the Mac. So I did it.

It’s freakishly fast. Crazy stupid fast. I love it.

I didn’t notice the lack of a right-click option right off the bat, but it’s there. Or rather, it’s not. No right click for you. This seems like something rather trivial to fix. I did it by getting AutoHotKey and making a quick one-liner script:

^LButton::click right

It maps Control+Left Click to the Right Click command in one fell swoop. Voila. If you’re suffering from this problem, I made an exe that will run this script. Problem solved. AutoHotKey is a free, open source scripting engine. It includes a utility which will convert a hotkey script to an executable file. I created one and added it to my startup folder in Windows, so I can now get my right-click on even in the absence of the trusty trackball. Get the executable for the script here. (see the source).

So there. I’ve done my part. Now somebody get it together and throw together a trackpad driver that will give everyone two-finger scrolling and tap-clicking.

Update: Another gotcha, another hotkey. There’s no Delete key! This is fixed with the hotkey script:

F12::delete

Sweet.

Anyway, the post mentions ‘Mixed feelings’ because it seems so awful to ruin a perfectly good Mac with Windows, but on the other hand it definitely does fly. It helps that this is a fresh Windows install and the registry hasn’t had a chance to get all rotten yet. I need to remember to back it up now for the day will surely come when I’ll need to reinstall to get rid of the Windows cruft that will set in.

After shelling out all that money for LASIK, it turns out I could’ve done it myself. Damn.

In what must certainly be karmic justice for some awful thing I’ve done, tragedy struck Casa Mulling It Over this afternoon.

I got home to discover an unusual amount of clutter on my bedroom floor. Closer inspection revealed that this clutter consisted of large amounts of glass, water, bamboo, and papers. Further review showed, to my dismay, that the glass was broken. My carpentry skills apparently are not up to professional standards, and my stylish Ikea shelf had collapsed enough to allow the items it was holding to go sliding down to the ground. Along the way it dented my MacBook and knocked my new camera to the ground. The Macbook has survived with a minor scuff.

The camera is making feeble clicking noises when I turn it on. It then shows a cryptic “E18″ error code and shuts itself off.

There is broken glass everywhere, shards large and small. Coming soon, I’m sure, to a lacerated foot near me. I already acquired a glass sliver trying to clean everything up.

I hope April isn’t going to be one of those months.

Ok. I played up my machoness up to this point, but I’ll admit it: I’m somewhat apprehensive about getting my corneas sliced open and having my eyes shot with frickin’ lasers. If it all goes wrong and I end up blind, this will be my last post until I learn how to blog via braille. So here goes nothing.

Update: No reason to fear. The process went off without a hitch. I was in and out in an hour, and the actual surgery took less than 20 minutes. It was impressive. I came home, took the two valium pills I was given, and slept for six hours. I can now see at least as well as I did with my glasses. It’s fantastic.

Another Update: As it turns out, Michael Chu of Cooking for Engineers recently had LASIK, and he gives a remarkably thorough breakdown of how it went. It’s the same type of surgery I had (Wavefront LASIK), but he’s got pictures and more details. I couldn’t have described it better myself.

FYI: the best del.icio.us bookmarklet I’ve found yet: Add to del.icio.us

As if to make me eat my words, it seems that the public transportation system in LA gets a little more sketchy and ghetto with each trip I take. Last night it was in peak form.

I boarded the subway intending to go to Compression and see John Tejada and Dan Bell (Spoiler: I made it there alive! Check out the photo set). Everything started out seeming mellow enough on the subway train. North Hollywood is the last stop on the red line, and it’s generally sparsely populated with riders. This is in fact a bad thing, since those unruly riders with a touch of the crazy feel that this is like a license to express the full depth and breadth of their insanity.
It all started with a young enterprising lady walking through the subway offering to sell water, juice, and pop for reasonable prices. A simple and harmless enough activity, and none of the riders took issue with this. Well, all but one. An older and heavily intoxicated older gentleman began questioning her legal right to be selling these items on the train. She gave some resistance, but the older gentleman clearly displayed signs of intending to be assaultive. She moved on to the next train and avoided further altercations.

This should’ve been the end of the affair, but the older gentleman, who we’ll call Crazy Bob, was having none of that. Crazy Bob continued to shout at the young entrepreneur even through she was no longer present. This continued for some time, and a pair of hispanic youths commented to themselves that Crazy Bob had no credentials to be enforcing the law on the subway in the first place. This was perhaps a bad move on their parts. Crazy Bob overhead this and stalked over, demanding that they repeat what they had said. They casually ignored him.

Crazy Bob spent the next five minutes on the subway describing, in graphic detail and at the top of his lungs, the various ways in which he would murder the hispanic youths.

A fellow subway passenger was gravely concerned by this development and discreetly began attempting to contact the subway operator by knocking on his door at the front of the train. There was no response. After a few minutes she gave up, and went to the emergency alert box and pushed the button. The door to the front of the train opened and the operator yelled at the young lady for distrubing him. It was incredibly shocking to see the subway operator berating the young lady for disturbing him while at the same time, 20 feet away, a man was threatening the lives of other passengers in explicit terms. The operator finished berating her and closed the door. Crazy Bob was still stalking the walkway of the train shouting “Hey ese! I’m going to kill you, muthafucka…yeah! FUCKING GUT YOU LIKE A FISH, BITCH!”

I alternated between staring at Crazy Bob in amazement and exchanging puzzled glances with the young lady who had tried in vain to get help from the subway operator. At the next stop in Universal City a large crowd filed onto the subway and Crazy Bob disappeared into the mass. We got off two stops later and as we walked to the street we discussed the event. We agreed that the subway operator had just engaged in gross negligence, put the lives of the passengers at risk, and should be in the unemployment line. We called Metro to describe what had just transpired and received a generic, “We’ll look into it” response. It was incredible. In hindsight, the subway operator had done worse than nothing. By starting up the train and leaving without giving anyone a chance to contact the police (they do have a purpose other than checking fares, right?) he would’ve effectively been aiding and abetting in any harm that came to any of the passengers. Unbelievable.

So yes, getting around by car is looking better and better.