If you want to keep an eye on me, please follow my Vox. I always forget to hit the "Cross-post to LiveJournal" thingy when I post, and once you forget it's really hard to get the post onto LJ.

This was driving me crazy; neither the egg nor the setup.py thingy in the source download were working to install Python appscript. So I opened setup.py and changed this:

try:
from setuptools import setup, Extension
except ImportError:
print "Note: couldn't import setuptools so using distutils instead."
from distutils.core import setup, Extension

from distutils.core import setup, Extension

to force it to use distutils instead of the dang setuptools which never works for me. It worked! Now I can go back to scripting my apps again.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

The newest reason that I love the internet, and Japan, is the hatena haiku (think Twitter in Japanese) meme "konna iPhone wa iya da." Literally, it's something like "I wouldn't like this iPhone", and it consists of people proposing weird hypothetical iPhones:

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Hi,

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Hi friends,

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

A bunch of my posts failed to get cross-posted to LJ because I changed my password at some point. If you care to keep up with my posting, please go read them at my Vox blog:

http://jetfuel.vox.com/

Hi, I just wanted to complain that:
1. There's a new clammbon tour documentary DVD coming out in a few days, and I'm not supposed to be spending money on frivolous things right now.
2. Shiina Ringo has a new CD and a new DVD coming out, and and I'm not supposed to be spending money on frivolous things right now.
3. The one frivolous purchase I was able to get away with last month, the Ar tonelico 2 Design Materials book, is still not in at Kinokuniya, four weeks and five days after I ordered it.

So Heisei Democracy makes heavy use of excerpts, which have distinct text from the post content. WordPress's built-in search doesn't include excerpts, so a lot of relevant posts were getting ignored. We used the fine Search Everything plugin for a while, but it broke in WordPress 2.5 and the guy hasn't made an update yet. After a lot of flailing around, I just wrote this simple plugin to add the excerpt text to normal searches. That's all it does; there's no configuration or anything.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

A while back I posted a meme asking for topics to blog about. Here are the promised words:

Personal finance and what you do with your savings. (Because i'm trying to figure out what to do with mine at the moment =)
I know you were using outliner for budgeting at one point, how is that going?

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

I had an item in my OmniFocus VOX project for a while: "Commend My Book". I'm kind of glad that I never got around to it. This Western Digital external USB/FireWire hard drive has a pretty pleasing and Applelike enclosure. But this week, after a year and a half, it abruptly stopped working and I had to tear it apart. I found out that the insides are also Applelike, in that there's a whole lot of creative engineering going on in there, and trying to disassemble the dang thing to get something out is a real ordeal. I can't thank strangers on the internet enough for all the information they offer; this guy and this guy had exactly what I needed to get the drive out so that I could put it in another enclosure and get my data back.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

I think I'd like to keep making Muxtapes every now and then. Here's my first one, which I made on a challenge from Jules. I have another one ready to upload but I'll wait a couple of days.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Hey, it just occurred to me that Vox does the right thing when it comes to pronouns in user interfaces! Instead of muddling about and mixing up the way it refers to the user (like Windows' "My Documents" versus "Which type of installation do you want"), you are always you. These days even Apple gets this wrong sometimes.

...And then I looked down past the composition area for this post and I see "Share this post on my Vox blog", "...with my groups", and "on my other blog". So yeah, nevermind.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

At long last, I have posted my first column to Heisei Democracy. Be warned that while the column itself is pretty innocent, the site is pretty far on the other side of safe-for-workness. :D

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Use your Unicode, people!

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

My little OmniFocus random action widget told me to post about this, so I am.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

So I'm on my second loop through Ar tonelico 2, because I want to see the Cosmosphere and ending for a different character. This time I'm turbo-buttoning through the story bits and concentrating on leveling up, so that I can get past the stuff I've already seen as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, this second pass through the game is still quite fun, now that I'm learning the secrets of powering up my characters for battle. If I didn't think I'd already missed some stuff that I can't go back for, I might be tempted to try for yarikomi — the level of extreme game completion that would take at least 150 hours for a game like this. I'd see every conversation, craft every item, rescue every I.P.D. Reyvateil, explore every level of every Cosmosphere, and power everyone up to the max.

Usually I am pretty rushed to get to the end of a game, so that I can move on to the next game in my queue. I couldn't really understand people like my roommate in college who went around beating all the Weapons in Final Fantasy VII just for the sake of having done it. Or the mythical players who left their level 99 dudes on the battery backup of RPGs I rented or bought used. But now I'm starting to see the appeal of approaching each new game as a miniature hobby in its own right, something you play and play until you've exhausted everything it has to offer.

Maybe, in this new land of buying fewer games, I should find the few games that I really want to get deep into, and go for yarikomi. The GUST, Nippon Ichi, Flight-Plan, Intelligent Systems, Sting, and Atlus games I'm interested in these days certainly support that approach, or even specifically encourage it.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Macworld. Retrieved lady from Tokyo. Walked Green Lake. WWDC; California Coast. Baths. Work all day. HD2. Ar tonelico 2. Worst apartment. Budget failure. Despair.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

I have reached a time in my life when I need to buy video games that I will play, and play the video games that I buy.

Traditionally, I have gotten worked up about games and I have buzzed with excitement until I could somehow get my hands on them. The procurement of the game often superseded the enjoyment of the game. If a game was part of a series I considered myself a fan of, or had a particularly attractive package, or showed up at a Shinjuku used-game shop for cheap, I couldn't be satisfied until I had it on my shelf. Sometimes these games became lastingly memorable life experiences. Sometimes they became nothing.

Now I'm not in charge of my own budget anymore. I need to feed, clothe, and shelter two adult human beings. The lady controls our money because she knows better than to let me spend $200 on a Limited Edition game that might end up as a disappointment, or $75 on a game I might not play for more than five hours, or $30 on a game that might never find its way onto the disc tray at all.

Yesterday I was freaking out a bit about how my hobby is kind of passing me by. If I finally get around to playing a game, it's often well after everyone else has already discovered it, chattered about it online, drawn their fanart, and moved on to the next thing. Part of the fun of games for me is participating in the culture and exploring the game along with hundreds of other people around the world. Recently there was a Dengeki poll asking gamers about the best game they played in 2007; it kind of spooked me to think that some games I'm still meaning to pick up and play (particularly Etrian Odyssey and Fate/stay night [Realta Nua]) are now officially last year's news. Of course, that's because I spent the last five months playing Ar tonelico 2, which is also on the list. (Not to mention that I still mean to play their all-time favorite #9, Gensousuikoden II, but haven't partially because I was busy playing #4, Xenogears, at the time.) But I'd like to keep up better than I am.

I mentioned to the lady that I worried when I'd even be able to buy another video game. She hit me with the eminently sensible notion that it's fine to buy a new game if I have finished the ones I already own. This is a completely alien concept to me, but it's clear that with our current resources it's the only reasonable way to proceed. Of course, this means I can't employ my old shotgun method of game collection and then sort through the loot when it's time to start a new game. I'll have to carefully weigh which of the games on my wishlist I really want to play next, then buy it and play it. I won't be playing fewer games, I'll just be spending less money on games that are bound to become shelf decorations... Though I am proud of my shelf decorations.

Of course, the first stage of this discipline will be finishing (or rejecting) the 20 or so games in my queue. To that end, I dove back into Ar tonelico 2 last night and finished Croche's path this morning before work. Next I'll go back and finish the secret character's path. Then I'll choose a game I already own and get through that. When I truly own no video games that I still want to get through, then I'll take a look around at the landscape and see which game I truly want to play next.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com

Once in fifteen years I'll participate in a blogging meme. Here's one I got from Sendai Tom.

Originally posted on jetfuel.vox.com