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Paul Tourville's Wholly Unspectacular Web Presence
HEY!!! The NEW website's been launched! Check it out here: http://www.ursuspacificus.net/blog/ |
| Ursus Pacificus | Paul's Pages | Kayak Kave | Klub Katana | Paul's Studio | Dummyhead |
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Ursus Pacificus Stuff About Paul -Autobigraphical Tripe -Philosophical Poo Paul Reviews Other People's Stuff -Movie Reviews -Book Reviews -CD Reviews Studio H -Dummyhead -Take2 Computers -Linux and Open Source -Miss Celaney Other Neat Stuffe -UrsusPacificus.net -Klub Katana -Paul's Kayak Kave -Paul's Pile-O-Links Some handy regional links: -Niantic Weather -State of Connecticut -Town of East Lyme -Connrcticut Humane Society Some of Paul's Favorite Websites... Computers: -The Jargon File -GIMP -MySQL -Linux.org -xiph.org (makers of oggVorbis -OpenSource.org -OpenOffice.org -Mozilla.org -GNU.org Friends: -Planetside... where Scott works -Adam Lyons -Eric Comprone Neat Junk: -The US Naval Observatory's Current Time -Darwin Awards Comedy: -The Rutles -The Official Monty Python Website -Spinal Tap -Bill Hicks -George Carlin Cars: -Nissan's Website -Subaru's USA home page -Subaru's cool home-home page Science: -Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy -NASA -PBS' "NOVA" -PBS' Stephen Hawking's Universe -space.com -Marshall Brain's "How Stuff Works" -SETI@home -CarlSagan.com Shopping: -ThinkGeek... Stuff for Smart Masses -EvolveFISH.com... Opinionated tripe for freethinkers Philosophy: -The Ontario Center for Religious Tolerance Music: -The official website for the Rock Band "Boston" -Peter Frampton's official website -Spinal Tap |
Paul's Old News Archive 12/22/2003 Hi... It's been WAY too long since I updated the site.... I have been working on updates for a long time... a little here, a little there... I finally decided to post them as they are. Some of the updates are a little bit obsolete, but they're better than nothing. hopefully, over Holiday Break , I'll have a little time to get everything more up to date. In the mean time, enjoy the stuff that's here. 7/22/2003 Hello, all... I've gotten a kayak... see below: Me, my boat and my car. Carrying the boat to the water. Making headway. It's a Walden Vista. I got it toward the end of June. I've taken it out on Gorton Pond and Smith's Cove in Niantic, and in Narrangansett Bay at Swansea, Mass., near my brother's house. I crossed the Niantic River (at Sandy Point, having launched from my father's house on Smith's Cove) and traversed the major beaches on Niantic Bay (Niantic Beach, Hole In The Wall, McCook's Point and Crescent Beach) this past Sunday, having launched from the Niantic side of the Amtrak railroad bridge across the Niantic River. Paddling in Niantic Bay presented some interesting new challenges. Up 'til this past Sunday, I'd confined my kayaking to fairly calm water. Limited currents; small waves, if any. Not Sunday. On an ordenary boat, someone aboard the boat employs "sea legs" to keep his or her balance as the boat rocks in the waves. In a kayak, you don't stand, you sit. As such, you must cultivate your "sea butt". My sea butt got a workout Sunday. I almost capsized 5 or 6 times.... My balance improved quite a bit as the day wore on. I calculate I covered about 3 miles in about an hour and a half in substantial currents and seas getting to 1 foot at times. More Later!!! 6/25/2003 -- Whoa! A new Dummyhead tune! Check out the Studio news Coming soon: Klub Katana Registry updates... "Keep sending those cards and letters!" 6/15/2003 Hi, Gang.... There's a new axe on the Klub Katana Registry... Thanks, Paul Hickson, for checking in! There's also a new spoof commercial on the Studio page. 6/8/2003 Another update?! so soon?! Yes, another update. :D The Klub Katana Registry is finally up. Still small, but growing! The Studio News area has some crummy pix of my mobile dj rig. I set it up last night to make sure everything still sworks after all the moving around and climate changes and so on... I was not disappointed. 6/5/2003 HOLY CRAP!!!! Fire in the hole!!! The Sky is FALLING!!! The Hard Drive on my Sony VAIO laptop went belly up a couple weeks ago... Boy, that sucked! Fortunately a healthy portion of the junk on there was backed up... although not everything was backed up. D'OH!!! I have since gotten another HDD, reinstalled RedHat Linux 7.3 and put the pieces back together. Not EVERYTHING is back to normal, but... I'm getting there. The studio is still settling in... Dummyhead are reviewing the song list for the new CD... I finally got my car and truck registered in Connecticut. Now I just need to get my motorcycle out here. Summer is rapidly approaching, and I'd like to get ssome riding in. Also... New content on the 'puters page.... Updated info on the Linux-based mobile DJ rig. Also, also... I finally got my lame-o hitcounter running again... the studio page has passed 2000 hits! Yay! One Last thing.... If you've sent stuff in for inclusion on the Klub Katana page... hang on... please be patient... I'm coallating ;) 5/14/2003 Hey-ho! Finally the new studio page is something worth posting. No other real changes yet... but they're coming! 5/03/03 Hi, Gang... Big thrills! I'm mostly moved into my new place, which, ironically, is the house I grew up in. It's taken me 12 years to move from one side of a wall to the other... ha-ha... The studio is about 85% put back together. 3 PCs up and running (including my laptop). The new job is going well (yay). I have a George Foreman Grill... The thing is awesome!... I mean... OK... I saw the ads when they first came on... cheese... and the clamshell grill is not exactly a new idea... but YIKES!! a well-done 1/3 lb burger in 4 minutes, paper-towel cleanup and no spatter... I'm sold! I hope you got your fill of MP3 files (all of my own doing... no "shared"/Copyright-infringing material here!)... They're gone. With all the hubbub over software patents and the like, I'd just as soon take the stuff down. Have no fear! The Open Source ogg/Vorbis project is here! It will take me some time to get everything cut over to ogg format... please be patient. Also, I'm in the process of completely re-vamping the Studio page. I have ripped down the old one. The pictures are old and the content is... well... a bit stale. There is a temporary page in its place right now. Again, Please be patient. 3/30/03 Howdy-Doo! Well a lot has happened since the 20th of January. The division of Sony that I worked for shut down, and I had to look for another job. I found one in New London, working for a consulting firm (which shall remain nameless) that has several projects with a major pharmaceutical company (which shall also remain nameless). So I moved to CT, and am currently (for a few more days) living with my "fazha". I've revamped the site a little... More to come. If you run Linux (and, as you should know by now, I think you ought to) and want to watch DVDs, check out "ogle"... I don't have a URL at the moment, but you can look it up on Google I hope to have some new and exciting content up soon. For the moment, this update will have to suffice ;). 1/20/03 Hi Folks!! OK, there have been quite a few changes recently. here's a list of some new junk on the site:
I've joined the efforts of SETI@home. If you have some spare clock-ticks on a PC at home, Maybe you can help, too! To see my progress, click here. 1/14/2003 Jeez!!! There's so much new junk on this site, I don't know where to begin... Check out the Studio G page and the Reviews page for starters.... 12/29/02 Howdy Doo!! Well, It's been about a month since I moved to Western Pennsylvania. Getting the Studio put back together has been something of a challenge, but I'm making progress. Yay! I'm currently in Connecticut visiting family and friends for the holidays. It's nice to be back. I'm staying at my father's house in Niantic.... Me again... 6/29/02 Hi... Bill Hicks: Dead but still funny Well.... I've recently acquired a taste for the comedy of Bill Hicks. If you've never heard Bill, you need to. Too bad he's not around anymore... he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994. While I don't agree with Hicks on whether a god exists, I find just about everything else he said (of what I've heard, anyway) pretty reasonable. John Enwistle: Dead but ... well... dead. By now, you've probably heard that John Entwhistle (sp?) (Bassist for The Who) died the day before yesterday or thereabouts. 57 years old, died of an aparent heart attack. A friend of mine commented that it's ironic when a rock musician or other artist dies of a drug overdose or in a plane crash, we think nothing of it, but when one dies of natural causes, we take note and ponder it as if it was a strange event. A note to "My Generation": Be careful what you wish for. Fun on the Roads of Southern California Summer's here and the time is right for dancing on the pedals. Yes, traffic congestion is getting no better here in Southern California. Air quality is getting remarkably bad. Traffic is bad. Crime, education, homelessness... all getting worse.... and what is the City of San Diego doing about it? Building a baseball park. Sensible, no? How many Lexuses did the San Diego Padres organization have to shell out to get the City government to swallow this particular dog-link? The City has expressed concern that the Padres may leave San Diego. OK. Let them go. They haven't won a world series in forever and a day and they're not really doing the City much good. If the City is so worried about the Padres leaving, there's one sure-fire way to keep them here: Buy the team. That's an investment. I think that might actually work to the City's advantage. Think of all the revenue that a major league baseball team generates. Now, take that revenue stream and direct it to lightening the tax burdon on the City's citizens. Movie Review: Ice Age I recently saw this film on a transcontinental flight, and will be posting a review soon. More Later!! me 5/28/02 Hi... OK... For those of you who were not previously aware of this, my use of the word "another" may come as a surprise, but.... here goes... I got another tattoo this past Friday... Nothing to be horrified about... for details, click here More Later!! me 5/18/02 Howdy! Jeez! It's MAY already! New content!! Reviews of Zoolander and Bandits, plus first looks at SuSE Linux Personal v8.0 and OpenOffice.org 1.0.... Other than that , there's not a whole lot new to report... Get this: I fancy myself a photographer.... HA! The above photo was taken 2/28/02 using a Canon Powershot 350 digital camera, and is actually a composite of 4 images, joined using "The GIMP" Well, Here it is, the 20th of March, 2002... My how time flies, eh? In a little over 6 months I'm planning to move back to my place of origin; back to Connecticut. I'm hoping to get back into radio when I get there. Hi, Gang! I'm still Paul Tourville, and you're still not. Well, here it is a week and change into February, 2002. What's new and exciting, you may ask..... well... not a whole lot. That's a lie. The morning show on the big Classic Rock radio station in town, here, ( 101.5FM KGB ) held a home-made jingle contest. For those of you who are not privvy, in radio talk, a jingle is a short bit of music, sometimes with singing, sometimes not, which is used for transitioning from one program element to another. For example, it's not uncommon (or at least it wasn't uncommon) for a DJ to talk down the fade of a song, give the call letters, maybe a check on time, temp or traffic, then play some commercials. The transition from the DJ's blubbering to commercials was commonly lubricated with a jingle. Jingles, if they have singing in them, often give the radio station's call letters ( "KGB" ), dial position, ( "101.5 FM" ) and the radio station's "Positioning Statement", which is a slogan of sorts ( "San Diego's World Class Rock" ). Typically radio stations buy "Jingle Packages" from studios which specialize in producing them, like Jam Productions. The radio station I worked at so many moons ago (the now defunct 1510AM WNLC in New London, CT) had a Jam jingle package, called "The Pyre". Basically, the jingle house would hire an orchestra or a group of studio musicians to record the instrumental portions of the jingles, to very strictly controlled tempos. This would be done once for a particular package, such as "The Pyre". Then the stereo masters of the instrumental recording would be used as accompanyment to record a group of contract singers in a tiny vocal booth to build the complete jingles for each radio station. How's THAT for a little background info?! So anyway, the Dave, Shelly and Chainsaw show on KGB decided to have a home-made jingle contest, where listeners would write, perform and record their own little jingles, send them in, and the one they liked the best would win. The prize was a $1000 HotWire.com travel credit. Last weekend, I put together a jingle,of which I was (and still am) very proud... (boast, boast)... The judging was yesterday (2/8/02), and, sadly, I didn't win ... (sob, sob)... Still it was great having my stuff on the air again (it's been such a long time...) and they liked the jingle. Shelly Dunn had rated it #3 on her list of 5 favorite entries... which ain't bad, considering there were actual working musicians entering this contest, and I am far from being a working musician. 2/9/02 1/13/02 Hi. I'm Paul Tourville. Welcome to my website. Now I have my own domain name and everything.... For a couple weeks, this collection of counter-intellectual tripe was housed in a subdirectory to a site operated my old highschool chum Jessica Law. She was kind enough to offer me some of her disk space, because I was whining about how geocities doesn't handle Server-Side Includes and CGI ...blah blah blah.... After a couple instances of telnetting into the Cobalt server appliances that her hosting operator (WebRyders) provided, I was hooked. I needed some space of my own... I mean it was nice of her to offer... I DO genuinely appreciate it! ... but I plan on posting lots of audio files and junk... it wouldn't be fair to hog up all her webspace like that....Plus... (and I hope Jessica doesn't take offense to this..) her domain name (datagoddess.net) suits her a whole lot better that it does me ;-) So I dug around and found a Latin dictionary on line... and came up with Ursus Pacificus as a.... suitable name... I guess.... and I went with .net for 2 reasons: 1) I don't plan to do any actual "business" on this site, and 2) .net names were $5 cheaper than .com names. -- me 1/13/02 |
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Site Last Updated: 18 January 2004 | Questions, Comments, Fears, Complaints? Mail Paul Tourville at tem_dummyhead *aT* yahoo.com |