In 3 weeks, I turn 30.

On a lighter note, my band is playing a "New Music Monday" at the Rendevous in the belltown part of Seattle. That's this upcoming Monday. July 26th, 2004. That's only 3 days away.

I'm not sure how hip I am to a Monday night show. Especially one at 10:30pm. Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

As an update to the previous post, the massive number looks like:

54,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

And there you have it...

I don't mind that Starbucks seems to have purchased the rights to Eye of the Tiger...

I don't even mind that they have people singing who make it more than obvious that they cannot sing so as to appear as normal people, singing parodious lyrics to the above song...

What I do mind is that in one of these particular commercials, it ends with the chap who's singing about making a presentation to the board and how his morning coffee-in-a-can from Starbucks will save it... ends with him saying, and I quote:

...in two hundred, fifty-six bit color graphics.

I'm sure that one day technology might reach a point where it is able to display 256-bit color, but that day is not today. We're currently at a cusp of 24-bit color, 8-bit per channel (Red, Green, and Blue being the three channels since 3x8=24). Don't get me wrong, that's still 16,777,216 colors. Most of which, to the untrained eye, don't look all that dissimilar.

So, for those math-buffs out there, 256-bit would be 2^256, or a really big freaking number. Just one channel in la-la land would be a little over 38,685,626,227,668,133,590,597,632 shades of, let's say, red. Then to get all three, (I can't even generate the number here on this computer) I'll just round to 38-septillian and cube it manually...

(Okay, I'm not actually doing it manually, but the number is much too large for silly computers of today to handle, so I'm just cubing 38, which I can do on the computer, rather than by hand - and then appending the appropriate quantity of zeroes to the end as would happen when cubed.)

54.9 trevigintillion colors. (Thanks to The MegaPenny Project for the obscenely large french numberological nomenclature). Even my blessed eyesight, visual acuity, training, and experience would have a bitch of a time telling most of those color-families apart.

Short version: Fuck you, Starbucks.

(Sorry, Bob. It had to be said.)

It's Thursday, so what better to do than to check out all those left over bags.

Sooo... I had today off from work since the 4th of July holiday happened upon a Sunday this year. And since I wasn't doing anything today except random chores, fooling around online and generally complaining about the goddamn sunny weather, I decided to go see a movie.

Before I go much further, just let me say that I remember when $6 was the full price of admission. Not matinee pricing. And sure as shit not 9:30-in-the-morning-ungodly-early-why-the-fuck-do-they- have-a-showing-at-9:30am-but-since-there-is-one-and-I'm-up-and-I-bet-you-nobody-else-is-gonna- be-there-because-it's-at-9-fucking-30-in-the-morning... prices.

So, I figured it was a once in a lifetime thing, to see a movie before 11am. On a weekday. And it was Spider-Man 2, which I had not yet seen, and figured this would be a safe bet. I really want to say something about it, but I know of the people who read this that at least one of them hasn't yet seen Spider-Man 2, and I'd prefer not sleeping in fear... With that said, I'll just say that it was a really good movie, in my opinion, much much better than the original, and even with a PG rating (I think... but I don't feel like checking) it was still pushing the envelope of dark comic realism. Short of The Crow, it has to be the best comic-book movie I've seen.

Of course, someone is going to remind me of some other, better comic-book movie, and I'm going to feel stupid. At least I'm safe in knowing that The Hulk won't be on their list...

My monitor is going south.

I've had this beastie for a little over 6 years, and it's starting to get a little freaky on me, usually shadowing or misaligning the red gun. It's a Sony Multiscan400PS, which is the 19" monitor in their pro-series...

As such, I've been checking out new monitors. That's a little creepy since I'm looking for a monitor on the monitor that I'm planning on getting rid of. That's right, buddy, you know what's coming... a long nap in the garage.

But, I can't find a suitable replacement. All the comparable LCD stuff scares me since I've yet to see a single LCD that even compares with CRT. Plasma definately compares, but not at triple the price, and the inability to go past 1024x768. I like 1600x1200, so maybe I'm just being a little picky. And, of course, every place is trying to phase out CRTs. Sony only has one CRT, a 21" pro model for $1800. That's a wee bit more than I'm willing to drop.

The hunt continues...