mh-z web-log

What I really want on my Kindle 2 is the ability to do a crossword puzzle. Imagine that! The puzzle, perfectly fit to the screen. The 5-way stick moves around among the squares. This should be pretty easy to achieve using the built-in browser, but someone has to create a JS+DOM crossword application. Me? Has this really not been done, yet? Most online puzzles use Across Lite (a Java (ugh) application), or perhaps Flash, neither of which the Kindle supports (nor could/should it). Previously un-crossword-worthy venues such as in-bed would suddenly become prime puzzle-solving spots. I’m strangely motivated.

A giant spider’s been building a web above the head of my shower, where the ceiling meets the wall. I’ve been in a hurry every time I’ve noticed it there (while showering), and haven’t gotten around to taking it out back for a talking-to. I figure it’s mostly harmless and that as long as I don’t bother it, it won’t bother me; so far we’ve settled into a truce, albeit a slightly uneasy one.

As of this evening, it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe I scared it away.

I want to post this question to a research service like the now-defunct [http://answers.google.com/answers/ Google Answers], because I wouldn’t mind paying a few dollars for help answering it. This is the sort of question for which search engines themselves seem to be of no help whatsoever.

:I am looking for a particular trippy animated short in which a little girl has lost her sock, and so her parents put her into the clothes dryer and turn it on. She finds herself in the “sock dimension”, an arid land where colorful socks of all types float and dance about. The girl eventually finds her missing sock and returns to the dryer, emerging unscathed with sock in hand.
:
:I saw this at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) several years ago, ahead of a movie screening, but scouring Google and YouTube doesn’t turn up anything useful whatsoever.
:
:What is the name of the animation piece I saw?

[http://www.answerbag.com AnswerBag] and a couple other sites I tried to use which came up as alternatives to Google Answers were of no help. The first wouldn’t even let me type in a question longer than a couple sentences. That’s fine for some questions, and granted, I probably could have expressed the above in fewer words, but that wouldn’t have preserved its tone and style, which are important.

I bet there’s a correlation between the number of words it takes to ask a question properly, and the difficulty in finding the answer by just searching with Google to begin with. Sites like AnswerBag seem mostly to be about soliciting opinions, anyway.

In retrospect, running four miles with shoes but no socks was a bad idea.

But then, I wanted to run, and hadn’t brought socks. What was a fleet-footed footwear-forgetting flip-flopped fellow to do?

As you may have realized, the subject refers to the prior sentence.

Hm, the “iTunes DJ” likes to play the same song many times in a row. That’s gotta be a bug.

[img[/img/misc/repetitive_auto_playlist.png]]

Books I bought today:

• //Villa Incognito// by Tom Robbins. Only Tom Robbins book I haven’t read.
• //Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs// by Chuck Klosterman. Brain candy.
• //Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need To Know About American History But Never Learned// by Kenneth C. Davis. Yeah, it’d be nice to know more about American history. I don’t know if “need to” is the correct bit of terminology, for most people, here.
• //This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science Of A Human Obsession// by Daniel J. Levitin. Brain candy.
• //Brave New World// by Aldous Huxley. Somehow I never read this in junior high.

I also ordered a Kindle 2. Woot!