Posting will remain light to nil for at least the rest of the week.
Reasons are rather graphic and as a courtesy to our readers are below the fold.


In the meantime, here is your Edith Hamilton fix.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:53 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 414 words, total size 3 kb.

So...today I went to buy some stuff of of iTunes.
They've changed the terms of use, which I cut and pasted below the fold.
(emphasis is mine). Let's see what one of our resident experts thinks about this...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:14 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 17640 words, total size 119 kb.

1 I've never purchased anything from iTunes. I buy my music downloads at amazon.com. They're just plain, ordinary, DRM-free mp3 files.

Posted by: Don at Sun Jan 22 20:44:20 2012 (yNG5l)

2 I usually buy mp3 albums on Amazon.com rather than iTunes; they're usually a buck or two cheaper.
I doubt that bit (requiring that you play their mp3s on apple devices) would be enforceable; I think a reasonable person would expect the mp3s he purchased to be usable on any device capable of playing them. 

Posted by: wfgodbold at Sun Jan 22 20:45:14 2012 (DbD8R)

3 Cool. Thanks!
"plain, ordinary, DRM-free mp3 files" is what iTunes used to be. I've been listening to them on the blackberry for about a year now...then suddenly this.
Feh.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jan 22 20:47:38 2012 (EJaOX)

4 I don't think you're reading this right. I THINK you're mistaking "iTunes Services" for "mp3 files", instead of "iTunes Store". Or is there something else buried in there? I'd have thought if Apple was bringing back DRM, a quick Google search would verify it.

Posted by: Uncle Willie at Sun Jan 22 22:09:35 2012 (xZueN)

5 I don't believe there's any actual DRM software. That would be a PR disaster.  I think it's signing an agreement that you'll only use Apple hardware. This is easily ignored, of course but it might open one up for complications down the road. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jan 22 22:41:39 2012 (EJaOX)

6 Where are you seeing this?

Posted by: Uncle Willie at Sun Jan 22 22:46:09 2012 (xZueN)

7 Amazon.  Simple.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sun Jan 22 22:47:55 2012 (f/6aJ)

8 Item vi of Usage Rules removes the Apple-device-only rules for iTunes Plus (DRM-free) music, and they no longer sell any other kind. The clause only applies to music purchased before they stopped adding DRM, most of which was upgradeable to iTunes Plus for a small fee.

Many people still own substantial DRMed libraries, though, either because they didn't want to pay, or because those exact tracks were no longer available in the store, removing the upgrade option.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Mon Jan 23 00:07:29 2012 (ar1+v)

9 I paid the 39 cents and upgraded my iTunes library to DRM-free.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Jan 23 05:27:01 2012 (PiXy!)

10 And yes, while the iBook license is utter crap, the endless list of restrictions don't apply to the DRM-free music.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Jan 23 05:28:42 2012 (PiXy!)

11 OK after rereading that, not only are my eyes bleeding but I think I was conflating the iTunes rental service with iTunes proper. The rental service really is like DIVX and the iBook thing is just obnoxious.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Jan 23 15:53:31 2012 (EJaOX)

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Of course even if I had time to spare, I couldn't do anything about the recent release of Katawa Shoujo, as I don't do torrents, and 4-Leaf is not yet offering direct downloads.  However, Brickmuppet Blog, fortuitously,  still retains the services of an EBP* for these situations. He sends us this screen cap from the game.

Not much to go on, but, I'm intrigued.
More on this looming atrocity here.
UPDATE: There is greater detail and inexplicable synchronicity here.
UPDATE: 2 Emi's dialog provides some tangential synchronicity  here.

_{*Emergency Backup Pervert}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:57 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Mom is home and doing better. She starts therapy tomorrow. It is still quite hectic here between that and school starting.

Other than belatedly remembering to pull my endorsement post out of "draft", posting is light. 
Here is Nodoka Manabe as compensation.

^{Art by Ikari Manatsu.. Now go buy K-ON!}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.

Yesterday I was still recovering from the Norwalk / food poisoning or whatever the hell it was.  My digestive tract seemed quite empty. More importantly, I was no longer wretching bile and drinking water did not immediately precipitate further wretching.  I got up and tried to get my act together to get to school and buy my books, but it was a chore just to get to the bathroom. Nevertheless, I got into the shower and got a stark lesson in perspective...

Because at that point things went south, way south...

My mom was going to go see my sister, to oogle at her granddaughter and help out around the house. She went into the bedroom to get something and got lost...
...in her bedroom.
My dad found her and after realizing that she was utterly incoherent he called for me in a voice that could chill fire. I staggered out of the shower, threw on some pants and we got her to the car. He took her to the hospital.
A few hours later he called.
She has had strokes...
plural...

It seems now that she has had a series of mini strokes over the last month or so which she had presumably written off as holiday stress. 

I've talked to her twice since then via phone. The first time she was quite incoherent but the second time, her speech, while slurred, was understandable.

I'm taking care of my grandmother who currently cannot go to the loo unassisted and Dad is with Mom. He stopped by last night  to get some of her things. As one can imagine he is quite despondent.

Last night they moved her to a specialist facility at a Hospital way out in Suffolk and although visiting hours had passed they provided my father a bench to spend the night with his wife...which does not bode well.

This morning there was no word but they were still conducting tests.

That is all I know at this time.

I'm rather beside myself at the moment

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:45 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 344 words, total size 2 kb.

16 pounds in 24 hours.
A couple more quesadeas and I''l be downright svelte.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:44 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I haven't opined on politics in a while. With this being an election year, it seems like a good idea to put my cards on the table and weigh in on various current issues.

^{"Oh God NO!" " PLEASE don't. We were almost making friends and EVERYTHING!"}

OK! OK! !t's below the fold.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:13 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 2007 words, total size 15 kb.

Banality is below the fold.
Picture is unrelated.

^{It's from Yotuba@! Go buy Yotsuba@!}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 311 words, total size 2 kb.

This is an interesting piece on the travails faced by borderline autistics.

This is the associated correction:

An article on Monday about Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students with Asperger syndrome who are navigating the perils of an intimate relationship, misidentified the character from the animated children’s TV show "My Little Pony” that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

For some time experts have known that the answer is 42.
Considerable effort has since been put in finding out what the question is.
Now, due to a unique confluence of events, this problem has been solved, albeit only temporarily.
For the next 366 days the question is "How old is the Brickmuppet?"
Now those experts have this brief window of opportunity to find out what all of this means.

^{An expert, hard at work on the problem.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:10 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 97 words, total size 1 kb.