I'm not sure why there's so much denial and speculation about the death of Rex Van de Camp on Desperate Housewives. (Yeah, I'm being meta about a TV show. Like I don't prattle on about Law & Order all the time.)

He's dead. It's disappointing, but what's so wrong about killing off a main character?

There are so many avenues to take the plot with Rex dead. And with Andrew turning out to be gay demon spawn and George being all psycho-stalker, keeping Rex alive would have painted Bree's storyline into a duller corner. That's assuming the writers do their job next season and really mess things up.

I would prefer that Zach not be Mike's son, and I have a feeling Tom will turn out to be a better parent than Lynette, while Lynette manages to alienate everyone trying to prove she can get back in the workforce game.

And since I do prattle about Law & Order alot -- I can't say I'm terribly disappointed by the cancellation of Trial By Jury. I watched each episode religiously, like a bitch for L&O would. But I just didn't feel it. The pace of the show dragged, and Crime & Punishment already did the exclusive focus on the courts better with real cases.

At the same time, the cancellation seems a bit premature. With another few episodes, I'm sure the writers would have found the right mix of suspense that makes Special Victims Unit the best of the bunch. I think Trial By Jury was aiming to do something along the lines of what the Homicide/Oz creative team did with The Jury last year.

By the way, here's a first-person account from Jamey Sheridan about the Bell's palsy that made him wear an eyepatch for the last few episodes of Criminal Intent.

*sniff, sniff* Wow. It's kind of musty in here.

I am not a movie person. I'm probably way more psyched for the upcoming release of Sleater-Kinney's The Woods than I am about seeing the new Star Wars movie. (Because I've already listened to the new Sleater-Kinney, and man does it crush!)

But if I have to pinpoint one movie I would brave a theater to see this summer, it would be Howl's Moving Castle. I'm not a Miyazaki Hayao nut by any mean, but I've watched Spirited Away, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke -- none of them disappointed.

I'm also looking forward to the DVD release of Steamboy. It played for all of two weeks at the Dobie, smashed right between SXSW and AAS' wedding. I couldn't find the time to go. So I've already pre-ordered the DVD from Waterloo.

As for the other big movie event of the summer, I'm waiting another few weekends to go see it in the theater.

I noticed a lot of Austinites writing about the new Whole Foods. So I may as well be fashionable and chime in:

• That creek in the middle of the outdoor dining area is the dumbest waste of a footpath.
• The $8 sushi isn't bad, but it sure isn't worth $8.
• Further proof of the idiocy of Austin drivers -- there is a NO LEFT TURN sign posted to prevent south-bound Lamar drivers from entering the Lamar Blvd. driveway. Heed it, dammit.

Some simple Google searches were enough to find Cakewalk instrument definition files for my KORG and Kurzweil keyboards, but it doesn't look like one really exists for the old Kawai K4 I bought on eBay.

There are, however, a number of software tools to edit K4 patches that also export instrument definition files. Kawai itself has made system exclusive dumps of the K4 available on its web site.

So, I loaded the sysex dump into K4Win, then exported the patch information into an instrument definition file. I cleaned it up a bit to separate the single-voice patches from the multi-voice patches. And because no one else seems to think it's necessary, I'm making my K4 instrument definition file available for the taking.

I've sort of held a bit of pride for not having to install MT-Blacklist since employing Movable Type back in 2003.

I tried to be clever -- I wrapped MT's comment script around my own account interface, which requires human approval. If bots tried to scan my pages for a comments script, they weren't going to have an easy time finding it.

Trackbacks, though, were a different matter.

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Oh how I try to resist music memes. Via Rhinelander.

Choose a band and answer only in song titles by that band: Number Girl

Are you male or female? Brutal Man

Describe yourself: Frustration in my blood

How do some people feel about you? Destruction Baby [RealAudio]

How do you feel about yourself? Teenage Casualties [RealAudio]

Describe your ex-boyfriend/ex-husband: Seiteki Shonen (Sexy Boy)

Describe your current boyfriend/husband: Cramp Discharger [RealAudio]

Describe what you want to be: I don't know

Describe your current mood: Sappukei

Describe your friends: Girlfriend Girlfriend Girlfriend

Share a few words of wisdom: Fight Fight

Just when I thought I found the Windows Update that crashed my system, it turns out there are four others that could have done the same. To wit, all five:

• KB835732
• KB841533
• KB840987
• KB885835
• KB891711

I'm not sure what it was about my system to cause any failures, and I'll only blame age of the machine only so far. But five so-called "critical" updates that end up crippling a computer instead? Maybe Microsoft really is rotting.

[This entry was edited because I was ragging on the wrong update.]

I mentioned how my old system reboots right before showing a login prompt. It turns out my system was failing at that point, and Windows was (stupidly) configured to reboot automatically upon a system failure.

Hard to diagnose a problem when the system acts in denial. I've since disabled that option.

After rolling back my Windows installation a few times, I determined it was one of the Windows updates that was causing the failure.

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My mom told me this when I was a kid, and even then, I thought it was bullshit. (About the eight glasses, that is. Not the not need to.)

Dear Software GUI Programmers,

Please remember this rule when setting the colors of your user interface: if you specify a background color, you must also specify a foreground color.

In my efforts to reinstall software on my system this past weekend, I encountered a number of installer scripts and interfaces where white text was placed against a white background, or black text against a black background. Why? Because I set the default colors on my system to white-on-black, not black-on-white.

White backgrounds hurt my eyes, which is why none of my web sites have light backgrounds. So I changed my system to suit my need.

Unfortunately, most developers aren't so vigilant. When you force your software to use white text, you can't assume your user's system will provide a dark background. Same goes for dark text.

I can't count the number of times I've had to switch back and forth between schemes, just to use an application. It's the first lesson of programming -- assume your user will give bad input.