I saw a teaser for Monday’s Connie Chung Tonight. Apparently as is vogue for slow newsrooms, they’ll be evaluating diets including The Zone (or, at least that’s my understanding from viewing the teaser without sound via the overhead tvs at the gym).

I know that some of my friends are looking to lose weight or get in better shape. The Zone isn’t difficult, and you won’t go hungry either (in fact, snacks between meals are required). I’ve been sticking with it since the summer, and it’s easy to stay with it.

Connie Chung Tonight airs weekdays on CNN at 8/7c and repeats that day’s episode at 10/9c.

From time to time, I have a hankering for a good pizza, and I especially enjoy Chicago-style pizzas (mmm, so much sauce and cheese — delicious!). But, are there any such restaurants in Dallas? (I don’t know of any yet)

After some brief searching, I found BJ’s Chicago Pizza & Brewhouse. They have a few restaurants in Texas, but I’m not sure if any are near here (Clear Lake? Lewisville?). Their Addison location is listed as opening “early 2003”, so maybe that’ll be available soon.

If all else fails, Pizza Hut also now offers Chicago-style pizza:

According to Evans, Chicago-style pizza is different from other pizzas: Chicago-style pizza has a flaky crust with tall sides. The dough is made with a hint of corn meal for taste and texture. The build of the pizza begins with a thick layer of sliced mozzarella cheese. It’s filled with an abundance of toppings, shredded cheese and then chunky marinara sauce is poured on the top of the pizza. […]

They talk-the-talk, but I’m not convinced yet. It’s not that I dislike Pizza Hut's pizza, but I’m concerned whether the cooking-speedups necessary for the delivery environment may have an impact on the quality or flavor :-/.

The DFWBlogs Cocktail Event was held this evening at The Cavern down on Lower Greenville. Their namesake is apt — it’s just like a dungeon cavern in there.

It was dark, but pleasantly so. They had scattered accent-lighting made up of colored (but shade-less) light bulbs. I saw their intention, but they ended up being a bit bright at times (in the same way that car headlights in your eyes can be bright without illuminating the general area). It would have made a great level for Doom (really).

Interestingly enough, they had no beers on tap (just by-the-bottle). Of the dozen-or-so beers on display behind the bar, I recognized many of them and it was a bit hard to decide. I knew I couldn’t go wrong with Newcastle, but Boddingtons also caught my eye. I recalled seeing it on RateBeer.com’s Top Accessible Beers list (and a quick tap-tap to the mirrored version in my Palm confirmed that it was on the list).

For a moment, I was leaning towards ordering the Boddingtons, but I hesitated and went with the Newcastle instead. When trying new beers, especially ones that might be more expensive than average, I prefer to buy some at a store for drinking at home — that way, I get much better value (even an $8 six-pack is still better value than paying $4/each for two beers).

I watched Ebert & Roeper this evening (as I do every week) and this week’s show featured a review of Daredevil. Considering Affleck’s recently lame track record (though not lame altogether), I didn’t have my hopes up. But, the duo rather liked it:

The movie is actually pretty good. Affleck and Garner probe for the believable corners of their characters, do not overact, are given semi-particular dialogue, and are in a very good-looking movie. Most of the tension takes place between the characters, not the props. There is, of course, a fancy formal ball to which everyone is invited (Commissioner Gordon must have been at the rival affair across town). […]

During the show’s segment on Daredevil in particular, they compared Daredevil to some of the darker comic book adaptations such as the first two Batman movies (and in contrast to the happier existence of Spider-Man).

And, I see that as a good sign since Spider-Man (and X-Men) were less than I had hoped for. Perhaps their PG-13 ratings were too restrictive, but maybe that’s not the case with Daredevil.

According to a study by doctors at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, diets high in saturated fat may have a higher risk for Alzheimer’s:

People who consumed the most saturated fat — the kind of fat that comes from meat, poultry, dairy products and palm or coconut oils — had 2.3 times the risk of developing Alzheimer’s compared with those who consumed the lowest amount of saturated fats, the researchers said. […]

The news doesn’t bother me much, as I don’t have much saturated fat in my diet anyhow. Catfish, which I often eat for dinner, has 1g saturated fat (the remaining 3g fat are presumably good fat).

And, I’m not sure what kind of tuna goes into canned tuna, but it also is fairly low in saturated fat. I generally have tuna (and apples) for breakfast and lunch and, for whatever reason, I haven’t really tired of that over the past few months ;).

It saddened me when Fear Factory split up in March (see also frontman Burton Bell’s statment on the breakup). However, it appears that the remaining three members may have reformed the band!

The reformed Fear Factory — now consisting of Christian Olde Wolbers (guitar/bass), Raymond Herrera (drums), and Burton C. Bell (vocals) — have posted for download 45-second samples of three cuts from their recently-recorded demo.

[…]

A fourth cut recorded during the same sessions, “Bite The Hand That Feeds”, was not made available for download, but is believed to be among the tracks planned for inclusion on the band's upcoming studio album, tentatively due in late 2003. […]

I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m pretty stoked about this :^0. I really enjoy Fear Factory’s metal-industrial sound and I own all of their albums (well, exept for their first, “Soul Of A New Machine”, which I found less refined than their later works).

Oh, and the “old Fear Factory” (as if reaching out of the grave) is releasing a new album of b-sides and remixes called Hatefiles on April 8 (cover art). (Props to the DJs on Sirius’ Metal channel for spreading the word on this Fear Factory info.)

After some effort, I successfully installed Gallery yesterday (it wasn’t quite as easy as I was hoping it would be).

In older versions, Gallery used to insist on the NetPBM library (installation requirements). However, it now supports ImageMacick as well. During the installation/configuration script, the pre-screening reported that NetPBM was found (“All 12 files found”) on my host. So, when presented with the pull-down to choose between NetPBM and ImageMagic, I just went with that…

The rest of the installation seemed to go fine. I then went to upload some photos and I started getting errors (the mind-numbingly vague “Unable to make thumbnail(0)”, whee). So, I re-ran the configuration script and turned on debug-mode. Then, after trying to upload photos again, the debug-mode diagnostics reported that one of the NetPBM files couldn’t be found (I’m still not sure whether this was the fault of Gallery or a mistake on the part of my hosting provider).

Since the NetPBM files were shared among several domains on my host and out of my reach (permissions-wise), I decided to attempt to install the latest version of NetPBM on my own. So, I uploaded those files to my host, set their permissions (755) and re-ran the Gallery configuration script. I told it the location of these newly installed files, but I just couldn’t get Gallery to recognize them (yuck).

I was about ready to give up, but then I remembered that Gallery supported ImageMagick as well. Of course, the pre-screening script didn’t affirm the discovery of ImageMagick files, so I wasn’t even sure if they were installed. But, I tried it anyway — setting the image-library in the configuration-script to ImageMagick — and it just worked (whew).

Don’t get me wrong — Gallery is a great program. But, its installation seems to become a bit wonky if it veers off its best case scenario. And, the “installation instructions” (if you can call them that) were a bit terse. Some of the steps were on the level of asking a novice cook to “julienne a potato”. Sure, that may be straightforward to an experienced cook, but it would also be understandably tough if you don’t even know what julienne means.

(And, just to clarify, I don't consider myself an expert cook, nor did I know what julienne meant until I looked it up just now.)

Since I couldn’t find a roommate for SXSW, I’ve booked at the Austin South Hawthorn Suites (4020 IH 35 South, and I would have linked right to that location’s page, but the site doesn’t cooperate when ripped out of its frames).

I’m checking in on the Friday (March 7th) and checking out on the Tuesday (March 11th), as I didn’t want to miss either Richard M Stallman nor Ben & Mena Trott whose panels respectively form bookends around those dates.

I won’t have access to e-mail while I’m there. (I was about to add “of course”, but then I realized that some lucky bunnies may be able to mooch access via their 802.11-equipped laptops and some freely-available wireless-access points.)

So, the best way to contact me while I’m there would be via my cell phone (469/569-7421) through either text messages or voice (my plan includes 500 text messages/month, so you needn't worry about using up my allotment).

Metallica is readying their next studio album, St. Anger, for release on June 10th (their first in five years). I haven’t cared for Metallica much since the Black Album days (though …And Justice For All may be my favorite), but they claim that they may be selling-in this time around:

The release of St. Anger on June 10th will bring fans the old Metallica from the early days before the Black Album. The album is said to have the same thrash metal vibe that gained them underground popularity in the mid ’80s. […]

I remain skeptical about that, but hopeful all the same. I’m sure that their songs will get airplay through their usual bribes to radio stations (as all major record labels do). So, I suppose I’ll at least have a chance to hear a few tracks before buying it.

I mentioned this to Bryan earlier today, but he didn’t seem so keen on it. But, perhaps I’ll get a warmer reception here ;). (if Bryan’s reaction was any guide, I won’t get my hopes up)

I think we can all agree that jelly-filled doughnuts are delicious (well, hopefully, most of us can agree on that much). I’ve often conjectured that better quality fruit fillings (such as real raspberry preserves) would result in an even-better JFD. But, that’s not really what came to mind today…

What about a PB-n-J filled doughnut? Most people like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (myself included), so how about that same experience in the context of a fried dough ring? Yum?