var tumblr_api_read = {"tumblelog":{"title":"Chris J. Karr","description":"","name":"cjkarr","timezone":"America\/Costa_Rica","cname":false,"feeds":[]},"posts-start":0,"posts-total":9,"posts-type":false,"posts":[{"id":76253976,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/76253976","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/76253976\/tumblrs-nice","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-02-06 22:51:00 GMT","date":"Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:51:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1233960660,"format":"html","regular-title":"Tumblr's nice...","regular-body":"<p>&#8230; but I think that I need a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aetherial.net\/weblog\/\">real weblog<\/a> again.<\/p>\n<br\/>"},{"id":55590660,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/55590660","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/55590660\/our-shoggoths-thank-you","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-10-21 11:10:00 GMT","date":"Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:10:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1224587400,"format":"html","regular-title":"\"Our Shoggoths Thank You\"","regular-body":"<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.aetherial.net\/images\/soot.jpg\" class=\"right\"\/>One of my favorite places online to buy things is from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/\">H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society<\/a>. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/whatisit.html\">the group&#8217;s history<\/a>, it was founded to support a live action role-playing game called &#8220;Cthulhu Lives&#8221;. I don&#8217;t quite know the game, but I do enjoy what the group creates.<\/p>\n\n<p>In a nutshell, the HPLHS produces a variety of adaptations of Lovecraft&#8217;s work in a variety of media. In the film realm, they produced an adaptation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/cocmovie\/index.html\">&#8220;The Call of Cthulhu&#8221;<\/a> and are currently working on an adaptation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/Whisperer\/trailer.html\">&#8220;The Whisperer in the Darkness&#8221;<\/a>. In the audio realm, they created three dramatic adaptations of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/store\/store.lasso?1=product&amp;2=123\">&#8220;At the Mountains of Madness&#8221;<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/store\/store.lasso?1=product&amp;2=32918\">&#8220;The Dunwich Horror&#8221;<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cthulhulives.org\/store\/store.lasso?1=product&amp;2=33157\">&#8220;The Shadow Out of Time&#8221;<\/a>. The thing that makes these adaptations so interesting is not that they attempt to situate them in the modern world, rather, they create movies and radio dramas <i>as they would have been<\/i> in HPL&#8217;s own lifetime. &#8220;The Call of Cthulhu&#8221; is a black and white silent film, while a fictitious tobacco company sponsors the radio shows.<\/p>\n\n<p>The cumulative result of these products is an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lovecraft_Mythos#The_reader.27s_response_to_the_mythos\">&#8220;air of verisimilitude&#8221;<\/a> surrounding the universe in which the HPLHS plays &#8220;Cthulhu Lives&#8221;. The nice thing about the high-quality products that they share with the rest of us is that it allows people like me to play along in our own small ways.<\/p>"},{"id":54765193,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54765193","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54765193\/ckmapview","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-10-16 01:11:00 GMT","date":"Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:11:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1224119460,"format":"html","regular-title":"CKMapView","regular-body":"<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.aetherial.net\/images\/CKMapView.png\" class=\"right\"\/>One of the nice things about attending a conference is that things are pretty quiet once things wrap up. I have a mapping project that I&#8217;ve been keeping under wraps, and one of the components I needed was a zooming image view control that could be connected to map data servers.<\/p>\n\n<p>After an afternoon of Objective-C hacking, I have version 0.1 of CKMapView working on Mac OS X. I plan to port it over to the iPhone once I&#8217;ve worked out the kinks, but I think that my current version that provides a zoomable view of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wowwiki.com\/Azeroth\">Azeroth<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wowwiki.com\/Outland\">the Outland<\/a> is quite nifty. While I have no plans to create an iPhone atlas of the World of Warcraft, I might reassess that decision at some point in the future. ;-)<\/p> \n\n<p>Update: The Outlands now available on your iPhone (simulator): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/chicago_photo_weblog\/2945356325\/\">screenshot<\/a>.<\/p>"},{"id":54431286,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54431286","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54431286\/the-return-of-the-blog","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-10-14 01:55:00 GMT","date":"Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:55:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1223949300,"format":"html","regular-title":"The return of the Blog","regular-body":"<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.aetherial.net\/images\/phoenix.jpg\" class=\"right\"\/> Like <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dark_Phoenix_Saga\">a phoenix<\/a> rising from the ashes, my personal weblog has returned after many months of retirement.<\/p>\n\n<p>Some time ago, I discontinued <a href=\"http:\/\/cjkarr.vox.com\">my Vox weblog<\/a> because I didn&#8217;t feel that I had a sufficient amount of interesting and important content to keep it going. I decided to focus my efforts on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aetherial.net\/#projects\">my projects<\/a> and to let them speak for themselves. I reserved <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/cjkarr\">my Twitter account<\/a> for my wannabe pithy thoughts.<\/p>\n\n<p>This was a nice arrangement, but I&#8217;ve decided to bring back the blog using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tumblr.com\">Tumblr<\/a> as a channel for me to post the occasional nugget that is too large for Twitter. Tumblr&#8217;s microblogging format seems to be well suited for this purpose. I plan on keeping this simple and just uploading the sporadic post here and there.<\/p>"},{"id":54323668,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54323668","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54323668\/halifax","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-10-13 10:55:42 GMT","date":"Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:55:42","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1223895342,"format":"html","regular-title":"Halifax","regular-body":"<p>I&#8217;m currently attending the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sigaccess.org\/assets08\/\">ASSETS 2008<\/a> conference in lovely Halifax, Nova Scotia. I arrived a day early to get things in order and I&#8217;m looking forward to the presentations later today.<\/p>\n\n<p>I did take the opportunity to explore the city a bit yesterday and I&#8217;m looking forward to finding a few minutes to visit <a href=\"http:\/\/museum.gov.ns.ca\/mma\/index.html\">The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic<\/a>. I was also hoping to bring a few Cuban cigars back to my humidor this trip, but that appears to be more expense and trouble than it&#8217;s worth. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m ready to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cigaraficionado.com\/Cigar\/CA_Archives\/CA_Show_Article\/0,2322,772,00.html\">play smuggler<\/a> quite yet.<\/p>"},{"id":54193310,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54193310","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/54193310\/app-store-roller-coaster","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-10-12 11:41:00 GMT","date":"Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:41:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1223811660,"format":"html","regular-title":"App Store Roller Coaster","regular-body":"<p>In my last entry almost three months ago, I had a sense of optimism with respect to the openness of Apple&#8217;s iTunes Application Store. The intervening months proved my initial assessment false, but I am happy to say that things are finally improving for the better. The app idea that I&#8217;ve been toying around with in my head might happen after all. I picked up a copy of an iPhone development book earlier this week (R.I.P. NDA) and I&#8217;m looking to get up to speed with the platform once I can find the time to do so.<\/p>\n\n<p>However, I also picked up the equivalent book for Google&#8217;s Android platform, so don&#8217;t look for any iPhone-exclusive applications any time soon. Apple may be doing better, but they have a ways to go before earning back the trust and goodwill they squandered by all the iPhone silliness.<\/p>\n\n<p>In other news, I&#8217;m enjoying the onset of fall in Chicago. It&#8217;s always been my favorite season, and I&#8217;m trying to take in as much of it as possible before it becomes too cold to go out much.<\/p>"},{"id":44454224,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44454224","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44454224\/apples-iphone-app-store","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-08-02 14:19:00 GMT","date":"Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:19:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1217686740,"format":"html","regular-title":"Apple's iPhone App Store","regular-body":"<p>I originally feared that Apple would exercise an iron fist over what applications they admitted into the App Store in order to establish a larger measure of control over the platform than they enjoy on the Mac.<\/p>\n\n<p>It appears that the opposite has happened and my expectations were entirely wrong.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rather than filter the applications in the App Store, Apple adopted a a fairly hands-off approach and it seems to be admitting just about everything. I think that I have already settled down on the applications that I&#8217;ll download in the foreseeable future. I wish the new app developers the best of luck, but I&#8217;ll be unsubscribing from my &#8220;new app&#8221; tracker feeds.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;ll be plugging away along on my own iPhone app that I hope to release once the platform&#8217;s settled down a bit. Send me an e-mail if you fancy yourself as a potential cartographer with a mobile device and I&#8217;ll add you to my private beta list once I have some code to release.<\/p>"},{"id":44329233,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44329233","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44329233\/c4-2-conference","type":"link","date-gmt":"2008-08-01 12:18:30 GMT","date":"Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:18:30","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1217593110,"format":"html","link-text":"C4[2] Conference","link-url":"http:\/\/rentzsch.com\/c4\/twoOpen","link-description":"<p>I just spent a fair amount of cash registering for the C4[2] conference in Chicago. The registration was a bit expensive for a poor graduate student, but I can&#8217;t imagine a better way to network and meet practicing Mac developers. I have aspirations of &#8220;going indy&#8221; (or something similar) after graduate school, so I expect that this conference will be well worth the registration fee given that I can get some good information on the feasibility of my plans. And this also seems like a good opportunity to showcase some of my research and projects to folks outside the ivory tower.<\/p>\n\n<p>(The fact that the conference is merely blocks away from my doorstep didn&#8217;t hurt, either.)<\/p>"},{"id":44264790,"url":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44264790","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/cjkarr.tumblr.com\/post\/44264790\/this-is-not-a-new-blog","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-07-31 22:35:07 GMT","date":"Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:35:07","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1217543707,"format":"html","regular-title":"This is not a new blog.","regular-body":"<p>Honestly, it isn&#8217;t. <\/p>\n\n<p>This is just a place for me to post things that don&#8217;t fit into that tiny little Twitterific  box. <\/p>\n\n<p>Ignore at your leisure. ;-)<\/p>"}]};