Sunday, 28 June 2009 at 17:25
It’s long been said that science fiction predicts, or at least inspires some of the things which we take for granted every day. While the exact origins of the genre could be debated until the cows come home (and they most certainly are in some circles), it was some time during the 17th century c.e. during the Age of Reason in which people really began to write stories in which the advances of the time were their inspiration. Great voyages by sailing ship and fanciful aircraft were taken to regions of the globe which had only been seen by the human imagination. Adventurers with an almost magical grasp of the techniques and devices of the time fought wars, plumbed the depths, and explored far-flung frontiers in those tales.
Insofar as such things are concerned, things haven’t changed much in four hundred years. We still write stories about what could be and what may be possible inspired by what we have now. Over a drink or two with Pegritz last weekend
I started noticing things in everyday life that could be said to have been predicted in some fashion by science fiction. It’s said that a good writer can extrapolate patterns from what is into what might be, and in some matters writers have been eerily prescient.
More under the cut...
Sunday, 28 June 2009 at 15:14
Yesterday afternoon, after much deliberation and cursing at the general lack of quality of PetCo's inventory Lyssa and I finally picked up a new rodent cage and associated gear (silent running wheel, water bottle, plastic hutch, et cetera) to set up on the coffee table in the library. We then headed in the opposite direction to the other PetCo in our area to pick up a new addition to the family, a mostly white long haired hamster who won our hearts through his antics and, it should be noted, cluelessness. When we first saw him a couple off weeks ago he'd figured out how to soak the bedding and himself in his half of the tank by loosening the cap on the water bottle, no mean feat when the water bottle is twice the size of the rodent and no opposable thumbs are involved. You can't help but fall in love with cute like that due solely to the entertainment factor.
It wasn't too difficult for the clerk at the petstore to get him out of the tank by scooping him up in plastic hutch and holding it against his chest so we could get a sense for how he reacted to people and how tame he was at the moment. He ran around in circles a few times and reacted pretty well to all of us until he got it in his head to put his paws on the edge of the hutch and try to hop over the side. Hamsters are notoriously nearsighted and curious, so it wasn't entirely unexpected that he'd consider making a bid for freedom, but then something unusual happened: he appears to have gotten a good look over the edge and realized that he couldn't see the ground (in actuality, about four and a half feet straight down).
Did you know that hamsters can scream? I mean, scream in panic and terror? The little guy opened his mouth as wide as he could, so far that we could see inside of his cheek pouches, and gave a breathy shriek that chilled us to the bone. He was truly afraid and didn't know what to do.
We bought him on the spot, maybe due in part to not knowing how to handle such fear in something so tiny. He spent the entire car ride home scrabbling against the walls of the cardboard carton they put him in and the time between arriving and getting his cage assembled trembling like a leaf.
A minor digression about the cages they sell at PetCo: they're crap. Utter shite. A snap-together cage shouldn't require a pair of pliers to crimp the snaps together, nor should there be sharp spurs of metal and missing welds on the removable bits. It took Lyssa and I a little over an hour to assemble the cage and make it hamster-worthy. By the time we were ready to install our hamster in his new home he was sprawled out on the bottom of the carry-home carton and not moving. I think he exhausted himself from terror, but at the time Lyssa and I wondered if he'd dropped over of a heart attack.
We're not sure of what to call him yet. The name Lemmy is in the running, as is Valentine (he's an important hamster, after all: he has a tower) and Teddy Bear. I think Lyssa and I are going to wait a little while and see how he acts and how amenable he is to being handled.
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 22:00
By and large, work has been, well, work. Lots of hours at the office, lots of hours stuck in traffic sweating like Kevin Mitnick during a traffic stop. When I haven't been logging time behind a console, I've either been trying to get my head back into Python coding (try as I might, I just don't understand GUI programming in general or PyGTK in particular), reading data sheets, reading up on the Arduino microcontroller, or pulling a Tesla while pondering the best way to build my latest obsession, a laser synthtar.
You see, it all started at HacDC a couple of weeks ago at one of Eliott's noisemaker classes. Rather than teaching a class, he's basically been letting us run loose to come up with whatever our twisted little hearts desire. I decided to try working with an integrated circuit without any instruction; as luck would have it, there was a 555 laying around that I unsoldered, looked up, and wired up as a simple noisemaker. To play with the dynamics of the sound I used a couple of photocells and a flashlight. This stuck in my head for a day or two until I ran across the laser synthitar article on Gizmodo, and it was as if a switch suddenly closed inside my head. I dashed off to Adafruit Industries' website to buy a Duemilanove (the latest generation Arduino which is a bit more advanced) and started scribbing schematics in my lab notebook. The circuitry is pretty straightforward but the project as written up is a little on the simplistic side - it has only three 'strings' with a little pitch shifting at the frets. By using a microcontroller instead of a couple of 555's I can make it much more versatile, and by not using a toy guitar I can position the strings more reasonably by building my own housing.
I then wondered if it would be possible to either rig up or emulate an MOS-6581 to do the sound synthesis. Off to Google I went because I know I'm not the only person out there who's ever wondered about this, and lo and behold someone has already figured out how to do it. So, my gameplan is this: build a simple laser trigger, write some code for the Arduino that plays a note whenever the trigger is broken, build a set of five laser triggers, modify the code to handle the five triggers, develop a system of frets that will feed into the microcontroller and change the notes the triggers generate (addition and subtraction, really), and build the whole shebang into something that I can wear on a guitar strap. Then it comes down to teaching myself how to play it. I already play a few instruments, so while the learning process will be fraught with "Oh gods, this sounds horrible!" moments I'll eventually sort things out and figure out how to pick out a few tunes. The rest will grow from that.
Thursday, 25 June 2009 at 20:51
It's official - Michael Jackson is dead at the age of 50. Jackson was rushed into an undisclosed hospital in Los Angeles, California in full cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 1446 PST8PDT. The cause of death isn't known, and won't be determined for a couple of weeks at least. The rumors from earlier today have been officially dispelled, and Netcraft confirms it. Jackson was easily one of the most prolific musicians in history, topping out in the neighborhood of 750 million records sold during his career. Oddly enough, he just closed a series of 50 concerts in London, England which would have run until March of 2010. Tickets for those concerts sold out in minutes.
Monday, 22 June 2009 at 18:38
Around 1700 EST5EDT in the DC metroplex, there was a head-on collision between two trains on the red line. The crash occurred in the vicinity of Takoma Park, Maryland. Reports vary, but about ten people were severely injured in the crash. Unconfirmed reports state that the crash may have had something to do with the drivers being distracted.
If you were on the DC metro and you’re reading this, please comment so that we know you’re okay.
More under the cut...
Friday, 19 June 2009 at 18:54
While I’m sitting here hacking around, here’s the exact command that I needed to run to get the Arduino development kit to install properly on Windbringer:
It should be noted that I’m using Layman to manage my overlays, which is why I had to specify the environment variable on the command line.
I discovered that GCC v4.1.2 didn't support the Atmega328, which is what my Arduino Duemilanove is based upon, so I had to upgrade GCC to the latest stable release for Gentoo. To generate code for the Atmega328, you need v4.2.2 or newer of GCC.
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/portage/local crossdev —gcc 4.3.2 —without-headers -t avr -s4
When compilation is finished, you then have to switch the profile to the new revision of avr-gcc:
gcc-config avr-4.2.4
source /etc/profile
The instructions I was following came from here. To switch the version of avr-gcc in use, I followed the directions at the end of the /var/log/portage/cross-avr-gcc-stage2.log file on Windbringer when the crossdev build was done.
Various and sundry notes are after the cut.
More under the cut...
Friday, 19 June 2009 at 17:01
Ever since version 2.6.29 of the Linux kernel was released I’d been having problems with Windbringer crashing on shutdown. After triggering the system shutdown applet in Gnome X would terminate, sometimes I’d see a debug message from NetworkManager as it tried to shut down the network interfaces (and sometimes the ALSA sound drivers, oddly enough), sometimes I wouldn’t see anything. The end result, however, was that Windbringer would have to be manually powered off, thus forcing a (lengthy) file system check the next time I booted up.
The answer arrived from this thread at the Gentoo forums last night – don’t unload the sound drivers when poewring down. You really don’t have to because there is no potential benefit or harm from not doing so.
To do this on a Gentoo Linux machine, edit the /etc/conf.d/alsasound file and change the value of UNLOAD_ON_STOP from “yes” to “no”. Save the file.
While I can’t promise that it’ll help with the v2.6.29.x series, it does happen to work with v2.6.30.
Thursday, 18 June 2009 at 09:36
While doing some research for another entry I stumbled across a pair of articles in my daily news feed scan that jumped out at me because they seem thematically appropriate. Warren Ellis called them “outbreaks of the future” because they hint at things to come when they appear in the media. Or maybe it’s because they ring of what was once science fiction while carrying a byline of the now.
James Symington of the Halifax, Canada police department’s K-9 unit worked with a search-and-rescue dog named Trakr for fifteen years. Trakr’s claim to fame came during the aftermath of 9/11 when the duo rescued the final survivor of the attacks from the rubble. Trakr was also recognized for his knack of locating stolen goods by tracking the scents left on them. Unfortunately, Trakr died of old age in April of this year, but his partner Symington now lives with five clones of his working dog. The company BioArts of Northern California ran an essay competition in which the winner would be gifted with clones of a treasured animal. Symington won the competition and is now the proud master of five re-implementations of Trakr named Trust, Valor, Solace, Prodigy, and Deja Vu grown from tissue samples taken from Trakr. While the five v2.0 dogs won’t be identical to Trakr because initial conditions have a lot to do with the personality, temprament, and talent and you can’t reproduce those exactly, it’ll be interesting to see how they turn out.
It isn’t known if the v2.0 dogs will be tested to see if they can be successfully trained to pick up where Trakr v1.0 left off.
More under the cut...
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 20:32
I’ve been sitting on some photographs that have piled on Windbringer’s hard drive up over the past couple of weeks and finally found the time to get them resized and uploaded.
A visit to the Air and Space Museum on my father’s in law’s birthday.
A couple of photographs taken at P. W. Singer’s presentation at HacDC. There are also a couple of shots of fun with night vision goggles later that evening in the set.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 17:35
After much deliberation I’ve finally gotten around to upgrading my website to the latest version of the software, and while I was at it I decided to change the default appearance to something a little less busy.. which basically means that I played around with CSS until I happened across something that I like but which will probably cause everyone else to run screaming.
I know things are a little broken right now, I’m still sorting them out. I hope you like it.
The locations of the RSS and ATOM feeds have changed, so if you read this site in an aggregator of some kind or you’re kind enough to syndicate it for me, the new URLs are:
http://drwho.virtadpt.net/rss
and
http://drwho.virtadpt.net/atom
Yes, I know that the first post is grey but the rest are white (and a little bit easier to read). I need to figure out how that happened and fix it.
If you were a registered visitor, you’ll have to re-register, unfortunately. The upgrade didn’t migrate those settings.
By the bye.. if anyone notices anything broken, please leave a comment under this post and I’ll fix it.
Sunday, 14 June 2009 at 22:33
A couple of weeks ago
I spent an evening in a dark, cramped bar full of pirate kitsch with a bunch of people who could have stepped out of the science fiction novel of your choice (yes, even the old-school
Shadowrun novels). Collectively, we had more electronic equipment than
NASA at the times we were born on our person. None of were particularly aware of
life imitating science fiction (
or is it science fiction predicting life?) or of
the horrors occurring around us at the time. On top of all of that, we all sat around appreciating a belly dancer for entertainment.
Earlier tonight, Pegritz and I held multiple distinct conversations at the same time using multiple electronic channels of communication (in addition to sitting two feet apart and talking) on entirely different topics.
We are indeed twenty minutes into the future.
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 at 21:59
One of the reasons the NIA fascinated me so is due to the fact that it operates as a sort of poor-lifeform's EEG coupled with an
EMG picking up the electrical activity of the muscles of the scalp and forehead. Another of my interests (of which I have far too many) is non-ordinary states of consciousness. I'm reasonably experienced with meditation and biofeedback techniques so once I got the
data collection utility and
visual analysis software working (yes, I keep linking to them; the one time I don't, I'll be flooded with requests for it the way my luck goes) I rigged up a harness for my NIA's base unit, put the headband on, and got down to my daily practice. All told, it took about an hour to capture the data.
Download the data set from here. (798kb compressed)
If you're interested, under the cut are my speculations on what happened tonight.
More under the cut...
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 at 20:21
Just for fun, I captured a couple of minutes of electrical activity into a text file, which is suitable for running through
nia_eeg_chart.py. I wasn't doing a whole lot, just listening to a podcast and flipping between e-mail and Firefox tabs, so it's not terribly interesting stuff. Either I'm more brainless than usual when browsing the Web, or it says something about exchanging one way of turning your mind off (television) for another (too many websites to keep track of at once).
Anyway, have some fun with that data set if you like.
Download it here.
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 at 00:14
Back in the 80's
Edmund Scientific used to sell an amorphous solar cell educational kit: a small lozenge of flexible plastic that contained a pinkish purple solar panel, a couple of lengths of wire, a small light, and a tiny electric fan. The nifty thing about that little solar cell was that it really was flexible; unlike the
rigid crystalline solar panels we've all seen you could curl that little sucker around your finger and it would still work if you set it in the sun. While they don't appear to sell that exact kit anymore (and if I'm wrong please tell me, I only took a quick spin through the results of their search engine) they do sell
a similiar solar cell that has a glass panel glued to the front.
Jump forward twenty years (and no jokes about my navigational abilities, please): a startup company in Ohio called
Xunlight has perfected a process by which
they can manufacture thin-film amorphous solar cells meters on a side. Amorphous cells are cheaper to manufacture than the crystalline silicon kind due to the fact that much less material goes into their construction - they're much thinner than standard solar cells (one millionth of a meter). To make up for the lack of efficiency three different materials instead of one are used in the manufacturing process, each of which is sensitive to a different portion of the
visible spectrum. All things considered, these panels are about 8% efficient, a far cry from the 20% efficiency of standard cells. Still, these solar panels have hit the contractor market for clients that are interested in covering the roofs of their houses with it to offset the amount of electricity they pull from the grid. I did some research to see how much they go for per square meter but
the outfit selling them doesn't have prices posted; instead you have to contact their sales reps to get a price quote. Interestingly, a few other companies are competing in the same market but are using different semiconductors with different degrees of success. Xunlight is aiming to hit the commercial market by next year.
Monday, 08 June 2009 at 22:27
There's a certain feeling a system admin gets when they find out that
one of their boxen has been pwned. You can't really compare it to anything else but it seems to combine the worst symptoms of cardiac arrest, realizing that someone's just shot at you and not missed, being busted by military police while carrying, and discovering that you slept through your thesis defense. A personal website falling is bad enough, but when you're talking about an operation that's worth six or seven digits in American dollars you just
know that heads were rolling.
Over the weekend a post to the
Full Disclosure mailing list contained
some proprietary information about T-Mobile's internal data network: hostnames, IP addresses, and operating systems of several dozen boxen (that have been
tentatively validated by people claiming to have worked for them (wild-ass guesstimate of veracity: 40%)). The information posted is only partial: all of the IPs are out of
RFC 1918, meaning that you'd have to get past the perimeter to actually get to the boxen. The crackers who posted the information imply that they have a lot more information than they released because they claim that they attempted to sell the data (including
dumps of databases, financial records, and confidential documents) to some of T-Mobile's competitors but were unsuccessful (no surprise, really - no company wants to be brought up on charges of corporate espionage). They've thrown open the bidding on this sensitive data, but no one knows if anything will come of it. Only time will tell.
As if that weren't enough excitement for one weekend, the website
Astalavista is toast. Early last Friday unknown crackers posted to Full Disclosure (F-D- is becoming so popular a list these days that the signal to noise ratio is becoming dangerously high) evidence of how thoroughly the site was cracked. The lengthy post contains transcripts of the initial penetration (it has been speculated through a bug in a web app), detailed directory listings,
PHP code confirming what
content management system they were using and the registration key for same. Practically every file on the servers that contained usernames and passwords was added to the transcript, and selected parts of the back-end database are in there for everyone to see (not just passwords, even a small number of private messages on the forums between the admins). For the admins' passwords some kind of righteous
rainbow table must have been used because a few of those cracked passwords aren't too far off from line noise. What appeared to be a version of the
vmsplice(2) exploit was used to break root, and that was all she wrote.
The final act of the crackers was to delete all of the backups and web content, and then
drop the databases. Only a few frames and a banner are left.
Sunday, 07 June 2009 at 00:41
Well, I finally got it working. After a lot of trial and error I was able to figure out how to set up a panel of six
strip charts, one per channel of electrical activity in the brain that the
OCZ NIA picks up. The application I wrote takes output captured from
nia_number_dumper.py and displays it as one would expect an EEG to look.
Python is required to run this software.
Next up: turning it into a realtime display from the NIA.
of the app in action.
Download nia_eeg_chart.zip here
Test data set for nia_eeg_chart.py
Saturday, 06 June 2009 at 23:15
When coding something in
Python, it's said that your logic should be as simple as possible because
the language does the heavy lifting for you. The nice thing about Python is that it makes it very easy to implement complex functionality because all the fiddly stuff that you normally spend ages coding and debugging (like
linked lists and
sorting algorithms) is already done for you. Also, the basic data types/objects that Python gives you are as
orthogonal as you can get without throwing your hands up and using sticky notes instead.
In short, I spent two weeks debugging a loop that was supposed to take every sixth, fifth, fourth, and so on entry from a huge list of values that wasn't working and shortened it to
zero = data[0::6]. Total time to rip out the loop that wasn't working and replace it with that: three minutes (counting looking it up in my copy of
Learning Python
).
Thursday, 04 June 2009 at 14:55
When manufacturers of
ATMs started using Windows to run them, you just knew that no good would come of it.
Eastern European banks discovered this the hard way when the security companies Sophos and SpiderLabs discovered
strains of malware tailored for automated teller machines that record
the second data track of banking cards inserted into the reader slot along with the PIN entered by the machine's user. That's really all you need to
make a copy of the card and loot the account. As if that's not enough, the malware also makes it possible for anyone carrying a specially encoded card to walk up and assume command of infected machines. After walking up to an infected machine and authenticating with the special card a menu of commands is displayed that makes it possible to edit the unit's logs to make it look un-compromised, uninstall the malware agent, reboot the ATM, and print the data it's captured. As if that's not enough, the agent also contains a feature which turns on the cash dispenser mechanism to empty the ATM's vault. One would think that whomever is behind this scam has considerable inside information because they understand the drivers of the ATM's subsystems well enough to write code to manipulate them in arbitrary ways. I also have to wonder how the dropper got onto the ATMs in the first place, it isn't as if you can just walk up to an ATM and jack into a serial port.. then again, the ATMs were manufactured by Diebold and
we all know how much they care about security. Maybe they were infected at the warehouse or the factory; maybe just after installation by a field service tech on the take. Maybe someone
compromised the banks' ATM-to-HQ networks and are infiltrating the ATMs that way.
I don't know how long it'll be before this sort of thing starts happening in the States, but I'll definitely be thinking twice before using an ATM in the forseeable future.
Incidentally, it's actually not that difficult to get hold of a suitable card to write arbitrary stripe data onto - Dell and Starbucks gift cards are perfect for this. So are copier cards from Staples.
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 at 17:38
Forget moblogging. It’s too much hassle to be workable because it never works, and it wrecks my formatting.
I just got back from HacDC, where tonight Peter Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
presented on the topic of applied military robotics. While it seems a bit cliche’ to say this, they aren’t science fiction anymore, military robots are actually recent history. Drones and teleoperated robots have been in use in Iraq and Afghanistan since the get go, and the last official count has over seven thousand robots in use overseas. From tank-like rovers that can push and pull stopped vehicles around to robots designed to assist in defusing IEDs, they’re not exactly a common sight but they’ve proven helpful enough that units of soldiers in the field have written thank-you notes to companies like iRobot for the Packbot.
We’ve all heard of the PredatorReaper drones, which to date have seen something like 400,000 hours total of flight time since deployment in 1995, but there are some other units out there which are downright amazing, such as a flat remotely controlled robot about the size of a garbage can lid that a soldier can heave into a building, scoot off of a rooftop at top speed and fall thirty feet to the ground, and even submerge itself in a stream to maneuver undetected and still operate. Or a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) about the size and shape of a wind-up glider that is launched by hand, propelled by an electric motor, and remotely controlled from a command center.
There are even scarier things going on out there – the US military aren’t the only ones with drones of various sorts. A number of mercenary organizations private military contracting companies are known to deploy them for various purposes, as are some political groups known to make big waves internationally, like Hamas. Drones that don’t belong to the US have been shot down a few times in the Middle East and they’re even running into improvised remotely controlled robots packing antipersonnel devices. One story that Dr. Singer told involved a skateboard that had been fitted with motors and a remote control rig. A unit of soldiers watched it rolling down the street toward them until one realized that it was rolling into the wind rather than with it. He didn’t give much in the way of specifics, but it’s said that the soldier probably saved the life of everyone he was with with that one detail.
Oh, and there’s one more little thing that I’d like to mention: it’s one thing for a bunch of Brazilian RF hackers to use older military comsats to relay pirate signals, but quite another to see bomb disposal robots in the field hacked, stuffed full of plastique, and sent back to base. The soldiers lived but they had a hell of a time figuring out what blew up; it was the distinctive tracks left by the bomb disposal robot which clued them in.
Carl from the Robotcast was on site filming tonight, so I’ll post a link to the episode as soon as he puts it online.
Simply amazing things are afoot these days.
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 at 16:00
Not too far away from where I live is Tyson's Corner, Virginia, a veritable hotspot of commerce, .com site headquarters, overpriced stores, and shopping malls of assorted shapes, sizes, and funny looks given if you walk in wearing ripped jeans and a "DIE YUPPIE SCUM" t-shirt. Since I moved into the DC metroplex back in '05 the Tyson's Corner area has been in one stage or another of the planning and construction of a new
Metrorail station. Obviously, this involves a certain amount of disruption of daily life from crews busily tearing up the roads, highways, sidwalks, and parking lots.
In short, it's not too different from Pittsburgh in some respects.
If you've ever worked in IT or telecom, you're no doubt familiar with a phenomenon known as the
fibre seeking backhoe, which is just what the name says it is, only you won't find many of the other words that tend to accompany this term in
Newton's Telecom Dictionary
. One would think that the contracting company running the heavy machinery would take the time to ring up the little "before digging call" number posted everywhere before steel hit asphalt and earth, and in a perfect world you'd be correct. However, it's quite another thing when
they hit an undocumented line and Men In Black come out of the woodwork to investigate.
In the past year or two just this scenario has played itself out a number of times. The story is more or less the same: backhoe goes to work in the morning, backhoe meets buried conduit underground, backhoe engages in impromptu bondage scene with conduit full of optical fibre, optical fibre breaks and cuts off data links connecting government facilities. At least, that's the most popular hypothesis in the land of the Three Letter Agency. No other organizations would have SUVs carrying people with badges and ID cards showing up within minutes of the outage. More's the point, no other organizations
could have AT&T on site the same day to repair the break. The hell of it is that the contracting companies aren't told about the so-called black lines when they call for info nor are they found on the maps they're routinely given of the utility runs in the vicinity of their worksites.
Tuesday, 02 June 2009 at 23:14
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Hash: SHA1
This is a test post to see if I've got
moblogging support in
Pivot set up correctly. Expect this to
be a boring and orchestrated post while I fool around with HTML markup.
I don't think that tags can be embedded in moblog posts like they can
in
PivotX, which I haven't gotten
around to setting up yet.
- --
The Doctor [412/724/301/703]
PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1
WWW: http://drwho.virtadpt.net/
Who are you?
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Monday, 01 June 2009 at 22:54
One of the many buzzwords that you hear in the discipline of software engineering is
metrics. They're supposed to be a measure of how effectively your coders are functioning based upon how many lines of code they write a day, how many bugs they make (for some value of 'bug'), how reusable their code is, how much money per line of code your project is burning through, or some other arcane measurement. The numbers are generated through techniques that appear to have more in common with
gematria than with engineering and make managers salivate with glee (or rabies). The theory is that if you can measure it you can quantify it, and if you can quantify it you can control it toward the end of improving it.
Generally speaking, the word 'metrics' makes people like me break out in hives.
But now there is a truely helpful metric that all of us can get behind:
how much fail is in your code.
Monday, 01 June 2009 at 19:15
After many months of near misses and scheduling conflicts, Kyrin finally got Lyssa and I to join him for a Friday evening at
Piratz Tavern (8402 Georgia Avenue; Silver Spring, MD; 20910; phone 301-588-9001 to cap off a long work week. Hasufin, Lyssa, and I piled into the TARDIS and set course for Silver Spring around 1900 EST5EDT, which we figured would be late enough to dodge weekend traffic on the Beltway.
It wasn't, actually, but we still made decent time without actually being fashionably late.
Piratz Tavern is a very small, unassuming place on a corner across the street from a Metro station (which makes for good parking in the evening) with a large figurehead of a mermaid wearing nipple tassels (no, I'm not kidding) on the side of the building. I suppose it's as good a navigational landmark as any.
We were greeted by an enthusiastic waiter in what I think was period garb who lead us to the back of the restaurant to the bar shouting "Kyrin! The rest of your victims are here!"
It's good to be recognized once in a while.
In addition to the Toxic Elf were Layla (the belly dancer from our wedding), Pod and Tessa from Baltimore, and a couple of new folks that I hadn't met before (though we appeared to know some of the same people in other circles). We placed our orders after pondering the menu for a while and sat back to shoot the bull for a few hours and wait for our food to arrive. Service was kind of slow that night but business was booming so I suppose that the queue of orders was pretty long. They've got decent food on the menu, a decent selection of drinks both at the bar and on the menu, and surprisingly friendly waitstaff who aren't afraid to chat for a while due to the distinct lack of ninja. Companionship aside, the entertainment wasn't bad, a belly dancer whom Lauren seems to know danced a set or two for us later in the evening. Not being a dancer I can't really comment on her technique or style in any constructive manner. What I can say is that I greatly enjoyed her performance and I wish that she'd had more space to move around in because the back portion of the Tavern (where the bar and long tables are) is actually kind of cramped. What is most striking about the Piratz Tavern is the pirate kitch nailed, glued, or embedded in most every solid surface in the place. From the replica Spanish dubloons embedded in the poured acrylic of the countertops to skulls with glowing eyes to the bladed weapons hanging from the walls, the interior of the place screams
Pirates of the Caribbean in an un-Disney-like sort of way.
It's a fun place, actually. I give it two flareguns overall due to service being a bit on the slow side and the uncomfortable wooden seats in the back.
More under the cut...
