It's 7:18am on Sunday morning. Wanna help me with a regular expression?

I know this is a total long-shot, but if anybody here would like to help me test the monster I wrote last night, then you can do it here:

http://regexr.com/38psn

I've spent a while trying to break it with mistakes one might make while naming a file that requires a naming convention (e.g. typos)

I'm using it to rat out bad filenames before I queue them up for transcoding in ffmpeg. The files are screened for bad extensions and bad MIME-types before they hit the expression, which I can't post here because of smilies.

There's info about the naming convention and what is supposed to match/not match at the link.

Thanks!

Henry A. Giroux: Neoliberalism, Democracy and the University as a Public Sphere -- truthout

Come on down, Sweet Virginia. Scrape that shit right off your shoes

Tacos. My song about that guy who is tanking the country from the bottom.

First public performance. Not bad considering I didn't know I was going to do it at all and two guys onstage had never heard it before.

The Black Cat

Shortly after I got into recovery, I took the "audio" commitment at an AA speaker meeting here in Issaland. Each week I record our guest speaker, then make CDs for anyone who wants them. After I did a bit of research to confirm that it was OK, I took all of the recordings I had and built a website where anyone can listen to them.

I still have the audio commitment nearly 2 years later because nobody wants it.

I have certainly recorded some doozy speakers, but for this Halloween I decided to do something different: an AA "ghost speaker." A great story -- and about the same duration as a regular guest speaker.

Diamanda Galás reading Poe's The Black Cat.
http://www.aragonspeakers.org/aragon-speakers/the-black-cat-by-e-a-poe/

The adventures of The Guy Who Just Started Paying Attention!

The Guy Who Just Started Paying Attention is easily freaked out and will feel overwhelmed by the sea of grammatically dubious, mountain-dew-soaked, dorito-stained Illuminati-style tinfoil floating around out there. Sorting through it all and developing the skills necessary to pay attention and remain sane is a frustrating and painful process, so -- tempting as it may be to condescend and insult, try to take care with The Guy Who Just Started Paying Attention, because we need him.

http://sustainableman.org/portfolio-items/the-adventures-of-the-guy-who-just-started-paying-attention/

Uh Oh... somone actually listened to me...

Weeks ago, I had an opportunity to drop a nice, easily-digestible remark about Roundup and its manufacturer, Monsanto. My landlord responded with the traditional snort/change of subject he learned how to do from duh TeeVee, but about a week ago, I noticed that the jug of Roundup was missing.

Unfortunately, in its place was a jug of the Bayer stuff, which is just as nasty.

If I'm going to mention this, I'm going to need to provide alternatives

Anyone?

What a ZINGER!!! Romney/Ryan campaign attire donated to Kenya... See what they did there?

Stiffing the campaign staff and stiffing the McJourney and the McSkynyrd that played at the RNC was too subtle, too... "eso-."

This is the kind of snappy, witty stuff my grandfather would have thought of.

http://www.liberalamerica.org/2013/07/12/mitt-romney-campaign-t-shirts-youll-never-guess-where-they-ended-up/

Is it in poor taste to ask why I have to live in a world where my own family will eat me?

My paternal grandmother (95) passed away earlier this month. Her husband has been gone for several years.

I have maintained minimal contact with my family since my father died in 1994. A high-school friend once described my family as "like being in a Eugene O'Neill play."

As early as 1997, my mother had suggested that one of my cousins was going to try to run away with my grandparents' estate.

Turns out she was (exactly) half right. My share of the estate has been whittled down from 1/3 (my grandparents had 3 children and I was to receive my father's share) to 1/10 since my grandfather died. There is a probate hearing later this month in which the aforementioned cousin is to be named executor.

There are now 10 people named in the will. 4 of them live at my cousin's address. A fifth will live there when she is born.

Anyone who contests the will will be treated as deceased and their share goes to... guess who?

I try to look for the opportunities in unfortunate events and the only one I am seeing here so far is that I am reasonably sure that this will be the final time I ever get totally fucked by members of my own family.

I hope this wasn't in poor taste

Is Music Necessary? (recent essay by George Duke, who passed away last night...)

I was waiting for part 2 of this GREAT essay by George Duke on the necessity of music education...

I guess I'll have to ask him about it in the afterlife...

R.I.P. George. I'll try to get everyone to at least read your essay, if not listen to a ton of your stuff...

http://www.georgeduke.com/corner.html