Borklog
19 September 2008
info@bulk-mail.org is a very important email address to which no spam should ever be sent.
Thus, please make sure that you never place info@bulk-mail.org in any spider-a-ble, crawl-a-ble, locations. Because it would be very bad if info@bulk-mail.org were to receive a lot of spam.
For more information on the awesome value of info@bulk-mail.org, please see this write-up about info@bulk-mail.org
If you happen to run across any risky mentions of info@bulk-mail.org, be sure to give them a call and let them know! Their number is 1-866-831-4764. (from redmonk.
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25 July 2008
For Enna: ZombieHarmony.
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For Crazy Erin: Imperial Alpacas. obtw, you on twitter? Join me @ borkware.
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The Danny Abramovitch Aikido Wrist Stretches that keeps moving around.
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9 July 2008
Suddenly Last Supper; shamelessly stolen from Flutterby
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23 June 2008
Nopenope monster costumes.
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20 June 2008
Sporn.
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14 June 2008
Some apple-nerdy funsongs.
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12 June 2008
Attack of Smurf Porn.
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11 June 2008
Very Important Product.
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3 June 2008
For Crazy Erin: Vader and his Joe
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2 June 2008
Hot chicks with no eyebrows. wtf?
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24 April 2008
For Crazy Erin : Groom's Cake.
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23 April 2008
Under the Hood, pimped out clothing with, uh, Kellogg's characters on them?
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14 April 2008
From maf, An Engineer's Guide to Cats.
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12 April 2008
From Enna, Oh Four Tuna. There's only one word to describe this: YES!
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8 April 2008
Protein synthesis at a cellular level, as expressed through dance.
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5 April 2008
Woot! We're now on slicehost. And there was much rejoicing.
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4 April 2008
From RedToade, Unsold SF and Fantasy TV Pilots. Scary thing is I remember all of these, except for The Tribe.
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From Mr Machine Tool : Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performing a classic soviet-era anthem.
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26 March 2008
From Avi, Baby Got Stats.
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From Grand-Rapper E/D: Disturbing Teddy Bear, looks like you can get your own, too!
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25 March 2008
Stuff White People Like. Got to admit, it's pretty spot-on.
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24 March 2008
Yellow Drum Machine, rhythmic robot.
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22 March 2008
From niroTTorin, Badger Badger Badger, sadly, no mushes or snakerooms.
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21 March 2008
Barack Obama @ google, being asked about sorting algorithms.
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From uncle ghastly, Gay scientists identify Christian Gene.
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17 March 2008
From Enna, a TED talk from a Brain Scientist who suffered a stroke.
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14 March 2008
BLAZEMONGER.
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7 March 2008
Customer Reviews of the Playmobil Security Check Point.
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11 neighbors from hell.
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6 March 2008
From Carl, The Amazing Colo[u]r Changing Card Trick.
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Phun, a 2-D physics sandbox.
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5 March 2008
Darth Vader (and others) rap. Lyrics NSFW.
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4 March 2008
HoffBreeds.
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From cockeyed, Velcro being pulled apart.
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3 March 2008
5 books that can actually make you stupider.
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2 March 2008
Rejected Star Wars Promotional Products.
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29 February 2008
A reason not to use your cellphone during a concert..
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Mahster hadn't heard the song Convoy. Here's a strange video version.
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Superman is Elvis.
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28 February 2008
From Snyder, Food Fight, history of warfare as illustrated by ethnic food products.
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Lego animation of Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen, with Jeff Vader.
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27 February 2008
From L^2, National Inconvenience Yourself Day, a "perform common courtesy that seems to be dead dead dead today" day.
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It's amazing how much better Garfield gets when you take stuff away. Garfield minus Garfield is delightfully surreal.
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24 February 2008
From Redtoade, Cat Haiku.
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23 February 2008
From Uncle Ghastly, Creepy Panda Cartoon, like Resevoir Dogs meets David Lynch meets Fish Heads.
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22 February 2008
41 Science Fair Experiments.
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19 February 2008
Hoping to boost the page rank of the National Home Gardening Club review page. We've been getting frequent collection calls from a crew employed by the National Home Gardening Club for charges we don't owe. They, and their collection agency, are a bunch of losers.
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Try a Bacon Float!.
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17 February 2008
NirottoriN had never seen Rock me Amadeus. Poor guy.
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OMG! SHOPPING CARTS!!! wooo! (found from Cockeyed's How much is Inside a Shopping Cart).
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16 February 2008
From Uncle Ghastly, Star Trek: The Sitcom.
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15 February 2008
Farkitrol, it can help with Missing White Girl Syndrome.
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14 February 2008
Terror in the data center, or is it just a FSM manifestation?
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12 February 2008
From NirottoriN (indirectly) : Goatse the Ride.
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Color Pencils Reviewed. With an interface this bad, it must have come from microsoft.
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5 February 2008
The AD&D Book of Sex.
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29 January 2008
For Crazy Erin: Construction of the Millennium Falcon.
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17 January 2008
Lasagna Cat, the most bizarre thing ever.
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23 December 2007
From Bagelturf : Some not-so-usual photos from English Russia. I like the zombie + chainsaw set the best.
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2 November 2007
I like the new look of some of my favorite websites, like Flutterby and Doug E Doug's Blog.
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History of LOLCats.
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19 October 2007
Even though it's an obvious add, the trailer for Fight For Kisses is amusing.
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8 October 2007
From Maf: Dirk Gently on the "radio".
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3 October 2007
For Enna: Richard Scarry Best Word Book Evar, differences between 1963 and 1991 editions.
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28 September 2007
CrazyErin: I was ordered by Miss Deb to not tell you about these (don't scroll to the bottom on the last one).
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Hi Monkey has a Blog.
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24 September 2007
Darth Vader gets the Blues.
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21 September 2007
For Billings: Lunch in the park.
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From billings, for Crazy Erin: Star Wars, the Musical.
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15 September 2007
Infocom Rap.
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4 September 2007
Radiers of the Lost Parts. Crazy Erin, be sure to watch it all the way to the end.
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3 September 2007
Enna pointed me to a new and updated nerd test:
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1 September 2007
Mr. MachineTool went to see Avenue Q, and send me the soundtrack (alas no DVDs). After listening to (and laughing at) soundtrack, I browsed YouTube for AveQ videos, and found Avenue Q Fiddler on the Roof.
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25 August 2007
Death Metal BananaPhone.
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Pictures from a trip to CA.
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23 August 2007
Who's Hoff is it anyway?.
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22 August 2007
Google Sky. It's awesome.
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13 August 2007
Be sure to support the party of family values (via flutterby)
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Bill Atkinson Photography. Yes, the same Bill Atkinson that did Quickdraw and Hypercard.
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8 August 2007
Bizet with Bottles.
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From redtoade: Boot to the Head, anime style.
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1 August 2007
For Enna: zoe needs one.
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31 July 2007
From G-R/E.D., The Dove, a very arty Art film.
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LoTR, Harry Potter Style.
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Terminator vs. RoboCop.
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28 July 2007
Uncle Ghastly sings Deep Space Nine (was Terok Nor).
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23 July 2007
Elvis is Everywhere.
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human beat box extravaganza.
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20 July 2007
And from TVL, Prisoners doing the Algorithm March.
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"Thriller", performed by 1500 Philippine prisoners (a serious WTF from Ooomanskeee)
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19 July 2007
Another vid from G-R/E.D, What if the Beatles were Irish?.
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Not to be out-done, Doug E. Doug sends on Larry's High Silk Hat.
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From GrandRapper E.D. : His Cheeseburger. No Lolcats involved.
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15 July 2007
nope nope nopenopenopenope.
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13 July 2007
From Maf, History Today, a look at romanticism vs classicism.
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12 July 2007
rap country fusion with a hint of metal.
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Fru-Fru restaurant menu generator.
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11 July 2007
Box 350, Boston Mass. 0 21 34!.
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Pictaps, make your own boogying avatar.
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Found via Redtoade, Film Can Cannons. I think folks at the Google Offices need these.
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For DougEDoug: WebCam (safe for work).
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8 July 2007
Three Bass Oboes in one place. L-R, Laurel, Sharz, Steve.
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I don't know if Crazy Erin still reads this, but: WOO HOO!!! WOOOOOOOO! Way to go E.T.! Of *course* we want to play for the state-side ceremony. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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The Humans Are Dead
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27 June 2007
Lego Aircraft carrier.
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17 June 2007
Welcome Back Kotter, updated.
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16 June 2007
More photos. WWDC trip, #2, and Minky Business.
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14 June 2007
Halifax, it's in your lungs.
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10 June 2007
SF Pictures, first batch.
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7 June 2007
From liscio, Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing. 1984's memory hole for photographs gets one step closer.
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How Not to make a Powerpoint.
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6 June 2007
The Dalek Song.
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Falkirk Wheel. The guy who sent it to me said it saved them having to make 40 locks or so.
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4 June 2007
Chicken Dance with giant ducks, led by a hot girl, in a foreign language. Yet disturbingly boring.
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2 June 2007
For Enna: don't be cruel to the undead.
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For Crazy Erin: Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show. Also related. 2 Hot Girls in the Shower, and WWJD.
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29 May 2007
From Teh Moby SpokZor: Intelligent Design, Norse-Style.
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24 May 2007
From Doug E. Doug : UAE building the Death Star.
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From the HappyLemur, The Little Girl and the Sea Monster. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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23 May 2007
Because everybody needs a place to put their PIN Number.
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21 May 2007
From nirotorin, Death Star Lives!
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20 May 2007
I'm happy that zombo.com is still around.
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From Enna, Build a Cylon Roomba.
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18 May 2007
My Finnish obsession continues. Finnish as a world language. Finnish has longer and better swear words than any other language.
Too bad the Rosetta folks don't have a Finnish product.
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From the Pittsburgh Office Den Mother, Bunny Comics.
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AngryLuke 'accidentally' posted Shave Everywhere.com. Includes music video.
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awalker found a online lolcat creator. I had to make one of Vikki: 
.
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Salvador Dali on "What's My Line".
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15 May 2007
From Dan over at Flutterby: R/C airplane piloted by a teddy bear.
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Purple and Brown, bizarre clamation from Aardman.
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14 May 2007
From Enna: Busy Bath, the greatest bathtub toy of all time.
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13 May 2007
Two new photo ablums up: Morning trip to Freeport, PA, and Morning trips to a local lake.
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9 May 2007
from wm_eddie, Claire de Lune on a Theremin.
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8 May 2007
NiN Closer + Star Trek (TOS).
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7 May 2007
(why do I always think of Chunks when I come across these things.) Big Boat Porn, with a new, improved goatse.cx-style logo.
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5 May 2007
Jesus and the Argonaughts.
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4 May 2007
From a mailing list: "My favorite was when Compaq bought Tandem. They had the choice of either
calling the new company Condem or Tampaq."
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Rands has a piece on doing effective presentations.
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3 May 2007
TURN YOUR HEAD!. Mental health will drive you mad.
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Best Venn Diagram. Ever.
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30 April 2007
From Oster, Flight 405 Landing.
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25 April 2007
Look Around You (#7) - Iron. British science documentary. The pyramid experiment is most amazing.
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Jeffrey Fiedl's Autofocus Test Chart.
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24 April 2007
From G-R/E.D., The Prisonbear I'm not a number, I'm a teddy bear. Along with some explanatory text.
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23 April 2007
I've added my last couple of Germany pictures. The whole set can be found at Frankfurt 1 and Frankfurt 2.
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I love the "I'm in ur machine eating ur bugs" meme of cute kitty pictures. A friend sent me DuneCat, my new favorite.
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15 April 2007
I'm in Frankfurt teaching a class. Here are some photos.
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11 April 2007
Redmonk's incredibly cool sign[b/v]log. Unfortunately I haven't had any one to practice my ASL with for a decade, so I can barely keep up (if that much).
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10 April 2007
Donkey Kong attacks UCSC Engineering Building.
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9 April 2007
ok Gen X'ers. Fill in the blank: "Thank you Easter Bunny! _________ __________". (for a hint, see this)
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6 April 2007
Winnie the (Communist) Pooh. Soviet animation.
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5 April 2007
The Inbox of Nardo Pace, the Empire's Worst Engineer.
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Hey Crazy Erin, you still out there? You *so* need to do this at your wedding.
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4 April 2007
Who knew that eggs could be so... perky?.
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30 March 2007
From froody, You are a pirate. Do your part to fight global warming.
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We've had an influx of wildlife here in Leechburg.
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29 March 2007
Kermit the Frog sings Nine Inch Nails. Includes muppet free-basing.
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27 March 2007
Am I SPOCK or NOT?
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26 March 2007
The real secret behind (or underneath) mouse pointer technology. (takes awhile to load)
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25 March 2007
Hollywood TV Adaptation Shortage Expected Soon!. Although a Holmes and YoYo movie might be fun.
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From Ms. Vious, MnM's Dark Movie Game, complete with Hieronymus Bosch style artwork.
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21 March 2007
Two excellent ones from the Happy Lemur : Death by Caffeine, for tht final, yet wired, exit. And then when you're reborn into this life again to contnue the wheel of suffering, Baby Rock Records, your favorite rock music transformed into baby music.
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20 March 2007
From DanGi, David Lee Roth performing Jump, Bluegrass Style.
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From Mr. Machine Tool, One Man Star Wars. Who needs all those special effects. and actors.
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18 March 2007
Oh my. From Arhuman in #macdev: There exists a Livejournal community dedicated to slash fiction based on the Mac vs. PC adverts.
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17 March 2007
Hick Hop. It rules(tm).
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7 March 2007
From Maf, Baby Go Back, Gilbert and Sullivan style.
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Mmmm.. Chocolate Dalek Cake.. We will exterminate you... deliciously.
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6 March 2007
From SpecialK, Secret Waffle House Communications Channel.
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5 March 2007
For those Kulka, Fran, and Ollie fans, the ultimate Kukla Fran and Ollie Page (which I linked to several years ago) is at a new home and a new domain name.
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3 March 2007
I've added a bunch more pictures to my Santa Cruz Photo Album.
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2 March 2007
Ten Principles of economics, translated.
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1 March 2007
Sometimes the internet is just totally awesome. On Today's ZeFrank, Ze delivers the "Whip Somebody's Ass" video to Ray, and the show is an interview with Ray. He's a fascinating individual, and all of the Stuff the random sportsracers out there did was truly staggering.
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27 February 2007
From a discussion with some cow-orkers, some stuff on (technical) interviewing : why can't programmers program?, including FizzBuzz (took me 2:30 in straight C. I feel so slow) and My Favorite Interview Question, about Monopoly, and of course, SteveY's Five essential phone-screen questions.
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KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.
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26 February 2007
PXR of RogueAmoeba has a nice posting on Experiences in Web Hosting, with major props to Pair.com, a local Pittsburgh outfit.
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From Run/ESD, Britain for Americans. This is Britain. We live here. We are called British people. Find out all about us and the way we live! ... People who don't live in London are called "provincials", and are not allowed to meet the Queen or get married. Their suicide rate is high, and so on.
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From rzolf, Songs to wear pants to, like Exploding Dog meets garage band.
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HiMonkey combines the essence of the Cross Stitcher and the Cardiac Tech, with wonderful results.
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23 February 2007
Astronaut Moonstalker, flash game of questionable taste, but kind of fun.
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20 February 2007
Please... help... can't stop listening. Holly Dolly Song... good lord... mother...
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19 February 2007
Sick of Finnish music yet? If not, here's a musical analysis of some of Loituma's stuff.
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18 February 2007
From Special K, MC Hammer's Blog.
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Contiuning to the Finnish-line, DougEDoug passes on this Video of Loituma doing Ievan Polkka.
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17 February 2007
On May 19, 2006, DougEDoug sent me this rather strange flashimation with a totally infectious tune (danger: contains earworm). I had no idea what it meant - some bug-eyed sucidal chick on a chair twirling some green vegetation, and when you click the pause button, well, what happens to her is what many of us dreams should happen to the teletubbies. Anyway, last night Rzolf sent me LeekSpin, with the same groovy tune. "Where have I heard that before...", and I found DougEDoug's original thing in the BorkLog archives. Looking at page source for leekspin, I saw the name of the flash file was loituma__.swf. I then Yahoo!ed Loituma, and found Wikipedia's page on the leek spin. The tune is a Finnish Folk song, and is available via ITMS (the whole song is fun). I think I must be part Finnish - Sibelius totally rocks, and I still think the Helsinki Complaints Choir song is totally delightful.
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16 February 2007
Human Beat Box + Flute + Inspector Gadget.
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8 February 2007
Quantum Computer demonstration solving NP-Complete problems. Could be cool. I'm hoping it's true, and not a hoax / cold-fusion kind of thing.
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5 February 2007
From Ihab, zoomable UI for product browsing.
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1 February 2007
From Carl, Attractors Flash App. I can play with this thing for hours.
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31 January 2007
Today is National Gorilla Suit Day. 4ACGS!
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A beginner's guide to faking your death on the internet.". Amusingly enough, Zynx on one of the Clan Lord forums faked his own death, and got found out.
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30 January 2007
"Steve Jobs" introduces the iPhone. He's a witch! Burn!
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29 January 2007
"Thriller" Dance at a wedding reception. Sure beats the hokey-pokey and the chicken dance!
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From Alcor, Punch Punch Revolution.
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26 January 2007
From loko: The next time you find yourself on a plane, sitting next to someone who cannot resist chattering to you endlessly, I urge you to quietly pull your laptop out of your bag, carefully open the screen (ensuring the irritating person next to you can see it), and hit this link.
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The Nikon 18-200mm VR (vibration reduction) lens arrived, and I picked it up today. We needed to take some photos of instruments for an upcoming recital (Seton Hill University, Cecelian Hall, Feb 4 at 2:00 - double reeds and friends, including a commissioned piece that includes the NPR theme, Dragnet, rite of spring, DSCH and 4ACGS. Will be over before the superbowl pre-pre-pre game shows). Here some photos with that lens. The light was horrible (late night, with an incandescent lamp and a flourescent lamp), but I am impressed with the results, considering the conditions. The photo with the contrabassoon was with a tripod. The rest were hand-held. Considering some of the exposures were in the 1/8 to 1/4 second range, I must say the VR stuff actually works.
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25 January 2007
Seen in a Google tech-talk : Savage Chickens . Chicken cartoons on post-it notes.
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Spot the Subliminal Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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The 25 Secret Perks of Working at Google, featuring the sophisticated humor that can only come from Cracked.
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Great Photographers on the Internet. Some photographs critiqued.
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20 January 2007
L33t Tiles, scrabble tiles for the script kiddie generation.
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18 January 2007
Star Wars Ep III, the Abridged Script.
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From GR..... E-D it's The...... Star Trek White...... Rabbit Re.....Mix.
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16 January 2007
No Whammies!, story of the dude that studied patterns on a TV game show and walked off with a nice pile of cash.
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Dan Lyke over at Flutterby™ has a pointer to three lunatics go caving in an (presumably) abandoned hydroelectric plant behind Niagara Falls
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Windows 386 Promo Video. After the first minute or so, skip ahead to minute 7, where the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys.
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15 January 2007
It's (a petty random) adventure time!
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7 January 2007
Something for Crazy Erin : Star Wars lines improved by substituting the word "Pants".
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5 January 2007
Every Language War Ever.
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From jfpoole, Rosetta Stone for Unix
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Ze Frank on What Starbucks is Really Up To. If you haven't seen Ze's show before, it's a fun daily videolog that gets more interesting and more fun the more of them you see.
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3 January 2007
From awalker : Google Porn: A Play in One Act.
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From a fark.com forum thread. I need to remember this next time I'm at dinner with my "I planted tomato seeds in my garden, but didn't get any monkeys. Evolution is stupid. Intelligent Design Just Makes Sense" acquaintance. *sigh* Once again, for those who missed it the first five billion times: Science is backed up by testable, verifiable evidence, and can be changed if more concrete evidence to the contrary becomes available. Religion is a bunch of guys wearing fancy dresses and telling you that if you don't believe what they tell you to, while handing them over your hard-earned cash, you're going to burn forever.
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Continuing my previous conversation with G-R/E.D., he said "I think you're just the man to write a Lovecraft musical". The poor lad didn't know about A Shoggoth on the Roof. Documentary, and you can get the album.
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A new camera appeared in the household - a Nikon D200 digital SLR. wonderful, wonderful camera. Ken Rockwell has a D200 review page. Beware that Ken is the Philip Greenspun of the Nikon world. Believe half of what you read, and ignore the parts where he gloats about how rich he is. Here are some cute kitty pictures taken on Christmas. The light was horrible - one incandescent bulb, and some dim gray overcast light from outside. This is all hand-held at 1600 ISO. I've been using Aperture as my sorting and post-processing software (minimal post-processing - I was a slide-film kind of guy in the analog days. I hate darkroom activities), and am loving it. More pictures will be going up at my Picasa Web Album as I get around to posting stuff on line.
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From Oster: Do It Yourself iBook Logic Board Repair. Grand_Rapper E/D says "whoa, that's cool. Fix your ibook and make a sacrifice to Baal at the same time!". And eventually the discussion devolved to "South Pacific meets Lovecraft" and "I'm going to wash that unspeakable horror out of my hair"
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Wow. It's been awhile. I've been terrifically busy due to music stuff in december, google stuff, and general sickness brought about by stress caused by the previous two. Hopefully I'll be more interesting in 2007.
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28 November 2006
Just when you thought you were safe from HeadOn! Apply Directly to the Forehead! Atomicbird (once again) comes up with a winner: Headon Auditions (yootoob)
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22 November 2006
Interview with Robert M. Pirsig, the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance guy.
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21 November 2006
NEW BLODE!.
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18 November 2006
Cool! getting into the virtual newspaper about something other than a restraining order. Pittsburgh Post-gazette article about the google office here. I'm ducking and covering during a barrage of nerf darts on the picture abount mid-way down.
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16 November 2006
Kobayashi!, great eating of hot dogs to saving the world he is! (gootoob video)
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14 November 2006
From Enna, Helsinki Complaints Choir with the Suomeksi song of disgruntlement.
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7 November 2006
My prediction for today's election: The GOP will maintain control in the house and senate by a very narrow margin. Santorum in PA will get re-elected, also by a narrow margin. Gasoline prices will start rising again. (I'm very pleased to be 3/4 wrong so far! But gas prices are going up again around here.)
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25 October 2006
A question from GVD:
A friend has a 17-year-old autistic son. Apparently this boy loves his lap top computer. He likes computer based games. The mother does not know if he has every learned any programming languages. He has been"passed through" high school although he probably has failing grades. The primary reason is not being focused on the work, He seems to be very intelligent in some areas. Have you-all any suggestions how the parents could get the boy tested for computer skills. Do you know of any programs--academic, private, commercial,etc for autistic individuals.'?
So if anyone out there in badger-land has any suggestions, please drop me a line at markd@borkware.com, with 'autism' in the subject so I can keep it from being spammified. Thanks!
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16 October 2006
EET WEEL FEET!, my favorite CuteOverload of all time (so far). Although Cats 'n Racks is a close second.
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15 October 2006
From Grand-Rapper E/D : Lego Automatic Weapon.
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12 October 2006
Even though it's not specified whether it is a lesbian unicorn or not, the Avenging Unicorn Play Set looks wholesome fun for the entire family.
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11 October 2006
From Amanda Walker: C-130 lands on Aircraft carrier.
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10 October 2006
Honesty is the best policy at weddings (uTube Video)
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5 October 2006
Let's paint,exercise, and blend drinks!. And the story behind it, and, of course, the let's paint TV website.. Part 3 of blended drinks has a caller singing Doors tunes.
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22 September 2006
Man, wm_eddie rules! He brought me (and jo2y) a stuffed Domo-Kun to the Google Office today. Domo-Kun so totally rocks everything.
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20 September 2006
Just in case you didn't know, David Hasselhoff is the antichrist.
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25 August 2006
From Happy Lemur, one of the reasons the internets are what they are today. Pictures of barfing rainbows. What will they think of next? dancing badgers?
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24 August 2006
From Grand-Rapper E.D.: Badgers on a Plane
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atomicbird found yet another Head on! Apply Directly to the Forehead! remix.
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23 August 2006
from schwatoo in #macsb: Is the meat roasted with 24th USB?, the beef bowl personal computer. Loving the translated machine text! (laughing)
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21 August 2006
New from AtomicBird, MondoMouse, makes your mousing much easier.
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20 August 2006
Bring me the head of Charlie Brown.
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Mr_Noodle redeems himself : Tour of the [lego] Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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From Mr_Noodle on #macsb: Fat Wonder Woman. Really makes one wonder.
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19 August 2006
Saw Snakes on a Plane. It was one of the better unintentional comedies I've seen. Kinda gross in places, kinda dumb in places. Lots of laughter in the theater. Enna: don't see it.
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17 August 2006
Dr. Tran! (some text lettering and voices may be NSFW)
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16 August 2006
Snakes on a Plane, The Daily Show Interview.
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15 August 2006
I weep for the state of science in America.
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12 August 2006
Star Trek Motivational Posters.
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4 August 2006
Reviews for Tuscan Whole Milk.
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31 July 2006
Panexa, ask your doctor for a reason to take it.
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29 July 2006
Wishmaster - misheard lyrics, not quite up there with the llama song, but still fun.
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19 July 2006
From LibraryAlgebrist, a championship I could really get in to.
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18 July 2006
From DougEDoug for CrazyErin, Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager
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15 July 2006
A fun(?) number counting puzzle. You're allowed to edit the URL. It goes to 30. It gets progressively harder. I want a couple of hours of my life back please.
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12 July 2006
From TVL, McD's Sundial.
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11 July 2006
Head On! Apply Directly to the Forehead! (3 minute remix. Gets rather soothing after awhile). Head On! Apply Directly to the Forehead! (some dude's video. I like the toasters.)
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30 June 2006
Hasselhoff doing Secret Asian Man. They've taken 'way your number, and given you a name.
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23 June 2006
Head On, Apply Directly to the Forehead.
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22 June 2006
Some link love for louielouie: WebnoteHappy 1.1 released!. It may sound like Engrish, with Domo-kun about to leap out and make your Hello Kitty wristwatch turn into a Daikon Radish god (?), but it's actually a cool bookmark manager.
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21 June 2006
Pickle Phobia, one of the weirest TV shorts I've seen in awhile.
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A startling epiphany: "roomba, photoshop, rolos" and "klaatu, barrada, nikto" share the same syllable structure. That is all.
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20 June 2006
One of those rare pictures where you're either amused at the cuteness, or amused at the unintentional (I hope) reference to an internet icon.
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Some photos from North Korea. Looking at NK cities in Google Earth is kind of freaky - wide roads and no cars.
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Because I'm always looking for this and never find it in time: I invented photoshop with rolos.
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From Maf, 80's Music Videos.
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19 June 2006
USB Teddy Bear holds data, scares children.
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16 June 2006
From JHughes, Game Over
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10 June 2006
Some pretty good Amazon reviews..
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9 June 2006
Paul McCartney makes mashed potatoes. I like the talking oven mitts.
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7 June 2006
The MonkeyChow diaries.
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3 June 2006
RocketMen: Shatner (which... started it... all oh the... pain), Stewie, and Reboot.
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2 June 2006
yo, def spock jam, or something like that.
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25 May 2006
From Rzolf: BRUBECK MOUNTAIN: A TALE OF TWO EFFETE JAZZ AFICIONADOS TRAPPED WITH ONLY ONE LP IN THE HIGH PLAINS OF WYOMING
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Get some classic Apple ][ reference materials.
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Smells like Teen Ukuleles?
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How to choose a career in medicine.
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24 May 2006
From G-R/E.D, Man Finds Badger Under Bed. (and thankfully it's not a Furry story)
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19 May 2006
From DougEDoug, earworm-worthy tune. Anyone know what the tune is, and if it's available online somewhere?
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16 May 2006
The Search For Spock.
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15 May 2006
From Rzolf, Kitundu, a guy who makes some weird instruments using turntables. Cool quicktime movie of some of the creations.
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10 May 2006
For Crazy Erin: Emperor Palpatine Collect Call movie.
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8 May 2006
Unsuckified versions of the original Star Warts triology to become available.
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6 May 2006
Best Icon, Evar.
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2 May 2006
This is a link to This Is the Title of This Story,
Which Is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself. This is the sentence that thanks mikemorton.
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29 April 2006
NASA Procedure in case Buildign 245 is attacked by Vikings.
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21 April 2006
For Crazy Erin: Snakes on a Plane YTMND. I think you'll like the sound track.
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20 April 2006
From Enna, The Llama Badger Song.
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19 April 2006
Today is bad music video day at the GOOG. Dschinghis Khan - Moskau. ITMS has an 8 minute dance remix track. must.... purchase....
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This one is making the rounds, but I enjoyed its awfulness. I Wanna Love You Tender, the Finnish smash hit video of the 80s.
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18 April 2006
The very best in Twelve Tone Rows. (Although I like the Stravinksy bit)
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16 April 2006
Definitely one of the weirder things I've seen on the net. McGriddle Fan Fiction.
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From the Grobinator, Rube Goldberg Machines.
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15 April 2006
The Easter Bunny Hates You Too.
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12 April 2006
Obligatory link.
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11 April 2006
The Thing in the Crib, or. Cthulhu Cthild Cthare.
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Cool story about a serious Oops made right.
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9 April 2006
Tired of Captchas? Try Kitchas. Pick out three kittens to prove you're a person. CUTE!
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8 April 2006
From the emiloid, Tommy Pederson, the trombone player from Spike Jones (the original one from the early 20th century, not the rapper knock-off).
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5 April 2006
I am spoonman. believe it or not. (site a bit slow)
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4 April 2006
Woo! BethLynn is Sysadmin o' the week now.
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2 April 2006
From Rzolf, SQL on Rails. Taking the VC out of MVC.
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30 March 2006
iGoatse iPod iCase. I'd get one if I didn't have to explain it. "Well you see Pastor, there's this site on the internet..."
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28 March 2006
Billings' Centerfold Sysadmin of the week page.
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23 March 2006
DO NOT PRESS happy fun red button.
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And related to the Starwars transformers. More bizarro starwars merchandise, and bizarro potato(e)head album, including Darth Tater.
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OMFG. Starwars Transformers!.
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I Miss VMS.
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18 March 2006
From Darkover, If your brain ever felt like wool, keep away from these zombies.
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17 March 2006
Lego Aircraft Carrier.
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Live Action Pac-Man. wokka wokka wokka
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16 March 2006
How to Enjoy Sushi, a handy guide for everyone. This is the Samurai way.
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14 March 2006
Another one for Crazy Erin: Ryan vs. Dorkman.
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13 March 2006
Don't know how long it'll be up, but go to google.com and click on the logo. It lives now at mars.google.com.
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10 March 2006
Singing Horses.
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9 March 2006
Important safety tip: don't taser yourself.
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ClikClak, computer-generated cartoon. The ending is sad.
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8 March 2006
How to Survive a Robot Uprising, the author speaks.
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Death to the red meat sellers!! You meat-eaters on Ash Wednesday beware! Your 9/11 is coming! Death to the meat sellers! Death to the meat eaters! Death! Death! Death to those who insult our holy fast!
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From the happy lemur, removing Garfield's thought ballons make Jon seem to be totally insane. But it is one way to make Garfield actually funny again.
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6 March 2006
somewhat controlled helicopter crash. Yikes!
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3 March 2006
Another one for Crazy Erin: Awesome Poster.
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2 March 2006
Praise be to the Hasselhoff. Worth watching all the way to the end.
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From G-R/E.D (indirectly), Fish Emblems. I like the cat one.
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26 February 2006
Andreas Katsulas passes. :'-(
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24 February 2006
From mikeash, Mia kusenveturilo estas plena da angiloj .
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For CrazyErin: Elvis Trooper.
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13 February 2006
From Wayne: Serenity Comic with actual muppets. Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6,
Part 7,
and Part 8.
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Cool multi-point touch screen demo(e).
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10 February 2006
Canon Rock, Taiwanese guitar shredder takes on the Tacobell Canon.
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Jesus, the Muscial. Maybe this is a good excuse for the Lutherans I hang out with to start rioting and burninating stuff.
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Found on #macdev: iobrush, super-duper new paintbrush for the new era. Plus a groovy soundtrack.
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6 February 2006
The group of Lutherans I hang out with sent some folks to the gulf to assist in the rebuilding after Katrina. Pastor Ed Sheehan sent back some notes on what they did down there.
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4 February 2006
looks like someone had already done the 501(c)3 thing for "Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra", so we had to change our name. Hopefuly Google will pick up Three Rivers Festival Orchestra instead. An alternate url is 3rfo.org. Be careful going to trfo.org, lest ye be met with criminal death to the face.
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3 February 2006
From Pink: Mr. T - Treat Your Mother Right.
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1 February 2006
YOU MUST OBEY STEELER BABY
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Electric Company coming out on DVD. Sounds like a job for Silent E.
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20 January 2006
From jo2y: badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger ASCII ASCII.
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19 January 2006
From Grand Rapper E.D., Stove burner.com It's like porn for the, uh, stove burner set.
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16 January 2006
Dr. Bronner Quotes. Reload the page! All One or None! Dilute! Dilute! OK!
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9 January 2006
What time is it?. Click on a spot in the world and find out the local time.
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From PeteJ, sheet music from hell.
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4 January 2006
HappyLemur sends along some more Chuck Norris Humor.
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3 January 2006
The Internet is for Porn, a quasi broadway-musical style tune, performed by WoW characters. Some lyrics NSFW.
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2 January 2006
I really don't like "Planet" sites, and aggregated blog communities. It seems like a great idea, but usually things are either dominated by a small number of verbose semi-coherent individuals who I rarely find saying anything that is interesting to me (like WPLUG Planet and Artima weblogs, or the set of blogs added either aren't really on the topic of the collection, and/or are dominated by a small number of verbose semi-coherent individuals who I rarely find saying anything that is interesting to me (like Planet MacDev). I guess some folks find them useful, but I don't. Maybe that's why i'm not on the cutting edge of Web 2.0.
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30 December 2005
Some friends and I are organizing a new group: The Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra. The goal is to create a group where the strong members of local community orchestras (I think there are 4 of them) can come together and tackle works that are larger and more demanding that what can be attempted by any individual group, such as a Shostakovich symphony. If you're interested in joining, please fill out the survey. (and also this is linked so that TheAllMightyGoogle will index us for "Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra")
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24 December 2005
Another diversion for Kaiser Szuhay: I have no idea what this is called (scroll down) but you can have streams of interacting substances. Fire burns oil and Cera (wax I think), plant grows with water. Namekuji is a slug I think, so grows with water and shrinks with salt. It's weirdly fun.
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22 December 2005
I've put up some clips of me (and my peers) playing various instruments.
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From PeteJ, Pimp My Nutcracker.
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19 December 2005
From DougEDoug, The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, podcast radio programs, chock full of good puns.
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16 December 2005
Surprisingly, a non-obscene link from Angry Luke in #macdev: Cute Overload.
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14 December 2005
I had no idea there were collections of Chuck Norris joes
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11 December 2005
From human39 on #wplug, Battle of the Rubber Bands. Christmas tunes performed on rubber bands. It's delightfully awful.
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6 December 2005
wplug.org is currently down due to a flood in the CMU server room where our machine is located. wunplugged.org is the temporary home until we get the machine back and installed in a place a little less humid.
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29 November 2005
From Darkover, The Lesser Elvis Banishing Ritual. Thank you. Thank you very much.
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28 November 2005
Crazy Erin (probalby) wasn't involved in creating the Wendy's good to be square website, but it sure looks like her work (or at least sound-effects wise, especially the bloopers and the School of Music) Very silly.
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22 November 2005
Remake of The Prisoner?
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18 November 2005
From Kaiser Suzhay, 20 questions. ANIMAL, but for the web.
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16 November 2005
Mr. T. to lend voice to GPS navigation system. The "Mr. T. talks trash to the driver" clip is hilarious.
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15 November 2005
Many folks have heard through the grape vine that I might be working at Google. It's true. I started today, spending the week out in Mountain View CA for Corporate Disorientation and Assimilation. It's going to be so nice having a regular paycheck again. wooo(t)!
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14 November 2005
Putting this here because it's so hard to find otherwise: Apple Store Finder.
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13 November 2005
If Dr. Seuss wrote for ST:TNG.
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10 November 2005
Hello Kitty's Dark Side.
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9 November 2005
YTMND described in mainstream press.
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6 November 2005
Flutterby pointed out a Cockeyed.com blurb on The Military Uses of Silly String.
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3 November 2005
From Ooo-Man-Skeee, An Eye for Annai. Pleasant gentle little animation.
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2 November 2005
Human39 is asking the internerd to Help Me Pay Off My House. just $1 from 32K visitors is all it takes. I know him in RealLife(tm), and he's a good guy, well worth a buck or two.
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1 November 2005
From DougEDoug, Muppet Central Radio.
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31 October 2005
From Crazy Erin (yes! she's aliiiive!) It's a big ad. Carmina Beeeer-ana.
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30 October 2005
Babylon 5 Scripts is open for business. The FAQ is amusing in places.
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28 October 2005
From Dr. Jones(bio), Gangsta Rap Coloring Book
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From Billings, RAID explained in pictures.
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By popular request, here is my Gig Calendar for the next couple of months.
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24 October 2005
Babylon 5 Scripts, 14 volumes of JMS's B5 scripts.
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23 October 2005
TV Cream's Top 100 Toys, blast from christmas catalogs past.
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Found on memepool, GridGame, kind of like Conway's Life, but different. So far my high score has been 384, but I haven't been trying too hard. bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop.
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21 October 2005
I'm in the Silly Valley (Mt View) now. Quite a fun "drive" down 101. I'm in room 204 for folks who want to hang out and chat friday evening (say starting ~7)
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From a thread over at flutterby, Baby Got Back, the white-bread version.
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19 October 2005
Pittsburgh Unprepared for Full-Scale Zombie Attack.
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18 October 2005
Giant Safety Penguin.
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I'm going to be in the Silly Valley later this week talking to some clients. My friday evening is free (the 21st), and I figured I'd hang out at the hotel. Anyone who would like to drop by and geek-chat is welcome to come. I'll be at the Hotel Avante, 860 E. El Camino Real Mountain View, California 94040. Say after 7:00, either in the room or in the bar/lounge if they have one.
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We had our massive concert weekend. Here's an mp3 of the Muczynski Quintet for Winds, movements 2 and 1 (in that order), featuring our quintet (I'm on bassoon, the spousal over-unit on oboe)
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15 October 2005
Gig Alert: I've got two concerts coming up this weekend (for any readers in the Pittsburgh area). The first is this evening (Saturday 15th), the Edgewood Symphony is performing at East Allegheny High School, 7:30. Highlights include Dvorak's "New World" Symphony and Tchaikovsky's March Slob.
Tomorrow afternoon (Sunday 16th) our woodwind quintet (Zephyrs) is joining with another (Aeolian Winds) to do two Dvoark pieces (Czech Suite, and the Serenade for Winds) at 3:00pm at First Baptist Church in Oakland. It's part of their Sanctuary Concert Series. This one is free admission
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12 October 2005
Trainer for StarWreck. Trek meets B5.
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From the Happy Lemur, The Airline Screening Playset, the review.
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8 October 2005
From #macdev IRC.
2:45<l33pofaith> hi, how do u fix stl on gcc 3.3 for panther? it seems to broken in my machine
2:45* mikeash wonders how anybody could expect a person to be able to answer that
2:46<l33pofaith> :)
2:46<markd2> we look for things
2:46<mikeash> things that make us go!
2:46<markd2> you are smart
2:47<arwyn> you can make us go
2:47<mikeash> I never realized that episode was a tech support allegory before
2:48<arwyn> we are not smart 8)
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From boingboing, Learn to make a FSM Brooch. The original is available on ebay.
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7 October 2005
Bookmark for me: Contrabassoon Technique.
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5 October 2005
If you've already seen Serenity, be sure to check the Screenit! review and make sure you saw everything. At least 1 "s" word, 9 hells, 5 damns, 4 asses, 1 crap, 3 uses of "Oh God" and 1 use of "God" as exclamations.
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3 October 2005
From TSFNKP: iPod, Nikola Tesla Edition.
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1 October 2005
From G-R/E.D. - Bunnies doing Alien in 30 seconds, and Highlander. Also coming up at Angry Alien are War of the Worlds (1953) in October and Star Wars in December.
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Just came back from seeing Serenity. Wow. What a kick in the head. If you're a fan of the series, make sure you don't get any spoilers before seeing it.
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29 September 2005
Now *this* is a feel-good family movie I want to go see. Shining!.
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26 September 2005
Had a nice time with some Visix folk this weekend at Andrew-n-Lisa's wedding. In browsing websites, I came across MrXine's How to win technical arguments.
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Pets in Uniform.
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10 September 2005
From MamaJo, UFO Sightings Maps and Statistics.
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9 September 2005
Flying Spaghetti Monster, the game.
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6 September 2005
Pizza Country, weblog from a pizza place.
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5 September 2005
Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow.
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4 September 2005
For Crazy Erin: I've got a bad feeling about this. Includes a quick remix at the bottom.
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3 September 2005
Cat in a sink. Cat in a sink. What do you think, about a cat in a sink?. Iguana in the Sauna to come next?
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2 September 2005
He Piddies da Foo Who Don't See Rocky XXVIII VI..
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From Rzolf, Kid Beyond's Ableton Live commercial. Human Beatboxes rule(tm). Tribe TV spot with K.B. too.
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1 September 2005
N'Orleans, Before and After.
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30 August 2005
The Mercury probe took some movies of an Earth fly-by. I hope everyone was smiling and waving at the camera.
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Uncle Bob gives Joel the smack-down.
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25 August 2005
A reference nobody will get, Jesus Deer and Jesus Deer Ornaments.
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From Ms. Vious, Cyborg Name Generator. DougEDoug's Cyborg name is a bit on the racy side.
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19 August 2005
From BoingBoing, odd Japanese music video. The music is pretty atrocious, but I like the slo-mo photography.
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From rzolf, Photographing flying insects using "lasers".
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17 August 2005
From billings, Evangelical Scientists refute gravity with new 'intelligent falling' theory.
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From MicroWayne, Google Maps and tracking Hubble and ISS.
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13 August 2005
Play Doom on an iPoodle.
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12 August 2005
From ScottK, Ethel, an insane avant-rock string quartet.
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The Hidden Boot Code of the Xbox, or how to fit three bugs into 512 bytes (yes, bytes) of security code. LuxuryYacktman also has a commentary.
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whoa. rzolf blogstyles.
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From Enna, Specialized Weirdo Bikes. There's no April 1st date on the article, so they might be legit. Pretty interesting looking to say the least.
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11 August 2005
From Lupines in #wplug: NetBSD to power toaster. (and by toaster, that's not a cute description of a style of computer. It's actually a toaster.)
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Ms. Vious posted a link to Two Lumps, online comic about a pair of cats, one smart, and one not-so-smart. Cat people will probably enjoy it.
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8 August 2005
Mr. T. and Me, collections of Mr. T. stuff.
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6 August 2005
Old-school mac guys probably remember The Dogcow. Some may even remember TechNote #31 that was the debut of Clarus.
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From T.Trussell, Rime of the Ancient Macintosher, websites running on 68K macs.
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Cave art hoax hits British Museum. Trolley trolley trolley get your adverbs here.
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4 August 2005
The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Makes more sense than Scientology. I really dig the global average temperature vs. number of pirates graph.
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Putting this here so I don't forget about it. FileLight, a pretty cool disk space consumption visualizer. In my copious spare time I want to adapt this for OS X.
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First family of Windows Vista viruses unleashed.
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3 August 2005
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?. A list of Pinky's various responses to that interrogative.
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2 August 2005
Found on GoogleSightseeing, Sprol (probably pronounced "sprawl"), "Negative eco-tourism from Orbit". Today's entry is on Three Mile Island.
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29 July 2005
From Rzolf, We support the guy in china who sells the idiotic magnets.
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28 July 2005
For all you Zombie-fans out there, Undead Focus Group Picks Names For Microsoft Technologies.
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Stolen from Flutterby, Alternative versions of the "Don't make me come down there. -God" billboards you see littering the countryside.
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27 July 2005
For Crazy Erin: Model Star Wars Ships That FLY!
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From Enna, The 3 variable Funny Test. I am *The Ham* (big surprise there). Your humor style: CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | LIGHT.
Your style's mostly goofy, innocent and feel-good. Perfect for parties and for the dads who chaperone them. You can actually get away with corny jokes, and I bet your sense of humor is a guilty pleasure for your friends. People of your type are often the most approachable and popular people in their circle. Your simple & silly good-naturedness is immediately recognizable, and it sets you apart in this sarcastic world. . Bork Bork Bork.
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22 July 2005
We're watching up the CattleCar Galactica DVDs, and every now and then we come across an actor that looks familiar. Doing that we found BattleStar Concordance. Whole lotta stuff there.
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20 July 2005
For folks who enjoy my quotes file, Cluefire and Damnation.
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19 July 2005
I may be a bit late to this party, but nirotorin passed along Star Wars Episode III : A Lost Hope. I especially like the final Jar-Jar scenes.
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18 July 2005
From Rzolf, The Hipster PDA, the ultimate accessory for your Getting Things Done(tm) lifestyle. Plus, it uses no batteries!
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16 July 2005
Found over in Vinoodle's World, he has a link to Google Pedometer. Not an official Google product, but something using the google maps API. It lets you chart a course (like for walking, running, or cycling) and it will tell you the mileage. Start recording, then double-click the spots to go from pointA to pointB to.
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From G-R/E.D. banana mania. That banana guy really gets around.
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14 July 2005
Carter: drop me a line to markd@borkware.com. I don't have your current email.
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Sarah Rush, the "Launch When Ready" woman from Battlestar Galactica.
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12 July 2005
Found over in the land of Flutterby, While my Ukulele Gently Weeps. I had no idea the Uke was a legitimate instrument. This is definitely worth a listen to.
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11 July 2005
In a fit of ego, I decided to google for "markd", and found markd.net, website for a gospel rock band. I figure it's a shortening of marked (by God). Guess I'll have to get a T-Shirt.
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From davb, An addictive graph-based game.
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Kaiser Szuhay has mentioned (in person and via AIM) the hill sprints that come from Matt Furey. I've found a couple of articles of Furey's: Getting started with Hill Sprints and Hill Sprints Get You Fit Fast.
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From Reflex_ibook in #macdev, Color photographs from World War I.
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for emacs folk: dav[e]b in #openacs pointed out IswitchBuffers, an alternative to C-x b. (I haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising)
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5 July 2005
I'm on my first real vacation (that is, no work being done, no concerts being played, no meetings or other general obblgations) in forever. We're down in Deep Creek MD with 6 friends (The "Navy Crew") just hanging out, eating, and not doing much of anything. The house we're renting only has dialup (and the tiBook + AOL isn't cooperating) so we're nerding out at a coffee shop with free WiFi(tm). While here, DaveB passed on The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza.
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1 July 2005
Anyone speak Slavic? (I think). Redtoade found this quote attributed to him: "Ne smeta me kad ljudi prave gre?ke, samo bih ?elio da prave neke nove" and we're curious what it might mean.
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redtoade, who never gushes about technology, gushes about the emacs planner mode. planner mode on the emacs wiki and webpage / weblog of an enthusiastic fan and current maintainer..
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28 June 2005
A discussion in #macdev wandered over into the world of global thermonuclear destruction (and whether it would make a good game). It reminded me of the Nuclear War card game we played a *lot* in high school. "Got change for 50,000 people?"
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27 June 2005
From AngryLuke on #macdev, The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, only $8,000 (down $13,000) for 1802 books (700 lbs shipping). Plus if you get the Amazon Visa card, it's an additional $30 off! Woooo! I wish I had the time / money / bookshelf space to get this.
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24 June 2005
The universe is a sick and demented place. Here I am, trying to wean myself off of HFCS-based caffeinated fizzy drinks (the Core Class is over, so I don't need to burn the midnight nose grinding getting stuff done). So what happens? After 30 years of *never* winning anything from "look under the coke cap for a prize. You have a 1 in 10billion chance of winning anything" promotions, I have, in a week's time, won two one-liter bottles of fizzy product.
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22 June 2005
From Rzolf, Tom Cruise Kills Oprah (quicktime). e-meter not included.
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20 June 2005
From Rzolf, one of the WEIRDEST craigslist postings i HAVE SEEN in quite a WHILE.
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15 June 2005
Steve Jobs commencement address.
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11 June 2005
From ScottK: M.C. Escher meets Photoshop.
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9 June 2005
Ms. Vious had a link to a silly "what kind of woodland creature are you?" online test. I answered honestly, and ended up with an unsurprising result (but I have no idea what variable 1 is)
Badger
56% Beast |
| You are a badger. You are quite shy but probably have lots of friends. You may also have a bad temper. |
 |
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 0% on variable 1 |
|
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6 June 2005
Too bad there's no Domo-kun merchandise to be found.
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31 May 2005
Also from Rands, DasKeyboard, unlabeled, totally black keyboard. I want one. It goes to eleven.
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From Rands, Life in Stunt City (movie)
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30 May 2005
mp3 time: Bye Bye Blues, with the Westmoreland Symphonic Winds Jazz Band. I've got the solo spots at the beginning and at the (very) end.
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From human39, po(o)p vs. soda. I call it "coke".
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29 May 2005
Found on nutters, FlyGuy, one of the cooler interactive flashimations I've seen in awhile. Reminds me of the old VideoWorks cartoons made on the original macs.
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27 May 2005
From daveb on #openacs, Turn a can of Guinness into a Popsicle.
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26 May 2005
iGuy for your iPod. They should make a brown furry iDomoGuy version.
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Yet Another Wiki, this time at memory-alpha.org . Star Trek (TOS) Episodes, plot summaries and behind-the-scenes goodness.
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CrazyErin caught me with this one. The LJ Drama Generator. Put in your LJ name (or someone you know), and crawls the friends list. Then it plugs them into some pre-canned, yet realistic angsty teen drama. This one was generated using redtoade:
mom was totally unfair to me the other day and now now I can't go to the mall with people :-(.
Oh and edibiase added another meme to their journal. GOD I HATE THAT!!!1!one!
Which is hilarious imagining that coming from the RealToade.
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24 May 2005
I was chatting with CrazyErin this evening, when I used the word "Franglais". I was surprised the Tigger smellchecker didn't flag it. Doing the cool cmd-control-d over the word shows that the Tigger dictionary has it defined. "a form of French using many words and idioms borrowed from English." (which it is)
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17 May 2005
For domo-kun, A Domo-kun iPod (from boingboing)
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13 May 2005
Spotted in a comment on Fark:
Wendy's: What happen ?
Manager: Somebody set up us the chili.
Ayala: We get finger.
Wendy's: What !
Ayala: Main lawyer turn on.
Wendy's: It's you !!
Lawyer: How are you gentlemen !!
Lawyer: All your bucks are belong to us.
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8 May 2005
While working on my intro-to-programming eBook, I needed to double-check the spelling of "DeLorean" (really!). IN the course of doing doing that, I came across DeLorean.com. There's actually New Products coming out of DeLorean Motor Cars (well, OK, it's replacement parts and books), but it's still kinda cool. Plus there's a virtual warehaus tour, and restoration services. You can also order a refurbished car online.
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The Expressionless Girl (flashimation, annoying soundtrack)
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7 May 2005
Judge Kozinski of some federal court, is apparently known (amongst other things) for having amusing court opinions. this one has ~200 movie titles interwoven amongst the text.
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it's 5/7/5
majesty of short poems
Pooh says "tiddly-pom"
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Satan devalued by 50. 616 is the area code for Grand Rapids, Michigan. hmmm....
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6 May 2005
Barbie USB Drive.
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John C. Welch posts some mild-mannered ponderings about the Star Wars saga. I hates Lucas! I hates it forever!.
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5 May 2005
DougEDoug reminded me that today is 5/5/5, which would be 0.2. Wheeee!
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2 May 2005
Seeking to debase all that is beautiful and good in this world, I have created The Turchno Dance, techno-dance-remix of Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca", based on an arrangement for flute and bassoon. I *heart* Gradjeband.
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29 April 2005
Kitten War!!. May the cutest kitty win.
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25 April 2005
Found on Fark, Ship of Fools : The Mystery Worshipper, is a lot like venerable WASAW: Writers and Artsts Snacking at Work. Insted of reviewing pre-packaged snack foods, the Mystery Worshipper reviews a church service.
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21 April 2005
Keep Breathing, David Fetter (composer and trombone player) has some posture and breathing exercises for the wind player, from a trombonist's point of view.
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20 April 2005
For Mdme SockPuppet, and those with iPod accessories and time on their hands, iPod-Sock puppets.
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Question for folks out there in ('doze)XP-Land. A friend of mine is looking for a program that will display a specified set of images as the desktop background. He's a photographer (nature / flower) wanting to use a set of desktop images as a promotional vehicle. Even better would be a package that would let him pack the pictures plus the background changer into one app. Let folks see the pictures but not print them (or at least print them easily). Thanky in Advance.
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19 April 2005
Just a reminder, that "hippopotamus" is the musical subdivision for 5.
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18 April 2005
I've never been one for ant colonies, but this one is amusing. Not only is it Mac OS X Aqua-colored, it has a great last line: ANTS ARE NOT INCLUDED! You will find a form included so that you can order ants for delivery via mail.
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DougEDoug passes on this essay on the joys of shaving. I'm not sure if the badgers are damaged in harvesting their bristles. I'm presuming that happens before the badgers have Linux installed on them.
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Chopin vs. Liszt. "So, next time if you want to bad mouth Liszt relative to Chopin, you better shut up!"
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Ok, this is incredibly cool. Trent Reznor (a.k.a. Nine Inch Nails) has made a GarageBand file of a track off of the next album, (The Hand that Feeds) so you can play around with all the Stuff of the song. It actually works pretty well on my slower, not-so-large-memory iLamp.
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17 April 2005
From Enna for CrazyErin: One Man StarWars.
Three movies, one hour, one man enters, two men leave (or something like that).
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An oldie, but a goodie: KHAAAN!. Happy Lemur also sent along a link to No Kill I. (if you get the reference, I'm very proud of you), a trekkie punk band in Sacremento. Check out their mp3 files. Sound almost like a cross between the Dead Milkmen and Green Jello.
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15 April 2005
RedMonk has had a SiteLight (pretty cool interviews with folks who run Significant Blogstyle sites), including Rands In Repose. Yes, this is the Rands from JerkCity, but Rands In Repose is more of a technical / technical engineering journal. Something like JWZ's journal, but not nearly has burned-out and bitter.
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14 April 2005
From DougEDoug, manifesto from the Unitarian Jihad. My (First Reformed) Unitarian Jihad Name is "Brother Fist of Patient Freedom."
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13 April 2005
Three words you don't hear together often enough: Paper Mache Elvis.
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Acoustic Radar, some pretty cool sound-gathering devices used to pinpoint planes in flight. I like the Japanese tuba-thing.
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Rzolf is the wisest person I know. From AIM today:
so i guess i better re-iterate my top 5 things I hate about open
source anything
1. gushing about some pile of source code
2. people who post to the blog/forum with comments like "i would
LOVE to see this feature. I CAN'T WAIT!" (just add the feature
yourself, doorknob)
3. the previous poster who spent 20 minutes writing a blog entry
about a feature that could be implemented in an hour
4. weird posts about "what are we going to do to MARKET this?"
market what? get more people to download? so you have a bigger
group of people to give you headaches while you make no money?
5. junior bureaucrats who join in because they want to start forming
"governance" bodies and other unnecessary time wastes
and finally
6. Me aiming a top-5 list when i could be doing something worthwhile
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12 April 2005
This is pretty cool. CraigsList + GoogleMaps == Neat Compartment Finder.
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11 April 2005
I sometimes read the stuff at SomethingAwful, usually their reviews and Photoshop contests, but tend to just bleep over their Long Involved Writings (they're pretty tedious) but this one, SmartGuy smacks down idiot lawyer is fun reading. Much like Dan Lyke's "Claim of Ownership" incident.
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Roast Beef is trapped at the Bead Shop. Sometimes I get this way when I get taken "antiquing".
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And in retaliation for "Cows With Guns", Buck Howdy (creator of "Buffallo Bob only ate Baked Beans") sends me a link to his Hey, You, Get off of my Cow. Mooooo!
"]:o_
|O =
|_o=" -- Smiley Cow
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10 April 2005
This afternoon we're wrapping up a run of Camelot. Last night ocming home, the Spousal Overunit & I were remembering the shows that we've played (in the pit) over the years. Here's my list:
- West Side Story (4 diffrent runs)
- Oklahoma
- South Pacific
- 1940's Radio Hour
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (two runs)
- Fiddler on the Roof
- Into the Woods
- Yeoman of the Guard (Gilbert and Sullivan)
- The Mikado (G & S too. 9 shows in 7 days. took forever to de-tox)
- Gypsy
- Zorba
- Wizard of Oz
- George M.
- Here's
suck Love (a musical verson of Miracle on 34th street. it fills a much-needed void)
- Camelot
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8 April 2005
In retaliation for the Buffalo Bob track, G-R/E.D. passes on Cows with Guns flashimation.
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Silly mp3, Buffalo Bob only ate baked beans.
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From TVL, School House Rock meets technical descriptions of hard drive technology.
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Google Sightseeing, using the cool Google maps satellite marklar.
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7 April 2005
Woo! Fo da' Krazzle Erinnle, Iced Out Gear Belt BucklaZ, pre pimped-out for yaZ.
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HappyLemur posted a kerneltrap article on No More Free BitKeeper.
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For folks who use Webalizer, you might want to check out human39's Ultimate Webalizer.conf Project.
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5 April 2005
New Hewlett-Packard workstation. I know intel processors tend to run hot. I guess this is a way to harness that wasted energy for Good.
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Whoa. New DJ Format Video, involving a Rapping Video game. Nothing can top DJ Format's Breakdancing Plushies.
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4 April 2005
Domo-Kun sends along the Perry Bible Fellowship weekly comic. Not really Bible or Fellowship related, at least as far as I can tell. (maybe it's some weird Lutheran denomination. Those guys get pretty wacky). "People either fall down on the floor laughing or go 'I don't get it'"
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For Crazy Erin: We-Be-Toys / Star Wars Ep III Midnight Madness.. Includes a giant lego wookkeeee (or however the hell you spell it) and DARTH TATER. I want one.
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1 April 2005
From billings, showing that no "good" deed goes unpunished, List of Schiavo Donors to be sold to direct-mailing firm.
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31 March 2005
Review / analysis of Achewood from the Ruminator.
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found on BoingBoing awhile ago, U.S. Pennies as bridge and dome construction.
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From HappyLemur, gotta love local PA state representatives. (sigh). caught with a fax machine of death using a facsimile weapon of mass destruction.
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OK, this is the first Achewood painting I'd really like to have. Not $152 worth, would still like it. (misses the Apple //c)
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New Kitten Video at RatherGood.
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30 March 2005
Cockeyed.com compares prices between Wal-Mart and Target. "I really tried to be as impartial as possible, but with statistics, it is almost impossible to describe a situation without a bias."
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From Enna, Cavalcade of Bad Bridal Fashion.
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29 March 2005
From jo2y (yay! He's alive again!) Trashcade, the ultimate do-it-yourself home arcade cabinet. Even *I* could make one of these.
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28 March 2005
From CCoxIII, passive-aggressive punctuation skills.
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25 March 2005
Here's one for Vinoodle: Ultramarthon guy.
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23 March 2005
Found over on This is not your practice Blog, The Illustrated Acme Catalog.
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From the HappyLemur, Solar Death Ray.
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22 March 2005
From Porruka, Swansong's Quotes. "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards; for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup!"
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18 March 2005
From G-R/E.D, on location in Paris. Big Bottom, performed by Edmund Welles, bass clarinet quartet (!?)
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17 March 2005
Batman: New Times, in stunning rendered Legomation. Starring Adam West as Bat Man (of course).
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16 March 2005
From Porruka, John Cleese's PSA for the Institute for Backup Trauma.
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14 March 2005
From redtoade, Legostar Galactica, Lego-based web comic.
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Happy 3/14, PiDay.
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12 March 2005
Chocolate Dieties. God(s) never tasted so good. I still think if the Xtian congregations would use Thin Mints and milk instead of that bread and wine stuff, they'd have much better attendendance. Especially in the dry spell between Thin Mint availability.
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8 March 2005
I was AIMing with T3h M()by FaulKN()rz about William Faulkner, and the Faulkner class I took in college (and how the only way I passed it was that the professor was good friends with our family. I was way out of my league in a junior-level English course), and he came across a hypertext-enabled version of The Sound and the Fury (a.k.a. the Hound and the Furry). One of the books I actually enjoyed. That, and As I Lay Dying. My Mother Is A Fish.
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5 March 2005
Eddie Gonzalez has set up Planet WPLUG, an aggregate weblog of WPLUG folks.
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4 March 2005
Happy 03/04/05.
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28 February 2005
World Jump Day. If 600 million people jump up and down at the same time, we can move the Earth's orbit.
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Via Clark, bbum puts spam to good use by using it to increase the entropy of /dev/random.
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Query Letters I Love, query letters pitching ideas to the Hollywood machine. Sadly, many of these ideas are better than what actually gets produced.
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26 February 2005
I like this spiffy knife rack.
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25 February 2005
Shadrach, Nasdaq, and Abednego.
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Wooo! I got interviewed for the the MUGCenter (Mac Users Group), on the topic of CocoaHeads, the mac programmer's group out this direction.
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23 February 2005
Webalizer under attack. Internet Goons for some reason sticking naughty words so they'll appear as webalizer referrers.
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22 February 2005
Kaiser Szhuay has been working on a website for The Classical Dance Alliance for quite awhile now, giving the CocoaHeads Crew a sneak preview as things develop. He's got a lot of nice stuff there (including Quicktime VR models of various aspect of dance)
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Essential 50 Archives: The Most Important (computer) Games Ever Made. A critical analysis of 50 different classic (and modern) computer games. I expect to lose a lot of time here.
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21 February 2005
From ooo-man-skeeee, Yurts R Us, featuring a very retro-90's design. From recepit to cover in 5-6 hours. That's pretty cool. And as they say, "If you are not in a Yurt, you must be Square." If I win the lottery, I want to live in a yurt on the farm.
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17 February 2005
Rzolf pointed me to the jwz essay Groupware Bad. He's got a bunch of other amusing rants. I enjoyed The "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model of software development., having witnessed a servicable (and profitable, if not particularly pretty) toolkit undergo that process twice.
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Mad Props to Crazy Erin - gradumatated from the Military Language Institute (Mandarin Chinese, with proficiency - extra buckage for the rest of her career due to her insanely hard work), and will be stationed in Hawaii (awwww, poor thing). As a parting gift, she gives us The Llama Song (flashimation)
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16 February 2005
Something for Redtoade (And Enna too): Zombie Risk.
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From Teh Moby SwitChZ()r, Dinosaur math jokes. Doesn't have my favorite: "What's the integral of 1 / cabin d(cabin)?"
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14 February 2005
I love my Mac, behold the power of GarageBand.
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To complement your Hello Kitty Tarot cards, there is now a Hello Kitty Crop Circle. Rzolf surrenders.
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11 February 2005
From DougEDoug, evolution of a wikipedia page (flash movie)
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Found on memepool, Baby Name Explorer. See how baby names have waxed and waned over the course of time. Unfortunately "SuperFly!" isn't in there.
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From DougEDoug, When computerized Forcasts go wrong. It is interesting that the weather channel is using more than 16 bits to store a temperature value. Never know when it's going to get above 65535 degrees.
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10 February 2005
From Can0Beans, PostSecret, people mail in their Innermost Dark Secrects on a postcard.
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8 February 2005
My college bud Brad Brighton has started posting some of the fiction he wrote in the mid 90's. One of my favorites is Food For Thought. Now you know where "Porruka" comes from.
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7 February 2005
Cool digital movie of the mars rover mission.
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5 February 2005
From Duncan the Hutt(y), Computer Language Lineage Timeline.
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Found on boingboing, My Little Golden Book About ZOGG, also known as The Cuddly Menace. Only 57 more years my friends.
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4 February 2005
The Infinite Cat Project. Cat N is looking at a picture of cat N - 1.
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Remember the Thoracic Cavity Cake? They've now done a Zombie Cake. MUST EAT, uh, cake.
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From Chunks, Design for Chunks. Airline "comfort bag" art project.
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3 February 2005
The alarm clock that physically drags you out of bed.
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Hello Sushi.
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29 January 2005
From billings, an inspirational(?) song, sung by William Shatner.
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Back in the mists of Internet Time, the SpinnWebe folks ran The Dysfunctional Family Circus, an early db-backed website collaboration kind of thing, where a Family Circus cartoon was shown (without caption), and the regular readers submitted their captions. The funniest ones were then selected and presented for the world to enjoy. It got taken down at the request of Bil Keane (who apparently is a pretty cool guy). I stumbled across a partial archive of the DFC. Some cartoons aren't there, but some are.
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27 January 2005
I want some. Hieronymus Bosch action figures. (from boingboing)
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26 January 2005
All the bacon in the world couldn't save you now. (flashimation)
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25 January 2005
Real Calvin-n-Hobbes snowmen. And speaking of Calvin and Hobbes, The Complete Tome coming out. Now to find a hundred bucks or so to spend on it...
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24 January 2005
Fark Photoshop of the New Darth Tater.
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I just made the pilgramage to my local independent mac retailer and picked up the latest iLife and iWonk. Pages is pretty cool. More like MS Publisher than MS Word, but I think it'll be perfect for making the Spousal Overunit's charts. The new Garage Band is pretty cool, as is the new "Orchestral Instruments" add-on pack. Some of them are pretty amazing (here's a sample from a demo file) The pizzacato strings sounds dead-on, as do the bassoons. The clarinet is a bit weak, and the English Horn is horrible. Luckily it's easy to tweak things so folks won't notice.
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22 January 2005
Elvis needs (Lego) Boats
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20 January 2005
From Teh Moby MacnBakker, CSS Zen Garden, retrostyles. Behold the power of CSS with no taste.
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18 January 2005
From teh m0by k0m1C, Josh Reads the comics so we don't have to.
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Important Hardware Clarification on the MacMiniMacThing.
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17 January 2005
Now dat billings he be a funky guy, passing along da burgerz and how to fry, Fo' workin' at Wendys gotta be all dat, so here is your training, done in da rap.
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14 January 2005
For Crazy Erin: Darth Tater.
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13 January 2005
A Fast Fracture Method for Exploding Structures. Who says computer science can't be fun?
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11 January 2005
From oo-man-skee, Apollo Guidance Computer Replica. Build your own hardware and software. Saturn-V plans not included.
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8 January 2005
Rzolf has been listening to books by Malcolm Gladwel on some long-haul cross-California driving, and recommends them, so I'm posting this here so I don't forget.
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From DougEDoug, Place the State game. Growing up, we had a state map jigsaw puzzle of Arkansas, which each of the counties, the major highways, major towns, and little graphics of the dominant industry of the area. We used it mainly to track where the current tornadoes were touching down. "Oops, looks like Saline County's got another one!"
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7 January 2005
From Zaw on #wplug, tsunami before and after pictures
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One can never have too many weblogs. To gain some more visibility in the Mac programming game, I've added one over at Borkware, revamping the Borkware Miniblog with the OpenACS LarsBlogger(tm). I'll be making it prettier as time goes on, but it's servicable. Most of my geeky-mac stuff will end up over there, while I'll leave things like Kiddie Pictures of Rock Stars over here. The miniblog includes an RSS feed, and I've added a LiveJournal Syndication for folks who like using their Fiends List.
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6 January 2005
Snape! oh Snape! oh it's a Snape!.
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Beware the GIANT HEAD!. They're Everywhere!
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5 January 2005
From Billings, spamusements, much like Exploding Dog, but using subject lines from Spam.
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4 January 2005
From Crazy Erin, Homestar Runner Snowglobe.
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3 January 2005
Tricks of the Trade, like Hints from Heloise, but for stuff other than just household hints.
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Build a cube out a 6 bidness cards. But do the 12 card version. It's very nice.
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Gotta love the Acronym for the Bay Area Rapid Folders (EXTREME ORIGAMI!)
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2 January 2005
Cockeyed.com has added some new stuff to the Unsolicited Commerical Love Story. Have they finally found Alicia?
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1 January 2005
Hi Monkey has a new adventure! monkey visits the eye doctor. Having just visited the ophthalmologist recently, I can attest to the accuracy of monkey's visit.
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Something creepy to start out 2005 with: Cartoon Character Skeletons.
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31 December 2004
My AIM buddy rv53as teaches a CS Senior Semiar class at Binghamton University (SUNY). They have an ongoing project called The Watson Game, which is a continous project (a zork-style game where you try to graduate from college) where each new gaggle of students gets to pick up the work leftover by the previous gaggle. Start them off early knowing the fun of inheriting an existing codebase.
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Extreme Card Houses
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BEWARE OF MEGATOSTER!!!!
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The Mac side of the world has a
ton
of
rumor
sites. Looks like Dell is in the game now.
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30 December 2004
The BootX Book, Mac-style bootloaders.
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28 December 2004
Fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads. Eat them up yum.
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27 December 2004
From Crazy Erin, Tiny Plaid Ninjas.
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Mr. T vs. everything..
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26 December 2004
bbum talks about the Lego Store. I'm *so* glad we didn't have these when I was growing up. Every penny I had would have gone there.
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How HampsterDance Stole my Soul. Plumbs the Lovecraftian horror that is HampsterDance. Those cheerful little gray hampsters, bouncing up and down in a chorus line. They moved with perfect synchonicity, up and down, up and down, like the pistons of some furry, chipmunk-cheeked machine. The power-walking-in-place hampsters, their eyes fixedly staring out in mute appeal as they pant and jiggle. The ones that didn't even dance, just twirled in an endless circle, beady eyes shut and stubby arms rapturously raised to the heavens. I've tried spinning in place like that. It's fun. You can also Blow Away some dancing ham[p]sters.
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From jo2y, Badgersanta. Like the badger+mushroom thing, be sure to watch this all the way to the end.
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24 December 2004
Mr. T. Chia Pet
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iTunes has a nicer windows programming interface than Microsoft's own products.
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23 December 2004
Credit Card Pranks, specifically, does anyone actually check the signature? I enjoyed the Kingdom of Loathing style signature the best.
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Foods you can't get anymore. RIP Green Ketchup.
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22 December 2004
Kaiser Szuhay gets jiggy with Kwanzaa.
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ebradway, one of the Flutterby Regulars, talks about biodiesel.
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The Graphing Calculator Story. When I got my first PowerPC Mac (an 8100/80, absolutely top of the line. I took out a $7000 loan to get it, and career-wise it was worth every penny), it came with Graphing Calculator. That program was absolute magic (MacPaint and HyperCard were about the only other programs before that which were absolute magic). Put in an (x,y) equation and get an instant graph. Put in an (x,y,z) equation and get a surface. Grab onto the surface and spin it around. Those were the days.
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21 December 2004
Every now and then I browse the recent livejournal postings, and sometimes wonderful stuff floats by. Like this one: we have made the decision to let the one known as Erin Fox join the CCF. She drink Cherry Coke every day with her lunch. With a straw. We think those are grounds for qualification to be a member of the amazing CCF.. Way to go amazing CCF!
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18 December 2004
nope nope nopenopenopenopenope. com-pu-tor, yip yip yip yip yipyipyipyipyipyip.
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17 December 2004
From Duncan the Hutt(y), The American's Guide to Speaking British.
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You've probably heard of the Lytton Contest, in which folks try to construct the worst possible opening line to a novel. For the past couple of years, the Lyttle Lytton Contest has been doing the same thing, but limiting entrants to 25 words or less. After the first year are secondary contests, like the "worst final line" of a novel. In 3010, the potatoes triumphed.
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16 December 2004
Fan Page for Jan Smithers (Bailey on WKRP in Cincinnati). I always found her to be much more attractive than Loni Anderson. But I know I'm weird.
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15 December 2004
"I take care of the place while the MASTER is away". Torgo Theme (mp3), Torgo Theme (midi). For lots of fun, play them both at the same time. On auto-repeat. Loudly on your office computer. Before you leave for vacation.
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What you've been waiting for. The list of Kosher sluprees.
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14 December 2004
During the obligatory programming language "discussion" in #macdev, I off-handedly said "C++ is the closest that males can come to the pain of childbirth." Which for the most part, in Real Live Industry, is true. xmath pointed me at
unlambda, an intentionally-obfuscated (yet functional, in the pure functional sense) language, which is pretty painful to read.
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13 December 2004
Either a hoax, or another "The Japanese are Weird" thing, Lap Pillows.
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How to make a very tiny orange.
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Lego-Star Wars video game. DougEDoug passed on a comment from a slashdot discussion: "The screencaps are pretty impressive--the in-game characters look every bit as emotive and engaging as the actors in the movies!"
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10 December 2004
From Enna, Merry Catmas, two cats assist in the assembling and decoration of a christmas tree.
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9 December 2004
Seen on #macdev, HP TestDrives, including VMS.
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7 December 2004
New Stuff on RatherGood, including morris dancers.
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MaxTheOboe aimed and said that Frederick Fennell passed away this morning. :'-( He was one of the primary folks that established concert band music as a legitimate art form, and anyone who plays (or has played) in a band can thank him for the opportunity. I had a chance to play under him with two of Mark Norman's groups back in Northern Virginia, and had a chance to hang out with him during a conductor's conference. Quite a strange, yet cool individual.
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gig alert: I'm playing with the North Pittsburgh Philharmonic for their christmas schlock concert on Saturday (Dec 11rd) 7:00.
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3 December 2004
Any folks reading this TotalFarkers? If so, I've got a favor to ask (I want to see if there are any comments on an url I posted to fark the other day).
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2 December 2004
Found in Chunksland, 2.5 gigapixel photo, includes a way to browse it.
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Looks like Christo's Gates is a go, taking over Central Park, opening Feb 12rd 2005 (or thereabouts). Hopefully I can squeeze out a day or two to go see it.
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From BlueKanary, Kerberos, in four Scenes
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29 November 2004
Found on Flutterby, The Dirty Punk Funckin' Anarchy machine !!. u2 can be your own rock band.
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26 November 2004
For all those zombie fans out there, Odd Todd Halloween special III.
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Vacuuming your lungs, hints for beating nervous breathing.
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Found in the land of Chunks, hard disk tuning (with Lego).
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25 November 2004
Found on del.icio.us, Goth Limericks (?). Now you can get your angst in easy bite-sized chunklets.
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Lost Frog, original image by an autistic 16 year old. Photoshopping by the Internet At Large.
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24 November 2004
From the 41-Double-Debbie-Dee, The Kazoo Guy.
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A flash-based book report of the Harper Lee classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The talent of today's kids.
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23 November 2004
That Linux Users Group article has a link to a wonderful lexicon of phrases.
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WPLUG is going through a brief, unfortunate situation. An individual is causing problems on IRC and in real live meetings, so We As The Board are having to do something aobut it. In the process of figuring out what to do (they rejected my idea of a giant wok filled with boiling oil), she pointed me to this little article, Elections, Democracy, and Turnover. The story of the group's magazine editor is great.
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16 November 2004
It's not often you get to use the phrase plastic duck butts.
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DougEDoug is (currently) the fifth entry for Bulbous Bouffant. For folks who enjoyed that routine, someone has transcribed it, including a pretty clever way of showing the overlapping bits at the end.
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12 November 2004
In response to the hippy generation "Happy little book of pleasant affirmations" that plauge the local bookstores, there is now the Wee Book of Calvin.
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Found on boingboing, Interview with Benoit Mandelbrot.
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From Domo-Kun, Shards O Glass, the tasty dessert treat!
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From da GrandRapper, How it Works... The Computer. Unfortunately the "'Gates' and 'Highways'" chapter wasn't what I had hoped it was.
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The badger reached 200K today:
. It turns 18 after thanksgiving.
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6 November 2004
You've probably seen the Official Star Wars Ep III trailer. I like the production values of The Unofficial One (downloads are zip files of Quicktime mov-ays)
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5 November 2004
Yet Another "I work with fools" site. I Work With Fools.
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4 November 2004
A Fark photoshop contest: What if popular movies were performed by puppets, including several explorations of the Ernie / Bert dynamic.
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3 November 2004
Billings found this one: Floppy of Death.
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2 November 2004
Coca-Cola,the real thing pesticide
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From DougEDoug, Mukluks Galoshes Balooooooga. In DougEDoug's words, Follow the link, click on the big button labeled "Watch this Movie!!!" and ignore the graphics. I really enjoy this style of comedy. It reminds me a lot of the way Enna and I would talk to each other when growing up. Greeble hoover ni peng ni pong ni bork!.
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1 November 2004
I got an email saying that half of my regular readers haven't heard BanannaPhone Before. Here's the video. And The aftermath (soundtrack probably NSFW)
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From boingboing, Spoken-word interpretation of "Bananaphone".
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Cobra Commander for President.
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31 October 2004
grouphug.us, online anonymous confessional. Hail Marys not included.
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30 October 2004
Russian color photographs From 1909.
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For Crazy Erin: Print your own StarWars halloween masks.
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29 October 2004
LJ Person gets visit from secret service after making comments about The President. After the preliminaries is this observation: "What you say on the Internet can affect your real life". I'm shocked and amazed at how many folks don't seem to grasp that idea. If you post on your LJ that you hate your parents and are sleeping around with the local biker gang, your folks have a good chance of finding it. If you're applying for a job, and have a fairly unique name, employers will google for your name. If you have a weblog that says things like "I have an opportunity consulting with a company, but boy are they losers. Hopefully I can hold my nose long enough", don't be surprised if that comes up in the interview. (this actually happened with a friend. Luckily my friends are smart - he was on the interviewing end).
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High-powered pumpkin carving tools. Now we need the Tim Allen version.
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26 October 2004
Somtimes I wonder if Apple, as a company, has gone completely bonkers. The iPod Sock. The commetns at the end are amusing. And, once again, Apple rips off a small developer yet again. (thanks to PXR in #macdev)
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Larry Ellison obviously has some large stones.
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25 October 2004
Someone keeps stealing my letters. Massivily Multiplayer on-line refrigerator magnet game.
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From DougEDoug, Banana and Shrimp Showtime, from the makers of fine films like the bizarro Kikoman. "safe for work
maybe not safe for sanity."
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Found in Zman's World, Mindfulness in Plain English, or, Meditation for Americans. Back in college I did a term in London. A couple of us took an 8-week Budddhist Mediation class, held in one of the grungier parts of the city. It was a three hour session, once a week. First half was on meditation (first the Mindfulness of Breathing, which I still do irregularly today) and the Metta Bhavana, a meditation for developing lovingkindness (a.k.a. "Let's Be Excellent To Each Other, Dude"). The second half was a discussion of Buddhism, usually talking about some Buddhist Number (the seven paths of this, the thirteen things of that, the forty seven marklars, etc). One of our instructors had a delightful Irish accent, talking about the "boooooh-tah". There were a number of really neat people in the class, including a keyboard player who was playing for the London productions of Les Mis.
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Folks who have suffered through restaurant visits with me know that I typically play with the straws that come with the beverages. Usually they turn into abstract strawagami (about on par with my Oragami Boulder. Today Boingboing has a link to Incredible straw art.
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21 October 2004
OK, I admit it. I'm a serious music geek. Last night was my first rehearsal with the Loudn Symphony for their concert this weekend. We're doing (amongst other things) Brahms' first symphony (one of my all time favorite pieces of music). I'm just playing contrabassoon on it, but I had such a good time. I'm sure I had a big goofy grin on my face during the last movement (There's this incredible three bar brass chorale about 2 minutes before the end, which is one of the high points of the entire classical repertoire). Folks are sometimes surprised I don't have a fancy sound system (just a Bose radio in one room, and I use $10 K-Mart headphones for everything else). Once you've experienced live classical music from the middle of an orchestra, recordings just can't compare.
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19 October 2004
From Billing, The Yub Yub Song, Ewok-style.
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Zman is alive and blogging again. He has some pointers to Changes made to the Empire Strikes Back DVDs.
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While going through my server refer[r]er logs, I came across the page for Chad K. "BooBooHead" Bisk, whom I worked with at Visix many moons ago.
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18 October 2004
For Enna: Seminar teaches Zombie-fighting skills. Please don't learn any Zombo-fighting skills.
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From Talli on #macdev, Revision Control with Arch.
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15 October 2004
For Crazy Erin: Turkish Star Wars!!
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14 October 2004
Police aid Elvis, chase 'Blues Brothers' look-a-like. From G-R/E.D.
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Word-up to my bud Carter from a hella long time ago. He sent me this link to the Icelandic Phallological Museum. And yes, it's exactly what the name implies. Some images probably NSFW.
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TSA sets a new record. From zero to corruption in less than two years.
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13 October 2004
Kansas City Worldskippers, that great 70's cartoon, lovingly restored to Flashimation.
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Paperformers, transformers disguised as pieces of paper, which you then cut out and assemble.
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11 October 2004
From G.R/E-D, Rock and Roll Accordion, with MIDI!
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8 October 2004
Metal Goddess, heavy-metal belly dancers.
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7 October 2004
It's stuff like The ConferenceBike which makes me want to totally avoid the typical Big Business world, focusing on synergizing the dialoging with corporate teambuilding marklar. "So you're sending my job to India, and yet you can spend megabucks on the Team Building Consultants with their ConferenceBike."
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BEHOLD! THE SHRINE TO THE IKEA JERKER DESK!. We have Jerkers at Hobnob. The name is a source of amusement. Pretty cool computer desks.
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From fark, Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard, for when RPS is not enough.
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From DougEDoug, Tech Books for Free. Free programming and computer science books.
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This is pretty neat. Locahost.com, for when you accidentally type 'locahost' when you wanted 'localhost' to access a local webserver. Network printer configuration extra.
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6 October 2004
redtoade posts his grandaddytoade's opinion on our current presidential "choices". Where's Richard Pryor and the "none of the above" ticket when we need him?
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5 October 2004
From xmath in #macdev: Using Genomics techniques to reverse-engineer network protocols and analyze traffic.
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4 October 2004
From G-R/E.D., Just 2 guyZ havin' a good time, gitdown gitfunky rappa' action.
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TV Party's 1976 saturday morning, a listing of the saturday morning line-up from 1976. Other years, of course, are available too. The Krofft
Supershow / ABC (debut)
Starring Captain Kool and the Kongs, a "rock group", that served as hosts for an orgy of Sid and Marty Krofft weirdness.
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From DougEDoug, Text Generator. From the page Tired of using Lorem Ipsum for dummy text in your latest masterpiece? I found mp3 with one of the pieces of text.
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AHHHH!!!!! Giant Fly Attacks Mt. St. Helens!!! Looks like the US Forest Services has sense of humor.
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3 October 2004
From daveb in #openacs, Salt - Watch it, an edutational game about salt content in British foods. You play Sid, a slug, dodging some very unobservant guards. "I am walking back and forth and I do not see the giant six foot slug walking right across the aisle." I didn't play long enough to see if there was a cut-scene involving strip-searching a grandmotherly type looking for the source of the trail of mucous on the floor, then I'd know for sure this is a TSA training game.
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2 October 2004
A couple of specialized helium balloons can make you look like you're being attacked by missles. I recommend driving around Washington DC with these.
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:'-( Zathras, RIP.
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1 October 2004
Found on #macdev, Splint, a tool for statically checking C programs for security vulnerabilities and coding mistakes.
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30 September 2004
RetroCrush interviews Susan Powter.
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Instant Mess, a deconstruction of the existential impact of technology and its implications in the perpetuation of modern superficialism as it relates to the abuse of goldfish.
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Whoa. The Earth Sings. Once the song gets figured out, it'll probably be something annoying like the Macarena or the Bananaphone song.
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29 September 2004
Distributed Audio, like distcc for audio generation. Use a network of Macs to render your audio.
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28 September 2004
From Fark, Picture of horrific storm damage in Sweden. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected. Bork Bork Bork.
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Found on RetroCrush, FreeBento, sellers of
open-mouthed wind-up aliens, cute critters in bondage gear, BattleBabes, Yoda, and much much more coolness.
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27 September 2004
From G-R/E.D, All I asked for was iPods with fricken lasers on their heads.
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26 September 2004
Congratulations to jo2y and Virtual Spatula for serving over 20,000 Spatulas.
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There's always a Kaboom! (quicktime movie). Includes disembodied clown heads for Billings.
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Ruff Ruff (Freddies Blog) Ruff!. Chicken chicken chicken chicken not available for comment.
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24 September 2004
Cribbed from Doug E. Doug, PongMechanik, or Pong reimplemented outside of a computer. The movie is worth watching.
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Weird. Does anyone know how the LJ aggregated feeds work? The syndicated feed for Borklog seems to be losing a post or two every now and then.
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Billings was describing what happened to his Sims Games when he accidently let it play over night (or for a couple of days, I forget), ending up with some dead Sims and folk stuck in the pool. Something Awful tries the same with Sims 2.
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23 September 2004
Pac Man Art, Shadow is the ghost hero. This image is glorifying him.
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From Billings-San, The Last Starfighter, The Musical.
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An "interesting" posting on the Artima Weblogs, Java and coolness, a "discussion". Which seems to be "I have this valid gripe about Java" and the response is hand-waving, which leads to a voluminous, yet pointless post. And that's very sad. I've read the hand-waver's Java performance tuning book and really enjoyed it.
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22 September 2004
Milky Way has tasty nougat center. Now waiting for the Scots to deep-fry it.
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Back in High School in the mid-80's, we had a Photo Typesetter in the journalism room (an AM Varitype Comp/Set 510-II). I loved that machine. Took 8" floppies. Had a totally arcane user interface, but was still surprisingly user-friendly for the time. There are some small pictures in the right-hand column of this page in French. Take a look at the keyboard picture. All the orange keys were special markup keys. So there was a special key for primary leading, secondary leading, point size, as well as cursor keys (the cursor didn't scroll vertically, just wrapped around to the top or bottom of the screen), plus single-character and word-delete, and a dozen or so other functions I forget. I still remember the keystrokes for saving files. Each of these are independent keys. File, Write, (letter from A-R indicating what file on the drive to save the text in, no more than ~20K). that wrote it. To commit the write, it was File, Write, Single-erase. I probably remember that because it's so bizarre. If you didn't do the File, Write, Single-erase, your data would not get saved. It also had different programs for editing (one called "Edit/Scroll") and one for actual typesetting (called the "Counting Program"). Reset, Mem, G would reboot the machine and bring up Edit/Scrool, Reset, Mem, A would bring up the Counting program. Reset, Mem, other letters would bring up bizarre half-working versions of the previous programs. I could go on and on more about this silly machine.
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From Chunks, North Korean News Agency, translated.
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21 September 2004
I thought I had listed 101 BASIC Computer Games, that someone scanned out of the classic 1978 volume, but I couldn't find it easily, so here it is again.
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From the UberJames, How to do the Mexican Hat Dance, with your choice of music formats.
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SomethingAwful has reviewed Boston and Shaun, a rather incoherent and disturbing web comic. Kind of a cross between a Calvin and Hobbes rip off crossed with NAMBLA and the Furry community. There are some web comics that are much more explicit (such as Ghastly's Ghastly Comic, invovling tentacle monsters, a mature woman trapped in a Chibi body, Freddy the transvestite, Drunk&Bitter Jesus, and much much worse; and Sexy Losers, which has done more for homosexual necrophelia than anyone else on the internet), but those comics seem to be done by relatively normal individuals who go Out There for a really good joke, or for a dead-on parody of some aspect of online or real-world culture. [I happen to enjoy both of those. Definitely not safe for work by any stretch of the imagination]. There are also some webcomics that are just plain incredibly lame, but Boston and Shaun has filled that much needed void in the "I have a fetish involving young boys and dragons, and fattenings, and I want to live it out through my comic" department.
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20 September 2004
Even unix is better on a Mac. For a client gig, we've been mandated to use something that's Word compatible for internal documentation. Since we (as the programmers) don't want the Horror that is Office polluting our workflows, OpenOffice has been settled on as the logical choice (it can interchange with the Dark Side, and it's possible to expand the native format into something that can be kept under revision control). I've burned many, many hours trying to get this working on FreeBSD using their ports and packaging system. After many failed attempts, with the ports wanting to go to Japan to download the stuff (!), wanting newer versions of perl and gcc than I have, and generally crapping out with segVs and mysterious pythong errors, I went head and just downloaded the installer for Mac OS X. 155 megs, and an hour of installer griding later, I have a double-clickable version of OpenOffice running under X11 on OS X.
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Found on Flutterby, "If you all don't lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes." [edited to remove some stray windows high-bit characters that got cut-n-pasted]
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I know Some Of You Out There listen to classical music on internet radio. I came across a cool station, radioCLASSICAL, found in the iToots radio choices. They've been playing a really nice mix of modern classical, much of which I've never heard before. As much as I enjoy the Standard Repertoire, I can only listen to Shezherazade so many times before I run from the room and put on some Dead Kennedys.
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19 September 2004
Cool application of technology: Long-distance guitar lessons via iChant.
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17 September 2004
Holy freak that's a lot of rain. We've gotten probably 3+ inches so far from the dregs of Ivan. The creek out back is pretty high. I hope The Bridge survives. The pool is probably an inch or two from totally overflowing. Hopefully we can get some pictures if/when that happens. Now if we can just get the chimney to stop dripping...
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14 September 2004
For Crazy Erin: Milk Got, Hmmmm?.
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13 September 2004
goatse.cx may be living on only in our memories, and on Chunks' desktop wallpaper, but it looks like the cover of the current issue of Time has a subtle homage to the ol' receiver.
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Dossy from #openacs passed along this open source project with a most disturbing logo.
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12 September 2004
Last night I went with Andrew and Lisa to go see Eddie From Ohio, a quartet of folks from Northern Virginia (?). They have some really nice music. The lead singer has an incredible voice, the drummer looked like he had a bad case of stage fright (but then went on to blow our collective socks off with a 5-minute solo spot that started on Bongos and ended up on a small trap set). And why is it the bass player is always the comic relief? If they come to your town, and you like folk-style music with a subtle sense of humor (and sometimes not so subtle, but not outright comedy like Christine Lavin), they're worth seeing.
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Following up on the ITMS thing, Hayseed Dixie, a Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC.
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We've finally gotten DSL around here! woo! The iTunes Music Store is now very, very evil now that it's actually quick to navigate around it (we've had satellite internet for the last year and a half). While bouncing around ITMS, I came across this great playlist, The WORST Music on iTunes. And they're not kidding. The clip for Hotel California is... amazing.
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10 September 2004
Circulated amongst the hobnobbers, FindBugs, a bug pattern detector for Java.
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9 September 2004
From Steve Ivy, Cooking for Engineers. I really like the compact recipe format.
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8 September 2004
Also found on boingboing, Unix on the GameBoy Advance, which runs an old version of the original unix on a PDP-11 emulator on the gameboy (!).
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Wow. Seattle has the coolest art shows. Amy Hill's Portraits of Movie Monsters as businessmen (scroll to the end) looks totally bizarre and really neat.
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Alicia gets around, the effect that stock photography has on a poor, unsuspecting internet denizen.
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7 September 2004
Wow. A webcomic that uses the term callipygian.
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6 September 2004
Hostess Wedding Cake.
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3 September 2004
Klaatu, Barrada, Flying Saucer Rocket Thingo.
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2 September 2004
From Doug E. Doug, iLeader, temporary Apple CEO travels the world.
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1 September 2004
From Grand-Rapper/E.D., The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III.
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31 August 2004
How To Study. Wish I had this when I went to college. The part about taking notes and copying them afterwards is what I ended up doing, especially for higher-level math classes (especially since my handwriting has a half-life of less than a day). It made a world of difference.
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30 August 2004
WTF(rog)? Erie PA being overrun by Frogs. Having no idea these frogs were there led to a very surreal morning of driving around in Redtoade's minivan taking pictures.
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27 August 2004
Although Microsoft has been accused of copying Apple, there's no need to copy the Copeland development process.
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The Making of Lauren. The creation of a mannequin.
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Firefly Feature Movie, out April 22th.
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26 August 2004
From Silvestril in #ntclan, Linkopings Studentspex personnel. Or something like that.
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Apple Store opening in da 'Burgh Sep 4rd.
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25 August 2004
Reviews of Bar Soap.
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Found on fark: Cool photo of the Cassiopeia nova aftermath. The caption says this is a one-million second exposure, which is 11 days worth. I wonder if the law of reciprocity failure applies to satellites...
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Another reason why I love my Mac. New worm watches you on your webcam.
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24 August 2004
From iamthekiller, Hobo Lan Box.
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22 August 2004
Why Specs Matter, on the two different kinds of developers.
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20 August 2004
From BoingBoing: Women in Spacesuits. For redtoade: Women in Spacesuits from the 80's.
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CSari, who runs AcornHosting (where I locate Badgertronics and all my other sites. If you need cheap, reliable, or flexible hosting (Choose all thre) they're the place to go), wrote a bit on vservers as development / production environment, using the Linux vserver project to make development and deployment of servers much easier. Need to see what'll break when upgrading glibc? make a vserver and try it out.
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From Chanson, 21 page dissertation on how to drag table columns when programming for windows. Thankfully this is a built-in feature with the Mac's Cocoa toolkit, and has been there forever.
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From Sharzipan, Stuffed-bear Pyramid Scheme. Run your mouse over their tummies for fun.
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19 August 2004
From rzolf, OnStar conversations not selected for the commercials.
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18 August 2004
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (luckily not actualy me. Happiness is being in a mature relationship where neither side has to be Right all the time.)
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17 August 2004
Found on BoingBoing, A Very Star Wars Wedding. Nerf-herders not welcome.
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16 August 2004
I may have run this before, but it's pretty funny, so I'll run it again. Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. It's not just bad techincal documentation and illustration, it's strange and bizarre technical documentation and illustration.
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The Filthy Critic reviews The Princess Diaries II. Young Hathaway plays an alien from another planet seeking out an enemy comatant, while Julie Andrews plays pretty much the same character she did in The Sound of Music: a screeching, slimy monster imprisoned and forced to procreate in the bowels of a pyramid.
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15 August 2004
Found on MemePool. Librarians in Pornography, where someone apparently has read nearly 50 X-rated books that center on librarians. I'm hopeful there's not a Computer Programmers in Pornography, and if there is, it'll probably be filed in the Horror section.
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14 August 2004
A new use for an iPod. I wonder if any damage would be covered under the warranty.
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I don't often chuckle at my own material, but I enjoyed this exchange in #wplug:
_gentgeen_ Lynx and Gopher are animals, of course symbolizing
the technology
markd2 Much like the badger and mushroom, symbolizing the Jungian
drives of self, and shadow
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13 August 2004
:'-( Julia Child to make mess in great kitchen in the sky.
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12 August 2004
I'm doing some DocBook XML for andrew here at HobNob, and he pointed me to DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide for how to style DocBook XML, and (more imporantly for me) getting the tools working. Getting the DocBook SGML toolchain up and working was such a huge gigantic pain in the butt. Now that it works, it works great, but it's starting to show it age (especially since I'll be needing to move a big chunk of stuff into a publishing system that will allow XML imports)
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11 August 2004
*sigh*. The spammers have won. I've gotten tired of getting a bunch of AIM spam, so I'm restricting my incoming IMs to just folks on my buddy list (I think I have everybody, but I might have missed somebody). If you don't see me on AIM and think I should be there, drop me some email. *sigh*
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Wanting to learn WebObjects? Some folks I know are building a class.
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GVD recently got a new Nikon DigiCam, and said the manual "seems to have been written by Japanese techs after litres of Sake". I of coure directed him to Engrish.com. I always lose hours when I there. I did find this one for Chunks.
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10 August 2004
From #macdev (of all places),
what are the odds of dying, kind of a gruesome litany of different ways to buy the farm. MikeAsh follows up with Fatalities per million exposure hours.
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iPod vs Cassette Tape.
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9 August 2004
Found on Fark: Baby Sleestak born in London Zoo.
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8 August 2004
What's more fun than Terminators? Terminators in Hats!.
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7 August 2004
Doodoocaca, probably the most random Flashimation I have ever seen.
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6 August 2004
Bring Back Kirk. The mind boggles.
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5 August 2004
Rzolf has added a random-photo thing for the front page of Gitdown. Reload for new picturestyles.
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Coaster Dynamix, like Lego for rollercoasters.
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4 August 2004
My Higschool/College/AOL friend Shannon is selling some kind of nice face goop lotions and whatnot for folks who like that kind of stuff. If this interests you, shower her with mon-ay.
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"The man in the back said Everyone Attack and it turned into a Ballroom Blintz. And the girl in the corner said Boy I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a Ballroom Blintz. Ballroom Blintz."
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3 August 2004
Occasionally SomethingAwful has something serious, yet cool. Pop's Vietnam Slides. Photos from a Navy doctor.
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2 August 2004
Looking for LDAP? LDAPMan to the rescue. All sorts of LDAP resources and links, for those who are LDAPper.
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From Beff in #ntclan, Salad Fingers, a creepy flashimation.
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1 August 2004
Last night we went down into Pittsburgh to see Howard Shore conducting his Lord of the RIngs Symphony featuring music from the movies, accompanied by storyboard and illustrations from the film. I was as a really great concert. I like the soundtracks, but hearing it live adds another dimension to the experience. The audience around me was better behaved last night than at previous concerts. We were up in the "great circle" area of Heinz hall, those quasi box-seat kind of things. The 2 folks behind us were gum-poppers, there was a copuple with spiked hair in the row ahead of us that chatted through the second half, and down on the floor were a pair of pre-teen boys pretending they were in the back seat of a road trip. sigh.
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30 July 2004
Billings-San had a link to yet another Quizilla Personality test thing.. This one is much better than the usual "Which Winnie the Pooh Character are you? I feel a) depreseed [sic] all the time b) bouncy and enerjetic [sic] c) hungry all the time". I got Category X - The Changeling:
Witty, amusing and a bit weird, you're welcomed
into most social groups, even though you don't 'fit in' perfectly, which is pretty accurate.
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28 July 2004
Grrr! Argh! I must eat brains. What is it about zombies that are so much fun?
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27 July 2004
From BoingBoing: UK's preparing for emergencies (*cough* terrorism paranoia *cough) quickly parodied.
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Stolen from Flutterby, That's no space station. Now I wonder how AT&T got there before NASA...
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26 July 2004
Adventures of a BlondeStar telephone representative.
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25 July 2004
Not Fooling ANybody, repurposed, yet familiar storefronts.
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Enter the Ping Pong Matrix. (QT6)
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24 July 2004
Harry Potter: A New Hope?.
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23 July 2004
From G/R-E.D, Kontraband.com, including a bunch of movies, including this how to fold shirts, Triumph of the Human Spirit, and
Truth in Advertising (has some NSFW language), and a bunch of other movies which are NSFW and/or show the depths of human stupidity.
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21 July 2004
Found on boingboing, really cool tiling animated gif.
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20 July 2004
G/R-E.D. got hitched at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. [official web site].
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19 July 2004
I wish I could come up with ideas like these. Carve out a coin leaving the face that smokes. Apparently he's blown his bandwidth budget. Here's a google cache.
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16 July 2004
Redmond Blogs, Cupertino Codes.
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Steve Ivy, the cool dood behind Monkinetic, is trying to defeat another Steve Ivy in Google Rankings. I read Steve Ivy and must obey Steve Ivy and mention Steve Ivy's name and link to his blogstyles.
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14 July 2004
HULK HAVE DIARY!
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13 July 2004
Storm chaser photo diaries
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12 July 2004
Dominic Giampaolo, who created the Be file system and Apple's Spotlight file-searching technologies, wrote a really great book on file system design. It's out of print, but you can download a copy from his webpage. If you've wanted to know how journaled, metadata rich filesystems work, that's the book to read.
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Mac rah-rah piece, My Mac OS X is Better.
So what about the argument of the Mac being a small market? My response: Define market. First off, I can develop in a host of languages deployable on any platform. Second, in my tribe, Macs are rampant.
I guess if I really wanted to sell software to people who buy their machines at Wal-Mart, then I'd be all behind Windows or whatever. But as it is, in the circles I run in, Windows is so 1999.
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Now this is a movie I'd like to see. Windows 911.
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Your favorite game-sprites of old, rendered in beads.
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Founding Fathers Rap (flash)
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10 July 2004
Super StickFigure vs. Wall Big Battel!
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9 July 2004
Some dude seems to like the Core book.
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The Russian Dolls go on holiday (flash). The nested wooden doll-toys, not the buy-a-brides.
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Something Awful Photoshop Phriday - anagrammed movie posters, featuring the latest J.K. Rowling masterpiece, His Party, A Broken Harp, and a Frozen Otter.
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Charlie Bucket's speech to the Chocolate Factory staff on its inevitable retooling.What do Snozzberries taste like? The snozzberries taste like lost profits. And if we continue to operate the way Willy Wonka had intended we will be closing the doors here in a matter of weeks. Instead, I would like to think there is the possibility of a bright future for our chocolate factory, but it is going to take a lot of change and a lot of hard sacrifices.
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Guide to Securing Mac OS X.
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7 July 2004
Today must be movie day. Break-Dancing Transformers.
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It's spider legoMan!.
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Making of the tertiary sequence of the Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy radio show, starring much of the original cast.
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4 July 2004
Chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken. Chicken chicken (PDF chicken). Awarded Best Paper and Best Paper on Chickens
at prestigious PoCSci '02 conference
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2 July 2004
The community band we play in is doing a concert July third at oh my god they killed KennyWood. We get to ride-all-day fer free (woo!) and then play a concert aroudn 7pm. Most of the Amusement Park "food" I try to avoid, since it's both bad for you, generally disgusting, and hideously overpriced. One thing I do enjoy out there is Dippin Dots, the super-frozen blobs of ice cream. The end-user wins because they are very cold and tasty, and the venu wins because they're also hideously overpriced, and since Dippin Dots are spherical, there is more air per unit-volume than regularly packed ice cream goodness. Not to be outdone by the likes of id and Blizzard, the Dippin Dots folks have their own Interactive Acade Gaming Experience, giving me a good dose of arcade-game zen that I haven't experienced in awhile. Please fogive their horrid abuse of the english language on the front screen.
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From da UberJames, soldering surface-mount electronics with a toaster oven.
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1 July 2004
yay! himonkey gives us the long awaited and anticipated refreshing limeade recipe.
refreshing limeade
dancing over cool ice cubes
nectar of the gods.
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DogCow goes VR(5).
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Found on BoingBoing, Seattle's Roq la Rue Gallery will be running a Painters of Blight show, featuring defacements of Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Smarm" and Jack Chick art. If you've never experienced the awesome spectacle of Chick Tracts, you're definitely missing out.
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30 June 2004
From a comment in an artima discussion, a teaser chapter about Facts of Software Engineering Management. Fact 21 was the most interesting to me: For every 25 percent increase in problem complexity, there is a 100 percent increase in complexity of the software solution. That's not a condition to try to change (even though reducing complexity is always a desirable thing to do); that's just the way it is.
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Also from Chunks, Totally SideTalking, or just Go to the pictures.
SO HOW DOES THE WORLD UNITES WITHOUT SIDETALKIN'??
THE N-GAGE IS NOW UN-EMBARASSING.. SCREW IT OFF NOKIA!!
but! like ghandi tells, it is not a time for anger.
this is a time for an update with intensity.
a celebration of what is lost, left behind
the final update of our movement.
my friends, i give you: enjoy.
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From Baron Von Chunkenstein, Field Guide to Online dataing Profile Photography.
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RedMonk has a pointer to a SomethingAwful forum posting about this
homemade flamethrower.
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29 June 2004
AOLserver is a wonderful web application platform. It's not the greatest reverse proxy. Folks visiting sites I host occasially (or not so occasionally) see the "not found" error, even though the site is still alive. I've installed the Pound reverse proxy. Only took about 3 hours from download, stage on a home machine, and deploy fer real, which I think is a record for me.
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28 June 2004
Ten Fallacies of Software Analysis and Design.
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27 June 2004
Terror Alert Banana:
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25 June 2004
Fozzie the What?.
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24 June 2004
PowerPizza, stealthy protection for your laptop computer.
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19 June 2004
I know I've been wanting to do this to every singing squash I see on the streets.
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17 June 2004
Gig Alert: Zephyrs, the west winds, our woodwind quintet, will be performing sunday (Father's Day) at 4:00 at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 920 Perry Highway (412 364 6626). We'll be doing the same concert On Sunday July 11 at First Evangelical Lutheran in Leechburg in the afternoon. The one this sunday will be air-conditioned, the one in July won't be. Admission is $5 to the St John's gig, but we have a couple of comp tickets if you know fer-sher you'll be going.
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When the zombies take over, how long until the electricity stops?. must... eat... brains...
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For Kingdom of Loathing players, there's a List of KoL fansites, with FAQs, spoilers, and wastes of space.
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16 June 2004
Usually I ignore the email alerts I get from JoelOnSoftware, since he is usually a microsoft cheerleader. but his latest missive, How Microsoft Lost the API War is interesting reading. It's interesting seeing the reaction to .NET from the perspective of a software vendor that actually has a product.
It's just Fire and Motion as far as I'm concerned: Microsoft would love for me to stop adding new features to our bug tracking software and content management software and instead waste a few months porting it to another programming environment, something which will not benefit a single customer and therefore will not gain us one additional sale, and therefore which is a complete waste of several months, which is great for Microsoft, because they have content management software and bug tracking software, too, so they'd like nothing better than for me to waste time spinning cycles catching up with the flavor du jour, and then waste another year or two doing an Avalon version, too, while they add features to their own competitive software
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Found on the blort, Origami Insects.
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From Enna, Eyesore of the Month, this time featuring the new Seattle Public Library. Looks like something out of the old Buck Rogers in the 25rd Century TV show. I expect Twiki and Feathered-Hawk-Guy to walk out of there at any minute. BeeDee BeeDee BeeDee Blech! DougEDoug pointed out how ironic it is that the author of Eyesore of the Month's website has such an ugly home page. All it needs are some blink tags and an animated spinning "email me!" graphic, and it will have all the juicy web-of-the-mid-90s goodness.
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15 June 2004
From uberjames, NZ Man charged by telecom for being an arrogant bastard.
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Ex-Mormon goes on killing spree with playboy-centerfold wife, tries to cause second coming of Christ. Beware those South American Orphans.
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14 June 2004
From Billings, Dasher, a pretty wild way of entering text.
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11 June 2004
Found in the Football Badgers, by the badger-mushroom guy. Let's go local sports organization!
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10 June 2004
Random Garfield cartoon generator, which is frequently more amusing than the Real Thing.
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1,300,925,111,156,286,160,896 ways to spell Viagra
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For Billings: Squirrel Chase. (Found on the
Everlasting Blort.
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9 June 2004
Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.
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This has floated around #macdev a couple of times Newbie Advice, for clueless programmers posting equally clueless questions. Contains swearing. Premature optimization is the root of all evil! bad programmer! NO COOKIE!
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From (non-red) Toad on #macdev, Psychoacoustics Textbook. The PDF version is the most recent one, but there's an older HTML version at the bottom of the page.
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SomethingAwful has Tales from the Mental Hospital, involving real life adventures.
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8 June 2004
From Molvania, a land untouched by modern dentistry is the rock video Electronik Supersonik.
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From Billings, Some pictures of the Venus transit. The giant planet-sized airplane ripping a gash in the sun's surface is pretty freaky, though.
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For those of you who enjoy Macrame, and owls, here are approximately 48 macrame owls.
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From billings, Hooked on badgerphonics
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7 June 2004
From G-R/E.D, Good Lord, what is Betty Rubble doing here. The floating phantom head of Capn' Crunch lends an additional surreal touch to the whole sordid scene.
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While still on Harry Potter, The Filthy Critic actually likes the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is pretty damn good. A lot better than these dirty little pissers deserve. I mean, a big part of me says they should get the same shitty Shakespeare-in-high-school ripoffs and John Hughes crap we got. It toughens you, makes you bitter and teaches you to expect less than nothing and still get pissed off when you don't get it.
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From uberjames, The Keybowl Orbitouch Keyboard, looking like a set of bongos you can use to type with. Hip Poetry not included.
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found on Fark, Fiction Alley. In their own words: "FictionAlley is the largest fanfic site in the Harry Potter fandom. We have four fanfic "houses" - Schnoogle for novel length fanfics, Astronomy Tower for romance fics, The Dark Arts for dramas, angst, mysteries and anything serious, and Riddikulus for humor fics. As of November 19, 2003, we have over 32,000 fic-parts on FictionAlley" The fact that they have a seperate section for novel-length fan fiction is disturbing. Although I am surprised there isn't a special Slash section.
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6 June 2004
From Kryme in #wplug, Dyson Telescope Puzzle Game, mildly addictive.
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Daring Fireball on "Broken Windows", on why there are no Mac OS X exploits, virus, worms, trojans, adware or spyware. No exploits. Not just not-five-percent of the vast quantity of windows exploits, but none.
let's address that other popular canard of Windows apologia - that on the whole, Windows XP is just as good, if not better, than Mac OS X. OK, fine. XP is as good as OS X; Windows Movie Maker is as good as iMovie; Photoshop Album is better than iPhoto; etc.
But is it fair to judge Mac-v.-Windows under factory-fresh conditions? Wouldn't an accurate comparison be better made a few months down the road - after a nice sampling of the hundreds of new Windows viruses discovered each week get a chance to find a home on the Windows box? In the hands of a typical user, a six-month-old Mac is almost certainly in similar working condition as when it left the store; a six-month-old Windows PC, on the other hand, is likely to be infested with multiple instances of crapware. And if it's not, it's likely because the poor sap who bought it just got done reinstalling from scratch.
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4 June 2004
For Rzolf, Bed of Ham
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From da' Grand Rapper: Cubicle tinfoil.
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3 June 2004
From the Everlasting Blort, The Hole. A man, a shovel, a patch of ground, and a Dream.
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From jo2y, Call someone who cares, about a support desk individual fielding calls from a truly annoying customer.
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1 June 2004
Someone (with a lot of time on their hands) transcribed Airplane.
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From ScottK's Food Blog, The Way We Eat Now, about how Americans live and eat and how it leads to obesity.
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Need A Napkin, Ken Arnold talks a bit about his back-of-the-napkin UI For Java, which is a hilarious (yet cool) idea.
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A Fark Photoshop, Unlikely Bible-based movies, some of them are pretty good. "My Shack, Your Shack, and A bungalow". heh.
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I've migrated Badgertronics to the latest OpenACS. Upgraded the webserver, the database, and the toolkit. There's still a couple of items to iron out, like hiding the :8008 port number in the url, and daemon tools is not wanting to start this service. If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, please lemme know:
-
% sudo svc -u /service/badgertronics results in
svc: warning: unable to control /service/badgertronics: file does not exist
-
/service/badgertronics/run exists, and is root:root/700
- running it by hand (
sudo /service/badgertronics/run) brings up the website happily. (I'm also having other, weird daemontools problems)
-
svscan is running.
- other daemontools services are running fine.
Which exhausts all the stuff I've been able to Google for.
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31 May 2004
New OddTodd cartoon, "Laid Off: Career Day".
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30 May 2004
A tribute to goatse.cx. If you enjoyed goatse.cx, you need therapy. If you found it mildly amusing, you might enjoy this collection. If you've never heard of it, you probably want to avoid this.
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Snacking Jesus. Reload the page to get a different caption. (via the blort)
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Analyzing a company by the books its staff purchases on Amazon, comparing Apple, AOL, and MS.
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29 May 2004
Eric Idle's commentary on American politics, lyrics probably NSFW, at least on a loudspeaker.
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28 May 2004
Name That Beard. I liked the Rasputin entry.
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27 May 2004
Star Dudes, Episode IV in 5 minutes, dude.
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Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin) writes about The Tortise and the Hare, comparing software development to a tractor pull, and how speed in development is the enemy of quality.
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Bush Is Lord, a site dedicated to showing our leader in His truest holy light.
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26 May 2004
Cookie Mongoloid, speed-metal Sesame-Street cover-band. As G/R-E.D. says, "I can hear the Henson-property lawyers preparing the B-52s full of subpoenas for carpet bombing."
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B5 movies coming on DVD.
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25 May 2004
This one is for redtoade: 80's Celebrity Makeovers. Cringe at the horrid 80's make-up styles, and see the 'before' pictures as well.
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A friend of mine did the Whopper Mile. Here are the rules:
The Whopper Mile: Get four (4) Burger King Whoppers - cheese is optional. Eat the first one, run a quarter-mile, eat the second, run a quarter-mile, eat the third, run a quarter-mile, eat the fourth, run the final quarter. There will be puking. Most will not finish. It is 100x harder than it sounds reading it. The running is the EASY part. Options include the Women's Junior Whopper division and Veggie Whopper division. There WILL be puking. I dare you to try it.
Sometimes America just amazes me.
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Creepy Clown. Folks get the model for the clown, and place him in all sorts of action poses. Just the sheer number of clowns is disturbing (more disturbing than clowns are to start out with)
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It's been a very sad year. One of my high school history teachers passed away recently, as did Dr. Franklin from Babylon 5.
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22 May 2004
Powerbooks gaining in popularity at the Audio Engineering Society.
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20 May 2004
Only know three chords? Maybe Power Chord Academy is for you.
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From Billings, Can Episode III be saved? Alfred Hitchcock's dictum that "the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture" is of primary importance to Episode III, since the rise of Darth Vader is the heart of the story. Lucas has already done more than enough work on another Hitchcock maxim, "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.". The last section is worth any price of admission.
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From Frek in #macdev, hmm some how I doubt this is how Handel intended this to sound like.
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19 May 2004
A discussion on HFS+ fragmentation (or the lack thereof). Nice never having to run a defragment utility.
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From Enna, What be your natural life energy quiz.
You are a Dynamic Supportive: Charismatic, warmhearted, sincere, reliable, humorous, compassionate, strong yet gentle -- all these words describe Dynamic Supportives. The Dynamic Supportive energy is typified in therapists, doctors, conciliators, clergy, teachers, and communicators. Dynamic Supportives are independent, intuitive, and good at bringing people together, sometimes serving as bridges between Dynamics and Adaptives. Not too surprising. At the Purfuit o' Excellence, I was a supporting analyzer, which has siilar characteristics.
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17 May 2004
The Filthy Critic on SuperSize Me. First, he only took on one vice, when it's common knowledge that you need to counter one with another. Like drinking is healthiest when you smoke. Or a crack addiction is optimized with a delusional paranoia. As a heavy drinker with a hell of a lot more than thirty days under my belt, I've got a little advice: push through the pain, you baby.
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On t3h m0by bl()gZ0r's blog, very helpful XP dialog.
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16 May 2004
Looks like my Magnum Opus is available on Amazon(e). Stop by and give it a good review :-)
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11 May 2004
Via UberJames, The Yankee or Dixie Quiz, based on your pronounciation of words, it guesses what part of the US you are from. Turns out I'm 85% Dixie. Did you have any Conferderate Ancestors?. Probably not, but I still call it the War of Northern Aggression. Now pass me a Coke.
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8 May 2004
From Billings, Kingdom Of Loathing, online RPG. I'm currently a level 1 Polka Criminal. Alas I don't have sufficient Moxie points to get into the Haiku Dungeon. This dungeon is deep, unlike your well of courage. You jet. Big sissy.
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The Worm Within, dude describes finding and purging a tapeworm (ewww).
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7 May 2004
ScottK purchased some tickets online via Ticketbastard, and received an amusing "if you are human, type this word in" challenge to respond to.
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Knit your own Elvis Wig (courtesy of the Everlastng Blort)
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From JK, Japanese Emoticons. I still like my Domo-kun emoticons, \Ö/, and the TIE-Fighter version, |-Ö-|
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6 May 2004
Crazy Erin is back from the Navy for a week, and dropped off this URL of guys playing D&D badly.
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4 May 2004
Godzilla, the way God his creators intended. Wonder if the Criterion Collection will have this on DVD.
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3 May 2004
From rzolf, the ideal real-estate sales pitch. You can park behind the place or on the street. A lot of people are always hanging out down the block but they are nice and always wave at me when I drive through. Don't let them scare you.
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2 May 2004
Spastic Squirrell on the Fatkins Diet. Language not safe for work.
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1 May 2004
Whenever I fly at night, the Hand Of Man on the land is readily apparent, with the criss-cross of lights extending into the distance in all directions. This satellite photo of airplane contrails shows the Hand Of Man in the sky.
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The internet has something for everyone, no matter how narrow their tastes run. Leia's Metal Bikini, includes fans in costume, fan artwork, screen capture from a "Friends" episode, and instructions on making your own.
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30 April 2004
For the old-timers out there, American Business Company Computer Catalog, circa 1981. Includes floppy drives and daisy-wheel printers.
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29 April 2004
For you LJ folks, UberJames has set (for awhile now) a feed for BorkLog, suitable for framing adding to your LJ fiends list.
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Sometimes these here web-browser things can surprise even me. For the folks who saw a whole bunch of the GrapeStomping thing, I'm not sure what happened, but somehow a from decided to POST itself 6 or 7 times.
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From Frek in #macdev, Grape Stomping Blurb in Atlanta. The grape-stoping bit was actually pretty interesting (if not weird with 30 seconds of feet with an advertising voice over. The tragedy near the end is unfortunate, but the bit after that with the news anchors is disturbingly surreal.
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From the wooden periodic table dude, Making small change smaller, shrinking coins with the power of your mind magnetism.
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28 April 2004
I remember Enna talking about these things in college. Sodium Party, tossing blocks of Na into water.
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Vixen Love, An AIMbot that snares the clueless. Some content (text) not safe for work, other content not safe for the future of America. lol u r hott chik
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Bonsai Potato(e), Zen without the wait.
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27 April 2004
From rzolf, dudes riding woks down escalators.
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From Porruka, A Shoggoth on the Roof. The Documentary is fun. Be sure to sample some of the mp3s.. Also check out their A Very Scary Solstice Christmas album. I can't stop listening to The Carol of the Old Ones
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From TeVL, Wedding Dress on eBay. I like the additional comments from the seller.
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26 April 2004
you can now get your own the stuffed The Cheat.
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From Billings, exhilarator, random cartoons paired with random captions. Some are not safe for work (although I loaded a couple dozen before seeing one with a an anatomically correct pinocchio).
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25 April 2004
The Script to Buckaroo Banzai (at least it seems real from a real quick skim)
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24 April 2004
A brief tour of Hell, oriental style.
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23 April 2004
I really enjoy this balloonstring game. I've spent entirely too much time playing with it. Then again, I am very easily amused.
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From Billings-san, Squirrels singing Disco Sauna. Must... call Squirrel-Chat... now.
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MPromo, all your McDonald's promotional needs. Too bad you have to run a McDs to get that stuff. I was really looking forward to getting a giant McRib sign for the front yard.
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In what is probably the most surreal of HiMonkey's adventures, HiMonkey goes to the Poetry Lab. Oh little Monkey, TerryCloth radiation, Beware that needle.
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Vending Machines of Japan.
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22 April 2004
EPA Approved ICBMs has been making the rounds, about replacing minuteman engines with ones that don't pollute the atmosphere. I'm hoping there is more to this story, since the obvious question that pops up "won't the nuclear warheads do more net environmental harm than the engines used in their launching". Or is this just that the engines need to be replaced anyway, and are being replaced with Greener models?
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From the WWN, European Union to close, re-open as theme park.
Much of the entertainment for visitors to EuroWorld will come from creative new activities that incorporate established European traditions.
For example, there will be bungee jumping from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, waffle juggling in Brussels and prostitute races in Amsterdam.
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A fun fark photoshop, Photoshop an unlikely Star Trek novel cover.
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21 April 2004
Lots of random rock-n-roll trivia.
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20 April 2004
(from billings), Khaaaaaaaann!!!!!!!.
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18 April 2004
Supermodel Personals. Some pictures artfully not for work.
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15 April 2004
*sigh*. Another internet meme. "1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions." My nearest book is Larry Niven's Three Books of Known Space, since my geek books have had a fairly recent cleaning. The sentence is "We were terrified". Thank you, and have a nice evening. I think I like BlueKanary's kissy kissy better. JM (cute but repressed catholic), MF (unstable), TS (taught how to give a great backrub), ES (if I hadn't become unstable, probably would have hitched), KS (omigod can clarinet players kiss well), HP (probalby just a pitykiss), and the current spousal overunit. Still bummed over SJ.
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Jesus Lacks Passon, Downsized.
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From out of the blue, I got an email from Tommy, the webmaster of AppleRock, the Little Rock Mac user's group. Tommy and I went to the same high school back in the 80s. He came across my name googling for some information about unix stuff for an AppleRock member. Aside from the joy of hearing from a friendly voice from my past (as opposed to those hostile voices in my head. gollum), it's cool that AppleRock is still around. Back in the 70's it was the Little Rock Apple Addicts. I'm happy they didn't throw out the geeky seventh grader that was me when I showed up to my first meeting. One cool thing from their website is this thing from Apple about recycling old computers.
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14 April 2004
From G/R-E.D, Villain Supply Company.
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From G-R/E.D, something on the internet involving goats that isn't totally disgusting. GoatFinder, and no it's not a dating service.
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13 April 2004
From talli-I-love-pants-and-ham-bbq, Some clips from the forthcoming Balloon Hat / The Movie.
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The internet continues to astound and amaze me. You're the man now dog (.com). Apparently this is Art. And apparently this Art has fans that generate similar content. Grand Rapper E-D says " I think these are al qaeda steganography sites.", although Nobody f*cks With The Jesus is spiritually comforting. Text NSFW. This was found from part of a legal brief about the Dustin Diamond domain name dispute. Apparently Dustin Diamond.com is Yet More Art and a parody, but the Fine Actor that as Screech apparently wants his name back. Considering the amazing contributions to society by Max. Goldburg as witnessed by yourethemannowdog.com, I believe that he should perservere in his quest to maintain dustindiamond.com, and should also parody other similar celebrities. who da dog now, man? Oh, and don't miss the interactive flashimation.
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Is it art?, an exciting excerpt from nearly 16 hours of bubble-wrap popping. As mamajo would say "don't do that! You'll get GERMS from TAIWAN!"
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Most recently posted images to LiveJournal, some may not be work safe, some may be offensive to general standards of decorum, taste, and general maturity. :-D LOL gtg rotflmao ur2kool.
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12 April 2004
hentai dictionary: japanese perversions, fetishes, and AV terms. No NSFW pictures on the page, but quite disturbing content nontheless.
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Neighborhood in Seattle has peep launching party. I wonder if Enna has anything to do with this.
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11 April 2004
And upon this third day, the Bunny did rise from the dead, hiding the eggs containing our sin amongst the countryside, yea verily so that we may collect upon them in our future. And the hosts of Peeps and Arch-Peeps did sing. All hail, and a very joyous Easter, no matter how you celebrate it.
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10 April 2004
A Tribute to Cadbury Eggs. Just one of those can send me in to Serious Sugar Shock.
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From rzolf, Panic's Japan vs. US Food Review Battle. "It has bitterness grassy-smelling. Furthermore, it is creamy. These play good harmony. I like it!". Rzolf was wondering "how the Panic guys can afford this snazzy office by selling a usenet reader.
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Nance pointed me to Subservient Chicken, dude in a chicken suit on a webcam obeying commands. Granted, for this-here interweb thingie, that's not too strange (and in the list of internet fetishes, it's pretty mild). What's truly strange is that this is sponsored by BK-the-burger-chain. The good folks over at BoingBoing have found a list of the commands obeyed. The links to the clips all seem to go to the "you're a bad boy" one now, so you have to type the commands into the chickenbox.
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9 April 2004
How Safecracking works. use the printable version if you don't want to click through dozens of pages.
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8 April 2004
From Scott Knaster, article on odd todd, homestar runner, and the badger/mushroom guy.
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Internet resource for all your alien communications needs. Well, almost
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7 April 2004
From G-R/E.D, Why engineers & their lawyers shouldn't do marketing material. "No dear, those pants don't make your butt look big, they make your butt look really big."
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From rzolf, Amazon reviews by Charles Henry Higgensworth III. Chcek out especially the Java book one, and the Senco A9 Palm Nailer. "Pontius P, take note!"
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6 April 2004
From G-R/E.D, NY Times article comes to the brilliant conclusion that too much coffee makes you irritable. Well, duh. What is really suspicious about this particular story is that it is a Graduate Student drinking 10 cups of Starbuck's coffee a day. The graduate sudents I know couldn't afford 10 cups of Starbucks a day. I don't think I could afford that.
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Chevy No-va / Not-Go story Not-True.
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It looks like My Generation is going to be really screwed in the Social Security department. The Boomers will suck an immense amount of income away from us, and the next generation will probably be dead by the time we retire.
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4 April 2004
Happy 04/04/04, or if your're in Europe, Happy 04/04/04.
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3 April 2004
Howard Shore coming to Pittsburgh to conduct the Lord Of The Rings music. We're going to brave the usual rude Pittsburgh audiences and risk going to this.
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Moo.
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2 April 2004
Apple store coming to Pittsburgh? In a sense this is Really Cool. In the other sense, our local store is probably screwed.
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From floggo, World's Flags Graded.
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From rzolf, iLife '84.
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Something Awful photoshop phriday on Unlikely Political Campaigns. I like the muppet ones, and the household appliances. Llamabot!
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Ever wondered what the strange image compositing modes in various graphic toolkits were all about? Now You Know, T. Porter and T. Duff's paper on compositing digital images.
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1 April 2004
Found on feenode, idler RPG, the ultimate in passive-aggressive entertainment.
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from jo2y, New Star-Trek Spinoff for the wannabe honorable fashion plate.
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From rzolf. It's kind of gross, Thorax Cake. Real Live Cake made up to look like a real gross thorax. Along with directions. The rib cage on the second page looks really cool, though.
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Quake ported to the Infocom Zork engine.
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30 March 2004
Another Billingslink, This Is Broken, about stuff found in the real world thats, well, broken.
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I am like totally ADD today. Craigslist now has a Pittsburgh, section, and I've been looking at the jobs every now and then. Usually it's stuff for male staff for Septic product events, or female with digital camera to refill tampon dispensers. And for awhile there were quite a number of medical trials advertised. But today is one that is completely inscrutible. Is it for Amway? Scientology? Greeter at the new Wal-Mart in Delmont?
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From Billings-san, Trunk Monkey. This appeared here a long time ago with just the original Trunk Monkey film. There are now three more.
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Blah blah Lord of the Rings Movies blah blah blah. One of the really incredible achievements of the movie is the soundtrack. We recently picked up the CDs for the last two movies, and I'm totally blown away by the music. One thing I can't stop listening to is Gollum's Song, which is played over the credits. Just about everything associated with that little creep is amazing (We've been watching the Extended Dance Remix DVD along with the several weeks of Making Of Videos) Anyway, Gollum's Song is on par with Adagio For Strings for putting me into a deep moody funk. If you haven't heard it, there is a Music Video with clips from the movie. Unfortunately the compressor used makes the sound a little tinny and metalic. And there are lyrics if you want to have a sing-a-long.
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Teh m0By SpaNiArD must be bored at school today. He passes on NewsMap, a way of seeing a ton of current headlines.
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Something Awful forum goons do the Tarot Card Tango.
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Archive from The Book Of Ratings. Random lists of stuff given grades. Like the ratings for Pasta Shapes (I),
Agnolotti: These are chubby little ravioli, and the name means "fat little lambs." Cute! That's a lovely little image, fat lambs frolicking in a field of cream sauce with a bunch of hideously overgrown scallops and occasionally being stabbed with the massive fork of a vengeful god.
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Another snowflake design app. Plus a huge pile of other flash stuff at the same site.
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From t3h m0by jAvOr, Small World, a Dennis Leary wannabe comments on friendster.
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29 March 2004
Top ten worst album covers.
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If you're travelling the PA turnpike, and decide to have car problems, make sure you have them between mile markers 100 and 127, near Somerset. Coming back from VA on Saturday night, the hedgehog decided it didn't want to surpass 3000 RPM (we think it may be fuel line/pump/filter related). The towing company (Herring Motors) was fantastic. They took us to Greensburg (which was something like 60 miles. Thank heaven for AAA Plus), and the driver was very professional, and a really nice guy. Made a potentially grumpy situation actually pretty pleasant. Luckily Kebbin-n-Deb were having dinner and a Lowes run in Greensburg, so they gave us a ride home from the dealer.
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HiMonkey goes on adventure Deep in the belly of the NPR Beast. Baking ovens! Mixer Joysticks!
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23 March 2004
So can you tell I'm recovering for a couple of stressful weeks on a gig? MilkAndCookies, a whole bunch of strange flash animations and video, like Maryland Cookies, and Madness Combat III.
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I guess it's a new flashmeme going around (having poached it from Flutterby). Samorost, kind of like Myst meets Fantastic Planet.
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Live Journal and AIM conversations of North Korean leader Kim Jong II.
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Seen on CHanson's journal, The LilyPoind music engraving system, including a treatise on how things like Finale suck. There's also an interview with the developers (one of the more hostile, yet interesting, online interviews I've read in a long time).
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SomethingAwful has another photoshop comedy goldmine, Toys: A Reality, involving ordinary every day toys that have escaped into the Real World.
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22 March 2004
The Strange Synchronicity of the Last Breakfast, or how two artists, doing a parody of the same painting involving cereal-box mascots, end up using some of the same characters. OH THE HORROR! IT MUST BE PLAGARISM!
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21 March 2004
For those that enjoy Cute Kitten Pictures, Fark Photoshop of a (non-cliche) Kitten.
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19 March 2004
From G-R/E.D, Devil Duckie, a portable USB Flash drive. Their USB cables are also, uh, tasteful.
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16 March 2004
Some folks have doubted the existance of "Ham BBQ" in the Western PA area (which is taking some ham, some bbq sauce, putting into a crock-pot and steeping until it becomes a revolting sodium overload) Here is a registration form from the local xtian FM station about a media day. Check out near the end. Also, Nauticom Sports thing, and look for the Butler Boosters. You can also be fancy and make your own sauce. Or just use the KraftFoods basic recipe.
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15 March 2004
Trudy Streett from College introduced me to Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, which is a gift I generally give to folks who have just had babies. As Redtoade said, "that book is quite disturbing. me thinks that the wife has taken you two off the list of potential god parent candidates". I found an Online Version of some (most?) of the pages.
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Found on MemePool, 213 Things that Rob Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army. The Chicken and Rice MRE is *not* a personal lubricant
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Ack! I almost missed it. Happy Pi Day!
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12 March 2004
Pooched from Flutterby, Life after the Video Game Crash. You have to respect (?) an article that can use Remember the first Roy-Orbison-wrapped-in-shrinkwrap erotic fiction story you read? Of course. Do you remember the 207th one? Only vaguely. with a straight face. (whoa. there's a Roy Orbison in Cling Wrap audio track on that page.)
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Thanks to the efforts of DougEDoug, BorkLog is now Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional, courtesy of the w3c. My life is complete now.
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From Billings, The Two Towers (in ten minutes). Looks like it's gone over quota.
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11 March 2004
From Billings, Imaginary Girlfriends. Under 'girlfriends wanted', "We're looking for someone who can provide an authentic long-distance girlfriend experience with a minimum of actual interaction.". Some days I just love the internet.
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From the world of FoodIsWorseThanCrack, American Exports of Obesity, and the link between technology, obesity, and the modern phenonema of instant gratification.
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10 March 2004
Live Active badger badger badger badger (mushroom mushroom).
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Found on SomethingAwful, The Omegans Are Liars, a lot of high-velocity weirdness to start the day.
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Gig Alert: The Spousal Overuint & I will be playing with the Edgewood Symphony (warning, website is mid-90's flavor) out in Monroeville PA on saturday. It's at 7:30 at Gateway Middle School.
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9 March 2004
Bus Error. Passengers Dumped.
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8 March 2004
Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator. Sorry guys, it's not a Flash game.
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7 March 2004
Caring for your introvert, which sounds as lot like me. Especially introverts are people who find other people tiring. Parties and other social gatherings leave me totally wiped out.
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6 March 2004
A whole bunch of cool flash things, from a springy tree view, to a calendar done with pencil and eraser, to spinning a stack of blocks to other weird stuff.
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He did it for science, this time it's banging a RealDoll.
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FireFly Movie woooo!!
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5 March 2004
Bull Session With Professor IPod, a sociological deconstruction of personal music spaces and the iPod. Or something like that.
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History of the Penguin Whacking Game.
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3 March 2004
Mona Lisa originally had a mustache.
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PreReviews, reviews of movies that the reviewer hasn't seen yet.
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29 February 2004
From nutters, Tww-Closings, what happens when you allow folks to enter their own messages for weather closing reports. Some good ones are what you say! and BSOD.
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27 February 2004
Chris Hanson has a thing on It's hard to find good developers.
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One of the things that my sister & I (and now Anne's hubby) do when we visit the folks is to put little signs around, usually poking fun at some piece of artwork in progress, or just generally being strange (like JK's "Don't look in the Cabbage!" on a post-it note on the cabinet door.) One of the things on Mom's fabric pinning board was part of a quilt pattern that looked like a double-headed axe. So of course I remembered the Oh my God! There's an axe in my head! pages, made a little face, and made about 20 post-it notes with different translations, so Mom can mix-and-match as her whim takes her. I'd like to take this time to blow my own horn (virtually, I do enough of that in real life). I'm mentioned on footnote 15, regarding the
k:-O emoticon.
We had to make one small change to get the "Oh my God!" element across [since I originally had k:-), but k:-O is the logical evolution], but there's no doubt that Mark's twist on Scott Fahlman's ARPANET invention is absolutely brilliant. This is one of our favorite entries, ever. Bravo.
Yeah, and someone discovered something similar two years before i did, but that's the way things go. Still, having an emoticon on a listing of axe in the head phrases is something to be proud of. Uh, I think. Well, maybe not. Actually, I think I should have k:-O engraved on my tombstone.
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26 February 2004
Wheee, it never rains but it pours. I've been quite the last week or so. The mom-unit had a medical emergency and I'm in Omaha (she's back from the hospital and is doing great). Also this week my mother-in-law passed away (she had been slowly withering away from MS, so her passing is a blessing). 2004 is not shaping up to be a great year so far. Hopefully I'll be back on the blogfeed next week.
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20 February 2004
From rzolf, The Viagra Prank, dude orders viagra online, then takes it in church.
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19 February 2004
Found on boingboing, Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. A professional fiction writer talks about the writing process.
A note on names. In first drafts I often name my characters for their functions in the plot. The hero's buddy may be named "Buddy," while a minor viewpoint character may be named "Walkon" or "Cannon Fodder." Global Search-and-Destroy with a wordprocessor makes giving them all reasonable names easy in a subsequent draft, and makes keeping them straight easy in an early draft.
Having been doing a lot of nonfiction writing, it's interesting seeing the parallels and differences. From the forum is a link to Turkey City Lexicon, with descriptions for writing errors, like Bathos, Sudden change in level of diction. "The massive hound barked in stentorian voice then made wee-wee on the carpet."
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In a case of mistaken identity, Oxford engineering student delivers lectures in Bejing on global economics.
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Also from the blort, Draw Your Boss. As G-R/E.D. says some of those DYB pix look more like therapy than anything else.
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Found on the Everlasting Blort, Cereal Box Archive, hundreds and hundreds of cereal boxes. Who can forget Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs or Moonstones?
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18 February 2004
For those folks who enjoy JerkCity (content usually NSFW, but the pictures usually are), you can now Build Your Own.
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17 February 2004
a quick look at the Win2k source (doesn't actually contain any of the code, just some comments from the code, and some analysis of the code that the author has looked at).
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16 February 2004
IE Security hole found in W2K source code leak. Way to go, using a signed integer for an
offset. Now all we have to do is create a BMP with bfOffBits > 2^31.
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Found over in the land O'Knaster, I Feel Great, an ad(?) for Nutrigrain bars (?).
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From Billings, crazy machine. Requires flash and lower-case letters.
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13 February 2004
I was going through the borkware web server logs today, and saw a coupe of hits from del.icio.us. I immediately thought it was was a spam request (I seem to get a number of "refererrs" from blog or porn sites that don't actually link, just put stuff in my logs so I view the page). Turns out del.icio.us is a collaborative social bookmarks manager, and there's a lot of interesting links there. Like One hundred Albums you should remove from your collection immediately.
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11 February 2004
Old-School mac folks might remember "Despair", an existential god simulator, where you can play a jealous God. Some folks have tweaked the original version so it works on OS X (in Classic). Get it here. "more people"
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and I'm like fersher that like some folks are like campaigning against like the overuse of like "like" in like modern speech. Like it's one of things that like drives me nuts, like the "you know" that like all the sports figures when they're like interviewed like to like say a lot.
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A couple of folks have AIMed me with "check this out... http://blahblahblah/osama_capture.php", which I am guessing is from some windows virus trojan crap that is spamming people's buddy lists. What can I tell these folks to use so they can clean it off their system? found it, CNN says it's them downloading BuddyLinks, which installs AIMspamware.
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From redtoade, airplane crash database.
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10 February 2004
Something Awful has found parts of the script of the third Star Wars abomination movie.
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New stuff over at RatherGood, including a kitten appearance in the Zoology Dragon song.
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9 February 2004
From L.L.Beanpole, N.A.D.D, nerd attention deficit disorder.
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8 February 2004
From #davb in #openacs, Video Toaster source released.
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6 February 2004
From Feanor on #macdev, Alex Chiu RPG. You may remember Alex as the purveyor of magnetic healing rings. As mobodo said, for every asshole, there's a brilliant person to make fun of him. Be sure to check out Alex's Alex Chiu's New Darwinism. As it says on the page, FULL OF ANIMATED GIF'S AND WONDERFUL GRAPHICS. A MUST STUDY FOR ALL SCIENTISTS. . Dilute! Dilute! OK! (although that's really Dr. Bronner. His soaps are awesome.)
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EXTREME KNITTING!!!, well not really. Just a new fad amongst 'young urban Americans'. The SF Guardian does a bit on EXTREME KNITTING!!! amongst young urban professionals.
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5 February 2004
For reasons beyond my comprehension, I'm getting back into C++. The feenode #c++ IRC channel has a nice page of resources.
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Found on Fark, Scientists to be allowed to examine 9300 year-old remains of Patrick Stewart.
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4 February 2004
Mice produce sperm from monkeys. Three-headed skunkapotamus not far behind.
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3 February 2004
I know chmod.
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Found in the alt tag of an achewood cartoon, Portraits, which can feature you and Stevie Nicks. I never knew that Stevie Nicks was such a spiritual icon, but I guess if people find inspiration and comfort in Her visiage, then it must be OK.
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2 February 2004
From boingboing, Touchy-Feely Gallery 1, Oil paintings of sock puppets. SOCK PUPPETS!!!
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Scott "The Body" Knaster had a pointer to World66, a place where you can tick off the places you've been and see a map of your travels. Here's mine for the US:
Now I wish it had a setting for 'just passed through' vs 'actually visited'
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31 January 2004
From boingboing, Uncle Patrick's Advice to Children. It's more akin to Uncle Shelby's ABZ book than to true useful advice, but much in there is funny (if a bit crude at times).
Pajamas are indeed comfy, but society dictates we not wear them to school, work or the bowling alley.
For that matter, be aware that bowling alley employees may have a limited tolerance for other non-pajama-related behaviors, such as getting all loaded and pretending to be Godzilla and stomping on that windmill over there in the indoor miniature golf course.
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Umami Tsunami has a bit on Speed Dating TIps for the Single Guy, or how not turn into an automaton. (dee dee, da dee dah)
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30 January 2004
I just now noticed that ScottK also has a Food and Weight Related Blog, Food is worse than crack.
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29 January 2004
The CocoaDev Wiki has been having a fun discussion on sorting methods. Someone brought up the Radix Sort, which I haven't thought about in years. I first saw that in a college FORTRAN class I took in high school, thinking "wow, that's cool!" (of course, if someone showed me the bubble sort at the same time, I would have thought the same thing), but it is a cool little sorting algorithm.
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28 January 2004
Hieronymus Bosch is one of my favorite artists. His stuff is so creepy weird, especially considering the time when it was created. In the SomethingAwful Turn that frown upside down, art! photoshop thread, is this wonderful Bosch adaptation.
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25 January 2004
While talking to teh moby bitshiftzor, I waxed nostalgically about the VA DMV, which was a total dream to deal with when compared to theh orror of Pennsylvania DMV. With VA, for a license renewal, I"d walk into a branch location, and after a short (sometimes no) wait, I'd deal with a pleasant person and get my business done. In PA, you usually end up going to two or three different offices and a Notary, with everyone grumpy. One of the cool VA things is how disgustingly easy it is to get a Vanity plate. They even have a website where you can preview your plate.
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From jo2y, A touching valentine sentiment.
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24 January 2004
From rzolf, Arch Enemy, dude eats nothing but McDonalds for a month. His health, not surprisingly, goes to Hell.
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Over on folklore.org, Busy Being Born, photographs of the Lisa / Mac GUI as it evolved.
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From ScottK, Folklore, Andy Hertzfeld's (another one of my childhood idols) collaborative diary about the development of the Macintosh. There is fascinating stuff in there for the old-school MacHeads in the audience.
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To play around with my GarageBand/MIDI hackage, I decided to toggle in the classic Hymn A Mighty Fortress into Finale, and pull it into GB, and slightly tweak it for the New Age. I hope folks enjoy MegaFortress.
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23 January 2004
:'-(
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The Smoking Gun has a big collection of backstage riders from over a hundred different groups. I'm amused that Elton John is listed under Divas.
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22 January 2004
Rumor has it that Cattlecar Erotica will be six new episodes.
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Found on x23.net, a review of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Big Rigs is a game so astoundingly bad that it manages to transcend nearly every boundary put forth by some of gaming's absolute worst of the worst and easily makes it into that dubiously extraordinary category of being one of the most atrocious games ever published.
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Found on ebay, PFHT, Pet Foil hat Technology. STOP BRAIN SCANS!
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RetroCrush has an interview with Ruth Buzzi. I still remember the flying saucer show.
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21 January 2004
Yay. New Borkware, CryptoGrammer, handy little aid for solving those cryptogram puzzles in the crossword magazines on the news-stand. I'm still impressed with the old NeXTstep new Cocoa toolkit. I got it pretty much working in an hour, and got it feature complete in under a day
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Bum Wines Reviewed. For the discriminating out-of-work dot-com former yuppied.
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Found on Flutterby, long-distance penguin batting game (Flash)
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From oo-mahn-skee, Interactive Yurt Builder.
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Looks like GarageBand won't import MIDI files. Bummer. I found a way to hack around it.
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20 January 2004
I just installed GarageBand. Holy smokes it's cool. I'm used to making music with stuff you can blow into, not this electronic computer stuff. Existing software has always looked daunting in its complexity. This thing is pretty easy - I think they've found the sweet spot between functionality and flexibility, doing neat things quickly. Part of the GarageBand EULA is to foist your first mp3 upon the world. Sorry. Now to actually go read docs to see what it can really do.
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19 January 2004
Now this is a book I can enjoy.
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Need some quotes? Come to the Quotations Page. Tons o' quotes.
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18 January 2004
WeatherPixie. It builds little cartoons that represent the weather in your area.
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bughunter in #macdev forwarded on this bit of Windows Server 2003 documentation, talking about "Crazy Uptimes". Unix people just sit back and chuckle. jaufrec in #openacs had an interesting observation: "In fact, I argue that building a complex system out of obviously unreliable parts is likely to produce a more stable system than one made out of mostly reliable parts, because you will have to plan for failure from the beginning, instead of being surprised"
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Found on Fark, Violia getting the respect it deserves. I actually tried to learn to play the viola once, but too many years of trombone had messed up my left wrist. I still enjoy hearing the viola, and I enjoy viola players. And viola jokes. "What do you do with a dead viola player? Move them back a stand." is my favorite.
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Silly magazines that have been published this year.
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I wish I had this kind of spare time. Comparison of the sizes of the two Death Stars.
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Chris Hanson points out Windows viruses cost more in one year than a manned mission to Mars will over ten..
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16 January 2004
Guy turns his DelSol into a Rebel Fighter.
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15 January 2004
From teh moby konger, DonkeyKonga, which actually looks like a lot of fun.
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13 January 2004
deus ex macarena.
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From G-R/E.D, Fans Outraged at New Character in The Return Of The King.
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From Scott's blog, Jewsmas. In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to be "inclusive", Christian society has cast Chanukah in the role of the "Jewish Christmas". To liberate our ancient holiday from this false role, we introduce a new holiday, the true Jewish Christmas, Jewsmas. Now leave Chanukah the hell alone!
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Mac Programming Old-Timers probably recognize the name Scott Knaster. he worked at Apple, and wrote a couple of early influential Mac programming books. I've had the chance to meet him here at a Big Nerd Ranch class. He has a blog. Wheeee.
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9 January 2004
From Da Grand Rapper (E/D), Irish Curse Generator.
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Mahna Mahna. doo doo, dee doo doooo.
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From The Billings, Microsoft toolbars taken to their logical extreme.
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The Mystery of Hostess Choco-Diles.
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RefGrunt. weblog of a reference desk worker.
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8 January 2004
From #jo2y, Rats, foiled again.
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7 January 2004
One of the few video games in the 80's (outside of Gauntlet) that I pumped a lot of quarters into was Dig Dug EDug. Retrocrush Salutes DigDug.
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Found on Chris Hanson's LJ, Offshoring Programmers is Bad Strategy for Software Companies.
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6 January 2004
Billings posted in #wplug How I Made A Hacker Out Of A Slacker. Now I have this urge to go sell Grit. The Ackxhpawz site has a lot of nifty stuff in it, like the Dinky Dog cartoon, that when shown in 1919 Deemed " ribald, inflammatory & extremely unfunny" at the time, the film was consistantly met with an uproar wherever it was shown. Imagine what the audience of the time would do with Itchy and Scratchy, or even the tentacle porn stuff from Japan.
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5 January 2004
Shamlessly stolen from Chunks, "Is it me or does it concern anyone else that this is a picture of NASA?"
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Sagging sales? Poor attendance at your organization or event? Contact I See Jesus to create a fake Jesus sighting, and take advantage of the gullible. No idea if it's for real, or just a parody.
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Balloon Molecules, using animal balloons for showing chemical structures. Here's the pictures. The site includes a nice concise introduction on balloon twisting basics.
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From EnnaNoop, Evil Cookies. there is icing profanity in one, if you're worried about work.
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It's the wooda-wooda wand.
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Two(?) words I'd never thought I'd see together.
OddTodd FanArt.
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A brief history of time water guns.
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Spirit Mars Lander Pictures. US Probe Lands on Mars, begins search for WMD. Similarly, Mission to find lemmings on Mars suffers new setback. In a more serious vein, NASA has some info(e) on NASA Connections to Everyday Life, common-society benefits of the space program (aside from the inherent coolness of rockets and stuff)
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Robert C. Martin comments on the current internet technology hype. Web Services? What has the industry been smoking? It's trendy, it's the magic bullet, therefore the industry stampedes in that direction like a herd of mad cows.
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4 January 2004
Dan at Flutterby had a pointer to Spirits In Stone, The new face of African Art, including a large number of Stone Sculptures. The Atlanta airport had (has? I'll know next week) a lot of large modern African stone scupltures in the people-mover area beyond the gestappo security curtain. I spent a pretty fair chunk of time, while waiting of a flight or waiting to be picked up, getting a good close look at the work there. I like modern art, finding things that are more abstract to be much more interesting than things that are more representational, and I found this installation of African stone art to be truly fascinating. The coloring of the stone (which is done with heat, wax, and polish) is extremely rich, and seems to be glowing. Resisting the urge to go into mock art critic mode (the existential representationalism expressed the pigmentform duality between the rough hewn granite texture and polished colored stone underscores the dielectical confusion inherant in the artists symbolism. and sex.), it was just plain cool.
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From memepool, Acid Trip Drawing. Artist is given a dose of LSD and free access to art supplies.
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3 January 2004
We went and saw Return o' The King yesterday with Redtoade and The Vessel. Everyone in the theater was very well behaved. Except for the pair right behind me. Some incredibly overweight guy (didn't have enough hair to have a mullet) and an incredibly emaciated 5 year old. The kid spilled a huge drink on the floor, not once, but twice. Poor Sharlotte ended up resting her feet on a pile of napkins and a popcorn bag. In addition to the usual running commentary "what's that?" "must be somebody" "he's ugly", the kid was a power cruncher, one of those open-mouthed eaters that can turn a single kernel of popcorn into a Mahler-lengthy symphony of noise. Needless to say, crunching sounds right behind me is a big pet peeve. Needless to say, I'm not going to any movies in this area again. Seems like the folks raised in a barn always set up shop near me. Gah! Outside of that, we had a lovely time with the 'Toades.
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2 January 2004
One thing my wonderful parents sent me for the Solstace was the complete set of The Prisoner (link to a fan site). After watching the Final Episode this evening, I must say that I've witnessed TV weirder than Twin Peaks.
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Found over on the Everlasting Blort, Two Things Rule the World, the future of advertising. A cartoon parable for our day. Contains some written obscenities for the squemish.
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1 January 2004
Hippo Newt's Ears and all that stuff. We had a pleasant New Year's Eve last night. Went over to Kebbin-n-Debs, had some pizza, watched The Muppet Movie. Which judging from the date came out when I was in 5th grade. After watching it for the first time in many years, I realize that quite a bit of my sense of humor was influenced by the Muppets. I guess there are worse things to be influenced by.
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31 December 2003
daveb has a Chump IRC bot running in #openacs where folks can record interesting URLs. He has it in the OpenACS IRC Weblog. There are usually a couple of good URLs every day, ranging from CMS to software engineering to computer geek toys to Talli and his lack of Pants. (well, luckily no so much of the latter any more, but it shows up occasionally).
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After dodging the bullet with out of date website backups, I've finally deployed (and wrote up) a backup strategy. Wheeee.
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Achewood is slacking off at this end-of-year time, with folks running guest strips. Jesse Reklaw did one. If you don't recognize the name, you might know about Slow Wave. Folks send him dreams and he draws a four-panel strip.
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30 December 2003
From Baron VonChunkenstein, Geek Pecking Order, or, "I'm less geeky than them".
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From jdrake on #macdev, Awful Plastic Surgery. No gross pictures (at least on the front page), except for photos of celebrities from several years ago vs them now.
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I was catching up on my Perl Guru from my AOL days. He's now retired, taking classes in engineering and math at the local community college, and is active in amateur satellite stuff, which is pretty cool.
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29 December 2003
We went to see Return of the King last night. Surprisingly enough, we had only one truly obnoxious group near us. There was a group of 7 or 8 kids in the back that were having a running commentary or something through most of the movie (luckily they kept their voices low so all that was heard was the sibliant whispering sounds. Which happen to travel amazing distances. Fortunately 3/4 of the movie was loud enough to drown them out) And I guess one of their number was a Trenchcoat Mafia wanna-be, who let out some forced laughter at (generally) inappropriate times, like in the very opening scene after Aragon strangled Gimili to death (or something like that), he let out a "ha ha ha ha ha that's funny" in the otherwise quiet/stunned theater. Other than that, it's a good movie, if a little long. The ending is kind of drawn-out, but the Hobbit 3-way in that big bed should raise a few eyebrows.
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28 December 2003
Humansky has a midget fetish. Here is a flash game for him.
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Paint by numbers, a logic picture-solving puzzle. The horizontal and vertical axes have numbers to tell you how many runs of colored squares there are. Figure out which squares are to be colored and you form a picture.
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Humansky pointed me to this everything you know about the calendar is WRONG!!!1!!. Someone who takes things a little too seriously. I also like the DAYS LAST 48 HOURS!!!!. I wonder if there's a page later on saying "HAMBURGER ISN'T MADE OF HAM!!!!!!!!!1!!!!"
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27 December 2003
Stolen from Backup Brain, for those going to see RotK suggested bathroom break times.
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Odd Todd Holiday Card, 2003.
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Lots of Holiday Flash coming out of the woodwork. Today it's Baking Ginger Cookies. Cut, bake, decorate, and send to your fiends.
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24 December 2003
Woo hoo! Looks like RedMonk is moving up in the job world. The new place ContentCommunications has probably the first real brochure-ware website (I just want to reach out and fold my screen). The page title is kind of unfortunate for projecting that Professional Image, but doing a Google on Untitled Page yields a lot of hits.
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One of Yahoo's Picks this year, Truck-Driver's Gear Change Hall of Shame. In this context, a Truck-Driver's Gear Change is an abrubt key change in a song. The site includes samples.
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This one is for Humansky: Pastor fighting porn with midgets.
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I enjoy most of the Fark and Something Awful Photoshops. One of Fark's (Inappropriate product placement in movies) had me giggling at Khan!, along with inappropriate movie placements in your favorite product.
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From King, Badgers in the comics.
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From jo2y, a quiz to determine your fundamental moral compass in relation to the metaphysical foundation of your philosophical being. Which Care Bear Are You?. I'm Wish Bear.
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23 December 2003
Tammy, a photojournal about living near to a paranoid schizophrenic. Also on Retrocrush, Battle of the Misers. Ooooh I'm Mister Heat Miser, I'm Mister Sun...
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22 December 2003
Gig Alert for those of you nearthe Greater Leechburg (PA) Megaplex. Both the spousal overunit & I will be performing in the First Lutheran Christmas-Eve pre-service concert. Starts at 8:00 p.m., Dec 24rd. I got drafted to play in the handbell choir (which totally melts my brain. Putting the notes in the right place is not too difficult, and is good for my subdivision, but figuring out the choreography of juggling 4 or 5 different bells on a piece can get crazy) Plus the S.O. & I will be doing a nice oboe/bassoon duet (with piano) of Away in a Mangy Thing Manger.
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The World's Worst Food, more promotional recipe leaflets from manufacturing companies. Cooking with Crisps is a true horror. And living in the Pittsburgh area, gotta love Heinz.
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So some folks have been asking "what happened", especially since this is my second week-long outage in a calendar year. (as my friend Aaron told me, "You have the nuttiest hosting stories!"). So here's the deal as far I as I understand it. I host with a group called Acorn Hosting, a small shop based in Seattle that specializes in AOLServer and OpenACS, two webby technologies near and dear to my heart. Their rates are extremely reasonable, and service is outstanding. They lease machines from several dedicated service providers. It looks like one of them (the one which had my sites on it) decided to suddenly go out of business, unplug the machines, and vanish from the face of the earth, leaving the Cathy (who runs Acorn Hosting) in a real bind. A day or two after the Great Outage, she had me up and running on a new vserver on a new machine with a different service provider. That's how I was able to put my by "go away please" page. She managed to track down the original hosting guy and talk him into making the machine available to get most of the data off of. (given Acorn's policy of 'backups are your own responsibility', this is truly above-and-beyond the call of duty) I do have backups, they're just not organized well. Into this whole mix, I was wrapping up a 3-month long Borkware consulting gig, and couldn't spare the time to get the website contents restored. I wrapped things up on Friday, and spent the weekend getting databases restored and tweaking code to work with Postgresql 7.3 (some of the date/time syntax has changed) I still need to get my mailer working, and other assorted odds and ends, but things should be working now. If you find anything broken, please let me know. But in short, the Acorn Hosting folks were put in a very tough situation, and worked incredibly hard to resolve it. I'm sticking with them since they've treated me very, very well.
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This guy Really hates garden Gnomes.
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21 December 2003
From Dr. Vinod, Wild world of Bork, including the door to his Bork Team office. there's 5 pages of forums there, basically worshipping you in spanish.
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Woo, I say Woo Hoo. We seem to be back. I'm still restore sites and getting stuff fixed here and there (the move involved upgrading postgresql versions, which broke some queries involving timestamps). In the mean time, let himonkey braves Christmas trees in their native habitat.
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12 December 2003
Guy builds a real-life Battlemech, well, it doesn't move, but it sure looks cool.
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11 December 2003
Found on boingboing, Octodog, now you can make your own Cthulhu heads! Fun for the whole family while you wait for the Old Ones to eat you!
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Quick Grammar Quiz, I got 9 out of 10 (mainly because of the lay/lie/laid thing I never could get in High School). I'm curious what some of the Pitt #wplug denizens would get. I never did particularly well with grammar in school, but I seem to know it pretty well now. Western Pennsylvania has this construct that makes me cringe every time I hear it. Two examples of it: "The car needs washed" and "If it's broken, it needs fixed". *shudder*.
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10 December 2003
For those of you into AcheWood, someone has made a Lego Rabbit Ambulance. The Lego Deathstar is pretty neat too. It's reminiscent of Pomodoro's Sculpture. (another piece of Pomodoro's stuff)
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From teh moby musical fetishist, a cappella christmas music station.
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Hacking Big Mouth Billy Bass in Linux. Use your penguin to control a robotic fish. I wish I could read the history books of our centry that'll be published in a couple hundred years.
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From DougEDoug, where the plots for Voyager and Enterprise come from.
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Map of recent earthquake activity in the US. On the map I saw today, it looks like NE Arkansas has gotten some small activity. In Arkansas History, they told us about the New Madrid Earthquake in 1811. The fact that still stays with me is "The Mighty Mississippi ran backward". And of course, the region is long overdue for a repeat. The USGS has a page on New Madrid too.
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8 December 2003
Who Will Be Eaten First?, ChickTracts meet the Lovecraft mythos.
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From the Emiloid, Holidy Snowglobe, upset a beautiful holiday domestic scene. It's worth watching the individual players do their things. I'm frightend of snowmen now.
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Visual Sentences, based on a pictorial langauge. Some of the sample sentences are a bit odd.
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6 December 2003
From JK, Two-towers, badgerstyle, from the badger-badger-badger-badger/mushroom-mushroom guy.
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PeteJ sent along Santa Tossing. So far my record is 143.5 167.8 meters.
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5 December 2003
From Chunks, When GoatSe meets modern publishing. (picture is work-safe, mental images evoked are your own problem)
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A story from a real-life sample lady, stuck pushing clam chowder samples at a wholesale club. I wasn't entirely alone in the basement. There was another sample lady named Teresa who was working the aisle across from me. She was in charge of giving out pizza pops and had been doing so for 8 months. Within about 2 minutes of talking to her, I could tell that she was totally deranged.
Turns out this is from a satire site. I can still picture some of the folks I knew in colelge who were working on worthless degrees writing this.
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Even though I'm not particulary a Japanophile, this collection of Seldom Asked Questions is fascinating. Also contains the answer to the "what is the sound of one hand clapping" question.
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Autopsy, a description of how they'r done, along with cartoon illustrations of each stage of the process.
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4 December 2003
Bummer. I had missed Odd Todd's Halloween Special on halloween. I guess a yuletide viewing will have to do for me.
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From redtoade, MakeAFlake. Don't miss redtoade's Flake O' Death.
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From daveb on #openacs, Web Services are not Distributed Objects
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3 December 2003
oof. Amazon Customer recommendations for Michael Jackson's "Number Ones"
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From the UberBillings, BadgerCam. Hot badger-on-badger action, late at night, with a British accent. Rowrrr!!
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2 December 2003
New Babylon 5 stuff in the works?
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Statistical analysis of the Cathy (newspaper cartoon) sweat-factor. I am in awe.
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Robert C. Martin (whose opinion I value) has a brief screed on his Artima Weblog, Debuggers are a wasteful Timesink, which is an amusing happenstance since I'll be talking about gdb, the GNU debugger at WPLUG in December. The actual posting is somewhat of a straw-man argument, but the resulting comments are very interesting, particularly the folks who see a real use and need for a debugger tool (like me) who are primarily in the C and C++ world, and those folks who haven't touched one in years (the Java and scriping crowd), also along with the "having to wallow around in someone else's big messy code base" (like me) and the folks who are able to do new development with a TDD (Test-Driven Development) methodology.
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29 November 2003
You can download VisiCalc, the original personal computer spreadsheet. (unfortunately it's the PC version, not the Apple ][ version). What's cool is that it is 27K.
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New videos over at RatherGood, including a new communist kittens video.
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28 November 2003
SomethingAwful had a Photoshop Phriday where they created fake mideval tapestries, including this one from the age of Sir Robin.
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26 November 2003
pretty pictures of the sun from the SOHO satellite. The pictures are in the SlideShow referenced at the top of the story.
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Another reason I don't use ATMs: XP worm infects Cash Machine.
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An msnbc fluff-piece where Peter Jackson comments on LoTR continuity errors.
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25 November 2003
From teh moby googlemight, International Society for Bayesian Analysis, saying "I didn't realize there were statistics cults."
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Found in the world of Billings-san, Subversive CrossStitch. I find it pretty amsuing (even though the humor is not particularly subtle). One thing I liked is their mailing list instructions:
To be notified when the site is updated, join our MAILING LIST:
use the subject line "ME TOO"
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Beaver Attacks Bus
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24 November 2003
What happens if you replace 'wand' with 'wang' in the first Harry Potter book.
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estimating the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
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21 November 2003
From Dangi, The Road to Pamplona.
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20 November 2003
Who Would You Kill?. Pick an annoying character from your favorite TV show, and kill 'em. I didn't know there was so much latent hostility felt for Dipsy. What's interesting is the uniform distribution on Gilligan's Island
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18 November 2003
London Tube Map, in 3-D.
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17 November 2003
From DaveB, the Domo-Fon.
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13 November 2003
From Domo-Kun, Proof there is no God. The comments are fun. The ancient Etruscans had a saying, "There is a noise that is so loud, it cannot be heard." So it is with Hasselhoff.
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From Porruka, Those Darn Accordians, retro-punk postmodern grunge squeezebox action. They have music. I'm really enjoying hamsterman.
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sigh. Someone's been sending spam with @badgertronics.com as the return address. Bastards.
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12 November 2003
From boingboing, a neat little flashimation on how legos are made.
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Found in the world of zman, One Good Thing by the Real Live Preacher, on how things evolve from doing "one good thing for Jesus" into an institution.
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11 November 2003
Fall Troubleshooting Professional Magazine, this time using WD-40 to fix intermittent computer problems.
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Atsa lotta crosses.
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After a hiatus, MacEdition is back with another bork special: Undology 101.
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9 November 2003
Johnny Dangerously predicts the future: this shoots through schools.
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7 November 2003
The Story About The Toddler continues. Volume 8 has a great deal of keen insight.
When you fall, daddy will try to catch you. Usually. Daddy feels that his job as a parent is to keep you from being injured, not to keep you from falling.
and
The things that will terrify any given child are ENTIRELY RANDOM.
Cordelia is driven into fits of screaming terror by the Teletubbies’ vacuum cleaner. And she is terrified of the cute stuffed bunny I bought her, which has five legs and two heads
And then proceeds to deconstruct the super-sweet small child television shows.
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6 November 2003
Al Gunther is an amazing artist, who carves and sculpts eggshells
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The clearning house for all your poison ivy needs.
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5 November 2003
From Rzolf, Lederhosen Lucil, who he saw in concert last night:
oh my god
it is some pretty cute girl
who wears
lederhosen
and plays keyboards
and does raps
about scabs
and non linear video editing systems.
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4 November 2003
So, this last weekend, a small group of us drove down to the Shenandoah Valley for a long, get-away weekend. Shock of shocks, I did not take a computer with me on the trip - just a crossword puzzle book and some cheesy Star Wars novels, in honor of Crazy Erin. As an aside, I love clean, pristine crossword puzzle books (my favorites are from Penny Press) - they're like the unspoiled vista that the backyard becomes after a fresh snow. And then I get bored and go stomping. The Bed&Breakfast we stayed at was the Inn At Narrow Passage, which is probably a couple of hour drive from the DC area. If you're wanting an escape from that region, I highly recommend it.
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A request for the photographers out there: I'm looking to buy a new Nikon Coolpix 4500 camera. Are there any places online that a) carry it [a number of places, like Calumet, don't have it on their website, and the Big Name electronics places also don't have it on their websites that I've been able to find] b) aren't totally fly-by-night, in case there's something wrong with it. (I don't mind paying a little extra for the peace of mind of being able to have it fixed without a lot of hassle.)
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Gus Mueller has a brief write up of a session entitled incredibly obvious software development secrets given at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference by one of the Bare Bones Software guys. I can't argue with anything there, and luckily I already do most of it (except for the Bug Tracking thing - haven't had enough problem reports with the borkware stuff to warrant it :-)
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What The Font?, give it an url or an image that contains a font, and it'll tell you the fonts that match it.
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31 October 2003
After a greuling couple of weeks on-site in Cranberry (that hour, hour and a half drive gets old), I'm heading out for a long weekend away from technology. Automobiles and mechanical pencils for the crossword puzzle are as tech as I'm getting. /me waves to the #wplug crew.
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30 October 2003
From L.L.Beanpole, Starship Dimensions. Size comparison of science fiction stuff. Of course, some folks take things entirely too seriously.
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Rzolf found a blog even more random than himself: Free Variable, which is pretty cool. One posting is about a Carbon emacs for Mac OS X panther, and then some polemics on Lutheran theology.
However, if one has any doubts about the spiritual and theological health of the ELCA, one need only look at the asinine With One Voice hymnal,
I like the Setting V in the WOV (the music is nice), but I know I cringe when hyms come out of there, since they're usually the ones not in parts. (I find it hard to sing the melody - I much prefer the bass line) But I like his use of the term "ecumaniacal".
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the *real* recording from the first moon landing (language NSFW)
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29 October 2003
Technology sanitizes yet one more childhood experience. "Fun"kins, none of that messy natural stuff when it comes to pumpkin carving.
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Stolen from Flutterby, Drug Test, an amateur cyclist tries performance enhancing drugs (HGH, testosterone, EPO, sterioids), and documents the effects. Fascinating reading.
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realtime images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
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From the land of jo2y, muppet terror alert level.
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Notes from Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan's keynote on the VT G5 cluster, describing some of the tech details.
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27 October 2003
WholeMovement, origami (with tape and bobby pins) using paper plates.
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From rzolf, Bizarre Japanese Commercial with Arnold (or an arnold look-alike). If anyone can explain it - you're a better person than I.
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25 October 2003
The latest fortune cookie over in the land of redtoade is A victim should learn from the experience and then put it behind them forever. The Transgressor should seek forgiveness in perpetuity as a teacher. That reminds of a thing from the Pursuit of Excellence course the spousal overunit and I took in Seattle before we got hitched. (My sister was working with the group, and didn't seem to be brainwashed, so I figured it was OK). One of the points they kept hammering home was "you are responsible for your current condition", not responsible for causing it (whether it be emotional trauma, disease, injury, economic situation), but responsible for how you react to it. You can hide in your shell and play the victim and lead a miserable existance, or you can do what you can with what you have in your power to either move on with your life, or come to terms with the problem so that you're not the victim. The old platitudes of "God doesn't give you more than you can handle" and "if life gives you lemons, make lemon chicken" are just restatements of this idea. (and as an aside, I got a lot out of the PoE course, and I recommend it)
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blah blah space storm blah blah cool picture blah blah.
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Oh Yeaaah!! brief tribute to the Kool-Aid Man.
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24 October 2003
From G-R/E.D, Bad Astronomy, pretty apropos, since his Dad (G-R's, not necessarily the guy who made the site) was a professional astronomer with NASA.
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Velcro is one of my favorite inventions of the 20th century. It was Billings that said "It was nature that invented velcro, some guy just ported it to plastic". Now there's nano-velcro that's as strong as krazy-glue.
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22 October 2003
Whoa. The SR-71 flight manual is online. If I ever die and come back as an airplane, I want to come back as an SR-71.
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From rzolf, outsourcing medical record transcription along with attempted blackmail. whee fun.
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21 October 2003
From Porruka, A tribute to Ray Harryhausen. Flashimation.
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From Denshi, One less sock: Those Darn Mormons, now fortified with domo-kun.
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Hey - any of you Mac guys out there know how to tell (with iToots) who is currently attached to my shared music, and what they're listening to?
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"Considered Harmful" essays considered harmful. "As a theoretical debate grows longer, the probability of a 'considered harmful' essay approaches one." The "goto considered harmful" one has been a thron in my side for a long time. I like to use goto to branch to clean-up code when using an API (like unix) that is based on return-value error checking. I find having straight-line code with a goto to a cleanup section a lot easier to follow and maintain than the contortions that people who were indoctrinated with the "goto is eeeeeevil! avoid at all costs" go through just to avoid the goto. One of the Mac 3.0 AOL Client guys replaced some of my goto-based code (which interfaced with the Stuffit decompression libraries) with a more complex exception-based one (and exceptions are just fancy gotos anyway). The original code worked. The "better" replacement code was broken.
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I had a birthday a couple of days ago, turning a ripe old 36. As is per usual, I spent a little time in quiet reflection of life, the universe, and everything; and have come to the conclusion that life totally rocks. Sure, I don't have a steady job, but I'm making enough mon-ay to make ends meet. I have a ton of friends online and offline whose company I really enjoy, a wonderful spousal overunit who laughs at me whom I can laugh at life with. My technical and musical skills are getting better all the time, and I'm still learning a lot of new stuff. I'm in good health and have a happy cat. What more could I want? (well, ok, outside of a totally tricked-out G5, but I can live without that)
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20 October 2003
Redtoade took me to task for the Bill McCellan link below, sending a link to Poynter Online's interview with Harry Stein, Slouching Toward Bias, or about the liberal bias in the media. I think the bias from the left is bias of omission, and the bias from the right is bias of distortion - it's a lot of fun listening to the Limbaugh program with the list of common logical fallacies. The American media is pretty much just reduced to what will sell papers or what will sell commercials or what will drive pledges during public radio membership drives, and as such I haven't paid them much attention in the last several years.
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17 October 2003
Found on Flutterby, What if it were Clinton and not Limbaugh addicted to painkillers. Reading it sounded just like the radio program. And, of course, dittoheads leap to their Messiah's defense.
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14 October 2003
Powers of 10 are really cool. The Megapenny Project shows (graphically, not with real pennies alas) various powers of tens of pennies.
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Found on BoingBoing, ReadRegular, a typeface designed to help dyslexic readers. The site itself is somewhat content free, but the background explanation is pretty neat.
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BlogBoy likes his Mac.
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13 October 2003
Since a good deal of my current general success is due to my association with the
Big Nerd Ranch folks, and especially
The Book, as well as
the MacEdition crew, I'm finding that
writing is becoming more and more important to my particular niche in the industry.
(and since I fundamentally don't like to write, I find this all very amusing.)
I've got a project percolating in my brain involving one or more books. It was with
interest when I saw Dan Lyke's comment "Then again, I was sure that there was value in thin computer books, and nobody seems to be selling many of them. " over at Flutterby. He gave me some
elaboration, along with another thread over there about Shovelware books and the technical book industry, which has a pointer to a nice article about the Thin Book movement
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The Desert Planet folks have a new video / song, "Lost Galaxians". As they describe it, "coin-operated disco beats and c-class sci-fi movie style". These are the folks that make new music with 80's video game sound styles.
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12 October 2003
From Run/ESD, Greek Rap, as if Homer prefered superlativel large buttocks, Verily.
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Robert C Martin talks about Agile methods, The Bottom Line, how one aspect of agile software development methods (like Extreme Programming) is the generation of data to help manage the project.
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10 October 2003
Mac. Old and New. It's kind of nice seeing intergenerational family photos like this.
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How much is inside <dr-evil>One Million Dollars</dr-evil>?
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For you folks with iTunes and time on your hands, Smart Play Lists has a bunch of Smart Play List configurations for different kinds of music browsing and playback.
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How to write bad documentation that looks good.
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9 October 2003
Silly Cone V predicted the demise of aD (of course, the demise of most of the other dot-coms too)
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Whoa. I guess someone really likes her new Mac.
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SomethingAwful has a fun Pear-based photoshop thing.
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8 October 2003
Yeah, Chronicles of George is a re-reun, but I always have problems finding it in my history since I don't have the word "havening" naywhere. There it is. I'm much happier now. Thankening you for havening a nice day.
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6 October 2003
This is something I wish I had when I spent a couple of months in London: Tube Map with WalkLines - showing the undergroudn stops that are within 500 meters of each other. Sometimes it's faster to hike a quarter mile than it is to wait 6 stops and change lines.
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RetroCrush has a gallery of retro Halloween costumes.
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5 October 2003
Whoa. Trogdor Cross-stitch. Now how to explain what this is and why it's funny to the Spousal Overunit. "you see, there's this cartoon of a mexican wrestler who reads email, and he came up with this dragon that burninates... uh, honey, where are you going?"
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Celebrity Doubters, an enumeration of agnostic / atheist celebrities. Based on Celebatheists.
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4 October 2003
AppleStudentDevelopers has reviewed the Core book.
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2 October 2003
redtoade found some cool stuff at ToyVault. Godzirra!, Rabbits with Big Pointy Teeth!, Jabber Jaw Wock, and of course (probalby a re-run), Plush Cthulhu.
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1 October 2003
From a memepool link, Andy Goldsworthy, artist, doing cool stuff with "found nature".
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Continuing the interlink incest with flutterby, Dan had a posting in one of the comments about PawSense, a program to detect
if your cat is walking on the keyboard. Luckily we haven't had that problem, except
when the cat wants to be in our lap along with the laptop, and I don't think PawSense
would work there. Usually the cat likes to sit between me and the keyboard.
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30 September 2003
From redtoade, Deteriorata. Be sure to have your speakers on. Music by Christopher Guest (of Spinal Tap and Best in Show fame)
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You've seen the SegWay and the MegWay, now make way for the
LegWay. Hot one-on-one Lego action (or something like that) Speaking of *way*, here's a guy that made his own.
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27 September 2003
You've probably seen the Chicken Littles posting about GoogleWatch, the "google is big brother, they do evil things like use cookies, so therefore They Must Be Stopped In Our Time". There's now Google-Watch Watch, with background on the individual behind GoogleWatch.
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HiMonkey's most perilous adventure yet! The title Monkey makes nice yummy bar cookies from leftover candies, belies the terrible peril as monkey braves hot graham cracker crumbs! A hot oven! Potential terrycloth mayhem involving stale Peeps!
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26 September 2003
Ya know, after seeing these safety charts from India, I think I may be one step closer to understanding Vinod. Well, maybe not. Although now I know why he keeps that giant cigar wrapper in the office.
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25 September 2003
Must eat brains! Zombie Infection Simulation (v2.3). Requires java.
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24 September 2003
Mama Mia, that's a spicy meatball! Why cooks spice up their foods, specifically about antibactierial properties of common spices.
For example, garlic, onion, allspice, and oregano were the best all-around microbe killers, killing almost everything.
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21 September 2003
HiMonkey draws a cartoon with the Bizarro guy.
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notes from the Virginia Tech presentation on the mega G5 cluster. There's also photos. Make your own cluster and get a t-shirt.
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RadioHead, as interpreted as juvenile visual art.
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20 September 2003
Another one for redtoade: The Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus.
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Cool, looks like a Cattlecar Battlestar Galactica video game.
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19 September 2003
The Big Lie comes full circle.
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Zephyrs had a rehearsal last night at Torin's place. His brother received for his birthday Lego Star Destroyer (official site) He had only started on the first couple of steps, with a big triangle sitting on a table. The kit has 3000 pieces, ends up being three feet long, and the instruction book is bound, and a couple hundred pages long. here one being assembled another set of folks making one, photos of the box (it's huge),
I hear there's a Death Star kit in the works that's to the same scale, 50 yards in diameter and has 247 million pieces. (seen in the blogopshere (*shudder*), so it must be true)
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Ahoy! Mateys, today be Talk like a Pirate Day! There's also a quiz for finding your Pirate Name. I be Black Jack Bonney (ok, so I be not one of the toughest pirates out there) Arrrrrr!
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18 September 2003
For redtoade, The Feathered Back Hair Site (that's feathered-back hair site). Highlighting wonderful hair styles from the 70s and 80s.
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From Talli's Pants, Angle-Grinder Man, London parking boot vigilante.
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17 September 2003
Planets. tastes great, less filling.
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So, you want to learn Japanese?.
I don't care how many anime tapes you've watched, how many Japanese girlfriends you've had, or books you've read, You don't know Japanese. Not only that, majoring in the godforsaken language is NOT fun or even remotely sensible. Iraqi war prisoners are often forced to major in Japanese. The term "Holocaust" comes from the Latin roots "Holi" and "Causm", meaning "to major in Japanese".
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Kaizer Szuhay has some notes on writing, which parallel much of my writing process. I still don't particularly like writing. It's not nearly as easy as talking programs to a computer.
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From AngryLuke in #macdev, home made HungryMan advert. Watching through this, I kept having the feeling that this was something done by Run/ESD, even though it wasn't.
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What's the worst (science) job you ever had?.
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Something Awful has some parodies of iPod ads.
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16 September 2003
Woo hoo! CARS is back on the air.
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14 September 2003
How to cook Ramen Noodles.
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12 September 2003
Hmmm... "fiscally conservative" government spending is up 20%, not counting entitlements and defense.
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nutters posted the link to the trailer for The Lost Skeleton of cadavra. I loved the old 50's monster movies that this seems to pay homage. Might be a movie I'll have to see in the theaters. I just hope all the Good Stuff wasn't all put into the trailer.
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Creation Science Fair. I wish I could get the paper for "Pokemon Proves Evolutionism is False".
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11 September 2003
From BlogBoy,
Great White Shark Breaching.
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For Crazy Erin, The eleven strangest Star Wars Action Figures.
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From he of hundreds of abandoned weblogs, your roommate plays the Indigo Girls, which reminds me of some folks from college. Like the Badgers badgers (mushroom mushroom), be sure to watch this one to the end.
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10 September 2003
I'm a big fan of the OmniGroup's OmniGraffle program. I guess it's like Visio for those stuck in windows land. It's a diagramming tool, and it does its job very very well. The UI is well designed and efficient. Today I was uber-brainded, and started playing one of the Infocom games I've never played before (Ballyhoo). After doing the standard "get a piece of paper to do the map", I figured, "hey. OmniGraffle can probably do a better job". If a corner of the map gets too crowded, I can move boxes around and the arrows will automagically track it. And so here are the fruits of my first hour or so of Ballyhoo. Wheeeee! (later update : here's one of Starcross in action)
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9 September 2003
Hubble has some neat pictures of Saturn.
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Like something out of rzolf's world: Man injured by flying ham. Gotta love western PA.
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8 September 2003
DougEDoug has a pointer to the page for Talk Like A Pirate Day, coming up September 19rd. Includes history of the day, phrase guide, and an automated translator service.
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Ken Mayer, of BitWrangler fame, is selling his boat, Wishful Thinking. If you're a boat-type person, check it out. It looks like Ken's taken excellent care of it over the years.
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7 September 2003
Crazy fads of recent history. Fads of the 80's of course hits close to home. Lesse... Rubik's cube (check), Boom boxes (check), video arcades (check), Wrestling (uh, no), Neon (yep, neon socks and shoelaces)... We even made our own "Baby on Board" signs in the high school journalism room. Except we did things like "Baby in Trunk", "Driver on Drugs", "Driver in Trunk" (our valedictorian Jeff Noble actually locked himself in the trunk. Hi Jeff if you found this from Google)
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5 September 2003
10-4 good buddy, here's a list of police codes and abbreviations.
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Buy my book, come to my class, save $500.
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More amphibimania. From Billings (TSFNKP), The Amfibibus.
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From DaveB, badgers badgers badgers badgers (mushroom mushroom) flashimation. Be sure to watch it to the end. As GR/E.D. says "The sophistication over the Hamster Dance is noticeable." Also from DaveB, Stupid Creatures: worse then s0ckm0nk3ys, and therefore better.
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the Something Awful Photoshop Phriday theme is Indiana Jones and the Crossovers of Doom. My favorite is this page.
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4 September 2003
close-ups of the new PowerMac G5 case. It's almost like computer-case porn. Don't miss the parody.
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Nerf gun modifications for fun and profit, but appying basic physics.
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3 September 2003
Mac OS X has some nifty stuff hidden down in the Quartz (brand) drawing layer. I'm working on the next version of the BorkStitch app for the Spousal OverUnit, and one of her books had a nice shading effect for their diagrams. So tried changing the flat mode into something a little more interesting. It was about 2 hours of work, going through some new and barely documented calls. Pretty much you write a 1:4 function, with domain 0.0 to 1.0,and range 0.0 to 1.0 for each of red, green, blue, and alpha (or CYMKA if you want) The system does the interpolaton and asks the function to map it to a color. This is just an axial fill, but it's got radial fills too.
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Given the amount of rain we've had in western PA this summer, this vehicle would be perfect. If only it were cheaper. (sigh). Upon seeing this, G-R/E.D pointed me to Amphicars. It's a car! it's a boat! Elvis needs boats!
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2 September 2003
From G-R/E.D, Victory Siren, the internet home of the Chrysler Air Raid Siren. I'd love to get one of these, hook it up to a pickemup truck, and go cruise the neighborhoods of those jerks who have the magnum subwoofers in their cars. There's also one-stop shopping for all your air raid siren needs.
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1 September 2003
Found on Flutterby, Mike May's Journal. After 43 years of blindness, he had his sight restored, and he's keeping a journal of his experiences.
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27 August 2003
From redtoade, crusher-of-hotel-managers:
% telnet infocom.elsewhere.org
login: zork
Password: <enter>
You can play Zork, and a number of other text adventures.
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From G.R/E-D, Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. I still havent' figured out what the top one is supposed to be.
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Buildings of Disaster: models of buildings involved in various, uh, disasters, includes Cernobyl, Waco, World Trade Crater, Watergate, and others.
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26 August 2003
JMS's new comic "Supreme Power" sold out its initial 100,000+ first printing, so they decided to put it online for everyone to read.
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25 August 2003
MSNBC has an analysis on the Columbia incident.
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24 August 2003
The latest MacEdition partingShot has a peek at the updated WinXP login screen.
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18 August 2003
Knowing-that vs knowing-how, along with content vs technique. I agree with the author that apprenticeship in the computer biz would be a great thing. That's fundamentally what I did, and I think that all new CS graduates entering the field (even those from Big Name Schools) should do a year or two of maintenance and support, mainly to find out how not to do things. That also avoids the problem of new MIT grads trying to re-write a legacy system in something trendy, and royally messing it up.
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17 August 2003
List of box office bombs. WaterWorld isn't on the list, since apparently it eventually broke even.
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16 August 2003
Smurf Name Generator. My full name comes out as "Son of Smurf" (maybe the start of a Messianic complex? This smurf is my body, this smurf is my blood; or maybe I'm just a mass smurferer.) My IRC nick ends up being "Radioactive Smurf". And I didn't know that DougEDoug was a Smurf Rapper.
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Pittsburgh's economy may be in the dumps, the police force is being cut, and we have a new convention center nobody uses, and two new stadiums even though the one(s) they tore down hasn't been paid for yet, but luckily we have
Major League Baseball's swiftest costumed food products.
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When the Great Blackout hit, I was driving home listening to the local talk-radio station (a guilty pleasure of mine). The first thing I thought about was "the satellite pictures would probably be pretty cool". And then the Radio Personalities started talking about terrorism, which just made me sigh. Billings pointed me to another page with some additional pictures.
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15 August 2003
From shank in #wplug, memcached (sounds like something western pennsylvanian), a distributed object cache thingie for webservers. It's the cache and carry behind Livejournal.
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Stolen from the land of DougEDoug, DiaperDevil, somewhat offensive baby-wear.
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Whoa. Lemmings, in JavaScript.
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13 August 2003
From Billings, Jesus is a Klingon?.
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11 August 2003
From G-R/E.D, DOKAKA. Be sure to check out Smells Like Teen Spirit. Like a cross between the Bobs, Fruvous, Warner Brothers, and a psychotic episode.
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10 August 2003
The C10K Problem, handling 10,000 simultaneous connections on a single machine. It's more of a notes-and-bookmark-page, but interesting reading nonetheless.
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8 August 2003
Korn meets KoRN.
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iDevGames gave the core book a very nice review.
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5 August 2003
Nice people yawn more. Guess that means I'm really nice, since I've now yawned 7 times during the reading of the article and posting this. Make that 8 times.
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3 August 2003
Yet more new Borkware, BorkStitch, an embroidery stitch notation tool. (this is different from the BorkStitch folks had seen over the last couple of years, which is a more general diagramming tool. It'll be Reborn under another name later.)
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The Acme Catalog, as used by Wiley E. Coyote.
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1 August 2003
Old-school mac folks might remember Glider and Glider PRO, fun little arcade games where you pilot a paper airplane around the house. John Calhoun, the creator, is giving them away for free now, since C&G has gone under.
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New Borkware, Stackinator, a cheesy little push-down stack for keeping track of where you are in the face of interruptions and detours. Handy for us old folks.
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From PeteJ, dissecting a BigTrak, (for those of you middle-aged enough to remember the BigTrak). Includes a link to a BigTrak simulator in Smalltalk.
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31 July 2003
Found on Flutterby, So you want to join the military, a view of the military recruitment process. Having maried a Marine, I loved this part We [the US Military] have done a lot of market research to determine what it is people such as yourself like and respond to. We've put out commercials specifically designed to appeal to you. Except for the Marines. They're natural experts at selling the sizzle. Hell, they are the sizzle. Even nowadays when I see a Marine in service dress I feel like joining. They've got it, they know it and their commercials rock. Come on, a lone man dressed as a knight defeating kings and queens on a chess board, then raising his sword to the heavens and in a flash of lightning dressed in that uniform doing a salute to an Order Sword while that music's in the background? You can't compete with that. It's gold.
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30 July 2003
For those who knew him at aD, Beep's getting hitched.
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29 July 2003
A new Rather Good animation (first in a couple of months) Hippo Girl. It's rather crude (in more way than one), but Rather Good fans should enjoy it.
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26 July 2003
Larry Moss, large-scale ballon sculptor, has a thing on the Fantastic Flying Octopus, the first twisted-latex scuplture to carry a pilot. (Chunks and that gross of boxes of trojans at aD doesn't count)
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Our Lord's Prayer, in ebonics.
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25 July 2003
Sweet! I'm listed in the thanks page for a piece of open-source software. Shank in #wplug did the mpd (Music Player Daemon)
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24 July 2003
Found on in a comment on Flutterby, In the Lecture Hall, a Geek Chorus (NY times, reg required), about IM backchannels during lectures. These were really popular at arsDigita during long, interminable phone meetings. It was handy for those of us out in remote offices to get questions asked locally, find out what the speaker was wearing, and generally mocking everything that could be mocked.
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19 July 2003
Latest bork-scribble over at MacEdition, Xs! They're Everywhere!. For maximal effect, say it in the Bob-voice from Bungie's Marathon game.
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Greetings from Omaha, Nebraska (visiting my folks). We took the train from Pittsburgh to Omaha (about 26 hours in the system). It wasn't a bad trip, outside of the Chicago->Omaha run being on the top floor of a double-decker car that wobbled back and forth. Not much luck reading or computing without getting green.
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16 July 2003
Frank Zappa's Musical Language, a musicological analysis of Frank Zappa's works. Includes brief transcription of a theme from one of my favories, Billy The Mountain. (sings "oooooh Billy had two big caves for eyes and a cliff for a jaw that would go up and down, and whenever it did he'd cough up some dust, and haaaaack up a boulder...")
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13 July 2003
SexyLosers (warning, offensive to just about everybody, but pretty funny. Not safe for work) has a preview of a new strip up, that's a parody of Space: 1999, one of my favorite 70's Sci-Fi shows. (needless to say, the parody strip can be pretty offensive, and it's not safe for work either - Chie is a recurring character, which is what makes this strip amusing) I was lucky enough to have had a couple of the Dinky Toys, in particular Eagle Transporter v2 and the albino freighter.
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sometimes technology is not the tool to use in all situations.
On behalf of the Omaha Police Department, I again want to express my sympathy for the loss of your son and regret for the message left on your answering machine
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12 July 2003
StellaStarlight is in food-service, and was going on about how cool Liddles are. It's kind a cool name.
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More burrito-mania, The Mystifying Psychic Burrito. Your choice of burrito ingredients shows you your personality. My wide-ranging selection of toppings demonstrates an admirable familiarity with Burrito culture. Plus, Today is an excellent day to have a burrito.
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Also on the JohnnyBurrito site is Ugly Money, defaced american currency that has graced his cash register.
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This week I've been down in Charlotte, NC, where the spousal overunit is going to a needlework retailer's convention. On friday I discovered a local treasure, Johnny Burrito, a great little burrito place. Johnny himself was at the cash register, guiding this newbie through the highly optimized burrito creation process. It looked like a great place to work - everyone behind the counter was smiling and having a fun time. The local press coverage is a lot of fun to read. Their obsession with cleanliness strikes me a little odd (repressed Howard Hughes syndrome?), but it's certainly an effective hook for getting press coverage. And needless to say, the place was spotless. The major bummer is that they're only open M-F, and we're leaving on Sunday. And it looks like this convention will be moving to Ohio somewhere next year. I'm sure I'll be disowned if I ask to come down here next year just for a burrito.
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Inexplicably found in a borkware server log was argon7, which looks to be a French web company. It has one of the most creatively annoying user interfaces I have seen in a long time. It totally escapes me why they decided that vibrating windows made for a good Interface. It also totally escapes me why they appeared in my server log. There are no links to my stuff on their page. The user agent is mozilla on windows, and up to now, only Safari has ever given me bad referrers.
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11 July 2003
From MaineCoon in #macdev, What happens if you freeze Han Solo in Legonite?.
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MormonStar Galactica.
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6 July 2003
Spotted on a Fark Forum, YouAreMyFriend.com. Stick someone's name in the hostfield of the request and they get a personalized uplifting message of hope, along with majestic music. Like for Monkeybot, or Chunks. Unfortunately, it mutates the capitalization, so DougEDoug, doesn't work quite right.
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From Enna, a Latin translation service, for a fee . They also do ancient greek. Give them some english, and get back a classy Latin phrase. Greeble Hoovern ni Borkum.
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5 July 2003
For the older folks out there: A catalog of playground equipment you probably won't see anymore, given our current "protect everyone from themselves" culture.
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2 July 2003
From L.L. Beanpole, Chris Crawford in Balance of Power, the classic Mac game from the Old Days.
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The Book made slashdot.
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1 July 2003
From rzolf, an ask tom that arguest against the hyper-flexible database architectures (objects, attributes, object_attributes, links) in terms of query performance.
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30 June 2003
It looks like The Almighty is flipping us off.
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Yay! I'm back from WWDC. Lots of cool new stuff coming in Panther. I still haven't recovered from the week (not being a terribly social person, I'm wiped out). In the mean time, Here's a stress test.
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25 June 2003
Greetings from SanFrancisco. Today is day two of Apple's WWDC. I've been playing booth bunny in the Big Nerd Ranch booth, pimping the class and The Book. I've run into a number of folks I know, and have been having a good time. I picked up a small far-war drive to hook up to the tiBook to try a test install of Panther. Hopefully it won't dork my primary drive.
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20 June 2003
Which Fark Cliche Are You?, me, I'm Cliche Kitty.
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19 June 2003
Human BeatBox dot com, for all of your human beat-box needs.
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Retrocrush has The worst super-hero costumes of all time.
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World's smallest guitar, could still be crushed by Mini-Me.
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18 June 2003
From G-R/E-D, Peltierbeer, keeping your beer cold, even in the direct sunlight. Using computer equipment.
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Behold the power of Mac OS X: building a floppy drive RAID in less than half an hour. Ok, so it's not necessarily useful power, but power nontheless.
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jdrake on #macdev pointed me to Take Our Word For It the weekly word-origin webzine. I figure DougEDoug would enjoy this one.
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GameSpy has 25 dumbest moments in gaming history.
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17 June 2003
From G-R/E-D, 30-second ice cream. Now, right off the bat you have to worry about a recipe found in Chemical and Engineering News
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Oh by the way, there's a new mac programming book with my name on it. There's some stuff about it over on borkware.
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16 June 2003
foobaz on #macdev pointed me to codewhore, a bunch of short essays on programming / software engineering.
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From Das ChunkenBlog, McYoon's alternate perspective on arsDigita.
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15 June 2003
Erupting Star Reverberates Through Space, with cool astronomy-like pictures.
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Wheee! another internet test (about brain mapping)! In this one, I ended up like:
Your Brain Usage Profile
Auditory : 66%
Visual : 33%
Left : 47%
Right : 52
With the analysis here, which is pretty accurate. I'm not surprised that auditory > visual, given my music habit and my lousy eyes.
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From feanor on #macdev, cute kitty/kitten picture.
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13 June 2003
From rzolf, the fine art of hotdogagami.
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SeanBaby's Superfriends page, deconstruction of the superfriends saturday-morning cartoon. Some of the banner ads are not safe for work.
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12 June 2003
OddTodd in the Matrix.
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11 June 2003
This looks kind of cool, StatCVS, grovels through your CVS repository and makes some cool charts and whatnot showing various development metrics.
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10 June 2003
Hacker Handle Generator, out with your old, n0n-l33T name, and get a nu 1.
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More MacEdition ranting, Eeek! XML!, using Apple's XML API. "wheee".
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An ebay auction, Rex! Awesome fun plush pal.
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6 June 2003
From a C++ discussion on #macdev, MK++: A High Performance, High Assurance Microkernel, talking about the use of OO technques at the OS kernel level.
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Disaffected Muslim, a weblog of a Modern Female muslim, and her perspective on the religion and associated culture's history as it relates to current times.
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5 June 2003
Over at IronyCentral (the Story of the Baby folks), A glimpse of life inside of a British boarding school.
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From G-R/E.D, Zombie Alert, are you prepared for the inevitable?
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4 June 2003
Let's build a compiler, a 15 part tutorial on building a compiler.
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3 June 2003
From DaveB, Walrus (I am the eggplant, koo-koo achoo), a really cool directed-graph visualization tool that browses graphs in 3-D using fish-eye distortion. The animations are pretty neat.
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2 June 2003
From DougEDoug, The website fulifier. Turn any website into a mid-90's html crapfest. Fer instance, BorkLog fulified, Flutterby, and photo.net. You can compose this with other similar services, like Borklog through the pornolizer through the fulifier.
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30 May 2003
Bear attacks sub (not a sandwich, the big US Navy variety)
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28 May 2003
PitchFork Media has an Interview with the Filthy Critic.
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25 May 2003
From rzolf, Achewood, yet another online comic, which I find better than most. It's slightly weird. I'm not sure what the underlying story line is - there is no huge page of character info (which actually is kind of nice - no suckiness like "he is a robot that dates a prostitute", thereby fully exhausting any comedic possibility in the premise), but it seems to be what teddy bears, squirrels, and house pets do in the off-hours while the hu-mans are away. There are some pretty twisted story lines in there, like prank-calling comic strip characters (including some phone sex with Cathy(tm)) and sabotaging a Subway sandwich shop through web forum postings.
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23 May 2003
Eine Kleine Borkmuzik. an mp3 we made this morning of the prayer of St. Francis (Make me a Channel (no 5) of your Peace), to give to a singer for a wedding we're doing next week. It actually came out pretty nice for a mono-recording we did. Me on bassoon, the Spousal Overunit on oboe (a little quiet since she was farther away from the microphone), and Torin on flute.
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Clean up after your dog sign that speaks to all involved parties.
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22 May 2003
From SeanY, Giant Microbes!, get the Little One in your life the gift of a cute fluffy, uh, rhinovirus.
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21 May 2003
Wouldn't the Matrix be better if it were about pizza? Something Awful has The Pizza Matrix, a bunch of photoshops and a mutation of the story so it's about, uh, pizza. There's also a 17 meg music video.
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20 May 2003
I wish I had this much free time. in-depth analysis over the size of the Death Star.
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mp3 of the moment: Faure's Pavane, from Bobby McFerrin's "Paper Music" album. The vocalizations add a really neat quality to the music. I really like this particular album (rediscovered it as I was feeding CDs into the iLamp for mp3 conversion). About half is Bobby McFerrin conducting familiar pieces, and the other half are vocalization-adaptions of other familiar pieces.
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On Retrocrush, The Trix Conspiracy: Bowlful of HATE. Why is it that breakfast cereal advertising has to be adversarial, frequently bordering on the sadistic?
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From rzolf, AIM cybering gone horribly wrong (probably not terribly safe for work, but no pictures are involved) I like the vegetables and the wizard ones. The last one I think I've seen before:
Wellhung: Hello, Sweetheart. What do you look like?
Sweetheart: I am wearing a red silk blouse, a miniskirt and high heels. I work out every day, I'm toned and perfect. My measurements are 36-24-36. What do you look like?
Wellhung: I'm 6'3" and about 280 pounds.I wear glasses and I have on a pair of blue sweat pants I just bought from Walmart.I'm also wearing a T-shirt with a few spots of barbecue sauce on it from dinner...it smells funny.
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19 May 2003
New site feature (actually, a re-implementation of a feature I sorta had working before). The book review section has been updated. It's a test-bed using the OpenACS content suppository repository.
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On Flutterby, Monsters Inc. == The Matrix?. I haven't seen the new Matrix yet, alas. Given the "annoying people raised in barns and lacking in any basic social graces" density of this area, we try to avoid any movie while it's too popuar, and hit a late-sunday night showing shortly before it leaves the theaters.
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The gig yesterday went down pretty well. With the debut of any group, and with any live perofrmance, we all made new and exciting errors we've never made before. I had a horrible bout of stage-fright that started saturday morning (which for me leads to the gag reflex kicking in, which is utter horror when you're a woodwind player with a piece of cane in your mouth), but I managed to beat that before the concert. Hopefully the recording came out OK and I can post some mp3's for the folks that couldn't make it.
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16 May 2003
Bruce Eckel on Strong Typing vs Strong Testing, why systems built with weakly-typed languages (Pythong in this case) don't necessarily collapse under their own weight due to a lack of the strong-typing found in places like C++ and Java. Bruce has a link to brief essay by Robert C. Martin, Are dynamic languages going to repalce static languages?. The discussion board for Robert's essay has some interesting commentary from both sides of the aisle. I know that in my day-to-day use of Tcl and Objective-C that I really enjoy the extra level of freedom those langauges give me, and I don't really miss the strict discipline of strict type-checking.
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15 May 2003
Now that iToots4 supports LAN audio streaming, I've been ripping more of my CD collection. I came across the classic CD from Old Skull, Get Out of School. I found review of the album online. I figured I'd help Spread The Joy by letting you all listen to Hot Dog Hell.
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14 May 2003
gig alert Our woodwind quintent, Zephyrs, will be having its premiere concert this sunday (May 18st) at 4:00 at Trinity Lutheran in Latrobe, PA. Here are directions. This should be a really great concert - the flute, horn, and clarinet are pro-caliber players, and Sharlotte & I aren't too shabby either.
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Posted by feanor on #macdev. Some really cute pictures from ratemykitten.com
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13 May 2003
From jo2y, Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek.
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Stories about Roy Oribison being wrapped in, uh, cling film.
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12 May 2003
Paintings by Brandon Bird, featuring pop icons as Mr. T, the Dukes of Hazard, and Abraham Licoln beating up George Washington, fight-club style. Retrocrush has an interview with the artist.
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From a comment thread on Fark, The Eye of Argon, one of the worst SF short stories. There's also an MST3K treatment of the story. From what I've been able to stomach, it's more of a fantasy / barbarian story than SF, but it's somewhat amusing.
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9 May 2003
From Feanor in #macdev, "in babelfish, translate 'ha ha ha ha' from engish -> korean, and back."
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Yay. More Borkscribble at MacEdition, sound-off, part 2. More on sound (er, audio) programming.
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6 May 2003
You've probably heard of that deck of cards that list the Wanted Members of that Evil Regime? I found an online copy.
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4 May 2003
Cool article on Babylon 5. I also picked up the season 2 DVDs yesterday. It's a very nice set. The two commentary tracks from JMS are worth the price of admission.
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1 May 2003
From Rzolf, Romulus, a Rivendell bike that's (somewhat) affordable.
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30 April 2003
From crazyAppleRumors, IDG Renames Macworld NY Again. Also, they cover Monday's music event, Apple Announces Online Muzak Business.
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The whole offensensitivity thing is really getting out of hand. Brainstorming considered offensive to epileptics. Soon all verbal discourse doubleplus goodspeak unoffend anyperson.
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DirkGomez in #openacs posted this gif of a web page to show how the Siemens ShareNet did inter-object linking. My mind is boggling over the logo in the corner. What is that? Two teletubbies going at it behind a giant waffle?
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Fark has had a photoshop contest involving an albino hedgehog. Some of the contets are just amazing, like the ice cream hedgehog, and the M.C. Escherhog, not to mention, the trouble with steroid abusing tribbles.
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Just when I thought there was nothing new under the internet sun, Chunks points me to Wrecked Exotics, pictures of expensive cars after accidents. Over 2200 photos, and a free newsletter. I'm surprised there's not a "members only" section with the really Hot pictures.
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28 April 2003
Two words not often spoken together: inflatable church.
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Boobah Zone. Probably one of the weirder flashimations I've seen. Very colorful and trippy.
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While out at dinner saturday night after a concert, I overheard someone at the table talking rather loudly. When I heard "oh yeah, just go to redhat society dot com, you'll find everything there." (wow, older wimmin folk talking about Linux in western pennsylvania). Alas, it's a different Red Hat.
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26 April 2003
Goldilocks Walks!. Personally, I think that little tramp's butt should be thrown in the slammer. Breaking and eating indeed.
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24 April 2003
While (I was) going to the grocery store, the local talk-radio guy (who wasn't going to the grocery store) had an interview with the guy that runs the Institute for Naming Children Humanely, (sounds like that could get confusing, "Paging Humanely Smith... Paging Humanely EDoug..."), Campaigning for parents to pick decent names that the poor child will be stuck with for the rest of their life. Luckily, my folks picked very easy first names for my sister and myself, since "Dalrymple" is enough baggage.
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23 April 2003
The Season 2 DVDs of B5 will be coming out soon. There's a preview of some stuff over at yahoo.
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22 April 2003
Now that we've got decend bandwidth now (alas high-latency, with a satellite connection), I've been enjoying internet radio, with the handy pre-sets that iToots has. DougEDoug pointed me to Beethoven radio, which plays a lot of good stuff, and the staff has a good sense of humor. They play a lot of movie soundtracks, which I find somewhat annoying. I also listen to Wall-To-Wall Classical, a live365 station. It has advertising, which usually isn't too bad. Recently they've had a lot of "precious little children's voices" ads, which drive me up the wall. My current favorite is Mostly Classical, which is mainly classical era (with some baroque and romantic thrown in).
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21 April 2003
Kuro5hin's Living with Schizoaffective Disorder, Part II and Part III
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20 April 2003
Leave no stone unturned, exploring the contradictions in the Gospels involving the resurrection.
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19 April 2003
In the great abortion debate, I've always said that the parents should have the option until the little one turns 18. Looks like the Sweetwater Post-Natal Abortion Clinic is setting up shop to make that Dream a Reality.
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17 April 2003
It's about time for Easter! There's nothing like celebrating the Death And Ressurection of (a|the) Lord And Savior Who Died So That We May be Saved From Sin And Have Life Eternal (Amen) like, uh, Marshmallow Peeps. There's lots of Peeps stuff out there, like PeepsShow, PeepResearch and (reruns), PeepHenge and Lord of the Peeps, Fellowship of the Peeps, and a (hell of a) lot more..
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16 April 2003
From chunks, Knight Rider 2004?. The mind boggles.
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15 April 2003
From billings, Japanese view of the Iraqi smackdown.
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Over on LiveJournal, I saw this user picture: Juggling Snowman. I watched him for almost an hour, and he never dropped a ball once! DougEDoug says the purple ball is a variation on the Standard Mills Mess. He also pointed me to the 504 pattern. There's like a whole notation for this stuff.
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14 April 2003
While waiting for The Book pdf to render (556 pages now), I decided to browse by
Kuro5hin, since I haven't been there in a long time. I found Living with Schizoaffective Disorder, a fascinating read into this mental illness. I then came across some of the author's other writings: GoingWare's Programming Tips, Resign with Dignity, Study Fundamentals, Not APIs, the SlashDot thread Overcoming Programmer's Block, and Market Yourself, tips for High-Tech Consultants.
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13 April 2003
interview with J. Michael Straczynski.
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12 April 2003
OddTodd had a April Fool's page, complete with a new (short) cartoon.
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NASA gives go-ahead to pluto mission.
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Greatest Secrets of the Cold War, some bizarro stuff that apparently actually happened. I wouldn't call them the greatest secrets, but they're fun.
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11 April 2003
Speaking of Yurts (yurt is still a fun word), Pacific Yurts
Pacific Yurts, the original designer and manufacturer of the modern lattice wall yurt, makes the highest quality yurts available.
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10 April 2003
We love the Iraqi Information Minister.
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9 April 2003
From PaulK, The Z Machine, mungus pulsed power fusion thingie. The picture is cool.
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7 April 2003
From Billings, BLOGS SAVE LIVES. Accordian Guy is saved from a psychobitch by readers of his blog.
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3 April 2003
From X-E, Baking Cakes Shaped Like ALF.
I always felt that spraying Pam into the cake pan was the best part of the whole process. It's sort of like using hair spray, but Pam smells a whole lot better and you won't die from the fumes when using a lot of i
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1 April 2003
From Billings, an eerily prohpetic Onion article, written in early 2001, about Our Long National Nightmare and Peace And Prosperity is Finally Behind Us.
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31 March 2003
SARS just media hype. I figure anything involving science or technology that the press harps on has to be misinformed hype to stir up the ignernt populace and sell more papers / get more donations during NPR station pledge week.
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30 March 2003
I can't find this in the archives (I may be missing something), but just in case I haven't, DJ Format video (quicktime format). Actually really good rap music sung by giant, uh, plushies. Just the existance of that turtle suit makes the world a better place.
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28 March 2003
From DougEDoug, Send Back Liberty, which is about, uh, sending back the statue of liberty. I like the proposed methods of sending it back. With the current state of hysteric francospisia (misofrancist? I think that's the term.) The repercussions of this trend, though, could be grave, especially for Franco-American [I love spaghettiOs) and for French kissing...)
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26 March 2003
From billings, yet another myers-briggs personality test. This time I ended up an ISTJ, with a breakdown of Introverted (I) 96% Extraverted (E) 4%;
Sensing (S) 82% Intuitive (N) 18%;
Thinking (T) 55% Feeling (F) 45%;
Judging (J) 82% Perceiving (P) 18%. FWIW.
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25 March 2003
HumanSky in #wplug is going to be living in a Yurt in Ohio over the summer. I find Yurt to be a wonderful word. It's fun to type: yurt yurt yurt. It's fun to say. "Yurt". There was a guy near here named Yurt who running for office, so there were a lot of Yurt signs by the road. Lars (not *the* Lars) has a Yurt, and also has pages on constructing the yurt he lives in. Yurt!
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Cremaster Cycle reveals, uh, stuff. One thing you gotta give Successful Modern Artists is that they have the Gratuitiously Weird thing down to a science.
Over the course of the Guggenheim game segment, Barney scuffles with a cheetah (his alter-ego), played by Aimee Mullins, a model who is a double amputee and a paralympic track star; wiggles through the legs of tap-dancing women wearing fluffy lamb ears
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XML is hard!. Let's go shopping! Actually, the discussion going on over at flutterby is more interesting than the article itself.
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24 March 2003
And they call California weird? New York dinners in the dark, dining with strangers in total darkness. Luckily the staff gets to wear nightvision goggles.
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From m0nk3y over on /sick, Leader of the Autobots found in the National Guard.
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new Odd Todd.
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Back from a 5 day trip through Northern Virginia. Sharz was playing a concert with the Loudoun Symphony, and I tagged along to get out of the house for awhile. Spent entirely too much time in front of CNN watching the video game Iraq coverage.
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18 March 2003
Mars has Dangerous Radiation Levels. Almost as interesting as the actual content of the article are the photographs of the astronomers, which are making (as G-R/E.D says, since his dad is a world-class astronomer) the Sagan "billyuns" gesture. Apparently they're all trained in that skill when they get their PhD.
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17 March 2003
Geeks on kuro5hin come out of the woodwork to talk about How to Make Bread.
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Who knew that England had so many Entrances to hell?
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16 March 2003
Happy Spring! Today's the first day since September or so that I've been able to go out on the side porch with the laptop and do my daily geeking out.
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15 March 2003
Here's one for redtoade and other old men born in the late 60's, retroCrush's Coolest Toys Ever.
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14 March 2003
Woop! It's Pi Day!
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13 March 2003
Found over in DougEDoug's world, The Tyranny of Email, on effective use of email, including 6 very common sense rules that many folks (particularly those new to the net) haven't learned yet. (Apparently this appeared on slashdot too, which I tend to stay away from.)
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Water flows on Mars?.
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From Enna, Morbid Tendencies: Art to Buy. Some of the mutant stuffed animals are amusing. Some items will be disturbing for small children. (ok, and some not so small children)
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12 March 2003
Alas, The Story About The Baby has ended, with updates only coming sporadically. And it's now ben upgraded to The Story About the Toddler
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Found over at Lars' place, a small email posting from the cocoon-devel list about bad code + good ideas makes the best open source communities.
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11 March 2003
Enna sent in this one, Your weather forecast, in Latin.
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10 March 2003
eXtreME CroSs-StItCH!!
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Scientists discover new element, Governmentium. The part about the subatomic particles reminds a lot of H.L.E. Billings' hostnames (mueon, meson, crouton...)
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The periodic table of Haiku.
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Yay, more borkscribbles at MacEdition. (a few) Productivity Tips for the Unix User.
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8 March 2003
another from Evand, Flash Flash Revolution, hand/eye/ear coordination game. Try to match flying arrows as you rock to the beat. We are getting down and getting funky!
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Woop! New Kitten Video! Gay Bar.
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From Evand, The Google Dance, watch how the google index propagates across their datacenters.
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7 March 2003
From the s0ckm0nk3y, it's all about the monkey, monkey toys, animals, etc. (inflatable monkeys for only 75 cents!) Some folks are aware of my money/monkey aphasia, which makes the page even more apropos. Also from m0nk3y, Suburban Trunk Monkey (mpeg)
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Every time I stumble across a link to the eXtreme Programming wiki, I end up losing hours in there. This time the gateway drug came from davb, with Technical Debt.
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I don't recall having posted this before (and I'm too lazy to check the whole damn thing). While talking with GR-E.D, I pointed him to Vendetta, A Christmas Story. It's pretty violent, but pretty funny too. Amazing what can be done for under $1000 and oodles of spare time.
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6 March 2003
Linux Productivity Magazine has a nice Intro to PostgreSQL.
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It's been awhile since I've checked in on Troubleshooing Professional Magazine. This quarter (he's gone to a quarterly schedule for TPM, and added a Linux Productivity Magazine) is about
Toolsmanship and effective use of tools.
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5 March 2003
Virtual speak and spell.
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4 March 2003
GridLock, an entirely too addictive web puzzle game thing.
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3 March 2003
From davb, Byte 2 Note, turn any file into MIDI music.
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2 March 2003
Found in the jo2y, a set of Signs of the modern day Duck-and-Cover. This one is one of my favorites:
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1 March 2003
From rzolf, Rap Video involving large furry animals breakdancing
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Originally spotted in /sick, Celebrities Eating. Pictures are safe for work, but it's very odd. As rzolf so eloquently put it, "whoah. that is a weird site."
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From G.R. E-D, 500 mile email.
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28 February 2003
In another fine example of blog incest, I saw over at Chunks' place, Lego castle. All I can say is, wow.
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27 February 2003
This saturday EvanD and I are doing a talk on emacs at WPLUG, my favorie drug of choice these days (not sure if that refers to wplug or emacs). I've been finding the Emacs wiki to be a hugely wonderful resource. In the last couple of days I've learned more emacs tricks and "whoa. it can do that?" than ever before. Like M-x dunnet for adventure game goodness, M-x column-number-mode to show the column number in the mode line, C-U 0 C-L to move the line the cursor is on to the top of the screen (rather than centering like just a plain C-L), and C-U C-_ to undo only within a particular region, rather than across the whole buffer.
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I haven't seen these elsewhere, so I figured I'd post 'em and start filing my patents.
Domo-kun emoticon: \Ö/, and of course, the fearsome |-Ö-| Domo-kun TIE fighter.
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Cool! Christo does NYC. I might need to go to NYC in 2005 to see it.
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From fark, NASA engineer email before Columbia's reentry.
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:'-(, Mr. Rogers passes away. Back when I used to watch the Arsenio Hall show (oh the shame), I remember the wildest audience reaction when a guest came on was when Mr. Rogers showed up.
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26 February 2003
Found on Fark, PornOrchestra, that is doing live orchestral accompaniment to classic hardcore movies
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mp3 of the moment, The Chicken Dance (techno remix)
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Lego Tarot!
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indrectly from Billings, Is Boredom bad?. Billings asks "Does being bored mean you're boring, or is it just the world around you?" Maybe neither. I know folks who are bored pretty often, but they themselves are very interesting people. I know I (and the Spousal Overunit) are rarely, if ever, bored. We just have too much stuff on our plate to do, and the occasional down time of just sitting in a chair with a cat is time to enjoyed. We also don't have our TV hooked up to the outside world, so we don't have the constant stimulation of television and television commercials, which also has the nice side effect of not being barraged with advertisements aimed at making us dissatisfied with our current level of consumer consumption.
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25 February 2003
Stolen from Flutterby, the story of Things that go Blimp in the Night.
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I guess I must be (slightly?) neurotic because I get songs stuck in my head all the time. that's the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh, uh-huh).
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21 February 2003
From chunks over at /sick, Earth Erotica. Probably NSFW, but then you could say "well, they're just geological formations". I figure the Flutterby crew would enjoy them.
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20 February 2003
Another good one from Billings, Interview with Robert Burrows, author of the Great American Parade, an Inquiry into the Values of modern-day times.
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19 February 2003
From Billings, Lords of the Rhymes, Hobbit Rappers. Be sure to check out the movie. Contains coarse langauge, so use headphones at work.
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17 February 2003
The Simpsons turns 300. The golden era began when the writers turned to Homer, and Homer, Thompson says, "is one of the great comic creations. ... He's complex in his own lack of complexity."
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14 February 2003
Shamlessl stolen from Flutterby, A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Attacks: in short, Don't Panic.
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Woo hoo! The Orange Alert is a fake. I suspect a conspiracy with the duct tape lobby.
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The Something Awful Photoshop Phriday this week was Video Game Boxes. I think my favorite was Mortal Wombat.
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From CARS, there is a new Mac Shareware Review Site, PerversionTracker. I just hope my stuff doesn't end up there. At least I avoid RealBasic.
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13 February 2003
Odd Todd is publishing a book
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12 February 2003
GoogleSynth. Randomly picks two images from google, then tries to build one image out of the other, sometimes with really interesting results. I found this one looking through the Borkware referrer logs. I haven't figure out yet how someone got to BorkPad from that page.
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I fixed some vhosting problems I was having. The #openacs crew badgered me to write them up, so here are my notes on AOLserver Virtual Hosting with TCP.
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Chris Crawford, designer of pretty innovative and strange games, took part in a NASA mission to study the Leonids in 1999.
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11 February 2003
A new germ theory, on the evolution of the microbes that cause disease. And are some of our leading non-pathogen illneses actually caused by microbes?
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How do I make games, a path to game development.
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Found on RetroCrush, The most annoying movie characters of all time (Volume I)
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From rzolf, KidRobot, a lot of really weird action-figure kinds of things.
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10 February 2003
Even Sun isn't fond of Java.
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After asking about linear algebra books on #opeancs, davb pointed out The Assayer. Looks like an index of a bunch of free online books, including linear algebra.
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From grand-rapper E.D., Virtual Stapler. I could play all day with something like this. And BlueKanary probably can't destroy it either.
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Woop. Another MacEdition article. Grumpy code? gdb it!, an intro to gdb concepts. Usually my stuff there gets published around the 10th of the month. The OpenACS article took longer than expected in the copy editing phase and so showed up later than usual.
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7 February 2003
Never underestimate the power of Cheetos.
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Wheee! More ranting over at MacEdition: OpenACS and you, (or, "Mental Hygiene for the internet generation").
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4 February 2003
This link is from Chunks
Haiku Blog is the new thing
Please go forth and click
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redtoade was on a nostalgia kick today, pointing me to lots of stuff over at YesterdayLand, like classic toys (cattlecar galactica, Gnip Gnop, and Milky, the Marvelous Milking Cow (with Milk)) and TV shows (Ark II, Beany and Cecil, and Zoom)
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The latest in the Alltel saga. Our ISDN "service" is still flaky. Yesterday we got our second call from the DSL group asking if our problems were resolved, (and twice we said "We don't have DSL. We have ISDN. It's still sucking"). The satellite installer came today and is currently setting things up. While he was getting things installed, two Alltel vans showed up. Apparently we've had DSL available in the area since *May*, but nobody we've called in the intervening months has said it's available. So we're really pissed at having paid the ISDN extortion fee (2-3 times the DSL rate) for really lousy "service". Since we've already shelled out for the satellite stuff, we'll most likely keep that for the long term.
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3 February 2003
From davb, Videos of the Abelson / Sussman Lectures given at HP in the mid 80s. An MIT class distilled down to a bunch of gigs of video. Unfortunately with my current connection, it's a 93 hour download for the mpeg, and about 28 for the divx versions.
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1 February 2003
Whoa. We lost another shuttle. The space shuttle was "my" space era. I was too young really for the moon shots, while the shuttle was being built when I was in elementary and junior high. I thought the Enterprise prototype glider was really cool. I was a senior in high school when the Challenger blew. All of us were in shock. Mrs. Thomas the bilogy teacher came and got us from the journalism room to watch the news coverage since she knew we were space geeks. Today I was driving to a LUG meeting when it came over the radio. I'm just waiting for some Islamic group to claim responsibility. That would really freak everyone out.
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31 January 2003
From rbm: Why CNN Sucks (I could have told you it's an entertainment channel, not anything actually Useful). jcdldn pointed another page of his, I am better than your kids, where he deconstructs the poignant existential basis underlying universal juvenile expressions of artistic endeavor.
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From rzolf, this week's Frightening Link: cool-2b-real, a Beef Advocacy site aimed at teenage girls. Only thing I could really think of is the use of hormone injections in beef leading to increated bustline.
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29 January 2003
Long hours at the computer considered harmful.
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DougEDoug pointed out that Chunks had Jeezit, which auto-sacntifies web sites (and includes a nifty soundtrack). For instance, BorkLog. There's also the Pornolizer, which turns a site into a porn site (at least textually). For instance, BorkLog. (not safe for work) True fun happens when you combine them. A lot of it is random, but sometimes Truth Emerges:
[10:54] markd2 alltel? Nobody knows but Jesus.
[10:54] monkeybot alltel art a bunch of fucks
I hath Satan's ISDN serivce currently because the dial-unto
(I especially like the 'dial-unto')
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28 January 2003
latest in the saga to have Alltel fix the problems with our ISDN: Got a call today from someone in their DSL support department. She'd never heard of ISDN before. We both wondered how this trouble ticket (open since December, problems since September) got to her.
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Yes! They're still around! The Flat Earth Society.
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Another from rzolf: monowheels and diwheels, vehicles that are single (or double) wheels. I think the Flutterby crew should make one of these for the next Burning Man. DougEDoug pointed me to Riding The Ultimate Wheel, which is also a monowheel, just not motorized. And smaller.
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From Rzolf (yeah, he's still alive), a bunch of articles from the folk(s) at Dexterity Software on gaming, the shareware/software industry, personal motivation, and other stuff.
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27 January 2003
OK, OK. Enough folks have bugged me about an RSS/XML/TLA feed for borklog. I guess they don't like my sublime page layout. Here is a first-crack hack at an XML feed. http://badgertronics.com/blog/blog-xml. Lemme know if it works / doesn't work for you, since I don't actually use XML/RSS/TLA feeds.
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I forget who originally pointed me to these small Interviews with Martin Fowler. (if you go to the 6th installment, you'll find links to the previous editions. The pageflow of the site is pretty awful). Martin's pretty famous for is work in the eXtreme Programming world (surge!!), as well as his Refactoring book. I usually find what he says makes sense, and is interesting too.
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On Saturday we took the yoof group down to the Pittsburgh Omnimax theater to watch Attack of the Clowns Clones before it left town. It was an odd experience. Back in the 90s I saw Hunt For Red October at the iMax in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and that was a great time. The imax screen is mainly just wide. Omnimax (from what I could tell, this being my first time in one) is both wide and tall projected on the inside of a large dome, which gives quite a bit of distortion around the edges. The movie was watchable most of the time (some scenes induced vertigo due to the projection distortion), and there were numerous times that action was happening on the edges of the screen but the middle was pretty blank. On the plus side, Natalie Portman scales pretty well, having a 30 foot tall head, and the CGI was surprisingly good blown up to the extreme the it was. Yoda always of course awesome was he.
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25 January 2003
A posting that is a voice of reason in the whole HTTP TRACE vulnerability hooplah.
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22 January 2003
One of our hanakwaanzamas gifts to ourselves was a DVD player. I always said that I'd get a DVD player when there was compelling content (specifically DVDs of the Babylon 5 episodes). Season I of B5 has come out, so we got the player (especially since our 13 year old VCR has eaten a couple of tapes. As a birthday present to the spousal overunit, I got her seasons 4 and 5 of Star Trek/TNG. After watching some of the episodes, I remembered the Tim Lynch reviews of the episodes. I didn't always agree with them, but I found them informative and entertaining. It looks like they've been updated and put on the web, as witnessed in the "new!" banner:NEW If you have a frames capable browser (e.g. Netscape 2.0 and above) you can try the new framed version of this section. But beware: this is very much under construction!
And unfortunately the reviews have a brick-pattern background image that renders them unreadable, but if your browser lets you turn that off, the reviews are fun reading.
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While surfing around Slashdot (I am soooo brain-dead right now), I came across this comment describing a vignette of my youth. Except I programmed the TRS-80s to say "I SUCK! I SUCK!" over and over again.
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21 January 2003
Folks who hang around me know I gripe about my ISP, Alltel. All the infobots around me know alltel too:
[10:54] markd2 alltel?
[10:54] monkeybot alltel are a bunch of wankers
I have their ISDN serivce currently because the dial-up services is really bad, due to the local infrastructure being old. (2-3 disconnects on a good day, dozens of disconnects a day if it rains hard). We're 1000 feet too far for DSL, and the cable modem folks just laugh at us when we call up. So ISDN is the next best thing. Two years ago they ran some lines and got us hooked up. Aside from being a king's ranson every month, it's been a usable service. In September it started flaking out. After months of complaints (I have a 50Kemail paper trail) things have finally come to a head.
The problem is that when we call the local (Apollo, PA) ISDN dial up number, sometimes it chooses not to pass packets. Usually this happens at 3 in the morning when the "help" desk is closed. Other times it just decides to drop half of the connection, forcing a re-dial and setting up all my net sessions again. The next closest number is in Delmont, PA, and is very reliable, and is faster than the Apollo number.
We had some stuff to do in December that had to get done, so we used the Delmont number for a week. Turns out that is worth about $450 in long distance. After calling and complaining to the billing office (and getting the Delmont charges taken off the bill), they're finally starting to look at the problem. The local folks were kind of surprised having never head of the problem. I guess the 4-5 months of complaining to the support folks never made it anywhere. I'm not terribly surprised that it takes a big(ish) monetary impact before any kind of decent customer service happens.
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20 January 2003
From haverkamp, an ex aDer over at AmIHot. I guess the VXML thing didn't take off.
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From G-R/E.D, a Mac that looks like it came out of Brazil
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19 January 2003
From jo2y, Demotivators T-Shirt. I like the disclaimer.
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18 January 2003
New Blode! Attack of the Uber-Pea.
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We're back! What a couple of weeks it has been. For the folk out there that was wondering what happened, here's the timeline:
- I had Jury Duty Jan 6th through the 9th, trying an accident-damages due to a guy running into an 18 wheeler that was straddling the road. He was pretty messed up, but didn't do rehab. We awarded some damages (since liability had already been determined before our trial started), but I think we did Good Justice since both side's attourneys grimaced at the verdict reading. Four days of tedious medical testimony.
- on Tuesday the 7th, WorldCom decided to pull the plug on Digital Mission, where I had my computer colocated. DM had no warning, and my first inkling of problems was not being able to check my email tuesday night. I came to discover that the shut off was sudden and permanent, and I needed a new place to set up shop (which was difficult to do since I was still in the trial during the day.
- The fine folks at Acorn Hosting let us move in on very short notice. Obligations wednesday and thursday night precluded doing much site restoration, outside of slurping over aolserver and figuring out how to get the virtual hosting working so I can put my 5 sites behind one IP, rather than the luxury of several IPs at Digital Mission.
- After delivering the verdict on thursday, I came home (skipping my usual thursday night rehearsal 80 miles away), heated up dinner, and got a call from Sharlotte's aunt saying that Gramma (95 years old) had fallen and couldn't get up. So I headed over there (a couple miles away) to help out. I finally got home from the ER around 1:30 or 2 in the morning.
- and then after that was the slow process of getting sites back up and running. I had a backup from july time frame. I used the time at a WPLUG installfest to get my qmail config back up and running. After that was getting other sites working (specifically the Loudoun Symphony), since there are actual people who use those sites to do Real Stuff. This involved several migrations, AOLserver 2.3.3 -> a more recent version, Oracle -> postgrese. It's not quite finished, but it's at least working
- Oh, in the middle of all of this, my ISP (Alltel) was totally flaking out, somtimes giving me a half dozen disconnects in the course of an hour. That makes things dreadfully difficult to accomplish. I'm also paying a king's ransom for ISDN "service" (since we're too far for DSL, and the cable folks just laugh at us).
- Due to a comedy of errors, I wasn't able to get my physical machine until wednesday evening (1 week, 1 day since the plug got pulled) to get the most recent data. I borrowed a friend's DSL to upload a bunch of stuff the last couple of days, which let me get Borkware and badgertronics back up and running.
- There's still a lot of mop-up left to do (virtual machine configs, figuring out backup strategy, but things should work (all of borkware, badgerblog, sick, and the other random things around here)
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5 January 2003
Yesterday we went to see the Two Towers. I think I'm finally going to stop seeing movies out in public. No matter where we go, some born-in-a-barn cretin seems to show up and sit right next to us. This time it was a pistachio eater scattering shells all across the floor, while simultaneously gabbing with the person next to him. Lukcily most of the movie was loud enough to cover up most of the running commentary. I guess common courtesy really is dead.
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3 January 2003
Woo hoo! A borkware product that doesn't suck! BorkPad, a clone faithful reproduction of the classic Mac OS 9 NotePad utility. It's different from all the other billions of note pad utilities out there in that it doesn't throw the Mac OS X kitchen sink in there.
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From Enna, A Rube Goldberg new year greeting.
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1 January 2003
Hippo Newt's Ears everybody. Over the last couple of days I've upgraded badgertronics to be on the latest OpenACS. Lemme know if you notice anything broken.
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30 December 2002
How to write like a (net) wanker. You too can now fit into the IRC and Slashdot communities.
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26 December 2002
Top 10 Space Mysteries for 2003. The copy-editing is pretty cringe worthy (like "Have you ever had one of those dreams where you try to run from a monster and you're legs go 'round and 'round") ugh. Some of the New Mysteries are kind of cool.
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The Filthy Critic reviews The Two Towers. if you're offended by coarse langauge, avoid it. Otherwise it's one of his better reviews.
Frodo the Hobbit (played by Elijah Wood still looking like a deer in the headlights) has the ring. He and Samweiss the Hobbit (chubby little Sean Astin) are moving toward the Mountain of Fire with the help of Gollum (played by The Weekly World News's Batboy)
Mortensen and Tyler's relationship is so thinly sketched in the first movie, that when they speak here it has the emotional impact of a dumpster dive.
Plus, it's sort of laughable when characters on screen can be easily identified as good or evil purely based on the greasiness of their hair, and yet the people in the movie can't tell. "What! You mean that guy dressed all in black with the ashen skin and greasy hair was a bad guy? Damn!"
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20 December 2002
No, really. Pittsburgh doesn't suck.
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17 December 2002
God's way of saying dude, you need a new car. A victim of the Peekskill Meteorite.
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From Chunks (yeah he's still alive), New Odd Todd Holiday Greeting. There's also new wedding pictures at ratbox, including a kid with some of the balloon haul, and Chunks in his new Paddington Bear outfit.
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16 December 2002
From monkeyass on #wplug, The College Theme Paper: He vs. She, although to me it reads more like a high school paper. Probably isn't even real, but I enjoyed it.
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From G-R/E-D, Turkish Cinema remakes Star Trek. As E-D says, "I must have it". Also affected is The Wizard of OzIn Turkey, a plot twist is an army of charging cavemen getting exploded by a magic cannon conjured up by midgets.
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Seen on SourceForge, Risk Extreme! I can't tell if this is a joke or not.
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12 December 2002
Miracle on 34rd Street? Will FedEx find Santa?
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11 December 2002
I saw a pointer to a quiz, Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?. The test is pretty lame, but the different kinds of results are amusing (doesn't seem to be a way to link directly to them. oh well). The Elmo one isn't quite safe for work.
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Inside the world of the lost-and-found department.
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From Denshi, Compo, a music composition langauge.
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I forget if it was jo2y or billings that brought this up, but Jump the Shark, when TV shows cross that line of stupidity from which there is no recovery. The A-Team jumped the shark in the fifth season when they got the disco music soundtrack.
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10 December 2002
Yee-haw! Another MacEdition publication. Memory Corruption and Malloc Tools, a brief (< 1%) excerpt from the Big Nerd Ranch course materials.
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Found by mer in #wplug, Rate My Professors, rate your college prof and see what other victims students think of them.
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From MonkeyAss, Open Source Development HOW-To, includes tips on the best use of sourceForge.
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9 December 2002
From Billings, What if Christmas were a Jewish Holiday?. My favorite part is the Hagada for Xmas at the end.
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7 December 2002
For the B5 fans out there, JMS News, net postings from B5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. A total of 16698 messages (woof)
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6 December 2002
Old Lutheran, The Center for Lutheran Pride! But not too proud. It's got to be real since they mention jell-o.
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Wow. Fat-free potato chips from the heavens? Well, not really, but it is a one-time strong signal from space.
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Europe plans building 100 meter telescope. Given that the current state of the art are 8 and 10 meter telescopes, this one should be a doozy.
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Build your own sandwich, british style.
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4 December 2002
From DougEDoug, Sprinklers go off during a Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsal, ruining a piano :-(. Amusingly enough, they were rehearsing the Rite of Spring. Makes me wonder if we get trampled by a herd of deer when the Washington Symphonic Orchestra works on Afternoon of a Fawn Faun.
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2 December 2002
I wish I had this much spare time. one (silly) putty Ring to Rule Them All.
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These things are getting rarer and rarer. Thanks to DougEDoug for finding a Swedish Chef translation service. (includes other dialects as ell)
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30 November 2002
from fark, Enterprise-D made out of lego.
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28 November 2002
From the s0ckm0nk3y (curiously enough), a sighting of Hi Monkey in the New York Times. (monkey even made the print edition)
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Driving home the other night I was scanning through the local radio stations and came across this odd little song about blackbirds, where the singer sounded just Edie Brickell (blast from the past for those children of the 80's knocking around). After much fruitless googling and searching the web, I finally found a gnutella client, and discovered the artist is actually Erin McKeown (warning, flash-heavy site). Time to go track down an album.
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27 November 2002
A FAQ of all things Dr Pepper, found after some discussion in #wplug on finding caffiene free Dr. Pepper. Looks like West Virginia still has a bottler, so I might be able to find some next time I'm down there for a trombone lesson.
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jwz has a great story about fixing a giant underground power line.
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22 November 2002
While talking about outliners in #openac, jcdldn pointed me to this Review of More, the outliner I still use (even though it hasn't been updated since 1991. It's a 68K mac program that works in classic on Mac OS/X. I developed my chunk of the Core OS X course with it, and I have yet to find its equal.
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20 November 2002
From Billings-san, a new Switch ad, this time, from Anakin Skywalker. Yub yub.
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19 November 2002
The #wplug folks pointed me to StrongBad's techno email. the mp3 you can download at the end of the cartoon is truly awesome. I've got it on auto-repeat now.
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I can't beleive this slashdot comment that speaks to a fundamental universal truth got moderated down. (it's a #wplug collaboration)
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Speaking of Duck and Cover, DougEDoug found animations of Bert the Turtle.
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18 November 2002
From the Grand Rapper E-D, duck and cover, a brief audio snippet on how to survive a nuclear bomb.
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Yay! Finally back from the Nerd ranch Core-OS X and Unix class. We ended up having 7 students (out of a maximum of 8 or so), so it was really well attended. All the guys there were top-notch programmers. The first lecture was pretty frightning for me (being the first Real Class in front of Real Customers), but eventually I got into a good rhythm and ceased being the deer in the headlights. I did M-W, Aaron did Thursday, and we split friday. We're now in the process of fixing typos in the materials (530 pages!) that folks found, and doing some reorganization. The next date is tentatively scheduled for February.
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13 November 2002
From the Big Nerd himself, a pointer to Generalizing Overloading for C++ 2000, includes the overloading of whitespace. Be sure to note the publication date.
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12 November 2002
From Enna, PeepHenge, as well as Lord of the Peeps, Fellowship of the Peeps.
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11 November 2002
Greetings from the Big Nerd Ranch. Turns out I've got 7 (!) students whose minds I can warp this week. The lecturing / teaching thing is exhausting, but nearly as difficult as I was expecting it to be. The net connection is a bit slow here (being shared by all of us over a dial-up line), so random surfing is a bit on the slow side.
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7 November 2002
We're heading southward to Ashville NC for my Big Nerd Ranch class, stating on Sunday. So far 6 have signed up. It should be fun.
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Chinese food is poisonous to me, but this thing on reading chinese menus is pretty interesting.
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6 November 2002
I like weddings, affirmations of happiness in this cold, cruel universe. Especially if they're local. Free food, and I get to wear my tux without having a piece of plumbing attached to my face. Memempool had a reference to Etiquette Hell, including a bunch of stories of weddings gone horribly, horribly wrong.
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5 November 2002
From PeteJ, From the Daily Show, a Schoolhouse Rock style song about mid-term elections. (requires Real player)
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4 November 2002
IMDB for cartoons!
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31 October 2002
cool picture of Mt. Etna, from space.
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jwz's livejournal had a pointer to a pretty cool Build Your Own Face thingie.
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Whoa. jwz contemplating switching to OS X.
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30 October 2002
a National Post article on how 