A hilarious story about some seedy corner of LessWrong I've never seen. Is there a paid "member's only" forum full of posts like this?
If you've watched roughly 1.5 hobgobillion .hack// episodes like me, you'll probably like this new series about an online game and the precocious wunderkind who are trapped inside it.
"endless engineering resources" makes it sound like they've created a programmer Rat King, and are busily tying more power cords together.
Amazing story of the completely shady origins of habeas corpus.
Oh Brian Eno, soothe me with your space elevator jamz.
Is this the "dubsteps" the children are on about? The vacuum cleaner bass sound is good at drowning at the new office's AC.
Today's "drown out the new office AC" jam:
Good reminder from mikeal that I'm playing San Fransisco on easy mode.
Holy hockey stick, Batman! Check out the graphs at the end of:
rachelbythebay is starting a programmer lesson thing, where she teaches you how to build a c++ program one coherent step at a time.
Even if you aren't interested in c++, it's worth checking out for her cool javascript terminal replay thingy.
Woohoo, we've almost done it! Watch the remaining unarchived pages on Yahoo Messages count down to zero--14k left!
Help to archive Yahoo Messages before they shut down in 8 days.
Today's jam. Phrase "all art has been contemporary" is stuck in my head now.
Trailer for a movie about Lil Bub.
Feelings engines... engage!
Spotted some augmented reality at Yosemite National Forest.
Today's jam. Everyday's jam.
All of you new theoldreader users: get off my internet lawn! The poor service can't handle all these Johnny-Come-Lately users (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
In the middle of fidgeting with project euler problem 40, some unexpected beauty:
Mmm... reminds me of my first internship. Day 2, I deleted every record in the database I was working with that started with the letter "t."
Since my internship was at a real company and not the clown factory this poor sap worked for, there were backups and I was only working with a dev version of the database anyway. Still, just remembering it makes me feel that intense panic all over again.
"So to all the girls learning how to code, and not sure where you stand: screw it, and just call yourself a developer already. You should be proud of all you know, and realize that even the best people don’t know everything."
The BBC version of House of Cards is like the Netflix version, except it's good and there's not wacky Sony product placement.
"Spencer, who is 29, possesses the insectlike eyes of a committed programmer."
The humans are on to us, my fellow beetle invaders! (yಠ,ಠ)y
According to my music player, I've listened to this song 47 times this week. No regrets.
In the year since I signed up for xbox live, my old credit card expired and I got a new one. When xbox tried to charge me for a new year, the charge was declined. I added a new payment option, transferred my subscription over to that new payment option, and then tried to remove the old (defunct) payment option.
It didn't work, because there are outstanding charges for my subscription, even though there is a new, working payment option tied to that subscription.
When I get through the choose your own adventure novel that is the "contact support" system, I am shown a "request failed, please try again later" error. Their website appears not to work with the two most popular browsers on the planet. Maybe if I go to a public library or something, I can find an old machine in a corner with IE on it...
Things I wish were turned on by default in lighttpd, a partial list:
* mod_compress, with css and js in the default filetypes
* etags for all the things
alternate title: "Drastically Improve the Loading Time of Your Static Site, in 200 Easy Steps"
Two things Stardock doesn't seem to understand:
* Password length limits make techies nervous.
* Trying to delete your embarrassing forum posts from the internet will just generate more lulz.
I wonder if this computer game may be good at confusing people who try to tell who you are by how you write.
If you catch me complaining about inane trending topics in the States, remind me that it could be much, much worse.
Sophie Schmidt (Eric Schmidt's daughter, not the footballer) had a chance to visit North Korea this January. This may be the first description of North Korea to mention memes.
Ignoring the link-bait headline and nonsense about ONOES TEH VIDGEOGAMES, this article has some interesting links to the current scientific literature on violence and video games. I was surprised at the amount of research that's been done, and the current consensus of that research.
The new Spider-Man is so good! Cool new powers, a less angsty backstory, and Miles Malones's hanging out with Iron Man and the Ulti-Cats roughly 1 million issues faster that Peter "Slowpoke" Parker.
Erica Wolf sent me this movie based on
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or, for those of us less than a few hundred year's old, Dynasty Warriors). I haven't seen it yet, but it probably has Lu Bu in it--what more do you need to know?
With a BAM! and a POW! and a REHIRE'D!, Gail Simone is back at the helm of the excellent 2011 reboot of Batgirl.
Thought I grabbed generic dark chocolate, until I got home and took a bite. I regret nothing!
Judging by this flickr notification, circa 2010 me was reading a little too much Neal Stephenson.
cc:
Thomas Dunlap
The Old Reader has the greatest error message, ever.
SPLC debunks the top three lies MRAs tell. Delicious!
Beautiful, reminds me of the Voynich manuscript.
Writer types: if you are using duotrope to track your submissions, and are worried about the upcoming pricing changes, here's a no-frills, free alternative:
I've seen a rise this year in infographics as a Trojan horse for spam. Here's a great example: while not exactly highbrow, I'm guessing
duelinganalogs.com wouldn't normally link to casino spam.
New version of "The Grey Album" by Danger Mouse, the world's coolest thoughtcriminal.
I heard Craig give a talk a few months ago, and I've been noodling over this idea of minimal publishing ever since.
Emily Kiernan, being a total bikey at our local bicycle repair shop. Also, I'm going to start calling cyclists "bikeys." Is this awesome? Y/n
The award for the paper with the funniest title cited by Alien Phenomenology by Ian Bogost goes to...
Trying out
http://theoldreader.com/ today. Love the sparse UI, importing my old feed was easy (google reader spits out an opml file that you can import here), only doodad I'm missing is sorting a folder in reserve chronological order (for the webcomics).
“I was overwhelmed,” she said. “Having that many people sign up, it was, like, wow.”
HOLD ON THERE IS SOMETHING IN MY EYE
I've been waiting since college for Chris Onstad's Recipes for a Lady or a Man: the Achewood Cookbook to come back in stock on Amazon. Today I learned that you can buy it in PDF form direct for the author!
Merlin Mann talks on his various podcasts about the feeling that everyone else has been given a manual on how to be an adult. I think this cookbook is a chapter from that manual.
Despite snarking with
Abben Maguire about this just a week ago, I enjoyed Kurzweil's talk at work today. He didn't refer to any of his recent dubious adventures in nutrition, and made me have feelings and stuff about the future.
The first thing I've learned about Raspberry Pi is that raspberry has a "P" in it. Who knew?
Also, ssh pi@rasberrypi.local doesn't work because rasberry != raspberry.
Why does registering to vote sign me up for spam emails from campaigners? There's no way I checked a box labeled "sure, send me spam from campaigners," so how do I turn it off?
Diana Arterian (
dianaarterian.com) just had a set of her amazing poems based on last words published in The Offending Adam.
It was a pleasure to hear some of these at readings, and now a wider audience can have that pleasure. Way, to go, Diana!
Netflix knows how to bring the lulz.
Later today, I will be listening to Don Knuth play the organ.
You keep using that word, "optional." I don't think it means what you think it means.
That green icon doesn't really fit the status "Data fetch failure."
In other news, cloudkick is great for monitoring.
Emily Kiernan and I, increasing the hipster per bike ratio at Shoreline Lake. Also pictured: a squirrel that appears to have eaten all the other squirrels.
Saith
Emily Kiernan:
"Think of internet ideas like Betty Crocker cake mix. Ready to use-- just add nuance and humanity (to taste). Of course, there is no reason it couldn't come with those things mixed in, but research shows that people feel better when they add them themselves."
What the hell, antirez (creator of Redis)?!
Protip: If you type "reverse sexism" into your editor, you are about to say something terrible on the internet.
What's in this 200 Mb "Compatibility Pack" for Borderlands 2, and why is it downloading so slowly?
Update: Oh... it's a copy of all the assets in the Mechromancer DLC that some subset of users may purchase today. Swell.
I accidentally stumbled across an article about
Thomas Bushnell's recent talk on Ubuntu and Google. There's even a recording of the talk at the bottom.
Way to go, Thomas!
I went to the fair last night.
Emily Kiernan won me a toy. I think it's my spirit animal?
I would totally watch a TV show about Lil' Edward Tufte. Here's a sneak peek of episode 1:
It was a great last night in hyperrome.
California now has an online voter registration form. It pulls your signature from the DMV, which means no telegraphs, fax machines, pagers, carrier pigeons, candygrams, pajamagrams, snail mail, or other discarded tech are needed to register.
As the youth say: aw, yiss.
​ is better than <wbr />. Thought you should know.
Great article on why everyone should install Ghostery and Adblock Plus. Probably not the result the author intended.
Getting a "Database unavailable" message when I try to visit
http://blog.last.fm/, and api calls to scrobble return successfully, but are not reflected on my "latest added" page. Oh, but the status page is working (everything's just fine, according to that).
This company didn't shut down while I was away, did it?
I'm so excited about Internet Explorer coming to Xbox that I'm going to go shotgun some energy drinks and do 1,000 chinups. In fact, I'm so excited I'm going to have to put on a third polo shirt--two popped collars are not enough to reflect my excitement.
In other news, doesn't this haunted thing already have a browser? I've never wanted to search for a thing on my console, but I'm pretty sure there's a tab named "bing" already.
Got an email from a Beninese gentleman who says a distant relative has left me a large amount of money. I have a good feeling about this, you guys. :)
Something interesting from the
tent.io docs: specifying up front which kinds of licensed content you are willing to accept from a given entity. I like the idea of being able to say: feel free to send me photos, but only those you are willing to let me remix.
I'd love to see what kind of community develops with this capability.
Watching season 1 of
Fringe again (I blame
Larry Hare). The first time through, I missed Observotron(tm) showing up in every episode--pretty fun.
I did not like The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi--could not even finish it. I was hoping for some light steampunk escapism a la China Miéville. It's... not that.
I'm getting really tired of the George RRRRRRRR Martin school of grit.
Hilariously, I learned about genetic bottlenecks from Ancient Aliens (stopped clocks twice a day &c).
I hear the diaspora kids have moved on to lolcats.
Good news: the shirt they gave me from the kickstarter has just become 200% more hip.
Uplink for tablets and linux! This brings back some great clickenhacken memories.
From issue 5 of the Uncanny X-Men. They only brushed against some of the detonate buttons?
Soup lifts his front left paw when he thinks he's found a tiny creature to chase on our walks. Maybe he thinks it will make him more aerodynamic?
Today in "Things We Saw Coming But Did Anyway to Save 30 Cents:"
Lulz, what a way to "recognize" the contributions of my stackoverflow account: with spam.
Bash tip of the day:
If you've ever tried to write a command to change your current working directory in bash, and were annoyed to learn that scripts do not change their parent's directory, behold!
~$ echo "cd /var/log" >> cder
~$ chmod +x cder
~$ ./cder
~$ # nothing happened, same dir, boo!
~$ . cder
/var/log$ # woahs we changed directory the spiders are eating the colors!!!
Zero-indexed stairways at the airport.
Speaking of off-by-one, I showed up a week early for my flight. Yup.
I was in a meeting today with 10 tech workers. On the subject of the Olympics, it was revealed that no one in the room was able to watch the events in realtime, except one attendee on video chat who happened to be in London during the Olympics.
Predictions: miserable viewership numbers, miserable ad revenue, and hilarious quote from NBC in a week about how this is the fault of piracy, somehow.
Twitter has somehow got the idea that I'm dead and need to be resurrected. Here's what I imagine the check for this looks like:
if (not tweeted about the olympics opening ceremony) {
return probably_dead
}
All quiet on the stream--am I the only one experiencing netflix downtime?
Thanks to
debu.gs, you can now count beer bottles in Inferno shell.
I did an extremely poor job finding a gastropub. I'm awarding myself half credit, because burrito.
I feel like "causes people to scream on the internet" should be reflected in the ratings for movies.
Can you think of any other movies where the movie is good but the fans are bad? I'd say "Fight Club" but I didn't particularly like the movie either.
40 minutes later, I have forgotten everything I ever knew about steak. I am the tao master of not knowing things about steak.
Breaking announcement: I am a nerdlinger.
HAHA I don't meet the minimum requirements for Adobe Digital Editions.
For the uninitiated, that's a euphemism for "you are one of those filthy linux users."
So now I'm off to download random scripts from forums in order to unlock my ebooks.
Feel free to turn the sound off if the song annoys, but take a look at the clips of Star Wars in this video. One interesting pattern I noticed is that Star Wars has very few women in it.
I guess this should have been obvious before, but the random seeking makes it clearer. What the heck, Star Wars?
video via:
Legbamel Not-Pop
Today I learned that when the power goes out in Laguna Beach at 11pm, the nearest wifi is... my office.
Bonus learnings: when the manual says "don't feed the gremlins in the evening" you should trust the Nice Manual Authors.
120 miles outside of LA, I found the perfect rebuttal:
At first I thought they meant "fresh Italian bread," but the packaging clearly says "French"...
Karaoke in an empty desert bar. As the cactus farmer on stage is currently insisting, I am living la vida loco.
Good news! The vet was able to get the foxtail out of Soup's foot.
Judging by the receipt, he is loaded up on ketamine and valium.
This may explain why he's convinced he's a vacuum cleaner.
Arbitrage in Eve Online
The highlight of my evening was smuggling oxygen through nullsec. Someone on one side of the Spooky Bad Zone was selling oxygen for too little, and someone on the other side was buying if for too much. Don't ask me where the oxygen came from, and why anyone would want it--I just loaded my unarmed industrial ship to the gills with the stuff and snuck it through.
For nudging the price of a few goods back towards equilibrium, I made a cool 400k play dollars. I neither confirm nor deny whether I needed a spreadsheet (in space!) to plan any of that.
It's interesting watching Bar Karma descend into community-generated madness over 12 episodes. Sad I didn't hear about it until it ended.
Charles Schwab is making me come up with a password that is 6-8 characters and has a number between two letters somewhere in it.
Clearly this whole world has gone mad.
Another entry in Pete's introduction to Inferno. "Yo dawg" jokes may or may not be included.
Based on David's erratic behavior and disregard for the wishes of his users, I have decided that AI in the Prometheus universe are based on Ruby on Rails.
Ran into this extra cute, extra elongated corgi at the dog beach last friday.
Emily Kiernan just pointed out that "skulls for the skull throne" is an example of synecdoche.
Thought you should know.
My favorite EVE adventure so far: space insurance fraud.
A tutorial mission had me driving a ship rigged to blow to a nearby base and setting it off. On my way to the target, I stopped at the Insurance office and bought the most expensive plan possible.
After the ship was destroyed, the insurance company dutifully mailed me 31k of play money.
It's a pitifully small amount of money in the grand scheme of things in EVE (for instance the mission payed 3 times that), but I go a kick out of committing an extremely mundane crime in a game about Epic Adventures.
Dang it EVE online, don't tell me what to do.
It's been a big year for computers telling me how my passwords should look. Next, I expect Chase to tell me my PIN should contain one prime followed by the number of letters in my mother's maiden name.
In case you needed an extra reason to support this project, it appears to have angered a lot of truly awful humans.
Donating is like flipping reddit the bird with money!
I don't know how anyone can study Arthurian legends. The Fisher King? The Questing Beast? 100% nightmare fuel.
I watched Prometheus last night, followed by the first Alien. First, I'm surprised at how beautiful Alien is--I'd put it head to head with 2001. Second, it's very cool how many shots are the same in the reboot. There's a silver axe in the escape pod that made me clap my hands together in child-like joy when I saw it was in both films.
Still fiddling with the best way to record gameplay on my xbox. The windows requirement finally broke my spirit, and I replaced the Roxio GameCap with Hauppauge HD PVR.
So. Nice.
Now I can just "cat /dev/video1 > video.ts" and upload the video to youtube. Results below:
As a followup to that Marco Arment quote from the other day:
I like justified text, and I also like including plain ugly urls in my posts. These two loves have not go together before now, meaning that the lines
before long urls had weird spacing. By committing unnameable html horrors (a la
http://jsfiddle.net/wpZD7/1/) to my blog today, I was able to get nice wrapping of long urls and prettier justified text. Complete control, zero oversight, huge fontsize... feels good man.
PARTY HARD shall be the whole of the law.
T-Rex and I are of one mind on this: Aaaahhh why aren't we beings of pure energy yet?
Recent news about storing heat reminds me of the "kink springs" in Paolo Bacigalupi's novels. The future is going to be weird you guys!
My website is generated by a crazy, hand-rolled collection of node.js scripts. Considering what a solved problem blogging is, why don't I use some off-the-shelf software?
Marco Arment has a pretty good answer:
"Writing your own blog platform is like roasting your own coffee: it's impractical and you probably shouldn't do it, but for people who really, truly care about it, it's worthwhile to them for their own personal priorities that sound crazy to everyone else."via:
twitter.com/spladow
Death to text messages. You can hack around the text-only restriction, you can hack around the character limits, you can hack around the lack of one-to-many support (but only if you control all the phones); it will still be shit.
Ubuntu Software Center has the indie bundle, so I'm actually using it for the first time.
The good: "Full name" is a freeform text field, which accepts "."
The bad: They have a password policy which mandates 1 number and 1 upper case character. Stop telling me what to do, Ubuntu.
The newest Humble Indie Bundle includes Psychonauts (with Linux support).
From the ENTER>text reading tonight.
Silverlake Jubilee. Moar neon!
Don Marquis is fascinating. Also, I wish I had thought of Prefaces first.
The Black Widow's one weakness is... shopping.
Yup.
I am ready for my hoverboard now.
Whoops your homophobic schemes.
Not sure what the point was. Is the state that added a Jim Crow law to the books in 1953 really going to do the right thing before the fed makes them?
A great idea. Conferences probably like people showing up more than they like fostering sexism. Probably.
This is a caption of me around 12pm today:
With all the hubbub at the office this week,
Emily Kiernan thought we might need some soothing words:
After watching
The Avengers, I was smack-talking Iron Man at a party.
Marco DiDomenico called me out, correctly, for having no idea who Iron Man was.
To remedy this, I've been reading Iron Man comics, starting with the shorts in "Tales of Suspense." The question that has been driving me crazy these first few issues is: why does Tony Stark keeps his identity a secret? It's not because he's worried about being attacked off-hours--the man is always getting attacked as Tony Stark anyway. It's not because he's worried about his family's safety--this smug jerk doesn't even have a pet cat.
The best reason I've found so far is from issue 40*: Tony is embarrassed about his ugly metal sleeveless shirt. See for yourself:
*
http://marvel.wikia.com/Tales_of_Suspense_Vol_1_40
The next part in Pete's Inferno series is about the shell. This one spent a day on HN's frontpage, possibly because it picked a fight with... well, every shell. Yes, even that one.
This dog is coping well with living in a tarantula.
I think I'm at a wine tasting in a tarantula, but I may have misheard.
Mark Twain came to Tustin this week. I had a great time at my first
Charles Kiernan show.
I wish the president had just vetoed this crazy law when he had the chance. I'm glad the ol' checks and balances and taking a shot at reverting it.
I've been walking past these honeysuckles on my way to and from work for almost a year. Finally noticed them today.
Purty.
It's shocking how thought-provoking Tim Bray can be when he's not talking about cameras, boats, or bathroom fan timers.
I woke up this morning to a wonderful surprise--my former coworkers are on techcruch today! Congrats, you wacky Border Stylons!
How to Delete a Scheduled Google Analytics Email* visit
analytics.google.com* click on "sign in". I have to do this every time I visit analytics and it drives me mad. I'm already signed in!!1!... anyway...
* click on the domain name. you probably just have one, but in case you have more I mean the domain the scheduled email is being sent about.
* click on "admin"
* click on "assets"
* click on "scheduled email"
* click "delete" next to the email you want to delete
* click "delete" to confirm
First ubuntu install in a while.
So... you have to hold down shift to see grub on boot now. Mashing the F- keys like a madman does nothing... I hear.
Crazy hair, or just crazy enough to work hair?
My stream is full of Tom Robbins quotes for #philosophyfriday
Internet, we may need to break up.
Emily Kiernan found a chocolate-flavored straw at the bottom of a box of cereal, and decided to drink her Moscow Mule with it.
And the award for grossest "promoted" tweet goes to:
A few weeks ago I had a question about environment variables in GAE. Here's my writeup of the answer I found.
A great photo by Diana Arterian of a major (and majorly weird) Silver Lake landmark.
Today in life-changing command line tips, reptyr lets you move a process from one terminal to another. Helpful for moving things into screen, for example.
I've been having a little trouble with wrist strain, so I got a fancy keyboard and mouse to give my wrists a little help.
Still not as Space Age as
Thomas Dunlap's desk, but I'm getting there. The man comes from actual Space--give me a little slack!
Interesting tidbit I came across while reading Michael Moorcock's Modern Times 2.0: Texas has no state income tax. Digging further, neither does Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington or Wyoming.
I think that's disgusting. I live in a state with a fairly progressive income tax scheme, and I could easily, easily afford to pay more than I do.
Does anyone else in this haunted country remember that class in high school where they learned that sales tax is regressive? Does "regressive" sound like a good thing to you?
It's not strictly in the rules that I have to talk in a funny voice about "mah bunnehs" while playing Arimaa.
But it helps.
Diana Arterian's Death Centos are poems constructed from last words. Two of these poems are in Corium Magaizine, so you should read them.
Soup du Jour's favorite spot to be scratched is right... there:
I always snort a superior snort whenever someone on Twitter is excited about something trending when it's really only trending in their tiny little town.
Here's a dumb question I should have thought to ask before: are trending topics on Google+ global, or based on where I live/who is in my circles?
My pet
Soup du Jour is upset that I've interrupted his reading.
Forget those Mad Men, I'm getting my fashion advice from Miss Fisher!
Emily Kiernan made some amazing dumplings for dinner last weekend. Nom nom nom!
Speaking of Danielewski--more Danielewski!
In this post, Echidne quotes heavily from A History of Women: Silences in the Middle Ages on the subject of women joining craft halls in large numbers (and then being banned almost entirely) in the middle ages.
I normally skip over the middle ages as a total bore-fest, but this story is worth digging into.
As a unbearable MZD fan who has an unread copy of
2666, I'm precisely in the cross-hairs for this joke.
via:
Emily Kiernan
Hard Truths about Mass Effect
There is no possible set of choices you can make in the character creation menu that will not result in David Bowie's cheekbones.
At Seaworld, I discovered the real American dream: riding around on dolphins like skis.
After watching a recent Microsoft video (
Googlighting), I just had to get this tie.
Drove past this beauty on my way home from San Diego. Not knowing the real name for this modern/gothic style of architecture, I will describe it as "Cotton Mather in Space."
Wise words from T-Rex:
"I want holodecks in my lifetime and I'm not afraid to enhance the timeline to get them."
Two of Diana's poems were just published on Two Serious Ladies. You should read them!
Spotted on my way out the door this morning.
Stayed up until 2am watching Ancient Aliens? I know that feel, bro.
My littlest sister and I finished Portal 2 Coop today. These are some clips from the final level, where we look pretty badass solving the "hard" puzzles, but I manage to fall all over myself on the final joke puzzle.
I still haven't picked up a copy (I'm still stuck on the first planet of ME1), but it sounds like by the time I get there the ending may be... well, different at least.
"Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April."
Personally I'm rooting for a DLC named "Buy a good ending to the game you already bought." That's the subtitle of the Fort Knox DLC for Borderlands, right?
My Roxio Gamecap arrived in the mail today. It refuses to look like a generic video capture device so I have to use it on Windows, it requires a serial key to install the drivers for no good reason, but otherwise looks fun.
I'm able to use it as an input device in a Hangout, so that will be fun.
Here's a quick test video showing me doing an awful job of picking a lock in Kingdoms of Amalur.
Good news! The insurance companies check got here and I was able to replace my old smashed car with a Mazda Protege 5. Not only is it the El Camino of station wagons, it's yellow!
I've been agitating for a generative music project for a few days. Thanks to the great intro at
http://epx.com.br/artigos/audioapi.php, I have a working (in Chrome) demo of generating some boring music from the string "this is a dog named jeff":
update: I've been fiddling with this with the volume turned very low, at normal volume my demo is crazy-loud. you have been warned.
Fear and Loathing in Amalur
This giant tree is nervous that I might be a psychotic killer instead of a hero, so it asks me to take care of a troll problem in a way that demonstrates my heart. There is only one way to complete this quest--running around like a psychotic killer stabbing all moving things--and that seems to have satisfied the tree that I'm a nice guy.
I've fought through all defenses and made it into the Kind of Holographic Witch's lair. Bad news--I'm overburdened with loot already and she says I'm trapped inside! Except when I turn around and walk back out the door... it's unlocked.
Fallout 3's addiction mechanics seemed cheesy, but games I've played afterwards seem really strange without them. Whenever a fight is going poorly, my character pops over 15 assorted uppers, downers, whippets and goofballs, with no long term effects. He can stop any time he wants to, man, he's just under a lot of pressure with this generic fantasy kindgom to save.
I've started going to the gym this year. It's been going pretty well, but I've been doing a lot of running in red Chuck Taylors. Don't get me wrong, anything John Nash likes to wear is fresh as hell, but these hightops have been killing my arches. I finally gave in today and bought some low-end running shoes with real padding. Ran 4.5 miles, and my feet feel great.
Moral of the story: don't be a vain hipster like me, kids--run in running shoes.
I wanted to write Zero and One slash fiction, but I couldn't figure out what it's value was...
Today's been pretty quiet, and it's a little chilly.
I appreciate the sense of space and quiet in this song, if that makes any sense.
This morning I noticed that my background image and it's thumbnail lined up just right. Fractals are pretty tasty:
My name did not make it through the account suspension, but as of this morning I am back.
Last night, I wrote a piece on my personal blog about naming and me:
Whee, now my account is being threatened with suspension for violating the names policy.
I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to not include an appeal link in the scare message...
Good news,
Argent Stonecutter's account is no longer being reviewed!
Keep it weird, Argent--let's show all of these people with "normal" names how it's done :)
Just found a tip about tying your shoelaces that is almost as exciting as that the tip for how to make Ctrl+S not do terrible things in my terminal:
Put This On, Episode 2: Shoes
Pictures from my first 5k, the LA Chinatown Firecracker.
Emily Kiernan and
+Elyse Lattanzio (the coolest kids in the second picture) talked me into it, and I had a surprisingly good time. Eating at Brite Spot afterwards with a tiny medal around my neck: bonus.
My favorite online calculator has gotten uppity:
Oh, and they want me to register to unlock features like "copy to clipboard"? Hahahahano.
youtube fail
14 times in a row, I opened a video, this ad for the Droid RAZR (a shitty, lowend phone verizon is pushing way too hard) came on and I hit the "next track" button. 14 times in a row!
I have an android phone! it's nicer than the razr! It's signed into my google account! When I click away from an ad, don't show it to me again! surely there must be more than one advertiser selling videos on youtube today!
#LazyPlus
I was looking at normalize.css today, and came across some css syntax I did't understand.
What does the "*" in " *zoom: 1;" do?
A: David Lynch, Sparklehorse, and Danger Mouse.
Q: That's an easy one, Alex. What are my three favorite things that have been rolled into one delicious bundle of wonder?
Spotted by:
Emily Kiernan
First day with the arrow keys turned off so I actually learn how to navigate with HJKL in vim. I am going to have the beefiest right pinky muscles ever after this.
Exciting news about that fancy-dancy Do Not Track header.
Abben Maguire didn't you once express a positive sentiment about Metal? I believe that sentiment requires that you respond to all news about Metal--I demand a funny post about Dave Mustaine!
I accidentally hit Ctrl+S twice a day, and spend 30 seconds slamming random keys until I remember Ctrl+Q. No more!
Andrew Pettit has been adding some pictures to his words lately, to great effect:
Slight delay on the ride home.
No one was hurt, and hopefully this means Papa just won a new ride.
All of you Pappy's fans can keep it--me and the Joshua Saloon are BFF.
The weirdest thing I'll read today: "Fun is about as good a life as it gets."
Not to brag, but I was in a presidential parade on my way to work today. It was pretty okay.
Emily Kiernan is helping a blue hedgehog with some rings that need collecting.
My bull-riding is not very majestic, but it did take 10 seconds for me to fall off like some kind of eucalyptus-stoned koala.
I changed my google profile name today to FiveThousand Lobsters. I thought it'd be a good idea to explain the origin of this name, and why I changed it.
StorytimeWhen I started using a tiling window manager, I kept the default status bar. One of my coworkers made fun of me for sticking to the defaults, so to prove that I had opened the right config files and chosen to leave everything the way it was on purpose, I added the string "RYAN IS 5000 LOBSTERS" to the end of the status bar message.
When I left that company, I wanted to keep in touch with my coworkers, and the network they were most active on was twitter. When I needed to choose a handle on that network, I decided to use a name that would have special significance to my excoworkers. Thus,
twitter.com/5000lobsters was born.
Okay, but why here?There are a couple reasons:
* I am an internet kid, participating in a social network with a "normal" name feels like showing up at a pool party in a tux. I feel most comfortable identifying myself online by handles.
* I am interested in ensuring that people who want or need to go by handles on this network are able to. The best way to keep track of the way that group is treated is to put myself into that group.
* I'd like this community to have more handles and less common names. The message I hear often is that the preference for common names is a community standard, that it is what the people want. I want to cast my vote for a different standard.
Yesterday I learned that sacrificing my smartphone to the nameless mountain gods will ensure a bountiful harvest, but is insufficient to convince googlebot to index my blog.
Emily Kiernan and I have been watching "Ancient Astronauts" on Netflix, for some terrible reason. In the current episode, the guy with the crazy hair has decided that all mentions of "giants" in ancient myths were really attempts to describe extraterrestrials.
Emily has decided that Dr. Suess's "Cat in the Hat" is really an attempt to describe an extraterrestrial sitting on top of another extraterrestrial.
On the plane ride home, I became convinced that the clouds I was flying over were hills and rivers, and that there was an entire Earth up in the clouds. When my plane landed at the cloud airport, I lost my luggage, but the helpful attendants were able to provide me with new cloud pants and a cloud computer. I took a taxi to my cloud home, and was please to note that their internet is devoted to pictures of clouds that are shaped kind of like cats.
Today I learned that I have some sort of moral problem with people hiring other people to drive them around on dogsleds.
Stay tuned to hear if I still have a hangup about this if the dogs are unionized.
Today I learned that "pulchritude" was not a word made up by MS Paint Adventures.
While we're on the subject, you should read MS Paint Adventures:
While in line at the grocery store, I learned that my neighborhood chain has a new policy where customers are not allowed to "borrow" each others' loyalty cards.
Oh Vons/Pavilions, how it slavers, how it bites and nips at my delicious data. Beware lest you reveal just how much I'm giving up!
JM just changed my life. If you are using directory symlinks and die a little inside each time you have to hit "TAB TAB," prepare for learning bombs:
I was running into some trouble last week trying to get node.js running on EC2's stock image. It's now a lot less exciting/dangerous than before, thanks to
T.C. Hollingsworth!
I'm not very good at music: I was just asking my friends today if being cool meant liking Lana Del Rey, or if, in order to achieve coolness, I should think she was lame.
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal has time-traveled from 3 months in the past to suggest that there may be better questions to ask. Good call, Tracy.
Bug 02329: The phone system is basically made of ghosts.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Call the superior court of orange county's phone system: 8778722122
2) Press "1" as soon as the call connects and a robot starts talking.
3) Press "1" again once the robot pauses and starts talking about.
4) Press "1#" once the robot pauses.
Expected: The robot should suggest that I try again, as "1" is not a valid claim number.
Actual: Eerie, haunting silence.
I was almost hit by a hummer on my way to work today. It's not surprising that a burnt-yellow H3 nearly destroyed me on its rush to join my lane, but what is surprising is the bumper sticker that was attached to said shiva-waggon: NIXON NOW.
I get my news from the internet, but I'm pretty sure that Nixon has not run for president since that car was constructed. I have so many questions.
Looking for parking felt a little bit weird.
As of this commit, Nick is officially a node.js contributor. I'm super excited for him, and even if he's too cool to brag about it he can't stop me.
You can check out what he's working on (besides contributions to node.js, I mean) at:
spire.io
Kenton Roberts's desk is kind of a magical place.
Why did the office have a MakerBot lying around? Science.
Dear Internet,
I hate checking my voicemail. It's like trying to talk to American Airlines customer service, except the machine is dumber and there's no music. Build me a service that will check my voicemail for me once a week and send me .mp3s of all the messages by email.
I will happily pay you $5 a month for this.
<3,
Ryan
According to a recent New York Times infographic, I'm in the n% (where n is between 2% and 100%). As a member of this particular social strata, I am required to adopt the following beliefs:
* Everyone in the n% is hardworking, and earned all of their wealth.
* Everyone in the (n-1)% is a fat cat who inherited all of their wealth, and their greed is destroying our country.
* Everyone in the (n+1)% is a freeloading drain on the welfare state, and should get a real job.
Today at brunch I learned that
Emily Kiernan like snails more than slugs because they are homeowners. Classist!
Also, Brussels Bistro is where you should eat oysters in Laguna Beach. Believe it.
I use Latitude to automatically check in and out of my office, so
Emily Kiernan can easily check when I'm heading home.
Recently, they started spamming my profile with these automatic check-ins, and there is no way to turn off this "feature."
Update: +Joe LaPenna points out (correctly) that this is not a recent change in behavior.
I've been casting about for a replacement, and thanks to
Kenton Roberts I think I've found one: Tasker.
Tasker makes it easy for me to set up "entering the office" and "leaving the office" contexts, and to use them to trigger actions like HTTP POSTs (coming soon:
isryanattheoffice.com).
"Wait Ryan, but Tasker costs money and you don't buy things on the internet!"
True, but Latitude has annoyed me enough that I'd like to give someone else some money to say "It's not cool to spam my profile without my permission, Latitude" as loudly as possible.
My new ringtone.
Coworkers: I'm so sorry.
At the emergency vet reading wiki articles about Solipsism.
Or maybe I'm a butterfly dreaming about poisoning my dog with trail mix. Wake up, butterfly!
I got an email from rdio last night telling me my account had access to music again. I had a lot of luck using Rdio to discover new bands the last time I used it, but it just wasn't worth the $5/month. It looks like the free tier of accounts get a certain quota/month of listens now.
Rdio-using droogs (cc:
Claire Armstrong,
+Daniel Hengeveld,
Thomas Dunlap): how much quota are we talking about here? Is it worth logging in again?
Cubicle decorations are here...
Dear firefox for android,
If I click on a bookmark on my home screen, then go back to my home screen and do that again, you must reuse the first tab I opened. This is the difference between a working and nonworking implementation of home screen bookmarks.
Love,
Ryan
Snowed a little while my flight was waiting to take off.
Still counts!
Buttoned-up shirt, coke, smartphone.
There is no way to couch this in irony.
The menus are books with the first pages replaced.
Strangers intently pursue books by candlelight.
I order a mixed drink with gin, absinthe.
A man in a fedora at the coffee shop.
His laptop angles towards me.
He is shopping online for fedoras.
The first new Achewood strip since February. The hiatus is over!
We have stuck it out. We have made it to the promised land. I'm proud of all of you.
When I signed into Google+ today, I saw a few people who I was not expecting in Chat. After trading a few cat pictures, I decided to set things back to the way they used to be. Here is a handy guide:
How to Change Your Google Chat Privacy Settings
* Look for the "Chat" title on the left of your stream.
* Click on the grey arrow to the right on that title.
* From the dropdown that pops up, choose "Privacy Settings."
* On the panel that pops up, click on the "Choose who can chat with you:" dropdown, and select the option "Custom."
* Go through the list of Circles, removing any you would not like to chat with you.
* Click "Save."
Check out: Ripples and Creative Kit.
The screenshot for "Hangouts with Extras" is also worth a look, in case you've missed the recent changes there.
Apple product owners rejoice!
If you go to Profile -> Edit Profile and click on Gender, you should now be able to set visibility.
