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If life were like Civ [Jul. 23rd, 2008|08:27 am]

eveglass
Partly because of the Great Civ Mishap (tm) yesterday and partly because I've been playing Civ IV an average of once a week for the better part of five months, it's been on my mind lately. This thought pattern was only encouraged by the recent journal post of the friend I've been playing with (entry 502, for those looking back at this in the future).

And, given all the changes that have been going on in my life lately, my thinking has occasionally trended along the lines of "what if life were like Civ." Even ignoring the matter of cheat codes (which might one day be an entirely different post: "what if life had cheat codes?"), here's what life might be like if it were more like Civ:

1. I could set the difficulty of my life. Sure, setting the difficulty to "easy" might not give me as many points in the end, but it would make social interactions a heck of a lot easier.

2. I could save my life before making any major decisions so that if the results were not positive, I could do it again differently.

3. I could branch my life, saving it at various different stages, to go back to many different points in my development and see what would happen differently if I'd chosen a different path.

4. I could always "look at the big picture" to see the exact effects a particular path of research or major behavioural change. If I didn't like the results, I could change whenever I wanted without any ill effects except maybe a minute of anarchy.

5. To keep people in my life productive and happy, I'd need only to ensure they had enough toys (luxury) and that they were healthy. Any deficiency in these two areas could be easily fixed by a reallocation of resources.

6. People would do exactly what I told them without complaining.

7. I'd have advisors telling me what would be best in any given situation for their realm of expertise. And I'd have complete freedom to ignore them if I thought I knew better than they did. And they wouldn't get offended.

8. You could know the exact percent certainty of success in battle, every time. You could ensure that you only attacked when you were 100% certain to win.

9. Death would never be permanent, except for my pixellated soldiers. And even then, my soldiers would be an easily-replaced resource with no hard feelings for the deaths of their former colleagues. As for myself, death would only last as long as it took to start a new game.

10. I could choose to start at any stage of development I liked, happily bypassing the growing pangs of infancy and awkwardness of adolescence.

Okay... that's my morning reflection. Now it's time to go off and do work. Bye.
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#986 [Jul. 23rd, 2008|04:10 am]
boasas

http://boasas.com/?c=986

Boy on a Stick and Slither : loving the one who spurns

Please visit BOASAS.COM for more comics!

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Upcoming Hurricanes [Jul. 23rd, 2008|04:00 am]
xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/453/

I'd like to see more damage assessments for hurricanes hitting New York and flooding Manhattan -- something like the 1938 Long Island Express, but aimed a bit more to the west. It's just a matter of time.
link116 comments|post comment

I Haz Finished! [Jul. 22nd, 2008|10:03 pm]

swestrup
Over the last 3-6 weeks (not sure how long, exactly) I've been watching every episode of Stargate SG-1 from the beginning. I hadn't seen several key episodes and had watched a large number of them out of order, so there were a bunch of questions I had about how the major story arcs tied together.

I only intended to watch to the beginning of the Ori story arc, as I had seen that in its entirety and quite recently at that. Well yesterday I finished the 8th season.

I watched a couple episodes of the 9th season just to reacquaint myself with how things tied together, and then called it quits. It actually feels kinda strange not to have dozens of episodes of some SF series waiting to be watched. Its beginning to make me wonder if I shouldn't do the same thing with Startrek: Voyager or Startrek: Deep-Space 9, as I never did see either series in its entirety.
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Irritations with llvm [Jul. 22nd, 2008|07:02 pm]

sps
Been looking more closely at the llvm docs. Some WTF's:

  • What's with this surface syntax? It looks worse than C++, and that takes talent.
  • All this verbiage justifying the use of sigils to avoid namespace collision and—they reserve parts of the user namespace for system use. WTF?
  • ‘Visibility styles’—this can't be right.
  • Linkage convention has to be part of the function type, or it won't work.
  • Where are the copy-out and copy-in/copy-out parameter attributes? Why is sret not a special case of copy-out?
  • Why is noreturn an attribute and not a return type? Actually, noreturn is the type with no values. See complaint about void, below.
  • How can data layout be a module-level attribute? I can imagine it being target-scope or per data structure, but it cannot meaningfully be per-module.
  • Why is type void documented as having no values and no size? It has one value and size zero, otherwise it would not be possible to return it. It should be treated uniformly with i0, {}, and other such degenerate types.
  • Why not provide type-safe pointer bit theft?
  • Why are vectors only power of two lengths, when arbitrary width integers are provided?
  • What's with the floating point support? The literal syntax requires the source to know the precise syntax of floats on the target, but at the same time bit operations on floats are verboten.
  • The array type syntax is weird and inconsistent.
  • Packed structure types should have properly controlled layout. If they had, they'd be great for, e.g., pickling.
  • I see no conceptual reason to outlaw vector-of-vector.
  • Ditto vector-of-pointer. There are machines that provide hardware support for this.
  • Vector support is otherwise broken, inconsistent, incomplete:-
    • Vector comparisons are inconsistent with scalar comparisons, for no obvious reason.
    • Vector shifts are missing, for no obvious reason.
    • Vector integer type conversions are missing, for no obvious reason.
    • Scalar to vector broadcasts are missing, for no obvious reason.
    • Vector horizontal operations are missing, for no obvious reason.
  • Remainder is present, but modulus is missing.
  • Shifts with large counts are documented as broken. Yes, Intel screwed this up, but that's no reason.
  • Arguably, saturating arithmetic should have been provided.
  • Definitely, rotate should have been provided.
  • The switch construct has the same inexplicable lame restrictions as in C.
  • The getresult operation makes no sense. Does a multiple value return return return multiple values, or a struct? Make up your mind!
  • The gc-support intrinsics are bizarre. This should be integrated into load and store, just as gc support declarations are integrated into the function headers.
  • The llvm.prefetch [weird, Semagic just went mysteriously into Chinese mode, and then came mysteriously out again. That would be useful if I knew how to do it on purpose!] cannot be right. It cannot.
  • Shouldn't llvm.memcpy be a primitive? Likewise (some generalisation of) llvm.memset? There are usually special ways to do these things, and they are basic parts of the implementations of many operations.
  • The list of mathematical intrinsics matches neither the programming languages nor the target platforms I am familiar with. What gives?
  • The llvm.bswap operation is a special case of the very useful address bit permutation operation. Grump.
  • The llvm.ctpop intrinsic is documented as not working for all widths on all platforms. WTF? I mean, why?
  • The llvm.part.select intrinsic is a monkey-flying-out-of-its-own-butt trick. If we can have this, there is no motivation for leaving out my generalised byte sex swapping operator. Especially since there is a much more logical interpretation to give to the reversed bounds case (viz., that you get the dual mask). In any case, bit reversal is cool, but it should clearly be a standalone primitive.
  • The llvm.init.trampoline intrinsic seems to be a direct import of a gcc-internal operation. Why not design something general?

And ... transactional memory? No? ;)

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July 22, 2008 [Jul. 22nd, 2008|10:05 pm]
dcoombs_rss

http://dcoombs.ca/nitlog/?m=200807#22

Photographic Limbo

(No, not in the how-low-can-you-go sense. This is an altogether much more directionless kind of limbo.)

So here, o seeker of things, is the thing. I have this camera, see. I've had it for 4 years and 8 days. That's an awfully long time to have a camera and not get seriously annoyed at it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, I've been getting seriously annoyed at it for much of the time I've had it. So, while it still works about as well as it ever did, I don't use it as much as I would like to because it's so inconvenient.

Time for a new camera.

Irrelevant

Among my gripes is not resolution. Everybody gets hung up on how many millions of pixels their camera has. Since I almost never enlarge a photo to fit on posterboard, I just don't really care about that. I am more concerned with the process of taking photos.

Whatever I get will surely have higher resolution than what I have now. How much higher, I don't care in the slightest.

I also don't really care about LiveView. Feel free to try to convince me of its merits. I admit to being curious. But I'm not convinced I'd really use it.

Do Not Want

I Do Not Want the things I've been getting seriously annoyed at my current camera for. It's slow: slow to shoot, slow to do anything when its teeny tiny buffer gets full, painfully horrifyingly slow to scroll through photos taken using the playback interface. I can't choose the metering mode. I can't choose the autofocus mode. I am sick of having to remove sensor dust. I can't change the shutter speed and aperture in manual mode without holding down buttons while turning dials and wincing in pain at the requisite contortion.

Want

I want a 35 mm full frame sensor, so I can use wide-angle lenses effecively. I want sensor-dust auto-cleaning. I want all the customizability that was removed from the Rebel. I want something that's pretty much indestructible.

[image]
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales.
Admit it, you would have stopped there too.

Options

As I see it, I can wait an undetermined number of months to see what Canon is going to announce as a successor to its EOS 5D. Or, I could wait, say, two weeks and get a Nikon D700.

Switching brands is not necessarily heretical. Brand loyalty isn't really my style anyway: I want something practical and good. I haven't invested that much in lenses: I have the EF 28-135 USM/IS and the EF 50 f/1.4, both of which are decent, but neither of which was spectacularly expensive. I'm sure they could find a good home, even used.

I'd have to learn a new interface, but I'm sure it would only feel weird for a while and then it would be fine. (I use vi; I'm sure I can figure out a Nikon.)

What concerns me is lenses. While it's neat that Nikon's range of new and old lenses are interoperable to varying degrees with camera bodies new and old, and while it's awesome that they are generally very solidly constructed, it is my impression (and maybe I'm wrong) that Canon's are a little better optically, particularly the primes. And certainly there are more Canon lenses with more modern autofocus systems than Nikon lenses.

There is also dilu's recent escapade with her self-destructing Canon EF-S 17-85 USM/IS lens, and Canon customer service's utterly bewildering replies. It's a factor. Stuff happens.

So: do I wait a completely undetermined length of time to get some yet unannounced product I at least know will be familiar and I will like, understand, and be able to use my current lenses with, or do I get something (basically) right away (!!), which I don't know as well but might end up loving, and commit myself to that for a while?

Opinions welcome.

[image]
Puddles of starfish. Southgate, Wales.

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The Dark Knight. [Jul. 22nd, 2008|09:35 pm]

vierge_en_trop
Everyone else in the free world has seen it, and for some reason so did I last night. Yes, I'm talking about The Dark Knight and I'd like my 2.5 hours back, please.

I couldn't even sleep through it because it was loud and cold in the theatre. No, I don't know why I even went, as I don't care one lick for the following things:
1. comic books
2. Batman
3. action movies
4. all of the above

Let's say I was caught with my guard down and it will never happen again. So much for going with the flow and trying new things.

God, it was just so terrible. So slick and smirky and totally unwatchable. Let's never speak of it again.
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projects [Jul. 22nd, 2008|12:40 pm]

holdenk
[Tags|, , , ]

I really want to get my hobosauce dialer application & t-mobo hax0r working for the free runner because then like I would have tastey sauce. Some people report that it works in Canada as well, which would be awesome news because free (slow) data is better than fast expensive data (for me).

I've been kind of ignoring my spam filter project, but I think it will be this weekends work along with some more unit tests for the scheme project. I'm planning on implementing some of the frontend components this weekend and, time permitting rounding out a few of the back end pieces.

Work project is going pretty well. I'm looking at hopefully having the minimal pipeline functioning for this Friday. On the other hand I have two presentations (including one to a VP). I'm a bit concerned about that because I still don't have any presentation skills. I may end up stealing some time away from my spam filter work to try and come up with a presentation.
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Oh Schmap! [Jul. 22nd, 2008|09:28 pm]
lizvangdotcom

http://lizvang.com/?p=355

Hi Liz,

Back in 2007, you kindly gave us permission to include your credited photo in our Schmap London Guide.

This is just a quick note to let you know that Schmap Guides have now been released for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Your photo in the iPhone version of our Schmap London Guide is at:
http://www.schmap.com/?m=iphone#uid=london&sid=restaurants_childfriendly&p=304&i=304_1

Best regards,

Emma
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

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Grab bag of links [Jul. 22nd, 2008|05:33 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|, , , , ]

On a lighter note, some links:

1. Professional thief robs 4 men on stage (video) -- a friend of mine actually saw this guy live at the comedy fest: he's a professional pickpocket and pretty funny... so long as you ignore the implication that there are people out there doing this to actually rob you and not make you laugh.

2. Amazing sand artists and their sand art (pictures) -- some absolutely stunning sand art. They're far too sophisticated for me to call them "sand castles."

3. Erin McKean on our freedom to coin new words (TED talk video) -- a professional lexicographer talks about how word-wardens should be like fishermen, not traffic cops. Surprisingly funny, at least for the word-geeks in the audience.

4. 10 things about the working world I wish I knew in college -- some pertinent life lessons for the newly-employed.

5. My favourite sensing/intuition activity for the MBTI -- do the exercise before reading on. This was really eye-opening for me. Let me know if you're the intuiting type according to this, because that mindset is completely foreign to me.

6. The three stages of language fluency -- Steve Kauffman, former Canadian diplomat who speaks 12 languages, outlines what he considers the various stages of fluency and how long it takes to get to each one.

7. The hundred pushups training program -- I'm contemplating starting this after Pennsic. It's a 6-week program (maybe a little longer) that will enable you to do 100 pushups in a row. Anyone want to do it with me?
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Best Neighbor Evar [Jul. 22nd, 2008|05:40 pm]

swestrup
[Tags|]
[mood |Snozzled]

So, Betty, our feisty retired nurse neighbor who has fought pirates on the open sea and smuggled $20,000 worth of drugs to the Red Cross in Mongolia heard that we were feeling a bit down due to our basement flooding. She came over with a bottle of 80 proof Polish mead.

I ended up having 3-4 little glasses of the delicious stuff and right now I am feeling no pain. I've always wondered if I would enjoy mead. I think the my final answer here is a resounding YES!
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Oh Schmap! [Jul. 22nd, 2008|05:28 pm]

lizvang
[Tags|, , , ]

Hi Liz,

Back in 2007, you kindly gave us permission to include your credited photo in our Schmap London Guide.

This is just a quick note to let you know that Schmap Guides have now been released for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Your photo in the iPhone version of our Schmap London Guide is at:
http://www.schmap.com/?m=iphone#uid=london&sid=restaurants_childfriendly&p=304&i=304_1

Best regards,

Emma
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides


link3 comments|post comment

I love my kids more than anything... [Jul. 22nd, 2008|04:36 pm]

blacksquiggles
but I'd be a liar if I said I never considered getting a divorce just to get every other weekend off.

*rips out hair*
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home-made bread [Jul. 22nd, 2008|04:31 pm]

baprime
[Tags|]


home-made bread
Originally uploaded by baprime
With the slightly cooler weather the last couple days, I've taken the opportunity to do some baking. Yesterday I made bread for the first time in ages. I make it differently every time, and it's nearly always delicious. This time I added a couple tsp of buckwheat honey, milk, butter, and stone-ground whole-wheat flour. It was perfect as a late night snack with some strawberry jam.

Today I made blueberry muffins, from my standard Company's Coming recipe. I usually alter it a little, though, finding it simpler to use vegetable oil than butter. Actually, they should be cool enough to eat now...
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Is that your final answer? [Jul. 22nd, 2008|04:12 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|]

So, the final answer according to Aspyr tech support: they have no idea what the freg is wrong and there's not much they can do to fix it. The only thing they *might* be able to do is try to replicate the problem on their end and then *maybe* they'd be able to do something, but since my graphics card isn't technically supported anyway, there's not much motivation in that department.

Civ IV might or might not work, given that my graphics card isn't supported for *that*, either. It's essentially the same situation as Civ III.

So, yeah. I'm out $56 and can't play my favourite game except on other people's computers. Julie am not happy.
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From the "Big Ol' Jet Airliner" Dept. [Jul. 22nd, 2008|03:24 pm]

true_nexus
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |@work]

And so I've begun the planning stage of "The Nexus Of Oz".
[info]crassy will be pleased.

Maria from TripCentral.Ca is going to help me out with getting into Oz and hitting Sydney, Cairns and then Perth. Of course, while in Perth I plan on couch surfing with [info]crassy.

There will be a stop somewhere else along the way back - maybe Fiji, Bali, the Seychelles, and/or New Zealand.

Angkor Wat, Bangalore and all points east will have to wait till the next time I get the urge to "span the globe"..

nex
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A ray of hope [Jul. 22nd, 2008|03:03 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|]

In follow-up to my previous post...

The helpful folks at Aspyr have just sent me a manual patch installer. To do this, I need to uninstall and then reinstall Civ iii. (Yes, again. It takes about 10 minutes each time.) Then I have to move some files from place to place. The tech support guy this time told me that even though I'm running a new mac, the game should at least install and load. Fingers crossed that it will work this time. If you don't hear me tearing my hair out in frustration, it's probably because I'm absorbed in conquering the world.

Edited to add: Still no. I've got the patch installed, but when I try to launch the game, it opens and them immediately closes. The only way I know it actually opened at all is that the icon appears in my dock (though it immediately goes away again). According to tech support, I'm the only person who every reported this problem. I get all the unique issues. I swear, it's God speaking. The recommended that I create a new user account and load the game there. At this point, I'm going to go home and work from there. No point in staying at the mall.
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God doesn't want me to play Civ [Jul. 22nd, 2008|02:42 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|]

I've been trying, for the better part of 2 months, to get Civ to run on my computer. I couldn't run it on my old computer, because it was simply too old. No problems, I thought, once I get my new computer I can run Civ IV.

I got my new computer. I was told my graphics card on my brand-new computer wasn't good enough to run a two-year-old game. Fine. Obnoxious, but at least I hadn't bought it. I would just be Civ-less.

So I decided to go back and see if Civ III would run. I downloaded it. I ran it. No beans: it wouldn't get past the "chose your resolution" page without crashing. Fine.

I discovered there's a re-released version of Civ III called Civ III: Complete. The Apple Store in Laval had it. I called Aspyr and was assured that it would run on my computer. I went to Laval. I bought the game. It asked me for a serial number. Problem #1: no serial number. Apparently mine was one of a very few that was released with a production glitch: they forgot to put the serial number on. I called Aspyr. They gave me a serial number but told me (in the process of the call) that the game has been known to simply not work with my graphics card.

I hung up the phone. I entered the serial number. The game wouldn't start. I download the patch. I run the patch. The patch installer freezes about 5% of the way through and when I quit that, the game won't open at all and I need to reinstall the folder just to get to the screen that tells me it might not run.

So that's where I'm at now: out $56 dollars, which a game that won't get any farther than an error screen. I'm really, really pissed. Especially since Civ is my favourite game of all time. Pissed.
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Reach out your hand [Jul. 22nd, 2008|07:50 am]

evildrgo
And touch your face. I'm floating in a beam of light with you. And I ran.

Canadian airport security is loads of fun. It must be the extasy they put in their coffee. The guy searching through my stuff was so rediculously perky that he's a shoe in for airport "security the musical."

I want to be in a new wave band. Cool hair, Tight pants and neon. What's more to life? Although new wave was over 20 years ago it still reminds me of a simpler time where I did worry about grown up things like bills and stuff. iTunes found a flock of seagulls and theyre guiding us all to a happy place. Where I spend my life just wishing.
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#985 [Jul. 22nd, 2008|12:02 am]
boasas

http://boasas.com/?c=985

Boy on a Stick and Slither : planning is the opposite of adventure

Please visit BOASAS.COM for more comics!

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#984 [Jul. 20th, 2008|10:01 pm]
boasas

http://boasas.com/?c=984

Boy on a Stick and Slither : calvin coolidge had gills.

Please visit BOASAS.COM for more comics!

link2 comments|post comment

Wales [Jul. 21st, 2008|11:24 pm]

diluvienne
Three Cliffs Bay
Three Cliffs Bay
Originally uploaded by diluvienne

Every time I mentioned that I was going to Wales for my birthday/ vacations, it would invariably trigger the following reaction: "But why?" I was asked, usually accompanied with a deeply puzzled face.

Obviously, all these people never went to Wales. It is, in my opinion, one of the most gorgeous place on the planet. Unspoiled pure beauty.
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yummy [Jul. 21st, 2008|10:35 pm]

angorian
[Tags|, ]

I just made these
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This is almost as funny as [Jul. 21st, 2008|10:16 pm]

evildrgo
[music |Repetitive Strain Injury - Severed Heads]

Dick in a box.... This one's for [info]mutex8 and [info]diluvienne

Pipetting all those well-plates, baby, sends your thumbs into overdrive
And spending long nights in the lab makes it hard for your love to thrive

epMotion
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@oscon [Jul. 21st, 2008|05:15 pm]

jbailey
I'm here at oscon this week - I'm 6 days into traveling after going to Colorado for work. It's really nice to see people that I missed at the events I couldn't make it to over the last several months.

In body news, I successfully dropped my pre-bed pill last night. I'm noticing it now, but think I'll be fine. We'll see how I do tomorrow. =)
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The Last HOPE [Jul. 21st, 2008|11:52 am]

bokunenjin
[Tags|, , , , ]

I took the train up to New York City to attend The Last HOPE this past weekend. It was a smooth, comfortable ride to Penn Station, right across the street from the hotel where I shared a room with a couple other HacDC folks. One thing I did not do was spent much time at the hackersmart run by HacDC; when there's so much exciting stuff going on—and I've paid good money to participate—it just didn't seem like a good use of my time to try to sell vintage linesman's handsets to random passersby.

HOPE attendee badge with active RFID tagMy preparations for this trip: instead of making a point to leave behind my pocket knife and any liquids of greater than three ounces as I would on a plane trip, I strategically removed any RFID tags and read up on using a SOCKS proxy to foil eavesdropping on my websurfing traffic. (I even filed a bug on that topic as I was testing it out.) I arrived too late on Thursday to register that evening, so after getting a bite to eat at Tic Toc Diner and trying unsuccessfully to use wifi from my hotel room (dozens of wifi networks were visible, but I couldn't successfully connect to any of them), I hit the sack.

On Friday morning I sat in the back of a few talks and realized I'd need to be more aggressive in beating the hordes of fellow attendees to decent seats. I think I can now appreciate why the ShmooCon organizers insist on capping the number of registrations. I did spend some time hanging out with other HacDC people, pretty much all of whom were more dedicated in their running of the hackersmart than I was. On Friday afternoon I attended The Attendee Meta-Data Project where we learned what would be done with the data collected from the RFID tags many of us chose to wear. amd.hope.net may be (back) up in the near future with more information on that. The team managed to barely scratch the surface of applications for that system, and I'm happy that they're being so open with the platform and the (non-personal-information) data collected on it. I hope they open up some public discussion area on it.

Next I attended Monumental Women Who Influenced Today's Technology. I found it rather disappointing because of the speaker's encyclopedic style of reciting names, dates, and facts supplemented by bullet-point-filled slides. Ugh. Weirder was that the second half of her talk was about "Women of the Phone", which profiled some voice actresses who were "famous" for being the voice of the date/time announcement or the voice menu on your provider's voicemail system. To me, these profiles just didn't make sense in a discussion of technical women. During the question-and-answer period, some audience members enlivened the hour with questions and comments about women in the IT sector today. I was surprised that the speaker hadn't even read Unlocking the Clubhouse, and I suspect the hour would have been more enlightening if it had been entirely based on audience participation.

After a short nap (yay for staying at the con hotel despite its dinginess), I went to Hacker Space Design Patterns and then A Collaborative Approach to Hardware Hacking: NYCResistor. The latter was an awesome panel talk that made me excited about HacDC and likely to hang out there more in the near future, in the hopes that HacDC can be half as cool as NYCResistor. I wandered back down to the hackersmart, picked up my spiffy black HacDC lab coat, and caught up with Andrew and friends for dinner at Soul Fixins'. On our way back, we randomly passed an historical plaque marking the place where Nikola Tesla died and picked up an impressively-constructed fake television sporting "Yo! MTV Raps!" on the screen. The latter was set out in the trash on the sidewalk, the volume of which piled up every evening was impressive, but not in a good way. I intended to check out digital music night, but I was feeling sleepy again—I should've tried a bottle of the Club-Mate they were selling.

On Saturday morning, I started out with Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM)-A Brief Primer on the Arcane Art and Science of Electronics Surveillance and Bug Detection by Marty Kaiser, the kind of old character who could tell you all kinds of fascinating stories from his life if you sit down to listen. I learned more about FBI politics than about surveillance countermeasures (which are apparently quite expensive), but it was a worthwhile talk. Next up was "Off the Grid" Voice/Data Communications, sort of an overview of two-way radio technologies. Incidentally, amateur radio is a sizable presence at HOPE, with a special event station on the air and all levels of license exams being offered. In such a privacy-conscious crowd, I'm surprised I've never heard any grumblings about the fact that getting an amateur radio license (in the US, anyway) means having your name and address added to a public domain database run by the FCC.

I sat in on some of the Debian OpenSSL Debacle talk, but I failed at getting a decent seat, so I couldn't really see the slides or follow the discussion. I left to wander the neighborhood for lunch. When I returned, I was determined to get a better seat at the next talk I wanted to attend, so in order to get a good seat for the Port Knocking and Single Packet Authorization talk, I showed up to the panel on Reprimand, an e-zine of which I'd never heard. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't really engaged with it. By the time the talk I'd really come for rolled around, I was feeling like—guess what!—taking a nap. If I felt the need for so much sleep on a regular basis I might be alarmed, but I suspect I was feeling exhausted by the sheer crush of people. I ended up sleeping through [info]elwing2000's talk (sorry!). I felt pretty refreshed, though, for the dinner at Ninja I'd organized with a bunch of friends, including but not limited to [info]elwing2000, [info]princessleia2, and [info]sfllaw. Sorry we missed you, [info]searchingbuddha and [info]secretsoflife! We had our own private dungeon dining room with ninja waiters and all. Okay, maybe they weren't real ninjas. The lighting was too dim for my camera (at least without the flash that I think makes most photos look awful), so I'm hoping to see some of the shots from those of us with snazzier cameras. I had a flight of Hanzo sakes, Clam Bombshells, a negitoro roll, and sashimi perched over a bowl of mist. Oh, and part of a "Ninja Star" for dessert, but I won't spoil the surprise by telling you what it is. :) I agreed with the consensus that the food wasn't great—this place is more about flash than about awesome food. The visit by a magician to our table toward the end of dinner underscored that point. It was entertaining, and I'm glad I went, but I wouldn't make any particular effort to return. Afterward we wandered TriBeCa, eventually settling down in Cowgirl and inadvertently crashing a birthday party. Wacky western fun ensued. :)

On Sunday, I wasn't sure whether to regret the few drinks at Cowgirl or the clams at Ninja (almost everyone had sushi too, so that's not high on my suspect list), but my stomach protested violently. We scrambled to check out even as I asked myself whether I should be giving up the only well air-conditioned place I could lay down and recover in proximity to a restroom. Everyone else had checked out of their rooms, too, yet the festivities wouldn't end until 7 p.m. or later. Resting on the floor of the anteroom to the ladies' restroom will not go on record as a high point in my life, but I felt much less queasy when I got up and caught the second half of Johnny Long's No-Tech Hacking talk. He walks a thin line between profiling and stereotyping in some of his "hacking", and it's inevitably based on the assumption that he's the only dissembler in a given situation. It irks me to see cases of social profiling that are smugly presented as successful without any evidence of their accuracy. That said, much of his work is solid.

I also caught the Attendee Meta-Data and Network summary parts of the closing ceremonies. I left early to enjoy my first real food of the day, a shepherd's pie, over at Stout before catching the train home.
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kind o' hobosauce [Jul. 21st, 2008|03:25 pm]

holdenk
[Tags|, , , , , ]

The weekend was kind of hobosauce.
Rave was on Friday, it was pretty good times. I went with a bunch of rave virgins so it was interesting. I probably should have told them more of the local drug terms, but I guess learning that on your own is funtimes too :P I don't really remember much of the rave, it was fun but nothing especially awesome. The place was more hobo than all the other places I've been to so far (not a lot mind you).
After that I slept most of Saturday, tried to poke at network time on the FreeRunner a bit (mostly resulting in the failsauce, but oh well).
Someone posted a stemming module for haskell so now I guess I should give that a shot. I kiind of want to do too much stuff in not so much time :( Oh well such is life.
Tomorrow is a baseball game aparently so like go free food and bear.
I haven't heard back from the device scape fellow yet (I e-mailed him last night) so that may or may not work out.
Have a plan to try and get on slashdot again if I can get the T-Mobile hax0r to work on the FreeRunner but odds are questionable. Anyways yah
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basement flooding [Jul. 21st, 2008|03:30 pm]

taxlady
[Tags|, , ]
[mood | distressed]

I'm taking a break and having breakfast. When I went into my office in the basement, I was met by tumbled boxes. Then, I heard/felt the squish of water in carpet. And, sure enough, there was water and tumbled boxes in the laundry room too. I sooo don't need this now.

The boxes tumbled because the bottom ones lost structural integrity when they got wet. The boxes are the stuff that went into storage when we had the sewer backup flooding in the basement. I just hadn't gotten around to unpacking them yet. 0_o That'll teach me, I hope.

I also had papers on the floor, so the current project is is hanging papers on wires with clothes pins. It's a lot harder than it sounds.

Thank goodness we have a ShopVac to get the water off the floor and out of the carpet. It's going to be a long job.
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Flooded. [Jul. 21st, 2008|03:35 pm]

swestrup
Woke up to a flooded basement this morning. Unlike last time, the "water" had mostly drained back away by the time we found out about it. That's not to say there isn't a huge mess. We still had piles of boxes that hadn't been dealt with since the last flood. The bottom ones got wet, so the stacks collapsed, getting many others wet and making a huge mess. In some way though, its not as bad as last time. We had many more things piled on shelves this time and many of the things directly touching the floor were fairly resistant to getting wet. So far a preliminary look in the wet boxes hasn't shown up any major losses, but we've only peeked in most most them.

[info]taxlady is extremely unhappy, of course, as her office is in that basement and she had a large pile of papers on the floor that she was sorting through when this happened. The entire stack got soaked and she's having to carefully peel the pages apart, sponge them lightly, and hang them on makeshift drying lines.

None of this was supposed to be able to happen again since we went out and installed a backflow arrester in the drain that backed up last time. However, clearly that plan didn't work. I have no idea if the problem is:

  1. Crappy backflow arrester doesn't work.
  2. Backflow arrester was installed improperly by me (there were no installation instructions with it).
  3. The water came from somewhere else this time (a neighbor's drain perhaps? Our basements drain into each other...)
  4. Martian Conspiracy.
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Gah! Stupid Torrent! [Jul. 21st, 2008|12:12 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|, ]

I finally delved into the world of BitTorrent, trying to download Civ III to see if it'll run on my computer. It's about 521 megs. It ran overnight, slowed for most of the morning with only 20 meg left, and then picked up steam about 5 minutes ago. Now, with less than a meg left... it lost all peers and I'm stuck! Gah!

Edited to add: Or, silly me, maybe it just finished downloading but refused to acknowledge this in any way a sane person would understand.
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The Crappy Lens Saga continues! [Jul. 21st, 2008|11:23 am]

diluvienne
[mood |unimpressed]

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elevation ... endless [Jul. 20th, 2008|11:13 pm]

graydon
Graydon at Cypress bowl This weekend was 100% bike crazy. Saturday we rode through Surrey to the US border, then back up to Delta and around Boundary Bay, up through Ladner, over to Alex Fraser bridge, back to Arthur Lang bridge, then home. Today we rode up Cypress mountain then along the sea-to-sky Upper Levels Highway (you pedant) to Horseshoe Bay, and back home (too much heavy Sunday traffic).

Total distance about 245km. The hardest part was the 900m continuous climb up Cypress. I know Kris has no sympathy here at all.
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Mission [Jul. 21st, 2008|04:00 am]
xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/452/

Don't you know? The chances of a random object being a scone are about one in six.
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hobosauce [Jul. 20th, 2008|09:14 pm]

holdenk
[Tags|, ]

I tried pokeing at the gsm stack to add an interesting bit, but it was pretty hobosauce for the lose. I really wish I could get the network time stuff to work for the happy sauce but oh well.
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POKEY CHAT SERVICE BEING EATED? [Jul. 21st, 2008|12:13 am]

nuttyindustries
[zaffirewolf]
[Current Location |PENGUIN VILLAGE]
[mood |POKEY]
[music |POKEY QUEST I THEME]

For the past few days or weeks or so, I noticed that the Pokey Chat Service messages remained at a steady 485. Eventually growing suspicious that perhaps I had miscounted, I attempted to foray into this quite little niche to find this message:

NOTHING HERE YET

I have stepped into the Twilight Zone of POKEY?????????
Is the POKEY CHAT SERVICE being serviced or is there some kind of an error? The users list also exists but no users can be found when you click on names.

What can I, a simple pixel, do, as this situation does not coincide with expected circumstances?
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Things I miss [Jul. 20th, 2008|11:40 pm]

eveglass
[Tags|]

Time and experience have taught me something insightful about my own personality: the last third of any extended separation (trip, vacation, or, in this case, long-distance relationship) is the hardest. I start missing the things or people far away much more than I did in the first two-thirds of the separation.

I just hit that "last third" point in my seasonal separation from Marc a few days ago. I've been thinking about him a lot. And it's not what everyone thinks. It's the little things. Things like:

- kisses on the base of my neck
- curling up on his couch with a mug of tea and our legs intertwined
- morning snuggles before we get out of bed
- wrapping my legs around his waist -- while upright -- to give him kisses
- watching him laugh
- holding hands

Soon enough, I know. I'll be leaving for Pennsic in 8 days, and once I come back there will be only 2 weeks left. I know already they'll be a brutal two weeks, but I'll get through them, and then he'll be home. Until then, though, it's gonna be a rough ride.
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Meta-recursive hallucinations [Jul. 20th, 2008|07:32 pm]

sps
So you know that thing where your eyes get a little over-enthusiastic in their reading, and you see things that aren't quite there?

(Erroneously) read on the milk carton:

Thank you for hallucinating.

Whoa, thought I.
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What great weekends are made of [Jul. 20th, 2008|06:40 pm]

posixeleni
[Tags|, , , , , ]


Mission Bay San Diego
Originally uploaded by posixeleni.
Dave took my buddy Shaun and I sailing on Mission Bay. This was the first time I had ever been on a sailboat and it was a great experience. We had brought burritos and just enjoyed the view of the bay with all the other boats around us and the sights and sounds of people partying on land. It had quite the calming effect, and left me wanting to go out on a sailboat again (of course Dave did all the work).

Shaun and I then took the train back to Oceanside and went to see the Dark Knight at the movie theatre. The auditorium was packed with Marines and families. Shaun and I both agreed that this version of Batman was darker than its predecessors with many unexpected turns. It's a shame that Heath won't be around for the next one. His Joker was even more disturbing than Nicholson's but still funny and quite absurd at times.

We also watched Bergman's The Virgin Spring which was extremely captivating and thought provoking. I know I'm being really vague about it but it's difficult to put to words the emotions that film inspires.
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Irony [Jul. 20th, 2008|05:13 pm]

evildrgo
I just find it ironic that Quebec city 400th anniversary celebration big bash tonight is headlined by Paul McCartney on the same grounds where the English defeated the French. This one is just a pr war since macs offered to do the concert for free while Celine dion wanted full price for her show. Its still a cool gig and I wish I had the the time to see em. Heck if it was maiden I'd make time. Even though the beattles are bigger than Jesus they're not bigger than Satan!!!!


Anyhow laundry is being done. Countdown till shanghai.
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Photomography [Jul. 20th, 2008|03:42 pm]

diluvienne
I went to the new Simon Camera store today. I wish there was a replacement solution for the MP-E....
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Serious conversations I can't believe actually happenned. [Jul. 20th, 2008|11:05 am]

pdage
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Work]
[music |None]

"Les Hippies ne sont pas Cyber Marie-Lou!"
- Dage
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Bodice swap at Pennsic? [Jul. 20th, 2008|09:02 am]

eveglass
[Tags|, ]

So, a somewhat odd request. At Pennsic 2004, I bought a beautiful bodice from The Likely Lotus. It's reversible: black cotton on one side, red velvet on the other. You can see its listing on the Likely Lotus website or a picture of me in it. I love this thing.

The problem? I was about 25 pounds heavier when I bought it and it doesn't fit me well anymore. I bought a size 32"-24" waist one, and now my waist is about 28".

So here's my offer: does anyone have a nice body that would fit a 28" waist, and if so, do you want to swap? Mine has been very lightly used and is still in great condition.

If you'll be at Pennsic or East Kingdom events, drop me a line and we'll talk.
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Yes... the funniest [Jul. 20th, 2008|06:50 am]

evildrgo
New thing on the NINternet.

Check it out today before it's taken down.

http://www.drhorrible.com/
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boredom [Jul. 19th, 2008|08:00 pm]

hub_
[Tags|]
[Current Location |@home]

This burb really suck. The video store that was within walking distance closed. Now I have to take my fucking car to rent a movie.
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fucking facebook [Jul. 19th, 2008|04:08 pm]

blacksquiggles
soon the pictures will start coming in...

I can't get away with anything anymore :)
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Saturday? [Jul. 19th, 2008|01:50 pm]

taxlady
How is today Saturday? Where did the week go?
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Joss Whedon Is a Genius [Jul. 19th, 2008|01:48 pm]

slajoie
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )