Video games != movies

Clive Thompson at Slate has an interesting piece about why video games should not be like movies. From Oughtta Stay Out of Pictures:

Playing a game, any kind of game, is inherently open-ended and interactive. Whether you're playing chess, Go, or Super Mario Bros., you don't really know how things will wind up or what will happen along the way. Narrative, on the other hand, is neither open-ended nor interactive. When you're watching a story, you surrender masochistically to the storyteller. The fun is in not having control, in sitting still and going "Yeah? And then what happened? And then?"

That's why cut scenes are such a massive pain in the neck--they enforce passivity.

It sometimes happens that I read an article and feel that I could have made the author's point better than he did. This is one of those times. Still, it's a good read.

Oddly enough?

I was wondering why this article was in Yahoo! News's "Oddly Enough" section, until I came to the very end of the piece.

The canned mackerel from the World Food Program was not to be distributed Monday, but put into storage. Crowds watched as boxes of food were shifted to trucks by local residents under the supervision of troops carrying automatic rifles.

Is it just me, or is that a little scary?

I understand not wanting people to riot and/or take all the food...but automatic rifles?

Filming for Memoirs of a Geisha is now complete

Here's an article from Japan Today about the film.

"It was an exquisite journey making this film," said [director Rob] Marshall [imdb entry]. "We had to film most of it in Los Angeles because we couldn't find any places here that still looked like 1920s and 1930s Japan. We ended up building a little Japan in Ventura, California. For the final scenes, we filmed in Kyoto temples that had never allowed filming before."

I remember when I mentioned Memoirs of a Geisha to my Japanese instructor. He was so angry that Arthur Golden, the book's author, had betrayed the trust of the geisha whose story he'd rewritten for his novel. I had been wondering whether others in Japan shared his sentiments. If they do, I presume they swallowed their pride for the sake of good PR. The movie is sure to turn even more attention towards Japan, boosting tourism and trade. That would explain why a film whose beginnings were so controversial could ever be filmed in temples that had never before allowed filming.

I found this bit interesting:

"We talked with Rob in great detail about whether this would be a culturally and historically accurate film or a concept film," [Ken] Watanabe [imdb entry] said. "Since it is a fantasy world, the details were not as important as they would have been in something like 'The Last Samurai.'"

[Kaori] Momoi [imdb entry] was at first shocked when she found out the leads wouldn't be Japanese actresses. "Then I realized that the book is told through the eyes of an American and for the film, further filtered through an American director's lens," she said. "I wanted to play up my nationality. There were some details that were wrong, such as the makeup wasn't thick enough on the geisha, but in the end, I think this modern twist on geishas will appeal to younger audiences."

Marshall hastened to add that he tried to pay great respect to Japanese culture.

Perhaps they're going for an air of mystery and fantasy, claiming that no one will ever really know "The Secret Life of Geisha". At this point, I'm just going to throw up my hands, and go see the movie.

It would be cool to see it in Japan, wouldn't it?

Gleeful handwriting analysts choke on own feet

Some handwriting analysts got a hold of a piece of paper that they thought was doodled on by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Their analysis?

Experts who examined the tangle of boxes, circles, loops and notes on debt and trade variously described Blair as "struggling to concentrate" or "not a natural leader" and "stressed and tense".

Too bad the scribbles weren't written by Tony Blair! It turns out that Bill Gates was probably the person doodling on the paper.

"We look forward to psychologists reassessing their conclusions of how these characteristics ascribed to the Prime Minister equally apply to Mr Gates," [a spokesman from Blair's Downing Street office] said.

Indeed.

"Weird Kentucky"

There's a neat article on the Louisville Courier-Journal's website.

Weird Kentucky: Here's where to find the intriguing, the unusual and the just plain odd

A snippet, detailing two oddities listed in the Unusual Kentucky Compendium:

The Blue Grass Army Depot: This Madison County storage facility houses nerve gas and is a popular site for UFO sightings. Rumor has it an alien spacecraft was once stored here. The Nameless Grocery Store in Wildie, which doesn't sell much of anything, and is very "Children of the Corn," the site says -- only "without the children. Or, the corn."

Also mentioned in the article is Kentucky author Vince Staten, author of Unauthorized America: A Travel Guide to the Places the Chamber of Commerce Won't Tell You About (1990).

I'm not at work

...but I am working. Sort of.

I apparently left my key to the office at work on Thursday. I didn't realize this until Saturday, and then I forgot to go get it. This morning, as I was tugging on my extra pairs of pants for the 33° bike ride, I suddenly realized that I would have no way of getting into the office, and I would have to bike all the way back.

So I took off the two extra pairs of pants, and settled in to work from home.

I've done pretty much everything I can do from here; now I'm just logged in to catch any phone calls that might come through. Robert should be up soon; hopefully he'll get my email or head into the office within an hour or so and I can go in then. I suppose I'll drive, though I haven't really decided yet.

It's been kind of neat to be at home for the sunrise. When I first got up it was completely dark, as usual. Slowly, the sky outside the curtains got lighter and lighter. I opened the blinds in the living room and shut off the lamp. In the office, I pulled the curtain up and hooked it over the rod, then stood for a moment gazing out at the new morning. A school bus coasted past the pond, yellow lights flashing. Out in the middle of the water, I saw a duckling submerge. I watched the area where he'd gone under for a long time, and he never resurfaced. When I started to wonder whether I'd really seen him go underwater or not, suddenly he popped back up again, a few feet away. I smiled.

It's so nice here. Though we're right next to Bobby Jones Expressway, you can't hear too much of the highway noise because of the screen of trees. Right now I'm listening to quiet dappled with faint quacking. Ripples are moving lazily across the pond. The sky is frosted with flat clouds, and the trees, bent and broken from Saturday's ice, hold their barren remaining limbs up into that mix of blue and white and pale grey. On the bank, ducks flap out of the water; a few yards away, other ducks plop back in, paddling across in lines.

Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and appreciate the beauty you've been gifted with.

Scary dreams

I rather suddenly just remembered what I dreamed last night. There was a weapon (probably an HPM ray, because I had just seen one in an episode of Lois & Clark) that was going to be used on cities in the world, and I was looking at some sort of screen that showed the primary possible targets.

#1 was Lexington, Kentucky. #2 was Louisville.

The screen zoomed in on a map of Kentucky and showed Lexington, then cut to live feed of a building that in my dream I recognized as being a tourist information building near the UK campus (but which actually doesn't exist). The camera just stayed on the front of that building, as if it was the reason the city was targeted.

A voice-over was saying that while there are plenty of bigger targets to choose from, Lexington was the best choice because it was in the heartland, and because it was where the weapon was originally conceived.

I was just terrified.

I've had several strange dreams lately. The other day, I dreamed my period started up again (it just ended on Thursday), and it was too heavy to stop by normal means, so I was just bleeding all over the place. It was really upsetting; I actually woke up from that one.

I imagine these dreams are products of my subconscious nervousness. I'm waiting to hear word about something that's very important to me (again, that thing I'll tell you all about in due time). I want it so badly. The waiting is affecting every aspect of my life.

While the dreams are morbidly fascinating, I'll be glad when my nights are peaceful again.

Whoa

He's ba-ack...!

OMG!!!!!!!!!

I MADE IT WORK!!!!!

I yelled "Woo hoo!" so loudly that it scared Sean :>

I've got the comments attached to the proper posts, and the little delete thingy works wonders on the empty comments.

Of course, it's never over...now I've noticed that it seems to be omitting some of the HTML in the comments (like <br /> tags). Now to figure out why it's doing that...

When I finally get the kinks worked out of the system, I will still need to edit the export file so that I can have people's posts be submitted under their actual names. Shouldn't be too big of a problem, but I wanted to mention that it's not over yet.

Blargh...

I now have it porting the correct information into the correct columns in the columns table. There are just two problems.

1. It is putting null information in as comments for posts that don't have comments.
2. It still isn't passing the post ID to comment_post_ID, so the comments are still floating in limbo instead of being associated with posts.

I'm trying to fix the second problem first, because it's the most serious. I think I can solve the first problem with a workaround that already exists for deleting empty posts. Besides, that's not really as big an issue to me as making the comments actually appear!

The comment export saga continues

Okay, so I have it dumping the Blogger export into the comments table, and I even figured out how to strip out the hyperlink to the Blogger profile...

...but it's dumping everything into the comments table, not just the comments, and it's completely ignoring the post IDs I tried to force-feed it. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. The upshot is that my comments table gets filled with rows and rows of data, but none of it is actually connected to a post.

I'm getting closer, little by little. But this really underscores my complete lack of true coding ability. I'm pretty sure that if I had a basic idea of how to work with PHP and MySQL, I wouldn't be having these issues.

More on WordPress

Okay, I've discovered that comment_post_ID has the same value as the post_ID of the post it goes with. Makes things easier, doesn't it? So, if I can assign comment_post_ID the same value as post_ID (by keeping it within the "for" loop, I think), I should be able to get the comments. Somehow. I can't run it as two separate processes like I mentioned in the previous post, because it's not guaranteed when I start the process what post numbers the posts will get. You'd think that the first post would get 1, the second would get 2, and so on down the line, and that is superficially how it's supposed to work, but the importer has a bug that causes blank posts to show up here and there, and I can't predict where those will occur. If I just ran the separate importer and crossed my fingers, I would probably end up with some comments assigned to posts that don't exist.

Fun, huh?

Time to mess with the importer code some more...

Shifting to WordPress...maybe

I got tired of seeing this post sitting in Drafts, so here it is.

Yesterday [I've had this post sitting in Drafts for a very long time, so I'm not actually sure when "yesterday" was. -Ed.], I decided to test WordPress and see how it works on my server. I was under the impression (due to this) that I wouldn't be able to run it. However, I went through the setup process and messed around with settings for awhile without ever seeing the "Database Error: Too Many Connections" message that I got when testing Mambo. I'm not sure if that means it'll be okay, or if I just put Mambo through more rigorous changes (although I'm thinking it's the second one).

The other problem is porting my Blogger stuff over into WordPress. They have a utility for importing Blogger posts, but they haven't updated it to include Blogger comments. All we see on the support forum are people asking whether or not there's a way to do it; one guy suggests exporting to Moveable Type format and then importing that to WordPress, but I hate that idea. It's too messy.

Looking at their tutorial and then examining the file in question, I got it into my head that maybe I could import the comments by modifying the file so that it would parse the comments and put them into the proper database fields. However, I was rather daunted by this task, and so I put it off for weeks.

Today [The real today. -Ed.], I started actually messing with it, just to see what would happen. At first I worked under the assumption that I would have to grab each comment while I was still within the "for" loop of the corresponding post. However, this didn't work. Finally, I remembered how to telnet into the database, so I took a look at how WordPress does its comments table. It contains the following columns:

comment_ID
comment_post_ID
comment_author
comment_author_email
comment_author_url
comment_author_IP
comment_date
comment_date_gmt
comment_content
comment_karma
comment_approved
user_id

I assume that comment_post_ID tells the software which post the comment goes with. This makes things easier and harder at the same time. I think that to get the raw comments data, all I need to do is create a separate dump from Blogger that contains the comments only...but I'm not sure how to indicate which posts the comments go with, nor what value comment_post_ID should then be assigned.

Kind of stumped, but at least I have an idea of the direction I need to go.

Another Japan blog!

Jeff at Sushicam linked today to a really cool Japan blog, A Year or so in Japan by a woman named Joanne. She is clever, insightful, and funny, and I've been enjoying perusing her archives today. Needless to say, she has been blogrolled.

Here is a link to the laugh-out-loud post Jeff refers to. It is absolutely fabulous. A quote:

I saw that my interest was not infactuation but fascination. The way a woman looks at a beautiful drag queen. Half in amazement and half in jealousy for such a outlandish sense of style and the confidence to carry it off. But even that has worn off for me. The coolness, the look that they woke up in their penthouse apartment, threw on a suit and loafers and I only happened to catch sight of them on the street or subway because they were between a rock and roll board meeting, a dinner date and a manicure appointment. The reality is different. They are kept men. Kept by their mothers.

This is not the best part. You have to read it.

On the other end of the spectrum (or, rather, on a completely different spectrum), here's a post about typical work life for men and women in Japan.

Everything here is prim and proper, especially on the outside. A laugh, a smile and apologizing are all done at appropriate times. People don't complain, they endure. Unless they are men. Men here, for some reason, function comfortably outside all the rules of etiquette.

I highly recommend this one, too. Eye-opening, insightful, and clever.

Heh. So much for the end of It's Walky!

Webcomic fans rock.

At some point, Willis posted the following:

January 23, 2005 - Okay, here's the skinny. I've got a lot of emails. You guys like the IW! strip that went up yesterday. You guys want more. Okay.

Well, here's the deal. Shortpacked! runs 3 times a week, and Roomies! runs twice a week -- that's a full-time job in itself. I've consciously cut down the number of strips I do a week so I can dedicate time to actual work that pays the bills. And so tossing another full-page strip a week onto my pile is not going to work, especially since that time spent will displace time needed to work on things that pay my bills. (And get me to California regularly.)

However.

I've got an idea. I like pleasing you peeps, 'cuz you're my peeps, so I'll cut y'all a deal. Every $100 donated to me through Paypal, I'll draw up an IW! strip to run that following Saturday. So if 20 people donate 5 bucks each, that's a new strip. That makes it worth my while, and it makes it possible for you folks to get what you want. In the meantime, Shortpacked! and Roomies! will continue to run for free.

Does that sound cool?

And then, later:

January 23, 2005 - Well, that was quick.

I wish he'd time-stamped it. :D (I also wish webcomic authors would use blog software for their rants, so I could get permalinks to the text...;P)

Anyway, new IW! on Saturdays. Yay!

Duane Keiser's paintings

I stuck Duane Keiser's painting blog in my blogroll awhile back, and since then I've enjoyed a fresh new still life every day.

Today's painting is very simple, yet somehow it really touches me. I don't know...I get the feeling of loneliness (the pushpins, solitary and surrounded by empty holes), and yet a soft sense of hope (the filtered rays of sunlight).

He sells these things for $100. They are postcard-sized. Like I said to Brooke the other day, as I rejected a painting about seven times that size for the same price, "Well, if I had money to spend on art..."

Of course, I think Mr. Keiser is more talented than whoever painted the blue-grey seaside piece that caught my eye at the mall. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm broke!

(Plus, the ones I really like are either far more expensive, or already sold.)

Do they sell insurance against dumb mechanics?

From Yahoo!:

An auto mechanic used a customer's sport utility vehicle to run an errand, left it in a parking lot with the motor running, then mistakenly took another running vehicle and returned to the garage, police said.

The car he took back wasn't even the same kind of car!

Japan blog

I was poking around the intarweb today and came across a blog by a gentleman named Peter Huddleston who lives in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. This post, about his first job in Japan, was the first one I read.

Its funny (not really) there was safety equipment (goggles, harnesses, gloves etc.) but if you used them it was not cool and others would smirk at you. It was crazy. Cutting steel duct with a grinder and red hot steel sparks shooting into your face because almost all of the grinders had the safety shield removed (it's easier to use them that way, but dangerous) without safety glasses. I was so damn lucky not to get an eye put out. I saw many whom did.

Since I love anecdotes and I love Japan, I've decided to blogroll him.

We appear to be in for some weather

Better rush to the grocery stores now to get supplies! After all, that ice won't melt until--maybe--Sunday afternoon!

I just have one thing to say...

WAR!

Health update

I went to the endocrinologist today, for a followup. I had the usual measurements taken: pulse, blood pressure, weight. Weight is down (obviously, though apparently my clothes and breakfast weigh 4 pounds), pulse is also down (70-something, I just remember being amazed that it wasn't 90), but blood pressure is still icky at 130/90. I'm going to be checking it in the mornings and evenings again to see how it goes...maybe it's just high because I'm nervous about that thing I refuse to blog about. I also made an appointment for later today with a regular physician, because the endocrinologist was really on my case about it today. She wants to know what the deal is with my blood pressure--can't really blame her for that.

I'm going to continue with my hormone treatments through February and March. In February I will have a blood test on day 2 or 3 of my period. At the end of March, based on the blood test results, we will decide whether or not to continue treatment. After stopping the hormones, we'd wait 4-6 months to see if my body returns to having periods normally. The doctor is optimistic about it.

She was proud of me for losing weight, but she was unhappy with my blood pressure, so along with strongarming me into going to a regular doctor, she told me to cut down on my sodium intake.

This is going to be really hard. For example, the bowl of Campbell's Chunky Soup I'm eating right now has 1740 grams of sodium in it...290 more than DietPower recommends. With one meal, I've grossly overblown my daily allowance.

I'm going to have to give up on boxed and canned meals, and try to make things naturally, and avoid salting things. I can only assume that eating out isn't a good idea either.

If anyone has any tips on limiting sodium (Mari, I know you went through this), please comment!

Bone marrow donation

From Japan Today:

A record 28,364 people registered as bone marrow donors in 2004, due mainly to blockbuster movies released last year depicting characters dying of leukemia, the Japan Marrow Donor Program said Friday.

I was lucky. My brother Ben was a 6 out of 6 match for my bone marrow. AJ was a 4 out of 6.

Not everyone is going to have that great a selection.

I won't kid you, it hurts to donate bone marrow. They drill into your pelvis and suck it out. I only went through a fraction of what Ben went through when I had my bone marrow biopsy. First there was an extraordinarily uncomfortable pressure on the bone, kind of a gritty feeling. But the vacuuming of the marrow was the worst part. It's hard to describe how that feels. The closest I can come is that it's like having your soul jerked from your body. I know that seems overdramatic, but what is more inner than your marrow, from which springs your lifeblood?

I had this procedure done a couple of times, each time with only one hole drilled. Ben had his marrow taken all at once, with far more taken out, and with multiple drillings. He was in so much pain that he was in tears, and Mom had to yell at the nurses to give him more morphine.

Ben was sore, unable to really move, for about a week afterwards. He sacrificed a lot to do that for me. But because of his suffering, I'm alive today.

It takes a very strong person to give bone marrow, in other words. It is, literally, the gift of life.

Here's how you can donate, if you're interested.

"Tokyo is an expensive-ass city"

Sid has finally posted again. He doesn't post often, and when he posts it's not always interesting, but there are enough gems in his archives that I know I should wait for the next one. Today, he doesn't disappoint. Any post that begins with the phrase "Tokyo is an expensive-ass city" is bound to be good.

The conclusion makes the entire piece. Enjoy.

"The Cluetrain economy"

Miss Em links to a great post by Jeff Jarvis about the VW ad, and advertising in general.

If I were you, VW, I would hold a contest to get people to create the best damned VW commercial anywhere and promise to spend big bucks to air it on, say, the Oscars. You don't have to pick the terrorist commercial. You'll be making clear that the thing was not made by you. At the same time, you will learn a lot about new messages that truly resonate and reverberate from your customers -- because your customers are creating them. How's that for market research?

This is the Cluetrain economy, guys: Markets are conversations. Join in the conversation, don't try to muzzle it.

I may have to start reading this guy regularly.

How I blog!

I thought somebody (somewhere) might be interested in the methodology I use when crafting my timely and well-reasoned posts.

;P

So, here's what I do: I visit links.

My Favorites are always open on the left side of my IE window. (Yes, IE. Creature of habit, I suppose.) Of the literally dozens of folders, I visit a mere few with alarming frequency: "AMRN Links", which contains a link to the main board; "Anime", which I really only use to get to my AnimeSuki bookmark, "Blitzkrieg Web Portals", which takes me to My Yahoo!, MSN, CNN (occasionally), and (most importantly) Bloglines; "Blogs", which takes me here and to Blogger to post, as well as to my del.icio.us bookmarks, smugmug, and to my friend's joural sites; "Blogs - Interesting People", which takes me to blogs of people I don't know personally; and "Friends and Family", which contains links to Box of Bunnies and das brunogekritzel (a message board for fans of Chris Baldwin's Bruno, and the only webcomic messageboard I frequent. I go there for the discussion, not because Bruno is my favorite comic).

Now, everything in the "Blogs" folder is a subscription in Bloglines, so I actually don't go to those sites very much unless I'm checking for new comments. Bloglines is what I am typically using when I make a post here.

What I do is this. I'll go to my Bloglines (click here to see how my [public] feeds look) and start with the "News Aggregates" folder, which currently contains Slashdot and BoingBoing. (MetaFilter used to be in there, but I was getting overwhelmed with news.) I click on anything that sounds interesting, opening a new window, but I stay in Bloglines to finish reading the entire folder. At that point, if I have a lot of new windows open, I'll go and read the full articles one by one, and one by one decide if I want to make a blog post about them.

After "News Aggregates", I go to "Odd/Weird", "Local News", "Japan News", "Japanese", and "Food". I save "Language" (which currently only contains the Language Log feed) for the end of my more informative reading, because it's my favorite, and because I always save the best for last.

Once I'm done with my more educational reading, I move to blogs. I don't necessarily expect to find anything newsworthy here, though it has happened. First I'll visit "Interesting People", to see what, for example, Jeff Laitila has to say about life in Japan. And lastly (saving the very best for last, you see), I visit "Friends".

This is my typical methodology. If I'm in a rush when I'm reading my feeds, often I'll save the news for later instead, so I'll have time to think about whether or not I want to post about it. Also, sometimes I'm not in the mood to plow through a Language Log post (they are awesome, but they typically require more "processing power"), so I'll leave those for later too. But in general, this is how I work.

Oh shit, I was going to put a zillion links in this post, but I have lost track of time and now I'm going to be late for my doctor's appointment!

He's here!!!

[Edit 5:00 pm]: OMG!!! Look at the art on discs 1 and 6!

Whoever put this box set together really knew their stuff!

(You may interpret the cause of the blurriness of those pictures as excitement, not laziness.)

Just to, you know, differentiate this from the "Male Heroine" quiz

Another quiz. Sue me. I hate dispatching ;>

You scored as Elizabeth I. I am Queen Elizabeth I of England. I am sometimes vain of my appearance, but usually level headed, though I have inherited my father's temper. I like to put on a performance. I have a way with languages and with words. I can inspire my subjects. I also accept the counsel of those who would advise me, though I stay true to my own opinions. Elizabeth I 88% Cleopatra 79% Xena, Warrior Princess 75% Boudicca 63% Joan of Arc 33% Which Female Heroine Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

I'm still at work

In an attempt to ensure that I wouldn't have to do it, my coworker didn't tell me she needed someone to cover her shift. When all her backup choices failed, this meant that I was the only one available to work. I had, literally, zero notice.

I'm glad this didn't happen yesterday. I probably would have strangled her.

Where should you live?

This is an interesting quiz.

You scored as Northern Virginia. Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the nation’s capitol, Northern Virginia is the place to be if you want to meet new people, work hard, and keep up on your politics. Welcome. Northern Virginia 75% Northwestern Washington State 69% Guam 63% Puerto Rico 56% Fallon, Nevada 56% Southern California 25% Where Should You Live? (US) created with QuizFarm.com

Wow, some people are dumb

I meant to mention yesterday how absolutely fucking brilliant that day's Penny Arcade was, but I never got around to it. Today, as I check the site, I see that there are apparently many people out there who don't understand satire.

That's really all I can think to say. I mean, satire is practically the cornerstone of Western civilization. Most people speak sarcastically on a daily basis.

I'm not sure where these stupid people came from, but as is tradition, they emerged in force.

"That is one butch chick."

Luke linked today to The Gender Genie, which purports to be able to tell your sex (gender?) based on your prose. I submitted my most recent post, which I will readily admit was influenced by Stephen R. Donaldson's writing style, and got the following:

Words: 344

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 247
Male Score: 784

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

When I clicked the link to tell it that it was wrong, I got the following note in a pop-up:

That is one butch chick.

The window went on to helpfully mention that

According to Koppel and Argamon, the algorithm should predict the gender of the author approximately 80% of the time.

I figured I'd try another post, so I picked my ramble about Aishiteruze Baby. Here are the results:

Words: 908

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 1538
Male Score: 1531

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Okay, so, I'm only a woman by a matter of seven points. Guess I blog like a guy!

Next I thought I'd shift gears and try a short story.

Words: 1482

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 2271
Male Score: 1592

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Ah-ha! (Though I'm concerned about whether I picked the correct option. Fiction? Nonfiction? I mean...it's nonfiction. It happened. But I wrote it for my fiction class, because I'm a n00b. Regardless, I put "nonfiction" in, so there you go.)

Okay, one more test...this time from a diary entry from when I was 13.

Words: 859

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 1754
Male Score: 1638

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS!!!

It would appear, inconclusively, based on this tiny smattering of data, that I sound the most like a woman when I am storytelling rather than rambling. Good to know!

Please

(This post will seem odd to all but a very few of you. All will be explained in time.)

This morning I was driven to the most desperate, urgent point of nerves, enough that I felt sick, enough that small things irritated me and I raised my voice at a wonderful lady, enough that I left curtly and slammed the door, enough that I cursed, loud and long, as I threw myself into my car and drove to the post office.

I had to fight to keep from yelling as I sneered at a woman who parked close to the door. Unlike you, I can manage to walk more than ten feet, I spewed at her mentally, wheeling into a space across the way. Striding into the post office, I labored for control of myself, clutching the thin parcel in my arms as if it could somehow give me strength.

It wasn't long before I was forcing politeness to the lady at the counter, paying her with my check card, and finally moving out of the building and back to my car.

And then I burst into tears.

Nervous! I realized, and said aloud, "I'm nervous!" The nausea, the snappishness, the anger over inconsequential things...I knew, dimly, that I was going to have to apologize to my coworkers, but at that point I was too gripped with the knowledge of my emotions to ponder on it.

Nervous! I sobbed and stopped myself, repeatedly, as I drove away from the post office, up Old Evans Road, and turned left on Washington. I chose to drown my fear in a McRib sandwich and a low-fat Berry Berry smoothie. It was very difficult not to cry at the drive-thru.

Now, I'm calmer. But that desperation still thrums within me, making me restless. I won't know something until next week, and even then it will only be preliminary. My mind is filled with the word Please.

Please. Please see what I see. See that this is perfect, this is how things should be. Let me have my dream.

Hey, everybody's got a little Voldemort in them, right?

You scored as Hermione Granger. You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out. Hermione Granger 85% Draco Malfoy 75% Harry Potter 75% Ron Weasley 70% Albus Dumbledore 65% Ginny Weasley 65% Sirius Black 60% Remus Lupin 55% Severus Snape 50% Lord Voldemort 25% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Look how close I came to being Draco Malfoy! And isn't it interesting that he and Harry are tied in my personality?

I wonder if there's a "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Alter Ego" quiz.

Probably not.

(If there was, though, I bet I'd be Atiaran...:P)

I feel terrible

I'm tired and crabby. That alone would be okay I guess. But as I was leaning over to read the teeny tiny print on the new Famous Dave's menu updates, I felt a sudden surge of bile in my throat, and I coughed and swallowed at once.

Now I feel just like Thomas Covenant during the beginning of the Quest, when Drool kept reaching out and "biting" him with the power of the Staff of Law. I'm afraid to move or cough improperly lest I feel like vomiting. I even had to put a post-it over the picture of Dave on this menu, because he's holding a huge rack of ribs and his mouth is wide open, and the sight makes me sick to my stomach.

So yes, I would rather be at home, reading Lord Foul's Bane, than here, squinting at small print and editing database entries.

Ah well. Such is life.

Retro '90s club

It's hard to remember all the way back to the 1990s, but a new club in Greenwich Village called Nerveana can help.

Check out the list of curiosities people will find in the place. Here's one example:

A facsimile of Lewinsky's semen-stained blue dress, used as evidence in the impeachment of Clinton, is encased in glass with a chewed-up cigar on the floor beside it.

Classy.

But what I want to know is...where's the homage to Friends?

Google is now indexing TV shows

But before you get too excited,

Search engine analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research said Google's latest innovation is likely to disappoint many people because it doesn't provide a direct link to watch the previously broadcast programming.

Google instead is displaying up to five still video images from the indexed television programs, as well as snippets from the show's narrative. The search results also will provide a breakdown on when the program aired and when an episode is scheduled to be repeated. Local programming information will be available for those who provide a ZIP code.

It's still a good feature, but I have to admit that I assumed I'd be able to watch previously aired episodes when I skimmed the Slashdot post. (That's why I was filled with disbelief, until I actually read the story.)

I'd like to know how they are going to do this. I mean, really. I can understand how the text search is going to work, by using raw data from closed captioning information, but how are they getting the still images? How do they decide what "snippets" to publish? While most of the other stuff may already be available to them in the form of licensed/subscription-based television information from the networks, I'm not sure about these two items. Is somebody going to be doing this by hand? If so, who? If not, will some program do it randomly? I'm not sure what the usefulness would be of that.

If people won't recycle on their own, then by gum, we'll make them!

I actually kind of like this idea:

San Francisco, which has long prided itself on environmentally friendly policies, is debating whether it should become the first U.S. city to tax grocery bags to encourage recycling.

On Tuesday, the city's Department of the Environment will vote on whether to recommend a 17 cent fee on each bag, be it paper or plastic, in an effort to curb the use of an estimated 50 million bags a year in the Californian city.

I have no problem with purchasing my own cloth bags (or whatever) to carry groceries in. My concern is how easy it would be for the various stores to implement procedures allowing for people who bring their own bags. At my local Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo stores, for example, there are these fabulous spinning columns of plastic bags, extremely easy to use and convenient. There is literally nowhere else for groceries to go. Unless you could manage to place a cloth bag into each plastic bag section before the cashier finishes scanning your first item, I'm not sure how this would work.

Essentially, right now it's easier and it causes less trouble to simply use the bags the store provides. If something like what San Francisco is proposing is actually going to work, store infrastructures have to be changed so that people who want to use their own bags don't end up holding up the line.

Today's Horribly-Rendered Sentence Award goes to...

...Reuters.

The price of starting your morning commute in a warm car during Eastern Canada's recent cold snap could easily have been making your vehicle a hot car in the hands of organized thieves, Toronto police say.

Gah!

I love the Internet!

Recently I've needed two things done that I don't normally deal with. I was expecting them to be big hassles. The first thing was getting a photo made. The second was getting a nice printout of a document.

For the photo, I discovered I was able to upload it directly to Walmart.com. I did so this morning, and picked up the print after work. Perfect!

For the document, I was planning to take a file over to FedEx Kinko's, and I went to their website to see what media I should store it on. There I discovered the new "File, Print FedEx Kinko's" application. Holy cow that is cool!

This is a great time to be alive, people.

Why our brains retain certain memories; plus a new keyboard.

Two links via Slashdot this morning.

Scientific American: Making Memories Stick

53-keys New Standard Keyboard

The backwards economic model of news agencies

Cory Doctorow has a very interesting piece up today.

Why do newspapers charge for yesterday's news?

The problem with the NYT's system is that it ensures that the Times can't be the paper of record any longer, because even if a thousand bloggers point to a great article on the day it comes out, thirty days later it will be invisible to the 99.999 percent of the Web who won't pay for access to fishwrap, no matter how interesting.

Doctorow proposes that newspapers offer their archives for free and charge for today's news.

It's a great idea. The only way it's going to happen, though, is either for one agency to do it first and show great success, or for many agencies to all agree to do it at once. I can easily see them all having cold feet about completely reversing their model.

They shouldn't, though. The web is moving to a pay-per-service model, I believe. People are more than willing to pay for things they enjoy, such as webcomics.

The one big ethical dilemma I see here is that news is a very different commodity from entertainment. For all intents and purposes, people need to read the news. How, then, can we justify charging for it?

Of course, to that question there is always the answer: Well, we charge people for food, don't we?

The loss of innocence

The other day, Sean and I finished watching Aishiteruze Baby. The title roughly translates to "Love Ya Baby", with "baby" taking on a double meaning--the suffix -ze is a boastful masculine form of speech, so we would expect that "baby" would refer to the speaker's girlfriend, but it actually refers to a little girl the speaker is caring for. (I assume here, of course, that the main character, Katakura Kippei, is the "speaker". It fits: when the anime begins, he is a total womanizer.)

On the surface, this seems to be an innocent, carefree, heartwarming story, but then things begin to happen.

The premise is that the little girl, Yuzuyu, is dropped into the Katakura family's lap by her mother, who has stated that she is unable to take care of her. Kippei, a high school student, becomes her primary caregiver. While we are left wondering about a mother who would abandon her child, we get clues--brief flashbacks of the mother being unable to deal with Yuzu, and the father having to balance them both. We learn that the father has died, and this leaves the mother unable to function. While that explains the abandonment to a point, we get a further piece of information about halfway through the series.

Yuzu's mother, Miyako, shows up at Yuzu's school, watching her from afar, not showing herself. Kippei discovers her and confronts her about why she left her child. Miyako breaks down and tells him that she once struck Yuzu. Kippei is nonplussed, remarking that he'd been beaten up by his mother and sister all his life, and he was fine. But Miyako whispers, "Chigau. Sou ja nai. Kodomo ga warui ja nai" (or something to that effect; translation: "No. That's not it. She'd done nothing wrong").

After this point, the series takes on an extremely dark edge. We meet new characters: a boy Yuzu's age who is physically and emotionally abused by his mother, and a girl a little younger than Kippei who was bullied so badly at school that she'd taken to burning herself all up her arm to prove that she was strong.

The little boy had to fall down a flight of stairs before his mother came to her senses. I have to tell you, I was furious during this part of the anime. While Kippei's older sister and the kindergarten teachers tried to save the boy from his mother, the boy would always stubbornly say that his mother hadn't hurt him and that he wanted to stay with her. Children want their mothers, Kippei reflected, and took it upon himself to speak to the woman. But she only took his words to heart after she moved to strike her child and he stumbled and fell down the stairs.

Every scene with the mother was filled with her internal thoughts. "Chigau. Sou ja nai. Kodomo ga warui ja nai," in an echo of what Yuzuyu's mother had said. And then she asked herself desperately, "When did I become like this?" I had absolutely no patience for it.

You see, the woman was abusive because she was insecure. Her husband had lost his job. All the woman could think about was how her status fell in the eyes of the other mothers in the neighborhood. Everything she did was an effort to hide her "shame". So, of course, she had little time for a beautiful, outgoing, funny child who drew attention to himself by acting out. No matter how much she scolded him and struck him, he kept "misbehaving", so obviously she just had to hit him more.

I hate that character. I hate that she used her position, the position of mother, giver of life, to abuse the greatest gift she had ever received. When things were finally resolved, when she agreed to doctor-advised counseling and the family decided to move so that the husband could find a job, I was still unhappy.

But her son was joyous, and he told Yuzu as he was about to leave that his mother was "a lot nicer now".

Motherhood is a position of power. I have no sympathy for those who refuse to acknowledge that fact, who turn to excuses to explain their renunciation of responsibility.

The other new character, the girl who was bullied at school, was also being physically abused, this time by her father. She refused to tell her parents what was going on at school, so her parents only knew that she was acting out, dyeing her hair, and being smart to them. She felt more and more alone as the series progressed, and eventually tried to kill herself. Kippei was able to talk her down, though, and a tenuous understanding was finally reached with her parents.

What makes this series truly shocking is that Yuzuyu is the witness to it all. She saw her friend's mother hit him. She saw the girl try to kill herself. And while she seemed to keep her childish innocence, you could tell that a new kind of wisdom was growing beneath it.

Yuzu was growing up, was forced to grow up by the cruel circumstances of her own and other people's lives.

Today, when I saw this headline on Mainichi, all I could think of was Aishiteruze Baby and the truths it had taught me.

Young couple starve 'burdensome' 3-year-old daughter to death

The world can be a beautiful place. But it is also ugly.

JapaneseFood.About.com featured a recipe for ichigo daifuku this week

The weight loss ends here!!

Not really, but sheesh :> I do not need to know how to make daifuku...

Totally fucked up

So here's a guy who has a family with his ex-wife. He lives at the home with them for part of the time. But he also has a family with his girlfriend, and he lives with them part-time too. He owns both houses, and supports both families financially.

Now, a third woman is suing him for more child support for the child they have together.

Sheesh, let's just ship this guy to Utah!

Snopes' take on the viral Volkwagen ad

Further cementing its position as an opinion site, Snopes makes the following pronouncement in its article concerning the absolutely hilarious "Small but tough." ad:

Companies often try to obscure the connections between themselves and their viral ads, sometimes claiming that promotions were "unauthorized" or "accidentally released." Though this technique may be effective in generating publicity, it can also backfire: If someone does indeed produce an unauthorized viral ad that creates negative publicity for the business it supposedly promotes, how can a company prove they weren't behind it? This is the dilemma currently faced by Volkswagen regarding a viral ad seemingly calculated to offend as many human beings as possible.

I haven't seen too many people offended by this...Miss Em notes,

i think it's very clever - of course, we all want car bombers to be thwarted in some way (well, most people do, anyway) and it also shows how strong the car is..... but does it make people associate that car with car bombers?

While I'm not particularly concerned about people associating the car with suicide bombers (if you take the ad literally, the bomber would have to be stupid to actually use the car), it did occur to me that a suicide bomber might choose to use one in the future because we'd never expect it. But that, really, is the only (extraordinarily minor) concern I can admit to having on the subject. I certainly was not "offended". So I suppose the next question to ask is this: is Volkswagen currently suffering due to this "negative publicity"? Or was that simply another Snopes opinion?

"Small but tough."

The Divine Miss Em linked today to a blog that linked this. Oh, what a treasure. This is absolutely beautiful. I laughed my ass off.

Edit 10:20pm: Volkswagen disclaims responsibility for the ad.

I had to fight to keep from laughing when I saw this look on Naruto's face

I had looked down to my plate (we always watch Naruto with meals, it seems), and when I glanced back up I was suddenly faced with...that. If I'd been eating something, I probably would have choked on it.

I mean...holy shit.

Prince of Tennis is real!

"COME ON!!!"

In episode 80, Wakato does his Change Over into a person I'd never heard of before, Lleyton Hewitt. But he's real!!!!!!

...yes, I am a dork.

(Thanks to Hai for pointing me to the episode. Does that make him a bigger dork?)

"I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprise."

That quote's from Aladdin. But it fits my results on this quiz, doesn't it?

"WHAT RELIGION BESTS SUITS YOU?" Agnostic You've probably studied loads of different religions, but you're just not sure if any of it is true. Evolution makes some sense to you, but it doesn't satisfy you. Lastly, your personality is one of question, but you won't go out of your way to find -The Truth- It's more of a hobby.

"This is one way to at least get their attention."

It could be a futile gesture, but Richmond is looking at banning the transport of chemical weapons by plane, train, or truck.

Such ordinances would seem to pose a problem if the Pentagon decides to send the 523 tons of decaying chemical weapons from Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond to an incineration site, such as the one in Anniston, Ala.

It's probably not possible to ship a trainload or truckload of the nerve agents VX or GB out of the depot without going through Richmond, which lies between the depot and Interstate 75. The ordinance, which presumably would be enforced by city police, would subject violators to fines up to $5,000.

I don't know that a mere $5,000 will deter government officials, but then again they are considering moving the nerve agents (previously mentioned here) because of budget restrictions. You never know.

Richmond City Manager David Evans sees the ordinance as more than a symbolic statement.

"If it passes the commission, it would be a strong indication of the feelings of the city, and hopefully that would not be ignored," he said.

Indeed! It's dangerous to move them, and destroying them near Richmond would add needed jobs to the area. If the budget is so constrained, maybe there's a way to privatize.

After what happened in Graniteville, does the government really want to risk moving these weapons?

A complete non-issue

Norwegians [and liberal Americans] Confused [and delighted] by Bush Salute

Bush, a former Texas governor, was simply greeting the Texas Longhorn marching band as it passed during a Washington D.C. parade in the president's honor, explained Verdens Gang, Norway's largest newspaper.

Just the same, the Internet was abuzz Thursday with speculation about what the Bushes really mean by the sign.

Yes, it was. I guess. I only saw BoingBoing's breathless "OMG Bush <3 Satan" post updated three or four times, after all. (Someone was so excited at the prospect that he even made T-shirts.)

Megatokyo frenzy!

Today, Scott Kurtz posts a reaction to the Internet furor over his snipe at Megatokyo (quoted here).

Mega-blow up
It looks like there's been a lot of fall out from the stupid joke I cracked this weekend about the parting of Megatokyo founders Rodney Caston and Fred Gallagher. First, Fred vomited up this big "confessional", followed by a sort of apology for over reacting. Then Rodney's blog got slammed by Fred haters and my inbox got flooded with people who wanted me to do everything from issue a written apology to prepare for a lawsuit over my "slanderous actions."

The internet means never having to forget what highschool was like.

I have to tell you, I think Kurtz is hilarious. He is almost an Internet badass.

I say "almost" because (at least, according to this guy) he removed his original post about MT. A real badass would, like Eric Burns, stand by his words, whatever they were. This has the bonus effect of making you, perhaps, think before speaking.

I have personally decided never to delete anything off my site, though my reasons are more egotistical than anything. Basically, I love myself, and I want to share all my thoughts with the world. All of them. Even the ones that would hurt people. Which is why I didn't delete this post, or this one, or this one, even though I hurt people's feelings with them. Ultimately, I'm leaving them there for history, so that my biographers will have a complete picture of what kind of person I was.

(Please don't call the guys in white coats on me for expecting to have biographers. It's my happy ego-dream.)

Since those three posts I have been more careful about what I write here, thinking long and hard before mentioning someone by name. That's a part of who I am, too; while I'm not fond of censoring myself, I realize that this journal isn't just for me and my biographers. It's read by people right now, and I have to respect those people.

How far can you go? That's a question I've struggled with; the line is being constantly negotiated by every single person who self-publishes on the Internet. But to me, making a hurtful post is less of an offense than deleting a post. The first is excusable (and even funny, like Kurtz's rants), but the second just seems like lying, or covering up the evidence. Once something's been published, you can't ever take it back. Not in the Information Age. Trying to do so only makes you seem untrustworthy.

So that, my friends, is my one and only beef with Scott Kurtz's rants.

Separate but not unequal?

Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter: Men and women use different brain areas to achieve similar IQ results, UCI study finds

I remember, back when I was in high school, having a furious debate with Michael Jennings via email over the differences between men and women--I was arguing that they were different yet equal overall, and he was arguing that "separate is inherently unequal", citing Brown v. Board. I did not consider a comparison of the sexes to be analogous to a comparison of races, especially since the "separate" mentioned in this case refers to the quality of education, not to the actual people involved. To wit: "We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." I also was unimpressed with the notion of allowing court cases to dictate one's personal ethics. Unfortunately, I wasn't very eloquent back then, so I think I ultimately lost that debate.

After all these years, though, it looks like I get the last laugh!

Ahahaha!

;P

(Side note: I don't know what Michael would say about that debate now. This was, like, nine years ago, or something. Hell, I could have even misinterpreted what he was trying to say...but the debate/argument had a profound effect on my opinions, so I cite it as I remember it.)

"Ethics are a luxury for people who can afford new pants."

It's so true...

The Gameguard vulnerability has been Slashdotted

...but unfortunately it's not on the front page. You have to go to the Games section. I guess everyone who plays games will go there, so it's not a big deal, but it still would have been cool to see it right there on the home page (not to mention receive it in my RSS feeds).

Here's the article: NCSoft to Roll Out Hackable Anti-Hack Software

(That Ryu Connor guy sure is sexy...)

God, I love Language Log

"Nearly all strings of words are ungrammatical"!

But celebrating their religious observances in home and church is a clause with celebrating as its verb, not a noun phrase with observances as its head. The word celebrating cannot possible [sic] be an attributive modifier with observances, because their, a genitive pronoun, follows it; that cannot be anything but a determiner, and determiners precede attributive adjectives. (Genitive pronouns cannot serve as attributive modifiers: phrases like *the my house or *an our cat are utterly ungrammatical.)

I also love that I found a typo. In Language Log.

Just caught up (finally) on Naruto manga

O_O

Way too many cool things happened...Naruto vs. Sasuke, Sakura finally on the road to becoming useful (yeesh), and then Kakashi's backstory...when it said "Uchiha Obito" I gasped aloud, "It's his eye!!"

Damn!

I am a total Narutard. And I'm unrepentant!

Serious security hole in proposed addition to some NCSoft games allows hackers full access to Windows computers

Here's a somewhat poorly-written (maybe I just don't like his style) article on the subject, and here is the BUGTRAQ report on the vulnerability.

You may recognize some names in those pieces. I know nuhzing! ;>

Incoming squid

Hundreds of giant squid are washing up on Orange County beaches [...] The bug-eyed sea creatures, believed to be Humboldt squid, normally reside in deep water and only come to the surface at night. Why approximately 500 of them began washing up on the sands of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on Tuesday isn't clear.

It's funny that no one even speculates that the tsunamis might have caused this. I mean, sure, the world is huge, but so were the effects of those earthquakes. Just looking at an overhead view of where the earthquake took place, one might expect that the islands to the east blocked all the waves. But what if the islands themselves shook (which I imagine happened), causing further undersea turbulence beyond the main affected area? The squid could have been startled out of their deep sea habitat and then washed along with lesser waves.

Just a thought; I'm no seismologist/geologist/whatever.

(Speaking of the tsunamis...the estimated death toll--I am really starting to despise that term--has topped 226,000 people, while the true number of deaths may never be known.)

Snowflakes actually look like those little paper cutouts I used to make

I am amazed at the beauty and intricacy of these snow crystals, archived by the Buffalo Museum of Science. Here's the homepage of the project, which seeks to preserve the wonderful work of Wilson A. Bentley. (Via BoingBoing.)

I don't know why it surprises me so much to see that snowflakes actually look how we're taught they look in school. I guess I always thought of paper snowflakes as flights of fancy that had little basis in reality. But it turns out that they really do; even the ones I made up from scratch are similar to these pictures. Astonishing, and beautiful.

Today's Sluggy is awesome!

"All I wanted was a twin brother! And now...the shame...the horror...the smell..."

Unbelievable

Someone posted, parenthetically, the following:

I probably learned it when I was teaching myself basic nuclear physics in grade school. Yeah, I'm a geek. ^_^;

He should have said, "Yeah, I'm an insufferable braggart."

You'd have to pay me to get me to go back to high school, but this guy...

The url is scary ("school_intruder"), but the story is actually pretty funny (sad, yes, but funny, damn it).

A homeless man with nowhere else to go says he went back to his old high school and posed as a student for three weeks, sitting in on classes, showering in the locker room and sleeping in the theater.

"Anywhere I could hide," Francisco Serrano said from jail Wednesday after he was arrested twice at Apple Valley High.

Here's a great quote for you

The four people arrested in last night's meth lab bust have been charged with crimes.

Jaywalking, I hope. It's a serious offense!

(Check out the picture in the article...looks like Anakin's up to his old tricks!)

Disgusting

I'm not even going to say anything. I'm just giving you a link. Feel free to speculate about why I think this is disgusting.

So I guess there's a stockpile of nerve agents in Richmond, Kentucky

Somehow, I didn't know that the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County is storing

two nerve agents: GB, better known as Sarin, and VX. Both are contained in projectiles and rockets. It also stores mustard agent in projectiles.

Nor did I know that

According to an assessment prepared for Congress, Madison's stockpile will pose the highest risk for terrorism in the nation two years from now because incineration will have been completed at other sites. It used area populations and the nature of the weapons stored at each site to calculate the risks.

That's just great, terrorist bait in my family's backyard...

(I'm supremely unsurprised at the left-leaning Herald-Leader's transparent attempts to blame this on the president, but it's still annoying.)

I've just discovered Topix.net

And apparently Augusta had some earthquakes yesterday! Funny, I didn't notice anything :D

There are some stories linked about the train wreck and chlorine leak in Graniteville, too.

Topix.net looks to be a great resource for local news!

19th century fortune teller

He was a Scottish professional golfer in the 19th century but he predicted bullet trains, driverless golf carts, televisions and digital watches.

In a book published in 1892 with uncanny echoes of 16th century French seer Nostradamus, golfer Jack McCullogh also predicted that women would start dressing like men and do all the work while their menfolk took to the golf courses full-time.

So, obviously, he traveled through time. My only question is...

...we have driverless golf carts?

No Internet for you!

Lots of furor over the California INDUCE bill. Cory Doctorow's rant is the funniest, as usual.

An extremist California Senator called Kevin Murray has introduced a Californian version of last year's Federal INDUCE Act, a law that proposed to make the very Internet itself illegal, for it bans producing, selling, offering, descirbing [sic] or building a network that can be used to share files unless "reasonable care" is taken to ensure that the files shared won't infringe upon copyright.

I have the answers

Today, while sitting at my desk fuming, I suddenly realized that the solution to all my problems is: real estate.

That isn't going to make any sense to most of you. But it occurred to me that part of my plan depends on something that someone I know already knows how to do. So I can concentrate on a different part of the plan. I can make a list! Assuming he's willing to work with me, things could really start coming together.

Vague, vague, vague! But it's good, I promise.

Grr...

I'm in the mood to write something that could get me dooced. Obviously I'm not going to, but I wanted to let you know ;P

I have defeated you, Old Man Winter!

Ahahahahahaha!

Seriously, the two pairs of pants were really helpful. I think I could have done with boots rather than sneakers. I had some snow boots at one point, but I think they got smushed and partially melted in my car and I threw them away. My ears were nice and cozy due to the toboggan, and my hands were fine with the gloves. My legs started to get a little chilly towards the end of the ride. My nose, though relatively unprotected, was okay because I had my coat zipped up all the way, and it actually reaches up to my nose, meaning my warm breath was trapped there to keep things cozy. It didn't even matter that my hair was wet; I didn't even really notice it until I arrived, took off the coat and toboggan, and thought, "Did I really sweat this much?" Then I remembered that I took a shower ;>

And I wasn't late! Yay!

So what if it's 22°?

I am now wearing two pairs of jeans, two pairs of socks, and a sweater, and I'm about to put on a toboggan, gloves, and my coat. Bring it on.

I'm also going to be late if I don't hurry up and leave already...

Some good reading

Sam has a great post up, covering two completely different subjects. The first bit is a response to the article I linked earlier today about Aubrey de Grey. It is the most interesting part of Sam's post to me; in fact, it made me think of this post I made this morning about eliminating extreme poverty. I wondered, after I posted it, if it could ever really happen, if the richer nations would take responsibility and give what they needed to. It made me seriously want to write a letter to my president, and I may yet do that. Sam's discussion of ethics broadens that topic to a general responsibility for our actions that many feel is lacking in the world.

The second part of his post is a nice discussion of issues of masculine and feminine roles in our society, and is also well worth reading. For me a lot of it seemed to be common sense. What's interesting (and a little irritating) is that that sort of opinion may not be all that common.

I love this show

Clark: You know, I was wondering...what if Chin is the hooded robber?
Lois: ...a mild-mannered reporter, really a superhero? Clark, please.

-Lois & Clark season 2 episode 11

Why's everybody sad today?

Is it the air pressure?

It's really weird...

...when you're humming along to a new piece of music, and you're doing the harmony, and suddenly the melody does exactly what you're humming.

I typically have good instincts for stuff like this, but when it's exact like that, it's kind of spooky.

(I suppose I should disclaimdisclose that this piece isn't exactly "new"; it's "The Steward of Gondor" from Return of the King. But I really haven't listened to it all that much, and I was fully expecting the melody to continue as it was going...)

Neutral/Lawful Good

Saw this alignment test over on Chris' blog. Damn, the html it spits out for you is ridiculous.

You scored as Neutral Good. A Neutral Good person tries to do the 'goodest' thing possible. These people are willing to work with the law to accomplish their goal, but if the law is corrupt they are just as willing to tear it down. To these people, doing what's right is the most important thing, regardless of rules, customs, or laws. Lawful Good 90% Neutral Good 90% Lawful Neutral 70% True Neutral 55% Chaotic Neutral 40% Lawful Evil 35% Chaotic Good 25% Neutral Evil 20% Chaotic Evil 5% What is your Alignment? created with QuizFarm.com

As you can see, I tied Neutral and Lawful Good. It says I'm Neutral because I said that doing the right thing is more important than never stealing in the tiebreaker question.

Robots learn Japanese cultural dance

Slashdot has an interesting roundup today entitled "Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture". Lots of links! From the Yahoo! article:

Katsushi Ikeuchi, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University, said the robot, which is usually used at construction sites, was taught traditional Japanese dance to preserve the art for the future.

The slow-paced dance, which is performed in groups and accompanied by lutes and other Japanese instruments, is rapidly losing ground in 21st-century Japan, with many young people only encountering it at local festivals.

Unfortunately, the articles don't say what the dancing is called in Japanese.

Reigning empress?

From Japan Today:

Seventy-nine percent of people polled in Japan said they support a female monarch on the imperial throne, far outnumbering 4% who are against it, and 16% who said they are ambivalent to the idea, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Tuesday.

There's some good news for Koizumi in that article, too.

I previously mentioned the possibility of a female imperial ruler. To be honest, I think it would be neat. Maybe not as neat as a female prime minister...

Bad grammar, Mainichi!

The title of the article is "Taxman pays teen girl to fondle her breasts". However, later in the article we see that

Morimoto paid the third-year junior high school girl 20,000 yen to let him fondle her breasts at a karaoke box in Yokohama's Nishi-ku at about 3 p.m. on Sept. 11 last year.

So, you see, the tax man didn't pay the teen girl to fondle her breasts. He paid her to let him fondle her breasts.

Sheesh!

What's the point of network television anymore?

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character's posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

"We have to be checking and second-guessing ourselves now," Fox entertainment president Gail Berman said Monday. "We have to protect our affiliates."

Everything should just go to cable. Or, better yet, programming on demand. People could just order whatever shows they feel like watching, whenever they want them.

More on living for a long-ass time

David Pescovitz of BoingBoing links today to a lengthy profile of Aubrey de Grey. I previously mentioned his essay on why humans can live to be 1,000.

For reasons that his memory cannot now retrieve, de Grey has been convinced since childhood that aging is, in his words, "something we need to fix."

Fascinating guy, that de Grey.

It's cold

According to weather.com, it's:

23°F

and it

Feels Like
15°F

So yeah, I'm not biking to work today.

I am driving, though, and I'd better, like, leave now.

Ending extreme poverty

According to this article on MSNBC, a 13-volume report has been submitted to the UN that indicates that if all nations meet their promised amount of development assistance to poor countries--0.7% of each nation's gross national income--then extreme poverty would be eliminated by 2025.

I literally started to cry when I read this.

What is with the title of my previous post?

"PCs and lifestyle"? It makes it sound like English is my second language ;P

PCs and lifestyle

MSN and c|net are having something of a torrid affair, I guess. Here's an article they collaborated on. It's about PCs that fit a room's design.

Behold the $55,000 PC

At the end of the article they link to another one.

Is that a Media Center PC--or an end table?

My hand hurts, so I don't feel like retyping all the crazy thoughts these articles gave me. Instead, I'll just paste part of my chat with Brooke. Sorry for the laziness.

me (15:02:27): I'm reading some articles about designing furniture to hide PCs
me (15:02:43): there was a show I saw YEARS ago where someone had designed their living room to be a home theater
Brooke (15:02:48): oh yeah? neat!
Brooke (15:02:54): I've seen those; they're really cool
me (15:03:04): and all the electronics and stuff was hidden behind beautiful wood panels
me (15:03:11): but my favorite part was the coffee table
me (15:03:16): it had built-in controls for EVERYTHING
me (15:03:27): with like a mini LCD screen or something
me (15:03:52): I'm thinking it would be nice to have a specially designed coffee table with a fold-up section that would reveal a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
Brooke (15:03:56): oh NICE
Brooke (15:04:00): heheheheheh :-)
me (15:04:06): you know, it doesn't have to be especially fancy
me (15:04:15): just so it looks nice, and hides the peripherals ;>
me (15:04:26): you know what I also think would be cool...a recipe PC
me (15:04:29): for in the kitchen
me (15:04:39): of course, this is more silly
me (15:04:55): but it would have its own little printer so it could print recipes on 4X6 cards
me (15:05:05): and also a little LCD screen if you just wanted to look at it on there
me (15:05:20): and I think it should be able to access web databases of recipes...maybe through a subscription service
me (15:05:24): surfing the web would be too dangerous for that
me (15:05:32): you wouldn't want to get a virus in your dinky little recipe PC
me (15:05:41): it wouldn't even really be a PC, more of a function box
me (15:05:45): is there a word for that?
me (15:05:49): :>
Brooke (15:06:11): there's one, now....... ;-)
Brooke (15:06:17): recipe pc
me (15:06:24): it could be connected to the house's server, and all the recipes and things could be stored there
me (15:06:33): so basically, I'm thinking it would be a dumb terminal
me (15:06:53): man, there are so many cool things you can do with computers
me (15:07:04): I'd like to integrate them better into my lifestyle
me (15:07:14): right now if I want to do anything on them I have to come into the office
me (15:07:24): I'd like to have more convenience for tasks that I find useful elsewhere
me (15:08:30): "The design company's other prototype is a wall-mounted system with a removable 12-inch LCD screen; it can be managed from a distance with a remote control, or the screen can be detached to function as a tablet for someone relaxing on a couch. Becker said the idea is to have a display option suited to traditional PC tasks such as e-mail and Web surfing, tasks that are often clumsy at best when executed via the screen of a TV set.

"For the most part, Media Center is geared toward media," he said. "The idea with this is that you can also bring some of those common PC functions to the couch.""
me (15:08:32): see, that's kinda neat

Wow

From Cornell News:

A Cornell University research group has made a sweet and environmentally beneficial discovery -- how to make plastics from citrus fruits, such as oranges, and carbon dioxide.

I love science!!

ClanBOB's website is back up

...and the Life of Riley archives are available. No new comics, yet, unless you count Dreams in Digital, which I have no interest in whatsoever.

But it's still nice to see that they've finally got their website working.

From the new FAQ:

Q1 :: What happend to the Life of Riley (LOR) Comic?
A1 :: LOR has been around for over four years now and there is much more we want to do with the current story line. However, after ***MUCH*** deliberation it was decided that we are going to take an indefinate hiatus on the LOR project until we can dedicate the time we feel it deserves.

I'm looking forward to LoR's return :) Click here for the main ClanBOB homepage.

What do I want to do?

I have to do something. We're at a standstill right now. We can't move forward. All we can do is maintain the status quo.

Sometimes I think I would be glad to get another job, any job, just so we'd have more income. But when I actually go looking, I usually dislike the idea of actually doing the jobs I feel I remotely have a shot at getting. I apply anyway, and I do my best to tailor my resume, and I never get called. (Or I do get called, and go through a bunch of interviews, and then end up not having enough experience after all, something you'd think they could have weeded out by looking at my resume...)

Today I was so depressed at the thought of all the things I want and can't have due to money that I went to bed for several hours. As I was lying there trying to go to sleep and get everything off my mind, I thought, "I need to decide what I want to do, and then do something about it every day." But all I could think of as I drifted off was "learn Japanese". I don't think there is a whole lot of demand for that here in Augusta.

I had an idea recently, and I'm still considering it, but there's a startup cost involved that may very well be prohibitive. I could host it on this webspace, but that would limit my space and other options. Even if I got it all set up, I would have to spend money in order to gather the content (I don't want to be specific here, in case I actually end up doing it). Bleh.

But I need to do something.

Damn it.

A change of plans

I was going to go to Kentucky this coming weekend to put my dog out of her misery, but it seems that she isn't actually miserable. She is still able to eat and go to the restroom. She hasn't lost any weight. She still goes up and down the stairs, on her three remaining legs. She still gets excited when Ben arrives at the house (he's the one who always gives dog treats). She still licks the plates when the family's through eating. Every now and then, she'll show signs of discomfort due to the bulbous tumor sticking out of the side of her face, but these moments do not dominate her life.

She is still happy.

And so I have asked Mom to let me know if things get worse for her, if she gets weak or unhappy or begins suffering continual pain. If and when one of those things happens, it will be time to let her go. But I can't justify putting her down over some slight discomfort that doesn't even really interfere with her lifestyle.

I feel like I've been put through a wringer.

Grannymom

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

A 66-year-old Romanian woman gave birth to a baby girl Sunday after years of fertility treatment and was claimed by Romanian media to be the world's oldest mother ever.

Yep, that'll be me. Old and gray, and dying when my kids get to high school (optimistically).

Won't that be great?

"It means...fiery strength."

Via BoingBoing, here's a cool site called Hanzi Smatter that discusses silly Westerners getting Chinese characters tattooed on themselves without knowing what they mean. The most recent post has some hilarious video clips from an NBC sitcom.

Jeff recently discussed this phenomenon on Sushicam.