Sun Aug 01 1999 08:59: I don't think caffeine has any effect on me anymore. I need to lay off for a while, I think.

Mon Aug 02 1999 08:38: I talked to Mike Popovic about my recording problems and he has Be QA on the case. It's good to have connections.

Mon Aug 02 1999 09:49: These green Crunchberries are so sick. I love it. They match my socks.

Tue Aug 03 1999 06:58: Freshmeat announcements... from the future!

Tue Aug 03 1999 07:18: I am writing my little paper contrasting Frederick Douglass and Jim from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I need 800 words. I have 362. I feel cheap comparing a real person with a fictional character, but what are you going to do?

Tue Aug 03 1999 08:31: Danny is making me an ommelette.

Now that I set up a logging thing, I can see that my site is getting 50-100 hits a day. This surprises me. I need to write a log analyzer or a program that converts my funky log format into a log format that one of the existing log analyzers can handle.

Wed Aug 04 1999 06:30: The cross-pollination continues as Mike Popovic writes another story for segfault. It's funny. Read it. As editor of segfault I demand more topical satire and less Microsoft-bashing!

Oh yeah, yesterday while we were doing the endless CSUA lounge cleanup, Mark got on Fred's case about Fred's endless Microsoft-bashing, and Fred and I were responding to every sentence Mark said by replacing words in that sentence to make it a Microsoft-bashing sentence. It was funny. That said, endless (or even substantial) Microsoft-bashing is, IMHO, not good. There's no need to make Microsoft-bashing your raison d'etre. That's French for "ethereal raisin".

Wed Aug 04 1999 06:32: Susanna is leaving for college on the 17th. She is going to BYU. Presumably she will have a home page there. I'm not too happy about her choice of college, but I'm not in charge of where Susanna goes to college or doesn't go to college. So I hope she does well. I don't think she has a major yet.

Wed Aug 04 1999 06:50:

Hi Scott! I see you searching for my name! That contact information page really works.

What does this mean?

http://www/V3/redirect.htm?URL=http%3A//fire.csua.ucla.edu/%7Eleonardr/comics/index.shtml,REFERRER=/tabsearch/,AD_ID=-1

Wed Aug 04 1999 07:18: Also, yesterday we decided that people should not wear Linux T-shirts to LinuxWorld Expo, because all the suits will be wearing Linux T-shirts, and if no real people wear them then it will be easy to spot the suits.

Wed Aug 04 1999 09:56: Susanna does not have a major. Among other classes, she has to take a "student development" class which will presumably guide her to a major.

I told Susanna she has to have a home page when she goes to college.

Surprisingly much of my math homework is done. I have to go turn it in now.

Wed Aug 04 1999 09:57: My big search engine hit-getters this week are "Poorman's Bikini Beach", and the perennially popular "Captain Planet" and its variations.

Wed Aug 04 1999 21:57: My paper is done. 1076 words. Now I will sleep.

Thu Aug 05 1999 06:41: Jake communicates with me through Altavista searches, in the same way I once communicated with Joe Barr through invalid page accesses. Noam Chompsky?

Thu Aug 05 1999 07:00: Hey, cool, I want to go to the GNU picnic.

Thu Aug 05 1999 12:34: Leonardonics: This x is insufficiently y!

I have to take my English final in a little bit. I'd better go figure out how to print out my paper.

Thu Aug 05 1999 17:20: csound is great, but its macro processing sucks. I'm going to have to write Perl programs that generate csound scores. In the meantime, you can listen to my still-unfinished csound masterpiece, Annoying Techno Music, from the version 1.1.2pl14 page. That's as much csound as I can stand to do without being able to make repeated phrases into functions. If I pointed you to that file earlier today, it's updated now, with two more measures of annoying techno goodness.

Thu Aug 05 1999 19:15: Another version of Annoying Techno Music. It's now generated by a Perl script. I now realize that Perl scripts have their own problems when it comes to generating music. However, I suppose I can avoid those by just having it print csound stuff in a print <<.

The little ditty in bars 10-11 is stupid and needs to be changed. I like the fact that I did a 15-bar song that doesn't sound weird because of it.

Fri Aug 06 1999 07:49: I am getting tired of {dandelions, my Texas travelogue}. I keep having to go through it to fix things and I am getting tired of reading it. But don't you get tired of it.

Fri Aug 06 1999 07:51: "Noam Chompsky" is Jake's misspelling (intentional? he knows how to spell it) and not mine. I reproduce below his altavista query, which will not make sense to you because it is in response to an email I sent to him, pertaining to a song I wrote about Mark Fasheh:

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&q=leonard+richardson%2e+this+is +jake%2e+your+new+song+sounds+awesome%2e+i+harbor+strong+feelings+towards+ superintelligent+monkeys+myself%2c+although+in+my+version+they+all+wear+rumpled+ suits+like+noam+chompsky+and+speak+in+english+accents%2e+if+push+comes+to+shove+you+ can+always+output+the+drum+machine+to+tape+and+then+play+it+back+into+your+multi+ tracker+and+record+on+top+of+it%2e+well%2c+i+think+i%27ve+proven+my+point%2e+ your+pal%2c+jake+berendes+%2b%22leonard+richardson%22&stq=10&c9k

Fri Aug 06 1999 07:58: The fact that I can correctly spell Noam Chomsky's name is evidenced by my personal notebook, in which the June 22 entry makes reference to his sinister Chomsky Hierarchy of Grammars.

Fri Aug 06 1999 14:39: Today was Nina Garcia's last day at MAP. Her arrival is chronicled in the May 1998 NYCB, in the 05/06 entry.

Fri Aug 06 1999 17:17: I got an email from Campus Events:

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
...
Director Colin Ebling chose to use the rave culture phenomenon as a metaphor for the show. The text has not been changed from its original format. However, the show and its characters appear as never before. Surrounded by his colorful Apostles dressed in layers of day-glo and beads, Jesus (John Torres) suffers for us all, once again.

I'm no expert, but wasn't once enough?

Fri Aug 06 1999 18:13: 6 new graphics in the Texas travelogue, including two from Roswell.

Fri Aug 06 1999 20:05: I am attempting to MP3ify the tracks from Nowhere Standard Time. The results are not that great, but they're probably on par with a dub of the master. I'll let you know how it goes. Yes, you personally.

Fri Aug 06 1999 21:09: Does anyone have the liner notes I wrote for BSD and NST? Because I don't. And I don't want to write them all again.

Fri Aug 06 1999 21:20: Also, if you were to manufacture a robotic giant, wouldn't you make it out of something more durable than iron?

Sun Aug 08 1999 22:08: Jake's Birthday Party got a hit for someone searching for "Mulder's Birthday". The "Now, Mulder, this is silly" verse is still the best verse of JBP. I don't know why I say "still" as though I had added verses since I first wrote it.

(unrelated) Dan, is that you?

Sun Aug 08 1999 22:17: I'm toying around with the Porcelain Puppy trilogy. I'm considering turning what is currently called OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO into an unrelated album (since it is largely unrelated to the trilogy), and putting a new OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO at the end of the trilogy, which actually would take place 24,996 years after PPvDD. Idunno. It beats studying for this stupid matrix midterm. The sequel to The Matrix should be called The Matrix of T with respect to B and B'.

I justify my idle musical speculation by pointing out to myself that I am actually doing recording right now, for the first time in a while. I'll be doing more recording once the BeOS is fixed. A pox upon closed source software!

Sun Aug 08 1999 22:26: I don't think I mentioned this; I'm done with English. I expect a solid A, because my final essay was much better than the wretched midterm essay (which recieved an A), and my paper was good.

Mon Aug 09 1999 06:58: Inverses: the bad boy of the cosmos!

Mon Aug 09 1999 07:06: Also:

roll out the scalar, we'll have a
scalar of fun

These should go in the personal notebook so as not to clutter up NYCB, but Snoore's Law is kicking in and I am stupid enough right now to find these things hilarious.

Mon Aug 09 1999 07:09: Good thing I made that reference to today's top segv article, as a check to find the link revealed that I had neglected to publish it. You see what I mean?

Mon Aug 09 1999 07:30: Bwahahaha! My scam to get a free LWE pass worked! No, actually the LWE people are being nice and letting me pick up a badge at the event since I never got the one they allegedly mailed me.

Mon Aug 09 1999 12:53: Bleah. That midterm sucked. I did well on the proofs though.

Mon Aug 09 1999 14:29: I got an 88 on that midterm, which will be bumped up to an A due to the lousy curve. As Cap'n Crunch would say, Yeee!

Mon Aug 09 1999 18:08: Woohoo! I can make NST MP3s! The sound quality is between as good as the masters (eg. the skits) and distorted in certain registers but servicable (eg. the songs, to varying degrees).

They're going up on linux.ucla.edu (I'm near quota here) as soon as I meet some unspecified goal, such as recording the rest of the second side (I started at Aah, Ricky!, so that's most of the second side; I'm at now.)

I'm using a KDE program called krecord. I had to mess with the makefile to get it to it compile, but it works.

Mon Aug 09 1999 19:45: The word on the MP3ification is variable. Most of the skits, Arbitron, The Chickadee, Malibu, and possibly others are perfect, Asia Carrera, Relativity, and others have distorted vocals. Is is my {breath, MP3 encoder}? I'm using bladeenc. The stuff from the second side is screwed up (with the exception of Malibu) due to improper mixer settings. You have been warned. Download away!

Mon Aug 09 1999 20:22: Listening to Nowhere Standard Time again, two years after its release: a review by Leonard Richardson

Arbitron and Relativity are really the unsung heroes of this album; both pack a double-precision punch. I Screw Up Everything I Touch may no longer be my masterpiece (I have unreleased songs which I think might rival it), but it's still up there. Asia Carrera is funny in at least five different ways. Revolution in A Can kind of emberasses me; I can see what I was trying to do, but I don't think it really worked. Vertigo and Malibu are awesome. The Drool cover is a pleasure to listen to, except for the parts where I have to sing notes I can't reach.

Minnesotan People Having Sex is stupid, but it would have been less stupid if Carlos had said "You betcha!" a couple more times. All the other skits are still funny, except for the ones that weren't really supposed to be that funny; Atari, Still Dying, and (to a lesser extent) the Seinfeld bits.

The performance is fairly amateurish in parts; When I Was Young, The Chickadee, etc. I have a fundamental problem with keeping a beat; that's another thing that helped bring about the downfall of Revolution In a Can. I wish I had enunciated the lyrics more clearly in Bastille Day, but the tempo was too fast.

I don't think Literacy Rate does a good job; it's certainly not as cool as its name would indicate. Death and Destruction and Don't Leave Me Here (Over There Would Be Fine) do what Literacy Rate should do but doesn't. Choppy The Pork Chop and Posture Pal do that and more, kicking my sorry butt up and down the block while they're at it. Circus fails in the same way as Revolution In A Can, but it was never intended to be as good as Revolution In A Can, so I don't feel too bad about it. Radio Free Singapore still works very well, less so, but still okay. Confectioner's Sugar was a throwaway in the first place. The Chickadee is not as good as Jake's remix of it. And the Theme is still unmatched for hidden meaning per word. And that's all the songs, all the real songs anyway. I'm not going to discuss all the skits because I discussed them as a group further up.

That's my review. Tell me what you think.

Tue Aug 10 1999 04:42: I am leaving soon for the airport. I have to pay an hour before the flight. I will be waiting for the flight for as long as I will be on the flight.

My backpack is full of clothes so I need an auxilliary container. I asked Ellina Poulson (who is kindly taking me to LAX) if I can use a briefcase. I don't know if a briefcase is the sort of thing you have lying around the house. If not, I will have to use a Trader Joe's bag to contain my books. I would rather use the briefcase as I can use that at LWE. But as I said, I don't know if she'll have a spare briefcase.

I have a piece of paper which contains all the information I will need to survive from now until I get back. Except for the obvious stuff like not running into walls. Wait, I don't have Mae Ling's cell phone number. Okay, I do now. If I get stranded at the airport or something, Mae Ling will save me. I hope.

Whenever I write a capital "R", I automatically write it with a double bar, making it the symbol for the real numbers. I'm fairly sure this is because the only time I actually write on paper is in math class.

The white zone is for loading and unloading only.

Tue Aug 10 1999 13:52: This is leonardr reporting live from Linuxworld Expo. I'm doing time at the GNU booth with Mae Ling. I have shed my jacket for a cool purple and yellow GNU bowling shirt, which I get to keep even. Woohoo! Miguel De Icaza is talking with some KDE guys about CORBA.

Tue Aug 10 1999 16:20: I'm writing this on Garrett's mighty laptop. I met ESR and totally botched the interaction with him. Mae Ling and I gave out FSF party invitations to all the exhibitors on the show floor. Then we lay on the inflatable couch because our feet hurt. Garrett gave me another linux.com T-shirt.

Tue Aug 10 1999 17:09: Mae Ling ran off with ESR somewhere. I'm stuck manning the FSF booth with another guy. Bleah.

Wed Aug 11 1999 21:23: Mae Ling and I should be a comedy duo.

L: What airport are we picking up your friend at?
ML: Don't end a sentence with "at"!
L: At what airport are we picking up your friend at?

Fri Aug 13 1999 08:12: I consistently and thoroughly missed Mike Popovic at LWE, so Mae Ling and I are going down to {Los Alamos, Menlo Park} to have lunch with him.

In Chinatown there is a store that sells magentic bracelets (yes, only one). The copy on the boxes for these bracelets reads something like:

For hundreds of years, it has been believed that wearing magnets increases blood flow and enhances well-being. Any metal cleanser will keep your bracelet lusterous.

Note how this differs from:

For hundreds of years, it has been believed that wearing magnets increases blood flow and enhances well-being. For hundreds of years, it has been believed that any metal cleanser will keep your bracelet lusterous.

Fri Aug 13 1999 08:18: I'm going to be mentioned on LinuxWorld again, but the story isn't up yet.

Sat Aug 14 1999 20:12: Yesterday, in accordance with prophecy, we went down and had lunch with Mike. He's quite a guy. We have pictures in Mae Ling's camera which may eventually see the light of day. A pair of symmetric bunny-ears pictures, one outside, one in Mike's cubicle. Mike has a BeBox. It's an incredibly cool piece of hardware. All those ports in the back make me drool.

I'm going home tomorrow. I'm going to have to catch up with my math; I think the final is on Thursday. It was worth it to come up here, though.

In San Jose, near the convention center, there is a carpet store. There are big signs in the window saying "Remnant Sale" and "Remnants 80% off". This sparked off a great running joke about Scott James Remnant, which generally involves me doing my stupid British accent that sounds nothing like Scott, but it's supposed to be Scott selling himself in the manner of a used car salesman. "Hurry! I'm going fast!"

Sat Aug 14 1999 20:34: The LinuxWorld story is up now.

Mon Aug 16 1999 08:25: Okay, I'm home. I didn't lose my keys after all. More later.

Tue Aug 17 1999 08:22: Susanna is leaving for college today. My mother is taking her down here and we are going to have lunch. Then off she goes on the plane.

Wed Aug 18 1999 08:42: Last night I finished Pity Me and Platform Independance Day, two songs that have been languishing around unfinished for years. I also chipped away a little at Cultural Integrity, which I doubt I will ever finish. Well, I only need like three more lines. I may finish it in another year or so.

Wed Aug 18 1999 08:51: Oh yeah, I'm writing a new song called Eric Raymond Thinks I'm A Spaz. So far it has nothing to do with Eric Raymond. It has everything to do with Brand's Traditional Essence of Chicken. This device has incorrect properties!

Wed Aug 18 1999 14:19: How good is "Organism Overdrive" as a band name?

I wanted to put up a poll asking that, but I can't find a poll program, and writing one involves doing work. Segfault's poll program uses a database, which is overkill for me.

If I know me, and I think I do, I'll probably get bored of studying tonight and write a poll program then.

Thu Aug 19 1999 00:19: The vote program is good enough for folk. Once more I retain my title as king of silly acronyms with the Cheezy Online Poll Of Useless Things. I'm going to sleep.

Thu Aug 19 1999 07:36: I folded the opinions into the articles, clearing up that big titlebar a little. The features are next to go, maybe.

Thu Aug 19 1999 07:54: I think I would like to live in Menlo Park after all. It's very nice, not Silicon Valley-ish at all. I hear it's really expensive, though.

I should probably be studying.

Thu Aug 19 1999 11:14: The steel cage still vibrates from the meeting of me and the father of the math final. I finished 20 minutes early. I can't see where I could have made a single mistake. Oh, wait, I forgot a square root which screwed up a normalization which gave a vector twice the value it should have had. So that's a couple points off.

Thu Aug 19 1999 11:56: A in English, almost certain A in math.

Thu Aug 19 1999 12:46: Why didn't anyone tell me that the vote was screwing up the front page in Netscape?

Thu Aug 19 1999 13:14: COPOUT is improved. I need to put it on the devel page, and revamp the devel page while I'm at it.

Thu Aug 19 1999 14:40: I added some comics to comics/, and rearranged pix/. There are front and back pictures of the Cascadia Megathrust Subduction Event T-shirt in the misc pictures of me section.

Thu Aug 19 1999 20:07: According to the public, Organism Overdrive is not a good name for a band. I'll leave the poll up over the weekend while I try to think of another name to put on the poll.

Thu Aug 19 1999 20:21: Argh. I don't have anything to do. I'm waiting for my mother to pick me up and I have absolutely nothing to do.

Sat Aug 21 1999 19:36: I really hate San Francisco. It's so ugly. Admittedly, I am in a very bad mood right now, but I hate San Francisco even when I'm in a good mood.

Sat Aug 21 1999 20:10: Consensus is that "Organism Overdrive" sucks as a band name, so I'm going to put my old band name on the chopping block now. If you voted before, vote again. I can take it.

Fri Aug 27 1999 09:44: I'm here, but I'm laying low so that Scott won't make me work on Segfault. Also, my life is changing at a rate more rapid than I am used to, and I need to recalibrate. I don't know how not doing anything will help me recalibrate, but I don't know what else to do.

I'm trying to write a log analysis program. I'm also moving to another apartment, on Saturday. I'll be living with Dan Helfman, when he moves in around the middle of September. La la la la life goes on.

I don't want to say "Dan Helfman" and I don't want to say "Daniel Helfman", which obviously leaves me in a fix. I want to say "Danny Helfman", for obvious reasons, but I don't think he would like that. Possibly I will call him Dan informally, and witten formally. Or vice versa. Let me know, Dan.

I'm probably going to keep "The Open Standards Band", as people generally think it's okay. I'm going to do a poll on "Sunshine Unit" just to see what people think, as I'm still thinking about doing an album based on the fictitious cover art I did for Susanna. I'm certainly not going to do more than one album as Sunshine Unit.

My mother: People who say bad things about L.A...
Me: Live in New York.
My mother: Aren't really talking about L.A., they're talking about the suburbs here.
Me: Oh.

Sat Aug 28 1999 07:17: Okay, I've had enough of this. I invented the term "open sores software" in 1998, and I'm tired of people using it like it's some kind of brand new hilarious sarcastic joke. It was funny once. Once! And I did the once! Last March! So knock it off!

Sat Aug 28 1999 10:03: My packing up reveals that I no longer need the karaoke machine (the machine I recorded BSD, NST, and the rough draft of OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO on). I haven't needed it for months, and I don't even have any microphones that fit it anymore (it takes standard 1/4" jacks, but my only microphone is one of those professional-looking three-prong deals). I'd like to give it to someone who would use it for home recording, but there are logistical problems inherant in getting it to anyone. But if you want it or know someone who does, let me know. It still works fine.

Sat Aug 28 1999 14:50: The Penguin Computing ad on Linuxtoday asks "How do you get 21 penguins in a rack?" It advises purchasing the Penguin 200, as "you can fit 21 servers on a standard rack". However, this assumes a needlessly wasteful policy of one penguin per server. With eight penguins per server, you'd only need three servers to get 21 penguins on a rack. One server can handle eight penguin processes without a problem.

Also, I just realized that instead of remembering "Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November", you can remember "four, six, nine, eleven". It's easier to memorize and it's also faster to go through. Or, if you're an EE type, you can turn the numbers into binary, make a Karnaugh map, and get "a₃ v a₄a₁".

They laughed at my theories! But now I'm laughing... at them! AH HA HA HA HA!

Sat Aug 28 1999 15:21: If you visit my site on any kind of regular basis (ynn.com, infoave.net, bellsouth.net, saunalahti.fi (!), etc.), let me know who you are 1) because I'd like to know, 2) so I can change the Browser Greetings program to greet you. Thanks. If you don't want me to know who you are, at least tell me that. Through BAH/HumBug or something, Idunno.

Sun Aug 29 1999 12:33: More search-engine saps I feel sorry for:

"music theoretician" -> "I'm sure there's a technical reason behind the mellowness of the extended power chord, but do I look like a music theoretician?" on the old music page (just now)

"ling ling potsticker sauce" -> separate discussions of Mae Ling Mak and of mix-your-own-sauce potstickers in my unfinished Spring LWE travelogue (all the way back in July, I only found this by accident just now)

That reminds me that I need to try and get those pictures of Mike and myself from Mae Ling so that we can do a BeDope/segv crossover type story or something. I should probably just have her mail them to Mike.

Sun Aug 29 1999 12:45: I don't have phone in my new apartment. I probably need to go somewhere and pay money to have it hooked up. So I don't have unternet at home. So I have to do everything on campus. In fact, there's really no compelling reason for me to go home at the moment.

I had Mongolian barbecue last night. It occurs to me that the pizza place I slag on in my Texas travelogue was actually no less sanitary than your average Mongolian barbecue place. Well, Mongolian barbecue places have tongs for the food.

Mongolian barbecue is excellent booze.

I got mail from daniel (another one?!) who is my ynn.com visitor. He appears to have a homepage, but it's on a dynamic IP so it's not up at the mo.

"Sunshine Unit" is doing better than I thought it would do.

I guess I'll go buy poster-hanging sticky stuff and then go back home.

Mon Aug 30 1999 08:05: Oh yeah, in the last episode of "My Word!", one of the guys said it had been thirty years since "the war". Assuming this refers to WWII, that confirms my suspicions of a late 60s/early 70s date for the recordings. At last count, "My Word!" is the only good thing to come out of the 70s.

Mon Aug 30 1999 08:41: This week's Information Week has these nutty pictures of Steve Ballmer on the cover. It's like "The Many Faces of Steve Ballmer".

Steve Ballmer cracks me up. I think I figured out his appeal to me. He's evil, but cheerfully so. I arrived at Demon Dog without going through Steve Ballmer, but the characters of the two are very similar, I think.

Nice overccast foggy weather today.

Mon Aug 30 1999 16:05: I wrote a song called "Social Chameleon" a few days ago and I can't stop {loving you, singing it}. It has both a Gilbert-and-Sullivan contrived rhyme scheme and frequent occurances of "the x of cephalopods", so I'm pretty much helpless against its mighty sticking-in-my-head powers.

Tue Aug 31 1999 06:19: Boy, when your subconscious pulls out some random bit of your memory to put in your dream, but the bit of memory it gets involves solving a system of linear equations, and your subconscious can't do math worth beans; that's when the in-dream hilarity begins.

Tue Aug 31 1999 06:29: By a certain, not unreasonable interpretation of the data, "Sunshine Unit" is doing better than "The Open Standards Band" did. The only thing I'm concerned about is that the opinions are more varied as regards "Sunshine Unit".

It just occured to me: is this even a valid way of picking a band name? It seems as though band names should be thought up and voted upon by the members of the band, preferably while drunk.

Tue Aug 31 1999 10:07: Mail You Can Bruise from Dan re his name.

Tue Aug 31 1999 12:06: I put COPOUT on /devel/, despite not having documented it yet, and revamped the devel page. It now looks a lot better.

Tue Aug 31 1999 12:13: I got an A in math, giving me straight As in my technical minor classes. My GPA goes up from 3.21 to 3.233. I doubt I'll get it up to 3.3 before I graduate.

Tue Aug 31 1999 12:17: Wait a minute, something is fishy. I didn't get any grade points for Math 115, and it only puts me down for 4 units last term. Possibly URSA is being flaky. So my actual GPA is probably 3.256 or therabouts.

Tue Aug 31 1999 12:24: I see what it is. The math class was in a different session than the english class. Even though my grade is in, my GPA hasn't been recalculated yet.