Fri Oct 01 1999 19:10:
Oops, I forgot to move the old NYCB into the archives. I need to
do auto-archiving, but I'm too lazy. That's the only reason.
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
Sat Oct 02 1999 07:19:
Dan and I want to write a game, for use when we get sick of XBlast
and FreeCiv. A networked game, obviously. Dan wanted to do a roguelike
game, but unless you have 100+ people playing, a networked roguelike
game is not that interesting. So I talked him out of that unless he
can come up with a way to make it interesting.
We have one really good idea, but it involves heavy 3D stuff.
So I don't want to do it straight off. When Dan wakes up I'm going
to try to sell him on a souped-up version of the classic Atari
2600 game Tank. I'm searching through Freshmeat to see if that's
been done already, and picking up any other interesting games as
I go along.
Sat Oct 02 1999 22:24:
We've started on the Tank remake, tenatively titled "Tank Carnage".
I'm doing the network support, Dan is doing the client. We're the
original Odd Couple! Once I get the message passing figured out,
the tank carnage can really begin.
Sun Oct 03 1999 15:15:
The Tank Carnage client can connect to the Tank Carnage
server, whereupon it obtains a level map and displays it on the
screen. It can also send commands to the server, although there are no tanks to receive them yet. The code is a mess. I hate C++!
Mon Oct 04 1999 07:16:
People dropped out ahead of me, so I am now, enrolled in
CS112. Only problem is, the paycheck I deposited Friday isn't
showing up in my bank account, so I'm not going to be able to buy my books today. I wonder
if they'll take my credit card.
Mon Oct 04 1999 07:22:
Yes, they will. So I'll do that.
Mon Oct 04 1999 10:37:
Someone is going crazy, and I hope it's not me. Last night I watched the
traditional Simpsons->Futurama->X-Files block (X-Files sucked; I think a policy of watching only episodes with aliens or the Lone Gunmen would be more successful than my current policy), and:
- There was stuff in The Simpsons that just plain made no sense.
I know about and understand the surreal aspect of the jokes on The Simpsons, but these
things weren't jokes, although they were portrayed as jokes. I don't
mean they were jokes that weren't funny. I mean they weren't jokes
at all. The fan belt? The air instead of Valium? {I, parents} just don't understand [how I could just kill a man]. Rather complicated multiple-reading sentence there.
- The commercials made me want to huddle up in a ball. Why? Why?
Why are today's commercials so fundamentally disturbing? Were they always like this?
Are the ad execs of America smoking crack (more than usual, I mean)? Are these commercials really supposed to make me want to buy these things?
- It's not Futurama's fault, but my repitoire of college party movies
is extremely limited, so I had to extrapolate a lot of the jokes this week. Same
as last week, actually, as I've never seen Titanic.
Mon Oct 04 1999 14:45:
So. I'm doing the log analyzer for segfault, and I finally get
Scott to log the referers for people who hit the site. And when
I analyze the logs I find that some of the referring URLs from Slashdot
have Slashdot usernames and passwords in them. We're getting 10-15 passwords a day. Turns out Mike
Popovic has been seeing the same thing in his server logs.
So I mail the Slashdot crew, and I get an email back from Rob
Malda that, basically, it's not a bug, it's a feature. They have a
thing where you bookmark http://slashdot.org/index.pl?op=userlogin&upasswd=xxxx&unickname=yyyy
and you can use that as your bookmark. So people go to that bookmark and it logs them in automatically, then they click on the segfault
Slashbox and get taken to our site and we get their username and password.
Malda sez: "When the bookmark is given to people it clearly states 'This is horribly
insecure, but some people want it anyway'. It's a dumb method, but
people are being warned of the risks."
So I don't know what moral can be derived from that, except
that a lot of people prefer convenience to security. And that if you want people's Slashdot
passwords, you should start a popular site and get a Slashbox for it.
Mon Oct 04 1999 15:11:
Your tax dollars at work, Israel:
Host: barzili.health.gov.il
Page: /~leonardr/articles/virgin/index.shtml
Last: http://www.google.com/search?q=virgin+defloration
Mon Oct 04 1999 18:23:
I'm at the LUG meeting. Dan is giving a talk on security.
I think CS111 might be just a scam to line Leonard Kleinrock's
pockets with royalties for his queuing theory book. We're talking
about a book published in 1975 here, selling for $95.
I couldn't find two of the books I need for my classes. Bleah.
At least the trip through the bookstore only took me about 6 minutes.
The line was long but they have learned from previous quarters and
had a whole lot of people in the checkout alcoves. So I only spent about 3 minutes in line.
Tue Oct 05 1999 13:24:
Sorry, the CS department network has been really flaky lately, as has the
new CSUA firewall. I'm going to move Crummy to leonardr.segfault.org
or crummy.segfault.org or something in the near future.
Tue Oct 05 1999 16:23:
Two of my professors today were wearing the same sort of plaid green
shirt that I was wearing. Weird.
Tue Oct 05 1999 19:23:
leonardr.segfault.org and crummy.segfault.org will eventually work.
Right now they just go to segfault.org. I have to restart Apache,
but since sith.segfault.org gets its DNS from linux.com, which
doesn't recognize it, sith itself doesn't recognize {leonardr,crummy}.segfault.org.
So I gotta wait. I'll try again in the morning.
Tue Oct 05 1999 19:54:
I did the guitar part for Sally O'Sally just now, so expect
that tomorrow, hopefully.
Mark Gave A Monkey Acid is turning into a very popular song. Dan was playing it for the guys in the LUG yesterday. It could be my surprise hit.
Tue Oct 05 1999 20:07:
Woohoo! Sorry, people
whose connections I cut off when I accidentally killed Apache.
Wed Oct 06 1999 07:46:
I waited until all my socks were dirty before I opened the new
socks I got two weeks ago, just so I could feel like someone who
buys new socks whenever the old ones get dirty.
Thu Oct 07 1999 17:16:
More segfault from me,
this one written in frustration so who knows how good it is, although Mike Popovic likes it.
I normally don't publish my own stories. But Scott is nowhere to be seen, and I checked this one
thoroughly with Dan, so...
Thu Oct 07 1999 18:20:
Leonard: Do you ever feel like there are aliens shooting a
nature documentary about you, or am I the only one?
Dan: I think it's just you.
Thu Oct 07 1999 18:40:
I forgot to mention that Kris' reign of terror as Daily Bruin
cartoonist began today. Behold The
Checkerboard Nightmare! A sudden (?) switch to a one-panel format
forced Kris to take refuge in hackneyed, punchline-oriented
humor, but he showed me one yesterday which is more his style, so
it'll pick up. Kris, for the life of me I can't think what the
music to that song would be like.
Fri Oct 08 1999 13:41:
Arrgh! More "Linux Myths" stories! My story was supposed to put a
stop to all that! Arrgh I say!
Someone left a big box of 240 tiny boxes of Raisin Bran Crunch
in the kitchen. Apparantly the managers. But that's a whole lot
of cereal. And a big waste of packaging.
Fri Oct 08 1999 19:17:
I attended Mike Popovic's (I wonder if I should just start calling
him Mike) Abacus World Expo keynote. His best line:
I cannot comment on that at this time, but yes.
I wish I'd said that (Oscar Wilde: You will, Leonard, you will).
Anyway. I have another segfault story ready to go. Sometime this
weekend, or on Monday.
Sat Oct 09 1999 20:37:
CGI works on sith now, but I'm going to hold off for just a little
bit longer until I get crummy.com hosted on there. Crummy's
long wanderings will finally be over.
Sun Oct 10 1999 08:55:
I saw a billboard yesterday, for a credit card. The credit card was
said to be "Y3K compliant". The expiration date on the sample credit
card had two digits.
I saw another billboard. It was for 1-800-Flowers.com.
I woke up screaming. Initially relieved to be awake, I soon realized
that I had seen those billboards before going to sleep the previous
night. I screamed some more.
Mon Oct 11 1999 10:20:
I just broke the sunglasses Mae Ling gave me. Yes, broke. I did
not lose them. I broke them. This is the first time I have broken
sunglasses rather than losing them.
Mon Oct 11 1999 19:46:
Went to some technology career fair. Never too early to start looking
for a job. eToys.com is a perfect match for me; an Internet
startup, a Linux shop, needing Perl and Unix people. The woman asked me if
I was free before June. Sorry, but I need to go to school.
I don't know if I should apply to scour.net again. I applied
for a summer job which I didn't get, but I don't know if I
failed their test or if they just didn't like my schedule. I'd ask
them outright except I know the guys personally and I don't want to put them
in an awkward situation w/r/t me. This is the week of career fairs
on campus; there's another one they'll be attending tomorrow. If Ilyah
is there I can bring the subject up; I know him well enough that
it won't be a problem, I hope. But I don't know if he deigns to visit career fairs.
The best situation for me would be to get hired by VA to work
on Segfault full time. But I don't think that's likely to happen. Even
if it did happen, they'd hire Scott before they hired me. They already
offered VA stock to him and not to me. They already drilled a hole in my throat. Oh well.
Memo to myself: do the dumb things I gotta do. Touch the puppet
head. Look up collegehire.com and save.com because they want to do the resume thing online. I can understand that.
Thu Oct 14 1999 10:35:
I have a bunch of new Leonardonics terms to write up
(eg. device, preposition-buzzword form, etc), but I'm too lazy. I
might as well do it now, since I don't have class for 20 minutes.
Thu Oct 14 1999 10:51:
Okay, go for it.. There are
a couple old ones I never linked to as well.
Thu Oct 14 1999 17:03:
Stuff I still have to explain, in Leonardonics or elsewhere: We're
your station, x; Forgot the gas card!; the pothead techie joke.
Fri Oct 15 1999 08:15:
Today's entertainment provided by people I know:
Fri Oct 15 1999 08:37:
Here's an artist's rendering
of that dinosaur, but I can't find a picture of the fossil yet. It
wants the crust from your sandwich!
Fri Oct 15 1999 10:26:
The first Are You An Organism? songs out of the gate are
Sodium
and Gamera and Swim
Free. Both are from an old tape which had recordings good enough
to dub, rather than re-record. I would have used this version of
Swim Free anyway, as I need Susanna to do the song.
Sat Oct 16 1999 12:42:
Fire is going down today for a big upgrade. So move to crummy.segfault.org.
I'll update that site before they take fire down.
There's an installfest going on. But I don't like installfests,
because they make me deal with hardware, and I'm not very good
with hardware. So I went home and am doing homework. I also put my
Slashdot code into action over on Segfault. It detects if you gave
us your Slashdot username and password via HTTP_REFERER,
shows your username and password to you, and links to an informative
page telling you what to do about it.
Sun Oct 17 1999 08:18:
This is the real site now. Still a few quirks and such. I gotta figure
out how to get the old site pages to redirect to the new site pages. I
mean, I know how to do it, but I don't want to change every single
page manually.
We experienced an earthquake yesterday, barely. Dan didn't
even wake up. I woke him up and he wasn't interested. He went back
to sleep.
Kris is covering Asia Carrera... with plastic wrap! No, I'm
kidding. Kris wouldn't do a thing like that. Kris is covering my song
Asia Carrera... with plastic wrap! Argh! I mean, I can't wait
to hear it. I don't know if that was preposition-buzzword form. It
would be, except the joke wasn't the preposition-buzzword joke and
"plastic wrap" isn't a buzzword. THE ANSWER IS NO.
Sun Oct 17 1999 11:47:
Let's try this again, like we did last summer.
Sun Oct 17 1999 13:20:
Kris pointed me to UnCook,
which he says gets rid of the Windows MP3 weirdness, which I believe
may have something to do with Windows browsers downloading MP3s as
the wrong MIME type. So get that program and fix the MP3s as you
download them, or something. Let me know how it goes.
Mon Oct 18 1999 13:34:
I'm redoing all the Dada Pokey stuff. So it'll be down and {funky, nonfunctional} for a while.
Mon Oct 18 1999 15:53:
Everything Dada Pokey is up to version 2.0, except for the Daily
Pokey viewer which I ran out of patience before I got to it. But
finally we're getting the post-haitus Pokeys in Dada Pokey.
Mon Oct 18 1999 16:01:
Stuff to do:
- Bring COPOUT to 1.0 (vote editing?).
Finish the Dada Pokey lister to do Daily Pokey YES
Set up cronjobs so that Daily Pokey works again
Add final pictures to Texas travelogue
Put up Coffee Junction pictures
- Leonardonics: "alleged"
Mon Oct 18 1999 16:36:
Okay, here are the Coffee Junction
pictures. Those aren't scanned from the actual pictures, and they're
not all the pictures I have, so there will be more once I get access
to a scanner.
Mon Oct 18 1999 20:04:
I went to an IBM thing. I got pizza. Celeste won a laptop! Wow!
I am in awe of Celeste's laptop-winning skills.
I ate nothing but junk all day. I bought a huge pastry and ate
that for breakfast, then I ate pizza for dinner. Bleah. At least
I didn't eat anything equally junky (or anything at all) for lunch.
Mon Oct 18 1999 20:43:
I added some more (9) pictures to the Texas travelogue, and split
it into three files so that it wouldn't be so graphic-heavy.
Well, so its graphic-heaviness wouldn't be felt so prominently.
This new batch includes such gems as Roswell Ford,
Satellite
Under Glass, and two new Quartzite pictures. I still have to thumbnail Gameroom, Roswell Bingo,
and (maybe) Spoooon. Then I should probably normalize all the thumbnails
and make it a full thumbnail thing instead of a combo thumbnail-big
picture thing. Then I'll be done. Not quite a year after the trip which
the travelogue commemerates.
Mon Oct 18 1999 20:53:
I'm just talkin' 'bout Leonard!
Tue Oct 19 1999 08:23:
I have this insane nervous tic in my right eye. It kept waking me
up last night, and it's driving me crazy now. Argh I say.
By rights crummy.com should work now, but for some reason it
doesn't. Stay tuned.
Tue Oct 19 1999 12:52:
While moving stuff to crummy.segfault.org, I accidentally deleted
madman7, the guided-hypertext CGI I was working on for Peter. Argh
again. I'm going to have to go back to an old version and rewrite
that.
Tue Oct 19 1999 13:30:
Gameroom and Roswell Bingo added to the travelogue. I decided
not to do Spoooon because I no longer remember what it was about
the spoon that made my mother mad. Look at that alliteration!
Tue Oct 19 1999 18:27:
Dada Pokey 2.0 is all working. The cron jobs are in place; Daily
Pokey (which has a great new archive system) will be updated every
night, as it was before, and the Pokey archives will be checked
for new strips every Friday.
Wed Oct 20 1999 15:48:
I'm listening to Kris' cover of Asia Carrera, which he sent me.
It's great. I'm kind of tired of listening to the original version,
but the cover makes it new again. The vocalizations, the phony
coffeehouse setting, everything aces. A couple of nitpicks, which I'm
sending over to him; we'll see what develops.
Fri Oct 22 1999 07:39:
The competition was keen, but Shaft retains his title as the cat
who's a funky sex machine for all the chicks. Don't forget to vote
in the new poll.
Fri Oct 22 1999 09:27:
COPOUT 1.0 is almost ready. I just have to do the admin password
checking and some kind of admin interface.
Mon Oct 25 1999 09:25:
He's a regular guy, your 'average Joe'. But must everyday situations
always end in disaster?
Tue Oct 26 1999 07:59:
From The Register:
"Research shows that women use the Web differently from men, most
typically using it to rapidly find solutions to otherwise
time-consuming problems," said Sarah Carpenter, VP strategy at
Freeserve.
Well, what damn stupid
things are men doing on the Web? This requires a poll. A rubric poll!
Tue Oct 26 1999 18:34:
Campbell was talking about the Monty Hall Paradox today, and I looked
at the source code for Monty Hall's Hall
of Doors, and I thought, "This Perl is so dingy!". So I rewrote it.
MHHD 2.0! Easier to follow, easier to understand, more wacky options
than ever before! The only thing I took out was the "play at home"
option, cause it messed up the code and I really don't think anyone
ever used it.
Tue Oct 26 1999 19:12:
I found the URL for the Salon interview with Illiad of User
Friendly, which interview will be published tomorrow. The
article links to Segfault, and someone from Salon checked the link
to make sure it was good, so it logged their referrer, which I
snarfed up.
Dan doesn't think it's at all cool that I read the interview before
anyone else. So I must turn elsewhere for validation.
I won't reveal the URL, but I will quote the (unintentionally)
funniest line: "as the open-source movement exploded over the last
two years, so did [Illiad's] fans." Ouch.
I suppose it's more a straight entertainment news story than an interview.
Wed Oct 27 1999 07:25:
Paleontologists have found bones indicating that the mighty mosasaur
was itself preyed upon
by huge, prehistoric sharks. Even more startling is the fact that
mosasaurs and sharks would often form nutty
vaudeville duos and tour the boards of the ancient seas.
Gotta love Oceans of Kansas
and its Real
Kansas Wildlife shirt. Also has more
cool artists renderings by Dan Varner, who did the vaudeville one.
Saber-toothed herring!
Wed Oct 27 1999 08:12:
Here's
the Salon article. If you knew a Salon article on a subject was
coming up, you could have a good chance of finding it ahead of time.
I don't know why I care.
Wed Oct 27 1999 08:20:
Looking through a list of O'Reilly books, going
up to June 2000. Handling Windows NT Logon Emergencies? How long before
my pushd and popd becomes reality?
Wed Oct 27 1999 16:24:
I just discovered that Dada Pokey was linked to from memepool.
I used to read memepool, but then stopped for some unspecified reason.
Wed Oct 27 1999 16:49:
Dada Pokey makes the weblog rounds, old chap!
Cardhouse claims
to have obtained it from PeterMe, which
doesn't appear to actually have a link to it anywhere.
Apathy
That appears to be it. Dada Pokey remains by far the most popular
page on my site.
Wed Oct 27 1999 18:53:
Dada Pokey linked to on PigDog,
not as an article but just as a link. Maybe they couldn't think
of enough sarcastic things to say about it.
Wed Oct 27 1999 21:23:
Dan wrote a program in Python that generates Slashdot headlines, and
I want to use it to write a song about Slashdot. But he changed the
focus to generating Jon Katz headlines, because the Katz headlines
it generated were way funnier than any of the other headlines, so
I'm just going to make up my own Slashdot headlines for the song.
Thu Oct 28 1999 07:47:
I called Scott up today and talked with him about the plan of
disabling comments and write-ins. He said go for it. So I did.
Am now bracing myself for the torrent of email. Also bracing myself for my phone bill.
Thu Oct 28 1999 08:04:
Dan improved the KatzDot thing while I was sleeping (while you
were sleeping), including moving it over to my suggestion of the
Dada Engine (not affiliated with Dada Pokey except in spirit). Some
samples:
- The Interactive Internet War, Digital Troubled Teens and Grief
- The Website Hysteria - Part One
- Beware The Online Music Industry Syndrome
- The Virtual Web: First Steps
- The Power of Digital MP3s and Geek Culture
Some of them are lousy, but most are pretty good. Good job, Dan.
Actually some of them are funny because they don't make sense ("Beyond the Open Source Hellmouth"). Dan and I were debating whether a good KatzDot engine would have those or not.
Thu Oct 28 1999 15:11:
Over 20 messages so far; only 4 have anything negative at all to
say. I think I made the right decision. But the tough work of
coming up with a system that functions correctly is still ahead.
I got a perfect score on my logic midterm. At last, Smithers!
A perfect score! But argh! I have a music history midterm and a
database project due Tuesday! Argh!
Thu Oct 28 1999 19:27:
Dan's trying to get KatzDot to do the first paragraph of stories.
It's not going as well as the headlines, but the stories are
funny in a different way. "On Monday this society presented this society with morally superior
violence across the country of information as information opening a
whole new chapter in Internet. Jane's Intelligence Review is riddled
with mind-boggling education."
That may be as good at it gets. I'd be happy with more stuff in the headlines,
personally.
Thu Oct 28 1999 20:01:
The headline generator is still going strong: - The Hellmouth Demands Students
- Slashdot? Don't Believe It
- Lo-Tech Sexbots - Experience It!
- Microsoft, Sexbots and Kids
- Cyber-Terrorism: An Interactive Experiment
Fri Oct 29 1999 13:50:
At last! crummy.com is fully operational! Blast off, with CRUMMY.COM!
Interesting shift in usage of that bit. Anyway, woohoo!
Fri Oct 29 1999 13:58:
I forgot to thank Dan (aka load) of linux.com for his help in
configuring sith's named.
Fri Oct 29 1999 18:38:
What the hell? Here's a
Slashdot article about the comment disabling. But it's not on
the front page. Although it was posted at 9:30AM, it only has
about 10 comments, and we've only gotten 2 click-throughs on it.
What's going on?
Fri Oct 29 1999 21:08:
I got a haircut today. I told Dan, "I have to wash all the hair out of my hair."
Sat Oct 30 1999 05:46:
I got this fortune twice, which must be some kind of omen, or
maybe some kind of manifestation of some kind of "memoryless property"
of a random system.
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
Sun Oct 31 1999 19:35:
I feel like I have some bizarre disease, but it's probably just
my torturous music history midterm, which I had to triage everything
else to study for and which is still destined to meet my father in
a steel cage.
Sun Oct 31 1999 21:05:
What a rip-off! The allegedly incredibly disturbing and graphic
X-Files they're rerunning tonight is just the lame "Home"
episode! What a rip-off! Wait, I already said that. And they
bumped Futurama to next week, too.
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