Sat Jan 01 2000 00:03:
Let's drink a toast to Crazy Legs!
Sat Jan 01 2000 00:03:
Let's drink a toast to Crazy Legs!
Sat Jan 01 2000 08:11:
I restrung the electric. It sounds a lot better now.
Sat Jan 01 2000 20:38:
I changed robotfindskitten to use ncurses 5. It also comes with a
binary now. It's still in devel.
Sat Jan 01 2000 20:39:
I refurbish verbed the noun. It posesses some new
quality now.
Sat Jan 01 2000 20:44:
The date format is kinda icky at the moment. Today's date looks like 20000101.
That's five zeroes in a row. Eew. Cooties.
Sat Jan 01 2000 20:50:
Hey, I have a bit part in the
new ZZT/Megazeux saga. And it's a singing part! And it's one more
cavern in the canyon.
Here is the fortune I got just now:
The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing. -- David Viscott
I think I will die without learning this lesson. So many lessons I will die without having learned. Like "don't die".
Sun Jan 02 2000 11:14:
Susanna's friend's nephew has a wooden duck which "goes waddling
across the floor making 'realistic duck noises'" and which,
bizarrely, is named after me. "They were deciding what to name it and Clark shouted
out the first name that popped into his head, and you are the only leonard
he knows, or knows of at least.", says Susanna.
Mon Jan 03 2000 08:01:
Huzzah! My Be Dope
story made Best
of Be Dope!
Mon Jan 03 2000 10:08:
eCow is back online. We apologize for the convenience.
Mon Jan 03 2000 10:24:
Hrmph. Scott ripped off the intentional-Y2K-breakage code I wrote
for Segfault, and put it on his own
{platters,site}. The joke is gone from Segfault, but it will
remain on netsplit until time immemorial, if I may mix my metaphors,
probably.
Mon Jan 03 2000 11:34:
Oh yeah, the new Mentos commercials are pale shadows of the old
Mentos commercials. I'm afraid Mentos may no longer be The Freshmaker.
The question is, if so, what is The Freshmaker now? (There must be a
Freshmaker, by the Law of Conservation of The Freshmaker)
Mon Jan 03 2000 14:08:
Scott claims that he didn't rip off my fake Y2K breakage code
(which is good, as the code was terrible), he just ripped off the
idea. I stand by my previous statement of "Hrmph."
Tue Jan 04 2000 08:21:
Wired
News has the story:
VA Linux Systems Inc., a developer of systems and services tailored to the alternative Linux operating system, said Tuesday that it will create a hosting service for so-called open source software projects.
Why don't they take care of the real open source projects before going on to the so-called open source projects?
Tue Jan 04 2000 11:35:
Behold Marvin Minsky's page! With all the third-person
biography you can stomach, and fun articles besides.
We all know the legend of the great mathematician who [was] warned that his proof would lead to a paradox if he took one more step. He replied "Ah, but I shall not take that step."
Wed Jan 05 2000 09:28:
First, there was Extreme Pizza Eating! Now, there's
Extreme Programming! The
geek population may never recover!
Wed Jan 05 2000 14:52:
I feel really, really bad that I couldn't think of anything funnier
than "Extreme Pizza Eating" to put in the previous entry. That entry
deserved better.
Wed Jan 05 2000 14:54:
I don't feel that bad. I feel a lot worse for other reasons.
But I wish I could have thought up something funnier.
Thu Jan 06 2000 06:26:
Is it fair to publish something like this?
I think it is. But why are they only picking on 4 or 5 guys?
Thu Jan 06 2000 06:35:
I don't understand the Amazon boycott thing. They take a loss on
every purchase you make, right? So the way to hit them where it hurts
is to buy a whole lot of stuff from them. The worst thing you
could possibly do is boycott them.
Fri Jan 07 2000 08:10:
Excellent. I was going to start writing Mahjongg Carnage and never
finish it, but someone else has written xmahjongg,
so I don't have to.
At one point Dan and I had a big argument over whether or not the solitaire version of Mahjongg was a "bastardized American version" (his exact words) of Mahjongg. I held that it was actually a different game that just happened to be played with the same materials, like Shisen-Sho, and that if you wanted a bastardized American version of Mahjongg you would have to look into the rule changes introduced upon the game's importation in the 1920s. Dan insisted on calling solitaire Mahjongg a bastardized American version of real Mahjongg, despite the fact that by the same logic, Klondike is a bastardized American version of Blackjack.
Fri Jan 07 2000 08:19:
Wait, never mind, xmahjongg is just another version of the solitaire
game, albeit one the authors of which are aware of the original game.
Fri Jan 07 2000 14:36:
All you trendy people who are getting pointed to Hyperdiscordia's Jusanotoron calendar
by your trendy web sites, be sure to also read the
rebuttal to it I wrote and Hyperdiscordia published, way back
in 1996.
Sat Jan 08 2000 17:28:
I bought this little bag of legumes for 79 cents at Trader Joes, wanting
to make soup with it. The rest of the stuff you need for the soup
(vegetables, tomato sauce) cost about $5. I didn't even get the celery.
Sat Jan 08 2000 18:32:
Guess what? I ruined the soup.
Mon Jan 10 2000 05:55:
I have class in 2 hours. Bleah.
Mon Jan 10 2000 06:39:
I think this guy might be the coolest person with an AOL homepage,
so cool that if you didn't know he had an AOL homepage and someone
told you, you'd say "No way!". Even more astounding, he actually has two AOL homepages, each of which contains one of the things I'm going to mention, and nothing else. On one is his
essay on the "bowling noir" art form, which is from his
book on The Big Lebowski. Just that ratchets him ten
notches above every other AOL page I've ever seen. But then he goes
off into this great rant:
By the time you finish this slim but magnificent volume, you'll have everything you need to know in order to make your very own Coen brothers film!
You heard us right! Who needs those two skinny Minnesotan oddballs? After you've read this paginated treasure trove of Coenana, you'll be able to create your very own offbeat, inaccessible, yet exquisitely crafted cinema that will leave audiences everywhere stupefied with delight! ...Right, boys?
Magnificent. I may or may not have to have that book.
Mon Jan 10 2000 07:50:
Whoops, I don't have class til 10. My EE discussion is tomorrow. Conveniently, both my discussions
conflict with my lab so I don't have to feel bad about not going.
Mon Jan 10 2000 14:11:
Inspired by Leonardonics, Scott James Remnant has posted
Scottish.
The page gives the impression that Scott's life is a continuous
sitcom in which strangers on the street proposition
Scott for sex, to which propositions Scott reacts with comic
astonishment.
Mon Jan 10 2000 18:36:
Apparantly the guy from whom my mother bought my Stop The Cascadia Megathrust
Subduction Event T-shirt (see /pix/1999/misc/) was predicting the Cascadia Megathrust Subduction
Event for the end of last year. He wrote a letter to the Sequim Gazette (forwarded to my mother by my great-aunt, forwarded to me by my mother)
explaining why no Cascadia Megathrust Subduction event had occured.
Surprisingly, the explanation was not that we had successfully Stopped
it. The explanation is that high atmospheric pressure had temporarily
deterred the Cascadia Megathrust Subduction Event, but that it
was still coming, mark you.
If I were this guy I would cut my losses and move onto something else, like model ships, but I don't have the emotional investment in the subject that he does. If I were to devise and implement a plan to actually Stop the Cascadia Megathrust Subduction Event once and for all, he'd probably punch me in the face.
Wed Jan 12 2000 06:51:
I'm working on getting the Totally MAD CD (which my mother gave me, thanks Mom) to work
under Linux. The first CD, which I assume to be a model for the others,
has a huge 500M file containing large numbers of JPEGs. There is also a
25M file which appears to contain an index. Unfortunately I can't
view the JPEGs because they're some weird nonstandard kind of JPEGs.
I sent one to Mike and he's going to get the graphics format guru at
Be to poke it with a stick. In the meantime, I'm going into the
CSUA lounge and installing in on the games machine, and seeing what
sort of temp files it leaves on the hard drive.
Wed Jan 12 2000 06:56:
I thought that Scott's quotes file only had Terry Pratchett
quotes in it, but just now I found one from me in there. So,
me and Terry Pretchett, pretty much. Living it up in Scott's quotes
file. Quotes database I should say.
Scott also put up the pictures of himself, myself, Garrett, and sometimes Illiad, so I can link those again from my never-to-be-finished (seriously) LWE travelogue.
Thu Jan 13 2000 06:42:
Blargh. My best current guess is that the JPGs are in some undocumented
format proponented (that's not a word) by a company called Pegasus,
which company is helpfully mentioned on the box the CDs come in.
Dan from Be says that the data might be encrypted somehow. That'd be
all I'd need.
I think that there are two factions within Be locked in a low-grade sort of mortal combat; one consisting of people with dull American names like Mike and Dan; and the other consisting of people with European names like Jean-Louis and Benoît, and that this internal struggle is what gives the BeOS its distinctive flavor. One day one side will triumph over the other, everyone on the losing side will change their name, and the BeOS will be altered forever.
Thu Jan 13 2000 06:43:
That last entry was not intended to offend anyone at Be. The people
at Be can take it, I know, so I guess this entry is to stave off anyone
who thinks they need to be offended for the people at Be.
Thu Jan 13 2000 16:54:
OK, the mystery is solved. One byte of the JPEG was obfuscated; adding
16 to it fixed the whole file. Only problem is, the files on the CD
are encoded using arithmetic coding, a Super-Huffman-Coding technique
which is patented by IBM. According to the data compression FAQ, this technique
offers 5%-10% greater compression than the normal Huffman coding
technique. Well, I (or my mother) may have been bilked out of $70, but at least
I learned a lot about the JPEG file format.
Fri Jan 14 2000 06:10:
OK, this is good news. I've plugged for Steve Ballmer in this space in the
past, and I'm doing it again. Steve Ballmer is perfect to head up Microsoft.
He's evil, he knows he's evil, and he's got a sense of humor about
it. He's like the ultimate Bond villan. Gates was just some
dork who tried to pretend he was a regular guy. You felt bad
ridiculing him, just because it was so easy. Ballmer knows where he
stands and he can take it as well as he dishes it out. Ballmer knows
the score.
Fri Jan 14 2000 06:22:
I have a strange tendency toward beginning entries with "OK," or "Hey,".
I think it's because when I write one of these entries
I feel like I'm sitting down at a table where you are already seated
and bringing you up to speed.
Fri Jan 14 2000 16:45:
Mike writes to say "btw, congrats on your 'Beanie' nomination".
I can't find any references to this so-called nomination on Slashdot,
and I even logged in on my account and everything. I await something
less vague from Mike.
Fri Jan 14 2000 16:53:
OK, the nomination is for me personally, "Best Deserving of a $2000
Award". at
this looooong URL which I had to type in because GPM isn't working
on kuato. Vote for me, even though I won't win, and even though
I couldn't tell you how to go about voting for me if my life
depended on it.
Mon Jan 17 2000 17:46:
Hey, that link doesn't work anymore!
I gotta go to the LUG meeting now.
Mon Jan 17 2000 20:02:
I'm going to stubbornly ignore the fact that the images on the MAD
CDs are encoded with arithmetic coding, and get to work on cracking
the index. Eventually, the patent will expire or I will move to
Korea, and when that happens I want a program that will work.
Tue Jan 18 2000 12:23:
Why does Scott always refer to me as "people", and say I'm complaining
when I'm not?
Certain people have complained that I always refer to them as "people" and that I say they complain when they're not complaining. These same people have swiped the style of the smarmy response to these pseudo-complaints so I can't do it. Bastards!
Wed Jan 19 2000 06:06:
I'm reading this article about
water
on Europa. And it occurs to me that it would really suck if there
was water on Europa but no life. Because let's not fool ourselves,
the only reason we care about water on Europa is because that might
mean life. Until we start strip-mining moons like in Fiasco,
anyway.
Wed Jan 19 2000 07:31:
I have to go print my resume (which hopefully I can get to fit on
one page) for the job fair today. And at 6, Dr. Rittel from Sun
will be speaking on "What I Wished [sic?] I Had Learned In Engineering
School". I guess that's not [sic], since he knows it now, and
therefore no longer wishes he had learned it in engineering school.
My left shoelace for some reason became all ragged, so I had to cut it up and restring my left shoe. Lousy shoelace!
Wed Jan 19 2000 07:43:
One of the things Dan keeps going on about is how bad the movie
High School High is. He goes on about this to the extent that
he will not believe that Jon Lovitz is actually pretty funny, just
because Jon Lovitz was in that movie. (I ask you, is it fair to judge
someone's entire comedic career based on one failure? No! Because
if that were the case, nobody would be funny.) So last night, to
silence these murmurings, I sat him down and we watched Manos: The
Hands Of Fate. After the movie: "I submit to you that that movie
was worse than High School High." Dan: "It was bad in a different
way." AAAAARGH!!!
Wed Jan 19 2000 09:01:
Guess who added this to kuato's motd:
Motd is archaic and unnecessarily restrictive. Text is so 70s!
My resume fits on one page, and I'm fairly sure the address is right. Now, to make copies!
Wed Jan 19 2000 16:46:
There's an actual game of Make Dan Complain going on in kuato's motd
now. I told Dan to work on bringing MDC to you, the Web public. My
idea is that he keeps a list of past complaints and people can query
them or request a new complaint.
I love this keyboard. It has great tactile and audible feedback. It says it's an MCL Micronorth. They don't make them anymore. I can say this with confidence because this keyboard does not have those damn Windows keys.
Thu Jan 20 2000 14:57:
Woohoo! I'm graduating in June! I just have to submit a petition
for my philosophy class, and declare my degree candidacy on URSA
Telephone, which I'm doing right now.
There, it's done. The candidacy part, I mean. I still have to submit that petition.
Thu Jan 20 2000 15:01:
Woops! My graduation evaluation report prints the year as 1900!
Fri Jan 21 2000 11:13:
The question is... what
are the other nine algorithms of the century? Seems like a list of
the top ten algorithms of the century would be very similar to a list
of the top ten algorithms ever.
Which reminds me, there is a talk being given by the Graduate Outreach group of the math department on "The Partial Differential Equation of the Century", "in the style of TIME Magazine". I'm not going to go because I hate differential equations, but I thought the flyer for the event was funny.
Fri Jan 21 2000 14:00:
Leonardonics: Demon Dog,
That was a good
x. I'm not too happy about the copy for those entries, although
the Aerosmith part is great (but it's a great bit, and I've been
kicking it around my head for a while).
Domain names consisting of numbers are good to deal with because
1) they're easy to enumerate (the smallest untaken number I can find is 2151.com), and 2) they tend to be owned by people who
think or hope that owning a domain name is the key to riches. Look at the sales pitch of the person who owns 500.com. Fri Jan 21 2000 14:37:
I'm low-key looking at the web sites that have numbers as .com domain
names. It's sort of a function mapping the natural numbers onto
the set of web pages. As you might have expected, this function is
neither one-to-one nor onto.
Sat Jan 22 2000 07:32:
See! The frustration of this guy who wrote a Linux development
environment for the Playstation and has to put "This is not a game and this
is not a Sony product and it's not Linux for the PlayStation." in the
Freshmeat entry!
Wed Jan 26 2000 04:45:
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.
Wed Jan 26 2000 04:59:
I added a section about dealing with questionable complaints in
Make Dan Complain.
I'm thinking about maybe making the penalty for questionable complaints
greater than it is now, to add some balance to the game.
Fri Jan 28 2000 11:28:
I got mail from Andy. The reason Andy is so hard to get a hold of is
that he's in England (or will be soon). Wowsers! He's
doing a research-type deal. "It all came sort of like a mandate," says
Andy. Andy's the only person I know who could say "It all came
sort of like a mandate."
I want to make a trailer for a movie called "How's It Goin', Andy?" I don't want to make the movie, just the trailer. I don't know what the trailer would involve, but it would definitely have lots of people saying "How's it goin', Andy?". I love that phrase. I want to have the following conversation with Andy:
Leonard: How's it goin', Andy?
Andy: It all came sort of like a mandate.
Fri Jan 28 2000 11:32:
YESterday I was talking with Josh about Space Ghost. And about
Brak. Yes, Brak! It all started because I have a Space Ghost quote in
my sig. Brak! Josh revealed that he has huge amounts of Brak quotes
and skits in MP3 format. Here is the FTP site: Brak Attack!
It has some other comedy stuff too, but who needs comedy when you've
got Brak? Brak!
Fri Jan 28 2000 15:01:
The LUG is having a Nethack tournament on xorn (kuato's replacement,
donated by VA). Nobody is particularily good, but I'm way ahead of
everybody else. Dan's going to beat me when his character finally dies,
though. He's been working on one character since yesterday afternoon.
Sat Jan 29 2000 17:03:
All my clothes are clean. And the sky is grey. My part of the room
has been invaded by ants so I bought things that you set out which contain food such that
the ants take the food home to their queen and it kills her. Presumably all
the other ants die when the queen dies, or there'd be no point in engaging in this bit of political intruigue.
Last night Josh invited me over to watch Space Ghost. It was tasty.
Sat Jan 29 2000 17:54:
I forgot to mention that Josh is in awe of my mighty Space Ghost
impression. My best line is "Ya like the Zorak, do ya?"
Sat Jan 29 2000 20:43:
The theology of Nethack is somewhat confused. I'd elaborate, but it's
almost time for "My Word!".
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