Wed Mar 01 2000 08:35:
Sourceforge looks really nice. I have to learn how to use CVS now.
Wed Mar 01 2000 09:57:
Josh on his Australian heritage: "I come from good convict stock."
Wed Mar 01 2000 08:35:
Sourceforge looks really nice. I have to learn how to use CVS now.
Wed Mar 01 2000 09:57:
Josh on his Australian heritage: "I come from good convict stock."
Thu Mar 02 2000 06:47:
Hi. I'm trooper Leonard Richardson. You know, I've seen it all--stared
into the gapin' maw of death--and I'm here to tell you of the horror
that lurks everywhere. No, don't get up.
Thu Mar 02 2000 18:31:
As the guy from Zelda 2 once said,
... ...
Sat Mar 04 2000 17:56:
Dan made an astute observation: Dan
Gillmor is what Jon Katz should be.
Sun Mar 05 2000 07:22:
I really like advogato, but I
always spell it "advagato". A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Mon Mar 06 2000 05:13:
Is there a book or Web site dealing with inconsistencies in Ulysses?
There should be, just to annoy the sort of people whom that would
annoy.
Mon Mar 06 2000 07:57:
ElfStone Attic Treasures.
What a great concept. A CD of old, obscure Linux stuff. The Linux counterpart
of the Da Warren CD Dave and I are working on, I suppose. And it's
got this great marketing on that page, which I will translate for you:
Mon Mar 06 2000 08:47:
Yesterday I was in Hollywood and I passed a store called Gay Mart
USA ("America's Favorite Gay Superstore"). What does one buy in a
gay superstore? Gay power tools? Big tubs of gay laundry detergent?
No, just the usual boring gay
clothes. If there was another gay superstore on the market,
Gay Mart USA would no longer be America's favorite, I'll tell ya that
for free.
Mon Mar 06 2000 08:54:
For some reason I'm really in the mood today to make fun of
marketingspeak. It must be spring! Yes! Spring is here again!
Tue Mar 07 2000 06:19:
My mother says it is my glorious duty to write the book on inconsistencies
in Ulysses. I think I'll save that for some English major
who has nothing better to do than nitpick Ulysses anyway.
Tue Mar 07 2000 06:27:
A starts-amusing-and-degenerates article
the original title of which (as seen on Newshub) was "Reptile diverts royal". I had to
look at the article because I had forgotten about the use of "royal"
as a noun so I thought "diverts" was being used as a noun and it was
like "This reptile's diverts are just plain excessive!". Whatever diverts are.
Tue Mar 07 2000 19:35:
Here's an idea: the Drinking Game Drinking Game. [Andy Rooney]D'jever
notice how drinking games are all kinda the same?[/Andy Rooney]
What if you could abstract the various mean-spirited tropes found in
drinking games into a set of rules that was itself a drinking game?
eg. "Take one drink every time you drink because someone exhibited
some mannerism of speech or annoying quirk." If a drinking game was
going too slowly, this would be a perfect way to up the ante, as it
were.
Tue Mar 07 2000 19:36:
I'm using square brackets instead of angle brackets because the
notebook program doesn't deal with editing lts and gts correctly, and
I'm too lazy to fix it.
Wed Mar 08 2000 06:26:
The Mozilla people cleverly do
not actually say the words "Open Sores", for they fear my string-searching
wrath. But all in vain, for the mighty Scott is
upon them like a whirlwind.
Wed Mar 08 2000 06:26:
I need to get my links page up so I don't have to link to people's
pages whenever I mention their names.
Wed Mar 08 2000 07:08:
What do these
five articles have to do with each other? I have no idea. The first three set something up and the next two knock it down.
And there's no email adress for that guy, so I can't contact him to ask
why he brought them together under the rubric of "economics".
Wed Mar 08 2000 08:19:
Industrial automation has gone too far! They've fired Mike Popovic
and replaced him with a
big glass of water!
Hey Mike, can I link to your webcam?
Wed Mar 08 2000 08:48:
jwz's Webcollage is
being used by people who are not jwz, and two separate people using it hit
the same one of my sketchbook cartoons within the span of a few hours, making
causing two Altavista image queries from Webcollage to appear in my access log and causing me to think there was some connection between the two hits when
there wasn't. A coincidence worthy of Lem.
Wed Mar 08 2000 08:50:
It may not be jwz's webcollage, since I can't find the source for
that on jwz's page. It may be one of the zillions of other programs
called "webcollage".
Wed Mar 08 2000 09:50:
Coming soon (this afternoon) to Da Da Warren
Memorial Memorial: Ace reporter Dave Griffith has the chilling
story of...the Theobrominator!
Wed Mar 08 2000 11:02:
I live in mortal fear that I'm going to be walking past some short
girl and she's going to put my eye out with her umbrella.
Thu Mar 09 2000 06:26:
I had two emails waiting for me when I woke up. One is from Scott.
The other is from Fred. Both are 2,108 bytes long.
You: That was an amazing story.
Me: I know.
Thu Mar 09 2000 06:48:
For years, science has mocked at the venerable notion that the
moon is made of green cheese, preferring their ridiculous "rock theory". Now, those hoity-toity eggheads must
eat their words, as the latest evidence shows that the
poles of Mars resemble different kinds of cheese! Vindication for
green cheese selenology! It's time to take our classrooms back from
rock theory and its Communist proponents!
Thu Mar 09 2000 06:53:
Dave says he has to think about my putting his Theobrominator story
up on the Memorial. Take your time, Dave. Jeepers.
Thu Mar 09 2000 07:11:
Yesterday I was setting Mark up with a copy of NOWB, and I decided
that the fact that he needed the author of the program to set it up
for him was not a good sign. So I need documentation. And the reason
I have been holding off on writing documentation is that the notebook
program is a mess. It's written in two different languages and it
has a lot of legacy stuff from when I tried to generalize it in the
wrong direction. So I'm thinking of taking an afternoon and rewriting
it all in Python, and then doing proper documentation, and then Mark
can set it up himself.
Mark made mention (alliteration!) of some feature (I don't remember what) that many weblog scripts have. I dismissed it by saying "Well, when I wrote this there were no weblogs," but now that I'm rewriting NOWB and there are weblogs now, I might as well listen to feature requests. One thing I'm definitely going to do is put in anchors for each entry, eg "20000302-3" for this one, so that you can point to, chop up, etc. particular entries. One thing I'm definitely not going to do is bring a database into the fray. {Cuba, XML}, maybe. {Castro, Database}, no.
Fri Mar 10 2000 06:35:
The moon entry I published yesterday reminds me of a Winnie The
Pooh apologetic in which the strange tilt of the planet
Neptune was forseen by Pooh and Co.'s expedition in search of the
East Pole.
Such an apologetic does not exist. Nonetheless, "reminds" is an appropriate word in this situation.
Fri Mar 10 2000 10:57:
The Humnet backbone is having problems since yesterday afternoon,
so mail sent to me yesterday I probably didn't get. Please send it
again since I don't know when the Humnet problem will be fixed.
Fri Mar 10 2000 12:12:
Susanna is writing in her notebook again;
unfortunately, the news is not good.
Fri Mar 10 2000 21:01:
What is the common tie between the
latest Segfault story and Liza Dei, my
latest recording? The world will know eventually. It's a lame
connection, but there is one, and I thought it was interesting that I'd
get that kind of article submitted when I was working on a song from
Revenge Of Porcelain Puppy.
Problems with Liza Dei: Couple weird vocal artifacts near the end, song gets cut off instead of fading out (3dSound doesn't {do fades, know Susie} the way I {want it to do fades, know Susie}), vocals a little too soft near the beginning. Other than that, it's a nice little tune.
Fri Mar 10 2000 21:05:
The new version of the notebook program (now called Newsbruiser) is
coming along okay. I have the design in place and now I just have to
roll up my sleeves and finish the implementation.
Fri Mar 10 2000 21:11:
The humnet backbone is back up. I have your email. Do not panic.
Fri Mar 10 2000 21:13:
Dan went out to watch Mission To Mars. I can't afford such
luxuries, so I must stay inside. I wonder whether Mission To Mars is the pseudo-realistic Mars movie or the 1950s-style Mars movie.
Fri Mar 10 2000 21:31:
Dan just came back. Me: "Man, you got ripped off." No, the theater
was sold out.
Sat Mar 11 2000 06:40:
I got new sunglasses yesterday. Let's see how long before I lose them.
Sat Mar 11 2000 11:58:
More Newsbruiser work. The only big chunk that still remains undone is
the chunk that actually changes the files around. Now I have to
take a shower and go work in the lab with Adam.
Sat Mar 11 2000 16:05:
Me glasses are broken. This has got to be some kind of record.
I did not mistreat my glasses in any way. They just broke.
Adam says Mission to Mars was more ridiculous than Armageddon.
Sat Mar 11 2000 18:17:
Is there an XML DTD for notebook entries? I don't want to reinvent
the wheel. I don't know where to go to find DTDs.
Sat Mar 11 2000 21:36:
I recorded a great theme and fantasia on "Popeye The Sailor Man",
but BeOS won't boot, so I can't put it together. Grr.
Sun Mar 12 2000 09:23:
Opus, the sad truth is that Lo Wang from Shadow Warrior is Uncle
Pennybags from Monopoly on his days off.
Sun Mar 12 2000 20:32:
I have Newsbruiser writing entries to files. Once I do the editing
frontend, editing will magically work as well.
I did not spend all day doing this. Just so you know.
Mon Mar 13 2000 06:37:
I like the phrase 'The thinking {man's, person's} x". It lets you
say 'This is like x except it's good', kind of clearing the room of
the foul presence of x by taking the moral high ground and acknowledging
its similarilty to whatever you've got.
This is my new "It's a beer." Whenever anyone attempts to prevent
me from getting x, I will say "When you're asking the greatest
question ever, you need x." It worked for this guy. Only he is
asking the greatest question ever. But still. I'm too cool for
silica clouds, baby. Mon Mar 13 2000 07:30:
Words to live by: (from this fab article):
As early as 2011, NASA hopes to launch what may be the most ambitious
telescope ever conceived: the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Scientists hope it can be
used to answer the question of whether life exists on planets beyond our solar
system. "When you're asking the greatest question ever, you need a great
telescope," says Charles Beichman, project scientist for the telescope.
Mon Mar 13 2000 22:04:
leonardr sez: check Susanna's homepage every day for
Susannalicious goodness. Jake endorses it as well: "it's bad she
altered her perfect little page, but other than that..."
Tue Mar 14 2000 06:45:
Great Planetfall quote: "I see nothing special about the mobile man-eating plant."
Wed Mar 15 2000 16:37:
I am King
Online The First! Demand for me is overwhelming! Thank you, my subjects!
Wed Mar 15 2000 16:56:
You may or may not be interested in hearing about
VA's
latest acquisitions.
Thu Mar 16 2000 05:49:
See what I mean?
Ballmer: he's evil, but he's a good sport.
Thu Mar 16 2000 06:09:
I'm sick of people complaining about free software taking away
programmers' jobs. One, it hasn't happened, and two, the
free market does not exist to serve the every whim of programmers.
It exists to serve consumers. That's the whole reason we have a free
market. If there was some magic way of making food for nothing
and farmers and agribusiness started protesting that this would drive them out
of business, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off? It's not the
best analogy, I know, but it's servicable.
I have three Netscape sessions open and in each of them I have a large TEXTAREA into which I am supposed to enter a message which will be displayed on a Web page. All the TEXTAREAs are the same size, too.
Thu Mar 16 2000 20:06:
Another call from GTE. I now know to ask to be put on the no call list.
Thus should end the era of the annoying calls from GTE.
Fri Mar 17 2000 05:23:
My job offer letter was sent Fed Ex, so of course it wasn't delivered
properly. They're sending it again regular mail, I think.
Fri Mar 17 2000 06:23:
Regardless of what you may have been led to believe, I'm not
Chris Duarte.
Fri Mar 17 2000 07:31:
Those
ancient snake species unfortunate enough to redevelop rudimentary hind limbs were often mocked
by their peers.
Fri Mar 17 2000 10:31:
Who's
marking up Mars? And why aren't they using Mars Markup Language?
Fri Mar 17 2000 10:53:
I have Mike to thank for the
earthquake map. "What happens when I click on an earthquake?"
DON'T!!!
Fri Mar 17 2000 13:33:
I bought a jar of marionberry preserves at Trader Joes. It's made
with real crack. Just kidding. About the crack. It really is called
marionberry.
Fri Mar 17 2000 13:58:
I accidentally rm -rfed my head of hair. That's okay. It'll
grow back. And it only cost me $6, unlike the more conventional crew
cuts which cost $12.
Fri Mar 17 2000 14:13:
Marionberry jelly is very good on peanut butter sandwiches. No seeds,
mildly tart, excellent all around.
Sat Mar 18 2000 07:47:
Gaaah!
I look like the guy from The Onion!
Sat Mar 18 2000 10:00:
Newsbruiser plods closer to completion. I really have to resolve that
notebook DTD thing now.
Sun Mar 19 2000 02:07:
Actually, I can just kludge together a file format. Which I did.
Why is the generation of XML documents treated as a second-class
activity? Python's XML parser comes with the system, but there's
only a half-assed XML generator which comes separately. Am I wrong in
thinking that I should be able to give a DTD and a data structure
to an object and have it spit out an XML document? Doesn't that
seem reasonable? Is there some module that I'm overlooking that
does it?
Mon Mar 20 2000 18:49:
Today I wrote UCLA the last tuition check I will ever write them.
Of course, I don't have enough money in my bank account to cover it,
but let's keep that our little secret.
Mon Mar 20 2000 18:53:
Mail from Andy on the harsh
conditions he finds in the UK. As always, Andy knows exactly which bits of information will interest me the most.
Tue Mar 21 2000 19:06:
Dan and I were discussing how dull the game Missile Command
is. One of the few games that actually makes doing homework seem
fun in comparison. The question is, what are the worst games
ever made? Arcade classics, CGA clunkers, right up to the
state of the art. The worst. Let me hear what you think.
Thu Mar 23 2000 20:42:
Gotta finish my philosophy paper and final tonight. Tomorrow morning
I'm flying to Austin for a job interview. Gonna hang out with Joe Barr,
check out the used bookstores. Jake, you need to get back to me pronto
on the hep places to go in Austin as I don't know if I'll have email
when I'm there.
You know how you'll be writing a paper and you'll get the feeling like "I have no case with this argument, the prof is going to see right through me."? That's how I feel with this paper. I've had that feeling before, though, and so far it's yet to mean less than a B on the paper.
Fri Mar 24 2000 00:08:
The final is done, and I just have to fix the intension of the
truth predicate. I mean fix the bibliography of my paper.
Fri Mar 24 2000 00:14:
Oh boy, time to act like a frikkin' loon.
Fri Mar 24 2000 00:17:
I'm done. Before I go to sleep, let me point you to
this
funny article (part 1 of 2) on corporate food mascots. Fitting,
as the 1996 Andy/Leonard skit "Interview with the Doughboy" has been
a topic of discussion between me and various people as of late.
I almost forgot to credit Mike for bringing that link to me in a basket.
Must sleep now. After pie.
Fri Mar 24 2000 07:29:
No one's biting on the "worst games ever" thing. Odd. I would have
thought that would have sparked a Katzian outpouring of email.
Sat Mar 25 2000 14:00:
I'm at pcOrder now demonstrating my notebook program.
Mon Mar 27 2000 15:05:
I gotta say, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome has the most
inappropriate soundtrack I've ever heard.
Tue Mar 28 2000 07:31:
Mike, who apparantly goes to Salon every day and reads the articles,
sends me part 2
of the advertising mascot shenanigans. I quote the thing Mike quoted:
General Mills has already taken steps to ensure that the enigmatic confectioner isn't perceived as a "ridiculous bumbler," Delahanty adds. "One thing we've done is we've reestablished that the marshmallows are a creation of Lucky. Although they have magical qualities, they never take on a personality of their own. They are inanimate objects. That's an area where in the past, there's been a little zigging and zagging. But we've refocused after our most recent equity study. Now, we've reestablished that Lucky is totally in control."
This is how we beat the Soviets, kids. Be proud.
Wed Mar 29 2000 07:09:
Photographic
memories of Jake are now avaliable.
Wed Mar 29 2000 07:13:
TreeDoc could finally put
an end to the annoying practice of clicking through subchapters
of HOWTOs and the like.
Wed Mar 29 2000 11:08:
I feel that I must speak out about the movie The Truth About
Cats and Dogs. It has the most ridiculous premise of any movie
I've ever seen, viz., that Uma Thurman is prettier than
Janeane Garofalo. What kind of twisted parallel universe spawned
this film? One in which giant insects wear sinister moustaches and bark
orders to coal-mining humans, no doubt.
Wed Mar 29 2000 20:52:
I forgot to mention that the inhabitants of Austin are obsessed with
Andre the Giant Has a Posse.
Thu Mar 30 2000 08:52:
A in EE103! A+ in CS152B! Whee!
I just got a nice letter from Bill Softky of Treedoc fame. In formulating a meaningful response I'm... able to get through to the server to review the project. There goes that complaint.
Fri Mar 31 2000 07:23:
I'm finally going through and reading all the old BOFHs.
So good. There should be a BOFH movie. I'm thinking something shot in
long real-time scenes, with the dull walking-down-hallways scenes
livened up by impromptu user interaction. During the course of two
hours, the threads of twenty or thirty simultaneous BOFH/PFY plots
(in both senses of the word) would intertwine, and they'd all come
together to form a huge crisis which would be solved by a particularily
masterful application of bastardness.
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