News You Can Bruise for 1999 May 25

Enjoy The Hubble Constant, the site presenting the findings of the Hubble Space Telescope to you, the taxpayer. Much like that other site whose URL I can't find which presents all the pictures the HST takes, but more technical.

Alternating periods of sunshine and shadow. Such is the rule for weather here in LA. I believe there is a city ordinance requiring it.

I need to get back on the LACMA track, as I just felt myself wanting a mail automaton to handle NYCB for me. Yes, I'm so lazy that I can't even be bothered to fire up a Web browser to put up a notebook entry.

Also, I'd like to be able to use a real text editor to write these entries in.

Links that work:

http://www.altavista.com/ucla/
http://www.altavista.com/mit/
http://www.altavista.com/ucb/

Links that don't work:

http://www.altavista.com/usc/
http://www.altavista.com/stanford/
http://www.altavista.com/ucsd/
http://www.altavista.com/caltech/
http://www.altavista.com/uiuc/
http://www.altavista.com/harvard/
http://www.altavista.com/yale/

More later. Class now.

I'm starting to have to delete press releases that people are sending to Segfault. Are we on some list of Linux sites for people to send their press releases to? If so, cut it out.

Hm, AIR wants the descendants of famous scientists and inventors to go on stage at this year's Ig Nobels. I am a descendant of Eli Whitney, and as such would probably qualify for the "Flaunt Your Genome" event. The only problem is that I'd miss some of the first week of class next quarter. And I'd have to pay for tickets.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, silly. Everybody knows that. More people know that than know what a cotton gin is.

If real life had a Wandering Monsters table, this would only show up on a 00: A car being driven by old folks with both a "Victory '96 Dole/Kemp" bumper sticker and this rude bumper sticker. That is my own GIMPy rendition of the bumper sticker in that graphic, by the way.

Also, that bumper sticker is a form of parody bumper sticker that I don't get. The form is an oval with two or three letters (or, in this case, glyphs) inside it. I have a "LNX" sticker that I got at LinuxWorld Expo, and there are millions of others I have seen on other people's cars. They are starting to outnumber even those damn fish. But I don't know what all these bumper stickers are parodying. Help me Spock! And enjoy my feeble mouse-drawing talents.

Here are some old graphics I did in the GIMP, predating even the alleged "first GIMP graphic" I stuffed into NYCB a while ago. There are three, in JPG and PNG format. My Netscape 4 won't read PNG. What's up with that, homey?

Adam was in the Engineering Week talent show today, and he didn't tell me about it. So I missed him. Not that I haven't seen him play before, but I would prefer the universe in which he had told me about it to the universe which I inhabit.

OK, Josh says that those bumper stickers are take-offs on the bumper stickers you put on your car if you live in Europe. I feel like an idiot {standing in line waiting for Miss Perfect da da da da da da da da, for not having known that}.

Hoo boy. The next year of my life is going to be a living hell. I wrote a big long explanation of it, which I will not post here, but the short version is that when this quarter ends, the hell will begin. The hell involves no non-working vacation, hellish summer school, no money, and four classes every quarter, even the ones in which I take the heavy CS classes like compiler construction and digital system design.

The payoff is that I will actually graduate in four years flat, instead of four years and one quarter. This will make me feel a lot better, and will have financial benefits as well.

Also, if for scheduling reasons (or because I just snap) I can't make it in four years after all, the hellish summer school I am about to undergo will allow me to take three classes every quarter instead of four. This means two easy quarters and two quarters of moderate difficulty. This also means more time to work. Which is a nice safety net to fall back on.

Living hell... living hell...