There are plenty of ersatz Hawaiian shirts out there - fine for a backyard luau, we suppose, but impractical and faintly ridiculous under real tropical conditions. We present the genuine article.
None of this can change the fact that they want $60 for a Hawaiian shirt.
This page says it's a person's name and also says English translation by the end of the year.
Have you seen (pictures of) that installation piece with the wax effigy of the Pope having been hit by a meteorite? There's some broken glass on the ground nearby and I can only conclude that the meteorite hit the Pope and then, in an unrelated event, some glass broke, because the meteorite sure as hell didn't come in from that direction.
Jake to me:
after much searching (everyone links to the picture on the christies page, which is no longer) i finally found a picture and made the conclusion that the meteroite came in through the roof, and the shaking caused a nearby skylight to break.
I think Jake has lost it here, because, had the meteorite come through the roof, it would have brought some roof material with it, yet all we see is the glass. I'm starting to think that the meteorite was pitched as a beanball from within the gallery, and that His Holiness should take a base.
This is only funny to about five people, but fortunately most of those five read this weblog. The reference is to Michael Stack, a senior software developer at CollabNet who lives the very life of Riley, and who famously calls everyone "boss".
I accidentally deleted a "stack" directory on my laptop this weekend because I thought it was a CVS checkout of stack's famous intranet homepage, but it wasn't. Oh well.
In addition to putting up some old travelogues of my mother's, I moved Home Improvement Horrors over to Jabberwocky, where it belongs. That article is by far the most sustainable source of hits for this site (though for some reason, one of Jeremey Bruce's MP3s was downloaded 550 times today), outdrawing even the homepage.
I am slowly expanding the NewsBruiser installed base. I need more relatives.
Tangentially, Peter Hodgson has sent me a brief sci-fi opus of his own design, requesting that I vet it for accuracy as regards computers. I'm planning to allow him considerable artistic license on the weighty issues, but nitpick on little things, like the fact that you don't need a virus scanner for your Linux box. More details may be forthcoming if he consents to publication.
This is Envelope Watch: Day One!
NewsBruiser 1.0 is coming along quite nicely. The view cgi with its cool navigation header is working great.
<josht> Hey, the donut penguin came by! left some in the kitchen.. <josht> and boy, talk about a fat penguin!! waddle waddle waddle
I mailed the envelope.
That said, I have now a set of abstractions which should work, once I finish writing them.
Going to sleep now before I start making more serious mistakes.
Also, I just noticed that the Degeneracy literary analysis page plays a funny Degeneracy-esque trick on you. Try it!
The first is a card from Susanna. It has a cartoon of Piglet of Winnie the Pooh fame sliding down a wooden slide, and it says:
Whee! You're322!
Very touching, you'll agree.
The second is a package from my mother, which cost *exactly* as much to send to me as it cost me to mail the Envelope Watch envelope (the exciting (no lie) and knee-slapping (still no lie) conclusion to Envelope Watch coming tomorrow, so stay tuned). I open it and find... a book! Not just any book. The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, Eighth Series, published in 1957.
Today's Fiction -- Tomorrow's FactsLIFE Magazine says there are more than TWO MILLION science fiction fans in this country. From all corners of the nation comes the resounding proof that science fiction has established itself as an exciting and imaginative NEW FORM OF LITERATURE that is attracting literally tens of thousands of new readers every year!
Not a bad haul for my birthday, especially considering I get free food from other people from work for the rest of the week at least.
I'm going to try and sleep off this headache now. Most people would have a headache waking up the day after their birthday, but not I. Hopefully not I, anyway.
Apart from my headache and fever, I feel pretty good; I'm not tired or anything.
The envelope I sent to Kris contained the purported Arabic Necronomicon I found in Berkeley. Last night, Kris sent me this cryptic (but not cryptonomic) message.
My dear colleague Dr. Richardson,
The package you posted last week has arrived at my study in good condition. The script is disturbingly clear, given the date of the medium. (Perhaps Drs. Charles, Dexter, &c. from the records department would be interested in the ancient preservation technique that must have been used on the original manuscripts!)
Even my brother -- whom I believe you met at the linguistics department conference last August, if you recall -- has had difficulty even beginning the translation, though he has come across several words and phrases at random scattered about the pages. He spoke to me rather excitedly this morning about a late night in the study with the Al-Azif, having found a section where the word "al-ab-so-urikyya," or "immortality," occurs no less than thirty-three times. He strongly believes this chapter details a recipe for immortality, though I remain pragmatic. He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in the study, now... even at the expense of his classes. I feel sorry for his students; a passion for work fuels new discoveries, but I fear their teacher is a bit too devoted to the material.
Well, I must be finishing up now. Work continues and I'll let you know what comes of it, if anything. My sincere thanks to you and your department for donating this fascinating text to our archives.
Fond wishes,
Dr. Kristofer Straub.
Miskatonic University
June 9th, 1927.
P.S. Aaagh, I emptied my revolver into it and yet it keeps coming, don't know how long I can hold out, must write these words of warning, that damned book, I welcome oblivion, yadda yadda yadda.
They didn't have enough people who understood warfare to assess what a war actually meant. When we say we're going to use this system to ... search areas ... [they] thought you do it with a fixed geometric method. Whereas I had to explain you don't... it's always relative to the kind of force you are protecting. Suddenly, that becomes a whole different problem.
I'm glad our clients don't file bug reports like that.
Example of my delirium: I was playing Nethack and interpreting the foibles of the random number generator as the surrealism of a sentient being, eg. "Why was that jackal carrying around eggs?"
Don also has a Stanislaus Lem page.
That makes it sound like I hit someone, which I did not do. Can't one apologize for little social infractions without arousing suspicion?
The front cover of my videocassette of Jackie Chan's The Young Master shows Jackie in jeans and a tank top. The video capture on the back shows Jackie in some sort of mechanic getup with the Mitsubishi logo on it, in front of what appears to be a fireworks stand. He's standing next to a Mediterranean-looking guy in slacks and a partially unbuttoned dress shirt.
The box cover copy says, in part, "While trying to help a friend avoid a life of crime, Jackie repeatedly runs into villians and police, all of whom want him out of their business."
Nowhere does the box cover copy mention that The Young Master is set entirely in imperial China, with no time travel excursions of any kind and therefore no Mitsubishi logos, fireworks stands, or Mediterranean-looking guys in slacks and unbuttoned dress shirts. In fact, I dare say that the video capture is from an entirely different movie.
I cannot imagine why the designers of the box cover felt the need to cover up this rather fundamental fact about The Young Master, especially since it is probably five times better than the firework stand movie. Whatever the motive, though, the crime is clear: false advertising. And murder. No, just kidding.
Two thousand miles in her seven league boots
I packed shorts and no cold-weather clothes (I really, really dislike checking bags and doing the baggage claim dance, so even for long trips I try to pack only enough to carry on the plane) because the weather forecast said the temperature would range from the 60s to the mid-90s. I am suspicious of this because all my memories of Utah involve intense cold. However, I'm fairly sure that this is because I've only ever been before in the winter. Also, I have a mental image of Utah as being made up entirely of mountainous crags, which is prima facie untrue as that would leave no place for the Great Salt Lake.
My neck and back are still sort of sore from my recent illness, and I'm hoping that the massage will help. I feel odd buying massage on the open market, as up until now I have merely availed myself of friends for such things.
...and hostile takeovers are just as common across light years as they are across boardroom tables.
I actually think they would be slightly less common.
Signal To Noise looks like the mainstream American SF version of His Master's Voice.
I had my picture taken with a large plexiglass dinosaur replica.
Unrelatedly (oddly enough): "It says DINOSAUR, not PICTURE OF DINOSAUR." -- Me to Susanna
Don't they know that when you do anything distinctive involving mayonnaise it makes your state a laughingstock? My advice to states and their inhabitants: stay far, far away from mayonnaise.
It turned out I was the one who was breathing.
<leonardr> what if dogs walked on their hind legs and wore funny hats? <jrobbins> that would simplify and make things more consistent
Also of historical interest is this picture which, as Susanna mentioned, I used to find my way back to her house. It's actually very simple. Since the picture was taken at about 9 in the morning, I'm obviously facing south. I also know that I'm facing towards Susanna's house, so to find her house later all I have to do is find south and go there.
A good illustration between the difference between intellectual property and real property is that if I buy someone some candy as a gift and then suffer a lapse of willpower and eat the candy myself, there's no more gift. But if I buy someone a book as a gift and then read it myself, I can still use it as a gift (assuming the recipient won't mind that the book has already been read, which is certainly not the case in this instance).
When someone grows a goatee who did not previously wear a goatee, I allege that they are actually the 'evil' version of themselves, as per the Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror.
Also, Seth sent word that robotfindskitten will be making an appearance in the LNX-BBC bootable business card image. They'll let any sort of junk into that distro, apparantly. It's worse than Debian.
I choked on my water a while ago. Jeff said "Are you okay? Do you need a beer?" Jeff, I can't even handle my water.
Ok, that's it for now. I'm off.
Cops don't like my profile
'Cause Mix-A-Lot kicks much style
Those are some petty, petty cops.
I attempted with almost complete success to reverse-engineer it by building it without looking at the instructions. Then I took it apart and built this really asymmetrical thing. Then I took that apart and built a vehicle designed to operate either right side up or upside-down. My whole Lego design sensibility is radically different from what it used to be; I used to be all about symmetry. This is also the first Lego thing I've ever built where it's okay to have the underside of the bricks facing up. I must admit that the stuff I did as a kid looked a lot nicer, but that's probably just because I had more than 58 pieces to work with.
Somewhere along the line, Lego's space sets stopped being spaceships and manned planetside vehicles, and became the terrestrial appendages of some space agency. I guess they don't want to cannibalize sales from their Star Wars line. Also, need I even point out the deleterious effect of giving a unique face to every single Lego person in every single set?
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