News You Can Bruise for 2003 February

As with so many others, my dream job would be something for the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center. My dream job that actually exists (again, as with many others) would be doing cool things for Google. (Today I actually thought of a cool thing to run against Google, of which possibly more anon, but it won't work without angering Google because it won't work within the rather limited Google API).

My belief: we should homestead the moon and other heavenly bodies. You can own the land if and only if you terraform or otherwise do work on it. Very Lockean.

Right now you're thinking "Leonard, why are you bringing up the durian? I already know all about the durian! I hit your site with my mondo RSS reader to read your witty comments on completely irrelevant topics, not to see you link to the durian site that's already #3 on Daypop!" But unless you've been reading NYCB since 1998 (or have read the archives), you don't know that I had a physics professor at UCLA whose name was Doug Durian. He was a good professor, but I did horribly (C+) in the class; this was entirely my fault.

In a bizarre turn of events, this NYCB entry is not the first time Doug Durian has been mentioned in conjunction with the durian fruit; it's been done before, in greater detail, here.

PS: I do untold amounts of research for each and every NYCB entry, except the ones clearly labeled with the blue triangle which means "completely unresearched". Reading my UCLA transcript to find my E&M grade I get the uncanny impression that as I progressed through my time at UCLA I actually got smarter. I don't know why I find this so uncanny as this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you go to college.

No, I didn't either. It looks like a fun Phantom Tollbooth-ish yarn, and Uin's part in it is generally well-received by the critics. I'm thinking of getting it and reviewing it here.

[0] First seen in Tales You Can Bruise, Issue #55.

[1] I found that one elsewhere and was going to link to it anyway, but this forms a useful framing device.

I want to get my game (which I last mentioned, let alone worked on, about 9 months ago) finished before the end of this year. I am somewhat distressed to, for the first time in my life, be thinking "Well, that's going to take more than a year," and even more distressed not to be feeling that that year represents a large chunk of my life.

My only hope for actually finishing the game on schedule, or at all, is that Leo will make Inform programming a non-hassle (I have a huge problem finding things and cross-referencing related parts of Inform code, and I think Leo will help), reinvigorating my jaded palate.

[0] For purposes of exploration, Mars must also be made of Lego.

Stoner says, "Call now, we're open" vmcgspgimrypn

I immediately thought, "What happened to Weedmon?! Bring back Weedmon!" But now it's obvious: "Weedmon" was clearly the alias of Omar Mendez, the dealer half of this transaction.

(Found via referer logs thanks to Mike's tendency to mention GTV! and Degeneracy everywhere; thanks, Mike!)

1. Squished Frog Blog
2. zen frog blog
3. frog blog
4. Electric Frogplate - Frog Blog
5. frogBLOG
6. Ribbity Blog
7. The Boiled Frog Blog
8. frog's blog
9. Frog n' Blog
10. A Frog in the Valley

• BART IP Address #1
• BART IP Address #2
• Can't Believe It Butter

Today my car thought "That Leonard thinks he's pretty smart. He's fixed the gas tank cover latch hook, but now it's time for LEVEL TWO!" I went to the dentist this morning, missing the shuttle, so once again I drove into work. As I drove out of the parking lot this evening I heard a crunch. One of the little plastic connectors that keeps the front spoiler[0] attached to the car had busted off, and my spoiler was dragging on the ground. I retraced my steps, found the connector, and drove gingerly home where my tools[1] are. It turns out I didn't need my tools because the connector is an ingenious two-part assembly, and once you figure this out you can just reattach the spoiler to the car with your bare hands. Success again!

Tune in tomorrow, when my hubcaps fall off and must be replaced with dinner plates.

[0] This is the second time this spoiler thing has flaked out on me. The first time this happened I didn't realize it until the connector was long gone, so I had to take my car into the shop, and that's what the guy called the thing in the front of the car. I don't think "spoiler" is the right word for it, but that's what he called it. I'm just sayin'.

[1] These are computer- and minor-home-improvement-geek tools, not car tools.

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars,
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.

That doesn't even make sense! "If their glory exceeds that of ours?" What does that mean? "If their glory exceeds the glory of our glory?" How about "If their glory exceeds even ours."?

The previews included one for a film that looks cool, despite being called "a darkly comic masterpiece" on the webpage: Divine Intervention. It features an actor who looks like Siddig El Fadil, and a pink Yasser Arafat balloon. I thought Big Shot's Funeral looked good, though[0], so what do I know.

[0] I haven't actually seen Big Shot's Funeral, but every review I've read was either really negative or (worse for my prospects of wanting to see a film) damning with faint praise.

For some reason, the closest Mongolian BBQ I could find to San Francisco is Colonel Lee's. Without knowing anything at all about why this is actually the case, I blame archaic health regulations against communal ingredient choosing and leaving frozen meat out in the open.

There's also a nice used-bookstore-that-tries-to-look-like-a-new-bookstore right across the street from Colonel Lee's.

The Scientologists, who have an office near Civic Center, were capitalizing on the march to sell Dianetics books.

--Zack's weblog

Scientologist Anti-War Slogans:

• No Body Thetans For Oil
• Clears Against The War
• I'm OT3 And I Vote
• BUSH = XENU

Couldn't it be "of our star"?

"I looked at Public Knowledge's Internet connection, and I wondered whether its bitrate exceeds that of ours."

I told Kevin about the painted Los Angeles river cats. He didn't believe me. I showed him this web page. "I cannot believe the lengths you have gone to to pull this hoax off," said Kevin.

"It is very exciting to be associated with a fun brand like Lay's. I am sure Saif-n-Kaif Hot & Sweet Chilly, Caribbean Style with its spicy, tangy taste is a flavour that will go down well with the younger generation," said Saif.

This reminds me that in Trader Joe's, Sumana and I saw some fliers for Tom's of Maine mouthwash. Only they weren't consumer-oriented fliers, they were fliers that tried to convince stores to carry the product. They said:

• Ginger flavor appeals to cultural creatives.

I was just thinking, "Ginger-flavored mouthwash, that's an interesting--gaaah!" If there's one thing us cultural creatives hate, it's to be identified as such.

My dream useless 'convergence' machine would be a combination Geiger counter/GPS system/ham radio. Fearmongering use case used to sell this device: "Help, I'm trapped near an old Soviet test site in Kazakhstan!"

Anyway, I released NewsBruiser 1.12, "Remote Control Rhino". It's got the XML-RPC interfaces and many bug fixes and enhancements. In fact, I'll be using it right now to import my old editthispage entries.

Update: Success! Eg. "dinoflagellate", The Even Newer Economy.

I've got several of these websites and I'm thinking of doing one every once in a while as an NYCB mini-feature (suggestions for mini-feature title welcomed). Today's entry is one I just found: Jeff Lee, one of the authors of Q*Bert, has a Q*Bert page. I have never been any good at Q*Bert, but I've always admired its sheer strangeness and eclectivity, and the page demonstrates how this occurred: it looks to have been designed by a committee of geeks with no management pressure to make it coherent and marketable. Other interesting fact: an early version of the Q*Bert code was equivalent to that OpenGL screensaver with the Slinkies.

I know many noted political theorists read NYCB, and I'm interested in hearing what these people think of this system. Is it interesting at all? How vulnerable is it to attack (assuming it's implemented well)? The main problem I can see is coercion to designate someone as your proxy.

[0] Ha ha.

I got my AS&S catalog in the mail yesterday, and I'm looking forward to another romp through the cheap but useless. I recommend signing up for the catalog; it's a lot of fun, and they don't seem to sell your address to other catalog companies.

Pete Peterson II is also in the enviable position of having the actual AS&S store "just down from the street" from where he lives. I used to imagine the AS&S store as an enormous warehouse in the middle of an Illinois cornfield, maybe next door to a pesticide reseller with a corrugated metal roof, but Pete says "it's just a medium sized store inside a strip mall that is wall to wall packed with stuff."

Am I the only one this happens to? The only one who talks about it on their weblog?

Example (this happened to me just now):

Then I saw her face
Now I'm a subscriber!

• Liero-AI is a side-view fighting game with an enormous number of weapons. No other game that I know of lets you use Iridium satellites as weapons.
• Enigma is seemingly a clone of an old DOS game called Oxyd. Oxyd was a very smart puzzle game which endeared itself to me by not using the same moving parts for every puzzle; there was some basic thing different about the game engine for just about every puzzle. This game deviates from that somewhat, but it's still got that great Oxyd gameplay (you toss a black sphere across the screen with your mouse; it's really fun).
• Trackballs is a Marble Madness-ish game. I couldn't get it to run, but it looks fun.
• Mojotron is suspiciously similar to Robotron and Llamatron. Sadly, is less bizarre and frenetic than Llamatron. Contains fake Engrish on title screen!
• Iter Vehemens ad Necem is a graphical roguelike with a realistic damage system ("Realistic damage system" == "There's gonna be dismemberment"; I think Penny Arcade once did a strip on this topic) and a properly roguelike obsession with fruit. I recommend it, and I usually don't recommend non-ASCII roguelikes.

#1 COLON CLEANSER LOSE 10-15 LBS PER WEEK gzgrhpjbi ncabj

"Bothered by unsightly internal organs?"

• I Was A Teenage Hyphen
• Semicolon Without A Cause
• Forbidden Comma

Update: Sumana says, "Semicolon Without A Clause!". Wah wah.

i need a girl(female version)

Your text 1 151 Name0230 Random word of digits with length 1 to 20 0868824163630871610 Random word of digits with length 1 to 17 664 Random word of small letters with length 1 to 16 uoy Random word of mixed symbols with length 1 to 27 7i0V8W1AG1rp1EFCKbm8O

There's more.

• Ada Norton
• Joel Alan St. Arnaud