News You Can Bruise

Aaron did all this while a college student in Portland, Oregon. Now he's about to graduate, and he's looking for a job. Send him an email and let him know what you've got going on.

1. Beautiful Soup was partly inspired by xmltramp, an XML parser Aaron wrote because he was frustrated with other XML parsers. I've been thinking a lot about this, and this is why my initial mourning of Aaron took the form it did, because screen-scraping—the use of an automated agent to replace a human-driven web browser—seems to have been at the core of the prosecutor's belief that this was a blockbuster case, more akin to a bank heist than a defaced storefront.
2. In 2005 Aaron wanted me to join his startup, Infogami. He showed me a prototype, a NewsBruiser-like blogging site. I was looking to quit my job at CollabNet, but I didn't take Aaron's offer because I was comfortable in San Francisco and really didn't want to move across the country. (In a Twilight Zone-level twist, in early 2006 I'd end up moving to New York, which I now like a lot better than San Francisco.) Aaron tells the next part of the story here. He couldn't find a partner and eventually ended up merging Infogami with Reddit[0], which was then sold to Conde Nast in 2006.

   Back in 2005 there was enough of the college-era me left that I would have seen this outcome as a big missed opportunity. I still had some desire, left over from the dot-com era, to win the startup lottery. But of course the Reddit merger happened because Aaron couldn't get a partner for Infogami. And my life over the next couple years, including my secondhand reading of Aaron's experience at Reddit (he was fired soon after the Conde Nast acquisition) made it clear to me that I would not enjoy winning the startup lottery any more than Aaron did. I count this among the most important things Aaron taught me.

I've cut a lot of what I wrote here because I don't want this entry to be a bunch of stuff about me and my opinions and what I think. But I'm the one who's still here. Aaron is gone, and all that's left of him is the parts we can share.

[0] I can't let go of these little technical inconsistencies between what I'm seeing now and what I remember. It looks like during the merger, Infogami stopped being a blogging site, and its framework (which became the first Python version of Reddit) was renamed "Infogami". Or maybe "Infogami" was the framework all along, and the blogging site was only one application of the product; I don't know.

import urllib2
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = 'http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/william-stafford/thinking-for-berky/'
soup = BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen(url))

print soup.find(attrs="title").text
for s in soup.find(attrs="poem").strings:
    print s.strip()

Unfortunately it's hard to arrange for synths music originally written for different synths, so there's some unneccessary ornamentation in the tape tracks. Example: this version of the Metroid intro makes it feel like the opening music to a Jerry Bruckheimer film, rather than the creepy civilization-overrun-by-weeds dirge that fits in with the game. And there's a weird tooty synth patch that I'd only previously heard in actual video games trying to be cute. It's not cute, guys.

Incidentally, in addition to having the coolest NES game music, Kid Icarus and Metroid used the same game engine and were released on the same day. Metroid became a huge hit and remains a Nintendo cash cow; Kid Icarus, like its namesake, plummeted to a watery death. I certainly appreciate the greatness of Metroid, but sometimes I wonder what the world would be like it things had happened the other way around.

Millard Fillmore demonstrated that through methodical industry and some competence an uninspiring man could make the American dream come true.

Now that suffices! Maybe there's hope for me yet!

Anyway, while we were having our little jokes, the real Brian Kernighan was riding high at Lucent, lording it over Kevin and giving interviews to fans. Years later, Adam sends a pointer to me and Kris as a reminder... of what could have been. Ach, it's a sad story, and one told for no apparent reason.

PS: confidential to Adam et al. Is it okay if I link to your Livejournals? You don't really advertise them and I know Kris has his own non-Live journal, but sometimes I'd like to link to something you write and I don't know if that's okay or if you want to keep them semi-private or if you even know I know about them, in which case, oops.

I think there's a resemblance (I used to think I looked like a concrete pillar).

This relieves me of the need to come up with an awesome dessert named after Stack for my "dishes named after programmers" diner menu.

Incidentally, if you're a Yankee in the South and you see "fried pie" on a menu, you might think that it's an eccentric dish made by this particular restaurant where they take slices of pie and deep-fry them. If you find this idea simultaneously repulsive and compelling, you might dare to order a fried pie, hoping and fearing to see a golden pie wedge breaded like a shrimp and plopped onto your plate with some whipped cream. If this is what you are expecting, you will be simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Fried pie is actually a completely standard dish that is basically a better version of those inedible $0.25 Hostess fruit pies. I'm not saying don't order it, but know what you're getting.

PS: Coming soon: more Kevan mania. Wait til you see the link he sent me! You won't believe the twist! Because it's based on a counterfactual!

PPS: Already here but not actually released: mine and Peter's weblog-ish hypertext versions of Gogol's Diary of a Madman. There's also fifty contemporary weblogs with the same title, most probably named after the Ozzy Osbourne song rather than directly after the story. Find the next trend before it happens!

"...in the musique-room the boy that was to sing a song, not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uprore."

Just another way in which my life is less exciting than Pepys': fewer random onstage beatings.

The Asian elephant is very sad because her friend had tuberculosis and was euthanized. We did see the African elephants who were happier, partly because they'd just had bales of hay stuck tucked between their tusks so that they would walk around and eat from a sort of beer hat of hay. I think when they complete the "African Savannah" habitat they should put the Elephas in with the Loxodonta and verisimillitude be damned.

The lake in the "South American Rainforest" habitat had been drained for no reason I could see, so there were no vegetarian piranha and the sole caiman was crammed into an isolation chamber along with the giant python. No turtles either, but elsewhere in the zoo they had Madagascar spider tortoises walking around on the grass, the tiniest chelonians you've ever seen.

Also, I recently found out that Zack makes candles, so I brought and gave him my now-ruined "Powerful Elvis Prayer" devotional candle for him to recycle. It's nice to be rid of it in a way that makes me feel like someone will appreciate it.

PS: stack's day job project is out.

Niggly sub-rules: when you choose a cue ball, the other cue ball is the eight ball for the duration of that shot (so if you sink one cue ball using the other, you lose unless it's the endgame and you were trying to sink the eight ball). If the other player sinks the cue ball they used, you have to put it somewhere appropriate on the table as in regular pool, but you don't have to use it on your next shot.

Rules for the horrible pool variants Andy and I used to play (with rules for cue ball bowling, bonuses for making a ball jump off the table and hit the potted fern, etc.) not forthcoming.

The point of this entry is that there are three brown signs we saw that point to things that should exist, and that we would have visited had we had more time. The first is the Abraham Lincoln birthplace in Kentucky. It apparently has a Lincoln Memorial type marble building which protects from deterioration a log cabin in which Lincoln was not born.

The second thing is the Agriculture Hall of Fame near the Kansas/Missouri border. Untrue to its name, the Agriculture Hall of Fame is not the destination for which the state fair is merely the semifinal. It does not house the World's Largest Grape. It does have inductees, who are pretty much who you'd expect. It has a lot of old farming implements. It has tours. It has a large collection of barbed wire and Harry Truman's boyhood plow. Speaking of which...

The third thing is the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, where it turns out Truman is buried. A little weird. The online-but-not-really gift shop lets you buy "The Buck Stops Here" desk sign replicas.

• Once they do an episode where the author makes a cameo appearance, it's all over.

This looks like some kind of ancient Rube Goldberg chain reaction, where the only reactants are dinosaurs shooting lasers at other dinosaurs.

If that doesn't get you to click, I don't know what will.

That reminds me of a joke Jason made up. "What do miners say when they strike helium?" [squeaky voice] "We're rich!"

I've complained in the past about the practice of including famous people in works of fiction (Sumana analyzed this as a projected Mary Sue impulse in reality fan fiction), but it turns out that, like all mankind, I am flawed. I think it is really cool that Samuel Pepys has a non-trivial part in Quicksilver. I thought I had a principled objection to this practice, but it was merely that no author had yet met my price. My price is apparently measured in some form of indie-cred economy units, since really famous people like Newton aggravate me when they show up, but I throw the door wide for less famous people like Pepys. Let's try some thought experiments. Robert E. Lee: blah. Hyman Rickover: sure, I'd read that. Einstein: waaay overdone. PGP author Phil Zimmerman: cool! Lewis Carroll: only if the story did not involve fairies.

I realized this while trying to find "Finnegan's Wake" (Google: 'Did you mean: "finnegans wake"'), the song that provides part of the the narrative structure for Finnegans Wake. It turns out to be a nineteenth-century American vaudeville song [Lyrics and music]. Even stack was surprised by this fact. Speaking of stack, here's his take on the matter:

There's loads of 'comic' songs -- alot written recently... but their authenticity is questionable being paddies singing about an idealized paddy (loads of drinking, working the bog, afraid o the women)...

Shaw has a character in john bull's other island that is a take on the 'stage Irishman'... There is an old irish novel, knocknagow, written by a man who was a member of an antecedant of the ira, the irb (should be the other way round says you) who took piss out of 'stage irish' mid 18th c (if i have my dates right).

As for actual songs, stack says he can't think of any in English, but "I know there'd be a legion in original irish." This reinforces my hypothesis of immigrant authorship.

Incidentally, if you are related to me and you want a weblog, I'll host it here.

As she says, I was a pallbearer. The VFW men did a twenty-one gun salute, played taps, folded up the flag and gave it to LeJeune's son. David Oman had brought a small flag, the kind that goes on a little stick except he'd removed it from the stick. He showed LeJeune's granddaughter how to fold the flag, then gave it to her. The pallbearers all got flowers for our suits and put them on the coffin at the end. Lots of ceremony.

Another thing I didn't know about LeJeune: she invented a synthetic substance called Swistraw for use in crafts.

Underwater avocado, yeah, yeah
Underwater avocado, bleah, bleah

Could be the big hit of the summer, assuming we could somehow declare it the big hit of the summer by fiat.

More information about my trip coming soon. If you want a trilobite, talk to me. If you want pictures, wait until I get my DSL equipment (I called today and discovered that someone forgot to push the damn button that sends my equipment, so the guy filed a Request To Push Damn Button, and hopefully that will be the end of it), or check out Seth's cool pictures from Germany.

I didn't want to struggle anymore! lp scg

And one for the "tepid irony" department, "choked on a tin of spinach" subdepartment:

I chose life instead of fat nhiwaxzgxpk lyhotz

Those were from Sumana. Kevan sends in "Speech Therapy Spam"

Do You Say: "I Wish I Knew How To Be A Seller On E B A Y" qybaygdswxhc m

I went to Amsterdam. I've been hanging out a lot with Jarno and his girlfriend PrustiTaina, because their travel plans have overlapped with mine to an unbelievable extent (eg. they planned to go to Amsterdam the same day I planned to, they chose the same hotels that I did, etc.) I also ate a waffle. My French is only good for reading and not for hearing what people are saying, nor for talking because when I try to talk to someone in French they just respond in English.

Q: Where do they keep the pirate Constitution?
A: In the National Arrrrchives.

Q: How do they protect the pirate Constitution from deterioration?
A: Arrrrgon.

Q: What's a pirate's favorite web portal?
A: Yoho!.

And two of mine:

Q: What was an evolutionary precursor to the modern pirate?
A: yo-ho-homo erectus.

Q: What is a pirate's favorite physical constant?
A: Plank's Constant.

(Apparently I can't remember any of Riana's pirate jokes.)

Also, when I came in, Zack mistook me for Cory Doctorow. Cory did not show up, leaving the nagging question in the back of my mind: could I have succesfully impersonated Cory Doctorow for the duration of the party? Maybe there's a story on the possibility.

I showed Seth and Nick Moffitt my new game, and they laughed uproariously. Hopefully I'll finish the game tomorrow, and then you too can laugh uproariously or not get it.

I was disappointed, because even though British and French taxpayers will no longer bleed billions of dollars per year, the rest of us lost a great shorthand for fallacious investments :).

1. He now has a weblog.

   Still, Mike Godwin is not someone who exaggerates the seriousness of a situation. Slashdot does, though!

2. He sent me and Kevin a link to reviews of a hot sauce written by people who have not yet recovered from the hot sauce.

   I WANT TO SEE THE PEOPLE IN PERSON WHO SAY THIS IS NOT HOT I WANT TO SEE THEM BURST INTO FLAMES AS THEY LIE ABOUT THIS VOLCANO EXTRACT IN A BOTTLE.

   I envision Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf saying that about some wimpy Tabasco.

Some call Jason the patron saint of UML users. I think that rather than being the patron saint of any particular thing, he should be canonized as the PatronSaint design pattern itself.

• Ada Norton
• Joel Alan St. Arnaud

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.

2) Does Linux run on Red Hat?
Torvalds: That's just too strange a question.

Welcome to The New Radioslack™! I think this redesign really embodies a new direction for the site, namely, "Not getting my ass sued by those motherfuckers at RadioShack."

Update: I can hear it pretty clearly from six floors up. It sounds a lot like FEEDBACK FEEDBACK FEEDBACK!

Another great thing about playing FreeCiv with humans is that you can give your cities silly names and not be the only one who appreciates them. I marked my triumphs over enemy cities by renaming them to the names of fusion cuisine restaurants like "Big Ken's Sushi Burrito Hut".

Speaking of silly names, today's entries will be reverse liponymic in "mola mola". I did not name a FreeCiv city Mola Mola, but I should have.

Update: stack says:

Human Rights commission. The g/f did representation for an NGO. I was chief photocopier for our delegation.