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2009-06-30 (Tuesday)
Dear Log,Classical Tibetan is, I'm pretty sure, the only language to have independently invented a punctuation system as complex as modern Europe uses (and argues about).
Have a look. (168 KB PDF)
It's pretty. And the characters have interestingly explanatory names.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: scribbly
Current Music: X- I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
2009-06-24 (Wednesday)
Dear Log,I'm fucking had it with typing "Ahmadinejad".
"Internationalization" is "i18n", "localization" is "l10n", because you count the letters you skip.
That skeezy guy is now "A9d".
I've already decided Nietzsche is "Nichi", so let's just move on.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: telescopic
Current Music: Stewart Lewis- Tome To Time
2009-05-28 (Thursday)
Dear Log,«I have a car horn application called Toot-toot.»—RFC5513: IANA Considerations for Three Letter AcronymsTags: writinglocation: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: chaopolitan
Current Music: Minutemen- Corona
2009-05-19 (Tuesday)
Dear Log,Someone wrote to me pointing out a bad URL in My Tips on Learning the Dvorak Keymap. Since this is about the fifteenth (!) year of me putting stuff on the web, and since that page is about eight years old, I had long forgotten it.
I corrected the URL, fixed a few other things, and reworded a phrase here and there.
In fiddling with the page, it occurred to me:
If not for my having switched to a Dvorak keymap in about 1997, my RSI would have worsened, and I would have had to almost definitely give up programming and writing– for money and otherwise, for good or for awesome.
I doubt it would have been a good thing.
Although maybe I would have finally had time to devote to exercising my Second Amendment right to building a doomsday machine.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: optimized
Current Music: the closing credits music to "Marjoe"
2009-05-17 (Sunday)
Dear Log,The main character in Clarke's book 3001 is supposed to be a flash-frozen and then revived astronaut, an American guy born at about the same time as me; and in the super-shiny and high-tech year 3001, he is revived. (I know, Futurama, sci-Fry, don't care.)
And I think the greatest flaw in the book, for there are many, is that he talks like he is Bertie Wooster. "Hm, yes, quite spectacularly indeed!", etc.
In a book populated by the smiling residents of the year 3001 who are slowly beginning to get on the man's nerves (amongst all his adventures), a single line, inserted really just about anywhere in the text, would have saved the book. It would be:
"You know, you people are absolutely fucking crazy," said Frank.Or even something a bit longer:
To: Dr Banjo or Annyong or whatever
From: FrankHey! How was L5? I wanna hear.
BTW, I'm really really really grateful that you got me a butler so that I don't have to spend twenty minutes trying to remember how the dishwasher works and reading its instructions which are in Mooninite Tok Pisin and whose "clever" interface is a MONDRIAN PAINTING. So seriously, I really am grateful! :) :)
But, I'm not so happy that this butler guy is a zombie.
Can you send someone normal over, some nice person to explain, like, stuff? Just someone to explain to me how towels do not exist, but nice fluffy ones appear just in the corner of my eye as I'm turning around to get one. Nice feature, but it's creepy. So, can we fine-tune the "towel latency"? Oh but wow, please thank whatsisname, the Mars guy, for showing me the MOUSE GESTURE for turning the towel material setting to "flafi teriklas" last week. The "namal" towels setting was the scariest fucking thing I've ever experienced and that's counting when I died.
Also, these little vacuum-cleaner robots that I can never actually see are keeping me up at night with little skitter hiss skitter hiss noises. Come explain just just all this STUFF, show me the interfaces, and I'll take notes! It can't be any worse than working Word 97. 1997. If there is a Word 2997, nobody tell me, or I'll kick them till they bleed. (Hah I'm just joking, the future is all nonviolent and stuff, but really, don't tell me.)
Or so I can ditch the butler, just get me a (sane) HAL-9500 AI and he can read up on it all, and then explain and explain and explain. About the towels. And stuff. Like how to keep the duvet from going into Saran Wrap mode, and also how to keep the couch from turning into a blob of cushy translucent sand. Yeah I'm sure you guys must love this stuff. But I'm used to crap from Ikea instead. Also, Netflix. I never did get to finish The Sopranos.
Also, when I ask ZOMBIE JEEVES here to go beep boop the kitchen machines to get me some onion rings, he just says "there are none" and goes back into staring into space. Can you like go "nano" me up some, please?
LATERZ!!!
P.S.: You people are absolutely fucking crazy.
send
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: tonal
Current Music: Pretenders- Back on the Chain Gang
Dear Log,
Click the above for the full screen, an 82K PNG.
Hhhhhhhhhh.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: hyper\\\;/:?@textual!!
Current Music: Pretenders- Back on the Chain Gang
2009-05-07 (Thursday)
Dear Log,Spam says:
Subject: The longer your instrument is, the shorter the ladder to success.I will tolerate almost anything from spam except mixed metaphors!
Now you don't have to look for something to cover your manhood when you are naked.Stop talking about foreskin!!
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: surreeled
Current Music: Bear McCreary- All Along The Watchtower
2009-05-06 (Wednesday)
Dear Log,A handy glossary of book terms.
I do some RTF stuff that generates books. And apparently, all this time, I've been calling the flytitle "the flyleaf"!
* * *
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: paginate
Current Music: Madonna- Erotica
2009-05-03 (Sunday)
Dear Log,Spam informs me:
"Now you can poke your big impressing tool into everybody's business."
* * *
Whelp
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: procked
Current Music: Pretenders- Back on the Chain Gang
2009-05-01 (Friday)
Dear Log,ऄ ↔ অ ↔ ਅ ↔ અ ↔ ଅ ↔ அ ↔ అ ↔ ಅ ↔ അ!!!
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: aaaaaah
Current Music: Matthew Popieluch- "Pirate[d] Sounds"
2009-04-23 (Thursday)
Dear Log,«Hitchens initially rejected the notion that waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that has allegedly been used on prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, constitutes torture.Subsequently, he was asked by Vanity Fair to experience it for himself.
In May 2008, Hitchens voluntarily experienced waterboarding, after which he fully changed his opinion.
He concluded "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."»
—Wikipedia entry "Christopher Hitchens", subsection "Waterboarding"Oh Hitchens, you're such a card!
I suggest, advocate, and would even demand the extrajudicial (equals it's okay, fun!) abduction and super-
duper- NOT- torture of Peggy Noonan, Carl Rove, and all those apologists for all that not-torture who I see skittering around the media. ("They move like things from science fiction, on the vacuum screen".) Peggy, will the drown-mo-tron make your mascara run? Carl, will having your head rammed into the bubble-wrappy wall over and over mess with your rub-in Minoxidil? Will the fist gripping the back of your head be tight enough to cause, or to not cause, your thinning hair come out in clumps? (We can always check the instant replay, for the viewers at home.) Bill, will being backwards hog-tied for a few hours/days make your chiropractor later sigh and have to work overtime? ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!
«There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston's face.
"I have pressed the first lever," said O'Brien. "You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue."
[...]
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
"It was a common punishment in Imperial China," said O'Brien as didactically as ever.»
—1984, Part 3, section 5.That is not-torture. You got the memo. You know who goes first.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: tort-reformed
Current Music: ACDC- Back in Black
2009-04-22 (Wednesday)
Dear Log,So today a Sirius channel blared at me "Captured the dreamer with a thousand thrills, the old masturbator from the faraway hills!!"
Okay, let me rewind on this one.
* * *
Sometimes I start doing something with the Tivo and then something distracts me and I go do that instead. When Tivo detects idleness (unless you're paused on something already recorded), after ten minutes or so, it drops you... into live TV! Which is exactly what I got a Tivo so I wouldn't ever fucking see! What's on that channel is usually something horrible and jarring and deafening about AND GET OUR NEW ABSBLASTER PLUS INSTRUCTIONAL DVD YES THAT'S RIGHT KATHY JUST CALL ONE EIGHT HUNDRED DICKS RAPING MY MOUTH HLGBLGBLGBLGKKKH!!!
I know no channel numbers. Why learn? But I want to put the TV on a channel that will not scare me senseless when Tivo says "idle too long, dropping you back into realtime!" I could punch up the channel guide and cursor pathetically through it until I find something whose channel and show title sound innocuous, but that would all take like eleventy thousand years!
So I need an easy-
to- remember channel number, here on my DirecTV lineup. 100? No no I do not want what's there... Many possibilities later, I find and remember 801. Eight oh one, eight oh one, I can remember that, eight oh one, got it. It's a Sirîus channel for 1940s music. So I punch that into the Tivo now and then, and forget about it, and then go about other Tivo business, but at peace that idleness will at worst drop me into, well, some muffled-sounding song from the 1940s. Also, it pleases me that the channel, audio aside, is a totally black screen, except for the Amiga-
generated- looking cards that pop up for just a few seconds listing the name of a new song starting. So I figure I dunno, just maybe that'll give the DirecTV box's mpeg decoder and Tivo's mpeg encoder and decoder a little rest on this channel. It's a win all around. * * *
This morning (the crack of noon), I pass by the TV and hit its power button and am dropped into the middle of...
[... click, thup ...] murals on the blue summer skies!Bitch what?
Painted the devil in my darlin's eyes!
Captured the dreamer with a thousand thrills!
The old masturbator from the faraway hills!!Then came his masterpiece and when he was through!
He smiled down from heaven and he gave me you!
What a beautiful job on that wonderful day!
That old masturbator from the hills far away!!I swear, every bit of this post-- what I heard, when I heard it, where, how-- it's all completely true.
I get the Tivo remote, and hit jumpback a few times, and replay. There it is. "That old masturbator from the hills far away!!". And its acoustics are 40s, namely high frequencies lost, low frequencies a muddle, but not as much as something from earlier. But this could all be faked in Cool Edit, you know.
So. This... uh... And... a... Old Masturbator...
I pull up the channel guide to see what channel it's really on. No, it really is the Sirîus '40s channel.
Googling for lyrics...
Okay, it turns out to be, supposedly, "Old Master Painter".
Don't play me like that.
I listened again. It's one of those deals like in "I'm Afraid of Americans" where there's the "Johnny wants to suck on a cock" but if you say "NO IT REALLY SAYS A COKE, YOU AND YOUR DIRTY MIND!" and you listen for that, okay, you can get "Coke". (Cock.)
Do you wanna hear "old master painter"? Okay. But it is "old masturbator". And there's no way that neither the lyricist, nor composer, nor the singer, nor anyone in the band stopped to say "Ya know... No, really really..."
* * *
Monolith from the hardware store.
And now Old Masturbator.
And even Unpornable, which was the shot across my bow, those years ago.
REALITY, I AM TIRED OF YOU PLAYING COY. I'M ON TO YOU.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: what
2009-03-17 (Tuesday)
Dear Log,«[interviewer]: Have you ever thought about writing your memoirs?Margot Kidder: I have. In fact, that’s what I was working on when you called, because I have no choice, because I, like everybody else, have lost most of my pension plan in this economic crash. So I have to. I’m going to call it I Slept With Everyone On Television. I was in the airport in Minneapolis, and I thought, “Shit. What you have to do is have something that catches the eye of people going from Minneapolis to New York that looks like a good, easy read on a plane.” So that title would sell out right away. I need to make some money. And if I put it all in the title, then I don’t have to spill the beans, really. And also, it’s funny.
[interviewer]: I would totally buy that book.
MK: Yeah, there you go. See? My point exactly.»
—"Random Roles: Margot Kidder"location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: Minneapolene
Current Music: Inspiral Carpets- Two Worlds Collide
2009-03-09 (Monday)
Dear Log,When I change some configuration option, my cellphone's interface says “Ok”.
“Ok” isn't “okay” or “OK”. “Ok” is Swedish, and Icelandic, for “yoke”. Like the thing you fasten onto oxen and go ploughing fields with.
[Later edit: it's also Ixil Mayan for "enter".]
This is more annoying than when I pass my neighbor-family's house and they have a nice homey wood plaque that says: THE STEVENSON'S
This is more annoying when I walk into a clothing store and see the sign over the “MENS” section.
This is more annoying than when the newspaper can't spell.
It is worse because it is on a glowing screen right in my hand.
* * *
I have no proofreader's red pen and I must scream!!
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Music: Matthew Popieluch- Pirate[d] Sounds
2009-02-20 (Friday)
Dear Log,David Rees cheered me up. I really needed it too.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: bettered
Current Music: Blues Traveler- Hook
2009-01-12 (Monday)
Dear Log,location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: conditional
Current Music: David Bowie- TVC15
Dear Log,From David Byrne's The New Sins ... ( -700px-across image- )
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: sincere
Current Music: Brian Eno- Music for Airports 2/1
2008-11-26 (Wednesday)
It's that time of year, folks!
[~2MB MP3, ~2min, of the author reading it.]
William S. Burroughs
"The Thanksgiving Prayer"Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.
For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.
Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the memories– all right let's see your arms!
You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
2008-11-18 (Tuesday)
Dear Log,«Of course, I am speaking metaphorically, but that is only because I am also about to become your religion.»— Caligula©®™∞, in Cintra Wilson's Caligula For Presidentlocation: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: looming
Current Music: Smash Mouth- When The Morning Comes
2008-11-08 (Saturday)
Dear Log,And this is what it looked like when I was trying to code up the big Yiddishy bannery part of my earlier post:
It's all because of sane logic that's works fine when you're keying in paragraphic text that's mostly in text in one direction, mixed with bits of text going in another direction. But in this particular case, it all went awry, and I never bothered to poke around in this program to see if there's an option for handling this stuff specially, whatever that would look like.
I'm very glad that I don't have to deal with bidirectional text often at all, because generally it's okay but these sort of no-win situations are agonizing. That mess, above, is what it LOOKED like as I was typing it. The actual typing, cursoring around, was crazier still.
And even when there's no markup...
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: optipessimal
Current Music: X- Soul Kitchen
Dear Log,location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: how we do
Current Music: Shriekback- Underwaterboys
2008-10-15 (Wednesday)
Dear Log,Ixatnu siofenut i avay
Y avait une fois un taxi
Taxi taxi taximètre
Qui circulait dans Paris
Taxi taxi taxi cuitIl aimait tant les voyages
Taxi taxi taximètre
Qu'il allait jusqu'en Hongrie
Taxi taxi taxi cuitEt qu'il traversait la Manche
Taxi taxi taximètre
En empruntant le ferry
Taxi taxi taxi cuitUn beau jour il arriva
Taxi taxi taximètre
Dans les déserts d'Arabie
Taxi taxi taxi cuitIl y faisait tellment chaud
Taxi taxi taximètre
Que sa carrosserie fondit
Taxi taxi taxi cuitEt de même le châssis
Taxi taxi taximètre
Et tous les pneus y compris
Taxi taxi taxi cuitChauffeurs chauffeurs de taxi
Taxi taxi taximètre
Ecoutez cette morale
Taxi taxi taxi cuitLorsque vous quittez Paris
Taxi taxi taximètre
Emportez un parapluie
Taxi taxi taxi cuitParapluie ou bien ombrelle
Taxi taxi taximètre
Un mot est bien vite dit
Taxi taxi taxi cuit.
—Raymond QueneauTags: writinglocation: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: cuit
Current Music: Kleptones- Kick The Bus, Kick The Train
2008-10-14 (Tuesday)
Dear Log,
IT IS OUT.
BUY!
* * *
THIS IS NEW ALSO:
BUY!
BUY BUY BUY.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: BUY.
Current Music: Bobby Darin- Mack The Knife
2008-10-03 (Friday)
Dear Log,Douglas Adams did, again, predict the future that we now know as Wikipedia:
«He [Hurling Frootmig, editor of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] also started to develop and explore the role of the editorial lunch-break which was subsequently to play such a crucial part in the Guide's history, since it meant that most of the actual work got done by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing.»—Life, the Universe, and EverythingWhat he didn't foresee is that those passersby would start throwing punches, arguing over policy, and stalking eachother. But here we are. Welcome to Wikipedia.
location: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: neutral
Current Music: Cake- Ruby Sees All
2008-09-26 (Friday)
Dear Log,Tags: writinglocation: Ketchikan, Alaska
Current Mood: subbed
Current Music: Devo- Beautiful World