Daily traversal

New website!

2007-02-26T13:39:00.000-06:00

F blogspot! I have successfully migrated over to my own domain running wordpress. Please change your feeds and so forth to reflect the new URL: http://www.dailytraversal.com.

The best thing: I found a nifty tool that sucked all the posts from this site (and flashwhore) and put them into the new site, so all of the links have been preserved! w00t! So F this place, and come to the new site at:

http://dailytraversal.com.

f.

Top 10 Largest Databases in the World

2007-02-19T12:14:00.000-06:00

A great list of great examples of great big freaking databases. Great!

Cage's 'Ghost Rider' Rides $44.5M In Box Office Revenues

2007-02-19T11:15:00.000-06:00

Jesus Christ. Well, when you're wrong, you're wrong. I'm big enough to admit it.

The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™

2007-02-16T14:11:00.000-06:00

w00t! I made the beta list for the LOTR MMORPG! Now I can merrily stomp through the Misty Mountains squishing Dwarves and Hobbits alike. Joyous day!

Movies: Ghost Rider Opens Cold

2007-02-09T11:56:00.000-06:00

Ever since hearing of this project, my guts have turned cold and stony. Whatever fool thought it wise to cast Nick Cage as Ghost Rider should be drawn and quartered. Well, alright, that's a stock reply from me regarding Nick Cage, but whatever. From the article:

Sony is dodging opening-day print reviews for "Ghost Rider,'' which opens a week from Friday. Critics are being invited to the premiere the night before the opening as well as a "courtesy'' screening on Friday, which means reviews will be buried in the Saturday papers.

Britney no lesbian

2007-02-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

It's been confirmed in an independent lab full of scientists and Nobel laureates in Physics and Astronavigation: Britney Spears is no lesbian. Apparantly, it's some kind of smear campaign from K-Fed (AKA "Burger Boy") in their divorce battle. K-Fed's producer, Omar 'Iceman' Sharif, says of Britney, "Britney was into threesomes and girls. There was tons of porn in the house - but it was mostly Britney's." What kind of a world is this, dear readers, in which young, innocent Britney Spears is accused of being a highly sexualized person? It's enough to make me physically ill.

Senator Carl Krueger Thinks iPods Can Kill You

2007-02-08T07:53:00.000-06:00

Well, file this under, "Get back to work ya bum." Apparantly, Senator Carl Krueger believes that by using a mobile electronic device you're putting yourself in mortal danger. From the article:

Yes, [Senator Krueger] is planning to introduce a law which would make the use of the iPod, the BlackBerry or any other handheld illegal, when crossing the streets of New York. No matter how funny or weird that might sound to you, his intentions are pretty serious. He claims that the number of fatal accidents caused by what he calls “the iPod oblivion” is increasing in New York and as an example he brings the case of a young man who died last month.

Seriously, guy, aren't we currently at war? Better things to do, perhaps?

Shower habits by gender

2007-02-06T17:15:00.000-06:00

A video showing the showering habits of men vs. the showering habits of women. For the record, I have never drawn a penis in the fog on the mirror after a shower, but I may have shaken my wiener and made the "woo woo!" sound.

Bad Language / How to be a freelance journalist

2007-02-03T15:58:00.000-06:00

A bit of good advice from Articulate Marketing Writer-in-chief, Matthew Stibbe, on the ins-and-outs of becoming a freelance journalist.

David Lee Roth Re-Joins Van Halen for Summer Tour - Music News - Playfuls.com - Fun & Entertainment

2007-02-03T15:09:00.000-06:00

Diamond Dave, Mr. Gigalo, re-joins the band with the record for the most number one hits on Billboard's rock list. Rejoins them again. No, really, this time they're rejoined. Dave and the band. Rejoined. Again. Together. To record rock-and-roll. Not to threaten each other, no, no, no. That was... an accident? No, to get along. Yes. To record some rock-and-roll. Together. Again.

PS2 Sales Likely to Surpass PS3 Sales in 2007 and 2008

2007-02-03T15:03:00.000-06:00

Vindicated. That's how I feel. For every conversation I've ever had about the PS3, it's ginormous price tag, and hasty rollout schedule. For that kid in Radio Shack who made fun of me for desiring a Wii instead of a PS3, I say, "In your face." For that co-worker that called the PS3 the "Cadillac of consoles" I say, "DeLorean, maybe." To all of the game developers who dropped their PS3 titles to concentrate on the Xbox 360 and the Wii, I say, "Forward-thinking." The PS3 is in deep doo-doo, and Sony and Blue-ray along with it. And let this be a warning to future generations of console manufacturers on how to take a solid brand and send it straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Rock Your Face

2007-02-01T18:25:00.000-06:00

In honor of their successful terrorist invasion of Earth yesterday, witness! The Moonites! They will rock your face.

Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD - Lifehacker

2007-01-30T16:22:00.000-06:00

Yay! Finally, no more hunting for converters for: xvid - dvd; divx - dvd; mp3 - dvd; ac3 - dvd; mov - dvd; avi - dvd; wmv - dvd; mpeg - dvd; vog - dvd; and so on. This tutorial on how to use the open source program DVD Flick will make it all happy.

Boxhead: The Rooms

2007-01-27T22:10:00.000-06:00

I've been playing this zombie shooter for the past 3 hours and I'm seriously cracked out on it. I found it to be pretty formulaic after a point but, well, see the "3 hours" above. Lots of fun!

Nudist Beginnings: Do nudists have a word for people who wear clothes?

2007-01-27T15:50:00.000-06:00

From the "You learn something new every day" department:

Yes, anyone who is not a nudist is called a "textile". The word textile refers to the non-nude person being clothed with textile materials (i.e., cloth is a textile).

I wonder if latex-wearers are known as synthies?

Tiger 1 Radio Controlled Model Tanks

2007-01-23T23:11:00.000-06:00

"1/4th Scale Tiger 1 !!
The only commercially available 1/4 RC Tank in the world! Massive size, 63' long in body, 36' wide, 28' tall, and 7' long with gun! Full option weight 200kgs! Will run on either 12v or 24v, all options available similar to the 1/6th tanks, but bigger and louder! Also, 1/4th T34/85 currently under test."

(Thanks, deedlebomb!)

Even vodka freezes in Siberia

2007-01-23T02:48:00.000-06:00

Some guys (uncredited) made a photo montage of their Jan 2006 trip through Siberia. See: beautiful and desolate landscapes, native Siberian fauna, bizarre Soviet Union relics, and crazy (shirtless!) Siberians.

Mum: You are wrong because...

2007-01-21T12:05:00.000-06:00

A list of argumentative fallacies for the next time you're at a family gathering and your uncle makes a statement about the world only being 6000 years old because the bible doesn't mention dinosaurs.

The Axe Murderer

2007-01-20T17:38:00.000-06:00

Video funness by a bunch of guys who answer the ancient philosophical question: what would you do if an axe-wielding maniac was beating on your door and your voice-dialing cell phone keeps connecting you to the wrong number? Fun!

You missed Muhammad Ali's birthday

2007-01-18T15:22:00.000-06:00

Gah! Yesterday was the 65th birthday of the butterfly-floating, bee-stinging idol of America and the world! And you missed it. You may officially suck now. Give yourself a haymaker to the face for penance!

I'm reading on Jan 20th

2007-01-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

I'm doing a performance reading this saturday, Jan 20th, at Kate the Great's bookstore, at 5550 N. Broadway St, Chicago. Come out and watch me astound audiences with funny googly-eyes and well-pronounced words. (I have no idea what I'm going to read yet.) Show starts at 6:30 in the PM.

All's well..

2007-01-16T13:59:00.000-06:00

Some images and other file-ish content was fubar on DT for a week or so due to a snafu on the server on which they're hosted. Seems that the web server suddenly got stuck on an internal 172 network, thus boofing the pooch. Gnarly. Anyhoo, everything should be back online now. Aren't you thrilled?

Caloric Values of Alcoholic Beverages, Alcohol calories

2007-01-15T16:55:00.000-06:00

JFC. Drinking booze will, indeed, make you fat. This excellent article, produced for the University of Rchester Health Promotion Office, not only discusses the metabolic reasoning behind the reviled "beer belly", but also has a comprehensive list of caloric values of alcoholic beverages.

I had always known that an average beer was about 150 calories per bottle, but what I hadn't known was how calorie-laden liquor was. For instance, a 1.5 oz shot of vodka can have as many as 125 calories, and a 12 oz Long Island Iced Tea has almost 800 calories! Compare that to the average daily caloric intake of the average American--2000 calories--and now you know why you felt like bloated crap the morning after drinking a half-dozen Long Islands.

Robert Anton Wilson is dead

2007-01-12T02:16:00.000-06:00

One of the greatest thinkers that I ever had the privilege to read, meet, and discuss, Robert Anton Wilson, has left his physical shell to join the cacophony of Eris in the halls of Chaos. RAW was a shill, a lunatic, a skeptic, and a great man of many profound words. He was a visionary blessed to be at the side of Timothy Leary's death bed, as well as the noted co-author of the "Illuminatus!" triology. The world is a sadder place with his loss, and, whoever you are, should smoke a joint in his honor this very moment. Fnord.

Eulogy for Robert Anton Wilson (1.4mb mp3)

Net Business Blog » Blog Archive » Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1)

2007-01-10T11:42:00.000-06:00

One of the easiest ways to make money online today is by creating “niche minisites.” The internet is huge, and it’s growing bigger everyday. You can always make a site that attempts to compete in large content areas, and you can succeed if you put enough time, effort, and money into it. What if you don’t have a lot of time? What if you don’t have much startup money? What if you’re lazy (even too lazy to start a Myspace turnkey)? Well then maybe you should give niche minisites a shot.

How to Draw Storyboards

2007-01-09T15:36:00.000-06:00

Any one story, if filmed in real time would be tedious and time-consuming. To condense this and inject interest, the plot is broken down further into important events or situations. These are called Moments and the rule which surround this idea is called the PRINCIPLE OF MOMENTS. This is a very important storyboarding tool. Now, every event is not as important as each other. Some are critcally important whilst others are simply required for the narrative or as atmosphere to t a more important event. For this reason Moments are generally categorised as Atmospheric, Narrative and Critical

Fiji coup leader to grant himself immunity - World - theage.com.au

2007-01-05T23:45:00.000-06:00

Fiji's new interim prime minister says he will grant immunity from prosecution for himself and fellow officers who overthrew the elected government a month ago.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who was sworn in as prime minister yesterday - exactly four weeks after staging a bloodless coup - said ratifying his actions would be among his first duties.

SanDisk introduces 32GB SSD for notebooks

2007-01-05T03:05:00.000-06:00

Invest in this. This is a technological turning point worthy of your attention.

Classes: Chicago Metro Area

2007-01-03T15:12:00.000-06:00

It's a bunch of people in Chicago who stab each other with rapiers. Freakin' awesome.

Meanings and origins of sayings and phrases

2006-12-31T15:25:00.000-06:00

Whether you want to resolve a friendly argument over how a saying or phrase originated or whether you just enjoy words, you'll probably find something here to interest you.

Confrérie du Sabre d'Or | Art Of Sabrage

2006-12-31T14:22:00.000-06:00

It is the art of opening a champagne bottle with a sword. How freaking cool is that?

1. Take a chilled bottle of champagne, not ice cold but suitable for drinking. The ideal temperature is around 37°F or 3°C
2. Carefully remove the wire around the cork. If the champagne has been properly chilled, the cork will remain in the bottle.

Top Myths of Renaissance Martial Arts & Swords

2006-12-29T16:08:00.000-06:00

From the article:

The diverse range of misconceptions and erroneous beliefs within historical fencing studies today is considerable. But there are perhaps some myths that are more common, and more pervasive, than others. This webpage presents an ongoing project that will continually try in an informal and condensed manner to help address some of these mistaken beliefs.

For example:

24. True rapiers could make lethal or debilitating edge cuts.

False. No historical rapier text teaches, implies, or expresses that edge blows with true rapiers, that is, the slender narrow blade forms developed in the 1570s or 1580s, killed by cut. Indeed, several historical sources specifically criticized these kind of rapiers for their lack of lethal cutting capacity. No historical accounts in the voluminous evidence of rapier combats describe rapiers as killing with cuts (or debilitating limbs by edge blows) but only as producing assorted lacerations and scratches.

I.33 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-12-29T15:44:00.000-06:00

I.33, also known as "the tower manuscript" because of its long stay in the Tower of London, is the earliest known surviving European treatise on the use of sword and buckler. The manuscript now resides in the collection of the Royal Armouries at Leeds, England. It is referred to as British Museum No. 14 E iii, No. 20, D. vi.

On 64 pages, the treatise shows a martial arts system of defensive and offensive techniques between a master and a pupil, referred to as sacerdos and scolaris, each armed with a sword and a buckler, drawn in ink and water colour and accompanied with Latin text, interspersed with German fencing terms. On the last two pages, the pupil is replaced by a woman called Walpurgis.

List of United States military schools and academies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-12-29T15:09:00.000-06:00

A handy list, which also includes a long list of defunct schools.

Someone turn my chapters into a novel

2006-12-04T19:03:00.000-06:00

So, it's a writing day over at the house today. Soren has joined us, and the three of us are sitting at the diningroom table working on our various theses. A.'s is on how one can see "whiteness" using the photography of Tina Barney. S.'s is on why and how melancholy characterizes the way we approach history today. Both of them are finishing M.A.s in modern art history, theory, and criticism. (That should probably all be in CAPS since it's the official title of their degree program.)

My thesis is a novel about an American scion who gets caught up with the Russian mafia during the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. My M.F.A. is in Creative Writing.

In preparing to write, I began going through some old material that I thought I could reuse. In fact, I have tons of old material, and curiosity got the better of me: how much old material, exactly, did I have? Or, as a metric, how many pages have I thus written for this novel? I often quoted a figure of "over 500", but it's always been an estimate.

So I counted the pages. All pages are Courier, 12-point, double-spaced. Because of the volume, and because I'm not exactly doing a scientific study here, I counted all cover pages as a page (there are only a few), as well as counting partial pages as a complete page (at the end of a chapter, e.g.).

All totaled, and not including typed notes or journal entries about process or direction or synposes (I have more than a few) or one-pagers, since November 30, 2004, I have 564 pages towards this novel. I'm on the 5th draft.

IMHO, instead of wasting my time, sitting here and writing more pages, I think I'm going to go to Craig's List and place an ad, "Will pay money to put my chapters into novel form." Then, instead of shovelling money at my M.F.A. program, I could just pay an editor to do all of the work for me and publish the novel instead of graduate.

I think it's a great plan.

Wolfe Pack -- Official Site of the Nero Wolfe Fan Club

2006-11-29T15:03:00.000-06:00

Nero Wolfe's fan club is sponsoring a writing contest: a detective novella of 15,000 - 20,000 words in length which must follow a set of guidelines along the lines of old-school detective novels, e.g. no psychics, coincidences, or psychopathic murderers.

Each entry must be an original unpublished work of fiction that conforms to the tradition of the Nero Wolfe series.
The mystery should be "traditional" in flavor.
The crime must be solved using the deductive abilities of the sleuth. No coincidences.
The killer must be known to the victim. No random pycho shootings.
The characters (male or female) must have an engaging relationship.

Why have HD prices not dropped?

2006-11-27T20:24:00.000-06:00

Two to three years ago I was paying between $70 - $100 for 250 GB hard drives, both IDE and SATA. I keep waiting for 250 GB drives to drop, but they remain in the same price range. Even as 320 GB and 400 GB drives come down in price, the 250 GB still will not budge. What gives with this? 750 GB drives are approaching the $350 range.

Bring the 250 GB drive prices down! I want $50 HDs, and lots of them!

Amazon's $100 360

2006-11-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

So, on the Amazon Customers Vote page, this week's deal is an Xbox 360 for $100. ! (The system typically retails for $299). They offered 1000 units at this price.

Sale started at 11:00AM PST. Accounting for time zone differences, I finally reached the sale page (after WAITING OMG THE SERVERS WERE JAMMED) at 11:09AM PST. SOLD OUT. 1000 units, gone in under 9 minutes. Bullocks.

THE 9 on Yahoo!'s 99th show

2006-11-22T13:15:00.000-06:00

The 9 keeps chugging along, production values are increasing, and guest stars abound. I saw T.O. last week, and today it's Fez from "That 70's Show." I'm telling you--you're asleep if you don't see the potential being realized by Yahoo!

Iraq - A Neo-Conservative Dream Mugged by Reality - NAM

2006-11-22T12:35:00.000-06:00

In this article, National Book Nominee and Washington Post correspondant, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, talks about how the neoconservative "dream" was corrupted by Rumsfeld's takeover of the state department. However, what I wonder is why he cares? Is this a whitewash of an extremely hostile and biggoted brand of American conservatism? I mean, neoconservative aims are just as aggressive, even with out a war-hawk like Rumsfeld in charge. Is it a chance to get easy shots in on the Iraq war fall guy?

In fact, it is an incredibly short article--a "Q&A"--and an audio excerpt. But the reason I liked it is because I didn't know Baghdad was called the "Emerald City" by the troops. And here's Chandrasekaran's explanation of why that is:

A number of disaffected people who worked in the Green Zone began to come to the realization that they were living in a fantasy, that bore no relation to the real Iraq. So they began to jokingly refer to the Green Zone as the “Emerald City.” It was kind of like going to Disneyland. It was like popping a Proza

YouTube - screwed by Bush

2006-11-22T12:19:00.000-06:00

Up for a little roleplay tonight, dear? How about I be the country and you be Bush.

"Don't pull out! Don't pull out!"

Mike the Headless Chicken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-11-22T00:58:00.000-06:00

On Monday September 10, 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, had his mother-in-law around for supper and was sent out to the yard by his wife to bring back a chicken. Olsen failed to completely decapitate the five-and-a-half month old bird named Mike, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.

Not quite sure what to do with his by now loose head, on the first night after the decapitation Mike slept with it under his wing; it was this touching tenacity to life and the now redundant organ that convinced Olsen to reprieve Mike from the cooking pot.

Despite Olsen's botched handiwork, the by-now-headless Mike was still able to balance on a perch and walk clumsily; he even attempted to preen and crow, apparently not noticing that neither activity could be accomplished properly without a head. After the bird did not die, a surprised and no doubt guilty Mr. Olsen decided to continue to care permanently for Mike, feeding him a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper; he was also fed small grains of corn. The unfortunate Mike occasionally choked on his own mucus, which the Olson family would clear using a syringe.

The end of the internet

2006-11-21T04:32:00.000-06:00

I did it. After months of denial, and being sorely out of practice, I read every page on the internet tonight. It took me 12 straight hours, but now there's nothing I don't know. As long as it's on the net.

Fuck I need to go to sleep.

Weird Al interviews Eminem. - CollegeHumor video

2006-11-17T10:51:00.000-06:00

A classic.

Laser Pointers, Blue, Green & Red Lasers

2006-11-17T10:32:00.001-06:00

This is a page of lasers that will actually burn things--the lasers as advertised by Star Wars in my childhood, but never delivered upon.

This site sells them.

Laser Pointers, Blue, Green & Red Lasers

2006-11-17T10:32:00.000-06:00

This is a page of lasers that will actually burn things--the lasers as advertised by Star Wars in my childhood, but never delivered upon.

This site sells them.

Jaleel White is not dead

2006-11-16T18:05:00.000-06:00

Urkle? Yeah. He's alive. So quit telling me that he killed himself.

Speaking about his "suicide":

White, now handsome and 30, a UCLA film school grad, a man who didn't squander his money or end up on America's Most Wanted alongside other fallen child stars, was alive and well and, as you might imagine, royally pissed.

I quit my job

2006-11-16T12:09:00.000-06:00

So, obvious lack of content here, and that was because I had a 70 hour / week job. But no longer. Although I loved the job, and worked with a great crew, production video game life didn't work out--at least, not when I have an MFA thesis in Creative Writing looming over me. Yes, it is hard to write a novel when all of your time is spent at the job.

So I quit. I'll miss Babaroga, and really appreciate working there.

For the future, I have a work-at-home job doing mobile social networking apps. mpulsemedia.com. Which also means that I'll have more time to write. Thesis-wise, but also to entertain the tubes of the intarwebs.

That is all. Now watch this flash from Whiskas(tm) cat food describing and demonstrating various cat behaviors.

A Crime

2006-11-16T11:39:00.000-06:00

Her body was burned. Not her face. In fact, her whole head was fine, except for the terrifying vision of it. Pain. Like a solid thing.

Lifting up her housewife dress, her midsection and genitals were a blackened mess. Charred skin cracked to reveal oozing red-black deep tissue below. The bone showed on her inner thighs.

She'd been raped. And burned to hide the evidence. But she hadn't been raped in the vagina. The evidence of burning was concentrated in the back. Between her buttocks.

A monster was on the loose; a hungry, devistating monster. And with an appetite like this, he would not soon be sated.

This was going to happen again.

Heeeehehe. I get to work on my thesis again. *stoked*

Device Dries Lice And Nits Out Of Hair

2006-11-06T18:13:00.000-06:00

Device Dries Lice And Nits Out Of Hair: "If you want to rid your children of lice and nits and don't want to use chemicals, a hairdryer-type device may be just what you are looking for. Use it on your child for 30-minutes and he/she will be infestation free, say the makers of the LouseBuster, Larada Sciences. The makers stress that their device dries the bugs out, it does not heat them. You should not try doing this at home with your hairdryer."

How do you say thank you?

2006-11-02T20:20:00.000-06:00

In hundreds of languages. Just in case.

A chain of events

2006-11-02T14:04:00.000-06:00

We needed a decent structure, so we created a lot of objects.

Too many objects blew the jar. We reduced the number of objects. We merged all of the images together.

Too many merged objects and images blew the heap.

That's the way it goes in OO.

Today's contemplation

2006-10-11T14:12:00.000-05:00

Did Sisyphus know that he was doomed to fail? That he would never actually be able to push the boulder over the hill?

(as overheard at work today)

Destroy all spammers

2006-09-24T13:21:00.000-05:00

Ah, email. Love it. Hate it. It will exist regardless. And you must function with it regardless.

Spammers. Hate them. Kill them.

I manage a domain. In that domain, I run qmail as my MTA of choice. And I had a big problem. Spammers were sending emails to letsjustmakeupsomewords@mydomain.com with fake "From" headers. My system, upon realizing that there was no user named "letsjustmakeupsomewords" would then bounce the message to the fake from header, effectively aiding in the delivery of spam.

This infuriated me, but I don't have the time to read through all the documentation that I would need to get a solid anti-spam system established, nor do I, as a lazy sysadmin, have the time to manage such a system (which requires constant preening to keep it from sliding into chaos).

Initially, I had established a whitelist of all of my aliases that I would allow mail to be delivered to. That helped to cut down the spam for me, but it did very little for my bouncing baby problem.

I also read copious quantities of documentation about how to use qmail's doublebounceto feature, but the spammers were circumventing this, and it was useless.

My solution? Follow the bouncing ball (as root):

echo '#' > /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-devnull
chown alias.nofiles /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-devnull
echo 'devnull' > /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-default

That's right. Now my system doesn't bounce SHIT. If you deliver to a bad username on my system, straight into the black hole of /dev/null you go. I'm tired of fighting with spammers, and now people who can't get an email address correct get to ride with them--straight to HELL.

I've been quite enjoying watching entries like this in my mail log this afternoon:

@400000004516ad350cad56a4 info msg 23004: bytes 1740 from qp 4887 uid 560
@400000004516ad350d1017e4 starting delivery 761: msg 23004 to local moisesortegabarbecue@MYDOMAIN.com
@400000004516ad350d139a54 status: local 1/10 remote 1/255
@400000004516ad350e37f9fc new msg 24044
@400000004516ad350e382cc4 info msg 24044: bytes 1852 from qp 4891 uid 504
@400000004516ad350e93f8c4 starting delivery 762: msg 24044 to local devnull@MYDOMAIN.com
@400000004516ad350e942b8c status: local 2/10 remote 1/255
@400000004516ad350e9442fc delivery 761: success: did_0+1+0/qp_4891/

BYE BYE TIGER. BYE BYE.

Swords and Fencing Terminology Round-up

2006-09-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

-Old-school terms, primarily in German and Italian
-Collection of swordish resources from The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts
-Uh, completely missing the intent (or perhaps I am...)
-RPG Library page on how to write fight scenes
-French and English glossary of fencing terms
-Just in case you wanted to read about cane fighting
-Canadian Fencing Federation glossary of tournament terms
-An analysis of the duel in "Hamlet" by Zbigniew Czajkowski
-Wikipedia's take on fencing definitions and maneuvers

I'm reading

2006-08-30T17:06:00.000-05:00

Come watch me read tomorrow night. I'm reading a really gross story called "Sacred Cow Skull." You'll be pleasantly disgusted.

Virtual Apple 2 - Online disk archive

2006-08-29T19:22:00.000-05:00

1,100 Apple II games you can play online! Right on. Here are the Es:

Eagles
Earth Orbit Station
Earthly Delights
Easter Island
Echelon
Eggs It
Eidolon
ElectroArena
Eliminator
Elite
Empire I - World Builders
Empire of the Overmind
Enchanter
Epoch
Escape
Escape From Arcturus
Escape From Rungistan
Escape From Traam
Escape!
ET Comes Back
Eternal Dagger
Europe Ablaze
Evolution
Exodus Construction Set
Expedition Amazon

The funniest thing about this: the emulator only works on IE on Windows. I.e. the APPLE emulator doesn't work on MAC. *Irony*.

FreeEnigma: not the deal it sounds

2006-08-25T15:33:00.000-05:00

BoingBoing is reporting about a new encryption service for email, FreeEnigma, which incorporates a relatively strong GPG encryption scheme into your popular email services (GMail, Hotmail, etc) via a FireFox extension.

One thing that you must know aboug GPG--indeed, any key-based encryption--is that, just as with any key for any lock, the key must be hidden for the encryption to work. If I have a key to the front door of your house, I can enter your house. It is the same for encryption: if I have the encryption key to your encrypted message, I can read your message.

Having established that, I found an interesting item in the FreeEnigma FAQ:

You manage all contacts and trusted persons with whom you want to exchange encrypted e-mails on the freenigma server. For the experts: the entire key management takes place on the server. Your keys are managed on the server while the encryption itself takes place within the client. For the non-experts: don't worry - you won't find any complicated terms in freenigma. Everything is simple and intuitive to use.

One of the "great" things about encryption is that the keys are long and complex and it would take a significant effort to find your key--unless you use FreeEnigma. Now, any governmental (or commercial) agent who wishes to read all of your encrypted email can just supoena FreeEnigma to get your key. And what's to stop FreeEnigma from exploiting your key themselves? Or from blundering it into the public domain like a much larger company recently did with their sensitive user information?

Encryption technology is not there yet because key management is not there yet. Just because an organization promises to take really, really good care of your sensitive key, we promise, doesn't mean you should trust them. In fact, you probably should not.

BACON WALLET

2006-08-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

Where do you keep your cheddar? In your bacon wallet! SO HUNGRY!

Snakes on the wane

2006-08-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

This article by Simon Houpt, art critic for the Globe and Mail, wonders aloud why "Snakes on a Plane" has done so badly, even though it generated so much internet buzz?

I have a few answers for him:
1) Have you seen the movie?
2) Do not believe the hype produced by a bunch of internet dorks. Peanut Butter Jelly Time may be the most amusing thing ever created, but an award-winning piece of culture it ain't.

Besides, even though New Line will recoup its 30 million in production costs with an opening weekend of 15 million, they really dropped the ball on how to make money from this movie:

MERCHANDISE! They should've crammed "Snakes on a Plane" logos and screenshots on everything from Burger King Cups to disposable diapers. That's the real genius behind the whole phenom that Houpt doesn't perceive: "Snakes on a Plane" really is just that bad of a concept that it appeals to the perverse to promote it. The movie will become a cult classic, surely, but it will never be a box-office smash.

California Academy of Sciences - General Information

2006-08-22T15:52:00.000-05:00

The trap-jaw ant is getting a lot of attention right now for having the fastest self-powered strike of any known animal. The ant, which lives in Costa Rica, can shut its mandibles at 145 MPH, beating out the vicious kick of the mantis shrimp.

How does one go about determining that a creature as tiny as an ant can move a body part 50% faster than Nolan Ryan can throw a fastball? They used a camera that recorded at 50,000 frames per second.

In addition to attacking its prey with lightning mandibles, trap-jaw ants can also hurl themselves into the air with the force of the snap to evade predators and the like.

The videos, at the bottom of the linked page, are not to be missed.

The Inner Life of a Cell

2006-08-17T20:06:00.000-05:00

A great article, and better animation, about a visualization of all things in the cell world. Pretty incredible and well-conceived.

Mountain Dew == Headache

2006-08-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

Every time I drink Mountain Dew, without fail, 20 minutes later I get a raging headache.

I thought it was because it had so much caffeine, so I looked it up on this chart to discover that Mountain Dew has 55mg of caffeine per 12 oz can. Well, considering that I usually have a quad iced venti latte every morning as well, which contains 4-6 oz of espresso, yielding a delicious jolt of 200-300 mg of caffeine, I decided that our friend C₈H₁₀N₄O₂ isn't the cuprit.

Instead I thought I'd look up the other major ingredient in Mountain Dew: sugar. However, Mountain Dew only has 46g of sugar, a mere 5g over Cherry Coke, which never gives me a headache.

Praise Jupiter for the Tubes of the Internets. Caffeine is not the culprit, nor is sugar, so on a whim I decided to go to Mountain Dew's Wikipedia entry, where I found a most interesting paragraph at the top:

Mountain Dew contains tartrazine (“FD&C Yellow No. 5” in the US), which could lead to allergic reactions in some people. This has also led to an urban legend that the Yellow No. 5 in Mountain Dew reduces the sperm count of male drinkers. This is, however, false. Mountain Dew, along with many other citrus flavoured sodas, contains citric acid and sodium benzoate. Recent reports to the FDA indicate that Mountain Dew and other soft drinks may contain high levels of benzene that are above the FDA's limit for public drinking water. The source of the benzene appears to be from a reaction of citric acid and sodium benzoate. There has been a call, recently, for soft drink companies to address the toxic chemical reaction that takes place in many similar beverages. Diet Mountain Dew contains aspartame. Mountain Dew's brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is another source of contention.

Well now the list of potentially bad items grows: tartrazine, according to the article, is the most egregious offender, which, according to its own Wikipedia entry is "banned in Norway and was banned in Austria and Germany, before EU regulations lifted the ban again." And in 2001, Heather Brodie Perry, a Reference Librarian at Stonehill College in Eastern Massachusetts, wrote a petition to the FDA to delist tartrazine (A.K.A. FD&C Yellow 5). I called Heather by phone and she told me that over 2000 people had signed her petition, which has yet to be closed by the FDA.

So is tartrazine causing an allergic reaction in me? Or are my headaches caused by the carcinogen benzine, or the allegedly brain-tumor-causing aspartame, or the toxic and indigestable traces of bromine contained in the brominated vegetable oil?

Heather suggested that I do a comparison with other products with similar amounts of tartrazine. She cited Tang as a good comparator. Looks like it's a Tang weekend for me!

(Special thanks to Heather Brodie Perry for being so nice when a random internet wacko--me--called her out of the blue!)

Word of the day: blotto

2006-08-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

blotto (adv.) - Blind drunk, intoxicated to the extreme

You were so blotto last night

Poker Math Geeks Unite!

2006-08-16T13:23:00.000-05:00

Cactus Kev, poker aficionado, has written a seriously hard-core poker hand evaluator. The real secret of it is in two parts.

First, the algorithm makes a difference between unique hands--any of the 2,598,960 (C(52,5) in combinatoric parlance) possible hands in poker--and distinct hands--those hands that will tie in a game of cards even though they're different (e.g. a ten-high straight of TH-9D-8D-7D-6D ties a ten-high straight of TS-9C-8C-7C-6C), and of which turn that 2,598,960 unique hands into 7462 distinct hands.

Cactus Kev then needed to be able to evaluate a hand with the cards in an arbitrary order (sorting it would waste CPU cycles), which brings us to the second strength of the algorithm: a prime number was assigned to each value of card (e.g. Two is 2, Three is 3, Four is 5, Five is 7, and so on until Ace is 41). Now he could simply multiply the five cards together and get a unique number, which he could then compare against any of the 7462 distinct hands to deterimine which hand he had.

Paul Senzee of Florida then further optimized the algorithm to include a pre-computed perfect hash, which knew all of the distinct hand ids in advance so as to remove any unnecessary CPU cycles.

This algorithm, on an unspecified computer (probably a Pentium 4 class machine), calculates a poker hand in arbitrary order in 63 milliseconds. That's almost 16 hands per second to identify the rank of any of the 2,598,960 poker hands. Kudos, gentlemen!

Spider web construction gallery (Samuel Zschoke)

2006-08-15T14:43:00.000-05:00

We already knew that the construction of a spider web is an intricate and beautiful process, but Dr. Samuel Zschokke, Senior Lecturer at Universität Basel, takes it one farther by diagramming the actual construction phases and materials of spider webs. And he does this in a most ingenious way:

the general idea was to have the spider build a web in front of a video camera connected a image scanning device (to detect the spider in the picture) which in turn was connected to a computer (to record the spider's positions).

The effects are quite stunning, and the trivia is awesome (for instance, did you know that most spiders only take an hour to build a web that may last for one or two days, while Cyrtophora citricola takes several nights to build a web which may then last for a couple of weeks? And what a web it is!)

BetaNews | Microsoft: Build Your Own Xbox Game

2006-08-14T20:05:00.000-05:00

Why not? I'm a bit surprised that MS would open a development platform for next to nothing, but, come on, like they don't have an ulterior motive. My guess: an attempt to strengthen their position among application developers, which is one of MS's main businesses. And it might just help the flagging 360 sales in the face of the imminent Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3 releases. Furthermore, I think MS is a bit tired of being smacked around by various hacker communities (who are going to reverse-engineer everything anyway), making their code release a first attempt at harnessing them as allies.

Coronal suture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-08-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

That crack along the top of your skull that divides it between front and back? It's called the coronal suture.

'Baby, Give Me a Kiss' - Los Angeles Times

2006-08-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

Wow. A great article by Claire Hoffman, a journalist on the Hollywood and adult entertainment beat for the LA Times, about Joe Francis, the apparantly psychotic founder and cult-leader of the Girls Gone Wild franchise. It should come as no surprise that the guy is ruthless, eneretic, charismatic, and covered in dirt. The article is written from a "ride-along" POV in which Hoffman gets access to the entire GGW empire--from the distribution facilities, to court documents, to hanging with Francis himself--and shows an incredible amount of restraint. I mean, tons of restraint. Francis has so much dirt on him that the entire article could've been about his pending legal fights, but Hoffman takes her time with it, painting a very versitile picture of the man responsible for those late-night infomercials promising drunk co-eds for all the world to see.

Zoey Budgerigar

2006-08-05T20:14:00.000-05:00

It says:

Hi, my name is Zoey Budgerigar. I am the Snow Princess from lands far away. I was rescued from the streets of St. George Staten Island, NY by Carly Haffner and Don Porcella in July of 2005. I am here to bring joy and beauty to your life.

Yes, but look at the picture of the blog creator, Don Porcella. Is it just me or is there a serious mismatch in effect?

Proverb of the day...

2006-08-05T19:40:00.000-05:00

The idiot who has his eye on your wife is like a blood sucking fly.
Egyptian Proverb

All Hallows Eve, All Souls and All Saints Day - Halloween's Christian Roots, The Tale of the Jack O' Lantern and More

2006-08-05T18:57:00.000-05:00

This would be the Catholic Church's take on the holiday as reported by AmericanCatholic.org. A whole bevy of links to articles on the proper, political stance for Catholics to take regarding Halloween, including "How Halloween can be Redeemed":

How can Catholics keep All Hallows Eve from becoming “hollow”? Celebrate Halloween and All Saints Day while remembering both the Christian connection to Halloween and the positive messages that stem from the holiday.

Snakes On A Plane :: Send a Message From Samuel L. Jackson!

2006-08-03T17:19:00.000-05:00

This has got to be the funnest fucking thing ever. It's madlibs with Sam Jackson's voice that will call a friend (or enemy) and leave them a message. ZOMFG!

Studies of the mental processes of chess grand

2006-08-02T15:21:00.000-05:00

From Scientific American:

But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters. The collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information. What is more, this research may have important implications for educators. Perhaps the same techniques used by chess players to hone their skills could be applied in the classroom to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.

What are the stupidest things your customers have ever done?

2006-08-02T11:55:00.000-05:00

Everybody likes to bitch about the young-twenty-something clerk behind the counter at their neighborhood cellular corner store, but what are those same clerks saying about you? This forum thread (quite long!) is a list of grievances the employees of the cell retail industry have against you. For example:

I had a customer come to my store at 9:10 at night with his defective V300 yelling at us to open the door for him (we close at 9 o'clock sharp). He came in earlier in the day because the phone was freezing or something, but he got all pissed off because he didn't want to go through warranty exchange, he wanted us to give him a new phone right there. I guess he had changed his mind, but when he demanded that we open the door and we refused, he started screaming "F$%* T-Mobile" and throws his phone about 150 feet across the 4 lane highway into another parking lot. I would've had more respect for him and his outburst if he'd stood behind his 'T-Mobile sucks' principles and left the phone there. Instead, I laughed as he drove across the street and spent 5 minutes wandering around looking for his phone in the dark. Then I memoed his account with the details in case he tried to go through with the exchange.

The Size Of Our World

2006-07-28T19:49:00.000-05:00

A nice comparison of the sizes of various celestial bodies to scale.

Texas Holdem Poker - “Official” Texas Hold ‘Em Rules

2006-07-28T15:31:00.000-05:00

-The- rules.

Kazaa pulls the plug on P2P piracy

2006-07-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Pussy cowards like Kazaa sell us all out. Instead of fighting for the freedom to distribute files over the net, they bend over and take a donky punch to the tune of $100 million paid out to the corporate fucktards of the RIAA. Furthermore, they have vowed to go 'legit', which currently has no clear definition, but I interprit to mean, "Sell the names of anyone who has downloaded a 'restricted' song to the RIAA-mafia for future lawsuits." If that's you, I'd be pretty goddamned pissed right now. Fuck Kazaa, now and forever.

On a related note, might I suggest some personal investigation into Onion 2 Routing, AKA TOR. TOR is a system by which a higher degree of anonymity is allowed on the internet by masking the path of incoming and outgoing packets through the use of volunteers like you--yes you! Anyway, go read the overview for more information about the technical aspects of why you should help the internet remain anonymous! And read Geek Activism to learn why you should care.

Why does Firefox suck so bad?

2006-07-27T10:49:00.000-05:00

I'm required to use Java for an internal application at work, and I will not touch IE under any circumstances, so I'm stuck with the terrible combination of Firefox and Java.

Do you already know what I'm talking about? Have you seen the problem over and over again?

Something is leaky in the combination of the two. After about an hour of usage, Firefox suddenly begins experiencing massive performance losses, and my Java app stops responding altogether. I close Firefox, but when I go to restart it, I get a message box saying, "You already have an instance of Firefox running." WTF. So I give the three-finger salute and sure enough there is an instance of Firefox, occupying anywhere between 50-90 MB of memory, sitting on its thumb and doing nothing.

I have tried searching for other reports of the problem, but googling for "Firefox sucks", "Firefox leaks memory like a bitch", or "Firefox + Jav = teh crap0rz" has yielded nothing. I can find no documentation about this issue--either reports or solutions--whatsoever, even though I know it must happen quite a bit out in the real world since it happens consistantly on my three very VERY different platforms.

WTF! Firefox, I love you. Do not force me into the arms of fat, bloated Netscape. Do not make me attempt to love the ivory tower of Opera. Do your job, do it well, and learn to get along with the other kids in the neighborhood! You are moments away from being sat down for a time-out. I'm begging you.

A big fucking hole

2006-07-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

The world's biggest, in fact! It's a diamond mind in Russia. There are no statistical dimensions on the site about how big the hole actually is, but on a pic halfway down the screen you can see a vortext coming out if it from the suction the hole makes due to its size. BIG.

Games

2006-07-20T19:29:00.000-05:00

A cool Hot-Wheels branded pipes game.

From A to craZy.

2006-07-20T11:36:00.000-05:00

This word association game will drive you nuts. Wheeeeeee.

Biomedical Image Awards 2006

2006-07-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

My love of photography on both the micro and macro level is well-known. Therefore, may I present the Biomedical Image Awards of 2006. Pictures of very tiny things, colored and stained for presentation. This is my favorite for the clarity of image. This one scares the hell out of me.

Grassroots blog spam

2006-07-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

Some fucktard thought it would be OK to up and email Daily Traversal the following big of political solicitation:

Simple add a link to Carl Sheeler (D-RI) US Senate web site. As an added bonus the top personal blog page referring the most active hits to Carl’s site by November 1st will receive a five hundred dollar contribution to support your personal page or blog. (This contribution will come directly from myself and is in no way connected with the campaign). Email myself william172@cox.net if you would like to help and for further details.

Spam is spam, even if you think that your candidate's nuts are made of pure platinum. Furthermore, this senatorial candidate is from Rhode Island--a place that I may be lucky enough to visit perhaps once in my entire life. GO AWAY.

Such as these

2006-07-19T01:51:00.000-05:00

It's nights like these that I miss you most
Drunken
A full tank of gas
Hot summer night into morning
and all of Chicago at our disposal.

Webfroot Shoutbox

2006-07-17T15:17:00.000-05:00

This, I believe, is what I need for a top-secret web project I'm working on.

Four Second Fury

2006-07-14T19:49:00.000-05:00

20 minigames that you have to win in 4 seconds or less!!!!!!!!!

The 9

2006-07-12T19:49:00.000-05:00

I intend no sarcasm whatsoever as I say that when I first watched this clip, a bolt of lightning hit my third eye and activated a vision of the future of the internet.

The 9 (9.yahoo.com) is a web-video program where an attractive American female (Maria Sandstone was her name I think--if not, it should be) gives commentary of 9 submitted links, the kind you find on any of the blogs on the right pane of this page.

This will be, without a doubt, one of the most emergant trends in web entertainment. It is short enough to be easily digestable (maybe 6-8 minutes), with interactive content (you can click on each of the links to view the 9 presented by Ms. Sandstone), and promises a revenue source through advertising on the page (this one is "Refreshed Daily By Pepsi").

The 9 is hosted by Yahoo, as evident from its URL, and I find it no surprise that 3 of 9 links go to video.yahoo.com. 2 of them go to flickr. Even clicking back a few days to investigate, I could find no links to either YouTube or video.google. I'm guessing I won't see any eBay either.

One link goes to a careerbuilder.com gimmick whereby you purportedly are building an email with a monkey in it that says something funny; in reality you are being subtly advertised to by careerbuilder. This should immediately alert the savvy browser as to the bias towards advertising.

The stuff on The 9, as a whole, is pretty interesting, and can make for an interesting way to being a hard day of fucking off on the web, and the production model--combining commentary and interactive media--will be certain to catch on with any halfway intellegent staff of 5 and a hot chick.

Director/Video Editor
Dude who runs the camera
Dude who writes the flash
Sysadmin/Fashion Magazine Connoseur (for wardrobe)
LAMP guy
Chick with tits who can crack jokes and looks good on video

There you go. A gift from me. Now run out and patent the process so no one else can do it.

The ultimate Pac-Man guide

2006-07-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

For that budding yet lazy Pac-Man virtuoso in all of us, KiLLerCloWn, some guy at mameworld.net, has created what can only be the definitive guide to Pac-Man. It really is quite spectacular to comprehend the sheer quantity of hours spent studying and documenting Pac-Man patters as a reproducable phenomenon, but the question begs: why?

Meh... why not!

The Art Department: In response to the old question, "What do I put in my Portfolio?"

2006-07-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

Irene Gallo, Art Director for Tor/Forge for the last dozen years or so, has written an interesting piece for would-be cover illustrators about what to put into your portfolio when looking for work. A lot of this is exactly what I tell my students: be consistant, know your client, and leave out the half-finished sketches.

Instant Sex

2006-07-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

A classic cartoon from one of the early masters of animation, Bob Godfrey. It does, of course, play on the whole "too much of a good thing" thing, which can go hang, but it's fucking funny anyway.

Incunabula Collection

2006-07-10T10:25:00.000-05:00

Old books. Drool.

Incunabula or incunables are the very first examples of books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed with moveable type in Western Europe. They range from the very first examples of the two-column Latin Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s to works printed through the end of the year 1500. The term 'incunable' derives from the Latin word cunabula for 'cradle' or 'origin', hinting at their status as the earliest of all books. Incunabula are also sometimes referred to as 'fifteeners' from their appearance in the fifteenth century.

Weird publishing facts

2006-07-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

Credible? Eh... entertaining! Here are four random samples of the (mostly un-annotated) factoids about the publishing industry and reading in general.

59% of the customers plan to purchase a specific book when entering a bookstore.
--Book industry Study Group. Publishing for Profit by Tom Woll, page 170.

The library market was $3-billion in 1993.

Of the top fifty books, fiction outsells nonfiction about 60% to 40%. Fiction peaks in July at 70% but nonfiction reaches almost 50% in December.
--USA Today, April 30, 1999.

A typical advance for a computer book is $10,000.
--Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1998.

iTWire - Motorola spinoff Freescale delivers first MRAM

2006-07-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

Magnetoresistive RAM--non-volatile memory. This is one of the holy grails of hardware, representing an order of magnitude shift in data transferral, and a replacement paradigm for the traditional CPU->memory->storage model of architecture.

The nightmares have returned

2006-07-10T00:09:00.000-05:00

Old, familiar dreams. Arguments walked away from unresolved. Friends turned into wronged lovers. Eyes open through all. Not sleeping.

CBC News: China harvesting Falun Gong organs, report alleges

2006-07-07T11:37:00.000-05:00

Now you can get a liver that already knows tai chi! Booyah!

Thanks Belial!

20 Years Of PC Viruses

2006-07-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

A neat history, for example:

n the first half of the 1980s, computer viruses -- programs that reproduce themselves by "infecting" other programs -- existed mostly in labs. A few had managed to find their way into the wild on the Apple II platform, but for the most part they were tightly controlled by computer researchers.

And then came Brain. Discovered in the first weeks of 1986, it was the first PC virus to widely circulate in the wild. Distributed via 5.25-inch floppy diskettes, Brain's spread was extremely slow by today's standards -- but it unleashed a tide of ever-more harmful viruses, worms, and other malware that we're still struggling with 20 years later.

Italy's role in imam snatch probed

2006-07-06T17:09:00.000-05:00

Best. Headline. Evar.

The Telephone Rock

2006-07-06T14:41:00.000-05:00

If you whippersnappers don't stop rocking on my telephone, I'm going to call the police!

Thanks Belial

Kenneth L. Lay, Ex-Chairman of Enron, Dies - New York Times

2006-07-05T17:08:00.000-05:00

"Ken, I know this is a hard time for you, but two drops of this and it'll all be over. You know it's the right thing to do. In the samurai days they called it 'falling on one's sword.' I know you won't let me down, Ken."

"Yes sir, Mr. President. I'll save a seat for you at the bar in hell."