tag/aim

Computer Historian Benj Edwards has started a podcast The Culture of Tech. He has some amazing people on it, starting with Steve Wozniak. Only 4 episodes in, but all have been great.

I think technology without ethics is pointless. It's like creating a self-driving chainsaw that just sort of cuts down whatever it wants.

They talk a lot about Ultima IV's Virtues system, a very thoughtful philosophical system of morality that I think stands up well to most other belief systems. (Also check out the Principles and Virtues of Mandrake the Bard parody of it.)

"I read an article recently about Joyce Weisbecker who was probably the first female video game developer, and her dad was a pioneering computer scientist at RCA, and he had this interesting way of thinking about software: he compared it to a magic trick. And I kept thinking: why is it a magic trick? Why that metaphor? And I finally realized that it's because everything a computer does is an illusion, it's all just a bunch of ones and zeroes and switches, and layers and layers and layers of illusion on top of illusion. "

They're talking about upcoming technology that will make it trivial to make convincing video footage of literally any person saying literally any thing. I think Weisbecker's father made a great point - it's so easy to think of objects on screen as real. (But of course, you could sort of say the same thing about mundane matter... This isn't a pencil on my desk, it's just a bunch of atoms!) Cue Plato's world of forms etc.

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"I had a 'recruiter' email me the other day, saying they really liked what they saw in one of my public github repos -- that I made one half-ass commit to like two years ago"
"man, I bet that does work fairly well if they happen to hit an actual relevant thing"
"Maybe the company he's working with is looking for someone who can churn out one half-ass commit every two years"

I snickered out loud.
--via mightygodking who swear it's not a photoshop. It is a suspiciously middle-aged-looking kid though.

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"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average anti-gay-marriage voter." FFS, Maine!!

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Also: newly elected Republican governors: a rebuke against Obama, or a rebuke against Obama with an obstructionist GOP not able to undo 8 years of Bush damage in 10 months?

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Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.

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We all live every day with the victory of [Ayn Rand,] this fifth-rate Nietzsche of the mini-malls.
--Johann Hari, http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/

Jim Graves pinged me on IM, we hadn't talked in a long while...
jim: howdy.
kirk: YO
jim: alright, chat at you next year :p
kirk: see ya then!

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43 minutes elapse - this why I like Jim, making room to let comedy happen- the delay could've been a day and I would have been giggling the entire time.

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jim: did Microsoft release some malicious code that slows down XP installs? Mine has been dogging for about 2months
kirk: I just got a metric tonload of updates
past few days though not past few months
So how's life up there at the Lowell conecctor
he asks
from his workplace in Andover
jim: lol. it's been rainy and leafy
kirk: any halloween plans?
jim: we're going to a roller derby costume party. i think.
what are you doing?
kirk: my ex housemate Miller's shindig
jim: will there be a disco ball?
kirk: I might go as a Feynman Diagram.
THUS PROVING MY UNTOUCHABLE GEEK CRED
untouchable in the India sense of the word.
jim: Not too shabby.
I have gone the other direction in my costume choice.
ultra lazy... i'll be putting on glitter body cream and going as a twilight vampire.
kirk: man, that'll probably be a chick magnet
jim: the best part is, i can wear whatever I want.
as long as i have the body glitter on under it
so are you going to decay into a few pions?
kirk: IF I'M LUCKY!!!!
jim: i know very little quantum mechanics
extremely little
kirk: i see what you did there.

--Jim and me yesterday. Man, I have a lot less funny IM banter in my life than I used to. I blame facebook.

Also this was on gtalk, but I still feel compelled to make AIM-like red and blue marks of who is talking.

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I just had the dumbest time with some lost car keys. They were gone, gone, gone, the car searched top to bottom, until they weren't.

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There is no such thing as an ending. Or a begining, for that matter. Everything is middle.

Just finished the audiobook for this heretical non-Douglas Adams sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide and you know-- it was pretty good, if a bit long.

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http://www.doublex.com/section/life/there-are-no-seven-stages-grief - on the lie of 7 stages of grief, and the resilience most people have - "What looks like strength, in Bonanno's book, is almost always strength."

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http://www.slate.com/id/2233834/ - Slate on how a parked Porsche is more eco-friendly than a in-use Prius. No crap, you elitist twerp. At my old job, we had a nice kind of team culture going for the developers.

Our manager Scott asked us to do weekly staus reports at end of day on Thursdays. I thought it would be easy to forget that, so I set an iPhone alarm to remind me, and then figuring the rest of the team was in the same boat, I decided to get in the habit of nudging people. To do so, I invented a persona for our group Skype chatroom called "Nagbot 3000". In theory I could have made up an automated script to do the reminder, but A. that would be work and B. It was kind of fun trying to think of variants to keep things lively.

Nagbot 3000 was generally appreciated by my coworkers. Here are some excerpts I saved at some point...

[Aug 2 2007 16:31:21] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: status reports for sbruce.

[Aug 16 2007 16:30:20] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: status tonight!

[Aug 23 2007 16:30:31] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: STATUS

[Aug 30 2007 16:54:51] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: STATUS

[Sep 6 2007 17:12:06] NAGBOT SEZ; geez, i guess there's status though everyone seems hipdeep in demo prep...

[Sep 20 2007 16:30:31] NagBot sez: DO YER STATUS
[Sep 20 2007 16:30:48] NagBot sez: *beep*

[Sep 27 2007 15:02:45] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: status

[Oct 4 2007 16:31:28] NAGBOT 300 SEZ: DO STATUS

[Oct 11 2007 16:17:57] NAGBOT SEZ: STATUS

[Oct 18 2007 16:52:39] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: DO STATUS

[Oct 25 2007 16:31:02] NAGBOT 3500 (now with politeness module) SEZ: DO YOUR STATUS REPORT PLEASE

[Nov 1 2007 16:30:25] NAGBOT 3000 [NOW WITH POLITENESS MODULE] SEZ: KINDLY DO YOUR STATUS REPORT, THANK YOU

[Nov 8 2007 16:30:48] NAGBOT 3000 (W/ POLITENESS MODULE UPGRADE) SEZ: IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND, PLEASE DO YOUR STATUS.

[Nov 15 2007 16:47:22] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: DO STATUS

[Nov 29 2007 16:33:46] *************NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: DO STATUS**************************

[Dec 6 2007 16:30:31] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: DO STATUS. PLZ.

[Dec 20 2007 16:30:14] NAGBOT SEZ DO STATUS

[Jan 3 2008 16:31:47] NAGBOT 3000 W/ NEW "X-TRA SASS" CIRCUIT SEZ: try to scrape together some kind of decent status report for this weird, holiday-stricken no-man's-land limbo of a week

[Jan 10 2008 16:37:17] NAGBOT 3000 (Freeware Basic Edition) SEZ: do sta.

[Jan 17 2008 16:32:11] NAGBOT 3000 (with music upgrade) SEZ (to the tune of Howdy Doody theme):
IT'S DO YOUR STATUS TIME,
IT'S DO YOUR STATUS TIME,
SCOTT WANTS TO KNOW WHAT YOU DID DO,
SO TELL HIM AND BE TRUE

[Jan 24 2008 16:40:47] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: IT IS ABOUT TIME TO DO YOUR STATUS REPORT.

[Jan 31 2008 16:31:11] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: SEND IN YOUR STATUS PLEASE.

[Feb 7 2008 16:30:34] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: STATUS STATUS RAH RAH RAH

[Feb 14 2008 16:44:56] NAGBOT SEZ: DO STATUS, CHA CHA CHA

[Feb 21 2008 16:35:07] NAGBOT 3000 (RHYMING UPDATE) SEZ:
The Time Has Come
The Walrus Said
To Write Things Done and Not:
Plus Obstacles, And Take All That Stuff
And Send It O'er Scott

[Feb 28 2008 16:31:22] NAGBOT 3000 (NOW WITH NEW BELLIGERENCE MODULE) SEZ: HEY YOU YA I'M TALKIN' TO YOU YOU GONNA GET YOUR DUMB STATUS INTO SBRUCE OR WHAT

[Mar 6 2008 16:36:01] NAGBOT 3000 (NOW W/ POWERPOINT MODULE) SEZ:
----------------------------
Status Reports
* Due Thursday E.o.D.
* Send to Scott
* Report 3 things:
-what you did this past week
-what you plan to do next week
-obstacles in your way
----------------------------

[Mar 13 2008 16:31:05] NAGBOT 3000 (JAPANESE EDITION) SEZ: 自分のステータスレポートをご覧ください。

[Apr 10 2008 16:30:56] NAGBOT 3000 (Mr. T Special Edition) SEZ: I PITY TH'FOOL WHO DON'T CUT OUT ALL THAT JIBBAJABBA AND DO A STATUS REPORT!

[Apr 17 2008 16:45:20] NAGBOT 3000 (with a little help from NagNAGBOTBot) SEZ: DO YOUR STATUS REPORT

[Apr 24 2008 16:28:01] NAGBOT 3000 (late 80s hiphop edition) SEZ: LOOKIN' AT MY GUCCI IT'S ABOUT THAT TIME

[May 1 2008 17:00:51] SLIGHTLY DELAYED NAGBOT 3000 SEZ: do your status!

[May 8 2008 16:30:30] NAGBOT 3000 (special Matrix Bullet-Time FX Edition) SEZ: dddddddddooooooooooooooooooo yyyyoooooooooooooooooouuuuurrrrrrrrrr sssssssttaaaaattuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssss rrreeeeeeeeepppooooooooooooooorrrrrrttt

[May 15 2008 17:23:45] NAGBOT 3000 SEZ (SUPER SECRET ENCRYPTION MODULE ENGAGED): qb lbhe fgnghf naq pbatenghyngvbaf ba xabjvat ebg-guvegrra!

[May 22 2008 16:33:20] NAGBOT 3000 (limerick edition) SEZ:
there once was a guy from rockport
whose career was nearly cut short
his work went unheeded
cause all that he needed
was to do his status report!

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http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/09/03/emotional-rescue - how moods are almost literally contagious, and what that means for the economy. "f you put two people in a room facing each other, without talking to each other, their moods will converge, or more likely, the mood of the less expressive person will move towards the mood of the more expressive person." What are the implications of that for how I want to live my life?

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on my car, the first leaf of fall? AARGH!
(eh, maybe just from a dead branch but still)

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http://magweasel.com/category/reading-room/ - has an amazing translation of "Phantom of Akihabara", about gamers after a Japanese censorship apocalypse. Also the site is a good PC-Engine blog too.

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http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-9-types-of-intelligence.html - Amber sent me the link. EVERYTHING needs to be evaluated in a many dimensional kind of way.... though you end up sounding too much like that "evaluating a poem's greatness" shtick Robin Williams has all the students rip out of the book in Dead Poets Society. Oy, I'm in a hurry, and nothing's jumping out at me from the backlog, so here is a convo I found amusing despite a rather unseemly dependency on "gay" jokes.

K: but you know
K: a guy only has so much funny in him
K: 'specially before his coffee
J: is true... try tea.. that's where the majick starts
K: DO I LOOK LIKE A LITTLE OLD LADY OR FOPPISH ENGLISHMAN? LIKE A SICKLY CHILD PERHAPS. NAY, I TELL THEE SIR, COFFEE IS THE ONLY DRINK FOR A ROUSTABOUT SUCH AS ME
J: I hear gay men like tea.. thought that may have applied :-p
J: hmm I'm rude.. sorry
J: since clearly that's not true
K: Dude, you're the one talking about the "majick" of tea.
J: I realized that as well
K: That's like 2 steps away from rainbow toting unicorns


Man. Today is so not Friday.

But, I get my new glasses today. It kind of weirds me out how the other pair just vanished, but still. Stylin'.

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Conversation of a While Back
kirk i guess i should be up
kirk got the disc that should let us play dr. mario et al on wii
evil b nifty.
evil b more fun than a cow on laxatives.
kirk err
evil b yes, its a great metaphor, don't you think
kirk that's the kind of thinking that gave us conker's bad fur day!
evil b my god, I must a billion selling game some where inside of me
kirk you fail at verb
--2007.07.02. "Conker's Bad Fur Day" is a fun but sophomoric game with a rather prolonged cow-and-prune-juice scene.

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Advice of the Moment

So that's why you wrote this: I've read stories where the most precise language and evocative imagery is saved for the all-important pudenda-shaving scene as the heroine gets ready to go to the library. I'm not knocking your kink, I'm just wondering why so much word-weight is put into a personal hygiene choice in a story about tracking down Shoggoths.

Oy, the weekend. I'm in Delaware the latter half of next week, so this weekend I have to find that difficult balance of preparation for the trip next week and that big category of "anything that isn't damn work related".

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IM of the Moment
FoSO: is delaware worth visiting?
kirk:let me ask you this: do you like the business sense of connecticut, the small-shore state feel of rhode island, and the black urban sensibility of the non-political parts of washington dc?
FoSO: wow, yes! sounds really nice...
kirk: huh, that sounds a lot better than I meant it to now that i read it

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Toy of the Season

--I linked to this snowflake construction kit toy before, but it bears repeating. Still has some oddities, every once in a while you'll be making an elaborate creation, then go to cut off a little near the left-edge center, and then suddenly everything drops off except for that little bit you meant to remove... fortunately there's an Undo button. (Be warned I had poor results with the "Email This Flake" function.)

FoSO also pointed out Zefrank's Kaleidoscope-y variant

I'm watching the Allstar Game as I write this... they just gave the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award to late Latino legend Roberto Clemente. Not only was he an incredible humanitarian, but he was one hell of a ballplayer.

Looking at the previous recepients, I'd say he's head and shoulders above most of them, especially the ones whose memory will be tainted by their likely steroid use.

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AIM Dialog of the Moment
atomicobie:*JUDO KICK*
kirkjerk: HASSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN CHOP!
atomicobie: HUNAN BEEF!
kirkjerk: M....S.........G!!!!!!
atomicobie: *dies*
atomicobie: you win
kirkjerk: !umami victory!
atomicobie: *still in throes of death twitching*
atomicobie: *going to be a minute*
kirkjerk: Man, I never expected my Loony Tunes plus bad chinese restaurant mojo to be so strong!
atomicobie: *still twitching*
atomicobie: *glares at watch*
kirkjerk: twitching...deliciously
atomicobie: *man, msg takes a while*
kirkjerk: Yeah, we should have tried instant msg-ing
atomicobie: *comes back to life to throttle you*
--Miller and myself. For the record, Hassan Chop is explained here, and umami was previously kisrael'd

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Hedbergism of the Moment

I went to the Home Depot, which was unnecessary. I need to go to the Apartment Depot, which is just a big warehouse with a whole lot of people standing around saying, "We don't have to fix shit."

AIM of the Moment
candi: i have a random question for you
kirk: ok, i'll give you a random answer
kirk: actually you dont even need the question
kirk: the answer is "dolphins"
kirk: ok, my cleverness here is done.
--Candi and me, June 5, 2005. Aliases changed to protect the guilty.

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Quote of the Moment

Engineers aren't boring people; we just get excited over boring things.

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Link of the Moment
Boingboing linked to some Carny Lingo. Cool stuff.

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Webgeek Tool of the Moment
Note to self: (and everyone else) I used to rely on (the now defunct?) domainsurfer.com to do partial string searches on registered domains, but it seems like namedroppers.com is doing a better job of it.

Quote of the Moment

Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

I'm not entirely sure of the context, but I think it predates the "my milkshake brings all the boys in the yard."

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Journal Entry of the Moment
Subway Series: SHOW TUNES 2, FUNDAMENTALISTS 0.

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Video of the Moment
Goofy yet information rich video: Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black. The typeface "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers". It amazes me how many typefaces and fonts there are out there sometimes.

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Sage Advice of the Moment
kirk: man, i'm getting some stuff done and i still have plenty of time for more, but i really feel like i'm pissing the day away...
LAN3: hehe. I like to do that on Sunday, though I was given an open invite to call a cute woman if I'm going to see a movie today, so I'm tempted to get up and go far far earlier than I normally would.
kirk: w00t!
kirk: but i do have a cold, and i could theoertically say i'm 'recovering' from the party-hardying last night.
LAN3: hehe. You don't need an excuse to piss away a Sunday. It's what people do.
--March 28 2004. I find great solace in that line "You don't need an excuse to piss away a Sunday. It's what people do." Conversation of the Moment
sarah: You know, if you truly enjoy a crazy italian fiesta in your mouth you might enjoy the crazy polish mexican mouth fiesta that Wes calls "Ross Pierogies"
sarah: Pierogies, cooked with Salsa on top!
sarah: Yummy!
kirk: Buying and cooking pierogies is completely foreign to my experience.
sarah: really?
kirk: I think i mighta bought some in NYC from a vendor
sarah: If you enjoy good stodgy potato-filled pasta things, then you'll love pierogies
sarah: I think that was actually the slogan of the Pierogie Council for a while

(Obviously based on yesterday's journal entry that I asked Sarah to preview. Man, I miss having her and Dylan around for snarky kitchen table conversations.)

AIM Dialog of the Moment
albert: you.
kirk: me?
albert: yes, you.
kirk: me!
kirk: what about me
albert: not much.
albert: just you.
kirk: i can't hear enough about me
kirk: me, me, me
Albert: no comment
kirk: it's the me show!
kirk: starring: me!
kirk: guest-starring: albert!
albert: haha

--Albert of AtariAge and myself. I thought this was a very appropriate dialog to have on the day of my birthday party. Any comments about the further appropriateness of this dialog to my entire life will be politely ignored. In the big-whoop site update news, I made a permanent home for Etch-A-Sketch Animator wing of Small Gif Cinema and put a link at the far end of the latter to the former.

Oddly, the glitch I thought I was responsible for on the bottom of the skeleton animation turns out to be an IE thing.

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AIM Chat of the Moment
LAN3 (5:28:01 PM): Hmm, I've got half a club sammich left from lunch, but I'm hungry now. What to do?
kirk: (5:28:29 PM): I'm not seeing the dilemna here.
--LAN3 and me (times adjusted to Seattle time). Immediately after the exchange he said he that if he had a blog he would post that, and I thought--wait--I have a blog...

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Link of the Moment
Heard this on the radio, but LAN3 gave me the link with the following headline: F*** THE NAZIS, SAYS CHURCHILL'S PARROT...turns out Churchill's parrot is still alive, and still does the Nazi-cursing that the former prime minister taught her. What I want to know is, how did he teach her to swear in asterisks?

You know, if I was part of some tribe that had parrots around, naturally, and they picked up my tribe's speech...man, that would really freak me out. You wonder what kind of model "primitive" tribes have of animal intelligence vs. us city dwellers.

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News of the Moment
Slate has some decent and cutting analysis of the last night's State of the Union speech, as well as some thoughts about the official and unofficial responses to it.

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Fetish of the Moment
Odd fetish, or just a parody? You decide...it's Girls Eating Sandwiches! Interesting to note that it's links all over the place, not a localized collection. Went to Locke-Ober with my Aunt, Uncle, and Mom last night. Fancy-shmancy! Lots of dark wood panelling. At first I was surprised how little web presence they had but when I got there I realized I was spelling it wrong. Though my websearch with the incorrect spelling taught me two things: the place is in the script for "Good Will Hunting" (albeit not spelled correctly) and they didn't let women in the main dining room until the mid-80s. Even now, they have a pretty strict dress code, but it can be kind of fun to dress up every once in a while.

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Toy of the Moment

--"Alien Bill Horde". (You can make 'em run the other way with the mouse...but you might need a recent Java plugin installed.) In meetings, sometimes I'd draw a huge swarm of Alien Bills, but the computer is so much better at it...(source)

AIM chat of the Moment
kirk: So I'm watching the 60s Batman movie
kirk: man, modern day Ronald McDonald looks a lot like oldschool Joker
LAN3: hahah.
kirk: of course, Ronald is pretty scary these days
kirk: his commercials imply he has fantastic magical powers
kirk: he's moved way beyond visual tricks like outlining goldenarches with his two index fingers
kirk: in one, he can freeze time for like, the entire world except for him and some minion kids
LAN3: One can only hope the Hamburgler doesn't get this power.
kirk: or else, entires cities would be flattened into "rubble, rubble"...
kirk: get it??
LAN3: hahaha, awful!

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Link of the Moment
A geeky cataloging of almost 200 particles of Star Trek. (Includes energy waves and the like as well.) "So tiny, you can't tell it's a deus ex machina!" It's not just all dilithium any more! Link of the Moment
EGM presenting Kids Say The Darndest Things about the Video Games of our youth. Whipper Snappers! Back in my day we had 4 colors, and 10 pixels...and we liked it!

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AIM Exchange of the Moment
LAN3: Lunar eclipse tonight-- natural occultation, or NASA coverup of renewed solar activity? Makes you wonder!
kirk: I thought it was just the moon saying "hmmm...mind if I stand just on this side of you for a bit? thanks"
--LAN3 had previous expressed amusement at my solar flare paranoia...

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Toy of the Moment
Lovely...Ranjit point me to a Virtual Paper Snowflake Construction Kit. The interface seems a little funny at first...you can only start cutting at the edge of the paper, for instance. But nicely done, and unlike the real thing, it has an "undo" button. AIM Conversation of the Moment
(Tikko is Ranjit's dog, a cute tiny pomeranian)
ranjit: poor tikko! learning more english would save him so much humiliation.
ranjit: I called him over, saying TIKKO! I WANT TO SQUEEZE YOUR NOSE.
ranjit: He came over, and I squeezed his nose.
kirk: heheheh

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Critter of the Moment

Nine dwarf chameleons born in UK. As Ranjit put it, "OMIGOD SO CUUUUUUUTE!" I really respect guys who aren't afraid to squeal like little girls. Like me, for instance.

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Quote of the Moment

If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular.

AIM Conversation of the Moment
kirk: man, thank goodness bruce banner has such flexible pants
brooke: hahaha
kirk: "HULK STOMP! HULK SMASH! HULK- er -- go cover privates..."
brooke: HAHA
brooke: I laughed out loud at that one

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News of the Moment
Wired.com reports that people are falling in love with their robovacs (in the "it's ok to love your pets" kind of way...I hope.)

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Image of the Moment
This English rotary-in-a-rotary is the most amazing traffic thing I've ever seen. The call it the "Magic Roundabout" after an old kid's tv show (Originally French, but a new, smarter version overdubbed into English, with lots of supposed sly drug references.) I wish I could see some video of cars on it; even with the traffic sign that link provides, I still don't quite get how it works out. So Mo got laid off yesterday...the timing came as a bit of a surprise, we thought her company was all set 'til mid summer. Layoffs are so romantic, when you do them...together.

Also, the Blender Message Board was attacked by multiple postings of this hundred-line rant/posting of private correspondence. I had to take more severe security measures for the first time.

What a suck day!

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Link of a Past Moment
An interesting Salon article from 1997, Sliced Off by the Cutting Edge, about a techworker who finally was falling behind the technological curve. I have small hopes but that my own independent interest will help keep me current, but you know. I already think anything can be done in 20 lines of Perl...

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The Fun of Online Only Friends
ranjit: it's Spring Cleaning day! I need distraction from my imaginary internet friends so I don't actually have to clean.
kirk: I'm imaginary now?
kirk: I can live with that.
ranjit: Well, as far as I know.
ranjit: it's my new philosophy of e-solipsism. AIM of the Moment

ranjit: Some people can say "you know what I'm saying" in just two syllables, nome sane?
kirk: we laugh because it's funny, we laugh because it's true
ranjit: we laugh because of the electrodes inserted into our cerebellums

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Link of the Moment
The results of the Great Bellybutton Lint Survey are in. And the conclusion is, that ain't just clothing lint. I object to their use of the term "Snail Trail" for the hair trailing from the belly button on down...that implies that it's slimy or slippery, and hopefully it's neither of these things. "Happy Trail" is a much better term.

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Quote of the Moment

Not all of us who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we're not poets.

Not as bad a movie as I had feared, but I don't see why people praise it quite so much as they do. In the guestbook, Annette asks if I have any anti-SPAM advice. Not really. I get tons of it myself...I just set up my homebrew webmail system so I could easily do mass deletes. I've been meaning to look into some more community based methods. Hotmail seems to have some anti-spam measures in place, I don't know how effective they are though. Maybe you could forward all your mail through an account like that.

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AIM Conversation of the Moment
ranjit: my dog gets an application of flea&tick killer once a month-- you squirt it on the back of his neck and it soaks through his skin into his blood.
ranjit: I always get a tiny bit on my fingers, and then I taste it for an hour.
kirk: bleck
ranjit: at least I am somewhat flea-resistant!
kirk: "thanks to a pet care incident gone horribly awry, mild mannered ranjit discovers he has developed one of the world's most trivial superpowers...mild resistance to fleas" Fortunately, with small power comes only small responsibility

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Link of the Moment
With all these terrorist related troubles, it might be hard to remember that environmental concerns still linger. Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide Now! AOLIM Chat of the Moment
kirk: Hah, if YOU had tv you could watch Feng Shui: Creating Environments for Success on tv along with me
kirk: that's gonna get me super pumped for my stairmaster workout
lee: thats WRONG dude
lee: feng shui and a stairmaster... yikes
kirk: ARE YOU TOUGH ENOUGH-- TO ARRANGE YOUR FURNITURE IN ACCORDANCE WITH PRINCIPLES OF YING AND YANG??????
kirk: FEEL THE BURN OF PROPER ALIGNMENT OF EARTH AND HEAVEN!!!!!!
kirk: CONFUCIOUS SAY: I'M GONNA KICK YER ASS!

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Link of the Moment
A long time ago, I remember seeing this one very bizarre story about a man who has a girlfriend who has a fetish of farting on cakes. I'm not making this up. In fact, a quick google search shows slight variations of the same sordid tale (this and that) so someone is paying attention to this stuff. And it even has its very own website with a memorable splash page image and little else. Just a quick note, have to get to work early for a day of diversity training. By the end of the day I expect to be much more diverse.

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From an AOL-IM Chat
john: did you hear (/.) about the russian programmer arressted for proving the adobe's eBook isn't secure (DMCA) ?
kirk: yes. And please don't write (/.) again; my brain keeps trying to parse it as ASCII art and I'm very uncomfortable with some of the results
--2001.07.17. (/.) is a parenthetical reference to the geeks favorite site, slashdot To any blender readers here, I am working on getting a Digest out... somehow it's so hard to be productive when you have extra free time!

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Exchange of the Moment
ranjit: i scanned some raw fish on my brand new scanner earlier. Gotta start it off with a bang.
kirk: wouldn't that make your later scanee items smell like raw fish?
ranjit: if only there were some way to clean objects!
kirk: this is why you should rely on restaurants for fish
kirk: I extend this philosophy to cooking in general
ranjit: Maybe someday someone will invent a spray for cleaning glass. They should make it blue!
kirk: the power of producing streak free glass pales compared to the olfactory force of the dark side of the fish.
--Kirk and Ranjit on AOL-IM. Screen names changed to protect the innocent.

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Slashdot Scavenged Link of the Moment
There was an interesting read posted on slashdot, William Gibson on Japanese and British culture.