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(Fraught stuff, not trying to undercut anyone's journey about figuring out their internal landscape) Melissa and I got to talking about folks posting checklists of signs you might have ADHD / Autism or other Neurodivergent type things, and it reminded me of learning about "The Barnum Effect" back in college - select phrases that sound specific but really almost anyone can identify with ("Sometimes you can be loud, outgoing, and a people person, but other times you can be quiet, shy, and reserved." "You can be overly harsh on yourself and very critical." "Although you do have some weaknesses, you try very hard to overcome them and be a better person.") This kind of thing are part of what power pop-astrology and some personality tests.

So there's an obvious negative read on it that says people are inclined to use armchair self-diagnosis as an excuse, or be a trend-hopper. But there's a more positive interpretation, like how even the more blatant and acute symptoms of these conditions are still part of the wider human condition, and there are a collection of different underlying conditions that can present in similar ways.

The other spectrum (no pun intended) of response is people who get a great sense of relief when they are diagnosed- like now they have explanations, treatments, and community - vs others who just feel judged, like the diagnosis doesn't change anything material, there's still the same challenges in navigating in society as ever, but now you know people are quick to categorize you and possibly dismiss you rather than appreciate you in a holistic way.

Silicon Valley was born, a computer heartland that would be defined by the rivalry between two men: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. [...] Gates founded Microsoft, and hit the big time with the baffling, unofficial sequel to Ms. Pac-Man, called MS-DOS. Meanwhile, Jobs created the Apple Macintosh, the world's first inherently smug computer.

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As early as the 1920s, researchers giving IQ tests to non-Westerners realized that any test of intelligence is strongly, if subtly, imbued with cultural biases... Samoans, when given a test requiring them to trace a route form point A to point B, often chose not the most direct route (the "correct" answer), but rather the most aesthetically pleasing one. Australian aborigines find it difficult to understand why a friend would ask them to solve a difficult puzzle and not help them with it. Indeed, the assumption that one must provide answers alone, without assistance from those who are older and wiser, is a statement about the culture-bound view of intelligence. Certainly the smartest thing to do, when face with a difficult problem, is to seek the advice of more experienced relatives and friends!

I've had similar thoughts when I read about rich young assholes paying for smart poor kids to take tests for them. Like, yeah, it ABSOLUTELY sucks to reinforce the unfairness of the world especially in the places that are meant to reflect some level of meritocracy. But on the other hand, these assholes are probably going to be successful, since they have connections and understanding of the processes of the world.

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I'm about halfway through my reread of "Gödel Escher Bach". Easier going than I feared, though to be honest I haven't bothered with most of the formal logic/ system exercises.

It's interesting how rereading a book that felt monumentally important to you long ago on its first read makes a kind of one way, clouded dialog between your old and current selves; you ponder how your old self responded to certain passages the first time.

Also interesting to be reminded that humans were still beating computers at chess; one suspects that AlphaZero is doing something akin to the kind of "chunking" that gave 1980-era human chess masters a strong edge over computers of the time.

Still bothered there's not a digital edition of this book; I suppose the references to illustrations would get fiddly but not insurmountably so. Does anyone know... like when a book gets reprinted, how has it been stored in the meanwhile? What are the 1980-era and modern forms of commercial black and white printing and storage?

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There are two types of drivers. Those that pretend the emergency brake button launches missiles. And those that pretend it controls the nitrous booster.

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via headspace-hotel who adds "Dear god, please support your local library because there's no way in hell that idea could be re-introduced once it lost its existing foothold in the world."

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Musing on Scientology and "Body Thetans". Like, I wonder if there are some parallels between thinking in terms of "Body Thetans" attaching themselves to our true selves and the idea of "mind as a committee", like where there might be one self "committee member" who is the slow-deciding narrator, but other parts of the mind seem to have their own agenda (see also Internal Family Systems). If that inner narrator has the right to claim "truest selfness" is an open question for me.

I mean, empirically, there might be pragmatic good to come to individuals in Scientology, though likely outweighed by what the church itself demands for its own secretive powermongering. And, maybe looking at like Travolta and Cruise as possible "success stories" is like judging the lottery by the winners.

I wonder if sympathy for Body Thetans is ever encouraged. I mean here you have these poor aliens chained to a volcano by Xenu or whatever... aren't they just looking to get along, like everybody else?

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Peloton's new Lanebreaker - I think it's good they're making a game out of the physical activity, but hope they get to something like the arcade game Prop Cycle - why not pretend to fly??

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ripping the lil panties off a Reese's is the most erotic thing you can do

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Heh, missed the physical vs NFT auction for Steve Jobs' job application.

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You want me to pay attention to the details? The thing that the devil is in?

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How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure.

RIP Rush Limbaugh. He and Gingrich (w/ the Contract w/ America) were f'in master rhetoricians/propagandists who really helped drive the wedge that has fractured our nation. Grudging admiration with anger at his stance.

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Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Spoiling the question: the more Dem the state voted, the lesser their COVID surge in the Fall - like that was a much stronger correlation than the % of the state's population infected before September 1.

Different political leans leads to different results in human misery.

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And another more dynamic graphic, cases per million per state, color coded politically. Melissa and I were at the Brattle Theatre's Bugs Bunny festival - in Long-Haired Hare he plays a tuba! A notable well-rendered sousaphone (so many comics and cartoons clearly use no reference art and draw it like something out of Dr. Seuss....)

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Man, this sucks: Cracked on 5 Ways The World Undermines Teen Girls' Confidence.

I'm so grateful I was able to stake out an "affable goofball nerd" personality for myself in high school. My fixed mindset "smartest kid in the place" ego was (is?) tender and needing lots of coddling, but I was able to carve out a social niche that wasn't as worried about standings in social hierarchies- and there's probably a lot more room for boys to do that than girls.

I wish I knew how to start distilling useful lessons for the kids in my life, the virtual nephews and especially nieces. But, like with job advice, I only know what's worked pretty well for me, from my rather fortunate starting places and an affinity for computers, and so have never had to be very analytical or planning-smart about my trajectory.... I have a notebook from when I was 18, the summer before college.

I had designed T-shirts for my high school's jazz band the years previous, and I guess the band was still the focus of tooling around with some design stuff, and so I made this:


I've always enjoyed handcrafting blockletters, and I believe I made these by drawing the 3D extrusion behind the letters and then just filling in the extruded bits on the page in front.

Anyway, I realized I can now have the mojo to get a computer to do most of the work for me, and so I made fgrtext: figure-ground reversal (the fancy word I saw for it on wikipedia's entry for negative space.) It's a little virtual toy to mess around with the words, colors and other factors.

I made it so you can bookmark creations - here are some designs I made for 222 Street Jazz:


BABAM!


and JP Honk:
I've been revamping some of my old programming toys and games - one of my favorites was this, the "Chaos Game" way of making a Sierpinski Triangle.

You pick a point somewhere inside a triangle, mark it, then the next point is halfway between that point and one of the three corners (randomly selected), and then you repeat.

What slowly (and magically - or at least counter-intuitively) emerges is a Sierpinski Triangle (kind of like the Zelda Triforce on drugs)

I really do dig recreational programming sometimes...

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Digital Alarm Clock History Amazing how emotionally evocative some of those old beep patterns are - also it reminded me of a bit of a family lore from my youth, this dang Raggedy Ann and Andy alarm clock - "ANDY ANDY PLEASE GET UP IT'S TIME TO CALL OUR FRIENDS / OK ANN, I'M AWAKE, LETS SHOUT IT ONCE AGAIN / WE WERE SENT TO WAKE YOU / SO HERE WE ARE TO SAY / PLEASE GET UP BRUSH YOUR TEETH AND START YOUR HAPPY DAY"

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RIP this shirt. (Well, I ripped this shirt, anyway) For a long time it felt like my bestest shirt ever.

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In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: 'In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.' His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.

The Atlantic had a small piece on Bolivia's cebritas, or traffic zebras... they figured the drivers there would respond more to goofy mockery than to punishment, and so various folks (often people being given a second change) put on the zebra outfits and go to the crosswalks.

(Reminds me of how long it took me to realize Douglas Adams saying Man "goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing" was about traffic safety and not a surrealist absurdity, or perhaps a slice of life scene on Eastern African plains)

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my favorite thing i've learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like "the eight winds cannot move me" blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes "FART" (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says "wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake"

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Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward declining Trump's offer to be national security adviser saying it was a "sh*t sandwich" reminded me of a quote I posted 12/31/2000, literally the second day of my blog:

"Life is a sh*t sandwich. But if you've got enough bread, you can't taste the sh*t."

Heh, a video of 101 Character Mario Kart

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20 People Who Accidentally Dressed Like Something Else I enjoyed this collection.

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A while back James Harvey posted a reposting of his own rant, and it stuck with me - useful when people argue against team productions as being less than single person artistry (coming up on a discussion about Kanye West now)


TRANSCRIPTION:
A photo of Geddy Lee (lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for "Rush") being assigned the quote

I play bass, and sing all while playing keyboards with my hands and feet, tell me more about Beyonce's 'artistry'

JH's retort:

Well, she's written a massive string of top ten hits and she can sing and dance her ass off like you never, ever could, motherfucker. Whoop-de-doo, you can play the piano with your feet. Do you really think the only artists who deserve respect are circus freaks like you, who spent their whole life learning a party trick that impresses no-one but complete and utter rubes? You probably think the One Man Band man in the park is the greatest artist of the 21st century. Are we going to pretend this isn't about your latent misogyny or are you gonna get back on your conservative shitwagon and get the fuck out of here"

(I do not think the first quote was authentic)

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Good advice...

Seymour, a British designer who has known Ive for years, recently referred to his friend's "emotionally warm modernism." Clive Grinyer, a friend and former London colleague of Ive's, said, appreciatively, "He's always been a bit bling." Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of design and architecture at MOMA, who has added many Apple products to the museum's collection, praised an innovation that indicated when a closed laptop was in "sleep" mode: a light glowed on and off twelve times a minute, like a restful person breathing. "Jony knows that I was transfixed," she said. "They had to abandon it because it kept people awake when it was on the bedside table." (Apple disputed this explanation.) "It was round and pulsating and it was just amazing."

I believe it though - I always thought that feature was cute but overhyped, exactly for the reason cited.

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Good explanation of why mirrors flip left to right, not up and down... basically it's not really flipping X or Y, but Z...

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You don't have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to.

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Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

Glad to finally be done with this book... it was more like "Thinking, Fast and Slooooooooooooow".

I also like the sample applied quote

You are thinking of your failed marriage entirely from the perspective of the remembering self. A divorce is like a symphony with a screeching sound at the end-- the fact that it ended badly does not mean it was all bad.

Combined with the idea of how do you feel about having a good or bad experience that you know you then don't remember, to what extent does it matter? That's a real thought-provoker for me.

The things that are expressed: emotions, opinions... and anal glands. Look it up. And remember... they are somehow a trio.

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I am changing jobs again, with a week between. I'm having a week of "staycation" between gigs, and right now, stronger than the second guessing about deciding to move on from my old job and the usual trepidation of starting at a new place (no matter how cool it looks) is my feeling of anticipatory regret that I am not going to get as much done this week as I'd like, from finishing up the web edition of my comic on mortality, to arranging my birthday, to finishing my a "Flappy Bird Game Jam" game, to scanning a ton of old photos, to finishing shoving some old VHS tapes to DVD, to organizing and consolidating my computer files and getting a backup strategy going, to starting on that timeline application I've been dreaming about--

But I guess I will get a chunk of it done. More so if I stop whining about it here.

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Oy. As I remake a version of JoustPong/FlapPing (for http://itch.io/jam/flappyjam ) I look at my developer blog for the Atari 2600 version I made, and realize that was exactly 10 years ago. http://alienbill.com/2600/flapping/

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Man, 5:2 Fasting Days go sloooooow when you're at home all day.

(Thank goodness for the (zero cal but high salt) miracle of pickles with mustard.)

But it feels so satisfying to be in bed at the end of that kind of day, having kept on the straight and narrow, and knowing that there will be plenty to eat tomorrow. A rather bawdy poem, attributed to Lord Rochester:

In a dark, silent, shady Grove,
Fit for the Delights of Love,
As on Corinna's Breast I panting lay,
My right Hand playing with Et Caetera,

A thousand Words and am'rous Kisses,
Prepar'd us both for more substantial Blisses;
And thus the hasty Moments slip away.
Lost in the Transport of Et Caetera.

She blush'd to see her Innocence betray'd,
And the small Opposition she had made;
Yet hugg'd me close, and, with a Sigh, did say,
Once more, my Dear, once more, Et Caetera.

But Oh! the Power to please this Nymph, was past,
Too violent a Flame can never last;
So we remitted to another Day,
The Prosecution of Et Caetera.

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

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Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=1 Great piece on Singapore. It's a bit strict, but I dig the pragmatism.

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Self-checkout at CVS gave me a 10 and 2 ones, not 3 ones. But stealing would be stealing, roboclerk and faceless corporation and all.

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Word is the Borders in my work building is closing down. Bummer, though allegedly the Copley Sq. rent was $1mil/month so not so surprising--

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http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=3570 - man maybe I should work up that trip to see NYC buddies sooner rather than later...

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A computer that can kick butt at Jeopardy is a great achievement. A program that could compose good Jeopardy clues would be even better.

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Growing up in upstate NY, there was an anti-arson ad- the gruff fireman said "for example, we knew this was arson just by the way it spread"- jeez, I thought, who is this Arson guy? Why don't they arrest him? (Mork from Ork always ending his show "Mork calling Orson, come in Orson" probably abetted the confusion.)

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--via

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"Sorry-- I totally forgot what we were just talking about."
"It's ok, it was more than 40 seconds ago"
"Do you know what that is in goldfish years?"

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Just fired up DosBox and Windows 3.1. Man, I kind of forgot about the pre-task bar world.

and then by way of preemptive apology to my Aunt...

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Dinner with Sawers + Felisdemens in town last night. Kate and Miller and I discussed what should be done in the event of zombie turtle attack... they're very hard to decapitate, see. If they're FAST zombie turtles, then a pizza spatula (for flipping them on their backs) wouldn't be enough. I figured out we needed to get Wayne Gretzky to slapshot them away.

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California can wreck their constitution with 50% of voters, but need 2/3 of legislators to pass a budget. Yeesh.
(click for remade version)

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virtual sisyphus
source - built in processing
It wasn't the easiest trip down here to Florida via Charlotte on Thursday.

First problem was me mis-remembering the time of the flight, somehow getting a 1PM departure stuck in my head when it was supposed to be 11... luckily I double checked when I thought I had heard my phone ring around 6:30.

I bypass the huge lines at the United counter only to have the automated kiosk tell me that it doesn't do US Airways flights. Apparently this is one of those insane "United Served By US Airways" flights and I jotted down the wrong airline, and so arrived at the wrong terminal.

So I tramp over to US Airways again bypassing a huge line only to have THEIR kiosk tell me that my first flight was running late, so I'd miss my flight and don't get a boarding pass. So I get into the huge line, along with some other travelers trying to make other connections via Charlotte, and after some complaining and only moving about 15 yards in the line (half an hour maybe?) we get put to a special express lane, and I get on my original flight, but with a later connection to Florida.

So this flight is suffering some typical airline-y delays, no big deal. Those seem on the verge of being settled when we are told: they don't actually have the crew they thought they would to fly the plane. I'm not too worried, my rescheduled connection is late enough (hmm, I think, the guy said it was 4 something, the badly printed ticket says boarding... 3:35? 3:55?) that it shouldn't be a problem.

Except, of course, it takes even longer than expected to scrape up a crew, and then there's lots of mysterious sitting at the gate, and we don't land in North Carolina 'til 4:30.

Also, just to add to the indignity of it all... when the hell did they start using tray-table tops as billboards? And those drop down video screens to go through a series of "Cranium" questions/advertisements? All the fun of a pre-movie slideshow but with even less comfortable seats.

So we get to the airport, and I decide against making a frantic push to make the connection, that boat has already sailed, to mix a metaphor. But wait! What's this? The flight is now leaving at 6PM? All right! Fate is finally smiling upon me and I have time to grab a local-ish Carolina BBQ sandwich!

(Anecdote... I purchased a book at the airport bookstore, since I had ripped through my first two pretty quickly. The clerk asked "do you need a magazine or newspaper to go with that?" What?? As like, a warmup? It's reading, not french fries, people.)

Another typical airline delay, plane got in late, need to clean it up, we'll leave at 7, blah blah... but then...they just found out their crew went "illegal" (which I assume means "have flown too many hours", and not "wanted by the INS") and the desk guy doesn't sound too optimistic about digging up a new one...

At this point, I'd want to use the ancient phrase and tell them to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, except I don't think they'd have the staff to actually get off the ground.

Fortunately the desk guy's pessimism was unfounded, and the flight was fairly fast, despite the cranium questions being a repeat of the first leg's....

All in all only 5 hours late, but... oy. A good chance to practice my efforts of contentment and detachment, I guess is the best that can be said about it, well that, and I'm Just Happy To Be Here.

Oh... also in the "could be worse" department, I had an empty seat next to me on the first part (guy wanted to swap for an aisle) and a whole empty role on the second. (Why someone in a full row didn't go for the aisle, I'm not sure.)

Lessons learned:

• Don't bother to call or check the website ahead of time. It's not like I did, anyway, but it was of zero help to the other travelers who did so.
• Do double check the airline, especially with United and US Airways. (and one less I learned this day, from other travelers who weren't quite as blasé: checking the flight status the day before or the day of just doesn't matter. You might as well just try your luck showing up at the airport...)
• Do relax and try to roll with things. You'll get there, and chances are there's someone in the same boat as you.

Anyway.

Today's Theme: Letters and Words.

Here are some neat little typographical artpieces. With music.

Here's an odd little handwriting technique.

And then Wordorigins.org gets pretty deeply into where our vocabulary came from.

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Quote of the Moment

If she would just love me again, I'd build her a beautiful cage and never ever let her out.

So I was looking at Language Log, a very well-written and readable blog for people who are into language.

One current big thing there are snowclones, clichés reappropriated... (The name comes from the grandaddy of them all, "just like the Eskimos have X words for snow, Y must have Z words for _____") Wikipedia has a list as well.

It reminds me a bit of that googlelack game Ranjit and I came up with back in the day-- maybe it would have caught on if it had a better name.

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Thought of the Moment

Q. Please explain how to diagram a sentence.
A. First spread the sentence out on a clean, flat surface, such as an ironing board. Then, using a sharp pencil or X-Acto knife, locate the "predicate," which indicates where the action has taken place and is usually located directly behind the gills.

This is exactly how I felt about diagramming sentences back in high school, it seemed like such a mean thing to do to a perfectly nice sentence. Though It seems a little odd to me that diagramming a sentence holds no appeal, even to my inner geek.

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Game of the Moment
Hey Nick B! This fun 2D Katamari Damacy game reminded me of some of your ideas for a 2600 port of the original. It looks like for the game select, the # of humps on the camel you click is how many Katamari-pushing cousins you guide at once...click on the pyramid for a chaotic 48! Nice game in the spirit of the original, plus a nice NES-era sounding remake of the main tune.

It reminds me a bit of my old cosmic ark swarm (especially when you finally click to burst the ball) though it's obviously a much more polished and developed game.

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Metaentry of the Moment
Heh. It's funny how all 3 of these things remind me of something back in the day... I didn't realize that two of them even used the same "It reminds me a bit of ..." construction.

Videos of the Moment
Big-Boys.com is a fun site...they have videos, games and images (some a little PG13/R-rated raunchy, some just fun), the same kind of stuff you see on StileProject, but they update on a daily basis, not once-or-twice-a-month, and they don't bombard you hardcore porn ads, always a plus.

Anyway, two very innocent videos: helicopter pilot bets his copilot that they can make it between some trees (the pilot loses, but no one gets hurt) and this is an amazing video of spiderman-like freeclimbers, jumping and climbing in some truly amazing ways. Anecdote of the Moment

"I have two children, one of each. My son enjoys playing with Lego Bionicles, and his sister sometimes likes to play with them too. These are robot/monster type toys that can be assembled and rebuilt to some degree.
One morning our son comes in our room and shows us that he has taken parts from two of the Bionicles and created a new one that has two dangerous weapons, poison and ice. He describes all the ways his new toy can fight enemies.
Then our daughter comes in with Gali Nuva, the blue Bionicle. She likes this one because it's her favorite color. She says Gali Nuva is going to put on a show and do gymnastics and singing and dancing, so everyone will sit and watch and enjoy the show.
I am thinking to myself that there is a huge difference between how girls and boys play with the same toy.
Then my daughter continues, 'So when they're all watching really carefully, Gali Nuva can kill them.'"

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Quote of the Moment

These spots are based on a now-common prank, in which you steal your neighbor's lawn gnome, lug it around the world, and mail back photos of the gnome astride far-flung landmarks. Whoever first thought to do this is, in my book, an unparalleled genius (and a genius of my favorite stripe, too: useless genius).

I like that idea useless genius. If it's not too immodest to say I think I have the tiniest dab of that from time to time, but emphasis on the "useless", and actually fairly easily paralleled.

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Link of the Moment
My old boss and friend Kiran sent me What Brand Are You?, after we started talking about my company's post-merge name of "Velosant". (I can just hear the focus group crowd thinking..."it's like 'Agilent'...but with velocity!") That branding tool is funny, though I think it's just pretending to look at your inputs ,and gives you a randomly select name and 'hook'. Refresh a few times and see some of the options... (I guess the site got BBC coverage when people started using the names for real...)

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Sad Headline of the Moment
Despite what OutKast would have you believe, Polaroid users warned not to "shake it". Another happy tradition shot down by grim reality. (Polaroids are conceptually coolish, though I would guess they're having their lunch eaten by digital photography.) They say there's gonna be some bigtime snow.

I remember the blizzard that helped to welcome 1996...I had just done Times Square New Years with Veronika who was visiting me from Germany. I remember the big problem snow plows had moving snow piles that turned out to have a car underneath...

What do you guys think of the directional areas, trying to get people to associate the comments link with the correct day's entry? And should I ditch the guestbook form, and have everything piped through the comments system? "Bozo", I'm surprised you haven't switched over...you post very topical guestbook entries, the kind of thing I had in mind when I put the system into place.

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Blogs of the Moment
Bostonworks (part of the Boston Globe's website) is starting a jobfinding blog. Might be an interesting thing for people who are looking to keep up with.

Another funny idea for a themed blog: Cooking Loser, bachelor boy cuisine. Maybe I should send in my various recipes for Tuna ala Kirk (with grey poupon style mustard, with salsa verde, and the most high class, the one with ginger soy sauce.)

ASCII art of the Moment

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####$$$######$+!!!!!!!!!!!+$##############$$$ 
###$$$$######$+!!!!!!!!!!+$################$$ 
##$$$$$$######$+!!!!!!!!+$################$$$

--A study I did in preparation for Pixeltime. I think I ended up using dithering to get in a few more shades of grey, though. You can see the final result or the source jpg (from my pixeltime tribute and photobook, respectively.)

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Game of the Moment
The poor man's typing of the dead. (The real Typing of the Dead is an odd game, an older lightgun shoot-the-zombies converted so you have to type words quickly and accurately to blow off zombie bits instead of just shooting them.) Still, as far as typing drills go, this one has some nice aesthetic qualities.

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Quick Article of the Moment
Slate has a good explanation of Modern Arabic, the old form that has remained constant, and the way telecommunication is causing some dialects to thin out a bit. Flash of the Moment
This has to be one of the cleverest Flash-based Intro Pages I've ever seen. Some interesting little flash things if you follow the pages it links to as well. (via Bill the Splut)

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Quote of the Moment

"What's worth succeeding in is worth failing in."

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Net Meme of a Previous Moment
If you weren't online in 1996, you may not have been around for the Dancing Baby video, one of the earlier really big net memes. (This was the same baby that later made it even bigger on "Ally McBeal") This page claims to be the originator of it, though they insist on slapping their ugly "Burning Pixel" signature all over their videos. This other page features the canonical "oogachaka" version, though I had a little trouble viewing the file in QuickTime, I had to drag it to IE in order to see it. Link of the Moment
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. The conspiracy continues.

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Jerks of the Moment
If you own a domain, Network Services will now selling its database to marketers. Oh goody. I'm I keep my personal home information out of date. Great quotes:

"On your mark, get set, go! The VeriSign/Network Solutions domain registration database is available for the first time ever. Approximately 6 million unique customers, sliced and diced for you to target prospects ..."
"... You can target based on their status in the dot com lifecycle: Is their web site live, is it secure or e-commerce enabled? We'll even tell you about their host switching behavior ..."

I feel so... so... so used. So glad to be seen as part of a great big commodity.
(via CamWorld)

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Joke of the Moment

What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.