satan's little suckass demonstration

(or, how to brew coffee with a sock and a bucket)

11/24/09 11:41 am

HobbesWERK: i really wish there was a visual vlan tutorial
HobbesWERK: because i have no idea what "no untagged" (notation untagged) means
greck: does that...
greck: enable tagging?
greck: lol
HobbesWERK: so far in these HPs
HobbesWERK: i see
HobbesWERK: tagged
HobbesWERK: untagged
HobbesWERK: no tagged
HobbesWERK: no untagged
HobbesWERK: lol
greck: that seems like 2x as many options as are necessary

TIME PASSES

greck: today's topics of discussion have included Google Wave Is Just IRC In A Web Browser and HP ProCurve Switches: Actually Stupid Or Just Unintelligible?
Riverside: no
Riverside: its Not Un-unintelligible
greck: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
greck: dammit you made my LOL on the phone
Riverside: hahahahahhaha

9/16/09 05:11 pm

wonko: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36CB4jOH2UA
surlytmpl: hammer pants
surlytmpl: sometimes he's adorable but sometimes he's ridiculously geeky
wonko: y
surlytmpl: this vid appears to be from the 80s
iammud: no way, that shit was made last week
greck: technically, since it's from india, it could be made *tomorrow*
iammud: haha

9/9/09 11:22 am

greck: random facts of the day: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html
greck: lots of countries I'd consider civilized, progressive, etc. at the bottom, and a huuuggeeee clusterfuck up at the top
jprentice: some of these places need to stop making babies and start making a country

7/27/09 10:22 pm

years ago, I worked (very briefly) for a company that made its money in high-speed, automated arbitrage—and it made a lot of money. ars has a great article explaining how it works, and why that stock video you see of guys yelling and bells clanging is just for TV.

( The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading )

I, for one, welcome our new trading-originated skynet overlords.

7/16/09 01:02 pm

So, I just found out about OmniGraphSketcher and was all excited. I need good data analysis tools, and I really like everything from The Omni Group that I already use. So I download it, and try to import a random dataset with 6 columns x 36,367 rows, and get this:



+1 for honesty, but I submitted feedback and asked for a few million data points without penalty. I'll buy a copy for rendering pre-reduced data sets (it's a swank tool, never seen anything like it), but if they add sheer capacity and some exploration tools... this will be serious gold.

7/7/09 04:45 pm - Discourse on the Xbox...

<greck> the old b/g one can't carry enough b/w to get video to the xbox in a timely fashion
<wil> xbox?
<wil> you son of a bitch!
<wil> now, I can take my best friend being gay, owning a japanese pickup truck, having a cat...
<wil> BUT AN XBOX!!??
<wil> that, sir, is unacceptable!
<wil> nickle and dime box, I say
<greck> I got everything I need including FOUR controllers and it's a new jasper mobo for < ps3 in a box
<wil> yeah, but you have to pay to get online
<wil> silver, gold, polished-turd level access plans
<wil> you traitorous SOB
<wil> I'd ride a bicycle to flagstaff to kick you in the shin, if I owned one.
<wil> it's because of micr0$uck that I can't watch hulu via my ps3 browser anymore
<wil> fucking assholes
<wil> for reals, the kind of dude that would deny his BEE EFF EFF online games of super puzzle fighter by
      buying MICROSOFT PRODUCTS is the kinda guy that would bang his friend's sister.
<wil> EVEN IF HE WAS GAY!
<wil> also, you know why I bought a DREAMCAST?!? because it was cheaper than the ps2 -- and look where THAT GOT ME!!
<greck> you won't be QUITE so sad when you come and visit and you get to play castle crashers, which rocks
<wil> you know what else rocks? standing up to facism!
<wil> but you wouldn't know anything about that, HIMMLER!!!
<wil> Goebbels McSwastika over there playing Halo 3 and trying to port WinMo 7 beta to his iPhone.

6/21/09 08:36 am

"The Constitution is perhaps the most geeky document of all time. It is essentially the Frequently Asked Questions list of the United States. It was written by moneyed, sickly, bookish, bifocal-wearing nerds, who believed that God was a distant, uncaring Dungeon Master."

( Mac spokesman and supernerd John Hodgman gets a chance to speak in front of the president and uses it to quiz him on comic books, Dune, and Star Trek. )

Fifteen minutes well-spent. Anyone who can quote Irulan and get laughs is alright in my book.

4/24/09 04:27 pm

another new birdcage.pl! (version 0.3.4)

[info]sans_cosm_ discovered an issue where tweetie puts an actual \n in the <text>...</text> part of the xml, which wasn't being handled gracefully. this has been hacked around.

also, there was a leftover bit of debug code that was forcing the lj post status to have always succeeded, which could have grossly defeated the error-checking logic that makes it not bump since_id if the tweets never make into a journal entry. this has also been fixed.

4/15/09 02:30 pm

[2:26pm] greck: anyone here on last.fm that isn't already my friend?
[2:26pm] Zombie_Jesus: I need to get on that.
[2:26pm] greck: if so add me http://www.last.fm/user/greck
[2:27pm] GEN3RIC: I should too. gosh. I just use the Zune social for that stuff
[2:27pm] Zombie_Jesus: Zune
[2:27pm] Zombie_Jesus: HAAHA
[2:27pm] Zombie_Jesus: Zune
[2:27pm] Zombie_Jesus: Sorry.
[2:27pm] GEN3RIC: You may mock it, but i adore it
[2:27pm] greck: OK so at the risk of being an ass
[2:27pm] greck: how is it "social" when you're the only one that has one?

4/15/09 09:20 am

new, new birdcage.pl! (version 0.3.1)

testing with [info]dakus' help, it became obvious (as it should have been from the start) that windows doesn't really do getpwuid() or like files that start with dots. so, if your $^O eq MSWin32, then it will now locate the script and use birdcage.rc in the same directory for configuration.

4/14/09 11:24 pm

new birdcage.pl!

rudimentary URL hotlinking

[info]lesboot asked for this (and it was needed), so here it is.

fixes up entity tags for < and >, so no more &lt; crap

now using since_id instead of trying to be smart about times

this is a huge one... the first time you run birdcage now, it will default to the most recent 20 tweets (you'll have to touch up that entry by hand). but after that, it will remember the actual last tweet id, and use that as the reference for the next run... even if it's not 24 hours. so all you have to do now is, well, run it occasionally. no worrying about the schedule! it'll grab up to 100 tweets since the last one it saw, which should be plenty if you're digesting once every day or so.

[edit: yes, [info]fallenangel, this update allows me and others to escape any time loops we may have been caught in.]

configuration is now kept in ~/.birdcagerc

that's right, a real configuration file. no more editing the script! so port all your configuration settings... the format is guessable, but it should look like kinda like this example birdcage.rc. don't forget to chmod 600.

don't need the TZ setting anymore

so don't bother porting that piece of your config... it's detected automagically from the status stream now.

and finally, if there aren't any new statuses since the last run... it won't post at all!



that's it for 0.3. there's absolutely no error checking on reading the config file yet, so YMMV if you make typos or have funky characters in your userpic keywords or ... you get the idea.

let me know (or submit a patch) if you encounter any problems.

4/1/09 11:24 am

[11:23am] HobbesWork: The VMware transporter is like 10000x better than Parallels
[11:23am] HobbesWork: Parallels encountered a bad sector!
[11:23am] HobbesWork: JOB HALTED
[11:23am] HobbesWork: A CHALLENGAR APPEARS
[11:23am] HobbesWork: VMWARE CASTS "WORK AROUND BAD SECTORS"

3/19/09 03:50 pm - TRAVEL ADVISORY

I'll be arriving in the triangle early in the morning on wednesday 5/6 with matt ([info]sans_cosm_) in tow. I'm on vacation and will be dragging him around the state through sunday 5/10, when he heads back to LA. I'll keep being there (but working) until tuesday 5/26.

3/19/09 02:12 pm

circumstances led to me sharing this photo:



[info]jessedutton says, "Ikea called. They want page 74 back."

3/18/09 12:34 pm - brain (and file) trust request...

anyone have a copy of ipod firmware 1.0.3 hanging around? itunes doesn't clean up, so if you haven't reinstalled/cleaned up since winter of 2007, it's possibly hanging around in ~/Library/iTunes/iPod Software Updates.

I finally got a classic, and that release works better with my in-truck interface, so I want to downgrade.

[edit: found it, but it did not resolve my problem. blah.]

3/18/09 08:40 am

I made dinner with an "Irish" theme last night for friends to celebrate Get Drunk Day (there was actually no drinking at all here—there was a pregnancy present). I was pretty skeptical of the whole thing, since I culled all the recipes from the front page of Allrecipes.com, but it turned out really good:

Irish Bacon and Cabbage Soup
Amazingly Easy Irish Soda Bread

Wow, the soda bread. Now, I consider myself a good southern boy... but I may never make biscuits the same way again. Substitute real butter for the margarine (yuck), use raw sugar, and make into biscuit shapes. Seriously good eats.

2/17/09 10:08 am

If you know me, you know I'm a firm believer (although I put it into practice with slightly less gusto) in [info]jessedutton's First Rule of the Internet (paraphrased):

Never put your data into anything you don't know how to permanently delete it from.

Today's illustration is Facebook, whose TOS used to indicate when you closed your account, any rights they claimed to your content expired. Not so anymore, the following language has been removed:
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
( Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever." )


† Contrast with my First Rule of the Internet: Don't fuck with the Internet. E.g. see http://www.kenny-glenn.com/.

1/30/09 01:39 pm



it's fun to surprise people by being nice
and sad that they are surprised

there was a homeless guy sitting outside the grocery store the other day, and I picked up a boxed lunch from the deli and a coke and just handed him the bag on the way out without saying anything

am I altruistic or do I just get off on being random and mysterious?

I guess it doesn't really matter if it's a little of both

1/29/09 10:56 am

Olah just offered up this photo of Kowloon Walled City, something I had never read about before:



The weird connection of the day is, during their occupation of Hong Kong during WW2, the Japanese tore most of it down and used the material to build Kai Tak Airport, which like the Concorde, is a hallmark of aviation that I will never be able to experience.

You may know Kai Tak by it's other name, "OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE", as made famous by various YouTube videos.

12/15/08 05:46 pm

Powered by LiveJournal.com