My job in a nutshell
Any Unix-using programmer should get a kick out of the latest xkcd comic. Now if I can just find the butterfly key on my keyboard, I'm set...
Showing posts with label Off-Topic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Off-Topic. Show all posts
Friday, February 01, 2008
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Kleptomania
Just found this comic, and I had to share it. I know some of my readers are big video game players, and you should get a kick out of this (click on it to see full size).
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
We may not torture, but we play Metallica
In the US news, it seems the best stories always slip through the cracks - sometimes even the Daily Show misses them. Here's one from a few years ago which I just found which seems to have only showed up in the British papers, and no, it is not a joke: Metallica is latest interrogation tactic.
This makes me wonder: Why do they use good music (for the heavy metal part, at least)? Why not just pull out the absolute worst? I guess maybe, since they're already skirting the line with Metallica, anything worse would cross over into definitely being torture.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
You know what else really grinds my gears?
Having my comments not approved to be posted in the first place. A moderation queue is generally intended to block off spammers and trolls from ever getting their comments onto your blog. When you use it to block off people who say stuff you just don't like, you've gone too far.
What makes it particularly frustrating is that this incident didn't occur on some woo's blog; it was on one of the blogs at ScienceBlogs. I won't mention which one in order to be more tactful that is probably deserved, but I'll note that it wasn't one of the big controversial blogs. All my comment really was was some helpful advice, but apparently some people can't take it.
Disclaimer: I have heard rumors that there have been some weird interactions of ScienceBlogs' e-mail notifications and Gmail's spam filter. I have seen other comments appear on this blog since I sent mine, but the interaction is apparently a bit capricious. This exists as an alternative explanation, though the cynic in me doesn't believe it.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Strange searches, June edition
I recently installed Google Analytics into this blog, so I'm now able to see some of the strange searches that lead people here without resorting to checking the sitemeter every three days. Unfortunately, I don't tend to get as many completely sick ones, but I do get my own subsection of weird. Anyways, onto the show!
reverse mmorpg english - How do you reverse an MMORPG?
quiddle - I can't even make up words properly anymore. At least I'm on the front page for this one, so it's not too common.
religion "double slit" - No, saying God decides which way the particle goes doesn't actually explain anything (and it doesn't even work).
what good chiropractors do - Become massage therapists.
ridiculous commandments - All of them (Okay, maybe thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not steal have some merit. Maybe).
past tense of relief - Nouns have no past tense; they exist only in the present. If you buy into Zeno's crap, this means they can't exist at all.
answer 43 ultimate - Subtract 1.
reasons why not to believe in christianity - Have you read the Bible? It gives a ton of good ones.
191f4e7bcac950618399a24eb37bbcbda4af1b8609995234 - This number does not appear once in my blog, and search engines I've tried with it return zero results. The strange part is how it showed up as a keyword for me.
when 2 neutral charges are put together - The Third Doctor comes in and tries to reverse the polarity of their flow.
is ghost hunting antichristian - Probably. These days, your average pen is antichristian.
satirist are - I can't imagine how far down the search results they must have gone to get to me.
intelligent"sound" - I think Douglas Adams came up with an intelligent shade of blue at one point, but that's the closest I can get.
key combination "shift key stuck" - Next time you search for that, do a favor and type in all caps. It's just funnier, 'kay?
ask god - Again, how far down in the search results are they looking to find me?
how to use somehow in a sentence - Somehow, it doesn't surprise me there are people out there who can't figure this out.
a glass of water has one ice cube floating in it. the ice melts. disregarding evaporation, the water level: - Do your homework yourself.
zealot render - Now, this one sounds like a good name for a weapon skeptics can use against religiosos. Might just have to keep it in mind in case they try to start a holy war.
measures to prevent melting of icecaps - Sorry, quantum observation effects don't work on a scale large enough that measuring icecaps will stop them from melting.
Not on the strange side, but I also got a ton of searches for "Quantum Mechanics for Dummies" and variants on it, plus some miscellaneous other physical stuff for dummies, so I know my posts on these subjects are hitting some people. Of course, the problem is that you just can't dumb down Quantum Mechanics past a certain level, so there's no way I'll be able to get everyone to understand it. Nevertheless, maybe it's helping some people.
You know what's also strange? Despite my liberal seasonings of Terry Pratchett references, I didn't get a single search for any of them. With that in mind, let's see what we can do for next month:
Tiffany Aching
Agatean Empire
Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild
Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Ankh-Morpork Post Office
Carrot Ironfoundersson
Dark Desert
Death's Domain
Detritus
Discworld
Djelibeybi
Cohen the Barbarian
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler
Dungeon Dimensions
Ephebe
Gaspode
Genua
Granny Weatherwax
Greebo
Hex
History Monks
Igor
Bloody Stupid Johnson
Klatch
Lancre
Leonard of Quirm
The Librarian
L-Space
Lu-Tze
The Luggage
Magpyr family
Mort and Ysabell
Nanny Ogg
C.W. St J. "Nobby" Nobbs
Moist von Lipwig
Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip
Mustrum Ridcully
Nac Mac Feegle
The Great God Om
Parasite universe
Pseudopolis
Rincewind
Roundworld
Sto Lat
Susan Sto Helit
Ponder Stibbons
General Tacticus
Twoflower
Überwald
Unseen University
Verence II of Lancre
Havelock Vetinari
Samuel Vimes
Lady Sybil Vimes/Lady Sybil Ramkin
There we go, that should do it.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Ask your god this!
It seems I've been tagged for this by TheBrummell. First, the rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog
However, simply eight facts about me seems a bit dull. How about eight facts and two lies about me, in no particular order? I'm still giving you eight facts, so it fits the bill. Your challenge is to figure out which eight are true and which two are lies. If you're the religious sort, this might be a good time to test out how well Divine Revelation works, so see if your god will give you the answers.
Here are the "facts," in no particular order:
1. On multiple occasions, I have used a knife to assist in drinking Coke.
2. I consider myself a "Secular Humanist."
3. I consumed more alcohol before I turned 21 than since then.
4. I've watched the movies of the new Star Wars trilogy more times than I've watched the movies of the old trilogy.
5. In real life, the only nickname I've had with any staying power whatsover was "The Beast" (though it still didn't have much).
6. I avoid writing with pencils and chalk at all costs. The sound/sensation of the lead or chalk being scraped off just grates my nerves somehow.
7. I once got a fundamentalist Jewish Creationist to admit to the possibility of a non-divine origin of the universe.
8. In early high school, I thought I'd disproven Special Relativity.
9. My fashion sense consists of judging whatever is on top of the pile or in the front of the closet at a given time to be most appropriate.
10. I once dressed up as a Terry Pratchett character for Halloween - and more than one person recognized who I was (though at UW, this isn't necessarily surprising).
Also, I'm opposed to pyramid-memes on principle, so I'll just let whoever wants to pick this up and run with it.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The Infophile Encoding System
Recent events have led me devise my own encoding system for alphanumericals, similar to ASCII but significantly more ridiculous. Basically, to make it, you start with any two character combination. Take the ASCII decimal representation of the first character, multiply it by 128, add it to the ASCII decimal representation of the second character, and then add 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,695,228.
As this is now a working encoding system, recent legal events might have the unintended consequence of making Intelligent Design proponents very mad. The problem here being that their favored abbreviation, ID, is now an illegal copyright circumvention device thanks to how it can be decoded with this system. Oops.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
In Consideration
As you've probably heard (unless you're more out of the loop than I am), 32 people were murdered at Virginia Tech in the USA's largest-ever mass shooting by a single individual. I have something I'd like to talk about in relation to it, hoping to explain how an individual could sink to those depths, but I'm going to wait a bit.
The events are still way too recent for me to talk about a subject which might make the gunner look a little less bad. For now, I'll just let it be and let people mourn for the dead and curse the killer. Once it's a bit less of an open wound, then I'll talk about it.
It's just sad that so many others don't have this small amount of tact. Already, we've got Debbie Schlussel blaming it on Muslims, Ken Ham blaming it on atheism, and Jack Thompson blaming it on video games. Even though I'm just blaming it on the depraved psychology of one individual, I'm still going to wait before going into it. People like these just sicken me.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Swear by Letters
Just announcing that I've now completed by list of reverse-censorships. The last term to be added was "Zuffle," which I found while browsing the Z section of Urban Dictionary. It's defined as: (definition hidden below the fold)To wipe your cock on the curtains after having sex at a posh bird's house.
The word itself may not sound bad, but the meaning of it is enough to merit inclusion.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Reverse Censorship
I read yet another article on the 'net today talking about "The N-word," and the fiasco around it, and I noticed that although the article was completely against banning the word, it was never once said uncensored. This then raises the question (no, not "begs the question") of how someone who doesn't know what word is being talked about is supposed to know to avoid it.
Let's go to a specific example, a regulated online community, such as an MMORPG. To maintain a "Teen" rating, most MMORPGs ban the use of profanity. But what qualifies as profanity? It would be nice if they could just give us a list of words we shouldn't say, but the closest they'd ever come (not that I've seen any even do this) is along the lines of "The F-word, the N-word..." If you honestly can't figure it out from that (picture a foreigner learning English to see why someone might not be completely up on all this stuff), you're F-worded.
In response to all this silly "The (Letter)-word" stuff, I've decided to turn it on it's head in protest. Now, the applicable letters are to be known as "The (Profanity)-letter" instead of simply stating the letter. I've purposely avoided actually using any profanities up to this point, but that stops below the fold. If you're mature enough, head below. If not, grow the fuck up and read it anyways.
I've filled in whatever letters I could think of, but a few are left blank. If you've got any suggestions, please leave them in the comments.
Update: The list is now complete, but if you have any better suggestions for certain letters, let me know!
A shall thus be known as "The Asshole-letter"
B shall thus be known as "The Bitch-letter"
C shall thus be known as "The Cunt-letter" (Alternatives: Cock, Cocksucker)
D shall thus be known as "The Damn-letter" (Alternative: Dipshit)
E shall thus be known as "The Epidermis-letter" (People will think it's crude)
F shall thus be known as "The Fuck-letter"
G shall thus be known as "The God-letter"
H shall thus be known as "The Hell-letter"
I shall thus be known as "The IDiot-letter"
J shall thus be known as "The Jesus-letter"
K shall thus be known as "The Knockers-letter"
L shall thus be known as "The Lesbian-letter" (Cross-reference: "The L Word")
M shall thus be known as "The Motherfucker-letter"
N shall thus be known as "The Nigger-letter"
O shall thus be known as "The Orgasm-letter"
P shall thus be known as "The Prick-letter"
Q shall thus be known as "The Queer-letter"
R shall thus be known as "The Retard-letter" (Alternative: Rectum)
S shall thus be known as "The Shit-letter"
T shall thus be known as "The Tits-letter"
U shall thus be known as "The Unclefucker-letter" (Thank you, South Park movie)
V shall thus be known as "The Vagina-letter"
W shall thus be known as "The Whore-letter"
X shall thus be known as "The XXX-letter" (Yeah, it's pointless, but the pointlessness is the point of this list)
Y shall thus be known as "The Yarbles-letter" (It means "Testicles," originally from A Clockwork Orange, but picked up elsewhere)
Z shall thus be known as "The Zuffle-letter" (Just the concept is enough, even if it doesn't sound so bad.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
While I'm on the subject...
It looks like another big April Fools joke has been pulled. Full story at The Panda's Thumb.
Unfortunately, I didn't think up any really good April Fools jokes for today. The best I could come up with was "Gullible's written at the bottom of the sidebar." The problem is that I don't get to see millions a couple of people scroll down pointlessly, so the joke's just lame.
Of course, if I'm using this to cover up my ultra-secret April Fools day joke, then maybe it's not so lame...
Oh, my random-fluctuations-in-the-spacetime-continuum, I was wrong!
It appears that RealClimate has put up a frankly hilarious alternative explanation for Global Warming: Sheep loss. It's definitely worth a read, so go check it out. There's just one little problem I have with it: Someone's going to end up doing one of the following:
- Believe it. I've noticed that whenever you ask the question "Could anyone really be stupid enough...?" the answer is almost always "Yes."
- Quote-mine it. I can just see someone quoting them for saying, "The already-reeling 'consensus' supposedly linking climate change to CO2 is about to receive its final coup-de-grace..."
- Not believe it, but think they're serious and use this to criticize them. I've seen this happen all-too-often before.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Breaking the Law
Possibly deadly and illegal picture below the fold. View at your own risk.
Inspired by a recent post on Skeptico. I've been holding on to this for a very long time, waiting for an appropriate opening (so long that Austen Atheist beat me to it by publishing his at a random time when he got tired of waiting. And no I'm not going to grace him with a link for stealing my idea).
Now, here's the question: Is this picture immoral? Should it be against the law? If you think so, please do the rest of us a favor and rid the world of yourself (preferably without taking the rest of us with you).
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Let's do the Timewarp Again
Sorry it's taking me longer to get the second part of my Global Warming post out; I had to skip town attend a grad school thing in Toronto, and had no internet access at my hotel. I'll hopefully have it out later tonight.
One other note: I realized from a recent comment that Blogger wasn't displaying my e-mail address (I thought I'd had it set up so it would, but the settings seem to randomly change on me). I've fixed that now, and while I was at it set up a G-mail address I'll be using for this blog "The Infophile (a with a circle around it) gmail (decimal point) com" (remove spaces, guess which characters I'm talking about in the parentheses. You never know how smart those bots are getting). No big deal, I'll still be checking any other address you've gotten from me, just trying to narrow it down to one address that will be used with this blog.
Oh, and if some of my post titles seem somewhat odd, don't worry about it. It's just part of my evil plan to ban prayer in public schools, make gay marriages not just legal but mandatory (to show them what a threat to marriage actually is), and create a tax on idiocy (or maybe just IDiocy).
Intersection with an IDiot
The problem with people on ScienceBlogs doing this is that they all share the same sub-domain, so Google treats them all as the same site. Not so for Blogspot, which is why I'm joining in to pick up the slack which our poor blogging friends such as Orac and PZ are constrained from picking up.
(Explanation here)
Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Literary Geekery
Found via Orac, this list of the supposed most influential Sci-Fi/Fan books of the last 50 years has been making its way around the 'net. (Whether or not you like Richard Dawkins, you have to give him props for coming up with the concept of a meme.) So, I figured I'd give it a go myself. I'll note in advance that my Sci-Fi/Fan reading phase has been limited to maybe the last 5 years or so (yes, I'm that young), so obviously my list of what I've read won't be quite that grand.
Books I've read in bold (and since they are so few, with comments):
- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien - First one on this list I actually read, and also notably the only "book" on this list that isn't a single book (technically it's six books in three volumes). It's a classic and did a lot to get people into the fantasy genre, but personally it seemed somewhat dull and cliche. Or maybe it just seems cliche because half the fantasy books since have copied it.
- The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
- Dune, Frank Herbert - Only ever got halfway through it on my first read-through, but it's waiting on my shelf for when I get around to it.
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
- The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
- The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
- A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
- Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
- Cities in Flight, James Blish
- The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett - Need I say more? Okay, I will. To be honest, though the first book was good, it's a far cry from the best in the Discworld series (okay, it's close to the bottom, even though that's a very high bottom). Pratchett varies a ton in the themes of his more recent books, so different ones will resonate best with different people. For me, my favorite was Night Watch, thanks to my kinship with the character of Sam Vimes and his struggles with "The Beast."
- Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
- Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
- The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
- Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
- Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
- Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card - The whole series is interesting, if only to see Card's descent into madness.
- The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
- The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
- Gateway, Frederik Pohl
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling - To me, the most notable thing about this series is that it proves that an outsider still has a shot to be a frakking huge success (word is, Rowling is now more rich than the Queen). The story is quite encouraging to novice writers, keeping many from giving up.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams - 4
- I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
- The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Little, Big, John Crowley
- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
- Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
- The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
- On the Beach, Nevil Shute
- Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
- Ringworld, Larry Niven
- Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien - Yes, Tolkien's the only author with more than one book on here (as far as I've noticed, at least). Don't particularly know what this is doing on here, though; it's a pale shadow of The Lord of the Rings.
- Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
- Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
- The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
- Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
- Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
- The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
- Timescape, Gregory Benford
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
- Calculating God, Robert J. Sawyer - Imagine proposing a book like this to a publisher: "Okay, a guy and an alien get together, and have a conversation. That's the book." Nevertheless, it works. For those who haven't read it, the novel is mostly about a debate over the existence of God, between a believer alien and an atheist human. The catch here is that God only intervenes on large scales: causing mass extinctions in order to push towards intelligent life. In the end, it's revealed that this "God" is just another big space alien, and the whole argument is turned on its head.
- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - Unlike the metaphors both authors normally use, this book takes Christianity by the horns, from the Creation to the Apocalypse and beyond.
- Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman - Something of Neil Gaiman's deserves to be on here, and this is one of the best and most recent. (Though if you've got a better suggestion of what you think his most "significant" contribution is, feel free to drop a comment (I'm looking at you, Akusai).)
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Plugging In
I know a lot of the regulars around here are big video game fans, so you'll likely want to go check out Akusai's new blog: Akusai's Video Game Musings. Go check it out!
Friday, February 02, 2007
Oops, you're dead!
I'm reading through Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent right now, and I just had to repost a quote from it for your amusement. The rest of the book is also quite good, and it even includes an atheistic god of evolution (his big project: The cockroach). Note that this is in one of his "footnotes," which is why it references the real world, rather than Discworld.
In fact it's the view of more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr. Spock's ears falling off.
It would be easy to laugh at the idiocy of humanity if we were outside it, but it's harder from the inside. Still, it's worth trying. So, go to the news, find out whatever idiotic thing Bush just did, and regardless of how much it's going to screw things up for people, laugh at the blooper. It's a lot better than going insane.
Strange Searches
I figured I'd take a page from a few other bloggers and post some of the strange search strings that have led people to my blog. Sitemeter is only showing the last couple of days, but there are some interesting ones nonetheless.
atheist pedophiles - This is what we call "Example mining." Try a search for "Priest pedophiles" next time and see how much easier it is.
quantum theory for dummies - I seem to get about two of these every day. I really should get around to continuing the series.
electrons - This was a blogs-only search, but I still must have been pretty far down the list. Someone really wanted to know about electrons...
how long till the ice has melted in antarctica - Already started. How long for all of it? Maybe a hundred years at the outside, if nothing's done to stop global warming.
meat puppets - Probably the band; I couldn't have popularized the term that quickly.
First, assume the cow is spherical - Second, assume it has constant density. Third, assume it's in a vacuum. Fourth, do not attempt Cow-Tipping.
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