News You Can Bruise for 1999 July

Thu Jul 01 1999 08:20: Yes, once more Leonard Richardson Month is upon us. I was going to reuse the 1997 Leonard Richardson Month copy for the third year running, but let's try to put a stop to the practice of reusing copy for the third year running, shall we?

There is a new Mail You Can Bruise. It's not even from a real person, but I think it's funny. I get the "fire is being strobed!" security message a lot, but I'd never gotten this security message before. Now I can say "Yes, I get alerted by email whenever someone is in promiscious mode." Whenever someone is in promiscious mode, I know about it! You can count on that.

I now have a whole bunch of travelogue pictures from my mother, which will soon be integrated into the travelogue proper. I am distressed to discover that the haircut I had did not make me look older. In fact, it made me look like a thirteen-year-old. Fortunately, I no longer have that haircut.

In just nine days {I can make you a man, I will be twenty years old}. Huzzah!

Thu Jul 01 1999 12:54: I just met Arely Zaragoza, who I went to high school with, in Ackerman. She is in a pre-med summer plan here, apparantly. I believe she is going to Cal State Bakersfield.

That trumps what I was going to put here, which is that I got my story published in Be Dope. That story is in the vein of the Adam Kaplan school of comedy, which holds that anything involving the word "ass" is funny. I think I did as well as I could have done, given the subject matter.

Mike Popovic, Be Dope editor extraordinaire, has offered me a CD of BeOS 4.5. Yippee! Now maybe I can finally get my music in gear.

So kids, if you want a copy of BeOS 4.5, just write a silly story for Be Dope. Note: I cannot guarantee that this will work for you.

I went to the EMS library, looking for the thing by Kolmogorov on the relative magnitudes of the different indices of a function, thinking it would be fun to read over the weekend. Unfortunately, while "the thing by Kolmogorov on the relative magnitudes of the different indices of a function" is how I store it in my mind, that's not something you can search on in the EMS library. Everything by Kolmogorov I could find looked too heavy for me, so I'll have to ask Prof. Enderton what paper or book he was talking about. This is no great loss, as there are two other books I am in the same predicament about, and I can just ask about all of them at once.

I did get Kernighan's (ho ho ho! I'm Brian Kernighan!) UNIX Programming Environment, Brooks' (ho ho ho! I'm Fred Brooks! No, never mind) The Mythical Man Month, and Knuth's Literate Programming, which will hold me at least through the 4th of July weekend.

Along the hall of the 6th floor of the Math Sciences building, there are portraits of mathematicians. Godel is right outside the door, and Kolmogorov is a little down the hall. Kolmogorov looks like he was quite the ladies' man.

Thu Jul 01 1999 14:16: The door mentioned in the last entry is the door to the room where I am taking my Linear Algebra class.

Fri Jul 02 1999 06:59: How does the BeOS compare to Linux?

Actually, at Be we love Linux...

Geez, I just asked for a comparison. There's no need to get defensive.

Fri Jul 02 1999 07:36: segv really needs to be moved stateside. Every time we get linked to from any site of consequence, response time slows to a crawl.

Also, I'd like to know what crazy mojo Recap is using to get every single column of his linked from Linux Today.

Fri Jul 02 1999 08:00: Here's the real ~~Ghostbusters~~ Linux sound page.

Fri Jul 02 1999 10:01: July seems to be okay, Y2K-wise. Anything that needs to look half a year into the future has broken by now. The next test is in about a week, when fiscal 2000 starts in many states.

Jake alleges that NYCB is in fact a weblog. But what does he know?

Fri Jul 02 1999 15:09: I keep throwing Jar Jar out, and the crafty bugger keeps worming his way back into my life. His foppish mug now stares at me from twelve cans of Mountain Dew. Have you seen me?, he seems to say.

Oh, I got a Yoda PEZ dispenser yesterday, for solving a challenge in Linear Algebra. I've never had a PEZ dispenser before. The upkeep is enormous; it takes over a minute to load the darn thing. The candy disposal mechanism doesn't go far enough. You tilt Yoda's head back and he pushes the candy out about a milimeter. You still have to reach in, chucking Yoda under the chin (Hmm! Stop that! Tickles, it does!), and grab the candy. It should plop it out into your hand.

Also, the [who's the cat who's a funky sex machine for all the chicks?] spring-loaded shaft [damn right. you know, i hear that spring-loaded shaft is one bad motha--(shut yo' mouth!) i'm just talkin' 'bout spring-loaded shaft! (we can dig it!)] needs to have a little latch thing that keeps it extended while you load the candy.

And let's face it; using Yoda's (or anyone's) head as a means of dispensing candy is just plain creepy. I will bet ten to one that PEZ was invented by some crazy German guy.

Also, the PEZ candies are not very good. That said, I like the Yoda PEZ dispenser. But the thing I will not tolerate is the sucker which recieves radio broadcasts and transmits them to your ears via your teeth. There should have been a special section of the Geneva Convention disallowing that.

Fri Jul 02 1999 15:24: As long as I'm cleaning out the Star Wars bin:

The Taco Bell/Star Wars cross promotional contest is something like "Defeat the Dark Side and Win". Defeating the Dark Side should really be its own reward.

Sat Jul 03 1999 20:21: I just realized that if I do The Devil Went Down to Silicon Valley, I won't have to finish the other song that I've never been able to finish. This is a great relief to me. Of course, this presumes that I can finish The Devil Went Down to Silicon Valley, but for Pete's sake, it's a parody of an existing song! I don't think I've ever had to leave a song parody unfinished.

Sat Jul 03 1999 21:03: Here is my hypothesis: When originally broadcast on the BBC, the My Word announcer said, "The BBC present: My Word!". When rebroadcast on American radio, they added in an "s" sound to accomadate American usage, causing the announcer to say, "The BBC present-ss: My Word!" rather creepily.

Sun Jul 04 1999 10:20: I'm going to the fabulous Pricewatch to look at systems, and the thing that's different from last time I was at Pricewatch about six months ago is that now all the cheap systems are Linux systems.

I'm not getting a full system, but that is interesting.

Sun Jul 04 1999 20:19: Go to devel and behold the Linux port of robotfindskitten! Almost just like the original! I just need to get the low ASCII characters to display. Apart from that, better than the original! Also check out my rudimentary action game, robotfindskitten 2: this time it's personal!

Mon Jul 05 1999 18:01: I spent the day greatly improving robotfindskitten 2. It's almost to the point where you could implement something like ZZT in the skeleton provided by robotfindskitten 2. All the stupid things, like the stairway changing colors and moving, and the guys talking to each other when they collide, were just done to test all the different hooks and such, but they also increase the length of time the game is fun, from about ten seconds to about a minute.

This code is very cool. Also, I no longer fear function pointers.

I really need to get working on the project I'm doing with Peter.

Mon Jul 05 1999 18:38: I learned this in English. There are these things called life records, which are put together by historians. A life record of someone is a compendium of absolutely everything that is known about that person's coming and goings and life and writings, indexed by day. Milton's life record is about twelve volumes. Shakespeare's is a lot thinner because we don't know much about his life. But you get the idea. Everything avaliable in historical records, right down to what someone ate on a particular date, is in the life record under the appropriate date.

Fine. But I'm starting to think that you can't simultaneously condone this and condemn those obsessive web pages that gather all information related in any way to, eg., Mr. Belvedere. Imagine the historical value of a really good life record of just some random French guy in the 14th century. Or, to move my analogy forward, an exhaustive, obsessive list and analysis of every gig played by some 1890s vaudevillian.

The better we document our culture, the easier it will be for future historians to make sense of our craziness. Obsessives, as we know, are only too happy to document minutae, and historians are paid to wade through minutae later on to discover the ones that turn out to be important or interesting. It's a perfect match. The only problem is that obsessives are not the people to turn to for objective reporting of events. But that's hardly a new problem for historians.

Mon Jul 05 1999 22:02: Okay, I no longer fear malloc() or free(), and, apart from an ugly cleanup function, the linked list implementation is rumbling along. It goes a lot smoother now, and now I can add mobile things at runtime, like projectiles. Woohoo!

the new version

I must sleep now.

Tue Jul 06 1999 06:44: Where did this fog come from?

Tue Jul 06 1999 07:28: It came on the rails, of course. It couldn't have come... from anywhere else.

Tue Jul 06 1999 16:07: Money For Nothing, Be For Free! Woohoo! It arrives straight from Be, Inc. in Menlo Park. Man, I'd hate to live in Menlo Park.

I'm copying everything over from my old drive so that I can use that as my BeOS drive. Whoa! Look what I found in the old /tmp:

-rw-rw-r--   1 500      500             6 Jun 29  1998 faultnic.log
rubberfish:/other_hd/tmp# less faultnic.log
Booga.

Heh heh... well, time for it to die.

I'm going to get a whole new computer with my birthday money. Except for the hard drives. A whole new computer. That's what I keep telling myself. But I'm afraid I will chicken out and not spend it.

Hm, my DOS partition is in a sorry state. Impossibly huge files in windows/system and such. I don't know if there's a bug in the Linux driver or if it's just DOS being crap.

Okay, I'm almost done. Before I reboot, enjoy this transcript of an old improvised bit Kris and i did once:

Steve: C'mon, Bill, get in my wallet!
Bill: I don't want to get into your wallet!
Steve: You have to! That's the only way we can sneak you into Netscape!
Bill: Oh, all right.
Marc: Good morning, Mr. Ballmer.
Steve: Oh, hi, uh, Mr. Anderson. Andereson. And--
Marc: Andreessen.
Steve: Yeah, that.
Marc: It's a good thing you managed to get here without Bill noticing!
Steve: Yeah, otherwise this whole back door thing would fall apart!
Bill: Heh heh heh!
Marc: What was that?
Steve: Oh, just, uh... my talking wallet! Now let's see some of that
source code!
Marc: But Mr. Ballmer, our source code is free on the net! You can just
download it!
Steve: WHAT?!?!?!

Tue Jul 06 1999 16:11: Argh. I just realized that I have to reconnect my CD-ROM drive.

Wed Jul 07 1999 06:36: Latino Students With Asthma. I thought it was a new student group, but it was an invitation to participate in an experiment.

I foolishly threw caution to the wind (NB: When you find yourself preparing to foolishly throw caution to the wind, don't! You may learn this lesson before I do.) and screwed up my system installing BeOS. I'd be fine if BeOS recognized my video card and mouse (?!), because then I could set up the other hard drive instead of the CDROM and coax BeOS into recognizing it, and be fine. But no. And for some reason, my floppy drive has died. So.

I think I subconsciously engineered this to force me to buy a new system.

Wed Jul 07 1999 07:17: I just realized that in the original improvisation of that bit, Kris and I switched who was doing Ballmer right in the middle, when I started doing Andreesen. I never even noticed that before, it was so smooth. Such teamwork! We would have cleaned up as a vaudeville act, as I believe I have stated here before.

You know what? I'm just gonna buy a whole new computer. I'm sick of pretending that I enjoy upgrading hardware.

Wed Jul 07 1999 08:32: Cool. My GPA is now a refreshing 3.21.

Peter has this wonderful little book I just found called A Book of Russian Idioms Illustrated. Featuring a literal cartoon rendition of a given idiom, and a figural cartoon rendition of that same idiom. It's fun to read.

Here's a great idiom: to sit between two chairs.

Wed Jul 07 1999 10:10: I need to tell you about Poorman's Bikini Beach, but I'm not sure how. It defies any attempt at description.

I'll tell you about it eventually. In the meantime I will say that yesterday there was an MST3K tribute on Bill Nye.

Wed Jul 07 1999 13:11: I just realized that my problem is that everything I know about hardware is about seven years old. Fortunately, the "plug cards into the motherboard and hope they work" paradigm remains dominant, but about this chipset business and this video card and sound card business, oy! These concerns did not exist the last time I bought a computer.

The last time I bought a computer was in 1996. But that computer occupied largely the same conceptual space as the one I bought in 1992, hardware-wise.

Hm... my computer purchases are just a little over three years apart. Three years and a couple months. Late 1992, early 1996, mid-1999. I wonder what class of buyer that puts me in.

My first computer lasted from 1987 to 1992. But I didn't do much on it.

The system I have my eye on is going to cost me about $650 with the shipping. That's about what it would cost to get the parts. Maybe $50 more. Why am I trying to rationalize this? I am not someone who thinks it a sin to buy a whole system instead of building one from parts. I don't even like building computers, dammit! I never liked building computers! I did it because it repesented a savings of $500-plus; this is no longer true!

Whoa. Okay, I'm better now.

Man, I hate dealing with hardware. Maybe it's just the cruftiness of the PC platform. But it's cheap and it works.

Wed Jul 07 1999 13:55: The previous entry is wrong. The system I want should only be about $500.

Wed Jul 07 1999 16:46: I repaired my MBR at home and am up and running here again. All that is screwed up is my old 2 gig hard drive, which was going to have BeOS on it eventually.

Wed Jul 07 1999 19:10:

Okay, I am ready to explain Poorman's Bikini Beach to you.

It's very public access. This guy, stage name "Poorman" (who apparantly is an ex-KROQ DJ) films and talks to and does stupid things with girls he meets on the beach. The selling point of the show is that the girls are all wearing bikinis, and they look pretty good in them. There's really no other reason to watch the show, unless (like me) you like listening to people talk about really trivial things.

It's not as bad as you'd think. I'm not defending the show (some of the girls are still in high school), but it's nowhere near as bad as you'd think. It's got a naivete about it. "Are you man enough for the wildest and wettest bikini contest in the Southland, ladies?"

So Poorman goes around the beach talking to women in bikinis. And they talk about whatever, their personal lives and such. And there are weird little bits like "Bikini Girl Forum", in which women in bikinis lie on towels and form a discussion panel. The topic I saw was "Why men are pigs". So they're discussing their old relationships and how they went sour because their men were pigs, and stuff like that. Poorman: "Do you think Poorman's Bikini Beach might be watched by a few pigs?"

It takes a certain mentality to walk this line: to believe that there's being a pig, and then there's talking to girls in bikinis and making it into a TV show, which is just good clean fun. But if you want to find women who hold this mentality, a good place to look is on the beaches near LA, because those who go to the beach wearing bikinis in the first place are more likely to hold it.

Anyway, one bit is where Poorman and various bikini-clad women go around to try to find the best burger in Southern California. It's a decent concept, I think. But who would watch it if it did not involve young ladies in bikinis? You practically have to have them to make it saleable for television, which I think is a shame.

And the little ads. Man. It's shilling more unabashed and cheerful than anything since the golden age of television. They have this phony taste test set up between this microbrew that sponsors the show, and some national brand beer. I don't know anything about beer, but that beer probably really is better than any national brand. But you'd never believe it from the commercial.

Poorman's Bikini Beach appears to be on weeknights at 6 PM, on channel 62, in the Los Angeles area. Channel 62 treats it as paid programming, but that appears to be how they treat everything. You should probably watch it once, just because the commercials are pretty funny, and occasionally poignant, in an odd sort of way. I don't know how long you'd want to keep watching it. It depends on how much you like low-budget locally-produced television, humdrum personal conversation, and/or ogling girls in bikinis. And you know, if you really want to, you can go to the beach yourself and talk to actual girls in actual bikinis, instead of watching it on television. Just don't be a pig about it.

Thu Jul 08 1999 06:41: My mother alleges that it has not been three years since I bought a computer, since "[w]e just bought mine in February". However, I did not buy that computer, and, more to the point, that is not my computer, it is her computer.

Am I really picky? Yesterday at work I was talking about the sale of 25 tons of gold by the Bank of England, and Rona made a joke, saying that that amount of gold would be worth about 25 cents in Canadian money. The point of the joke was that Canadian money is worthless, but I pointed out that the joke actually implied that Canadian money was incredibly valuable, if 25 cents would buy 25 tons of gold. And Rona implied that I was being really picky. But if you make a joke, and someone points out that the point made by the joke was the opposite point of the one you intended to make, is that being picky?

Thu Jul 08 1999 06:46: How about this: I replace my computer about once every 35 months.

Thu Jul 08 1999 06:53: Oooh mista Kotter! I forgot to mention this: I found those caffinated penguin mints! At the Penguins frozen yogurt place! They're not made by Penguins, it's a cross-promotional deal. With these caffienated penguin mints, I WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!

And my birthday is tomorrow.

Thu Jul 08 1999 08:16: rfk2 now has bullets, although the guys the bullets are supposed to hurt don't realize that they're bullets. How inconsiderate. This is more of a breakthrough than it sounds, as it means that things on the screen can be created and destroyed at runtime. I still have to clean up the code a lot, so I'm not putting out a new release. Not that anyone downloads it anyway. Well, judging from the webserver logs, there have been 19 downloads of it. Pretty good, actually.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Scott D. Boyd (sdboyd@fastlane.net) sent me some Perl code for doing DNS lookups. You have him to thank for the fact that the browser greetings program now prints out your hostname instead of your IP address.

Thu Jul 08 1999 12:16: Now that my home system works again I find myself wanting to not spend my birthday money. Argh! I knew this would happen! Will I have to deliberately destroy my old computer to make me get a new one?

Thu Jul 08 1999 12:38: In the spirit of last year's UNIX countdown, I present this year's American-style date countdown.

Thu Jul 08 1999 12:40: Time for another episode of Date Countdown, American Style!

Thu Jul 08 1999 18:14: Bullets in rfk2 are sane now. They disappear when they go off the screen, but dead killers can still kill you. So get the new version. The code is still messy. I'm still learning how to use malloc and free. I used to be really scared of anything pertaining to pointers, but I think I'm getting a lot better.

Thu Jul 08 1999 21:11: All objects in rfk2, except for robot, are now allocated at runtime. The only problem I'm having right now is when you stand right next to something and fire at it. The object gets overwritten with the bullet. I'm going to need to create the bullet, manually hit the other object with the bullet, and send the touch message to the bullet, whereupon it will remove itself from memory.

rfk2 is a decent game now. By this I do not mean that it's fun for any length of time. I mean that it has a goal, some enemies who interfere with the goal, and a way of dispatching those enemies. Enemy to dispatch.

Another new version up now. This is the first actually playable version, if you ignore the problem with shooting right next to something.

Fri Jul 09 1999 08:28: Happy birthday to me.

Fri Jul 09 1999 08:56: It turns out that Andy is as lost without a map as I am when it comes to these newfangled computers. Andy:

"And on the subject of computer upgrades, my mother and I were shopping around for new computer parts to upgrade Lisa's computer and it dawned on me that I had no friggin' idea what's good these days and what isn't. Apparently motherboards these days require funky new computer cases. And RAM SIMMS are yesterday's news."

I just got some pointers from Mike Popovic of BeDope, though, so I'm doing okay.

Oh, I set up a thing to record where people come to my homepage from. Mostly from segfault, but a few from bedope, one from yenrab's page, and one from the sampo 404 page.

I've gotten 3 emails of appreciation about my bedope story. I don't know how to respond, so I thank you publically on my page here.

Andy is coming over next week sometime, I hope, to record Jake's birthday present with me. While he's here, I hope to do a sort of "Phantasmorgia of Andy!" in which we record all my songs that mention him. I believe I have three. They're all just one-off references, I don't have a song about him per se.

I should really go see the Berliner Ensemble this weekend. It's probably something which for the rest of my life I will regret not having gone to see. But I'm just so lazy.

Fri Jul 09 1999 16:43: There was one Berliner Ensemble ticket left. It was way in the back. It was not a student ticket. It cost $49. There is no way I'm paying $49 for a damn theater ticket.

Twelve Mace Windus take their place in my fridge alongside the four remaining Jar Jars. I don't normally go through eight cans of Mountain Dew in a week, but when it's on sale, it's on sale.

By the way, no one, under any circumstances, should ever use the phrase "roving tongue".

Mon Jul 12 1999 08:12: I just saw an albino pigeon.

I was going to skip class today and go to work, but I couldn't get out of bed.

I have to read Walden. Such dense prose, so hard to read after Franklin's Autobiography. I read it in high school without any trouble. I think if you're going to read Walden you should read it in high school.

I have begun to really dig The X-Files. It's my generation's The Twilight Zone.

Mon Jul 12 1999 08:48: Okay, I ordered my mighty computer. It cost $582. It is an AMD 450 with 128 megs of RAM. It should be here in about two weeks. Now maybe I can stop agonizing over this.

Mon Jul 12 1999 13:47: I screwed up! I forgot that I'm a senior now, and entitled to the first slot for picking classes! And I went and wasted that slot by not signing up for anything! Now 181 is full! ARRGH

Oh well. I had to scramble, but I found a decent schedule for the fall. Computer System Modeling Fundamentals, which appears to be a benchmarking class or a distributed systems class or some combination of the two; the database class I almost took last quarter; A creampuff (?) Bach music history class; and First Course in Logic, which I discovered you need in order to take any interesting upper-division philosophy classes, apart from the Philosophy of Science series, which is not being offered this year.

FCIL has gotta be a joke. What could be in it that I haven't done three times over? My only concern is that I'm using up my easy classes this quarter. But I don't really have a choice, as the two hard classes I have left I can't take this quarter.

I'm going to be very angry if UCLA doesn't think the classes I chose fall into the right categories and makes me take additional classes, thus preventing me from graduating on time. I don't think that will happen, but it might.

Tue Jul 13 1999 05:48: Interesting, as always, to see what searches bring people to this site. The Captain Planet comic is bringing quite a few people in.

Tue Jul 13 1999 06:03: New version of rfk2. I fixed the stairway problem, but an unrelated problem causes segfaults when you shoot right next to an enemy. The whole bullet thing needs to be rethought, so this will be the last rfk2 for a while, probably. You can toggle synchronous mode on and off by hitting the S key. Synchronous mode means everything moves once after you move and then stops and waits for you to move again. It's of no use in rfk2, but as rfk2 is supposed to be a general framework for ANSI games, I figured I'd put it in. So now I could do rfk1 in the framework provided by rfk2.

Tue Jul 13 1999 07:02: I thought of a way to do the cookie subversion thing, but it's not as easy as the way I couldn't do it last year. Browsers won't accept cookies from domains other than the domain offering the cookie. So instead of just setting the cookie I'd have to print out the cookie text and have the user cut and paste it into their cookies.txt. This limits the scope of the subversion somewhat.

Hm, interesting idea for a client-server program.

Tue Jul 13 1999 07:20: I have a fourth song that mentions Andy, but it's not done, and probably never will be.

Tue Jul 13 1999 09:18: I added a link to Scott Hammack's personal slang dictionary on the Leonardonics page. When I say I want to see your personal slang dictionary, I mean I want to see your personal slang dictionary, and I also mean that if you don't have one, I want you to write one. Anyone can make a personal slang dictionary, and, as far as I'm concerned, everyone should. Even if it's just a couple terms.

Tue Jul 13 1999 16:34: Mark Twain's The Late Benjamin Franklin has got to be one of the funniest things I have ever read. Enjoy in moderation.

I typed that in just now. I'm not expecting you to be awed by that, I'm just explaining why I'm putting a copy on my site and not pointing to it somewhere else.

Fred is having this moral crisis about the crappy proprietary software you have to use in the digital design lab. He won't agree to the licensing agreement, and believes that this prohibits him from using the software. Sheesh! I wish that was my biggest moral problem.

To his credit, Fred is not (just) a whiner. He is writing a GPLed replacement for the crappy proprietary software you have to use in the assembly language class (the infamous and much-mocked CUSP). I salute him for that. Also, I went through rfk2 with him today and he enjoyed my code, and I showed him some new C tricks. This I am proud of, as he previously proved to be the repository of all Linux-display-related knowledge, thus making me feel inferior.

Today is the day of swiping stuff from school. I swiped the toaster from CSUA, as I have none of my own (I'm a hatter), and I was having to toast my bread in the oven, and it was always burning. I also swiped the fan from Peter's office, as my apartment is impossibly hot, especially at night. I doubt that fan has seen daylight in fifteen years.

Tue Jul 13 1999 16:38: I'm going to give the stuff back, obviously, once someone else needs it.

Tue Jul 13 1999 20:05: The URL tree printer now generates valid HTML 4.0. I fixed it by making the Franklin page verify correctly.

Wed Jul 14 1999 07:46: Every time I buy something with my check card, they run into a problem with the address verification. It goes on and on until they call the credit union, which magically resolves everything. It is a mystery to me.

Okay, Mr. MegaSuperBrowser, I'm ready for you! I'll take you down!

Wed Jul 14 1999 08:00: How about a program that notifies you via email when you get new email?

Wed Jul 14 1999 08:23: New Leonardronicseseses: magic footnote and (from yesterday) creampuff.

Wed Jul 14 1999 09:00: I need to buy tomatoes, cheese, a spoon to replace Danny's spoon that I broke. I think that's it.

Wed Jul 14 1999 13:32: Here's a big (or small, depending) list of actual factual Y2K problems that have already occured.

Thu Jul 15 1999 06:42: Lately I have been dragged into deep conversations. With Fred the other day, and with Campbell yesterday. Maybe it's {because I'm a Londoner, summer}.

Response to my Cookie Swap Protocol proposal has been fairly positive, except for one AC who called me a bastard via BAH/HumBug, so I am linking the proposal to the public.

Thu Jul 15 1999 07:07: Man! I want in on this! Jake, is this what your friends do instead of studying? What relationship does this "That's a spicy meatball!" have with your "That's a spicy meatball!"?

Fri Jul 16 1999 08:35: I can't get enough of the Super Golden Crisp that is Stanislaw Lem. Every time I think he's going to reuse an idea he's already used in a story, he turns on me and pounds me into the ground for my insolence. Metaphorically, I mean.

I read Eden, Memoirs of a Space Traveller, and Return from the Stars yesterday, picking up one as soon as I finished the other. Memoirs was consistently good, and very funny. Return started out excellent and then dragged along for a while. Eden started off great, was consistently great, and ended in a mind-numbing explosion of greatness that overwhelmed me to the extent that I never want to read the beginning or middle of the book again, just the end.

I have three more books of Lem to read, and there are at least five more books of his in English in the library, although a couple of the novels look like your standard Cold War-era Polish angst-filled novels. I've never actually read such a novel, but I can recognize the form.

Actually, I did read a novel of that form, though by a Russian expatriate, It Is Hard To Be A Russian Spy. I found it in Peter's office. I thought it would be a light-hearted romp through the world of espionage. Instead, it was just depressing. I do like saying "Is hard to be Russian spy" in my lame Russian broken-English accent, though.

I went to the library to get T.H. White's Arthurian novels. I came for the White, stayed for the Lem. I am starting The Sword In The Stone, which I now realize was where Disney got their The Sword In The Stone from. I thought that movie seemed a little lighthearted to be a Disneyisation from the original Arthurian mythos.

Fri Jul 16 1999 08:43: Oh, one more thing about the library. Mark Twain has about three shelves of stuff. And on the shelf right next to Twain is most of a shelf dedicated to Fennimore Cooper (Clemens->Cooper), subject of Twain's riotous "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", in which Cooper was said to have, on one page alone, committed 114 sins against artistic style of a possible 115. Just a funny juxtaposition.

Fri Jul 16 1999 09:43: A guy posted the Dada Pokey URL on a message board. I know because I got a visitor from there and logged it. Dada Pokey is probably more bookmarked than any other page on my site, judging from the number of hits it gets that aren't from other pages.

Fri Jul 16 1999 13:04: I can't get enough of the Super Golden Crisp that is the phrase "I can't get enough of the Super Golden Crisp that is x". It should probably go in Leonardonics. By the way, there should be a cereal called Super Golem Crisp.

Sun Jul 18 1999 06:04: I am sicker than a dog. Have been since Friday afternoon. Nose plugged up, hurts to eat, etc. Unable to study for midterms. Not good. Will try to study for math (easy) today, and hopefully I'll be better and can study for english tomorrow. I have to go be sick now. Hm, good name for a BeOS productivity suite: Gobe Sick.

Sun Jul 18 1999 20:10: I'm still sick. In my absence, I suggest bowing before the might of Leonard Kleinrock.

Mon Jul 19 1999 08:36: What good is having a student health center that won't take insurance? Why even bother? I suppose they get the occasional student who injures himself in Wooden and can't hobble all the way down to the medical center, but on the whole I don't see how anyone would be desperate enough to go there but not desperate to go the medical center.

My indignation has given me renewed vitality.

Mon Jul 19 1999 09:35: Leonardonics: I can't get enough of the Super Golden Crisp that is x

Mon Jul 19 1999 12:39: I totally whomped my math midterm. I made at most one mistake.

Now I must reread Franklin and Thoreau for my midterm tomorrow. I don't think I read the whole of Walden in high school. I might've, but it just seems so much longer now.

Tue Jul 20 1999 06:31: !!!!! The movie First Spaceship on Venus, as seen on MST3K, is based on a book called The Astronauts by Stanislaw Lem! "Lem is said to have disowned the film."

Lem was alive as of 1996. That's the date of an interview with him I found. At any rate, he no longer writes.

I'm getting all this stuff at pages like this one.

Tue Jul 20 1999 09:32: There is a security seminar called "Deciduous: Decentralized Identification of Network-Based Intrusion Source" today, which I plan to attend, if only for the free food.

Tue Jul 20 1999 11:49: Woo! Warner Brothers cartoon pop culture references explained!

Tue Jul 20 1999 12:41: With this entry, the July 1999 NYCB will become the largest NYCB to date, the previous record holder being the March 1998 NYCB.

95% on the math midterm. I did make the one mistake I thought I had made. English midterm in 20 minutes. I went through Franklin yesterday, marking everything that might be of use, and am trying to force my way through Higher Laws, as my prof believes that to be one of the focal points of Walden.

Tue Jul 20 1999 15:51: My midterm essay was long-winded and scattershot, but such is the manner of midterm essays.

Wed Jul 21 1999 06:32: I didn't go to that seminar thingy. I was too tired after the midterm.

Thu Jul 22 1999 06:06: By what criteria did Red Hat decide who to offer pre-IPO stock to? They didn't offer me any (which is just as well as I can't afford it), but they did offer some to witten and uzi of LUG fame. Possibly they sent mail to everyone who has a freshmeat entry. Which is technically spam. Although I don't know what else could have been done.

Thu Jul 22 1999 15:22: Man, IDG really, really wants me to shell out money for LinuxWorld Expo.

Yippee! My mother has my new computer. Soon it will be in my hands. On my floor, I mean.

Dave Griffith emailed my saying that he got a tape drive and a CD burner and is restoring the Da Warren file library. So I'll have a CD of that eventually. Yay!

Fri Jul 23 1999 08:30: My mother is coming down to LA with my computer. Fortunately she was coming down to LA anyway. At one point in my life I would have been excited to the point of incoherence by a new piece of hardware, much less a new computer. I am excited, but not to the point of incoherence. How swiftly fly the joys of youth!

Fri Jul 23 1999 13:54: An actual "cool links" page that links to Dada Pokey: http://www.spaceninja.com/home/links.html

Fri Jul 23 1999 15:05: Five years later, it's still funny: (extended file description for TOXINS.ZIP, uploaded to Da Warren on 7/15/1994)

Should you go for the more expensive mainstream drugs, or should you
try to get a cheap high off of a passing toad? This file will tell you
which species posess the toxins that make these amphibians a favorite of
Beavis and Butthead, as well as the effects of the toxins. This handy
guide will help you evaluate whether or not to "LICK THAT TOAD!"

Fri Jul 23 1999 15:09: Another Da Warren file description, funny in a different way:

WINMODEM v1.00  - WinModem makes the invisible visible. If you have
an internal modem, WinModem can supply the missing status lights. No
more guesswork. You'll always know what the modem id [sic] doing. A must-have
utility if you use communications under Windows.

Fri Jul 23 1999 16:01: Leonardonics: xus maximus (archaic)

Fri Jul 23 1999 18:15: With the new Linux, going on the Internet has never been easier! And when you buy from Affordable Computers, we don't tell you the root password of the machine you buy, but we set it to "password" so you can probably guess it!

Man, this Netscape is fast. Everything is fast, except for bootup, which unaccountably takes forever. This machine weighs in at a beefy 897.84 Bogomips.

I was given a 3.5 gig hard drive instead of a 1.0 gig. I'm not complaining.

kppp is solid gold.

Fri Jul 23 1999 21:59: I'm cooking in the BeOS. Not at the moment, as I can't get it to recognize my modem. But in general, I have done cooking in the BeOS. I want to do a song composed entirely of pieces of audio that came on the BeOS CD.

Sat Jul 24 1999 10:22: There's a Spinal Tap joke in the BeOS. There is not, however, my modem working. I have all the correct information and it still won't talk to my modem.

I'm on campus at the moment. I took rubberfish in to CSUA as Fred and I are going to make it into a server. Now I'm going to go to Radio Shack (knock a little louder, sugar!) to get a mixer->sound card cable so that I can plug my mixer into my sound card. I have one which is from the last time I bought a new computer, in 1996, but it doesn't work anymore. I base this conclusion on the fact that it does not connect output to input, although output and input both work. Thus, by definition, the cable does not work. QED.

Mon Jul 26 1999 07:01: Wow, everything looks so cosmic! This new lynx is more colorful than a barrel of iMacs! Which I guess would be about two iMacs. Anyway, I got the mixer hookup going, except for this intermittent flickering which I haven't been able to track down yet.

I have a decent little baguette of a song recorded called "Sweet Emulsion". It's basically a joke from high school set to different music and with a funny telemarketer's answering machine message mixed in.

I could do a whole album of such baguettes. I certainly have enough scraps on my tapes which could not be made into whole songs, but which I could stretch out to a minute or so with the clever use of samples.

Mon Jul 26 1999 07:19: Bagatelles, not baguettes.

My mother gave me a shirt she got from a crazy guy in Oregon when she went to visit her aunt. On the front it has a rather unconvincing tsunami collage. On the back it says "STOP THE CASCADIA MEGATHRUST EARTHQUAKE SUBDUCTION EVENT", which reminds me of "STOP CONTINENTAL DRIFT". I am disappointed that there are not seven exclamation marks after "EVENT", but it's a good shirt.

My mother's aunt asked the guy how one goes about STOPping the CASCADIA MEGATHRUST EARTHQUAKE SUBDUCTION EVENT. "Pray!" said the guy. That information should really be on the shirt.

Mon Jul 26 1999 07:42: I keep forgetting things. I'm fairly sure that the guest star on The X-Files last night was the same actor who played Garak on ST:DS9. He had the same voice and mannerisms.

Also, is there a rider in David Duchnovy's contract that requires him to summarize the episode in the fiftieth minute of the hour, just before the conclusion?

I'm watching three hours of television a week (DS9, Simpsons, Futurama, X-Files). I'm not sure how good or bad that is. For comparison, I also listen to three hours of radio a week (Prairie Home Companion, My Word, My Music). I read about six hours yesterday, but that's just because I'm still tearing through Lem like a madman.

Josh tried to get me into listening to the old radio dramas they play nightly on some AM station. I might give that a try again, except I forgot what station they're on.

I'm reading Peace on Earth at the moment. 1987, Lem's last book? It certainly fits the mold of "this is my last book".

Mon Jul 26 1999 19:13: I got rid of the annoying glitches in my recording by setting the BeOS' real-time sound processing checkbox, but that checkbox makes everything I record staticky. I don't know why. Dammit, I have 128M of RAM!

My current project is trying to get a decent recording of "Brandy Waters Will Have Her Revenge On Leonard", the gruesome sequel to Brian Overturf's gruesome "Leonard Shot Everyone Down" (for those of you who didn't hear it the first time, it goes "Leonard shot everyone down/Leonard shot everyone down/He shot down his girlfriend named Brandy Waters/she said "no no no no"; there are people, my sister among them, but me not, who know who Brandy Waters is. I thought it was unfair to have me immortalized in song as killing her, without giving her a chance to kill me back)

It's a do-wop song. I love doing the layered vocals, and if there's one thing I've learned from Frank Zappa, it's that anything is funny when you do it as a do-wop song.

Mon Jul 26 1999 19:55: OK, here is a cheap MP3 of Leonard Shot Everyone Down. I pity the poor sap who comes in on a search for "mp3" and has to content himself with that file.

Mon Jul 26 1999 21:15: Okay, all my electronic strugglings are going on a new album, version 1.1.2pl14, named in parody of the "version 2.0" metaphor. The songs are going on the album in order of creation, so presumably a higher track number will mean better quality. Right now there is Sweet Emulsion and Leonard Shot Everyone Down. I'm not happy about the way Sweet Emulsion got mp3ed. The .wav doesn't have that weird squibbling noise in the background.

Tue Jul 27 1999 08:35: When real-time sound is off, my recording skips. When real-time sound is on, the sound quality degrades as a function of how much other stuff is in memory. In particular, if I am playing back a song to record another track on top of it, the sound quality of what I record is completely unusable.

This is unacceptable behavior on the part of the BeOS, particularily on a 450Mhz/128M machine. I hesitate to blame the BeOS for this, but the evidence is pretty convincing.

Possibly I'm recording at an unreasonably high sampling rate, but I can't find anywhere to change it, either at the system or the application level.

Tue Jul 27 1999 15:12: Woohoo! Dan Helfman, whom I will be living with next year in a room the size of a refrigerator carton, has a personal slang dictionary! I should write some software for managing one's personal slang dictionary. That might encourage more people to have them. All those without personal slang dictionaries will taste my lizard steel!

Tue Jul 27 1999 19:05: I got a RAM checking utility. Even while simultanously mixing a bunch of old tracks and recording a new one on top of that, the BeOS stays within the first 64 megs of RAM. I have half my RAM doing absolutely nothing, and the recording still sounds horrid!

Wed Jul 28 1999 07:11: Okay, it's official. I am going to LinuxWorld Expo, and I'm going to be there for all three days. Yippee! I'm not yet sure how I'm going to get there and back, though.

Wed Jul 28 1999 07:57: I really ought to finish my first LWE travelogue before I attend another LWE.

Wed Jul 28 1999 12:43: Hooray for pitas.com, the public weblog service that's like being able to use my notebook program! Well, I can already use my notebook program, and, since it's GPLed, you can use it too, but you might not have server space for it. So you can go sign up at pitas.com and have your own weblog. Hooray!

Jake wants me to do a public personal slang dictionary. Thinking about it I'm not sure how good an idea that is. It's a good thing in that personal slang needs to dissipate, but not a good thing in that one's personal slang is one's own, and you don't want a page that just has a big blob of your slang mixed in with other peoples'.