A thing-place

This puts a thing I try to say all the time really, really well.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:06:54 -0500

This puts a thing I try to say all the time really, really well.

Worst Academic Pun Ever

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:44:26 -0500

From Clement Hawes’ Three Times Round the Globe: Gulliver and Colonial Discourse:

“White caps his catalogue of racial differences with a remarkable specimen of mammary iconography:

Where shall we find, unless in the European, that nobly
arched head, containing such a quantity of brain .. . ? Where
the perpendicular face, the prominent nose, and round
projecting chin? … Where that erect posture of the body
and noble gait? … Where, except on the bosom of the Euro-
pean woman, two such plump and snowy white hemispheres,
tipt with vermillion? (135)

At the very conclusion of his treatise, White refers to the slave trade as “indefensible” and avers that he would “rejoice at its abolition” (137). Yet his racial self-delight and his laboriously cultivated disgust toward the “Other,” despite his claim “simply to investigate a proposition in natural history” (137), amount to an aesthetic rationalization for domination-for making both “hemispheres” as “snowy white” as possible.”

Ouch.

Tom Gauld, tomgauld.com

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:33:00 -0500

Tom Gauld, tomgauld.com

"For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groat he is worth, so before..."

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:43:14 -0400

“For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groat he is worth, so before one can commence a true critic, it will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind, which perhaps for a less purchase would be thought but an indifferent bargain.”

- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

"Geoff Manaugh writes and thinks like some unholy hybrid of Umberto Eco, Paul Morley, William Gibson..."

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:03:05 -0400

“Geoff Manaugh writes and thinks like some unholy hybrid of Umberto Eco, Paul Morley, William Gibson and an unhinged ayahuascero dressed only in pages from a furniture catalogue dated 10 December 2012.”

- Warren Ellis, being a very typical Warren Ellis.

Chincoteague, VA

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:21:19 -0400

Our waitress this morning, with no context:

“If you open the door and go outside and see a woman who when she opens her mouth bell noises come out, that’s because I shoved it down her throat.”

Web Services That Should Exist

Sun, 03 May 2009 03:05:28 -0400

txt -> png; png -> txt

Enter text, it spits out a 100 x 100, suitably random-looking block of colored pixels. Upload or link to one of those, it spits out the text that made it.

Preferably makes equally random-looking output on any input including null; preferably returns variable amounts of consistent, unique gibberish when fed images it didn’t generate.

phone number anonymization

Tell it your phone number and an amount of time, and it generates a number (or a code that can be entered via phone into a menu at a static number) that when called forwards to your phone number.

Context Switching

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:40:44 -0400

Keystrokes I use on a (*semi-)regular basis to switch contexts:

cmd-tab, cmd-shift-tab (OS X applications)
cmd-`, cmd-shift-` (OS X windows within app)
cmd-Q (OS X quit app)
cmd-W (OS X close window)
cmd-opt-rightarrow/leftarrow (OSX Firefox/Opera tabs next/prev)
cmd-[0-9] (OSX Firefox/Opera specific tab)
cmd-k (OSX Firefox google search)
cmd-l (OSX Firefox/Opera URL bar)
cmd-t (OSX Firefox/Opera new tab)
cmd-w (OSX Firefox/Opera close tab)
cmd-fn-f12 (OSX Firefox undo close tab)
opt-space (invoke quicksilver)
*cmd-space (invoke spotlight)
opt-tab (Visor)
*cmd-n (new Terminal, new OS X FF window)
cmd-rightarrow/leftarrow (*Terminals, *X11 windows, Adium tabs)
ctrl-x-b (emacs buffers)
ctrl-z (suspend (usually emacs))
**ctrl-a-c (new screen in screen)
**ctrl-a-n/p (previous/next screen in screen)
fg (resume (usually emacs) )
*ctrl-alt-[f1-f12] (TTYs on CS dept. machines)
alt-tab, alt-shift-tab (KDE applications)
*ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab (KDE workspaces)
alt-f4 (KDE close window)
alt-[0-9] (Linux FF specific tab)
ctrl-k (Linux FF Google search)
ctrl-l (Linux FF url bar)
ctrl-t (Linux FF new tab)
ctrl-w (Linux FF close tab)
ctrl-shift-n (Konsole new session)
alt-shift-left/right (Konsole sessions)
tab, shift-tab (Focus in almost everything)
j/k (next/prev in gmail/google reader)
u (return to inbox in gmail)

With all of this, my success rate the first time I try to switch contexts is probably around 70%, and only tht high because my high rate of trivial cmd-tabs… the worst situations are when less-used apps with interfaces similar to more-used apps don’t implement certain keystrokes (cmd-k in Opera, j/k/u in Google Groups, cmd-option-rightarrow/leftarrow in Linux FF)
and when there is transparency involved (If I am using multiple transparent terminal windows and Visor and another app at the same time (fairly often), my success rate choosing between opt-tab, cmd-tab, cmd-`, and cmd-rightarrow/leftarrow, not mention sometimes opt-space, drops to like 15% on the first try and maybe 50% on the second and third…

"…she cut straight into the pointy end of a nice slab of brie, rather than slicing a thin..."

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:03:59 -0400

“

…she cut straight into the pointy end of a nice slab of brie, rather than slicing a thin segment as is usual.

Soon after she heard someone exclaim loudly,

“Which cretin has pointed the Brie?!”

”

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/mar/27/middle-class-food-woes?commentid=4a83b985-ccce-442e-9842-29b469a2191a

Photo

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:32:24 -0500

Photo

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:29:18 -0500

"Over the next few weeks, as the trial version winds down, we’ll be opting everyone into the new..."

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:35:58 -0400

“Over the next few weeks, as the trial version winds down, we’ll be opting everyone into the new Facebook.”

- the Facebook Redesign Page.

"‘Yes?’ she asks, compressing so much data into the twenty-four-bit monosyllable that if..."

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:19:00 -0400

“‘Yes?’ she asks, compressing so much data into the twenty-four-bit monosyllable that if you could patent the algorithm, you’d be set for life.”

- from Halting State, by Charles Stross.

Nice musics

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:01:23 -0400

Nice musics

Taking Notes

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:19:38 -0500

I’m in a small English class - seven students total. Everyone but me takes copious notes.

One day (a day a friend from highschool happened to be visiting) I raised my hand in class and made a pretty good point. Then there was this cinematic moment - a tiny silence, and then everyone else in the room picked up a pen and jotted down what I’d said.

I shivered. I hated them.

A Pun

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:43:39 -0500

Three men were stranded on a desert island, with only a tiny, muddy spring of fresh water to sustain them. They all spoke different languages and could not communicate well, and so a natural order based on strength fell into place. Each day, the strongest man always shoved the other two out of the way first, and drank his fill from the spring. Then the second strongest fought off the weakest and drank most of what dregs were left. A chest filled with paper, pens, and empty bottles had washed ashore with them, and the weakest man, parched and desolate, would often sit beneath the shade of the lone palm tree, writing page after page in his broken English (for he assumed that an English message-in-a-bottle was the most likely to be understood):

”Help! I am dying of 3st!”

Seen in the XKCD puzzle forums

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:19:22 -0400

There are two types of people in the world: 1) those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.

I wonder if this is a thing

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:13:55 -0400

that I will use.