Anime Art Blog Cool Geek Life World Rant

June 27, 2003

World  I'm Sorry...

What planet did you say you're from?

"This is a great chicken, a friendly chicken, a chicken that is ready for a relationship," said Kat Brown, deputy director of the shelter.
Gravy and roast potatoes make a good relationship.

Oh yes, here.

(via Fark)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 08:11 PM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Non-Transferable

This membership is limited to current incarnation only. Any use of this membership in a previous or future life will result in the immediate termination of this membership and its benefits.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 05:10 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 26, 2003

Blog  One Day

One day I will write the perfect post. Every word will be both a geek-culture reference and a literary allusion, and also a relevant link to another blog. It will form a perfect bricktext at 72 columns, with acrostics on both the left and the right. The post will be in the form of a sonnet and the entire thing will be a palindrome.

Also, it will make some kind of sense.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:11 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

June 25, 2003

Art  Title Fit - I Felt It

The first CD we listened to on our trip was Weird Al Yankovic's new release, Poodle Hat. All good Weird stuff (I particularly like Hardware Store and A Complicated Song), until we got to Bob:

I, man, am regal - a German am I
Never odd or even
If I had a hi-fi
What?
Madam, I'm Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Warsaw was raw
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
OK, I should have caught it by now, but it's a lot easier seeing the words in print than hearing them sung for the first time. Anyway:
Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see God?
"Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod
I quite like that one, but:
Rats live on no evil star
The light dawned, and it was blinding.

As for those readers (or rather Googlers) who were looking to download Poodle Hat: Just buy the darn thing, willya? The CD contains a bonus Quicktime movie with all the songs, extra mixes, the lyrics (yes, he did say automatic circumcisers) and Weird Al's very own home movies.

If you're a nut for a jar of tuna, you need Poodle Hat.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:23 PM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

June 24, 2003

Life  Sesquipedalian

The Eskimos are famous - perhaps apocryphally - for having forty words for snow. Cecil Adams once noted:

In my spare time I have been attempting to construct an Eskimo sentence in my basement, such as will be suitable for the season. I have not get it perfected yet, but it is coming along pretty well, and with a little work it might pass for the genuine article. So far I have: kaniktshaq moritlkatsio atsuniartoq.

When completed, this sentence will proclaim: "Look at all this fucking snow." At present it means: "Observe the snow. It fornicates." This is not poetic, but it is serviceable, and I intend to employ it at the next opportunity.

Since English was invented by, well, the English, one wonders whether it in turn has forty words for rain. Perusing a handy thesaurus, I was able to come up with only 12:
cloudburst, condensation, deluge, downpour, drizzle, monsoon, precipitation, rain, shower, sleet, spit, sprinkle
Other than that there are a few dubious ones like mist (not really rain) or sun shower. (They also offered to take me to the 10 most popular sites for "rain", an offer which I have set aside for a fine day.)

Which is just my round-about way of noting that, irrespective of all the nice things I have said about Sydney's weather, it is raining again.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:25 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Harry Who?

It would seem that I have been labouring under a misapprehension and Harry Potter is not in fact the colonel who commanded the 4077th in later episodes of M*A*S*H. He is, it would appear, the hero of an absurdly popular series of books by one J. K. Rowling.

I dropped in today on a friend of mine who runs a bookstore here in Sydney. Not a small bookstore, but not a huge one either. He ordered in 600 copies of the hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - and sold them all in three days.

Now, I don't begrudge Ms. Rowling her squillions... Alright, I do begrudge her her squillions, but not to the extent that I begrudge Microsoft theirs. But I'm at a loss to explain the popularity of these books. They're not bad, but -

I have a collection of Fritz Leiber's short stories; I bought it because it contained some stories that I'd never seen collected elsewhere. Total world-wide print run of this book was 80 copies. Why? There's no question, none at all, that Fritz Leiber was a better writer than J. K. Rowling. Why wasn't he a squillionaire too?

Leiber's work isn't for children, but a large proportion of Harry Potter readers are adults. I don't mind at all that adults read and enjoy Harry Potter, but why aren't they also reading Dunsany? Or in a similar vein, Neil Gaiman's Stardust, a beautiful and wondrous tale almost flawless in its tribute to Dunsany's style. It's good to see that Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books are being kept in print, but where oh where is The Silver Eggheads?

Why, if adults find they enjoy fantasy, are they not reading masters of the weird and wonderful like Tim Powers and Michael Shea? Why not Lois Bujold, who can create characters who sometimes seem more real than my own family, or C. J. Cherryh, who writes so well that a hundred pages can pass with no action and you barely notice and care not at all? When will we see a movie version of The Anubis Gates or Nifft the Lean or The Curse of Chalion or Gate of Ivrel?

Why are they not reading Ursula Le Guin? Why not T.H. White? Why not - well, actually, Terry Pratchett is doing pretty well. And Stephen Donaldson - his novels may not appeal to all, but do try his short stories in Daughter of Regals and Reave the Just.

As for me? Well, since I couldn't buy the latest Harry Potter epic, it may be time for me to finish my own novel and maybe, just maybe, make some squillions of my own.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:13 PM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (4)

June 23, 2003

Life  Ex Cathedra


This lovely cathedral with its wooden belltower was in, um... Wangaratta, I think.

Yes, Wangaratta.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:07 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

June 22, 2003

Life  Cheesecake Photos


Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:37 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Life  Tastes Great


My cousin Melissa encounters wasabi for the first time.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:17 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 21, 2003

Life  Power Saving


We unplugged the cat and it went into sleep mode.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:24 PM | Life | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Uh, Skipper?

I think the GPS is on the blink again...

(I think I may have been on this submarine once, back when it was still in service when I was in the Cub Sprouts. There's not enough room on one of these things to swing even the smallest and most uncomplaining of cats.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:30 AM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Perfect Weather

We left Sydney at 5:30 AM on Saturday morning. Ignore everything I've said previously about how delightful Sydney is in winter: This morning it was cold, dark, wet, windy and generally miserable. (Of course, after we left it cleared up and turned into a delightful day. One of my colleagues described it as "beach weather".)

We, on the other hand, followed the miserableness south. By mid-morning, the rain had mostly stopped, the darkness had lifted, the wind had died down, and though it was still a touch chilly, we had otherwise perfect weather for a long drive in the country.

Perfect except for the impenetrable fog, that is.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:30 AM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Signing Off

I'm signing off now, hoping to catch fifteen winks before we set out on our road trip at five o'clock. (I didn't realise that there was a five in the morning. At least, not as a time where one wakes up, as opposed to stays awake 'til.) Then I'm off, and unless my WiFi card suddenly decides to work, you probably won't hear from me until Tuesday, when I will be presenting Pixy Misa's Big Adventure: Twelve Hundred Miles Sharing The Back Seat With A Two-Year-Old.

So's you don't get lonely (and taking the opportunity for a swipe at Orrin Hatch), here are some completely legal mp3s for you to download: Crunchy Frog Blues, What Dance Dance Kitten Did On Her Holiday, and Return of the Return of the Electric Ant. All are written by the brilliant [And modest. — Ed.] young composer, novelist, programmer and blogger... Uh, that is, me.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:13 AM | Life | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)

Geek  Campbell's Condensed Geek

Neverwinter Nights, Bioware's fairly nifty multi-player Dungeons and Dragons game, is now available for Linux!:

CD-Key: You will have to purchase a copy of the game to get a valid Neverwinter Nights CD-Key. Of course, with this purchase you also get a lovely Neverwinter Nights mapkin, a spiral-bound game manual, and three plastic-coated aluminum-reinforced W1nd0z3 brand coasters.
Yay!

And Shadows of Undrentide, the first Neverwinter Nights expansion, is expected to arrive in Australia next week.

Yay!

And there's another new hardcover D&D rulebook out: Ghostwalk:

Ghostwalk contains everything needed to run a stand-alone campaign in and around the city of Manifest, or to integrate it into an existing world, including rules for playing ghost characters and advancing in the new eidolon and eidoloncer classes, several new prestige classes, over 70 new feats and 65 new spells, three complete adventures, four highly detailed encounter sites, and fourteen new monsters and templates.
That makes, what, 24 official 3rd Edition hardcover rulebooks? Not counting unofficial stuff, softcover stuff, D20 stuff...

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:46 AM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 20, 2003

Geek  Internet Time

It would seem that Apple accidentally leaked the specs for their new PowerMac G5 systems, due to be officially announced on Monday.

So far, business as usual.

The interesting thing is that within hours of the accident, someone set up a CafePress store selling items that would only appeal to true geeks.

Nice specs, tho'.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:53 PM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Midwinter Montage

As a change of pace, I thought I'd post some pictures I took on my way to work today. This is Sydney in the middle of winter.


The view from my front door.


Crows can't read.


You're not supposed to walk through here, but everyone does. The alternative is to climb three flights of stairs to the road above, and then walk back downhill until the roads join up again.


The Department of Lands building.


The Department of Education building. This is Sydney sandstone. The whole city is built on this stuff, and many of the older buildings are also built of it. When it's kept clean, it's a wonderful golden colour, particularly in the afternoon sun.


The State Library, which is just across the road from where I work. Sadly there's nowhere to stand to take a good picture of it unless you want to get run over. (This is the only photo I took with a significant degree of zoom. It's quite noticeable, isn't it?)


Two great big marbles. The guy on the right is holding a Grace Bros bag.


The Domain. This park is directly across the road from my office. Unfortunately, the street is in shadow and my camera couldn't quite cope with the contrast here. I'll try taking more photos earlier in the day. Just off to the left are the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Sydney Opera House, so there's lots more photos to take.

And a couple more that I didn't take this morning:



A waratah by night. The waratah is the State Flower of New South Wales. This example is in my brother's garden.


A hundred-foot tower made of sticky tape being destroyed by fire.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:08 AM | Life | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

June 19, 2003

Life  Midwinter Madness

I hate shopping for clothes.

I'm a guy, so I guess it comes with the territory. In fact, I hate shopping in general. Don't get me wrong: I don't mind buying things; in fact, I quite enjoy buying things. It's the process of shopping that wears me down. The problem is, I guess, that I don't want something like 99.9% of what is available in stores. I'm just not interested in pawing my way through 300 different items that I wouldn't take if they were free before I find want whatever it is that I'm after.

The ideal transaction for me would work like this: I walk into the store, which is clean, well lit, and is most definitely not playing rap music. Or Celine Dion, for that matter. I find what I want, clearly labelled and in plentiful supply, sitting on a shelf. I take it to the cashier, who takes my money and puts my purchase and my receipt in a sturdy bag. Then I take my goodies and leave.

Total elapsed time should not be more than five minutes.

I wear Levi jeans for a fairly simple reason: I can buy them off the shelf, and they fit. I know exactly which style I want, which colour (well, I'm willing to vary the colour), and my size. The Levi's store in Sydney's Pitt St mall delivers on this about half the time, which is significantly better than the odds I've found elsewhere.

Not today, of course. The mid-year sales are on, which means that the tables are piled high with dozens of identical pairs of 30-waist, 36-leg, indigo-grey bootcuts. (How the stores manage to land themselves with that sort of junk in the first place is another question entirely, and I'm not going to go into a discussion of focus forecasting right now.) Anyway, the Levi's store didn't have my size in that style in any colour whatsoever. Nor did Grace Bros. Nor did David Jones. (Though DJs did prove once again that some people will buy anything: Three hundred and nineteen dollars for a pair of jeans?)

Just Jeans don't even carry that style. Jeans West don't sell Levi's. (What?) They sell Jeans West brand. (Oh.) But they will sell me two pairs for the price of one pair of Levi 504s. They're a little long, but but this point I was willing to buy anything that had two holes at one end, one hole at the other, and a zip.

If there's one thing that's even worse than buying clothes, of course, it's buying shoes. About fifteen years ago I found a style of shoe that was comfortable, smart, hard-wearing and not too horribly expensive. Every so often my existing pair would start to look noticeably scruffy even to me, and I'd go to the store and buy another pair. Same size, same style, though sometimes I bought black and sometimes brown.

Unfortunately, the last pair I bought had had the hard-wearingness taken out for some inscrutable marketing reason, and they fell apart in short order. Scratch a decade and a half of shoe-buying expertise.

So here I am looking for a new pair of shoes, because the hole in the toe of my sneakers is starting to get kind of obvious. But it's not like you can stop at a random shoe store in the mall, immediately find something you like, guess your size right the first time and discover that they fit perfectly. And it's hardly likely that they'll be on sale at half price, and that the store will have a second, identical pair on hand...

I guess you can call me Cinderella.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:45 PM | Life | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Creepy Susie

Book of the Day is Creepy Susie and 13 other tragic tales for troubled children by Angus Oblong.

Now, normally in recommending a book I'd include a carefully selected quote of some of the author's finest prose. In this case, however, this amounts to:

This is Helga.
These are the Debbies. The Debbies all tried very hard to be the same.
Helga was an endless source of amusement for the Debbies...
Even though Helga was different, she had somehow convinced herself that there was a place in society for her.
The Debbies sought to destroy Helga's glimmer of hope to one day fit in.
Take a look at the sample pages on Amazon's site. Then buy the book.

You can also read The Cutie Bunch Friendly Pal Pack.

There are a bunch more books here too. So if you know a child with a birthday coming up...

(via the cheese stands alone via Tiger)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:02 AM | Art | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

June 18, 2003

Art  Strange and Unusual

Web Site of the Day is Strange and Unusual Dictionaries. Though it mostly consists of links to books and other web sites, it provides three valuable resources: The White Queen's Dictionary of One Letter Words (with over 700 entries!), The Dictionary of All-Consonant Words (I got rhythm, I got music... What? They don't count rhythm? Foobie bletch!), and of course the indispensible Dictionary of All-Vowel Words (running from a'u to Yu).

From there, adoxographers might choose to study The Grandiloquent Dictionary, though aabarists might prefer The Pseudodictionary. For the rest of us, there's always The Foolish Dictionary, presented by Aaaugh!

Confound your friends and amaze your enemies with your new-found Scrabble-power!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:53 PM | Art | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Road Trip

I'm off on a road trip this weekend, and busy busy until then, so I don't know when I'll be blogging. On the other hand, I'll be taking both my notebook and my digital camera with me, so expect a serious update when I get back.

(Can I just add at this point that I love my digital camera? Point and click-click-clickety-click. OK, so two out of three pictures are duds. No problem, since I take ten times as many pictures as before.)

Meanwhile, The International Squirrel Conspiracy has further squirrel terrorism updates, and helpful notes on how you as a citizen can help.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:29 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 17, 2003

Art  Retromingent

Word of the day is retromingent. [If it is, it can bloody well clean it up itself. &mdash Ed.]

(from The Wall Street Journal via Instapundit.)

June 16, 2003

World  Forwarded Without Comment

(Though I'm having to restrain myself.)

From the CD Japan J-Pop mailing list:

Sugizo, the former guitar player of the super rock
group Luna Sea, has been active with his solo project
Sugizo & The Spank Your Juice since the summer of
2002, and the upcoming single will be the third.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=CRCP-10046

At the same time, the lead singer of Penicillin, Hakuei
will be releasing his second solo single.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=IOCD-11036

Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:23 PM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Hello Polly Heater

The sky is blue, the sun is shining; there's a gentle breeze playing with the leaves in the trees. It's cool enough to wear that new jacket if you want to look stylish; warm enough to wear a t-shirt if you want to be comfortable.

Yes folks, another typical Winter's day in Sydney.

Last night, though, it was cold. Not cold cold, I admit, but still cold. So I turned my little heater on for the first time this year.

Ah. Blessed warmth. The smell of burning dust. Splut.

Splut?

No warmth. No anything, in fact. Click off, click on. Nothing.

The best heater in the district. It's so clean. Well, at least the dust is all burnt off.

So today at lunch time I went to Grace Bros. (for readers who remember that show, yes, it's real) and bought myself Poodle Hat, Spirited Away, Lilo & Stitch, and the new Bond flick, Halle Berry's Navel. Oh, and a heater.

This heater cost me $25. Now, late last year, just before Christmas, I gave up on my old air conditioner (which was also going splut, but would at least unsplut itself if you gave it a chance) and bought a new one. My new air conditioner works very well and I'm quite pleased with the purchase, but - how shall I put this - it cost a little more than $25. Not quite two zeroes more, but in that general vicinity.

So my question is - I did say there was a question, didn't I? No? Well, there's a question. My question is, why can't I buy a compact, efficient, portable, $25 device that cools my house rather than warming it?

Well, OK, apart from the Laws of Thermodynamics, why can't I buy such a thing? It's almost enough to make me want to move from the comfortable sub-tropics to one of those nasty places where frozen water falls from the sky at certain times of the year and no-one thinks it odd.

But only almost.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:15 PM | Life | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Rant  You Feel A Sense Of Loss

George Goble's web site is gone. Gone!

Curse you, people in charge!

But blessings be upon the Wayback Machine, for they have the true web site. Or most of it, anyway.

Don't do this at home. Unless you have someone filming you.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 06:54 PM | Rant | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin'

Blog of the Day is Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin', for his fine sense of grammar and his judicious use of language, as approved by 7 out of 10 alien species:

Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, remember I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, as I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector and most of the species in the Gamma quadrant.]
Tiger has a fine review up of the entrants in N.Z. Bear's New Weblog Showcase. If you're interested in Blogging (as opposed to just individual Blogs), or if you're looking for new Blogs to read, it's well worth the time to read Tiger's review and take a look at the Bear's showcase.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:38 AM | Blog | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Blog  Secret Project X Update

Well, the server seems to have utterly failed to melt, and Secret Project X is nearing completion. It actually seems to work, but needs a little fiddling before I unleash it on an unsuspecting world.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:14 AM | Blog | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 15, 2003

World  It Isn't Easy...

The headline in The Australian says it all, really:

‘Extinct’ bum breathing turtle back
I'll just give you a minute to let the glory of that line settle in. ‘Extinct’ bum breathing turtle back. That's our national newspaper, that is. No country but Oz etc. etc., and we're proud of it.

As for the bum-breathing turtle:

SCIENTISTS were beating a path to a plastic tank in Brisbane yesterday to examine a shell-backed beast they had presumed to be extinct.

The young male Lavarack's turtle was captured in a creek at the Lawn Hill National Park in north Queensland a week ago and flown to the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service in Brisbane.

As well as its journey back from the dead, the shelled beast has another unusual characteristic scientists are keen to investigate: it breathes through its bum.

Which I suppose is preferable to talking through it, as is so common in the world these days.
"Whenever there is a new specimen that people have read about but never seen everyone comes down for a look," he said.

"That's especially true with a handsome turtle like this. Most turtles have a plain cream colour underneath but this one is pleasantly mottled."

Yes, that's right, butter the poor turtle up and then -
Scientists will stick a camera-headed fibre-optic cable into his cloaca to see how his breathing apparatus works.
Bloody hell! What have I ever done to you! How'd you like it if I examined your breathing apparatus, mate?

Right, I'm off.

(via Fark)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:43 AM | World | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 14, 2003

Blog  Secret Project X

Light blogging today and tomorrow because (a) I am feeling blah and uninspired, and (b) I am busy working on Secret Project X. If SP X doesn't melt my server, it should be up for the world to see in the next few days. If it does melt my server, well, it's been nice talking to you.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:37 PM | Blog | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Klapka?

Amazon tells me that it's Jerome Klapka Jerome. No wonder he only used the initial.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:01 PM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Knick Knacks

Over at misinformer.com, Marcus is asking the important questions: Knick Knack's Breast Spheres: Where Are They Now?

"The girl!" I gasped, "She's got no boobies!"
The guy sitting next to me cuffed me in the back of the head.
"Shhh! Of course she's got no boobies. It's a kid's cartoon."
"No," I explained, "I mean... she used to have boobies! They're gone!"
"Shut up you pervert. There were never any boobies."
These people have to be stopped! Remake or no Remake, movie revisionism is evil - especially when it involves boobies.

(Thanks to Segnosaur on JREF Forums for the link.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:44 PM | Art | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 13, 2003

Cool  Uncommon Knowledge About A Sunset

Is it found on a desk? I say Probably.
Does it break if dropped? I say Yes.
Does it have keys? I say Probably.
Is it originally from Canada? I say Probably.
Can it jump? I say Probably.
Can you order it at a restaurant? I say Yes.
Do you open and close it? I say Yes.
Was it used over 100 years ago? I say Doubtful.
Does it stand on two legs? I say Probably.
Do the rabbits eat it? I say Probably.
Does it have arms? I say Probably.
Is it a type of bird? I say Probably.
Is it normally planted in gardens? I say Probably.
Is it originally from Africa? I say Probably.
Is it red when ripe? I say Probably.
Does it have a hole in it? I say Probably.
Play Twenty Questions at 20Q.net and learn all sorts of things that you never knew you didn't know.
Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:02 PM | Cool | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Collinization

Blog of the Day is Collinization:

So here I am, 22 years old with the house to myself for 10 days, and a huge bag of frozen peas covering my face. Of course the painkillers they gave me (which don't work) don't mix very well with alcohol, so I get to hear all my friends get drunk while I suffer in the darkness of the green giant's bounty.
Scroll down to the entry Life tells me, 'Grab your ankles!', and after you read that, work your way upwards. (It's at Blogspot, so permalinks aren't very useful even when they work at all.) Make sure you put down any beverages before getting to Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?, as the management will not be held responsible for the consequences.

(Thanks to Susie at Practical Penumbra for pointing me to this one.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:20 AM | Blog | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 12, 2003

World  Because It Was There

Whoa.

If you have a broadband connection (or are very patient) and have Quicktime installed on your computer, go here. Now.

This view of Petra is also good, if not quite as breathtaking as Everest.

Then go to the site's home page to read more.

(Found in a comment on Little Green Footballs, though unfortuntely I've now lost the comment.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:11 AM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Planarian

Word of the day is planarian. (Yes, but it wouldn't be if — hang on, that's a noun! You cheated! — Ed.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:15 AM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Poodle Hats

My colleagues at work returned from lunch today to taunt me with their copies of Poodle Hat. I have been somewhat paralysed the last couple of days and haven't had the opportunity to go out and purchase my own copy. Grrr! Oops, time for my meds.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:11 AM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  Hackers, Old Style

Web site of the Day is the MIT Hack Gallery. As they say:

The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking").
Some favourites:
The Great Droid
Trogdor the Burninator in Post-It Notes
The Elevator in the Basement
The Gnome Infestation
There are many more, with pictures. There's a Best Of page too, which might be a good place to start.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:05 AM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 11, 2003

World  Nor Any Drop To Drink

This week's New Scientist also has an article on the latest in mega-engineering trends, the same trend that Mapchic wrote about recently on Geographica: dirty great big dams. New Scientist refers to them as "megawater" projects. And the Three Gorges Dam that Mapchic spoke of is only the beginning. Try this for size:

The third, western, arm is the biggest and most complex. It will capture the headwaters of the Yangtze in a 300-metre-high dam [That's as tall as an 80-storey building. — Pixy] downstream from the melting glaciers of Tibet. Every year, it will lift a volume of water equivalent to a quaerter of the annual flow of the river Nile through a 100-kilometre tunnel into the upper reaches of the Yellow river.
The article gives some grim statistics on just why China feels forced to undertake such huge projects:
Five times in the last decade, the Yellow river has failed to reach the sea for part of the year because every drop of water has been diverted.
The aquifers [underground water] of northern China are being depleted by a staggering 30 cubic kilometres a year.
The water table beneath Beijing has fallen 59 metres in the past 40 years.
The north of China, the article tells us, has two thirds of the nation's farmland and only one fifth the water; in the south the figures are reversed. So there are sound reasons for these projects, but the history of similar works - the Aswan Dam beaing a prime example - raise doubts about their long-term prospects.

The article also refers to an (admittedly speculative) Australian plan to "drought-proof" the country by diverting northern rivers such as the Clarence (which is actually in the southern half of Australia) and the Ord, inland in the general direction of Adelaide. Now, I'll grant that Adelaide needs all the water it can get, but the problem with trying to drought-proof Australia is that it's a frigging desert.

Ahem. Sorry. It's not a question of there being more water than needed in some places and a shortage in others, as in China; even in principle there's not enough water to go around. The recent drought affected pretty much the entire country; in Sydney, which is where it is because of the high local rainfall (and the harbour, of course), it didn't rain at all for months. If you want to drought-proof Australia, you have two choices: either fix the world in a permanent La Niña cycle (perhaps by dropping enormous ice cubes in the Pacific) - which really doesn't do that much and will probably piss off every country in the world except Australia - or increase the water supply in the interior of the continent, perhaps by building a mountain range stretching from Ayers Rock to Adelaide. This idea (which was actually floated about twenty years ago) would give real meaning to the term mega-engineering.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:46 PM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  ROT F, L

This week's New Scientist notes that the Alpha Five database package (I've heard of Meta 4, but not of Alpha Five) uses the extension .sex for its files:

As a result, the template directory of this program included filenames such as: "Gift entry.sex, Invited guests.sex, Party budget.sex, Classes to instructors.sex, Classes to students.sex, Recipes.sex, People - Activities.sex, Employees.sex" and much more.
The Motorola 6809 microprocessor, as used in the Tandy Color Computer (my first computer!), had a sign extend instruction; the assembly language mnemonic for which was, reasonably enough, SEX. Sign extend extended a signed 8-bit number to a signed 16-bit number. Due to the way twos-complement arithmetic works, this involves filling the leading byte with either zeroes or ones depending on whether the number was positive or negative. Which is probably more than you wanted to know about the subject, so lets get on with story:
DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11 assembler that used the SEX mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this happened, either. The author of "The Intel 8086 Primer", who was one of the original designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was being extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or and logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.
That's just one of about a squillion little bits of geek humour to be found in the Jargon File, including the wonderful tales Robin Hood and Friar Tuck and The Story of Mel:
A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:

        Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly'' software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term "software'' sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.

If you are a geek, or love a geek, or just want to understand geeks better, you really need to read The Story of Mel. The jargon file describes it thus:
This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. In a few spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology of hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the subject put together.
And also notes that:
The original submission to the net was not in free verse, nor any approximation to it -- it was straight prose style, in non-justified paragraphs. In bouncing around the net it apparently got modified into the "free verse" form now popular. In other words, it got hacked on the net. That seems appropriate, somehow.
Go forth and read, while I scour the net for new irony.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:37 PM | Geek | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

World  Tribes 2

Have you ever wondered how the different European nations view one another? Well, you need wonder no more, now that you have this handy chart!

(Thanks to headscratcher4 on the JREF Forums for this gem.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:20 AM | World | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

June 10, 2003

World  Rocking the Casbah

Reason Online has a fascinating article up titled Look Who’s Rocking the Casbah:

Eroticism like this, which seems to emerge from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, isn’t usually very noteworthy. Indeed, the video’s assumption that there’s something "forbidden" about its subject matter that must be approached in an "artistic" fashion may seem outdated. But in this case it is exactly such elements that make the production compelling. The reason is the video’s cultural context: This is not an American or European or Japanese video; it is an Arab artifact. The woman is a singer named Elissa; her song, which has made her a leading celebrity in the Mideast, is entitled "Aychaylak" ("I Live for You"); and both her song and her video were among last year’s biggest music hits in the Arabic-speaking world.
Exactly what the broader implications of this trend are is beyond me, but it's bound to have an impact on the Arab world.

(via Motley Cow, who comments Peace on Earth through Arab pop sex kittens?)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 05:15 PM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Geographica

Blog of the Day is Geographica, hosted by Mapchic:

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
I’m still unemployed
And I have no money.
Oops, that was five days ago. Sorry, Mapchic!
I have to admit that I am a bit sad that I did not get a chance to go to China and see the Yangtze before the gorges were flooded. I understand that it was a lovely region.

What I do know for certain is that this dam will render all previous physical maps of China obsolete.

The changes wrought by this dam go way beyond those of a simple new roadway – instead there will be a new physical map of China. A new lake (no name has been released) will be created it is expected to stretch for almost 400 miles upstream along the Yangtze. The flooded area will cover 2 cities, 11 counties and 116 towns.

Yes, and I wish they'd stop moving borders around and changing names and stuff like that! I just bought a new atlas and I'd like it to last at least a little while, thank you!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:56 PM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  Useless Motherboard Features

The Useless Motherboard Feature of the Day Award goes to Gigabyte for their GA-7NNXP, GA-8PENXP, and GA-8KNXP. Why's that?, you ask. I'll tell you. The GA-7NNXP has four memory sockets. How many memory modules do you think you can use with it?

Wrong. Guess again. That's right, three.

Similarly, the GA-8KNXP has six memory sockets. How many can you use? Yes, that's right. Four.

The 8KNXP's problem is actually understandable: The chipset supports two channels, and each channel supports four banks of memory. A double sided module - and almost all modules are double-sided - has two banks. Which means you can only use two modules. Unless you happen to have single-sided modules lying around. There's no point in buying single-sided modules, because they have half the capacity of the double-sided ones but cost rather more than half as much.

The 7NNXP also has two channels. One channel can apparently support four banks of memory, and the other... Well, the 7NNXP (and the five other boards in the same family) is the only Nforce motherboard I've seen with four memory sockets; all the others have three. It would seem that the second channel can only support two banks. If you plug three 512MB double-sided modules into a 7NNXP, you get the expected 1.5GB, but because the memory isn't balanced across the channels, it doesn't work in dual channel mode. If you add a fourth module, you still have 1.5GB of memory - it disables one side on each of the third and fourth modules - and it still doesn't work in dual-channel mode.

Gah. What's the point? Apart from the four people in the world who happen to already have DDR400 single-sided modules that they aren't using, who needs this? And why isn't there a big notice on Gigabyte's site saying "extra memory sockets will not work for most users"?

Grumble. I'm upset mostly because these looked like really nice boards. As it stands, there's nothing really to set them apart from boards from the other manufactures like AOpen, Asus, Abit, Albatron, Asrock... Except that Gigabyte starts with a 'G'.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:53 PM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Peripatetic

Word of the day is peripatetic. (Yes, and I assume it will be gone by tomorrow? — Ed.)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:57 PM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Cool  We're the Phone Company

I've always loved this Lily Tomlin sketch from Saturday Night Live, perhaps because I've worked in the industry for (mumble) years. Every so often I'll trot it out when the opportunity arises - or indeed for no reason at all.

Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year, serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care. Watch this -- just lost Peoria. You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:53 AM | Cool | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

June 09, 2003

Blog  Rob is Still in Japan

Blog of the Day is Rob's Still in Japan:

As we got into the elevator to go to our hotel room, a Japanese family got in with us. The kindergarten-aged girl took one look at us, marched up to me and insistently held out her nametag. We weren't quite sure how to react.

I looked at her nametag, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Aa, Minako-chan, hajimemashite! The young girl's face broke out into a huge grin, and she danced back to her equally happy parents.

Make sure you check out his photo album too.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:53 PM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

World  Squirrels and Snakes and Kittens, Oh My!

I have to admit, these are good photos. (The snake is number 7 and the kitten number 11.) You can vote for your favourite, too.

(via The International Squirrel Conspiracy)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:29 PM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  So, This is W.Bloggar?

Hey, it got my categories! Neat. Now let's see if it works...

It does indeed. Cool, very cool. w.bloggar: recommended by Pixy Misa. On the basis of three whole minutes of experience.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:55 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  Ow! Said the Blogger

Ow! Ow ow!

Last night my back was a bit stiff, which I put down to a long day at the computer fiddling with stylesheets. This morning when I woke up, it was OW.

Whoever designed the human spine needs a darn good kicking, that's what I say. I also say, OW.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:00 AM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 08, 2003

Blog  One Shoe Off...

Susie of Practical Penumbra asks the question that's been on all our minds:

Ever tried to manage a movie theater on a Saturday night with only one concession register open and one of your employees stuck on the roof?
Nooo... No, I must say that I haven't.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:20 PM | Blog | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  How's It Look?

Ambient Irony should look rather like this:

(Click for larger image.)

If it doesn't look like that, please leave a comment to let me know. Make sure you say what browser and operating system you are using.

Thanks!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:26 PM | Blog | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Rant  Postman Pat Vs. The Internet

Over at Gweilo Diaries, Conrad points us to an article on the evils of spam, and a possible solution, running in The Weekly Standard. Conrad concludes:

Something needs to be done and, in the end, the only solution may be an e-mail "postage fee".
This suggestion has been floated before, and has been largely ignored because, for a variety of reasons, it is completely impractical.

First off, the Internet is global. Unless every country in the world charges an email postage fee, any country that doesn't charge such a fee will become an instant spam-haven. So the spammers will relocate their servers at minimal cost, and spam will continue unabated.

Second, no-one runs the email system. Anyone can run an email server; I run three myself. Indeed, I've written an email server myself. How are you going to enforce this postage fee, when the way email actually works is one (privately owned) server passing the message to another, with no "post office" of any sort involved?

Third, even if you passed legislation that all SMTP (the Internet mail protocol) transactions on the public internet incur a fee, and enabled law-inforcement agencies to go after the free-email offenders, the immediate result would be that people stop using SMTP and start using something else. It's quite easy to send email over an SSL-encrypted HTTP connection so that it looks just like a web page. Tax that.

Fourth, there are many, many useful public mailing lists that send out thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of messages a day. An email tax would kill them instantly to no good end.

Finally, the technological solutions do work. I have 600 spam emails in my Junk folder, trapped there by Mozilla's Bayesian filtering. Christopher Caldwell's article shows a basic lack of understanding of how Bayesian filters work:

The primary tool that exists today is the "Bayesian" filter, which seeks out words like "Viagra" and phrases like "online gambling." Spammers have long been able to evade such filters with subtle misspellings (TURN HER ON WITH HERBAL VIARGA!).
In fact, this is precisely the problem that existed before Bayesian filtering, and which Bayesian filtering is designed to solve.

The key here is that spam looks like spam. With Mozilla, there's a training period where you need to tell the program this is spam and this is not spam. It quickly learns to recognise the characteristics of spam; not just individual words, but all the patterns found in both the headers and the body of the message, the same things that let you tell at a glance that a message is spam.

Which is not to say that I don't favour anti-spam legislation. Even when it's filtered out automatically, I'm still paying to download the spam in the first place. The right legislation would let spammer's internet connections be blocked promptly, preventing the flood of messages going out in the first place... And leading us back to my first point. But at least we won't have some ghostly beaureacracy monitoring our emails and extracting a penny a piece.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 05:24 PM | Rant | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)

Blog  We've Got Movable Type!

It's up! I just made a tarball of my MT test site, scp'd it up to my server, unpacked it, fiddled with permissions and Apache options a bit, and viola!

If you're reading this in IE, though, it's not my fault!

Update: Then I ran into errors in MT, ended up deleting the whole thing, installing 2.64, reimporting all my entries, re-adding my plugins, fiddling with my templates and stylesheets to get them working again... It could have gone smoother.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:09 PM | Blog | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Blogger is Back

Joy. A three hour outage doesn't even earn a mention on Status.Blogger.Com, it seems.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:42 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Rant  Hooray for England

Steven den Beste points to an "opinion piece" by Tom Utley in The Telegraph (the English one, not Sydney's Daily Terror):

"You know, Tom," this sage said to me, glancing up from his well thumbed copy of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, "we really ought to make Prince William Governor-General of Australia."
There are a number of problems with this ill-conceived attempt at humour, not least of which is that it's not funny. The one I choose to point out, though, is that the Brits can't make anyone our Governor-General. We send the Queen a list, and she approves one of our choices. I believe that the last list we sent only had one name on it - not a particularly good choice, in my opinion; in any case, it's rather strongly hinted which of the names is to be approved.

Oh, and as for Tom's lady friend who failed to find love in the Land Down Under: There certainly are heterosexual males even in Sydney, but most of them are already hooked up with beautiful Australian women. If you can't find a man in England, dear, you're not going to do any better down here.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:41 AM | Rant | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Theatre of the Absurd

Tonight in Pixy Misa's Theatre of the Absurd we have a very special double feature: Big Trouble (Barry Sonnenfeld, 2002) and Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986).

Big Trouble takes its story from the book of the same name by Dave Barry. Tim Allen stars as Eliot Arnold, formerly a Pulitzer prize-winning humour columnist for the Miami Herald (I wonder where they got that idea from), now divorced and trying to make a living in advertising. He also narrates the film, a necessary conceit given the complex and curious nature of the story. Oh, and there's also an opening narration by Puggy (Jason Lee), who lives in a tree and wins the love of Nina the maid (Sofia Vergara), the lucky bastard.

By the end of the film, Eliot has saved the world, remarried, and won the respect of his teenage son (in order of increasing difficulty). In between, things happen. These things involve guns, goats, bufo marinus, and the worlds most valuable garbage disposal unit.

Basically, this film is a farce, a screwball comedy, with elements of action thrown in. And the one thing you can't do with either a farce or an action flick is slow down. Never ever slow down, never give your audience a chance to stop laughing or let the adrenalin go cold. Unfortunately, Big Trouble doesn't manage this; there are many fine scenes, some wonderful ones, even, but the pacing is inconsistent. Perhaps this is because they were trying to shove the whole book into an 85-minute movie (and it is a faithful translation; I don't recall anything significant that was missing or changed from the novel). Perhaps its just hard to translate this sort of insanity onto the screen; Striptease, the movie of Carl Hiaasen's marvellous book, certainly suffered when it was turned into cellulite. [That's celluloid. — Ed. Says you. Have you seen the film?]

Which is not to say that Big Trouble is a bad film. One reviewer on IMDB called it "the worst comedy of the year", apparently because he couldn't follow the story. What's so hard? There's this guy (Tim Allen), you see, and his son (Ben Foster) is trying to kill this girl (Zooey Deschanel) [What sort of a name is "Zooey"? — Ed.], only not like kill her, it's just this game they're playing, Killer, which if I recall correctly was released by Steve Jackson Games, and there's this toad (Rick Lazzarini) which has taken over the dog's (Martha Stewart. No, really, Martha Stewart.) food dish and these Russians and this annoying guy that makes Fishhook Beer and then the world gets saved.

Well, maybe it helps to read the book first. Or maybe not. I did read the book first, and the movie being the faithful adaptation that it is, I knew what was coming. This works fine with, say, The Princess Bride, where it doesn't matter if you read the book or watch the film first, because then you can go right ahead and watch the film or read the book, and it adds to the experience rather than taking away. So, I wasn't confused at all watching Big Trouble, but I wasn't surprised either. Except for the goat; I laughed out loud at the goat.

Which is just my way of saying, no, it's not a bad film, much less the worst comedy of the year. Didn't The Animal come out in 2002? No, apparently 2001. Anyway, Big Trouble is a fun film, enjoyable and amusing, a bit cheesy, perhaps, but well worth the hour-and-a-half. Pixy Misa gives it a 7.

Big Trouble in Little China most certainly does not have the pacing problems of Big Trouble. It starts off nice and easy, setting the scene, establishing the characters... And then it hits full throttle and never lets up. This is Hollywood's take on the Wuxia film, and it's a good one. If you're not familiar with this school of film, or the stories and legends it draws upon, then you can't expect it to make much sense, and you'll just have to hang on and enjoy the ride. If you are familiar with the genre, you should enjoy the Western reaction to the various mythic elements, which can be summed up as What is this shit?

Our guide to this exploration of Chinese legend is Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), a truck driver with friends in San Francisco's Chinatown. When Wang Chi's (Dennis Dun) newly arrived fiancee Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) is abducted from the airport by Chinese thugs, Jack and Wang go to rescue her. Their encounters move swiftly from rival gangs to flying men in bamboo hats (Thunder, Rain and Lightning, played by Carter Wong, Peter Kwong and James Pax) and a two-thousand year old Chinese sorceror who shoots beams of light from his eyes and mouth (Lo Pan, played by James Hong).

It's comic book stuff, but it's good comic book stuff. There are love interests for all our heroes (Kim Cattrall as Gracie Law, the aforementioned Miao Yin (Miao Miao), and Kate Burton as Margo the reporter), there are fights, monsters, dark sorcery, bright magic (Victor Wong as Egg Shen), temples, weddings, guns, knives, good men, bad men, ninja girls (can't go wrong with ninja girls)... It doesn't have a car chase, not really, but apart from that the movie is complete.

Will Jack win through despite the odds, defeat the evil sorceror and save the girl? Well, duh, of course he will. It's not so important how it ends, because you know that going in; what's important is that it's done with style, with humour, with panache. And indeed it is. Pixy Misa gives it an 8.

Meanwhile, Blogger is down again. I'm not stupid, not totally; I can learn from painful experience; I did the Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Post&Publish dance, and I didn't lose my article. It's still down, and I still can't post; what do you expect from Microsoft SQL Server? Pixy Misa gives Blogger a 4. Catch it on TV.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:03 AM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 07, 2003

Art  I'm in Big Trouble

Nina, the maid in Big Trouble, is played by Sofia Vergara. I think I'm in love.

And you know those security seals they put on DVDs? I hate those things! Particularly when they put them on all three sides. Not naming any particular companies (Viz Video).

Oh, and in case anyone was still planning to invade Australia, we have lots of cane toads. Lots and lots of cane toads

Posted by Pixy Misa at 08:34 PM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 06, 2003

Blog  Ewww!!

Is that how this blog [The old Blogger blog. — Ed.] looks in Internet Explorer? I must admit, I'd never tried it; I use Mozilla for everything these days. No wonder nobody was reading it.

Well, anyway, that was easy enough to fix. Thank goodness it's just tables and not stylesheets.

And Internet Explorer really doesn't get the idea of "reload", does it? Cow of a browser. People use this thing? By choice?

Posted by Pixy Misa at 02:00 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  An Outbreak of Sanity

I've commented before on Australia's insanely expensive internet access. At the time I mentioned Comindico, and their unlimited usage plans.

I have a problem with unlimited usage plans. First, the ISP will certainly not have enough bandwidth to allow everyone to run at full speed all the time. Comindico appear to oversell their bandwidth 30 times; in other words, they provision 1.5Mbits of bandwidth to the Internet for every 30 1.5Mbit customers they sign up. That's not unusual, by the way. In fact, many ISPs use higher ratios.

The problem is, by promoting themselves as an all-you-can-eat network, Comindico are likely to attract the big eaters. If everyone is constantly downloading as fast as they can, everyone will get 50 kilobits per second. That's dial-up speed.

And the other problem is that if you give something away for free, people don't value it. Why curb your downloads when they don't cost you anything? It's the tragedy of the commons yet again.

Which is why I was interested to note that three ISPs - Swiftel, Optraweb and CyberLink - have now announced new plans with drastically cheaper - but not free - downloads.

The plans are almost identical, so I suspect there's some sort of resale deal going on. Quick summary:

SpeedIncluded
Downloads
Monthly
Charge
Excess
per MB
Included
Uploads
IP Address
256/642GB$450.6cUnlimitedStatic
512/1286GB$650.6cUnlimitedStatic
512/5126GB$1250.6cUnlimitedStatic
1500/25610GB$1250.6cUnlimitedStatic
256/64Unlimited$75n/aUnlimitedStatic

Yes, that's zero point six cents per megabyte. Compare that to the 14.9 cents charged by my current ISP.

Also nice to see is the 512/512 SDSL plan. At first glance, this has no real advantages for the average user. But when you think about it, ADSL forces us all into the category of consumers: with limited upload rates we're permanent second-class internet citizens. SDSL means that you can run your own web server or file sharing, and give as good as you get. In fact, these plans are perfect for hobbyists or small businesses running their own web sites, as they all include a static IP address and unlimited uploads.

So, am I going to switch? Yes. Probably yes. I'd have to give up my free night-time and weekend downloads. But I think I can cope with that; after all, Buffy's over now; no more to download. And I'm probably going to switch to the 512/512 while I'm at it. Hosting providers, who needs them?

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:27 AM | Geek | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 05, 2003

Geek  Yes, We Have No GA-7NNXP

It's not my fault that Google keeps pointing people to Ambient Irony when they are really looking for reviews of the GA-7NNXP. And I'm not the kind of person who would stoop to using this to boost my reader count. If you are looking for a review of the GA-7NNXP, I still can't help you. But if you live in Australia, Eyo now have stock of the GA-7NNXP ($352) and the GA-7N400V Pro ($280.50). The latter board lacks Gigabit ethernet and 6-phase power, and only supports 333MHz memory and FSB, but it does include dual-channel GeForce4MX graphics.

He called his rescue racer crew
As often they'd rehearsed
And off to save the boy they flew
But who would get there first?
The GA-7NNXP, of course! With dual-channel DDR-400 memory, it flies through the benchmarks!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:16 PM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  Gadget File

Played with a couple of interesting gadgets recently.

On my way home from work yesterday, I noticed that my local Apple dealer had a little stall set up in the shopping mall I pass through. And, nestled between two Powerbooks, there was the new iPod, singing the siren song from the start of Pufnstuf:

Come and play with me, Jimmy
Come and play with me.
And I will take you on a trip
Far across the sea.
My name's not Jimmy, but hey, whatever. My current MP3 player is a Sony Picturebook. This has the advantage of being a full blown PC, so not only does it play music, but also Nethack, the Sims, videos, Microsoft Word... It has the major disadvantage, though, that it runs Windows XP. While XP is at least a real operating system (unlike Windows ME, which just played one on television), it is a big fat mooing cow of an operating system. A nifty gadget like the Picturebook needs a frolicking lamb-like operating system, like OS-9 or AmigaOS. But it's got Windows XP. So while it works, it's not exactly convenient if you just want to put on your headphones and listen to a tune or three.

The first thing that struck me about the iPod is how small it is. Looking at the pictures on Apple's web site don't really give you any guide to the size, so let me tell you: It's small. It's maybe one-tenth the size of my Picturebook, and the Picturebook is one of the smallest and lightest notebooks around.

Second, it looks better in real life than on the web. The finish is very clean; it's clearly a well-designed and well-constructed item.

The flea in the ointment is the controls. Apple make a big fuss about how the new controls are touch-sensitive, with no moving parts to wear out or break down. The down side of having no moving parts, though, is that you get no tactile feedback whatsoever. Is it doing something when I push here? Oh, look, the screen scrolled! How... novel.

Still tempting, though. Still very tempting.

The other gadget was somewhat larger: A dual-processor Athlon MP 2400+, kitted out with a 3Ware RAID controller and 8 Western Digital 200GB drives. Only 1GB of memory, because the supplier was out of stock of the 1GB memory modules. It came with two 512MB modules for the time being.

This is not a slow box. It's destined to house about a terabyte of archival data, and run various searches and reports. I was wondering just how long it would take Linux to format a 1.05 terabyte RAID-5 volume.

The answer is: Rather less time than it takes Windows XP to format a new 80GB drive on my home machine. This was easily the quickest Linux install I've done; I've never seen the progress meter go flickety-flickety quite like that. If you have a terabyte of data that needs a home, and a modest budget, then this sort of system is highly recommended.

From her broom broom in the sky
She watched her plans materialize
She waved her wand
The beautiful boat was gone
The skies grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on and on and on.
Not quite so impressive, though, is Red Hat's disk partitioning utility. For some unfathomable reason, rather than clicking to select the drive that a particular filesystem will live on, you have to click to turn off all the drives that you don't want it to live on. This gets tired quickly when you have eight drives in the system. No, I do not want this filesystem on /dev/sdb. No, I do not want this filesystem on /dev/sdc. No, I do not... Maybe they've improved things in version 9; I was installing 8.0, since I know that release works with the software I want to run. Red Hat 9 seems to work, but I'm not about to rebuild a terabyte of data due to some minor incompatibility.

No, I do not want this filesystem on /dev/sde. No, I do not...

With all my filesystems RAIDed, and my old-fogey habits of having separate partitions for separate things - so that when something inevitably runs amok, it doesn't trash everything in one go - with those two put together, I had about 30 partitions to create. No, I do not want this filesystem on /dev/sdg...

Oh, and you know how if you have, say, 28GB of free space on a drive, you can allocate it easily to a new partition by double-clicking on it? Don't do that.

Sigh. Reboot. Keyboard-Mouse-English-Custom-No, I do not want this filesystem on /dev/sdb...

It took me longer to get the partitions set up than it did to format 1.6TB of disk. That's good, I suppose. But I just know that my next dream will involve check boxes that just won't stay turned off. NO DAMMIT! I DO NOT WANT THIS FILESYSTEM ON /DEV/SDC!!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 08:27 PM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 04, 2003

Blog  Infernal Combustion

Frank J. of IMAO has the skinny on how internal combustion engines work:

Well, if you check around the engine (do this when it is off and on a non-haunted car), you'll see a magic rune imprinted on it. This spell keeps the fire inside the engine. Were it ever scratched off, the next time you start your car, KA-BOOM!

Every 100,000 miles, you really should have the rune re-enchanted by a sorcerer. Check you car's owner manual for more information.

What Frank doesn't explain, though, is that the rune is there to keep the elves in. The elves actually do the work of moving the pistons, y'see. They're kind of like the magic smoke that is used in so-called "electronic" equipment; you'll have noticed that if the smoke ever gets out, the thing stops working. When you send it in for repairs, all they really do is put new smoke in.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:58 PM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Finding Captain Nemo

James Lileks has found a movie he actually likes:

I also watched “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” New restored widescreen Technicolor Cinemescope etc. version. Having only seen a scratchy pan-and-scan on TV as a kid, I was curious what the movie really looked like. Oy. It’s just sublime.
I also want to know the story behind the Kirk Douglas interview he mentions.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:02 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 03, 2003

Life  Mandy Twain and the Vultures of L'hi

What do an international banking conspiracy, an ancient, floating Tibetan mountain by the name of L'hi (pronounced lee), a group of schoolgirl crimefighters with an irascible hidden leader, a train that doesn't appear on any timetable bearing the number plate MAD 06, a secretive group of assassins composed of misfits described as being "stillborn into society", a talking vulture, and an extremely badly-written play that was panned by critics fifty years before it was written have in common?

The inscription translates as L'hi hovers over everything. Actually, where I say hovers, it uses a word that also means bank and architecture and is a near-homonym in the original language for vulture.

In fact, there's another hundred lines of it, but no-one remembers the rest.

Answer: They interrupted my nap. Stupid dreams.

I wonder if the girls will rescue their kidnapped newest member in the next episode...

Posted by Pixy Misa at 10:45 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Life  No More Busy Busy

Bills went out today, busy busy time is done for another month, and my life returns to normal. Ish. Normalish. Regular blogging will resume after my nap.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 07:34 PM | Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 02, 2003

Geek  Video Cards 'R' Us

For a couple of years it was easy to recommend a video card: just buy whatever Nvidia had in your price range. After a somewhat awkward start with the NV1, Nvidia shot to the lead of the graphics market and stayed there . Competitors like 3DFX went broke trying to catch up. Others abandoned the broader market to try to carve comfortable niches for themselves at the periphery. As the GeForce 2, 3 and 4 rolled out, Nvidia looked unstoppable.

Then something happened. ATI came from behind and started narrowing the gap very quickly indeed. Nvidia needed a new chip to show that they were still the undisputed champions of the graphics world, they needed it to be fast, and the needed it now.

What they got was the GeForce FX: late, expensive, absurdly power hungry, and not all that much faster than the previous model. Meanwhile ATI rolled on, launching new models in all directions: the 9000, the 9200, the 9500, the 9500 Pro, the 9600, the 9700, the 9700 Pro, the 9800... Of course, a 9500 Pro is faster than the 9600. Is a 9700 Pro faster than a 9800? Who knows?

Dan does. At Dansdata he delves deep into the question of which video card, without - and this is important - without bludgeoning you to death with statistics and misleading bar-graphs. (Hardware reviewers should be forced to read Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information before they are allowed anywhere near a keyboard.)

If you're not looking for a new graphics card right now (and if you shelled out for a GeForce4 4600 Ultra last year like me, I can't blame you), then you obviously need either (a) a tiny radio controlled tank, (b) a really nifty collection of nifty magnets, or (c) a kitten. Warning: Purchasing two or more of these simultaneously may prove hazardous to your continued well-being.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:41 PM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 01, 2003

Anime  Good News, Everyone!

AnimeSuki is back! If you get the "Those idiots..." page, you'll just need to hit reload. Or if you're running IE, which is a bit fuzzy on the whole "reload" concept, you may need to reboot a couple of times.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 09:05 AM | Anime | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Geek  Neverwinter Update

I've been looking over the white cliffs of... no.

I've been taking closer look at the various hakpacks developed for Neverwinter Nights. At first, I thought that not that much had changed in the last few months. Then I realised that I was looking in the wrong place. Then I found the right place.

Yow. People have been busy.

I like the looks of this swamp. This strange city is cool too. Here's an alternate version of the standard dungeon. These drylands tilesets are a welcome change from the standard greenery. Drow fans will find this castle and this temple rewarding. And I quite liked this nicely decorated castle.

Here's a list of all of the general-purpose tilesets - there's 173 of them - and another list of the tilesets tied to specific adventures. There's 213 of those. The original game came with eight. There are also 58 combination tilesets, getting around the problem of only being able to use one tileset at a time, and 37 all-in-one tilesets. I'm not sure how you can have 37 different all-in-ones, but there you are.

Update: Here's a view of the Elemental Plane of Cheese. And here are some Cheese Elementals. These are Nacho Cheese Elementals:

This is what happens when you over microwave nacho cheese, and it becomes a planar vortex to the plane of cheese. Or there may be other reasons, but oh well. They Burn people to death with their boiling cheesiness!
I'm sure they do! Here's a Ninja Cow. There's also a nattily dressed Cow Wizard, but I seem to have lost it.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:09 AM | Geek | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

World  She Sells Sea Lions?

If you're truly bored and it's daytime in San Francisco, why not spend thirty seconds looking at small blurry pictures of small blurry people looking at small blurry sea lions?

Oh, yeah. Here.

I think the sea lions are the things sitting on the rectangular things.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:43 AM | World | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog  Readers? Or Not Readers?

I just took a look at my Sitemeter referral stats. Endlessly fascinating. Apart from my friends on the JREF Forums, I have a (presumably disappointed) fellow of excellent taste looking to download the Marx Brothers on Bittorrent; a couple of irritated people who were after a review of the Gigabyte GA-7NNXP (I must say it looks good on paper, and I may be getting one when the next pay cheque comes in); more people of discernment looking for Jungle Guu, Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (AnimeSuki is where I found Jungle Guu, but it's down right now. It is available on Kazaa, partly because I'm sharing it (cough). Likewise MST3K; I have about 20 episodes downloaded and shared - that's around 14GB worth. Sugar is available on DVD, so be nice and buy it.) And someone arriving from gravett.org who I'll forgive for the blinking links because I'm listed in (his? her? its?) blogroll. And a fine blogroll it is too; look at the company I'm in: James Lileks, Glenn Reynolds, Rachel Lucas, Frank J., Emperor Misha, Tim Blair, Mr. Mustard... I mean, I'm down near the bottom of the page, but what a great page to be down near the bottom of. Except for the blue text on a blue background, that is.

For the person who wanted to limit uploads in Bittorrent under Linux: the --max_upload_rate option may do the trick.

The person looking for pictures (presumably) of Guu in the bear suit: sorry, I don't have any.

The Weird Al fans: sorry, I still don't have Poodle Hat. It's not out for another week in Australia.

Wow, there really are a lot of people looking for reviews of the GA-7NNXP. Sorry, I could swear I found one at work on Friday, but it doesn't show up in my searches now. You could do worse than looking here at nForcersHQ or keeping an eye on AMDZone. If you live in Australia (like all right-thinking people), CW Supplies have the GA-7NNXP for $333 and the nearly-as-good GA-7N400 Pro for $239.

As for the people searching on "Nullarbor Plain horned kangaroo" and "mootrix comic", well done! You've discovered Ambient Irony!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 01:19 AM | Blog | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Art  Trashing With Style

James Lileks was not impressed with The Matrix Reloaded:

“Um - it’s all underground? The steel mill is entirely underground?”

“That’s right. Tall as a 50-story building, when completed. It will be the world’s biggest underground steel mill.”

“It’ll be the world’s only underground steel mill.”

Nor was Mark Steyn overly enthused with X-Men 2:
Nobody who genuinely loved superheroes would do that to them. The exception is Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who plays the shape-shifter Mystique. I can’t say Miss Romijn-Stamos’ shape is in much need of shifting, particularly as she spends most of the movie dressed in a kind of skin-tight slime that makes it look as if she’s just emerged from the pit on Lesbian Mud-Wrestling Night at the local sports bar.
Are there any good movies on the horizon, now that Return of the King has been pushed back to 2004? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:36 AM | Art | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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