One of the ways that I can lose time on the Internet–one of the myriad, myriad ways–is browsing through the contents of Flickr. Sometimes I just search on strange keywords, or lyrics, or the names of perfomers, just to see what comes up, and spent way more time than I intended flicking through the results. For example, this isn’t what… Read more →
Month: January 2009
Let Us Talk Of Webcomics: Part 1, Dresden Codak.
I read a fair number of comics–you know the old school printed kind that one buys at speciality stores these days (admittedly some of them can be purchased at the larger bookstores as well, particularly the Asian imports, but most of what I read is speciality shop only). The “direct market” has been in some trouble for a while now,… Read more →
Worth 2000 Words
A recent cleaning and reorganization process resulted in our more-or-less reclaiming the upstairs family room from our daughter. Not that we’ve kicked her out of there, but we’ve removed a bunch of her stuff from the room, making it seem less exclusively hers. A consequence of this is that we had room to add a new chair. So we went… Read more →
Aside
So, which would be more fun to leave visible on your computer in a full screen, kiosk mode, browser window: Now or Henchmen’s Helper? (Sometimes I wish I was in an office, just so I could engage in these small performances.)
Sometimes you need more than six words
I knew he had potential when, instead of being creeped out, he was fascinated by the antique glass eye I carry around in my purse. One sentence stories. All the potential of PostSecret, but less bathos. Although drunken ideas rarely come to fruition, we found ourselves on Pearl Street the next morning serving syrupy handfuls of my famous pumpkin spice… Read more →
Aside
I found a place–or rather was referred to one–on Saturday that would happily sell me a replacement 1TB SATA2 drive for my RAID array, and at a decent price. (Yes, you can read that as “Future Shop can bite my shiny metal ass.”) The array worked perfectly, and none of my roughly 2TB of data in that array was lost due to the drive failure. I wish I could report the same level of success with Intrepid Ibex and wireless–I did finally get the wireless “working”, but it disconnects every 15 minutes or so, and I am becoming very familiar with the term “kernel panic”.
Easy To Say, Hard To Do
One of many. Read more →
Aside
Mean Tricks To Play On Yourself #345: Install Linux on a laptop with only wireless connectivity (i.e. not just not plugged in, but nothing to plug in to), where that connectivity is provided by a Broadcom-based wireless adapter. Level 2: Once you have that working, enjoy it for a while, and then do a distribution upgrade, so that it will break and you can have that fun all over again. Level 3: Repeat with every distribution upgrade.
Aside
There should always be a 24-hour computer parts store, so that when one of the drives in your RAID array craps out, you can immediately go and buy a replacement for it, rather than having to spend the night in the knowledge that if another one of the drives happens to fail right now, you’re toast.
SF Writers Say Smart Things: WJW On Geek Fiction
I’ve never mistaken my hobbies for real life. I’ve always craved real life, even when I didn’t have one. I’ve sought out life, even when I didn’t know how. I’ve always tried to live real life, even when I didn’t have a clue. I travel a lot. I talk to strangers. I eat their candy. —Walter Jon Williams Go read… Read more →
Language By Example, Again
As I said the last time I talked about this, several times a week I find myself saying something and I realize that while I know what it means, I don’t know why it means that. When I catch myself at this, I’m off to find out why. This morning brought two new examples. The first was “proof”. I mean… Read more →
Aside
Wow. 22 minutes. He’s right, they do live on shamelessness and motivated amnesia.
It begins…
Look, I know the dude isn’t the messiah. He’s a politician, and he’s way, way to the right of me, so I’m sure lots of things he will do will seem disappointing to me. That’s not the point today. As a very smart friend of mine said today: “For the first time in about fifteen years I believe it is… Read more →
A robot moose walks into a bar…
That’s Bullwinkle, the robot moose. No, seriously. A robot moose. Apparently the Natural Resources Department here in Nova Scotia uses him to catch people who are illegally trying to bag an endangered species. I ran into a story today–admittedly a story from a couple of years back–about this, and it just makes me laugh. It’s a short story, but pure… Read more →
On bacon
I quite like bacon. Indeed, I occasionally require it, ideally in the form of the canonical club sandwich. You might think, then, that see a short, informative video on bacon would be something I would enjoy. As you might guess after watching that, “I enjoyed that” was not my immediate reaction. In fact, my immediate reaction was to Google the… Read more →
