September 22, 2003

Geek

Spammeriffic!

Just received three of the fake "Microsoft Update" virus spams - at an email address I didn't know I had. (Which probably explains why it wasn't properly spam-filtered.)

And 132 other assorted pieces of crap. Ranging from "Hi!" to "God Bless Pixymisa and the USA!" to the usual offers of sex and money (I'm fine for both at the moment, thanks).

Look, can't we kill just a few of them? Y'know, set an example?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Life

Brrr!

Well, they fixed the air conditioning at work. And then some. It was a balmy 31 degrees today (that's real degrees, so 88 of your puny American degrees), which I doubt the computers would have enjoyed. Naturally on such a warm day I didn't bring a jumper or a jacket or anything... So they decided to switch the air conditioning from Ineffectual to Antarctic.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:44 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 21, 2003

Cool

Quack!

Captain Quack Rubber Duck Quiz

Thanks to CoolDuck LeeAnn.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:05 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 20, 2003

Art

Red Thunder

Red Thunder by John Varley

I've never been disappointed by John Varley.

Until now.

If Rocketship Galileo had been written by the Robert Heinlein who wrote The Number of the Beast, rather than the Robert Heinlein who, well, wrote Rocketship Galileo, you'd have Red Thunder. It's all there: the characters too stupid to live, the pointless and unappealing sex, the arguments about who's going to drive, the contrived plot...

I give it sucks out of five. And no, I haven't suddenly developed a New Zealand accent.

Avoid.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:43 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Life

Happy Birthday to Meeee!

It's my birthday!* This afternoon I'm going to see Finding Nemo with my family, then maybe dinner at a non-Thai restaurant.

I wonder if I'll get any presents? I've been a little... slack in the present-giving department this year, what with my three full-time jobs and all. Maybe my nephew will give me a present, since I gave him six boxes of Lego last weekend.

* 25. Though not necessarily in base-10.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:51 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 19, 2003

Geek

Ahoy There!

That scurvy bilge-rat of a server I mentioned yesterday, me hearties, is now booting more-or-less happily. I guess that threatening to make it walk the plank did the trick.

Arrr!

Only thing is, it insists on doing a full file-system check first. Shiver me disk drives! With 1.6 terabytes of disk, that takes a while.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:46 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

Arrrr!

Avast there!

Late for work, me hearties! Now where did I put those scurvy Linux disks?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:41 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 18, 2003

Geek

Uh-Oh

My PC, it will not boot.
I rm'd * while su root.

Well, actually, I didn't. I've always wanted to try that, but I've never had a box I didn't care about at a time when I had the time to play around.

I think it just overheated. Spring has well and truly sprung here in Sydney, but the office air conditioning is still set to Winter. So it's really not surprising that the computers are finding it a bit on the warm side.

And it's not really my PC, it's one of the servers. The one with a terabyte of data on it, to be precise.

Poot.

I've left it turned off overnight, and tomorrow I will return armed with a 30cm fan, an extension lead so we can position it somewhere a little cooler... And my Linux install CDs, because I'm not that much of an optimist.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:46 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 17, 2003

Life

Just One Of Those Days

pengi.jpg
catty.jpg

See you tomorrow.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:03 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 16, 2003

Life

Urk

How did I end up with two full time jobs instead of one part time job?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:18 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 15, 2003

Blog

Naughtiness

The Axis of Naughty rules! Instapundit... Oops, I mean
Instapundit says so.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:29 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 14, 2003

Life

Magic

I spent the day at my brother's house celebrating my nephew's second birthday. While he likes the Lego I bought him, his favourite present by far was the Wiggles Safari DVD (the Wiggles meet Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter).

As soon as he had it unwrapped, he grabbed the DVD, trotted into the living room, and -

Well, he doesn't quite have this down pat. He put the DVD on the shelf under the TV, grabbed the remote control, and started pushing buttons. After all, the DVD player is too high up for him to reach, so it's worth a try.

At two, he's realised that if you put the shiny round thing in the silver rectangular thing and push the little buttons on the small grey oblong thing, pictures and music come from the square black thing and you can dance along - which at that age consists of spinning in circles until you fall over.

Unfortunately, the DVD was warped, and in the middle of Wobbly Camel the picture and sound broke up and it swiftly became unwatchable. We found that only the first two and last three of fifteen or so songs played properly.

Which kind of ruined the magic...

What I'd like to do here is write a Whittleian essay about how what engineers really want to do is magic - build machines that work so well that the very workings that they laboured so hard to create are effectively invisible to the user. You do this and that happens, every time, without any noise or smoke or heat. You don't need to pull it apart twice a year to grease the flanges or re-tune the interociter. You don't need to prime it with margarine before starting it when the weather's below freezing.

It just works.

I guess I went into computers because it's the closest useful field we have to magic. You move this thing until that thing points to this other thing, then you push on this thing and music! Movies! Books! Your printer springs to life and prints out a newspaper, or you send a letter to your friend on the other side of the world (and it arrives in a matter of seconds.)

Bugs are the mis-aligned gears and dry solder joints in the engineering magic of programming. When you run into a bug, it reveals the workings you've tried so hard to hide. The magic is ruined, though we're used to it and we usually manage to pick ourselves up and move on.

(Like, say, when my ADSL connection drops out and destroys the illusion that the internet is "just there".)

One recent failed spell has reduced Tuning Spork to speaking in tongues in a most amusing way, but usually the results are just a bloody nuisance.

I have no idea where this post is going, though, so I'll stop here. If you do happen to know, please tell me and I'll do my best to finish it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:25 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 13, 2003

World

Nobody Likes A Shitferret

Geek website Hypothermia raffled off one of their computers to raise money to pay Briana LaHara's settlement with the RIAA.

All the tickets were sold in five hours.

(via The Inquirer)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:12 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 12, 2003

Life

Scarcity Abounds

I may be somewhat scarce on mu.nu this weekend - I have books to read, programs to write, presents to buy, parties to attend (yay!) - so there will be bloggage after, but perhaps not so much bloggage during.

In the meantime, why is it taking so darn long to grep this file? It's only, um, five gigabytes. It's not like it's particularly big or anything...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:46 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 11, 2003

World

Europe

I'm having a discussion elsewhere with a gentleman from a European country which I will not name. Here's a snippet - my comments are in plain text, his in italics):

The way I look at it, is this: the concept of democracy has a number of elements which we can use to ascertain the degree of democracy. The GDR was a socalled "peoples democracy" which in our definition was not a democracy.

Yes, this is known as "a lie".

Another interpretation is not necessarily a lie.

This is not "another interpretation". Calling East Germany a democracy is a lie. There's no complication here, it is simply and entirely untrue.

From our point of view it is a lie, not from theirs. Why would our truth be more true than that of others? Because we have proven it to be so because the wall fell?

And here we get to the crux of the problem, the post-modernist fallacy that all points of view are equally valid.

Words have meaning. "Democracy" has a meaning. East Germany was not a democracy. This is a fact. They called it a democracy, therefore they lied. This is also a fact.

In fact, they knew damn well that it wasn't a democracy and the whole thing was a sham from the beginning.

Some people just don't get it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:18 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

World

September 11

It is September 11 where I am, and likely will be for you by the time you read this. I really can't do the topic justice, so I suggest you all visit Voices at A Small Victory to read people who can.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:12 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Art

Shitferrets Are Us

SilverBlue is not happy with the shitferrets* at the RIAA.

Not happy at all.

* In one post I used the term shitweasels to refer to the senior management at SCO, and received an irate comment from a shitweasel complaining that I had unfairly maligned shitweasels the world over. Hence the neologism.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:59 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

Bloggers Under Glass

N.Z. Bear has a particularly fine collection of bloggers in this week's New Weblog Showcase.

Jerry McCusker of Machine in the Ghost ponders the question of what things would be like If Americans Ran the Afterlife, and suggests that Purgatory could be run at a profit.

Open Source Software Law has a background article on SCO vs. IBM, but they lose points for failing to use the word "shitferret".

Virtue Pure (sounds like a bottled-water company) muses on the value of role-playing, and suggests that playing Dungeons and Dragons may in fact lead us to better understand other people.

And if that fails, we can zap them with Leomund's Lamentable Belabourment. That'll teach them.

Aaron at Pardon my English suggests that giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants may not be the smartest move.

Iocean at Inspiranote returns to an essay written shortly after the September 11 attacks. This is warm fuzzy new-age stuff, unfortunately, and not for me at all.

Eye on the Left picks up on some unusually insane ramblings. The post consists almost entirely of the quoted insanity, which confused me a little when I read it reformatted on the Bear's site.

Brainstorming spotted James Dean keeping an eye on holiday traffic and stopped to take pictures.

I couldn't find the selected post from Like a Packet of Woodbines, but this picture is a classic.

And Jim at Snooze Button Dreams wonders why he can't be gay.

So, who are my picks?

Brainstorming, because, well, that's cool and funny.

Snooze Button Dreams because it's funny and insightful, and because I have an addiction to the snooze button myself.

And Pardon my English, because sometimes irony will not do and you just have to cut loose with a rant.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:32 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 10, 2003

Geek

Feces-Flinging DRM

Feces Flinging Monkey (no, not Ethel, a different one) has a rather depressing look at digital rights management (DRM) and how it will destroy civilisation.

What he fails to consider is that all DRM is ultimately doomed for the simple reason that DRM is digital and humans are analogue. Can't rip an MP3 of that song? Play it back and record it again. So you lose a little quality. Can't cut-and-paste that article from the New York Times? Well, you can read it, yes? You can type, yes?

And so on. Which doesn't mean that the DRM-types aren't evil - they are evil, no question - just that DRM isn't going to bring about the heat death of the universe.

That's my job.

I would have left a comment at the Monkey's blog, but his comments don't work right now. Funny how that happens to the not-Munuvians.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:27 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Geek

When You Care Enough

Darl McBride, Chief Shitferret at SCO (member of the Axis of Bloody Nuisances), has posted an open letter to the Open Source Community. Not surprisingly, the letter is filled with mistruths and untruths and has generated appropriate levels of flamage at sites like Slashdot.

There's also a feedback feature at LinuxWorld's site, where the letter is posted. This is what came up when I stopped by:

127 feedback items so far - last one posted 9 September 2003 12:08 PM

* Aaron Graves commented ...
Open Letter from Aaron Graves to SCO:

Dear Mr. McBride;

Go fuck yourself.

Sincerely,

Aaron Graves

That sums up the mood of the Open Source Community nicely.

Meanwhile, fellow Axis of Bloody Nuisances member the RIAA has taken to filing lawsuits against twelve-year-old girls. Nice move, public-relations-wise.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:46 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 09, 2003

Blog

Mister Green

A very warm Munuvian welcome for [Who is it this time, Susie? Right, thanks.] Mister Green. Mister Green is the product of early bioengineering experiments conducted on [What's that? Oh. Right, I see.] Mister Green is not the product of early bioengineering experiments, and in fact comes certified 100% natural ingredients.

Snap! Crackle! Mister Green!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 08, 2003

Life

This Comes As No Surprise

To anyone who knows me:

My inner child is six years old today

My inner child is six years old!

Look what I can do! I can walk, I can run, I can
read! I like to do stuff, and there's a whole
big world out there to do it in. Just so long
as I can take my blankie and my Mommy and my
three best friends with me, of course.

How Old is Your Inner Child?
brought to you by Quizilla

Where the heck is my blankie, anyway?

(Thanks to Cherry)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:50 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

Daniel Moore

Another new Munuvian! This time it's Daniel Moore, nanotechnology researcher and all-round good guy. By curious coincidence, not long before joining us here he discovered this:

The Japanese have a word alleged, by Douglas Hofstadter - writer of this great book I read in AP US History forever ago called American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions." I recently had a long discussion with a friend in which my answers were based on how I can't answer her questions because of the underlying assumptions to her argument that I didn't buy into and I didn't want to validate them. I could have just used this word. It is pronouced "moo" like the cow noise and is unfortunately transliterated to "mu" (unfortunate because it only supports people mispronouncing the Greek letter with the same transliteration).
My mother gave me Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach for Christmas when I was 16, which led (via a tortuous path) to this very web site. mu.nu: The only way I could have packed more meaning into a domain name would have been to call it cat.dog... And there's no .dog TLD, so that's out anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 07, 2003

World

Slow News Day

So I'll do what all the big news people do... Baby animal pictures!

baby_leopard.jpg

baby_leopard2.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:46 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 06, 2003

World

What If We Held A Convention

And everyone came?

I think the people responsible for the CounterConvention have a slight problem. Check out this list of groups who have signed on as part of their RNC party-pooping program:

The Committee of Circular Flying Birds
Dwarves for the Responsible Control of Pliers
International Consortium of Those as Drunk as We Are
Glow Rabbit Society
Modern Drunkard Magazine
Society of Poop-Throwing Monkeys
John Dillinger Died for You Society
The Wow, Most People Think We're Idiots Association
Libs Against Basic Web Page Design (their motto: We’re too stupid to understand word wrap)
International Coalition of People Who Just Don't Get It
International Anti-Ismist Anti-Organisation
Bottle o' Pop Action Network
UNIX Users United for IMF Riots
Radical Anarchist Feminazis Against Veganism
Radical Anarchist Veganazis Against Feminism
Organization of People Who Always Show up at Protests
Sedated Gorillas for Masturbation and the Oppression of Iraqis by Devil Bush (We are a society of sedated Gorillas that only want the government to provide us our constitutionally-provided right to the pursuit of happiness, i.e., manual stimulation. And a free bottle of pop. And maybe a taco. It's our right goddamn it.)
Purple Polar Bear Society
Popular Front For the Liberation of This Website (All property is theft, including this website.)
Chocolate Chinchilla Coterie (An organization devoted to pitying the Angry Left while sipping martinis.)
ONOMATOPOEIA NOW! (Bang! Swish! Purr! Buzz!)
National Burping Society
Dead Penguins Society
Twinkies For The Ethical Treatment Of Twinkies
ZIG for Great Justice (Someone set us up the bomb. You are on your way to destruction. )
Australians Against Iowa Cornfields
Judean People's Front
Judean People's Behind
Die, Manatee Die!
Dreadlock Army (Too mellow to march.)
Tigers Are Great (Tigers are cool. Anyone who doesn't want to be a tiger is a fool.)
Organization of Bemused Onlookers
Oh yes, and:
Jimmy Taranto Fan Club (We love Best of the Web! )

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:29 PM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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