Susie will probably afflict me with a plague of frogs unless I mention this Frank person. Apparently he has a blog.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1. Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it?

Isaac Asimov.

2. What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so fucking good?

What, one book? Uh... John Barnes' One for the Morning Glory. It's a fairy tale, written for adults, it's a fairy tale that knows it's a fairy tale and revels in it, and the wordplay is amazing. Read with a dictionary close at hand.

3. What does “diversity” mean to you?

Nothing in particular. The phrase diuerse alarums, on the other hand...

4. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done?

Wild? Um. Riding a giant inflatable banana being towed behind a speedboat. I think that's probably it.

5. Do you regret doing it?

Regret not doing it again.

6. Can you drive a stick shift?

Not legally.

7. What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car?

About 150km/h - maybe 95mph.

8. Were you driving, or riding at the time?

Riding. Won't say who was driving.

9. Which is better: snakes or spiders?

Look, I live in Australia. Either one will kill you soon as look at you. Spiders are easier to squash - a cinder block dropped from a good height, say, or a sledgehammer if you're out of cinder blocks. On the other hand, snakes can't jump. Also, there's usually more meat on a snake.

10. What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate?

Salmonella enterica. (By the way, salmonella.org has a Buy from Amazon link. Thanks, but no.)

11. Have you ever shit your pants? Be HONEST!

See previous entry.

12. Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience?

On the whole, yes.

13. Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged?

Certainly not outlawed. And I don't think it needs official encouragement.

14. Name one man with a fine ass.

Balaam.

15. Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts?

No. And no.

16. Who is Martha Burk?

Not sure. Is she the new editor of the New York Times?

17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd like to be all-powerful.

18. Do you eat raw oysters?

No. I also do not eat raw slugs.

19. Are you claustrophobic?

Let me out of here!

20. If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to?

Yes. I only have the one brain, and flawed though it might be, I'd like to keep it safe inside my head.

21. Name five great Presidents.

Those guys on the mountain plus one.

22. Name three shitty Presidents.

Clinton, Chirac, Putin.

23. Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding.

Yes, Fanny.

24. This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks?

No, because (a) I'm in Australia and (b) the miserable excuse we have for a state government has banned private firework displays without a permit.

25. If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose?

The young Diana Rigg, I think. Yes.

(Questions from Gut Rumbles via diuerse sources.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:23 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Now if everybody jumped off a cliff......
(parents down-under DO say that to their kids, don't they?)

Posted by: Susie at July 09, 2003 06:06 AM (QVnOi)

2 Your turn, Susie! It's fun!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 09, 2003 03:57 PM (w7Pkc)

3 Jimmy Choo Private patent-leather sandals| Jimmy Choo blue snake Shokira knotted sandals| Jimmy Choo Sora fringed suede boots| Jimmy Choo Wavy Strap Sandal| Jimmy Choo Double-Banded Bootie| Jimmy Choo black studded fishnet Karina booties| Jimmy Choo Kaia leopard-print suede boots| Jimmy Choo Double-Banded Bootie| Miu Miu Suede gladiator sandals| Miu Miu Bow-embellished python ballerina flats| miu miu Jewel-embellished jacquard ballerina flats| miu miu Denim ballerina flats| miu miu Black Leather pumps| Miu Miu Suede multi-strap sandals| 100miu miu Suede peep-toe pumps| miu miu Polka-dot satin-twill sandals|

Posted by: louboutin cheap at May 19, 2011 12:17 AM (mKzDq)

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To salve my conscience after Loyal First Reader Susie accused me of poesy (when I was in fact quoting the Great Weird Al), here is something that I really did write:

A Reflection Upon the Modern Style

Poetry that doesn't rhyme
Is laziness, a waste of time,
A blight upon the landscape that
Would be outlawed if I were King.

And poems that do not scan are worse;
How can they be described as verse?
They have no soul; their tone is flat;
They do not make one cry or sing.

This modern stuff I cannot stand.
It must be banished from the land,
While I lay out the welcome mat
For poetry with rhymes that ring

Down through these hallowed, ancient halls
And far on out beyond these walls,
To man and woman, dog and cat...
I'm out of words that end in ing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:32 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Went to visit my nephew on Saturday. And the rest of the family, of course, including Jupiter (the cat learning trig on the right). But mostly my nephew.

He's learned a new trick: When there are grown-ups sitting around the kitchen table talking (or more likely, playing with cool toys; on this occasion a collection of Hewlett-Packard calculators), he doesn't like to be left out. The solution, when you're two feet tall, is to stand on a chair.

Which he did.

Of course, it's only one small step from standing on a chair to falling off a chair, and in the fullness of time he did that too.

Not happy at all.

But in less than a minute he'd had enough of crying and was climbing back on that darn chair. Whether this is a sign of stubbornness or just a short attention span I'm not sure.

But he did seem to like the short clips of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, Mahoromatic and Steel Angel Kurumi that I showed him. Well, that's putting it mildly: He was transfixed, as my sister-in-law (no, the other one) said.

It can't be long before he starts demanding to be taken to Pixy's house. Pixy, after all, has all the cartoons:

And all the cool toys.

(No, under the table.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:46 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Would you look at all that stuff...

They've got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters,
Trash compactors, juice extractors, shower rods and water meters,
Walkie-talkies, copper wires, safety goggles, radial tires,
BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers,
Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters,
Paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters,
Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables,
Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles,
Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication,
Metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation,
Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors,
Tire gauges, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors,
Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers,
Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers,
Soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers,
Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers —

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:33 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Happy Independence Day to all my American readers!

Where I am, the 4th is nearly over, so I hope it was a good day for you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:54 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Had a long and blerky day at work (If you are expecting a file to arrive at nine A.M. as usual because you have promised to process it, check it, and get the results back out by mid-day, you can be sure of receiving it promptly at half-past-four in the afternoon) so... Where was I? Blerky day, yes. So I thought I'd have a nap before heading online for my daily fix. I didn't have pizza for lunch, so I have no explanation for this dream:

After a short film involving a Galactic Empire trying to select a suitable new ruler from among the hopelessly inbred children of the nobility (I blame this on too much MST3K), we moved to me at a Consumer Electronics Show demonstrating my company's latest product: A cluster of 192 Playstation 2's programmed to digitally apply make-up and costumes to actors in real time. I'm sure the hobbits and orcs in Lord of the Rings (not to mention John Rhys-Davies) would have appreciated our dedication. I wandered around the audience with a hand-held high-defintion digital video camera turning girls into princesses and boys into goblins.

A bonus feature was that it could also modulate voices, not just to another pitch, but to any pattern required. I demonstrated this by having audience members sing into a microphone, and regardless of talent (or the quite remarkable lack thereof) they all sounded like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. The demonstration was a huge success until I reached the end of my power cord without realising it. Oops.

Cut to the commercials, quick! First up, two — let us say, low end — spin-offs of the same technology: DeerMaker and DeerMaker .45.

DeerMaker allows you to quickly and easily add deer to your family photos! And DeerMaker .45 allows you to quickly and easily — yes, that's right — quickly and easily add dead deer to your photos.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:18 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog of the day is Mudpiemarie:

1. How are you planning to spend the summer?
Tough one. I think I'll be at work during July and at work during August... Oh wait, that is the entire summer. Can we say bitter? Anyway, I am taking a dance class this summer and I am going to attempt to take a couple of days off around labor day to go to New York.

2. What was your first summer job?
My first summer job was babysitting the devil child. Devil child was five years old, watched Mtv, had a dog that could jump as high as my head, and invited large quantities of toddlers over to her house when I wasn't looking. She also had one of those Barbie cars that runs on batteries, except her batteries were never charged so I would end up pushing the thing back home. This would always lead to the argument of why I couldn't push her in the car, which would inevitably lead to her having a tantrum and me looking like the devil babysitter. Ahhh, the joys of early employment.

She had this to say about Harry Potter:

Friday was pure crazy-stuff at the bookstore. We sold 650 copies of HP5 that night. In the whole scheme of things that may not sound like a lot, but you must keep in mind that every copy had at least two people attached to it (if not more). So according to my calculations, we broke approximately 108 fire codes on Friday night.

I had been fooled into thinking that we were actually going to open the boxes prior to midnight so we could have them ready to sell. I was wrong. We sliced the boxes open at midnight and sold them straight from the boxes. Oh the nerdiness. People were actually taking pictures of the boxes. Oh wait, I did that, too.

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

Between my ISP sending my packets on a grand tour of the Solar System and having to be at work early today (early being 8:30, as opposed to my normal time of 11), I forgot to shut off Kazaa, which was busy downloading a set of large files which I will refer to by the code-name "MST3K".

Well, what's the big deal? So I left my file sharing running.

The big deal is this: Between 1 AM and 8 AM, my ISP gives me free downloads (and cuts my speed by 70%, but I'll save that for another rant). From 8 AM onwards, they charge me - once I exceed my princely monthly allowance of 2.5 gigabytes - 14.9 cents per meg. (Also note that sometime in the night they fixed the problem so that my packets were now staying in the general vicinity of Earth.)

I had about 700 MB left for the month. (My month ends on the 10th.) Left to itself, my link can transfer about 500 MB per hour. I left home at 7:45, and would probably be back around 7 PM. So, that's eleven hours times half a gig minus seven hundred meg times 14.9 cents seven hundred dollars in excess usage charges.

Oh. Dear.

The first of the month is by far our busiest time at work; there was no way I was going to get to run home and turn my computer off. The alternative - calling my ISP and telling them that I'd left my file sharing running and could they please disconnect my line - was more palatable than a $700 bill, but only just.

So... Think like a geek.

I SSH'd into my home firewall box. (Thank Linus for Linux, and thank my foresight that I'd set things up so I could do that. I hardly ever need to; mostly I work from home and connect to servers at the office.)

Now what? I'm on Linux. Kazaa is on my Windows box. If I was still runing ME I could have just crashed it remotely, but after the great Driver Plague of '03 I upgraded to XP, which is a little more robust. After a little thought, I set off a ping flood aimed at my Windows box (which is named Ukyo) from my firewall (Pixy). Hopefully that would choke the downloads enough so they wouldn't bankrupt me utterly.

Then I stopped and considered for a minute. I have a router. It's a little blue Netgear thingy that connects my home network to the internet (via my ADSL modem). I viewed it until now as a black - or rather blue - box. Plug it in, turn it on, start sucking data.

But it's a router. And routers route stuff. So if it works like a real router, I should be able to tell it not to let my PC download a squigabyte of data and burn my bank account to the ground.

It has a web interface, but that wouldn't let me do what I wanted. If it was a real router, the good stuff would be accessible by telnet. (Everyone know what telnet is? Good.) But was it? Easy way to find out:

$ telnet router
Trying 192.168.0.1...
Connected to router.
Escape character is '^]'.

Password: *******

pixymisa@>

A couple of minutes of poking around revealed the command ip route add which would add an IP route. (Yes, the commands do actually make some sort of sense.) A route tells the router how to move packets from point A to point B. (This is why routes are called routes, and why routers are called routers. Simple, isn't it?)

In this case, point A was the Internet, and point B was my PC, and I didn't want anything getting from A to B. It's not hard to achieve this. Indeed, it happens all the time, mostly by accident.

Imagine that you were having a party, and wanted to invite everyone at the office except for this one person who you can't stand. You can't just not invite her; that would be rude. So what you do, is you give her bogus instructions. Turn left into Floogleman Street, you say. It's the house next to the Fire Station. You can't miss it. Of course, there is no Floogleman Street, no Fire Station, and you live in a condo. You take the phone of the hook, and the party is a huge success.

That's just what I did. I told the router that any packets bound for Ukyo had to go down Floogleman Street (after making damn sure there was no Floogleman Street on my network). The packets would arrive, wander about for a minute with confused expressions on their headers, and quietly expire. Since nothing ever came back, the servers at the far end eventually gave up sending anything, and my bandwidth (and my bank account) was saved.

Try that with a Windows box.

(The title comes from an incident that took place back in the dawn of time when I was at University. Uni, as we knew it. At Uni, there was an ornamental pond in the middle of the library lawn. One day, for no reason that was ever disclosed, the Powers decided that the pond was to be filled in. A group of workpersons duly arrived with a truckload of dirt and dumped it into the pond. One of the workpersons was heard to say the line, and became instantly - if anonymously - famous.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

No... updates... for... a... little... while... because... my... ISP... is... routing... all... packets... via... Mars...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ooh! More Flash gaming goodness! Check out the aptly named Defend Your Castle. Weeeeeeeeee splorch!

(via The International Squirrel Conspiracy)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cherry Pez taste like cough syrup, and neither one tastes anything like any cherry on planet Earth. Why they don't label things "Cough Syrup Flavour" I don't know, but it's probably one of those inscrutable marketing reasons, like "If we did that, no-one would buy the product."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I was reading back issues of The Bleat when James happened to mention out-takes of one of the movies he was watching. I've forgotten which one, and it doesn't really matter.

If you've seen A Bug's Life (and if you haven't, do!), and you're not the sort of person who has to leave the instant the closing credits roll, you'll know that one of the best parts of the movie is the out-takes at the end. Out-takes are usually funny because movies are so carefully polished; it's wonderful to see things get screwed up. It's doubly funny, of course, if you do it in a cartoon, when that sort of thing doesn't happen.

What you may not know is that this gag didn't originate with A Bug's Life. The first time I saw it was in Maris the Chojo, and then it came as a great surprise and a delight. (The rest of the film was good too.)

I was wondering, was this really the first time anyone did this? Once you've seen it, of course, it's such an obvious idea, like so many great ideas are. IMDB says it was but it's a user comment rather than anything official. Inasmuch as anything on IMDB is official anyway.

So, loyal readers and filmfans: Did anyone else do this before 1992? Walt Disney, or the Brothers Warner, perhaps? Fritz Freleng? Hanna-Barbera? Max Fleischer?

Any information would be appreciated, because, darn it, this is important.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:03 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny planet seven billion light years from Sol. He cut out his super-hyper-drive for the landing...and at that point, a tall, lean spaceman stepped out of the tail assembly, proton gun-blaster in a space-tanned hand.

"Get back from those controls, Bat Durston," the tall stranger lipped thinly. "You don't know it, but this is your last space trip."

---

Hoofs drumming, Bat Durston came galloping down through the narrow pass at Eagle Gulch, a tiny gold colony 400 miles north of Tombstone. He spurred hard for a low overhang of rim-rock...and at that point a tall, lean wrangler stepped out from behind a high boulder, six-shooter in a sun-tanned hand.

"Rear back and dismount, Bat Durston," the tall stranger lipped thinly. "You don't know it, but this is your last saddle-jaunt through these here parts."

Sound familiar? They should. You've been watching Firefly.*

So have I, mind you. It's not a bad show. It's also not Science Fiction. It's a Western in space.

The thing that nags at me from watching the first few episodes of Firefly is not so much what's there as what's missing. They have faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity — and revolvers and 1950s spacesuits. When someone gets shot in the stomach, the wound doesn't heal in moments as you might expect; instead it's a medical emergency. Vital medical supplies don't have RFID tags on them. People don't even have mobile phones, much less embedded communicators.

The Serenity's radar seems to have an effective range of about 300 yards. What's up with that? If you're travelling at interstellar velocities and there's something within 300 yards of you, you're already dead.

There's a gas stove on the spaceship, for crying out loud. Did Joss Whedon put this in as intentional self-mockery? Have these people lost the ancient technology of microwaves? (If so, it would explain why their radar is shot.)

Also, the Serenity itself looks like the mutant offspring of an Aibo and a camel.

In Firefly's favour, despite having spaceships, guns, and a girl in a box, it's not a ripoff of Outlaw Star. Which is something of a pity, because Aisha Clanclan would liven things up no end.

* These two pieces were run side by side as an ad in the old Galaxy magazine. It then continued:

Sound alike? They should--one is merely a western transplanted to some alien and impossible planet. If this is your idea of science fiction, you're welcome to it! YOU'LL NEVER FIND IT IN GALAXY!

What you will find in GALAXY is the finest science fiction...authentic, plausible, thoughtful...written by authors who do not automatically switch over from crime waves to Earth invasions; by people who know and love science fiction...for people who also know and love it.

** 90% of everything is crap.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Small Victory has similar thoughts to me on the relative value of Harry Potter and Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Comments by her readers show that we're not the only Stardust fans either.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:43 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

For those who don't have the time to read the whole sad story in Perl Bad, the short of it is: I did it.

I blew up Susie's blog. I lost the post that she spent an hour working on. It was I, and not a bunch of monkeys or poltergeists who ate the script.

Sorry, Susie. I will now go and feed myself to the sheep.

While I'm doing that, the rest of you can read Susie's entry in The New Weblog Showcase - and, of course, link to it on your blog, because it's good.

Mind you, the equal first-place at the moment is a rather interesting post (for me, the geek, anyway) about setting up a Web Forum view for a Movable Type blog. You can see it in action at Web Dawn.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Now how are we gonna get a win for Susie if you are voting for the person she is tied with? I thought it was interesting too, but I am not geeky enough to really understand it.

Posted by: Tiger at June 28, 2003 02:27 PM (kgWRl)

2 But Pixy, it only happened because I mentioned the evil thumbnails......had I not brought them into the poltergeist conversation, you never would have drawn your trusty Python in an attempt to slay them, resulting in the accidental injury to Perl......
So I will forgive you, if you forgive me.....

Posted by: Susie at June 28, 2003 08:54 PM (xA/Fr)

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I haven't used Perl much since 1998 or maybe 1999, when I discovered Python. Or rediscovered it, I should say; I knew of Python from some prior life but had dismissed it as irrelevant because it uses indentation to indicate program structure.

What?

Well, in most languages, you'd write a loop by enclosing it in markers like this:

for i = 1 to 10:
    print i.
end.

for (i=1;i<10;i++) 
    printf("%d\n",i);

for i = 1 to 10: print i. end.

and

for (i=1;i<10;i++) printf("%d\n",i);

respectively, and the compiler would be perfectly happy. You write in whatever style you like, as long as those curly brackets or that end statement are in the right place.

In Python, though, you'd write it like this:

for i in range(0,10):
    print i

    print i*i

Which looks really pretty, but is a bad idea, because if anything happens to your indenting, your program won't work any more. On the other hand, it's a good idea, because it's a very common problem that a programmer will change a piece of code without fixing the indenting, so that the program looks like it does one thing but really does something else.

You can't do that with Python.

But if something does happen to your indentation, your code is toast. The Pythonistas speak of a whitespace-eating nanovirus, but HTML will do the job just fine:

for i in range(0,10): print i print i*i

That's the exact same code, only this time I left it as normal HTML text. Python won't like that at all.

So from a language-design standpoint, it's kind of a problem. From a practical standpoint, though, it turns out to be a pretty good tradeoff. I've only once been bitten by the whitespace-eating nanovirus, and while it was painful I've seen plenty of code lost due to editor accidents or files getting overwritten or good old drive failures, so one lost program isn't really that bad. The fact that the layout of the program always reflects its function really is a blessing - though it still doesn't stop people from writing incomprehensible Python code.

There are a few main points that I like about Python. First, the code is clean. With Perl, you get lines of code like:

my($tag) = @_;
return ("start_$1","end_$1") 
  if $tag=~/^(?:\*|start_|end_)(.+)/;

Second, it comes with a nice, flexible and fairly rich standard library. It doesn't have a vast collection of modules like Perl's CPAN, which sometimes seems to have modules for every conceivable requirement, but it does have a decent library, and it's standard. If you have Python installed, you have the standard library. (It's possible to screw this up, but it takes effort.)

Third, Python is dead easy to install on any Unix platform. Download and unpack it, then it's the familiar configure, make, make install dance. Blippy blip blip, and you're done.

Perl's install is somewhat weird. It has a Configure script, but if you don't know about the -d option, it will ask you all sorts of questions that you will probably have no idea how to answer. So you keep hitting the enter key, and after a while you start getting all these strange messages (Python's configure gives strange messages too, but it doesn't bug you constantly). Then it asks if you want to make dependencies, and you say what the hell, why not? Then you make, and then you make test, which takes forever, and then you make install -

And then your friend Susie contacts you in a panic because her blog is toast.

Oops.

But all you've done is updated Perl. Everything MovableType should need is built into Perl by default. But now it's complaining that DB_File.pm is missing in action. DB_File.pm is the code that handles MT's databases; without it you can't update anything, and though people can still read your blog, they can't leave comments.

Not good. So you take a look, and sure enough, you've overwritten every trace of the old version of Perl. Rats. Well, DB_File should have been included, but no problem, you'll just specify it manually: ./Configure -D DB_File -de to make sure this time. Then make, make install...

Which you do, only nothing changes at all. So you Configure again, only this time you actually read all of the text scroll ing past. And you notice this little bit of unpleasantness:

Checking Berkeley DB version ...
You have Berkeley DB Version 2 or greater.
db.h is from Berkeley DB Version 3.3.11
libdb is from Berkeley DB Version 2.4.14
db.h and libdb are incompatible.
I can't use Berkeley DB with your <db.h>.
I'll disable Berkeley DB.
Removing unusable -ldb from library list
libs = -lnsl -lndbm -lgdbm -ldl -lm -lc -lcrypt -lutil

So much for DB_File. Gone bye-bye.

Now you check your libraries. You've got three different versions of Berkeley DB installed (all of them out of date, of course, but not to worry, even fairly old versions work well enough), and some weird links between them, but the default library is version 3.3. So it should work.

Check your library path. It's not looking anywhere weird.

Do a find, to see if there's a copy of libdb.so lurking somewhere strange. Nope.

Eh. Well, the Configure script actually creates a little test program to see what version of Berkeley DB you have. So you copy that little test program and compile it manually, and it works. Perfectly happy. What? How?

Time to Google. Which turns out to be no help at all. MovableType's support forum isn't much good either; mostly it suggests using MySQL. But there's a mention of recent Linux C libraries including Berkeley DB themselves, and the problems this causes if you want a version of Berkeley DB other than that in the C library.

A clue.

Well, if your program found the right version of Berkeley DB, but Perl doesn't, that must mean that Perl is picking up the wrong version from the C library. So you look at the libraries that Perl is using, and sure enough, the C library is listed before Berkeley DB. Change that and keep your fingers crossed while the whole thing rebuilds...

Success! We're back on the air! After two hours of pointless wrangling with Perl, it's decided to do what it's supposed to. MT is happy, I'm happy, Susie probably won't be happy because I have a nasty suspicion that it ate her post.

The whole thing started because I was trying to set up Image::Magick so that MovableType could generate image thumbnails. Image::Magick requires Image Magick (no great surprise), which of course is not installed. And Image Magick doesn't want to compile because it doesn't like my version of Perl. No problem, that version of Perl is out of date anyway; I'll just fetch the latest release and install that and aaarrgh!

What possessed Six Apart to write MT in Perl in the first place I'll never know. There are people in the world who program in Perl by choice, just as there are people who eat brussels sprouts or live in North Dakota or listen to System of a Down.

If they'd written it in Python this whole hideous mess could have been avoided. Of course, then I'd have had to find something else to rant about.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:17 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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.

Oh yes, here.

(via Fark)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:11 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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 | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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 | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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

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?

Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see God?
"Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod

Rats live on no evil star

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 | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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.

cloudburst, condensation, deluge, downpour, drizzle, monsoon, precipitation, rain, shower, sleet, spit, sprinkle

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 | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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 | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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

Yes, Wangaratta.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)