Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who doesn't need another link, looks like he writes a lot, but most of his blog is really made up of quotes. Well, I can do that too:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Which reminds me: Pibgorn by Brooke McEldowney. Read it. It's good. Though sometimes slow-moving. Right now it's in the middle of a long and complicated sub-story, so it may not immediately make sense. Stick with it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Tastes great, less screwed-up archives. Or so they say. I'll give it a whirl with a test blog before the wholesale migration.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

At this rate we might as well unevolve back into fish. Or maybe just amphibians.

But there are many parts of Australia that are still in drought. Sydney is where it is, after all, because it does rain a lot here - relative to the rest of the country.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

'Smatter of fact, I did write a blog entry on Friday. It went something like this:

Blog of the day is Sedgewick's Adventures in College - or it would be except that by some strange twist of fate Stupid Stupid Blogger™ is down again and I can't update my blog.

Anyway, I know exactly how Joanna feels when she says "It's 5:18 in the frappin' morning, and I still haven't gotten any sleep." I do that all the time. At least I'm not in college any more, so the only exams I have these days are these once-a-month get-it-right-or-your-ass-is-fired bill runs.

I love bill runs.

Or maybe that's the Travacalm talking.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Not to mention the bout of food poisoning.

Very much not to mention the bout of food poisoning.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:13 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

It's that time of month again.

I work as a programmer in the billing department of a small phone company. Our bills go out at the start of the month. And we run a sort of just-in-time development process. And there are always changes to be made. So for two or three days each month I don't sleep.

Or blog, of course.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

James Lileks wants a new iPod too.

Great minds, and so on.

What he actually got was a swing.

Read it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:40 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I gotta get me one of them iPods.

The new models are cooler than ever, even if the "dock" looks worse than useless. 30GB of storage, 6 ounces, 8 hours playing time. Connects via FireWire or USB; doubles as an external hard disk for my perennially full Sony Picturebook.

You can even play Solitaire!

Clearly, what Apple and/or Sony need to do is smoosh this thing together with the nifty Sony Clie NZ90, which wonderful as it is, is direly lacking in storage. Then add a multi-system cellphone and GPS and you'll have the ultimate geek gadget.

Except by that point it will weigh as much as my Picturebook, and still do less.

Never mind then. I'll just take the iPod.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Meanwhile, Google has picked up my blog! If you search on "Stupid Stupid Blogger" I'm right there. On page 2.

Funny how that works, considering that no-one links to me and it took months to pick up my other site.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'm part of the Blogosphere Ecosystem!

'Course, I'm an Insignificant Microbe, coming in at number 1964 out of 1966, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Right?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:03 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The other problem with Whuffie, of course, (and Doctorow does touch on this in the book and in the interview) is that it is controlled by positive feedback.

And we all know how well that works.

For those who don't, consider your favourite economic boom-and-bust - from the tulip craze to the Great Depression to the dot.com bubble. Or lynx and hare populations in the Arctic. Or consider a nuclear explosion, which is a great example of positive feedback. If you're lucky, positive feedback will give rise to boom-and-bust cycles. If you're unlucky, you'll get a boom-and-splat.

Not a good way to run, well, anything, really. Unless you want to make a very large bang.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:27 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

To be fair to Mr. Doctorow, he does point out in this interview that his society would not function as described; and that it would need:

some kind of antitrust law or garbage collector that periodically comes along and randomizes Whuffie

Of course, unless you've brainwashed 100% of the population, the anti-trust laws or garbage collectors will need to be backed up by the men with the you-know-whats.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Episode 5 of Rizelmine went plooie too. Sigh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:59 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oh, yes.

As always, by the light of day it's neither as original nor as interesting as it was at 4 A.M. But here goes:

When you are designing your Utopia, remember this: People will be people, and to make things work, somewhere there will have to be men with guns. And it does not necessarily make things better for them to be hidden from view.

What brought this on? Last night I was reading Cory Doctorow's new book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It's not a bad book, and you can download it for free, which is always a plus.

But the society described in the book simply wouldn't work - unless there are, somewhere behind the scenes, men with guns.

Read it anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I had an interesting an original thought last night that I wanted to share with you.

Unfortunately, I've forgotten what it was.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:27 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

It's raining. How... novel.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:35 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The problem with downloading stuff from a filesharing network is that you don't know what you'll get. The episode of Buffy that I downloaded using BitTorrent proved to be a dud - after I'd dragged all 433MB back to my PC over my sorry excuse for broadband. One episode of Jungle Guu was plagued with video glitches. One episode of Azumanga Daioh dropped out with a minute or so to go.

In case anyone is listening: I'd pay to be able to download these files directly from the source. That's pay as in actual money.

You'd have to get the price right, though. A DVD box set of Buffy runs about $120, or around $5 per episode (Australian prices). A download would have to be cheaper than that, and if quality is significantly below DVD standard, it would have to be significantly cheaper.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

So, just how often does Easter coincide with Anzac Day to give a three-day working week?

I'd work it out, but I think I'd rather take a nap.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

You know that headache you get just because you're tired? And all you need to do to make it go away is get some sleep? Only you can't sleep because you've got this headache?

I've got one of those.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hale's mother's name is Weda.

Just thought you'd want to know.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:46 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Internet is a time machine.

I did 18 out of my 20 impossible things, and of the remaining two, one can't happen before the end of the month and no-one has actually decided what the other one is yet. So I can say that they're done and no-one can prove otherwise.

In other words, I'm blogging from work.

So why is the Internet a time machine, you ask? Well, you could (and indeed should) take a look at lileks.com and spend a happy - if somewhat dazed - afternoon lost in the 50's and 60's. It's well worth the effort, particularly if you missed them the first time 'round.

But what I was actually thinking of is this: Tonight, when I go home, I'm going to watch next week's episode of Buffy.

Which means I can spoil it for the guys at work. Hahaha! Not that I'd do that, of course.

The thing I have to remember is: Don't get greedy. No-one likes a greedy time traveller.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I have 20 impossible things to do before I go in to the office today, so I won't have time to blog.

Oh.

Oops.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:17 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Of course, now I have to download next week's episode and watch that too. No minutes! No waiting!

But this time I think I'll leave it to run overnight so that it doesn't chew up my precious peak-time badnwidth.

Meanwhile, kAzAa is chewing up all my upstream bandwidth, since I dropped Azumanga Daioh and Jungle Guu into my share folder. (And Rizelmine.) But I don't pay for uploads, so I don't care. Nyaa!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:40 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'm working from home today. Yay me!

On a less cheerful note, I forgot to watch Buffy last night. Well, poot. And episode 10 is well and truly history as far as BitTorrent is concerned. Fortunately, Kazaa (well, Kazaa Lite) found it for me and is happily downloading now. Unfortunately, this is costing me, depending on how you want to look at it, $12, $60, or nothing at all.

I'm sticking with "nothing at all", thanks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:05 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)