That Great Taste of Foot

Tonsorial Damage

2008-04-06T16:39:32Z

I was preparing to go out on a dreary Sunday afternoon, when something profound happened.

My hairbrush, the one I had been using for quite some years, decided to snap. Apparently, I had dropped it some time ago, and it only just got around to being weak enough to break. It did so as I was pressing it onto my head. It took no hair, but now I have two brushes of half-size, both with jagged edges and only one with a handle. As such, I am disinclined to use it, and may have to get another.

"Where's the profundity," you ask. "What makes this event so special? Things break all the time."

Granted all that, but think about it: the things you use during the course of a day have effects on you. Change those things, and the . A different-sized coffee mug might affect how much caffeine you take in during a day. A new wallet may let you carry more or less money and credit cards in your pocket. Shoes can change the way you walk, causing or curing long-term back problems. And a different hairbrush may change the way you prep and primp your appearance in the morning or evening before going out.

I don't see it having that great an impact on me; it's not like I'm such a fashion-plate or clothes-horse that I really care how I look. But a different brush may give way to a change in hairstyle, shampoo, maybe some self-attitude changes...

Or maybe I can find a reasonable facsimile of that brush elsewhere. Because change can be scary.

Wish me luck.

The axe is good! The nipple is bad! The axe is good! The nipple is bad!

2008-03-28T22:35:18Z

There is simply not enough dramamine in existence to counter the motion-sickness you'll get by contemplate the amount of spin required to make this comprehensible..

Exhibit A: A game, coming soon, brought to yo by G4TV's X-Play News:

Exhibit B: A news article which I found through FARK about a most curiously edited wrestling promotional poster</a>.

Because, y'know, nipples are baaaaaad. Including mens'.

It's after making a direct comparison like this that I shake my head, for I know not only how bent some peoples' priorities are, but how few actually care. And I can too easily imagine people are already having "elective aureole reduction surgery" in some cases.

When "Wonderful" Just Doesn't Cut It

2008-03-21T14:03:32Z

Having not had the capability for a while for whatever reason, I had to try it out when I finally could.

The capability is iSight, a user-facing camera which is these days built into every laptop Apple makes. (And that's every one, including that poufy, flouncy little Macbook Air.) It can be used for other things, like the folks at Delicious Monster realized when they built their application Delicious Library.

The idea behind Delicious Library was to build a fairly intuitive iTunes-like interface for the cataloging of physical objects, like CDs, DVDs, books, and games. They even make it easy to get the information into your computer by letting you scan a barcode if you have a convenient camera handy (cough). Then they go online and fetch all the particulars of the thing you scanned.

I wanted to try it. And the demo version allows you to scan up to 25 items. So hey, I could try it.

The first books I held up to the camera (using the camera view window as a guide), it picked right up. As an extra delightful feature, it read the name with the built-in text-to-speech engine.

The fifth, it searched for a few moments and then balked. It couldn't find a book corresponding to the UPC of the book I held up to it. A wonderful thing got cut ever-so-slightly low in my sight.

And frankly, I can't blame it for failing. The first four books I showed it were cookbooks, by noted authors and commercially available. The fifth was an incredibly obscure roleplaying game book that I had picked up two nights before, and just happened to have by my feet.

That incredible convenience of using a barcode scanner to read your library into your computer? Not so much so when you have two hundred or more books that it might not be able to read, neatly stacked on shelves in another room.

The Most Trivial of Epiphanies

2008-03-21T12:47:24Z

One lady performer, one keyboardist who never says much...

Why have we never seen "The Captain and Tenille" and "The Eurythmics" in the same place at the same time?

A Mind Too Full For Its Own Good

2008-02-27T16:57:22Z

Old laptop: 100Gb capacity disk. At last report, a little over 8Gb still free (minimum recommended).

New laptop: 250Gb capacity disk. Some software removed because it no longer works with the new system, but mercifully they're in the minority. (Ideafisher is dead! Long live Thought Office!) And yet, it's still filling up fast.

Part of the ~~nuisance~~ joy of getting a new computer is discovering all the nifty new things you can do with it. This one is no exception. Because it's got such a large disk, for instance, I succumbed to the temptation to move all of my Native Instruments sound libraries (the samples needed to make this, this, this, and this work), and I'm starting to move in some of the Ableton sound libraries (like this and this, though I'll stop short of this).

And damnit, they're huge. All told, that's about 65Gb of sound files that aren't music by themselves but need someone else to sequence them. And yes, as part of me says that this is overkill due to the overlap, there's another part of me that is incredibly happy with overkill. It probably makes a lot of people wonder why I don't make more music. I know I wonder that.

Simultaneous with that sick little rush, I want to play some more interesting computer games. And these folks are notoriously indifferent to my platform of choice, so it looks like I'll have to install Windows. Miraculously, I have a license key, and managed to get a disk image unpacked and functioning sufficiently to download a double steaming pantload of updates.

And while there's a perfectly good dual-boot solution available to me already, it requires me to partition my hard drive. I don' wanna do that. Sadly, the virtualization solution of choice proved insufficiently robust for either of my initial experiments. So it looks like I gotta partition.

You can see where this is going: any space I devote to that other operating system is space I can't devote to my other habits, like massive sound libraries (although to be fair, Massive is a synthesizer, and doesn't have that problem with sample bloat that the others do).

Given that I've only ever created one musical composition that I would consider complete, the choice seems somewhat clear-cut...but still somehow shameful.

Nothing much to report

2008-01-21T16:44:26Z

You won't believe where I'm writing this...

I'm hammering this out on my Wii (thank you Opera) because my primary computer is busy with its anti-virus scan. Yes, it's shameful that I run it so infrequently, but given that a full scan takes over 20 hours, it's not sonething I can do every day anyway

The bitch is that I use HTML tags, and the input method is ill-adapted to the task, though I'm learning.

Monseur Grunchy es mort! Vivre l'Confetti Factorie!

I went out this 16-degree morning and bought myself a new shredder. The old one fit over a trash can and tookup to five sheets. The new one takes up to six, cuts up credit cards and ruins CDs and DVDs, and has its own bin.

And it microcuts! It'll reduce a single sheet of paper to 2400 little schnibbles, each smaller than a Tic-Tac™.

And the power switch and warning label have a cool blue LED glow, but now I'm just being a geek.

Then again, posting about it on LJ means the geekdom is pretty much fait accompli, non?

Out of bed, with no place to go

I have a vacation day today due to work being closed, and apart from the paper-destroying appliance, which I bought before 9 AM, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my day.

As proof, I offer up the fact tgat I typed this up on a Wii.

A Little Problem

2008-01-06T17:51:53Z

Has everyone got their calculators, scales, and sacrificial daggers ready?

Good, then let's begin.

Let's say that someone has a large collection of RPG books. He had six shelves of them, laid out cover to cover as good books should be, filling each shelf completely. He had acquired others, such that he had some books set on top of those, and some books on the floor in front of the bookshelves awaiting placement.

One day, he lamented the situation and set about organizing them better. He got some book boxes, and started pulling books off the bottom shelves. He observed, as he did this, that the book box would ideally hold 19 inches worth of books. This would still allow the box to be picked up by the sides, but everything inside would be more or less secure.

He filled two such boxes mostly to capacity and set them aside. He measured one shelf, which was 28.5 inches long. All six shelves have the same capacity. He cut the books from on top of the shelves and on the floor into his collection, and came out once again with six mostly full bookshelves, The first three shelves, which have about 10 inches remaining across all three, cover from A-F. The second three shelves cover from G-Sh.

Now, given how many books he has, why doesn't he play more games?

Seriously.

Really and truly, I wonder that now. I've had a good look over my collection in the process of organizing it, and there are many things I wish I could play. They range in setting from precambrian to so futuristic we're precambrian to it, in style from meat-and-potatoes fantasy and science-fiction to thrillingly offbeat and off-kilter system cuisine, and in complexity from pre-industrial up through the atomic age and back around to new-age neo-hippie claptrap (though fun-looking claptrap, I'll say).

There is a stunning wealth of ideas in that collection, as well as the tools needed to roll my own.

So why haven't I?

Boxes & Bookshelves

2008-01-01T16:56:37Z

January 1st. A time of transition, much like an odomoter rolling over to a multiple of ten thousand.

In eight months, I hope to be out of here, preferably into something resembling a house. Toward that end, I've already started buying book boxes, and looking critically at shelving, though not necessarily in that order.

Those who know me, know I collect RPGs. I think I can call it "collecting" rather than "compulsive buying" because I tend not to get repeats (differing editions notwithstanding). On the other hand, I'm not quite sure I can call it "collecting" because I don't buy every little thing that comes out. So perhaps it's neither?

Anyway, this is my third year living here, and I've bought enough books that my "collection" / "evidence of my compulsion" have filled, nay, overflowed their allotted bookshelves. Some would take this as a sign that they should stop buying books—those people are called "dullards."

The next obvious choice is to invest in bigger shelves, or at least move around the ones I have now to make better use of them, but then there's that move in 7-9 months to consider. Yes, I could buy a bookshelf kit and lug it up the stairs and assemble it, but then I'd have to move bunches of books around to put the new bookshelf to use and then I'd eventually have to pack up the books anyway and lug the assembled bookshelf downstairs. That way lies madness.

Between them, I think I have the answer. I picked up boxes yesterday. Book boxes. The kind you'd use to pack up and move. I'm going to start putting books in boxes now. I'm going to do just enough reorganizing that everything sits properly on the shelves (no books on top of books, for instance), and then the excess, the W-Z part of the collection, will get put in a box. It won't get taped up; I may still want to read them. But they'll be organized, somewhat convenient, in order, and when the day comes that I need to put everything in boxes, I'll have a headstart.

Pedantic? Yes, and hardly LJ material either. But it's good to talk things like this out.

Anyone else got any long-range planning things I could do for an upcoming (hopeful) move?

One book, two bookmarks

2007-12-22T15:13:01Z

Remember all that kvetching I've done about not being able to create a sufficiently updated and advanced version of the Subplot Switchboard?

Well, I got this book, RailsSpace, which contains everything needed to build a social networking site in the programming system Ruby on Rails.

And right now, I have two bookmarks sticking out of it.

It's simple, really: After I go through a chapter and work on building the application as they describe it, I go through again and rework the example on my own code, which still only has subtle differences. By the time we diverge fully, I ought to have enough of a handle on what I'm doing to continue. And each application has its own bookmark.

Even if I do manage to get through all the book, I won't be quite done building the app—there's layout (graphics, document structure, CSS), AJAX for that extra quasi-tactile feedback, and then it's a matter of finding a host who does both RoR and databasing.

And then there's testing. Rails has its own testing facility, but that only shows when something is functioning as it was designed, not when it's functioning correctly. I may need volunteers. Someday.

When Closure is Anything But

2007-12-02T00:51:29Z

Everyone knows that I can get a little funny about food sometimes. Sometimes it's special, sometimes it's mashed-up junk. There was this place I liked to go to when I lived in Prospect Bay.

My first brush with Chesapeake Chicken (& Rockin' Ribs) (Warning: Flash intro) (Oh, and their design could make small childrens' eyes bleed) was riding home from Easton on Rt. 50 with the parents. There was this chicken place in a building by the side of the road, and much to my horror there was a guy in a chicken suit in front of it, dancing (nay, cavorting) around to attract attention. And so help me, it looked like he was enjoying himself.

It turned out that they did good barbecued chicken, sides, pie, etc. A lot of picnic food. And we stopped there a few times, though it was out of the way, and it was good.

There's that word "was" again...

The problem was its location. Where it was on Rt. 50 required us to get out onto Rt. 50, drive a ways, and then turn across traffic. Bear in mind that said stretch of Rt. 50 is called the "Ocean Gateway" because on any given weekend during the summer, it locks up tight. Traffic on that stretch of road during summer is both a bitch and a bear... which I suppose makes it a female bear.

That little place that was out of the way closed, and we thought it was because it wasn't doing well. We could hardly understand that. Then we found out that no, it just moved. And it moved to a much better place for us.

It was still on Rt. 50, and still technically across the road from us, but because it was on that stretch of road between the Bay Bridge and the 50/301 split, there were a number of easy, convenient overpasses we could use to get to it. Even when traffic was tough, we could sneak over, grab our food, and run back. Excellent!

Just in case you don't feel like going back to that link...

Among other things, they had rotisserie chicken and ribs, good Caesar salad, and "honeydrop biscuits," which I found were the single best non-ice-cream item to go well with Toad Sweat. Buttery, honey-sweet, and soft in a way that tube biscuits would dream about if they could. They also had a little space set aside for cookbooks, interesting crockery, hot sauces (I visited for those alone, I admit), and I found some nice oddities there. It might not have been a good and proper use of a restaurant, but it was a fun time-waster.

During the winter, they would add an item on the menu: chicken chili. And it was made with their rotisserie chicken. That and those biscuits were an easy meal or two, same way those biscuits and Toad Sweat were dessert.

But that party ended...

I pulled in tonight to see what it was doing. I'd seen little action over there and wondered if they'd taken a break over Thanksgiving; they'd done that a year or two previous and I was worried that it wouldn't reopen. This time, I went in, there were no lights, the light-string chicken and some of the signage in front was gone, the tables inside were missing, and there next to the "Zagat" sticker on the door was a hand-written "Closed" sign.

Let's just say I felt cheated. Before I found the site above, I thought there might still be one in Easton, but the site says that the only other location they have is Bethesda.

C'mon. Seriously. Bethesda?? Yes, it's becoming the restaurant hub of Washington D.C., but that's also the best reason to avoid it—the competition's too stiff, the parking situation doesn't suit the carry-out nature of the place... and I suppose yes, there's a little sour grapes over the place abandoning its previous customers.

And the final insult...

Either business there was lousy (which is impossible considering how it sat at an ideal spot for feeding beach traffic) or they got bought out and abandoned the place laughing all the way to the back. Which is far more reasonable, since there was a billboard down the road a little ways advertising a big, rich restaurant chain that would be coming to that area in Spring 2008.

That property, even situated as it is in front of a motel, could be their best bet for rapid development. But it galls me that an honest, homey restaurant which sold good food, some of which I couldn't get anywhere else, would sell out to the likes of...

Wait for it...

Cracker Barrel.

I mean, really.

Ribs: NOT sexy!

2007-11-25T15:52:59Z

It's too modern for heroin, so let's blame it on Ecstasy.

Wrights and Masons

2007-11-20T03:16:34Z

Okay, call it a strange little caprice. I just finished playing through a game, with online assistance

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Ever hear of it? It's an excellent little framework for presenting fiction in an interactive fashion: each phase in the game consists of either sorting through a series of statements and picking out someone or something that contradicts one of them, or answering questions by presenting people or things as a way of demonstrating that you're actually paying attention to the story.

As a game, it's more or less good. In later editions of it, they've recycled characters and introduced new play features, some of which are good calls and bring stuff to the party and some of which are more sort of meh. But they they are all just icing on the cake, which I have to admit tastes a little funny.

My major qualm with the series is that the interaction of prosecution, defense, and witnesses is a little contrived. And when I say there are "contrivances," I mean they're big enough to drive a truck through. I'm not sure how the justice system normally works in Japan (the games' country of origin), but I really doubt it works the way it's portrayed. It couldn't possibly.

Which is why, in the title of this little hit-piece, I bring up another name in the legal genre: Perry Mason, the defense attorney created by Earl Stanley Gardner. In those stories, the presentation of any case was pretty much straightforward. I'm not sure how it compares with the real American legal system, but it comes a lot closer to what I'd consider an ideal.

It also looks significantly better from the pure game theory standpoint as well. Prosecution calls witnesses for their testimony, defense cross-examines (requesting clarifications on or countering any points brought up in direct examination), prosecution re-directs (requesting clarifications on or countering any points brought up in cross-examination, and defense re-cross-examines (you get the idea). After prosecution has built up its case with all its testimony, it's defense's turn to break it down. Defense does the direct examination, prosecution cross-examines, defense re-directs, and prosecution re-crosses. It's a simple, straightforward (ABAB)*(BABA) progression.

Other rules determine what can be talked about. Redirects and recrosses can only be used to address points on previous levels, and sometimes a single innocuous question at one level could spawn a dozen or so inconvenient questions at the level below because that one question "opened the door" to the whole different line of inquiry. Leading questions can only be asked under certain circumstances. And so forth.

Programming such a game could be a complex and daunting task. Perhaps the Inform 7 language would be up to the task? There are already libraries written in it for things like interaction matrices (ask character about topic, get certain information back under certain circumstances, etc.) It could be a lot of fun to play through... which is I suppose why I'd rather someone else create this puppy. I don't have time to write such a beast myself.

Any takers?

Mr. YouTube, you're on in five.

2007-11-07T11:40:10Z

I don't watch much television. This is a mixed blessing, because while it spares me from caring about any series that will ultimately be cancelled by an executive pinhead more interested in short-term advertising profits than in long-term plot development and character arc, it also cuts me off from some conversation at work. Because I don't know what happened in the latest episodes of Heroes or Lost, I find I sometimes have reason to give talk at work a wide berth. Not that it's a bad thing, though, because it's accepted by most people who know me that I could probably write weirder stuff in my sleep.

So then the people who write the shows fell out of lockstep with the people who greenlight and produce the shows, and suddenly Hollywood is staring a writer's strike in the face, and the rest of the country is facing a drought of content. <span class="sarcasm">Waaaaaaah.</span>

Part of me can't help laughing. In fact, part of me is lounging around the living room in its underwear, giggling maniacally and playing with the bubble machine, having freebased a chunk of schadenfreude and gotten higher than the aggregate of any three space missions of your choice. Hey, I have a sizeable stockpile of the stuff. I might as well indulge. Oh hell, actually most of me is laughing at this.

And the rest of me? Well, not exactly sad. More like intrigued and expectant. See, a lot of these people are suddenly going to realize that the big content providers aren't providing content. The well will go dry, the collective of couch potatoes will look up, intone "We Must Be Entertained!", and start looking around for something new to watch.

Meanwhile, there are all of these little video services out there like YouTube and Google Videos that... well, sadly, most people don't so much produce content themselves as want to show other people content from other sources that they liked. The big content providers are obviously trying to stomp down on that because they don't think they need the popularity and free marketing. Copyright lawyers can sometimes be funny.

But some people do produce content, and they can inspire others. For instance, the classic short film Tony vs. Paul got enough people interested in stop motion animation to create answers, responses, take-offs..... and ironically, a sneaker commercial which even more ironically I don't have a link to. It seems the guys behind the Pollinate videos were dead-on: rip-offs can occur in all directions, and creativity is something to aspire to.

Let's get back to original content. With the major din of the the major content providers dying down due to repetition and a lack of new material, some people may be inspired to produce something of their own. And in the absence of something more professional-looking, it could catch on.

Will it start a revolution? Probably not, but now that the guards are asleep in the towers, it seems like the best time to attack.

Anyone got any links they want to share?

Multiple Cuisine Disorder

2007-10-14T17:50:30Z

Attitudes on food vary. Some primp and fuss over the stove to the point that you wonder what they're going to do with whatever they're preparing: will they eat it, or marry it? Others look at it as mere sustenance, and will gladly slouch into the kitchen, grab a can, open it, and eat whatever is inside, even if it's cake frosting. Oh heck, especially if it's cake frosting.

I...............vacillate.

The Quick & Easy

I have no shortage of ready-to-eat foods in my kitchen. Over the stove, I have a number of packets, containing precooked chicken breasts, seasoned tuna, noodles and sauce, and rice. Over the microwave I have several cans of soup and a particularly guilty pleasure, chicken spread. In the freezer, I have many boxes of grilled fish fillets (can you really say they're grilled if they're cooked in the microwave? Common sense says "no") and a couple of boxes of frozen jerk shrimp.

Of those, it should be noted that the jerk shrimp requires the most preparation, being cooked up in a skillet where the crusted-on frozen-on glaze becomes, they claim, a "sauce." And it should be observed, that stuff is pretty good when served with rice. But you have to make the rice yourself.

The Slow & Complicated

Right now, I have a pan soaking in the sink. It's the drip pan which sat under a wire rack which contained several chicken breasts, and sat in a larger cast iron pan. And sandwiched between the cast iron pan and the drip pan was about a tablespoon of applewood chips, now fully blackened by the heat.

There's a sheet of plastic wrap.....well, let's just say I built a safety catch for the smoke detector. The temperature probe is sitting next to the stove, cleaned but not yet put away, because the last time I tried to use the smoker on chicken breasts, I let it go for an hour or so and got chicken jerky as a result. I now know it takes about 25 minutes to achieve doneness. I know because I have my countdown timer sitting next to my temperature probe.

The cooked chicken, caked with herbs du provence, are chilling in the fridge along with a pound of ground beef (for a dirty rice mix), a pound of ground turkey breast (for a meatloaf) (yes, that meatloaf), celery, cilantro, a quart of milk, and a carton of egg whites. On the counter I have a bud of garlic and an onion, sitting next to a new bottle of sugar free vanilla syrup.

And the Ugly

I like coffee. That's why there's the vanilla syrup on the counter: to add to the coffee. And even if I don't make a pot of hot coffee, I have a supply of iced coffee (just add ice!) in the fridge, which gets supplemented every time I make a pot of coffee and don't drink it all when it's hot. A combination of logic and wishful thinking says it should be okay to drink.

Planning Ahead

2007-09-17T02:26:53Z

Check the calendar lately? You should. There's only 100 shopping days until Christmas!

Yes, you read that right. It's over three months until the holiday that has families tearing their hair out trying to pick that one perfect gift (as long as it's available, on sale, fun to share with the giver, etc.), and I'm ahead of the game for once, by virtue of having already started my shopping. Yes. I'm gloating. I've actually started my Christmas shopping before the stores could put out their Thanksgiving decorations. October may have been too late.

Really, it started as little more than an impulse purchase on Amazon as I was ordering some things for myself. One of the recommendations that came up for me didn't exactly tickle my fancy, but then I thought, "Not for me, no, but my mother would love this." [insert light bulb here] I already owe her some music sofware and hardware for finally going through with getting her new computer, but this ought to catch her by surprise.

There was one other thing that got me thinking about the holiday. And I mean looking forward to it in a wary, how-am-I-gonna-wrestle-it-to-the-ground kind of way, not a oh-joy-it's-coming-it's-coming kind of way. It was something I put on my calendar last January. Call it a New Years Resolution, if you will: I decided long ago that I wanted to design and send out my own Christmas card.

And what a logistical nightmare that's going to be.

The requirements for sending out your own greeting card are:

A greeting card design
Paper on which to print your greeting card design
A list of people's addresses to which cards get sent.

And so far, I'm ...zero for three there.

Mind you I have some ideas for a greeting card design, but I have yet to commit anything to paper/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/fingerpaints.

The paper on which to print your greeting card is no problem if you're not discerning. If you're content printing your résumé on 20 lb. white copy paper, then you're sitting pretty.

Of course I have a problem. From an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, you'll get two sizes of greeting card: 4.25"x5.5" or 5.5"x8.5". <fauxbritish>Well that's just naff, i'nt it? I mean, one of 'em's too small. It'll get lost among all yer others an' they'll forget you even sent a card. An' the other's too big. It'll dwarf the rest of 'em, an' that's bad 'cos you'll make everyone think you're puttin' on airs.</fauxbritish>

(I have no idea where that came from.)

And it turns out that while it's a great idea to have blank medium-weight paper to print proper-sized greeting cards on, not many people sell that size paper, because its use is so specific. But I may have found a company that sells 7"x10". Folds down to 5"x7" and judging by the way they talk up the paper in printer's jargon (which I recognize—make of that what you will), they know their stuff. So I'm probably going to order from them.

As for the addresses of my friends, well, good thing I'm a social cripple these days. That makes that task so much easier.

Sweet like lead paint

2007-09-01T22:56:31Z

As is the Saturday custom, I visited my parents. Mother did my laundry even though I can do it myself, and she's even confessed to me that ironing hurt her hand even before the surgery. So let's just say they make out well by keeping me conflicted.

Anyway, we went out for lunch (also a quaint weekend custom). The restaurant of choice was a national chain that shall after today always be "Ucky Fried Ick" to me, in much the same way another chain shall always remain "Bug Evans." And something I saw there was ...shocking.

One of the items they serve with their chicken—pardon me, their ick—is biscuits, so it's natural that they'd have packets of honey off to the side. Or is it?

I've done enough design work and look at details of a presentation to catch things, and boy, did I! For one, the front of the packet is clear in a faint yellowish-brown color. In big bold letters there's the word Honey ... but wait! Underneath that, in the same font in a thin outline so it's practically invisible against the transparent yellow-brown liquid pretending to be the oral secretions of bees, is the word Sauce.

"Honey ...sauce? Why, that would imply there's something else in there beside honey.

The list of ingredients on the back reads something like this:

High Fructose Corn Syrup
Corn Syrup
Sugar

Why, that's not just a list of ingredients, that's a list of sweeteners sorted in order of industrial expense! And because honey's fourth on the list, you can be sure that at least 3/4 of it isn't honey. And by consequence, cheaper.

It's Corporate America trying to cash in on its customers' faith in the brand by feeding them inferior product in order to save money and claim they're delivering a service. Why, it's, it's... not surprising in the least. I think what I'm outraged at is my inability to be outraged at each new surprise these assclowns pull. My expectations are already on the ground, bleeding, and it's like they felt the need to deliver one or two swift kicks, just 'cos.

t's OK f we lev out fw mnr dtls, rt?

2007-08-24T23:33:30Z

Since I read Airbag at work, and work has some serious proxy blocks in place for anything that it considers potentially harmful or misusable, I couldn't browse this link:

Content-aware image resizing This is scarry, and not in a good way.

Naturally, I wondered, and I finally remembered it when I got home. I found two different links to essentially the same presentation. One was the one provided on Airbag (which was blocked at work for fear that I might learn (gasp!) hacking! and the other was a comparatively safe O'Reilly (the technical book publisher, not the douchebag). But even if I'd found that one, I wouldn't have been able to see it anyway because the presentation was hosted on YouTube, which is blocked at work for fear that I might become (gasp!) social! But that's a rant for another time.

This rant is about a technical idea someone had to minimize a picture while keeping most significant elements in it. Rather than taking out entire rows or columns of pixels to make the image smaller, the algorithm takes out specific paths of pixels, allowing the important parts to keep their aspect ratio while squeezing them into a smaller space. They do this by removing the unimportant parts. This is supposedly better than cropping, which may remove major details from around the picture, or resizing, which removes parts of major details from the middles of pictures.

Interesting? Having seen the video, I'd say so. Is it nifty? I'd agree there too. Cool to watch? Yep. But good? To borrow a turn of phrase from James Lileks, "Sweet smokin' Judas, what were they thinking??!?!

Remember that saying "a picture is worth a thousand words"? Well, their market value just plummeted. It's as if someone thought Photoshop wasn't prevalent or easy enough to use already. "No, it's too much work to go in and turn a picture into a total liar by consciously removing or changing elements. We'd like to be able to resize the image and just have them go away automatically."

The LARP That Dare Not Say Its Name

2007-08-19T23:44:25Z

I'm not quite sure how it began. I think I was comparing newspaper articles with a co-worker. He pointed out his and I pointed out the only comparatively recent one that I knew of.

Frankly, I'd forgotten how long ago it was. (I'd also forgotten how the rest of "my" paragraph ran; I usually stopped at the words "pasty and intense." Let's just say it shifted his opinion of me slightly, and not necessarily for the worse.) Check out the date on that sucker -- July 14th, 1996! Not only did I forget the date of that article, but I'm over a year late for its 10th birthday! I should have baked it a urinal cake or something.

What it drove home for me is that it's been a very long time since I've been fully and properly involved. I thought that the last game I'd run was Port Royal. It was actually something else which, for the sake of any potential future reputation I may try to build, I am not going to name. That's how long it's been, that I was able to completely forget it.

I reviewed a big honking stack of old Metagames looking 40% to build up some sort of game résumé, 40% to relive past glories, and 20% to torture myself. I have either not been a participant or tried halfheartedly to participate and been intimidated by people, settings, and situations for about a decade, give or take a little.

The hiatus has gone on long enough.

I've got a lot of problems, up to and including thinking that I don't belong among any of the people in that social circle. Or not knowing them any more. Or thinking that they won't accept me back. Or that I can't even handle playing in a modern game, since my last attempt fell on its face.

On the other hand, the regret is really annoying me. It's like a persistent itch that no amount of hitting with a meat hook will make go away. Under the cracked, crisped exterior something is pulsating, growing, and trying to burst out. I take that to mean either the burnout is almost at an end, if only I could scrape away the char. Or I've got an alien parasite entering its pupal stage. Either way, something's got to give.

My impediments?

A crippling lack of self-confidence. I went into that above. 'Nuff said.
The Subplot Switchboard. The tool which I used to write games in the past in Hypercard (both IIGS and Macintosh versions) is still theoretically useful, but it has many shortcomings. I've toyed with versions in Supercard, Runtime Revolution, Ruby on Rails, Microsoft Access, Filemaker Pro (several versions), and Xcode/Cocoa, but I haven't got anything yet that really gets the bacon delivered, y'know? And there are some ideas for features that I want to put in.
Unfamiliarity with the Territory. Sure, I tried one persistent game in recent history, but it felt different to me. More different than I could handle. I balked, I let my other fears get to me, and I had sadly little trouble staying away through its conclusion. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew? Perhaps I needed something smaller to work on first?

I want to start playing again. I want to start writing again. (And a little help creating the new Subplot Switchboard would be nice ... say, I haven't tried perl yet...)

But it's been a very long time since I tried this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

No, Intercon XXII doesn't look like it'll do the trick. Nothing in that line-up appeals to me.

And before someone asks, no damnit, I am not going to make my first game in about a decade the rerun of Port Fucking Royal.

Not bad.

2007-08-17T23:50:22Z

I got four paragraphs into writing something before I realized that it would serve nobody but myself to post. Nobody would derive any benefit from it, and I'd feel like a whiny sap for posting it. So I deleted it.

I do that a lot. That's why you don't hear much from me.

territan @ 2007-08-05T16:06:00

2007-08-05T16:21:34Z

So my laptop is backing itself up (it would have finished in my sleep if the disk hadn't filled up), and so I started cleaning up. This involved walking back and forth with stuff that needs to be elsewhere, and carrying it to where it belongs. Simple?

Not so simple.

The floor in front of my apartment's den (too small for a bedroom, too large for a teachest) has always been a little creaky. Now it'ds getting noticeably wobbly, to the point where I wonder how long it'll be before I become a guest of my downstairs neighbors. It doesn't help that I weigh a significant fraction of a Buick, but when one relies on one's flooring, one expects support, damnit.

So? Move.

Trust me, that's a goal. But I haven't found a suitable replacement yet, and I want something I'll be reasonably happy with for some time.

There's also the problem that my last opportunity to opt out of next year's lease passed on July 20th. So yeah, I could move elsewhere, but I'd still be paying rent here.

So? Lose weight.

Do not get me started on that option.

So? Call customer service.

That's where this is going--I need to call the people who run this place and tell them parts are running down.

But I know what comes after that: the first two times someone comes out to examine it, they won't even find the spot I'm talking about, then they'll argue with me over who has to pay for this, and they'll have to tear up the carpeting to fix it, and there's a chance they won't do it right, &c.

And yes, I'm being negative. I like to thin, this makes me right more often than the optimist.

Values? Pah!

2007-07-06T22:11:57Z

The Franklin Covey binder is fairly common where I work. This in itself isn't strange, even though everyone also has Microsoft Outlook. It's a low-tech solution, sure, but it doesn't misplace your appointments, contact lists, or e-mail whenever the LDAP server goes down, which judging by my experience is about one time in five.

It should be noted, though, that the Franklin Covey system adds an insidious twist to the ideal of personal organization. Outlook will let you schedule meetings and whatever you want, no matter how pointless they may be. The Franklin Covey system has the audacity to try to get you to organize yourself.

Part of the basic system is a thing, smaller than a book, larger than a pamphlet, called the "Planner Guide," and part of it is an attempt to get you to define what it is that you really want to do and where you want to be. It's simple, straightforward, and I must grudgingly admit that it's correct: that to have a plan to get to where you want to be, you first have to have goals, and beneath that (it's organized like a pyramid), you have to have a set of base values so you know what goals to go after.

And then it asks me to consider what my core values are. Not what I think they should be, not what I think they need to be to make me happy, just what they are.

And I still don't have an answer.

I'm somewhat bothered by the fact that I can't think of anything that I really value, and the only reason I can think of for drawing a blank is that I really don't value anything. I gave up on it long ago. I didn't think I was good enough at anything, so I gave up caring about most things. I don't get involved through the simple expedient of not having a horse in any race. I sold them for glue long ago, in an attempt to find relative peace of mind through the omission of stupid mistakes.

It hasn't been working out.

But do I want to foster any of those old values? Caring about things means the universe just has more things to kick around.

Changing of the Guard / Virtual Props

2007-05-11T23:33:01Z

It had to happen sooner or later, and it's not a bad thing at all really.

I play various tabletop roleplaying games on Tuesday nights. We just last week finished a marathon run of one campaign, and now another player is going to make with the GMitude.

That person is me, glorious font of positive thinking that I am.

I have to start a brand spanking new run of In Nomine, the game that would have Pat Pulling jumping up out of her grave, blinking the dirt out of her eyes, and saying, "Wait. I was right?" (No you weren't you daft Chicken Little of cultists and mediocre parenting. Now get back in that damn hole.) This is a decidedly good thing, but I'm not taking any joy in it yet.

In this iteration of the campaign, the players will be playing characters on the demonic side rather than the previous angelic side; I'm already starting work on the Blasphemy on my "new" (over a year and counting) internet provider. Change too is a good thing.

And to prepare them for this Belgian clustersomething, I'm going to start them off with an appetizer. Something that will both whet their appetite and prepare them (somewhat) for what's to come.

I'm going to run a session of Paranoia for them. Specifically, a thing I ran once online a long time ago called The Shocker!!. (Note: two exclamation points are mandated.) Only I'm going farther with it than I ever have before. I wrote out the multiple endings. I documented all the R&D equipment that'll help them on their way and/or off this mortal coil. And I fired up Carrara to create one of the game's props.

Yes. Virtual props. Because a mere description of this one particular thing in the game simply won't do it justice. Nor will an item card. No, I want people to see the thing as their characters might. It's been a while, but I did a fairly decent job with it if I do say so myself. I won't mention any of the details yet; it's supposed to be a surprise and one of the players comes here to read once in a while.

These little things should make me somewhat happy.

Eurek-, er, something...

2007-05-01T23:47:54Z

Perhaps it should be mentioned, although it may get the hopes of some up unduly, that I had a minor breakthrough in the advancement of Switchboard Technology this morning. No, I don't have the Ruby on Rails version of it up and running, but I saw enough of it through to complete the full basic layout of tables. And I did it in Filemaker, of all things.

To understand why this is a breakthrough, you have to understand that when specifying relationships between tables, you can't set a relationship between table A and table B, then between table B and table C, and then right back from table C to table A. That violates some rule of database construction, and I don't remember which one right now. You have to create a copy of table A in the relationship view to connect back to table C.

The switchboard as I have it drawn currently has six actual tables: Events (1), Characters (6), Subplots (2), Roles (6), Scriplets(2), and Relations (3). The numbers in parentheses are the number of times each table appears in the grand Relationship graph. There are a total of 19 relationships on the graph. I consider it a minor feat that I got all that in place.

And now I'm confronted with a problem, and it's inspired (quite necessarily, I assure you) by that friend of mine who insists that he wants to run one of my more successful games with or without me: I've taken a look in Port Royal's Switchboard. There were a number of plots that weren't completely filled in, weren't written for, etc. They wouldn't have counted in the final analysis. Now I need to figure out how to tweak the character-side tables so they'll only tabulate character involvement numbers, inventory lists, etc. from "declared active" subplots. Still, I feel I'm onto something. Maybe I could find a Filemaker-friendly web server somewhere?

Dream interpreters, start your steno pads!

2007-05-01T16:32:42Z

As is often true with my increasingly infrequent dreams, this one came in two parts. And they have nothing that I can see to do with each other.

The Dreams

Part the First

The first part consisted of me visiting a college campus somewhere and being asked to take a look at something. It was easily as tall as, and 5-7 times as wide as, your average grandfather's clock. It had some baroque woodwork and numbering in a 18th-19th century style. And while there was a normal-sized clock face in the top center of it, there were a few dozen other dials whose significance was lost on me at the time.

There was very little in the way of mechanism behind it all. Behind that top grandfather clock face, there was a teeny tiny little hourglass, no larger than an egg-timer. We were sure it was critical to the operation of the thing, but we couldn't see how.

Part the Second

At some point, we had a part off the clock, and a mouse crawled out (at that point, it was mouse-sized). I picked it up (at that point, it was housecat-sized and I could see it was missing patches of fur) and tried to get rid of it outside, but I was too busy running around and avoiding the swarms of bumblebees that were erupting from the ground. I remember getting stung in the knee once, but it didn't hurt for some reason.

_____ is my life! 0

2007-04-29T22:33:27Z

I buy a lot of roleplaying games. Most of them which I have I've never even played. I'm more like a collector, buying this system for its hokey setting and buying that for its novel system. Or sometimes I just do it compulsively, snarfing up something that looks neat. Rarely do I buy anything until it's popular; I bought Vampire before it was really popular, shunned it for all that time that it was the thing to play at LARPs, and finally, when the furor over the genre was at last dismissed as the preening, pretentious posturing that it was, I bought the post-"apocalypse" version. And Werewolf. And Mage.

Recently I ordered a bunch of independents which looked interesting, plus there was the chance that I'd be playing in one of them and wanted to do some clean-up on my character. One thing I find those sorts of indy games are good for is getting you to think...

I picked up four different game systems when I had the chance. I can never buy just one book online, and I consider that a positive trait. It's the Machiavellian style: get all of your book orders out of the way in a single day. (And better to go to UPS or the USPS one day to pick up one box with four books in it than, well, you know the rest.)

Spirit of the Century was the one I had the vested interest in picking up, since johnprester was planning on running it. That was why I originally went to Indie Press Revolution. Two of the others which I got were With Great Power and Dogs in the Vineyard. They're interesting games in their own right for their strong storytelling aspects. The fourth, Fastlane, looked interesting from way back because rather than cards or dice, you use a roulette wheel. The storytelling is weak, little more than an adjunct to the betting system which is how you resolve conflicts, but that's what's got me hung up right now.

See, among the traits that Fastlane characters get is a thing that reads basically like the title to this posting: "(Something) is my life! (Number)" which says how important that something is to that character. It affects betting and whatnot. And it's important because during play those life-things can be reduced. If they're all reduced to zero, the character sees no more reason to participate.

That's what got me thinking how I'd build myself in that system. It started...

Roleplaying Games is my life! ___1___

...and...

...and... nothing. I couldn't really think of anything else.

I've pretty much dropped out. I'm doing little more than subsisting in the face of people trying to push me forward. And while I'm fairly certain those directions are wrong for me, nothing feels right. I don't dream any more. I have no happy place. Even video games are only a sort of desperate, distracting place.

I need something more. (And no, don't try to push religion on me. You'll only put me in my caustic, snarky place.)