The Twilight Report

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:07:00 GMT

25 February 2009 08:25pm: Lost contact with my network back in Wyoming... again. I hate you Big Pond. You can bite me.
Today at 04:10pm: Swim in the ocean, and I am as good as new.
Today at 05:40pm: First time at chatswood station when they are using all four platforms. Some of us thought we'd never live to see the day.
Today at 05:43pm: I've seen old photos of this station when it was nice. Now it is all concrete and no character.

we never talk anymore

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:24:00 GMT

internet i’m bored of you; we never talk anymore i miss you black and white; and my time in the darkroom i never was very good at being blunt i like how history is always repeating itself, except for the nice parts; the future always seems like a cut down discounted version of something you once remembered i hate missing people no longer with us i’ve forgotten more than you will ever know, but do you remember more than i’ve remembered? i am moving to wyoming; yes really! i hate MySQL, but if everything were postgres, it would be pretty boring arguing about it i tasted lime in my drink tonight; it reminded me of someone special new mexico will never be the same; before or after product launch next monday; should be a grand crash

таня и юрий и стефан

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:18:00 GMT

Someone asked why Таня pronounced something in a certain way today and she said “I don’t pronounce it that way; it just sounds like I do.” (Russians often spell things one way, but then pronounce them another, to the bemusement of Australians who pronounce them the way they are spelled regardless of what language they came from: witness news anchors saying “junta”).
The young bloke in the front row with a Guns and Roses T-Shirt didn’t know who Юрий Гагарин was.
I was watching the Colbert Report today and I got the munchies for Doritos. I know I am a couple of weeks late.
There was an article in the Sydney mX today about Stephen Colbert’s (Стефан Колбер) run for the White House. mX is brought to you by the same corporate overlords that bring you Faux News. It did mention it was a joke, but it didn’t mention that he was only running in South Carolina.
I wonder if Sydneysiders even know where South Carolina is. Then again, I know Americans have no idea where New South Wales is.
My Internet is for shit tonight speed wise :(

commerce without morality

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:19:00 GMT

So forever ago, Smitha wrote in her LJ something about spelling alphabets and never being able to think of countries to associate with certain letters. What do you use for X? Anyway, that got me to think that defunct empires would be a good spelling alphabet to use, not because it would be easy to understand, but because I suspected that I could design it to be pretty hard to decipher. For example, when I got to H I chose “Holy Roman Empire” and for R I chose “Roman Empire.” Although it isn’t ambiguous, unless you were paying attention you might get lost.

So I finally wrote a little web app to give you the spelling alphabet spelling for a number of different alphabets. Some of them (NATO, LAPD) are actually in use. Some of the others (defunct empire, etc) I just made up for fun. I made defunct empire the default because it seemed to be the least useful.

www.wdlabs.com/twilight/lingua/alphabet

(btw- if you can think of a country that starts with X let me know. I will accept historical, currently nonexistent countries, but not fictional countries, as I am currently using the fictional country Xanth for X because I couldn’t think of anything else. I also need defunct empires for W X and Y; the current X is actually the capitol of an Empire, not the Empire itself)

I also have a new management policy for my website, so make sure you read that and agree to all of the terms before using my website. It is also available in latin if you English isn’t very good.

Extra IP address

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:41:00 GMT

So I have just done away with the legacy dependency on Apache 1.3.x for nullray, and freed up the IP address that it was using (64.38.18.198). I was sort of looking forward to freeing up the IP address, but now that I have it, I'm not sure what I want to do with it. Ideas?

naturally

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:23:00 GMT

Work has been sucking it out of me lately^[1], so I haven't even checked my LJ in the past week, much less posted.

I bought a bunch of things like clothes and a new phone yesterday (let me know if you want the #). It has the Internet on it (yes, the ENTIRE internet), so now I can carry it around with me (yes, the ENTIRE internet). Actually it still doesn't solve my problem of not being able ot IM at work^[2]. It solves a host of other problems though, so I don't object. Cameras on phones seemed like such a dumb thing before I got one, but living without my first few months in Australia has reminded me that there are times when they are handy. Mostly to take visual notes. If I see an ad for something that I want to later research I can. Also: I know it seems like a little thing, but I am offended by the fact that I actually have to set the time on my phone. In America my phone set the tiem itself. This was handy when I flew.

Yesterday I also found a really nice apartment in Artarmon, for which I filed an application, but the realestate agent screwed me and it looks like I won't get the place. Lawyers have a bad rap, yet I have had nothing but positive experience dealing with lawyers^[3], whereas my experience with realeastate agenst has been entirely negative.

[1] I'm ready to quit

[2] at least not directly, I still may be able to figure something out though

[3] in fact, the one time when I worked with lawyers and programmers at the same time, the programmers really dissapointed me in their narrow mindedness.

zoo and internetless

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:26:00 GMT

I have been without the Internet(s) for the last four days. I appear to be in good health and I don't think there will be any ill long term effects. Last Saturday, I went to the zoo with auntie Rae, mum, Torbin and Judy.

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Import

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 16:25:00 GMT

According to UPS (or oops as e calls it):

PACKAGE WAS DELAYED BY A
FOOD AND DRUG
ADMINISTRATION HOLD.

It's a good thing the food and drug administration was holding onto my new computer for over a week, because someone might eat it by mistake and die.

Why is it so difficult to order shit on the Internet?

Somewhat Educational

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:15:00 GMT

Brad sent me this thing which was kind of fun:

http://www.atome.bliesch.com/atome.php3

It appears to be about atoms and to be in German, so it may be educational.

Missing The Point

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 04:25:00 GMT

http://www.whitedactyl.com/static/mariokilldeathstar

I think that people who debate who would win in a confrontation between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer are totally missing the point. The real question is who would win in a fight between Mario and the Death Star. I think this flash movie will settle things once and for all.

Google Gawk

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:07:00 GMT

Those geniuses at google have provided us with a new way to gawk at the devastation in New Orleans. If you go to

http://earth.google.com/katrina.html

you can download overlays for google earth which will let you view before and after shots.

I went to bed super early last night and I woke up at like 5:30am or something. Tyler IMed me and said "I'm off to bed." I'm thinking about going into New York City today.

Best In Free Entertainment

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 02:02:00 GMT

Seriously though, if you haven't checked out Google Earth you have to. My only quip about it is that it is lacking in sound effects, which I have been supplying myself. My preferred technique is to use rocket noises as I skim across the surface of the earth. Tyler suggested audio themes.

Not Just for Porn Anymore

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:40:00 GMT

According to Avenue Q the Internet is "for porn." Apparently the Internet has opened up the market for a new type of venture which I have never seen before:

I urge you to take action, before it is too late.

Update: Just so we're clear, I think this is sick.

When is a Blog not a Blog?

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 22:13:00 GMT

Ok, I've encountered this too often now not to comment on it, but several times I've heard people something of the form:

"I hate blogs, but I have to post here since LiveJournal is down"
"Gee, I never really thought of LiveJournal as a blog... is that what I am? A blogger?"
"I don't have a blog, I'm on LiveJournal."
"LiveJournal is soooo much better than blogging."

Usually (in case it hadn't been obvious) the comment is presented with disdain toward blogs, and is presented in a blog. So I am not sure if that is irony or just stupidity. Hold on though, lets check dictionary.com:

n : a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies [syn: web log]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, ©2003 Princeton University

(there were actually two, but I preferred the more concise one)

Would that not describe LiveJournal? And tell me, would a LiveJournal by any other name be any less angst ridden?

What's in a Letter?

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:24:00 GMT

Somehow, in the boredom of waiting for the timer to finish its timing run, I stumbled across a thread on Wikipedia dominated by the internet vs. Internet debate. I would say obviously some people need to find better things to do with their time, but I am apparently no better because I actually read through about half of it, by which time I had gone through several identical argument cycles (cycle where the same people make the same arguments as though they had not just been made at all); so I am no better.

I never even really thought of this as controversial. To me, you capitalize the Internet where we check our mail and browse the web every day, whereas I do not capitalize the internet of computers which sits behind my firewall at home operating semi-autonomously (many such internets exist). Apparently, however, it is controversial to some people.

So I ask the question: what is in a letter? According to Lynne Truss, in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves about punctuation, she mentions that the word "I" in the English language was original capitalized to make it stick out and be more readable. The German language is infinitely more strait forward in its capitalization rules - all nouns are capitalized - and yet even there, there are some funny rules, Sie the formal form of you is capitalized, whereas du the informal you is not. Some languages don't even have capital letters! I wonder what they do with all the free time they have on their hands due to the near const absence of capitalization arguments.

What goes almost unnoticed in the discussion page of the Internet Wikipedia entry is that there is a whole section of the article which is blatantly biased, inappropriate and offensive; not to mention the fact that it violates the neutral point of view policy of the website. This is so typical of Internet discourse. People waste their time arguing the relative merits of emacs vs. vi (I use pico or nano instead, I don't think that harms anyone else) or who would win if the Enterprise took on an Imperial Star Destroyer (I am pretty sure both are fictional). Surprisingly enough, which type of ship would win usually has a lot to do with which one the author finds most aesthetically or artistically pleasing (ie. is a fan of).

It is so easy to forget that there are actual problems confronting our society. It isn't really an Internet phenomenon either. As a nation we were so caught up in the President's penis, and debating whether he should be impeached, that we totally didn't notice that the "bad guys" were sneaking up on us. Oops. Too political.

Rumor

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 16:16:00 GMT

It seems to be the case that the best way to start a rumor is to deny it. In Wag the Dog the White House denies the rumors about a non existent bomber in order to get the press to start flapping their gums about said non existent bomber that they hadn't even heard about until the press statement was made about the non existent bomber. I wonder though: is the media really that smart?

So as I am writing this I am still trying to decide what kind of rumor I should spread by denying it. The Internet is fantastic for this sort of thing. I am pretty sure that I want my rumor to be untrue, so this here Internet will be the perfect place to spread my rumor. I was reading strategies for lying in an article once and I can remember some of the advice it gave.

Firstly, if you can, lie to someone you do not know well. When people lie, it alters their behavior subconsciously. Someone who knows you well is more likely to pick up on this than someone who does not. If you cannot choose the person you need to lie to, you should lie through proxy. Tell a third person your lie, who doesn't know you as well in such a way that they will tell your intended target. Since they will believe the lie, your target will be less likely to pick up on it. This is why presidents have press secretaries. If you absolutely must lie directly to someone you know well, you should do it in such a way as to reduce extraneous input in the message. By lying to a person over the phone the other person cannot see your face and will not be able to pick up on the visual subconscious behaviors indicative of lying. There are actually some universal subconscious behaviors that people have when they are lying, which are hard to avoid unless you are a trained actor. People tend to arch their eyebrows, for example when they lie. Even better than lying over the phone though, is to lie in written communication. Which bring us to the Internet and why it is so easy to lie on the Internet.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to monger about.

I Like

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:45:00 GMT

I like journals with pretty pictures.

Is that wrong?

Administrative

Tue, 23 Nov 2004 01:31:00 GMT

I am thinking about moving The Twilight Report to LiveJournal. The new URL is/will be:

twilight.wdlabs.com

There are a number of advantages to this, including, but not limited to:

It will be more reliable, and will contain no advertising.
When I post entries to my blog at funny hours of the night it won't screw up the dates of existing entries because of a bug in the time zone compensation code.(*)
It has security features which allows my friends to read protected entries, while keeping all you stalkers out.(**)
My blog won't invariably turn into a game of PacMan.(***)

The truth is, however, I can't ask you guys to setup a LiveJournal just to read my random musings, because they are random, and only somewhat amusing, and if you are anything like me you are busy people. If, however, you already happen to have a LiveJournal account, add me as a friend there, and I will more thank likely add you back. My user name is plicease and once again, the URL is:

twilight.wdlabs.com

One other thing: If you are reading this rubbish and you still haven't said hi, please do so. I don't bite.

(*) I just made up the name of this bug, but it seems like a good explanation for it.
(**) Not that I've even had any stalkers since college, and even then they were more like pet stalkers.
(***) I do have to admit that I do enjoy playing the classics, but PacMan is not a mail client.

Arizona Fish Story : A Life Less Serious

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:18:00 GMT

phone woke me up. reporter daily star. "it's three o'clock morning" i moaned. parts of speach difficult. photographer. desire photographs taken. for interview. vaguely remember reporter from yesterday. mitch gitman. acknowledge affirmative. roll out of bed. stagger bathroom, drench self healing power of hot water. My eyes begin to see objects a little more distinctly and my memory is coming back on line. Yesterday a reporter had interviewed me about the Dorm network "ResComp" or as I like to refer to it "ResInComp." I turn the water off and start to towel off. I had directed him in the direction of an acquaintance Fydor and my friend Tyler, because they were like minded Internet Dorm Dwellers. Mitch had just called me up to ask if they could photograph me using the Internet.

I wonder why he called me up this early as I walk back into my room, when I notice that it is awfully bright in my room for 3:00am. I squint at my alarm clock and hit it with a clenched fist. It changes to 8:14am, which I assume means it is actually 8:04am, since I always set the thing ten minutes fast.

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hide your license plate Grover

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:21:00 GMT

hide your license plate Grover

I am not sure why I find this amusing. Can someone explain to me the spam that would accompany this subject line? More Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by spam subject lines!