Book of the Moment: Against the Tide
Once again taking a break from Wicked I cracked open Against the Tide. This book is the third in John Ringo's Council Wars mythos. In Emerald Sea Ringo set up a large series of dominoes as its characters wove together the foundation for a continental navy. In Against the Tide he immediately starts the domino chain reaction only to find that there were flaws in the chain and the naval forces suffer a huge defeat, partly to have the fun of repairing this navy and re-readying for a second try.
The Bingo Hall Murders (Beware, Old Lady)
I got this made up refrain stuck in my head the other day in the shower and decided to write a couple verses around it. The rhyming works pretty well, but the rhythm is a bit odd. I can sing a crappy version of it, which is all that counts, I guess.
The Bingo Hall Murders
She was jealous and she was outraged She hadn't won a dime She was tired of hearing, "Maybe next time?" That night's big fat winner Was the late Mrs. Jane Who had a broken hip and walked with a cane Her jealousy grew and set fire to Her And with that her thoughts turned to Murder They found the body late the next day Poor Mrs. Jane beaten by her cane Refrain: Beware, Old Lady, The next time you go, When someone shouts out "Bingo!" Warning! Lookout! For of that person, it might be the last thing you know The police had too many suspects For their old Ms. Doe They needed more leads to hunt this foe The case was left open They had not a clue Even after the finding of crazy Mrs. Rue They found her in their own parking lot Lying in a pile of her own bingo spots The police warned all the Halls They said to take care, For this was neither a hoax nor a scare [Refrain] They say She went across the country From Hall to Hall Sweeping her gaze from Wall to Wall The winner those nights Was not a winner for long That's why I'm singing this awful song So that the next game of Bingo You just might know That the person beside you Just might be Her So be prepared and be aware... [Refrain]
Of Mice and Dudes
Lebowski Fest was indeed fun. I went to the Friday night concert (They Might Be Giants) and enjoyed it. I also stood out in the heat and humidity for 3 hours at the Saturday Garden Party manning the "Marmot Fling" game. I was introduced to Lucky Pineapple, which was a fun local band.
On an entirely different subject, my mouse "friend" is back. I believed I had heard him several times several months back, but didn't find any exacting proof. This time I've watched him the past couple of nights. He's pretty big, and as far as I can tell he doesn't exactly live in my room, he simply uses it as a favorite shortcut... He runs in from the closet (which is connected to the next room as well as the hallway) and into this particular hole in the wall. As far as I can tell, though, the hole is a mere passageway for him, as there aren't any obvious signs of a nest (and I obviously can't make out his body). However, I can't see too far into it. I'm guessing, though, that the nest is somewhere under the floor, actually.
I checked this morning, but the house supply of mouse traps has diminished to the vanishing point, and so I'm going to have to requisition one. Until then I'm just going to keep more of an eye on my food. However, most of my food is in a cabinet, and I believe it is my neighbor that is providing the major source of this stupid mouse's food (hence the running across my room, from the direction of his).
The Slugishness of the Sauna Summer
We've been getting a lot of rain these past few weeks. With 90+ degree (Fahrenheit) weather and a normal river valley tendency towards humidity, walking around the city has felt like living in a sauna. For not being much of a dehumidifier, my wall unit has coped quite well, but as soon as I step out of my room you can feel the city breathing down your neck. It has meant a couple miserable migraines recently, and between them and my wish to do a bit more reading, I've realize that I'm not being all that productive.
Anyway, this weekend should be fun (and appropriate)... The Lebowski Fest Opening Ceremonies are tonight, and I figure I'm going to go. I don't have a ticket, but according to the website they'll have some at the gate, and even if I miss out and there aren't any left tonight's stuff is at the beautiful Waterfront Park, which is cool to just visit anyway.
On the other hand, I do have a ticket for tomorrow's Garden Party, because I'll be volunteering at some booth with some Brothers of mine. I don't think they'll let us in to bowl, though, but I don't know yet who we are actually volunteering for or what sort of tickets we'll be given. The safe bet is that they'll only let us into the Garden Party, and I'll just have to get my bowling urge out somewhere/someday else.
Harry Potter and the Lazy Editor
Cracked open the latest Harry Potter book like millions of other people, and one thing I've noticed (and it is bugging me) is that about every couple pages or so I've been drawn out of the book by an egregious editing mistake. The first is about page 10 with the word "sight" being mispelled "site" and really messing with the grammar of that particular sentence. The most recent that hit me was the word "buffer" that didn't make any sense in the sentence, but which I assumed should have been "duffer". That one I guess could be an american editor unfamiliar with a word used more often in british speech. There were several inbetween. It just bugs me that a good editor should have caught all of this, as most of them break the meaning of the sentences that contain them. I guess the editor(s) were just rushing through the book in order to get it out the door for the publishing deadline.
On Brotherhood and Forgiveness
Let me anti-rant the last rant. Spats happen, but the real test is in getting past them. Every familial relationship can be like that, and that is why we use the word "fraternal", because there's little difference sometimes in the way things can get out of hand between me and my familial brother and me an my fraternal Brothers.
I was a bit harsher than I needed to be, and all I can do is apologize. I have a short fuse, and its a huge problem. On the other hand, I don't hold grudges and I easily forgive. Usually as soon as I commit something like that to paper I forget it. I can only hope that others are as forgiving of my short fuse. This particular time, I let things snowball beyond the point of easy return, and that's my problem in how I reacted. I can only try to do better.
I was also told that a particularly harsh exageration/hyperbole had been left in the post I left, which I had mistakenly thought I had already removed. All I can do is apologize. I don't remove posts, but I will reedit them, and I've done that tonight. Apparently I pissed off a lot more people than I intended to. My intent is never to piss people off, and I hope people can accept that. If I piss you off, come talk to me or email me. (...and yes I realize that I myself am human and sometimes fail to take that advice.) Realize that I'm an open book; I won't lie, and I'll answer anything I am asked. In this particular instance I had used a nasty stereotype (dirty), when that wasn't were my real anger was and ...
DRAGONzine: The Definitive Collection
Finished uploading DRAGONzine stories. To celebrate I put together DRAGONzine: The Definitive Collection. Now you can purchase the glory that was DRAGONzine in paperback form. Not that I expect anyone is interested, but I'm just amazed that, although somewhat poorly formatted, those few stories I once wrote add up to 198 pages.
Professor Carpworth
Professor Carpworth was a joke gone horribly, horribly serious. Full of bad puns and fish names (it was a phase, what can I say), the Professor solved some of the deepest mysteries in the universe via his deep knowledge and insight into the nature of... color.
Mexican Penguin
More than anything else, Mexican Penguin was the cornerstone of DRAGONzine. It was my first attempt at a novel length work and at releasing a serial work. Because I had written the first couple chapters before I started my DRAGONzine attempt it was guaranteed material to use to pick up slack and fill an issue.
Drupal: Struggles with Source Control
Working on CosmWiki today I hit up a huge problem... making changes to the .module file had no effect. I spent a couple of hours poring through documentation looking for some way to "clear the cache". Lo and behold, and I feel like an idiot, but do to Drupal's module loading system, for some reason it was latching onto one of the copies in my _darcs source control directory. So I re-initted up in the main drupal directory and problem solved. Now I just feel like an idiot for not trying that sooner.
Technical Difficulties
Well, I was an idiot and used the auto-upgrade thing to upgrade. I said I wasn't going to do this the last time I royally messed things up, and this time the shit has hit the fan even harder. Serves me right for attempting to do something at midnight, who knows what I was thinking just now when I clicked the necessary buttons. We just haven't reached the day when web apps can smartly upgrade themselves no matter how much people try to pretend we do. Anyway, I'll work on this stuff tomorrow. In the meantime, my apologies for the semi-working install.
Living 20 Minutes Into the Future
Okay, I've been timeshifting a particular (nearly) 20 year old TV show set "20 Minutes Into the Future". I was 3 when it first aired, but it is just as bitingly satirical now as it was then. In fact, its almost scarier because its easier to be worried that it actually happened 20 minutes in the past and if you turn to CNN you'll find Edison Carter reporting. I'm at least relieved to find that the local cable channel 23 is nothing more dangerous than "QVC", though.
Anyway, I'm slowly going through the "tapes" one by one, in order, and the last two have been particularly good (or bad, really). Security System showed a frightening world where Credit Fraud had become a worse crime than Murder. With the current worries of identity theft and debt consolidation I wonder how far we are from a congressional bill clammoring for higher punishments for Credit Fraud.
War was even more mind numbingly foretelling. Shown four years before the official start of the first Gulf War (not to mention this second one, or Osama bin Ladin), it told the story of a "terrorist" selling his "revolution" to the networks for big ratings. I don't know about anyone else, but I for one sometimes believe that the real war is the one between the 24-hour news channels saying stupid shit.
Drupal: CosmWiki Introduction
For Mythoi.com I wanted a easy to use, powerful, and partitionable (across a taxonomy hierarchy) Wiki engine to mount inside of Drupal. Last week I did the briefest amount of work getting acquainted with the Drupal API (via DrupalDocs). With DrupalDocs down today I was resorting to Vim searches and the Drupal chatroom.
Today I got some good prototypes started on the main UI for the wiki. I created it to respond to wiki/ and wiki/edit/ paths. The first attempts to load the proper node based on the title and the second attempts to edit/create it. So far the only thing I've ascertained works correctly is that without a proper node reference the wiki/Some/Page will display a message saying that no such page yet exists and if the user has the proper access rights it will display a link to the wiki/edit/Some/Page. A small start, obviously, but a good foundation for the next pieces. Here's what I need to do:
- I need to implement cosmwiki_admin() so that the admin can select the "cosm vocabulary".
- I need to look into how to connect a slash-delimited path to a term's taxonomy id from the "cosm vocabulary".
- I need to implement hook_node_form() so that I can add the Body and modified taxonomy form (taxonomy form minus the "cosm vocabulary" field).
- I need to implement hook_node_validate() so that I can produce a reasonable error when the user attempts to change the title (since I can't disable the title form field, because it is buried in node_form()).
- I need to implement hook_node_view() for displaying the node.
- I need to implement submission abilities and test form, validation, taxonomy, and display.
- I need to implement hook_filter() for WikiFormatting. I'll probably either "borrow" the existing ...
Louisville Taxis
Louisville taxis are a weird entity. For a city where you can't get almost anywhere without a car, you would think that more people would rely on the taxis, but I've honestly seen more limos in my life in Louisville, than I have taxis. Then, with no taxi commission and no taxi monopoly, everytime you see a taxi it is usually a different company if not a different color.
Now, most cities the taxi drivers tend to drive "ultra native"... that is, they know the cities better than most natives and drive like it. Here, most taxis drive like they just arrived in the city and have no clue where they are going. I think I would trust the buses well before I would trust a taxi in this city.
The other day I saw a real taxi, one that drove better than me, and was amazed. One of the blue taxi companies had actually managed to hire a driver that made me think, "Wow, that guy drives like a taxi driver from any other city".
On Brotherhood and Needless Noise...
7/16/5: I followed up on this. I also made an important wording change that should have been made the first time.
I started an earlier draft of this that was posted in drunken anger for several hours a few weeks ago. I don't think anyone read it, because it was removed upon sobering. Now, sober (albeit somewhat sleep deprived), is just as good a time to revisit this topic as any. This weekend was our summer Brotherhood Retreat and so some of the things we talked about there are fresh on my mind.
I'm entangled in this war of mutual disrespect. A useless battle of ego, perhaps, but my side is fraught with actual consequences. I also feel like I'm being back into a losing corner, and have several times been quite close to doing something drastic.
This person I'm having the feud with thinks he is better than me. He thinks that he magically has control. I've had to make threats to even get him to listen to me. Worse, he has no sense of balance in his use of music (my immediate problem) and alcohol (his long term problem, in my opinion). He's in fact the second worst underage alcoholic I've known, and doing his best to "improve" his ranking. It's a bad college cliche, really, and it appears that he thinks his problematic alcoholism and "partying" makes him better than me. I don't want to get drunk and hang out with the same girls every weekend. Is that really all that anti-social and "uncool"? I'm I turning into just "the old complaining guy"? Personally, I see it more as attempting to better "maintain my self-respect by proper conduct at all times", but then what do ...
Book of the Moment: Only You Can Save Mankind
Taking a break from Wicked (slower reading than I expected; interesting but not 'gripping')... I blew through Volume 2 (The Doll's House) of The Sandman yesterday, and was myself blown away.
I also started headlong into Only You Can Save Mankind. Terry Pratchett (PTerry) is currently the only writer I get emails when his American publisher (HarperCollins) releases a book, and I will be there within a couple of days to pick up my copy. This book marks the first HarperCollins release of Pratchett's decade+ year old Johnny Maxwell trilogy, the first kid's books he wrote. (His later kid's books include The Bromeliad Trilogy and his Discworld kid's books including Carnegie-winner The Amazing Maurice.) His kid's books are always just as enjoyable as his adult works, and usually only differ in length, protagonist age, and humor cleanliness. Only You... seems to prefigure some of his later humor (he loves the pronounce punctuation gag), but also provides an interesting contrast in that it has more of a "science fiction" feel than his later works... you could see this one actually happening in our world.
My biggest gripe is that it is simply too short and there will be a waiting period until the next rerelease. (It was cool to have The Bromeliad Trilogy released in a single volume.)
Nature is Dumb
Woke up a few hours earlier than I meant to due to a cockroach flying on to my head. It was a huge one, so apparently just a loner, probably disturbed by the fences and initial stages of yesterday's construction in our "back yard". I can't figure out why it thought (I guess they don't) my head would be a good place to be. It's a fraternity house, so it's not like it might be all that hard to look for someplace better. Oddly enough, all the problems with mice and squirrels this is the first cockroach I can recall seeing. The thing woke me mostly because it had this awful "rotten grass leaves" smell (and usually I don't dream in smells). I can't seem to get that smell off my hand and it bugs me. I guess the smell means the thing defecated on me... what a beautiful thought for first thing in the morning, eh?
July 5th Barbequeing
First of all, got my A back from German 141. I'm so excited over even such a minute GPA boost. I think I've finally hit the right course and I'm excited and happy with my studies.
CafePress today opened their new Louisville facility, where 80%+ of their production will be moving (millions of made to order products). To celebrate they invited their "shopkeepers" in/near this area for a free barbeque (with free beer) and free shirt. Free food and a t-shirt was enough to entice this college student. In that respect it was well worth it. There was even a tour of what little there is to the facility already, and some info on where it will go. While I was there they even "test shipped" their first products (newly printed posters) from the facility.
I was surprised to find how small and personable the company really was, and met several of the developers today. Not only was this a great networking opportunity, but I met the VP of HR and was told that they were quite interested in developing ties with the University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering and the possibility of hiring a coop for work for on on-hand software needs at their Louisville facility. I've been looking for an unusual coop, and this may just be it... I'll basically be defining the role for those to come, and unlike the last experience I'll be right there (sight, smell, sound) along with the "real work". They seem ready to start the position "now", and I'd be more than willing to jump in this Fall term. (It's the middle/end of the current term and I'm taking classes so starting "now" would be a bit tougher.)
Now I ...
Spelling Reform
Ai wəs sumwæt börd and þəinking əbout þə hard əgli prabləm əf əmerεcan inglεsh speling riform. Such an əgli þəing.
...er... Anyway, playing around with a weird mess of psuedo-IPA. Just goes to show that maybe I should spend more time studying the IPA. It would be cool to get together some group to push for a better standard English spelling. I'm the return of the thorn (Þ, þ) to the language's spelling would be cool, and the schwa (ə) is so often used in American speech patterns that maybe we should adopt it as well.
Happy 3rd Anniversary
Happy Independence Day, Everybody!
Almost hard to believe that today marks the start of the 4th year of me placing content on WorldMaker.net. Probably not an anniversary anyone else sees much gravitas in this anniversary, but each of us has our arbitrary anniversaries.
