Anyway, the real reason I brought all this up is to show you this image, which demonstrates pretty effectively the idea of black math:
I think I speak for us all when I say that that is probably the best Garfield cartoon I've ever seen.
Wednesday, September 6
Garfield meets Black Math
One of Charlie Stross' series, the Laundry books, is in the horror genre. Of course, it has a representatively Strossian twist: in that universe, the incantations required to bridge the gap between our world and the Ones Where The Demons Are take the form of mathematics. There are equations that can drive you insane; thoughts that, when you have them, your head becomes a conduit for Evil. It's an extension of the forbidden-knowledge meme, and it has all the standard trappings thereof; when it's well done, that meme drives the horror stories that I find most creepy. And Stross does do it well.
Anyway, the real reason I brought all this up is to show you this image, which demonstrates pretty effectively the idea of black math:
I think I speak for us all when I say that that is probably the best Garfield cartoon I've ever seen.
Anyway, the real reason I brought all this up is to show you this image, which demonstrates pretty effectively the idea of black math:
I think I speak for us all when I say that that is probably the best Garfield cartoon I've ever seen.
Friday, August 4
Lightning Strikes in Toronto
This incredible photograph makes me miss Toronto. Using my powers of triangulation, I was able to determine from the satellite images at Google Maps that the photographer was at the high-rise on the northeast corner of Bay and Edward.
Thursday, June 29
This is why Friendster and Orkut and all those other FoaF services don't work.
Because we have Real Social Networks already; we're homo sapiens sapiens and that particular ape is very good at tracking social relationships all by itself.
Monday, June 26
On the naming of Sports Teams
I know someone who simply cannot grasp the modern naming style of certain sports teams. Oilers, Hurricanes, Penguins, even Maple Leafs she can understand - on these teams such as these, each player is a single "senator," a "knickerbocker," or perhaps a "Red Sock." The team is therefore collectively called the Giants or the Jets or the Argonauts or what have you.
But these basketball team names really confuse her. The Miami Heat? Heat is singular! How can many players form a team called a "heat?" What is a "heat" anyway? Same thing with the Utah Jazz or the Orlando Magic. These teams should be called the Miami Heat Sources or the Orlando Magicians or the Utah... uh, Jazz Musicians.
These modern-sounding American-style names really confuse foreign ears too. When Major League Soccer was founded in the United States back in 1993, many of the teams had wacky names such as the Kansas City Wiz (later the Wizards) or the San Jose Clash (later the Earthquakes). According to the Wiki article, these name changes occured to lure more traditional-minded Hispanic soccer fans to the league. Witness the Dallas Burn (hunh?), which became FC Dallas in 2005. FC stands for Futból Club, a naming convention popular among many Latin and European teams.
Letting the popular masses name a sports team may not always be a good idea. The Toronto Raptors started their first season in 1995, but well before that, the organization held a contest within the city to name the new NBA expansion team. Jurassic Park was the movie-du-jour at the time, so instead of receving a name that reflected Toronto's rich botanical or avian diversity (as its hockey and baseball teams respectively do), the basketball team was named after a species of dinosaur popularized in a Michael Crichton adaptation.
I guess it's all for the best. You can guess what the Toronto Raptors would be called if they had been founded this year: The "Toronto Snakes on a Plane." I can just picture the logo.
But these basketball team names really confuse her. The Miami Heat? Heat is singular! How can many players form a team called a "heat?" What is a "heat" anyway? Same thing with the Utah Jazz or the Orlando Magic. These teams should be called the Miami Heat Sources or the Orlando Magicians or the Utah... uh, Jazz Musicians.
These modern-sounding American-style names really confuse foreign ears too. When Major League Soccer was founded in the United States back in 1993, many of the teams had wacky names such as the Kansas City Wiz (later the Wizards) or the San Jose Clash (later the Earthquakes). According to the Wiki article, these name changes occured to lure more traditional-minded Hispanic soccer fans to the league. Witness the Dallas Burn (hunh?), which became FC Dallas in 2005. FC stands for Futból Club, a naming convention popular among many Latin and European teams.
Letting the popular masses name a sports team may not always be a good idea. The Toronto Raptors started their first season in 1995, but well before that, the organization held a contest within the city to name the new NBA expansion team. Jurassic Park was the movie-du-jour at the time, so instead of receving a name that reflected Toronto's rich botanical or avian diversity (as its hockey and baseball teams respectively do), the basketball team was named after a species of dinosaur popularized in a Michael Crichton adaptation.
I guess it's all for the best. You can guess what the Toronto Raptors would be called if they had been founded this year: The "Toronto Snakes on a Plane." I can just picture the logo.
Sunday, June 25
Dayvan Cowboy
Is it fitting that one of the best instrumental minimalist electronic tracks of all time should have the best video?
Yes.
Yes.
Wednesday, June 21
Friday, June 16
Don't sound stupid.
Stop using comma splices.
Geez, Academy of Linguistic Awareness! Either of these would have worked:
Now your cover is blown, and your chances of affecting a perfectly good cause are shot.
(via boingboing)
P.S.
This is sadly similar to Stephen Notley's attempt to correct society's greivous apostrophe errors. (He of Bob the Angry Flower fame.) He publishes this insanely brilliant, popular, and world-altering strip:
Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, you Idiots
But then he blows his cover with this one.
Worlds
He mistakenly thinks that the name of the competition, the "World's" is incorrectly pluralized, when in fact it is simply the World's Gymnastics Competetion or something like that. There are no multiple "worlds" participating.
To be fair, he fessed up to his error in the annotations of the printed book, and he more than made up for it with a series of other linguistic propaganda leaflets such as this one:
Bob's Quick Guide to French, you Idiots
P.P.S. The "Acadamy [sic] of Linguistic Awareness" is a satirical group. Notice the spelling errors in their poster, not to mention their name. Is the comma splice intentional? I don't know, but one thing is certain: people should stop saying "like" so often.
Geez, Academy of Linguistic Awareness! Either of these would have worked:
Don't sound stupid; stop saying like.
Don't sound stupid. Stop saying like.
Now your cover is blown, and your chances of affecting a perfectly good cause are shot.
(via boingboing)
P.S.
This is sadly similar to Stephen Notley's attempt to correct society's greivous apostrophe errors. (He of Bob the Angry Flower fame.) He publishes this insanely brilliant, popular, and world-altering strip:
Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, you Idiots
But then he blows his cover with this one.
Worlds
He mistakenly thinks that the name of the competition, the "World's" is incorrectly pluralized, when in fact it is simply the World's Gymnastics Competetion or something like that. There are no multiple "worlds" participating.
To be fair, he fessed up to his error in the annotations of the printed book, and he more than made up for it with a series of other linguistic propaganda leaflets such as this one:
Bob's Quick Guide to French, you Idiots
P.P.S. The "Acadamy [sic] of Linguistic Awareness" is a satirical group. Notice the spelling errors in their poster, not to mention their name. Is the comma splice intentional? I don't know, but one thing is certain: people should stop saying "like" so often.
Tuesday, June 6
They Lied To Us
This was supposed to be the future apocalypse.
Where is myjetpack river of blood,
Where are myrobotic companions locusts,
Where are mydinner in pill form boils,
Where is mynuclear-powered levitating house Earth rent asunder?
(thanks, The Bishop Of Turkey.)
Where is my
Where are my
Where are my
Where is my
(thanks, The Bishop Of Turkey.)
Monday, June 5
The Cost
Schneier points out a Solzhenitsyn quote from Cancer Ward, and it got me thinking. (Thanks, James.)
As one of the comments says, there's a cost to everything nowadays. We're richer now, as a society, than anyone has ever been at any time. We have more than enough food, we have warmth and safety in the dead of winter, we have a say in our government, we have rich, soft clothes, we have entertainment, we have long lives, we know an incredible amount about how our world works, and those of us sufficiently 'net-savvy as to be reading this blog have access to the almost all of that knowledge. But there's a cost! We paid for our food with environmental degradation. We paid for our warmth with the creation of dams, and the exploitation of fossil fuels. We paid for our freedom of goverment with the requirement for eternal vigilance thereof. We paid for our soft clothes with the time and energy it takes to keep up with fashion. We paid for our entertainment with advertisments selling us things we don't need. We paid for our knowledge with immense amount of wasted effort pursuing ultimately worthless ideas, and lastly but certainly not leastly we paid for the internet with our privacy.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a cost. Most times, we don't even know we're paying it, but we are.
As one of the comments says, there's a cost to everything nowadays. We're richer now, as a society, than anyone has ever been at any time. We have more than enough food, we have warmth and safety in the dead of winter, we have a say in our government, we have rich, soft clothes, we have entertainment, we have long lives, we know an incredible amount about how our world works, and those of us sufficiently 'net-savvy as to be reading this blog have access to the almost all of that knowledge. But there's a cost! We paid for our food with environmental degradation. We paid for our warmth with the creation of dams, and the exploitation of fossil fuels. We paid for our freedom of goverment with the requirement for eternal vigilance thereof. We paid for our soft clothes with the time and energy it takes to keep up with fashion. We paid for our entertainment with advertisments selling us things we don't need. We paid for our knowledge with immense amount of wasted effort pursuing ultimately worthless ideas, and lastly but certainly not leastly we paid for the internet with our privacy.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a cost. Most times, we don't even know we're paying it, but we are.
Friday, June 2
Peter Gabriel
...writes good music. Or at least, he did on Us and So, the two albums of his I recently got in a fit of "hey, I remember liking that stuff in high school". It's like getting two more Dave Matthews albums for free! (OK not really, but they're similar enough that someone who doesn't listen to either at all might confuse them.)
I'd never really listened to his stuff all the way through before. I mean, sure, it's been on while I was over at people's houses, so it all seemed vaguely familiar (or is that just that all his songs sound the same?) but now, I'm actually listening to it. Amazing how long it takes to (re)discover some things.
I'd never really listened to his stuff all the way through before. I mean, sure, it's been on while I was over at people's houses, so it all seemed vaguely familiar (or is that just that all his songs sound the same?) but now, I'm actually listening to it. Amazing how long it takes to (re)discover some things.
Friday, May 19
Thursday, May 4
The Meme of Ten
Life is random, at least for the next ten tracks. Here we go.
1. The Zutons - Moons and Horror Shows
Oh thank heavens I got the one good Zutons track. I'm a big Album Person - I prefer to listen to whole albums in one sitting rather than one single at a time. Who Killed the Zutons? is on my iPod in its entirety despite the fact that I only like one or two of its tracks. This is one of them. Catchy!
2. Tea Party - Shadows on the Mountainside
Edges of Twilight. Now there is an album. Fraxas and I had an interesting conversation about it a while back, which I'll quote in the comments.
3. The Chromatics - Doppler Shifting
I have always been a huge fan of science-themed acapella. Finding it is tough. Thanks, Jeremy!
4. RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
Is this Rock? hip-hop? Dance? Electronica? Who cares. I like it.
5. Cello Suite I in G Major by J.S. Bach, Edgar Meyer, Unaccompanied Cello Suites on Double Bass
As a lapsed bass player, I enjoy listening to ridiculous acts of virtuosity that hardly sound like they could have been performed by a human being. Oh wait, no, that only depresses me.
6. Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows
Hey, there's Bono of U2 covering a Leonard Cohen song in a trailer. Leonard Cohen is probably the only buddhist monk to ever write a song that Bono covers, which is a strange distinction indeed.
7. The Odds - Domesticated Blind
Finally, my iPod takes me to a song I've never really listened to before, which is odd (no pun in ten did!). I'll pay attention now.
Hmm. Clever lyrics, jangly retro tune, what's not to like? Next.
8. Boards of Canada - ROYGBIV
The bright, sinuous airiness of this track is what launched me on a Boards of Canada obsession. It's a perfect 2-minute morsel of music that solidly anchors rest of the album Music has the Right to Children, which otherwise consists of fleeting, fragmented melodic structures that play patty-cake with your brain.
9. The Roots - Distortion to Static
Okay. This is from a playlist that a friend put together for me. I have only recently started to discover hip-hop, so I'll try to sound off on this track without sounding maximally lame. It is - how you say? Fresh. Its qualities are not what you would call "whack" at all, as far as I can tell.
10. Rondellus - Rotae Confusionis
This is from this album, a bunch of very authentically delivered medieval-style latin-language covers of Black Sabbath songs.
1. The Zutons - Moons and Horror Shows
Oh thank heavens I got the one good Zutons track. I'm a big Album Person - I prefer to listen to whole albums in one sitting rather than one single at a time. Who Killed the Zutons? is on my iPod in its entirety despite the fact that I only like one or two of its tracks. This is one of them. Catchy!
2. Tea Party - Shadows on the Mountainside
Edges of Twilight. Now there is an album. Fraxas and I had an interesting conversation about it a while back, which I'll quote in the comments.
3. The Chromatics - Doppler Shifting
I have always been a huge fan of science-themed acapella. Finding it is tough. Thanks, Jeremy!
4. RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
Is this Rock? hip-hop? Dance? Electronica? Who cares. I like it.
5. Cello Suite I in G Major by J.S. Bach, Edgar Meyer, Unaccompanied Cello Suites on Double Bass
As a lapsed bass player, I enjoy listening to ridiculous acts of virtuosity that hardly sound like they could have been performed by a human being. Oh wait, no, that only depresses me.
6. Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows
Hey, there's Bono of U2 covering a Leonard Cohen song in a trailer. Leonard Cohen is probably the only buddhist monk to ever write a song that Bono covers, which is a strange distinction indeed.
7. The Odds - Domesticated Blind
Finally, my iPod takes me to a song I've never really listened to before, which is odd (no pun in ten did!). I'll pay attention now.
Hmm. Clever lyrics, jangly retro tune, what's not to like? Next.
8. Boards of Canada - ROYGBIV
The bright, sinuous airiness of this track is what launched me on a Boards of Canada obsession. It's a perfect 2-minute morsel of music that solidly anchors rest of the album Music has the Right to Children, which otherwise consists of fleeting, fragmented melodic structures that play patty-cake with your brain.
9. The Roots - Distortion to Static
Okay. This is from a playlist that a friend put together for me. I have only recently started to discover hip-hop, so I'll try to sound off on this track without sounding maximally lame. It is - how you say? Fresh. Its qualities are not what you would call "whack" at all, as far as I can tell.
10. Rondellus - Rotae Confusionis
This is from this album, a bunch of very authentically delivered medieval-style latin-language covers of Black Sabbath songs.
metareview: The Onion AV Club "savages" the "summer" "movies"
The Onion's ridiculously highbrow lowbrow highbrow ironic AV Club has a feature on summer movies. It's run-of-the-mill fare for them, but it did have this gem:
When you think about it, that's actually surprisingly widely relevant advice.
Suggested alternate activity: Dressing up as Depp's character [from the new Pirates of the Carribean movie], saying 'Arrrr' a lot, quoting the first film extensively, taking a long, deep look in the mirror and admitting you live a sad and lonely life."
When you think about it, that's actually surprisingly widely relevant advice.
Tuesday, May 2
Back On The Wagon
My name's Fraxas, and I'm an addict. I've been clean for 2 days now. I still think about it all the time; sometimes, I even talk about it. I know I had some good times while I was using, I know the use let me discover things about myself I couldn't have found out any other way -- and they weren't all bad things. I learned about loyalty, I learned about teamwork, I learned about mastery, I learned about conflict resolution, and about perseverance.
But it hurt me, too. I'd use and use and use, trying to fill that void in my life, succeeding in the short run but failing in the long. I lost a lot of sleep. I lost some friends. I got a lot worse at my job. I almost lost my relationship with my wife.
And that's why I quit Everquest 2.
This isn't the developer's fault, any more than alcoholics can blame Diageo. This isn't the media's fault, this isn't anyone's fault but my own. I'm flawed, have always been flawed, in that computer games suck me in and entrance me more effectively than anything else I know of. It seems silly to admit this; after all, "video game addiction" is still pretty fringe as a concept, and I'm not sure it holds water as a Real Psychological Condition rather than a character flaw. But it's a useful metaphor if nothing else.
I've tried to get over thispastime hobby problem before, taking periodic breaks and switching flavours of poison every once in a while, but ultimately they're all the same. All these slow-advancement, highly-social, highly-time-dependent games trigger the same pathological behaviours in me. So I have to stop them all, or accept the life my flaws force on me when I play MMOs.
And I'm not willing to lose any more of my best years to any game, no matter how good it is.
But it hurt me, too. I'd use and use and use, trying to fill that void in my life, succeeding in the short run but failing in the long. I lost a lot of sleep. I lost some friends. I got a lot worse at my job. I almost lost my relationship with my wife.
And that's why I quit Everquest 2.
This isn't the developer's fault, any more than alcoholics can blame Diageo. This isn't the media's fault, this isn't anyone's fault but my own. I'm flawed, have always been flawed, in that computer games suck me in and entrance me more effectively than anything else I know of. It seems silly to admit this; after all, "video game addiction" is still pretty fringe as a concept, and I'm not sure it holds water as a Real Psychological Condition rather than a character flaw. But it's a useful metaphor if nothing else.
I've tried to get over this
And I'm not willing to lose any more of my best years to any game, no matter how good it is.
Sunday, April 30
Wednesday, April 26
If it looks like mastery and it smells like mastery, it's probably mastery
The fine folks at eGullet show us how to sharpen a knife.
In mind-crushing, fifteen-thousand-word detail, getting into math, specializing knives for different jobs, and the various theoretical disputes still extant in the field of knife geekery.
cool!
In mind-crushing, fifteen-thousand-word detail, getting into math, specializing knives for different jobs, and the various theoretical disputes still extant in the field of knife geekery.
cool!
Monday, April 24
not dead, just....resting.
Recent interesting things: I received for my birthday (which was recent) 4 killer old games -- Fallout 1&2, Planescape: Torment, and something else that I can't remember. I have started playing two of them. I have made some progress in them. No super-mindblowing moments yet though. I also got Oblivion and Stubbs The Zombie and (oh god) the hardware to run them well. So what did I do with the New Machine Of Hotness?
yeah, you know it.
Everquest 2, all day and all night.
Since it's still vaguely (vaguely? who am I kidding? DEEPLY) shameful to admit you play One Of Those Games, I haven't been posting much. After all, do you really care that I now I have a 70 Coercer on Lucan Dlere, and that my guild Transcendance is running a Mark of Awakening raid this coming weekend? 68+. Bring your Mental resist gear.
Ahem.
yeah, you know it.
Everquest 2, all day and all night.
Since it's still vaguely (vaguely? who am I kidding? DEEPLY) shameful to admit you play One Of Those Games, I haven't been posting much. After all, do you really care that I now I have a 70 Coercer on Lucan Dlere, and that my guild Transcendance is running a Mark of Awakening raid this coming weekend? 68+. Bring your Mental resist gear.
Ahem.
Thursday, March 30
A short, sweet nugget from a founder of Brunching Shuttlecocks
Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg of brunching fame is writing a regular collum for Wired online. I will quote from this week's entry, which contains a high density of truth.
I have no idea what he's talking about, not being a huge gamer myself, but dang if that doesn't sound fun.
3. More Grav GunsLet's be honest here, game developers. There are maybe three of you who are working on new game ideas. The rest of you are just combining turn-based sandbox squad shooters with extreme sports party RPGs and wrapping it all in a Shrek license. I know you rip off all your ideas, you know you rip off all your ideas, so let's get down to it: Rip off the Grav Gun from Half-Life 2. I just got a chance to try out Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and it was not only like finding God, it was like finding God in an inexpensive but excellent Asian-food restaurant that always has a table open. Now I require the ability to throw a toilet at my enemies in every single video game in existence, including the Bible quiz games. Especially Bible quiz games.
Monday, March 27
Friday, March 24
What You Really Own
In his most recent blogpost, Raymond Chen thirdhands an expression I now fourthhand to you:
And the same thing goes for data, we just don't all know it yet.
you don't really own anything you can't carry at a dead run while firing an AK-47 over your shoulder.Ha ha, we think; how glib. But what about data? One thing you can carry at a dead run while firing an AK-47 over your shoulder is passwords, and the mobile phone in your pocket -- you know, the one with more compute power and local storage than the entire WORLD 35 years ago -- probably doesn't slow you down that much. Not to mention the fact that, as long as the war you're in the middle of isn't global, you probably have some safe (virtual) place to store a bunch more bits. Greg Papadopoulos, in a spiel I attended, made the analogy between data storage and money storage. Nowadays, it's totally obvious that the safest place for your retirement nest egg is a bank and not your mattress. But not only was that not always the case in the past, but it took people's perception a bit of time to catch up to the reality that yes, banks are safer. Not always more convenient, but safer. And the money's no less yours for you not having actual specie in your posession.
And the same thing goes for data, we just don't all know it yet.
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