Archive for June, 2004

2004.06.15

Alternate History Blog

If you’re ever stuck for ideas of how to mangle history, this is the site for you. It’s the Alternate History Blog and it’s author, Robbie Taylor, has some wonderful ideas. Here’s the alternative history of June 3rd as an example:

Holy British Empire Founded

in 899, Pope Pius III met with King Arthur of Britain and declared him to be God’s Apostle on earth. He crowned him Pope Arthur I, abdicating his own position, and Arthur renamed his kingdom the Holy British Empire. It included many disparate areas of Europe at its beginning, but by Arthur’s death in 932, it stretched from Scotland to the Italian boot.

in 1602, Francis Bacon’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed for the royal court. Shortly thereafter, Bacon is arrested and charged with witchcraft; after a personal meeting with the crown, he is freed.

in 1864, the Union’s loss at Cold Harbor spells the end of their efforts to bring back the rebel Confederate States. Within a year, the two countries begin their long, uneasy cold war that only ends with reunification in 1999.

in 1902, the Vidalia Eddie is introduced. The Vidalia has a small movie screen on it that allows the user to see the output of the Vidalia prior to printing it. This innovation rocks the world and spells the end of Edison’s French competitors, who cannot match this technological advance.

in 1965, Major Ed White becomes the first American to walk in space. Unfortunately, he also became the first American to die in space when he was captured by the aliens.

in 1989, the Communist government of China began unravelling as the rebellion in Tiananman Square expanded to the streets of Beijing. By the fall, the entire province was in open revolt, with many military units coming over to the rebel side.

I really hope he continues with material as strong as he’s demonstrated!

2004.06.12

R.I.P.

When I was young and in Boy Scouts it was impressed on me that when we left a camp site we left it in better condition than when we left it.

Like him or hate him, overall President Ronald Reagan left the world a better place than when he arrived. How much better will be up for debate for a long time and I’m not going into it here.

Goodbye, Mr. President.

2004.06.09

Blosxom Themes

There has been much confusion regarding the theme plugin and its installation and usage. I hope here to explain as clearly as possible for newcomers how to install, configure, use and create themes for their sites. This article will show how to install, configure and create themes (a basic HTML theme in this article) using the theme plugin and a text editor. Read the rest of this entry…

2004.06.09

Latin Characters

This site has an interesting animation showing the origin and changes of the Latin alphabet over time. It’s a good study in how to modify your artificial writing systems in a realistic manner. The main page has many other script evolutions, including Cyrillic, Arabic, and the original Phoenician based on Proto-Sinaitic characters (though the animations aren’t as involved as the Latin).

2004.06.08

Lemony Snicket Trailer Online

You can see the Lemony Snicket trailer for the movie online here. The official movie site (read: marketing schlok) is here. There’s actually a few amusing bits there. I’m nervously excited about the movie; I love the books so I’m desperately afraid Hollywood will do what they often do and destroy a perfectly good thing. I think mistake number one was casting a well known actor in any role in the movie… Jim Carrey.

Anyways, if you’re out cruising the web anyways you might as well go visit the official Lemony Snicket website. There are a few gems there, including this card that I printed out and gave to friends last year…

2004.06.07

Yamagata Ishikaru

A long time ago the place I work was on a ccMail system. Every week one of us would have to stay late and run maintenance scripts and every week we would send out an email to the company declaring that they needed to log off mail so we could run this.

The message was always the same, copied and pasted over time without change. No one read it. I decided -and was later “talked to” about- to add stuff to the standard message, wrapping it in the story of Yamagata Ishikaru, a Japanese businessman who accidently recieves these emails and is confused and paranoid about them. At first no one noticed, then a few people noticed, then there was a cult following of these messages I was sending out.

I’ll see if i can dig up the original messages, but I did find this one, the final release just before getting “the talk” I mentioned.

Yamagata Ishikaru stares at the screen. What does the new message mean? The previous message from this company said something about maintenance of mail servers. This one about toast. He wonders… does it have deeper meaning? A quick search on the internet reveals this result:

Information Terrorism: Can You Trust Your Toaster?

Ishikaru’s eyes pop! He starts to sweat. He starts to get paranoid. Are they after him? Is it a plan to attack him? Recruit him?

His eyes flick to the space that used to be his outside window before they (who?) bricked it up. Is a microphone hidden in the mortar? A camera in the light fixture? He asks his secretary to bring him water. It is brought on a tray with a napkin and a slice of lemon. Is it poisoned? He decides not to drink it.

Instead he decides to reply to the with this carefully constructed message:

Please do send toaster to your coworker Doug. It is certain he will enjoy more than I. I previously have toaster at home, at work, and in auto and still have in these places. I will now buy one toaster for everyone I know. Your generous offer is my inspiration. Please take no offense: I refuse the gift. Give it to the Doug and he will be happy.

Thank you,

Ishikaru Yamagata

Yamagata Ishikaru smiles thinking this “Doug” is in for a big suprise…

As I find the other messages (some of them with secret codes even!) I will post them here…

2004.06.05

Mischief Managed

Just got back from seeing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Loved it. The Dementors were amazingly creepy, the werewolf was scary powerful, and I want that Marauder’s Map. The actors playing Harry, Ron and Hermione are performing much better. Even Daniel Radcliffe’s eye twitch is gone; a small detail but one I always thought distracting. The art direction was rich and deep. I’m sure seeing it on the IMAX screen at the Metreon helped bring out a lot of the detail you just won’t be able to see on smaller screens.

I haven’t gatherer all my thoughts together to express them fully, but I am happy with the film, the development of characters, and hope and pray that when they release the DVD they follow the Lord of the Rings and release an extended version.

2004.06.04

Mook on the Drums

Mookee bought a drum set so now we’re not looking for a drummer… of course he’ll have to sort out how to actually play. I don’t think he’s too skilled at coordinating his hands and feet, at least not yet, but that will come with time.

2004.06.03

Thirty Five

Today I am thirty five. I actually had to think about the number because I stopped keeping track a couple years ago. Much like I stopped really paying attention to birthdays a long time ago. I think the last birthday I actually paid attention to and really cared about was when I turned eleven. 11 years… I was a true teen at that point!

The other birthday of any significance that I paid attention to was when I turned twenty five, and only because someone phrased it as a quarter of a century. I wrote an entry to my sister for her 25th last year (private section; password required) which paraphrased my observations from then:

it’s the cutting point. absolutely no more youth. time to go, time to do, time to start making dreams into reality.

i can’t explain how i feel this moment. it’s not so humungous a feat to have attained my twenty fifth year; all i had to do was keep myself alive. others have made a bigger deal of it than i have. yet it’s like walking through the door you’ve just discovered. it’s like finally asking the question, and knowing the answer is there if you look. it’s like an airplane taking off. once it touches off you know there’s nothing to stop you from going to your destination.

so i celebrated -if you can call it a celebration- by eating at a chinese restaurant and then going through more than my share of jack daniels.

Anyways, I’m signing off for now. It’s time for food!

2004.06.03

“Organic” Foods?

Pardon me for being ignorant, but I take umbrage to the use of the word “organic” to denote food grown or raised without chemical (fertilizers, antibiotics, etc) help. The word has been usurped by marketers catering to those who probably have the best intentions towards the environment and their own personal health but are just as easily manipulated as trailer trash being told twinkies are good for them because they’ve got shelf life.

The word organic, as recently as 1997, had nothing to do with food. As recently as 1997 the marketer’s definition of organic was not in the dictionary. See Dictionary.com and scroll to the bottom you can see Princeton University’s definition. The closest we get to the marketer’s definition is number two, “of or relating to or derived from living organisms.”

I think it’s laudable (sometimes laughable) that so-called organic foods are called “organic” when it just means originating from carbon based life, which is everyone. I’m organic, you’re organic, we’re all organic together. You don’t see me saying, “Hey, that baby is organic. I wonder how he’d taste broiled with basil?” They should have called it “chemical free” or chem-free for short. They could even marketize it to Kemfree since marketers hate correct spelling and love to cram words together.

Imagine a world where we eat Kemfree steak and potatoes, or Kemfree steamed veggies on a bed of Kemfree wild rice. It’s all organic but then so is your toenail.

Looking forward to the extermination of all marketers… Maybe we can turn them into the other (Kemfree) white meat and feed the hungry of this world.