Say Weeeeeee!
Ahhhhhh!

Speaking of Which

Speaking of much data, I just rebuilt my PC. Wiped the system drive, repartitioned it, reinstalled Windows XP, Plus! Pack (not sure why I bother... well, the Nature theme is kind of nice), SP1, Mozilla...

Have you noticed that Windows applications these days all like to keep their data in a particular place? That place being C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data.

So your vital information is, by default, stored in a hidden folder on the system disk. This is absurd. Admittedly, most people only have one disk, and only one partition on that disk (not that this is a good idea, just that it's the way things are). But why in Hell's name is my data - my data - automatically hidden from me by the operating system?

Anyway, I told Mozilla that no, my email folders aren't in C:\Documents and Settings\PixyMisa\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\deh0sa9r.slt\Mail any more; they're now in E:\Mail. (Hey, I didn't notice that before! E:\Mail! Haha!)

And the second time I did it, I got it right and it worked. So the next time I have to shoot Windows XP through the head and reinstall, I won't need to backup and restore 4 gigabytes of old email first.

Yeah, 4 gigabytes. See, Steven den Beste was right when he said that there is much data.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:18 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Data, Data Everywhere

Over at USS Clueless, Steven den Beste insists that there is much data.

I wholeheartedly agree. A pox on the data pluralists!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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From the Wires

Slashdot

Oldest Planet Ever Discovered: Hubblesite reports on the discovery of a 13-billion-year-old planet. Imagine the candles on that cake!
TCP Interface for IIgs: GS/TCP is now available to provide standard TCP networking on your Apple IIgs (which runs at a zippy 2.8MHz).
Repel Bugs With Your Cell Phone: Only available in Korea.
Ask Slashdot: Soft Processors in FPGAs: Ever wanted to build your own microprocessor, but lacked a billion-dollar R&D facility? This is for you!

ZDNet

Reviewed: The Magicolor 2300DL colour laser printer. If you don't want a colour laser printer, it's because you've never had the chance to play with one. For speed, reliability and convenience they blow inkjets out of the water. Until recently, they've been too expensive for home use. ZDNet review one of the cheapest models available.

Madville

An interactive tour of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. What more could you ask for?
How about an in-depth discussion of how quicksand works complete with Flash animations?

Kuro5hin

(That's pronounced "corrosion", by the way.)

Copy-controlled CDs: Is the end in sight? I sure hope so. They certainly suck.
The Rise of Stupid Everything: Probably not what you'd expect from the title.

LinuxHardware

Linux on the XBox: All the details on how. Also why.

Designtechnica

Metallica Disses Apple iTunes: Metallica continue to whine. Discerning people continue to not listen to them anyway.

Neowin.net

MP3.com - Bye Bye?: Vivendi has closed the European arm of MP3.com, which they paid 265 million squid for not too long ago. Will the rest of the company follow?

Risks Digest

(The Risks Digest is the web archive of newsgroup comp.risks, the premier source of entertainment information about the risks (potential and actual) of computer systems and other advanced technology.)

Dead-pregnant-men software failure: No, the computer system didn't actually impregnate or kill them. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
The risk of assuming things: The assumption in point being No-one can be that crazy...

Internetnews.com

The WiFi hotspot market ispicking up. Which can only mean that WiFi is set to go bye bye.

Wired News

Yet another bunch of wankers lawyers wankers claim to have an absurdly over-broad patent on basic internet functionality. Can't we just shoot these people?

(Thanks to freshnews.org for their automatic Geek News aggregator.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Plant People from Planet X

Everyone knows that these are the end times. The signs are everywhere: crazed squirrels, giant squid, Frank... The only question is which force of evil is going to do us in first.

Having done my own research, I've come to a different conclusion to many of the recent Apocolypse scholars. After its recent forfeit, Planet X has been relegated to the little league of doom, but I think it's up to something.

First, of course, it's no-show is itself suspicious. No better way to catch your enemy unawares than to not turn up at all!

Second is this news report from... Well, alright, from France:

Pluto, the smallest and most distant planet in our solar system, has revealed a strange phenomenon to astronomers. Instead of shrinking as the planet moves away from the Sun, Pluto's atmosphere has grown bigger.

Bigger, eh? Something funny going on there. And since Pluto is the ninth planet and right next door to Planet X, it's a perfect staging post for their nefarious activities.

The timing is itself ominous:

Unfortunately, neither team will be able to continue their investigation of this strange phenomenon in the near future. Pluto occultations are few and difficult to predict because the planet¹s orbit is not well known.

"There are no further Pluto events this year," says Person. "There are a few candidates coming in the next few years but no certain ones."

So, if it wasn't for this lucky chance, we wouldn't have known anything until too late!

Now we all know where atmospheres come from. That's right, trees. So the next step is to check to see if there have been any reports of trees acting odd. And indeed there have:

Scientists who set out to gauge the impact of urban pollutants on trees have made a surprising discovery — trees planted near New York City's congested mean streets actually grow twice as large as their rural counterparts.

Giant urban-adapted trees! How evil is that!

Fortunately, the researchers discovered the mutant trees' fatal weakness:

Later experiments in controlled settings found the same trees, when exposed to high levels of ozone, indeed grew half as large.

NASA to the Rescue?

The one plan that might help is NASA's Pluto fly-by mission, called New Horizons, which has been pencilled in, then cancelled, on a number of occasions. Currently this is due to launch during 2006, encountering Pluto about a decade later.

Clearly what we need to do is equip this baby with an Ozone Bomb and wipe out the Plutonian Mutant Tree Menace for good.

I urge all my readers to write to their congresscritters today in support of NASA's bold plan.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Frank Frank Frank

Susie will probably afflict me with a plague of frogs unless I mention this Frank person. Apparently he has a blog.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:52 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Everybody's Doing It!

1. Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it?

Isaac Asimov.

2. What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so fucking good?

What, one book? Uh... John Barnes' One for the Morning Glory. It's a fairy tale, written for adults, it's a fairy tale that knows it's a fairy tale and revels in it, and the wordplay is amazing. Read with a dictionary close at hand.

3. What does “diversity” mean to you?

Nothing in particular. The phrase diuerse alarums, on the other hand...

4. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done?

Wild? Um. Riding a giant inflatable banana being towed behind a speedboat. I think that's probably it.

5. Do you regret doing it?

Regret not doing it again.

6. Can you drive a stick shift?

Not legally.

7. What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car?

About 150km/h - maybe 95mph.

8. Were you driving, or riding at the time?

Riding. Won't say who was driving.

9. Which is better: snakes or spiders?

Look, I live in Australia. Either one will kill you soon as look at you. Spiders are easier to squash - a cinder block dropped from a good height, say, or a sledgehammer if you're out of cinder blocks. On the other hand, snakes can't jump. Also, there's usually more meat on a snake.

10. What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate?

Salmonella enterica. (By the way, salmonella.org has a Buy from Amazon link. Thanks, but no.)

11. Have you ever shit your pants? Be HONEST!

See previous entry.

12. Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience?

On the whole, yes.

13. Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged?

Certainly not outlawed. And I don't think it needs official encouragement.

14. Name one man with a fine ass.

Balaam.

15. Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts?

No. And no.

16. Who is Martha Burk?

Not sure. Is she the new editor of the New York Times?

17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd like to be all-powerful.

18. Do you eat raw oysters?

No. I also do not eat raw slugs.

19. Are you claustrophobic?

Let me out of here!

20. If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to?

Yes. I only have the one brain, and flawed though it might be, I'd like to keep it safe inside my head.

21. Name five great Presidents.

Those guys on the mountain plus one.

22. Name three shitty Presidents.

Clinton, Chirac, Putin.

23. Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding.

Yes, Fanny.

24. This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks?

No, because (a) I'm in Australia and (b) the miserable excuse we have for a state government has banned private firework displays without a permit.

25. If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose?

The young Diana Rigg, I think. Yes.

(Questions from Gut Rumbles via diuerse sources.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:23 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Renaissance Pixy

To salve my conscience after Loyal First Reader Susie accused me of poesy (when I was in fact quoting the Great Weird Al), here is something that I really did write:

A Reflection Upon the Modern Style

Poetry that doesn't rhyme
Is laziness, a waste of time,
A blight upon the landscape that
Would be outlawed if I were King.

And poems that do not scan are worse;
How can they be described as verse?
They have no soul; their tone is flat;
They do not make one cry or sing.

This modern stuff I cannot stand.
It must be banished from the land,
While I lay out the welcome mat
For poetry with rhymes that ring

Down through these hallowed, ancient halls
And far on out beyond these walls,
To man and woman, dog and cat...
I'm out of words that end in ing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Look What I Can Do!

Went to visit my nephew on Saturday. And the rest of the family, of course, including Jupiter (the cat learning trig on the right). But mostly my nephew.

He's learned a new trick: When there are grown-ups sitting around the kitchen table talking (or more likely, playing with cool toys; on this occasion a collection of Hewlett-Packard calculators), he doesn't like to be left out. The solution, when you're two feet tall, is to stand on a chair.

Which he did.

Of course, it's only one small step from standing on a chair to falling off a chair, and in the fullness of time he did that too.

Not happy at all.

But in less than a minute he'd had enough of crying and was climbing back on that darn chair. Whether this is a sign of stubbornness or just a short attention span I'm not sure.

But he did seem to like the short clips of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, Mahoromatic and Steel Angel Kurumi that I showed him. Well, that's putting it mildly: He was transfixed, as my sister-in-law (no, the other one) said.

It can't be long before he starts demanding to be taken to Pixy's house. Pixy, after all, has all the cartoons:

And all the cool toys.

(No, under the table.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:46 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Hardware Store

Would you look at all that stuff...

They've got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters,
Trash compactors, juice extractors, shower rods and water meters,
Walkie-talkies, copper wires, safety goggles, radial tires,
BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers,
Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters,
Paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters,
Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables,
Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles,
Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication,
Metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation,
Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors,
Tire gauges, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors,
Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers,
Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers,
Soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers,
Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers —

I'm goin' to the Hardware Store.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Just Because

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:04 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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