No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

Blurgle Flub

Long day at work. Blah. Need chocolate. No chocolate. Ugh. Can't blog.

(Dies.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:30 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Mainstreaming Of Counterculture

When one stops off at a major chain bookstore on the way home and buys a couple of volumes of Slayers manga, it is a novel experience for the sales assistant to exclaim:

We're stocking Slayers now? That's so cool! I used to read Jump when I lived in Japan.

(Jump is the weekly magazine in which the Slayers manga originally appeared.)

I forgot my 20% discount coupon, though. Darn.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:33 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Why We Still Need The BBC

The whale attracted a lot of onlookers both before and after it exploded.

(Thanks to the BBC and Judi the Squirrel.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:16 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Fudge? Pudge? One Of Those, Anyway


'Fudged in the Head'
What Type of Lunatic are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Thanks to the Sadistic (but cheesy) Bastard.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Darn These Migraines Anyway

Darn them to heck!

I can hardly see to read Lileks. Woe!

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The Medium Had Better Be The Message

Because otherwise I have no idea what the photographer is trying to say here.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:02 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sydney Summer

Those clouds are getting pretty dark. Do you think it looks like rain?
rumble rumble
I hope not. I don't have an umbrella.
pit pat
Neither do I. Uh oh -
pitpat pitter patter
Maybe we'd better find shelter!
pitterpatter pitterSPLOOSH
Holy cow!
crack! rumble rumble
I don't think it will last long. We can just wait it out.
ceerack! rumble rumble
How close do you think that lightni -
CEERACKACKACK!
Mummy!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:40 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Who What?

Who is Wonkette, who are Media Whores Online, who is this Rittenhouse dude, and why should I care that they are engaged in an unseemly public squabble?

Piss off the lot of you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Letters From Trixie

The letters from my granddaughter Trixie can now be found in the archives for January 2104 over on the left.

At least until she sends me another letter and my template catches fire...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Always Apropos

Mama is a 4th Grader is now coming out on fansub.

Whaddya think of that, Trixie?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Nobody Loves Me

I was wondering why, whenever a new mail virus-worm thingy breaks loose and wreaks havoc across the internet (or "web" as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation would have it), causing Windows and Exchange administrators to tear out what little hair they have left and Linux users to wet themselves laughing, I don't get any.

Does no-one love me?

Could it be that most people I know are not virus-worm-thingy-spreading idiots so that I am at least two stages removed from the major pool of infection?

Or could it be - oh look - that my spam filter is merrily gobbling them all up. Dozens of them. How amusing.

You do love me after all!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:08 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Fall Of Amaravati

I was wondering who would be the next victim.

Turns out it's Marc Miyake, who explains why Manga rocks and Amekomi sucks.

So sad to see a brave man fall.

Next!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:36 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Gobble Gobble SLURP

Some posts just write themselves:

The response to the Turkey & Gravy Jones Soda has been incredible. Thank you for your interest and patience in regards to this soda. We apologize if you were not able to get your hands on the Turkey & Gravy Jones Soda. Since this was a premium edition with limited quantities in Michigan and Washington region, we sold out pretty quickly. However, due to the huge interests from our consumers, we will be better prepared to meet everyone's need next year. All the sales from Turkey & Gravy soda will be going to Toys for Tots. If you sign up for our free Jones Soda newsletter, you will get advance notice of future premium flavors.

No, really.

(Thanks to Sam Kington in Tim Blair's comments.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Powered By Penguins

The Penguin Baseball thingy seems to keep disappearing from the web, so I snarfed a copy...

And here it is!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:28 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Quality Time

I didn't post anything today because I was spending quality time with the grandkids.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:10 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Welcoming Trixie

This is a long weekend for me, since January 26th is Australia Day. In honor of this, Australia's 103rd year as an independent nation, and inspired by Jen[Pete]'s post on 100 Years Ago, I've decided to try a little experiment. Please bear with me, as this may get a little weird.

Let's get the ball rolling, shall we? I'd like you all to welcome my granddaughter Trixie, who will be taking over blogging responsibilities for the rest of the weekend.

Take it away, Trixie Misa!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:32 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Advance Warning

Your objective is simple: Widespread misery

Your motive is a little bit more complex: To show them all

Stage One:

To begin your plan, you must first seduce a Wealthy Heiress. This will cause the world to sit up and take notice, stunned by your arrival. Who is this Evil Genius? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in classic black?

Stage Two:

Next, you will steal the Pacific Ocean. This will cause countless hordes of Mad Scientists to flock to you, begging to do your every bidding. Your name will become synonymous with fuzzy bunnies, as lesser men whisper your name in terror.

Stage Three:

Finally, you will covertly move your Needlessly Big Weather Machine, bringing about pain, suffering, the usual. This will all be done from a Underground Secret Headquarters of Doom, an excellent choice if we might say. These three deeds will herald the end, and the citizens of this planet will have no choice but to elect you their new god.

Trust us, it'll all come together in the end.

Get your own evil plan!

(Found at Not Quite Tea and Crumpets who got it from our very own Rocket Jones. I read that one, Ted, only I didn't have time to try all the links. Really I did!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:55 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Nothing New Under The Sun

The new MuNu sever has locked up again, and my F drive has turned into a pumpkin.

How long does Windows XP take to chkdsk a 240GB pumpkin, anyway?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:21 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Make The Time, George

Mitch H. of Blogfonte links to an interview with George Soros. Mitch finds the money quote:

Unfortunately, I don't have time to read; I only have time to write.

Says it all, really.

If you don't have the time or the patience to read the whole interview, do at least look at Mitch's analysis.

I don't have time to read; I only have time to write.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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That's A Hardware Problem

It would appear that I was right and it was a flaky disk drive after all. Drive has now been replaced, the old Samsung swapped out for a Seagate.

I'm now writing a 40GB file just to give it a little exercise. If that works, I'll consider the problem fixed.

Oh, yes:

How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None - that's a hardware problem.

Update: 40GB file, no problems. Now I'll just make a copy of that...

Update: Assertion failure in __journal_remove_journal_head() at journal.c:1854: "buffer_jbd(bh)"

Not what I wanted to hear.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Pst Fnd in a Blg

Glenn Reynolds has a new Tech Central Station column up, this time about memory - both computer and human. It's worth reading, though I do have a couple of nits to pick.

First, he suggests that 10TB of storage would be enough to hold a lifetime's worth of experiences, given an estimated data stream of 100MB per second. A quick calculation (86,400 seconds in a day, 365.25 days per year, say 75 years life expectancy) yields a number around 2400 times larger than that. The original article is just a short piece in Wired (scroll down to Digital Recording for the Analog Soul) so I'm not sure exactly what was meant to go into that 10TB - possibly just selected or compressed data.

When Glenn says

Every time I buy a new computer, I just copy my old files over. I should go through and delete the unnecessary ones, but I don't. The reason is that it's too much time and trouble, and the new hard drive -- being, inevitably, much larger than the old hard drive -- has plenty of room. The result now is that I have over 100,000 files.

I just have to laugh. Not at him, mind you, but at myself. My latest Linux box has a 720GB RAID 5 array containing 1.7 million files... There are actually more than that, but some of them are still compressed into archives following the Great Transition a few weeks back. My Windows box holds another 350,000 or so, a point which was brought to me with great force when my filesystem got corrupted. Just scanning the file allocation table took hours. It took several days to recover all the files.

There's one flaw in the article, though, that I can't easily excuse. Glenn talks about indexing and library science, even quoting Robert Heinlein on the subject:

Figuring out how to index and find all of this stuff simply underscores the wisdom of Robert Heinlein's statement: "library science is the foundation of all sciences, just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs."

But he utterly fails to mention the seminal work of literature on the subject, Hal Draper's Ms Fnd in a Lbry. It's been out of print for decades, though you may be able to find a second-hand copy of Laughing Space, a collection of science fiction humour edited by Isaac Asimov and Janet Jeppson.

Ms Fnd in a Lbry is about the collapse of civilisation when the master index to the Great Library becomes corrupted, a quite remarkable insight given that the story was written in 1961. The other key insight in the story is that the indexes, bibliographies and glossaries (not to mention the index to indexes, the bibliography of glossaries, and so on) so far outweigh the actual data that the data itself ends up getting lost.

A hint as to the source of this insight came from (of all places) a Marxist mailing list from 1997: Hal Draper became a part-time microfilm acquisitions librarian at the University of California at Berkeley. I can see how that job might have sent his thoughts heading in a particular direction.

If you can find Ms Fnd in a Lbry somewhere - it doesn't seem to have been posted to the web, which is something of a surprise since everything else has - then do read it, because not only is it both insightful and foresightful as I have said, it is also very funny. (As a geek I particularly enjoyed the discussion of how to store multiple bits of data on a single subatomic particle, and how nudged quanta won out over notched quanta. But that's just me.)

Note: The first version of this post used GB when it should have said TB. Twice. I'm sure that's a sign of... Something.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Taking It Back

Look out everyone! It's a meme:

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Sto Helit, we're going to Sto Lat and Genua and the Pseudopolis and Lancre and Slice! We're going to Omnia and Ephebe and Djelibeybi! And we're going to Al Khali and Bes Pelargic and HungHung and EcksEcksEcksEcks! And then we're going to Ankh Morpork. To take back Unseen University! YEEEAAARGH!!

And then there's:

And you know something? You know something? We're going to the ampulla of Vater! And the esophagus! And the duodenum! And the gastric fundus! And the small intestine! And THEN, especially then, we'll go to the anal canal... and take back the integrity of your intestinal tract! BLURRRGH!

Ntot xto mtenxtion:

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Tenochtitlan, we're going to Tlatelolco and Atotonilco and Coatepec and Tehuantepec and Oaxaca! We're going to Tzintzuntzan and Xochimilco and Iztaccihuatl! And we're going to Huehuetla and Zacualco and Acaxochitlan and Cihuatlan! And then we're going to Popocatepetl. To take back The Temple of The Moon God! YEEEAAARGH!!

And finally, for those with smaller horizons:

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Pennsylvania Avenue, we're going to Oriental Avenue and St. Charles Place and St. James Place and Community Chest and Chance! We're going to Kentucky Avenue and Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens! And we're going to Water Works and Pacific Avenue and B & O Railroad and both shitty purple ones! And then we're going to Broadway and Park Place. To go past Go and Collect $200! YEEEAAARGH!!

(Thanks to the commenters at Tim Blair's place.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:22 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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You Know You're In Trouble When

Your hosting company says that they suspect there is a problem related to software RAID on your server, and they would like to disable it while they run some tests.

And you say, well, the server is not in production yet, so fine, go ahead.

And then they say, how do you disable software RAID anyway?

I think the new server will be a few days yet.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:16 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Problem Solved

Now the Nintendo Gamecube can run Minx too. Which is good if you can't get your hands on an AS/400.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Oh My God! I'm Trapped in Episode 26 of Evangelion!

Thanks to Mitch H. of Blogfonte for the link to (ta da!) Nadesico Thumbnail Theatre!

Ruri: Enough with the screeching already! Mr. Greenfield, take the amphetamines AWAY from Spike Spencer and Jennifer Earhart.

Thousands of Anime Fans: Shut up, Ruri! This is the best dub ADV has ever put out. No wonder it took them so long to release it.

Ruri: Grr. Idiots.

You know you want to!

Akito: Did someone say anime???

Akito, Megumi, Ruri, Minato, Howmei, Seiya, Goat and Admiral Fukube: WHOA!

Ruri: Ha ha, you have to wait until after the commercials to see what Gai showed us.

Thousands of anime fans: No we don't, we've got DVDs.

Ruri: Grrr.

Nadesico Logo: Quack Quack.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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