The plug thing! It's not plugged!

Sunday, September 30

Rant

Oh My Stars, It's Full Of Pleh

Stargate Atlantis season 4 is here.

First episode is pretty solid, except aah asteroid belt asteroid belt aah!

Yeah, standard bad-scifi subplot since at least, oh, 1890.  I'm sure someone, at some point, has got it right.  I mean, just speaking statistically...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:29 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, September 27

Rant

Pixy's Tip Of The Day

Never run phpBB and a multi-domain Movable Type installation on one CPanel server.

Don't.  Just....  Don't.

Now I'm off to scan 38,000 files for possible nasties.

Update: Started out just scanning the filenames.  Smart move.  Two Three nasties detected and removed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:17 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, September 26

Anime

Anime Quote-Classics-Unquote



Hmm.  Looks like Youtube is taking a nap.  Oh, there we are.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:25 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunday, September 23

Anime

It's Here! It's Here!

After a remarkably poopy weekend, I finally have things mostly sorted out.
  • I have a workaround for the cookie problem that will allow the mu.nu migration to Minx to proceed starting tomorrow.
  • I've locked down all the non-essential stuff in Movable Type and I've implemented a new logging system which tracks all CGI activity, including POST parameters.
  • I found out where my weekly dose of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe got to: There's a new feed at iTunes, and you have to resubscribe.
  • Episode 12 of Potemayo.
  • Uh, and I found out how to get through Goldor Manor in FFIII.  (Hint: Change jobs.)*
It's a minute to midnight, so I think that's all for today.  Potemayo, and bed, await.

* My characters in FFIII are named Sunao, Pote, Mikan and Kyo.  Unfortunately you're limited to six characters, so no Guchuko.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, September 21

Blog

Stampeeeede!

The migration is on. smile

Any mu.nu users want to move to Minx, just comment here or email me (andrew -at- pixymisa -dot- net), and I'll make it happen.  I've copied the post from Munuviana into the extended entry for more details.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:11 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, September 20

Life

It's My Birthday

I can has shiny new Nintendo DS Lite, shiny new Final Fantasy III, and shiny new Terry Pratchett novel.

Sadly, I can also has a few bugs with the theme builder.  I'll take a short birthday break and then dive into the bugpile.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:11 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, September 19

Geek

I Need A Bigger Hammer

My footer won't foot.

Grr.

There's a tool around somewhere that shows you div lines overlaying your web page so you can work out where that unwanted space is coming from.  Have to go find it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:32 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, September 18

Geek

Done

1.1 is live. grin

It's now almost midnight here at Pixy Labs, so I'm going to leave it at that for today, but look for all sorts of goodies tomorrow!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:57 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, September 17

Geek

Closing In

I am now running without banner, header, or footer templates.  Everything is running from the new default templates.  The whole thing is theoretically live, but I have a couple of hours of work to do tidying up before I announce anything.

Edit: "Couple of hours" being out by the factor of four that has applied throughout this project.  neutral

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:20 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunday, September 16

Cool

Ejätsu Tsabbari Tikkari Lallan Tittari Tillan Titsdandulla

(Bumped and updated because Internet Explorer is poopy.)

Stop it with the leek already Orihime!

Ejätsu tsabbari tikkari lallan tittari tillan titsdandulla
dibidabidallaa ruppatirupiran Kurikan kukka ja Kivikan kuu
är tsä tsää ja ribidabidillaa ba ridsan dillan dirlanduu
aba ribbaddaa da ribbaribaa ribiribirisden dirlanduu

For those who somehow (like me) avoided this menace when it hit the net last year...  Here it is.

Click to see the evil.

Song is Ievan Polkka recorded by the Finnish group Loituma.  The animation is known as Loituma Girl or, for obvious reasons, Leekspin. The girl pictured is Orihime Inoue from the anime series Bleach.

This little thingy sparked something of a comeback for Loituma.  Here's a 1995 recording of Ievan Polkka:



And a 2007 appearance:



And an official music video:



There are innumerable variants of the original animation, but most of them aren't worth looking at.  Particularly that hideous thing with the donkey...

When I first saw this clip I immediately realised that the lyrics were gibberish - scat, basically.  So I was rather surprised on looking up the song to find that it was actually a dialect of Finnish known as Savo.

But my ear didn't fail me after all.  Except for a few words - Kurikan kukka ja Kivikan kuu means Kurikka's (a town) flower and Kivikka's (a name) moon - the section of the song used in the animated clip is indeed gibberish.  The rest of the song is in Savo; this part is made up by the singer and varies between performances.  It is interesting that I could tell this without knowing a word of Finnish.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:51 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anime

Potenotes

So, the penultimate episode is up.

Looks like my predictions are at least partly right.

Spoiler for Potemayo:

They also drop some hints about the ending, but I suspect there's some misdirection going on there.  If I'm right, next week's episode could be rolling-on-the-floor funny.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:54 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Geek

The Problem Is Somewhere Else

I was copying a few* files on the new mu.nu server and it was running a little slower than expected, so I stopped the copy and ran a quick performance test using hdparm.

And I was all, damn, there's something wrong here, it's only doing about 6MB a second.  (I'd expect to see upwards of 40MB a second on any modern 3.5" drive.)

So I checked one of the mee.nu servers, and I got the same disappointing results.

And then I looked again, and I realised...  Those numbers aren't in MB.  They're the next larger unit.

I was looking at the cached (not raw) performance, and yes, I'm getting 6GB per second from the cache.

Unfortunately, that still doesn't explain why the copy is so slow.

Answer: Ah.  If I'm copying archives from both the old servers to the new servers and uncompressing them on the fly, copying files from one disk to the other on the server at the same time is unlikely to deliver 100% of the system's potential.

* A few = slightly less than a million.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:31 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, September 14

Geek

Look Ma, No Hands!

I am going to turn off my style sheet now.  If the theme builder is installed correctly, this will make no difference at all.

If my site suddenly disappears, well, there's probably still a bug or two hanging around.

Update: Oops.  Let's try that again.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

Geek

Also Also Wik

Not just my air conditioner, but also my dishwasher and my oven pull the voltage down enough to reset my external drive.

Western Digital has to be getting complaints about this thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

Thursday, September 13

Geek

Taking Steps

Step 1: Announce that you'll be releasing detailed specs for your graphics chips to open source developers, albeit under an NDA.
Step 2: Announce that you've reconsidered.  Never mind the NDA stuff, it will be open to all.
Step 3: Actually deliver the documentation.
Step 4: Watch x.org's server melt.
Step 5: Profit!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

Do Want

/images/starmap.jpg
It's a star map.  The problem with star maps in general is that stars are distributed in three dimensions.  The solution this map uses is that it is also in three dimensions.  It's engraved inside a solid transparent block using a carefully focused laser.


/images/poteko1.jpg

/images/poteko2.jpg

Still not plushies, but ideal for sitting atop your monitor.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:43 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

When Short Bearded Men Attack

The inimitable James Randi on homeopathy:


more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, September 12

Anime

Potemanga

/images/potecover.gif

Scanslated.


From what I've read so far, the anime is very faithful to the manga, but the jokes are still funny even after you've seen them in the other form.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

When Facts Attack

Or, How the Continuing Merger of Reporting and Editorials Came to Produce Something Good

FoxNews:
Pennsylvania Man Claims to Burn Salt Water


Oh, great.  There goes the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
ERIE, Pa. —  An Erie, Pa., cancer researcher says he has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by a retired chemistry professor as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius says he happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he says he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

Yes, it would indeed be the most remarkable water science discovery in a century if it weren't total nonsense.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Water isn't a fuel (unless you have a working fusion reactor).  Water is what you get when you're finished burning a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University emeritus professor of chemistry, has held demonstrations at his State College, Pa., lab to confirm his own observations.
This might not mean anything to you, but it does to me.  Rustum Roy is a distinguished materials scientist, with published papers going back six decades.  Which makes him an octogenarian, yes.

He is also something of a crank - no, I take that back; he's all of a crank.  His written work also includes some... odd... opinions on various social issues, vitriolic attacks on the pure sciences (physics and chemistry) and bold predictions that these computer things are just a passing fad and that we will shortly all move back into villages.

On top of that, he's a supporter of homeopathy, and has recently attached his name to some astoundingly shoddy research purporting to support that particular brand of quackery.  (He may have been directly involved in the research; I don't know for certain.  But his name is on the paper.)

Which is how it goes.  Some crank claims some cranky thing, and some crank scientist (scientists are hardly immune from crankery) supports the claim.

What floored me is the very next line:
[Roy is also a specialist in "whole person healing" and Christian sexuality.]
Which is entirely true.

But...  Did a major news organisation just look up the references of source and make an editorial aside casting doubt on his competence?  Well, it looks that way to me.

But maybe FoxNews thinks that specialists in "whole person healing" are qualified to comment on matters thermodynamic - even though they themselves put the term "whole person healing" in scare quotes.

Or... maybe not:
[Internet commentary upon Kanzius and Roy's assertion points out that creating fire from salt water is possible by first separating it into hydrogen, oxygen, sodium and chloride, then burning the sodium. However, such a process would consume much more energy than it produces.]

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, September 11

Geek

My Links Are Blue

And I am too.

Not. smile

Running live on 1.1 now.  The blue links are a side-effect: my blog was set up on a slightly dodgy 1.1 alpha, so a few things glitched when I merged it back into the mainstream.  It should fix itself, though, if I do this...

Yes!  Okay, those colours aren't quite right either, but that's what you get from a quick clicky-clicky.

Update: Colours are back again.  The colour picker does let you put in hex values if you really want to.  (Also colour names for the 140 standard named colours.)

The one remaining bug is something that didn't break that should have; namely, my banner.  I changed the banner sizing from exclusive to inclusive at the last minute; either way is confusing, but inclusive is probably less so.  Having the same number but assigning it a different meaning should have screwed up my banner image, but it's fine, so there's something wrong with the code there.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:45 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anime

Market Penetration

My local EzyDVD store has a hentai section.  With a sign that reads Hentai.

...

(Goes back to installing Minx 1.1.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Geek

Tweaky Tweaky

I had one small problem left with the theme builder: Once you started using it on a theme-builder based site, the little colour-picker boxes would scoot over to the right of the screen.  This also happened to the menus in the editor.  The editor has an adjustment value that lets you fix this, but the colour picker doesn't.

As it turns out, this happens if you use the editor or colour picker inside a div with relative or absolute positioning.  And as it also turns out, I don't need to do that for the editing pages.  The new stylesheet introduces a contents div that lives within the existing main div.  The contents div has to be relative-position, so that I can manipulate the absolute positioning of the sidebars within the contents area rather than within the entire browser window.  (The content columns are still relative, because absolute positioning introduces its own problems).

But the edit screens haven't changed - they're the same whether you use the theme builder or not - and thus don't use the contents div, so by simply removing the relative positioning specifier on the main div all the edit features are fixed again.

Only problem is that the same editor is used for comments, and is in the contents div pretty much of necessity.  If you check the colour pickers in my comments right now, they're way off to the right - and the positioning error depends on the width of the browser window!

Aargh.

Alright, I can fix this.  But if you resize your browser window while you are commenting, you're on your own.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, September 10

World

Corrections

Aiming to activate the theme builder tonight.  Had one of those weekends, full of distractions; every night I ended up thinking, well, I didn't get to finish the theme builder today, but it's a long weekend, so I can always do it tomorrow.  And then it was Monday. sad

Also, Potemayo, genre of: absurdist comedy bildungsroman.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, September 06

Geek

Applet Bug

Blog fall down. sad

Update: Bug fixed; applets are go.  1.1 here we come!

Just need to add a CSS class so that you can control applet styling, and add a couple more examples, which I'll do this evening, and then I can roll out the whole thing. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:42 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

My Other Car Is A Talking Pony

Progress Quest, the MMORPG for people who don't have any free time whatsoever.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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