Idea popped into my head for a story set in the Mina Smith universe. Mina's a customs agent, but this time our protagonist is an accountant. As much an accountant as Mina is a customs agent, anyway.
Just a snippet that I'll likely never finish, but anyway... more...
It kind of reminds me of H. Beam Piper's Paratime Police stuff. Not bad at all.
You wrote this the same week you were trying to write your own SQL language? The Handicapper General's gonna come get you if you're not careful, Harrison.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Tuesday, February 16 2010 03:03 AM (jwKxK)
3
I haven't actually read any Piper in decades. I'm sure there's a germ of an idea or three borrowed from there, as well as the whirling SF cosmos in general. Mina Smith is the protagonist in the original (similarly fragmentary and unpublished) stories I've set in the same universe, but earlier in the timeline, and as I indicated, a customs agent tasked to stamp out paratemporal contraband. If she's not retired by this point, she's probably a very senior figure in the Agency.
There's an awful lot that our accountant friend doesn't know, for all his advanced tech.
It's not a SQL language, though, just a programmatic database with some nice query-by-example features. Intentionally not Turing-complete. Though of course every protocol evolves until it is...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 16 2010 03:37 AM (PiXy!)
1
Pixy, I just got hit by a spambot... and lost the past 7 days worth of comments on my sidebar. They're still in the posts, mind. Just like the last time... except this guy is selling jerseys instead of boots.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, November 20 2009 01:08 PM (C32SO)
2
Oh, and I've saved an example of the jerk's work in my "edit comments" page, if you want to take a look.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, November 20 2009 01:11 PM (C32SO)
There's a problem with spam and the way the system finds your recent comments; it doesn't quite all work. It will fix itself once I clear out the spam though.
The system looks at the most recently updated posts to find the most recent comments, but while spam counts as an update, it doesn't show in the recent comments list, so it all goes funny.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 20 2009 10:24 PM (PiXy!)
I'm running way behind on this one - it's been a hectic month, developing new systems, putting out forest fires, cruising the Aegean - but I have enough tracks together now to at least put up an early, incomplete relase.
Another reason for delay is that Summer Theologica has expanded into a double album, which wasn't at all as planned. I'll outline the tracks first, then paste in links as the files get uploaded to the server.
You can find our other recent works at SemiAutumnatic and Winter Collection. Part four of our tenth-anniversary collection, Unsprung, is scheduled to be released next month, if I can persuade the girls to get back into the studio.
Update: 14 tracks uploaded and ready to go.
Update: 4 more tracks - Gödel's Dilemma, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.
Update: And two more, which I think will be all for tonight: Laplace's Demon and Russell's Teapot. Who knew that Bertrand Russell could get funky?
Updte: Two more tracks - Socrates' Method and Hume's Problem. Nearly done! There will be a third disc at some point with studio sessions of the live recordings and some remixes. I'm also going to move a couple of tracks around... Well, you'll see.
Update: Uploaded the closing tracks of discs 1 & 2: Anak Krakatau and Thera, respectively.
Update: All tracks and mixes uploaded. Done! That leaves me, oh, a whole day to get the next album out...
Robert Browning was one of the few writers I studied in high school English that I both respected and enjoyed. Shakespeare too, though his plays are far better seen than read. (The performance of King Lear we went to see got a standing ovation from a crowd of teenagers.)
The Seekers did take the melody for The Carnival Is Over from the Russian folk song Stenka Razin.
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Thursday, July 26
Font Set Two Is In The Water!
Font set two, featuring the work of the astoundingly prolific Manfred Klein. I've only used a small selection of his work, the fonts I felt best suited to blog banners... Out of what I've downloaded so far. That still makes for over 160 fonts.
Just as I was preparing this post, I heard back from Manfred giving me the go ahead. So we're cool for school.
Samples in the extended entry; 164 files, total about 1.3MB.
Pretty cool, but some of those are basically illegible.
When I first loaded this page, the comment entry box and the Preview and Post buttons had become detached from the editor bar and were floating somewhere in the middle of the post.
When I clicked into the box, it jumped down here where it's supposed to be, but right now I'm looking at the Preview and Post buttons still loitering above the MyMedieval font. This is probably an IE specific problem. I've seen something similar happen on other mee.nu blogs.
Let me see what happens when I hit Preview.
*click*
Looks like everything is in its place now.
Posted by: Will at Friday, July 27 2007 01:26 AM (olS40)
Pretty cool, but some of those are basically illegible.
True. Some of them are just there for stylistic value; others are readable at larger sizes. Font Set One is a cleaner set of designs, reflecting the different intents of the two designers.
Since they're just for blog banners and no-one is forced to use any of them, I'm not going to worry if some are hard to read. (The really illegible ones I've already weeded out...) I wanted to provide a nice range of designs even at the expense of legibility.
The one where everything is trilaterally symmetrical is actually legible at larger sizes. Sort of.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 27 2007 01:48 AM (PiXy!)
3
Oh, and the one that is entirely illegible is braille. (Which you might have guessed.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 27 2007 01:51 AM (PiXy!)
4
You must be talking about the MK-Kleidos Chaplina font. I still can't make some of the letters out. The 19 CRT at home set to 1600 x 1200 was impossible. The 19" LCD at work set to 1280 x 1024 isn't much better. I had to hover over the image for the alt to even figure out the name.
Posted by: Will at Friday, July 27 2007 04:02 AM (SOx9v)
5
Yep. But in a larger font size, it looks like this:
Not very useful below about 60-point, I admit.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 27 2007 04:23 AM (PiXy!)
The problem I've been having is with licensing. There's a ton of fonts out there that are cheap or free, but 98% of the time there are restrictions on use. You can't use it for commercial purposes, or it's only licensed for one computer, or whatever. There are very, very few fonts that are under open-source style licenses.
Fortunately I was able to contact these two designers and they generously agreed to let me use these fonts. Otherwise I'd be limited to a handful of typefaces like Gentium, Charis, and Bitstream Vera, or paying hundreds of dollars per font for a site license.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 27 2007 04:01 PM (PiXy!)
Now that you have a real swarm of them, and given that they're mainly just for creating logos, you probably don't need any more.
A site license would be a real problem. IIRC, you're planning on selling this software eventually, aren't you? It's not just about creating a hosting service.
If you needed a site license for fonts, then so would everyone who bought your software. Obviously unacceptable.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, July 27 2007 05:48 PM (+rSRq)
The first (of two) starter font sets for the theme builder is ready. I hope to finish the second set today, and then finish coding the theme builder itself.
Samples are in the extended entry. This might take a while to load - it's about 3MB in 152 files. (Update: Oops, they were 32-bit images. Squished down to 8-bits now, so it's only about 1MB.)
As I mentioned before, these are all the work of the lovely and talented and all-round nice guy Nick Curtis. Set two will highlight another font designer, Manfred Klein.*
* Assuming Manfred is okay with this. I've emailed him about the project and hope to hear back soon. Unfortunately, another designer whose work I very much like, Derek Vogelpohl, has disappeared from the net and can't be contacted. Derek's fonts are under a mixture of freeware and non-commercial-only licenses, so I'm hesitant to use any of them without his consent.
This is intended to make it easy to produce image galleries and photo albums where you need to produce images in multiple resolutions. Also, it will be used for user avatars: Since mee.nu users have complete control over their site layouts, there won't be a single fixed size for avatars, and resizing in the browser produces ugly images.
The advantages (apart from the improved quality) are that it makes it very easy to keep the image proportions, and it produces smaller files for fast loading times. (And less strain on your bandwidth.) Doing high-quality image processing is fairly CPU intensive, but we already have 16 CPUs at our disposal, so that is not anticipated to be a problem.
One hitch: This doesn't work for animated GIFs. Neither does the image processing function in the file module; the GIF library I'm using is lacking in several respects.
1
I hope that image resizing isn't being done on the fly every time a page is loaded; that sounds like a real glutton for CPU cycles. But given that it's a tag, I suspect that's the case.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, June 03 2007 08:32 AM (+rSRq)
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It's cached (both on the browser and the server).
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 03 2007 12:26 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 03 2007 01:58 PM (PiXy!)
5
The other reason I'm not particularly worried about CPU load is that our standard cluster node is now a quad-core Xeon. We're not short of CPU power.
And that only costs us 10% more than the dual-core Opterons we originally budgeted for, while delivering 2.5x the performance.
Also, the image engine automatically switches to a less CPU intensive algorithm for large target sizes. Still higher-quality than browser scaling, of course.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 03 2007 02:41 PM (PiXy!)
6
The comparison with the browser is rather impressive.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, June 05 2007 10:19 AM (9imyF)
Brickmuppet is off on active duty (Coast Guard), but has left us with this fine bit of pinup art in his absence. Seeing it stirred an ancient (in web time) memory, and I followed the link to the artist's page (some NSFW), and there she was:
1
The chain segment on the hip seems hanging wrong.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thursday, May 31 2007 01:13 PM (9imyF)
2
I must be doing something wrong, because I didn't see that particular picture there. No doubt at all, however, that those pictures are stellar. (Or that some of them are NSFW.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, May 31 2007 02:05 PM (+rSRq)
3
Never mind. I found the others. (stupid stupid stupid...)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, May 31 2007 02:06 PM (+rSRq)
4
I have bad news for you, Pete. You are suffering from Stage Three Engineer's Disease. There is no cure. You will spend your retirement building live steam models.
(Yeah, it's not a proper catenary. In eight years, I hadn't noticed that. Guess I'm not Stage Three yet.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 31 2007 02:07 PM (PiXy!)
5
I'm put in mind of the final MST3k episode, "Diabolik":
Mike: Those are some dangerously steep stairs. Crow: You're looking at the stairs? Oh, Mike honey...
(And now I'm feeling stupid: I can't find the above picture on the artist's site. *facepalm*)
Posted by: GreyDuck at Thursday, May 31 2007 02:36 PM (CdXfx)
1
Mostly works. Drag-and-drop seems to generate relative paths for the images, which don't work when you switch folders. I can either fix this in the editor, or patch it in Minx itself.
I vote patch.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 10:56 AM (PiXy!)
2
And I thought I'd set the word count to include the title. Hmm.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 10:59 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:18 AM (PiXy!)
4
Oh, right. It's breaking on whitespace after the HTML tags have been stripped, but when the tags are stripped they don't leave any whitespace (which even ignoring the wordcount problem makes the text pretty unreadable). Let's see if I can fix that...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:21 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:39 AM (PiXy!)
6
Also, the quick-and-dirty regex HTML stripperer saves me a second trip through the SGML parser, which speeds up Minx by a good 10%. So it's a win all 'round.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:40 AM (PiXy!)
1
Well, of course you can get away with anything if you can plausibly lay the blame on an alternate universe. The tricky part lies within that word, "plausibly," of course.
Posted by: GreyDuck at Tuesday, February 20 2007 07:54 PM (GRUEw)
If you have an incredibly valuable and useful portal to thousands of other worlds, you will most likely forget how to use it, and only in the rarest circumstances will you guard it.
In contrast to pretty much all of recorded history, most civilizations are both peaceful and liberal.
One shot stuns, two shots kills, three shots disintegrates.
The floor is never "out of phase."
Posted by: TallDave at Thursday, February 22 2007 11:50 PM (odS+4)
Caught the first two episodes of The Dresden Files today. If you haven't heard of this, and you like urban fantasy, you should check out author Jim Butcher's site and then take a look in your favourite bookstore.
Anyway, the show: It's good. It's not a direct adaptation of the books, at least not so far; there are hints that some later episodes will be closer to the source material.* Also, there are changes: Harry's apartment is aboveground; the Blue Beetle has been replaced by a Korean War era Jeep (which is fine; the reason Harry drives the Beetle in the books works just as well for a Jeep, and a Jeep would make some of the scenes in the books work better); Murphy is brunette; and Bob has gone all Quantum Leap on us.**
None of these present a major problem, and Paul Blackthorne makes a great Harry Dresden. He's not quite how I pictured Harry... or wasn't, until I saw him playing the part. Valerie Cruz isn't Murphy, but I think she'll make an acceptable not-Murphy. Terrence Man isn't quite Bob either, but given the changes that they needed to make to Bob for TV, I think he'll do fine. Conrad Coates as Morgan hasn't shown up yet, though it's a good sign that they list him as a major character.
Overall, a strong thumbs up from me. SciFi have put the whole first episode online so you can take a look.
* From this page, episode 6 is titled The Storm Front; Storm Front is the first book in the series.
** You'll know what I mean when you see the first episode. You'll say "Who the heck is that?!" That's Bob. "Oh... He's gone all Quantum Leap on us!" It works okay though, and book-style Bob would have been tricky to bring across to TV.
As a critic, Baxter pulls no punches. His comments about others' work on similar themes to his own books (future history and space opera, etc) are often strident but also highly perceptive. Unsurprisingly, it is American writers that are the main targets of Baxter's incisive analysis. He's justly intolerant of implausibility in both plot development and character motivation, and derides US authors for their lack of any sense of irony. Baxter seems to suggest that this last bit of typically British sensibility is an essential part of any SF writer's mindset, irrespective of their nationality. This is not to say that Baxter slams optimism, only that American blue-sky thinking ought to be tempered with an awareness and deep consideration of the alternatives.
Riiiight.
I've just read Baxter's Timelike Infinity and Ring, the second and fourth books of his Xeelee sequence. The first, Raft, is out of print (or nearly so); the third, Flux, I bounced off after two pages.
With the small size of my sample set noted, it must also be noted that the plots of the two books I have read, and indeed the overall plot arc of the Xeelee sequence (which is outlined in those two books), is only possible if the great majority of Baxter's characters, and indeed of all sentient life-forms in his universe, are either brain-damaged or insane.
They build a starship to go on a five million light-year cruise, dragging one end of a wormhole with it, and their primary concern is the stability of the society on the ship during the cruise. The ship is churning across five million light-years of space at a velocity so great that only a thousand years will pass on board (and that includes deceleration and the return voyage!) and they are worried about social interactions. Medical techniques have advanced to the point that at least two of the original crew survive the journey; computer technology has advanced to the point that human minds can be (and are) uploaded into machines and so are effectively immortal, and they can't keep a starship crew functional for a thousand years. One of the characters is five million years old, and they can't...
And then they drop the wormhole and break it.
They have time travel. They have working time travel. In both directions. They've actually used it. And they still can't get anything right.
And while this is going on, the human race takes over the galaxy, gets wiped out by the race that controls the rest of the universe, which is then destroyed (for a rather dubious value of destroyed) by something even the humans have known about for five million years (and which has been around for twenty billion years, and just happens to crop up now), and apparently no-one involved ever bothers to talk to anyone else.
The astrophysics are complete baloney too. If you artificially cool the hydrogen core of a main-sequence star so that fusion ceases and it collapses under its own gravity, you might very well get helium fusion in the surrounding layers and something that resembles a regular red giant. But the hydrogen core is still there, even if it's collapsed into degenerate matter, and if you ever remove the artificial cooling you'll have an instant supernova.
And, and, and, red dwarfs are among the most useful stellar objects for a species planning seriously for the long term. A small red dwarf can keep up hydrogen fusion for a trillion years or more, a long time even to the Xeelee. And they're everywhere. Space is littered with the blasted things. Oh noes, we have no yellow stars, we are done for! What crap.
All of which criticism would not be nearly so mordant, if it were not for that one sentence from that review:
He's justly intolerant of implausibility in both plot development and character motivation, and derides US authors for their lack of any sense of irony.
Yeah, well, Baxter certainly has a keen sense of... something.
P.S. American blue-sky thinking ought to be tempered with an awareness and deep consideration of the alternatives. Yeah. Baxter's characters manage to commit suicide on behalf of not just the human race, but almost all life in the galaxy, through wilful and persistent stupidity. Mr Baxter, I have given deep consideration to your alternatives, and they suck.
P.P.S. I'm off to watch Sumomomo Momomo. Add half an eye-sparkle to my earlier review. It's no classic, but it's silly and fun.
P.P.P.S. That line about "American blue-sky thinking" still has me steamed. But having not read the book in question, I don't know how well it represents what Baxter actually wrote - it could well be something the reviewer read into it rather than something that is actually there - so I'll lay off awaiting further data.
1
Baxter is suffering from the usual eurotard zero-sum thinking.
They just can't get out of that limited opportunities mental box.
Posted by: Kristopher at Tuesday, November 21 2006 11:33 AM (jcvPd)
2
I've only read his Manifold series. The first two were pretty good. The overall framework interesting.
However Origin was astoundingly uninteresting. Truck loads of exposition explaining his evolution ideas. Its just not handled well at all.
Overall I found his writing quite dry.
Posted by: Andrew at Tuesday, November 21 2006 05:39 PM (81C4m)
3
Kristopher - you're dead on about the zero-sum thinking. That's the theme behind the entire Xeelee sequence. And since the scenario portrayed is obviously not zero-sum, none of the books make any sense.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 21 2006 08:09 PM (FRalS)
Good new sci-fi is hard to find; a few years ago I'd more or less decided there wasn't any. I'd actually started to just eternally re-read all my Asimov, Zelazny, Niven, Cook, Herbert, etc., until Glenn turned me on to Scalzi, Stross, and others I can't recall at the moment, for which service I will be eternally grateful.
It's a nice luxury to have the Instapundit pre-screening my reading.
Of course, even the best sci-fi can usually be picked apart on technical grounds; if it can't, it's probably unreadably boring. And there's an almost universal tendency to anthropomorphize AI, but of course assuming they'll just do whatever they're programmed to would also be unreadably boring.
Anyway, I look forward to whole genres being made laughably obsolete over the next couple years as the Large Hadron Collider starts giving us some clues as to whether loop quantum gravity, String/M theory, or (snicker) Heim theory is closest to the mark.
Posted by: TallDave at Tuesday, November 21 2006 08:42 PM (odS+4)
5
I don't like all of Stross's work, but some of it is excellent. I haven't got around to reading Scalzi yet.
And go Loop Quantum Gravity! [waves pompoms]
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 22 2006 01:38 AM (FRalS)
I went and saw Howl's Moving Castle today. That makes four movies I've seen (at the cinema) in the past month; more usually I'm likely to see one or two in a year.
It also makes four out of five of the current movies that I want to see -
Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-rabbit
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Serenity
Howl's Moving Castle
Corpse Bride
Only the last remains, because it doesn't open here until next week.
I'm planning to put up a review of all five movies at some point, so for now I'll just note that if you enjoy animated films or fantasy stories at all, this is a must see while it's on the big screen. But as I noted (and unlike most of Miyazaki's previous work) there are a couple of rough edges.
I can't say for certain whether these crept in during translation (possible for one of the problems), are present in the original novel by Diana Wynne Jones (most of Miyazaki's films are from stories of his own creation), or are Miyazaki's fault. I'll be seeking out the book tomorrow, so I'll be able to clear that one up at least.
As to what the rough edges are... Well, wait for the review.
Ah. Okay. From one of the reviews on Amazon:
Diana Wynne Jones is much more subtle with her lessons in the book than Miyazaki is in the movie so don't expect the "war is bad" and "love is good" lessons to be thrown in your face. In fact, there isn't even a war in the book! That was something that was added in the jump from page to screen.
Yes, that was the worst of the rough edges. Sure, war is bad and love is good, but before now Miyazaki has been able to communicate this without, well, throwing it in your face. Now I must buy the book.
1
So, should I see Charlie etc., or keep my fond memories of Gene Wilder intact?
Posted by: Susie at Monday, October 17 2005 12:18 PM (a0oF7)
2
I quite liked it. It's fairly faithful to the book (there's a subplot tacked on, but nothing notable has been removed or changed).
But, um, I haven't seen the Gene Wilder version.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 17 2005 12:28 PM (QriEg)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, October 18 2005 04:27 AM (AIaDY)
5
Susie, for Willy Wonka I preferred Gene Wilder, although Jonny Depp adds a interesting touch to the role. If you have fond memories of that version like I do, then the new one might not inspire you in the same way. I also found the new C&tCF a bit rushed.
And although I enjoyed Howl's moving castle (especially as I got to see it with PM himself!), I thought Spirited Away was much better overall.
Kean
Posted by: Kean at Tuesday, October 18 2005 08:46 AM (Z/aWn)
6
Thanks, Kean! Hey, you better make sure Lord Pixy sees the original some time. I've seen the trailer for Charlie almost daily for the past couple months and that Gloria Swanson look of Johnny's scares me.. ;)
Posted by: Susie at Tuesday, October 18 2005 11:59 AM (a0oF7)
7
How about 'Nightwatch' - the Russian scifi/susepnse film?
It looks astouding.
It's at the Dendy now.
Posted by: harry at Thursday, October 20 2005 04:50 AM (hOcbI)
8
awaiting w/ bated breath the reviews on Grommet,& Serenity
Posted by: michele at Sunday, October 23 2005 01:18 AM (h3+j5)
If George Romero and Cubby Broccoli had been switched at birth*
Dr. Dead
From Russia with Death
Deadfinger
Deadball
You Only Die Twice
On Her Late Majesty's Secret Service
Diemonds Are Forever
Die and Let Die
The Zombie with the Golden Gun
The Spy Who Killed Me
Graveraker
For Dead Eyes Only
Deadpussy
A View to a Corpse
The Dying Daylights
Zombeye
Tomorrow Dies
The Afterworld Is Not Enough
Die Yet Another Day
Never Say Nevermore Again
* Tricky since they were born thirty years apart...
1
Deadpussy?
Seems to me that there are at least two seperate groups that *may* already have that one covered.
But then i *am* off my non-existent medication.
:-D
Posted by: tommy at Friday, July 01 2005 10:57 PM (OJ+GI)
2
"Diemonds Are Forever"
Not "Zombies Are Forever"?
Pix, ol' buddy... what drugs are you taking, and can I have some?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, July 02 2005 01:36 AM (ds0+e)
Picked up The Hallowed Hunt today. This is the third book in the series that began with The Curse of Chalion, the best book to date by one of my favourite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold (better known for her Miles Vorkosigan novels).
Also in the store was John Varley's latest, Mammoth. I didn't buy that one because (a) it runs foul of Pixy's 77th Law (all books titled "Mammoth" suck), and (b) his last novel, Red Thunder, was complete crap. Maybe when it comes out in paperback.
Update: SPIT! It's US$16.47 at Amazon. Here in Oz it's A$54. Will someone please round up the Australian book publishing and distribution industry and shoot them? Thanks.
1
What are the other Pixy's Laws? I know the first one:
"Everything involving computers sucks."
Now you can't just toss out Law #77 and expect us to believe there are 75 between #1 and #77.
(BTW: re: Pixy's First Law. Can something so blindingly obvious actually be a Law?)
Posted by: Any A. Mouse at Friday, June 17 2005 12:14 PM (kCb5q)
2
Hehe, that's quite a bump up on the ol' exchange rate. http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi
Tell you what, I'll buy one here and sell it to you for the low low price of only A$53.
Posted by: TallDave at Friday, June 17 2005 01:33 PM (9XE6n)
3
You're right, "Red Thunder" sucked big weenie. I doubt he'll ever hit the high notes he did with the Gaea trilogy and "Persistance of Vision".
Posted by: LeeAnn at Saturday, June 18 2005 07:16 PM (v9jcm)
4
So how is Hallowed Hunt? I still have mixed feelings on the Chalion series (loved Curse, Paladin was sort of meh), but I'm enough of a Bujold fan to pick it up at some point. If it's good, that point might be sooner.
Posted by: Chris C. at Tuesday, June 21 2005 05:31 PM (GvCHO)
5
Hallowed Hunt is closer to Paladin than Curse, unfortunately. Still good, but not brilliant.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 22 2005 02:03 AM (AIaDY)
6
Well, I just got it for $13 from the sfbc, so even if it's meh+, it's not too bad.
Posted by: Chris C. at Thursday, June 23 2005 02:53 PM (GvCHO)
So here I am, browsing through the contents of my iPod. Look, I have three separate copies of Bananarama's Nathan Jones: The extended version from their album Wow; the version from the Rain Man soundtrack, which seems to be the same; and the compress-the-hell-out-of-the-dynamic-range version off their Greatest Hits. Which sounds like dog dirt by comparison.
Now I'm over the formatting debacle, I'm a lot happier with it. But why can't iTunes rip music from multiple CD-ROM drives at once? Huh? Why, Apple? Why?
(I have six versions of Glenn Miller's In the Mood on there too. It's not that I'm a Bananarama freak... Or not just a Bananarama freak.)
1
I know why iTunes can't rip from multiple CD-ROM devices. They couldn't build the app as a massive mp3 ripping machine because that would upset the RIAA. Without the RIAA there is no iTunes music store. Without the music store they sell a LOT few iPods. (4.5 million in the 4th quarter of 2004).
Without massive iPod sales no leverage to try to expand desktop market share.
So I blame the RIAA.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at Saturday, February 12 2005 08:33 PM (U3CvV)
2
First Bananarama... what's next, Bow Wow Wow? Fun Boy 3?
(not that I'd complain, m'self...)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, February 12 2005 11:14 PM (6iibX)
3
Stephen - yeah, that's pretty much what I figured. Plus with Windows' crappy I/O management, it would probably kill the machine.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, February 13 2005 03:05 AM (+S1Ft)
4
Hmm -- I've had an iPod since last September, but I bought my first iTune just last week. I don't think the store is that huge a driver; there are other mp3 buying outlets, and Napster is using online radio to pull sales.
Posted by: PG at Sunday, February 13 2005 02:22 PM (pvzw0)
5
Call yourself a Bananarama fan eh?????
I challenge you.........
One Question.
A wrong answer = Nothing, not even a disapointed glance, or a tut.
Correct Answer = A reward. not something duff. I will list the prize on ebay under the name of the first person to send the answer. Source proof needed.
Posted by: Nathan Jones at Thursday, November 17 2005 07:00 PM (TdzJ9)
6
Any takers......
Question. Who was Nathan Jones,
What do you know???
I am a Nathan Jones, and i want to meet that one.
Come on, put the ipods down and help me on this quest.....
Do send in any kinda kack about the wrestler, not that Nathan Jones. Only the one from the song
Nathan Jones, you`ve been gone too long....
Nathan Jones
Posted by: Nathan Jones at Thursday, November 17 2005 07:09 PM (TdzJ9)
7
ya pidoras, pizu chujie doors, zaabuzte moi url - http://greatpharmacies.com/ a suda pishite pisma i spamte - admass@pisem.net
Posted by: ya pidoras at Tuesday, July 25 2006 06:43 AM (hNGYv)
Just got back from seeing The Incredibles with my family.
This film is a work of art. In my opinion, the best film from Pixar to date, and that says a lot. There were only a couple of moments when it slowed down - for the rest of it (and at 2 hours, there was quite a bit of rest of it) I was totally involved in the film.
The short that accompanied it, Boundin', was also a delight, and introduced my family to one of my personal favourite quintessentially American critters, the jackalope. None of them had ever heard of a jackalope before, so they were probably wondering why I was laughing so hard at that point.
Unlike Finding Nemo, The Incredibles isn't for really young children. There's actually a fair bit of violence in the film, and unlike, say, Bugs Bunny, the violence clearly has consequences. But for older children, and for us grown ups who haven't forgotten being children, it's an absolute must-see.
1
One of my favorite burger joints here in Plano, Texas - Country Burger - has a stuffed jackalope mounted above the cash register in the front. Very Texan; very American.
Posted by: JohnL at Sunday, January 02 2005 03:23 AM (gplif)
And Now For Something Completely Different, With Bunnies
I've been getting this sudden rush of Google hits, and I just realised why. Here you go, boys and girls, the complete lyrics for TISM's Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me, translated from Pub Strine into fairly standard English for your convenience:
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Does anyone else get that feeling?
Teenagers, naked, couple in threes
Grandparents swing from the ceiling.
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Corporate capers and office amore.
Shenanigans outdoor and in.
Resist and then later your find out there's more
Regret in not doing the sin.
Our lives have to die
Of that there's no help
My favourite way to end them
Is the orb-weaver spider's whose pedipalp
Enters the female pudendum.
Then dies on the spot
His corpse there still stuck,
Left for his rivals to curse at.
He would rather die than not get to fuck
Personally I reckon it's worth it.
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Does anyone else get that feeling?
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
Does everybody else get that feeling?
Posted by: Quazie at Tuesday, November 16 2004 08:54 PM (Plwqp)
5
The poor cute bunnie, you can't help feeling sad for him. Did anyone notice one of the choir bunnies had 3.5 written on him? Hehe
Posted by: Candie at Friday, November 19 2004 05:11 PM (Pvzo/)
6
And who said the passion in rock was dead? I mean, maybe it's not as cheesey as some of the old school songs...but the passion man, the passion! And anything with arachnid sex organ references gets 5 stars in my book.
Posted by: Sam at Saturday, November 20 2004 01:15 PM (CTJ8B)
7
OMG!!! I felt SO sad for the little bunny... i'd let him fuck ME!!!! (and i'm male!)
Aww... really cool...
luvvin it!
Posted by: Ty at Saturday, November 20 2004 06:13 PM (rByZX)
Posted by: rob at Saturday, November 20 2004 09:11 PM (6krEN)
9
best song i've ever heard, but whats with the part where he bends over an spreads his ass open?
Posted by: foamy at Sunday, November 21 2004 12:54 PM (4Qc8B)
10
I am that 3.5 bunny - and yes, I'd hate to say, it's due to an abnormality.
Posted by: reginald at Monday, November 22 2004 01:57 AM (d/NtY)
11
The Fucking Bunnie Is The Coolist Thing I Have Ever Seen..
I FELT SO SAD FOR THE POOL LITTLE BUNNY :-( :-(
I Think He Is Sooooo Hot!
O...and by the way i am the bunny that has 912 written on him
Posted by: Quacker at Monday, November 22 2004 08:03 PM (GHLHY)
Posted by: Kevin at Tuesday, November 23 2004 09:35 PM (dGdcX)
13
I saw this video posted over at www.ebaumsworld.com and I lost it when I saw the cutness of the bunny! It's so sad when he starts crying. I've had the vid on repeat for a long time now... He's now my avatar on my message board I post at.
Bunnies need lovin too! So someone please FUG THIS BUNNY!!
Posted by: Eric at Tuesday, November 23 2004 11:50 PM (Mz2SV)
14
Kevin, I thought it was "loves" at first too, but now I'm pretty sure it's "lives". Hmm.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 24 2004 02:38 AM (+S1Ft)
15
Another line
Corporate chambers
Sounds more like Corporate capers to me.
Posted by: Steve at Wednesday, November 24 2004 02:53 AM (QO31P)
16
Sadly, I'm the 0 bunny that plays the keyboard...
Posted by: Harry at Wednesday, November 24 2004 09:34 AM (JkTj9)
17
Damn!! - This song rulez!! And the bunny from the clip is just hilarious!! :D
Posted by: Seth at Wednesday, November 24 2004 01:22 PM (B8t4l)
Posted by: any nohmus at Thursday, November 25 2004 12:43 AM (A/jlj)
19
haha..!!! i cant stop laughing at this!! i CANT.. ive been playing it strait for .. lets se.. 5.. maybe 6 DAYS.. :D and.. that one slutty bunny.. the 1718 bunny ;) id fuck him!! lol
Posted by: Tiffany at Thursday, November 25 2004 04:53 PM (V1RjJ)
20
OMG I am so obessed with this song I have had it reeating on and on and on. i want this song so bad all my friends i sent it to said they couldnt stop watching it its gonna be a BUNNIE EPIDEMIC!
Thankies for the lyrics i love this song so damn much
Aubrey
Posted by: Aubrey at Friday, November 26 2004 01:01 AM (33Ynz)
21
Dang this song really hit home for me... Its so deep. Awesome!
Posted by: duce at Friday, November 26 2004 01:56 AM (TWT9K)
22
the first thing that ran though my mind when i first say this was wow. they should make a cartoon with him in it. they could put it on adult swim or somthin like that and have the song as the them to the show i would watch it every night.
Posted by: antihero2211 at Friday, November 26 2004 06:41 AM (FLPp0)
23
id like to thank TISM (this is serious mum) the band who wrote the song and to the awesome person who did this vid for it, it has been the talking point of everyone at work! Lets face it, we've all been that bunny at some point. GOD!!!!!! you gotta love that bunny!
Posted by: exit at Saturday, November 27 2004 02:48 PM (kJpdI)
24
THIS SONG KICKS ASS, THEY SHOULD REALLY THINK ABOUT SHOWING THIS ON MUCH MUSIC OR SOMTIN!!!
I first heard this on ebaumsworld, and i cant get enough of it!! all my friends love it too, TISM should really think of going big with this hit. ITS HIT SOOO FAST ALL OVER NORTH AMERICA, PLUS, ITS ONLY ON THE INTERNET, id say it takes talent to spred a music vid over the internet!!
Posted by: Mike at Tuesday, November 30 2004 03:58 PM (l+tKu)
25
ha ha. thanx 4 the lyrics. the bunny is so cool. he stands up for the guys who dont get any. go little bunny dude!!! get some!!!
Posted by: chris at Tuesday, November 30 2004 08:39 PM (ywZa8)
26
also, god bless ebaums world. it is like the holy book of internet-ology, a soon-to-be religion at the rate computers are made.
Posted by: chris at Tuesday, November 30 2004 08:41 PM (ywZa8)
27
This Video is great and when you know the lyrics it makes this song so much more meaningful. I want to walk down the aisle on my wedding day to this song. Thank you to the person who made this vid and to TISM.
Posted by: Xena at Wednesday, December 01 2004 10:20 PM (QW5VN)
28
i am the 1 bunny every one else has had more sex then me :( can someone plz fuck me plz lets have comp sex plz!!!!!! i want some :) and thanks for the lyrics
Posted by: cooldood at Saturday, December 04 2004 02:51 AM (fxfxF)
29
pretty good clip. saw it on albinoblacksheep. *grins* 67 was kinda cute too although i make no comments of having sex with them :P no #68 mwahaha
Posted by: inuyasha at Saturday, December 04 2004 10:36 PM (7vJCm)
30
yea me and by friend figured out that 3.5 bunny, he had sex 3 times then got some head so 3.5
Posted by: Koinoperatedboy at Sunday, December 05 2004 07:37 PM (zfB9h)
31
what a sad funny song. ive been listening 2 this for a week and its neva boring i send it 2 evry1 on ma e-mail account! all the replies about it is "its a good song and the little bunny is soo cute" thnx TISM for the brill song and thnx 2 the guys who created the vid!
ps ive also truied 2 make ma own copies of lthe little bunny and bring it in2 skool! they all think hes so cute!
Posted by: jamma at Monday, December 06 2004 04:56 PM (TFI5r)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, December 07 2004 05:23 AM (+S1Ft)
33
Awesome song!
However, I keep hearing "'cause parents" rather than "grandparents"
The bunny does put on quite the performance!
Posted by: fhqwhgads at Wednesday, December 08 2004 01:23 AM (qEqjx)
34
I keep hearing "As parents"
This thing is great... it's on repeat. Poor bunny... I know how he feels...
Posted by: sleepingintherain at Thursday, December 09 2004 11:41 PM (4YAl9)
35
Killer, killer song. Brilliant, brilliant video.
Pretentious Indie people can lick the back of it....I guarantee there are hundreds of songs that will never come anywhere near their 'radar' because they're served exclusively on the Internet. Viva Geek culture...from the old-school installers for pirated software to silly Flash toons, it's an amazing and infinitely exciting phenomenon to watch unfold.
Oh, and I'm the zero keyboard-playing bunny too...both by choice (no premaritals for me) and by defect (fatass with man-tits; just discovered the gym - most fun ever). w00t!
Posted by: Scotty Tryhard of the Mounties at Thursday, December 16 2004 06:55 PM (DlLbC)
36
Wow, that was hilarious. I've seen that video now about as many times as the slutty bunny's had sex. :P It speaks to me. I feel like the redneck lookin' bunny, though. y'know, 912? hee hee...
Anyway, the flash animation of this video is EXTREMLY smooth. I've tried to mimic his style and flair, but failed miserably...
The concept, style, execution, and general story execution is brilliant. Much kudos to Mr. Derriman on his work.
Posted by: Mr. Jangles at Wednesday, April 20 2005 03:27 PM (kYsfN)
Posted by: Dustin at Monday, November 22 2004 03:03 AM (zKSX2)
5
I don't think so, Dustin - it has to rhyme with "pudendum" to fit. ;)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, November 22 2004 03:20 AM (+S1Ft)
6
I think it should be "All our lives have to die" not just our lives have to die.
Posted by: draco_one at Friday, November 26 2004 10:19 AM (p8hRo)
7
how come u didnt put the lyrics of the first verse or second verse in there? i wanna know the lyrics to the part when the bunny puts his face to the screen and when he walks through the line of bunnies. o well, i guess this kinda helps. i really love this flash animation!
Posted by: Evan at Friday, November 26 2004 10:17 PM (moZ8O)
Posted by: chris at Sunday, November 28 2004 01:28 PM (6krEN)
9
This song is awesome but yes, I still can't understand the first two verses. The song is awesome but I still can't seem to understand the song except for "Everyone else has had more sex than me! Ooooh!" And a little bit of the second verse as hes walking by the line of numbered bunnies, prior to the 0 bunny's synth solo (referring to the Flash animation).
As for the verse you gave us, I woulda NEVER gotten that... Female pundendum? Ive only heard that phrase once before and I woulda NEVER understood it had I not read it here.. Thank you for that. Now, all I ask is for the other two verses ^__^
Posted by: Talwar at Monday, November 29 2004 01:41 AM (YX+Ez)
10
yes i agree. please provide us with accurate information as to the identity and/or location of these lyrics. thank you. if you find them, you can email me the lyrics at antibody88@aol.com. thank you again in advance.
Posted by: chris at Monday, November 29 2004 01:56 AM (6krEN)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, November 29 2004 02:29 AM (+S1Ft)
12
Everyone else has had more sex than me
Does anyone else get that feeling?
Teenagers, naked, couple in threes;
Grandparents swing from the ceiling;
Corporate capers and office amour;
Shenanigans outdoor and in -
Resist, and then later you find out there's more
Regret in not doing the sin.
All loves have to die - of that there's no help;
My favourite way to end em'
Is the orb-weaver spider's, whose pedipalp
Enters the female pudendum,
Then dies on the spot, his corpse there still stuck,
Left for his rivals to curse it.
He would rather die than not get to fuck:
Personally, I reckon it's worth it.
http://www.tism.com.au/
Posted by: osa420 at Thursday, December 02 2004 02:42 PM (ngvIf)
13
This is the greatest song I've ever heard. and ebaum's world dancing bunny video just makes it that much more interesting. www.ebaumsworld.com/moresexthanme.html
Posted by: Emily at Monday, December 06 2004 09:53 PM (OtnmD)
14
anyone think that we have way too much free time on our hands? i thought so, but i dont matter so bye.
Posted by: chris at Sunday, December 12 2004 03:53 AM (ywZa8)
15
Wooooooooo. BEST FUCKING SONG IN THE WORLD! YOU ROCK SINGING BUNNEH!
Posted by: Jessii at Friday, January 14 2005 11:03 PM (BZHuI)
