quiet

computer rooms are eerie when you turn everything (including the UPSes) off for the weekend…

posted at 5:42 pm on Friday, October 05, 2007 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on quiet

trends

Apparently ex-starship captains go on to become the local authority in small-town horror flicks:

* “Kingdom of the Spiders”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076271/
* “Slither”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439815/

Have Patrick Stewart or Kate Mulgrew done insect/reptile horror flicks yet?

posted at 9:58 pm on Sunday, February 05, 2006 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on trends

EBEs

bq. I’m sure if there’s something out there they’re wise enough to stay away from us.

— Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab

posted at 2:53 pm on Monday, October 17, 2005 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on EBEs

change

bq. Change is mandatory, survival is optional; choose wisely!

atrributed to François Tavenas, but I think it’s actually older…

posted at 2:40 pm on Monday, October 17, 2005 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on change

quotes

Collected from various sources.

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.
— Sir Ralph Richardson

Only an “S” separates laughter from slaughter.

I have found a marvelous technique for increasing the size of one’s member, which this subject line is too small to contain.
— Fermat’s Last Spam

posted at 11:51 am on Thursday, February 17, 2005 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
  1. - irving - says:

    And only a “t” separates immorality from immortality…

another qotd

bq. “We can tell when a technology has truly arrived when the new problems it gives rise to approach in magnitude the problems it was designed to solve.”

– Arthur Chandler, 1997 (quoted at the end of “Morality Play”)
[http://charon.sfsu.edu/MORALITYPLAY.HTML]

posted at 12:47 pm on Sunday, January 23, 2005 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on another qotd

authority

bq. “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

РVoltaire [Fran̤ois Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)

posted at 12:11 pm on Friday, January 21, 2005 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
  1. Jeff K says:

    “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ” Sigmund Freud

MT Plus Comment Spam Equals Dead Site

I’ve experience the problems described here: The Daily Whim: MT Plus Comment Spam Equals Dead Site

Several times we’ve woken up to a dead cfrq.net server, and (ignoring one disk crash) it’s always been runaway Movable Type comment scripts causing the system to thrash, until some important process gets killed because of the resulting out-of-memory condition. It invariably happens on a Saturday, which means we all get to wait until Monday morning for the server to get manually rebooted.

I’ve installed countermeasures in the past:
* I’ve renamed the comments script
* I close comments automatically after two weeks
* “Comment SPAM interlocking”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2003/10/14/comments-spam-interlock/

And still, I see a constant, steady stream of comment spam that gets posted, even to postings that are closed to comments!

So far my WordPress blog is getting fewer hits, but it’s only a matter of time until the spammers find that one…

*sigh.

posted at 5:54 pm on Tuesday, December 14, 2004 in Links, Miscellaneous, Security | Comments (1)
  1. ReidNews says:

    Comments have been disabled
    Due to a huge influx of comment spam, I have disabled comments on tnir. This affects all blogs hosted on tnir, including Luisa’s and David’s. If you try to post a ccomment, it will let you type it in, but when you click “post” it will give you some…

Page 23 Meme

“This is one of the most arcane and irregular architectures still in use, but is undeniably the most popular.”

(“Linkers and Loaders”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558604960, John R. Levine)

The deal:
Grab the nearest book whatever it happens to be.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth complete sentence.
Post the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

(via “The Nita”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/the_nita/37386.html

posted at 3:51 pm on Monday, April 12, 2004 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)

Balance

Here we sit, teetering on the knife edge between light and dark.

Happy Spring :-)

posted at 1:49 am on Saturday, March 20, 2004 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
  1. Jeff K says:

    You should be a poet. Btw, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for creating your weight loss page. It was the single most important thing in my hitting my goal of 30 lbs down and breaking 200lbs, by Spring and before I’m 40. woohoo. [Well indirectly, as the little book of points and the 0-point soup from weight watchers is really what did it, but I would never have gone there without knowing it helped you].

The Lion in March


march_snow.jpg

I snapped this on the way out this morning. Spring is in 3 days!

On the plus side, the weather people are telling us that the next 30 days will be warmer than average. That should make up for the bitter January we had, although I’m a little concerned that everything’s going to dry out too quickly. We still haven’t recovered from the last couple of years of low-precipitation winters, and our holding capacity is way down, since we’ve paved over so many of the forests and wetlands around here…

posted at 10:12 am on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on The Lion in March

Windy

It was very windy Wednesday night and all day Thursday; it sounded like the “new roof” was going to lift off and disappear!

I didn’t put my garbage out on Thursday morning, because I knew I’d probably find my garbage can about a mile away. I came home last night to find two recycling boxes on my front lawn! I’ll leave ’em there for a couple of days, and see if anyone claims them…

posted at 10:48 pm on Friday, November 14, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Windy

French Press Coffee?

Something to add to my list of things to try: “French Press Coffee”:http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/000204.html (described here by “Mike Rohde”:http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/). The thought of coffee that “tastes like fresh ground coffee smells” is intriguing, although it may get my wife drinking more coffee…

posted at 1:33 pm on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
  1. joy says:

    Yes! Yes! French press coffee. It’s great. (I broke the glass carafe of mine a few weeks ago and I’ve been missing it.)

    Two things though to note about French press coffee.

    It’s the type of coffee that you drink on a sunday morning while leisurely reading the paper since after you pour the coffee, you really can’t wait and do a refill from the same carafe. It’s not like a regular drip coffeemaker.

    Also, you need to use high quality french roasted coffee. I’ve tried other types of coffee, but french roasted is the best to use.

Happy Equinox, and eggs

It’s Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox. Day and Night are (temporarily) in balance. Summer has past; Winter has not yet arrived. Time to bring in the harvest, and get ready for winter.

Of course, you can try “balancing an egg”:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030923.html instead…

posted at 4:04 pm on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Happy Equinox, and eggs

Why is Outlook so popular?

From Daring Fireball: Good Times

bq. Most corporations now have a CIO (chief information officer), whose clout is directly proportional to the number of people employed in the company’s IT division. More IT staff means a larger budget, and budgets are the rulers used to measure wangs in corporate America.

bq. It is thus in the interests of corporate IT staff to deploy technology that requires a large IT staff for maintenance.

The next section comparing plumbing to IT is hilarious…

One caveat; I know quite a few perfectly rational, capable IT people who are stuck with Outlook and Exchange because that’s what management wants, not because _they_ think it’s the best solution. It’s not always the IT people who get to make these decisions…

posted at 5:14 pm on Thursday, August 28, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
  1. James says:

    I think that was pretty much the author’s point: that if the IT people had their way, Outlook and Exchange would be out the door faster than a cat on fire, but management doesn’t get it.

Digital Retouching Examples

“Greg’s Digital Retouching Portfolio”:http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/digital.html has a bunch of interesting examples of modern image retouching. Each image is a rollover allowing you to easily see the before and after versions of an image.

Look at this site, and then _remember_ it the next time you’re looking at a magazine ad or billboard image.

The “bikini-clad model”:http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html is particularly telling…

posted at 4:35 pm on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Digital Retouching Examples

Sweeping The Alley

delimiter.org: Sweeping The Alley:

bq. As I get older (and hopefully, wiser) I’m discovering the value of keeping one’s mouth shut.

Followed by an interesting little parable on life; check it out.

posted at 3:57 pm on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Sweeping The Alley

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Canada! 136 and still going strong…

posted at 9:03 am on Tuesday, July 01, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Happy Birthday!

The Bike Doctor

Is there an equivalent to The Bike Doctor in Toronto (or the GTA)?

(via “chuqui”:http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/000519.html )

posted at 9:00 am on Tuesday, July 01, 2003 in Miscellaneous | Comments Off on The Bike Doctor

Changes at BAKKA

After 22 years, John Rose has sold BAKKA Books, the local Toronto Science Fiction and Fantasy bookshop, to Ben Freiman. John writes:

bq. I had a lot of fun in the years I owned the store, but I’ve been behind the counter a long time, and it’s really time for a change. I owned BAKKA for more than twenty-two years. I sold a lot of great books in those years and met a lot of great people, authors, publishers and customers alike. I began to look for someone who could take over the store, to bring a fresh energy, a new attitude and a renewed interest, to keep it going. Ben’s offer came along in the fall and I decided to accept it.

In what _might_ be a timeworn cliche, the name has changed to “Bakka-Phoenix Books”.

Changes are happening already; the store has been re-arranged a bit, and is getting a new paint job. Ominously, while BAKKA has been an Apple-based store for the 17 years I’ve been a customer, there’s a new Wintel box sitting on the counter next to the old cash register &ltgrin&gt.

On a more serious note Chris, Michelle, and Tara will continue at the store, and will probably be even more active in running the place than they were before. That continuity will be very important, and I’m glad to see it.

There’s more! John resisted the Internet for a long time, and with good reason (IMO); running an online catalog and ordering system is a full-time job, and puts one in closer competition with the behemoths chapters.ca and amazon.ca. Future Fantasy in Palo Alto made a name for themselves with one of the first online SF&F catalogs, yet they still went under (Granted, they had a crappy physical location). Anyway, the new store will have “a website”:http://www.bakkaphoenixbooks.com/. There’s nothing there yet, but I’m told of plans for both “coming soon” and “wishlist” sections, which will make me very happy…

All in all, it sounds like a good thing. I knew John was getting tired, and I’m happy that he found a positive way to move on. I’ve been a loyal customer of the store for 17 years, and so I wish Ben and the staff the best of luck with the new store, and hope it continues to be around for a long time!

posted at 9:43 am on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 in Books, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Changes at BAKKA
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