Apathy

Upcoming: Voicemail, Defunct Rock
Currently: Unfortunate Random Mode

Another one of the big, chunky nuggets you love coming by tomorrow. There. Now I have a deadline so I won't waste the whole evening.

Egad. Some kind fellow, seeming to be named Pete, expresses a desire to look like this site. I must say, the humour included is fine stuff; and the unwanted email of th' week is grand. Not the email, but the idea. If I keep getting these vapid forwards, it might become a feature here at the ol' "ill-named" Apathy. Only thing left is a title; may I recommend "Glue on Black"?

Now, to leech a link from him: This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics is a very narrow, targetted blog that shoots your veins full of math and the folks who love it. Needs a link to the main/archival page somewhere on the current week, but overall, a delightfully enlightening confiscation!

The Doom ps manager meme spread so fast, it popped up on about 6 of my daily reads in a single day. Figured I might as well continue the trend. I tried it with my pssafe wrapper (doesn't kill your own processes, or important root daemons)... and yes, it really is fun blowing away other unfortunate user's processes. Not that I would ever install this on a production machine... cough. Yet.

More geeky word crap: Just discovered Random House's "Random Word of the Day", which has some very wide-ranging archives. There's even an entry for bloke, which I managed to strangle earlier this week.

I thought FBI was an acronym. I thought copacetic was an established word that originated in a Romance language. I was sure Captain Marvel only popularized "holy moly". I would have been willing to bet on the fact that skulduggery was a Dickensian invention. I am wrong a lot.

However, because I am a complete dork, I knew that grok was a Heinlein invention.

In the land of intended humour: I was sent that "Pluck Yew" forward for the fifteen-gazillionth time. So, I decided to follow Marychen's link to the happy world of Internet etymology. Those offended by crude words may now avert your eyes and ignore this blog for all eternity.

For here it is! A rather long-winded discussion of the origins of fuck, and why there was/is such a huge taboo on the word. Near the end, Mr. Dave Wilton explains the "pluck yew" internet myth, and the only relevant fact, which has to do with obscene British gestures and war; I'll spare you the details.

Nothing like a bit of Goethe to straighten things right out. I think he is getting at the fact that mass forwarding emails is the real evil. I sure hope the practice doesn't endure through the centuries.

Some of the furniture bandying in the blogs this past week is swell. Russ points out the new Herman Miller Levity desk. In love. That certainly would go well with the Aeron chair; I'd be Spaceman Dan. How often would you want to stand up and compute, though? Doing that in the server racks is pain enough, thank you. No specs listed; there would have to be an upper monitor size limit, though.

On the other hand, the TJ collection is on sale, can hold 200 pounds, has space for more than one monitor, and is a normal desk that won't scare people. Leaning in that direction, but I really know little about modern furniture. Have any suggestions? Or links?

Music review wagon: How to confuse the reader, part one: Arcwelder - Everest review. I think they spun around in circles a bit too much.

On the other side of the big lake, comes part two: Joel R.L. Phelps - Warm Spring Nights review. Meine Deutsch... hat geplummeted to nothing. Hinternet.de, har har. I will have to keep the eyeballs peeled for this.

I miss Jason too...
At least the Homes has some live reviews up after yesterday's insanity. Yaaay, Calexico! It's like... Friends of Dean Martinez, with singing. And, if I may interject, I have to say that DJ Shadow is just like that. I wouldn't be expecting "hooks and beats".

Silly me: Apparently everyone else has been using an online link repository for ages. I will try them both out!

Don't attempt to shave your own neck with a dull razor. Iceburn is an appropriate theme song to this evening. The only new Iceburn link I can find tonight is mainly a review. For more of that, you can visit one of the largest off-kilter review sites on the planet: Aiding & Abetting.

If you have adventurous musical tastes, and ever see one of their albums on display in your local record store, I recommend you taste it. Progressing from your normal Black Sabbath riff to free atonal jazz, it's normal music smashed together and smoothed back out. Noise jazz fiends (anyone?) should be sure to track down the Polar Bear Suites, which include much more non-dynamic sax and fret experimentation.

Ahh. Soothing. Good night.

Not so handy, but fun, web application: Funmail!
Arg, I hope Blink [below] lets me annotate links because I forgot where I stole this from earlier today. However, I have had a grand old time creating wacky aliases and pretending I'm from the UK, blokes. Or is that supposed Australian?

Although I doubt I will actually use a fully web-based email account (there's no downloading/archival of messages as Yahoo! and Hotmail allow), this is fun for vanity addresses. There's a lot to choose from here. Some of my current faves:

american@nerd.co.uk
dgfitch@beanpole.co.uk
youw@ill.co.uk
running@haggard.co.uk
imightremember@andpigsmightfly.co.uk

Handy web application: Blink! [memepool�reprint]
Import, manage, publish, and check your bookmarks in a central net-based location. Why, oh why Lord couldn't I find this a month ago? I have been transporting bookmarks back and forth from work by FTPing them around, and it's just plain confusing.

Blink seems to offer some fancy features for publishing and sharing bookmarks, as well as a darn nifty import feature that snarfed my teeny 1000-link bookmarks in under a minute. Another feature which was instantly handy: the "stale" link checker. See how many of them old bookmarks stand up to the 404 test! Only 2 of mine failed.

Although the interface is scarily Windows-ish, I suppose that's necessary. More on this as it actually gets put to the grindstone at work and home.

Skip the NT crap I logged for personal reading.

More from the "blog abuse" sector:

...looking at these links will turn you to salt.

Boring work stuff: I'm looking for a link repository dealing with NT security. Yes, I know, ick. The part that annoys me is the fact that general NT and IIS security issue pages aren't that hard to come by, but Microsoft restructures their pages so often none of the links work.

Not so amazing English fact: solder actually started out being spelled like it sounds. Sowder, souder, sawdyr, sawter, sodder. So where did the L come from? Souldour...

I've been looking forward to Messiah for some time. Dave Perry, one of the Shiny folk, gets the Voodoo Extreme treatment. Asked to describe the game in one word, he spews out a few paragraphs:

This game is going to require some serious AI, and you can tell they had to invest a lot of effort in making the world as interactive and open as possible. Plus, any game with a cherubic protagonist named Bob gets a thumbs up sight unseen.

Hey kids, it's your pal and mine Donald Knuth, speaking in MIT's lecture series: God and Computers.

Good point. Now, while obviously not a professional speaker, I find the man compelling in a befuddling, elderly wizard type way.

Meta: Ahhh. The Firewater problem (below) was Matador's fault. Chris from Insound says they suggest I try ordering again and see if I randomly get the correct CD. Haha. Real funny Matador. See me laugh, and try to avoid purchasing your CDs once I have the Silkworm discography. I'll import all the forthcoming Mogwai discs, you know I will, don't make me do it man!!

I like lists. Pitchfork churns out a better list than Spin, I must say. I followed the directions and purchased an album on the list I had never heard of, Polvo's "Exploded Drawing". I like it! I really like it, and I feel stupid for not hearing this sooner. Dischordant yet catchy math rock that skips through the tracks like, umm, a piece of brightly colored styrofoam. Yeah. Thanks Pitchfork!

POWER TO THE PEOPLE... new Pokey.

Proof positive, dogmatrix are for kids! This is greatly hilarious to me this morning, and I forgot where I stole it from a while back (before I started labelling bookmarks). Thanks for brightening my Monday, whoever you are.

Meta: CD pressing errors stink. I really wanted to hear Silkworm's Firewater album, supposedly their "most accessible". Instead, Matador screwed up and the CD which looks like Firewater is instead Matador's own wimpy Bardo Pond. Grr.

Cool music alert: Supposedly, Matador and CDNow and other bloodsucking corporations are going to let you listen to their band's CMJ shows. Except Chavez! Bah! First, you need Quicktime for the streaming, and second, they want your vital stats. Skip it.

Now, settle in for some treats! I will add commentary as I watch 'em.

Mogwai - Stupid crowd yelling. Flashing lights that are not needed. These guys struck me as a studio band, but I guess when it comes down to it, they just plain rock all over us.
If you've not heard of Mogwai and you like guitars, please do yourself a favor and check this out.
I can't figure out how to use an EQ in Quicktime 4, and the treble is a bit muffled here; cymbals are tough to make out in the beginning.
Best point: 32:00 - 34:00 ... 'Gwai grooves down into nothing twice, the crowd gets a bit confused, and then roaring back comes the riff. Decrescendo again at 38:20, but they get it this time. Hooray! Also nifty-neato is the segment near the end where one guitarist whips off the axe, unveils a second drum altar, and begins to rail along with the gunfire. Go watch!

Finally, a free dynamic DNS hosting service that supports updating with a simple HTTP request and figures out your IP for itself. No OS-specific clients needed.

Now if I could get my Debian drive unborked, I'd be able to... surf at home, from work.. umm, or something... never mind.

Derek Hess draws rock scene posters and other over the top pencil-based art. Don Caballero fences. Shellac paints. Man... or Astroman ballet? Only in teacups!

Can't find the one I'm looking for, a Season to Risk show with Rodan opening, dead Barney slumped against a wall.

Minor annoyance of the day: Just after I start following the OED word of the day, it doesn't update.