a - quick links -
archives - current zaa - last zaa
5mb of inline images, cause i like it that way.
I found a new keyboard shortcut: ctl-del deletes next word.
very useful. doesn't work in trillian but works in mozilla and write at least.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
| "christmas" | 33100000 |
| "christmas eve" | 1240000 |
| "christmas eve day" | 8150 |
| "christmas eve day eve" | 4 |
pictures of the us soldiers who've died in iraq
this is the first time I've seen their faces. They all look so young. And now they're fucking dead and nobody knows all the things they planned to do in the future. There is no heaven, they're not in a better place. All the effort they ever made in their life is shit now, all those thousands of hours playing as a kid and thinking are all nothing. It doesn't work out in the end, and it can happen to you.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Ideosphere Foresight Exchange. combines gambling, elitism, and arrogance. Bet that you can predict the future.
here's what i've invested in.
| Claim | Price | Held | desc | comment |
| YEN | 38 | -70 | this comes true if the yen goes below 80 per dollar before 2008. Right now it's 105~, in the height of the bubble it was only 85. | People don't realize how insane it would be if the yen went to this level. This claim is never going to happen, so I bought NO shares, I get money if it doesn't come true. 2008 isn't too far off. |
| GoCH | 40 | -35 | Comes true if there is a world champion computer go player before 2020. | First of all, go programs currently suck, weak amateurs beat them. Strong amateurs can give them absolutely huge handicaps, equivalent to giving someone a queen and 2 rooks in chess, and still win. They've been that way for quite a while now, despite there being various prizes for developing them, and a big market for go programs. So at the current rate this claim will never come true. If there is a world changing development, such as quantum computers, maybe this claim has a chance. I paid .60 for "NO" shares, I'd probably really pay up to .80. The problem is, this claim isn't going to pay off for a long time. |
| Clrk04 | 8 | 0 | wesley clark pres in 2004 | I bought some of this at around 20, thinking that even if he didn't win, it'd go up a lot if he won the nomination. A few days ago someone posted a message to the foresight list saying there was an arbitrage opportunity, since you could get NO shares for all the dem candidates and also NO shares for bush for under 1.0, even though one of those was pretty much guaranteed to pay off for 1.0 each. So something was overvalued. Clark's value went down about 50% overnight. I just got out of that market. Shouldn't bet about things like that if I don't even watch the news. |
TERRIBLISMA - awe at massive destruction.
whenever there's a big hurricane coming I always root for it to be huge and destroy lots of stuff. Flood all those silly people who build their houses right next to the ocean, etc. But weather reporters always act like they're scared and want it to go away. Inside they must really be rooting for super damaging violent weather though. It sucks that they have to pretend.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
so i'm going to make a cd soon. if you want to get one, just send me your address and i'll send it to you. that's it, you don't have to do anything. ok? my email address is
hello. if you are reading this you are very special. there's this cd club where i make a cd, and send it out to people. it's got various stuff on it.
.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
a google images search for "holy fucking shit", and what it led to.
ok this is weird 
ha ha. wonder how pomegranate candy tastes.
stories that start with 'got gave me an inspiration' are great. Once i met a woman who insisted god had inspired her to rent an apartment for the use of the saints of god. so even though she didn't have the money she was maintaining this apartment. idiot.
this same company sold "spanish candy", known as GOMAS DE MASCAR / ACIDO. oh yeah.
it's so simple than even a child or an unchurched person can understand! or an idiot. god. yeah that bracelet is for losers. how many kids wear this, just hoping someone will be like "ooh, what's the story behind that interesting bracelet?" 
my ticket to heaven!! 
ok you're probably getting sick of this by now. just note the last part - "enough for an entire class!" what kind of class i wonder. 
eat that sin! eat that blood! i love how they get in one dogma jab, baptism is just an outward symbol of faith (baptists), not a required ceremony.
THE J IS FOR JESUS. THE REASON FOR THE SEASON BITCHES 
omg are people really this stupid?
i read that paul never once mentions jesus' teachings specifically; he mostly just talks about his own ideas, with jesus just as a symbol. maybe paul's to blame for everything, and jesus was just a good teacher.
nice.
nice
wow jesus is cool. he looks hardcore, gang hand signs.
OH MY FUCKING GOD 
HOLY FUCKING SHIT is right. look at that.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
ha ha ha
that capitalization is nice.
i can't wait for the SNOW to hit NJ. I predict we'll get 2 feet this year.
shit. mandlebrot terragen landscape? 
i feel that
terragen is awesome.
wow arabic is sweet. almost even better than kanji.
love it.
i really wonder how he thinks of himself. does he keep a journal? yeah right. bet cheney does though, imagines it'll be really valuable for future generations, his drive for power will be revered.
oh yeah
why is star trek so meaningful? any new cliche applied to star trek is funny. star trek is our culture.
ha ha 
ooh
i I wonder what george bush is like in bed. His wife doesn't seem to have much going on. 
ahh, the oregon trail. this game was really fun when i was in elementary school. there'd be challenges every once in a while where all of a sudden you'd be attacked by indians, and you'd have to type something like "bang" really quickly. depending on how fast you typed, you'd lose fewer food or horses or fewer people would get shot. if your keyboard was broken you'd really be stuck. really tough indians would require you to type gibberish.
Reminds me of a game i saw in Japan, "typing of the damned". it's like tomb raider except there's no gun, just a keyboard. Skeletons approach you with words written on their foreheads, and you have to type them quickly before the guy gets to you. It's hilarious. It even said typing of the damned right there on the machine.
this is lee changho. One of the best go players in the world. this is the happiest picture of him i could find.
here he has no expression at all
here there is at least something. he's a lefty.
no expression, almost like he's trying not to have one. i guess that helps in go?
and this is cho chikun. i think his nickname is "killer" or something. you gotta like that he is smiling. otherwise i'd feel too sorry for all these guys who play go their entire lives.
lee again. he won a bunch of tournaments at age 16.
it's ishida yoshio, another japanese famous go player. i used to watch him comment on games on tv, and he's quite a good commenter, isn't too afraid to say anything.
cho chikun again, looks like it'd be fun to talk to him about go.
it's like that guy hideo from neuromancer, the machine created and raised super intense japanese assassin; these go players have been playing since before they learned to read, 8 or 10 hours a day. that must do something to you. but nothing can stop people from developing personalities anyway. is it most effective to devote your entire life to it, or to spend time doing other stuff? marriage is known to be bad for you in go, chess, and publishing scientific papers.
great huh
this is so classic and brilliant. the use of photoshopped images to augment making a point on a bbs will be studied in sociology classes in the future. 
i recently read a little bit about dna stuff again after a long time. it is fucking cool. so complicated, but we're getting more and more understanding. this is a picture of tDNA, which fits onto somewhere in the protein making process to join up the right amino acid. i just have these visions of great cgi stuff you could make of all the processes going on in a cell. floating around and following different bits, tracing their life cycles etc.
ha ha 
ha ha
ech
yep. id like to see how often bush sr is in touch with his son. 1 hour a day?
oh i love bling bling. who made that up?
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
I am waiting for the day when the link http://videos.google.com works. it's not today though.
Friday, November 14, 2003
you know that site diaryland? well for like 3 years i always read that in my mind as DAIRY land. cheese and milk. I thought i was right cause the graphics there are kind of farmy. it was a shock to see it was something obvious like diary land. i had felt kind of happy that a site with such a silly name like dairy land had managed to get so popular. oh well.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
http://www.buttafly.com/originals/friendster2.php analasys of personality types from friendster pictures. my friendster
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
omg what horrible thing has this little girl stumbled upon!
tripping
i fucking love snow, i can't wait for it to fall like this again. silly cars ride off the road in front of our house, they are known as "ditchers". sometimes they come in for coffee and to use the phone. I guess they won't be coming in for the phone so much nowadays.
our house has massive ditches, but nothing compared to japan. I wonder if they have many ditchers over there.
here is a typical gutter for where i was in japan. in farming areas they can be way bigger, more like little rivers, maybe 5 feet by 5 feet. The one in front of my house was about 3 by 4 feet, with maybe 3 to 6 inches of water in it.
from here
Another curious phenomenon was the "gomi bike". In cities, at bus stops, on idyllic country lanes, literally anywhere, bikes were abandoned in their thousands. Many seemed to have nothing worse than a flat tyre, others had been dumped weeks or months before to judge from the state of their decomposition. Very few appeared to have been cannibalised, and even when they had been stripped beyond any possibility of anyone returning for them, they remained, as eyesores. This was only one aspect of a wider problem, though: we also saw videos, furniture, late model cars simply dumped on the pavement or in the countryside in vast quantities, and without any regard for the resulting public ugliness, let alone the environmental effect. Naturally we asked how this could happen in a society in other ways so conscious of aesthetics, especially given the value of that most precious of Japanese commodities, space. We never got an answer - people seemed to prefer to ignore the issue.
flash thing of plants growing.
Monday, November 10, 2003
| 3.1 | 14900000 |
| 3.14 | 136000 |
| 3.141 | 53900 |
| 3.1415 | 20600 |
| 3.14159 | 73500 |
| 3.141592 | 7520 |
| 3.1415926 | 12100 |
| 3.14159265 | 10000 |
| 3.141592653 | 1730 |
| 3.1415926535 | 4890 |
| 3.14159265358 | 689 |
| 3.141592653589 | 1490 |
| 3.1415926535897 | 580 |
| 3.14159265358979 | 5080 |
| 3.141592653589793 | 5530 |
| 3.1415926535897932 | 1910 |
| 3.14159265358979323 | 444 |
| 3.141592653589793238 | 744 |
| 3.1415926535897932384 | 366 |
| 3.14159265358979323846 | 9160 |
| 3.141592653589793238462 | 173 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626 | 273 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264 | 309 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643 | 1160 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433 | 221 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338 | 170 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383 | 314 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832 | 167 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327 | 292 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279 | 1430 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 | 1150 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950 | 184 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502 | 52 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028 | 87 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288 | 322 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884 | 70 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841 | 264 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419 | 90 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197 | 224 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971 | 108 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716 | 219 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169 | 121 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693 | 38 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939 | 28 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399 | 43 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993 | 33 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937 | 41 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375 | 109 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751 | 282 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510 | 479 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105 | 67 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058 | 35 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582 | 83 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820 | 18 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209 | 117 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097 | 147 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974 | 39 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749 | 40 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494 | 39 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944 | 193 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445 | 46 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459 | 102 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592 | 393 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923 | 45 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230 | 24 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307 | 80 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078 | 61 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781 | 57 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816 | 53 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164 | 106 |
| 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640 | 21 |
| 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406 | 38 |
| 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062 | 47 |
A Typical JET (english teacher in japan) conversation. I had this about 300 times in 3 years.
How long have you been in Japan? I've also noticed this tendency within my hobby, flying. Upon meeting, two pilots always ask each other how many flight hours they have. The longer the time, the better your status.
- * 1-30 days: Green, wet behind the ears, just off the plane. Veterans like to pat this dazzled or distressed newcomer on the head and offer all sorts of advice. Not a threat.
- * 30 days - 1 year: Tourist -- you still haven't committed and could turn tail for home any time.
- * 2-3 years: Starting to pay your dues. Are you an English teacher or what?
So i've kind of changed the format of this weblog now. Most of the unique research into cool shit I do on the internet is now in the form of google images. So this place is kind of like a scrapbook that i'm showing my friend; get the concept? I don't search out new articles anymore, I just read
1. boingboing - appreciation of cool fucking shit, and news;
2. robotwisdom - leftist shit;
3. metafilter - fucking cool but shallow shit.
oh yeah and i read good fucking mailing lists:
1.viridian, run by bruce sterling about global warming, fucking good;
2. the week in review, about scientology developments;
3. popbitch, fucking good funny shit about the world of pop
4. NTK - again just good shit
zaa zaa now is going to be about cool images, since i can't get enough of just looking at them and riffing.
Friday, October 31, 2003
fucking great show
fucking great show
both shows are made for my segment, and it's so satisfying, that is my culture.
I really wonder if data collectors have to deal with a huge spike in people in the 90210 zip code, because so many people have it memorized. Besides your own zip code, how many can you name? Also people born jan 1 1970. After that the most common is probably jan 1 1900?
From sidetalking. fucking funny. I like how people have obviously tried to make a "phone face". 
It's funny, in japan you can't just walk around with a white t-shirt on, people will think you forgot to put a shirt on. It's really not cool. I wish i'd known that for my first few months there, everyong thought i was walking around in an undershirt.
Crazy, somebody put up these screen grabs of them using dc into the public domain, so i'm copying them here for your information. Nice program huh?
Oh, here's their uploading - emerson, lake, & palmer, mr. bungle, and one piece. Other people's taste is funny on dc i've heard.
I love candy corn
I hadn't known that far sides were getting translated into german. When i was in japan i tried to show the far side to japanese people and they didn't get it at all. I showed the one with the mummy in the bathroom and the guy accidentally picking up his wrappings in the next stall, a few kids thought that was funny. I showed "bowler's hell" where there's a really hard bowling alley and they didn't get it at all. I showed the one where the scientist is about to pop a bag right behind another scientist working on an atom bomb and they didn't get it at all.
Finally i showed the giant headed guy walking into the headhunter tribe, subtitle "professor didn't know it, but he was going to become famous in the history of the tribe". They didn't get it at all. It was hard to tell if they really didn't get it, or if they were too embarassed to show it; especially about the one with the nuke. Did the repression even reach conscious level? Really i wonder that about all sorts of things in japan. 
ha ha ha have you ever thought of this before?
geez
ha ha
ha ha, looks like costa rica
I can probably guess this one
hell yeah
Japan's 50s era happened during the 70s and 80s. Maybe their 60s will be next? Oh god please!!
Sweet sweet minesweeper. I looked over someone's shoulder as they downloaded a video called "tetris japan championships", it was really sick, that guy was really fast. playing like on level 20 for a long long time. Tetris is really a balance of 2 factors, the fall speed and the lock speed, the speed the piece locks onto the ground once it's fallen. In gameboy tetris, lock speed was the same as fall speed, that made sense physically. But a lot of later tetrises have it so that even if a piece looks like it's stuck, you can move it around. I think that's fucked up. But it does let you play at a lot higher levels though. There's also the issue of pieces getting stuck before you can get them to the side, on gameboy after level 22 or so it was almost impossible to get a piece to the side, even with a low pit. So that was a problem.
I've always wondered about non-time constraned tetris, just give 2 people the same first 100 pieces, where the pieces don't fall at all, and see who's doing better. That'd be fun.
ziggarut?
Andrew wiles.
I have a new idea for a t-shirt - on the top it says "I love my country" and below it says "but i hate george bush". Alternately the top could say "i love the constitution". Both of those would be true for me. After being in japan i'm more of a patriot than ever, we've got a good system compared to them; it's slipping out of control here now, but it's better than japan. My current shirt has a picture of bush and below it it says "corrupt". I like it. There's no need to distort his face or words or make him look like a monkey; he's evil and corrupt, which are a lot worse than being stupid. I bet a lot of voters think his stupid fuckups are kind of endearing; attacking them doesn't help democrats. 
US maps with a different size metric?
Such a nice on isn't it???
Old terragen images. Fucking sweet.
Friday, October 31, 2003
so, direct connect is really good for downloading LEGAL mp3s. also LEGAL movies before they come out on dvd. also if it were legal to download aqua teen hunger force and sealab 2021 episodes, it'd be really good for that probably.
Friday, October 31, 2003
oh, i miss japan so much! i miss pocari sweat. coco's curry house, ebi ni komi. indian restaurant and ordering spiciness 9 in order to avoid paying 100 yen. driving on the left. racing around each weekend trying to do as much fun stuff as possible. vending machines. pocari sweat. american milk coffee. shitty japanese croissants. running to get the damn expensive train. hot girls everywhere that i actually sort of have a chance to talk to, although i never take it.
the biggest problem in japan is that you don't have similar friends, since all the japanese people like you are all in the us, or at least a big city, doing something interesting. as an english teacher, i was lumped with a bunch of junior high school teachers. some were nice, some sucked, but they were all conformists, even for japan. and conformists fucking suck.
Friday, October 31, 2003
leftovers, a bunch of maps, japanese pics.
nice.
fantasy world maps are always so strange. you'd think the people living there would figure out they were in a video game. i mean look at it, it's supposed to be a sphere but all fits on one view.
so silly.
cool guy
one thing japan girl style has is low cut shirts worn over higher cut shirts. so you've got a low line revealing... another layer.
mulleted japanese guy
first i thought this was a really realistic-looking fantasy map, but it turned out to be a map TO a fantasy convention.
doesn't seem dense enough
japan has these maps that list every building and who owns it. so you can just look at it and figure out who lives where. do they have that in the US?
i like this one. very angular.
chocobos!
what can this be? a housing development?
this sucks, til i saw the title along the top - "perpetually looking-aside-in-the-face-of-imminent-disaster map
cool
OMG they are the same size@!!!11!!!!!
animals hidden in lincoln's head!!!
love subway maps
"fantasy subway map!" I don't get the difference, but...
i like this one, lots of cities.
i got this from searching for "extreme map" - it's a "thrilled-map". 
4 years is a long time. i wonder if ppl tagged along? imagine finally getting back to the us and realizing that you've still got a year's walk to get home. also i wonder if after 4 years you still get tired at the end of the day.
Monday, October 27, 2003
