I don't post much in this LJ these days -- at least, not as much as I did at certain points in the past. I moved my more in-depth thoughtful stuff off LJ to SOB: Scion of Backronymics (yes, that name is a joke). Check there if you want to see more regular postings from me with more attention to subjects that get into some nontrivial depth and often end up being kind of long. You can also get a friends list RSS feed of it here on LJ. It doesn't seem to track anything beyond a certain age, so if you want to see older archives, you'll have to go to the source. Edits of typos and formatting issues don't make it into the LJ RSS syndication, anyway, so if you're not too lazy it's probably best to get it at the source anyway. I know of a couple people who use the LJ RSS feed as notification of new material, then go read the original.

Thanks to cluebyfour for creating that LJ RSS feed originally. It's nice having fans, or at least readers.

If anyone ever creates LJ RSS feeds for anyone on my blogroll at SOB, I hope they'll let me know.

It's still in its early stages of development, but I'm happy to be an integral part of the creation of the Software Liberation Front website. Check it out, tell your friends, and join the fight to liberate software.

Someone hit me up with a stupid meme — except this one's not so stupid, because it really made me think and gave me an excuse to ask people I know to give me interesting information about books (and we should all know by now that I love books). I'm not going to repost it here, but you can see the original post at your leisure (the repost link leads to an LJ RSS feed for my off-LJ weblog, where all the interesting stuff is happening).

Since four of the five weblogs whose "owners" I pinged to perpetuate the meme are on LJ, and the fifth is also an LJ user though I pointed at his off-LJ weblog, I figured I should at least repost the list of people here:

• greyface (who already posted a response)


• inertiacage


• Joseph


• papertygre


• the_jenny

I've read another review, and discussed it with its author. I'm impressed with the fact that someone complained about disappointment with the movie without picking on it for reasons that really don't apply. Yes, the script was thin, the acting was mismanaged, the politics of headlining was gruesome to behold, and the directing was . . . directionless.
( Read more... )

In other words, I'm still of the opinion this movie is quite enjoyable, but you need to intentionally overlook some issues and check your brain at the door. Just roll with it. You'll be better off.

I'll make this quick.

1. Stay through the (very long) credits, or at least don't leave any longer than it takes to urinate. There's an anticlimactic "surprise" scene at the end of the credits. I'm sure you'll guess what's going on before anything happens. Still, watch it.


2. The movie is kinda fluff. I'm not surprised. The previous two weren't exactly art, either. They were fun. So is this one. Don't be disappointed because it's not art.


3. Kelsey Grammar is much better as Beast than most people expected. I chose to reserve judgment, with a fair bit of trepidation, and I'm glad I did. He wasn't bad.


4. The burninator's fire-starting tools are neat. Don't blink, or you'll miss the explanation bit for him starting fire later.


5. As Roo mentioned to me, there's a bit of 90210 in the story of this one. It's not as bad as I expected from her dire warnings, though.


6. If you didn't complain about continuity, plotline, timeline, characterization, and so on in the last two movies, ever since the COMPLETELY HOSED UP introduction and unrecognizable modification of the Rogue character, you BETTER NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT ANY OF THAT IN MY HEARING WITH REGARDS TO THIS MOVIE. Well, you may if you like, but if so:

PREPARE TO BE MOCKED MERCILESSLY!

Every once in a while, someone notices I don't like Python much and wants an itemized list of reasons. It's not very easy to come up with such a thing on demand. I don't usually sit around making lists of reasons I dislike a given programming language, believe it or not, so I don't usually have such reasons in front of me. The short, flippant answer I tend to give instead of an itemized list is usually "It makes my eyes bleed."

Here's a little bit of a reason, though, from a conversation in IMs today:

(13:59:59) ilcylic: holy crap python is way different from perl.
(14:00:29) @: What did you notice is "way different"?
(14:01:16) ilcylic: just all the stupid OO language.
(14:01:32) @: Scaffolding an' stuff?  Egregious overuse of "self"?
(14:01:46) ilcylic: yeah.
(14:01:49) ilcylic: Oh yeah.
(14:02:06) ilcylic:
template = self.template('admin/article/index.pt')(context=self.context, **dict(self.options))
        self.form = HTMLForm(template, ArticleFilterSchema)

    def getDefaults(self):
        defaults = {'active':self.request().field('active', 'true'),
                    'featured':self.request().field('featured', ''),
                    'categoryID':self.request().field('categoryID', ''),
                    'locationID':self.request().field('locationID', ''),
                    'year':self.request().field('year', str(DateTime.today().year)),
                   }

(14:02:30) @: OUCH.
(14:02:39) ilcylic: yeah.
(14:02:39) @: You're making my EYES BLEED!
(14:02:47) ilcylic: and the use of tabs instead of braces
(14:02:52) @: yeah
(14:02:56) ilcylic: for flow control.
(14:03:03) ilcylic: makes it hard for me to read what's going on.
(14:03:11) ilcylic: like reading a book without punctuation.
(14:03:16) @: There's a distinct lack of symmetry.

I particularly like the punctuation analogy. Tomorrow I may not like it as much, but for now, it just sounds right.

NOTE: I intentionally changed the indentation on the first line of that Python code to try to neaten it up a touch for LJ.

(10:05:23) Fang: Ahh well. It... could be worse?
(10:05:40) @: It could.
(10:05:46) Fang: You could be on fire.
(10:05:47) @: I could be on fire. That would be worse.
(10:05:49) @: hah
(10:05:49) Fang: AGH!
(10:05:57) Fang: OUT of my head, foul demon!
(10:06:02) @: OMFG
(10:06:05) @: WTFBBQ

Also, from a description of how to install Bind on SuSE 10.1:

insert CD, click OK, receive banana.

Usually life is only this funny at three in the morning when nobody's slept in about 24 hours. Mornings aren't supposed to be this amusing.

I got a few very nifty gifts for my b'day this year. Proof of how well the people giving me gifts actually know me follows:

I got a copy each of the Kenshin Intros & Exits, Kenshin in-show, and Kenshin OVA soundtracks. That's pretty spiff. The OVA music especially should be good -- once I start listening to it. I seem to recall rather liking it while I was watching the OVA (last time I watched it was a couple weeks ago, I think).

I got a DVD-R with the 60 Minutes Johnny Cash interview and Johnny Cash at San Quentin on it.

I got Steve Oualline's Wicked Cool Perl Scripts, from No Starch Press. Even the title is good.

Last (so far?) but not least, I got a bottle of Mu Sake. Mu Sake is, it turns out, junmai daiginjyo-shu. In general: you can get junmai or honjozo sake, where honjozo has "brewer's alcohol" added to it (usually along with some water), rendering a "fortified" sake, whereas junmai is made with nothing but rice, water, and koji (the magic mold used to ferment the rice). Ginjyo sake is reasonably good quality, but daiginjyo is the really premium stuff. Generally speaking, for the purist, the best sake is junmai daiginjyo-shu, or highest-grade sake (with at least 50% of the rice grains polished away before brewing) that is made only using water, rice, and koji. I've had one glass of the stuff so far. I washed my one and only wineglass, then opened the bottle — and the scent made my mouth water. I poured a glass, and sipped. This is, bar none, the best sake I've ever had. I wasn't sure whether I was going to drink any tonight, but a friend talked me into yielding to temptation via IMs, and here I am, impressed.

Yep, my friends certainly know how to spoil me.

Wow. I've really been remiss in my "duties" here at LJ. I haven't been reading my friends list, I haven't been posting anything — I've just been generally absent and lazy. Actually, I've been busy. I've been busy with stuff that interferes with my blogging motivation, but have made an effort to start putting some time into it again nonetheless.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I've moved the longer, thoughtful stuff to my Standard Obfuscatory Babblings outlet. I rarely have only brief, superficial things to say, really, that I consider worth committing to the permanence of the web. Maybe dividing my weblogging efforts wasn't precisely the best idea, in retrospect, in terms of maintaining my current audience. Whoops.

I promised weblog contemplations in my title. Well, there were some. Here are more:
Blogging vs. Writing, Login vs. Spam
It's primarily a discussion of conflicting motivations between different outlets for the writing impulse. Well, maybe "compulsion" would be a better term than "impulse". I've been known to describe my "desire" to write as a hand reaching out of the blank page, grabbing me by the throat, and slamming my head against the desk repeatedly until I relent and start writing, and enough blood has flowed to provide all the ink I need. Differing outlets for that writing compulsion can have interference effects upon each other, however. See the link above for more.

While I'm at it: I'm watching part three of the Children of Dune miniseries, for the first time, as I write this. Actually, I'm watching an ad, or more precisely I'm trying to ignore it, until the miniseries comes back from this commercial break. In my surprise at how good it is, in contrast with the preceding Dune miniseries (which sucked awfully), I find myself inspired to reread the Dune chronicles by Frank Herbert, and wrote an expository contemplation of the Dune milieu in all its various incarnations. If you want to read about the non-ornithopters, poofy purple costumes, and the challenge of avoiding Dune burnout, that's the place to get it. There's even a Gay Eye for the Straight Guy reference.

In other news (as written by me, no less), I found it quite fascinating to discover that Go Daddy ditches open source OS then donates $10k to open source project. Those of you who care about news of the webhosting industry might find that story to be of interest — I know I did. Have a gander.

I think that's all for now. Back to your regularly scheduled LiveJournalling.

Has anything good ever come out of Utah? Certainly not SCO.

SCO was ordered by the court to "disclose with specificity all allegedly misused material identified to date."

In response to SCO's recent filing, nominally in compliance with that order, IBM says of 198 out of the 201 items noted "SCO does not provide a complete set of reference points (version, file and line) for any of the 198 items. Astonishingly, SCO fails specifically to identify a single line of System V, AIX or Dynix, and Linux code for any of the 198 items." According to IBM's response to the filing, the remaining three items are also without merit, but at least bear the appearance of compliance so that IBM will deal with them at summary judgment rather than in its initial response. "This motion is directed only to 198 of the items because SCO's disclosures as to those items are utterly lacking in the required detail." They're not even worth taking to summary judgment. Furthermore, "It is beyond reasonable debate that SCO acted willfully in not specifying its claims. The court made it perfectly clear what SCO was required to do."

"To create the false impression that it has provided information that it has not provided, SCO tells the court that it has provided 'color-coded illustrations', 'line-by-line source code comparisons' and 'over 45,000 pages of supporting materials'," IBM said in relation to SCO's opposition brief. "What SCO fails to mention is that 33,000 of those pages concern item 294, which SCO abandons in its opposition brief."

Is there more that's wrong with the 201 items? You betcha. "Moreover, while the Final Disclosures include color-coded illustrations and line-by-line source comparisons, they do not do so with regard to any of the 198 items at issue."

In summary: "By failing to provide adequate reference points, SCO has left IBM no way to evaluate its claims without surveying the entire universe of potentially relevant code and guessing." Yeah. Throw darts at 5.7 million lines of source code and see if you hit something relevant.

Two good things would come of IBM actually doing an exhaustive survey of the Linux kernel's source code for matches with code for which SCO claims copyright:

1. SCO would be substantively and without question fed their own damned feet.


2. Some bugs would get fixed in the process.

Actually (if I remember the timing correctly) at the time of SCO's original complaint, it seems there were about 2.4 million lines of source code, and SCO was claiming 1.1 million lines of code infringed on SCO's copyrights. Say what? In the period between the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (when the malfeasance supposedly occurred, I believe), there wasn't enough time to incorporate anywhere near 1.1 million new lines of source code from any single source. That would have required willfully setting out to create the biggest copyright infringement SNAFU in the history of computer software and for probably half of IBM's programmer staff to stop doing anything else for that entire period but copy and integrate source code, throwing out great gobs of source code that was legitimately generated by the open source development community at large for no other reason than to make more room for copyright-infringing code. What kind of asinine nonsense is this?

Some sales manager for an LLC knocked me off the top Google hit for my legal name. As such, I figure I should link to me. If you also link to me, I would be pleased. Spread my online resume linkage to the world at large so that I will gain increased Google fame and millions of job offers with six- and seven-figure salaries.

I am Chad Perrin. Thanks for your time.

I've got an entry at SOB about two things related to software development that I'd like to bring to the attention of some of my LJ readership:

1. users as programmers


2. web browser development spec

(note: all of the following links lead to the same page)

users as programmers is actually the title of the entry. I address the matter of the value of having your target end user population as your software developers, for purposes of producing quality software. I think it's a reasonably interesting discussion of the topic.

web browser development spec: I also brought up the idea of developing a new web browser built on the Gecko rendering engine. While I still use Firefox, I think the Firefox dev team has seriously lost the plot, and I would like to have a browser that actually delivers on the promises Firefox (or, actually, Phoenix originally, then Firebird) made. After quite a bit of hunting around and punishing myself by experimenting with other browsers that suck, I've come to the conclusion that to get such a browser, I'd have to develop it myself (with others, of course). I'm hoping any of you with some interest in the subject of a Better Browser will surf over to that entry and have a look at the initial proposed specification as it evolves. Input, from non-techies as well as programmers, is quite welcome. What do you want in a browser? Let me (us) know.

While I'm at it, I'm also considering the possibility of an easier to use, more sanely implemented encryption scheme for secure and private web browsing than SSL. Ideas on that are solicited.

I sorta ganked this from mata_hari_, but modified it slightly to suit my purposes (the number five just seemed a better fit than four).

FIVE JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:

1. Comic Book Shop Cashier


2. US Army Airborne Infantry


3. Fencing Instructor at Renaissance Faire


4. Datacenter Technician for the Wikimedia Foundation


5. Professional Writer

FIVE MOVIES YOU COULD (AND DO!) WATCH OVER AND OVER:

1. Bladerunner


2. Duel on Genryu Island


3. Equilibrium


4. Grosse Pointe Blank


5. To Have And Have Not

FIVE CITIES YOU'VE LIVED IN:

1. Kahului, Maui, HI


2. Rivercide, CA


3. Vicenza, Italy


4. Tampa, FL


5. Fort Collins, CO

FIVE TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:

1. Battlestar Galactica


2. Stargate SG-1


3. Profit


4. Firefly


5. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Project

FIVE PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION:

1. Firenze, Italia


2. London, England


3. Muenchen, Deutschland


4. San Juan, Puerto Rico


5. Glamis, CA, USA

FIVE WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY (besides LJ):

1. SOB


2. PerlMonks


3. TechRepublic


4. Wikinews


5. either Paul Graham or ESR

FIVE OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:

1. Buffalo Stirrup Steak


2. Gnocchi con Crema


3. Pancakes at Mollywhop


4. Strawberry Waffles at Norm's


5. Teriyaki Chicken and Rice

FIVE PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

1. With Friends I Miss (though I'd rather they come here than me go there — this place rules)


2. Libertopia


3. Mars (Planetforge version)


4. Mars (Messiah version)


5. Right Here, but With More Money

The expisode of X Files in which I was an extra is on TV! It just started on TNT. (Mountain Standard Time)

The title of the episode is "The Unnatural", and I have a copy of the script signed by David Duchovny (who wrote and directed the episode). I remember his wife was thoroughly pregnant and impatient for him to leave while he was signing autographs that night.

As some of you are already aware, I have a weblog I call SOB, which I have been known to describe as "recursive extropian linguistic therapy" or, in layman's terms, "talking to myself for purposes of improving things" (or something like that). I've decided to create a subdomain redirect to it, so in about 24-48 hours (once it's propagated through Internet DNS) you'll be able to reach it at http://sob.apotheon.org as well as http://apotheon.org/sob (not a huge difference, but it looks nicer). The old /sob URL (as opposed to the new sob. URL) will still work, however — never fear for your old links.

As for the weblog itself, I've been doing some writing there. Today, I added a just-completed bit about the effects of corporate law on individual liberty. If you find that too politicized for you, though, feel free to stick your fingers in your ears and repeat the word puppy over and over again to block out the bad thoughts. Cuteness shall overcome.

In an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin commented on TV censorship by the FCC. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "What the hell? They let Sarah Jessica Parker on TV, and she has a face like a foot!"

It's nice to finally hear someone else say what I've thought for years.

Zombie dreams suck.

Hey, Ratha, I linked to you. I just thought you might wanna know. It's in reference to that discussion we had way back when we met and you questioned the validity of arguments in favor of intellectual property law. Yea, verily, you've had a profound effect on my opinions on some matters.

Hopefully this new entry will influence my Google ads to stop showing a bunch of evangelical Christian marketing materials that nobody visiting SOB is likely to buy.

The words "sleeps with a gun under his pillow" are sort of a common indictment of someone's sanity. If someone says "He sleeps with a gun under his pillow," what that person is really saying is "He's a paranoid nutcase."

What's crazy about it, exactly? I'm not disputing it (yet — I haven't formed an opinion of the actual practice of sleeping with a gun under the pillow). I'm just curious about it.

I, personally, wouldn't sleep with a gun under my pillow on a regular basis, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it would probably cause me to wake up with a sore ear and a stiff neck in the morning. I'm not sure that I see any "craziness" in the idea to a degree that justifies the colloquial meaning of the term, though. Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough.

Hey, Anatol, I tried responding to your email about information regarding database administration, et cetera. The first email I sent bounced. I expect the second will do the same. Just so's ya know, I didn't ignore or forget about you.