Pfeffa & Yona

One point for the title, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Creepy Cases

I have seen some odd case mods over the years, ranging from the impressive to the just plain weird, but never has a case mod just plain creeped me out.  Well, that day has come.

If I walked into a friend's place and saw that then I don't know what I'd say.  I do know that if I was of the female gender and walked into a guy's house with that then I'd be getting out of there fast.

(On an unrelated note, I feel the need to plug the compare and process tags plugins for MovableType.)

Update: You can thank my brother for this comment: ""Craig [my brother's room mate] wonders where you plug stuff in."
. . .
Ewww!  Mental image!  Bad Jon!  Bad!  No cookie for you!

Shut Up! Just Shut Up!

I've got a bunch of links here, so just follow along and I guarantee you'll be amused.

Right, so here we go:  On April 19th, the Globe and Mail's television columnist, John Doyle, wrote an article about people who are attempting to get the Fox News channel broadcast in Canada.  Mr. Doyle was all for it, believing that we Canadians needed to see this channel so we could laugh our collective arses off at it.  In his article, Mr. Doyle compares Fox News to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and pundit Bill O'Reilly to Napoleon Solo, engaged in a life or death battle with a shadowy enemy whose goals are unclear, but who we can be sure is up to no good.

Anyways, someone informed Mr. O'Reilly, and since he's never been one to back down from an argument, no matter how ridiculous he may seem in the process, he promptly decided he wasn't going to stoop to John Doyle's level and took the high road.  Wait, who am I kidding?  Mr. O'Reilly instead did what he does best and started flinging mud back at the Globe, dismissing them as a bunch of pinheads at a dishonest lefty outfit.

Of course, Mr. Doyle wrote this all up in another column (Hey, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity), and once again Bill O'Reilly couldn't let it be.  Once again he attacked the Globe as a leftist paper (ok, so it is lefter leaning than the Post, but that's not exactly hard), and even managed to take a swipe at the CBC, or 'Communist Broadcasting Corporation'.  The end result?  Doyle got yet another column out of it.

His column doesn't show up on weekends, so we'll have to wait until Monday to find out if anything showed up. Oh, and Bill? We love you, really we do. (snicker)

One point for the fair and balanced the title.

Let Jesus Fuck You!

Sometimes while browsing through Fark threads, I come across a link that just completely blows the mind.  This is one of those times.  I won't describe it, although that doesn't really take away any of the "what the fuck?" value found within.  instead, I'll just link to it, but be warned: this link likely falls into the category of "Not Safe For Work" (or sanity either.)  Enjoy.

One point and a can of pea soup for the title.  Apologies to anyone I may have offended, but it fit too well.

Think of a Number, Don't Think of an Answer

I have no idea where Chapters gets their in-store music from (a clerk could only identify it as being "some satellite feed"), but whoever programs it gets my respect.  I was browsing around, when I recognised the guitar riff that was playing.  I didn't think much about it, but when I got to the cash I realised that what I was hearing was not Elastica's Connection, but the much more obscure Three Girl Rhumba by Wire.

So, whoever you are, I tip my hat to you.

In the Middle of Our Street

I got kind of bored and, since I wasn't able to sleep, I decided to take some pictures of the apartment.  It's nothing too exciting; there's no image of the lovely view from our balcony (the Harvey's parking lot), no shots of the bathroom (tub, toilet, empty counters, lots of blue), none of the hallway (mirrors, shoes, coats), or server closet (seen here in a January file photo), and the kitchen shows no trace of what I did over the weekend.  Still, you get the following:

At the most generic, we have the kitchen: Dishwasher, fridge, stove, sinks, microwaves (not pictured).  It's your standard kitchen.

Right next to the kitchen, we have the living room.  Bare, utilitarian, whatever you want to call it.  It's in an apartment occupied by two guys and serves little purpose other than offering a place to sit and play video games.  The kitchen table can be seen in the foreground.  Or rather, some of the stuff covering the kitchen table can be seen in the foreground.

Finally, because I respect Scott's privacy enough not to post pictures of his room on the web, there's my room.  Seen here in one of its neater phases.  The bed still isn't made, but that only happens when I change the sheets.

That's about it.  It's your standard apartment in a large apartment building, but I finally got some more use out of my digital camera.

On a completely unrelated note, I've succeeded in getting Scott hooked on Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, while I spend my time playing Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life on the GameCube.  It's amusing and fun, bad translation not withstanding; besides, what other game offers what's essentially a farming sim with the ability to try and milk the bull? (SFW)

One point for the title.  I'd offer extra points for anyone who did the nutty dance, but I'd need proof.

Here In The Tower of Song

I thought that I had mentioned this ages ago, but a search through the posted entries doesn't show any references.  Anyways, there's a neat little project I've been following on and off, called Audioscrobbler, that tracks what songs you listen to and tries to match you up with other artists you might like based on similarities between listeneing preferences.

The current version of the website isn't as fully featured as version one used to be (artist recommendations currently don't update), but it is slowly getting there.  What's more, plugins even exist for such niche operating systems as MorphOS, so there's really no excuse not to join up.

So, with that, I command you to go sign up, grab a plugin, and start generating data.  For those who want to know what the stats look like first, here's a sample.

One point for the title.  You know the drill.

> conflicts 1a 2a 3a 4a

If you're reading this, that means I successfully managed to move heimdall (database server) over to kernel version 2.6.5 and skoll (webserver) to kernel version 2.4.26.  Heimdall wasn't too hard, it mainly consisted of searching around the various compilation errors until I discovered that enabling generic RTC emulation (required for just about any Linux calls to the RTC on a PPC machine) also required another option — nvram support — to be enabled.  Skoll was a completely different story.

My original plan was to upgrade it to a 2.6 kernel as well.  Unfortunately, it's running Debian stable, and module-init-tools, needed to load the 2.6.x modules, doesn't exist as a package in Debian stable.  There are packages, but they exist only for testing or unstable.

Now, if there's one thing that's fun, it's trying to bring a package from testing onto a machine running stable.  There's two ways to do this: the first is to download the binary package, and the other is to download the source to the package and build your own package.  Each has their advantages and disadvantages, but they both have one thing in common: dependency hell.

Trying to bring in a pre-compiled package requires you to upgrade libc6, which in turn requires you to upgrade a huge chunk of your base packages to those found in testing.  It's quicker than compiling, at least on an older (read: slower) machine, but it means those packages won't get upgraded until the stable version becomes greater than the installed testing version.

The other way, which is the way I went this time, involves getting the source, trying to compile it, getting the source for the pre-build dependency packages that exist only in testing, compiling those, compiling the original package, trying to install it, and then doing all the same over again for the packages dependencies.  Like using a pre-compiled package, there are some packages that won't see any of the upgrades to the stable tree.  However, there are fewer of them.

Of course, having done all this, I then found out that 32-bit SPARC SMP support is broken in 2.6.x.

Three points and my deepest sympathies to whoever gets the title.

Channelling the Spirit of Leroy Anderson

As of late I've developped the urge to have a typewriter.  I'm not talking about one of the later electric ones, with the ability to erase words and what not, I'm talking about an old fashioned monstrosity that clacks and dings.  Unfortunately, I have no idea where I'd even start looking.  Any ideas or clues to start me on my journey would be greaty appreciated.

Although it's not a quote, I'll give one point to anyone who gets the reference.

Yet Another Gargantuan Effort to Move His Drinks Cabinet Six Inches Close to Berlin

It has been established that when I get bored, I start trawling for random information.  This being one of the primary reasons that I a) never get any work accomplished, and b) can point out errors in Trivial Pursuit cards.

Today's trip down Randomness Lane started with a viewing of Batoru rowaiaru (aka Battle Royale) with Dmitrii, that turned into a general discussion on films that led to a discussion of Vin Diesel films specifically, followed by Starship Troopers, the depiction of soliders and commanders in war movies (with notable references being the Kubrick classics Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket), government corruption, Soviet television programs, and, finally, whether or not a Soviet leader was ever executed.

Rumoured assassinations, such as Lenin and Stalin, didn't count, and any of those who came to power during the 80s were obvious non-contenders.  So that left a total of three leaders (Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev) to check, although a case could be made to include Bulganin on the list. (Between Malenkov and Khrushchev, for those who care.)  None of the names checked out, but given the nature of Soviet politics, which saw an unbelievable number of high-level political positions in existence, with the importance of the position varying based on who occupied it, it's possible that someone high up actually was executed at some point.  To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the following are a list of positions which, at some point in history, were the title of the leader of the USSR: Chairman of the Soviet Council of People's Commissars, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary (of the blah blah blah), President of the Surpeme Soviet, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and President of the Soviet Union.

Anyways, to get back on topic: this search for information on Soviet leaders eventually led to a Wikipedia entry on Vyacheslav Molotov, a Soviet politician and diplomat who is now better known for the Finnish army's decision to name their improvised anti-tank weapon after him.  This entry contained a reference to an ancedote told by Stalin to Churchhill concerning a meeting between Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.  This, in turn, led me on to the Nuremberg Trials, the Maginot Line (and its German counterpart: the Siegfried Line, or Westwall), and the Schlieffen plan, before finally arriving at trench warfare.

Now, trench warfare, and World War I specifically, has always been a fascination of mine -- there's just something about the sheer futility of it that almost makes it absurd — so I spent most of my trench warfare reading poking around in that era.  Eventually I ended up in the Wikipedia section on chemical warfare during the First World War, where along with bits of trivia (first occurance of gas warfare: January 1, 1915, at the Battle of Bolimow, on the Eastern Front) I discovered the number one way I don't want to die.

To quote from the entry on phosgene: "The gas combines with water in the tissues of the respiratory tract to form carbon dioxide and hydrochloric acid. The acid then dissolves the membranes in the lungs. Fluid fills the lungs, and death results from a combination of blood loss, shock, and respiratory failure."  (This description also applies to diphosgene, which rapidly breaks down into phosgene and chloroform, but had the added effect of destroying the filters used in period gas masks.)

Like its origins in a discussion of no fixed topic, this tale was pointless and meandering, but now you know how my mind works, and how its for me to walk from the kitchen to my bedroom and get so completely side tracked that I have no idea what I was thinking about when I started.

Two points for the title, but only if you actually managed to read the above entry.  Otherwise, it's one point.

The Glass Is Too Bloody Big

Those who actually look at the stuff on the left bar will notice that the IMDB Top 250 counter just hit 125, meaning I'm half done.  Now, if only my music project would work like that.  I now have 11.4 days to listen to, more than when I started.

I'll give a point to anyone who gives me the entirety of the joke.

Did You Know That Betelgeuse Five Has Developed A Very Slight Eccentricy In Its Orbit?

I saw this a few weeks ago when I saw Dawn of the Dead, but it slipped my mind until now: Be afraid, be very afraid, for it is worse than we could ever imagine. (Quicktime required.)

For those who don't get the title reference, this description of the current going-ons regarding another author's legacy is an alternate way of putting it.

Title is worth one point. Category is: Accidents involving contraceptives and time machines.