I Saw Flashes, You Saw the Pan

Courtesy of Dmitri: Can you put the moon in orbit? A neat little demonstration of SVG and Javascript.  However, it only works in Firefox 1.5 at the moment, as the page makes use of several Mozilla-only extensions to CSS.  (-moz-column-width and -moz-column-gap, to be precise).  (There's also the issue of the SVG, as I seem to recall hearing that Mozilla has implemented a different part of the spec than Opera has.  I have no idea what (if anything) other browsers have implemented.)

Unfortunately, the author of the page had to ruin it all by putting an Intelligent Design/Creationism spin to it, based off of an interpretation of Newtonian physics and the various theories of moon formation that can be called, at best, simplistic.

Don't put very large values into the launch force box though, as it will cause Firefox to lock up.

Well, I'm Pissed

I just upgraded to Mozilla Firefox 1.5, only to find that it had deleted all of the search plugins I had previously downloaded (and I had a lot of them—including one or two ones I had created myself).  To compound matters, mycroft is currently throwing mysql_connect() errors everywhere, meaning that I can't just re-download them.  Needless to say, I am not happy with this.

Anybody else have this happen to them?

- . .-.. . --. .-. .- .--. .... / .-. . .-.. .- - . -.. / . -. - .-. -.--

The Beeb has an article (and, after it is broadcast sometime tomorrow, an audio stream of a programme) up about the creation of the "Victorian Internet": the world-wide telegraph cables that crossed oceans and continents to allow communication with the other side of the planet within hours, instead of weeks or months.

Although I knew some parts of it (the first trans-Atlantic cable lasted less than 24 hours, and the second less than a week), other parts I didn't, and they're interesting.  Take this little snippet, for example:

"The idea of electrical communication seems to have begun as long ago as 1746, when about 200 monks at monastery in Paris arranged themselves in a line over a mile long, each holding ends of 25ft iron wires.

"The abbot, also a scientist, discharged a Leiden jar (a primitive electrical battery) into the wire, giving all the monks a simultaneous electrical shock.

""This all sounds very silly, but is in fact extremely important because, firstly, they all said 'ow' which showed that you were sending a signal right along the line; and, secondly, they all said 'ow' at the same time, and that meant that you were sending the signal very quickly," explains Tom Standage, author of the Victorian Internet and technology editor at the Economist."

The Three Tall Sons

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

And at last Man raised on high the final glory of his civilization, the towering edifice of the ultimate city.

Softly beneath him in the deeps of the earth purred his machinery fulfilling all his needs, there was no more toil for man. There he sat at ease discussing the Sex Problem.

And sometimes painfully out of forgotten fields, there came to his outer door, came to the furthest rampart of the final glory of Man, a poor old woman begging. And always they turned her away. This glory of Man's achievement, this city was not for her.

 Continue reading The Three Tall Sons

Built Then Burnt

I currently can't feel anything in my right hand, and it's a good thing.

So I get back from Jamie and Dana's place (having left early since I was tired), and decide that I'll have something hot to drink and read for a bit before going to bed.  More specifically, I decide to have chai.  This is notable as it's the only hot drink I have that requires me to use something other than the kettle.  So, to an outside observer, the next minute or so would have sounded something like this:

• Beep!  (The sound of the microwave finishing.)
• Ka-thunk! (The sound of me opening and closing the microwave door.)
• Crack!  (The sound of a glass breaking from heat.)
• [expletive deleted] (The sound I make as the milk hits my skin, this is loud and is near simultaneous with the next one.)
• Crash!  (The sound that the remaining parts of the mug make as they hit the floor after I drop them.)

So since then I've had my hand in a bowl of cool water.  It's not looking too bad at the moment: my thumb, which got most of the liquid, is bright red (and starts throbbing painfully if I take it out of the water for too long), but I don't see any blisters forming yet.

Wait, scratch what I said earlier; I can feel my hand, and OW OW OW!!

Posted by g026r at 23:19 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

The Stars Are RightWrong

From an AP article in The Globe and Mail:

"Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra says he will not answer questions from reporters until next year because the alignment of the planets is not in his favour."

You have no idea how much I'd love to be able to do this.

"Would the defendent please tell the court just what he was doing dancing naked down Queen St. at 3 in the morning with a duck on his head?"

"Well, your Honour, I'd love to, but my astrologer tells me that the stars aren't right. Therefore it would be inauspicious for me to answer any questions at this moment."

The Messengers

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

One wandering nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses.

"Take us a message to the Golden Town."

Thus sang the Muses.

But the man said: "They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak the Muses."

And the Muses called him by name.

"Take us a message," they said, "to the Golden Town."

And the man was downcast for he would have chased hares.

And the Muses called again.

 Continue reading The Messengers

Holy Smokes! You Need Booze!

Why doesn't this surprise me in the least?

Hospital bans booze from pharmacy cabinet

"Doctors in Edmundston will stop prescribing booze to patients on Jan. 1, defying an old-fashioned practice that still exists in many New Brunswick hospitals. [...]"

Nurse, I need 30cc of whisky—stat!

Richard Nixon's Back Again

Courtesy of my brother:

"The youth in America are being LIED to by liberal politicians and the mainstream media... but we've come up with a GREAT way to get the TRUTH to them: MUSIC. The Right Brothers, a conservative music duo out of Nashville, has released a new song that does what needed to be done: it tells the TRUTH. Titled Bush Was Right, the song hits the listener with fact after fact after fact - but the tune is so catchy, and the music is so driving, you can't help but sing along (especially on the chorus)! Will YOU help us to get this song in front of American youth?"

You can visit the website here, or read the email they sent out (plus the song lyrics) here.  However, for full enjoyment, I suggest viewing the clip from MSNBC (Edit:  direct linking seems to be disabled.  You can find the videos here) which allows you to: see a newscaster try to keep from laughing, hear the song, and also see a really bad spit-take.

What I find amusing is the fact that they've already decided that failure to get a video of it played on MTV means that MTV is liberally biased.  To me, this shows a basic ignorance of two things: 1) just how bad their song is musically (guys, it's a We Didn't Start the Fire ripoff, and not even a good one at that), and 2) MTV still plays music videos?

Edit 2:  Hear more of their music here.  It's not as bad musically as Bush was Right, but that's not much of a compliment.

Don't… Don't… Don't… Don't Believe the Hype

Certain sites have been carrying critiques of the mainstream video game press as of late, claiming that they're little more than thinly disguised advertisers and hype-machines for the big gaming companies.  Although it doesn't prove this point, as no one really takes them seriously, I decided to go through the SpikeTV 2005 Video Game Awards site and look at the nominees and see what I spotted.  (Anyone with no interest in video games may wish to stop reading at this point.)

 Continue reading Don't… Don't… Don't… Don't Believe the Hype

Filler

Because I realise that I haven't posted anything in a week, and because I found these sitting on my camera:  here are the appetizers I made for the Hallowe'en party last month.  The dip is a spicy carrot dip, and the other things are noodle sushi^*.  (I'm of the opinion that it's fairly easy to tell which ones were the first made, just by the ineptness of my rolling skills.)  From what I can recall, the sushi was popular, the dip not so much so.

 Continue reading Filler

The Song Of The Blackbird

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

As the poet passed the thorn-tree the blackbird sang.

"How ever do you do it?" the poet said, for he knew bird language.

"It was like this," said the blackbird. "It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was as yellow as her beak; she could fly much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary she-blackbird, there has never been any other like her at all. I did not dare go near her because she was so wonderful. One day last Spring when it got warm again—it had been cold, we ate berries, things were quite different then, but Spring came and it got warm—one day I was thinking how wonderful she was and it seemed so extraordinary to think that I should ever have seen her, the only really wonderful she-blackbird in the world, that I opened my beak to give a shout, and then this song came, and there had never been anything like it before, and luckily I remembered it, the very song that I sang just now. But what is so extraordinary, the most amazing occurence of that marvellous day, was that no sooner had I sung the song than that very bird, the most wonderful she-blackbird in the world, flew right up to me and sat quite close to me on the same tree. I never remember such wonderful times as those.

"Yes, the song came in a moment, and as I was saying…."

And an old wanderer walking with a stick came by and the blackbird flew away, and the poet told the old man the blackbird's wonderful story.

"That song new?" said the wanderer. "Not a bit of it. God made it years ago. All the blackbirds used to sing it when I was young. It was new then."

Nature And Time

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

Through the streets of Coventry one winter's night strode a triumphant spirit. Behind him stooping, unkempt, utterly ragged, wearing the clothes and look that outcasts have, whining, weeping, reproaching, an ill-used spirit tried to keep pace with him. Continually she plucked him by the sleeve and cried out to him as she panted after and he strode resolute on.

It was a bitter night, yet it did not seem to be the cold that she feared, ill-clad though she was, but the trams and the ugly shops and the glare of the factories, from which she continually winced as she hobbled on, and the pavement hurt her feet.

 Continue reading Nature And Time

Anne, Sister Anne, Do You See Nobody Coming?

I've developed a bit of an interest in fairy/folk tales as of late.  More specifically, I'm rather intrigued by the analysis and classification of these tales.

Basically, there appears to be two methods.  The first is based off of the work of Vladimir Propp—a Russian scholar who broke down Russian folktales into 31 irreducible parts (with each part being sub-defined into different variations on the theme).  The idea behind it being that although not every part will be present in every tale, every tale can be broken down into a number of the given 31 parts.  This results in a tale being able to be described using a string of letters (both Latin and Greek) and numbers, which outlines its basic plot structure.  For example, one online analysis describes the Grimm brothers' Bearskin as being of type αa⁵D^lE¹MF^lTa⁵BKNToQW^*.  I'd try to explain what this means, but the subsections don't quite match up with the detailed breakdown of parts given before. (Namely: To, which appears to represent some variation of transformation (T) doesn't appear in the list of possible Ts (nor does o appear anywhere as its own element), and W^* is listed in the wedding (W) variants as "protagonist(s) ascends throne"—something that never happens in Bearksin.)

The other form of analysis is the Aarne-Thompson (AT) numbering system, which has been recently revised as the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) system. (Anyone with €100+ to spare can feel free to buy me a copy of it.)  The AT system classifies the tales based on their basic thematic elements, and records if they appear to be variations of other themes.  (For example: Hansel & Gretel is of type 327A, where 327 represents tales of the type "the children and the ogre". But it is also considered to contain type 1121: "burning the ogre's wife in his own oven".)  That said, the system is apparently a tad cumbersome.  Compare Fitcher's Bird and Blue Beard; both are extremely similar in theme (villain forbids character(s) from entering a room, and threatens them with death if he discovers that they have disobeyed him), but are classified as two separate types (311 for Fitcher's Bird, and 312 for Bluebeard), ostensibly because in one (311) the rescuer is female, but in the other (312) the rescuer is male.  (Although, not having a full understanding of the AT system, I am relying off of what I have heard from other sources.)  (This site contains a list of a large number of the AT motifs, and their corresponding number.)

Anyways, enough rambling.  Here's an automated fairy tale generator that produces them based off of which of Propp's elements are selected for inclusion.