Entry Title? I Don't Need to Show You Any Stinkin' Entry Title!

Originally this was a long entry about a recent link posted on Boing Boing dealing with out of print books, however I then realised it was boring.

Rather than waste an update, here's a link to Ebert's Most Hated, a collection of reviews of what Roger Ebert considers to be some of the worst movies he's seen.  (Oddly enough, I Spit on Your Grave isn't on there.)  While I don't always agree with Ebert, I do love to read the reviews of films he hates.

(All I can remember from the boring entry that this replaces is that it contained a swipe at Danielle Steel who — with 29 entries (spanning 1983 to 1998) — was one of the more common author names to find on the yearly bestseller list.  Namely: would it really be such a bad thing for literature if her books were to go out of print?)

Posted by g026r at 21:05 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

Book Database Stats

Moving my shelves around in my room finally gave me a reason to add the last of my books to my database, since all the books needed to be pulled off and resorted anyways.  So here are a few random (and likely uninteresting) stats pulled from it.  (You have been warned.  No complaining afterwards if you actually read this.)

There are a total of 357 books entered in the database, with 260 distinct authors and 128 distinct publishers, for a total of 123 729 pages.  (Actually, the page count is higher.  There are 3 books with no page numbers, and therefore are represented by a page count of 0 in the database.)  Of these books, 273 are categorised as fiction, and 84 are listed as non-fiction.  The average printing date is 1991 (for those books with a discernible printing date), and the average page count (excluding those three previously mentioned books) is 349.5 pages.

Now for some random "top 3" lists:

The three authors with the most books that I own:

1. Terry Pratchett (33 books.)
2. Lord Dunsany (11 books.)
3. Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison (10 books each, although at least one book [Dangerous Visions] with Ellison marked as the author also has the edited flag set — meaning that it was largely the work of other authors, and primarily edited by him.)

The three publishers with the most books that I own:

1. Penguin Books (29 books, not counting those published by its subsidiaries such as Puffin and Pelican.)
2. Corgi (25 books.)
3. DC Comics (11 books.  Yeah, my trade paperback collections of comics are in the database.  You got a problem with that?)

The three books with the oldest printing date that I own:

1. Lord Dunsany - Far Off Unhappy Things (Elkin Matthews, 1919.)
2. Lord Dunsany - Five Plays (Little, Brown, and Company, 1925.)
3. Ambrose Bierce - The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce (The Citadel Press, 1946.)

The three longest non-fiction books that I own:

1. Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Tenth Edition, Revised (Oxford University Press, 2002.  1708 pages.)
2. All Music Guide to Rock, 2nd Edition (Miller Freeman Books, 1997.  1232 pages.)
3. Fundamentals of Physics Extended, Fifth Edition (Wiley, 1997.  1142 pages.)  (Yes, the database includes dictionaries and textbooks.  It also includes all my cookbooks.  About the only printed matter it doesn't contain is magazines.)

The three longest fiction books that I own:

1. William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Collins.  1433 pages.)
2. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (Modern Library, 2001.  1132 pages.)
3. Masterpieces of the Drama, Sixth Edition (Prentice Hall.  1036 pages.)

The three shortest books that I own:

1. Neil Gaiman - Shoggoth's Old Peculiar (Dreamhaven Books, 2004.  37 pages.)
2. Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven and Other Favorite Poems (Dover.  50 pages.)
3. Henrik Ibsen - Ghosts (Dover.  60 pages.)

*Gag!*

I just opened my fridge, took a swig of some cider I bought last week, and found that it had started to ferment.  Ick!  Ewww!  Gag!  &c., &c.

We're All On So Many Drugs With the Curtains Drawn

I'll be honest and state that I haven't really been paying attention to the current election campaign.  I figured out which party's policies I largely agreed with early on, and sort of tuned out since then.  However, every now and then something comes along which I can't help but notice, usually because it infuriates me.  This is one of those times.

Harper warns of activist judges (from the Globe and Mail).

Now, why does it infuriate me?  Because of two things: first, it's bringing American political rhetoric to Canada.  They may be similar in some ways, but in others (especially the political system), they're rather different.  I know people immediately know what you mean when you say it, but that doesn't mean it's applicable.

The meaning is, of course, the second thing.  "Activist judges" has always struck me as meaning "judges who don't rule the way we want them to rule".  I see it as just more bitterness about the fact that certain social policies are either rejected or accepted, when those parroting the phrase would rather they not be.

So please, Mr. Harper, leave the American political rhetoric where it belongs, in America.  It won't get me to vote for you, but it might help keep the political discourse a bit more civil.

I've also got issues dealing with the idea of an elected Senate (and some minor ones dealing with the fixed election proposal), but those are rants for another time.

You're a Bedtime Story — the One That Keeps the Curtains Closed

It struck me whilst walking home along the dark, wet streets (7°C!  In January!  At night!) just how perfect Morphine's The Night is for occasions like that.  So, in commemoration of this, here's a collection of Russian folk tales that I recently discovered.

The list isn't without flaws, with at least one being incomplete, and others appearing as if they were OCRed, but never proof-checked afterwards.  For this reason, I suggest using this alternate source for The Apples of Youth and the Living Water, Baba Yaga, and The Cat and the Fox (listed on the other page as Liza the Fox and Catafay the Cat).  Those links contain notes by the page author (and translator), as well as one extra tale that doesn't appear to be in the first list (The Old Man and the Bear).

Enjoy.  I'm going to bed now.

It Really Ties the Room Together

Scott's parents gave him money to buy new furniture for Christmas, and it finally arrived on Friday.  It looks nice, but unfortunately it seems that whoever did the shipping can't tell the difference between "dark steel blue" and "olive green."  On the plus side, we discovered that the green looks much better than the blue (which is what was ordered), yet it wasn't even mentioned as a colour choice on the website.

The replacement love-seat (in olive green) is supposed to arrive sometime next week.  All that's really needed now is some sort of symmetrical coffee table — say a square, or circle.

Picture below.  Please ignore the mess that is the top of the current coffee table.

 Continue reading It Really Ties the Room Together

Posted by g026r at 22:13 | 5 comments | Most recent by g026r

Well, There's Spam, Egg, Sausage, and Spam; That's Not Got Much Spam In It

I am getting the strangest spam as of late.  The one to most recently drop into my mailbox:  "Samurai Stock Report."  As far as I can figure, either that's the proper stock for those who follow the code of the warrior, or the CEO promises to disembowel himself honourably should the company not meet analysts' expectations.

Twenty Mattresses and Twenty Eider-Down Beds

I once again attempted pea soup, using a different recipe than last time.  Final verdict: a bit bland.  I'm thinking it might have been better with the optional whipping cream, but I didn't know how much it made, and I didn't want to do anything that would prevent bottling of it.

(Ok, so this was just an entry for the sake of an entry.  Recipe below, so that it's not completely useless.)

 Continue reading Twenty Mattresses and Twenty Eider-Down Beds

They Had 500 Years of Democracy and Peace, and What Did That Produce?

I blogged the last one, so I may as well blog this one too.  (In other words: yes, this is a relatively useless entry.)

Swiss manufacture (as evidenced by the little crosses everywhere, and the fact that the backs of the buttons are marked "BERN"), of an unknown age.  (The guy who sold it to me claimed 80+ years, but I didn't believe him even before I bought it.  Someone else told me about 50-60, but I don't know whether I believe that either.  Anyways, old enough to get a very musty smell to it.  It needs to be aired out a bit, as well as a bit of cleaning done to it to get some stuff off of one of the cuffs.)  Not too bad of a fit; it could stand to be about one button tighter in the back, but it fits well enough as is.  (Which is surprising, given my relative lack of anything that could be even remotely described as girth.)  In good enough condition, although the bottom is unhemmed, and looking a bit worn.  Seems warm enough (being wool), and is heavy — I gain a good 5 to 6 pounds when I put it on.

The only thing I can't figure out is if it was originally meant to be worn with some sort of separate liner (as some longer coats were).  There are a couple of button holes in places that makes me think that's a possibility, but I really don't know enough about these things to say for sure.  (And, as a note, both sleeves appear to be the same size, making this one of better workmanship than the Soviet jacket.)

And Goebbels Has No B'lls At All!

I found this image over on Wikipedia a while back, and just had to post it.  (Although, in my defence, I did resist doing so for several days.)  The reasoning being that… Well, you'll understand when you see it.

 Continue reading And Goebbels Has No B'lls At All!

Now, take a good look at that.  Doesn't it look like the cover of some bad space opera or alternate timeline sci-fi novel?  Yeah, it does.  Not the type of picture that anyone in their right mind would ever actually make of someone.  Except that that's Georgy Zhukov, Soviet field commander during World War II (and the commander who led Soviet troops into Berlin).

The thing that causes even further eyebrow raises on my part is the fact that the painting was apparently done during his lifetime.  Yeah, I know it was for propaganda purposes, and that stuff is never the most subdued of artwork, but really all that needs it a giant title splashed across the top, and an author name on the bottom, for it to look perfectly in place next to all the terrible trashy novels in the sci-fi section of your local used bookstore.  Preferably the text would be done in some god-forsaken, eye-searing colour combination.

(As a side note: I'll give you kudos if you can quote the entire verse of the song in the entry title.  There's just one rule: no cheating.)

I'm All Out of Bird Puns

Someone must have warned the crows that I was coming again today, as there were nowhere near as many on campus tonight.  (Either that, or I was slightly too early today, although very few were still arriving when I left.)  The largest mass of them appeared to have migrated slightly north to the trees along University Avenue.

On the plus side, I have worked out the camera settings that seem to give me the best picture.  Next time, crows, next time!

A Murder Most Fowl

I tried taking pictures of the crows that roost on campus at night, but to say they turned out worse than desired would be an understatement.  (And those are the best two, after cropping and other adjustments.)  I blame it on the fact that my batteries were dying between pictures (forcing me to constantly turn the camera back on after each shot), and that I got there about 15-30 minutes too late (those pictures linked have the contrast and colours adjusted so that they don't merely look like a single dark-blue rectangle).  I'm going to try again tomorrow when it's brighter, as well as fiddling with my camera settings some (and hopefully I'll remember to turn off the flash this time).

I also discovered that crows don't like having their pictures taken;  immediately after the shutter went, the birds in the second shot all took off en masse, with enough noise to drown out even my headphones.

On the other hand, I did end up with an unintentional picture of my breath.  If I really wanted to have fun I'd post that to ghost-photography sites as an example of ecto-plasm.

It's Always In The Last Place You Look

What better time than the new year to dig into my server stats and see how people got here?  So, here're the top 10 search terms of the year 2005 for leftblank.org and/or heimdall.shacknet.nu:

1. kitten: Not surprising at all.  I had a picture of a kitten on here, and it was getting hotlinked so much that the server actually started spewing out 503 (Service temporarily unavailable) errors.  For a little while it was replaced with a "don't hotlink" shock image, and then after it became apparent that the denizens of the wasteland known as MySpace weren't going to notice, I just deleted it.  If you've come here looking for it, then here's a message for you: It's gone! Go away!
2. sweet potato pie:  An entry from 2004 is responsible for this one.  If you've come here looking for that, then I can heartily recommend trying it out.  It's a good pie.
3. battery:  Who would have thought that a two year-old photo of a battery that spontaneously exploded on my desk would garner so much interest?  It's never hit server-killing bandwidth usage, so this one is still here.
4. labafana:  A surprising entry, given that the page in question only went up in December, and a typo at that.  Then again, that could have just meant that there were fewer page hits, and therefore fewer alternatives than my explanation of why La Befana wasn't a pagan attempt to take over Christmas.
5. pad thai: Yet another two year-old photo, and the second food entry.  Is this a hint that I should turn this into either a blog of old photos, or one consisting solely of food?
6. dance: 2 year-old picture again.
7. random pictures:  Yep, plenty of those here.
8. леÑ%89ен: Um.  Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
9. this space intentionally left blank:  That's my website.
10. sir robert laird borden:  One of three entries in the top thirty search terms that deal with my entry on the MacAdam shovel.  Who knew that ineffective WWI entrenching tools were so popular?

And that's it for the top 10.  The top 30 can be found here for the truly bored or curious.

Finally: sorry if the site's running a bit slow.  My graph of the rapture index got linked to from several places, and I never got around to optimising the code.  (Whoops.)  It should clear up in a few days as traffic from those sites die down.

It's Like There's a Party in My Mouth, and Everyone's Vomiting

If you ever are forced to go to a potluck supper, and you hate the people involved, then might I suggest bringing Seven-Up Salad with Seven-Up Dressing?

Shan made it for her regrettable foods New Year's Eve party.  The general verdict was that the salad itself wasn't bad — a sort of sweet, citrsusy-apple flavour.  The dressing (with its vinegar, eggs, 2 teaspoons of salt, and dry mustard) was causing strange looks before it was even finished cooking.  Upon eating, it caused horrible (and horribly funny) faces, along with screams and general "what the hell did I just put in my mouth?" noises.

Linda, on the other hand, claimed to actually like it.

Posted by g026r at 02:40 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r