Brolin Empey

01:18 - Pirating vs. buying movies

Looking for <http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg>? See my comment on Flickr.

04:01 - Dream log begins.

I just had a scary dream similar to The Matrix. I usually stay in bed instead of getting up to record my dreams because when I get up I usually end up staying up until I would normally get up, which means I do not get enough sleep for work, but this time I wanted to share my dream. A similar thing happened 2 weeks ago, after I met Tamara Poustie for the first time: I dreamt of her (I forgot what I dreamt), then awoke in the night. I was considering sharing my dream with her, but I did not because I decided to stay in bed so I could fall asleep again so I could get enough sleep for work. :( She dreamt of me too, but I do not remember what she dreamt and I do not even remember if she remembered what she dreamt about me.

I dreamt I had a sort of nightmare, which is strange because the dream containing this dream could be considered a nightmare. I dreamt I knew I could not wake. It started when I thought I tripped on Pasha in the ground floor kitchen, but I knew he was actually in the ground floor living room. There were 2 electronic devices affecting my dreams, but they did not agree on what I should dream. One was something about a SIM for a GSM cell phone. It was something for a cell phone that was battery-powered and that people wore while sleeping. The other was something line-powered (dependent on the mains), but I cannot remember what it was. The dream conflicts created by these 2 devices explained my nightmares: for example, one device would make a door creak in front of me, but the other device would make a distant door creak behind me because it did not agree with the first device. In this example, I was scared because I thought someone or something was following me because of the unexpected sounds. Anyway, the only time I could experience the true reality, unaffected by the 2 electronic devices, was when the mains failed for long enough that the battery powering the battery-powered device fully discharged. If the mains failed briefly, the line-powered device would stop affecting my dreams, but the battery-powered device would still be powered. Maybe this dream reflects how I realise first-hand how dependent/reliant we are on electricity every time the mains fails because I e.g., automatically try to turn on the light every time I enter a new room, cannot do anything work-related at work without my PC, etc. Cue Joni Mitchell song Big Yello Taxi: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” That is so true.

I hope this post makes sense to someone other than me, because that probably means it will make sense to me too months or years later. I know my thoughts now (Later, I may likely forget what I was thinking now.), but I have to rely on language to express them, but I can easily use language incorrectly because I know what I mean to express, but not necessarily how my expression can and/or will be interpreted.

Current Mood: sleepy

16:30 - Dumb software = simple code. Smart software = complex code?

This 46-line bash script essentially copies 2 files. The 46 lines includes whitespace, comments, and debug code (print statements) and the files are copied conditionally and intelligently, but still — is there a simpler implementation that avoids duplication and can be configured to back up additional files by changing the word list of a single for command?

root@Repository:~ [0] # cat -n bin/qb-backup
     1  #!/bin/bash
     2
     3  #2009-07-15 brolin: Forked from pv-backup.
     4
     5  WORKING_DIR='/home/data/Admin/Accounting/QuickBooks'
     6  BACKUP_DIR="${WORKING_DIR}/backup"
     7
     8  do_backup ()
     9  {
    10          working_copy_basename="${1}"
    11          backup_glob_pattern="${2}"
    12          backup_regex="${3}"
    13
    14
    15          working_copy="${WORKING_DIR}/${working_copy_basename}"
    16  #       backup_glob="${BACKUP_DIR}/${backup_glob_pattern}"
    17
    18
    19          #declare -p working_copy_basename backup_glob_pattern backup_regex working_copy #; exit
    20
    21          [ -e "${working_copy}" ] || exit 1
    22
    23          cd "${BACKUP_DIR}" || exit 1
    24          ls -1r ${backup_glob_pattern} &>/dev/null && most_recent_backup_copy="$(ls -1r ${backup_glob_pattern}|grep -E "${backup_regex}"|cut -d $'\n' -f 1)"
    25
    26          #declare -p most_recent_backup_copy #; exit
    27
    28          if [[ -z most_recent_backup_copy || "${working_copy}" -nt "${most_recent_backup_copy}" ]]; then
    29              #echo foo
    30              [[ "${working_copy_basename}" =~ '([^.]+)(\..*)' ]] || exit 1
    31              #declare -p BASH_REMATCH #; exit
    32              todays_backup_copy="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}-$(date -I)${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
    33              #declare -p todays_backup_copy #; exit
    34              cp -p "${working_copy}" "${todays_backup_copy}" && chmod a-w "${todays_backup_copy}"
    35          fi
    36  }
    37
    38  working_copy_basename_extension='QBW'
    39  backup_glob_pattern='*.QBW'
    40  date_regex='[[:digit:]]{4}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}'
    41
    42  for company_name in 'Techsol' 'zPoint Products'; do
    43          #declare -p company_name
    44          do_backup "${company_name}.${working_copy_basename_extension}" "${backup_glob_pattern}" "^${company_name}-${date_regex}\.${working_copy_basename_extension}"
    45  done
    46
root@Repository:~ [0] #

Current Mood: thoughtful

12:06 - A concrete example of my everyday frustrations with lack of software usability

I do not need formal education in Computer Science to not believe in determinism: everyday, end-user office work is sufficient.

I was asked to add information to a table in a Word document. This Word document was saved by Word 2007 in Word 97-2003 file format.

I am using the Ubuntu package of OpenOffice.org v2.4.1 on Ubuntu Linux v8.04.1. Judgeing by the file types in its common dialogs, OpenOffice.org supports only up to Word 2002.

I opened the Word document in OOo Writer. The document appeared to be formatted correctly.

I wanted to delete the last 5 rows — the rows themselves, not only the cell contents in the rows — from a table.

I dragged the mouse to select the last 5 rows. I started dragging in the top left cell, between the left table border and the left edge of the text in the cell (the start of the English text, since English is written from left to right). The entire 5 rows were selected, not only the cell contents. However, when I pressed Delete on the keyboard, only the cell contents were deleted. I experimented with Row -> Delete from the context menu and Delete -> Rows from the Table menu. In both cases, only one row was deleted.

I asked the document author how to delete table cells in Word because I thought OOo Writer would use the same procedure. In Word 2007, the table cells can be deleted by dragging the mouse to select the cells, then pressing the Delete key.¹ This seemed intuitive.

I experimented some more with OOo Writer. I discovered there are two ways of selecting table cells:

1. Use the I-beam cursor to start dragging from inside the top left cell.

2. Use the right arrow cursor to start dragging from left of the left (outside) table border. The tooltip says "Select table row".

In both cases, the appearance of the selected table cells is identical. In other words, I could not tell how the cells were selected by the resulting selection.

I discovered that pressing Delete after using method 1 to select cells deletes only the cell contents, not the cells themselves. Pressing Delete after using method 2 deletes the cells themselves, not only their contents. This was my original goal.

By this point, I was frustrated. Why does the behaviour of the Delete key depend on an invisible state? This is extremely counter-intuitive, illogical, and confusing.

I demoed this invisible state behaviour to another person. The illogical behaviour was at least reproducible.

I explained my observations to the Word document's author. Then I tried to get back on track: I used method 2 to select the 5 rows I wanted to delete. I pressed the Delete key. What happened? Only the cell contents were deleted!

What the hell? How illogical is this — I can no longer reproduce the illogical behaviour! Maybe OOo's state changed when a backup copy of the document was automatically saved?

To worsen this mess, I discovered another confusing behaviour: After using either method to select cells, the entire cells are selected. After pressing Delete, the cells are empty and nothing is selected. This makes sense. However, after undoing the Delete, only the cell contents are selected: the text in the cells is selected, but nothing else.

I frequently have similar experiences — at least once per month in quantifiable terms — but I usually try to avoid getting sidetracked even further by documenting how I got sidetracked in the first place.

Update (2008-09-20):

¹ This needs to be confirmed because I may have observed only one of multiple selection methods.

Yes, I know I am inconsistent when referring to the Delete key.

Current Mood: frustrated

19:30 - Sanity is a full-time job, in a world that is always changing

Do you believe in sanity?

I never question my insanity. I almost hit a pedestrian whilst driving home today because I was trying to drive as fast as I was thinking of non-driving subjects whilst driving in a residential street, which requires allocation of extra CPU time to driving processes. Fortunately, no misfortune ensued, other than both of our surprise. Of course, I justify my excessive speed by pointing out that the ped, to use Carmageddon terminology, which I find funny because I find others's misfortune hilarious, chose to cross the street at the worst possible place: behind (from my perspective) a parked truck, so neither of us could see the other until our hit test almost returned TRUE and the following run question returned FALSE. Anyway, to get back on track and talk less of incriminating subjects in public, I rhetorically ask why I was thinking so much about so many subjects. Well, I implied a question instead of asking directly, which makes it a rhetorical statement, if such a thing exists. Of course, the rhetorical statement contained a question, so it was, in effect, a rhetorical question. Speaking of which, statements and questions are an everyday example of reductionism: reducing all (natural) language to two (classes|forms|categories|types|kinds|blah|blah|blah). The preceding, parenthesised expression was a regular expression, for the so-called "regular" people who are evidently sufficiently irregular to be ignorant of regular expressions. Moral of the story and obligatory pun: Speed of thought can be a Bad Thing™ when driving on residential streets. English is an illogical language. Why do I use an illogical language to write about logic? Because English is supposedly my "natural" language. Which means it is natural for me to remember how to express myself using countless exceptions to rules, which may be natural for me, but are still counter-intuitive. Yay for Sidetracking 101™. Anyway, my del.icio.us bookmarks are proof — or evidence, to continue the (il)legal theme I started by retelling my potentially incriminating story — of how extremely sidetracked I get. My bookmarks begin to quantify how many times I have started what becomes Yet Another Unfinished Project™. And yes, I almost got sidetracked by inserting a proper em dash instead of two, successive, ASCII, minus symbols. (Update: I fixed the em dash.) So yes, I am extremely tangential and constantly sidetracked. I wonder whether I am the most tangential and sidetracked person on Earth. My neurons were transporting so many thoughts as they raced around the closed circuit of my mind before I sat down at my PC and began to write this, but now I fear I have already forgotten much of what I wanted to write. My mind is racing. My obsessive-compulsive tendencies are causing me to quickly and repeatedly press Shift whilst thinking of what to write. What is language? A set of symbols understood by an interpreter. In this case, I am a human interpreter: whilst staring at the light, which, in addition to referring to starting at my monitor, could refer to starting at the so-called "light at the end of the tunnel", which suggests I am dead, which is not corroborated by my quantity of rambling output, ... too sidetracked. Whilst starting at the polarised light from my Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display video (terminal|monitor), photons hit photoreceptors (Update: rods or cones?) in my eyes, which (excite|stimulate) nerve endings (?), which send electrical impulses, which reminds me of weapon key bindings in Quake I, to my brain, which performs optical character recognition to interpret strings of English characters as (lexical units|words), which are associated with memories from my (non-volatile memory|permanent storage), which, unlike a *nix file system, seems to contain many files with 0 links. These files can be accessed only when a recognised pattern causes me (my mind) to associate a sense with a memory -- or file, to continue the *nix file system analogy. Speaking of which, file systems are a specialised database for the hierarchical disorganisation of named bitstreams (files). I wanted to read about file systems on Wikipedia, but had forgotten about this desire until now. Which illustrates my previous point. Which suggests humans do, indeed, think visually if I chose the verb "illustrate" to explain how my rambling created a new link to my previously inaccessible memory. Speaking of rambling, is DDR3 the current (SD)RAM bling? ;)

Summary: Brolin's mind is:

• racing


• overanalysing everything


• causing (mass|grave) sidetracking and consequent derailing


• sending impulses to control his muscles to cause his fingers to press the right keys at their memorised positions to write synonymous — or at least related — verbs as regular expressions because he cannot choose the most apt verb and does not want to get sidetracked by trying to choose the best verb (Yes, I know I am repeating myself.)

Current Mood: thoughtful

04:00 - It's time to Turn That Frown Upside Down™!

My previous post was too negative — time for a positive note (pun intended):

DJ DiNexx - The Nexxia is the best and most memorable psytrance (or goa trance?) track I have heard. I cannot recommend this track enough. It is a perfect example to cite when asked what type of music I like. It even samples Kraftwerk (one of the tracks from Computer World)!

Update (2008-06-29): DJ Ziki - Best of Noga mix is another example. I will update this post each time I have a new example.¹



"What if there were no hypothetical questions?" — George Carlin, many of whose quotes sound exactly like Brolinisms™ :)


Update (2008-09-20):
¹ I have evidently failed to update this post. However, I like most tracks on Digitally Imported's Trance channel. I have been listening to DI's Trance channel for weeks — at least 1 month by now? Interestingly, my hit-to-miss ratio is higher on DI's Trance channel than on DI's Goa-Psytrance channel. This is interesting because my hit-to-miss ratio was higher on non-DI Goa and Psytrance channels, such as Philosomatika and "Psytranceradio and Goaplace".

Current Mood: thoughtful

15:05 - Why Firefox is not my favourite Web browser

I am going to record everything I dislike about Firefox here.

2008-06-22:

1. When saving a page, Firefox downloads the page again instead of saving the cached copy. This may not matter for static pages, but it is the Wrong Thing™ to do when saving the output of a server-side script:

Real-World example: I placed an order through Bow Wow Auto Parts. I wanted to save a copy of my receipt. I did not need a paper copy, so I tried to save a copy of the page. Firefox already had the page in memory; why could it not just save this cached copy? Instead, it downloads the page again. This fails because the page is a server-side script: if you use a GET request to download the page, all the parameters, which are normally passed via a POST request, are missing. The result? The saved page says my credit card could not be charged instead of listing my order and payment details.

Why does Firefox still do this? (fail) This one design flaw is enough to justify using Opera instead of Firefox.

2. The Find bar's messages², which seem to have been copied from Vim¹, lack parallelism: For example, "Reached end of page, continued from top". If the search reached the end, then it should continue at the beginning. If it continued from the top, then it should have searched until it hit the bottom.

3. The Find bar lacks a "Whole word only" option.

4. The Search bar seems to censor suggestions from certain search engines. For example, "fuck" finds suggestions with Wikipedia, but not with Google nor Yahoo. However, I am not sure whether Firefox is responsible for this censorship.

2008-07-10:

5. My choice (that sounds strange for some reason; I want to use "decision" instead of "choice" because it sounds more "natural" to me, which is redundant, because who else who I be referring to when I am writing in (the?) first person? "for some reason" is redundant too: how could I have any feeling without a reason? Anyway, that is getting too philosophical again.) to edit this post illustrates how extremely tangential I am. This may well explain why I feel time is flying by faster than ever: because even my thought processes get extremely sidetracked, leaving me always feeling like I always have a list of things I not only want to do, but to think about, that grows far faster than items are completed. Back on track: I decided I wanted to try writing the Prove It! (complete with marketroid-style, trailing exclamation mark (as if there are other types of exclamation marks? Well, there are in Spanish (and French too?), but not in English)). Now the only thing missing is CamelCase! Which sounds like a box (case) of Camel cigarettes) Bollocks, I have nested too many levels of parentheses again; Firefox does not highlight matching parentheses, presumably because "normal" people do not get so sidetracked whilst writing that they not only nest parentheses, but nest sufficient quantities to cause them to lose track of closing the previously-opened parentheses. Fail fail fail. Where was I? (fail) OK, I wanted to try writing my chosen Prove It! multiple-choice tests again. I went to the ... now I have to get sidetracked yet again by copying ... well, I can't paste it until I have copied it... Prove It! Web site. (I may as well use Vim to edit this post, so I can use markers. Of course, I think I must be getting a little too sidetracked if I need to use markers whilst (or "while", in this case) writing English, which is a so-called/supposedly "natural" language — it certainly is not always natural to me, even though I am a native English speaker. Sidetracking 101, by Brolin Empey. I went to the Prove It! (it would be cool if I could use keyboard shortcuts with Klipper to choose which buffer to paste, like with the " prefix in Vim) ... I fail at focusing. I went to the Prove It! Web site, complete with CP/M- and Micros~1-style, 3-letter, truncated .htm file extension in default.htm, which exhumes Micros~1 because only IIS uses default instead of index by default for its equivalent of Apache httpd's DirectoryIndex ... I was going to say "directive", but I think the directive is what sets the value. What do you call the value of the directive? Just "value"? or "variable"? It depends on the target audience, level of abstraction, naming conventions, style guide, programming language, ... STOP GETTING SIDETRACKED! OK, now I can't even explain that I went to the Prove It! (amazing I still have that in my clipboard buffer!) Web site without getting sidetracked by the filenames used. So yes, the default.htm and stereotypical/cliche, marketing-fantasy, smiling-person-using-a-laptop-because-she-is-so-happy-she-stares-at-other-than-her-computer-display-whilst-working, businessperson (have to be politically correct here, since she is a businesswoman, after all) image and tagline/slogan. In this case, the marketing fantasy was at least somewhat realistic because it did not show someone using a non-line-powered laptop, but the part of the laptop with the computer (not the display, which I think is called the lid) is not shown in the photo, so, for all I know, it may be the standard marketing fantasy of using a battery-powered laptop because "Look at me, I'm so productive because I can work anywhere for all of what, 3 hours at the most until I need to find an AC outlet before my battery dies!"...

This really is the story of my complete lack of life/antisocial life, even though I cannot claim my middle name is sidetracked because I do not have any names starting with 'S'. I do have Thomas, though, which, in addition to "tangent", could stand for the "tracked" in "sidetracked".

I went to the Prove It! Web site.

I could not log in because I could not remember my "Session ID" (how can it be a session ID when I use the same ID for multiple sessions? (fail)). Firefox, AFAIK, has no equivalent to Opera's Wand dialog, which lets me choose from the remembered logins for the current page. I know I have saved a login for this page, but I cannot remember what it is, never mind what it starts with. I need to know what the login (username for those not familiar with *nix terminology)... well, actually, in this case it is called a "Session ID", as confusing as that name may be, so I could at least try to be consistent.

I need to know what the saved login starts with because Firefox cannot show all saved logins for a page. Which is my Firefox complaint #5. Which is why I got sidetracked by editing this post in the first place. Yay, it has only been what, at least one hour since I started editing this post in order to add my Firefox complaint #5. And yes, I am always this sidetracked. And yes, I wonder if I must be the most tangential and externally-sidetracked person in the world — or on Earth, to avoid using a certain phrasal idiom, which sounds more "natural" to me. Now, I need to copy this rambling post to my clipboard buffer before submitting this form, in case LiveJournal eats my post, or, more likely, my Internet INTARWEB connection has been borked lost again because I am using a wireless link to log in to my Web banking... oh shit, I wasn't supposed to say that, was I? ;)

¹ And from where did Vim copy these messages?

² I know, these messages are part of the language pack, not Firefox itself.

Is it acceptable for footnote ... what do you call them? anchors? ... to be unordered? In #2 above, I (not surprisingly) added footnote #2 after #1^a, but then #2 comes before #1. If I really wanted to know, I could test with OpenOffice.org Writer to see how it handles this scenario. However, I do not want to get that sidetracked. I am already sidetracked by editing this post because I got sidetracked whilst trying to log in to the Prove It! Skills Testing Website, which led to #5 above.

^a I have, once again, found myself writing footnotes to footnotes. To avoid confusion, I decided to use letters instead of digits for my second-level footnotes. Speaking of second level, the point of this second-level footnote was to explain that I originally wrote "the second footnote", but decided to use cardinal numbers instead of ordinals to reference the footnotes because using ordinals to refer to cardinals gets confusing when the cardinals start at 0 instead of 1. This leads to the coinage of the "zeroth" ordinal, the use of which can be avoided by using cardinals to refer to cardinals instead of using ordinals to refer to cardinals. Anyway, in case anyone is actually reading this, and in the less likely chance my reader actually understands this rambling, this illustrates how extremely tangential (and perhaps circumstantial too, but I keep putting off looking up this word in a dictionary) I am: I decide to try writing ... this is supposed to be point #5 above. See #5 above.

Update (2008-09-20):
#5 is merely an inconvenience because I can search in Firefox's Saved Passwords window.

Current Mood: frustrated

22:38 - LiveBlackMail

LiveJournal uses the file extension .bml. bml = Black Mail, of Dutch Breeze fame. Mix-E-Load! Joyport girl! Posting to LiveJournal instead of learning to create electronik free art. Linking to URLs without checking to make sure they are still what you think they are, rather than spam portals or Russian lolitas. Nabokov references. Sting references to songs that reference Nabokov. Overuse of loose association. Stream of conciousness. iostream stdio.h C > C++. Tangent. Playing with my cell phone whilst walking around aimlessly and consequently feeling like a stereotypical teenager, even though I am no longer a teenager. Going to Main Street in the City of Vancouver on Father's Day and, as usual, being too shy to talk to anyone I do not know. Hoping I don't die in a car crash whilst writing SMS messages whilst riding in cars with boys (not riding in boys with cars). Juvenile humour. UK English > Canadian English > * > US "English". Pretentiousness. Missing Firefox functionality whilst using Opera, but still preferring Opera. Listening to Machinae Supremacy promo songs over and over. Contemplating buying a real C64 system for 30 CAD, but choosing not to. Being born on an airplane = being airborn(e). Airborn(e) boy = airmale. AOL notification of new "arrival" = You've Got Male! You have mail. A fatal exception 0E has occurred in module FOOBAR at SOME:ADDR . Alt-tabbing to Amarok because I can't be arsed to create a proper playlist. Enjoying spamming my LiveJournal. Being frustrated by the Software Borkout® that is OpenOffice.org v2.4 on my Ubuntu v8.04 installation. Realising how coincidental it is that 2*4=8. Being greatly irritated by people who incorrectly and colloquially refer to OpenOffice.org as OpenOffice. (fail) Being pedantic. Of course. Using fragments for stylistic pretentiousness and pontification. Not looking up new words when reading, but keeping the unknown words in memory and spending more time speculating about their meaning that it would take to look up the actual definition. OpenOffice.org v2.4 breaking my report, which worked fine in v2.1 on Gentoo. Thinking Ubuntu is less great than I initially thought. "Oh noes, these drivers and applications are not Free Software. Heaven forbid some companies might want to protect their intellectual property." Wondering whether tasteless and/or low-brow pornography is still considered intellectual property, then realising I already thought of this, but not being sure whether I already blogged about this. Hi2u run-on sentences. Say hello to the period: Your Friend at the End®. Registering for DreamHost. Wondering about the US Patriot Act.

Once upon a time, there was a shy boy named Brolin who liked to play with his personal computer. Then Brolin had to live on his own and consequently died because he was too lazy to eat or exercise. Speculation. Specular. Bump-mapping. Doom3 engine. Okular. KDE4. Vistaesque. Vista bad. 164 = all the way to death. 168 = all the way to prosperity. Questioning my insanity because I think I hear someone calling me. Noticing the Freudian slip I made by writing "insanity" instead of "sanity". Sanity. English, Amiga demoscene group. Jester of Sanity. Volker Tripp. Living in the past. "Man who lives in past has his back turned to future." Paraphrasing ... forgot the word ... not Aeosop's Fables... inconsistent spacing before horizontal ellipses, which are really three sequential periods instead of a Unicode horizontal ellipsis character. Paraphrasing ${WORD_I_FORGOT} because I can't be arsed to Google for the correct quote. Wondering how anyone survived before hypertext and computer networks -- I would have had to go to physical library, which is much father away than /lib/ or /usr/lib/, but I am so lazy that I cannot pull answers from Web reference sites. However, I justify this laziness by explaining that I do not want to get even more sidetracked than I always am. Uh oh — I actually wrote a complete sentence! Using the ability of computer networks to copy information immensely quickly to contribute to the already infinite source of misinformation and misquotes. Failing at life. "Relax, it's just life."

Constantly choosing to cross my legs like a girl, even though it cuts off my circulation and makes me worry about whether my body is going to fail because I have poor circulation and avoid physical exercise. Mental masturbation. Adding "like a girl" not because there is anything wrong with crossing one's legs, but because I felt like it. Wishing I had a girl with whom I could be affectionate. Thinking of a vocal trance song in which the female singer sings "Sleep with me, tonight. Dream with me, tonight." Fucking myself both literally and by procrastinating. ("Speaking of procrastination, ...") Boy, ("Girl, "?) I sure know how to give the wrong impression! I had no lustful thoughts when I wrote that; I believe the "Sleep with me, tonight." lyric has literal meaning, not sexual nor lustful meaning. DOT DOT DOT. US Department of Transportation. USA. Greenhouse gas factory. Global warming. We're all going to die. Of course. What was my point? 72 points per inch. Volkswagen Pointer. Dereferenceable integer containing a memory address. Having obsessive compulsive tendencies. Backspacing the two — not one — spaces after a period, then inserting them again. Repeat. Seagate on Disc Drive. Apple on Infinite Loop.

fscking /proc/self

Greetz fly out to:

THIS
SPACE
FOR
RENT

OK, what was I doing?

Update (2008-06-19):

I updated the text preceding this appendage by correcting oversights and clarifying some points I communicated poorly. This illustrates the great importance of not only proofreading immediately after writing, but days later too, when I am in a different mood.

I think WORD_I_FORGOT='proverb'.

My OpenOffice.org Base v2.4 borkout was solved by using Sun's JRE instead of the FSF's JRE, which Ubuntu includes in the base installation. See openoffice base crashes when loading robust form on Ubuntu Forums; my post is #3.

OpenOffice.org has definitely not inspired great confidence for me: my Base report broke after upgrading from OpenOffice.org v2.1 (on Gentoo) to v2.4 (on Ubuntu). I am not alone: there are multiple topics in the OpenOffice.org Forum. Many of these topics were started soon (within weeks) after the release of OpenOffice.org v2.4. I found no solution; the only workaround that worked for me was to completely recreate my report. This was feasible because my database has only one report. However, I cannot imagine a business or other organisation that depends on a database to accept having to manually (interactively) delete and recreate possibly hundreds of reports!

I wanted to use TM symbols, but used ® instead because I could not remember the HTML 4 character entity for TM and did not want to get sidetracked by looking it up.

Speaking of Main Street: The Rolling Blackouts - Overload on Mains Street. :)

Speaking of mains, the following psytrance track contains a recording mentioning "the future belonged to alternating current":
Botanic Blue - Spiritworld (Psy-Trance February Mix)

(Klipper is such an essential application! How can anyone live without a clipboard history? :))

I love this style of music so much!

(This post still contains known (that is redundant.) grammatical errors, but I am leaving it as is. Otherwise, I would spend too long obsessing over trivial details.)

Tangential connection: I mentioned Jester of Sanity. One of Jester's MOD files contains a vocal sample exclaiming "keep this frequency clear!". Dj Single - God Of Happiness contains a different vocal sample (different voice) exclaiming¹ this same phrase.

1. See, I did learn something in elementary school¹: I caught myself writing "saying" instead of a more descriptive and specific verb. :)

1. I am, of course, being silly: in terms (no pun intended!) of academic, school subjects, I may have learned more in elementary school than in high school — at least in terms of practical things I use every day. I do have a very strange and unusual unique educational history, though. Well, not only in terms of lack of formal education. :)

How often do footnotes require further footnotes? :D For other writers, I mean. ;) Footnotes to footnotes are nothing new for me!

Current Mood: high: 'lo medium hi (hello)

13:40 - Bill Gates == 666


$ ./string_sum 'BILLGATES'
663


Bill Gates the 3rd. +3 = 666

Incidentally:

Current Mood: silly

15:30 - Is Imperative Reaction guilty of copying Purple Motion?

Listen to 2nd_pm.s3m, then Guilt by Imperative Reaction. Is this similarity coincidental?

Current Mood: curious