New lists
Signs You've Played Too Many Console RPGs - I created the list and added 32 items, including several that my friends Tanis and Melissa came up with. Many of the items were inspired by The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés. Other Keepers of Lists members added 11 items, but I think most of them didn't understand the topic of the list.
New Units of Measurement - I created the list and added 22 items. Most of the items are not original and many come from The Bent of Tau Beta Pi, Spring 1988 or Al Lowe.
Most Ridiculous Statements Made In Insurance Claims - I added 16 items.
Odd Places To Find Your Picture - I added 10 items.
Please vote "yea" on items you like in these lists :)
Updates on my life
Graduate school
I'm the TA for a discrete mathematics class. My responsibilities include running a Monday discussion, holding an office hour, and grading tests. I've led one discussion so far, and it wasn't as hard as I expected. One student even commented that I seemed to be prepared (hah!). In addition to TAing, I'm taking an undergrad class in cryptography and a graduate class in computability and complexity.
Overall, I'm not enjoying graduate school. I don't have many friends here, classes aren't particularly interesting, and I don't know what I'm going to research. I enjoy thinking about the computational complexity of puzzles and games, but that doesn't mean computational complexity research is for me. I'm interested in what it takes to write secure software and design secure user interfaces, but I don't know if those are real research areas.
Music
I'm no longer listening to Claremont Shades, USC Sirens, Blackmore's Night, Sting, Sixpence, Alanis, No Doubt, Vienna Teng, or Máire Brennan continuously. Instead, I'm listening to Evanescence - Fallen (mostly Bring me to Life, Whisper, and Imaginary), Joan Baez - Play Me Backwards (especially Stones in the Road and Through Your Hands), Strunz and Farah - Americas, and James Taylor - Greatest Hits continuously. I discovered Evanescence after hearing three college a cappella groups perform versions of Bring me to Life at two concerts in one weekend.
I found out that the song from Final Fantasy 6 that I feel like I've known forever is called "Terra's theme" or "Tina's theme".
Games
I'm addicted to a puzzle game by Pāvils Jurjāns called Net. I discovered it by reading Selene's game notes, which mostly covers RPGs. I think it is NP-complete, but I haven't thought about it carefully. I haven't played much Minesweeper (NP-complete) or Marble (I don't even know if it's decidable) lately.
I've also been playing RPGs. I played Wild Arms (ok) and Chrono Cross (good) over Christmas break. I tried Vagrant Story but didn't like it. Now I'm playing Xenogears. I like it so far, but it's very easy to get lost in 3D areas such as cities and forests. I will probably play Final Fantasy 9 next.
All of the RPGs are for the Playstation, so I've been them using an emulator called epsxe along with Pete Bernert's graphics plugins, some of which are open source. Playing games using an emulator has several advantages over using a console system: I can change the game's speed on the fly, save or load at any time, and play at the same time as my brother. It also has several disadvantages: I have to tweak the emulator settings for each game to keep it from freezing, and I have to choose between pirating the games and Playstation BIOS (illegal) or buying a Playstation and the games and then downloading them anyway (ridiculous).
Anime
Cal Animage Beta has been showing one episode a week of Midori no Hibi, Bleach, Samurai Champloo, Kyou Kara Maou, Phantom Memory Kurau, and Tactics. Midori no Hibi is my favorite of these series.
Movies
I loved Kinsey. My favorite scene was the one with the lesbian woman (not a sex scene). The religious right's response to the movie made it even better (more Kinsey-related links). I liked The Incredibles and Garden State. I didn't like Team America, and I found Mean Creek confusing.
Keepers of Lists
I contributed high-scoring items to Signs You Are Not Drunk Enough, Reasons To Move To Canada, and Signs You Should Stop Writing Items For Keepers. I contributed more items to Signs You May Be A Terrorist than the person who started the list. Over half of my items have been getting getting positive scores recently, which is a welcome change. I submitted five new lists, which will be accepted or rejected for publication over the next few months.
Existing personal projects
Pornzilla and Thumbs have been getting a lot of hits, even though I have not put much effort into them lately. The top five search phrases that bring people to squarefree.com are "porn" (150/day), "pornzilla", "thumbs", "best porn", and "free porn". (The next two are not porn-related: "bookmarklets" (25/day) and "burning edge".) I've only been updating The Burning Edge once a week, in part because the Firefox trunk isn't very exciting right now.
I'm way behind with incorporating feedback and submissions for bookmarklets and Thumbs.
Signs you might be a terrorist
I wrote two thirds of the items on Top 21 Signs You May Be A Terrorist, today's list on Keepers of Lists.
Trying out del.icio.us
My del.icio.us bookmarks. This may be the end of my link propogation posts.
Political humor
- Keep your Jesus off my penis. Wow. NSFR.
- This Land (unframed). So funny, I didn't mind it letting Bush off easy.
- Bush in 41.2 seconds. Surprised me.
- Yet another edited State of the Union address. Not as good as the ones from previous years.
On eBay recently
- Wedding dress worn twice: by the seller's ex-wife at the wedding, and by the seller to take the photos.
- An Erdös number of 5 (the high bidder wasn't serious)
- The air guitar used by Ben Jovi
RLP #5
- Using "gay" as a pejorative vs. misspelling "you're" as "your" (in a comment)
- Cover of The Economist: anatomy of a wayward administration (via kos; picture via atrios)
- Teen who distributed her own photo charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography (via curious)
RLP #3
- Respect Bootleggers via jcurious
- Your favorite band sucks via simon
- Terry Tate, Office Linebacker: Sensitivity Training
- Sample abstract for the 8th International Global Atmospheric Conference via schmack
- Caution: This sign has sharp edges via cait
- Error in Microsoft Frontpage ad
- How Harvey Mudd stole Caltech's cannon via schmack
- Firesomething extension. Mozilla Poweroyster!
- James Gosling: Moore's Law in two photos
- Hidden bird, a demonstration of visual grouping by motion
RLP #2
- Amazing sidewalk-chalk drawings, 2, 3 (via schmack)
- Once upon a time, there was a SPC Schwarz stationed with the Army in the Balkans. SPC Schwarz was either very clever or very bored; but probably both, since he managed to attempt or be warned about 213 things he wasn't allowed to do. (via schmack)
- Vote for the next US president (via jcurious)
- Caitlin Silberman: Matholicism
- David Shrigley's signs and other interventions (via caitlin)
- mpt: customer service
- The great aluminum foil prank
- KoL forum: Traffic tickets are inherently sexist
- KoL: Top 45 Signs Your Workplace Productivity Could Improve (3 items are mine)
- KoL: Top 82 Rules Of Military Combat (6 items are mine)
The Devil's Dictionary of the Internet
From Greg Knauss' Devil's Dictionary (via Simon Willison):
- command line, noun
- The most efficient method available for accidentally deleting data.
- journalism, noun
- A form of information distribution widely acknowledge to be unethical, corrupt and amoral; also, what blogging is, God dammit!
- p2p, noun
- A class of computer network, designed to allow people to remain safely anonymous while they trade public domain documents and songs to which they own the copyright.
- Semantic Web, proper noun
- An attempt to apply the Dewey Decimal system to an orgy.
The original Devil's Dictionary (1911) by Ambrose Bierce is also available online.
1) Report bug. 2) ??? 3) Profit!
Track the popularity of the Busniess Plan meme over time by searching for Mozilla bug reports that say "3. Profit".
So far, 27 bugs have been reported with the phrase. The first report was in December 2001, and the meme's popularity seems to have peaked around March 2003. Its popularity is now declining slowly.
Fun with the English language
- Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips? (Via Schmack.)
- Can you parse this English sentence? Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. The answer. (Via Stephanie Harves.)
- "You shanked my jengaship!" I think it's interesting that "shank", a mispronounciation of the past tense of "sink", gained an extra past-tense marker to become "shanked".
- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. (Via Schmack.)
- Actual newspaper headlines (collected from several sources)
- Capitol Steps: Al-Jazeera [Alouette?]
- Capitol Steps: Look Away (Rush Limbaugh's statement) [Dixie]
- Capitol Steps: Lirty Dies: Kobe Bryant (spoonerisms)
- Mountain Liquor?! I hardly know 'er!
RLP
- Those Crazy Dutch
"I haven't even mentioned the government subsidized open air prostitution zone. Open daily and guarded by policemen, you just drive in to pick up one of the waiting prostitutes and drive with her in between one of the provided man-sized plastic walls which constitute the so called 'afwerkplek' (meaning something like 'finish off spot'). There are even signs leading you to the spots and telling you what to do. Some people suggested charging clients to pay for the project, but this was rejected because it was argued that would make the city into a pimp."
- Ian Oeschger: My son is running his own online web journal!
- Blake Ross: Why you don't let smart people start athletic programs
- The impotence of proofreading
- Eric and the Gazebo
- Exam Stories
Usage Nazi
Health Education Outreach flyer on tables at Platt dining hall:
Try this exercise to explore your relationships and how they are effected by alcohol.
At least it didn't go into detail about how alcohol effects babies.
The ultimate Engrish phrase?
"Eternal Engine of Linguistic Massacre", a song title translated from Japanese, seems to sum up the entire Engrish phenomenon. It is song 5 on the second CD of the soundtrack of a Japanese game called Valkyrie Profile. But when I found the original title of the song and showed it to Gabe, he decided it was translated correctly and didn't make any more sense in Japanese.
Laid to governation
Gabriel Neer: "Governating the countryside! Governating the peasants! Especially the women!"
Strong Bad + Lord of the Rings =
Dan Cicio and Pamela Rettig outdo Strong Bad in their modification of Strong Bad's Kids' Book.
Failed Romance
Eleanor Casey: Failed Romance.
If you really must write your own [romantic poem], then remember - it doesn't have to rhyme. Specifically, you should never ever ever try to rhyme the girl's name with something. Never. Even more specifically, do not try to rhyme "Eleanor" with "smell of her". No.
If I ever write a poem comparing Helen to cantaloupes, I will be sure not to mention the process of smelling the melons to determine ripeness.
Tournament of Shame
After Friday night anime, we had our first Tournament of Shame (air hockey). A tournament of shame is a sequential pairwise game in which the loser stays to play the next player in line. Very fun with a sufficiently silly group such as Michael, Erika, Jeff, Gabe, Calvin, Kay, Adrian, Helen, and me.
The idea of a tournament of shame is that no player will dominate the tournament: it's hard to be so bad that you lose to everyone else consistently. Or maybe the point is just to be silly by cheering players when they score on themselves.
Correction: It's called a "tournament of shame", not a "tournament of losers".
Multiple choice
The correct answer to this question is an:
A) aardvark
B) rat
C) cow
(Stolen from a Slashdot post by "j3110".)
Deep Fried Live
Deep Fried Live is a cross between Strong Bad and a cooking show. DFL is "hosted" by accident-prone Tako the Octopus. The show is funny, and I might have learned something about cooking by watching it. My favorite episodes are 3: Chocolate-Chip Cookies, in which Tako confronts his fear of food mixers, and 7: Steak, in which Tako is abducted by an alien who needs cooking tips.
When I told Helen about Deep Fried Live, she informed me that "tako" is Japanese for "octopus". Helen is amazing at picking up languages. She seems to know more Japanese than I do, even though I've taken a semester and she has not.
If you have disabled Flash because you hate Flash ads, you're missing out on some great Flash cartoons and should try the Flash Click to View extension for Mozilla Firebird.
Comedy Sportz
I went to ComedySportz for the first time last night. I loved it.
Six players in two teams played 8 improv comedy games. In "185", an audience member suggests something that might walk into a bar, such as a penguin. Players race to come up with bar jokes involving 185 penguins:
185 penguins walk into a bar. The bartender says "I don't like you, please leave." A penguin asks "Why?" The bartender says "You smell fishy."
or
185 penguins walk into a bar. The bartender says "Sorry, this is a Microsoft shop."Continue reading "Comedy Sportz"
California recall
Capitol Steps: Interview with "Arnold Schwarzenegger" (mp3).
Meanwhile, SFGate reports that 52% of registered California voters "said the recall does not make California look foolish to the rest of the country". (via Erika Rice)
The British government has learned...
Bush: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (State of the Union address)
Rice: "The statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."
Rumsfeld: "It turns out that it's technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does -- did say that -- and still says that."
"Randy": "I never said your wife's a whore. What I said was: Jim found out your wife's a whore." (a comment on dKos via causality)
At least it doesn't include the Union Jack
Strong Badia's flag breaks many of the rules Josh Parsons used when he graded the world's flags. I wonder if the Brothers Chaps consulted that page before creating the flag.
