Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Begs the question

So okay, example from fark just now:

"One of America's oldest rodeos bans chewing tobacco, which begs the question: Why are nine-year-olds chewing tobacco?"

Of course I immediatley thought to myself "Great now I get to read page after page of idiots going 'THAT IS NOT BEGGING THE QUESTION LMAO'" and sure enough, someone in the first five or ten posts said "That isn't begging the question."

What the hell is it then? "Begging the question" as a logical fallacy is a fallacy of a construct anyway, because arguments that beg the question don't beg any singular question, while Canoe.ca writing about american rodeos does beg a question: why is canada writing about rodeos?

So what is it, then?

Monday, September 19, 2005

Hilarity

I found this on the uncyclopedia, here.

The Spanish Armada is considered one of the greatest military forces in history. It consisted of thousands upon thousands of flamenco dancers determined to carry the rhythm of Latin Music to the rest of the civilized world.
Unfortunately, it couldn't live up to the hype, and was defeated by the Wu Tang Clan in 1972.
Survivors of the battle eventually got together and re-formed as the Groove Armada, with slightly more success.
This article is a pile of crap. The article submitter may also have been huffing kittens . You can help Uncyclopedia by whipping it into shape.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Crapulence

Ladies and gentlemen, my hot water is broken.

Yeah, the water this morning was not only not hot or in the slightest warm, but was actually PAINFULLY COLD. It couldn't have been a hair over 50 degrees. I had to use a pair of boxers as a makeshift washcloth, and even that was painful.

What does this mean to you?

I'm probably leaving early. Oh, also I'm going to be very irritable and quite likely drunk earlier than normal as a result. I might even try beer in the shower if it's still not working!


[edit from 2019: as with the Kevin Smith movies, I'm glad I stopped randomly quoting '90s cartoons]
Circus midgets?

I've had it up to HERE with the likes of you people!

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Nerd Commentary

I'm trying the related URL thing here, but if it doesn't work, hit this if you care.

Scott Berkun, a former developer for the MS Internet Explorer UI, changed to Firefox recently as his primary browser due to issues in IE's current implementation. He, however, took issue with some of FF's quirks, especially involving window behavior and its effects on tabs and the find bar.

I don't really have any problem with a developer defending his choices in software, but sometimes, an adversarial response buried within friendly justifications is just kind of revolting (probably not the right word). I apply that to this paragraph from Asa Dotzler (Firefox UI developer):

I'm really pleased that other than those issues, Scott, who worked on IE versions 1-5, is finding Firefox to be a better fit than IE. It's even better that he's offering some good feedback. Without high quality feedback, we wouldn't have the Firefox we do today.

It's that "other than those issues" thing that bothers me. I like hearing that people are pleased with my product, as it's much easier for them to say "Hey, I like your database changes" than it is for them to say "I hate everything about it."

What irks me, though, is the broadcast concept that him taking issue with some design choices is an affront to what they're doing. In this case, leaving out other than those issues would result in "I'm really pleased that Scott is finidng firefox to be a better fit... Without feedback [etc]"

It's more effective that way, I say. I must say, though, that I do like seeing a reasonable set of responses to criticisms instead of the all-too-slashdot trend of simply going "We did tabs because that's what we decided and we're not open to suggestions, thanks for playing."

More importantly, I think it's interesting that Dotzler pushes the extensions. I think that's a great move on his part. As someone who has done some UI work for a project recently, I'd love to have the ability to say "Well, I set it up that way because I don't want people making this change or that, but never fear... since I work in such a great team environment, you have the ability to override my decision and do what actually works best for you, a real person."

I admire that, and wish I could say the same. Unfortunately, filemaker is not friendly for that. Oh well.

Garp garp garp.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Oh the things we realize

I went to weather.com and inspected the hurricane report just now.

I realized something... while I lived in Oregon, I had managed to completely fail to realize that hurricanes happen every year. I don't even remember hearing about Andrew or Hugo or any of that outside of the general "a hurricane came through." Living on the appropriate side of the country changes your perspective, I suppose.

It's not like we didn't have powerful weather; many a winter did we spend ducking away from powerful arctic cyclonic systems that would bring 70 mile an hour gusts along with several inches of rain. I suppose we thought less of those, though, because they were so spread out and banded that it never really registered as one storm if you were a casual observer. Knowing what I do about how weather works now, though, I guess we were fortunate that storms like that couldn't strengthen themselves.

Now, with Ophelia bearing up on the coast, I continue wondering if it'll manage to have any effect on our weather here. This brings about that realization from earlier: every summer, the weather channel gets several dozen visits from me just to check up on hurricanes.

Funny how things work.

There Are No Left Hands

I've taken a couple courses in this room, MMH 1304. Only today did I realize something important about it: there are no left handed desks.

Aside from that being kind of unsettling, as even crap lecture halls in the engineering building where human existence was never a planned-for consideration, have left handed tablets. In this room, however, left handed people are apparently forced to ask those seated a space over to their left if it's a problem if they use the desk between them to write on.

Repulsive.

I have a few thoughts about why there are no lefty tablets, though.

A) The designers of this building were considering the nature of applied psychology at the time, and wanted to make it possible for instructors to force everyone to have the same preferences prior to starting instruction.

B) Gnomes came in the middle of the night and switched the left handed desks to right handed desks. Gnomes are crazy good at welding.

C) This building is a twisting maze of accident to begin with. Each floor spans a set of stairs, the x4xx wing occupies at least 40 percent of the building, and I'm pretty sure there is no x2xx wing. The building was constructed as a shell, then filled with rooms. This resulted, I therefore propose, in a powerful gravity well that pulled all other out-of-the-ordinary objects in this building. Space-time can't handle so much backward in one place, so nature had to sort itself out.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Contemplation

So by now, everyone on the internet probably knows about Apple's iPod nano and Motorola's ROKR phones. I actually feel good about myself, though, for not being a total Apple Fanboy anymore in spite of the fact that I've owned four macs and an iPod mini over the course of my life.

I don't think the nano is a very good product as a replacement for the iPod Mini. The price point for it, $199 for 2GB and $249 for 4GB is not reasonable as compared to the Mini's 4GB and 6GB, respectively. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure the nano is a fantastic product otherwise, with its support of photos and whatnot, but for a product with two gigs less space and (was it?) four fewer hours of battery life, it seems like the only thing you're paying for is minaturization. That doesn't seem fair to me. But whatever, if it does the job for you, it does the job for you. I can say I'm glad I bought the mini, as my only reason for owning it is to put music on it. I have an iBook for pictures.

And shut up about video.

The other product, the ROKR phone, is so underwhelming I don't care about it. $250 from one carrier with 2 year contract is crap for anything anyway, but more importantly, the interface is not at all up to Apple's specs, and apparently the phone's form factor is that of a brick. As the type of consumer I am, that is more or less completely useless to me.

How's the August 2005 iBook working out for me, you might be wondering? It's nice, I like the improvements over the March 2004 version I had last year. The GPU is sturdy enough to do core image, which means I see the ripply whatsit floating over the screen when I open widgets in dashboard (rare!). More importantly, battery life is similar thus far, wireless coverage seems better, and while I don't yet care about bluetooth, I'm glad it's there.

And I won't have to sell this one in 8 or 9 months! Wink!

Friday, September 9, 2005

Oh Google, you so funny!

Someone managed to get to my index page last night by searching for the following string on Google Images:

map vortex i am

I've since been trying to figure out (on and off, anyway) why anyone would search for that string. Everyone else that got here searched either for 'the content vortex' or my name.

map vortex i am?

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Reflection

I'm pretty sure that it's a good thing I was too worn down to think today, because had I been able to do that, the only thought in my head from the time I started my shift at work up until now probably would have been

"I want to go home and watch dragonball z"

and that's ... so uncharacteristic.

Hell on Earth Day

Do you ever get that feeling that the feeling you got the day before was one you should have paid closer attention to?

Yesterday, I got out of the car and started walking toward the mall when I said to jeff "Why do I have the feeling that today will make me feel like continuing to get out of bed every day is a fruitless enterprise?"

Today, I braved nobody hearing what I was saying, someone pinning a last minute request by someone who was rantinating about jesus christ only knows what that wasn't getting paid for by the college, then finding out that our calendar system has more or less crashed, then finding out that apparently we no longer do late class starts but nobody told me, then and then and then and then and I want to go home.

I seriously shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning.