In the dark

A slice of (real) life

Question of the day

The compliment of suburban is urban.

Why isn't the compliment of a suburb an urb?

Code Monkey Dance

I ran across this video on The Uncredible Hallq's blog and enjoyed it so much I had to share. I cannot fathom why I like it, I just do. I think I'll do the Code Monkey dance at random moments at work tomorrow.

First impressions

Poking a little fun at some of my favorite tech bloggers. Click on the image to view.

S'truth

Trying too hard

Every President's Day local companies produce ads to entice buyers to purchase their products. Nothing unusual about that. What amazes me is the length some stores will go to in order to relate their product to the presidents. How do you sell furniture in relation to a federal holiday celebrating two U.S. presidents? You offer "presidential-sized savings". Are those Taft sized savings (he was so fat, weighing 330 pounds, that he got stuck in the White House bathtub) or are they only James Madison sized (5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed under 100 pounds)?

What the hell, presidential-sized saving? And we wonder at the illiteracy rates among our children.

Four faces of Samuel Barber

One of my favorite classical pieces is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. It is in turn melancholic, inspirational, profound and restful. I've put together four videos featuring different musician's interpretation of this beautiful melody.


I can't honestly say I prefer one to the other. In their own way each version illustrates another facet of the work.


The first is the traditional, classical version. Second, a vocal version performed by The Choir of Trinity College,Cambridge,UK.Directed by Richard Marlow. Third, an electronic interpretation by William Orbit and finally, Dj Tiesto presents the Adagio in a techno style.


I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Jeber loves LOLcatz

You can now order a book of the original LOLcat cartoons from the original artist.

Limited edition signed drawing copy of Meet the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, available from Hobotopia.

Kubuntu on an HP dv2000

I recently got an HP dv2410us and finally got tired of Vista, so I wiped the drive and installed Kubuntu 7.10. I was jazzed, all the major components worked immediately.

The only hardware that didn't work was the built-in webcam (no great loss), my bluetooth mouse (OK, I have a USB one as well) and the wireless (uh-oh).

It just so happened I was on my way to the KDE 4.0 release event at Google the next weekend, so I left it alone and waited to see if one of the great minds there could offer a suggestion.

To my surprise and pleasure, I had two great minds take a look at it. Jonathan Riddell (Jonathan is the only Canonical employee who works full-time with the Kubuntu project and is the lead maintainer and KDE developer) and a VP from AMD both examined my laptop and reached the disappointing conclusion that the Broadcom chipset in it is too new for Linux to have developed drivers for it.

So now I'm dual-booting Kubuntu with Vista and have the best of both worlds (well, on the Windows side that's open for debate).

My visit to Nirvana

 
I just got back from three days at the Google campus attending the release event for the Linux KDE version 4.0 desktop. The event itself was great. I got to meet quite a few very smart people from all over the world, united by our interest in Linux and the KDE desktop manager. But I don't think any of us could get over the fact that we were at Google, geek heaven, the holy of holies for the internet crowd.

We were "asked" not to say much about the Google campus, so I'm afraid I can't go into much detail about the place. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, only outside and only when accompanied by Google security or staff. Let's just say that having spent a few years working at the NSA I didn't feel that out-of-place at the Googlplex.

Vote for Stephen

Marimo-All About a Dog

For anyone who has ever lived with, and loved, a dog.

BBC NEWS | Obituary: Oscar Peterson

One of the jazz world’s greats has died. Oscar Peterson was a truly gifted pianist. He’ll be missed by all of us who love jazz.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Obituary: Oscar Peterson

Lessons learned...the hard way

1) Do not under any circumstances microwave a full cup of coffee with sugar already added.

2) Keep a roll of paper towels handy near the microwave.

3) Do not attempt to drink the coffee you made in the process of learning rule #1.

Do not push the Red Button

Put The Big Red Button on your site

Polish off your week

...with this music video. Everybody, on put your shoes for dancing into disco.



Don't blame me if this gets stuck in your head all weekend.

Microsoft shuts down Santa for talking dirty

And Bill O'Reilly's upset about store clerks who say, "Happy Holidays"?

Microsoft Corp. quickly shut down Santa Claus’ Web privileges after it found out the automated elf it created for kids to instant message with was talking naughty, not nice.

(MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)

Last year, Microsoft encouraged kids to connect directly to “Santa” by adding northpolelive.com to their Windows Live Messenger contact lists. The Santa program, which Microsoft reactivated in early December, asked children what they wanted for Christmas and could respond on topic, thanks to artificial intelligence.

The holiday cheer soured this week when a reader of a United Kingdom-based technology news site, The Register, reported that a chat between Santa and his underage nieces about eating pizza prompted Santa to bring up oral sex.

One of the publication’s writers replicated the chat Monday. After declining the writer’s repeated invitations to eat pizza, a frustrated Santa burst out with, “You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

The exchange ended with the writer and Santa calling each other “dirty bastard.”

Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said the company’s engineers tried to clean up Santa’s vocabulary, but even after making changes to the software, the company wasn’t comfortable keeping him online.

“It’s not like if you say, ’Hello Santa,’ he’s going to throw inappropriate stuff at you,” said Sohn.

Sohn said Santa’s lewd comment was sparked by someone “pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn’t supposed to do.”

Santa is just one of many “agents,” or automated IM programs, that computer users can chat with on Live Messenger. Some are useful — customer service agents, for example — while others are frivolous, like an alien that responds to IMs with burbling extraterrestrial noises. Sohn said some of the bots are programmed to fend off inappropriate messages.

“If they’re meant to be cheeky and have fun with you, they may repeat certain things back,” he said, or respond to certain words with “that’s naughty.”

Sohn said Microsoft was not aware that the Santa code included the foul language, but insisted the company did not suspect an employee prank.

Microsoft disabled Santa Tuesday. On Wednesday, northpolelive.com appeared to be online in one reporter’s essenger contact list, but Santa did not respond to her messages.

(Source)

This almost makes Vista seem benign.

Just because it's Thursday

OH HAI HAPPY THANSGIBBEN!