| Yet another griping about networksolutions - in order to add a DNS server to my entry, I had to choose "I want to... transfer my domain name to another ISP". That being something that I didn't, in fact, want to do. Also, they continually refer to DNS servers or nameservers as hosts. Why not go one step further, and just refer to everything in your records as things? If you're going to be stupidly vague, you may as well go the whole way. [00:16] [0 comments]
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Friday 20 July 2001
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| Today's survey-of-disbelief - web-browsers default to using the Times New Roman font, which, in my opinion, is terribly ugly and unpleasant. Does anyone like serif fonts? Tell me if you do. [20:22] [0 comments]
| One person said they liked Hersheys - it's the infamous Meander again. We can safely and reasonably conclude that Hersheys cause mononucleosis. [20:19] [0 comments]
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| Glyph inspired by Metamagical Themas. How would you describe the upper-case letter A? Chances are, even serifs would depart from your description. Almost nobody would describe it such that it would encompass today's Glyph, yet almost everybody (who isn't a computer) would recognise the Glyph as an A. [20:03] [0 comments]
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Thursday 19 July 2001
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| Grabualsa, by the way. Come to me, search engines! [23:56] [1 comment]
| I have nothing worth blogging today, so instead I ask a question - does anybody actually like the default paraffin-flavouring of Hersheys chocolate? Tell me if you do. [23:52] [0 comments]
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| I have now been crowned king of horrible monsters, and I refuse to pray for death. RARRH, I AM A CYCLOPES! [04:57] [0 comments]
| Ten out of ten wife's stupid friends agree, RavenBlack is a horrible monster and should pray for death. [03:31] [0 comments]
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Wednesday 18 July 2001
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| Instead of San Francisco, we're now looking at moving to Seattle, which various sources claim is The Emerald City, rainy, full of goths, and with available tech jobs. On the downside of its comparison against San Francisco, there's much less chance of a random violent death due to plate tectonics. Where's the fun in that? [21:12] [0 comments]
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| Redoing the personality disorder test today, I scored eight disorders out of ten, by answering the questions as asked, rather than the questions I thought they meant. Still must try harder, though. [00:21] [0 comments]
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| Related to my image-recognition rant of July 10th, Kevan tells me that Google has a not-really-what-I-was-looking-for image search based on link text and image name. While it fails to produce the requested thin people with dark blue hair, and also doesn't get pictures of skeletons on elephants, it does do a decent job of finding elephant skeletons. [00:15] [0 comments]
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Tuesday 17 July 2001
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| Ending the run of reader submissions, the Glyphs return to being produced by my own infinitely grumpy hand. [23:57] [0 comments]
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| From As Above, I do the Personality Disorder Test to see whether it agrees with my own assessment of my disorders of choice. The results? I'm highly Schizoid, moderately schizotypal, moderately antisocial, moderately narcissistic and moderately obsessive-compulsive. On the up-side, at least I'm not very paranoid, borderline, histrionic, avoidant or dependent. Only five out of ten disorders. Could do better. [01:19] [0 comments]
| Most of all, DefCon reminded me of Jeff K and, especially, his Usar Freindley Flash animation. Gaze upon it and despair. On a related note, my wife got me a badge. [01:05] [0 comments]
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Monday 16 July 2001
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| DefCon was the most bored I have been for a long time. Not only that, it was days of being the most bored I've been for a long time. On Sunday, the network was down for hours, then external ssh was blocked, hence the lack of entries yesterday. You didn't miss much, since I would have just been complaining anyway. Apparently that's all I do. [22:17] [0 comments]
| Today's reader submission Glyph is from Kevan. And now, on with the bitching. [22:15] [0 comments]
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Saturday 14 July 2001
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| Demonstrating the predicted lack of reader-submitted Glyphs, I have no Glyph for today. I also have no fun today. Las Vegas sucks. DefCon sucks. The people suck. The only redeeming feature is that I haven't yet heard anyone say the standard geek humour. On the downside, I haven't heard anyone say anything more interesting either. And I just paid $200 for a single meal for three people, due to eating with lots of people and the bill being split equally between eaters, despite one guy eating $500 of food, and each of my three eating, even at extortionate rates, maybe $30
at most. I hate geeks. I should have stayed at home and thrown out the plane ticket - about $150 would have been saved that way already, as well as a lot of grumpiness. I did briefly meet Starla from the White Hats, which, despite almost nothing being said and me already being thoroughly grumpy, was the high point. That's how bad it is. There are bloody fruit machines in the bloody airport. All must die. [07:43] [0 comments]
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Thursday 12 July 2001
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| With a bit of quick-thinking, I've decided to install ZipSlack on Fiend so I can connect to a network at DefCon without fearing for my computer's life. And from there, I'll be able to update the blog after all. Hooray for the wonders of modern technology. [09:20] [0 comments]
| Note: In that Las Vegas entry, "tomorrow night" refers to tonight, in fact. Whose stupid idea was it to end days at midnight anyway? 7am, that's when day-transfer should occur. [08:18] [0 comments]
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| Today's reader-submission Glyph courtesy of Tyrethali, who inspired me to this particular laziness. And a fine Glyph it is too. [08:15] [0 comments]
| Amusingly, I won't actually be able to update on these various days of absence that are following. Which means a bunch of reader submissions, should I get a bunch, will be clustered on Monday, the day of returning. I'm off to Las Vegas tomorrow night. "Why?", you may ask, "You're already married, you think gambling is silly, you hate the sun, you hate neon, and you hate people! Why on earth would you go to Las Vegas?". And you'd be surprisingly correct on all counts. In fact, I don't even want to go to Las Vegas any more, but the flight is booked already, for a visit to DefCon. Sigh. [08:15] [0 comments]
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| In a fit of laziness, I've come up with the fantastic idea of reader-submission Glyphs for the next few days. Send me your 80x60 monochrome GIFs, and your artwork may appear in RavenBlog, along with a link or something if you like. This will be running until the 18th or so, so get it while it's hot. Many will enter, few will win! [07:47] [0 comments]
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Wednesday 11 July 2001
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| Huzzah! A consignment of gum (as per my request of the 29th of June) has arrived from Kevan. The rest of you in England are still cursed of course. [22:47] [1 comment]
| Those of my readers who've ever visited whoishottest.com's thong section, even for a fraction of a second, will recognise today's Glyph as actually being the exact picture submitted by every entrant. [22:44] [0 comments]
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| I wonder how long it will be before computers can do proper image-recognition. When they can, I want text-based picture-searches, pronto. "Google, get me pictures of... thin people with dark blue hair.. Now get me pictures of skeletons... on elephants!". "No results found: would you like me to draw you a picture?". "No, but you can bring me a pie. Warp speed to the nearest planet. Tell me the answer to this criminal mastermind's riddle, too." [06:54] [0 comments]
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| Incidentally, I wrote back to Miss 'Speaking as a mother', asking what part of my site in particular offended her, and explaining (not in great detail) what a furry is. My wife is considering calling the scrawled out number of Mr 'True Beliveser'. [00:22] [0 comments]
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Tuesday 10 July 2001
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| RavenGet has undergone another minor update, making it resistant to running-two-copies-at-once, and hopefully also better at recognising dead connections. [01:41] [0 comments]
| On the same theme, in today's Batman Beyond, "Three high-school footballers have been arrested for using slappers.". To an American, this would mean only the drug that slappers were depicted to be. To a Brit, it's a lot funnier, slapper being just one among many sexual euphemisms lacked by America. It's endlessly entertaining to have such a surfeit of euphemisms that nobody around you knows. [01:09] [0 comments]
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| Some things that regained my attention today - some of the more obscure phrases not to use to Americans. Don't take the piss or take the mickey with an American. You also should probably not snigger - instead you should snicker. If you want to take the piss, I'm afraid there is no phrase in America to describe the act. Which is perhaps why they tend to have difficulty recognising it. [00:06] [0 comments]
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Sunday 8 July 2001
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| More Glyphs for the sick... A bunch of grapes... of WRATH! Watch the bacteria or virii or whatever greebly things try to eat the grapes, and watch as the tables are turned. Grapes of wrath have huge pointy... they have great big... Ach, I warned ye... [10:25] [0 comments]
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| I'm told that people in London do get mongrelnewrenaultcliosis, as though this invalidates my claim of it not appearing in England. In fact, London is a suburb of America, and so my claim stands. [07:06] [0 comments]
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| An NTK-style inappropriate (or amazingly appropriate) banner ad caught my eye just now. Have a peek at it here. [06:51] [0 comments]
| There's also, I'm told in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, grammar-rage, as invoked by my terrible habit of starting sentences with 'and'. Grammar-rage is, of course, responsible for 95% of mailing-list related accidents. [04:00] [0 comments]
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| Then there are the rages. Road-rage, air-rage, shopping-rage, queue-rage, being-an-idiot-rage... It's all the rage these days. And of course, these rages are on the increase - that's because people are learning that it's not their responsibility - they didn't do it, they were afflicted with a rage! Marvellous stuff. [03:32] [0 comments]
| Sticking with the recent theme, don't you just love all the disorders there are in America? There's Attention Deficit Disorder, there's lovely old Tourette's Syndrome, and there's my personal favourite Social Anxiety Disorder. I'm afraid I have two of the above, and am thus offered the choice of seeing a psychiatrist or being summarily terminated. [03:30] [0 comments]
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| The answer to my question about mondonuclearhalitosis is apparently that no, people in England don't get it. Which probably means that in reality they call it flu and get on with their lives. Whereas in America they're told that they're deathly ill and should stay in bed, and so they are, and they do. The power of suggestion, as Harry Hill would have it. [03:21] [0 comments]
| I finally got around to mp3ising this Beethoven piece. Get it, and enjoy it, while you can. Many will enter, few will win. [01:16] [0 comments]
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Saturday 7 July 2001
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| Apparently, the baked beans in America that aren't marked vegetarian don't have, as I had imagined, a little bit of pork flavouring in them. No, indeed, they have a huge slimy glob of lard in the bottom of the tin. No wonder nobody around here likes baked beans. [01:55] [0 comments]
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Friday 6 July 2001
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| Yesterday I read two books of The Wonderland Gambit by Jack Chalker. The first one, The Cybernetic Walrus, was good - twists throughout, all gradually making more sense. The second one, The March Hare Network, was a little irritating, being largely a lot of "all that you learned in the first book was untrue", not even done in a very interesting way. Not to say that The March Hare Network was bad, it just wasn't nearly as good as Walrus. I still recommend them. [20:28] [0 comments]
| Another fun thing of that same Eudora ad - partially covered by another window, I am advertised at thusly: Click here sea turtles : cccturtle.org. Fantastic. I'd love to have a look, but unfortunately I'm not a sea turtle. [20:25] [0 comments]
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| Two or three ads, recently, have been declaring "Many will enter, few will win!", about games of random chance. Is this supposed to be an endorsement? I can understand it being an endorsement of a game of skill, in that it would then be prestigious to be one of the few, but where's the prestige in being the one to be picked randomly from a large number? The house of death! Many will enter, few will win! Play now! [20:13] [0 comments]
| Today's Glyph is dedicated to Meander, who apparently is infected with monothermonuclearosis. Death to the bacteria! Or a dream holiday in sunny Spain for the bacteria. Either way, so long as they sod off. [18:27] [0 comments]
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| If anyone reading this has a machine named osty, and dials up through 1st.net, you have a virus that spreads itself by emailing a randomly-named attachment. I recommend a nice free virus scan. [03:30] [0 comments]
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Thursday 5 July 2001
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| Since I'm bitching about America anyway, though... Vegetarian Baked Beans. Since when did it become necessary to specify that Baked Beans are vegetarian? Since America made them, by default, not. So which part is it that contains pig? Is it 'beans' or is pig a part of the baking process? When are all vegetables going to be labelled vegetarian, for my peace of mind? I wouldn't put it past America to invent the pig-filled lettuce. As Nik put it, "'scuse me sonny, is this lettuce vegematarian?" [21:37] [4 comments]
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| I didn't make a Blog entry yesterday as a sort of ironic gesture regarding the date. American Independence Day, you see, being something that shouldn't exist. Who is independent in a society where you can sue because you stubbed your toe? Actually, the real reason I posted nothing yesterday was because I didn't have anything I wanted to write, but the independence thing seems like a better excuse. [21:33] [0 comments]
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Sunday 1 July 2001
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| Just woke up from a dream in which I swallowed a scary alien worm thing, that was supposed to boost one's reflexes and synapses. An odd feeling of substance-in-chest-level-throat-tubes, when I woke. I wonder if I swallowed a pillow or something. [17:07] [0 comments]
| If you have RavenGet, get a new version. Thank you. There are snakes in the old version. [09:29] [0 comments]
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| You know it's time to permanently disable Javascript when dictionary.com starts doing popup ads. Grarh. [05:11] [4 comments]
| I received an amusingly distorted phrase in my email today, by someone to whom English is a second language; "Well, don't you need a lack of new friends sometimes?". Ironic, then, that I often think that I do indeed need a lack of new friends, which is why I rarely cultivate extended contact with people who email me out of the blue. [04:23] [0 comments]
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| I know, my loyal fans have been waiting all day for the Saturday Glyph, not knowing it to be delayed by my not being home all day - how cruel of me not to warn you of my impending absence, and, worse, to not even explain what it was about, now. I'm so mean to you, and yet you keep coming back. And then the Glyph is rubbish as well. Ha ha. [04:18] [0 comments]
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