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?SN ERROR

Posted April 24, 2012 at 01:00 EDT under technology.

Here are some related things:

I've just finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This is a wonderful book that, if you are the right age, will reach directly into your childhood and transport you simultaneously into the past and future.

It's that good. Read it.

After finishing the book I had an overwhelming urge to revisit some of my old computer and gaming obsessions. So, I decided to take a look at the current state of MAME and MESS. It turns out, the current state is very well, thank you so I grabbed the latest source packages and compiled them for SDL under OS X 64-bit.

So, now I can play Taipan on an Apple //e, Dungeons of Daggorath on a TRS-80 Color Computer (with Extended Basic, and the aftermarket 32K RAM upgrade, yo), or just relax with Joust as long as I don't run out of pretend quarters.

Oh, and just because I know y'all won't forget my love for MOS Technology, imagine my surprise when I realized I could do this wonderful thing:

0xDEAD + 0xBEEF = 0xBEAF

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. It is a picture of a MOS KIM-1 with keypad I/O and 7-segment displays rendered over it, backed by an emulated MOS KIM-1 system.

This is pure, unadulterated geek glory.

The coping alcoholic says...

Posted March 10, 2012 at 07:27 EST under photos.

... I've earned it.

Seriously. What a week. Fuck me, but I've become a GUI coder.

MOAR CHEEZBALL PHOTOGRAFFY

Posted February 26, 2012 at 10:58 EST under photos.

You get your choice of two cheezeball photography tropes today.

WIDE ANGLE CHEEZBALL:

INSTAMATIC HOLGA CHEEZBALL:

You are welcome.

#TellVicEverything

Posted February 16, 2012 at 10:24 EST under microblog.

Please, won't you think of the children? #TellVicEverything

I considered blacking out this site to support the fight against SOPA/PIPA ...

Posted January 18, 2012 at 12:56 EST under daily.

... but then realized no one would notice.

OMG PONIES

Posted January 4, 2012 at 11:57 EST under daily.

Make your own.

Taking the Stma out of Christmas

Posted December 21, 2011 at 09:16 EST under daily.

Photo by @ecogrrl

Oh, just do something already

Posted October 12, 2011 at 01:15 EDT under daily.

My perennial musings upon the nature and direction of this blog must get really, really boring.

But, it is a subject we can mine for a long time, and I don't have much else to say these days.

I mean, the majority of updates would be links to interesting internet flotsam I run across, photo-blogging, and one-line quips telling y'all wut Imma upto. (And sometimes all three rolled up into one.)

But Twitter and Google (unPlus, but for how long?) and Tumblr and 23 (along with their attendant social-media acronyms) have that pretty much under control, don't they? About the only reason I can really think of to continue with this blog in its current form is to use it to play with some code.

I'm still pretty stoked about how much Lua gives me that old thrill the way other little languages like Forth used to. But without all the scary post-fix cruft and inscrutable interface. (I kid, Forth. I still love you, man! Let's never fight again.) It is no mistake I'm seeing folks from the old days on comp.lang.forth also active in the Lua community.

So, when I run across a framework like the Kepler Project, I get all warm and fuzzy about turfing the ugly PHP you are staring at, and replace it with a more elegant and correct service.

I'm also considering just archiving all previous blog entries if I do this, and then reorg the whole site based around these external services (writing any code to leverage their APIs to integrate it better) with a few little apps hosted locally. It sure is tempting.

But, on the other hand, I have the option of doing nothing. This certainly is the path of least resistance. What I'm finding, though, is that I need to run into a little resistance, sometimes, if I'm going to find that coding itch to scratch.

What to do?

Rosita

Posted October 8, 2011 at 09:15 EDT under cocktails.

Previously.

Rosita: tequila, dry and sweet vermouth, Campari, bitters.

.sig

Posted October 6, 2011 at 11:13 EDT under daily.

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

But, I am enjoying all your beautiful signature blocks, with their pseudo-legal boilerplate. It sure looks awesome converted to plain-text.

The Poncho

Posted September 29, 2011 at 09:49 EDT under cocktails.

Previously.

The Poncho: Tequila Reposado, dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur, Peychaud's Bitters.

Diabolo

Posted September 20, 2011 at 10:50 EDT under cocktails.

Another chapter in the drink 'em if you got 'em project. Again, not particularly weird, but (what the heck) I had a lot of white rum.

Diabolo: rum, dry vermouth, Cointreau, Angostura bitters.

The "23"

Posted September 17, 2011 at 09:28 EDT under cocktails.

The back-story: we have too many weird liquors in the cabinet, and not enough spare money to keep the usual suspects in stock. So, we are working our way through the collection by finding equally weird cocktails to drink so we use up what we have.

Our first source for most of these cocktails will be (Old) Mr Boston: Official Bartender's Guide. Followed quickly by any random page we find on the internets. It does tickle me that the book is published by Wiley.

This one isn't really all that weird, but it does mean killing a bottle of cognac that has been languishing in the collection for some time. (I'm not really the snifter-of-brandy type any more, as my tastes run more to whiskys these days. Up to now, the cognac has primarily been used as cooking ingredient as a fancy-pants version of vanilla extract.)

It's probably cheating to use cognac instead of Armagnac, since the mixology geeks will already be screaming that they are not the same at all, but this is probably a reasonable simulacrum. They both have that French gn digraph in their names, so they must be similar.

Anyway, it's a start, and I suspect we will be making plenty of creative substitutions as we go along. Down with prescriptivism!

The 23: Armagnac, sweet vermouth, lemon juice, bitters.

I bet you can't wait until we get to the banana liqueur and aquavit. Maybe we'll bend your noodles by mixing them together.

Suddenly faced with the reality of an irascible, recalcitrant TOI.

Posted September 5, 2011 at 12:07 EDT under daily.

So, some prickly dude who I know nothing about has published a manifesto insisting that folks should not have the temerity to do any research on his father. They should especially not quote his father in any manner, because he owns the copyright on any and all quotes and explicitly disregards any fair dealing provisions in your local copyright laws.

He also thinks blogs are stupid and forbids you to read them if they happen to use some words that his father has used in the past.

Also, he wants to piss in your tent, or something.

It's pretty funny. You should read it.

Strange fellow, indeed. However, it did make me go and read up on who his father happens to be, and possibly look for quotes that I can repeat here in order to highlight the sweet, sweet irony. Unfortunately, his old dad (Louis Zukofsky) happens to be a poet, and poetry can't possibly be quoted or used in a research paper, so I think he's been led down the garden path.

Obscure American poets are automatically safe from pirates who only want to cravenly further their own lucrative careers as students of English Literature.

I do note that Zukofsky has published prose based on the works of other authors, but I assume that since he was a sensitive poet who was doing important work (and not just a grubby grad student) this is ok.

Michele wotsherface is a douchebag etc.

Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:11 EDT under news.

Yes, yes. Michele Attention-Whore Bachmann who is currently begging for support from the voters on the stupid side of the bell-curve is a feeble-minded douchebag, etc.

She should be forced by the Ghost of Christmas Future to live in a world created to the exact specifications of her mind-boggling stupid opinions. In a real Bachmann US, she'd be ground up into cat food by libertarian corporate interests in about 10 minutes.

It amazes me more that a number of mouth-breathers seem to think this woman is saying anything intelligent or reasonable. My guess is that her supporters, such as they are, are taken mostly from the ranks of the illiterate and culturally retarded.

It is truly ironic that it is this exact population that would find themselves jobless, homeless and without the medical insurance or political enfranchisement they would so miss if they got exactly what they demanded from their racist leaders.

There you go: your regular dose of political rhetoric delivered in the patented clevermonkey style. You are welcome.

Siht: Site Is Hardly There

Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:42 EDT under site announcements.

So, none of you may have noticed that we let eco-monkey.com expire.

I wasn't doing much with it, and even though I had some neat ideas, actually getting some of the ideas off the ground seemed like so much wishful thinking.

I mean, I'm not even sure why anyone bothers having a personal blog any more. Does anyone actually read these things? The usual bitching, moaning and complaining that most blogs are bursting with is so much more accessible via (un)social media, isn't it?

I'm not even sure a blog RSS feed is even worth the traffic these days.

But, I can't make up my mind to pull the plug on this site. Not quite yet.

I still have to have a place to talk about having a blog and what to do with it, don't I?

.bak to skool sail

Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:33 EDT under daily.

Here's a rare slack afternoon at Starbucks stealing Wi-Fi; something only paid child-care gets you, these days:

These moments have been rare these last few months, but I am going to miss my rather unstructured days come September.

Just like thousands of school-children, I'm back to the nine-to-five grind after labour day. And this year it's a new school and new teachers and everything. I hope I get a nice locker and don't have to change in the smelly change-room.

I wonder: if I can't identify the bullies this year, does this mean I'm the bully? If so, you all owe me years of lunch-money.

qr code codes porn porno

Posted August 5, 2011 at 10:44 EDT under daily.

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Alien nostalgia Polaroid

Posted July 15, 2011 at 11:15 EDT under photos.

Weirdo over-processed tonemapped nostalgia fuckery.

FROM THE DESK OF A-DOG

Posted July 15, 2011 at 11:12 EDT under photos.

PLZ TO NOTE I M 1 YR OLD NOW. AM NOW SRS BABY. ALL DONE.

SEND MOAR CUPCAKES.

DUDE, HAVE YOU TRIED THIS BANANA?

Posted June 24, 2011 at 10:53 EDT under photos.

Boy, will I ever be in trouble once she sees this one.

MOAR CAMRA PRON

Posted June 23, 2011 at 11:16 EDT under daily.

The Pentax Q:

Pentax has almost done everything right here.

We got a slew of interesting lenses, a decent raw engine with very good high ISO performance, and an improvement (of sorts) on the K-mount. All for a very reasonable list price.

The kooky way manufacturers set image aspect ratio by capturing full-frame and then putting crop info in the proprietary metadata is just plain stupid, though.

But, they missed the boat on the sensor size. The future belongs to larger sensors, not larger megapixels. Give me a fixed lens with a good sensor size and lower pixel count any day of the week.

Camera Cat says: DO NOT WANT.

Via.