We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • harshing on the TTC at Osgoode

  • stick it up yer nose

    toothpastefordinner.com: mouth breather
    from toothpastefordinner.com : original image

    If you’d told me even six months ago that I’d be scooting a quarter litre of warm saline up my nose every night, I’d be all like, “yeah, chinny reckon”. But sadly, and this may be heading into TMI territory, it’s true.

    For many years, my nose wasn’t much more than decorative. Too blocked to provide a useful means of breathing or sensing smells, it got only occasional use as a sunglasses bracket. It also had unpleasant nocturnal habits, ones best not described here.

    A month or so ago, I decided I’d had enough. I went to the pharmacy and got one of those squeezy bottle things that comes with the little sachets of salt+bicarb. I can smell again! I can actually use my nose for breathing!!

    Those two benefits are pretty awesome, but the whole process isn’t a bed of roses:

    • yeah, you really need to do the kha-kha-kha thing with your throat, unless you like aspirating saline.
    • every night, it still feels a little like drowning, and hasn’t really got any better.
    • A sinus can still surprise up to an hour later, when an unexpected head tilt can produce a deluge too large for any tissue.
    • if the water’s too cold, it feels like being stabbed in the head. From the inside.
    • I’m much more in touch with my mucus than I want to be, and far, far more than you’d want me to be. I mean seriously, some of the things that I get out … well, let’s just say I’ve measured from nostrils to bronchi, and these luminous sinus puppies would easily stretch that far.
    • The results are nothing like the video. They’re all serene, like they’re getting their Deva Premal on; me, I’m left snotty and spluttering.

    So, it works for me. But we’re all glad that I’m not sharing the details, aren’t we?

  • my juvenalia: 2D Star Dodge / Stardodger

    Oh dear:

    And here’s the Locomotive BASIC version, as published in Amstrad Computer User:

    10 ' ** Initialise **
20 MODE 1
30 INK 0,0
40 BORDER 0
50 INK 1,26
60 INK 3,0
70 q=5
90 LOCATE 16,1
100 PRINT"Stardodger"
110 LOCATE 1,5
120 PRINT"Avoid the killer Asterisqs, and seek the"
130 LOCATE 9,6
140 PRINT"wondrous Nextscreen Gap."
150 LOCATE 12,13
160 PRINT"Use SHIFT to climb"
170 GOSUB 700
190 MODE 1
200 DRAWR 629,0
210 DRAWR 0,170
220 MOVER 0,60
230 DRAWR 0,169
240 DRAWR -629,0
250 DRAWR 0,-399
260 DRAWR 0,2
270 DRAWR 627,0
280 DRAWR 0,168
290 MOVER 0,60
300 DRAWR 0,167
310 DRAWR -625,0
320 DRAWR 0,-399
330 MOVE 636,0
340 DRAW 636,399,3
350 MOVE 638,0
360 DRAW 638,399
370 PLOT -1,-1,1
380 TAG
390 FOR s=1 TO q
400 MOVE 50+RND*561,20+RND*361
410 PRINT"*";
420 NEXT
430 TAGOFF
440 MOVE 0,200
450 dy=4
470 DRAWR 4,dy
480 IF INKEY(21)<>-1 THEN dy=4 ELSE dy=-4
490 t=TESTR(2,dy/2)
500 IF t=1 GOTO 550  
510 IF t=3 GOTO 620
520 MOVER -2,-dy/2
530 GOTO 470
550 MODE 1
560 PRINT TAB(16);"YOU GOOFED"
570 LOCATE 5,13
580 PRINT"Number of Screens completed = "+STR$((q/5)-1)
590 GOSUB 700
600 RUN
620 MODE 1 
630 PRINT TAB(16);"WELL DONE"
640 LOCATE 10,13
650 PRINT"Stand by for Screen "+STR$((q/5)+1)
660 GOSUB 700
670 q=q+5
680 GOTO 190
700 LOCATE 8,25
710 PRINT"Press any key to continue"
720 WHILE INKEY$<>""
730 WEND
740 WHILE INKEY$=""
750 WEND
760 RETURN

    Here’s Asterisk Tracker, the original inspiration from 1984

  • Subnormality: Understanding Nuclear Weapons

  • cold war drives to the pharmacy

  • implicit markup: easy to read, hard to parse

    I don’t usually ponder about other people’s blog postings, but Jeff Atwood’s Responsible Open Source Code Parenting reminded me of some of the old wars that the used to be when I was a markup head. Jeff writes about his frustration that John Gruber’s Markdown text-to-html filter:

    1. hasn’t been updated for some time
    2. doesn’t quite do exactly what Jeff’s users at Stack Overflow want
    3. appears to have any changes in its behaviour from v1.0.1 strenuously vetoed by Gruber himself.

    Markdown is nice in that you can write screeds of text, and it does almost exactly what you’d expect. The markup doesn’t get in the way, usually. The difficulty arises when implicit markup (indented lines for quoted text, bulleted lists, highlights) has to give way to explicit (cross-references, code samples). Explicit markup is ugly, but sometimes, you’ve got to do it. Complex intent requires complex modes of communication, and sometimes plain text just hasn’t the bandwidth. [As an aside, there was a hilarious lengthy recurring episode on John Mark Ockerbloom‘s late bookpeople mailing list where a user (mercilessly skewered here)  insisted that they could write a general Gutenberg plain-text converter that would re-create typeset quality in an e-book reader with no explicit markup, and that XML was completely unnecessary and ill-conceived. The un-markup language, called zen markup language (said user had an aversion to the shift key) lives on only in a single website: the home of z.m.l. As for XML, its executive assistant had no comment on the matter.] Looking at Markdown, it looks like Gruber’s moved on from it. He made a 1.0.1 which did what he wanted. The code’s there to change if anyone needs it. I understand his frustration at people wanting to make changes and still call it Markdown; I’d be annoyed if I had text which I thought was in one format suddenly not be accepted, or do something unexpected. Seriously, that’s almost as bad as ‘deprecated‘. [At least Gruber didn’t go on a deletion rampage, like (admittedly smaller-time) erstwhile CHDK stalwart Barney Fife did when he was slighted in a forum. Looks like almost everything he contributed to CHDK has been removed, including some very useful control scripts and explanations.] Personally, when I need to make text to web conversions, I still use txt2html and a bunch of shell and Perl glue to feed to tidy. It’s on its third maintainer, doesn’t do much, but does it simply. And I’m pretty simple that way.

    Update: see also On my increasing exasperation with Markdown.

  • oh dear …

    At the meeting Van Zyl agreed to turn off the tower with immediate effect to assess whether the health problems described by some of the residents subsided. What Craigavon residents were unaware of is that the tower had already been switched off in early October – six weeks before the November meeting where residents confirmed the continued ailments they experienced.

    via Massive revelation in iBurst tower battle.

  • wwdbd?

    Q: What would David Byrne do?
    A: Be David Byrne.

  • in which Joe re-enacts his mother’s response to his father and sister’s canoe capsizing on the Des Moines River in 1982

    Joe
    http://scruss.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/VID-00001-20100102-1930.3gp

  • to scan film, or not

    I’ve recently taken up film photography again. But processing is expensive.

    To have 24 exposures processed and scanned at 6MP at Downtown Camera costs $12 + tax. That’s a pretty good price for black and white.

    I can process at home (yay stinky toxic chemicals!) for a bit less. I’d need to buy a scanner, and the cheapest film scanners come in at around $300.

    What to do, what to do?

  • Unstable airline passenger ignites self; none hurt

    I try very hard not to write about the news; it affects me so little, yet frequently annoys me.

    All that media noise about that guy on that plane. So much passenger delay will ensue.

    Of course he was unstable. Killing yourself and others for a cause is not rational.

    Of course he’d claim connections to Al Qaeda. He’s unstable, wants to sound badass.

    Of course Al Qaeda would claim him as one of their own. What, would you turn down the free publicity?

    So, the subject of this entry is how I think it should have been reported. Move on, people; there’s real news to be reported.

  • missöüri bird cälls

    oh, itunes …

  • slow motion maru


    (via)

  • “The Day Before Boxing Day” – Directed by Robyn Hitchcock & Hannah Bird

  • eggs are not the only nog

    Why is eggnog the only nog? Why isn’t there meatnog, since it’s just as revolting a concept. Now I’ve written this, is it a nogblog?

  • tammy’s scary hair

    circa 1969, on Hee Haw:

  • just think

    just think if i were famous i could draw stuff like this and sell it for thousands of dollars but when i do it it's just a doodle worth nothing
    just think if i were famous i could draw stuff like this and sell it for thousands of dollars but when i do it it’s just a doodle worth nothing

  • it worries me sometimes …

    Glenn has a tidy mind.

  • if you see a fork in the road

  • dropping nuclear reactors from a great height

    This looks like the engineers had far too much fun trying to find ways of damaging a small (simulated) nuclear reactor: SNAP rector safety tests