Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Boo!

I don't think Halloween in New York is actually fun until you've done about a pound of blow. I'm not actually having fun.

Today was probably the best weather we'll have for the rest of '06. That was nice. Halloween was always my favorite holiday, but the joy has been lost on me these past three years. Maybe I haven't hit the right parties. Maybe I don't have the right friends. Maybe I ain't found the right costume. Maybe I should wear a costume. Next year.

Candy corn is my favorite candy and I had a helluva time finding some today. I tried Upstien, Downstien, Duane Reade, K-Mart. Finally I found some Indian Corn at another DR. To my surprise and disgust, Indian Candy Corn tastes different from the regular kind. Chocolaty. New York never has the things you need. Like fun.


You're not really my friend unless I periodically fantasize about sex with you.
-Lies

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Ma

Mommy showed up to see my movement project. Yeah!

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Ask not what your blog can do for you...

Rarely do I ask more of you, dear reader, than to consider this, or imagine that, or seance for the summoning of so-and-so, but today I make an exception. The new version of Ubuntu was just released. I'd really like it if you gave it a try. I know an OS installation can be a big deal, so I understand if you want to pass on this one, but be aware that the next version of Ubuntu (slated for release April 19th) will not be optional. You either make the switch or you say goodbye to our friendship. You have until April.

But if you think you'd like to try Ubuntu now, here's some persuasion:

  • Ubuntu is totally free: no cost, no license. It is a gift to you from the penguin god.
  • You can keep Windows around and choose if you want to use Windows or Ubuntu every time you start your computer.
  • Installation is dead easy:
    • Go to www.ubuntu.com.
    • Download 6.10 for the desktop (if you're familiar with bittorrent, defiantly use that for the download).
    • Burn the image. You'll need something like Nero or DaemonTools (the latter is free).
    • Pop the CD in and restart.
    • Behold! You're running Ubuntu! To permanently install it, click the "Install" icon on the desktop. When the installation is done, you can toss the CD.
    • That's it!
  • After you've installed Ubuntu, you probably want to install EasyUbuntu. That takes care of things like audio/video codecs, browser plugins, and other things that don't come pre-installed with Ubuntu for legal reasons.
  • What "Just works" in Ubuntu:
    • Surf the web
    • Check your email
    • Instant message
    • Create and edit MS Office documents (Word et al)
    • Listen to your music
    • Rip and burn CDs
    • Sync your iPod
    • Connect your digital camera
    • Watch videos
    • And more
  • Caveats:
    • You can't listen to music you've bought on iTunes (blame DRM)
    • Not all PC games are available for Linux (keep that Windows install around).
    • That's everything that comes to mind.
If you decide to install, be sure to backup your files, bookmarks, etc. Put them on a data CD or DVD or an external hard drive.

If you have any questions, there is a great Ubuntu community ready and willing to help. I'm also more than happy to lend a hand. Send any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer:
lunchtimemama at gmail dot com.

FLOSS daily.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

If you want to get into heaven...

Firefox 2

www.mozilla.com

Yeah!

Styroferno

The 9th ring of hell is filled with packing peanuts.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Haiku For You

Little turds splashing,
So happy in the toilet;
I don't want to flush.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Huzzah!

Tomorrow, code that I've written will go out to millions of people. Or rather, my patch has been committed for the 0.11.2 release of Banshee. OK, so it's not really a big deal at all. But it's my first committed patch, so it's special.

Existence is preferable to the alternative.

Falsifiability is God

Human understanding is not absolute. Truth is. If our belief in a geocentric solar system is pitted against the fact of a heliocentric solar system, heliocentricity remains true, despite our belief to the contrary. Truth also trumps human ignorance. If we know nothing of a planet orbiting another sun, it's existence remains true despite our unawareness. And indeed, on most matters we are ignorant.

Human observation, while imperfect, can provide reasonable evidence of truth. Evidence successfully obtained through repeatable experimentation can be said to be "true" to a certain extent (significant figures, error, etc.).

Given these circumstances, we are very likely to often find evidence contrary to or beyond the scope of our understandings. And indeed we often do.

Science is based solely on evidence. Science is necessarily falsifiable. All scientific theories seek to be disproved by evidence. Theories are modified, discarded, and created to fit our changing corpus of evidence. Thusly through science we learn via trial-and-error.

Religion is based solely on divine documents. Religion is necessarily unfalsifiable. All religions rely on the absolute and exclusive truth of their doctrine. When presented with contradictory evidence, a religion must (a) reject the evidence, (b) concede the absolute authority of its religious documents, (c) admit to "human error" or "metaphor" in its religious documents. In each of those situations:
A) The religion's point of view appears ever more absurd as humanity's talent for observation improves and contrary evidence mounts.
B) The religion violates the fundamental tenant of unfalsifiability and becomes completely defunct.
C) The religion calls into question all of its doctrine. How is one to know what is correctly interpreted and what is not and how does one know with what confidence a particular doctrine is interpreted and on whose authority are such things to be believed.

And indeed religions often face contrary evidence.

There are multiple religions which claim truth at the falsehood of all other religions. None of these religions holds a majority of the human population among their believers. No religion can therefor claim authority by belief ("it is believed, therefor it is true") because by that logic, all religions are made wrong by the disbelief in any one religion by a majority of humanity. Most religions possess supposedly divine documents. No evidence exists of these documents' divinity and all are of decidedly un-divine authorship (human). No religion can therefor claim authority by divine document since all religions claim that authority with equal evidence ("we say so").

Religion is therefor a most absurd means by which to discover truth. Science is, at least, a start.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Multiplicity

I share a birthday with Shakespeare and it's the date that he allegedly died too. I've imagined for some years now that I will enjoy my final birthday, fall asleep, and wake up in an afterlife populated exclusively by mes of different ages, each of who's final memory is the celebration of their most recent birthday. A copy of me from every April 23rd will be there: 1986, 1996, 2006, ... ? And we would live together forever. Certain rules would be decided: the tending of the perpetual infants, the minding of the eternally young, the dissemination of life story, cooking, cleaning, and of course, sex - or perhaps masturbation is the more appropriate term. It would certainly be a Hell rather than a Heaven: I am far too in love with myself to ever enjoy the company of other mes.

I've been playing Psychonauts. It is really amazing. If you have any interest in video games whatsoever, you must check it out! You can try the demo on Steam if you're so inclined.

"I am the milkman. My milk is delicious."

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

PAF

The gym is better than friends
The gym is a lot better looking than your friends, the gym is available anytime you are (until 11), and at the gym, you're free to engage in as little human interaction as you please.

The gym is destroying my soul
If some rehearsal or other prohibits attendance, the withdrawal consumes my psyche. I'm going to have to miss on Friday again. Send help!

All hail the great and terrible GYM!

When talking to myself, I address myself in the first person plural pronoun, "we."
"We know full well..."
"We really ought to..."
"We must burn..."
Who else is in here with me?

Five signs you hit rock bottom a while ago

  1. You can't quite place the source of your apartment's sweaty reek.
  2. You skip class to avoid turning in homework that isn't even due.
  3. You're suite mate doesn't offer to share the skank week he's so obviously smoking in there.
  4. "Buy Soap!" has rolled over six daily to-do lists.
  5. You're eating cereal with a fork.
à la 5ives

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Q

Would the world be better if we held our thoughts to the same moral standard that we hold our behaviors?

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Ding Dong!

Sex Goddess of my life, Jade Jackson, paid me a compliment today. Yeah, I'm totally gonna masturbate about it.

"Life begins at ejaculation."

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Pre-Order Now!

My next book is coming out in December (exact release date pending). I'll let you know when you can find it on bookshelves. Be sure to check it out. It's called:

Bestseller
The Modern Art of Titling Non-Fiction Books With a Single,
Punchy Word and Then Finding the Perfect Long-Winded Sub-Title
to Go Along With It and also Some Ironic and Self-Referential
Wit and Some Dick Jokes Too
by Scott Peterson

Durdenism

You are further noise.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Vid ee oh

Democracy + tvRSS = Die, television!

In related news, Google bought YouTube. I exploded.

You can't emphasis Beef!

Orson Welles, bless us with your peas!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

War is always relevant.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Identity Misplacement

The pants I'm wearing don't have any pockets. I asked Kyle to keep my wallet in his bag during class today. Kyle left. I don't have a wallet.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Silver Lining

Girl on her cellphone in the elevator:
So she calls me today and asks if I'll help clean up and I'm like, "Clean up what?" and she's like, "All the puke" and I guess I had like thrown up all over her apartment which I totally don't remember at all. . . Yeah, I must have totally blacked out before that happened, which I guess is actually kind of really great because I only remember the good stuff!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Locked in the bunker

I barely left my room this weekend. I've been working on my latest computer project and the current phase is extremely tedious. Briefly:

Intro:
I'm guessing that you, dear reader, are either using Windows or OSX. Well, there's a third thing called Linux. Linux is FREE. It's free both as in speech and as in beer. That is to say, it doesn't cost any money and it's not proprietary/copyrighted/licensed/restricted/closed-source. The problem is, it's not as good. But that's starting to change. There's a new type of Linux called Ubuntu. Ubuntu is fully functional and very easy to use. It's not quite ready to take over the world (e.g., I'm not going to recommend it to my mom yet), but it's getting close. I've been using Ubuntu for about a month now and I'm not looking back.


Problem:
I use iTunes on Windows and when I moved to Ubuntu, I wanted a familiar interface for my music. Linux has a number of iTunes-clones for organizing and playing music. The app I settled on is called Banshee. It imported my music collection just fine, but certain information that I had in iTunes (song ratings, play counts, play lists, &c.) is kept inside of iTunes and therefore wasn't brought into Banshee. Since iTunes is a popular music player, I imagine other first-time Linux users will have this problem too.


Project:
I'm writing a plugin for Banshee that will dig that information out of iTunes an merge it into Banshee. If all goes well, the plugin will import the following:

Luckily, iTunes makes available an XML file with most of that info. Here's an excerpt from the file (emphasis mine):
<key>Name</key><string>Stacey's Mom</string>
<key>Genre</key><string>Rock/Pop</string>
<key>Size</key><integer>7995139</integer>
<key>Total Time</key><integer>198844</integer>
<key>Track Number</key><integer>3</integer>
<key>Track Count</key><integer>16</integer>
<key>Play Count</key><integer>77</integer>
<key>Play Date</key><integer>3242496736</integer>
<key>Rating</key><integer>100</integer>
As you can see, the information we're looking for is very easy to find. I've listened to Stacey's Mom 77 times and it has a rating of 100 (5 stars). Right now, my plugin does a fine job of importing ratings, play counts, last played, and playlists. The next step is to handle smart playlists. Here's where it gets tricky. While the XML data is very easy to read, smart playlists are encoded in binary: 1's and 0's. Here is part of a smart playlist:
00000000 00000000 00000000 00010010 00000000
01000010 00000000 01100101 00000000 01101110
00000000 00100000 00000000 01000110 00000000
01101111 00000000 01101100 00000000 01100100
00000000 01110011 01010011 01001100 01110011
That is decidedly more difficult to interpret. Enter the I-haven't-left-my-room-in-two-days factor. So I've spent the last 48 hours creating smart playlists in iTunes and analyzing the bytes that come out. I'm making good headway and it's only a matter of time before I have all of the bits figured out, but the tedium does wear on me.

Thankfully, I've discovered a new distraction: DEFCON! It's a charming little game about global thermonuclear warfare. It's easy to learn and loads of fun and best of all, you can play the whole game for free (the demo just limits the number of opponents you can have). New York City is a common target for ICBMs, so maybe it's best that I stay inside.

Awk! Toe-bur

Rabbit rabbit!

"Look at my poofy pants one more time and I kill you, muthafucka!" - William Shakespeare