I just arrived back home.  I knew I was in for a scolding from my cat.  I always get a scolding from my cat when I walk in.  Except, I realized, he was standing by his food dish.  He always does, but I have always assumed that is because it is by the door.  But this was clearly his “feed me” yell.  I thought about it.  It always is.

“You have food!” I told him.

“FEEDMEFEEDMEFEEDMEFEEDME!”

So I took his food bowl, held it through the front door for ten seconds, out of his sight, then brought it back in and set it in front of him.

He stopped screaming.  He was happy.  He had been fed.  He ate.

Feeling best/worst/best again. Jelloing this across everywhere one might find me.  All pending contacts will be addressed — later.

I went nuts when my healthcare provider (back when I was employed by a company, and therefore deserved a healthcare provider) started paying for chiropractic “treatments” (here, previously.)  The theory of chiropractic is that all disease is caused by “subluxations” of the spine.  Something something energy lines.  But the real reason that this was covered, presumably, was that the co-pay was $40 for each of the patient’s visits, and the practitioner was paid $50 per visit, which works out to a rather good bargain in for-profit medical care.

Then medical plans started covering acupuncture.  And, maybe, apothecary visits.  And, whatever whatever.  And now the Senate healthcare bill …

For real …

Wants to cover prayer.  Prayer.  The patient can have a Christian Science practitioner paid $20 – $40 per day to pray for him.  Gah!  I so fucking wish I were making this up.

The bill was inserted by Orrin Hatch (booga booga booga!)

Oh, and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.  WTF?

And politicians wonder at my, and my fellow skeptics’ — um — skepticism (?) of how their sponsors affect their votes, and how their personal religious views affect their votes, and how we can’t trust a motherfucking word that comes out of their dripping mouths.

Which leads to one last observation: Damn, is this the best work-at-home opportunity I’ve ever heard of.  Except I would be mortified to charge somebody $20 – $40 to pretend to pray for him.  But that’s really not what I do best.  How about this: I will charge any interested reader $10 per day to write a short blog post about how awesome he is.  I’ll also cross-post it to Twitter.  I will also implore, in every post, that all relevant authorities, deities, forces, energies, dragons, readers, and teapots also believe that the reader is cool.  But don’t expect me to spend more than a few minutes at it per day: I wouldn’t want you to think I was in the charity business for charitable reasons.

I iz in ur space-time continuum, upsetting all your gravity and quantums and stuffs.
/cheezburger

And the one Dave wanted:

I’ve been burned before by lack of backups.

Everybody has.

I’m more disciplined now.  I back up everything.

Everything I can afford to.

My hugeish drive just died.  It was first reported as failed reads.  Then, a corrupt superblock.  Now the IDE controller won’t even recognize it.  I would have backed it up if I could afford another drive of equal or greater capacity.

Motherfucking son of a syphilitic whore.

All my ripped music (500 CDs), my stamp catalogues, my audiobooks (including the one I’m in the middle of), and my backups of all my other drives, including ones I don’t even have any longer.

Solid.  State.  Drives.  Now.

I think this (now housed near the top of my sidebar) is pretty rad:

I’m sure it’s been done, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

So: what (many) sites have I forgotten?

Two things from The World — a radio program co-produced by PRI, the BBC, and the not-to-be-trifled with WGBH Boston, in a segment about new EU rules for pesticides:

First, an organic farmer in France (?) saying that she considered pesticides to be “basically poison”.

Uh, yeah.  They are pesticides.  For killing pests.  Animals.  Poisoning animals.  Hello?

And, more fun — a conventional farmer from the environs of Leeds, who claimed (this will be a fairly close paraphrase)

Broccoli, cauliflower, onions, carrots, and numerous other crops simply could not be grown in England without the use of pesticides.  We would be unable to provide the quality, healthy produce at the prices British customers currently enjoy without these chemicals.

Let’s take that one slowly, starting in the middle.  Quality?  OK, I’m with you.  The loss from bug-eaten organic produce can be rather large, and providing the partially-consumed produce to grocers (rather than composting it) would result in lower quality.  Low-priced?  Definitely with you.  Loss = lower output = higher prices.  This is your argument here.  But healthy (presumably meaning healthful)?  Come on.  You are telling me, albeit in a sound bite, that not spraying vegetables with pesticides would result in more toxic food?

Let’s go back to the beginning.  One could not grow brassicae, allia, and — um — carrots (?) in England without pesticides?  Pretty sure Queen Elizabeth I ate those products.  Pretty damn sure they weren’t imported from Portugal.

Organic farming, on a global scale, may not make sense.  I’ve read arguments on both sides.  Some argue that output, with current methods, could not produce the amount of food currently generated, which is in turn not enough to feed the world.  Others pounce on this later claim, and say that if food production was sustainable and local, rather than shipping things all over the world, the population of could be fed (no, not going to chase down links.)  But, in a theme that arises plentifully on this blog, you’ve got to fight fair.  Pesticides are poisons.  Carrots can be grown in England without chemicals.  Your bottom line will be impacted.  Let’s start there.

I heard a segment on public radio about the perfume industry and the changes it is undergoing.  Apparently a new class of perfumes don’t smell like great perfume, they smell like the person him/herself smells wonderful.  There was a bit on a perfume designer who can allegedly duplicate any aroma: he made a perfume that smells like snow for his daughter.

Who the hell would want to smell like snow when Weird Fragrances exists?

Presumably for the Jones Soda crowd, you can smell like, well, simply weird shit.  Like burning rubber.  Or crisp banknotes.  Magazines.  Fireworks smoke or (aargh) an ashtray.  As of now, you can request a free sample.

Oh, and if anyone remembers the details on that public radio segment, or the book the interviewee wrote, let me know.

Update: This may just be a spam trap.  I have received huge amounts of spam to an email address used only to register on this site.  I haven’t checked my mail yet, so I don’t know if the free samples exist or not.

I’m alive.  More to follow.

4 stars for being a serviceable thriller, with
+1 stars for Jim Carrey in a compelling role where he does not talk out of his ass, and
+1 for stars-playing-multiple-roles, and
+.5 for Rhona Mitra, with
-3 stars for Schumacher being a total douchebag, and
-1 for the wrong ending, redeemed with
+.5 for the almost-sufficient explanation in InfiniFilm of why they chose the wrong ending

So why not 3 stars?  You’ve got me.

Recommendation: Queue it

I said I’d start exploitation cinema at 0 stars, right?  So:

0 stars, with
+1 for Michael Biehn, and
+3 for gleefully exploiting the genre without exploiting the audience, and
+1 for Bruce Willis, and
+1 for the shocking anti-gun moment in an otherwise pro-gun movie, though
+1 extra for Rodriguez hiding this from his son, despite
-1 for the sickening use of meat throughout, except
+1 because I’m fairly confident it was meant ironically

Recommendation: Buy it

Either there is sky-splitting thunder and lightning in the next valley, or the Inland Empire is being bombed.  I suppose I’ll know tomorrow.  Or later today, that is.  I still can’t fucking sleep.

Christmas is a time of peace, love, and sharing, an opportunity to embrace our fellow human beings regardless of language or culture. But Christmas is also a time of song, and to properly celebrate our diversity we are in need of truly multilingual Christmas carols. To ensure that other languages were not left out … to stop English-speakers from singing only carols over which English holds linguistic monopoly … I enlisted the help of Babelfish. I have taken English language Christmas carols through the translation path English -> French -> English -> German -> English -> Italian -> English -> Portuguese -> English -> Spanish -> English, and I trust I have now created a truly universal canon of carols with which the whole western world may celebrate the joy of Christmas. If I have left any of your favorites out, please let me know.

[Christmas is a little while of La Paz, the lover and the relations of transformation, of an occasion to the independent kisses of our human beings of the comrade of the language or the cultivación. But Christmas is due to also commemorate correctly a little while of the song and our diversity, of that the really multilingual necessity to carols of Christmas. In order to control, if other languages for the external part... with the English of the loudspeakers raised of carols of the effect are not lazy the song for the external part only, in those English of the interceptions of the monopoly of the linguistico..., Enr4olé the sustenation of Babelfish. I made examinación to carols of the English of Christmas of English of the ways the access of the translation - > French - > English - > German - > English - > Italian - > English - > Portuguese - > English - > Spanish - > English and I give the form him for the secret that really I produced the universal one of carols of an injector of the hour, with that the western world of all the joy in Christmas that I commemorate myself I can. If specific of nao the her person or omitted thing of the favorites, to leave me requests to me she knows.]

I have not altered the output of the Babelfish automatic translator other than to break the text into multiple lines and capitalize each line’s first letter.

A Presence of the Jump of the Way

‘Twas the night before Christmas, if all the house
A creature nonbeaten ignition, decree a rat;
The surfaces under possible had been interrupted more with the attention of the chimney,
In the hopes, this Nicholas would be the way here soon;
Douillettement of the children in its bases inside had all been ece of fish,
When the views of the plum trees of the sugar to dance in its titles;
First E in ‘ kerchief relative and my protection of the protection,

Also for the stature the small winter of the hats had been constant,
Awhile external in the board such Rattern is emerged,
I sprinkled of the base, the end to see, that what the material age.
Distant moved far in the Window flied me like the screw of the lightning,
With him gezerrissenem opened he violentemente played of obturators and sash the lateral advanced one.
The moon in concentr of again-please of the snow
With lucentezza of the cut at noon to the messages given for the low point,
If, this they have that to being you you are strange in my observed eyes,
Pero sleigh and a small miniature of Rens eight,
With administrative the old small woman if you he animated and the opaque one,
It knew in a while, when he must be jump of the way.
More fastly of the one of coursers aquile relative had come,
And it whistled and it shouted towards outside and it called known him;
Hour he marks! dancers of the hour! Hour Prancer and Vixen!
In, it commits! In Cupid! In, to give and screws of the lightning!
Jusqu with the expensive outpost of portale! jusqu with the expensive outpost of the wall!
Hour of the script of the left! Distant script moved absentee! The distant script separated everything!

Like asciugarli of the paginations, those before the wild hurricane Moscow,
If to come to the contact of an obstacle, the sustenation with the sky,
Therefore to coursers of the face of the part outpost of the house, the one that it had controlled,
With sleigh full with goodses and the way of the game the Nicholas also.
And then, in tonhoehenschwankung, I feels in the roof
Prancing and Pawing of each small ice-slide.
Because I lost myself in my hand and I have given it around return,
In the surface under possible of the way of the chimney of Nicholas with a mark for it is more of her came.
Everything in the skin, the title relative to the relative foot was equipped,
And all relative it had dressed has apannati with the ash and soot;
A assembly of goodses of the game, that one had played that in the relative one later,
And the relative assembly was similar to open expert of the buyer.

The relative eyes — as it ignited! The relative small free space, how much merrily!
The relative of Guancie was like the colors rose color, the relative Wekzeugspritze like cherry!
Durchdacht relative small of the age of the contented opening like elbow,
And to widen age as the white man he he I mention relative like the snow;
The section of a tube, of that was hard obstructed in relative teeth,
And it smoked to him surrounded the relative title like country;
It had an extended face and a small round rigonfiamento of antinode,
This has the mental patient, when it laughed as bowlful congeals.
It was potelé and dodu, old pluggings eleven allegros,
I and laughter, when I he I SAW, in spite of the I;
A sample of the relative eye and the torsion of the relative title,
It gave scared soon knowing that it did not have equal not anything;
A word spoke no, but it was directly to the relative work,
And fulled coverall the surfaces more under possible; then dice returned with sure
And barretta relative that is extended of the pagination of the relative Wekzeugspritze,
A character in the agreement is magnified and, giving to the expensive outpost of the chimney, she;
Esguinchado is with sleigh relative, the relative square gave whistles is,
And distant it moved everything far had piloted appreciates thistle of the dune.
But urlare felt he, before this that I lead of the Vista,
With the “lucky person native everything and the whole night of the characteristic!”

Joy In The World

Joy in the world!
Getlteman came
To go away to the relative track received the king
In order to leave all internal the part
Prepararsi ch ‘ he who the section emits
And the sky and the nature sing
And the sky and the nature sing
And the skies and the sky and the nature sing

Joy in the world!
El Salvador governs
For dejárleslo the men of Songsgebrauch
During the zones and the tide
Cliff, assembly and levels
In order to relaunch the Resounding the joy
In order to relaunch the Resounding the joy
The retort, retort, of that resounding the joy

Nient ‘ another one did not leave not sins
The pain is developed and
Still to disturbarsi the track of the thorns
It comes to give the form
Relative work of blessings
Distant separated as he takes care of a course it one him finds
Distant separated as he takes care of a course it one him finds
Distant separated like, distant separated as it takes care of a course he one him finds

It governs the world
Truthfully and beauty
Marcature of E, those the control of the nations
Ruhme of
Relative righteousness
Relative miracles of and the lover
Relative miracles of and the lover
Relative miracle and and miracles of the lover

Bells I Gave Squillo

Precipitated it gives the snow
In a horse you open sleigh
The length of eccederli of the zones
Risata Finishes.
Bell in the main cycle of the part of the extremity
System of the illumination of the alcohol in the form
The obligation exceeds and that the safeguard sings
A song, of that tonight that is sleighing.

Bell of the explosion, edge of the explosion
Geklingel completely,
The safeguard of the OH must go he inside in
In a horse you open sleigh, or
Bell of the explosion, edge of the explosion
Geklingel completely,
The safeguard of the OH must go he inside in
In a horse you open sleigh.

Corridors of the Assembly

For disc battery the corridors with boughs of houx, F!
‘Tis the relative station with merrily, of F!
Regolarsi becomes, ours dressed allegros we, of F fullfilled!
Troll old carol of Yuletide, F!

In order to see yule, before we, the end for folding of F!
In order to repair to the teeth verzahnung-Stein and chorus of collegarli, F!
To follow it in the contented measurement, of F!
When I to explain the treasure of Yuletide, F!

Distant separated the old passages as of the year, of F that it has dulled!
The news hailed the new people, of ye and the girls, F!
In order to sing merrily the totality to us all! Of F!
Despreocupado equipment the wind and the period, of the F!

Twelve WeihnachtsTage

The tenth Weihnachtstag secondly, that one that loves my applicable I gave
Tambourinage of twelve Klopfern
Eleven cable of pipers
10 ONU-IN-cA-to-to-in-to-to-leaping getlteman
Later dancing of Getlteman of the nine
ONU-IN-cA-to-to-in-to-to-milking eight of spendthrift
a swimming of seven swans
ONU-IN-cA-to-to-in-to-to-laying of six gansos
Five of gold are blocked
Four birds for the indication
Three henhen hens
Two doves of the turtle
And a Rebhuhn in the pear a tree

Three King D ‘ of the East We Are

Three king d ‘ of the east we in cross are
And the gifts of the sustenation, of that separated they distant,
Of the good zone and, to fissarsi and the mountain,
After the asterisk here.
Or, the asterisk of the miracle, the asterisk of the resistance,
Asterisk with the system to ignite in the true beauty,
Antreibenen inside to the west, end of the work of the instrument of the distillation,
Leads to him with the perfect light.

Song De Wassail

We here this that wassailing under green of the paginations therefore.
Here much more we honest ramble, the end to see.
The lover to and the joy come wassail you and they ingualmente.
And that the God segnen and that it transmits a new lucky person of the year.
And the God transmits a new lucky person of the year.

In Distant It Separated the Food

In distant it separated the food, no drawer to the order a base.
The small Jesuslord produced to motivatings of the title the relative force.
The asterisks in the system to ignite in the sky had observed lowest superficial, where it is extended.
The small Jesuslord in dream in the hay.

First Christmas

First Christmas, that one that was the angel,
Who one was visualized, with shepards determined, that it is defective in the zones, poich2e is extended:
In the zones, in where they extend ONU-IN-cA-to-to-in-to-to-keeping his cold winter
Eight of the ewe, that was therefore deeply.
Christmas, the king of Israel takes to
Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

To Be Firm Ye Joyeux, Sigg.

Rest of allegro of the God, of sigg.,
Left frights of the attention only no,
Of you who the Christian one was our constant to the rescuer
Of the Weihnachtstag,
To the later face in us all the energy of Satan,
When to exhaust to us we were -;
Tidings of or the comfort and the joy,
Of the comfort and the joy,
Tidings of or the comfort and the joy.

OF, God to That the Quick Ear! In Order to Announce the Angels Who Sing

It lends the ear! announcing angels they sing,
To the reputation with the baby of the king,
Of La Paz in the track and smoothness of the mercy,
The God and the riconciliano of sinners.
Merrily, connects all the nations of ye,
Increase, the sky triumph;
With the Hauptrechnermitteangelika to affirm,
‘The Christian is in loans of Bethlehem’
The ear of the sopportato! announcing angels they sing,
To the reputation with the baby of the king.

It Came to the Opened Station of the Work of the Midnight

This song to the opened station of the work of the midnight,
From the one of the old man, from her came,
That splendourful is the angels, from which ausgebritten near the track if it became, the end
To touch in its teeth goldVerzahnung-stein of gold:
‘Peace of the transformation relation, pleasant consideration with the men,
Everything-pleasant king of the sky!’
The world in the serious model of the calm for the low point,
The end to mean the angels, the end to sing.

Night of Santo of Or

The asterisks, that one are he Shinebrillamment the night of the birth of our rescuer, much stay the world in sin and maehen pining the error extend the night of Santo of or, of that internal one ‘, until he does not appear this he and relative internal present modernities of the piece the tremito an elasticity of the sensation of odore of hope one, in the morning ordered and of those glorous new of the world of the rejoices here of the beginning. In order to lower in relative ginocchia or, or they feel the voices of angels. Damages of or guess, damages of or, where Christian, when one night, of which he is divine of or it takes, of the damages or, which it is divine, or divine damaging.

That Boy Is This One

That boy is immense this, this one, to the rest
In the riavviamento of Maria, dream?
Who to congratulate angels with the cake with hymns,
When the protection of the Shepherdskonserve?
This, this one is Christian the king,
To that the shepherds and the angels arrest the end to sing:
It accelerated, to consider, around to the praise ottener it,
Young, son of Maria!

Native White Man

The dream of a native white right of the man has taste of this, this one I has last to the knowledge where the stops of the tree to only feel I-I dream of the children and glitzern of the native white man when, of that practitioner to know where the stop of the tree ignites and feels the children, the end to feel the edge of sleigh in the snow. Dream of the native white man with each Weihnachtskarte the fact that I May, that it writes his days merrily and he is illuminandosi inside ignited and it conserves his whole Christmases, that is white man.

Angel, Who We Felt in the Ascent

Angel, which we have the felt of the expensive outpost,
Or ‘ comfortable he he Songebenen.
The mountains of and in the answer,
The echo generation that the marks contented relative for are of the form.
Gloria…, Gloria, in Excelsius Deo

Calm Night

Calm night! Night of Santo!
Everything that is peace, everything is illuminandosi inside ignited.
Nut/mother of yon approximately and the virgins of the boy,
Therefore of offered and the boy of the force of motivatings of Santo,
To duer to me in narcotic La Paz!

The Small Boy of the Klopfers

Come they had visualized to me (the pumpum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
A baby of the king the end to see (pum PA-RHUM of the pumpum)
Our gifts, with exactitude are more (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
Transference of the king
Therefore honor (pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
If we to come

Small boy (pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
Also in the morning a deficient boy (pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
I do not have the gift that he can be obtained (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
This is modified for particular requirements, around our king to the elasticity
I must play for you? (pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
In the cylinder of the mine

Folding Maria the main one (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
Cattles and the time had arrested of the lamb (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
I played my cylinder for (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
I played mines the thing that it unemployment more better possible
Then it has the smile to me (the pum of the pum of the pum of PA-RHUM)
Cylinder of and the mine

Felt, This What Felt to Me?

You must at night say to the wind to the lamb small,
You who you see them, that what I you consider?
For the ascent the small lamb sees them,
Sees in the sky, of which what I he considers?
An asterisk, an asterisk, dancing during the night,
With the greater part therefore of the extremity appreciates the small wheel of deers red.
With the greater part therefore of the small wheel of gradirli of the extremity of deers red.

To the Expensive Outpost in the Light of the Quarter

To the expensive outpost in the RUPTURE of the Rens of the lateral one of dachs it advanced.
With old covering native of the father of the man of him it covers.
For the point under the chimney with a good number of goodses of the game.
Everything for the small joys in Christmas.
I have, that I have, Ho!
Who does not disappear?
I have, that I have, Ho!
Who does not disappear?
To advanced in dachs the lateral one that advanced,
Interrupting the face of the emergency, switch of the emergency, switch of the emergency!
For the point under the chimney with buoa the jump of this santo!

Retraction:  I likely made an error in my September Satan’s Face post.  Details are available at that link.

Four excellent food products that you are unlikely to know about already:

1. Maine Coast Sea Vegetables Alaria: “Similar to wakame biologically and nutritionally, with a black or dark-green color. A more wild, yet delicate taste….”  This is delicious to eat raw, straight out of the bag; it may also be cooked for soups, salads, or boiled as greens.  The bag, by the way, is resealable and has “PLEASE RE-USE THIS BAG” printed on the front.  Kudos to them.
2. Whole Foods 365 Cola: Whole Foods have reformulated this beverage to use cane syrup as a sweetener; this imparts a delicious flavor reminiscent of the “microbrew” birch beers (birch beers are soft drinks, like root beers are.)  This product does not contain caffeine.
3. Kettle Chips Habañero Chili with Ginger Potato Chips: I think the name says it all: a creative flavor, and it is a well executed one as well.  The heat is present but not calibrated to blow your head off.  The ginger is restrained and adds a great undercurrent of flavor.
4. Health Valley Lentil with Couscous Soup: Presented as a Cup-o’-Noodles-style single-serving container, this is great to keep in a desk drawer at work for late nights.  It is far tastier and more nutritive than the cheap ramen cups; the seasoning emphasizes curry that fills the room with a delicious exotic aroma.

I just had the pleasure of watching the skateboarding vert finals of the 2001 Gravity Games.  What a great competition.  Rune Glifberg followed his second-run 92-plus score with an amazing and beautiful 96 point final run.  This truly has to be one of the most beautiful vert runs ever.  He stitched together five back-to-back technical tricks (including two 540s), he threw down a gorgeous full-extension Madonna, he pulled off a textbook-perfect tailgrab so flawless that it floored me to see it in the middle of a competition run.

The pleasure was not just the beautiful, technical and creative riding.  It was heartwarming to see, yet again, this community of sportsmen who are genuinely happy and congratulatory when a co-competitor beats them.  There is a tangible atmosphere of personal respect and nobility; the community feeling reminds me of Seattle musicians who consider sales to be after-thoughts and spend entire interviews endorsing other bands rather than talking about their own work.  If you are a skeptic please take some time and watch part (or all) of the next pro skateboarding competition: the level of skill and sportsmanship is sure to surprise and impress you.

[Edited 04 Jan 2002] I am removing this post.  It dealt with my very angry feelings towards the website of a group of big-game hunters whom I had called “sadistic” and “murdering”, but it unnecessarily adds unpleasantness to the site.  If you are interested in the URL I was referencing, let me know by email.

There are games in which an element of chance is decisive, such as roulette or Snakes and Ladders: these games are appropriate only for children (if they are complicated) or for gamblers (if they are simple).

                  - J. Mark Thompson, “Defining the Abstract”

I am upgrading the Perl installation on a Linux machine.  The installation script is interactive, beautifully written, and sometimes very funny.  It just scrolled the following:

(Looks like you have stdio.h from Linux.)

Checking how std your stdio is...

Your stdio acts pretty std.

Anyway, I thought it was very funny.

I just saw the new Yahoo!/Pizza Hut advertisement using JavaScript animation.  If the ad is not showing on Yahoo! right now (you cannot miss it) I have cached a copy.  While I am loathe to admit liking something that could easily become a highly invasive advertising trick, this new ad works.  As long as the animations are under five seconds and the graphics under about 200×200 pixels, this is in my opinion preferable to pop-ups/pop-unders, at least until the novelty wears off.

I have written some fun software to solve Boggle games (this is the game in which six-sided dice labeled with letters are shaken in a plastic container to form an N x N array; the object of the game, in short, is to find paths through adjacent letters to form valid English words, subject to minimum length rules and a prohibition against using one die twice in a single word.)  The searches are very fast, even on this 266 MHz machine.  I just shook the game to get an array, as follows:

JFDER
GDARD
MWOTE
PTUCP
HILAH

A few seconds glancing gives me adder, water, actor, and rear/reared. 

I plugged the grid into the Boggle program, which found 363 matches in about one second, including the four I mention above.  Other notables that the program found include acuter, alcoate, capered, chaptered, outpaced, readout, rerouted, retouch, ulcered, and watered.  I might touch up the program a bit and release it as freeware, perhaps open-sourced under the GNU GPL.  Let’s see if there is any interest.

Here is a screenshot:

Longtime readers might remember the post from February of this year in which I questioned Match.com’s choice of this advertisement:

I expect that the photograph must be in Corbis or some similar database.  Consider this ad from the RealPlayer download page …

… and this ad from a magazine …

One time when I was in school I was seated in the office of my advisor, a brilliant and funny physicist.  In the middle of one of his sentences something on his whiteboard distracted him.  It looked much like this:

He started thinking out loud: “A, B, and pi-zero … A, B, and pi-zero … what was I doing?  Was I working on quantum mechanics?  What was … Wait!  That’s not a pi-zero!  That’s a goat!”  The professor had been explaining the “Monty Hall Problem” to a student earlier in the day.

Note: This post has been displaying strangely in some browsers.  I have made a change that I expect will make it render better.

I did not intend to write this post.  I sat down to compose a post on the Richard Dawkins book I just finished reading.  As I began to compose it I had need to add a hyperlink.  This is a bit of a pain in the neck (in terms of unnecessary typing) in Notepad++, a third-party replacement for Microsoft’s Notepad.  Since mid 1995 I have used one or the other to compose web pages.  It should be trivial to add a link in a web editing program: highlight the text, hit Ctrl-something, and type in the URL, preferably having the program fill in the “http://” for you if you leave it off (only if you leave it off; it should be smart enough not to turn your FTP URLs, for instance, into “http://ftp://ftp.microsoft.com”.)

In six-plus years I have not found a program to help me compose HTML that does not infuriate me through feature creep.  I want something bare-bones, at code level, that helps me with syntactic constructs.  I can handle the semantic stuff myself.  Prompted by this I went to Download.com to see what programs were ranked well.  The program I tried to download required me to supply a name and email address that they cross-their-heart-and-hope-to-die will not use for any purpose.  Right.  So I did what I usually do: I went to Mailexpire.com, typed in my real address, and it provided me with a Mailexpire.com email alias that will expire in twelve hours.  Take a moment and try it for yourself.

One does not really want to put a valid name down, either.  One can use something off the top of the head (I find this is frequently drawn from something in my field of view, what could be called the “Mrs. Doubtfire” approach) or use a random name generator such as the excellent one at kleimo.com.  Playing with it just now, with the “obscurity factor” set to 50 and gender set to “male”, I was offered Hal Tutas, Marlin Couser, Kendrick Guderjahn, Elwood Alessandro, and Jackson Sheild.  None of these names shows up in Google, by the way.  (The obscurity factor is fun to play with.  A setting of 1 ["common"] gave Martin Haviland [shows up in Google 5 times], Gary Verret [in Google 6 times], Lawrence Easter [26 times], Charles Flint [659 times], and Luis Grimaldo [58 times].  A setting of 99 yielded Wes Fosso, Cedrick Baresi, Jeromy Easlick, Rueben Alesse, and Alonso Egidio of which, predictably, none shows up in Google.)

But we already have a string literal to work with: the part of the Mailexpire address before “@mailexpire.com”.  One could try to make a name out of this; this has the arguable advantage of convincing a human screener, at least one who does not know how Mailexpire works.  Better yet, Mailexpire should buy, for instance, npqo.com, ncqn.com, and ofpi.com and randomly assign these domains to the email addresses, which would further convince a human screener.  The domain names I chose for this example, in case you are interested, are the result of hitting the keyboard randomly to generate a four-letter string and checking to see if the domain was reserved.  It took me twelve tries before I found a total of three unreserved four-letter .com domain names.  My sample is very small, so we cannot say with any confidence that 75% of four-letter domain names are already taken (maybe it was a fluke, or maybe my finger motions, for any of a number of reasons, preferred common sequences of letters when hitting “randomly”.)  But keep in mind that there are just under half a million four-letter domain names alone.  Have people really registered three quarters of these?

But back to making a name out of a Mailexpire address.  I just generated fifteen Mailexpire aliases, as follows: aroubtfuln, cliffectat, dravarrors, enroachink, hopelonalt, mumiosinev, myrtlyauei, neiteousic, peerledgeo, synodsuuoo, taphyseleo, turbidelpi, volishelty, welkindrew, wirelloned.  The intriguing thing to me about these is that they are clearly not random strings.  They are far to English-like, embedding words, parts of words, and (which may be the same as the last one) likely combinations of letters.  It belongs to the class of what Hofstadter describes as “English-sounding nonsense”.

Some of the names split easily into a first and last name.  Some present difficult juxtapositions of consonants.  I have a way that I deal with this (this sounds like a ton of work but it all happens very quickly in one’s head.)  In descending frequency, the order of vowels in English is much as you might expect: e-a-o-i-u-y.  What I do for a difficult name is to take the first consonant juxtaposition and insert an ‘e’ in between, take the next pair and insert an ‘a’, and so on; this makes it just believable that the email address could have been formed by removing letters from a too-long name.  Sometimes once the name is split it appears much better if the “first” and “last” names are swapped.

As if I were not spending too much time on an obscure topic already, here are my results on the fifteen names above:

Anyway, it may be fun to play with.  Alternatively, you could use Mailexpire.com to generate fictitious names for characters in stories and novels, for RPG NPCs, etc.

I have spent a couple of hours making this front page, and all of the archived pages, HTML 4.0 compliant.  I hope this will help the page render more consistently across platforms and browsers.