Hear that? It's the winds of change...

Oh right...

2010-01-01T18:47:38Z

So I finally remembered what the other thing I was going to say about my Christmas shopping trip was: The muzak in one store was playing what must have been Judy Garland's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", because it had the line "From now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow." And I was like, "Hey I remember reading about that on the Interwebs." I forget where, exactly, but Wikipedia has the original lyrics and a rundown of the song's history.

2010-01-01T07:03:39Z

I wonder how much software will come out this year that uses MMX in place of a version number.

It's always lalalalalalalalala...

2009-12-23T03:50:18Z

On a shopping trip today, I saw a car with a Kingdom of Loathing bumper sticker that said "My other car is made of meat." I've never played Kingdom of Loathing, but I knew enough from Wikipedia and whoever it was from the Define Cynical chatroom that played it to sort of get the joke.

Some of the thrift stores around here have gotten wise to the fact that people have started raiding their stores for eBay fodder. The mere presence of such shoppers is unfortunate given that thrift stores are supposed to exist to provide cheap goods to low-income families, but the stores themselves raising their prices to cash in on this is even worse. Can't say I can fault them when the merchandise in question is really only of interest to the eBayers and their would-be customers though, like the Atari 2600 with cartridges that was going for $20. Wish mine worked well enough to be worth that much. :\ They also had an old 8mm film projector. Some public school must have been clearing out their old storage closets.

There was something else I was going to mention, but I've forgotten it.

There must have been some magic in that movie clip I found...

2009-12-17T21:44:41Z

Anyone ever read the story about the "magic"/"more magic" switch? Basically it was about a switch someone had wired up to an old mainframe computer that didn't look like it should do anything but always crashed the computer when flipped from its default position of "more magic" to "magic."

Well, I had such an experience today working on a Flash file for work.

It was a Christmas e-card I had made last year, and the client wanted to re-release it with some edits. So I opened up the old file, resaved it with a new name, and went to work. There were several objects in the object library that were no longer needed, so I deleted them. One, strangely, was a movie clip (Flash's term for any object that you can manipulate with ActionScript code) labeled "blankMovie" that was, indeed, blank. One frame, nothing in it. No code, no reference to it in any other code, and as far as I could tell the clip wasn't in the main timeline anywhere either. So I deleted it too, assuming from the name that it was like those "New Folder"s I occasionally create by accidentally hitting the "New Folder" button in Windows.

That was the other day. Today I was putting in the last changes, namely replacing the two music clips with the ones the client had just emailed me, and compiled and tested the finished file. Everything worked smoothly up to the point where clicking a button makes the first piece of music fade out and a second one fade in. Instead, the second piece of music started and they immediately both faded out. I remember having the same problem when I first designed the thing last year, but couldn't for the life of me remember what I had done to fix it, and more importantly why it wouldn't still work. I inspected every piece of code I could find, and none of it seemed to have been changed, so I was stumped.

Then it hit me. I opened up the old version, removed the blankMovie object, recompiled as "temp" and tested it. Sure enough, same problem. I copy-pasted blankMovie into the new file's library, hoping desperately that was all I needed to do, and of course it wasn't. So I started copying my new material into the old file and testing it, and even after replacing the music clips (which were tagged with different names than the first ones), it worked perfectly.

I still have no freaking clue where I had placed blankMovie in my timeline (being blank, it would be invisible) or why it made the darned thing work. All I know is that it's somehow critical to the operation of the file. It's my own little "more magic" switch. :)

Thoughts based on last night's Big Bang Theory

2009-12-15T23:52:57Z

If television is any indication, being a psychologist has got to be a sweet gig. If you don't like someone, you can pretty much accuse them of having any psychological disorder you want and nobody will know you're bluffing except them, and if they deny it you can just brush them off by claiming they're in denial.

Obviously I got into the wrong field.

Someone has a dream...

2009-12-11T06:57:10Z

This is officially the funniest thing ever (click for fullview):

They can take their spam and shove it between their buns.

2009-12-10T18:59:24Z

So today I logged into Thunderbird and found 120 messages waiting for me, almost all spam. Apparently some big spammer has ramped up production big-time. As of today I am officially dropping my Lupinia email and switching to my Gmail account (stevethepocket) full-time.

I'll give it a week for everyone I know to become aware of the change, and then I am permanently closing the account.

Also, seriously, have the nerds who do all those RFC's just been sitting on their butts for the last decade? They could have created a new, spam-proof email protocol, standardized it, AND gotten it to be universally adopted within that much time, and as far as I know they haven't even started. In a world where radical new technologies are created every day, email is still stuck in the 1980s. That is just unacceptable.

Definition

2009-12-03T17:15:12Z

Deadpan humor: When the straight-man has the punchline.

blows dust off everything

2009-11-27T06:05:07Z

Oh, right. Yeah I have a new hard drive and stuff. 500 GB, which is less than the old one but still more than I'll need for quite a while.

Rather than try to use my system restore disc and revert aaaaaaaaaall the way back to the March 2008 setup, I decided to install the Windows 7 release candidate. I realized I never really used it enough the first time around to truly evaluate its features, and I am discovering regularly how right I was. Like it turns out that by default, my router is set to be able to wake up the computer—which for some reason was making the computer wake up the very second I try to put the computer to sleep. So I had to change that. On the flip side, just today I found out that it stores two separate volume settings for when you're using the speakers vs. the headphones! Handy!

And it turns out their reactivation thing for Office is super easy and doesn't require explaining to a human being why you're reinstalling and couldn't deactivate the old copy. Their phone system robot just takes your word for it that you've only got it installed on one machine. Makes me wonder why they even bother though. Maybe they're hoping would-be pirates will be afraid to call.

I am... the Determinator

2009-10-31T22:10:48Z

So, I'm a dumbass. I knew this day would come eventually, and I've been looking into preparing for it, but I never actually committed, and now it might be too late.

Long story short: My hard drive failed, and I have no backups.

When I say "no backups," try to comprehend the extent of this. Imagine that my house has just burned down, and all that's left is what's in the fireproof safe. The most absolutely vital stuff, to be sure, but only what fit in a small compartment. And the worst part is that I could have fireproofed the entire house for a not unreasonable sum, if I hadn't been waiting for a sale.

In this case, the safe is Windows Live SkyDrive, which holds the high-res originals of all the Mandy strips up until October 8; and my MP3 player, which holds the MozBackup file for Firefox and Thunderbird, the latter of which includes my most important Internet passwords. Also all my music is safe on my MP3 player of course. So that just leaves everything I've ever written, drawn, recorded, or animated. It's all on there, and I have good reason to believe most of it is intact, but I also have good reason to believe the motor is fried, so there's no way to get it off there short of those super-expensive data recovery services.

But I'm going to look at this at a blessing in disguise. You may or may not already be aware that I still don't have a real job. I haven't heard from the people I was working for in literally months, and I really haven't been looking anywhere else. I'm not a galactically lazy person; I did get through four years of college without missing a single class or assignment (that I can recall). But in that case, there was pressure. If any given paper wasn't on the professor's desk at the beginning of class, I failed the assignment. My grade in the class would drop and I would look like a moron. Plus, if my GPA ever dropped below 3.5, ~~the bus would explode~~ I would lose the huge scholarship that was keeping me from having to quit.

Since then there hasn't been any pressure. My parents, bless them, haven't threatened to kick me out if I don't find work. And there's nothing of considerable expense that I need. There's the vague idea that if I don't get a full-time job soon, my resume will have a gaping hole that may shut me out of future employment opportunities, but that's all. But now I have a goal: Earn $600 to send my drive away to a data recovery service if I ever want to see my precious data again. And because this is such a ludicrous amount, I can't justify only making that much and immediately spending it; I have to reach a point where $600 is such a paltry sum that I wouldn't even miss it.

This could take a while. But as God is my witness, I will do this.

And as an added bonus, I won't be able to do much else in the meantime.

Courtesy of the New York Times

2009-10-28T03:22:56Z

I keep forgetting to post this. It's a perspective you don't hear often on an issue that almost never comes up, and it seems to be well-researched. It was written a whole year ago, hence the addressing of Obama as our "next President." It's super long, so you'll probably rather bookmark it than read it now unless you're really bored.

The Food Issue: An Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief

Just use a login from Bugmenot.com if you don't have an account.

<yay>

2009-10-22T00:15:20Z

Satisfaction is having my new strip finished and uploaded five hours early. :)

Farewell, no-name brand white computer.

2009-10-21T01:24:51Z

So the Windows XP disc that my uncle promised to send me came today, which means I spent all day reformatting and re-setting-up my old computer so I could pass it along to my brother. It feels kind of like the end of an era. No more PS2 connectors, no more VGA, no more Windows XP, and no more floppy disks! And my desk is so much less cluttered looking. I could actually use it for drawing if I wanted to.

Something interesting happened while I was installing the updates, though. Microsoft Update apparently now includes updates to third-party drivers, listed as "optional hardware updates". One of these was for... the monitor, of all things. I can't imagine what the purpose for it could have been, and it didn't really say. But it got me to thinking. I may have mentioned before, a few months after I got this monitor, it started having this problem where it would go into auto-adjust mode (remember auto-adjust?) every minute or so without explanation. The company said it was a BIOS error, and I had to send it in to be remedied. Well, sometime in the past year or so, my monitor's problem has come back. And of course there's nothing I can do about it now, since the warranty is long since expired. Luckily it doesn't matter now because the Acer uses DVI, and DVI mode doesn't even have an auto-adjust. But if it had been an issue that affected DVI mode, I would be well buggered, as they say.

But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. BIOS is firmware, and firmware can be updated without replacing anything. So imagine if, instead of DVI or HDMI as our video connectors, we used USB or FireWire. Monitor manufacturers could fix problems like this as soon as they're discovered by releasing firmware updates that users can download, just like we can with any other USB device.

Well, I can dream.

Weirdest thing...

2009-10-15T18:29:41Z

I got an email today that read:

Hello ,

You are receiving this email because you have either purchased a Screentime Media product or downloaded one of our free trials from Screentime.com.

To continue receiving news from Screentime including product updates, sample code, tutorials and compatibility alerts please [link removed]confirm your subscription[/link].

You'll get:
Tips, tricks and samples of the latest hot screen savers created with Screentime for Flash

Alerts when we release product updates, along with compatibility alerts and other information

Invitations to Beta test new software

Sample code and examples of mProjector apps

Special offers and promotions

If you are not interested in receiving these emails, simply do nothing and you will be unsubscribed from our list.

Thank you,
Screentime Media

The company seems to be real enough, so it couldn't be random spam or a phishing scam. And I doubt a complete stranger entered my address to avoid getting junk mail, thinking it was a fake address. But I'm also almost positive I never bought or downloaded anything from them, and definitely not recently. The only logical explanation left is that someone who knows my email address decided for some reason to use it when they obtained this program... but there's no reason why someone would do that either.

I'm tempted to try emailing the company asking who the heck is registered with my email address in their records, but I highly doubt they would divulge that information.

Oh, Microsoft.

2009-10-13T00:41:41Z

So I found myself wanting to see if, perhaps, I could actually find a tool I could use to remap my keyboard layout. Replace the keys I don't want anymore with something more useful, like some special character I use a lot. Microsoft has such a tool, in fact, so I downloaded it and tried to install. It said it requires the Microsoft .NET framework to install and refused to continue until I got it... but I already have it, so apparently it was designed to check for only the versions that were out at the time the program was made. *facepalm*

You'd think they'd catch something like that pretty quickly, since it indicates that Visual Studio .NET itself had a bug in it that would have affected all the developers who use it. Presumably they caught that bug and patched it, but never thought to recompile their own .NET apps. And since they don't offer free support for anything, they'll probably never get any feedback and never find out that it's broken. Pity; it seems like such a useful program.

Extra credit...

2009-10-11T23:41:02Z

...to whoever does the markup in our supermarket ads, for writing "Oatmeal Crème Pies." It's wrong; the accent mark doesn't actually belong there; but they get credit for just knowing how to make that symbol on the computer. Most people don't, and probably most don't even realize that they can. I suppose someone who does markup should be expected to know how, but on the other hand it is just a supermarket ad. It would almost qualify them as overqualified for that position.

On a related note, I have a running list of keyboard keys I would omit if I were designing the keyboard for a new computer platform. The other day I decided to add Caps Lock. You are welcome to shout at me about how wrong I am.

You know what...

2009-10-10T08:00:40Z

...I'm still coming to grips with the fact that we live in an age where there's a celebrity named "Lady Gaga." When I first heard the name, I thought it was someone from... I dunno, sometime in the past. 1970s or '80s maybe. And I still have to remind myself that, no, this is someone from our own time.

On a related note, as our own decade officially draws to a close, I find myself wondering how it will be looked back on. What major features of our recent culture will be synonymous with the decade.

It took a while for people to decide how to define the '90s, but the basics are clear. It was the age of Seinfeld and The Simpsons; of paintball, laser tag, and Xtreme Sports; of curvy cars and stainless-steel kitchens; of the beige home PC and the early Internet. The age when irony came of age, and gay celebrities started coming out of the closet. The age when popular music could employ synthesizers without sounding "techno", CDs displaced cassettes, and white people discovered rap. The Disney renaissance came and went, and satellite TV became the new cable, while cable became the new network TV. An age bookended by Hammer Pants and the Macarena.

Every decade is defined not only by what was new, but also by what is old by the time it's over.

How would you define the 2000s?

u suk lol

2009-10-09T20:13:36Z

Imagine if you went to the editor of a newspaper or magazine and pitched the idea of printing every single letter to the editor in their publication without editing or even reading them. They would think you were insane, and not just because it would send the printing costs through the roof. And yet, so many news sites and web 'zines do precisely that, by allowing anonymous, unmoderated comments that often appear directly beneath the article itself. Some of them are the same sites run by the printed publications! Would that I could have been a fly on the wall when their editors were pitched the idea and they thought for a moment before answering, "Yep, I can't see how that can possibly go wrong."

Because it's Xtra, baby!

2009-10-08T23:32:34Z

Well, my Zen Xtra has its new battery, updated Vista-ready firmware, and most of my music on it (I'm still in the process of "porting over" my iTunes stuff, and by port I mean bay, such as the sort pirates use, hint hint). I still have plenty of space, and the neat thing about this new firmware is that I can also drag-and-drop files directly onto its hard drive. So presumably I could use it as a cheap, low-capacity backup drive. You know, for just the most important stuff. Or more likely, the biggest files, since Microsoft's free SkyDrive backup service has plenty of space but a 50MB-per-file limit.

The only real gripe I have about the device that I have right now is the battery indicator. When fully charged, it looks like this:

There are nine pixels available in the middle of the icon, potentially nine distinct levels of charge it could be indicating to me. Ten if they add a "flashing" icon for near-death, eleven if "dead" counts a level. But rather than actually use them all, they chose to use ... three. Out of nine. Not only that, it dropped down from "three" to "two" very quickly and hasn't budged from it since. And who knows how long it's designed to linger on "one" before it dies. So I won't really know or even be able to properly guess what this battery's capacity is until it dies.

How to make complete nonsense sound plausable

2009-09-24T02:31:52Z

So I noticed something about the whole "death panel" bullshit. The way it was presented was very sneaky but very effective at getting people to suspect or even believe it to be true, even though there's no evidence for it at all. Let's analyze how it went down, shall we? This is fascinating to me.

Step one: Present some facts that don't actually prove anything but look suspicious. The bill's provision for "end-of-life consultations", taken out of context, works well for this.

Step two: Reach a conclusion that's completely bogus but is consistent with the narrow and inaccurate presentation of the facts. In this case, that the bill is referring to counseling sessions where a state-appointed doctor convinces the patient to submit to doctor-assisted suicide to avoid being a burden on the system, or even denies them care because they're not "of value to society."

Step three: Watch as people react in shock and horror.

Step Four: Wait for some level-headed researcher to provide a solid refutation of your conclusion. The text about end-of-life consultations refers to getting advice on how to create a living will, arrange for hospice care in the event that it's needed, etc. Other health care plans have similar language and that's exactly what it refers to.

Step Five: Backpedal and present a new argument that's weaker but not technically based on patently untrue claims. Appealing to one's emotions and prejudices is a good bet. In this case, it goes something like: "OK, but think about it: This plan is supposed to be cheaper than commercial health care, and you know the government likes to cut corners on stuff anyway. So this is bound to happen eventually. Besides, do you really trust them with your life?" This argument, had it been presented out of the blue, isn't very convincing, because it's mere speculation. But you can't disprove it either. It wouldn't have worked on its own, unless your victim is really gullible, but you primed the pump, set the stage, set the wheels in motion, whatever, with the first "fact" you presented.

Like I said, this is fascinating to me. I bet psychologists or sociologists already have a term for it. I wonder how many other successful conspiracy theories have used this tactic.

I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be...

2009-09-15T06:29:02Z

http://www.mandycomics.net/

In addition to the thoroughly renobberated (I think that's the word Opus used) design, some of you nerds might like to know that I used this to upload today's strip. This is literally all it can do right now (the other three tabs all lead to the 404 page), but it works. Security shouldn't be an issue either because I'm using those pop-up login things instead of an in-page login box, at least for now.

Does This Remind You Of Anything

2009-09-02T05:39:09Z

It's kind of a shame to have to point out that The Far Side did it first, with the Big Bad Wolf dressed up like Granny.

"Boys" vs. "Boys"

2009-08-31T02:22:12Z

I don't remember if I ever mentioned this before, but a few years ago my college's theater class put on a production of "The Boys Next Door". It was very moving, and at least two of the actors stood out as... well, it wouldn't be exaggerating to call their performances "perfect".

One played Barry's estranged father, who has never been quite able to see Barry as a human being, and tried and eventually failed dramatically at masking this, causing Barry to have a nervous breakdown. (If it's not clear enough from the description, you're not supposed to like him; Jack's parting words to him are "You can take a cab straight to Hell!") His actor portrayed him with just the right amount of familiarity and revulsion, without going over the top, in the space of the maybe five minutes he was on stage.

The other played Lucien, the most severely handicapped of the group. I say this as a person who has been to MR/DD schools and organizations many times over the years: He played a mentally disabled man more convincingly than any other actor I've ever seen, including Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. I don't know what background he had to use for reference, and I guess I probably should have asked him afterward when I was making an idiot of myself gushing over his performance, but seriously: spot on.

Anyway, fast forward to today, when on my way to the kitchen I found my parents watching the 1996 film version. It was about at the middle. I sat down and watched the rest of it, and I have to say I was disappointed. Mind you, it was a made-for-TV movie, and those are rarely that great, but it's kind of sad that college kids did a better job than some of them. Courtney Vance, playing Lucien, struck me as just not having enough practice, and Richard Jenkins played Barry's father a little too subtly. Dispassionate characters, like professional actors, it seems, can't be played too accurately or it doesn't quite work. Nathan Lane probably did the best job, as Norman, much more convincing than his actor in the college production, but no matter how good he is, I don't think I can ever take him seriously in this kind of role because... he's Nathan Lane. I always see him rather than the character, something even Will Ferrell can avoid when the situation calls for it.

I don't even remember the names of the actors in the college production, but they have promising futures in the world of acting.

Squishy.

2009-08-28T17:35:24Z

So I just had this dessert thing my mother brought home from ... somewhere. It's a ball of chocolate cake with marshmallow stuff surrounding it, and then pink coconut shavings on top. When I picked it up, I swear it felt like a plushie of some kind. When I bit into it and started eating it, it still felt like a plushie. I managed to choke down the whole thing, but I wouldn't want to touch another one again.

Still, there's untapped market potential here: actual edible plushies for furries who are into "vore." OK, so it's a very small niche market, but it's a cake. People make custom novelty cakes all the time. Also I'm not being in any way serious. But you should know that already.

Firefox 3.5

2009-08-26T20:42:39Z

I've noticed that Firefox 3.5 only applies the zoom level you set to the site you're on at the time. Which is good news for those of us who want to embiggen Homestar Runner cartoons, but bad for virtually everyone the zoom ability was created for in the first place.

Still waiting for them to add full-page cache search like Chrome and Opera have. What's funny is that I suggested it as a feature on their forum about a year before Chrome came out, and everyone was like "Oh that's not doable." Pffffft.