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Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds . I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased.

The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead.

It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!' I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions . Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves . After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.

It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.

I have just recounted to you with rigorous exactness what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds.

-Dr. Beaurieux, Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, June 28th, 1905

my latest masterpiece: kinda obscure

i really need to fix all of this.

I use Google Reader every day. I star things I like. I also share them. Here is the list of things I have shared.

Ford Prefect: All right. How would you react if I said that I'm not from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?
Arthur Dent: I don't know. Why? Do you think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?

To stop being a tourist, sometimes all you have to do is start standing still...
Taras Grescoe, End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists (2003)

I will say, that all the special effects artisans that I worked with, either whether they were in pyro or CG or actual practical model-making, were real polymaths, and this is absolutely a word that applies to a crowd like this because there's the esthetic that once you learn about one thing you want to learn about more things and I know you guys more than almost any other crowd I've probably ever spoken to, is a group of people who who wants to learn a little bit about absolutely fuckin' everything you can, and as a collector of skills and a master of not a single one of them, um, there, you know there's, no one knows the full phrase..."jack of all trades, master of none", the finish of that phrase is "though often better than a master of one." -Adam Savage, The Last Hope, 2008

That being said, jack of all trades, edited by yours truly, since I could not find the source though i like his version better.

Did you know that the sale and use of tobacco is completely banned in Bhutan, excepting foreign tourists and NGOs?

garfield without garfield (i like this)

Patrick Bateman: Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?
David Van Patten: The maitre 'd at Canal Bar?
Patrick Bateman: No, serial killer, Wisconsin, the '50s.
Craig McDermott: So what did he say?
Patrick Bateman: "When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants me to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right."
David Van Patten: And what did the other part think?
Patrick Bateman: "What her head would look like on a stick..."
[laughs]

On a Saturday afternoon in 1958, I sat in a Harlem department store, surrounded by hundreds of people. I was autographing copies of Stride Toward Freedom, my book about the Montgomery bus boycott. And while sitting there, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" I was looking down writing, and I said "Yes." And the next minute, I felt something sharp plunge forcefully into my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed with a letter opener by a woman who would later be judged insane, Mrs. Izola Ware Curry.

Rushed by ambulance to Harlem Hospital, I lay in a bed for hours while preparations were made to remove the keen-edged knife from my body. Days later, when I was well enough to talk with Dr. Aubrey Maynard, the chief of the surgeons who performed the delicate, dangerous operation, I learned the reason for the long delay that preceded surgery. He told me that the razor tip of the instrument had been touching my aorta and that my whole chest had to be opened to extract it.

"If you had sneezed during all those hours of waiting," Dr. Maynard said, "your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood."

It came out in the New York Times the next morning that, if I had sneezed, I would have died.

About four days later, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, they allowed me to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital and read some of the kind letters that came from all over the States, and the world. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. There was a letter from a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

Um, thank you. I'm not much for public speaking. Or much for speaking. Or, come to think of it, much for the public. And I'm not very good at lying. So let me just say that, in my experience, high school sucks. If I had to do it all over again, I'd have started advanced placement classes in preschool so I could go from eighth grade straight to college. However, given the unalterable fact that high school sucks, I'd like to add that if you're lucky enough to have a good friend and a family that cares it doesn't have to suck quite as much. Otherwise my advice is; Stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless experience proves you wrong. Remember, when the emperor looks naked, the emperor IS naked. The truth and a lie are not sort of the same thing. And there is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can't be improved with pizza. Thank you --- Daria's high school graduation speech

I have always wondered what sumo wrestlers eat.

though the google zeitgeist link still works, apparently it has since been replaced with google hot trends, apparently a snappier name...

i was reminiscing about certain wastes of time in the name of ridiculous code: textmode quake, mame ported to a digital camera, and one that is new to me, someone who wrote a program that reads his LPs that he scanned in with a freakin' scanner!

somethinginteresting has relocated to a new server where I hope it will stay for a while. I went through all these links and made sure everything is working, fixing up a few things that have moved over the years. it's kind of remarkable how far it goes back at this point. there's a bunch of references to firebird and phoenix, the original names of firefox before it really came into its own! i will continue maintaining and improving the site, adding new items of interest soon, and i am slowly bringing back online some of the database driven sub-sites that had vanished for the last year or two. in particular, the generic sucks/rules meter as inspired by the old Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter has been reactivated.

"If someone calls me up and says their toaster is talking to them, I don't refer them to professional help, I say, 'Put the toaster on the phone'."
- Sal Ivon, former managing editor of the Weekly World News

Now the world has gone to bed,
darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infra-red,
how I hate the night.

"He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse."

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

Gareth: I've got a new theory about marriage. Two people are in love, they live together, and then suddenly one day, they run out of conversation.
Charles: Uh-huh.
Gareth: Totally. I mean they can't think of a single thing to say to each other. That's it: panic! Then suddenly it-it occurs to the chap that there is a way out of the deadlock.
Charles: Which is?
Gareth: He'll ask her to marry him.
Charles: Brilliant! Brilliant!
Gareth: Suddenly they've got something to talk about for the rest of their lives.
Charles: Basically you're saying marriage is just a way of getting out of an embarrassing pause in conversation.
Gareth: The definitive icebreaker.

[Sitting in the bar after Carol storms out]
Melvin Udall: Well, it's not right to go into details, I got nervous. I screwed up, I said the wrong thing... Where if I hadn't, I could be in bed right now with a woman who, if you make her laugh, you got a life. Instead I'm here with you
[gestures to bartender]
Melvin Udall: . No offense, but a moron pushing the last legal drug.

i took down the tool mp3s.

i made a page using the flickr API which will display a random image from my flickr pictures.

i have long felt this page in some way epitomized the glory of the internet in some way...see for yourself: pictures of celebrities playing ping pong.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. -- Paul McCartney

in school, when i was young, many kids would break their arms. most of the time it was the same kids, i don't know why that was. all these people would then sign the casts. i never broke anything, so nobody ever signed my cast.

Melissa Robbins: You had an affair? And now she's trying to kill us? How could you?
Brendon: I'm sorry.
Melissa Robbins: Who is she?
Brendon: Just some woman.
Melissa Robbins: Is it because I'm fat?
Brendon: No... In fact, she's fat too.

-- home movies

this is a 200k animated gif which makes me laugh and made me decide to forward it via email which i never, ever do, and now to post it here as well. i am a sellout, like google? the eyeball is my favorite part.

"I have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process." - the story of mel

somethinginteresting was moved to a new host recently, hence there were a few days of downtime. a few of the sub-sites like the sucks/rules thing and basically anything database-driven is temporarily down while i sort all of it out on the new server. hopefully all of that will function as normal soon. until then, dead links above.

an interesting list of accidentally vegan items by companies that don't give a shit but forgot to put veal into their oreos

I recall one old coloured woman who was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising money to pay for the farm. She hobbled into the room where I was, leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; but they were clean. She said: "Mr. Washin'ton, God knows I spent de bes' days of my life in slavery. God knows I's ignorant an' poor; but," she added, "I knows what you an' Miss Davidson is tryin' to do. I knows you is tryin' to make better men an' better women for de coloured race. I ain't got no money, but I wants you to take dese six eggs, what I's been savin' up, an' I wants you to put dese six eggs into de eddication of dese boys an' gals."

Since the work at Tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, I think, that touched me so deeply as this one.

- Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

a while ago i wrote about the only unsolvable hand of microsoft's freecell being #11982. There are also many other hands that have been established as difficult. there is also a lot of other information to be found on this freecell faq...stuff i bet you didn't even think existed. i may have too much time on my hands now, though i can't believe i'm saying that. incidentally, #1941 is regarded as one of or the hardest solvable hand, and it is really, really hard. good to try if you think you are good at freecell.

wikipedia tells of breakfasts of the world

i just read "up from slavery" by booker t. washington. he is very big on being industrious and the value of working with one's hands, so i fixed my vaccum cleaner. a while ago, i pulled the cord out too far, so it wouldn't snap back. so i took it apart and unjammed the spring, and now it snaps back correctly. maybe i can make a career out of this.

Man #1: Someone took a shit in the sink.
Man #2: It happens. This is New York.

--Men's Room, Port Authority (overheard in nyc again)

i just uninstalled all my firefox search plugins and replaced them with this one for yubnub.org, a not-wonderfully-named but absolutely genius nonetheless (social) commandline for the web. love it!

i should just stop going to the drudge report anyway, but so far i haven't and today the pop-ups that evade firefox's pop-up blocking finally drove me nuts. so, to block the pop-ups that seem to get past firefox, type 'about:config' in the address bar, then create a new integer with the name 'privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins' and the value '2'. then stop going to drudge anyway.

Master Betty: I have been called bad before. Many have said I do things that are not correct to do. I don't believe in talk such as this. I am nice man, with happy feelings. All of the time. First, a joke. What do you get when you cross an owl with a bungee chord? My ass. Nyah, haha, haha, haha, ENOUGH.

- Kung Pow: Enter the Fist

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other.
He says: Which is the better time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!
Hobo: You are correct.

--F train (courtesy of overheardinnewyork.com)

Marla Ruzicka, rip

hows sf

although it doesn't really do enough justice to his act for those who haven't heard him, here is a smattering of mitch hedberg's jokes. his family also updated webpage with a few thoughtful words.

Monty: Simon wrote his own obituary and he asked me to read it. (he pulls a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolds it and reads) "Simon B. Wilder bit it on Wednesday". (small laughing sigh) "He saw the world out of the porthole of a leaky freighter, was a collector of memories and interrupted a lecture at Harvard." (pause) In fifty years on earth, he did only one thing he regretted." [pause] "He is survived by his family: Jeff Hawks, who always remembers to flush, Everett Callaway, who knows how to use words, Courtney Bloominthall, who is strong, but know how to love, and Montgomery Kessler," [starts to cry] "who will graduate life with honor and no regret."

one of my favorite comedians, mitch hedberg, died yesterday at the age of 37. i have quoted him here before, his work was genius. he only had two albums, strategic grill locations, and mitch all together. i'm really bummed. you can read more about it at google news

i've got a fistful of yen

amit4ujanu: tell me whatever is shown in these hollywood
amit4ujanu: abt the ppl
amit4ujanu: is it correct
amit4ujanu: like they marry 2 3 times
amit4ujanu: children loose their verginity at 15 or 16
nad: pretty much

- brahmin guy from new delhi in this language chatroom

i finally ordered a landline, because my cell phone doesn't work in my apartment at all, and i was amazed (although not that surprised) to learn that Verizon would charge me $2.50 PER MONTH to keep my name out of the phonebook. i mean, c'mon, really. amen.

after running the headlines site for a while, i have compiled a list of what is probably most or all of google news's sources culled from their alert emails

"I'm just very tired, very tired of doing comedy, very tired of seeing your vacant faces staring back at me wanting me to fill your empty lives with humor you couldn't possibly think of yourselves." - Bill Hicks

"I'd like to take you now on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab wretched lives." - Tom Lehrer

i know i said it already, but del.icio.us is absolute genius. try out my bookmarks, at del.icio.us/nad

happy new year

from the imdb entry on martha plympton (stef from the goonies: "On the commentary track for the DVD of Goonies, The (1985), she says that she was once playing the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler on stage when an audience member yelled "Gooooonies!" from his seat."

i think i posted before about the utility of tinyurl, but only recently was i made aware of the even handier hugeurl

after writing that recycle bin, i figured i'd father the random code snippets on this page into some kind of index

a new program i wrote to silently clear the recycle bin from the command line [source] and [exe]

i myself have wondered why there weren't really any pictures of an airplane wreckage from the plane which struck the Pentagon on 9/11. this short clip raises some detailed and specific questions

dimebag darrell, former guitarist of pantera and subsequent guitarist of damageplan was shot and killed on stage today, 12/8/04, in an ohio nightclub by a guy who subsequently shot into the audience killing 3 other people before a police officer shot and killed him. r.i.p all, wtf

my generic sucks-rules-o-meter kind of shit the bed, but it is back now you can see for yourself that which sucks and that which rules

i have been heavily getting into del.icio.us, a social bookmarking system. a beginner's guide to del.icio.us may be informative

i have been sifting through the wonderful collection of beautiful images at photo.net's photo of the week collection

Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word. - gallup poll, november 2004

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are Atheists?
Bush: I guess I'm pretty weak in the Atheist community. Faith in god is important to me.
Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are Atheists?
Bush: No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?
Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on Atheists.

- George H.W. Bush, to a AA reporter Robert I. Sherman in August 27,1987, while serving as vice-president and running for President

i live in new york city, and i eat out a lot. i made this list of vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants (ie, restaurants in which i can eat) and although it isn't really done, i suppose it'll never really be done, so check it out and don't say i didn't warn you: eating somethinginteresting in nyc

sorryeverybody.com has made me feel a bit better, now that there are like 200 some odd pages of people from all over (even texas) looking as glum as i felt last week

i think i posted gmailfs a while ago, which was a cool idea but a lame implementation. well, gmail drive to the rescue

kind of depressing

this is a great clip from the daily show showing Bush and Cheney make statements that are at best wrong and at worst lies. the short version is that the 9/11 commission report announced no ties were found between iraq and al-qaeda, whereas bush claims in the video that by invading iraq we have shut off a source of terrorist funding and an ally of al-qaeda. additionally, the 9/11 commission report says that evidence points to the alleged meeting of Mohammad Atta with an iraqi intelligence official never happening. Cheney claims that he never said that meeting was "pretty well confirmed" and then is shown on video saying exactly that. Forgetful? Suuuuure. really worth watching [quicktime, 1.8mb]

i know it isn't exactly of general interest, but i have been learning mandarin chinese and there is this great chinese dictionary i found where you can look things up in english, pinyin, or by chinese character. it has come in very handy since babelfish's chinese translation is a little spotty.

an awful lot is said about bias in the media these days, and for the moment i'm really enjoying the apparent lack of bias at factcheck.org. they cite good and often direct sources and provide quotes, and they don't appear to choose sides. a great way of getting a factual look at the claims politicans make.

Amazon Light 4.0, an alternate interface to amazon which apparently makes use of something called Amazon Web Services

a really interesting dialogue that i highly encourage my readership, albeit unknown in size, to read: is God a taoist?

i was playing around with implementing cookies for the headlines site in order to not require the login everytime so I was looking through my cookies to see what was in there. there were so many that i decided to make use of the feature in firefox and many browsers that prompts you if a site wants to set a cookie and gives you the option of accepting or denying it. it has been a while since i did that, i had always previously just had deny all or perhaps if there was some site i used regularly enough that actually needed them, "accept all". i'm pretty sure that 'accept all' is the default on firefox, which kind of surprises me a little but considering that a variety of sites actually need them to work and that prompting each time gets annoying pretty quick since cookies are so ubiquitous, i'm not really that surprised in the end. in any case, it is amazing how many sites use cookies unnecessarily. that is, they use them not to simply remember session information as to gather information about how people navigate their site, or to use them for cross-site ad-delivery purposes and gather other information about users. it really feels a kind of sinister misuse of a technology in many cases.

frequently asked questions about god

structured procrastination, a new concept to consider

my recent discovery is that javascript can be embedded into a bookmark and executed at any particular moment. someone has decided to call these bookmarklets and there are a whole slew of them from which to choose on the site.

i have been using gmail lately and i really like it. the interface is quite brilliant, and they give you 1gb of storage which i know hotmail is attempting to best. anyway, someone went ahead and coded this nifty filesystem for linux which runs on top of gmail, aptly named gmailfs. i gave it a try and it works. i think it's kind of a nifty idea. my connection is kind of hosed at the moment so it is functional, but difficult to get a sense of real world performance. in any case, i like the idea of it even if it isn't 100% practical just yet. the whole notion of google becoming more of a platform intrigues me, although i realize there is concern they will go mad with power. we shall see.

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. The Lord has just blessed him.... It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad." - Pat Robertson, AP/Fox News, January 2, 2004

Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!

i found this electoral college calculator while reading about the swing state project. it contains data for ALL the elections going back to 1789. java is required, but it is worth checking out.

i randomly decided to check on my old irc client that i wrote. it was slightly broken, so i added support for pong parameters and channel keys and it seems to compile ok on linux, freebsd, and presumably it's original target os: netbsd for m68k :P ph33r nirc.c. now it would really benefit from a simple curses interface, nicer output, and hopefully in the next few days, vms support...

factcheck.org is a site i just discovered which seems to do a pretty good job of taking an unbiased look at the statements politicans make and judging the accuracy thereof. it seems to be pretty non-partisan based on the articles i've read so far. i am pleased. it's a shame that facts and politicans are like oil and water.

Well, Jon, The great jousting tournament that is Election Day draws nigh, the prize the building you see behind me, Castle Congress. But what side shall prevail in this epic electoral tilt? Who shall control the future of Fortress America? Will we be, as the Republicans desire, a nation of wealthy heavily armed white men, befouling the air and water in a ceaseless quest for profits, beholden to no laws but those of our lord and savior Jesus Christ? Or shall we instead embrace the Democrats' vision of a namby-pamby quasi-Socialist Republic with an all-homosexual army flamboyantly defending a citizenry suckling at the foul teat of government welfare? The choice is yours, fair maiden America, for the name of this feudal system is Democracy. - Steven Colbert

ports of common gnu utilities to native win32. these come in really handy all the time, i just don't think i ever posted them here before.

bananaslug adds a random word to your google searches, flinging you to sites which you may have never discovered otherwise. i have made a bunch of different pages now to find random sites, and collected them at http://somethinginteresting.org/code/random/

"Drugs just lower your level of self-hate, and you need self-hate to be funny." - Conan O'Brien

maybe i posted google's zeitgeist page before. i like how the japanese queries at the bottom are translated (for those of us whose japanese is rusty or nonexistent)

i wanted to read an article on salon.com recently. they have a system now which allows you to view an ad and gain access to their premium content rather than pay for a subscription. after viewing an ad, you get a cookie which gives you one day's access to the full articles on the site. i noticed today while viewing the ad, that there is a link for the page that writes the cookie embedded in the ad site, and you can just go to that link directly in order to get the cookie without viewing the ad. so just go to http://www.salon.com/news/cookie.html (now fixed, finally) for a one day pass at salon. just for curiosity's sake, here is the google search of all the other people who figured that out. i think if salon either wrote cookies to make sure you read each page of the ad, or a varied url for each cookie that needs to be written, they could maybe stop this type of abuse.

in case you are one seizure short for today

'An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."'

i was doing something else and i accidentally made one of those pages where you can find out your ip/hostname

i have heard a lot of people claim that some of the facts in Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 are "wrong" or "proven to be lies", "dishonest", and "flat-out phony". i submit to those who feel this way to consider that although Michael Moore is clearly an extremist at times and he has a point of view he is clearly trying to get across which many disagree with, claims about his "lies" may be greatly exaggerated.

the headlines page is new, improved, and seems to be working.

bobby fischer is somewhat of a chess legend who has been in the news lately. he is also something of a loon. hear him rant about the jewish conspiracy against him, and how happy he was about 9/11. there is a more lengthy profile of what the hell happened to him on the Observer (part 1 / part 2).

i do often read reviews on amazon, and i do enjoy sorting by lowest rating first and reading those who just slam all day long. that's why i got a particular kick out of the amazon knee-jerk contrarian game

somethinginteresting has moved and i'm still in the process of updating files and things so there might be a few glitches over the next week or so. this for the benefit of the 8 of you or so who actually read what i write here

today i learned something new about firefox by reading one of those pages that comes pre-marked in the browser. who knew something useful could actually be found in one of those? it turns out you can define an arbitrary keyword for a bookmark in firefox, such as 'd' for drudgereport or whatever. so when you type something in the address bar, it will look for a matching keyword for a bookmark before doing the "i'm feeling lucky" search that i'm always going on about. ADDITIONALLY, you can do a search for something on google for instance, bookmark that, then add a keyword for it and change your query in the bookmark to %s. now, when you type the bookmark keyword followed by some text, it will substitute your user input for the %s. the result? i can now do a google define (define:query) by typing "gd some word" in my address bar, and i'm sure you can find other uses for this. the details were at http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/bookmarks/ but are now gone. this is probably one of those things that has existed forever that i just never knew about.

tinyurl is a really useful resource for those of us who paste links constantly into IM or irc or whatever, check it out if you haven't been there. what i had thought about but never taken the time explore until now however is that you can generally just choose random tinyurls and find your way to strange an interesting lands, ie tinyurl.com/turd, tinyurl.com/123, etc. come to think of it, how about being flung to a random tinyurl (http://somethinginteresting.org/code/tinyurl/) ? and lastly, for the bookmark impaired: try this out biotch

Gmail accounts for threesome - m4ww - 32
Reply to: anon-33769512@craigslist.org
Date: 2004-06-14, 10:34PM EDT

Single white male seeking two hot thin young bisexual girls for an entire night of hot fucking and sucking in exchange for two Gmail accounts. Please have photos to send.

thanks to you-know-who-you-are for what i'd have to agree may be the best straight dope ever: When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?

while on hold somewhere today, i couldn't help but think of this old craigslist post

if someone sends you a stale link, you need to say iast. if someone just can't take a moment to try searching for the answer before asking, remind them to fucking google it

a while back, i explained how it is enormously useful to be able to get around with the keyboard using firefox. in particular, i find the built-in google i'm-feeling-lucky feature very useful to avoid remembering urls and to reduce typing necessary to get to any site. i started a small collection of these, hopefully some will find it useful and realize the might of this tiny feature.

i was pleased to read about this tcp/ip stack implemented in php, and subsequently reminded of this webserver implemented in postscript. the code for the former is pretty neat, and for the latter at the moment, largely incomprehensible to me. hopefully i can remedy that sometime.

popular cultural events rendered as isometric screen shots, why i think of these old ass things is beyond me

ok, i was annoyed that the little dos box pops up so here is a version of the same program with a winmain instead, so it can be clicked on or run from 'run' or whatever you want: clear.c and clear.exe

i'm sure some of you can think of a reason to want to clear the recent documents menu more easily. cleardocs.c, and for the compiler-less, cleardocs.exe

"America always does the right thing once they have exhausted all of the alternatives." - Winston Churchill

"This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office ... Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put." - Winston Churchill

notes on the history of pornography, and in a related and arguably racier note, retroraunch.com

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.." - Steven Wright

The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army

what i wanted was a way to look at the limited number of ingredients in my liquor collection and mixers in my refrigerator, and figure out what drinks i could make. someone did it already.

i was wondering about brain freeze

"I think the mail was a good indication of how bitterly divided our country is right now," Rooney said on his Sunday "60 Minutes" commentary. "I hope I'm not contributing to that, even though I'm right and everyone else is wrong."

pigeonrank?

"This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types." - Judge Braswell Dean, Georgia court of Appeals

a recipe for a prison wine made of oranges, fruit syrup, ketchup, and sugar...mmmmm, prison Pruno. and may God have mercy on your soul.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

i found an incredible well-written and lucid faq about animal rights. it is the most complete and best write-up i have ever read of these ideas. nobody has to agree, but please read it, especially the section on morality. (local copy) just in case.

something recently jogged my memory of the stanford prison experiment

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi

'Mr. Reagan understood human nature well enough to see how contrary it was to communism. He was so confident of his judgement that in a 1975 radio broadcast, he called communism "a form of insanity . . . which will one day disappear from the earth."'

i have recently re-embraced the bookmarks toolbar concept, and have placed upon mine a number of sites which i feel have nearly endless things for me to learn. this is part of an ongoing effort to make me less dumb. they are how stuff works, mit's opencourseware, the straight dope, wikipedia, and everything. so far it isn't working.

it began with a column and interview on the atheism of isaac asimov, which led me to explore Positive Atheism, particularly the quotes section. twists and turns led me to these supplementary links on the same topic, the celebrity atheist list, and the Onion asking celebrities is there a god?"

a fascinating paper by michael crichton entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming"

Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. - structure and interpretation of computer programs

Alvy Singer: Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.

"I think the thing that -- the prayer that I would like America is to ask for is to pray for God's protection for our land and our people, to pray against -- that there's a shield of protection, so that if the evil ones try to hit us again, that we've done everything we can, physically, and that there is a spiritual shield that protects the country." - George W. Bush, Town Hall Forum

maps of surveillance camera locations in new york city and other cities such as boston, courtesy of the Surveillance Camera Players, one of many interesting groups hosted on notbored.org

"On July 20, 1989, President George H. W. Bush marked the 20th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing with a speech at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington in which he called for a permanent American presence on the moon and, ultimately, a mission to Mars."

"Suicide has become such a pressing issue that the Army sent an assessment team to Iraq late last year to see if anything more could be done to prevent troops from killing themselves."

i consider myself jaded when it comes to esoteric programming languages like brainfuck and befunge, but i had never come across piet, a language in which programs look like abstract paintings!

merry new year

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." - Mohandas Gandhi

"A costumed figure stands in a doorway at Hampton Court Palace in southwest London in this image caught on closed circuit television and released by the Palace Friday, Dec. 19, 2003. On several occasions in October 2003, guards at the palace were alerted to an open fire door in the 16th century palace. Upon reviewing the CCTV footage, the curious image of a costumed figure suddenly appeared on the screen and closed the doors. The Palace is well known for its alleged supernatural activity." (whatever it is, i love the picture) ... a follow-up to this, a complete report (link down for the moment) on this incident confidently debunking it as a hoax. still a great picture.

a group of researchers at princeton believe that human consciousness can somehow have an effect on random number generators. they have distributed these worldwide and correlate the data with worldwide events in an effort to scientifically observe this phenomena. they have been recording data since 1998 and have had quite a few successes so far. the experiment is called the Global Consciousness Project.

let us indulge in a bit of qwerty/dvorak controversy. to clarify, in my previous mention of keyboards, i meant that the qwerty keyboard was initially designed to solve a mechanical problem in typewriters, to prevent hammers from becoming stuck when two letters were typed in rapid succession. now owen has brought to my attention an article at the straight dope clarifying the story a bit. the straight dope in turn cites another article which argues that dvorak has not been shown to be superior, and makes a number of other points about the acceptance of qwerty and market rejection of dvorak and other alternative keyboards. finally, here is one more article debunking the previous. my reading of these indicates that more scientific study of the differences between the two is necessary before a conclusion can be reached. but at least respect the merits of one-handed dvorak, surely we all would like to type with one hand at one time or another? cyb3r.

i was going through the page looking for dead links and realized that the famous texas 'last meals' page was gone...i subsequently found an article saying that the newly redesigned texas department of criminal justice page has dropped it after somehow realizing that it is in poor taste. it actually happened very recently, so very coincidental that i should discover it the same day. anyway, one can still read last statements, but for meals, we'll have to turn to someone really dedicated to the cause, whatever that is, so try dead man eating.

since everything2 has been on hiatus, i've been seeking out alternatives and wandered over to the wikipedia. every now and then i'd do a search for something on google and land there, but they've come a long way since the last time i genuinely took the time to look around and i've been going back a lot the last few days to read about unusual topics. a really great effort to develop a totally free knowledge resource.

you see, the original qwerty design was produced by typewriter manufacturers in an effort to slow down typists and reduce problems with stuck keys. the design we actually use every day is actually designed to make us type slower, without even mentioning all the resulting ergonomic problems. anyway, i started to play with this dvorak tutorial. there exist one-handed designs too, which i think is pretty darned nifty. while we're talking about it, check out the velotype, a chording keyboard which encodes syllables and letter groups and apparently allow typing at the speed of speech, which is why they use it for such applications as close-captioning for the deaf. i believe it's comparable to stenography in many respects, but apparently much more difficult to learn than a new keyboard layout.

When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, "If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?"

perhaps i considered it so obvious that i didn't put it up earlier, like putting a link to google here, but maybe it isn't, so now i say that babelfish is a resource i end up using daily and is the closest approximation to what the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy called "probably the oddest thing in the universe." so sayeth the Guide.

i received a story about animal testing on a dog in the mail, and made a point to find an online version to put up here. this was written by someone who is now a veterinarian. i find these kinds of stories very difficult to read, but i think they're important and people should know about them. these stories come to me via the physicians committee for responsible medicine.

winners of the nobel peace prize

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus he Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

- Tao Te Ching, 27, just one translation

a real time traveler, or a genius hoax? you be the judge

bitterwaitress.com, pretty much says it all doesn't it? home of the shitty tipper database (apparently down) (celebrities)

a place to make your confession

i owe this one to my sister. apparently, the history channel has a pretty amazing archive of audio and video for things like famous speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.

After Bankei had passed away, a blind man who lived near the master's temple told a friend: "Since I am blind, I cannot watch a person's face, so I must judge his character by the sound of his voice. Ordinarily when I hear someone congratulate another upon his happiness or success, I also hear a secret tone of envy. When condolence is expressed for the misfortune of another, I hear pleasure and satisfaction, as if the one condoling was really glad there was something left to gain in his own world.

"In all my experience, however, Bankei's voice was always sincere. Whenever he expressed happiness, I heard nothing but happiness, and whenever he expressed sorrow, sorrow was all I heard."

Rube Baker: Women: you can't live with them, and they can't pee standing up.

everyone knows it is fun to type in random domains and see if they are taken, like www.turds.com, www.sphincter.com, or www.lungbutter.com for example. i'm sure you can think of much better ones to try, and keep it up for at least 15 minutes. when using firebird (heh, old link is dead, now go to firefox), you can select the location bar with a simple ctrl-L and then type in a series of terms which will be treated as an i'm-feeling-lucky search on google. this is my new favorite game; stream of consciousness surfing with google

"Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat." - Socrates

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." - Aristotle

Brak: Say wh... what time you got there pardner?
Thunderclese: Time is an abstract concept created by carbon-based life-forms to monitor their ongoing decay.

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience excaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same."

i found three new interesting and random news/editorial sites which seem to be updated often: EmergencyNet, truthout, and The Morning News.

i was cleaning up my home directory and found some old code. at some point i decided to write a game of life program just for the hell of it. there is a first version, and a second that allows dynamic resizing of the tables. i was really pleased with myself at the time for making dynamically allocated multi-dimensional arrays. ./life2 -h for help, or preferably just read the code.

i liked my news page, but to satiate my need for rapidly updating headlines, i needed to make a page of headlines; the most rapidly updating and thus totally overwhelming news page in existence.

try to find an 800 number that isn't taken

two more things to check every day, buzzflash, and emergencyNet

an easy look at the electoral vote distribution from the last election

a realization of how little i know about much of the world has led me to create my very own world news page, powered by Google News. now you can find out all about what is going on in any country in the world, even the ones that do not make it to CNN, BBC, or whatever lame news site you like to read. now let the might of thousands of newspapers be harnessed with the click of a blah.

when there is a forest fire, there are people called smokejumpers who leap from airplanes at low altitudes into the forests to fight the fires from inside out by chopping down trees and doing controlled burns. holy shit, eh?

i thought this a fairly enlightened write-up on veganism

maybe obvious, but i kind of find whatismyip useful periodically

not exactly of GeNeRaL interest, but i have been vegan for a while now, and i recently came up with a a list of restaurants in nyc that i plan to visit very soon. special thanks to menupages, like they actually care

i would like to learn how to identify trees and plants. i am totally clueless on this subject. i will start in central park

thought provoking writings on the meaning of life

"The ladder theory is a theory of adult male/female interaction." you may not agree with everything this guy says, but certainly a great deal of it is true whether you like it or not. an outgrowth of intellectualwhores.com, also worth a visit

a little light reading about our fearless leader, and the wonderful things he is doing for us

so my friend said to me, he said "i think the weather is trippy" but i said, "no man, it's not the weather that is trippy, perhaps it's the way we perceive it that it is indeed trippy", then i thought "man, i shoulda just said YEAH!" - Mitch Hedberg

i woke up and everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. i couldn't believe it. i called my friend and i said, "c'mere, look at this stuff it's all an exact replica, what do you think?" he said, "do i know you?" - Steven Wright

on numerous occasions, i have been depressed at the prospect of finding a boot disk with which to fix something which is probably a total waste of time in the first place. nonetheless, i am a loser for only recently learning of bootdisk.com.

somethinginteresting moved, hence the downtime. dns is still propogating, but should be all fixed soon, hopefully for the long haul.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi

a blog of a girl who has attempted to vanish and escape her father who is apparently rich, powerful, and who would like to force her to marry someone she does not want to marry. it is kind of fascinating, she has documented to a certain extent what it takes to vanish completely and establish a new identity. it seems reasonably real, inasmuch as i can tell from what is written on the site. not wholly related, but through that site i discovered a new news site i believe i will be reading more of: the agonist.

i am a big fan of craigslist. it is sort of a grass roots simple bulletin board, no ads, no bullshit. i used the boston craigslist when trying to find a band, and the new york craigslist while searching for an apartment. i only recently became aware of a special section in the los angeles edition for EROTIC SERVICES, the subject lines are just phenomenal...

i'm moving pretty soon, and i've been looking around for a new apartment. i think i'm going to try to get into one of MrWong's Soup'Partments if there's an opening.

i don't know why, but this amuses me to no end. i'm not making it up. i'm not just saying that cuz i'm drunk. the hax0r economist.

Winners of the Ig Nobel Prize: The winners have all done things that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK. a few sample titles:

"Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain."
"Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth,"
"The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension."
"Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture."

these are all academic papers and there are way too many good ones to post here. way too many.

hackers and painters

this is a somewhat aged piece of internet culture that i never quite got out of my head and recently found myself re-reading, namely True Porn Clerk Stories.

the media does seem to report so much negative and so little positive...a while ago i had a brainstorm to make a website to focus more on good news. apparently i have been beat to the punch.

El Guapo: Jefe, you do not understand women. You cannot force open the petals of a flower. When the flower is ready, it opens itself up to you.
Jefe: So when do you think Carmen will "open up her flower" to you?
El Guapo: Tonight, or I will kill her!

"Kenny G will be releasing a CD fully comprised of Christmas songs. Happy birthday, Jesus - HOPE YOU LIKE CRAP!" - Norm Macdonald

i don't agree with everything the man says, but...

"F Scott Fitzgerald has an indispensable quote: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once and still retain the ability to function.' Or as I like to call it, 'O.J killed his wife, and the police are corrupt.'" - Bill Maher

i have spoken before of the merits of the internet movie database, but it has only recently come to my attention that there exists a website of the same caliber for musical matters, namely the All Music Guide.

also dave attell

dave matthews 'two-step' from the luther college, a song i listen to more often since hearing a young girl recount how it was her friend's favorite song, and she wrote the lyrics on her casket when her friend was shot and killed in the columbine massacre. Dm,Bb,C, throw in a few F,Bb,Gm,Am kind of thingies when it feels right. then noodle in Dm and life will be short but sweet for certain.

the gist of 'battle of who could care less' by ben folds 5, a song i can't get out of my head: intro: G,F,Eb,Db,Db,Eb,B,Db,(Eb,F) verse: G,F,Eb,Eb,Eb,F,Db,Eb,(f) chorus: C,Bb,F,F,C,Bb,F,F,C,Bb,F,Eb,C,G bridgything: Eb,G and you can probably wing it like i do if you made it this far. i considered posting the lyrics which i like also, but you can probably wing that too

sorry about the whole borked dns thing, in case anyone noticed. my email was down for about a week as a result, so anyone actually wanting to read this page wasn't the only one screwed.

while we're on the topic, some others of the standup/talking genre i've enjoyed, some classic, some unknown, whatever: bill hicks, chris rock, richard pryor, george carlin, steve martin, bill cosby, jerry seinfeld, john pinette, robert schimmel, henry rollins, DAVID CROSS, joe rogan, kathleen madigan, margeret smith, pablo francisco, eddie murphy, lenny bruce, woody allen, sam kinison, and others i decided to not mention. also, i like some of what henry rollins says but other parts are way too alpha male for my taste. i've always felt that things can be learned from everyone, even those with whom we do not agree.

i am ever in search of somethinginteresting...i particularly enjoy standup comedy for some reason, also so-called spoken word artists or when comedy crosses over more or less into social commentary. i have quoted bill hicks here fairly often for example. someone thankfully and recently introduced me to joe frank. i've listened to 'terminal' and 'what do women want' so far and i plan to work through the archive as quickly as my attention span will permit.

i used to have a link to an etch-a-sketch art gallery here which is now defunct, though i found a few other similarly impressive examples to share.

everybody loves the box scores, right?

"Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water." - Poor Richard

"I don't smoke pot, and I'm glad because then I can champion it without any special pleading. The reason I don't smoke pot is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations. And I got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot." - Lenny Bruce (thanks to some Freq)

lest it never see the light of day, many moons ago it became necessary and desirable to write a minimal irc client which should compile on netbsd or linux and i make no further promises. also, when i say minimal i mean it got mostly working and then i spilled water on my laptop and stopped caring, possibly not in that order.

Very well. Where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanise, he would drink... he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of 14 a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

And then they found me guilty, and then they pronounced me invisible, for a span of one year beginning on the eleventh of May in the year of Grace 2104, and they took me to a dark room beneath the courthouse to affix the mark to my forehead before turning me loose.

Two municipally paid ruffians did the job. One flung me into a chair and the other lifted the brand.

"This won't hurt a bit," the slab-jawed ape said, and thrust the brand against my forehead, and there was a moment of coolness, and that was all.

"What happens now?" I asked.

But there was no answer, and they turned away from me and left the room without a word. The door remained open. I was free to leave, or to stay and rot, as I chose. No one would speak to me, or look at me more than once, long enough to see the sign on my forehead. I was invisible.

Before Og left for a speaking engagement or book tour, Bette would write the color of each pair of pants on the zipper and number each necktie. She would then put a stack of cards in the suitcase, each identifying which pair of pants went with which tie. Og was color-blind. Things got very interesting when he was away for several days or decided to mix and match.

"We do not remember days, we remember moments." - Cesare Pavese

"I know that it is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgements. For instance, if someone approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth, one cannot refute such a viewpoint on rational grounds. But if there is agreement on certain goals and values, one can argue rationally about the means by which these objectives may be obtained." - Albert Einstein

Grief drives men to serious reflection, sharpens understanding, and softens the heart. - John Adams

I SAW THIS TWILIGHT SONZE APISODE ONEC, WHERE EVERYONE WAS FORCED TO IGNORE THIS MAN AND OWMAN...YOU SEE, IT WAS HOW THE JUSTICE SYSTEJ WORKED IN THAT WORLD OR CENTURY OR WHATEVER. THEY HAD COMMITTED SOME CRIME, AND THEREFORE, THEY WERE BRANDED WITH A KIND OF MARK ON THEIR FORHEADS WHICH INDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF TEHE WORLD THAT THESE FOLKS WERE TO BE IGNORED...

AFTER THE MAN WAS FREED FROM THIE PUNSIHMENT, THE WOMAN FOUND HI ON THE STREET, A RESEPCTABLE BUSINESS MAN SOMEHOW ESTA ABLIHSED AFTER THIS CRIME., AND HE SAID TO HIM, PLEASE, ACAN YOU TALK TO ME, REMEBER ME? AND AT FISRST HE IGNORED HER, HE PRETENDED AS THOUGH EHE COUDLN'TS EE HER. BUT THEN NHE SIAD, i SEE YOU...i see you! AND THE CAMERAS AND THOUGHT POI,CE OCLSED INON THEM BOTH...

the us census data fascinates me. you can find some nice prefab tables or build your own if you prefer. fyi, only 24.5% of the us age 25 and over has a bachelor's degree or higher.

"i always think someday they're going to make me a birthday party, and wheel out a tremendous birthday cake, and a giant naked woman is going to leap out of the cake, and hurt me, and leap back in..." - Woody Allen (again)

"Sex and death. Two things that come once in a lifetime. But, at least after death you're not nauseous." - Woody Allen

i am reminded of a quote about the great musician and social commentator Tom Lehrer, rendered by the New York Times I believe, "Mr Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." well neither is mine.

"the villain is the hero of his own story."
-mike myers' mom (if you haven't seen the "inside the actor's studio" with him, DO

i have been meaning to research the concept of deconstruction for a while. only recently did i get around to locating the tutorial i so desperately require. now, onward...

i'm quite certain that i've mentioned the straight dope before, a wonderful website containing factual answers to questions long pondered. a few things we can finally clear up are the origin of OK, the content of the male ejaculate, and why pigeons bob their heads when they walk.. more...

i was wondering just how rich the people running the United States are.

well, there is some news floating around about a group that will shortly be offering up the first human clone. the interesting thing about that group is that they believe life did not so much evolve on earth as it was say, placed here by aliens. in reading about these guys, i discovered God-U-Like, an interesting exercise in comparative religion. it amuses me to see a group like the Raelians getting mainstream press in associated press articles.

"Please try to inculcate a feeling of deep and reverential humility."
-Sant Kirpal Singh Ji via Fred

piercing have become increasingly popular as time has gone on, and i've known a number of people who have engaged in various degrees of body modification, from tattoos and piercings, to more unusual alterations. i recently discovered pictures of a friend of a friend who has split her tongue. WARNING: these pictures are really graphic, and pretty gross so make sure you are CERTAIN you want to see someone with their tongue cut in half. she includes some comments in her journal about her motives, but I have been interested in motivation for body alteration for a while now, and found a paper looking into the matter. lastly, another acquaintance has taken this idea to somewhat of an extreme, he is the only person i've ever met to actually split his tongue and was the inspiration for the above linked girl doing her's. the leaping point doesn't have any pictures, but after that beware, it also gets pretty real. (one more is an interview with the guy who performs these modifications...too interesting to pass up.

i was curious about just how much money is being spent by our government, particularly on defense and education. here are a few highlights from the FY03 Defense Budget, and here is a more complete list of Federal Programs by Agency and Account.

it seems (of course) that i am not the only one to consider whether retention of information presented on paper is better than when presented on a monitor.

Dennis Miller said, "We need a presidential candidate with the balls to say, 'Yeah I inhaled, then I drank the fucking bongwater, what are you going to do about it?'"

I suspect a great deal more will come of this in the coming weeks, but I'm reading a very interesting book right now, "John Adams" by David McCullough which has given me a certain inspiration I haven't felt in quite a while if ever. Sometime soon I will probably expound further on the reasons for my enthusiasm, but for now all I can do is recommend reading it yourself.

so i finally got around to installing the lunix on my primary desktop machine (slackware) and I was playing around with KDE and Konqueror, the built-in browser. i was somewhat stunned to notice that there were about 3 or 4 tags on this page that didn't properly close links, which Konqueror picked up but every other browser just fixed silently. The error was a/ instead of /a, so despite the fact that i only use like 4 tags on this page, i managed to fuck up the html anyway. also, what's up with IE and Phoenix getting my back like that?

the advertising slogan generator is good for at least a few laughs.

the lack of dates on this page always makes me feel better about not adding anything for some arbitrary length of time. who cares anyway? i haven't even descended through every link here, i'm sure no one else has. if only i could take the time to read thoroughly instead of following my mind as it races away with some other topic it will never full explore.

the texas death row links have always been popular (probably for the same reason traffic slows down at an accident) but for those of you who think you can stomach other horrific details of how our justice system works, try stop prisoner rape, don't forget to peruse the 'survivor stories'.

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park and when you choose to go on it you think its real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, it has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and its very loud and its fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: is this real or is this just a ride?

And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say: hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because: this is just a ride. And we...

kill those people.

'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account, and my family... This has to be real.'

It's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice, no effort, no work, no job, no savings of money, a choice right now between fear and love.

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off, the eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."

-bill hicks (dead, age 32, of pancreatic cancer)

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:58:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Alexander Viro
To: Nicholas Wourms
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: What's left over.

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Nicholas Wourms wrote:

> slow or you are out of diskspace, too bad! I'm sure I'm not the only one
> who is tired of hearing people whine about "bloat" wrt the sources and
> demanding that features they don't use be ignored. No one (non-core)

One look at the From:
understanding has blossomed
.procmailrc grows

the so-called Rosetta Stone for Unix is this nifty table that will help you figure out how to translate commands from one Unix to the next. (thanks mowse)

my totally unwarranted but spontaneous disclaimer is that nothing on this site pretends to be new or timely, just interesting. anyway, many moons ago there was a story circulating about a guy playing chess on the interweb who received a righteous smackdown from an anonymous player he believes is bobby fischer. i love the possibility of this being true, regardless of the actual truth behind it.

i have to say i was pretty surprised when i fired up the win32 version of openoffice, and it just worked. for those of you who don't know, this is a completely free (LGPL) office suite which can read w0rd docs, xls, and powerpoint presentations.

i have this ancient mac lcIII and recently we took the liberty of installing netBSD on it, specifically the mac68k variant. apart from the painful slowness (at times) of the machine, it is actually pretty happy running unix and of course that is just plain cool. i am considering moving somethinginteresting over to the box eventually, just for sheer novelty. it is currently serving up a copy of the website at home using im-httpd, the only web server i found that was minimal enough to compile in a reasonable amount of time on this computing dynamo. i had to hax0r the source though, since it doesn't support GET /, only GET /index.html. having said that, things are serving at a surprisingly tolerable pace and we may have a new home s00n.

although i appreciate the submission, absolutely not. there are a zillion weblog apps out there but i'm totally disinterested in having a bloated backend with mysql/postgresql and a bunch of perl crap to drive the whole thing. the whole point is to keep it completely stark and simple, sans any ancillary information like dates, titles, and especially comments. this way the only thing on there is the piece of information itself, and people have to regard that independently without being able to look at other people's comments for an opinion to feed their own. make sense?

nad

damn, 42k already.
a) make some sort of archive, be it by hand or something more sophisticated
b) just don't do anything and see how big the thing will get
c) huh?

i rediscovered this great paper called A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux which demonstrates the creation of a 45 byte elf executable that linux will still uhhh, execute. there are some great tricks towards the end like hiding the entire program header inside the elf header itself, but you should really read the paper to appreciate it. just to throw a few more links in, check out the source for the final program and hey, how about the elf spec?

the musical selections for the day are an orchestra made entirely of vegetables, a symphony of cellphones, and lastly, (!) a LEGO HARPSICHORD!

grepping every (source) file in some tree (if recursive grep doesn't do it or is unavailable):
a) find . -name "*.[ch]" -exec grep -H "int turd" {} \;
b) for i in `find . -name "*.[ch]"`; do grep -H $i; done
c) ./yermom -h


Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water.

After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result -- all the apes are sprayed with cold water. This continues through several more attempts. Pretty soon, when another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes all try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water.

Remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes that had been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because that's the way they've always done it and that's the way it's always been around here.

And that's how policy begins....

-- from everything2, attributed to a random email forward

i am fascinated by mit's opencourseware project which is still in the developmental phase but promises to be an amazing resource when more courses are added. for those of you unfamiliar, they are publishing all course materials for MIT courses (duh) online, for free.

at least one person noticed that dns was b0rked the weekend. oh well, these things to do happen.

while i truly would love to use an open-source browser instead of opera, i generally find mozilla to be a bloated sack of dogshit...however, my life has changed. i will now use (dead link removed) Firebird (formerly Phoenix), the fastest browser i have ever seen. it is a seriously slimmed down version of mozilla and CNN has never loaded so fast (not that you should be reading CNN anyway, but it is also a bloated piece of dogshit so if it loads quick you KNOW you're good). anyway, i highly suggest you download it immediately: current releases for both win32 and the LUNIX(!)

a great submission (paluka): really interesting interview (cached version) with the Reverend Maynard James Keenan of Tool, who we love, love, love. if you haven't heard them before, your appreciation of his and their genius will be somewhat limited.

it is difficult to suspend judgment when trying to make a humorous comment about the monkey man who runs our country. dammit, i couldn't do it. well anyway, freakin' hilarious. hopefully a few of you metalheads can appreciate, and maybe some of you not?

hopefully you've received at least 1 e-invitation, then you can appreciate the joke.

i actually wrote something: a command-line windows sniffer using raw sockets instead of pcap, so no pre-installation of anything is required. my guess is it will work on nt, definitely 2k, and xp. really anything with winsock 2 support. poorsniff.c, poorsniff.h, a readme, and even a a binary (9k) for those of you who can't be bothered to download lcc-win32. and because i am such a smooth pimp daddy, i gave poorsniff IT'S VERY OWN PAGE.

weird [jpeg/63k]

we love things like metaspy which allow us to see people searching the web, but even moreso when it is Google who is hooking us up. Is it voyeuristic?

unmask is a piece of software which statistically analyzes text and stores it with an identity. you can then compare an anonymous piece of text with your data store and determine who the author is, theoretically. it uses a variety of criteria to make this determination, and regardless of how well it works (still undetermined at this point), it is a cool idea and worth examining further imho. while we're at it, the company is interesting as well as are some of their other products, such as spike

damn, we're making ripping off images a habit! another one i could not resist, try as i decided not to... norml is the hint, and don't forget the freedom rally y0.

an amusing image courtesy of rense.com, which is a strange, strange website with a lot of alarmist articles about conspiracies and UFO landings. despite that, there are occasionally interesting, factual articles and it is worth visiting periodically IMHO biotch.

i continue to want to believe that a clean, renewable energy source is out there, and to this end i read zpenergy, a site attempting to rationally examine claims of zero-point energy generation, or so-called "free energy". there was an interesting article about an inventor who claims to have built an electric car that does not require recharging. sounds too good to be true based on his page, but interesting nonetheless.

recently, there was an interesting interview with Larry Wall on slashdot, to which i will link directly despite my better judgment. there was an unusually interesting question about how it is possible for a technical and rational individual (such as Larry) to believe in God and how his religious views have influenced his work on perl. i find this topic to be fascinating for a variety of reasons, and without going into my personal views here is an interesting quote someone posted in the comments:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
- Carl Sagan

someone made a site that tracks amazon.com items and websites via alexa and graphs the rankings over time. i think that is interesting.

i was idly wondering about seal's scars after hearing that 'kissed by a rose' song on the radio. i heard the ritual/ceremonial crap a while ago, but as it turns out they are caused by lupus.

"I'm an alien from another sphere. The thing I like about the earth is the range of colors -- fantastic to mundane; brilliant to dull. As I was penetrating the ozone, I c.. perchanced to notice the orange peel-like quality of the light playing upon the s.. the ocean. I gotta go right now; someone is videotaping me in my spaceship."

here is an interesting paper on code style and error checking, i picked up from the linux-kernel mailing list in an argument over whether close() should return something or not.

On Sat, 13 Jul 2002, Alexander Viro wrote:
>
> So I'd just do
>
> vi fs/dcache.c -c '/|= DCACHE_R/d|/nr_un/pu|<|x'
>
> and be done with that. Linus?

Done.

For future reference - don't anybody else try to send patches as vi scripts, please. Yes, it's manly, but let's face it, so is bungee-jumping with the cord tied to your testicles.

Linus

a haiku recently acquired regarding the deadliest of japanese cuisine (fugu=blowfish): "I cannot see her tonight/I have to give her up/So I will eat fugu"

here is a horrifying website that allows you to map the radius of destruction a nuclear blast would cause (variable megatonnage too) from the epicenter of your choice. (update, i think they took down the part that let you put in a city because it was too scary ... LAME)

i hate to endorse something that will work with Internet Explorer but not Opera, but i have to admit that stumbleupon is pretty cool. it is basically a random button for your browser which will send you to sites rated by other users (and you). at least they support mozilla, so they're trying. you choose categories of sites you want to visit, in my case just about ALL OF THEM.

"If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there."

If cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl

i'm trying to change, but this is closer to my life than i would care to admit

"I don't like porno movies. They piss me off. First they show a great-looking naked woman who starts playing with herself and while I'm watching, she sort of becomes my girlfriend. And then, suddenly, in walks a guy with a big dick, and he starts fucking my girlfriend. It pisses me off." - George Carlin

"If my film makes one more person miserable, I'll feel I've done my job." - Woody Allen

[Alvy addresses a pair of strangers on the street.]
Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Stranger: And I'm exactly the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see! Wow! That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

-- from Annie Hall, try using the imdb sometime

wha't d&d character are you? (i came out a Chaotic Good Elf Bard Mage)

have you already read everything? how about recaps of simpsons episodes?

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." - Galileo Galilei

1 small cheese extra thick crust no cheese
1 large pepperoni extra thick crust
3 orders of twisty bread
2 liter coke
2 liter diet coke

support norml (national organization for the reform of marijuana laws) "The tyranny and the bullshit has gone on too long!" -tenacious d

damn, write a real back end already

According to Creighton, cats in the wild are loners. According to the experts, it seems to be more a matter of motivation than lack of intelligence.

"Say, Pooh, why aren't you busy?", I said.
"Because it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"Yes, but----"
"Why ruin it?" he said.
"But you could be doing something Important," I said.
"I am," said Pooh.
"Oh? Doing what?"
"Listening," he said.
"Listening to what?"
"To the birds. And that squirrel over there."
"What are they saying?" I asked.
"That it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"But you know that already," I said.
"Yes, but it's always good to hear that somebody else thing so, too," he replied.
"Well, you could be spending your time getting Educated by listening to the radio, instead," I said.
"That thing?"
"Certainly. How else will you know what's going on in the world?" I said.
"By going outside," said Pooh.
"ER...well..." (Click) "Now just listen to this Pooh."
"Thirty thousand people were killed today when five jumbo airliners collided over downtown Los Angeles...," the Radio announced.
"What does that tell you about the world?" asked Pooh.
"Hmm. You're right." (Click)
"What are the birds saying now?" I asked.
"That it's a nice day," said Pooh.

-- from the Tao of Pooh (which you should read)

apparently, game #11982 is the only unsolvable hand of freecell

Ideals of Rastafarianism include adherence to nonviolence, no accumulation of personal material wealth, vegetarianism, consuming food unpolluted by industrial chemicals, dressing in clothes made from natural fibers, daily Bible consultations. The growth of hair into dreadlocks embodies these principles by allowing the hair to assume a natural, unprocessed form. An optional part of Rastafarianism is the smoking of marijuana, believed to aid in interpreting decoding the Bible.

"The entire world drinks alcohol, that's why there are so many wars. Herb is much better for you." -- Bob Marley

i usually prefer maps.yahoo for directions since it is much more minimal, but mapquest has this ridiculous feature which allows you to view an aerial photo of the address after putting it in. Try it out. Imagine what the military shit must be like if they have this stuff up for public consumption.

check out this everything node containing a 9/11 timeline with some interesting facts (with sources). Also, mentioned therein: the article about Osama Bin Laden's hospital stay in Dubai, Pakistan, complete with family visits and CIA meetings. Ya, all bullshit of course.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein

damn, this shit is crazy! check out WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. There's a lot of stuff I could link to directly, but just for starters here is a picture of a "palestinian terrorist" wearing what looks a hell of a lot like a star of david and how about an article with a bit of info about Enron giving the Taliban millions of dollars knowing that they were harboring Bin Laden! I'm going to have to do a lot more reading on this site, and so should you. Cross reference this stuff against more mainstream news sites and you'll see that a lot of it links up (in the cases where the mainstream actually covers these stories beyond small one-time blurbs). FUCKED UP MAN! RECOGNIZE!

i advise you to read Michael Moore's newest book, Stupid White Men. He has a lot of interesting things to say about the United States and the way we live here. You will be at the very least educated and hopefully incited to action. Read more about it on his website.

from President Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation, January 1961: "In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." The Disclosure Project is working on some related problems which most people will probably scoff at, but maybe you should read the website and DECIDE FOR YOURSELF INSTEAD OF ONLY LISTENING TO WHAT IS BEING FED TO YOU.

fark you

for those of us in the US, this is how our laws are made.

recently Tool won a grammy (best metal performance, schism) and Justin Chancellor thanked "Alex Grey for doing the artwork and my dad for doing my mom".

i have refrained from posting articles, since this not really a news site. Having said that, i read an article in the New Yorker Archive about the Bin Laden family and various ties to the West (which has since unfortunately gone dead), including the incredibly wealthy investment group run by the Bin Laden family out of Saudi Arabia, the private jet that was sent to the US to pick up all of Bin Laden family members immediately after the 9/11 attacks (during the no-fly 3 day period after the attacks, and before they were interviewed by the FBI), and other interesting facts you should probably know but will probably continue to ignore after reading the first three paragraphs of the article and quickly losing interest. Since the article is gone, Google will reveal details with a modicum of effort since I could not find the actual article text, though the incidents are well-reported at this point.

oh j0y, oh rapture, Google has a news page.

"If and when the runaway 7-year-old cow is captured, Mayor Charlie Luken plans to give it the key to the city."

"It is far more valuable in my opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism. [I hope we] will be able to tell our son that his father carried the flag to end terrorism, raising an unprecedented demand among people from all countries not for revenge but for the values we all share: love, compassion, friendship and citizenship far transcending the so-called clash of civilizations." - Daniel Pearl's wife, when asked about revenge for the murder of her husband.

it occurs to me that some may have not heard about the Google programming contest. As if we needed yet another reason that Google kicks complete ass.

it's pseudo-pr0n, but I just have to put it up anyway: god help us all

this page is almost 20k, which is almost my arbitrarily self-imposed limit for how big it should be. which means, pretty soon, i'm going to have make an archive or something. huh-huh, i said scale.

i think that web browsing fullscreen is a markedly more interesting and visceral experience than with the constant reminder of your OS around the corners of the screen. High probability that hitting F11 will let you decide for yourself. PS, new 0pera 0wnZ j00

i recently added the UPI Wire to my regularly-reload list. I tried to quit for a while, but I still go to Slashdot with some mount of regularity. kuro5hin is a cool alternative if you care.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." -Albert Einstein

"Isn't it interesting, that the two drugs that are legal, alcohol and cigarettes...two drugs which do absolutely nothing for you whatsoever...and drugs that grow naturally upon this planet, drugs that open your eyes up to make you realize how you're being fucked every day of your life...those drugs are against the law? Wow! Coincidence? I don't know." -Bill Hicks

"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty." -George W. Bush

he was a conscientious objector man!

something from everything: "PCP acutely induces a psychotic state in which one becomes withdrawn, autistic-like, negativistic, and unable to maintain a cognitive set, and manifests concrete, impoverished, idiosyncratic, and bizzare responses to proverbs and projective testing. Some people show catatonic posturing. These schizophrenic-like alterations in brain functioning goes beyond the symptom level; any person under the influence of even a small amount of PCP will have profound alterations of higher emotional functions affecting judgement and cognition."

for some reason, i get a kick out of looking at the most e-mailed pictures on Yahoo's news section.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn't reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn't waste anything. This is called embodying the light. What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job? If you don't understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret. -Lao-tzu

the WayBack machine is an archive of websites back pretty far in some cases, check out 1998 Google.

this will be a placeholder for the old link to Fravia's site, should it ever become accessible again...try googling for it periodically.

morse code is one of those things I have a vague desire to learn, but for no real reason.

Steven Wright is a very funny man, you should seek out his wisdom, and read his story which I recently discovered "The Beach". (hint: scroll down dumbass)

legislation recently introduced in the House of Representatives, "To require the induction into the Armed Forces of young men registered under the Military Selective Service Act, and to authorize young women to volunteer, to receive basic military training and education for a period of up to one year."

i play the guitar. often, i am too lazy to figure out chords, so I just use this.

i'm infatuated with websites that have (reasonably) steady updates of just cooL stuff, ie sweet c0de. Although, it isn't steady, you might like a taste of the straight dope. Here's a sample.

It is said that soon after his enlightenment, the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the extraordinary radiance and peacefulness of his presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?" "No," said the Buddha. "Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?" Again the Buddha answered, "No." "Are you a man?" "No." "Well, my friend, what then are you?" The Buddha replied, "I am awake."

a great story about al Viro recovering a linux box after someone deletes libc

sample interesting item from straightdope: fighting ignorance since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)

...the only online dictionary i use. techweb is cool, but is specifically a technical encyclopedia, not a dictionary.

no chronology, no dates, nothing deprecated or less interesting because it's older. changes happen not only at the top ya know.

interesting new website to check out, called News From Babylon. Updated LOTS.

i suggest reading the jargon file, and while you're there, don't overlook the hacker folklore section, especially the story of mel. the hacker profile is also interesting. (IMHO)

another amusing link for the non-flash-impaired.

more proof that Google is the coolest search engine ever.

Person who say it cannot be done should not interrupt person doing it. --Chinese Proverb (after gazing upon the glibc c0de, i felt obliged to seek out alternatives, hence above discovered link.

oo oo, i'm down with the linux kernel. read kerneltrap, lwn.net. I'd link to it directly but they don't have a "latest" link. Bastards. Oh yeah, linux-kernel is pretty ridiculous, if you think you can handle it. Lastly, use the source douche.

discover your alignment. being a d&d dork isn't mandatory, but helps.

screw it, as long as we're on the fight club kick we might as well read the whole script.

i read the news a lot; more than anything else probably. usually reloading drudge often as a first stop. have to swing by cnn just to make sure we get the daily dose from corporate america (AOL TimeWarner), then maybe the bbc for an objective opinion of the US and our antics. i tried out worldnews for a while, which has an interesting gathering of international newspapers to choose from. Alternate perspectives are GOOD. Finally, the traditional reuters headlines from Yahoo. i guess i shoot over to entertainment at Yahoo too, just because I can't help myself. oh well, nobody's perfect.

oldish but goodish story of a bet: if one guy can eat nothing but PEANUT BUTTER, FROSTING, AND WATER for a week straight, the other has to go spend two days in a row from opening to closing in a home depot. That's 16 hours a day in case you don't know home depot's hours off the top of your head (Luckily they did it before the 24 hours a day policy took effect). (links recently relocated to creatively titled, typical crap

i found transcripts for Nixon's conversations with Prime Minister Zhou of the People's Republic of China from the history visit in 1972. There were classified for a long time, but declassified in 1994. Pretty interesting to see what world leaders talk about. There is also specific reference to them getting drunk the last night and talking shit.

i recently volunteered for an organization that builds computers for people who can't afford them using free software only. the hardware can be kinda low end, so this came in handy. Looking back now a few years later, KITE has alas vanished it would appear.

"When a theory achieves nothing but the opposite of its alleged goals, yet its advocates remain undeterred, you may be certain that it is not a conviction or an 'ideal,' but a rationalization." - Ayn Rand

memepool is good for a few things, particularly helping to unravel the mystery of Britney Spears' breasts (not for the flash impaired) Make sure you go look at liquid generation afterwards. Play the games, which I'm not even going to try to link to, and you'll see why.

fight club and calvin & hobbes the0ry

turns out that the readline library is released under the GPL whereas BitchX and the other irc clients are BSD. According to the GPL FAQ, you can't link to a GPL library unless your ahem, "proggy" is GPL t00. Thanks Cloak.

i once read of a backdoor implemented by Ken Thompson that was severely badass. I found out about it via the jargon file which is a good way to kill some time anyway (read the story of mel while you're there), but he discusses it himself in this 'classic' from the ACM.

Internet Explorer is an abomination and I refuse to even link to it on general principle. You have to take a stand sometime you know? Opera on the other hand, freakin rocks. Actually try to use it, don't just say, "I tried it a while ago and didn't like it." Oh yeah, there's always wget.

this is entirely too much fun.

did you know that all the command-line editing stuff (end of line, beginning of line, delete next word, delete last word, etc) in ircii (and therefore epic and BitchX) is implemented manually? ie, they wrote it themselves instead of using readline(). It downloads the source and looks for itself. Try input.c (ircii eggsample). If you don't know what command-line editing is, please obtain clue via rtfm n0w.

hoofreakinray, learning to use ncurses. here's a moderately useful tutorial and another version of that simple resolver that has a curses interface. It's kinda busted, but should be helpful for at least getting a vague idea of how to write an ncurses enabled applimication.

loadable kernel module trojan-style: knark, (formerly at http://www.sekure.net/), adore from teso, and kis, formerly at http://www.uberhax0r.net. Also, try reading about runtime kernel patching in phrack 58 and all sorts of crazy coding shit on Silvio's page (now gone, formerly http://www.big.net.au/~silvio), for instance more about kmem patching and elf virii. Yes, all of this is old. So what? (a few links have vanished, you'll have to search a bit)

i need to make a cgi form for submissions. i know, leave me alone.

if you don't believe me that everything kicks ass (DICK) then read this one. If you still don't think so, you're probably beyond hope. At least give it a shot. Ok, fine. Don't. See if I give a shit. >

everything KICKS SO MUCH ASS, i'm going to link to it thrice.

yeah, so maybe it's a little like memepool. who cares? like you don't need one more site to reload to see if something new has been posted in the last 10 minutes.

i was going to make somethinginteresting.org (why do people link to shit when they're already on the page?) look snazzy, but fuck it. the whole point is to go read all these other interesting things.

go read about free unlimited energy sources and how the government and military are preventing you from ever using them. The Disclosure Project

a simple resolver by nad for when nslookup is missing: resolv.c

busybox ownz. Get the latest source here. Also, compare asmutils@linuxassembly.org reproductions of unix tools all in assembly, including libc! Not exactly the same, but didja know some people did that in perl too?