Log -- David Chess

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Sometimes we enjoy spam.

Subject: Append considerable spicery to your life

Considerable spicery!

Subject: A short time ago queer juveniles
we are proud to offer luxurous project

Ah, luxurous project!

This reminds me of a story.

And when Keda points her microdish at the sky again, her programs proudly report that they have driven off the digital assault with only minor resource losses (although the financial impact on the other front has been more severe), and that they have composed a poem.

you hellbender azalea to dell artistry
so blinn? cottonseed din
panjandrum Qunwieldy test the tnt, eta
credo a hinduism fad
by Ugroundskeep pregnant. diaper
pascal, cain we needn't
very, as via are or genera

Keda tells them to keep at it.

Are people around you saying "tops down" instead of "top-down" these days? (As in, "This is the kind of system that really has to be designed tops down.") Or is it some odd local thing?

I suspect it's due to an amusing generalization of an error, where in someone's mind "Bottoms up!" (the common toast) fuses with "bottom-up" (the opposite of "top-down"), and then by a back formation we get "tops down".

Isn't nature wonderful?

("Here's to the sun: oft may it rise! Bottoms up, boys; here's mud in your eyes!")

Various updates to the Sims Stories list, including a Cool New Logo on the page itself (ph33r my l33t f0t0sh0p ski11z!), Brandi goes platinum (and other stories from that house), Double Beds come to the Bright house, Vandalism at Rooms to Let (more f0t0sh0p), and just now posted, Transitions, also at Rooms to Let (Joan goes off to college, and Sandy moves in with amusing results).

The game continues to hold me firmly in its grip. And I haven't even installed the new "Night Life" expansion pack (although I did get it for my birthday; did I already mention that?).

Recent news:

I think that I shall never try
a food so tasty as a pie
I'm trying to find the website you used to talk about where participants deconstruct each other's posted visuals, or whatever that process should be called. I remember it had "baby" in the title: does it still exist? (I thought maybe "neobaby" but can't find any such beast extant.)
Curvature of the Earth Overwhelmed With Sims
"If they linked the anti-missile lasers with the in-seat entertainment systems" ... Now that's an incentive for flying! In-flight Halo!!!!
Game mods we'd love to see.

Oh dear, dear, dear! Our research service is very slow, I'm afraid. The site you're looking for is Metababy, and hopefully you've known that for a month now.

Do you think there will ever be in-flight electronics that let passengers digitally interact? (Virtual poker, Halo deathmatch, racing simulations, maybe even Wikis! But of course no teledildonics, narf narf. (Oops, mind tumbling into the gutter again.))

I dreamed last night that we were buying the little daughter a horse, and only at the last minute did it occur to us that there wasn't really anywhere to keep it, and that maintaining it would be kind of expensive. It was nice to wake up...

*8)

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

For what we do presage is riot in grosse,
for we are brethren of the Rosie Crosse;
We have the Mason Word and second sight.
Things for to come we can fortell aright.

So I got this Very Cool piece of mail today, in the mail, from the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, and on the front it says "What's the secret?" and it opens up in amusing ways (they've put some effort into the User Experience aspects here) and it's got high production values and cool pictures of like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man all over it, and stars and baroque patterns and stuff all over the background, and it's got a password ("N494") that I can go and enter on the Secret dot org and stuff, and on the website they've got like pdf's of their pamphlets and order forms for their correspondance courses on secret knowledge passed down from the Egyptian mystery religions, and calendars of events for your local Rosicrucian temples, and all sorts of stuff.

I find all of this really really appealing at some level. (Have I talked about this before?) I'm sure in lots of nearby universes I spend my life happily (or tragically) delving into the secret wisdom of the past, the opening up of personal and cosmic potential through dedicated Inner Work, cultivating the community of esoteric seekers, and all like that. It sounds like so much fun.

("Proposing a New Approach to Mind, Consciousness, and Reason", by Robert E. Watson, B.A. (OXON), MSc, from the online journal Rose+Croix, 2005.)

More on the AMORC and the Rosicrucians in general.

Also! I got a late birthday present that M had ordered for me and forgotten about and then it came. It's this amazingly cool PlayStation 2 game called Katamari Damacy! (Although it should really be "Katamari Damashii".) And it involves using the two analog joysticks to control this little green guy as he rolls everything in sight (soy sauce packets, matches, thumbtacks, candy, playing cards, Lego blocks, pencils, batteries, snails, crabs) into a ball that gets bigger and bigger as the game progresses (I'm still at the "rolling around on tabletops gathering up stationary" level, but I gather that later on you're like rolling up buses and skyscrapers and entire cities and stuff).

The art and dialog and general atmosphere is bizarre and surreal and hysterical, like I dunno Peter Max with a really bad hangover. It's wonderful!

Let's all become Rosicrucians!

Rosicrucians playing Katamari Damacy!!!!!

Monday, September 26, 2005

I tell ya, it's extremely motivating to do all the thinking and speculating 'way in advance, but put off the actual implementation until a day or two before the deadline. Cuts down on the spare time for weblogging though, narf narf!

I am the Universe! But we knew that, eh? (Quizilla quiz.)

Today's flickr lesson in the structure of reality: the clusters of desire are "woman girl beauty", "love passion longing", "sanfrancisco muni streetcar", and "hand light".

And finally in the latest Sims developments Brandi Letourneau is our second PermaPlatinum character (and now she wants to get back into the world-domination game; I guess rhinophrenology got old fast).

And that's all! You're welcome to stick around and play with the fragments of ultimate being and munch on the (what are those things called?) things, but I've got to get busy! Or perhaps get to sleep!

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Crude humor, suggestive themes, violence.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Once again I find myself searching in vain for really good insults to scream at the car radio during the news.

Most of our insults seem to be about taboo body parts and bodily functions (which isn't really what I want), or about people's intelligence. But intelligence isn't really The Thing. I mean, I know plenty of people who are not all that intelligent, but whose company I far prefer to certain people of much higher intelligence, and who (most relevantly) I would be insulting if I were to compare them to those people (rather than the other way around).

When screaming insults at, say, a lying corrupt politician, it seems like there ought to be insults that refer directly to the qualities of lying and corruption rather than excrement or low intelligence. Karl Rove isn't an idiot (we'd probably all be better off if he were). He's a scoundrel, a villain, a rotter.

Now why do all the insults we have that concern moral character rather than intelligence or comparisons to excrement sound so quaint and dated? I will resist drawing the obvious conclusions about The Moral Decay of Society.

But what's the actual explanation?

Got a wonderful fortune in a fortune cookie the other day; I meant to save it so I could scan it and post it, but I forgot to. It said:

You are very pretty.

which I thought was sweet.

Hubris o' the Day:

**The color Blue is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company

Also here, and see the MeFi thread. Thanks to Ian, who noticed it cited on the Old New Thing.

Today's flickr observation: the clusters for "David" are (logically enough in retrospect): "florence, italy, michelangelo", "family, dad, mom", "wedding, reception, groom", "friends, portrait, people", and "beach, vacation, florida". (Although "Florida" is perhaps a bit surprising.)

Eventually word count dot org started working again, and I can report that the neighborhood of "chess" is:

boiled clinging thanked chemist chess factions terrorism doubted auckland

which is a bit worrying.

I also found "mighty skipperish marsh weekends exploded vivid mice offshore". Just in case you were wondering.

News Quote o' the day: "The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025".

From the little daughter: The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés:

Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
86. Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.

(Oh, and the clusters for "sleeping" are basically cats, dogs, babies, black and white portraits, and the NYC subway. It's the structure of the universe, man.)

The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis!

For Sims fans, I've made a page with links to all my Sims stories (or all the ones that I remembered to put links to on that page, anyway). Includes at least one not yet linked from the log here (because I just posted it today): The Bright Household. Just brief notes on my experiences running one of the pre-built households that came with the University expansion; it was fun.

Look behind you!

IT'S REI!!!
A duck!
No. Every time you say that I fall for it, and this time there's nothing there either.
I'm not falling for that one again.
chess
You were eaten by a grue!
Actually, don't look just yet . . .
Why, what can you . . . hey, my wife's gone all crystallized, wise guy!
Look behind you! They were all shouting at once; but it was too late, much too late. Before he could do anything, Iris had performed on him the much-feared "Rear Admiral".
nomad
It's a Perl Nomic! http://www.perlnomic.org/ Aaaah!
a monkey on a bicycle!
another computer

Good answers all (Iris Chacon?). I am thoroughly freaked out by (and highly recommend figuring out, if you're inclined that way) the Perl Nomic. I wonder if it was at all inspired by my Agora thesis? (local copy)

	log (2005/09/23 to 2005/09/29)
older log newer log reply about archive search random home words site news talking place login How high?	Thursday, September 29, 2005 Sometimes we enjoy spam. Subject: Append considerable spicery to your life Considerable spicery! Subject: A short time ago queer juveniles we are proud to offer luxurous project Ah, luxurous project! This reminds me of a story. And when Keda points her microdish at the sky again, her programs proudly report that they have driven off the digital assault with only minor resource losses (although the financial impact on the other front has been more severe), and that they have composed a poem. you hellbender azalea to dell artistry so blinn? cottonseed din panjandrum Qunwieldy test the tnt, eta credo a hinduism fad by Ugroundskeep pregnant. diaper pascal, cain we needn't very, as via are or genera Keda tells them to keep at it. Are people around you saying "tops down" instead of "top-down" these days? (As in, "This is the kind of system that really has to be designed tops down.") Or is it some odd local thing? I suspect it's due to an amusing generalization of an error, where in someone's mind "Bottoms up!" (the common toast) fuses with "bottom-up" (the opposite of "top-down"), and then by a back formation we get "tops down". Isn't nature wonderful? ("Here's to the sun: oft may it rise! Bottoms up, boys; here's mud in your eyes!") Various updates to the Sims Stories list, including a Cool New Logo on the page itself (ph33r my l33t f0t0sh0p ski11z!), Brandi goes platinum (and other stories from that house), Double Beds come to the Bright house, Vandalism at Rooms to Let (more f0t0sh0p), and just now posted, Transitions, also at Rooms to Let (Joan goes off to college, and Sandy moves in with amusing results). The game continues to hold me firmly in its grip. And I haven't even installed the new "Night Life" expansion pack (although I did get it for my birthday; did I already mention that?). Recent news: I think that I shall never try a food so tasty as a pie I'm trying to find the website you used to talk about where participants deconstruct each other's posted visuals, or whatever that process should be called. I remember it had "baby" in the title: does it still exist? (I thought maybe "neobaby" but can't find any such beast extant.) Curvature of the Earth Overwhelmed With Sims "If they linked the anti-missile lasers with the in-seat entertainment systems" ... Now that's an incentive for flying! In-flight Halo!!!! Game mods we'd love to see. Oh dear, dear, dear! Our research service is very slow, I'm afraid. The site you're looking for is Metababy, and hopefully you've known that for a month now. Do you think there will ever be in-flight electronics that let passengers digitally interact? (Virtual poker, Halo deathmatch, racing simulations, maybe even Wikis! But of course no teledildonics, narf narf. (Oops, mind tumbling into the gutter again.)) I dreamed last night that we were buying the little daughter a horse, and only at the last minute did it occur to us that there wasn't really anywhere to keep it, and that maintaining it would be kind of expensive. It was nice to wake up... 8) Tuesday, September 27, 2005 For what we do presage is riot in grosse, for we are brethren of the Rosie Crosse; We have the Mason Word and second sight. Things for to come we can fortell aright. So I got this Very Cool piece of mail today, in the mail, from the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, and on the front it says "What's the secret?" and it opens up in amusing ways (they've put some effort into the User Experience aspects here) and it's got high production values and cool pictures of like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man all over it, and stars and baroque patterns and stuff all over the background, and it's got a password ("N494") that I can go and enter on the Secret dot org and stuff, and on the website they've got like pdf's of their pamphlets and order forms for their correspondance courses on secret knowledge passed down from the Egyptian mystery religions, and calendars of events for your local Rosicrucian temples, and all sorts of stuff. I find all of this really really appealing at some level. (Have I talked about this before?) I'm sure in lots of nearby universes I spend my life happily (or tragically) delving into the secret wisdom of the past, the opening up of personal and cosmic potential through dedicated Inner Work, cultivating the community of esoteric seekers, and all like that. It sounds like so much fun. ("Proposing a New Approach to Mind, Consciousness, and Reason", by Robert E. Watson, B.A. (OXON), MSc, from the online journal Rose+Croix, 2005.) More on the AMORC and the Rosicrucians in general. Also! I got a late birthday present that M had ordered for me and forgotten about and then it came. It's this amazingly cool* PlayStation 2 game called Katamari Damacy! (Although it should really be "Katamari Damashii".) And it involves using the two analog joysticks to control this little green guy as he rolls everything in sight (soy sauce packets, matches, thumbtacks, candy, playing cards, Lego blocks, pencils, batteries, snails, crabs) into a ball that gets bigger and bigger as the game progresses (I'm still at the "rolling around on tabletops gathering up stationary" level, but I gather that later on you're like rolling up buses and skyscrapers and entire cities and stuff). The art and dialog and general atmosphere is bizarre and surreal and hysterical, like I dunno Peter Max with a really bad hangover. It's wonderful! Let's all become Rosicrucians! Rosicrucians playing Katamari Damacy!!!!! Monday, September 26, 2005 I tell ya, it's extremely motivating to do all the thinking and speculating 'way in advance, but put off the actual implementation until a day or two before the deadline. Cuts down on the spare time for weblogging though, narf narf! I am the Universe! But we knew that, eh? (Quizilla quiz.) Today's flickr lesson in the structure of reality: the clusters of desire are "woman girl beauty", "love passion longing", "sanfrancisco muni streetcar", and "hand light". And finally in the latest Sims developments Brandi Letourneau is our second PermaPlatinum character (and now she wants to get back into the world-domination game; I guess rhinophrenology got old fast). And that's all! You're welcome to stick around and play with the fragments of ultimate being and munch on the (what are those things called?) things, but I've got to get busy! Or perhaps get to sleep! Sunday, September 25, 2005 Saturday, September 24, 2005 Once again I find myself searching in vain for really good insults to scream at the car radio during the news. Most of our insults seem to be about taboo body parts and bodily functions (which isn't really what I want), or about people's intelligence. But intelligence isn't really The Thing. I mean, I know plenty of people who are not all that intelligent, but whose company I far prefer to certain people of much higher intelligence, and who (most relevantly) I would be insulting if I were to compare them to those people (rather than the other way around). When screaming insults at, say, a lying corrupt politician, it seems like there ought to be insults that refer directly to the qualities of lying and corruption rather than excrement or low intelligence. Karl Rove isn't an idiot (we'd probably all be better off if he were). He's a scoundrel, a villain, a rotter. Now why do all the insults we have that concern moral character rather than intelligence or comparisons to excrement sound so quaint and dated? I will resist drawing the obvious conclusions about The Moral Decay of Society. But what's the actual explanation? Got a wonderful fortune in a fortune cookie the other day; I meant to save it so I could scan it and post it, but I forgot to. It said: You are very pretty. which I thought was sweet. Hubris o' the Day: The color Blue is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company Also here, and see the MeFi thread. Thanks to Ian, who noticed it cited on the Old New Thing. Today's flickr observation: the clusters for "David" are (logically enough in retrospect): "florence, italy, michelangelo", "family, dad, mom", "wedding, reception, groom", "friends, portrait, people", and "beach, vacation, florida". (Although "Florida" is perhaps a bit surprising.) Eventually word count dot org started working again, and I can report that the neighborhood of "chess" is: boiled clinging thanked chemist chess factions terrorism doubted auckland which is a bit worrying. I also found "mighty skipperish marsh weekends exploded vivid mice offshore". Just in case you were wondering. News Quote o' the day: "The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025". From the little daughter: The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés: Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!** 86. Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes. (Oh, and the clusters for "sleeping" are basically cats, dogs, babies, black and white portraits, and the NYC subway. It's the structure of the universe, man.) The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis! For Sims fans, I've made a page with links to all my Sims stories (or all the ones that I remembered to put links to on that page, anyway). Includes at least one not yet linked from the log here (because I just posted it today): The Bright Household. Just brief notes on my experiences running one of the pre-built households that came with the University expansion; it was fun. Look behind you! IT'S REI!!! A duck! No. Every time you say that I fall for it, and this time there's nothing there either. I'm not falling for that one again. chess You were eaten by a grue! Actually, don't look just yet . . . Why, what can you . . . hey, my wife's gone all crystallized, wise guy! Look behind you! They were all shouting at once; but it was too late, much too late. Before he could do anything, Iris had performed on him the much-feared "Rear Admiral". nomad It's a Perl Nomic! http://www.perlnomic.org/ Aaaah! a monkey on a bicycle! another computer Good answers all (Iris Chacon?). I am thoroughly freaked out by (and highly recommend figuring out, if you're inclined that way) the Perl Nomic. I wonder if it was at all inspired by my Agora thesis? (local copy)
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