Monday: A bear, some squirrels, and an asshole.

"No, see, I told you.  Everyone was all ripped up and torn to shreds when I got there.  You probably can't see the differences, but I'm pretty sure it was a tiger.  Maybe a lion.  This was definitely one of those 'big cat' kind of a mass mauling.  Couldn't have been a bear.  Not at all."

• This squirrel is drinking.
• These jerks need to be tracked down and prosecuted for attacking a squirrel.
• However, the squirrel itself is probably fine.  Squirrels are tiny, and so their surface area is large relative to their density, so they have a terminal velocity somewhere in the 40mph range, which is apparently something that's not so bad.
• Do you know Randy Queen?  Well, you've now at least heard of him, and now you also know that he's kind of an asshole.

Sunday: asdfasdg

I probably should have done more prep work given that I'm going on vacation in less than a week and today was the last day off before then.  Crap.

And I couldn't decide what to get to eat today, so I just drove and magically ended up at sushi.

• Well, that sucks.
• Pretty much everyone's reaction to the news, I think.
• And hey, tropical storm is supposed to hit the state the day after I leave.  Wonderful.

Saturday: So the H-1 work is finished.

But traffic is still terrible.  There are now four lanes instead of three, but traffic still crawls along.  I suspect part of the issue is that they reworked all of the on and off ramps, but there are no signs anywhere to tell you which things are different.  It also doesn't help that they didn't fix the biggest issue: that on ramps immediately turn into off ramps, so everyone has to merge back and forth.  That doesn't explain why the left most lane was going the same speed as everything else.

"I'd really rather drive."

• Totoro.
• Helper bear.
• I have no links, so here's a song I heard while stuck in traffic.

Friday: Fuck it, here's a bear.

"I fucking hate technology!"

• So I saw this.  But you can get the ngram viewer to show you where it's found the words. "Palaemon," "Polaemon," and "Pakeman" all have trouble with the OCR, especially with the æ ligature.
• Bunny.
• Burger.
• For fucks sake.  I leave the island for the first time in like a billion years, and that's when they decide to do cinema showings of Totoro.

Thursday: Because nothing can just fucking work anymore.

I guess I should just be happy I'm not this guy.

• Bat.
• Lunch break.
• So I guess I'll have this to look forward to next week.
• I would like a Squirrel Girl movie.

Well. That was unexpected.

I mean, you go to watch a video entitled, "How to make Pikachu Burgers":

and within the first ten seconds, you no longer care about the pikachu burgers, because the background music is a remix of the closing theme to Serial Experiments Lain:

What?

The end results of this is that:

1. I'll need to get everything the remix guy (Manny Marx) has made to listen to for vacation.  This is the kind of relaxed synth-dominated hip hop I really enjoy.
2. I regret that finding Nakaido Reichi albums from English language retailers is basically impossible.
3. Serial Experiments Lain is still one of the greatest shows ever produced, and I should watch it again.  Huh.  I have a vacation coming up, and it's 4 DVDs.  That should fit nicely so I can watch it on the plane.

Wednesday: And then today everything basically exploded

I simply can't keep track of three different large scale processing operations at the same time as I'm fixing bugs and developing infinite failsafes because things just randomly break.

Seriously.  Job X was cancelled after two hours, with the completion fraction suggesting it needed four to finish.  Rerunning Job X last night took 1:15, consistently for four different tests.  Why the difference?  No clue.

Basically it's perpetually this.

• I always could tell where things were going to change on cartoons as a kid using this trick.
• That's somewhat unexpected.
• Good news: legitimate Monte Cristo.  Bad news: it looks like they have a tiny parking lot.
• Yeah, this story only works if they intentionally choose button pushers as the people to kill.

Tuesday: I successfully did some things today, so I consider that a good thing.

Including fixing the perl in yesterday's game post, so it should now be correct.

And now I want doughnuts.

• How Gary Gygax lost control of TSR.
• It is kind of a big coat.
• Really?  For fuck's sake, Tony.
• Good idea, but I'm concerned that the solar cell is too small to be that useful.

"Hey, I could probably automate that in perl, and make it a game."

cat kitten sword robot space pink white bumblebee bee helmet

Code under the cut.  Rules for the game:  player one chooses an image, and the other players need to come up with descriptive words for what's on it.  Then, you run the command on the best set of words (maybe you don't want to use all of them because you end up with legos.  Maybe you get points if you only use like 1 word, but if you use 9 or more, but get legos, you lose points).  If the image itself, or the character, or an obviously "these images are related somehow" match happens, then the seekers get the point.  If not, then the player who chose the original image gets a point.  So under these rules, the Bee and Puppycat image gets a point, and I lose two points because I didn't find B&PC, and I ended up with legos when I used 10 words.

Monday: It's clear to me that this thing is just far too complicated for me to keep in entirely in my head.

Woo for developing something crazy confusing.  I'm pretty sure this is why robot rebellions happen.  Somebody has to design the whole thing, but they forget to check that $kill_all_humans is set to 'false'.  I mean, there are just too many variables to remember.

I don't seem to have an image for "robot rebellion."  Have "owl rebellion" instead.

• I was going to say "how crappy of a pop-culture writer do you have to be to screw things up like this?", but I then went to see how hard it actually is to identify this as Bee and Puppycat stuff, assuming you don't know that it is.  It's hard.  I could find no permutation of the set of words [cat kitten sword robot space pink white bumblebee bee helmet] that returned a B&PC result on google images.  Part of the problem is that this fucker has been nailing down merchandising for forty fucking years.  I also suspect that all B&PC stuff uses "puppycat" universally, which is not something someone who knows nothing about it is going to search for.  Still, ask around and see if someone else knows who they are.
• I like this comic.  It presents every day situations that everyone deals with, but does it in a soothing calming manner without all the flash and drama that a lot of other comics pile on.  Just a simple package, and the results of opening it.
• Bill Shuster is a dickbag, and this isn't going to do anything.  No one goes, "man, if only flights were cheaper, I'd fly everywhere!"  People decide they're taking a trip, and then want to buy the cheapest one that fits their criteria.  That's the final price.  The main problem is that everything else splits out the sales tax, so there's this idea that it's something unusual.  No.  You can't buy product X at price Y-T.  That's not an option.  Therefore, you pay Y, which is the only price you should be concerned with.  No other prices should be apparent.  I don't buy things by going to the store, finding the wholesale price printed on the shelf, and then take it to the counter where they add the workers fee, the building fee, the electricity fee, the finance fees, the overhead fees, and then the sales tax.
• This is something that I only vaguely remember the details behind.  Gas company Y was doing well, the government froze the company for reasons, Y largely falls apart due to the freeze, and the parts are sold to company R, which is kind of owned by the government.  Plus they threw a bunch of people into jail, blah blah blah.  Now there's a $51.5e9 judgement that company Y probably didn't deserve to be looted by the government.  So, yay! Justice!  Delayed and probably unenforable Justice!  The most depressing of all Justices!
• Except Aquaman.
• Except BatB Aquaman (this is the same link as the previous point, but you have to get down to the happy-smiley Aquaman).
• Today I learned that shopping carts in the UK and Australia have locks on them, and you have to put a coin in the slot to unlock the cart from the rest of the carts, and then when you're done, relocking the cart to its friends allows you to get your cart back.  I suspect it's less a theft deterrent (because if I could get a shopping cart for a pound, I'd be thinking up things I want to move around at home), and more a way to eliminate the cart-guy going out to salvage used carts and bringing them back to the store.

Sunday: Today was a burger day

And crap.  I was going to do laundry today.  I guess instead of doing two or three loads, I'll do one and hope I don't forget to put it in the dryer.

• Did you know that something called "Belvita Breakfast Biscuits" exists?  I didn't until I heard a commercial for them this afternoon and immediately looked over because I was sure they'd said "Velveeta Breakfast Biscuits," and I wanted to see what horror that was.
• But this is also why I love filler episodes.
• Cat attack.
• Old Man Miyazaki is a downer.
• I would be so happy if this would happen.  Just make the serious show, and then tack on a five minute short at the end that's a comedy thing.  A lot of the TTG episodes stretch the joke, so it would help.

I dare you to see the teaser image, and not click on this video.

Saturday: I don't know what the title is going to be. Let's just choose a random picture from the download pile.

Sure.  That works.

• Surprise Spider-Man.
• I continue to hate you, Grant Morrison.  Just stop.
• Pika-car.
• Deer.

I mean, Season of the Mists.  Morpheus just goes to Hell.  He doesn't have to plot a course past Apokalips to get there.  He just goes.  Why?  Because you don't need a fucking map to get there.  And when was the dreaming separated from nightmares?  It was always just an aspect of the local region.  Of course, the monitors observe everything.  Like when they lived on a satellite and watched Earth.  Or when they didn't know about Darkseid and the Fourth World.  And, you have this "new 52," where there are only 52 universes (excluding all this other shit you're now rolling into the concept).  Why, after jerking off on the number 52 for nearly a decade now, did you start numbering from zero, so you don't actually have a universe 52?  Why are some unnumbered?  Is there some secret conspiracy that we're not supposed to know that there's a universe 14, and even if we figured that out, we'd ruin things if we know where in the puke pile in the center of your map it was located?  And you put Destiny outside the Source Wall.  Which is dumb for many reasons, the least of which is that something like this (sure, this is Fantastic Four from Marvel, but still) is the obvious allegory that the SW always seemed to represent.

This is the problem with Grant Morrison.  He's a fucking idiot.  However, he thinks that by putting lots of cryptic bullshit in his stories, he can fool people into thinking he's smart.  Apparently he's fooled enough, but just stapling more cryptic bullshit on top of old cryptic bullshit isn't telling a story.  Do you know where this shows up?  Final Crisis.  That's not a story.  It's a parody of a story.  Seven Soldiers of Victory.  Not a story.  Not even seven stories.  It's a shitty attempt to retell the Arthur legend using minor characters.  I mean, slogging through...fuck.  Bulleteer and Zatanna were the only moderately interesting things, and I can't even remember the details of Zatanna's story.  I think she loses her powers or something?  Something totally original like that.  He put Frankenstein on Mars and it was boring.  Frankenstein on Mars should be one of those "is this awesome [y/y]" kind of stories.

Friday: I think I might get a tablet this weekend.

Partially because I remembered this week that you can play scummvm games on android.  I have the Monkey Island series, but I've never sat down to play 2 or 3.  Four I played on PS2, and 1 I last played in undergrad.  Being able to play them on the plane while travelling seems like a good plan.  I think this will cause the PSP to be left behind.

This is also the answer to the question of "why would I want a device that lives between computer and phone?"  "Because you're going to be on a plane for 99 hours, and you'll be able to watch videos and play pointy-clicky games without needing to get a full computer out or kill your eyes looking at the tiny phone screen."  I'll have to sort out which DVR things and which youtube things I want to put on it.

I drew this today while discovering that the fast file system makes the code run far slower than running it on the slow file system.  I don't even fucking know anymore.

Also: Dear local sushi place that I don't get sushi at because you stopped serving unagi and give fucking ika instead of hamachi.  Fucking ika.  Ick.  Anyway, I know I visit fairly often, so maybe I'm a good customer or something, but this is way too much food.  I can't eat a pound of teriyaki chicken and a quarter pound of spicy poke.

• Bots.
• Pikachu.
• I guess character themed menus are a comic con thing?

Thursday: Someone was talking about foxes on youtube last night.

It's the same one from this post from 2011.  Also: holy crap, this image is almost eight years old.

• Cat snake.
• Wombat.
• Skeleton hell.
• Tiny bunny.
• Michael J. New is a fucking idiot.  Here's the relevant bit, "The question of how to handle pregnant students is a problem that many private Christian schools have grappled with in the past. Punishing such students might make them more likely to choose abortion; accommodating them might undermine norms against premarital sex and create a culture where abortions happen more often."  Get that?  A leads to more abortions.  Not-A also leads to more abortions.  The implied logic here is that the only way to stop abortions is make them entirely illegal, and then you can punish all you want, with nothing to stop you.  That must be his conclusion, since accommodating would still lead to "undermined norms," and that's obviously something he's opposed to.
• Want a second point?  "I would hate to see pregnancy resource centers lose out on donations because the government is taking on a more active role in caring for mothers."  If I'm not mistaken, PRCs tend to be religious/pro-life institutions.  So if the government helped people out more, they might not go to private pro-life groups.  What a jerk.

Wednesday: Limitations and Improvements: Challenge!

• Inequality.
• Rescue armadillo.
• Astronaut animals.
• The Prince of Wales and a stuffed squirrel.
• Hello Kitty needs to get better editors.
• There is so much wrong with this Comic Con menu.
• Beast Boy is a burger.  Quote from season 1, episode 1: "Dude, I've been most of those animals!"
• Brainiac is chicken tenders.  I can just imagine the quiet mechanical rage.
• Why is Dazzler the only Marvel character?  I mean.  Dazzler.  WTF?
• Why is Wonder Woman's associated dish in parentheses?
• I am assuming that's Golden Age Sandman, as the alternative is far too depressing.

Tuesday: slow-mo chipmunk.

The proper term is "kush kush."

• Starfire.
• Supergirl.
• Straight up murder.
• Misty/Jinx.
• Not paid a lot.
• I also miss weather front maps.

Monday: So this is how today worked

I mean, WTF, The Weather?

• That's unfortunate.
• Partially because it was the scene of this wonderful post from six years ago.
• Missile defense systems are generally useless.
• Batgirl.
• I really like gifs like this.
• No.  Having different lengths but identical widths only works if you sort the bills by denomination, and then align against a right angle edge.  Otherwise, the possible arrangements make it likely that small bills get lost.  

Sunday: That was the lamest "tropical storm" ever.

Basically it just rained kind of hard last night.  There was thunder and lightning, which is cool, because we usually don't get that here.  But still, in the end, it was just a regular amount of rain for me.

I tried to take some super long (8s, the max my camera can do) shots to see if I could capture some lightning, but it didn't work.  Still, I liked how these two came out:

This one shows the light pollution is concentrated at ala moana (left), ward center (center), and downtown (right).

I like the cars in this one.

Then today, I took a bunch of shots to show the clouds coming over the mountains:

This is about a minute of action.

• Dog.
• Book.
• That episode of Chowder where they had a live action car wash to pay for the animation.

Saturday: Clearly, I need to go to the museum more than I do.

Because when I was looking through to get the links to my previous visits, I found this one, and then this one (which unfortunately has the exact Cain and Abel joke I was going to make in this post).  That works out to me only really going once every 15 months or so.  That's far less frequently than I thought.  Anyway:

Museum!

Since this is the first time ever that I've been on a Saturday, I made a reservation to get lunch at the cafe.

I had a tiny plant, and the lady at the next table had her ipad.

 I didn't have any plan going in, as it's mostly a sandwich and salad thing.

Then again, so was the British Museum.

I went with the pasta special:

Mahi-mahi, kalamata olives, capers, roasted peppers, in a roasted tomato sauce.

 So.  Salt.  It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't really what I was hoping for.  The peppers were too harsh, so I pushed them all to one side and pretended they didn't exist.  The tomato chunks were roasted just enough to make them sweet, but the capers and olives overwhelmed them in big combined bites.  I think I should have gone with a sandwich instead.

And of course I got a dessert:

"Chocolate Walnut Torte" sounded suspiciously like what a brownie would call itself if it was trying to hide.

Again, not bad, but not quite what I had hoped for.  I wanted more chocolate fudgy flavor.  But, that's kind of universally true.

Anyway, art time.  I had planned to go to see the Art Deco exhibit, but I didn't take any pictures in that room, as I wasn't sure what the photography policy is.  Then I noticed that some things have "no camera" signs, but by then I'd already moved past the things I would have taken pictures of.

Now, I'm not saying that this native Hawaiian mask looks like Cthulhu, but...

I've changed my mind.  This is the new greatest tiger in the history of the world.

Jars that look like bunnies.

"No way!"

"You know what?  Your cross sucks!  There, I said it!  Your cross is crap, and it's got nothing on my sweet ass book!"

"Let us adore the Jesus we've dumped on the ground."

 And then, looking closer:

"Damn it, sky surfer angel! Stop scaring my livestock!"

This jar looks like a kitty.

By this point it was three hours later, I'd seen everything, and so I went to the shop.

And, obviously bought the catalogue for the show.

Plus this other book about Hawaiian ephemera.

And two postcards.  I see this guy every time I visit, so I figured I'd get a card of him.  The other one is a carving from the art deco exhibit.

Link time.

• I saw a youtube video last night from the ISS, and saw that they use Thinkpads too.  This led me to remember that I need to find one of the new thinkpads in a store, and see if the new trackpad is usable or not.  I'm concerned I'm going to miss having real actual buttons to click.
• Totoro.
• Bear.
• Josephine Baker, to add more art deco.