My wife got me a set of MegaBlocks for Christmas, set in some strange Viking-esque world. Besides this ferocious dragon, pictured here perched on top of the lamp near my desk, the playset includes a “Marauder’s Gate,” complete with working cannon, jail (with trap door), some sort of power crystal, a kinda-longboat, and a dozen soldiers (all with unique faces) bristling with weaponry.
The dragon’s front right foot is outstretched, and has a magnet embedded inside. Unfortunately the viking soldiers also are magnetic, and as a result the dragon can swoop down and pick up a hapless viking thus guaranteeing a grisly make-believe death. Neat!
On this, the most penultimate day of the year, we wandered down to Davis Square today to send off a care package to Iraq; vitamins, PowerBars, and Cheetos, all of which are (apparently) sorely coveted in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. I think that this is going to become a monthly tradition.
On the way home I picked up a few techno/drum & bass compilations (excellent programming music) from the used records shop and a copy of Anglo-Saxon England by Sir Frank Stenton from the far too perilous antiquarian book store. I had intended to get an almanac, but so full of glee was I at the discovery of such a delightful looking footnoted book chock-full of Angles and Saxons it slipped my mind.
I called a programming break for today, so a good deal of the day was spent in tinkering of the musical nature.
FBI urges police to watch for people carrying almanacs.
No, really.
Holiday eating and drinking has put me a bit out of sorts. Oscillating between feasting from the cornucopia and not eating (in anticipation of aforementioned cornucopia) is not a good thing.
Despite it all I’m having a grand time. This much consecutive time off is a treat, and there is an entire week to look forward to.
Varia (and I to a less extent) has been hard at work fixing up the frontmost room of our apartment. In the past few days she’s turned it from “the room that we put stuff we’re not using in” to a room that is not only useful, but genuinely pleasant to be in. Tomorrow we venture out to get an easel and sundry art supplies.
The past few weeks has brought an upswing in blog spam. Comments get posted with generic and harmless (not to mention unrelated) messages and believable e-mail addresses. But what’s this, the URL is something like http://somecompleteripoff-selling-viagra-or-prozac-or-something-more-unsavory.net!
The point of the spam is to help the folks at http://totalandutterwanker.com improve their ranking on Google. It’s a technique known as Google Bombing, and it works (as an example, see Google results for miserable failure and unelectable). It is, however, annoying; I got four spam comments this morning. If this continues I shall have to look into an automated comment scanning system.
I can’t believe it! The local Foodmaster was out of Fritos! Why does the world hate me so? Rage and Angst!
Ahem.
The Frito-Lay delivery man didn’t make it in time and/or there was a incredible run of people with the munchies which could only be satisfied with the bold taste of Fritos. In any case, there are no Fritos in Mudville; we will survive somehow. The leftover chili will not be made into Frito pie, but into Generic Corn Chip pie. Of course, as Varia says, once it’s slathered in boiling hot ultra-spicy chili, it won’t really matter.
All the live monkeys arrived in the mail, thank you. I hope that you (yes you) and yours had a Magnificent Holiday Experience™.
A nice day was had here, though as always on holidays we miss those that we can’t be with. Gifts were exchanged and food was made. Oh, the food! Somewhere after two dozen muffins, gingerbread cookies, apple pie and a few large meals I lost count.
Now, on to Boxing Day.
This is what happens when one doesn’t cook for a week whilst receiving a box full of fruit and vegetables. The pot in the left is entirely full of onions and garlic, and the bowl on the right apples. Not pictured are another 7 bananas, 5 avocados, a few heads of lettuce, some kale, mushrooms and cauliflower.
Today was my last day at the office for a while; I have already started enjoying a well-deserved holiday. In fact I am enjoying it as I type this post.
Chances are I am enjoying it even as you read this.
Book-A-Minute specializes in digging through all sorts of books and packaging the meat of the story in ultra-condensed form. Take as an example their version of Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus: I rule.
Poseidon: For your sin of pride, I curse you for all eternity.
(Unfazed, Odysseus boards his ship and sets SAIL for Greece, where his family is awaiting his RETURN from Troy. A STORM happens, and it drives them off course into the MEDITERRANEAN, where they come upon a strange LAND owned by the giant Cyclops POLYPHEMUS who eats some of the men ALL UP, but then they ESCAPE. Still lost, they run into the island of the sorceress CIRCE who turns some of Odysseus’ men into ANIMALS, and it takes YEARS before they escape, and then they sail by some singing SIRENS, but they can’t hear because they have STUFF in their ears. Then they come upon an island where there is a field of HERBS, and they all get HIGH, until Odysseus says it’s time to GO. Then Odysseus’ men let a WIND out of a BAG, and some more men DIE. And they sail on to HADES to talk to some DEAD people, and some more men DIE. And they steer the ship between the six headed monster SCYLLA and the torrential whirlpool CHARYBDIS, and Scylla makes some more men DIE, and Charybdis makes the rest of them DIE. Then the ship busts up into a JILLION pieces, but Odysseus is SAVED by the nymph Calypso who confines him to her ISLAND because she thinks he’s HOT, and she wants his BODY. Then years later she lets him GO, but Poseidon is determined to terrorize him FURTHER. And then SUDDENLY Odysseus has an IDEA.)
Odysseus: Poseidon, I am sorry.
Poseidon: Ok, you can go home now.
(Odysseus goes home.)
THE END
The best part is that one can read dozens and dozens of books in a single hour!
A busy weekend cleaning and coding. I think that whatever illness I was hosting has moved on, which is obviously good news. It couldn’t come any sooner, what with an extended Christmas holiday starting on Wednesday.
We finally got around to watching Shrek, which was fantastic. I doubt I will ever get tired of the Gingerbread Man interrogation scene.
The highlight of the weekend was an early Christmas present from the ever delightful Danuv; an Ambient Orb of my own! The Orb is a glowing orb that can change to any color of the rainbow. It doesn’t change colors randomly, however; the color changes reflect to changes in data, such as the weather or the stock market. This is all done wirelessly over a cellular network so it can hang out on a table or a bookshelf and quietly be beautiful and informative. And it’s programmable!
The concept of environmental objects which unobtrusively present information is a very attractive one to me at present. Given the vast amount of information I process in a given day, any way to prevent overload is welcomed. A solution that doesn’t involve interrupting me and/or forcing me to be glued to my computer is even better.
Thus sayeth the wife: “You can’t ship live monkeys. I looked it up.”
To those of you who were expecting a live monkey from me this Christmas, please be patient while I re-evaluate my gift-giving scheme.
I have, over the past week, purchased three action figures, bringing the total size of action figures in my possession to three. On Sunday I picked up a very large Aragorn with a big nose and a floppy sword, and last night I purchased a James T. Kirk and Commander Spock figures, from the first year of the original Star Trek, armed with phasers and rubbery shirts. Mr. Spock has an extra hand as well, though I haven’t yet been able to determine why.
The world of Star Trek fans is not my world. So why Kirk and Spock. The answer lies with Aragorn. After Aragorn appeared, I began using him in stop motion animation, using my iSight and a nifty little piece of software. Due to the fact that his range of motion is a bit limited, my first animation, entitled “Get Off My Lawn You Punk Kids” features the Ranger of the North shooing away off-screen hooligans, shaking his fist all the way. He cannot reach for his floppy sword, but he sure can shake his fist.
Lack of motion aside, Aragorn was doomed to be an actor in monologues as he had no other actors. I could have perhaps done a stop motion paraphrasing of “The Madness of King George” with Aragorn talking to the furniture (and shaking his fist!), but I felt that bringing on a few new pieces of talent would do it. Hence Kirk and Spock. Quite a bit shorter than the King of Gondor, they have much better range of motion in their upper bodies.
So far stop motion is fun and not nearly as tedious as I expected if one’s not expecting any academy awards. And the possibilities are limited only by how much time I have to spend on it. I could, for example, sew Kirk and Spock little suits and have them act out “Waiting for Godot.” Or film them knocking each other over. Or film Spock hurling his spare hand at Kirk.
That’s entertainment.
I’m recovering. The body ache and sore throat have moved on, leaving me with a slightly fuzzy and massively congested head. A victory of sorts.
In attempts to not reinvent the wheel for a project I’m working on, I’ve been experimenting with the CGI module in Perl. I didn’t much care for it at first, but as a script grows the benefits become clear. Not to mention the fact that it is well documented. Thank you for your quality work, anonymous Perl documentation team!
Unsurprisingly, my hair is still growing. It is at that charming length where it mostly sticks straight up, but for a spot in the back where it sticks out in a bizarre fractal pattern. Call it Tennis Hair; in a few weeks it will progress through Beethoven Hair to Mad Scientist Hair. Eventually the laws of gravity will kick in and my silky locks will again fall toward our nurturing earth; until then every day is a bad hair day.
I did drag my sorry self (with Varia’s help) out to the nerd event of the year, being opening day of Return of the King. I won’t say very much about it, though I suggest that every man, woman and child on this green Earth go and see it at the earliest opportunity. It is something that must be experienced. I laughed, I cried (a lot, for different reason), I was struck with awe.
I’m sick today. Well, I was sick yesterday, but I’m sicker today. Ache and cough, sniffle and sneeze.
Trying to code Perl when one is in this sort of a mood is quite the experience, and I highly recommend it.
