Recent blog entries for marnanel

marnanel @ 2008-07-22T23:53:00

"Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

Syndicated 2008-07-23 03:53:57 from Monument

When you can't tell satire from stupidity any more

"Friedrich Nieztsche wrote, in the 1960’s, that “God is dead.” I recall that everybody was horrified that he would say such a thing."

He then wrote "And so am I. Braiiins."

Syndicated 2008-07-22 17:27:30 from Monument

I was going to post about my life, but I forget what was happening.

My life has many parts, and one part is free software work. Most of that is Metacity. There are three main parts to my work on Metacity: fixing bugs, writing tests, and "oo, shiny!" Fixing bugs is the most important, at least critical or blocker bugs. Writing tests is important for the long term. (I'm including fixing up commenting in that, otherwise I can't know what the tests are supposed to do.) "Oo, shiny!" is rarer, but keeps people happy when it's something they asked for. Sometimes real life takes over and I can't do any Metacity work for a while. Other times I do work on one at the expense of the others. People sometimes get impatient when their bugs aren't fixed, but there's mostly just me working on it (there are others, but they're busier on other projects).

The other day we went to the all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant in a thunderstorm late at night and discussed Java, and because it was late and there was a storm, there was hardly anyone else there. The staff were sitting at another table having an apparently very amusing conversation in Chinese. They came over to apologise in case they were disturbing us, and I said they weren't, and they said that there wasn't much food out because of the paucity of customers at that point, but that if there was anything we wanted they'd cook it specially. There was tons of food. I should write a guide to local restaurants and put it up on the web.

We went to buy a wheelbarrow the other day, as you do, and they had to get a manager to come and unlock one because they were all chained together at the front of the shop. The sales clerk said, "Yes, we have to get the manager because these are locked with a lock I can't possibly open for you. You see, it can't be picked, it can't even be shot off." I can't believe he was expecting me to whip a revolver out of my pocket, shout "Hi ho, Silver, away!" and ride off with a wheelbarrow, so I was a little puzzled to note that this wonderful lock was attached to an ordinary length of steel cable which an ordinary pair of bolt cutters would have made short work of. Maybe living in Cambridge makes you look out for these things.

Speaking of Cambridge, it seems I'm going to miss my college's Commemoration of Benefactors this decade. Oh well.

And now the politics: here is what a South Carolina senator believes is a funny picture.

Syndicated 2008-07-22 03:50:58 from Monument

Nice things from nice people

The other day, I got a package with multicoloured slap bracelets in it from desh, who had read on this journal that I had never seen them and thought my family might have some fun with them. Having seen them, I can confirm I'd never seen them before.

Then plexq gave me a copy of Rosetta Stone in Welsh, which I've been wanting for ages!

People are being so nice to me. Thank you both.

Syndicated 2008-07-21 14:46:42 from Monument

2 Cor 3:18 notwithstanding

Dear kids,

Shouting "Hey Jesus!" at me when I walk down the street is so not original. I know I'm wearing sandals. This is because it's hot. You should be glad I'm nice and don't send bears after you.

Kthxbye,

Marn.

Syndicated 2008-07-20 23:04:38 from Monument

Greasemonkey. You should get it.

Allow me to recommend something. You don't have to be a programmer to use it. It's fun and useful and you will be recommending it to others pretty soon. It's Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on. When you install it, it lets you modify the way you see any page on the web you want. Every time you add a "script" to Greasemonkey, it changes the way you see and interact with a particular site; there's a big repository of scripts at http://www.userscripts.org.

For example, take a look under http://userscripts.org/tags/livejournal : one script lets you comment on posts without leaving your friends page, one lets you ignore your friends' posts which have a given tag, one displays the city which anonymous commenters with IP recorded come from.

You can get Greasemonkey here.

Syndicated 2008-07-19 16:52:35 (Updated 2008-07-19 17:01:35) from Monument

Webcomics

Sometimes I read webcomics. I used to read User Friendly many years ago, and I read Sluggy Freelance religiously (once in 2001 I actually set aside an entire day to do nothing else but read the comics from the start to where I'd started reading). For a while I read Bunny. Now the only comic I read is xkcd. ghoti thinks I should read Ozy and Millie, too; I've tried a few times, but it's hard to jump in in the middle, and I don't have the time I had in 2001 to read things from the beginning.

I have sometimes thought of making a page which explains the joke in each xkcd for non-geek people (after all, occasionally I have to go and ask other people when the tables are turned). On the other hand, there are the xkcd forums to do that in already.

Sometimes I read A Softer World, which is the only place I know where the comics appear in more (or perhaps as many) dimensions simultaneously as xkcd:

1. The contents of the comic image
2. The mouseover text
3. In xkcd, the title of the comic, which is also the filename. ASW comics have titles hidden in their filenames which usually also give you an extra insight into the comic. (It also makes them a lot harder to read, though I suspect there's a greasemonkey script.)

ASW needs forums even more than xkcd does, though: xkcd is often clever and subtle, but either you get it or you don't. With ASW it's more like a poem, and quite often one of those kinds of poems where you read it and you want to run out and stop the next person on the street and say "Read this poem! Quickly! Savour it as fast as you can, and then tell me what you think it means!" Of course there's the LJ feed, but that disappears off into the bit bucket after a few weeks anyway.

So really I like thinky comics more than laughy comics, and that was what I wanted to say, and I should write my posts more readably rather than relying on stream-of-consciousness. And I would rather be a judge than a miner. The end.

Syndicated 2008-07-19 16:17:55 (Updated 2008-07-19 16:38:25) from Monument

Na na na na na na, Katamari Obama...

"Nerds for Obama" bumper sticker.

(I would say "if only this had been an official campaign sticker", but actually I think it's better that people make this sort of thing up for themselves.)

h/t baratron

Syndicated 2008-07-17 00:59:28 from Monument

marnanel @ 2008-07-16T13:17:00

"Key elements of Christian doctrine are offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said in a letter to Islamic scholars."

In other news, the Pope continues to be Catholic. How did anyone actually think this was news?

(I suppose perhaps it's drawing a distinction between "personally offensive to people who are Muslims" and "repugnant to Muslim theology"... or maybe it's just very confused.)

Syndicated 2008-07-16 17:20:16 from Monument

What is it with the users who sign up to LJ and leave one comment

often with no relevance, on public posts, and then leave again? Very often by the time you reach the comment, the accounts's been deleted.

Syndicated 2008-07-16 02:33:40 (Updated 2008-07-16 03:19:58) from Monument