I like stuff.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Irony is a dead scene

From an article about the premature burning of burningman


"Someone went to a great extent to interfere with everyone else's burn. I think, frankly, an attention whore has made a plea for attention," a Burning Man volunteer named Ranger Sasquatch told the San Francisco Chronicle. "In three days, we will have this rebuilt."


Thank you, Ranger Sasquatch.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Everything's Ruined

Things
 worked
  out
   better
    than
     we
      had
       planned

Capital
 from boy,
  woman
   and man

We were like ink and paper
Numbers on a calculator
Knew arithmetic so well
Working
 overtime
  completed
 what
  was
   assigned
We had to multiply ourselves

A bouncing little baby
A shiny copper penny

And he spent himself
Would not listen to us
But when he lost his appetite
He lost his weight in friends
Baby became a fat nickel so fast...then came puberty

Exponentially

Soon our boy became a million
People

loved him so
And helped him to grow
Everyone knew the thing that was best
Of course, he must invest

A penny
 won't do
  but
   he
    made
     us
      proud

He
 made
  us
   rich
but
 how
  were we to know

He's counterfeit
Now everything's ruined

-FNM

I needed a laugh.



And don't forget to see the source

Monday, August 13, 2007

Retardation?

Stupid things remind me of stupid things, and as loathe as I am to say it, they still have the power to get me all bent out of shape.

So rather than being an idiot about it, I'll take a step back and say "Hey, see you in a couple days"

-transiit

Friday, August 10, 2007

And so it was...

Not much to say beyond this.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Rumination upon feelings of confession or regret

Ah yes, another shot of "Hey! Give me an Idea!"

So this was an idea offered up by FJeff, "rumination upon feelings of confession or regret." Let's go.

The year was 1996. I was in my first year of college and renting a house with a couple other guys. It was a friday night in early spring, the girlfriend of the time was working her job at a movie theater, and my best friend was back in town on spring break .

Us, not being the incredibly exciting sorts, nor really being men of means, we jumped into my car and headed for the Taco Bell drive-thru.

He is certainly a smarter man than I, having ordered a relatively demure combo meal for about $2.50. Of course, you have to understand that he was attending a private school well known in his field, while I was lazing away at community college, so living up to my lesser intelligence, I ordered two of everything (well, nearly everything.)

I learned a valuable lesson that night. The human body is not designed to consume those levels of junk food in one sitting. But damnit, I did it anyway.

Confession? I once ate $18 worth of Taco Bell as a single meal.
Regret? Well, unsurprisingly, that came later...

-transiit



Other entries from this round:
Miss Jecka - Is a simulation anything more than scientific fantasy?
Viscous Platypus - Is a simulation anything more than scientific fantasy?

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

And more thinkin'

Here's an article that seemed to be a little less sensationalistic than usual.

Having grown up taking apart my toys (and eventually learning how to take them apart in a way such that I can put them back together), this seems familiar.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

The 1-Byte Restaurant Review Guide

I was digging through the archives a bit tonight, and I realized that I'd referred to this a couple times but never actually codified it. So rather than waiting for the gent that helped me start this idea some years ago, I'm going to throw out the idea, RFC style.



This document specifies the Standard One-Byte Restaurant
Review Protocol. This edition serves as a draft of
codifying culinary reviews, without concern for error
handling, option codes, and the security, precedence,
compartments, and handling restriction features of the
review protocol.

In many standards track documents several words are used
to signify the requirements in the specification. These
words are often capitalized. This document defines these
words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents.
Authors who follow these guidelines should incorporate
this phrase near the beginning of their document:

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL",
"SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",
"MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be
interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Note that the force of these words is modified by the
requirement level of the document in which they are used.

1. MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL",
mean that thedefinition is an absolute requirement of
the specification.

2. MUST NOT This phrase, or the phrase "SHALL NOT",
mean that the definition is an absolute prohibition of
the specification.

3. SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED",
mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular
circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full
implications must be understood and carefully weighed
before choosing a different course.

4. SHOULD NOT This phrase, or the phrase "NOT
RECOMMENDED" mean that there may exist valid reasons in
particular circumstances when the particular behavior is
acceptable or even useful, but the full implications
should be understood and the case carefully weighed
before implementing any behavior described with this
label.

--

The one-byte restaurant review protocol is intended to
give a standardized meaning to culinary reviews,
preserving both common definitions of criteria, as well as
offering a reader as much information as possible in the
most efficient manner.

While this specification does offer some subjectivity in
the thresholds of certain ranges, the expressed goal is to
define a central format that can be interpreted by a range of
products from diverse vendors.

--

Format:

The restaurant review protocol uses a data structure in the
form of a single byte, with the bit positions indicating
various features as shown below

0123 45 67
^^^^ ^ ^
|||| | |
|||| | \- Cost: 11: Everybody's got two mortgages these
|||| | days.
|||| | 10: One good meal is worth a week of
|||| | ramen.
|||| | 01: One good meal is worth a dinner of
|||| | grilled cheese sandwiches
|||| | 00: Woohoo! Cheaper than the unlabeled
|||| | canned food at the megalomart!
|||| \- Quality: 11: Better than sex.
|||| 10: Better than Ezra.
|||| 01: Better than dirt.
|||| 00: Better than nothing.
|||\- Formality: 1: Dress up
||| 0: At least wear something.
||\--- Take-out: 1: It's an option.
|| 0: You go now.
|\- Cleanliness: 1: What you'd hope for.
| 0: Alert the CDC.
\- Availability: 1: There's a good chance you can get
what you search for.
0: Plan for it. They might only be open
five minutes a year.
--
Example:
Many 1-byte restaurant review compatible applications may
use the hexadecimal equivalent to the binary, so a common
occurrence would be a review such as "7e" or, "01111110",
which would translate to "rarely open, clean, take-out is
available, wear the nice threads, best food you'll ever
have, non-bankruptcy expensive"



Thursday, August 02, 2007

No shortage of things to think about.

Granted, I could care less about Procter & Gamble or some AMEX promotional stunt under most circumstances, but but this might be an interesting read.

-transiit

Hey!

Once upon a time, I had a half dozen different blogs that were rather subject specific. Not that I ever posted in any of them...

But considering that before the great blog consolidation of 2007, this was my food blog, I'm going to post something apropos for a change.

My friend Thorn (aka Thom) has recently started a video blog

You should check it out.

(and let me take a moment to acknowledge his design aesthetic, using the same template as me =) )