Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Interesting fact of the day.
"Caligula" means "little boots". My buddy Sarah's cat is named Lil Boots. He's not completely unlike Caligula; Boots once nominated Wee consul of Rome. But after that the parallels diminish with assuredly unastonishing rapidity. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 01:06 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
And speaking of drinking beer...
Floridian Witzbold Dave Barry looks back on 2003.
Posted by Daev @ 04:13 PM CST [Link]
LWD [more]
Posted by Daev @ 03:32 PM CST [Link]
Today on Fresh Air they reaired interviews with Bob Dorough and Fred Rogers. I had heard both before but were worth hearing again. I am definitely a Bob Dorough freak. Three is indeed a magic number.
But what knocked me off my ass was a story Mr Rogers told. When asked if the crew ever played pranks on him, he recalled in his inimitable manner how the crew once put an inflatable date in the closet.
Posted by Daev @ 02:07 PM CST [Link]
Poor Richard set us up the bomb
AP - The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. . . The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, "the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities."
Posted by Daev @ 01:43 PM CST [Link]
Monday, December 29, 2003
LWD the magic bunny. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 07:47 PM CST [Link]
Mousetrap styley car commercial. Over 600 takes to get it right.
Posted by Daev @ 10:34 AM CST [Link]
Sunday, December 28, 2003
LWD [more]
Posted by Daev @ 08:02 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Little Wee Diary escapes the "more" section.
Wee and I are having a lovely Saturday. What with the shops open this morn, I went down to Plus searching for hay. They didn't have it, but the petshop did. Three bucks, ouch. But it was worth it because one of the cages at the shop had several cavies and a larger grey hare. One of the guinea pigs was literally riding on the back of the hare. That was very cute.
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 07:08 AM CST [Link]
Friday, December 26, 2003
It is the birthday of Chuck Babbage, creator of the analytical engine.
Yet even more fascinating to me the life of
Lady Ada Lovelace, who was his valuable assistant. She was perhaps the first person to envision AI.
Posted by Daev @ 10:07 AM CST [Link]
When I was a sophomore in college, Matt Vavrock was my roommate. He had a Gibson, loved Star Trek, had a burning passion for Full Moon straight-to-videos, slept with the TV on.
His dad was a nearing-retirement mail carrier who became afflicted with Bells Palsy--parallysis on one side of the face. You can't bat one of your eyes and you literally talk out the side of your mouth. This gave Matt's dad a vague manner of speaking and resemblance to a latter day Brian Wilson.
Mr. Vavrock is a veteran, and was trained as a morse code correspondent. I asked him if those guys ever "knock" in their sleep, thinking myself oh so clever. He answered no, matter of factly. But sometimes a guy would wake with a start, sit up in his bunk and begin to go " da daa da da daa " in a panic. Creepy.
Little Wee to the Dee to the Eye to the A to the Ree [more]
Posted by Daev @ 04:36 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Lil Wee Diary Xmastide [more]
Posted by Daev @ 07:56 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
I left the house to take in the third Lord of the Rings. A great film as long as there were some orcs to kill with a chunk of trebucheted masonry. The rest of the film was pure Schmalz. And two words for the misties: Rock Climbing, Joel. Rock Climbing. Just about every scene with Frodo was like the climax of Rocky II. Get up, Rocky! Grab onto the ropes and get up! The internal dynamics worked well in the book, but in the film gave me a hernia.
Lil Wee 13 [more]
Posted by Daev @ 01:47 AM CST [Link]
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Antibubbles?
Posted by Daev @ 10:12 AM CST [Link]
Hey Seamonkeys.
Sad news. The Inventor who gave us seamonkeys, and was apparently a klansman, has died.
Posted by Daev @ 12:08 AM CST [Link]
Monday, December 22, 2003
Lil ole Wee Diary Day twelve [more]
Posted by Daev @ 11:54 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Joseph Stalin
Benjamin Disraeli
Frank Zappa
These three men all have one thing in common: they're dead. But I'm not, and so I was the only one who got presents. I now have a lemony-scented bar of glycerine soap with a spider embedded in it. The rule is that whosoever gets down to the spider has to eat it.
Lil' Wee Diary Day 'leven. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 05:16 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Little Wee Diary Day ten [more]
Posted by Daev @ 12:11 PM CST [Link]
Friday, December 19, 2003
Little Wee Diary Friday Photos [more]
Posted by Daev @ 03:20 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Little Wee Diary Day Eight.
Time to clean the cage. It's a really fine time. Take it away, Ron. (ca. 200K)
Posted by Daev @ 02:33 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Why The US Doesn't Want SH Tried In International Court?
Only an unoccupied Iraq truly has the moral highground to try him for crimes against his own folk. As for his war attrocities, well, we were accomplices.
Posted by Daev @ 10:17 PM CST [Link]
Cnn clip of US troops killing a wounded man.
"That was awesome. Let's do it again."
Posted by Daev @ 10:11 PM CST [Link]
Little Wee Diary day seven [more]
Posted by Daev @ 10:04 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
The Little Wee Diary day six. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 03:33 PM CST [Link]
DEBKAfile, an Israeli intelligence analytics publication, is widely read by your leaders and mine, but not so much by the people who voted for them.
Posted by Daev @ 01:17 PM CST [Link]
Monday, December 15, 2003
Little Wee Diary day f' [more]
Posted by Daev @ 07:37 PM CST [Link]
In a flash, Dresden has been transformed into a winter wonderland. I didn't see it coming. It was sunny and crispily mild this morn when I stepped out into the garden to take a shower.
I didn't put on a sweater or bring a winter hat when I left the house a good hour and a half before class began. I stopped at a bakery and had lunch.
I saw the first flakes come down with mild interest. As I ate my steak with red cabbage and potatoes, I studied two stickers on the wall. They were jelly-filled sugared donoughts with arms, legs and faces. The man JD says "I'm hot for ya!" and the lady tells us curtly, "I'm a sweety". I looked back out the window and the snow was coming down so densely you couldn't see the houses across the street.
On the way to the classroom I briefly lost my sense of direction in the blizzard of ought 3.
It was over about as fast as it began, leaving the whole town looking like a fairytale landscape.
Posted by Daev @ 02:52 PM CST [Link]
Oh goodness, somebody's birthday present arrived today. I gotthis and that.
Posted by Daev @ 02:27 PM CST [Link]
Come to the
English Club Winter Solstice Party!
I think I forgot to mention the date on the flyer. 20.12.03, the day before Winter Solstice.
Posted by Daev @ 02:04 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, December 14, 2003
I miss ol' Ron. I took the liberty of recording our last
interview the night before he flew back to Cali.
Posted by Daev @ 10:08 PM CST [Link]
After this Tuesday on, be sure to listen to last weeks program of This American Life. There, you can listen to part two of Hyder Akbar's audio diary entries from his second visit in Afghanistan.
Hyder Akbar, an American-Afghani, returned last year with his exiled father. His father, a former freedom fighter, is now a rather important official in the government.
In the second installment, Hyder describes an Afghani TV gameshow where the winner could win a case of soap; later he records an entry while in an ambush. The most heavy segment deals with a friend of the family who becomes only the third Afghan prisoner to die in captivity.
(part one)
Posted by Daev @ 07:08 PM CST [Link]
They caught the guy.
Little Wee Diary day four [more]
Posted by Daev @ 06:23 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, December 13, 2003
How to wash a dog.
Little Wee Diary Day three. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 08:24 PM CST [Link]
Friday, December 12, 2003
Those guys at AP are a might tech savvy. Read about that new-biggest-prime-number-guy righthere. Find the mistake?
Shafer ran a Dell Dimension PC with 2 gigahertz of memory and an Intel Pentium 4 microprocessor _ 'like you'd get at Circuit City' _ in his office for 19 days until Nov. 17, when he glanced at the screen at 2:30 p.m. and saw 'New Mersenne prime found.' The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out
Little Wee Diaries -- Day ta-hooo. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 06:02 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, December 11, 2003
PC pool week was a mild success. I changed the lesson plan for each class as I went along, and the results were astonishingly varied. The classes that went well went very very well, the ones that didn't just blew chunks.
The interactive chat had some interesting moments. I saved the transcript of one of the better ones for sake of posterity. Not all classes took to it, though. In fact, some just went ape. Oh well.
The Little Wee Diary--Day one.
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 03:40 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
It's "The Shaggs" Appreciation Day today.
So Say I.
Listen to My Pal Foot Foot.Try out this Shaggs' Custom Desktop theme (Win 98). I made it myself like, years ago.
Posted by Daev @ 07:06 AM CST [Link]
Monday, December 8, 2003
This is the magic of Modemocracy:
1) Go to Google.
2) Type in "miserable failure"
3) Hit I feel lucky (auf gut Glück!)
4) Tee hee.
Posted by Daev @ 05:30 PM CST [Link]
Annet wrote me about this week's English Club:
This week we are meeting at Café 100 in the basement
on Wednesday at eight as usual.
In January another English club activity will take
place. We want to visit the Karl-May-Museum in
Radebeul. A guided tour in
English costs 50 ?. That means we should be at least
ten persons, so that it won't be too expensive.
Please tell me if you are interested and which date
would you prefer: 17./18. or 24./25.Jan.?
I wonder if that is to say we would be sleeping over in the museum over night from the 17th to the 18th? Better bring a bedroll, partner.
Posted by Daev @ 12:52 PM CST [Link]
Tasks For today:
1) I am getting a digicam for Xmas. Which one should I ask for? It needs to be in the 200 - 300 Eu price range. But money isn`t everything. It´s all about what comes with. Some good starting points are listed on page 29.
2) You have not done a lick of preparation for your presentation?!! Well, no time like the present, eh?
3) Find some nice text. Translate it in Babblefish. Then do it again. And again, then back into English. Send it through the Chat.
4) Apropos Babblefish, a Doctor Who story written by Douglas Adams: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shada/ You need sound.
5) Links galore:
the ones in bold seem pretty neat.
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 07:50 AM CST [Link]
Friday, December 5, 2003
I'm goin' back to Cali, Cali, Cali.
goin' back to Cali...
That's right!
Attention- all who did not sign up for the Arnold Let Me have Some Pie Too giveaway!
Let me know asap what you want me to bring back from California.
Please limit your responses on this one to item, quantity and your name seeing as how one tends to be discursive.
Thanks- have a fantastic time where you are during the holidays and everyone be nice to each other.
See you at the Roar of 2004- rOn
Posted by rOn @ 10:45 AM CST [Link]
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
"Further out, scientists salivate over the prospect of data manipulation and storage on an atomic level." (From unit 5.)A "Bazillion" thanks to Onkel Roman for the cartoon.
Posted by Daev @ 01:38 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
I stumbled upon an interesting passage about Arctic pagan roots of Christmas when I stumbled upon this article on shamanism:
It has even been suggested that the figure of Father Christmas derives from this type of shamanic practice. At the winter solstice, Finnish shamans would eat large quantities of the highly toxic fly agaric mushroom. They would then go around the village, dressed in red and white to mimic the colouring of the mushroom, and urinate down the smokehole of each hut. The villagers would drink the urine, which would contain a potent - but not life-threatening - dose of the fly agaric toxin.
Getting high by drinking the urine of those who ingested highly toxic mushrooms is the very first image I get when I think about Xmas.
Here's more on that from the good folks at Fungus of the Month! With some great pictures.
Posted by Daev @ 07:51 PM CST [Link]
Monday, December 1, 2003
We will meet the week of Dec. 8th in Language Lab BZW 251.
Posted by Daev @ 04:40 AM CST [Link]
