No Uptime
This was outstanding, especially the “Why Nu?” page.
This was outstanding, especially the “Why Nu?” page.
When I took the indestructible cellophane packaging off of my new Toadies CD (Rubberneck), I noticed the ”©1994 Interscope” on the back. This made me think of Sixteen Stone, which was the first—and my first—Bush CD. And the only one I will vouch for in any way positive.
One of my little heuristics for buying old albums is to count the number of songs I was expecting to be on the CD before I pick it up, then count the number of songs I am surprised are on the album. Then, when I play the whole album, I count the number of songs I remember but did not recognize before listening to the CD.
For this album, it was 1+1+2. In fact, it happens to be the same pattern for Sixteen Stone. For reference, that would be (“Machine Head”) + (“Comedown”) + (“Little Things”, “Glycerine”).
The fact is, this is a very good album. It somehow manages to portray an image of a hard jam band while keeping song lengths down to sub-early-Dave Matthews levels. Lots of instrumental breaks, and even an instrumental opener. Pretty hard, but mitigated by a level of weirdness that makes the experimental stuff very easy to swallow. Plus, “Tyler” is just a cool little song.
I’ve taken to saying “Excuse me” whenever someone cuts me off in a store.
If we assume that daytime talk shows aren’t fake, there are some truly crazy people in this world.
The new trend in marketing- and consultant-speak is to take a word that normally requires a preposition or infinitive after it and just cavalierly use it on its own, or in the wrong way, to invoke some mental image without having to say anything.
Those close to me while watching TV will hear me railing about the use of “inspire” in this fashion. “Inspiration comes standard” and its relatives are about as stupid as I can imagine. Inspired to do what? Drive? Be at the place to which you are driving?
Even if you are kind of generically inspired, the actual usage of the word tends to be (borrowing from one of the example sentences in the dictionary) “The artist was inspired by the tree.” Here, it is obvious that the inspiration is “to paint,” “to sculpt,” whatever, but we get the idea. As in, the artist wasn’t inspired to jump out of a tree. That is understood. If I’m driving a Chrysler, it’s hardly clear from the context.
Now Microsoft is using “enable” without saying what they are enabling. “Empower” is about the same, which is Lifetime material all the way.
Several other buzzwords are avoiding the movement through fortuitous contextual problems with this use. Take “leverage.” If you could use this one in the intransitive fashion and make it sound cool, it would already be done like crazy. However, “We have made Company X increasingly leveraged” just makes it sound like you ran up a bunch of long-term debt.
This article is here to remind me to read it after finals.
Given that I’ve pretty much finished studying, I treated myself to reading the Skip Lists article. Turns out Keith Packard (of X Windows fame) has written a nice reference implementation for skip lists.
Is the plural of Wii.. Wiii?
Anyway, new wishlist, with the latest addition of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, which was recommended to me today over lunch. The wishlist also features the not-so-latest removal of the Wii from the list, pending Hallmark World Conquest Day of Doom this February. Just kidding, Kristin.
I’m going to be bookified for next year, even given what I already have in the cache.
Idea between formula sheet entries (possibly already exists):
Any update to my DokuWiki (wish list) or Cluster would “ping” my blog at the proper time to notify readers that a change was made between post N and N-1, say.
Semisonic’s Feeling Strangely Fine was just sold to me by Pandora. I’m such a sucker, but I have them to thank for Cardinal Trait, so no bad feelings there.
We now have the post-finals project nailed down. This looks beautiful.
This merges with the main kernel tree at 2.6.20 (the on-deck release, at this point).