Friday Ephemeraren’t
As I’m still finding my footing after the holiday interlude, I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with some competitive fashion, a wearable compass, assorted Hungarian fishing huts, the sturdy tape breakthrough we’ve all been waiting for, some declassified CIA maps, and a tediously accurate scale model of the solar system.
Play nicely. No biting.
The pocket-friendly duct tape is nice, but my daughter has prior art. At least ten years ago she habitually carried a couple yards wrapped around an old credit card.
Sigh. Missed business opportunity.
Just updated the OS on a secondary computer. Once I get the new bells and whistles sorted out, I’ll do the same for the primary computer and continue from there . . .
And one of these days, I really need to go digging all the way into the plumbing . . .
Hal,
I have a copy of (I think) Version 6 Unix sources, if you wanna go really hard core and skip that “official” BSD training.
Of course, it’s on a 1/2×6 inch reel of 6250 bpi magtape. Good luck reading it. Probably it’s the VAX 780 version, or maybe even PDP-11/70.
Of course, it’s on a 1/2×6 inch reel of 6250 bpi magtape.
Ah, yes, that little issue . . .
Or one can drop $40 for a current media study copy of all the assorted related OSes . . .
What on earth did that guy use to render the tediously accurate scale map of the solar system?
SWIDT?
What on earth did that guy use to render the tediously accurate scale map of the solar system?
Some sort of software I expect . . .
Just updated the OS on a secondary computer.
It’s nice to see BSD undergoing the same incompatible distribution-and-packaging-format diaspora as Linux.
. . . the same incompatible distribution-and-packaging-format diaspora as Linux.
Not really, unless there’s something you’re thinking of specifically.
The snafu with Linux has always been that Linus does the kernel and doesn’t bother with the general distributions of kernel and other. Following that, everyone else then does what they want to assemble and package and install their version of other that gets wrapped around the kernel, resulting in all those distributions.
For the BSDs, they’ve stayed as monolithic projects of kernel and other, where TrueOS is simply the latest edition of FreeBSD with a windowed installation from the start, and the preassembled package installation—Where the packaging model, as I recall, has gotten adopted elsewhere in the BSDs anyway, so that just serves as further reinforcement of the continuing overall monolithic aspects.
It is tedious, isn’t it?
Not really, unless there’s something you’re thinking of specifically.
Never mind, I see they’ve deprecated PBI in favour of pkg. I run PC-BSD on an old laptop myself.
a tediously accurate scale model of the solar system.
Mostly space then.
Can we burn down Buzzfeed yet?
https://twitter.com/YeyoZa/status/816938091298570241
Can we burn down Buzzfeed yet?
As noted down the thread, the people at Buzzfeed really do like their racist headlines.
[ Added: ]
I suppose you have to wonder how many English graduates, schooled in the evils of “white privilege” and saddled with near-useless degrees – people like the unlovely Hannah Brooks Olsen – will end up seeking employment at places like Buzzfeed or Everyday Feminism, where they’ll churn out equally poisonous trash. Week after week.
Star Wars Intro Generator
(Sorry if it’s been posted already.)
As I’m still finding my footing after the holiday interlude
It must have been epic.
Star Wars Intro Generator
I was just watching this video on the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing and Grand Moff Tarkin.
If you open the tedious model of the solar system and hit Ctrl-U (at least in most browsers I know), you will be directed to source code explaining how it’s constructed with element placement and pixel counts. Excerpted:
It must have been epic.
Nothing terribly debauched. Nothing I’ll admit to, anyway. It’s more that after a couple of weeks of being happily disconnected from politics, academia, etc., it takes a while to get back in the swing of it all. You have to get past the natural gag reflex.
a tediously accurate scale model of the solar system.
Mostly space then.
I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Drive-in Sunday/Skeletons in the closet/The Band, before they became The Band/Car sculptures?.
A tasty burger.
Ice sculptures.
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/01/the-2016-harbin-ice-and-snow-festival/422655/
A tasty burger.
It’s barely 11am and I’m already thinking about lunch.
Why I Married Myself
Because never before in history have single women had meaningful lives without narcissistic ceremonies. One has to read the whole thing, it is a warehouse full of crazy.
Can we burn down Buzzfeed yet?
Buzzfeed is pure, distilled clickbait, and their “listicles” all look like pop-up spam – the kind you wonder if they’ll install malware if you click on them. Scrolling through their front page trying to find the article in question (which one Tweeter claimed was “humor”), I could feel IQ points being sucked out of my brain. What utter garbage.
Okay, I found the link. It is a joke list. It’s about stupid things people do in “infomercials” that no one ever does in real life. But the readers’ comments are even worse. Damn, the internet is fully of supposedly “educated” people who are just plain stupid. It’s almost as if they’ve been indoctrinated…
“Because never before in history have single women had meaningful lives without narcissistic ceremonies. One has to read the whole thing, it is a warehouse full of crazy.”
Didn’t Doonesbury do a riff on this 25 years ago, when he was still funny? IIRC, when the preacher got to the ‘does anyone have any reason’ stage, an unknown admirer of the nitwi… bride spoke out. Her reaction? “Thank God!”
“Damn, the internet is fully of supposedly “educated” people who are just plain stupid.”
Nah. It’s September 8529th, 1993. The internet is full of idiots.
(Related ephemera. Although can something that long-lived truly be called ephemeral?)
You have to get past the natural gag reflex.
Excuse me?!
A wild and crazy guy.
A wild and crazy guy.
I can’t help feeling there’s some kind of lesson to be learned.
Sam Duncan,
Nah. It’s September 8529th, 1993.
Heh.
Or, as they say on 4Chan, “Sure is summer in here”.
Star Wars Intro Generator
It is amusing with text copied from one of these pages here . . .
It is amusing with text copied from one of these pages here…
The Year Reheated works quite well. At last, the cosmic grandeur I deserve.
The Year Reheated works quite well. At last, the cosmic grandeur I deserve.
Hmm. Playing the Imperial March on your honky-tonk in the corner does give it a certain something.
You have to get past the natural gag reflex.
I see what you did there…
In racist typo news:
There’s a hashtag and everything. Nearly as good as the Australian cookbook where one recipe called for “salt and ground black people”.
The BlackTwitter treatment of Rachel Dolezal had far more jokes in it.
In racist typo news:
Went to have a look, got sidetracked by a rather prominent ad.—Or at least it’s there at the moment, dunno what sort of rotation that page has . . .
So, while it’s universally acknowledged that there’s a hipster born every minute, apparently some hipsters are presumed to be right wing.
“The NHS is starved”
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/817699989132636160
Why I Married Myself
“Yet another woman forced to do all the cooking & cleaning in a marriage”
https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/817510843059343360
Why I Married Myself
This is why we pay our Guild of Evil dues. Good work, boys!
On a completely different tack, did anyone else here enjoy Rogue One as much as I did?
did anyone else here enjoy Rogue One as much as I did?
Haven’t seen it. I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but it’s on my wait-until-it’s-on-Sky list.
Theophrastus,
Your question is a bit ambiguous, but speaking for myself the answer is almost certainly No.
Not as bad as “Man of Steel”, though.
Uber driver gives hardcore customer service.
The CIA’s “Cartographic Maps”
Isn’t that tautology? That said, I left school a while ago. Perhaps cartographical maps are now a sub-division of maps?
I’m rather luke-warm about Star Wars, but my wife and her brother are enthusiasts. Yet I went to see Rogue One, and I was absorbed because it had a self-contained storyline, characters I could relate to, a powerful sense of alien planets, no naff Star Wars humour and a moral theme – the nobility of sacrifice in war.
Hmm. Theophrastus shames me into posting more…
(When we do reviews of company presentations, we always start with the pros, so..) (no spoilers)
I liked, for instance:
Tudyk’s robot character. Comic relief without the stupidity of he-who-shall-not-be-named. And his ultimate fate was handled reasonably well.
Some of the planet sets, especially the low-rent districts. Dense with visual and auditory imagery without being distracting – this is a hard trick to pull off.
The female and male leads. Both more real as humans, with internal conflicts and layers of experiences.
The depiction of factional squabbling and the related political and moral issues.
The references, subtle and not, to other productions.
The visuals production quality.
I disliked:
The many very obvious video-game items, especially in and around the archive. The one scene where my son and I looked at each other and said “crates!” simultaneously.
The lighting, especially in the first half. At one point I was wondering if it was a 3D production, which often have this problem.
The pacing and editing. Perhaps some of my complaint here comes from the foreknowledge of the fundamentals of the ending, but I was frankly bored during several stretches. Also, unexplained and implausible segues.
I guess the basic problem I had with it was that many things I think of as technical production decisions spoiled the presentation of a solid premise.
For calibration purposes, y’all should know that I hated “Fury Road”.
Sure there are non-cartographic maps Lisboeta.
The schematic maps of the various world undergrounds being an example millions use every day, because they are much more useful than the cartographic versions.
“The last time Congressional Democrats peaceably accepted a GOP victory in the Electoral College was 1988. In 2000, 2004 and 2016, Democrats in Congress objected, tried to object, and generally disrupted the process of certifying the Electoral College vote. They did so with no substantive grounds, instead just for the political theater of it… This is part of a pattern of a specific species of political norm-smashing where Democrats seem to be leading the way: Refusing to concede when they lose.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/253955/
Fred the Fourth
Thanks for you thoughts. I’d agree with your positives, but with only one of your negatives – the scenes around the archive were rather contrived. Unlike you, I found it had a lot of pace. That said, I went to see it with fairly low expectations…
What leftwing bias in academia?
https://twitter.com/niall_gooch/status/817785376500686848
did anyone else here enjoy Rogue One as much as I did?
I’ve pretty much disliked every movie I’ve seen in the last 15-20 years to the point of whereas we once went almost every Friday, I only saw two last year, The Martian (meh, ok) and Dr. Stange (unfortunately meh, but it was election night and I needed to be away from TV’s and distracted). I have especially disliked every Star Wars movie since the third one. The wife, who is no sci-fi fan, and I just got back from seeing Rogue One and both of us enjoyed it immensely. I actually had forgotten what it is like to enjoy a movie.
For calibration purposes, y’all should know that I hated “Fury Road”.
Details?
Separated at birth?
Hal, if I gave details about my dislike of “Fury Road” I would then have to provide another calibration basis, else fall into circular reference.
(That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)
In other news:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098332/They-Kant-PC-students-demand-white-philosophers-including-Plato-Descartes-dropped-university-syllabus.html
From the “Asians do weird things” department:
Taiwanese politician’s funeral features 50 pole dancers
I’d think having pole dancers on top of moving jeeps would be a bit dangerous, however.
I’d think having pole dancers on top of moving jeeps would be a bit dangerous, however.
I’m told the secret is to maintain a firm grip on the pole with both buttocks.
I also think I’d rather have the pole dancers before I die.
“I’m told the secret is to maintain a firm grip on the pole with both buttocks.”
.
On a completely different tack, did anyone else here enjoy Rogue One as much as I did?
I appear to have been the only one to notice that the film casts the Rebellion as ISIS/Al-Qaeda terrorists fighting the US as the occupying military Empire. I found this offensive enough that it ruined the movie for me.
By the end of the movie I was cheering for the Empire. Director Krennic was the only character I liked.
(This is aside from the many directing and writing flaws throughout the movie; I can’t exactly blame the director and scriptwriters for Not Getting Star Wars, as most fans don’t, but I would think that if you screw up as simple and iconic a character as Darth Vader then that’s not a good sign you have a good grasp of the franchise)
. . . I would think that if you screw up as simple and iconic a character as Darth Vader then that’s not a good sign you have a good grasp of the franchise)
Ayup.
I appear to have been the only one to notice that the film casts the Rebellion as ISIS/Al-Qaeda terrorists fighting the US as the occupying military Empire. I found this offensive enough that it ruined the movie for me.
I think you just might be over-interpreting some things there.
By the end of the movie I was cheering for the Empire.
I used to hang out a bit in Star Wars forums. It wasn’t unusual for big Star Wars fans to be pro-Empire. Certainly many had little love for the rebels.
Also, Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. This is a syndrome that I suffer from too. I have watched them enough to know all the ridiculousness on display — there is as little as ghastly to a person who loves Star Wars than the word “midichlorians”.
And so a small cottage industry has spawned of “Why I hate Star Wars” by Star Wars fans. http://www.indiewire.com/2012/04/no-one-hates-star-wars-quite-like-a-star-wars-fan-130016/
I will go see Rogue One. I expect to hate it.
I appear to have been the only one to notice that the film casts the Rebellion as ISIS/Al-Qaeda terrorists fighting the US as the occupying military Empire.
I had just re-watched Firefly, so I had Browncoats vs. Alliance on my mind, and I saw parallels to THAT. Also, the Empire has always very obviously been the Third Reich, not the United States, because it never pretends to exercise power in the name of liberation or other happy talk — The Empire displays its iron fist sans adornment and doesn’t care who calls it evil.
I think you just might be over-interpreting some things there.
I really don’t think I am, from the oh-look-its-Petra easter egg to the name of the main planet to casting an Arabic actor with an Arabic accent to play the Rebellion’s Captain of Intelligence to the Empire invading for the purpose of stealing their precious natural resources to the scene where the Rebels ambush an Imperial armored vehicle in the streets of a Middle-eastern-themed slum. And that’s just the parts I can describe without spoilers.
(If you’re still not seeing it, take a look at all the things they added unnecessarily to Star Wars canon, and why. Since when has the Star War universe had man-portable rocket launchers? Since they needed to make a Rebel look like a jihadi with a manpack SAM.)
No, I really don’t think I’m over-interpreting it. At all.
I had just re-watched Firefly, so I had Browncoats vs. Alliance on my mind, and I saw parallels to THAT.
Just for calibration purposes, you know the “Browncoats” are the Confederate Army from the US Civil War, right?
Have a hot take.
Diego Luna is an Arab? Or are Mexicans now “Arabic”?