I’m happy to say that I have now contributed an article to that supreme productivity-reducer, the TV Tropes wiki.
I’ve done little edits there in the past, but never had the chance to create an article. But a couple of days ago I noticed that they didn’t have an article on one of the staples of sci-fi TV and movies: The Ridiculously Dense Asteroid Field.
So I made one. It’s already been considerably improved by other users.
Apropos of this post, my sister also has a shed-cat-whisker storage unit.
Hers is tougher than ours.
One of the simplest ways to get yourself a sample of the current crop of spam is by using a “spamtrap” e-mail address. Such an address is not advertised as being a way to contact anyone, but is visible to spammers’ automatic address harvesters. You can, for instance, put such an address on a Web page with the foreground and background text colours set the same, so that no human can even see it when reading the page normally.
Because I write the I/O letters column for Atomic magazine here in Australia (and reprint it on Dan’s Data six months after paper publication), I get to see all of the spam that makes it through the filters on the io@atomicmpc.com.au address. The I/O address isn’t a true spam trap, since it has a real purpose, but it’s certainly not subscribing to any mailing lists.
Recently, io@atomicmpc.com.au has been receiving regular press releases from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia, which is the local branch of Lyndon LaRouche’s completely sensible and entirely not batshit insane political task force.
Most recently, these messages have informed me that the only thing standing between us and the complete financial collapse of Western society is LaRouche’s Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007, which includes a number of modest proposals along the lines of nationalising the entire US financial industry.
That seems simple enough. I’m sure that right after George W Bush and Dick Cheney finish having gay sex on live TV, they’ll get right onto making it happen.
Woe betide the world if they ignore Lyndon’s predictions, after all. Remember how his pan-ethnic street gangs conquered the USA in 1973? Remember how domestic terrorism tore the USA apart in the Reagan years? And, of course, everybody knows that the British Royal Family are drug pushers!
(A bit of a long walk to the joke, but worth it, I think.)
It’s possible that I’m only getting the LaRouche spam because the Citizens Electoral Council are still rockin’ a 1994-era mailing list system that doesn’t send a confirmation e-mail, and someone subscribed io@atomicmpc.com.au as a joke. (Ah, for a return to those halcyon days when you could effortlessly subscribe anyone you liked to dozens of random newsletters…)
I wouldn’t be surprised if they just bought a “Press” e-mail list or ran their own Web-page troller, though.
The Error’d series on what-used-to-be-TheDailyWTF occasionally features some magnificently huge error boxes. I think the second one in this post has to be the record-holder: A standard Windows error box, 401 by 737 pixels in size.
I, however, quite often see one with 3.8% more area, and even less usefulness.
When the server that supports the excellent Pennypacker Penny-Arcade-indexing Firefox extension is down, the extension becomes unhappy.
It, then, serves you up with not one but two of these petite little beauties…
…every time you look at a PA comic page.
That’s 683 by 449 pixels, folks.
And feel the quality!
My recent reinstall reacquainted me with the delightfully varied places in which Windows programs keep their configuration settings.
In the olden days, you knew where the config files were. Old DOS programs didn’t necessarily have config info; you just gave ‘em parameters on the command line, as the Great Beards intended.
When there were enough persistent settings to require separate configuration storage, you’d just have a text file called progname.cfg or something in the program directory. Easy.
Some programs still do this, even today. Blessed be the name of those programs, for you can often just run ‘em from their directory and have everything work, whether or not you’ve ever run an installer for that program on your current Windows install.
But there are so many other places where Windows programs, in this modern age, may keep settings.
Some of them make their own directory in Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\, for instance.
Others use Documents and Settings\username\Application Data, just to keep you on your toes.
(Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data also contains the XP IconCache.db file, deleting which can cure some weird icon problems. Or at least change them.)
And some programs, of course, tuck their settings away in the registry. Typically in some branch that’ll have a different name when you reinstall, so you’re thwarted even if you get all clever and “Export” that branch from regedit.
(I was quite proud of myself when I successfully edited the exported .reg file to put the settings for that one awkward program in the new long-nonsense-named registry branch.)
Some programs even decide to strike a blow for individualism by putting config files in the parched wasteland of My Documents. Cunning!
(Yes, I am aware that Mac OS X has one place where all of this stuff Must Be Kept, and Often Is. I agree unreservedly that just switching to a lovely trouble-free Mac would make settings transfer a great deal easier, by relieving me of many of the programs whose settings I would otherwise have to transfer, not to mention a substantial amount of the employment that so tiresomely requires me to use said applications.)
The whole installation-transfer adventure did have some bright patches. Some applications that look as if they ought to be a mass of horrible encrypted untransferable setting info actually aren’t at all. Valve’s “Steam” game download system, for instance, can trivially easily be ported from one Windows installation to another. Just install Steam on the new computer, then copy the (huge) steamapps folder from your old install to the new one. Done.
I even successfully exported and then re-imported the security certificates for the Australian-Government-issue Goods and Services Tax software, which isn’t as legendarily bad as you might think but still doesn’t inspire confidence that such a feat will actually be possible.
Oh - I’m also sure I’m not the first to be annoyed by all of the software companies who insist on making their install directory not Program Files\ThisProgram, but Program Files\CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet\ThisProgram, apparently because they assume you’re going to be so impressed with ThisProgram that you’ll buy a whole suite of other Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net software, which must be kept in one directory for, um, neatness. Or something.
Later on, if you’re trying to find the ThisProgram install directory (or even its entry on the Start menu, which will of course also be a company-named subdirectory), your eye will slide right over the CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet directory, because nobody outside CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet has any idea what the company is called.
The most outstanding example I’ve seen of this approach is from one Juan M. Aguirregabiria, whose programs, that’s right, want to install themselves in Program Files\Juan M. Aguirregabiria\…
(And then the program of his that I tried had some DLL error or other and didn’t even freakin’ run.)
I have no opinion on the authenticity or otherwise of the decor in Stalin’s bunker, as depicted in a series of pictures on English Russia.
But I think whitewall tyres on an armoured vehicle are pretty darn sweet.
Reality show idea: “Pimp My BMP“!
If you own one or more cats, you will occasionally find a shed whisker lying around.
Unlike the little delaminated bits of claw, dismayingly frequent piles of vomit and prodigious amount of ordinary hairs that cats also leave lying around, shed whiskers look as if they ought to be good for something.
Regrettably, the cat’s-whisker detector used in classic crystal radios does not use an actual cat whisker.
I’m also not a painter, so I don’t need a super-fine single bristle for putting highlights in eyes.
I do own a microscope, but have not recently needed to push any minuscule shells around on a slide.
And I have no interest in enraging a cricket.
So I am, at the moment, unable to think of anything to do with spare whiskers. Until such time as I do, I’ve chosen to store them.
Like so.
I welcome any suggestions regarding what to make and/or do with this impressive collection.
One of the great entertainments that awaits you whenever you reinstall Windows is seeing what new and strange personality features your fresh install exhibits.
It happens almost every time, and usually within days, or possibly even hours, of the reinstall; some weird thing arises that you’ve never seen before, even if all you’ve done is reinstalled the same version of Windows on the same computer you were using before.
Munged icons are a pretty common Windows problem - the OS messes up the pointers to its cached icons file, so each class of file or folder gets a semi-random new icon. But this new install of mine just came up with a variation on that theme which is a new one on me.
Yes, it munged the Quick Launch icons!
(In case you’re wondering: No, none of those icons match the programs they’re connected to.)
No problem, said I. I opened TweakUI and used its “Rebuild Icons” option, confident that everything would now be fine again.
Instead, I got this. Now all but one of the icons is invisible!
More “Rebuild Icons” attempts caused the single still-visible icon to change, and more and more icons on the desktop to disappear.
Well played, Windows! Well played!
Another of those thesaurusised porno spams arrived, with the puzzling subject line “lascivious yez Cyprians rmpp Masturbates!”
So now I know that “Cyprian” is not just an archaic word for a resident of Cyprus, but is also an old term for “a lewd or licentious person, esp. a prostitute”.
It’s not, I grant you, as useful a word as “catamite” for everyday abuse of the deserving, but it’s diverting nonetheless.
(Modern definitions of “catamite” are a bit colourless, if you ask me. I much prefer the succinct old Oxford definition, “a sodomite’s minion”. The 1913 Webster’s opted for “a boy kept for unnatural purposes”, which left the details of the poor fellow’s everyday life alarmingly hazy.)
The author of a different spam was pleased to inform me that after using certain suggestively-named pills for seven months, “now my shaft is extremely weightier than civil”.
I think there’s something in that for all of us, don’t you?
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