Satya's blog - 2005/08/

Search Google for Flying Spaghetti Monster. I mean, if I'm going to believe in a random god, I might as well believe in an FSM. Take Intelligent Design (please). Why not just believe that your chosen god (or, to put it in ways that most religions might find acceptable, "the god whose chosen you are") did in fact create the universe, but the method used in your favorite religious text is an allegory or something -- it wasn't a flash or 6 days and seven nights or cut from the whale of a liver, or whatever. It was the process that "Science" is now discovering. Big Bang (or whatever), millions of years of cooling, condense out of the cosmic yomomma excuse me, the cosmic dust, evolution (there's that dirty word again), bam! Maybe "god" does work in a mysterious way -- quantum dynamics!

Most people don't want to understand the processes that drive their everyday lives. It might as well be magic, like Clarke said. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and to most people a stapler is advanced. Hell, they probably think staples are created from FSM's rear end or something!

This doesn't begin to come close to the contempt I feel for people's stupidity.

So BadSegue's Netflix Queue Manager is now a "proper" Greasemonkey script (instead of being a stub that loads the JS from BS's site, the GM script now *is* the main JS). Yay! And it rocks!

But today I found that on the Netflix site, you can drag-and-drop your queue... on pages *other* than the Queue page. Weird.

Ah, haven't blogged about this yet. Tried to get out in May, but couldn't find someone to start immediately. Told New_Place to hold, told Old_Place "can't do, wait till end of lease on july 31".

So, fix up Aug 05 with New_Place, tell Old_Place on jul 07 that aug 07 is last day, in writing no less. Old_Place goes "no, you no give 30 day notice before end of penultimate month, you screwed, get out on jul 31". Lease says "30-day written notice", nothing about end of penultimate month. I'm like, er, what do we do for 7 days?

Anyway, they fixed it eventually and "let" us stay for an extra week -- we paid for it, of course. Never said we wouldn't.

So, more Star Wars/Harry Potter connections:

1. Avada Kedavra versus Vader's Sith Neck Pinch
2. Crucio versus Force lightning
3. Imperius versus everyone and their droid's mind control
4. Broomstick flying and snitch-catching versus bullseye-eyeing womp-rats in Beggar's Canyon in a T-16 Skyhopper.
5. Boy Who Lived versus Boy who will bring balance to the Force
6. Dumbledore's "I have no wand" speech versus the Emperor's "I have no weapon" speech
7. Is Dumbledore going to pull a Qui-gon? (I was going to say Obi-wan, but Qui-gon fits better)

Updated:

1. The villain used to be the greatest student ever: Anakin/Riddle was taught by Obi-wan/Dumbledore and became the evil Vader/Voldemort -- who was then redeemed (not yet, or ever, in the HPverse) by someone similar to him, i.e. Luke/Harry.
2. Ghosts and Force-ghosts.

Updated:

1. Flitwick versus Yoda
2. McGonnagal versus Windu
3. Natural flying skills
4. Wand-brothers versus "Luke, I am your [spoiler]"
5. Harry/Luke's father turns out to be evil
6. Voldemort's side constantly called the "Dark Side", Voldemort is a "Dark Lord"

Updated:

1. Yoda's "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." and Riddle's "Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies."
2. Ron and Hermione bickering and Han and Leia bickering.
3. House-elves and droids

Last updated: Oct 14 2005 20:33

I just saw Clone Wars, which is a bunch of 3 minute "cartoons" pasted together into an hour-long feature. It was pretty good, about the level of Attack of the Clones: provided some backstory, had some good fights, Anakin still whined.

Good visuals. The whole thing was done anime style (some of the spaceships wouldn't have been out of place in Robotech), courtesy Genndy Tarta... Tarta.. ::looks up IMDB:: Genndy Tartakovsky! but I think there was too much swaggering in the Jedi. Jedi do not swagger! Damn good battles, though. Mace Windu doesn't say much, but he kicks much ass. If this wasn't anime, I'd have issues with how many droids one Jedi, even Windu, can handle.

High points: The lightsaber battles, especially Windu's. Anakin's line "I have you now." which he uses as Vader in Ep 6 as well. The clone troopers, especially the special detachment. Low points: An unbelievably cocky Obi-wan. Padme as a figurehead and eye-candy.

IMDB has just informed me that there are episodes I haven't seen. Ah, this is Volume 1.

A bit of comic relief (just enough) from the droids. Not completely out of place, but not necessary.

Clone Wars on Netflix Clone Wars on IMDB

_The Getaway Special_ by Jerry Oltion is about a mad scientist who invents a simple hyperdive and then moves the space shuttle he's in to the vicinity of Saturn. (That's not all; I'm still reading it.)

It's good so far. Accurate (to my ground-lubber's view-point) view of *real* modern space flight. So far, besides the hyperdrive, there isn't anything "fiction" about it. Same goes for the g*v**nment paranoia and tactics depicted.

At one point, the mad scientist says how (something) is like taking grant money from tobacco companies or Microsoft.... Later, he makes a new email message because it's the fastest way to get a text editor.

Meme o' the day, folks. This is stupid. 1. (Don't) go here. 2. Pass it on.

1. ~How did you meet thepug? at work
2. ~What would you do if you had never met icewalker? nothing
3. ~What do you honestly think of thepug? scary
4. ~Would or did thepug and thepug go out? er, he's himself? broken script, everyone!
5. ~Have you ever liked mysticmoose? that canuck freak?... yeah, he's okay.
6. ~If thepug died tomorrow, what is one thing that you would need him/her to know? don't go surfing
7. ~Would freegeek and mayuresh make a good couple? bwahahaha! no.
8. ~Describe thepug in 3 words: tofu's evil twin
9. ~Do you think thepug is hot? don't go there
10. ~Would thepug and jace make a lovely couple? no!
11. ~What do you think of when you see thepug? holy crap, it's tofu!
12. ~Tell me something humiliating about mayuresh: i like to keep my friends friendly.
13. ~Do you know any of thetofu's family members? yes
14. ~What's thepug's favorite color? dunno
15. ~On a scale of 1-10 how cute is popefelix? not going there
16. ~What would you do if mcg just professed their undying love for you? not going there either
17. ~What language does thepug speak? californian? what's with the thepug fixation?
18. ~Who is thepug going out with? ... er, dunno.
19. ~Is weezer_311 a boy or a girl? boy, i think
20. ~Would thepug and mcg make a good couple? probably not.
21. ~Who do you think thepug would be great with from this list? no one, they're all guys. i think i see the problem.
22. ~When was the last time you talked to thepug? month ago?
23. ~What is mysticmoose's favorite band? dunno, probably dub island
24. ~Does freegeek have any siblings? yes
25. ~Would you ever date thetofu? no
26. ~Would you ever date thepug? no
27. ~Is thepug single? dunno probably
28. ~What is thepug's last name? i know it, won't say.
29. ~What is thepug's middle name? dunno
30. What is thepug's fantasy? not going there even if i knew
31. ~Where does weezer_311 live? lani court
32. ~Would you make out with thepug? sigh. no.
33. ~Are icewalker and thetofu best friends? i don't think so
34. ~Does thepug like thepug? now cut that out. ya know, a simple while($a eq $b) would fix that.
35. ~How did you meet thepug? er? see question 1.
36. ~Is thepug older than you? probably
37. ~Is jace the sexiest person alive? er, not going there. and no.

Update: Nuts, they couldn't insert some break tags, or make it a list?

Last updated: Aug 19 2005 23:03

Regarding data-driven web sites that also involve logging in, and web site login management in particular, I said in chat today:

I think they all suck, but since we actually wrote this ourselves, we know exactly how much it sucks... so it appears to suck more. I call it my theory of relative suckitudity.

If you copy a URL wrapped over multiple lines from somewhere and try to paste it into the address bar, you will end up only with the first line of it. To fix it, go to about:config and change editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines setting to 3.

Says some guy called Andrei via Jeremy Zawdony's blog.

So I've finally posted the pictures of the opening night (that's night before opening day) fireworks on the Ravenel bridge.

(more here: http://www.thesatya.com/albums/chs/cpbridge/thumb1.html)

This is a big 8-lane (4 each way) cable-stayed suspension bridge with ramps for downtown, Meeting Street, North Charleston, Coleman, and Johnnie Dodds. There is a separate (jersey barrier) bicycle and pedestrian lane from East Bay Street to Coleman Boulevard. It replaces the old and old-old bridges, the Grace and Pearman (I can't keep straight which is which) which are like 60 to 80 years old.

The old-old bridge, which stood alone for the first 20 years or so, was pretty narrow. Just two lanes, one each way. They say it was a white-knuckle drive across. It still is. It's the one on the right in this picture:

(more pictures, including a side view that almost shows the Yorktown, here: http://www.thesatya.com/albums/chs/cpbridge/thumb1.html)

My boss has been taking pictures and blogging about the construction at http://ravenelbridge.net/ and he will blog the demolition of the old bridges.

The new bridge is taller, longer, and wider than the old ones.

Last updated: Jan 22 2006 09:15

Firefox has an extension called Greasemonkey (I'd link to it but their site is down right now). It basically lets you add user-defined javascript to any page so you can enhance it's functionality. The Netflix queue manager is a little sucky, so someone wrote a GM (greasemonkey) script so you can drag movies up and down the queue, sort them, etc.

The script is just a few lines, and all it does is import the big scripts from the guy's site at http://badsegue.org/ . I thought, why should I import from there every time. So I put the scripts, CSS, and a lot of the images on my local server. Changed all the refernces to images, etc. as well. The original script right-aligns everything, which doesn't look so good. I fixed that.

I will re-release it or better yet get him to accept patches or whatever.

I was telling Gautam all this, and then I said that to use this you have to have Firefox, which 10% people do. 10% of those have Greasemonkey. And 10% of those have Netflix. 50% of those would be interested in this So it comes down to about 0.00005% of people being interested in this.

I have to see what the redistribution policy is on that thing.

Update: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ is the greasemonkey site.

Last updated: Aug 03 2005 22:33