Left: Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in The Terminator.
Right: Solid Snake from Metal Gear.
Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category
Autism-R-Us
Thursday, April 20th, 2006I am impressed with the comments and how active your site is. Some spam comment
Active? Ha! I’ve been anything but active around here lately. I keep trying to write more, but there’s not really much happening right now.
Things are finally starting to happen on the medical front. I’ve talked to a new doctor, and he was of the opinion that whatever ailed me, it sure wasn’t a depression — something my previous doc was hellbent on. So now I’m off the meds, and I already feel better.
He was also of the opinion that while I showed some characteristics (I can’t really call it symptoms, since I don’t see it as an illness; merely a non-normative state of mind) of Asperger’s syndrome, it wasn’t severe enough to call it AS proper. So right now it’s merely an autistic spectrum disorder until they’ve figured out some letter acronym that fits me. And I don’t really agree with the “disorder” part either.
The number of autistic traits present determines the severity of autism in the individual. These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering. Wikipedia
I can’t say that I have a very big interest in the various sciences, but I do recall having a pretty easy time grasping the concepts back in school, while others struggled with it.
I talked to a psychologist for a bit last week and did a computerized personality test; next Monday I’m meeting him again for a followup on what the test says about me.
Since I’m pretty interested in informatics, I pointed out several problems with that computerized test. Whoever designed the application clearly wasn’t a designer proper. The questions were of a “yes/no” type, but many questions were formulated so that answering no made the sentence a double negation. That confused me a lot. It would have been a lot clearer if the options were “I agree” and “I do not agree”.
And now I’m off for bed. I’ll try to write more frequently around here now.
Hey, Warren!
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006Stop doing that, Warren. It’s wide open for abuse, such as me making all your readers who read via your RSS feed see this.
What I’m talking about is publishing all your Technorati occurences and Flickr comments in your article feed. Reading your own stuff? I love it. That’s what I want. Reading what every boring entity on the planet writes about you? In French? No thanks, not interested. I don’t speak French.
I suppose I could have e-mailed Warren about this instead, but where’s the fun in that? Feel free to call me a dick in the comments.
Snailmail Spam
Monday, March 20th, 2006I had a letter waiting for me when I got home after watching V For Vendetta, of which I might rant later. US air mail, eh? I rip it open.
Some silly domain registrar, Domain Registry of America (who in the fine print state they are not affiliated with or endorsed by the government of the United States) wants me to host this very domain, and what a fancy name said domain has, at them instead of Gandi, my current registrar.
I would consider it if their yearly fee wasn’t 216% of what I’m paying right now. €26 per year? I pay €12 now. That pricing has no attachment whatsoever to reality.
And why does your spam look so much like a bill? Hidden deep in a paragraph you say that it isn’t, yet you do your best to make it look like one. Add some FUD about “losing your online identity” and I put you on my shit list.
Well, thanks for sending me something to light the fireplace with.
Geek Books
Saturday, November 26th, 2005Woohoo, another meme to spread. And this one I really like, book and scifi junkie that I am. Stolen from Michael Hanscom:
The Guardian UK ran a survey voting for the top 20 geek novels written since 1932. The books I’ve read are marked in bold, the ones I also own are marked in italics.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
- Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
- Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K Dick
- Neuromancer — William Gibson
- Dune — Frank Herbert
- I, Robot — Isaac Asimov
- Foundation — Isaac Asimov
- The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett
- Microserfs — Douglas Coupland
- Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
- Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
- Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson
- Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks
- Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein
- The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick
- American Gods — Neil Gaiman
- The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
- Trouble with Lichen — John Wyndham
Of the ones I haven’t read, I have read something else by the same author in most of the cases. And the rest are in my reading list. I need to return some books to the library on Monday anyway, so I’ll keep my eyes open.
Risk 2210AD
Friday, November 18th, 2005
Testing remote posting from Flickr.
Things I Don’t Like About iTunes
Saturday, November 12th, 2005- I want a “remove duplicate entries” option for playlists. I quite often drag good tunes to various playlists, but I’m never sure if I already have the song there.
- I want the option to have iTunes play the currently selected track after the current one is finished, like Foobar does.
- Retarded tag writing. It writes its gain info as a comment, for crying out loud! Why can’t iTunes make its own ID3 field called iTunesGain or something and store the data there?
- And on the topic of audio gain, use a commonly accepted standard instead to be compatible with lots of other players.
- Reshuffling the party list (with 25 songs) takes forever when the music is on an SMB mount. Why?
- Stop using 100MB of memory!
Serenity
Friday, October 14th, 2005
Could this movie please come to Sweden now? I wants it.
Silly Test Meme Time
Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
You scored as Death. You are death! Reaper of souls! Riding your horse, Binky, with a scythe at hand. Always working, always busy! You sometimes try to socialize with the living, and ALWAYS SPEAK IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Silly Scientists
Thursday, October 6th, 2005- “Scientists from the Center for Disease Control have recreated the virus behind the Spanish flu that killed 50 million people in 1918.” #
- “Scientists have taught dolphins at Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida to sing a short, high-pitched version of the Batman theme, which combines both rhythm and vocalizations.” #