some kind of antitrust law or garbage collector that periodically comes along and randomizes WhuffieWhuffie is the measure of respect in the society of Down and Out; more than that, it's that society's equivalent of cash - as much as it has any equivalent. Of course, unless you've brainwashed 100% of the population, the anti-trust laws or garbage collectors will need to be backed up by the men with the you-know-whats. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/28/2003 09:59:00 AM ----- BODY: Episode 5 of Rizelmine went plooie too. Sigh. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/28/2003 09:56:00 AM ----- BODY: Oh, yes. As always, by the light of day it's neither as original nor as interesting as it was at 4 A.M. But here goes: When you are designing your Utopia, remember this: People will be people, and to make things work, somewhere there will have to be men with guns. And it does not necessarily make things better for them to be hidden from view. What brought this on? Last night I was reading Cory Doctorow's new book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It's not a bad book, and you can download it for free, which is always a plus. But the society described in the book simply wouldn't work - unless there are, somewhere behind the scenes, men with guns. Read it anyway. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/28/2003 09:27:00 AM ----- BODY: I had an interesting an original thought last night that I wanted to share with you. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what it was. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/27/2003 02:35:00 PM ----- BODY: Oh, look! It's raining. How... novel. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/26/2003 04:36:00 PM ----- BODY: The problem with downloading stuff from a filesharing network is that you don't know what you'll get. The episode of Buffy that I downloaded using BitTorrent proved to be a dud - after I'd dragged all 433MB back to my PC over my sorry excuse for broadband. One episode of Jungle Guu was plagued with video glitches. One episode of Azumanga Daioh dropped out with a minute or so to go. In case anyone is listening: I'd pay to be able to download these files directly from the source. That's pay as in actual money. You'd have to get the price right, though. A DVD box set of Buffy runs about $120, or around $5 per episode (Australian prices). A download would have to be cheaper than that, and if quality is significantly below DVD standard, it would have to be significantly cheaper. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/25/2003 06:32:00 PM ----- BODY: So, just how often does Easter coincide with Anzac Day to give a three-day working week? I'd work it out, but I think I'd rather take a nap. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/24/2003 11:49:00 PM ----- BODY: You know that headache you get just because you're tired? And all you need to do to make it go away is get some sleep? Only you can't sleep because you've got this headache? I've got one of those. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/24/2003 02:46:00 AM ----- BODY: Weda. Hale's mother's name is Weda. Just thought you'd want to know. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/23/2003 04:01:00 PM ----- BODY: The Internet is a time machine. I did 18 out of my 20 impossible things, and of the remaining two, one can't happen before the end of the month and no-one has actually decided what the other one is yet. So I can say that they're done and no-one can prove otherwise. In other words, I'm blogging from work. So why is the Internet a time machine, you ask? Well, you could (and indeed should) take a look at lileks.com and spend a happy - if somewhat dazed - afternoon lost in the 50's and 60's. It's well worth the effort, particularly if you missed them the first time 'round. But what I was actually thinking of is this: Tonight, when I go home, I'm going to watch next week's episode of Buffy. Which means I can spoil it for the guys at work. Hahaha! Not that I'd do that, of course. The thing I have to remember is: Don't get greedy. No-one likes a greedy time traveller. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/23/2003 08:17:00 AM ----- BODY: I have 20 impossible things to do before I go in to the office today, so I won't have time to blog. Oh. Oops. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/22/2003 08:40:00 PM ----- BODY: Well, I've watched Buffy now. Of course, now I have to download next week's episode and watch that too. No minutes! No waiting! But this time I think I'll leave it to run overnight so that it doesn't chew up my precious peak-time badnwidth. Meanwhile, kAzAa is chewing up all my upstream bandwidth, since I dropped Azumanga Daioh and Jungle Guu into my share folder. (And Rizelmine.) But I don't pay for uploads, so I don't care. Nyaa! -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/22/2003 02:05:00 PM ----- BODY: I'm working from home today. Yay me! On a less cheerful note, I forgot to watch Buffy last night. Well, poot. And episode 10 is well and truly history as far as BitTorrent is concerned. Fortunately, Kazaa (well, Kazaa Lite) found it for me and is happily downloading now. Unfortunately, this is costing me, depending on how you want to look at it, $12, $60, or nothing at all. I'm sticking with "nothing at all", thanks. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/21/2003 04:17:00 AM ----- BODY: Tip for Time Travellers: Don't get greedy. (via Dave Barry) -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/20/2003 08:47:00 PM ----- BODY: Family dinner last night to celebrate my brother's 35th birthday. Since it was his birthday, he got to choose the restaurant, and as expected we went Thai. I hate Thai food. Probably because I'm a supertaster. Coffee tastes horrible to me (for all its wonderful aroma) as does pretty much anything alcoholic. I thought for years that wine was an acquired taste, until I learned that most people can't tell that it tastes nasty. Anyway, everyone else in my family (with one exception) loves Thai Red Beef Curry. To me, it tastes like it's been boiled in dishwater. Some other dishes are even worse. We had a fish curry dish once - I'm not sure exactly what it was - that everyone loved so much that they ordered another serving. I had to restrain myself from spitting out the single fork-full I tried. My nephew Lionel feels no such constraints. If he doesn't like something, it's gone. Of course, he's 18 months old and cute as a bug, so he can get away with it. Fortunately, he loves rice (though he wasn't too impressed with the saffron rice) and prawn crackers. When we'd finished our basket of prawn crackers and were waiting for our entrees, Lionel was eyeing the baskets of crackers being delivered to other tables. They're going the wrong way! Prawn crackers over here! Oh well. The Massaman Lamb was actually pretty decent, as were the curry puffs. And rice is rice, so I didn't starve. We had dessert at my brother's house - chocolate cake and coffee for everyone else; chocolate cake and hot chocolate for me. Mmm. Chocolate. Oh, and remember my little internet rant, wherein I mentioned a company called Comindico? Turns out that my brother's company is a Comindico reseller, and he'll put me in touch with someone there. So I can hope to have real internet access soon! Fingers crossed, as I said. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/20/2003 08:46:00 PM ----- BODY: Stupid Stupid Blogger™ ate my post. In fact, Stupid Stupid Blogger™ has been effectively down for hours, at least as far as updates go. Fortunately, I'm smarter than Stupid Stupid Blogger™, and I copied my post when by Geeksense™ started tingling. Just as blind people tend to be more alert to sounds, working as a programmer for [mumble] years helps develop a sense of when an application is going to barf in your lap. Anyway, the BloggerPeople™ have fixed whatever it was, so I'll post my post now. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 04:09:00 PM ----- BODY: Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0005' Invalid procedure call or argument: 'mid' //functions/doAutoLogin.inc, line 15 Ah, that explains it. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 04:06:00 PM ----- BODY: Oh yeah. It's still raining. Knock it off already, will ya? -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 04:02:00 PM ----- BODY: Has Blogger always been this buggy? My archives are broken. I can't regenerate them. I can't fix them. I can't even delete them. I've seen no shortage of other server-side errors either. I'm new to this blogging thing, and thought that this was the easiest way to start. Now I'm thinking it might be less painful to write the whole thing in Python, if not 6809 assembler. The phrase "stupid stupid Blogger" springs to mind for some reason. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 03:45:00 PM ----- BODY: Steven den Beste has an interesting analysis of just why the French are such weasels. One thing that it fails to take into account is that the French have always been weasels - or at least for the past thousand years or so. Charlemagne doesn't seem to have been a weasel, but then again, he wasn't French. Irregardless of which, you should read it, and this piece by Guy Milliere titled France is Almost Finished as well. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 01:30:00 AM ----- BODY: Okay, so I've been watching Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. So? Want to make something of it? Phear the power of the cute side. Phear! -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/19/2003 01:14:00 AM ----- BODY: The Australian police seem to be having fun today. Two questions come to mind: 1. Operation "Sorbet"? 2. Heroin comes in brand names now? What sort of a name is "Double Uoglobe" anyway? (via USS Clueless) -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/18/2003 07:02:00 PM ----- BODY: Australia is a nice place to live as long as you don't want to use the Net. As I've mentioned, I have lately been watching quite a bit of Anime that I've downloaded using BitTorrent. The way I do it is this: 1. I log in to my web server in the U.S. (I pay about $80 per month for a server including 100GB of uploads and unlimited downloads.) I use the Linux BitTorrent client to download the file I want. And of course I leave the window open for others to download the file in turn - though I tend to limit the upload rate because otherwise I'd hit my monthly usage limit within a day or so. If I exceed my monthly usage limit I have to pay an extra dollar or so per gigabyte. 2. I wait until 1 A.M., and then download the files from my web server to my home where I can actually watch them. Why do I have to wait until 1 A.M.? Because my ADSL connection, for which I pay $190 per month, only includes 2.5GB of "peak" downloads, where peak is 8 A.M. to 1 A.M. weekdays. If I exceed my usage limit I have to pay an extra $150 per gigabyte. No, I'm not kidding. Off-peak, which applies on weekends and from 1 A.M. to 8 A.M. weekdays (and costs me an extra $30 per month) is free - but if I download more than 10GB in a month, my connection is throttled down to about one fifth of normal speed. It doesn't get reset each month, either - you don't get 10GB first before being throttled. If you download more than 10GB in a month, you start the next month pre-throttled. Recently, a download I'd left to run overnight took longer than expected and ran into peak time, putting me 200MB over my monthly limit. That cost me $30 - about the price of a DVD here. If it wasn't for off-peak times, downloading a single episode would cost as much as a whole DVD. Why don't I find a better ISP? Well, until very recently, there wasn't one. The deal I just described was about the best you could find in Australia. Now, though, a company called Comindico has started offering unlimited downloads on ADSL through a number of resellers. If they are any good (it's too early to tell yet) this is going to shake up the Australian broadband market big time. Fingers crossed, because there a few industries that need a kick in the pants more than the ISPs in Australia. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/17/2003 09:18:00 PM ----- BODY: To whoever is in charge of these things: Yes, we did ask for rain. Yes, we are grateful. Thank you. But perhaps you could take a short break? -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/17/2003 01:34:00 AM ----- BODY: First I say that a blog has to be about something and that I can't just sit here and babble about what I've been watching, then I sit here and babble about what I've been watching. (Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu and Azumanga Daioh, for those who haven't been paying attention.) So to redeem myself, here's another link to someone else's blog, and more specifically Frank J.'s proposal to Nuke the Moon. For peace. Of course. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/16/2003 12:57:00 AM ----- BODY: Two of the best anime series I've seen recently are ones I didn't buy, but downloaded from the net. I didn't buy them not because I'm cheap, but because they're not for sale. Not in English, anyway, dubbed or subbed. The first is Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu (Jungle Guu for short), which translates roughly to The jungle was always nice, then came Guu. Which is pretty much the story. Hale is a young boy growing up in a jungle village with his mother, whose name I can't remember right now. Hale's quiet life is turned upside down when his mother adopts the little orphaned girl Guu, who is not quite what she seems. Having watched only 15 (out of 26) episodes so far, I can't actually say what Guu is, and I'm not at all sure that it becomes clearer in later episodes. But it doesn't really matter. Guu is weird, her facial expressions are wonderful (you get a taste of them in the opening credits) and is the perfect foil for Hale. Jungle Guu is definitely off-beat, but in a way that quickly grows on you. I could give you more details, but I'd likely spoil something. Just watch it. The second series is Azumanga Daioh, the story of a group of high-school girls. They don't dress up in combat suits and battle alien invaders. They don't transform into mini-skirted magical maidens and save the world. They don't even fall into a parallel universe and find themselves forced to examine their own identities. They just go to school, like more-or-less normal girls. But that's more than enough. Azumanga Daioh was originally produced as 130 5-minute shorts and has been resewn as 26 half-hour episodes, though you wouldn't know it except for the sub-episode titles and the unflagging pace. Frequently rib-crackingly funny, sometimes poignant, never dull, Azumanga Daioh is a delightful study of high-school life. If you want to watch these - or other anime that hasn't yet been picked up English-language distributors - hop on over to AnimeSuki, which is a nifty directory of BitTorrent downloads of fan-subbed anime. (BitTorrent has to be the least annoying file-sharing program ever, and works not only amazingly well, but also on Linux. Which is a good thing, because for some reason it crashes my otherwise stable WinXP box.) -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/15/2003 02:11:00 AM ----- BODY: Ha! I defeated the evil Blogger-Mozilla-Paragraph-Breaking Link Bug. View Dave Barry's blog in Mozilla to see what I mean. Or just read it in your browser of choice. He always has the most interesting links. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/14/2003 11:30:00 PM ----- BODY: So what is this blog about, anyway? I mean, a blog is supposed to be about something, right? I can't just sit here and babble about what I had for dinner (hokkien noodles with chicken and sweetcorn, not very good), or what I've been reading (Laurel Hamilton's Cerulean Sins, not very good) or watching (Azumanga Daioh, downloaded off the net. Very good.)
Right now this blog isn't about anything much, so if you've had your fill of the cute kitty (which should take all of five seconds unless you're Sakaki-san), go read Lileks, who probably does have something to say. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/14/2003 06:40:00 PM ----- BODY: That cat is looking at me funny. -------- AUTHOR: Pixy Misa DATE: 4/14/2003 05:20:00 PM ----- BODY: This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine. --------