Global Causality Violation

Yes, yes, another gravatar snapshot...

2011-12-11T14:55:00.001-08:00

Saved for posterity, for when Xane changes his avatar...

On Optimization

2011-08-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like a five year old program written by the damn fool you used to be to wise you up and take pity on the damn fool you'll be five years from now.
--Argent Stonecutter, SL Scripting Tips forum, Dec 8, 2008

What's the gentlest way to remove contacts from your friend list?

2011-06-22T17:20:00.001-07:00

I normally use a little carbon tetrachloride or acetone (nail polish remover) and gentle rubbing, though some people swear by duct tape ... lay it down over the contact, wait for a couple of hours to set, and carefully peel it off. Never use a putty knife or spatula... you will shatter the contact and may scratch the underlying substrate.

CANNED ESPRESSO NON-PATENT #101

2011-06-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

Eventually someone is going to combine Guinness' foam technology with canned coffee.

(this brilliant idea released into the public domain, GOOGLE FOR IT YOU SLACK PATENT EXAMINERS)

Fermilab has found the Higgs Boson? Maybe...

2011-04-06T12:43:00.001-07:00

WE HAVE THE HIGGS BOSON. IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN LEAVE US$30B UNDER THE POTTED PLANT IN THE LOBBY OF FERMILAB BY SEPTEMBER 2011.

2011-03-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

IMVU. This is the best they can manage for a ferret.

2011-03-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Just posting this here for future reference to use when Frank changes his avatar back.

And done...

Kangaroos!

2011-02-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

So, Athena is the goddess of Wisdom, is she?

2011-02-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Trojan War was started when Eris was snubbed by Hermes and not allowed into some Olympian shindig, so she offered a golden apple “to the fairest”. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all claimed to be “the fairest” and rather than have the most awesome cat-fight of all time the gods decided to have a beauty contest. They got this prince of Troy named Paris to judge it, and Aphrodite bribed him with the most beautiful woman in the world, a Greek princess named Helen. The Greeks objected, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for nine years and raze Troy to the ground.

If Athena had been so bleeding wise, she would have sold tickets to Olympian Mud Wrestling between Aphrodite and Hera instead, and the topless towers of Troy wouldn’t have toppled.

The joy of gmail...

2011-02-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Ninja tricks with Gravatar.

It's not the 18th century any more...

2010-12-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

“There comes a point in every man’s life when he must be tempted to spit on his hands, hoist the Jolly Roger, and start writing fanfic.”

That's the way to deal with grinches...

2010-12-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going to kill you in your sleep, Mister Grinch

I say!

Paint the halls with blood and terror
Falla lalla la… la la la la…
What’s this? A bomb, addressed to ‘bearer’?
Myahahahaha… ha ha… ha ha…

Giant otter cyberpunk epic. In space.

2010-11-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

“No wonder you can’t mind-link with your space-suit, how the heck did you get a live eel stuck there? No, don’t explain. Yes, you can eat it now.”

More Roller Coasters

2010-11-07T05:06:00.000-08:00

“And this wall is built along the path of the Roman-era roller coaster “Nullus Gravitas” that originally served as the border between the legionaries barracks and the grounds of the temple of Bozeidon*, the god of pratfalls…”

*Actually, it was probably Nyuktune, Bozeidon was his Greek name.

A history of Ferris Wheels through the Ages

2010-08-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

“Here we have the bamboo and silk wheel from the Fun Park of Emperor Bozhou, of the Honk dynasty. This wheel was known to have collapsed on two occasions, but it was rebuilt by the Ritual Clowns each time. A ride on it was one of the trials required for employment in the Fun Bureaucracy.

“The short-lived Honk reign was cut short by the Serious Rebellion, the Fun Park was destroyed by fireworks, and Bozhou’s red nose was ground to powder and scattered over its ashes.

...

“This wheel was to have been built by Archimedes at the command of the king of Syracuse, but it was converted into a defensive engine during the Roman invasion. Cicero claims that it was captured intact and shipped to the Circus Ludicrus outside the Emperor’s Summer Retreat near the Roman city of Florence, but there is no contemporary confirmation of this story.

“Leonardo da Vinci is said to have spent several years attempting to recreate this wheel during his residence in Florence, due to the popular tales about its abilities: it was supposed to be able to cloud minds, raise the dead, and reverse baldness, but of course later pictures of the great inventor clearly demonstrate that he can not have been successful in this endeavor.

...

“During the Derp period after the collapse of the tower of Babel, Ferris Wheels where frequently seen among the great cities of the Feral Crescent. Ur, Um, Huh, and Duh needed great building projects to show off their growing prowess in the new languages (which still had simple, quaint names like “Huh”, “Hurr”, and “What you say?”) [1]. Obviously the traditional works like towers and pyramids were considered to risky, so theme parks blossomed among the towns and villages.

“The primitive state of irrigation obviously made waterslides and wave pools impossible, but the engineers who survived the Babel disaster were able to quickly improvise Ferris wheels and drop towers from their memories of cranes and scaffolds.

...

“The Ferris wheels and other rides of Precolumbian Central America did not long survive the coming of the Europeans, and only their elaborate foundations remain. These were no amusement parks, instead the rides were tests of courage and skill, with spiked logs and huge stone balls[2] released onto the tracks of their wooden coasters in praise of Hahahapocthli and Ticklecoatl, the feather boa.”

-- Housepets

[1] "There’s debate over whether “Anchor What?” was part of a city-state amusement complex, or a religious training facility like those found in Central America. Traditionally it was said to have been founded by a lost vessel from the great Queng-Hohoho flotilla of military and merchant clowns during the Honk reign, but Whattish historians now argue that the Risible Emperor was inspired by their ancestors instead.

"The name, of course, refers to a classic Honkish practical joke involving a rubber anchor."

[2] "Despite the pop-science stories about alien intervention, these balls were obviously originally volcanic in origin, produced by geode-like crystallization around a seed, and only a small number were actually finished to trophy quality for the emperors and high priests. The average WeisGei or NyukNyuk monk kept nothing more than a common boulder to show for their death-defying ride."

Yet another Erudite Ferret blog!

2010-06-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Just down the street from here!

Russian Peasant Arithmetic.

2010-06-17T11:21:00.001-07:00

Professor Ferret here!

I just wrote a message on SLU I think I'll post here for posterity... explaining Russian Peasant Arithmetic. Here's the original message by Tess Whitcroft:

How to multiply

After writing down the numbers halve the first one and double the second, writing the new numbers below the preceding ones. If the number being halved is odd, just ignore the remainder. Repeat this operation as long as you can:

177 x 23
88 . 46
44 . 92
22 . 184
11 . 368
5 . 736
2 . 1472
1 . 2944

Now remove from the second column all numbers where the corresponding number in the first column is even:

177 x 23
88 . 46 < remove
44 . 92 < remove
22 . 184 < remove
11 . 368
5 . 736
2 . 1472 < remove
1 . 2944

Then add up the remaining numbers:

23 + 368 + 736 + 2944 = 4071

After a couple of requests for explanation, I ended up posting this:

OK, start with the number 177. In binary that's 10110001.

Dividing by two is equivalent to shifting one bit to the right. 177/2 is 88, that's 1011000.

So, here's what you're doing in binary (LHS is Left Hand Side, RHS is Right Hand Side):
LHS       RHS          LO BIT OF LHS   RHS = 23 * 2^N
10110001  10111        1               23 * 2^0 = 23 * 1 = 23
1011000   101110       0
101100    1011100      0
10110     10111000     0
1011      101110000    1               23 * 2^4 = 23 * 16 = 368
101       1011100000   1               23 * 2^5 = 23 * 32 = 736
10        10111000000  0
1         101110000000 1               23 * 2^7 = 23 * 128 = 2944
Look at the third column I added. That's the LHS number in binary, reversed (read from bottom to top). So the process of dividing extracts the binary equivalent of the number starting from the low bit, by looking at the low bit of the value... the values where the number is odd have a low bit of 1. The values where the number is even have a low bit of 0.

At the same time you're calculating 2^n * LHS by multiplying it by two each time.

So what we've done is this:

177 * 23 is (2^0 + 2^4 + 2^5 + 2^7) * 23

By pulling out the values where it's odd, you've extracted:

2^0 * 23 + 2^4 * 23 + 2^4 * 23 + 2^7 * 23

And because multiplication is distributive... that's the value you want.

Caesar Salad with Russian Dressing

2010-06-03T13:02:00.001-07:00

Tsarist Russia was the Zombie Roman Empire. The Soviet Union was the Robot Zombie Roman Empire. The new Russia is the Pirate Robot Zombie Roman Empire.

LOLFERRETS

2010-05-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Erland Aakre has lolferrets.

What Robert Anton Wilson heard in Beethoven's symphonies

2010-04-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

Lord, use me.
Lord, use me but don’t break me.
Lord, I don’t care if you break me.

Headfish comes full circle

2009-11-17T03:19:00.001-08:00

Back in the old days, when Taco was still around, Uchi and Loafy and I were hanging around in a skybox high above Dwellget. Uchi attached a Starax goldfish to his head and the headfish was born. My avatar at the time was an otter, so I took to wearing it and handing out copies to people when they asked me about it.

Them: Argent, you have a fish.
Me: What fish?
(hand them a copy, they wear it)
Me: It must be in your head.
(which of course it was by this time)

Cheap yucks, yes, but pretty soon I started seeing people wanding around with Headfish that I'd never met... it had gone viral. People started making more elaborate headfishes, which was cool. A year or so later, 7 Seas shows up, and people's headfishes start getting replaced by 7 Seas fishes. And now...

Making a 7Seas Custom Fish from a STARAX fish!

Yes, someone's reinvented the original inspiration for the whole headfish phenomenon.

Right where you are sitting now...

2009-07-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.

Turn to page 56.

Find the fifth sentence.

Post that sentence.

Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the closest book.

Liveweasel. They should call it "liveweasel.com".

2009-06-24T03:57:00.000-07:00

So, I needed a LJ account to post to people's LJs. Oh well, I'm sure I can steal some really funky socks over there.

Argent Stonecutter's LiveJournal.

What I find disturbing is that LiveJournal is integrated into Windows Live somehow. At least it wanted me to set up a Windows Live Id. Blow that for a joke.

If you can't run your tongue across them, merge with them.

2009-06-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

I was motion in the boundless universe. I was the square root of minus one. I was covered in thick beige fuzz that moved of its own accord. I was ten feet tall.

I was a pastrami ice-cream cone. I was the key of G minor. I was full of tiny gears and printed circuits and my battery needed charging.

I was pregnant and I knew the people responsible. I was the law west of the Klamath River. I was without form, and void. I was a long-playing microgroove record.

I saw the best minds of my generation and I was appalled. I was a platinum gas tank. I was an army advancing toward I was as army.

I was the ghost of Christmas past. I was the rabbit in the moon. I was as corny as Kansas in orbit.

I wasn't thinking very well at all. -- Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid.

NOM NOM NOM

2009-05-11T13:47:00.001-07:00

Tasty!

Pluto IS a planet

2009-04-12T18:45:00.001-07:00

The vote in Prague was totally rigged. Less than 500 members of the IAU, and almost half of them abstained, and they come up with a definition of a planet that excludes the Earth!

More Erudite Ferrets

2009-04-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

I suppose it is acceptable to treat the term "lolz" as technical jargon.

European-American?

2009-04-02T14:10:00.001-07:00

The domesticated ferret comes from the European polecat, yesno? So would that be European-American or Mustelid-American?

Argent's Deviant to Hanlon's Razor

2009-03-31T14:09:00.001-07:00

Argent's Deviant to Hanlon's Razor. "Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by a Monday morning meeting."

Spin the Bottle is for wimps!

2009-03-31T09:02:00.001-07:00

Wheeee!

Making me dizzy.

Some SLURLs...

2009-03-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Skyhook Station

Coonspiracy Store

Global Causality Violation

2009-03-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

I can't believe nobody else in Blogger is interested in Global Causality Violation.

Smart marmots?

2009-03-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

Much as I appreciate Josh's inimitable contribution to the world of amusing carnivore trivia, I must object to being described as a "smart marmot".

Erudite Ferrets

2009-03-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

Erudite Ferrets are the new black.

"I think I see your problem. You forgot to account for the effect of a rotating frame of reference on the cosmological constant. The missing mass of the universe is under your couch."