Gecko Bloggle

Put that under your mouse and click it.

It was recently pointed out to me that I’d been nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards in the category of Best Sci/Tech Blog. I asked aloud why this was the case, I was reminded of a few of the geekier things I’ve posted about in the last… while or so…

Let’s recap a little (ooh, ooh, a clip show!):

We’ve got programs that makes phones call other phones, taxidermied robotic owls, optical mice and turntables *do* mix, iPods minus the iTunes, awesome bluetooth iPod remote headphones that crack in half three weeks after you get ’em, elderteapots and yell-controlled blenders (both in one post, too!), sites you don’t click on, network drive mapping problems (my MOST popular post ever, sadly), video/audio fragmentation performances, wicked-looking games that never actually get launched ever, me writing about DNS and Active Directory the way some blogs write about food, Google putting yoni in my bible pocket, going on an absolute TEAR regarding LG’s marketing video made in 2001, commenting on Boogaloo Shrimp (from Breakin’ and Breakin2 – Electric Boogaloo) and then having HIM SHOW UP in the comments on my very own blog, hassling the guy who put Princess Leia in the GoldBikini (it’s okay, I work with him), finding secret messages regarding a certain digital audio format in my can of Edwards coffee, our cat smuggling LEDs in her ocular cavities, guys playing a cover of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” while ruining a number of kitchen appliances, fighting with a whole bunch of people online over who gets to spell what with fridge letters, insane robofish, the Rohypnol version of “Who’s On First?”, carrying a midget around as a cryptographic tool, and who could forget “Why a deep focus in my temporal lobe makes me hate Kirk Cameron in specific, and religious zealots in general.”

So, yeah… It’s been a long and weird trip these last three years…

Thanks to whomever nominated me, it’s nice to be reminded why I write any of this stuff down…

I’ll have to see if I can find the video I’m talking out in this repost from our YahooGroup in December of 2001…
[Edit: Yep. Here it is.� Requires IE, or at least something more like IE than Firefox.]

Hebbo one and all.

Okay, maybe Frank didn’t like this, but I thought it was hilarious. Ten minutes of solid marketing spew, most likely designed by people who can’t use the photocopier down the hall, and have blown up entire lunch-rooms trying to make coffee in the toaster oven.

But what do I know? I’m from Chilliwack. When you’ve been starin’ at corn for twelve years, just about everything’s funny. Except for the last 1/2 hour of SNL.

Oh yeah, the PR thing.

I’d like to see a “Part II” of this marketing thing (or maybe just a re-edit) with the Masai guy hucking a spear through the tree-powered display screen and having the yuppies in the sushi bar gettin’ kabobbed.

It was like all of the “future tech” junk in every Arnold Ham’n’egger film from Terminator through Sixth Day being spliced into a 10-minute PR bomb. Here’s what the future looks like! Don’t need it? Didn’t want it? Never use it in a million years? We’ve got it! (Maybe. After Sony makes one. It’s our idea though.)

Finally: glass doors I can walk *through* without them having to open, or maybe they were just logo-displaying goo, or soap bubbles. Either way, how do you know which ones you’re allowed to walk through? “And if you’ll follow me, over here we have the g-*BANG!* Oh! I ting I bwoke by doze!”

And another thing: Where’d the mice go? Apparently, LG doesn’t make mice. Maybe they make invisible mice that look like cheese sandwiches, ’cause that’s so futuristic.

They do, however appear to make games that have the following handy-dandy keyboard controls:

ASDF – (turn left, in varying degrees)
JKL; – (turn right, in varying degrees)
Spacebar – Lose suddenly, without reason.
Shift-Spacebar – Win suddenly, without reason.
Ctrl-Alt-Space-Underscore-Backspace – Cause hunks of raw perch to spew out of a tree somewhere in Uganda.

I don’t wanna think about what this “game” would look like.

Maybe it’s called “Wobbly Jello Bike Passenger Shake Off Panic” or something. In Japan, it’ll be known simply as “Pocky Game for Short Men,” and become a HUGE hit, just to confuse marketing people in the West.

Oh yeah, with the even *more* handy-dandy auto-gloat-cam, built right into the game console.

Oh yeah, and another *other* thing: If I’m playing a game against some poor schmo on another continent, and my mom’s face pops up in the middle of the game to talk to me, do I get to yell at my mom for seriously hampering my ping time? If I get gibbed ’cause some telemarketer really really REALLY wants to sell me a subscription to TheProvince.Com, I’m gonna send ’em some cat sand in my snazzy new FAXeleporter.

And what was up with that guy hugging the kid on the stoop in GenericThirdWorldica? Get OFF me, ya weirdo. No I *don’t* wanna look at what your watch can do. No I don’t wanna talk to your plastic daughter. I’m hungry, give me your freeze-dried perch-on-a-spear-flavoured PowerBar, or I’m gonna pour hot coffee into your watch and scald your mother-in-law.

All walls everywhere are uniformly white and light up. How convenient. Thank goodness there’s no messy windows or art or doors anywhere. Simplifies interior decoration quite a bit, doesn’t it? What does Feng Shui have to say about this?

Let’s hear it for LG for thinking up a stainless steel bubble that attached to a pole like some sorta fireman’s speed-bump thing, and it holds everything you’d want in a kitchen, as long as everything you want in a kitchen consists of a single bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Maybe some time in the future, I’ll be running around with a wet towel wrapped around my head, and I’ll need something self-guiding that I can stick up my nose to get the tracking unit out, and LG will be there.

Or maybe I’ll just end up poking my brains out with it the nose-track-unit-remover ’cause LG had to put a fifteen-foot antennae on the end of it so my financial advisor could interrupt me in the middle of the procedure to tell me I need broken nose insurance.

Thanks Sean,
I needed that.

Zen (I don’t need a picture frame that’s *actually* a two way camera next to MY bed) Render

This was in response to a friend’s question about whether or not they were depressed (or just having a hard time, what?).

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I’m hearing ya. I was going to suggest (again) that you apply here at Mole Hill (They have “market” and “assisted” pricing for a suite in one of these heritage homes, and having a friend who’s already “in” really helps. Oh, and did I mention that a single parent with a child gets a two-bedroom, according to the rules?) but then you mentioned in that you can’t move away from E’s preschool and N’s parents.

I think it’s totally valid that you’re depressed, and feeling like it’s really freakin’ hard to clean the house (or get outta bed in the morning). Know what? It is.

The fact that you *do* do these things so often, and yet still have time to be interested and engaged in life (and love) in any capacity speaks volumes toward your ability to overcome what life keeps throwing at you. (know what else? life keeps taking a pee in your turtle pool, too)

I don’t think I’m talking out my butt when I say that everyone reading your post is trying to figure out how they can help in some way or another. Not just go “ra-ra” from the sidelines, but actually get in there and kick the ball too (or at least submarine a defensive player or two). Make sure you let us know when there’s things you could use. Don’t let yourself think for a moment that any one of us wouldn’t jump at the chance to do something to help out.

When A went through a period of feeling completely overwhelmed, and feeling like she was just having it all be too much, I got out a piece of paper and started doing “Good/Bad” lists with her. All the basics were there: Time, Money, Kids, Cleaning, Shopping, Friends, Work, Family, etc, and it was pretty easy to figure out what kinds of things went into each column, but the simple act of writing all that shit DOWN made her realise that she wasn’t being unreasonable about feeling overwhelmed.

Her life *was* overwhelming.

Still is.

But I’ll be damned if writing some of that shit down didn’t help her to see that it was okay to feel overwhelmed.

The Super-Soccer Moms out there who work full time *and* clean the house *and* have dinner parties *and* take pole-dancing classes in their spare time (what spare time) are all (I’m pretty sure) faking the funk somewhere in their life. I could be wrong, they might all be just idiotically energetic and overly-healthy people who also like to build cars out of macrame in their spare time. I doubt it though. I’m thinking a lot of them step out of their Escalade in the underground parking and wrangle their $800 stroller into the elevator of their highrise and think “Holy Mother of JEEBUS do I need a drink.”

…and the next morning, they shit on the little club kid at Starbucks who forgot to put CAROB sprinkles on their extra-non-low-whip-spang-enfeebled-mocha-chip-a-crack-a-freakin’-ccino, instead of chocolate.

So… yeah. Life’s hard. Need help?

“A” says that depression *is* picking on yourself and doubting your own abilities. It’s a cycle: You feel bad about feeling bad which makes you feel bad…

She also says there’s a book called “Feeling Good,” that totally helped her. I’ll pray to the bookcase gods and see if it falls on my head, and send it your way.

Hello fellow netizens.

Okay, so a piece of spam made it through my filters today (fyi: during the day or two that I had no mail at all, and was trying to figure out what the heck was going on, I turned off my filter and started getting 10-20 a day instead of the 2-3 a week I’m used to, so I guess my filters are working, once properly configured), and it was this huge graphic trying to sell me something. No big shock there, but what I’ve been noticing more and more in spam is the tendency for the spammers to add entire words and paragraphs to their messages in order to pad them (and maybe allow some through based on content that would “overrule” the filters). Usually it’s just monkey-poundings in order to make each email unique in some way, so that they can’t be bulk deleted easily.

In this particular message, the following gibberish was added:

addictions boulevards midrange immaculately sating cowhide methodicalness craziness examiner imitated pop sans huddle crossword porphyry tallness seasonable achievable possible teemed identifies posit sculpt bernardino popularly accompanist hypocycloid
poet saturates schoolmaster positives hour saunter evictions braze etymology asher crackle technical tarry 9th searched bogs bolshevist tentatively humble angles bothersome coverall add covary terrorizing bookkeep bowstring
talon mention eureka boil evaporating exercisable hub postulate midscale medicate scare counsels hyperbolic counteracted boner plower pourer playground athenian scalable brandish admissible ajax poplin botulin schelling exposition
coverlet posters credulity schematic bravado acreage armenia terrapin euphemisms husband seat alpert crag micro expels poked hybrid menu adduct messing creates exclaimed pose televising mercurial excursus annalen
countrify exceptional boss polyhedron bowstring cozen horticulture aristotle exponentially icosahedron scholastically bluegrass mauve metallizations plead poled exalts scares ignorance exhortations craved searches accountable accountably expeditiously alfred mathematic
hungering methodology admiring schizoid accustoming counterargument scuba anglophobia covertly almaden course audrey alabamian scrupulous melon brasses scurvy excavate cowpox merciless saner tankers adamson armco horrid accurateness tarantara

In some deeply disturbing way, it’s almost pretty.

Anybody else seen stuff like this? The junk in this message was originally white (on white background), so sometimes you have to go look.

So yeah, that’s all I have to say.

Word, nords.

PS: Have I already posted about this CONTROL-A stuff? http://www.toccionline.com/creations/ctrla/ Pretty neat trick.

An oldie but a goodie.
Note the banner (it’s says “Campbell’s Olympic Shame” on it).
and then look at this one notice something’s been Photoshopped out?

Okay, after that super-explode-o reposting frenzy, I think I’m done, and I’ll just stick with B2.

This is where I found the following graphics

Two whom it may concern:

Quoted from your site:

“We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema’s actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11. Clearly, you cannot deny the fact that this falls under hate speech. We believe that if they will not willingly change the name, the government should step in to stop the movie’s production or to force a name change.”

http://www.twotowersprotest.org/faq.htm

Which would be fine and good, except for the fact that maybe, just MAYBE, Peter Jackson named the second movie “The Two Towers” because that’s the name of the second book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, published in 1955 by Ballantine Books.

The WTC towers were built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1973…

Should there be compassion for the people that died 9-11-2001? Absolutely. Should that compassion mean that anybody that does anything that reminds anyone else of 9-11 is somehow evil and doing it intentionally? I don’t think so.

If you can’t seem to put your pain down long enough to see that what you’re doing doesn’t make any sense, at least try to do something positive that will actually *HELP* the people who were affected by 9-11. Go volunteer somewhere. Find out if there’s any kids in New York that lost a parent on 9-11 and maybe that kid needs an extra Christmas present (or clothes, or a trust fund).

Your outrage at something as simple as an escapist story written almost fifty years ago as somehow being responsible for the tragedy in New York only goes to show how detatched you actually are from the people who are hurting. How about you ask the survivors (or the victims’ families) what THEY want you to do to help, instead of attacking a box-office smash in order to try to collect money.

I hope you are kidding (but if you are, I don’t see the joke), and if you’re not, I hope you’re ashamed of yourselves. Think about what you’re doing (or trying to do). Wanting to help, and wanting to blame someone are totally natural feelings. Make sure you’re helping the victims, and not just yelling at anyone that makes you have an emotional response.

It’s okay to hurt, and it’s okay to be angry about what happened, but there’s really no point in attacking a movie that had nothing to do with terrorists, or Americans. It’s a story about good and evil. So’s the bible. So’s life sometimes.

Rage and hatred is not what is needed to help people heal from 9-11.

Rage and hatred is what caused 9-11.

Here’s where they are.

Sorry for the hellacious URL.

Whois info for, twotowersprotest.org:

Registrant: two towers protest
32 pender street vancouver,
bc y6e3j2 CA

Domain Name: TWOTOWERSPROTEST.ORG
Administrative Contact: towers, two
twotowersprotest@twotowersprotest.org
32 pender street vancouver,
bc y6e3j2 CA 1 800 657 3499

Technical Contact: wu, steve info@gotoecom.com
5066 kingsway suite #210 burnaby,
bc v5h2e7 CA 604-412-1503 Fax: 604-451-8611 Registration Service Provider: Gotoecom Internet & Marketing Ltd.,
info@gotoecom.com 604-412-1503
www.gotoecom.com

This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords, DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions. Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 13-Nov-2002. Record expires on 15-Oct-2003. Record Created on 15-Oct-2002. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.LOWBUDGETHOST.COM NS2.LOWBUDGETHOST.COM

ent on the Xmas train last night at Stanley Park. Okay, this is TWICE we’ve been on that goofy little train now, and do you think I thought to bring the camera either time?

NO.

Nuts.