Dispatches from the Eccentric Frontier
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the “Max Kaehn” journal:| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
22:13 ※ Enquiring minds want to know
After I showed a Worth1000 entry to![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
obsessivewoman, a discussion on red puppet identification led to the speculation: is Animal related to Elmo? Or, for that matter, Gitmo?
Current Mood:  amused |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
20:37 ※ The Addams Family: Where are they now?
Between Thing and the Dungeon Master on Good Eats, I suspect Alton Brown’s television persona is a renegade Addams who lacked the family palate for braised giraffe, mongoose broth, and salamander puffs and went to cooking school to learn about spices other than aconite and belladonna. Perhaps a Cousin Wednesday is going to show up at some point...Current Mood:  weird |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
19:53 ※ It's the R'lyeh thing!
Katrina was pondering why a mystical conspiracy would be carbonating the ocean...
| Current Mood: amused |
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| Tags: demented visions ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
21:30 ※ I had to do it
I’ve had this theory for years, and now proof! The Dalai Lama caught with one of the secret feline masters!
| Current Mood: amused |
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| Tags: demented visions ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
17:30 ※ The march of progress?
For the first time in my life, I have had to reboot my desktop phone.(It’s a voice-over-IP system.)
| Current Mood: amused |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
19:56 ※ Torture for Alton Brown?
obsessivewoman is watching “Gotta Get It: Gadget Gifts” on the Food Network; it features an impressive array of culinary gadgets, most of which are extreme unitaskers that would not find frequent use in a household kitchen. I keep expecting them to cut away from the show to Alton Brown being given the Clockwork Orange treatment and quivering in horror.
| Current Mood: amused |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
17:00 ※ Dubai constructs thaumaturgical megaproject
Dubai have a project going called The World, a huge map of the Earth created as a set of man-made islands. Keep an eye out for sinister agents collecting ritual samples from the corresponding locations on the globe; it looks like they’re trying to make a bigger and more accurate thaumaturgical resonator than the effort to replicate the world’s various monuments on the Las Vegas Strip.Current Mood:  illuminated |
Current Music: Steve Roach - Immersion: One | |
| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | ||
15:04 ※ Reality overlays
Looking back over my notion of Toonconferencing, it occurred to me that the same technology could be used (with drastically more CPU power) with a combined camera and augmented reality system to give your entire world a cartoon overlay. (It would need to be amazingly fast, though, to keep up with the real world without introducing lag.) This sort of thing could see practical application for tasks where it’s necessary to highlight certain details and minimize others.The really cool application, though, would be a high dynamic range filter. (If you haven’t seen HDR photography, take a look at the Flickr feed.) In addition to the aesthetic appeal, it could come in very handy when driving to cut down on glare and reflections of the sun.
Current Mood:  inventive |
Current Music: Ololiuqui - Ololiuqui | |
| Tags: future trends ⁎, random thoughts ⁎, where's my venture capital? ⁎ | ||
20:03 ※ Toonconferencing
By the time videoconferencing becomes popular, it will probably take place over fiber optic lines and not be much constrained by bandwidth. There will be some demand for it over wireless, though, and that is much more constrained. Wireless videophones will have to have some way to downgrade their connections to handle limited bandwidth. Right now, we just wind up with dropped frames and jerky movements, but throwing more processing at it could make things much more interesting.When CPU horsepower drastically outstrips available bandwidth, there will be a lot of ways to compress connections. I expect one of them will be optimized for the most important data in video communication: the nuances of the human face. We’ve already spent decades working on a very low-bandwidth representation of that, in the form of cartoons. Once there’s demand for low-bandwidth video connections, I expect we’ll see “toon filters” that operate by identifying the important details of the human face and transmitting just the changes in those parameters over the wire (after an initial setup).
And once you can send a cartoon of your own face, it should be possible to send any other cartoon you want. Disney may even license their trademark characters so people can make calls as anyone from the Cheshire Cat to Maleficent. (Though that may get nixed as soon as someone brings up the possibility of getting an obscene phone call from the Little Mermaid.) More exaggerated cartoony features may even be easier to read on small screens than normal human proportions.
| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: future trends ⁎, random thoughts ⁎, where's my venture capital? ⁎ | |
13:50 ※ Twelve Steps for the Sith Lord
For purposes of Star Wars narrative, it’s important to have your established infrastructure become decadent or hidebound. You wouldn’t get nearly as much cinematic action out of a universe where this sort of thing happens:“Hi. I’m Sidney Palpatine, and I am a Dark Jedi.”
“Hi, Sid!”
“It has been three years since I last used the Force to dominate and control...”
| Current Mood: perverse |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
23:39 ※ Cthulhu ph'nglui Apple fhtagn
Ever have one of those ideas that just sticks in your brain until you can finally express it in concrete form?
| Current Mood: weird |
Current Music: Erich Zann - Opus 13 extended dance mix | |
| Tags: demented visions ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | ||
21:09 ※ Vocabulary for our times
divertimento recently When our Republic had the proud though sometimes awkward strut of youth and before the growth of culture and skepticism had recruited a lively army of debunkers, there was a Congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina, who achieved notoriety even in that day for the flood of bombastic nonsense that he poured forth. He talked, as he said, “only for Buncombe.” All of which was intended simply to tickle the ears and swell with vanity the diaphragms of the voters, assuring their support for the good old Congressman from Buncombe, a man of the people. Shortly, Buncombe became a common descriptive term— buncombe— signifying remarks uttered, without regard to truth or sincerity or pertinence, for the purpose of swaying the crowd in behalf of a candidate for office, or any man who wanted something, or any movement that was trying to put itself over.If political discourse ever moved past the era of the blathering of Felix Walker, it has surely devolved to that point in these benighted times. But it reminds me that the English language has quite a number of delightful terms for bullshit that have fallen out of common use. (If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds true, it may reflect on our culture.) Here are some choice ones that are rather apt for the present day:“Buncombe” meant a tricky, specious appeal to the crowd. It implied, not sound discussion and a genuine effort to place the truth on view, but oratory consisting of catchphrases, platitudes, sentimentalities, and the like.
Current Mood:  sleepy |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
17:23 ※ Cognitive dissonance of the day
I know that when I read the term “POJO” in design documentation, they’re talking about Plain Old Java Objects. But nevertheless, I cannot help but think about fire-breathing chickens...| Current Mood: amused |
Current Music: William Orbit - Strange Cargo III | |
| Tags: day job ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | ||
13:38 ※ Anticipating my vacation
I’m planning on going on vacation for the week of July 4th, so I wanted to put together a guide for people who need to solve Windows problems while I’m out. I titled it “Fenestral Haruspication”— literally “divination by inspection of the entrails of Windows”.(Update: changed from “fenestric” to “fenestral” when a bit of searching showed that the latter is actually in the dictionary.)
| Current Mood: sleepy |
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| Tags: computers suck ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
18:37 ※ Havoc is wreaked
After much effort (including capable assistance fromdeirdremoon), the yard at Maine Coon Manor no longer resembles the plant nursery for the FTD of Hate. Though I suppose I missed a chance for entrepeneurship. I probably could’ve made a lot of money if I advertised nettlegram deliveries on wingnut rant sites.
Current Mood:  tired |
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| Tags: better moat and castle ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
13:06 ※ If we really want to trigger regime change in Iran...
So there’s much ado about Iran right now, with claims being touted that they’re close to being able to create nuclear weapons. (The claim that they could produce nuclear weapons in sixteen days is predicated on their getting 54,000 centrifuges working in series, from a mere 164 now. They’re years away from doing that.) Given the Bush regime’s track record on nation-building, I really don’t want to see them make an even bigger mess in the Middle East. And there’s a much better way to facilitate regime change there.Most Iranians aren’t very happy with their current theocratic government. They don’t like having their weblogs censored. So why not try a 21st century take on Radio Free Europe? Instead of spreading propaganda, Voice of America style, just smuggle cheap laptops (already localized to Farsi) across the border with wireless connections, and equipment for setting up camouflaged wireless links or getting satellite uplinks. (Low bandwidth is fine; they don’t need streaming video, though it could come in handy for verisimilitude.) Set up the laptops with everything a subversive thinker needs to get on the Net and meet up with fellow-thinkers to get organized, protected by encryption and anonymity. It shouldn’t be difficult to set up links over the border in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we can probably persuade some of Iran’s other neighbors to help out as well.
It’s just the sort of thing to severely annoy oppressive regimes, and it makes for much better propaganda for us. “We’re just smuggling them some freedom; they’ll know what to do with it.”
| Current Location: 37.418000, -122.09565 | Current Mood: resigned |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: hold your nose and vote ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | ||
12:25 ※ Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
Today, the treat at work was from Noah’s Bagels, and the box had a slogan:Noah’s makes any occasion taste better!My natural reaction was to look for exceptions to their blanket statement: any occasion? What, they’re making unleavened bagels for Passover?
| Current Mood: perverse |
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| Tags: day job ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
18:20 ※
If substantial numbers of former New Orleans residents settle in distinct regions of other cities, will those be called “the Little Easy”? If people who don’t have the money to wait for New Orleans to be cleaned up and made habitable once again settle in sufficient numbers that they bring New Orleans culture to other cities, there might be some interesting second-order effects.Current Mood:  speculative |
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| Tags: future trends ⁎, random thoughts ⁎ | |
18:06 ※ Question for my heathen friends
Is there any movement within Asatru to get children exposed to the truth about Ginnungagap and Ymir in science class in school? If so, where do I send my check?| Current Mood: weird |
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| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | |
08:37 ※ Unusually coherent dreams (for me, anyway)
( I don’t often get dreams you can productize )| Current Mood: sleepy |
Current Music: Miles Davis - Walkin' |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: random thoughts ⁎ | ||
| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
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