Gathering Darkness - 18

Came across this meme on a friend's blog, and it sounded kind of interesting, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The rules, as I got them, are as follows:
1. Put your music player on shuffle
2. Press forward for each question
3. Use the song title as the answer
4. NO CHEATING!!! What you get is what you get!

I'm more than a little bit disturbed by the pattern that began to develop as the experiment wound on...fortunately, I can point it all to the fact that I didn't have very much music loaded on my ipod when I did this, so maybe I can try it again later with a broader selection of my music and it will end up feeling a bit less like my ipod is trying to question my sexual orientation. Continue reading "Internet Meme Develops into Unsettling Trend"

Those of you who listen to the TrekWest5 podcast know that we are starting to make more use of my Google Voice account. In testing the viability of this as something to help our listeners give comments, Peter called and recorded a rambling message. When we logged into the account, we were greeted with the following automated transcription to go along with this recording. Continue reading "Google Voice Transcripts Are Hilarious"

Brought to you from Wil Wheaton's (@wilw) twitter, I give you 101 Muppets of Sesame Street...there was more than one entry that made me think "WTF?!", and you'll find a couple of them behind the jump. Continue reading "So Many Things Lost"

I'm currently reading "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" by Leonard Mlodinow, and came across the following passage that I thought would catch the attention of some of the aspiring authors here.
I'm quite enjoying the book, and need to thank my good friend BigE for buying it for me. Here's the quote:

Suppose four publishers have rejected the manuscript for your thriller about love, war, and global warming. Your intuition and the bad feeling in the pit of your stomach might say that the rejections by all those publishing experts mean your manuscript is no good. But is your intuition correct? Is your novel unsellable? We all know from experience that if several tosses of a coin come up heads, it doesn't mean we are tossing a two-headed coin...

Continue reading "Randomness and Getting Published"

Tuesday should see the release of Firefox 3.5, which has a lot of exciting features I hope to be able to take advantage of from this blog - including using localStorage to implement the "Auto-save" feature, which should cut down on a lot of the un-published drafts that accumulate every few months. I encourage you to download the new release and give it a try!

Just wanted to share a 'spam comment' that showed up in a REALLY old post. I will be redacting certain keywords:

Hey. Nice, i hate this site, kill you. Help me! I can not find sites on the: [redacted]. I found only this - [redacted]. Order [redacted] because due to the the generic reason of go to page [redacted] is clear. How government and the legal profession coerced a plea bargain from a I had been without the [redacted] longer than I had ever been previously and Thanks for the help :eek:, [redacted]

I am Dilbert, Peter the PHB.



Hate you, Peter Nash.

On Saturday, my family and I tried to make use of all those tax dollars being drained from my wallet by visiting the Orem Public Library. Unfortunately, before we were able to check out with our selected materials, a fire alarm began to sound and we had to put our books down and leave. By the time the fire crews and other emergency services left, the library had closed for the day. I was unable to find any information online about it (if you know anything, please leave a comment!), however I found this interesting video on YouTube talking about a new "TouchTable" they've installed at the Orem library...so, those of you with ready access to the SLCPL...well, ok, your library still wins. But it's still kind of forward-thinking for Utah County!

100 people are being held prisoner in a jail. They are told that in one hour, they will all be taken to separate windowless, soundproof cells. One at a time, and in a random order, they will be taken from their cells, interrogated, and then sent back to their cells. All interrogations will take place in the same room, which contains one light bulb and the switch that operates it. The light is initially off, but the inmates are free to toggle the switch as often as they want, whenever they are in the interrogation room, and the prison guards will not toggle the switch at all. No prisoner can see the light from their cell. Only one prisoner is interrogated at a time, each prisoner can be interrogated multiple times, and they have no way of communicating besides the light switch. The length and amount of time between interrogations is random, so no help there.
At any time, any prisoner under interrogation may state, "Everyone has been interrogated at least once." If this statement is true, everyone will be released. If it is false, all of the prisoners will be executed.
The prisoners have one hour to work out their strategy before they're isolated for good. How do they get released?

Note: The selection process for interrogations is random and fair; some prisoners may be interviewed multiple times before another prisoner is interrogated at all, and after any point in time, every prisoner will be interrogated an infinite number of times more.

My proposed solution is rot13 behind the fold. Continue reading "Logic Puzzles via Randall (xkcd) Munroe"

I don't like most of the music I hear other people listening to. Most of what's out there sounds like crap. However, after following a trail of "Recommendations" by Last.fm, Rhapsody and Pandora, I thought I'd mention some artists that I've recently (in some cases, 're-')discovered that have a sound which appeals to me, along with some tracks that are from artists I don't normally listen to which I enjoyed.

Colbie Caillat - especially her rendition of one of my all-time favorite songs, "Kiss the Girl" from Disney's "The Little Mermaid"!
Lenka
Lilly Allen
Erin McCarley
Ingrid Michaelson
JayMay
Yael Naim
Uh Huh Her - this is a band, not the PJ Harvey album
The Postal Service
Madeleine Peyroux - it's absolutely CREEPY how much this woman sounds like Lady Day

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
Natasha Bedingfield - These Words (I Love You, I Love You)
Katie Melua - Just Like Heaven (an awesome acoustic cover of the smash hit from The Cure)

With the start of Yet Another Joss Whendon SciFi looming, the media machine appears to be getting ready to crank up its efforts - exhibit #1, the Scriptwriting in the UK blog's list of 10 writing tips from Joss.

Given the number of stories that have started here, I think we can all relate to tip #1:

1. FINISH IT
Actually finishing it is what I’m gonna put in as step one. You may laugh at this, but it’s true. I have so many friends who have written two-thirds of a screenplay, and then re-written it for about three years.

Following a thread that started on one of MG's shared links on the side, I eventually ended up at Bookie Woogie, where a father reads the same book to his 10, 8, and 5 year old children, then they get together to discuss the books - this discussion is recorded and transcribed onto the blog. Check it out, there's some interesting stuff.

I haven't actually followed up on this story, but if it's true, this is a huge step forward for digital media.

No idea how I even got here, but the Wikipedia page for the video game Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read.