Fore-shadowing
"...Its massive oak shaft and polished horn-beam cogs have long since passed away, and yielded to their successor, cast iron, which in its turn is now being rapidly replaced by the stronger metal, steel, thus keeping up that ever-changing cycle of advancement in the arts which is carrying us forward to discoveries that may change every phase of civilized life, if the exhaustion of our coal does not land us again into a state of barbarism." Bessemer(1872). Italics mine.
Complaint Department
I09 posted an article on the 'best Sf novel' to entice a non-SF reader to take up the genre.
And I'm going to complain about the whole damned list.
This being the Internet, I'm allowed to do this.*
First, personal disclosure: I've read SF since I was 8 years old. It was the second week of August, and I picked up a copy of Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts, probably because of the awesome cover that the Del Rey edition had.There was something about the brown shade of the flat spaceship that caught my attention, and it was written in simple enough terms that I did not have to struggle.
At that moment, my total SF experience had been watching The Search for Spock at a local drive-in.
I probably thought spaceships were real. But it was a good start,and I followed that with Little Fuzzy by H.Beam Piper, who set the hook deep. Since than, I've read literally thousands of SF novels, the majority of them crap. (Guns of Terra 10. Hyperion. CenterForce. Gunner Kade. Clone. Syzygy... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...) It has made me the cretin I am today.**
Seriously, I09, you're going to suggest The Handmaid's Tale? Why not The Jesus Incident, if you want to terrify a new reader with dystopia and nightmare? The Handmaid's Tale is a great book. But it is describing a hideous world. How are you going to hook someone with that?
The Left hand Of Darkness? Not one person in four is clever enough to understand that masterpiece. To everyone else its a boring political complicated with sleds and unusual personal problems. Not to mention it'll disturb anyone with latent homophobia or sexual anxieties.
Cloud Atlas? Please tell me you didn't understand the question.
Pattern Recognition? Great novel. Not great SF.
American Gods? Well, it is Gaimen's best. But its not SF.
Interesting to note that Childhood's End came up twice. Its a book that continues to generate strong reactions, especially in people who you would not think had a Satan hangup, but its not a beginner's book.
Why did it take the comment section to point out Stranger in a Strange Land ?
Its story about morality police, sexual repression and the role of religion is still germane today.
...But Heinlein, like Kipling, has a muddy reputation with academics and intellectuals. Purposeful exclusion?
Why not Eye of Cat , or Webs of Everywhere, or The Martian Chronicles?
Editors take note: most people read for pleasure. They are only going to read a genre if it provides this pleasure. When a person is starting out, it is best to start with enjoyable reads.
Do you think that trying to entice them with a bleak society of ritualized rape and murder (Handmaid's Tale), child soldiers being tricked into genocide(Ender's Game), aliens in the devil's form stealing humanity's children and future (Childhood's End), or the end of the world (Spin), is going to get them to pick up another SF novel?
If the only SF movie I had ever watched was Children of Men would I be anxious to watch The Iron Giant?
SF is difficult to describe, hard to pin down, and tends to be idiosyncratically defined. But certain themes are expected by the naive reader: spaceships, the future, adventure... give them Whipping Star, give them This Immortal, give them Dragonriders of Pern, give them The Pastel City or Star Rider; but give them something which opens a window to the bright worlds of infinite possibilities, not the grim and constrained avenues of nightmare and decay.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a powerful trilogy***, but I'm not going to give it to a beginning fantasy reader. Nor are they going to get Game of Thrones. Start with Tea with the Black Dragon, and work your way up to the bleak avenues of the desperate and the dead.
Let them enjoy the sunshine before they face the Overlords, the Commanders of the Faithful, or for that matter, the Eich.
*If you check any forum, you'll see that opinionated whining is quite common.
** Nothing else to blame.
***Yes, I know there is two series, I'm talking about the first.
And I'm going to complain about the whole damned list.
This being the Internet, I'm allowed to do this.*
First, personal disclosure: I've read SF since I was 8 years old. It was the second week of August, and I picked up a copy of Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts, probably because of the awesome cover that the Del Rey edition had.There was something about the brown shade of the flat spaceship that caught my attention, and it was written in simple enough terms that I did not have to struggle.
At that moment, my total SF experience had been watching The Search for Spock at a local drive-in.
I probably thought spaceships were real. But it was a good start,and I followed that with Little Fuzzy by H.Beam Piper, who set the hook deep. Since than, I've read literally thousands of SF novels, the majority of them crap. (Guns of Terra 10. Hyperion. CenterForce. Gunner Kade. Clone. Syzygy... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...) It has made me the cretin I am today.**
Seriously, I09, you're going to suggest The Handmaid's Tale? Why not The Jesus Incident, if you want to terrify a new reader with dystopia and nightmare? The Handmaid's Tale is a great book. But it is describing a hideous world. How are you going to hook someone with that?
The Left hand Of Darkness? Not one person in four is clever enough to understand that masterpiece. To everyone else its a boring political complicated with sleds and unusual personal problems. Not to mention it'll disturb anyone with latent homophobia or sexual anxieties.
Cloud Atlas? Please tell me you didn't understand the question.
Pattern Recognition? Great novel. Not great SF.
American Gods? Well, it is Gaimen's best. But its not SF.
Interesting to note that Childhood's End came up twice. Its a book that continues to generate strong reactions, especially in people who you would not think had a Satan hangup, but its not a beginner's book.
Why did it take the comment section to point out Stranger in a Strange Land ?
Its story about morality police, sexual repression and the role of religion is still germane today.
...But Heinlein, like Kipling, has a muddy reputation with academics and intellectuals. Purposeful exclusion?
Why not Eye of Cat , or Webs of Everywhere, or The Martian Chronicles?
Editors take note: most people read for pleasure. They are only going to read a genre if it provides this pleasure. When a person is starting out, it is best to start with enjoyable reads.
Do you think that trying to entice them with a bleak society of ritualized rape and murder (Handmaid's Tale), child soldiers being tricked into genocide(Ender's Game), aliens in the devil's form stealing humanity's children and future (Childhood's End), or the end of the world (Spin), is going to get them to pick up another SF novel?
If the only SF movie I had ever watched was Children of Men would I be anxious to watch The Iron Giant?
SF is difficult to describe, hard to pin down, and tends to be idiosyncratically defined. But certain themes are expected by the naive reader: spaceships, the future, adventure... give them Whipping Star, give them This Immortal, give them Dragonriders of Pern, give them The Pastel City or Star Rider; but give them something which opens a window to the bright worlds of infinite possibilities, not the grim and constrained avenues of nightmare and decay.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a powerful trilogy***, but I'm not going to give it to a beginning fantasy reader. Nor are they going to get Game of Thrones. Start with Tea with the Black Dragon, and work your way up to the bleak avenues of the desperate and the dead.
Let them enjoy the sunshine before they face the Overlords, the Commanders of the Faithful, or for that matter, the Eich.
*If you check any forum, you'll see that opinionated whining is quite common.
** Nothing else to blame.
***Yes, I know there is two series, I'm talking about the first.
"Your 'Right' or my 'Right'"
I've had these days, although it usually does not require beer to bring one on:
The strip is from the Whiteboard, of course, and is the only webcomic I've read that the mad scientist is
The strip is from the Whiteboard, of course, and is the only webcomic I've read that the mad scientist is
- 1: A talking polar bear, and
- 2: Not the main focus of the story.
Colonel 'Sierpinski' Korn
Prodding the envelope by disallowing "backward" moves i.e. the relentless march of progress must be to the right, an old familiar Friend predictably emerges.
I pushed it to 40 iterations, just for amusements sake, but it was clear after 18 that we were entering a Sierpinski Gasket, and once in, you never come out.
[EDIT] That is obviously not a Sierpinski, I don't know what I was thinking. It is familiar though, and I think I have seen it somewhere in Wolfram's Big Book of Diagrams.*
[EDIT] After scanning Wolfram's oeuvre, I'd like to say Rule 110, except its not. I think it was just the semi-regular triangles that are throwing me off,
By disallowing "backward" moves, we disallow iteration on anything except the previous generations output.
Unfortunately, the interesting parts of the Dho-Na curve are the parts on the -x side which is unreachable this way. I only calculated the (+x,+y) section, as the -x quadrants are unreachable, and (+x,-y) is just a flopped image.
The next step is to apply Thue-Morse to the tree algorithm, I think.
I was entertained by this paper on Koch, Thue Morse and Turtles, an almost Carrolean combination.
[EDIT] This is why you don't draw this stuff by hand - there a couple of typos in the above gasket.
Holes in the Gasket!
...For a moment I wanted the title to link to the Colonel Korn reference, rather than to the blog post, which suggests the need for some sort of pointers-to-pointers in hypertext. But than I came to my senses.
*'A new kind of science', Wolfram (2002), also known as the Liber Glyphic Iteraticus.
[EDIT] That is obviously not a Sierpinski, I don't know what I was thinking. It is familiar though, and I think I have seen it somewhere in Wolfram's Big Book of Diagrams.*
[EDIT] After scanning Wolfram's oeuvre, I'd like to say Rule 110, except its not. I think it was just the semi-regular triangles that are throwing me off,
By disallowing "backward" moves, we disallow iteration on anything except the previous generations output.
Unfortunately, the interesting parts of the Dho-Na curve are the parts on the -x side which is unreachable this way. I only calculated the (+x,+y) section, as the -x quadrants are unreachable, and (+x,-y) is just a flopped image.
The next step is to apply Thue-Morse to the tree algorithm, I think.
I was entertained by this paper on Koch, Thue Morse and Turtles, an almost Carrolean combination.
[EDIT] This is why you don't draw this stuff by hand - there a couple of typos in the above gasket.
Holes in the Gasket!
...For a moment I wanted the title to link to the Colonel Korn reference, rather than to the blog post, which suggests the need for some sort of pointers-to-pointers in hypertext. But than I came to my senses.
*'A new kind of science', Wolfram (2002), also known as the Liber Glyphic Iteraticus.
Dho-Na Curve of the Sleeper
One of Charles Stross's more intriguing scenery details* in his Laundry novels is the idea of a Dho-Na curve (which sounds beautifully like 'Do-Not').
A Dho-Na curve is a modern elaboration on several ideas of magical geometry, and while its clear that there are several subsets of the Curve, (some of them discovered in the far past such as Alhazred,738), but most of them have to be computationally discovered. If they derived by iterative or formulaic means is an exercise left to the readers imagination, but we can make some inferences.
In Stross's 1940's, German necromancers were calculating subsets of the Curve using Konrad Zuse's stolen Z-1 mechanical computer. This was a rather sophisticated machine, capable of 22-bit operations on a 64 -bit register. The interesting thing about it was that it ran the program as it read it off of punched tape, and printed its output as it went. No program code was stored in memory beyond the current opcode!
Stross dictates supernatural penalties for complex computation/cogitation, but I suspect that the Z1, by the very natural of its one-step RAM-less processor was quite immune to possession by creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions.
I digress.
To a mathematician, a curve is not necessary smooth and curvy, the Koch Snowflake being my favorite holotype.
In the spirit of the old 'ABRACADBRA' magic squares**, or the Sator Square, I started tinkering with this rule:
Using the Phrase of the Sleeper ( I was originally doodling the line 'Oak Island Treasure' ) generates this:
Note that it generates the seed phrase minus its first letter reversed twice, along with astounding babble like
"ng ag ngat htagn hf uf hfuh lhuf ngn hfh lu hu fuf gag ngathfuhluht"
Sprinkle that with apostrophes and bake for 30 minutes at 350, and you've got a sentence worthy of any Dagonian!
"Ia! Ia! Cthuhlu f'thagn! Ng'ag ngat htagn 'hf! Uf'hfuh lhuf ngn! Hfh lu hu fuf gag ngathfuhluht!"
Of course, we only have a scrap of a phrase, which limits the size we can inscribe.
We could of course, generate a 'Cthulhu Fh'tagn ' modified Thue-Morse sequence which may be awesomely cool.
What else?
Once the sentence is complete, every letter could be replaced with a smaller version of the whole curve, starting a Koch Curvature.
The textual plane could be rotated , and a Cthulhubulb**** generated.
All single letter words could be struck out, opening the lacework pattern.
...I managed to get three possessive apostrophes into one sentence in this post, which I think is a personal record.
* The Atrocity Archive, for instance. Read it. Its the best of the set.
** Although the first example in literature is a triangle.(Quintus Serenus Sammonicus,Liber Medicinalis, 3BC)
*** "GOTO is a bad command"...yeah whatever, bite me.
****From which we hatch a Baal-zehulubulbette.
A Dho-Na curve is a modern elaboration on several ideas of magical geometry, and while its clear that there are several subsets of the Curve, (some of them discovered in the far past such as Alhazred,738), but most of them have to be computationally discovered. If they derived by iterative or formulaic means is an exercise left to the readers imagination, but we can make some inferences.
In Stross's 1940's, German necromancers were calculating subsets of the Curve using Konrad Zuse's stolen Z-1 mechanical computer. This was a rather sophisticated machine, capable of 22-bit operations on a 64 -bit register. The interesting thing about it was that it ran the program as it read it off of punched tape, and printed its output as it went. No program code was stored in memory beyond the current opcode!
Stross dictates supernatural penalties for complex computation/cogitation, but I suspect that the Z1, by the very natural of its one-step RAM-less processor was quite immune to possession by creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions.
I digress.
To a mathematician, a curve is not necessary smooth and curvy, the Koch Snowflake being my favorite holotype.
In the spirit of the old 'ABRACADBRA' magic squares**, or the Sator Square, I started tinkering with this rule:
10 Write the letter of the seed.
20 Write up to three copies of the next letter of the seed, in any of the four cardinal directions,
EXCEPT when it would touch an already written letter( diagonal contacts are permitted).
EXCEPT when it would touch an already written letter( diagonal contacts are permitted).
30 GOTO 20***
Note that it generates the seed phrase minus its first letter reversed twice, along with astounding babble like
"ng ag ngat htagn hf uf hfuh lhuf ngn hfh lu hu fuf gag ngathfuhluht"
Sprinkle that with apostrophes and bake for 30 minutes at 350, and you've got a sentence worthy of any Dagonian!
"Ia! Ia! Cthuhlu f'thagn! Ng'ag ngat htagn 'hf! Uf'hfuh lhuf ngn! Hfh lu hu fuf gag ngathfuhluht!"
Of course, we only have a scrap of a phrase, which limits the size we can inscribe.
We could of course, generate a 'Cthulhu Fh'tagn ' modified Thue-Morse sequence which may be awesomely cool.
What else?
Once the sentence is complete, every letter could be replaced with a smaller version of the whole curve, starting a Koch Curvature.
The textual plane could be rotated , and a Cthulhubulb**** generated.
All single letter words could be struck out, opening the lacework pattern.
...I managed to get three possessive apostrophes into one sentence in this post, which I think is a personal record.
* The Atrocity Archive, for instance. Read it. Its the best of the set.
** Although the first example in literature is a triangle.(Quintus Serenus Sammonicus,Liber Medicinalis, 3BC)
*** "GOTO is a bad command"...yeah whatever, bite me.
****From which we hatch a Baal-zehulubulbette.
O RLY?
Ad related to +oviposition
Bare Bikini: Cheap
Everyone Wants to Pay a Low Price. Best Value for Bare Bikini!
I mean, come on, Yahoo!, is this the best you can do?
Bare Bikini: Cheap
Everyone Wants to Pay a Low Price. Best Value for Bare Bikini!
I mean, come on, Yahoo!, is this the best you can do?
Is this 'Prolapse' or 'Inversion'?
Inversion, perhaps the most gauche of spatial operations.
I think that maybe I found the entry point:
http://fencehopping.tumblr.com/post/69757312135/moths-what-the-fuck
Or did I?
Gender Bender InterChangers
I cracked open a box of Old Computer Stuff, taped up and put away back in 2002.
It contained a 1 GB SCSI drive, a EGA video card, and my old computer converter kit, assembled over a decade, used with hatred & swearing, and thankfully forgotten.
DB-9, DB-25, mac to VGA, VGA to mac, Serial to PS/2, PS/2 to USB...the cursed phrases I used to mutter in my nightmarish sleep.
Notice the two hand-made adapters? One was hacked together to get a HUGE and AWKWARD scanner running...I don't remember its brand name, but it was the size of a dumpster, could scan at approximately
angstrom resolution, and would take an aeon to transfer that scan over a parallel port, even at 112,200 bps.
Anyone remember 112,200? I do, the way an aged war veteran remembers the trenches.
The other one was a male/male null modem built for the singular purpose of playing Quake at a laughably termed 'LAN Party' where almost no one had Ethernet adapters.
If we'd been a smart and as clever as we all thought we were at the time, then we'd have called it the 'unLAN Party' and actually managed to have a good time: the only highlight I remember of that evening was listening to DJ Shadow for the first time.
And the point of this masturbatory nostalgia is that I am really really glad the USB has conquered the world, and if they would just hurry up and ditch all connector styles but one, my happiness would be complete.
My nagging suspicion is that a new connector will become fad in time, probably some sort of barrel jack to transfer DC (Probably something irritatingly non-integer like 3.3V), and with a single fiber optic down the center to allow terabyte connection to a freaking mouse.
Because I also found a box of of Wang Diskettes (5 1/4",double sided, double density), which bear scribbled labels suggesting the RenegadeMime used them to archive a disassembler, I'll let An Wang have the last word: "Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change."
It contained a 1 GB SCSI drive, a EGA video card, and my old computer converter kit, assembled over a decade, used with hatred & swearing, and thankfully forgotten.
DB-9, DB-25, mac to VGA, VGA to mac, Serial to PS/2, PS/2 to USB...the cursed phrases I used to mutter in my nightmarish sleep.
Notice the two hand-made adapters? One was hacked together to get a HUGE and AWKWARD scanner running...I don't remember its brand name, but it was the size of a dumpster, could scan at approximately
angstrom resolution, and would take an aeon to transfer that scan over a parallel port, even at 112,200 bps.
Anyone remember 112,200? I do, the way an aged war veteran remembers the trenches.
The other one was a male/male null modem built for the singular purpose of playing Quake at a laughably termed 'LAN Party' where almost no one had Ethernet adapters.
If we'd been a smart and as clever as we all thought we were at the time, then we'd have called it the 'unLAN Party' and actually managed to have a good time: the only highlight I remember of that evening was listening to DJ Shadow for the first time.
And the point of this masturbatory nostalgia is that I am really really glad the USB has conquered the world, and if they would just hurry up and ditch all connector styles but one, my happiness would be complete.
My nagging suspicion is that a new connector will become fad in time, probably some sort of barrel jack to transfer DC (Probably something irritatingly non-integer like 3.3V), and with a single fiber optic down the center to allow terabyte connection to a freaking mouse.
Because I also found a box of of Wang Diskettes (5 1/4",double sided, double density), which bear scribbled labels suggesting the RenegadeMime used them to archive a disassembler, I'll let An Wang have the last word: "Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change."
Another taste of the Mandible
Early morning. Pre-caffination. My parieto-temporal and inferior frontal gyrus regions froze trying to read this phrase:
"On the other hand, the idea of attaining the cycle lifting of voltage
waveform by bringing into use microcontroller which is of 8051 family
can be extremely exact as per the plan engraved in assembly or C
language so that the real time average voltage or electric current
practiced at the load is fairly lesser than the entire signal if
functional to the load."
This is almost poetry.
"On the other hand, the idea,
of attaining the cycle lifting waveform
by bringing into use
be extremely exact as per the planso that
the real time electric
practiced at the load
is fairly lesser than
signal."
Perhaps I have the making of a book of found poetry here. I dredge the Internet for the almost Markov-chain output of humans and then parse and edit according to strict rules.
The work above was created by 'delete-only, but layout freely'.
Other rules might be 'add particles: "the, and. a, or, it, is" ', or 'cut/paste phrase'.
The key is minimal transmogrification, because I'm trying to reveal the natural beauty of these lunatic paragraphs. The title has , of course, already been found: 'Who Defrays the Mandible.'
Coming soon to Lulu.com, and God Have Mercy On Our Souls (because we sure as hell can't stop this train wreck)
Cue a mix of 'U Can't Touch This' and 'Please Don't Stop The Music'
"Now cruising in his Pinto..."
Ran into a denial-of-service message today I've never seen before:
" What happened?
The owner of this website (remysharp.com) has banned your access based on your browser's signature (eed096dbac4050e-ua48)."
Considering I'd never been to remysharp.com before, this made me feel less than welcome.
It also made me nostalgic for my old friends 401, 403 and of course 404.
Error 1010? Do we really need this many error messages? And really, how different is this from 1006, 1007 and 1008?
'Rod Logic' - I feel like I've accidentally wandered into some sort of Bloom County LARP
My hobby is to set up Google Alerts with really obscure requests. Unfortunately, this means I get really obscure alerts.
I'm not knocking Google Alerts - its a great idea, its just that I'm standing in one of the shallow parts of the Internet, hoping for a change of tide. Or at least a ripple.
'Rod logic' seemed safe until Dennis Rodman's recent antics.
Maybe its time to switch to something with the term 'mandible'...
I certainly can't be learning any less.
I'm not knocking Google Alerts - its a great idea, its just that I'm standing in one of the shallow parts of the Internet, hoping for a change of tide. Or at least a ripple.
'Rod logic' seemed safe until Dennis Rodman's recent antics.
Maybe its time to switch to something with the term 'mandible'...
I certainly can't be learning any less.
Raptor Crampons
Deinonychus and the raptors tend to stick in my mind, because like Stegosaurus or Ankylosaurus, they are just so damned flamboyant. It seems odd to me that predators ranging from 10 lbs to 160lbs ( a 10X scale increase) would use exactly the same very specialized prey assault technique.
Today I had the image of a row of Velociraptors hanging from a branch like bats.
Maybe the claw was a climbing claw, but not for huge herbivores: actually for huge herbs?
Nearly all of the raptors fit in the weight class of the puma/cougar/jaguar which are modern large tree-philic predators. The tree-climbing would also explain the stiff tail, fused to prevent motion in a vertical plane.
Woodpeckers and sapsuckers prop themselves on their tails while hanging from trees. Could the raptors hang themselves from their claws, prop themselves on their tails, and wait for prey, with minimal energy expenditure? The strong front legs and long grasping fingers would be very useful for this role as well.
If this were the case, there should be signs:
The muscle attachments for the talon claw would be robust.
The talons themselves would show wear inside the inside edge. The wear on the tip would probable the same in either case.
A semi-arboreal species would have strong pressure to develop gliding of flying abilities.
Microraptor has already been suggested for this role, but I am willing to expand the possibilities.
Utahraptor could be argued as the antithesis to this - at 1200lbs, its not climbing trees. But, like the Giant Ground Sloth, its quite possible that the creature adapted to a changing role, and became a forest floor monster, padding through the trees in search of prey, its sleeping dreams disturbed by strange desires to hang head down in the moonlight
Upon some googling, I find Manning et al. (2005) suggest that the claws would be more effective for climbing than killing.
Today I had the image of a row of Velociraptors hanging from a branch like bats.
Maybe the claw was a climbing claw, but not for huge herbivores: actually for huge herbs?
Nearly all of the raptors fit in the weight class of the puma/cougar/jaguar which are modern large tree-philic predators. The tree-climbing would also explain the stiff tail, fused to prevent motion in a vertical plane.
Woodpeckers and sapsuckers prop themselves on their tails while hanging from trees. Could the raptors hang themselves from their claws, prop themselves on their tails, and wait for prey, with minimal energy expenditure? The strong front legs and long grasping fingers would be very useful for this role as well.
If this were the case, there should be signs:
The muscle attachments for the talon claw would be robust.
The talons themselves would show wear inside the inside edge. The wear on the tip would probable the same in either case.
A semi-arboreal species would have strong pressure to develop gliding of flying abilities.
Microraptor has already been suggested for this role, but I am willing to expand the possibilities.
Utahraptor could be argued as the antithesis to this - at 1200lbs, its not climbing trees. But, like the Giant Ground Sloth, its quite possible that the creature adapted to a changing role, and became a forest floor monster, padding through the trees in search of prey, its sleeping dreams disturbed by strange desires to hang head down in the moonlight
Upon some googling, I find Manning et al. (2005) suggest that the claws would be more effective for climbing than killing.
By the Hand of Saint Markov
Years ago we were gifted with the Revelations of Alice.
Mystery dogged our days, and we prayed for further wisdom from the pure madness of the machines.
At last, our prayers have been answered, and fresh prophecy revealed via the hand of Charles Stross:
Mystery dogged our days, and we prayed for further wisdom from the pure madness of the machines.
At last, our prayers have been answered, and fresh prophecy revealed via the hand of Charles Stross:
"
It spread over it a
robber, a shedder of blood, when I listened with mad
intentness. " "...I'm dying with sleep"
Count Dracula's Great Love(1973) "El gran amor del conde Drácula"
"And believe me, I can assure you..." ...That this movie would make more sense if watched backwards. It certainly could not make less.
Seeing as the copy I watched had been converted from 1.85 : 1 aspect ratio by clipping the sides, 'JANUS FILMS' became 'ANUS FILMS' which was the first warning sign that I had once again been slipped the red and blue pill at once, and madness was to be my evenings companion.*
Emory Exposition and his traveling companions (The Southern Belle, the Sexy Governess, Strawberry and Blueberry Shortcake**)
Suffer an vanishing stagecoach wheel while traveling through the Dread Gorgo Pass on route to the abandoned sanatorium built at Count Dracula's Lair.
I am prepared to award bonus points for the actress flexing her nostrils during the blood sucking vampire/lesbian interlude, but I'll have to take the points away again for the idiotic whipping scene, and the on-again-off-again approach to nudity that only makes sense when you realize they shot the film so that all the titty clips could be pulled out and the movie would still work.
Well, they failed. Censored or not censored, this was one of those movies where you sink into a dull lassitude while watching, vaguely irritated that you can't make sense of any part of what you are watching, nipples or no.
The movie might have been better if it had had a guidebook, explaining what the hell was actually the point.
"Because the power of the unknown goes beyond death..." I hate to think this is so, because that means I'm never going to get any kind of understanding of this movie.
Its not like Troll 2 where the filmmakers had no idea what they are doing,its more like Javier Aguirre was possessed by Philip K Dick, and set out to frustrate understanding at every turn.
Giving the illusion of explication by overdubbing monologue at random points was clever, and actually left me more confused than if I'd just watched the movie with the sound turned off.
Typical echo-chamber pronouncement:
"The blood of the girl that loved the prince of darkness, and the blood of the virgin that has been tortured will be mixed together, thereby creating a new physical body for his daughter..."
Why do the vampire trio rise with gaping mouths to greet the light? Are they hungry baby birds?
I like the idea of Dracula surrounding his castle with beartraps to snare fresh prey, but wouldn't the peasants clue in on this eventually?
Being vampiric seems to mean walking around slowly with your mouth open and never blinking:
I was waiting for 'Wendell' or anyone, really, to say 'Blah'.
Why does Dracula/Wendell talk in the third person? Why does he talk all?
The madness extends to the Wikipedia entry!
The plot description includes this gem:
'...Then he seduces all of the girls but Karen. And he then turns them and then chains them in his dungeon. And he makes them die by making be in the sun. then he goes and seduces Karen and then he knows he has finally found love. He the tells Karen that he loves her and he can`t let her be what he is. So he stakes himself and before he dies he says "Karen".'
I'm sorry, Wikipedia contributor, that is actually too coherent to be accurate. I'm also intrigued by your phrase '...by making be in the sun.'
All in all, this one is a treasure of madness, and one I will watch again.
*With movies like these, who needs drugs?
** The characters,not the confections (And yes, I know there is no Blueberry Shortcake character, but there should be, the same way there should be a Castle Grayskull Polly Pocket Edition.)
"And believe me, I can assure you..." ...That this movie would make more sense if watched backwards. It certainly could not make less.
Seeing as the copy I watched had been converted from 1.85 : 1 aspect ratio by clipping the sides, 'JANUS FILMS' became 'ANUS FILMS' which was the first warning sign that I had once again been slipped the red and blue pill at once, and madness was to be my evenings companion.*
Emory Exposition and his traveling companions (The Southern Belle, the Sexy Governess, Strawberry and Blueberry Shortcake**)
Suffer an vanishing stagecoach wheel while traveling through the Dread Gorgo Pass on route to the abandoned sanatorium built at Count Dracula's Lair.
I am prepared to award bonus points for the actress flexing her nostrils during the blood sucking vampire/lesbian interlude, but I'll have to take the points away again for the idiotic whipping scene, and the on-again-off-again approach to nudity that only makes sense when you realize they shot the film so that all the titty clips could be pulled out and the movie would still work.
Well, they failed. Censored or not censored, this was one of those movies where you sink into a dull lassitude while watching, vaguely irritated that you can't make sense of any part of what you are watching, nipples or no.
The movie might have been better if it had had a guidebook, explaining what the hell was actually the point.
"Because the power of the unknown goes beyond death..." I hate to think this is so, because that means I'm never going to get any kind of understanding of this movie.
Its not like Troll 2 where the filmmakers had no idea what they are doing,its more like Javier Aguirre was possessed by Philip K Dick, and set out to frustrate understanding at every turn.
Giving the illusion of explication by overdubbing monologue at random points was clever, and actually left me more confused than if I'd just watched the movie with the sound turned off.
Typical echo-chamber pronouncement:
"The blood of the girl that loved the prince of darkness, and the blood of the virgin that has been tortured will be mixed together, thereby creating a new physical body for his daughter..."
Why do the vampire trio rise with gaping mouths to greet the light? Are they hungry baby birds?
I like the idea of Dracula surrounding his castle with beartraps to snare fresh prey, but wouldn't the peasants clue in on this eventually?
Being vampiric seems to mean walking around slowly with your mouth open and never blinking:
I was waiting for 'Wendell' or anyone, really, to say 'Blah'.
Why does Dracula/Wendell talk in the third person? Why does he talk all?
The madness extends to the Wikipedia entry!
The plot description includes this gem:
'...Then he seduces all of the girls but Karen. And he then turns them and then chains them in his dungeon. And he makes them die by making be in the sun. then he goes and seduces Karen and then he knows he has finally found love. He the tells Karen that he loves her and he can`t let her be what he is. So he stakes himself and before he dies he says "Karen".'
I'm sorry, Wikipedia contributor, that is actually too coherent to be accurate. I'm also intrigued by your phrase '...by making be in the sun.'
All in all, this one is a treasure of madness, and one I will watch again.
*With movies like these, who needs drugs?
** The characters,not the confections (And yes, I know there is no Blueberry Shortcake character, but there should be, the same way there should be a Castle Grayskull Polly Pocket Edition.)
Not 1kHz
Until recently* my primary oscilloscope was a old Leader 515, which had been well-loved in its former role as a tackling dummy at a local technical college. I'm not complaining; it did what I asked it, so long as I only used simple sentence structure and raised my voice. It was kind of like having a very old and decrepit servant, one that any given moment was trembling along the ragged edge of dementia.
And this was my good 'scope.
The other one was a green single channel monster with vacuum tubes and thumbscrew terminals for the probe attachments. Care to guess its bandwidth? No need to bother - it was low, low low, baby. Good for a audio signal wigglescope display**, most of the time. If it was a servant, than it would be the shaking and snail like butler out of Sherlock Holmes:A Game of Shadows.
EDIT: Its a Starkit, and not very Googleable.I think I might need to post a write-up.
Needless to say, I used it largely as a paperweight. Being landlocked, I have little need for boat anchors, and anyways, a boat anchor is capable of actually serving a useful purpose.
While tinkering with the Rigol, I needed a signal, so I thought I'd measure the calibration wave on the Leader. It was, I supposed, a 1kHz, 0.5v p-p square wave.
Nope.
The wave was pretty square, even when the Rigol was turned up to full resolution, but the little frequency counter display claimed 980.4 Hz.
So could the Leader have drifted that far in its senescence? Or was it always 980Hz, in which case, why?
I can't imagine the Rigol being that inaccurate right out of the box, especially not a digital scope.
*A combination of a birthday, Rigol, and the most awesome wife in existence.
**The only device I have ever used that managed to fray its AC cord at the (very inadequate) strain-relief entry, and arc flash to the case one day when plugged in. Two prong plug, of course.
And this was my good 'scope.
The other one was a green single channel monster with vacuum tubes and thumbscrew terminals for the probe attachments. Care to guess its bandwidth? No need to bother - it was low, low low, baby. Good for a audio signal wigglescope display**, most of the time. If it was a servant, than it would be the shaking and snail like butler out of Sherlock Holmes:A Game of Shadows.
EDIT: Its a Starkit, and not very Googleable.I think I might need to post a write-up.
Needless to say, I used it largely as a paperweight. Being landlocked, I have little need for boat anchors, and anyways, a boat anchor is capable of actually serving a useful purpose.
While tinkering with the Rigol, I needed a signal, so I thought I'd measure the calibration wave on the Leader. It was, I supposed, a 1kHz, 0.5v p-p square wave.
Nope.
The wave was pretty square, even when the Rigol was turned up to full resolution, but the little frequency counter display claimed 980.4 Hz.
So could the Leader have drifted that far in its senescence? Or was it always 980Hz, in which case, why?
I can't imagine the Rigol being that inaccurate right out of the box, especially not a digital scope.
*A combination of a birthday, Rigol, and the most awesome wife in existence.
**The only device I have ever used that managed to fray its AC cord at the (very inadequate) strain-relief entry, and arc flash to the case one day when plugged in. Two prong plug, of course.
Aphoritaxic: Do not grasp your own wit by the blade.
Every apprentice carver will learn
That even the keenest blade can turn.
Cut with care:
Sharp wits slice the deepest.
Satan's Calliope
Over four years, and still no Wikipedia page for Lucy Hosking. Or for Satan's Calliope, which on title alone should merit a mention.
(A picture is in Wikimedia Commons.)
Of course, there is a bit more info on the web now - there was almost none back then.
...And in the spirit of confusion, why does the Metroactive Arts claim the Calliope was designed and built by Steve Hosking, which contradicts Santa Cruz Good Times, which has almost an identical origin story, neither of which entirely agreeing with Leonardo Online?
I'm guessing they are married, and its the reporters that are screwing up attribution?
...Not to mention there are many creative couples whos individual influences are difficult to discerne in any piece of work.
C.L.Moore and H. Kuttner immediately spring to mind.
Or is this leakage from a parallel universe?
Or a real-world case of Rule 63?
Or did (s)he get a gender exchange while at Burning Man?
(I'm sorry, but there really isn't any tactful way of saying that. Is this an untouched opportunity, Hallmark?)
(A picture is in Wikimedia Commons.)
Of course, there is a bit more info on the web now - there was almost none back then.
...And in the spirit of confusion, why does the Metroactive Arts claim the Calliope was designed and built by Steve Hosking, which contradicts Santa Cruz Good Times, which has almost an identical origin story, neither of which entirely agreeing with Leonardo Online?
I'm guessing they are married, and its the reporters that are screwing up attribution?
...Not to mention there are many creative couples whos individual influences are difficult to discerne in any piece of work.
C.L.Moore and H. Kuttner immediately spring to mind.
Or is this leakage from a parallel universe?
Or a real-world case of Rule 63?
Or did (s)he get a gender exchange while at Burning Man?
(I'm sorry, but there really isn't any tactful way of saying that. Is this an untouched opportunity, Hallmark?)
Questions for the New Year
"...slime of a new bureaucracy." -- Franz Kafka
What is the maximum number of laws and regulations possible in a human society before any action becomes impossible?
How many new laws and regulations are added per year? Do they increase as a arithmetical or geometric rate?
Conversely, how close are we to the point where it is the best policy to assume every action is forbidden unless explicitly permitted?
At some point, a software agent that can check the legislation in real time against your actions would be a useful app for every prudent person. And likewise, on that could file applications and permits without delay would also be useful.
Consider the advantages of robotic arbitrage, high-speed robotic lawyers may also prove beneficial.
I'm surprised that science fiction missed this.
EDIT: I keep thinking of the repeated refrain from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... "As your attorney, I advise..." but spoken in one of those creepy high-end synthesized voices.
What is the maximum number of laws and regulations possible in a human society before any action becomes impossible?
How many new laws and regulations are added per year? Do they increase as a arithmetical or geometric rate?
Conversely, how close are we to the point where it is the best policy to assume every action is forbidden unless explicitly permitted?
At some point, a software agent that can check the legislation in real time against your actions would be a useful app for every prudent person. And likewise, on that could file applications and permits without delay would also be useful.
Consider the advantages of robotic arbitrage, high-speed robotic lawyers may also prove beneficial.
I'm surprised that science fiction missed this.
EDIT: I keep thinking of the repeated refrain from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... "As your attorney, I advise..." but spoken in one of those creepy high-end synthesized voices.
Track Of The (Werewolf) Moon Beast
"The very presence of the moon itself, a moon rock of gigantic size, if you will..."
This would have been a lot more entertaining if it had featured Apollo Astronauts. Imagine "Buzz" Collins* converted into a ravening beast inside the LEM.
Lets do a werewolf mystery, only lets make it a were-reptile, and hey, we'll trigger it be shooting a meteor into a man's head, only he'll never notice**, better yet, make it a self-detonating atomic were-reptile.
And lets make the Main Character a motorcycle-riding archeologist.
Is this the first Action Archeologist on film?
Beyond this audacious concept, it had nothing but the usual: the Singalong, the filter effects, the jerky time lapse transformations.
The blonde heroine couldn't act, which was all right because no one else could either. Watch the scene where they discuss the previous night's mysterious murders, paying attention to their body language. This scene gets extra points for groping the underage actresses boob on camera.
Also the first time I ever saw an Indian tribe have a traditional tribal mask made of sheet aluminum.
* My least favorite Apollo Astronaut. I'm scare-quoting 'Buzz' because Wikipedia told me to.
**hey, Patrick Lawler didn't notice the roofing nail in his skull. At least for the first little while. (".... I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling.”)
This would have been a lot more entertaining if it had featured Apollo Astronauts. Imagine "Buzz" Collins* converted into a ravening beast inside the LEM.
Lets do a werewolf mystery, only lets make it a were-reptile, and hey, we'll trigger it be shooting a meteor into a man's head, only he'll never notice**, better yet, make it a self-detonating atomic were-reptile.
And lets make the Main Character a motorcycle-riding archeologist.
Is this the first Action Archeologist on film?
Beyond this audacious concept, it had nothing but the usual: the Singalong, the filter effects, the jerky time lapse transformations.
The blonde heroine couldn't act, which was all right because no one else could either. Watch the scene where they discuss the previous night's mysterious murders, paying attention to their body language. This scene gets extra points for groping the underage actresses boob on camera.
Also the first time I ever saw an Indian tribe have a traditional tribal mask made of sheet aluminum.
* My least favorite Apollo Astronaut. I'm scare-quoting 'Buzz' because Wikipedia told me to.
**hey, Patrick Lawler didn't notice the roofing nail in his skull. At least for the first little while. (".... I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling.”)
Tumblr's War on Context
Hey! Tumblr! There is this thing called 'context' that adds value to things.
Now if I was on some sort of amateur porn site , I'd expect a random gibble of images presented without sense, provenance or attribution.
When I browse pictures on an multimillion dollar website/brand, I expect a little more.
Context has many parts, not the least of which is provenance. Reblogging does horrible things to provenance.
If I'm looking a a picture of a mysterious redhead* and I'd like to Know More, it does not help me to know that jokersspuzzlepalace reblogged this from drunkenamnesiacphotos because following the linkage to 'there' merely tells me that they
reblogged it from skeletorhatesmankind
who reblogged it from minddefyingmadness1234
who reblogged it from downtherabbitholeoftimewasteingsuck
who reblogged it...
Recursion is a cool idea, but not in my webpages.And it suggests the scary possibility that at least half of Tumblr is just robots hitting 'reblog'.
...Cue refrain of 'Cotton-Eye Joe': "Where does it come from, wheres does it go..."
Why not do something daring, something unthinkable in today's data blizzard: why not link to where the photo came from the first time.
I understand that this is not going to be a cures-all solution, but in this world of everything staying on the damn cloud, at least a pointer to where the photo originally entered the datasphere would be really useful for those browsers of the Net who actually like a side order of information with their data salad.
And while we're on the topic of your UI, lets just remark that:
Myspace already proved that a million monkeys arranging their own webpage elements would produce statistically similar arrangements. Mathematically averaging all of Myspace would give you a array of images and text that fills the screen without form or logic. Much like your 'Wall of TV Madness' mode of showing all posts. Its a cool layout when filling the space behind a brooding villain, but its significant to note that all villains shown with those TV walls are invariably mad.
Posting is a linear process, a sequence of points. And when those points are wrapped around a page that can (faux) infinitely scroll, this does not aid quick comprehension. Its like looking at clay tablets from before they invented punctuation, or for that matter, margins. We've only had four thousand years of designing layouts, guys. Go look at some Egyptian wall paintings, at the very least. I'm sure many tumblrers would love being portrayed in Pharaonic motif. Skeletorhatesmankind** certainly would.
I never thought that anyone would bother expanding the Myspace DIY Complication Kit (which had been beta tested on Geocities, back in the day...).
Extending this concept to the hyperlinks themselves is madness, and strikes at the very root of hypertext.
And despite what the Undead Ghost of Franz Kafka is telling your designers in between the glasses of absinthe he keeps paying for, this is not the Next Good Idea.
I leave it as an exercise for a clever web monkey to generate the code for a circular reblog.
EDIT : (this creates a 'circular reblog monkey')
* I'm using this example, because if I said ' a picture of a fantastic machine', everyone would still think " O, he's just whining about porn"
** I can't believe this nick isn't taken. Also, the spellchecker on Firefox wants to turn 'skeletorhatesmankind' into 'statesmanlike'. Kind of terrifying.
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