Security research is the continual process of discovering that your spaceship is a deathtrap."
--James Mickens. (Italics mine)
Security Research
"As a child, it seems completely reasonable to build a spaceship out of bed sheets, firecrackers, and lawn furniture; as you get older, you realize that the S.S. Improbable will not take you to space, but instead a lonely killing field of fire, Child Protective Services, and awkward local news interviews, not necessarily in that order, but with everything showing up eventually.
Security research is the continual process of discovering that your spaceship is a deathtrap."
Security research is the continual process of discovering that your spaceship is a deathtrap."
Ghostly Horde of IRC
This is an idea I came up with a few years ago, but there is no way I am going to have to time to ever implement it. Maybe some one else will run with it...
Back in the Day (Which I am informally defining as the late 1990's) I spent a lot of time on IRC. DALnet was my hangout of choice, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time socializing.
Predictably, I spent time on #science_fiction!
I am by nature a hoarder, and this mania extends to logfiles. Looking through my archives the other day, I found several hundred kilobytes of channel logs for #nightspell and #vampyreinn.
Here was conversations with people long forgotten about, all have whom have aged, matured and changed over the last 15-20 years. Some have even died.
Most of the chatter is just that, chatter. But #Vampyreinn is a little different. It was billed as a freeform roleplay channel...so most everyone in it liked RPG's of one sort or another. In another context and a decade or so later, cosplaying might have been a really popular hit with us...but all we had was 16 shades of colored text, imagination, and download speeds low enough that even transferring the channel master list was a sit-and-wait operation.
/list, anyone?
Enough history. I have thousands of lines of dialogue and interaction as several dozen characters walked in and out of the eponymous bar, quarreled, boasted, lounged and fought with each other. Storys, events, and dramas. Demonic kings lounging on thrones, lone gunslingers brooding in the leather dusters, alien anthropologists hitting on earth girls, a queen of hell restlessly folding her blue wings.
What I would like is a horde of bots, each primed with its script from long ago. Text color set to dark gray, probably, and maybe a leading underscore on the nicks to prevent collisions with the living & active.
Romantically, the ghostly horde should log in at midnight; more practically perhaps to set the conversations to the twenty year anniversary of the original conversation.
They would not engage anyone else, merely act there roles, and then depart the stage again.
The unenlightened would be baffled at the grey ghosts...but those still on DALnet who remember the old lost friends, would be reminded of them.
My ideal prank. Baffles the unenlightened, and romanticly tweaks the hearts of the few, and sadly now, the old.
Of course, the logs would be undated, and on the next anniversary even more ghosts would crowd on the stage, with ghosts responding the ghosts, and younger ghosts trying to provoke reactions threaded through the real users trying to comprehend....and iterated again, and again, a rolling snowball of text, in time a notorious ghost channel rolling around the calender.
Back in the Day (Which I am informally defining as the late 1990's) I spent a lot of time on IRC. DALnet was my hangout of choice, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time socializing.
Predictably, I spent time on #science_fiction!
I am by nature a hoarder, and this mania extends to logfiles. Looking through my archives the other day, I found several hundred kilobytes of channel logs for #nightspell and #vampyreinn.
Here was conversations with people long forgotten about, all have whom have aged, matured and changed over the last 15-20 years. Some have even died.
Most of the chatter is just that, chatter. But #Vampyreinn is a little different. It was billed as a freeform roleplay channel...so most everyone in it liked RPG's of one sort or another. In another context and a decade or so later, cosplaying might have been a really popular hit with us...but all we had was 16 shades of colored text, imagination, and download speeds low enough that even transferring the channel master list was a sit-and-wait operation.
/list, anyone?
Enough history. I have thousands of lines of dialogue and interaction as several dozen characters walked in and out of the eponymous bar, quarreled, boasted, lounged and fought with each other. Storys, events, and dramas. Demonic kings lounging on thrones, lone gunslingers brooding in the leather dusters, alien anthropologists hitting on earth girls, a queen of hell restlessly folding her blue wings.
What I would like is a horde of bots, each primed with its script from long ago. Text color set to dark gray, probably, and maybe a leading underscore on the nicks to prevent collisions with the living & active.
Romantically, the ghostly horde should log in at midnight; more practically perhaps to set the conversations to the twenty year anniversary of the original conversation.
They would not engage anyone else, merely act there roles, and then depart the stage again.
The unenlightened would be baffled at the grey ghosts...but those still on DALnet who remember the old lost friends, would be reminded of them.
My ideal prank. Baffles the unenlightened, and romanticly tweaks the hearts of the few, and sadly now, the old.
Of course, the logs would be undated, and on the next anniversary even more ghosts would crowd on the stage, with ghosts responding the ghosts, and younger ghosts trying to provoke reactions threaded through the real users trying to comprehend....and iterated again, and again, a rolling snowball of text, in time a notorious ghost channel rolling around the calender.
Maslow's Monkey's Mallet
Invention for the day: use bubblewrap labels on cans or bottles of beer. The advantages are manifold:
1. The added insulation keeps the drink cooler longer.
2. The added insulation keeps your hand comfortable.
3. The thing floats way better. If the label is properly shaped, the container will ride with the mouth comfortably out of water,allowing a much better beer-in-my-sensory-deprivation-tank experience.
4. The compulsive amongst use have something better to do than pick labels off of beer bottles; the bubbles are so satisfactory to pop!
5. Dropped containers would suffer less shock; less broken bottles (wasted beer!) and exploding cans.
6. Discarded cans and bottles will float, rather than sink, aiding in recycling recovery!
Although, if the damn cans were built with a designed in aluminum bubble of around 10cc, this could be accomplished without the added step of needing to peel the label away before melting down the cans.
Ultimately, we could put the beer right into the bubbles themselves. Assuming the average swig* of beer to be around 50cc, we could package a swig in a roughly-two-inch wide blister. A four-ish inch wide scarf of this material could hold about 500ml to the foot, but if we reduce the packing fraction, and allow a percentage of bubbles to be empty to provide vacuous** pleasure, we could easily get 250ml to the foot, or 1.5 liters in a six foot scarf. That's a comfortable supply that should meet most swigging requirements. Wrapped around the neck would distribute the weight evenly, and keep your hands free to wave foam fingers, fucus, or filigree as your heart dictated. You would have to carry a small pointy-tipped juice box style straw, but even that could be the avenue of innocent pleasure***.
Improvements are still possible. The air bubbles can be filled with a selection of pretzels and salted peanuts.
The last bubble on the scarf could contain breath mints!
Winos would sport a new oddly hipster look, and redneck porn would develop a new prop.
This is how the Future comes to us. The Divine Madness is merely the technique of carrying ideas where ideas would normally fear to tread.
EDIT:
Found this!
A tip of my hat to you, Diane!
*There are 10 sips to a swig, and six swigs to a quaff. Four quaffs make a draft, and three drafts make a chug.
**You see what I did there?
***Probably banned from hooligan soccer matchs after a while.
1. The added insulation keeps the drink cooler longer.
2. The added insulation keeps your hand comfortable.
3. The thing floats way better. If the label is properly shaped, the container will ride with the mouth comfortably out of water,allowing a much better beer-in-my-sensory-deprivation-tank experience.
4. The compulsive amongst use have something better to do than pick labels off of beer bottles; the bubbles are so satisfactory to pop!
5. Dropped containers would suffer less shock; less broken bottles (wasted beer!) and exploding cans.
6. Discarded cans and bottles will float, rather than sink, aiding in recycling recovery!
Although, if the damn cans were built with a designed in aluminum bubble of around 10cc, this could be accomplished without the added step of needing to peel the label away before melting down the cans.
Ultimately, we could put the beer right into the bubbles themselves. Assuming the average swig* of beer to be around 50cc, we could package a swig in a roughly-two-inch wide blister. A four-ish inch wide scarf of this material could hold about 500ml to the foot, but if we reduce the packing fraction, and allow a percentage of bubbles to be empty to provide vacuous** pleasure, we could easily get 250ml to the foot, or 1.5 liters in a six foot scarf. That's a comfortable supply that should meet most swigging requirements. Wrapped around the neck would distribute the weight evenly, and keep your hands free to wave foam fingers, fucus, or filigree as your heart dictated. You would have to carry a small pointy-tipped juice box style straw, but even that could be the avenue of innocent pleasure***.
The BubbleBeerScarf!
Improvements are still possible. The air bubbles can be filled with a selection of pretzels and salted peanuts.
The last bubble on the scarf could contain breath mints!
Winos would sport a new oddly hipster look, and redneck porn would develop a new prop.
This is how the Future comes to us. The Divine Madness is merely the technique of carrying ideas where ideas would normally fear to tread.
EDIT:
Found this!
A tip of my hat to you, Diane!
*There are 10 sips to a swig, and six swigs to a quaff. Four quaffs make a draft, and three drafts make a chug.
**You see what I did there?
***Probably banned from hooligan soccer matchs after a while.
The deformed Elephant God of Val Yu Village
Ia! Ia! Cthulu fthagn!
Note the fleshy sucker like mouth at the end of the tentacle like snout; the ribby swept back 'ears', the reddish baleful eyes. The ringed lichen-like spots and the shiny black hooves complete the unearthly appearance of this strange small, crudely ( could we say devolved?) sculpture...
One of the great treats of junk shops is old books, and one of the greatest pleasures of old books is references to even older books.
I found a copy of Willy Leys book on cryptobiology - printed before the term even became fashionable, or possibly even coined.
Flipping it open, I immediately found the following footnote:
"'Another one, hardly known to naturalists, is described in an interesting book which privately printed in 1858. Its author was one Dr. L. Lewysohn, who called himself "Preacher of the Isrealitic Congregation of Worms." The title of the book is Zoologie des Talmuds (Zoology of the Talmud)..."
My practical side assumes them mean the city Worms, but its a pretty marvellous title to a English speaker.
'Prediger der israelitischen Gemeinde von Worms'?
Amazon claims I can buy a copy, but Amazon claims that of all apocrypha, and I haven't 85 pounds to spare in testing the theory.
I also found a copy of ' The Frozen Stream, An Account Of The Formation And Properties Of Ice' by Charles Tomlinson, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It has some fascinating anecdotes concerning fabulous cold:
'In St Petersburg...Every one is very uneasy about his nose and ears which are very apt to get frozen; and as the sufferer is not aware of his danger by any previous uncomfortable sensation, the first person in the street who observes a nose putting on the appearance of white marble, exclaims "Sir! sir! Your nose! Your nose!" and taking up a handful of snow, applies it to the strangers face and endeavors , by briskly rubbing, to restore the circulation. these are salutations which people of accustomed to in such climates, and by which thousands of these valued organs are saved from the clutches of the frost.' (emphasis mine.)
"The bodies of whales have been found embedded in icebergs..."
Bizarrely, the chapters on refrigeration and ice making are practical and accurate, as well as his adventures on the Saint John River during the Canadian winter. Its the mundane chapters that make the seasoning of madness more piquant: in what mind could the salutation of "Сэр! сэр! Ваш нос! Ваш нос!" followed by a face full of snow seem reasonable?
As always, my reason staggers.
Its all about the Whine
For practical reasons, I brew wines and beer.
A year ago, the chance congruence of a fifty pound bag of undesired squash, and a empty fermentor led me to try brewing a squash wine. This seemed like a reasonable idea; I checked around for recipes. I don't mind winging a recipe, but its always instructive to learn from others mistakes.
Oddly, the various books I have on wine-making did not have any squash wine recipes. These books have publication dates from 1899 to 2012, and include that ferment things from cherry pie filling to crushed chickens, so I was a little surprised by the omission.
The Internet wasn't much more informative. The New Zealanders had tried it, but as near as I can tell, the fermentation enthusiasts in New Zealand have tried everything.
'Marrow Squash makes an insipid wine that is improved considerably by adding an ounce of grated ginger root; Zucchini Squash makes a very poor wine; Hubbard Squash makes a wine very similar to Pumpkin', Jack Keller remarks.
Hmmm thought I. Intriguing.
Most of the recipes I could find were heavy on spices and raisins; a trick I always felt really gave you a spiced raisin wine with whatever random additive-of-the-day.
Guided by this snotty sense of purism, I brewed
Fermentation was swift to start - within two hours the gas cap was jumping, and everything seemed well.
After 20 days I transferred it off the pulp, and measured it at 900 S.G.
It had a strange taste. an initial sharp bite that faded instantly, followed by a faint flat , almost burnt metal aftertaste, difficult to discern, but equally difficult to ignore.
Age. I decided. This wine is young and unfriendly. Age will temper it.
A year has passed, and the temper has gotten worse. It has the brownish-gold shade of beer; the taste of dry white wine, and an aftertaste that is persistent and un-ignorable.
One of my taste testers, who will largely drink anything, including various 'prison hooch' style concoctions was perfectly willing to pour his sample down the sink rather than finish it. I am not certain what went wrong here; perhaps baking the squash first rather than fermenting it raw?
Maybe a decade in the cellar will improve this...I will be interested to find out. Perhaps I shall do up some fancy labels, and use the bottles as handout gifts for people I don't really like.
A year ago, the chance congruence of a fifty pound bag of undesired squash, and a empty fermentor led me to try brewing a squash wine. This seemed like a reasonable idea; I checked around for recipes. I don't mind winging a recipe, but its always instructive to learn from others mistakes.
Oddly, the various books I have on wine-making did not have any squash wine recipes. These books have publication dates from 1899 to 2012, and include that ferment things from cherry pie filling to crushed chickens, so I was a little surprised by the omission.
The Internet wasn't much more informative. The New Zealanders had tried it, but as near as I can tell, the fermentation enthusiasts in New Zealand have tried everything.
'Marrow Squash makes an insipid wine that is improved considerably by adding an ounce of grated ginger root; Zucchini Squash makes a very poor wine; Hubbard Squash makes a wine very similar to Pumpkin', Jack Keller remarks.
Hmmm thought I. Intriguing.
Most of the recipes I could find were heavy on spices and raisins; a trick I always felt really gave you a spiced raisin wine with whatever random additive-of-the-day.
Guided by this snotty sense of purism, I brewed
14 cups baked (then peeled and mashed) Green Queen Table Squash
3 kgs brilliant yellow sugar (which brought my S.G. to 1072)
Acid blend and diammonium phosphate in case my tiny yeasties lacked pep
and water sufficient to make 16 litres of brew.
Fermentation was swift to start - within two hours the gas cap was jumping, and everything seemed well.
After 20 days I transferred it off the pulp, and measured it at 900 S.G.
It had a strange taste. an initial sharp bite that faded instantly, followed by a faint flat , almost burnt metal aftertaste, difficult to discern, but equally difficult to ignore.
Age. I decided. This wine is young and unfriendly. Age will temper it.
A year has passed, and the temper has gotten worse. It has the brownish-gold shade of beer; the taste of dry white wine, and an aftertaste that is persistent and un-ignorable.
One of my taste testers, who will largely drink anything, including various 'prison hooch' style concoctions was perfectly willing to pour his sample down the sink rather than finish it. I am not certain what went wrong here; perhaps baking the squash first rather than fermenting it raw?
Maybe a decade in the cellar will improve this...I will be interested to find out. Perhaps I shall do up some fancy labels, and use the bottles as handout gifts for people I don't really like.
Just a Thought
Is the character Trash from Return of the Living Dead the original Suicide Girl?
Granted she is lacking ink, but she would not be out of place alongside Annasthesia or Akuma.
Granted she is lacking ink, but she would not be out of place alongside Annasthesia or Akuma.
Where Old Wiring Went to Die.
Commissioned to clear up unused cabling from the ceilings of an old car dealership, I found:
It was very close to a archaeological listing of obsolete communication technology.
We did not however, find cans connected with string: the walls were thin and I believe they just used Mark One Shouting when needed.
Cat5e
Cat 5
Cat 3
4-pair 24 gauge
Thin Net Coaxial Cable
Flat 2 pair telephone
Round 2 pair telephone
2 pair twisted & sheilded terinated in a 25 pin D-sheild
Cat5 connected via wire nuts to a section of 20 gauge 2 pair
25 pair telephone
And 20 gauge10 wire instrumentation cable.
It was very close to a archaeological listing of obsolete communication technology.
We did not however, find cans connected with string: the walls were thin and I believe they just used Mark One Shouting when needed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
