Dear Diary

So we have this little time-waster computer game that is a bit like Boggle, in that you have to create words from a clustered bunch of letters. I was playing it, and in a desperation move I spelled the word ZARF.

And it took it.

Hmmm, says I. So I ended the game and went to that great agglomeration of knowledge, the internet.

Whattayaknow, it is a word, and what's more, I've used one and never known what it's called.

A triad of photos, to prove what a nerd I am:

Printer Testing text on an envelope.

The baleful red eyes of a remote control.

My new addiction, starring Edward James Olmos.

It's been a busy few days.

Thursday: we went to Superman Returns. The movie was okay, but I think it could have been a lot more fun. Superman was dull and flat, and Lois was just depressed. Fortunately, Lex Luthor was a show-stealer, and provided most of the laughs (though there were moments where Jimmy Olsen's imperturbably positive worldview made me think of Will Ferrell, in a good way).

Friday: I bought Clone Wars Vol I and II and Mike Patton's latest project, Peeping Tom.

Peeping Tom is an eclectic mix of tunes. Mike Patton (lead singer for the now-defunct Faith No More, among other things) teams up with a bunch of different people. Apparently the sound files were transferred via email between the various participants during the album's gestation period. I enjoy the tunes; somewhere online I read that the project is "pop music as Mike Patton would like to define pop music".

Given that Patton's voice is one of the reasons that I liked Faith No More so much—he's got a range from guttural, death-metal low registers, all the way up to a nasal falsetto, and he sounds particularly nasty when he's stage-whispering—it seems natural that I would like this album. And I do.

Interesting note: One of his co-conspirators is Norah Jones. And she swears.

Peeping Tom on Conan O'Brien, performing "Mojo", the album's first single Taken off of YouTube due to copyright violations.

We also rented Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was a fun, violent, swear-filled romp. It was a lot of fun to watch, sort of in the Pulp Fiction vein (in more ways than one, really).

And tonight I watched Volume II of Clone Wars (I'd already seen Volume I at my sister's place, courtesy of my bro-in-law). Volume II was just as well-done as Volume I. Why o why couldn't the prequel trilogy have been this good?

One of the extras on the DVD was a short film called Revenge of the Brick. It's brilliant. Especially the orchestral bit at the end. Enjoy!

Oh, one more sort-of Star Wars related item. A cow-orker forwarded this to me, and now I'm contemplating buying the album. It's a song called "Crazy", by a band called Gnarls Barkley.

DSCF7037
Discovered in Paula Wirth's Flickr photostream.

Well, it'd be hard to lose in the parking lot…

Attention drivers in my town: This sign means "No Left Turns". It applies to you. Yes, even you. If you see this sign, you are not allowed by law to make a left turn.

Not even in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

What right-thinking, rational individual decided that, in the VBScript language, the Boolean value False would equate to 0, and True would equal -1? I mean really.

Or were there CInt(False) right-thinking, rational individuals on the team that created the VBScript specs and code? Hmmm, that would explain quite a lot.

If you've read and enjoyed Terry Bisson's story "They're Made Out of Meat", you need to see this film. If you haven't read it, and you like oddball SF, then you need to see it, too.

The story itself is online, too.

Found via BoingBoing. (where else, really?)

PHP Designer 2006 is some nice software, let me tell you. And free.

That is all.

If you need any phenterimine (whatever that is), I know a guy who can hook you up. I'll just have to trawl through some logfiles to get his email address. Oh wait, nevermind. That email address looks fake.

So I installed Dr. Dave's Spam Karma v2.2. Here's hopin'…

Tricks of the Trade

User-submitted tips & tricks to make your life easier. Way cool, as far as I'm concerned.

1. Save frequently.
2. Don't give The Gimp real-time priority when it's already running at 99% of the CPU.
3. Baking bread when you're hungry doesn't make you any less hungry.

You'd think I'd already know all these things.