dannyman.toldme.com

GORUDENSUTADASUTO!!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/08/19/gorudensutadasuto/

From http://www.translationparty.com/#2010449:

We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the Devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden!

私たちはスターダストには、金色のは、我々は悪魔の駆け引きに巻き込まれ、私たちは庭に自分自身を取り戻すぞ！

We are stardust, golden, we are involved in a devil’s bargain, we’ll get back to the garden itself!

私たちは、黄金の、我々は悪魔の取引に関与している、私どもの方では庭そのものを買ってあげるスターダスト！

We are golden, we are involved in the transactions of the devil, for us is to buy the Stardust Garden!

我々は、我々は悪魔の取引に関与している、私たちは、スターダストを購入する金色の庭です！

We are, we are involved in trading the devil we are to buy a garden of golden stardust!

我々は、我々は我々黄金のスターダストの庭を購入している悪魔の取引に関与しています！

We we we are involved in the transactions of the Devil’s Garden to buy the golden stardust!

私たちは、悪魔の庭の取引に関与している我々ゴールデンスターダストを購入する！

We are, we are involved in trading in the garden of the devil and buy GORUDENSUTADASUTO!

我々は、我々の取引では、悪魔とGORUDENSUTADASUTO購入の庭に関与しています！

We have in our business, and the devil is involved in the garden GORUDENSUTADASUTO purchase!

我々のビジネスでは、とて、悪魔の庭園を購入GORUDENSUTADASUTOにかかわっている！

In our business, and bought the devil’s garden GORUDENSUTADASUTO be involved in!

私たちのビジネスでは、とに関与するGORUDENSUTADASUTO悪魔の庭を購入！

Our business is involved in the garden of the devil and GORUDENSUTADASUTO Purchase!

当社の事業は、悪魔とGORUDENSUTADASUTO購入の庭にかかわっている！

Our business is the devil’s garden GORUDENSUTADASUTO be involved purchasing!

購買関与するGORUDENSUTADASUTO当社の事業は、悪魔の庭です！

Be involved purchasing GORUDENSUTADASUTO Our business is the devil’s garden!

GORUDENSUTADASUTOを購入することが当社の事業関係は、悪魔の庭です！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO our business relationship to purchase is the devil’s garden!

購入するGORUDENSUTADASUTO私たちのビジネス関係は、悪魔の庭です！

Buy GORUDENSUTADASUTO our business relationship is the garden of the devil!

私たちのビジネス関係を購入するGORUDENSUTADASUTO悪魔の庭です！

Buy GORUDENSUTADASUTO our business relationship is the devil’s garden!

私たちのビジネス関係を購入するGORUDENSUTADASUTO 、悪魔の庭です！

Buy a business in our GORUDENSUTADASUTO, is the garden of the devil!

私たちのGORUDENSUTADASUTOで、ビジネスの購入は、悪魔の庭です！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO in our purchase of the business is the devil’s garden!

ビジネスGORUDENSUTADASUTOの購入には、悪魔の庭です！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO business to purchase is the devil’s garden!

GORUDENSUTADASUTOビジネスの購入には、悪魔の庭です！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO to buy the business, is the garden of the devil!

GORUDENSUTADASUTO 、悪魔の庭されているビジネスを購入する！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO, to buy a business that is the devil’s garden!

GORUDENSUTADASUTOは、悪魔の庭園でのビジネスを購入する！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO is to buy a business in the gardens of the devil!

GORUDENSUTADASUTO悪魔の庭園でのビジネスを購入することです！

GORUDENSUTADASUTO is to buy a business in the gardens of the devil!

1 Comment

Make-Your-Own Album Cover

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/02/23/chumbhotbongs-paribatra/

Here’s what the kids are doing on Facebook:

1 – Click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The title of the first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use Gimp or similar to put it all together.

Obviously I’m just killing some time. It is a quiet rainy Sunday. I’m making bread and have plenty of domestic obligations.

The above image could well be construed as lèse majesté in Thailand.

Feedback Welcome

A “Bush Free” Inauguration

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/01/08/bush-free/

Per Araya Diaz, patriotic Americans of every sex are encouraged to go “Bush Free” this inauguration. For those who live in San Francisco, one can even hire a very special clown as a (NSFW) party facilitator.

Pass it along!

UPDATE: See also: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33001844363 and Shave the Date

Feedback Welcome

Effective Caffeine Use

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/11/19/effective-caffeine-use/

Wow. Someone, I think at work, just got me on this article called “The Calculus of Caffeine Consumption” — insightful!

So, the idea is that caffeine can either be used to keep you awake and functioning at a basic level, like say while you’re driving cross-country, or it can be used to enhance your cognitive peaks, in case you’re trying to really get the mind crunching on some problem so you can produce a paper or code or such. Further advice is that because caffeine tolerance builds up after a few weeks, caffeine becomes ineffective. The best strategy is to go off caffeine when you don’t need it, and use caffeine wisely when it is needed.

For my part, in the past year, I have gone through the occasional abstinence. More frequently though, I drink tea during the day, which has less caffeine, and then when I need to kick it up a notch, or to wash down some tasty chocolate, I drink coffee. Part of my weekend ritual is to have a “chocolate croissant” and a coffee, after which I have a really aggressive creative buzz going on, even though I have been drinking tea at work all week.

The other advice is that creativity peaks shortly after you have just woken up. Therefor one might try scheduling creative periods after a morning cup of coffee, then an early afternoon nap, followed by another cup of coffee.

I wonder if instead I should have a cup of tea in the early evening, so I can enjoy a moderate creative boost at home on my own time.

Feedback Welcome

Budget Cuts

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/11/14/budget-cuts/

Welcome to the recession. My employer has reduced the budget. We will maintain a constant headcount but need to reduce discretionary spending. We’ll keep serving bagels on Friday mornings, but no more fancy salmon dill red bell pepper pesto “lite” cream cheese.

All the same, while I can enjoy Philly Cream Cheese-“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Haha! 1980s flashback spread!

Mainly, I am happy and lucky to be in a pretty decent position to ride out this downturn with my income intact. Though, I have a nice cushion in the bank just-in-case. If I do find myself unemployed I may move out of my place and hit the road for several months.

On a less jovial note, the remains of a bookstore I recently saw in the Inner Sunset:

3 Comments

SysAdmin ESP

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/10/30/sysadmin-esp/

We were talking about on-call at lunch today, and many of us recounted that on more than one occasion we had woken up immediately prior to receiving a page that would have woken us up. I recounted an experience where I dreamed that a server was crashing right before I received a page about a server crashing. These could be random anecdotes, or perhaps premonitions. Maybe we understand the patterns of outages on some really deep inarticulate level, or maybe we just wake up a lot or dream of computers crashing but we are only apt to remember these incidences if the pager brings us to full consciousness. Who knows?

As I was sitting here with my headphones on just now not listening to anything I heard the blit blit blit blit blit of radio interference, probably my mobile device exchanging data. I had a fanciful idea that maybe, just maybe, people can actually sense radio waves in some manner and that those of us who have developed a strong Pavlovian response to a paging device might be able to connect a particular pattern with a particular outcome. When the pager near the bed starts to chatter at 2AM maybe there is some part of the human being that can see that pattern.

Probably not.

1 Comment

Tip Jar! Tipjoy!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/10/29/tip-jar-tipjoy/

I have long thought the Internet needed a tip jar. I felt so strongly about this that back in 2003 I spent some time building my own online feed aggregator, which had the ambition of collecting feedback (like Digg) and later monetizing by allowing users, should they desire, to “share the wealth” back to site authors. Say, if you’d marked 50 pages that you like, and decided to chuck in $5, the site could take your $5 and try to give, say, 10 cents to each site. In this way people could gain some modest remuneration for the Internet publishing efforts.

Of course, that was a bit ambitious for me and the project was scrapped when I scored full-time employment.

JRA was recently wishing for the Internet tip jar, and he found that someone has finally built one: Tipjoy.

Briefly, the idea is you can earmark sites for tips of various sizes, then send in a few dollars via PayPal. Tipjoy will then pass the tips along to site authors. They profit by collecting a 3% transaction fee, and I assume they get some float off their PayPal balance as well. At this time authors “cash out” via Amazon.com gift certificates or by sending the money off to charity. That is for legal reasons though it sounds like they hope to traffic in cash in the future.They recently added the ability to cash out via PayPal as well, and deposit to a checking account is a planned feature.

I added a tip jar down in the feedback section below. I set the default to a modest 2 cents. I’m more curious than anything as to how many folks would bother to spread the karma.

1 Comment

Dining Area Wall

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/09/18/dining-area-wall/

Lately I have taken to reduced caffeine. During the week, I drink tea. On the weekend I head out to the cafe and enjoy a chocolate croissant and a black cup of coffee, which leaves me bold and reckless. Last weekend I picked up some paints at the hardware store, with no clear goal in mind. I used up the yellow painting the wall of my dining area, then felt inspired to render a Swedish Flag with the blue. I’m pretty pleased with the result. I think there may be a bit more to come.

Feedback Welcome

Dear Liberal Friends . . .

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/09/14/dear-liberal-friends/

I have always had every intention in the world to vote for Barack Obama. I really wish liberals found him more fascinating than the Republican ticket because while I admire and respect John McCain and Sarah Palin I would just as soon not hear anything more about them. I mean, shut up already! Yeah, the doddering maverick POW, and the folksy ultra-conservative corrupt hockey Mom from Alaska–I know, I get it, I’ve had my fill! Can we go back to talking about the charismatic Christian-not-Muslim black guy and his tell-it-like-it-is sidekick for a change? Hearing about those guys doesn’t irritate the f*ck out of me.

Thanks!

Feedback Welcome

Female North Korean Soldiers

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/09/11/female-north-korean-soldiers/

I arrived at work today to find that someone had left a bit of the Wall Street Journal sitting on my desk, open to this page:

Now, why would someone leave me this photo? For anyone who knows me, they might reasonably conclude that the sight of Korean women marching in skirts might lift my spirits in particular. And while I certainly do appreciate that aspect I also enjoy the obviously uncomfortable looks on their faces: is it the heavy-handed discipline? the insane authoritarian cult? the spotty food rations? the high goose-stepping? the discomfort of pantyhose?

Later in the day, my benefactor greeted me and explained his gift. It is because I have this picture tacked to my cube, stolen from Xinhua:

That’s the Chinese anti-terrorism people drilling on Segway scooters.

Feedback Welcome

Muni’s Message to Black Youth

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/08/24/munis-message-to-black-youth/

I spend a few minutes most mornings at the bus shelter at 19th Ave and Taraval. In July, they featured this public-service ad on the street side of the shelter, encouraging black youth to “stay alive and free” eating mama’s home cooking, rather than the cuisine associated with orange jumpsuits:

Cheesy, but well-meaning. I encourage all youth to “stay alive and free”.

The shelter side of this shelter usually features bizarre fashion advertising. In July, on the flip side of the above poster was this bizarre lady: a white woman seductively holding handcuffs. In addition to promoting “fashion” I guess she was trying to explain that temptations can be crassly grotesque:

To be sure, my neighborhood is dominated by Chinese families. Red is the color you wear on your wedding day.

Meanwhile, over on the BART, I see this strange poster in the distance:

I got up to take a closer look to discover a black man in his underwear, barricading the door against the sodomy we assume accompanies a prostate exam. “If you’re over 50, or an African American over 45, get your prostate exam!”

No comment.

So, yeah, there are some provocative posters, questionable imagery, but look beyond advertising to real folk, and you’ll see some soul.

1 Comment

Self Portrait

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/06/19/self-portrait/

Done in Thailand. I don’t recall if this was before or after I got sunburned. Pretty colorful for a white guy!

Feedback Welcome

Do you see a sign?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/15/do-you-see-a-sign/

As seen on Judah:

Do you see a sign “Leave your
junk here”? No you don’t see
a sign “Leave your junk here.”
Do you know why? Because this
corner is not a junk yard. Try
putting your crap in a garbage
can.

There is a certain practice in San Francisco of people disposing of unwanted stuff by leaving it on the curb. Alas, for stuff that nobody wants, that means crap piling up on sidewalks. Someone expressed their disapproval in the form of an homage to Quentin Tarantino.

I couldn’t agree more.

Feedback Welcome

Overheard in SF

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/03/19/literally-serious/

Overheard on Taraval, in front of the Safeway at 17th Ave:

“I’m literally serious: I coughed up my lungs.”

Poor girl.

Feedback Welcome

Trendspotting: “The Amiga Line”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/01/26/deader-than-amiga/

I have been playing with Google Trends, which will be happy to generate a pretty graph of keyword frequency over time. A rough gauge to the relative popularity of various things. This evening, I was riffing off a post from the Royal Pingdom, regarding the relative popularity of Ubuntu and Vista, among other things.

I got started graphing various Linux distributions against each other, XP versus Vista, and trying to figure out the best keyword for OS X. Then, I wondered about FreeBSD. Against Ubuntu, it was a flatline. So, I asked myself: what is the threshold for a dead or dying Operating System?

Amiga vs FreeBSD:

Ouch! Can we get deader?

Amiga vs FreeBSD vs BeOS:

To be fair, the cult of Amiga is still strong . . . BeOS is well and truly dead. But how do the BSDs fare?

Amiga vs FreeBSD vs BeOS vs NetBSD vs OpenBSD:

NetBSD has been sleeping with the BeOS fishes for a while, and OpenBSD is on its way. And that’s a league below Amiga!

In Red Hat land, only Fedora beats “the Amiga Line”. For Unix in general, nothing stops the Ubuntu juggernaut. But there’s a long way to go to catch up with Uncle Bill.

(Yes, it is a rainy night and the girlfriend is out of town.)

Postscript: Ubuntu versus Obama

3 Comments