Sometime in the distant past when I put the link to my Amazon wishlist here on the site, I wondered if it would actually inspire people to buy me stuff from it or if it was just a vanity move (I use that wishlist as much as a bookmark system as an actual list of things I’d like to buy someday). I figure it was mostly a vanity thing; I truly did not expect anyone to buy me anything from it.

So imagine my surprise when a package from Amazon came to the door, with the book Halting State (newly added to my wishlist) inside. At first it was real head-scratcher; I didn’t remember at first that I had published the wishlist link and then I was confused because it listed me at an older mailing address (one of something like the 6(!) addresses that Amazon had on file that had slipped through the cracks) but had made it here anyhow.

(I know, I’m supposed to be out on the leading edge of this internet thing, right?)

Once I realized what had happened, I was astounded; a PHP developer named Dave Ross had found my PHP stemmer script and it had saved him a lot of work (his words) and in gratitude, he bought the book for me. I guess I was astounded because I put those PHP scripts online for free, and I enjoy helping people out who have questions about them and incorporating improvements that they send to me; it’s an open source thing, I suppose, and I’m just glad I can put something out there that’s useful to people, but the thought of compensation didn’t occur to me in this case.

Okay, enough being naive, get to the point. Thank you, Dave, for the extremely generous gift. I’m glad I was (indirectly) able to help you out. And I hope I can repay the favor sometime in the future.

It’s the gift economy. Sometimes it rears up and slaps you in the face. In a good way.

A recipe we’ve been playing around with, and took to a Halloween party Saturday night. It’s quite tasty. For a single serving:

• 1 ounce vodka
• 1 ounce vanilla liqueur
• 1.5 ounces apple juice
• 1 tbsp. real pumpkin
• Cinnamon (dash)
• Nutmeg (garnish)

In a shaker with ice, shake up all the ingredients (yes, shaken, not stirred). The pumpkin should be pureed—canned pumpkin, in other words. The best apple juice I’ve found is all-natural—the cider-looking stuff.

You can rim the glasses with graham cracker crumbs, and even do a spritz of whipped cream on the drink—you could consider that the "pumpkin pie martini."

So apparently the Storm Worm—an email-propagating trojan that’s creating an unknowingly-large botnet—has learned how to figure out when security researchers are probing it and is retaliating (Via Boing Boing via Slashdot):

The Storm worm is fighting back against security researchers that seek to destroy it and has them running scared, Interop New York show attendees heard Tuesday.

The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days….

As researchers test their versions of Storm by connecting to Storm command-and-control servers, the servers seem to recognize these attempts as threatening. Then either the worm itself or the people behind it seem to knock them off the Internet by flooding them with traffic from Storm’s botnet….

Now, if I were approaching this news from a science fiction (writing) or a conspiracy theoretical angle, I’d be seriously wondering if this isn’t the rise of a distributed sentient AI.

(*cough* Skynet *cough*)

This isn’t a new idea. William Gibson back in ’98 wrote a script for "The X-Files" based on the same premise: a computer virus (several, actually) was loosed upon the internet to spread and evolve and bootstrap itself into a networked emergent AI.

Then, of course, it tried to kill everybody who tried to stop it.

Jen posted something along the lines of what I was thinking; first there was National Novel Writing Month, now there’s also a National Blog Posting Month, what’s next?

Any why are they both for November? Did the NaBloPoMo guys just follow the model too closely?

Okay, enough rhetorical questions. (The answers, by the way, are National [insert meme here] Month, they aped NaNoWriMo, and yes.) For what it’s worth, I’m half-seriously considering trying NaNoWriMo (that’s the one where you try to write a 50,000-word novel in a month)—I know, I know, I’ve said this before—but by now everyone should know I’m full of grandiose schemes and ideas, right? Right?

At any rate, blogging every day isn’t really that much of a stretch, since I’m more or less doing that already (not here recently, but certainly between my other two blogs). But the novel… you’d have to average 1667 words per day just to meet the 50,000 mark.

(For reference, my longest piece (I think it’s my longest) here on chuggnutt.com is this, at about 3500 words, just over twice what that daily average should be.)

Something to chew on. At least the idea’s out there in the ether now. And it looks as though Jen will be participating in both—though I like her idea of National Cookbook Writing Month (NaCoWriMo?) in an ironic sort of way…

I know I’m a day behind on this, but every now and again, Slashdot posts a story that is so incomprehensibly gibberish-sounding that I point and laugh. Yesterday was one such: Time Dimension To Become Space-like.

‘We show that regular changes of signature on brane-worlds in AdS bulks may account for some types of the recently fashionable sudden singularities. Therefore, the fact that the Universe seems to approach a future sudden singularity at an accelerated rate of expansion might simply be an indication that our braneworld is about to change from Lorentzian to Euclidean signature. Both the brane and the bulk remain fully regular everywhere.’

What the hell is that? I can’t even follow it. I can’t even pretend to follow it. I think Slashdot is trying to write dialog for a Star Trek episode again.

Jake beat me to the punch on blogging this, but I couldn’t resist anyway. I got this comment on my clothesline post the other day:

The rules are the rules. Anyone who doesn’t want to live by the rules can go live in the ugly lowlands.

It was signed "Sally Heatherton" and points to the blog "Marvelous Bend!". Intrigued (I mean, would someone really say such a thing?), I checked out the blog and was utterly incredulous for a minute, and then realized that it’s a fake. Satire. And it’s brilliant! It’s freakin’ brilliant!

Well, maybe not that brilliant, but it’s damn funny. (And sad to say, plausible enough—I actually know someone very much like this.)

Like Jake, I went through searching the web and DIAL and Dex and found nothing.

Almost nothing, that is. It’s not an identity or anything like that, but (up until today) the only result I could get for "Sally Heatherton" on Google (quotes included) was a hit on a character in a book: The Barrow Murder by James Huston. Via Google’s Book Search (that’s good stuff):

I went to the window of a teller I knew at the bank, Sally Heatherton. We had even dated for a short time, until she called our relationship off. "I don’t want to get involved with someone who’s broke all the time," she announced. "A loser. I want to get married to someone who’s a success, who can support me, so I can get the hell out of this teller cage."

I guess the new game around here is "Guess Who Sally Heatherton Really Is."

Jake points to an utterly jaw-dropping article in the Wall Street Journal about a woman who is running into trouble up on Awbrey Butte by… get this… daring to hang her laundry on a clothesline.

No kidding.

This is stupid beyond words. Check it:

The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines. In a move that has torn apart this otherwise tranquil community, the development’s managers have threatened legal action. To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.

"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor’s clothesline. "It can’t possibly increase property values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood."

Let’s break down a couple of those things, shall we? It states, "clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains"—ummm, if you’re settling in the "Oregon mountains," you’d better believe clotheslines are a way of life. You know, the kind of life you moved here to experience? If that’s a problem, then leave.

And "urban blight" and "bombards the senses"? Seriously? It’s a clothesline. If anything, I would think it would not only make the neighborhood nicer, but it would increase property values. That’s how the world works for those of us with common sense, anyway.

So Brooks Resources is threatening legal action. And while she may be, technically, in violation of the CC&Rs for the neighborhood,

Ms. Taylor responded by pointing out that the subdivision is "blatantly full of noncompliant owners" who display everything from plastic play equipment to exterior paint colors that don’t meet the requirement of "medium to dark tones." She added: "Who am I hurting by hanging clothes out to dry?"

So yeah, I’m just blown away by this level of stupidity. Hanging a clothesline is the "green" and environmentally-responsible thing to do—and isn’t being green the new trend, especially among the "elite" and all these new, trendy homes and developments that are going up? How does caring about the environment constitute "blight"?

I guess being environmentally responsible isn’t a priority for Brooks Resources or the other fools complaining over a backyard clothesline; if I was really snarky I’d write a headline saying Brooks Resources hates the environment.

Man, some days I agree with Jake’s comment that Bend really seems to be turning into a craphole.

When I wrote the post about the G.I. Joe movie awhile back, I started ruminating over the apparent trend over the past few years of making movies based on 80’s TV series. Like "Miami Vice" and "The Dukes of Hazzard."

It took awhile, but there is an "A-Team" movie in production, scheduled for a 2008 release. And I’m a little surprised someone hasn’t taken up such obvious movie-fodder as "Airwolf" and "MacGyver." I mean, if ever there was an 80’s show destined to be a movie, "Airwolf" is it.

It’s when they start hitting the 80’s cartoons that you realize they’re desperate (or is that brilliant?)—like "Transformers" and the afore-mentioned "G.I. Joe." I got to thinking about what other noteworthy 80’s cartoons to watch out for…

• Robotech: recently announced, possibly headed up by Tobey Maguire.
• He-Man: "Masters of the Universe" was made way back in 1987, with Dolph Lundgren as He-Man. That’s apparently not stopping a new version (set for 2009) though: here’s the IMDB page for it, and here’s an article from May of this year.
• Voltron: There was some speculation that JJ Abrahms’ weird "Cloverfield" movie was going to be Voltron, but that was debunked. However, someone else picked up the ball: a movie set for 2008 apparently; here’s the super-secret IMDB page for it. More details here.
• Thundercats: Good grief, Esquire has an article about this that includes cast and everything. Who knew? (Ugh, it even mentions a "Care Bear" movie.) I got snookered! (See comment below.) Here’s a real link to a "Thundercats" movie.
• Gummi Bears: Please, no.
• Smurfs: Please, no. (Alas, it looks like a CGI animated movie is set for 2008.)
• M.A.S.K.: None as far as I know.
• Thundarr the Barbarian: I’m getting Eclectic Old-School here. But a cartoon set on an apocalyptic, far-future version of the Earth? (Even the moon is split in two!) What’s not to like? But no movie treatment as far as I know.

What’s next?

Announced on Variety.com: a live-action G.I. Joe movie, to be released summer of 2009 and directed by Stephen Sommers.

Hasbro’s Goldner said that the mythology of G.I Joe was fleshed out during the 1980s through 155 issues of Marvel Comics, as well as an animated TV series. There are about 30 core characters, good and evil, that can be exploited in films.

"Marrying Steve’s vision with 25 years of this brand mythology feels like a great way to go forward," Goldner said.

While some remember the character from its gung-ho fighting man ’60s incarnation, he’s evolved. G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. The property is closer in tone to "X-Men" and James Bond than a war film.

Brussels-based and more like an "X-Men" movie? I don’t know, sounds like it could be weird. I guess that’s what you’d expect from the guy who directed Van Helsing.

And I might be wrong, but reading over the Wikipedia G.I. Joe page, isn’t the "double-crossing Scottish arms dealer" Destro? If they don’t have Cobra Commander with the ultimate casting choice playing the role… man, I don’t know. (Next fun diversion: picking the ultimate cast for the movie.)

I guess the time is ripe for this sort of thing. But yeah, I’m surprised it took this long, though on the other hand, I remember seeing a live-action G.I. Joe movie back in 1994…

A random collection of things that… well, the title pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

• "There’s two roles I think [Steve] Buscemi was born to play. The first is Cobra Commander in a live-action G.I. Joe movie. ‘Retreeeeeat!’" source
• I found the trailer on YouTube for the never-released 1994 Fantastic Four movie… it is so bad. (And wow, what’s the deal with the effects/costume/WTF for The Thing? It’s hysterical, but at the same time, freaky as hell.)
• The "Expendable" Red Shirt on ThinkGeek ("Just don’t stand next to us when you wear that thing.")
• "You’re single because you use emoticons." someecards.com – many more much, much funnier but waaaaay too raunchy for me to repeat
• "And then a second and a half later I thought, ‘wait, this is exactly how Uncle Ben died.’" source