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Chuggnutt!

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  • Bye bye, UPN

    As reported on bend.com and confirmed on our local cable provider BendCable’s website, BendCable has dropped UPN entirely. Apparently BendCable didn’t want the competition from a new UPN-affiliate that’s scheduled to launch here in January 2004. So, they got pissy and as of now, UPN channel 12 is off the air.

    The only show I watch on UPN is Enterprise, so it’s not like I’m missing out on a lot of TV, but what bothers me is that this is the kind of stupid shit BendCable does. This is a provider that doesn’t even offer basic channels like FX or Comedy Central, and up until a few years ago didn’t even offer MTV.

  • How to Win a Barfight

    Another fun little tidbit reprinted from a friend’s daily “Survival” calendar.

    Most state laws stipulate that you may use sufficient force to stop the attack, but you may not deliver any sort of punitive retribution to your attacker. Knowing this may save you a costly trip to court.

    1. Attack the most sensitive areas of your opponent: eyes, groin, knee, and throat.
      Stay close; if your opponent is large he will need room to hit you.
    2. Attack repeatedly and be efficient.
      Make fast, repeated blows to any or all sensitive areas.
    3. If necessary, use a weapon.
      Choices include telephones, pens, bottles, books, beer mugs, coffee cups, and keys.
    4. Protect yourself from additional attackers by fighting with your back to (but not up against) a corner or wall.

  • Not Your Father’s Sesame Street

    When you have young children, you get exposed to a lot of children’s television programming, well beyond the Muppets and Sesame Street of yesteryear. Most of these are good, educational, well thought-out and well written shows, perfect for kids, but if you watch too many of them as an adult—as I do—you begin wish you could apply some grown-up sensibilities to them. I’m going to do that here.

    Read on if you like; if you’re not a parent, you may wonder just what the hell I’m talking about. (more…)

  • More Fun Links

    A large part of the process of writing, I think, is just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing online content (like blogs), or fiction, or news, or whatever.

    Anyway. Some more fun links from around the Web.

    Tha Shizzolator is another one of those goofy translator sites, only this one is from Snoop Dogg and translates to “shizzle”. It’s pretty funny. Try it on my site.

    Textfiles.com is a site that is dedicated to collecting and archiving (you guessed it) text files from old BBS systems from 1980 through 1995. Those of you who remember the old Bulletin Board System days (like me) should have a good time with this. Plus, it’s important; as is eloquently stated on the site, “everyone finding themselves drawn online should know what happened before, to see where it all really started to come together and to know what went on, before it’s forgotten.”

  • A Few Things

    So yeah, I haven’t been able to think of anything to blog about lately. Sue me! Anyway, here’s a few things:

    Stealth Disco. I’m behind the curve a bit on linking to this, but who cares? It’s definitely out there. Something I could see myself doing back in the day.

    Garth Ennis’ Marvel comic “Thor: Vikings” is really freaking me out. Zombie Vikings. ‘Nuff said.

    Urban exploration—I first read something about this on Kuro5hin, and while it’s not exactly the same thing, I remember exploring old buildings and such growing up in Central Oregon—the rural equivalent. Pretty interesting stuff.

  • Comic Book Rant

    This rant is something I mentioned here some time back, and I’ve been mulling it over in my head for a while now; if you’re not interested in comics, then you can safely pass this up. It’s one of those highly geeky topics that make many people shake their head in bemusement whenever it comes up.

    Also, it’s long. Consider yourself warned. (more…)

  • RIP

    Passing of an American legend: Johnny Cash dies at 71.

    Much more suprising, no less tragic, John Ritter dies at 54.

  • New Cory Doctorow Ebooks

    I’ve just added six new Palm Reader ebooks to my ebooks page that are really short stories from Cory Doctorow’s new book, A Place So Foreign and Eight More.

    There’s still one more short story I need to convert, and then I’ll combine them all into one big book download. Enjoy. And thank Cory!

  • Sugar High Friday

    Sugar High Friday was an event that I single-handedly started when I was working for Dakotah Direct in Spokane, Washington. Here’s the gist of it (hearts and arteries, beware):

    Some arbitrary Friday, maybe one Friday a month, there is a suggestion and a mutual consensus to have the Event. There is no overt advertising, simply word-of-mouth, but word gets around. On that Friday, everybody participating brings to work some assortment of candy and junk food in an obscenely sweet pseudo-potluck. And for the entire day, everyone consumes the sweets (often washed down by copious amounts of soda pop) and partakes in the hypoglycemia-inducing, high-calorie bonding. All are welcome, whether they contribute or not.

    Sounds disgusting? It probably was. But it was a hell of a lot of fun, and it’s one of the few things I genuinely miss about working for Dakotah. Until my current job, I hadn’t worked for a company that’s had enough people to make a Sugar High Friday a true Event. Now I am, so maybe it’s time to try to start it up with a new batch of coworkers.

    Spread the word! Enjoy Sugar High Friday in your organization!

    Hell, maybe I’ll set up a website and truly institutionalize it…

  • More PHP Errata

    Again reading Larry Ullman’s PHP Advanced and finding it okay, but I came across another glaring error.

    On page 169, in the discussion about variable order, Ullman’s got the variable order entirely backwards. The out-of-the-box order for PHP variables is EGPCS (which refer to Environment, Get, Post, Cookie, and Server variables), meaning that PHP processes input into variables from those sources in that order. The book incorrectly lists these in reverse while claiming it’s the proper order.

    The funniest part is there’s a graphic of a screen shot from the php.ini file, which clearly shows the EGPCS ordering, contrary to the text.

    Hello? Editors? Anyone?