christopher’s lives (v5.3)

Monday, April 19th, 2004 at 11.59 pm

30 Years of Penn & Teller

verily, so says this tidbit on yahoo news via i forget who…

heros of mine, they are…
so, i thought of the link in our little orrl thing…

the writings of Penn Jillette
(yes, the big one of Penn & Teller)
Philosopher Warrior Extraordinaire… from his articles for PC-Computing, dating back to 1990, his Excite articles of the late 90’s, plenty of various writings, articles, columns, on a wide variety of subjects, and his wonderful “Road Penn” journal, beginning in april, 2000 and continuing to this day… also has interviews, chat scripts, and more….
jan30,03 - they lost their domain name, so, for now, this link goes to the wayback machine’s archive of the page…

and it still does as their new site seems to no longer have their writings…
(btw, the most recent link there on web archive is to a copy made AFTER a porn site got their domain name, so, go for second most recent or older…)

one of my favorites, of course, is one he did in ‘92, i believe, for pc computing, called “We’re All Going to Hell”

ok, i was wrong…
his writings ARE on the new site
well, good…

Monday, April 19th, 2004 at 9.17 pm

cool, “Vinyl Data”

Vinyl Data [via BoingBoing]

“One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD’s, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That’s right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70’s and early 80’s that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.”

alas, no mention of the TI-99/4A…

Sunday, April 18th, 2004 at 9.19 pm

100 greatest movie characters?

[moved from my LiveJournal]

well, here is Premiere.com’s idea of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time (via Fark)

though, i found fark’s comments thread about this article to be a much better read, with many more suggestions i agree with than premiere’s…

(btw, both fark links above go to the “Avantgo” versions, which is a very nice lite alternative…)

Sunday, April 18th, 2004 at 7.04 pm

some new screenshots from my psion

[moved from my LiveJournal]

firstly, i finally got Opera to work out… it is very nice is some ways, very awful in others… but, it lets me do some things i could not before, so, i see keeping it handy for some jobs…

for one, i can finally log in to yahoo groups…
hell, i can’t even go to yahoo groups on the default browser…
so, here is dcbg

on the next two, a couple shots i posted before, comparing opera to “Web”, the default psion browser…

my livejournal…

and what it looks like on the default browser…

our homepage

(btw, this is already out of date, we are about to put version 3 of our hp online, as soon as we are done with it…)

and on the default browser…

and a couple shots of apps i have been trying lately…

here is nIRC

it is nice, but, very prone to frequent crashes, so, it is almost unusable…

and here is a “planetarium-in-your-pocket” i got…

and the same thing in inverse mode…

these have all been added to our screengrabs collection

Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 at 12.50 pm

Desert Island

[moved from my LiveJournal]

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Space Channel 5 Remix Soundtrack

i read this one long, long ago and tought it was perfect, and i was relating it to the folks a little while back, so, just had to get the full text for any and all to see…

stop me if you’ve heard this one…

Ed finally decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeds to have the time of his life –until the boat sank. He found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies…nothing… only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

“I rowed from the other side of the island,” she says. “I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,’ he says. “You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you.”

“Oh, this?’ replies the woman. “I made the rowboat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches. And the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”

“But, but, that’s impossible,’ stutters Ed. “You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?”

“Oh, that was no problem,” replies the woman. “On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.” Ed is stunned. “Let’s row over to my place,” she says.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As Ed looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, he could only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down please. Would you like to have a drink?”

“No, no, thank you.’ he says, still dazed. “Can’t take any more coconut juice.” “It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replies. “How about a Pina Colada?”

Trying to hide his continued amazement, he accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces,
“I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom.”

No longer questioning anything, Ed goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. “Wow! This woman is amazing!” he muses, “What next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her.
“Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a really long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months. You know…” She stares into his eyes.

He can’t believe what he’s hearing:
“You mean—”, he swallows excitedly, “I can check my email?!”

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