Modes of Transport

For the discerning modern college student there are a variety of popular modes of transport. We shall examine here two traditional examples.

First we have the simple motor car, a favorite of many. Drawbacks include parking issues on a cramped campus (illustrated here by illegally parking in a faculty lot), and the inherent douchiness of driving around a $114,200 Audi R8 as a college student.

We shall assume that as the day brightened and the frosty morning chill wore off, this student decided to drop by home and pick up a more seasonal and breezy ride. Also a favorite among students, the motor scooter offers that can't-be-beat wind-in-the-hair motoring experience with a bonus of abundant free parking near campus. Additional pluses on our example below include the forward-mounted rocket launcher and advanced fan-propulsion and lifting rotor system to evade pursuit by campus security. Far superior to any mere German sports coupe on a sunny day.

Headline

Teaser headline in TPM's "Daybreaker" e-mail this morning:

It's as if the headline is missing a certain something... Something like:

Position On Incest Remains Firm.

Yeah, that'd work.

Poot

The preview image may be fuckeded, if so just click the damn thing. Also, it's probably too slow. Photoshoooop seems to want to make it slow, and I can't be arsed to fix it right now. Sosumi.

UPDATE: Substance came to the rescue.

Fire Up Again

A certain zombie insisted in comments on my earlier masterpiece of photoshoopery that it was deficient because the bassoon's mouthpiece was being used as a trigger and not being blown into as it should.

FINE!

But see, then the "fire" coming out doesn't really fit (unless our soldier has really bad breath). So then I had to take that out too:

I guess that works. Not sure I like these better than the first one, but it'll be easier to animate if I ever get around to that.

UPDATE: As suggested by "Schroeder" in comments:

(needed two versions for use on various backgrounds)

Fire Up The Bassoons!

For teh Zombie:

I should send the PSD file to Substance for the full animatronic treatment. Or I could figure out how to do the cheezy animations myself.

Update: For full effect you really need to click the image to see it in its full-resolution transparent glory. Just sayin'

For Substance

That righteous Substance McGravitas recently posted one way to handle messing with some text files. There are easier ways to go about it, and I am a helpful beer snob:

Sample file contents:

---

% cat pissoff.list 
fuck you
you fucking wanker
go fuck yourself
% 

% cat wanker.list 
useless git
bollocks
bloody hell
%

---

What Substance wants to do is take those input files and wrap them in some simple XML. PERL is perfect for this job. Here's a quickly whipped up program to do so:

---

#!/usr/bin/perl

if ($#ARGV < 0) {
    print STDERR "\nUsage: abuse [files...]\n\n";
    print STDERR "I know you came here for abuse,";
    print STDERR " but you still need files as arguments.\n";
    print STDERR "Output goes to STDOUT, you probably "
    print STDERR "want to redirect it somewhere\n\n";
    exit(1);
}

print "<XML>\n";

foreach $file (@ARGV) {
    if (-r $file) {
 open(FILE, "$file");
 @lines = <FILE>;

 foreach $line (@lines) {
     chomp($line);
     print "<words>\n\t<data>$line</data>\n</words>\n";
 }
 close(FILE);
    } else {
 print STDERR "Can't read $file -- skipped\n";
    }
}

print "</XML>\n";

---

Save that as a file called something (in my case I saved it as "abuse" -- just 'cause). Make it executable:

---

%chmod 755 abuse

---

Now run it with our two files:

---

% ./abuse pissoff.list wanker.list 
<XML>
<words>
 <data>fuck you</data>
</words>
<words>
 <data>you fucking wanker</data>
</words>
<words>
 <data>go fuck yourself</data>
</words>
<words>
 <data>useless git</data>
</words>
<words>
 <data>bollocks</data>
</words>
<words>
 <data>bloody hell</data>
</words>
</XML>

---

To store the output in a file, simply redirect the output somewhere using standard shell redirection:

---

% ./abuse pissoff.list wanker.list > fuckyou.xml

---

It took me twice as long to write this post than it did to write the code. PERL is a damn handy thing to have around.

Compare & Contrast

New OSU "Beaver" logo:

Designed by the wizards at Nike, along with corresponding new uniform designs for all the various sports.

Here is the current logo that one is replacing:

That one was a redesign they did back in 2000. After the original Benny Beaver had been around since 1951. You'd think we could hang onto this one for longer than that, but I guess not.

Anyway, here is an actual beaver:

(creative commons photo credit: Tancread@flickr)

Uncanny, eh?

Evidently the students seem to like the new look, so that's good I guess. Of course the real reason for the change is most likely to encourage the thousands of idiotic football fans to buy replacement replica outfits so they can "support" their team while they watch "student athletes" continue to be exploited by the NCAA. I'm sure OSU and Nike came to a mutually profitable understanding about all this. I'm also pretty sure only a tiny portion of this (if any) will actually ever trickle down to the University's general fund. So it is, so shall it ever be.