Gone.

Warm up, then shut up

Yes, we get it. It's snowing on the east coast. I made you a fire so you could warm up.

Now, could we please put something else on the news? I'm sure there are other things going on in the country, and there's also this whole other place called "the rest of the fucking world" that really doesn't give a shit.

Thanks.

Just your average Tuesday

Somebody said something about some event or something being on the TV machine tonight, but I couldn't find it. What did I miss?

Whataboutery Wednesday

whataboutery
noun
1. (of two communities in conflict) the practice of repeatedly blaming the other side and referring to events from the past

I have no idea why this word seems so relevant at this point in time. No idea at all. But I'm definitely gonna start using it more.

Here, have some music from a good Portland band:

You should buy the album.

Light(er) posting

I'm moving. There will be even fewer shitty posts than normal around here for a while. I know you're all terribly upset.

I guess I'll be nice awful and make sure you all know about the Cards Against Humanity's Holiday Bullshit for this year (hurry, less than 200,000 left, they'll go quick).

To tide you over until I post again, here is a mesmerizing picture of the McKenzie river I took a couple months ago:

(click to embigginate)

That is all, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blogoscape. See you on the flipside, if I survive.

I made this...

...for no particular reason.

Please feel free to use it, I'm sure it'll come in handy in various situations.

Updated: Originally a Ute Ooob but I fixxorated it and made it a really fucking big gif on Imgur for more versatility. Please note new zoomishness. You're welcome.

The Team Washington Deserves

I came up with a new name and logo for the current Washington's Racist Stereotype football team:

I think it fits.

Update: be sure to zoom for enhanced blood-drippy goodness.

Friday Filler: Movie Plots

Bruce Schneier just concluded his seventh movie plot threat contest. Here's the start of the winner's plot:

The NSA, GCHQ et al actually don't have the ability to conduct the mass surveillance that we now believe they do. Edward Snowden was in fact groomed, without his knowledge, to become a whistleblower, and the leaked documents were elaborately falsified by the NSA and GCHQ.

...

This latest contest revolved around surveillance (Schneier is working with Snowden and St. Glenneth of Greenwald. Thankfully, Schneier does actually know what he's talking about and lacks the oh so delightful tendency to lie unabashedly). This latest one's OK, but not quite as funny as the second one from way back in 2007, which focused on the TSA. A simpler time:

...

"Maybe," said Wilkes, not ready to write it off as just a screener's error. The NTSB guys were always quick to find a bad decision, one human error, and explain the whole thing away. But Wilkes' job was to find the flaws in the systems, the procedures, the way to come up with prophylactic precautions. Maybe there was nothing more than a screener who didn't spot a grenade or a stick of dynamite, something so obvious that there was nothing to do but chalk up a hundred and eighty three dead lives to one madman and one very bad TSA employee.

But maybe not. That's when Wilkes spotted the first two of the butterflies. Bright yellow against the charred black of the burned wreckage, they seemed like the most incongruous things -- and as he thought this, another appeared.

...

Anyway, just some Friday Filler I guess. hadn't read his blog in a while, and didn't know if any of my vast, vast readership had seen it. So check it out, or not, whatever.

Fuckit, it's Filler Friday!

Here, have one of my favorite covers of Pink Floyd's "Dogs":

For some reason I just love this version. It's still true to the original, but has its own personality. The whole "set 2" of the Live Frogs album is a cover of the "Animals" album, and I love it.

Also, too: As additional filler, I guess it's time to dust off this gun control rant of mine from a couple years ago. I guess I should just put that as a constantly available link in the blog template, since we're just gonna get more and more of these fucked up mass killings until we're all finally staring at each other at some massive standoff or something. Fuck.

Toe-tappin' Tuesday

One of my favorite local bluesy bands just released a new album. It's available here along with a couple sample tracks. Also available on emusic but I think buying directly from the label gets them more money (disclosure: I noticed it at emusic first, so I suck).

I shall resume my regularly-scheduled dearth of posting now.

Wayback Wednesday II

This was one of my favorite games as a kid. Now I can play it any time I want!

Xevious

Sadly, it requires Flash. Controls are:

• Mouse click to start.
• Z key to fire
• X key to bomb
• Arrow keys to move

Tons moar old classics available here. Consider your day wasted.

You're welcome!

Mimic Monday

I needed to get Miley Boner off the top of my blog, and conveniently today's XKCD is pretty good:

Blinkout

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm having too much fun with this shit, but I don't care.

You really really need to

C'mon, you know you want to... All the kewl kids are doing it...

Evil Zedbra

For the fine folks at Riddled:

RIP Blinky, take 2

Since you lot were so enamored with my previous seizure-inducing ode to Blinky the wonder tag, here's something even worse! A twitching, blinking, color-shifting monstrosity that will terribly frighten and/or nauseate all viewers. Be sure to share it with your friends!

Much like last time, we first simply apply a "class" tag to any elements we want this technique to apply to. But to really fuck things up we throw a whole shitload of nested <div> tags in the mix:

<div class='blonk'>
<div class='blonk'>
<div class='blonk'>
(etc...)
<p class='blonk'>Some shit goes here</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
(etc...)

And then we write just a tiny bit more code, simiilar but much worse than the last:

<script type="text/javascript">
//Two timers to make it kinda jerky and twitchy:
var longdelay=100; // change to adjust speed
var shortdelay=10;

var delay=longdelay;
var positive = 0;

// Evil array of evil color evilness:
var colors=["#ff00ff","#ffff00","#00ffff","#880088","#ff8800","#ff0000","#00ff00","#0000FF"];
var c=0;
function blonk() {
  var annoyances = document.getElementsByClassName('blonk');
  for (var i=annoyances.length - 1; i>=0; i--) {
    var b = annoyances[i];
    b.style.border="0.5em solid " + colors[c];
    if (positive === 1) {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'visible') ? 'hidden' : 'visible';
      positive = 0;
    } else {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'hidden') ? 'visible' : 'hidden';
      positive = 1;
    }
    if (i>=c) { // make the blinking a bit twitchy
      delay=(longdelay * 3)/2.5 + (shortdelay *c);
    } else {
      delay=shortdelay;
    }
    if (c < colors.length) {
      c++;
    } else {
      c=0;
      positive=1;
    }
    b.style.color=colors[c];
   }
   window.setTimeout(blonk, delay);
}

blonk();
</script>

And the result is gloriously, hideously, afwul!

Now that's just plain fucked up!

RIP Blinky

A sad, sad day. The much-maligned <blink> tag is being removed from the last browser that supported it, Firefox.

Thankfully, we can easily come up with an even more annoying alternative, our own special programmatic "blink" that has adjustable speed and alternating blinkage.

First, apply a "class" attribute to whatever you want to blink:

<div class='blink'><p>PUT ANNOYING BLINKY STUFF HERE</p></div>

You can use tags other than <div> -- <span> is a good choice too. Note that more than one item can have the same "class" so you can do that multiple times. In fact you should, because that way they'll alternate states and be extra annoying.

Now, add just a tiny bit of code:

<script type="text/javascript">
var delay=100; // change to adjust speed

function annoy() {
  var annoyances = document.getElementsByClassName('blink');
  var positive=1;
  for (var i=annoyances.length - 1; i>=0; i--) {
    var b = annoyances[i];
    if (positive === 1) {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'visible') ? 'hidden' : 'visible';
      positive = 0;
    } else {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'hidden') ? 'visible' : 'hidden';
      positive = 1;
    }
   }
   window.setTimeout(annoy, delay);
}

annoy();
</script>

Presto:

THIS SHOULD ANNOY EVERYONE

BUT IF IT DOESN'T HOW ABOUT THIS TOO?

Oh yeah, that's the stuff. The blink is dead, long live the blink!

UPDATE: I fixxorated it so it'll work (hopefully) with a new-ish version of Internet Exploder too. Woudln't want bbkf and Mooser to miss out.

Not beer...

...but I may just make an exception for this.

And my whining last post paid off -- 75 degrees (nearly a record) and sunny over the weekend. About fucking time.

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.

Something Different

Zero fucks given.

I like it, I really need to build something like this. I'd probably use an old Z-car instead though, always liked those.