Spawn More Overlords!

*sigh*

80+ desktop computers, all basically purchased individually.

ALL need a RAM update.

Anyone know of a utility that will tell me how much and what type of RAM they have (DDR/DDR2/PC100/whatever)? Windows machine and preferably something I don't have to install on EVERY FREAKING MACHINE?


I'm just not looking forward to cracking the cases of a crapload of computers if there's a way to either run it from a thumb drive, or (preferably) add it to the login script...

Any help would be appreciated!

Taking a dive!
Originally uploaded by Wenchilada

So this afternoon, we got a bit of a break from the smog and things started to clear up, so Ren took her family to Hou Hai and invited Persmonster and I to join them.

Hou Hai (pr. Ho Hi) is great! It is a lovely park, with a lake you can go for a punt on or swim in (if you're game). As it is summer here, you can imagine that it is also very busy and a little bit touristy. But the floating lotus flowers (I didn't manage to get a shot of them) are a saving grace as are the many bars and restaurants that dot the shoreline. It is all very cruisy, really.

We stopped in at No Names Restaurant for beer o'clock and then made our way along until we came to a Thai restaurant. Food was good and spicey (so I will probably pay for it) and yummy! Definately not like the Thai you get back home, so it was a nice experience, though, boy, do I miss the Thai from back home...

This photo is of a crazy, crazy man we met who insisted we needed to take his photo and worked the crowd like nothing else. We all counted to san and with the grace of a dying swan, he launched himself into the most spectacular bellyflop I have ever seen. He could sing too, so after he took his dive here, he stood up on a post and sang some opera for us. Best bit was, he could sing quite well, even if the speedos detracted somewhat from his performance...or did they add to it? Hard to say...

Hey guys!

Just a quick update on a few things, particularly the reason I haven't been updating.

I moved back to Texas and I am still not in my apartment, so I haven't been able to unpack all my stuff, including the PC I do art and comics with... which is, by the way, probably still not working. Hopefully as SOON as I settle into my new place I can get that fixed up.

So yes, it's been a busy month. I have an actual job now too. Crazy times.

Also... an announcement....

For those of you who don't know, my sister ("Kat") and her boyfriend ("Michael"... yes, he's been in the comic) have been dating for a while now. Well last night he asked her to marry him and she said yes! So if you'd like, leave congratulations here and I'll make sure they see it. :)

Anyway, I miss you guys, and definitely miss doing Head Trip, and know that I am still alive and the comic WILL resume ASAP.

~shinga

Adam Tooze’s book The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is a superb example of how revealing and clarifying economic history can be.

It is a study of the economics behind the politics, and the politics behind the economics, that led to the rise of Hitler, the creation of the Nazi economy and its eventual destruction. Tooze brings out the sheer malign purposiveness of Hitler’s policy. ( a loot economy )

Tooze’s book is genuinely revelatory. The purposiveness of Nazi policy, the fears and aspirations that drove it, the limitations it laboured under are all made clear. Hitler was, from first to last, a wilful gambler who knew himself to be such. He was also a consummate political game player who attracted and used people of genuine talent for a purpose that was horrific. That the Nazi economy was a loot economy was not happenstance but the nature of the beast. Genghis Khan with a telephone indeed.

then come to Edinburgh. I am seriously jealous of Bro's neighbourhood. So beautiful. I went for a walk this morning and took lots of pics of buildings- tenement houses mostly. Also visited the local graveyard, terribly picturesque and gothic, incuding old crumbling vaults with water dripping. Atmospheric or what?

I think we are off to scrounge in thrift shops this arvo.

Yesterday I exhausted myself by running around the Burrell collection. So glad I went. Lots of medieval stuff and beautiful grounds to walk through.

more later.

I've mentioned Jiminies before, but if you missed my earlier LJ article (being as how it was a year and a half ago, I forgive you) the recap is: Jiminies were invented (as a concept) by jeff_duntemann; they're a wearable computer with a short-range radio communication and the ability to understand simple spoken commands and talk to nearby peripherals like screens and networked computers.  But they're not like any kind of computer you've seen before; if computers were websites, the Jiminy would be FaceBook, only without the aggravation and spam and poking zombies.

Jeff's original article has survived the ravages of time quite well; his original system design is still pretty much what I'd be hoping for, except maybe that you'd want to replace infrared with something less flakey like Bluetooth II (which doesn't exist yet; I'm imagining a version of Bluetooth that doesn't make me want to scream).

A Jiminy is supposed to be ubiquitous, like a mobile phone or an iPod.  (Neither of which it replaces, by the way!  Well, not exactly; it kind of completes them.  It's complicated.)  Everyone has one, and fair enough too: they cost a pittance to make, and sell as a loss leader, so you can pretty much buy them for the cost of the petrol you spent driving to the store.  They're at KMart and Coles, if you don't mind a cheap one with a little less memory and Shrek VI branding.  Or you can get them the way geeks do, from Amazon, or the way the chic wankers do, from the Apple Shop, where they're called iJims and cost three times as much for slightly worse battery life and a more scratchable case.  It doesn't matter.  Everyone has one.  That's what matters.

The point of the Jiminy is that it keeps you in touch with other Jiminy users (ie everyone; see previous paragraph).  You feed it with queries -- except we don't call them queries or search terms or anything like that, because that's too computery: we call them questions -- and all the Jiminies within range of each other, and all the others in range of them, and so on ad infinitum, find the answers for you.

Yesterday's speculative article was my brainstorming on how a mildly aggravating night of misunderstood directions and missed turns could have been different if I had had a Jiminy tracking my location and my expectations and giving me advice.  Nothing too complicated: slow down to avoid the police speed trap (which I didn't encounter, by the way -- that was just fiction) or turn here to get home without going ten kilometres out of my way, and so on.

Jiminies wouldn't change your life, not the way the internet did.  But think about that internet.  Tell someone from 1981 about it: it's a collection of computers connected via a failsafe network, with lots of downloadable documents for you to look at, most of which are interactive through the medium of typing and mouse-clicking.  How does that sound life-changing?  But throw in email and Google and Wikipedia and maybe even Facebook and LJ, and suddenly lives are qualitatively different. 

Joel Spolsky, I think, talks about how the key question to ask about any new technology is: how will this help someone to get laid?  That is to say, how does this technology connect people together?  Seriously, Slashdot is just geeks talking about how they plan to dual-boot Linux as soon as they've cleared the viruses off their Win98 boxes; but Facebook, that's about hooking up and getting "it's complicated" with people of a compatible gender.  People get laid as a direct result of Facebook; that, by Joel's definition, is a successful system!  Go back earlier, the same is true of email, mobile phones, cars, churches, language, the wheel, fire...  they're all technology that connects people.  Fire was invented to help human beings stay alive long enough to make more human beings; every other successful technology is either similar in its effect, or else peripheral to that.

With simple, ubiquitous technology to keep people connected all the time, Jiminies could have a dramatic effect on human life.  If they sell it as a loss leader, like printers and film cameras (where you pay for the ink or the film to offset the insanely cheap hardware) then they could spread like wildfire.  Once they're everywhere, they'd come alive like the internet or the phone network or the Roman Empire did, and history would be different.

As Jeff said, I expect to see this in my lifetime; I just wish they'd hurry the heck up!

“The new steampunk & dieselpunk magazine” is here with the release of the first issue of the Gatehouse Gazette.

In this first issue, the reader with find an introduction to the genre of dieselpunk by Piecraft and Ottens, an interview with Toby Frost, author of Space Captain Smith, steampunk fashion and couture by Hilde Heyvaert, a review of the latest Indiana Jones film by Jack Rose, steampunk poetry, essays, cartoons—and more!

CLICK HERE TO GO GET IT NOW!

I seem to recall deciding I was not to buy any more books until I've read five. Or maybe seven, on account of buying all those art books the day I made it to the Nolan exhibition, but I can't find any reference to that so let's say five. It would be bad if I got all overwhelmed.

Okay, well.

1. I finished The Subtle Knife(audio) by Phillip Pullman and it's definitely not as good as Northern Lights. Mind you, it was a hard act to follow. Oh, and as an audio book it managed to do all the things that make me dislike audio books. Full-cast recordings drive me nuts - they give me too much of each character, I prefer one narrator who only makes discreet changes for the different characters (allowing me to hear them how I wish to). And in this one, a particular bunch of characters (the witches) were grossly overacted (as permanently breathless women who probably like reading poetry aloud while wandering around British country houses in diaphanous gowns circa 1924).

The story itself doesn't really have any start or finish. It just goes and then it stops. The world gets more elaborate, but thus far I don't know why it needs to. Stuff from the first book is left hanging.

I now need to read the third one in the hopes that it will all make sense then.

As far as a non-Christian response to C.S. Lewis...I dunno. Cooper's The Dark Is Rising is a pretty seriously exciting fantasy that puts forward some pretty wild(in a good way) ideas about non-human power and sustains the excitement for an entire series. Pullman certainly doesn't outrank Cooper.

2. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: You Don't Have To Live With It. An Eight Step Protocol, by Martha Kilcoyne. It hasn't changed my life, but it would have been a very handy book many years ago. And it was good to once again be reminded of the importance of a few things that I know to be important but regularly overlook. I read this just prior to starting the online self help course that a bunch of us are doing and it was good for getting me into the right mindset.

So that's two down.

I'm still only half way through Whores in History, Prostitution In Western Society by Nickie Roberts. It was published in 1992 and you can tell - there are many points she feels compelled to make which I don't think she'd need to make today. Of course that might depend on her audience. (Let's face it, unless you are like me and prefer to hide under a rock, you have to state the bleeding obvious on a regular basis). I'm also a bit doubtful about some of her interpretations but I haven't teased my ideas out yet.

The next book I'm itching to read is by David Hockney. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques Of The Old Masters is something I glanced at months ago and have been hoping to get back to but it's been out on loan and I only just got my grubby mitts on it again the other day. My first browsing reminded me that art critics rarely write about art in a way that means much to me, but some artists can. (And Hockney in particular is very readable). Art in it's historical context, yes fine. But the art itself? It makes a lot more sense when someone who is themself competent takes the time to describe the whys and hows. As for the subject, it sounds interesting and worth finding out more.

Book number five will be either Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Arete which is currently sitting beside the bed, another book on Etruscans (there are two in the library pile, although the whopping tome I started over Easter was unavailable), or that one I've got somewhere on the shelf about the Rape of Nanjing. Or maybe one of a zillion others.

Yep, those are my plans.

Next post: Gardens! More books! Travel! Advice! Yay!

Going to Ontario. May or may not use the computer when there...it sometimes is dicey. Back on 23rd.

We played hockey this afternoon and I played Goal Keeper again.
For me it was an easy game, I did very little, I think I touched the ball once per half.

We won 1-0.
Currently we are equal second on the ladder only the other team we tie with has more goals than us which affects the draw for the finals. We play that team next weekend.

Annoyingly, our regular goal keeper has missed number of games now and is unlikely to qualify to play for our team in the finals (you have to play 60% of games which is 9 games). This means I'm likely to play goals is and when we get in to the Finals.

I am a good goal keeper and I'm happy to play it. But I means I get less exercise so I need to find other ways to get the exercise back into my day. Thankfully the weather has kind of cleared up and I'f finally shaken the cold I had. And with days getting longer again, it looks like I'll need to start walking home from work again quick smart.

Also my gym membership finishes next month, so the last payment on the 1st August means I have a little more financial freedom and I can join the gym at work for half price which can also be taken straight out of my pay. Then I just need to work it into my routine. Annoyingly Pilates isn't included in the gym membership so I'll need to pay extra for that, and I quite like Pilates, it's worked for me in the past, I'll just have to work it into the budget that I really need to do soon! lol.

Well I'll stop rambling here now and go get ready for the party tonight.

fun fun fun

You must be, because my ass would have been walked straight out the building for this.

The guy sitting next to me: "No! I'm done answering your question! I've answered it three times already! No more."

Yes. We have all wanted to say this (or something like it), and probably have, after putting the phone on mute. But I looked over at this guy's screen to see what sort of idiot question was apparently being asked, and he was saying this TO the customer, and then proceeded to argue with the woman over answering the question again.


I can probably guarantee that if I'd been on the other end of that call, the next words out of my mouth would have been, "I'd like to speak with your supervisor."



I wonder if he'll still have a job after quality hears this call.

The Rev. Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population was one of those runaway intellectual successes which turns its author’s name into an adjective. Alas, as someone observed, classics are like the aristocracy: we learn their titles and pretend acquaintance. It is a book far more invoked than read.

The Penguin™ edition contains the first edition of the Essay conjoined with A Summary View of the Principle of Population and a particularly useful and intelligent introduction by philosopher Anthony Flew. (I recommend that you read Flew’s introduction, then read the two works by Malthus, and then re-read Flew’s introduction.)

The Essay has three elements to it. Malthus’s statement and explication of his principle of population; critiques of Condorcet and Godwin; and a justification of the works of God to man. ( an original thinker )

To say parents make deliberate choices about having children is not to argue against providing contraception. First, more precise control of fertility choices is surely good: especially for poor folk. Second, the big thing about the pill was not that it is a contraceptive device, but that it is a female-controlled contraceptive device. But the notion that poor folk “just have babies” is condescending nonsense.( further problems )

That there turned out to be fundamental problems with Malthus’s theory does not detract from it being a major intellectual achievement. We owe both the theory of natural selection and modern demographics to it. He was very much on to something, just not quite what he thought he was on to.

Still Sick.

Picked up Lillith from the airport last night and spent the night at Kazzia's with her. Even though I got 10 hours of sleep and had a good dinner and breakfast, I'm now feeling crappier. Hope that if I nap the next couple of hours, I'll be able to hit K's birthday party for at least 2 hours.

Tomorrow I think will sleep before I go and get Lillith and K&B to bring them into Newtown, and then to drop L at the airport tomorrow night.

It's awesome to have my irish girl visiting us, but it sucks that I'm sick.

Grey
Originally uploaded by Wenchilada

Yep. Grey.

(le sigh)

I've just realized that Steam Powered, the convention in the Bay Area, is going to be held at the same time as the Alternative Press Expo (except SP starts 1 day earlier). Oh, dear, what a terrible choice of dates. :( I should have noticed right off the bat, as I think APE's dates were announced last year. Well, APE is my favorite convention in the world, so that's where I'll be on November 1st and 2nd. I do hope SP will be selling single-day admissions, as there are probably other APE loyalists who'd like to go to SP on the 31st.

APE usually has cheap admission, so it's worth checking out if you're in town for Steam Powered and have some spare time. I may have a table there that would also have some of my associate's "I love steampunk" and "Airship Mechanic" shirts, and if so, I'll let people know in advance.

First, my deepest apologies for keeping the Overlooked Manga Festival on hiatus for so long. I'm currently reading so many manga for a book I'm writing that I have no time to read manga for blog-related purposes. It's wrong, I know.

But I had to bring back the OMF for one special Fourth of July event. After all, what's more American than manga? Okay, yes, everything, but manga can teach us a lot about the U.S. of A. From manga, we learn that America is a magical land of hot gay gang-bangers, Broadway dancers shacked up with underage alien fish, and unashamed racism. Also, everyone has awesome names like "Aslan" and "Wedy."

What else can we learn about America through manga? How about the history of the courageous leaders who have served in the highest office in the land? That's why I'm pleased to present:

The Overlooked Manga Festival Parade of Manga Presidents

( Read more... )

As free as the wind blows...
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v318/hometime/?action=view&current=DSCN0130.jpg

C brought me two dozen snails, so you see the consequences for the slugs....

Monday: Full body (heavy)
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Boot Camp
Thursday: Upper body (medium)
Friday: Boot Camp
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Upper body (light)

Upper body in between boot camp because boot camp is if anything leg heavy. 2 whole rest days. I should schedule stretching for the day after second boot camp so I don't neglect it :)

jai.
.

The best blonde joke in human history!

Kaboom!

So no shit, there I was, walking back from lunch with whimsywanderer and davidsarah, and guess what whimsywanderer noticed, just sitting out by the curb?

Yup. I has a fainting couch!

Happy 4th of July weekend, everyone!