Posted by me on Sunday, the 28th day of January, anno domini 2007 at 11:12 PM, local time.
So, previously, I have blogged about Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North, a comic genius. Now, I would like to make a praiseful mention of xkcd by Randall Munroe. I don’t remember who first sent me the link, I suspect it may have been Kyle. He at least claims the distinction. Anyway, I have seen a couple of the comics off and on when people or websites mention them to me. They have been funny, and all, but just recently, I found myself going through the entire archive of comics. Many of them are down right hilarious. Some are scary in how well they describe me. All of them are quite good.
And, if you go and read some of them, don’t forget about the mouse-over text for each comic. Much like dinosaur comics, it is often a punchline, or commentary on the comic. But, they are always a vital part of the day’s offerings. Unfortunately firefox has a bug with long mouse-over texts, so sometimes you might not get to read it all. I do have a solution for Dinosaur Comics, which goes and grabs the mouse-over text and displays it prominently below the comic for easy reading. It also takes Ryan’s mess and makes proper XHTML out of it. That is one point where the author of xkcd is better: the source is clean. I respect that. Thank you, Mr Munroe.
I do plan to write a script to make it easier to read xkcd as well, but haven’t gotten to it yet. Please stand by.
As for a comparison between Dinosaur Comics and xkcd in terms of goodness, I think I still have to go with Dinosaur Comics. They are consistently of a level that xkcd usually, but not always, manages to reach. Besides, everybody seems to already like xkcd. Its not as fun to evangelize as Dinosaur Comics is (which, for some reason, a lot of people don’t seem to get).
Anyway, I recommend you keep an eye on these comics! They are sometimes rather niche in their audience, but a lot of times, pretty much everybody can appreciate the humor.
Tags: dinosaur comics, humor, kyle, webcomics, xkcd
From "That which should be praised"
Posted by me on Sunday, the 28th day of January, anno domini 2007 at 9:18 PM, local time.
So, it’s been a while since I’ve bothered Jim about teaching me to knit. However, in my usual meanderings through wikipedia, I happened upon the knitting entry, which in turn led me another site, where I found Something Worth Knitting. I then began to look a bit further into such things, and discovered some other very interesting things.
So anyway, uh, Jim? About that ‘knitting’ thing?
Tags: crocheting, geometry, knitting, math, mathematical crocheting, wikipedia
From "Tripe. Utter tripe."
Posted by me on Thursday, the 25th day of January, anno domini 2007 at 11:50 PM, local time.
So, I was at work the other day, getting cheap “break-room” coffee from the coffee machine, and I put in my seventy-five cents and it dropped down a cup and proceeded to do nothing whatsoever.
This has happened to me in the past, and really all it means is that have to walk all the way to the next break-room and get a cup of coffee there. But, now I have lost the seventy-five cents I put into the first machine. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to convince myself that if I buy enough coffee from the machines, my average number of failures tends to zero-ish and so I lose no money at all. That’s how that works, right?
On the other hand, the machine supposedly gives away a free cup of coffee every fifty cups purchased. I have experienced this phenomenon twice, I believe, in the 3 years or so now that I have been at my present job buying coffee from the break-room. So, I guess I’m making money on the deal? It is funny when it happens though, because you put in your money, make your selection, and it spits your money back out at you, as if to say, “Pfft!Your money is no good here, my friend. Have some coffee.” And then the little cup drops down and the coffee pours out and I am happy.
Tags: break room, coffee machine, failures, free coffee
From "That which must be mocked"
Posted by me on Wednesday, the 17th day of January, anno domini 2007 at 1:20 AM, local time.
So, a quick update from the new year (yes I know, the new year is several weeks old now). First off, I’ve started a new blog. Or rather, I’ve split this one into two parts. I’ve noticed that I tended to blog about lots of random things here, but very seldom have I been blogging about technical subjects. I also recognize that while some of my readers might be interested in those technical subjects, many others might not be. So, any new ramblings about technical things (computers, math, programming, etc.) will go to this new blog, Complicated System of Pulleys. It can be reached from this blog by going to the link off to the right side, down in the sessrumnir.net section.
Related to this splitting, I have done a bit of a name reversal on this less technical blog. It used to be called sessrumnir.net and there was just a little comment under the title saying Nevermind…. Well, since I now have this second blog at pretty much the same site, I thought that it was more appropriate for both of them to be considered sessrumnir.net and each should be given separate names. Complicated System of Pulleys was pretty easy to come up with, and since Nevermind… had always been part of the old blog’s masthead, I thought it too might be appropriate.
Lastly (for now), I have added a small quote section to the mastheads. There was a lot of empty whitespace up there, and I like quotes, so there we go. Right now, I have to manually change the quote every once and a while, and I’ll probably keep it that way, though I imagine I’ll make it easier for myself to change it eventually. The two blogs will have separate sets of quotes. The quotes will generally be something that popped into my head, or something from a book I am/was reading. I will try to give proper credit/blame when possible. Some of them I might make up and those won’t be credited to anyone.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Oh, except to say that there is now about 4-6″ of snow cover. This is cause for celebration and joy. Thank you.
Tags: blogging, happiness, meta, new year, pulleys, snow
From "Tripe. Utter tripe."
Posted by me on Monday, the 1st day of January, anno domini 2007 at 2:43 AM, local time.
So just a quick note here this early hour into the new year to relate the wonderful news! Es schneit! Es schneit! Es hat geschneit! Es ist Schneiende! Isn’t it wonderful? After months of waiting, heartbreak, and sorrow, it has finally snowed! And I am tired and am going to bed! Yay!
Tags: happiness, new year, sleepy, snow
From "That which must be said, That which should be praised"