April » 2009 » The Electronic Replicant

Sunday Stealing: The Mud Meme

If it weren't for meme posts, maybe I wouldn't have no posts at all.

1. What are your current obsessions?: People that think it's all right to use every machine in the entire laundromat. Also, people that say “alright.”
2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?: What wardrobe? I don't wear the same thing every day, but all my clothes seem to look exactly the same. Wait a minute, am I a cartoon character?
3. What's for dinner?: Swine Flu.
4. Last thing you bought?: Another set of clothes that look exactly like the others.
5. What are you listening to?: Circling aircraft. Ming! Activate the lightning field!
6. If you were a god/goddess who would you be?: I think the practical answer would be to set myself up as god-emperor to a society of ignorant primitives. I'd speak to them though a giant flaming holographic head with a horrifyingly loud digitally altered voice, and send them on pointless and inscrutable quests which I would, of course, engineer ahead of time. (Allbenevolently, of course.) Then I'd reward their efforts with a revelation about agriculture, architecture, sanitation, or whatever. Isn't that what godhood's all about?
7. Favorite holiday spots?: The North Pole.
8. Reading right now?: Yes. I'd hate to think I was hallucinating all these questions.
9. 4 words to describe yourself.: In the words of Gag Halfrunt, personal brain-care specialist to Zaphod Beeblebrox, “he's just zis guy.”
10. Guilty pleasure?: Guilty?Moi?
11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak?: Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter.
12. Planning to travel to next?: In search of a society of ignorant primitives.
13. Best thing you ate or drank lately?: I didn't catch it's name, but the other day I had a fabulous little fruit drink with an umbrella on top.
14. When did you last get tipsy?: Friday. Or was that yesterday? What's today, Sunday? Then it all started Thursday.
15. Care to share some wisdom?: If there's an elephant in the room, introduce him. And don't step in the poop. You know there's gonna be poop.
16. Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to you?: “You're sonice.“

I recently discovered a service called Odiogo that will magically (and deliciously) transform any boring blog into a dynamic and entertaining multimedia experience! Okay, maybe not. What actually happens is that Odiogo fetches your RSS feed and uses it to generate an audio track for each entry. The synthetic narrator isn't bad. He sounds less like a Speak and Spell and almost like a human with a strange accent reading from cue cards. For those of you that use mainstream blogging platforms, there are even plugins to allow you to embed the audio files on your blog entry pages. For those of us that justhave to use oddball software, there's always jiggery-pokery. And we canall link to audio-enhanced versions of our RSS feeds:

Of course, there are a few gotchas to be found. For example, each audio file is named after the title of the post from which it was generated. Thus if you have several posts that share a title (such as, oh, I don't know, “Now Reading”) all of these posts will share the same audio file— probably not the desired result.

Still, this looks like not only a fun novelty, but also something that someone, somewhere may find useful.

Now Reading

Now Reading: (Resumed)The Void Captain's Tale by Norman Spinrad

Just Finished:The Art of Capacity Planning by John Allspaw

Chances are good that you know of at least one website that's been a victim of its own popularity, whether it's been Slashdotted, Farked or Dugg, or it is visited by the Fail Whale too often. InThe Art of Capacity Planning, the chief engineer atFlickr explains how to gauge the capacity of your Web site by observing metrics, analyzing trends, and forecasting appropriately. Though the volume is thin by the standards of today's technical tomes, it is dense with facts and light on hand-holding. After all, someone who can build a popular site in the first place likely already knows how— or knowshow to find out how— to implement the author's suggestions. Of course, every Web site is different, as the author is quick to point out, so what worked at Flickr is presented merely as illustration, not as gospel.

Friday Stealing

When I woke up this morning, I thought it was Saturday. I'll pretend like it's Sunday so that I can re-steal thisSunday Stealing questionnaire fromDrill N Hammer. At this rate, by Tuesday it will be Thursday. By Wednesday it will be August, and by Thursday it will be the end of existence as we know it!

1. How did you come up with your blog title OR what does it mean?: MyCyborg Name isElectronic Replicant Intended for Killing. Since theIntended for Killing bit might give people a mistaken idea, I shortened the name. My services are not for hire.
2. What are your general goals for blogging?: None. Is that why I suck?
3. Do people “in your real life” know that you blog and do they comment on your blog OR is it largely anonymous?: I have a real life? Why am I not there?
4. How often do you post (x per week)?: Well, the latest average seems to be… once?
5. How often do you read other blogs (x per week)?: Daily. And yet I can only manage to hack together a post once a week?
6. How do you select blogs to read (do you prefer blogs that focus on certain topics or do you choose by tone or…?): I use a secret Sorting Algorithm of Evil. I could tell you more about it, but then I would have toIntend to Kill you.
7. Do you have any plans to copy your blog entries in any other format, 0R do you think that one day, you’ll just delete it all?: Yes, I plan to use them as the basis for a virtual personality reconstruction.
8. What are the things you like best about blogging?: Reading the funny stories that people share and making funny remarks about them… no, wait, I seem to be thinking ofreading blogs.
9. What are the things you don’t like about blogging?: Not having any funny stories to share and thus not allowing anybody to make any funny remarks about them.
10. How do you handle comments?: IIntend to Reply to all comments, but sometimes I don't, because I suck.
11. Do you have any burning thoughts to share on blog etiquette?: Question on commenters: Normally, I reply to a comment with another comment for all to see. When is it expected and proper to reply directly via e-mail to a commenter?
12. Any desired blog features?: Aself-posting blog. Anartificially intelligent self-posting blog. That would be awesome.
12. Have you suffered blog addiction?: No, I can quit whenever I want.

Now Reading

Now Reading: (Resumed)The Art Of Capacity Planning by John Allspaw.

Just Finished:

Forbidden Planets by Marvin Kaye: This was a science fiction anthology based around the theme of— get this— forbidden planets. I must admit that I wasn't particularly wowed by five of the six short stories in the volume. However, the sixth (“No Place Like Home” by Julie E. Czerneda) was rather good.
Software by Rudy Rucker: Despite my lukewarm review ofWetware,I gave in to curiosity and ordered bothSoftwareandFreewarefrom paperbackswap.com.Software felt, to me, like a rather long short story one might find in an issue ofOmni orAsimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Entertaining, but suffused with the ideas of an earlier age, an age of microcomputers, Pac-Man, andStar Wars.The author depicts a future filled with burned-out hippies and their stoner slacker descendants. This includes the allegedly brilliant inventor of the Boppers, a race of sentient robots. This book felt as though even it, the first volume of the series, may have been a later volume, since the reader is presented with an interesting past that the narrator mentions but tends to gloss over, almost as though he were attempting to refresh the reader's memory.
Freeware by Rudy Rucker: The third book of the *ware series,Freeware shows us the fate of the Moldies, the semi-organic descendants of the Boppers. The Boppers' fully-organic descendants, the meatbops, are apparently extinct and forgotten, though there is a girl on the Moon with some interesting imaginary friends. Throughout the book, we are treated to numerous descriptions of man-on-moldie action. Then a signal from outer space is decoded and things get a bit silly. I don't think I'll pick up the next book,Realware, but that's pretty much what I said when I finishedWetware,so who knows?

New? What's that?

So, you may ask, what's new? Read any good books lately? Seen any shows? Freak out your coworkers? Have you done anything worth sharing?

The answers are:

Nothing, as in what did you learn in school today, dear? Nothing.
Read, yes. Good, meh
Only the Watchmen, and that's so three-weeks-ago
No, they're used to it now.
I did build one ofthese…

Sunday Stealing: The Mud Meme

I has podcast???

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Friday Stealing

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