Geekery

Wired’s top 100 geek skills must be not geeky enough

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

Considering they suggest you can Google stuff to figure out any of these skills, I’d automatically get 100/100 on this list of 100 geek skills you need to know. Even without Googling, I count 85 things on that list I can do right now, without looking anything up. I don’t know whether to boast or cry about it though.

This reminds me, I should post pictures at some point of the cool NES controller mint tin that I turned into a 5-volt USB power injector so I could connect USB devices to my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. If you have even half an idea what I’m talking about, you’d be impressed. If you’re not impressed, pretend I said I built a vibrator. See? Right back to impressed.

And no, calculating THAC0 is not on my list of stuff I can do. I never did get into D&D. Nor can I do much with LEGO other than stick them together. That’s more CyberLizard’s domain.

Wired’s top 100 geek skills must be not geeky enough
{advertisement}

Aww, thanks Scicurious.

Jason Thibeault1 Comment

Over at Neurotopia, our favorite nerd / geek / dork Scicurious (she hit the trifecta!) posted a shout-out to Jodi and I, in the way of a viral video.

You really ought to head over and check out the neuro-nuts for all sorts of cool science-blogging — like Friday Weird Science, where they talk about crazy freaky animal sex, or how stress might or might not trigger your chocolate habit (you’ll have to click to see!).

Aww, thanks Scicurious.

9 looks way awesome

Jason Thibeault

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to watch a CG film as much as I want to watch this one. It has everything I love: post-apocalyptic desperate struggle for survival, airships, killer action sequences, and… animated dolls? I didn’t even know I loved that!

Hat tip Jodi, who got it from The Steampunk Home

Also, I have no idea how to categorize this. I don’t have a Movies category, as I don’t normally care enough about movies to blog about them. Since it’s CG, it’ll go under Computers for now.

9 looks way awesome

How to make the Bible way more interesting

Jason Thibeault6 Comments

I heartily approve of this use of the Linux swiss-army-knife command, sed, to “fix” the King James version of the Bible so that it reads as though it was written by HP Lovecraft. This stands as a testament as to just how easily one can mix and match terms from one work of fiction with another work of fiction and still have it fit the mythos you’re expecting it to fit — that is, if you’re in the correct mindset and are looking for similarities. You could probably do the same with Greek mythology, replacing Dionysus and Helios with Jesus, and you’d find enough alike that it would seem uncanny.

An example of the output from this script:

Num16:19-21
And Korah gathered all the congregation against them unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the madness of Cthulhu appeared unto all the congregation.
And Cthulhu spake unto Abdul Alhazred and unto Aaron, saying,
Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.

You’ve probably already read this as this was just linked on Pharyngula. But roughly half of you won’t be able to do it, as you don’t have immediate access to a Linux box. So, I’m volunteering to take requests. Pick your favorite Bible verse, and I’ll give you what it translates as. For instance:

Ge6:7 And Cthulhu said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Ge28:16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely Cthulhu is in this place; and I knew it not.
Ge28:17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of Cthulhu, and this is the gate of R’lyeh.

Fun for the whole family, until we’re Cthulhu food that is. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

How to make the Bible way more interesting

Happy Father’s Day

Jason Thibeault

I called my father to wish him a happy Father’s Day but just missed him — he had been called off to fight a fire underground. The ornery bugger is, on top of being a miner, a draegerman — basically, a combination fireman and paramedic trained specifically to deal with mine rescue operations. He in fact was heavily involved in rescue operations at the Westray disaster. At 49, he’s starting to break down a bit, with arthritis and such, but he’s still kicking.

He and my stepmother are going to come down and visit sometime in August, which will be a nice change of pace from the usual, having to visit him myself. Plus I get to show off what meager life Jodi and I have managed to carve out. Though, so help me, if he asks Jodi to get pregnant again, I may have to kick him out early.

Anyway, apropos of the day, here’s a geeky video.

Happy Father’s Day

Good news everyone!

Jason Thibeault1 Comment
Now you're reading this post in my voice!
Now you're reading this post in my voice!

Futurama just got renewed and is making 26 more episodes. That’s not just good news, that’s excellent news! I lost my remote though, so I’ll have to get out the Finglonger to turn on the television.

Wednesday’s announcement that Comedy Central is bringing Futurama back for another 26 episodes, to begin airing in 2010, was both fortuitous and entirely expected.

Futurama never really went away, the show’s brain trust backed four straight-to-DVD movies, with the express intention of keeping the tale alive.

I can’t wait. There’s only one show out there that can make a joke about quantum physics that’s actually funny. Or maybe two, I’ve never seen Big Bang Theory.

Great Llamas of the Bahamas, we're back on TV!
Great Llamas of the Bahamas, we're back on TV!

Good news everyone!

Geek Art: Needlework Brings Together Programmers, Crafters

Jason Thibeault6 Comments

Jodi showed me this earlier, and I wanted to blog it, but got distracted with hacking the Gibson I mean arguing with Rystefn. Oh well.

Needlepoint geekery can be found at wired.com. It’s pretty awesome, actually. I kind of want a blanket embroidered with a motherboard design. Or maybe embroidered with FORGED HEADERS FROM YAHOO AND GMAIL ZOMG. It sure is geeky. I bet I could spoof me some blankets like nothing, because being an IT guy is just like being a Level 4 Wizard with 12 points in Intelligence!!!!1

Geek Art: Needlework Brings Together Programmers, Crafters

So… sex is just a bunch of math?

Jason Thibeault,

While being a computer geek, I have never been terribly good at high-level physics or maths. This post makes me want to change my mind, where it attempts to create a unified quantum theory out of sexuality.

If there is a difference in energy of the basis states a pure |M> state can oscillate between |S> and |G> according to a time-dependent phase factor arising when the two states interfere with each other:

|M(t)>=cosθ|S>exp(-iE1t) + sinθ|G>exp(-iE2t);

(obviously we are using natural units here, so that it all looks cleverer than it actually is). This equation is the origin of the expressions  “it’s just a phase he’s going through” and “he swings both ways”. In physics parlance this means that the eigenstates of the sexual interaction do not coincide with the conventional gender types, indicating that sexual behaviour is not necessarily time-invariant for a given body.

Brilliant, but I’m going to have to do way more research before my eyes don’t glaze over repeatedly. Oh well, anything to self-improve.

Hat tip Phil Plait.

And while we’re talking about sex and geekery, it’s worth mentioning that XKCD had a relevant comic recently (especially the more relevant if you’ve been attempting to follow all these crazy drama threads lately).

So… sex is just a bunch of math?

you hit the emu. you killed the emu. –more– Welcome to level 2

Jason Thibeault, , 8 Comments

On the first networked, Unix-based computers, your gaming options were severely limited. You could play the Colossal Cave Adventure, a text adventure game (one of those text-based ones with a parser that accepts commands like “go north”, or “throw stone at ogre” or “examine your navel”); simplistic AI-based games like a chess game where you’d have to play a physical board, enter your move in chess notation, and the AI would give you its move in chess notation in return; quiz games of all stripes; or maybe even a Star Trek based game (which I remember playing on my Tandy 1000 EX, my first computer, and is admittedly pretty fun as a strategy game). In 1980, though, the first graphically represented, heavily D&D-influenced RPG came into the picture and completely blew the rest of the RPGs at the time, out of the water.

Of course, by graphically represented, I mean it used ASCII characters used to display text on the console to represent the player, the dungeon, items and monsters. Turn by turn, you’d move an @ symbol one space at a time — and for every space you move, the monsters on each floor of the randomly generated dungeon if they are awake and roaming, or know where you are, would either wander aimlessly or come after you with relentless tenacity respectively, hoping to put an end to your spelunking career. Meanwhile, you ran around grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down, like gold for points so you could get on the high score list, or weapons, scrolls and potions to make killing these ne’er-do-wells easier (thus facilitating your staying alive to get more gold).

Continue reading “you hit the emu. you killed the emu. –more– Welcome to level 2” →

you hit the emu. you killed the emu. –more– Welcome to level 2