FremLog

Titanic: To fail horribly and miserably at something. An epic failure.

“Some guy in the dorm burned popcorn, set off the smoke detectors, and got the building evacuated. It was titanic.”

“Man, I totally titanisized on that test today.”

Ok, this is somewhat scary.

I didn’t even think about the poll until after I’d clicked an option. Should I be worried that “they” know enough about me purely from information gathered autonomously to ask if I liked a spiritual sequel to KOTOR or a game about parkour better? Both of which titles I eagerly anticipate playing within the next five years? I don’t even think I’m in a gaming group. Well, maybe I am. Crap, I’m in like five of them.

I generate information for humans, not robots. I really wish Facebook had a robots.txt option.

But seriously. I answered the poll. That’s even worse! They have extracted more information from me! Soon they will derive vital information from my preference, like my secret plans to have a finger removed in order to insert an assassination blade. Airport security will start stopping everyone with four fingers and then where will I be? Not en route to stabbing evil Facebook scrubbing bots, that’s where.

In other, tangentially related, information, Nineteen Eighty-Four recently landed on my Christmas reading list. Stuff that in your hat and eat it, robot!

p.s. What happened to the last one percent, I wonder? Dead, most likely. Sad.

I have an announcement to make.

YAY! PHOENIX REQUIEM IS STARTING! w00t!!!

Ahem. I now return you to your normal blog.

A few days ago, I decided to go running. Rather than carry my keys with me and have them all jingling around in my pocket, I decided to leave them at the dorm.
This posed a problem. How would I get back in my room? Leaving the door open and/or unlocked is rarely a great idea. So I pulled my room key off my keyring and scoured the hallway outside my door in search of a good place to hide it. The terrain was sadly lacking in flowerpots and welcome mats; and I, thinking inside the box, didn’t remember that I had an entire lounge in which to deposit objects.

But behold! The venetian blind at the end of the hall. At the very top, between the frame and the top of the blind, there was a gap just large enough to insert a key. So, I did. Just to be sure I’d be able to get it back out, I used the tip of a pencil to pull it out again. Confident that my room was protected by a sufficient amount of security by obscurity, I jogged out of the building.

Returning thirty minutes later, covered in sweat and not thinking very coherently, I returned to the window blind. With the skill and precision of a ninja, I slowly, carefully, grabbed at the key. It jingled slightly as it fell out of sight, deep into the internal mechanisms of the blind. Oops.

Fortunately, I’m apathetic.

The End.

Afterward
Several hours later, armed with various tools of prying, some guys from Penn3 figured out how to dismount the blind from its lofty perch above the window, and the key was restored to it’s rightful place in my pocket. It’s really hard to remove window blinds when all parties involved are laughing hysterically.

Description: Chasing a moving vehicle through deserted alleyways in the middle of a large city.
Status: Completed

Now, to work on movie inspired fantasy #3477: Catching previously mentioned vehicle.

I have a vague idea that I’m easily amused…

For several undisclosed reasons (which those who know me can probably guess at), I find this news story hilarious.

I’d just like to say, Windows Safari is pretty much the most bizarre thing I’ve seen all month. I feel so confused.

There are some people who would say to me, “James, being an extreme Pirates of the Caribbean fanboy, having eagerly awaited the conclusion of the trilogy for months, and having been one of the first to see the third movie (having gone at 12:01 AM on May 25th), do you feel that it has been worthy of the anticipation, lack of sleep, ten bucks, and “Pirates” name?

The people who ask these things don’t exist, but I’ll flatter myself and pretend that they do.

To these sorts of people, I shall reply:

(Spoiler. Mom, don’t cheat.)
Continue reading ‘Pirates III is Out’

Just a quick shoutout for people using Xubuntu and having trouble consolidating everything onto one taskbar/panel…

Xubuntu has an invisible spacer on the top panel to keep the system tray and clock plugins all the way on the right. If you want to have the tasklist take up all avalible space on the panel, you will need to locate and kill this spacer, otherwise it pushes everything on the right side of the panel off-screen.

The great thing about this spacer is that you have no idea that it’s there, you only find it by observing the wacky behavior of the panel when you re-arrange plugins. I would suggest that the XFCE developers mimic Firefox, and show a white box or the text “spacer” or something in edit mode to let the user know that there is, in fact, something on the taskbar that they can’t see. I only found the spacer by moving everything on the panel to the extreme left and right clicking on a whim.

Huzzah for usability! Tune in next week, when uncle Frem shows you how to make a complete desktop environment using only forty-eight thousand dollars and your teeth.

Gaim development is really taking off. It’s flying these days. Seriously, what is up with AOL?