I've been really impressed by this album from Katatonia - particularly a track called "My Twin".
Get it somewhere. You're looking for album cover that looks like this :D
It's as "listenable" as the legendary Tool album - Lateralus (big call), or A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step etc.
Same kind of adrenaline inducing rawness :)
Go and watch The Century of the Self (documentary by Adam Curtis shown on BBC Four).
Brilliant overview of the different techniques employed to control the masses and shape the idea of "democracy" that the US seems so intent on exporting.
The Century of the Self Episode 1 2 3 4
N.B. This is approx 4 hours of documentary :)
Saddam Hussein (1937-2006)
From an article on the International Herald Tribune:
A trial on the far more sweeping charges that he directed the killing of 50,000 Kurds in an organized ethnic-cleansing campaign is still under way and will continue despite Hussein's execution.and
Iraqi officials said the execution would be filmed, both for the historical record and as proof for those who may doubt the word of both the Americans and Iraqis.
The US-based rights group Human Rights Watch condemned the hanging, saying history would judge his trial and execution harshly.
Richard Dicker, a Human Rights Watch director, said: "Saddam Hussein was responsible for horrific, widespread human rights violations, but those acts, however brutal, cannot justify his execution, a cruel and inhuman punishment.
41 emails and 2 days to delete one file and move a redirect page through 4 environments.
That's when you know you're dealing with process overkill at work. I've never in my entire life had to deal with so much bullshit to delete a file off a freaking test environment. Why the hell a company would pay tens of thousands of dollars for software which can do this for you out of the box with full transactional deployments and audit trails, and not use it is beyond me.
I'm laughing about it as I type this in fact. A squeaky, desperate slightly maniacal little laugh.
everyone needs bringing back down to earth
every now
and
again.
Why does everyone think I'm a genius?
Read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It's a brilliant and enlightening read.
Quotes to come in later posts.
Why won't God heal amputees?
Dinner conversation:
Mary: "I believe in God. I've believed in him since I was 7"
You: "Yeah? I want to because there's reams of hot ass at Hillsong but he doesn't heal amputees"
Mary: "Huh?"
You: "If he regenerated legs he'd get my vote."
Mary: "You're sick"
You: "Hey, I don't claim to be able to regenerate legs."
And so on.
Fucking ridiculous.
Scott is Jeff Daniels in the Squid and the Whale. Only he's studying philosophy and not a PhD in literature (yet).
Amarok pictured here is the out of the box music player in Kubuntu and just another reason why Kubuntu lords it over your puny-assed little OS.
Mmm.. let me see - you want song lyrics? Click. Artist or band info (sourced from Wikipedia)? Click. A summary of all the albums you have by a given artist and which songs you listen to most often? Click. Want to grab missing album art? Click. Download track info to supplement your crappy ID3 tags on your mp3 collection because you're a pirate and BitTorrent rocks? Click!
The wonders of open source eh?
I've already blogged about most of these points here, but the author of this article, "Avoid the loony Zune" makes some good points about Microsoft and its dealings with the wider music industry.
There are far more positive reviews at the Zune scene's Zune Owner Reviews page, and I guess this helps to balance all the bad press Zune has been getting since release.
Despite reading 100 "good reviews", I still find it hard to look past the DRM, lack of podcast support, next to useless WiFi and the Zune points system for buying tracks. The sad thing is, Microsoft's famous marketing prowess will probably convince most users that these things aren't important.
Educate yourself about the recent Novell and Microsoft agreement, and then decide if you want to sign the protest against it (written by Bruce Perens). I did.
I was having a discussion with a web developer friend of mine the other day about Kubuntu. He made the very valid point that he still needs a windows install around to do thorough testing of IE browser support on a windows box.
Well I have IE 5.5 and 6.0 running on Kubuntu (and no I'm not using VMWare). I found a very nifty little script in my blog reading this morning which installs IE 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 for you (you can choose which versions you want). The magic all happens with IEs4Linux (also check out his blog - looks like IE7 support is there too - maybe this will convince me to finally install IE7). It installs with a minimum of fuss and hassle. In fact with ADSL2+ the install is lightning fast.
The only requirement is that you have Wine installed and cabextract (a program to extract Microsoft Cabinet files). Using Adept Manager I had these installed in minutes. Following the Kubuntu instructions on the IEs4Linux was incredibly straightfoward. Within minutes I had two fancy looking IE icons on my desktop (an upside down IE logo in what looks like a cocktail glass), and I was ready to go.
I have a screenshot of IE 5.5, IE 6.0 and Firefox running behind it. No hacks, no pain. It Just Works. Very impressive. Just to prove that it really is IE I've loaded up Bento's blog Waffle which proudly gives IE the middle finger. You can see what I mean in the screenshot :)
So while it's not IE on Windows, it's about as close as you'll get whilst running a Linux distro. I say give it a whirl :)
I stumbled across this article today. Reminds me of someone who recently bought a mac to do Rails development on, but wasn't particularly happy a few days after buying it.
Anyone who swears by a particular platform to do development for a particular web framework needs their head checked. And as far as David Hansson's comments? Mere elitist hype-generating mumbo jumbo.
At least this guy backs up his claims.
This was a pleasurable read. Another poignant article considering yesterday was my last day at Insane Asylum Group (you all know the acronym). I'm officially unemployed. First time in almost 7 years. What the fuck. It's awesome.
10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job
I've been reading a chapter of 'The Art of Unix Programming' by ESR every morning before work lately. I was also having drinks with a few guys who organised and spoke at World Usability Day yesterday at the State Library in Sydney. Anyway, reading this koan this morning seemed particularly poignant and funny :) Enjoy!
Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface
One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.
“The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward”, he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface”.
Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.
“I don't understand you!” said the programmer.
Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.
“What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer.
Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.
“Why can't you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer.
Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.
As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.
At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.
Quoted from: Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface
Ok - so I'm typing this post from my newly installed Kubuntu (which is pretty much just Ubuntu with KDE as the default window manager). It's very very nice.
I'm just copying across my mp3s from my USB external hard disk and we'll be good to go. I have Gaim installed and configured (which I was using on Windows anyway - it wees all over MSN and Trillian (which is just plain ugly)). Kubuntu pre-installs OpenOffice which I was also using on my Windows XP box, and I have Firefox 2.0 up and running.
It's been about 9 years since I ran Linux exclusively on my desktop at home, and that only lasted about 18 months. Boy o boy has Linux come a long way. I haven't had to go hunting around for my XConfig file. I haven't spent days looking for an obscure X server driver. Everything Just Works. In fact, it's interesting to note that I've installed and configured Kubuntu to my tastes faster than it normally takes to download, configure and install Cygwin (a tool that any serious programmer familiar with *nixs would usually install on their Windows boxen).
Ah, I love it. Let me see, I have Adept which appears to be a kickarse GUI interface to the powerful apt-get packaging system we've all been envious of from Debian. I have an audio player already installed (mp3s work with barely any fuss). I have CD and DVD burning software, a powerful media player in Kaffeine. I have an RSS reader pre-installed. I have Bluetooth chat (!), a bittorrent client, an IRC client, a PDF reader out of the box, Konqueror - a kick arse web browser (arguably better than Firefox in some sense - just ask Apple - Safari heart KHTML and all that). I have all that Linux brings to the development table (Windows has nothing on Linux - and no I'm not convinced that Powershell will make much of a difference), and all of this is wrapped up in a really quite beautiful GUI (I rate it way higher than XP or other MS derivatives - Mac OS X still rocks - though Ubuntu is definitely up there).
For those who want to take a peek you can click on the smaller image below for a full res screenshot of what Kubuntu looks like on my desktop (1280x1024). Even the process of taking this image was effortless. Hitting printscreen on your keyboard automatically brings up a snapshot program which wants to save your desktop as a PNG for you. Excellent :)
I'll get to know Kubuntu better over the next week or so and post some more, so stay tuned :)
One last point. People who are interested in Linux, or Free Software in general (there is a convincingly philosophical argument behind this) should definitely check Ubuntu out. You can download it here. Give it a go. If you're a developer and you're happy to put the time in I can't imagine you'd fail to be impressed.
Saw U2 last night at Sydney's Telstra Dome. I've never been a huge U2 fan, but holy crap. Bono and especially The Edge - WOW. The effect of Edge's guitar riffs on the crowd is inexplicable. You have to experience it to understand I think - spine shattering, goose-bump inducing beauty. I'm still processing the whole thing, but I was wholey and entirely impressed. Incredible entertainers.
Oh - and they played this song. The whole thing was incredible.
I'm going to switch from Windows XP to Kubuntu on my desktop at home.
I'll post rants about it in the coming weeks :)
Three stories from my life by Steve Jobs.
And another interesting/motivational article I stumbled across recently How to make something amazing, right now.
Just start doing it. Whatever it is. Yeah ok.
I obviously have more time on my hands these days :) I've spent the whole weekend doing *nothing* so far. A very welcome change from writing Ruby on Rails apps for uni and writing 20 page project management progress reports.
This is really interesting. I love how flexible this interface is. I'd agree that it's incredibly intuitive1. Anyone who reads digg.com might have already seen this. Pretty nifty touch driven UI. Have a look. This gets me a bit excited about technology :)
1 This begs the question though, 'what does intuitive mean for different audiences?'. I'm definitely going to have to do HCI next session at uni.
Saw this on reddit.com this morning. Pretty interesting imo. Check out the US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud from "1776-01-15: Foundation of Government" to "2006-01-31: State of the Union Address". Play with the slider. Groovy.
I resigned today and you're all invited to my farewell. I'll be having it on the 10th of November (I think). Should be a total blast.
Everyone is invited. Yes - even you Saliba - and you Bentley. I'm paying for Milton and Constandinou to circumnavigate the globe and show us a good time.
Very very exciting times. [Mescaline - it's the only way to fly].
I'll leave you with:
jerry stand up
pull back the curtains and let some light in
quit your job
because you hate it and it's wasting you
Hack of a fest sounds good.
"Openness is part of the magic for us," said Dickerson. "If you go around Silicon Valley there is this whole veneer of privacy."
"You aren't greeted with open arms if you knock on the door and say 'What are you doing?' With hack day, we are saying we want you to knock on the door and see what we are doing."
Since beginning internal hack days last year, Yahoo has held them at facilities in Australia, India, Europe and the US.
"There are some major products coming that were conceived and built at hack days," Dickerson said. "We can't wait to tell people."
Sounds like a pretty nifty idea. www.portablefilmfestival.com
Better than buying an ipod and paying for movies. Totally different of course but I couldn't resist :)
jerry stand up
pull back the curtains and let some light in
quit your job
because you hate it and it's wasting you
once upon a time you were running
singing to the ground every morning
once upon a time you were
jerry stand up
am i the only one who's noticed that you've been missing
remember yourself man
remember that you have chance and possibility
once upon a time you were running
singing to the ground every morning
once upon a time you were crazy
jerry
you're not getting any younger
all you need is fresh air
a nice new suit and a walk in the park every day or two
every day in every way
Jerry Stand Up - Echolalia
Zune is looking more and more like a crappy attempt to break into the portable music player market.
I've spent some of the morning reading some details about it on the zuneinsider.com blog. There is an interesting Zune interface demo up there as well.
It didn't take long however to realise that there are some real corkers in the latest information released by MS.
"I made a song. I own it. How come, when I wirelessly send it to a girl I want to impress, the song has 3 days/3 plays?"This is an absolute joke. Everyone in the know understands that Digital Rights Management is bad for you and me2.
Good question. There currently isn't a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding. And besides, she'll come see you three days later. . .
Zune will play podcasts. I'm actually listenting to a podcast right now. If you bring the audio file into the software (like a wma or mp3 file), you can play it on your Zune. Beyond that, there will be other options for podcasting support for future releases.I'm sorry, but just because I can import an mp3 file or whatever into my Zune and play it doesn't mean it can play podcasts. Who the hell do they think they're duping? I can't import my existing podcast RSS feeds? I can't syndicate my favourite podcasts? To say Zune will play podcasts is just lame. Zune doesn't support podcasting.
ok, back atcha. lots of folks have asked about Mac support: Not right now, but we'll continue to listen to folks and customers and respond to what they tell us they want and need.But not about Mac support eh? Being listened to is great and makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but if you're not going to do anything about it what's the point?
There's been ruminations in the online media about www.myspace.com lately, and about potentially forged identities and people questioning the true motivations of the creators and owners of the site. This article is fairly interesting and goes into quite a bit of depth about it. At least it's interesting to read about how the business grew to it's current stature, even if you disregard or don't care about the so-called hidden machinations of the creators.
www.myspace.com is the new Moleskine.
I'm going to post an email conversation from work about my company's latest attempts at making a fool of themselves by showing that they have no idea about web standards, and no idea about the web in general. This document slid on by past web developers, web producers (who were instrumental in writing it or at least reviewing it) and even past our esteemed senior system analysts (who have been mentioned before on this illustrious blog). Let me just state this: JSR has nothing to do with front end scripting standards. I know you want to know more - stay tuned - it'll probably not be worth it :P
How good is it that the people we work for in IT don't know what Turing complete means. They haven't heard of brainfuck and they certainly don't know what Big-Oh notation means ("Oh, is that something to do with .NET?" - certainly not you stupid fuck). This is why google is kicking arse.
UPDATE: Actually this is a perfect question to pose to prospective employers at the close of an interview.
Big Wig: Right Jones, do you have any questions for us before we consider your future with us?
Jones: Yes, actually, I do. What does Turing Complete mean?
Big Wig: Ahh, Turing Complete? Umm.. Turing Umm.. Ke?
Jones: C'mon man, Turing Complete. Surely they taught you this in high school computer science?
Big Wig: Ahh, no.
Jones: You're fired!
Big Wig: What? I'm fired! Get out. How dare you.
Jones: You're fired you fucking moron!
Big Wig: Get out! Security?!
Jones: HaHAahAHaHA You fucking MORON
Big Wig: SECURITY! Get this man out of here. He's a threat to national security
Jones: Eat this (bends over and pulls /dev/null out his arse). BAAANG!!!
Ok - this is insane and brilliant in my opinion. Get ready for a bit of memory usage in your browser on opening that link - but man - I love it. The more I get sucked into the details the more it reminds me of my days spent gazing at miniature train models as a little kid. Well kinda like that crossed with playing Chrono Trigger on a PC emulator. Oh yeah - and cross that with memories of playing with little lego men. Yeah! Brilliant stuff :)
This really is kinda creepy. The facial expressions are amazing.
Check out the wikipedia entry for more information.
Read an article on smh.com.au this morning called Devil in the detail: Vatican exorcises Harry Potter.
Favourite quotes:
"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Pope's "caster-out of demons".
Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence.
In the same interview, Father Amorth said he was convinced that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by the devil.
It's been 9 days and counting so far. Let's see how long I last. 9 days since that and that. I need to give up the latter. The former can happen whenever the planets align and all that malarkey.
I think I'm on to a good thing this time. True lucidity is just around the corner. I wake up and feel it slithering out of my fingers in the mornings now.
Check your website out as a graph.
(This is muttering-madman.blogspot.com) ;)
As an aside, I've been arguing with the powers that be about a website developed by our company fairly recently. They put everything behind https with a completely newbie-ish JavaScript redirect from the http:// landing page. Obviously this is completely brain dead. The scary thing? The person responsible for designing this solution is a senior systems analyst...
Anyway, I generated a graph of this. Hillarious I'm sure you'd agree.
(URL hidden to protect the guilty) :|
have been getting to me lately. Almost every song I listen to has some gem in it. Great writing in my opinion.
"i want days and weeks to burst out of you"
Say Something
"in a city that rumbles like an impatient child
he hears everything"
Feeding The Birds And Hoping For Something In Return
"and your eyes become corridors
where i wander with a candle
calling out to you"
You Only Hide
"I was hanging upside down from the overpass
Waiting to discover something about the world
I couldn't get with the program and I couldn't listen to them
It was like trying to think in reverse
And I don't want to slide into apathy"
Monsters
"You're not the first to think that everything has been thought before
I spoke to an echo and he said
'I’m not satisfied, I want something more'"
Three Dimensions
"you hold me in mid air and you keep me a measure from impact
you stop and ask me if the ringing in your ears might be the sound of thought
you're like a long slow accident, time stood still while motion emptied you out
and we watched you like a slide show 1,2,3,4 and there you go"
Stunt Show
i picture myself like a column of smoke
and when questioned i see myself riding around forever on a manmade horse and you
and you
you'll be
moving randomly
Manmade Horse
Kinda interesting article about false memories and imagination.
This probably helps explain why I sometimes have false memories about situations and events I've dreamt. Most bizarre. I guess I just have very vivid dreams (or something).
"What we learn could be useful for people who make decisions outside [the lab] based on the memory of others"
Grasping the Thistle by Lisa Kelly. Brilliant read imho.
My favourite bit was:
Though back at question time at the close of the June symposium session my prickly question was duly responded to, even if the answers could have been more likened to variously sidestepping17, trampling18 and patronising19 the thistle rather than grasping it. And I was left none the wiser as to the significance of Sydney to the Biennale of Sydney, other than as a host city with a series of well appointed venues for culture sourced from ‘elsewhere’.
17 Museum of Contemporary Art senior curator Rachel Kent insisted that she was unable to comment, not having worked on ‘Zones of Contact’, but suggested attending meetings, lunches and talks.
18 Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre artistic director Nick Tsoutas asserted that the Biennale of Sydney was not a platform of inclusivity, was not responsible for representing Sydney artists, was a nationally organised international event that could be staged in any interchangeable city and has nothing to do with Sydney or its arts community. Probably all in one sentence. No one disagreed with him.
19 Australian Centre for Photography director Alasdair Foster suggested that the artworks themselves in ‘Zones of Contact’ functioned as a ‘conversation’. And that whilst local artists might not get to meet visiting artists, they got to meet the works.
Some Henry Miller excerpts from "Black Spring"
'Anyway, after she had worked herself up to a state of collapse, when the neighbors couldn't stand it any longer and there were knocks on the door, then her aged mother would come crawling out of the bedroom and with tears in her eyes would beg me to go in there and quiet her a bit. "Oh, leave her be," I'd say, "she'll get over it." Whereupon, ceasing her sobs for a moment the wife would spring out of bed, wild, blind with rage, her hair all down and tangled up, her eyes swollen and bleary, and still hiccoughing and sobbing she would commence to pound me with her fists, to lambast me until I became hysterical with laughter. And when she saw me rocking to and fro like a crazy man, when her arms were tired and her fists sore, she would yell like a drunken whore—"Fiend! Demon!"—and then slink off like a weary dog. Afterwards, when I had quieted her down a bit, when I realized that she really needed a kind word or two, I would tumble her on to the bed again and throw a good fuck into her. Blast me if she wasn't the finest piece of tail imaginable after those scenes of grief and anguish! I never heard a woman moan and gibber like she could. "Do anything to me!" she used to say. "Do what you want!" I could stand her on her head and blow into it, I could back-scuttle her, I could drag her past the parson's house, as they say, any goddamn thing at all--she was simply delirious with joy. Uterine hysteria, that's what it was! And I hope God take me, as the good master used to say, if I am lying in a single word I say.
(God, mentioned above, being defined by St. Augustine, as follows: "An infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.")'
'No more peeping through keyholes! No more masturbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I'm sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don't want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible—it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age.
A classic purity, then—and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! The odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion's dung, of tiger's breath and elephant's hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human bones—whilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!'
The response:
hmmm... we dont' know. we grabbed the miller off of file sharing. don't know where it came from, etc. we haven't altered the file in any way. such are the hazards of file sharing, no?
yrs,
kenneth
ubuweb
I noticed something very strange in a recording I downloaded from UbuWeb the other day. A friend of mine recommended I give a Henry Miller reading of an excerpt from "Black Spring" a listen so I promptly downloaded and listened to it; several times. As soon as I could I went out and bought a copy of the book. It's total madness and genius and quite possibly a perfect rendering of beauty and "esctasy" in the manner Miller intended. I haven't finished it yet, but it's an amazing work of art. Check it out.
Anyway, to get to the point. There is a discrepancy between the book and the recording on UbuWeb. I noticed something missing from the recording because the line in the book which happens to be missing from the recording is a total bombshell and beautifully poised for maximum impact :) So I posted some feedback on their feedback web form:-
*Quick note about possible censorship?*
Hi guys,
I've been reading Henry Miller's "Black Spring" lately. Your link to Miller reading an excerpt from it inspired me to get my hands on the book and read it for myself. One thing has come to my attention during my reading of it though. There is a discrepancy between the recording you have hosted on your site and the book.
The book (ISBN 0-8021-3182-4) has (bottom of p24-25):-
"Something better than a Christ, something bigger than a heart, something beyond God Almighty I think of--MYSELF. I am a man. That seems to me sufficient.
I am a man of God and a man of the Devil. To each his due. Nothing eternal, nothing absolute. Before me always the image of the body, our triune god of penis and testicles. On the right, God the Father, on the left and hanging a little lower, God the Son; and between and above them the Holy Ghost. I can never forget that this holy trinity is man-made, that it will undergo infinite changes--"
But your recording cuts out "the Devil. To each his due." and also leaves out "Before me always the image of the body, our triune god of penis and testicles."
It's obvious in the first instance that the recording has been doctored. The second sentence is neatly censored in its entirety.
Are you aware of this? I'm intrigued and somewhat dissapointed as it's one of the more powerful images/lines in the beginning of the book. Who would deliberately censor such things?
I look forward to your reply and thank you in advance for your investigation,
P.S. ubuweb.com is an amazing resource. Thank you so much for making all of this freely available.
This is a very groovy thread with some very groovy images done on cardboard!?!
cardboard is for boxes
My favourite would have to be the little dude standing next to the street sign with a broken umbrella.
Scene: man wearing "street gear", "graffing" a wall and generally being "hip hop".
"Man, I don't believe in cliches you know. They're wack."
"Apropos of Readymades" by Marcel Duchamp, from Marcel Duchamp on UbuWeb Sound
In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.
A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called "Pharmacy" after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote "In advance of the broken arm."
It was around that time that the word "Readymade" came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation.
A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "Readymades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation.
The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete anaesthesia.
One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the "Readymade."
That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal.
Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called "Readymade aided."
At another time, wanting to expose the basic antinomy between art and "Readymades," I imagined a "Reciprocal Readymade": use a Rembrandt as an ironing board!
I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of "Readymades" to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my "Readymades" against such a contamination.
Another aspect of the "Readymade" is its lack of uniqueness... the replica of the "Readymade" delivering the same message, in fact nearly every one of the "Readymades" existing today is not an original in the conventional sense.
A final remark to this egomaniac's discourse:
Since the tubes of paint used by an artist are manufactured and readymade products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are "Readymades aided" and also works of assemblage.
Marcel Duchamp, 1961
See an artists paint box strewn with violent reds and dashes of yellow ochre. Add sullied rags wrung through hands and dropped frequently at the foot of an easel. They're blackened and soiled with heavy blotches of colour. Add an assortment of tools and spatulas. Pick this box up and shake it thoroughly and imagine the contents being mixed up and smacked around inside. Now open it and blow the result up to room size. Think of a house looking exactly like this, a replica of an oversized artists paint box. This large paint box is illuminated with a warm yellow light. Music is blaring out every orifice of this place. Bottles of paint are lined up on the window sill in the kitchen like miniature watercolours. The room before it is littered with so many individual newspaper sheets. Someone has taken enormous care to separate each one from it's sheaf and then thrown them spontaneously around the entire house. Empty glasses stained with bourbon and coke seem to lounge in a drunken stupor between pillows on the floor. The entire house-in-a-box is a trail of mess from one room to the other.
Two women sit directly outside of this. The oversized one's face is darkened with black hair. Her eyes don't make a statement because they hide in shadow. The other woman is dainty by comparison. She has the stature, remarkably, of a mouse. Her nose moves in a dainty wiggle as she nibbles at her companion's conversation, tasting each piece and lavishing audible satisfactions.
“Oh, comeon, I know he likes you”, she murmurs quietly. Her body language is shy and wary of the larger woman. She leans away from her larger companion. She seems wary of being crushed.
“Yeah, he's weird. I love him and I know he loves me too”, whines the other one.
I think about cutting to a suburban soap-opera scene. “He's weird”. Ok. Let's go with that.
But the large one stops talking and contents herself with moping under her mop of dirty black hair. I notice that her hands are too large. They are mans hands. I want to throw a soiled nappy in her face. Her little partner sits and silently placates her. Her little body moves imperceptably, but it's there. A certain cooing rhythm. A slightly seductive wobble. That's when I notice it; they are mistress and slave. I look at the black haired woman and imagine dark gritty black pubes to match. Suddenly she is sitting upright on her stool, her faced screwed up with enormous exertion. Her significant arse starts to envelope the seat with a hot swollen greed. I stare slack-jawed in wonder. The seat buckles violently and flings the smaller woman in the air. Her hands have clamped around one of the legs and she dangles off it staring, transfixed at the looming event horizon, the point where time is slowing and at which the seat is disappearing. I'm dimly aware of shouting something though I'm not sure it's intelligble. No-one is listening. The little woman's tail wraps around the window sill and rattles the old glass pane. The pane beats back and cruelly slaps the large womans sagging breasts. I beat my hands on my thighs and scratch wailing lines into the duco of a passing car. The dark haired woman is groaning and her eyes have started to grin blood. Her lips shake and shower saliva over the entire verandah. I'm kicking the fence down in front of me while the little woman is disappearing, but she is gone and the only remnant is a slick wet mess of hair. The large woman heaves a massive sigh and winks at me. I grin back at her and continue on my way.
Great black rolls of shadow roared in our ears and raced over viridian hills. The earth folded in magnificent creases to meet the land below, and you moved your fingers nimbly and quickly through your hair. Your nervous staccato movements spilled more black like an ink spill but the earth ignored you; you with your sweet sorghum tangled hair and your thin wet dress clinging to your hips. You squatted and I ground my teeth at the black grave. Why Didn't You Cry? Instead you conducted the skies and moved earth with your pink little fingers. No one was out there but us. Just the two of us and mist and rain and racing shadows following your direction. They would bend back their ears and bare their teeth in a stretch to race across vast lengths of paddock and sweep through fences and smash into bales of hay. The sky was cold and miserable. The air was blue around us. I wanted to hold your hips in my hands and feel their gentle warmth. You flittered smiles at me, and blinked your long lashes. I shrank back from you and trembled.
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is incredible. What an author. If only I could read Japanese.
Good and Evil are constructions to justify conflict.
Something is labelled evil if it opposes the person labelling it so. Likewise, good concords with the desire of the person labelling it so.
People who do something do it because it is good, that is, because it is what they want to do. Even the protagonist of a terrible act thinks it is good, because he does it. This means that good and evil aren't absolute.
If something conflicts with my desire, it is evil. If something concurs with me I find it good.
So good and evil are creations to justify and label this conflict.
Humanity is naturally inclined to conflict. Being born into the world we have only ourselves. This sense of self and this aloneness is what generates such conflict. It is the most basic fact of our existence. My relationship with the world around me is founded upon this sense of "me and the world". "me" takes precedence over the "world". And the conflict that ensues is labelled "good" and "evil" by me.
"Excuse me, may I have a piece of space?"If I can and if I draw a different boundary around one piece of space in three dimensions (ignoring theories concerning themselves with infinitely dimensional space), what makes that contained space unique? Is it the container? It is the shape? Is it the distribution of objects within the space? Is it the instant in time that the space existed? Is it the speed with which the space is moving relative to an observer? I think the whole concept is ridiculous.
"Holy fuck, that cloud definitely wasn't there before. I am once again experiencing unparalleled space on my way to work!"But people describing art galleries do take great pride in this uniqueness of "space". They almost seem to have a monopoly on unique space. What's going on? Are they morons, or are they simply groping with dithering tautologies? I'll go for the former.
Creature sketches by Bobby Chiu. Shockingly good creature sketches and such.
One of my favourites.
Can someone please buy this for me for Christmas?
Have a look at Bush rushes bombs to Israel.
Three paragraphs stood out for me:
Citing American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Times said on Saturday that the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the White House.
The report said that the news threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hezbollah.
The arms shipment has not been announced publicly. The officials who described the decision by George Bush's administration to rush the munitions included employees of two government agencies.
Around 20,000 people marched from Town Hall to Martin Place in Sydney today to show their opposition and general contempt for what Israel has been doing in Lebanon over the last few weeks.
It was a pretty intense atmosphere. I was suprised at how many families were there though. Mothers pushed prams with banners wrapper around them, and little kids wore tshirts that said "stop killing our children". But there was a lighter side to some of it as well; I kept seeing people wearing tshirts with slogans like "Make Hommus Not War".
One thing I really noticed though was the palpable swings in emotion in the crowd throughout the march; outrage and anger, a deep gentle sadness, happiness and smiles. That was probably the most intense part about it all. Anger for the atrocities against Lebanon, sadness at the waste of life and disregard for the rights of the Lebanese people and happiness at the support and comradery displayed in filling Martin Place full of protesters. I spoke to a couple of guys, one of which has his family stuck in the south of Lebanon right at this moment. It really brings it home when you talk to people directly affected by this. There was a general sense at the end of the march that we were doing something to make a difference.
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There seems to be a fundamental clash between good engineering principles and marketing. We all see it time and time again in Technology and IT.
Take the new "iPod killer" from Microsoft. More details are leaking out about it now. We know it'll be called "Zune" and even what it'll look like. Microsoft has bundled WiFi with it, supposedly to communicate with MTV's Urge service. Looks like you might be able to connect to Sirius as well. How about a good hearty stew of US censhorship for all! Total BS if you ask me. Big Whoop - I'll be able to get the latest Hezbollah and Iran updates on my Zune. Yay free information! All it is at the end of the day is another avenue for big business to commoditise and censor information on the internet. I can't see how that's a good thing in the long run.
Take Palm on the other hand. These guys are at least trying to do the right thing (check out the Zen of Palm article - very good read). I respect the openess of this approach. They're providing thinner services. I don't have to buy into a bundle of crap that I don't need or won't use or will force me to give up my freedom of choice in the matter.
I will refuse to buy a Zune for the same reasons (and more) that I have refused to buy an iPod. There should be more people in the world like this guy.
I think they should start a photography competition for the most boring photograph. I think it would be a very difficult feat; to create such a boring photograph that is. Even very badly photographed scenes can be very interesting by virtue of their utter dullness. I'm not sure it would be easy to capture a boring scene at all; other than perhaps very "artistic" photographs at very "artistic" art exhibitions:
Anyway, on a more lively note, let's play this when you're free next. You bring some friends with you and come over to mine. I'll do a big chocolate fondue:
Poor Pussy is a party game described in a Childcraft book of children's games. As it is described:
This game makes everybody laugh. Have the guests sit around the room. Choose one person to be the pussy. Pussy must go over to a guest and meow three times. The guest must pet pussy's head three times and say "Poor pussy, poor pussy, poor pussy," without laughing. The pussy should do his best to make the guest laugh. He can make funny meows and walk around like a cat. The pussy goes from one guest to another until someone laughs. The first one to laugh becomes the new pussy.
Note: Pussy is both a vulgar word referring to the vulva and vagina, and an affectionate term for a "cat". Thus it is a double entendre.
He looked at her and knew she was his creation. She looked back at him and spoke at the exact same instant he thought she did and that's why he knew it. He'd thought it. She was his and he was his own. A completely unguarded mote of self. Why it was like this was beyond him, but if god was "in everyone" then he was surely god. Everyone thought they were god, but everyone was his creation which made him about as sure a bet as anyone else. Perhaps a slightly better one. Stars circled galaxies, planets stars, moons planets, the whole nested cluster of complexity and glory was his to invent. That's why he knew it. Someone of his invention had told him about the imperfections, but where do you think "art mimicks life" comes from? He snickered. He liked that one. Time was a line that added another dimension to Now-ness, just like the concept of self added another dimension to his photo format world. What else was missing. Nothing. He'd made it all and the bits that weren't there were just as there as anything else. In fact it would have been crowded if he had made them, which he couldn't have of course. He hadn't thought of them, so they didn't exist. Just the concept of them missing existed and that was a slight bore. Funny to think this would all go with him when he died. The true plight of god. Everything here - everything you think you know because he thinks it will stop and cease to exist when he passes away. That's the way it should be. Stop thinking until I tell you you have.
I keep losing my virginity every time I go out lately. These strange little homeless men come in from the rain and rip it from my jugular. It's vulgar and it leaves me in a quivering heap for minutes aftewards. Beer bellied men howl with laughter at me on my knees clutching my gaping throat in the middle of any given pub on Crown St. Then these strange little homeless men swallow it whole, like giblets, and run back out into the downpour. It only happens when it rains. It's something about the water, but I haven't worked it out yet.
Before it was over it was forgotten. Someone had opened his head and emptied it of memories. Everything was gone; his history, his people. Nama cried and wrapped her hands around his wrist. His fingers curled and gently touched her. She remembered that touch and dark red fire and the smell of fresh earth at the start of the dry season. But this wasn't the same. A different man sat next to her now. It was not her father. He was not knowing. Killara sat like his forefathers had for hundreds of generations before him. Hewn out of dark rock, his white beard swayed like thick alyepe around his neck and his brooding shoulders hunched in silhouette against a startlingly blue sky. Why this little woman should be crying and holding his hand confused him, but he liked her. She could have been a tea tree blossum. His little tea tree blossum. There, a spark, like a memory of something, but it was a dying ember for burial. This had happened before he thought, maybe he would remember. Instead, he winked and smiled his toothless charm at her. "Don't cry little one, Alkwerte be here to look after you. You be right little one. You be right."
A couple of weeks ago I dived into the deep end (.NET and web services and how that should all work with our content management system). Lots of learning, lots of thinking and my mind is thanking me for the stretch. But the last few days I've been swimming up to the surface and today I'm loving my job.
(It could be that I'm writing this at my desk at work and staring out through the atrium and across the inner western suburbs on a beautifully overcast and rainy day, but I think it really means I've broken through the surface.)
I'm just experiencing the euphoria that comes with the rush of fresh air, filling my lungs, playing on the surface rather than deep diving in dark subterranean bullshit. It's great. Everything is about possibilities and the whole thing is endless. I'm doing things The Right Way and it makes me happy. This is what it's all about.
w00tnesslyness.
loop:
it takes 30 minutes to install IIS, then
write a web service using VS 2005 and
have it working
it takes 3 days to install Apache, Tomcat,
work out how Ant works, configure all the
servers and write a web service using Java
and have it working
dilemma, CMS provides a native, mature,
high performance Java API. also exposes
that API via web services
dilemma, writing a .NET thick client to
replace part of the front end of said CMS.
limited to using web services, or .NET
Remoting or some other MS proprietary
technology to communicate with the CMS.
the web services API is low level leading
to a large number of calls being sent to
the SOAP server. performance takes a dive.
solution; write a web service layer which
wraps the native Java API provided by the
CMS and expose "system" level functionality
using a service oriented architecture.
reduce the number of calls to web services,
and use the local java libraries to talk
to the CMS
jmp loop
never_get_here:
Yaasssss you bitches!!!
jmp never_get_here
I can see how some people would be biased towards online learning. It only takes one look at the photograph in that article to understand why.
"It's a more positive learning environment because it is not defined by time and space."
"It is totally flexible for the teacher and students, which removes the stress of having to turn up on time and in the right mood."
All correspondence is by email rather than posted on a website.
"Martin has previously done masters degrees and says he is getting a lot more time and attention from me online," Dr Foster said. "I would write to him every day.
"There is a kind of intimacy in the communications and more space for self-expression than there is in a classroom.
"People don't seem to be intimidated to say what they feel on the email because they aren't being looked at."
Just stumbled across this. Man o man is this impressive! These guys at MIT have developed a fully fledged web-based OS. Check it out at www.youos.com. They have a blog here as well. *Very* interesting reading.
I've taken some screenshots whilst logged into my YouOS account. I love the fact that I have a browser with this blog loaded inside my browser on my computer's OS. Click on the image below to see a full sized screenshot (it's about half a meg (go png!)).
Holy crap I love this stuff.
UPDATE: Xin looks totally kickarse as well.
I've been reading "A Lover's Discourse : Fragments" by Roland Barthes lately. An amazing book. It's not often you come across a writer like this. Everyone should read him.
Excerpt from Inexpressible Love (to write)
The full moon this fall,No indirect means could be more effective in the expression of sadness than that "all night long". What if I were to try it, myself?
All night long
I have paced around the pond.This summer morning, the bay sparkling,or:
I went outside
To pick a wistaria.This morning, the bay sparkling,On the one hand, this is saying nothing; on the other, it is saying too much: impossible to adjust. My expressive needs oscillate between the mild little haiku summarizing a huge situation, and a great flood of banalities. I am too big and too weak for writing: I am alongside it, for writing is always dense, violent, indifferent to the infantile ego which solicits it. Love has of course a complicity with my language (which maintains it), but it cannot be lodged in my writing.
I stayed here, motionless,
Thinking of who is gone.
Amorous errantry has its comical side: it resembles a ballet, more or less nimble according to the velocity of the fickle subject; but it also a grand opera. The accursed Dutchman is doomed to wander the seas until he has found a woman who will be eternally faithful. I am that Flying Dutchman; I cannot stop wandering (loving) because of an ancient sign which dedicated me, in the remote days of my earliest childhood, to the god of my Image-repertoire, afflicting me with a compulsion to speak which leads me to say "I love you" in one port of call after another, until some other receives this phrase and gives it back to me; but no one can assume the impossible reply (of an insupportable fulfillment), and my wandering, my errantry continues.
Throughout life, all of love's "failures" resemble one another (and with reason: they all proceed from the same flaw). X and Y have not been able (have not wanted) to answer my "demand," to adhere to my "truth"; they have not altered their system one iota; for me, the former has merely repeated the latter. And yet X and Y are incomparable; it is in their difference, the model of an infinitely pursued difference, that I find the energy to begin all over again. The "perpetual mutability" (in inconstantia contans) which animates me, far from squeezing all those I encounter into the same functional type (not to answer my demand), violently dislocates their false community: errantry does not align—it produces iridescence: what results is the nuance. Thus I move on, to the end of the tapestry, from one nuance to the next (the nuance is the last state of a color which can be named; the nuance is the Intractable).
In the incident, it is not the cause which pulls me up short and which echoes within me thereupon, but the structure. The entire structure of the relation comes to me as one might pull a tablecloth toward one: its disadvantages, its snares, its impasses (similarly, in the tiny lens embellishing the mother-of-pearl penholder, I could see Paris and the Eiffel Tower). I make no recriminations, develop no suspicions, search for no causes; I see in terror the scope of the situation in which I am caught up; I am not the man of resentment, but of fatality.
(For me, the incident is a sign, not an index; the element of a system, not the efflorescence of a causality.)
Sometimes, hysterically, my own body produces the incident: an evening I was looking forward to with delight, a heartfelt declaration whose effect, I felt, would be highly beneficial—these I obstruct by a stomach ache, an attack of grippe: all the possible substitutes of hysterical aphonia.
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure.
(To speak amorously is to expend without an end in sight, without a crisis; it is to practice a relation without orgasm. There may exist a literary form of this coitus reservatus: what we call Marivaudage.)
and forget about modern english and its self-absorbed frivolities; burn away the excrement which oozes from the pores of most modern writers and take us back to rhythmic, pulsing primitivism.
Compare these two articles; Israel attacks Palestinian PM's office and Air strike targets Palestinian PM's office. Apart from having to dig to find the second one (all I could find on smh.com.au was news about Big Brother "sexual assault evictions" and more Channel Nine irrelevancies) I prefer the former. At least it has some guts to it.
From the aljazeera.net article:
When asked about any possible Israeli assassination of the Gaza-based Hamas prime minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli infrastructure minister, said: "We make no distinction between terrorists. No one involved in terrorism has any immunity"
A sign of an average writer is one that writes too much. If you're going to be verbose, at least make me want to dive into beautiful language and imagery. Make me marvel at the language. Make me laugh out loud at the cleverness of some point of metaphor or scream out loud at it's beauty and originality. Show me something I haven't seen before.
Murakami writes too much and he doesn't seem to do it particularly well. His style is filled with platitudes. He uses far too many cliches. You might argue that he's using jargon to develop his characters vernacular, but really it just jars. So far his "clever" similies have been at best, strange. They've afforded me no breath-taking insight into his story. They've made me stop and think, but then I've shaken my head and thought "Oh boy, that was a bit of let-down". His writing has culturally didactic elements. That's kind of interesting. There are humorous moments in the novel too, but unfortunately much of the playfulness seems forced and staged. There is a pseudo-science veneer to "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" which annoys me. Most of it isn't even plausible. Perhaps it's not meant to be. But if that's the case at least make it novel and interesting. There is too much techno-babble.
I read a review where Murakami said he often sat down with very little plan and no solid idea of the shape a story would take before he started writing it. It shows. That writing approach might sound refreshing and "creative", but if the end result is self-indulgent and aimless it loses any aesthetic appeal.
I wondered at the quality of the paper this book was printed on when I bought it. I was mildly annoyed that it appeared to be printed on recycled toilet paper. That's turning out to be quite a poignant omen.
A friend at work showed me this today. I'm so behind the times, but check out www.krugle.com. It indexes code in open source projects so there is a whole bunch of languages it can give you very useful code snippets for - for me that's java, perl and C# - for all the pretend programmers that's JavaScript :P
Amazery! Check it!
I've been oscillating between different editors lately. At home I tended to use Vim for my programming tasks. At work I used a combination of Notepad++, XEmacs, Vim, and IDEs like Visual Studio 2005 for .NET work. I've finally had a gutful and have decided to use Vim as my primary editor (especially for programming tasks).
I think Vim is a really great editor on any platform. It certainly feels very natural on *nixs and there is a Vim port for Mac OS X. This tutorial however is targetted at the total Vim beginner who is interested in giving Vim a try on Windows. It explains how to install and configure Vim (for Windows XP), how to use some of its basic features and how to get further information.
Vim is a very powerful editor. As such it has a dizzying array of options which can be customised. In fact Vim can even be scripted, and this allows you to extend it in very cool ways. This section will describe some of the most basic customisations that you can make to setup the editor as you see fit.
All configuration for gVim is kept in a single file, _gvimrc. This file will probably have been created in your HOME directory. For me on Windows XP, this is C:\Documents and Settings\snarkyboojum. If you can't find a _gvimrc file there create one. _gvimrc is where you configure the graphical version of Vim (as opposed to the terminal version which you can run in a Command prompt - try typing "vim" at the command prompt and you'll see what I mean). The other configuration file you should be interested in is _vimrc. This file configures the terminal version of vim. Many options specified in one can be specified in the other. There are a few options that are only relevant for gVim, but the configurations I'll specify below are interchangable between both Vims.
The first thing you want in your _gvimrc file is:
set nocompatibleThis improves the usefulness of (g)Vim by not trying to make it more compatible with Vi. There are subtle differences between Vi and Vim for a reason. If you want Vim to behave more closely to Vi you'll want to set compatible.
Without going into a rant about tabs vs. spaces I really do prefer expanding my tabs to spaces. I tend to use 4 spaces to represent a tab and I like for my code to autoindent while I'm writing it and have this indented by 4 spaces aswell. To set this up add the following to your _gvimrc file:
set autoindent
" replace a tab with 4 space characters
set tabstop=4
" configure autoindent to indent using 4 spaces aswell
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
Every programmer I've met or know loves syntax highlighting. I know I do. To turn this on by default in Vim add the following to your _gvimrc file
syntax on
In Vi, the backspace key didn't allow you to backspace over newlines amongst other things. This will quickly drive you crazy if you don't "fix" that. To make backspace work as you would expect add:
set backspace=indent,eol,start
To highlight search matches when performing a search and to enable incremental search where potential matches are found as you type the search pattern add
set hlsearch
set incsearch
Fonts are an important element of text editing. Programming fonts are usually different to standard word processing fonts in that they clearly distinguish between such characters as 0 and O. I like a proggy_fonts font called "Proggy Clean". To change the font used by default in gVim, add the following:
set guifont=ProggyCleanTT:h12:cANSI
where ProggyCleanTT is the name of the font, h12 is the height of the font in points (this can be a floating point number), and cANSI is the character set used. You can specify more than one font here in case a font isn't found. For fonts with spaces in the name just use the \ character to escape the space in the name. E.g. Andale\ Mono. On Windows a _ character can be used to replace spaces in font names too.
I like the mouse to hide when I'm typing text so I also add the following
set mousehide
It is possible to define the size of the gVim window when Vim starts aswell. This option is controlled by specifying the number of rows and columns to use. E.g.
" open a long window
set lines=55
So after all that, you should have a better idea on how customizable Vim is. This isn't even stratching the surface of what Vim can do. A good way to find out how to improve your configuration is to visit www.vim.org and check the massive collection of tips they have there. Another good way to learn about this stuff is to find other people's configs. To find out what any given setting does just type :help <command> in Vim and you'll be taken straight to the relevant help section for that command e.g. :help softtabstop. For reference, here is what my _gvimrc looks like:
" Snarkyboojum's Vim configuration
" Last updated: 24/06/2006
set nocompatible
" turn syntax highlighting on and change tabs to 4 spaces
syntax on
set autoindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
" make the spaces feel like tabs when moving over them
set softtabstop=4
" turn the annoying visual bell off
set novb
" set up search behaviour
set showmatch
set incsearch
set hlsearch
" make command line two lines high
set ch=2
" hide the mouse when typing text
set mousehide
" make backspace behave the way I'd expect it to
set backspace=indent,eol,start
filetype plugin on
" setup font and window size
set guifont=ProggyCleanTT:h12:cANSI
set lines=55
" make it obvious when there are nasty tabs and trailing whitespace in a file
set list listchars=tab:»·,trail:·
Still being written
The Vim homepage. There is a wealth of information about Vim here. The tips and scripts sections are very very useful.
Vim documentation including links to a PDF version of Steve Oualline's Vim book.
Vim for Perl developers. Good intro to some interesting Vim stuff for the Perl geeks.
Seven habits of effective text editing by Bram Moolenaar (the creator of Vim)
Fat little stubby dwarf people live across from me. They waddle back and forth across the road. For a long time I couldn't understand why they'd walk out of one house, across the street and into another house. People don't just enter into each others house willy nilly do they? They have some kind of monopoly over this corner of Short St. It smacks of too much community. But then I live in The Mondrian, designed by a famous architect whose name I don't know and I don't talk to anyone.
Check out Google Trends. Someone should write a tool like this for blogs :P
And now for the honest truth about what makes the world go 'round.
Who woulda thunk it?
Read this article today and became really indignant and angry. These people are treated inhumanely, tortured, locked away in little more than cement holes and are told they are being held indefinitely. The whole process is illegal and most detainees must know it. Anyone's psychological health would take a beating after even a few months of this kind of treatment. So news hits that three of them have hanged themselves. These guys have been in Guantanamo for 4 years. You'd expect some empathy and concern, or at least some kind of investigation, but the best the base commander can come up with is:-
"They have no regard for human life," he said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
"To help prevent more suicides, guards will now give bed sheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake up in the morning"
Measuring the speed of an electric motor using an AVR microprocessor and displaying it on an LCD screen.
Can anyone else see the rabbit?
:020000020000FC
:100000000C9423000C9429000C9422000C942200E0
:100010000C9422000C9422000C9422000C942200D8
:100020000C9422000C9422000C9422000C942200C8
:100030000C9422000C9422000C9422000C942200B8
:100040000C94340018950FEF0DBF00E10EBF0C9417
:1000500059000F930FB70F9301E0100F0027201FD7
:100060000F910FBF0F9118950FB70F93DF93CF9399
:100070009F938F93C0E0D1E08991988101968D3054
:100080000EE0900769F4269517952695179561E07F
:1000900064D025D0002708830A931127222702C0A5
:1000A00098838A938F919F91CF91DF910F910FBF8A
:1000B0001895002701BB0FEF02BB02E000936A0016
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The sound effects are entirely convincing. Limitless replay potential. I'll be right back.
UPDATE: Ok, thanks to an (obviously) twisted friend of mine this takes the cake.
You have to love it when you stumble upon the "key" to a conversation:
"I want to make love to you"
"Why?"
"Because I think I've fallen in love with you"
"Oh come here and kiss me!"
etc.
I love that stuff.
You created a fiction, had been creating a fiction all birthday-night, which tangled comfortably with the baggage you trundle around with you. But in my darkened bedroom I couldn't weigh this history. I stood apart from you watching while you cried "That isn't it", but I couldn't discern the lock and key you used to justify your feelings. It was all just madness to me. You begged me to join your tug o' war game of half-truth-tests, but been there done that baby. Not this time. I frown to write a remembrance of you leaving my house, trailing "Fuck you", "fuck you", "fuck you", down my stairs as I busily packed the dishwasher. And then you calling me from outside telling me you couldn't find a cab. "Ok". Did I care? "I'll come out and help you find one". "I'm doing this because I'm a gentleman", but one more cock-up and you can freeze. It wasn't even surprising to see you huddled in the corner. You were thoroughly alone and hurt, your back to me, testing, waiting for an embrace. You reminded me of our conversations about my childhood strictures. But it was you against the wall, and me walking past, and I hadn't grabbed the other end of your rope. I could see you still pulling fiercely and falling backwards with nothing to balance your swirl of child-woman confusion. So I walked towards Bourke St, "Let's get you a taxi", and you finally fell on your arse. Rope burns be damned as you screamed at me again. "Get me a fucking taxi". So sad to hear you scream and effuse your anger like it was my duty to take responsibility for your childishness. You so clearly showed your fiction intact. "Get me a fucking taxi or I'll call the fucking police". Finally a truth, a jagged contrast to your effete mask of operatic horderves and cocktails at “The Mint”. Did you expect me to do anything but turn around slowly and pass you by on my way back home? I don't play "Jump - how high?" woman. And again, it wasn't a triumph to hear you calling 5 minutes later. You still didn't understand a thing I said to you then. I will never talk to you again. That will justify your self-righteous anger. You will never talk to me again.