Octopodial Chrome

Icehouse is an intriguing game system. The playing pieces can be used for a myriad different games. Very slick.

Maxima is a cool symbolic algebra system based on software which has been around since the 1960s and which has been continuously updated since. Available under the GPL, it has survived even the death of the maintainer. Very cool, if math is one’s thing. And neat no matter what.

MIT have put online the entire text of How to Design Programs, an excellent guide to software design.

A very cool arms & armour museum has opened in Kentucky. I’ll have to get out there, soon.

Paul Greenberg has written a piece on Memorial Day far better than I could have done; be sure to read it.

Today I made shortbread. It’s amazing how easy the stuff is to make. The recipe I used went on and on about how important the quality of the butter used is, but somehow the standard Costco stuff managed to make the best shortbread I have ever had (seriously—I cannot believe that it came out of my oven). Wow is it good. So good, in fact, that I need to give it away and get it out of the house before I eat it all. The stuff is addictive.

Simple Cooking is dedicated to good, plain, wholesome cooking. Good site, with some good recipes. Although I am not bloody likely to eat another steak-and-kidney pie, after the one I’d at a London pub which tasted as though it had been marinated in a urinal for a few weeks. Their other recipes are worth reading, though.

From the 1960s through to 1997, the combination to activate Minuteman missiles was 00000000. I am so proud of our Air Force.

My brother Thomas made pizza while I was visiting him last weekend; impressed by how good it was (he’s an excellent cook), I resolved that I need to follow his lead. And so the very night I returned home I procured the appropriate tools and made a pie. Yesterday I did the same; here is a photo of my Margherita pizza (named, incidentally, after a queen of Italy; the colours are those of the Italian flag: green basil; white cheese; red sauce):

I’m not yet to Tom’s level—but I’m getting better. When I have the art mastered, I shall put a recipe up on my bachelor recipes page.

dillo is a small but capable web browser written against gtk+ (and hence running on Linux/Solaris/AIX/HP-UX/&c). It’s pretty basic, but I kinda like it. Among its advantages is the fact that it can run on a handheld such as an iPaq (the binary is but 350K). One has to give the fellow behind it a lot of credit. He’s looking for funding, so ig you’ve a few extra bucks, forward them his way.

I saw in Tom’s Rants that coriander helps prevent food poisoning. As he notes, it’s damnedly good stuff, and another reason to eat it is welcome.

What does annoy me is that the article calls coriander cilantro. It’s not cilantro, it never has been cilantro and for as long as I’ve breath in my body it shall not be cilantro. The article even goes so far as to say that the seeds of cilantro are also known as coriander. Newsflash: the English word is coriander; the Spanish word is cilantro. Both coriander seeds and coriander leaf are eaten, and both are good. There is no such thing as cilantro in the English language, and more than I drink cerveza.

FWIW, the Spanish word cilantro is a corruption of Late Latin coliandrum, which is itself a corruption of the Latin coriandrum. Those with any wit at all can see that the English coriander is much closer to the Latin coriandrum than the debased cilantro.

Thrice-accursed languages contaminating ours.

The odometer on my bike rolled over 200 miles today. Not all that impressive to other folks, who might do that in a day, but still a nice milestone for me.

William F. Buckley, Jr., has recently published The Fall of the Berlin Wall (which I hope to soon own); it has been excerpted in the National Review Online. I highly recommend it:

Tumbling Down

The fall of the Berlin Wall

Passions & Confusions

Irrepressible move west

The Sinatra Doctrine

Rampaging hooligans move history

Party at Checkpoint Charlie

Not West; not East—just Germany

Regeneration & Hope

Enter the post-wall era

It’s hard to believe now how different things were then. I was just a kid when it all happened, but all of us who were around then remember that incredible winter when Communist socialism finally fell. The world is a much better and freer place. Not perfect—socialism still exists, even in our own states and cities—but things are so much better now than they were. There was a time when we all expected to face a world-shattering war; that particular threat is gone now.

Outnumbered five-to-one, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders fixed bayonets and charged an outnumbering rebel force in Iraq, the first British bayonet charge since the Falklands. One can only imagine the Oh, sh*t! moment the enemy had, slightly before 35 of them fell to the attack. But three Scots were wounded; none were slain.

Here’s a clip from a relevant article:

Outnumbered British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learnt in drills.

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over highway the and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

An Army spokesman said, This was an intense engagement.

The last bayonet charge was by the Scots Guards and the Paras against Argentinian positions.

Note that the last charge was also by Scotsmen. This could be due to the fact that Scotch soldiers are four times as likely to do cocaine, heroin or other hard drugs. Seen on a blog comment:

Once again we see the vaunted courage of our terrorist opponents:

It’s all well and good to truss up and slaughter a helpless captive, screaming Allah akbar! with your masked buddies to keep up your courage. It’s something again to hose down a convoy with an AK in the hope of hitting something, then run away and hide.

It’s quite another when you provoke a response involving a screaming, lunatic Scotsman intent on impaling you on a pike.

I have a hunch things are going to quiet down in that area of operations.

All very cool.

Kate O’Beirne made an interesting point in her article about medals awarded in the recent wars, that media coverage of the war portrays our (bad word, but soldiers doesn’t cover sailors, Marines or pilots) warriors in exactly two ways: victims (the dead) or evildoers (the guards at Abu Ghraib). What is not shown is valour, or heroism, or anything like.

This is exactly the condition in which our modern society finds itself. We can recognise those who harm others, and we can recognise those who are harmed, but we do not recognise good. This is the kind of muddle-headed thinking which leads to victims being referred to as heroes. They’re not (necessarily). A hero does something; a victim has something done to him.

The truth of the matter is that we still have many heroes; we still have many good men who strive for that which is right. I’m not writing just about the war, but about life in general: the man who gives up a night on the town with his buddies to give his family a better life is doing good; the couple where in Denver who feed the poor every Saturday morning are doing good; the clerk who helps one find a store which does have what one is looking for is doing good.

But our sick society doesn’t recognise any of that. As far as it is concerned, the world is made up of victims and victors.

John J. Donohue & Steven D. Levitt argue that it does. It makes a certain amount of sense: of the roughly 1.6 million slain yearly, many are precisely those who would be most likely to engage in criminal behaviours in the future (due to a disproportionate number of the aborted springing from poor homes). In a way, our modern society has realised the misanthropic dream of murdering the violent classes; we simply do it in a quiet way. No public executions; no clearing of the ghettos; no outward messiness whatsoever—just death dealt to the innocent, privately and quietly, where almost no-one cares to think about it. In a way, it’s worse: at least the mass-murderer is being honest about what he does; we pretend not to know what we’re doing.

Today I noticed that my net worth has exceeded seventy-five grand for the first time. It seems like only yesterday that I had finally gotten into the black after being in the red for so long. It’s a nice feeling.

Before anyone gets jealous, I should note that the figure includes about $5,000 in depreciating assets (e.g. my deep fryer, DVD player, bicycle, collection of HP calculators I purchased when I believe they’d be exiting that market &c.) which I’ll probably never sell, as well as about $3,100 in bad debts owed me by others, which I’ll almost certainly never see repaid. Still, it’s a great demonstration of how well hard work and heavy savings can pay off.

Steven E. Landsburg argues that it makes more economic sense to execute worm-writers than murderers. He may be correct. I prefer outlawing them, though. To make someone an outlaw removes him from the protection of the law. His property can be taken, and it’s not stealing; his person can be beaten, and it’s not assault; his life can be taken, and it’s not murder, or manslaughter, or even homicide. One who is outside the law is fair game for anyone who happens upon him.

This is my preferred treatment for spammers: simply pass laws stating that it is a positive defence against any criminal or civil charges that the victim was a spammer. Then, let the psychopaths take care of the problem for us.

There is a comprehensive Guide to Springfield, USA put together by careful watching of many, many Simpsons episodes. These guys have way too much time on their hands, but it’s still quite cool!

Last weekend I visited my brother Thomas in San Diego to celebrate my birthday; I’d a great time. San Diego has a pleasant climate and is incredibly attractive, although my opinion of downtown was mixed. My brother’s friends are pretty cool, though. Anyway, here’s a photo of us downtown:

Handsome pair, huh? The photo was taken at the Yard House in downtown San Diego. This place has a great selection and wonderful music (80s, classic rock &c.). The prices are steep, though.

freebooks.by.ru has a plethora of technical books available online, free of charge. Very nice indeed.

One of the most frequently hurled accusations against Bush has been that Iraq and al Qaeda were never linked, and that in fact Iraq never had anything to do with terrorism. This is frequently stated in the leftist press, but is it true?

The Washington Times notes the Iraq–al Qaeda link; so too did Clinton believe that Iraq and al Qaeda coöperate; the Council on Foreign Relations notes that Iraq sponsored terrorism; the Middle East Quarterly has written on Iraqi–Ansar al-Islam ties; so too has the Christian Science Monitor written about Iraq & Ansar al-Islam; the Daily Telegraph has reported on documents proving a link; the Telegraph has also noted a memo stating that one of the 11 September terrorists was trained in Saddam’s Iraq.

CNN note that the South has dominated American Idol. Naturally; Southerners are superior people.

Mark Pilgrim realises that free software is useful software. He had been blogging with Movable Type, which is proprietary but was free enough: a new version came out, the pricing got restrictive and he was stuck. But then he discovered WordPress, which is and always will be free.

I’m visiting my flyboy brother this weekend; it’s so pretty here in San Diego that even the roadside weeds are beautiful!

Well, today I am 26 years old: officially in my late twenties. I suppose that I might as well get measured for a coffin now. Also, lay in a stock of Metamucil and start outfitting a wardrobe consisting of pants which go to my chest, as well as buying an over-large car. Sigh…

I don’t know if this is true or not, but allegedly, a German couple who went to a fertility clinic after being childless for 8 years had not known about sex. I find it very difficult to believe—surely they would have figured it out at some point? I mean, one must have an absolute lack of hormones not to.

Ever been concerned about what life without the Internet might be like? Never fear—an Internet-less existence survival guide is here.

The Eye of Argon is the worst story ever written; submitted by a 16 year old to a science fiction contest, it proceeded to win the Worst Story award—and continued to win for fifteen straight years. It is horribly, painfully, mind-numbingly bad. And now The Eye of Argon gets the MST3K treatment. Will the world ever be the same again?

RFCs (Requests for Comments) are the working standards of the Internet; while a very few are eventually promoted to official Internet Standards, most never do, and yet are no less important for that. Some are superseded; some obsoleted; but most are still in effect.

RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines (dating back to 1995) is one such RFC. It’s an important document, and should be read by all newbies.

Its guidelines are not mandatory in letter but rather in spirit (e.g. I use underscores rather than asterisks to indicate emphasis in plain text). Much as a great poet knows when to break the rules, so too an experienced user knows when the time is right to do things differently. A newbie, though, should always follow the established pattern until he has the experience to know when not to.

Radley Balko illustrates the lunacy of the drug war and related phenomena: denying a dying man a shot of whiskey; imprisoning a multiple sclerosis sufferer for 25 years because he bought painkillers; handcuffing a threatening the terminally ill. Those who prosecute the War on Some Drugs; those who are prohibitionists of whatever sort; those whose goal in life is to deny personal liberty: these are animals.

Rupert Sessions managed to waste all his money—money which could have cared for his disabled wife—and run up tremendous debts in a Nigerian scam. And the man won’t even admit that he was fooled!

Everyone has seen those awful 419 scam-spams in which some supposedly-rich person needs one’s help to retrieve some ungodly sum of money, and is willing to let one have a huge chunk of it—oh, but there’s some front money first…

Well scamming the scammers has become a kind of new game. One of the most popular is the Lovecraftian anti-scam, first pioneered by steerp1ke; a variant is the disembodied head of Thomas Mallory.

Not technically a 419 scam, but just as annoying, are the folks who send spams begging for money for some non-existent cause. One anti-scammer managed to convince the scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head. Although this one almost worries me—what if the fellow is on the up-and-up, but is completely ignorant of netiquette (and thus believes that sending millions of people email is A-OK)?

419 Eater actually has an entire section of photos the scammers sent of themselves.

Today I discovered that I’ve lost so much weight that I can slip my suit trousers off without unzipping or unbuttoning them. I’m going to have to have them tailored down to size. That’s a good problem to have!

I just finished watching Un Homme et Une Femme, a film by Claude Lelouch from ’66. It’s been lying on my coffee table for a few weeks, ever since Netflix sent it me; I’d been avoiding it because I’d a premonition that it’d be some long, boring 60s-sh Froggy film like Claire’s Kneed (’71); Rohmer had his moments (his Four Seasons cycle is superb) but that was not one of them. Quite the contrary: it’s really quite the masterpiece. Very touching, very sweet, very believable—and very romantic. Not to be commended enough.

The reader may recall my post back in December in which I made good bread; well, I have done it again nearly half-a-year later. This was my recipe: 2¼ cups (3×¾ cups) flour; 1 cup hot water from the tap; a ¼ oz. packet of yeast; a good dollop of honey, a splash of white wine vinegar and a splash of olive oil; mix all but water well; add water; mix into a dough; knead; let rise for 30 minutes, punch down, rise another 15; put into a bread pan and let rise for 30 minutes; bake at 375° for 45 minutes. It’s amazing stuff; next time I’ll use my homemade vinegar and more honey, but otherwise I’m quite pleased. Here’s a picture of the finished product:

I’m eating it with all sorts of preserves which I’ve had stuck in my fridge for ages. Now that I truly know how to bake bread, I can make it anytime I please. Life is good.

In a small German-speaking region of a canton in Switzerland, a card game called Troggu is played. It appears doomed to die out, which is a real pity, since it appears to be both simple and a lot of fun. I’ll have to see if I can get a deck and teach it to some folks.

I just bought myself a Happy Hacking Keyboard (actually, the Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2, to be completely exact); it’s a small keyboard which cuts the unwieldy 101-or-so-key standard layout down to a much more manageable 64. It has an incredibly small footprint (4.7" × 11.6") and does things the Right Way: there is no accurséd Caps Lock key (the Control key goes there, as God intended); the Esc is next to the 1 and the tilde/backtick is above the Backspace. Despite its small size, the keys themselves are full-size. My hands needn’t travel nearly so far anymore. The keyboard is a complete joy to use. Here’s a picture of it; notice my hand at left:

Pretty sweet, huh?

The first legal batch of whiskey made in Colorado has been distilled. I wish these guys all the best luck.

The editors of the National review make some excellent points about Abu Ghraib. Among them are that the world didn’t care when it was Saddam who tortured his own people (giving the lie to the Left’s claims of moral superiority—they merely care about making a political point) and that the US reacted very quickly to the allegations: three days after a soldier reported abuse, a criminal investigation was announced; three days thereafter an administrative investigation was commenced. The media made a big story out of it after the problem was well in hand, effectively locking the stall after the horse had long been gone.

Today marks the four-year anniversary of my graduation from Austin College. I’ve now spent as many years in the real world as I spent in college. In my morose moments I like to refer to the 14th of May 2000 as Black Sunday, but when I reflect on the order of things I recognise that it’s necessary to move on in life: one cannot be a student forever, or indeed remain in any state for too long a time.

But man was college fun. I was surrounded by friends & familiar faces (and pretty girls—Texas, quite frankly, rocks in that department). There were parties all the time. Twenty dollars was a lot of money, capable of securing anything one’s heart might have desired. My major concern was writing papers, which is easy once one has discovered the key. I had no mortgage, no rent, no gas, electric or light bills. Granted, I was racking up student-loan debt—but I didn’t think about it, and thus it might as well have not existed.

But of course the day comes when one must grow up. Moving to the next stage of life is never pleasant: birth requires labour (is it any wonder the newly-born infant screams?); physical maturity requires adolescence; and mental maturation requires graduation, leaving one’s friends behind and a lot of hard work and sacrifice. In the adult world, one doesn’t have the option of just racking up some more loans. Twenty dollars is only a lot of money to spend on oneself; it’s nothing compared to what one must expend to stay alive. Time is a precious commodity, and there’s never enough in the day. Eventually one realises that there will never be enough time: some things will never get done, and an unpleasant triage must be performed as one prioritises one’s life.

It’s not all bad, of course: things which were beyond imagination in school are now possible (e.g. a year and a half ago, I dropped everything and headed to London when airfares dropped to nearly naught); one has more options, more freedoms; one contributes to the world, rather than merely taking from it.

And of course the process doesn’t stop. I suppose that the next step in life is marriage, which brings along its own sacrifices and joys, and then after that parenthood with its own complement, and eventually retirement, which if planned right should be the great playground of life. I imagine that the key to happiness is to appreciate the memory of past stages of life, enjoy the present and anticipate the future—but I’m too gloomy a soul for that.

When I was 21, I rather thought that I’d be somewhat further along in life at 25 than I actually am: making six figures; owning a home; married; driving a new car; surrounded by friends. As it is I’m still quite firmly in the five-figure range (although I’m in the respectable end thereof); I don’t own a house but I do own a condo; I’m single, and expect to remain so in the foreseeable future; my car is thirteen years old, the same I had my senior year of college; and I’m just beginning to form a circle of friends here in Denver. Still, life’s not too bad: I manage to sock away about 20% of my salary, and so I have the expectation of a pleasant retirement in my dwindling years (a good four dozen years from now); I have a respectable job; I serve in a modest capacity at church; my health is excellent; certainly, I (and just about anyone reading this, for that matter) am better off than almost anyone who has ever lived throughout all history.

But rare is the day I don’t wish, at least a little bit, that I had yet to cross that stage and receive my diploma.

squidfingers has some very cool tilable patterns free for use.

It runs out that domestic music sales are up approximately 10% this year, not down 7% as the RIAA has tried to claim. They are shipping fewer units to stores (that’s what’s down), but more units are actually selling (and that’s what makes money). Indeed, given that units-shipped is an expense and units-sold is money made, they are essentially complaining that they have cut expenses!

Imagine that last year I shipped 1,728 CDs and sold 1,296—that would mean that I made 432 too many, at some cost to me. This year I ship 1,584 and sell 1,440, thus making only 144 too many, at a lower cost to me. And I make more money, because I’ve actually sold more units. My expenses are down and my profits are up; would I have any grounds to complain to anyone?

The RIAA must be suppressed.

After World War II, veterans in McMinn County, Tennessee, overthrew a corrupt sheriff. They had tried to have a fair election, but he and his deputies confiscated ballots, shot a black man for trying to vote and generally made nuisances of themselves. So the GIs and other local men armed themselves and advanced on the jail where the crooked sheriff and his men were holed up. They won.

I’m generally dubious of claims that private firearms ownership helps overthrow tyranny; the last time that was tried we lost and suffered a century of defeat. But in this case it seems to have worked.

Leonid Stadnyk is the world’s tallest living man, but rather than bask in fame he sufferes in poverty, anonymity and loneliness. His sad story has been reported by CNN, The Guardian and The Age. The poor fellow cannot work, cannot travel and cannot even afford shoes. He’ll never marry, and when his mother dies he’ll be unable to provide for himself.

More pictures are at ArtUkraine.com. If he isn’t a convincing argument for charity, I don’t know what is.

Senator Zell Miller (D., Georgia) wishes to repeal the 17th Amendment. That’s the farce which requires that senators be popularly elected and unaccountable, rather than selected by state legislatures and directed in their votes. He’ll almost certainly fail, but it’s a noble effort.

The old saw goes that if one locked an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite length of time, eventually they’d produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator attempts to test this.

weather.com saved money by switching to Linux, Tomcat and other free software. Your company can too.

I do disagree with their use of MySQL; it’d be much smarter to go with PostgreSQL, which is a much better, database—which is also free.

A young Iraqi has a blog entitled Iraq the Model. His English is imperfect, but it’s an interesting look at what’s going on over there.

Back in July ’03, Max Boot wrote on the challenges & opportunities we face in the upcoming years with regards to our military. A most interesting article.

A CNN articles notes that less than half of adults or children wear bike helmets. Well, duh. They look stupid, they are uncomfortable, they don’t protect the important parts and they are dumb. Wearing a bike helmet is like going hiking in a gambeson, because one might trip and fall. Every time one wears a helmet, one looks like a twit: every single time, without fail. But one doesn’t need a helmet every time; in fact, the odds are good that one will never need the idiotic thing—but if one wears it, one will look like an ever-loving fool for hundreds or thousands of miles.

Helmets don’t even protect the important parts, either: they leaves the eyes, nose, teeth & cheeks open to injury. It hurts to break teeth, lose an eye, shatter one’s nose or tear open one’s cheek.

Sure, if one is racing, then a helmet is a wise choice. Sure, if one is one dangerous roads, or mountain biking, it’s a good idea. But why look less than one’s best needlessly?

Tonight we took my mom to dinner to celebrate Mother’s Day (late because of the party for the ordination yesterday). Dinner at Le Central was amazing as always. I’d an iceberg salad with blue cheese dressing & pickled onions, followed by Beef Wellington and some sort of cupcake for dessert, along with an excellent wine which smelled of cigar boxes and tasted of strawberries and a very nice decade-old port.

Electric Bikes Northwest sell bicycles with built-in motors meant to augment, not supplant, human power. The motor kicks in to give one that extra power needed to climb a hill or maintain 25 mph, but one still pedals. That way, one still gets the exercise and cost benefits of a bicycle while not arriving at one’s destination all sweaty and an hour late. Extremely cool; my next bike might be one of these.

I’m thinking of adding AiYo to this blog. It’s a sidebar which shows products I’ve recently written about and reviewed; if readers of Octopodial Chrome follow the links and purchase, I get a small cut. Does anyone have any thoughts—is this kosher, or is taking advantage?

My gut reaction is that it’s not a bad thing, since readers can ignore it if they choose.

I recently purchased the DVD Every Breath You Take, a newly-remastered collection of The Police’s best. It is absolutely incredible: the quality is amazing; the music sounds like it never did before; there’s a kind of liveliness to it all which is breathtaking. DVD Audio is the wave of the future, mark my words. I first noticed this at my buddy Phil’s: he’d recently purchased an REM disc with Losing My Religion on it (incidentally, losing my religion is an old Southern phrase for losing one’s temper—it has naught to do with atheism); we heard instruments we’d never heard before. I’ve since experienced the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over which is awe-inspiring. I’m running out of superlatives here, so I’ll end with this brief note: go out and buy a surround-sound system and DVD player now.

Deroy Murdock argues against the War on Some Drugs. He notes:

• Persecution of a California couple, growing marijuana for medical use in California, using California water—all of which is legal in California—being persecuted under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, despite there being no interstate commerce going on!
• Prohibition of ephedrine, a dietary supplement linked to 155 deaths in eleven years—fewer than Tylenol.
• Attempts to make the most effective and popular pain-killer more difficult to get, since after all we can’t have folks relieving their pain.

None of these things directly effects anyone but those who uses them. None of these things is therefor the business of the State. And yet we continue to persecute people, secure in a blind moral high-handedness. When will this madness stop?

My buddy Dean’s brother George was ordained a deacon today. Unfortunately, although I brought my camera I’ve no pictures—I never got the chance for a photo good enough to merit interrupting the service. I’m hoping to receive a copy of one with all the clergy (three deacons, five priests and a metropolitan; the last is the equivalent of a Roman Catholic cardinal) in front of the rood screen. Despite the length of the service—matins, liturgy, ordination, memorial service & blessing of the bread—it went quite quickly. It’s great to see him finally taking the first permanent step on his way to the priesthood. Axios!

pizza_party is a command-line interface to Domino’s web ordering system; now it’s possible to order a pizza without bothering to fire up a browser! It can remember your favourite pizzas, be used to order many different pizzas (say, for a corporate gathering) and is distributed under the General Public License, so it’s free software. Could one ask for anything more?

James Hague argues that on modern computer systems, performance tuning is different from what one might expect—more concerned with algorithms and other such high-level optimisations than with language choice, tweaking and such low-level approaches. A very good read.

Way back when, Marathon was a great game for the Macintosh. Released at about the same time as Doom, it featured an intriguing story as well as exceptional gameplay. Future versions upped the ante in the story-telling realm considerably; some still count Marathon among the greatest of games purely for its story. I wasted a considerable number of hours playing the trilogy in college.

Before its maker—Bungie, of lamented memory—was bought by Microsoft, they freed the source to Marathon, and after Marathon, Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞, we now have Marathon Aleph One (math geeks wil recognise that Aleph One is the power of the continuum, which is larger than simple infinity…). Very, very cool.

It’s a little-known fact that inflating one’s tyres makes a world of difference when riding a bicycle. If they were at, say, 24 PSI when they should have been at 40–65, it’s amazing how much smoother the ride is, and how much less effort is required. Something I noticed yesterday, and had confirmed today. Why, it’s almost as easy to bike to & from work as to drive. Now.

I love Boulder. It’s the greatest place on earth. And cool, too.

The bike paths! The girls! The beer! The girls! The food! Also, the girls. And the library. What a wonderful place. For lunch I’d a burger & a beer at the Mountain Sun. After work I had a few beers, rode more than a dozen miles & strolled through an interesting old cemetery. Boulder is so cool.

Bastich was a webcomic I read whilst in college. It ran only from 1995–1998, but man was it funny back then. I recommend it, from what I recollect as a dim 20 year old. I still remember when it stopped being updated. I kept on re-visiting, hoping against hope to see a new comic. Sigh.

Is there anything finer than a summer evening just after the sun has sunk below the horizon, but before it has gotten dark—what I believe our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called hador? Is there aught better than that soft silence, that still sweetness, that feeling that all the world is repairing itself from the day’s endeavours? It’s the most romantic time, when one feels as though one were a youth once more, and all the world were one’s oyster, when anything was possible and everything would be done. I would give anything to live my life in that cool twilight.

CNN reports that a father-and-son team are attempting to clone our nation’s champion trees (the biggest, and often oldest, of their kind) in an effort to revitalise forests by reintroducing their genetic material. A brilliant idea. I wonder if they take donations?

Steven Pinker has written a new book which argues that our genes are most responsible for who we are—which is yet more evidence for aristocracy. If we can breed hunting dogs, why can we not breed leaders? The answer, of course, is that we can.

The Russian site All of MP3 offers legal and cheap music downloads. You may be responsible for paying customs duties, though—I’m not certain how the law covers downloading across national lines. Still, very cool.

You pay by the megabyte—$5 per 500MB, and let them know what format you want the music in: MP3, OGG, WMA &c., as well as your desired bitrate, and suddenly you’re in like Flint. Heck, if you want you can download CD-quality music (for about $6.50 per disc). Very cool.

After a far-too-long hiatus (with the exception of a chicken cooked in broth from a mediæval recipe) from cooking, I’m back at it. My buddy Dean gave me a shoulder of lamb (bone with scraps of meat) from his Easter party, and I’m making my famous bean soup from it. Interestingly, after several hours of simmering, the broth from the bones & meat was white—I’ve never seen that before. The aroma is quite strong, as one would expect from lamb, but as the soup cooks away it is mellowing into something quite tasty.