I first saw this one in an Escape Hatch post. I knew it would make a good Motivational Monday picture here. In my quest to find a larger version of the poster, I found out the name of the guy in the poster; he's Easton Ellsworth.
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
Like I said, the next thing on the list to kill us all is the Large Hadron Collider. Now there's a lawsuit against it in Hawaii, no less (the Large Hadron Collider is in Switzerland). They claim it could destroy Earth, and possibly the universe (?).
I've already explained in a previous blog post why the collider isn't a threat... Nature throws far more energized particles into our atmosphere and we haven't been consumed by a micro-black hole yet. And the universe? There are massive black holes in the center of galaxies, why would some micro-black hole threaten the universe?
Heh, I have a motivational poster about the Large Hadron Collider, but it's NSFW... The Large Hardon Collider.
I present to you, the 100th YouTube video from Wise Beard Man. It is made of Epic Win... Behold, Wise Beard Cat & Wise Beard Kitten!
Wise Beard Man's 100th YouTube Video
You can read Part 1 here.
Part 2 covers Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows. Perhaps the most tortured music I have ever heard. It's not a band, but a single artist, by the name of Anna-Varney Cantodea. She can be described as transgender or perhaps between genders, but she prefers to be referred to as female. She's German, but most of her lyrics are in English. Throughout her life she's been in a very deep depression.
Her music can be a bit of a shock to someone not fully prepared for it. I don't blame you if you don't like it. It takes some getting used to, but I have developed a sort-of connection with it.
Sopor Fratrem Mortis Est - Sopor Aeternus
In an Hour Darkly - Sopor Aeternus
The Conqueror Worm
Think my taste in music is odd, yet?
Ever do a Google search for your name? It's called vanity searching (also egosurfing). You get best results if you put quotes around your name in the search bar, that way you only get that exact phrase. I do vanity searches now and then to keep track of what the world is saying about me (turns out, not much).
My name is pretty unique on the Internet, so most (but not all) of the results are about me. Out of the 10 that come up, 6 of them are specifically about me. If I click “repeat the search with the omitted results included” then 25 out of 29 are about me. Most are articles from this blog, and that's only the articles that have been re-indexed since I've put my name down in the creative commons footer information.
Nothing too interesting comes up for my name really, other than my blog and website. If I switch over to Google image search, I only get a few pictures of my seamonkey tank.
An actor's name comes up for my dad. Anyone else have something interesting come up?
Here's a few pictures that were taken this winter by a snowmobile enthusiast here in Ketchikan. He said I could put the pictures on my blog, but I didn't think to ask if I could attribute his name to them, you know how some people are with their privacy and such... So I'll have to ask him and edit the post later if he's ok with his name being here.
Those odd plastered-looking things sticking up out of the snow are the tops of trees. There's been a lot of snow in the mountains this year. Click an image to view the full size.
That last one sort-of looks like a praying mantis.
My shoelace finally broke on one of my shoes, I knew it was getting weak. I went through shoelaces fast with my last pair of shoes. This is the first time I've had to replace them with these shoes, however. The little aglet came off last week, but now the lace itself broke.
The tips at the end of shoelaces are called "aglets". Their true purpose is sinister.
Turns out yesterday's Motivational Monday post contained a "poison word" for Ad Sense. It caused non-paying ads to show. I've since then fixed it, but I'll have to watch what I say if I want to keep the ads I guess. I'm only accumulating a few cents a day from it, but it's better than nothing.1
As I said in a previous post, you'd be surprised at how few websites validate. According to Design Oahu, only 5 out of the top 50 websites validate. I've been looking further into how to get the blog to validate. It looks like it might be possible to reduce the number of errors. However, that blogger navbar at the top is still going to generate some errors no matter what I do, because it is an iframe. Frames are not supported in xhtml strict, simple as that.
I do have a Games section on the way (maybe next week). Once that is up, I truly will not have a need for Realm of Marf. That's the last major section not ported over yet. (the web feeds section wasn't at all popular, so it's being dropped)
I'm surprised at the number of visitors I have over at Realm of Marf. It's on the order of 40-50 visits a day, and gaining for some reason... I hope they will transfer over here when I move the Games section. And yes, I've stopped linking to it because it's going to be gone soon. Well, ok, not gone... Empty with links pointing here so people can update their bookmarks instead of getting a 404 error.
1: Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging or implying you to click on the ads, that's against the Ad Sense TOS. Only click on an ad if you have a genuine interest.
Perhaps the best motivational poster yet...
I forgot to point out I've put a picture of myself in the About section.
Last year, South Park finally made the connection between the resurrection of Christ and what Easter is now; bunnies hiding colored eggs. But where do the peeps come in?
Let's talk for a moment about Peeps. You know, those little marshmallow chicks... Beware their eyes, they are insoluble, even in sulfuric acid and phenol.
Conclusion: Given enough time, the proper resources, and access to some really toxic stuff, one can probably dissolve just about anything except Peep eyes.
My taste in music is a little odd, at least my dad, mom, and friends say so. This is part 1 of a multi-part series I'll do on my favorite music, concentrating on a single artist/band per part. The series will be sporadic, probably spread out over a couple of months or more. I'm going to try to limit it to 3 videos per band. The primary reason for the videos is the music, so any actual footage that goes along with it may or may not be related to the song.
Part 1 focuses on the Crüxshadows. They are at this point in time, my favorite. Usually for this type of thing you'd save the best for last, but whatever. My favorite changes frequently enough that by the time I did get to them, they may not be my favorite anymore. Although they look a lot like a German Goth band, they are from Florida. Going to be tough to only pick 3 videos...
The Cruxshadows - Winterborn
Monsters By The Cruxshadows
Crüxshadows - The Edge Of The World
We go and have a snowstorm...
The Sad Little Man Search and Rescue Team
I first came up with the name Marf back in 7th grade. I had a project in math class to lay out a search pattern for a search and rescue team, and I had named each member. Marf was the most original name out of all of them, and I started to use it for an online alias after this. The picture to the left is the logo for the Sad Little Man Search and Rescue team. Here's the story... It's a little modified from its original, I just couldn't bring myself to post the poor grammar version from 7th grade.
Pilot Gina Roberts crashed her plane only 1½ hours into her 440-mile flight from Laverton to Nullagine when the Laverton airport receives a distress call. Gina was having engine trouble. She gave her location as 185 mi. from Laverton and at a heading of 334°. Then communication was lost.
A search plane was sent out from Wiluna, the closest town to the crash. The plane went in spirals around the heading. The search plane found the crash site, but Gina was not there.
A new team new team had just been hired, but we didn’t have time to put them through training. We decided to give them the mission anyway. There are 8 people in the team, and they all say they have a super-natural way to find people, so we knew they were the right men for the job.
Bob Mattelli: He is very lazy, and a bit overweight. He was a computer hacker under the alias VIRUS_500.
Joe Manken: He is an alcoholic bum that the we took off the street and gave him a job.
Ed Med. People say that he is “special” (in the head). He has worked for the FBI, but we didn't get much information about that.
Fred Med: He has worked for the Air Force as a fighter pilot. He said they wouldn’t let him fly anything after the first day of training. He did any way, that's why he's no longer in the Air Force.
Ned Med: He worked for NASA, but made an incorrect calculation and got fired.
Ted Med: He was an atomic bomb maker for Russia for 10 years. He has amazingly survived many nuclear accidents.
Zed Med: He was a weapons specialist, an assassin of sorts. He knows where to shoot people so they die instantaneously. Even with a cheap B-B gun.
Marf Spudel: He was an undertaker. He is more than a little weird (not used to the living).
We put them at the crash site to find Gina. They ran around like sad little men (mostly down hill). They will have 4 hours to find Gina before a storm hits. All of them went in different directions. Most of them were going in circles.
Marf ran north in a strait line and got lost. He ended up going east and was thought to have been eaten alive by coyotes. The rest of the team wasn't really thinking about Gina at all; they were wondering what the IQ of an octopus is. Ed found an empty juice box 2 miles southeast of the crash site and radioed the other people on the team to come over to him. Marf was out of range of the radio by this point.
They all searched that area until Fred found some footprints in the mud. There is now only 1 hour before the storm hits by this time. Bob was too lazy to search any more so he sat down and stopped searching. Joe had some booze hidden and got drunk, he ended up wandering off in a random direction.
Ed, Fred, Ned, Ted, and Zed all found Gina at the same exact time from different angles and rescued her. They picked up Bob, but they couldn't find Joe or Marf so they left without them.
Joe died from exposure when the storm hit, and his half-eaten body was found after the storm passed, with coyotes dragging it away. Marf never was seen again, although it was assumed he was eaten alive by coyotes.
You'll notice the sidebar here at the blog looks a little different. The profile info is gone and there's now a Navigation "widget" in its place. You can still view my blogger profile from the navigation.
The blog supplement pages are up, at least the About, Links, and Quotes sections. I haven't created the Games section yet, that may take a little longer. These sections are essentially the same I had on Realm of Marf. I've just updated them with the new template and added to the About section. I've also taken them off Realm of Marf; these are the replacements.
The new pages are on a googlepages domain, not blogspot. I hand-wrote the pages in notepad, and they validate as xhtml Strict, go ahead and click the little orange validation button at the bottom of the pages, you'll see. Blogger blogs don't validate at all, they have hundreds of errors; and there's nothing the blog owner can do about it.
What does the validation mean? It means it's free of any errors in the code. It means I took that extra step to make sure my pages are the best they can be. It means I care about my viewers. You'd be surprised at how few pages there are out there without errors.
EDIT: The Blog Supplement pages have been moved to a subdomain of the new domain.
Before I go into this post, I'd like to point out the sunset image to the right can be used as a desktop background, click the image to view the full size. I took this image on December 2, 2007.
To counter the Escape Hatch article Up, Up, n Shut Up where the word "up" has so many meanings, I present to you the word "set".
From Wikipedia:
"Set has 464 separate definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary, the most of any English word; its full definition comprises 10,000 words making it the longest definition in the OED."
Let's set the stage... So get set! (and set about making this post)
Shall I set the pencil on the table, set it in concrete, or set it free?
Shall I set a broken bone and set it in a cast?
Shall I set the sails and set out on the open sea?
Shall I set my clocks, set a table, or set my hair?
Shall I set the story in Alaska?
Shall I set up the set for Act 2 of the performance?
Shall we set a legal precedent?
Shall we set a date for an occasion?
Shall we set off on an adventure, or set off an alarm?
Shall we set the janitor to work?
Shall we set two friends against each other?
Shall we set a record, set a good example, or just set a gem?
Will that pendant be set with emeralds?
Will I set a great deal with this offer?
Will you pay my bail that the judge set at $100,000? 1
Will you set a value on my life?
Will you set a seed for planting?
Will you set a trap for me?
Is the sun going to set soon?
Is there a time set?
Is the paint set?
Is the glue set up?
Is the mental set of our audience set how we want it?
Is there a tag set in your clothing?
Is it set in stone?
Let's set ourselves apart from others. But please, don't be set off by my personality.
Let's set aside our differences. Or are you set in your ways?
Let's set aside that item and save it for later.
Let's set at our enemies.
Let's not be set back by them. Especially not be set back financially by that $100,000.
Let's set forth, set forward, and set off.
Let's set off an explosion.
Let's set off your temper.
Let's set to work.
Do you see a set pattern?
Do you have your hammock set out?
Do you have enough reserves set by?
Do you have a computer set up?
Do you like my set up?
Do you want to set it in motion?
Do you have your heart set on it? Or have you set your sights on it?
Do you still worship the Egyptian god set?
Do I need to be set straight?
Are you set up to be a dictator?
Are you going to set up a charity?
Are you going to set out to find out what went wrong?
Are you going to set up that figurine that fell?
Are you going to set me on fire? Or set fire to my house?
Are you going to set a foot in my house?
I'm going to set up shop so I can sell of my set of collectibles.
I'm going to use a mathematical set.
I've got a chemistry set and a chess set.
I've set aside many examples because I didn't want to use them, so this isn't a complete set.
I've set the final example I'm going to write, so I hope you've been set back by the sheer number of definitions for the word "set".
Yes, I wrote all of that myself. I was using an online dictionary to make the examples. I tried not to use the same usage twice, but I may have once or twice.)
1: For example only, I don't really have a bail and I'm not in trouble with the law.
Motivational Monday is uplifting, as always. I just love to bring a bit of hope and inspiration to everyone's day (or perhaps even entire week) with my Motivational Mondays1.
Quick tip: don't put a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. One man in London figured that out the hard way. He wanted to "pop" the question; instead, the question floated away. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise, however. She's refusing to talk to him until he gets a new ring. If that's all that matters to her, he's better off without a ring.
Those of you observant enough will notice minor changes in the blog's template. However, under the surface it was a rather large update. I've switched the blog over to the new CSS layout I've been working on. Just one step closer to the merging of Realm of Marf and Master Marf. I've got it set up so the blog and my additional webpages (when I add them) use the same CSS file, so I can make a tweak to the template in the one CSS file and have it apply everywhere.
I'm still open for suggestions for what games and such to add.
I can't help but notice there are videos of today's protests getting pulled from YouTube. There's no point to link to them because they're pulled, but a couple video IDs are 1fMc3YuRfh4 and OG5wBYF0dwA. These were videos of the protests in London and New York.
The cult of Scientology is suppressing freedom of speech, again. Co$ is afraid, and they're doing everything they can to discredit or silence Anonymous.
Scientology is Afraid of Anonymous
Scientology tried to stop the protests, but they failed. Did they really think they could get a restraining order from a group of peaceful protesters?
There's already press coverage from Adelaide, Australia, about 200 protesters there. Sadly, I don't expect much coverage from the US news. They're so wrapped up in Spitzer and his prostitute that the rest of the world doesn't even exist. I am so tired of hearing about that...
Usually Scientologists have a big party on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. They even somehow manage to close down public roads when they have parties, as shown on July 4th, 1999 in Los Angles. (video 1) (video 2) (video 3) (video 4) (video 5)
A new US 5 dollar bill is being sent out into circulation. Our money is looking more and more Canadian all the time with these colors they're using. One thing I've always liked is the UV reactive strip in all the bills except the $1. Each bill has a different color strip, although you can only see the strips under a blacklight. The colors are as follows; $5 Blue, $10 Orange, $20 Green, $50 Yellow, and $100 Red.
Ever wounder what Abe Lincoln would look like with purple makeup? No, I hadn't really given it any thought either. But regardless, this is what he looks like:
The 100 dollar bill is the next in line for colorization.
I made a favicon for Master Marf. It's part of the work I'm doing behind the scenes in preparation of merging this blog and Realm of Marf. I figured I'd go ahead and apply the icon to the blog now. I used favicon.cc to make the icon. At first I tried to create a little dragon similar to the ones in the header, with an M stamped over the top of it. It didn't look like anything, however. You couldn't tell it was a dragon at all, and you couldn't even see the M very well either. So I went with this one; a sphere with an M across it. Kinda reminds me of the doorknob in the movie Home Alone for some reason, but whatever. I tried a double M, but that didn't work too well either. The letter M is just too damn wide, and two of them don't fit very well within a 16x16 icon. I'm satisfied for now with what I have. What do you think about the icon? At least it's not the default blogspot icon.
March 15 is fast approaching. Be ready to grab your party hat, Guy Fawkes mask, protest sign, and party hard! March 15th is L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, and Scientology deserves one hell of a celebration (protest) from Anonymous. Here's a message from Wise Bald Guy:
Party Hard Anonymous
Improv Everywhere has a new YouTube video. I've had one of their videos (Frozen Grand Central) on my blog before.
Food Court Musical
Makes me wish there was a group something like Improv Everywhere in this town. I'd love to see things like this randomly happen. At time index 3:01 I think a couple of them screwed up the lyrics, as someone said "trees" out of sync with the rest. But overall it was a good performance. I think my favorite part is the guy with mustard on his pants.
Makes you realize just how odd it would be if life were a musical. I've never understood musicals in that respect: Someone just suddenly breaks out into song and dance and everyone joins in. Probably why I usually don't care for musicals, it takes away from the realism and believability of the movie.
I'm working on merging my blog and my website, Realm of Marf. My final outcome will be similar to what Realm of Marf is now, but with this blog as the home page. Also, the entire thing will use the same template as the blog. I have a test blog set up, so I can get everything all organized and situated without affecting this blog until I'm ready. I'm still tweaking the template a bit.
As many of you know, you can't just make a page with a blog unless it's a new article. I don't want some things to be formatted like an article with the date and all. So I'll use the website for any additional pages I want, linking to them from my blog. They will be supplements for the blog.
I'm using a different domain that matches my blog's a little better, so Realm of Marf itself will be taken down. It will remain up for a while after with warnings that it's going to go down and re-direct people to the blog. That should give people a chance to update their bookmarks, and I hopefully won't loose much of my traffic over there.
I'm not sure of the time frame I'm looking at for these changes. Just giving a heads up that they are coming.
Please leave comments suggesting other sections you'd like to see added. Any games you'd like to see? I'm thinking about adding the falling sand game and a few of its variants. What else would be fun or useful for you?
On a totally unrelated note, new South Park episodes start on March 12th!
Or at least, Catholicism. I would hope about everyone can identify the two people depicted in the motivational.
Modular Snake Robots
These could be useful for all sorts of situations. Such as finding survivors of a building collapse after an earthquake.
Robot Humps (maybe slightly NSFW)
And this little guy, although not as useful as the robots in the first video, is still pretty funny.
Oh, and if you haven't done so already change your clocks for daylight savings time. Unless you're in an area that doesn't change their clocks for it.
I was hired by a friend to speed up their computer. As far as I could tell, the main reason for it running slow was Norton Antivirus itself. I hate Norton... So I uninstalled that and put AVG on instead. I taught her a few things about computers and I deleted a ton of temporary files. I scanned for spyware with Ad Aware and didn't find any.
Google took some images off their street-level view option for Google maps because of a government order. They said the images showed guard positions and other tactical information about government bases. However, the pictures were taken from public streets. Anyone is allowed to take pictures from a public street and distribute them on the internet. So why target Google?
I don't think Google should have given in like they did. They probably just didn't want to raise a big stink about it.
Worst staircase ever.
What were they thinking when they built this? And no, it's not a photoshop job. It's at the Lloyd's headquarters building, at the corner of Leadenhall and Lime Street in London. I think the original source is Esthr's Flickr account.
Was it a job fair or an advertisement expo? I sure couldn't tell the difference between them. There were a few places that didn't even have any jobs available. They were just there for advertising (like the University).
Then you have the multitude of military branches; Army, Navy... There's no way I'd have anything to do with that.
Then there's all the tourism seasonal work. I should probably lower my standards, but I really don't want to deal with those people. They can be standing on the dock and they'll ask where sea level is.
What's left? Not much. I'm looking for (ideally) a computer technician job. Or at least something vaguely related. I checked out the IBEW, and they may have a telephone technician position available mid summer. The Hospital doesn't have any IT openings.
Alaska Air is the most promising, as a Customer Service Agent. I know someone that works there and it sounds like a job I'd be able to do. If I were to get the job, I'd be sent down to Seattle for training. That would be a perfect chance to see how I like Seattle, because that's where I'd like to live eventually. I don't think it'd be too hard to transfer to Alaska Air in Seattle. They require you to apply online, to show that you have some computer experience.
Speaking of applying online, most of the jobs I looked at required that (like NOAA). There wasn't even one opportunity to hand out the resume I created. Although basically all the jobs had nothing to do with what my resume was aimed at anyway.
What does it take to simply be a computer tech who doesn't always have to deal with the public?
I've seen this image before, and it holds a lot of truth:
I'm glad to hear Monique isn't as bad as I originally feared. She's already regretting the deletion of Escape Hatch. I had a comment from her on that article that straitened me out.
I went to a resume workshop today at the local job center. There's a major job fair on Thursday that I'm planning to go to. Maybe I'll actually stop being a bum and finally get a job. I'll keep you all updated with that.
(gasp! I'm actually talking about my personal life!)
What's funny is some of the "don'ts" on a list we were given. Things like "References: None... I leave a path of destruction in my wake." Supposedly that was actually something that was on a resume. Most of the other ones were mistakes caused by a spell checker, where it selects the wrong word. An example would be "rabid typist", when it was supposed to be rapid typist. Or one that said "I hope to hear from you shorty" (instead of shortly). That one was sent to an employer that actually was a short man.
I'm going to start doing Motivational Mondays. Every Monday I'll post a different motivational poster for you all to ponder through out the week. You can expect most of them to be in the same tone as this week's "motivational" poster. I suppose I actually started this last week, with the Perspective poster.
As you can read from this Doodle Page posting, Monique, the author of the Escape Hatch blog (and currently the Doodle Page) must be terminally ill.
I have to say I didn't know her for too long, but I enjoyed reading her blog. My condolences go out to her and her family. She will be missed.
I usually like comics that have a continuing storyline, and I'll list those ones first. With these comics, it's best to start from the very beginning so you can understand what's going on in the current issue. I mention if a comic has a web feed or not, because that's important to me. I'm much less likely to read and follow a web comic without a feed.
Ctrl+Alt+Del - A comic about gaming. Be it Computer or console gaming. Has a web feed, so it's easy to keep track of new comics.
Dungeon Crawl Inc. - A comic that takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. No web feed available, however.
Girls With Slingshots - Primarily meant for woman readers, I think. I still find it interesting. No web feed available, but I did send an email to the author requesting one. We'll see how that goes...
Home on the Strange - Unfortunately, there's no new comics. It has come to an end. But it's still there if you want to read through it from the beginning. Has a web feed, but since there's no new ones, it's sort of useless.
Order of the Stick - My favorite, it's another comic taking place in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. It's written by Rich Burlew, a co-author of a few official Dungeons & Dragons manuals. A web feed is available.
These next two don't really have an ongoing story line, but they're funny all the same.
Cyanide and Happiness - I found out about this one from the Escape Hatch blog. There are also a few short flash animations, not just comics. Web feed available.
Reiko - A little demon girl and her interactions with her little classmates. Also has a few short flash animations. No web feed that I could find.
These next ones are not really comics, as they are just flash cartoons. But I still want to mention them.
Childrin R Skary - No, I didn't misspell, that's the name of it. Although she doesn't have any horns, I suspect this little girl is also a demon. New videos are somewhat rare, it's not updated very often. Web feed available (so you'll be alerted when there is finally an update).
iLL wiLL PreSS - The rantings of a very egotistical squirrel with a poor outlook on humanity, and a very high-pitch voice. No web feed available, unfortunately.
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