Get your motor runnin'

So today Graham tells me that, inspired by Jowen's discovery of Oregon Trail online, he's been playing an old DOS version of Cross Country Canada. The main things I remember about this game are:

• I loved it;
• I never made a successful delivery ever;
• "I don't know how to [blank]"; and
• the food you got at diners was always either greasy meat pie with greasy fries or tourtiére with poutine, probably depending on whether or not you were in Quebec.

Recently I was telling Dave S. about Oregon Trail online, and talk turned to this game I played when I was a kid. It was just a sub-game of one of those educational games, but it was a tonne of funne: the idea was that you are in some little room and you can grab all manner of logic gates (even buffers and flip-flops). On one side of the room there are four outputs that turn on and off in a certain rhythm, and on the other side you need to generate a certain rhythm. It's up to you to combine the gates in some way as to match the rhythm on the other side. In any case, I don't remember the name of this game, but I think that this game is the single most important reason for me eventually going into computer science. (Dave rightly pointed out that this is pretty sad.) Does anyone know what this game was called?

But back to Cross Country Canada. It's funny that Graham should bring this up tonight, because just last night I saw a rather amusing piece (click on the one called "Public Enemy Number One") on The Daily Show about... uh... trucking. Yeah, trucking. Somehow I don't imagine that Cross Country Canada knows how to "drop truckerbomb", but if it did, oh man I would send the programmers money.

As an aside, I'm still looking for a decent colour scheme for the blog. I changed everything to be darker, but it was a little too dark for my tastes and it didn't project the happy, welcoming image I've grown accustomed to. But now with most of the colours changed back, it looks too bright again; back to the drawing board. At least I'm getting better with the GIMP (it's like Photoshop, only it's free and legal) -- before you know it, I'll be cutting pictures of your heads onto pictures of barnyard animals and the pictures will be so realistic none will be the wiser.

I'm also considering, inspired by vintage stevekwan.com, putting a translucent image of myself right over the middle bit where the writing is. Wouldn't that be weird?

But back to driving and urine: Jimothy pointed me to this article on Conan O'Brien. It's really quite long but it's a good read, and on the third page it includes the line "Later, the NBC censors will prevent him from airing Chewbacca Stuck in a Glory Hole, and O’Brien won’t like that one bit."

Current Music: Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

EDIT (1:25AM, September 29, 2005): I've got it looking approximately how I want it to look... in Firefox. Those of you using IE will have issues, but just out of principle I'm not going to fix it for you right now. I hate IE, and not just as a computer guy who has used Netscape/Mozilla forever: I hate IE as someone who has developed a website for money. I'll fix it if I feel like it. (I'll probably feel like it tomorrow.)

What's Wang This Week

Check out the new look. Isn't it lame?

Things are busy here, with TA work and my own classes to be working on. Solution: don't do any of it. Instead, Dave and I went to San Francisco followed by In-N-Out. While I was in San Francisco, I saw and played with an iPod nano for the first time. I've fallen prey yet again to Apple's products/marketing, and I have decided that I want one for Christmas. Anyone? Anyone?

Then next Christmas, I would like a Nintendo Revolution, although I think I can probably count on Derek or Mike to get one. However, in the off-chance they both decide to get PS3s/X-Box 360s instead, I guess it falls to me. How else will we play the next-gen Mario Kart? How else will Adam and I have lightsaber duels in my living room?

I've been having trouble with my Linux partition (and at this point about 80% of you are skipping to the next paragraph) because every time I boot into it, the clock is 8 hours off, because it's doing some bad compensation for time zones, even though the clock it's on is on local time. Today I accidentally booted into Linux, so I figured I'd try to fix it. After doing some digging, I realized that the system wasn't able to access the hardware clock, and the reason was that Debian doesn't compile the hardware clock's driver into the kernel. Now, I'm all for minimizing the kernel and putting things into modules, but doesn't that seem like a weird oversight? I think most people need the clock. Linux needs the clock.

Then, I discovered that it in fact had been compiled, but as a module (and yes, that 80% of you can skip this paragraph too without missing much). However, the system was not loading the module at bootup. Now, doesn't that sound like a huge oversight? Obviously someone must have already realized that you would need it.

I really gotta find me an advisor. Preferably one with lots of grant money. My officemate actually is part of a research group and they had extra grant money so they were trying to buy him a laptop. But he turned it down. He turned it down. Even his advisor was telling him to run with it, but no. At the very least he could have sold his current laptop, putting the proceeds into going into Sharks games with me (he's Canadian). Speaking of which, I've also discovered that one of the new students in the department is from Minnesota and is a hockey fan. This gives me two potential people to go to hockey games with, which would be great because it avoids the stigma of the man-date. Even better, my officemate is not a Habs fan despite being from Quebec, and the new guy isn't a Wild fan (understandably), so getting them to come to Canucks games with me will be easier.

I must also start looking on Vancouver's craigslist to look for Canucks tickets on sale over the holidays. Not all those 17000 season ticket holders can go to all the games, right? Right? Right?

Right?

Current Music: Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun

Ass Piracy and Japanese Schoolchildren

Thanks Frances:

I am a Japanese School Teacher
I've barely made a dent in it, but you should read the first article. It's really something.

Random quotes from my past, provided without context #29

Some people brag about their cars or penis size

I brag about my graphics card

You gotta keep in mind...having a nice car or huge schlong is great and all...but my graphics card can render a far nicer car or far larger penis than yours

And it can do so with 8x anisotropic filtering!

Does YOUR dick have 8x anisotropic filtering? I doubt it

-- Steve Kwan

Current Music: Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To

Dickolas steals from Man vs. Clown!: Part 2 of an n part series, where n is large

Anything I say about this article before you read it will only spoil it that little bit more, so just jump right into it: Good Magazine's article

Palming Mark Kingwell
I stole this from Man vs. Clown! as I am wont to do. I highly recommend you pay Mr. Lynn an e-visit right now, because he has something you should all see right now, to get you back into the mood for hockey.

Current Music: Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better

FINALLY you can SEE your meat

Last week some of us were talking about old SNL clips, and I realized that the two clips I remember most vividly from the early-to-mid 90's are:

• Crystal Gravy


• Schmitt's Gay

Good times.

Current Music: The Decemberists - Leslie Anne Levine

EDIT (10:21PM, September 21, 2005): The links now point to where they say they point to.

Addendum

This talking-like-a-pirate thing isn't working so well for me; I don't know if I can keep it up all day.

I think I may have to settle for talking like the pirates from Overboard.

Current Music: The Decemberists - From My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)