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Design your own life

The other day I received a brochure from IKEA, the last page featured an advertisement by “DELA” a dutch funeral insurance company. Even though the disclaimer at the bottom of the add that the advertisement was not an initiative by IKEA it made me think about the essential missing products in the IKEA “design your own life” philosophy.
Design your own life
 
Aska

Swedish Urn
colors

  • Sunday Grey
  • Heaven White
  • Bat Black
  • Blood Red
€ 149.00
Kista
Swedish Pine Coffin
€ 349.00
Off course this is all parody and the marvelous IKEA company is not associated with any of the above.
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BubbleBable


Seems like I was mentioned… I hope in a favorable context.

Q12　最近メインで使っている言語は？　なぜその言語に引かれたのですか？

Perl。それまではawkやCを使っていて、今でもたくさん使っているけれど、PerlはCでやりたいことをプロトタイピングするのに実は便利。システムコールとかよく似た名前で扱えるしね。後、よいライブラリがそろっている。DNS関連では、オラフ・コルクマン（Olaf Kolkman）のNet::DNSなんか結構素敵。

　Cは知っておくと困らない。おかげで今もなんとかメシが食えてます。別に簡単な統計計算をCでやったっていい。32ビット同士のかけ算で、結果が64ビットであってほしい、というのをアセンブリ言語以外で書くのって結構面倒だからね。

　オブジェクト指向的なものにはイマイチ慣れなくて、使わずにいるんだけど、データや実行しているコードの流れさえつかめば、どういう言語でも対応はできると思う。Concurrency（同時に複数のコードが走っていること）を考えると、順番が書かれている通りに実行されるわけじゃないから、難しいけど。

　言語オタクにはなれなかったというか、劣等感があります。Prologとか、全然分かっていない。LISPのS式は、素晴らしいと思うし、教養の1つとして知っておくべきだと思うけど。JavaとCommon Lispが近縁なんだよな、そういえば。

　ツールというか、ゴチャマンとした処理系としては、Rは面白いと思ってます。プログラミング言語というよりは、統計処理関連アプリだけど :-）

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Confit de Canard

This years Christmas I decided to live up to the Duck Dogma (“Whenever you see Duck, eat it!”) and made Confit de Canard.

Confit is a means of preparation where one starts with salting  the meat and then cook it gently, drowned in fat. 

 

Duck has the property to turn dry when prepared, you can prevent that by making sure the meat does not boil.

When roasting the meat that can be prevented by roasting it on a high temperature so that it is sealed by its own crust, and then leaving it on a relatively low fire until its done.

The alternative way of preparing is to seal the meat in fat and slowly let it simmer. I have been told that can prepare beef at about 40 degrees Centigrade as long as you keep it at that temperature for a few hours, never tried it though.

I prepared the confit for 9 persons, so I bought myself 18 legs and 5 cans of goose fat.

I rubbed the legs with salt, crushed pepper and pimento. This is something that I intend to improve on the next time I prepare this. Then I plan to salting the legs by marinade them in a salt solution for a day or so.

Arrange the legs in a casserole and cover with goose fat. Use sufficient fat to make sure the legs are covered when the fat is melted. It took me exactly 5 pots of 0.5 liter.

For taste add a few cloves of garlic, a few onions and a few leaves of laurel.

Put this in your oven, temperature around 100 degrees centigrade so that the meat itself is at about 90 degrees. Leave this simmer for about 3 to 4 hours. That is all, real easy, cannot fail.

By the way, a pot of goose fat of 0.5 liter costs about 4 Euro, I’ve never spend so much money on grease. But fortunately its great fat to prepare potatoes in.
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Planet Earth to M$…. beeebbb… noiisssseee… beeepppp

I just read an article on ZDnet. It describes a demo of an exploit on an un-patched XP SP1 machine on an open wireless network. The MS executive was surprised by the ease of the attack.

Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft U.K., was surprised by the incident.

"In the demonstration we saw, it was both enlightening and frightening to witness the seeming ease of the attack on the (Windows) computer," said McGrath. "But the computer was new, not updated, and not patched."

The first sentence makes one wonder on which planet has this man been hiding. The second sentence makes me wonder how machines are sold other than new, not updated, and not patched.

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IPv6 Depletion Song

From The RIPE 55 Secret Working Group Report

a long long time ago
i can still remember
when my laptop could connect elsewhere

and i tell you all there was a day
the network card i threw away
had a purpose – and worked for you and me….

But 18 years completely wasted
with each address we’ve aggregated
the tables overflowing
the traffic just stopped flowing….

And now we’re bearing all the scars
and all my traceroutes showing stars…
the packets would travel faster in cars…
the day….the routers died

Chorus (ALL!!!!!)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Now did you write an RFC
That dictated how we all should be
Did we listen like we should that day

Now were you back at RIPE fifty-four
Where we heard the same things months before
And the people knew they’d have to change their ways….

And we – knew that all the ISPs
Could be – future proof for centuries

But that was then not now
Spent too much time playing WoW

ooh there was time we sat on IRC
Making jokes on how this day would be
Now there’s no more use for TCP
The day the routers died…

Chorus (chime in now)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

I remember those old days I mourn
Sitting in my room, downloading porn
Yeah that’s how it used to be….

When the packets flowed from A to B
via routers that could talk IP
There was data..that could be exchanged between you and me….

Oh but – I could see you all ignore
The fact – we’d fill up IPv4

But we all lost the nerve
And we got what we deserved!

And while…we threw our network kit away
And wished we’d heard the things they say
Put all our lives in disarray

The day…the routers died…

Chorus (those silent will be shot)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Saw a man with whom I used to peer
Asked him to rescue my career
He just sighed and turned away..

I went down to the net cafe
that I used to visit everyday
But the man there said I might as well just leave…

And now we’ve all lost our purpose..
my cisco shares completely worthless…

No future meetings for me
At the Hotel Krasnapolsky

and the men that make us push and push
Like Geoff Huston and Randy Bush
Should’ve listened to what they told us….
The day…the routers….died

Chorus (time to lose your voice)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

 

Words and performance by Gary Feldman

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XN–BLAFOO

 
Yesterday the following data appeared in the root zone… 
 

XN–0ZWM56D.

XN–11B5BS3A9AJ6G.

XN–80AKHBYKNJ4F.

XN–9T4B11YI5A.

XN–DEBA0AD.

XN–G6W251D.

XN–HGBK6AJ7F53BBA.

XN–HLCJ6AYA9ESC7A.

XN–JXALPDLP.

XN–KGBECHTV.

XN–ZCKZAH.

 

in Amsterdam Zweegers was found death in a bath tub and the statistics on child death did not significantly change.

 

  

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Debating technique

 What is the name of the debating trick that starts with making wide sweeping statements about the community of your opponent, like in:

Our 61st Febember blog post on Chocolate Cookies has generated significant attention. It is gratifying to see culinary experts like Cookie Monster respond. Not so gratifying is that Cookie Monster's response reveals that even experts in pastry can fail to understand the dietary implications of the recipes they work with daily. This has been a longstanding problem in the culinary community.

 

 

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The Amen Break

This video contains an expose by Nate Harrisson about the “Amen Break”. I did not know about the “Amen Break” as a concept and this video is an eyeopener. A good piece of music history and theory that, when you are only remotely interested in the history of modern music, you should listen to.

Nate Wilson uses the history of the Amen Break to make an elloquentargument about “innovation” in arts and culture being stiffled by tostrict copyright rules.

Well worth 18 minutes of your time. One remark: this YouTube content is radio, not video.

For those who do not know what the Amen Break is here follows the first paragraph of the Wikipedia lemma:

(usually pronounced //ɑ:’mmɛn/) was a drum-solo performed by Gregory Sylvester “G.C.” Coleman. The “Amen Break”, “Amen” or imitations thereof, are frequently used as sampled drum loops in hip hop, jungle and drum and bassmusic. It is 5.20 seconds long and consists of 4 bars of the drum-solosampled from the song “Amen, Brother” as performed by the 1960s funk and soul outfit The Winstons. The song is an up-tempo instrumental rendition of an older gospel music classic. The Winstons’ version was released as a B-side of the 45 RPM 7-inch vinyl single “Color Him Father” in 1969 on Metromedia (MMS-117), and is currently available on several compilations and on a 12-inch vinyl re-release together with other songs by The Winstons.

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GNU wins!

You probably thought this was about an open source license. (These are probably not even Gnus, but I know more about GPL than about African animals.).

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