Voder-Vocoder

I’m a devious degenerate, defender of the devil.

— Fett’s Vette, MC Chris

I went out and bought a GBA SP today. I love it. It’s so tiny and beautiful. I also picked up Metroid Fusion, which is wonderfully old-school, yet beautiful. I hadn’t had a gameboy since the first generation of them came out, back in the day. But I still have my old games (Tetris, Metroid II, Pinball, some others), which work on the GBA platform, even though the larger cartridges stick out a bit. Something fun to do on long bus rides.

To users of the phoenix browser: I found this page on Phoenix Help.

If you use phoenix under linux, and you don’t have anti-aliased fonts turned on, try this. I just installed it. It rocks.

No war coverage today. They had bloody golf on the tube. Golf! In this time of crisis.

I hiked around the arboretum for a while today. It was nice to be outside.

The War Party

Let’s see what the Iraqis have to say about all this.

Interesting conversation:
Me: So I sat around all day and watched TV…
Her: Cartoons?
Me: No, the news. I’ve been watching the war all day, and I ought to stop watching so much if it.
Her: You should watch cartoons instead.

The world would be a much better place if we all watched more cartoons.

I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here, I’m not here

In a little while
I’ll be gone
The moment’s already passed
Yeah, it’s gone

—How to Disappear Completely, Radiohead

The war is on, as of cira 9:00PM CST.

Currently drinking: White Russian. I’ll be switching to whiskey soon.

Note: the Iraq debate I was going to sponsor next week will not be taking place. The point is now moot.

Mindless Link Propagation

1) Here’s something to read from Terry Jones in the Observer.

2) Please, support the DOWN WITH NATIONALISM campaign. All you have to do is copy and pass on this image.

3) Remember, In the Grim Future of Hello Kitty, There is ony War!

4) The Gulf War II Drinking Game

Last night I had a dream that I was fighting zombies. We rushed upstairs in the house where we were holed up, ’cause it’s so easy for zombies to jump in through the downstairs windows. Now we only had a narrow staircase to defend. Luckilly it had a door at the top, too. The zombies were armed with derringers, so the usual thing that happened was that the zombies would shoot and miss, then we’d throw a heavy lamp at them and they’s be knocked silly for a while but we couldn’t steal their guns, cause they only had one shot. So we ended up having to hack the zombies up with a big knife or something. Eventually all of the people I was with were killed or zombiefied, and I was on the run. The funny thing about the whole thing was that neither I or the zombied had any special strength. In fact, they were kinda slow and easy to confuse.

Then I met the head zombie. He was slowly turning into an alien. His skin was becoming hard and scaly, and his fingers were becoming pointy, and his face was developing a beaklike structure. (Kind of like a Nivin Protector.) If this was a bad sci-fi movie, then there would be all of this scientific bullshit about space-born virus inteligence. But there wasn’t, and that was refreshing. It helped that there was no know-it-all scientist character int he story at all.

Then I woke up.

What did I do before that? I got home at 1am, made some dinner, and listened to the BBC World Service on FM90.7 for a while until they started talking about sports.

What did I do before that? I went to see the Kissers play at Luther’s. Good show.

I’m thinking of doing the Appalachian Trail (or a portion thereof) this summer. This seems like it might be a logistical challenge.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Kyle says that the war would have started today, but for that fact. Someone in the administration probably noted that it would be unseemly for Al-Jazeera to broadcast images of Americans geting roaring drunk on Jameson’s, Guinness, and Harp on the day that we start an invasion. Probably worse than when some Palestinean punks cheered September 11.

I kinda think Kyle is right. About the timing issue, that is.

I had planned to sponsor a debate on the war next week, assuming it hasn’t started yet. It looks like it won’t happen.

It’s spring today. It’s time for me to switch to a lighter coat. That’s too bad, ’cause I like my leather coat.

I’ve been working on a Fish Simulation, based on the thoughts of Chris Wilson.

Worked most of the night on algebra. Took exam this morning. I think I got three out of four problems right. Am happy with that.

I need to work harder in this class. I think it’s important. Abe suggests I check out this book.

I put a lot of work into reworking this page yesterday. I’ve finally moved all content off of http://uw.physics.wisc.edu/~hal/ and transferred it to this site. I also grabbed a lot of content off of http://ups.physics.wisc.edu/~hal/.

There’s now a lot of junk on the left sidebar.

You can define a natural isomorphism from Hom_R(R^(Λ₁), R^(Λ₂)) to (R^(Λ₂))^Λ₁. (Where Hom_R(R^(Λ₁), R^(Λ₂)) is the R-linear homomorphisms from R^(Λ₁) to R^(Λ₂).)

Hom_R(R^(Λ₁), R^(Λ₂)) —> R^{(Λ₂) , Λ₁}

If f is an element of Hom_R(R^(Λ₁), R^(Λ₂)) then that map sends f to [f], a (Λ₂) , Λ₁ matrix.

Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?

• Godspeed You! Black Emperor – I saw this salon article and mp3. I downloaded the song, and it’s growing on me. Dl’ed more on Kazaalight and like the moodyness. Am I turning into pretentious bastard? Would anyone notice the difference?
• For those interested in web design, here is A List Apart. Interesting articles, although most are old. Ignore if you have a life.

It amazes me how little work I get done on the weekend. Look, it’s almost over and I accomplished squat.

I changed my look. Special thanks to Mark Chapman, who cut my hair.

Lots of other new things in my life. New advertising campaign: “Need to bring up your grade? ACT NOW!”

Took two exams yesterday. The analysis exam had no super hard questions, but I probably missed some important details in some of my proofs. I hope for liberal quantities of partial credit.