Voder-Vocoder

I played around with Movable Type this weekend. I liked it, but have a couple of issues. I think it should come with a couple of dozen stylesheets for users to choose from. I spent an hour playing with CSS before I got something I liked.

The one thing I don’t like is that it groups entries by date. That seems very unnatural.

I am giving up on Debian Linux. I tried installing it for a headless server and it worked great–but was running a 2.2 kernel. So I install the 2.4.x kernel with apt-get, and reboot. Well, the install program modified lilo incorrectly and ran /sbin/lilo, so it was broken and failed to boot. I go in and fix lilo, and get it to boot the 2.4 kernel, but suddenly it no longer is loading the correct module for the net card. At this point I decided to give up on this.

Been doing some Java programing for math. I’m getting paid to do this too! I’ve written two applets that deal with a rotor-based sandpile model.

"We are well aware that the xmms ui sucks. Some time i hope we can ship media player with a working interface, but for now use Ctrl-D."

—Alexander Larsson

Possessions are junk. They won’t make you happy. This is why I won’t be spending $700-$1000 to fix my broken laptop.

I also promise from this day forth that I will never buy another thing from Best Buy. Those bastards won’t honor their warranty.

I picked up a copy of maple 9 yesterday. I’ll give you my opinions on it later. I strongly suspect that the computer algebra system which is the true computer algebra system can only be understood by mathematicians.

I’m sick.

\begin{rant}

I’m sick the weekly asshole killing innocents and avoiding the consequences of his action through suicide.

I’m sick of Ariel Sharon building a apartheid state in Palestine.

I’m sick of the Nobel Prize committee giving a peace prize to avowed terrorist Yasser Arafat.

I’m sick of George W. Bush, an devout Christian, chumming it up with Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz at the ranch, when Abdullah is the ruling dictator of a country where it is illegal to celebrate the Eucharist in public.

I’m sick of George Bush, who said in 2000 that his favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ, interpreting “Turn the other cheek” to mean “Bomb another country, just to prove that your testicles are bigger than everyone else’s.”

I’m sick of every member of every army in the world, who all think that the commandment THOU SHALT NOT KILL somehow doesn’t apply to them.

\end{rant}

My paper, Aztec Diamonds and Baxter Permutations can now be found at arXiv:math.CO/0309135.

It was cool last niught and I had my window open. I slept well and woke up 90 seconds before the alarm. Somehow that inspired me to have the most interesting dream.

I was flying somewhere, after not flying in years. I was still afraid of surfacte-to-air missiles, but fiinally decided that I could take a chance on air travel again. I had jsut got on the plane when I had a vision. The plane was not going to make it to its destination. I got off of the plane before it left the gate. As I was leaving, I noiticed that the pilot who was boarding looked drunk or ill.

As I stod in the terminal, I watched the plane take off, and then crash into the ground. My fears were justified. I got out my cell and called for a ride home. I immediately got a couple of messages from people who wanted to know if I was alive.

As I walked out of the terminal, a female security guard asked me to come with her. I obliged, until she led me into a scary part of the airport. Then I said I didn’t want to come with her, or I would be happy to talk to her, but maybe in a nice conference room somewhere. Another security guard walked up then, noticed that I was making trouble and pulled a gun on me. The first guard told the second that he shouldn’t point a gun at me, but he didn’t listen. I fought the second guard, and managed to shoot him in the fight. I then unloaded the pistol and threw it away. I then told the first guard to get lost. I ran.

When I got outside, my ride pulled up. This was a skinny punky girl who only appears in this dream. She was driving crazy and I told her that we had to make a fast getaway. She stepped on it and drove down the wrong way down one of those one way drives at the airport. I mentioned that we would probably attract less attention if we went the right way and drove casual.

That’s where I woke up.

There should be a cooking show with two 13 year old boys who have never cooked anything more complicated than peanut butter and jelly. Each episode, they try and fail to invent something new, like chocolate scrambled eggs.