I hope you had a happy holiday. I spent mine in Maryland, giving thanks for being surrounded by loving parents and lifelong family friends whose idea of giving thanks seems to involve a lot of receiving thanks. And by “thanks”, I mean food. And by “food”, I mean… pie.
I have a new jogging partner, a co-worker who lives a very convenient 3 minutes away from me. Convenient, in the sense that I can get there by back roads, or even jog there. Although it’s more likely that he would jog here, since he’s in significantly better shape than I am, as all workout partners should be. And yes, smartypants, there is such a thing as an inconvenient 3 minutes, for instance, the 3 minutes you spend wondering whether there will be a pink line in the round window.
After some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I have come to the conclusion that, if I jog 4 miles every day from now until Christmas, I may actually be able to work off all the thanks I received last weekend.
Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords [via RRE]
Spirituality of Tetris: Predestination of Blocks. Your pieces have already been determined at the first moment the game begins. Many Tetris players view this is a sign of a sort of spirituality in their Tetris game.
Fig Newton Fun Facts. Over a billion Newtons are consumed every year.
I’m eating one right now.
I’m the top Mark Pilgrim on Google. This is more of an accomplishment than it sounds. I’ve been searching for my own name on search engines for years, and it used to come up with lots of hits related to this Mark Pilgrim, a radio DJ in South Africa. He actually sent me an email a few months ago. I wrote him back but it never really went anywhere. I don’t hold it against him; I suck at email correspondence too. The more disturbing part is that I get a steady stream of hits of people coming to this weblog by searching Google for “mark pilgrim”. 7 just yesterday.
Juggler’s World: Delving deeper into juggling hieroglyphics. It is not possible to determine beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt whether the juggling depicted [in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics] has ritual religious significance, or is primarily athletic.
Juggling simulation programs for Mac. Just because.
I played the euphonium for over 10 years. I was in all-state band three years in a row. I had a double-belled euphonium for several years. One of the silver ones with 5 valves. I still have it, in the back of the closet. It’s one of those things I move from apartment to apartment to house and stuff it back in the closet.
I miss FEED Magazine.
New Apple ad for Mac OS X (seen in The New Yorker): “The only thing we have a monopoly on is compliments.”
Anti-piracy feud bodes ill for Web music. People using hot new music devices such as Apple Computer’s iPod or Compaq Computer’s iPaq will not be able to play music from the Pressplay and MusicNet subscription services.
What a surprise. By the way, Apple’s idea of anti-piracy is putting a sticker on the package that says “Don’t steal music” in 5 languages.
A year ago in Salon: Cool clothes for identical zombies.
4 years ago in National Hog Farmer: Managing People Who Manage Pigs. You can teach people to raise hogs – but you can’t teach compassion for the animal.
Some advice, apparently, transcends time. BTW, National Hog Farmer has archives online for the past 4 years. All magazines should be this organized.
Mulling Brains. In short, brains taste nasty. Which brings up a question of dinner-party etiquette: Just what does one do when offered a plate of steaming pork brains by a well-meaning host?
5 years ago in News.com: Apple acquires Next in stunning move.
6 years ago: Browser statistics on Yahoo. Microsoft Explorer: 6.4%. Lynx: 5.8%.
SatireWire: Dog Porn Disclaimers
Zen Crossword [via BBSpot]
The Register: Linux app makes Xbox net gaming a reality. Next year’s launch of Microsoft’s network gaming service for Xbox has been pre-empted by an open source/Linux development, XBox Gateway.
The program itself runs on Linux, but it comes bundled as a floppy boot disk with enough Linux to run it automatically, so you don’t actually have to install Linux on your hard drive. (Try that with a Windows app!) Here’s the project home page, FAQ, and installation HOWTO.
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© 2001–present Mark Pilgrim