Creative Ramblings

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Okay, so the Iranians are going to (hopefully not, but probably will) stone to death 8 women and one man who have been convicted of adultery… But, wait a minute- eight women and ONE man? Okay, so where are the other men?! If they insist on taking Old Testament law and doing weird things with it, they could at least keep the part about punishing BOTH parties. To where did the men disappear?!

In one week, Britain has not only accepted Muslim Shariah Law, but they’ve also approved the creation of human/pig embryos, which will (presumably) be hacked apart for spare parts at a few weeks of age. (Note: From what I know of scientists’s curious and slightly perverse nature, they will “accidentally” forget to kill a few of them and grow them out just to see what they become. Watch it happen.)

One company has already tried this to some extent, and is seeking a patent on the procedure.

I couldn’t believe either of these stories when I first read them, but I’ve been poking around the internet on news sites ranging from conservative blogs to bikers’ sites, and both stories (especially the pig embryo one) are mentioned in other places, so I think that they’re both legit. x_x

For hundreds of years, Britain has remained at least more or less sane compared to the crazies in the world, but it looks like those days are coming to an end. It’s a sad day when the home of Blake and Tennyson becomes the home of Frankenstein. When the sun sets on the British Empire, will it set in a mad scientists’s laboratory? People can believe that they came from monkies if that floats their boat, but I don’t think that scientific ethics and the line between humans and animals should be completely thrown out the window by people of any belief system. We saw what happens with that in Nazi Germany.

What’s doubly ironic about this pig/human thing is that it happens around the same time that the Muslims in Britain are getting rights to their own legal system and are getting more and more influence in the rulership of the country. Knowing Muslims’ feeling about pigs (NOT good!) and the human/animal distinction, I don’t think that they’ll take it very well. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I guess, in the end, I’m left wondering which would be worse- to live under absolute Shariah law or under a state of Nazi-style mad scientists who play games with humans in the lab. Many countries are hurtling towards one or the other, and I have to wonder which would be the more inhumane. Neither possibility seems very fun. I think that Shariah may actually be a bit better than the mad scientists’ fest, since Islam does at least have some moral code, but choosing between the two is like picking whether to jump into a shark tank or a tiger cage.

It kind of reminds me of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells. Wells, in addition to being a writer, was a eugenicist whose scientific fantasies were for the most part impossible, but are a horrfying look at what interested him and like-minded people. While I’m certainly not in a huge panic over Britain’s recent descent, it still serves as a very real warning sign to America. I love science (I always have) but it needs some boundaries. People shouldn’t do totally crazy things just to see if they’ll work. Embryonic stem cells aren’t worth much, anyway- adult stem cells have promise, but when embryonic stem cells were used on Parkinson’s victims, the effects (violent jerking and spasms) were more horrific than the disease (which they did NOT cure.) Last I heard, they couldn’t get the jerking to stop, either. Adult stem cells work well and are harvested without killing anyone, from human adults (think: similar to blood donation.)

Anyway… …seriously, human/pig hybrids? Are these guys on crack or something? 0_o;; Word of advice: Do NOT do science when under the influence of drugs. Seriously. You might make a pig mutant or something. Friends don’t let friends go to the lab drunk.

I found this trick here. It’s so useful!!! =D

How to Locate and Delete Dead Files from You iTunes Library:

1. Make a smart playlist called “All Files” with this rule: “Artist” is not “123456789″ (or any nonsense name that won’t be in your library).

2. Make a static playlist called “All Live Files”.

3. Make a smart playlist called “Missing Files” with these rules: Match all of the following rules, Playlist is “All Files”, Playlist is not “All Live Files”

4. Select all the files from “All Files” and drag them into “All Live Files”. The dead files marked (!) will not copy over.

5. “Missing Files” will contain all of your dead files. Select all and delete. Voila, a nice clean iTunes library.

I have these three playlists in their own folder. Whenever I gather more than a couple dead tracks for whatever reason, I delete all the tracks in “All Live Files” and repeat steps 4 and 5.

How to Delete a file from a playlist:

Windows: SHIFT + DEL
Mac: OPTION + DEL

I didn’t believe this until I read it. Apparently, there IS some sanity left in the Supreme Court, and they do occasionally read our founding documents. The glaringly unconstitutional DC gun ban has been overturned, leaving people free to blast would-be murderers. Mugging people in DC just got a bit harder.

Full Story Here

Also-
Is There a Relationship between Guns and Freedom? Comparative Results from 59 Nations

Transcribed from my 2008/01/02 LiveJournal entry for reference-

After over a week of work, I FINALLY found a tutorial for installing Wacom Bamboo tablet support in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 “Gutsy” that ACTUALLY WORKS. I’m copying and pasting it here for the benefit of those who might need it- the tutorial on the Linux Wacom Project site didn’t work for me (and I couldn’t find any success stories on the site for my version,) but the following, which I took from the EdTechDev Blog, did:

Getting a Wacom Bamboo Tablet to work in Ubuntu Gutsy

The Bamboo Wacom tablets are new, and the wacom driver in the Ubuntu repositories does not support it, so you’ll need to compile and install the newest drivers manually (or go get an older Wacom tablet).

1. Go ahead and plug in your wacom bamboo tablet into the usb port.
2. Download the latest sources for the Wacom drivers from the Linux Wacom project.
3. Here is an adapted version of the instructions on the linuxwacom site. Run these commands (in the Terminal application) to unpack and compile the project: (change the version numbers to the version of linuxwacom you have)

bunzip2 linuxwacom-0.7.9-4.tar.bz2
tar xvf linuxwacom-0.7.9-4.tar
cd linuxwacom-0.7.9-4

## see notes below, you’ll probably have to install
## build-essential, xorg-dev, and other packages
## before continuing:

./configure –enable-wacom
make
sudo make install

When you run the ./configure command, if you get errors, you likely need to install some development tools and libraries (using the synaptic package manager or apt-get), including: build-essential, linux-headers-generic, and xorg-dev.
4. Instead of src/2.6.19/wacom.ko, the wacom.ko will be under src/2.6.22/wacom.ko (depending on what kernel version you have - Ubuntu Gutsy is at 2.6.22 at the moment). Type “uname -r” to see your current kernel version.
5. Type “locate wacom.ko” to find the correct place to copy your new wacom.ko driver file. The correct path is the one that matches your current kernel version. In my case it is: /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/wacom.ko
Note that is …kernel/drivers/input/tablet/ NOT …kernel/drivers/usb/input/ like in the instructions on the linuxwacom site.
So I copied the wacom.ko driver there with this command (from inside the linuxwacom folder):

sudo cp src/2.6.22/wacom.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/wacom.ko

6. See the instructions on the linuxwacom site for more info. I ran the prebuilt install command but I don’t think that’s necessary. I ignored the stuff about /etc/udev/rules.d/10-wacom.rules. The filename in Ubuntu Gutsy is 50-xserver-xorg-input-wacom.rules, anyway.
7. Now you have to configure the X wacom driver in your xorg.conf file. Backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file before making any edits. If you are unfamiliar with editing xorg.conf, you can use these commands:

##backup
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-mybackup
##open file with gedit text editor:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Inside the ServerLayout section of the xorg.conf file add these lines:

InputDevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “pad”

And below your other input devices (like “Configured Mouse”) add these sections: (note I used /dev/input/wacom NOT /dev/input/event0 like in their instructions)

Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “stylus”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “stylus”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “eraser”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “eraser”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “cursor”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “cursor”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

# This section is for Intuos3, Cintiq 21UX, Graphire4, or Bamboo
Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “pad”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “pad”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

8. Now the kicker. Type these commands to unload and reload the wacom driver:

sudo rmmod wacom
sudo modprobe wacom

#then run:
grep -i wacom /var/log/messages | tail

You should see messages like “registered new interface driver wacom” and “device … is bound to the wacom driver” You should be able to see the cursor move when you drag the pen on the tablet now. But you still won’t be able to use the stylus/eraser/cursor as an input device in Inkscape or Gimp or Krita. You’ll have to reboot first, or at least restart X (control-alt-backspace). To enable the tablet as an input device in Inkscape, go to File->Input Devices and set the stylus/cursor/eraser to Screen. In Gimp you go to File->Preferences->Input Devices->Configure Input Devices and do the same.
9. Whenever your system updates to a new kernel, you’ll want to run the ./configure and make and install commands again (copy over the newly compiled wacom.ko file to the correct location). Once Ubuntu is updated to the 2.6.23 kernel AND has a wacom driver that is newer than 0.7.8, none of this should be necessary anymore.

So, FireFox 3 is now out. I downloaded and installed it. Here’s a brief rundown of the new features and functionality-

* Expect that a large percentage of your add-ons will not work. If the makers update the add-ons, that might change, but for now about 40-60% of mine are disabled. The ones I miss the most- the Bible Toolbar, the ImageShack addons, Gladder (BEST PROXY EVAR!), Media Pirate (downloads YouTube videos,) and the FireFox PayPal plugin. MOST of my themes no longer work, but the “Red Cats (Green Flavor)” which I almost always use works with FireFox 3, as does its sister “Red Cats (Blue Flavor.” The woman who does those themes is a skilled genius who always updates on time!

* The interface is slow and freezes up a bit, but future updates will probably fix that- and I’m running Vista, which may be part of the problem.

* The new bookmarks management system has great potential, and enables you to add tags, etc. easily when bookmarking, but it’s as a slow as a slug and often freezes when copying-and-pasting folders. It also keeps the Bookmarks Toolbar as a separate entity from the main bookmarks library (previously, it was a subfolder) which led to problems with using the toolbar RSS folder with Sage RSS (a WONDERFUL RSS extension!) This led to me having to copy and paste the RSS folder into the bookmarks list, and in the process, FireFox crashed several times before accepting it.

* The default interface looks cool.

* FireFox 3 has an incredible amount of potential and I don’t plan on downgrading it, but I would recommend that others wait for a month or so before installing it. By then, all of the little bugs will be hammered out of it and most of the extensions will have been upgraded to work with the new FireFox 3.

I found this quote by the artist Paul McClintock amusing-

“It?s a perversity of the worst kind that art seems to only be valuable after the artist is dead. I will therefore fake my own death on several occasions throughout my life. Wait for the money to come rolling in and then return to collect it all. **** anyone that thinks classic art is worth more than contemporary art. Classic art should be free. The instant the artist dies it should go into the public domain.

In fact, I might just stipulate this in my will ? and for any art I sell? you own it until I die. Then the world owns it you ****er. You?re not going to make money selling my art after I?m gone.

?and then I wake up and realize my art is never going to be valuable. Which is actually quite reassuring.”

This obi is up for bidding here on Ebay. I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of obi, and this thing may seriously be the ugliest one in existence. The guy selling it is a great seller (I’ve gotten things from him before.) I wonder where he found this thing…

UPDATE!!!
Apparently, toke_9 bought it. 0_0

Random, but I was watching Harukanaru Toki no Naka de episode 15 and I noticed that Sefuru looks a LOT like Kurapika from Hunter X Hunter. Image comparison below-

Read the rest of this entry »

I finally got around to watching the Naruto Shippuden movie. It’s a massive improvement over the horror that was the third movie, but it’s basically a rip of the first Naruto movie ("Clash in the Land of Snow.")

How it’s a rip of Naruto movie 1:

* hopeless, cynical and very annoying woman must be protected from group of ninja.

* Naruto wonderfully inspires her not to give up.

* horribly designed group of bad-ninja-flunkies with no character development

* Strange clothing designs all throughout

* Etc., etc….

High points of the movie include:

* the high priestess’s ceremonial robes are well-designed, although she doesn’t wear them much.

* the evil ninja basically turn into Hollows. Really. They morph and end up looking like Hollows (or perhaps Vizards.) Someone is ripping ideas here.

* For some reason, I think that the main villain looks like a pirate, and that amused me to no end.

* It’s worth suffering through the ending credits for the cameo at the end. It’s hilarious.

* Seeing a man use what I call the "Britney-Spears-no-jutsu" was funny.

* Shikamaru and Temari get a few scenes, and they’re together, as usual. (I’m a mild ShikaTema fan.)

Low Points of the Movie:

* Worst Naruto theme song ever. Seriously, the ending them is that bad. I endured it in (fulfilled) hopes of a funny cameo at the end.

* No character development for the villains (a sad affliction of most anime movies) and questions about them left unanswered.

* the miko is just really unlikable.

* her very likable servants die. (The likable civilians always die in movies like these!)

* the Akatsuki don’t show up even once, even in a cameo. TT_TT

Random Observations:

* SuperWombat and I spent about an hour trying to figure out the gender of the orange-haired villain flunky. We eventually decided that it was probably female. This was part of the fun.

* The idea of a Nordic-looking miko is funny.

* Apparently, the miko’s mom (named "Miroku," quite funnily) retained her powers after having a child. Interesting for those familiar with what miko are (think: "combat nuns.")

* Anything other than the third movie would have to be an improvement, and the Naruto Shippuden movie is probably one of the better Naruto movies.