awakeasaurusrex

The Republicans are messing with forces they don't understand.

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:52:21 GMT

They need help coming up with new ideas, after the electorate rejected all their old ones. So they turned to the Internet.

The top results are kooky enough (thanks to the Ron Paul crowd), but through a glitch you can still see posts which have been pulled from the main lists, such as this extremely popular proposal to give every American novelty testicles that can hang from the exhaust pipe of their pickup truck.

This has the proposals live as they come in, before they're moderated, and that's awesome. The discussion about Truck Nutz is RAGING.

The person who does thesillyaddiction.com gets on my nerves sometimes

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:51:28 GMT

but this almost gave me a giggling fit at work.

Public Service Announcement.

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:08:11 GMT

If you get evil enough in Jade Empire you can make your character kick puppies to death for health powerups.

That is all.

Joe the Plumber has no idea what he is talking about.

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:16:10 GMT

To give some context: not only is Joe the Plumber getting schooled by Fox News, who (like most Murdoch organs) are ever-keen to make socialism look bad, he's being schooled by Alan Colmes, the token liberal talking head they bring in for the conservative talking heads like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly to slap about.

And now he's got a website and book!

The world might have changed but Sarah Palin is still very very dumb.

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:52:27 GMT

Check out this hatchet job from, of all places, Fox News.

Bill O'Reilly airing negative stories about conservative Republicans? That's change I can believe in!

Mwa ha ha!

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:23:01 GMT

Mwa ha ha ha!

Context: Free Republic is where the hardcore Republican base hangs out online. And by "hardcore" I mean they occasionally say things like "the Founders restricted the franchise to rich white men for very good reasons". Their flailing after the 2006 midterms included someone comparing George Bush and Dick Cheney to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda; this looks to be just as much fun.

Oh look, they're clinging to the hope that the Electoral College delegates will come to their senses and not appoint Obama.

This is going to entertain me for weeks.

Other highlights of the day:
- McCain being really gracious in his concession speech, flashing "shut the fuck up" looks at his supporters when they start booing Obama.
- Palin looking like she's on the verge of exploding (a bit like those bombs which she will now never ever ever be allowed to mess with, thank God).
- Obama's first decision as President-Elect: getting a puppy for his kids.

"homosexual sodomy to your heart's content"

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:31:47 GMT

This is what happens when hardcore Republicans are facing utter electoral defeat: wild, uncontrolled, Time Cube levels of crazy.

TO VICTORY

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:51:29 GMT

More of my favourite pink-shirted Palin supporters.

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:27:58 GMT

So you remember this, right?

Well, there's more of those two:

Lefty looks bored. I don't know what to make of Righty's expression.

NEWS FLASH: High-profile Republican defects from McCain to Obama campaign!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:35:03 GMT

Cutest political cartoon ever?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:56:11 GMT

Sarah Palin's appeal to the Republican base explained.

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:59:22 GMT

Someone should give the photographer an award for this one:

(Why yes, I am wasting a load of time at work. Why do you ask?)

He's like a poor little lost lamb.

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:42:36 GMT

He's so confused! You just want to take him home and tell him it's all going to be OK.

Why couldn't I have invented MMORPGs?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:03:22 GMT

Then I could build my very own mansion full of secret rooms.

"What are we going to do, John?"

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:58:06 GMT

"The same thing we do every four years..."

Marriage is awesome.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:35:42 GMT

To all of you who came to the wedding celebration: thank you. It was great to see everyone having such a great time.

To all of you who helped out with any aspect of it: doubleplus thank you. We couldn't have done it without you.

The legal stuff happens on Tuesday, but as we said to many of you last night that's not the part we've been focused on (although it's also pretty important): the big emphasis was on celebrating the ramshackle mess that is "us" in front of a crowd of approving friends and family, and that's exactly what happened.

Advise me on getting a new computer.

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:24:43 GMT

I finally handed in my thesis today. This means two things:

- Amy and I can get ourselves an XBox 360 at some point in the near future.
- I can finally retire my broke-down old laptop. It'll still boot... just about... in Safe Mode, but the hardware seems to be firmly busted, it's out of warranty and even when it does get fixed it normally ends up breaking again (often within 6 months). I think, at the end of the day, the problem isn't with any of the components so much as it is with the basic design of the machine.

So, what sort of machine would people recommend? Here's the sort of parameters I'm looking at, in order of priority:

1: RELIABLE. Reliable reliable reliable. I don't necessarily need something that I can run over with a tank and still use, but it should at least be able to handle being used for extended periods of time without catching fire. If I can leave it on overnight without all the circuitry burning itself out, all the better.
2: Not a commuter machine, tempting as the likes of the eee are. This is for at-home, personal, non-work use.
3: It should be able to run Windows XP and/or Vista. I'm not averse to having a Linux partition or something, but I want to be able to use Windows when I have to.
4: Reasonably modern specs. I'm not looking for a dedicated gaming rig - were I able to afford one, I still don't like the idea of paying top-notch prices for a machine which is already going to look slightly worn and dated in a year's time, and I'm not likely to bother buying upgraded video cards or RAM or whatever to keep it at the cutting edge. And it has to be said that the vast majority of PC games I have played in the last five or so years have either been old or have been homemade freeware/shareware games, and those tend not to require massive amounts of computing power. That said, it does sometimes make me sad that my current machine can't play any current games (seriously, good luck finding something that doesn't require at least a 128MB video card). Something that can happily run Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War without exploding or slowing down to an embarrassing crawl is fine by me.

(EDIT: By the way, just because the old computer was a laptop doesn't mean the new one necessarily has to be, although if I am going to get a desktop I should really wait until Amy and I move to somewhere where there's actual space for a desktop. Plus, since as I say above I don't require excitingly vast amounts of computing power and I'm not the sort of dude who's inclined to fiddle with the inside of his computer anyway, I'm leaning towards another laptop. Amy's computer has convinced me that there are machines out there which won't gleefully melt their insides if you ask them to check your e-mail.)

Any recommendations, my Army of Geekdom?

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, wedding planning is going fine.)

Rice Boy finished.

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:02:08 GMT

Rice Boy, if you didn't know, is (or, as of now, was) an excellent webcomic which, at its core, presents a surreal (as in the landscapes and creatures look like the sort of thing Dali would have painted, or perhaps Bosch) spin on the classic fantasy Quest Story. Go read it here; I find that it flows much better as a complete whole than it did as an episodic series.

ROAR

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:20:12 GMT

I've just sent my supervisor the first drafts of the introductory chapters to my thesis.

This doesn't mean that my thesis is finished, not by a long shot - my supervisor needs to proofread everything, I need to make such additions and corrections and alterations that he deems necessary. On the other hand, that's a process which hasn't taken too long even with particularly arduous chapters; I generally find writing things in the first place far more stressful than I do revising and editing them. So, finishing the first draft of the thesis is a bit of a milestone. It's especially nice since the end came with unexpected speed: I honestly hadn't expected to get to this point for weeks. :D

So, Amy got me an Easter basket

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:48:52 GMT

full of delicious treats, which is amazing of her. Said treats included a Kinder Surprise, which naturally I fell upon in order to assemble the toy inside.

I got this fellow:

According to the Kinder website, his name is "Tok Tok" and he teaches the kids at the wizard school (in Kinder's Harry Potter-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off toy range) about dragons and stuff, but he isn't very good at maths, so that's why when he can't help the kids with Maths problems he turns red. Nice try, Kinder, but it doesn't explain explain the HORNS and the FORKED TAIL. (Nor does it explain the snazzy blue pants, but I can't think of any Satanic connotations of snazzy blue pants.)

A tiny devil, emerging from an egg, on Easter Sunday. Sign of the end times, you reckon?

Best Gary Gygax tribute to date.

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:20:46 GMT

From Achewood:

Attention all geeks.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:23:26 GMT

Gary Gygax is dead.

Please to commence mourning, tasteless jokes about Raise Dead.

So cute.

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:25:18 GMT

You know they're best of friends really.

I don't do these normally, but this is a particularly fun one.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:40:42 GMT

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your journal and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.

Ah Pook Is Here

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:27:37 GMT