| From the GMail User Agreement: |
[May. 8th, 2008|06:40 pm] |
"8.4 You understand that by using the Services you may be exposed to Content that you may find offensive, indecent or objectionable and that, in this respect, you use the Services at your own risk."
See, there always has to be an ass-cover note in any user agreement. However I appreciate tremendously that Google chose to word it as "it's the Internet, sparky-- eye-bleach-inducing nightmare fuel is part of the experience" as opposed to the typical "well, our terms of service, *cough* forbid posting obscene or offensive materials *cough* NOTOURFAULT *cough* so, *cough* ONYOUROWN *cough* if someone sees something they don't like, well, we did say you couldn't." |
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| The Parallel Port |
[May. 3rd, 2008|05:23 pm] |
| [ | mood |
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When I took EE478, also known as the Digital Systems Course of Doom, we were given a deceptively difficult assignment: get information from the PC serial port. Seemed straightforward enough, write a program to send bits, read bits, easy. But reading the serial packets meant synchronizing a timing circuit to the stream of bits, shifting them into a register, then reading them out in serial, a task that took about a whole breadboard, and I'm not talking about the little ones. I'm talking about the four strips tied together, make sure all the power lines are connected, mammer-jammer breadboards.
So, when I started looking into using the parallel port, I steeled myself for the worst. I was expecting signals that appeared, then disappeared. I was expecting the libraries to control the thing to be pages of impossible navigations just to get a single bit to flip. I was ready for agony.
Thing is, however, the parallel port is remarkably straightforward. Pins 2 through 9 can be rigged, rather cleanly, to direct output bits, which, and this is the really neat part, just stay there. Like, even if the program exits.
The bit rate's also pretty respectable, provided you don't want to send large files over it. Run at "full rate," that is, without any wait statements between one number and the next, my scope tracks a bit at 1.5us, for a bit rate of almost 700kbaud.
What can I do with this? Well, it'd be easier to list what I couldn't do with it. The first thing I did was make a cheap-ass LED counter where, instead of wiring up flipflops, I just hooked three outputs of the parallel port to some LEDs and wrote a for loop. Next I discovered something delightful: connect a speaker between bit zero and ground, and you can program sounds. SO AWESOME.
So my linux lappy and me are nearly ready to start off into that deliciously murky area between software and hardware-- all that I need now is some more software for programming microcontrollers.. aaaaaaaand some actual microcontrollers.
Well maybe I'll work out some way to muck with those Z80's I have lying around.
Edit: You know what I can't do? PULSE WIDTH MODULATION. Yyeah, whenever the OS thinks to itself, "well, that byte can go to the parallel port NEXT cycle," the PWM sputters. My PWM LED *tries* to do that cool Macintosh fade-in-fade-out thing, but ends up looking kind of sad and pathetic as it sputters uuuUUuUUUuuuUUuuUUuup and dddDooOOoOOoOOoOoooOOoown in brightness. |
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| The Benefit of the Doubt |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|05:48 pm] |
I'm known to be charitable in my evaluations of people. I consider it one of the better things about me. Given a situation where someone is acting badly, I try to imagine the circumstances that could lead a basically rational, basically well-meaning person to end up acting in such a way, then I assume that this is what has happened.
It's amazingly useful in dealing with people, I've found.
But I've also discovered that there are a few cases where this useful self-programming utterly fails me. There are some things which will cause me to switch gears entirely and begin on a personal mental crusade to vilify a person whose infraction in no way remotely deserves it. I'm not talking about things where it might be justified, like, say, punching someone. I'm talking about extremely minor gaffes in conversation, which many people might not consider gaffes at all:
1: Displays of social conservatism. And I'm not even talking about the crazy redneck stuff. I'm talking about, for example, a guy saying he's vaguely distressed by people on the bus with massive tattoos, piercings, and/or metal plates stuck into their heads. In fact, anyone who shows any evidence of having a reaction less positive than "wow, I could NEVER do that to myself but it sure does look DIFFERENT" is in for a round of me trying to deconstruct them into anti-change fucktrolls.
2: Appeals to authority. If anyone ever says anything to the effect of "well person A says it, and person A is really sharp," I will immediately append to this sentence, in my head, "and I'd rather agree with A than be right". And then I'd start thinking of them as a totalitarian suckup dickhead.
3: Appeals to superior experience. If anyone ever says to me "I've been doing this for X years and I know it is so" I will immediately replace this in my head with "I do not remotely know whether this is true, but I'm hoping to intimidate you with how very LONG I have managed to avoid learning this." Label mentally applied to the above innocent gaffer: luddite dipshit.
So this is a real problem. I'm very lucky to work in a place where very few people display ANY of these qualities because I'm pretty sure I'd hate everyone inside a week if they did. I'm actually trying to at least partially de-program myself of this behavior, because while I still believe quite fervently that social conservatism and appeals to authority or experience are wrong, I need to train myself to understand that many people don't have as visceral a reaction to these things as I do, and may indeed use them as a kind of shorthand for more rational thoughts.
But naturally this will take a while. |
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| The Mads are BACK! |
[Apr. 20th, 2008|01:45 pm] |
Mad Science Attack in Miami.
Any rumors you may have heard concerning an "Allan the bubble professor" being involved are purely unconnected with me. I assure you. I mean seriously, I'd have to be really mentally unstable to develop that kind of weaponized detergent. |
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| (Crossposted from maskedretriever.com) |
[Apr. 20th, 2008|07:20 am] |
I've never been to a comics convention in my entire life, for what it's worth.
In this, my first year, I'm volunteering to help out with goodness-knows-what, for the very practical reason that it will keep me from chickening out. I have a terrible track reccord with this sort of thing and knowing that I'm on someone's list of resources always gives me a big boost in terms of motivation. Being counted on counts for something.
I'm trying to figure out what to do for a 'zine to bring with me-- I want to have some paper to show people the level I'm on. The reason for that is that is that I just read The Escapists and that book is designed to make people form Superhero Teams of Comics. Utterly engrossing artwork and a story with punch and enough grit to masterfully suspend disbelief pull you in and quiet any sense you might have that this "couldn't really happen," and all the while the over-arching story that is whispered into your ear is one of abject idealism: You CAN make a great comic with a few friends. There will be hard times, but it will be transcendentally beyond worth it.
And honestly? I already really really wanted to believe that. |
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| Poor Hillary. |
[Apr. 16th, 2008|10:12 pm] |
She got asked a REALLY hard question on the debate tonight, and indeed, Senator Clinton had to admit, she didn't have an answer on hand. So I thought I'd help her out.
The question:
"Senator Clinton, you spoke of using former presidents to serve both as ambassadors and advisors-- what role do you imagine the current president taking?"
So I thought I'd provide some answers, which I have compiled with the help of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) marco262. Not the EASY ones, you know, the ones where we tie him to a tree for all the little children to throw vegetables at him, or just send him to Iran with a name tag and a briefcase full of playboys and ham sandwiches, but the ones that, conceivably, you could really get away with using. And here they are:
10: Emergency Beer Disposal
9: Ambassador to the fraternities of American college-age males
8: America's collective aerobic coach
7: A modern Yogi Berra
6: The official whitehouse tour "greeter"
5: "King" of America, in the same way that britain has a Queen: someone with the illusion of importance for the tabloids to obsess over. (Hey, he looks the part.)
4: Presidential golf instructor
3: Whitehouse pinch hitter for those presidential ball games so it won't be obvious that either A) Obama throws like a girl or B) Hillary Doesn't.
2: The new center square on Hollywood Squares
And the number one use for ex-president George W Bush:
1: Official advisor for what NOT to do as President of the US of A |
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| My last name bugs me sometimes. |
[Apr. 13th, 2008|08:10 pm] |
So about a hundred years ago, my father's side of the family had a name that presumably came from some ancient pagan tribe of Czechoslovakia. That name was Hudeczek. My great grandfather or so took a whiff of the way the winds were blowing in Austria and decided not to have their names sound like they were, indeed, something other than nice locals. So a name was picked.
The name was the name of the street they lived on. That name was not a proper noun as it turns out. It was the word "corner". So began the Ecker family.
Now, being a post-modernist, I know not to judge the actions of my ancestors out of context. Things might have been bad enough for Czeks that this was a vital move. I can't and shouldn't presume to understand. But being a Nietzsche reader, I can call a lost end of a power struggle when I see one. Whoever that last generation of Austrian Hudeczeks were, they backed down.
My name has "backing down" built into it after a fashion. |
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| Pure Trope |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|05:18 pm] |
So doing Simon got me really thinking hard about the Way I Do Comics and I started to really start attacking myself on a collection of fronts, because where Simon succeeded were places where usually I fail, and where it failed it smelled an awful lot like it was failing the way my other stories have failed.
And I started gnawing on myself.
What's with all the science fiction, man? What's with all the tropes? Why the word play and base comedy and stereotyped Hero Shots and Adventure Runs and mimicry of Star Trek plots? Isn't all that stuff the very stuff that's keeping me from doing good and original work?
So I stewed over a few new ideas, and started mumbling to myself "give up the Epic, give up Firefly with Bunnies-- they're crap. Trope-soaked crap." I started thinking really drastic stuff like "no more science fiction" and "write what you know-- write what you FUCKING KNOW" And in this haze of eerily mingled self-loathing and megalomania I picked up Alan Moore's Writing for Comics and started reading. For a few pages Alan Moore confirmed everything I'd been chanting to myself. IDEAS, man, he kept saying, that's what you need to seed with, and I started plotting my transformation into some kind of weirdo post-modernist literature comics artist-- until I put down the book for a moment and abruptly remembered that Watchmen is a great heaping pile of superhero tropes.
It swims in superhero tropes. They ooze from its very pores. But Watchmen is still way better than 99.998% of all comics, everywhere, because lurking just beneath all those tropes is a story that rocks, and beneath that is a devastating thought-- that maybe it's all bullshit, and our only hope of not going crazy or killing each other is to pointedly ignore that very real fact.
So no, I don't have to stop writing science fiction or drop one adorable nod to Firefly from FWB. But I do have to look underneath the fun gags and neat-o moments and figure out what I should be saying with it. Because doing that won't just make me feel better about writing furry science fiction. It'll make said furry science fiction better.
Assuming I'm not just having delusions of grandeur. That seems to happen to me a lot. |
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| Holy WOW. |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|01:45 pm] |
http://www.inchwormds.com/tutorial/
Look. At this shiny.
This is so. Freaking. SHINY.
Drawing on the DS. AMAZING drawing on the DS. Like, better than a lot of the big-dog programs for PC drawing on the DS. GO AND BEHOLD THE SHININESS OF IT!
You get onion-skinning and animation! SO AMAZING
I worry a little about the DRM likely to befall something linked to a centralized website like that, But at least for comics you've got screen capture if worst comes to worst.
WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant. |
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| Charge. |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|07:44 pm] |
The energy's flowing oddly. I'm trying not to waste it.
It's the fault of the bad sleep schedule, the symposium, lots of little things coming together. I have right now a head of too little creative output, too much stimulation, and restless energy that can only be created by trying and failing to be useful for the better part of a week.
Dead Like Me is entirely too brilliant. I'm almost a good enough writer that when I get inspired by something it isn't horribly derivative. For those of you who saw Stranger than Fiction with any proximity to reading Simon, YEAH, SORRY ABOUT THAT. Have an idea that came from DLM... trying not to kill it is hard.
Better keep moving-- internet eats my creativity like it was friggin' popcorn. |
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| No, I hadn't forgotten. |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|10:37 pm] |
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Uberhouse has indeed moved and updated, SINNERS. |
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| Back to work with me. |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|07:02 pm] |
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Boy, that didn't feel eerily like Simon's typical work day at ALL. :B |
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| UH2 ~totally~ delayed... |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|11:00 pm] |
I'm frantically trying to scan my 24-hour comic which ended up being only 12 pages but it's a pretty decent (if rather screwed-up) story which I intend to post in lieu of today's UH2 update.
When I get the gorram thing inked that is. |
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| Wait-- |
[Mar. 17th, 2008|10:38 pm] |
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| Money's no problem as long as ya got some. |
[Mar. 17th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
Yesterday after I got my taxes done (I owed this year but not ~too~ much) my car wouldn't start again. Had 'er towed to the Toyota dealership, signed her in and walked to the train. After work today (usually ride the train to work anyway) walked back to the dealership, signed her out, and drove off. The computer had died, and the swap out was under warranty, but I had them do routine maintenance because I'd been planning to do this eventually anyway.
I know not everyone can afford to be as easygoing about stuff that costs the kind of money this costs. I'm glad I can afford engine trouble. Also glad I have trains.
I am totally blaming the fact that UH2 is going to be late tonight on my having to deal with car-related stuff for a total of six hours over the past two days, even though this never would have been an issue if I had a buffer.
So there. |
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| It BEGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS |
[Mar. 9th, 2008|05:17 pm] |
http://www.maskedretriever.com/uh_remaster/
Updated a little early today so I could test everything out. Counting the thrice-weekly schedule of the UH Remaster project, that's five updates a week!
I do eventually mean to make a dead-tree book out of Umlaut House, but to do that I have to re-scan and post-process all 300+ comics, which is a monumental undertaking. To give me some sense of nominal in-between goals, I'm turning them into updates, which will hopefully keep me scanning. |
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| Amazingly enough, I'm not dead. |
[Mar. 7th, 2008|06:46 pm] |
So I woke up this morning feeling dizzy, feverish, coughing up phlegm, and having a pounding headache. I informed work that I was going to be dead for a while and would try to get back to them as soon as possible. I then went back to bed. I got up, woozily ate lunch, then went back to bed again. I sat on the couch and read three pages of Guns, Germs and Steel and then went back to bed.
I've walked perhaps 40 steps today, most of which have felt like massive physical efforts.
About an hour ago, in a blurry, delirious, overheated moment of self-supposed clarity, I became intensely aware that the Singularity was going to start in the Philippines because of the east-west axis of the Asian continent, the direction of Earth's rotation, and the fact that they had sugar cane. And then my fever broke.
Now I actually feel-- okay, not better but only like I've had the ever-loving shit beat out of me and not like it's currently happening. 24-hour nightmare illness. I AM SO GLAD THAT IS OVER. |
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| Crossposted from MaskedRetriever.com |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|11:14 pm] |
Starting March 10, I'm going to be running Umlaut House again, on mondays, wednesdays and thursdays-- in short, any weekday there isn't a UH2 update, there will be a remastered Umlaut House comic added to the archive. The reason? I need these comics scanned and saved to 300 dpi if they're going to look anything but horrible in a book. To keep the fire lit under my ass to get them all scanned (a herculean task considering the 370+ comics that need to be processed), I'm imposing this schedule on myself.
Now, if I scan three Umlaut House updates a week, it'll take two years and change to get them all in. This is longer really than I want to take, but with the remastered strips having due dates on the net, I figure three a week will be my minimum rate. I'm pretty sure this rate is doable-- I sat down and did six in an evening tonight. The due dates are just my way of reminding myself.
And maybe feed some comments, which as we've established keep me from vaporizing. |
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| Comment System for the Archives |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|11:48 pm] |
I've added a JS-Kit Comment System widget to my templates for Umlaut House, UH2, and Unit Zero, and plan to do so for the other small comics as well. Assuming it doesn't turn out to be evil somehow this should definitely encourage comments.
dID yOu kNoW? Comments on my comics are actually the only thing that keeps me from drying up and crystallizing into dust on contact with sunlight.
It's true! |
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