RKNet Blog... Thing

• loituma, still awesome #
• @joanmarie made with satan? what? wiki link me? #
• @joanmarine oh it’s kinda like textured vegetable protein (TVP)! #
• happy birthday @zefrank :) #
• my birthday is on April 30th, me ‘n @zefrank are a full month apart! #
• time to scurry off to work! yikes. socks? keys? brains? check! #
• @rodzilla what town are you in again? not snowing in Dover. (yet) #
• @Rodzilla just heard someone hollar "it’s snowing" from another office. spoke too soon #
• I want a Paris-esque self-portrait, but I want to do it drenched in maple syrup while holding a snarling badger #
• bleh. I knew about kings of power 4 billion % so early, if I’d watched it then i’d look way more relevant #
• @ectomo jesus, grow a handlebar moustache for me http://tinyurl.com/3xsqgm #
• Digg for my friend? http://tinyurl.com/2v8dfq #
• Had a surprisingly delicious fra diavlo[sic] from the cafeteria upstairs! #
• @frantabulous it’s the spidery legs and the glowing eyes, I think #
• @chrisgarrett not really, cuz i don’t trust any 1 thing with overall online success one word: diversify! #
• @chrisgarrett find things that interest me & be genuine + experiment w/ tracking methods + be social (not just a networker) #
• HAHA! http://tinyurl.com/2qajhl #
• going on a brushes binge. mm… pretty #
• @patrickcurl snowed here today too. what a ripoff, huh? #
• Is it possible to do what I really want without leaving this place? #
• @roflcopter1337 got any recommendations on progress-friendly areas to live? (pref still in the US) :) #
• @brianshaler depends on if they have anything useful to share with me or not #
• @roflcopter1337 several friends of mine moved to Oregon and they LOVE it, people, weather, life, all of it #
• lol @roflcopter1337 NH doesn’t have sales tax either, cost of living overall is what’s obscene. X_X #

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One look at our vending machines will tell you that office-dwelling drones like Your Humble Narrator are always seeking out exotic drinkable liquids. Especially if said liquids are reputed to be imbued with energizing or stupefying properties. Maybe it’s the condition of our imprisonment, which in this office typically involves non-ergonomic, castoff cubicles, brutally punishing chairs, and cthonic food from the grim eateries which dot the surrounding wasteland (these bleak offerings might make Franz Kafka shrug resignedly and reach for a fork, but personally they make me bemoan the lack of a 24-hour Korean restaurant in the immediate vicinity). Maybe it’s the psychological/economic bondage of a modern business environment, wherein failure is not an option and the creature comforts are best described as “hit-or-miss”. Maybe it’s the high frustration level, combined with lack of sleep (due to work-related worries) which can make us rage like fearsome goetic demons forced to watch Legally Blonde 2.

In any case, even if one just examines the elaborate cultural rituals associated with (for instance) shotgunning sugar-free Red Bull (I’ll try to post about this in the future) or popping down to the local sports bar for a bottom-shelf Long Island iced tea (referred to by us cognoscenti as an “ether and sour mix” because of its unusual psychotogenic properties which cannot be individually ascribed to any of its constituent boozes)… it’s clear that there’s some kind of collective drinks-based coping behavior which spans the nerd-steppenwolf demographic and, unpredictably, inches insidiously into the repertoire of fairly respectable Liberal Arts majors. My personal theory is that these behaviors start out as pathological compulsions, until they are copied by at least one other person, whereby they attain official meme-hood, which in turn makes the progenitor feel justified, so he/she repeats the action, and then the cycle self-perpetuates until the meme gets old, the participants die/get fired, or until the required ingredients become exhausted.

Take for example, the practice of dropping a teabag into a hot cup of coffee.

This loathsome act is a true last-ditch effort. The participants are so jaded in their exhaustion, this is the final frontier, the nadir, the Last Judgment. Whether our nights are spent boozing it up or writing code until the wee hours, the effect is astonishingly similar. Once-human organisms are now reduced to soulless husks, caricatures of our former selves. In this degraded condition, we crave stimulus, which, at this advanced stage, can only be brought about by a handful of questionable exercise stimulants, washed down with an overpriced canister of phenylalanine-rich chemical ooze.

Such was our Monday mindset when, today, my staunch acolyte and I devised a new and gruesome sacrament. By steeping a teabag in a cup of infernally steaming coffee, our desire was to harness the clarity and energy of the strong black tea, tempered with the anxiety and panic of the coffee. The result was a murky liquid, which looked a lot like that black stuff which engulfed James Brolin toward the end of The Amityville Horror. Perhaps most singular was the aftertaste, a bitter, lingering tang of tannins. It is testament to my own slow, sad deterioration that I found the mixture to be not wholly unpleasant. Perhaps most disturbing is the understanding that I might voluntarily drink this again.

Below is a transcript of our findings:
(02:13:57 PM) me: dude this actually isn’t as awful as I thought it would be
(02:14:16 PM) XXXXX: its almost good
(02:14:25 PM) me: for real
(02:14:32 PM) me: I already feel more jacked up
(02:15:08 PM) XXXXX: then we should call it jack bauer’s tea bag
(02:15:28 PM) me: hahahahahah
(02:15:58 PM) me: I was going to suggest we could call it “Nightside of Eden” - I like yours better
(02:16:27 PM) XXXXX: well yours is for sure more poetic
(02:17:34 PM) me: “chai-flavored roundhouse kick to the taint”
(02:18:07 PM) XXXXX: thats it!
(02:18:16 PM) XXXXX: thats the taste in my mouth exactly!
(02:18:32 PM) me: “the sweat from Charles Bronson’s brow”
(02:18:57 PM) me: “Paul Schaeffer’s smarm in a cup”
(02:18:57 PM) XXXXX: strained through kurt russels pubes
(02:19:02 PM) me: hahahah

All this talk of Mudkips (and having to troll around Google Labs for something work related) got me to thinking, just how popular is this whole “mudkips” thing, and what about rival Pokémon meme, Seaking?
Well, the results are in!
The winner for longest running search item? Seaking.
Current most popular? Mudkips.
Overall though, I’d say the winner is Seaking by a huge margin. Fuck yeah, Seaking!

Although I couldn’t help but notice, when adding Slowpoke (Hey guys, am I late?), I got some articles too. Talking about some hybrid Lexus. Funky. In typical Slowpoke fashion, this search lags way, way behind the others. Fitting, really.

Search result totals (as of a few minutes ago):
Seaking - 1,110,000
Slowpoke - 624,000
Mudkips - 359,000 for mudkip, 122,000 for mudkips

Clearly, even though there’s a rise in popularity of the newer gen meme fodder, Mudkips, there is a serious lack of content for this topic. Although to be fair, I think Encyclopedia Dramatica probably has the subject covered well enough for us all. If you don’t know that ED is not safe for work then you haven’t been around the block. So I’ll tell you right now, that it’s not safe for work, and if you’re really very worried about that, then you should probably not go around the block. They do however have a link in there for a PDF on scientists’ attempts to study the development and regeneration of axolotls, which as we learned earlier today, are the closest thing we get to Mudkips on this side of our Quantum Reality Tunnel. Science will find a way though, it always does. Yay science!

Anyway, all of that was really just some blatent search related infoporn, exposing me for the meme-addled child I truly am. Do they have support groups for this kind of thing?

Ok, not really. My good friend Kento over at Uglorable has composed an AMAZING compendium of obscure animals - one for each letter of the alphabet - entitled: Obscure Animal Alphabet: Axolotl to Zebu.

For letter A is the Axolotl, which HAS to be the inspiration for that internet famous Pokémon, Mudkips.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Sure there’s color differences, but that’s pretty minor all things considered.

As you go down the list, you realize that the creators of Pokémon were clearly influenced by nature itself. Sure, they take a lot of liberties, but in terms of creature design, it’s clear they went straight for nature’s bounty.

Even if you couldn’t care less about video games, Pokémon, or internet memes, I’d still recommend checking out this animal alphabet. Every letter is an adventure, there’s a photo of each unique animal, and a description of each one! It’s like Zoo Books, only awesome.

via Gatochy’s Flickr stream! Subscribe to it, and check out some of her blog work also. <3 (Might want to check it out using [blackr], too.)

• @jbancroft must be a big dang plane to need that many pilots #
• curly wheat pasta drenched in simple tomato basil sauce. om nom nom nom #
• @steveswrong I signed up for some basic media embedding worked ok couple times used #
• sms tweeters, what kinda tech you packin? #
• I just registered worstbarever.com .org & .net who wants to touch me? #
• hahaha. thanks @iScatterling #
• @iscatterling oooh… that’s good too! too bad I’m outta money. XD #
• I <3 @brianshaler #
• @brianshaler Oh god oh god I hope the quotes weren’t necessary! #

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• I ID’d a colonist from Aliens as the Captain from Red Dwarf. I am PIMP #
• Did I mention I only saw Red Dwarf for the first time ever yesterday? #
• watching Aliens again. wish I had a copy of Event Horizon to watch afterwards. it’s like peas n carrots! #
• @brianshaler I’ve had at least 1 new follower who seems more about pushing a biz via twitter than anything. I feel yer pain re: 30boxes #
• @gapingvoid DAMMIT! I was in TX a few months ago, right next to a sonic, and i SO missed out. *jealous* #
• not use a social media for experiments or games? I respect @annaleen but it seems paranoid & grumpy #
• This snow is offensive to me. #
• @joanmarie i’ve been sick all week and I walked .25mi with trees pooing snow on me X_X #
• http://tweetstats.com/graphs/Giania infoporn on my tweeting habits! #
• I’ve decided I’m going to follow everyone who follows me, ‘cept other teams. @teamoctarine is where it’s at #
• @drhypercube innit? found it via http://tinyurl.com/2twblw #
• @drhypercube I’m adding a twitter plugin (&updating my other WP plugins) right now #
• @jabancroft thank you for your mention of TwitterTools, I couldn’t find that info anywhere else! #
• just got some REAL sudafed from a coworker. there may be breathing in my future! #
• @iscatterling DUDE. you are Xtreeeeme! :P headcolds are beyond sucky, ya know? #
• @patrickcurl of course it’s okay to ask! Part of having a network is leveraging their help :) #
• man, I really gotta get around to canceling my stupid, useless cable #
• sudafed can’t quite keep up, tea getting cold. oh lawd what will I do?? #
• @gapingvoid I like the idea of PRT. short, recognizable, etc. #
• @gapingvoid you already got my yes vote on PRT! :D #

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Because I’ve caught a serious case of Twitter fever, I’ve added the TwitterTools plugin, which will daily dump my meaningless tweets (from my personal twitter, not the RKNet twitter) into a single post. The benefit of this is that you, gentle readers, will be privvy to the exciting (HA) life of yours truly, and get the added benefit of all the neat links that I tweet, but neglect to del.icio.us and totally don’t bother blogging about.

The other plugin is more for me, and doesn’t have nearly as much of a direct effect on the content of this blog (yet). I finally got around to adding the WPStats plugin and I honestly don’t know how I went without it for so long. Granted, the stats provided by FeedBurner are pretty good, but I need something more directly related to my actual site traffic. While additions like Clickheat are fun, they aren’t necessarily the strongest measure of visitors and activity. In a text-based medium, you’ve got to know what text brings people to you, and what text keeps them there.

Pretty excited about the whole thing. You should be too! It ultimately means I can monitor to see what makes you the visitors the most happy, and increase the volume on those subjects to 11.

P.S. How do the google ads look? Obtrusive? Not awesome enough? Discuss. I’m hoping that they will eventually start actually trending towards being “contextual” so there can be some halfway decent sponsors in the mix. I also have designs on cleaning this place up (a lot) and re-appealing to Project Wonderful’s review staff so I can then allow real humans to display fun ads for their neat stuff on my blog.

• so can people see what I choose to track? #
• I need to learn what adding # to subjects does #
• sweet mother of mercy, another seo-type! :) hi @andrewbaron #

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Perusing my feeds I saw a link to an article that Opera does in fact pass the Acid 3 test. I was pretty stoked to hear that, since I was pretty sure when I ran my copy of 9.26 and 9.5 through the test, neither one passed or even approached passing. (9.5 was closer at around 60-64%.)

I went to try out the Acid 3 test again to see if I’d missed something, or not checked on the latest version of the browser, and Opera out-and-out crashed on me. Which is a very rare thing, Opera’s always been pretty stable for me, but it’s never fun to have to kill all your tabs and start over.

Upon re-reading the article I realized that the version of Opera which currently passes the newest standards testing is their internal development version. Translation: I was decieved by my excitement, and for my laziness was punished by crashing Opera upon the merciless rocks of the Web 2.0 usability test. From now on I’m just going to get my Opera-related news straight from Opera Labs and bypass the PR maneuvers from the My Opera side of things, and the various fans.

I’m still patiently awaiting Kestral’s release from beta to full, because I think at that point Opera might stand a fighting chance of gaining a “real” marketshare. (i.e. Above 1%)