RKNet Blog... Thing

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

• @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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• 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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First and foremost, happy Pi Day!

Secondly, and more importantly (my prioritization skills have become rather skewed, what can I say?), it is the birthday of my esteemed co-writer and guy-I-totally-do-the-thing-with, Ian!

Wish him a happy one! Tomorrow: Ides of March. Watch out for statesmen bearing shiny objects, they might also be very pointed, and very headed for your viscera.

Although Guided By Voices were around between 1983 and 2004, there is a good chance you’ve never heard of this band. I know I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the combined efforts of a cover by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and Ian’s prodigious musical knowledge.

The song I’m sharing with you is the one I’m desperately, madly in love with these days. Clocking in at a meager 1:45 (2:14 on the Trail of Dead cover), it’s hard to believe it could be so moving. This brief sampling off of 1994’s Bee Thousand is slow and delicate like an aged alley cat and just like that old cat it still resonates like the graceful killer living at its core. That, and you know, there is all that rusty yowling.

The lo-fi buzz permates the latter half, sending the song from a quiet mystery into a trip into the past, when records were cut in one take or bust, all the instruments in one room, and you’d better hope the drums were properly muffled because we aren’t doing this again, dammit.

I highly recommend giving the rest of Bee Thousand a listen. If you have an interest in early R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, or perhaps some of these newer lo-fi and indie darlings like The White Stripes or Trail of Dead, then you should really be listening to Guided By Voices. For those less interested in the actual audio aspect, you can stun all your hipster friends with your new found, old school indie cred, you trend whore.

For musicians, the Guided By Voices website has the chords available for a bunch of their songs (Caution: Frames! T_T). In that same section are MP3s and Real Audio files of live performances, as well as a couple videos.

Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory (lyrics by Guided By Voices)

Cold hands touching my face
Don’t hide… the snake can see you
Old friends you might not remember
Fading away from you
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory

And we looked
And we passed
Through the hallways of shatterproof glass

She runs through the night as if nobody cares
She screams and she cries and ignores all the stares
She wants me to come, but I’m never going there
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory

Being, in suitable Measure, a humble Broadside in the Baroque Fashion, the Aim, inasmuch as mere Persons be possessed of a Will to divine Truths, and these Truths doth shew the Purpose and Designes of such a benevolent Creator, who, though a Deity endowed with Caprice, hath made Humankind in His Image, and there-by disencumb’red His Creation of a notably oppressive Weight; that is to say, the tragic Burden of Ignorance, and there-by shewed to mortal Persons, (not much unlike thy humble Scrivener, may it please the Reader), the Whys and Hows of this World; including forthwith certain Understandings of Natural Philosophy, which, through the Mercy (and possibly Oversight) of the Lord our God, divers Peoples, (both antiently and contemporaneous with our Modern Times and Days), hath educated their Selves by way of divers Disciplines and Reasonings, these being demonstrably unattainable by the lower Orders of Beastes, by Which is implied, but not to these Specimens limited, nor specifickally iterated, as the common Aurochs, the fearsome River-Horse of Africa, divers Sheepes, or Rattes, &c., &c., and seeing thusly, (if my Esteemed Reader permit me such Embellisshment) that the Milk of human Reason is accordingly, through a veritable and ostensible (though mysterious) Trans-Substantiation, congeal’d there-by into the Cheese of Civilization, by the Means and Devices previously elucidated, by Nature founding a mighty Precedent, by which Learned Persons may discourse, on the very Nature of the Thinge at Hand; to wit, a golden Shafte, the approximatte Breadth and Girth of a Man’s Rod (this being, an Euphemisme, much in Fashion, of Late employ’d in the Description or Ridicule of a Man’s generative Organ), assumedly Hollow’d, and carried by certaine fashionable Ladies of High Breeding, who, being some-what Inured to the Censure of the Mobb, may carrie about their Personages, for Use in conducting a fresh Jet of liquid Urine, from a Lady’s divine Holiest of Holies, to any number of Targets, Destinations, or Bodies of Water intended for Same, a Device or Engine known to the Vulgar as the “Shenis“.

Argument:

Previous Writings hath taken scant Account for the Merits of said Innovation, having elected to lambaste and be-labor the Shenis with some Scorn not entirely undeserv’d, and so discount the great Benefites, which can be enumerated at some length by thinking Persons.

These Criticisms, though frivolous in the Eyes of this humble Author, bear some Merit in their Repetition;

• The Shenis, following Use, in the Manner above described, contains various and sundry bodily Humors and Fluides which, if not cleansed with Water, Acqua Fortis, or Vitriol, may linger with-in the golden Shafte, (and also the Receptacle designated for Catchment); and certain Doctores of Physick, Natural Philosophers, Churchmen, Charlatans, Apothecaries, Wise-Women, Bone-setters, Seers, Wizardes, and Herbalists happen to advance the Radickal Claim that, as accumulated Detritus of this Nature may breed Swarmes of divers Diseases and Discomforts, including Locust-Crotch, Ague, and The Itch, so close Handling of a Shafte long Impregnated with Effluvia may confer said Ailments on the noble Bearer Herself, much to the Dismay of the Lady and her Companions.
• The Shenis, being an extaordinary gilded Phallus, in Length not smaller than twelve Inches, is a Sight so extra-ordinary as to attract undue Oversight and Scrutiny from Persons of Quality, and these Gentlefolk, though devoted in Spirit to Modernity, may quail at the Acceptance of the common Use of such an Artifact which, by Comparison with various and sundry Dildoes, &c., &c., formerly in Possession of the Borgia Popes, or the Emperor Caligula, rival these Objects for sheer, unmitigated Decadence, Tackinesse, and conspicuous Excess. (In Sooth, dear Reader, thy humble Author admits the Truth of this, yet holds Unconvinc’d that this Item be a Faulte).

These Arguments, and divers Others, may certes be applied contra the Shenis, as many a contrary Opinion or Idea seemeth, while the Moon shines, to be well-reason’d or inviolable. The Esteemed Reader should, however, accept a Caution: that the Sun, as He rises and rudely violates the Brains of the recently Awakened (and typically Hung-Over) like a buggering Miscreant, also dispels Arguments which, upon secondary Inspection, are reveal’d to be Naught but the Excremental Discharge of ethereal, ephemeral Dreams, such as Those dream’d by One much devoted to the Pracktice of daily imbibing certaine Inexpensive Pharmacopoeic preparations.

This Author proposes a strong Counter-Argument, which, though not Infallible, (as only the Work of the Creator may be beyond Reproach), may serve to Illuminate a particular Pointe, as ruthlessly as does the Sun to the Retinas of the intemperate Drunkard, there-by rendering him a gormless Wrack of his former Self, and which, by outweighing other divers worthy Criticisms of the Shenis by reason of the greater Merit, should mote it necessary for the Publick to embrace the Shenis, and all Things Shenile:

Namely, that the Shenis is a suitable Accoutrement for Ladies of Distinction, who happen to be in the Habit of conducting the Exploration of divers low Taverns, slatternly Boozeries, certaine disreputable and ill-favor’d Stores of Convenience, and Dwelling-Places or Work-Places of sluttish or boorish Persons, for the Reason that, in such Circumstances as typically befall a Man, where-in he is forced, by his own bewilderingly wretched Drunkenness, or a Sense of sheer Meanness, or by a noble and gentlemanly Lust for unholy and awful Vengeance, to unfurl his mighty Member from behind his Codpiece, Sporran, Greaves &c., &c., and thence let forth a voluble Column of Pisse, for the Purpose of instilling Ignominy and Fury in the hearts of his Enemies- or possibly just from drunken Perversity, targeting some Object which would not benefite from such Bespatterment, id est: a Trashe-canne, or some-such other Item which requires Handling and subsequent Dis-posal by a deservedly furious Peasant or impertinent, surly Wage-Slave.

Long have Females, and Women particularly, labored under the Notion, that utilizing an Adversary’s Trashe-canne, for an amusing makeshift Privy, while in a State of vindictive Drunkenness, is an impossible Methodology. With divers technologickal Engines, such as the Shenis, can we now ensure that the Womanly Sector of our Populace is as equally forearmed, for this dire Contingency. Concomitant with the Advent of the Shenis, this Author augurs a Rise in the regard of the Female gender, and increased Respect paid to Ladies Hither and Yon.

In summation- Fine Ladies who indulge in Purchases of this or similar “Engines for the Guidance of Urine” shall make known a dire, yet silent, Ultimatum; “Your Respect, if you please, Knave, else your eventual Trip to the Dumpster shall be a dribbly and foul Journey indeed.” Victims of such unspeakably gruesome Treatment, upon their subsequent Bemoistening, may reflect on their Habits and Ways of conducting their Business, and possibly improve Same.

If these Rogues change not their Manners, repeated Shenisings may, at Least, alter their Tune.

I’m back in the humid, smelly Northeast and I figured I’d flex the ol’ guest-blogging muscles before they dwindle into insignificance… anyway, I was at SES San Jose 2007 last week. I must have made friends out there, since I noticed a LinkedIn invite in my inbox the morning after the Google Dance (I drink a lot so my autopilot is somewhat developed by this point).

I rolled into the office this morning, and I noticed another LinkedIn invite in Thunderbird. I clicked through from the link in the email and this is what I saw:

Facts:

• my name isn’t Jon,
• I know for a fact that I’m a major LinkedIn n00blar, and
• this account has like seven bazillion contacts associated with it

There’s no way this is my account. What’s more, the page clearly states: “you are not the intended recipient of this email”. It’s nice that they let me know, but why did I receive it in the first place? Beyond a doubt, I was logged into some guy’s LinkedIn account. I could have sent horse porn to all of his contacts (assuming I happened to have some lying around, which I didn’t, *ahem*). I could have ruined his life if I was so inclined. The implications are truly frightening. An entire network of professional contacts stood teetering, like a house of cards. Fortunately, I’m not that much of a douchebag, so I snapped a quick screenshot and closed Firefox.

So what happened? Discounting any server-side problems that might have caused this, maybe the URL I clicked was not a complete URL. Long URLs sometimes break in most email clients, so maybe whatever truncated version I clicked on ended up being a link to someone else’s account. If this is what happened, this is disturbing to contemplate. Someone smarter than me could play around with the URL parameters and probably gain access to all kinds of stuff in this fashion.

I’m likely to dismiss this as a possibility. LinkedIn probably obfuscates those URLs in some manner. I mean, everyone uses LinkedIn. They wouldn’t use it if it was fraught with security issues, right?

Then again, when one applies that kind of logic to things like Microsoft-built operating systems, that whole argument disintegrates like diarrhea in a chemical toilet.

I don’t feel like it’s LinkedIn’s fault. Yeah, something went wrong, but it is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone. If anything is to blame it is the nature of the internet itself.

There is an inherent fault in the way people view web-based applications these days. Caught up in the exuberance of “Web 2.0″, people sometimes talk about moving “beyond the desktop”. As if someday everything that we do with computers will happen independently of our own client machines. All of our data will be stored remotely on servers, and catalogued according to various folksonomies.

This vision of the future fails to take into account the intrinsically vulnerable state of any node in the www. Any site can be hacked. It is largely a question of how much time and expertise available to the hacker. Often those who assert the contrary, that a particular site is “hacker safe“, are somewhat disingenuous, to put it mildly.

Google would do well to consider the inherent vulnerability of all data on the Web, as several Google products, including Gmail, have been hacked in the past. When a web-based application is compromised, accountability becomes vague. Especially in the case of Google, whose employees are divided into a number of teams which often don’t have sufficient clearance to pass information between one another. Sure, they might have a flawless internal process for dealing with this kind of thing, but to an outsider visiting the ‘Plex, Google’s methods can appear bureaucratic and protocol-heavy at best, obfuscatory at worst (on the positive side, they do make a terrific tofu scramble with extra green onion).

In general, any attempts to divorce a user experience from the concept of the “desktop” are misguided. If anything we should be fortifying, streamlining and improving the desktop environment. Thankfully, this is already happening (download Xubuntu 7.04 for a scintillating example).

I don’t mean to propose we all become e-hermits either. I still plan on using LinkedIn, and I would recommend it to other people too. Simply put: don’t believe the hype, and don’t put sensitive information somewhere where you cannot personally oversee its physical security.

Play safe, kids.

http://www.shelfari.com/giania
I was tipped off by someone on my LJ friends list yesterday that there was indeed a social site based around books! Thank goodness. I’d been saying for ages I wish I had some place to collect a list of everything I’d read. At one point I tried to keep a .txt file of all my comics and that proved to be an extremely daunting task indeed.
This, however, is like Last.FM, or wishlist specifically for books, for lack of a better comparison. For those who prefer audiobooks, neverfear, you are welcome here, as searches do turn up audiobook versions of pretty much every author or title I searched for thus far.
I have to say that other than the quirky behavior of the searches after I add books in Opera I really find going through and adding everything I own and have read (not necessarily one and the same!) to be a really addictive process. It’s so fun, just seeing everything I’ve read laid out like that, and knowing I’ve still got a lot more to look up. You can really tell a lot about a person by what they read, it seems.
It is rather nice to be able to see what your friends have read and ask them about it, rather than having to pry them for information on what they’ve read or hope they remember a book they read several years ago just to tell you.
Even though I already have a stack of items to read that is quite probably taller than I am, I’m always looking for suggestions on more things to read. So do go ahead and friend me if you decide to sign up for Shelfari, and be sure to tell them I sent you!
Happy reading!