Posts

Variations on a Theme

4 min read

What exactly do you do, when you realize there’s nothing seems interesting? That you don’t want to meet anyone, because there’s a limit to the elements that influence the human condition, and people are nothing if not predictable, instinctually driven automatons ultimately devoid of novelty. We’re creatures of habit, of our environment, of parenting, of any multitude within a cavalcade of influences both imagined and concrete. Yet our psychology is exquisitely unencumbered with the confusion this might imply.

Grasping at Air

4 min read

It’s funny, how we grip so tenaciously to the labels that bind us. Those essentially meaningless syllables that rattle with vowels and consonants but are lost to history and tradition. Do we really identify with these words? Or are they surreal and disjointed to the majority, only accepted as society demands?

Thwarting Friends and Foes with Colemak

3 min read

My apparently undiagnosed masochism has inspired me to switch keyboard layouts. Aiming for pure obscurity, I’ve been typing using Colemak for the past several months. It’s no Dvorak in the popularity arena, having only an estimated userbase of 3000 as of January 2009. According to a computer aided layout optimizer, it’s also more efficient than the venerable Dvorak, ranking highly across all alternatives. Note that all statistics for Qwerty are hideous by comparison. Thankfully, Ubuntu makes it an available default keyboard layout, and for this, I salute Canonical. If only other Linux distributions would follow that lead, considering the benefits.

4Chan Has its Moments, Apparently

3 min read

Now… I don’t normally do this, but while wasting time on Fark, I ran across this comment by a user, who himself copied it from an anonymous posting on the notorious 4Chan. While it glosses over many aspects of our government and how it affects our lives, it presents a good snapshot of just how ignorant people are to reality, and how willing they are to push any agenda that matches their own personal biases. You can’t take advantage of all the things on this list and simultaneously scream “Socialism!” because one particular thing has been painted as the great bogeyman. I’ve long wondered how police, libraries, and schools are fine and dandy, but some things are “Socialism!” and anathema to Democracy and decent, God-fearing citizens. Anyway, enjoy!

KDEwwwwwww!

3 min read

Well, I’ve officially decided to abandon KDE. Why after all this time, you ask, when they’ve done so much work already to alienate and annoy former fans with the rather abrupt 4.x tree? Well, there’s Ubuntu bug #289264, but every large application has the chance of producing some kind of leaky program. No, I can forgive a rather hilarious and long-standing memory leak because I know how to circumvent and disable programs. What I can’t abide, however, is intentional sabotage. What am I talking about? Take a look at this process list.