Barkerburgh

Every year during the winter solstice holiday season, I celebrate my people’s ancient Sacred and Revelatory Restoration of the Crashed Operating System.

This year, as an atheist, I was planning to forgo it as outmoded and irrelevant to this, our modern world of the future.

My people’s gods are angry and petulant, capricious and heedless.  I was forced to repeat the primal, days-long ritual.

Finally, on Friday I succeeded to my gods’ satisfaction.

Again I am blessed.  For a year.

Another truth about that photo of Riverdale Park.

The night of Wednesday, December 12, 2007, and into Thursday morning, I spent several hours playing Quake II, Warcraft III and Mechwarrior III, and a little Thief. I’d spent an hour or so working on NaNoWriMo 2006 and the TV was on in the background. Once or twice the William Shatner Warcraft commercial came on.

Part of the NaNoWriMo 2006 project involves non-imitative Star Trek replicator type technology which is related to holodeck technology, and I was writing a scene that involved its use. (NB: Star Trek didn’t invent it first. I’d mention Venus Equilateral, but…)

I’m mentioning these as likely influences because when I went to bed, I dreamt.

When I dream, man, do I dream. And I dream in colour.

(more…)

In response to popular demand, here is the Word document version of my 2002 novel, The Word in the Box.

From the Barker Reviews, May 2003:” It is about a boy named Martin who is given a quest; to find a magical word in a box, and that word, when spoken, will make everything perfect and everyone perfectly happy. He’s never been on a quest before, and never met any magical creatures, that he is aware of, and so this quest promises to be both interesting and educational. For him and the reader.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I won’t finish by midnight November 30, but I’ve made such great progress (for me) that I can’t imagine not just-keep-on-goinging (sic).

The last time I entered, which was what, 2002? - I finally finished the story the following May, I guess. I never did a lot of after-draft rewrites on it, just a little tweaking here and there, but it proved to me that I could do it. My personal circumstances were considerably less than ideal at the time, and I still managed to pull it off.

This will be a better story.

I’ve basically used the same password on all my accounts for years. It’s clever, idiosyncratic and medium strength, according to the analysts.

I recently went using from ****** to using *********, which is good and strong. But I haven’t remembered to change it on all my accounts yet, and I forget which ones I’ve changed and which ones I haven’t.

So I keep having to ask the system to email me my forgotten password, and then I forget which email account I used as an alternative address, or even what my secret question was. Did my mother have a dog when she still had her maiden name? Or was it the one about the angles on the head of a pin. (I get too clever for my own good sometimes, and I suspect you already know that and are just too good a friend to actually tell me.¹)

I have to resort to the absolute wrong thing to do to remember my passwords, which I can’t mention in this post, obviously, for security reasons.  I wouldn’t want my life hacked by people even more clever for my own good than I am, now would I?

I didn’t even know this guy and I just got this email!

So who needs a new house? Whose kids need to go to university abroad? Who needs exotic surgery in foreign climes?

(Italics mine.)

“MANAGING PARTNER
GRAPEVINE & ASSOCIATES LAW FIRM
LONDON - UK.
NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST

Hello,
On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engr.Huish Shearmur;I again try to notify you as my first letter was returned undelivered yet i tried still to reach you again by this same email address stated on the WILL.He left the sum of Seven Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars(USD$7,100.000.00 ) to you in the codicil and last testament of his WILL.
Late Engr. Huish Shearmur died on the 13th day of march, 2006 at the age of 80 years, and his WILL is now ready for execution.Please endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible at grapevinelawfirm@hotmail.co.uk to enable me conclude my job and give you more detailed information about his WILL.

yours in Service,

BARRISTER ANDREW MARTIN ESQ”

The lineup starts now.

I heard a young man recite this on CNN, during an item on the North Carolina fire that killed several members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity from the University of South Carolina. He was speaking about his late fraternity brothers.

It’s a little dated - and even sexist, in the sense that it could - and should - apply to women too, in any age, but I like the feel and the flavour of it.

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The True Gentleman
The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

—John Walter Wayland (Virginia Omicron Chapter 1899)

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References
Delta House
Robot House

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Edited on October 30 to correct location of fire and students’ school.

Wow, it sure is ugly. What a mess.

It’s more than a little appalling that there’s artistic types all over the city patting each other on the ass and telling themselves the ROMperor’s new clothes are haute cuisine.

Last night was hot TV at my place.

First off was the one hour season premiere of Family Guy, which was an abso-totally-lutely hilarious take-off on the original Star Wars - no, Nerdapalooza, not Episode 1; the original movie, later subtitled ‘A New Hope’ to fit into Lucas’s diabolical - ahem - plot.

Stewie as Darth Vader, Peter as Han Solo! Chris as Luke, rescuing his mom, as Princess Leia, from the cell on Death Star - his mom! Get it? Get it? At one point,when the laughs lulled out for a minute, I felt sad. Then the laughs started again, and kept coming.

Good for the soul.

Then at midnight was Discovery’s repeat of Episode 1 of ‘Race to Mars’ (premiered earlier that evening). As I’m sure many of you know, I am of the opinion that we (as a species, but me personally especially) should have been living on Mars by now. Instead, NASA has concentrated on growing Space Tomatoes on the shuttle and trying to see if ants can be trained to manipulate small screws in zero gravity. Bollocks.

So when the fictional team made orbit successfully around Mars after some Earthside supplier/contractor-caused technical glitches, I nearly cried. ‘God speed, John Glenn’s spiritual descendants!’ I thought. Okay, I didn’t, but I’m thinking it now. Episode 2 is next Sunday.

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In Non-TV-TMSL news, I’m discovering more and more cool stuff to do with MediaWiki. The latest trip is that, using a very simple block of code, you can create a list that is dynamically sortable by the viewer, or just by default. I had been inputting and/or rearranging Glossary/Encyclopaedia/Dictionary entries in alphabetical order just to keep them easily browsable later, but now I don’t even have to do that.

Usually, of course, with these sorts of things, the highly nerdal documentation sucks syphilitic donkey ass - it’s unclear to start with (often overly technical - like the cartoons in <i>Scientific American</i> - or obscure, like the cartoons in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>) and if you do exactly what it says in the example - <i>exactly</i> - it doesn’t work. Then it takes five hours of experimentation to get it to work. And if you forgot to document your own progress in figuring it out, then you do it all again next time. “I” have to do it all again next time.However, with the sorting of lists (and tables!) it was fairly clear and straightforward. My Sandbox test worked almost immediately and then I applied it to a ‘real’ page - viola!

Better and better!

“Oh, the wonderful things I shall know on the morning of the day of my death!”