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Posts published in January 2010

Rise, Lolho the Squamous!

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lenora and tachikoma

If the world didn't have enough evil already, dedicated computer engineers have figured out how to put it on tap. Behold the terror that is the Lovecraftian Name Generator! Go on, click on it, see what I'm talking about.

Back? Ok, I admit, "Lolho" and "Ual'ke" aren't the scariest Lovecraftian names. But it's programmatic. You can create more than one. The current limit is 25, but by the unholy names of Anai, Bbhaaat, Bosaush, Cazagorarl, Ch-yos, H'eligthorteg, Han-dha, Ibhagugu, K'zaru, Kephoital, Mazazho, Mephangos, Mmililog,Nacharsar, Nali-yatl, Naquggo, Niquggolo, Phomasothugn, Ralellosaq, Rhub-harny, Rlakibha, Uga-urshu, Uggugakithu, Ygg-cyo and Yishotha, not even in Lovecraft's coldest visions of an indifferent universe could he have imagined you'd be able to create an entire pantheon with the click of a button!

Even worse, that limit is no doubt arbitrary, designed to protect their computing infrastructure if not the fabric of space-time. A truly evil black-hatter could use a sequence of queries to generate matched sets of Cthulukin at the upper limit of the QPS (queries-per-second) their servers could handle! Hopefully they have some kind of DoS (Denial of Shoggoths) throttling on their servers to protect humanity. If not-

the mind reels.
-the Centaur

The Future Will Work

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I've seen and heard a lot of craziness lately. It's making smart people say very stupid things. Look, I know these are trying times. Depression. Layoffs. Earthquakes. A Republican elected to Ted Kennedy's seat (just kidding). A Kenyan in the White House (even more kidding). Global warming hysteria / denialism. Cats and dogs living together: mass hysteria.

But be not afraid.

Humanity and the Earth have been through this before. Depression? We survived the Dark Ages. Layoffs? We've survived the collapse of industries and even civilizations. Earthquakes? We survived Pompeii and Krakatoa. Political shifts? God save the queen, we don't need her any more, and we even survived Communism. And global warming? Once the entire ocean became an algal bloom and almost everything alive died - and we're still here.

We can fix the atmosphere by taking measures that won't ruin the economy in case global warming is wrong and will start us on the path in case global warming is right. We can live with political changes and shifts and learn from the battle. And we can build a better world by recognizing that there are things wrong here and now that need fixing, and fixing them - while remembering human nature will always be with us.

Stop scaring yourself with imagined fears born from the latest crisis. Take a deep breath and look back through time. Look at all we've been through. Look at all the disasters that, too, have passed. And look at all we've accomplished. Sometimes it took great vision and immense amounts of hard work, but, praise God, he really does help those who help themselves.

The future will work. You can count on it. If you're willing to make it happen.

-the Centaur

The Sexiest … Brain on Earth?

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From Coilhouse's shoutout Stephen Hawking - "It matters if you just don't give up":
Hey, guess who else was born on Jan 8th? World-renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. He turns 68 today. Here’s a small assortment of reverent (and not so reverent) clips and quotes concerning a brilliant and resilient man whose mind is arguably Teh Sexiest human organ on this entire planet:
One of my favorite of the clips in that article follows:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNcHFRq6wOQ]
"I hope I would not use the [robotic boxing glove the Simpsons gave me]. But sometimes I'm sorely tempted."

Filed under "Thank You, Carl Sagan" because, well, he's practically the next best thing to Carl we have now.
-the Centaur

The Real Fortress of Solitude

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More than a sixth of a mile underground. 122 degrees Fahrenheit. 100% humidity. An environment that could kill a man in ten minutes - filled with 35 foot long selenite spears straight out of the Fortress of Solitude.

They're the Naica caves, one of the most beautiful environments on Earth:

*ARE* you feeling lucky today?

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A friend of mine really likes the Chinese Tank Man picture: a lone figure carrying a grocery bag standing up to a whole line of tanks. To him it symbolizes the challenge of the individual against authority, even though he was ultimately disappeared ... though not necessarily killed.

Today a colleague at the Search Engine that Starts With a G forwarded me a new riff on that image:



"I'm feeling watched" indeed. Apparently this cartoonist is not alone in using that image to talk about issues with Google and China, though the sense today in the picture above is far different from the sense in 2005 when it was first riffed on:



So ... are you feeling lucky today that you are allowed to read this?
-the Centaur

Spam comments: the new black.

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Hey black hat guys, comments are STILL MODERATED. This is doing you no good. Cut it out.

Don’t let your cats watch you play Portal…

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...it can have ... UNFORTUNATE ... consequences:



No cats were harmed in the linking of this post ... but, well, I can't say that for the photography.

-the Centaur

P.S. The cat is not mine :-), but I do like playing Portal. For those that don't get the joke, Portal is a game in which players have a "hole gun" that can create a magic portal on a wall that the player can jump through, unless the player is a cat. My buddy Gordon hooked me up with this meme.

Frost Moon in the Publisher’s Marketplace…

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... thanks to Bell Bridge Books:
Last but not least, our new fantasy series, SKIN DANCER, by debut author Anthony Francis, is careening through production and drawing absolute, total RAVES from early insider reads. Filled with adventure, humor, edgy characters and an incredible alternate reality, this story of a "magical tattoo artist" in modern Atlanta is going to rock the fantasy readers' world. Book one, FROST MOON, introduces the coolest heroine evah: tattoo specialist and "skin dancer" Dakota Frost, a tall, gorgeous, bi-sexual twenty-something whose tats are admiringly known as "Frost bites."

Ahem. I'm very flattered. I hope Frost Moon lives up to that description!
-the Centaur

Crossposted to the Dakota Frost blog...

Qumana FAIL

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A nice blog editor, but when I tried more complex formatting in the last post it didn't display it well in preview mode, leading to errors which required heavy editing on the actual Blogger side. Still, it helped me get the essay written.

-the Centaur