| Current Time: 2013 May 20, 09:26 AM EDT |
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| Title/Time/Category | Blog |
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Big Beaver in front, Whitetail in back
2005 December 16, 06:38 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
The 1992 edition of "The Great Saskatchewan Vacation Book" (motto:
like being in Canada, only not as cold and with fewer Canadians) lists
several US-Canada Customs Offices. Each office has a "US side" and a
"Canada side"-- for example, one Customs Office has "North Portal,
Saskatchewan" as it's Canada side, and "Portal, North Dakota" as it's US
side. The one I found most fascinating had "Big Beaver (Saskatchewan)"
as it's Canada side, and "Whitetail (Montana)" as it's US side. |
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Philately is a Dirty Word
2005 October 29, 12:19 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Way back in the late 1970s, I used to collect coins, but gave it up,
because I was always disappointed at how few coins a given amount of
money would buy.
Years later, I discovered stamp collecting, after sending away for a
starter set from the Jamestown Stamp Company. Along with my first
assortment, they sent a form asking me what types of stamps I wanted
to receive. After putting down "inflation stamps" [stamps issued in
large denominations because currency has been devalued to the point
where it costs 1 million marks (or whatever) to send a letter], I was
stumped. After rejecting all the "obvious" stamp "topicals" [eg,
stamps with puppies, stamps with flowers, stamps with monarchs, etc],
I finally let honesty come to the rescue and put down "naked women"
(which turns out to be a surprisingly good answer in many situations--
try it at your next job interview).
I fully expected Jamestown to ignore my request, or to send me a
polite-but-firm letter explaining that they couldn't help me. I'd
forgotten that many old paintings feature naked women [ahh, Rubens--
naked women AND wonderful sandwiches-- is there nothing you can't
do?], and that many stamps feature old paintings!
For many years, Jamestown kept the naked women coming [to my mailbox,
that is], and, when purchased in bulk, collectible stamps are
sometimes less than 1 cent each, making this the cheapest form of
"soft porn" I'd ever found! (this was before free soft porn websites,
of course).
NOTE: While I think Jamestown is a wonderful company, this isn't an
endorsement. I later signed up with Kenmore, which also has a great
selection, and I'm sure other stamp companies do too. Jamestown just
happened to be the company that introduced me to naked-women stamp
collecting.
As crude as some people may find this entry, please note that I
refrained from the obvious "and you can lick the backs" joke. |
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England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, commonwealth realms, and commonwealth nations
2005 October 28, 11:27 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
It annoys me when people refer to England as a "country", since it's
not a sovereign nation-- rather, it's part of the United Kingdom,
which is a sovereign nation. Of course, this doesn't explain why
England has a top-level domain (TLD), namely ".en".
Even worse, Great Britain, which has no political status whatsoever
(it's just the name of the island on which England, Scotland, and
Wales are situated-- and if you've ever wondered "what's so great
about Great Britain", it's just called that to distinguish it from
Britannia, a smaller, nearby French island with a similar name),
also has a TLD, namely ".gb". To be fair, other dependent islands
also have TLDs (the Faroe Islands (.fo) [Denmark], Reunion Island
(.re) [France], the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands (.hm) [New
Zealand], and, worst of all, the uninhabited and stupidly named
British Indian Ocean Territory (.io) [United Kingdom]).
Some people even think that Australia and Canada are "part of" England
or the United Kingdom in some strange way. Not true, but Australia and
Canada are the two largest "commonwealth realms"-- independent nations
that recognize King Charles II as their head-of-state/King. The other
13 nations who recognize King Charles II as their King (excluding the
United Kingdom itself, obviously): Antigua and Barbuda [that's one
single country with an "and" in their name-- don't even get me
started!], the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica [ya mon!,
Chuck be'd d' King!], New Zealand [which I maintain is really part of
Australia, even though they refuse to admit it-- ironically, Tasmania,
which really is part of Australia, often behaves like it's
independent], Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis [another country
with an "and" in it's name-- they actually held a national referendum
to separate into two countries with two names, but this eminently
sensible referendum was defeated -- I'm sure if they ever have a
referendum to annex another country, it will pass, so their name will
eventually be "Saint Kitts and Nevis and Bob and Carol and Ted and
Alice and a Bunch of Really Small Uninhabited Islands That Are
Underwater Ninety Percent of The Time But Are Still Part of This
Stupid Country and Also Starring Norman Fell as Mr Roper"], Saint
Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines [this would be a good name for
a rock band], the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu [wasn't he the Vulcan
guy on Star Trek: Voyager?]
I have yet to come up with a mnemonic for the 15 commonwealth
realms. The closest I've gotten is "Solomon, grinning twice, zealously
jams antique Barbies (2) into papa's new guinea pig.", which doesn't
quite work.
Just to confuse matters, "commonwealth realm" sounds a lot like
"commonwealth nation", but they are different. The "commonwealth of
nations" is just a group of countries (all former British colonies)
that have a special trade agreement with each other (sort of like
NAFTA or the EEC, but without a stupid acronym). There are 53
commonwealth nations, and I am not going to list them here, partly for
space reasons, but mostly the "commonwealth of nations" is stupid.
I realize some British (English? United Kingdomish? commonwealthers?)
people might be offended by this blog entry (I like British people,
and I like annoying them even more), because 1) they're British and
pretty much offended by everything, 2) Queen Elizabeth II is still the
British monarch [as of this writing -- but I'm sure the old bat will
have to step down soon!] so I shouldn't be talking about "King
Charles", 3) if you believe the textbook version of British history,
Prince Charles will ascend to the throne as King Charles III (not II);
I, however, prefer the Blackadder version of British history.
This might be a good time to remind everyone that I type these blog
entries off the top of my head and am too lazy to do any fact
checking. In other words, if you're reading my blog entries, you're a
fairly sad individual-- if you're reading my blog entries and
expecting factual material, you're beyond hope.
Slightly more accurate information on some of this crap may be found at:
Then again, it may not be... |
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Fashions by Sunkist
2005 October 27, 12:36 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
One of my favorite television programs is the improvisational "game
show" Whose Line Is It Anyway? (the original British version, not
the significantly less interesting American version). In one of the
episodes, all the other contestants are teasing Ryan Stiles because
he's wearing a bright orange shirt, and, in one of the games, he sings
"People make fun of me just because I wear fashions from Sunkist"
(exact wording courtesy
http://phillips.personal.nccu.edu.tw/improv/bart.html).
I'd always assumed there were no "fashions from Sunkist", but, on 20
Feb 2002 (http://sarangworld.com/TSHIRT), I wore a Sunkist t-shirt (a
gift from the Sunkist cooperative), which does indeed have a bright
splash of orange color on it. It's one of my more favorite shirts, and
I happen to be wearing it again today. |
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Differences between the Bowling for Soup song 1985 and My Life Today
2005 October 26, 06:39 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
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Klingons (Tlingits) in Alaska?
2005 October 21, 07:07 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Did Klingons come to Earth and live in Alaska several hundred years
ago? Consider this excerpt from the Alaska Official State Map:
Alaska's two great Indian nations, the Tlingits and the Athabascans,
settled in Southeast and Central Alaska.
... When the first Russians tried to settle in Sitka, the Tlingits
drove them out, despite the guns and cannons brought by the intruders.
Defeating guns and cannons with primitive weapons? Sure sounds like
the Klingons to me. And, as all Trekkies know, the correct spelling of
Klingon is "tlhIngan", which is very close to "Tlingit".
I'm actually not the first person to notice this-- some other sites
suggest that the Klingons were named after the Tlingits, but I
find my explanation much more plausible. |
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Secret Link
2005 October 10, 09:33 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Here's a link to a page that's been on my site for at least 6 years,
but that doesn't have any links leading to it (it's hidden, but not
password-protected): http://sarangworld.com/meetsarang.php3
I'd like to say something like "after many years of introspection,
I've decided to release this page", but I probably just forgot to link
it when I created it 6+ years ago-- and I'm still too lazy to
link it from anywhere except here. According to my (sadly incomplete)
log files, the only hit to this page so far was from one person who
used my on-site search engine to find it [it was called
meetsarang.shtml back then] way back in August 1999 (in fact,
that's the only way I know this page is 6+ years old-- I have no
idea when I actually created it!)
Update: I remember a co-worker at UNM commenting on this page, so I
must've created it while I was still working at UNM -- ie, sometime
before 27 Sep 1996. |
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Google this!
2005 September 25, 07:07 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
If you visit
"http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache%3Awww.sarangworld.com%2Fblog%2F"
(or type "cache:www.sarangworld.com/blog/" into the google search
engine), you can see google's most-recently cached version of this
page. Since I display the current time/date at the top of this blog
table, you can tell exactly how long ago google last visited my site
(considering it has to crawl the entire World Wide Web, I'm amazed at
how up-to-date they manage to keep the cache!). Actually, this isn't
tremendously exciting (since the print the time/date of retrieval at
the top of the page anyway), but I'm getting desperate for blog entries. |
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LAMP programming
2005 September 25, 06:58 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I consider myself a "LAMP" programmer, where LAMP stands for
Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. My current project uses MySQL and PHP, but
runs on a Windows platform with the IIS web server. I guess that makes
me a Windows-IIS-MySQL-PHP or "WIMP" programmer. |
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Was Lincoln a Trekkie?
2005 September 25, 01:11 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Star Trek fans (Trekkies or "Trekkers" if you take yourself too
seriously) know that the creators of Star Trek like the number 47, and
try to sneak it in where-ever they can. Trekkies follow their lead,
and do the same. All this got me to wondering about President Abraham
Lincoln's Gettysburg address which began "4 score and 7 years ago", a
clear reference to the number 47 (otherwise, he could've said "87
years ago" or "In 1776" or something like that). For those of you
naysayers who believe Lincoln pre-dated Star Trek, just watch "Episode
77: The Savage Curtain". |
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69, dude!
2005 September 25, 01:04 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
The program I use to post blog entries returns the "id" of the last
entry posted, and the id of the last post was 69, which, of course,
got me thinking. I believe the sexual reference to 69 is French. I
used to think the French word for 69 was "trois-vingt-neuf", meaning
"three twenties and nine", since the French count by 20s (that's where
we get our word "score" from -- "4 score and 7 years" is 87
years). So, I thought 69 was actually "six neuf", French for "six
nine", not "sixty-nine" (to us smartass holier-than-thou nitpickers,
that's a big difference), since "six neuf" sounds like six and nine
next to each other, while trois-vingt-neuf doesn't. As it turns out, I
was wrong (the whole "counting by 20s" thing starts at 80). The French
word for 69 is "soixante-neuf". This sounds enough like six and nine
next to each other, that I'm guessing the French word for 69 is also
69, not "six nine". And, yes, I've just created a blog entry on oral
sex that somehow manages to be incredibly dull! |
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Mail Order Monsters
2005 September 25, 12:47 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
As much as I love "Master of Magic" (see previous entry), I always
referred to it as "MOM2". The first game I loved with the initials
"MOM" was "Mail-Order Monsters" for the Commodore 64/128, way back in
the mid-80s (ok, now I'm going back 20 years for blog entries-- pretty
soon, I'm going to have to go pre-natal!). |
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Master of Magic
2005 September 25, 12:42 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Ages ago (~1997-2000), I was addicted to "Master of Magic", a DOS game
by Microprose (that I could also play on my Linux box using DOSEMU),
to the point where I wrote up parodied versions of some of the
spells/retorts available in the game. I'd planned to create a "Master
of Magic Parody Page", but, as always, never got around to it. Since
the game is now ancient and probably long since forgotten (I've since
developed and conquered an addiction to "Civilization: Call to Power"
(CivCTP), so Master of Magic is "2 addictions past"), I've decided it
would be pointless to create the page now. Since this blog is fast
becoming a dumping ground for my incomplete projects, here's the
partial parody I wrote. Unless you're seriously addicted to "Master of
Magic", you'll miss most of these references (I'm no longer sure of
some of them, since I haven't played in ~5 years):
- Pink Carnation. Summons the greatest of all crooners, Bing
Crosby. In addition to entertaining the local populace of your
capital, Bing has the special ability to "Create Movie House" in any
of your cities, provided there is a "road to" that city. Bing can also
cast "Enchant Evening".
- Black Channels. Allows target friendly unit to watch
entertaining programs such as the Jeffersons, Flip Wilson, Good Times,
the Cosby Show, etc, by providing them with BET, Black Entertainment
Television.
- Call the Noid. Attempts to deliver a Domino's pizza to the
target enemy city. Toppings may be selected from the "Select Toppings"
subscreen.
- Cranks Call. Places a "crank call" to the target enemy
unit. Any non-cellular-phone-equipped unit must leave the battlefield
to answer the "crank call".
- Cruel Unwinding. Unwinds the target wizard's watch, causing
the target wizard to be late to meetings, miss appointments, etc. See
also "Timex Stop"
- Death Nights. Dramatically decreases the target wizard's
social life.
- Djeanne. Summons Barbara Eden. Though of not much use in
combat, Barbara is nice to look out and can cast 50 mana points per
turn... but her spells usually fail in some unusual way.
- Fireball. Causes massive layoffs in the target enemy city,
lowering production. The fired workers sometimes become farmers, but
often just collect unemployment.
- Powerball. Introduces a lottery in the target enemy city,
dramatically reducing gold production, while producing little in
return.
- Ghourls. Summons the Spice Girls, with the dreaded "wailing
voice". The Spice Girls can transmit their state of fame to their
opponents: when they win a battle, slain units rise to join their
group.
- Herb Mastery. Gives the casting wizard control over all
creatures named "Herb". Since there are no creatures named Herb in the
game, this spell is completely useless.
- Irrelevancy. Makes a target friendly unit irrelevant. The
target unit may move anywhere, including into enemy cities, but will
be completely ignored.
- Immunity to Immunity. Makes the target friendly unit immune
to the immunities of other units.... except those that are immune to
"Immunity to Immunity".
- Stalker. Creates a harmless but persistent entity that
seeks to romance the target wizard.
- Pestiness. Summons Wesley Crusher... to the target ENEMY
city.
- Phantom Beep. Causes a pager-like "beep" sound to occur
during combat. All enemy pager-equipped units will be so busy checking
their pagers, they won't be able to attack or defend that round!
- Planar Seal. Summons a jet-flying pinniped.
- Psionic Blast. Decreases unrest in target friendly city by
creating a partygoing mood, May only be cast on cities located in
valleys ("This is a total psionic blast, dude")
- Word of Recall. *69 in most areas.
|
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That Stupid Icon
2005 September 24, 11:44 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
If you've ever bookmarked one of my pages, and your browser supports
the "favicon" feature (most browsers do), you've probably wondered
what that strange icon you see next to my pages is (some browsers will
show this even if you don't bookmark any of my pages). It's really too
small to see (here's a full-size
version), but it's a cartoonish representation (or "avatar" if you
prefer) of me, created by a program used to access the long-defunct
Sierra Network (TSN for "The Sierra Network", an AOL-like dialup
service that was popular before the Internet was widely used). The
avatar was created in the early 90s. Since I no longer wear glasses (I
had LASIK about a year and a half ago), wear my hair much shorter
these days (the "skinhead" look), have pastier skin, and never
smile, I guess it's more a representation of who I used to be (ah,
forgotten youth!). And, yes, while we're at it, that picture on my homepage is even older (late
80s). Why don't I put up a more recent picture? Hey, if I looked
that bad back then, imagine how I look now (or, better still, don't). |
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Erotic Antibacterial?
2005 September 24, 11:25 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Am I the only one who finds FineCare's Antibacterial Fresh Rain(tm) and Peach Fresh(tm) designs strangely erotic?
The linked "scans" are fairly pixellated and not that great-- try to
find them at your local grocery store if you want a better look. On
the actual bottles, the flower is a rosier shade of pink with small
beads of moisture, and the peach is plumper and more succulent with
a more enticing groove. Despite this, I'm guessing I'm still the only
one who finds these designs erotic.
The "scanned" images come from
http://usa-detergents.com/pub/productsheets/Finecare-Handsoap.pdf, and
additional images are at
http://usa-detergents.com/pub/productsheets/Finecare-64oz-Handsoap.pdf |
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Choose Your Own Adventure
2005 September 24, 11:10 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Many years ago (in the early 1980s), I tried to "map" the Choose
Your Own Adventure book The Mystery of Chimney Rock
(figuring out which pages led to which other pages) using pen and
paper. I remember starting over several times because the map always
looked so ugly. The one other thing I remembered was that page 37 (the
"death by cheese-and-crackers" page) was "unusual" in that, no matter
how I drew the map, it was always isolated from the other pages. This
afternoon (inspired by http://www.ethblue.com/cyoa/altairlarge.html) I
wrote a computer program (using other existing tools, of course) that
mapped "Chimney Rock" and a few other Choose Your Own Adventure
books. The preliminary version is
far from great, but after I do a few more and add color-coding, I'll
probably create a subsite for these. I find it strangely satisfying
that the automatic program that created this map also isolated
page 37. Is spending an afternoon of programming time to solve a
childhood task (I had to dig the yellowing Choose Your Own
Adventure books out of storage-- I haven't read them in ages!) a
complete waste of time? Or is it the meaning of life? |
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AIM on Cricket
2005 September 18, 12:02 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I finally got my Cricket phone working with AIM Mobile (for a long
time, AIM Mobile didn't work with Cricket), so messages sent to AIM
user "javamath" should now reach my wireless. This is good, because it
gives me another way to receive messages that I will procrastinate
indefinitely in answering! |
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Very Late Tribute to the Late Charles Schulz
2005 September 18, 12:56 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Back in November 1997, Robert Cook (http://olywa.net/cook/) and I
wondered how Charles Schulz would end the Peanuts series when he was
ready to retire. We ultimately speculated (incorrectly) that Schulz
probably had a large staff of cartoonists working for him, and that
the strip would long outlive him. Despite this, we drew up (well, I
suggested and Robert drew) our thoughts on what the last few Peanuts
strips might look like, calling our version "Cracked Nuts". I
originally meant to post these in January 1998, but never got around
to it (don't ask me why-- this blog is a great excuse to dredge up all
the material I've wanted to post, but never did). When Charles Schulz
retired (14 December 1999) and subsequently died (12 February 2000,
the night before his last comic strip ran-- thus, his comic strip did
outlive him -- by 1 day), my desire to post these strips (with some
minor changes) was rekindled. I came up with several clever ways of
releasing them-- watermarking, auto-releasing one per day, using
HTTP_REFERER to avoid "improper" linking, etc. These ways were
so clever that they would require a fair amount of time to
program, so I never actually got around to posting the strips. If I
had, they could've become the first tribute strips posted after
Schulz's death (since they'd already been written and drawn 2 years
ago), and we could've ridden some of the hoopla surrounding Schulz's
death. In a way, I'm glad we didn't do this, but I became so
despondent over not posting these strips "at the right time", I kept
delaying putting them up at all ("if I didn't post them in February
2000, what's the point of posting them now?"). For what it's worth,
here they are now. Caveats: 1) a lot of the jokes in these strips have
already been used in other tributes-- we wrote most of them back in
late 1997/early 1998, so the jokes are "original", even if they don't
appear to be. 2) this isn't a "tribute" in the traditional sense--
it's rather crass (sort of in the style of Blackadder, where major
characters [sometimes all of them] die in the last episode of each
season) and somewhat satirical-- definitely NOT the sort of thing
Schulz would've drawn. 3) most of these strips were written in late
1997/early 1998, but some were written (or edited or re-written) in
late 1999/early 2000: |
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Mountain Time Zone
2005 September 17, 10:49 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've often argued that the continental United States has too many time
zones, and should get rid of the Mountain Time Zone (the one I live
in), by migrating areas in the Mountain Time Zone to either the
Pacific or Central Time Zone. My stronger arguments include:
- The continental US currently observes 4 separate lunch hours,
making it harder to contact people in different states (eg, you spend
an hour for lunch and then the person you want to contact spends an
hour for lunch, so there are 2 hours per day you can't contact each
other-- if you were in the same time zone [and ate lunch at the same
time, obviously], there would only be 1 hour per day you can't contact
each other [unless you eat lunch at your desk, carry a cell phone,
etc, of course]). Three time zones would be more efficient.
- The population of the Mountain Time Zone is much smaller
than the population of the other three time zones, so not that many
people would be affected.
- Many people in the Mountain Time Zone are farmers and ranchers,
who live by "nature's clock" (sunrise and sunset), and therefore
wouldn't be affected at all by a time zone change.
- Many other people in the Mountain Time Zone live in
Arizona. Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time [the Native
American reservations in Arizona are federal lands and do observe
DST], and is therefore effectively in the Pacific Time Zone half the
year anyway.
- Some businesses in the Mountain Time Zone intentionally stagger
their hours to match those of the Pacific and Central Time Zones, so
there are even more people whose work schedules are effectively in
another timezone.
My weaker arugments:
- Many victims of Hurricane Katrina have moved to the Mountain Time
Zone (and, because the Mountain Time Zone had a fairly small
population to begin with, Katrina victims now make up a signifigant
percentage of Mountain Time Zone residents). Let's make them feel at home by adopting their time zone (the Central Time Zone).
- The abbreviation for Mountain Standard Time "MST" is French for VD
(venereal disease).
|
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Dating Standards
2005 September 17, 07:55 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
When it comes to dating, I have fairly high standards: living human
female-- has to be at least two out of three. |
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Antibacterial Soaps
2005 September 17, 05:48 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Some antibacterial soaps advertise that they kill 96% of all household
bacteria. This sounded pretty impressive, until I realized it was
probably the other 4% I really had to worry about! I mean, if
immersing them in potent antibiotic chemicals won't kill them, what
chance do I have? |
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Wolfram
2005 September 17, 04:02 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
At the risk of offending Wolfram (creators of Mathematica), here's a
week's worth of Wolfram cartoons, drawn by Robert Cook
(http://olywa.net/cook/)WAY back in July 1998:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
[Disclaimer: Wolfram did not authorize any of these cartoons, and is
probably totally unaware of them.] |
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Metric Prefixes (small)
2005 September 17, 12:53 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
My mnemonic for remembering small metric prefixes: "Mike's nanny picks
feminine attire. Zippers? Yucko!", where "Mike" is micro, "nanny" is
nano, "picks" is pico, "feminine" is femto, "attire" is atto,
"zippers" is zepto, and "yucko!" is yocto. My only worry is that this
implies zippers are non-feminine, which I'm not sure is true (none of
the feminine attire I wear [er, I mean "am aware of"] has zippers,
but that maybe just me) |
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Metric Prefixes (large)
2005 September 17, 12:49 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
There are a lot of mnemonics for remembering metric prefixes, but I
didn't like any of them so came up with my own. For large prefixes:
"Maggot pezetta? Y'oughta!" (which translates to "Have you tried
maggot pezetta? You ought to!"). "Maggot" is mega giga tera, "p" is
peta, "e" is exa, "zetta" is zetta, and "Y'oughta" is yotta. I don't
know exactly what maggot pezetta is, but I picture it as pasta made
from maggots, sprinkled with powdered Pez. One advantage of picturing
this image is that it's not easy to forget. One disadvantage of
picturing this image is that... it's not easy to forget. |
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Afterbirth
2005 September 17, 12:45 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I read that, in some cultures, people eat the afterbirth when a woman
has delivered a baby. I tried to figure out what dishes might use this
as an ingredient, and the only thing I could come up with was "pasta
placenta". All this did make me wonder about "Prego" [preggo?]
spaghetti sauce, especially given their "it's in there" slogan. |
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Sometimes you feel like a nut...
2005 September 17, 12:37 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
At the risk of offending the powerful Hershey's corporation (and
finding a chocolate horse's head in my bed), I'm pretty sure that
commercial jingle they had "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes
you don't. Almond Joy's got nuts. Mounds don't" was promoting bisexuality. |
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My Life Story
2005 September 17, 12:17 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
When people ask for the story of my life, I often start with:
I was born the son of poor Black sharecroppers. My parents were poor
people... and they didn't actually sharecrop with anyone-- they just
threw some of their crop up in the air and said they were
sharecropping with God. Poor, stupid people. And not terribly
attractive. Poor, stupid, ugly people. And after spending all day in
the fields... poor, stupid, ugly, smelly people....
I'm finding that people aren't asking about my life story as much anymore. |
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Unanswered Email
2005 September 16, 11:42 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
The oldest unanswered email I have is dated October 1987 (using
FidoNet [arf arf], which pre-dated the Internet). It's an invitation
to an event I really wanted to attend, but forgot about. I feel so bad
about missing the event that I just can't bring myself to send a
reply-- maybe if I hold on to it for a couple more years... [nitpicky
comment: I was using QuantumLink (which later became "America OnLine"
and finally just "AOL") in 1985, but don't consider the correspondance
there "email", because QuantumLink was a closed system at the time] |
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Mathematica
2005 September 16, 11:29 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I was a big fan of the commerical (non-open-source) programming
language Mathematica, and, in April 1998, successfully used this top ten list to obtain a
free copy (number 7 on the list was the impetus for the paper
mentioned in the previous blog entry below). Nowadays (7.5 years
later) there are fairly good open-source alternatives to Mathematica
(at least in terms of Mathematica's flexible symbol, list, and
function handling, though there still aren't any open-source languages
(?) that include Mathematica's large collection of efficient
algorithims and formulas). [this is the 2nd time I've reached back 7+
years for a blog entry-- apparentally, I'm running out of material!] |
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Artificial Dumbness
2005 September 16, 11:16 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've never formally submitted a paper for publication. The closest I
came was in April 1998 when I almost submitted this abstract -- Blondes and Boors: How Artificial
Dumbness Will Pass the Turing Test.
The 1979 Peter Sellers' movie Being There
(http://imdb.com/title/tt0078841/), which I
hadn't seen when I wrote the "abstract" above, makes the same point
much more eloquently. Roger Ebert's 1997 review of the film
(http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970525/REVIEWS08/401010303/1023)
is also excellent reading (Ebert's earlier 1980 review isn't as good). |
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Nawlins Cafe
2005 September 16, 09:42 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
It's just a wild coincidence, but the building I used to work in had a
"Nawlins Cafe" on the ground floor (which, because of the hilly nature
of our city, was actually below street level). Sadly, business was
poor, and it went under. |
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Hard Habit To Break
2005 September 16, 09:37 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Chicago's "Hard Habit to Break" is one of my favorite songs. For many
people, it's special because it evokes memories of a long-lost love
that they've never quite gotten over. For me, it's special because
it's the first song I ever heard digitized (a short clip on a
Commodore 64). In a similar vein, my "Summer of '69" (Bryan Adams
song) was more like "Got my first real 8-bit, bought it at the five
and time, programmed until my fingers bled, was the summer of
'79...". This blog entry, along with the previous one (below), really
define who I am as a person. |
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Defining Moment in My Life
2005 September 16, 07:05 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I once geekily asked a girl to a Star Trek convention. Amazingly, she
said yes. Unsurprisingly, between the time I asked her out and the
convention itself, I managed to anger her so much that she decided not
to go. This blog entry, along with the next one (above) really defines
who I am as a person. |
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Domestic Violence
2005 September 12, 06:47 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've decided to come out in support of domestic violence. If we start
depending too heavily on imported violence, we'll no longer be
self-reliant. The United States has some the world's highest-quality
violence, readily available in most major urban areas. When it comes
to violence, I say: choose America! |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
It's a Toon? Thing
2005 September 12, 11:45 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I feel the term "toon" is offensive, and should be
replaced with "Animated American". |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
Improving the Art of Mime
2005 September 12, 07:09 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I want to improve the art of mime by adding vocals: "Oh no, I'm
trapped in a box. It appears to be a fairly rectangular glass box. I
sure hope I get out of this box soon, so I can walk home. It's a
pretty windy day, and I'll have to walk against the wind to get
home. Once I get home and the wind dies down, I'm going to walk my
dog. He's a big dog. I sure hope he doesn't try to run after something
and pull me along on his leash..." and so on. |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
Cameo Appearances
2005 September 11, 03:40 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've always wanted to do cameos on TV shows without actually having an
acting career. I would enter the stage (or the camera would do a slow
pan to my face) and they'd have the audience applaud wildly. I'd then
say a line or two, and that would be it. People at home would wonder
who I was, or what I'd done to deserve all that applause, but I'd
always just be "that cameo guy". |
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42
2005 September 11, 02:01 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
OK, this is scary. These blog entries are stored in a
MySQL table (that's not the scary part) with a unique "id"
field. The value of the "id" for that last entry was...
was... was... 42! (completely a coincidence, I didn't
plan it, or even realize it until after I'd posted the
entry [the posting form returns the id of the entry
created]) |
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What Do You Get If You Multiply Six By Nine?
2005 September 11, 01:57 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
As everyone knows, the late Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhikers' series,
notes the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and
everything is 42. He also speculates the great question itself might
be "what do you get if you multiply six by nine"? (since this question
was discovered by randomly picking home-made Scrabble tiles [which
obviously don't follow the letter distribution of real Scrabble tiles
(eg, 4 y's)], it IS speculative and not definitive). The obvious joke
is that 6 times 9 isn't 42 (unless you do the math in base 13, of
course), but it got me to thinking. If you multiply 6 by 9 in various
programming languages, you get a variety of answers, depending on
whether 6 and 9 are treated as integers, strings, floats, etc. For
example, "6" (string) times (using "*") 9 (integer) yields the string
"666666666" (which is 666*1001001, hmmm) in some languages, the
integer 54 in others, and an error in others. A lot of people have
strong feelings about which is the "correct" answer, and programming
language debates are often called "holy wars" because of how they can
heat up. When computer programmers are finally in power, it would
ironic (though unlikely) if people went to war, ultimately over the
answer to "what do you get if you multiply six by nine". Perhaps
Douglas Adams, in his infinite wisdom, was telling us that we're all
wrong (since the answer is 42), and shouldn't fight over it... perhaps
Douglas Adams was a far greater visionary than people
imagined... perhaps it's time for my medication. |
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I Hate Ruby
2005 September 11, 01:40 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've decided that I hate the Ruby programming language. To demonstrate
this hatred, I installed Ruby to see how badly I could mangle and
abuse it. It turns out Ruby is fairly abuseable. I've always hated
that 57/42 is 1 in many programming languages (integer division my
foot!-- I have no problem with 57 div 42 being 1, but not 57/42), so I
mangled Ruby into having 57/42 evaluate properly (to
1.35714285714286). I then coerced Ruby into understanding that
"42"+"57" is 99, not "4257" (concat or "." is for string appends, "+"
is for numbers!). I then "explained" to Ruby that I've been using
"echo" to mean "print" for ages (PHP), and didn't plan on changing
that. Ruby buckled under nicely. Ruby is almost (but not quite) a
meta-programming language-- my mangled version of Ruby is quite
different from the version of Ruby that ships, and I have more abuses
in mind. I can't stop using the Ruby language-- I hate it far too
much. |
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CivCTP Apology
2005 September 7, 09:03 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I owe an apology to the creators of Civilization: Call to
Power (a game where you build cities to form an empire).
One of the "random events" in their game is coastal
flooding, which once completely destroyed a coastal city I
had built. I said that, while floods could cause a lot of
damage, there was no way water could destroy an
entire city completely. I was wrong -- some days, I really
hate being wrong. |
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England Isn't the UK and Russia wasn't the USSR
2005 September 7, 08:02 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
People sometimes refer to the United Kingdom as "England"
(one of it's "states"), and used to refer to the USSR as
"Russia" (again, one of it's "states"), and Patrick Maigron
tells me that "Holland" (which I mention in an earlier
blog entry) is actually a "state" inside the Netherlands.
However, most people dont refer to the USA as "Texas", or
to France as "Champagne". I wonder how the whole
state-name-for-the-whole-country thing came about. |
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New Orleans
2005 September 7, 07:14 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
It's amazing how many people think of "New Orleans" as
"just the name of that city", not realizing it's actually
named after the French city of Orleans. I'm guessing New
Yorkers are just as bad (York is a small town in England). |
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Trojan Entry
2005 September 7, 07:08 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I wonder how many people realize that "Trojan" simply means
"from the city or state of Troy", similar to "New Yorker",
"Californian", "Spanish", etc... |
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New Orleaners Next Door
2005 September 7, 07:04 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
My apartment complex announced today that fifteen families from New
Orleans are moving in, which means (according to my calculations) that
1 in every 15000 New Orleaners is moving into my apartment complex
(its a fairly big complex, but thats still a lot!). The only thing I
can figure is that they want to get as far away from the sea as
possible (like much of Albuquerque, my apartment complex is over a
mile above sea level). |
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Fluorescent Light Bulbs
2005 September 6, 07:25 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I think I've fallen in love with fluorescent light bulbs
(even though "fluorescent" is still nearly impossible to
spell)-- they not only save energy, but they're also very
cool (temperature-wise, not just "groovy" cool), which is
important during our hot Albuquerque summers. Their only
"downside" -- starting off dim each time you turn
them on and increasing to full brightness over a period of
0-3 minutes -- is actually an advantage for my bedside
lamp -- it's really nice to wake to a dim light that
slowly brightens! (I realize theres an obvious "in love"
joke here about bulbs lighting up my life, but I'm
not going to make it!) |
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Netflix
2005 September 6, 07:10 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I originally wasn't a big Netflix fan (but joined anyway and dropped it
later), because there weren't that many movies I wanted to see. Movies
usually run about 90 minutes, and my attention span is nowhere near
that. I rejoined "recently" (actually quite a while ago) when they
started releasing TV shows on DVD -- 22 minutes is much more my
style! A few days ago, my declining attention span was happy to learn
that Netflix now has music videos -- complete works of entertainment
less than 5 minutes long. In fact, it took me longer to type in this
blog entry (if you include all the editing) than it takes to watch a
music video. WOOHOO! |
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Anagramatic Synonyms
2005 August 28, 06:27 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I wonder how many pairs of words are both synonyms and anagrams-- unfocused and confused come close, but aren't quite anagrams. |
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The Other E/R
2005 August 1, 08:28 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I'm probably one of the few people who likes a show called E/R, but not the E/R that everyone else likes. The one I like was a short-lived spinoff of the Jeffersons (http://www.tv.com/e-r-1984/pilot-1/episode/46319/summary.html) |
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Friends Conventions
2005 July 22, 07:21 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
How come there are Star Trek conventions, but no Friends TV show conventions? I think it'd be fun to dress up like Ross (actually, I also think it'd be fun to dress up like Monica, but I shouldn't admit that in public!) |
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Changing Expressions
2005 July 9, 11:04 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I wonder if the expression "tough road ahead" is a modernization of "tough row to hoe", since we now drive more than we farm ? |
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Human Relations
2005 July 9, 02:14 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I think Inside Star Trek: The Real Story is a better guide to human relations than that Dale Carnegie book. Even the "rude" memos in Inside Star Trek are polite and friendly, and if you can learn how to work with actors, agents, and network executives (people with some of the brittlest egos in the world), you can learn to work with anyone. |
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Le Famous French Entry
2005 July 5, 10:21 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've always wanted to do a blog entry in French: bon jour mon petite pomme de granite, voule vous la avec couche mon capitan a la carte. I suspect this would make more sense if I spoke or understood French. |
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The Netherlands
2005 July 5, 09:51 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
My first thought when I saw a detailed map of the Netherlands was "Boy, they sure name a lot of their cities after cheeses". Since then, I've realized it's the other way around, but I still think of Holland as a cheesy country. |
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Switzerland
2005 July 5, 09:49 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
It's always fascinated me that the country code for Switzerland (ch) stands for Confederation Helvetica. Before I learned that, I thought Helvetica was just a font! |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
Dutch Entry
2005 July 5, 09:45 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Does it bug anyone else that, while the country name is The
Netherlands, the short form isn't Neth or Nether, but
Holland?! And the people aren't the Hollish people or the
Nether people (which admittedly conjurs up some interesting
images), but the Dutch people?! Even worse, their queen
is named Beatrice, so they literally have a Queen
Bea (queen bee), ugh! Someone should do something about
this. |
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The British Isles
2005 July 5, 09:39 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've always wondered if the British Isles exert some sort of calming/intelligence force. The Vikings were some of the most wild and violent peoples in the world, but, when they came to England, they formed the most sophisticated and courteous nation in the world. Conversely, people who leave the British Isles end up becoming loud and boisterous (Americans), rude and surly (Australians), and/or unsophisticated and cloddish (Canadians). I realize this blog entry will offend Australians and Canadians, and apologize in advance to the French people for not insulting them as well. |
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Round and Round == Mario Brothers?
2005 June 29, 10:13 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I've always wondered if the Ratt song Round and Round was really
about Mario Brothers (I realize I'm misquoting some lyrics below,
this is just how I heard them):
- "we'll put you on your shells", a reference to the turtle-like
shellcreepers?
- "another day, some other way", a reference to a new level and a
new method of defeating enemies?
- "I knew right from the beginning that you would end up winning; I
knew right from the start, you put an arrow through my heart", what
the Princess might say to Mario
- "out on the streets, that's where we'll meet"; Mario Brothers is
set "under the streets" (in the sewers), so this one's admittedly a
bit of a stretch.
|
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First Blog Entry of 2005
2005 June 29, 10:01 AM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Geez, it's been almost 2 years since I did a blog entry. At least I've
finally added the year to each entry (as I predicted, it took me more
than a year to do this!) . Of course, since the blog isn't "live" yet, this maybe isn't/wasn't such a big deal? |
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Star Trek Characters
2003 July 29, 01:11 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
If I could be any Star Trek character, I think I'd really like to be Boothby |
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That Number
2003 July 28, 09:44 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
After reading the first paragraph of this page again, I realize that a lot of people were probably expecting some sort of reference to that number; but, no, I won`t do it |
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Dating This Blog
2003 July 28, 09:41 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I just realized I have about until 1 year from today until I have to
worry about somehow incorporating the year into the date of each blog
item; how much do you want to bet I won`t get it done by then? |
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Smarter Spammers
2003 July 26, 10:56 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I get a lot of spam that`s mostly attached images, but the subject usually gives it away; I wonder what will happen when spammers send just images and use misleading subject lines? |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
Mad About City Names
2003 July 26, 10:39 PM
TraceRoute (View just this entry) |
There are too many cities that start with "mad" -- Madrid, Spain ; Madison, WI ; and even Madison, NJ ; someone should do something about this |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
My First Internet Machine Retired
2003 July 26, 10:30 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
Just found out that one of the first machines I ever had an Internet account on (forsythe at Stanford) has been retired |
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Warning: strftime() [function.strftime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /home/larryday/sites/SARANGWORLD/blog/index.php on line 65
First Blog Entry
2003 July 26, 07:02 PM
Blog (View just this entry) |
I can`t decide what the first entry on my blog should be, so this is it |
