A Blog Of Notes, the newish audio blog that Tim and myself have been working on, keeps getting awesomer.
As we are nearing the end of the month, we have strung all the audio files of March 2008 together into a single, easily-played sound file (we’re calling these collections of monthly sounds a “compile”).
Go here to listen to the March compile that Tim has so skillfully constructed.
Yes, we are also providing a March compile with a backing drumbeat, thank you for asking!
The birds are coming back. I saw some robins last week, and have seen a lot of cardinals flying around behind our house. I found some information regarding cardinals indicating that they are not migratory, but despite this I don’t recall seeing one around here in the winter.
Anyways, I got back from shopping this afternoon, and had my handheld digital voice recorder with me. I don’t really recognize birdsongs, but I know what a cardinal sounds like.
There was one high up in a tree right next to our garage. I was in a blissful enough moment to stop and record it for a bit.
If you listen closely you can hear another cardinal in the distance (perhaps answering its call?).
Hi, here’s a belated movie quote meme completed on behalf of Mathman.
Rules:
1. Here are quotes from 15 of my favourite movies.
2. See if you can name the films from whence they were lifted.
3. No googling or IMDBing; I’m trusting you on this.
4. I’ll post the film names as they’re correctly identified.
My additional rule:
5. Person(s) with the most correct answers can supply a doodle idea for me to doodle.
The Quotes:
1. “What does Operations care about a bunch of damn books? A book in Dutch. A book out of Venezuela. Mystery stories in Arabic.”
Three Days of the Condor [Matty Boy]
2. “Life mocks me even in death!”
An American Werewolf In London [Never Identified!]
3. “Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones.”
Dr. Strangelove [Matty Boy]
4. “I saved Latin. What did you ever do?”
Rushmore [Cowboy The Cat]
5. “Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
The Third Man [Becca]
6. “Back home, they put me in jail for what I’m doing. Here, they give me awards. “
Casino [SamuraiFrog]
7. “I heard about Doc, and I know why he did it. Somebody took away his painting privileges.”
Escape From Alcatraz [Becca]
8. “Oh, ho ho! You sly dog! You got me monologuing! I can’t believe it.”
The Incredibles [J.D.]
9. “You’re a very attractive man, Ken. You’re… smart, you’ve got wonderful bones, great eyes, and you dress really interestingly.”
A Fish Called Wanda [Tim]
10. “Ask him, Edie, how come he’s so good at killing people?”
A History Of Violence [J.D.]
11. “You are named after the dog?”
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade [Cowboy The Cat]
12. “Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself.”
Inside Man [J.D.]
13. “What was Raymond doing with his hands?”
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) [SamuraiFrog]
14. “I think my body’s getting used to these 36-hour days.”
Primer [Never Identified!]
15. “Lisa, whatever female-driven, emotion-based dilemma you may be dealing with right now, you have my sympathy. But for the sake of time and sanity, let’s break this down into a little male-driven fact-based logic. One simple phone call saves your dad’s life. “
Red Eye [Lonie Polony]
UPDATE!
To make this a meme with an amazingly happy ending, I have decided to offer my doodling services for *anyone* that was the first to correctly answer any of the questions.
I await your doodle ideas!
DOODLE UPDATE!
For Lonie Polony: Danny Zucco in Greased Lightning (how about Zucco in front of Greased Lightning? I should have read your request a little more carefully!)
For SamuraiFrog: A walrus typing on a laptop that’s starting to explode.
For Tim: Working from home.
For J.D.: John McCain channeling The Hulk breaking a baby lamb in half, with the blood dripping onto a poster for Blade Runner
For Becca: Wonder Woman dancing with Mario (from Mario Brothers)
Well, I didn’t make it into BoingBoing before my one year blogoversary, despite my desperate attempts at pandering to their specific tastes.
However, as I mentioned before, I do have one more trick up my sleeve.
Continuing a time-honored cultural tradition, I present the following:
What, you were expecting something a little more intelligent and a little less juvenile?
It was a year ago today when I began uploading my thoughts to this blog. That first post was about a zombie apocalypse.
I am looking for help from the readers of this blog now.
We are out shopping at a supermarket when the zombie apocalypse becomes evident to us. The front of the supermarket is made up of floor to ceiling glass windows. There are two sets of automatic glass doors on either end of the front of the supermarket. There is also a service entrance in the back, which is a steel door and locked from the inside.
There are hundreds of zombies outside in the front parking lot. There are about fifteen zombie shoppers in the supermarket. There are five zombies out back. All of the store’s employees are zombies.
The zombies are the slow-moving, George Romero kind. You can kill them by removing the head or destroying the brain.
Assume that all non-zombies in the supermarket arrived by motor vehicle.
Quick, we need to decide on a plan! What are we going to do? What do we need to take care of in order to survive?
I need to know what our priorities are, and we need to decide on tasks and have volunteers for each task.
Together we can get through this! I know it!
SO LET’S GO!
I was monkeying around with Google a bit.
One nice feature of Google is that if you accidentally mistype something you’re searching for, Google tries to guess the text that you intended to type.
I’ll actually use this as a feature in some cases. Say there’s a scientific phenomena or some other such thing for which I can’t quite remember the proper name.
I’ll pop a close approximation of it into Google, and I’ll usually be able to get the correct spelling of what I’m looking for after hitting “Search”, often displayed to me as:
Did you mean: [correctly spelled term]
So, I thought it would be funny if I got Google to say something naughty, like Did you mean: asshole
But dammit, it appears that Google doesn’t like to swear.
I did a little scientific experiment, using a more common expletive, “asshole” and compared it with a lesser-used though no less colorful word, “asswipe”.
First, let’s type in the words with their correct spelling.
Search for asshole:
Ooh! Over 24 million hits. That’s a pretty popular swear word.
Now let’s search for asswipe:
That’s not a shabby search result total, but at under 400,000 that’s significantly smaller than the results for asshole.
Now, let’s intentionally misspell both words, in the exact same manner.
Let’s search for asssdwipee
Hmm, no results, but Google thinks I might be looking for “asswipe”.
Now let’s search for asssdholee
No results, and Google has no suggestions for me! It doesn’t matter that “asshole” brings back 60 times the results that “asswipe” does, and that I am misspelling the two words in the same exact manner. Sorry, Google cannot help you!
__________________________________________
I am of course not constructing a scientific theory backed up by hills of proofs and anecdotal evidence.
However, I challenge you to type in some text in Google where it will suggest the word “asshole” as what you were really searching for. Come to think of it, why not also try to get Google to suggest any of the seven dirty words?
UPDATE:
My brother took my challenge, and I must say I am impressed.
Here we are, on the eve of my one year blogoversary, nearing the arbitrary deadline I have set for myself to be honored on the pages of BoingBoing, like such blogging luminaries as Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein and Becca.
I have shown the world Super Mario Homemade Macaroni and Cheese.
I have given it a Steampunk bar of soap.
I have even translated a short story into the vernacular of a zoned-out seventh grader, a voice all too absent from our intellectual discourse in this baby-boomer dominated world.
Will my sort of not half-assed efforts pay off? I don’t know.
I do know that if you want to see I, Splotchy BoingBoinged, you have the means within your power.
If you have seen something cool on my site, whether it was yesterday or a year ago, you can suggest it to the tastemakers of BoingBoing here. You’ll be glad you did. Actually, I’ll be glad you did, and isn’t that really the same thing?
If I do not make it into BoingBoing before the arrival of my blogoversary, don’t worry. I won’t wilt like a fragile flower. Sure, there will be weeping, but it will be the strong, silent kind.
And I do have one last trick up my sleeve.
BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow is also a fiction writer. He wrote a cautionary tale of Google, security and privacy titled Scroogled for Radar Online (if you don’t want to be bothered to click through several pages for the complete story you can get it in one long page here).
Periodically I will see links to different language translations of this story made by diligent multilingual BoingBoing devotees.
However, I have yet to see a translation of this story done by a procrastinating seventh grader who sort of just skimmed it at the last minute. Until now, that is.
Scroogled!
Greg got off a plane. He was a brown unshaven nut and he was looking good. But then later he wasn’t feeling so good when he was waiting a long time and he was sweaty.
So Google is everywhere. Their doing all security now.
Greg used to work at Google and liked it, but then he didn’t want to work there anymore.
“Hi.”
The officer took his card and was staring at a screen a lot. He had some food on his lip.
The officer asked him about a long time ago, and Greg said, why do you want to know about that.
Greg said what are you talking about model rockets.
Yeah, the officer said.
Greg was kind of sick to his stomach. No, it’s okay.
Okay.
But then the officer was still bugging him.
There was a girl Maya who worked in a chocolate lab. She had teeth and a drooling problem. They had a couple dogs. She was explaining all about the security that Google was doing, and it was really scary.
Greg was crazy surprised. What’s up with Google he asked Maya? They’re supposed to be good and everything? Why are they evil cherries?
Maya said they were evil cherries and Greg should just deal.
They were quiet for a minute.
So Google is crazy mad with the spying Greg asked Maya.
You betcha Greg.
Oh, Maya isn’t with Greg, she is a lesbian, but it’s okay.
So then Greg started working for Google. HE DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE!!!!!!
Maya killed herself because Google was crazy mad with the spying. But Greg got a couple of days off, which he probably needed.
THE END?!!
