Sunday, March 28, 2004 [16:26]
Ultimate Superhappy Tip-top Top Ramen Noodle Recipe (v 0.1)
I just had a culinary eureka moment. Grab a pen and write this down:
Take one pack of beef flavored Ramen Noodles. Put a little over a cup of water in a small pan. Bring it to a boil, and as you wait, add in the beef flavoring packet and about a teaspoon of chili powder.
When the water starts boiling, add the noodles, stirring gratuitously to make sure they cook evenly. Remember, we only added about half the recommended amount of water.
Finally, once it's basically done boiling, add half a handful of grated cheese and stir it in. Don't complain. You're supposed to read the entire recipe before you dive in.
There you have it: Ramen Noodles with a spicy, Western zing. By far, that was the best twelve and a half cents I ever spent. Sometimes I can't believe how awesome I am!
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 [17:16]
Happy Birthday to Me!
...In about seven friggin' months.
I don't usually post day-to-day trivia. I don't usually post long-winded rants against the government. I don't usually post mock news stories like "Canadians: American or British?" In fact, I don't really post much at all. I'm still trying to hit some sort of stride here.
I remember why I decided to start this blog. Obviously, it wasn't to push back the frontiers of technology-enabled interpersonal communication. Obviously, it wasn't to make millions from ad revenue or from selling commemorative coffee mugs. It was because I keep forgetting stuff. Sometimes a couple of well chosen words can unleash a flood a memories from decades long forgotten. [WARNING: What follows is mostly self-indulgent reminiscing. You may want to come back later, when I've finished my expose: "Internet Troll Rehabilitated into Productive Member of Society."]
A couple of weeks ago, I went to attend a baby blessing for my cousin's new baby, Colton. I'm not much for the religion thing anymore, and Mormonism is an especially sore spot for me. But the whole family was getting together for it, so I came along. It turns out that she attends the ward I did when I was six.
They still use the same church building. Even though I attended it every week, it didn't bring back many memories, except something about a deaf girl in my Primary, and a few impressions of playing in the nursery.
I slipped out after the blessing, and took a long walk. Meadowlark Elementary was across the street from the ward house, which is where I spent my kindergarten, first, and second grades. Big years. Here are some helpful triggers, in no particular order:
My Aquaman t-shirt.
Elmer's glue.
Left-handed scissors.
Superfriends, Galaxy High, The Littles, Sesame Street, Today's Special.
Snow, snowboots, giant snowball bigger than Miss Roberts.
That climbing dome thingy with the brightly colored vertices.
The hopscotch thingies (which are still there).
Assemblies. Mr. Baxter's bagpipes.
Reading with the first graders.
Fire drills. The megaphone.
Village Inn: The coolest place in the entire world.
U.S. Jail.
The time I tied my own shoelaces together, but it was Tal's birthday, and disaster ensued.
Halloween. I was a magician.
Swimming lessons.
Well, that should help me out in about fifty years. Too bad the rest of you had to sit through it.
Next week's installment: Why "The Brycenator" can't seem to get a date. (Spoiler: Part of it is that he insists on having women call him "The Brycenator.")
Friday, March 19, 2004 [08:18]
Spring Break
It's times like these that I wish I had some really exciting job or skill. For instance, if I was moonlighting as a CIA assassin--and don't try and tell me they don't exist--I would be spending spring break piloting a small raft up some Indonesian jungle river, with nothing but a 72 hour supply of food, a cyanide pill, and a high-powered sniper rifle named Gina. Oh, and a single 50 cal bullet, whose case was engraved with the name of some brutal dictator. Or maybe he's not a brutal dictator, but some unfortunate schmuck of a leader who wants to nationalize the factories if Nike doesn't improve working conditions. I wouldn't know which was the case. They only tell me what I need to know. And what I know is this: I'll only need the one bullet.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004 [09:13]
Vote Grassroots!
Only they can stop the rise of the machines!
Tuesday, March 02, 2004 [10:27]
Wow.
Two and a half weeks since I last blogged. And still, I have absolutely nothing to say.
Okay, time to scrape the bottom of the barrel. The ASUU is holding their studentbody elections, and I'm having trouble deciding which of the various parties have the best posters. I guess I could go to their respective websites and try to figure out if any of them have any positions on anything, or if there are any issues worth worrying about. But it's much easier to just vote a straight Space Monkey Mafia ticket. As best I can tell, their platform is based entirely on cynicism and disillusionment, which I find very appealing.
Somehow, I don't see them riding to victory on a groundswell of apathy.
Saturday, February 14, 2004 [02:05]
Down and out
Cory Doctorow is cool. Not the sort of cool that makes you want to smack him upside the head with a two-by-four, like Justin Timberlake. Cory never married Britney Spears, or suspended himself in a tiny plastic box over Budapest, or tried to end world hunger by singing at it.
Instead, he writes stuff. Mostly sci-fi, with a bit of a Neal Stephenson feel to it, but about 600 pages shorter for the modern, on-the-go lifestyle. A couple of years ago, there was a bit of a buzz on Slashdot about his first book, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". So after hearing about it six or seven times, I grabbed it from the library, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Later on, it was brought to my attention that the book was freely available under a Creative Commons license. Basically, it meant that you could download it for free, convert it to any format you liked, and give it away. I'm a big fan of that sort of thing, and it was especially fitting given the subject matter of the book (which I'm not going to rehash here, since you can go read it yourself this very second).
Now, following the release of his second book, he relicensed Down and Out under an even more liberal license, which gives readers the right to modify the book, create "derivative works" (sequels, for example, or books set in the same universe), and redistribute for any non-commercial purpose.
My first thought was, "Well, the book might be improved by adding Jar-Jar Binks and then having him brutally murdered." Pleasant thought, but impossible. Doctorow may have released his world for the masses to toy with and abuse, but George Lucas has not. The vagaries of copyright law have spared Binks a much-deserved bungee hanging.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn't avail myself of the author's generosity, but it's certainly in keeping with the whole whuffie concept. [Note: I went to look for a definition, but Wikipedia didn't yet have one. So I wrote one. And now my train of thought is shot to hell.] While I'm not convinced that the author has found the perfect solution to the current copyright insanity, it's a bold and noble experiment. More important, it seems to be working.
Well, now there's nothing to do but to GPL my Star Trek/Harry Potter crossover fanfic.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 [07:49]
When did I become a liberal freak?
I don't remember it happening. Nevertheless.
Sunday, February 08, 2004 [00:03]
My new life as a wedding photographer
Originally, my twenty line blogging script automatically posted as soon as I closed the text editor. Needless to say, that wasn't an ideal solution. Now it's a bit more sane, but at the cost of five more lines of script.
Yep. I just closed this entry, then opened it again, and picked up right where I left off. Minus some cursor movement. I could spend many a happy hour, just opening and closing Emacs. Which, of course, is an ordeal in itself.
So I spent Thursday evening helping my parents do a wedding reception for one of my friends from high school. Once things got going, I assigned myself the role of unofficial wedding photographer. It was fun wandering around, snapping pictures, occasionally trying to get people to line up. Though, deep down in the depths of my soul, I wished I was being paid $200 an hour to do it.
It's not about the money. I have not succumbed to the siren song of material wealth. No, I lust only for power over my fellow man. See, if I was being paid $200, I could say, "You three, line up. You, out of my picture!" And it would just happen. Because I would be the wedding photographer, and being anything but fully cooperative would be the same as flushing your own money down the toilet.
Though I couldn't always bend people to my iron will, I did manage to get a lot of great shots. I'm still undecided about the new camera, though. It's a Sony Cybershot 5.0 megapixel camera, an upgrade from an older 2.1 my brother used to let me borrow. It requires a much steadier hand. Maybe it's that the same amount of light has to cover more pixels, and the engineering types leaving the shutter open longer to compensate.
Sorry. I have a severe case of technolust, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about shiny toys.
The food was a hit, and I got the kinds of pictures that are going to make people cringe and wish I hadn't clicked at that precise moment. I ran out of flash sticks half way through the obligatory "posing of the rowdy children around the bride and groom," but somebody had a real camera setup for that part anyways. Most of my shots were filled with guests and family, which are valuable in their own way. The groom's father insisted on paying me for film, and after I explained how digital photos work, he insisted on paying me for the blank CD.
I don't want the liability of being the official guy to blame when those irreplaceable photos turn out to be dark and blurry. But as hobbies go, this could be a fun one.
So until next time, keep those cameras rolling.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004 [12:43]
A thought
What if, one night as you slept, tens of thousands of very small, very strong gnomes crept all over your skin. At a pre-arranged signal, they would each grab the base of a different hair follicle, count to three, and give it a good hard yank.
Shocked, confused, and bald all the way down to your eyebrows. Not a good way to wake up.
That, in a nutshell, is my entire argument against further development of nanotechnology.
Saturday, January 24, 2004 [12:15]
Giving back to the f4|\|zz04z
Every day, around midnight, the U of U servers send me a list of who has been reading [or at least, requesting files which may or may not exist] my site. For reasons which entirely elude me, somebody does. Every couple of days, there are some requests from somebody using Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 with StumbleUpon installed. I've never tried the latter, but Firebird is a really sweet piece of work, and you--yes, you!--should download it immediately. [Windows][Linux][Mac OS X]
But I digress. I've been racking my brain trying to think of an appropriate reward for this person, who has given so much and asked only for a few .html files in return. Now, I've finally done it.
Announcer voice: In recognition of this person's excessive dedication to my blog--a dedication which greatly exceeds my own--I do hereby award him or her my "Fan of the Month" award, along with all rights and privileges entailed therein.
These rights and privileges are legion. For example, if at some point in the future you are pulled over by The Fuzz, you can simply inform the officer that you are Bryce's Fan of the Month (February-March 2004), and the officer will wave you on your way with a kind word of congratulations. Out of politeness, he won't even mention the open container.
If you go to the Student Services building up at the U, and notify the Registrations Office of the award, your next two semesters of tuition are free. If you are not currently a student, you will automatically be accepted into the degree program of your choice.
But that's only the beginning of the vast flood of riches that is gushing straight towards you. Take this prestigious award to Hollywood, and you are guaranteed a date with the movie star of your choice (with the obvious exception of Katherine Hepburn... even my vast powers are for naught in the undiscovered country). Take this prestigious award to the floor of the Senate, and they will repeal the three laws of your choice (suggestions: The Patriot Act, the DMCA, and the law that forbids law-abiding commuters from running cellphone users off the road). Present it to the Secret Service, and you get to sucker punch President Bush. Sadly, you can only do it once, and you have to schedule an appointment at least a week in advance. But it's a start.
Finally, you never have to pay taxes again. If you win two months in a row, the Feds start paying you instead.
This is a boatload of goodies that you don't want to miss out on. So until next month's winner is selected, keep hitting that refresh button.
[Offer not valid in Provo]
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