WTFbrb

Anna, of The Annalog writes a story every day. Aside from a couple breaks, she has been doing it for almost two months straight now. I’ve subscribed to her RSS feed, so I get a daily dose of fiction prose mixed in with my news and webcomics.

The stories are to novels what The Far Side is to Achewood. They quickly draw you into a world that is familiar and yet bizarre: sometimes the mailman becomes too involved in your mail, and other times city dwellers live out their somewhat bohemian fantasies. In a few hundred words—a minute or two of reading—the story of someone’s life has come and gone, you’ve met and lost a friend, given in to hope, and felt despair at the human condition.

Since looking up vehicles by VIN is (umm, well…) the point, I believe Carfax was just granted a patent on one of the most common uses of the “WHERE” clause in SQL. For you non techies, it is indeed as simple as it sounds, WHERE looks up things in a database, WHERE a specific thing is true. (For example WHERE TitleStatus=’Clean’).

I think I need to file a few patents. Say looking up movies based on genre, or books based on publication date, or computer hard drives based on manufacturer. Or anything that anyone would ever do when trying to segment data ever….

Via http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005300.php

I just upgraded WordPress and in the process sort of messed up my theme. It was old and not the best though, so I decided to hunt around for new ones. I settled on Almost Spring by Becca Wei, over at Beccary.

Being inherently dissatisfied with anything a perfectionist, I will inevitably be making lots of tweaks over the coming weeks, so expect it.

Don’t worry, the shrugging guy will be back soon.

Driver of a dark grey/dirty black small pickup in Mountain View, you were driving in the right lane while I biked in the left, preparing to make a left turn. You asked me “Are you trying to commit suicide” and then drove off. I shouted after you “I’m making a left turn, jackass”.

I apologize, I should not have called you a jackass as you did not act as such. Rather, you acted as chickenshit. Snug in your pickup, ensured of the manlihood it takes to apply few pounds of pressure on a rubber and metal “pedal”, easing at 30 miles per hour towards the stoplight, while I biked at 25 mph in the left lane, using real pedals to supply torque to power a device without assistance.

You thought it might be clever, perhaps even in a helpful way if you asked me if I was mentally unstable, unable to navigate my device by the laws of the road. You thought you would imply that my sense of self preservation was lacking anymore than yours, mister “I’m going to lean out the window and act like chickenshit while I drive too fast towards a stoplight”.

And yet you had a point, you did have some skewed priorities of self preservation, you were too chickenshit to slow down to listen to my reply. You were so sure of your inability to assess the situation correctly that rather than hearing a reply that would prove your inaccuracy, you hid in your right-on-red.

Yes, Chickenshit, I apologize for I should not have called you a Jackass. My mistake.

Scifi lovers, check out Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. It’s some great “hard sf” from the man who is truly becoming the next great science fiction author, Cory Doctorow. Also it’s free.

In this volume, he steps partway back from his usual close-to-absurd-but-just-believable style and collects a few of his pieces that follow more traditional motifs. He goes so far as to name them after classics as in “I, Robot”. He uses this backdrop to add modern ideas including his own views, interpretations, and visions of intellectual property, gaming, and even religion. Also it’s free.

Seriously, if nothing else read the 2 page “Printcrime” . You really owe it to yourself, it’s profound. Also it’s free.

I bought the book since I basically love to read sci fi while curled up and falling a sleep (I have since I was a child), but if you’re not sure yet, read them for free online, or print them out, because…it’s free.

PS: I began a Wikipedia article on the collection: here.