Found on FurAffinity:
Divide Cute by Zero, Receive Puppy
(The eyes—they are like singularities and will suck your soul out of your body.)

---

On a more somber note, Australia is now Natio non Grata as far as I'm concerned: Confirmed: Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia

To those of you stuck there: I'm sorry, but the entire continent is now way worse than dead to me. It is your fault for not dragging the fuckers who are doing this out of their offices and frog-marching them to the guillotine. The idea that you even have a "Censorship Minister" is an unforgivable abomination.

So, I've decided on a name for an alternate feral fursona: SPARQLdog.

No, not a Sparkledog. See also: "Opposable thumbs would be nice" by NightmareHound.

Rather, a SPARQL dog.
True fact: The last time I said "SPARQL" in person to someone who knew what it was, the response was "...don't even use that word." (The coffee-pot conversation was about the conference session on SQL schema design being too early in the morning.)

Now I just need to get a commission. :P

Poll #1414965
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Koinu by Mary Mouse [Commission, SFW]

<geek>Now I just have to wait for the rest of the stack to pop.</geek>
(It seems that whenever I have multiple commissions in progress from different artists, they always wind up getting completed LIFO.)

By now, you've probably seen the old, tooth-rottingly cute video of dogs playing with polar bears.

The geeky twist that recently dawned upon me is that this is a beautiful if unintentional allegory for how contact between a human-created AI and an alien intelligence might play out. If I was a writer I might be able to do something with that, but alas, this short entry will have to suffice.

This is for the 'nix-geek crowd, and can be ignored by everyone else without me thinking any less of you.

Here's how I install stuff on 'nix systems:

Every single separate package goes in it's own prefix.
If it's a system I've set up by hand, these are rooted in /.prefix ala /.prefix/python/[bin|lib|...]. Otherwise, if it's a shared system, or one where I keep my hands off the OS (like my OS X laptop), the prefixes are rooted at ~/.prefix.
After installing, I symlink any interesting executables to /command or ~/command as appropriate.

Where things get interesting is linking against libraries that are installed in these prefixes. It's not hard or complicated, it can just require passing an explosive amount of CPPFLAGS/LDFLAGS when running ./configure for a dependent package. (150% so on OS X, thanks to Apple's dynamic library fetish.)

Tonight, I finally got sick of building paragraph-long configure invocations by repetitively copy-pasting from my notes, and decided to write this utility. It's very simple; you invoke it inline while defining the CPPFLAGS/LDFLAGS for ./configure, and it will find the location of the package and output the appropriate flags.

Without this utility:
./configure --prefix=/Users/xxxx/.prefix/myapp CPPFLAGS="-I/Users/xxxx/.prefix/readline/include -I/Users/xxxx/.prefix/jpeg/include -I/Users/xxxx/.prefix/freetype/include -I/Users/xxxx/.prefix/sqlite/include
" LDFLAGS="-L/Users/xxxx/.prefix/readline/lib -L/Users/xxxx/.prefix/jpeg/lib -L/Users/xxxx/.prefix/freetype/lib -L/Users/xxxx/.prefix/sqlite/lib -Wl,-rpath,/Users/xxxx/.prefix/readline/lib -Wl,-rpath,/Users/xxxx/.prefix/jpeg/lib -Wl,-rpath,/Users/xxxx/.prefix/freetype/lib -Wl,-rpath,/Users/xxxx/.prefix/sqlite/lib"

With this utility:
./configure --prefix=/Users/xxxx/.prefix/myapp CPPFLAGS="$(prefix -I readline jpeg freetype sqlite)" LDFLAGS="$(prefix -LR readline jpeg freetype sqlite)"

See why I wrote it? ;P

( prefix.py version 1 )

I was on a plane, talking with someone I had spent the unmemorable portion of the dream trying to discover the identity of and track down. The conversation shifted and I said something to the effect of "I knew you were a life-extension-health-nut, but I really didn't expect you to be on the popsicle plan."
This is when something went horribly wrong with the plane; I think the fore section (everything in front of the wings) simply fell off. I was going to comment about the "fat lot of good that'll do you now," but woke up before I said it.

The term "shipper" in the context of someone describing themselves as "a Lee/Kara shipper" on a BSG forum never made much sense to me. It was obvious to me that they meant something along the lines of wanting to see them hook up, but the term itself didn't make any sense until just now, months after I first saw it used:

Relationship

*facepaw*

Poll #1367445 Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All Do you pronounce the 'A' in "a-grade" the same as in "is-a"? View Answers Yes 4 (30.8%) No 9 (69.2%) Where is your accent from? [Optional] View Answers

Addendum:
This came from me remembering an argument on IRC right after the first Matrix movie came out. I was trying to argue (but failed to articulate at the time) the because Agent Smith used the stressed (a-grade)/eh/ay form, the meaning of "I am a Smith" changed from "I am one of many smiths" to "I am Agent Smith", shortening Agent to "A" as if it were the initial of his first name, with the implication that there was only one of him (then).

Everyone thought I was nuts, then again, I often "read" things differently than most people. For instance, in BioShock, even though it was plainly obvious that Sander Cohen was gay, I did not regard the audio diary where he refers to Andrew Ryan as "the man I once loved" as implication that they were ever lovers in the romantic/fuckbuddy sense. Instead, the meaning that was immediately obvious to me was more along the lines of "I used to believe in this man/used to love what he stood for/used to love what he had created."

Addendum addendum:
D'oh! I should have added a question re the cot/caught merger, which I'm hypothesizing is not related to what I guess I'll call the "a-grade/is-a" merger. (For me, cot/caught is completely merged—I can't even imagine how their sound might differ.)

For some reason, I have a very strong feeling that something just went (or is about to go) very, very wrong for someone I care about, in ± a day or two.

I'd like to think I'm not crazy (edit addendum: or would it be better if I was?), but the last time I had a feeling like this (a couple years ago), I wrote about it in a private entry. The catch is that although the feeling, I'll call it a "moment of sensation", actually happened, although I was half-wrong about the context. Furthermore, the thought that maybe it acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy is something I can't shake, and is why I'm hesitant to write more right now.

It is stupid. It is shiny.
I could not resist, and just ordered one of the bone-pattern collars for myself:

This definitely falls into the realm of Epileptic Trees, but the more I think about it, the more thoroughly convinced I am that Daniel (#7) was Starbuck's father. [Highlight if you've seen "No Exit."]

Oh happy joy, it's time-delayed con crud!

Also, my brain is terrible.
I'm in the middle of exposure-correcting >1400 pictures (the survivors of the first round of editing), and I can't help but imagine what the lyrics might be if Stephen Lynch were to write and sing "Ugly Fursuit"

Have shifter knob in car replaced. [Appointment: 0930 Wednesday]
Finish Discrete Homework. [Deadline: 1300 Wednesday]
Finish Physics Homework. [Deadline: 1500 Wednesday]
Test: Discrete. [1300-1500 Wednesday] (Checked schedule, no test. Yay!)
Test: Physics. [1500-1700 Wednesday]

Laundry: Everything [Deadline: 2000 Wednesday] (Fuck the neighbors. I need non-stinking clothes.)

[Deadline: 0300 Thursday]...
Remove snow tires from trunk.
Mount GPS on dashboard instead of windshield. (Thanks, California! *STAB*)
Find: Camera Batteries FAILED
Charge camera batteries.
Find: Lenscap FAILED
Find: CF cards, dump to laptop.
Pack: Surge suppressor
Pack: Ethernet cables
Let Time Machine back up my home directory.
Put backup drive in fire safe.
Pack: Camera/Laptop/Phone paraphernalia.
Pack: AA batteries for flash
Set up: new cablemodem
Clean up dishes from room so roommates have something to eat off of.

Don't forget: Conbadges, Lube, Condoms

Sleep: ???? FAILED

Also: Figure out what the hell flipped the nymphomania satyriasis switch to "on." (Thanks, Wikitionary!)

If you want my Phone Number or BlackBerry PIN, comment here.
Likewise, if you want to give me yours, comments are screened.

My IMs are listed on my LJ profile.
I'll be on AIM and Yahoo IM, as well as Google Talk under my real-name gmail address.