I didn’t want IE8. I really didn’t. I like keeping my software up to date, but I know from experience (read: hours spent wrestling with Office 2007 and trying to help my dad figure out Vista on his office comp) that with Microsoft, newer isn’t usually better. So despite it being nearly 4 months since its release, I didn’t download it. I’ve enabled automatic updates on my computer because of Microsoft’s constant harping about how not updating regularly will leave your system vulnerable to attack. Last night I received instructions to install IE8 as part of the updates. An innocuous-looking installation wizard popped up. It was late, I was sleepy, and I unthinkingly clicked Okay. Cut to the present. I tried to boot into windows, only to see a black screen with the words
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file.
Luckily, I have a dual boot with Ubuntu so I was able to look it up online. As this succinct explanation puts it, Microsoft has outdone itself. Internet Explorer 8 has a bug which deletes the boot file boot.ini and prevents Windows from finding critical system files like hal.dll (which allows software applications to communicate with hardware devices in the system). Now I have to dig up my XP cd and do a repair. Peachy.
When I was 16 I had an astounding idea – What if we all don’t see colour the same way? What if we both point to grass and say ‘green’, but what you actually see is red and what I actually see is blue? We’ve both been taught to call that colour green, but our eyes are perceiving two completely different colours. How would anyone ever know? I’m so imaginative! I thought.
I asked my friends if they’d ever thought about it. They told me that they hadn’t, that I was very strange, and not to tell anyone else because normal people don’t think about such things. I’m brilliant and original! I thought.
Then I grew up and went to college and met another person who had had exactly the same idea. And he also thought he was imaginative and brilliant and ever so original for thinking of it.
If there were two of us in such a small geographical area, it stood to reason there’d be more of our kind out in the world. I ran to Google and found hundreds of articles and blog posts dedicated to my imaginative brilliant original idea. My cloud of self-admiration vanished. Goddamn Internets.
Anyway, this all came back to me because of this article on colour theory. Pink isn’t part of the colour spectrum! Our brain creates the colour we know as pink from a mixture of red and blue. How cool is that?
Pink it’s my new obsession
Pink it’s not even a question
Pink on the lips of your lover, ’cause it’s an imaginary colour
Pink is the love you discover
Imagine if Steve Tyler had sung that. Millions of people would have learnt about this amazing phenomenon. Aerosmith, you had a chance to edify the world and you blew it!
Another lucid article on how we perceive colour can be found here.
And finally, this optical illusion is so fascinating I simply had to add it to my post.
Concentrate on the black dot in the middle and watch the surrounding colours evanesce.
I never thought I’d care when he died. Maybe it’s just the effect of CNN’s dramatic coverage, but I feel bad about Michael Jackson’s death. He was degenerate and kooky, but he made great music.
A CNN reporter is interviewing random bystanders outside his house. They’re not doing a very good job of concealing their excitement at being on tv.
“This is very devastating.” *grin*
“It’s sad.” *grin*
I wouldn’t call it injustice so much as foolhardiness. Yelling at a bunch of people who clearly had no interest in what you were trying to say and were only trying to provoke you. Silly boy. Nice gloves though.
Have you ever found yourself walking out of a movie hall trying to convince yourself that the movie you just saw was worth buying tickets for and wasn’t a complete and utter waste of your time? What if you saw one movie in particular that was so singularly awful that it took months for the trauma and anguish of being subjected to it to be wiped from your memory? And what if, when you’d barely found a way to control the impulse to retch and self-flagellate at the mere mention of the title, the movie added you on Facebook and sent you a well-worded message designed to worm its way back into your psyche?
I have the Airtel Home 999 Plus broadband plan which until recently gave me unlimited downloads at a wholely respectable speed of 384kbps. That meant I got about 40kBps on average, which was enough to keep me happy. And of course, on certain peer to peer protocols that number was much higher. A couple of days ago I noticed my download speed had become abysmally low – about 15kBps. A little googling turned up this: Airtel screws unlimited plan users.
There’s nothing about it on the Airtel website, but I did come across this Google Doc somewhere.
So it’s official. The honeymoon’s over.
The barefoot corpse of Laura Nelson hangs from a tree in Okemah, Oklahoma. District Judge Caruthers convened a grand jury in June 1911 to investigate the lynching of the Laura Nelson and her son. In his instructions to the jury, he said, “The people of the state have said by recently adopted constitutional provision that the race to which the unfortunate victims belonged should in large measure be divorced from participation in our political contests, because of their known racial inferiority and their dependent credulity, which very characteristic made them the mere tool of the designing and cunning. It is well known that I heartily concur in this constitutional provision of the people’s will. The more then does the duty devolve upon us of a superior race and of greater intelligence to protect this weaker race from unjustifiable and lawless attacks.”
2009
Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as president of the United States by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Alas, I can resist temptation no longer. Despite the inherently doomed nature of this enterprise, I simply must make a to do list! So here we go.
Once the holidays come about, I will…
1. Practise photography (subject to getting my camera repaired)
2. Read REAL books. Textbooks don’t count. I really must revisit my childhood favourites.
3. Get rid of all the junk in my room. This should actually be #1 because clean room = clean mind.
4. Drink lots of green tea. You can never have too many antioxidants. Or can you?
5. Watch the sixth season of One Tree Hill. It’s a silly soppy show but I’ve been watching for so long that if I stop now they’ll hunt me down and take me out. But then again, I should want Chad Michael Murray to hunt me down and take me out. To the movies would be nice.
6. Finish Atlas Shrugged. I’ve been stuck on Galt’s speech for nearly five months. I can’t help it – he goes on and on and says the same thing in ten different ways!
7. Exercise! I think this has been on every list I’ve ever made since I got into the list-making business. Someday…
8. Organise my movie database. With around 400 movies to catalogue this is no small task.
Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. When I listen to it I feel like I’m gliding underwater and lying on an open plain under a blue sky and snuggled up in bed on a cold rainy night.
I just saw a Canadian movie called Away From Her. It’s about an elderly couple who are forced to live apart after 44 years of marriage when the wife gets Alzheimer’s disease. While in a nursing home, she develops a strong bond with a male resident and forgets her husband almost completely. Heartbroken, the husband visits her daily, hoping each day that the sight of him will bring her memory back. But instead he has to watch helplessly as his wife lavishes her affection on her new partner. Slowly he accepts it, and later in the film makes a considerable sacrifice to ensure his wife’s happiness.
The movie does a wonderful job of capturing the painfulness and poignancy of growing old.
The score of this film really stood out to me. Reminiscent of another Canadian film I once watched, Lie With Me, it’s a soft comforting melody that perfectly complements the serene yet sorrowful mood of the film.
“Wordie lets you make lists of words and phrases. Words you love, words you hate, words on a given topic, whatever. Lists are visible to everyone but can be added to by just you, a group of friends, or anyone, as you wish.”
