outlawpoet's Friends

Funny, both Warren Ellis and Cory Doctorow have had problems with their characterizations, I on the other hand, am happy with mine:

I am: Frank Herbert His style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time.

Which science fiction writer are you?

warrenellis.com

warrenellis.com

Warren's new website is kinda ugly if your screen is too big.

Well, I'm off. I'll be in Salt Lake until Sunday. Hold all my calls until then, internet.

When I get back, hopefully I'll have a long stretch of uneventful, and I can get back to some of my side projects which I've been meaning to put up for people to look at.

In the meantime, in the words of Jenny Sparks, "Until I get back, you fucking well BEHAVE."

Grand Illusions Ltd Pens and Pencils

I kind of want one of these metal pens.

Ugh. So, I'm here, obviously very late at night, because I have to leave too early in the morning to trust myself to go to bed. I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to get some work done before I leave.

I'm going to Michigan, for a funeral, which is unpleasant, to say the least. I'll be there for the weekend, and back, then to SLC for next weekend. It's all part of a family extravaganza.

Other than this sudden and unhappy events, things are good. At work especially. I'm working on interesting things, and generally we're accomplishing a great deal. In a most exciting development, we're finally getting into having permanent instances of our system. You see, usually we start up the AI software, run it through training, and then test it, for anywhere from ten seconds(while debugging) to 4-6 hours(for liveweb tests). This means that no instance of the AI is ever around for very long. But now we have instances that we're running for days and days. Even better, we're starting to use it to do practical things for ourselves ( my favorite one is TIGO, the AI that watches another AI being tested, and complains to us if it sees the testee making mistakes).

It's all very interesting, I wish I didn't have to go this weekend. Other than, you know, the obvious reasons to wish it weren't so.

Strangely, I have some money left over from christmas, even after buying a plane ticket. Maybe I'll get one of those pens. Or start squirreling away for an iPhone. Who knows.

Buy Sealand

An interesting Idea.

I keep track of silly idealistic things like this, because occasionally one of them actually occurs and astounds people.

If a copyfight group owned Sealand, it could cause some very interesting things to happen. It might be dangerous, and is certainly baiting governments and corporations, any of which have rather more guns than any copyfight group.

I find myself split between the cynical hope that this happens and provokes an overreaction, showing the flaws in the system, and hoping that it all works out in a Cryptonomicon kind of data haven-ish way.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

interesting page.

I like the idea of portion control a lot more than I like proscriptive dieting.