out of the blue

Just to warn you people, there's a bot out there that IMs two random people with the initial message "i say, old bean, have you seen my hat?", then relays their messages to each other. So, you have two people talking to each other through an intermediary screen name, both of which think that the other person IMed them. I found an explaination here, and thought I would repeat it in case you guys end up having the same thing done. It's annoying. Here's my transcript:

autohat8000: i say, old bean, have you seen my hat?

insanityisall: And who would this be?

autohat8000: tsk tsk….you IMed me first

autohat8000: its only right that you introduce yourself first

insanityisall: And that is patently false. If you're a bot, I don't really want to talk to you. If you're a person, you'll have to tell me why I should believe you're not a bot.

autohat8000: which leads me to believe that you are a bot

insanityisall: Last chance before being blocked. I have no patience with this sort of thing.

autohat8000: well, if i knew who you were and in what way you had gained my IM, then maybe I could understand what is happening

autohat8000: as it is now, you are like a sales man banging at my door to tell me that you wont ever bother me again

insanityisall: Looks to be a bot:
http://tesseractivity.livejournal.com/6157.html?page=7

insanityisall: See you.

insanityisall: I'm blocking "autohat8000". If you're a real person, I suggest you do then same.

insanityisall: the*

I'm not sure what this is, just a prank, or some sort of new viral marketing campaign, or what. In any event, here are some resources:

• Wikipedia entry – TheGreatHatsby
• Check to see if the bot is a "legitimate, hatsby-sponsored hatbot"
• info page of livejournal community "themissinghat"
• tesseractivity's original livejournal post documenting the phenomenon

Apparently you can initiate a conversation by IMing any of the screen names listed in the Wikipedia entry. But I wouldn't suggest it. You might annoy people.

In Mars news, it looks like there may be standing pools of water on Mars. If this is confirmed, it might shake a long-held perspective that liquid water on the surface is impossible due to Mars's thin atmosphere.

Weta Workshop, the people who did the physical effects (costumes, armaments, etc) for the Lord of the Rings movies (among others) have created a line of limited edition steampunk ray guns: "Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators". They are absolutely beautiful.

Today's coolest news, for me, is that the Safari browser is being released for Windows. That means that it will now be possible to test all of the major browsers on Windows (although system-specific tests remain useful due to (for example) differences in font rendering). Cross-browser, cross-platform support is a difficult proposition, but this is a major step towards making that goal achievable.

Come now, what is this? Two picture posts in a row?

I just returned from a four-day family trip to Central Oregon. Most of these pictures were taken on a bike ride with my dad on the McKenzie River. It was a nice trail ride, without too many rocks and roots to bother us, and I never once lost too much control above any of the steep slopes. The river and its side streams were beautiful. I would say it was the most green I've seen in ages, but I just went through the redwoods. This green, however, was vibrant as opposed to regal, youthful as opposed to ancient. Trees are my favorite, and streams a close second. Together, well, let me just say it's difficult to withstand the wave of happiness.

I just got back from visiting Nathan in San Francisco with Sarah and Aaron. I won't make a full post right now, because I feel like sleeping, but I'll post the pictures. Most of them are on Flickr, as always, but I'll put a couple here.

They're mostly from downtown San Francisco:

xkcd author Randall Munroe gives a talk at MIT. The pictures are awesome:

Those who follow xkcd will appreciate the raptors that stalked him and the playpen balls that were scattered about:

Among the dinosaurs that menaced xkcd artist Randall Munroe during his lecture at MIT were a pair of radio-controlled velociraptors that occupied a portion of the right-hand side of the stage. When the velociraptors moved towards Munroe, the artist reached for the squirt gun loaded with grape juice that had been conveniently provided for him.

If anyone doubted the fact that the RIAA is merely a floudnering industry trying to keep itself afloat by whatever dastardly means are available to it, think on this. The RIAA has acquired legal authority to receive royalties for any music streamed online, no matter who controls the copyright.

Perhaps I shouldn't bother bringing stuff like this up, especially since my opinion won't change anything, but this is absurd. I just wanted to express that.

Sarah was working on writing accounts of 9 different species of birds for her ornithology class, so I decided to sketch each of the birds as she got to them. I used references from Google, of course. It was very fun.

The very young: 3ish-year old landlady

The very old: The Zimmers

I was talking to Aaron last night, and I wanted to use the term "ur-poem", in a rather limited sense. But I wasn't quite sure if that would be precisely what I wanted to say, so I did a quick google search to see if it was common. For "ur-poem", I recieved rather disgusting results.

In the first two pages, there was only a single hit that was what I had intended (at the beginning of the second page). The next proper hit was five pages in. The others were all variants on the soul-reaving "i luv ur poem!"

This disgusts me.

The proper usage of the phrase "ur-poem" is not some stupid slack-jawed internet-shorthand. The prefix "ur-" means "original", and "prototypical" [wikipedia]. (Interestingly, the root is German. As in ursprache, protolanguage. I thought it would have something to do with the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur.)

Just so you know.

I paint in Photoshop.

I compose poetry in my favorite code editor.

Mmmmm.