Topiary Hell

Saturday, November 11, 2000

Spring wrote more about topiaries, and sent the following links:

Potpourri Easter Egg Topiary
Valentine's Day Topiary Centerpiece
Sweet Treats Topiaries
Classic Duet

Oh the horror! The horror! Mommy! Make it stop!

Architectureal Heaven

I mentioned to Spring the other day about this Greek Orthodox church I drive by everyday to and from work.

I'm interested in architecture. And this church is one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) churches in the area; I think it has a neoclassical design—you have your gold domes, the cross at the apex, a bell tower, but out front it has this stand of free-standing columns that give it a unique look. Simply gorgeous.

So when I discribed it to Spring she was very intrigued and wished she could see it. So I brought my digital camera to work so that on the way home in the morning, I could photograph it. [will add photos when I get a chance to]

Urban Decay

Also on the way home from work I pass what used to be Solar Testing Service Inc. Used to be because either it moved locations or went out of business. I remember there being hundreds of solar panels mounted about two feet off the ground in the field next to the building but now there is nothing left but an abandonded building and a field of posts.

Nothing like the beauty of urban decay.

Birthday Party

Today was Mark's birthday party and John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, was hosting it for us. Unlike the last party John threw, there were no strippers.

It was just Mark's very close friends and family (his father). We sat around, eating freshly grilled burgers, warmed macaroni salad and cold baked beans (their maid is from another country and doesn't quite have our cuisine down pat), soda and beer. All of it good. And one delicious chocolate cake that was to die for.

Later on, we marveled at John's 800 gallon salt water aquarium, home to a few dozen fish, a dozen snails, live coral, some shrimp and two suicidal fish that kept wanting to be sucked into the filtration system. Mark and John spent some time keeping the fish from suicide runs (or who knows, meybe they get a rush from doing that) until they seemed to stop it.L

Afterwards, we ended up watching a forgettable film (Milk Money) and American Beauty on a digital HBO broadcast on John's 72" HDTV. Wow. HDTV, if you've never seen it, is simply incredible—it's like being in a movie theater.

Work Agony

What I didn't mention last week was that it was the Week From Hell. After getting home from work (remember, I work the midnight shift), I got a call from my friend Jeff Cuscutis (I know entirely too many Jeffs) called me up around noon to remind me we were getting together.

This only after two hours of sleep.

So I ended up spending the entire day over at his house and leaving in time to drive to work and spend eight hours there.

I must have been up for 28 of the previous 30 hours. It was horrible (and is one reason why there isn't an entry from last Sunday).

Anyway, this week was similar, except that I got twice as much sleep (four hours) and I spent it at someone else's house (John the paper millionaire of a dotcom).

Sigh.

On the plus side, like last week, I was able to (electronically) chat with a friend.

Sunday, November 11, 2001

Return to Post Apocalyptic Boca Raton

We finally returned to Post Apocalyptic Boca Raton or, as Spring calls it, Poca Boca. The day was beautiful, and we had the time. So like Douglas MacAuthor, we returned. Only it wasn't to the Philipines and it wasn't during a World War but I digress.

Poca Boca isn't all that big an area, being nestled just south of Spanish River Blvd and just east of FAU. We drove and parked the car along the abandoned road and strolled through the area for several hours.

The vegetation has gone wild and in one section (around 39^th St. and an abandonded section of 5^th Ave) the growth has almost overgrown the entire street. Along 39^th are the foundations for the model homes that were built in the late 60s and we were amused to find a couch still there in what may have been the living room.

As we were walking around Spring and I talked about various locations that a person could potentially squat and remain unseen from homes and streets along the edge of Poca Boca.

Florida Swampland

After visiting Poca Boca Spring and I headed off to the ends of South Florida—Loxahatchee. The Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge on the western fringe of South Florida. We drove out there the day before but just after the sun had set and therefore we only stayed a few minutes before we were eaten alive by mosquitos.

Going in the day, we avoided all that and were able to stroll around the area a bit. Quite a few people were out, getting airboat tours (those things are loud) and fishing. We walked along the hiking path (that goes on and on and on and on) for a bit, then headed home where we both took a nap.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Of course the bank is closed!

Whoa! Who made today a holiday? It's bad enough with banks and their bankers' hours …

I ain't got no password. You ain't got no password. They ain't got no password? Where the heck's the password?

Yesterday I was given the previous sysadmin's computer, running Windows XP Professional. Well, I'm given to understand that there are some support issues that require the use of Windows (cough frontpage cough) and it's not like this is new to me; so instead of using X-Windows to prop open a dozen xterms I use Windows to prop open a dozen putty.exes.

So when I sat down to use M's (the previous sysadmin) former computer she was already logged in. I did briefly think about changing her password just prior to leaving yesterday, but not knowing how to actually go about changing the password, I figured I could leave it until today. I'll just leave myself logged in and everything should be okay. Right?

Right?

You do see where this is going, right?

Today, I sat down in front of the computer, and right there was the Windows XP login window, asking me for M's password.

Sigh.

And none of the adminstrative passwords I've been given over the past few days worked. C couldn't even log in.

As I left the office tonight (the cubicle isn't nearly as depressive looking now that I've cleaned it up—now it has this Zen emptiness going for it) the XP installation CD was reformatting the harddrive (a different one—M's machine had important files on it and an XP reinstall is always destructive it seems—also, note to self: check to see if the cover is already off a computer before blindly removing screws out the back).

I've also learned the depths of my loathing of web-based adminstration. Of course you [the web-based administration program] couldn't create a sub-site—this computer doesn't have DNS on it you XXXXXXX piece of XXXX! Now create the sub-site! Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggllll!

Fortunely, I didn't have to deal with the phone all that much today.

Reason #2.71828182845904523536 I hate PHP

So for my other job, I was requested to upgrade PHP from 4.3.8 to 4.3.9 because of a non-functioning script on one of the websites (in and of itself, never a good sign). So I pull it down, configure, make, make install and other stuff to get it into Apache, get an executable built, move it into place, start it up, and everything looks good so far … request http://www.example.net/server_info to make sure PHP is in there and … nothing.

Web server is running.

No page.

Any, and all requests are dying.

This is not good.

Check the log file and find:

[Sun Oct 10 02:09:49 2004] [notice] child pid 22113 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

Put the old executable into place and start tracking down the problem.

Well, long story short, the “solution” to this “problem” involved deleting the existing PHP configuration (and associated files—the one installed for PHP 4.3.8) and installing the PHP configuration for PHP 4.3.9.

Okay, PHP 3x to PHP 4x, I could understand.

I might even forgive breakage from 4.x to 4.y.

But breakage from 4.3.8 to 4.3.9?

Truely, PHP is the scripting language du jour.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

“Office Space” Recut

Last year, Robert Ryang recut a trailer for “The Shining” to make it appear as a romantic comedy, which lead to a rash of recut trailers for various films placing them in different genres—Robert Ryang's work was the best of the lot.

Now comes this (and Mark should appreciate this)—“Office Space” Recut (link via Jason Kottke).

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

“You are in a fractal of twisty little chambers …

Years ago in college, generating fractals with fractint was a popular pastime among my group of friends. But it was mostly (if not entirely) two-dimentional fractals being generated.

But this three-dimentional Mandelbrot set?

Wow!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Psychotherapy of Racter

One idea I have for this year's NaNoGenMo is Oz As She Is Spoke, an homage to English As She Is Spoke. The process is simple. Take the text from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:

She was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran and opened the door.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter 2

and translate it to language A, then from A to B, and finally back to English:

Dorothy was he suddenly so bad, was awake by pushing The injury may have been lying on a soft bed, no. This was, This jar to catch his spirit, and he was made the surprise; And Toto put his cold little nose and his face and dismally whined. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house is not growing; Nor was it Dark, bright sunlight entering through the window, the fill A small room. He sprang with his heel into his bed and ran to and Toto And has opened the door.

(I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to figure out the two intermediate langauges I used) Amusing, but I think I'll save that idea in case my current idea, a conversation between Racter and Eliza (the idea that Bunny would like to see) proves to be too difficult to pull off.

So, before tackling the difficult problem of “scripting Racter” I'd thought I'd try to get a version of Eliza up and running. I found this version, and with this commentary, it's pretty easy to see how Eliza works.

We can map the key sequences to possible responses:

local keyword_reply =
{
  ["can you"] =
  {
    "Don't you believe that i can*",
    "Perhaps you would like me to be able to*",
    "You want me to be able to*",
  },

  ["can i"] =
  {
    "Perhaps you don't want to*",
    "Do you want to be able to*",
  },

  ["you are"] =
  {
    "What makes you think i am*",
    "Does it please you believe i am *",
    "Perhaps you would like to be*", 
    "Do you sometimes wish you were*",
  },

  -- ...
}

And by using LPeg, we can easily build a parsing pattern that can match these key sequences:

local nonalpha = R(" @","[`","{~")

local keywords = P(false)
for kw in pairs(keyword_reply) do
  if kw ~= "" then
    keywords = keywords + P(kw)
  end
end

local parse = (P(1) - (keywords * nonalpha))^0 * C(keywords) * C(P(1)^0)

key,rest = parse:match "please, can i turn you off now?"

key will contain “can i” and rest will contain “turn you off now?” And given “can i”, we can pick one of the two possible responses. In this version, a response that ends with “*” just parrots the rest of the input, but at this point, Eliza would print: “Do you want to be able to turn you off now?” which isn't correct. We need to correct the pronouns. Again, some LPeg code to do just that:

conjugate = Cs((
                   P" are"  / " am "
                 + P" were" / " was "
                 + P" you"  / " me "
                 + P" your" / " my "
                 + P" I've" / " you've "
                 + P" I'm"  / " you're "
                 + P" me"   / " you "
                 + C(1)
                )^1)

rest = conjugate:match(rest)

and now we get: “Do you want to be able to turn me off now?” which is correct.

LPeg makes Eliza much easier to write and modify. Even if you can't understand the code itself, it's easy to see what needs to be added to do the conversion. Compare that with the original version I'm using as a reference:

380 REM ******************************************
390 REM **TAKE PART OF STRING AND CONJUGATE IT****
400 REM **USING THE LIST OF STRINGS TO BE SWAPPED*
410 REM ******************************************
430 C$=" "+RIGHT$(I$,LEN(I$)-LEN(F$)-L+1)+" "
440 FOR X=1 TO N2/2
460 FOR L=1 TO LEN(C$)
470 IF L+LEN(WORDIN$(X))>LEN(C$) THEN 510
480 IF MID$(C$,L,LEN(WORDIN$(X)))<>WORDIN$(X) THEN 510
490 C$=LEFT$(C$,L-1)+WORDOUT$(X)+RIGHT$(C$,LEN(C$)-L-LEN(WORDIN$(X))+1)
495 L = L+LEN(WORDOUT$(X))
500 GOTO 540
510 IF L+LEN(WORDOUT$(X))>LEN(C$)THEN 540
520 IF MID$(C$,L,LEN(WORDOUT$(X)))<>WORDOUT$(X) THEN 540
530 C$=LEFT$(C$,L-1)+WORDIN$(X)+RIGHT$(C$,LEN(C$)-L-LEN(WORDOUT$(X))+1)
535 L=L+LEN(WORDIN$(X))
540 NEXT L
550 NEXT X
555 IF MID$(C$,2,1)=" "THEN C$=RIGHT$(C$,LEN(C$)-1):REM ONLY 1 SPACE
556 FOR L=1 TO LEN(C$)
557 IF MID$(C$,L,1)="!" THEN C$=LEFT$(C$,L-1)+RIGHT$(C$,LEN(C$)-L):GOTO 557
558 NEXT L

Just a bit more work to get some corner cases worked out and then comes the hard part of getting Eliza to talk to Racter.

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Extreme spices, Brevard edition

Today was a cold, miserable, rainy day here in Brevard, so we didn't get out much. But a few days ago, we did stop by the local Food Lion, the other grocery chain in Brevard. Whereas Ingles is the more upscale type grocery store, Food Lion is your … um … less expensive grocery store. So my expectations were pretty low.

What I was not expecting was to find actual turmeric!

[A picture of fresh turmeric] A mutant carrot or a mutant worm … you decide.

I've never seen fresh turmeric! Much less expect to find it in a … um … less expensive grocery store!

The Boston Diaries