13 Jun 2004
Draft #2 – 1728 words (target: 1000)
Assessment Task 1: Imaginative Composition
The fall into darkness, it is said, was inevitable. For a cause lost in the depths of time past, this dark being came to hate the world and all within it. Seeking only destruction of life, he embarked on a mission of desolation; it was perhaps better for those on whom he was dependent for his un-life, that they were stripped of all consciousness and will as they fell under the curse of his ineluctable hunger.
Those who became subject to this desolate ruler became bound under him, enacting their retribution upon others — and so the cycle continued, hundreds drawn under this curse. Fear of this decimation of any sense of self identity or existence, substituted with a perpetual, mindless repetition of the motions instigated by the first to fall was rational, although, it must be said, immortality as nothing is worse than frail existence within which life may exist. This fear is not the conventional one of pain, or other suffering — but of nothing. Not of the unknown, simply emptiness.
Fear did nothing — the haunting sound of approaching inevitability remained. For most, the world was slowly falling to the grasp of this lifeless dictator, however there was one, it was said, possessing the qualities to overpower and destroy this being, releasing the world from an age of bondage under an empty master.
—-
Karl Riley drifted in alternating states of consciousness. An alarm sounded loudly next to him, and he jerked upright, slamming a closed fist down on the keypad of his mobile. Begrudgingly, he rolled, bringing himself upright. It was two in the morning, and apparently he was needed immediately at work. Muttering something about overtime, he dressed, left his apartment, and started driving to the support-centre, stopping only for a coffee from an all-night convenience store.
As he turned to return to his car, the lights of the convenience store flickered, before failing. Hearing the sales assistant swearing, Karl walked in darkness to his car. A cloaked figure moved along the street, towards him, making no attempt at concealment. He reached Karl’s car first, and stood, waiting at the driver side door.
“Hello?” said Karl, somewhat hesitantly.
The figure stood, silent and motionless, his face in darkness.
“Sorry, that’s my car. I need to go. It’s two-twenty on a Thursday morning, and I have ten minutes to get to work. What are you doing?”
Without speech, he moved aside, and continued to walk along the street. Glancing cautiously, Karl unlocked his car, sat down, and again locked the doors from the inside. He turned to pull his seatbelt, and again turned back to fasten it. As he looked up from his task, his eyes locked with two perspicacious, penetrating eyes, of the figure he had seen moments before, fixated to the window of his car.
Tearing his gaze from this apparition, Karl turned the keys, gunned the engine, and tore off down an otherwise-deserted street. Breathing heavily, he reached shakily for his coffee.
“Wake up Karl, wake up,” he repeated over to himself. “Wake up Karl, wake up, WAKE UP!”, he found himself shouting. Except it wasn’t his voice he heard shouting. It had come from behind him.
He leant his weight on the cars brake, and it shuddered to a halt in the middle of the street. His seatbelt caught him, and he turned to the back seat of the car, where the man sat. Indifferent to Karl’s driving, speaking now in mocking tones — “Wake up, Karl. Wake up.” He ceased speaking, reaching a hand forwards to firmly grasp Karl’s shoulder.
His rancid breath permeated the car, and Karl shuddered at his touch.
“Am I awake?” asked Karl, now uncertain of anything. The grip tightened, and Karl winced from the pain of it.
“Yes.”
“What is happening?”
“You are to be freed from awareness.”
With that, he loosened his grip on Karl’s shoulder, instead reaching for his neck. He moved his face closer, the breath becoming stronger, more repulsive. His mouth almost upon Karl’s throat, he saw the cross strung around his neck. Violently, he pulled away, breaking through the back window of the car, and vanishing into the night.
Skeptically, Karl glanced out the back window, still wondering if he really was awake.
“He broke my window.”
—-
Arriving thirty minutes late, covered in spilt coffee and broken glass, his supervisor, Lara, looked dubiously at Karl, but didn’t ask questions. “There’s a package on your desk” was the extent of conversation that morning. A package? Delivered between when he had left work at 5:30 the previous night and now?
Somewhat intrigued, he opened it. A potent aroma filled the room as three pieces of garlic rolled from the package and onto his desk. A dagger followed. Staring at his workspace as though offended by the presence of these things, they stoically remained through his many blinks of disbelief.
A person passed in the corridor, sniffing cautiously. Apparently satisfied that the smell was garlic, they continued on their way.
Karl peered into the FedEx bag, finding a letter enclosed.
You are being watched. This package carries garlic that it may arrive unheeded. Tonight you have learnt of the forces of evil which remain hidden from society at large; these forces would not have you read this, would not permit you to learn of them. You are the conclusion to a thousand years lechery at the hands of these… creatures. They are the un-dead, an accursed people, fallen under the grasp of the evil one. It is said that there would be one who could crush this master, freeing thousands from his grasp, and saving humanity. This one is you. Enclosed with this letter is a dagger, forged from silver — this is the weapon with which you must destroy him, by piercing his heart. The attack on you tonight was not imagined; your attacker must be destroyed.
“So, I’m to go around wielding a silver dagger which arrived in an anonymous bag, stabbing anyone who looks shady and wears black?”
The phone rang.
“Karl Riley” he answered.
“No.”
“Pardon?”
“No, you are not to go around stabbing anyone. The man who attacked you. He is the one you must destroy.”
“How…” Karl looked at the display on his phone. Caller ID resolved the number to an internal extension — 107. “How do…”
“Never mind. I can assure you, extension 107 does not exist,” the voice said, apparently getting louder, “but I do.”
Those last words were heard not on the phone, but from behind Karl, coming from Lara. She wasn’t holding a phone.
“Hello.”
“Umm… hi. How do you know all this?”
“There are many who know of this evil, but few which are empowered to act. Lara, whose body I now occupy, knows nothing of this. She, like most of humanity, will never be aware of the darkness amongst them. You are elected to serve, burdened with this knowledge. It is for you to act.”
With that, the figure of Lara flickered and disappeared into the air, leaving Karl sitting, at a loss.
—-
He returned to his apartment, with no word as to why he had been called into work. He assumed it was associated with the other events of the night, although how, he didn’t know.
The new messages indicator flashed on his phone.
“You have… seven new messages.”
“Seven?!” he exclaimed, unbelieving.
The messages began to play.
“Hey Karl, what’s up? Phil here. You coming into work today? Gimme a buzz sometime, okay?”
“Hi Karl, Chris calling… missed you at work today, everything okay?”
“Hey, it’s Steph. Where you been the past few days?”
“Karl, Lara here. Pick up the phone. Are you there? Karl? Where have you been the last week?”
There were another three to play, but Karl slammed a fist down on the machine, and it stopped.
Cautiously, he checked the date on his watch.
“What…?” he began to speak. The phone rang. He answered, and a voice began speaking. “I am coming to destroy you. I am the undead one, whom you encountered one week ago. Do not wonder about time, for soon you shall exist immortal and outside of such petty constraints.”
Karl listened as the line went dead. He placed down the phone, and collapsed on the floor, his vision obscured by tears of confusion and desperation. A bird-like silhouette flickered past his window, casting a shadow illuminated by moonlight over the figure of Karl. He heard a voice, with no physical origin — it chanted softly, enveloping, surrounding him. No comprehensible words were spoken, but this was of no consequence. A second voice could be heard, at first quiet, but gaining, growing louder. This voice was violent, harsh. Formed words came in its’ speech, although Karl could not know their meaning.
The first voice began to speak in his thoughts — he did not recognise the words, but understood. It was telling him to stand, to walk. He could not see. Shapes moved in his vision, as the two voices raged and fought. He felt himself being directed, moving towards the table where he had left the FedEx envelope. Reaching, perfectly directed, he lifted the knife from the envelope.
He felt the second voice shift within his head; his visions became darker, reddening, as though maddened by the touch of silver. The sounds were tortuous, a resonant scream penetrating his being, feeling as though the presence of the knife was burning him from the inside.
A strangled voice rasped at him, “RELEASE THE KNIFE”, commanding forcefully even whilst in its agony. Karl remained still by the desire of the soft, yet powerful first voice. Remaining with it seemed unbearable, but releasing it? Karl grasped it feverishly, unable to bring himself to let it fall, trapped between pain and he did not know what else. The words of the letter drifted in his mind, as though in a thick fog.
…there would be one who could crush this master… you must destroy him, by piercing his heart…
His purpose clear, his arm pulled the knife away from his body, only to bring it towards him, plunging it deep into his chest.
The voices stopped. He was alone on the floor of his kitchen, fist tightly grasping cold metal, dying.
I’m uncertain as to whether I shall count this as an edit or not. It addresses issues of clarity and performs surgery where required, but content-liposuction didn’t happen here.
Blurred Reality is the working title for the story at this point. Again, comments are welcomed, and ripping me/the story to shreds is far better than just saying “it’s good/it’s not so good”.
13 Jun 2004
Originally written for WordPress, this two-part application displays XMMS’s currently playing song.
Consisting of a C module, which is compiled and operates as part of XMMS itself (as a plugin) and a PHP script which reads the output of this plugin and displays it wherever the user wants (i.e. on a remote web host). It uses sockets, so the webserver doesn’t need to be on the computer running XMMS, which is handy for websites like… this one.
Why am I not yet using it? A few bugs, it would seem… I don’t speak C, so I’ve emailed the author to ask what’s going on. Anyone else running Linux/XMMS I’d recommend take a look here, even if you’re not running WP (that is of little significance).
I’ve got the script running here: http://nicktangents.is-a-geek.com/random/playing.php until it is worked out properly, at which point I’ll move it over to this part of the world (i.e. the server the website you are viewing now is running off).
It is interesting, but only partially working… the “currently playing” song as displayed there is just the first entry in my playlist at the minute… the artist field does not function, however as the song string is actually the XMMS title string, that doesn’t matter too much. I’m more interested in resolving the first-entry-in-playlist-only display thing, personally.
Any resolution shall be posted here-ish as soon as it happens! A reason to get the Projects section off the ground, perhaps…
12 Jun 2004
Has anyone else seen an influx of German spam lately? I have, as has Sam… anybody else?
We’ve been dutifully feeding it into babelfish and various other online translators, just to give foreign-language spammers an opportunity to make their impact on their target audience. Spam email IS effective, ladies and gentlemen; whilst I wouldn’t normally give any normal spam a second glance,
*categorised, mark as “read”, filed in the spam folder (4085 messages)*
foreign language email (n.b. there are no images in ANY of these emails, only the occasional text-only link… if there were images, I wouldn’t have opened them.) gets translated, and then read! I even clicked on a link or two (after ascertaining that there were no identifying features to the URL – e.g. email campaign success tracking/address skimming)!!!
The actual content of the emails is… interesting (or questionable.) For the most part, they are political messages of one kind or another – it is not immediately clear what they are trying to say – the general gist of it seems to be that EU immigrants are bad, criminal people, and shouldn’t be allowed into the country or welfare.
One message reproduced here for your convenience:
Immigration wave of Eastern European people on social security fears Munich(rpo). Hans Werner sense, president institute for economic research has inthe ‘Sueddeutschen Zeitung’ before a solid immigration wave of EasternEuropean people on social security to Germany warned. The European Unionembodied transition periods for employees, but unemployed persons mightimmigrate immediately and would have from the outset ‘Anspruch on all socialLeistungen’. This regulation is grotesque and the Western European welfarestates will destroy. Only a change of the European Union condition can stillprevent. The consequences of the liberality guideline for migrations withinthe European Union, approved of by the European Union parliament, are ‘vonpolitics and public totally uebersehen’ , the economist criticized. EastEuropeans may come during a transition period of several years ‘nicht asemployees. As independent ones and not an employed person persons may dothem itself however immediately in Germany niederlassen’, explained sense.’Von beginning on does not have also that employed person requirement on allsocial achievements of the state as more native. That becomes many, whichare in the poorer regions of Europe at home, arranges, into the rich welfarestates of the European Union wandern.’ The incentives are over powerful. TheGerman social welfare assistance is five times as highly as slowakischerwages. The forthcoming poverty migration made of Eastern Europe will erodethe Western European welfare states: ‘Die states will back-screw theirachievements in a kind deterrence competition, because none become the goalof the welfare migrations will’, and ‘im final result could be Europe onlyas socially, as it America today ist’. In order to turn away this, theEuropean Union states ‘das right of the migration would have into theSozialstaat’ paint: The homeland would have to remain responsible for thesocial security benefits at not employed person immigrant, demanded the ifopresident.
Babelfish’d, not human translation, hence the… obscure… nature of it all.
All this poses an interesting question in terms of email-marketing/spam: would you get a higher market penetration by sending foreign-language messages, and a babel link?
Possibly not… not everyone is as weird as myself, and most probably still wouldn’t bother. I imagine they get a high enough clickthrough by simply sending out pr0n email… sad, but probably true.
So has anyone else been receiving this kind of email? Does anyone speak/translate German fluently and receive this kind of email (i.e. can you make more sense of it than babelfish’d english does?)
12 Jun 2004
And sometime, it’s all going to fall apart… a new version was released without any forewarning – suddenly, I’m running superfluous code, bloated, and in violation of all standards recommendations.
Realworld™ hacks? They happen, too. Circuit switched, call it what you will… most of the time, there is another way to do things. Admittedly, it’s possible to waste an indefinite amount of time finding these alternative routes to a solution, but that doesn’t negate their existence.
The definition of the word “hack” is something of a source of amusement. Broad application? Oh yeah. I suppose one can say they hack without fear of people suspecting anything, given the magnitude of that list. What kind of hacker are you? Will your hacks still work with the next version of… Life?
12 Jun 2004
…on dalegroup.net regarding the state of operating system development (no permalink available due to the nature of the software that is being used for news over there).
I’ve been playing around with domains and forests (mmm trees) today. Connecting domain servers to different computers all talking to one central DNS box. Oh my how I love windows. Everything just works. Really I love windows. I don’t care what anyone else says. I find it stable, fast and easy to use. Isn’t that what computers are meant to be like? I also spent a far bit of time on a 12″ iBook with OSX 10.3.x very nice too. I like these operating systems because they have one company behind them pushing them in one direction, not some linux distro which has been split so many times it isn’t funny, or a technology release gone wrong (fedora anyone?). You need direction when building an operating system and that is what Microsoft and Apple both do. Great job guys.
Linux, whilst not guided in the same unilateral manner as both OS X and Windows, is still capable of consistent development values and policies allowing for a highly efficient, scalable and usable platform. Linux on the desktop has not yet reached the maturity of even Windows (let alone the sophistication of OS X), a claim which I am yet to see contested. Development policies resulting from Open Source are, by their very nature, open. This does not REQUIRE fragmentation such as that which was described, although this is often a result.
The lack of control by a monolithic entity over a product permits innovation in the marketplace, resulting in technological advancement for the greater benefit of the entire community, not the bottom-line of a TNC software monopoly. Not that TNC monopolies are bad – well, they are, but that isn’t the issue being discussed here. TNC monopolies stifle innovation, and subject users to the decisions made by aforementioned monopoly – users have no choice, at this point, but to wait for the situation to change, or to switch platforms.
I can’t help but notice a striking parallel between Roman Catholicism and closed-source monopolist-software vendors. My reasoning is a little abstract, so bare with me, here. Both enjoy monolithic, absolute control over those within their respective structures – this, arguably, is a good thing – people with the knowledge are making decisions for the greater good of the organisation as a whole.
But what if those with knowledge aren’t making the correct decisions? Or are pursuing a path which allows users no input or control over that which they are subject to (i.e. their belief system, being dictated by the Pope, or their software environment, being dictated by Microsoft)… are users supposed accept this path as being right, going with what those with knowledge tell them, or is there room for individual choice, even if this means questioning the entity, as Martin Luther did?
Open-Source, like the Protestant movement, does not require users follow an established structure. To an extent, it allows users to choose for themselves – any apparent church structure within whatever denomination shouldn’t have the power to dictate the beliefs of individuals who profess that faith (as conservative Roman Catholics would believe); matters of faith are individual, as are all beliefs (n.b. this does not make individual beliefs CORRECT).
Because of this inherent propensity for deviation and fragmentation to occur, it has – not all people will see eye-to-eye on all things, and a framework in which people are free to make up their own mind does result in fragmentation. Not always for the better.
Likewise, the Open-Source community allows for fragmentation to occur. This is ideal for individuals, although not always for the community as a whole – this is where product vendors come in.
A key example, most relevant given comments made regarding Fedora Core 2, is that of RedHat. They are an OS application vendor, with strong Open-Source ties, specifically in their financial and developmental support of the Fedora project. Fedora exists both to serve the Open-Source community as a whole, as well as provide an environment in which development and testing may occur for the refinement of RedHats’ commercial-grade/Enterprise offerings.
In this, RedHat operates as an integrator. Whilst the quality of freely (as in beer/speech/whatever else) available software released by the Fedora project may be of dubious quality at various stages of development, RedHat, operating as a commercial software solutions development organisation, ensures that the quality of their enterprise-grade offerings do not suffer.
Windows just works? Often… although I would venture that in terms of ALL server related tasks, a solution from one proven OSS vendor would prove just as adequate. Worried about interoperability? That is a separate concern – remember, Windows doesn’t have a monopoly on the server market, and it is far from interoperable with *nix platforms.
Windows just works on the desktop? Sure, in between the spyware and malware and virus outbreaks and other various system compromises. I spent an hour today trying to get crap off a computer used by my brothers. Spybot, AdAware – latest definitions, multiple scans, nothing resolved. I spent the remaining 20 minutes manually hacking things down, thinking “this wouldn’t happen if this computer were running Linux”.
And it wouldn’t have. I was (and am) sorely tempted to install a locked-down heavily customised version of Fedora (heh, Core 1, because 2 sucks, apparently ;)) on there, with Mozilla, aMSN and OpenOffice, and leave home indefinitely. They would be perfectly fine until it ran out of disc space.
If they wish to play games? Then why are they still using a Pentium 166 (OC’d to 200) with 48MB of RAM? That doesn’t appear to be a consideration from where I am sitting.
What a shame, they won’t be able to install any software they want. No dialers for you, I’m sorry.