Slowtime

So I’ve had this PC for however long I’ve had it now, and still haven’t installed Quicktime. As in, I haven’t been putting it off, and I’ve been watching plenty of Quicktime content, but I just haven’t seen the need to. As in, it didn’t cross my mind. Because I can install VLC in a matter of seconds with out worrying about annoying “upgrade to pro” prompts or battling the website to let me download a version without full-of-DRM-style-crap music library player wossit. Whatever happened to Nullsoft/Winamp, anyway? I’ve been stuck on a little island called “open-source” (it has penguins but is strangely not that uncomfortable) for a couple of years… then this massive cruise liner came along and picked me up and offered to take me home for about $200. I didn’t get a glossy brochure about the cruise but it’s functionally the same, and now I’m back home wondering what transpired in my absence. Do people still use that thing? Anyway, whatever. Quicktime in the official sense seems kinda redundant with the exception of good/easy browser integration. The end.

Custom Fonts

Hahaha. I just rang a font company to enquire after a product. They told me that it’d been stuck in customs for two weeks and they couldn’t do anything about it yet (this is a 3KG, ~1,800 page, hardcover book. You’d think it’d make more sense to print here, but whatever!)

Terrorists fonts, perhaps.

Viagra spam is not funny

So stop pretending it is. If you’re going to try and slip it past heuristics (machine or me) by including human humour, how about just trying it once. Your humour will not slip past me because I find it more amusing on twenty-seventh reading. My default moderate action is delete all, then approve if it looks human (and then I check to see if it actually makes sense). I’ve thus-far refrained from using Akismet, but think I’m probably producing more false-positives than it would. Then again, absolutely nothing is getting through that shouldn’t, so in a way that’s a good thing.

Not in the mood for jokes, today, especially where they’re jokes unleashed upon the world by the rotting claws of rats resting upon keyboards.

I know I bitch about this every few months, but that’s because it hasn’t gone away yet. And because I get to dance a small victory, because it hasn’t become effective yet, either. Propulsion by small things.

The Problem with English

Is that there’s too much bloody writing saying not enough. Extrapolate this.

Not there

I feel like I’m making stuff up, and that this is a load of rubbish that has very little bearing on intended (or realised) meaning. But it doesn’t do well to tell someone that their discipline (linguistic analysis, it seems) masqurading as English is completely unhelpful and generally full of crap. This feels so much like “close textual referencing” in the Advanced HSC course. Extension was sensible and was far more concerned with the context and comprehension of a text… this, I suppose, pretends to touch on comprehension but in practice seems to be far more about composition without any regard for context. Yet, somehow, we’re not meant to argue against the grain. This sorcery is enough to make me want to abandon the subject altogether — the subject of this analysis is a dead horse, and I am neither a jockey nor a necromancer. Still to conjure: several hundred words. Why? About what? There is nothing useful here! Empty parallels and distinctions have no bearing on meaning or characterisation! If it only asked for a contrast between the two, that would be fine. The idea that grammatical analysis makes a (meaningful) contribution to this particular excerpt is, at best, farcical. And I am venting here so hopefully I do so less in the essay proper. I so don’t get this subject.

Later: Well, the fiction is over. I don’t want to think about the exam, though at least that is limited in the scope of rubbish expected. I’m having one of those I-really-want-to-take-a-semester-off/drop uni nights.