Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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04:06 am
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And now, your moment of Zen
The music video for Dream Warriors' "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" is pure intellectual smut, a glorious celebration of avant-garde, of a type that seems custom-tailored to a big chunk of my friends list. (Totally worksafe. Weirdness level: 520 milliBohemes.)
Of course, the Dream Warriors also recorded the world's only rap song about roleplaying games [lyrics], so perhaps this is to be expected. Or maybe it's just more of you Canadians trying to export proper culture to your boorish southern pals?
I am also amused that the video took Bonnie Tyler's fencers and gymnasts, but left behind the ninjas.
Random trivia: While the letter sequence 'pron' is used in many common English words such as "apron" and "pronounce", the letter sequence "porn" is only found in "pornography" and its cognates. (Unless you count obscure medical terms like epornithic or proper names like Lampornis.)
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Guess.
Tags: multimedia, roleplaying, wordplay
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01:50 am
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Hi again! (and LOH: 056-058 ++)
The momentum of silence has gotten pretty overwhelming around here. The longer I go without saying something, the greater the urge to have that "comeback" post be the greatest thing ever, the Nobel Prize-winning, sliced-toast-beating collection of devastating witticisms that will cure cancer, poverty, starvation, cholera, and the Republican party.
Pretty clearly, that isn't happening. I mean, not even my writing can fix Sarah Palin.[*]
But anyway! I should at least say something and start trying to kick the silence habit. After all, I've kept myself pretty busy -- just not here. Witness:
- Oh hey wasn't there this novel I was posting to the Web? Even though I haven't mentioned anything about it since ... um ... May?
Then there was a month where I disappeared off the radar. I'm better now. And I came back with:
- Change of Mind -- even if you've been giving the novel a pass, this short story (~7500 words) about a mage's experiences with telepathy-as-mental-health-tool should be worth your time. A tip o' the hat to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dragonzuela, who challenged me with the original concept in my Writing Requests thread.
- And
Racing Stripes by ~baxil on deviantART
-- a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait. Oh, and you knew I had an art gallery, right? The newest piece of art there is from around the time of John McCain's bar mitzvah[*], but it's the first time I've ever posted them so let's just call them "new" and be done with it.
There's much more to say, as ever and always; but for now i'll be content with re-breaking the ice.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Brainpool, "Who's That Man?"
Tags: legend of hero, multimedia, writing
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06:06 pm
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WARNING: Google has broken Javascript spam munging
Cruising through my mailbox just now, I happened to glance at a piece of spam before deleting it, and did a double-take:
![[Headers for spam to the address kawaii@tomorrowlands.org]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/kawaii_spam.png)
The reason I was startled is that the kawaii address (for feedback from my "Chibi Jesus" page) is one that I exempted from spam filtering about a year back. I chose an unused address at my domain, did not use it for any purpose or attach it to any outbound mail, and published it nowhere except for a single web page, where it was protected from spam filtering by the Javascript munging recommended by Project Honey Pot.
Here, as of a month ago when it wasn't being spammed, was the only reference (WARNING: HIDEOUS MIDI MUSIC) to that address on the Web:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
// thx to http://www.blazonry.com/javascript/js_hiding.php
var rhs = "tomorrowlands";
var tld = "org";
var lhs = "kawaii";
function print_mail_to_link()
{
document.write("<a href=\"mailto");
document.write(":" + lhs + "@" + rhs + "." + tld + "\">");
document.write(lhs + "@" + rhs + "." + tld + "<\/a>");
}
<b><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">print_mail_to_link()</script></b>
<noscript>
<i>(An e-mail link here has been hidden in Javascript. If you have Javascript turned off, please use the contact form linked at the bottom of the page.)</i>
</noscript>
Should be pretty freakin' bulletproof, right? After all, as Project Honey Pot noted with no apparent sense of irony, "It should be noted that both of these techniques are likely to remain sound for some time to come. Harvesters that interpret the Javascript on every page they encounter would face a substantial risk of getting stuck in infinite loops or crashing due to malformed Javascript. ... This is likely beyond the current computing power of a legitimate company like Google."
The problem is that, if a legitimate company like Google does apply the computing power to it, the spammers don't have to expend the effort: they merely have to crawl the Google results.
And, alarmingly, this seems to be what has started to happen.
At first I thought that the address had been either guessed or else reposted somewhere, and I ran a Google search for kawaii@tomorrowlands.org in order to explore this. The only result to pop up was my own page, and the text summary of the page read:
The source code of the Google results page shows the address bare: "<em>kawaii@tomorrowlands.org</em>"
The source code of the Google-cached page is identical to mine (i.e. no raw address; the Javascript is preserved); the cache was taken May 12, 2009. It appears that the caching itself doesn't break the munging. There must be something about the excerpting process that does the trick.
At first I couldn't believe my eyes. Was this coincidence? I went through my recently deleted e-mail and rechecked all of the spam headers.
I have a similar whitelisted-and-munged address I use only for WikkaWiki announcements, that has only been posted on my own wiki, protected similarly. It has also started receiving spam, and investigation turned up the same results. At this point the evidence is pretty damning.
The first spam I still have for kawaii was on June 8; it's likely that Google's behavior change dates from before then, and the spammers are only now beginning to take advantage of this new potential. The spam started slowly and is now up to several messages per day -- word is probably spreading amongst the bad guys.
So.
Webmasters: Time to re-spamproof your site. A damn useful tool has just dropped out of the toolbox.
PLEASE NOTE: I have disabled the e-mail address referred to by this post. To contact me regarding this post, please write to [the first three letters of this journal name] [the dash symbol, '-'] [mail] [at-sign] tomorrowlands [dot.] org, or leave a comment below.
UPDATE: Two pieces of additional information I'd like to pull out from comments:
1. Even though the sample search I provided was for the compromised e-mail address, the spammer does NOT need to previously know your e-mail address in order to Google it. They just have to search for things shaped like e-mail addresses and skim the cream of the results. [*]
2. There is anecdotal evidence that pages which pull their decode function from a separate .js file have not been broken. (Yet.)
UPDATE 2: Welcome to /. readers! More discussion in the Slashdot thread.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Jim's Big Ego, "WTFMFWTFAYT?"
Tags: geekery, my brain now hurts, privacy, technology
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06:20 am
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Daily Random Thoughts
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Tags: 140 characters
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06:20 am
[Link] |
Daily Random Thoughts
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Tags: 140 characters
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06:20 am
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Daily Random Thoughts
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Tags: 140 characters
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09:27 pm
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Legend of Hero delay, and 051-055
I'm taking a mental health day. Friends-locked post below describes why.
I'm fine, just would like a little time. Tonight's Legend of Hero post over at ttustories is being cancelled, but normal schedule will resume on Thursday. I'm not going to post any bonus content, but I'll try to get a post or two written for this journal if I feel up to it. I've had some interesting dreams.
Anyway, the kids just finished their second boss fight -- so it's a good night to browse through the archives and see what catches your eye. Considering that I haven't actually posted any updates here for the last five episodes (whoops), even those of you who follow the story regularly will have plenty of new reading available.
Take your pick: Ron and Riselmian! The singer and the Archon! Kevin and David! A new boss fight starts! The boss fight ends!
And now, off to dinner.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  unsettled
Tags: legend of hero
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06:20 am
[Link] |
Daily Random Thoughts
(via LoudTwitter)
Tags: 140 characters
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06:20 am
[Link] |
Daily Random Thoughts
(via LoudTwitter)
Tags: 140 characters
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05:18 pm
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An open letter to George Will
Mr. Will,
On behalf of degenerate Godless left-wing libruls everywhere, I would like to thank you for your rich contribution to American conservatism's descent into hallucinatory self-parody. (TL;DR summary: He spends an entire column attacking jeans. I am not kidding. - Ed.)
As self-examination, it is hard to overstate the profundity of lines like "the plague of [denim] ... is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche." But even that overwrought prose is just a pale shadow of your inimitable phrase "authentic work clothes for horny-handed sons of toil and the soil", with its vivid imagery of sexually tumescent, salaciously ungloved metacarpals.
...
... Excuse me for a moment, I must go occupy the toilette.
More seriously, the only response your article deserves is a snappy one-liner (like tilton's comment: "1952 called, they want their outrage back"). However, in a moment of misguided pity I would like to seriously address some of your arguments, in the vain hope that others of your ilk may note your shortcomings and overcome them, upping the ante of conservative crazy to previously unthinkable heights.
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Jeans are, you quote approvingly, "a manifestation of 'the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby.'" You are packing three complaints into this single condemnation; let's examine them separately:
- Jeans make parents and their children look the same. Your lead paragraph harrumphs disapprovingly that "Father and son are dressed identically"; later, "In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences ...".
It's a good thing, then, that we have such models of civility and propriety as the Victorian era to aspire to, when little Lord Fauntleroy was stuffed into a tiny tailored suit and forced to stand quietly while his father shared tea and crumpets with men in large tailored suits.
You exhort readers to consider St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians and "put away childish things." Sir, better men than you have quoted that passage, and until you can muster any sort of response to one of the 20th Century's most eminent Christian theologians, I suggest you go stand in the corner with little Lord Fauntleroy.
- Jeans aren't appropriate clothing for the rich. "Denim on the bourgeoisie is ... discordant"; it is "silly" for "Americans (who ... load) their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed" in jeans; "Silicon Valley billionaires" are posing when they "(wear) jeans when introducing new products."
I agree, actually. I think the rich should wear clothes that distinguish them from the Little People. I think they should cultivate mannerisms and complaints that always and forever cause them to stand out from the undifferentiated rabble. Then the proletariat might realize how much they've been conned by the wealthy's "jes' folks like you" act and decide democratically to raise the top marginal tax rate back to 90%. American society rests far too much moral weight on the pretty, fragile fiction that somehow the $1,000,000-per-year crowd represents the best of American morality and unfairly overburdened entrepreneurship.
- Jeans are sloppy dress. "[W]e all strive to look equally shabby." "Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances."
Golly gee whiz, George, I get bouts of nostalgia for the 1980s too, what with the fad of pricey "designer jeans" that allowed denim wearers to rise above the shabby masses. And who wouldn't want to return to a time when the height of fashion was oversized sunglasses, a poofy mullet, and a tight leather jacket? But there's a time and a place for nostalgia, and that time and place is in the toilette, alone with a dogeared copy of Glam Rock Monthly and salaciously ungloved metacarpals.
When you're done with that, Mr. Will, here's something for you to chew on. Stop confusing what people wear with how they wear it. If I stood someone who cared about their appearance next to someone who didn't, and both of them were wearing jeans, I dare say that even you would be able to tell the difference.
What's your real beef? Are you lamenting the end of "business attire" and the rise of business casual? Clearly relaxed dress codes haven't caused worker productivity to suffer, so there must be some even more pernicious harm at stake here.
Ah-hah: "The appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves." So the true evil is that you, George Will, and people like you can no longer make moral judgments on people based on egregiously superficial factors like the type of fabric in their pants. Mr. Will, I refer you to my first paragraph.
The richest irony of all this is that like you, Mr. Will, I am a denim abstainer. I too own only one pair of jeans, which I have worn only a handful of times, all out on hiking trips where the rugged fabric actually served a function. I don't like the feel of denim; I don't like the fit of most jeans; I don't like the microspaces that most jeans consider "pockets."
And you know what? Nobody gives me shit about it, and nobody has ever launched your style of blistering jeremiad at the non-denim heathens. At least, nobody has cared since high school. If your acquaintances are stuck in the "arrested adolescence" you decry, and goad you for not following the denim trend, get adult friends.
You urge people to discover "the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste." Let me go you one better: Learn to accept that there are some things that exist in a broad plateau in between "good" and "bad." If jeans aren't "good" taste -- and they're not; nobody is praised for wearing them -- it's because they're simply neutral: a default that people can wear without provoking judgment calls.
At least from the rational.
But hey, to paraphrase someone witty enough to be published in a syndicated column, seventy-five percent of American "conservatives" -- those with irrational sociopolitical neuroses -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.
Go wipe the froth from your mouth, Mr. Will. My jeanless ass* has some video games to enjoy.
Yours in cotton-poly blends,
Baxil
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* Considering the amount of venom he has spewed on the subject of what covers American asses, I think I'm going to have to write George Will off as a victim of Tush Derangement Syndrome[*].
Edited to add: Not to break the mood, but keep in mind that the same people backing George Will's jeans jihad are the ones who defended -- and still defend -- the Bush administration for literally sanctioning torture. The fact that this movement has not been removed from polite political conversation -- much less the fact that those involved have so far eluded prison -- is a continuing embarrassment on the United States.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Stabbing Westward, "Thing I Hate"
Tags: politics
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02:34 pm
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GIP; and Legend of Hero: 048-050
I just added my 69th user icon. Huh-huh-huh. Insert innuendo here.
In other numerical-landmark news, my fantasy serial Legend of Hero just reached its 50th update! Yay! It's been a learning experience to transform "hasty NaNoWriMo novel" into "edited serial fiction", to have a single project occupy my mindset for such a sustained period of time, to meet self-imposed deadlines and push the story forward with new material and thrash into shape what was already there. I'm getting close to the end of the prewritten buffer, so in a lot of ways this is where the rubber hits the road (how long can I buckle down and start producing more new raw material at a sustainable pace?), but it also feels like an accomplishment to have gotten this far, another sign that I'm reaching the point of being able to write a saleable novel and/or other long-form fiction. It will happen.
Anyway ... 50. Wow! It feels like a birthday -- and where would a birthday be without gifts? Thanks to my readers who wrote reviews of LoH -- and to Web Fiction Guide's Drew Daniels, who just this weekend gave my serial a WFG editor's imprimatur with an official 4-star review and the praise "If you are an RPG Gamer you’ll have fun with this story."
The fun continues this week with a return to the main characters' explorations. Hurrah! David talks Kevin into visiting the Hall of Heroes again, shows off his new skills and equipment, and tries to teach Kevin how to unlock his own special attacks. And Trent? Don't think that he's out of the picture -- in fact, he has started his own investigation into the nature of the Shadowlands ...
The statistics-obsessed geeks among you (and you're in good company) should also visit LoH's Bonuses section, where several pages of David's Shadowlands game-system notes have now been unlocked. That way I can keep the elemental crystal stuff from becoming several thousand words of tedious exposition, while still peeling back the layers for those who care. :)
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Scorpio Rising, "Goofball"
Tags: legend of hero, misc life updates
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06:33 pm
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Anyone for rebuses?
So, killing time while I'm sick, I'm playing a very obscure free Mac OS X game called "Explore!" It's basically a click-until-you-die easter egg machine; every once in a while you'll find a completely random encounter that gives you either resources or "souvenirs". If you've got a Mac you can download a copy here.
Of course, with a name like "Explore" and that level of obscurity, there's nobody out on the Internet talking about how to optimize the game or beat its puzzles. And that means when I run across a brain-breaker, the only thing I can do is pause the game and turn to my friends list.
As my latest easter egg encounter, I seem to have randomly stumbled across the game's programmer during my desert walk. He sys he'll give me a souvenir if I can solve a Unicode rebus. I said yes, and this popped up on the screen:
(It's accompanied by a caption that reads something like "Your nerd senses tingle".)
The good news is that I appear to get infinite guesses (as long as I don't leave the encounter, he just says "Nope, that's not what the Unicode rebus says" when I'm wrong). I've tried a few simple variants -- 'bang' and 'not' for the exclamation marks, for example -- but can't make anything out of it. Of course, since I downloaded the game from a site in Sweden, it's possible the rebus could be in something other than English ...
Anyone want to give it a crack? I'll leave the game where it is and keep trying anything that's posted here. Baxil points and major self-esteem to the first solver.
EDITED TO ADD: The "//" glyph is not a double solidus, it's actually "parallel to" (Unicode #2225) -- it just inexplicably displays at an angle on the Mac. See comments.
------
ALSO EDITED TO ADD: Bonus riddle! Once upon a time while in a whimsical mood, I posted this comment about the hypothetical playlist of an AD&D "Jukebox of Many Things":
> I considered that, but 3E really nerfed the Jukebox of Many Things. Have you seen its playlist these days? For example, they took out the high-morale skeletons and replaced them with an electrum piece.*
>
> * Gamer humor + pop-culture reference = ow.
The two things mentioned are oblique references to bands. I remember what the first of them ("high-morale skeletons") was supposed to mean but I no longer remember what the hell I meant with "electrum piece." Care to refresh my memory?
ETA x3: I really should give out some sort of actual prize or reward for these.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  perplexed
Current Music: Sting, "Desert Rose"
Tags: requests, riddles
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11:13 pm
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1k
The good news: $2,000+ in tax refunds this year. Thank goodness for the Lifetime Learning Credit adding a silver lining to huge student loans.
The bad news: Sick. Crawling into bed once I get all my investment crap entered into our tax return.
May push back the LoH update tomorrow. We'll see how I feel.
EDITED TO ADD: Well, this was kind of an underwhelming entry for my 1,000th LJ post.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Tags: misc life updates
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06:20 am
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Daily Random Thoughts
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Tags: 140 characters
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07:56 pm
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Legend of Hero: 046-047
Finally got to sit down again on the players' side of the gaming table this weekend. We haven't played the campaign that generated the CSI: Luvine tales in a few months, but it was as fun as I remember it, and the Story Dice were rolling hot.
For example, at one point, we were undergoing a "Test of Body" to determine our right to take possession of a plot-critical magical artifact. Our first challenge was to have one of our characters outdrink a dwarf. So Simon the sorcerer, a crippled little shrimp of a man with a horrible constitution but an inexplicable love of hard liquor, sat down at the table. Three pints later, after ridiculously horrible rolls all around, the dwarf slumped over. Simon shrugged, finished his glass, and then collapsed too.
Shortly thereafter, we ended up facing off against a half-orc barbarian who said one of us had to defeat him in single combat. Our ranger, who has got some Issues with orcs, tried and failed twice, and then sulked in a corner while he waited for us to recover enough healing magic to get him back to full strength. Simon shrugged, stepped forward, won initiative, immediately dropped the foe with a Sleep spell, and beheaded the half-orc with his own greataxe before taking a single scratch.
Then we came across a barred grate we needed to bend open to proceed. I very nearly managed to singlehandedly complete the test-of-body trifecta with a STR 7 sorcerer, except that by group consensus, our ranger was told to take a shot first so that it could be even more epic when he failed and his scrawny shell of a brother succeeded. Jonas the ranger promptly rolled a 20 on his strength check and took the bars apart without blinking.
Meanwhile, back in Legend of Hero, David is trying to convince Kevin and Crissy to visit the Shadowlands with him. They're game, but in Crissy: Act V they discover an unexpected obstacle. Behind the scenes, Machinations: Act VI lets us listen in on the Shadow King's inner circle, all together for the first time. How come he's not immediately throwing the full weight of his overwhelming force against the heroes? If the answer seems hackneyed, give it a few weeks: you have to play the trope straight in order to deconstruct it, after all.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Something random off of the new iPod :)
Tags: legend of hero, roleplaying
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06:20 am
[Link] |
Daily Random Thoughts
(via LoudTwitter)
Tags: 140 characters
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12:59 am
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Art update, and Legend of Hero: 042-045
I've bought a few lovely pieces of custom artwork lately. One's from jonart, who is taking commissions:
![[Dancing unicorn]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/savi-dancing-by-paka-thumb.jpg)
... and a Baxil portrait by talakestreal, who last I checked is still taking bargain commissions as an opportunity to test out new watercolors:
$5 Watercolor Commission: Baxi by ~talakestreal on deviantART
While I've been plugging along at my own creative endeavour, which takes the form of words. The latest from Legend of Hero:
Wandering Merchant Joix: Act IV - The culmination of the "Companions" arc weaves together the threads of Joix, Emile and our protagonists, and shows what happened to the Hall of Heroes.
The Sunlit World: Act III - As the school day draws to a close, Crissy uses her newfound knowledge to persuade Kevin to let her join their search.
The Sunlit World: Act IV - Kevin, Trent and Crissy argue about the reality of the Shadowlands on their way to Kevin's house ... then find something unexpected.
Machinations: Act V - Riselmian and Gavin meet, with amusing if predictable results.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Tags: legend of hero, multimedia
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04:19 pm
[Link] |
Game acronyms
circuit_four recently posted about "[figuring] out the solitaire rules for RFTG:TGS", which led to some acronym guessing. Clearly some Web-2.0-style crowd wisdom is called for here.
Poll #1368445 It's a board game of some sort
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhat does "RFTG: TGS" stand for?
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  silly
Current Music: Absurd Minds, "The Gash"
Tags: polls, wordplay
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11:38 pm
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Product recommendation
Back in the ancient, crazy days of 2002, I bought a graphics tablet for a very reasonable price. It plugged into those newfangled USB port things, and only one of my computers had a USB card installed, but (even on a Mac) I ran it with almost no trouble. The included software worked well, the drivers caused no issues, the plugins for my graphics programs integrated excellently and took full advantage of the tablet's pressure sensitivity, and the hardware was sturdy. I doubt I used it enough to justify the purchase price, but it was an awesome toy and I'm glad I bought it.
Today I dragged the tablet down out of the attic. It has survived two moves and seven years of sloppy handling. It has outlived two computers and seven OS upgrades. I surfed to the manufacturer website, discovered the tablet is still actively supported, downloaded current drivers for OSX, rebooted, and it's performing like it came home from the store yesterday. There's even a handwriting recognition feature that I haven't yet played with.
Ironically, my computer is too old to use my 2002 tablet at full efficiency. My only installation issue is that The GIMP for Mac OS X doesn't have pressure sensitivity support, because the underlying X11 environment for OS 10.4.11 won't recognize the device as a tablet (which they fixed in OS 10.5). With a commercial drawing program, I'd be set.
So, I would like to wholeheartedly endorse Wacom for their breathtaking awesomeness. This sort of computer peripheral product longevity is unheard of, and if you have any use for a drawing tablet whatsoever, they deserve your business.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  amazed
Current Music: Brainpool, "Who's That Man?"
Tags: multimedia, reviews, technology
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12:54 am
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The not-quite-Friday Five
From eredien:
Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. You're encouraged to post that list, with your commentary on each item, to your lj (or just add a reply back at me).
Extra Baxilian addition: If you have a mental association with me that nobody has mentioned yet, add it to your five-things request and I'll write some bonus commentary. (N.b.: I'm preemptively calling mulligan on "draconity" just because it's so blindingly obvious.)
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Hiking -- The vast majority of you have were already following my journal in summer 2006, when I plowed through nearly 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. So I have little to add. Except: In an odd bit of coincidence, I finally gave in earlier this month and posted one of my THGGTPCT episodes to YouTube, where it's just a click away instead of a two-minute weird-format movie download. Go see!
Hawks -- This also goes back to the PCT trip (aka "BaxWalk 2006"). My trail name was "Redtail," which ironically didn't actually refer to the bird. I once scripted (but never actually drew) a guest strip for Theri There that used this fact as the punchline: "So you changed your self-image from a flying creature to another flying creature for a 2600-mile walk?" "Yeah, well." I've still got that script, fallen off the stove*, and regret not illustrating it, though I doubt that's likely to ever change.
Running a Web Forum -- Once upon a time, I was the Herder of Cats and official administrator of "BaxTalk," a set of discussion forums at Tomorrowlands. There were many topics based loosely around my old journal, along with a draconity board, a TTU board, and plenty of marginalia. It was pretty famous for the quality of its users and discussions, and somehow cohered and stayed awesome despite having a userbase of half dragons and half random-people-that-knew-me-from-other-venues.
Entropy caught up to it, unavoidably, as its old PERL back-end bogged down, and then the phpBB resurrection died in the Great Server Crash of 2004. More broadly, it was a victim both of Web 2.0 and of my own reluctance to put in the administrative time it would have needed to continue. By then, I had already moved to Livejournal, and the comments section here scratched most of the itches that the old fora fulfilled for me.
The big question always was, and remains: What went right? How did it maintain its quality? To that, I can only say: A lot of luck, a little clarity on what the acceptable behavioral standards were, a little drama avoidance, and a LOT of "like attracts like." Awesomeness wants to self-propagate.
Evolving Spiritually -- If eredien wants to expand on this one, I'll yield the floor. I actually honestly don't see myself as having changed very dramatically in spiritual belief during my adult life. Maybe some of the things I see as subtle refinements -- tone shifts, as it were -- strike chords in others, or maybe I've just got a dragon-sized blind spot here.
Incidentally, dragonzuela cited my essay on quantum theism recently, which I penned over seven years ago. I still am proud to have written it and stand by its spiritual sentiments (if not its exact percentages).
Puns -- Okay, I admit it: I'm often accused of littering my posts with wordplay. Clearly the accusation is rearing its head again. It's time to put it down once and for all.
I thought of a dozen witty ways to respond to this. Two of them were unsuitable for publication in an all-ages venue. I examined the others to see if any met the standard of quality you have come to expect from my dragon drops.
...
... No pun in ten did.
(*runs away quickly*)
--
* Baxilian argot time! Fallen Off The Stove, adj.: An important project that has been back-burnered too far. It remains in your mindspace and resources for it are still at hand, but you don't want to do anything about it until all of the (more recent) front-burnered and back-burnered projects are resolved or set aside, so it lives on in a messy state of limbo.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Brian Eno, "Deep Blue Day," Trainspotting OST
Tags: meme, wordplay
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