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Evil genius powers I want

Aug 312010

While my supervilian powers are well known within the elite circles of my chosen lieutennants (and a more select subset there-off among those chosen to become members of my Harem after I become the dark ruler of the world), nonetheless there are some powers that I believe would greatly aid me in my conquest and which, as yet, I have not managed to acquire.

The power to make annoying songs of my choosing stick in people’s heads (always good to make any enterprising heroes think they have become manic depressives)
The power to make stupidity hurt (continously).
The power to always hit every streetlamp green
The power to talk entirely in rhyming palindromes (because it would be awesome damnit)
The power to force a person to think rationally about his next action (actually that would be kind of a hero power but what the heck)
The power to instill mortal fear in telemarketers by whistling down the phone line
The power to reverse entropy (so I can unscramble eggs you know)
The power to prevent stupid things from becoming fads

This list is far from complete, but should give a fair idea of the kind of supervilian powers I believe will allow me as your future lord and master to rule with a relatively benign iron fist.

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In a perfect world

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Jun 072010

So I’m sure you’re all in one of two categories by now. Either you are eagerly waiting for the next chapter in OMGpwnies’s diary, or you’re just eagerly waiting for me to write about anything at all else for a change.
Well today I figured I’d serve the second category and write about something else. For those in the former group – don’t worry, a new diary is coming tomorrow – and it includes some pretty cool stuff – including the tanking of Gnomerigan.

Today’s post is somewhere between humor, philosophy and politics… but ultimately it’s a bit of light hearted dreaming with some serious moments… I am about to list my top ten predictions on what would happen if I lived in a perfect world… and then my top ten predictions on what will probably happen instead. Timeline… give it say, 2 years – putting us neatly in 2012.

And yes it’s all very silly, but hopefully, in silliness lies a bit of make-you-think.

Will Wheaton becomes the first unanimously elected president of the United States
My wife Felicia Venter (born Day) and I are decide to name our first born daughter Jaina Proudmoore Venter.
Seph Blatter’s four year trial for single-handedly bankrupting South Africa ends with his conviction and sentencing to ten years in Rooigrond prison.
Julius Malema’s body is found in his parktown home, apparently having drowned in his heated pool after going for a drunken swim. His will has all his assets sold and the money used to form a trust-fund for poverty-relief (somebody told him it would look good in the press and there’d be plenty of time to change it after everyone had forgotten again).
Steve Hoffmeir and Joost Van Der Westhuizen announce that they are in fact gay, and are getting married. The entire country gossips about who will cheat first and who with. A year later they discover they were both cheating at the same time… wih Nathaniel.
As a direct result of the above – every conservative Afrikaans family in the country suddenly decide that moffies are cool, and not the spawn of Satan after all and furthermore declare that they have always thought so and “look I even have a moffie friend who cuts my hair”. They can’t figure out that you won’t really pass much mustard as having gone beyond discrimination while you continue to use pejorative terms like “moffie” but at least they are making the effort.
After yet another spate of shocking revelations of corruption, the accused politicians actually resign their jobs and apologize to the people.
Multiple independent sources determine that violent crime in South Africa is now the lowest in the world. Nobody can even remember what all those razor-wire fences were for.
The government declares digital freedom a basic human right. Copyright terms are reduced to 14 years, software may not be legally sold or distributed in any other form without source code and there is a ban on “protective measure” technologies that could interfere with citizens exercise of their fair dealing rights. Copyright propaganda that overstates the limits of copyright becomes grounds for having said copyright revoked. The success of the program in South Africa leads to it’s adoption in the EU and Canada and subsequent enforcement as WIPO treaty
HIV vaccination is approved for human use and subsequently becomes a legal requirement much like polio in the past, with the tide of new infections stemmed, the eradication of the disease becomes a viable reality

Outrage over Obama’s liberal politics lead to a far-right swing in US politics and Rush Limbaugh becomes the leader of the free world, thus effectively removing any “freedom” in it for anybody who isn’t a Straight,White, Wealthy,American, Christian.
Still a single divorcee, I sit on my couch watching Doctor Who and trying to decide if I’ll eat pronutro for dinner or bother to call for pizza
President-for-life Jacob Zuma announces that after his sterling success running the reserve bank for 3 years and maintaining both inflation and interest rates of over 30%, Seph Blatter is to become the new Minister of Finance.
Julius Malema’s body is found in a the pool of a Sandton Socialite of the new “Black-Kugel” variety, as is hers, both apparently overdosed on cocaine which they were snorting through rolled up copies of the South African constitution.. Rather than finally ruining faith in his rhetoric, he is hailed as a martyr and the ANCYL announces that in his memory they will never again elect a leader who has passed any subjects in school… ever.
Steve and Joost , both feeling their last scandals sufficiently forgotten, announces their next marriages. Somehow, yet again, both are getting married to models.
The ACDP announces that should they win enough seats in parliament they will campaign for the ritual stoning of gay people as an official policy. Thousands of Afrikaans families switch their votes from the DA to the ACDP.
After yet another spate of corruption charges, numerous MPs are found guilty, fined and return to work the next day with no concerns about the matter.
South Africa’s violent crime rate actually hits a daily death-toll that surpasses that of the (continuing) war in Iraq.
The government declares that Microsoft and Apple are now the only .legal entities allowed to sell software in South Africa, fair dealing laws are scrapped, and under pressure from WIPO a DMCA style prohibition on bypassing protection measures is put in place. Downloading an MP3 now carries the death penalty they refuse to give to murderers.
The minister of health declares that, in contrast to the FDA, the HIV Vaccine which the was declared fit-for-human-trials in 2009 already and is now declared safe and usable, has a minor risk of damaging your hair follicles and will therefore be banned in South Africa. It takes 6 years and numerous court cases to get it made available in state hospitals and those who get the vaccine are generally excommunicated from their churches on suspicion of promiscuity.

So… which future do you want to live in? What will you do to make the right one happen ?

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Nerdy Geek is Nerdy !

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Apr 202010

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A thought on why geeks like Steampunk design

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Mar 192010

Steampunk as a literary form is, for the most part, just a form of the alternate-history novel with elements of science fiction and fantasy thrown in. Though interesting in many ways, it’s not particularly sociologically significant (by itself) – but there is something interesting to be said about it’s sudden and more recent popularity as inspiration for decor.

The resulting decor is deliberately anachronistic, not for sale anywhere and generally done painstakingly by hand by the fans of it. When I say deliberately anachronistic I mean it, fans take the crucial elements of steam era technology (copper and brass cogwheels and sprockets) and mould them into modern technological devices in such a way as to present the appearance that they are functional parts of these devices.
While the literary form may have inspired the idea, it’s certainly more than that.

So why is geek culture suddenly embracing a design style so radically different from what we more commonly expect ? What happen to the LED-string lights and cathode-tubes and plasma-balls we all love and why are we now decorating with cogwheels and mechanicals ? What most geeks do for a living shuns “mechanical” as generally being the worst part of things – it’s the gears and sprockets in the computer (usually in things like fans and hard drive motors) that break. Yet … this design seems to hype up something we are supposed to dislike ?

I think I have an idea why though. Steampunk design takes it’s cues not from the technology of the Victorian age but from the aesthetic designs for technology that were prevalent in that age – and there is a crucial difference between the aesthetic design that Victorian era companies embraced and that prevalent today.
Victorian technology took pride in making as much of the workings of the device visible as possible, as many moving parts in plain sight as could be there. The casings were usually made of glass, and the sprockets and gears kept polished and shined as they were meant to be observed.
The reason was that the Victorians took pride not just in what the device did, but in the intricate workings that allowed it to do so. The designers fed a market filled with curiosity.
By contrast – modern culture has developed a kind of hatred of curiosity. People not only aren’t curious, they not only don’t care about how things work – they insist that their ignorance is a kind of right. Designers of modern technology hide as much of the workings of their product as possible, hide the intricacies – because people get upset by them. People care only about what the device does, they do not want to know or think about how it does so and confronting them with the knowledge upset them.
Geeks have always been a counter-culture to this aspect. Geeks want to know how it works, they are curious explorers by nature. We open our stuff up to see how it fits together, we are the drivers of the free and open-source movement because we want to be able to see how our software works.
In short – geeks have embraced steampunk design out of a deepseated nostalgia for an era when this curiosity was not frowned upon, deemed antisocial or weird, but in fact shared by so many that every device was designed to meet it.

Like all forms of nostalgia this is probably a pretty romanticized view (and certainly a mostly unconscious one). I doubt the average Victorian coalminer gave a damn how a clock worked, but the Victorian gentleman who owned the clock certainly did – that is why all the clocks had casings made of glass rather than wood or sheet-metal. Today we all own clocks – but only a small group of us still care about how a clock works. We are the geeks, the curious ones – the seekers of knowledge. Steampunk-design is a representation of that desire to see behind the veil – a nostalgia for an age when the veil wasn’t there, and more importantly was unwanted rather than desired.

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Filkday: The sound of stupid.

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Mar 052010

My thanks to JHBPrincess for the line that inspired this one.
Sung (of course) to the melody of: The sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle

——-
Hello Friday, my old friend
I’ve come to walk with you again
Because a week softly burning
Left it’s scars while I was working
And the users that were standing at my desk
Were insane
And spewed the sound of stupid

——-
In directory trees I walked alone
Ten milion files of mpeg-one
Wading through penis-enlargement spam
And then the real mail isn’t worth a damn
When my eyes were stabbed by a website in adobe flash
That split my brain
And screeched the sound of stupid

——-
And in the monitor light I saw
People praising “Avatar”
People talking without thinking
People typing without spelling
People writing crap that braincells never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of stupid

——-
“Fools,” said I, “you do not know
Stupid like a cancer grows
Read my blog and I might teach you
Switch of Britney and I might reach you”
But they all said “STFU fag”
And clammored with the sound of stupid

——-
And the idiots bowed to pray
To the pop idols they wanted to lay
And the signs flashed out their warnings
In the words that they were forming
And the signs said “Caution: coffee burns when hot”
And “Am I hot” ?
And I wept at the sound of stupid.

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My date with Yo-Landi Vi$$er.

Diary 6 Responses »

Feb 042010

Now I know I’m fokken famous but I was still kina surprized when my phone rang and Yo-Landi asked me out cos she’s way more fokken famous than I is. At least now that MaxNormal ditched the three-piece suits and reinvented themselves as Die Antwoord.
I’m not even all that used to girls asking me out, throwing me undies with their number on is a more usual approach but I guess she’s a bit fokken old-fashioned in that regard. So I spent some time thinking what a chick like her would actually, you know like, dig and shit, and came up with this perfect date plan.

Hired the perfect car (a 1988 Toyota Hilux bakkie met fucked suspension), and picked her up from her posh pozzie in *censored* where her bra’s DJ HiTek and Max Waddy first read me the fokken leviete about taking good care of her and not fokken playing with their little friend and having her home before fokken dawn…
So off we go to her favorite fokken restaurant (a wimpy drive through) and then to go watch the the city lights from some fokken naais romantiek hilltop somewhere. Next fokken thing I know… she’s like: “bru… jy’s fokken tasty, pomp my.”.. and one thing jumped on another en toe creak daai fokken hilux se springs harder as HiTek se fokken next-level beats.

I had to stick my finger in her mouth to suck on – but mostly to make her stop trying to fokken dirty talk cos that’s just not on … at least, not the fokken way she does it… what can I fokken say ? I mean she may be a fokken zef rapper but I don’t think rapping the lyrics of rich-bitch during orgasm is all that fokken appealing, besides she can’t rap as fast as fokken Max so she wasn’t keeping up with the rythm of the fokken springs and I wasn’t gonna slow that down. Fok daai kak.

Anyways, about five seconds later she’s complaining cos I’m taking too long and she’s getting fokken tired, so we finish off and I drop her off…

She’s fokken awesome.

DISCLAIMER: This post is a parody review of the band. I did not in fact go on an actual date with Yo-Landi in a Hilux (or any other vehicle) and I did
not in fact sleep with her, or in fact ever even meet her (so if there’s ever a paternity claim I know it aint mine)…
I just wanted to get into the spirit of the thing. I dig the irony of the band, and I hope they’ll dig the irony of my chosen review style.

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100 truths about silentcoder

Diary 4 Responses »

Jan 282010

100 Truths! After you’ve filled this out, TAG 10 people and have them do the same.

1. Last beverage ~ black filter coffee
2. Last phone call~ Anita, wanted to check if I was okay.
3. Last kiss~ does a “hello” peck from a friend count ? Because that greatly influences the answer.
4. Last song you listened to~ 36 Crazy Fists: Slit-wrist theory.
5. Last time you cried~ Tuesday night, after a day of the ex-wife reminding me exactly WHY she’s my EX wife.

HAVE YOU EVER:
6. Dated someone twice ~ Yes
7. Been cheated on? ~ Yes
8. Kissed someone & regretted it ? ~ Yes
9. Lost someone special? ~ Yes
10. Been depressed? ~ Yes
11. Been high? –> Yes

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:
12. Black
13. Sunset-red
14. Lightblue

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU:
15. Have you made new friends this year ~ Yes
16. Fallen out of love ~ Yes (well the year’s just started, but if you count “last 12 months” then yes)
17. Laughed until you cried ~ Yes
18. Met someone who changed you ~ No
19. Found out who your true friends were ~ Yes
20. Found out someone was talking about you ~ Yes
21. Kissed anyone on your top friends list ~ Yes *blush*

TRUTH:
23. How many kids do you want to have ~ I would like one or two, one day.
24. Do you have any pets ~ Cat and a Dog.
25. Do you want to change your name ~ I kina did, no legal change, just started using my initials as my name several years ago.
26. What did you do for your last birthday ~ Threw a small intimate party at a cocktail bar.
27. What time did you wake up today ~ around 6:30
28. What were you doing at midnight last night ~ Watching Jeff Dunham.
29. Name something you CANNOT wait for ~ No comment.
30. Last time you saw your father ~ Mid-December.
31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life ~ I would really like a six-pack… yes it’s shallow but even I sometimes have shallow vanities…
32. What are you listening to right now ~ The sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard
33. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom ~ Yes, my best friend in highschool’s dad was named Tom. Was a very cool guy, a writer who inspired me to write.
34. What’s getting on your nerves right now? ~ People who can’t tell the difference between a mailing-list and a reply-all list.
36. What’s your real name ~ Dream On.
37. Relationship Status ~ Single and available for short-term leases.
38. Zodiac sign ~ Aries
39. Male or female ~ Male
40.Primary School ~ Pierneef Skool
41. High School ~ Oos-Moot
43. Hair color ~ Black, but my blonde roots are starting to show.
44. Long or short ~ My hair or me ? Hair is long, for a guy anyway.
45. Height ~ 185cm
46. Do you have a crush on someone ~ yeah… maybe more than one…
47. What do you like about yourself ~ I want to spend my life making the world a better place, ironically, this is also what I hate about myself.
48. Piercings ~ left ear.
49. Tattoos ~ Two.
50. Righty or lefty ~ Ambidextrous.

FIRSTS :
51. First surgery ~ tonsils 3yrs
52. First piercing ~ Left Ear, age 18.
53. First tattoo ~ Aged 19, on a random Saturday morning after spending weeks looking for the perfect electric guitar picture.
54. First best friend ~ Trevor
55. First Sport ~ Sheez, I can’t remember.
56. First pet ~ dog
57. First vacation ~ First I remember was a trip to badplaas in the low-feld, must have been 4 or 5 years old.
58. First concert ~ Cutting Jade at Tequila Sunrise (this was a few years before they got signed, when nobody knew who they were)
59. First crush ~ Aaah Cindy… she was a sweetheart. We were 7 years old.
60. First alcohol drink ~ well appart from the odd sip of wine with my parents, I had my first beer around age 16.

RIGHT NOW:
61. Eating ~ Haven’t yet, I don’t eat breakfast and it’s too early for lunch.
62. Drinking ~ nothing
63. I’m about to ~ Sign of a customer ticket
64. Listening to ~ Still they clacking of keys.
65. Waiting for ~ lunchtime.

WHICH IS BETTER WITH THE OTHER SEX?
69. Lips or eyes~ eyes
70. Hugs or kisses ~ either
71. Shorter or taller ~ Shorties are adorable, but sometimes taller can be more sensual… bearing has more to do with whether you look good for your height than your height ever will.
72. Older or Younger ~ Couldn’t care less.
73. Romantic or spontaneous ~ What ? No option for “explosive” ?
74. Nice stomach or nice arms ~ Both please.
75. Tattoos or piercings ~ Both are sexy as hell.
76. Sensitive or loud ~ confident, smart and self-assured.
77. Hook-up or relationship ~ RIght now, hook-up, but the right person could change my mind.
78. Trouble maker or hesitant ~ I’m a trouble-maker, I prefer the company of fellow trouble-makers.

HAVE YOU EVER :
79. Kissed a stranger ~ Yes
80. Drank hard liquor ~ yes
81. Lost glasses/contacts ~ No
82. cried in front of someone ~ yes
83. Broken someone’s heart ~ Yes, though always when I believed it was ultimately in their best interest as well.
84. Had your own heart broken ~ Yep…
85. Been arrested ~ mmm, no.
86. Turned someone down ~ Not as often as I should have.
87. Cried when someone died ~ Yes.
88. Liked a friend that is a girl ~ Most of my friends have always been girls, my whole life, and sometimes – I’ve liked them like “that” too.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
89. Yourself ~ too much perhaps.
90. Miracles ~ nope.
91. Love at first sight ~ I used to. Learned a harsh lesson.
92. Heaven ~ Sometimes.
93. Santa Clause ~ Yep, he’s existence is a historical fact. But the mythology around him should be treated as such.
94. Kissing on the first date ~ Absolutely.
95. Angels ~ The kind who wear leather and ride Harley’s.

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
96. Is there one person you want to be with right now – No comment.
97. Had more than one boyfriend/girlfriend at one time ~ Hell no, one is more than enough work !
98. Do you believe its possible to remain faithful forever ~ For some people.
99. What’s the one thing you cannot live without ~ Heavy Metal
100. Posting this as 100 Truths ~ Yes

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How fanboys see movies

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Jan 202010

With the “how fanboys see operating systems” picture doing the rounds… it occured to me that fanboys are even worse about movies… so here’s my take on how Fanboys of three great classic movies, see each other’s poison.