Monday, April 30, 2007

Chat tax!

I think constantly being on IRC is destroying my vocabulary. I find myself more and more often struggling to find words that eloquently convey my messages. I have come up with a most logical solution to this problem: ChatTax.

ChatTax is a program that forces the user to read passages of well-worded, vivid, enjoyable prose for 15 minutes or so before allowing the user onto his chat program of choice. It also has access to an electronic dictionary so the user can look up unfamiliar words without the effort of pulling out a meatspace dictionary.

I'm serious about this. It's a brilliant idea that could possibly make me millions while simultaniously alienating entire legions of teenagers whose parents bought my program!

Unfortunately, I can't code. Does anyone out there want to develop ChatTax and split the proceeds 50-50?

Friday, April 27, 2007

ULWPP Part 2: Bislama Words (sort of)

I was going to provide a nice compendium of lots of Bislama words in this entry, but I took all of them from this website by Andrew Gray. Of course, he also wrote a plagiarism article that so moved my heart that I decided not to do it after all. There are a handful of books on the subject too. Namely, this one and this one.

And so concludes this part of the ULWPP! Maybe there'll be some other language to work on soon.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

ULWPP Part 1: Bislama, a Primer

Bislama is one of the official languages of Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific. The language could be described as a pidgin language of English, though it would be more accurate to say that it is "English if English was designed by a bunch of four-year-olds." Please note that I am not trying to insult anyone with that statement. I am actually quite in awe of the ingenuity shown by the native Vanuatuans who designed the language in the first place.

Long long ago, when the Queen's empire was still blossoming, many British explorers (hereafter referred to as "Sea Limeys") travelled the South Pacific, taking over whatever they could find. The rest of the South Pacific was taken over by Dutch and French explorers (hereafter referred to as "Windmill monkeys" and "Associates of that dude with the goatee from The Matrix: Reloaded," respectively). One of the territories the Sea Limeys claimed was Vanuatu, a loosely-organised collection of islands. These islands' inhabitants had very different cultures and very different languages from each other, a result of the minimal inter-island interaction. This became a problem when the Sea Limeys relocated all the Vanuatuans onto a few large islands, regardless of island of origin, and stuck them on a few big sugar plantations. The vast lingual differences proved to be a problem at first: no one could communicate with anyone else. Eventually, however, they began to craft a very simple language based on what they heard from the Sea Limey masters' speaking. This led to a very reduced version of English, one that was simple to learn. Since almost all the words were English cognates, it allowed Vanuatuans to communicate reasonably well with their oppressive Sea Limey overlords as well as with each other.

Oddly enough, they chose to name the language Bislama, from the French words "bĂȘche de mer," meaning "sea cucumber." Why anyone would name their language after a creature who regularly defenestrates itself on purpose is a mystery to me. This also seems odd because bĂȘche de mer is French, not English. While most words came (and still do come) from English, a fair number came from other sources. Here's a breakdown of the sources of Bislama's vocabulary:



Common pirate lingo words include "save," (pronounced suh-vay), which means "to know" and comes from the pirate-lingo word "savvy." Similarly, the word for "child" is "pikanini" which comes from "pickaninny." Please note that words that would be construed as offencive in English, like "pickaninny" and "shit," are used in Bislama as perfectly innocent, legitimate words.

Learn some more basic words next time, in ULWPP Part 2: Bislama sentences!

Monday, April 23, 2007

The Useless Language Wikipedia Project, Part 0: The Dark Ages of the ULWPP

Man, this is awesome. I'm all set up to teach you guys about a language that I don't speak at all. Talk about the blind leading the blind, eh? Okay, let's begin!

No, wait, we can't begin yet. I have to explain what the Useless Language Wikipedia Project is. The ULWPP is a project that I started to help inflate the article count on low-article-count Wikipediae. It began when I saw the Dzongkha Wikipedia. It claimed to have 14 articles, but 12 of them were spam, one was a random list of cities and things in Bhutan, and the other was the actual main page. This was sad, so I found some online resources and began to glark basic spelling and syntax. I then proceeded to write two brief Wikipedia entries: here and here.

That was sort of exciting, but frankly, Dzongkha is one of the suckiest languages ever. About half of the letters written are silent, remnants of the tonal Tibetan language from which Dzongkha evolved. It's also horribly painful to write in; seeing as it's written using the Tibetan alphabet, I had to take a character map and copy-paste letters and diacritics (all the vowels are written above or below the consonants, except for "a" which is unwritten and implied) one by one. It was lame and I then decided to move on to an easier low-article-count Wikipedia.

Enter the Marshallese Wikipedia. I was really excited about this one, because it was Roman alphabet-based (albeit with some funky diacritics, like an n with a macron, n̄). To top it off, Marshallese is an extremely laid-back language, a byproduct of it being unwritten for so many centuries. Words can pretty much go in any order in a sentence and the listener will be able to understand the gist of your message. There is no one spelling for any word, either. For example, the word for "hello" can be spelt as "yokwe," "jokwe," "iokwe," "jiokwe," or any of numerous other spellings. My Marshallese glee, however, was short-lived; I had only written one article before I discovered an even easier language's Wikipedia to mess with: Bislama.

I wrote a giant and pretty cool history of Bislama here, but you'll get to read it later, when I make ULWPP Part 1: A Bislama Primer! Stay tuned!

I want to actually make ULWPP a legitimate Wikiproject, like Wikiproject:Biography, but I'm pretty inept when it comes to Wikipolitics and I don't know how to go about doing this. Similarly, I'd like to become an administrator for Dzongkha or Marshallese or Bislama because these wikipediae don't have any adminstrators, and consequently lie ripe for vandalism. Alas, my Wikipolitical ineptitude stops me here too. I need some ULWPP diplomats. Also, we need to change the name. I sincerely doubt that Bhutanese people, Marshallese people, and Vanuatuans appreciate their languages being labelled "useless."

...Even if it is true.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Olga?

I don't get it.



Apparently, there's a place on the border of South Pasadena and Los Angeles proper called "Olga." I have no idea what it is, nor does anyone else I have spoken to. Even searching on Google yields bupkis. Perhaps I should investigate this some more, but for now I'm left to creating wild fantasies.

Who, or what, is this "Olga?" Is it a teeny-tiny city nestled inside South Pas near that one liquor store and the really ridiculous intersection with the Gold Line? That seems unlikely, because Google Maps refers to it as "Olga, South Pasadena." Maybe some sly city planner named the intersection's stoplight. That too seems unlikely, because Olga traditionally connotes rotund Scandinavian women belting out Wagner arie and our stoplight posts are rather slender, and not very musically inclined. Man, if I could train a lightpost to sing I could make millions on Broadway. That's be worth at least 20,000 caps.

What I believe to be most likely is that somebody at Google is continuing the traditions of cartographers of yore. Many mapmakers, in order to prevent plagiarism, would invent their own city, street, river, forest or whatever, and name it after themselves. If, for example, a cartographer named Phineas McGillicuddy wished to defend his work from unlicenced copying, he could add, say, a city in Georgia named "Phineas" or "Loch McGillicuddy" in Scotland. Were he to see these spots on someone else's map, then Phinny would know that his work had been stolen and uncredited.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go see if anyone at Google HQ is named "Olga." Perhaps I could lure her out with a nice herring dish and some Wagner....

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Update!

My long rants usually take an hour or so and I'm pressed for time today, so you get a mechanical TV update.

The video driver works now, and I'm just waiting on some parts. Next I have to figure out if the software used to convert images to audio also works for video. Unfortunately, none of this will happen now because of my aforementioned time-pressing.

There, a 45-second post. Bye!

Monday, April 16, 2007

Kiwi!

There's a new baby kiwi at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. You can see it on a live webcam here (I found that that the webcam only works in IE, unfortunately). This news excites me greatly, because I friggin' love those fuzzy apteryces*. This news also confuses me, because I don't know why I love those fuzzy apteryces*. Seriously, they're pretty ugly and gangly and not very entertaining. They seriously look like an oversized kiwi fruit with bug-eyes and too-big feet. So what's the deal? Why do I love them so much?

The only possible explanation I can think of for my admiration of these flightless birds is that this is video games' fault. I am specifically blaming The New Zealand Story for the Sega Genesis**. The premise of the game is as follows: You are Tiki, a kiwi living a carefree life with all the other kiwis in your home on the North Island of New Zealand. One day, a walrus waddles into your village and kidnaps everyone, intent on sending you all to an evil walrus-run zoo. Somehow, you manage to escape, and you must chase the walrus all the way to the bottom of South Island to rescue all of your kiwi comrades. Also, you have a girlfriend named Phee-Phee.

It's a pretty fun game, and it involves some GTA-esque elements, like hijacking vehicles. Granted, those vehicles are hot-air balloons piloted by anthropomorphic cats who throw hatchets, but the idea is the same. The point is that the game is fun, and--since the main character is a kiwi on a morally righteous mission--it limns kiwis extremely positively. There is one major problem, however:


THIS IS NOT A KIWI.



Tiki (and all the other in-game kiwis) do not look like real kiwis. I am sure the game developers at Taito were aware of this, and had some motive for making their sprites look absolutely nothing like what they are supposed to represent. My working theory is that Taito was in league with the powerful Kiwi Lobbying Group, currently the only political machine to be comprised of flightless birds. The KLG knew that its members were ugly, and an accurate depiction of them in a video game would be less-than-stellar for their popularity in the always-critical youth market. Together, Taito and the KLG hatched a plan to convince the ignorant masses that kiwis were actually adorable yellow balls of fluff that fought evil monsters like walruses and aliens in order to keep the world safe.

YOUR SECRET IS OUT, KIWIS! I KNOW OF YOUR DECEITFUL PLAN! YOU CANNOT SILENCE ME, FOR YOUR PUNY, USELESS WINGS ARE INCAPABLE OF MANIPULATING COMPUTER EQUIPMENT! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And that is why I love kiwi birds. Awww, it's so cute!

* This is not the real, appropriate plural for "apteryx," a word coming from the Greek "a-" and "pteryx," together meaning "no wing." The plural I used is a Latin plural, not a Greek one. If someone is able to decipher this chart, I'd replace it with the legitimate plural.

** There is an earlier version of TNZS, called Kiwi Kraze and released on the NES, but that one was pretty sucky and I didn't actually play it until after the Genesis version. I don't know why I bothered explaning this to you putzes.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Proof that humanity is hosed.

If you haven't already lost faith in humanity, perhaps the fact that there is a Wikipedia article on Rasputin's penis will be the last straw. Come on, humanity. We really don't want to read about famous weirdoes' body parts. I pray that this never comes up in conversation, anywhere, ever.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Catpennies!

Science has managed to quantify nearly everything. Heat, light, vibration, even colour hue and intensity. One thing that hasn't been quantified, however, is entertainment. It's never been done before. However, sometime last month someone finally made headway in this field. The entire body of research can be seen here.

Catpennies. IT'S BRILLIANT! Finally we have a way of measuring how much fun we're having. For example, the conversation I had about Luxembourg today was about 100 catpennies, or one decacatpenny. It would be easier to call that a "catdollar," but I can't do that. You'll see why two paragraphs down.

If we now can measure units of fun, how do we measure units of dullness? The obvious answer is something mildly sucky. It has to be about as sucky as a catpenny is fun. The best thing I can come up with is losing a quarter. One lostquarter is equal to negative one catpennies. Waiting at the baggage claim in LAX is close to 50 lostquarters (unless you have a Game Boy, in which case it is about 20 catpennies.)

Unfortunately, I suspect that science will be unkind to the names "catpenny" and "lostquarter." To make this system of measures accepted by science, the names must be changed. The easiest way to do this would be simple abbreviations, like "cap" and "losque." Sadly, this also means that 100 catpennies cannot equal one catdollar. If it did, then the unit of measurement would have to change to "cad" and that would make no sense. Instead, it will have to be a "decacap."

Actually, caps and losques might make more sense than the originals. If I were to use catpennies, catnickels, catdimes, catdollars, and so forth, this would cause great problems when converting to lostquarters. Since 1 catpenny is equal to 1 lostquarter, 1 catdollar is equal to 25 lostdollars. This would quickly become confusing.

Now, go out in the world and embrace this system! Make sure to live every day to the fullest! Try and have a million-cap day!

Monday, April 9, 2007

A disappointing post!

This was going to be a post about cats and pennies and such, but it's late and I'll save that for a time when I have more energy. Right now I'm at the very beginning of a new project: a mechanical television.

Other, bolder people could turn this device into something new and amazing. I'm probably going to take the lame route and not add anything new. If I were to add something new, it would be sound. That seems remarkably easy to do, but some stuff I've read seems to imply otherwise.

Anyway, mechanical TVs work by a single light source rapidly changing brightness to represent different shades of grey. Each instance of brightness is shone through a hole in a rapidly spinning disc, so that a little square appears in on the other side of the disc in the same shade as the light source. Do this 6400 times a second and you have a mechanical TV! The best part is that the information being sent requires no film, very low voltage, and can run for hours using only a CD player.

I should get started. So long, aetherweb!

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Bird cloning!

I'm lazy. Instead of getting a fresh post, you get my lecture that I delivered to nobody in particular in the #nerdparadise chatroom a few months back, which also happens to be a forum post I made about thirty seconds ago (Today's Saturday. Pretend this update happened on a Friday, okay?).

I'm really interested in cloning extinct birds (and, for that matter, most creatures that come from a hard-shelled egg). The geirfugl, the dodo, the Rodrigues solitaire, the passenger pigeon, the moa, the California condor (there are fifty-something left...it may not be extinct but it needs all the help it can get), and all sorts of dinosauranoids.

Anyway. There are lots of reasons why we have yet to bring back extinct bird species. There are two extremely large reasons.

The first is that this reintroduced specimen will have no parental figures and, consequently, much of its behaviour will be drastically different than the original species and it may not know how to act in certain situations that would doom the creature in the wild. This is unavoidable unless avian psychologists make some amazing breakthroughs soon.

The second reason, which is the one I understand far less, concerns the eggs themselves. As far as I know, not a single avian has been cloned, because the eggs are a pain to deal with. Every species' eggs are slightly different, and many extinct animals (like the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire) have no living relatives close enough to act as substitute-egg-donors. Then there's the issue of actually inserting the extinct animal's genetic information into the nucleus of the egg cell before it starts to form a morula. Then there's the issue of successfully implanting the egg in a suitable foster parent (because, really, there's no way in hell you're going to have any modern bird lay a dinosaur egg) who will also care for the young hatchling if need be.

The only solution I can think of for issue #2 would be to invent several new substances that can act as artificial albumen, yolk, shell, and other stuff that goes into eggs. It would have to be pliable at times, to allow for gene-insertion as well as readjusting the levels of the fluids and nutrients in the egg, but it would also have to be rigid to mimic a proper egg. I dunno. Someone else can figure that one out.

Recommended reading: Digging for Dodos by Ian Parker, New Yorker Magazine, January 22, 2007. The link I provided is not the full text; it continues for many more pages. While you're at it, you might as well read Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Several letters that I wrote while touring colleges on the east coast

An open letter to all residents of Baltimore, Maryland

Dear residents of Baltimore, Maryland:


This is a turn signal. Use it.

I am serious, residents of Baltimore, Maryland. This is a problem. You have this wonderful highway system, much better than L.A.'s. It's a highway system with a rational layout, one that doesn't look like it was designed by a blind chimpanzee, and you are using it irresponsibly. I am distraught by the lack of signalled turns. pI was watching traffic on the highway for over an hour and saw two people signal when changing lanes. TWO. Y'all signal turns at intersections, so you obviously know how to use your turn signals. Now it's only an issue of making you actually freaking use them.

Here's a primer: When changing lanes to the left, use your left turn signal. When changing lanes to the right, use your right turn signal. The end.

Seriously, how hard is that? I may not be very familiar with the East coast, but I know this isn't the norm. I did not witness anything this horrible when in Washington, or even in NYC. You've got to clean up your act. Think of the children, residents of Baltimore, Maryland. Thanks for listening. Please take my advice to heart.

************

A letter to the Baltimore World Trade Centre, Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Baltimore World Trade Centre:

I can't help but notice that you have a North Korean flag among the hundreds of flags in your lobby. Why is this, Baltimore World Trade Centre? I highly doubt you do any world trade with North Korea. Please either remove the North Korean flag or at least move it to a less prominent position than the middle of the flag-display. Thanks.

************

An open letter to all residents of Albany, New York


This is a car gas pedal. Use it.

I know your fine city is sort of close to Canada, but you have to remember that it's not in Canada. When a speed limit sign says "35," that number is not 35 kph. I know it is lamentable that we are still using the Imperial system of measurement, but we are, and you have to use the Imperial system while here. Please increase your speed by approximately 61% to ensure that you obey our speed signs. Thank you.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Mmmmmm...

Loaf of doughnut.

I said these words on Thursday when trying to (very inaccurately) describe brioche, a sweet French bread. Though my description failed, this statement was etched into my memory. It's heart-cloggingly awesome.

Imagine a doughnut loaf. For the most part, it would be little more than changing the shape of the doughnut. The only major altertion I can think of is that the icing/sugar/other toppings would have to be mixed in evenly because it'd be too messy to handle icing-covered bread in many situations.

Obviously, a sample must be made. I'm going to buy a whole bunch of old doughnuts from the grocery store and compress them into a dense cube. Then I will proceed to slice and enjoy my doughnut loaf. Later, I will be found dead on the floor. Maybe I died from cardiac arrest. Maybe I died from a caloric overdose. Maybe I just collapsed out of sheer ecstasy because I just ate a loaf of doughnut.