Just so you don’t think for a moment that I am out there having fun when I leave this blog unattended for weeks on end…

Note that this snapshot entirely fails to convey the real Soviet-era ambiance of my 8am-1pm weekly Tuesday lecture: attended by twelve hardcore students huddled in a 300-seat auditorium, fighting sleep and hypothermia, with the dreary droning of a disinterested lecturer as background lullaby.

Can I get a Hell Yeah for advanced graph theory?!?

Hell… zzz…

Programmers who can’t spell…

Dear unknown person who produced this unspeakably awful batch of code I have to work with:

While I realize your first language is not English, and even though I have my doubts about your French spelling abilities for that matter, could you please make an effort and not spell it ‘avaliable’ in a few hundred files and templates?

I know the code works all the same. It just bugs the hell out of me.

I finally took the time to format and update a small paper I wrote last month on the creolization process and its interpretations in cognitive science.

Despite its pompous title, it is very much layman-oriented and designed as a general presentation of creolization.

What is creolization, I hear you ask?

Well, it’s a fascinating phenomenon observed in communities where kids raised by speakers of a pidgin end up spontaneously producing a more grammatically advanced language of their own (a creole). Not only does it happen in practically every known instance of such pidgin-speaking communities, but a similar process has been observed in Nicaragua with sign language.

Beyond their ethnological and linguistics interest, Creolization studies give great insights as to how humans learn to speak and the cognitive process involved.

If you have some interest into either of these fields, you can read the whole thing here:
Creolization and Cognitive Theories of Language Acquisition

And by the way, don’t let the pedantic tone fool you… I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about in there: I am neither a linguist nor much of a cognitive scientist. This particular assignment just happened to have enough wiggle room that I could escape the dreary droning of a typical math’n'physics paper in my choice of topic.

Feel free to post comments, additional info or point out some of the gross inaccuracies no doubt littering the text in the comment area provided to that effect.

Time for some Q&A here…

Below are a few of the most oft-heard questions/statements about my previous panic-level-3 announcement regarding a serious security issue in WP and how to easily fix it temporarily (one checkbox to untick)… Along with answers:

“Is this a joke/hoax?”

Is the date the 1st of April?

“How critical is it?”

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If you are running Wordpress as your blogging platform and if you have been trusting enough to leave User registration enabled for guests, DISABLE IT IMMEDIATELY (in wp-admin >> options: make sure “Anyone can register” is not checked).

Additionally, delete or disable ANY guest account already created by people you are not sure about.

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Around 10am GMT today, Unknowngenius Corp. headquarters have had to sustain yet another nasty email spam attack. This one ostensibly attempting to clog our inbox beyond recognition by sending thousands of spams to random addresses across the world, thus resulting in thousands of “no delivery” response mails being sent back to our own mailbox from hundreds different server, with no way to easily filter them out.

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Do I even need to bore you with detailed recounts of the ongoing motives for this month of particularly slow blogging?

Last week we had deadline frenzy, this week was oral-presentation-and-written-exam semi-frenzy, next week is final apotheosis of exams and masters programs’ applications. By wednesday, I should be all done and back to regular blogging, assuming my computer hasn’t been turned into a smoldering pile of melted plastic by the giant bonfire I am planning to light in my courtyard, using all the paper currently littering my apartment as combustible.

Ever since and until then, I am all work, very little play, and practically no blog to speak of.

However, yesterday night, I exceptionally took a short break to conduct non-studying-related activities, the exact nature of which shall remain prudently nebulous, except perhaps to mention they bore no relations to soccer whatsoever, featured role-playing aerobics, high levels of cross-channel cheekiness and female-on-male wrestling. Also resulted in my voodoo pin doll finally making an appearance in downstairs’ neighbour special 5am collection (see about wrestling, and ensuing loud thumping noises, above) as well as getting up this morning with a worryingly purple-coloured, very broken-looking, middle toe (see about same).

Therefore, in the spirit of keeping things even with my time, I thought I’d take some to post a few scattered notes I just found this morning in a forgotten corner of my apartment, impaled on a dead rat with a sharpened stiletto heel. I reckon they might be my working notes from two weeks ago, during the finishing line of my first deadline grand slam. Do not worry if you don’t understand much, or anything at all: it might just be that you are a) slightly less psychotic than I at the time and b) somewhat below ‘pathetic’ in your general level of geekiness…

Excerpts from dr Dave’s Working Notes: June 4 – June 11

[omitting: various doodlings of dubious artistic values and possibly offensive graphic nature, certifiably random combinations of symbols not identified as meaningful in any human languages, text fragments dissolved beyond recognition by stains of what appears to be high-grade alcoholic beverages]

Sunday 06/04

9:14 pm – Hmn. I wonder which month is today.

Oh my.

I think we have just entered official freak-out deadline rush season.

Monday 06/05

3:24 pm – Interesting fact about computer labs and thermodynamics: a balmy outdoors tropical-jungle temperature seems to turn into slightly uncomfortable bone-melting heat in rooms filled with two dozen cheap PCs running 24/7.

3:46 pm – Attempt to refurbish some of the older computers’ fan into more useful human-cooling activities thwarted by nosy sysadmin. Perhaps it’s time to get ssh going and work from home.

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What better occasion than a charmingly rainy Spring Sunday afternoon to take care of a long due tidying-up of my blogroll (that list of blogs found under the Links tab above)…

In fact, it was mostly an occasion to crash on the couch, procrastinate all day and do some reading while nibbling on the relics of yesterday’s food orgy, but having accomplished one tangible task, no matter how trivial, gives me a faint sense of accomplishment and somewhat helps relieve the guilt.

First off, I finally ditched the “linkroll”, as you are all probably subscribed to the same dozen blogs I and everybody on the net goes to, to get their fix in “quirky” humorous pieces of web lore. Real links of interest will make it into posts of their own from now on. But anyway, I do suspect your first motive for visiting this blog is not to find the latest in kung-fu-fighting cat movies or dorky teenagers lip-syncing to cheesy eurodance.

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Wherein the author enumerates much meaningless data and uses them as springboard for some slightly more topical meandering…

• 1,059 WordPress plugins currently sit on wp-plugins.net. Not bad for a project that was half-shunned by the official WP pubah(s) from the very beginning. Kinda getting worried by the amount of bandwidth this is eating off my quota right now (read: somewhere in the 200% vicinity). But we’ll cross that bridge when it starts falling.
• 11,232 SK2 downloads for the year 2006 so far. There again, not bad for a plugin that doesn’t happen to be the one packaged by default in WordPress 2.0.
• 968 comments (mostly Trackbacks and Pingbacks, as I closed comments on this page a while back) on SK2’s homepage. Can’t help but notice an uncannily high percentage of posts from Germany. Is SK2 like, the David Hasselhoff of anti-spam plugins?

As you can tell, despite being on cruise-control mode, the Deliverables Department of UnknownGenius Corp. is doing nicely. As for where it’s heading, I suppose I may use the occasion to offer a quick update:

The short answer is that it is going nowhere.

The longer answer is that, ultimately, I will be phasing out all WordPress development (and most web coding, actually) from my activities.

For those who care about the Why, I will try to provide some elements without delving too deep into the multiple layers of frustration and unrelated motives for my general disinterest toward WordPress at the moment:

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I just got a brand new handheld Japanese dictionary. It’s very complete, using one of the best database out there, smaller than a few credit cards stacked together and I paid 20,000 yens for it.

Oh, it also plays mp3s.

And movies.

In fact, it does a whole lot of things, pretty much anything I want it to do, provided I have time to write a program for it.

It’s an iPod Nano, running µClinux, thanks to the brilliant work of the iPod Linux team.

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Will any of you sharp visitors throw in a supposition as to which part of my stupid laptop is not working as it should, today?

As you no doubt caught on by now: a glyph crucial at communicating in writing most linguistic constructs of latin origin, is outright missing from this post’s body. That tiny plastic thing on my laptop that usually allows for input of this particular symbol, is constantly snapping out of its spot, foiling all plans to lay my thoughts in a straightforward phrasing without using such unnatural turns of words. My vocabulary has abruptly shrunk to dramatically small proportions. And with it, so has my sanity.

Having no motivation nor skills to commit a full book in this fashion, I shall stop torturing my brain for words, right this instant, and ask you to kindly wait until I fix this quandary for a dispatch of any actual worth.

And thanks go to this guy for unwittingly prompting today’s trifling contribution to this blog.

If you hold back anything, I’ll kill you.
If you bend the truth, or I think you are, I’ll kill you.
If you forget anything, I’ll kill you.

In fact, you’ll have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick.

Do you understand everything I’ve said?

Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.

Rory the Breaker

I’m deeply sorry that my first post of note in weeks must be about such a pedestrian topic, but I feel it is time to publicly edict certain rules about commenting on this fine piece of thought-challenging writing we call our blog.

Ironically, while strait-laced spam (you know the kind: congratulation on the neatness of your post punctuated by a recommendation for this interesting site about horses playing texas holdem’ with mature grandmas) is no longer an issue, “semi-spam”, or plain non-spam-but-moronic comments have become a real problem. I blame Google, and the thousands clueless imbeciles it washes up on my shores daily.

For the first time in History, it is possible to get a glimpse into the collective IQ of a sizable share of this planet’s population. And trust me: it is rather depressing. Not that I had much doubt left, but this shall go a long way in reenforcing my personal opinion that, as a species, we are frighteningly dumb. How we managed to make it thus far is beyond me… and a strong argument in favour of Intelligent Design theories… I mean, there has to be a God out there. A God that, for some unfathomable reason, is personally attached to the survival of a species who considers “I like cats!!!!11111″ and “u R s0 kewl!!!” to be the best possible use of nigh-boundless, worldwide inter-communication.

Don’t get me started on Google queries.

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Less than a week ago, we were launching our major campaign: “A bullet for every Spammer, a lifetime supply of quality gin for dr Dave“.

We called for your generosity in helping make this dream come true (especially the drinkable part).

The results are in.

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First blog update on Spam Karma, Wordpress development and Spam in many months, and a crucial one at that. Being notoriously verbose to the point of irrelevance, yet with lots to say today, I have tried to provide a telegraphic sum-up below, feel free to skip and go straight to the parts you may care about (hint for the busy ones: the plot thickens mostly around part 6 and 7).

1. How well is SK2 stopping spam currently?

Pretty damn well, thank you.

2. What’s wrong in the peaceful Kingdom of SpamKarmia then?

A new breed of Evil has been summoned and is threatening to breach in.

3. How evil?

Very Evil… and powerful.

4. Won’t anybody show up and save the day?

Doubtful…

5. Is there really nothing you can do?

Of course there is.

6. Then why aren’t you busy doing it, you lazy bastard

Here is why: …

7. You wouldn’t leave us to die here, would you?

Watch me.

And now for the details:

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I already expressed in the past my thoughts on hot-linkers…

I don’t think I need to go over the vast insignificance of script-kiddies: they rank somewhere between leeches and mono-cellular organisms in the general scheme of Internet things. Actually more like irritating little flies or mosquitoes…. Mosquitoes with really, really small penises and a need to overcompensate for it.

But to be both a script-kiddy defacer and a hotlinker…

That just begs for me to take 10 minutes off my very busy moving day and go the extra-mile in moronic-hot-linking prevention:

[Before] [After]