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.
Author: Dave
Yesterweek blogging: My Week in Geek
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.
Wanna hear some noise in Paris tonight?
Tonight, in Paris and most other urban areas, is La Fête de la Musique
Not that there’s any point mentioning it: if you don’t live in France, you rightfully don’t give a flying rat’s ass, if you do, I reckon you are all too aware of it by now.
Thirty years ago… Way down south…
Exactly thirty years ago today, a large gathering of students took place in the South Western Townships of Johannesburg: then and still now, one of the most miserable place you could ever set a sight on. On that day, a few thousands black students were protesting yet another humiliating law passed by the pro-apartheid government, when armed policemen started firing real bullets at the crowd.
The resulting mayhem and deaths of many children had for indirect consequence to force the world into reconsidering its fairly lenient take on the Afrikaners’ quasi-aryan policies. The international community slowly but surely issued official condemnations and accompanying trade cutbacks. Although it should be noted that, until 1986, any UN attempt at imposing worldwide economic sanctions against South Africa was promptly vetoed by both US and UK.
Indeed, neither Maggie nor Ronnie ever deemed it necessary to have any lower an opinion of their South African (white) friends over such trifling details. I’ll let you guess which of the two, in 1987, labeled the ANC a “terrorist organization” and equalled the chances of it ever gaining power to “living in cloud cuckoo land”… though I must say the flowery language is kinda giving it away.
Worry not yourself, you may have done your part to help teenage-shooting, citizen-torturing, white-supremacist pro-Apartheid government of South Africa survive through most of the 20th century: all you had to do was getting engaged more than a dozen years ago.
Eventually, beside internal Black resistance and increasingly disadvantaging demographics, the fall of the apartheid system would seem to hang more on South Africa’s loss of credit on the financial market and ensuing economic turmoils, than any concerted efforts from so-called civilized nations to put significant pressure on its leaders. As it was, these countries were in no rush to lose their privileged trade relations with the ever courteous and oh-so-exquisitely well-mannered good old fair-skinned boys leading South Africa at the time. You know, the same countries who will jump on the first occasion to bomb moustachioed dictators back to the stone-age, out of their deeper concern for the well-being of the people and the advancement of freedom and democracy throughout the world.
Happy Soweto Riots Day.
Evil Overlord List
If, like me, you strive to achieve excellency in any field you put your mind to, be it risk assessment and investment banking or complete world domination through evil masterplan, here are a few useful pointers to being an efficient and successful Evil Overlord, plucked from the canonical Evil Overlord Guide:
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation
28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
[…]
School Assignments in the 21st Century
One step up from cheating googling up references for your university assignment:
Posting the entire project requirements to a few newsboards and wait for generous math-loving souls to do it all for you.
An idea that apparently befell a few of my classmates, a cursory Google query tells me. However: none of their gullible benefactors have so far made contributions to their cause of high enough value that they’d help mine (beggars can’t be choosers), so I guess I’ll stick with the initial plan, gear up for a few days without sleep and do it myself.
To the point: Now being the end of May, the end of May being apparently such a nice and round date, than it was deemed the ideal deadline for every single of my university projects, essays, assignments etc., me having as usual spent most of my recent times procrastinating or taking part in entirely unrelated activities…
Anyway, I’ll spare you a few extra steps of sweat and tears in the process, but the conclusion is: blogging will be slow this week… Sorry…
Sudden realization…
Don’t take it personally, especially if you got one of these yourself, but…
I think I’m way too smart to be blogging.
Location, location, location…
To the attention of the shopkeeper who has repeatedly been trying to shortchange me during my lunch pause:
Sir,
Either you are in good faith, and truly unable to count up to 20 euros without getting it wrong more than 60% of the time.
In which case, I would strongly advise for a career change.
Or…
You are just another average money-grubbing lowlife trying to improve his profits and survive in the dog-eat-dog world of small businesses by less than commandable means.
And I would then have to question the wisdom of running such a trade across the street from one of Paris’ major universities, specializing in Science and Mathematics.
If anything, I feel a bit insulted.
Help me save Basil!
Team, we need differential diagnostic, NOW:
Patients #1, #2, #3 and #4 – a family – let’s call them the Lamiaceaes, were admitted in mid-April: sharing a rather small room, but healthy and showing no sign of infection. They were kept indoors and put on a steady diet of H2O, administered twice daily.
Within days following their admission, they showed signs of discomfort: all limbs progressively went numb, patients could no longer stand upright without assistance. Their health deteriorated exponentially over the course of a week. Finally, patients #1, #2 and #3 all underwent cardiac arrest, followed by acute dehydration, to be declared clinically dead on the seventh day after several failed attempts at resuscitation. Patient #4, youngest member of the family, entered a vegetative state but, in the end, miraculously survived: he emerged from his coma a few weeks later and has been making such an encouraging recovery ever since that doctors have allowed his relocation to the outdoor patio.
It was diagnosed at the time that overcrowding of their room, conjugated with possible lack of fresh air may have caused the sudden and unexpected death of all but one of the Lamiaceaes. Endemic condition or residual infection caught at their previous place of residence was not completely excluded, albeit impossible to prove and somewhat invalidated by the survival of the weakest family member.
Patient #5, whom we shall call Basil, a large-sized fully-grown adult, was admitted two days ago.
Desperately Seeking in Paris II (the aftermath)
A while back, I posted about finding some specific ingredients in Paris (mainly Japanese but also Thai and generally all sorts of non-French food) without having to pay for overseas shipping each time.
Following some kind readers’ suggestions and with a bit additional exploration, I have since resolved all my culinary woes. I figured I’d post a quick recap and a few extra advice for the sake of past and future seekers of exotic food in Paris:
First off: the bestest, cheaperest, fresh tofu, along with countless other goodies (can you believe they even had konnyaku!?!) was found at Supermarket Paris Store on Avenue d’Ivry (about 10 minutes from Place d’Italie, on the left side), thanks to Chrys, whom we shall dearly miss now that she has relocated…
Unlike most other Asian stores in the area (Tang Frères etc.), this one stocks up a fairly consequent aisle of typically Japanese products.
Of course they also carry the usual south-east asian fare, though their curry paste didn’t turn out all that convincing to my humble curry-loving tastebuds (their coconut paste: not at all). But these are much easier to find anywhere else in the neighbourhood… I still want to find some of this mucho combiniente cononut powder (same taste, much lighter to carry around), but the canned stuff is available everywhere… On my next trip, I might even try some of their kimchee (kimchee ramen… yay!).