Usually, when I stumble across things online (which I do a lot), I usually only share the amusing or geeky things with you. I'm like a pop-up add filter, I strain out all the bad things I find and only share the good! And I'm not just talking about The Onion.

For example, I have shared snippets of Strong Bad with you (and if you don't read most of his emails, you're really missing something!).

Sometimes, however, I come across something that is TOO FRIGGIN WEIRD NOT to share. Today is such a day as I share with you the link to Yatta. I have no idea what the hell this is (though it's hosted on an MIT server). This is just Odd. Not funny, really. Just odd. So watch Yatta. (I copied the file to my site. I don't think he'll mind).

I found the Yatta thing on a site by a junior at MIT. I'm not sure if he made it or not. Either way, his main page is here if you're interested. (Who knew someone from California could be so odd. Must be the MIT influence.) So email him about how odd he is. MIT people like that sort of thing.

Curious about the song he used? Well, our MIT friend was kind enough to also have a copy of the music video he took the song from. Guess what? IT's EVEN ODDER!. Watch it here. Warning! this depicts japanese male singers in a very-near-nude state!

(I may be a little behind this curve. Maybe you all have already seen it.)

We (Me, Mike, and his Parents) went to see Cirque du Soleil today. And let me start by saying it was great. It really was. The performance was unbelievable.

If you haven't seen it, it's a collection of circus acts that, allegedly, is tied to some greater story. The story of the show we saw was basically a boy meets girl, boy can't walk, girl gets thrown through the air a lot, and there was something about a guy with a hot air balloon, then they got married. (Girl and boy, not guy and balloon. I don't think. The story was a bit hard to follow).

I'm not sure Mike was able to follow the story either. At one point, I asked him if he thought the man dressed in black with the light bulb for a head was supposed to represent the modern technological ideal in sharp contrast to the baser, more naturalistic setting of the overall production. He responded by stating that the girl who got tossed around a lot couldn't possibly have any bones in her body.

Anyway, story aside, it was a great show. I think.

I had a configuration issue with my Blogger, so it was down for a bit. It's back, hopefully without problems.

Well, okay. Not really, but life has been in the mundane realm lately. So, no entries because nothing interesting/annoying/amusing has happened really. Last week was exams for me and Mike, and he has more this week (poor guy).

I spent the long weekend cleaning and loafing (and went to the gym each and every day). I went to see Daredevil with RSD Miranda on Sunday. It, like the rest of me week so far, was okay. Not horrible, not great. Little bit of bubblegum for the mind.

As part of my tax return program, I spent the vast majority of it paying bills, but I did buy myself one little gift. The complete works of Monty Python.

And now for something completely different.....

This week should be more interesting because:

a) It's a short week.
b) Mike's parents are coming to stay with us. We're going to see Cirque Du Soliel Varekai on Sunday.

Okay, so Action Script for flash is a programming/scripting language for Flash, which obviously is designed to work via the web. The people who created the language, then, had an eye turned towards preventing the program from crashing.

In traditional programming languages, for example, if I wanted to get number values from a user, then divide one by the other, I needed to check the inputs to

A: Make sure it\rquote s a number and
B: Make sure the denominator was not a zero.

If you divide by zero, you get an overflow error. And you know that some people, like me, will try to crash programs this way \endash to test how well the programmer anticipated the moron-factor of the user.

The Flash AS designers took an interesting approach to the divide by zero problem. They defined Infinity. It\rquote s a number type. Divide by zero and the resultant value is Infinity. Cool? It gets better. Divide a number by infinity and the result is? You got it: 0. (The definition of Infinity is actually any number larger than the largest number the flash language can handle).

They have another number value called NAN which means, literally, not a number. So, if you try to perform a math operation on a non-number, it returns NAN. Not as cool as the Infinity thing, but it\rquote s nice. (Now, I can check that an input value is a number by using either NAN or !Nan as my test value.)

I think that\rquote s cooler than the underwear of a polar bear.

------- Dreamhost has been having problem with the Mysql server that powers my site - so if you tried to comment or some such and got an error, that's why.

It seems to be up now, though.

... the more we stay the same.

The Smoking Gun is an interesting site that contains arrest warrants and mug shots of the rich and/or famous. It has everything from the complaint against Michael Jackson to Nick Noltes unflattering picture when he was arrested recently.

Of interest, was that this morning Fark.com posted a link to the Smoking Gun's FBI files on the song Louie Louie. It includes, among other things, a letter from an irate parent about the obscene lyrics, some examples of the obscene lyrics, and of course the real non-obscene lyrics.

Here's the ending paragraph from the parental letter:

This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation what with this record, the biggest hit movies, and the sex and violence exploited on TV

How can we stamp out this menace???

I am struck by how often I hear the exact same complaints about today\rquote s' music, movies, T.V., ect. The above letter was written in 1964. Today's complainer's will have you believe that, unless we do a major 360, we're doomed for the fires of hell, which is exactly what people thought about 40 years ago. Yet, we're all still doing fine. I find the circular nature of our society interesting. (Not that there's isn't horribly offensive music out there, there is. It's just not going to cripple us as a nation).

Interested in more musical facts? Greg of GregRushton.com has posted a link an exploration of the meaning of 'American Pie'. It's an interesting exploration of the subtext of the music.

From the 'Too Friggin cool not to mention' files comes news of the honest to goodness REAL invisibility cloak!

Well, okay, not quite. But still! Check out this article on the newly invented Invisibilty Cloak.

Hopefully, the magic wands are not too far behind (I have a couple of people who could stand be turned into a toad for a while).

I created a Mad Libs for the State of the Union speech (well, part of it) using Flash. You can play with it here.

******** Technical Notes
The cool thing about this is that 90% of the elements are created,named, positioned, and then destroyed dynamically.

Well, if you're a Flash expert, this is probably old hat. If you're a flash dummy like me, it's kind of cool.

************ Madlibs people mailed to me.

Some people (Patty) mailed me thier 'State of the Union' piece. Here's my favorite line:

We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared, and we will eat every thong and every gorilla that threatens the American people.

So go ahead, mail me your madlibs!

Every morning, I stumble to work blearily. I'm not really a morning person, though my imagined role as a responsible person forces me to be one. So, as you might imagine, it's not unusual for me to arrive to work and then realize I forgot something important, like my pants. If my brain had its way, it wouldn't actually process any information until after 10am.

Luckily, I'm still able to arrive at work and engage people in thoughtful communication, such as when they ask me if I'll be much longer photocopying those 12 chapters of a book which was left for me to do. Why? Because each morning I (with millions of others) engage in that great morning wake-up ritual of drinking coffee. And, as it often goes un-thanked, I would like to dedicate today\rquote s entry to my friend, Coffee.

I'd like to publicly dedicate this entry to you, friend coffee! For all that you do!

Too much? But think of all coffee has done for us? There are health benefits, such as smaller kidney stones and other cool stuff, according to The Coffee Science Information Centre.

It also helps us make decisions. For instance, via the Magic Coffee Mug dot Com (Kind of a magic 8 ball, but in mug form!)

Hey, and you don't just drink the stuff! How about a nice coffee bean and peppercorn crusted steak for your next barbeque?

Not to mention the huge impact coffee has had on, not only the development of our country, but the whole world! Brush up a little bit on your Coffee History.

Still not convinced? Maybe you haven't yet had the satisfaction of the perfect cup.

I'd like to finish with A Poem(tm) I wrote for Coffee.

Coffee, Coffee, what would we do?
If not for your place in our morning brew?
We'd fight. And cry. and maybe die.
That's why I'm a 'Cup every morning or I'll friggin' kill someone' kind of guy.

The space Shuttle was lost with all hands today at 9am today. A country mourns 7 explorers who won't be coming home.