Fantasist's Scroll

This comes to us from Gizmodo.
Apparently, the latest “cool” thing in Japan are keychain arboratums, with actual, live plants! You can transplant them when they get too big, which doesn’t look like it would take too long, frankly. These are actual, real growing plants so small that they can fit on a keychain.

I guess it’s better than Hello Kitty sex toys!
Aw, go look at it, you know you want to! Besides, it’s Friday, you deserve it!

Well, there’s been a bit of a problem with some of the word generators.
Apparently, one of them has been sucking up too much memory on my webhost’s server, so I’ve temporarily disabled it until I’m home from the road and cna deal with it. (Damn! That was one long sentence!) I’ll get it straight sooner or later, but it’ll take a bit.
Sorry for the inconvenience!

Hmm, there have been a lot of rat-brain stories lately…
No, really, there have been a lot of stories about experiments done with rat brains. First, there was the story about the scientists in Florida who got a rat brain to pilot an aircraft. Then, there was a story about the android run by a rat brain. But, when I got really got me thinking was when I saw this article about how rats can tell the difference between two languages.
Taken separately, they don’t seem like a big deal, but, what happens when you combine them together into a single package? How long before we see these freakish things on the battlefield? Truth is stranger than fiction. But, you know what? A science-fiction author predicted this kind of thing back in the early 80’s. Yep, Joe Clifford-Faust, author of “Company Man”. He didn’t get much attention back then, I thought, but he sure seems right on the money with his predictions. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Okay, so it occurred to me that there had to be a better way.
Yeah, sure, I could talk about the evils of free porn until I’m blue in the face. I could even rant about how terrible it is to manipulate searchengines. Instead, I’m going to try and do it. Again.
Yes, again. I did it once back in 2000/2001 to get my other site ranked so highly on Google for the search terms “CNE resume” that it was the number one hit. I did all sorts of crazy things, not the least of which was start a blog, incidentally. One thing I did was look at both the Google Zeitgeist and the Yahoo Buzz Index and try to use those terms in my site. So, for instance, according to Google’s Zeitgeist, I should talk about: how I felt about the Golden Globes and who won; the fact that Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day; what Teri Hatcher was wearing at the Golden Globes; who Teri Polo is and what she wore at the Golden Globes; what NASA has thrown into space lately; what “naughtiness” Prince Harry has been up to over in the UK; detailed specs on the iPod Shuffle; the super-model antics of Naomi Campbell; the fact that Mariska Hargitay also won a Golden Globe; and how the movie “Elektra” was doing in the box office. As you can see, that first hit, the Golden Globe Awards, was a really popular one, since it was repeated in, or was effected by, several later searches.
Last week, I should have been talking about: Amber Frey, the adulterous whore who was banging Scott Peterson; the terrible damage done by the tsunami in India; how terrible it is that Ashlee Simpson was caught lip-synching; Delta Airlines for some reason; the Weather Channel coverage of that tsunami in India; Heidi Klum, because it’s always a good time to talk about Ms. Klum (and she got married to Seal); NFL player Randy Moss, presumably because he sprained his ankle; the Orange Bowl, because it’s still football season; the fact that Brad Pitt is single again; and all the cool concept cars at the Detroit Auto Show. Crazy stuff, right?

Well, according to Yahoo Buzz Index, I should have talked about some very different things this week. If I wanted to get Yahoo hits, I should have talked about: OJ Simpson’s daughter, Sydney Simpson, getting arrested; Playboy Playmate Alicia Rickter, for obvious, pornographic reasons; those nuts over at Jibjab, who made another hit animation; Enter Location, because, uh, people were travelling a lot?; actress Elisabeth Harnois, possibly for the Golden Globes again?; O.J. Simpson, because his daughter got arrested, of course; the fact that Julian Ozanne got married to Gillian Anderson and no one knows who he is, but everyone knows her from the X-files; anything and everything about actress Lucy Liu, just because, she’s Lucy Liu; the Tennesse-based music and arts festival, Bonnaroo; “How We Do” almost anything, from the sound of it; eating “Breakfast and Brunch”? Or is that more travelling stuff?; how cheap Costco Wholesale pricing is; soap-opera star Annie Parisse, most likely because she moved on to something better; the fact that Japan had another big earthquake; and Jimjab.com, which is most likely a mistake for “jibjab.com”.

Wow, those are totally different things, aren’t they? Are people who use those two different searchengines that different? Have I been losing out by optimizing for Google?
Oh, I don’t know, but I think I’m going to go have a bit of a lay-down. This whole experience has been exhausting.
(And, yes, I’ve posted this same thing on my other blog, the Diary of a Network Geek, for the same reason as the last post.)

WHAT?!?
What the devil am I doing talking about free porn on this very non-adult blog? Simple, talking about free porn is the fastest way to get hits. Sad, but true. In fact, John Dvorak has written an article about this called Free Porn Magic For You.
I used to think that the Internet had improved with age, that we’d finally gotten past all the free porn, or “pron” if you’re one of the hip, out-of-work webdesigners from the 90’s, and had moved on to something more meaningful. I guess I was wrong. If you read the article, you’ll see that what holds true from the earlier days of the Internet still, sadly, holds true today. People are looking for free porn on the Internet. Now, the hits I generally get via searches on Google, and company, aren’t filled with porn terms, movies, or “performers”, so I’m not really expecting a lot of traffic boost, but, well, it can’t hurt. Can it? You know, I’m already starting to feel a bit slimy with all that.
Damn, how else can I boost ratings on this site? For pity’s sake, I know hundreds of people hit this site on a daily and weekly basis, but I have only one sad, lonely Bloglines subscriber. Just one. Did I mention that Bloglines is a free service? And they have nice, FREE tools that let you keep up with your favorite blogs? (Aw, c’mon, subscribe to the Fantasist’s Scroll with Bloglines!) Oh, I suppose I could always just produce more content here. Yeah, that might work, too. But, well, I’d rather go with the sure thing. So, for those of you who are websurfers that got here looking for free porn, I apologize. I was just using you to drive my stats up. I hope you don’t hate me too much.
(And, yes, I talked about this on my other blog, the Diary of a Network Geek. So sue me!)

Freakish, strange and disturbing.
Perfect for a Fantasist Friday Fun link! In this case, it’s Custom Creatures, a site dedicated to “creative” taxidermy. Freakish, two-headed goats and jackelopes and things stranger still. They’re all there. Strange tortured beasts that are sure to disturb your sensibilities. At least, they upset mine, even though I found the exhibit oddly compelling.

Aw, cut me some slack, it’s Friday! Go check it out.

I know, you’re thinking, who?
Well, Robert W. Service is the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. Still in the dark? That’s okay. I don’t think that Mr. Service is too well known anymore. I know him because of my father. Apparently, when my father was growing up one of the things that kids in school did was memorize and recite poetry. It was a competition along the lines of a spelling bee, from what he described. In any case, the poem that he memorized was, of course, “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. It’s a gruesome little tale about a man keeping his promise to a dying friend. A promise to cremate his remains in the frozen Yukon, in Winter, during the Gold Rush. Here’s a sample:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

You can see how that might grab a young man’s attention, eh? Especially, when his father introduces him to it. Well, if you click on the link, you can read the rest for yourself. I think it’s worth it.

I got a request to share my sourcecode yesterday.
First off, I generally don’t do that because a lot of my stuff is derived from work found elsewhere anyway. Also, my code is crappy looking! I mean, I’m not a real programmer, so sometimes I do strange, circuitous things to make my code work and I’d be embrassed to let that out into the world.
Secondly, I don’t want to support that ugly code when it gets out into the world. Half the time, I can’t remember what I’ve done in the first place, much less why. And, frankly, I don’t have time to properly maintain my own website, so I certainly don’t have time to properly support someone else’s coding efforts.
Thirdly, all my stuff is coded specifically for the web. More precisely, for this website. So, certian “look-and-feel” things are done to force a match here. Also, some of my code contains things that I’d rather not make too publicly available. After all, it is what makes my site unique.

I tried to send this person a note with all that in it, but it bounced back. So, even if I’d wanted to send him my source, I couldn’t! For those of you who really, really want to make your own PERL-based language scripts, do what I did, go to Chris Pound’s Name Generator page and start with his code. That’s really all I’ve done is mangle his code for the web.
So just start with that and play around with PERL. And, of course, go read a couple of PERL books. (One good one, after you’ve gotten your feet wet, is the PERL Cookbook, but any of the O’Reilly books are great.)
Good luck!