My apologies, internet. I was being a pretty good blogger for a while there, but this week's looking rough. I'd desperately like to write a convoluted apologia on behalf of Bear Grylls, or explain how a pigeon almost killed me, or emphatically agree that dragons are awesome. But for now all that will have to wait. Instead, please accept some bulleted items of a technical nature.

• Item the first! I received my SuperCard in the mail at long last. I'll explain the nefarious things it allows me to do with my gameboy later. For now, suffice it to say that the marginal cost of an experience point just plummeted.
• Tim's recently had a few great posts about the First Sale Doctrine and whether software companies can bind you to contractual terms by printing them on a tiny sheet of paper that you throw out, unread, with the rest of the packaging for Office 2007. His latest is particularly interesting — in it he responds to a criticism involving open source software and its own reliance on software licenses. I think Tim's second point in response is on the money: the use of compiled software is very different from the use of source code.
  
  Besides, there's no real reason why a more explicit contractual agreement couldn't be imposed on the distribution of open source code. Tim has noted that Microsoft could make you sign a contract to buy Windows, too, but doesn't because it would end up costing them money (and make consumers more aware of the terms of the agreements).
  
  But the vast majority of open source developers know about the licenses associated with their hobby, even if they can't explain the differences between the GPL, BSD, Apache, Mozilla and LGPL licenses off the top of their heads. I don't think too many lines of code would be lost by requiring some sort of deliberate acknowledgment of a project's license prior to downloading its source.
  
  But this may all be irrelevant. I'm no lawyer, but my general impression is that the exchange of money can significantly alter a legal landscape — it certainly does in other areas of intellectual property law. I'm not sure whether that works for or against open source evangelists in this case, but I think it's plausible to say that they may occupy a different legal position than that of commercial software vendors.
• Also at Tech Liberation, Adam Thierer writes about wifi piggybacking. I already left a lengthy comment there, so if you want to hear my ruminations on the subject you can follow the link. But more practically, I wanted to say that it's really, really easy to set up a connection-sharing arrangement. I recently installed the custom DD-WRT firmware on Emily's router and set it to repeat Scooter's signal (he'd okayed the project at the beginning of the summer). Aside from some router-specific difficulties that won't be relevant for anyone following the directions below, it worked like a charm.
  
  So if you can get a willing neighbor's faint signal by the window and nowhere else, you might want to think about buying a router to handle the window-sitting for you. It's pretty simple to do:
  
  
  1. Go to this page and figure out what the cheapest compatible router is, then buy it. Plan on spending about $50.
  2. Follow these instructions, which will guide you through downloading and installing the DD-WRT firmware onto your router. To set up the router as a repeater you'll need to use the v24 release of the firmware, which is still considered beta-quality.
  3. Use these directions to configure your newly-powerful router into a wireless repeater. It even works with encrypted networks! Well, provided that you have the password. Still, it's incredibly useful and seems to be quite speedy and stable based on my admittedly not-quite-rigorous testing.
• Finally, an interesting but almost certainly specious argument stating that Comcast's specific anti-Bittorrent measures may be illegal.

...now that Charles is gone. He's spending the week celebrating Darren and Emilie's love over in Belgium, a country about which I know disappointingly few hilarious stereotypes. The happy couple is getting married in a castle, and apparently Charles has been drafted into the ceremony. I believe he'll be operating the portcullis.

His departure has left the house with too few people and too many options: I can't decide what to make filthy first. Last night's unexpected bout of burrito-making caprice left some promising food spills around the kitchen, but I ultimately decided that was an unambitious way to begin and cleaned them up. For now I've settled for leaving a pile of sweaty gym clothes on the couch — but this is merely the foundation for the work to come.

I finally made it to a meeting. In brief: loquacious audience members ignorant of the limits of technology; presenters that were, if anything, too aware of them. But the disconnected dynamic was partly the fault of the space, which — despite providing a "WONDERS OF SCIENCE" banner above the podium — didn't prove to be a particularly great setting.

Still, there were some interesting projects, I got pointed toward some interesting things, and I'll be going back.

HOLY FUCK IRONMAN

(I don't even really like Iron Man comics)

Some questions have been raised about my and Amanda's recent Iron Man advocacy. Allow me to offer a slightly more nuanced case than I did last night:

1. First, as the Nabob points out, there's the Robert Downey Jr. factor. Consider the recent awesomeness of comic book movies. Now consider that the title of Greatest Living Superhero Actor is currently held by either Wesley Snipes or Christopher Reeve, depending on your personal taste and how carefully you read the criteria for winning the aforementioned title.
   
   Robert Downey Jr. has the sort of genuine charisma that can only be learned by having to repeatedly explain to strangers why they just found you sleeping in their house. It comes through in his performances. In the preview his delivery of the script's lame jokes actually makes them seem sort of funny! Ask yourself: what if Sir Laurence Olivier had been cast in a role involving repulsor beams? What would cinema look like today? My guess: explodier.
2. Although I didn't think it was as great as certain other people did, Transformers did usher in a major new cinematic innovation: the "how does the protagonist fare against U.S. military hardware?" scene. It should soon take its place next to "mistaken identity", "Rocky-style training montage", "going on two dates at once", and the two or three other dramatic conventions that screenwriters have at their disposal. In the preview, Iron Man, like, totally dusts some fighter jets, and you can tell the pilots are all "Maaan" but also have to admit that it was pretty sweet. I agree with those pilots, but my enthusiasm is unchecked by professional considerations.
3. Finally, the preview implies that the movie retells the Iron Man origin story more or less faithfully. Even though Iron Man is a second-string superhero, most nerds are well-acquainted with and attached to his origin story. This is because all subsequent Iron Man stories have kind of sucked, prompting the creators to revisit the origin story on a regular basis.
   
   I don't think that deviation from the canon would have much of an effect on my enjoyment of the movie. But hearing nerds whine about it for the next eight months would have an effect on my enjoyment of the internet. So thanks in advance for sticking to the source text, Mr. Favreau.

Nice job, guys. The lack of stipple portraits of Sommer is admittedly dispiriting, but otherwise it seems pretty alright.

The Post's got a story that might be of interest to my fellow UVA alums: apparently one of the school paper's idiot cartoonists has gotten himself fired over an offensive cartoon. It took some hunting, but I managed to find the cartoon in question, which comes from a comic strip called Quirksmith:

As you might expect, the most notable thing about the comic is its overwhelming lack of funniness. The joke's confused in a way that's difficult to explain — rather than being smartly flipped to hilarious effect, the conceptual setup simply lolls off to the side, like the top layer slumping off of an overengineered cake.

It's also not very offensive, I don't think (said the white, middle-class, first-world blogger). The figures have a primitive look, but not one that's easy to unequivocally define as racist (Thinking about this more, I've changed my mind — obviously implying that all Ethiopians live in primitive conditions is pretty racist; my initial scan was for physical caricature, which isn't present. But the Post article quotes the aggrieved parties as complaining about the famine-related sentiment rather than the pictoral representation, so I think it's safe to press onward regardless...). Maybe I'm being overly and/or insufficiently generous, but I doubt the cartoonist is even aware that there's currently a famine (or near-famine) occurring in Ethiopia.

The Post article points out that the guy is 22 years old — that's close enough to my age that I bet he heard the same Ethiopia-targeting "yo mama so skinny"-style jokes that I did in elementary school. In this case Ethiopia is just being lazily used as a stand-in for the tragically un-pluralizable Nicole Richie.

But he must have arrived on the tail-end of this lame playground schtick, or perhaps heard it from an older sibling. So it's not entirely surprising that various similarly-aged student groups would see the strip as a mean-spirited non sequitur rather than merely a lame riff on a decades-old joke. Still, calling for the author's head over this is strikes me as playing into the hands of the David Horowitzes of the world.

On the other hand, I think the strip has been somewhat comedically redeemed by the controversy, if only because the Post writeup includes the following:

Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor for the New Yorker, which specializes in drawings that mock human foibles, looked at Woolard's cartoon after a reporter e-mailed it to him.

...

"The New Yorker magazine would not have published it," Mankoff said.

Surprising, I know. You'd think it would be a shoo-in, given that it's both a) so inscrutable as to imply non-existent depth and b) not at all funny. Unfortunately it contains no French puns, so the magazine had to politely decline the submission.

Of course, none of the preceding should be taken as a defense of the Quirksmith author. Like nearly all Cav Daily cartoonists, he deserves the worst that the universe can come up with. This isn't the first time he's fed indefensible red meat to ideologues, either; apparently the following cartoon actually made it onto The O'Reilly Factor:

Ugh.

I shouldn't end on a down note, though. I can't compete with Jon, who tells me that nearly-perfect Perry Bible Fellowship ran in the paper at Syracuse while he was in school. But the Cavalier Daily did have one or two good comics while I was an undergrad. My favorite was Shallow Grave, a bitterly funny strip drawn by a guy named Sean Polyn, who happened to work in the same lab where I spent some time.

Sean's too busy being a neuroscientist to draw strips these days, but he's still got a bunch of em online. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Hitler clones
• True tales of the Lunar Patrol!
• Buried alive
• Choke-cola (I don't know why I like you this but I do)

Well, it was a beautiful weekend in Cazenovia — a fun wedding, a relaxing and productive couple of days after, and a nice time all around. Unfortunately, it seems that during the first twenty-some years of my life I was unknowingly using up my lifetime allotment of air travel karma. I can no longer set foot in an airport without some sort of travel apocalypse unfolding. If I checked bags I'd probably be dead by now.

Otherwise: work, busy, etc. I really need some sort of system to crawl out from under September. Inbox Zero might be a little ambitious, though. For now I'd settle for RSS Reader One Thousand.

I don't mean to just whine, though — things aren't all bleak. For instance, I'm continuing to make strides in the struggle for the fair treatment of Espers. In fact, let me take this opportunity to announce that I believe we've reached an accord with the Empire! It's a momentous achievement, to be sure.

Admittedly, there are some alarmists on the internet who warn of an impending ecological disaster that could result in a floating and/or abruptly-not-floating continent. However, I remain confident that such doomsaying is wholly unfounded (although the issue does merit more study).

Drupal is excellent software, PHP-based though it may be. So there's a little thrill of excitement that occurs when you find what appears to be a genuine bug in a high-profile part of it. But that thrill is tempered when you realize that a) your clients don't care about the exotic nature of the problem, as they have already launched their website against your recommendation and b) all of the people who could help you appear to currently be on planes to Barcelona.

So I reproduce my plaintive IRC begging here not because I think it's likely to help (I know some Drupal hax0rs extraordinaire, but I don't think they're subscribed). No, this is just me crying out to the universe.

I've got a really weird issue with Views and profile fields. Essentially, a profile-heavy view intermittently stops returning any records. Resaving the view typically resolves the problem -- for a while. I haven't been able to determine the event that causes the view to break again, but it always does. Looking at the results from views_build_view('queries',..), it's clear that sometimes the module is forgetting to repeatedly join the query against profile_values.

for example, here's how the query looks when it's working: http://papernapkin.org/pastebin/view/2725

and here's how it looks when it's broken: http://papernapkin.org/pastebin/view/2726

in hook_views_query_alter this manifests itself as abbreviated 'tables' and 'tablequeue' properties in the query object. but adding code to that hook to manually alter those properties to the known-to-be-good version doesn't resolve the problem. so I'm at a loss. any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

It looks like I'll be dumping views and rewriting this page manually. Which, in turn, means that you can expect bitching about a SQL injection problem in this space in two or three days...

From Wired Magazine's June 2007 Playlist feature, because the bathroom at work will not be restocked with reading material until Nicco returns to DC in 2008 or the End of Days:

Deadwood fans in our office are still smarting over last year's cancellation of their favorite show. But they won't be able to resist writer David Milch's follow-up series, John From Cincinnati, which debuts June 10 on HBO. It's got mystic philosophizing, SoCal surfing, drug addiction, and a mysterious person (or is he an alien?) named John, who is most definitely not from Cincinnati. Plus, Rebecca De Mornay plays a smokin' grandma! What's not to like? Whereas Deadwood was lavish and profane (think Cormac McCarthy with Tourette's Syndrome), JFC is spare and spiritual (think William James with surfboards). But it's pure Milch, so expect another overnight cult hit with memorable taglines ("Meet the fuckin' Jetsons!") and fanboy pilgrimages to Imperial Beach, California, where the series is set.

Scrubbed from the first draft: a bunch of exclamation points and a bit about how our future society will be based upon John From Cincinnati and occasionally have to send George Carlin back through time to help David Milch score heroin/bibles.

• Full-text Paul Krugman feed

And, in case you missed it:

• Full-text Freakonomics feed

C|Net's got a very good writeup of the situation that owners of hacked iPhones face now that Steve Jobs has said Apple won't simply tolerate their antics. It's unclear how diligent Apple will actually be when it comes to fighting this battle — Jobs is very good at sounding soothing and then delivering nothing — but it seems likely that Apple will at least make a superficial effort to make life difficult for the more high-profile sources of phone-hacking software.

None of this is likely to matter much to iPhone users who know how to use Bittorrent and IRC, however. If Apple got serious about the effort I could imagine users getting locked out of firmware upgrades and iTunes use (lest they lose their hacked functionality permanently). AT&T might also start preventing nonstandard apps from using their network. The former seems likely to me; the latter, not so much.

From the bizarre opening production company logo to the moment in the climactic battle when the dragon goes through puberty, that was just about everything that one could ask for from a Korean dragon-versus-dragon movie. Along with awesome CGI and memorable catchphrases ("What are you talking about?"; "That doesn't make any sense"), it boasted the most convoluted plot in a movie of Asian provenance that I've witnessed since my third viewing of Ninja Scroll revealed that the elite team of ninja monsters who poisoned the village's well did so in order to manipulate gold prices in a bid to destabilize the Tokugawa Shogunate. The fiends!

The actual dragon-on-dragon violence occurred in a modern-day Los Angeles where Americans spend most of their time brandishing guns and familiarizing themselves with obscure aspects of Korean culture. Sommer was at the football game, so I haven't yet been able to ask whether this constitutes a creative liberty. Either way, it won't diminish the reptilian awesomeness contained in D-War. I don't know if South Korean movies make it to the north end of the DMZ, but if they do I bet Kim Jong-Il is kicking himself for trading away his nuclear ambitions. Fuel oil isn't going to do squat against an angry Imoogi desperate for Yuh Yi Joo.

This is not an original observation by any means, but holy hell are Megan's commenters a bunch of assholes. Faced with their host's ecopostasy, they're stamping their feet and fuming. Predictable, sure, but this is some really high-quality stuff: you only have to go two comments in before someone asserts that hedoesn't see why he should alter his driving habits just because it might save an Indian child from drowning. No, sir, I say that it is asking me to change my behavior in any way which is the immoral act! By God, I will not abide that! Good day to you, sir!

Ah, to live your life by such strict adherence to principle — and in a roomy and rugged American car, to boot! Twin luxuries that I'll probably never know.

I realize that many already have, but I think we need to talk about Mystery. I only became aware of the guy recently, as he unexpectedly began appearing on various TV shows that play in the background of my usual late night routine (which usually consists of fervently trying to load ROMs onto something or other).

I guess that Mystery's gotten himself a publicist and is making the rounds. I realize that in my own small way I'm playing into his hands by writing this. But I can't help it. He's just so awful.

He's also the host of a reality show on VH1 that's devoted to teaching guys how to pick up girls. Mystery is a pick-up artist, you see — the world's greatest, apparently, although it seems difficult to find solid metrics about this sort of thing. He's tall and not bad looking, although his wardrobe makes it instantly obvious that at some point in the past Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee had a garage sale. He paints his fingernails black. He used to be a magician.

I have to confess that I've never seen his VH1 show. I also haven't read Neil Strauss's book The Game, in which I'm told Mystery plays a prominent role (as you all know, I refuse to read any books that aren't about wizards). I'm speaking from a position of blessed ignorance.

But I have visited Mystery's website, which he runs with a guy called Matador. "Wait a minute," you may be saying, "I'm beginning to think that these guys aren't using their real names!" Right you are, my sharp-witted reader! It seems that people in Mystery's line of work like to use pseudonyms — like bloggers, except with venereal disease instead of comment spam. For example, the coauthors of Mystery's book include Lovedrop, Style, Sinn, Wilder, and Toecutter (Style is Neil Strauss). My favorite is Thundercat, who I found while googling in support of this post (bonus: he describes a Daily Show "sketch" as "chick humor"). Mystery was well-prepared for pseudonymity, having already legally inserted an unnecessary "Von" into his name in his early twenties.

Back to the website. It's pretty sad. Not because there are 473 of 500 backstage passes available for the next seminar, or even because it's running on a Microsoft webserver. No, it's the testimonial video. You really need to see it for yourself, but for those unable to watch at work, allow me to summarize.

Three former students of Matador recount their experience at the "backstage" portion of a seminar. It's instantly clear how these men have been instructed to make their appearance more appealing to the opposite sex.

Thanks to the generosity of my coworker Matt, I enjoyed/tolerated a can of Jones' Candy Corn Soda at lunch today. My report: it tastes like candy corn. Sort of. Also like root beer, sort of. And honey-sort-of. But mostly, it tastes like [CLOYINGLY SWEET INDUSTRIAL BYPRODUCT].

Not recommended unless you are a soda company executive hoping for free press attention near a holiday.