fun with numbers ’n stuff

Posted on Saturday, 2004 February 14 by Anton

MathWorld has had a facelift.

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silver lining

Posted on Saturday, 2004 February 14 by Anton

I sneezed and something in my back ribs went pop. What a way to start the day.

Medicating myself for the pain put me in just the right mood for 14 episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment

more Buffy notes

Posted on Friday, 2004 February 13 by Anton

The episode “The Zeppo” can be seen as a lesson in the principle of comparative advantage. Or as a good laugh.

When was Angel invited into Rupert’s apartment (before “Passion”)? When was he invited into Faith’s motel room (before “Consequences”)?

Most of the Latin in Buffy is genuine. “Passion” contains both good Latin (hicce verbis consensus rescissus est, though Willow mispronounced it recissus) and pseudo-Latin gibberish (formatia trans sicere educatorum).

In “Some Assembly Required”, the three girls killed in a road accident are said to have died of “natural causes”. I was reminded of a line from a Mad parody of some crime movie: “Around here, that’s natural causes.”

“Dead Man’s Party” suggests the question: Can a cat be a vampire? Can a lizard?

In “Beauty and the Beasts”, someone ought to have asked: If the wolf got out, why would he return?

Why is it safe for Willow to swap spit with a werewolf?

Posted in cinema | 2 Comments

a Russian is a Russian

Posted on Friday, 2004 February 13 by Anton

“I enjoyed hearing you whistle Mussorgsky just now.”
“Thanks! but it was meant to be Prokofiev.”

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customs of the Eldar

Posted on Tuesday, 2004 February 10 by Anton

What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex

Posted in prose | 1 Comment

latest bulletin from the voices

Posted on Monday, 2004 February 09 by Anton

Little MIS Manager
sat on a tanager

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partial success

Posted on Sunday, 2004 February 08 by Anton

I thought I had succeeded in setting up a dual-boot machine, but —

  Booting 'Windows XP'

rootnoverify(hd0,4)
chainloader +1

and it stops there. Hanh?

Oh well, better that than the other way around (Windows but no Linux).

Much later: Lei at GigaBox told me that Red Hat’s partitioner wrecks the boot block that Windows needs; I should try again, using the Windows setup to partition the disk.

Posted in neep-neep | Leave a comment