Below are the 17 most recent journal entries recorded in Michael Bayne's LiveJournal:

Thursday, February 20th, 2003
12:10 pm	Speling The great thing about the word mispelled is that you can mispell it and people will just think that you're being clever. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 19th, 2003
12:41 am	Blah blah teleblah I don't have anything to say to you people, but I can no longer tolerate having a journal that has gone so long without updates. Maybe I should write some software that extracts snippets from my emails at random and posts them to my live journal. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002
3:02 pm	On Patents A patent system is a tiger that should only be let out of its cage in circumstances where we are absolutely certain that the consequences of not seeking its protection are worse than living our lives in close proximity to a man-eating feline. In the software world, we have a thriving business climate (even in light of the huge decline it's taken in the last couple of years) and patents could hardly have contributed less to its success. I cannot think of a single case where a software patent has worked as intended, giving the creator of a truly novel idea time to capitalize that idea and recoup their investment in its development. Most inventions in the software world take less effort to "develop" than is required to file a patent on the result. The field abounds with software patents gone awry: the patent on XOR, the one on Lempel-Ziv compression (used in GIF), Amazon's one-click fiasco, the recent cluster fuck with MP3. Progress in the field is stifled, tremendous effort is wasted working around these thorns in our collective side, and the holders of the patent can hardly be said to have benefited in the final analysis. Inventions in the software world are cheap and plentiful and convey vastly less advantage to their owner than, say, good product design (see Apple) or effective business practices (see Microsoft). We should look to the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of the few admirable figures in America's varied history: "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 6th, 2002
4:19 pm	Re: [crowd] wisdom from penny arcade On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Paul Phillips wrote: > I'm still out there looking for cracked copies of a couple pieces of > software I've BOUGHT that insist I have the fucking CD in the drive to > run it. I don't have this 80 freakin' gigabyte disk so I can swap CDs > in every time I want to run your software, you fucking fucks! Not to > mention that my laptop often doesn't have the CD drive in at all. More game wisdom from PA: The review machine doesn't know quite how to deal with this quandary, that a game can still be highly enjoyable even if it does not innovate. Quantum Redshift, a game I hold very dear to my heart, is an extremely addictive execution of hovercar racing. It gets fucked in the ass by every reviewer from hell to breakfast, because they are analyzing it, not playing it. Go get a new fucking job, you're spent. They need to change you people out like lightbulbs. What if a game is merely excellent? As a gamer, as a player of games, I am prepared to settle for excellence. We all used to be very happy playing a game that was just "fun." If your tastes have changed, if you seek more elaborate diversions, what the hell does that have to do with Unreal Tournament? I didn't go to your site to read a review of you. I could give a fuck about you. I was left with this feeling after reading reviews of Mario Sunshine. What has far and away been the purest, smoothest, no bumps on the road from neurons to electrons, fun that I've had since, well Mario 64, is being called "not a revolutionary product" and "'evolutionary,' more than anything else". I'd say it's fucking revolutionary in that it's actually good, unlike the hordes of crap that is generally passed off as entertainment. I'd say it's "fun" more than anything else. I imagine that artists in every media struggle with this same mindless drive toward novelty and "revolution". Why people can't just make a fucking value judgement boggles my mind. If it's a tired rehash of formulas drawn from a genre, call it that. If it executes an existing genre in a way that delivers a wildly positive experience, don't fucking call it "evolutionary," call it good. Change them like lightbulbs indeed. (Comment on this)
4:12 pm	Testing One two three. Is this thing on? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 17th, 2001
12:23 am	Teen antics Not Another Teen Movie / 12-16-2001 / Metreon, SF You need to have achieved the right balance of having wits enough about you to catch the torrent of movie references, but having waylayed your wits sufficiently to let the humor slip past your guard. The thing I appreciated about this film was not that the jokes were especially clever, but that they paid close attention to detail and left no nook empty of tasteless humor. That and that I was so high, I couldn't stop laughing. It reminded me of the early Zucker brothers movies that I so adore. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 13th, 2001
6:48 pm	hm So I wonder if anyone can post to samskivert's livejournal? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
2:43 am	So I'm installing Star Office and being anal about disabling all the pointless crap that I don't want installed (because, of course, I'm at dangerous risk of running out of the 14 gigs of space I have left on my laptop). There's a section on localization that allows one to avoid installing data for various languages that one probably doesn't speak anyway. It lists each language next to the size of the data: English - 1708kb French - 1824kb Spanish - 1368kb Everything looks pretty reasonable, until you get to German: German - 12720kb Why, one has to wonder, does the German language require an order of magnitude more data than the other languages? They don't use a multibyte character set. They tend to be a verbose people on the whole, I concede, but surely not to that degree. I can only speculate that this is somehow related to the impending third shot at taking over the world that the Germans have been secretly planning in the last few decades. It's good to see that they're making progress on that front. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 10th, 2001
3:16 pm	Fun and games I'm catching up on my game reviews and threw in a film review for some variety. Game / Platform / Period Pikmin / GameCube / December 2001 Pikmin! I love those little guys. It's about time someone took the Lemmings idea and brought it into the twenty first century. Who better to do so than Shigeru Miyamoto, gardener and game designer extraordinaire? The environments are visually lush and the puzzles excellently conceived. Lots of exciting surprises lurk in the nooks and crannies, showing an attention to detail that is remarkable. I'm sure some will complain that the game is short or not sufficiently difficult, but I was thoroughly satisfied with my romp with the Pikmin. I don't feel that every game I play need be an RSI-inducing, controller out the window throwing, mortal challenge to my video gaming abilities. If I'm in the mood for that, I can go back to trying to finish Super Monkey Ball without dying. Super Monkey Ball / GameCube / November - December 2001 For some reason, I find that just about anything is better with the careful addition of monkeys; perhaps it's our shared lineage, or perhaps it's a reflection of all the fun I had playing the Monkey Island series. Regardless, I'm sure Super Monkey Ball would be just as fun even if the marbles one rolls around the increasingly challenging courses weren't occupied by screeching little monkeys. The levels proceed from simple, through good clean fun, and on up to "Sweet Jesus! I'm going to need 40 grams of methamphetamine and seventy two sleepless hours to get through this one." The multiplayer options aren't exactly inspired, but they've satisfied the need for hot four player action in these trying months before Kart is to be released for the GameCube. I am a bit disturbed by the thought of the thousands of monkey corpses that I've littered over the ground below the elevated courses. Luigi's Mansion / GameCube / November 2001 As stunning as the lighting and particle effects are in this game, the thing I enjoyed most was the sound. You have Luigi nervously whistling and humming the theme song, and there are all the great haunted house noises that clang and bump seemingly right over your shoulder thanks to apt use of Dolby surround. The sound and visuals combine to give you a good scare every time a ghost jumps out and starts doing its ghostly business, though it helps if you play late at night. While the game play was straightforward and the puzzles not overly challenging, the game was never tedious and the multitude of unique ghosts kept things interesting from start to finish. Samurai / Board game / September - December 2001 Another German offering, this one a bit more strategic and competitive than Carcassonne. Samurai involves placing tiles on the board in an attempt to capture figures which the placed tiles eventually surround. Having five tiles to work with along with their carefully balanced capabilities makes possible a variety of interesting strategies and the game plays quickly enough that one isn't reluctant to be experimental. The non-intuitive scoring takes a while to grasp and seems to create situations where the battle between two winning players is decided (advertently or inadvertently) by a third player's single move. Funky scoring notwithstanding, Samurai is more fun than any other board game I've played in recent memory. Carcassonne / Board game / July - November 2001 Tile laying fun for the whole family. One of the vast pantheon of German games, Carcassonne involves connecting tiles together and claiming features created by the placed tiles (roads, cities, cloisters and farms). Though complex strategies are difficult to devise and even more difficult to test, the game moves quickly and choosing which basic strategies to employ given the behavior of your opponents proves to be challenge enough. Another bonus is that the game play is such that it's fun in both casual and competitive environments. Novocaine / 12-08-2001 / Opera Plaza Cinemas, SF A thoroughly wacky movie that is well suited for Steve Martin's comic style. Things quickly progress from questionably believable to fantasy alternate universe land, which has the beneficial effect of forcibly suspending your disbelief and leaving you to simply enjoy the ride. Unfortunately, the antics don't quite gel into the level of humor that leaves you with a sore stomach, rather the film seems tied down loosely to the anchor of plausibility. I discovered afterward that the film was written and directed by David Atkins, who did Arizona Dream, an even less scrutable film. I feel that Novocaine is a step in the right direction, but that he hasn't yet found his groove. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 7th, 2001
6:58 pm	email2lj.pl Somehow I've simply grown accustomed to writing journal-type prose in my mail reader. I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with composing via a web page or through the GUI clients, but I thought I'd feel comfortable authoring journal entries from within emacs. I do practically everything except write emails in emacs. Based on my lackluster attempt at keeping a journal in recent weeks, I'd have to say it isn't working out. Not one to simply admit that I'm lazy or not cut out for communicating in this manner, I chose to reflect my shortcomings onto some unthinking, unfeeling technology. I didn't stop there, however, I took the logical next step of exorcizing my failing by creating some new technology that will fix the "problem". Enter email2lj.pl, a simple script which one with the means to do so can wire up to submit LiveJournal entries when email is sent to a particular address. It's quite simply to configure, actually. If you're like many people I know, you have every email address from a particular domain delivered via some Unix machine running procmail. Pick an email address that suits you (I was partial to live@samskivert.com), and add a procmail rule that looks like so: :0 * ^Envelope-to: live@samskivert.com | [path to]/email2lj.pl [username] [hashed password] [real email] Where username is your LiveJournal username, hashed password is your MD5 hashed LiveJournal password (which you can obtain by looking at the source to the standard journal submission page) and real email is (surprisingly enough) your real email address, which email2lj.pl will send email to if a journal submission failed to go through for some reason (like they've been doing all day today because livejournal.com seems to be wallowing in the fifth circle of hell). The perl script doesn't require any esoteric perl libraries, but as always, your mileage may vary. It seems to be function well for me and at the very least it has motivated me to write what is probably my longest journal submission yet. Whee! (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 2nd, 2001
9:15 pm	Harry Potter We love the cinema: Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone / 12-01-2001 / Metreon, SF An utterly delightful movie. Finally, lovers of fantasy have been given the gift of an engaging, intelligent, visually stunning rendition of the world of wizards and witches. On top of all that, the public at large has a fresh treatment of the classic themes which picks up the ball that George Lucas has so firmly dropped. Between Harry Potter and The Fellowship of the Ring, the years of abuse and neglect that Hollywood has heaped upon my AD&D playing inner-child may finally be atoned. In unrelated news, I got a great poster yesterday. It has a diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum from 3 Hz to about 10^24 Hz with all sorts of great information like what sort of devices are used to generate waves in the various bands, what the bands are used for, atomic emmision spectra and all sorts of other groovy stuff. Apparently you can buy them online. Current Mood: subdued Current Music: the drum and the bass (Comment on this)
Friday, November 30th, 2001
11:33 am	More I/O Two media updates for the price of one! Talk about value. Title / Author / Period Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand / December 2000 - November 2001 Phew. I'm glad that's over. I could complain about the book's excessive length or its questionable ending or the idealogical extremes it tries to pass off as characters, but you know what Mom said about not having anything nice to say. Instead, I'll mention that Rand has stoked the flame of desire for achievement inside me that has been waning more than I would like to admit. For that, I'm glad I read this book. But don't think I'm running out to buy a copy of The Fountainhead. Title / Location / Date The Man Who Wasn't There / Bridge Theater, SF / 11-25-2001 An expertly executed, tongue in cheek, if a bit bleak, homage to the Film Noir. I'm a big fan of Billy Bob. Current Mood: alert Current Music: kcmu.org (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 21st, 2001
11:07 am	BE ORDAINED NOW! I wish all the spam I received were this entertaining: Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 08:06:02 -0700 From: felicity511@aram-verlag.de To: bzzdalton034@nwn.de Subject: B e c o m e - a Minister Now Minister Charles Simpson has the power to make you a LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within 48 hours!!!! ^s18^ BE ORDAINED NOW! As a minister, you will be authorized to perform the rites and ceremonies of the church!! WEDDINGS MARRY your BROTHER, SISTER, or your BEST FRIEND!! Don't settle for being the BEST MAN OR BRIDES' MAID Most states require that you register your certificate (THAT WE SEND YOU) with the state prior to conducting the ceremony. FUNERALS A very hard time for you and your family Don't settle for a minister you don't know!! Most states require that you register your certificate (THAT WE SEND YOU) with the state prior to conducting the ceremony. BAPTISMS You can say "WELCOME TO THE WORLD!!!! I AM YOUR MINISTER AND YOUR UNCLE!!" What a special way to welcome a child of God. FORGIVENESS OF SINS The Catholic Church has practiced the forgiveness of sins for centuries **Forgiveness of Sins is granted to all who ask in sincerity and willingness to change for the better!! VISIT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES Since you will be a Certified Minister, you can visit others in need!! Preach the Word of God to those who have strayed from the flock WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH?? After your LEGAL ORDINATION, you may start your own congregation!! At this point you must be wondering how much the Certificate costs. Right? Well, let's talk about how much the program is worth. Considering the value of becoming a CERTIFIED MINISTER I'd say the program is easily worth $100. Wouldn't you agree? However, it won't cost that much. Not even close! My goal is to make this life changing program affordable so average folks can benefit from the power of it. Since I know how much you want to help others, you're going to receive your Minister Certification for under $100.00... Not even $50.00... You are going to receive the entire life-changing course for only $29.95. For only $29.95 you will receive: 1. 8-inch by 10-inch certificate IN COLOR, WITH GOLD SEAL. (CERTIFICATE IS PROFESSIONALLY PRINTED BY AN INK PRESS) 2. Proof of Minister Certification in YOUR NAME!! 3. SHIPPING IS FREE!!! ... I could forgive others of their sins. I could start my own church. I could VISIT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES! For the love of the Lord in Heaven, I have to send this man my $29.95 and BE ORDAINED NOW! Clearly this is taking my spirituality into my own hands. Current Mood: lively Current Music: kexp.org (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 15th, 2001
11:51 am	Waking Life Another movie review: Title / Location / Date Waking Life / Embarcadero Theater, SF / 11-15-2001 I'd like to think that if I were to make a movie, it would turn out a lot like, and of the same caliber as, Waking Life. While some films may veil their philosophic explorations and others lack them entirely, Waking Life does neither; it lays them right on the table with no fear that they might confuse or rub the viewer the wrong way. By being so bold, the author of this film connected with me in a way that few persons have in real life and in the process, reinforced my resolve to strive for greatness and expanded my understanding of how to do so. This I view as one of the highest forms of achievement. Thank you Richard Linklater. One of the lines in the movie was something to the effect of "this is absolutely the most exciting time that we could hope to be alive." I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. What's more, I applaud the films intent to convey that message to its viewers. I've often thought about what ideas I would want to communicate to the masses were I to write a book or a screenplay and I realize that that one is on the top of the list. The simultaneously depressing and exhilarating thing is that Waking Life beat me to the punch on much of the universal truth that I had lined up for future expression. Fortunately, in doing so, it left me feeling challenged to do better; to capture the yet more delicate subtleties of human existence and to lay them out clearly and compellingly, for all to see. I've never felt more up to the challenge. Current Mood: groggy (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 10th, 2001
8:48 pm	Monsters Inc. I regularly post movie reviews to an archive on my website, but I suppose I might as well put them here too. Title: Monsters, Inc. Date: 11/8/2001 Where: Metreon, SF Rating: 4 An absolutely delightful movie. Pixar continues to hit them out of the park with Monsters, Inc., a riotously funny, tender, exciting and technically impressive film. Animation prowess aside, Pixar manages to make such great films that I wonder how other studios can screw up so badly. The writing and humor are top notch, the drama never contrived, the timing impeccable. They've got some great filmmakers tucked away over in Emeryville. Current Mood: slightly less hungover (Comment on this)
7:25 pm	Old skool Weren't most web journals in the good old days filled with complaints about HTML losing and browsers misinterpreting things and basically how much it sucked to be a web developer? Well I'm going to continue in that fine tradition and complain that even though we now have CSS1 and CSS2 and dynamic fonts and XSL-FO and a host of other high technologies, none of the fucking browsers display fonts consistently! I had to change all my stylesheets (OK, all two of them but that's not the point) now that Mozilla 0.95 is out because the bastards decided to start using fonts that were about two points smaller. No mention in the release notes explaining why. Maybe someone on the development team had to switch to a smaller monitor and was feeling cramped. The whole business suffers from the original sin of the half-baked idea that we could just make web pages for which the font size didn't matter. If someone wanted to view the whole thing in 40 point Times because they're blind as a bat, our layouts should be flexible enough to accomodate it. Well, if I want to convey a non-trivial quantity of information in a visually economical manner, I can't have the browsers or any old yahoo fiddling with the font sizes. I need line weights and whitespace and the fonts to achieve a Zen-like balance. Most web displays require one to pack a great deal of information into a small space; the last thing I need is for the browser to display my fonts two fucking point sizes off. If grandma can't read it, she can zoom in on the whole thing, scaling everything up, not just the fonts. What we need is Mussolini-style, hard-line, dictatorial control. The W3C should issue a specification dictating the exact geometric interpretation of their standards and enforce a penalty of tarring and feathering browser developers that don't conform. Or maybe boiling in oil. Current Mood: peeved and hungover (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, November 9th, 2001
4:13 pm	Hello world. At the suggestion of my friend Paul, I've entered the deep dark world of blogging. I had a note on one of my myriad lists of ideas and/or things to do about doing something like this with a mailing list because no one that I know is likely to ever go to a web page to read my tired ramblings. I think the thing that prevented me from getting around to it is that no one would want to receive my tired ramblings in email either. This being my first submission with the lovely emacs client, I feel obliged to fiddle around a bit to see how things get formatted. Will the above paragraphs be paragraphs? Or am I required to insert the tag myself? Oh the anticipation of finding out is killing me. What if I stick an image tag in my entry. Is that copacetic? The questions abound. Current Mood: subdued Current Music: neurofunk.com (Comment on this)