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This is a list of awesome stuff seen by the phlyingpenguin.

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Archive

Nov
1st
Sun
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Oct
15th
Thu
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The Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser is a product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The Guide has this to say on the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser:
When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
And that is how I feel about Pappy’s.

The Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser is a product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The Guide has this to say on the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser:

When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

And that is how I feel about Pappy’s.

Sep
28th
Mon
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Chatting with a bot

  • Bot: You aren't nothing to me, I actually respect you a lot.
  • Me: excellent, I like cats too
  • Bot: I'm trying to learn spanish.
  • Me: Spanish is a silly language. Learn Japanese instead.
  • Bot: Spanish.
  • Me: Japanese.
  • Bot: Spanish.
  • Me: Japanese.
  • Bot: Spanish.
  • Me: Japanese. Japanese. Japanese. Japanese.
  • Bot: Spanish.
  • Me: nihongo
  • Bot: Nihongo uno quapa?
  • Me: iie. nihongo hanashite kudasai
  • Bot: Boku mo Nihongo wo hanashimasu. Tanoshii to omoimasu.
  • Me: hai. watashi ha nihongo wo manabu desu.
  • Bot: Desu.
  • Me: DESU!
  • Bot: Desu?
  • Me: DESU GA HITSUYOU!
  • Bot: Desu desu desu.
  • Note: This bot is the Pidgin Jabberwacky autoresponder. http://bluesuncorp.co.uk/article/pidgin-autoresponder-using-jabberwacky
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Boulder Photos

Boulder CO

I finally uploaded the pictures of my Boulder trip. Enjoy. [link]

Aug
28th
Fri
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My Passive Aggressive Note: 

And yes, I did submit it to passiveaggressivenotes.com
My Passive Aggressive Note:

And yes, I did submit it to passiveaggressivenotes.com

Aug
13th
Thu
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iPhone Push and My First App

Twitter Push

I’m working on my first (useful) iPhone app. It’s a push mechanism for Twitter updates and functions similarly to the Polar Bear Farm Tweet Push updater app ($0.99/30 days). Their app pushes all friend updates, which is quite a bit too much. Instead, mine is set to only push those tweets with users marked for notifications. That’s an option not available in any of the push notification Twitter apps that I’ve seen so far. This is to save on the outrageous SMS costs on which I still refuse to subscribe to any more than the base plan on. Twitter can eat that like candy if I want alerts. I may opt to allow ad-hoc distribution to friends’ iPhones, we’ll see. Until then, my server’s hard drive seems to have crashed so service quality is a bit low!

As far as thoughts about my experience with developing the app, I followed a recipe that I had seen in an article on Ars Technica before the 3.0 SDK was public. Overall it was very easy to write the skeleton push app and have it launch Twitterific once it loads, but the notifications certificates and other required handshakes were fairly hard to navigate. After all that’s done, all I had to do was make a daemon to check Twitter and push it over Apple’s network. For this, I used Python Twitter Tools to great success.

I did run into one fairly odd problem. It turns out that Twitter’s API doesn’t actually match up to what I’m fairly sure it’s supposed to be at the moment. Requesting a user’s friends status list (statuses/friends, max 100 at a time) seems to correctly report which users are set with device notification turned on. However, the friends timeline (statuses/friends_timeline) function that returns the last X number of tweets has a user tag in it for each update. This user tag doesn’t show the same value for notifications that the friend list does. That’s a problem since my app is suited to using the friends_timeline to get the last few updates to push out, but can’t use the notifications without spending another API call per 100 friends a user has. A bug report has been submitted to the API folks. For now, I can manually filter the users out without using Twitter’s data, but if I were to let anybody else use the app, I’d really prefer it to work correctly.

Jun
23rd
Tue
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Honesty.

  • Me: if I'm honest
  • Me: which sometimes I am
  • Jordan: but usually not
  • Me: I'd say the sour mash beer went sour
  • Jordan: hah
  • Me: and the can lid I found in the fermenter may support this hypothesis
  • Me: but for now I'm going to say the flavor is on purpose and will mellow out
  • Jordan: well
  • Jordan: you went for a sour
  • Jordan: so there you are
  • Me: I did go for sour
Jun
16th
Tue
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On buying international books...

  • Reuben: hell yea. how much is this book listed for
  • Me: $140 new.
  • Me: I consider buying internationally as helping an emerging country in poverty though.
  • Reuben: lmao
  • Me: In my mind, I just fed 10 starving kids for 3 months!
  • Reuben: lol
  • Me: It's all about mindset.
  • Reuben: well with both are contributions i think the country is in better conditions
  • Me: excellent.
  • Me: They may just pull out of their situation with our help.
  • Reuben: we just ended the war possibly
  • Me: possibly? PROBABLY!
May
11th
Mon
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So I’ve almost graduated.
This came in the mail so that I’d have a diploma at least until they give me a real one at the end of the summer.  Very nice of them.

So I’ve almost graduated.

This came in the mail so that I’d have a diploma at least until they give me a real one at the end of the summer.  Very nice of them.

May
7th
Thu
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Long Kow’s Crystal Noodle Soup (Spicy Tofu)
I found this soup at the Meijer and thought that it might be good.  The packaging was amazing at least.  After getting in my car and looking through the food, it occurred to me that I ought to see the nutrition information just for laughs.
I may have had a heart attack.
Instant noodles almost always have more sodium content than you really should intake, and many are double serving sized packages to begin with.  This stuff is worse.  85% of your 2,000 calorie diet’s DV is contained in this one cup. That, for those wondering, is 2.04 grams.  I use the gram measurement for emphasis. Grams.
So with all that salt inside, it must be delicious, right?   Eh.  I’m glad I tried this stuff at home instead of at work because I would have been making an emergency lunch break to get real food.  It’s not that the flavour is bad, but more that the texture of slimy crystal noodles isn’t really palatable to me.  I’ve had plenty of dishes with these sorts of noodles in them, but most of them aren’t slimy.  Gross.  The flavour itself isn’t really bad.  Having blocks of tofu is a terribly good idea for instant soup, and I wish more would do it.  Maybe I should start buying dried tofu to go with regular noodle bowls instead.
By golly, I think I’ve learned something from this experiment!

Long Kow’s Crystal Noodle Soup (Spicy Tofu)

I found this soup at the Meijer and thought that it might be good.  The packaging was amazing at least.  After getting in my car and looking through the food, it occurred to me that I ought to see the nutrition information just for laughs.

I may have had a heart attack.

Instant noodles almost always have more sodium content than you really should intake, and many are double serving sized packages to begin with.  This stuff is worse.  85% of your 2,000 calorie diet’s DV is contained in this one cup. That, for those wondering, is 2.04 grams.  I use the gram measurement for emphasis. Grams.

So with all that salt inside, it must be delicious, right?   Eh.  I’m glad I tried this stuff at home instead of at work because I would have been making an emergency lunch break to get real food.  It’s not that the flavour is bad, but more that the texture of slimy crystal noodles isn’t really palatable to me.  I’ve had plenty of dishes with these sorts of noodles in them, but most of them aren’t slimy.  Gross.  The flavour itself isn’t really bad.  Having blocks of tofu is a terribly good idea for instant soup, and I wish more would do it.  Maybe I should start buying dried tofu to go with regular noodle bowls instead.

By golly, I think I’ve learned something from this experiment!

Feb
19th
Thu
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I think I've played this prank several times now...

  • Self: so I have some really bad news
  • Self: was talking to Doyle a few minutes ago and apparently BBC @ Clay & Main had a fire earlier today
  • Ross: your kidding????
  • Self: I wish
  • Self: but I do have good news too
  • Self: I just saved a bunch of money on car insurance!
Jan
17th
Sat
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Jan
9th
Fri
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This is a horn melon or kiwano. I got it from Jungle Jim’s last weekend in an effort to find some exotic fruits. It’s a rather interesting dessert I must say. They grow (naturally) in the Kalahari Desert and are grown in California in the states. I assume they’re probably common in the west, but I’ve never seen one around these parts.
It tastes like sweet cucumber Jello with a bit of sourness to it. I say Jello in the sense that it really has that consistency. That description may not sound appealing to all, but it’s actually quite delicious. I’ll definitely buy a kiwano whenever I come across one.
TwinkleShots

This is a horn melon or kiwano. I got it from Jungle Jim’s last weekend in an effort to find some exotic fruits. It’s a rather interesting dessert I must say. They grow (naturally) in the Kalahari Desert and are grown in California in the states. I assume they’re probably common in the west, but I’ve never seen one around these parts.

It tastes like sweet cucumber Jello with a bit of sourness to it. I say Jello in the sense that it really has that consistency. That description may not sound appealing to all, but it’s actually quite delicious. I’ll definitely buy a kiwano whenever I come across one.

TwinkleShots

Dec
17th
Wed
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Cat Spanking (via roselouisewood)

O_o Internet, you are extremely bizarre.

Dec
13th
Sat
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Neko found a bell.: I think it fits him well.

Neko found a bell.: I think it fits him well.