Stephan Sokolow @ssokolow@qoto.org
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- https://github.com/ssokolow
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Linux user, open-source enthusiast, science buff, and retro-hobbyist who occasionally reviews fanfiction.
Joined Mar 2020
Tip: If you get something like roofing tar on your hands, pour a little bit of cooking oil on them and scrub. Then wash your hands with soap.
The oil will act as a solvent for the tar (and do it impressively well) and then the soap will remove both of them.
Just ran across a post which explains how HJKL and use of ~ to mean $HOME came from the same terminal's keyboard layout... the Lear Siegler ADM-3A.
In case anyone's interested, I just posted a run-down of simple C/C++ test frameworks that'll build for real-mode DOS with Open Watcom C/C++ 1.9, plus preliminary research for how to do functional testing on a DOS program.
http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2020/10/31/automated-testing-for-open-watcom-c-c-and-dos/
...so it turns out there's a rap song hidden on track 2 of my Mario Teaches Typing CD, and someone used its presence for a funnier interpretation of the title screen:
...speaking of which, I was originally introduced to the Fountains of Wayne song years ago by Fred Perry's "Misi's Mom" animation.
That guy is a drawing monster. He learned traditional animation so he could do his own OAV for his comic, Gold Digger.
He took down his original upload out of fear of the YouTube COPPA change, but you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WMs-__ZGZU
...he also did that You Are A Pirate animation that made the rounds years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm32QynLGnE
The characters in that one are a crew of pirate-ninja leprechauns from Gold Digger.
Who here knows the song "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne? What about the gender-swapped parody "Stacy's Dad" by annapantsu?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRk_52uQfMY
I find it amusingly fitting that, when a woman got her hands on it, she added a touch more class to the lyrics by making her character 23 and swapping out things like "I know it might be wrong" for "It's actually pretty sad", giving a sense that the character is more self-aware, instead of just acknowlegding that *others* won't approve.
I just added an entry to the "Recommended 'Politics in Harry Potter' fics" list on my blog.
http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2017/08/09/recommended-politics-in-harry-potter-fics/
PSA:
If you're trying to write a utility using Open Watcom C/C++ that works both on DOS and on the Linux machine you normally cross-compile from, and you're getting mysterious misbehaviours on one platform, check your INCLUDE path.
Having INCLUDE=$WATCOM/lh when cross-building for DOS or having INCLUDE=$WATCOM/h when building natively for Linux can result in successfull builds with confusing runtime misbehaviours.
My fanfiction review TODO list is now fully transcribed from private to public, having been cleaned up quite a bit along the way.
http://blog.ssokolow.com/fanfiction-review-todo-list/
Given that the publicly visible list has doubled in size, anyone who's interested should look again.
How about another excellent song that seems to be known in too narrow a niche and drifts in and out of my memory?
The Charm of the Seer by Ayreon
For anyone following my blog for fanfiction reviews, please be aware that I added about 40 stories to the my Fanfiction Reviews TODO page last night and I'm about to add a bunch more.
(For those who missed the announcement, I've been tidying up and transcribing my private notes on what I want to review as, even without full reviews, they're still valuable as a list of interesting things to consider reading.)
Another great song that I was reminded of:
Imago by Pain of Salvation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3dtoQ2lyAQ
The metaphor in the lyrics reminds me of Mado Kara Mieru from Christopher Tin's Calling All Dawns.
I just discovered the Nightwish song "The Islander"... another case of "every metal band must have at least one soft song".
A beautiful celtic folk-ish song that I recommend everyone check out, even if they don't like Nightwish otherwise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--tFFz44zvc
(And the music video is beautiful too)
Today, I got nerd-sniped into writing a quick little tool for looking at binary data as pixels to identify patterns that might not show up in a hex dump.
...of course, I also read Alternate Universe fanfiction, so I suppose it's just stuff that's not clearly declaring itself to be AU where I feel an aversion to changing the characters before copyright runs out.
Random realization:
I have no problem with reinterpreting the look of characters like Dracula, but I have to squash and question an impulse to dislike things like Zendaya being cast for MJ in the more recent Spider-man movies.
I thought about it and I realized that, intuitively, it's all down to copyright. If the original work is still under copyright, I see it as too soon to break from the original creator's conception of the character.
...and another that I almost failed to re-identify.
Golden Brown by The Stranglers from 1981
Just posting a nostalgic song from the 90s (Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins) so that maybe next time I'll remember that I did something unique with it.
For whatever reason, it loves to pop up in my memory just hazy enough that I can't search up the lyrics to remember its name.
...and I found the Anonymous article I was thinking of.
WIRED, November 2011: "Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz"
https://www.wired.com/2011/11/anonymous-101/
Definitely an interesting read when an article not only gives an overview of 4chan's /b/ at the time, but draws a thread back to things like Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (published in parts from 1759 through 1767).
Another fun pull from years ago that I was just reminded of in conversation.
An article on the development of "because" as a preposition:
Now to see if I can track down that article on Anonymous that I remember.
- Main Site
- https://ssokolow.com/
- GitHub
- https://github.com/ssokolow
- Old Posts
- https://twitter.com/deitarion
Linux user, open-source enthusiast, science buff, and retro-hobbyist who occasionally reviews fanfiction.
Joined Mar 2020
