For a number of years, the visits counter on cherryh.com has not worked. I’ve refurbed it several times, but this time couldn’t even find the free-counter site to do it. And this last week, lo, it’s come back to life. With an updated count, as if it’s always had the records, but couldn’t post them. Now it’s counting again. Zombie counter, I tell you.
Counter (numeric) weirdness…
by CJ | Jan 27, 2018 | Journal | 15 comments
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Possibly, it was off counting knnn? Gremlins in the cyber-spatio-temporal aether? One never knows.
A cool video on the fanning out of lifeforms after the age of dinosaurs, into the Cenozoic. The catchy title involves, “Terminator Pigs, Walking Whales, and Demon Ducks,” and says it was presented at Balticon 51 or 15. — I could’ve wished for more on several of the critters presented therein. This included even a type of early mammal ancestral group I’ll have to look up, called the “multituberculates,” which, from the video, predate marsupials and placentals and might be an egg-laying form, at a guess from the word-roots.
https://youtu.be/QrWUilBdDEo
And… Wetter living through chemistry. Specifically, what happens when a previously chilled plastic bottle of soda (individual serving size) reaches near room temperature and is inadvertently squeezed just slightly while twisting open the sealed cap.
Yes, what happens is, half the dang drink fizzes out in a great effervescent spray, getting me, the cabinet, and the carpet below. But thankfully not the keyboard. There was a good deal of mopping up and swabbing down the furniture, of about half the contents of the bottle, between 4 and 6 ounces, I’d say.
I am really not the kind of brute-strength sort of guy who would bear down on a soda bottle without even trying, but I did squeeze this, or it was already shaken enough, or else the cooling/warming of the bottle was just right to produce a fountainous eruption.
Which means I lost half my dang drink. Which means I opened another one to make up for it. Which means I’ve had a quarter of a bag of popcorn plus one and a half bottles of Dr. Pepper, 10 or 12 oz. per bottle. So…so I should be more than caffeinated and sugared enough for anything. Yeah.
Was it worth it? Yeah.
Go enjoy the video. Neat stuff on the weird mammalian and avian lifeforms from prehistory, some of which would make great alien critters for any alien planet or zoo. (The paleontologist suggests one species would make good, cute Star Trek alien officers, haha.)
That is indeed a cool video!
It must be a ghostly in counter 😀
oh, ow! 😉
Chuckles at Surdumil’s pun.
— A random name thing on BehindTheName (dot com) turned up an Anglo-Saxon name a month or so ago that has stuck with me so much, I think I have to write something based around it, but as a type of creature, rather than a personal name. Ever since seeing that, I get reminded of it every few days, so it’s stuck in my subconscious.
I’m stuck with cold/allergy symptoms today. Slept about twice as long as usual, meaning I got about 8 to 9 hours with only one brief waking before going right back to sleep during the night. Usually, I’m lucky if I get 4 to 6 hours in any one stretch. That should’ve been a clue. So I went around this morning for the first 30 minutes to an hour, sniffly, sneezy, drippy, watery-eyes, the usual symptoms for a cold or allergies, and not feeling like much. This improved a little after that, but I am still dragging around and feel crummy, still with a stuffy head and eyes and nose and general body feeling that do not like me or the world very much. Heh.
So, for at least today, and possibly the next day or two, and I really hope no more than that, I’ve got either fatigue or cold/allergy symptoms going on, and I hope it is not going to go into a full-on cold or anything more. Bleh. I am up because I don’t want to be in bed, which I am taking as a good sign. Very glad I have beans and veggies already cooked, and some soups and ramen in the pantry. Chili? Maybe, dunno.
I emailed a friend a small grocery list, because I really need to get things, which should carry me over until I’m feeling better and can get them to get me to the store in person. With, of course, my thanks and I’ll pay them when they get by with the groceries. — I checked: Amazon’s Fresh service isn’t yet available in my area, though their Prime Pantry, I have used before. I don’t know if Kroger’s does deliveries, but I’ve now learned you can supposedly send in an order by one app or another of theirs, or their website, or some such, and go by and pick it up. I may be testing that out, once I feel better.
So, bleh. nothing too major, just, bleh. — So I intend to work on the computer, then rest and read or draw after that.
The new Kindle Fire tablet arrived, but their infernal interface (bright red-orange background with white or black tiny text) for the setup interface, is too small for me to read clearly, even with a magnifying glass. Which tells me something about my eyesight now, yes. — So I am going to ask a friend to run through it, to scroll through and pick my wifi router, enter its password, and do whatever else is needed for setup, such as, if at all possible, increasing the text size of the thing’s operating system interface, plus the usual increase to the text size within the Kindle app itself.
It is a pain in the posterior to have to ask someone else to do the setup for me. I’m still techie enough to manage that myself, if I could only see it well enough.
What gets me about it is, there is plenty of screen real estate, they could’ve used a larger size, at least during the setup, and scroll the list-boxes a bit more, and it would be usable for me (and likely many others with poor vision, or legally blind like me). If they’d controlled themselves and not used the red-orange as a background color, and used it instead along with black background and white or red-orange text, the contrast would be better, enough I’d have a better chance at reading the small text under magnification. But they didn’t do that. Heck, they could’ve used a nice graphic element above or on the side in that red-orange, away from the interface text and page areas, and they’d have achieved just as striking and cool, er, hot, of an impression. (I like the red-orange, by the way. I’m all for catchy, good-looking, but well-designed and thought-out design schemes.)
I feel like I’m turning into that grouchy old guy who yells at the kids to keep off his lawn. I do not want to be that guy. He’s mean and the kids and neighbors are right not to like that kind of thing. A person ought to be nice to their neighbors and at least civil and preferably nice, to people in general, unless proven otherwise. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can’t ever be happy with anything or anyone around them. That’s just too mean, and no way to act, or to enjoy the good things of life. There are good things in life.
hmm, and earlier, the younger cat wanted very much to be a paperweight / tribble in my lap, to the point of staying a lump and not trying to move when I needed to get up and move him. LOL. he is fine, just being lazy and wanting to soak up every last bit of attention, ’cause that’s how he is. Little jealous so-and-so also regularly attempts to hog attention and food away from the other, senior and more gentlemanly, overly-polite, and almost entirely non-assertive feline of the household. That one will too rarely stick up for himself. he’s the sort who thinks everyone should be a friend and the whole world should go along in reasonable order. … And I suspect I’m more like him than the bratty, assertive, outspoken one. Of note, they both have real strengths and I love ’em both. A certain amount of that assertive, occasionally pushy nature is needed to get by in the world. These two are particularly opposite about it, which has both comical and more serious implications, and the occasional irritation for the human staffer. Heh. I have a feeling they’d be interesting as hani. I suspect they are more extreme about it, personality-wise, than Shu and Sei. — Life with cats, however, is never dull. There is always something funny or interesting or occasionally irksome, or just plain oddball, in the feline approach to the world. — No doubt they think the human approach is just as bonkers or fascinating, though, or they wouldn’t put up with it. :rofl:
On the Study of Cats and Cat Logic, 101:
The self-same cat who was mimicking an immobile lump earlier, was, when I returned from the kitchen with lunch, sitting there pretty as you please, looking just as smart and stately as his small, stout, round self can look. “Look at me, aren’t I cute, and yet regal?” Why yes, cat, you are.
But no, this quite hot bowl of ramen (with added veggies) and a fortune cookie, is not yours, thank you. This is the cat who, as a rescued street kitten, was in mortal fear that the giant hew-mon, mostly hairless and on two legs and so gigantic, might _eat_ him. (Also, the human was inexplicably confused about the kitten being female instead of male. However, the human, on second inspection, did correct this mistaken assumption.) Said kitten, after the initial few weeks, finally came to the conclusion that, if the human was not going to eat him, and did in fact seem to like him and provide for him, and even preferred his company and comfort, then that must mean he was the king o’ the world. Or at least either house in which he resided, back and forth between them Oh, and the other, senior cat. (With my apologies to said senior cat, because I never should have fussed at him in the slightest when he hissed and objected (quite reasonably) to the kitten trying to appropriate his food bowl. I should have known the older cat was too courteous for his ow good, and would not really harm the kitten, who deserved a smack-down for his presumption.)
The kitten grew up some years ago, and he’s rarely ever met food he didn’t like. Fortunately, perhaps, he won’t eat some things, though why, defies human logic. But he still tends to overeat.
“Is that for me?” He’ll eat the other cat’s food. He’ll eat your food, despite you informing him in no uncertain terms that he’s rude and barbarian, and even a growl or picking him up and depositing him elsewhere to ge the point across. The little blighter still thinks he can and should have the other cat’s food, and perhaps yours as well. Therefore, one is on guard, and does deposit the little feline elsewhere, when one eats. Ah, but separate the two with a closed door, and oh, the wails of woe from both felines! They are convinced that’s intolerable and the cat on the other side of the door from them is excluded and in some danger thereby, in need of rescue, and therefore yowling at the door and pawing at it.
The thing with the food, and the younger cat (he’s over 8 now) thinking he might get by with a paw or.a nose to sample my food, if he can get to it. — You know, considering he’s the same cat who, as a kitten, was scared I’d _eat_ him or something (saucer eyes nearly as big as the kitten himself, cowering, abject fear) — considering this, I’ve reached a conclusion about cat logic.
Assertion: Hypothesis, Potential Theorem:
Cat Logic functions under its own gravity, independent of the force of regular Newtonian or Einsteinian or perhaps Hawking-ian gravity. This should perhaps be studied by physicists; certainly by behaviorists.
Cat Logic operates under its own gravity, irrespective of human logic or ordinary gravity in known and human-observed space-time.
Cat Logic is a system that may or may not operate affected by Cat Logic from another cat. That is, if a system contains a set of two or more cats, each cat’s logic may operate independently of any other cat in the system at the same point in space-time. However, apparently conversely, any two or more cats may co-operate (or cooperate) with congruent or equal Cat Logic upon the same elements within the system; that is, within the vicinity, upon which they may act with physical or mental or any other forces as yet unknown to human senses and observation.
Any two or more cats may operate together using congruent (or equal) Cat Logic towards a goal. Or any two or more cats may operate independently using individualized Cat Logic upon any other given elements, including other cats, humans, beings, or objects, or perhaps ideas and concepts. (further citation and investigation are needed to support this latter assertion, in re: ideas and concepts; or in re, senses and abilities outside of human-observed senses, or the supernatural.)
I still have no explanation for what seems to be Feline Teleportation, although anecdotally, I have been near it or almost observed it happen (one can never quite see it, which seems odd in itself) on several occasions.
No artificial or technological external instrumentality, i.e, device or tool, has been observed in order for a cat to use Feline Teleportation. That is, the cat can be quite bare (naked does not seem the right word) of collar or human-provided costume or any such thing, and yet a cat can still use Feline Teleportation.
As far as is known, this also includes the lack of any internal device not already a biological component of the cat. That is, no human computer chip or other human technology. No cat technology has ever been observed, at least to this researcher’s knowledge. (More data are needed via other human observers and sensory methods.)
Therefore, it remains an open question whether cats may possess some innate biological or technological means, as yet unobserved or unobservable within human senses, for Feline Teleportation, and potentially Cat Logic, or other properties exhibited by the species known as cats, Felis cattus.
Sure would be handy to do some of those things.
—–
The humorous bit about the cats got me wondering again about how much we don’t know, how much we misunderstand, or how much we miss altogether, because we’re human and somehow miss it. What’s parallel or neighboring our own dimensions of space and time that intersects them, or that is, er, superimposed in a way that isn’t easy to describe in our four dimensions? What’s well within our four known dimensions, but that we still don’t know, at all, or well enough? Goodness knows, our current understanding of things is more incomplete and just scratching the surface, than we’d like to admit, in our high-tech world these days. We think we’re so smart, we know so much…until we find we don’t.
It’s a wonderful and awesome and daunting thing, and exciting, how much there still is out there, and how much we haven’t even guessed at, or we glimpse periodically and don’t understand, so we shrug and go on. Or we invent wild theories or beliefs for what we think happened, when really, the people it happened to weren’t too clear on what it was when it happened to them.
It’s a strange universe out there, and apparently we only see a tiny fraction of the whole picture at any one moment.
I did not expect a funny bit about the cats to send me off that far into the great unexplained. Heh. Well, so that’s a corner of life today.
I do wish so much of the world would not actively try to ignore or destroy what’s out there, both in reality and in our knowledge. So much of the world’s public face, at present, seems bent on ignorance and destruction and a lack of tolerance or acceptance of what does not fit in their peculiar personal or group world-views. … And that’s about as political or religious as I feel like getting near that topic at present. Just… It is frustrating to see and hear what’s going on in the news these days, so many places, and to know that even very recently people in those same places were much better at it than the people now so busy undoing things.
I prefer those who’d create and explore and accept, over those who would not. The former are productive and progressive. The latter are counter-productive and regressive. It seems to me that expanding humanity ought to be preferable to restricting it so much that it threatens its own existence. — And yet we all have both tendencies, I guess.
It’s all a mystery and I don’t have enough answers to my own questions, let alone other people’s questions.
OK,so much for the inner starry-eyed idealist dreamer. He’s usually overshadowed by the jaded cynical realist pessimist these days. But I guess that naive self is still down in there somewhere. My outward and inward, often-depressed and irritated-at-life self kinda misses that naive dreamer optimist being around more often. I dunno.
OK, enough nattering on. Clean up the dishes and back to doing something that might (someday?) produce income independent of present means.
I don’t see any way to get to the genealogy blog! How? Got something to post on mass ancestor killers.
Top of the page: Miscellaneous, drop-down menu has Genealogy, A Hobby of Mine, near the bottom of the menu.
I don’t have anything at the top of the page, not a word, but a green “flower”, a “magnifying glass”, and three stripes.
Oh! Click on the three stripes.
So, who died in 1258?
I just noticed something of concern there: if you view:source on the http://www.cherryh.com page, someone has injected a whole lot of what looks like spam links at the bottom.
Those definitely are bogus. They’re AFTER the {/html} , i.e. where the browser stops rendering the page. There’s a {!–google–} comment preceeding. The position of the anchors is way, like 3.000 pixels, left and above the screen. And the top level domain is Western Samoa.
Probably time to check all your pages! (And make sure they aren’t contaminating your backups.)
Well, whatever the miscreants were up to, it appears that the links are not active where they can be clicked on. Is that something that appears only to indexing bots, so if someone is searching for Adobe software, say, it will show up in a Google search, even if it’s not readily apparent on nand’ CJ’s page? I went sniffing through some domain searches, but none of the usual ones like whois could identify .ws as an legit domain.
It is. Just do a Google search for “ws top level domain”. That gives you Wikipedia:
“.ws is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Samoa. It is administered by SamoaNIC, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Samoa.
The .ws domain is an abbreviation for “Western Samoa”, which was the nation’s official name in the 1970s when two-letter country codes were standardized.
…
The .ws country code has been marketed as a domain hack, with the .ws purportedly standing for “World Site”, Web Site or Web Service, providing a “global” Internet presence to registrants, as it supports all internationalized domain names. Due to its potential popularity, a sliding scale of prices is operated by the registrar, depending on the brevity of the desired domain. Domains with four characters or more are competitively priced while three-, two-, and single-character domains have their own pricing tiers, quickly scaling into thousands of United States dollars.
In 2016, .ws gained popularity as one of the first domain name registries to offer emoji domains.”
I went trawling through whois and a couple of other domain searches, but none of them could tell me who registered it; .ws is not under their purview.
Good catch re unwanted insertions. That falls under the heading of “Search Engine Optimization”….of the service the optimizer is trying to push (or increase search ranking of), at someone else’s expense. Which is why it is done covertly without the knowledge, much less permission, of the owner of the site the code is injected into.
Now to the point I wanted to make – “found on Twitter”
@omaketheatre
I miss the days of the Internet, where your actual website was the nexus point for sharing your work with your readers. Now it is a hodgepodge of social media platforms that offer various disjointed experiences.