As some of you may have noticed, there was something of an issue here over the last few days. If you didn't...then I need to up my blogging game rather dramatically.
As I understand it, this is what happened.
A large number of razorback hogs with beehives straped to their backs were set loose by unknown parties in the Texas bunker containing our RAID server, sucsessfully distracting the staff long enough for a number of trained Ghost Faced Bats to plant their C-4 charges in the facilities fire control computer without being noticed which precipitated the destruction of the buildings point defense system thus allowing a low flying UFO to fire an asteroid into the server building with the following results...
Actual footage from the Mee.Nu Zeppelin which was arriving with a shipment of Vegimite at the time.
So yeah...aliens.
Despite this, our crackerjack team of antipodean tech unicorns have restored everything except for any images or files uploaded after mid-March. Restoring some of those will be problematic as the frame grabs were discarded. In any event I've restored the images on the front page as I type this.
In all seriousness, Kudos to Pixy (our Antipodean tech unicorn) who has been working his Aussie posterior off the last three days rebuilding everyones websites despite a disasterous hardware failure and the difficulties inherent in being upsiode down all the time.
In possibly (but probably not) related news, my Twitter account got hacked yesterday as well, sending all 45 of my followers 150 solicitations to invest in a bitcoin enterprise. Between this and the spoofing a few weeks ago it's been a bad month for me and tech.
4
This guy would like someone to read what is written on these WW-2 Japanese cigarettes.
http://greybeard.igogg.com/2014/05/13/wwii-cigarettes/
Posted by: jon spencer at Wed May 14 21:09:21 2014 (jfISJ)
5
I almost deleted your comment because it just looked so spammy.
That being said, the link is pretty interesting. It looks like Japanese cigarettes had branding on the individual cigs.
Trigger Warning (@Wonderduck)
There is an oddity regarding the story though, the Battle of Midway did not involve small unit infantry actions and was two years before Truk, so the Battle his father was wounded in was certainly not Midway.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu May 15 01:40:41 2014 (DnAJl)
Perhaps It's Just My own Insecurity...
...but I have come to the deeply disheartening conclusion that all those complementary comments from Michal Kors and Oakley may not, in fact, be entirely sincere.
Also: If you haven't already, you should go watch Nichijou. It makes the bad news bearable.
I've been using the Epic web broswer for 20 days and have gotten
a feel for it.
One of its features is a little pop up window
that tells what trackers it is blocking.
To the right is the NY Daily News. Interestingly
4-chan of all places had only one, and that’s only on certain boards. I probably
need to stay away from those boards anyway...I already wear glasses.
Of course the browser’s extreme focus on privacy
comes with a few quirks, with a lack of
spewlchek being the most keenly felt. Since it carries no cache data it
is a bit slower to load. Occasionally one finds a site that reacts badly to anything
that doesn't let it track its viewers and demands that you its their
cookies like some rabid girl scout. I haven’t been blocked from any site
however.
Aside from the slightly
slower loading, the only functionality quirks I’ve found so far are as
follows. Occasionally embedded videos on some Wordpress blogs do not show up.
There are a few quirks with the Dashboard in Minx (The Mee’n You blog engine) but
said quirks are present in Safari and Opera as well.
On the plus side, it
seems to have the amazing ability to disable only the bad pop-up windows.
Let me explain.
ODU’s website opens
certain features in pop-up windows and pop up blockers (like the ones ion the
ODU learning commons computers…) generally disable that functionality. However,
they work fine in Epic. On the other hand, I have not seen a pop-up AD since I
started using the browser. I have had no issues with Paypal, which surprised
me. I understand that Epic allows people to view HULU from outside the US and
while I cannot confirm that, I can say that I was able to access one Japanese
site that normally blocks US access…and
I was thoroughly scarred by the experience.
One's mileage may vary, but I
think the slightly slow loading is a small price to pay for the added privacy.
This of course is assuming that
the whole thing isn’t an NSA honey pot to snare us paranoids .
1
I poked around with Epic, but the lack of any extension support makes me wary. Specifically, you can't run ScriptSafe (the Chrome equivalent to NoScript). Now yes, you can manually white/blacklist sites for javascript natively, but it's kind of a hassle and the lack of temporary whitelists is somewhat annoying. That pushed me to Pale Moon, but I'm also running Epic on the side to see if I can get used to it. Oh, and there's no mouse gestures or tab mix plus in chrome, but that's more icing than anything else.
Posted by: ReallyBored at Sat Apr 26 13:17:23 2014 (n3V1X)
STOP THE PRESSES
I've been working on this post for hours. It is a scandal that exemplifies the terrifying abuses of power many of us have come to fear. The fact that it has not been getting a lot of coverage is in and of itself disturbing.
After considerable digging, here's what we know....
"It originated with an Info-Wars link."
Oh...
Well then...
It has been a beautiful day here in Virginia. I'm going to go back outside and partake of it.
Yeah, there hasn't been much going on here lately.
I am swamped, with three tests looming later this week, a dreadful cold that has resulted in a fever of 101, and that kidney stone fragment that was left by last years surgery has started to move.
In lieu of actual content, I was going to post some cheesecake. Regrettably, I could only find crumpets, crackers and fondue.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri Apr 11 20:03:04 2014 (RqRa5)
5Yes, there was a comma in your comment. There were also two typoes in the space of the 17 words of my comment. You win this round Pete. Savor your victory, for I have nearly recovered from my afflictions and shall soon return...with a Harvey's.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Apr 12 11:19:16 2014 (DnAJl)
A Bother
So, the day revolved around trying alternatives to Firefox...I have tentatively settled on Epic, which is basically Chrome without the Google. It's extreme privacy philosophy adds some annoying quirks (like a lack of spewllchek) but it is otherwise very nice and as a happy coincidence, the dashboard at Mee.nu is slightly more functional with it (I assume that holds true for Chrome, though I've never blogged with Chrome). All in all it's nice and the privacy features, imperfect as they likely are, have a special appeal now.
While appalled, I had not initially intended to dump Firefox, indeed when the notion first came up I thought it silly. To do so is a rather impotent gesture and giving up an admittedly splendid browser is a contender for the most comically gimp, first-world example of self flagellation there can be. Furthermore, I detest the hyperpolitization of everything and I loathe the purity police of any political stripe even more.
However, those despicable trends of modern life are at the core of the Firefox scandal where they are intertwined with the moral cowardice that facilitates them.
I've been using IE over this weekend, but thanks to your heads-up, I'll give Epic a spin.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Sun Apr 6 10:31:30 2014 (b4Q61)
2
Been trying to work with Avant, but it feels clunky, like clicking a button or hitting the Enter key results in levers being thrown and gears clanking.
3 With Epic, the lack of spellcheck and password amnesia are annoying but I've probably grown too dependent on spellcheck and autofill anyway. I did note one minor Mee.Nu issue with Epic, the recently instituted "drag with cursor to embugulate/debigulate image widget" does not work in Epic (or Safari). One has to use the file operations menue in the images directory, which will break animated .gifs. Note for those with PCs, this awesome gift from Pixy works fine in IE, which I have on my netbook.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Apr 6 15:35:32 2014 (DnAJl)
4
Just in case you're looking for another option, I took Vox Day's advice on this and switched to Pale Moon. Works beautifully and the transfer was seemless, as Pale Moon is basically Firefox without the Mozilla. It's about the most painless switch I can imagine.
Posted by: Tom at Sun Apr 6 22:30:11 2014 (bdCln)
5
My desktop is Linux and I insist on actual open source, so Pale Moon may not be an option. I was going to look into Midori. Maybe dab in its development as well.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Apr 7 10:01:36 2014 (RqRa5)
No, I thought you made it pretty clear that you were being sarcastic and didn't hate Catholics, and that your "advice" was satirical in nature.
To be fair, the large number of real anti-Catholics out there... well, it makes a lot of Catholics see certain words and react. Those Catholic bloggers who have called themselves "Papists" as part of their shtick have experienced similar grief. And there are always people mistaking fake stories on the Onion or Eye of the Tiber for real news. So occasionally somebody argues that all humor should be stamped out lest we be misunderstood, only to be howled down by those who have senses of humor.
It's sad that people call good evil and evil good, and it's not pleasant to have people do that to you; but it happens (and especially in Lent, when people seem to do crazier things). You have my sympathy.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sun Mar 30 19:42:18 2014 (mpHLh)
2
Some people have such poor reading comprehension that if you quote a Nazi in order to denounce his words, you'll be called a Nazi for quoting him. And half the time they won't even know it was a quote.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Mar 30 20:33:28 2014 (TJ7ih)
Eating Crow With Verve
R.S. McCain isn't the only one dealing with contributors publishing unfounded rumors.
Bearing Drift is a conservative blog focused primarily on Virginia politics. Love or hate their views they have built a reputation as a bunch of straight shooters. Well, Friday one of their contributors, a Willie Deutch, announced that Governor McDonnell was resigning...and their traffic shot through the roof...and made the local radio station.
However, this story appears at this point to be utter bull squeeze.
The next day Bearing Drift put up this post. They are not throwing Deutch under the bus...yet...as he may have been burned by a source but they do acknowledge that the story is at best dubious. As corrections go, it's pretty decent, being on the front page and all.
It also stands as a reminder that reputation is not easily gained once lost and there are a LOT of BS stories out there. We here at Brickmuppet Blog are not immune to getting stories wrong. It's easy to get burned if ones normally reliable source is on crack that day...but it's important to remember that much of what is out there is crazy. Theres a LOT of BS stories floating about now...it seems to be more than usual....I know of several bloggers who've had to retract posts when they found out that stories they got from normally reliable sources were tracked back and found to ultimately come from Alex Jones or something.
Everybody Comment!
My blog is not letting me comment. Post yes, comment no. I don't understand, but I'm curious as to whether or not any one else can comment.
With that in mind......here is something to comment on.
Mee.nu seems to support animated .PNGs.
I'm not sure how much I'll use this. i can't make them, few browsers support them and they tend to be hideously large.
However if you have Firefox or another compatible browser you can look below the fold and perhaps be offended.
2
Steven's right, the server treats them like any other PNG. If you use any of the image manipulation functions (like resize) it will probably deanimate them.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Apr 3 18:26:37 2013 (F7DdT)
5
"Animated png" isn't really a thing, so if it works in FF, that's just the latest thing in a long line of Netscape people making stuff up. There was a .mng spec proposed but never adopted for animated pngs.
Chrome doesn't animate them either.
Posted by: RickC at Wed Apr 3 19:13:53 2013 (WQ6Vb)
6
When I said '"Animated png" isn't really a thing' I meant as opposed to .mng files...
Posted by: RickC at Wed Apr 3 19:14:23 2013 (WQ6Vb)
file extension say's it's a gif, but you knew that. I didn't examine the bytes.
MNG was designed to be an animation extension to the PNG format, but it never caught on. I suppose I was being pedantic. FWIW, those images don't animate in Chrome, either.
Siergen, gif is IIRC limited to 256 colors; PNGs can support true colors, so an image with a large palette could easily dwarf the size of a similar GIF.
Posted by: RickC at Fri Apr 5 20:12:22 2013 (WQ6Vb)
Exam Week
Midterms are upon me.
I have nothing, and will likely have nothing until Friday or Saturday.
As compensation for this, here is some publicity art for Yamato 2199 which I post with some trepidation as the LAST bit of Yamato 2199 cheesecake somehow caused a bit of consternation. Apologies in advance gentle readers for any distress.
1
What I've seen of 2199 is beautiful and highly lovable - taking what was good about the original series, and excising all the wonky "we're still figuring out how to write and produce anime hereabouts" elements which caused occasional WTF moments.
But I find it kind of off-putting the way the female characters have been updated. Where are all the interchangeable willowy Matsumoto women? Where's the casual late-Showa sexism that resulted in a ship with only one crew-woman? Wait, no, that last one is one of the improvements...
Posted by: Mitch H. at Wed Mar 6 10:26:19 2013 (jwKxK)
2
And they preserved the skin-tight pressure suits, which can't be a bad thing.
"The Medic's pressure suit seems to have a leaky area."
Are you implying that "physics" is more powerful than zettai ryouiki? How silly.
Posted by: Mikeski at Thu Mar 7 16:22:39 2013 (DU6Ja)
5
Actually, Zettai Ryouki does not, in fact, provide adequate protection against vacuum. This is an important point our female readers should keep in mind when choosing space attire.
Things have been exceedingly busy
...of late. I missed 11 days of school (out of 20 so far) due to the shot-proof flu and subsequent pneumonia, combined with a violent reaction to an antibiotic. Also the alternator died. Thus I've been playing catch up.
I have a couple of unfinished posts on current events and tech...but they are depressing me and sapping my energy.
Additionally I haven't been blogging about anime much because nothing that's streaming right now interests me and Nisemonogatari made me feel quite unclean.
So, gentle readers, here's another random picture to tide you over till I catch up .
Art by Sabaku Chitai is a slightly off model representation of Anglerfish Team from Girls und Panzer...and yet is strangely awesome.
NecroSpammers
Pixy (The great guru of Mee.nu) has done a fine job keeping the pernicious purveyors of processed pulled pork shoulder at bay. Occasionally, a singularly sharp spammer will succeed in sneaking his shameful solicitations into the sidebar, but for the most part readers don't see the vast majority of the spam comments.
The depraved, delinquent douchenozzels often comment on posts over a year old, and they tend to comment in the same posts over and over. The latest fusillade of frustrating fiendishness fell upon two recent posts and here, but mostly, they continue to flood this post.
What is it about Kannagi?
I apologize to you readers for venting my vexation at this venal villany by maltreating you with my maladroit metablogging...so here is some tangentially related anime art as atonement.
Kannagi is no longer being published in the US but DVDs still turn up.
An Easy Peasy Contest
As I type this I just got in from work and am checking my E-mail and noting something unexpected.
Inquiries.
Some are just expressing curiosity and others are very deeply concerned about the reason that two of the recent posts included pictures of lamias. I thought this would be obvious to most of my readership.
So, to the first person to correctly guess from the context why there were pics of lamias in those two posts, I'll do one post on a topic of your choice.
Difficulty: Because I responded to one inquiry, you are disqualified from participating if your name ends in the suffix "duck".
Note: This picture is posted for reasons not directly related to the two others. It's here because I had to slog through a hell of a lot of Lamia pics to find a few worksafe ones (wtf!?) and because I just thought it was cute.
Doting lamia and daughter drawn by Nanashin (Link NSFW)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Jan 2 16:42:53 2013 (vp6an)
6
How about what's your favourite manga and what you like about it. Thought about making you write a review of Monster Musume at first, but that seems a bit much.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jan 2 17:22:40 2013 (RqRa5)
7
I think you've got you anime memes mixed up. It's supposed to be "attractive females versus tentacles", not "attractive females who are tentacles"...
Posted by: Siergen at Wed Jan 2 18:47:48 2013 (Ao4Kw)
Difficulty: Because I responded to one inquiry, you are disqualified from participating if your name ends in the suffix "duck".
Darn it.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Jan 2 19:58:10 2013 (cymHZ)
9
Pete, I meant to ask you: When these Japanese seiyuu are singing that song in Russian, how terrible are their accents? Is it at least understandable?
10
It sounds understandable, but I'm not sure if this is because I know the lyrics. We used to sing Katyusha in kindergarten, and corrupted the words on purpose. For example, in our version Katyusha came to the sheer bluff as usual, but instead of "starting the song about the grey prarie eagle" she "threw/shot sousage with great precision". We imagined that teachers could not tell what we were doing, with all the loud music and other kids singing in perfect cacophony, but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, with a baggage like that I cannot be sure I truly understand what seiyuu are singing. When they insert English, I often cannot tell what they are saying, but it becomes obvious in retrospect.
AKB0048 used fully fluent Russian speakers when the crew visited Tundrastar, which was quite a surprise!
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jan 2 22:39:40 2013 (RqRa5)
11
And let me say again how happy we all are that you ARE standing.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Jan 3 16:38:09 2013 (vp6an)
In many ways, I am more disheartened by the so called
generic commenter†than I am by the out and out spammer.
Why? you ask, Because at least the spammer is completely
open and honest about their intentions! We know what they are doing.
The so called generic commenter is a con man and also a charlatan You can probably tell that I have very strong
toward this group of commenters
1
There was a spambot over at Wonderduck's whose message was something to the effect that "some of the commenters here seem brainless". That one certainly rivals this one.
Blog Art Offline
Christmas hell is starting up at UPS. I've also got 3 papers due and my computer has helpfully reformatted my flash drive. I have to start over.
Blogging will be light for a bit.
I understand that the approved substitutes for content include robots, cats and ta-tas.
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!
I've been using the Epic web broswer for 20 days and have gotten
a feel for it. 
