Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Warrior Tang's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 14th, 2009
12:40 am	The Facebook Panopticon, Part 3 Facebook's latest scary "you should friend this person" suggestion is an organization, a community arts center in Chicago with a name that sounded familiar. I remember: They spammed me a couple of times last year. I had found the arts center to seem a legitimate place and emailed someone there to tell them I had nothing to do with them and did not even live near Chicago, and I stopped getting their spam. I still have the response in my e-mail archives: We've recently changed our list management service. If you'd unsubscribed at some point and were mistakenly added by into our database, we apologize. [...] We'll miss having you as part of our community and hope we'll still see you at our upcoming events. Enough people were having the same problem that they had a form letter for the case. My first thought on the Facebook connection is that Facebook somehow got ahold of an old version of the community center's mailing list. Finding that I still had a copy of the spam, there is a more direct connection: the spam was sent via Facebook Mail. This was several months before I had a Facebook account, but I created my account with the same address that had been spammed by the organization. Facebook could easily find a relationship between my account and this other user who had once sent something to my email address. One more minor detail: The spam had been sent by the Facebook account of a member of the organization and not the organization's account that Facebook recommended to me today, but this is an easy connection for Facebook's computers to make since the member is a friend of the organization. So this one is marked down from scary to curious. If it were not for the original Facebook connection, I would be more alarmed. See also: earlier and earlier. Current Mood: confused Current Music: Velvet Revolver - Headspace (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
1:13 pm	Competition Yesterday morning I was running late but not too late to hit the Chinese doughnut shop for a large coffee and two doughnuts. On the way out of the parking lot, I saw a line of seven cars at the Starbucks drive-through. I got out of the doughnut place with food and coffee for little more than a large coffee alone costs at Starbucks, and I doubt it took much longer than waiting in line. For a complete change of subject, here is an interesting webcomic: The Noob is like Adventurers for MMORPGs. Current Mood: blah Current Music: Astroslide - Patriarch (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
8:49 am	Sportsmiddle interviews Tim Lincecum HOST: "Welcome to EPSN Sportsmiddle. Tonight, we have an interview with Cy Young Award winning pitcher Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants. Let's get him in here." ["TIM LINCECUM" enters the room in a cloud of smoke, carrying a small bag of chips. He dazedly stumbles towards the chair and slides down into it, then offers his chips to the host.] LINCECUM: "Wanna munchie?" HOST: "No thanks. So Tim, what's it like when you're on the mound and staring down one of the league's great hitters like {NAME} or {NAME}?" LINCECUM: "Oh, man, it's like, whoa. Here's this dude and he's like brilliant man, but you can't let it get to you. You gotta mellow out, man, and if he gets a hit off you, ain't no thing. I mean, you can't strike out everybody. Sometimes, man, you just gotta take a hit." HOST: "And to what do you attribute your success in the game?" LINCECUM: "I'd like to thank my pitching coach and my personal trainer: Cheech, and Chong." HOST: "All right. And now its time for a message from our commercial sponsor, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. You can get Krispy Kreme freshly baked every morning." LINCECUM: [mugs for the camera while more smoke blows behind him] [LINCECUM shakes his bag of chips upside down to show that it's empty] LINCECUM: "Hey, man, we got any of those doughnuts? I got an appetite for some reason." HOST: "Oh, sure, they give us deliveries as part of the ad deal. [to offscreen:] Hey, could you bring over the box of doughnuts?" [A CAMERA CREWMAN walks in with a box of doughnuts and puts it on the desk. The CREWMAN then puts a small piece of paper in front of LINCECUM] CREWMAN: "Hey, Tim, I'm a big fan of yours. Can I have your autograph?" LINCECUM: "Sure, man." [LINCECUM starts writing on the paper with a doobie] LINCECUM: "Hold on man, this isn't a pen." HOST: "We'll be right back." Current Mood: amused Current Music: dun dun dun, dun dun dun (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
5:50 pm	Starcruft ( Starcraft parody short-sketch ideas. ) Current Mood: geeky Current Music: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
9:21 pm	Funny webcomic: DBMD-Man Batman parody: The Adventures Of Dark, Brooding, Mentally-Disturbed Man Current Mood: amused Current Music: The Killers - Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine (Comment on this)
Monday, October 19th, 2009
6:29 pm	Gangsta rap has no monopoly on thuggish lyrics Remember the big scare in the 1990s about rap lyrics? White-guy rock and roll can be plenty thuggish: You think we could get along It's the same argument You're still wrong Too bad you don't listen Too bad you don't see Too bad I'm about to feed you your teeth I've got more fight than you And I'm your demon now Too late to run, dude but you can try anyhow I've got your number, man You're in for one long night Better listen next time I say, hey, Walk the other way It's good music, but my jaw dropped a little when I recognized what I was listening to. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Astroslide - Walk The Other Way (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
6:54 pm	Obvious in retrospect A political cartoonist has been drawing the Republican Party as a wooly mammoth. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Chris Geehan and Dan Byrne McCullough - Welcome To The Party, Pal (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 28th, 2009
8:21 pm	The Black Card Visa is marketing a new credit card called the Black Card for which they want you to pay $500 a year for the privilege of giving them even more of your money if you don't keep your payments up to date. The Black Card is like a credit card, but it's black. It can be tapped for swamp mana or get you punted from a fencing tournament. A big selling point is that the card is made with carbon. It's organic! Hey, do you like carbon? For $500, I can send you a beautiful thin carbon cylinder encased in a smooth wooden protective cover. Painted a brilliant yellow, this carbon cylinder is an excellent decoration for a desk or office setting. Order in the next fifteen mintues and I'll make it a whole factory-sealed package of ten carbon cylinders, and I'll also throw in a copper-plated engraving of Abraham Lincoln that was issued by the United States Mint! Any takers? Hmm. I have to figure out how the people who would pay for something like the Black Card are able to make enough money to afford it in the first place. If you do buy the Black Card, Visa is also offering a "24-hour Concierge Service" along with it. This means that they will post a guard at the door of your house for 24 hours a day, every day, all year for only $500. Actually, it means that they are trying to redefine the word "concierge" to who-knows-what. If they redefined it to a 24-hour prostitute service then I might be interested. Otherwise, meh. All this talk about the prestigious exclusive Black Card raises the question: Will they let Black people use the Black Card? The Black Card is not for everyone. In fact, it is limited to only 1% of U.S. residents to ensure the highest caliber of personal service is provided to every Cardmember. I guess they won't let Black people use the Black Card. One last bit of interest: BLACK and BLACK CARD family of marks are trademarks of Black Card LLC They seriously claim a trademark on the word Black. It's bad enough that they claim a trademark on a generic term like Black Card. It is fortunate that they do not claim that these are registered trademarks. Current Mood: busy Current Music: Cloverleaf Drive - Men Don't Make Air (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
6:29 pm	Erebor? Izzat somewhere near Nigeria? Via BB, imagining "The Hobbit" as a 419 scam letter. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Wingless - One Girl In All The World (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
9:20 pm	The Aral Sea is gone Satellite photo shows next to nothing left of the Aral Sea. Consider also Lake Chad. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Chris Geehan and Dan Byrne McCullough - Welcome To The Party, Pal (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
7:43 pm	Anti-Zelda Here is another idea for a video game that I am never going to be able to make. This is, of course, heavily inspired by my having recently played Twilight Princess. Current Mood: geeky Current Music: Lifeforce - Further (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
6:57 pm	Kickass game of the nonce: Iji Iji is a run-and gun platformer with a nice multi-skill leveling system, alternate dialogue if you eschew the "-and-gun" part of the game, and a bunch of hidden secrets to go back and look for. It also has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a video game in which the music mixes excellently with the sound effects of you and your enemies shooting and shouting at each other. In short, it rules. Play it if you have the time. Current Mood: geeky Current Music: Iji Soundtrack - Level 2 (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
1:44 pm	An old school gamer's look at Twilight Princess I got Twilight Princess and played it. For comparison, I have previously played the original NES LoZ, the side-scrolling LoZ 2, and Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. Commentary: ( cut for being very long ) ( Comparisons to the original Legend of Zelda. ) Current Mood: geeky Current Music: Astroslide - Hutchinson (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
8:36 am	Space exploration and public relations Slashdot links to a report on high-resolution images taken of the star Betelgeuse. Here is the picture headlining the Astronomy Now story as "The True Face of Betelgeuse". Here is the picture that was actually taken. The fake picture is pretty, but it ticks me off that NASA ESO (and any space science group in general) feels they have to do this. (thanks to mrfnord for the correction, and I surrender the position of "the description should be exciting enough" to someone who did a better job of reading it.) Current Mood: grumpy Current Music: The Offspring - Nitro (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
8:04 pm	Blackwater scandal with huge implications An anonymous lawsuit accuses Blackwater mercenaries founder Erik Prince of assassinating whistleblowers and leading a Christian crusade to kill Muslims. Current Mood: curious Current Music: The Moody Blues - Nights In White Satin (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:58 pm	Comic relief Arthur Laffer, the economist of Laffer's Curve fame, went on CNN to spread the fear that Medicare and Medicaid might end up being run by the government if Obama gets his way. Current Mood: amused Current Music: The Moody Blues - I'm Just A Singer (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
9:08 pm	US Navy pilot Scott Speicher's remains found They found the remains of one of the first American casualties of the Iraq war of 1991 buried by locals after his jet was shot down. He was initially reported as killed in action, but then considered missing when they couldn't confirm that he was killed. Then a strange thing happened... In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to "missing/captured," although it has never said what evidence it had that he ever was in captivity. The Pentagon confirmed with certainty that Speicher was alive and being held by Iraq, and this became one of the arguments used to promote the Iraq war of 2003. This was yet another case of the Bush administration lying about Iraq. See also this blog which provides a good timeline on the subject. Current Mood: blah Current Music: Portishead - Glory Box (Comment on this)
8:30 pm	ATM skimming taken to the next level I've heard about ATM skimmers, but someone planted a whole fake ATM to steal card numbers. Irony: they tried to do it during the Black Hat security conference so it got caught fairly quickly. Current Mood: tired Current Music: U2 - New York (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
8:37 pm	Left 4 Dead brainstorming Left 4 Dead is a fun game and I hear that it can be modified. I thought it would be fun to, before a LAN party, replace the hunter model with a mudkip and modify the Tank's audio so he shouts "Falcon Punch!" when punching. However, I don't have the slightest idea how to modify the game and I have not taken the time to look into it. Anyway, that idea turned into a general brainstorm on how to make the game better or at least different. ( this is a very long post... ) Current Mood: geeky Current Music: Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm (3 Comments |Comment on this)
7:46 am	Fallout Disneyland Concept art for a post-apocalyptic Disney universe, apparently with a video game in the works. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Five A. M. - Weightless (Comment on this)