A nice artistic design and beautiful execution including C64 based sound effects. Additionally: Boobies!

Current Emotive State: amused
Current Music: Bastion - You've Got My Love

In a quest for a single glass of chocolate milk I did some experimenting and discovered the following recipe:
3 teaspoons water
3 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cocoa powder

Mix ingredients in small microwave safe container
Microwave 15 seconds
Stir
Microwave 30 more seconds
Stir and then pour mixture into 8oz milk

Caution! This makes HOT SYRUP; think of it like napalm or hot oil. Be careful with it when you pull it out and mix it!

The recipe was derived from a comment by Beanygurl at http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf265031.tip.html

RE: Chocolate Milk Using Hershey's Cocoa Powder
By beanygurl (119) Contact
Make chocolate syrup as follows. I keep mine in a jar in the fridge. Maybe you have an old squeeze container you can use. Should keep for 4 weeks in the fridge. (I'd skip the vanilla and the salt) Tastes great on ice cream or use to make chocolate milk!

1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 cup Sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Vanilla
dash of salt

Combine cocoa, sugar, and salt in a saucepan. Add water, and mix until smooth. Bring this mixture to a boil. Allow it to boil for one minute, be careful this does not over boil. Remove from heat, when this cools add the vanilla.

Tags: bakerman

Below is the Rowdy Ninja Shanty (Ep 1-5) It's sung to the tune of "What would you do with a drunken sailor" If you get a chance, give it a quick run through and see if you can remember the verses and we'll do it as a spontaneous event sometime at NDK. Also, keep an eye out for "The ballad of shikamaru" hopefully coming before then as well.

What would you do with a row-dy ninja?
--------------------------------------

What would you do with a row-dy ninja
What would you do with a row-dy ninja
What would you do with a row-dy ninja
Ear-ly in the morning.

Make him wear bright o-range cloth-ing / x3 / Ear-ly in the morning.
Give him a young crea-py stal-ker / x3 / Ear-ly in the morning.
Make him drink old ex-pir-ed milk / x3 / Ear-ly in the morning.
Have him hang down from an old tree / x3 / Ear-ly in the morning.
Have him go with-out his sup-per / x3 / Ear-ly in the morning.

Here we are five ep-pi-sodes in
Dat-ta-ba-yo is wear-ing thin
'Least we know he like his ra-men
Ear-ly in the morning

Tags: cosplay, music
Current Location: Home
Current Emotive State: creative
Current Music: What would you do with a drunken sailor?

Girl: "Does this make my butt look big?"
Blunt Guy: "Do you want an honest answer?"
Girl: "Of course!"
Blunt Guy: "To which question?"
Girl: "Huh?"
Blunt Guy: "'Does this make my butt look big' is a euphemism for about 3 different things and itself has one direct meaning. I can answer any or all of the 4 if you would like"
Girl: "What?"
Blunt Guy: "It looks good on you. I do indeed love you and still think you're attractive. And lastly yes it makes your butt look big but acceptably so for my own tastes."
Girl: *speechless and probably insulted*
Blunt Guy: "Did I miss any? Was the one you actually wanted on the list? And should I prep the couch again?"

----

Slowly I'm learning the nuances of the social world, but there's still a lot of things where I still stand by my old motto: "Lies, told to yourself or others (including in the form of a question) are the root cause of most social conflict."

Though I think living by that rule is quite hard. There's still too many things in my life that I can't bring myself to admit in public that would really make my life easier. I know the shame won't burden me terribly given what I will tell people, but all the same it's embarrassing and not just for me but for everyone involved.

(The above example inspired by the way girls do by *whitedog1)

Tags: philosophy
Current Location: Home
Current Emotive State: contemplative
Current Music: None

The web has created a great many interesting things; e-mail, twitter, blogs, web pages, and even on demand broadcasting. But there are those who ask: "Hasn't the e-relationship ruined the nature of real friends and family".

Let's explore this a bit shall we? From my study and observation friendship is characterized by a few major things; communication, support, mutual entertainment, and camaraderie. How does the web work towards each of these goals?

Communication: The web takes people to places that many people will likely never see in their entire lifetime. It also allows people who only see each other once in a blue moon to interact regularly. That being said the most common mode of communication on the web is text based. As a consequence the web does not work very well for communicating emotion. Additionally, many of the modes of communication are point-to-multipoint; i.e. broadcast. I am no more friends with a radio jockey any more than I am with a random watcher on twitter. Having Obama following me doesn't actually mean that me and the president are 'buddies'. Subsequently many of the modes of communication on the internet are more supportive of the gossip chain (though providing first hand news instead of second hand) but do not make for a true connection with another person.

Support: The web provides a somewhat subpar mechanism for support. The lack of vocal tone makes empathy on the web very difficult. As a consequence people who honestly care will frequently be misinterpreted as being indifferent and people who need help can't be told apart from anyone else.

Mutual Entertainment: The web here does a good job of filling in for face time, but again isn't a complete workaround. You can get much of the same entertainment from the web as you can in person, but it's hard to really get excited about it. Here - though - unlike in many other usage models of the web you find that people take advantage of web technologies like voice chat to resolve the emotion issue. This makes things a lot more personal. That being said I can say from my own experience that playing with a group of friends online isn't as good as playing in person. To be honest my best experiences actually come from using the web to bridge together several people in the same room.

Camaraderie: This is one place that the web excels. Rule 34 (If it exists, there is porn of it.) and the people who enjoy that porn have found that the web is an excellent tool for coming together for mutual benefit. To that end, I suspect that many of the BDSM, Furry, and Quilting conventions that are held today are the consequence of the ability to find and communicate with people of similar interests that the web enables.

All in all I believe that the web can be used as a tool to support other modes of friendship and empowers people to find friends they otherwise wouldn't. But that being said I believe that these tools cannot be used by themselves to create and establish friendships. Face time, phone calls (or voice chat,) and just good ol' hangin' out are essential to properly developed, healthy relationships. In time this may become less relevant as new technologies come out - and more over are actually adopted - but for the moment the web is just a tool in the toolbelt of friendship.

Sometime later I may discuss why the 140 character limit in twitter, though frustrating, isn't going to ruin the lives of everyone on the planet and with the right supplementary tools is a powerful way for news type communication.

Tags: philosophy, tech
Current Location: Home
Current Emotive State: thoughtful
Current Music: None, though that sounds like a lovely idea.

I've seen a few phishing attempts that worked with a more hook-and-line approach as compared to the usual bait-and-switch approach that most people use. However I have to share with you one of the best I've seen.

Return-Path: <info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
Received: from mail.ok.net ([94.75.217.51])
by Amalla.prod.phx1.secureserver.net (8.13.6/8.12.11) with ESMTP id n6E4Etj0010041
for <jtc-school@nqig.net>; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:14:56 -0700
Received: from localhost (localhost.ok.net [127.0.0.1])
by mail.ok.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD5F2873852;
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:55 +0300 (EEST)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at mail.ok.net
Received: from mail.ok.net ([127.0.0.1])
by localhost (mail.ok.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
with ESMTP id M8+daLJUkecq; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:55 +0300 (EEST)
Received: by mail.ok.net (Postfix, from userid 100)
id B4C348806B2; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:09 +0300 (EEST)
Received: from User (unknown [121.121.186.210])
by mail.ok.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B07ED88040C;
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:21:37 +0300 (EEST)
Reply-To: <johnson_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
From: "sheila johnson"<info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
Subject: HELP ME
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:21:24 +0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Message-Id: <20090713152137.B07ED88040C@mail.ok.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Dear Beloved in Christ,

It is by the grace of God that I received Christ,having known the
truth,I had no choice than to do what is lawful and right
in the sight of God for eternal life and in the sight of man for
witness of God & his mercies and glory upon my life.

I am Mrs.Sheila Johnson the wife of Mr Harold Johnson,my husband worked
with the Chevron/Texaco in Kenya for twenty
years before he died in the year 2001.We were married for ten years
without a child. My Husband died after a brief illness that
lasted for only four days.

Before his death we were both born again Christians.
Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my
matrimonial home which the Bible is against.When my late
husband was alive he deposited the sum of US$3.5M.(Three Million Five
Hundred Thousand U.S.Dollars) with a Bank in Asia.

Presently,this money is still with the Bank and the management just
wrote me as the beneficiary to come forward to sign for the
release of this money or rather issue a letter of authorization to
somebody to receive it on my behalf if I can not come over.
Presently,I'm in a hospital in Kenya where I have been undergoing
treatment for esophageal cancer.I have since lost my ability
to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a few weeks to
live.It is my last wish to see this money distributed to charity
organizations anywhere in the World.Because relatives and friends have
plundered so much of my wealth since my illness,I
cannot live with the agony of entrusting this huge responsibility to
any of them.

Please,I beg you in the name of God to help me Stand and collect the
Funds from the Bank.

I want a person that is God fearing that will use this money to fund
churches,orphanages and widows propagating the word of
God and to ensure that the house of God is maintained.

The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth.I
took this decision because I don't have any child that will
inherit this money and my husband's relatives are not Christians and I
don't want my husband's hard earned money to be misused
by unbelievers.I don't want a situation where this money will be used
in an ungodly manner.Hence the reason for taking this bold
decision.I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going.I know
that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord.

Exodus{14 VS 14}says that the lord will fight my case and I shall hold
my peace.I don't need any telephone communication in this
regard because of my soundless voice and presence of my husband's
relatives around me always.I don't want them to know about
this development. With God all things are possible.

As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of my
attorney who is in Asia as he will be the one to assist you in laying
claims for this funds.

Kindly send your reply to my private email address which is as follows:

johnson_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk
Your Sister in Christ,
Mrs.sheila Johnson.
_____________________________________________________________________
Bu e-posta Ok.net sistemleri kullanilarak gonderilmistir.

Oh no! Poor thing; surrounded by non-christians, no children, dead husband with a fortune in money all she wants is to donate the wealth to charity before she dies. How sweet!

But wait, she sends an e-mail to an agnostic/atheist so that a god fearing person can help her.

>.>

<.<

Sure! I'm glad to help! ^w^

---

Okay, so beyond the obvious line and total lack of personal addressing (A dying woman has the time to write a form letter?) let's look at the technical indicators of why this e-mail is bubkis.

Let's look again at the header:

Return-Path: <info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
Received: from mail.ok.net ([94.75.217.51])
by Amalla.prod.phx1.secureserver.net (8.13.6/8.12.11) with ESMTP id n6E4Etj0010041
for <jtc-school@nqig.net>; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:14:56 -0700
Received: from localhost (localhost.ok.net [127.0.0.1])
by mail.ok.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD5F2873852;
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:55 +0300 (EEST)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at mail.ok.net
Received: from mail.ok.net ([127.0.0.1])
by localhost (mail.ok.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
with ESMTP id M8+daLJUkecq; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:55 +0300 (EEST)
Received: by mail.ok.net (Postfix, from userid 100)
id B4C348806B2; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:09 +0300 (EEST)
Received: from User (unknown [121.121.186.210])
by mail.ok.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B07ED88040C;
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:21:37 +0300 (EEST)
Reply-To: <johnson_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
From: "sheila johnson"<info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>
Subject: HELP ME
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:21:24 +0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Message-Id: <20090713152137.B07ED88040C@mail.ok.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Notice the very first line: Return-Path: <info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk> Now notice some of the other lines in the header: Reply-To: <johnson_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk> and From: "sheila johnson"<info_mrs.sheila@yahoo.com.hk>. Do you think that Yahoo would send a different return address? What kind of situation would have to exist for us to see this kind of behavior?

Next notice the Message-Id: Message-Id: <20090713152137.B07ED88040C@mail.ok.net> Notice that this isn't Yahoo. For that matter, it's the same as the first hop in the message path: Received: by mail.ok.net (Postfix, from userid 100)
id B4C348806B2; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:09 +0300 (EEST)

Now why would a Kenyan have sent their e-mail via a turkish ISP with an e-mail address for Yahoo in Hong Kong?

Well, in practice this is actually fairly easy to explain. The key lies in the end of the e-mail. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of my attorney who is in Asia as he will be the one to assist you in laying claims for this funds. Our con artist actually is probably in Hong Kong; and actually isn't terribly bright. He's probably using a script kiddy tool and misconfigured it (thus the e-mail address mismatch.) Lastly the software was probably running on a zombie machine that was compromized somewhere in Turkey.

Tags: tech
Current Emotive State: amused

*PPBBBBT!*

"Damn man! What's with the gas?!"

"Oh that? I'm farting a brick."

"Don't you mean shitting a brick?"

"No, I my gas precipitates into a clay like powder on contact with oxygen."

"WTF?!"

"The bad part is where I have to collect the precipitate in my underpants and then press it into bricks with my butt cheeks."

X3

Ya, my brain was wandering today. Maybe I got too much sun.

Tags: literature
Current Location: Home... finally.
Current Emotive State: silly
Current Music: Nada!

So one of the tenants that I was raised with was that the suffering of man was deliberate and necessary for the spiritual development of humanity for reasons that only god had the ability to understand. After my "logical rebirth" (lol Abusing the mystic's terms) I knew something was terribly wrong with that statement, but I could not determine what it was. For the longest time I tried to approach that argument logically but always hit a brick wall with "the infinite being knows why" part.

However, about a month ago I finally worked out a solution to why it had to be wrong. Actually I can thank my brother for the realization. Discussing some of the issues regarding the fruits of religion it struck me: God is the ultimate creator of everything; the cause of all causes; the effect with no casual origin. This means that the universe - both physical and spiritual - are in his control. This was the crack in the logic where light was shining through. The counter-argument goes like this:

• God created man such that suffering feels like a bad thing and makes us feel unhappy.
• God created the universe such that suffering is related to spiritual development.
• Therefore, God created the universe deliberately such that man must suffer. (Note: He could have created it differently; he was not bound by any rules)
• Therefore since God chose to make us suffer when this was not necessary, man's suffering is strictly a matter of God's preference.
• Therefore God prefers that man suffer and be unhappy.

This does not disprove god or anything similar, but does create a dichotomy between the trio of God's benevolence, omniscience, and his omnipotence. Disregard any one of them and then this makes sense. See the table below for the logical conclusions

• Discard Benevolence: God simply likes to see us suffer
• Discard Omnipotence: God isn't in control of everything and is bound by external rules; rules which make suffering part of spiritual development.
• Discard Omniscience: God didn't have the foresight to avoid making suffering a requisite part of the universe and hasn't figured out that he can grant himself omniscience yet with his omnipotence.

I can't rule out laziness completely as I have no idea how hard it is to make humans to not suffer as compared to not; but "how hard it is" is something within God's control if he's Omnipotent, though changing how hard something is may be hard itself, so by recursion it's possible that it's a mountain that a lazy God doesn't want to summit.

Either way I'm just glad I was finally able to put a finger on why that statement was so troubling to me logically.

Tags: philosophy
Current Emotive State: satisfied
Current Music: One Day One Step, by Toybox playing over and over and over in my head.

Made Peach Gel Thingy
Source: None.

Experiment Procedure Notes:
Added frozen peaches to "eh, so much" water and about twice to three times the sugar than the water could dissolve cold.
Heated to 180F degrees (monitored with a candy thermometer)
Cooked until it stopped behaving like soup and started behaving like syrup.
Checked/Stirred every 10 minutes managed by a timer that was frequently ignored for 5 minutes extra.
Broke apart fruit at stirring events.
Cook time was about 2 hours.

Observations:
This recipe produces a gelled kinda thing that is sweet; is reminiscent of peaches in odor, color, and taste; and contains large, soft fruit bits.
The resulting stuff was quite tasty on bread. Probably would be tasty on pancakes and toast as well.

Research Results:
None. This was to cooking what most people make their first drinking experience; keep doing it until it feels right.

Future Recommendations:
Try other fruits. Peaches were yummy and broke down nicely. Maybe other things work well. (Strawberries? Grapes? oohhh... PINEAPPLE?!)
Cook it covered for a long time first, then reduce. Looking at it, the fruit's fibrous structure seemed to break down with water and heat. Cooking it longer then might reduce the fruit chunks further still. However, since I was reducing it, cooking it longer means more water, so it makes more sense to cook it covered and keep the water (and the volatile yummy smelly bits) inside and then reduce it once the fruit is softened up into mush.
Thinking of similar things, I may be able to store fruit that's been in my freezer too long this way. Just pour it into clean, hot glass jars and seal them. Kinda like jelly; but homemade and less wasteful (Unless I count the heating costs for the stove, then I'm not sure if it's such a good idea, but it makes me feel less wasteful. X3 )

Tags: bakerman

Lately I've been reading "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama. It's actually an interesting book about how science and religion share a great many similarities and how to reconcile the differences.

However, one thing that caught my eye as a discussion on the "Conventional" verses the "Ultimate" truth in Buddism. It speaks of a contradiction in how we operate on a day to day basis and how the fundamental tenants of some Buddhist philosophies speak of how those operations are based on untenable principles.

As for this disparity I couldn't, and wouldn't attempt to broach the issue as I don't have anywhere near the background required (The Dali Lama suggests a "Two Truths" philosophy that resolves this.) However, he shows a similar disparity in modern science with classical physics and quantum mechanics and begs for a resolution of the seemingly schizophrenic worldview that common sense demands of us even in the face of the very chaotic quantum mechanics.

This, however, I can and will approach. Though there is some complicated mathematics that prove it, and actually producing it may still need to be done; the gist of this is that the sensitivity of the systems, as taken on average at the macroscale, to variations in microscale effects is negligible. This isn't always true (for example CRTs) but is true enough for anything that isn't explicitly designed to exploit a microscale effect that we generally can ignore it.

Think of it this way; the probability distribution for a subatomic particle's position may spread it over several angstroms; and this is true for each particle. However, all in all the center of mass for the object that it's part of is going to be relatievly still since each particle is moving randomly. If the movements were correlated (such as a structural resonance) then we can see it effect the macroscale. But then we can concern ourselves with the resonance itself and ignore the effect of each contributor. Subsequently things like electromagnetic waves, which can propagate in a variety of ways, can be seen in the macroscale as a single thing; not a composite of many smaller things.

In conclusion just as religion has the philosophically tenable, and practically useful form; so too does science. Science can just quantify the error due to the "practical assumptions".

Tags: philosophy