Rory Parle

I have a new dream! As an off-topic comment on diveintomark.org pointed out, Mark Pilgrim is Google‘s top result for the search ‘Mark’. I think that’s somewhat worthy of respect. Particularly remembering that Mark allegedly wrote a gospel.

So my new dream is of typing my own given name into the address bar of my browser and being taken to my own site. That is, of course, without bookmark keywords or any other trickery. I have now to compete with late Irish rock-star Rory Gallagher. Yes, I realise that that link will infinitessimally increase his Page-rank, but I’m going to fight clean damnit! Anyway at least I haven’t got Stephen King to contend with. Take that!

Who knew that weblogging was contagious? It seems it falls to me to welcome the newest member of the ‘blogosphere’. Stephen recently launched www-s-seven.tk. I should warn that the page will display a popup ad; an alternative is www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~sbrophy. Stephen will no-doubt put my posting frequency to shame, so I’d like to point out right at the outset that I have written my own content manager from scratch, whereas s-seven runs on blogger.

Picture me with a humorously over-large cigar perched, unlit, between my lips. See it resting slightly to the side, leaving me limited room for speech. Keep that image in your mind. Now, "I love it when a plan comes together."

So here’s the plan. I’ll buy an iPod (check). I’ll cram all of my music onto it (check). Something’s missing. I need some audio that isn’t music. Eddie Murphy is no good to me now; I know his shows by heart. I need the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So should I click on that little green ‘K’ and see where the wonderful world of file-‘sharing’ takes me? Nah, I think I’ll just wait until the BBC releases all of its TV and radio archives online, for free. Oh, I’ll have those early seasons of Red Dwarf too, if you please.

This is certainly more attention grabbing than that story about running Linux on a Furby.

It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t get around to posting that entry about why Arnie was unlikely to run for governor of California this time around. I will not make a career out of political predictions. I’ve watched the story unfold so far, albeit from a distance, and this is as far as we’ve got as far as I can see:

A handful of gimmick candidates, including Arnie ("All that matters to me now is Jenny"), Gary Coleman ("whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Gray Davis?"), Larry Flint (as in ‘the people versus’), as well as some pornstress and a hooker. And a dog. Tough choice. Maybe, if I was Californian, I’d choose the geek option? Georgy Russell is certainly easier on the eyes than the others, especially the dog and Gary Coleman. But surely the best option is to let the whole world choose. And we needn’t even limit ourselves to the actual candidates! Step in Am I Governor or Not?

There is nothing I can say that will make Google’s new calculator any cooler, so just try it out. Some examples:

• Answer to Life the Universe and Everything
• Speed of light in furlongs per fortnight
• e
• VII + IX
• Two plus Four
• c * φ

I asked if presenting my plans to my adoring public would make me more or less likely to live by them. It seems I was motivated by your impatience. Scatterbrain (Soylentred.net’s home-grown CMS) has now got a nifty divide between the load-bearing code that chucks out info from the database and the actual HTML with which said info is structured. I can easily change every page on the site in an instant without even looking at the underlying code. Go me.

What’s the point of adding functionality without using it? None, so far as I can see. So after a few keystrokes, every page of Soylentred.net is ready to accomodate the new style I call Krimson Kreme. As always, I invite comments (and bug reports) about the new style. Is it nice and does it work?

Users of Opera, Mozilla and other useable browsers (so not Internet Explorer), can still see the old style. It’s the alternative stylesheet named ‘grey’.

Ext. Housing Estate – Night

Rory walks home after the Greystones festival fireworks. He looks up, surprised.

Rory (to himself)

That’s odd.

Cut to

Rory’s car, in the middle of the road. The unseen driver is struggling to start the engine. Rory approaches the driver’s side window.

Cut to

Close up – driver’s door opens.

Some Guy

Can you give me a hand mate, I’m having some trouble.

Rory (amused)

…in my car.

Some Guy

Your car?

Cut to

Wide shot. Some Guy stumbles out of the car.

Cut to

Close up – Some Guy is holding two sets of keys. Rory takes first set with little resistance. Rory grabs second set (for the other car)

Some Guy

Hang on mate, I’m just gonna try this one. (Indicates other car.)

Rory

No you’re not.

Cut to

Long shot. Some Guy stumbles away up the road.

Rory (to himself)

That doesn’t happen every day.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to post on the topic of God, theism and the recent hate-mongering of the Catholic church, not to avoid offence ("it’s my site" is such a harsh term ;-)), but simply because it seems that a lot has to be said before anything comes across. The phrase used in the title comes from a comment by Tom Coates from his article On the existence of God…, which takes issue with the Vatican’s afforementioned hate-mongering, and theism in general in fact.

Short of Richard Dawkins, and maybe even including Dawkins, this article and its succeeding comments offer the best arguments against theism and agnosticism that I’ve ever read. Not only that they’re wrong factually, but that theism can become morally wrong. Case in point: the Vatican message that brought up the issue will have significant ill-effects on thousands of people while having no good effects whatsoever. It is now morally unjustifiable to be a Catholic.

Google really can be entertaining. The latest trick I’ve stumbled across is to search for "Index of" "Name Last modified Size Description". Instant access to thousands of folders whose owners, more likely than not, aren’t aware that their folder is accessible. It works because apache (the most popular web-server in the world) has the ability to generate HTML listings of folder contents, and the format contains those search terms.

For added value, append more search terms, like mpg, mov, jpg or "My Documents". Who has their My Documents folder accessible to the web? Let’s find out.

Oh, and no. You won’t find soylentred in any of your searches. Partly because my server is configured not to present folder listings, but mostly because Google hasn’t spidered me yet.