Personal Blog of Zacharias Stankiewicz
After my first post regarding iPad wallpapers, I got some feedback to the tune of “dude, it gotta be 1024 square so it elegantly resizes regardless of portrait or landscape orientation.
So, here’s the first one I got from an ancient D&D book (Dragonlance, 2nd edition, from Time of The Twins if I remember correctly) as well as one from the first trilogy.
Enjoy.
I can’t take credit for the illustration, but I ran across this when I was looking through my old D&D books.
Raistlin battling Fistandantilus back in ye olden 2nd edition.
Anyways, I chopped it up into the right resolution (1024×768, portrait) for those Ipad havers. Or someone using a five year old 15″ LCD wrong.
Until the pixel ratio is a little closer to 16:10 or 16:9, I won’t be getting an iPad, btw.
As this is the flying-car century, I find it important to figure out how exactly we ended up “here,” or at least in our hearts and heads. As any responsible person would do, I googled it.
That wasn’t as helpful as you’d think.
The literature, then.
Slightly more so.
I really like cruising the “other” section on The Pirate Bay, looking for some weird stuff. As a current Physics student who has finals next week, I took a peek at the torrent above. The bottom comment pretty much says it all when it comes to the usual character of this community. My favorite by far though, is the Dark Mission lecture I downloaded where we went from “NASA is hiding the truth about mars” to “NASA is full of Nazis, Masons, and Magi” in about 40 minutes of absolute drivel.
Anyhoos, there’s good stuff on there if you are looking to learn science, hacking through a thicket online to get to something like the Feynman lectures.
If you catch yourself in the path of 9/11 truthers, there’s always the very well-written report that Popular Science published in 2006. Treating conspiracy theorists like misguided children doesn’t help, actually arguing doesn’t do a lot of good either. Suffice it to say that a conspiracy theory is a mental shortcut that allows a person to skip some severely complicated or emotional stuff, and that it’d be hard to drag anyone through that unless they’re willing.
The reason why youth pastors start at 24k a year and the average computer scientist makes $98,000 in their median year midcareer is because facts can say whatever you want them to, given enough framing and juryrigging.
Jenny and I got home from Bradford County Thanksgiving – and she decided it was time to get the patch I’ve had on the fridge on to my backpack. I was all like, “psh, about time, I’m tired of those Horde kids beating me up after Physics lab.”
pictured: things on my refrigerator.
Jenny got to work with her Home Economics Boogie-Woogie Kung-Fu-ie.
Huzzah, it is [Epic] – Hordies watch out!
Equipped with the most plum-est of purps, I now need some epic-level grub to make sure I have the calories to make with the asswhoopage.
Enter Port Richmond sold-by-the-pound frozen pirogi!
pictured: power lunch, ~1400 kcal.
Time to kick some ass!
It’s not like I’m too poor to buy myself books, but I’d be some sort of idiot to think that if I managed to buy all of these, the time to read them would also be included in the box.
Since my (community) college has free, unlimited printing, I made this list and broke it out during a particular dry math lecture about inverting a sine function or some other sassafras. Then, I looked for patterns in it. Thus, we have a list of things that I think tell you a lot about how awesome I am.
Remember folks, it’s almost christmas!
Okay, let me start with the following: I’m not a un-fan of AT&T – but they are the low-hanging fruit this evening. I’m really tired of the US carriers simply lying about each others services.
via the recent Engadget article AT&T sues Verizon over ‘there’s a map for that’ ads – a lawsuit that basically lets them get a headline in the trade, and mainstream press with the following statement:
In essence, we believe the ads mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn’t offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country. In fact, AT&T’s wireless network blankets the US, reaching approximately 296M people. Additionally, our 3G service is available in over 9,600 cities and towns. Verizon’s misleading advertising tactics appear to be a response to AT&T’s strong leadership in smartphones. We have twice the number of smartphone customers… and we’ve beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers. We also had lower churn — a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive.
Wow, that is just begging for someone to “help make sense of it” – lets begin.
In essence, we believe the ads mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn’t offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country.
Offer and provide being a key difference here.
In fact, AT&T’s wireless network blankets the US, reaching approximately 296M people. Additionally, our 3G service is available in over 9,600 cities and towns.
Listen, I don’t care how many fucking towns, villages, wal-marts, and gangbangs your shitty 3G coverage reaches. THE FUCKING SERVICE DOESN’T WORK FOR SHIT IN PLACES THAT ARE ON THE MAP.
Verizon’s misleading advertising tactics appear to be
It’s kind of off-topic to mention this. Why not speculate Verizon got the idea to do this while sucking off devil cock in hell.
a response to AT&T’s strong leadership in smartphones.
Everyone gives Apple lots of money. That is not leadership. My cheap girlfriend who doesn’t spend money on premium peanut butter has an iMac.
We have twice the number of smartphone customers…
ellipses are never good writing, unless they appear in angst-ridden teen vampire dialog…
…
…
or mocking bad writing.
and we’ve beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers.
We also had lower churn –
trading up to ye old double minus, the … said they missed…
…
…
you.
Amish people don’t believe that making less butter is something to brag about, either.
a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive.
or they’re in contracts. Or maybe they don’t like mobile phone calls interrupting their days.
All in all, this full-of-lies-and-distortions press release is about a lawsuit that doesn’t matter over an advertisement that America will collectively forget by the end of the year.
edit 1: fixed some obvious grammatical errors that I feel plenty bad enough about without your damned help.
Two because I have to.
Oh, and a pile of articles and assorted stuff, as usual.
Reading: Middlesex
Getting Read To Me: Atlas Shrugged
Watching: Dexter, Californication, House, Bones
So, I’ve been nurturing some wierd interests as of late, and instead of just emailing Jenny about it, how about I take a second and share with you, Internet? It would seem that as my courseload gets heavier, I find new and improved ways of goofing off.
School season means septa season which means podcast season. The problem is that I’ve managed to dry the well of podcasts I really like, and thusly started listening to entirely too much spoken word “junk,” including Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rynd. This is one of those books that one is “expected to know” when trying to compare intellect penises with some douchebag on the Internet. And what the hell, I liked Bioshock. I’d like to point you towards the Introduction of the text, in which the author basically says that nobody edited this floating wonder of dense word-poop. If you are okay with that, we are okay.
Also, I love how all the “masters of industry, thus the universe” are all smokers – because your context is showing! Ewww, nobody likes those bras anymore, thats all I saying.
Richard Jeni, by the way, genius. Much more engaging.
Elsewhere, Good Old Games is an amazing website that has some very decent product, they get do interesting computer science work (revamp old code to remove DRM, that ought to be fun!) and also are amusingly British. But what I looove more than anything is the design they use on thier product (and elsewhere) pages. Presumably, they use a photoshop filter to de-grey an area and toss some type above it. It’s wonderful and simple and I’m all sorts of pissed I didn’t think of it. I have the design chops of a manilla envelope full of pipe cleaners.
Basically what I’m saying is that they’re better at computers than I am.
Here’s a picture of Seinfeld’s head on a famous Bruce Lee photo, done in pencil on a tshirt. That is very far removed from those abs themselves. It’s random, and what else is there, really? It’s from Topatoco.
Ever catch yourself wondering where Ross Perot learned how to break out a chart to prove a political point? Oh, that was pretty easy to find out:
This happened on my way to find a copy of this print, which unfortunately cost more than the deleted scenes of the Zapruder film:
I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to have a decent-sized one of these, right next to my “Keep Calm” print – monochromaticization FTW. This shot, for me at least, reminds me of the duty and honor of brotherhood. And that’s something that definitely deserves to look at your TV as you sit under it, eating cheese from a can.
but dontcha worry, undergraduate science students, I have the answer: productive hobbies! Me, I’m a drinking-mid-shelf-whiskey-watch-Casino-again kind of guy. This however, does not meet the criteria of being a productive use of one’s leisure time, and I sure as hell don’t want to end up doing dishes.
Hey, what about photography? I have a habit of ending up in places I don’t belong in anyways, I might as well record the experience. Then I wouldn’t be using a DSLR to take pictures of how messy my desk is! Last night I got a Nikon D40 for a hefty discount at my local Target, which I won’t be reviewing. I know more about headphones, 19th century British politics, ikea furniture, and a $20-30 Gin than I do about photography, anyways, this thing came out like a million years ago. Ask Kevin Rose how he likes his.
Anyways, it (pictures, and the taking of them) is something I’m going to be doing (badly) going forward. I look forward to adding yet another kind of way of inflicting punishment on the internet’s sensibilities.
