Tim Donlan

Fuck Spammers

DELETE FROM bB_comments WHERE commenttext LIKE ‘%h1%’ Do you see this line? That’s my righteous sword that cleaves through comment-spam like the breath of god. Why they attempt to emphasize their futile gestures for porn and poker sites with a header tag is beyond me, perhaps lesser hosts

My bread and butter...

…has been twofold on these draining late-summer days. FirstN-Game, an insidiously difficult platform jumper, reminiscent of old NES games, both in the frustration factor and skill quotient. The tiny flash gem contains a fully functioning physics system, responsive enemies, death-defying jumps and 500 levels (5 per episode). Plus, custom made

Escape Artists

After a solid month of reading, I finally wrapped up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It’s one of those dense novels that takes a while to plow through, regardless of its literary merit. And this is a book that won a Pulitzer. The award is well deserved;

going dutch

Slate [http://www.slate.com/id/2124561/entry/2124562/] is running an excellent 5-piece article (one episode per day) on Amsterdam and European life. The writer catches on all the high points of this city – the canals, coffeehouses, gezellig, shrooming – and has a lot of the same sentiments I felt

Freud, Drugs and the mind

By now, most psychologists have thrown ole Sigmund on the pile of depreciated science. For now, his ideas live on in literary and cultural studies. His greatest gift – the terms id, ego and superego. Even the most mediocre psychology 101 student, not knowing the difference between chomsky and b.f.

Ethereal Felines...In space!

“I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write,” says Dr. Richard Ames in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Ames acts as the author’s avatar as he moves through his own universe – meeting, screwing and killing other characters in Heinlein’s pantheon. Like

Feed Me!

If you use the custom google interface , you can put the RSS feed of this very blog on your homepage. Neato! It looks like this: Just create a custom content section and add this RSS url: http://www.daydalus.net/blog/rss.php?ver=2 And if you need a

so this is a wednesday night...

The cicadas play audile tag with their cellophane wings, up in the navy silhouette clouds. I’m back in shadow, melding back with the harsh smoke and new painted blown glass. Dewey feet dripping through tiny treetops, mini forest. Not hot, just a steamed bathroom, where you write words in

MMO Duper makes bank

This owns – http://plaguelands.com/?page_id=172 A guy details an EQ2 exploit and all the money he made. Expect to see more stories like this as online games continue to increase in popularity.

Men of Destiny

I finished recently two books: The Last American Man and the Cat Who walks through walls. While entertaining, I wouldn’t call either great books. Airplane novels – a way to pass the time with text. Last American Man is the bio of Eustace Conway, a modern day Daniel Boone or

No, I havn't been slacking...

First: http://www.daydalus.net/ellipsis/ The litmag is done. I’m very proud of the finished product, especially my two fellow artists Richard and Anna. They have some raw talent that never ceases to amaze me. Feel free to download the pdf for free, or purchase the printed copy

Yet more War Inside Spottings

Bush official signs up for RFID implant! http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/19/former_bush_official.html What’ll be next?

I'm not really one for politics but...

Taken from here: http://65.108.69.156/tle2005/tle328-20050717-02.html Bill of Rights (Translated) The Government is too evil and stupid- We hold this truth to be self evident-the Government is evil and stupid and unless watched like a hawk, will abuse people, violate their rights and their property.

Link Roundup

Three things – William Gibson wrote an interesting article [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/gibson.html] on “Remix culture”. He talks about how William S. Burroughs was one of the original remixers – cutting and pasting old science fiction texts into a strange amalgam. With digital technology, the results

Synthetic Biology OMG

I was bored at work and came across some interesting articles. Craig Venter, the guy who sequenced the human genome, started a new company to do synthetic biology for industrial use. Here’s his new company [http://syntheticgenomics.com/about.htm]. They plan to take a simple organism, like E.

Episode III: Geeks vs. Sloths

Neal Stephenson in New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?pagewanted=1] (Use this [http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2005%2F06%2F17%2Fopinion%2F17stephenson.html%3Fpagewanted%3D1] for login ) -The reclusive badass speaks. Very interestesting article,

ALife Thoughts - Phenotype and Genotype

In the first part of this here [http://www.daydalus.net/blog/?postid=22] (excuse the psuedo thesis-paper language), I wrote about some qualities of “life” and how digital life can model after this. Specifically, I talked about how life is rooted in a datatype – DNA for biological life, and

Draft Craft Manifesto

Shamelessly ripped from Boing Boing [http://boingboing.net/], who in turn got it from here [http://ullamaaria.typepad.com/hobbyprincess/2005/03/draft_craft_man.html]. Thought this was a pretty cool list of reasons/benefits from making stuff. Also highlights the difference between creating and consuming. 1. People get

Link Roundup

I might start doing this weekly, just a collection of cool links that I found over the past week: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peak Oil – a doom and gloom prediction that once we reach the height of the oil bell curve, it’s all downhill. National Geographic [http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/

It's that time again...

You might feel it behind the eyes but you’re not that suave lovable guy every girl wants to wrap her arms around. You’re just part of the herd, another clonetrooper with matching uniform. Look in the mirror. Those same eyes are lethargic, delayed reaction. You can almost see

God, Storytelling and Life of Pi

Spoiler alert: This review might contain spoilers. I don’t think it’s anything drastic, and besides, books are more about epiphany and revelation than surprise. If you read this review you’ll still love the book. And if you want to go in a virgin, get reading, I’ll

The Illusion of Permanence

Amidst the frustration and rage deriving from a recent mp3 fiasco (I tried to use the ipod plugin for winamp and subsequently formatted my ipod and lost half the music on my harddrive. Note: I strongly suggest NOT using this program.), I’m beginning to long for the old days

Real Quick

http://trashotron.com/agony/news/2005/05-23-05.htm#052405 Interview with Chuck Palahniuk for some radio show. It’s pretty long (42 min) with lots of cool details about ChuckP and his work. Chuck actually talked about having an over-abundance of media bombarding us, and its difficult to find an

DIY Society

One of the growing trends out on the web is the idea of do-it-yourself [http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1061773,00.html?promoid=roth] . From MAKE magazine, a geek’s guide to building rube-Goldberg contraptions, to services like LULU and IFilm. Media is easy to make,

Mysteries of the IPod

Since January, my car has been a sanctuary of musical selection, free from obnoxious DJs [http://www.99x.com/] and advertising barragement. I have an iPod [http://www.apple.com/ipod/] with iTrip [http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itrip/] hooked into a PowerPod [http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powerpod/]. However,