Socialist Sushi

So Amber was cleaning out the garage, and pulled in some boxes of papers we were going through. I found a paper I wrote for an english class in 1997. This is the start of the concluding paragraph:

As a virtual reality Utopia works. Unfortunately this is not saying much: in other realities young Skywalker defeats the Empire with the aid of his heretofore unknown twin sister, a smuggler and a giant furball known as “Chewie.”

Yes, I actually used “heretofore.”

Another line:

It is interesting to note that not all Utopian ideas try to be pretty: for example, Orwell’s 1984 or, for those who love the classics, Escape from New York.

I Got an A on the paper. Go figure. One of the teacher’s comments: “Writing style is a little stiff at times…” No idea what she was smoking.

The link made it onto Boing Boing, and it truly is a wonderful thing: Waffle-making robot a hit

Funnily enough, I read this article after reading the latest installment of Cory Doctorow’s story Themepunks, which is about people doing odd things with junk technology.

I’m loving the story. The first real linux box I built was a 486/100 with 16 megs o’ RAM. It served as a web proxy for 4 of us in my dad’s office, giving us all ‘net access over the screaming fast 56K connection. And it worked flawlessly. A year or two later I would use another 486 scrounged out of a box of parts shoved in a closet to run an anonymous remailer.

I’ve never done anything astoundingly cool with old, discarded parts, but I have been able to use older computers to do useful things. The latest is taking “obsolete” computers donated by my employer and setup linux boxen at Amber’s clinic.

Besides… the robot makes waffles. What else is there to say, really?

Oh, and go read Themepunks.

Just got back from watching Serenity. I liked it.

I had read a review or two saying it didn’t translate well from small to big screen, but I have to disagree. it was definately an enjoyable flick, pretty true to the series.

One thing I like about it (don’t worry, no spoilers): It’s not all smiles and sunshine. There’s a lot of pain in it, which makes it much more believable.

If you liked the show, or even halfway dug it, I recommend you take the time to see this.