Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday

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You’ve probably noticed that there are many different spellings of Arabic names depending on which news source you are reading. The truth is that there is no consensus how to write Arabic words in English. If we are going to investigate Arabic names we must therefore use phonetic spellings. Saddam’s sons then become Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday.

Now if we translate those names from Pig Latin back into English we have Skoo Bee Doo. Is this a veiled reference to the cartoon dog from the 1970s, Scooby Doo? Can it be anything but that?

Well consider this. Scooby Doo’s final year of first-run shows was 1977. It was also in 1977 that Saddam Hussein came to power in the ruling Baath Party.

Coincidence? You decide.

— Bernard Slattery

(via Glenn)

Metabetablog

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Here’s an interesting project: metabetablog.

Metabetablog is a graphical representation of the TypePad beta testing experience, a compression of data generated in this evolving blogging environment. Each entry contains a dense chunk of sample content from the top ten most recently-updated blogs from the TypePad Devlog, gathered just before posting. The posts can be read as generative poetry, as text-snapshots, as sand through the hourglass…

I mention this because my last post got incorporated into the latest creation. Made me laugh.

Importing MT archives: month by month

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I’m starting work on importing my archives from The Long Letter into Eclecticism.

What I’m dealing with is simply the fact that I have archives dating back to November of 2000. While Movable Type has an ‘export’ feature, it exports everything. With fewer posts, that might be less of an issue, but since I’m going to have to go through post-by-post to double-check URLs, add pictures, and so on, I wanted to see if I could figure out how to import one month’s worth of posts at a time, instead of the whole kit and kaboodle.

Here’s what I ended up with…

  1. Create a new Archive Template, and put the following code into the template: 
     TITLE:
 AUTHOR:
 DATE:
 PRIMARY CATEGORY:
 CATEGORY:
 -----
 BODY:

 -----
 EXTENDED BODY:

 -----
 EXCERPT:

 -----
 COMMENT:

 AUTHOR:

 EMAIL:

 URL:

 IP:

 DATE:

 -----
 PING:

 TITLE:

 URL:

 IP:

 BLOG NAME:

 DATE:

 -----
 --------
  2. In MT, under the ‘Weblog Config’ button, go to the ‘Archiving’ section. Click the ‘Add new…’ button, set the Archive Type to ‘Monthly’, and the ‘Template’ to the name of the new template that you just created, then click ‘Add.’

  3. You should now have two options under the ‘Monthly’ archive type. Switch over to the new archive template that you just created, and put the following in the ‘Archive File Template’ box:

    export/.txt

  4. Click the ‘Rebuild Site’ option, choose the ‘Rebuild Monthly Archive Only’ option, and click the ‘Rebuild’ button.

    Once MT is done rebuilding, you should have a series of files inside an ‘export’ directory inside your site’s archives directory (in my case, that ended up being /longletter/archives/export/, your configuration may be slightly different). There will be one file for each month, named something like 2003-07.txt.

  5. In TypePad, under the ‘Manage’ tab for your weblog, choose the ‘Import/Export’ option. In box A, put in the URL for your first month’s export file (for me, this was http://www.djwudi.com/longletter/archives/export/2000-11.txt). Leave the ‘Encoding’ drop-down menu set to ‘Unicode’, and hit the ‘Import’ button.

  6. There is no step 6. You’re done!

So that’s it. Now that I can go month by month, I’ll import one month, go through each post to make sure all the links are correct, then move on to the next month. This will probably take a while, as I’ve got close to three years of posts to check, but I’m on my way!

And the word ‘PROJECT’ flashed before my eyes…

When You're Evil

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I found this song by Voltaire on a sampler from Projekt Records. It’s a good sampler, but this is easily the best of the bunch. Gypsy-ish melody, music that’s mostly violin and drumkit, and wonderful lyrics that sound to me like they’re sung with a quite mischevious glint in the eye. Gets me grinning every time I hear it.

When the Devil is too busy,
and Death’s a bit too much,
They call on me — by name you see —
for my special touch.
To the gentlemen I’m Miss Fortune,
To the ladies I’m Sir Prize,
But call me by any name,
any way it’s all the same…

I’m the fly in your soup,
I’m the pebble in your shoe,
I’m the pea beneath your bed,
I’m a bump on every head,
I’m the peel on which you slip,
I’m a pin in every hip,
I’m the thorn in your side,
Makes you wriggle and writhe —

(Chorus)
And it’s so easy when you’re evil!
This is the life, you see
The Devil tips his hat to me.
I do it all because I’m evil,
And I do it all for free…
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.

While there’s children to make sad,
While there’s candy to be had,
While there’s pockets left to pick,
While there’s grannies left to trip down the stairs
I’ll be there, I’ll be waiting round the corner
It’s a game, i’m glad I’m in it
’cause there’s one born every minute.

(Chorus)

I pledge my allegiance to all things dark
And I promise on my damned soul
To do as I am told, Lord Beelzebub
Has never seen a soldier quite like me,
Not only does his job but does it happily.

I’m the fear that keeps you awake,
I’m the shadows on the wall,
I’m the monsters they become,
I’m the nightmare in your skull,
I’m a dagger in your back,
An extra turn upon the rack,
I’m the quivering in your heart,
A stabbing pain, a sudden start.

(Chorus)

And I’d do it all for free,
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.
And I’d do it all for free,
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.

It gets so lonely being evil.
What I’d do to see a smile,
Even for a little while,
And no one loves you when you’re evil…

I’m lying though my teeth!
Your tears are all the company I need!

And who says Goth’s don’t have a sense of humor? ;)

Neverland

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Ooooh…I’m all sorts of excited about this: Neverland, a modern retelling of Peter Pan.

Neverland is [Damion Dietz] updated take exploring that thesis, with the Lost Boys a group of urban punks, Tinkerbell a single parent, Tiger Lilly a drag queen and Hook a sadomasochistic fury out to destroy all the beauty he envies.

…it works both as a fable and on straightforwardly realistic terms as well — and he’s not afraid to explore the darker implications of Peter’s refusal to accept adult responsibility and Captain Hook’s obsession with his own lost youth and beauty.

…Neverland seems like an appropriate way to celebrate the centenary of a book that never grows old. It opens up the book to newer dimensions, not to mention new audiences. Adults who remember the story only vaguely will be induced to pick up the book again, to check how the metaphors line up with the events in the book, to see whether they can see those pale colors when they close their eyes.

— from various reviews on the Neverland press page

(via Wil)

Darwinian Poetry

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First off, a disclaimer: in general, poetry is just not my thing. The only poet I’ve ever really enjoyed reading is e. e. cummings, very rarely has any other poetry caught my eye.

That said, the Darwinian Poetry project that Chris Boese mentioned caught my eye, and sounds like a really fun little experiment. So, what’s Darwinian Poetry?

Ok, here’s the idea: starting with a whole bunch (specifically 1,000) randomly generated groups of words (our “poems”), we are going to subject them to a form of natural selection, killing off the “bad” ones and breeding the “good” ones with each other. If enough generations go by, and if the gene pool is rich enough, we should eventually start to see interesting poems emerge.

The cool part is that YOU are the arbiter of what constitutes “good” and “bad” poetry. Once you start, you will be presented with two poems. In all likelihood they will both be abysmal pieces of nonsensical garbage. That’s ok. All you have to do is read them both and pick the one you find more appealing, for whatever reason. Your decision might be based on a single word that you happen to like. It doesn’t matter. Just pick whichever one strikes your fancy.

Once you choose a poem, your vote will be recorded and two more poems will appear. Keep doing this for as long as you like, and definitely come back frequently.

Over time the poems picked by you, and I hope by thousands of other people, will interbreed and more and more interesting poems will emerge. It could take a while. Weeks…months…I don’t know. It all depends on how many people participate, and how often.

The funny thing is, after clicking through a few, I’ve seen some that are entirely nonsensical, and others that rank right up there with some of the “official” poetry I’ve read.

But then, given my aforementioned views on poetry, that may not be saying much. ;)

The Blogger Voter List

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Mike Walsh, who inspired this recent post of mine, is starting to track the Blogger Voter List. He’s looking to keep a list of bloggers who, in essence, put their money where their mouth is, and vote as well as rant.

Remember, you can blog all you want about politicians and political issues but if you don’t vote, it doesn’t matter. And politicians only listen to registered voters. So register to vote, if you haven’t already, and then register on “The Blogger Voter List” so politicians and the people who manage political campaigns realize that bloggers (and people who read blogs) are a new force to be reckoned with.

He’s also looking for somone with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) experience to assist in coding a site to track this, so it doesn’t have to remain an updated-by-hand listing. I wish my knowledge were up to par, but unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Anyone else feel like stepping up to the plate?