Bitter Old Man (in training)

How to get mIRC to (stop) autojoining IRC channels when you connect.

2009-12-09T23:31:50Z

I've had another hair-tearing bout of stupidity and frustration trying to find out how to get mIRC to stop joining certain channels automatically when I connect. I'd set it to join them long ago, but had forgotten how.

Looking through the options and help files didn't help, and the no-doubt correct advice from the #mIRC channel I was too stupid to translate into action.

I figured it out finally. So I'm posting it here in case it might help someone else with the same problem in future.

(Digressing, I want to say thank you to all the kind people who have posted stuff online to help clueless twits like me.)

Anyway here is my take on the answer:
I figured it out finally. For reference, the answer I

needed was something like:
"Go to the Tools -> Favorites -> Organize Favorites
(or Alt+J or click the 'Favorites' button (little heart

picture, third from the left))
Then, in the 'mIRC Favorties' window select the channel

you are interested in from the list (use the 'Add' to add

a channel if it isn't there)
Once you have selected the channel click the 'Edit'

button. In the resulting 'Edit Channel' window, click on

the 'Join on connect' tickbox. Click 'OK'. Then check

in the "Enable join on connect" tickbox. Click 'OK'

again."

This has worked for me. See the mIRC website for advice

by people who actually know what they are talking about:
http://mirc.com/

(mIRC automatically joining channels.)

captain_button @ 2009-10-15T15:36:00

2009-10-15T19:37:41Z

Happy Birthday, jrasku!

I need to STFU online

2009-04-21T22:32:11Z

Other places online, I mean. Not here, although I've been doing a pretty good job of that lately.

I mean on comment threads anywhere but the very few places I'm actually welcome.

Most places have long since made it clear that unless I am making a joke or providing friendly information, I am unwanted. And usually not even when I am.

Besides, I like to think a bit and check my facts before posting anything of substance, which is contrary to all the laws of comment threads where everything is supposed to be superfast and anything not posted in the first few hours won't ever be seen by much of anyone.

(Friendly information is information which does not interfere with people's preconceptions.)

Obviously, here doesn't count, since I'm welcome pretty much by definition. And those who don't want to hear my crap just shouldn't come here. (Though lots of people can't grasp the last point.)

Where does LJ get their stupid interface tricks from anyway? A cut disappears just because you remove the default text from it before pasting in your own? And the preview doesn't tell you anything about how the cut version will look.

Damn kids with their intertubes and their presliced cheese food and their Tony Jacquelin glof club sets...

Macafee site advisor annoyanceware.

2008-12-19T22:46:19Z

I like the Mcafee site advisor, or at least the idea of it, but they made a serious effort to lose my business today.

They tried to "upgrade" it without really asking so they could take over all my searching. And stole extra screen estate without asking, by adding a superfluous search bar. I'm not using the search bar I have now, and see no reason to. (I should probably look around to see if I can turn that off too.) If I want to search I open a new Firefox window which defaults to the Google Advanced search page. BTW it was the Google search bar that warned me that Mcafee was trying to hijack searches.

Do they have courses for this stuff? "How to piss off your users 101"?

If they just made it an option I might have considered it. Unless it was one of those harassment "choices" where they try and hustle you into a decision by getting in the way of doing what you want to do.

And other charming "features" like an "options" button on the Add-on box that doesn't do anything. And a popup menu that is more interested in hustling you than helping you.

But Google and Yahoo answers help me out with this. Searched for "search bar" "mcafee site advisor" and on the first page was this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081212193339AABN84j

My thanks to King2day, jebber, Yahoo! Answers and Google..

Ruri from Martian Successor Nadesico saying baka bakka

2008-11-20T02:38:31Z

I just got incredibly frustrated looking for something that I was sure would be on the web in all sorts of places. But I can't find it.

So I'm going to do something about that, I hope.

I was chatting online with a friend and mentioned Ruri's catch phrase "baka bakka" from Martian Successor Nadesico. It means something like "a bunch of fools". See the links for more about that.

I went out to find an audio or video file of it. I couldn't find one anywhere. I spent at least a half hour looking.

What am I, STUPID?

So anyway, since such a file is not easily findable, I decide to make one and put it up. Maybe the next person will find it here. Hey, it worked for my HP printer post. So here is an mp3 sound file of it.

Baka Bakka

There is a bit of the previous word at the start, sorry. This is from my US release DVD # 2 "Mission to Mars". It is from the teaser of Episode 5, "Ruri's Navigation Logs".

Like everything I do it is half-assed because I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm just using stuff other people made. Thank you, everyone.

(If you want a job done half-assed, do it yourself.)

I'd better also put "baka baka" and "baka-baka" because people might search for those forms.

Anyway I have to get on to other stupidities...

Edit: Fixed a typo and changed "preview" to "teaser".

Another comment here because blogspot hates me

2008-10-31T23:03:07Z

Putting a comment here because blogspot won't let me post it there.

Wait ... another Heather?

I did a bunch of pottery work with a lady named Mrs. Brand when I was a kid. I remember it fondly, which is rather rare in my childhood. Now I'm trying to think if I actually have any of that stuff left anymore. Need to look when I go home for Thanksgiving.

Fufilled my Civic Duty.

2008-10-31T01:57:14Z

Did early voting today. Had to stand in line for 2 hours. A poll worker said they had had something like 12% of the county's registered voters in so far.

Of course, since this was on a Diebold machine, I can't be sure who I voted for.

captain_button @ 2008-10-24T18:19:00

2008-10-24T22:29:58Z

Putting a comment here because blogspot won't let me post it there.

I try and submit a comment using OpenID and this LJ account, and it replies:

Google Error
Bad Request
Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request.

Anyway, here is the comment:

Data massaging like that is a large part of my day job. And two people are better also because of the rubber dummy effect, i.e. Explaining the problem to someone else can give you the insight you need.

General agreement about politics, but my paranoid side still worries about the Democrat talent for snatching defeat from the slavering jaws of victory.

Heh. My "prove you are a real person" word is "yoter". An omen?

Saw The Princess Bride again

2008-10-11T18:19:53Z

Hello.

I am the Dread Pirate Roberts.

I leave no survivors.

Prepare to die.

If there is a credit crunch...

2008-10-08T22:13:59Z

Why do my credit card companies keep nagging me to take more cash advances?

Jerky video playing DVDs on my computer

2008-08-03T00:48:36Z

I've finally fixed a problem with my computer that I've been wrestling with all week. So I'll go on about it here in the hopes it may turn up on someone's search and help them with a similar problem. (I got a thank you on my earlier one about my HP printer!)

When I tried to play a DVD directly on my computer the sound and video was very jerky. I figured I'd fouled something up when I was turning off Autoplay on my CD-ROM the week before last to get around the "Macromedia Splash Screen" BS that Motorola put on the CD-ROM with their cable modem to make it impossible to use the CD-ROM.

I went down my usual false trails of thinking it was an issue with the VideoLAN VLC media player I use. It wasn't. Checked that by copying the DVD to my hard drive. VLC played it fine from there.

Did some more searching and found the answer thanks to various kind people who'd posted stuff about it.

It turns out that on Windows XP machines there is a bug. If the machine is having trouble getting data from the CD-ROM it drops down to an older and simpler data transfer protocol, "PIO". And then it gets stuck and won't switch back to the faster "DMA" protocol.

There are various ways to fix this, and you may have to try several to get one that works for you.

Anyway, here are the web pages I found helpful. My sincere thanks to the people who wrote them.

http://www.techmind.org/dvd/index.html

http://winhlp.com/node/10

http://sniptools.com/vault/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp#comment1891

(What happened to the button for creating URLs here? What have I messed up now?)

(Edit: Those buttons are only in the "Rich Text" mode, not the "HTML" mode. But they weren't showing up for me when I was switching before. Maybe the net was laggy and I was too impatient.)

Disclaimer: I'm just a half-assed dilettante messing with this stuff. Don't mistake me for someone who actually knows what he is talking about. Use at you own risk. May contain nuts.

(Hey! The Firefox spell check right click menu works right in here now. Thanks to whoever it was that fixed it.)

I was hoping for "The Haughty Intellectual"

2008-07-17T04:02:14Z

But I can't really argue with this. Fortunately (?) I didn't own a trench coat back then.

Your result for The Personality Defect Test...

Spiteful Loner

You are 86% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 57% Brutal, and 0% Arrogant.

You are the Spiteful Loner, the personality type that is most likely to go on a shooting rampage. In high school, you were probably that kid who wore all black and who sat alone in a corner of the lunch room, drawing pictures of dead babies. You are a rational person and tend to hold emotions in very low-esteem; not only that, but you are also rather introverted, meaning you probably bury any emotions you feel deep inside yourself, like all of the bodies in your backyard. Combine these traits with your dislike of others and your brutality, and it seems that you would be quite likely to shoot innocent people in a rampage. Most likely, you also have low self-esteem. Hell, I get low self-esteem just looking at you. This is only yet one more incentive to go on a shooting rampage, because you wouldn't care if you died as a result. Granted, you probably haven't gone on a shooting rampage and probably never will, but all the motivations are there. All you need is for someone to push you over the edge, calling you names and belittling you. Like me. But don't shoot me. I have a 101 mile-long knife, you know. In conclusion, your personality is defective because you are too introverted, brutal, insecure, and rather unemotional. No wonder no one hangs around you, you morbid, cold-hearted freak!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Televangelist.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Capitalist Pig, the Smartass, and the Sociopath.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

About Saint_Gasoline

I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Take The Personality Defect Test at HelloQuizzy

How the Hell do you get quiz HTML to show up?

2008-07-17T03:57:06Z

How the Hell do you get quiz HTML to show up?

(Actually I've figured this out now, but I'm posting anyway in case it might help someone else with this problem.)

I couldn't get the HTML from online quiz sites to show up. And in my usual stupid way, I couldn't figure out why. So I was writing a bitchy post asking how people do it when I had an idea and tried it. It worked. Classic "rubber dummy theory" in action.

The crucial bit is that the LJ editor doesn't pay proper attention when you change from the "Rich Text" tab to the "HTML" tab. Anything you have already typed is not treated as HTML. You have to change to the HTML tab FIRST and then enter the HTML. If you have already entered it, do a select all, copy, paste, and then try the preview again. Or something like that. It make take a few tries to get it to do it right.

(I suppose this might be a feature instead of a bug, so you can mix both kinds in one post. But it that case there should be something in the FAQ about. I checked, and if it is there it isn't in any place I'd think to look.)

And while we're at it, apparently Livejournal also likes to fuck you over if you have two post windows over at one time, like say, if you are checking how the editor works or something. It flushes the older one. And doesn't save it as a draft.

(And the firefox spelling checker right-click correction still doesn't work.)

(All this is on a WinXP machine with Firefox 2.0.0.16 .)

Are Microsoft and LiveJournal in a bidding war for bad interface writers or something?

Alternatively, I'm just being a stupid FH again.

Got free money, need to decide what to do.

2008-06-16T21:15:25Z

I got my stimulus check today, along with an unexpected but trivial refund. Now my inner selves are waffling over what to do.

Self-interest says pay off debt.

Good citizen says buy something, that's what it is for.

Altruist says give it to charity, they'll spend it on something that someone actually needs.

Paranoid says give it to a presidential campaign.

2001: A Space Odyssey - my theory

2008-06-13T04:54:41Z

People were talking about this over on the SJGames Pyramid boards, so that seemed as good an excuse as any to dredge up another old USENET posting.

Original Post Here

This is my interpretation of the ending of the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey

G Williams wrote:

> Can anyone explain exactly *what* was supposed to happen in the weird
> bit at the end when he leaves the ship and goes out in the pod and
> ends up in the room?

My take:

Forced-draft evolution.

In the Dawn of Man segment, the monolith transformed advanced animals
into primitive people. The tangible manifestation of this was
tool-use, particularly weapon use, with the benefit of improved
hunting ability and the dubious benefit of homicide/murder/war.

[ Some people would disagree with the premise that there is
a fundamental difference between animals and people. Perhaps,
but IMHO such a difference is fundamental to 2001. ]

The first homicide weapon turns into an orbital nuclear weapons
launcher. Clarke has mentioned this, though acknowledging that
you really can't tell that in the movie. All the other satellites
you see before the Pan Am Space Clipper are nuke launchers also.

In one click of the movie camera humans have evolved from primitive
people to advanced people.

The monoliths on the moon and around Jupiter are a trap to lure in
a human sample for the next step, to transform advanced people
into primitive "Star people", a higher level of being as far
above humans as humans are above animals.

Bowman is sucked in by the monolith, which is a star gate that
sends him via faster than light travel to wherever it is that the
beings doing this whole uplift project are.

Before they can run Bowman through the accelerated evolution
process they have to let him finish his human life first. Or
maybe they have to observe him for 40 years or so to get enough
baseline data to calibrate the evolution machine for humans.

Finally they evolve Bowman into a Star Child, and send him back to
Earth, where he gets to decide what to do with the remaining
unsuperevolved humans.

In the book the Star Child arrives just as World War III is
breaking out. He doesn't like the idea, so he detonates all
the nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth, harmlessly.

Just my interpretation of the book and movie, plus
Lost Worlds of 2001 which has various earlier versions of
the story.

You Lightyearage May Vary.

Murphy averted, at least momentarily

2008-06-11T05:51:05Z

I wants to note, for the record, that for once I found something one of the first places I looked, instead of one of the last places I could look.

A video switchbox , as it happens.

Goddess PsychoHistory has fallen, and she can't get up!

2008-05-29T22:37:01Z

For lack of anything better to say, I've dredged up an old USENET post of mine from the long ago days of the 20th century.

This was in response to james_nicoll asking why there was so much Alternate History SF around.

I was a bit proud of what I cranked out, at least by my standards:
(I've left it as is except for fixing typos and formatting. Obviously some of this stuff is dated.)
(Why is LJ text editor so sucky? If I put blank lines in there, maybe I want them there!)

Because the Goddess PsychoHistory has fallen, and she can't get up.

More precisely, Eris has tripped her, and jumped up and down on
her with spiked shoes, scattering tiny little bits to the five winds.

In the Golden Age of SF, it was often postulated, if not assumed
that psychology and sociology and suchlike would soon undergo
fundamental breakthroughs and lead to strong technologies,
just as had happened chemistry and physics.

As the Golden Age faded, and eventually the New Wave, people
began to realize that breaking through in these social sciences
might be harder than anticipated, and that even after the process
of history was understood, there might not be anything feasible to be done.

But through it all, there was the underlying idea that history
was fundamentally deterministic, that people behave they way they
do for reasons, and that at least in principle, the clockwork
universe could be totally envisioned from its initial state.

While there was wide disagreement as to how the future would
develop, it was agreed that whatever the course *was* pretty
much inevitable [1]. The blind men argued about what the elephant
was like, but they were sure it was a mammal.

In the 1980s, some cracks began showing, as the energy crisis
abated instead of spiraling down into a Mad Max scenario. And
the Third World dominoes fail to fall as per schedule, and some
even stood back up.

Middle Eastern terrorists neglect to build atomic bombs, despite
the reasonably-priced do-it-yourself kits available at any Radio
Shack.

The ecology neglects to suddenly nose-dive into oblivion.

Then in the 1990s everything went crazy.

The Soviet Union collapsed with little bloodshed. When
everybody knew that the Kremlin would definitely start WWIII
to distract the populace from their lack of decent VCRs. Or at
the very least have a civil war with nuclear weapons.

Damn-it, can't these people read the script?!

Then the US lead coalition trounces Iraq soundly, having neglected
to remember that the US wasn't allowed to win wars after Vietnam.

In the 1980s I took it as given that there were three hopeless
situations in the world where no solution was possible and massive
bloodbaths were inevitable. South Africa, Northern Ireland, and
Israel/Palestine.

All three places spent the 90s making me look like a fool, which
pleased me greatly [2].

The inevitable March of the Morons was canceled when not enough
morons showed up.

The unstoppable population bomb fizzled because ... well it did,
but I'm not sure why.

The lunar colonies with cheap fusion power failed to show up, as
did the air cars and rocket-packs.

But everybody has a computer, which churlishly refuses to become
sentient and try and take over the world.

To sum up, for the past twenty years the world has been vigorously
rubbing our noses in the fact that history is an unpredictable
chaotic process.

So if history is one long series of crap shoots, what would
have happened if William the Bastard hadn't rolled that natural
crit back in 1066?

Dreams don't Fail. Dreams don't Succeed. Sh*t just happens.

That's my theory, anyway.

[1] I should tie this in with time travel stories, but I don't
have the classic ones organized in my mind. If you chart date of
publication vs. how difficult time is to change, what does the curve
look like?

[2] Of course, very recent events make it look like I may have been
1/3 right after all. Bugger.

For the original USENET post look here.

Panties for Peace!

2008-05-28T22:07:17Z

In Burma, that is.

Activists exasperated at the failure of diplomacy to apply pressure on Burma's military regime are resorting to a new means of protest against the regime's recent crackdown: sending female underwear to Burmese embassies.

There's got to be some snarky remark about fanservice or vending machines or something here, but I can't quite get it to jell...

Didn't Frank Zappa make a quilt of women's underwear thrown on stage at his concerts? Maybe they can get this as a weapon of mass cooties.

The world is not just weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we can imagine.

More seriously, The situation is Burma sounds horrible, and I hope this helps.

More links:
Panties for Peace - Canada
CTV.ca story

Update: Stuff about the Zappa quilt.

Lost in Dreams

2008-05-22T03:22:21Z

If you lost in dreams and then realize that you don't want to find your way out, are you still lost?

Book cataloging update

2008-05-10T02:31:02Z

In case you were wondering, I mostly finished cataloging my stuff. Books and games are all done (4595). Videos are done (662). CDs are done (165).

Still to do when and if:
Comic books. 6-8 long boxes. not sure if I should get a special comics db thing or just shoehorn them into Readerware somehow.
Magazines, slick and pulp. A few hundred, maybe.
Audio cassettes. Dozens.
LPs. Three or four boxes. And no way to play them.

IPU knows if I'll ever get to the rest or put stuff up on LibraryThing.

Conclusion: I have way too much crap.

Secondary conclusion: My speeling sucks.

Amazon search wierdness

2008-05-05T01:48:14Z

I was searching Amazon.com, and it has some strange quirks. If you search for:

Barefoot Gen Writing the Truth

You get one hit, volume 6 of the Barefoot Gen manga.

If you search for:

Barefoot Gen

You get 8 pages of results, which is reasonable enough. except that volume 6, "Barefoot Gen Writing the Truth" is not on any of them. Volumes 1-5 are, but not 6, but we know 6 is listed on amazon. Weird.

When I was cataloging books I found that doing a Google site search for amazon.com often turned up things the amazon search wouldn't. I've found this to be true in a lot of cases, that Google is better at finding stuff on a website than that website's own search.

Where is the HP printer toolbox?

2008-04-20T05:16:12Z

Sorry I haven't been posting.

I did find out eventually where the HP printer toolbox is.

I'm pissed off at my HP printer right now, and could not find the answer to that question anywhere obvious on Google. So I'm putting it here in the hopes that maybe it will help someone else with this problem.

When you change the print cartridge on an HP PSC1200 printer, the next you try to print something it whines at you to go to the "printer toolbox" and align the print heads or calibrate the print heads.

So I look in the menus for the printer toolbox.

Start -> All Programs -> Hewlett-Packard -> HP PSC1200 series -> (Nothing about a toolbox)
Start -> All Programs -> Hewlett-Packard -> Memories Disc-> (Nothing about a toolbox)

Start -> Printers and Faxes -> hp psc 1200 series -> look in the menus -> (Nothing about a toolbox)

Search My Documents and then C:\ for file names containing "toolbox" -> nothing about HP printers.

Got some help from a friend on IRC. Turns out that HP expects you to just know from tea leaves or something that you have to go:

Start -> Printers and Faxes -> hp psc 1200 series -> Printer -> Properties -> General -> Printing Preferences -> Services -> Where you finally find a button saying "Open the HP toolbox".

How obvious, I don't know why I didn't realize immediately that was how it had to be. [/sarcasm]

Anyway, I hope this helps someone else down the road.

Another phrasing of the question for the search engines:

Where is the HP toolbox?

I haz bin lolcatd!

2008-03-11T21:05:59Z

Or rather my cat Tigger has been.

(OK, how are you supposed to get lj to stop making everything a URL?)

That said, I don't get it.

3500 books of SF on the wall...

2008-01-08T05:46:29Z

3500 books cataloged.

Still caught in the posting bind.

Been brooding on people who come up with elaborate explanations for non-problems like braille on drive-up ATMs, and azi variation in CJ Cherryh's books. I wonder if there is a proper name for that.

Half-watching: Ergo Proxy

An awful lot of the anime I find myself watching starts out as at least possibly science fiction but digresses into fantasy. Though very little would count as hard science fiction by book standards.

I keep meaning to add stuff to tvtropes.org but I always procrastinate so I can do a better job later, or so I pretend.

Lethargy

2007-12-22T20:52:17Z

Ok, I'm up to 3001 book cataloged. whee

I haven't been posting because of the usual perfectionist/procrastinator dynamic. I think of something to post about, but I put off actually doing it because I want to do it just right and check my facts, get wikipedia links, etc. But that makes it such a big project that I keep putting it off, and eventually the idea is stale.

I'm getting by.

Lewis Black has a funny bit about creationists, which I saw over at Pharyngula.

Addition: 3001 books means I've done almost all the small paperbacks and the larger paperbacks I am told should not be called "trade", and started in on the hardcovers. Still to go, rest of the hardbacks, game books (other than White Wolf), and comics.