What the crap?

7/04/2011

Indeed. Why does this ordinarily quite burlesque and colorful blog suddenly look like the works of Jacob Nielsen?

If you are new to this blog; move along, but if you’ve come to expect bright colors and swirly shit all over the place, take a while and harken.

I need a project to get back to my former glory, and I need to deliver myself a prompt, swift kick in the rear to get going. The best way to do this is to just publish this new design for the blog while it’s still butt-ugly so that I’ll have an incentive to fix it the fuck up as soon as humanly possible.

If you really miss the old design go visit Kajas blog.

That is all.

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The blog is dead. Long live the blog!

19/03/2009

If you managed to visit this blog in the 10 minutes or so before this post goes live you might have been slightly befuddled by the fact that your address bar doesn’t say parallaxdenigrate.net as you might have expected, but rather ctrloptcmd.com.

So I’ve finally moved the blog to a new domain, and let me tell you; It wasn’t easy. Oh, exporting and importing the MySQL tables was a breeze and implementing the 301 redirect wasn’t too complicated. No, the challenge was in deciding on a domain name that wasn’t already taken. In the process I probably bought about 15 domains just to get one I liked enough to use.

Now, gentle reader, you might ask yourself “What the fuck is supposed to be the point of all this?“, to which I might reply; “Well, even if parallaxdenigrate.net was a amusing domain name to the likes of me who are blessed with an odd sense of humor, it’s not exactly what you’d call memorable. Try to tell someone to type in ‘parallaxdenigrate.net’ into their browser and you’ll see what I mean.” You, in turn may exclaim something along the lines of “Are you retarded? How the blazing hell is ‘ctrloptcmd.com’ easier to remember than your previous parrylaxy thingie? You suck. I’m not gonna read your blog anymore.” at which juncture in our fascinating exchange I might counter with “Aha! But if you just remember controloptioncommand.com, which naturally redirects to this, abbreviated form of the same sequence, I think you’ll find it immensely easier to keep lodged in your cerebrum the unified resource locator corresponding to this, my humble blog.” at which point you’ve probably left so I’d be talking to myself.

Regardless! Here it is, the new and not at all improved version 1.000001 of parallaxdenigrate controloptioncommand.

Although I’ll be keeping parallaxdenigrate.net online for a while just to make sure nobody gets lost, I’d strongly encourage you to update your bookmarks and feeds.

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Freud on homosexuality

19/01/2009

Freud, the father of the psychoanalysis, received a letter from a woman who was deeply worried about her son, describing what she perceived as his abnormalities and seeking advice. This is Freuds reply.

Dear Mrs….

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. . . .

Sincerely yours with kind wishes,
Freud

How come we still have people trying to “cure” homosexuality with therapy? And how come married couples in California are being divorced against their will?

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On the subject of time

12/01/2009

Time has always been subject of scrutiny and discourse, philosophy and theory, science and fiction. The very concept of time is frequently disputed as at best a faulty system to explain the sequencing of entropy and extropy based on certain recurring natural phenomenae; and at worst an imaginary crutch for our lack of ability to comprehend the world in more than three dimensions.

There is little controversy however concerning the fact that we perceive time as a real and measurable phenomenon. Artifacts from the Palaeolithic suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 12,000, and possibly even 30,000 BCE. A multitude of different systems have been devised to measure, calculate and conceptualize time. The study of devices and systems to measure time is called Horology, and is a field broad enough to warrant museums, libraries and doctorates.
The act of arranging past events in ordered sequences is referred to as Chronology, while the conceptualizing of ordering and arranging future events is referred to as any one of planning, predicting, anticipating, divining, foretelling or hoping.

As a means of bringing some measure of order to the art of organizing future anticipated events several systems were devised to facilitate this process. These systems are known as calendars, and are typically agreed on as the official system for such measurements in a given society. That is; The sequence of days, weeks, months and years as well as the occurrence of any holidays or annually reoccurring events are predetermined by the official calendar.

In the western world the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, is the by far most common calendar in use. With a predetermined discrepancy of only 1 second per year, and one day every four years, the calendar divides the progression of time neatly into days, weeks, months and years; corresponding to the rotation of the earth on it’s own axis, cycles of the moon and the earths orbit of the sun.

The discrepancies mentioned means that there is, predictably, some few discrepancies in the amount of seconds in a year and the days of a month (although always the same month). However the remaining larger units of time, and their progression are static and as such even more of a central focus around which to organize, conceptualize and express measurement of time.

Take the week; A repeating cyclical pattern consisting of 7 days. It always start with the same day (sunday or monday according to region) and progresses from one day to the next until the week has come full circle, and thus starts again. If on a tuesday you inquire about when a certain event will occur, and you get the reply that it will occur the coming friday; You may safely assume that wednesday and thursday will pass between now (still, for the sake of argument: tuesday) and when said event is likely to happen.

And that is why I haven’t finished your project yet.

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Macromedia ShockZone

11/12/2008

A while ago I was doing a talk on the Flash platform for NRK, and to give the audience a bit of perspective I took a trip down memory lane and dug up some real goodies. Oh yes.

Since this is too good to not to be repeated, allow me to present; the Macromedia ShockZone site from 1997:

Oops. Seems you don’t have Flash Player installed. Click here to fix it.

Click to start, or witness the fullbrowser glory.

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