Fun with Finals and Stuff...

OK. Finals are over. Unfortunately, they required more than doodling in margins, which is--I think--the thing I learned to do best over the past semester in lectures. I became a master at doodling "Bobbo the Insane, One-Eyed Clown". He was, by far, the coolest. But nonetheless, he's in the trash bin now. I'll miss you, Bobbo.

I have zero comments. That means I have no friends. Will you be my friend?

Yup. That makes it all better.

Fun with Moops, Number the One

Okay, everyone. The moment you've all been waiting for.

The one.

The first.

But not the only...

Well, now it's the only but it won't be in a while...

You're. . . still waiting?...

(Great big, expensive-sounding fanfare begins.)

The Boyumblog Moop Review!

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#1. The Smartest, Most Satanic Moop in the Universe

The universe is a big place, and there are a lot of smart people, most of them in the universe, which is a big place. Most of these people, inhabiting the universe, that big place, are moops. Some of them don't know it, others do but try to hide it. But not this moop.

Because this moop isn't even a person. This moop follows moo quite closely, I hear, making it easier for moo-people to 'migrate' to its wonderful loins. (Loins? Seriously, Boyum...)

Of course, I'm talking about the Python Object-Oriented, Live-Coding, Multi-User Domain, of which the obvious mnemonic is... MOOP? What happened to POOLCMUD? I guess it just doesn't have the same ring to it. Whatever this 'MOOP' is, the guys who made it are really smart, I guess. All those hyphenated words... you'd hafta be.

And even to run it, I'm having problems right from the start. After deciding to give this MOOP a shot, I entered the "Getting Started" area to find out how I, too, could migrate myself to this wonderful state of moopdom. I never liked the moo-rons in Moo anyway. The first instructions...

'Unzip it into a working directory.' - OK. Check. Downloaded the .zip and put it in a working directory (I chose number C), which was easy to do, because all of my directories are working. I mean, how could I put it in a NON-working directory. Jeez, maybe these geeks aren't as smart as I thought.

And on I go... and the next instruction reads:

'Make sure that python is in your path'... What? Filling in the obviously missing 'the' and '.' in that sentence, I get a strange feeling that maybe this Python object-oriented, live-coding, multi-user domain isn't exactly what I thought it is. What path are they talking about? Is this something about life's journey? My spiritual path? Is this some sort of Satanic serpentine cult?

'...or that you give the python files executable permissions if your OS supports it.' -- Oh. OK. There's the '.'. But -- whazza? The day I give any computer file permission to execute me will be the day that Doug Downs will transform himself into a computer file.

Anyway... these 'programmers' then tell you to do a few more things, and you finally end up staring at a:

'>'.

What do they say about this demonic, Satanist symbol of theirs?:

'the > is the prompt, which will change depending on context.' -- Changing prompts due to changing contexts... Oh the possibilities. I must find this MOOP! I must get python in my path! Come for me, dear MOOP. Hold on a second. No, no, what's happening? It's just too much! It's JUST TOO MUCH! What else?!:

'Type 0 to exit.' -- 0.

Whew. That's better. I had better remove that .zip from my working directory before any more poor Moos are overtaken by this Satanic brotherhood. So, I guess the moral of the story is that though people in this great big universe of ours might be really smart, that doesn't mean that they don't love Satan and brainwashing.


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A POST-PRODUCTION MESSAGE FROM THE BOYUM.

"Beep."

"Oh, crap! I forgot to include even one link in this whole message. What a moop."

"Beep."

My New Year's Resolutions...

OK, OK. I know. No one cares about my New Year's resolutions. And I don't really care, either. I know I'll just break them in about a week's time, anyway.

So what I'll do instead is express the horrible taste in my mouth still there after over 12 hours--all from watching the Hitchcock 'classic', The Birds. Or maybe it's a bad taste burned onto my retinas. Let me tell you something, if neutrinos have the uncanny ability to explode your eyeballs like Mr. Carlstrom says they do, then I need to get my hands on some in case I am ever forced to watch that piece of dog-filth movie ever again. And, I mean, that's saying something coming from me. I tend to see the good in my movies, which is why Mrs. Doubtfire graces the "favorite movies" section above, even though, Pierce Brosnan, you could have done much better. After seeing the movie, I realize what a good thing it is that Alfred Hitchcock is already sinking into the inky blackness of bad movie history, that he's most remembered now not for his psychological thrillers or insane animal trainers but only for being incredibly fat. Just in case you're even considering seeing the movie, let me tell you that it's worse than Christmas with the Kranks, which, given its corniness, should indeed have been entitled 'Kristmas with the Kranks,' in order to give it even the initial appearance of wittiness. Or maybe 'Boyumblog,' but now, that wouldn't have made much sense, now would it have? I mean, a catchy title gets you almost the whole way there. I mean, with a title like "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," you don't even need actors that can act like normal children not on an overdose of painkillers, a coherent plotline, or a non-mentally-challenged star. I bet they could have netted at least another $4 million with a title like "Kristmas" with the Kranks, with Tim Allen running around the house with his beer gut hanging over his yellow speedo screaming about the "Krist" child being born on "Kristmas" day. And of course he would be spelling the words as he said them so that everyone would know what a witty, witty man writer John Grisham is. He should have stuck to writing about lawyers. People like laughing about lawyers. People like laughing about Kristmas, too, but unfortunately he doesn't give any movie-goer that opportunity...

Anyway, The Birds is a terrible movie, but it fools you into believing that it's a good movie until the very end. So don't get roped in like I did, li'l buddy. I had to wait until some British pop music show (badly impersonating TRL) came on before I really accepted that it was over. It's not that the movie has a BAD ending, it's that it has NO ending at all.

And that's all I have to say about that.

NOTE: This isn't a MOOP review. They will be much better. This is just... a crap review. Full of crappiness.

Oh man, only the bees can save this post now.