Doggerybaw

Letter to the Editor

September 3rd, 2009 by scott

I was talking to Jeff Harris about zombies, a common topic around the office, and he came up with an idea that I couldn’t resist. Jeff, you’re my inspiration…

Here is the result:

Dear Editor:

With great interest, I read your special issue about biometric computer authentication (May, 2009). My firm has been looking for a viable biometrics solution for quite some time and several of the products you reviewed look promising.

However, we have one question that remains unanswered by any of the articles in this otherwise excellent issue: Do any of these products work for the undead?

You see, we take being an equal opportunity employer quite seriously. Hiring the undead keeps us in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and contributes to a diverse work environment. We also recognize that there are certain advantages to hiring people who have risen from the grave. For one thing, they seldom object to working the night shift. In fact, they prefer it. As long as the shift ends before sunrise, you can count on zombies to remain alert and productive way into the wee hours of the morning. They also tend not to require expensive health benefits or group life insurance.

But for these prized workers, biometric authentication is often a problem. It’s hard to log in to the network with a fingerprint reader when your fingerprints have decayed and your finger tends to remain in the reader after you pull your hand away. Likewise, iris recognition devices are problematic when the eyes keep falling out of the head and dangle well below the beam from the reader. Face recognition? Forget it. In addition to the eyeball issue I just mentioned, as the face deteriorates new patches of mold or the continual changing of the shape of a rotting face with its sagging skin and ever-more-deviating septum renders such systems useless.

Some of our employees have suggested that it might be useful to have a device that allows the employee to pull the bowels from his belly and run them through a scanner. This might help solve the problem, but it raises an obvious security issue. What’s to stop somebody from pulling the guts out of a coworker and using them to gain access to a restricted system? DNA-based devices have similar security problems. With disembodied body parts littered throughout the office, there’s little control over people’s samples. They leave bits and pieces everywhere they go. Anybody can pick up a bit of disembodied flesh and run it through a scanner. We even tried odor-based biometrics, but quickly learned that this type of device overloads and fails when the workplace houses more than a small number of rotting corpses.

As you can see, current biometrics don’t work for an organization like ours. In the current economy, people seem to be dying every day, and as they rise from the dead and seek suitable employment, biometric authentication seems like the way to go. Traditional passwords don’t do any good because people tend to forget them when their brains rot and leak out of their ears.

If the research you did for your special issue provided insight into how to use biometrics for this under-appreciated segment of the workforce, we would love to hear about it.

Thank you,

Rip Morguenstern,
VP of Security
Liquid Putrefaction, Inc.

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Free Software for Writers: PinderSoft Whiteboard 2008

August 28th, 2009 by scott

PinderSoft Whiteboard (http://pindersoft.com/whiteboardps.htm) is an interesting note keeping app, set up with a whiteboard metaphor (meaning a blank screen). Its uniqueness comes from its ten tabs, which can all be renamed, plus an 11th tab for storing links. Beyond that, there’s not much to say. It’s a notes app. It does notes stuff. There are some basic editing capabilities, basically what you’d expect from a notes app. And it can easily be kept in the system tray.

Wishlist:

• Keeping the app in the system tray is nice, but how could they not give it a hotkey so you can bring it up without having to remember which tiny icon to click in the tray? I’ve solved that, I think, by assigning a gMote mouse gesture (http://www.handform.net/gmote.php). If I could remember that I did that, it would make pulling stuff up pretty easy. If I had a hotkey, I’d use this a lot, I think. It would be as easy or easier than turning around and writing on the real whiteboard.

• Being able to strike-through or check off completed items seems like another obvious feature, but it apparently wasn’t very obvious to the developer. Maybe he thought being able to strike through text using the font option was enough, but I want something easier, maybe with a keystroke. At least there’s a workaround, though.

• Not really any export to speak of. Each tab is saved as an RTF file, so I guess you can pretty much do what you want with your text. That reminds me of a weird usability thing. When you click to open a file in your default editor, you just get an Explorer window with the directory where the files are stored. You still have to open the file. An extra step, not really a big deal, but kind of weird.

• And, if each tab is just stored as an RTF file, why can’t you create more tabs? That seems logical.

• Tougher to implement with the RTF editing environment, but being able to draw would make this a real whiteboard app instead of just a note taking app. Even if you could just import a graphic file, it would be better.

In a Dream World

If I ran the world and all my wishes came true, we’d have this app, with a hotkey to bring it up, and the ability to draw, and even some basic mind-mapping features. Plus, I could write down my notes telepathically and they would be put down the way I mean them, not the way I actually say or think them, in perfect clarity and Pulitzer-worthy prose. It would also have basic to-do list features, like check boxes. And it would be a gourmet seafood chef with great legs and unlimited financial resources.

But even with its limitations, it seems pretty useful, especially if you have several (but not more than ten) projects to track. I think it’s worth checking out.

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This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie

July 4th, 2009 by scott

This song is best when complete, but almost nobody ever sings the whole thing, completely changing Mr. Guthrie’s meaning and intent.

This Land Is Your Land

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

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Playing the Blogosphere

June 19th, 2009 by scott

I was planning a post about my file backup strategy, but I posted it at the Utah Children’s Writers Blog instead. Go over there and check it out.

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Writing Good Villains

May 15th, 2009 by scott

I blogged today, just not here. Look for my post, “Writing Good Villains,” at http://utahchildrenswriters.blogspot.com.

—————-
Now playing: LadyHawke Soundtrack - Marquet’s Death
via FoxyTunes

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National Poetry Month: “That Everything’s Inevitable” by Katy Lederer

April 30th, 2009 by scott

I just read this one for the first time this morning, and really like it. So I’m sharing.

THAT EVERYTHING’S INEVITABLE

That everything’s inevitable.
That fate is whatever has already happened.
The brain, which is as elemental, as sane, as the rest of the processing universe is.
In this world, I am the surest thing.
Scrunched-up arms, folded legs, lovely destitute eyes.
Please insert your spare coins.
I am filling them up.
Please insert your spare vision, your vigor, your vim.
But yet, I am a vatic one.
As vatic as the Vatican.
In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum
I am waiting, like an animal,
For poetry.

–Katy Lederer

—————-
Now playing: THE ROLLING STONES - As Tears Go By
via FoxyTunes

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National Poetry Month: “Speculation: Along the Way” by Scott Cairns

April 29th, 2009 by scott

SPECULATION: ALONG THE WAY

The roaring alongside he takes for granted —”Sandpiper” by Elizabeth Bishop

And when, of a given evening, say, an evening laced
with storm clouds skirting distance parsed by slanting light,

or when the thick air of an August afternoon by the late approach
of just such a storm turns suddenly thin and cool, and the familiar

roaring, for the moment made especially unmistakable
by distant thunder, may seem oddly to be answered from within

—that’s how it feels, anyway—and when, of a moment, such roaring
couples as well with sudden calm—interior, exterior, it hardly matters—

in that fortunate incursion whereby the roar itself is suddenly interred,
you might startle to having had a taste of what will pass as prayer,

or a taste, at the very least, of how fraught, how laden the visible is,
even as you find a likely figure for its uncanny agency. Sure,

I’m making this up as I go, hoping—even as I go—to be finally
getting somewhere. And maybe I am. Maybe I’m taking you along.

Let’s say it’s so, and say we now commence.

–Scott Cairns

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National Poetry Month: “The Alligator Bride” by Donald Hall

April 28th, 2009 by scott

THE ALLIGATOR BRIDE

The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table
while the men shrieked
repossessing the gold umbrella.

Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners
missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love
with the Alligator Bride.

Ah, the tiny fine white
teeth! The Bride, propped on her tail
in white lace
stares from the holes
of her eyes. Her stuck-open mouth
laughs at minister and people.

On bare new wood
fourteen tomatoes,
a dozen ears of corn,
six bottles of white wine,

a melon,
a cat,
broccoli
and the Alligator Bride.

The color of bubble gum,
the consistency of petroleum jelly,
wickedness oozes
from the palm of my left hand.
My cat licks it.
I watch the Alligator Bride.

Big houses like shabby boulders
hold themselves tight
in gelatin.
I am unable to daydream.
The sky is a gun aimed at me.
I pull the trigger.
The skull of my promises
leans in a black closet, gapes
with its good mouth
for a teat to suck.

A bird flies back and forth
in my house that is covered by gelatin
and the cat leaps at it
missing. Under the Empire Table
the Alligator Bride
lies in her bridal shroud.
My left hand
leaks on the Chinese carpet.

–Donald Hall

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National Poetry Month: “Duets” by Kim Robert Stafford

April 27th, 2009 by scott

DUETS

A dream flips me into the daylight.
I pry my way back:
a door opens, I enter, never
escape; the jailor sings by morning
duets through the bars with me.
I wake and out my window
by dawn a blackbird sings and
listens, sings and listens.

Listen. Thistledown jumps its dance
in the wind. I’m small and have
no regrets. Yesterday is a temporary
tombstone, a hollow stalk
on the hill. I’m putting my best
ear forward; in the space between songs
I’m travelling. My hands make
whistling wings in the wind.

No things meet without music:
wind and the chimney’s whine, hail’s click
with the pane, breath in a bird’s
throat, rain in my ear when I
sleep in the grass. I miss the
whisper of a swallow’s wings
meeting the thin air somewhere far.
Branches of my voice, come back.
Inside each song
I’m listening.

–Kim Robert Stafford

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National Poetry Month: “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman

April 26th, 2009 by scott

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

–Walt Whitman

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