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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I guess this is rather niche, but I go to thesession a lot for fiddle tunes. They are ostensibly an Irish traditional music site, but their collection is a vast community-led effort and there’s all sorts of stuff of varying genres on there. Folk music in general is improvisational by nature, and what’s interesting about thesession is you will find multiple versions (aka settings) of a given tune as it’s played by different artists or in particular regions. None of them are “right” per se, but it gives you some ideas when trying to work out your own style.


  • For instance, in February 2023, the hosting giant disclosed that unknown attackers stole source code and installed malware on compromised servers after breaching its cPanel shared hosting environment in a multi-year breach.

    I assumed their security for this was to keep shuffling around their web site to make that cPanel stuff impossible to find? It’s like a store that keeps rearranging their floor inventory. I dread having to do anything with cPanel. Kudos to the hackers who managed to work it out.



  • I don’t know about good, but today was an unusual day for me.

    With a blizzard setting in, I figured my best chance to get to work was on the bus. So I was walking up to where I could catch it passing various houses with Christmas lights and decorations, only to stop dead in my tracks at one particular house.

    It’s sole decoation was an 8-ft tall Krampus on the front lawn. It had a goat head with horns and demonic eyes and sharp claws holding a gnarled staff on one side and chains on the other. It’s dark burgundy cloak had a dusting of snow on its shoulders to complete the look.

    Then I was on the bus trying to digest what I had seen when who should walk on but Polar Man! He’s a local superhero with a bushy beard and a mask. He helps people in distress shovel out their driveways. At one point as the bus was passing through a residential area, he got up and yelled “Driver! Stop the bus!” and leapt out dramatically to cheering passengers.










  • Your first one reminds me of something that happened awhile back. I was at a donut shop staring out the window when a scruffy dude in a pickup truck slammed into a traffic light, tipping it over across the street.

    Now as it happens, said donut shop was a watering hole for police officers (yes, the stereotype is real), and about a dozen buff uniforms trotted out within seconds. The guy climbed out of the truck and tried to light a cig and it fell out of his mouth as he saw them rushing up.




  • One time when I was a kid, we went on a long car trip and a thunderstorm approached. My dad said, “Don’t worry about the sound. It’s the light that kills you!” My Japanese mom was not cool with this. “No, it’s the sound. What are you talking about?” A fierce argument ensued.

    So, the words for thunder and lightning in Japanese are kaminari and inazuma, respectively. But that’s not a perfect translation. kaminari means something like “peal of the gods”, and is the forceful, dangerous part. inazuma is basically just a light show.

    English is the opposite. Thunder is just a sound, while lightning can kill you. To put it another way, in English, one word is light + electricity while the other is sound. In Japanese, one word is sound + electricity while the other is light.

    Anyway, I was about to speak up when my big brother tugged my arm. “No. This is a popcorn moment. Don’t ruin it!”


  • I guess that would be the red light cam.

    It’s the middle of the night and I’m driving down a steep hill with a birthday cake on the passenger seat. The light at the foot of the hill turns yellow and I start to apply the brakes but the cake slides forward. I quickly assess the situation. There’s no one on the road in any direction as far as the eye can see, and so I breeze through the light.

    flash

    $400 cake.