Of Mollusks and Gravity

Friday; high time for some Squid World Domination propaganda. Now, this article (about an elephant out of space — or not) doesn't mention them at all, but I for one am pretty sure of how a squid would deal with a black hole. Once in place at the center of the singularity (uhm), it would dwell for a while happily consuming this and that, then it would casually climb out again and continue its shambling stellar voyage. Due to its very nature, its apparent thermalization at the horizon could be interpreted just as clever camouflage, I guess. Or ink.

This brings to mind the epic battle between dark matter and dark energy. Although poised to win, dark energy will probably have a hard time evaporating space-time if these cosmic squid engage in opposition. They are the embodiment of prolonged composition in adverse environments. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if they were the original culprits at that primordial moment of proto-space-time when the Pleroma was torn apart and rendered into matter and whatnot. "That is not dead" etcetera. No wonder that some destruction-bent outer gods have a hard time getting along with these great old ones and their dreams of supremacy.

Disclaimer: this nonsense is not in any way intended to ridicule the aforementioned article. Information paradox and such is way fun too. It's probably also of great interest when discussing backup issues.

Addendum: it is still debatable whether the squid would climb out casually or if in effect it would climb out causally. Permutation aside, this would of course be of great consequence in determining how to pass judgement on the behaviour of these beings.

From Curry to Caml

I think I've suspended/ditched my Haskell courtship for now. It was nice to bend my brain a little, but I just never saw that "oh, this is where I will use what's-its-name to great effect". I'm trying to be pragmatic when it comes to coding I guess (or just non-theoretic and impatient perhaps — still I keep calling myself a "holistic pragmatic"). Still looking for some functional fetish though, I went straight to OCaml. I must say that there is a definitive attraction.. I didn't see it the first time around (quickly scanning through parts of the unison code), but perhaps the excursion to Haskell brought me the mindset I needed to appreciate it more.

I find this tutorial quite nice, and with a decent amount of humor.

It's way too early to say how deep I will dive though. Maybe pycaml could be an interesting path to walk..

Lurking Beneath

Squid will have dominion of the earth one day. Unless they already do, hiding like spineless (but definitely not gutless) ancient gods down in the depths of the ocean.

Only seven meters, and that stare is probably just 'cause it's cold.

The enormous squid it appears!!

Humboldt Squids - *not* your friendly neighbourhood cephalopods.

I guess with all those arms you're bound to get it..

A classic.

Tiny beacons of hope? Or just some baby demons.

Strolling about with my new dress..

I guess a spine will only get you so far..

Not content staying on the ground?

I'm sure this fella wasn't on the planet yesterday.

Now make sure your tap is tightly closed; these things can get through pretty tiny pipes I guess. They're likely sending out evil dreams of worlds incomprehensible by telepathy too, so try to avoid the murkier parts of your nightmares..

One Oort to RDF, o-dot-three

Another one hits the Dust.. feed. Uhm. Ok, seriously.. I just put up Oort 0.3, with some new stuff. Mainly a rudimentary template for Paste. And the switch from Kid to Genshi for templating.

I've also begun writing some kind of tutorial.. Like many others, I use dp.SyntaxHighlighter for the code samples (the Oort pages themselves are written in reStructuredText and assembled with the other stuff through Python and Genshi).

And the Oort pages are looking a tad bit better, I hope. ;)

A Web for the Cloud

Oort now has a location with some pages dedicated to it. And lo and behold, there's a logo as well!

There's even some interpretation.