By way of the distinguished Charlie Stross, I present you with the best Nigerian counterscam ever. It’s easy to respond to Nigerian 419 scams, but it’s hard to do so in a manner which will entertain anyone but yourself. This guy figured out the trick. Like all good tricks, it involves Cthulhu. (You might say he leveraged his secret knowledge to produce humor. Bwah hah ha.)
Worth reading: Salon’s [interview with Michael Chabon](http://web.archive.org/web/20110219121425/http://web.archive.org/web/20110219121425/http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/10/22/chabon/index.html (original) “Salon.com Books | The lost adventure of childhood”) (original), on the subject of his new novel Summerland. I haven’t read the book yet, because I was far too broke to buy hardcovers over the summer, but I rather expect to remember to pick it up soon. I think that Chabon’s sense of wonder makes him one of the best authors out there right now. Summerland sounds like a glorious expression of that sense of wonder. ...
The sniper seems to have been caught, which is great news. Not so great news: he recently changed his last name to Muhammad, and reportedly converted to Islam some years ago. Inevitably, some people are rushing to point out how dangerous those Muslims are. I thought about it. In the last ten years, if we look at domestic terrorism, the score is American Christians 2 and American Muslims 1. Kaczynski and McVeigh beat Muhammad. Clearly — very clearly — Christians are bad news and very dangerous. ...
We have a new contender for goofiest team relocation move ever. ESPN reports that the Montreal Expos may move to Boston for a year. This would be great for the owners of the Red Sox, since they’d get rent from the Expos. The Expos are currently owned by Major League Baseball itself, which would love to see attendance drop so that there’d be more of an excuse to contract the Expos out of existence. The fans are not deeply important in this equation. ...
My former employer, CMGI, is going to transfer to the NASDAQ SmallCap market on November 1st. The requirements for being listed on the NASDAQ SmallCap market are somewhat less rigorous (original) than the requirements for the main NASDAQ market. It does retain the minimum share price of $1 requirement, however, which CMGI doesn’t currently meet. I would expect a reverse stock split sometime in the next 180 days.
I can’t help it; interesting web pages always come in threes, maybe. Or it’s just the season. In any case, I can’t resist this followup to my CMGI comments. Apparently, CMGI had trouble because David Wetherell built his house on an Indian burial ground (original).
It was snowing this morning. Not sticking, except on the top of my car, but distinct white flakes coming down. As I’d half expected, my brain didn’t quite register the white stuff at first. It looked like rain but it was acting funny. It’s been a good ten years since I’ve seen snow, you see; a legitimate ten years. It doesn’t snow in San Francisco, it didn’t happen to snow in England when I was there in January a couple of years back, and I just didn’t happen to travel anywhere else at an appropriate time to see the stuff. ...
If you’re a New England sports fan, there are certain rules: In basketball, detest the Lakers above all others. Also, cheer against Philadelphia, because they’re the only other team to pose a significant threat to the Celtics in the 80s and there was that whole Wilt Chamberlain thing as well. It’s also good to hate any team that features a player who’s been called “better than Larry Bird,” but only while that player is active. No point hating the Chicago Bulls at this point, for example. ...
Phil Ringnalda makes explicit the Movable Type RSS .91 feed issue to which I just alluded, so yeah. His solution is more elegant than the hard-coded timezone I used (and was too embarassed to explain). I will be installing it at a later date.
John Tynes just released Meta Action (original), an incomplete set of rules for running modern action with the D20 ruleset. At first glance it looks interesting enough. It retains hit points, since it’s intended to simulate action movies and thus can be less realistic, but more or less does away with classes. Your Charisma bonus is added to every roll, since action heros are good looking. Without revamping the combat system, though, I’m not sure the ruleset works. PCs are going to get hit all the time, particularly since you can pump skill points into your ranged or melee attack bonuses. A level 1 character with a 14 Charisma (say) can easily have a total of +7 to hit right off the bat. Even level 0 NPCs can be fairly deadly. Three goons with shotguns are terrifying. ...