lorem ipsum

Most of you have probably heard — repeatedly — that I spent some time in bonny Scotland, back in the mid-90’s. I have many fond memories of my time there, and most involve my friend and immediate supervisor, Richie. Luckily, through the internet, Richie and I have managed to remain in touch for the dozen or so years since I departed that magical land of haggis, kilts, and bagpipes.

I often mention that, upon first arriving in Glasgow, I spent my first two weeks saying little other than, “Pardon?” The Glaswegian accent is notoriously impenetrable, and I was proud it took only two weeks of stumbling around in complete and utter confusion before I managed to develop a passable ear for it.

Although I may have developed an ear for the accent, it is clear that Google Voice’s wonderful — and often unintentionally hilarious — voicemail transcription service has not, as Richie’s recent message so beautifully illustrates. I would like to point out that it often transcribes messages flawlessly. As you will see below, however, sometimes it does not…

Google’s guess:

Called the. I’m on my way number consulate work. Hey man, or go to corporate overview certain chills buddy bye.

The year, 1998. The setting, Washington state. A young man, not long back from a stint in Scotland, heads off to college, a roughly eight hour drive from his family and friends.

To pass the time on the long, sometimes lonely drives home (this was before iPods and highly affordable cellphones), he composes haiku. What sort of haiku, you ask? Why, Saved by the Bell haiku, of course.

Every so often, we are afforded the chance to enjoy an unclouded look into the sort of person we were, years ago. Finding this webpage, of which both the contents and code were written by me, in 1998, proved just such an opportunity for me. There’s very little that’s unembarrassing about the page, but I’m still chuckling with warm nostalgia.

And besides, how can you really hate on a form of 17th century Japanese poetry being used to describe an endearingly mediocre sitcom for American children in the late 1980s/early 1990s?

Sometimes, whether the thing in question is a gadget, musical act, or a “killer app”, I am an almost ostentatiously early adopter. I’ve been reading books on a PalmPilot since the late 90s, for example, and I’ve been downloading mp3s since the days of ratioed FTP servers. Other times, however, I am painfully late to the party. Case in point, Jonathan Coulton.

Now, I’m a bit baffled as to how I took so long to really give “JoCo” a listen. I’d heard his sublimely amusing “Still Alive” some time ago, and I’d been in close proximity to a couple of his shows, but my interest was never sparked. Odd!

Well, I’ve been in an increasingly great mood, lately. Things have just been falling into place extraordinarily well over the last week or two. Simultaneously, however, some friends have been going through some pretty rough patches. So, looking for music to either revive flagging spirits, or keep them up once high, I have found myself listening to some pretty silly stuff (see: Lonely Island). Enter our Mr Coulton.

This was the first song recommended to me, and in my opinion, there is no way to ruin a song that has lyrics about “ruining ponies”.

I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you,
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it.
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies…
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much?
Maybe I used too many monkeys?
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?

As many of you are no doubt aware, I have long been obsessed with the idea of filters and macros. I have spent an inordinate amount of time tinkering with Gmail’s fantastic filtering system, developing a labyrinthine convention of persistent filtering and forwarding that effectively reduces my manual involvement with an individual email to the act of opening/reading it. For example, an email from Kate that mentions Dan would get the labels “Kate”, “Dan”, and “SE++”; the same email, sent instead by Dustin, would get “Dan” and “SE++”, and skip the inbox entirely (though it would remain marked as unread). And this is just a simplified peek at what I’ve got set up. For some reason, this level of automated organization holds a deep fascination for me, a fascination second only to my profound affinity for relatively unnecessary gadgets.

Imagine my near-hysterical delight, then, when I found this little guy, the literal convergence of my two nerdiest, guiltiest pleasures, over at lifehacker, the possibilities for which have essentially sent me into an hourlong nerdgasm that is still going strong.