Posts by Dr. Boli
NEW FROM PENULTIMATONE RECORDS.
John Cage: 4′33″, performed by the Imperial Banjo Orchestra. Consistently the Orchestra’s most-requested feature. In this exciting recording, the virtuoso musicians of the IBO perform Cage’s seminal work in a record-breaking two minutes and forty-eight seconds.
PUZZLE TIME.
Here is a puzzle to occupy a few spare minutes. These quotations are from a very long commercially motivated comment, which Dr. Boli declines to publish as a comment. But he will print these quotations as a little intellectual exercise for his readers.
Clearly, this text was produced by what the Internet calls “article spinning,” which is the business of allowing an algorithm to substitute synonyms for various words in the hopes of producing a “new” article from old text, thus fooling search engines into thinking it counts as original content.
Your challenge, dear readers, is to look at this text and reverse the process: that is, find the synonyms that will make this text make sense again. For example, “advantage” = “better,” and “pro” = “for,” so “My advantage half and I have been married pro 15 years” now makes sense. (You can see that the distinction of parts of speech is not always observed in the spinning algorithm.)
Wikipedia’s article on article spinning tells us, “Once considered spamdexing, a black hat SEO practice years ago, the practice is now admitted as a fair way to lower the similarity ratio, resulting large catalogs of more or less similar items.” Do you suppose that the Wikipedia article was written by someone with an interest in the spamming business?
There are a modulation of factors that abet to a in clover unity compatibility, empathy, a stubborn renunciation to consecrate up so you can undiplomatic your mother-in-law wrong. My advantage half and I have been married pro 15 years and I can asseverate that all of these things thing, but an peculiarity of the hint reasons we’re appease together is because of the BOB Duallie Stroller.
Take into inseparable’s dominion me explain.
We cause twins. They’re 11 to the fullest extent a finally of essence and wonderful children when they’re not being unequivocally irrational tweens, but the fugitive while between birth and, assert, the advance 11 was correct insanity. Exceptionally those initially craggy years when the kids depended on us in the fullest fitted everything. Having two babies at long ago is stupid. At least one of them is as a matrix visit crying. And they not in any speed drowse at the done time. Ever. So, as a well-spring, you dish not at home of the closet a a deposit of devise crying and not sleeping, too. And arguing. There’s so much to converse about here when you’re sleep-deprived. Every so often you introduce honourable to live on maintain on the refer to notes management from Mommy and Me music class.
You backwards the Duallie a stroller, I prerequisite about it a union counselor that you purely shield to surrender to $700 once.
My confine stayed at effectively with the babies owing the zenith infrequent years of their ascendancy, while I went to a cushy assert administer to, so I can solely cogitate on of the sensitive torture she went all the way in the course on a diurnal fundamental between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. But there was a lunch break. Every time, I’d clock on section at hours and depreciate the kids accurate towards an hour-long go crazed in the BOB Duallie, a uncouth, side-by-side two-ply stroller that was a piece in vengeance representing our relationship. You rouse the Duallie a stroller, I docket it a federation counselor that you right-minded profitable to repetition $700 once. That lunch weaken gave me the crevice seeking some guilt-free working-out while affording my provoke a mid-day exude up from having to emissary to to two pigmy dictators.
The kids were well-deserved a infrequent months antiquated when we prime started the ritual. I had to things blankets in every governing them to expand kit up in the scale of the seats, like when you’re in mesial juncture create and you’re Sanctum sanctorum Ec. don gives you an egg to protect looking in class of a week. The kids were on the everything pernickety at administrator, but a mile into the exert oneself with because they’d individual effectively down and lift the ride. I’d talk to them in a lenitive ascertainment while I was sustained, pointing disguise dogs and flowers and detailing beyond contempt rumors hither our neighbors. And the kids loved their stroller time. It gave them a inadvertently b perhaps to interact with the formidable whopping people in a more retired temperament than sitting in a automobile undertake in affords. We employed the stroller to bludgeon parks from inseparable finish to the other metropolitan area, getting up closed and overfamiliar with dogs, captivating leaves in the fight back up, and getting snowed on in the winter. The Duallie facilitated libidinous blood bonding grow older since us and helped affirm the boring decamp as an plain lore in our lives.
HOW IT WORKS.
FOR THE DIFFICULT CHARACTER WHO HAS EVERYTHING…
Here is a Like to With You brand Time Timer.
AL’S COMPUTER STUFF FOR GUYS.
Hi, everybody, and, well, here we are, and it’s a brand-new show. This is Al, by the way. A lot of you probably know me from where I fill in for Herb on Herb’s Cooking for One. But Georgina kept saying I should get a real job, so I said fine, and I went to the network and told them to give me my own show, and they told me, no, they don’t need another show from me, and the only reason I’m doing Cooking for One is because Herb is the second cousin once removed of the CEO of the oil company that owns the network, and Herb wanted me, and his cousin said they had to take me. So I said fine, which I seem to say a lot, and I asked the teenager next door how you do one of those on-line video things, and he said it was just like what I do for Herb’s show, but more professional. So here I am. I don’t really know much about how this site works, but if you see a button that says “Send Al money,” click on it.
Anyway, for our first episode, we’re going to upgrade the memory in this laptop. Memory is the stuff your computer uses to remember stuff, like where it put its car keys. Ha ha! The kid next door said people like it if you use humor in these videos. Actually, I have no idea what your computer uses memory for. I don’t think it has car keys. But they say it’s the first thing you should upgrade if you’re having performance issues. The kid next door said that, and he said I should use his joke about Canadian pharmacies, too, but I forgot what it was.
I was going to upgrade Georgina’s computer, but she used some language I didn’t know she knew and told me what would happen if I took her computer apart again, so I’m doing mine instead. Now, upgrading the memory is dead simple, which I know because I watched some guy doing it in an on-line video. But he wasn’t as entertaining as I am. He had the same brand of computer, though, so I know exactly what I’m doing. So first we need a clean workspace, which I’m making right now. I just have to brush the utility bills and potting soil off the dining-room table here, and there we are: clean workspace. Now we turn the computer upside-down like this. If you turn Georgina’s computer upside-down, you find a label on the bottom panel that says “DON’T EVEN THINK IT, BUSTER,” and some day I’ll tell you the story of how I know that. So we set it down here, and we have ten screws to unscrew.
So I have this little precision screwdriver here that I got at the dollar store in a set of ten precision screwdrivers, and this is the one that looks like it will fit these screws best. So I put it in the screw and turn like this. Well, I try to turn, anyway. How are you supposed to get a grip on this thing? Man, they put these screws in tight.
You know what? This screwdriver needs a better grip. And I know just the thing for it. I have this roll of masking tape right here that I was going to use with the potting soil for another project, and I’ll just take off a piece of it like this—well, that didn’t work. Who makes this stuff, anyway? They can’t call it “contractor grade” if it keeps ripping off in little triangles like this. I’ll just stick this one on the handle here, and then get a—well, darn, I still can’t get a strip of it. Am I going to have to rip off eighty-five little triangles of masking tape just to get a big enough wad for this screwdriver? Oh, there we go. About time. Now I just roll it around the handle like this. Well, somehow that all ended up on my finger. I think I had the sticky side facing the wrong way.
Well, forget this. Who needs precision screwdrivers anyway? This is what power tools are for. Here’s my trusty drill, right where I left it in the bag of potting soil, and I’ve got a Phillips-head bit for it. It’s a bit big for these screws, but the power will more than make up for that. We’ll just
[————inaudible————]
looks more like a hole than a screw now, doesn’t it? But still, we got the screw out. I think we vaporized it. Now I just have to do that nine more times, so you might want to hold your ears for this part.
[————inaudible————]
Okay, see, that saved some time. We were going to have to pry the back off with a screwdriver or crowbar or something, but since it broke in two pieces while we were getting that last screw out, we don’t have to worry about prying. And I can replace it with a piece of tin foil or something like that.
Wow, look at all the little parts in here. They should have these things clearly labeled. This one is the hard drive or “fan,” as some people call it, and this one is the— Well, it might be some sort of pulley. But the memory is this flat card thing here right in the middle. And all you have to do is pull back on these two levers, like this, and it pops right up. You just pull back on these two levers like this. And it… You just pull back on these two levers, and it pops right—
Whoa! Look at it go! And it landed right in the potting soil. Well, memory has silicon in it, and silicon is sand, so I’ll just use that part for potting cactus plants. By the way, you need some kind of full-body armor when you’re potting cactus plants. I learned that yesterday. Anyway, we got rid of the old memory, and all we have to do now is slip the new memory into that thingy with the spring. So I just take it like this, and push it in here, and— no, that’s backwards. I have to pull back on these— Whoa! Right into the potting soil again. Well, I’d better go get this one.… Okay, so I put it in like this. No the other way. No, I guess that was the right way. Now, I don’t want to have this flying across the dining room again, so I’m going to take this hammer and make sure it’s lodged in good… and… tight… like…
Well, that sort of made a hole in the plastic thingy that the memory card was attached to. But anyway, the memory is in there good and solid. Now, on the other video, the guy showed the computer booting up with its new memory, but that was boring, and anyway I frankly don’t think it’s going to happen, so we’ll skip that part, and I’ll go down to Best Buy and see what laptops they have on sale.
That’s it for now. Join me next time when we learn how to connect to a printer. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say there are some pretty big power tools involved. So until then this is Al saying so long, and happy bits and bytes. There, kid, I came up with a signoff catch phrase. Are you happy?
THE NICEST THING…
The nicest thing a commenter has said about Dr. Boli so far today:
What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable know-how regarding unpredicted feelings.
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INSPIRING YARD SIGN.
NOW IN PRESS.
Teddy the Tardy Tardigrade, by Teenie Sparkle. Oh no! Teddy the tardigrade is late for school! And he forgot his homework! And there’s a big jelly stain on his school uniform! And an asteroid impact has caused a new ice age and disrupted the atmosphere and raised radiation levels to 500 times normal! Watch Teddy learn the valuable lesson that sometimes saying “I’m sorry” is all it takes to fix everything.