Trivial facts can be entertaining. But they’re only more entertaining when they’ve been scrambled through a Markov chain algorithm [Link changed 2006-05-24 to Wayback Machine, as the original post has disappeared]. (“What’s a Markov chain”, you ask? Well, here’s a description of the process.)

Want to create your own Markovized texts? Perhaps the most famous Markov chainer is the punnily named Mark V. Shaney, for DOS/Windows systems. There’s also a version of Mark written in the Python scripting language (note: for more recent versions of Python, you’ll have to change all occurrences of “rand” into “random”), as well as a GPLed C source by Tim Musson that’s based upon it.

Whoa. I was just looking through my server logs (as I tend to do when I’m really bored), and I discovered that, at least for the time being, I’m on the first page of Google results for “proofreader”!

Wow. I feel so…honored…or something…

While some artists and record labels are sabotaging peer-to-peer networks with inaccurately labeled MP3 files and releasing CDs that can’t be ripped without much trouble, others are very much in favor of the free distribution of their music.

So, go download some popular singles from such groups as The Strokes, The Hives, The White Stripes and Badly Drawn Boy— and show the record companies that free publicity is not a bad thing.

I know, I know, it’s the wrong time of year, but I simply can’t pass up blogging this link I stumbled across today. Suffice it to say that Christmas songs just don’t sound the same after being run through Babelfish…

And yes, “Native White Man” is in fact one of the carols listed. Hehe.

I love Windows XP, but sometimes it does the strangest things. Apparently tonight the taskbar got a bit confused and grouped one of the Mozilla windows on my desktop as if it were an instance of Windows Explorer. What’s even stranger is that the other Mozilla window I had open was grouped correctly…

A tip to idiot spammers: If you’re going to be advertising an e-text about US government grants, it’s probably best not to send your ad from a Ukrainian reply-to address (gomail.com.ua) and through a mail relay which claims to be in Japan (plaza23.mbn.or.jp)…

I just saw an MSN banner ad which promoted the fact that Microsoft’s service offers “less busy signals” than its main competitor.

Am I the only one who finds this a bit jarring? It’s fewer, people!

(And besides, I’m quite pleased with the lack of busy signals on my broadband service, thank you very much. Heh.)

Go figure; a recent study has shown that high-school students tend to know more about technology than their teachers.

A couple interesting links culled from Kat‘s blog:

• How similar and/or compatible are you with me? Find out at SimilarMinds.com. (Incidentally, I was 91% similar to and 91% compatible with Kat. Figures. :))
• Y’know those “common bonds” categories on Jeopardy? Wanna see if artificial intelligence is any match for game show contestants? Check out Google Sets and see. ‘Tis a shame, as Kat points out, that it didn’t recognize the names or winning words of National Spelling Bee contestants– though it did recognize the Semisonic song titles and Chinese entrées that I typed in…

From an e-mail notice sent out by my ISP:

To make sure that you continue to have a high-quality experience with your [ISP] email, we will begin automatically emptying all WebMail trash folders on a daily basis, beginning July 5, 2002. Please do not place items in the WebMail trash folder that you would like to keep.

Is it just me, or does the whole premise of this warning sound like the basis for a Computer Stupidity?