new hardware

i finally have replacement hardware, a Lenovo laptop replete with Windows Vista. Fedora Core 9 comes out on Tuesday, so i'll be jacked up and Linified by Tuesday night and waiting to dump more newbie-hacker crap on y'all. i also have new custom ink lined up for then, and a couple new piercings doing their best to heal up within the confines of my slightly shit immune system, plus new (hot) Scottish nookie, so all in all i'm a pretty happy little bastard right now. i might even have a job.

anyway. few challenges are gonna be working with the Broadcomm chipset for wireless under Core 8 (i seem to remember that needing madwifi), making the weird combo memory card reader and the fingerprint auth device work at all - especially the fingerprinter, i'll be fucking chuffed if i can get that shit working. it's a swiper rather than a presser, too, which makes it harder to hack; i'd want to dust the keyboard, monitor and case for prints, relief one into a mould and make a gelatine finger to test that before i could say i was sure though. biosecurity is pretty cool, but we've all seen it's far from infallible.

does give me a little more trust in Windows, though, although disturbingly i don't think the regular auth protocol has been disabled in favour of fingerprints. i'd have passwords required as well as prints, or as a backup only if the prints failed, but not as an either-or option...

so kids, fingerprints are fun but won't keep the robbers away, Scots are all hardcore motherfuckers, and remember - Tramadol fucks you up.

L

uh, "milestones"

i'm crying with laughter as i'm typing this. Sapiens Anonym just hit both 100 posts...

...and the incredible milestone of 1000 hits.

L

withdrawal

i'm trying to deal with the above motherfucker right now (it being 2:52 in the morning) and it's not working. if you know kiddies who think it's cool to be addicted to opiates, and i do, do me a favour and slap them out of it; this is what you get. pain that's worse than the one you're taking the fucking things for. insomnia cranked up to utter sleeplessness. physical and psychological total dependence on a drug to which your body becomes more resistant day by day, just as day by day you need it more and more, and the doctors become less and less willing to give it to you. you eat too much, you drink too much, you can't work or think or do anything worth doing, and you know it isn't going to get better. i fucking hate this.

anyway, my point is that there are ways of dealing with it, they just don't always work (like tonight). in an attempt to distract myself, i'm sharing my, uh 'wisdom' when it comes to coping with either withdrawal or severe pain - same strategy, different applications. in no particular order:

- distractions. you can't erase pain, but you can make your brain think about something else at the same time. whatever you do don't just lie there hoping it will get better; that way you have no distractions and you just make it worse. internet shopping is good, so is doing your core comps or chilling with your buddies. hit ICQ and talk to someone.

- the old English cure. where i'm from, if you told someone you had terminal leukaemia, their response would be Poor cunt. Sit down and have a cup of tea. laced with Russian Standard, it actually works pretty fucking well, i gotta say.

- get your ass in the hot shower. sounds stupid, but it helps, especially if you got a shower radio (i find some Subway to Sally helps. get it on the Pirate Bay!)

- of course, if you could get your hands on some wimbawe, everyone knows it has a medicinal effect. unfortunately everyone also knows the government hates wimbawe and all who sail on it.

- don't get wasted (a little overeasy is fine). it doesn't help and the combination of alcomahol and drug withdrawal will just make you throw up. likewise try and fight the compulsion to overeat, as you won't throw up, you'll just bloat and sit there for nine hours feeling like you need to throw up.

- play some Xbox if you have it, or Amiga or whatever. personally i don't have any of that shit, but if i did, it'd sure fucking help.

so yeah, gonna try and sleep some now. i'll probably be back before long with more inane, self-pitying tripe.

L

PDFfest

three new PDF / ODT format guides by yours truly, coming up within a few days, one for Linux newbies wanting to install Fedora Core 8, a second part for Linux newbies wanting to stuff it to the gills with hacktools, and a third for anyone wanting to recreate the baby-steps of my RFID project and learn about the technology.

i'm on it, i'm on it!

L

ps. i'm also seeding the new Subway to Sally album, Bastard. it rocks. get to the Pirate Bay and grab you some medieval metal! - L

the Virgin Mary did anal

i can say that without being arrested, and i can say Jesus was a child rapist, and i can walk down the street denying the holy spirit, and i can call priests paedophiles and bishops pretentious self-deluded fools and monks antisocial and -

yeah, that's right, after 140 years of campaigning, Britain finally overturned its anti-blasphemy laws. god is a dry-arse buttfucker.

L

your weekly 'tramadol fucks you up':

1. will Tramadol fuck me up
3. how long for tramadol to exit
4. does tramadol fuck you up?
6. tramadol fucked up
7. solpadol
9. tramadol does it fuck you up?
10. what does tramadol do to you?
11. tramadol fuck up

don't really surprise me no more. for the information of my tramhead readers, it takes about six hours for the effects of tramadol to wear off, seven for the drug to exit your system totally - at least in my case, it'll vary hugely (we're talking by like three hours here). i've talked about what tramadol does already; go and find out for yourselves if you wanna know that bad, or just take the fucking drugs and see what happens.

once again, ladies and gentlemen, tramadol fucks you up.

L

ladies and gentlemen:

the Gender Genie doesn't know whether or not i have a penis.

and rightly so. ain't no PHP script in the world can gender-stereotype Lepht Anonym, bitches.

L

idiocy surpasses itself

straight after i say it can't get stupider than using no AV, no less. this month, people have been mostly searching for:

4. solpadol - i'm not even on Solpadol anymore.
5. ilove you - i get the feeling this guy might want my underwear or something.
6. ilove you 2 - he should just get together with this guy.
7. tramadol fuck you up? - i heard this in a Chinese accent. oh ya, fuck you up real bad, really sick, fuck you guts up nasty, mm.
8. anonym for understand - not when you talk like that i fucking don't.
9. can i crush solpadol tablets? - categorically, no. crushing them results in something that tastes like a sluice farm smells, i can tell you.

you gotta wonder, don't you.

L

i say, google, does tramadol or does it not fuck you up?

this week's net belches:

4. tramadol fucks you up (1 time) yes, yes it does.
5. Sapiens Windows (1 time) I'M INFESTEEEED!
7. "jacked in" (1 time) always was, always will be...

plus your average quotient of number string DDoS attempts, idiot Yanks looking for antonyms of words you shouldn't need to Google anyway, even a couple people who were actually looking for me.

but who the fuck actually feels the need to search for "tramadol fucks you up"?

L

bitter

dihydrocodeine, one step up from regular codeine, is a strong scrip-only analgesic, prescribed to chronic pain patients like yours truly for the dual purpose of shutting us the fuck up and letting us scare the shit out of our peers by taking them in class. they're big, they're uncoated and they taste so bad that they induce your gag reflex, meaning that the first couple times you try to take them, you'll spit them out because their bitter taste stimulates the area of your brain that tells you they're likely to be poison, and you won't even have meant to.

my friends, i have discerned their secret, and its name is Jaffa.

this is how you take a massive pill without hurling:

1. buy Jaffa cakes.
2. dissect a cake, making sure to leave orangey bit intact.
3. wrap nasty-ass pill of your choice in orangey bit.
4. shove to back of mouth and swallow before it can dissolve.
5. repeat as necessary, wash down with OJ or chocolate milkshake (and for the love of all that you hold sacred, don't use Coca-Cola).

now go forth and use this secret to heal the sick.

L

Lepht's not dead yet

and that little interlude was due to the upgrade from 800mg Solpadol a day to 850 Tramadol. that shit fucks with your head; i've been slurring at my fellow students, i missed two assignments of my own and i partially recall asking my doc "if there's any... unTramadol... in your, in your cupboard?" having forgotten i was on it and had a shot or two of schnapps.

so yeah, i ain't dead, and i'll be back as soon as i can type properly again.


L

earth to Google:

i'm short, i'm jug-eared, i'm bulldog-nosed. i've always got a hood covering my eyes. i've got far too many tattoos. i don't work out enough. i'm not good-looking in any sense of the word, and i don't give a fuck, because my worth doesn't come from what my body looks like.

now will you fucking stop telling me two mysterious crushes think i'm hot?

L

ed. to further the point, Google, would you call "hot" someone whose left eye is drooped shut half the time because of their meds? i think not. assholes.

martian aliens they ate my Wijit

so you've all noticed the little Lijit widget over there in the top corner. some of you decided to play hooky with the widget, too. here's what you asked me for this week:

1. solpadol (8 times) look, you can't have my meds, OK? it's my Solpadol, and you'll have to beat me up to get it. why don't any of you want the Diproflex or the Zopiclone, anyway?
2. label (2 times) huh?
3. 1190311124113 (2 times) i'll explain this in a second.
4. anonym for arrogant (1 time) no, Anonym for President! i'm pretty much against arrogant.
5. 1190068085886 (1 time)
6. 1190068226397 (1 time)
7. atheist golden rule (1 time) you want this here rule.
8. -1 (1 time)
9. 1190480612750 (1 time)

okay, so what the fuck is with these number string searches? i got two hypotheses myself: 1: DoS / code injection attempt from a moron, and 2. attempt by aliens to find the last digit of pi by sending bits of the known sequence to me, an obvious expert in theoretical mathematics.

a tenner says it's aliens.

Lepht

ed.: in addition to the Wijit, i finally got my ass on sitemeter. stats widget is at the bottom of the sidebar; scroll on down and satisfy your lust for statistics. - L

glass machines and Mary Sues

i've taken a nauseating, long-procrastinated* look at the plot of the Left Behind books recently, and have now finally given up calling it a plot at all. that's not my biggest beef, though.

the heroes are Mary Sues. idk if anyone even remembers what a Mary Sue is, so for the edification of those who've never had their short stories or novels reviewed by honest guys: Mary Sue, a term originally from the world of the fanfic kids, refers to a character who is irritatingly godlike or inherently "better" than their peers, always better-looking and more talented, and represents the fantasy alter-ego of the author. a 'Sue is entertaining to nobody but its creator: a kind of literary wank, if you will.

and Sues is what we got here. as Fred Clark has already criticised:

Rayford Steele -- the virile, sexually obsessed but chaste hero pilot -- seems to be Tim LaHaye's fantasy wish-fulfillment stand-in. Cameron "Buck" Williams seems to represent the dream self of Jerry B. Jenkins. The aging hack ghostwriter of subculture genre fiction transforms himself into a world-famous, Pulitzer-winning, super-journalist admired by writers and desired by women everywhere.

Clark is right; these are Sues par excellence, saving the world for Jesus with their awsum 1337 skillz.

(i can't believe i just typed that.) but i bring up Sues to make a point: i got asked yesterday why i so consistently refuse to reveal my race, gender or age to anyone in the Wired. this is why: because i'm sick of seeing kids create alter-egos for the Net that are so wildly stupid, so stereotypically arrogant and blatantly untrue, that i can't even take them seriously: the impossible body-types of Second Life and IMVU, the boasts i hear again and again about skills and hacks and girls, the image-centred hordes of the social networking cartels, all make me hurl with their pretentiousness, and i wanted to escape that. i didn't wanna be just another grunt with a perfect virtual life and no mind behind it; i was trying to remove the face entirely so you couldn't see anything but the thoughts.

so this is my biggest hitch here: in reading these awful Sues, i became even more aware that we decide part of what we think of others, even here in the Wired, on their persona. that's why mine is a null, as i've said, a genderless, faceless construct: i meant it to be a glass machine, whose workings are clearly visible through its colourless exterior.

and that's why. now, of course, i've started wondering exactly how much of the glass' structure is surmisable from the clockwork, and whether online personae are all Sues or not...

Lepht

ed: I've been carrying on with Clark's criticism, and sadly, he's disappointed me with his approval of "the surrender of self involved in surrender to God". that frankly disgusts me; surrender? surrender the most valuable thing you all own, your own minds, and let the teachings take control without question? this i cannot and never will advocate. - L

*i know it's not a transitive verb, but it looks good, okay?

isolation

i am beginning to wonder if this isolation isn't bad for me. i've been completely by myself, through no fault of my own (flatmate, depressive episode, refuses to see anyone) for about three days now, maybe more. it's starting to make me think differently, and that worries me; it's becoming more difficult to see the good side of things and to enjoy stupid-ass stuff like i usually do.

like i said, this worries the shit outta me, more so because i know why. we're evolved from social primates, and there've been experiments with social Rhesus monkeys and isolation that drove the poor little fuckers insane; we're simply not adapted for dealing with everything by ourselves. even writing this is making me feel a little better; but that don't mean i can deal with loneliness.

i think hackers are probably a more at-risk group than most for this, too. we're isolated by nature - it's not easy to date someone who spends ten hours or more at a time doing something you know nothing about, which forces them into secrecy lest they get arrested or persecuted and glues them into their rig for days - and often we don't have many friends. i'm a prime example of that. but that kind of social predisposition doesn't exactly prepare us for utter, complete aloneness: that's something else entirely, something dangerous. like i said, humans aren't meant to do this.

then again, i guess i'm hoping that the fact that i've got more experience of it than, say, the captain of the rugby team or the head cheerleader, will make me better equipped to deal with it. i'm hoping that what i've learned from before - and it's simple shit, things like you shouldn't listen to sad music or read manga where the characters keep dying (unless it's High School of the Dead) - will keep me safe from any nasty shit this time round.

but i've never done it for this long before, and this time there's nobody in the meatspace either. nobody's on campus, nobody's in the lab, nobody's in my flat when i get there; it feels like nuclear winter sometimes. i honestly don't know whether this is safe enough, or what the fuck i'll do if it turns out not to be.

i don't know what's gonna happen. that scares the shit outta me. i'm gonna post something every day, just to kinda anchor my head to reality; if anyone does lurk this blog, just do me a favour and comment. any kind of contact would be good right now.

as a last note, i guess you could call this an experiment. we'll all see what happens when people are left alone for this long.

"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker." ain't never been so true.


Lepht

the 3am reset

in my lab at a random time between 0250 and 0310, all the machines in the building reset. if you stand right at the back of the lab, with all the lights turned off, you see a beautiful scene - sixty or seventy screens lit up pale blue, surrounded by the sparkles of HDD indicators, the little dots of red emerging from underneath the optical mice, the status LEDs in bright yellow on the CD drives and the glitter as the blue glow reflects off the silver of the deactivated ceiling panels. it's wonderful - the closest thing i'll get to the Aurora Borealis. i've never seen anything so beautiful.

Lepht