Everybody lies, Dr Gregory House says so:

1. Everybody lies.
2. I don’t ask why patients lie, I just assume they all do.
3. It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.
4. Truth begins in lies.
5. I’ve found that when you want to know the truth about someone that someone is probably the last person you should ask.
6. The most successful marriages are based on lies.
7. You want to know how two chemicals interact, do you ask them? No, they’re going to lie through their lying little chemical teeth. Throw them in a beaker and apply heat.

Major LOL for number seven!!!

Back on topic, what is truth, how does one define truth? Back at Earthdance, one of the DJ’s opening sets started with a voice saying 99.9999999999999…% of everything you know is WRONG! The timing was perfect, for the rest of the weekend while dancing like Robocop™ (my new trademark at trance parties), my mind was working overtime trying to find a definition for truth and what constitutes a lie.

One person might say, the light is red when the light is in fact red relative to his perception, to a colourblind person, the light might not be red, relative to the colourblind person, the person seeing the red light is lying as he is probably seeing it as grey (does perception make them both liars?) or maybe somebody told him that the colour he is seeing is in fact red in which case he is believing what the mass is believing. Is what the mass believe the truth? Is conformity to fact or actuality truth?

The earth is flat, that lunatic scientist saying it’s not must be stoned to death … sounds familiar? Does that mean we should take the word of one scientist or person ranked higher than oneself in the system as truth?

Einstein was smart enough to understand the principles of relativity, everything is relative except for relatives, putting that into context means the scientist making the claims about something might be wrong as well as his claims are only true relative to his perception and maybe his measuring instruments. Maybe his believes had an influence on his perception, something which plays a major role in the investigation of paranormal activities. Quote from Richard Rosen: Are you going out after the truth, or are you going out after something you believe?

What fascinates me is how elusive the definition of truth can be, every time you nail it down, another end comes loose requiring some more definitions which all requires some more definitions to back up the true definition of the definition under the spotlight.

You get a chainletter in your mailbox telling you a soppy story about some little girl who’s about to die if you don’t forward it, is there any truth in it? Maybe there is, the probability is leaning heavier towards it being a hoax, only the original source will truly know if it’s a hoax or in fact the truth. Should we discredit sources claiming to be true when one of the facts in the text doesn’t add up or when the general trend of a certain series of events doesn’t seem true? The general reaction is: “What else are they lying about?”

Depending on how strict your definition of truth is, in general, something is either true or it is false, when it is partly true, it is not true and according to the dictionary, when something is not true, it is false. The conclusion is that the only truth is that everything is a lie as it can not be true. Building on this loosely proven assumption and putting it back into the context of what society believes is true, since society in general believes that everything they know is true, I conclude that the truth is in fact a lie and that all lies are truth. If all lies are true, then that means there can be many truths all equally true and untrue at the same time.

Fascinating quote from Hieros Gamos which voids most of the above: The truth lies behind our eyelids, in and beyond our minds, at the tips of our fingers. It comes to us before we seek it, and once found, unfolds itself in its entirety. The implications of this we are learning to comprehend. A million realities superimposed over one another, anchored in the concept of phenomenon. The only One Truth is the universal Every Truth, and because one thing is true, does not make the other interpretations less true.

Is choice a lie? Is choice the truth? Choice is relative to whatever you want it to be.

Ignorance can only be bliss for so long, unless you have no conscience.

Fnord is evaporated herbal tea without the herbs.

Fnord is that funny feeling you get when you reach for the
Snickers bar and come back holding a slurpee.

Fnord is the 43 1/3rd state, next to Wyoming.
Fnord is this really, really tall mountain.
Fnord is the reason boxes of condoms carry twelve instead of ten.

Fnord is the blue stripes in the road that never get painted.
Fnord is the place where those socks vanish off to in the laundry.
Fnord is an arcade game like Pacman without the little dots.
Fnord is a little pufflike cloud you see at 5pm.

Fnord is the tool the dentist uses on unruly patients.
Fnord is the blank paper that cassette labels are printed on.
Fnord is where the buses hide at night.
Fnord is the empty pages at the end of the book.

Fnord is the screw that falls from the car for no reason.
Fnord is why Burger King uses paper instead of foam.
Fnord is the little green pebble in your shoe.
Fnord is the orange print in the yellow pages.

Fnord is a pickle without the bumps. Fnord is why ducks eat trees.
Fnord is toast without bread. Fnord is a venetian blind without the slats.

Fnord is the lint in the navel of the mites that eat
the lint in the navel of the mites that eat
the lint in Fnord’s navel.

Fnord is an apostrophe on drugs.
Fnord is the bucket where they keep the unused serifs for H*lvetica.
Fnord is the gunk that sticks to the inside of your car’s fenders.
Fnord is the source of all the zero bits in your computer.

Fnord is the echo of silence.
Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness.
Fnord is the preposition at the end of sixpence.

Fnord is the feeling in your brain when you hold your breath too long.
Fnord is the reason latent homosexuals stay latent.

Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is the whole donut.

Fnord is an annoying series of email messages.
Fnord is the color only blind people can see.

Fnord is the serial number on a box of
cereal.

Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.
Fnord is a naked woman with herpes simplex 428.
Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is a pyrotumescent retrograde onyx obelisk.

Fnord is why lisp has so many parentheses.
Fnord is the the four-leaf clover with a missing leaf.

Fnord is double-jointed and has a cubic spline.
Fnord never sleeps.
Fnord is the “een” in baleen whale.

Fnord is neither a particle nor a wave.

Fnord is the space in between the pixels on your screen.

Fnord is the guy that writes the Infiniti ads.
Fnord is the nut in peanut butter and jelly.
Fnord is an antebellum flagellum fella.

Fnord is a sentient vacuum cleaner.

Fnord is the smallest number greater than zero.
Fnord lives in the empty space above a decimal point.

Fnord is the odd-colored scale on a dragon’s back.
Fnord is the redundant coin slot on arcade games.
Fnord was last seen in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fnord is the founding father of the phrase “founding father”.
Fnord is the last bit of sand you can’t get out of your shoe.
Fnord keeps a spare eyebrow in his pocket.
Fnord invented the green hubcap.
Fnord is why doctors ask you to cough.

Fnord is the “ooo” in varooom of race cars.
Fnord uses two bathtubs at once.

I cannot escape them
No matter how I try
They wait for me everywhere
I cannot pass them by.

Innocuous sayings and parables
And on the evening news
I hear the word “FNORD!”
And suddenly I’m confused

I sit alone in my room
And I’m feeling rather bored
I turn on the tube and guess what
I hear the word “FNORD!”

“Don’t see the fnords and they won’t eat you”
That’s what I’ve heard the wisemen say
But I can’t get away from those beasties
There’s just no fucking way.

Well, got to admit, after playing poker for the first time last night and for a second time today, I can honestly say, this game is addictive, especially when combined with some pizza, some decent quality tequila (Jose Cuervo Gold), good company and high stakes.

To anyone looking to play the game but are intimidated by the complexity, relax, you’ll learn it quickly and before you know it, you’ll discover that you have some talent, not that the game requires much talent, but if you can keep a straight face all the time, you’ll most likely make a killing.

Poker is played with a standard pack of 52 cards. (Some variant games use multiple packs or add a few cards called jokers.) The cards are ranked (from high to low) Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace. (Ace can be high or low, but is usually high).

There are four suits (spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds); however, no suit is higher than another.

The rank of hands remains the same no matter which type of poker game you play.

In a nutshell, a poker hand consists of five cards. Poker hands fall into one of several categories, such as flush, straight, or two pair. The player with the highest ranking hand is the winner.

0) Royal Flush: A royal flush is an ace high straight flush.

1) Straight Flush: A straight flush is a five-card straight, all in the same suit.

2) Four of a Kind - Quads: Quads, or four of a kind, are four cards of equal rank.

3) Full House or Full Boat: A full house, or full boat, contains a set (three) of cards of one rank and a pair of another rank.

4) Flush: A flush is any five cards, all of the same suit.

5) Straight: Five cards of sequential rank. Every possible straight will contain either a 5 or a 10.

6) Three of a Kind or Set: Three cards of the same rank.

7) Two Pair: A two pair is two cards of one rank and another two cards of another rank.

8) Pair: One pair is two cards of the same rank.

9) High Card: The hand with the highest card(s) wins.

The dealer can either be a dedicated dealer, or one of the players in which case the a new dealer is chosen after every round, usually chosen clockwise. The dealer’s job is to hand out cards and take the bets.

We play the game with two cards, not the 5 card one. Before any cards are given to any player, the person next to the dealer must place the minimum bet and the person next to that person, double the minimum bet (it goes clockwise, so that would be the person on the left side of the dealer, assuming the dealer is one of the players) After those two bets have been placed, every player receives two cards which they can use to decide whether they are going to call (which means placing a bet equal to the highest bet), raise (which means upping the highest bet by a certain percentage or fixed amount) or fold (in which case the player decides not to continue the round and forfeit his bets)

Once every player matched the highest bid (or folded if they decide not to take part in the madness of increasing bets), the first three cards are placed on the table (only in the first round that 3 cards are placed on the table at once) after which the next round of betting occurs. Betting continues until the 5th card is placed on the table or only one player remains after everyone folded. The last person remaining after everyone folded, wins. If more than one person remains, the players reveal their cards and the player with the highest rank of hand wins. The winner takes all the accumulated bets.

This should give you a basic idea of how the game works, I’m still a newbie myself, but thought I might as well share the knowledge I learned yesterday. For a more in depth guide on the rules of the game, go to http://www.pokercoach.us

To spice up the game even more, add the jokers and make up some interesting rules for them, one set of rules that can particularity screw with your head, is when one joker is set as an instant win and the other joker as an instant loss, if you get the one joker, you keep everyone in the game as long as possible and when you reveal your joker, you take everything, it’s like winning the jackpot, how much you make is totally up to you. Revealing the other joker means you will lose instantly, the only way to win the game is to bluff until the end and hope everyone folds, whoever has the joker, may not fold until the last round of betting. If the joker happens to land in the cards on the table, they simply acquire whatever value you want them to be, basically a wild card, the way most people use the jokers if they choose to play with them.

Enjoy your poker games, any kind of feedback is welcome, especially if I’m misinterpreting the rules in one way of another.

I don’t care what Linus Torvalds says, Tux needs to lose a little bit of weight!

In case you’re wondering where the original idea for a penguin came from, here’s a letter from the original Linux Kernel mailing list posted by Linus Torvalds explaining why he chose a penguin as the Linux mascot and not some unfriendly macho beast like creature:

Re: Linux Logo prototype.

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)

Thu, 9 May 1996 17:48:56 +0300 (EET DST)

.
Somebody had a logo competition announcement, maybe people can send their
ideas to a web-site..
.
Anyway, this one looks like the poor penguin is not really strong enough to
hold up the world, and it's going to get squashed. Not a good, positive logo,
in that respect..
.
Now, when you think about penguins, first take a deep calming breath, and
then think "cuddly". Take another breath, and think "cute". Go back to
"cuddly" for a while (and go on breathing), then think "contented".
.
With me so far? Good..
.
Now, with penguins, (cuddly such), "contented" means it has either just
gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring. Take it from me, I'm an expert on
penguins, those are really the only two options.
.
Now, working on that angle, we don't really want to be associated with a
randy penguin (well, we do, but it's not politic, so we won't), so we
should be looking at the "stuffed to its brim with herring" angle here.
.
So when you think "penguin", you should be imagining a slighly overweight
penguin (*), sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just burped.
It's sitting there with a beatific smile - the world is a good place to be
when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish and you can feel another
"burp" coming.
.
(*) Not FAT, but you should be able to see that it's sitting down because
it's really too stuffed to stand up. Think "bean bag" here.
.
Now, if you have problems associating yourself with something that gets
off by eating raw fish, think "chocolate" or something, but you get the
idea.
.
Ok, so we should be thinking of a lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin
sitting down after having gorged itself on herring. Still with me?
.
NOW comes the hard part. With this image firmly etched on your eyeballs, you
then scetch a stylizied version of it. Not a lot of detail - just a black
brush-type outline (you know the effect you get with a brush where the
thickness of the line varies). THAT requires talent. Give people the
outline, and they should say [ sickly sweet voice, babytalk almost ]“Ooh,
what a cuddly penguin, I bet he is just _stuffed_ with herring”, and small
children will jump up and down and scream “mommy mommy, can I have one too?”.
.
Then we can do a larger version with some more detail (maybe leaning
against a globe of the world, but I don’t think we really want to give
any “macho penguin” image here about Atlas or anything). That more
detailed version can spank billy-boy to tears for all I care, or play
ice-hockey with the FreeBSD demon. But the simple, single penguin would
be the logo, and the others would just be that cuddly penguin being used
as an actor in some tableau.
.
Linus

The explanation for the name TUX can also be found in the mailing list archive:

Re: Let's name the penguin! (was: Re: Linux 2.0 really _is_ released..)
.
James Hughes (jamesh@interpath.com)
Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:25:52 -0400
.
(T)orvolds (U)ni(X) --> TUX!

Not everyone wants to be associated with an overweight penguin burping after a meal, no wonder a few of the more hardcore Linux distros chose to move away form the overweight penguin image (not saying SUSE is hardcore, but Novel always wants to do things differently anyway), I suggest they slowly slim down TUX until he looks like a little innocent penguin kid, instead of a bulky blob!

SUSE slightly broke the association by choosing an overweight chameleon:

FreeBSD chose the chubby devil:

Gentoo chose a chubby ‘g’ it seems:

Debian decided they had enough of chubby mascots!
They gave their logo design job to pre-school kids in order to keep the design open source:

Now that I drifted totally off topic, let’s get back on topic, how can TUX or SUSE reveal those 6 pack abs (or in the case of SUSE, the chameleon, maybe 3 pack abs?) Doing a thousand sit ups a day probably wont do anything about their situation, not convinced?

Take a look at Mark Pfeltz’s abs, he broke the world record for most sit ups in 59 hours, he did 45,005 situps, but you still can’t see any abs:

I tried to take him on obviously, but after an hour and just over 1000 sit ups, I figured that I’m wasting my time, think of how much work you can finish in 59 hours.

The point I’m trying to make is that great looking abs has nothing to do with the amount of sit ups you do and has everything to do with the amount of body fat in your body, instead of wasting 59 hours, Mark could’ve spend that time doing strength training to burn that layer of fat and maybe even some aerobic type workouts to burn more body fat. That’s just another reason why all of these magic ab machines you see on television, fail, they may make your abs rock hard, but they don’t do anything about the layer of fat covering it. In the case of TUX, he’ll need to change his diet a little bit, spend less time in front of the computer compiling Linux kernels and get some exercise to burn that body suit of his.

Tom Venuto wrote a fantastic article backed up by science on why body fat tends to sit around the waist with men and around the thighs with woman, take a look here!

You can’t out-train a lousy diet! Here’s my advice: TUX needs to understand that life is about more than eating fish all day long, SUSE can eat all the flies it wants, I don’t like flies, FreeBSD must release a couple of souls from their computers, he’s working too hard, gentoo needs to use some style sheets in order to shrink down that ‘g’ and for Debian it’s already too late! In general that means, cut back on calorie intake while increasing the amount of training you do (burn those calories) to create a calorie deficiency in your body. Once your body fat percentage starts to hit the single digits, you’ll start seeing those beautiful abs smiling at you! It’s that easy, yet that difficult!

Think I’ll leave the specifics of burning calories for another day . . .

Ever wondered whether it is possible to make alcoholic chewing gum?

I think my concoction came pretty close:

Besides looking like a fetus, this concoction is deadly, the white stuff in the center is crystallized while only a few drops of drinkable booze remains.

The big question, what is in it?

It started out as a Absinthe shot which I finished halfway just to get the before taste (before comparing it to the after taste). Next the half shot of Absinthe was filled up with Sex on the Beach after which I tasted a third of the concoction again, then the empty third of the shot glass was filled with a small amount of Russian Bear Vodka and the rest with black liquorish flavoured Sambuca after which the thing suddenly started crystallizing. When chewing the “chewing gum”, it’s like chewing a breath refresher, only much stronger and it knocks away any form of sore throat. (A doctor will probably disagree, so don’t try this at home, unless you have to :P)

Would love to hear about your favourite concoctions, what works for you and what type of UDO (Unidentified Drinkable Objects) have your created as a result of boredom, leave some comments if you dare!

As per request, the music video and lyrics of an all time favorite . . .

Enjoy!!!

I’m sittin’ here in the boring room
It’s just another rainy Sunday afternoon
I’m wasting my time, I got nothing to do
I’m hanging around, I’m waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder
I’m driving around in my car
I’m driving too fast, I’m driving too far
I’d like to change my point of view
I feel so lonely I’m waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder
I wonder how, I wonder why
Yesterday you told me ’bout the blue, blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree
I’m turning my head up and down
I’m turning, turning, turning, turning, turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon tree
I’m sittin’ here, I miss the power
I’d like to go out, taking a shower
But there’s a heavy cloud inside my head

I feel so tired, put myself into bed
Well nothing ever happens, and I wonder
Isolation, is not good for me
Isolation, I don’t want to sit on the lemon tree
I’m stepping around in the desert of joy
Maybe anyhow I get another toy
And everything will happen, and you wonder
I wonder how, I wonder why
Yesterday you told me ’bout the blue, blue sky
And all that I can see is just another lemon tree
I’m turning my head up and down
I’m turning, turning, turning, turning, turning around
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree
And I wonder, wonder
I wonder how, I wonder why
Yesterday you told me ’bout the blue, blue sky
And all that I can see, and all that I can see
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree

After writing a short blog entry on the Hurie Els (as bosparra.com refers to him), I’ve noticed an insane increase in traffic to my blog, just taking a look at the traffic from people actually searching for the words Jurie Els and Robbie Klay this morning, I’ve come to the conclusions that people in this country love gossip, can not live without it and have nothing better to do with their time other than reading Jurie Els gossip, I find the whole saga in bad taste and would have preferred not to know about it!

Even though Jurie Els managed to get an interdict against Huis Genoot from publishing Robbie Klay’s article (according to news24), I noticed on the front page that the article was in fact published, only censored, that’s like making headlines on the news about aliens landing on earth and then prohibiting people form using the word aliens altogether, everyone is talking about the aliens, but nobody dare say the word alien publicly in fear of prosecution.

Congratulations to Huis Genoot for spicing up the life of millions of ou tannies, I’ll nominate Huis Genoot for the Nobel Gossip prize, I believe they have a pretty good chance of winning it whether I nominate them or not …

Jurie Els (being referred to as a Cape Town “singer”), succeeded in getting an interdict against Medi24 concerning an article appearing in this week’s You and Huis Genoot.

In the article Robbie Klay talks openly and names “the uncle” who allegedly sexually molested him for several years.

I’m not going to draw any conclusions based on gossip, just provide you the links:

Read All About It Here:

http://www.bosparra.com/oom%e2%80%99-interdik/

http://www.bosparra.com/huldeblyk-hurie-els/

http://www.bosparra.com/hurie-inspirasie/

And the original article:

http://www.24.com/news/?p=tsa&i=839225

Today was probably the first time in 10 years I’ve been to a hair salon! (haha, that’s a record long time, you hear that Guinness?) Usually I made use of the portable hair salon type services (a stylus going from house to house) or simply used the shaver boxed away in my dad’s collection of army stuff, but neither was available this time …
What really fascinated me about the hair salon is the way woman literally farm with hair like farmers would produce crop, watering, harvesting, ploughing and feeding the crop. They will come in, sit down and tell the stylus exactly what they want, the amount of layers, what colour, which layer they want curls, which layer they want straight, the angle at which the curls should be done, the amount of heat to apply, which direction it should be combed in, what types of shampoo they want to use while washing and some of them leave with 99.9999999% of their hair still on their head with maybe a few split ends cut off or a couple of gray hairs cut out.

What is even more fascinating is the amount of chit-chat, woman will come in and sit down, as soon as her buttocks touch the chair, she starts talking, after maybe 10 or 15 minutes the conversation will steer into the direction of what the stylus is interested in, especially if she’s the chatty type, otherwise the customer or crop will continue chatting. This is truly amazing, they have absolutely no fear of hair getting into their mouth, or have woman developed some special way of talking and magnetizing the falling hair in such a way that talking pushes falling hair away? That will probably explain how hair falling from a woman’s head can defy some laws of physics, take a look at all the obscure places it falls and notice how the chaos theory makes more sense than any form of physics.

Topics they chat about is a function of their age group, younger woman will talk about their job and their bosses and if the stylus is really friendly, they might start to share gossip, talking about their exes, current boyfriends or just have an intimate chat while the older woman will start to talk about the weather (haha, this one definite conversation starter with old people, old people can talk about the weather for hours), how Eskom is messing with their cooking, cleaning and other household chores, some of them will quickly touch the politics if they run out of something to say (and be totally clueless I might add) and for those who sit there longer than one hour usually switches to talking about their grand children, how sweet they are, what their children is currently doing and so on. Even more fascinating is how the chatty type stylus can have the same conversation 2 or 3 times an hour and still be so enthusiastic about it, either they are good liars or have a poor memory.

Then there’s the weird equipment they use, the brain fryers (those noisy machines they put over the old people’s heads) and disinfectant which they spray on everyone’s head upon the event of BTC (buttocks touch chair), I guess they have specially formulated that disinfectant to make provision for all types of hair bacteria, I wonder where they learn all this stuff! Something else I’ve noticed is the way they clean the floors, the hair on the floor is always broomed away to the back into a secret compartment not publicly visible, shouldn’t they inform their customers what they’re doing with the hair or is that kind of transparency seen as invasion of privacy?

If engineers want to create the world’s biggest unique LOREM IPSUM piece of text, they should rather get woman from a hair salon to create it than a machine generating the text, they produce much more words than hair each day, I guess the market value for hair is much higher than the market value for words, no wonder the stylus is so quiet when she brooms away the hair to the back of the salon . . .

This is a question I get asked quite often from people stumbling on my new blog, “What are those Moving Blocks?” Or I’ll get some funny suggestions like a mini doomsday counter, horizontal Tetris thingy, some type of unseen Google ad, subliminal advertising tool and many more, keep them coming though, I’m getting some pretty cool ideas for my quest on world domination :P

They are obviously referring to my Binary Clock sitting in the top left corner just below the temporary logo.

After the inquiry on what it is, I usually get, “So how do you read the time on it?”

That’s actually really simple, the first row represents the hours in binary, the second row is the minutes in binary while the last row is the seconds in binary. It works as follow, a red block is considered a one while a black block is considered a zero, you read it from right to left and the value of each trailing block is the previous block’s value times two. Simply count all the red blocks times their respective position value for each row to get the hours, minutes and seconds respectively, let’s work out the time in the image as an example:

Counting only the red blocks will give the following values:

H: [32][16][08][04][02][01] => 08+04=12

M: [32][16][08][04][02][01] => 16+08+01=25

S: [32][16][08][04][02][01] =>16+04+02=22

And there we have the time 12h25 and 22 seconds.

Hmmm, think it is time to build a hexadecimal clock running from 000000 to FFFFFF and simply displaying a block of colour, 00h00 will be displayed as black and 23h59 will be very close to white, as the time goes on, the colour will change accordingly, lunchtime will be displayed as a reddish gray and as lunchtime passes by, green and blue will gradually blend in with the red until it’s a new shade of red.

Comment with any suggestions on interesting ways of keeping time, would love to hear from my fellow geeks :P