Archive for July, 2006

Billy Joel – Don’t Ask me Why

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

All the waiters in your grand cafe
Leave their tables when you blink
Every dog must have his everyday
Every drunk must have his drink
Don’t wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don’t ask me why

All your life you had to stand in line
Still you’re standing on your feet
All your choices made you change your mind
Now your calender’s complete
Don’t wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don’t ask me why

You can say the human heart
Is only make-believe
And I am only fighting fire with fire
But you are still a victim
Of the accidents you leave
As sure as I’m a victim of desire

All the servants in your new hotel
Throw their roses at your feet
Fool them all but baby I can tell
You’re no stranger to the street
Don’t ask for favors
Don’t talk to strangers
Don’t ask me why

Yesterday you were an only child
Now your ghosts have gone away
You can kill them in the classic style
Now you, “parlez vous francais”
Don’t look for answers
You took your chances
Don’t ask me why
Don’t ask me why

Life on Mars – David Bowie

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling “No”
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
For she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It’s on Amerika’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
‘Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Billy Joel – My Life

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

Got a call from an old friend
We used to be real close
Said he couldn’t go on the American way
Closed the shop, sold the house
Bought a ticket to the West Coast
Now he gives them a stand-up routine in L.A.

I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m alright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone

I never said you had to offer me a second chance
(I never said you had to)
I never said I was a victim of circumstance
(I never said)
I still belong, don’t get me wrong
And you can speak your mind
But not on my time

They will tell you, you can’t sleep alone in a strange place
Then they’ll tell you, you can’t sleep with somebody else
Ah, but sooner or later you sleep in your own space
Either way it’s okay, you wake up with yourself

I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m alright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone

I never said you had to offer me a second chance
(I never said you had to)
I never said I was a victim of circumstance
(Of cirumstance)
I still belong, don’t get me wrong
And you can speak your mind
But not on my time

I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone

(Keep it to yourself, it’s my life.)
(Keep it to yourself, it’s my life.)
(Keep it to yourself, it’s my life.)
(Keep it to yourself, it’s my life.)

320G / 10980円

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

Seagate ST3320620AS 320G SATAII 16MB cache – 10,980 yen tax inc (AUD$124).

Almost 3 Gigs per 100円 (price of a can of soda). For someone who remembers $100/G not all that long ago, that’s pretty cool.

Also, good to see the , finally.

Song of the Week 2

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

Miss Information (Shael Riley)

UPDATE: Bill Gates Revolution (leet geek beat)

new music, late july 2006

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Listening to: “geek rap” (I hate the term nerdcore), symphonic gothic, japanese girl punk, chinese & taiwanese pop/experimental, some jap. soundtracks.

Samples

geek rap:

Miss Information (Shael Riley) (lyrics warning, haha)
Bill Gates Revolution (leet geek beat)

gothic/j-punk: enough here already

chi/tai pop

我要我們在一起
如果還有明天 – this is funny, because i was sent a version of this song by a chinese friend because Li Yuchun (the SuperGirl Winner .. remember?) sang it at her concert in Chengdu. My Taiwanese housemate heard me playing it and insisted I had to listen to his “better” version. Then when I was playing that, ANOTHER chinese friend heard it and told me no no no, hers is the best version, and sent it to me. I agree, here it is. Apparently very famous, but I’d never heard it.

can’t find the experimental taiwanese music I was listening to. It’s somewhere here in this ocean of unreadable kanji.

japanese soundtracks

Ellegarden – Stereoman (may not actually be japanese, who knows anymore)

will upload as time permits.

Miss Information – Shael Riley (feat Beefy)

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Miss Information (Lyrics by Shael Riley and Beefy; music by Shael Riley)

My name is Disk Mastah Smokabitch,
nerd rap historian,
rock like Amadeus and chant like Gregorian.
Listen up, there’s a lot to the story and if my name was Sean Stone,
I would play the accordian.

Lemme set you straight,
so you ain’t gotta guess:
MC Chris’s real name is Damien Hess, he’s the best,
Correct, Most adept nerd rapper,
to ever coach the little league team of YT Cracka
plus the Spamtek Crew, in mascara,
and the faux hawk like Kevin Pereira…

What? It was the punk rock era!
Come on, contradict me, you can’t, son, I dare ya.

I get on track with the yes, yes, ya’ll,
I bring it back with the no, not at all,
I fill you head with oblique catch-alls,
Miss Information is smart, big tits and tall.

What kind of girl is Miss? You can’t find her,
She keeps an iPod inside her vagina,
the cord hangs kinda behind her.

A little Eine Kleine Nacht in a minor.

MC Router rocked the 1337 beats in geek speak,
and Benjamin Bear clean your clock like neat freaks.
We keep beats, like Optimus Rhyme with heat seek
and I never joined a frat cause I hate greeks.

What’s the problem, my son?
It seems that you’ve met my friend Ultraklystron.
He’s a werewolf, by gum!
And he can’t stand Japanese animation.

Mega Man in a porno shop.
Futuristic Sex Robots with hip-hop stops.
I came to rock the schlock jock,
with the trackball sticky from the peppermint schnapps on top.

I never get my screennames blocked.
Flip the k-line on the IRC-cop,
And you know I got this track locked.
Take it back like Link boomerangin’ an octorock.

I get on track with the yes, yes, ya’ll,
I bring it back with the no, not at all,
I fill you head with oblique catch-alls,
Miss Information is smart, big tits and tall.

What kind of girl is Miss? You can’t find her,
She keeps an iPod inside her vagina,
the cord hangs kinda behind her.

A little bit of night music in A minor.

The heavyweight webcomic artist to order,
rocks the nerd style from south of the border.
Whitesican with a skin disorder.
You better step aside for the big man.

I mean he jacked like a elephant,
ground beneath he,
shakes the earth when he moves his feet. He,
never touch a vegetable, green and leafy,
I wanna give it up to my main man…
MC Plus Plus!

Alice is sending her message to Bob,
protecting that…

Wait. That’s the wrong song.

133T G33k B34t were created In a test tube
And my friend Monzy is actually Ice Cube
And we met one another up at MIT
Where we studied the art of rhyming from Beefy
And few know that Frontalot is actually a parrot
Who had his DNA spliced with that of a ferret
In the mad science lab of Dr. MC Hawking
He’s the puppetmaster of Frontalot’s sqawking
No lies, Optimus Rhyme are actually cyborgs
who used to go by the name The Machina Warlords
The high voice was a curse put on mc chris
That’ll vanish after true love’s first kiss
It’s hard to be a rapper and an amputee
That’s why I have so much respect for Jesse Dangerously
This has all been fact, no jokes, and no lying
The greatest rapper in the world is Mr. Shael Riley

Who? Shael Riley? This one here?
Done a whole lot a tracks, ain’t nobody cared
but he keeps coming back like he’s learning impaired
with a MC Chris voice and the Frontalot hair.

I couldn’t mumble
I humble my sentence since,
I was consumed by a taciturn reticence,
face to face with the man who set precedence
for nerd style and geek-rock excellence.

Using physics he could tell I was sick,
so he opened his mouth and produced a guitar pick
I looked at MC Hawking,
I picked up his pick and now I can’t stop rawking.

I bring it back with the yes, yes, ya’ll,
I get on track with the no, not at all,
I fill your head with oblique catch-alls,
Miss Information is smart, big tits and tall.

What kind of girl is Miss? You can’t find her,
She keeps an iPod inside her vagina,
the cord hangs kinda behind her.

A little MC Nach Bar in A minor,

I bring it back with the yes, yes, ya’ll,
I get on track with the no, not at all,
I fill your head with oblique catch-alls,
MC Router is smart, big tits and tall.

What kind of girl is Miss? You can’t find her,
She keeps an iPod inside her vagina,
the cord hangs kinda behind her.

A little Eine Kleine Nacht in A minor

A little nerdcore hip-hop, in A minor.

Song of the Week

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Song of the week is 浮舟 (Ukifune) by Go!Go!7188.

Obey The Moderator

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

I don’t know which is scarier – that there even exists a rap song about moderating an internet forum, or that it’s actually pretty good.

Lyrics in comments. I’ll nullify your password, man!

Number Noun Dot Com

Monday, July 24th, 2006

God I hate anyone who thinks that an irrelevant number followed by a totally meaningless noun is any kind of acceptable domain name.

37Signals.com – the assholes who are responsible for starting this trend.
43things.com – I’d like to stab them with 43 things, yes
9Rules.com – The approximate number of laws preventing me from delivering these fuckers their just reward, ie a grisly death, perhaps by hacking into small pieces
43folders.com – After the above retribution is carried out, perhaps we could store their body parts in about 43 folders or so, maybe more
83degrees.com – is the temperature at which I’d like to cook your fucking BRAIN, assholes

Generating Unique IDs & the Birthday Paradox

Monday, July 24th, 2006

Some of my recent work has led me into research into how to generate as random-as-possible numbers for use in a distributed messaging application. The idea is that, even if two (or more) databases, hosted in different countries for maximum local speed, somehow get out of sync, there will be some dependable ID unique to every row in every table which will allow some sort of merge without losing everything. To try to synchronise unique row IDs on different databases in different countries .. is a recipe for disaster.

Of course my application is not running simulateneously in multiple countries for now. But this needs to be built in from the start.

Anyway, it’s fascinating just how difficult it is to generate a reliably random number. And getting into any kind of serious thought on the subject never fails to astound me with the counter-intuitive, and yet provably true, twists in the very nature of numbers.

Perhaps the best example of this kind of counter-intuitive truth is the Birthday Paradox, the well-known probability theory question. Simply put – you only need 23 people in a room together before the chance that two of them share a birthday is already 50%. I can’t speculate on the hyper-logical functioning of other people’s brains, but to me this seems intuitively wrong. I can understand the logic, I can agree with the proof, but I still think it’s weird.

How does this relate to unique IDs? Well, it turns out that even if you have a very good random number generator – a perfect one, in fact – you will still encounter collisions far, far earlier than one would intuitively expect. I’ll cut and paste a good example from the python mailing list:

My back-of-the envelope calculations [..] suggest that if you could generate truly random p=0.5 bits, then if you generate a trillion row database every second for a period of time equal to the current age of the universe, and give each row a 128-bit random ID, it’s about even money whether or not a duplicate key error would occur once over all those databases over that time period.

My calculations don’t agree [..]

As far I can see you’ll get “birthday” collisions at around sqrt(n) number of ids, where n is the maximum ID value (maybe I’m wrong here?). So 128 bit IDs can be used about 2^64 times before collisions are important. If a trillion is 10^12, and you generate a database every second then you have:
>>> (2l^64 / 10l^12) 18446744L seconds, or
>>> 18446744.0 / (60*60*24*365) 0.58[..] years.

That’s about half a year, which is somewhat shorter than the age of the universe!

Oh yeah, 6 months is just a little bit shorter than the age of the universe. A minor discrepancy! But truth be told, my brain in its uninformed state will automatically think the former example looks reasonable. The latter seem impossibly soon. And yet, it’s provably correct.

I don’t expect to be generating a trillion rows a second, so I’ll probably be OK with a 128-bit ID. But intuitively I would have expected a 32-bit key to be more than adequate. If I went with that, though, I’d have a 50% chance of a collision after just 2^16 rows – which is only 65,536!

Rails has a built-in “session id” generator which supposedly suffices for http session use, although it’s been called into reasonable question by users. For now, I’ll read a 128-bit key from /dev/(u)random.

Server Search

Monday, July 24th, 2006

I need a new server.

Current options are:

LayeredTech
SoftLayer (currently winning)
LiquidWeb

I like SoftLayer because of their vLan policy, and of course price/performance. The everyone-is-a-vLan is a great idea because if you need another server or 20, they can just drop them in, configure them on the same vLan and voila! Another server at 192.168.x.x. Although they should give a discount if it’s not going to be internet-facing (eg DB…). And RackSpace, while by popular consensus the best, are just too expensive.

I’m undecided between managed and unmanaged. Well actually – I just can’t see why management is necessary. I have never needed management help before and can’t really imagine why I would need it in future unless I was DDOS’d or something – but surely that would be covered even by “unmanaged” services? I’d like to know exactly what management is supposed to do?

Unfortunately, all the above seem a little slow from Japan. In fact everyone seems slow from Japan – ironically the fastest appears to be GoDaddy, from whom I would not rent a dedicated server in a million years. Naturally the cost of an in-country DS is absolutely ludicrous at what seems to be around a 3-5x premium over the US market. There must be a market opportunity for someone to open some kind of reasonable-value dedicated/colo service in Japan?

Another option is of course to go for someone in HK or Singapore but I don’t really want to mess around with those countries at this stage. It’s just too hard to find someone who can be trusted, and there’s too many dodgy outfits, and not enough large companies. I’m not buying a DS from someone who accepts fricking e-gold and Stormpay but no CC except through PayPal! Jesus, what kind of operation doesn’t have CC processing?

Anyway SoftLayer it is unless I find something else. This site won’t be making the move immediately, though – if there’s no troubles after a couple of months, I’ll bring everything over for good. I’m not moving until I’m absolutely sure I only have to move once, though.

Go!Go!7188 – 浮舟

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

浮舟 – Go!Go! 7188

作詞 浜田亞紀子
作曲 中島優美

春のにおいも芽吹く花も
立ちすくむあたしに
君を連れてはこない
夏が來る頃は明け方の雨
靜かに寄り添って
かけら拾い集める
秋が過ぎたらきっとあたしは
のびた黑い髮を切り落としてしまう
愛しい人よ離れ顔なんて
3日もすりゃすぐに忘れてしまった
ただ染みついて消えないのは
煙草のにおい

君を待つ日日は足りない
切ない 鳴り止まない 
不協和音が響き合って
それがあたしの枯れない
溶けない 鳴り止まない
孤獨の唄 來(らい)來來…

かすかな別れを漂わすこともなく
足音は突然 絶切れた
あぁ悲しくも美しき白い冬
會えるものならば他に何も望まない
降り積もるは あの日も雪

君を待つ日日は足りない
切ない 鳴り止まない 
不協和音が響き合って
それがあたしの枯れない
溶けない 鳴り止まない
孤獨の唄 來(らい)來來…

孤獨の唄 來來來

Paul Graham at RailsConf 2006

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

While searching for ways to not work but pretend I was doing something educational and useful, I started watching videos of keynotes from the Rails conference held recently in Chicago. DHH’s speech was good, what you’d expect I guess. Thought provoking but I wasn’t really inspired. But Paul Graham’s was excellent. Not really related to Rails all that much, but just general insight on business, independence, the concept of the “outsider”, and the advantages of being your own boss. I liked it very much so I recommend anyone interested in independent business watch it here.

It’s in an annoying flash format but put up with it, it’s worth it.

Defeating Nature

Monday, July 17th, 2006

From an interesting post at Irradiance’s Blog:

“Hypothetically, if I was mad and desperate to return my body to a state of youth, what scientific advances would I decide to bank on as happening the soonest that would allow me to do this”.

I think the best way would be : clone yourself, have the body grow to sufficient size, have one’s brain and spinal cord transplanted into the new body.

Interesting idea but I think it’s coming at the problem from the wrong angle. I also read a lot about this subject and am convinced that people like the Immortality Institute are barking up the wrong tree. Why are they so obsessed with preserving the human body? The same body that gave them all these problems in the first place? We should be instead focussed on bettering the human body and adopting that.

Now I realise it’s a kind of blasphemy in some circles to even hint that we, pathetic insignificant man, can better nature. Well, I think that’s bullshit. We beat nature every day and will continue to do so at an ever-increasing rate. Sure, our bodies are complex – billions of years of evolution saw to that. But because of our resources, we can improve on nature’s ludicrously complex and fragile solutions and solve problems in a better way. Why re-implement the insanely complex digestive system, for example, when we can solve the problem of “bodies need power to move” by, you know, using a battery?

Nature doesn’t have batteries, it doesn’t have motors. Humans can do better because we can draw on far more resources and design. Nature couldn’t come up with the wheel because there’s no evolutionary jump imaginable, no matter how wacky, that can spontaeneously come up with a wheel/axel structure in an animal. But we’ve got wheels, and electricity, and motors, and circuits. So my answer to any of these nature fans is “show me the bird that can fly nonstop from Sydney to London at 900kph carrying 200 tons of cargo and then I’ll admit nature rules”.

The human eye? Modern video cameras are better. The human ear? A fragile, deteriorating piece of crap compared to a $50 microphone. Human muscle? Weak. Circulatory system? Fragile, prone to blockage and failure. Skin? Easily harmed, bettered by modern touch/heat sensors, sabotaged by obsolete pain receptors. Prone to malfunction. Prone to disease. Irreplaceable parts. Built-in time-delayed auto-destruct. Incapable of operation outside tightly controlled conditions. Can someone please tell me what the hell is so good about the human body?

OK, I hear you say. The brain. And yes, the brain is the one thing about human physiology that impresses me. But the good news is, we already have them. We can keep the brain and throw away the rest. We know what the brain eats, how it likes to be kept. The obvious next step for any human wishing to upgrade his/her capabilities and/or lifespan is to keep his/her brain, and transplant it into a more advanced machine. We can worry about reproduction later.

Anyway Irradiance’s original post was about preserving the body so I’ll just cut and paste my (slightly edited) responses here:

On Cloning

The reason I don’t go with the cloning idea is because I don’t think it will ever be ethically permissable to raise a body to the size required where it can accept an adult brain, then get rid of the brain which is already there (and is absolutely required for proper development) and stick your own in. Even if you retard the local brain somehow, reducing it to just the bare minimum of functionality required to eat, exercise, brush teeth, etc .. it’s still basically murder and I don’t think that will ever change. That doesn’t mean it won’t be doable of course but because of its basic illegality I doubt research will speed along in perfecting the process. Who knows, though.

Also, the technology required to genetically modify the brain of a foetus in situ in preparation for the above process seems way, way further away than just linking up an existing brain, whether to an unwilling “donor” (heh heh) or to a machine. The latter is far more likely than the former IMO. And again .. because of ethical problems, I don’t see much future for the research. Who the fuck is going to fund research on “A method of getting some poor schmuck, scoooping their brain out and sticking mine in LOL”. Robotics is a much better bet!

On the technology required for life extension

The best hope is for the brain/spinal cord to be removed and supported by some sort of machine. Once we’ve done that, and can communicate with the brain properly, we have any number of options, the easiest of which is probably feeding it some sort of VR sim, and the furthest off is putting in a Ghost In The Shell-style humanoid body.

What technology is needed? Well, first the ability to remove and store the living brain. We can probably remove it intact already, and the technology to keep it alive and fed doesn’t seem all that hard. It sounds like a real nightmare though, just sitting there conscious in the ultimate isolation tank, so we also need to communicate – machine/nerve interfaces. Work progresses well on this, and you may be aware of early success in such things as connecting cameras to optic nerves, etc. The whole thing will, of course, take a long time but I don’t think it’s out of reach.

So once we’ve got the brain bubbling happily away in some kind of nutrient-rich vat, and can send/receive from it the right kinds of signals, we’re up to the VR. We can present to the brain an artificial body in a virtual world. Hell, some people might prefer this. Or we can remote link to whatever model of robot is most advanced – once we’ve worked out how to turn nerve signals into electricity, we can digitise and abstract it in whatever way we want.

The total humanoid replacement body is a long way off, but I think we will see it in our lifetimes. The ability, at least, to make a human form and fill it with motors and a power source, is already here, although crude. Advances in materials technology, mainly, are required here – stronger myomer muscles, better plastics, etc. Video for eyes, sound for ears, of course, is no problem at all. Power source is also a big problem at the moment.

But I don’t see any fundamental problem which will render the above impossible. The body is, after all, nothing but a hugely complex machine. We don’t have to duplicate even a thousandth of it, as we have mechanical solutions for almost every function – for example, we don’t need to re-implement digestion when we can just have a power source.

In summary – the big problems are 1. nourishing and maintaining the brain/spinal cord in a tank and 2. communicating with it. Everything else is just tweaking the options.

Nemo – Nightwish

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

This is me for forever
One of the lost ones
The one without a name
Without an honest heart as compass

This is me for forever
One without a name
These lines the last endeavor
To find the missing lifeline

Oh how I wish
For soothing rain
All I wish is to dream again
My loving heart
Lost in the dark
For hope I’d give my everything

My flower
Withered between
The pages two and three
The once and forever bloom gone with my sins

Walk the dark path
Sleep with angels
Call the past for help
Touch me with your love
And reveal to me my true name

Oh how I wish
For soothing rain
All I wish is to dream again
My loving heart
Lost in the dark
For hope I’d give my everything

Oh how I wish
For soothing rain
Oh how I wish to dream again
Once and for all
And all for once
Nemo my name forever more

Nemo sailing home
Nemo letting go

Oh how I wish
For soothing rain
All I wish is to dream again
My loving heart
Lost in the dark
For hope I’d give my everything

Oh how I wish
For soothing rain
Oh how I wish to dream again
Once and for all
And all for once
Nemo my name forever more

Nemo my name forever more

Ghost Love Score – Nightwish

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

We used to swim the same moonlight waters
Oceans away from the wakeful day

- My fall will be for you -
My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
If you be the one to cut me
I`ll bleed forever

Scent of the sea before the waking of the world
Brings me to thee
Into the blue memory

- My fall will be for you -
My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
If you be the one to cut me
I will bleed forever

Into the blue memory

A siren from the deep came to me
Sang my name my longing
Still I write my songs about that dream of mine
Worth everything I may ever be

The Child will be born again
That siren carried him to me
First of them true loves
Singing on the shoulders of an angel
Without care for love n` loss

Bring me home or leave me be
My love in the dark heart of the night
I have lost the path before me
The one behind will lead me

Take me
Cure me
Kill me
Bring me home
Every way
Every day
Just another loop in the hangman`s noose

Take me, cure me, kill me, bring me home
Every way, every day
I keep on watching us sleep

Relive the old sin of Adam and Eve
Of you and me
Forgive the adoring beast

Redeem me into childhood
Show me myself without the shell
Like the advent of May
I`ll be there when you say
Time to never hold our love

- My fall will be for you -
My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
You were the one to cut me
So I`ll bleed forever

My dream right now

Monday, July 10th, 2006

Is to be driving through the Tokyo nights in a BMW 6 Series convertible, listening to Nemo by Nightwish and just having the best time ever.

BMW 6 Series Convertible

Only 11,600,000円!

Instant Message away codes

Saturday, July 1st, 2006

Here is the exact meanings of my IM statuses:

ONLINE: I am not busy, and I am inviting anyone who wants to talk to me.

AWAY: I am probably doing somethign else but not too busy, and so if you want to talk about something, why not say hello .. but no guarantees

BE RIGHT BACK: As it sounds.

BUSY: I never use this. If I’m so busy, I’m not online.

OUT TO LUNCH:
I am away from the keyboard, probably shopping or something, but did not want to disconnect IM for some reason.

ON THE PHONE: Self explanatory. I rarely use this though.

OFFLINE / APPEAR OFFLINE: I am either too busy to waste time on IM or I am simply not running the app. Send an email!

I thought I’d type this list because it seems like everyone has some subtle sort of scheme for what “away” and “busy” means. I never know if someone’s going to be all upset if I message them when they insist they’re “busy” – hey, if you’re so busy, turn off your IM, I think. But anyway, this is what *I* think these statuses mean.