Profile for Rob T Firefly:
Artist, writer, hacker, performer, and nerd of all trades from New York City, USA.
me dot net
my podcasts
mastodon
twatter
social things
things I work at
Recent front page messages:
Best answers to questions:
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- a member for 22 years, 1 month and 23 days
- has posted 408 messages on the main board
- (of which 5 have appeared on the front page)
- has posted 9 messages on the talk board
- has posted 202 messages on the links board
- (including 52 links)
- has posted 41 stories and 37 replies on question of the week
- They liked 477 pictures, 277 links, 3 talk posts, and 1451 qotw answers.
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Artist, writer, hacker, performer, and nerd of all trades from New York City, USA.
me dot net
my podcasts
mastodon
twatter
social things
things I work at
Recent front page messages:
I made a new banner for my Twitter.
Click your clicker for bigger better banner (71 kb)
(Mon 28th Nov 2022, 14:25, More)
Click your clicker for bigger better banner (71 kb)(Mon 28th Nov 2022, 14:25, More)
The USBee.
The tragedy is watching it try to get into the flower the right way round.
(Sun 22nd Sep 2019, 18:12, More)
The tragedy is watching it try to get into the flower the right way round.
(Sun 22nd Sep 2019, 18:12, More)
Best answers to questions:
» Sexism
Beardy pain.
Here's one area of Western society in which women generally have it much easier then men; women have it utterly made where shaving is concerned.
Shaving my face is rubbish. Why would any just society dictate that I have to scrape a razor-sharp razor all over the most visible and vital to social interaction part of my body, first thing in the damned morning whilst my brain is still half-asleep and my dexterity is suffering a -2D6 penalty with possible additional modifiers depending on how the previous night went?
In response to this, women might wish to bring up having to shave their legs, underarms, or whatever else to comply with prevailing societal standards of beauty, but the things ladies generally shave can easily be covered with clothing if one is just not feeling up to it. If I could skip shaving my face and just go to work with a trouser leg over my head instead, I would be so happy.
(Mon 28th Dec 2009, 6:05, More)
Beardy pain.
Here's one area of Western society in which women generally have it much easier then men; women have it utterly made where shaving is concerned.
Shaving my face is rubbish. Why would any just society dictate that I have to scrape a razor-sharp razor all over the most visible and vital to social interaction part of my body, first thing in the damned morning whilst my brain is still half-asleep and my dexterity is suffering a -2D6 penalty with possible additional modifiers depending on how the previous night went?
In response to this, women might wish to bring up having to shave their legs, underarms, or whatever else to comply with prevailing societal standards of beauty, but the things ladies generally shave can easily be covered with clothing if one is just not feeling up to it. If I could skip shaving my face and just go to work with a trouser leg over my head instead, I would be so happy.
(Mon 28th Dec 2009, 6:05, More)
» Breakin' The Law
Not dangerous, just embarassing...
One late night, I was walking home from work when I noticed a box that a store had put out with the trash. It was filled with plastic DVD cases. I opened a few and they were empty, and it just so happened I needed some spare cases.
I grabbed the box and continued home. A patrol car pulled to a stop near me, and the cop leaned out his window toward me. "What's in the box?"
Why lie? "Some empty DVD cases I found in the trash. I really needed them, and they were thrown out, so..."
"Can I see?"
Why not? I opened the box and handed him a few. He took them for a closer look, confirmed their emptiness, and then looked at the covers.
I didn't realize why he started laughing so hard until I realized where I had got them - outside the porno store. I took a closer look in the box, and in the light of the cop car realized what the covers looked like. I had just handed the cop a stack of empty video nasties, with very "illustrative" covers.
He dropped them back in the box, looked at me as though I were liable to begin violating myself at any moment, snickered "Enjoy," and drove off.
(Thu 8th Jan 2004, 7:01, More)
Not dangerous, just embarassing...
One late night, I was walking home from work when I noticed a box that a store had put out with the trash. It was filled with plastic DVD cases. I opened a few and they were empty, and it just so happened I needed some spare cases.
I grabbed the box and continued home. A patrol car pulled to a stop near me, and the cop leaned out his window toward me. "What's in the box?"
Why lie? "Some empty DVD cases I found in the trash. I really needed them, and they were thrown out, so..."
"Can I see?"
Why not? I opened the box and handed him a few. He took them for a closer look, confirmed their emptiness, and then looked at the covers.
I didn't realize why he started laughing so hard until I realized where I had got them - outside the porno store. I took a closer look in the box, and in the light of the cop car realized what the covers looked like. I had just handed the cop a stack of empty video nasties, with very "illustrative" covers.
He dropped them back in the box, looked at me as though I were liable to begin violating myself at any moment, snickered "Enjoy," and drove off.
(Thu 8th Jan 2004, 7:01, More)
» Abusing freebies
Floppy disks
Back in the early-mid 1990s I was an impoverished young computer geek with a hefty software-downloading habit. Since in those days I would have needed a second mortgage to afford an upgrade to my pathetically insufficient hard drive, I went through insane amounts of the then-popular 3.5" floppy disks.
They were sort of expensive and I was poor, but I noticed the free floppies that turned up in my mail now and then, which contained software and free trials for the online services of the period - America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe.
As many nerds of a certain age remember, those freebies still had the write-protect switches on them, were easily re-formattable, and were surprisingly high-quality disks, I imagine in order to survive trips through the post glued to boring magazines. The disks were also made freely available in display boxes, sitting on the counters of all the computer shops.
A few phone calls later, those three service providers somehow got the idea that my address was in fact a modestly successful computer shop. They happily sent me free cases of their floppies in DOS, Windows, and Macintosh flavors every month or so - enough to hold my stashes of data and still have enough to give away to other geeks.
This little scheme served me very well up until the days of damnably unwriteable CD-ROMs.
Apologies for texture.
(Sat 10th Nov 2007, 23:16, More)
Floppy disks
Back in the early-mid 1990s I was an impoverished young computer geek with a hefty software-downloading habit. Since in those days I would have needed a second mortgage to afford an upgrade to my pathetically insufficient hard drive, I went through insane amounts of the then-popular 3.5" floppy disks.
They were sort of expensive and I was poor, but I noticed the free floppies that turned up in my mail now and then, which contained software and free trials for the online services of the period - America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe.
As many nerds of a certain age remember, those freebies still had the write-protect switches on them, were easily re-formattable, and were surprisingly high-quality disks, I imagine in order to survive trips through the post glued to boring magazines. The disks were also made freely available in display boxes, sitting on the counters of all the computer shops.
A few phone calls later, those three service providers somehow got the idea that my address was in fact a modestly successful computer shop. They happily sent me free cases of their floppies in DOS, Windows, and Macintosh flavors every month or so - enough to hold my stashes of data and still have enough to give away to other geeks.
This little scheme served me very well up until the days of damnably unwriteable CD-ROMs.
Apologies for texture.
(Sat 10th Nov 2007, 23:16, More)
» Missing body parts
Hair.
I've been visibly losing my hair since age 16 or so, which led to my growing it long in high school. I'm 28 now, I don't mind being bald, and people are even occasionally inclined to rub my head, which is nice.
(Sun 4th Jun 2006, 1:53, More)
Hair.
I've been visibly losing my hair since age 16 or so, which led to my growing it long in high school. I'm 28 now, I don't mind being bald, and people are even occasionally inclined to rub my head, which is nice.
(Sun 4th Jun 2006, 1:53, More)
» Apparently I'm a sex offender
The nonce sense that never was
Earlier this year when Eurovision was going on, and you lovely Brits were sending that creepy bastard Daz Sampson with his schoolgirls and Ian Huntley features to represent you, I had the perfect idea for a spoof. I rewrote the lyrics to contain many noncey references, chronicle Daz's many failed attempts at pulling children, and even a sly b3ta reference.
Of course, as I was working out a cover of the tune on my old MIDI keyboard, the damn thing chose that moment to die a cheap electronic death. Undaunted, I moved on to recording my vocal track. After a bit of practice, I got a pretty good impression down, and began rapping into my computer.. this being in the US, where nobody apart from the local b3tans know anything about Sampson, his video, or Eurovision.
So, there I was with my studio headphones on, enthusiastically rapping to a half-done backing track in a Manchester accent about failing to pull little girls. It wasn't until I was interrupted by my visiting sister walking into the room and pulling my headphones off me that I learned the best take of my rapping was interrupted throughout by timid knocks on my window and her confused voice asking "Rob? Did you just shout what I think you did?"
For some reason, my stuttering explanation which went something like "well you see there's this guy in the UK, who looks like a child molester, a real child molester named Ian Huntley except it's not really him, and they're sending him to this big European song contest, and there are these schoolgirls dancing.. um, let me show you the video! It's awful!!" wasn't met with quite the level of understanding and shared laughter I would have liked. More of a terrified head-shaking and slowly backing away sort of thing...
I ended up putting the half-finished project aside in favor of some other stuff, and eventually replaced the keyboard. Unfortunately, by that time Eurovision had been and gone, that crazy-eyed freak presumably retreated back into his plastic mac, and there's nothing sadder than spoofing something that's horribly old news, so I deleted the unfinished audio. Still, if anyone else with a musical itch to scratch wants to have a go, contact me and I'll send you my lyrics to do with as you please, and you can also have the password to the musician's MySpace account I created for it in a moment of particularly poor judgment.
Apologies for texture.
(Sat 19th Aug 2006, 2:59, More)
The nonce sense that never was
Earlier this year when Eurovision was going on, and you lovely Brits were sending that creepy bastard Daz Sampson with his schoolgirls and Ian Huntley features to represent you, I had the perfect idea for a spoof. I rewrote the lyrics to contain many noncey references, chronicle Daz's many failed attempts at pulling children, and even a sly b3ta reference.
Of course, as I was working out a cover of the tune on my old MIDI keyboard, the damn thing chose that moment to die a cheap electronic death. Undaunted, I moved on to recording my vocal track. After a bit of practice, I got a pretty good impression down, and began rapping into my computer.. this being in the US, where nobody apart from the local b3tans know anything about Sampson, his video, or Eurovision.
So, there I was with my studio headphones on, enthusiastically rapping to a half-done backing track in a Manchester accent about failing to pull little girls. It wasn't until I was interrupted by my visiting sister walking into the room and pulling my headphones off me that I learned the best take of my rapping was interrupted throughout by timid knocks on my window and her confused voice asking "Rob? Did you just shout what I think you did?"
For some reason, my stuttering explanation which went something like "well you see there's this guy in the UK, who looks like a child molester, a real child molester named Ian Huntley except it's not really him, and they're sending him to this big European song contest, and there are these schoolgirls dancing.. um, let me show you the video! It's awful!!" wasn't met with quite the level of understanding and shared laughter I would have liked. More of a terrified head-shaking and slowly backing away sort of thing...
I ended up putting the half-finished project aside in favor of some other stuff, and eventually replaced the keyboard. Unfortunately, by that time Eurovision had been and gone, that crazy-eyed freak presumably retreated back into his plastic mac, and there's nothing sadder than spoofing something that's horribly old news, so I deleted the unfinished audio. Still, if anyone else with a musical itch to scratch wants to have a go, contact me and I'll send you my lyrics to do with as you please, and you can also have the password to the musician's MySpace account I created for it in a moment of particularly poor judgment.
Apologies for texture.
(Sat 19th Aug 2006, 2:59, More)