Music for Dogs

(Or should that title be “Music To Bark By”?)

I know some folks who are involved with dog rescue groups (Lucky Dog Animal Rescue and Homeward Trails Animal Rescue). As a result, I get to see a lot of photos of dogs that are available for adoption. Frequently, these are puppies which are being fostered (along with their mother) until they are old enough to be weaned. On occasion, they’ll also share when dogs are being transported away from areas with high-kill shelters.

This causes problems (not big problems to be certain).

First, I want the dogs. All. The. Dogs. I don’t have room to raise more dogs, but that does little to stop the wanting.

Second, and perhaps more significantly, my weird brain makes all sorts of random associations. Often associations with songs.

With apologies to the late Jerry Reed:

🎶 Eastbound and down, loaded up with puppies,
We gonna do what they say can’t be done.
We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there,
I’m eastbound, just watch those pup dogs run. 🎶

And with that out of the way, here’s the original version of the song.

(Cover image created via Dall-E.)

I’m a Little Teapot…

Even if they don’t know about HTTP status codes, most folks know that a “404 error” means “page not found.”

Lesser known is the 418 status, meaning “I’m a teapot” (in response to a request to brew coffee).

Today, I stumbled across a somewhat legitimate use for it. Not an actual internet connected teapot (though that would be awesome), but someone using it in the spirit of “This server can’t do what you’re asking, but another might be able to. (It’s a hack, but not an unreasonable one.)

The 418 “I’m a teapot” status code itself started off as an April Fool’s joke in RFC 2324, the “Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol”. Rather than badly summarizing it myself, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia’s Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol article which details not only the origins of the protocol, but also the story of how the “I’m a teapot” status code became an official part of the HTTP specification and is baked in to a number of mainstream HTTP frameworks.

(Header image by A.cilia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Educational Videos …. Where?!?

So here’s an unusual story from 404 Media about a woman posting explainer videos about calculus, neural networks, and the like. And the twist is, she’s posting these educational videos, on Pornhub of all places.

Why on Earth is she publishing educational videos on a porn site? Her rationale makes perfect sense – Pornhub pays better than YouTube (though she posts there too).

There’s also a mention that when she shared a link to her videos on her Linkedin profile, that service responded with a ban and won’t explain why. My guess is they found the link inappropriate (I mean, it is a porn site), but refusing to explain the ban takes inappropriate to a whole other level.

(Read the article)

Wooden Bitcoin

Just like their digital counterpart, wooden bitcoin are not backed by any real world assets and their value is therefore largely speculative.

However, unlike their digital counterpart, in the event of a worldwide economic collapse, wooden bitcoin will still maintain some real world value as kindling for a cookfire.

A small pile of wooden disks on a silver background. An outer circle on each disk reads "Wooden Bitcoin. Just as Good, Really." Text on an inner circle reads "To Redeem: Insert into any Internet Coin Slot." The Bitcoin logo appears at the center of each disk.

Boot To The Head

I use different browsers for varying reasons. By default, the Brave browser shows full page ads on the home screen. Even though they pretty much universally don’o’t interest me, I don’t begrudge Brave the ads since they help pay for the company’s ongoing operating costs. And, according to Brave, they don’t trade in my personal data so I see little reason to turn them off.

Plus, some of the ads are downright entertaining. For example, a few months ago, this was the background image from an ad for Karate.com.

Two men in martial arts uniforms, standing on a mat in what appears to be an arena or gymnasium. * **Two Men** * The man on the left is bald and has a beard. * He is wearing a black martial arts uniform with white accents. * His hands are clasped together in front of him. * The man on the right has short brown hair. * He is wearing a white martial arts uniform with black accents. * His left leg is raised, and his arms are bent at the elbows. The image suggests that the two men are engaged in some kind of martial arts training or competition.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be about, but in my mind, the smirking bald guy on the left is clearly thinking “Daniel-san, you’ve watched ‘The Karate Kid’ waaaay too many times.”

And then a few moments later, the guy in the white gi is curled up on the floor, having just had his butt kicked.

Winona Sighting

We’ve had a female pileated visiting our yard the past several years. She’s not formally introduced herself, so we’ve taken to calling her Winona. There’s a male we call Woodrow, but we’ve not seen him lately.

Female pileated woodpecker sitting in a tree.
Zoomed in photo of a female pileated woodpecker in a tree. The nictitating membrane over its eye is half-closed.
Female pileated woodpecker with its beak inserted in a knot in a branch.