Mashup Challenge $100,000 prize - WTF if Spectate Swamp wins?

[CodeSimian]

Quick suggestion. The following quote is funnier in its original context (hey, Swampy taught me something after all!):

As it appears on your site: "These animals are beautiful. The ones that know the most about them are the trappers. They are amazing creatures." 

With hilarious added context:

"<font face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">These animals are beautiful. The ones that know the most about
them are the trappers. They are amazing creatures.

I'm not too keen on only seeing the dead ones either.

Mike tells me they get skinned then go to Europe. "</font>

 

Also, you lost a great nugget of wisdom when you fixed up the quotes page:

http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/8159/155087.aspx#155087 

When searching I set the swamp search to play at 1/10 speed and I sit close and watch. Hitting enter pauses the video. It takes 10 minutes to view a 1 minute clip as it is. Hitting pause no pause is no way to search for aliens.

 

[CodeSimian]

 By the way, the site keeps getting better and better.  Hope all that hard work eventually pays off (in the form of sweet, sweet ad revenues)!

[Weng]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

 Another update: I think I fixed most of the layout on the site. Check it out and let me know if you see any major issues.

Major issue: It's totally broken on Opera :P

Navbar is stuck way out on the left, the rest of the layout is centered.

[CodeSimian]

One more suggestion.  If you are really serious about attracting major traffic from people who have never heard of SpectateSwamp, you may want to make the site more accessible to the Masses (ironic, I know).  Right now, I think the site is most attractive to those of us who are already familiar with Spectate's lunacy.

Most people will not want to navigate the whole site to find out why Spectate is the stupidest man on Earth, so I would suggest summarizing the main reasons on the front page:

• Thinks birds, insects, and leaves are aliens
• Thinks he wrote the world's greatest software program, but nobody wants to use it
• Believes himself to be a modern-day medicine man, even though First Nations want nothing to do with him
• Thinks the best way to work with video is to do "screen re-shoots" of his laptop
• Once painted his head yellow to run in the federal election
  
• Threatened several organizations with "curses" including '86 Expo and United Nations
• Boasts about being a self-styled Sasquatch, alien, and dinosaur skin hunter
• Obsessed with holey rocks
• Believes he made it rain in 1986
• Believes he will save the world in 2012
• Finds all attention flattering, including mockery and blatant insults

On the front page, instead of just the one picture, you might want to include a montage of Spectate's various incarnations (Bearded YellowHead circa '93, Masked Medicine Man, Insane White-Haired Old Guy Clutching Medicine Stones).

If Joe Sixpack stumbles on your site from a wayward google search or an email from a techie friend, he needs to be engaged in the site immediately, otherwise he'll leave and he won't recommend the site to his own friends.  Right now I think the navigation tree gives the visitor a hint of Swampy's craziness, but more can be done to grab his attention quickly.

One way to do this could be: 

•  The top of the front page could be a small montage of Swampy (as described above)
• Underneath the montage, a caption could read: The World According To Doug Pederson
• Below the caption, you could list the summarized versions of Swampy's crazy claims, maybe from his point of view (paraphrased or quoted).

If you can do all of that with a minimum of text, you might be able to attract even more more visitors.

Just my 2 cents.  Could be wrong (probably am), I've never run my own web site or undertaken any kind of marketing venture. 

[CodeSimian]

 One more thing: you might also want to point out that Spectate is a relentless publicity hound.  He spams every Internet blog, wiki, and forum known to man with his crackpot ideas on Desktop Search and aliens in an attempt to get attention.  He admits that he enjoys "riling people up" (e.g. posting dead animals videos to a nature appreciation still photography forum.)  By highlighting this fact, you might lessen any possible sympathy the reader might have for Spectate.  (As in, "Gee, this guy sure is stupid, but I feel kinda guilty laughing at him.  Maybe I won't spread his site around.")  Once you see how Spectate ignores all pleas for sanity and attempts of assistance, sympathy for him quickly dissipates. 

[MarcB]

@SpectateSwamp said:

And who on earth would want to look at those monstrosities. Too intimidating. Too much to learn.

 

Why would we have to "learn" them? Did you "learn" Windows when you started on SSDS? It couldn't exist/run WITHOUT Windows.

Same with Linux. No one (except kernel/driver developers) generally cares what happens in the background, all you do is learn the interfaces to it.

Do you know exactly how a car runs? No, you just step on the gas and turn the wheel. Those are interfaces that hide the guts of the car from you. You don't need to learn biochemistry to refine your own gas. You don't have to learn metallurgy to forge your own steel. You don't have to learn electronics to build your own control systems. Just step on a pedal and things happen.

Exact same thing in SSDS. You don't "do" video, all you do is tell Windows to start playing a video for you. You don't parse the video file, you don't extract video data, you don't decompress/decode the video data, you don't blit it to a frame buffer, you don't create windows for it to play in. You just tell Windows "go" and it does it for you. MCIsendstring is a simple interface to very complicated systems. But claiming you "do" video because of a single function call is a total lie. All you're doing is calling a taxi to take you somewhere, because you code can't even handle pushing a gas pedal or turning a wheel.

So you can quit saying you don't need anything other than SSDS. Let's see how far you could get if MCIsendstring suddenly vanished from existence and you had to implement a complete media player on your own. Could you write a video codec? An audio codec? You wouldn't even know where to start.

[TDC]

@MarcB said:

No, you just step on the gas and turn the wheel.

 

I sure hope he doesn't have a car.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

 @CodeSimian said:

Also, you lost a great nugget of wisdom when you fixed up the quotes page:

Just hold back, I let the content and layout take priority over dynamic quotes. I am going to work on it soon I promise.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@CodeSimian said:

Hope all that hard work eventually pays off (in the form of sweet, sweet ad revenues)!

 

I highly doubt it. I am not really looking to make money, but it would be nice to recover some of my expenses. We will see. So far: $1.36

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@CodeSimian said:

If you are really serious about attracting major traffic from people who have never heard of SpectateSwamp, you may want to make the site more accessible to the Masses

 

I absolutely agree. I only stuck the current content on the front page because it was the best we have for the purpose. But we certainly could use a quick 'Draw them into the insanity' writeup with pictures.

Right now I am just grateful for TDWTF traffic we have. But soon it would be nice to expand a bit.

Any takers on this suggestion? Anyone that can help write it up?

[MasterPlanSoftware]

Conspiracies

Does anyone want to do a write up for the conspiracies page?

Swampspiracies?

[dlikhten]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

Does anyone want to do a write up for the conspiracies page?

Swampspiracies?

 

Doug Patterson believes that there is one giant conspiracy amongst all programmers. He believes that all programs are actually unnecessary and are engeneered by programmers to make themselves useful and needed. He feels that by eliminating most programs, people will be freed from their shackles and will realize just how wonderful and liberating SpectateSwamp Desktop Search is. Ignoring all pleas for sanity from programmers claiming that what he envisioned in SSDS has already been done, is freely available, and works better than SSDS, he continues to believe that SSDS is the greatest program ever created and is being shunned by evil programmers fighing to keep their jobs.

[dlikhten]

 its a start :)

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@dlikhten said:

 its a start :)

 

Indeed, thanks. Let's see if it snowballs like the other write ups have.

[burntfuse]

 Just found out that jakkle was the one who wrote the Teachings page.

 The conspiracies page should also probably mention other things besides the "geek conspiracy", maybe something like this too:

 

Doug Pederson believes that when any of his attempts to "liberate the masses" from video editing, spread the word of SSDS, or do anything else goes wrong, it's because of a conspiracy. At one point he ran in a local election, and when he lost he blamed it on "plants". When he entered SSDS in a web application mashup contest by NetSquared.org and it was disqualified (because it isn't a web application), he insisted it was because the sponsors pressured NetSquared to drop it, as SSDS would make their products obsolete. Many people tried to explain to him that this was like trying to enter a dog in a horse race. Doug Pederson responded by saying that he would have turned it into a web application if it won, but again, people compared this to entering a dog in a horse race and hoping it would turn into a horse. Finally, he admitted that this contest was the wrong place to try to advertise SSDS, but he still stuck to his opinion that it was "pure silly" to actually tell him that it had been disqualified and to "let down the Swampies." When his insane and self-contradictory ramblings on why video editing is evil, posted on video forums, are deleted, he says that most of the people believed him, but it was the "forum bullies" that drove him off.

 

[burntfuse]

 Also, maybe it's just me, but I think the tone of the SSDS article is slightly off - the full insanity doesn't come across.  It's more like "He uses many methods which aren't considered best practice" when it should be more like "This is a horrible mess which makes no sense to a sane person."  Not to sound insulting, I think what's there is a good start, but after reading it I don't quite get the impression of "Wow, this guy has no fucking idea what he's doing."

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@burntfuse said:

 Just found out that jakkle was the one who wrote the Teachings page.

 

Excellent, I suspected that, but wasn't 100% sure. Thanks I will change it as soon as my RD session starts responding again.

@burntfuse said:

 The conspiracies page should also probably mention other things besides the "geek conspiracy", maybe something like this too:

I like your write up. Hopefully we can expand on that as well, I would like to see it divided into sections. Maybe something like:

• Forum Conspiracies
• Alien Conspiracies
• Magic Rock Conspiracies
• Desktop Search Conspiracies
• Dinosaur Skin Conspiracies

Etc...

Could do it in just one nice writeup on that page, and if need expand it into a whole section with different pages for each documenting his belief in the 'conspiracy'.

Let's face it, he has given us plenty of material on this!

[burntfuse]

I don't know if there's enough conspiracies material for separate sections, but I was thinking about taking what the other person had already done and maybe adding a bit and combining it with mine to make a more in-depth write-up.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@burntfuse said:

 Also, maybe it's just me, but I think the tone of the SSDS article is slightly off - the full insanity doesn't come across.  It's more like "He uses many methods which aren't considered best practice" when it should be more like "This is a horrible mess which makes no sense to a sane person."  Not to sound insulting, I think what's there is a good start, but after reading it I don't quite get the impression of "Wow, this guy has no fucking idea what he's doing."

 

I agree, I wouldn't mind more of an antagonistic tone, especially considering the nature of the site. However I think WWWolf did a good job of documenting the issues, and I don't think he likes to be insulting (like most of the rest of us). I have to compliment and respect him for that.

But if someone wants to add a synopsis of the nature of SSDS, and how completely fucking ridiculous it (and SS) is, I would not be opposed to jockeying in a new page or something for it.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@burntfuse said:

I don't know if there's enough conspiracies material for separate sections, but I was thinking about taking what the other person had already done and maybe adding a bit and combining it with mine to make a more in-depth write-up.

 

I am all for it. I think it really helps to make the case for mental illness in addition to the pure stupidity we have documented.

[dlikhten]

 We can have a list of conspiracies and a short description of how each is rediculous. Going from mild to insanity sort order.

[bstorer]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

But if someone wants to add a synopsis of the nature of SSDS, and how completely fucking ridiculous it (and SS) is, I would not be opposed to jockeying in a new page or something for it.

I'm busy elsewhere, but I cobbled together a couple scripts to determine the frequency of certain key words and functions in his code.  Keep in mind that I have already stripped all the comments, so these are all actually in the code:

GoTo: 614
GoSub: 172
Call: 3

Then: 1138

Left: 233
Right: 90
Mid: 101

Return: 36
End Sub: 10

Cls: 31
Print: 483

DoEvents: 141
mciSendString: 54

[dlikhten]

@bstorer said:

I'm busy elsewhere, but I cobbled together a couple scripts to determine the frequency of certain key words and functions in his code.  Keep in mind that I have already stripped all the comments, so these are all actually in the code:

 

Nice! Now we also need a statistic of how many commented lines of code there are just to show his inability to use source control :)

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@bstorer said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

But if someone wants to add a synopsis of the nature of SSDS, and how completely fucking ridiculous it (and SS) is, I would not be opposed to jockeying in a new page or something for it.

I'm busy elsewhere, but I cobbled together a couple scripts to determine the frequency of certain key words and functions in his code.  Keep in mind that I have already stripped all the comments, so these are all actually in the code:

GoTo: 614
GoSub: 172
Call: 3

Then: 1138

Left: 233
Right: 90
Mid: 101

Return: 36
End Sub: 10

Cls: 31
Print: 483

DoEvents: 141
mciSendString: 54

 

Maybe I can make sections off the desktop search, and have one for just code analysis?

Something like this?

[quote user=""]

Teachings

    Desktop Search

         The Code

         The philosophy

         The results

[/quote]

[bstorer]

@dlikhten said:

Nice! Now we also need a statistic of how many commented lines of code there are just to show his inability to use source control :)

bstorer@Heimdall ~/idiotic
$ wc -l source.txt stripped.txt
 10169 source.txt
  7886 stripped.txt
 18055 total

Do your own math.

[bstorer]

@bstorer said:

Do your own math.

Aw, here you go, because I'm an old softie.  Also, because my previous post only takes into account full-line comments, not junked commented out at the end of the line.

bstorer@Heimdall ~/idiotic
$ ./strip.pl < source.txt > /dev/null
Comments:
  Full line:    2283
  End of line:  2407

It was only 7 more lines of code anyway.

[dlikhten]

@bstorer said:

@bstorer said:

Do your own math.

Aw, here you go, because I'm an old softie.  Also, because my previous post only takes into account full-line comments, not junked commented out at the end of the line.

bstorer@Heimdall ~/idiotic
$ ./strip.pl < source.txt > /dev/null
Comments:
  Full line:    2283
  End of line:  2407

It was only 7 more lines of code anyway.

 

Good stuff... Now this does not take into account REAL comments does it? I mean we don't want to be sloppy like him and miss-inform. We unlike someone on this forum, actually learn, its this wierd thing thats supposed to separate us from chimps. Though calling SS a chimp is an insult to the Chimp's intelligence.

[bstorer]

@dlikhten said:

@bstorer said:

@bstorer said:

Do your own math.

Aw, here you go, because I'm an old softie.  Also, because my previous post only takes into account full-line comments, not junked commented out at the end of the line.

bstorer@Heimdall ~/idiotic
$ ./strip.pl < source.txt > /dev/null
Comments:
  Full line:    2283
  End of line:  2407

It was only 7 more lines of code anyway.

 

Good stuff... Now this does not take into account REAL comments does it? I mean we don't want to be sloppy like him and miss-inform. We unlike someone on this forum, actually learn, its this wierd thing thats supposed to separate us from chimps. Though calling SS a chimp is an insult to the Chimp's intelligence.

No, that's all comments.  You're welcome to go through line-by-line and weed out the real comments from the code.  I'm sure as hell not going to do it.

Also, I failed to mention above that the code contains 380 labels.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

 @Weng said:

Major issue: It's totally broken on Opera :P

Navbar is stuck way out on the left, the rest of the layout is centered.

Do you have a screenshot or something? That sounds like the proper layout to me...

 

Also, if you have an idea of what might be wrong I would be happy to try it out. Otherwise I am going to be likely to tell you GARB (Get A Real Browser).

[stolen_username]

@CodeSimian said:

Quick suggestion. The following quote is funnier in its original context (hey, Swampy taught me something after all!):

I'm glad someone noticed that.  The end line of that quite is IMO one of the funniest things to come out of SpectateSwamp.

EDIT:  While I'm posting, I might as well give you permission to use [url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=H5dCncMvhMw]that atrocious video[/url] I made comparing tracker-search to grep. 

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@stolen_username said:

EDIT:  While I'm posting, I might as well give you permission to use that atrocious video I made comparing tracker-search to grep. 

 

Sweet, I will add it to the Swamptributions page when I get the time.

 

Thanks.

[Guest]

Hey, the new design looks great, much better than before! May I ask you several questions, though: what's that vertical bar symbol doing in the bread crumb? And why's the Google Search not working? Is it the "search site" or "search web"? If the former, you ought to label it more clearly, if the latter, why's it there? Why did you replace the favicon with the nontransparent one again?

Also, you didn't incorporate my technical corrigendum into WWWWolf's text.

@WWWWolf said:

While making the video clip, my computer started playing the Deus Ex theme all by itself.

You should've overlayed it onto the video for more dramaric effect 8=]. For example, the "Deus Ex Ending 2" would be quite fitting.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@Spectre said:

what's that vertical bar symbol doing in the bread crumb?

 

It is the seperator.

@Spectre said:

And why's the Google Search not working?

I don't know, I noticed that last night though. I will have to go try it again.

@Spectre said:

Is it the "search site" or "search web"?

search web

@Spectre said:

if the latter, why's it there?

Anything to make money.

@Spectre said:

Why did you replace the favicon with the nontransparent one again?

I didn't. Not sure what happened, must have overwritten it somewhere. I'll get that on the next pass.

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@Spectre said:

Also, you didn't incorporate my technical corrigendum into WWWWolf's text.

 

I have to much to do currently to try and rewrite stuff. Grab the text off the site, alter it how you wish and post it. I will include it in the next revision. That also gives other people a chance to edit what you say.

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

I was doing some testing obviously with mp3 stuff. Just jamming it. I deactivated it and left the other test functions commented out as well. Sometimes it's better to leave a little junk around for others to find. This is a good place to hardcode and jam mp3 tests.

There is other stuff you'll find that I never use. But they are clues as to where you might want to make a change yourself. Or myself. If I can remember why I left that code there. Or was it me?

Most people would prefer to use things like documentation and proper source code control. Leaving crap behind in a source file is never a good move.

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

And who on earth would want to look at those monstrosities.

People actually maintain this code - not just look you know.

@SpectateSwamp said:

Too intimidating. Too much to learn.

Properly organised and commented / documented code is far easier to read than utter crap code though. Certainly there is a learning curve when encountering a new source code base but gaining a reasonable understanding isn't impossible.

@SpectateSwamp said:

I'm surprised some of you are so brave as to look at this bad code.

Foolish rather than brave. Bad code doesn't even come close to describing the utter junk that is SSDS.

@SpectateSwamp said:

Yup. Nobody needs much more than Swamp search. Being simple. I have kept it simple. So any stup should be able to make changes and fixes.

Nobody needs SSDS is the real truth. It is not a simple app in any form. the interface is bewildering and makes no sense. The source is a travisty of programming design and structure. Virtually no one can compile the code as it stands never mind make changes, the entire thing is a total mess!

[burntfuse]

 Conspiracies (I used some of dlikhten's version in here):

 

Doug Pederson believes that there are many conspiracies centered on himself.  In fact, when anything goes wrong for him, he blames "plants" and "forum bullies" instead of his own shortcomings.  The biggest conspiracy is the one created by:

Geeks

In his mind, "geeks" or programmers of any kind are responsible for making things more complex than they have to be, in an attempt to deceive "the masses."  He believes that all programs besides SSDS are actually unnecessary and are created only to keep the programmers' jobs and to make money.  Despite this, there are many programs he uses frequently besides SSDS, such as his web browser, Visual Basic, CamStudio, and the capture software for his video camera.  Doug Pederson feels that by eliminating all other programs, people will be liberated from their shackles and free to effortlessly have full control of their data using SSDS.  Ignoring all pleas for sanity from programmers who point out that what he envisioned in SSDS has already been done, is freely available, and works better than SSDS, he continues to believe that SSDS is the greatest program ever created and is being shunned by evil programmers fighing to keep their jobs.

The stupidity gets worse: Doug Pederson seems to think that anything where he can't immediately understand the internal workings is unnecessary - even operating systems.  He insists that the millions of lines of code in Windows are "too much to understand," and that no one needs Windows, even though he uses it himself daily and SSDS can run only with the help of Windows.

Education

Doug Pederson has repeatedly said that no one needs more than a 9th grade education.  He insists that a 9th grader could be taught to do any job there is in a short time, despite the many examples people have given of their jobs which clearly need years of college or dedicated personal study, along with the examples of things he uses every day which would never exist without higher education (his video camera, his computer, his copy of Visual Basic, etc.).  It's unclear whether he thinks this is an actual conspiracy or not, but this seems to be linked to the Geek Conspiracy.

Video Editing

When Doug Pederson posts his insane ramblings about the evils of video editing on video forums, the threads almost always get locked or deleted, as he can't argue rationally and doesn't listen to other people, only repeating his same points over and over until it descends to the level of spam.  Instead of blaming himself, he insists that he was getting through to "the masses," but that a small minority of "forum bullies" got his threads shut down.  He has also implied that these "forum bullies" or even the entire forum staff were in the pay of editing software companies, which had pressured the forum to ban Doug Pederson because they saw his dangerous views as a risk to their revenue, as if left unchecked he might liberate the masses from the "evils" of video editing, and they would no longer need to buy editing software.  Doug Pederson has contradicted himself on this a few times, and when he wants to cut out a portion of a video he uses his own insanely stupid method of editing (for more about this, see the Video [LINK TO VIDEO SECTION] section).

Politics

In 1993, Doug Pederson ran in a local election as "YellowHead", and apparently painted his head yellow to attract attention.  If this wasn't enough to get most voters to dismiss him as a nutcase, he also made strange campaign speeches [LINK TO SPEECH VIDEO] where he talked about "data processing data data processing."  Since he unsurprisingly lost the election, he blames political "plants" and government insiders.

NetSquared Contest

In a way, this is a subset of the Geek Conspiracy, but it's strange enough to deserve its own section.  In March 2008, Doug Pederson found out about a web application mashup contest run by NetSquared.org.  Apparently seeing this as just another way to promote SSDS besides spamming forums and wikis, he entered SSDS, even though it clearly isn't even a web application, much less a web application mashup.  When it was rejected, he complained that the sponsors of the contest must have realized that SSDS was a threat to their "unnecessary" software and pressured NetSquared to drop it.  People explained to him that this was like entering a goat in a horse race.  He responded that he would have turned it into a web application if it had won (unlikely, as he hasn't changed any part of it for years, and refuses to change it anytime in the near future).  Again, people told him this was like entering a goat in a horse race, hoping it would magically transform into a horse.  Finally, Doug Pederson gave up and admitted that SSDS didn't belong in the NetSquared contest, but insisted that it was "pure silly" of them to actually tell him that he was disqualified, and that they were "letting down the Swampies."

Spectate Swamp Desktop Search and Search Giants

As with the NetSquared Conspiracy, this is also related to the Geek Conspiracy.  Doug Pederson thinks that besides making other unrelated programs unnecessary, SSDS especially makes other search programs unnecessary and beats them in every way - features, speed, usability, etc.  According to him, the "search giants" (which he uses to refer to Google, Microsoft, or any company which produces a popular desktop search program) see SSDS as a threat, and they take every chance they can to suppress it, applying pressure to NetSquared among other ways.  In a thread on a forum at The Daily WTF (LINK TO FIRST THREAD) he asked many times why the "search giants" didn't post to the thread and respond personally to his claims, if their products were actually better.

[Guest]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@Spectre said:

what's that vertical bar symbol doing in the bread
crumb?

 

It is the seperator.

And... what does it separate?

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@Spectre said:

And why's the Google Search not working?

I don't know, I noticed that last night though. I will have to go try it again.

I think I know:

[code]<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom" [b]target="google_window"[/b]>[/code]

And here're the updated portions:

One point is that the code is riddled with one [b]odd idiom: using <font face="Courier New">Left(buf,bufLen) = "magic string"</font> string comparisons. Not only <font face="Courier New">bufLen</font>s are magic numbers, enabling bugs to creep, they're often equal to the actual length of <font face="Courier New">buf</font>, rendering the comparison equivalent to <font face="Courier New">buf = "magic string"</font>.

SpectateSwamp is also blissfully unaware of the <font face="Courier New">Boolean</font> datatype, or dislikes it for some reason; to store yes/no values he uses actual strings "YES" and "NO" (though sometimes it's "Y" and "N", with no discernible pattern).[/b]

SS also claims SSDS is a multimedia player, and it can indeed play video files. However, it uses [b][url=http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms709461(VS.85).aspx]Media Control Interface[/url], part of the[/b] Windows Multimedia API [b](deleted)[/b] to do the actual heavy lifting. Implementing a media player [b](deleted)[/b] is a relatively simple and straightforward matter using the [b](deleted)[/b] APIs in question, and it is unlikely this feature alone is a selling point. It also makes porting difficult to other operating systems.

Would be nice to link "source.txt" to the actual source ([url]http://telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/source.txt[/url], just in case you forgot).

I also suggest to replace parenthesized URI's with actual links on the Swampology page, e.g. "[url=http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/belief_bias.htm]belief bias[/url] issue", instead of "belief Bias issue ([url]http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/belief_bias.htm[/url])".

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@Spectre said:

And... what does it separate?

 

The links in the breadcrumbs?

@Spectre said:

I think I know:

Probably. I just grabbed what they gave me. Not a huge priority. I don't think anyone will ever actually use it.

[AbbydonKrafts]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@Spectre said:

And... what does it separate?

 

The links in the breadcrumbs?

Nuh uh...

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@AbbydonKrafts said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@Spectre said:

And... what does it separate?

 

The links in the breadcrumbs?

Nuh uh...

 

Oh yeah? I don't see it now :-P

Probably just dead pixels on your monitor!

[AbbydonKrafts]

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

Oh yeah? I don't see it now :-P

You can't cover it up now! I have proof! Video everything! Capture what they don't want you to know! JAM IT, DAMMIT!

[MasterPlanSoftware]

@AbbydonKrafts said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

Oh yeah? I don't see it now :-P

You can't cover it up now! I have proof! Video everything! Capture what they don't want you to know! JAM IT, DAMMIT!

 

Yeah, but you don't have a bird in the screenshot that can see the artifact for you...

[dlikhten]

 Addition to conspiracies:

Doug believes that shortcut keys are a conspiracy. After all why would anyone want to use buttons like Ctrl Alt and other combinations. He feels that his "quick keys" are an obvious superiority with combinations like "kkk" instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del and jjj for whatever else. Despite everyone telling him that infact shortcut keys are often customizeable and frankly his ideas are not realistic (if someone gets frustrated and hits k 3 times they restart their computer, hows that for frustration), he refuses to believe it. One of his rationalle is that he wants to design a keyboard/quick keys for his friends with missing (or partially cut) fingers and feels that everyone else is against helping his handicapped friends.

[dlikhten]

 Error: http://www.thestupidestmanonearth.com/DOugPedersonBio.aspx

[CodeSimian]

@burntfuse said:

Politics

In 1993, Doug Pederson ran in a local election as "YellowHead", and apparently painted his head yellow to attract attention.  If this wasn't enough to get most voters to dismiss him as a nutcase, he also made strange campaign speeches [LINK TO SPEECH VIDEO] where he talked about "data processing data data processing."  Since he unsurprisingly lost the election, he blames political "plants" and government insiders.

 

Correction, it was the 1993 Canadian federal election.  He ran in the district of Yellowhead and finished with the smallest number of votes:

Yellowhead (electoral district) - Wikipedia

Canadian federal election, 1993
Party	Candidate	Votes
	Reform	Cliff Breitkreuz	22,790
	Liberal	John Higgerty	8,964
	Progressive Conservative	Marilyn Stecyk	5,766
	New Democrat	Joe Woytowich	1,804
	National	Alex S. Mann	1,147
	Christian Heritage	Peter Piers	441
	Natural Law	Dennis Ronald Michaelchuk	284
	Independent	Douglas Bruce Pederson	209

For context, he was beaten by the Natural Law candidate; members of the Natural Law party believe they can levitate solely with power of their minds (yogic flying).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Law_Party_of_Canada 

On a related, here's a possible (lame) trivia section if you ever get desperate for content.  A better (or funnier) writer than I could probably jazz this content up, if it is worth saving at all: 

 

The Lowest Form of Humour? (Puns, Double Entendres, and Changing The Subject For No Good Reason)

Doug Pederson clearly has a great love for wordplay.  He frequently incorporates puns and double entendres in his forum discussions and real-life actions, to the point of absurdity.  For example, he describes his appearance in an old picture thusly: "That picture was from 1993 I ran in the federal election. The riding was named Yellowhead. I was Yellowhead." (http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=2&PostID=178588)  For Pederson, the idea of painting his head yellow to run in the Yellowhead riding was apparently an incredibly clever and funny play on words, and would guarantee his success in the election.

As another example, when a forum member jokingly suggested Pederson run for the office of Canadian Prime Minister, he responded: 

"That was the only promise I made to the People of YellowHead. That I would never Run again. Next time I would turn and fight. I never ran before 1993 for anything and never will."

In his response, Pederson managed to "cleverly" change the meaning of "run" from "campaign for political office" to "run away".  

When opportunities for great double entendres dry up, Pederson is always at the ready with a subtle and ingenious pun: "The most powerful stones on the planet. The greatest program on the planet. Weird coinci-dance isn't it?"

Of course, "coinci-dance" is a reference to Pederson's propensity for dancing with his magical rocks to gain some sort of mystical favour for himself or to curse his enemies.

If insanely funny puns and double meanings are not enough, Pederson will also randomly change the subject entirely, based on some implausible alternative meaning of a word or phrase under discussion:

http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/8159/153701.aspx#153701 

 "This sure doesn't look good for NetSquares.org. Treating Me like that, is almost like snubbing the [Medicine] Stones. Not a wise move.

Oh yeah I got the same birthdate as [Rolling Stone] Mick Jagger. I'm 5 years less old."

In the context of the original discussion, Pederson was clearly referring to his magic Medicine Stones.  However, he abruptly changed the subject to the Rolling Stones, for no apparent reason.  Is it possible that Pederson himself forgot what he was talking about?  

Further proof of Pederson's propensity for pithy puns can be found on random forums at an internets near you:

 http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/8159/153752.aspx#153752

"I started working for Capital Cable. They went through a name change to Shaw Cable. Making me a Shawman."

[BeenThere]

Website Suggestions

Been lurking for a while on this forum, but man this thread just made me have to sign up.

Good work on the website, I have a couple of ideas that can help convey the sheer lunacy of this individual... a section on 'SwampFights' could be a good way to show the struggles and great enemies SpectateSwamp has gone up against.  This is already somewhat implied in the conspiracies, but it fails to truly convey the sheer weight of these epic 'David vs Goliath' battles that he wages on a regular basis.

Some that come to mind (very incomplete)

• Getting fired for smoking pot:  what happened, what he thinks happened, how he waged battle (plastic holey stoned dance curse, if I recall?)
• Why did he curse the UN and Exp 86 again?  I am sure this would be another of his great epic battles - not many people have the stones to take on the UN!
• Mashup - what happened (had no valid entry, what he thinks happened (with link to conspiracy) and the threats that are yet to come to pass (good to prepare readers who may be in the area... since he has warned it'll be really bad for everyone there)
• Cancer (based on his own words, he may do battle cancer itself)
• And of course - the BIGGEST battle of all, The Nuclear Armageddon when he plans to save us from The Apocalypse

 

It would also be good to see what "impact" his waged battle had on his various foes, if any.  I am sure he's taken credit for at least a few not-so-odd coincidences.  My thinking this would be limited to actual 'battles' in his mind, where he took 'action' in some form.  The times he just felt blatantly victimized (poor old swampy) by various plants and conspiracies wouldn't qualify, imho.

Another fun thing (though perhaps a bit harder to add) would be one of those "how blahblahblah are you?" survey forms, where you end up being rated at some percentage based on multiple choice answers to questions.

It could be some sort of "Test how Swampified are you?"  with questions reigning from your beliefs on source control, programming techniques, stones, aliens, dreams, "how long would you video record clouds and power lines before getting bored?" with answers ranging from "WTF would I do that for?" to "I like to video clouds for hours at a time"

You could end up being rated from 0-100% Swampified, and, if all the totals were recorded, a quick tally could declare "You are [|tied for] the #[2-n] Stupidest Man On Earth!"

Those sort of "Surveys for Bored Working People" tend to get around, so it may bring some outside viewers to the site.

[SpectateSwamp]

The Badest of Code don't matter

@spenk said:

@SpectateSwamp said:

I'm surprised some of you are so brave as to look at this bad code.

Foolish rather than brave. Bad code doesn't even come close to describing the utter junk that is SSDS.

Actually it's pretty amazing code. Most of it was written nearly 10 years ago. A lot of the so called bad coding habits were done just to pick somebody's ass many years later and it's working. This code is simple enough and has lots of internal notes and crumbs. My memory has never been all that great and it doesn't have to be. I know who wrote the code and that it's easy to go into the source and make a change and jam it. This is a simple working search engine. Don't be scared. The only complex part has a flowchart. And doesn't need to be touched(much). See the changes that were required to add scrolling text. (use SSDS) with scource.txt at prompt #1, at prompt #2 enter "c" for context search and at prompt #3 enter "12/dec/2004" and you will have them displayed 1 after the other.(enter enter...) Then look at some other date change. This program has had quite a few changes and is more complex than ever. Good luck.  

The Yellowhead political run was very interesting to say the least. Yellowhead is the last riding on the list in Canada. There I was very last. I always say if you are going to be last be very last.

[CodeSimian]

@SpectateSwamp said:

I always say if you are going to be last be very last.

 

"Last" means the very same thing as "very last".

@SpectateSwamp said:

<font color="#ff0000" size="7">This is a simple working search engine. </font>Don't be scared. The only complex part has a flowchart.

@SpectateSwamp said:

This program has had quite a few changes and is <font color="#ff0000" size="7">more complex than ever</font>.

So, is your program simple or complex?  I am sooooooo confused. 

 @SpectateSwamp said:

it was written nearly 10 years ago. A lot of the so called bad coding habits were done just to pick somebody's ass many years later and it's working.

Wow, great plan.  Way to think ahead.  Next you will tell us that Expo '86 and Yellowhead '93 were just practical jokes so you could annoy some strangers on the Internet in 2008, right? 

@SpectateSwamp said:

pick somebody's ass

Keep your private life to yourself, okay?  (Seriously, what is with the Grade 2 slang?  Grow up.) 

 

 

 

[SpectateSwamp]

The Badest of Code don't matter

@CodeSimian said:

@SpectateSwamp said:

<FONT color=#ff0000 size=7>This is a simple working search engine. </FONT>Don't be scared. The only complex part has a flowchart.

@SpectateSwamp said:

This program has had quite a few changes and is <FONT color=#ff0000 size=7>more complex than ever</FONT>.

So, is your program simple or complex?  I am sooooooo confused. 

More complex in that it does a lot more. In the beginning it just did text. then pictures then video and music then background jobs and other complexities.