Seth Kinast’s Blog

So I got a fun spam e-mail today, about magic products…

NOTE: This e-mail is for professional magicians only. Please ignore it if you are not a professional magician. We hope that you are happy to receive this information but If you would like to be removed from this confidential e-mail list, please let us know

“everything you touch turns to excitement”

The next big thing from the creative mind of Yigal Mesika and Zeev Fleischman!

A mind-blowing masterpiece and a mentalist’s dream, this effect bridges the mental and the physical.

The shock from electric touch will make audiences excited and they will remember you for the rest of their lives. Perform it anywhere on a moment’s notice.

*Imagine while using your “powers” of your mind, you ask someone to think of a number or pick a card. You then hold your finger up and ask your volunteer to focus on that number or card and transfer that thought to you simply by touching your finger. When your fingers touch, you give them an electric static shock, and to their breathtaking surprise, the thought seems to travel from their brain to yours to deliver an unbelievable presentation that will blow their mind! You’ve got to see it to believe it!

*With a touch of your finger, make a fluorescent light bulb glow on and off under your command!

*Make confetti move under your command!

*charge a spoon or keys and watch as it shocks a volunteer! They will believe you have supernatural powers!

Make the biggest skeptic into a believer!

If you’re familiar with the Spiderpen, you know that MESIKA MAGIC is the brand that promises you first-class quality!

PLUS:

* INCLUDES BONUS DVD!
* BATTERIES !
* TRY IT NO-RISK FOR 3-MONTHS. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, WE RETURN YOUR MONEY BACK GUARANTEED!
* FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE UNTIL JANUARY 1st!

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, IF YOU FIND ANY KNOCK-OFFS WITH BETTER QUALITY, WE WILL RETURN YOUR MONEY BACK GUARANTEED! BUY MESIKA. BUY THE BEST! I PROMISE YOU THAT EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH WILL TURN TO EXCITEMENT!

DON’T MISS OUT!

OFFER GOOD ONLY UNTIL DECEMBER 31st!!!

$149.99

visit the website at *snip*
Mesika Magic is located at 7245 Hillside Ave #310 Los Angeles, CA 90046

Phone: (323) 851-2580

This is an advertisement from Mesika Magic for “Electric Touch”

But you see… I decided to reply. I am obviously a professional magician and so they will be happy to hear from me, their target audience.

It is good that thou art cognizant of my status as one of the top practicers of the dark arts, for I am indeed one of the ten Great Magicians. However, thine admission DOTH NOT mollify my rage at receiving thy spam promoting these cheap and petty sleight-of-hand tricks. Such insolence mocks the brethren who doth seek to practise the TRUE ARTS OF PURE WIZARDRY. Fools!

To duly punish thee for thine gross offense against Myself, Melchizidek the Wondrous, I have begun, on this day of Thermidor, the Dark Summoning of the Infernal Magick. Once set in motion, such powerful wizardry CANNOT be stopped except through the sacrifice of a young maiden on the Altar of Abaddon. Should thou wishest to save thine countrymen, thine families, and thine own wretched selfs, please remit thine young maiden to:

Melchizidek the Wondrous
c/o Dark Summonings R Us
7000 Jormungandr Path
Asgard

Note: Thou hast until the rising of the new moon allows its dark light to fall on mine Altar. Do not fan the flames of my wrath with thine petty delays.

Signed,
Kvasir
on behalf of Melchizidek the Wondrous

I win.

SafeWalk is the most boring thing in the history of ever. Ah well, gives a lot of time to work on homework

I got picked to work for Housing & Food for a few weeks this semester, encouraging residents to reapply to live in University housing again in the fall of 2006. We got hoodies and shirts that say H&F Geek on them, and are supposed to wear them around campus, especially to big events like this week’s Winter Welcome.

We also had to sit for photos and write an ad for the paper… the first one came out today, and here it is! Sorry for poor-ish scan, but newspapers bleed through pretty badly.

(The title comes from quote #308)

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. I got here on Sunday the 8th for training, and had three days of 8:00 - 5:00 training. We went over all sorts of stuff, from blood-borne pathogens and fire safety to discipline and how to write a citation. The training culminated in an exercise called Behind Closed Doors, in which we were placed in scenarios to which we had to respond. My two scenarios were a huge alcohol party, and a noise / visitation violation. They were both way over the top with anything I would actually have to deal with in real life, so I feel pretty prepared to handle what may come along.

The first few days I’ve been on the hall, I’ve had to deal with an emergency door alarm, two fire alarms, one set of rounds, two and a half hours of desk duty, and lots and lots of questions and check-ins. But so far, I think it’s all been going pretty well. I adore Couch Center, the tower in which I’ve been placed, and (for the most part) everyone is making me feel really welcome. And having a single room is perhaps the greatest thing ever, after the terrible semester I had in the fall.

One of the unannounced perks is that my ID card opens every door in every dorm, including Traditions (the OU apartments). It’s good for popping onto friends’ halls and saying hi

Part II will probably come when I have some fun stories to tell…

Dapper has been the first Ubuntu release to which I’ve really gotten to contribute significantly. As I’ve honed my packaging techniques (practicing with backports first), I’ve moved from simple updates of current packages in Dapper to Debianizing brand-new packages. I’ve started to work more closely with Riddell in #kubuntu-devel, and he’s been extremely helpful in pointing towards ways I can help, fixing problems in my packages, and reviewing candidates for Dapper.

As I stay around the dev channels more and more, it’s become rather apparent that we have too few hands for too much work. Although the core Ubuntu issues are of course getting lots of attention and polish (and are looking great), it’s especially hard to get KDE packages worked on. As a Kubuntu user, it’s hard to reconcile sabdfl’s proclamation that Kubuntu would become a distro on par with Ubuntu with the sad fact that when I need KDE packages reviewed, I have a rather sparse list of devs whom I can bug. Riddell does a fantastic job with the resources he has; he has the package output of a dozen lesser mortals However, I would really suggest that anyone interested in KDE and Kubuntu come poke us in #kubuntu-devel. There are jobs that anyone can do, even things as simple as bug triage.

I’m hoping to apply for MOTU soon, which will increase the number of devs that favor KDE by one and hopefully raphink will be able to apply soon as well. But if Dapper is going to be all it can be, we need far more people committed to making Kubuntu as cool as it can be.

That said, some of the packages I’ve brought in for Dapper include:

• kmobiletools, a sweet app for syncing your mobile with Kontact. It can also be used to control your phone (make calls, read / write text messages) from the computer.
• kflickr, a nice KDE interface to upload photos to flickr.
• md5deep, a set of tools to perform MD5, SHA1, and other hashes on files
• Several KDE styles

I’m hoping to get in a few more packages before upstream version freeze, but we’ll just have to see