icemetalpunk

Will you tell me that you love me

Just so I can run away?

And the things you want to hear

So I know just what not to say?

Will you be my light in darkness

I will use to blind my eyes?

And the warmth when I am freezing

So I burn myself alive?

Be a shoulder I can lean on

'Til you crumple to the floor;

Give me everything I wanted

So that I can ask for more.

I have lived not many years yet,

Still I've come to understand

Not to bear another's judgment

Who would choose to hold my hand.

As the question title suggests, is there a name for a fetish about bright hair color? The closest I could find was "trichophilia", but that covers all kinds of hair fetishes, like haricuts, the feel of hair, etc. Is there anything specific to bright colors?

For example, when a woman has her hair dyed basically any bright color (except a non-blonde yellow...ew), it really turns me on. It can be almost anything: blue, green, red, purple, whatever. If it's bright, I'm attracted. I don't really know why, but I'm just looking for a name for it.

Anyone?

I don't really know if there's a good category for this, but this seems close enough.

Can you guys give me suggestions of categories of things that are both very diverse and also usually immobile? The classic answer is plants, but there must be more than just those, right?

(Note: this is for a potential video game idea).

I don't know if this is better in the Religion section or the Psychology section, but...

I've seen many people wonder how religious humans would react to meeting intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some people say it would undermine their beliefs which put humans at the center of creation, while others say it wouldn't matter because God created them as well as us, and we're still at the top of our world. That's not my question today.

I want to reverse this. Hypothetically, let's say we make first contact with an intelligent alien species, and they turn out to have no concept of a god. They've never heard of the concept of religion, never even considered that the events that created the universe were supernatural in any way, or especially not personal and conscious.

If we explained our most common religious beliefs to them--the Big Three of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--how do you think they would react? What would they think about us? And more importantly, how would religious humans react when they found out another intelligent species has lived and progressed just fine without ever believing in a god? Would that make many people hostile towards them? Would it change those peoples' beliefs? Or would they just pity the "poor, heathen aliens"?

So I've been working on a mathematical puzzle, and I've hit a wall. Can anyone help?

So the point I'm at, I have a point described by (aQ, bQ), where a, b, and Q are all positive integers. If I'm taking the distance to that point from the origin, how do I prove that there exists a Q such that the p-norm distance (the Minkowski distance of order p) equals the Euclidean distance (the normal 2-norm distance, sqrt((x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2)) for all p?

For reference, the p-norm distance in 2D is defined as:

(|x2 - x1|^p + |y2-y1|^p) ^ (1/p)

Which, since our first point is the origin, simplifies to:

(|aQ|^p + |bQ|^p) ^ (1/p)

We also know that a, b, and Q are integers > 0, so we can remove the absolute values:

((aQ)^p + (bQ)^p) ^ (1/p)

How do I prove that a Q exists to make those distances equal given those constraints?

I've been wondering: since baryons are composed of three quarks, and there are 6 flavors of quarks (12 if you count antiquarks), this should mean there are 6^3 (216) or 12^3 (1,728) baryons, right? All the lists I've found have multiple classifications of baryons and I haven't been able to find one I can understand and count, but none of them seemed to have such large amounts of baryons on them.

Is the number as high as 216? If so, can someone please provide a simple list of them all? If not, is there a reason there would be less?

Billy, a gay man, finally comes out of the closet to his friends and family. He thought it would be a good thing to finally be himself, but his religious father did not approve.

"I thought I raised you better than that, Billy," he said. "You are no longer my son until you learn right from wrong."

Depressed, Billy goes out binge drinking. He meets a man at the bar and goes back to a motel with him. He quickly forgets his troubles for the night, and come morning, the man is gone.

Billy returns home to his parents' and confronts his father. "Dad," he says, "I want you to know that from now on, I'm following your religion. You don't have to worry about me."

"Don't lie to me, Billy. I know people who saw you go into a motel room with a man last night. Have you learned nothing from Leviticus?"

"Yes, Dad, I have. I've learned that it's wrong for a man to lie with another man."

"Are you saying you did not lie with that man, then?"

"No, Dad, I did not."

And just as Billy's father breathes a sigh of relief, Billy continues.

"We did it standing up."

I have a PHP script which reads the contents of an HTML page into a string, does a bit of processing with str_ireplace and preg_replace, and outputs the result to the page. But I'm having a little trouble thinking of an efficient way to resize the images on the page.

I need any images larger than a certain size--say, 200x200px--to be scaled down proportionally. But images that are smaller remain untouched, and are not scaled up to 200x200. The image tags, though, will not usually have the explicit dimensions in them.

The only way I could think of to accomplish this would be to use a Regular Expression to find all the image URLs in the page, and for each one load the image with imagecreatefrom*(), get the dimensions, calculate the resized dimensions, and add it to the <img> tag in the string. But that seems extremely slow and inefficient, given that some files may have upwards of 20 or 30 images in them.

Is there a better way to do this?

I'm trying to use PHP's exec() function to run a program on my server (specifically, it's a program that converts .doc files--which can be uploaded--into HTML files). However, no matter how I try to do this, it never works.

I've tried exec(), system(), passthru(), even process creation with popen(). They all work fine for built-in system commands--like ping, echo, etc.--but when I try to run any non-standard EXE's, it doesn't work. I get an empty return value and the program is never executed server-side.

After some research, I've given cmd.exe Read/Execute access for all groups, specifically IUSR. I've also set the Apache service properties to allow it to "Interact with the desktop". Nothing helped.

I'm using WAMPServer 2 with PHP 5.3.4 and Apache 2.2.17 on a Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit system.

Can someone please help? I need to be able to convert .doc files for my site, and I can't do that if I can't run EXE's from PHP.

I'm trying to parse Twitter-style hashtags from a string in Javascript (that is, tags of the form #thisIsAHashTag). The string is stored in the variable tweet.text and the regular expression replacement it supposed to wrap all hashtags in a link that passes the hashtag data to a script called Search().

I figured a regular expression would be the easiest way to go, so I came up with this:

(Y!A cuts off long lines, so I had to put it in a text file for you): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11662651/HashTag_RegExp.tx...

I can break it down a bit to explain: the first parenthesized expression should capture the start of the string or a space; following this, it should capture the content of the #hashTagText, which is only letters, numbers, an _ characters; and the last expression just ensures there's a non-hashtag character or end-of-string after the hashtag.

This mostly works, but when multiple hashtags come in a row, it only wraps every other hashtag in a link. For example, if I pass it a string that contains this:

This #is #not #a #working #hashtag string.

Then #is, #a, and #hashtag will correctly be wrapped, but #not and #working will remain untouched.

Can someone help me spot the problem or come up with a better RegEx to wrap EVERY hashtag correctly?

Thanks :) .

This question has bothered me ever since elementary school. In a physical sense, what exactly is energy? I've always been taught it's the "ability to perform work", but that's quite abstract. Meanwhile, we talk about physical things having certain amounts of energy, releasing energy, absorbing energy, and transferring energy. Are we really saying that these particles are releasing an ability, absorbing an ability, and transferring an ability? It all seems too abstract to be measured so specifically and concretely.

Other than that definition, I've heard many people say, "we really don't know what energy is". If that's true, does that mean energy is the physical equivalent of the mathematical complex number--we don't know what it represents, but we can use it and manipulate it to get results that make sense?

The more I think about it, the more I feel like "energy" could be described as "the sensitivity of an object to the influence of force carriers". As in, the more energy you have, the less likely you are to be affected by a force. Is that at all an accurate--or even sensible--statement?

I guess what I'm really asking is, "What is energy? Do we, as a species, even know?"

I have a nice layout for my new site that includes a fixed-position menu bar and fixed left-and-right sidebars, with scrollable content in the middle. Everything works fine in Firefox, as you can see here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11662651/Graphics/SiteStuf...

But in IE, it's completely messed up. The top menu contents show up below the left menu instead of in the top menu. The main contents and the right-side menu show up below all that. And nothing remains fixed when I scroll.

I usually don't post my entire file and ask for help, but in this case, where it works PERFECTLY in Firefox and NOTHING works in IE, I can't think of a better way.

So, here's the file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11662651/Graphics/SiteStuf...

Why is IE completely being stupid (more so than usual)?

-IMP

I'm curious: of the five main boroughs of New York state (Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island), which borough is Albany, NY in? I've tried looking it up, and surprisingly it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere online.

Thanks.

No explanation needed this time. Just a sad poem that came to me in the wee hours of 5AM xD .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's a crack in the dark

But it's not filled with light.

It's filled with your memory

That keeps me up at night.

There's a crack in the dark

But I'm not sure where

Sometimes I want to find it,

Sometimes I just don't care.

You're the crack in the dark

That riddles my mind

The one I love, the one I hate

The crack that leaves me blind.

Soon I'll crack through the dark

And take a little peek

Maybe light will shine through,

Or maybe I'm just weak

When I peek through the dark,

I hope you'll be there.

I hope it's you holding my hand

But cruel life's not that fair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

As always, C&C is welcome.

-IMP ;) :)

Well, things never did get better between me and my friend...it inspired another depressing poem, though I just wrote this after literally 23 hours without sleep, so it's possible it's terrible :P .

Anyway, it's called Unexpected End, and it has kind of a 4-on-the-floor rhythm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unexpected End

How can I help her when I can't even fix myself?

When I look into the mirror all I see is shame and doubt

I don't even know what's hap'ning when I look into her eyes

All the thoughts that I once knew so well now catch me by surprise

Thinkin' this and thinkin' that, am I the only one who knows

That it's lies and nothing more, and I'll repeat it blow-for-blow

See for four years we were friends, acquaintences I'd better say

Then six months we were just best friends 'til that cold November day

When I realized there was something more, stirring in my brain

Controlling every heartbeat, every wax and every wane

So I told you that one half-truth that we both now know so well

You reacted with such joy it felt like Heaven, now it's Hell

For one month we had some fun, tossed feelings back and forth

But then one day in February told you I felt more

Since then I haven't seen you, barely speak to you at all

You avoid me like the plague and yet you claim that nothing's wrong

I was there for you when times were tough, a friend when you're in need

Not a week later I spoke the truth and you went off on me

Now here we are, six months have passed since that February day

Yet still no talking though you know those feelings have gone away

I stay back because I know you're dispaired with me in your life

And you stay back saying "nothing's wrong" even through all the obvious strife

In just 2 months I'm leaving, won't be able to see you again

I guess when the unexpeceted comes, it's the Unexpected End.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As always, comments and criticism are welcome as long as it's civil.

-IMP ;) :)

Just two more of my old poems.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm There

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They think you're talking to yourself,

'Cause they don't know–I'm there.

Some people worry for your health,

But they don't know–I'm there.

So let them pass you on the street

And let them stop and stare.

It doesn't matter what they think,

Long as you know–I'm there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lovelife

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Love remains while lovers live,

But soon after what love canst thou give?

Is love abstract or a tangible thing?

Supernatural or chemical feeling?

Is it conceptual or concrete as stone?

And will it survive long after we're gone?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-IMP ;) :)

I'm going through a lot of my old poems, and I thought I'd post some here. For this one, I don't mean to underestimate you readers, but just remember that "arms" aren't always body parts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tired Arms

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These arms are getting tired,

They long to be set free,

And not just to respond to our

“To be or not to be?”

They long to be the last ones called,

Long to be left behind,

When the black obscurity called revenge

Obscures their masters' minds.

They hold onto these wishes,

But know they have no choice,

They know only their masters

Have any kind of voice.

So they continue falling down,

Slaves to gravity,

And they continue counting up

Their countless casualties.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-IMP ;) :)

I wrote this poem exactly one year ago on the day. It's fairly long, so I'll get right to it. Comments and criticisms are welcome, as long as they're civil.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Divine Conversation/Divine Realization

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I was walking down the street,

I stumbled upon God.

I held out my arms and grinned so sweet,

He gave a sad smile and nod.

“Lord,” I said, my arms held wide,

“It's You I wish to embrace!”

He only stared with glassy eyes,

Perplexity on His face.

“But who are you?” He asked me,

“I do not know you at all.”

My arms fell flat, down to my sides,

I leaned against the wall.

“I am Your son, like all of Man,

Is that not the truth?”

He chuckled a bit, like only He can,

“Only in your youth.

As life progresses, as young men age,

As men and women grow,

They worship Me and all pretend

That all My words they know.

But I have told them not to kill,

Yet stone the unruly child.

I have told them love thy neighbor,

While destroying sin the while.”

“But Lord,” I asked, “How can this be?

Was it all an inane test?”

He smiled again as he replied,

“The Scriveners know it best.

The words men read, they call My Own,

Came never from My Lips.

They kill for Me, they die for Me,

But never do they kiss.

They wrote the words, the Bible so,

For power and for greed.

And therefore, child, I know you not;

No man has followed Me.”

“But surely, Lord,” I protested again,

“The Christians know you so?”

“I'm sorry to say,” answered my Friend,

“Even there, it's 'no'.

They know Me not, they love Me not,

But think themselves the best.

Forsooth, dear sir, they are mistaken,

They're no more than the rest.”

“Well, now I'm here, my Lord, my God,

So tell me what is right.

Tell me how to Follow You,

How to live my life.”

“That is not My job, young one,

It's a task that lies with you.

Individuality is My greatest gift

It's true.

The only thing that Man got right

Of my many orations,

Is 'Love Thy Neighbor', not thy fight,

And love not thy nations.”

“So help those in need,” I asked of Him,

“Is all that I must do?”

“It is all that I have said,

The rest is up to You.”

And as I watched, He faded out,

A dream among the day.

But His message had been delivered;

There was nothing more to say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-IMP ;) :)

I know very little about business and finances, but I was watching "Shark Tank" today and one investor offered a sum for 30% equity stake in a business plus 14% royalty.

I was under the impression that if someone owns 30% of a company, they make 30% of the profits.If that's the case, what's the difference between owning a stake in a company and getting royalties for a product the business produces?

-IMP ;) :)

Does anyone have any clue what the ending of the Fringe season 3 finale was about? Is Jashua Jackson (Peter) not coming back next season? And if Peter never existed now, then Walter wouldn't have crossed into the other universe for him in the first place, so wouldn't the whole multiuniversal decay and subsequent war also not exist anymore? And what do the observers have to do with this? And if Peter & Walter sent the Machine back in time, where did it come from in its "original" timeline?

So many questions! Can anyone answer even one of them?

Argh! I hate the writers and love them at the same time.

-IMP ;) :)