The following are questions and answers about David Hammond, most of which are seldom asked or were made up on the spot by me just for my own amusement. If you find something informative here, I've made a terrible mistake.
No. Most people have heard the phrase, “I think, therefore I am,” which attempts to prove one's own existence by recognizing the presence of consciousness. The idea of “consciousness” is simply an abstract description of the workings of a complex system. Abstract things are immaterial, and thus they do not exist except in our own consciousness. If consciousness can only exist inside consciousness, then it can't truly exist at all. Since consciousness can't exist and my consciousness is the only thing I am certain of, I must not exist.
Fairies.
Yes. “Almu” for short. I changed his name for a Gmail account back in the day. He is the bird formerly known as Pete.
You mean physically, or on the Internet?
Ah. I'm always in the following IRC channels on irc.freenode.net, using the nick “Nanobot”:
I like to help people out with web design issues in my spare time. But please ask the question in the main channel, not PM.
I also developed and maintain Lolibot, an IRC bot you'll see in all of the above channels except #web. As of this moment of writing, I don't yet have any public documentation for Lolibot, but it does lots of cool/helpful stuff. Just watch how others use it.
Yes.
Honto.
Honto ni honto ni honto.
Shut up.
HIV is very common among vampires, although their immunity from most human diseases prevents the virus from causing fatalities within the vampire population. Despite the prevalence of HIV-infected vampires, the risk of the virus transferring from the vampire to the bite victim is usually low, as vampire blood generally doesn't enter the bloodstream of the victim in this process. However, if the vampire has sores in his or her mouth, such as from accidental fang penetration of the gum lining or from herpes, the virus may be able to spread to the victim. In general, it is recommended to avoid being bitten by a vampire if possible.
It should be noted that the virus may also spread through sexual intercourse with a vampire. Use of a condom may reduce the chances of infection.
The downy woodpecker, of course.
“Ideal”, huh? I won't hold back then.
No you don't. No one does. That's why it's called “ideal”.
That is, unless I'm currently dating you and haven't updated this page yet, in which case... of course you're my ideal girl, honey. ^_^
I don't expect anyone to meet the above description. That's why it's called “ideal”. If a girl comes even close to meeting half of the points, that would be awesome. Sorry for being honest; it's your fault for asking about my ideal mate. Yes, you, the imaginary question asker I just invented.
I'd get myself a double cup of chocolate ice cream to celebrate and then probably go right back to whatever it was I was doing.
WTF kind of question is that? Why do you want to know every insignificant little detail of my life? Weirdo.
Anyway, I like it when there's a light rain or mist, nice cool temperature, and not much wind. I love cloudy days. The hot sun makes me all depressed and angsty. Walking through a forest along the California coast just after or during a light rain is euphoria to me.
Ah, this is an easy question. Assuming you're counting in a base-π numeric system, all of the digits of pi are as follows: 10.
Never! Back, evil villain!
At this moment of writing, my works have the following rankings on Google for the associated search terms. Result will vary depending on your geographical location and personal search history, although these searches were done with a clean search profile.
No lame SEO tactics required.
There were a ton of other standards-related searches and variants of the above for which my works have ranked high, but meh.
Oh, and I'm referenced in these books.
Not intentionally. I just sat in the garage rolling them around in my mouth and sometimes fell asleep like that. I don't recommend it.
I'll let you know once Wakoopa releases their Linux client.
In the meantime, here is a (probably outdated) list of some of my favorite software:
I'd also like to give a shout-out to sshfs and smbmount, and all the other Linux tools which make maintaining dozens of websites so much easier.
Since pigs started flying and their bacon stopped being oh so delicious.
Depends on what you mean by “egg”. If you mean the first egg laid by a chicken, obviously the chicken came first. If you mean the first egg that contained a chicken, then the egg came first because the first animal which had DNA close enough to be considered a chicken would have formed inside the egg which was developed within and laid by its barely-non-chicken parent (although it would be quite a task to determine exactly where that cut-off point would be, since hen and chick would have still had very similar DNA and appearance).
Of course, if you just mean the first egg in general, that would have been millions of years before the first chicken.
Again, it depends on what exactly you mean in the question.
What caused life to exist? Probably random chance that formed the first cell (hey, given the incomprehensibly large number of planets and time we had before the first cell came about, random chance had bound to make something interesting eventually), and then random mutations filtered by largely nonrandom survival of the fittest which lead us to evolve to where we are today.
What was the purpose for our existence? For there to be a purpose, there must have been a conscious initiator (a god). I don't believe in a god, so my answer would be “there was none,” but if there were a god, you'd have to ask him/her/it.
Why do we get up in the morning? I get up because I enjoy a lot of things about being awake. I enjoy writing, developing stuff, listening to music, watching shows, talking with people, eating, playing games, and so on. Staying in bed forever doesn't sound very fun.
Why do we choose to live rather than simply die? Well, as I said above, I enjoy life. Why would I want to die? I don't believe in an afterlife. If I have a choice between living or just not existing, I'd rather live. Besides, death usually hurts.
What is the end result of our collective lives? Like I said, I don't believe that there's a overall “purpose” for our existence, and there isn't any predetermined path that we're “supposed” to be following. So whatever the end result is, that's what it is. It probably won't be anything poetic. It'll probably be something along the lines of a giant explosion and the word “Oops.” Or we may just squader all of our natural resources and slowly starve to death as a species. Either way, I don't see the eventual end of humanity as being a particularly happy event (for us, I mean).
If Apple forks the KHTML source code and calls it WebKit, are they the same engine? At first, sure, they might as well be. But you keep in mind that as time goes on, they will become more and more distinct, and you very soon have to consider them different engines even though they share a lot of the same foundation. Same deal with the person issue.
Okay, enough of these cliche questions. The only reason people still talk about these questions is because they're ambiguously worded. Clarify your particular usage of the word “sound” and I'll give you the corresponding one of two certain answers.
