{"id":190,"date":"2024-11-01T06:02:41","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T01:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localblog.local\/?p=190"},"modified":"2026-06-19T23:21:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T23:21:28","slug":"ghosts-in-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/very-random\/ghosts-in-the-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts in the machine!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sequence-01.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-325\" style=\"width:523px;height:auto\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">animated gif with clips from I, Robot, The Net, Hackers, NCIS, a very little clip from the music video for Dilemma by Kelly Rowland &#8211; no real reason for the last one or any of them<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Key Lessons from the GIF<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>you can only hack the planet if you&#8217;re in a spinning phone booth or you happen to have a Xybernaut Poma Wearable PC, though I bet if you grabbed that old Virtual Boy you have laying around, you&#8217;d hack twice as fast<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>red floppies are for viruses, only; remember to always use the appropriate color floppy disk for your intended purpose<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>are you being hacked? Is it moving too fast? Get a friend and type on the same keyboard <em>together<\/em> for maximum effectiveness &#8212; it&#8217;s just like a two player computer game from the 90s (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kl6rsi7BEtk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">clip from NCIS<\/a>)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>tech debt = AI\/robots taking over&#8211;time to delete all those functions you know you&#8217;re not using but have left there <em>just in case<\/em> (or better yet, just comment it all out&#8230; <em>just in case)<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>and lastly, even 22 years later, Excel still isn&#8217;t a great way to text (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/ikrd\/nelly-kelly-rowland-excel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">details<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why I Made it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I found this while cleaning up files. I made it recently, but forgot I did. It was supposed to be a joke, but turned out weirdly serious. I made it because I could, but also because it makes me think of one very specific incident from my past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was still very new to tech\/development, I kept coming across a file containing a single class in our SVN repo at work that didn&#8217;t seem to be used anywhere. I was still unsure of myself and my skills. I thought that maybe it was used somewhere and I just couldn&#8217;t find it like some weird Java magic. (It wasn&#8217;t.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, instead of tracking down the code author or asking people&#8211;because they were busy and maybe I was wrong&#8211;I added a comment in the file asking if it was still in use and suggested that if not, we should delete it. I forgot about it and stumbled across it <em>3 years later.<\/em> I finally deleted it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I happened to rewatch <em>I, Robot<\/em> shortly after this, and it&#8217;s what came to mind when he said random segments of code. I imagined all of the code bloat out there giving rise to the singularity\/AI\/robot takeover. Obviously, that&#8217;s not how it works, but it&#8217;s still what I think about, and it still makes me laugh <em>every. single. time<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"988\" height=\"954\" src=\"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ghostsinthemachine.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-326\" style=\"width:209px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ghostsinthemachine.png 988w, https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ghostsinthemachine-300x290.png 300w, https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ghostsinthemachine-768x742.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 988px) 100vw, 988px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">g-g-g-ghosts!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Key Lessons from the GIF Why I Made it I found this while cleaning up files. I made it recently, but forgot I did. It was supposed to be a joke, but turned out weirdly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,8,11,34],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-very-random","tag-ai","tag-animatedgif","tag-code","tag-singularity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanahryding.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}