Author: Dan Q
Dan Q is a software engineer, a director of a voluntary organisation, a trainee counsellor, a keen geocacher, and an amateur magician. He lives with his partner and her husband in a polyamorous triad, and occasionally finds time to blog.
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Ghost In The Shell 2 : Innocence
Paul will, yet again, have kittens: Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence seems to have been released.
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The Village
Went to see The Village last night - very good film, well worth seeing, so long as you take a few things into account:
1. Unlike what all the previews would have you believe, this is not even remotely a horror movie - it's a story about innocence and about what people will sacrifice in order … -
Aber Graduates Earn Least In UK
This is just fucking weak: the average salary of an Aberystwyth graduate is just £12,968... the lowest in the UK. And on this crappy 'probationary period', that's still more than I earn. Fucking shitty.
Feeling unmotivated now. Not getting enough work done. -
Programmer’s Day
Apparently it's Programmer's Day, so Paul, Bryn, Claire and I put together an old low-end Pentium into a dual-booting Red Hat/Windows 98SE box, and racked up some classic games of the 80s and 90s. Fab.
There's actually some debate about whether Programmer's Day should be included as a Wikipedia entry... as there's not a lot of … -
Homosexual Intercourse Exposure To Be Reduced By Highland Cattle
In this news story on Ananova, it is reported that a Dutch town is hoping to reduce occurrences of gays using their park for sex by filling it with Scottish highland cattle, which will apparently "scare them off".
It's a weird world. -
Lottery Scratchcards And Illicit Hallucinogens
Damn weird: last night I dreamt that I found a lottery scratchcard which had not been completed - just two of it's sixteen panels had been scratched off. While I'd not be fool enough to buy one (the mathematics is simple - the lottery is a stupidity tax), I'll happily play one I didn't pay …
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JavaScript Random Quote Generator
A friend sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if I knew of a simple random quote generator that she could embed on her web page. So I've written one, and I'm making it available here on the off chance that anybody else wants it too. It's implemented in JavaScript, and works simply by including a …
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Violently Ill
Argh.
The worst part of being so horribly ill is the moment when you're dashing to the toilet before you pebbledash the floor with your arse... and at that moment you realise that your stomach is about to eject it's contents, too. What a paradox.
In any case - it's not all bad news: the Ship & … -
Happy Fun Weekend
It's so much nicer coming back to the office on a Monday after a weekend both relaxing and productive, with lots of happy fun time with friends. Managed to tidy the flat, do heaps of laundry, have a successful Troma Night (three films, a decent crowd, and everybody hung on in 'til the end despite …
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The Scary Baby Conspiracy
Now here's an idea for an Illuminati: The Game Of Conspiracy "Illuminati" card - The Scary Baby Conspiracy. Suggestions for the Scary Baby Conspiracy's unique win condition and any special rules are welcome (from anybody who actually knows what Illuminati is). Fnord.
On which note - it's Geek Night tonight! Hopefully we can have a couple … -
A.I. Nuts, Again
Do you remember a week or two ago I wrote about a guy who patented the "Ethical Rules Of Artificial Intelligence"? Well - it looks like he's read my article and placed his own comments. I'm quite surprised and impressed that he took the time (away from his heavy schedule of philosophising or book-signing or …
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Sweet Sounds Of Perl
Claire'd like this, as she's been programming a lot of Perl recently:
There's a guy who uses Perl code to generate music in nightclubs. So far, so good. Well, now, he's taken to writing the code that generates the music live, in front of an audience. Of course, this brings up a whole suite of new … -
Mr. Sinus Theater 3000 In Name-Theft Lawsuit
The Austin Business Journal reports that the makers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are taking to court the makers of a new show, Mr. Sinus Theater 3000, in which a group of guys sit in front of a cinema screen and take the piss out of the films they watch. And fair enough: it seems … -
Sick And Wrong Use Of Emacs
I've been made aware of an easter egg in emacs, a text editor.
Fire up a copy of emacs, hit meta-X (alt-x), then type doctor to talk to an ELIZA-like chatbot. Better yet, type psychoanalyze-pinhead to... well... you'll see...
Have my two-tone, 1958 Nash METRO brought around..I don't understand.So this is what it feels like to … -
World’s First Room-Temperature Plastic Magnet
New Scientist reports that researchers at the University of Durham have created the world's first plastic magnet to work at room temperature (previous plastic magnets worked only at extremely low temperatures, typically measurable in double-digit Kelvins).
I'm sure I'm likely to be corrected on some minor point by any of the physicists who read this blog, …