For the benefit of they that asked: a Scoville Scale worth seeing. I’m impressed that I own a bottle of the hottest sauce they do that’s actually intended for consumption.
If I had £140, I still wouldn’t spend it on a bottle of Blaire’s 6A.M.… when a pepper sauce is contains three times the capsaicin level of police-grade pepper spray, it’s not designed to be used as food. I mean, really.
This morning, I found a bug in Internet Explorer. I wasn’t using it, of course, but I’d sent a Macromedia Flash file to a colleague by e-mail, who opened it in IE, but couldn’t.
It turns out that Internet Explorer can’t cope with opening Flash (.swf) files from the local file system, if the filename contains an apostrophe (e.g. “Dan’s Pictures.swf”). Crazy little bug, but I’ve tested it a little and it seems that this really is the case. But how do I report it?
Microsoft‘s web site, despite a redesign, is a sprawling mess. Eventually I gave up and submitted it as a ‘feature request’. I submitted PNG-support as a feature request, too, because it would be nice if sites like Abnib looked as good to the unwashed masses of IE users as it does to users of real web browsers.
Board games are making a comeback this Christmas, reports the BBC. That’s interesting news. So go “Have Your Say” already, and tell them what your favourite Geek Night board game is!
My head really hurts. Ow.
I Am A: Chaotic Neutral Elf Mage Druid
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral characters are unstable, and frequently insane. They believe in disorder first and foremost, and will thus strive for that disorder in
everything they do. This means that they will do whatever seems ‘fun’ or ‘novel’ at any given time.
Race: Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of
their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a
thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.
Primary Class: Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically
strong, their mental talents can make up for this.
Secondary Class: Druids are a special variety of Cleric who serves the Earth, and can call upon the power in the earth to accomplish their goals. They tend to be
somewhat fanatical about defending natural settings. (could equally be secondary class: Bard)
Deity: Azuth is the Lawful Neutral god of wizards and mages. He is also known as the High One, and is the Patron of Wizards. His followers believe that a systematic
approach to magic is the best, and they strive for calm and caution in order to avoid accidents. They wear shimmering robes, and are well-versed in magic, as well as typical priest
spells. Azuth’s symbol is a hand with a raised, glowing index finger.
I still loathe D&D.
The horror continues:
1. Still no fix for Andromeda. SmartData‘s web site is currently a temporary holding page I knocked up, and everybody’s e-mails come to my desktop to be sorted and delivered to them by hand. The hosting provider still hasnt gotten back to me with anything but excuses, despite my calling them every hour to “remind” them to pull their collective fingers out.
2. I have a killer headache, which is making thinking through this morning’s problems somewhat more difficult than it should be. And I haven’t even started the work I need to get done today, yet.
This review originally appeared on Amazon. See more reviews by Dan.
Sadly, the dramatic graphical improvements over the previous ‘Larry’ games is countered by a significant reduction in playability. Most of the sub-quests come down to one of five or six of the same mini-games, over and over again. The scenes and situations that little Larry Lovage finds himself in are amusing, and after a while you’ll find yourself playing the games just to see more of the plot unfold.
If you like playing the same old “bash the buttons in the correct order” mini-games again and again, this’ll suit you. But if you’d rather just see the plot tick by you’re better spending your money on seeing a movie.
1. Andromeda (Smartdata‘s main online server) goes down, taking our web site and e-mail with it.
2. The hosts are slow and arsey and aren’t much help at all. “I can ping it,” says one. “Yes, well I can ping it too,” I reply, coldly, “But apart from that, it doesn’t seem to have any purpose other than to help keep your building warm!” I finally persuade them to go and look at it.
3. Oh yeh – did I mention that this happened, taking (as I said) our web site down, just as we launch some national publicity? My boss doesn’t look happy.
4. Why do letters with windows in them so rarely contain, like, Christmas cards and other fluffy things? Mine, today, was from the council, insisting that, no, really, I do have to pay them one-and-a-half people’s council tax for the next two and a half years.
Kittens are immensely cute. See below.
That aside, and now I’ve gotten the attention of all of you, I’m not going to write about kittens at all. As those of you who read Abnib (or otherwise read both Bryn and my blog), we had a little kerfuffle yesterday about the Welsh language. I thought I’d probably get a chance to post first, before he did, but I’ve learned very well not to post when drunk, and waited ’til this morning… by which time he’d written his own. In any case…
On The Value Of The Welsh Language
I agree entirely with Bryn that Welsh is indeed, not, definitively, an old dead language. In fact, I was surprised to find that usage of the language is increasing in many areas of Wales (which, to be fair, I find hard to understand the reasons for – I would have always have suspected it of being a language in decline). Statistically speaking, Welsh usage in Aberystwyth has fallen in the last 10 years (source: 1991/2001 census), but this can be attributed to the fact that the survey methods used between these two censuses has changed – for the first time, in 2001, students were counted by their term-time address (which is, to be fair, typically where they spend most of the year), rather than their home-time address. A deeper look at the statistics shows that the number of Welsh speakers in Aberystwyth has increased pretty much in-line with the population over the last decade. A great demonstration of what can be ‘proven’ with statistics.
In any case, Bryn’s blog entry meanders around the topic a little – if his post is directed (as I assume it is) to me, then he makes the mistake that I am comparing the Welsh language to British English, a dialect of English spoken by approximately 15% of English speakers worldwid… and, in fact, we spent a little while later in the evening finding fault with English – which, let’s face it, with it’s non-phonetic structure, crazy spellings, inconsistent double-letters, and double-meanings [right?], isn’t difficult – at which point the comparison came between Welsh and other phonetic languages; in particular Russian (which uses the nightmare Cyrillic alphabet) and Latin (which really is a dead language, sadly), and – kind of – Esperanto.
In the end, I think it’s important for Bryn to realise that it was not him I was trying to spark a debate about (which, in the end, is my only aim when launching with a contraversial point such as the one I made), but a language which he happens to speak (and which, given any kind of free time in my life, I’d still love to learn – something I’ve been promising myself for about four years now, but the most I’ve managed is a brief, free introduction). English is the third-most common “first language”, but then, Windows is the most common “first operating system”, and I don’t think that Bryn would have walked out if I’d have said that the operating system he uses was “old and dead” – to the contrary, this would probably have led to a lively debate about the relative merits of various operating system choice.
It seems that somehow my attack on the Welsh language was seen by Bryn as an attack on him, which it wasn’t. And perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t mean that what I implied is what I mean, only that this could get people thinking and talking about things they might not otherwise think twice about.
On ‘The Video’
Not one to split things into multiple posts if I think of them at the same time, I thought I’d also say a word about the video Bryn mentioned: sorry about that, but again – it’s not you or what you do, it’s just a bit of fun that I think got out of hand amongst the Troma Night troops. Not that that’s going to stop me showing next week’s mini-video (which I don’t think features you, Bryn).
Sorry there, old man. While I stand my ground on the Welsh language icebreaker, and I apologise profusely for letting ‘the video’ get out of hand, I still ought to have thought about your feelings, too. And you shouldn’t have walked out.
Aren’t kittens brilliant? There’s one more for you to look at, here.
Google Suggest is the newest crazy invention from the guys at Google Labs… and it’s actually pretty cool! Go give it a go…
From an article on the BBC:
SmartData UK aims to create software and database solutions.
Company spokesman Gareth Hopkins said: “The move to Technium Aberystwyth has facilitated an expansion of the company and we believe this opportunity will open up a whole range of possibilities.
“The package offered by the Technium will assist us in creating more jobs and expanding into the international market place.”
Here’s a damned cool clock (requires Flash).
Here’s a scary little news story: Rat Brain Flies Jet, from The Register.
You know, there’ve been several occassions on which I’d have really loved to have left a comment on Hayley’s LiveJournal, but she’s set it so that only people she’s listed as “friends” can post comments to it, and she hasn’t listed anybody as friends!
But hey; now that I’ve mentioned this on my blog, everybody who knows us both will pester her until she fixes it. Winnage.
Checking my GMail account this morning, I noticed an unusual icon in the lower-right corner of the browser window:
It turns out that Google‘s GMail service seems to be testing an ATOM feed – a kind of syndication feed (similar to those used by weblogs and news sites – see Scatmania’s ATOM feed) that can be ‘subscribed’ to from your desktop computer.
Right now, the GMail feed looks pretty bare:
Nonetheless, this is an interesting turn of events – didn’t Google recently say that no other automated mail checking tools were to be used except for their own GMail Notifier (sorry, can’t find a news story to link)? But now it looks like they’re working on developing a format by which anybody can ‘subscribe’ to their own inbox (although probably only using a web browser – the non-browser-based XML readers seem to have difficulty with cookies, which are likely to be required.
It’s all interesting.
