Articles – Page 106

I Want One Of These

Some professor has invented a device that uses on-the-fly destructive sound wave interference to cancel out the whine of computer fans. Wow! Toy! Want! Estimates suggest fans with these could be made available for just $20 more than the price of regular fans.

In other news, does anybody else find it scary that this site selling pregnancy tests has a picture labelled ‘for illustration only’. What else are you going to use it for, other than as an illustration? Are women trying to get away with a ‘freebie’ by urinating on their computer screens or something?

Sliding Doors, My High School Crush, And Wierd Dreams

Last night I had a weird dream which I’ve therefore decided to share with you. As usual, written first-person and present-tense:

I’m 16 and back and high school in some kind of ‘sliding doors’-esque alternate reality in which things went somewhat differently. In this one, I actually ask out Marguerite, a girl at school who I fancied the pants off. We get together, and make a fab couple. After high school, I go to Preston College and she goes to Runshaw (as actually happened), but all’s still well. But then, after college, I decide to come to University at Aberystwyth. She doesn’t want me to leave Preston to go to University, as she wants to study here. As we start to argue about this, I wake up.

Fuckin’ weird, and no mistake.

Haven’t seen Marguerite… pretty much since high school (interestingly, her older sister, Rosemary, studied here in Aberystwyth). However, a quick trawl of the World Wide Web found this (not terribly good) photograph of her at Victoria Falls:

[picture missing]

I shouldn’t mix Guinness, red wine, and real ale before sleeping.

Student Skills Competition – Dress Rehersals

Fun in the sun. Today I get to sit at the back of the Aberystwyth Arts Centre Theatre and shout “Speak Up!” at random second year students from 13 different departments, interspersed with periods of tech-talk about what can and can’t be done with a data projector, laptop, VHS cassette player, a pre-set configuration of stage lights, and a sound deck.

The actual Student Skills Competition is on Wednesday. Why not check when your department is being represented and come along to support your team? It’s always a giggle.

The Computer Science team last year sucked. The year before they sucked even worse. The year before that was my year, and we rocked – and won £500 for Best Presentation. I know a little about the Computer Science team this year [photo], but will they suck or rock?

Taking all bets.

Why Do I Work At This Place?

I’m too good for this place or the money I get. Here I am, working on a Sunday to fix a handful of bugs that my co-workers couldn’t cope with (admittedly, the first of these [which I’ve just fixed] is a killer), but hey – I’m running several hours ahead of myself and it’s not even midday yet.

My mum’s visiting with her b/f and the dog, and I’d like to get home sometime soon, so I’m hacking at full pelt to get this code sorted. At current rates, I might be able to be finished by 2pm. Yay.

I’ve got the Goo Goo Dolls on full blast. Fucking marvelous. The sheep in the fields nearest the office jumped when I put it on. It’s proper ear-drum-splitting rock!

I’m still insanely busy, but it doesn’t matter because today I feel like God.

Rock on.

Typically Busy

[this post was lost during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially-recovered on 13 October 2018]

Another couple of weeks of academic nightmare coming up, followed by the Easter Break (during which I’ll be working, ho hum). I’ve got to do my second “poster session” presentation for my dissertation a week on Wednesday; next week I have all my pracs *and* I’m helping out backstage with the Student Skills competition. Oh; and I managed to get myself persuaded to go into the office at the weekend, forgetting that my mum’s visiting. D’oh.

Oh yeh; my mum’s visiting this weekend. She’s bringing Andy (the BF¹) and Puddles (the KCS²) along for Troma Night. Which is nice.

And, in other shiny happy news, I sold my old copy of The Sims: Party Pack for about the same value as it can be bought in shops. Yay, and, indeed, hey.

And, while I’m on the ball – other shiny happy news – I’ve managed to grovel to the bank and secure myself a dramatically increased overdraft, interest free, until September. Which means I can afford to pay for my ADSL subscription. Oh; and the …

The Internet Saves The Day

You’ve got to love it.

Claire today took her car to a garage in Capel Bangor to be serviced and to have it’s brakes fixed. Unfortunatley she didn’t anticipate the scope of this operation and found herself stuck there for (potentially) two hours.

However, with the joy of the world wide web, I was able to find a bus for her to get home, and the phone number of the garage she was at (as she’d yet again failed to take her mobile phone with her), and get her this information quickly enough that she will be able to get to the bus stop in time.

And some people don’t think that this is progress.

The Volume of a Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus in the Ovine Medial Preoptic Area/Anterior Hypothalamus Varies with Sexual Partner Preference

A study has just been released (click here for the abstract) about the biochemical differences between ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ rams.

Just a thought: what do you have to do to get a research grant for that… “Hi… I’d like you to give me thousands of pounds to chop up the brains of gay sheep.”

And on a more amusing note, somebody’s spliced together chunks of President Bush’s address, last month, to make a hilarious (and terrifyingly, more accurate) speech [QuickTime MOV]. I love it! “Saddam Hussien was trying to acquire… six billion hydrogen-powered doctors!” Wonderful. Take a look!

I really ought to tell you what I’ve been up to this last week, but I can’t be bothered yet.

I’m So Fucking Clever

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[this post was partially recovered on 24 November 2017]

I’ve had a great idea that I might try to implement sometime (or put of the stack of things I might try to implement sometime (or put on the stack of things I might think about moving onto the stack of things I might try to implement sometime)). Allow me to illustrate…

As Kit has noticed (Andy too), SpamBots prowl around LiveJournal‘s servers (I’ve described a possible strategy they could be using as a comment to Kit’s entry). Basically, these are semi-intelligent robots which, starting with people with ‘relevant’ interests, advertise their product on the blogs of them and their Friends… and their Friends’ Friends… etc.

Now, think back a little further to an entry in Alec’s blog, mid-January: some ‘random’ came along and began to flirt with him through the medium of comments in his blog. ‘She’ kept up conversation for some time before disappearing. …

My DJ Name

Daniel Huntley spins tunes as
DJ Dark IllusionGet your dj name @ Quiz Me

Damn, I’m hungover.

Beautiful Morning In The Valleys

Jen is, of course, correct. It is a beautiful morning. As I came over the brow of Penglais hill into the valley of Capel Dewi, the frosty fields were spread out before me like a big white blanket. If you happen to be up early this morning, go take a look… before it thaws.

It’s a pity I have so much work to do. I’d have enjoyed spending the day walking. Perhaps I’ll see if I can get everything I need to do, done, and bunk off early… try to find a way up the hill that overshadows the valley: the one I’ve always wanted to climb…

(all dependent on getting this work done, but hey…)

More, Abstract, On Faith In What You Love

Following my previous entry, here’s some recent feeling around the matter of “losing faith in what you love”.

Very recently, I’ve met a great many people who are just beginning to find interesting and rewarding a thing which I have taken for granted for so long. And I’ve been encouraging this, in my own way – helping them to understand what makes it so great. Would I be a hypocrite if I didn’t believe it myself? And to hide this, how well must I act?

Maybe I’ve written too much. And maybe I’ve written too little. I’m not looking for people’s sympathy any more than their concern. And I’m still me, still happy, and still doing the things I do with the people I love. I’m just a little confused.

But if anybody has the answers, don’t hesitate to tell me.

The Most Frustrating Things In The World… Ever… (2004)

The most annoying thing in the world? Witnessing an argument and knowing exactly what needs to be said, and what needs to be asked, to resolve it, but those involved being so engrossed in it that none of them will listen to hear what they need to hear.

No; that’s not right; the most annoying thing in the world: when one of the people involved in said argument is so self-righteous about what they’re trying to say that instead of listening to what the other people are actually asking, they keep re-iterating their point, which isn’t actually the answer to the question being asked.

I’m still not sure that’s quite it… perhaps this is it:

Losing faith in something you love.

Manos: The Hands Of Fate

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. It is far, far worse, even, than Barb Wire.

It is truly abysmal. Awful filming, meaningless plot, impossible-to-understand ending, crap acting, discontinuity, shitty clipping… apparently three members of the cast committed suicide shortly after filming was completed. Almost none of the rest worked in film again.

Never, ever watch this film. Really.

Update (20th March 2012) – crosslink:

Kit’s warning

Jam

I’ve just watched the DVD of the controversial Channel 4 TV Series, Jam. It’s… different. It’s perhaps a little too dark and bitter a sense of humour even for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed the “Symptomless Coma” sketch. All very, very sick-and-wrong, though. While I personally liked it, I can see why it got complaints.

That, and I’ve been doing my laundry and practising my juggling. My left arm still isn’t as strong nor as controlled as I’d like it to be; and I’ll need it to improve some more before I can really make any progress with four-ball juggling.

And I’ve been reading yet more of MMYRTL (A.K.A. Developing Your Own 32-Bit OS). It’s really quite scary. But great bedtime reading.

Oh; and you can rely on me not to go on about the WinNT/2K source code leak for ages in my blog. It’s being well enough covered, I feel, by… well; everybody. It’s safe to say that the Windows source code is spreading across the internet like a virus. I don’t think I ought to finish that analogy.

I need to get some sleep.

SiteFinder: Mark Two

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]

[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]

If you’ve been reading this blog since September-ish, you’ll remember when I had about a week of ranting about the VeriSign/SiteFinder lark: this was where VeriSign, who (in layman’s terms) are responsible for linking all .com, .net, and .org addresses to their respective servers, in September last year put a ‘catch-all’ clause in. In other words, every possible combination of letters and numbers, followed by a .com, .net, or .org, ‘belonged’ to them. This was a complete abuse of their position of power, and caused a great deal of faults amongst systems throughout the internet. In addition, it could eventually have been used (and evidence suggests that the intention was there) to monopolise the internet’s search engine and advertising services.

Well; they’re at it again, as this article (“SiteFinder vs. Engineers: Our Mistake Is Ignorance”) discusses, so you’re likely to see me ranting at least a little more. If they do decide to do it again, they’ve stated that they will “provide 60 or 90 days warning, in order for the appropriate technological …