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Damn, I’m hungover.
Tag: 2004-07-11 fully recovered
Lion Cut?
The Internet Is A World Of Ends
Got a spare quarter hour? I think you should go and read WorldOfEnds.com. It’s a fascinating and concise analysis of what is the nature of internet, and why why should stop making mistakes with it.
It’s not geeky – it’s philosophical.
Safer Internet Day
Today is European Safer Internet Day.
Does that mean that all those idiots who fell for the MyDoom virus (which, of course, required you to open a ZIP file inside the infected e-mail, the run the program inside it – yet still became the fastest-spreading e-mail virus to date) are going to actually plug their brains in for once.
If you got infected by MyDoom, shame on you for your stupidity.
Amusing Line From The Python Manual
I just extracted the following line from the Python documentation (for those of you who don’t know, Python is a relatively-new and somewhat unusual programming language who’s name is derived not from the snake but from Monty Python):
Attempts to pickle unpicklable objects will raise the PicklingError exception; when this happens, an unspecified number of bytes may have already been written to the underlying
file.
You have to love any manual with that line in it! It almost beats the famous Fortran line about defining pi as a constant in case it’s value changes.
Burger King Love Us
A new-looking manager (young, with a shiny badge) is making Changes at the Burger King around the corner from us. From Monday, the entire restaurant will become No Smoking (yay!), and the old upstairs toilets – once closed owing to vandalism – have been re-opened. Claire and I were in there this evening, discussing our comparative days (mine at work, hers learning Japanese), and met the new-looking manager, who gave us vouchers each, redeemable for free meals there in future. Nice.
Dodge!
Go play this little DHTML game. Can you beat my ‘survival time’ of 24.593 seconds?
How To Make Piracy Legal; Nobody Loses; Everybody Gains
The Register brings a report about Harvard University Professor Terry Fisher’s plan to make piracy pay for itself. Not by making it yet more illegal, but by stopping it from being immoral. Go read the article. It’s great.
Make It Snow!
It’s snowing!!!
How Would Sian Feel About This?
Here’s a conundrum. Based on prior conversations, I’ve concluded that Sian is against the idea of genetic modification of plants etc. I’ve never really agreed with her on this – although I can see her reasons.
As a member of Amnesty International, it’s safe to assume, then, that she’s also not in favour of landmines. I’d certainly agree with her here: landmines are particularly nasty devices, and as we all know, hang around to kill people for decades after wars are over.
So how would she feel about a genetically modified flower which changes colour if it’s roots come near landmines [Yahoo! News]? These things, which are sterile to prevent cross-contamination, could be planted using seed-sprays from the rear of low-flying planes over areas known to have minefields, and those near mines would be a different colour, warning locals and making diffusion easier for UN soldiers. Of course, they wouldn’t be foolproof – nothing is – but how many lives could this GM tool save?
So; Sian – place a comment if you like: where do you stand on these flowers? (other than ‘away from the red ones’) And of course, anybody else is also welcome to have a say…
Windows For The Welsh
Just as Bryn is making progress with his translations of parts of Linux, Microsoft announce plans to release a Welsh edition on Windows XP [The Reg]. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it.
Alone, And With…
People who are in on the Secret Of The Jukebox will be delighted to hear that I’ve had a good long hack at it tonight (hence it being 4:30am) and I’ve managed to get heaps done and ready for Paul to break test, including but not limited to the new “Alone, And With…” engine, which doesn’t seem to suffer any longer from the age-old bug that gives it it’s name.
I’ve just finished listening to some old hard-to-get Goo Goo Dolls albums that I acquired a little while ago. One is silly over-punky shouty hard rock stuff; very coarse and unrefined, much unlike their later stuff. The other, ‘Hold Me Up’, is much recommendable: some tracks I’d heard before, some stuff I hadn’t heard, all very very good. In particular, enjoyed ‘Laughing’, ‘Kevin’s Song’, and the older version of ‘Two Days In February’. Toy.
And You Thought Adam Was Difficult When He Was Drunk…
Do you remember a few weeks ago, when Strokey Adam came around drunk? Well, it turns out it could have been a lot worse – see this news report about what drunken elephants can get up to [BBC].
My Internet: Architecture And Operation exam went well this morning. I could waffle on about Aggregatable Global Unicast Addresses in IPv6 for hours. But then I ran out of time.
Troma Night tonight – yay. The flat’s a tip. Must do some tidying this afternoon. All help welcome.
For Sale: Wireless Network Cable
This auction on eBay Germany (you can use Babel Fish to translate it if you like) seems to be trying to sell a Wireless Network Cable.
(and, for the benefit of Adam, who won’t ‘get’ it: a wireless network, being wireless, doesn’t have cables – this is geek humour that even you can understand)
Is This Paul?
[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]
[this post was recovered on 12 October 2018]
Take a look at this article from the BBC, about Aberystwyth train station, and tell me – is that Paul in the frame?