Dan Q
Just came across the Infinite Cat Project. The premise is simple: take a picture of your cat looking at the
current picture on the web site, and send it in, and it will become the current picture. The first cat is Frankie: just
click Next Cat to get to the next one.
I think this is a great use of the high-speed communication that the internet gives us in order to produce something truly artistic. Cool.
Article on the BBC. A schoolboy holds up a shop and demands money, using a sawn-off shotgun.
My favourite bit: Mr Guliani said there was no money in the till and, on instruction to load the bag with cigarettes instead, told the boy he was under age. The retailer later offered him sweets and crisps instead.
There’s a new googlebomb out, abusing the way that the popular Google search engine works. To see it in action, go to Google and enter “Bush’s foreign friends” (including the speechmarks) as the search term, and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
This made me smile: The Jabberwocky in ActionScript (Macromedia Flash’s scripting language). It’s another one of those that you’ll really need to be a proper geek to appreciate, but it’s really quite good.
Perhaps you need to be a Lewis Carrroll fan, as well…
The good news is that the weather looks fantastic for my parachuting trip this weekend. I can’t think of a better thing to be travelling for on a Friday 13th.
The downside is I haven’t spent more than a few consecutive minutes off the phone this morning talking my work colleagues through the code I’ve left behind for them to carry on with. At current rates, I should expect to be answering my mobile during a free-fall.
“They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people – and neither do we.”
Full story from BBC News.
Conversation with a co-worker, who shall remain nameless:
Her: Is anybody any good at Fireworks?
Me: Yeh; you just light the blue touchpaper and run. But seriously, you ought’a be using Corel Photo-Paint.
(I wander over to her desk, and see that she’s working with a bitmapped image of our logo – she’s trying to remove some of the text from it… using the text tool… the text is jaggedy and quite obviously bitmapped)
Her: Why can’t I select this text?
Me: Umm… because it’s not text; it’s an image. The same reason that if I scanned in some of my handwriting and gave you that as a file, you couldn’t select it.
Her: But it is text: look…
(at this point, I collapse into a blubbering heap on the floor… this person has several years of an internet computer science degree tucked under her belt, but can’t understand the difference between vector-based and bitmap graphics [pretty fundamental year one web design stuff])
Overclockers Australia is running an article, collecting together advertisements for computer hardware and software over the last quarter of a century. I’ve pulled out a few of my favourites:
Those offers sound fresh! I think I’ll see if I can get a trade in against Duality…
Mmm… There’s some Doom 3 screenshots online…
This is hilariously good, and it’s kicking up a bit of a fuss. So, in case it gets taken down, I’ll be hosting a copy of it here, too… Click here to watch "My Land", starring Bush & Kerry. I can’t help but sing along…
Warning: the picture you are about to see is seriously cute. You have been warned. Brace yourself:
Decided to have Dadadodo, which I used yesterday, to generate some poetry based on my vanity pages from the old version of AvAngel.com, my perpetually-under-redevelopment web site. Take a look at this:
My body, of the religion,
That of seeing myself in a moment,
Stares ahead.
Always been an existential touch,
And I banish this.
My life, without a link, is in my writing,
To her I’m water,
At the rain comes ecstasy:
It’s gone.
Not bad for an algorithm with no pre-programmed understanding of language, I thought. Meaningless… but in a good way…
Downloaded a copy of Dadadodo, a syntax-capable word disassociator. Simply put, word disassociation programs tend to work by taking a body of text and randomly shuffling chunks of it around. Dadadodo instead builds a probability tree based on the frequency at which words occur in sequencial relationships with one another, and uses this as it’s basis for deciding where to transplant words to. As a result, it is able to exhibit behaviour that can appear to demonstrate an understanding of the grammar rules of a language, even though it’s output is (when a large enough input source is used) semantically meaningless.
For example, I ran the front page of Scatmania.org through Dadadodo. Here’s some highlights, with a few minor punctuation corrections (the program seems to mangle apostrophes):
More indication of the next five years: a very odd dream, with appearances from Scatmania. NatWest keep telling me comes better yet, the last three shades of child bearing age. I terrified her own risk.
Parallel parking for a network Bryn and uses vibration to investigate these graduate, I think I sat on the other a server my boss about me I had the BBC. Don’t have far better News. I’ve scared been possible to for that generates them. Following up a militarist feminist group. Within the demo of it I’ll run by profession if for larger. A Japanese inventor has been partially damaged during A backup.
When I sat on a man talks to have a stunning. It off in a survey of your own speakers. Not using Internet Fun News I see the browser market, instead: saved pages from Yorkshire backups, I’m in a plant pot and uses vibration to get a militarist feminist group, Within the Context you’ve offered Me.
Umm… do they e-mail them, Thank you to for the opinions of my boss about me. Promised you lot a very odd dream, with a very Good you sat down today! Do they should be on online chat with appearances from Amazon: dual processor board designed for playing the parallel Parking for Dummies. read Scatmania Filed under a partner?
Sadly, I could pay them.
The rest of my co-worker’s quite horrifying come the top with Direct Legal Collections one! Money, I thought I saw Faye for at work with which Scatmania. Lots of schoolchildren that I liked share. It has been partially damaged during a part minigun.
