Dan Q
I see that Slate, a magazine run by MSN (and owned entirely by Microsoft), recently published an article promoting the idea of not using Internet Explorer. Whoopsie, say Microsoft. Better yet, the article suggests using Mozilla Firefox, their main competitor in the browser market, instead.
Promised you something cheery. There it is.
It’s all news, today! Lots of fascinating little stories and nothing about me. I mean, who’s blog is it anyway?
According to The Register, the authoritive source on such matters, God may have infringed upon Intel’s intellectual property. Only moderately funny, but nice and geeky.
In other news, I hear that AMD are planning to release a new dual-processor board designed to accomodate two older Athlon chips, optomised for playing 80s music on MP3. They’re calling it the Duron Duron.
The Register have a report on a survey of the musical tastes of IT specialists, by profession. If you’re a geek, date a geek, live with geeks, or whatever, it’s worth a look.
Gotta love HSBC. No, this isn’t a real ad.
(shamelessly stolen from http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/sbos18.htm)
How To Make Invisibility Paint
If you put invisibility paint on anything, it turns it invisible. Here’s how to make invisibility paint:
Start by taking a large tin, which must be able to hold enough paint to fill it. Take one ordinary apple (or, if you don’t have an ordinary apple, a doughnut-shaped one). Chop it up and put it in the tin.
Add a soft nutshell, a silver-looking cobweb, three white onions, a piece of paper with “Deely Bo” written on it, a pinch of September sunlight (or two pinches of August sunlight), and a sugar pencil. Blue sugar pencils are best.
At this point, you should say, “Star of stars, so far and faint, help me with this see-through paint.” You have to say it out loud, no matter how stupid it makes you look, because the paint will know if you haven’t.
Next, you crush a moth and put that in the tin, then add a slug’s eye-stalks, a snake’s skin, a tree, and the sting from a poisonous cat.
And I’m sorry about this, but you also have to add a drop of your own blood. A friend’s blood just won’t do, no matter how much of it you can get.
Three months earlier, you should have ordered from your local blacksmith a small hammer with the metal bit shaped like a pear. Hit the side of the tin seventy-seven times with this hammer. Ignore any grown-ups who complain about the noise.
Lastly, fill the tin to the brim with some nice, fresh milk.
Mix everything together with a large spoon, and bake it for two hours in hot snow.
And that’s all there is to it! Invisibility paint!
Remember, invisibility pain makes things disappear completely. Whatever it gets on will turn invisible straight away. Be careful!
Now you know how to make invisibility paint. I’ll let you figure out how to find the tin once the mixture is ready.
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?
…it fits in your living room, detects intruders, and has a 3-year warranty!
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, go have a play with my latest software toy, Product ‘X’. Eventually, we’ll be able to replace both innovators and (more importantly) marketers with a system like this: it generates instant hype!
I might have to write an add-in for it that lets it automatically fill in patent application forms. =o)
Go play with Product ‘X’, and tell me what you think.
This’ll be a giggle. I’ve got a little project on the go that should amuse you all for a good few minutes (we’ve all been laughing our socks off here at it this evening). Given my way, I’ll be deploying it tomorrow afternoon.
In related news, I hear that some folks have been arrested on suspicion of being behind the Half-Life 2 code thefts. Maybe Valve were waiting for the arrest to be made so they could get their code back. =o)
[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]
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?…
[picture removed]
Claire, Paul, Bryn, Ruth, JTA, Andy and I went to the beach this evening to play frisbee and watch the sunset. We even got Bryn participating, which is somewhat a rarity for any of this fun outings that involve physical activity. Everybody seemed happy to be taking a break from exams. Aber is wonderful this time of year – why must it coincide with exam time?
Paul got some mint-choc-chip ice cream without chocolate chips. Don’t ask.
Afterwards, we all went to the Castle and played hide & seek as it got darker. Paul went first, and I was last to be found – I’d climbed over a wall to a fenced-off area, in which I was very visible, but not in a place anyone would look. I went second, and took ages to find Paul and Ruth. It shouldn’t have taken so long to find Ruth – she was just in the shadows of a tower – but Paul had a brilliant hiding place: inside the ruins of a chimney (how he squeezed in there I’ll never know). For our final game, with Ruth hunting, I hid on top of a tower – with a great view – where I could become completely concealed by lying down. I was found third-from-last, with JTA and Claire remaining hidden for ages (despite many [not particularly helpful] text-messaged clues sent by JTA to Ruth). JTA had wedged himself between two upstanding slabs of rock, and could only be seen from above. Claire, better yet, had lay down and slid herself into what appeared to be an old drainage channel from one of the buildings into the courtyard.
Finally, we all returned to the flat for a game of Chez Geek: Paul won, and deservedly so (despite us all ganging up on him quite brutally at the end).
Time for bed, methinks.
[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]
[more of this post was recovered on 13 October 2018]
You can blame Paul for this, but here we go:
1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says: You enter these seven digits as your password. (See Figure 2.1.) If you have a password
2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?: Two bottle caps.
3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?: I can’t even remember the last time I watched TV.
4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is: 11:40?
5: Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?: 11:37
6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?: The other computer. A truck backing up. A generator. A woman’s footsteps. A bus. Quiet chattering. A woman coughing.
7: When did you last step outside? Outside? That’s like here, but with lower resolution, isn’t it? I guess it must have been yesterday sometime.
8: Before you came to this website, what did you look at?: An SSH shell.
9: What are you wearing?: Black …
Yay! Take a look at this piccy (especially you, Paul).
