fun – Page 16

I’m Surrounded By Idiots

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])

Computer Hardware For Sale: Bargain Prices

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:

1989 Tandy 500 MC Professional – only $8499; VGA graphics, 386/20MHz, 2MB RAM – this computer’s a real beast: and what a bargain!
Late-80’s Portable Computer – just $2295; 8" (monochrome) screen, CP/M (w/ WORDSTAR, MAILMERGE, and SUPERCALC). Has 64K of RAM and not one but two floppy disk drives (double-density)!
Looking to increase your hard storage space (this means you, Paul)? There’s a 10-MB Hard Disk (sold in 1981) for the sweet price of $3398! Yes, that’s 10 megabytes, not gigabytes. About the same size as a modern desktop computer CD-ROM drive, and with a slower seek time.
TRS-80 Model 16 (wonderful piece of hardware) for just $8499: 128K of RAM, dual-processors (one MC68000, one Z-80), multi-processing, page-capable memory model, optional 8MB HDD, two serial and one parallel port, and an 80×24 character 30.5cm green screen. Add a second floppy drive for just $500 more!

Those offers sound fresh! I think I’ll see if I can get a trade in against Duality…

Doom 3 Screenshots

Mmm… There’s some Doom 3 screenshots online…

This Land Will Surely Vote For Me!

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 – Severe Risk Of Death-By-Cuteness

Warning: the picture you are about to see is seriously cute. You have been warned. Brace yourself:

Dadadodo Poetry

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…

Dadadodo: Exterminate All Rational Thought

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.

Something Cheery

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.

God Violates Intel Trademark

Jesus Inside 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.

Developers Play Air Guitar To Megadeth

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.

HSBC Advertising

Gotta love HSBC. No, this isn’t a real ad.

How To Make Invisibility Paint

(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 Takes Off In Aberystwyth

The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?

It’s Not Just A Games Console…

…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.

It’s Like An Umbrella, But It Can Be Deployed Within Minutes

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.