You just can’t rely on GMail’s “contacts” search any more. Look what it came up with:
Not a result I'd commonly associate with the word "virgin".
With apologies to those of you who won’t “get” this: the person who came up in the search results is a name that is far, far away, in my mind, from the word “virgin”.
In not-completely-unrelated news, I use a program called SwiftKey X on my phone, which uses Markov chains (as I’ve described before) to
intelligently suggest word completion and entire words and phrases based on the language I naturally use. I had the software thoroughly parse my text messages, emails, and even this
blog to help it learn my language patterns. And recently, while writing a text message to my housemate Paul, it suggested
the following sentence as the content of my message:
I am a beautiful person.
I have no idea where it got the idea that that’s something I’m liable to say with any regularity. Except now that it’s appeared on my blog, it will. It’s all gone a little recursive.
Apparently the plastic coating around this cable helps to prevent 'virus noises', whatever those are. Red scribbles added by me.
Somehow, this triggered a transformation in me. You know how when Eric eats
a banana, an amazing transformation occurs? A similar thing happened to me: this horrendously-worded advertisement turned me into an old person. I wanted to write a letter
to them.
My letter... er... email to Bluemouth Interactive.
There were so many unanswered questions in my mind: what is a “virus noise” (is it a bit like the sound of somebody sneezing?)? How a polyester coating protects against them? And what
kind of viruses are transmitted down video cables, anyway?
Bluemouth's response to me. Like the other pictures, you can click it to see it in full.
Their explanation? The ‘Virus’ was transcribed from French terminology for interference. It’s not a computer virus or anything like that.
The world is full of examples of cables being over-sold, especially HDMI cables and things like “gold-plated optical cables” (do photons care about the conductivity of gold, now?).
Does anybody have enough of a familiarity with the French language to let me know if their explanation is believable?
This picture’s been floating around the Internet lately. I’m sure that the guy in the picture thinks he’s original, but we totally beat him to it. Back in about 2003.
The Tampon Gun
The difference is, though, that when some friends and I were messing around with about a thousand applicator tampons that had reached their use-by date, we went one step further. We
sellotaped laser pointers to the barrels of our guns, and had a laser-guided tampon battle in the car park.
It turns out that laser sights don’t actually improve the accuracy of tampon blowguns. As a weapon, they’re worse than useless, of course – tampons have actually been used to save people from
blood loss after a bullet wound. But still, it made for a more fun – if sillier – afternoon than would have been had by just throwing the damn things away, even if we did then have
to spend quite a lot of time picking them all up and binning them anyway.
There’s something that I just don’t understand about vegetarians. It’s something that I didn’t understand when I mercilessly teased them, and it’s something that I still don’t
understand now that I am one:
Quorn ‘Roast Chicken Style Slices’. No chickens were harmed in the making of this chicken.
You know the stuff I’m talking about: stuff made out of mycoprotein
or TVP or soya that’s specifically designed to emulate real meat in flavour (sometimes
effectively) and texture (rarely so). Browse the chilled and frozen aisles of your local supermarket for their “vegetarian” section and you’ll find meatfree (although rarely vegan)
alternatives to chicken, turkey, beef and pork, presented here in descending order of how convincing they are as a substitute.
Tesco ‘vegetarian’ hot dogs. There’s actually a distinct possibility that these contain MORE meat than their non-vegetarian counterparts.
Let’s be clear here: it’s not that I don’t see the point in faux meat. It has a few clear benefits: for a start, it makes vegetarianism more-approachable to omnivores who
are considering it for the first time. I’ve tried meat substitutes on a number of occasions over the last couple of decades, and they’ve really improved over that time: even a
meat-lover like me can be (partially) placated by the selection of substitutes available.
Man, this photo of a BLT looks more delicious every time I use it on my blog. Why do I torture myself this way?
And while I slightly buy-in to the argument
that the existence of these fake meats “glorifies” meat-eating, perhaps even to the extent as to under-sell vegetarianism as a poor substitute for the “real thing”, I don’t think
that this is in itself the biggest problem with the fake meat industry. There’s a far bigger issue in question:
Why are we stopping here?
A dodo. Apparently it tasted somewhat like turkey, only tougher: there are dozens of accounts of its preparation and consumption.
If we’re really trying here to make “fake meats”, then why are we setting our targets in-line with the commonly-eaten “real meats”? Why stop at chicken and turkey when we might as well
make dodo-flavoured nut roasts and Quorn slices? Sure, they’re extinct, so
we’ll probably never have real dodo meat: but there’s no reason that the manufacturers of artificial meats can’t have a go. There are dozens of accounts of the preparation and
consumption of dodos, so we’d surely be able to emulate their flavour at least as well as we do the meats that we already produce substitutes for.
A tin of unicorn meat: a good source of sparkles! Also cures poison, detects virgins, etc.
Why stop there? We might as well have tins of unicorn meat, too, a meal already familiar to those of us who’ve played more than our fair share of NetHack. How about dragons, or griffins, or the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary? If we’re going to make it up as we go along when we make artificial bacon, we
might as well make it up as we go along when we make basilisk-burgers and salamander-sausages, too.
There’s a reason, of course, that we don’t see these more-imaginative meat substitutes. Many of the most loyal fake-meat customers are the kinds of people who don’t like to
think about the connection between, for example, “chicken” (the foodstuff), and “chicken” (the clucking bird). To be fair, a lot of meat-eaters don’t like to think about this
either, but I get the impression that it’s more-common among vegetarians.
But seriously, though: I think they’re missing a trick, here. Who wouldn’t love to eat artificial pegasus-pâté?
Never before have I come across a wine so obviously created for me as this one.
Bottles of white and red 'pro-mis-Q-ous' wine.
I haven’t tasted it, and I’ve never seen it for sale. But just look at the label: it’s called pro-mis-Q-ous, a deliberate mis-spelling of
“promiscuous” that substitutes in and emphasises the letter Q (which, of course, is my surname). The label goes
on to define promiscuity, and it – and their website, makes significant mention on nonmonogamy, which few will by surprised to hear is pretty close to my heart too.
Things are crazy busy again. No time to blog properly, so here’s a picture that I scribbled on.
Incidentally, I was actually at the concert where this photo was taken, back in 2005. But that’s not actually me in the corner. I was just inspired to make the joke by this comic.
I always wondered where Paul got all of the weirder parts of his music collection. Turns out Amazon just starts
recommending it to you once you start looking in the right places:
Scientists investigating this week’s catastrophic lunchquake in the Dan’s Lunchbox region have released a statement today about the techtonic causes of the disaster.
Analysis of the lunchquake.
“The upheaval event, which reached 5.9 on the Tupperware Scale, was probably caused by overenthusiastic cycling,” explained Dr. Pepper, Professor of Lunchtime Beverages at Tetrapak
University.
“The breadospheres ‘float’ on soft, viscous eggmayolayers. Usually these are stable, but sometimes a lateral shift can result in entire breadosphere plates being displaced underneath
one another.”
This is what happened earlier this week, when a breadospheric shift resulted in catastrophic sinkage in the left-side-of-lunchbox area, eggmayolayer “vents”, and an increase in the
height of Apple Mountain.
No lives were lost during the disaster. However, two jammie dodgers were completely ruined.
Recent emissions in the ring of fire area is unrelated to this recent lunchquake, and are instead believed to be associated with excessive consumption of spicy food at lunchtimes.
A conversation I had this morning with JTA, via text message:
I sent:
Boiler update: this is getting silly. The probability-weighted Markov-chain based predictive text system I’m using this morning saw me type “boi” and suggested “Boiler update:”? /sighs/
On the upside, I’ve successfully arranged for the new distributor valve to be installed on Friday, when I’ll be around.
To give a little background, we’re having trouble with the boiler on Earth. You may have observed that
it broke last year, and then again this year: well – it’s still broken, really. Nowadays it’ll only produce a
little hot water at a time, and makes a noise like that scene in Titanic where the ship begins to tear
in two. You know – a bad noise for a boiler to make. Over the last two or three weeks we’ve repeatedly fought to get it repaired, but it’s been challenging: more on that
in a different blog post, if JTA doesn’t get there first.
JTA replied:
On the plus side, at least this saga is overriding your phone’s memory of your previous life as a male prostitute. :-)
I was once mistaken for a gay prostitute, actually – by a gay prostitute – but that’s another story, I guess. In any case, I responded:
Until now! you’ve just mentioned that again, which means it’ll be the “last message received” when the paramedics go through my phone if I’m killed on the way to work this morning. And
they’ll say, “yeah; I’d pay to have sex with him.”
Quickly followed by:
And his mate will say:
“Now he’s dead, you don’t HAVE to pay.”
If my corpse is raped by a paramedic, I’m blaming you.
To which JTA said:
You’re talking about people who drive blacked out vans full of drugs. I’m pretty sure they never pay.
From prostitution to necrophilia to date rape over the course of only a handful of text messages. What a great start to a Wednesday morning. I do like the image of an ambulance as “a
blacked out van full of drugs,” though…
Ah, it’s that time of year again. Here’s a quick round-up of some of my favourite pranks on the web this April Fools’ Day:
ThinkGeek can always be relied upon for a good April Fools’, and this year is no exception. Of their prank products, my
favourite is clearly the Anti-3D glasses, which completely filter out the left
channel from 3D movies, allowing you to watch them in 2D.
Geocachers amongst you might be pleased by the Nano Alarm
container, which sounds a high-pitched alarm when a human body comes near it, making it easier to find. Actually, I’d have found it a more-amusing prank if they’d claimed it detects
interference in GPS signals caused by a nearby GPS receiver.
An article on IPv4.5 claims that we ran out of
IPv4 addresses completely this morning and, with IPv6 still far from fully-deployed, we’re having to implement IPv4.5 as an emergency measure. IPv4.5 shares IP adddresses between
people at opposite sides of the globe, giving priority to those on the “day” side, so there’s a slight risk that some traffic might be mis-directed… but it’ll only be by nocturnal
websurfers who are probably just on Facebook or Twitter anyway.
I’ve found Gay Monopoly on BoardGameGeek, and I’m not sure if it’s a joke or not… BoardGameGeek’s already an April Fools in which they become search engine “Geekdo” (try
searching for “Catan”… or any other board game… on it). The photos of Gay Monopoly look
remarkably believable, but it’s hard to take anything seriously today.
The Pirate Bay has become The Pirat eBay, and has released a blog post claiming that they bought the rights to eBay on eBay and have since re-branded.
Google are well known for their April Fools’ Day pranks, and there are a good number of fantastic ones this year, but my favourite is GMail Motion, motion-sensitive controls based on body movements by which you can interact with your email. Well-worth a look.
Have a great April Fools Day! Play a prank on somebody for me. And, if you don’t want to get caught out yourself, why not install the Do Not Fool add-on for Firefox, which passes a Do-Not-Fool header to every web site you visit, requesting that the site
does not display to you any prank content but only genuine pages.
My boss, Simon, and his family have recently gotten a new puppy, called Ruby.
Ruby, my boss’s new puppy. Aww.
Apparently the little girl’s full of energy and bounce and is taking up a lot of time while she gets settled in to her new home. While talking on an instant messenger with my boss
earlier this week, he was telling me about how he’d had to get up in the middle of the night and take her for a run around the garden, because the little tyke was still full of beans
and not sleepy. And that’s why I made one of those fabulous moments in instant messaging: when you type something that can be read multiple ways:
Dan: Puppy eating time?
Obviously, I had meant:
Dan: [Is the] puppy eating [i.e. consuming a lot of your] time? [Poor you, you're not getting much sleep.]
Just three words. So simple. But a split second later the other, inevitable way of reading it became clear:
Dan: [Is it] puppy-eating time? [I want to eat your puppy!]
A puppy sandwich: probably the best way to eat a puppy – dressed with a little mustard and lettuce and presented in a bap. Or a french stick, if it’s a dachshund.
Shit. That’s not what I meant! I tried to correct myself:
Dan: I don't want to kill your puppy!
Then I realised: what if my boss didn’t read it the wrong way at all? What if he already understood that I was asking about how much time and energy the new family member was taking up…
if that’s the case, then I’d just made myself look like a psychopath who’s contemplating killing his family pets. I backpedalled:
Dan: That came out all wrong. I mean: of course I don't want to kill your puppy - I just didn't want you to think that I did, in case you thought that for some
reason.
That didn’t help. This was just going from bad to worse. Then, salvation came:
Simon has reconnected. Simon: Sorry, had to reboot - did you get my message about our new puppy?
The photos from Ruth & JTA’s wedding are coming soon, I swear. In the meantime, here are a few questions that I’m still
puzzling over:
What kind of chord do I think I’m playing?
What does my mother think smells so good; and why does Becky disagree?
Why is Fiona kissing me?
Why is Chris saluting in this picture?
On what subject is Bryn pondering? And did his mighty brain come to a conclusion on the subject?
Why is Owen carrying Robin around? And is this truly the happiest day of Robin’s life?
Who choreographed Matt P and I’s dance moves? And why do we look so awesome?
Who’s just hit Matt R in the back of the head with a snowball?
To whom is Liz threatening fisticuffs? And does anybody other than Finbar even use the word ‘fisticuffs’?
What does that look on JTA’s face mean? No, wait… I know this one…
If Robin is interviewing Tom, why is he using an invisible microphone?
What has startled JTA so badly?
Some or none of these questions will be answered in time (and, perhaps, when you see the whole picture). Keep an eye on the wedding blog for updates just as soon as Ruth and JTA find the time to
update it! And I’ll look forward to hearing your caption ideas for some of the “sillier” pictures.
Meanwhile, if you’re among the people who took photos at the wedding and who hasn’t yet given me nice, hi-res copies, please get in touch!
