And while I’ve failed at hitting it, having scooped up my laptop and gone down to the beach only to have to turn around and come back when the sun disappeared behind thick, dark clouds, Ruth seems to have grasped the concept quite well. She’s reading papers in anticipation of her final ever exam tomorrow, and, well…
I saw XKCD #584 – “Unsatisfied” – this morning. In the comic (in a slightly Sliding Doors way), a man chooses between one of two lovers, and spends the rest of his life thinking about the other one in a “what if” kind-of way, leaving him ultimately unsatisfied with his life, regardless of which he chooses.
Go read the comic if you haven’t yet.
I had a slightly smug moment, and ‘shopped this together:
The Economist has a story about a bill going through US Congress about the noise (or lack thereof) made by electric and some hybrid cars. For years, I’ve pretty much predicted this development. Only I meant it in a tongue-in-cheek way.
“Cars are getting quieter and quieter,” I’ve been heard to say, “And electric and hybrid cars promise to be quieter still. I’ll bet that someday, people will realise that these quiet cars are actually more dangerous than traditional, noisy cars with internal combustion engines, and at that point laws will be passed requiring cars to make a noise.”
“There’s already legislation that requires indicators to make a ‘tick-tock’ sound, since we did away with the relays that used to make the sound we associate with indicators. Cheap cars tend to make a shitty-sounding, very-obviously-synthesised sound. So, we can assume that cheap cars in the future will make the cheapest-sounding ‘engine’ sounds. You’ll hear them coming with a uniform ‘brum-brum-brum-brum-brum’ sound, or a grating ‘bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’.”
“But cars are more than a means of transport; they’re a status symbol, and we already see people tricking out their wheels with glowy lights and things that make their exhaust pipes louder and fake spoilers. And as time goes on, the technology to make higher-quality synthesised sounds will make it into the cheap, chavvy cars. And what’ll happen when the cheap, chavvy cars get sold, with sophisticated built-in synthesisers? The same thing that happened when the cheap mobile phones became capable of playing sophisticated audio formats: custom ringtones.”
“Someday, within my lifetime, somebody will be run over by a car that sounds like Crazy Frog. And it will be both sad and hilarious in equal measure.”
Something we didn’t see coming a decade ago.
As a song came on the radio (well, Club 977 – The 80s Channel), Ruth laughed. “What?” I asked.
“This song just reminded me of a webcomic I read today about song mash-ups,” she replied.
“Oh yeah. I read that one. Which webcomic was it?”
“I don’t remember.”
It was only when we started thinking in terms of Venn diagrams that we realised which webcomic we’d seen this particular joke in.
It was XKCD #575. By the time we were finding set intersections, we should have guessed that it would have been XKCD.
In other news, my leg is still sore, but people keep giving me cake, so that’s good. I went back to work today, on my crutches, and it was completely exhausting. On the other hand, it’s probably giving my arms some good exercise, which might just make up for not going to circuit training this week (I’ve been forbidden from doing so on account of my injuries, despite my protests that I’d be perfectly capable of doing shuttle runs and squats and exercise bikes like this, right?).
Clicky for a bigger picture. With thanks to James Holden’s billboard generator.
JTA had forgotten to bring his coat with him to Troma Night, so he quickly fashioned himself a makeshift coat out of bin bags. Unfortunately, it had stopped raining in the meantime, and so he ended up looking like a bit of a wally.
In case you hadn’t seen the kind of news story I’m talking about, here’s one.
Couldn’t help but think that this might be the inevitable consequence:
Here’s an idea: what if bills came with a sweet treat, like a lollipop or something. Or perhaps if the bill itself was printed on editle paper, like ricepaper, using a food dye-based ink. Aside from the improved biodegradability of the paper, it’d also make you look forward to opening your bills and nibbling at them. Better yet, it’d encourage you to pay them, because then you wouldn’t need the paper copy any more and could eat them.
It’d certainly make large bills easier to swallow, anyway.
Psychologically speaking, it’d play upon the Reciprocity Norm, an observed phenomenon in which people who are given something are more likely to give something in return: when charities give you a free pen in the envelope they send you, or when Hari Krishnas give you a flower at an airport “as a gift” and then ask for a donation, they’re playing upon this principle. Would sucking on candy delivered to you as a “gift” from your electricity company make you feel guilty for putting off paying the bill for a few days longer than you should?
In case anybody’s interested, SmartData‘s animated Christmas card (with a little help from JibJab) is now online. Watch it here.
Remember about four-and-a-bit years ago, I downloaded Dadadodo, which I described at the time as a “word disassociator?” The program itself is a Markov chain generator/randomiser that works on sentence structures: in other words, given some text (speeches, poetry, blog posts, whatever – other kinds have been demonstrated to work on things like music) it will learn the frequencies in which words and punctuation follow other words and punctuation and use that to build resulting sentences.
Imagine the fun you could have if you took the combined speeches of any politician particularly famous for waffling through their answers. Like, say, US presidential election Republican party running mate Sarah Palin…
Well, imagine no more – Interview Sarah Palin has you covered. Kick-starting paragraphs (“winding her up”) with particular topics (e.g. “Iraq and Afghanistan,” “John McCain,” etc.) sets off this fabulous little Markov-chain-speechbot. Even if you don’t understand even the theories of the mathematics, you can enjoy this site so long as you’ve got a suitable sense of humour around political waffling.
Does food ever go missing in your house and you don’t know who’s eaten it? You probably ought to check all of your cupboards, then, in case you’ve had a small Japanese woman living in one of them for the last year and you hadn’t noticed.
…John Melton plays the piano and grins a lot. Don’t let him know that you’ve realised he’s just pressed the “demo” button.
This morning I received my new passport, following my name change last month. In the envelope with the new passport and the usual collection of leaflets about safe travelling, I found the following compliments slip:
The slip reads:
Mr. Q,
Your passport has now been issued, as requested. I would advise you that due to your unusual surname, you may experience difficulties at Immigration Control when travelling. The Passport Service will take no responsibility for any problems incurred as the change of name is your own personal choice.
Kind regards;
[indecipherable signature]
Kinda cool.
From an e-mail. Original source unknown.