Got a spare quarter hour? I think you should go and read WorldOfEnds.com. It’s a fascinating and concise analysis of what is the nature of internet, and why why should stop making mistakes with it.
It’s not geeky – it’s philosophical.
Month: February 2004
Like A Sheep; Following My Friends
My friend Jen has done one of those god-awful survey thingies where you supposedly reveal yourself better to your friends, on her blog. Not one to miss out, I’m going to do it, too… I’ll be skipping a few of the more boring questions and adding a couple more…
1. BASICS:
FULL NAME: Daniel Huntley
SEX: Male
BIRTHDAY: 8th of January, 1981
HEIGHT: 178cm (about 5’10”)
WEIGHT: Not sure; probably about 80kg at the moment
HAIR COLOR: Light brown
EYE COLOR: Blue
PETS: Would love to have cats, but don’t really have space to keep any right now
SIBLINGS: Two younger sisters, Sarah (15) and Becky (14).
RELIGION PRACTICED: Devout atheist
RIGHT, LEFT, OR BOTH HANDED: Right
STRONGEST ATTRIBUTE: Stubbornness? Intelligence? Extrovertism?
WHAT YOU’RE KNOWN FOR: Being “the axe man” of Aberystwyth,
Penbryn-Hall.co.uk, Scatman Dan, that thing with the goat, etc. etc. I’m a local …
Safer Internet Day
Today is European Safer Internet Day.
Does that mean that all those idiots who fell for the MyDoom virus (which, of course, required you to open a ZIP file inside the infected e-mail, the run the program inside it – yet still became the fastest-spreading e-mail virus to date) are going to actually plug their brains in for once.
If you got infected by MyDoom, shame on you for your stupidity.
Answer These With Song Titles…
Alec has a thing going on his blog where he’s challenging people to answer questions about themselves in terms of song titles. Go have a look, see my response, and have a go yourself, here.
Went to Booker Cash & Carry this afternoon, and bought just over 3kg of Sherbert Lemons and a little less of Dew Drops. Fun!
Amusing Line From The Python Manual
I just extracted the following line from the Python documentation (for those of you who don’t know, Python is a relatively-new and somewhat unusual programming language who’s name is derived not from the snake but from Monty Python):
Attempts to pickle unpicklable objects will raise the PicklingError exception; when this happens, an unspecified number of bytes may have already been written to the underlying
file.
You have to love any manual with that line in it! It almost beats the famous Fortran line about defining pi as a constant in case it’s value changes.
Burger King Love Us
A new-looking manager (young, with a shiny badge) is making Changes at the Burger King around the corner from us. From Monday, the entire restaurant will become No Smoking (yay!), and the old upstairs toilets – once closed owing to vandalism – have been re-opened. Claire and I were in there this evening, discussing our comparative days (mine at work, hers learning Japanese), and met the new-looking manager, who gave us vouchers each, redeemable for free meals there in future. Nice.
Space Mutiny!
[this post was lost during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially recovered on 13 October 2018]
Not the worst film I’ve ever seen (fourth worst film in the world, according to the IMDB), and seeing it as the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version only made it funnier in it’s stupidity!
Here’s a brief synopsis of the plot (if it can so be called), as I understood it:
- A retired Santa look-alike runs a spaceship called the Southern Star, which looks like Battlestar Galactica from the outside (stolen footage) and like the warehouse of a brewery on the inside. For some reason, sunlight streams in through the open windows, and the computers look like running Asteroids would be beyond them.
- Unfortunately, the head of his security forces (who for some reason wear painball masks and balaclavas at all times), a man who laughs manically and frowns in such a way as to make you think his skull is trying to escape, is plotting a mutiny. He is killing or freezing members of the security team who do not comply with this plan. His motive isn’t terribly clear. He and the other mutineers are planting bombs made of soap around the brewery. His name is Calgon… yes, like the detergent.
- …
Handles; Life; And Grabbing The Latter By The Former
[this post was damaged during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially-recovered on 13 October 2018]
Oh yeh – we went to Brum on Saturday, but Bryn tells that story far better than I did, with all of it’s visiting Scottish girlfriends, fallen trees (and phone lines), visits to Newtown McDonalds, and enormous shopping centres, so I’ll not bother repeating anything to do with that. Troma Night, when we got back, was good, though.
What I did want to share with you was that there’s a lot of pleasure to be gained by ‘grabbing life by the handles’, hence the title of this merry little post. I’m sure Andy knows what I mean, and Kit, with his ongoing evacuation in the direction of Scotland, understands too.
What I’m talking about is leaping on opportunities; not being tied down by pessimism. And doing things just to remind yourself that you can, because you’re wonderful and you can take on the world if you’re that way inclined. It’s pushing yourself that little bit further for nothing more than the satisfaction of a sweat. It’s letting yourself show off how great you are …
Dodge!
Go play this little DHTML game. Can you beat my ‘survival time’ of 24.593 seconds?
How To Make Piracy Legal; Nobody Loses; Everybody Gains
The Register brings a report about Harvard University Professor Terry Fisher’s plan to make piracy pay for itself. Not by making it yet more illegal, but by stopping it from being immoral. Go read the article. It’s great.