Lindsay Marshall's Weblog

Bifurcated Rivets

14 November 2000

09:32:06
Is it just me or is Clitrimazole a really unsuitable name for the active ingredient in a thrush treatment?

13 November 2000

09:43:01
I put new strings on a couple of our guitars at the weekend - what a fantastic difference. Like new instruments!

09:37:24
Sheesh lots of people misunderstood Friday's comments about the US election. I wasn't suggesting that the constituion was changed now, just that it ought to get fixed for next time. And as to lawyers, well I reckon that the legal people that would end up dealing with this sort of issue are political appointees and so will not be unbiased (whatever they say). The Us ought to get some independent, external election supervisors in - just like they do for other countries where the system doesn't work properly. Lots of people also seem to think that the complaints about the design of the ballot papers are bogus - I entirely disagree. The US ballot papers are some of the most complicated things I have ever seen. Designed without the slightest thought to human factors at all. I have a lot of sympathy for people who got confused by them.

10 November 2000

08:00:44
About to lose an election? Suggest constitutional reform? Nah! Call in the lawyers, they need more money, power and influence don't you think?

8 November 2000

12:07:22
Just installed VMWare - haven't tried it for a while. Very impressed.

10:43:41
Hmm, Dubya and Gore, with Dubya winning seems to me a clear indication that the so-called "American Century" is over. Look for retrograde movement.

7 November 2000

15:52:54
I can't get my mailbox to less than 100 messages. Too much hassle and stuff to do!!! Aaaagggh.

14:39:48
This is a nice example of why you need to check advertising very carefully.

6 November 2000

12:21:28
Globe explorer is fun. Pity it doesn't do the UK very well at the moment.

09:20:17
Ooops, I got the Tyne Bridge Webcam URL wrong - sorry. The bridge move is not happening today though as the weather is so dreadful (as you will see if you look at the images...).

3 November 2000

09:20:10
*SIGH*, Now I have to go and find out about UDDi and web services since I'm involved in a proposal for this kind of thing at the moment. Can I have another 10 hours in the day please?

09:12:12
Is it just me or is User Friendly going through one of its increasingly frequent unfunny patches?

2 November 2000

14:53:50
Check out the Tyne Bridge webcams. In particular check them out on Monday morning as then (weather permitting) the largest floating crane in the world will be lifting the new millenium bridge into place.

1 November 2000

30 October 2000

14:04:18
Why does amazon.co.uk not stock the True Names reprint

?? I am very hacked off by this. I really don't understand what their rules are for stocking and not stocking US only titles. Why hasn't it been published over here anyway? Grrrr.

11:35:47
Lots of fun things to do (possibly) at pages2send.com. Well, you can annoy lots of your friends with junk mail about it anyway.

09:46:24
Why would anyone want to steal Microsoft code? perhaps they are teaching a course in how not to do it I suppose. I take back all the pisitive-ish things I said about Windows Me. It is behaving worse than WIn95 ever did - I actually had to reinstall the system from scratch last night and it still didn't fix the problem. What a pile of crap.

25 October 2000

14:43:45
Nice Choppper ad - not that I ever had one. I was way too old at the time. I didn't own my own bike until I was nearly 40. Sniff.

08:43:33
The Register is right - the new Intel ads are rather poor... The piano key one nearly works - the idea is good - but they both suffer from "wackiness".

24 October 2000

23 October 2000

13:54:31
This page is really, really annoying. I bet they thought it was slick and cool when they designed it too.

09:04:31
Hmm, a Windows Me tweaking guide - I need that for the machine at home! I had been impressed with Me's reliability compared with '95 until yesterday when for no reason at all my display driver was corrupted. *sigh*

08:57:45
An Economist story about how much information is produced in a year. An unconvincing study I think.

08:48:32
Went to see Chicken Run yesterday (at last!) - very, very funny. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it.

08:47:06
Friday night, we went to see Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain at the Custom's House in South Shields. Excellent venue and of course, a fantastic night. A couple of Irish storytellers kicked off each half and Bob Fox played the opening set - also excellent.

08:33:56
Test your morse code skills - I wish I had learned morse when I was younger. All I can recognise is dah di dah dit dah dah di dah.

20 October 2000

19 October 2000

18 October 2000

17 October 2000

12:37:04
Whatever you believe about crop circles, their is no denying that some of them are astonishingly beautiful - pictures of the 2000 circles. (Warning: truely horrible and badly designed webpage, but the pictures are worth it)

12:27:39
Global Expansion tectonics - is the earth getting bigger? Sadly I don't know enough geology to decide whther this is really bogus or whether he has a good point that is just not the official party line!

12:20:58
I still don't quite know what it is, but here's another Ag machine seller. Oh, it's some kind of super, alternative antibiotic. The Zen Chi device sounds fun, but is a tad expensive and quite how a massage machine substitues for exercise I'm not sure.

12:16:19
Colloidal Silver generator anyone? I haven't quite grasped what Colloidal Ag is meant to do for me.

12:12:51
I bet you never thought you would see Edgar Cayce and Nose Clippers mentioned on the same page. What the hell are nose clippers anyway! Ah, it's nose hair, not noses themselves. Oh well.

09:21:06
Went for a session of acupuncture yesterday which was an interesting experience. it's amazing how realxing lying quitely with a dozen needles stuck in you is!

16 October 2000

14:11:47
They may know a lot about new energy, but they need someone to tell them how to design usable web pages!!

14:09:06
The Geometry centre - I can't remember whether or not I've linked to this before or not, but it's a great resource so it's worth mentioning again even if I have.

13:58:57
I have a whole load of good, weird URLs, but they are at home and I forgot to bring them in. *sigh*

13:56:58
Yesterday i was playing with a neighbour's high-pressure washer. Excellent! Almost as good as the angle grinder. Deeply satisfying as it cuts through all that crud. My garden paths are now cleaner than they have ever been. Now all I need is a lwanmower that cuts long, wet grass.

13 October 2000

16:03:34
Got KDE 2 working and it seems pretty fast and stable - some nice features. Trouble is several programs that I have been using haven't been ported to it yet - aaaagggggh!

12 October 2000

14:16:47
Hmm, KDE-2 is nearly out and there seems to be something about having exceptions turned off so it is much faster. Of course everywhere is /.ed so you cant get in to download the stuff. The betas certainly looked interesting, but they were slow on my machine

13:21:39
I had a bizarre dream las night (which makes a change from not sleeping at all) where I was at some kind of festival which was in a big marquee, and had performance artists around and a cycle track. The Spice Girls were playing one tent and in another was a band called "Eclipse" with David Bowie on guitar and piano. Ther was a singer, a bass player, a guitarist and violinist. All the instruments were semi-acoustic and ginished in high sheen black lacquer. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for penny and carrying two large strips of cardboard which the wind blew against.

11 October 2000

10 October 2000

9 October 2000

11:39:32
Could be useful if you make a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

6 October 2000

13:21:48
onelook - access to 629 dictionaries! Imagine, 629 different definitions of the same word!

13:19:10
The webtender for all your drinking ideas. Personally I have never seen the point in cocktails, though I am partial to the odd margarita.

13:18:03
Yowza, the University has a license to use the OED so I can just call it up and use it.

4 October 2000

11:58:38
I pulled a copy of the first two chapters of The Satori Effect to see what is like. I'll let you know if it is worth 10 bucks to get the rest....

11:56:49
More bible code stuff about encoding America in the Torah. You have to be severely deluded if you can see any sense at all in this kind of stuff.

11:53:51
Bible code to demonstrate that Clinton should be impeached. Note that the page has not been updated since 1998.

11:52:25
How strange : Hebrew letters on the piste. Why would anyone want to buy one of these? (Unless of course it was painted on velvet :-) )

11:50:18
Someone suggests that Men in Black is based on the LV legend. I am not convinced.

11:48:52
Another reference to the LV, embedded in a sick making Honor Code address to a school. I bet the girls were sniggering all the way through this.

11:47:05
As always in matters Judaic, Leonard G came up with the goods on the Lamed Vav (thanks!) There is a good brief description of the story at the end of this page.

3 October 2000

14:05:16
I was trying to find something about the lamed vavnicks and this was all I could come up with.

08:34:18
The Wavefinder sounds like an interesting gizmo. Anything htat brings back the supremacy of wireless is good.

2 October 2000

09:53:14
This weekend I also bought myself an angle grinder to help me in my ongoing work on my backyard wall. What a very macho tool it is. Many RPM and lots of noise. Effective too.

09:52:21
Yesterday we went to the family sculpture day in Saltwell Park in Gateshead. A good time was had by all and the music by the Cajun Aces was excellent. Getting the resultant sculptures home was rather more of a problem...

29 September 2000

10:35:35
Find your cheese rating - mine is Leerdammer. If I use my full name I am Port Salut which is one of my kids' favourite cheeses.

10:31:02
This is a very, very strange site - performance art? Insanity? Who knows.

09:33:58
|Struggling with online sexual temptation? Then surf at once to Pure Intimacy. I like the idea of "seemingly harmless air-brushed nudity" - is the air brushing going to wear off or something?

09:30:00
Foil the Filters winners - a well deserved win to Carroll High School methinks.

28 September 2000

12:55:04
Find out what was UK number one on your birthday. (I only just qualified...)

12:31:01
We went to our neighbour Richard Hobson's exhibition opening last night at South Shield's Custom House Gallery. I really like his work. I just wish I could afford to buy some! I also got to meet Birtley Aris (no webpage) a couple of whose pictures I have but someone I had never met.

27 September 2000

09:50:16
BTW my "Dancer name" is Smoky Wallace. I can't find the website where this idea originated from though. There is an exotic dancer forum page though.

09:46:19
A rather neat mirror for some software that we are not supposed to mention.

26 September 2000

14:49:22
Ominous valve - I think I've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again. I really need that search engine.

25 September 2000

22 September 2000

16:15:10
Flat Earth Society web pages. A spoof, but how have they dealt with the *real* flat earth society which certainly existed 20 years ago! I started a flat earth society at school but it was banned as subversive.

21 September 2000

09:05:18
I have been wanting link together our street in a "community area network" for some time now and it looks like other people have been and gone and done it. Given that all most schools are connected to the net, they would make an ideal centre node for local communities to feed off. Easy and cheap, but of course it won't happen because of the politics involved.

20 September 2000

09:11:27
Mind you, there is also an ovulation alert service... "What shall we do, dear? Watch the aurora or conceive?" Actually the Japanese would love this as they believe that conception under the aurora is very lucky, or that there is a better chance or something - OK, so you can't always beleive what they said on Northern Exposure!!

09:10:17
Aurorawatch UK - excellent. Will e-mail you when there is a good chance of seeing the aurora borealis in the UK.

19 September 2000

18 September 2000

14:41:19
Yesterday I went round the engine room of the Newcastle Swing Bridge. What a fantastic contruction. Openedin 1876 (the same day as Little Bighorn) and still in fine working order. Everything duplexed in case of failures. Wonderful hydraulic engines and BIG COGS!! It is not usually open, but this was the Civic Trust heritage open day weekend and lots of places were open.

14:36:31
This sounds like an interesting study. I wonder how easy it will be to read though? The orignal paper is on-line.