Volume 36
14 Jan 2002
Impossible to do anything with the local network in the state it is.....
Network horrors after the power came back - couldn't get anywhere at any price.
11 Jan 2002
I haven't quite worked out what this is doing. Ah, just slow to load *and* I had animated gifs turned off - no wonder I couldn't see the cartoons. Very strange and disturbing.
A colleague (doesn't that make me sound so professional!) told me about seeing a PC magazine placed amongst what are described as "top shelf magazines", not by accident, but clearly on purpose. On asking why this was he was told that the cover disc included a copy of Netscape which a child could load and use to browse the Internet freely! Shock, horror, gasp!!!
Keep tabs on your children. (You do know the lat. and long. of the local crack house don't you>?)
I was lookign fro the bio of Bob Wills (called San Antonio Rose) and i came across this rather wonderful image. Clearly he has just been stung by a bee (all those flowers!) on teh chin and she is about to try and get the sting out (by sucking it I should imagine). Meantime he is watching for any other insects that might slither over her shoulder. I also notice that he has a better developed chest than she has, and he seems to have very short legs.
10 Jan 2002
catless will be powered off over the weekend so you won't be able to read this message from about midday tomorrow till Monday.
9 Jan 2002
Before you ask, this flash virus has nothing to do with me even though it has my initials in its name.
OK, I know this was on /., but the Creative Extigy really does look like a neat device - so much easier than fiddling around at the back of your PC all the time. (Do the people who design PC motherboards ever use computers? Why aren't the USB plugs at the front???? (presumably because they want us all to buy extension boxes...))
8 Jan 2002
A google catalog search for "vibrator" yields some diverse results! As does a search for "bong" (note the Bong Crosby typo - interesting if it isn't of course). Lots of fun to be had here.......some of the scanning is quite inaccurate though, as you would expect a search for "modern" yields hits for "modem"
Ah ha, the new google catalog search let me find adverts for the Bose headphones - $300 in teh US, so vastly more here, so I can forget about them then.
I wan't one of these - but I can't find a price anywhere. That presumably means that they are scarily expensive so I won't be able to afford it. *sigh*
Hmmm, the on and off colouring was all screwed up and one of today's entries ended up in yesterday. I blame Windows myself.
The Virtual Prostitution museum - it is the museum that is virtual, it isn't a museum of cybersex (yet)
Behind-u - an entirely pointless product as far as I can see, and it is another product that encourages people to lie and to hide things. If you feel you have to hide something, then maybe you ought to think about whether or not you ought to be doing it!
7 Jan 2002
Why is Germany like a dry cleaners? Everyone is trying to get rid of unwanted marks.
Silly signs, slogans and spelling - scroll down and check out the Xmas cards from China.....
I bought a very strange thing in a sale - it is a glow in the dark Señor Misterioso. There is a lot of text on the packaging all of which serves only to make the item even more puzzling. The website of the company that makes it is no help at all. I am trying at the Archie McPhee website to see if that is any help...well, he's there but I am no further forward. AM have a great 404 page though.
I'm more convinced that the Apple announcement will be a set-top box thingy that will look fantastic but be overpriced, and inherently pointless.
4 Jan 2002
Well, the iWalk video is pretty certainly fake, but I'll have an iPad if they were to exist. (via the Wibbly Weblog which doesn't list me in its sidebar - the nerve!!)
Arabic -> English translation software. Does the line "a language that employs its own alphabet" sound as ignorant to you as it does to me?
Been entirely knocked out by Eric Clapton's From the cradle album that someone lent me. Great playing and I can join in on the harmonica too.
The (printed) Guardian has an item about how Belgian euros are more likely to come down heads than other euros, but I can't find it on the website.
3 Jan 2002
I do hope that Apple's hype is about a PDA - the iWalk rumour is interesting, though sadly it won't be a Newton which is still miles better than anything else that has ever been around.
The Taschen webpage - publishers of fine books at reasonable prices. (Check out the world of erotic wrestling...
2 Jan 2002
Interactive Japanese weather and if you try this page and move your mouse around over the kanji for the cities, you'll see the romaji appear in the URL display, which is useful if entirely unintentional!
1 Jan 2002
I made a great soup from a recipe in the Observer on Sunday - lentil and mushroom, but with chilli and lemon in it. Lovely - I must see if they have the recipes online. Ah yes, here it is - definitely recommended.
I was asked if this would be too sick for my weblog! Uh, no it isn't and you should check out some of those fruitcake links too. (Thanks TMS)
I wish they would hurry up and get Opera 6 running for Mac OS X : 5 is really not a patch on 6
Well, a merry 2002 to all of you! We had a great party in our street and did our usually New Year's day walk this morning. Then we went and walked across the Millenium Bridge for the first time and what a fantastic structure it is - beautiful ande functional and it deliciously flexible. At least one of you will be delighted to hear that I have finished the laser game - the last level was really rather too easy I thought. I am still a little connectivity challenged so it is a bit hard to get lots of links in, but I have an intersting backlog of stuff which will appear pretty soon - I will put up a couple now.
30 Dec 2001
Now on level 26 (25 was quite easy, contrary to what I had been told). Haven't had a chance to look at it yet though. My emulation is very useful though as it doesn't clear the board when you hit a bomb and it all turns green when you get the all the lamps lit. I've modified it so that I can create and save new boards too so when I get to the end I can generate even more frustrating and timesucking puzzles to give to people.....
29 Dec 2001
Oh, lord this connection is slow.
27 Dec 2001
Damn, I had the beam bender implemented wrongly which did not help me find solutions, but I am now on level 22.
26 Dec 2001
My implementation of the laser game in tcl/tk is now pretty well finished so I can work on level 19 without being connected. Which is nice.
For my birthday, someone gave me (in jest of course) a Scottish Karaoke video - an astonishing piece of work made even worse by the fact that the people doing the on-screen words could not spell or use apostrophes correctly. I was glued to the screen in horror as this vile music rolled over me, watching for the next error.
I was given two great CDs fro Xmas - Peter Rowan;s first album (well, the one with Panama Red on it anyway) and Tom McConville's Music of James Hill - superb stuff. Other than that, of course, bah humbug
22 Dec 2001
Still stuck on level 19...
RIP Clifford T. Ward
21 Dec 2001
Well, there will probably be updates over the holiday, but if not, have a jolly time, or at the very least, don't get too miserable or stressed.
ExtremeTracking - not linked because of the service, but because of the use of "website" as a verb. Ugh.
BTW, thanks to everyone who has sent me stuff about de-regioning iBook DVDs. (I haven't done it yet though)
20 Dec 2001
Level 19!!
Capillary endothelial cells and microglia in a rat brain cryosection labeled with green-fluorescent Alexa Fluor 488 isolectin IB4 - looks like lots of pretty little Xmas lights....
Level 18....
19 Dec 2001
What corporate mascot are you? I appear to be Tony the Tiger - well, I did have frosties for breakfast this morning.
YES!!! I just cracked level 12!!!!
18 Dec 2001
And someone is investigating acupuncture for depression. (I'm a fan of acupuncture, but don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt!)
17 Dec 2001
I am still getting Badtrans emails.
I'm not impressed with Opera's bug handling - I've now submitted three bug reports, two of them pretty serious, and have had no acknowledgement of any kind.
The NSA Museum - amazing the double standards here. The spies who get shot down by Russians whilst invading their airspace are hnoured, but if they caught any Russians doing the same they would be evil scum!
I hadnlt heard about this. Mind you, neither had I heard about the man who was arrested for plotting to crash a light plane into the Houses of Parliament. I had to read about this in a copy of the Japan Times!!
There is of course the official Kylie site - which uses flash quite well in fact. They have the Kylie Agent Provocateur underwear video here - it is worth watching, first because it is quite clever, and second because it also fails uttterly because Kylie looks wntirely plastic throughout it. Mind you, I'd like to have seen it in a cinema full of lads.
On Friday night, I read Kiran Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
- fantastic! Read it.
It was my birthday yesterday, but I only got on e-card this year, so thanks to $from for that one!
Well, there are some entertaining songs at this site, if only they would actually let me play them - I get an entirely bogus authorisation error.
14 Dec 2001
The Body of Secrets website - I am reading it
at the moment and it is fascinating and scary. It is rather too long and too detailed, and I am not at all surprised to read about the duplicitous, double dealing people that run the governments fo the world, but you should still read it.
Excellent Tom Tomorrow and this one too. Well, they are almost all excellent, but you know what I mean
Simon suggests that Toyota pickups are ubiquitous because there are not really any acceptable alternatives, which would explain a lot. But I suppose the question then is why are there no other alternatives when there is clearly a market!
"The Arizona Power Exchange (APEX) is a support and educational organization for people whose lives or interests include S/M, Bondage & Discipline, or Dominance & Submission. The term S/M is used to cover all behaviors and interests within the lifestyle. This organization promotes safe, sane, and consensual erotic play between adults."
Tom points out to me that the USD/Yen value displayed at Japan Today, does seem to indicate the Yen has risen sharply against the dollar.
Cold reading (No, not what you do outside with a book in winter) Lots of other good stuff on this site too.
13 Dec 2001
Damn, the laser game isn't actually there, just a note that says it was very popular. And I bet everyone was stuck on level twelve like I was. I might just have to implement a tcl/tk version of the game or something - it is after all not rocket science.
Ah, weblogging from the comfort of my own home, in my chair, in the front room, and Ewano has found where the laser game has moved to. Deep joy.
[re]distribution - "PDA, information appliance and nomadic arts as cultural intervention"(Thanks JC)
Have Toyota got something going with the press? Why are the vehicles used by everybody (it seems) in Afghanistan described as "Toyota pickups" - I bet there are some that aren't Toyotas! (Have I said Toyota enough times yet? Do I qualify?)
12 Dec 2001
Dumb Laws (Thanks ewano - who points out that the laser game has stopped working!!! Oh no! I was stuck on level 12....)
Local Exchange Trading Schemes - a great idea, and we should have more of them. There is such a thing as society and it works when you let it!
A usenet posting by me in 1983 - at least I assume that it's mine - it's certainly opinionated enought o be me. (It was posted the day before my 31st birthday too)
11 Dec 2001
Blast, I've forgotten what I was going to add! Something cynical and world weary I have no doubt.
Had a mail screw up last night, so if you mailed me and it bounced, please send it again!
10 Dec 2001
I wonder how I can prevent my iBook from region coding its DVD after i have used 5 times? (Not that I have used it any times in fact)
I was clearly behind the leading edge on the company song thing, so thanks to all of you who pointed me at the site that has been up for ages and which everyone else has been talking about for weeks....
8 Dec 2001
Now, like Tony Blair, I am trying the third way, and it really works much better (unlike Mr Blair's third way)
Now I am trying it running over a secure connection on a 56K modem link. Very sloooooow.
I'm running my weblog software from home to see how it goes - a bit slow when run the way I am doing it at the moment!
Small rant: Why can't people use the word "me" any more? Why must they always say "myself"? It drives me up the wall!"Speak to Ms Jones or myself if you have any problems" - aaaaaaagahh!!!!!!!!
7 Dec 2001
I was looking to see if anyone had a collection of company songs anywhere on the net but I haven't managed to find one yet.
What work of art are you? (via EatonWeb via blogdex) I am Mondrian's Composition A which is great - I love Mondrian (though I like Jackson Pollock even more) Except that the description is not like me and bears no relation to the answers I gave!!
6 Dec 2001
5 Dec 2001
Still getting BadTrans but haven't had a goner yet.
Today has the nastiest weather I have seen for ages!!
Opera have finally produced a version that allows a non-MDI interface! It seems to be really rather good, now all I need is for them to get the Max OS X version to catch up!!
4 Dec 2001
RIP Josh Kirby - personally I didn't like his work, but that does not mean that he was not a master at what he did.
Catastrophic variables - I know this sounds like a problem taht a novice programmer would have, but it isn't.
Can't tell your googlies from your flippers? You need this guide to spin bowling. (Thanks Matt)
Corporate insanity (Thanks janet) I often get mail from people who want to "exchange links" - they seem to think that if they link to me I have to link to them. How odd.
Specially for Ole here is Poke the Bunny (Thanks Alex) and check out Titanic and also Kitka
3 Dec 2001
Find out about today's sake (or be told "no data available" - let's hope there's sake available)
Oh, congratulations to the Japanese royal family on the birth of their daughter - I hope that they change their succession laws PDQ.
Les Techniques de Wap - nothing to do with phones either. I always wondered how to do that.
I am still being inundated with BadTrans virused messages. *sigh*
An English-Creole dictionary (thanks to Vincent who just mailed me a list of about 30 good sites, so I hope he won't mind if I don't keep acknowledge him!)
Apologies for making the wrong joke about the Heineken website the other day, of course I should have said "A flash site that refreshes the parts taht our sites can't reach". Damn these semi-identical beer companies.
30 Nov 2001
Someone on the Guardian GH tribute site just said "It is truly a sad world when you start to run out of Beatles"
I'm really rather upset about George Harrison
RIP George Harrison - all things must pass indeed. He was my favourite beatle.
Thanks to everyone who sent me cached copies and who pointed out that the google copy was pretty fresh (I was in a flap when I looked at google so misread it!). I haven't managed to find any of yesterday's links but it wasn't a great collection anyway. I'll reconstruct the remainder of the page later today. In fact the google copy seems somehow to have become fresher! When I went to it just now i(13:00) it had most of yesterday's links too - how odd.
29 Nov 2001
ISee - avoid surveillance cameras. I really get annoyed by cameras - they are a real infringement of my rights to privacy and there is no evidence that they have any effect on crime rates. Graffiti Writer is good too.
The days have been restored. I'm still getting swamped by BadTrans generated messages.
28 Nov 2001
Truth is Fallen in the Street - bizarre, fundamentalist christian ranting from Des Griffin, Author, Publisher and Patriot. Based on his picture, I would not buy a used car from this man.
On the radio this morning, the two DJs did not know who Germaine Greer is - not even vaguely.
27 Nov 2001
Damn it, why won't metasend accept a mime-type with a . in it! they are perfectly legal as far as I know.
26 Nov 2001
It is now safe to turn off your brain - which, means that its the usual load of sexist nonsense posing as "games" of course.
Getting lots of email warnings about virused messages - must be BadTrans.B, and I guess that it's some of you that have been hit.
Holy Place - this seems to be a Jewish football team in Japan. Or something. (Thanks Len, I think)
Osaka Station - listen to the sound samples of station announcements which are great. The Japanese have trainspotters too it seems.
The L page from a sex thesaurus. Just what you need first thing on a Monday morning. (thanks John)