Volume 46
21 Aug 2003
Good story in /. discussions today : "I actually saw a pretty intelligent use of signs by cops once. lollapalooza was held in an outdoor venue near where I used to live. People leaving the show had to get on a limited-access highway and go about 2 miles before there was an exit, and everyone leaving the show had to drive to that exit. About a mile before the exit, they placed several large signs that said 'Drug checkpoint ahead. All cars will be searched.' Of course, that would be illegal to do, and there was no 'drug checkpoint' at all. Instead, the police waited around for people to illegally u-turn across the median and then busted those people. We just kept driving, and sure enough, no checkpoint. After we made a legal u-turn at the next exit, we saw someone swerve across the median, and then saw two cops streak after them, sirens blazing. I don't think we stopped laughing the whole way home. Sure, it's an underhanded method, but anyone who knows their rights wouldn't fall for it."
Spar Boxes - personally, I think that they are some of the ugliest and nastiest things I have ever seen.
Blast, I set up a VPN from home last night and Outlook has sucked all the contents of my Inbox down to my home machine. I wonder how I can get them back again? I wonder how I can stop it doing it again?
20 Aug 2003
San Miguel : The Official Beer of the Provisional People's Democratic Republic of Diego Garcia
damn it, someone has been using my address as the From for a spam message, or at least that what appears to be happening.
19 Aug 2003
Ahhh, ADSL at home. Not the full wireless stuff yet, so no surfing in the front room, but it is soooo much faster. I would even go as far as to say that it is usable!
"The metaphysically-minded person feels that the actual world is made up solely of positive, specific, determinate, concrete, contingent, individual, sensory facts, and that the appearance of a penumbra of fictional, negative, general, indeterminate, abstract, necessary, super-individual, physical facts is somehow only an appearance due to a lack of penetration upon our part." From John Wisdom's Metaphysics and Verification.
That video of David Blaine taking his own heart out. Watch how he careful he is to make sure that his shirt doesn't open enough to expose how he does it.
Voyeur Web "an archive version of the July 2001 artport gate page, collapses the private and public spheres by connecting the blueprint of an apartment to images from webcams that open a view into the apartment's rooms."
18 Aug 2003
Gosh, I love Weebl and Bob almost as much as I love pie.
Aaaargh - I saw some of Pop idol on Saturady I think it has to be one of the nastiest and most pointless shows ever made.
Odd word coincidences. On friday night I watched the Big Lebowski, which I had never seen before. After it finished I put on a new CD I had got and reading the booklet I find that one of the tracks features a mandolin player identified only as "Dude". ON Saturday morning there was a review of a new book about Frank Sinatra which referred to his "johnson". Neither dude nor johnson are words that I would expect to come across often.
15 Aug 2003
Timely considerations at the edge of space "Where does the Difference pass? Everywhere. It is the dividing line, the border, the shifting river bed. It passes between mechanists that reduce energy syntheses to the randomistic reactions of mass, and the machinists that seek to grasp energy syntheses as singular acts of creation that escape the molar rules of mass. It passes equally between the refuge mechanists resort to in abstruse mysticism of Nature, and the two regimes of repetition which machinists have exposed to relate the macro and microcosmos. And it passes everywhere where a scientific dogma is questioned relentlessly." Huh?
I just did a "Who are you in the matrix" quiz thing and I am Agent Smith.
My phone just rang and the voice said "Can I have sales please". I said "This is the computing science department", "Sorry" he said. Two minutes later the phone rings again, "I'm trying to buy some bifurcated rivets and this number keeps coming up...". I found him someone who really does sell bifurcated rivets in the UK.
14 Aug 2003
CTBusters "The Croft Chemtrailbuster exchanges good orgone for DOR. The DOR is not stored, so the Croft Chemtrailbuster is safe."
13 Aug 2003
My current car insurance company has reworded the section on liability to others to include this : "We will not pay for any amount in excess of 20 million pounds in respect of damage to property as a result of any claim or series of claims caused by one event". The only thing that I can think of that this covers is if someone steals my car and uses it to build a car bomb and that there is then a claim against my insurance.
Crazy Eyes - my son has a pair of the cat ones. They are really quite scary. (bad for the eyes too)
12 Aug 2003
RIP Gregory Hines
Enter the realm of the Kingdomality Personal Preference Profile (I am a Benevolent Ruler, but you knew that already of course)
Damn, screw up with the order for trying to enable my phone line with ADSL. Grrrr.
11 Aug 2003
Yes I know the the "thanks" line is currently screwed up.
The Matrix - I particularly like the bit that says "But that would entail converting all the food eaten by the individual into electricity. In practice, less power would be generated since food is needed by the body."
The London News Review - this might be good when it comes out, there again it might turn out to be utter rubbish. The "London" in the title does rather suggest a rather south-eastern orientation.
2600 messages in my SPAM inbox.....
It's Xmas at Costco. (Worse, there were adverts for Xmas party bookings on local radio in June!)
RIP WIll Atkinson - I once saw him cause consternation at a melodeon competition where there were only two entrants. He awarded the first to the person who was not the local favourite (who always won) on the grounds that he played a one row box which was more authentic. You can listen to Will Atkinson's March by Jimmy Lindsay should you so desire - nice tune.
Boo!
24 Jul 2003
As is usual at this time of year, I'm away for a couple of weeks doing the exactly the same things as I usually do when I am away for a couple of weeks at this time of year....
Describing things to blind people - I love the kaleidoscope example. Why doesn't someone build one!
I've been doing lots of volunteering for research testing : I did stuff on tone differentiation a week or so ago, yesterday I did some stuff for someone researching aphasia and today I sat in darkened room doing colour vision tests.
23 Jul 2003
Well, the BT checker tells me that my exchange has ADSL, but my ISP has confirmed nothing so far...
I keep getting spam offering me a "Livecam Botschaft". I don't know what it is, but it sounds unpleasant.
22 Jul 2003
"Crossing the Bridge" Noodles (Note that this is not an endorsement of the habit of eating chickens or shellfish!)
By accident I ended up in a rather good guitar recital this lunchtime where there there a couple of Piazzola pieces played.
21 Jul 2003
18 Jul 2003
"This site is used for research purposes only. The text contained in this HTML document is free of any intentional meaning. You are not encouraged to read any further as this may cause (un)real frustration on your side." A lot of web pages are like that.
Pick a really distracting background, and then have a random click around on some of the links to the left - some intersting images and some odd photographs (though probably only because I can't read the captions)
Palladian Villas (I'm reading a book about Palladio 
at the moment - you can actually rent the Villa Saraceno - how cool would that be?)
17 Jul 2003
Bifurcations 2003 "The use and control of Chaos" - I wonder if I should adopt that as a tagline!
All of a sudden there is an astonishing amount of rain falling by my office window.
16 Jul 2003
I think that yesterday's Beloki crash link should now be working again.... (They changed the URL for some reason)
15 Jul 2003
I'm being interviewed about the Virtual Memorial Garden for WHYY 91FM in Philadelphia in a minute or two. It will go out sometime in the autumn - I'll link to the programme when I find out about it.
Neopets® "is the greatest Virtual Pet Site on the Internet. With your help, we have built a community of over 50 million virtual pet owners across the world!"
I wonder if I should add comments to my book reviews as well? That might just lead to taste wars of course. I shall think about - trivial to do.
Map-a-mobile - I haven't quite worked out what prevents you from spying on the movements of anyone with a mobile. Yet another reason to keep your mobile switched off.
14 Jul 2003
Good weekend - great weather (too hot in fact), Saturday we went up to Rothbury Festival and spent the afternoon in a nice little session in the Turk's Head. Sunday morning we went to the Baltic to see the Gormley exhibition which is really rather good, tehre is also a superb exhibition of photographs of the North east "coal coast" by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. While we there we wandered out on to the observation dexk and lo and behold the Millenium bridge and Swing bridge opened to let a ship through - first time I have seeen this happen. Wonderful.
Try drawing a 6 in the air with your right hand whilst making clockwise circles with your right foot.....
11 Jul 2003
10 Jul 2003
9 Jul 2003
Has anyone got plans for an RFID Tag detector and a gizmo to render them inoperable yet?
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Take the picture tour of the great pyramid - it is excellent (if you ignore the spelling mistakes)
8 Jul 2003
Exwitch Ministries - oh dear, oh dear, oh dear : "To reach occultists, Wiccans, Witches, Pagans, and others through consistent witness, demonstration of Christ-like character, apologetics, and genuine love and concern." Not just god bothering but people bothering too!
Hmmm, there is a new Tim Cahill book out, and from it I have found that there is another one that has not been published in the UK. Blast.
What do you do with old encyclopedias? I have full set of Brittanica from the 60s to get rid of and I really don't want to bin them, but have no use or space for them.
Grrr, don't you just hate the recommendation system at Amazon! It's like all those jokes about Tivo - I said I liked one book that happened to have football in the title and then spent 20 minutes getting rid of all the football recommendations it started giving me. Same with SF - you buy one and suddenly you get tons of it.
7 Jul 2003
What's with the sudden splurge of SPAM about keyrings? Weird.
Supervert "If the Marquis de Sade were alive today, would he have a web site? Would Edgar Allan Poe be the webmaster of his own domain? Would Arthur Rimbaud use computer technology to disorganize the senses? Would Charles Baudelaire employ venture capital for a sinister new internet startup, Fleurs du Mal Inc?"
More offensive comics (these really do scrape the bottom of the barrel methinks, fell free to give them a miss)
At Newcastleton I heard that Bob Hopkirk had died last year - a great fiddler and a lovely man. The nearest I can get to a link is this one to a CD that he is featured on. I think that is him on the cover - it certainly looks like him to me.
It was Newcastleton festival this weekend. Cracking session on Friday night, Saturday not so good as everyone seemed to have played themselves out! But almost all the regulars were there so it was good to see everyone.
3 Jul 2003
Lost comics - guaranteed to offend almost anybody. Why hasn't this guy been sued by everyone I wonder?
Lots of talk around today on making cameraphones go CLICK loudly. How hard can it be to disable this feature if you are that way inclined. Will it be a crime to have a digital camera that makes no noise?
I just looked at a webpage where the company describes istelf as "the leader in next-generation productivity solutions for anywhere, anytime, any operating system computing from a variety of Internet-connected devices including thin client and mobile computing platforms". No comment.
I note that Kraft are going to make Dairylea Triangles and Toblerone smaller to reduce the fat content so they are healthier. I bet they keep the profits healthy too and don't commensurately reduce the prices - hey, it's better for you so we can charge more for it! (Like wholemeal bread and flour: it has less done to it so costs more...)
Gloomy Bear Bloody Plush Doll "This isn't your normal plush bear doll. It's the Adult Gloomy Bear! It doesn't think about cuddling next to you at night. It thinks only of tasting your blood..."
I got sent a chain letter the other day! A "send a tenner to the top of the list, it really works" kind of thing. Just somneone who picked my name out of the phone book as per the instructions in the letter. Soon these scams will be illegal here but not yet, so there is nobody to report them too.
Talking of Jazz Herbies - I went to see Herbie Hancock last night (a little older looking than the first picture on the website!). Fantastic set of musicians with amazing technique, but I had my doubts about it. The drummer (Terri Lynn Carrington) was excellent, but way too loud and drowned out everyone else. Bobby Hutcherson on vibes was hard to hear and tended to get lost in the overall sound. Scott Colley on bass was, for me, the stand out of the evening - phenomenl playing. The band were clearly enjoying themselves but there was some spark missing - some of the solos were high speed meandering (can you meander at high speed?). I'm glad I went though just to have seen them. The last time he played Newcastle was the week I moved here nearly 30 years ago!
2 Jul 2003
Just loaded the mouse gestures extension for Firebird - it may be useful, assuming I can get them to work. I suspect having a pen rather than a mouse would make things much easier.
Seems like a good day for a new log.