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2004
January

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5th
- Careless design: lamp → Attention to detail impresses me, so I’m continually unimpressed by almost everything. For all the power of free market tiered pricing, it’s almost impossible to buy something that doesn’t have some component built by the lowest bidder. And the lowest bidders are presumably the companies where the idiots work. For reasons totally beyond my control, I [...]
- The filmworks gallery → Upon entering a public house in heady early 21st century Britain, you are immediately, and ruthlessly, assaulted by total disinterest. When a waitron finally notices you, usually in the same way they notice what they’ve just trodden in, you’ll get the lead-piercing lava-freezing glance, whereupon they’ll pause, mid-text, zombie-drag over to your table, grab your [...]
- Reviews! Reviews! → I like reading other peoples’ Christmas presents: if you’re quick, you can finish them before they get taken away. Reading your own books can be done any time. And so I read this: Eats, Shoots & Leaves While looking on amazon.co.uk for reviews (to see what my opinion should be, obviously) I found this one: fantastic book well [...]
- What we gonna do, when the money runs out? → Osmosing through the covers and floating out of the window seems perfectly natural. Not even crossing the night-still city and breaking through the cloud layer arouses your suspicion. Sharp ascension. The horizon curves away as the thinning air sinks and guards the globe against the hard vacuum; breathing is not an issue. You look back [...]
- Waves! → Pictures of waves! These are from the dog beach in São Conrado. It’s not really a dog beach. It’s just a beach where dogs are allowed, unlike all the others. Directions: from São Conrado, go up the Estrada do Joá road. Just after the top, there is a gated entrance to the club on that island. [...]
6th
- Student life can be hazardous to your health → Picture of a disgusting saucepan
7th
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time → Is it ironic or appropriate that in a book supposedly about Autism, I should notice this on the copyright page?: Mark Haddon has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work… Unless she’s adopted a pen-mugshot to go with that pen-name. Good book though.
- Americans queue for 8 hours in Brazil → Americans are being fingerprinted at Brazilian airports, like Brazilians are in the USA. The queue for Americans at GIG, Rio, was 8 hours long on Monday, and that’s for everybody, including the crew. Brazil is thus playing the tit-for-tat strategy, but I suspect the USA is using always-defect nowadays.
9th
- The Eye of Bushron turns to Mars → Bush on Mars: President George W Bush will announce proposals next week to send Americans to Mars, and back to the Moon. Well the rovers landed in areas thought to be ancient oceans. Stands to reason there was marine life there once, and we all know what hundred million year old marine life smells like, don’t we?
- This is the corporate dream → I can’t believe I’m reading slashdot comments, but this one, in the context of outsourcing jobs, is spot on: 24/7 advertising. No job. No career. No credit. Basket full of crap at 28% interest. Get back on that fucking couch and keep your fucking mouth shut, consumer. This is the “corporate dream.” The outsourcing problem is not [...]
- Hot Pixels → The CCD sensor on my camera is 2272×1704 pixels, and it’s 7mm across, which means there are more than 100,000 pixels per square millimetre. My 15″ laptop screen, at a resolution of 1600×1200, has only 28px/mm^2. Both of them have exactly one broken pixel. Laptop screen Sensing and displaying are very different functions, but these numbers make [...]
- Search test → Testing testing testing. Image search and comment search to come later. Much later.
11th
- Dude, are you being sarcastic? → People don’t tell jokes any more. As all adolescents and pundits (and detached critics who believe they can forever jump out of the system and analyse it without being a part of it) know, a straight joke gets you lynched, unless you attempt to step back to a higher plane of omnijoculence and do a [...]
13th
- Quote of the month → Is your boss a ‘corporate psycho’? asks BBC News Online: Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths. Since there are significantly more than 3 million RnB fans in North America, this allows us to rule out insanity as the sole cause of their musical taste. (On the other hand, hip-hoppy stuff [...]
- Zucker Brothers Mazingness → Airplane, The Naked Gun, and… Scary Movie 3? I didn’t know David Zucker and Robert K Weiss did that. Maybe that means it’s worth seeing. They’re also doing the 4th one. Zucker produced Phone Booth too apparently. And then there’s The Untitled Onion Movie! Wow! Zucker and Onion humour together! That could go so disastrously [...]
- Berlusconi rolls deep on everyone → Ahem, I quote from Roll Deep: Practice the “What the fuck?!” arm gesture (both arms open, palms spread outward) until it becomes an automatic response to any question, especially if from a parent, cop, boss, or teacher. Ya best proteck ya neck
15th
- Keep flags off Mars! → Flags in Space is an interesting read. They don’t have the latest one though: Columbia Memorial Station The conspiracy wackos can rage over the fact that one of those is an Israeli flag, but I’m just a bit disappointed that there are flags there at all. Nationalism was born on Earth and it will die here, one [...]
16th
- Adobe(R) Newspeak(R) → (Via b3ta) The long telescopic arm of the Adobe lawyerbot grasps for the jugular of the English language once more: CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software. INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped. If I were them I’d be more worried about the fact that the photoshopping industry/community is powered almost exclusively by warez’d copies. The same [...]
19th
- The value of comments → This is why having comments enabled is good.
20th
- Block an exit, go to jail → In the exam room, in a calm voice, as part of the usuals rubrics: Those of you with bags in front of the fire exit are facing a prison sentence. Harsh, but fair.
22nd
- Labs in the news → Science lessons are getting disrupted by unruly pupils.
24th
- One-liners → Ooh, a new feature! There should be two mini-posts before this post, and one after (in a minute…), unless you’re reading this in more than 5 posts time in which case all these one-liners should be archived on the day pages As soon as the exams are over I’m going to refactor my spaghetti python into something [...]
- Post 0×90 Spectacular → Meta-bloggery is usually horrid; a perfect target for those bitter blogs-are-all-rubbish screeds written by people who seemingly can’t use their back buttons. However, despite not being politically correct, it is nevertheless a lot of fun, and quite popular. I promise not to do it too much; my eyesight’s bad enough as it is. Having said [...]
25th
- Gawd-dayam scienticians wid’ deir edumacation → So Opportunity landed safely, evoking this comment: “We done good!” project manager Pete Theisinger reports. “We seem to have a very well-performed vehicle. We didn’t have any trouble with the critical deploys.” Nouning the make language weirds, among other grammar atrocities.
29th
- Snowfight → Snowy Lawn at Night When it snows at night the sky is bright with light and if the clouds are at the right height, the white sight can delight, or incite a fight, despite tonight being quite alright for the flight of a kite; our trite plight is that I must now write. Fo’ shizzle. Er, anyway, [...]
31st
- Daily Mail World → With b3ta doing Daily Mail World this week, I couldn’t resist implementing the old kill counter. And so, we have: Operation Scumwash! All you have to do is enter the number of asylum seekers you’ve brutally murdered this week, sit back, and enjoy the warm glow you get from knowing you’ve Done The Right Thing.