School in America: sucks to be you
Here’s an interesting interview with a writer who went back to high school in America for a year, and what they thought about it. [rw]
Oh, and happy new year, by the way. ;-)
I have Go
There’s this game called Go which I’ve been getting quite interested in lately. It’s a board game for two players, dating from about 2000 B.C. and is one of the most popular games in the world, primarily in the far east. It’s very simple: essentially you just place stones on a board trying to surround the other player’s stones – but also incredibly deep. For instance, there now exist chess A.I.s (eg Deep Blue) which can beat all but the best chess players, but Go has so many more possibilities, and has so much more room for “intuition” that a novice go player can beat the best Go A.I.s around at present. (See here for more about computers and Go).
So it sounded like a fun game – and I’m pleased to report that it is. :-) Julie kindly gave me “The Go Pack” for Christmas, and we’ve started playing. The full game is played on a 19 x 19 board, and involves capturing territory, scoring, etc., but there’s a quick version of the game, called atari go, where the first person to capture a piece wins. It’s kinda reminiscent of Connect Four but with more possibilities, and it’s excellent fun. I started out beating Julie consistently then she “switched on” and started trouncing me, and now we seem about evenly matched. Think we’ll play this for a while then move on to the full game…
Sound good? Fancy a game? Okey dokey, you can play atari go online – excellent!
There are lots of Go sites on the net, eg Sensei’s library (a wiki – fantastic!), gobase.org (excellent), British Go Association, Wei Chi online guide (nice picture of a traditional Go board on that page), What Is Go?, gameclub.com.
Buffer overflows are totally unacceptable
Here’s Henry Baker talking on the RISKS forum about Buffer overflows and why they’re totally unacceptable. Makes me glad I love python…
And, related, a report from the CHATS (Composable High-Assurance Trustworthy Systems) program.
The Fuller Projection
Cool things humans have done, #4184: The Fuller Projection, in which the surface of the globe is projected onto an icosahedron which is then unfurled. Come on kids, let’s hear it for Buckminster Fuller! [via National Geographic magazine]
The ultimate Fake Band list
The ultimate Fake Band list, including such greats as Spinal Tap, Disaster Area, Deathtongue, Smeg and The Heads, S Club 7 (?), and – oh yes – Murph and the Magic Tones. [devnull]
Gimbo’s first Rock climbing experience
I tried my hand at rock-climbing last night, on the indoor wall at the Welsh International Climbing Centre (apparently the biggest indoor climbing centre in Europe) – bloody good fun. Definitely more to come…
Prosperity through punishment
Prosperity through punishment [slashdot]
“Cooperation can flourish if the public-spirited majority can punish freeloaders, say Swiss economists. People will pay to punish – suggesting that their notions of fairness outweigh selfish considerations. The work may help explain why people cooperate in society.”
Who’s for online Scalectrix?
Who’s for online Scalectrix? (Showckwave Flash required).
You want mayo on that?
I’d like a pit bull salad sandwich, a bag of cheese & onion crisps, and a coffee please.
Surreal numbers – an introduction
Surreal numbers – An Introduction – 52 page PDF on a fascinating topic.
Outsider Music
“Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music.” … also showcases a gay country singer named Peter Grudzien who yodels about gays in the military; an African-American school teacher named B. J. Snowden who sings a tone-deaf and earnest anthem called “In Canada” (“In Canada, they treat you like a queen/ In Canada, they never will be mean”); and a Swedish Elvis impersonator named Eilert Pilarm whose hapless slurring of “Jailhouse Rock” so distorts the original, it boggles the mind with its originality. In addition, it features Daniel Johnston (top), a touchstone of the genre, singing “Walking the Cow,” an exquisite organ melody with a soulful lyric about the healing effects of walking a cow.
Oooh, list comprehensions
Python rocks, and list comprehensions, in particular, rock.
Hemingway’s “Old Man” dies in Cuba, aged 104
Hemingway’s “Old Man” dies in Cuba, aged 104.
Insanity test
Insanity test – excellent.
IP address manipulation in python
IPy for python – IP-address handling in the style of perl’s NetAddr::IP.
Ha ha bonk
A buddhist walks into a pizza place and says “Make me one with everything”. :-)
This year, I resolve…
This year, I resolve…
Internal waves at Gibraltar
Cool image of internal waves at the straits of Gibraltar.
Go Materhorn!
Let’s hear it for the Matterhorn.
Archaeologist Tired of Unearthing Unspeakable Ancient Evils
Archaeologist Tired of Unearthing Unspeakable Ancient Evils.
“Can’t a man even clean up his work area without inadvertently conjuring up a pack of lightning-breathing ocelots?”
Poor fellow…
Football referee who scored a goal resigns. [poe]
A referee who scored for a team losing 18-1 has resigned after being told by the Football Association that he would be suspended.
Kandahar comes out of the closet
Kandahar comes out of the closet. [lev]
Now that Taleban rule is over in Mullah Omar’s former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge.
Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex.
Kandahar’s Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.
Go Helsinki
Spaced‘s guide to the best clubs and bars in Helsinki.
James Earl Jones oops
Plaque Honoring James Earl Jones Instead Has Name of Martin Luther King’s Killer [lev]
A plaque intended to honor deep-voiced actor James Earl Jones at Fort Lauderdale’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration instead is erroneously inscribed to James Earl Ray, King’s killer.
“Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive,” reads the plaque, which has prompted outrage among civil leaders.
Tutu on Mugabe
Archbishop Desmond Tutu says Robert Mugabe has “gone bonkers in a big way”. [lev]
Mainichi Daily News
Mainichi Daily News has a slightly surreal Japanese news/gossip section called Wai Wai. It’s worth checking out, if only for its surreal style of writing…
My personal favourite headline from the front page: Tokyo’s homeless women: Foot loose and fancy free.
Another great true urban legend
Another great urban legend (another true one, at that): For 25 years two brothers-in-law traded the same pair of gift pants back and forth between them, each time finding more inventive ways to wrap the beasties.
The pants next turned up in a drab green, 3-foot cube that once was a 1974 Gremlin. A note attached to the 2,000-pound scrunched car advised Collette that the pants were inside the glove compartment.
Some SNMP resources
Some SNMP resources: The comp.protocols.snmp FAQ. Introductions to, and papers on, SNMP by David Guerrero, Yoram Cohen, freesoft.org (including links to RFCs), and Cisco Systems. Toolkits: The Net-SNMP project, and a page all about Linux SNMP tools. Python-related: pysnmp, an SNMP framework for python, and this is just weird. Miscellaneous other stuff: snmplink.org, “an excellent reference site on all aspects of SNMP and Network Management”, and a list of SNMP-related sites. That lot should keep me going for a while. :-)
BBC testing Ogg streaming – hurrah!
The BBC is testing Ogg Vorbis streaming for radio. Excellent – Ogg Vorbis is a free and open audio codec, and if they can start using that instead of Real Audio, I’m all for it, for reasons of both cost and liberty.
Python goodies
Python goodies: Albatross, “a small toolkit for developing highly stateful web applications”; Pythoncard, “a project to build a HyperCard like tool in, and using, the Python language”; an assertion that “Python is just as good as C++ for real apps“. [python-url]
Trinity drinks deeply at learning’s open source
Trinity drinks deeply at learning’s open source. [daily-url]
Trinity college, Melbourne, has replaced its Windows network with Linux machines, and has adopted python for teaching and operations.
The biggest benefits to educators of open source are cost, simplicity and flexibility, says Trinity ITT manager Richard Wraith.
Myths over Miami
Myths over Miami (originally published on my 23rd birthday, I notice). [null]
A bit of digging produced this… Clive Barker was working on a film based on the article – would love to see that.
How long do you have to live?
How long do you have to live? According to this, I’m due to die at 3:27 AM on Wednesday December 19, 2063, aged 90. Gee, that’s going to spoil my family’s Christmas.
Lighting-up saber
From this (frivolous) discussion of product placement in Star Wars prequels [null]:
Imagine how silly it would look if, during the middle of one of their conversations, either Luke or Ben pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a lightsaber.
Gwen Stefani actually rather attractive shocker
I’ve suddenly realised that Gwen Stefani is, to quote Tharg, “one serious stack of woman flesh”. Why wasn’t I informed of this sooner?
Cambodia photos
Some pretty cool Cambodia pictures.
Spam filtering at AOL
From the RISKS digest, some interesting/insightful comments about spam filtering at AOL.
What, only four?
Fantastic: a watch that tells you the direction and distance to the four nearest pubs.
The best ewok painting in the world, ever!
The best ewok painting in the world. Also, Ponda Baba’s arm is missing (broken – 20030610). [pants]
Terry Waite on the POWs at Camp X-Ray
Terry Waite on the POWs at Camp X-Ray.
I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba’s Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we – countries that call ourselves civilised – are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?
FTPutil.py, a high-level FTP interface
FTPutil.py, a high-level interface to python’s standard ftplib module. Looks excellent – wish I’d had this a month ago.
Killing Dragons
Last night, I finished reading this book. It was tedious in places but got very good as it went on. I’ve submitted a review to Amazon, hopefully it’ll appear there soon… [2002-01-31: It's finally appeared.]
Climbing the north face of the Eiger
Climbing the north face of the Eiger – gripping stuff, but I wish there was more commentary on the photos.
Undertow by Lush – it’s, well, lush
I’m listening to Undertow by Lush over and over again this afternoon – it’s absolutely unbelievable – really really lovely. Thank you, Andrew for nudging me in this direction – although I haven’t found the DJ Spooky mix yet. If I like it more than the original, things will be getting messy round here.
Interestingly, it looks like Emma from Lush went on to form Sing-Sing, who I’ve come across via Locust. This makes me want to check out Sing-Sing more…
Gimboland gets a search box
I’ve added a simple search button to Gimboland – in the sidebar, under the archives. Will also add an “advanced search” option, and customise the look of the results pages, but not right now… Groovy.
Turkey targets Chomsky
Turkey Targets Chomsky [robot]
Scarcely two months after the European Union praised Turkey for passing new laws protecting freedom of expression, the authorities in Ankara are using anti -terrorism legislation to prosecute Mr Chomsky’s Turkish publisher.
The Gregs of Humanity
Band name: The Gregs of Humanity
How do the filters know what to filter?
How do the filters know what to filter?
Consider a system in which you have a signal passing through a number of filters, and an “undo” mechanism so you can return to an arbitrary previous state. Now, say you have an “antifilter”, which removes the influence of any filters previous to it.
OK, the question is, is the antifilter considered to be a filter or not? To put it another way, does an antifilter remove the influence of any previous antifilters? Then, what are the implications of either choice for the logic and behaviour of the system? Example: multiple antifilters in series. How does this configuration behave if antifilters “remove” previous antifilters? How does it behave if they don’t?
Knots on the brain
I’ve decided that since I’m getting into rock-climbing a bit, it’s time I learnt how to tie some knots: Knots on the web; knot knowledge; knot guide at Irish Climbing Online; knots.pdf.
So far I’ve mastered the figure-of-8, bowline, highwayman’s hitch, and fisherman’s knot. Last Tuesday I couldn’t do a figure-of-8 to save my life, which is ridiculuous because it’s so easy – and I knew it was ridiculous at the time, which made me more anxious to get it right, and more likely to get it wrong. Well, never again, I say!
Television addiction
One for Ed: Television addiction. [null]
What is more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continue. Survey participants commonly reflect that television has somehow absorbed or sucked out their energy, leaving them depleted. They say they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. In contrast, they rarely indicate such difficulty after reading. After playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people report improvements in mood. After watching TV, people’s moods are about the same or worse than before.
I blame Ed for making me like Sex & The City.
Changing Rooms – avoid!
If you’ve ever watched BBC1′s “Changing Rooms”, don’t miss this: an account of the show by one of its participants. [plastic]
noah grey – nice look
noah grey – I love the look of this site: gentle, clean, functional, interesting. The photos bar down the right is a nice idea, I might have to nick that. :-)
I’m really starting to think about writing my own blogging software… I currently use Blogger and it’s been really good, but I’m such a perfectionist/control freak that I’m definitely outgrowing it. My trek website is built with home-grown software: no weblogs there but lots of dynamic picture indices etc. Still just an idea at the moment, but one that’s growing…
Cutting to the heart of the matter
Y’all are crazy sex chimps. Why yes, yes we are. Thanks for noticing, ma’am.
Loops of fury, Batman!
Loops of fury, Batman! I’ve been tying Dutch bowlines when I thought I was tying er, ordinary bowlines! Boy, is my face red.
Another good knot site, anyway. I love its comments on the granny: This knot is dangerous, and untrustful. One moment is slips the other it jams. It is best to ban it out from your habits
While we’re in the world of knots and climbing, how about the Outdoor Action Guide to Belaying?
Niiiiiiinjas!
Ninjas are mammals. Ninjas fight ALL the time. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
A hot sighting is a picture of a ninja REALLY flipping out: surfing on a school bus, flipping over a Thanksgiving dinner table while a family screams, or simply eating a cat.
Spaced Penguin
Spaced Penguin (requires Flash).
Googlewhacking
Googlewhacking – your goal is to find that elusive query (ideally two words) with a single, solitary result.
Converting bitmap images to coloured ascii
Here’s a groovy site which converts bitmap images into coloured ASCII – nice. Alas, doesn’t seem to work with Opera. Boo, hiss.
The Healthy Flooring Network
I have a dust and dander allergy (great news in a cat lover) and my dream house has wooden flooring instead of carpets, and blinds instead of curtains. Rugs provide snugness underfoot, as they can be beaten out properly. Alas, while I rent, it’s just a dream.
Interesting remark from the site: British people have a particular attachment to fitted carpets. … The proportion of houses with fitted carpets everywhere else in the world is much lower, even in countries with similar climates (UK homes 98%, France 16%).
(Thanks, Malc, for the link).
Paul Lynde quotes
Fantastic: Paul Lynde quotes from Hollywood Squares. [pants]
Peter Marshall: True or false, the navy has trained whales to recover objects a mile deep.
Paul Lynde: At first they tried unsuccessfully with cocker spaniels…
Peter Marshall: What is the name of the instrument with the light on the end, that the doctor sticks in your ear?
Paul Lynde: Oh, a cigarette.
Peter Marshall: Henry Kissinger was recently quoted as saying,”They aren’t even sexy!” Who was he referring to?
Paul Lynde: The Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Peter Marshall: Now listen carefully, Paul…during the time of the hula hoop, the yo-yo, and Davy Crockett hats, who was in the White House?
Paul Lynde: I’ll say the yo-yo!
Cool clock
A very cool clock which, alas, requires Flash.
Fancy something a little more low-tech (no Flash required)? OK, try this.
Gimbo tries out the webring concept
Gimboland is now a member of the webloggers webring – navigation links may be found at the bottom of the sidebar. Groovy.
So, I’d like to say hello to, on my left, James at Feed My Head, and on my right, Louise at non-sequitur spanikopitas – a couple of groovy looking sites I’m pleased to meet. :-)
Alan Moore knows the score
Alan Moore knows the score. Two Alan Moore stories via robot wisdom: one, two.
Excellent advert
It’s a real shame that this is advertising what it is, but this ad is intense and excellent (thanks, Alan).
More on Black Hawk Down
Both Saviour and Victim – more Black Hawk Down background. [robot]
The special forces, over-confident and hopelessly ill-informed, raided, in quick succession, the headquarters of the UN development program, the charity World Concern and the offices of Médecins sans Frontieres. They managed to capture, among scores of innocent civilians and aid workers, the chief of the UN’s police force.
A month will not be enough
A month will not be enough. Trust me, I know about bugs. :-)
Doomed Engineers
I particularly liked Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake’s entry. Known for: winged automobiles. Demise: a suddenly wingless automobile.
Cheese racing!
Cheese racing! [ntk] Do NOT attempt ‘indoor cheese racing’. This is strictly an outdoor sport. (This includes tents!)
[ 2002-02-05: Oh wow, I had a cheese racing dream last night. I'd forgotten about it, but just now I re-read this entry and remembered. Can't recall any details, except it was disgusting. :-) ]
This is what science is for
How much porn is there inside a print cartridge? [milk]
We figured the folks at the Davis library would would know where hot scientific erotica belonged according to the Dewey Decimal System.
Blogger is starting to suck!
Blogger is really starting to piss me off. It keeps telling me it’s published my changes, but it hasn’t. The FTP log even looks like it has, but it hasn’t. If I sign out and sign in again, it works. Gaaah.
Ich bin ein Rivendeller
Apparently, If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Elrond. Who would you be?
evany still has the goods
evany is always a pleasure to read, though she doesn’t update often. Don’t miss the African Grey story from Tuesday, December 18, 2001. Love it.
emacs plus python equals pleasure
My two favourite pieces of software in the world are python and emacs. Bringing these worlds together, we have pymacs, which “allows Emacs users to extend Emacs using Python, where they might have traditionally used Emacs LISP”. Groovy.
Superbowl adverts
Might have to have a look at this later, from home: Superbowl ads [blah].
Later… OK, took a look at a few of them. I really liked “Mini Fridge”, “Card”, “Hank Aaron”, and “Parrot”. “Satin Sheets” was OK. “Clydesdales” was self-indulgent senti-patriotic-mental crap, as far as I could make out.
“Kevin Bacon” is good, but only if you’ve seen this. Watch the ad first, then follow the “this” link.
HTML Hell from Eric Raymond
HTML Hell from Eric Raymond. Good points one and all, with the possible exception of the hit-counter moan. I like my hit counter. It tells me if anyone else is looking at my site without all that tedious mucking about with apache logs. By the way, on the whole, no-one else is looking at my site, it seems. ;-)
webloggers webring go pop?
Hmmm, the webloggers webring seems to have disappeared into the ether. Distressing.
From Hell, the Freemason perspective
Here’s a short but fascinating discussion of Alan Moore‘s From Hell by an American Freemason, concentrating on the negative attitudes towards Masonry the book/film may inspire.
Love’s not just blind, it’s deaf too
Love’s not just blind, it’s deaf. [robot]
Percentage of unique words in lyrics. Average word length. Frequency of “love”, “heart” and “baby”. These were the criteria used by a US study of boy, girl and teen bands. The researchers picked albums by four of the biggest pop acts around – Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and ‘N Sync – and pitted them against an album by Pink Floyd, their musical opposite.
Some NTK goodies
Goodies via ntk: The Sentinel Chess Set, The Jim Royle Comedy Machine.
Gibbering and raving in Cornwall
Well, I’ve just got back from my parents’ house in Cornwall after spending most of Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday laid up in bed with tonsilitis. The best part was the fever and delirium on Sunday night, when my mind tried its hardest to turn itself into a computer program for solving the problem of Jack The Ripper. Pleasant. I’m pretty much better now, thanks to the modern miracle that is antibiotics. Complete the course, people!
I’d gone to Cornwall for a celebration (on Sunday) of my grandmother’s 90th birthday (on Tuesday). I missed the celebration because I was in bed, sweating and gibbering quietly, but did get so see Nan on her actual birthday, so I guess that made up for it. Missed out on lots of great food though… :-(
Regarding Jack The Ripper: my delirium was certainly inspired by seeing the movie From Hell, on Saturday afternoon, which was a big mistake anyway, because it sucked big time. Ian Holm was very good as Dr Gull, but the script was ham-fisted, Johnny Depp was very disappointing, and worst of all, well, why the hell do Hollywood have to turn everything into a bloody love story? I mean, come on, you have these five East End prostitutes, and four of them are as “raggedy-arsed” (to quote Neil Gaiman) as you’d expect, but there’s this one pristine beauty (Heather Graham) with gorgeous hair and flawless skin, and it’s just so AAAAARRRRGH! I mean, love interest? In a Jack The Ripper movie? I really hope the book isn’t so agonisingly contrived – surely not, Mr. Moore?
Yay, I’m an uncle!
The other big news is that today I became an uncle for the first time! My sister-in-law, Claire, gave birth to a 7lb boy at about 3:30 this afternoon. Bookies’ favourite is currently “Adam” but that might change. Congratulations, Mike and Claire, and thanks – now I get to be a mad-haired Uncle Andrew, like in The Magician’s Nephew.
QA Confidential – awesome and strange
Get on over and read QA Confidential at Leisuretown right now. Seriously. :-)
Actually, if you haven’t got a good half hour or so, don’t, because it’s rather long. But do write “QA Conf” on a post-it note and stick it to your monitor to remind you to read it later. Perhaps over a sandwich. Go on, spoil yourself…
Knots are quantised!
Groovy New Scientist article which Phil pointed me out: Knots are quantised. Barmy.
Want more knot theory? How about Warwick University‘s MA3F2 Knot Theory course – all notes online! Writhe is defined here. I can just about follow this, but once again, I say, barmy.
The Religious Experience of Philip K Dick
The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick – unmissable if you’re a “Dick head”. [robot]
Mmmmm, discharge
Went to see my GP this morning, and was very confused by the way she kept referring to snot as “watery discharge”…
Born to curl
Born to curl. Combining the intrigue of chess, the precision of marbles and the work ethic of Hilda Ogden, curling is so deadly it makes crown green bowling look like Rollerball.
Lord Of The Rings meets Blackadder
Lord Of The Rings meets Blackadder – excellent. [null]
Reminds me: I’m currently reading Bored Of The Rings for the first time since I was about twelve, and I’m pleased to report that it’s still reducing me to tears quite regularly…
comp.lang.python kitty quote
Seen on comp.lang.python: “Maybe compared with Perl, where if your cat sits on the keyboard, the resulting code is as likely to run as anything you write.”
The Snack sound toolkit
The combination of Snack and a scripting language makes it possible to create sound tools and applications with a minimum of effort. This is due to the rapid development nature of scripting languages. As a bonus you get an application that is cross-platform from start. It is also easy to integrate Snack based applications with existing sound analysis software.
Genie-us!
Heard an article on Radio 4 last night about bootleg mixing, where two completely different records are mixed together to produce something new.
The canonical example is Freelance Hellraiser’s Stroke of Genie-us, which combines the guitar riff from The Strokes‘ Last Night with the vocal of Christina Aguilera‘s Genie In A Bottle. I grabbed a copy off gnutella today and I’ve been listening to it non-stop – it’s fantastic.
Interested? Check out The Next Thing Isn’t Always Big for a snapshot of the scene today. Apparently.
Glitches en matrix
Routing issues have prevented me getting onto Blogger lately. Now resolved, ie I’m Back. :-)
Python DB stuff
Some interesting python database related items I should check out when I have time (ie never, probably):
Database Objects – “a dynamic object-oriented, repository based layer on top of the Python DB-API II spec.”
Gadfly – “a collection of python modules that provides relational database functionality entirely implemented in Python.”
MetaKit – “takes the middle ground between RDBMS, OODBMS, and flat-file databases – yet it is quite different from each of them.”
Yegods, the insanity!
I think it’s obscene that ZDNet refer to someone who says “HTTP … is the only way to get an a reliable end-to-end connection over the Internet” as a “guru“.
Cryptology – wo!
Loads of cryptology stuff – thanks Malc.
Predicting America’s next attack
Predicting America’s next attack – bombs away! [greg]
Note the lack of countries in the bottom-left quadrant…
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates in IM
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (as conducted over AOL Instant Messenger). [greg]
Firs photos of Adam Gimblett
My brother Michael, the pround father, has sent me some photos of my brand new nephew Adam – sweet! Once again, congratulations to Mike and Claire!
The Blue Marble
The Blue Marble – some lovely images of the Earth from space.
I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said, “why do we call it Earth when it’s obvious it should be Ocean?”… I like that.
Not actually part of the Blue Marble pages, but here are some really nice satellite images. Examples: Cornwall, Kathmandu, Bernese Alps (including Eiger), pyramids at Giza, Nasca lines in Peru, Mongolia, and of course, The Great Wall.
Unix Programming FAQs
Unix Programming Frequently Asked Questions including How do I get my program to act like a daemon? – groovy.
ADSL with Linux at home
Joyously, I got my home ADSL connection working with Linux last night, using the open source drivers. I’m pleased to report that all went well, the instructions were easy to follow, and the solution is “nice” (eg doesn’t involve patching the kernel). So it’s no more Windows(TM) rubbish for me any more, buddies… :-)
Gimboland goes Wayback
Gimboland history at Alexa’s Wayback Machine.
Threads, Tkinter and asynchronous I/O
Threads, Tkinter and asynchronous I/O – an idiom I think I should try to grok.
TCPWatch
TCPWatch, “a utility written in Python that lets you monitor forwarded TCP connections or HTTP proxy connections. It displays the sessions in a window with a history of past connections. It is useful for developing and debugging protocol implementations and web services.”
Guido speaks: Unifying types and classes
Guido speaks: Unifying types and classes in Python 2.2. Related pages by Andrew Kuchling: What’s New in Python 2.2 and Python Warts.
Disturbing auctions
There’s some really scary stuff at disturbingauctions.com. [null]
Dead Man’s Switch
“… a system that, if not reset by a given time, will automatically carry out a series of tasks, such as posting messages to websites like Ars, sending e-mails to loved ones (or hated ones), and encrypting or destroying sensitive files…”
pyboids – flocking simulation
pyboids – flocking simulation in python and Tk. Nice.
Bunhill greats
I visited William Blake‘s grave at Bunhill Cemetery, London, on Friday, and was delighted to find that someone had left some flowers on the grave: a jam jar with some bluebells in it. Sweet.
Here are some of Blake’s paintings. In particular, Ghost of a Flea.
Greg Egan – he’s good
Greg Egan – he’s good. Complete short stories online: Oceanic, The Planck Drive, Border Guards.
Sketch – a vector drawing program for Unix
Sketch – a vector drawing program for Unix. Written in C/python, scriptable in python.
Playing with it a bit, it’s not exactly CorelDraw – but hey, it’s free! ;-)
She’s gonna blow!
On Saturday, the London Eye was stopped after it started rotating too fast. Nice.
I visited St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday and went up to the Golden Gallery, at 280 feet. Strange, it didn’t look like I was much lower than the London Eye (450 feet), but I guess appearances can be deceptive, especially witn the Thames in between us. ;-)
The advantages of the gallery over the wheel are that it’s stationary and you can stay there as long as you want. The advantages of the wheel over the gallery, on the other hand, are that it’s not bloody freezing cold, and you don’t have to climb hundreds of steps to get there…
Mingus on feline bathroom habits
Toilet training your cat by Charles Mingus. The main thing to remember is not to rush or confuse him.
Battle of the browsers!!!
Battle of the browsers!!! I’m interested to learn that both Galeon and Mozilla now support tabbed browsing, which is one of the reasons I love Opera so much. Also interested to see this note on improving Galeon’s load time. Time to have another look at Galeon I think…
Hmmm, yeah – it’s definitely improved greatly since the last time I looked and it’s quite nice. But I still have a few gripes with it:
It renders the tables on Gimboland badly (some spaces between cells are one pixel, some are two – ugly (I later realised this was because my stylesheet specified the gap in points instead of pixels – now fixed)), which is a Gecko/Mozilla thing, I realize.
When downloading a page, there’s no graphical indication that anything is happening – no progress bar, etc. Sometimes I wonder if it’s doing anything, then the page suddenly appears. Compare with Opera, which tells you how many images are left to load, etc., and it’s much less fun.
The zoom control doesn’t have a drop-down selector like Opera does – big lossage – I usually view at 100% or 150%, and it’s a drag to step through 110, 120, 130, 140 on the way…
I don’t like its text input much, eg the box I’m using to write this – for some reason it’s put in a horizontal scrollbar, and is showing 90% of the width of the text – why???
I think I’ll stick with Opera for now, but I’d like to switch to Galeon soon, as it’s ideologically far more sound. ;-)
Skip Montaro’s ideas on how to contribute to python
Skip Montaro’s ideas on how best to contribute to python.
Stuff I could write a howto on:
Using urllib to fetch webpages.
Using mimetools/mimetypes/multipart/etc. to build a multipart MIME message.
Using getopt.
Dynamic imports using __import__
Bugs I could attack:
filecmp.dircmp case sensitivity bug
setup.pyalways return 0 command status
base n integer to string conversion
Plenty there to be getting on with, I reckon…
And on this subject: Becoming a python developer.
The Optik library
Optik, “a powerful, flexible, extensible, easy-to-use command-line parsing library for Python”. Might make my proposed “using getopt” howto obsolete… ;-)
links – like lynx but more so
links, a text-mode browser like lynx but somewhat more fully featured (eg it can render tables). Very nice.
Tips for talking with the hearing impaired
Tips for Talking With the Hearing-Impaired by aahz, a python developer.
The Water Margin
The Water Margin. I must find more Water Margin links – and, er, read the books. :-)
Useless python
Useless python – actually looks quite useful, if only as a source of ideas…
Gimbo on the web in 1997
Oh. My. God. My homepage five years ago.
Oh wow: the twinkle. Memories…
I hope you’ll agree that I’ve come a long way…
Groovy python idiom
Groovy python idiom: Making the members of a list unique by converting it to a dictionary and back again.
The Crackpot Index
I particularly liked the parenthesised part of: “30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).”
Quines
Quines. A quine is “a program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output”.
World of Spectrum!
World of Spectrum including the games archive. Nice.
Related stuff: Poke frenzy and the SNA file format.
apt-get install spectemu-x11
Text Processing In Python
Text Processing In Python – online draft of a dead-tree book yet to be published (or, indeed, completed).
American atheists becoming increasingly marginalised
American atheists becoming increasingly marginalised, ostracised, demonised. [null] Worrying article, with some very interesting quotes…
Scary stuff from former President Bush during a 1988 presidential campaign stop: “I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” This is a democratically elected president speaking, apparently ready and willing to remove citizenship (hey, why not go the whole hog and say human rights?) from a group based solely on their (lack of) religious belief. Go USA!
How about the atheist position on ethics: “We are very ethical. We do the right thing because we think it’s right — not because we think we’ll be rewarded or punished in the afterlife based on our actions.” Definitely – and that’s much harder to do, which should, I think, result in even greater rewards in the afterlife for decent atheists. Oh, hang on…
And finally: “Children grow out of belief in their make-believe friends, even though they bring them comfort. For me, growing up was realizing that reality is what I can see and feel and reason out, not what I wish for.” I don’t completely agree that reality is “what I can see and feel and reason out”, I personally think it transcends that, but I like the general sentiment.
Python web frameworks overview
Python web frameworks overview, and Templates (from a WebWare-centric perspective).
imghdr python module
A handy module in the standard python library which I wasn’t aware of until today: imghdr, which “determines the type of image contained in a file or byte stream”. Similarly, sndhdr.
Fancy some bunnylingus?
According to popbitch, the Colombian word for rabbit is “bunnylingus”. Not that I believe everything I read in popbitch, mind… ;-)
The Proclamations of Emperor Norton
Excellent! The Proclamations of Emperor Norton I, the first and last Emperor of the United States as seen in Sandman 31, Three Septembers and a January. [null]
For the full skinny on the Emperor, check out this well-written wikipedia article.
Emperor Norton I was clearly much loved and revered by his subjects. Although penniless, he regularly frequented the finest restaurants in San Francisco, and the proprietors of these establishments took it upon themselves to add brass plaques in their entrances that declared “By Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States”. This vanity appears to have been tolerated without complaint by the Emperor. By all accounts, such Imperial “seals of approval” were much prized and a substantial boost to trade for such businesses. No play or musical performance in San Francisco would dare to open without reserving balcony seats for the Emperor and his two mongrel dogs, Lazarus and Bummer. (As a sidenote, the tragic death of Lazarus, in an 1863 accident with a vehicle belonging to the Fire Department of San Francisco, led to a period of public mourning. In 1865, when Bummer pased away, Mark Twain was sufficiently moved to write an epitaph for the Imperial Canine, saying that he’d died “full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.”)
Made up country surprisingly popular
Thousands apply for citizenship of non-existent country over the internet.
Freestyle Walking with DJ Cyber and Sidepocket
Freestyle Walking with DJ Cyber and Sidepocket – excellent. [wotever]
Live like there’s nothing more to watch on TV. Walk like hot girls are watching.
Britian to back European rival to GPS?
Britian to back European rival to GPS?
The US would like to kill Galileo, but with Europe having its own rocket launching facilities in French Guyana, its own Ariane rocket and positioning technology more advanced than America’s (European atomic clocks in the Galileo system can position to within 45 centimetres compared to GPS’s 100 metres), the EU has sovereignty over its choices.
…
The US has breached too many international treaties and shown such a disregard for anyone’s interests but its own that we cannot trust it over satellite positioning technology, a public good that will rank beside water and energy distribution in importance in the decades ahead.
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia – butt ugly but informative.
FAM, the File Alteration Monitor
FAM, the File Alteration Monitor – “provides an API which applications can use to be notified when specific files or directories are changed.” Groovy.
Tourette’s Syndrome Simulator
Cruel but slightly amusing: Tourette’s Syndrome Simulator. (Also see www.tourettes.co.uk, which for my money is actually a better gag). [ntk]
Rejection massively reduces IQ
Rejection massively reduces IQ. [robot]
Rejection can dramatically reduce a person’s IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.
Post-autistic economics
Post-autistic economics – an intriguing New Statesman article discussing (and hoping for an end to) the “cult of measurement” underpinning economics and management today. [plastic]
“So-called efficiency,” says Richard Scase, professor of organisational behaviour at the University of Kent at Canterbury, “takes the place of effectiveness, quantity of quality. The means become an end in themselves.”
…
I also know of at least one local authority that achieves government targets for separating waste – at great expense – but then simply mixes it all up again in landfill. Scotland Yard figures that showed it had recruited 218 people from ethnic minorities between April and September 2000 turned out to include Irish, New Zealanders and Australians. The useful figure was four.
The Soundbug
The Soundbug, “a British-designed gadget aimed at young people that turns any hard, smooth surface into a loudspeaker.” [robot]
Alas, not high quality – “It’s audio, not hi-fi. We’re aiming at the eight to 16 market,” Olympia’s president, Richard May, told BBC News Online.
Spoon! Tah-dah!
Little things please little minds… I now have The Tick triumphantly exclaiming “Spoon!” with a little fanfare every time I get a mail. Happy.
The 1955 Good Wife’s Guide
The Good Wife’s Guide from Housekeeping Monthly, May 1955. [girl]
November banquet photos
I’ve uploaded a load of photos from a banquet I helped run last November at Caerphilly Castle. In particular: in full swing, the castle.
Overcoming ICANN
Overcoming ICANN – an open letter to the internet community.
Begins: “Despite its best efforts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proven overall to be a failed experiment in Internet policy development, implementation, and management. ICANN’s lack of meaningful representation, and its continuing pattern of drastic and seemingly arbitrary structural and policy changes (among other shortcomings), have created an unstable and suspicion-ridden environment that is detrimental to the interests of the vast majority of Internet users around the world. The resulting overly politicized situation not only threatens the stability of the Internet itself, but also invites drastic and undesirable interventions by a variety of vested interests.”
Ninjaburger
Ninjaburger – Guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes or less, or we commit Seppuku! [drivel]
Weblog interconnections
This is super-duper cool… A Picture Of Weblogs – a representation of many, many, weblogs and their interconnections. You can search for a particular weblog and see what other blogs it connects to, and which connect to it.
It’s not perfect, for instance it didn’t pick up any link from gimboland to misterpants, despite there being a link in the sidebar since gimboland started, but it’s funky and fun nonetheless.
Hey, I just realised why there’s no misterpants link… My link goes to his splash page (‘cos I love it), not straight to the blog page. Cool.
Sustrans – a sustainable transport charity
Sustrans, a sustainable transport charity, including a map of the UK’s National Cycle Network.
Unfortunately their website is rather broken in Opera. Sigh…
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures including such old favourites as towers of Hanoi, 8 queens, dining philosophers, and – who could forget – the travelling salesman. Damn, that’s real computing. ;-)
“Wicker Man” remake gossip
“Wicker Man” remake gossip – not sure if I like the sound of this or not. Probably not… [robot]
Colchester Climbing Club
Colchester Climbing Club, operated by the venerable Piemaster.
Absinthe & Thujone
Absinthe & Thujone. [null] – debunking everything you’ve heard about absinthe in the pub.
I particularly liked: Modern variations involving setting the absinthe alight are mere cheap melodrama.
France legalises mobile-phone jamming in public venues
Mobile-phone jamming in public venues has become legal in France. [fark]
Jamming devices make it impossible to make or receive calls, voice mails and text messages on a mobile telephone. France is the first country to legalize jamming devices for public use.
Screen dream
Potentially interesting: Screen dream, a webring is for those who keep journals of their dreams online.
Python still amazing!
God, I love python. Once again it amazes me. I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say it took less than two minutes to go from “hmmm, wouldn’t it be nice if…” to “wow, that was easy”. Again.
ht2html
ht2html – a web page template processor as used at www.python.org.
One big Buddha
Wow, that’s one big Buddha (thanks, Malc).
America on the road to Fascism?
America on the road to fascism? [null] Not terribly well written, but interesting nonetheless. As Andrew at null says, the neighbourhood watch stuff is probably the scariest bit:
“The commercials, narrated by Ed McMahon, suggest that you cooperate with the Neighborhood Watch Association and the Civilian Defense Force. You will be told how to spot “suspicious” characters or even people you might have known all your life, who are suddenly acting “out of character.” Then the camera pans down a row of townhouses, and there’s an American flag in front of every house. The voice-over says “inform the authorities of anything you see that’s suspicious” and then the camera stops at the one house that doesn’t have an American flag flying outside — and then it continues to pan down the way.”
How to spot Comet Ikeya-Zhang
How to spot Comet Ikeya-Zhang. [robot]
2002-04-04: And here’s a picture of the coment. [also robot]
Flo Control
Flo Control. [milk]
“She also has a habit of catching various animals, dragging them inside through the cat door, and letting them loose so they can be chased for hours. Very cruel. To put an end to this we have built a computer-controlled device that visually determines if Flo is carrying anything in her mouth when she enters, and if she does, it simply does not let her in.”
The sad end of an era
Sigh… Nice weekend, but somewhat melancholy. My parents retired, closing the family business after 73 years of trading – not bad. We gave it a good send-off though, and I think they’re looking forward to some well-deserved travel and hardcore gardening. :-)
Quote of the weekend (from me): “You could have drawn a second bean to indicate plurality.”
The Random Masturbation Synonym Generator
The Random Masturbation Synonym Generator – fantastic! [wotever]
GvR interview
An interview with Guido van Rossum, creator of python.
findsyms.py
findsyms.py – a handy dandy utility for identifying undocumented parts of the python distribution. Cool.
CAGE, a cellular automata engine for python
CAGE, a cellular automata engine for python. Only does 1-d and 2-d automata though – boo!
Principia Discordia
It’s about time I linked to Principia Discordia, I think…
Apparently, I’m an Oread
Apparently, I’m an Oread [hamster]. Now to find out what an Oread is… Ooh, it’s a nymph. Well, I knew I was a nympho already… ;-)
I’m also a girlie duck.
Guardian Israel coverage redux
Praise be to Rich for pointing me at The Guardian‘s excellent Israel coverage, and in particular, a timeline of events in the region since 1881. Nice.
Two-headed snake found
Two-headed snake found, news at 11.
dial100.com
Just spotted this in someone’s .sig on uknot:
“http://dial00.com – international calls for the cost of a UK call – over 60 countries. No subscription, no commitment, just dial 0871 9000000 and then your destination.”
No idea if it works or not, is legit, etc. – but might be interesting to someone. Ed? :-)
Britney Spears is binary presets
Cool… Britney Spears is an anagram of Binary Presets. There are, of course, many other ways to spell her name, all of them wrong. [popbitch]
Python implementation of Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm
Python implementation of Dijkstra’s algorithm for shortest paths – got to be grokked. Also see Guido’s essay on the subject.
The secret technology behind Google
Don’t miss this: the secret technology behind google.
Borg preferable to Singleton?
Here’s an eloquent, lengthy, highly technical and somewhat philosophical argument in favour of using the Borg pattern in python instead of Singleton: Simple python non-patterns. Nice.
(And, complementing that page, Design patterns in python, which I’ve almost certainly linked to before, but what the heck).
Please let us drive faster, Mr Government
Looks like an interesting read: The Association of British Drivers‘ Submission for the Raising of the Motorway Speed Limit.
Gimboland’s amazing rotating logos!
Gimboland now has nine banners – the one in use should change at random every fifteen minutes. More to come! Collect the set! etc.
24 Hour Party People
24 Hour Party People reviewed at the good old B. B. of C. [null].
Science shouldn’t work like this
A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal. [lev]
Praise the bungee
From the same site – don’t miss these: I have no idea what this is about, Aqua Dog saves the day, Thunderbears are go!. Fantastic.
The Toaster
“The Toaster is a large picture, seven metres long and four and a half metres high, totally made from bread toasted in different temperatures and for different lengths of time to reach the different nuances that occur between black and white, ochre and rust.”
All Your Brand Are Belong To Us
All Your Brand Are Belong To Us [milk] – Right this very second, chances are there is a marketing team somewhere trying to hijack “All your Base Are Belong to Us” in order to sell you something. Doing this makes their job that much harder.
I particularly liked Tommy Hilfiger (“All your surface area are belong to us”) and Benetton (“All your shame are belong to us”).
You just don’t play loud music at 3AM. You don’t do it.
At 3 A.M. the faint but persistent sound of distant bass slowly penetrated my dream and dragged me awake. Ah, the students are having fun. Working on the principle that if it was capable of waking me up I’d be unable to get back to sleep, off I went to tell them to put a lid on it. Imagine my susprise when I realised the sound came from not next door (as is usually the case), but two doors down. Standing outside their front door I could truly appreciate the grandeur of the excellent drum & bass being played – but alas there was work in the morning, so I rang the doorbell and did the deed. Fair play to them, there was no fuss, which may have had something to do with the thick pungent smoke hazing the hallway behind the red-eyed chap who answered the door. Enjoy it while you can people, for nine-til-five is beckoning.
Of course, then I was completely wired and had to read for fortyfive minutes before I could get back to sleep. So now I’m really knackered. Urgh…
Roll on APril April and May
April and May are going to be good months for planet-gazing. [Thanks, Michelle].
Gimboland search proxy
I think people were using the Gimboland archive search thinking it was still the old Google search I used to have, so I’ve implemented a handy-dandy little search proxy which can be used to search Gimbloland, Google, Google Images, and the comp.lang.python archive on Google. Nice.
Who’s playing Glastonbury this year?
Who’s playing Glastonbury this year? The organisers won’t announce until they’ve sold all the tickets, but this page has a round-up culled from artists’ own sites. Especially pleasing: Banco de Gaia, Richie Havens. Orbital still a rumour. Oh please… Oh please…
Gawd bless yer, ma’am
In loving memory of Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Who is the “Disco-naut”?
Who is the “Disco-naut”? Very silly, really…
Goodbye, working class
“The assertion that the working classes no longer exist is being made by a property company which wants to develop a site in central London for luxury housing, despite a 1929 covenant which states that the land may only be used to provide housing for the working classes. The clause goes on to say that they must have stone cladding and a satellite dish on the front, a car stacked up on bricks in the front garden and a doorbell that plays an electric version of Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner.”
MEMS Exchange Architecture
I finally got round to reading The MEMS Exchange Architecture today, something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while but hadn’t because it’s quite long. It describes the architecture of a major project written in python, including several freely released components of the project, most notably the Quixote web application development framework. I’m still looking for some way to move away from Blogger and towards something where my blog entries are held by me (not on some server in California or something), and if I’m going to write my own (which I’ll probably have to, being an anally retentive perfectionist), Quixote looks interesting.
Misc b/w photos
Some miscellaneous black & white photos I took over Christmas: A big wheel in Plymouth.
My parents’ cat Blossom in her natual habitat.
Emma, Rich, Ab, Gareth, Jala & Simon in the Claude.
Jala & Tip at Jala’s sister’s place.
Jala reading at our place.
Phoneboxes in Princetown, with Dartmoor prison visible.
A detail from a painting by Simon’s brother, Toby (yes, the painting’s very colourful!).
A tractor in the snow at Princetown.
I should really upload these to photo.net but I can’t be arsed… :-)
SpecTix
SpecTix, a development environment to build cross-platform applications using the Tk GUI toolkit with multiple target languages, including python. Sounds awesome, wish I had time to try it out…
More student annoyance – grrrrr
Another sleep-deprived night thanks to the local students. If I could move out of Cardiff today, I would. Still can’t quite understand why this is more of a problem this year than previously. Is it just that I’m older? Or are they just stupider?
Voting by SMS and internet?
Local U.K. governments in Liverpool and Sheffield are gearing up to allow citizens to vote using SMS (Short Message Service) text messages and the Internet in elections 2 May 2002. [risks]
It’s OK, I learnt it three years later
Damn it, I missed The Truth About Lesbian Sex last night.
Which online personality test are you?
Which online personality test are you? [ntk] (I’m the Which James Bond Villain Are You? test).
The Universe within 12.5 light years
The Universe within 12.5 light years [charlie] – very reminiscent of Elite. :-)
Five Things You Probably Didn’t Notice in The Shining
Five Things You Probably Didn’t Notice in “The Shining”. [girl] To be honest, I only found numbers three and four interesting, but I found them interesting enough to put the link here. :-)
Heard of sheep?
Heard of sheep? (Ta, Jon).
rsync and Debian
rsync and Debian. Neat.
Goban screensaver
Cool – the goban screensaver, which plays classic games of Go for your pleasure and elucidation.
Plas y Brenin
Plas y Brenin, an outdoors-activities training centre in Snowdonia. They’ll take your money and turn it into good clean fun. :-)
The library cats map
The library cats map [null] – cool. There’s a load in Penzance.
The ecstasy debate
Much of the scientific evidence showing that ecstasy damages the brain is fundamentally flawed and has been mistakenly used by politicians to warn the public of the dangers of the drug, a report said yesterday. [null]
“The research involved brain scans with a radioactively tagged chemical probe that latched on to the serotonin transporter proteins that ecstasy targets. The thinking was that brains damaged by ecstasy would give off less radioactive ‘glow’ than those where the serotonin cells were intact.”
“But two independent experts told New Scientist there was a key flaw. They said the way brains reacted to this kind of scan varied enormously with or without ecstasy.”
“Some healthy brains glowed up to 40 times brighter than others and even a number of ecstasy users’ brains outshone ecstasy-free brains by factors of 10 or more.”
Python documentation keyword search engine
Excellent. A natty little Python documentation keyword search engine. I’ll have to hook this into my search proxy (ie the search box in the right-hand sidebar) some time, but not right now as I’m too busy working towards my long sought-after stomach ulcer. :-)
Later: OK, that’s done, thanks to my remarkably capable coding techniques which made it possible to add the search in about a minute. Damn, I’m good. ;-)
Even later: Since that’s just a keyword search, I thought I’d better proxy the “full-on find this word anywhere in the python documentation” search as well – so I’ve done that. The search proxy list is getting quite long now…
Get your maps here
Funkin’ excellent shop for maps: Castle Street Books, 23 Castle St, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5DF. The proprietor is not just an obvious and unashamed cartophile, he’s also as mad as a hatter – though of course the two are often closely related. Respect.
The Association For Free Software
The Association For Free Software, “an organisation set up in the UK to promote Free Software to users, business and Government. The AFFS seeks to secure the status of Free Software within the UK and increase public understanding of Free Software among developers and users alike.” [ntk]
w3m – oooh
Remarkable… w3m is “just another” text-based web browser, until that is, you factor in w3m-img [ntk] which patches it to display images – in your xterm! – and – even geekier! – emacs-w3m, which turns your emacs into a web browser. Hey, who needs Opera?
Ctrl-R – nice one bruvva!
Wow. I’ve just discovered what happens when you hit Ctrl-R in bash. Go on, unixers, try it. Fantastic, eh? Damn, I love this stuff.
More search proxying
Necessity being the mother of invention, I’ve added a MySQL documentation search to the search proxy.
Prophecy?
Last night I dreamt that I met Guido van Rossum and he told me to write a book on python aimed at schoolchildren learning to program for the first time. Wacky!
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Eugene Wigner (1960), and The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics by R.W. Hamming (1980).
I think it is a joke, yes
In the words of Max Headroom, “I don’t know if it’s a joke or not”, but I’ve just read on popbitch that Bob the Builder and Atomic Kitten are going to release a duet for charity, called You Can Fix My Hole Again. :-)
Python Quick Reference
Python Quick Reference (also now in sidebar).
Ah yes, the Banach-Tarski Paradox
Ah yes, the Banach-Tarski Paradox. Of course.
IQ test with salary checking
Here’s an IQ Test which also tells you if you’re too smart for the salary you’re earning.
I got a cash/cleverness coefficient of 11, and “Your IQ is significantly more powerful than the average for your salary bracket. Demand a pay rise while you still have your faculties.”
That’s kinda nice, but what does it say about my ambition & drive? ;-)
British aquaria!
The plural of aquarium is, of course, aquaria.
Cringeley on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – incredible
Remarkable Cringeley on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome [robot].
She’s the tops
Wow. My girlfriend, Julie, has spent the last six months training to be an RSPCA Inspector – a tough course to get onto, and a tough course to complete. Well, I’ve just heard that she’s the top student this year. Go Jala!
Mount Everest from the ISS
Mount Everest from the International Space Station. Also, spotting Everest from space.
Oh, so scary
Hahahahaha – 54% of Americans know that it takes the Earth one year to orbit the sun. What the hell do the other 46% think?
Securing and Optimizing Linux
Securing and Optimizing Linux: Red Hat Edition. So where’s the Debian edition? :-)
Curling on Linux
Stoned – a curling simulator for linux.
Blogging in python?
Well well, what have we here? Pyblog, a “highly-customisable blogging framework coded entirely in Python”. Wooty!
Fix that proxy, mofo!
Julie pointed out that multiple words weren’t being handled properly by the search proxy. Interesting, doesn’t seem to be a problem with Opera under Linux, or IE5.5, so maybe it’s a non-issue, but I’ve tried to fix it anyway. Will try it out later from home…
Deadly Bloody Serious About Python
Interesting pythonic weblog: Deadly Bloody Serious About Python (amid the larger Deadly Bloody Serious).
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
Fantastic!!! I saw this page (“Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About”) a long time ago but lost the link, couldn’t find it on google, and subsequently forgot about it. Now those good lads at wotever have only gone and brought it back in to my life… Cheers lads!
I remember this being one of the funniest things I’d ever read. I shall now go and re-read it and find out if it’s as good as I remember. (Later: yep, not bad. Much bigger, too.)
Go loopback!
Funkin’ excellent… I just used the loopback device to mount an ISO image without first burning it to a CD. Nice!
Nice bit of cheese seeks biscuit or mouse
Nice bit of cheese seeks biscuit or mouse. No bourbons. [milk]
Why is it so hard to get decent digital versions of your photos?
Got three films back from Jessops yesterday, including CD-ROMs on which, I’d been told, I’d find lo-res and hi-res images, where the hi-res images were 20 megabyte JPEGs – excellent.
Alas, ’twas a bare-faced lie. The range from 600K to 1.3M, ie exactly the same as on the Kodak Photo-CDs. Still, at least the CD packaging’s more sensible. Sigh…
Oh yeah – will put some of the pictures up later, or maybe much later as I’m on holiday next week…
Climbin in the Lake District
An unsorted, uninvestigated list of links from the venerable piemaster to help me suss out climbing in the Lake District: www.keswickclimbingwall.co.uk, www.kendalwall.co.uk, http://www.thebmc.co.uk, www.howtownoac.co.uk, www.eclipse-outdoor.co.uk/mountain-guiding/rock-climbing.htm, www.adventure-days.co.uk. Cheers, Pete!
Total eclipses from now ’til 2020
Want to know where all the total eclipses of the sun will occur between 1997 and 2020? Me too!!! So it’s lucky there’s a handy chart which may be seen here, here, or here. Hurrah!
Right, I’m outta here
Alluded to earlier but not explicitly stated: I’m on holiday next week, in the Lake District with Jala. Thus, I won’t be updating Gimboland unless it rains constantly and we get so bored of sitting in a pub reading and playing Go that we seek out a cybercafe.
Good weeks all round, catch ya later, etc. As a parting gift, here’s one of my new photos: an angel in a graveyard in my home town (which is Callington).
I heart Cumbria
In the words of the furniture, “well, we’re back”. We found a very nice, yet pleasantly cheap B&B in Coniston, and had a few lovely days tramping around. The weather was mostly best described as “pissy”, but we did have one day (Thursday) when Jala manged to catch some sunburn (poor thing). Good food was eaten, excellent beer was quaffed, the rain was ignored with a shrug, and I fell in love with Alfred Wainwright‘s beautiful, detailed, witty and just damn cute guides to the Lakeland Fells.
The highlight of the week was definitely Sunburn Day, which was spent ascending, traversing, and descending the excellent Crinkle Crags, but we also had a good time at Tilberthwaite Gill, and watching the Everest IMAX movie. Oh yes, and going to Keswick three evenings in a row because Jala lost her purse. Fortunately they’re very honest in Ye Olde Golden Lion. :-)
We also went to Penrith in search of the fabled Penrith Tea Rooms, just so we could demand the finest wines available to humanity and state that we’re coming back in here. Alas, although we definitely found the right spot, the tea rooms appears to be the “Garden” cafe, unrecognisable on the inside. Ah well… We had some cake anyway.
HTTP headers from slashdot include Futurama quotes
HTTP headers from slashdot include Futurama quotes.
Wainwright’s Lakeland Fells photographic guide
Excellent: Wainwright’s Lakeland Fells photographic guide.
Worst Case Scenarios and how to deal with them
Worst Case Scenarios and how to deal with them. [wotever]
Must try out the fire-making some time…
Online thesaurus
I found a nice, lightweight implementation of Roget’s Thesaurus (circa 1911, admittedly), so I’ve included it in the search proxy, under “roget’s”. Much better than the Merriam-Webster offering currently in my left-sidebar.
Update 2002-08-13: I’ve now replaced that with a more up to date thesaurus.
Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated – again
Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated, including an example of using continuations to implement a back-tracking search. n-queens with continuations, anyone?
Fingerprint ID systems compromisable quite easily
Fingerprint ID systems compromisable using cheap, commonly-available materials.
Matsumoto tried these attacks against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them. The results are enough to scrap the systems completely, and to send the various fingerprint biometric companies packing. Impressive is an understatement.
Wainwright – he loved the animals, he did
I’ve just read in my Wainwright biography that at the end of the last book in his series of guides to the Lakeland fells, “he also reveals that he had made a small fortune from the books – all of which he is going to give to animals, helping the RSPCA to set up an animal shelter in Kendal.”
What a guy…
Google sets
Google sets – funky.
Selections from Aled’s photo album
Selections from Aled‘s photo album: See Him Fly!, See Him Gurn! (warning: shocking), See Him Nearly Lose His Hands, Nice, Nicer, and finally, Why Me?
iBrowser to be gecko-powered?
iBrowser to be gecko-powered? I do hope so. [robot]
Malc goes adventuring
Email from Malc this morning: “Guess where I was last night…” Got back at 6AM, apparently.
BSD vs. Linux
BSD vs. Linux – a very convincing argument, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Musical mornings
Two pieces of music with occasionally true names: Lionrock‘s “Morning will come when I’m not ready”, and Transcendental Love Machine‘s “When I wake up in the morning my head is full of wires”.
On most mornings, one or the other of these is true. Sometimes, both.
Today, it was the wires.
RMS in Aber next week
On my birthday, next Wednesday, Richard Stallman is giving a lecture at Aberystwyth University. I’m going to be in west Wales anyway, so it’s kinda tempting, but seems on overly geeky way to spend a birthday, perhaps.
The following Monday, Tony Benn is at Milford Haven. Also tempting.
Perhaps inspired by the above, last night I dreamt I met Richard Stallman and he told me to contribute to the GNU project‘s documentation. Who should I believe? Him, or Guido van Rossum, who visited me in an earlier dream, instructing me to write a programming manual for children? And what is the deeper meaning of all these nocturnal visits by software luminaries?
Iain Banks on “The Culture”
Iain Banks on “The Culture”. [via null, tenuously]
Road To Reading
Those good people at Road To Reading wrote to me to tell me that their 6-cassette Advanced Reading Course is available free to anyone in the world, not just to Americans, as I had stated on this very page in April 2001. Silly me. Still, I might have to order one now.
Pleasant side-effect: when browsing through my archives I was reminded of the existence of the excellent extended cake mix, a blog which is updated infrequently but well. Don’t miss the story about the talking panther.
Off I go to Wales
Right, I’m staying away from computers for the next week, stolidly ignoring the Jubliee celebrations and the World Cup in west Wales with Jala and Tip.. Back next Friday. Have funky ones, everyone…
Back I come from Wales, age incremented
Well, that was pleasant… A very relaxed week, thank you very much – and the sun even deigned to come out on my birthday. Hurrah.
Preferably furry ones
Sometimes I wish we humans had tails.
Toilet paper algorithms
We never realized that you had to be a computer scientist to use toilet paper. [ntk]
Blogger problems
Why haven’t I updated Gimboland in a week? Good question, gentle reader. In fact, I have updated it, but Blogger is refusing to publish the updated page to the web server. It appears a few other Bloggers users are having this problem, but not (apparently) enough that it’s getting any attention. I don’t know when or even if it’s going to be fixed.
Until it is, I’ll update the page manually, but probably not very often as it’s a right old rigmarole. I think that part of the problem is that now that they’re selling Blogger (as Blogger Pro) as well as giving it away free, the Pro users are getting more stable service, or at least more attention, than the freebie ones. I guess that’s fair enough when you want to make money (and Blogger’s been so successful that I’m sure they couldn’t afford to keep giving it away for free entirely), but it doesn’t help me much.
Why don’t I sign up to Blogger Pro? Because I intend on writing my own blogging software to place me in full control. This is underway, but it’s not ready for unveiling. Rich suggested I call it Gobber, which I quite liked. Anyway, more news as it happens. Cheers.
No more Blogger; now it’s Gobber
Gimboland is back – and from now on it’s maintained using Neomorph/Gobber, a python weblog system written by me.
It’s fairly rudimentary at the moment: just enough to get me to the point where I can ditch the increasingly flakey Blogger, basically. Blog entries are held in a text file, slurped into an appropriate data structure in memory, and turned into an index.html using albatross.
The next thing to add will be archive publishing, and then a through-the-web interface so I don’t have to be on my box to add posts. Having said that, it’s a great pleasure to update my blog (or ‘gob’, as I should really call it now) using emacs. :-)
Driving tips
Driving tips, courtesy of Jon.
Suffix trees and weightless threads in python
A couple of groovy python links:
Suffix trees, and suffix trees in python. “Suffix trees are a data structure that makes it convenient to do string matching against an entire data set in O(N) time. This is really wonderful, but creating the suffix tree isn’t always that easy.”
Also, implementing “weightless threads” with Python generators. Nice.
bash.org – random quotes from IRC
Random quotes from IRC, if you want to pipe coffee through your nose onto your keyboard.
Some goodies: oobe, coffee, hazard, revenge, ewwww, search engine, tetris, curiousity, autobiography, cool cat.
Directory Opus
Back in the Amiga days, my weapon of choice for file management was the excellent Directory Opus. Now I’ve ascended to the wonderful world of Linux I tend to eschew flashy graphical interfaces in favour of the raw naked power of the command line, but DOpus still has a place in my heart.
Being in a bit of a retro mood, I’ve been playing around with a Linux clone called Worker, and found it to be quite good. Today I discovered Gentoo, which is even better: nicer looking, nicer feeling, and very configurable.
I’m not sure if I’ll use either of them seriously, but it’s nice to take a trip down memory lane… :-)
Random word generator
Random Word Generator – using Markov chains to generate words which could be real, but happen not to be.
Elites for today?
Celestia and Mostly Harmless.
Celestia is “a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions.”, and Mostly Harmless is a project to create “a free Elite like space game based on Chris Laurel’s Celestia.” [ntk]
ftputil.py again
Excellent: ftputil.py, a high-level interface to python’s ftplib module, which is particularly interesting since it provides an upload_if_newer() method. Nice.
Download it from here.
E-sheep
This looks absolutely insane – I look forward to reading it tonight.
MayaVi – scientific data visualisation in python
MayaVi, “a free, easy to use scientific data visualizer, written in Python and using the VTK Visualization Toolkit for the graphics”. Nifty – with some very impressive looking screenshots (eg cartoid thresh, cartoid stream, streamlines).
Big up to the d
Happy Birthday, Dad!!!
GKrellM plugin programmers reference
GKrellM Plugin Programmers Reference.
I’m currently working on a plugin which displays sunrise/sunset times, like this but nicer looking. Stay tuned.
/dev/null goodies
More good stuff via Andy at The Null Device: Yo La Tengo make groovy music, they do. There’s even a text-only version of their webpage: righteous.
RFC 2468
I’ve just seen RFC 2468 for the first time: Vint Cerf‘s obituary for Jon Postel, the first Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. I’d seen his name before but didn’t realise who he was, or that he was dead. What a great way to be remembered…
Pet Shop Boys commentary
Pet Shop Boys Commentary. [null]
It’s quite interesting that this link has surfaced now, because just lately the Pet Shop Boys’ first album, Please, has been on my mind a bit. I’m not a huge fan of the band, and never paid much attention to anything after this album, but it does have a place in my heart. It was one of the records I used to sneak into my brother’s room and play at that joyous point in my early teens when I’d just discovered the record player. And just lately, for some unknown reason, I’ve had a hankering to listen to some of it again, in particular the non-singles Love Comes Quickly and Later Tonight, which even my naive prepubescent mind realised had sinister undertones.
As I say, I haven’t enjoyed much they’ve done since, and I would probably have dismissed them by now as bland popsters were it not for their performance of West End Girls on Top Of The Pops, which I caught a repeat of a couple of years ago. By that time I’d spent a while experimenting with synths, drum machines, etc. and I was astounded: it was live, it was stripped down and strung out, it seemed like they were improvising a new mix on the spot, and it sounded absolutely excellent to my techno-attuned ears. Highly impressive for the day, and a foreshadowing of their later more overt dance orientation, I guess. Since that point I’ve had a quiet respect for their ability if not their later releases.
Then Julie comes along and dismisses them with “I don’t like his voice”. Chicks, huh?
Found: the weblog of Jim Finnis
Found: the weblog of Jim Finnis, a games programmer in Aberystwyth who “is in beta and will be improved shortly”. :-)
The Circle – scalable decentralized p2p with Chord
The Circle, a scalable decentralized peer to peer application written in python, using a decentralised hashtable or “Chord” in a cunning manner described here (PDF). Another groovy project I probably won’t have time to contribute to…
Air traffic controllers under too much pressure
The number of formal complaints of over-work from air-traffic controllers has more than doubled since the Swanwick national control centre opened in January 2002.
That really makes me feel safe about flying in British skies. Not.
Sunpipes
Sunpipes – nifty idea, shame about the jingoistic homepage.
Two questions: can you turn them off, and how do they perform on a dull day?
Python goodies from Dr Dobb’s
Python goodies from Dr Dobb’s Python-URL:
Nice bit of advocacy, mimedecode.py, thoughts on metaclasses, and Christian Tismer’s slides on Continuations and Stackless Python.
BBC news tickers
BBC news tickers: they do exist after all…
Trusting in God since 1956, when the commies were getting really scary
I’m interested to read (here [null]) that until 1956 the motto of the USA was not “In God We Trust” but “E Pluribus Unum”, meaning “From Many, One”…
I think “Semper Ubi Sub Ubi” would have been better, though.
Did I just buy a house?
Yikes. Might have bought a house.
RMS biography online
Free As In Freedom, the biography of Richard Stallman, available online under the GFDL.
Cardiff Festival
The Cardiff Festival has just kicked off – loads of events going on over the next month or so. Not many bands announced yet for the Big Weekend (Aug 2-4), but Alabama 3 is one of them.
And this coming weekend, something new: Compass Point, “Hip Hop, World Music, Metal Punk, Indie, Cutting Edge & Dance music”. Could be good – or then again.
Dead link hunting leads to bigger kittens
Just going through the archives looking for cool stuff and I noticed the Random Kitten Generator link was broken. Google found me the new location and, oh my God, it’s A GIANT KITTEN!!!
Introducing Gimboland images and software
A couple of new links in the sidebar… images is my new image gallery (python powered, of course). At present there’s no fancy image viewer CGI but there will be soon. Anyway, check it out, there are some cute baby photos in there. More to come later… software is where I’ll be publishing some of my software over the next little while, but there’s nothing there yet. I just included the link so images wouldn’t have a gap next to it. ;-)
Minority Report – yeah, not bad
Went to the flicks last night and gazed in wonder upon Minority Report – very good indeed, certainly the best Spielberg I’ve seen for a long long time. Superb vision of Washington DC 2054, with autopilot cars that go vertically and cops with Jetpacs (at last!). Another one to add to the (fairly short) list of films starring Tom Cruise which I can watch without wanting to scratch my eyes out. :-)
Top 30 UK Blogs
Top 30 UK Blogs, according to Alexa [ntk]
interconnected.org seems to have a lot of interesting stuff. Yesterday’s entries, for instance, mention Buckminster Fuller, the Sephirotic Tree, and this remarkable snippet on flocking.
Also from there, and very cool, The collective consciousness is attempting to create Great Britain – why not go and help them out?
Bloggus Caesari
Bloggus Caesari, the weblog of Julius Caeser – excellent. [kevan]
The Man in the Bowler Hat
The Man in the Bowler Hat by A. S. J. Tessimond: the poem upon which Osymyso‘s excellent The Not Quite Fool is based.
dataflow-orientied programming in python
dataflow – a framework for dataflow-oriented programming in python. What it’s for.
Short and sweet haiku article
Short and sweet haiku article.
Optimising keyboard layout with a genetic algorithm
Using a genetic algorithm to optimise keyboard layout. [robot]
Hmmm, might have to try out this Dvorak malarkey…
Windows still rubbish
Hello? Windows users? When are you going to wise up? Hello? Anyone in there? Hello?
3d-Desktop
3d-Desktop, “a GNOME OpenGL program for switching virtual desktops in a seamless 3-dimensional manner”.
jwz on message threading
jwz on message threading.
“In this document, I describe what is, in my humble but correct opinion, the best known algorithm for threading messages (that is, grouping messages together in parent/child relationships based on which messages are replies to which others.)”
Quite interesting, although it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I wanted a generalised way of threading messages where I had a flat collection in which each message contained a reference to its parent (if any), whereas much of the magic that jwz applies is to do with working out what the hell those parent/child relationships are in the first place, in the whacky world of email. Still, it’s all good stuff and his general scheme got me moving in the right direction.
Also groovy: WebCollage, which is now running as my Xscreensaver.
The spiral of governance
Last night, sleeping the sleep of the just, I dreamt that Britain’s House Of Commons was arranged in a spiral, and that over time, the members occupied seats closer and closer to its centre. Eventually they would reach it, at which point they’d go back to the outside, starting the cycle once again. A single cycle lasted many years, and the moment when the centre was reached was considered to have special cosmic significance. It was deemed typical of Tony Blair that he would have the luck to be in power at one such historic moment…
Climbing Snowdon is a great way to spend a day
Whew – fantastic weekend! On Friday afternoon Malc & I drove up to Snowdonia where we met up with my Dad, my brother Colin, and his wife Caitlin, there to climb some hills. On Saturday we did Snowdon (by the Rhyd Ddu path), and yesterday Malc & I did Moel Siabod (by the east ridge), both of which were excellent fun. The peak of Snowdon was surreal – there’s a railway station and also the very busy Miners’ Track, so it was teeming with people – quite strange after our peaceful climb.
Anyway, I rattled off three films over the two days, so there should be plenty of material for a webpage when I finally get round to visiting Jessops again. Many thanks, once again, to our expert Sherpa, Colin. :-)
More depressing TCPA/Palladium analysis
More depressing TCPA/Palladium analysis by Ross Anderson, Reader in Security Engineering at Cambridge University.
Doggles – goggles for dogs
Doggles – goggles for dogs. Fantastic.
Veneer selector
Having trouble picking out the right veneer? Let the veneer selector help!
Nice… Thanks, Malc.
Musicality all around
Quite a few interesting musical things going on at the moment…
The ever-discerning Andrew has been raving about Seascapes Of The Interior so I followed the links to check them out. Their “Sounds” page led me to download Protection from mp3.com, and “Discriminating” & “Marks on a Beetle’s Back” from myplay.com. Very interesting stuff.
Protection is, frankly, beautiful, especially for the first half (acoustic marvellousness), and gets somewhat menacing and strange towards the end, veering ever so slightly into “prog” stylings (the sins of which I know way too much about), with wordless vocals which reminded of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull… I wasn’t sure if I liked this at first, but I am now: I do.
“Discriminating” has more floaty acousticness, laced with a touch of feedback and some spoken female vocals which, for some reason, put me in mind of some stuff from The Sisterhood’s Gift. But don’t let that put you off – it’s quite pleasant really, if a little diaphonous.
“Marks on a Beetle’s Back”, the longest of the three tracks, sits somewhere between the two – denser than Protection, but more upbeat than Discriminating. Aha. I’ve just figured out the band this stuff really reminds me of: This Mortal Coil.
Whilst grabbing those last two from myplay.com, I also grabbed “Hungover, as the Oven at Maida Vale” from Godspeed You Black Emperor‘s Peel session. I’d heard the name before (probably from the great man himself) but not the music, and, well, wow. It’s incredible. Long, rambling, difficult, beautiful, scary, tragic, crazy, etc., etc.
So it’s been a pretty interesting week for my ears, basically.
And then, out of the blue, I get email from my old buddy Mr Jan Tomlinson, telling me the following:
“Too many DJs”, comp, you may already have it, if you don’t buy it, it is just bonkers brilliance I’m afraid!!, or stuff the Hives and all that malarky, go straight to the Buff Medways!!!
or try the Gotan Project, argies making music, very goooooooooooood!
Von Dutch
Now, considering I’ve never received email from Jan before, and haven’t seen him in probably two or three years, that’s pretty “to the point”, not to mention slightly random. :-) Thanks for the tips, Jan!
Soylent Green is yummy
“What the hell is Filet Minion?” Excellent. :-)
Porn clerk stories
Via null, some fascinating and highly entertaining (in a morbid people-watching kinda way) porn clerk stories. The author is basically a left-wing freedom-loving liberal, and some of the best parts are when this attitude is challenged, or at least brought into focus.
Example: “And it’s never the 21-year-olds who rent Barely Legal, it’s always the 45-and-ups. Gah. The 21-year-olds do occasionally rent the one Older Women, Hotter Sex video we have. I approve of this, in a shocking display of my own personal prejudices.”
and, beautifully disarming:
“He is, after all, just putting on makeup. But why in our porn section? It has such harsh fluorescent lighting.”
Excellent.
The valley of happiness lives up to its name
Marvellous, marvellous weekend camping in the fabled Happy Valley, up near Abergaveny with a bunch of slightly deranged people I’m privileged to call my friends. In a remarkable reversal of the usual Laws Of The Universe, Julie and I were the last people to crash out on Saturday night. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed camping so much.
Sodaplay
Something rather flashy and fun which Odin showed me a long time ago, that I’d forgotten about: sodaplay. (Requires Java, I think).
Bless me
I just can’t stop sneezing today.
Forensic Programming course notes
Forensic Programming course notes, a work in progress. [via risks]
I seem to have stopped sneezing, by the way.
American man jailed for barbequing a kitten
American man jailed for barbequing a kitten, may get up to five years in prison.
Stupid moon rock thieves!
Moon rock thieves nabbed after advertising them for sale on the web – showing that NASA interns aren’t as smart as you might think.
Bob Monkhouse, Protector of The Light
Family fortunes stupidity, and a bit more.
“Something that frightens Dracula”: “Bob Monkhouse”. Bob Monkhouse???
Everest summit view
The view from the summit of Everest – thanks, Rich.
Making things happen vs making things work
“Many of the products and services supplied by companies offering “solutions” never worked, or never worked properly” [robot]
McNealy’s attitude is the culmination of the last decade’s ascendant ethos for U.S. business: near worship and lavish compensation for people who “make things happen” coupled with near contempt and minimal rewards for people who “make things work.”
Hmmm, doesn’t sound familiar at all…
Epileptic fit signs
Don’t miss this: a first-person description of the sensations leading to an epileptic fit – incredible. [null]
Faulty schematics of ruined machine
Faulty schematics of ruined machine, from Godspeed You Black Emperor‘s website.
Off to WOMAD
Right, I’m off to Reading, to check out the WOMAD Festival, taking place there this weekend. Barbara has cunningly scored us cheap day tickets for tomorrow, which is super good ‘cos Francis Dunnery is playing. Have funky weekends, people.
Yay WOMAD
Mmmm, that was an extremely relaxed weekend. WOMAD was very chilled, easily the most relaxed, “happy-vibe” festival I’ve been to. I think we’ll go for the entire weekend next time. It’s much smaller than Glastonbury (a fifth of the size? an eighth?) but very vibrant and with loads of good music. We saw several bands from various countries, and they were all as energetic and frenetic as you’d expect. :-)
Francis Dunnery was definitely the highlight, for us at least. He said at the start that it was going to be a relaxed and gentle set for a beautiful evening, and so it was. Julie and I sat there with a jug of Sangria between us, and mellow vibes abounded. There was only one song I recognised (an old It Bites number called Hunting The Whale), but that didn’t detract at all. There were, alas, a couple of moments of self-indulgent guitar twiddling, which really didn’t fit in with the rest of the set, but thankfully they were brief and few. I think I might well have to pick up his new album soon, and get Julie singing along to “Hometown” again.
The rest of the weekend was spent in similarly relaxed fashion, loafing around Reading with Barbara & Tobi, watching Goldmember (quite amusing, but no great shakes – be sure to disengage brain before viewing), then returning to Cardiff to spend yesterday lazing around in pubs, reading. Julie started Touching The Void at about 2pm, and finished it at about 7 – bless her (and loved it, of course). Oh yes, also finally saw Dude, Where’s My Car last night, and I have to say, I did enjoy it. Delightfully silly.
Binary ha ha
From Paul: “There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”
Killer fonts
Killer Fonts – “Handwritten fonts by outlaws, brainiacs, maniacs, and rock n rollers”. [malc]
The cruft index
From Rich: The Cruft Index – very true.
Cruft Force 6. Limping. Description: [Delphi|Visual Basic|Java] suddenly remembers a trial shareware component – deleted six months ago because it was rubbish – and refuses to compile anything until it is reinstated.
Oh, I’ve been there – which is one of the many reasons why I refuse to touch Delphi and, if possible, Windows. :-)
Best British weblog
The Guardian is launching “the first competition to find the best British weblog“.
More cool APODs
A couple more cool Astronomy Pics from the last week: solar system, setting sun.
The joy of proof
Gimbo scratches his head as he ponders the following: Given a real number x and a rational number e, find a rational number within a distance e of x.
Later… OK, a bit of googling later and I’m reminded that for every irrational number, there is some rational number within an arbitrary distance of it. I reckon if I can find the proof of that result, I’ll know how to solve the above. Next question is how to find the proof…
Ants in the Mr Pants
Ants in the Mr Pants – excellent.
Painting with light
Painting with light – cool photographic technique involving a completely dark room, a very long exposure, and a photographer walking around carrying a dim and focussed lamp which they point at the parts of the subject they want lit, just for long enough for it to register on the film. Very nifty.
Valgrind
Valgrind: “An open-source tool for finding memory-management problems in Linux-x86 executables”.
Bookmarks cleanup
I’m moving some stuff out of my (rather crufty) bookmarks list, which I don’t really use any more. This stuff will be designated by the following attribution: [bm], which may prove confusing since, once moved to the weblog, the link will be removed from the bookmark list. I hope you can all deal with that. You can? Very good. Carry on.
Eric conveys an emotion
Many of you will have already seen this. It’s so good it’s worth a second trip, or, if you haven’t in fact seen it yet, a first: Eric Conveys An Emotion [bm]. Superb.
The Monkeybagel Document
I have yet to come across a more truthful and insightful description of the job of a programmer than The Monkeybagel Document [bm].
The key phrases here are “unburdened by a requirement for architectural forethought”, and my personal favourite, “sinister grace”… :-)
Melrose Place art
Here’s an interesting one from the bookmarks. Melrose Place Art [bm].
With the ultimate goal of involving the television audience, the GALA Committee placed numerous props and set pieces in camera’s view, which were then broadcast to an international audience of millions. Although the artworks were not intended to subvert or parody the series, the characters and stories often provided an opportunity to create pieces which addressed topics like gender, infectious diseases, violence, environmental devastation and global conflict.
It’s groovy. Unlike Melrose Place.
More Gimboland sidebar tweaking
A couple of changes in the “blogs” section of the sidebar:
Leviathan (no activity since April) -> Swaine’s World
Plastic (I just don’t read it) -> Bifurcated Rivets
Earth as art
Earth As Art – more superfunky views from space [rivets].
My personal favourites: Aleutian Clouds, Dasht-e Kevir, Icefall, Lambert Glacier, Karman Vortices
The Big Bus
Gimbo! Forget ye not!!! The Big Bus is on BBC1 at 01:35 on Monday night (ie Tuesday morning)!!! [ntk]
Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada
Now playing: The Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP by Godspeed You Black Emperor, the first CD I’ve bought in ages. On initial listening, I’d say it’s rather good. Will definitely be acquiring more by this band over the next few weeks I think…
While I’m at it, let’s have a big thumbs-up for Seascapes Of The Interior. A little birdie told them I’d mentioned them here on Gimboland, so they (in the form of Adam “Guitars, Vocals, Organ” Casey) wrote to me offering to send a copy of their demo! How’s that for service? :-) I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival, and there’s an album out soon too, apparently. Groovy.
The other thing I did today was pick up no less than seven films I’d had developed, the highlights of which I’ll be adding to the image gallery as and when (though obviously it’s gonna take a while). Subject matter: Julie’s passing out ceremony, the Lake District, the Garth (hill near Cardiff), my birthday, and Snowdonia – ie loads of it. :-)
Recording Artists Safety Guide To The Beach
Recording Artists Safety Guide To The Beach – amusing, depressing, and offensive all at the same time!
The Ion window manager
I’ve started using the Ion Window Manager after reading an article about it via Rootprompt. So far I’m really liking it, although it’s going to take some getting used to.
Ion … tries to address the navigation problem by having the screen divided into frames that take up the whole screen and never overlap.
I’ve been getting more and more dissatisfied by Gnome for a while now, and in particular by the way I have to use my mouse for so much mundane navigational stuff. This may or may not be an improvement – only time will tell – but I’m going to give it a go.
So far the main thing I’m missing is “sticky” windows, in particular gkrellm – ion currently has no concept of stickiness and it looks like the author isn’t intending to introduce one, saying that it breaks the paradigm. Hmmm…
I was a bit worried about The Gimp at first – it didn’t look like it was going to be usable. However, now I’ve figured out I can put the gimp windows on their own workspace, I’m thinking it might become more usable. Just maybe.
Python’s & Java’s bytecodes compared by GvR
Guido on Python bytecode compared with Java bytecode – interesting [python-url].
Secrets to a happy marriage
Secrets to a happy marriage:
1.It is important to find a woman that cooks and cleans.
2. It is important to find a woman that makes good money.
3. It is important to find a woman that likes to have sex.
4. It is vitally important that these three women never meet.
Yeah, Ion is niiiice
I’m starting to really like Ion.
Grrrrrrrrr
Dammit, I did forget The Big Bus. Grrr.
A contrarian view of open source
Superb Bruce Sterling talk: A Contrarian View of Open Source. Presumably doing the rounds, but I got it via Rich.
This guy … William Gates? He’s my age. He’s a gentleman of my generation. We’re a few months apart in age. I’ve never met him. I hate to pick on him. Really. He’s obviously a very smart man. And he’s a nicer guy, as a human being, than a lot of his competitors. But I have to pick on Bill, instead of Bill’s competitors. Because Bill physically killed and ate all his competitors.
The older Bill gets, the uglier he gets. He’s a guy riding a white horse, that turned into a runaway bronco bull, that turned into a scaly crocodile, and now, it is turning into some kind of diseased revenant. It’s like the Steed of the Nazgul, those black, flying zombie horses that explode when exposed to fresh water. That’s what Microsoft is like now.
…
When a crackdown comes, that isn’t the end of the story. That’s the start of a dissident’s story.
Another fundamental security flaw in Windows
Another fundamental security flaw in Microsoft Windows: Shatter Attacks – How to break Windows.
The flaws presented in this paper are, at the time of writing, unfixable. The only reliable solution to these attacks requires functionality that is not present in Windows, as well as efforts on the part of every single Windows software vendor. Microsoft has known about these flaws for some time; when I alerted them to this attack, their response was that they do not class it as a flaw.
I’ve successfully executed these attacks against a Terminal Server a hundred miles away.
Nice.
Sundowners!
I had my first gin & tonic last night, and also my second, third, and fourth. <slurred>Cheers, Emma!</slurred>
Things I will do if I am ever a vampire
Things I will do if I am ever a vampire [wotever].
When I take the Hero’s True Love to make her my concubine and eternal slave I will not show her off to goad the Hero into making an attack. That would goad the Hero into making an attack.
Go rocketcam!
Australian amateur rocket enthusiast mounts a wireless camera on a rocket and sends it up – groovy.
Good geeky t-shirt
Excellent T-shirt – if you’re a geek, anyway [ntk].
PJ O’Rourke interview
One for Ed: a P.J. O’Rourke interview [robot - hi Jorn!].
mailshots.co.uk – cheap photographic film
mailshots.co.uk – cheap photographic film by mail order in the UK. Slow site, but they’ve got Ilford XP2 for 2.45 a roll, which is a bargain in my book. Thanks, krag wad.
The Mad Revisionist
The Mad Revisionist, a project which I fear is doomed to failure, for gullibility knows no limits [reenhead via null].
The walking forest machine
The Walking Forest Machine [rivets].
I wasn’t sure if this was real or not (I thought some of the pictures looked a little fake) but Plustech is apparently a subsidiary of Timberjack and they sure look like the real deal – manufacturers of what are perhaps the ultimate in testerone-fuelled power tools for the modern man about the forest.
Hell sweet hell!
Another comic to read, although there don’t seem to have been any new strips since April: Hell Sweet Hell.
Nice: Satan’s video-dating attempt.
Quorn not so groovy after all?
This is the first I’ve heard that Quorn has a questionable health record. It’s been available here in the UK for years, and I have to say I quite like it. Hrrrmmm… [via robot]
Division by three actually possible
Division by three (Conway & Doyle, 1994).
In this paper we show that it is possible to divide by three.
… A proof that it is possible to divide by two was presented by Bernstein in his Inaugural Dissertation of 1901, which appeared in Mathematische Annallen in 1905; Bernstein also indicated how to extend his results to division by any finite n, but we are not aware of anyone other than Bernstein himself who ever claimed to understand this argument.
… Indeed, we’re somewhat doubtful whether large natural numbers (like 80^5000, or even 2^200) exist in any very real sense, and we’re secretly hoping that Nelson will succeed in his program for proving that the usual axioms of arithmetic — and hence also of set theory — are inconsistent. All the more reason, then, for us to stick with methods which, because of their concrete, combinatorial nature, are likely to survive the possible collapse of set theory as we know it today.
Search proxy now has dictionary and thesaurus
Finally added decent dictionary and thesaurus options to the search proxy in the sidebar. Of course, I’m the only person who’ll ever use them, but hey, that’s Gimboland! :-)
ICANN shenanigans
Succinct overview of recent ICANN shenanigans: Internet overseer takes wrong path on accountability.
The Wizardry of Id
The Wizardry of Id – very interesting techie examination of development of 3-d gaming technologies in the hands of John Carmack [robot].
Homeland insecurity & Schneier
Homeland Insecurity – a looooong but very worthwhile article looking at security visionary Bruce Schneier and the plethora of “security measures” being introduced in the U.S.A. [null]. The base message is, surprise surprise, the whole thing’s screwed up.
Think I might subscribe to Crypto-Gram, Counterpane‘s monthly security newsletter…
Smokehand
I went to see local band Smokehand last night, not because I’d ever heard of them or was a fan, but as a friend-of-a-friend thing. Anyway, they were superb and very unusual – sleazy, jazzy, dark, and yes, smoky. :-) Will definitely be keeping an eye and an ear open for these boys.
Music slump ‘not caused by piracy’
Music slump ‘not caused by piracy’.
Record sales are down 15% in the US, but Massachusetts-based outfit Forrester Research, which surveyed 1,000 American online consumers, said it saw no evidence of decreased CD buying among frequent consumers of digital music.
Penguin prostitution
Old but good: Penguin prostitution [popbitch].
Afghan anti-American backlash has begun
There’s an anti-American backlash brewing in Afghanistan, which is worrying aid workers who feel the lines between military and civilian operators have been deliberately blurred by the former [robot].
“I have banned all coalition forces from my compound and will not meet with them in public,” a Western humanitarian official told me in Kabul. “If they want to contact me, I tell them to send me e- mails. I will meet them only in certain public authority offices. Yes, of course we are worried that people will mistake us for the military. They have these ‘humanitarian units’ and they ask ‘how can we coordinate with you?’ but I refuse to co- ordinate with them. They simply have no idea how to deal with the social, cultural, political complex of life here.”
Leonardo Dicaprio as Alexander The Great?
Leonardo Dicaprio as Alexander The Great? You have to be kidding…
JDEE – java and emacs
If I am ever required to use Java, I may find the Java Development Environment for Emacs (JDEE) useful.
Klein bottles
Klein bottles – nice! [rivets]
These are the finest closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifolds sold anywhere in our three spatial dimensions.
Santa: all I want for Christmas is a Klein mug. :-)
How many inches of what?
I received spam today whose subject line was: How many “inches” does it take to satisfy a woman in bed? Upon inspection, it seemed that yes, the “inches” in question were indeed the ones you might expect – so why the quotes?
What if they’d really meant to include the quotes? What if the “inches” weren’t the obvious inches, but some other inches? What might they have referred to? And yes, please tell us, how many are required? :-)
hoofers!
My girlfriend recently made up a new word to describe a less-than-attractive woman: “hoofer”. Use it where you might also use “minger”, for instance. Try it out: it’s suprisingly satisfying.
confideinme.com
confideinme.com – people confess their secrets to the rabid web at large [wotever]. Sweet!
Psychic phone lines – fun to work for?
Interesting and short look at working on a psychic phone line [rivets].
Just what is the penguin/dragon relationship here?
From this distance, it looks like a dragon riding a penguin [robot]. Given time, it may turn out to be a penguin riding a dragon.
Steve Bell online
I went looking for an online version of the Biff cartoon that appears in the Guardian, but didn’t find one (yet). I did, however, find an archive of the excellent Steve Bell‘s work.
Wunderbar
I’ve had this conversation with Julie, I’m sure. Well, the latter part, anyway.
Sadly, not that much there – just a taster. Enough to make me add some Biff books to my Christmas list, anyway. :-)
While I was looking for it, I also came across this short but amusing page about Last Kiss, which seems similar in some ways.
The Zope honeymoon has passed
Just because Zope is written in python, doesn’t mean it’s as fun to use. :-/
Oblomovka, the weblog of Danny O’Brien
Oblomovka, the weblog of Danny O’Brien, of Need To Know fame.
Galan, a modular synthesiser for Linux
Galan, a modular synthesiser for Linux. Had a quick play this morning and it looks pretty groovy, full-featured, etc. Nice.
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, which as Andrew at nullzilla describes it (and I can’t do better), is a secret web journal maintained by an anonymous sound engineer working on an album with a major-label-signed band, and showing just how fucked up things are in the recording business. Fascinating.
Insightful quote: And anybody that thinks I should blindly skip through life satisfied at being unproductive so-long as I’m being compensated for such activities, isn’t considering the negative effect that lack of accomplishment can have on the brain. The act of accomplishing nothing other than wastefulness is both exhausting and debilitating to the soul. And while in the short term it may be self-serving to my financial well-being to participate in such unproductiveness, the resulting waste only serves to sicken me.
Yurts and furniture from the festival
A couple of bits from when we went to WOMAD, which I hadn’t got round to including here yet:
Yurtworks – Mongolian yurts, made in Cornwall, available to buy or hire in a number of sizes. We went inside a sixteen-footer at the festival and it was niiiiiice – very comfortable, very relaxed, and huge. Yurt holiday on Bodmin Moor, anyone?
Desirable Debris – handbuilt furniture using reclaimed matierials, with the tagline “Screws & Glue The Only Things New”.
There must be more than this
It’s an absolutely beautiful day. I should be walking on a hillside, or climbing a rock face, or jumping out of an aeroplane with a parachute on my back, or swimming in the sea. I should be walking a dog. I should be wearing shades. I should be wearing shorts. I should be with the one I love.
Instead I’m sat in an air-conditioned office whose windows are obscured by blinds. Nuts.
Wanker’s Corner
Wanker’s Corner, Oregon. [popbitch]
Goodbye Mike, hello Shauny
I got bored of Mike Swaine not updated his page for nearly a month, so I removed him from the sidebar. I never read Slashdot anymore, so I removed that too.
Those particular darlings have moved over to make room for Found and What’s new Pussycat?. Welcome aboard, boys.
The Internet Mah Jong Server
The Internet Mah Jong Server, allowing you to play Mah Jong in real-time with other humans around the world. [girl]
Ultimate Hitchhikers
Ultimate Hitchhikers [rivets].
This amazing species definitely goes to the top of our hitchhiker list with 12 SRDUs (Sock Removal Difficulty Units).
Chess is fun – oh yes
Chess Is Fun. Most of the chess sites I’ve seen have either covered the real basics (ie the moves the pieces can make) or have lived in the realm of advanced strategy. I like this site because it introduces basic strategy – fundamentals which every player should know such as “knights belong in the centre, and in holes in the pawn structure”. I suck at chess, but maybe if I study this and play a bit more, I could improve…
Becoming a stone monkey
I went climbing at the Welsh International Climbing Centre last night, as I’ve done on most Tuesday evenings since January. At last I’ve found a sport I enjoy – and it only took 27 years! My climbing’s definitely improved since I started (as you’d hope), and I can now comfortably climb routes that had me frozen in terror and indecision in my early days. A hell of a lot of it is just confidence – knowing that you probably can make that move, and also that if you try and fail, the rope will hold you. Probably.
Having said that, I’ve still got a long way to go – in particular I haven’t led yet and haven’t climbed outdoors at all. I’m probably moving to Carmarthenshire soon, so the plan is to join a climbing club over there and get to know the Gower peninsula and the Pembrokeshire cliffs, I guess.
Anyway, just thought I’d update the world on my climbing progress. Normal service will now be resumed.
Water wars
Water wars [robot].
There’s a lot of tension between India and Pakistan, but water is one of the things that has not caused too many problems. That’s because of the Indus Water Treaty, one of the world’s most successful negotiations of water conflict. If that conflict had not been settled through a treaty, there’s no doubt that they would have been at war long ago.
… Rivers like the Yellow River or the Colorado don’t make it to the end anymore. And the Yellow River is a very ferocious river. To understand that that river dries up before it reaches its end is almost unfathomable.
Does Gimboland need comments?
I’ve just been told that a) Gimboland needs a comment system and b) Gimboland is boring. Hmph.
Actually, I agree.
As to a), I’d like a comment system but neomorph, the software powering Gimboland is homegrown and deliberately lightweight – so whilst it’s a nice idea it probably ain’t gonna happen soon. Comments and feedback are welcomed by emailing me, though (address link in sidebar).
As to b), well, hmph again I guess. :-)
I’m listening to John Peel right now if that helps bump up my interest rating (probably not – and probably even less so if I tell you I’m doing it over ADSL on a Linux box using xmms – ahead, geek factor 10, etc). Damn it, that man is a genius. Normally with Radio 1, when there’s music playing I wish they’d stop it and talk, but then they talk such utter shite that I wish they’d just shut the fuck up and play a record, at which point the whole grisly cycle begins once again. But with Peel, the music’s often amazing, and constantly interesting, and when he talks it’s poetry on toast. Always a pleasure – Peel and Pig, we salute you.
Happy birthday for Friday, by the way.
Dave Gorman’s got a new show
Dave Gorman’s got a new show, though that teaser page is pretty piss poor, imho. Anyway, w00t!
Happy Birthday Alice and John
Happy Birthday Alice Dickinson, one year old today! Card is on its way… :-)
And yes, happy birthday Mr Peel.
Gimboland gets an RSS feed
Paul Novarese appeared out of nowhere and said You don’t need comments, you need an RSS feed! (Score:5, Insightful)
How right he is. Suiting thought to deed, I got to work, and a mere half hour later, we proudly present the Gimboland RSS feed! Thanks for the thought, Paul.
Now to go and register it…
RRR – Melbourne-based internet radio
RRR, a Melbourne-based radio station which has been recommended to me (thanks, Richard!). Haven’t had chance to listen yet, but will probably check it out over the weekend… :-)
Genetic algorithms doing crazy things
Learning to fly and pretending to oscillate – those crazy genetic algorithms! [found]
My weekend
In another world, I got married on Saturday.
In this world, that wedding has been postponed until a time when Julie and I are settled together again (as opposed to being seperated by hundreds of miles), so we went to Glastonbury, and stayed in a rather pleasant B & B instead.
On Saturday afternoon we had a nose around the Abbey, chortled at some of the shops on the High Street, and were intimidated by some of the frankly aggressive “free spirits”, then Julie had a Reiki session which left her feeling relaxed and happy, but still with a sore back. In the evening we had dinner outside a pub, met a nice dog with a bit of a flea allergy, discussed the rules of chess, drank lots of gin whilst watching the local mating rituals, and slept in The Most Comfortable Bed Ever.
Yesterday, we breakfasted with Australians, climbed the Tor (’tis but a pimple!), and then went to Wookey Hole where there are some groovy caves, a reasonably interesting paper mill, and best of all, a maze of mirrors. I vaguely remember going here as a nipper, and my brother Colin pronouncing the caves better than those at Cheddar – a shocking line to take, I thought at the time. I haven’t been to Cheddar for a long long time, so I couldn’t possibly comment, but Wookey was certainly well worth visiting. (Hey, I just realised why Colin liked Wookey so much.)
After Wookey, we drove around Somerset, heading vaguely towards Weston-super-Mare but ending up at Brean Sands which was just the epitome of the Great British Holiday: mobile homes and caravans that don’t go anywhere, sand in your, well, everything, and cheaply-built single-storey resorts with “cabaret”, a word which strikes terror into my heart. Super.
Home, pizza, pub, bed. Lovely.
Kill Your Idol
It’s like Axl said, kiddies: Kill Your Idol.
Golden Rules for Making Money
Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum, 1880 [gammatron].
Phil France lives!
I’ve just discovered the weblog of an old friend and housemate of mine: Phil. I don’t have time to read any of it right now, which is why I’m linking to it. It’s like setting the video so you don’t have to watch TV. :-)
Review: Seascapes Of The Interior promo
OK, it’s about time I shared my thoughts on the Seascapes Of The Interior promo/demo, which I received a few weeks ago and which I’ve been busily absorbing. The first thing to say is thanks to the band for sending it, of course. It’s nice to be in the club – just wish I could make it to some gigs. :-)
My snap/grossly simplistic characterisation of the band: experimental folky acoustic/electric instrumentals with an occasional vocal component (but “song” would be too strong a word). :-) Think God Speed You Black Emperor! meets Fairport Convention, perhaps. Sort of. I guess. If you want to hear some and make up your own mind, I don’t think think you can do better than Protection.
There are five tracks on the demo. I’d already downloaded and got to know “Discriminating Wisdom” and “Protection”, and I really like the latter, so I was mainly interested in the three I hadn’t heard.
So what did I think? Well, obviously this is all my stupid subjective opinion and thus utterly worthless, but what the heck, I’ll share.
The first track, “Symbiont Step”, is superb. A very slow, quiet and droning start gradually builds over a few minutes to a fully-formed and laid-back opener, which at eight minutes drops gently away only to suddenly return with added super-frenzied violin attack. It’s a somewhat Godspeed You Black Emperor! construct, of which I fully approve. Then a slow descent back into the land of the chilled, ending at just over eleven minutes. This is the good stuff – more of the same, please.
I find “Passing” very unsatisfying, simply because it’s so short and leaves me hungry for more. It fades in, does its stuff for about a minute, then fades out. Such a shame, because the stuff it does is groovy: distorted slide guitar over strummy acoustic guitar and synth (or is it organ? mellotron samples?). It’s really interesting and I want more. :-/
“Discriminating Wisdom”, I already know, and it’s fairly good, though not a favourite. Seven minutes long, basically a dreamy, floaty piece with ethereal female vocals you can’t quite make out. It’s nice enough, but to my mind it’s pretty low-impact.
“As I Patiently Watch The Blood Drain Away” leaves me utterly perplexed, particularly when I’m told that it’s going to be included on the band’s forthcoming album. It’s inoffensive, I suppose, but that’s because it’s basically devoid of musical interest (IMHO). We have four minutes of an annoying riff on what sounds like a child’s toy metal xylophone, with a bit of warbly vocal and droning synth for interest (?), then a further two minutes of some sort of whistley feedback noise (a bit like the spooky bit in Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”), and that’s it. What’s the deal here? It’s just too experimental (self-indulgent?) for my tastes, I fear. To me its value is as a discordant counterpoint to emphasise the beauty and musicality of the next and final track, “Protection”.
“Protection” is just wonderful. I really don’t know how to describe it adequately. I find it utterly beautiful, musical, haunting, scary, and all told I think it’s my favourite track of the year, which is really saying something. I’m not going to bother to attempt to describe it, because I won’t do it justice – if you want to hear it, get it here.
I realise that a lot of the above is pretty critical. The problem is, the bits I like, I love, but I don’t really know how to express that. It’s easier for me to describe what I don’t like, I suppose. Overall, I do really like what I’ve heard and I’m seriously looking forward to getting the album when it comes out – I just hope it’s more in the style of “Symbiont Step” and “Protection”, and less in the style of “As I Patiently Watch…”. Fingers crossed.
The maximum possible size of an LP
An investigation into the maximum possible size of an LP, which unfortunately assumes it has no mass [phil]. Nice choice of vinyl for the images.
Howdy doody RSS people!!!
I’ve added meaningful titles to the items in the RSS feed (previously was just the timestamp). This means I have to add meaningful titles to my posts from now on, and since I don’t see the need for such titles on the front page, the only way you’ll see them is via RSS. An exciting bonus for the RSS-obsessed portion of my audience, eh?
I also realised that since the RSS links go straight to the Gimboland archive pages, I need to be more careful about keeping the archive for the current month up to date. This requires thought. Perhaps the RSS feed should just link to the front page, rather than the archives? Hmmm…
The adoring public
Cor… Scanning my webstats and referral logs, I notice that the following good people have all linked to me lately: Anita Rowland, buffoonery.org, Tastes Like Chicken, Pysbertron, and Audra. Plenty for me to check out there, then…
Cusack For President (yes!) [chicken].
Tasty Wisdom Nuggets
Two tasty nuggets of programming wisdom I’ve had lying around for a while, not really knowing what to do with them:
There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. — C. A. R. Hoare
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant. — Alan Perlis.
No idea where I found these, I’m afraid…
Getting too old for goth girls?
I’m slightly distressed, and slightly relieved, to find out that goth girls don’t seem to do it for me like they used to. Maybe the sample I took is skewed, but the inner frenzy that would once have been kindled at their sight, now lays dormant. Perhaps I’m leaving childish things behind, or maybe I’m just getting old. Thankfully, there are exceptions to be found, but frankly they’re just babes, never mind the gothic…
Update 2003-06-02: Schwing-a-ling!
Now, this is more like it. (Ack – link broken. It was “Gothic Cat of the Week”).
The Degree Confluence Project
The Degree Confluence Project [rebecca].
The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.
Swaziland is complete! Still a couple of secondary visits to do in Wales, I notice…
Hamster found driving toy racing car
What is it with all these bloody hamster stories lately?
Cosmic angst
There should be a word for that moment when you finish a Spicy Curry Pot Noodle then look down and see the unopened sachet of Spicy Sauce sat on your desk.
On the bright side, the next one will be Extra Spicy!
Ruby Mission
But of a curry theme this afternoon… Death By Curry including lots of recipes. Mmmmm.
Notes and queries
The Guardian’s Notes & Queries [found].
All shook up
Wunderbar: this is the Biff cartoon that made me go looking for Biff online.
Not-quite-accidents in the workplace
When office supplies attack. Shame you can’t click on the images for larger versions.
Gimbo’s life takes an academic turn
I’ve got a new job!
I’m going to be a tutor at Swansea University‘s Computer Science department. To which, I say, w00t. :-)
The interview took place yesterday afternoon – seriously scary, with a panel of five professors and a friendly face from personnel. Lots of very open-ended questions which gave me plenty of opportunity for demonstrating loquaciousness (wow! I spelt that right first time!), ie I rambled my head off. I thought it went OK but I was kicking myself over some things, so it was a great pleasure to be offered the job.
It’s going to be seriously hard work (Professor Tucker said “I can assure you that the best brains of the department will be occupied with filling your time”). I’ll be teaching two classes (one on Operating System design, in which we’ll study the Linux kernel – fantastic!), on top of which I’ll have several smaller tutor groups, some individual projects to supervise, a bit of administrative work, and of course, best of all, research. Would I, they asked, be interested in registering for a PhD, as that’s something they’d like to encourage? Are they kidding? Would I? Fortunately I managed to answer in the affirmative without sounding sarcastic, saying “w00t”, or saying “word”. Which was nice.
I’ve got slightly mixed feelings about leaving Frontier, but I’m not really in any doubt about my decision. There are some seriously good people here, who it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with, I’ve learnt a ton of stuff in my time here, and all things considered the working environment is great (headphones – yay!). But on the other hand, my job has steadily morphed away from learning and towards doing (which is fair enough when your job is, ultimately, to produce code not think about it), and I don’t still want to be a “jobbing programmer” when I’m in my forties – the market’s far too ageist for that. I’ve had a good few years working in industry, but I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to get back to academia, and get that PhD under my belt. Now is the right time to make that move.
In summary, the first step to becoming a fully-fledged Eccentric Professor has been taken. Tweed with leather patches, here we come!
Back to pen and paper, then…
Long, worrying tales of recent electronic voting screw-ups in America [risks].
The moving sofa constant, and if hackers ruled the world
Several goodies via gammatron:
The moving sofa constant and other mathematical constants.
Photoshop fun: If hackers ruled the world. I particularly liked the idea of CHIXX0R magazine. :-)
Popping water balloons in zero-gravity
Popping water balloons in zero-gravity – with video [chicken].
419 from Mordor
Dear Sir, I am an Uruk of Mordor… – an amusing take on a a classic scam.
Web Designer Builds Home out of Flash
Web Designer Builds Home out of Flash.
The whole house consists of one room, but with the power of Flash, Farrell never needs to leave that room. “I’m a little uncomfortable taking a leak the same place where I sleep and fry my eggs, but never having to walk more than 5 feet is pretty nice.”
That quotes pretty much covers what I dislike about Flash: deliberately breaking the paradigm I’m used to when surfing, and replacing it with your own homegrown version which, let’s face it, won’t be as good.
Also, I don’t have the plugin so can’t view it. :-)
Stain removal for fun and non-profit
Cornell publication provides lab-tested ways to remove 250 different stains from clothes and textiles – and here it is [robot].
America intent on world domination. Film at 11.
Bush planned Iraq ‘regime change’ before becoming President [null].
‘… the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.’
… the US must ‘discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role’.
… reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
Somewhat more frivolously, Jesus said… [rivets]
Atomic Badger Racing
Atomic Badger Racing – Flash required [rivets].
Mixerman on socks
Last Friday’s entry in The Daily Adventures of Mixerman contains the following inspirational thoughts on socks:
I replace all of my socks on occasion, and I like to have a full months supply on hand as I can fit the whole lot in the washer in one load. Sometimes I buy a new supply of socks just so I don’t have to wash the dirty ones. And sometimes that gets my wife to wash them for me, since she doesn’t want me buying new socks when I have a laundry basket full of perfectly good socks, were they not dirty. With these strategies in place, I find that I only have to wash my own socks about 3 times per year. I suppose I could just use a fluff and fold service, but for some reason, that gives me the creeps. It’s all very convoluted, and besides, I digress.
The art of deception
I will, solicitors willing, be moving into a new house at some point in the next month. One of the best features of the house is its large kitchen. The worst thing about the kitchen is the view: a plain white wall.
Perhaps a Trompe L’oeil is in order. Ron Francis has some nice ones, in particular this one, this one, and this one.
Of course, it’s just another project that I’ll continually think about in tiny bursts, and never do anything about.
The receding sands
It seems that the south Saharan desert sands are receding [robot].
Desperately seeking…
If anyone reading this has my copy of The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, please could I have it back? Thanks. :-)
Bloody annoying comment systems!
I’ll tell you something… If I ever do install a comments system on this page, I’m going to make damn sure it doesn’t involve bloody pop-up windows.
It’s raining cars.
It’s raining cars. Hallelujah.
Swastikas predate nazis by 3000 years
Short, badly written but mildly interesting article on the history of the swastika, which may or may not suprise you, depending on whether you knew this stuff all ready or not. Clue: nazis didn’t invent it.
Taliban reunited
www.talibanreunited.com (thanks Pete!)
Strum my strings
Indie-chick lovers, step on up! It’s the bass & guitar girls page! [rivets]
And about time too..
The Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture has been proven – party on, dudes! [ntk]
And here’s an older story linked from that page which is also quite interesting. Two scientists have created a mathematical model of the stock market, which shows that chaotic ups and downs happen because of the actions of the traders, not because of any real change in the underlying value of the stocks. Sounds reasonable.
Words
I’m not an American, so I’ll never be a “High School Graduate”, but what the heck, I’m still mildly interested in this list of “100 Words That All High School Graduates – And Their Parents – Should Know” [gammatron].
Random updates from Gimbo’s life
Just in case anyone’s interested, here are a couple of snippets on the Big Things happening in my life at the mo…
I won’t be starting my new job until December, because my current employer loves me enough to make me work my full three months notice. Gladly, my new employer loves-me-at-first-sight enough to wait.
In other news, we may be within a fortnight of completing on our new house, and I really mean that. Things were slowed down by the glaring absence of the garden from the titles provided by the Land Registry, but after a bit of poking by the vendor’s solicitors, it now seems we have a title with most of the garden on it, although there’s still a patch “unaccounted for”. This is not, we are assured, anything to worry about, because it’s unlikely anyone will appear and say “hey, that land belongs to me”, and if they do, we’re insured for the value of the land anyway. So, slightly worrying, but it’s not going to stop us. That given, contracts are in the process of being exchanged and so when I now say “we’re hoping to complete in the next fortnight”, I have some basis other than bloody-minded optimism.
Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation [risks]
This is groovy:
I’m sure that many, many readers of RISKS are familiar with the story of Ken Thompson’s Turing Award lecture: of the invisible trapdoor in /bin/login maintained by an equally invisible trapdoor in the compiler, of the oblique reference to an “unknown Air Force document” whence came the idea for the trapdoors, of Ken’s request for anyone who knew of the actual paper to let him know. What I, for one, did not know was that the paper and its authors had in fact come to light: “Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis”, written by Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell and published by the Air Force in 1974. And in a new paper which is simultaneously a trip down memory lane and an up-to-the-moment call to arms, Karger and Schell have collaborated on a new, retrospective paper which reviews (and incorporates a resurrected copy of!) the former report, while analyzing today’s computer security landscape in light of the former report’s analyses and recommendations.
Woman falls for Nigeria scam, $2M lost
Woman falls for Nigeria scam, $2M lost [rotten]
The FBI said Poet, a bookkeeper for a small Berkley law firm, embezzled $2.1 million from the firm’s accounts between February and August, after scam organizers persuaded her to wire huge amounts of money to bank accounts in South Africa and Taiwan to expedite the transfer of money to the United States.
Opera brings me and Anita closer together
I’ve never been able to bring myself to read Anita Rowland’s weblog, simply because it’s all in italics, making it really hard to read. Then today I remembered Opera‘s ability to turn off stylesheets (it refers to this feature as toggling between “user mode” and “author mode”). Now that’s more like it. (Later: Hmmm, I’ve just noticed that in IE, the italics aren’t there anyway. Weird. Maybe it’s something I’ve done. Shrug.)
BTW, speaking of the grooviness of obscure web browsers, allow me to mention Phoenix, a Mozilla offshoot which does what should obviously have been done in the first place, ie ditched the email reader , etc. in order to concentrate on making a web browser. It differs from Galeon in that it uses the same XUL user-interface language that Mozilla does, whereas Galeon is a Gnome wrapper around the Gecko HTML rendering engine. It’s certainly lighter and nicer than Mozilla, but still too slow and unresponsive for my liking – but hey, it’s early days yet.
Hmmm… Also, here’s Skipstone, a GTK wrapper around Gecko – I haven’t looked at it yet, I just saw the link off the Galeon site.
10 worst airline crashes of all time
10 worst airline crashes of all time [consumptive]. Number 7: whoah.
“Gimbo Incorrect” shocker!
Anita Rowland, I’ll see your “d’oh” and raise you a “pants!”. It seems that the italics problem is a quirk of my setup, as a colleague of mine, also using Opera, doesn’t see italics. Quite what this peculiarity of mine could be, I haven’t worked out (there are so many to choose from). We apologise for any distress we may have caused to your or your family. :-)
Gimboland gets permalinks
I’ve added permalinks to Gimboland (at long last, some might say). The problem has always been, where the heck do I put them? I like my layout, and everything I tried (eg [link] links at the end of each post) just didn’t feel right. I’ve come up with the ultimate low-impact solution, whose discovery I leave as an exercise to the reader.
Play tetris on a plane, go to jail
An air passenger who played a game on his mobile phone during a flight has been jailed for four months [risks].
Taurus II
Fantastic: the track sheet for Taurus II (346Kb, but here’s a small version) by Mike Oldfield, which to my mind is his masterpiece. My brother has the original gatefold-sleeve/vinyl version of the album Five Miles Out, which this track sheet appears on, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. Super.
The truth about cats and dogs.
Cats remind us not to work too hard. Dogs remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. Greatly are they to be praised.
Apologies for attitudes
I’m sorry world, I just don’t like reggae. I’ve tried. I’ve listened. I’ve given it a good go – but I still think it’s shit. Sorry about that.
Also, would someone please explain to me what all the fuss about Richard Ashcroft is about? I mean, woo-ee, wow look at him, looking all rock ‘n’ roll smoking a cigarette, but come on, what has he got to tell me about my life and how I should live it? Oh yes, absolutely nothing – silly me.
Finally, I’d like to welcome all the students back to Cardiff and tell them all to please FUCK OFF. Or at the very least, stop waking me up at ten past one in the morning on the way home from the union/some club/etc. I mean, come on, you’re walking home through an area whose main feature is a shitload of terraced houses – didn’t it ever occur to you that people live there and would quite like to be sleeping at this moment? You may not have to get up until noon tomorrow, but I’ve got to work for a living, and listening to you yammering and bollocking at each other at the top of your voices as you pass my house at two in the morning really makes me want to kill you, frankly. You tossers.
PS: I’m drunk.
Apologies for apologies
:-) Dear oh dear, the perils of gin and tonic, eh?
I pretty much stand by my comments, with the possible exception of my criticisms of Mr Ashcroft. I’m not a big fan but yes, The Verve did do some good stuff that maybe did tell me something about how I should live my life. Basically, I think I’d just seen a picture of him, looking “all rock ‘n’ roll and smoking a cigarette”, and it rubbed me up the wrong way. Sorry about that. I’ll try to be more reasoned in my drunken invective in the future.
Do mine eyes deceive me?
Superb optical illusion [rivets]. Also, eluzions, via anita.
Kids today are idiots
Here’s a very amusing account of a young American lady trying her best to set herself, and her surroundings, on fire [gammatron].
Mumble mumble mumble
Seen on Psybertron: “It’s like receiving a threat from a post-modernist gangster, who makes you an offer you can’t understand.” – Charlie Stross. :-)
Welcome to the modern village
Welcome to the modern village [rotten].
The third kind of inhabitant is the commuter. The commuter has left the city for the fresh air, the countryside and the bigger house. Sadly, they don’t see any of these because they have to commute vast distances, leaving before dawn and returning after dark. At weekends, they travel vast distances to see friends from the city who live in villages on the other side of the city. You can recognise these people in the village because they’re the ones you don’t recognise.
Uh-oh.
Mosaic
Commuter is a command line tool that creates mosaics from images, where every tile of the image is itself a smaller picture.
Exposing the X selection
xsel – handy utility to allow you to access the X selection from the command line.
Oscar Wilde on football
On the way home from work, I heard the following quote, from Oscar Wilde: Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.
The Ol’ Baloney Factory
The Turkey City Lexicon – A Primer for Science-Fiction Workshops. [null]
Adios, Mr Liddle
Here’s the mildly amusing Guardian column by Ron Liddle, which has led to his stepping down as editor of the Today programme.
The truth about curry
The truth about curry [thanks, JOn].
Knitting with dog hair
Knitting with dog hair – fantastic! [rivets]
Now all we need is a Henry Raddick review…
Singin’ in the rain
Note to self: visit India just before, and while, the monsoon breaks. :-)
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair
More Mike Oldfield stuff, since that’s mainly what I’m listening to at the moment: notes on Hymn To Diana, the (imho beautiful) poem by Ben Jonson at the end of Incantations Part 4.
(Ooh – so the beach on the cover is in Menorca, is it? Well well, and there was me thinking it looked Cornish.)
A blast from the past!
Iiiiiiiiiiiiit’s Vicky! :-)
It’s a man’s life as a pilot
What happens when dry ice is mixed with blue toilet acid at 33,000 feet [chicken].
Jens stares. Then he turns to his young second officer and puts a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of both fatherly comfort and surrendering camaraderie, as if to say, “Don’t worry son, I’ll clean all this up,” or maybe, “Down with the ship we go, my friend.” He sighs, gestures toward the fizzing, angrily disgorging bowl and says, with a tone of surprisingly unironic pride: “She’s got quite a head on her, doesn’t she?”
…Up front, the first officer has no idea what’s going on. Looking behind him, his view mostly blocked by the circuit-breaker panels and cockpit door, this is what he sees: a haze of white odorless smoke, and his captain yelping with laughter and thrusting at something with a long metal pole.
I don’t believe it – whatever it is!
The Skeptic’s Dictionary [null].
I particularly enjoyed the sections on speed reading, osteopathy, chiropractice, reiki, homeopathy and reflexology, all of which have been experienced or discussed by Julie and me lately. It’s very interesting to see an opposing viewpoint on these subjects, and the varying degrees to which they may or may not have any basis in reality. Alas, no mention of yoga or Alexander technique.
Unicycle jousting
Unicycle jousting! Thanks, Pete. :-)
Requiem for a dream
Requiem For A Dream (alas, the site is heavy on Flash, so here’s the IMDB entry) is being shown at Chapter next Tuesday. It comes highly recommended from a reliable source so I might just have to check it out.
Also of note, being shown later in the month: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, My Little Eye, Moulin Rouge and Amadeus. If I can make it to just two of those that’d be groovy.
It is… your destiny!
I was just catching up with Sluggy Freelance, and laughed my head off at this little gem – superb.
I find Sluggy interesting, but a bit hit-and-miss. The long-running plotlines don’t really do it for me, and tend to hang together very poorly imho. But every now and then it throws up a joke that makes it all worthwhile – like this one. :-)
Ah, nuts… I was hoping it was just going to be a one-off, but alas it’s the start of a whole Harry Potter rip-off storyline. Shame.
The playground dictionary
The law of the playground – brutal (“binning”), nostalgic (“sing hosana…”), and occasionally very funny (“experiment”) [rivets].
Requiem For A Dream
Well, we saw Requiem For A Dream last night.
Fuck.
Incredible. Utterly incredible. The last third of the film was the most harrowing, harshest, and bleakest piece of cinema I’ve ever seen. Its impact on us was physical. We came out of the theatre feeling sick and shaken. I’ve never experienced anything like it – I’ve had hints of that kind of reaction before but this was a whole other level. The content, the filming, the editing, the music, all came together to form this thing that reached into my head and pulled my brain out through my mouth. Very impressive indeed.
Number puzzle in python
Here’s a Mensa number puzzle being attacked by python [python-url] – some very neat solutions.
Also, the python quotes database, no doubt brimming with sagacity, and a brief investigation of how to get rid of HTML tags.
Escher lego
Escher’s “Balcony”, “Belvedere”, and “Ascending and Descending” in LEGO [null].
Why don’t they learn? Why don’t they listen?
A couple of tasty Microsoft-bashing snippets from the latest RISKS.
What did you expect if you used Microsoft software?
Also: well, durrrrr. “Let’s acknowledge a sad truth about software: any code of significant scope and power will have bugs in it,” Ballmer told customers. Quite apart from the fact that this “truth” is a lie (you can, in fact, create provably correct software, but few people bother because it costs more), we have the issue of how you deal with such bugs, and whether your software design is, in fact, deliberately overcomplex to prevent people reverse-engineering it.
People, the only way you’re ever going to have reliable software is if it’s open. I really don’t see why this is so hard to grasp.
Wales: it’s great!
Gratuitous Welsh links via Malcolm: Solva, Pembrokeshire – lovely spot, unimpressive site (and why’s it a .net?), and www.data-wales.co.uk – all sorts of miscellaneous Welsh info.
Stoner cats and other oddities
OK, Dr Fun officially rocks. Stoner cats, Donald Knuth, gerbil accelerator, cat-herding, oreo-gami, death star, rhymes with buckwheat, anger management, Greenspan, early bird, natural born krillers.
Sweet, dude!
If I ever move out of Britain, Bracken Bank Stores will be sweet, dude.
Le weekend
I am returned from a most pleasant weekend.
We took Friday off in order to meet our solicitor face to face and sign important pieces of paper – pieces of paper which need to be signed if we are ever going to buy our new house. Our dealings with our solicitor thus far have been less than satisfactory – I’d say laughable but the frustration isn’t funny. Gladly, the chap we were dealing with has gone on holiday for a fortnight, and someone else has taken over our case in the meantime. We arrived at the meeting, deposit cheque in hand, only to find that this person didn’t know about all the little interesting things that have delayed us so far (eg, the land being split over two titles, rather than just one, which is apparently such an incredibly unusual situation that our solicitor had to take a holiday to recover from the stress of dealing with it). Fortunately, the newbie was actually competent, professional, and communicative, and by the end of the meeting we felt confident that yes, on Friday October 25th, we should have the keys to our new house in our grubby little mitts.
Important tasks being done, we went to Cornwall to spend the weekend with my family, which was a generally lazy and inactive time. Our main sport was smiling at, singing at, and generally loving my new nephew Adam, who seems to be shaping up to be a very happy and smiley baby – super. We also popped in on Dave, Jay, Alice, and even newer baby Timothy, all of whom are very cute.
In a bookshop in Bovey Tracey, I wanted to buy Astanga Yoga, and Julie wanted to buy a back care book which I can’t currently find on Amazon, so we compromised and bought The Yoga Back Book.
Cinematically, we took Mum and Dad to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was very enjoyable a second time – lighthearted feelgood fun. We also saw Vertical Limit. Now, I’m only a beginner at this climbing/mountaineering lark, but even I could spot how much of this movie was preposterous. Never mind though, ‘cos it’s a right ripping yarn, and thoroughly enjoyable on its own terms.
I learnt that Gimboland’s greatest fans are Roger, Paula, and Jess. Hi guys, and thanks for your support! :-)
We returned to Cardiff yesterday via Ikea, a company which I’m sure will be receiving much of our money once we’re in the house. :-)
So yeah, that was nice. Today it’s raining hard and all I really want to do is sit in bed and read. Harumph.
Burning Skulls
Some super-doovy welding masks via the wotever boys.
Toasty Japanese coffee tables of joy
Kotatsu – toasty Japanese coffee tables of joy [consumptive].
Medical student joke
I received this joke by email today, and thought it was good enough to share…
First-year students at Medical School were receiving their first anatomy class with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet. The professor started the class by telling them, “In medicine, it is necessary to have two important qualities as a doctor: the first is that you can not be disgusted by anything involving the human body”. For an example, the professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck it in his mouth. “Go ahead and do the same thing,” he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead body and sucking on it. When everyone finished, the professor looked at them and told them, “The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention.”
Hot or nyet?
Am I hot or nyet? This is what happens when someone running a company offering mail order Russian brides stumbles upon Am I Hot Or Not?.
A few clicks later, and I’m wondering if they’re genuine. They’re singularly good looking, but most seem to have scores in the 5 to 7 range. I’d think if you were considering getting a bride by mail order, your standards wouldn’t be so strangely high. But maybe I’m not a rich American.
Lego harpsichord
Lego harpsicord (with mp3s) [sharpeworld].
Today in history
Today in history: Oct 15 1981 — Mork has Mindy’s baby (according to rotten, anyway). :-)
Fly to the hills
Bruce Dickinson, front-man of Iron Maiden, has become an airline pilot [rotten].
Speedy slithering with Pysco
Make Python run as fast as C with Psyco – another installment of the excellent “Charming Python” series.
GPS for dogs
One for Malc and the Mountain Rescue boys: Dog GPS [gamma].
You can view your own as well as your dog’s position with up to 5 meters precision – whatever the physical distance is.
Party like it’s 2001
Julie and I have a fancy dress party to go to some time in November. The theme is “Spacemen and Aliens”. I’m seriously considering going as the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think the tricky part to work out will be how to keep enough freedom of movement so I can sit down/eat/drink/dance/etc. whilst remaining suitably monolithic.
Woody Harrelson gets serious
Woody Harrelson in the Guardian: I’m an American tired of American lies (thanks, Simon).
Britney, Baby, One More Time
Dejected, Schmitz discovers Robert Stephens, a young, gay Britney impersonator. Schmitz takes off for New Orleans with Stephens, promising him a chance to meet his teen idol, all the while taking film of Stephens’ cross-country exploits and pawning them off as footage of the real deal.
Best of all, it’s based on a true story [popbitch].
Skyscrapers, bridges and rides, oh my.
I just discovered www.skyscraperpage.com and I’m loving it: Thousands of the world’s tallest buildings searchable and sortable by many parameters – groovy.
Check it out: Minas Tirith. :-)
Synesthesia: taste what I say
Synesthesia article (via rotten). Nothing really new in the article, but if you’ve never heard of synesthesia, check it out. :-)
“One world at a time.”
“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you” and other astronomical quotes [robot].
Quotes from “Coupling”.
coupling.ft – a fortune cookie database of quotes (only 34 of them, alas) from the BBC‘s excellent Coupling series.
In case anyone’s interested, here’s the python script I wrote to build the quotes list, which does so by repeatedly querying this page.
More quotes here, in various formats including fortune. The Tom Baker ones are quite good and make me want to read his autobiography.
Finally, here’s a nice picture of Jeff.
Ick
I’m ill, and off work.
I’ve had a nasty coldy/flu type thing for the past few days, kindly donated by my girlfriend who was suffering at the weekend. Last night it developed into an exquisitely painful sore throat – my throat is my weak spot, and if I get ill, it’s usually there. Ow.
Mucus membranes
Mucus membranes…
Le retour du gimbo
Where to begin?
Of course. First and foremost, happy birthday Mum. I’ll phone later, honest.
Illness has abated – I’m still not 100% but mucus levels have returned to some semblance of normality. Being off work ill is so annoying – if I’m going to have time on my hands I want to do something enjoyable, not sit around feeling crap. OTOH I guess I made a good start on The Lord of the Rings, which is not to be sneezed at.
The big news is, we’ve got the house. Yes indeed, Julie and I now own our little cottage in Carmarthenshire. It is, as required, up a lane, with three bedrooms, two fireplaces, a big kitchen, an ickle garden and room for some cats. Unfortunately, that also means we owe a ridiculous sum of money and all hopes of disappearing around the world with backpacks have disappeared.
Saturday, when we took possession, was weird. We’re not moving in immediately (instead we’ll be doing so in dribs and drabs over the next month, and working on various rooms as we go), so there wasn’t a mad rush of activity, and when we got there we weren’t quite sure what to do. We just sat around in each room, found little things to do everywhere, and soaked up the vibe. Pleasant. Tip had a right old time going around and sniffing everything, his claws tippity-tappeting on the wooden floors. Next door’s cat was utterly scandalised by his presence, and watched him intently through the kitchen window. He, of course, was oblivious to this.
The place doesn’t need much work to make it liveable – in fact, it doesn’t need any but we’re doing some anyway. The living room ceiling is varnished pine and it’s a bit dark for our taste, so that’s got to be stripped and painted. Guess who had a fun afternoon with a sander yesterday? Well, it wasn’t me. I had a gruelling afternoon with a sander. Apart ca, there’s a little rearrangement to be done in the kitchen, most of the doors need some attention (vendor or vendor’s handyman knew nothing about how to hang a door or fit a handle), the chimneys need sweeping and after the storm at the weekend, the roof needs works – but that’s it. Instead we can spend all our money on furniture. Oh, the joy.
We met the neighbours, who were welcoming and friendly – they’ve invited us for drinks and fireworks next weekend. They have an eleven year old girl who was hoping that whoever moved in would have a baby so she could baby sit. We expressed our regret at being unable to fulfill this wish, but held out the hope that perhaps in a few years time, the situation might change. That was the most solid declaration we have given so far of any desire to produce sprogs together, and it came at the prompting of an eleven year old girl we’d never met before. How strange is that?
The final thing to mention is Saturday night’s Regenesis gig in Swansea, which was superb. I know Genesis are exceedingly uncool, but I like to think that back in the early days, before Peter Gabriel left and before Phil Collins stepped out from behind the drum kit, whilst still being decidedly uncool, at least were uncool in a respectable way. And of course, I love the music whether it’s cool or not, so this gig was a real pleasure. The setup was quite strange: everyone was seated around tables scattered over the hall, except for those of us who arrived too late for that, who took our places around the edges.
Right at the front-left, next to the stage and next to a speaker stack, were two guys who (their friend informed me when they saw me smiling at their antics) were on acid. They were clearly enjoying themselves – shaking their heads around, waving their arms, and clapping in time with the music. Unfortunately, most of the audience seemed content to thoughtfully watch with their arms folded, and some actually objected to this pair. Presumably it’s hard to smugly pick out the mistakes in an intricate keyboard solo if you’re distracted by someone actually enjoying themself. So they got told to calm down, which they naturally objected to, and fingers got pointed, bouncers intervened, and they were chucked out. It hardly seemed fair, and to be honest it put a slight shadow on the evening: the overcerebral wankers had won the day, and the people who were actually connecting with the music were out in the rain.
Tracklist: Watcher of the Skies, Selling England by the Pound (entire album): [Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, I Know What I Like, Firth of Fifth, More Fool Me, The Battle of Epping Forest, After The Ordeal, The Cinema Show, Aisle of Plenty], Eleventh Earl of Mar, The Musical Box, Supper’s Ready. Encore: Drum Duet and Los Endos. Some of the Selling England stuff I could have lived without (particularly The Battle of Epping Forest, although it was fun to watch the trippers getting down to it), and I was disappointed they didn’t encore with The Knife, but it was utterly fantastic to hear The Cinema Show and Supper’s Ready live after all these years. There was no unaccompanied bass pedal solo.
Supporting was Melbourne – an ambientish rockish outfit fronted by Carrie Melbourne, a session bassist and Chapman Stickist (with husband and founder Regenesis member – very cosy – Dave Melbourne on keyboards). The vocal parts I could take or leave, but when the pieces got moving they were very good. I’d like to hear some more before I buy any, I think. She was pregnant, and I wondered what effect all that resonant bass would have on the unborn child’s musical sensibilities – or indeed its hearing. :-)
A man and his tool
Ah yes, the Performance Power CLM200 Combination Sander. I know it well…
(Living room ceiling is one third done.)
Nietzsche and Goofy
From this small but quirky Nietzsche FAQ, we have: What was Goofy?
Witness, for example, the little-seen but avant-garde 1930s cartoon “Goofy the Aryan,” in which Goofy seizes power, destroys traditional religion, and institutes a new “master” morality based on his cult of personality. Goofy, in a very real sense, is the Philosopher of the Future.
Have they got news for us?
Very poor design but some good content at this Have I Got News For You? fan site. The Trivia section is particularly obsessive, enumerating as it does the camera angles used in the show. Also, don’t miss the Captions section. I haven’t linked to either section directly because – duh – the site uses frames.
Later that evening: Cor – Angus has been sacked.
Mike attains the ultimate answer
Almost forgot… Happy birthday Mike!
Scotland needs babies
The population of Scotland is set to fall under 5 million by 2010, which is great news for fans of open spaces and solitude, I guess. [rotten]
Iiiiiiit’s Syd!
Pictures of Syd Barrett through the ages.
Gimbo goes choral
I’ve been listening to nothing other than Allegri‘s haunting Miserere for the past couple of days. Not my usual ear fodder by any means, but it’s so damn beautiful. I’d originally only encountered it as part of The Orb’s piece, “Into The Fourth Dimension”, but having heard snatches lately on adverts and the like I decided to hunt it down.
(Yikes – looks like The Orb haven’t been paying their domain registration bills – bummer.)
Text to speech
Text-to-Speech Synthesis at Bell labs.
Funk Logic
Funk Logic – “Rack filler panels with a bunch of stuff all over ‘em”. Cool.
Blast from the past
Helen Carruthers, who used to work here at Frontier.
Magnetic paint
Yes! I’ve bought a house just in time for Magnetic Paint, “an acrylic latex water-based primer that turns any wall into a magnetic receptive surface”!!! [wotever]
Dreaming of better things
Last night I dreamt I’d won the lottery, although I’d only got five numbers right, not six. On the sixth number, I was one digit out. My disappointment at having missed out on The Big One by such a small margin was approximately equal to my disappointment at subsequently waking up and realising I hadn’t won the lottery after all. Still, I think I’d better a ticket for tonight’s draw. If only I could remember the numbers from the dream…
Toady of Blog Hall
Might have to pop up to Aberystwyth Arts Centre in December to see Jim Finnis playing Toad in The Wind In The Willows…
Barton Gimbo
Ed, upon seeing my passport picture (taken in 1994), tells me that I am the doppelganger of John Turturro. Thanks, Ed. I guess that’s another good reason for seeing Barton Fink.
Oxy morons
Jesus fuck. The DVD/VHS set of Band Of Brothers includes a documentary called (get this), “We Stand Alone Together”. I’m sorry, but that just fails to make sense on so many levels…
Validation
The Gimboland front page is valid HTML 4.0 Transitional (and so are all the archives) – woo hoo!
Thanks, ntk, for the pointer to the recently revamped checker. I had 155 errors but it didn’t take long to get that figure down to zero. Some of the errors were stupid (eg missing quotes, missing end tags), and some were new and interesting to me (eg ampersands in URLs should, apparently, be escaped to &, to be decoded by the user agent, which I hadn’t realised).
Now to check – nay, fix – the CSS… OK, that’s done.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
I’ve just read John Betjeman’s poem “Slough” for the first time. Is it just me, or do the fifth and sixth verses refer to Chris Finch and the seventh verse refer to Tim, from The Office?
(Yes, I know Tim isn’t balding – it’s poetic licence, innit?).
Good T-shirts
Stuck for an idea of what to buy me for Christmas? How about this t-shirt (++ungood) and/or this one if it appears on this page in time for Christmas, which it may or may not do.
The Lord of the Doctorates
The Lord of the Rings as an allegory of doing a PhD – something for me to look forward to, then.
Also, some really bad site design but some really nice Tolkien maps – I found this one particularly interesting.
I don’t know if it’s a joke or not…
I met a Dutch girl with inflatable shoes last week.
I phoned her up yesterday to ask her for a date, but she’s popped her clogs.
Skirrid Inn for sale
The Skirrid’s for sale! (thanks, Malc).
Dang. The Skirrid Inn is a really great pub that does fantastic food, just the thing for a Sunday afternoon at the end of a funk-filled weekend camping in the nearby Happy Valley (not its real name) with my buds. I do hope the place doesn’t change too much…
The Princetown Fabio Project
The Princetown Fabio Project [rivets]. Superb.
My first girlfriend’s Dad lived (in fact, as far as I know, still lives) with a very nice German lady who worked as a translator of books, from English into German. She had two kinds of work: highbrow stuff that she loved doing and that paid really poorly, and trashy stuff that of course paid really well. At the time I met her (ooh, about 1992 I guess) she was busily translating Fabio’s latest magnus opus, which was probably called something like “Viking” or “Pirate” or some such. The poor dear.
I used to believe…
I used to believe… [rivets] – “a collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children”.
Big kudos to Mat for fixing the navigation frame within an hour of me emailing him to say it didn’t work in Opera under Linux. :-)
No trick or treat – lots of sweets for us!
We spent our first night at our new house last night. It was very quiet and peaceful (well, once I stopped sanding – half way there!). :-) The trip to work this morning took an hour and a quarter, which isn’t too bad – I only need to do it for the next month then I’m starting my new job and it’ll be more like fifty minutes. Yawn.
Gimbo is…
…the generating force of the house
…one of america’s preeminent folklorists
…really keen to attack the bowler in this picture as he is at least half way down the wicket chasing a most tremendous wide only to
…her name
…best reached by email
…one of the authors of the official history of canadian participation in the war against iraq
…the new 1st vice
…married and lives on the isle of bute
…etnograaf
Thanks, Si (and boingboing).
The homeowner shuffle
Bloody busy weekend… Living room ceiling is sanded, most of the (vast quantity of) dust is gone, and the beams are masked ready for painting. I’m knackered. :-)
Julie and Heather honed their flatpack skills so we now have one room in the house which is comfortably habitable – an inner sanctum of peace, very important for our sanity I think.
The plumber’s coming tomorrow. Initially this was just to fit another tap in the kitchen for a dishwasher, but since then we’ve discovered that there’s no pressure to one of the hot taps upstairs, another hot tap upstairs just will not turn, and the pipes under the kitchen sink are simply insane, including a clever t-piece with an opening at the top so you can conveniently flood the cupboard by pouring water down the sink! The house is basically great but there are so many of these little bits of insanity that I wonder how anyone actually lived there. Worst of all, the fish on the bathroom tiles are upside down. The whole room’s going to have to be ripped out! (Just kidding – or am I?)
The neighbours popped round on Saturday evening with a card and some wine, and yesterday I plucked up the courage to borrow a screwdriver. So far, so good. No card from my Mum yet, but she can probably be excused because I hadn’t actually told her the address. ;-)
IP Personality
IP Personality – The Linux IP Personality patch adds to your Linux 2.4 kernel the ability to have different ‘personalities’ network wise, that is to change some characteristics of its network traffic, depending on different parameters (anything you can specify in an iptables rule: src/dst IP address, TCP or UDP port, etc.)
…The primary objective of this patch is to counter network fingerprinting techniques, as described in Fyodor’s article. Fyodor is the author of nmap, the famous port scanner that has a powerful remote OS detection engine. IP Personality can fool current versions of nmap, and is very configurable, so that it can probably fool any similar tool. The patch allows one to emulate the behaviour of any system listed in nmap’s list of OS fingerprints.
Cool.
(Spotted whilst reading a thread about King’s College, London, not allowing Unix/Linux boxen to be connected to their network, which was reached via RISKS. Weirdly, the thread mutates into one about fox hunting. Aah, usenet…)
Slide Rule Universe
The Slide Rule Universe – “In 50 years, the computer you are using to view this will be landfill, but your trusty slide rule will just be nicely broken in.”
Bon anniversaire
Holy shit. A year ago today, I went to China. A whole year, and I still haven’t uploaded all my photos. Jesus.
Where central Wisconsin meets the Concorde age
The Gobbler [gamma]. Utterly, utterly fantastic.
Which is worse?
Which is worse? [wotever]. Nice idea, but that interface totally sucks. I want to be able to vote on many polls at once, and I hate it when websites insist on opening new windows. It’s rude and unnecessary. I will tell my browser when I want it to open a new window. Not you: me. Sigh… If only.
I usually have popups disabled in Opera, but then you get a site like this that doesn’t work without popups enabled, so I enable it, then forget and don’t turn them off again until I go somewhere that bombards me with adverts. Aaaargh.
Pete Townsend on Kurt Cobain
Pete Townsend looking at Kurt Cobain’s journals for The Guardian [via robot]. Jorn says Pete’s being “curmudgeonly” but he seems sensible and insightful to me. Hey ho.
It is desperately sad for me to sit here, 57 years old, and contemplate how often wasteful are the deaths of those in the rock industry. We find it so hard to save our own, but must take responsibility for the fact that the message such deaths as Cobain’s sends to his fans is that it is in some way heroic to scream at the world, thrash a guitar, smash it up and then overdose.
Read this book to see that the human spirit, even at its most sublime, can effect monumental damage on itself and its fellow souls if addiction enters the story. I mourn for Kurt. A once beautiful, then pathetic, lost and heroically stupid boy. Hard rock indeed.
“Pathetic” isn’t a word you often see used in conjunction with Cobain, but it’s a good summary of how I’ve felt about him for a long time.
Oh no, it’s not about oil at all
Oh no, it’s not about oil at all, honest mate. [rotten]
Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington – confirmed by an INC spokesman – comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US- led land invasion.
Dr. Estrella’s Incredibly Abridged Dictionary of Composers
Dr. Estrella’s Incredibly Abridged Dictionary of Composers [rivets]. A handy little quick-reference resource.
My wall fever is returning
Big-up thanks to Mark Hughes and family for some positive feedback on Gimboland and Andy’s Trek – it’s always nice to be praised. ;-)
Great Wall fans: check out their pictures of the Huanghua section, which are really rather good – as is most of their travelogue, to be honest. This is the section of “wild” (ie reconstructed) wall which we tackled on the third day of our trek (four months after Mark and family). To my shame, I haven’t uploaded my own photos of this section yet – yes, a year later – but these are a lovely reminder. Check out the panorama which Mark took at the point where we turned off to the right and descended through orchards back to the road. The section seen in the panorama was deemed too dangerous for our group – even for the hardcore. That steep downward slope, whose hairiness I could only glimpse from afar can be well appreciated in this superb shot.
I long to go back, and to tackle this section. I long to go back, full stop. Anthony Feasey at the National Star Centre had told me he was running a wild wall trek in 2003 which would take us there, but the website (thegreatwall.co.uk) is “somewhat sparse”. I should drop him an email – except he’s probably in China right now on this year’s trek, the lucky git.
Stupid lambda tricks
Whilst looking for information on using lambda forms in python, I came across stupid lambda tricks, which has some interesting and nifty things to say, if you’re a python geek.
Also, some nice notes on python’s recently revamped sort() method, with doovy references.
Timezones in Unix and Windows filesystems
The latest Risks digest has an interesting note on Windows daylight saving and file time-stamps, and the subtle difference between how Unix and Windows handle them.
The tea is made
The invention of the teasmade, and indeed lots of teasmade information at – where else – www.teasmade.com [via rivets].
I have fond childhood memories of my parents’ teasmade, which sat on a bedside table on the mothership’s side, and which went from striking me as terribly advanced and technical, to striking me as terribly quaint and whimsical as time passed and I grew older. Such is the way with many “mod cons”, I suppose – which is good for those of us who surf the internet for post-ironic kitsch.
(By thw way, thank you Shauny, for introducing me to the term “mothership” in this context. My Mum hates to be called “mother”, but hopefully Android can get away with calling her the mothership, though I haven’t remembered to do so in person – yet.)
(Also, apologies for using the term “post-ironic”. No, I don’t know what it means either.)
Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
Exteremely interesting/insightful interview with Mark Hertsgaard, author of “The Eagle’s Shadow” [robot], which I’m now going to quote to death:
Right now the emissions of one American are equal to about 19 Indians and about 45 Chinese. [The Chinese] are saying that if you want to talk about this, just realize that we use about 10 percent of the energy you Americans do. That’s where it plays out. It’s not resentment that we have wealth but it’s what we do with our wealth.
Half of humanity lives on less than $2 per day, but this is at a time that because of television, the poor — for the first time in human history — really do understand how well the rich live. They are not going to continue to accept their impoverished status. Somehow over these next 50 to 100 years, those people will rise up. They are going to escape poverty one way or another. The great challenge facing our civilization globally is how we accommodate that.
If we keep going with the American model — and I mean the entire high-consumption model — we’re fried. There’s no way that we can escape severe climate change and all of the disasters that come with that. That’s where the resentment does come from. If we were really serious about being a global leader, that’s where we would be putting our energy.
That’s the fundamental problem — we don’t want to listen. We want to tell. We’re so used to being the big boys. The arrogant person never knows they’re arrogant and that’s the problem with our official stance in the world.
StarLogo
This looks fun: StarLogo [gamma].
StarLogo is a programmable modeling environment for exploring the workings of decentralized systems — systems that are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. With StarLogo, you can model (and gain insights into) many real-life phenomena, such as bird flocks, traffic jams, ant colonies, and market economies.
Definitely something to play with once I start my new job, I think, along with PyKarel (about which here is an article).
Another python tutorial
Another (large) python tutuorial in the form of David M. Beazley’s slides from OSCON 2000. The slides are brief but there are many of them (kinda like sushi or maybe sex with Arnold J Rimmer). Here’s an index of the slides.
Why paint cats?
Why Paint Cats – “The ethics of feline aesthetics” (and the book’s own website). Looking at some the authors’ other works (Dancing With Cats and Why Cats Paint), it seems that it’s entirely tounge-in-cheek and that nobody actually paints cats. On the other hand, life imitates art, and if this was done in Photoshop, it’s pretty good. [via pants]
And while we’re on the subject of people doing stupid things to humilate their pets, here’s a load of pets dressed up for halloween [also via pants]. My personal favourite.
Flash your rack
Flash Your Rack – hotornot meets, well, nudity. I’m surprised it’s taken so long, to be honest. Not particularly worksafe, obviously. Nice logo, though.
The USA according my racist aunt
A map of “the USA according to my racist aunt” – superb [pants].
A year ago today…
A year ago today I had the best day of my life. The weather today is exactly the same, and my heart is aching. Boo…
I heart evany
I <heart> evany. But I’ve only just noticed that she’s hosted at diaryland, not dairyland, which is, of course, a farm theme-park in Cornwall.
Eroticus librarianus
There’s been lots of hormonally charged discussion amongst the techies in the office today about cute librarians. Alas, a search for cute librarian gallery produced little other than porn. Shame.
By the way, if anyone’s looking for someone to audit their accounts, all the boys in the office recommend Grant Thornton.
Apologios
This is a public apology for wishing my brother a happy birthday two days late. At least he got his pressie in time. His birthday and the mothership’s are on adjacent days, and whilst I can remember when hers is, I always get confused if his is the day before or the day after. Ah well, in future years, all I need to do is refer to Gimboland, I guess!
Big brown beastie, big brown face
I like beer, and I like cheese. I like the smell of a westerly breeze. But what I like more than all of these. Is to be on horseback.
Scary Squirrel World
Scary Squirrel World, including three marvellous theories on their origins (I favour the “natural” theory, personally).
(Reached via this exciting news story.)
Democracy continues to bleed
More worries about electronic voting in America in the latest Risks Digest.
The general consensus among election officials and voters seems to be that the all-electronic machines are a great improvement, relatively easy to use, and inherently able to prevent overvotes. The general consensus among knowledgeable computer security experts seems to be that almost all of the existing all-electronic systems could relatively easily be rigged by internal fraud in the software and external manipulation of the local polling-place configurations and could also be subject to undetected internal errors, because of an almost complete absence of meaningful audit trails and independent verification of the consistency of votes tabulated with votes cast. Just because an all-electronic machine looks like it might be working, how do you *KNOW* it is doing the right thing? From a RISKS perspective, a perceived potential lack of integrity is a serious obstacle to democracy.
That damn ceiling
House news: the living room ceiling is nearly done! I finished sanding it on Sunday, then had to mask off the beams ready for painting. I’m not spending every night at the house yet, so yesterday evening saw me putting the finishing touches to the masking, as Julie got to work with a long-handled paint roller. In no time at all, the first coat was basically complete, except for some “cutting in” with a small brush.
It’s somewhat vexing that I spent so long sanding these boards down only to have Julie come along and just go “lah-de-dah, tum-de-dum, slap-slap-slap, oh look – the ceiling’s painted!”. Of course, it was then Muggins who got to stand on the stepladder, cutting in, which still isn’t quite finished – plus we’ll probably do another coat at the weekend. I figure it will have taken about twenty-four hours of work in total. Crazy. I’m sure someone a little less perfectionist and pernickety could probably have done it in half the time, but hey, that’s the way it goes in Gimboland.
Oh yes – I almost forgot the exciting part. It hadn’t occurred to me to wear goggles while I was painting. Alas for that, because while I was cutting in, I managed to drop a largish blob of white paint into my left eye, to my great surprise and consternation. I managed to get off the stepladder and stumble into the hallway, calling for Julie, who was in the next room sorting out books, as I went. She took my hand and led me up the stairs to the bathroom so I could wash it out with water.
At this point I should probably, like Douglas Adams in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide, assure my audience of the ultimate safety and happiness of our hero. I’m sure you’re all very concerned about my eyesight, but rest easy: the paint was a water-based matt vinyl emulsion and can be – and was – washed out without harm. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Now, the most enjoyable part was certainly just after I’d slapped some water on it a few times. This had had the effect of washing most of the paint away, but when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw thick streaks of paint down my nose and cheek, and a kind of floating haze of white paint shimmering all over my left eyeball – all seen through a whitish mist, of course. This was the first time Julie had got a good look (my head was bowed as she led me upstairs), and I believe her reaction was something along the lines of “fucking hell”. It really did look rather cool.
I continued to rinse my eye and my face until it was mostly gone, then washed my hands thoroughly and we both had a good look at the eyeball. There were quite a few tiny white stringy speckles to be extracted, but nothing too bad. The only pain I felt was a result of Julie pulling my eyelids around a little overenthusiastically – the paint itself caused no pain or even discomfort, just lots of whiteness.
We consulted the tin, and it said to rinse well with water and seek medical assistance. We considered this last piece of advice gravely. On the one hand, eyesight is not something to be trifled with, and if that’s what it says on the tin, maybe there’s a good reason for them saying that. On the other hand, they probably have to say that to cover themselves, don’t they, and if I go to casualty I’ll probably be sat around waiting for two hours in order for somebody to just wash my eye out with sterile water instead of tap water. Which of the hands was to be believed?
There was only one thing for it: we consulted a higher authority, ie Julie’s Dad, who is wise in the ways of building and decoration (and who, by the by, has been unutterably fantastic in helping us sort out the house in more ways than I can mention here without turning this into Andy’s DIY blog, which it is veering dangerously close to anyway). Gladly, George assured us that he’d done the same thing “hundreds of times” and that as long as we washed it out well and it wasn’t hurting, it should be just fine. If it had been gloss, he said, it would be another matter: for a start it would have been burning with pain and we’d probably have not bothered calling him – straight to casualty – but matt vinyl emulsion is a friendlier beast.
Joy! I got back to it, taking greater care not to place my head directly underneath the roving paintbrush. So far, so good.
Personal Johnny
Johnny Cash covers Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus [null]. I’ve heard it and it’s fantastic. Johnny Cash rules the universe.
Anti-telemarketing counterscript
Anti-telemarketing Counterscript [pants].
Telemarketers make use of a telescript – a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.
Includes an A4 PDF version of the script. But will I ever have to guts to try it?
Waving cat
Fantastic waving cat animated gif [pants].
Andy dreams of…
I did the googlism thing last week, but Anita suggests looking for dreams.
…a Willy Wonkonian world with chocolate rivers, candy flowers, and schnozberry flavored wallpaper.
…the riches to come.
…ripping the whole thing up and using the substantial space to build a snowflex fun park similar to the Sheffield masterpiece he helped create.
…a day when he can surf on the moon.
…a large party with all his friends and a bottomless keg.
…leopards.
…getting out of jail.
…being spanked by Anna Kournikova.
Strange but true.
But Grommit – it’s the wrong York!
Man banned from driving after trusting in-car computer [Risks]. Amusing.
Pseudodictionary
Pseudodictionary – a dictionary of words that don’t officially exist [rivets].
I have submitted a word for possible inclusion, and shall update the loyal Gimboland readership as to its acceptance or otherwise in due course.
Dolphin attack!
Another reason to take some time out and replenish North Sea cod stocks: hungry dolphins are attacking humans and porpoises [rotten].
Entrepreneurs
Potted biographies of Bill Gates, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Venderbilt [via robot].
Learn to speak Welsh
Clwb Malu Cachu, including swearing in Welsh [found].
The closest I’ll get to space travel
My name is going to Mars, and so is Julie’s. Yours can too [gamma].
Face Blind
Face Blind – fascinating.
I was born with a condition that makes it difficult for me to recognize faces. There is a small part of the brain that is dedicated to that job, and though it is small, when it comes to recognizing faces, it is very very good. In me, that part doesn’t work, making me blind to all but the most familiar of faces.
Raw photography
Some incredibly powerful photographs by Japanese artist Manabu Yamanaka [buffoonery].
I am an Evany fanboy
Evany’s apartment building caught fire. Spoiler: she and her cat are both fine. I’m turning into such an Evany fanboy. How embarassing.
Goodbye hit counter
The Gimboland hit counter just passed 20,000 hits.
Now, I’m moving the site (and the trek site) to a different hosting service (probably WebQuarry) some time during the next three weeks, at which point the count would have to start from zero again. Furthermore, some people think hit counters are a bad idea anyway, and to be honest I think they have a point (in fact I’d agree with everything on that page, pretty much). It’s been interesting to watch the counter tick up (and accelerate – w00t) over time, but I could get the same information and more accurately by other means.
Thus, I’ve decided to drop the hit counter from this moment on. If you feel a gaping hole in your heart and need to watch something counting, you could do worse than the prime number shitting bear [rivets]. For some reason mine is stuck on 2. Heh – number twos. *snigger*
Nuggets of robot wisdom
Three tasty nuggets of robot wisdom: a stonking close-up of a sun-spot, James “Kibo” Parry’s mildly disgusting account of Thai bug essence, and some stuff about microkernels, which introduces to me the exciting concept of exokernels:
In contrast, the exokernel architecture implements nothing in kernel space. The exokernel’s sole purpose is to securely multiplex hardware resources among user-space processes. Device drivers, virtual memory, even cpu multiplexing and process management are implemented in user space. Supervisor-mode hardware events, like timer ticks, page faults, etc., activate stub handlers in the kernel that simply pass the event to a user-level process that implements the relevant facility’s policy.
Gimbo invents a new word
As a follow-up from this weblog entry, Gimbo invents a new word.
The Tale of the Chairs
The Tale of the Chairs
And so it was that our brave adventurers, Sir Andy and Lady Jala, once again sallied forth unto the magical land of Ikea, there to seek good cheap furniture, and to do battle with the crushing hordes of others stupid or busy enough to go on a Saturday. Hope and fortitude were plentiful in their hearts, for they knew what they were after, yea, and they had the van with them.
Their first obstacle, they bested easily. They spoke unto the Guardian of the Sofas and arranged that his minions would deliver their chosen items unto The Nut House, our heroes’ dwelling, struggling under their weight in exchange for a princely sum. All had gone well with this deal, and though the crowds of strolling fools were great about them, they sallied forth in the knowledge that their quest must end well, for they had phoned ahead and checked that their remaining quarry was in stock.
They took their time through the remaining glens and valleys of that fair land, content for the moment to drift downstream with the current about them, whilst keeping their eyes open for a nice waste paper bin. In due course they entered the lower Market Realm, and marvelled at the gadgetry about them, and though such gadgetry was not the intent of their quest, they readily picked up a few handy bits. For it is the way with gadgetry, that though you know it not until you see it, you cannot live without it.
At last they came unto the Warehouse, that vast hall wherein may be found gathered together all the truly wondrous Ikean artifacts. They sought Aisle Twentysix, and lo – there it was before them, and there, on Shelf Nineteen, lay The Forsbyan Dining Table of Stoutness. Their glee was great, for at the end of their last quest in these quarters, the table had been sadly lacking from their treasure. Truly they stood in the Aisle of Plenty, and gladness was in their hearts, for only the Sixfold Rebeckan Chairs remained to be found, and having phoned ahead our adventurers were confident that the chairs could not escape them.
Alas! The chairs were nowhere to be seen, when shortly thereafter was found Aisle Twentyeight, Shelf Eight, their appointed place. Our heroes’ consternation was great, for it seemed that all their preparation and endeavour had come to naught, and that they would, after all, have to return to that place next week. Their hearts were heavy at this prospect, for though the land of Ikea is full of wondrous things, it lay far from their come in Carmarthenshire, and they had other stuff they really needed to be getting on with. Lady Jala wailed and gnashed her teeth, and only Sir Andy’s calming words prevented her from smiting down the Guardian of Aisle Twentyeight immediately, though the blame lay not with him.
The heroes conferred as to what should be done next. It seemed they had no option but to return another time and hope for better chance, but then Sir Andy remembered the bargain they had struck with the Guardian of the Sofas. Perhaps a similar bargain might be reached, which would see the Sixfold Rebeckan Chairs delivered unto their own land without further effort upon our adventurers’ parts? Indeed, since the Guardians of the Warehouse and the Dining departments served the same overlord as the Guardian of the Sofas, might not the Chairs be attached to the same order? This plan seemed good, and so Lady Jala stood guard over the treasures already gained, whilst Sir Andy sallied forth to speak with the Guardian of the Warehouse with their hopeful proposition.
Now, Sir Andy was generally, by nature, a gentle and reasonable man, particularly when accompanied by the fiesty Lady Jala, whose anger could be great, and upon whom he oftentimes called himself to act as a calming influence. And so he spoke to the Guardian of the Warehouse full of cheer and good humour, and received the news that no, he would need to speak to the Goblins of Home Delivery about that mate, with calm and hopefulness. Before returning to his companion, he asked the Guardian to check that the Sixfold Chairs were indeed absent, and was surprised to learn that according to the Great Computer, their should be Fourteenfold Rebecka Chairs in that place.
“Is the shelf empty?”, said the Guardian?
“Indeed it is, Sir”, replied our champion.
“Then the shelf is empty.”
With those words ringing in his ears, Sir Andy returned to his Lady – and alas that he did not pursue that point further with the Guardian there and then, for much painful battle might have been averted. But it is the way with such moments, that they pass us by before we realise, and it is only time and reflection which leads us to know their importance at last, too late for any action.
They crossed the barrier of the Tills, fighting their way through the hordes until they reached the quiet haven wherein lay the Home Delivery and its Goblin Horde, where they waited a short time while the Chief Goblin listened to the entreaties of another weary traveller. In time they had their say, and were dismayed to learn that in fact the ones who could help them would be the Priestesses of that most mystical sect, Customer Services, and to see a Priestess they needs must take a ticket and wait their turn.
A ticket they took, and their turn they awaited, and all the while Sir Andy told Lady Jala to remain calm and that surely they would have satisfaction now, for if the Priestesses of Customer Services could not help them, yea, who could? Lady Jala poured not a little scorn upon Sir Andy’s entreaties, as she is wont to do at such times, but Sir Andy knew that this was simply the Cosmic Balance at work, made manifest in that eternal struggle called love, and inwardly he was glad so see her spoiling for a fight, believing as he did that a little “good cop bad cop” might be a fearsome weapon against their adversaries, should the struggle take a turn for the worse.
In due course their number was called, and they approached the Priestess, as she sat at her alter, before the Great Computer. Our heroes were a little dismayed, for they had hoped to meet one of Great Veneration, and yet the first flush of youth was still upon this Priestess’s cheeks. Their fears, alas, were soon realised. Sir Andy explained that they sought the Sixfold Rebecka Chairs, and those items being absent from the Warehouse, they were hopeful that the Chairs might be attached unto their order that Sofas be delivered unto their home. Or, if such an attachment were impossible, perhaps the order for the Sofas might be torn up, and replaced with a new order containing both the Sofas and the Chairs. Surely all comers will agree that such ideas were entirely reasonable, and exactly the kind of thing that a Priestess of Customer Services, with her Great Computer before her, ought to be able to do without a moment’s thought. Alas, the Priestess was ignorant as to the feasability of their request, and sought assistance from others of her house. Sir Andy was dismayed to hear her relay their entreaty less than faithfully, for she made it known that they wished to cancel their order, or failing that, attach the Chairs to it – whereas the opposite was in fact true – but no matter, for in fact, whilst such a thing might indeed be possible, it was not in the power of the Priestess to grant it. Instead our heroes must travel back to the realm of Sofas, there to entreat upon the Guardian to extend the order they had earlier placed in his care.
At this point in our story a subtle shift starts to occur, as Sir Andy’s calm demeanour starts to slip and be replaced by incredulity at the inabilities of the Ikean system. For if it is possible to conjure forth such an end through the Great Computer in the realm of Sofas, then surely the Priestesses of Customer Service, whose task is to maintain Customer Satisfaction in the face of Imperilled Shopping Experience, should have that capability also? After all, are not their Great Computers but windows unto an all-pervading Majestic Computer connecting all the realms of Ikea together? This, mused Sir Andy, is what you get when you use VMS.
The brave and by now weary adventurers left that place of disappointment, and hurried back to the realm of Sofas, pausing only to pick up a Customer Feedback form upon which to vent their anger. At their arrival where earlier they had stood with such hope and energy, they accosted the Guardian and made plain their desires, with such grave expressions as could not fail but to convey the seriousness of this matter. Hope, which springs eternal, sprang forth once again as the Guardian told them that yes, he could indeed do that for them, and would do so immediately. Yet just as hope springs eternal, so too is the way of the adventurer strewn with cowpats from The Devil’s Own Satanic Herd, and it was the Guardian’s unenviable task to relay the sad news that because the Sixfold Chairs of Rebecka are lacking a mystical property known as a lead time, it is impossible to order them to be delivered to your home at a later date. Indeed, he said, the only way to achieve such an end is to actually find them in the Warehouse, take them from the Shelf upon which they lay, and hie them to the Goblins of Home Delivery.
It has already been remarked upon that Sir Andy’s demeanour had begun to slip. At this point, it is fair to say, it lay in shattered pieces at his feet, his face turned red, and nails of iron began to issue from his mouth at the poor Guardian. A rare moment indeed, for it was then Lady Jala’s turn to take Sir Andy by the arm and urge restraint, for once again, the Guardian was not himself at fault. The Guardian gave them one glimmer of hope: travel once again (“Ah! The runaround!”, quoth Sir Andy) to the realm of Dining wherein lay the home of the Sixfold Chairs, and ask the Great Guardian of Dining for assistance, for perhaps in his power he might be able to cause an exception to be made.
With heavy hearts, and wondering whether other chairs might be acceptable to them, our questing heroes made the unwelcome journey to Dining, there to seek such assistance. The Great Guardian was readily identified by his confident and controlling manner, but immediately dashed their hopes of such an arrangement, saying that without a lead time, it would be unutterably impossible, and though Sir Andy might stand there unto his last day lamenting the failings of the situation, it could not change.
However. The Great Guardian took no small interest in their tale of the things that had occurred in the Warehouse, and the fact that the Great Computer said there should be Fourteenfold Rebecka Chairs upon the Shelf. It was, he said, entirely possible that the chairs were present, but not where they should by rights be, and if the weary travellers would but wait one moment, he would take hidden paths to the Warehouse realm, there to seek them out. Three minutes, maximum.
Our heroes waited in that realm for him to return, all the time espying other chairs that might serve to end their quest that day, but pained in their hearts at the prospect, for none seemed so lovely to their eye (or their rear end) as the Rebecka. And here our tale takes its final turn, and a glad one at that, for the Great Guardian returned with the happy news that the Chairs were indeed there, having been mislaid, and that he had set aside a Sixfold bundle for the completion of their quest, which could be collected on Aisle One. And there was much rejoicing.
They ventured once again into the realm of the Warehouse, sought and found their chairs in Aisle One, and finally returned to Aisle Twentyeight, that scence of earlier devestation, there to collect their other treasures. Upon the way, they amused each other with tales of how, in their absence, some rogue had undoubtedly come across their unguarded treasure and taken it for their own, rendering the quest incomplete, and so they were glad indeed to find that this had not taken place, and the treasure was safe.
They took their place at the Till crossing, paid the toll, loaded their treasures unto their mighty steed Astravan, and set forth from that place, vowing not to return any time soon. Little did they realise that once they had assembled that little table lamp picked up as an afterthought, they would desire at least one more, maybe two, and so, as is the way with men who are slaves to their lust, seal their own fates. But that will be another tale, for another day.
SUV drivers for Osama
S.U.V. Drivers for Osama – Keeping up with the Joneses while Supporting Global Jihad [rivets].
Of course, in addition to helping Jihad, driving a fashionable Sport Utility Vehicle confers many social advantages upon a Brother, especially in infidel lands where the SUV is widely regarded as an indication of wealth and prestige. Indeed, Allah may well see fit to bless an SUV-driving Brother with supplicating maidens even before his rendezvous with Paradise.
Porn movies with almost-real titles
Porn movies whose titles are based on real movie titles. Some are ridiculous, some are disarmingly simple. I think my favourite is “Position: Impossible”.
Gimboland is on the move
OK, Gimboland is on the move, from Frontier to Webquarry. Any disruption you experience over the next week or so is entirely intentional. See you on the other side!
Gimbo falls
I had my first “proper” fall while lead-climbing last night.
When you’re rock climbing (which, alas, I’ve only done on indoor walls so far – but very good indoor walls at that), there are basically two ways you can fall.
The first way is when you know you can’t hold on any longer and that you’re going to fall, so you warn your belayer and they take up the slack in the rope. I’d call this a controlled fall, and in the best of these, you basically don’t move anywhere – you can just let go of the wall and stay where you are. I’ve had many of these.
The other way is when you’re making a move and you fail – your foot slips, your grip isn’t strong enough, or you just miss the hold. In this case, because you’re moving there’s usually got to be some slack in the rope, and the belayer hasn’t been warned so you end up falling further as the slack is taken up and the rope stretches a bit – you might descend a few feet, and possibly swing across the wall, depending on how far off the centre line you are. I’ve also had quite a few these by now, but only while top-roping.
Now, top-roping is when you have a rope running from you (the climber) up to the top of the wall, through a fixed point, and back down to the belayer, who takes up the slack as you ascend, then lowers you from the top. It’s a good way to start climbing, but “the real deal” is leading, where there’s no rope attached to the wall at the start, and you clip yourself into protection on the way up. Until you’ve got the first clip in, you’re on your own, and if you fall, you’re in free fall – and because you have to climb past your protection, it’s often impossible for the belayer to take up slack in such a way that you could have a controlled fall as described above – at least, not without you climbing back below your protection before letting go.
Anyway, I was leading for maybe the eighth or ninth time in my short climbing career, and I’d just clipped in to the first bolt on the wall, about ten feet up I guess. I was starting to move up to the next one, passing the clip and off to the right, but my left foot wasn’t well placed. I could tell it wasn’t right, but didn’t see where it should have been until I tried again later. I reached up for my next hold, and the foot slipped off the wall. The next thing I knew, I was dangling with my feet about eighteen inches off the ground, having swung across the wall and down, crashing into Malcolm, belaying me, on the way – he’d been pulled into the wall as I fell.
All in all, it was as good a fall as I could have expected. I didn’t hit the ground (thanks Malc!) and apart from a grazed elbow I was unhurt. We both laughed for a bit, mainly in surprise, then Malc lowered me to the ground and I started again. I thought I’d have lost my nerve but it was OK, and I finished the climb.
I’m sure it’ll be the first of many. I just wanted to note its passing here.
The other thing that happened last night
The other thing that happened at the climbing wall last night: I saw a girl who looked like Krag Wad. Those of you who don’t know Krag, please look perplexed now.
Let’s go infra-red!
I’m thinking about infra-red control for my home PC. Specifically, I want the PC in one room, running xmms, and an IR receiver in another room in the house (where the music will actually play). The Linux Infrared Remote Control project tells me I should be able to get this controller to work, which would be neato, ‘cos it’s only about 20 euros.
Wounded Iraqis buried alive during Gulf War I
I’m pretty much lifting this from [rotten]: Wounded Iraqis buried alive during Gulf War I.
Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plow spoil funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came M2 Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.
“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”
Go U.S.A.!
GetContentSize()
GetContentSize – tells you the proportion of “real text” vs. “HTML cruft” at a given URL [gamma]. Gimboland gets 48.93% – not bad, whereas Frontier’s home page has a measley 7.15%. I don’t understand why this should be the case, however.
Clean sweep
Dick van Dyke is visiting us today, to sweep our chimneys. Joy!
Too much software for me to grok
A long list of too much Linux Multimedia software for me to grok any time soon, at debianlinux.net [robot].
Only thirteen years to go, then!
Couple resume seven year trek from South Africa to Cape Horn, after a year’s break to recover from injury.
Last May we set off from the Cape of Good Hope, and spent much of the time limping because James injured his ankle early on.
After eight months and 2,000 km on the road, we came back to England to get it checked out, only to find that walking on it had made it worse and worse. So we’ve had to take a year out while he recovers from surgery.
“…only to find that walking on it had made it worse and worse”? No shit, Sherlock. Still, good luck and all that.
Entrances To Hell
Entrances To Hell – excellent [wotever].
There’s even one in Cardiff called, bizarrely, Slipknot. Before going looking for entrances yourself, be sure to read the safety page.
Keep ‘em peeled out there people…
Airline food – it’s never been better!
I’m booking some flights to Amsterdam in the new year for my bud’s stag night, and I’m just really impressed by the range of food options available: Asian Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Diabetic, Kosher, Low Cholesterol/Fat, Low Sodium/No Salt, Oriental, Low Purin, Raw Vegetarian, Seafood, Vegetarian/Milk/Eggs, Vegetarian/Non Dairy.
I went for “Asian Vegetarian”, just to see what happens. Don’t know what “Purin” is? Me neither. Ah, it’s a golden retriever puppy who, apparently, “looks like a cup of delicious pudding”.
Which C++ code structure are you?
Which C++ code structure are you? [rivets].
I am a float: Often noted as being a little unpredicatable, Your imagination and flexability are envyed by many. You dislike being asked specific questions and will speak nonsense if confused.
Well, that last bit’s certainly right.
Free audio books
Free audio books – cool [rivets].
Also, the revolutionary AK-mp3 – a portable mp3 player in the clip of an AK-47. “This is our bit for World Peace. Hopefully, from now on many Militants and Terrorists will use their AK47s to listen to music and audio books?They need to chill out and take it easy.”
Churchy gets down with DJ Shopmobility and the Chain
Charlotte Church is fully decked out with draw, rizla, fags and a shiny tracksuit to take up her place of honour in the Goldie Lookin’ Chain. Wish it was true, don’t think it is.
2002-11-25: The Chain come clean.
Bridge basics
Interesting… I’d always thought of the Second Severn Crossing as just another suspension bridge (like the first one), but it is in fact a “cable-stayed” bridge. I think I always had a dull realisation in my mind that it was unlike other suspension bridges I’d crossed, but in that zen-like state we all drive in, I never really thought hard enough about it. *shrug*
Business card art
Some pretty nifty business card art at gapingvoid.com [consume].
I particularly liked please.
Free photos
Lots of good Gimboland-logo raw material at freestockphotos.com [pants].
Reesespotters anonymous
Sweet, especially as I saw an ickle Reese Witherspoon lookalike on her way to college this morning.
Monsoon Wedding
We saw Monsoon Wedding last night – most pleasant. The dialogue, a mix of Hindi and English, was incredibly hard to follow for the first five or ten minutes, until you got used to it. The Hindi was fine, because there were subtitles – but I’ve never heard English spoken so quickly! :-)
Democrats twice as likely to die in plane crashes
From a historical standpoint Democrats are twice as likely to die in air crashes as Republicans. Frequently, those who have died were known to have been either involved in the investigation of covert operations or to have taken highly controversial positions in opposition to vested government interests. [rotten]
The numbers are small though: 14 vs 8
Another oil spill, this time off Wales
Another oil spill, this time off Wales – though it doesn’t sound as bad as last week’s, thankfully.
The Black Book of Carmarthen
The Black Book of Carmarthen (thanks, Rich!) No, it’s not Jon Stoneman’s little black book from his roustabout days – it’s a medieval manuscript, recently scanned for your viewing pleasure.
Nobel prize for anal probing
I didn’t realise there was a Nobel Prize for Anal Probing.
Income tax and all that
I heard on Radio 4 on Saturday that in the UK, 50% of income tax revenue comes from the top 10% of earners, and in fact 20% of it comes from the top 1%, to which, I say, blimey.
I do hope I’ve remembered those figures correctly.
Guilloche elements
Guilloche elements – security for physical documents [gamma]. Cool.
Here’s a linux tool for creating them – though it doesn’t, admittedly, look particularly sophisticated.
The Peon’s Guide To Secure System Development
The Peon’s Guide To Secure System Development [python-url]
Increasingly incompetent developers are creeping their way into important projects. Considering that most good programmers are pretty bad at security, bad programmers with roles in important projects are guaranteed to doom the world to oblivion. The author feels that a step toward washing himself clean of responsibility is by writing this document. Checking your memcpy() and malloc() calls have been lectured to death. It’s not working. The approach used by this document is to instead shame developers into producing better systems.
…If something like Windows plays any part at all in your system design, you should probably give up now. Despite being closed source, holes are discovered constantly. The Windows system is also far too massive, complex, and user unfriendly for human beings to have any hope in securing it.
…You say you’re a gifted programmer who can handle pointers like an artisan? Great. Tell that to the other 50,000 gifted programmers who write shit. Shit that can endanger businesses, careers, lives, etc. When the revolution comes, your kind will be the first against the wall. Use a high level language.
Vintage Synths
vintagesynth.org [found] – nice.
For the past two years, my synths, sampler, mixer, etc. have languished unused while the studio reverted to its true state of a bedroom. Now that we’re leaving the flat (cleaning this week to be out on Saturday) and moving into the house, I feel the itch returning. I’ve also got a shiny new computer on its way and have discovered that since the last time I looked, Linux audio has come a long way (eg, check out ardour).
Black widows turn up in Tesco grapes
Black widows turn up in Tesco grapes. It seems that a reduction in the use of pesticides is allowing them to slip through the net. This is great: increasing envrionmental friendliness brings back some of the unwanted elements previously eliminated by our environmental unfriendliness. Are we willing to pay the price? The lady with the kiddies and the grapes says no, apparently.
Gimboland really is on the move
The great Gimboland move has begun in earnest – I’ve just started the process of transferring my domain registrations out to a holding space, which shouldn’t cause any disruption. Early next week, when that’s settled, I’ll repoint the name servers to Webquarry, and hopefully that’ll be smooth too. But you never know, so…
Country Bumpkin
I no longer live in Cardiff.
On Saturday afternoon we closed the door on the flat one last time, and drove off into the sunset. After ten years living in Cardiff I have left the building and returned to the leafy countryside. Weird.
Leaving the flat was no problem, but saying goodbye to Ed wasn’t fun. We’ve only known him a year, but in that time, with him lodging in the flat he’s become a good friend and it’s going to be weird not having him around. I know we’ll keep in touch and see each other from time to time, and it’s not like we did everything together, but it’s still sad. I mean, I now have friends who’ve moved away from Cardiff that I see maybe two or three times a year. If you think about it, that means I’ll probably see them somewhere between a hundred and two hundred times again before I die, unless things change. That’s weird. And now, I guess, I’ve entered that class of people, by leaving Cardiff myself.
Uh-oh… Also, I accidentally took Julie’s car keys and purse to work this morning. D’oh!
Burn, baby, burn.
The chimney sweep came last week, cleared out the chimneys and told us they were OK to use (previous occupant hadn’t done so). So, last night we lit a fire in the library, thus fulfilling a long-term dream of mine. Super. Now all I have to do is arrange a threesome with some horseriding instructors, and do a session on John Peel’s show, and I’ll be ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Fuckwit vendor
The bottle of champagne which our house’s previous occupant left for us does not make up for the news I’ve just received, that the last time the Rayburn was serviced, the engineer told said occupant that he would refuse to service it again as it was on its last legs. Since even a second hand Rayburn will cost us several hundred pounds, I’m not particularly happy that we heard this from the engineer, rather than the vendor (say, before we bought the place).
Quantum sheep shit
The bullshit that gets talked about quantum mechanics by people who know nothing about it is incredible. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory are spoken of today the same way X-rays and magnetism were in days gone by. Sheesh.
Stallman and Samaritans
Two Linux stories at the BBC: a short look at Richard Stallman and the Samaritans have started using Linux.
Bingo bitchslap
I used to belong to a group called the Cardiff Arthurians, who were into King Arthur, castles, and all that. We never quite made it to Castle Bingo though. It is a silly place, as the saying goes.
Jury service
I really hope Jury Service is continued next week – ‘cos it’s pretty good so far [null].
Snippets:
“Blrrrt. Greetings, tech-juror Rogers. I am a guidance iffrit from the People’s Magical Libyan Jamahiriya. Show me to representatives of the People’s Revolutionary Command Councils and I am required to intercede for you. Polish me and I will install translation leeches in your Broca’s area, then assist you in memorizing the Qur’an and hadiths. Release me and I will grant your deepest wish.”
Air travel is so slow you’d almost always be faster going by train. But the Gibraltar bridge is down for repair again and last time Huw caught a TGV through the Carpathians he was propositioned incessantly by a feral privatized blood bank that seemed to have a thing for Welsh T- helper lymphocytes.
Lycra-dog!
Top Quality Bodywear for Dogs – what the?
Today is my penultimate day
Today is my penultimate day at Frontier. I don’t know how much Gimboland acticity there’ll be over the next couple of weeks, as I settle into my new job. Must get PPP working from home…
We had the “Goodbye Andy”
We had the “Goodbye Andy” drinking session last Friday, here in Cardiff. Myself and a hand-picked possee of techies and buddies started out in the bar at Chapter Arts Centre, Canton, which has an excellent selection of European beers including the rather outrageous Trappistes Rochefort. The plan was to have a few there and then head into town, probably to the Toucan club, there to shake our stuff.
A good time was, I think, had by all. Certainly quite a few of the aforementioned Trappistes were bought for me by my soon-to-be-ex-colleagues, and this had the strange effect of making me rather drunk. I had a good time – I know I had a good time, but exactly what I did remains hazy. Some of us made it to the Toucan, but I wasn’t one of them – my inner circle were called home early, to deal with a small stiletto-heeled tornado (but that’s another story).
One thing became clear today. One wonderful thing I’d totally forgotten about, until Krag Wad kindly reminded me.
While we were still at Chapter, Krag happened to spot Mr Lindsay Whittle, leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council, and wondered if I might consider, next time I happened to be sauntering past the good councillor, if I’d mind issuing a subliminal suggestion to “Stop the speedbumps in Caerphilly”. I accepted this mission and duly sauntered. As I recall, I managed to get most of the message across, but I started laughing somewhere around “Caer”. This was, however, considered a great success.
But it doesn’t end there. No, just a minute or so later we noticed him heading for the gents’ toilets. This was too good an opportunity to miss. The possibilities were very exciting: if he entered a cubicle, we could stand outside, haranguing him until he relented. If he stood by a urinal, we could canvas him face to face. We followed him in, only to discover – joy! – he was stood at the middle of the three urinals, perfection itself. I took the one on the left, Krag took the one on the right, and very quietly, to the tune of “Deutchshland Uber Alles”, we began to sing “Stop the speedbumps in Caerphilly”.
We didn’t get far. I think we managed to get one line out, maybe two, but before too long I was totally losing it, and ended up lying on my back laughing my head of.
Fortunately the councillor took it in his stride – presumably as a borough councillor he has to deal with lunatics on a regular basis. With a polite “allright, are you boys?”, he left the scene.
I fear my career in Welsh politics has been dereailed before it has begun. Ah well. It should also be noticed that I have no idea where in Caerphilly the speedbumps are, or why they need to be stopped. But spread the word. Stop the speedbumps in Caerphilly.
A short Loopback device FAQ,
A short Loopback device FAQ, including instructions on using loopback to mount an ISO image without burning it to a CD-ROM. Also, notes on CD Ripping, Recording, and Audio Mastering.
Japan’s ‘curry killer’ sentenced to
Japan’s ‘curry killer’ sentenced to death.
According to the rights group Amnesty International, there are at least 118 people currently on death row in Japan, some 50 of whom have had their sentences upheld and can be executed at any time.
Prisoners are informed they are going to be executed less than two hours before they are hanged, AI says, and family and friends are not told in advance.
Episode two of Jury Service
Episode two of Jury Service is out.
“I will also nail to the wall the hide of anyone who talks about Exhibit A outside this room, because there are hardware superweapons and there are software superweapons, and we don’t know what Exhibit A is, yet. For all we know it’s a piece of hardware that looks like a portable shower cubicle then turns round and installs antique Microsoft crashware in your thalamus.”
The Orbital Recovery Corporation, which
The Orbital Recovery Corporation, which would be a lot better if it had Paul & Phil Hartnoll manning the spaceships [gamma].
Rayburn update: my earlier post
Rayburn update: my earlier post was inaccurate, due to confusion all round. Apparently it’s not that our particular Rayburn is defunct, it’s that the engineer in question dislikes all Rayburns of its type (ie ones which do the central heating too) as inefficient, and hence doesn’t touch any of them any more. We’ve found a Rayburn-friendly engineer who’s going to come for a look later in the week some time – although he tells me that yes, they are intrinsically inefficient. We’ll probably install a boiler in parallel with it some time, which’ll have the added advantage of being timer-controlled. Anyway, there we are. Vendor not such a fuckwit as earlier expressed.
Incredible. According to these pages
Incredible. According to these pages about the “Dawn of Man” sequence [consume] in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the best make-up Oscar in 1968 went to Planet of the Apes. Stupidity reigns!
Righto, so ends another era
Righto, so ends another era in the Gimbo employment tale. Thank you Frontier, and good luck to all your employees. I’ll be back in the Gimboland saddle at some point over the next few days, clart.
You knows it!
Hey’up. Well, here I am
Hey’up.
Well, here I am at Swansea University, sitting in the Multimedia & Graphics research lab surrounded by PhD students. Yes, that’s right, I don’t have my own box to work on yet. I will in due course (and it looks hopeful, though not certain, that I’ll be able to install gentoo on it – this is generally a SuSE shop), but since I don’t even have a room yet, a computer’s not at the top of the agenda. I’m currently sharing with Chris Whyley, who’s very nice, but whilst I have a bookshelf I don’t have a desk. Not a big problem, all I’m doing so far is reading and occasionally scribbling down notes.
All in all, it’s “so far, so good”, I’d say. I spent most of yesterday meeting people, getting an account set up, getting my ID card (and library card – alas, I can only take out 30 books at a time), and generally getting acclimatised. People are all (so far) very nice and welcoming. The most exciting part of yesterday was my attendance at a tutorial given by Professor Tucker, the head of the department. This is a group which I’ll be taking over next year, so they were as curious to see me as I was to see them. One of the first things they’ll be doing with me is a short presentation each on some coursework they’ve been doing this term, and the Professor took great pleasure in reading out the titles of their works and exclaiming with mock surprise that that was something I knew all about, to the terror of the author in question. In actual fact, a lot of it was stuff I know all about. I’ll be particularly interested to see the presentation on making music with computers. :-)
Apart from that, I’ve been reading. My main task at the moment is to ready myself for the Operating Systems course I’ll be teaching as of the end of January (lectures at 11:00 on a Thursday, and 14:00 on a Friday, by the looks of things). I’m doing this by going through Professor Chen‘s notes on the subject and expanding on the gruesome details in some of the seven textbooks I now have with the words “Operating Systems” in their titles. I’m currently concentrating on concurrency and mutual exclusion – stuff I already knew enough about to work with when I needed to (possibly with a bit of reading), but which I now need to know inside-out so I can teach it without looking like a blithering idiot (as if). So today it’s been semaphores, Lamport’s Bakery algorithm, Dining Philosopher, etc. Fun stuff. No, really.
It’s all fairly relaxed and flexible – certainly a far cry from Frontier. Suits me. And it’s so nice to have access to a library again. Apart from the directly work-related stuff, I’ve picked up a book on Haskell, volume one of Knuth (only a one-week loan, alas, even for one in such an exalted state as I, but extended over Christmas), and nice little number called Tracking the Automatic Ant. I was reading that last one over lunch, trying to get my head round a proof that the “obvious” way of tying your shoelaces is (in terms of lace length) the unique optimal way of doing it. I’m OK until point 22 of the proof, but then something happens which I haven’t quite figured out yet. I’ll keep at it. It’s just so nice to be thinking again.
I’m meeting the Frontier techies for a curry tonight which I’m really looking forward to (although maybe I shouldn’t have had chicken jalfrezi for lunch), and hopefully there’ll also be misc other Frontier people around, seeing Hannah off the premises in time honoured fashion (yes, another person who left Frontier this week, except that in a master stroke of employee morale management, the powers-that-be decided not to tell anyone that she was leaving until two days before it happened – but of course!). With a bit of luck I’ll throw her around the place as I’ve been known to do in the past.
Executive summary: I’m happy.
I learnt last night that
I learnt last night that one of the departmental secretaries, the marvellous and reputedly omnipotent Jill, is Aphex Twin‘s cousin.
This is, of course, mega, and I threw my arms around her in celebration. I should perhaps point out that this happened not in the office, but in a pub at the tail end of the drinking session following our Christmas lunch, down in the Mumbles. A fine time was had by all and remarkably, I was the last man standing. That sounds better than it is: everybody else didn’t collapse in a drunken heap, they just all drifted home before about nine. There’s an open day today (free buffet lunch – w00t!), and bleary eyes wouldn’t be ideal (which reminds me: time for a coffee). So, at nine last night I was in the White Rose on my own waiting for Julie to pick me up and contemplating the day’s events. I haven’t (as far as I can remember) insulted, propositioned, or poured my heart out to any of my colleagues here, to which I say “score!”.
Julie picked me up at about nine fifteen to drive me home, and got to listen to me drunkenly expounding on various subjects. At one point I was trying to explain some programming concept by asking her to imagine that she could create and destroy instances of the RSPCA’s Swansea Animal Centre at will. No, the analogy didn’t really work last night, either.
I advise my former colleagues at Frontier not to read the next sentence. I arrived at work at 10:15 today, and nobody blinked.
Nothing to do with anything above, but quite interesting/amusing, and mentions Julie’s colleague Elaine: The Urban Cowboys of Swansea. The Urban Cowboys move their herd from the Technology Block to the Main Block in order to prevent theft and for them to be in full view during Home Economics.
I’m learning TeX by reading Knuth. Hardcore.
Damn. I just burnt my tongue on my coffee. I hate that.