J at work got himself a new joystick to better be able to pwn in Battlefield 2 (he also got a BF2 Z-board keyboard as well). Anyway, the joystick has some ubar force-feedback abilities, which maybe this little movie demonstrates:

Shake It!

(mp4 camera-phone movie - should play in Quicktime)

Listening to the morning show on Five Live this morning, there was a discussion sparked by recent changes to the law that meant Judges now decide how long convicted murderers should stay in gaol instead of politicians. One of the guests was Des Saddler (not sure on the spelling) who's daughter and two grand-children were killed by his daughter's second husband. The killer was given a mere 13-year sentence for all three murders and Des was there to put the view he should be in prison for life.

The second caller to the show, one David, held forth on re-introducing the death penalty rather than keeping convicted murderers in prison supported by the taxes of their victims. Des, asked if the death penalty would have made the death of his daughter easier to bear, was against it. David, then showing he hadn't really been keeping up with the show, put forward a scenario where one of Des's children was kidnapped and killed and the murderer caught and sentenced to life in prison - and if that happening would change Des's views on the death penalty...

You might be able to listen to the BBC stream here until next week - it starts about nine minutes in. Or I uploaded a brief excerpt:

A frame-by-frame analysis of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (via Coudal Partners):

“3. In Blue Velvet there are approximately 172,800 frames, at approximately 24 frames per second. (Everything here--all the calculations--are approximate. I use the word "frame" here in a sort of metaphorical way. Many thanks to Stuart Willis and Will Luers for input regarding DVD frame rate.)

4. A frame-by-frame analysis of Blue Velvet would take 473 years assuming one frame is presented per day.

5. I hope to offer 2 or 3 frames per week.”

Frame By Frame: Frame By Frame: An Introduction

From this morning's trawl of the spam-trap generic work email inbox.

On the 1st of november , we will have to pay for the use of our MSN and email accounts unless we send this message to at least 18 contacts on your contact list. It's no joke if you don't believe me then go to the site ( www.msn.com ) and see for yourself. Anyways once you've sent this message to at least 18 contacts , your msn dude will become blue. please copy and paste don't forward cos people won't take notice of it otherwise!

Also, the word gullible isn't in the dictionary.

“This is one of the most unlikely covers I've ever heard buut it happened.”

DREAMS OF HORSES: M.I.A. Covers Kaiser Chiefs

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

First signs of issues caused by the 360's lack of a HD...

“Last but not least, after we were told that there was no ability to fly aircrafts in the game due to the DVD drive's inability to stream the environment fast enough in full 720p resolution.”

Evil Avatar - Lack of Hard Disk Negativley Effecting 360 Development?

Just an email with this image... and a link to some compromised Polish site.

OK - the outburst on the Telethon was understandable. The “[white people aren't] allowed to use slang until it is at least a year old” thing could have been a jokey commentary on how long it takes us crackers to “get on down” and such. But... third strike?

Seriously? Kele Okereke shouldn't be in Bloc Party? Should The Go! Team drop Ninja and her rapping because the rest of them aren't black?

People should make the music they want to, not worry about whether it's the right music for their skin colour.

Apparently, exploit finding and exploiting security holes on Firefox is mainly done by people prone to temper tantrums if they don't get the attention they think they deserve.

“Exploit author SkyLined credits several people with assisting him in the creation of PwnZilla 5. In his description of the code, he says, "Since Netscape has not replied to reports about this vulnerability I've chosen to release it."”

[...]

“The vulnerability was originally reported to the Mozilla Foundation by Tom Ferris, who elected to make it public before fixed versions of Firefox and the Mozilla Application Suite were released. SecurityProNews reporter John Stith interviewed Tom Ferris about the IDN vulnerability last week, providing more insight into why Ferris chose to publish details of the flaw. Stith's article states: "He [Ferris] also commented that when he initially submitted all his information to Mozilla, they seemed at odds and he felt put out by them... Microsoft has always 'treated him more like a professional.' He said he felt the folks over at Mozilla treated him more like a kid."”

PwnZilla 5 Exploits IDN Link Buffer Overflow - MozillaZine Talkback

This is doing the email rounds:

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.

Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

You are in Florida - Miami to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

Suddenly you see a man floundering in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer... somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realise who it is.

It's George W Bush!

At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under... forever. You have two options...

i) you can save the life of G.W. Bush

or

ii) you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful men.

So here's the question, and please give an honest answer:

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Video for The Go! Team's infectious Bottle Rocket, out on the 26th of this month (256k WMV - also in 56k and as 256k and 56k Realmeedja).

My first year with T-Mobile was up, so they offered me a bunch of stuff for continuing. I picked a new phone, a Samsung E720. It's much much lighter than my old Motorola one and has a few more features, including MP3 playback and video with 88.5Mb of memory. The camera has a flash, and works both when the tri-corder phone is open or closed, allowing me to take the scary unshaved pic after the jump (NSFCoA). The bluetooth functions are much better than the Motorola as well, since that phone's Bluetooth had been put in a burlap sack and beaten until it whimpered by Moto.

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I just got back from a six-hour “Diabetes Day” at the hospital. It wasn't entirely pointless, despite featuring the world's most boring yet confrontational dietician, since we were all given a free blood sugar tester - Accu-chek's new “Aviva” model in fact. So, now I have three, including my original US one.

However, in my rush to get there I forgot to buy a ticket in the car park and thus got clamped. It was a £25 fee to get unclamped. Hopefully I confused the hell out of the clampers by being reasonable about the whole thing and then going and buying a ticket for the rest of the day (I'd realised what I'd done during the lunch break and decided to get it sorted then, rather than later when the [at least two] other clampees turned up). One of the clampers even said he'd have waited until he wanted to leave had he been clamped - then again, possibly he hadn't read his own leaflets which say “up to two-hour waiting time”.

Regarding an older post, I finally managed to solve both problems. In case anyone else runs into them:

The Samba Problem: ports! The following ports need to be opened on the Linux box for trouble-free sharing with Windows:

• 137:udp (AKA netbios-ns)
• 138:udp (AKA netbios-dgm)
• 139:tcp (AKA netbios-ssn)
• 445:tcp (AKA microsoft-ds)

The Sharing Tab Problem: registry! As per an answer the the ExpertSexChange site (which you can't read unless you pony up some cash), my registry had been edited to disable it (probably by one of those tweak registry programs I sometimes foolishly play with). To repair I had to recreate the following entry:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Sharing]
“(default)”="{f81e9010-6ea4-11ce-a7ff-00aa003ca9f6}“

and edit another to move the value in the ”~~disabled~~“ key back into ”(default)“:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\
 {f81e9010-6ea4-11ce-a7ff-00aa003ca9f6}\InProcServer32]
”(Default)"="ntshrui.dll“
”~~Disabled~~"="ntshrui.dll“
”ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

VG Cats - Updated Mondays

“<Gandalf> how do you create a user in linux?
<@Viceroy> you can't, if you use linux you're going to live alone forever”

QDB: Quote #540211

Much entertainment from Wikipedia and noted but sometimes controversial comic scribe and artist John Byrne. If you have some time, just churn through the page history from about here for the full monty. Though, this edit in combination with this rumour may be my favourite.

Possibly more amusing - and certainly more ironic - is on Byrne's own board where he solicits help in getting his edits made:

Does anyone know how to contact whatever Powers may Be at this online “encyclopedia”? For a couple of days now, between other, more important concerns, I have been trying to delete from the entry about me all the nonsense that goes beyond encyclopdic [sic] reference and enters the realms of opinion, rumor and borderline libel, and the result is that the page has been “locked” against my editing, on that grounds that my attempts to delete lies and troll-fodder constitute “vandalism”.

After mopping his fevered brow, the boards denizens then go on to deconstruct Wikipedia, using a combination of opinion, rumour and borderline libel to dismiss it:

Lots of people on here rely on that site when making statements. To me, wikipedia is just like a blog-- anybody can write whatever they want, & it becomes “fact.” No thanks.

Apparently, several Internet users can share a common IP address (wasn't aware of this; is this only on AOL?), so everyone linked to that address will receive emails and messages from Wikipedia re “vandalism” of an entry and threats of being barred. This occurred with me, and I have never created an entry or edited a page...yet “I” received hostile emails for doing so.

You wouldn't like it if someone made an entry that alleges you are a cannabilstic [sic] cross-dresser, would you? But the attitude of Wiki is such that if you can type it on a keyboard, then its perfectly fit to print.

One has to understand Wiki has their own definitions of “editing” and “vandalism”. The commonly accepted idea of editing includes the deletion of information. Wiki tends to see this as “vandalism”. If someone writes “SHIT” on their article, to delete it would be considered vandalism. If you replaced it with “FECES”, that would be considered “editing”.

Much fondling of joysticks from a couple of homies today over Nintendo's announced new console's controller.

I remain unconvinced. It is no-doubt an impressive and revolutionary idea and in the oft-shown “nunchuk” mode with a thumstick-on-a-string could well drag FPS control on consoles to something approaching the mobility you get with a mouse. Hands-on reports have been largely positive but I wonder if anyone has used if for more than a few minutes.

Try this test: see how long you can hold your hands out - without resting your elbows on anything - in the pose shown in the press release? Five minutes? Ten? Thirty? What about when moving one of your hands around a bit? Or try it with resting your elbows on something - I'm not sure it's an improvement.

We'll see anyway, I doubt my scepticism will have much effect, though it's good to know I'm not alone in it

Finally got around to uploading a couple of sunset shots I took a few weeks back.

“The presentation closed with the surprise announcement that Telltale has entered into an agreement with Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell to reintroduce the popular dog and rabbit team to the digital age.”

Adventure Gamers : Telltale Games secures rights to Sam & Max

“Jay was spotted by the ever present gaze of the librarian reading a page titled "Old Grandma Hardcore," and reported him to the disciplinarian bodies that be. Jay has now been given an "In School Suspension" and won't be able to access the internet at school for the rest of the year for viewing "questionable material" using the school district's equipment (which, by the way, runs an old version of Safari, which doesn't make the site look that pretty anyway.) The most important element of this "internet tale of woe" is now the boy has the words "accessing pornography about old people" on a document somewhere in his permanent record.”

Old Grandma Hardcore: OGHC- The Unforeseen Consequences; Good God, What Have We Done?

Received via work email today:

WHEN U ALREADY START READING THIS DONT STOP OR ELSE SUMTHIN BAD
WILL

HAPPEN ..... MY NAME IS SUMMER...

I AM 15 YEARS OLD WITH BLONDE HAIR AND SCARY EYES. I HAVE NO NOSE OR EARS.
I AM DEAD.

IF U DO NOT SEND THIS TO 15PPL IN THE NEXT 5 MIN., I WILL APPEAR TONIGHT BY
YOUR BED WITH A KNIFE AND KILL YOU. THIS IS NO JOKE SOMETHING GOOD WILL
HAPPEN TO U TONIGHT AT 10:22. SOMEONE WILL CALL U OR TALK TO U ONLINE AND
SAY I LOVE U.

DON'T BREAK THIS PLEASE COPY AND PASTE ON TO A NEW EMAIL DO NOT FAWARD

(obviously, still alive - 13/9/05)

More news from the Chinese Sweatblogging network...

“From now on, any employee who chats with foreigners or especially gets into an online relationship with foreigners will receive a larger bonus during Chinese New Year. Multiple relationships will result in even better bonuses.”

blogoriented

A very comprehensive and amazing gallery of photos taken from just before to a couple of days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans: Kodakgallery.com Slideshow

(link now no worky)

Oi, what a terrible match to watch. What is Sven paid for? For the first half, Wright-Philips is England's only succesful attacking force whilst the best Rooney can manage is coming close to twatting the ref. So half-time sees Joe Cole on for Wright-Philips and Rooney still on the pitch, to no discernable effect - except maybe dulling the attack.

And what's this gibberish: “The result went very wrong. For 35 minutes we played exactly how we wanted, a lot of patience, we controlled the game, we created some half-chances.”

“Some half-chances” against Northern Ireland cannot possible be classified as something you'd want. I suppose I can take some satisfaction from the winning goal being scored by a Leeds player.

Oh, and the commentators forgetting Wright-Philips is adopted and talking about how he gets his abilities from his Dad.

I'm in two minds over the whole Antony and the Johnsons winning the Mercury Music Prize thing. On the one hand, it's not a popularity contest. On the other, is an album of largely vocal - and retro - songs really the best current music in the UK (notwithstanding that Antony has not lived in the UK since he he was six)?

I'd have been made up if Bloc Party had won - I certainly felt Silent Alarm was much better than the Kaiser Chiefs' Employment, the favourite; there's about four standout songs on that, whereas Silent Alarm doesn't have a single bad song, even the slow one at the end. I must've had some inkling the judges were going for a retro vote though, since I guessed the poptastic harmonies of The Magic Numbers were going to get the nod, much as they pass me by.

I think, ultimately, the winner was picked as a “fuck-you” to the public: you're not cool enough to “get” this (though, apparently, sales of I Am a Bird Now are up 900% already - then again, that suggests very little were sold in the first place). It was amusing watching the coverage on BBC4 to see Radio 1's Jo Whiley interviewing some guy from the NME and both of them acting as if this was the sort of music they regularly covered (Jools Holland though I could well believe does - that man like absolutely everything).

I'm more interested now in checking out The Go! Team and Maxïmo Park though, so I guess the whole thing does help, regardless of who wins.

(you can watch a few of the performances on the BBC4 site)

Sun Microsystems is an interesting company. They've done a lot for open source stuff with their cash behind both Java and OpenOffice. On the other hand they tried to persuade the world that “the network is the computer” and everyone should buy expensive Sun servers to power “cheap” thin clients. They also came up with Network the Dog, who seems to have all but been erased from the Internets these days - I guess he's one dog who was just for Christmas.

I cut my *nix teeth admining a Solaris box though, so I had some fond memories - until today.

As a few people know, I work for a small online games company you've never heard of. We do online sports management sims based on the lower, amateur side of sports. The oldest game we have is Sunday League which has been around since mid-2000 and takes its impetus from Sunday League Football wherein a number of variously talented lads with degrees of fitness attempt to injure each other on the field of battle play before getting lathered in the pub.

Long before I arrived Cat Games decided to trademark Sunday League. This is, sadly, a long, involved process which is one of many ways for lawyers to squeeze money out of you. It gets even worse when a big company like Sun decides to take a pop at you. A care package came back from the lawyers today - Sun is apparently blocking our trademark on the basis that people might get confused; that they would think Sun were involved in Sunday League. That, to be more specific, when people heard “Sunday League” they might think of a “league” or range of “Sun Ray” or “Sun Blade” products and, I don't know, sign up for our game instead of buying an over-priced web server.

We just think they're bat-shit insane.

Some people put too much into their feedback...

(and he also spelt “off” incorrectly)

More pointless twaddle about the Goldfrapp CD. I was submitting the TRMs to MusicBrainz and happened to glance at the inside of the CD insert. After looking at that, what you can't see on the cover, but might guess from the full image if I hadn't cropped the top is that Alison Goldfrapp is standing in a forest of phalluses.

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High bandwidth video (wmv) for the new Bloc Party single. Kind of a bland band playing in a studio thing. (also medium and low bandwidth versions)

I picked up the new Goldfrapp album “Supernature” yesterday - the cover features Ms. Goldfrapp in a state of some dishabille:



However, there's an odd chunk taken out of the hand covering her breast. It doesn't seem like the title would be unreadable if the missing part of anatomy was restored, so was the seductive curve of a boobie excised to prevent adolescents in the record store from frottering themselves to death - or was it something more sinister...

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I read about this guy in Bill Bryson's Down Under. Though the article is somewhat disingenious in that they've just decided he was lost rather than proving it (though it is the most likely explanation).

“Harold Holt disappeared while swimming in heavy seas at a surf beach in the southern state of Victoria on December 17, 1967, after serving almost two years as prime minister.”

Mystery of lost prime minister put to rest at last - Yahoo! News

I've got 212 feeds in Bloglines at the moment. I've deleted a few but seem to end up adding more. In many cases, I look at some of the busier categories and maybe glance at the first few entries before dismissing the whole lot and moving on.

This doesn't seem ideal.

I could cut things down - maybe there's a feed filtering system that just shows items which match tags I've entered. But then I'd need to predict what I'm interested in before hand; and sometimes there's an interesting story that isn't related to anything...

I really need a feature that knows what items I'd like without me telling it.

(As an aside, Bloglines' feed search seems almost entirely useless - a search on all blogs for “Rolling Stones” pulled up a list of apparently dead spam or illicit mp3 blogs, whilst a search of my subscriptions produced no hits when at least one article for the BBC music feed was about them)

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick... what's Mosley been doing these past few years.

“FIA president Max Mosley announced the partnership after a recent survey of fans showed 94% wanted more overtaking.

"We didn't realise how important (passing) was to the fans until recently," said Mosley.”

BBC SPORT | Motorsport | Formula One | F1 unveils plan to improve racing

Personalised Number Plates (or License Plates for my Merkin friends) I have seen in the past two days:

BI99 EGO (on the back of a flash Jag that was going far too slowly for a flash Jag)
HI5 PLS