Archive for September of 2005

You shouldn't do that on radio

September 29, 2005
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:

This could take a while...

September 27, 2005
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

One for beans I think...

September 26, 2005
“This is one of the most unlikely covers I've ever heard buut it happened.”

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

Everyone else is doing it...

September 26, 2005
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

Hard Driving

September 25, 2005
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?

Paypal Scam o' the Week

September 24, 2005
Just an email with this image... and a link to some compromised Polish site.

Scam

Moral Test

September 23, 2005
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:

Read more »

New Phone

September 21, 2005
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.

Read more »

S.M.R.T.

September 21, 2005
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”.

More console comicery

September 19, 2005
VG Cats - Updated Mondays

That's a Cerebus reference, right?

September 17, 2005
“<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

Don't let the sun go down on me...

September 16, 2005
Woolwich Sunset 2a
Woolwich Sunset 2a,
originally uploaded by Auz.

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

Sam & Max: The Revenge of the Return

September 15, 2005
“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

A meditation on the perils of blog nomenclature

September 15, 2005
“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?

Killed by a noseless, earless, dead AOL user

September 12, 2005
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 smile - 13/9/05)

Paid 2 flirt

September 11, 2005
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

New Orleans drowns

September 10, 2005
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)

Lost, one prime minister, answers to the name Harold Holt

September 02, 2005
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

Bloverload

September 02, 2005
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)

Number Plates

September 01, 2005
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