September 08, 2008
Me and Tim
Timothy Leary and I, we are the same person.
MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Ancestors - Family history
Posted by daen at 02:57 AM | Comments (1)
June 15, 2007
Reality check
I'm still around, living in a new apartment, on my own, and soon to be without gainful employment. All through choice, apparently. Stay tuned.
Posted by daen at 02:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2006
Best excuse for a spliff ever
A couple of days, George Michael passed out at the wheel of his car at a set of traffic lights. When police arrived they found him in possession of a small spliff:
A friend added that his penchant for cannabis was linked to the fact that he was now a Buddhist convert and it helped his chanting.
Wonderful.
Posted by daen at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2006
Denmark for my German visitors
It occurs to me as I surf my referrer log (and this is a reflection of the general slowness of my brain and the ineptness of my language skills) that the title of this blog is also similar to the German proper noun for Denmark, "Dänemark". As a small disambiguation service to my accidental, and no doubt terribly confused, German visitors who were presumably expecting to read about holidaying in Denmark, allow me to provide you with a link directly to the German pages of the VisitDenmark website and one to a German language webpage on holidaying in Denmark. Schönen Tag noch!
Posted by daen at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Thought for the day ...
There are only two things to worry about, either you are healthy or you are sick. If you are healthy, then there is nothing to worry about. But if you are sick there are only two things to worry about, either you will get well or you will die. If you get well, then there is nothing to worry about. But if you die there are only two things to worry about, either you will go to heaven or to hell. If you go to heaven, then there is nothing to worry about. And if you to go hell, you'll be so darn busy shaking hands with your friends you won't have time to worry.
Posted by daen at 11:35 PM
August 27, 2005
Back from California
We're back. And boy, are we tired.
I'll post a fuller entry soon. Suffice to say that:
1. Redwood stumps make excellent wedding platforms.
2. Falling into boiling mud can cost you a limb (no, not me - Kendall Vanhook Bumpass).
3a. The River Bar Farm outside Fortuna, CA is an excellent B&B.
3b. As is the Weston House in Shingletown, CA.
4. The Ford dealership in Fortuna, CA are an excellent bunch of folks who will try to help fix your crappy Taurus SE front passenger window when it breaks.
5. But don't ever rent a car from Dollar unless you want to run the risk of spending 3 hours on the phone trying to get them to do something constructive when the front passenger window on your crappy Taurus SE breaks.
Posted by daen at 01:35 PM
August 10, 2005
Saturnus Technology Systems
Saturnus Technology Systems is an Australian company who have developed "an investment accounting system specifically targetted at the Australian financial services market." Why do I mention it here? An ex-colleague of mine, Simon Andrew, is one of the brains behind the company, so it'll probably be a decent portfolio management system.
Posted by daen at 06:34 PM
August 08, 2005
S.W.A.M.P. (Studies of Work Atmospheres and Mass Production)
is an organization whose primary goal is to find creative expression within elements of culture that are inherently counter-creative.
Their projects subvert these elements and make them into something new and much more interesting. For example:
Spore 1.1 is a self-sustaining ecosystem for a rubber tree plant purchased from Home Depot. In this project, Home Depot is responsible for the plant in two ways: first, an unconditional guarantee to replace any plant they sell, for up to one year; secondly through an implied cybernetic contract. This second responsibility is the creative content for the work, where Home Depot's economic health is transitioned through a series of physical computing techniques to a mechanism for controlling the watering of the plant. An onboard computer uses a Wi-Fi connection to access Home Depot stock quotes once per week, keeping a database of these week ending stock values. From the fluctuations in Home Depot stock, various programs and circuitry are controlled accordingly. As the company does well, so does the plant - if the company suffers losses, Spore 1.1 does not get watered. If the plant should parish, due to poor stock performance, it is returned to the Home Depot and replaced with another-at no additional cost.
(Thanks to boingboing for pointing me at this)
Posted by daen at 06:21 PM
July 20, 2005
36th anniversary of Apollo 11 moon landing
Google Moon celebrates the 36th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings in the form of a special Google map. But wait - there's conclusive proof that the whole thing was faked! Zoom in to the maximum level for irrefutable evidence ... Scary stuff.
Posted by daen at 10:55 AM
July 15, 2005
The transistor
More than you ever wanted to know about transistors ...
Posted by daen at 11:02 PM
July 12, 2005
"Cannot be underestimated"
The phrase "cannot be underestimated" is an odd one. Do people mean "should not be underestimated"? For example, this article concerns a grey parrot named Alex, who understands the concept of zero. The story quotes researcher Dr Pepperberg as saying:
"This kind of research is changing the way we think about birds and intelligence, but it also helps us break down barriers to learning in humans – and the importance of such strides cannot be underestimated," said Dr. Pepperberg.
I'm fairly sure that's not what Dr P meant.
Posted by daen at 04:51 PM
July 06, 2005
Charles Darwin has a Posse
CHARLES DARWIN HAS A POSSE -- stickers in support of evolution
Posted by daen at 03:59 PM
The Bush Four Stage Strategy on Climate Change
- Say that climate change is not anthropogenic in origin;
- Say that climate change may be anthropogenic in origin, but we should do nothing about it;
- Say maybe we should do something about it, but there is nothing we can do;
- Say maybe there was something we could have done, but it is too late now
Interesting to see that he has progressed to stage 2 now.
(Adapted from the "Yes Prime Minister" four stage Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.)
Posted by daen at 03:20 PM
Happy Birthday, Mr Ocean of Wisdom
George W Bush (59) and the Dalai Lama (70) share a birthday today. If they weren't 11 years apart, it would be fun to entertain the notion that they were switched at birth ... Looks like the Chimp Circus has left town, anyway.
Posted by daen at 03:17 PM
June 29, 2005
You. Are. Joking.
Reagan voted 'greatest American'. I mean, what?
That list in full.
1 Ronald Reagan
2 Abraham Lincoln
3 Martin Luther King
4 George Washington
5 Benjamin Franklin
6 George W Bush
7 Bill Clinton
8 Elvis Presley
9 Oprah Winfrey
10 Franklin D Roosevelt
I mean, Lincoln, yes ; Martin Luther King, yes ; Washington, of course ; Ben Franklin, certainly ; Roosevelt, Presley, yeah, OK. But Oprah? GWB? Clinton? REAGAN?!?!
OK, let's see some other candidates, folks ...
Neil Armstrong
Buzz Aldrin
The Wright Brothers
Henry Ford
Louis Armstrong
Ernest Hemingway
JFK
J P Morgan
Andrew Carnegie
Ulysses S Grant
Thomas Jefferson
Andy Warhol
Humphrey Bogart
Crazy Horse
Richard Feynman
John Steinbeck
George Washington Carver
Rosa Parks
Booker T. Washington
Robert Oppenheimer
Linus Pauling
Jonas Salk
Jesse Owens
Alexander Graham Bell
Dwight D. Eisenhower
William Randolph Hearst
Walt Disney
Frank Lloyd Wright
Helen Keller
Charlie Chaplin
Mark Twain
Bill Gates
Vint Cerf
Any of the people above, some controversial, some not, have just as great a claim to greatness than Oprah, bless her, don't they?
2.4 million people (Discovery Channel viewers and AOL users ... hmm) voted on this, and most of them should be ashamed. This is a daft populist quiz, no more nor less, and reflects on the US's fascination with the glib and superficial.
Posted by daen at 12:57 AM
June 21, 2005
Australians in freak wombat crash
The Beeb sometimes likes to indulge its tabloid side a little. Consider Australians in freak wombat crash. Really.
Two men in south-eastern Australia have survived unharmed after their truck hit a wombat before crashing off the side of a bridge.My friend Simon, who is an Ozzie, once told me that wombats were a serious road hazard. Simon, I'm sorry I didn't believe you. It took the BBC to make me a believer.
Posted by daen at 12:08 PM
June 16, 2005
Happy 101st Bloomsday
June 16th is Bloomsday. Which is today.
Posted by daen at 01:25 AM
June 14, 2005
First records ...
I'm re-reading Giles Smith's excellent book Lost In Music. Giles talks about the first record he ever bought (which he variously recalls as Let It Be or I Saw a Mouse, among others).
The first record I ever bought for money was Black Man Ray by China Crisis. The first record I had given to me by someone who was not family was Closest Thing To Heaven by the Kane Gang. Good solid 80s fare.
According to Martin Newton's excellent UK chart hits website for July 1984, Closest Thing To Heaven was in the UK charts along with Neil's Hole In My Shoe, Shakatak's Down On The Street and Blancmange's The Day Before You Came. Jesus.
The China Crisis single entered the charts in March 1985, the same time as Madonna's Material Girl, Alison Moyet's That Ole Devil Called Love and the Rah Band's Clouds Across The Moon (great song).
Martin Newton has more UK chart info here going back to November 1952!
Posted by daen at 01:57 PM
June 08, 2005
Uncyclopedia
In their own words Uncyclopedia is
the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
Entries are whimsical and some are more true than they would like us to believe. For example, consider the entry on hand waving.
Hand waving is the most important part of calculus. The idea is to pretend that arguments with holes are valid and rigorous.Techniques
There are many techniques for hand waving calculus. The first is loud speech. Loud speech allows you to say things without anybody talking back, for fear they will get yelled at. The second is triviality arguments. In this, you say, "Proof is trivial". Usually people will accept you without looking at this themselves. A closely related method is obviousity arguments. In support of some step, you say it is "obvious" or "clear", etc. An expanded version of this method is "The proof is left to the reader (or student.)" As the reader or student has more important priorities, no one will care to check things out. Another method is to make references to obscure, not necessarily related theorems, and connect the start and end of your argument to these references. This will give the illusion of causal contiguity.Uses
As you know, mathematics cannot proceed without rigor. This makes things slow. With hand waving calculus, we can proceed much faster and in fact can prove many things that it was impossible to prove before. The key concept is that there is an illusion of rigor while it is not really present, so people accept it.
Posted by daen at 09:30 PM
May 19, 2005
77/78 bus times
Number 77/78 bus timetable - Saturday and Sunday
Posted by daen at 12:30 AM
April 22, 2005
Bures : the butcher's shop
Drake's butchers shop is where Pont set up shop between 1986 and 1988 in the little village of Bures.
Posted by daen at 02:11 PM
April 12, 2005
Online God-O-Meter
The Amazing God-o-meter detects the presence of any of the following spirit-based entities :
Blessed Virgin Mary
Your personal deity
The Horned God
Ganesha
Krishna
Yahweh
Koresh
Jesus
Allah
Odin
Jah
IPU
The stronger the signal, the further the Mystic Pointer will move from 0 (no god present) to 1 (divine intervention imminent). This allows the user to determine how closely their god is to them and how much attention the god is likely to pay to any prayers, incantations, sacrifices or wishful thinking.
I think it's time for a web service version of this ...
Posted by daen at 12:03 AM
April 10, 2005
Weird fiction
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Scold Your Pets For Not Being Romantic Enough Day!
Tell Wiffles that she never tries to surprise you. That she takes you for granted. Tell her that it would be nice if you could just come home one day to find that Wiffles had done something, perhaps arranged her poo to look like your face or whatever, just to let you know that you're still special. Wiffles will just kind of walk away because she doesn't speak English. When she does, weep.
Happy Scold Your Pets For Not Being Romantic Enough Day!
Posted by daen at 05:47 PM
March 17, 2005
Periodic tables
This website shows the periodic table in a number of forms (the elements that are superconducting, their state at 700 celsius etc) as well periodic tables in novel forms (such as the chemical galaxy).
Posted by daen at 01:02 AM
March 16, 2005
Spoiled Ink
Short stories @ Spoiled Ink @ Spoiled Ink
Posted by daen at 01:31 AM
March 15, 2005
Unintentional irony from the Roman Catholic Church
"The book is everywhere. There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true."
Thus spake the representative of the Roman Catholic Church about the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Surely I am not the only one to find deep irony in the Vatican's dismissal of a widspread and popular tome as a dangerous fiction ... I was briefly tempted to pen a scathingly satirical article for the Rockall Times, but really, what's the point?
Posted by daen at 08:33 PM
March 13, 2005
"Yes, Madam President"
Do You Think the United States is Ready for a Woman President in 2008? - 62% say 'Yes' (The Hearst Newspapers / Siena College National Poll).
More remarkable, out of 1,125 registered voters across 50 states and DC in the survey, around 11 did not know who Hilary Clinton is, and nearly 80 of them had never heard of Condoleezza Rice. You know, wife of the former President and junior Senator from New York, and the current Secretary of State - the highest ranking member of the US cabinet - respectively? These ignoramuses are registered voters, saints forfend us. Can you imagine them on election day (if they bothered to turn out) - "Bush ... yeah, definitely rings a bell ... isn't he a golfer?".
Posted by daen at 10:06 PM
March 03, 2005
Steve Fossett sets solo flight record
Steve Fossett has set the solo flight record less than a month after Ellen MacArthur broke the round the world solo sailing record. Well done Steve, Scaled Composites and the Virgin Global Flyer team.
Posted by daen at 09:11 PM
February 21, 2005
Hunter S Thompson is dead
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- Dr Gonzo
Posted by daen at 01:18 PM
February 08, 2005
Ellen MacArthur breaks round-the-world solo sailing record
Ellen MacArthur, the diminuitive English yachtswoman, has completed her single-handed round-the-world voyage in record-breaking time ... 71 days and 12 and-a-bit hours. Over 27,000 miles, that's an average speed of 15 miles per hour (13 knots). Unbelievable.
Posted by daen at 12:26 AM
February 06, 2005
Ernst Mayr is dead
Ernst Mayr has died, aged 100. He is well known for his 1942 book on Systematics and the Origin of Species, in which he argues for a model of speciation based on geographic (allopatric) isolation. Initially badly received, Mayr argued the case for allopatry until the critics shut up.
Darwin once wrote: "It's dogged as does it... I have often and often thought that this is the motto for every scientific worker." An appropriate thought for a man who has been described as the Darwin of the 20th Century.
His Harvard obituary is here and his WikiPedia entry is here.
Posted by daen at 03:12 AM
February 01, 2005
Ivan Noble dies aged 37
Ivan Noble, BBC News science and technology writer, has died aged 37 in a London hospice.
For over two years, Ivan kept an online diary describing his battle with cancer for BBC News Interactive's readers.
Thousands of people e-mailed the website to share their experiences and thoughts with him.
He is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
Posted by daen at 01:17 PM
January 27, 2005
Auschwitz liberation day : 60 years on
BBC NEWS | Europe | World marks Auschwitz liberation
Posted by daen at 11:38 PM
Alberto Gonzales? No thanks.
Alberto Gonzales is Not Fit to be Attorney General
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. In this case, we, the undersigned bloggers, have decided to speak as one and collectively author a document of opposition. We oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General of the United States, and we urge every United States Senator to vote against him.
As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.
[...]
With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him. [More]
Scarily self-referential, since I expect the link to Newsfare to reflect this link which reflects the link to Newsfare which ... you get the point.
Posted by daen at 11:30 PM
January 20, 2005
Objets Perdus et Trouvés
Objets Perdus et Trouvés sur Internet: La ressource en ligne d'objets perdus ou trouvés du monde.
Posted by daen at 11:21 PM
December 02, 2004
Iraq Homeland Security Advisory System
See it here.
Posted by daen at 12:48 AM
November 30, 2004
RS-232 wiring info
Tech Info - RS232 Cables and Wiring
Posted by daen at 03:38 PM
November 18, 2004
Father Jack
Look for "Feck" and "Arse" in Google Sets and out pops Father Jack.
Posted by daen at 02:38 PM
November 06, 2004
Liverpool St Station webcams
BBC - Essex Webcams - Liverpool Street Station
Posted by daen at 03:35 PM
November 02, 2004
LoreBrandComics
Posted by daen at 09:44 AM
October 21, 2004
FactCheck.org
FactCheck.org has a tagline of "holding politicians accountable".
Their mission statement is:
"We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.
The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation."
At the moment they are almost exclusively examining claims made by both Bush and Kerry camps in the runup to the election. This is a Good Thing and helps keep your feet firmly on the ground.
Posted by daen at 01:22 PM
October 19, 2004
Ad graveyard
Now, if you read my blog, you'll know it's high minded, not a little liberalistic and usually good clean fun. But this Aussie dog food advert is very, very funny. Sorry.
Posted by daen at 12:37 AM
October 18, 2004
California Ballot Propositions - 2004 election
The Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley has written out a table of California Ballot Propositions for the 2004 election. The best part is the list of organizations and newspapers - from the Peace and Freedom Party to the Sierra Club. Never have I had to learn so much about a state's politics so fast ...
Posted by daen at 11:40 PM
September 27, 2004
The Creation à la Infocom - and the Hitchhiker's Guide rides again
The Creation is spoof transcript of how Genesis would read if done in an Infocom text adventure game, circa 1985 ...
Also, Hitchhiker's Guide Infocom game made flash - to go along with the 25th anniversary Tertiary phase new shows.
Posted by daen at 11:44 PM
September 21, 2004
Aphorisms
This list of aphorisms contains a few really good ones ...
If you’ve got demons, make demonade
Posted by daen at 11:12 PM
September 20, 2004
Which side of the road do they drive on?
Brian Lucas's "Which side of the road do they drive on?" is a great resource if you're wondering what percentage of the world drives on the left vs the right hand side of the road, what side to drive on in Mauritius if you come from Mauritania (or in Brussels if you come from Brunei) and why you might have been happy not to have been driving on Swedish roads at 5:00am on 3rd September 1967 ...
Posted by daen at 11:37 PM
The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony
Patrick Woodroffe and Dave Greenslade are not well known. Woodroffe has done book and album cover art (The Strawbs, Judas Priest) and some film work ("Neverending Story II") while Greenslade is a musician - founder of "Colesseum" in the 60s, and the eponymous "Greenslade". Greenslade is notably a friend of Terry Pratchett, releasing "From the Discworld" in 1994, an album of music inspired by Pratchett's Discworld novels.
Greenslade and Woodroffe have collaborated on two projects, "Time and Tide" in 1975, and "The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony" in 1979 [example].
The "Pentateuch" is a weird concept album. I stumbled across it around 1985 in my local library and loaned it out. At that time I was listening to Jean-Michel Jarre, Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds", Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Variations", Kraftwerk ... eclectic, eh? ... and I was disappointed by the music of "Pentateuch". Greenslade uses the opportunity to tweak his array of synths, software and vocoders, but few of the tracks are any good, though there are one or two that I remember even now.
It's Woodroffe's illustrations that are captivating. You can look at them for hours, and you will keep finding new and extraordinary things. Tommy Schönenberg has written a good review of "Pentateuch" on his comprehensive vintage progressive rock site.
Posted by daen at 09:36 PM
September 14, 2004
Look out GWB ...
Yes ... I am a natural-born citizen of the USA (according to Wikipedia's interpretation of Title 8, Section 1401 of the U.S. Code) which means I can run for President ... so if it all goes horribly wrong in November, I can get nominated by the Democrats and kick the GoP out in 2008 ... Now I just have to figure out a way to get my name on the list of Danish Prime Ministers ... BUAHAHAHA!! (evil laugh).
Posted by daen at 11:44 PM
September 10, 2004
A Sense of Scale
A Sense of scale compares distance from the Planck length all the way up to the distance to one of the furthest known objects, quasar SDSS_1044_0125, or more than 61 orders of magnitude ...
Posted by daen at 10:28 AM
September 05, 2004
9/11 : questions, questions, questions
UQ Wire: The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11
The Project for the New American Century
Exposing the Project for the New American Century
Posted by daen at 11:01 PM
September 04, 2004
Enneagram Test
Main Type | Overall Self |
 |  |
| Enneagram Test Results
Your variant is self pres |
Posted by daen at 06:49 PM
Personality Test
| Global Personality Test Results |
| Stability (33%) moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and nervous. Orderliness (40%) moderately low which suggests you tend to be unreliable, lazy, careless, and unmotivated. Extraversion (53%) medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, optimistic, sociable and affectionate. |
personality tests by similarminds.com
Posted by daen at 06:42 PM
Bloginality
My Bloginality is ENFP!!!
Posted by daen at 06:41 PM
August 28, 2004
Modern wisdom from historical wrongdoers
Göring: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Göring: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Sound familiar?
Posted by daen at 01:06 AM
August 24, 2004
What Iz The Whiz®?
The Whiz® is a soft, white, plastic funnel coated with an anti-bacterial agent. It changes the punchline to the old joke "What is it a man does standing up, a woman sitting down, and a dog on three legs?" (Answer: shaking hands).
As highlighted in the BBC article "Girls beat Glasto toilet nightmare".
Posted by daen at 11:11 PM
August 23, 2004
Burgh Island
In 1941, Agatha Christie wrote the Poirot story "Evil Under the Sun" on Burgh Island, just off the Devon coast. The Beeb went there to film that particular Poirot episode sixty years later.
Posted by daen at 11:24 PM
Flickr
Photo sharing website Flickr is very interesting - camera phone upload, EXIF digital camera info, calendar based organizer, RSS feeds ...
Posted by daen at 02:02 PM
August 17, 2004
Dihydrogen monoxide
Disturbing website on this little-known chemical.
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the unstable radical Hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.
Posted by daen at 12:00 PM
Mashie Niblick
What's a mashie niblick? What do you mean, you don't know? Look it up!
Posted by daen at 11:00 AM
August 14, 2004
ROM images for Atari emulators
The Atari pages at online.pl have literally hundreds of ROM images for use with your Atari 400/800 emulator.
Posted by daen at 11:34 PM
August 05, 2004
Googling for unusual words - and as a party game ...
"Unclimbability" is a word with an interesting history on Google (see my previous entry):
Feb 2003 - no hits
Jul 2003 - 1 hit
Aug 2004 - 5 unique hits (27 total hits)
OK - "undescendability", "unreinsurability", "unreimpeachability", "reclimbability", "unreclimbable" or "unreclimbability" have no Google hits (well, one after this blog entry hits the Google servers) ... let's see how long it takes for that to change! There's one hit for "reclimbable", but it's a misseplling misspelling of "reclinable".
And here's the link to the game.
Posted by daen at 11:44 PM
August 03, 2004
How to be creative
In his own words, Hugh "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" Macleod is a creative director who writes about the grim new realities of the advertising business. Gapingvoid is his vehicle, and this is "how to be creative".
Posted by daen at 02:09 PM
Rotating earth watch
Boing Boing describes this rotating earth-model watch. I want one!
Posted by daen at 01:53 PM
August 02, 2004
FUH2
The Hummer 2 is a gas-guzzling beast of a car. It weighs 8,600 lbs (3,930 kg) which is about the weight of 3.4 Mini Coopers at 2,530 lbs (1,150 kg). FUH2 is a celebration of this whale of a car, with accompanying salutes.
Posted by daen at 04:35 PM
July 30, 2004
Francis Crick is dead
 | Francis Harry Compton Crick, co-discoverer of the double helical genetic blueprint of life known commonly as DNA, died on July 28 2004. His biography at the Nobel foundation website is here. |
Posted by daen at 12:15 AM
July 29, 2004
Spain 2004
Flamingoes at Laguna Fuente de Piedra. July 18, 2004.
Torcal National Park, Spain. July 19, 2004.
Unusual photo of Competa, Spain, with a paraglider spiralling in to land, presumably, in the church square. July 22, 2004.
Fireworks marking the end of the Competa feria. July 25, 2004.
Gecko on the wall. July 28, 2004.
Posted by daen at 11:11 PM
Westwood Park, Great Horkesley, Essex, England
The following is from "British History Online, Great Horkesley: Manors and other estates. A History of the County of Essex: Volume X, Janet Cooper (Editor) (2001)."
William Lynne (d. 1616) built up an estate in Great and Little Horkesley and neighbouring parishes later called WESTWOOD PARK. (source Morant, Essex, ii. 235; Feet of F. Essex, vi. 5, 14, 82, 189) It descended from father to son in his family until the later 18th century, being held by William Lynne (d. 1651), John Lynne (d. 1680), Jacob Lynne (d. 1708), T. H. Lynne (d. 1752), N. G. Lynne (d. 1777), and William Lynne. (source E.R.O., D/Dze 1, ff. 16, 38 and v.; Morant, Essex, ii. 236; Essex Map (1777)) The estate appears to have passed by 1811 to C. Watson, whose daughter and heir probably before 1834 married C. Rooke. He held Westwood Park in 1848. J. Leveson Gower owned it between 1859 and 1866, and William MacAndrew from 1870 until he sold it in 1906, (source E.R.O., D/DZe 2, ff. 4v.–6v., 32v.–35; Census, 1841; White's Dir. Essex (1848), 125; Kelly's Dir. Essex (1859–1902); E.R.O., sale cat. A1029) presumably to W. J. M. Hill who owned it in 1908. In 1917 the estate was owned by Mrs. M. O. Shaw who sold it to C. H. Brocklebank in 1925. R. J. L. Ogilby, who owned it in 1937, had been succeeded by his widow I. K. Ogilby by 1938. (source Kelly's Dir. Essex (1906–1937); E.R.O., sale cat. A3; ibid. T/P 303/1; T/P 303/4/1). The house was acquired in 1950 by Essex County Council for use as an old people's home. It closed in 1987 and the house was sold to a computer firm and subsequently to Buntings Ltd. (source E.R.O., sale cat. F 133; ibid. T/P 303/3/2, T/P 303/6; Gardner, Great Horkesley [15]; below, this par., Econ.)
Westwood Park, apparently originally built in 1692, was rebuilt in Elizabethan style by W. J. M. Hill c. 1908. In 1874 the surrounding parkland covered 65 a. and there was another 9 a. of gardens and 'pleasure grounds'. (source May, Jockey Hill to the Stour, photos. 71–4; May, More of the Horkesleys, photos. 73–4; Kelly's Dir. Essex (1874, 1908); Dept. of Env., Buildings List; E.R.O., sale cat. F133; ibid. T/P 303/2; above, plate 20). The north and south lodges, designed by Raymond Erith to match the house, were rebuilt between 1938 and 1940. (source E.R.O., T/P 303/4/1).
E.R.O = Essex Record Office
© Copyright 2003 University of London & History of Parliament Trust
The Brocklebank arms are inset over the front door at Westwood Park. The arms are described as:
Quarterly, 1st and 4th grandquarters, Azure, an escallop Or between three brocks Agent, on a chief engrailed of the Second a cock Proper between two escallops of the First (for Brocklebank): 2nd grandquarter, Ermine, on a cross engrailed between four lions rampant Gules, a tilting spear erect Or between four bezants (for Royds): third grandquarter quarterly (i) and (iv) Gules, a fess chequy Argent and Azure, (ii) and (iii) Or a lion rampant Gules debruised of a riband in bend Sable, all within a bordure per pale dexter Azure charged alternately with four stars Or and four lozenges also Or, sinister Argent charged in the sinister chief with a martlet Azure (for Lindsay).
From Heraldry Scotland's gallery of members arms (Brocklebank).
The full crest is shown below.
Posted by daen at 10:47 PM
July 11, 2004
Chris Foss tribute site
The Chris Foss Tribute Homepage has a large amount of scanned Chris Foss science fiction art. Foss is well known as an illustrator of SF book covers, but has also been involved, albeit abortively, in the design of films such as "Dune" and "Alien".
Posted by daen at 01:27 AM
July 07, 2004
Arcata Eye Police Log
Unlikely reading, but the Arcata Eye newspaper's police log is a riot:
Friday, May 28 1:04 p.m. A man sat with a dog four to six feet from one of the signs that says "NO DOGS" on the Plaza. He claimed an officer said he could sit there and dog up the place, but a City ranger said he’d warned the man to remove his dog a half-hour earlier. He was cited, while the dog’s uncomprehending face glowed with unconditional love for all concerned.
Sunday, May 23 9:38 p.m. Like a vulture rooting out scabrous intestines encrusted with a thick mantle of writhing insect larvae from a rotting wildebeest carcass, a shoplifter helped himself to candy from an F Street supermarket’s bulk bins. The grown man was caught sweet-handed and told not to come back.
Friday, May 21 10:45 p.m. It was in aisle 12 that they found the drunken man in rubber boots.
Thursday, May 20 4:05 p.m. A man described as "out of it" was seen "poking around in peoples’ windows," but wasn’t doing so "in a harmful manner." He whispers to himself, said the caller, "makes little things out of stuff he finds" and may need mental health assistance. Police couldn’t find the harmless whispering, window-poking, thing-making stuff-finder.
Posted by daen at 12:42 AM
July 06, 2004
British TV Comedy
Posted by daen at 11:10 PM
July 02, 2004
Donkey-related French Proverbs
Chantez à l'âne, il vous fera des pêts.
Translation: Sing to an ass, he will fart in your face.
À frotter la tête d'un âne, on perd son savon.
Translation: Rubbing a donkey's head is nothing but a waste of soap.
Il n'y a pas d'ânesse qui ne trouve son âne.
Translation: Every Jack has his Jill.
Literal meaning: Every she-ass finds her donkey.
Il y a plus d'un âne à la foire qui s'appelle Martin.
Translation: If one will not, another will.
Literal meaning: There is more than one donkey at the fair called Martin.
From wikipedia.
Posted by daen at 03:33 PM
Moon with Exilim-Z3
Professional image from the Observatorio ARVAL (l) versus a picture taken with a Casio Exilim-Z3 (r) out of our apartment window. First, I had to adjust the white exposure by -2.00EV and by pointing the camera at a light in the apartment and partially pressing the shutter button, I got it to hold to 1/500 seconds shutter speed.
Posted by daen at 01:15 AM
July 01, 2004
Wivenhoe Photos
This website has a lot of photos of Wivenhoe - the nature, the people, the buildings and the May Fair. It's also the website of Wivenhoe Rentals, so if you're looking to live in Wivenhoe, this would be a good place to start to get a feel for the place AND find a house there!
Posted by daen at 11:59 PM
Marmite!
Though it shocks me, many people have never heard of Marmite, a Vitamin B complex-rich vegetarian spread with a strong savoury taste which complements cheese and buttered toast exquisitely. Good solid brekkie material for those who don't fancy cereal, croissants or a fried breakfast. The Aussies have their own popular yeast extract brand called Vegemite which doesn't have the lustrous silky dark brown texture of Marmite ...
Posted by daen at 08:58 PM
NASA JPL Solar System Simulator - Cassini at Saturn
Have a look at the NASA JPL Solar System Simulator for fun pictures like this, which is the view that the Cassini spacecraft will have just after it crosses Saturn's rings.
Posted by daen at 01:06 AM
June 28, 2004
Antihistamines : not to be sniffed at
Loratadine is a non-sedating antihistamine important during the high pollen days of spring. It is a histamine H1-receptor antagonist. It's the active ingredient in Claritin, and it's what I use to combat my hayfever.
Here's some antihistamine background.
Posted by daen at 10:27 PM
Euro 2004 : What went wrong for England
Well-meaning England rugby captain Johnny Wilkinson explained to his mate David what happened at the rugby World Cup in Oz last year ...
Posted by daen at 10:13 PM
June 27, 2004
SpaceShip One
Spaceflightnow.com has this story on Scaled Composite's SpaceShip One 100km flight. Pilot Mike Melvill said:
"I must say, I wasn't scared, I was a little nervous when I got in the airplane, but I was not afraid all the way up. But I was a little afraid on the way down. Boy, when you re-enter at 2.9 Mach and you start hitting the atmosphere, the noises you hear are somebody talking to you very, very sharply. You know, you begin to believe, wow, should I really be doing this?"
Quite.
Posted by daen at 11:40 PM
June 21, 2004
Linköping
Linköping stands on the Stångan river ... I took this shot on the evening of June 4, looking West back to the town and the sunset - you can just see the cathedral in the distance.
Posted by daen at 01:26 AM
April 25, 2004
Scissor Sisters
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Posted by daen at 10:24 PM
Red Dwarf
Just because I care.
LISTER: It's stupid anyway, all this maintenance business. The only
reason they don't give this job to the service robots is they've got a better union than us.
...
RIMMER: Lister, that is absolute nonsense. Right. What's next?
(Reading his clipboard) "Botanical gardens: faulty power circuit. In corridor 147: sticking door."
LISTER: It's true, you know, though, Rimmer. You rank below all four of those service robots. Even the one that's gone absolutely mad.
RIMMER: Step up to Red Alert!
KRYTEN: Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.
Posted by daen at 06:25 PM
April 19, 2004
McDonald's boss dies of a heart attack
BBC NEWS | Business | McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo dies
Posted by daen at 06:07 PM
April 14, 2004
David Changer - All at sea
David Changer, bon viveur and ex-CEO of BACmac, is now skipper of a beautiful catamaran named "Elanah", currently on the return leg of a journey which took her from the UK to Oz. By now, they should be well on the way to Gibraltar. Read more at his "Indian Ocean Cruise 2003" website.
David is second from the right in this pic.
Posted by daen at 01:05 AM
April 13, 2004
"HELLO? I'M ON THE TRAIN/BUS/WAY TO AN EARLY DEATH AT THE HANDS OF MY FELLOW COMMUTERS ..."
Jakob Nielsen considers a study into why mobile phones are annoying ...
"The researchers asked test participants to rate how annoyed they were by the mobile phone's ring tone. ... However, people didn't find the ring to be particularly bad, so the fact that mobile phones ring doesn't seem to explain why bystanders hate mobile-phone conversations.
[L]oudness wasn't the worst problem with mobile phones. In fact, even phone conversations in a normal voice received worse scores than face-to-face conversations. The worst problem seems to be that conversations on mobile phones are more noticeable than face-to-face conversations.
[T]he problem seems to be that people pay more attention when they hear only half a conversation. It's apparently easier to tune out the continuous drone of a complete conversation, in which two people take turns speaking, than it is to ignore a person speaking and falling silent in turns."
Posted by daen at 05:22 PM
April 07, 2004
Oook.
This article at the Beeb website suggests using chimp 'language' in the workplace and that
"Instead of bitching about your terrifying boss behind their back, try showing them your fear by baring your teeth and using submissive body language such as lowering your head and crouching."
Posted by daen at 01:31 PM
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Triumph sez "Enter a Website For Me to Poop On!".
No, really.
Posted by daen at 12:58 AM
The War on Terrior
Normally, I don't like to single people out. Sometimes, however, it must be done.
On Amazon, Paul Cherry's reviews include this immortal phrase concerning Sting's new album, "Sacred Love":
The song, "This War"is a shrill and erroneous indictment of Bush hispursuit of the war on terrior.
"Hispursuit of the war on terrior"? Now I know things are pretty bad at the White House right now, but when did persecuting small dogs become government policy? "Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war"?
Which leads me to Paul's finest work, his "review" of Al Franken's book "Lies And the Lying Liars who Tell Them", which I have not read, but now, thanks to Paul, will. Once again, Paul's capacity for vitriol and invective far outstrips his command of the English language:
Al Franken is a liar himself. He wouldn't know the truth if it smacked him in his fat head. He is a liberial that hates Bush.
As a liberial, he thinks that his ilk is "entitled" to controlling the government. He also is an America hater. Guys like this muling, puking dolt should move to France. There he would be at able to agree with the spineless, ungrateful French when they spew their hate America bulls**t!
Gosh, and this from a self-professed Sting fan ...
I am particularly intrigued by the effortless suspension of any rational thought process and the segué into an obligatory right-wing anti-French rant that this permits. He also scores extra critique points for raising the tone a bit by throwing in a bit of Shakespeare - "mewling and puking" - from Jacques' "All the world's a stage" speech on the seven ages of man ("As You Like It" Act II, Scene vii) although, sadly, the inevitable misspelling loses those points immediately. Shame.
Maybe Paul has some reason for putting up such personal diatribes thinly disguised as reviews, reaffirming the view of the right-wing that "liberials" have as he goes. Maybe he feels threatened. Or, as a patriotic Bush-loving American, he might feel unappreciated. Or maybe he just doesn't know how to set up a weblog and, frustrated, needs to vent his spleen on Amazon and in the guestbooks of unfortunate Canadian websites. Maybe we'll never know what ails him.
I do sympathise, though. Really. Many Americans like Paul feel that America is doing the right thing. By acting firmly and decisively, the good old US of A will sort everything out in the playground, bang a few heads together, take away some of the more dangerous toys from the more dangerous boys. And surely the President knows what he's doing ... doesn't he?
My opinion is that now, post-9/11, post-Tal{e|i}ban, post-Saddam, is a very unsafe time for everyone. And, thanks to America's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will be for the next 50 years. Is Iraq better off without Saddam? Definitely. Is Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter) a safer place for anyone right now? Definitely not. Will Iraq be a safe place in 10 years time? Who knows? Not for the hundreds of soldiers and Iraqi civilians who'll be killed in that time. And will the US be a safer place? Not by any definition of the word "safe". Al Qua{e|i}da are not doubt plotting some low-tech, high-explosive lunacy as you read this. Civil liberties have already been eroded faster than Bush can mispronounce "nuclear". And America's goodwill with the rest of the world has rarely been lower.
What's the solution? I wish I knew. If everybody could be nice to everybody else, it'd help. Failing that, the US needs to reconcile its expansionistic/colonialist military/industrial views with its inward-looking isolationist attitude in all other things - culture, religion and education spring to mind. US citizens need to take note that not everything the US does, says or produces, materially or culturally, necessarily benefits the rest of the world, and yes, that really is a problem although you might not think so. And yes, other countries have their own ways of doing things and their own cultures, too, which might be worth getting to know before dismissing out of hand or proposing a replacement by McDonalds.
*sigh*
Posted by daen at 12:47 AM
April 06, 2004
Terrorism
"Fighting terrorism by mass military action is like dealing with wasps by shooting wasps' nests with a shotgun."
Posted by daen at 12:30 PM
April 05, 2004
Goodbye Concorde
Visit the Concorde SST website for all the information you could ever want about this remarkable aeroplane. 27 years of service, 1 accident and the dream of supersonic flight is over - for now.
Posted by daen at 12:08 AM
March 28, 2004
The "Celtic"
The "Celtic" is a Thames sailing barge, currently berthed at Sittingbourne, Kent, awaiting restoration at the Dolphin Yard sailing museum.
Photo: Harold Wyld, Kent Coast in Photos website ©2003
Posted by daen at 01:51 AM
March 16, 2004
The Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator
The Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator
Funny old world, innit? (Thanks to www.plasticbag.org)
Posted by daen at 07:00 PM
March 09, 2004
Like the joke about the GM chickens ...
Chicken drumsticks have always been a popular party snack, so it was a logical step for a large company - let's call them Sonmanto - to produce a six-legged chicken. A farm-scale trial was begun with great hopes, but after a while it was clear that production of drumsticks was not happening and so a Sonmanto scientist was dispatched to investigate.
When he got to the farm, he saw that everything looked fine - the chickens were a funny looking lot, but they seemed happy scratching around in the dirt with their six feet.
When the farmer came out to meet him, looking tired and worn out, the scientist asked, "Are things OK? Aren't the eggs hatching? Are the chicks dying or something? Or maybe the meat isn't good? Are you having problems with getting the processing plant up and running?". "No, no," said the farmer, "it's none of that - the chicks grow up fine, but we haven't even used the processing plant yet. We've got no idea what the meat tastes like." The scientist was surprised. "You've got all these fine chickens scratching around here and you haven't eaten any of 'em yet?" The farmer looked at the scientist in a tired way and said "OK, Dr Wiseguy, YOU try catching them."
Except it was frogs legs.
BBC NEWS | England | Somerset | Puzzle over three-headed frog
Posted by daen at 01:08 PM
March 04, 2004
The Moon Illusion - an Unsolved Mystery
The Moon Illusion at Donald Simanek's website is an excellent discussion about some of the explanations of why the moon can sometimes appear larger in the sky. Bottom line - nobody really knows why.
Posted by daen at 09:59 PM
February 27, 2004
Beagle found!
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Darwin's Beagle ship 'found'
Posted by daen at 02:35 PM
February 23, 2004
A message ...
Fourmilab's article on self-decoding messages makes for an interesting puzzle ...
How would you go about dealing with something like this if you were an alien?
0000001010101000000000000101000001010000000100100010001000100101 1001010101010101010100100100000000000000000000000000000000000001 1000000000000000000011010000000000000000000110100000000000000000 0101010000000000000000001111100000000000000000000000000000000110 0001110001100001100010000000000000110010000110100011000110000110 1011111011111011111011111000000000000000000000000001000000000000 0000010000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000111111000000 0000000111110000000000000000000000011000011000011100011000100000 0010000000001000011010000110001110011010111110111110111110111110 0000000000000000000000000100000011000000000100000000000110000000 0000000010000011000000000011111100000110000001111100000000001100 0000000000010000000010000000010000010000001100000001000000011000 0110000001000000000011000100001100000000000000011001100000000000 0011000100001100000000011000011000000100000001000000100000000100 0001000000011000000001000100000000110000000010001000000000100000 0010000010000000100000001000000010000000000001100000000011000000 0011000000000100011101011000000000001000000010000000000000010000 0111110000000000001000010111010010110110000001001110010011111110 1110000111000001101110000000001010000011101100100000010100000111 1110010000001010000011000000100000110110000000000000000000000000 0000000000111000001000000000000001110101000101010101010011100000 0000101010100000000000000001010000000000000011111000000000000000 0111111111000000000000111000000011100000000011000000000001100000 0011010000000001011000001100110000000110011000010001010000010100 0100001000100100010010001000000001000101000100000000000010000100 0010000000000001000000000100000000000000100101000000000001111001 111101001111000
Posted by daen at 12:20 PM
February 12, 2004
The Rockall Times is back!
That august organ, scion of Manningtree, wreaker of havoc, settler of scores, purveyor of quality T-shirts and sundry merchandising, "The Rockall Times" has returned to cyber-satire-space. Yes, sharper and more pointed than "The Onion" and a squillionfold more English to boot.
"What the ...?", I hear you, dear reader, murmur with untramelled apathy.
Just click on the link and don't ask difficult questions.
Not worksafe. Contains connubial puffinery and the occasional bit of pink skin.
Posted by daen at 12:26 AM
January 07, 2004
Beagle 2 : found?
Look closely at this section of the NASA Spirit photo - you can clearly see what seems to be the Beagle 2 probe, perched on a rock and perhaps damaged beyond hope ...
Posted by daen at 11:55 AM
December 13, 2003
"She cannae take much more, Cap'n"
The Centre for Hypersonics at the University of Queensland performed a little test on a scale model of the USS Enterprise in their hypersonic "wind tunnel" at Mach 5 (6.6 km/s or 24,000 km/hr).
Sadly, this was the last mission of the USS Enterprise ... it was hit by a Klingon ... spanner?
Posted by daen at 12:57 AM
December 10, 2003
Epic pointless exercises
The Excerpts from "Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant" website awes me with the scope of its undertaking to create a non-linguistic system for deterring the Indiana Joneses of 12,003 from entering nuclear waste dumps.
For example:
Nasty looking spikes ...
(although the guy above looks to me as if he's about to climb 'em for a giggle).
And if only we could render the following phrases into unambiguous future speak:
- This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
- Sending this message was impo[r]tant to us. (We had to leave a warning for future eras that we fucked up in our own)
- We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. (But not powerful enough to deal with the glowing green gunk buried beneath you)
- This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
- What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
- The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
- The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
- The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
- The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
- The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
I figure they deliberately left off "... so don't make the same mistakes as we did - leave the pretty glowing green thing in the ground and run away!"
There's a great bit of ironic cartoon comedy (possibly deliberate ...):
... mirrored in this excellent T-shirt design ...
("Make friends [of the Earth] and influence people with this T-shirt! Be the envy of other nuclear powers!")
Posted by daen at 11:26 PM
Bloomin' marvellous
This cactus enjoyed its replanting so much, it bloomed. Click for a closeup of that flower ...
Posted by daen at 10:03 PM
December 04, 2003
Miserable Failure @ whitehouse.gov?
Interesting how Google reflects opinion on Dubya Bush ...
Posted by daen at 03:24 PM
December 03, 2003
40th Mersenne prime found
Here it is - all 6.3 million digits of 220,996,011-1.
Posted by daen at 12:19 AM
December 01, 2003
Brunello di Montalcino - vintages
The Consorzio Brunello di Montalcino is worth a visit.
1945*****
1946****
1947****
1948**
1949***
1950****
1951****
1952***
1953***
1954**
1955*****
1956**
1957****
1958****
1959***
1960***
1961*****
1962****
1963***
1964*****
1965****
1966****
1967****
1968***
1969**
1970*****
1971***
1972*
1973***
1974**
1975*****
1976*
1977****
1978****
1979****
1980****
1981***
1982****
1983****
1984*
1985*****
1986***
1987***
1988*****
1989**
1990*****
1991****
1992**
1993****
1994****
1995*****
1996***
1997*****
(1998****)
1999****
(2000***)
(2001****)
(2002**)
N.B. Le annate tra parentesi sono in corso di affinamento
N.B. The vintages in brachets [sic] are in the process of aging
LEGENDA: LEGEND:
annata insufficiente - insufficient vintage *
annata discreta - fair vintage **
annata pregevole - good vintage ***
annata ottima - excellent vintage ****
annata eccezionale - outstanding vintage *****
Posted by daen at 01:27 PM
November 20, 2003
Hozzie Radio
Once upon a time I was a "Technical Operator" (or "TO") at Thameside Hospital Radio. Many DJs on English local radio got their first exposure to a broadcast studio at Thameside - Tim Murphy, Vernon Harwood and Adrian Fox f.x. - and many others who didn't fancy making a fool of themselves in front of a microphone went on to make a fool of themselves behind the microphone (or camera). Others, though bitten by the technical bug, didn't want to work with nasty analogue signals and got into software. Regardless, the Thameside Hospital Radio audio snippets page (courtesy of Pete Sipple) is remarkable for preserving a slice of HR history. There are more audio clips at Mark Himsley's TH Audio Archive including a trailer for one of the late, great Billy Panton's shows.
Posted by daen at 02:51 PM
November 06, 2003
Atari T-shirt
J. got me this for my birthday.
Thanks! I like it!
Posted by daen at 01:50 PM
October 14, 2003
A very long bit of wire with a dodgy name
For all the technology and impressive statistics, and the fact that it's the third of it's kind ...
... includes 39 landing points in 33 countries and 4 continents from Western Europe (including Germany, England and France) to the Far East (including China, Japan and Singapore) and to Australia. ... the longest [submarine cable] system in the world with a total length of 39,000 km. The use of Wavelength Division Multiplexing greatly increases the capacity of the network allowing high quality transmission all the way over distances as far as from Germany to Australia.
... it's still called SEA-ME-WE.
Posted by daen at 02:06 AM
October 13, 2003
Farewell, Rick Blake
I heard that Dr Rick Blake, formerly of the Computing Service at the University of Essex, died on 13th September, and was buried at Weeley Cemetery on 26th September. Rick had retired in 1991 due to ill health, and was well known as an enthusiastic cricketer, and was a local in many of the Wivenhoe pubs. I knew him for four years, from 1996 to 2000, as a regular drinker in the Greyhound, and sometimes I'd give him a wave when he paused for a bit of a sit down on the wall opposite my house, on the long trek up Queen's Road from his house to the pub or back again. His stick-thin frame, tweed jacket and floppy white hat made him instantly recognizable, but it was his ability to demolish the Times and Financial Times crosswords after 10 pints that amazed me. He was friendly, polite and clever, but his thirst for beer combined with cancer of the mouth, which conspired to rob him of his teeth in the late 90's, made conversation with him a challenging task for the uninitiated. Which is a shame, because those conversations often went far, wide and deep, and were all conducted through a wry grin. I'm sorry our paths didn't cross just one more time. I'll miss you Rick - you were a gent.
Posted by daen at 05:10 PM
October 09, 2003
Definitely not mainstream music
I was pleased to see my friend Martin Newell chronicled in Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll (which is a bit unfair, because he's neither unknown nor a legend).
Posted by daen at 01:06 AM
October 06, 2003
Who are you out there?
One of the things that I enjoy is finding out who visits this blog, and how. The interesting thing is what brings them (you!) here.
Sometimes I (accidentally) hit a topical note, such as mentioning the we're-going-to-get-wiped-out-by-a-meteor-oh-no-we're-not story from a few weeks back, which had a lot of people googling like mad for background info. By a quirk of fate, this blog seemed to get hit quite a bit, which pushed September's statistics way through the roof - almost 300 hits!
But sometimes I have no idea either why or how this blog pops up on Google's radar. Take this Google search for example. "Oil painting of cyclists". I mean, wha' the ...? First of all, I wonder what the story is behind such a thing. Why not golfers or gymnasts? And secondly, I was momentarily gobsmacked as to how the heck I'd ended up in the list (if you've clicked the link to the search already, you'll have seen the answer).
Funny old thing, life, innit?
Posted by daen at 02:15 PM
September 29, 2003
Sesame Street Terrorists
The Sesame Street Terror Alert Level is a splendid adjunct to the Ashcroft version I blogged some time back. Much cuter.
Posted by daen at 05:55 PM
Light chocolate, dark chocolate
Measure the speed of light with chocolate and microwave
Honourable mention for Ole Rømer ...
"In the 1676, Danish Astronomer Ole Roemer made the first reasonable observation of the finite speed of light."
"The only equipment you need for this experiment is a microwave, a ruler and chocolate, cheese or any other food that melts. Remove the turntable from the microwave and replace with chocolate on a plate (so the plate does not rotate), and heat until it just starts to melt - about 20 seconds, depending on the power of the oven. There will be some melted hot spots and some cold solid spots in the chocolate. The distance between the hot spots is half the wavelength of the microwaves, and the frequency of the microwaves will often be printed on the back of the oven. The speed of light is equal to the wavelength multiplied by the frequency of an electromagnetic wave (microwaves and visible light are both examples of electromagnetic waves). So from this simple experiment, and some easy math, you can work out the speed of light from Milky Way Magic Stars®!"
Thanks /.
Posted by daen at 01:40 PM
September 28, 2003
Elvis Costello plays Ringsted 1 Nov 2003
Info and tickets here.
Posted by daen at 03:08 PM
September 26, 2003
I've been waiting 14 years to see the Doctor ...
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Doctor Who returns to TV
Dr Who, that is ...
"Cult science fiction series Doctor Who is returning to TV, 14 years after it was axed," sez the Beeb. About bloody time.
Posted by daen at 02:46 PM
The World as a Blog
This is a splendid bit of visualisation using GeoURL, RSS and Weblogs.com.
Posted by daen at 02:26 PM
September 19, 2003
"Page not found" : a monologue
The Marvin of web servers ...
Posted by daen at 11:41 PM
September 16, 2003
New "Where's George?" - a $200 note with Dubbya on it ...
SEPTEMBER 12--North Carolina cops are searching for a guy who successfully passed a $200 bill bearing George W. Bush's portrait and a drawing of the White House complete with lawn signs reading "We like ice cream" and "USA deserves a tax cut." The phony Bush bill--a copy of which you'll find below--was presented to a cashier at a Food Lion in Roanoke Rapids on September 6 by an unidentified male who was seeking to pay for $150 in groceries. Remarkably, the cashier accepted the counterfeit note and gave the man $50 change. In a separate incident involving a different perp, Roanoke Rapids cops Tuesday arrested Michael Harris, 24, for attempting last month to pass an identical $200 Bush bill at a convenience store.
Counterfeit!? Surely not ...? (Thanks boingboing)
Posted by daen at 12:02 AM
September 10, 2003
Opus returns
Berkeley Breathed Back in the Funnies sez Slashdot
"Berkeley Breathed is creating a new Sunday comic strip, according to the Washington Post. The half-page comic strip will feature Opus the penguin from Breathed's Bloom County and Outland series, and will begin Nov. 23"
According to the BB blurb, Opus has been missing from the funnies for nearly 10 years. Unbelievable.
Posted by daen at 11:51 PM
September 02, 2003
Strange cartoon website
Posted by daen at 02:45 PM
Pleased to meet you, 2003 QQ47 and Toutatis ...
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid given Torino 1 rating
NASA Astronomy Pic of the Day (1997) : Earth Nears Asteroid Toutatis
Update 3 September 2003 : It seems the impact risk of asteroid 2003 QQ47 been downgraded on the NASA NEO site. Phew.
Oh dear ...
A potential asteroid impact on 21 March 2014 has been given a Torino hazard rating of 1, defined as ‘an event meriting careful monitoring’. The newly discovered 1.2 km wide asteroid, known to scientists as 2003 QQ47, has a mass of around 2 600 billion kg, and would deliver around 350 000 MT of energy in an impact with Earth. Currently, the overall probability of this asteroid impacting Earth is 1 in 909 000. However, the orbit calculations are based on just 51 observations during a 7-day period. Dr Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University, Belfast, one of the expert team advising the UK NEO information Centre said “The NEO will be observable from Earth for the next 2 months, and astronomers will continue to track it over this period.”
I hope Kevin is right:
“As additional observations are made over the coming months, and the uncertainties decrease, asteroid 2003 QQ47 is likely to drop down the Torino scale,” said Kevin Yates, project manager for the UK NEO Information Centre, based at the National Space Centre in Leicester.
That's if we survive this one on September 29, 2004 ...:
"the Earth will pass very near Toutatis, closing to within a million miles (4 times the Earth-Moon distance) - the closest approach predicted for any asteroid or comet between now and 2060"
Still, it sounds as if this is a confidently predicted miss ... I hope.
There is a nice link here to an animated GIF explaining the process of determining the position of these asteroids with greater precision over time.
Here is a list of current Near-Earth Object worries, and here is an explanation of the Torino scale.
Sleep well.
Posted by daen at 12:47 PM
September 01, 2003
Medics and Monsters ...
I have been looking for an science fiction short story title for about a year. Stupidly, I didn't ask in the rec.arts.sf.written usenet forum ... until now. Within 30 minutes of posting, I got two replies which allowed me to track the story down!
Second Ending
Ace, 1962. Words: 35000.
"Five miles below the surface, Ross was awakened from the deep sleep of suspended animation to find himself in an empty world. There was no noise, or people, and no motion save for the steady activity of the hospital robots" (blurb). Ross, the sole survivor of World War Last, must meet up with some other human beings -- even if he's got to create them himself. And, with the hibernation technique and omnicompetent robots at his command, he eventually does just that. After a fashion. White's most beautifully fitted piece of work, with this fitting Dedication: "TO PEGGY, who isn't the last girl on Earth, just the only one."
Posted by daen at 09:57 PM
August 29, 2003
Pesky parasites
Back Pain - Q Fever! - Medical Humor
"A 48 year old male is seen in general medical clinic for the chief complaint of back pain, which began 2 weeks ago during a trip to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
The patient denies trauma or having lifted unusually heavy objects, and states the pain is concentrated in his mid-to-upper back bilaterally.
Symptoms are described as a "heaviness and a soreness," and are worst in the evening, but appear least noticeable when he lies flat on his stomach.
Of note, the patient is only able to lie prone or on his side; he is unable to lie on his back due to excessive discomfort."
Posted by daen at 11:04 AM
August 28, 2003
Reference Manager format specifications and Citation Manager link ...
"The complete specification for the RIS format is provided here for your convenience, as it is the most flexible format in which to change any references you wish to import into Reference Manager. All reference types supported by Reference Manager are supported by the Capture routines for the RIS format."
Posted by daen at 10:17 PM
It's only a bit of hail ...
Posted by daen at 06:40 PM
August 21, 2003
Maxwell's House
Maxwell's equations - Wikipedia
Posted by daen at 11:35 PM
August 20, 2003
Lorem ipsum ...
I wrote about Cicero some time back.
The well known placeholder text:
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi"
is based, apparently, on a passage from de Finibus ...
"After telling everyone that Lorem ipsum, the nonsensical text that comes with PageMaker, only looks like Latin but actually says nothing, I heard from Richard McClintock, publication director at the Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who had enlightening news:
"Lorem ipsum is latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from Cicero's _de Finibus_ 1.10.32, which begins 'Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...' [There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain.]. [de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in the Renaisance.]
"What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since some printed in the 1500s took a galley of type and scambled it to make a type specemin book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occational 'ing' or 'y' thrown in. It's ironic that when the then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as Greek; the phrase 'it's Greek to me' and 'greeking' have common semantic roots!" -- from this page.
You can also read about it here.
Posted by daen at 01:45 PM
Just ...
not in the mood to write a weblog right now. Sorry. Stay tuned. If you can be bothered.
Posted by daen at 12:04 PM
July 30, 2003
Parties in space!
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)
Pretty scary to think of students in space (at least some of the ones I've known).
Still, some neat links and pictures.
That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
Posted by daen at 11:04 PM
The Bells! The Bells!
A church gets some new bells, so they need to hire a bell-ringer. They put out an ad in the paper, and people start coming to the church to apply for the job and try out by doing their best ringing. One of the applicants that comes in is a guy with no arms or legs. The priest looks at him and wonders how this guy is going to ring the bells, but since the church is, after all, an equal opportunity employer, he lets the guy try out for the job.
The guy proceeds to hop quickly across the bell tower and smash his head on the bells. It makes an absolutely beautiful sound, one very different from the rest of the bell-ringers, and the priest hires the guy on the spot. That Sunday, the guy shows up to mass in a little bowtie, a little nervous, but very excited about his new job. He hops across the bell tower at full speed, puts his head down to ring the bell, and misses the bell, goes flying out of the bell tower, and lands below, dead. Everyone in the church runs out and looks down at the guy, wondering who he is. They ask the priest, and he says, "I don't his name, but his face rings a bell."
And yet, this is not the end of the joke. The dead bell ringer's brother wants to fill in for his brother, so he runs up the stairs to the belfry to ring the bells, panting, and just as he's about to ring the bells, he falls over dead of a heart attack. Everyone hears the thump and runs upstairs to see what happened. When asked again if he knew the person, the priest replies, "I don't know his name, but he's a dead ringer for his brother."
And now, finally this terrible, terrible joke is over
Thanks to Uncle Roy in Picayune, MS for this one ...
Up in belfry
Sexton stands
Pulling pud with clawlike hands
Down in pulpit
Parson yells
"Stop pulling pud, pull f***ing bells!"
And finally, not very bells related, but I enjoyed it anyway:
Nelson Mandela is sitting at home watching the telly when he hears a ring on the doorbell. When he opens it, he is confronted by a big deliveryman, clutching a clip board and saying, "Special delivery. Couldya sign 'ere?" Behind him is an enormous lorry full of car exhausts. So Nelson says to him, "Sorry, I think you've got the wrong address", and shuts the door in his face. The next day he hears a ring on the doorbell again. When he opens it the delivery man is back with a huge lorry, full of brake pads. He thrusts his clipboard under Nelson's nose, saying, "Special delivery. Couldya sign 'ere?" Mr Mandela is getting a bit hacked off by now, so he says: "Now, look, I told you yesterday you've got the wrong address! I didn't want the exhausts, and I certainly don't want brakepads!" Then he slams the door in the deliveryman's face. The following day, Nelson is resting, and late in the afternoon, he hears a ring on the doorbell again. He opens the door, and there is the same delivery man with the same clipboard, saying "Special delivery. Couldya sign 'ere?" Behind him are TWO huge lorries full of replacement car doors, engine parts, the lot. This time Nelson loses his temper completely, he grabs the delivery man by his shirt front and yells at him; "Look, I didn't want the exhausts, I didn't want the brake pads, and I don't want car doors and engine parts! Don't you understand? You've got the wrong address!" The delivery man looks at him very puzzled, consults his clipboard, and says: "Are ya tellin' me you're not Nissan Maindealer?"
Goodnight.
Posted by daen at 12:04 AM
July 29, 2003
Martin Newell : "The Sound of a Bike"
The pomes link seems to be broken on the "Sound of a Bike" page - follow this link to the "pomes" ... D.
It's the sound of a bike
Which is part of the deal
And the well-oiled whirr
Of the sprocket and wheel
For the sound of a bike
Is distinctly genteel
And is holier now
Than the automobile
And the ching of the bell
On a bend in a lane
And the back-alley squeak
Of the brakes after rain
And the willow-herb wind
For the ghost of a train
Since the cinderpath track
Became cyclist's domain.
But the sound of a bike
Disappears without trace
In the madness of town
And the scrimmage for space
With the cut-up and curse
And the rage on the face
Of contestants engaged
In the circular race
For the sound of a bike
Has a subtler beat
In the click of its gears
And the crick of its seat
Than the harsh metal dirge
Of a gridlocked elite
In their four-wheeled cells
On a five o'clock street
Posted by daen at 12:12 AM
July 28, 2003
Blake's 7 set to return!
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Blake's 7 set for hi-tech return
I recently wrote about the old hit BBC TV series Blake's 7. Well, great news, British sci-fi fans ... Blake's 7 is, at long last, set to return to British TV screens ... I wonder if it will ever make it to Danish telly? One can only hope ...
One of the stars of cult sci-fi series Blake's 7 has signed a deal to bring the show back to screens more than 20 years after it ended.
Paul Darrow, who played the ruthless anti-hero Avon, is in a consortium that has acquired the rights to the show from the widow of its creator, Terry Nation.
Made as a UK answer to Star Wars or Star Trek, Blake's 7 became a hit between 1978-81 - despite its shaky sets and basic effects.
A new TV mini-series, starring Darrow, will have a budget of $5-6m (£3-3.7m), the show's website said.
"Hi-tech"? Does this mean the walls won't wobble when someone slams a door on the 'Liberator'?!? Or that Orac won't be made of Perspex and Christmas tree lights any more?!? I hope not.
Posted by daen at 03:41 PM
July 27, 2003
Culture, innit?
Iain M. Banks: A Few Notes on the Culture
The humans of the Culture, having solved all the obvious problems of their shared pasts to be free from hunger, want, disease and the fear of natural disaster and attack, would find it a slightly empty existence only and merely enjoying themselves, and so need the good-works of the Contact section to let them feel vicariously useful. For the Culture's AIs, that need to feel useful is largely replaced by the desire to experience, but as a drive it is no less strong. The universe - or at least in this era, the galaxy - is waiting there, largely unexplored (by the Culture, anyway), its physical principles and laws quite comprehensively understood but the results of fifteen billion years of the chaotically formative application and interaction of those laws still far from fully mapped and evaluated.
By Gödel out of Chaos, the galaxy is, in other words, an immensely, intrinsically, and inexhaustibly interesting place; an intellectual playground for machines that know everything except fear and what lies hidden within the next uncharted stellar system.
This is where I think one has to ask why any AI civilisation - and probably any sophisticated culture at all - would want to spread itself everywhere in the galaxy (or the universe, for that matter). It would be perfectly possible to build a Von Neumann machine that would build copies of itself and eventually, unless stopped, turn the universe into nothing but those self-copies, but the question does arise; why? What is the point? To put it in what we might still regard as frivolous terms but which the Culture would have the wisdom to take perfectly seriously, where is the fun in that?
Indeed.
Read about Iain M. Banks' Culture novels here.
Posted by daen at 09:58 PM
July 14, 2003
Americans and "American English"
Apropos of nothing, I had the following thought about Americans the other day. They speak a strange form of English which the world calls "American English", right? And in England we often refer to them as our American cousins. I think that both of these things are down to the fact that a long, long time ago we shared a common Grammar ...
OK, you do better on a Monday morning.
Posted by daen at 10:34 AM
July 07, 2003
The Joy of the Double-Dactyl ...
Brilliant examples of that odd and syncopated verse form, the double dactyl.
Oh what a narcissist!
Beauregard Vanity's
egocentricity's
dauntingly grim.
Could he breed simply by
parthenogenesis,
soon all the world would be
swarming with him!
Do you get the picture? No?
Here's an "explanation".
Double-Dactyl
Long-short-short, long-short-short
Dactyls in dimeter,
Verse form with choriambs
(Masculine rhyme):
One sentence (two stanzas)
Hexasyllabically
Challenges poets who
Don't have the time.
Double dactyls were invented by Antony Hecht and Paul Pascal.
A dactyl, as you may know, is a poetic foot of the form >-- (ON-off-off). For example, interstate, realize, microphone, cereal, limerick, etc. etc. A double dactyl, naturally enough, is two dactyls in a row.
A double dactyl is also a poem... Quite like a limerick, it has a rigid (if peculiar) structure. Two stanzas, each comprising three lines of dactylic dimeter followed by a line with a dactyl and a single accent. The two stanzas have to rhyme on their last line. The first line of the first stanza is repetitive nonsense. The second line of the first stanza is somebody's name -- strictly speaking, a proper noun. Note that this name must itself be double-dactylic. E.g. Gloria Vanderbilt, Jesus of Nazareth, Gilbert and Sullivan, Archangel Gabriel. In the second stanza, one entire line must be a double-dactylic word. E.g. biopsychology, geopolitical, gastrointestinal, abecedarian, etc. etc.
Finally, here's a bad example (in that the second line is not double dactylic and that the rhyme is weak and etc etc ...) by an anonymous poet ... maybe a new form - the terrordactyl?
Faraway faraway
Open University
Gives me the chance
to get my degree
Science and maths are
unhypothetically
fun things to study - or
don't you agree?
Argh.
Posted by daen at 10:41 PM
July 04, 2003
Which one are you?
The Canonical List of Flame Warriors
I swear I've encountered all of these types, and been half of them myself ...
The illustrations (by Mike Reed) are hilarious, too ...
Compost has few weapons at his disposal and must resort to expletives and gross vulgarities to amplify his rhetorical thrusts. His tactical approach can occasionally rout Innocence Abused, but it is generally ineffective against other Warriors. Combatants know when he has spent the fury of his attack when he suggests that his opponent's mother is a professional sexual services provider (although he will put it in different terms). Nanny has little stomach for Compost's ordure and will quickly eject him from the forum.
Posted by daen at 02:28 PM
The Craziest Band in the World
I wondered if Bob Kerr and his Whoopee Band were playing the Jazz Festival this year. Sadly not, but I did find out that once again they had snuck in and out of Denmark over three days in June without my noticing. Drat! Next year, boys ...
Bob Kerr and his Whoopee Band combine their musical skills and great sense of humor to create a SHOW of unashamed nostalgia ...
From start to finish an evening with the Kings of Musical Comedy will have you laughing in uncontrollable hysterics. 5 very eccentric English Gentlemen playing between them some 20 conventional instruments and some not so conventional ...
Their show is a complete mixture of styles from the late great Spike Jones and his City Slickers & the Firehouse Five right through the whole musical spectrum from the 20's to the 90's, with parodies of Roy Orbison, The Blues Brothers to name but a few and with a little bit of "Classical Music" thrown in for good measure it all adds up to an evening of pure honest fun and entertainment. The whole show was described by a leading European newspaper as a modern day cross between Spike Jones, The Marx Brothers and Monty Python.
Posted by daen at 11:37 AM
June 30, 2003
Lively debate at home ... or domestic homicide in the making?
Things my girlfriend and I have argued about
Englishman Mil Millington lives with his German girlfriend, Margret. All quite straightforward, you might think. Ha. Read on ...
Nothing keeps a relationship on its toes so much as lively debate. Fortunate, then, that my girlfriend and I agree on absolutely nothing. At all.
Combine utter, polar disagreement on everything, ever, with the fact that I am a text-book Only Child, and she is a violent psychopath, and we're warming up. Then factor in my being English while she is German, which not only makes each one of us personally and absolutely responsible for the history, and the social and cultural mores of our respective countries, but also opens up a whole field of sub-arguments grounded in grammatical and semantic disputes and, well, just try saying anything and walking away ...
For example (and this made me laugh embarrassingly loudly in the office just now) ...
The sheer volume of food that needs to be crammed into the freezer means it's only possible at all because Margret employs two ruses.
The first is brute force. Basically, she just hammers things into the drawers with the heel of her shoe. Which works, but at the expense of horrifically deforming whatever she's storing. We're all used to this now, naturally. Jonathan [First Born to M and M -- D.] pretty much expects his turkey dinosaurs to be a collection of misshapen body parts: they're turkey dinosaurs, as modelled on the scenes of carnage the day after the comet hit Earth ...
The second point is that she only has any chance whatsoever of jamming all the things in if she throws away the cardboard boxes in which everything's packed. The boxes which, of course, bear the cooking instructions ...
Posted by daen at 06:28 PM
Books in the wild!
BookCrossing - Home - FREE YOUR BOOKS!
The "3 Rs" of BookCrossing...
1. Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
2. Register it on BookCrossing (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
3. Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes to BookCrossing and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!
It's a great idea, but I'm not sure I like the idea of "losing" my books like this ...! Maybe I'll just have to buy extra copies for "release" into the wild ...
Posted by daen at 01:40 PM
June 25, 2003
Building broadband wireless for communities
trip the loop, make your switch, consume the net !
Consume is a collaborative strategy for the self provision of a broadband telecommunications infrastructure
Freenetworks.org - building free digital network infrastructures
FreeNetworks.org is a voluntary cooperative association dedicated to education, collaboration, and advocacy of the creation of free digital network infrastructures.
Posted by daen at 08:57 PM
Tom Lehrer's "Elements" animated with Flash
Mike Stanfill, Private Hand - Flash Animation - The Elements, by Tom Lehrer
Brilliant Macromedia Flash animation of Tom Lehrer's elements (words by Tom Lehrer, tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan -- the Major General's song from the Pirates of Penzance, of course)
Posted by daen at 08:10 PM
June 21, 2003
Igor! Bring me an Atari 800!
OFS Media Labs - Atari 800 Total Conversion Project AND Atari 800 ITX case mod
Slashdot has this story:
As case mods go, this one's not the weirdest, But it has its own retro charm. Musician and geek Andy Hutson slipped a Mini-ITX motherboard into an Atari 800 case... and used an old cartridge as the mouse! Too bad the original keyboard's not functional.
Posted by daen at 12:52 PM
June 04, 2003
GPS measures continental drift, predicts weather, raises dead
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Nottinghamshire | The millimetre men
Dr Bingley said: "Work is still being done in this area... but there are suggestions GPS could be used to better understand the organisation of thunderstorms and perhaps anticipate when they will happen.
...
"We have already seen that GPS can show the build up of water vapour before cloud formation or a storm."
For this reason, the Met Office has become involved in funding fixed GPS stations.
OK, I was kidding about raising the dead ...
Posted by daen at 03:11 PM
June 03, 2003
Mars Express
Posted by daen at 11:39 PM
May 28, 2003
Pweeeh! Beep! Ka-boosh!
Emulators Online - Atari 8-bit Emulation
Pining for Atari 8-bit Space Invaders? Wanting to beat your Star Raiders high score? Missing M.U.L.E? Haven't got a clue what I'm talking about? Why not visit Emulators Inc. Atari 8-bit emulation website and download an 8-bit Atari of your very own!?!?!?!?
Posted by daen at 02:38 PM
May 26, 2003
Odd animations
Weebl has turned into a cult (yes, cult).
Other Animals, The Hairy Ballerina
Phil Hall's "The HairyBallerina" recently won the best animation in the Digital Flash Animation category at the 15th Budweiser Foyle Film Festival. So there.
Posted by daen at 04:18 PM
May 12, 2003
Bioinformed
A bioinformatics weblog - nodalpoint.org
Nodalpoint is great for tracking bioinformatics issues. To get the best from it you'll need to create an account (free). The news feeds page makes for excellent reading.
Posted by daen at 12:54 AM
May 11, 2003
Comb jellies and jellyfish
Introduction to the Ctenophora, Introduction to the Cnidaria
Ctenophores are the "sea goosberries" or "comb jellies", and do not possess stinging cells. Cnidaria are the stinging ones (from the Greek "cnidos" meaning stinging nettle) including the box jelly.
Why am I telling you this? I have no idea. But I think Roald Dahl had the cnidaria in mind when he wrote about the Vermicious Knids in "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator".
Posted by daen at 11:28 PM
May 08, 2003
"Where's Raed?" is back!
He's been away for a while, but, postbellum, Salam Pax is back. Is he for real? Who knows, but he sure sounds convincing ...
A whole market has emerged right there in front of the two hotels, Meridian and Sheraton. Thuraya phone owners standing in front of their cars offering you phone calls abroad for $5 a minute (it actually costs less than a dollar). Photocopy shops to make copies of whatever the coalition is throwing at the people today. People with foldable chairs and cardboard boxes in front of them offering to exchange your dollars, no idea why the cardboard box. Maybe to make it look like an office. Cigarette vendors, various sandwiches are at offer but they don’t look too safe to eat. The atmosphere is like a festival. We only needed live music and a beer stand.
Whatever….. G. had a falafel sandwich and we drank “ZamZam Cola”. Baghdad is flooded with “ZamZam Cola” – named after the “holy” well in Mecca. Iranian product and tastes too sweet. But since it is called ZamZam it must have some divine qualities. I have been drinking ZamZam Cola for a while now; I am expecting to grow angel wings any day.
Posted by daen at 11:21 PM
Poor Mohammed's Daughter
Martin Newell-Poor Mohammed's Daughter
Mohammed's fillings, buccal and occlusal
In gaping mouth when he throws back his head
Confirm the diligence of Baghdad dentists
If not the fact his little daughter's dead
This picture of the grocer is unusual
His howling anguish, shock and disbelief
The intimacy wedded to intrusion-
A war allows us windows on such grief
In eastern England now, the spring advances
A sharp east wind still nibbles at the days
In Colchester the soldiers' pubs stay empty
As field-by-field the farmland turns to baize
The rooks are building higher which enhances
The chance that summer comes up with the goods
The sergeants' wives must exercise the dogs now
They hear the transport planes above the woods
A gung-ho newsman on the television
In self-important, bullying semi-dark
With barely-bridled relish, talks of tactics
Astride a giant model of Iraq
A line of virtual tanks take up position
And flash up gold explosions on attack
If science can put missiles through a cat-flap
It won't bring poor Mohammed's daughter back.
In Babylon they've cluster bombs not towers
In Nineveh, not Quinquereme but Bradley
Where hope dissolves in nausea and migraine
The ancient world is doing rather badly
The children of the modern world spend hours
With drips in arms and bandages on heads
And 'surgical' are strikes, which does seem clearer
Observing tiny patients on their beds.
"You betcha melted boots we're coming, mister
A war is best held fresh, or it'll spoil
You gotta go in hard to burst a blister
Especially if that blister's full of oil."
Poor Mohammed held his daughter, kissed her
Brushed the blood and dust from matted hair
Noting that her body seemed much lighter
Never seeing the camera clicking there.
Posted by daen at 01:46 PM
May 07, 2003
Meetup
Meetup: Organizing local interest groups.
Posted by daen at 08:39 PM
QuickMath - powered by webMathematica
QuickMath Automatic Math Solutions
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Posted by daen at 08:14 PM
May 03, 2003
Cicero : De Finibus
Vulgo enim dicitur, "Iucundi acti labores". (Trans: It is commonly said that accomplished labours are delightful).
Posted by daen at 02:47 PM
Reference books on-line
Reference: Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Thesauri, Usage, Quotations, and more. Bartleby.com
Encyclopedias, gazetteers, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, guides to English usage, religion and mythology, literary history, anatomy, cooking, etiquette and parliamentary procedure are all here. Bit worried about cooking and anatomy being next to each other ...
Oddly, here's one they missed from the inestimable Viz website ...
Posted by daen at 12:16 PM
May 01, 2003
Complaint
Sadly, my 100th entry is a complaint.
"Daen de Leon has had his say, and this is mine. Let's get down to brass tacks: I cannot believe how many actual, physical, breathing, thinking people have fallen for Daen's subterfuge. I'm totally stunned. If we are powerless to maximize our individual potential for effectiveness and success in combatting him, it is because we have allowed Daen to test another formula for silencing serious opposition. Simply put, he insists that society is supposed to be lenient towards unbalanced, unambitious swindlers. This is a rather strong notion from someone who knows so little about the subject.
In the past, people like Daen would have been tarred and feathered for trying to increase people's stress and aggression. He obviously didn't have to pass an intelligence test to get to where he is today, because his knowledge of how things work is completely off the mark. First of all, those of us who are too lazy or disinterested to search for solutions that are more creative and constructive than the typically gnosticism-prone ones championed by heartless prevaricators have no right to complain when he and his buddies cure the evil of discrimination with more discrimination. So, where do headstrong, unruly crybabies like him come from, and what are we going to do with them? I guess it just boils down to the question: Is it possible for those who defend silly barbarism to make their defense look more perverted than it currently is? It is bootless to speculate on the matter, but it should be noted that one of Daen's peons once said, "Animalism and Marxism are identical concepts." Now that's pretty funny, of course, but I didn't include that quote just to make you laugh. I included it to convince you that there is a proper place in life for hatred. Hatred of that which is wrong is a powerful and valuable tool. But when Daen perverts hatred in order to subordinate principles of fairness to less admirable criteria, it becomes clear that if one could get a Ph.D. in Dadaism, he would be the first in line to have one. Plainly stated, Daen speaks like a true defender of the status quo -- a status quo, we should not forget, that enables him to relabel millions of people as "vulgar". The recent outrage at Daen de Leon's cock-and-bull stories may point to a brighter future. For now, however, I must leave you knowing that violence, mayhem, and insanity are the inevitable consequences of his machinations."
Posted by daen at 12:21 AM
April 30, 2003
Three cities
Webcams in Copenhagen, London and San Francisco
Posted by daen at 09:56 PM
April 29, 2003
Nuevolution : drug discovery through evolution
Someone I know very well will be working here soon:
Nuevolution A/S is a Danish biotech company founded May 2001, with focus on discovering and developing highly selective drugs with high potency, through our unique ChemeticsTM technology that bridges molecular biology and synthetic chemistry. The ChemeticsTM technology allows small molecules to be encoded by DNA and thus enables molecular evolution of small molecules. Nuevolution will use ChemeticsTM to discover and develop drug candidates for pharmaceutical applications.
Posted by daen at 12:23 PM
h2m : Holistic Management
h2m is a consultancy where an old friend, Hamish, works. Visit them and get your business sorted out.
Posted by daen at 12:07 PM
April 28, 2003
Ding dong, Avon calling
Blake's 7 / Blakes 7 / B7 (hermit.org / Blakes-7.com)
The science fiction series Blake's 7 was created by Terry Nation, for the BBC. It was set in the "third century of the second calendar", and showed a near omnipotent totalitarian government, the Federation. By stifling freedom and creative endeavor, and filling the air and water with tranquilizing drugs, they ruthlessly suppressed or eliminated their opponents.
Such is to be the fate of Roj Blake, former resistance leader, who is convicted on false charges and put aboard a prison ship. They escape with some fellow prisoners in an abandoned alien spaceship, which they rename the Liberator. Blake becomes an intergalactic Robin Hood, leading his dogged band of raffish outlaws against a tyrannical empire with the same persistence that made his Sherwood counterpart a thorn in the Sheriff's side.
The original seven were Blake, cold computer genius Kerr Avon, cowardly thief Vila Restal, gentle giant Olag Gan, smuggler Jenna Stanis, Auron telepath Cally, and Zen, the Liberator's on-board computer. Later in the series other characters joined the band as others left. They were the mercenary Del Tarrant, weapons expert Dayna Mellanby, blonde gunslinger Soolin, and two new computers, Orac and Scorpio's (the ship that replaced the Liberator on-board computer Slave. On the Federation side, the pursuit of Blake was controlled and run by chief villainess Servalan, and her henchman Travis.
Blake's 7 (or B7 to the cognoscenti ...) first aired on 2nd January 1978, ran for four seasons and 52 shows, ended on 21st December 1981 (regularly picking up 9 or 10 million viewers) and involved travelling in spaceships where closing a door too hard caused the walls to wobble. :-)
Posted by daen at 10:00 PM
April 27, 2003
Open Bioinformatics
Creating a bioinformatics nation
The Open Bioinformatics Foundation
Lincoln Stein wrote this as a keynote speech for the 2002 O'Reilly Open Bioinformatics Conference in Tucson, Arizona. It later appeared in Nature, where I read it last year. It reminded me of my own experiences and the financial software industry's travails over the last 20 years which I have written about in this very blog.
A web-services model will allow biological data to be fully exploited.
During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Italy was fragmented into dozens of rival city-states controlled by such legendary families as the Estes, Viscontis and Medicis. Though picturesque, this political fragmentation was ultimately damaging to science and commerce because of the lack of standardization in everything from weights and measures to the tax code to the currency to the very dialects people spoke. A fragmented and technologically weak society was vulnerable to conquest, and from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries Italy was dominated by invading powers.
The old city-states of Italy are an apt metaphor for bioinformatics today. The field is dominated by rival groups, each promoting its web sites, services and data formats. Unarguably, this environment of creative chaos has greatly enriched the field. But it has also created a significant hindrance to researchers wishing to exploit the wealth of genome data to its fullest.
Despite its shaky beginning, the nation of Italy was eventually forged through a combination of violent and diplomatic efforts. It is now a strong and stable component of a larger economic unit, the European Union, with which it shares a common currency, a common set of weights and measures, and a common set of rules for national and international commerce. My hope is that bioinformatics will one day achieve the same degree of strength and stability by adopting a universal code of conduct along the lines I propose here.
Read more of Lincoln's article for his hopes of salvation, but I'm not giving too much away if I direct you to the Open Bioinformatics Foundation website ...
Posted by daen at 12:17 AM
April 25, 2003
Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python
My aim in this talk is to present a comprehensive overview of each and every one of the main themes endured by analytic philosophy in the last sixty years or so, and to argue the bold historical claim that the whole lot is well represented-indeed, often best represented-in the work of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, collectively and henceforth referred to as "Monty Python." Since I have all of fifty minutes to make my case, I expect we'll have time for a song at the end. So let's get to it.
A very funny transcript of a talk from 1993 by Gary Hardcastle at the University of Wisconsin on Monty Python and their role in analytic philosophy ... links to sketches (the Parrot Sketch, the Cheese Shop, Argument etc), and here are some audio clips (at the bottom), too. You lucky people.
Posted by daen at 09:28 PM
Canning spam
BBC NEWS | Technology | Where spam comes from
For anyone plagued by junk e-mails, the question that often baffles most is how did the spammers get your address.
US researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology set out to answer this question in the summer of 2002.
They found that e-mail addresses posted on websites or in newsgroups attract the most spam.
Spam is estimated to account for up to 40% of global e-mail traffic and is causing a massive headache for businesses, which are losing billions in productivity.
Posted by daen at 05:53 PM
April 24, 2003
Verse and prose : #3
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope
To round out my strange imbalanced troika of odd verse and prose, here's some Wendy Cope. Enjoy.
He Tells Her
He tells her that the Earth is flat -
He knows the facts and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
Her arguments he calls unsound.
He often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
A Green Song To Sing At The Bottle Bank
One green bottle, drop it in the bank,
Ten green bottles, what a lot we drank,
Heaps of bottles, and yesterdays a blank,
But we'll save the planet, tinkle tinkle clank.
We've got bottles, nice percussive trash,
Bags of bottles, cleand us out of cash,
Empty bottles, we love to hear them smash,
And we'll save the planet, tinkle tinkle, crash.
Posted by daen at 02:24 PM
April 23, 2003
Verse and prose : #2
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.
HECTOR HUGH MUNRO, who wrote under the name SAKI was born on 18 December 1870, at Akyab, Burma. His father was an officer in the Burma police. Saki was sent to live with two maiden aunts in Devon at the age of two. Although these aunts were probably well-intentioned, they brought him up in a regime of strictness and severity. This left an indelible mark on his character, and is immortalized in a number of his short stories, especially Sredni Vashtar and The Lumber Room.
Munro was educated at Exmouth and at Bedford grammar school. He joined the Burma police but soon turned to journalism. He wrote political satires for the Westminster Gazette, was foreign correspondent for the Morning Post in the Balkans, Russia, and Paris. He moved to London in 1908.
He wrote four series of short stories: Reginald in 1904, Reginald in Russia in 1910, The Chronicles of Clovis in 1912, and Beasts and Super-Beasts 1914. His stories frequently reflect the manners and attitudes of Edwardian society, from the standpoint of the sardonic insider. They are beautifully polished, epigrammatic pieces of writing. The stories often involve a vein of cruelty, and often resolve on a surprise twist in the last sentence.
Saki died in the trenches of France in 1916.
Posted by daen at 11:11 PM
Verse and prose : #1
Short stories by Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms (1905-42) mainly made a living writing children's books in Leningrad. He also wrote poems and absurd short stories, often published in underground magazines, after the avant-garde literary societies that Kharms was associated with were banned by the Stalin regime.
In 1931 Kharms was convicted of anti-Soviet activity and spent a year in prison and exile in Kursk. In 1937 his children's books were confiscated by the authorities, and deprived of his main source of income Kharms was often on the brink of starvation in the following years. He continued to write short, grotesque stories, which weren't published, but merely stored in Kharms' desk drawer.
In August 1941, shortly before the terrible siege of Leningrad, Kharms was arrested a second time, accused of "spreading defeatist propaganda". During the trial Kharms was declared non compos mentis and was incarcerated in a military prison. In February 1942, while Leningrad was ravaged by famine, Kharms starved to death in prison.
Read and enjoy.
Posted by daen at 11:05 PM
April 22, 2003
The fretful porpentine ...
St Tiggywinkles is an animal hospital in Buckinghamshire, England. They look after an enormous number of sick wild animals each year, releasing most of them back into the wild. I worked there for a short while, in the summer of '94. I will never, ever forget the smell of a room full of sick hedgehogs on a hot summer's day ... Still, all in a good cause, eh?
Posted by daen at 02:15 PM
delete from the_living where name = 'CODD'
Mercury News | 04/20/2003 | Computer pioneer, dead at 79, revolutionized database system
Posted by daen at 11:35 AM
April 21, 2003
Giornale Nuovo
"Mr H" writes his excellent Giornale Nuovo entries with great panache, and almost always includes some splendid images. He covers topics as diverse as the Bibliothèque nationale de France's online exhibition of Stanislaus Lubinetski's 1667 treatise Theatrum Cometicum through contemporary Russian composer Vladimir Martynov to mezzotints depicting the five senses by 17th century Dutch graphic artist Jacob Gole, and much much more.
Posted by daen at 01:55 PM
April 07, 2003
Weather, weather, altogether, what's it going to do?
| København | Malaga |
See you soon!
Posted by daen at 01:28 AM
War as a Winnebago metaphor ...
GEORGE W. BUSH stands before a WINNEBAGO and addresses the gathered CROWD.
BUSH: Hey everybody! You remember that old woman who's been stranded on the ice these past 6 months, who we've been ignoring up until now? Today, I'm sending this Winnebago fulla Boy Scouts out there to RESCUE HER!
Also, check out "Barracuda : The Scotty Zaccharine Story".
Posted by daen at 01:19 AM
April 06, 2003
Finger on the pulse - see those data packets go!
Network Overview /// Internet Traffic Report
This is the overall state of the internet. Watch it rise, watch it fall. Or, get a life and go outside in the fresh spring air.
Posted by daen at 04:18 PM
April 04, 2003
WHAT did you say about me?!
Find out what Google says about you. For example, some select Googlisms for me:
daen is with his lovely half friesian son
daen is available for purchase
daen is oval shaped
daen is a small mutt
daen is 0
daen is not here yet
daen is amazed at the woman's nerves
daen is withdrawing on all front
daen is hru'hfirh of the house radaik
daen is retiring from the front office
daen is interested in the social security of ethnic minorities
daen is a monster
daen is more than willing to pay attention to the fair isobel
daen is ranked 4 and has played for 32m in 30 days
daen is more on target
Update 24/4/2003
DAEN is 16.3 hand Friesian stallion and has been described as majestic - fantasy horse - gentle giant. With his shining black coat, long heavy mane and tail and fetlock hair, he represents a horse of the greatest royalty. All descriptions are true. His bold, high action trot and rolling canter are combined with an attitude and disposition that allows him to be used as a school horse or just ridden by children with a halter and lead.
Posted by daen at 02:40 AM
MP with MT
Tom Watson has got recent exposure with his "Teens!" page, extolling involvement in politics for the hormonally challenged juvenile, which recently got showcased at boingboing. Unfortunately, taken in isolation, it's not possible to tell whether TW's "Teens!'" page is ironic or clueless. But read the rest of the blog, which is some inspired and witty observation from the backbenches going back to July 2001, and "ironic" is the only verdict.
Posted by daen at 02:02 AM
April 03, 2003
BACmac : ya wha'?
I used to work for these good people. They are, alas, no more (oh, hey, the company I mean - the people are all well, as far as I know).
Those were the days - writing trading room pricing and display systems for OS/2 version 1.3 (here's a picture of the pretty box) using MS C 5.1 (here's a picture of that pretty box, too).
I joined in September 1992, and for about 18 months, we coded away on a trading system for Berliner Bank (or Bank Gesellschaft Berlin - BGB - as it later became).
Later, BACmac got bought by the Arab Banking Corporation, becoming ABC (IT) Service Ltd. And a culture clash unfortunately ensued ... I left.
Still, nice logo, eh?
Posted by daen at 09:57 PM
Michael Rodd : found alive & well and working in NW5!
Michael Rodd, doyen of 70's TV, is running a production company, a little bird tells me. So, if you need anyone who works with "media logistics for business and industry", pop on over to their website. (Thanks Eli!)
Posted by daen at 09:38 PM
"Hi! I'm on the train!" *zzzap*
Oh yessss... Pavlovian revenge.
Posted by daen at 09:29 PM
April 02, 2003
Networking
David Irvine IRVINE TECHNOLOGIES LTD Home Page
I've known David Irvine for nigh on 12 years via the "BACmac connection" (explanation forthcoming in a future episode - yes, foreshadowing is a vital ingredient of the modern blog). So do an old relationship a favour and visit his website. Better yet, engage his services as a security consultant. I would, if I had something I wanted to secure, but it all seems to have been pinched :-)
Posted by daen at 09:41 PM
"Buy"! ... eh, I meant "Sell"! Oh, never mind ...
BlogShares - Fantasy Blog Share Market
BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by inbound links
Don't forget to buy some Daenmark shares, now!
Posted by daen at 03:51 PM
March 30, 2003
Baghdad satellite images
DigitalGlobe Baghdad satellite images
Amazing satellite photos of Baghdad - before and during the war. 0.6 meter resolution means you can see cars and trees, but you can't quite see Saddam in his presidential swimming pool ...
I love looking at cities from the air. It seems such a shame to be bombing the living crap out of Baghdad.
Posted by daen at 11:40 PM
March 26, 2003
War in Baghdad
The famous blog, posted by "Salam Pax". Read it and get an insight into what life in Baghdad is like right now. Only, don't try sending e-mail to him - his mailbox has exceeded its disk quota (probably many times over).
Posted by daen at 01:33 AM
March 25, 2003
GPS: Now, where are we?
The Global Positioning System: Assessing National Policies (contains PDF).
Interesting document from the Rand Corporation about GPS. Appendices A ("GPS Technologies and Alternatives") and B ("GPS History, Chronology and Budgets") are especially interesting, if a bit out of date (1995). The Block IIR satellites referred to are slightly delayed due to delays with the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) which was supposed to come online in 2000, but flew its inaugral flights late last year.
Posted by daen at 11:38 PM
First floor : geostationary satellites, mens' shoes and cutlery
A 60,000 mile long 3 inch wide carbon nanofibre cable costing $7bn - which goes straight up into space? Science fiction? Not for much longer ...
Posted by daen at 11:22 PM
March 22, 2003
MT 2.6.3, new server ...
Just finished moving the blog to the new web server, and have done the upgrade to MT 2.6.3 - all went well, hurrah!
We just have to wait for the DNS changes to kick in, and we're rockin' and rollin'!
Right now, I'm off to bed ... zzz ... zzz
War! What is it good for? etc.
Posted by daen at 12:19 AM
March 21, 2003
More wore
There was another "Stop the War" demo on Sunday 15 March in Copenhagen, at 12:00 outside the American embassy at 24 Dag Hammarskjölds Allé. This time the demonstrators went to the Ministry of Defence at 42 Holmens Kanal.
There were also demonstrations, as on 15 February, in other places in Denmark and in other countries. Other demonstrations are going on day by day. See the "Nej til krig" website for details.
Posted by daen at 11:56 PM
Another poster for peace
Download and print peace posters from artists like Milton ("I ♥ NY") Glaser and Ellen Gould (above).
Posted by daen at 11:52 PM
Iraq
Library of Congress entry on Iraq
Global Policy Forum information on the Iraq crisis
CIA World Bumper Factbook entry on Iraq
The history of Iraq is fascinating ... and disturbing.
Posted by daen at 11:49 PM
February 28, 2003
Dr Seuss and Lord of the Rings
What if Lord of the Rings had been written by someone else ...?
Message board thread about how alternative authorship of the Lord of the Rings might read ...
"Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring!
I am too small to carry this thing!"
"I can not, will not hold the One.
You have a slim chance, but I have none.
I will not take it on a boat,
I will not take it across a moat.
I cannot take it under Moria,
that's one thing I can't do for ya.
I would not bring it into Mordor,
I would not make it to the border."
-excerpt from Dr. Seuss's Fellowship of the Ring.
Here's another one ...
On this particular evening, something changed hands quietly in the back of a hobbit-hole in the Shire many miles from the dark realm of Mordor. A small, metallic something. Something which could be accurately described as a circular loop of shining metal.
The land of Middle Earth was almost oblivious to the change of ownership, which was wonderful for the two parties concerned. The trade went unnoticed among the citizens of Rivendell, it escaped the Nazgul completely, and even the dark lord himself continued straight on with his day without noticing. This was a pity for him, because it was exactly the thing he had been searching for all these years.
-- from The Mostly Harmless Ring of Power, by Douglas Adams
Posted by daen at 04:45 PM
I can see your house from here!
London from the ISS ... more details here
Snap of London from the ISS, 233 miles (376 km) up. Don't drop the camera Mr Astronaut ...
Posted by daen at 12:05 PM
Nature & Geocaches & Walks & ... in Andalucia
Nature ... and Geocaches ... and walks ... and food ... and other stuff.
Yes, it's soon time to head south to Competa for (what's left of) the winter here in Denmark. April, I know, is not really winter but by the time we get back spring will be under way here ... perfect!
"At 650 m above sea level and 16 km from the Mediterranean, Cómpeta is one of the famous "white villages" steeped in Moorish history and culture. Its location high in the Sierra Almijara affords it the most stunning scenery, with views from the mountains down to the sea, and on a clear day across the Mediteranean to the distant shores of Morrocco. The centre of the village is dominated by its 16th century church, a delightful plaza with street-cafés, restaurants, shops, bank etc. Usually it is crowded with people, having a chat or just going about their business. Even it seems quiet noisy and frightening to the shy north europeans, they soon find out that this is only the typical expression of the andalusian lifestyle. The warmth and friendliness of the people still remains an invitation to stay here. Throughout the year there are varios „fiestas“ in the village with local flamenco music and dancing." (from "Competa")
I have fond memories of sitting in a bar in Competa watching England knocking Denmark out of the world cup last year ...
Posted by daen at 11:40 AM
New York, New York - so good they ... wrote a website about it
New York Songlines: Walking Tours of Manhattan Streets
Extraordinary annotated walking guide to NYC.
"The Aboriginal Australians were able to navigate across their harsh and unforgiving land by memorizing and following the Songlines--an intricate series of song cycles that identified the landmarks that one needed to pass to get where one needed to go. These songs described how the features of the land were created and named during the Dreamtime, the timeless era when the giants, heroes and monsters that serve as totems for the Aboriginal tribes walked the earth. By singing the songs in the proper order, the Aborigines could walk across their nation's vast deserts and always know where they were."
Wonder what this has got to do with NY, eh?
(Thanks boingboing)
Posted by daen at 10:47 AM
February 24, 2003
Trends in technology : parallel universes
Lincoln Stein and the Bioinformatics Nation
Not many people know this, but I used to work for some banks. Shhh. I also used to work for a number of companies which made software for banks, mainly information and trading systems. In the good old bad old days (ca. 1985) if you wanted to get, say, foreign exchange rates from a Reuters Money Monitor screen, you needed to know exactly what bits of information were at which location on the screen (actually, in the screen record) and then "scrape" them out. Such tools were called "screen scrapers" and were horribly sensitive to changes in layout, of course. Later, companies like Reuters, Bridge (now part of Reuters), Telerate (once part of Dow Jones, then Bridge, now merged with Moneyline), Pont (now dead) and Bloomberg started offering record based feeds which made the whole thing a lot easier, but financial content aggregation standards were not there (this was before XML, remember?) so the "glue" was still written by the information system vendor companies I worked for. Today, there are very few players in the financial information system market, and financial information systems are like pocket calculators - you pretty much get a free one with every box of "Frosties". Need FX rates? Look on the web.
I don't work for banks any more. I work in the pharmaceutical IT business. I want to work in biotechnology, which means keeping an eye on bioinformatics developments. People like Lincoln Stein, who's been active in the Perl community for some time, and is now an old hat at this bioinformatics stuff, are coming at the problem of handling the bioinformatics information deluge from about the same place that we were at in 1985. Actually, it's a bit better than that : the Web and XML is here ; lessons have been learned about data visualisation techniques ; and disk space/processor speed/memory are not the limiting factors any more. The bioinformatics community is also more open than financial information vendors ever were, so I doubt that the financial information "feed wars" of the late 80's won't occur in bioinformatics. Watch this space ...
Jim Kent is another bioinformatics convert, and developed a lot of the tools needed for the AceDB project - and then GigAssembler for Celera to do the genome assembly at UC Santa Cruz ... and the human genome browser ... let's face it, the HGP owes Jim a bit of a debt, don't you think?
Posted by daen at 10:28 PM
February 22, 2003
Columbia : NASA investigation reference
STS-107 Investigation Reference Page
This page has links to (very large) JPEGs showing Columbia's reentry and subsequent catastrophic breakup over Texas, annotated with the altitude, MACH and significant events.
Posted by daen at 06:44 PM
February 15, 2003
Anti-war protest in London and everywhere else
BBC NEWS | Europe | Millions join anti-war protests worldwide
Posters of all shapes and sizes urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair to think again on war with Iraq.
Posted by daen at 10:18 PM
February 14, 2003
Edge : The Third Culture
"The Third Culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."
C P Snow (actually Baron Snow of Leicester) was educated as a chemist and physicist at Leicester and Cambridge. He was also later in life the holder of many public posts. But it is for his 1959 book "The Two Cultures" that he is best known. In it, puts forward his thesis that the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities (the "two cultures" of the title) is a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. In a follow up published in 1963, Snow optimistically proposes that a third culture, bridging the other two, would emerge.
Much has been written about these ideas by many who are wiser than me (and some who aren't, apparently) but this page at the Edge.org makes for interesting reading about the whole shenanigans.
Posted by daen at 02:21 PM
John Ashcroft in full colour ...
Def Con Alerts: Collect them All!
This is the current "terrah" alert level ... we'll soon see whether orange is too high or too low ...
.
Posted by daen at 12:13 AM
February 12, 2003
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland : specifically, OOP!
Well, I had to try, didn't I? Having finished "Soul of a New Machine", I turned to "Microserfs" (again) and, no doubt like so many Douglas Coupland fans before me, idly wondered if daniel@oop.com might not turn out to be a real person at a real company. Well, Daniel Underwood might not exist, but OOP does. Or did. It's now part of netdecisions ("the international technology solutions provider" - who they?). Even less Coupland-esqe : OOP wasn't even its name when the company was swallowed - it was the hyperdull Java Business Solutions Inc. zzz. O, how is pure art sullied by the taint of the real.
On that note - goodnight.
Posted by daen at 01:37 AM
Flying Upside Down
Soul of a New Machine : Flying Upside Down (excerpt from The Atlantic, July '81)
For those of you who are paying attention (the rest of you : WAKE UP!) you may remember me writing about Tracy Kidder's 1981 book, "Soul of a New Machine" last month. You can read a couple of chapters at the Atlantic Online website.
I was interested in what became of the Hardy Boys and Micro-Kids. Read about life after Eagle here.
And finally, why wasn't Data General building a 32-bit mini-computer like building the space shuttle or the SR-71 Blackbird? Read why here (warning: PDF).
Posted by daen at 12:33 AM
February 10, 2003
Font of fun
5K81 is the name of this odd little toy (apparently based on a symbol generating grid designed by a chap called Adrian Frutiger) and was last year's international 5K award winner. There's a Danish version too. The 5K awards are for creating the most interesting web pages in 5 kilobytes or under ...
Now, you might be wondering why this entry is in Courier New (if you've got it installed, otherwise just use your imagination :-). That's because Adrian Frutiger (and I didn't know this until about 10 minutes ago) designed it. Along with Univers, OCR-A (you know, the weird font at the bottom of all your cheques), OCR-B and a whole load of other fonts which you pretty much take for granted. So there.
(Thanks to Torben Kjær for setting me loose on this odd train of thought.)
Posted by daen at 05:14 PM
February 06, 2003
StrangeBanana
StrangeBanana: Computer-generated webpage design
StrangeBanana is an automatic graphic webpage generator produced by my near-neighbour in "meatspace" (according to GeoURL) Torben Kjær ... my advice is just to try it - but don't get hypnotised pressing F5.
Posted by daen at 12:40 AM
February 04, 2003
What ever happened to ... Michael Rodd?
Ever wondered what happened to Michael Rodd (Tomorrow's World, Screen Test ...)? Odd that Raymond Baxter, that other mainstay of TW, isn't listed ...
Posted by daen at 02:54 PM
Hi Ho Silver - Away! etc.
The Lone Ranger Lyrics by Quantum Jump
No, I don't know what this link is doing here, either. Let's just say an idle train of thought from Indiana Jones to Gloria Estefan's "Doctor Beat" to the Rah Band's "Clouds Across the Moon" ultimately leads here. Trust me. By the way, the whip-crack at the end of "Lone Ranger" segues perfectly into the start of "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys ... and that's about the only interesting thing I ever discovered on my own at Southend and District Hospitals Radio Service. Feel free to quote me.
Posted by daen at 01:24 PM
February 01, 2003
Loss of Columbia
See STS-107 mission status for up-to-date information.
Poignant update to STS-107 page at NASA ("February 1, 9:16am 2003 - landing did not occur")
Posted by daen at 06:33 PM
The Unclimbability of Google
Google-søgning: unclimbability
"Unclimbability" returns returned no hits on Google. Now, it gives one. :-)
Posted by daen at 12:20 PM
January 31, 2003
Bits ... in ... Spa-a-a-ace!!
NASA is working on hooking up its missions to the 'net. They're running Red Hat, so that should be OK then.
Posted by daen at 09:30 PM
"Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder
This isn't really a review of the book : for that, or to order it , visit Amazon. This blog entry is sort of a personal perspective on re-reading "SoaNM" nearly twenty years later.
For those of you who haven't read it, "Soul of a New Machine" is the story of the people behind a new computer being designed at Data General in the late 1970s.
I'm fully re-reading this book after nearly twenty years. Normally, I re-read books after a couple of years, but this one got lent to someone who a) lives a long way away and b) never quite got around to reading it after a long time. I went and retrieved it in 2000 and started to re-read it early 2001.
I put it back on the bookshelf after reading the first 20 pages. It bored me.
Now, the funny thing is that when I first read "Soul of a New Machine", I was from cover to cover in a couple of days. What changed?
Me.
In 1999, I went through a number of shall we say "life change" which, for a while, turned me off computers. One of these was the failure of my software business. Another was the elopement of my wife with one of my employees, a software developer. I got very depressed. What would Dr Freud have made of it all? :-).
Now, more than two years on, things look very different again.
On Monday I picked the book up again and started reading it. And to my surprise, it was once more the interesting book I first read.
What's going on here? I'm back into computers again, for a start. There's a lot of fun things happened in technology since 1999 - the rise of blogging, for a start. And GPS-for-the-masses. I'm living with someone I love very much in a great apartment in Copenhagen. My life is stable again. I'm working in a different country in a different industry. I'm not earning as much, but I am getting an education.
But what does it mean? When I first read the book, I was a teenager who dreamt of getting into programming, who tinkered around a bit at home with his ZX-80 (later an Atari 400, then an 800) and fooled around a bit with electronics. One lucky break, 17 years and umpteen jobs later ... well, it didn't quite turn out the way I expected. Is that what my renewed interest in the book means? Am I yearning once again for a challenging software job where you work weekends and long hours for basic pay, where the reward is seeing your code ship in a product, and the intellectual stimulation is enough? If that's what it is, then I'm kidding myself, because I was never that good. A lot of my code never made it into a product. I know I have some of my work from 1997 and 1998 still chundering away on a deal-routing system in a high street bank in London (and New York and Singapore and probably Hong Kong). Whoopee-doo.
The environment that the book describes has gone - forever. Data General was described as being close to half-billion dollar company. I'm not sure, but even in these troubled economic times, I don't think a $500mn company is so huge. I world for a small pharma company, and their annual turnover is close to $250mn. Even taking inflation into account, that puts the value of my employer close to DG's value in the book at present day prices. The playing field was also, I guess, changing dramatically in the late 1970s for hardware and software companies in the US, so a book about DG five years later might have had the company at a much greater value. But then again, DG is now part of EMC, the storage vendors, and the North American Data General Users' Group shut down on October 31 2001. Eclipse and NOVA, like VAX and PDP before them, are solidly consigned to the category of legacy systems.
And attitudes have changed. Po Bronson drew the distinction in his excellent book about life in Silicon Valley, "The Nudist on the Late Shift", that software developers and techies in the late 90's were more likely to be free-wheeling haxx0r/contract types on massive hourly rates than "signed-up" corporate engineers on a fixed salary. Now the dotcom bubble has ... well, let's say deflated ... the contrast might not be so clear, of course. I've tried both approaches, and they've both got their ups and downs.
I think the poignancy of this disappeared world - the people and companies in "SoaNM", my own (largely unfulfilled) career potential, the occasional connection I've had with the experiences of the people in the book - has made it more appealing once again.
I'm receptive again to what it has to say. I'm missing the teamwork that the book describes. I miss the mental stimulation that programming brings.
But I think my next set of intellectual puzzles will be from a different direction. A student friend of mine from last year's Open University course, Ron Beemster, e-mailed me this morning to say he'd landed a PhD in bio-engineering. I'm really envious but also very happy for Ron. I'd like to go in that direction, too.
And that's what "SoaNM" has chimed with in me, again : the possibility of new paths to follow and a new set of puzzles to solve - and probably another new career ...
Posted by daen at 01:56 PM
"Play Hookey" : techie tutorials out of the classroom
Fancy learning about op-amps, half-adders and other dangerous sounding bits of technical doo-daddery? Visit Ken Bigelow's techie tutorial website ...
While you're out of the classroom, there's no reason why you can't learn a little something and enjoy yourself while you're doing it. That's the basic purpose of this site ...
This Website is intended for those intrepid individuals who, for whatever reason, find themselves looking for a less than formal approach to useful education in a number of technical fields. Unlike the University-based courses which I have found on the Internet, the "lessons" provided here will be available to anyone at any time, and at no cost..
Nice one, Ken!
I like Ken's style:
For those thrill-seeking individuals who prefer the security risks of Internet Explorer, IE4 and later will also handle the interactions currently in use. This site will never attempt to exploit the security holes offered by IE, but we do feel you should be aware of the hazard.
Posted by daen at 11:26 AM
January 30, 2003
Terragen : Grand Canyon
If anyone feels like looking at the Grand Canyon from any particular angle, visit Tim O'Donoghue's site and download the Terragen terrain files. Pictures will come soon (once my PC has finished rendering them!)
Posted by daen at 09:29 PM
Junkbot
Albino Blacksheep - Flash / Junkbot
Like robots? Like LEGO? Then play this game.
(Thanks to Irregular Orbit again)
Posted by daen at 06:15 PM
40 orders of magnitude
Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial
Remember the old short film zooming in from the Milky Way down through the solar system, Earth, a guy, a mosquito biting the guy, down to the atomic level? This is the same thing, only as a Java applet. Cool.
(Thanks boingboing!)
Posted by daen at 11:27 AM
Hell's (Door) Bells
The catalogue of UK Entrances to Hell.
| My favourite is 54.
I wonder if there are any in Denmark? (Thanks NTK via Irregular Orbit via boingboing) |  |
Posted by daen at 12:02 AM
January 29, 2003
To Insanity ... and Beyond!
Model Rocket Video Camera Australia
vs.
NASA STS-112 videos
 | Nutty Ozzie bloke with a neat hobby ... versus nutty Americans with billions of dollars to spend. You tell me which is which ...! (thanks to boingboing) |  |
Posted by daen at 11:37 PM
Brush the barking spider's teeth ...
BBC News | HEALTH | How not to use a toothbrush
Toothbrush ... haemorrhoids. Not two words you would necessarily think could be linked. But a report from 2001 details how one gent used the former to try to relieve the latter, with a trip to the X-ray machine and a close encounter with a pair of biopsy forceps to remember the experience by.
It appears to be the first and only time doctors have recorded a toothbrush being used in this way.
But accident and emergency departments have reported similar incidents with other dental instruments, including toothbrush holders, toothbrush packages and toothpicks.
Toothpicks? Ye Gods, I hope they asked to leave the table first.
The title of the report, by the way, is "Don't Forget Your Toothbrush". Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good link between toothbrushes and haemorrhoids.
Posted by daen at 10:27 PM
ICPS 2003
ICPS2003 - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR PHYSICS STUDENTS
ICPS 2003 is in Odense. Last year's was in Hungary. Become a physics student, and see the World!
Posted by daen at 09:55 PM
January 28, 2003
Goldilocks & the Three Planets
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Odds against Earth-like planets
"Who's been sleeping in my porridge?"
It seems that it's trickier than previously thought to keep an Earth-like world neither too hot nor too cold in orbit around a star. Another tweak to the Drake Equation?
Posted by daen at 11:21 PM
Terragen
Terragen
This incredible FREE program lets you make photorealistic images of the most stunning fantasy landscapes. I'm hooked.
 |  |  |  |
Posted by daen at 05:52 PM
January 23, 2003
Collective animal terms
AskOxford: Collective Terms for Animals
All those wacky terms for animals you never knew you needed.
How many boars in a singular? How many in a sounder? What animal is the collective term bellowing applied to? And how the hell did thrushes get the collective noun "mutation"?!
Posted by daen at 01:30 PM
January 19, 2003
many.dk
What can I say? You just have to visit many.dk to get a feel for its strangeness.
Posted by daen at 06:03 PM