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Frumps

"They're like an official notice; you are now a frump; here are the hideous things you're allowed wear" - Germaine Greer on catalogs sent to middle-aged women.

Editied to make it clear that this did not refer to above-mentioned fluffy kitties

incredibly-cheap-advertising-

Incredibly cheap advertising, with a catch

Look! A thounsanth of a cent per click! The catch is, of course, that your ad gets associated with the rantings of an insane bigot. Still, cheap!
http://www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/purchase_form.php?other_product_id=22013

coolness

Coolness

Albino animals. Particularly like the puffin :)

http://www.messybeast.com/albinism/albinism.htm

and-more-crazy-people

And more crazy people

Didn't want to overdo it on mad audiophiles, but saw this and couldn't resist: http://www.soundstage.com/todd04.htm

This is a review of various wires, analog and digital. When talking about a piano, recording, he says "By mechanical, I mean that the highest frequencies, on occasion, gave the impression of being reproduced by a mechanical source rather than being created by human hands." Wuh? Yep, a piano is a mechanical source... "Vocals, especially female, were immediate, expressive and detailed." The copper wires can tell the singer's gender, don't you know. "[it's largest flaw] is a slight coolness and emotional distance." Again, super-intelligent copper.

And then there's the super-expensive power cables. In this case a comparative steal at $185 for 6 feet. "Pictures don't do it justice. It is thick and very stiff, barely
yielding at all when bent sideways." sounds like a sentence from another form of literature entirely, tho it sort of ties in with the title, "Size is NOT everything...".

Obviously, there's babble about letting wires break in. No comment.

Haven't these people ever heard of the placebo effect?!

mad-mad-mad

Mad, mad, mad

People are stupid. This is no big secret. How stupid people are, though, continues to amaze. That piece was written by someone who earnestly believes that it is sensible to pay thousands of dollars for digital cables in a HiFi system. For transmitting checksummed, digital data over a few feet. 'Nuff said.

Edit: Ah, and he also believes in the benefits of expensive POWER CABLES. Gah.

new-website

New Website

A thing for finding the name of a song based on its lyrics; finally sort-of-kind-of up: http://findMeATune.com

science-through-crochet

Science through Crochet

A mathematician has succeeded in modeling previously unmodeled hyperbolic curves... using crochet. You can see them at http://www.theiff.org/lectures/05b.html. (Horrible Javascript, but interesting pictures).

I now have images of grannies sitting down with their books of knitting patterns, deciding whether to knit a jumper, or a hyperbolic spiral...

shopping

Shopping

What did I do today? Well, lectures, some work on projects, and... went to buy new shoes. Now, I don't LIKE shopping. I have severe problems with choosing things. Shops intimidate me. However, I was down to one pair of shoes a size too small, and one with a large hole in it, so I didn't really have much choice. So off I went to the shops (just down the road; my uni's in the middle of the city) and remembered why I REALLY dislike buying shoes. The SIZES. The completely NON-STANDARD sizes. There's UK, US and European, and then, as if that wasn't enough confusion, each manufacturer has their own interpretation of each. Sometimes more than one. The attitude to the people who work there reflects the confusion. They've obviously lost touch with reality entirely. "Do you have this in size 11 please? No, but we have it in 10 and 12. Do you want to try one of those?" Hmm. Anyway, got them in the end. But really, in a world where we can build microchips 90nm thick, and semi-accurately tell how far away the next galaxy is, is standardisation of shoe and clothes sizes so much to ask?

Reading "Paperweight" by Stephen Fry, which is a compendium of his radio and newspaper articles. Great fun.

hellooooooo

Hellooooooo!

Well, I'm starting a blog. Yay. Okay, then, here's a bit about me.

First of all, why am I doing this horrible, horrible thing? The internet is full of blogs, cluttering the place up. Well, if everyone else can go round the place posting their irrelevant babbling, then I don't see why I shouldn't. I've already got a few rants on my website, and would like to publish them in a more convenient format. I may answer reader questions on my programming tutorials here. Also, I enjoy irrelevant babble.

I'm a 2nd year Computer Science student in Trinity College Dublin. My website's here; in all probibility you just came from it. It's a particularly unappealing shade of purple; this weblog, on the other hand, is quite tasteful out of the box; I don't think I'll be modifying its look much. I enjoy messing around with technology, writing pointless little gadgets, and generally making a complete nuisance of myself. It listen to a weird mix of music.

I'm gay and unrepentantly so (and can even be a little noisy about it sometimes). Some people seem to have a problem with me talking about this in public. I'll consider shutting up about it when gay people are treated remotely like humans by society, not before. I'm a member of the Union of Students in Ireland LGBT working group, and such. I'm also in the unfortunate position of being about as attractive as a dead bishop, and therefore perma-single and bitter about it. Now, please, please don't write to me to tell me that your Abraham/Jesus/Mohammad/Cthultu variant of choice say homosexuals are naughty, and that I'm going to burn in hell for eternity. Don't tell me it's a choice, don't tell me gay people should keep quiet about it... honestly, I don't want to hear about it. You're obviously an idiot.

I've also got an interest in politics (firmly left-wing, surprise, surprise...) I'm extremely cautious of politicians, however. You don't get to be a politician by being a decent human being.

On a lighter note, I like kittens, and pretty colours, and music, and am generally much nicer than I sound (wouldn't be hard).

So, that's a quick introduction to me. *looks around* Where's everyone gone?