unhappy-new-year

Unhappy New Year

I'm not having a good day. First, I think the guy I was kinda-sorta going out with has dumped me. Maybe. I think. I'm not really used to this stuff, never having been with someone before, and I just feel sad and confused.

And, unrelated, I was meant to be going to a party tonight in town, which I was quite looking forward to. The DART was out of order due to a failure of some sort on the southside, and I waited for over an hour for a bus with no results. So back at home, on my own.

opera-for-electronic-devices

Opera for ELECTRONIC Devices

From Opera's site:

Explore Opera's complete suite of Internet technologies for electronic devices.

Do they also have a suite for steam engine?

gay-agenda

Gay Agenda

Another aggregator, this time for non-Irish LGBTQ people: gay-agenda.org. Again, idea is Damien's, technical and hosting mine.

the-homosexual-agenda-googles

The Homosexual Agenda - Google's View

The top result for 'homosexual agenda' is quite fun. My Homosexual Agenda is currently 6th.

the-alliwire-incident

The AlliWire Incident

(I'd just like to note that I'm not a customer of AlliWire, nor am I associated with Alliwire. Just an interested bystander)



Back before the XBox 360 was released, when it was a matter of great hype, an outfit called Alliwire.com, operated by one Dillon Millsap, a 17 year old, started advertising pre-orderable XBox 360. No payment by PayPal or credit card. Make what you will of that.

rssatom-feed-oddness

RSS/Atom feed oddness

Most blogging systems provide alleged RSS and/or Atom feeds. A surprising number of these are broken. Blogspot, for instance, uses <br/> instead of <br />.Not a huge problem, certainly, but it annoys one of the more common parsing libraries. A local community website has custom written blogging software. Its RSS is fine... except that the dates are in UK/Ireland local format, that is DD/MM/YY. Dates are supposed to be in RFC822 format. The local site having broken RSS is acceptable; Blogspot, not so much.

wacky-google-searches

Wacky Google Searches

Someone found homosexual-agenda.org by searching for "Homosexual Skeletor". It isn't even on the first page for that term; the searcher was obviously REALLY interested.

the-benchmark-of-corpulence

The Benchmark of Corpulence

From this BBC article:

By the time of the next Olympics, doctors predict that three out of four people in the country will have a body mass index of more than 25, the benchmark of corpulence.

I just wanted to say that I enjoy the phrase "the benchmark of corpulence", and that people should use it more often in everyday conversation.

Also, that's an absolutely terrifying statistic (it's for the US). How long before there are no normal-weight people left?

the-horrors-of-television

The Horrors of Television

We recently got Sky satellite television. It turned up while I was in Belfast; I was much surprised to notice two thick wires running along the floor, and a satellite dish perched like a bird of prey atop the kitchen window. Now, Sky's service consists mostly of dreadful channels that no-one in their right minds would ever watch.

The next day, I came home to find my brother and sister gazing rapt into the screen. On that screen, a large collie dog was jumping over a skipping rope, while the audience looked on enthralled, a horrible blank expression in their eyes. They continued watching this for some minutes. That, to me, sums up satellite television.

Now, I must admit, it has its benefits. Do you know, they show a couple of episodes of that ITV show where someone buys a house, rebuilds and decorates it horribly, and sells it on making a profit solely because of the rising property market, every single day? It's great! And then there are those two women who go around making fun of peoples' dirty homes... Oh no. I have become as one with the collie-dog admirers.

As a side issue, it also introduced me to the wonderful Strawberry Cow ad, which regularly appears on the channel with the lovely house programmes.

And today, when I was at my granny's house, I noticed she was watching something... so horrible, I dread to think of it. I assumed it was on one of the dreadful satellite channels; in fact, it was on BBC. BBC! Imagine! BBC Northern Ireland, admittedly (both produced and shown by them), but still! The idea! What was it? Children were given words to spell, to tense music, while the audience looked at them like they were a skipping dog. For half an hour. Horrendous.

us-being-sensible-for-once

US being sensible for once

The US is no longer funding development of the ridiculous RNEP bunker busting atomic bomb.

christmas-eve

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, or strictly speaking Christmas morning. So I got into the festive spirit by watching the Invader Zim Christmas episode. And so should you!

"Bow down, bow down, before the power of Santa!"

And so forth.

Merry Christmas!

sick-and-wrong

Sick and Wrong

This is just... er, no. Let's upset people and then sell the video on eBay! What a wonderful, wonderful person you are!

weirdness

Weirdness

Robin tagged me for this.

Okay, so five weird things about me.

1. I have unreasonably long arms relative to the rest of my body. This is a problem when wearing shirts and lab jackets, both of which look ridiculous. Fortunately, I rarely, these days, have occasion to wear either.


2. I really, really dislike touching cotton wool. Makes me shiver.


3. I collect vast amounts of useless information, as you will be able to see from reading this blog.


4. As an occasional indulgence, I drink coffee and coke at the same time. That is, I have a cup of coffee and a can of coke at the same time; I don't mix them. People tend to think this very odd; they're probably right.


5. I eat cereal dry. Even muesli. This one terrifies people.

So there you have it; five weird things about me. I'll pass it onto other people at some point...

homosexual-agenda

Homosexual Agenda

I've just finished setting up homosexual-agenda.org. It's a blog aggregator for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Irish people. The idea was Damien Mulley's, as is the domain. I'm doing the hosting and the (minimal) technical stuff.

It uses the PlanetPlanet aggregator, and a little hack of my own to make BlogSpot feeds work with PlanetPlanet.

Should be interesting to see where it goes...

blogspot-on-planet-fix

Blogspot on Planet Fix

Blogspot's atom feed (http://whatever.blogspot.com/atom.xml) currently doesn't work properly with the PlanetPlanet aggregator, and possibly other things that use the Universal Feed Parser, due to using <br/> instead of <br />. I'm currently setting up a Planet, so this was a problem. My solution was to write a filter script. It's very simple. You can use it if you want.

To use, for your feed put: http://rsynnott.com/stuff/bsatomfix.php?url=[url of blogspot atom.xml]. Ideally the url for the target blog atom file should be URL encoded, but PlanetPlanet at least handles it itself. I obviously make no guarantees about this script, but if you use it, let me know :)

odd-security-poster

Odd Security Poster

This is part of a security notice that appeared in Trinity College yesterday:


Beyond the question of why they're looking for this person (possibly drug dealer or similar) it is interesting that they assume that he always wears the same clothes. I also like the emphasis on the APX 1.77M; not having had some sort of laser to measure him to within nanometers, they are obviously very cautious of asserting accuracy.

Also, I never knew that they had a CCTV there before.

inexplicable-orange-cone

Inexplicable Orange Cone

This was on top of someone's gatepost on my way home last night. Sadly, there was none on the opposing gatepost. Poor quality is due to mobile phone's rather bad 'night-vision mode'.

computers-for-mad-people

Computers for Mad People

These people here are talking about spending up to 5000euro putting together computers for playing games with. Computers which for their purposes will be out of date in a couple of years. Amazing. (Mind you, if I had that to spend, I'd be tempted by the quad G5 Mac. But I wouldn't actually buy it; that's what makes me different from the mad people on that forum. Anyway, it would be far prettier than their 'pimped rigs', whatever that means) :)

awh

Awh!!!

Lully cats! This is insanely cute. I can't stop watching it.

domain-names

Domain Names

Why, oh why are all the best domain-names taken? By silly name-squatter sites? I am currently writing a small webservice. Sadly, I cannot use a good domain name, 'cause they're all occupied. So I'll have to use something like www.cat-defenestration-2.org.su (note, webservice I am writing does not actually involve throwing cats out windows. There are too few internet-enabled cats for that to be of interest... FOR NOW)

And I will reveal what the webservice is when I'm good and ready. Given my current levels of procrastination, expect an alpha in 2010.

christmas-attention-span-and-

Christmas, Attention Span, and Weight

It's Christmas, which is always rather odd. I'm getting into it more this year; I've been listening to Christmas music and such :)

For the last few months, I've found myself unable to plan or concentrate on anything. Hmm. Not good. Really must get myself more together.

My weight's been creeping up. Hmm, not good. 69kg, up from 65kg. (I'm around 5'11"). This happened without me noticing. Shouldn't REALLY be happening; I haven't been drinking alcohol in the last week or so, or anything... Bad trend; must rectify.

the-plot-thickens

The Plot Thickens!

I got a nasty little comment on a recent post about spam on boards. Now, I also recently wrote a post about a scammer on boards who was creating accounts to endorse his product as third parties, and to talk about the great new site that 'they'd' found.

Interestingly, the person who made the comment on the spam post came to this site through clicking in from the password-protected stats page for perfumeireland.com, the site with the endorsements from imaginary people. Now, the spam entry was right after the scam entry; it could have been a simple mistake.

But wait, there's more! perfumeireland.com's address is in Wexford, as is the the whois entry contact address, but the person looking at their stats is apparently on one of Irish Broadbands Three Rock transceivers, in Dublin. Now, there's an open proxy on the machine that apparently did the commenting, but it seems wildly unlikely the the Wexford guy is using an open proxy in Dublin to comment on things that offend him. Hmm, interesting.

And on a mostly unrelated note, googling for airtalk.ie shows the following tagline: "Check out are great Rates!" Hanging's too good for them.

I'm bored, can you tell?

how-do-people-get-here

How do people get here?

Time, I feel, for another fascinating look at what you people search for to get to this site. This isn't all search terms used, just a few of the more intriguing ones.

Harry Potter - Okaaaayyyy..... 309 this month

jenny's dog naming service - Hmm, I'm not the only one who wondered....

scary photos - For their pains, they got a few photos of me looking anorexic

mirv - Yay, I'm a world authority on nasty weapons, apparently!

smeggle - Hmm, wacky legal threats draw the crowds!

sun niagara

- I seem to be the only one other than Sun and TheRegister who talks about this, sadly. It's great.

insane people - You've come to the right place!

rob synnott - Stalker

banned from a forum my legal rights - It's a Smeggle (see above) in training? blog.rsynnott.com, your one stop shop for crazy legal threats!

bizzare server - Not sure where this came from; I never even mentioned Netware

current antimatter reactors - Why certainly sir! And here is our range of teleporters

easy ways sql can be injected php - Oh, dear, leet hax0rs

escortireland - Ooh, I wasn't the only one to be intrigued

masterfoods company review - And I hope they enjoyed it!

overinflated sense of self - Again, they've come to the right place

php easy rants - Eh?

picture of eep - Okay....

polls on people's stupidity - the easiest way to do this is to ask people what they think causes global warming

synnott name - Oops, I may have distressed some distant relative looking for their roots...

mad people - Again, they came to the right place!

Wasn't that fun?

wikipedia-founder-not-really-

Wikipedia Founder Not Really Dead

The Register, fabulous online news source, recently posted a hoax piece about the death of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, based entirely on (false) information found on that online encyclopaedia. It also comments on his involvement with pornography (this is true, as far as it goes; his Bomis site sells or sold pornography, but he is known to be extremely sensitive about the use of the word 'pornography' to describe said content). Some people are quite upset about the whole thing, for some reason.

And on a blog's comment page talking about the incident, we are told that it should be obvious that it was a hoax, because of the '.uk' in the domain name. Yes; everything from the UK is sarcastic, apparently.

trams-in-new-orleans

Trams in New Orleans

New Orleans is bringing its tram system back online. With trams from the '20s; the modern ones were damaged in the hurricane.

boardsie-spam

Boards.ie Spam

Someone spam-vertised http://www.airtalk.ie/ (rel=nofollowed, of course) to boards.ie. Didn't last long. Tsk. You'd wonder why they bother, really; can't help their image much... Oddly, when asked, they actually admitted to working for the company in question.

scam-tastic

Scam-tastic!

Last week, there was a complaint on a boards.ie signature compliance thread about someone advertising a commercial website, perfumeireland.com (link rel=nofollowed; I don't want to help him with his promotion). I dimly remembered seeing a different person spam-vertising said website some time ago. Before that, I remember a thread by the same person asking how to promote websites...

So, I had a look at his recent posts, and found this. Looks okay at first, eh? See the quoted post from 'aoifesquife'? (the original message has now been deleted along with the user). Looks like a nice, innocent, third party, right? All "her" five posts were talking about the joys of perfumeireland, tho.

It didn't end there. There were about five supposed third parties advertising the site. All the same writing style and so forth, all acting like happy customers. So I started this thread. Duplicates were confirmed, and banning happened, though disappointingly not of the original user.

And then, the original user got upset about people complaining about his deceptive marketing. Apparently, dishonest and deceptive marketing is fine, on the internet. Bizarre. He's spammed it on other forums as well (just google for thewaterboy), but boards.ie SEEMS to be the only one where such a scam has been pulled.

On the original post you will note that a customer has trouble with customs. Thewaterboy, outraged, says that in 500 transactions he's never had trouble before. Believe him? Of course you do. But wait! What is this? Note that in that case he apparently didn't compensate the customer. What credibility.

It seems likely that this site is an affiliate site for this. Looking at Barron's past posts on boards seems to back this up.

strawberry-cows

Strawberry Cows

While watching Discovery Realtime, a satellite channel which has that programme where mad people renovate a house and try, desperately, to sell it, I saw this ad. One of the scariest things I've ever seen; a mother with children driving home is followed by unnatural-looking red cows. At the end, a narrator says, "So good, the strawberry cows want it back". It's an ad for strawberry-flavoured milk, which is disturbing in itself, but the ad itself is really, really unnerving. Strawberry Cows. *shudders*

black-toilet-paper

Black Toilet Paper

Here's a company that sells hideous black toilet paper. Yes, black toilet paper. It was advertised on the Wikipedia Toilet Paper page (don't ask). Their ad for the paper shows a roll, followed by "why not". Why, though, really?

Oh, and black toilet paper is "just right for your sensual needs". Yuk.

Also, note the frightening woman on their homepage.

quotes-i-like

Quotes I Like

Okay, rather than posting quotes all the time, I'll just put them here, from the top down.

Invader Zim

Zim: Weenies smeenies! Zim needs no meats.
...
Zim: Now prepare your brain, filthy beast of meat and hair. Your magical love adventure begins NOW!
...
Dib: You're just jealous...
Zim: This has nothing to do with JELLY!

Invader Zim

Bus Driver: Where do you think you're going?
Zim: I go home. Now mind your business, bus slave.
...
Taxi Driver: Where to?
Zim: You think I won't be ready. But you're wrong, presumptuous cab beast.

Are you Being Served

(Discussing Mrs Slocome's Birthday)
Granger: I vote we give her a cyanide tablet.... No, I take that back.
Peacock: Good.
Granger: Two cyanide tablets, in case the first one doesn't work.
...
Peacock: We should make it a special occasion.
Granger: I've already suggested a cyanide tablet.

the-harsh-and-bitch-world-of-

The Harsh and Bitchy World of Student Politics

I'm on the USI LGBT (Union of Students in Ireland Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) Working Group. We generally have a Rights Officer; she has just resigned. This leaves us in the interesting position of having to elect a chairperson. I'm standing for this. I'm not entirely sure why; to an extent, I feel an obligation to try and keep the campaign going to some extent.

I'm running in a competed election. Already, I'm feeling very uncomfortable.

amazon-associate-madness

Amazon Associate Madness

After using the Amazon Associate program for well over a year, and making an average of about $5 a month (only just worth running it, really...), I suddenly made $70 yesterday; someone, after clicking through to Amazon on one of my links, bought the Adobe Creative Suite. Impressive... It'll be my first cheque from them :)

the-joys-of-contextual-advert

The Joys of Contextual Advertising

A few days ago I wrote a little thing about a treadmill that controls computer games, entitled "Another weapon in the war against the wobblebottom". AdSense took this as queue to display ads about torture in Guantanamo. Because of the word "war". I'm surprised it beat "treadmill"; people are very keen to advertise fitness stuff using AdWords generally. Bad, naughty AdSense. I don't really want to display ads about torture...

mr-wheat

Mr Wheat

And here's Mr Wheat (sadly, Kelloggs seem to have erased all record of him from their site, possibly after people started uncontrollably shaking at the very sight of Rasin Wheats).


(Click for larger version)

What on Earth were they thinking of, really?

hideous-furniture

Hideous Furniture

A while ago, I found a brochure full of hideous furniture. Really, really hideous. Then I made this. Then I lost it. I was in an odd mood at the time, and some of the comments are a bit over the top, but anyway, enjoy :)

escortirelandcom

escortireland.com

This website is one for Irish prostitute advertising. Some of it is really very very funny. It goes without saying that it is not work-safe. Actually, neither is this post.

Check out the reviews, especially this one. The author complains that "she talks too much"; possibly giving insight into why he is forced to consort with prostitutes in the first place.

This one is rather worrying; the guy writing the review seems to be about 10. And then there's fat, smelly Alicia. Poor Alicia. And this prostitute has no interest in quality, apparently. Tsk. "no idea about giving pleasure,not like other Filipino T girls". And a wonderful, long, rambling tale here. More sagas.

Oh, hours of fun! I must drag myself away, now, really.

Users of prostitutes seem to like to refer to it as 'paid sex'. The whole thing's sorta sad, really. I keep trying to imagine what these men who spend 200euro an hour on sex look like.

Also, it's done in Macromedia ColdFusion - you don't see that much these days, do you?

I'll leave you with: "AND SHE EVEN LET ME WATCH HER PISS", shall I?

anonymous-hate-mail

Anonymous Hate Mail

I get anonymous hate mail now:

Robert Synnott you sir are a wanker!

Sent from the comments form on my old website that I never use, but that is linked off boards.ie. Hmm. *puts on stalker gear* Oddly, no referrer. It's an NTL customer in Galway tho, using Firefox 1.5 on Windows. That has to narrow it down. I wonder who I annoyed?

Extra points for spelling my name correctly, incidentally :)

chicken-related-oddness

Chicken-related Oddness

More fun stuff from James Lilek. The lower picture is particularly disturbing.

web-design-horrors

Web Design Horrors

This is... really unnervingly bad. It was advertised on boards.ie; for some ungodly reason on the marketing forum.

I thought this sort of design was confined to the mid 90s.

jennys-dog-naming-service

Jenny's Dog-Naming Service

When visiting Google AdSense to check on my evil empire's revenue, I was surprised to see that the little example site screenshot had been replaced by something called "Jenny's Dog-Naming Service". I mean, really. A dog naming service. With a little American flag. Because there's nothing more patriotic than dog-naming. Without named dogs, the terrorists would win.

225

Sparrow Death

I somehow managed to miss the case of the sparrow and the dominoes. The sparrow's corpse was kept in a government freezer, mind you.

criminal-pettiness

Criminal Pettiness?

Here's someone wondering do balls kicked into their garden become their property. I mean, really. Really.

cyber-beggars

Cyber-Beggars

Remember savekaryn.com? Here's another one. In the last few months, they've raised a fabulous $9.41. Apparently, cyber-begging is a bit hit-or-miss.

Oh, and here's another million something page. With all animated images. When it's full, it should cause browsers to crash entertainingly...

mr-coffee-cocomation

Mr Coffee Cocomation

Someone bought this thing from clicking through one of my websites. In one of the reviews: "Not the true frothy hot chocolate that one gets with an expresso machine,". I have not the words.

ooo-er

Ooo-er

A lyrics-viewing MacOS widget got a cease and desist letter from a publisher. When I saw the headline I immediately thought of my own reverse lyrics search; since it uses only data from Google and does not store or distribute lyrics, however, it should be okay. Still, it's the first time publishers have gone near lyrics copyright violations...

another-weapon-in-the-war-aga

Another weapon in the war against the wobble-bottom!

A treadmill that controls computer games. Wonderful. Logical progression from DDR, I suppose.

arts-block-anecdotes

Arts Block Anecdotes

I was in the Arts Block in college today. Here are some tedious little things which I will now attempt to pass off as interesting.

Condom machine in the toilets. It sells two types of condoms, ordinary (or possibly ribbed or something) and "extra-safe". On the sign on the machine, ordinary has a little bubble saying "Fun". Extra-safe has a little bubble saying "Secure". So, two things can be taken from this, firstly that extra-safe condoms are not fun, but are suitable for use in banks, assuming that your bank allows sex. Secondly, ordinary condoms, while fun, are not secure, and thus presumably don't work. They are not really selling their product well. Incidentally, extra-safe had a further bubble saying "now easy-on". Presumably previous models had a combination-lock, or something.

Cafe. Apparently, if you pay 10 cents extra, you can get a paper cup instead of a polystyrene cup. They're the same size and so forth. Since paper cups tend to try to kill me, I doubt I'd bother. In fact, I can't imagine anyone ever doing this.

coming-vaguely-soon-niagara-i

Coming Vaguely Soon, Niagara II!

The Register has revealed that Sun will launch the successor to its UltraSparc T1 (Niagara) in 2007. The chip will have 8 cores, just like the current one, but it'll have 8 hardware threads per core, a floating point unit per core, and will operate in multi-processor configurations. It will be clocked at at least 1.4GHz, and manufactured with a 65nm process. This doesn't seem to be Rock, incidentally - Rock will launch separately. So Sun do have a plan, seemingly. I hope they succeed - who wants to live in an all-386 world? :)

condoms-us-government-distast

Condoms, US Government distaste for

The US government's delightful website, 4parents.gov, promotes abstinence as the only method of STD prevention, portraying the effectiveness of condoms in an extremely poor light. Since abstinence doesn't work (abstinence-fixated America has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world, roughly twice that of the UK), this seems unwise. Could it be that the US government is spreading misinformation which will cause suffering, death and disease epidemic for the purpose of appeasing insane fundamentalist "Christians"? If so, why?

I'm also unhappy about its treatment of LGBT "lifestyles". What is that even supposed to mean?

When Human Rights Watch, an organisation established to monitor gulags in the former Soviet Union, is sending you letters about your websites of misinformation, you probably have issues.

As a side note, the only other countries which favour the "abstinence-only" approach to sexual health are in Africa. And one of them has a 40% rate of HIV infection.

civil-union-in-the-uk

Civil Union in the UK

Two men became the first people in the UK today to get a civil union. Although it's a good thing, it's quite sad in a way; one of them seems ready to die any day now, which is why they got to skip the 15 day period after application. Previously, a couple in Northern Ireland were going to be the first, as Northern Ireland is the first nation in the UK to implement the new law.

Here are some comments on civil unions on the BBC's site. Note that most of those who weighed in with an objection have issues with speaking English. And if I see one more person say that "marriage is for procreation" I will flip. These people don't seem to be overly keen to campaign for banning post-menopausal women from marrying, oddly enough...

niagara-at-last

Niagara At Last

Sun has finally released its innovative new processor, Niagara (UltraSparc T1). It comes in 4, 6, and 8 core versions, running for now at 1 and 1.2ghz. Each core has 4 hardware threads. Very fast on-chip memory controllers and so forth, naturally, though they seem to have held back on the on-chip network assist and encryption that were muttered about last year. The chip is aimed towards the web services market. System prices (for the 1ghz 4 core model, naturally) start at just $3000. Seems to be a Solaris 10 only deal for the moment, or at least that's all they're advertising - they use Linux on some of their other systems. All LOOKS impressive enough, will be interesting to see where it goes...

Strangely, Slashdot seems to have ignored the news completely. Weird.

Update: They are also open-sourcing the chip. As in, they will be releasing Verilog source (awh, why not VHDL?) next year.

love-gnomes

Love Gnomes

I just got a spam comment containing the phrase "Love Gnomes". I shudder to think...

more-dodgy-contracting-site-p

More Dodgy Contracting Site Projects

Looking at another of those "Copy Google. Budget $200" sites. A couple of interesting projects.

Here's one to calculate Islamic prayer timings. With ColdFusion. And Access.

Then there's this program to add people to your MySpace friends based on age and such. Stalker-tastic.

no-longer-burned-and-army-ads

No Longer Burned, and Army Ads

I had an appointment in student health this morning, and got the dressing off my hand. It still hurts a bit, and makes typing and such difficult, but all in all it's surprisingly good.

Also, the college Careers Advisory Service is sending spam about the defence forces. I find this odd; I mean, we're not America...

Update: The Google Ad that appeared on this page involves dating army people. Weird.

argh-it-burns

Argh, it BURNS!

Today, I got a nice cup of coffee from the coffee shop outside college on Westland Row. It was of the environmentally-friendly paper variety, with a little cardboard holder. Which fell apart, causing half a (large) cup of hot black coffee to deposit itself on my hand. Where it stayed, dripping and more falling out for the next ten seconds. I was so shocked initially that I didn't even feel it, then I couldn't drop it cause there were people everywhere. So burnt. Quite badly. So, ran into college, shoved hand under tap. Ooh, this tap only does hot water. Eventually found bathroom which still had cold water, held under that for ten minutes. Still hurt. Badly. Went to Student Health Center. Which was closed till 2. So, went to gym, on the basis that they might have first aid stuff. Nice lady there gives me an ice-pack and waits at student health with me. :) She was really very nice and took a lot of trouble over it, and it's nice that people are that nice. (And that sentence makes me look like a dolt; I write better when criticising, I fear)

So, got to health center, and was asked to fill out a large complicated form. Turned out to be college accident form, and irrelevant since accident occurred outside college. Was then waiting for 25 mins, while lots of people got Hep B vaccines. Added insult to injury, really; I was in for a burnt hand, they were in because they had sex regularly (they weren't medical/nursing students; it was an STD prevention issue). Meanwhile I'm too ugly for sex, and have a burnt hand. Grr. Anyway, went in eventually, more running hand under tap, then got a dressing and some neurofen.

Hurts a fair bit, and not sure when I'll have the use o it again, but it could have been a fair bit worse, I suppose (if I had dropped the cup, on my leg). Am having to learn to do everything with my left hand... And I don't know if I'll be going near that coffee shop again, nice and all as it is, and irrational as that is.

image-flipping-wackiness

Image-flipping Wackiness

A few weeks ago, I wanted a photo to represent me on instant messenger apps and websites and so on, so I took one with my mobile phone and transferred it to the computer with my mobile phone, via Bluetooth. Apple makes this wonderfully easy, incidentally. Since my phone camera’s format is 4:3, and my face is longer than it is wide, I took the picture with the phone rotated 90 degrees.

Flipping it on the computer should be no problem, right? So, double-click on it, and click the rotate-90-degrees button in Preview. And save. Lovely. Select it and look at the preview supplied in the Finder to check it’s okay. It’s fine. So, upload it to various places. Hmm, it’s sideways. Repeat. Weird, still sideways. Open on desktop in Safari. Ooh, sideways. It turns out that Preview doesn’t actually rotate the image, it just sets some sort of proprietary flag to tell Preview that it’s been flipped. Nothing else recognises this, seemingly. There’s a simple solution - use Gimp for Mac, or Photoshop, or similar (I used Gimp, Photoshop being, after all, terrifyingly expensive). Save. Properly rotated. Weird.

On searching on this before posting, I find that I’m not the only one to have come across this. And, apparently, it’s new; MacOS pre-10.4 didn’t do it. Weird.

Update: it seems that the reason for this bizarre behaviour is that instead of rotating and saving the image, Preview simply uses the EXIF Rotate tag. The sad thing is that this is in theory a very good idea; in particular, for non-90 degree rotations, doing so will prevent data loss from the rotation, allowing the image to be reverted perfectly to its original state. But since very few client apps honour the EXIF Rotate tag, it is in practice a very bad idea.

death-of-nice-keyboard

Death of Nice Keyboard

I had a nice clicky keyboard, not as nice as the IBM ones, but still nice. It broke (a number of keys started malfunctioning simultaneously. I suppose it's only to be expected; it was nearly as old as I am, and I'm not actually using it too much recently, what with the Mac and all, but it's still sad. I must have some sort of funeral. :)

not-sick-anymore

Not Sick Anymore

My horrible, horrible cold, that's had me moping around and not doing much this past week, seems to have mostly vanished! Yay!

investigative-journalism-for-

Investigative Journalism for Bloggers

Best blog entry ever. An interested bystander takes on a naughty, naughty company (the same one behind the whole CherryOS thing) over copyright violation. You couldn't make this stuff up.

stalker

Stalker?

Hmm, quite a few people are finding this by googling for either "Robert Synnott" or "Robert Synnott gay". Do I have stalkers now?

proxy-annoyance

Proxy Annoyance

MacOS has a unified proxy thingy. You set a proxy in one place, and all your applications use it, except for a few mildly schizophrenic ones like FireFox. Fine. Except that many applications, including some Apple-supplied ones, don’t support proxy authentication. iTunes is probably the extreme case; it supports proxy authentication for iTMS, but not for its radio service. This is irritating for things like MSN Instant Messenger and Skype, which simply fail to work without providing an explanation.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. Authoxy is an application that authenticates against your real proxy, and provides a fake proxy which doesn’t require authentication for your applications to use. Lovely! Works flawlessly. Free, though you can give the author some money if you like it.

So that’s how to get Skype, MSN and so on working over an authenticating proxy on the Mac.

more-pub-toilet-signs

More Pub Toilet Signs

Another fake ad thing in a pub. This time, an Eastern Health Board ad, consisting of a piece of reflective material with "Are you looking at someone with Chlamydia" or similar on it; the problem was that the ad was placed rather high. Apparently only people who are well over seven feet tall get Chlamydia...