mobile-phone

Mobile Phone

My mobile phone died this morning. Or, really, its charger did. The phone itself had been going downhill for some time though. So, I took the opportunity to get a new one. It's from a different provider, but through the magic of modern technology, or at least modern state-enforced network co-operation, I was able to retain my old number. Surprisingly painless, really, and the phone's nice.

the-marching-morons

The Marching Morons

From SomethingAwful... a story about a restaurant customer who got upset because of the presence of a smoking dish involving mushrooms, claiming it would cause mushrooms to grow inside his childrens' lungs. And what did the staff do? Throw him out for being a disruptive influence? Sell him tinfoil hats on commission? No, they gave him his meal free. That's right, modern society rewards horrible, cretinous stupidity.

The customer is always right, indeed...

more-boardsie-eats-babies

More Boards.ie Eats Babies

Some sort of radio presenter creature (Ray Foley of Today FM; he's popular with the text-speak crowd, it seems) visited boards.ie, got banned, and had a hissy fit about it. (It's a little unclear what happened, exactly; he seems to have got upset that people weren't very nice about him. He apparently has a poor record on boards. He's a bit over-sensitive).

Also, he takes pictures of strangers and puts them on the internet. And he refers to gay people as 'gays', a pet peeve of mine. He's also unable to use apostrophes, but that's common enough, I suppose, and he is targeting the lowest common denominator.

Really, you'd think these people would handle criticism better.

python

Python

I've become somewhat hooked on Python. Sarah has sung its praises for some time, but I didn't really investigate in any great detail until recently. It's fast, lightweight, and has some fun functional programming features, plus the wonderfully handy list comprehensions. I'm using it at work currently, and also for a couple of personal projects.

In Python, whitespace is syntactically relevant. This is certainly one of the language's most talked-about features, albeit mainly by non-Python users who almost universally decry it as an abomination. Odd it may be, initially, but I have gotten to really like it. EMACS has a nice mode for handling it.

And that brings me to the alleged LISPyness. People are always going on about how Python is like LISP. Now, a lot of this can be put down to the functional constructs and the strong dynamic typing. But many other languages have those, and aren't so compared. I think the reason for the frequent comparison may be somewhat subliminal; Python is the same shape as LISP. The lack of terminating statements or curly brackets gives Python and LISP functions a "going-right" look, and the LISP mandated indentation style, as fairly universally practised, is quite like the Python syntactically-relevant indentation style.

As a matter of fact, I wish it was more like LISP; in particular, macros and symbols would be nice.

more-adsenseadwords-foolishne

More AdSense/AdWords Foolishness

A Google ad displayed in my (Google-supplied) spam directory on GMail: "Savory Spam Crescents - Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown". Hmm. They look revolting.

moan-moan-moan

Moan moan moan

I don't suppose anyone knows any gay guys with very low standards? They'd have to be terribly low; this is me at the moment:

irritiating-windows-behaviour

Irritiating Windows Behaviour

I'm using Windows at work (the other guy on the project is using a mac; I'm most jealous :) ). The other day, it decided to download some patches. And asked me did I want to reboot. Actually, it gave a little countdown box to reboot. I quickly clicked on "Reboot Later", and went about my business. Shortly afterwards, I went for lunch, leaving an emacs session with unsaved things plus various terminals open. When I came back, the screen was empty. Turns out, "Reboot Later" means "show this screen again at an unspecified time in the future, and reboot if the timer runs out".

Also, if you hold down the shift key for eight seconds, it threatens to turn on something called FilterKeys, and also inverts the shift key behaviour.

I don't like windows very much.

google-spelling-error

Google Spelling Error!

In gmail, click on someone in Google Talk. Note that to describe their picture, it uses the word 'pick'.

speculative-birthday-celebrat

Speculative Birthday Celebration

Since I was 21 a couple of weeks ago, I'd like to attempt to celebrate that in some way. I'm a little disorganised about it, as I am in most things, but anyway, when are people around?

phoneexpo-strikes-again

PhoneExpo Strikes Again (Consumer Warning)

Celebrated spam-thing Patrick Murphy is at it again. Witness this post on boards.ie. The upshot is that by joining his forum, members agree to recieve periodic emails (note the weasel words; they can disable the emails from the administrator, but not the other ones). To have their account deleted, Murphy requires them to pay a euro by PayPal. That's right, he's demanding money to stop spamming people. There are others.

This is, of course, verboten. See here, particularly the section pertaining to charges.

It seems that he is letting people who were members before this change leave for free. This isn't good enough, though, and doesn't absolve him of his responsibility to follow the Data Protection Act. Also note that he is donating the euros to charity; this should clearly show anyone who reads the T&Cs (and who does?) that he DOESN'T want their money, he wants to be able to spam them.

Rarely have I seen such slimy, underhanded behaviour from someone who hasn't already been elected. I would encourage anyone else horrified by this to mention it in their blog, to raise awareness of the need to read the terms and conditions before signing up for this person's site.

[tags]spam,scam[/tags]

gardai-antics

Gardai Antics

When I got off the train tonight, and headed towards home, I noticed, walking away from the station, two shadowy figures. As I got closer, I saw they were gardai. At the top of the road, just before where it comes to Sutton Cross, was a gardai checkpoint. Cars were being waved through. As I got near it, a new Mercedes was stopped. One garda shone a light on its numberplate and exclaimed, using, I seem to recall, a naughty word(!) As I lost sight of that spot, the Mercedes was still there, and other cars were passing through unimpeded.

Further along, there was another checkpoint, this one with blue flashing lights all over the road. Again, letting cars through, having a look at them. A bus passed though totally un-interfered with. And as I turned off the main road, a garda car, without flashing lights and so on, headed for where I'd come from at huge speed.

So, what was all this about? It didn't LOOK like the ordinary check for drunk drivers. Far too much attention was given to that one car. It looked a bit like an attempt to monitor the entrances to the peninsula. If they'd been concentrating on cars leaving it might have made sense. Each lot of gardai I saw consisted of one male and one female; I have the vague idea that this might have something to do with children, but that may just be an idea I've picked up from old TV dramas; there's always a female police officer to take the abducted child, or whatever.

Anyway, no doubt if it was anything dramatic it will be on the news tomorrow.

job-perks

Job Perks

See the bunnies? I've got a tshirt with those on them. It got some funny looks on the DART in the morning, I can tell you!

[tags]work,tshirt,rabbits,pornography[/tags]

interimjpg

interim.jpg

web-project-horror

Web Project Horror

At the beginning of this academic year, I took on the backend bit of a largish website project. Like an idiot. Happily thinking to myself "oh, it won't be too much work". Turns out, I horribly underestimated the scale of the thing. The damn thing is just about done NOW. It has caused me endless worry during the year. It has just about driven me mad. It caused me to stress and procrastinate. It really needed someone with more time on their hands.

I suppose we learn from our mistakes. This is, I know, a fairly typical contracting mistake; take on a vastly oversized project thinking it's smaller than it is. I should never have taken it on in the first place; I see that now. I'll just be terribly glad when I get the thing finished.

(Just to clarify, this is all, really, my own fault).

low-key-spamvertising

Low-key Spamvertising

The website of a pseudo-major open source project. Note the spam-tastic links at the bottom. If they needed the money, you'd think they'd have gone for a reputable advertising company, not the SEOs. Of course, I suppose, their page benefits greatly from being linked to from their deployed product all over the place...

[tags]BBlog,SEO,Advertising[/tags]

summer

Summer

So, I haven't been posting much. No doubt many of you, especially those of you who get this jammed down your throat by some aggregator or other, were not entirely distraught at this. Well, I'm sorry to say it was a temporary thing. I plan to resume writing my long, rambling articles soonish.

I finished my exams last Thursday, and started my summer job at Demonware on Tuesday. It's great. It's also handily located; it's on Abbey Street.

I'm still vaguely planning on having a birthday party at some point (my 21st was during the exams). In practice, though, with my organisational skills, it is highly unlikely that this will happen :)

gonna-take-you-to-a-gay-bar

Gonna take you to a gay bar!

(RE: Title)

Anyway, I briefly went to the George with friends tonight. Possibly a bad idea; hasn't exactly cheered me up. Decent incentive to lose weight though; I put some on during the exams, and it hasn't left as yet.

legal-toons-sponsored-by-the-

Legal Toons - sponsored by the KKK?

Arizona has a lovely website on law for kids. It includes a 'legal toons' section. They're horrid. And rather white-centric.

Weapons @ School
Are the kids this stupid?

Tagging
And on the second offence, you're executed.

Shoplifting
Note the non-white criminal. He won't be the last.

Marijuana
Again, naughty non-white. And made-up drug slang. Eventually, the Hispanic boy is jailed, and the white boy is interned in a cubicle. Also, note that it's filed under "violent crime".

Skipping School
The foolish non-white girl doesn't listen to the wise counsel of her white friend. And she gets caught! It's a bit like Uncle Tom's Cabin for the internet, really.

Smoking @ School
And 100 lashes.

Curfew
Yes, walk home with random adults when they tell you to.

MIP
A BLACK ADULT IS LEADING WHITE CHILDREN ASTRAY!

Gopeds
Again, race. Note that the police tend to be blond Aryans.

Seatbelts
But what's this? An inter-racial family?! Ah, the children misbehave. That will teach him to miscegenate. (It occurs to me that this is an odd word, which people may not know. Up until 1967, inter-racial marriage was illegal in the US; the crime was called miscegenation).

Joyriding
Remember, driving is illegal.

Driving Drunk
Tall people are also on the watchlist, it seems. But a black policeman! What happened there?

There are also some flash things, but I really couldn't be bothered.

marketing-2

Marketing

From a personals ad: "6`2", rugby build, gsoh, have a little beer belly which some think is cute!" Well, quite. Also, later on in the ad, "not into fat..." Irony.

And, bizarrely, "into fit guyz, sportzgear and underwear (not cks)." Someone's choosy! And fat!

That has been your insight into the hideous world of personals for the illiterate homo. Thank you, and goodnight.

[tags]personals,wobblebottom,silliness[/tags]

more-greenpeace-idiocy

More Greenpeace Idiocy

Greenpeace enjoy using sensationalism to make their points, especially about nuclear power. They have just effectively admitted this. From one of their leaflets: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]".

I wonder is all propaganda written like this? "Lets play Madlibs, the nuclear power edition!"

inflation

Inflation

The newspaper says today that childcare is increasing in cost at 5 times the rate of inflation. There's been a lot of this sort of thing lately; medical inflation is much higher than real inflation, as is inflation on clothes, and various other things. This is interesting, as it implies, with all these super-high special inflations, there must be some commodity that's getting cheaper to compensate, and bring the overall rate down.

Probably cats. They're not very expensive.

[tags]inflation,cats[/tags]