Howrses for Cowrses

So, the other day I Googled for the word 'goat'. As one does. It's one of my standard test phrases. Don't look at me like that, it's perfectly normal. Anyway, my search resulted in the following AdWords:

Goats on eBay! Compare goats! Erm, gout. See, this is why people have issues with AdWords. No-one searching for goats is interested in gout. Actually, I'm not at all sure that anyone this century is interested in gout.

And then there was this:

Yes, dear, it is very, very weird.

Ah, but, as always, I've saved the best for last. Please note that last AdWord. First, I don't know why it's remotely appropriate to the search term, but really, that's hardly the point.

What is Howrse? Well, it's a massively multiplayer game... with 600,000 players... where you breed imaginary horses. Yes, really.

No-one normal gets excited about horse sex, digital or not, to the extent of using italics. I'm quite definite on this point.

From the terms and conditions:

Players should only apply the advice provided by OWLIENT in relation to the Game within the context of the Game. OWLIENT warns Players that the advice given (in particular in the breeder's manual) as to how to rear their horse and manage their equestrian centre, is merely provided as a rough guide. In no way should the information and advice provided by OWLIENT be interpreted as applying to the rearing of a real horse, or the management of a real equestrian centre.

Translation: in the real world, merely submitting a HTTP form will not make horses shag.

Sometimes, the Internet scares me.

Crimes you didn't know existed

So, a New Zealand man rang the police claiming to have been raped by a wombat. Apparently, it turned him into an Australian.

That isn't the good bit. That's just tedious Reuters 'Oddly Enough' material. The good bit is that he was charged with "using a telephone for a fictitious purpose." I'm sorry, what?!

Jess Conrad - bloody scary pseudo-celeb

I recently had the pleasure of seeing one of those programmes on the BBC where odd presenters help people to find a new house.

But this was an episode with a difference. You see, it featured Jess Conrad. Who the fuck is Jess Conrad, you might reasonably ask. Why, he was a minor pop-star and teen idol, he turned up in some bad movies, and he was the Voice of Viagra (really)!

Oh, it was dreadful. Representative quote (by the man himself): "Could Jess Conrad live in a house like this? I think he could." He didn't buy the house in the end; 25,000 over budget is a deal-breaker for even the greatest celebrities.

A hopeless, pathetic namedropper who talks in the third person and thinks he's a star. Really, it was cringeworthy. If he wasn't so inherently dislikeable, I'd have almost felt sorry for him.

If you'd like him to show up at your star-studded charity golf event, his lacklustre website is here.

In August 2003 he and Renee celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary with a star-studded garden party.

Sad, sad.

Weirdly specific website requirements

From some random crap website:

No further comment, m'lud.

Scary German Food

Here's a comparison of what the packaging for various German packaged food shows, versus what the food actually looks like.

Quite frankly, a lot of the food looks less scary in real life than in the photos...

Not in this case, though:

I mean, the concept of herring salad is bad enough, the photo nauseating, but the real thing... Excuse me; I think, I'd better visit the bathroom. After all, someone has to make it!

It should be noted that the Germans seem to think that a sort of wallpaper paste is an acceptable substitute for potatoes. Repeatedly. Fairly certain that that was what World War II was about.

Also, ,see the flags on the products. Most of the more dreadful concoctions are blamed, with little credibility, on other nations. Remind me not to buy processed food in Lidl...

Very True, XKCD

As someone who has so many elderly BBC radio shows in his iTunes library that it is rare to ge through more than four songs on shuffle without hearing one, I can certainly see the truth in this comic (from XKCD):

I mean, whatever about my chances (presumably slim) of falling for someone who shares my taste in radio, even I do not find Clement Freud being rude to people 30 years ago to be a turn-on.

Other perhaps unfortunate things in my iTunes library: "The March of the Sinister Ducks", some audio books, and "Everybody wants to rule the world", which I associate with Margaret Thatcher enough that it is rendered entirely unfit for aforementioned purpose.

As an aside:

Several television versions have been attempted. Two pilot episodes were recorded for television in 1969 and 1981 but never broadcast, except in documentaries about Kenneth Williams.

I can't help loving the idea of something which exists for the sole purpose of being in documentaries about Kenneth Williams.

Interesting AdWords

After I received a gmail message with the subject 'test':

I wonder who is paying for those, and why? Learning experience gone wrong? Surely an expensive one, if so; there are plenty of legit items for 'test'...

Best. Come-on. Ever.

So, I was in the George (gay bar) recently, when I am approached by a gentleman of exceedingly ample carriage (euphemism for fat) and unfortunate face, about 30.

He said: "Anyone want to fill me?" Waits a few seconds. "No givers?" Walks off. Hilarious.

Quite frankly, I suspect that what he was looking for would be rather mechanically difficult; he really was very fat. Still, by far the weirdest come-on I have had in the place.

More pointless anecdotes from my life

Well, last night I celebrated the invention of the brown envelope, or whatever that patriotic holiday we had yesterday was, with a few gins and tonic; in deference to the occasion, the gin was Cork Dry, so I was at least supporting pseudo-local industry, I suppose. I also didn't get much sleep, and woke early.

What with one thing and another, then, I was in the mood for a fried egg or something for breakfast, so ventured out to the shop to obtain some. Eggs, I mean, not fried ones; don't be ridiculous.

Now, the shop across the road is a strange beast. It sells washing powder, but not washing-up liquid. It sells rice, but not newspapers. It sells pepper (two varieties!), but not salt; this last should be particularly amusing to certain people of my aquaintance, who really need to get a life.

Predictably enough, I suppose, there were no eggs. Small Internet cafe and hot chocolate to go, sure, but no eggs. Increasingly, I suspect that the place is just a front for smuggling dodgy shelving units or something. So I went to the marginally further, but considerably saner, shop. There to be confronted by the silliest ATM I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Shops here, you see, often have small ATMs which inevitably only give out fifty euro notes. Well, fine. I've never dared to use this one before, because it tends to display a Windows 95 crash screen, but as luck would have it it was working today, and I'd noticed I had no money in my pocket. The machine turned out to be willing to give me 20, 70, 90, 130, or 170 euro. Why those increments I don't know, but I'm sure the designers had their reasons. Of course, I think, it must provide twenty euro notes, in that case, or it would be unable to make up the amounts. So, I ask for twenty euro. No such luck; I get the old "This machine only dispenses 50 euro notes" line. I mean, am I the only one who thinks that under the circumstances that is completely mad? You can enter the amount you want manually, of course, so I did, and went on my way. Still, silly.

See, you really should read the titles of these things. I gave you fair warning that this was going to be a quite spectacularly boring entry, but did you listen? Did you?

Here, have a recipe!

Just so that we are clear, this blog isn't actually about anything. With that in mind, and to further confuse the hundred-odd of you who for some reason insist on continuing to subscribe to what amounts to about three pieces of nonsense a day, here is a recipe of my own devising for a chicken stir-fry. Do try it, unless you're a vegetarian or something similarly awful; it's really quite nice.

First, put some rice on to cook; the variety matters not, though bear in mind that brown rice takes a silly amount of time; it may be all very good for you, but be sensible and stick with the white stuff, I think.

Put some vegetable oil in a wok or pan, and heat. When nice and hot, add chopped garlic, plenty whole cumin seed (or, as my flat-mate never ceases to amuse himself by saying, with obviously an incurably dirty mind, 'cumin whole'), lots and lots of dried or fresh chilies, ginger, and any other old crap you have lying around; in my case, generally more chili products. You should be left with a sizzling, slightly suspect, oily mess.

Add sliced chicken, and stir-fry until the sword of Damocles that is Salmonella no longer hangs over your head; cooking chicken is great fun, because of the minor risk of unpleasant death involved if you do it insufficiently. Add chopped onions and mushrooms, and fry until onions are soft.

Now drain and add the rice, and fry for a little longer. Serve. Delicious.

Hah, bet you thought there was a punch-line, didn't you? Well, no, there isn't; I'm just trying to spread my culinary atrocities and burn other peoples' mouths! It's my blog, after all, and I shall do as I please.

Macbook Pro!

I got my Macbook Pro today. Oh, it's lovely; I'm very glad now that I didn't go for the Macbook. Amazingly fast, beautiful high-resolution screen, light, decent battery life, surprisingly good keyboard... Next to it my poor old iBook looks quite tawdry.

Anyway, I am now learning to write iPhone applications; great fun, and Apple's documentation really is very helpful.

A lovely little something for you

I feel sure that at least a few of my dear readers will enjoy this, a blog detailing the goings-on at a presumably fictional London club. Mind you, I say presumably fictional, but stranger things have happened; the Guardian confirms that these nice gentlemen did indeed distribute tweed jackets in a council estate, for instance. Oh, I do hope so!

Anyway, I particularly enjoyed the piece on fat-person offsetting.

The power of PRAYER

So, apparently the US is going a bit third world in response to the housing crisis. Tent cities are popping up, populated by people who lost their homes in the whole sub-prime loan thing.

As always with Youtube, the comments are... fascinating.

You know, I'll go out on a limb and guess that prayer is not the best way to get a house.

Also, crackwhorebaby is a loony.

ComplaintRemover.com; spammy, scammy incompetent scum

I would like to present to you the blackest of black-hat SEOs. So black, in fact, that Matt Cutts hasn't even addressed their methods; after all, he doesn't want his local newsagents blown up.

ComplaintRemover.com was made fun of by Gawker's Consumerist today. On the face of it, they look like your run-of-the-mill black-hat SEO; dodgy links in the footers, ugly site, poor explanation of methods... Their purpose, granted, differs from your average SEO in that they claim that they will remove complaints about you from the search engines.

If you search for them, though, you'll find out two things, one amusing, the other disturbing. The amusing one is that they are clearly unable to remove complaints about themselves. The disturbing one is that they were found to be defamatory extortionist death-threat makers by an Arizona court. Read the article. Scary as hell.

Honestly, if you want this sort of dirty work done, you'd be better with the Mafia. They apparently get results and have some style; they can probably at least spell 'their'.

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.
Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.
Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.

In my opinion, William Stanley, the guy who runs the site, deserves to go to jail for a long time. There should be zero tolerance for this sort of insanity.

I shall watch this case with great interest.

Lord of the Rings Prequel 19b; Sauron goes to the Optician

I've just noticed that there is a brand of contact lens cleaning solution called 'Sauflon'. On the bottle, the 'f' and 'l' run into each other, looking rather like an 'r'. There is also a stylised drawing of a single eye beside the text. I do not believe this to be a coincidence.

Well, what if Sauron did have poor vision? He only has one eye, so glasses are clearly out of the question. A monocle would work, but then you have the problem of providing the requisite fire-proof top hat; few milliners will work in asbestos for insurance reasons. In any case, I don't think it would quite suit his image.

Here, the US Starfire optical testing range attempts laser eye surgery on Sauron. One assumes that they are still working the bugs out.

And thus, he is left with contact lenses. Presumably, he made the product endorsement to offset the cost of the rather large amount of cleaning fluid required; Mount Doom looks sooty.

On a related note, the bottle of solution proudly claims to contain no preservatives. Now, call me old-fashioned, but if there's one thing I don't want to be preservative-free, it's contact lens cleaning solution. No-one wants an amoeba in the eye.

Silly search terms of the day

As is occasionally my habit, I took a look at what people had been searching for this blog with.

The results shocked and horrified me, of course. Google, as usual, seems to think that I am a colossal pervert.

Anyway, highlights.

"sound of an ejaculation"

I'm afraid that, not having a microphone handy, I can't really be of much help on this one. That's the only reason, of course...

prostitute and "veblen good"

This one's interesting. A Veblen Good is basically something which is more attractive to consumers when it is more expensive. So, users of prostitutes, does she turn you on more if you have to take out an overdraft? Enquiring minds apparently want to know!

Javascript pays rather better than Python

Remember I mentioned the low wages for Python programmers?

Javascript programmers apparently don't have the same issue:

Impressive, eh?

You can't write serious applications in Lisp, you know...

The Common Lisp Directory webapp (an odd creature which started off as a Reddit clone, apparently) just crashed today, after 273 million requests and 823 days of uptime, due to a hardware failure. Pathetic! As you know, .NET webapps typically stay up uninterrupted for decades, while there are Java webapps which have been running since 1879.

Okay, so it's really rather impressive. Admittedly, it was running on Lispworks, a hefty commercial Lisp, on Debian, but I know of webapps running on the excellent free SBCL which have been up and running for a year or so uninterrupted.

Bizarrely, the most common cause of failure to reach it from the Internet was the author's router having trouble; it lived in his house.

Next person who babbles about Lisp being unusable in the real world (typically about three front-page articles on Reddit Programming a day) gets a slap.

Lessons Learned

Tonic water and cranberry turns out to be a great mixer.

Tonic water, cranberry and cheap fake Red Bull, not so much.

Cathal Ó Searcaigh controversy continues

I've mentioned the whole Cathal Ó Searcaigh fiasco before. Synopsis for people who haven't been paying attention; documentary is aired showing that celebrated Irish-language poet likes to (a) give money to kids in Nepal and (b) allegedly shag kids in Nepal.

Now, first of all, I have not seen the documentary; I had meant to, but I don't watch telly much these days, and it had slipped my mind. However, I've read a good many reviews and synopses, and at this point am interested enough that if it was available on DVD or whatever I would certainly buy it.

There seem to be a couple of issues. First, a lot of people seem to feel that the documentary was unfair. Of course, without knowing the facts I can't comment too deeply, but from what reviews I have read it does seem that the director is somewhat more interested in lots of publicity than in confronting the problem that is Ó Searcaigh. This is, of course, by no means a defence of the poet; it just seems to me that, as unfortunately happens so often, there is no hero or heroine in this case. The director gets her publicity, the poet gets his sexually naive 16 year olds.

Secondly, and this is the bit that concerns me; people are very keen to defend him. Dermod Moore, here, defends him. Senator David Norris, a man who I ordinarily have a great deal of respect for, defends him to an extent. Various poets have defended him.

There seem to be two major modes of defence, both of which I find incomprehensible. The first is, essentially "oh, but he's a poet". There seem to be at least a few who will defend him more or less entirely on this basis. Some of them were on the radio. This is patently absurd, and I doubt that many will take it seriously.

The second is far, far more worrying. The second mode of defence, you see, is to say "Ah, but he's gay". This is used by gay people and straight people alike. Certain people seem to have got it into their head that the older man preying on the young boy is normal, acceptable, or even part of 'gay culture'. Now, as a gay male who has been hit on by old guys since I was 17 (but, sadly, not by very many guys my age...) I can't understand this. it happens, certainly. So, for that matter, does it happen that dirty old men hit on 16-year-old girls. Neither is more acceptable than the other. No amount of babbling on about ancient Greeks and Oscar Wilde will make it okay for a wealthy older man to take advantage of a child sexually.

People say that he is being victimised; after all, plenty of western tourists prey on young girls in the developing world (dreadful euphemism, 'developing world', born out of globalisation and a desire to say, however true or untrue it may be, that these desperately poor countries are developing, so we needn't feel too guilty...), and no-one raises too much of a fuss. It must be because he's gay, they say. Ah, but how many of those tourists allow their victimisation to be captured on camera? I can assure you that any who did would be lambasted in the press, and, in all probability, prosecuted; there are laws which would seem to provide for such.

The point is that people should not defend him simply because he is gay. It's ridiculous. If he's done something which would ordinarily be unacceptable, it matters little what orientation he is. If he has.

Damien Mulley suggests that he should be taken off the Leaving Cert here. I'm not convinced that this is actually sensible; there are far dodgier people than him on various state exam syllabi. I certainly think, though, that people are standing up for him for terribly dubious reasons...

More Cable Madness

More fun with Monster HDMI cables. Turns out, they don't seem to make a difference.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, of course. HDMI is a digital standard; as long as the cable manages to transmit it properly at all, it should work. People, though, seem naturally inclined to believe that their 500 euro HDMI cable is better than Joe Blogg's 10 euro one. Such is the nature of humanity, sadly; certain things are perceived as being better simply because they are more expensive.

It's particularly absurd in the case of digital cables, though. With analogue cables, it's different to prove anything to everyone's satisfaction; some people simply don't believe in analogue signal comparisons or double-blind testing. With digital, though, the issue should be far simpler; If bitstream 1 is the same as bitstream 2, the cables are as good as each other for the purpose.

It's not helped, I suspect, because the websites and magazines which review these things are partially dependent on ads from cable manufacturers...

Americans for Terrorism

I was thinking more about our lovely pro-terrorist friends. Look at this great MySpace group I found. American supporters of the IRA. Wonderful.

Americans, admit it, if these people were brown they'd be in Guantanamo.

Even worse are those Americans who take it upon themselves to fund the IRA. See that above? 29 dead. All civilians, 9 of them children. 300 injured, some horribly. This isn't in some age of oppression decades ago, mind you, this was in 1998. If you gave money to aid the 'Republican cause', you may have been paying for this, you stupid fucking bastards.

Please, Americans, don't give money to terrorists. Even if they are white and don't wear funny clothes.

Stupid Inventions

Back then, poisons were evidently far more a part of everyday life. As were paracetamol-addicted children, it would seem.

I... couldn't possibly comment. A vibrator for a hand drill. Nothing more to say, really, is there?

Bertie, boycott Bush

The Taoiseach of Ireland often presents the President of the US with some shamrock on St. Patrick's Day. It's traditional.

In view of recent events... Is it really appropriate?

Bertie, you're a dreadful creature, but you're significantly less dreadful than Bush. The Mahon tribunal, after all, has not even mentioned torture. Don't meet with the man. It demeans you, and it demeans our country. 

(Note: This entry was called 'Bertie, boycott Blair', for a few minutes. Freudian slip, I assure you. Blair is somewhat less evil, though he does have a slightly mad wife.)

Consumer spending is soaring

Today, I made the largest consumer purchase of my life. And it feels great.

I'm getting a Macbook Pro! Yay!!!

On Loony Nationalists

Nationalism, in a strictly Irish context, tends to refer to the belief that Northern Ireland should be part of the Republic of Ireland. This would be fine, except that the majority of Northern Irish people don't want to be part of the Republic of Ireland.

A friend recently wrote a post which was rather disparaging of an, in fairness, pretty crap (in my opinion, naturally) Nationalist blog.

Today, he got a comment from a person claiming to be the author:

Sharon here , from the blog you described as " This one..." , in comparison to the full title and link you gave to the "excellent"Unionist blog 'A Pint of Unionist Lite' . I notice wee things like that !
Still - it's good to know from which direction the belittling is coming from , and you have left no doubt about that : "It's probably the case that unionism - at least at this moment in time - will always appear more rational, as it reflects the will of the people. As it is, republicanism cannot but be "in poor taste" as it does the very opposite..."
Do you not know that 'Unionism' is in the minority on this isle ? The "will of the people" , indeed lol!
You mention the "tumultuous history we've had in the last 30 years..." , as if this issue has only been with us for that short a time . Another unionist trait ! 
And would you not agree that having over 200,000 'hits' and been nominated three times by our readers as 'Best (Irish) Political Blog' is good going for someone who "doesn't seem to have a clue " ?
Anyway - glad you like the photo's we publish : perhaps in future you could confine yourself to simply looking at the images on our blog , as the text is obviously wayyyy too heavy for you .
Thanks!

The blog of the offended party is really a bit of a laugh; mad use of bold and punctuation, and blatant terrorist-worship.

Right, a few points. First, on Unionism being in a minority on this isle, well, that's rather irrelevant, really, isn't it? What's relevant is the opinions of the citizens of the foreign nation which you wish to assimilate into the Republic; that world be Northern Ireland. I certainly have my doubts that extremist Nationalism is in the majority in the Republic, incidentally; just how many seats does Sinn Fein have, again?

Then there's the silly drawing of conclusions, and the assertion that taking interest only in the last 30 years of Irish history is a Unionist trait? I'm not even going to go into it, it's so silly.

On the 200,000 hits, well, I've had over 80,000 in the last year, and my blog is about... well, nothing, really. Similarly, I've been nominated for various Irish Blog Awards categories twice. I just have rather less up my own arse about it than the blogger.

As for the "text is obviously wayyyy too heavy for you", well, that's rich from someone who talks about "photo's", quite frankly.

Now, justifying the assimilation of a foreign nation on the basis that the majority of your own nation approves the fact is nothing short of imperialism. You might as well say that the German invasion of Poland was justified because a lot of Germans felt that they had some obscure historical right to it. If a Unionist is someone who resists the imperialist takeover of Northern Ireland, then call me a Unionist! Of course 'Unionism' is more rational in Northern Ireland; it is the will of the people.

This is not to say that the oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland in the past was right, or even that the current situation is ideal. To be honest, I think both Gerry and Ian are rather dreadful, and the world would be a far better place without them and their rabid followers. However, the past does not give us a right to take revenge in the present. Northern Ireland is not part of the Republic of Ireland, and its citizens do not wish it to be. Let it go. Focus on something more bloody important, if you must obsess about something.

Interesting product directions

From an elderly electronic product:

If the system does not operate properly, push the reset button. If the system does still not operate properly, switch it off, wait 5 seconds, nd switch it on. If the system still does not operate properly, switch it off.

I particularly like item 3.

Wikpedia on MS Services for UNIX

Confusingly, Microsoft Services for UNIX is a UNIX compatibility layer for Windows, rather like Cygwin. One might reasonably assume the opposite. The only circumstance I can think of it being used in is the Hotmail Windows port, and that was only because Windows Scheduling was at the time vastly inferior to cron.

Anyway:

There was at least one beta release of the initial version of SFU before its final release in February 1999. This release was only in English and was supported on Windows NT 4.0 SP3+ for x86 and Alpha platforms. This is the only known release to support Alpha

Presumably this is as opposed to the three secret versions for Alpha, the architecture which no-one has ever actually run Windows on. Along with PowerPC (yes, really! NT for PPC!). And MIPS. And possibly Itanium.

More Wikipedia - Windows for Worktops

From Wikipedia's article on Microsoft's computerised table thing:

Initial customers will be in the hospitality businesses, such as restaurants, hotels, retail, public entertainment venues and the military for tactical overviews.

Since when was the military a hospitality business? Also, would one really want to plan battles with a version of Vista which lives in furniture?

Stand by for iSofa. And possibly iCouch Pro.

Oh, also:

Surface was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 30, 2007 

when he threw it at someone.

Wikipedia on the highly important subject of URINALS

But is it strawberry flavoured?!

Due to budget cuts at the BBC, this specialised Dalek is currently serving as a urinal.

In this marvellous modern age, toilets can cater for even the most obscure fetishes.

This urinal is for use in centrifuges.

The weaker sex need no longer feel left out of the toilet revolution.

Eeek!

And now for some quotes.

The plastic mesh guard called a kivah is designed to prevent solid objects (such as cigarette butts, feces, or paper) from being flushed and possibly causing a plumbing stoppage.

I'm glad someone went to the trouble of naming it. Saves on confused plumbers.

Often, one or two of the urinals, typically at one end of a long row of urinals, will be mounted lower than the others, for use by short people, often boys, who can't reach the urinals that are meant for teenage boys and men. These shorter urinals also facilitate use by individuals in wheelchairs

What?! How?

Once used exclusively in commercial or institutional washrooms, urinals for private home installation are now available.

Again, what?! And why?

Ernest Hemingway converted a urinal from Sloppy Joe's bar into a water fountain for his cats.

No more need really be said.

• Gabriel Chevallier's 1934 satirical novel Clochemerle deals with the ramifications over plans to install a new urinal in a French village.

I'm sure it's fascinating.

MP3 Player Nostalgia

The MP3 player, apparently, first turned up on our electronics shop shelves a whole ten years ago! Doesn't seem that long ago, does it? It had a whole 32mb of Flash memory, and cost 250 dollars. Here's the first one:

My first personal music player was a Sony Walkman with a built-in radio. The tape player slowly died, with tapes getting slower in the middle to the point where I could only listen to my beloved Tina Turner tape for Private Dancer and Steel Claw before Tina turned into Vader, but the radio kept going for years afterwards; I was still listening to it in my first year of college.

My first MP3 player was a Creative Labs MuVo, pictured above. It had 64mb storage, and ran off a single AAA battery in the separate battery enclosure. In theory it was a nice enough player, but it had its issues; in particular, there was a tendency for the storage to lose a megabyte or two every time you deleted a song, so that it eventually needed to be reformatted. Transfer to the device was also pretty slow, even by USB 1.1 standards; it could manage 300kB/sec. It also just didn't like certain MP3s, apparently at random.

Well I remember, though, listening to it on the bus, nearly finished secondary school and having just come out (me, not the MP3 player). That period was the first that I ever felt happy, that I can recall.

My first iPod was a first-generation mini; the silver one. Generally great, though it did crash from time to time; it could be reset by holding a couple of the buttons down for an interminably long time.

Then came the iPod Nano. Far smaller, the same capacity, and far better battery life. Also, for reasons I was never terribly clear on, a colour screen. I never did do much iPod-watching, but I'm sure it's nice for people who like to stare at the screen constantly...

Now I have an iPod Touch. Wonderful browser and tools, and theoretically wonderful player, but hard to control when it's in your pocket.

I am probably going to have to handcuff myself to the desk on Friday to prevent myself darting into the nearest O2 store like a kingfisher to get the iPhone...

I did also have a phone which could play MP3s at one time, but since it needed specialised headphones and had 16MB internal memory, this capability was rather wasted.

So, what was your first? Or are you one of these luddites who prefers to use a porta-gramaphone or whatever? (Fun trivia; Motorola is called that because they originally made a record player for cars).

New Firefox 3 beta 4 for MacOS; more hideous than ever!

Firefox has never really looked quite right on MacOS. Buttons weren't native, and so forth. In Firefox 3 Beta 4 this has changed... for the worse. Observe, if you will, the gorgeous toolbar:

Lovely, eh? But nothing compared to this, well, work of art:

Note the clashing interface styles.

I personally don't use Firefox on MacOS anymore; Safari is sufficient for my needs, and far faster. I must say, I pity anyone who does, and has to put up with that amazing preference box...

Ridiculous comments on startup posts

Noted bulldog enthusiast and founder of pointless pseudo-wiki Jason Calacanis recently made a controversial post on how to run your startup. You can look for yourself, but the general idea seems to be to make your staff work constantly; no escaping the office for lunch, even. Or coffee. Or anything. Presumably for about six months, at which point they will go entirely mad. Then you can just get new ones; good programmers grow on trees, you know. (Note that although this is very much how the post read, it is apparently not what he meant). The rest of the post is rather prosaic, though like many in his field he likes chairs more than would be considered entirely reasonable by most people.

The comments are rather interesting. First, most of them are absurdly sucky-up. Calcanis has a lot of fans, for some reason. Then there's this:

1. Never buy new servers from a Top3 vendor. Refurbish fire sale hardware from imploding startups or roll your own to spec. Newegg is your friend.

It strikes me that the only person who would build his own production servers is one who isn't actually making any money off what they are serving; when your home-made totally leet 1U server breaks leading to downtime, you've probably just lost any saving right there, and replacement is far more likely to be problematic.

The imploding startup bit seems superficially sensible, but really isn't. A 1U quad-core Xeon will be faster and use less power, and expensive rack space, than the 2 or 4U 4 processor Xeon of yesteryear. People often seem to ignore the cost of keeping servers, even though it generally works out to more than the purchase price pretty quickly. I'm quite sure that there are still a few E450s being passed from startup to startup, from the web 1 bubble burst.

Then there's this:

Don't buy whiteboards at an office store. Just buy white "wallboard" at home depot. Its a little bit less easy to clean off, but a 4'x8' wallboard is about $8. A comparable offical "whiteboard" is $400. Multiply that by all your conference rooms...

So the idea is, instead of having proper whiteboards, annoy your employees with a dodgy alternative, saving 392 dollars in the process. GREAT idea. And if you have multiple conference rooms, well, you can probably afford whiteboards. I also beg leave to doubt that whiteboards cost 400 dollars. Maybe 'offical' (made of offal?) ones do, of course.

At this point they start competing for stupidest money-saving, employee-annoying scheme:

If your employees aren't worried about their desks you could even skip the kitchen tables and go straight for the plastic fold-up tables from Costco. It would be economical and would free up space in a second for reorganization of the office.

And more suck-ups:

As I have said before and I will say again!! Jason Calacanis is BRILLIANT!!!

Or brillant, perhaps...

Finally, some sense:

I wouldn't work for you if you paid me a million dollars because you're an arrogant windbag who thinks programmers are glorified typists and therefore twice as much hours put in equals twice as much work.

You don't know shit about software development. For realz.

Of course, Mahalo isn't about software development either; it's a bloody wiki.

The war on desks continues (I really hope this one is a joke):

Tables: get Ikea legs and put them on solid-core doors. Big enough for two people, and you can adjust the height.

And have them work on dumb terminals:

For the price of one Mac you can buy a big server, load up the ram and hard drives, install Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu and then install LTSP (linux terminal server project, LTSP.org). Then you can get cheap client terminals or scrounge old pc's (even as old as 10 year old Pentium 2, or newer) for everyone in the office - and these client machines don't need hard drives, cd-roms, etc (so are quiet)

This one is off-topic but gets points for introducing me to a profession that I had no idea existed:

I love "Hire from Middle America" - this is great! By the way, I am a Duct Tape Marketing coach and don't pay all that money for rent and dry cleaning. I work out of my house and can help coach people through short-term marketing projects.

And this work of genius:

There is NO REASON whatsoever for an office...cell phones, EVDO, come one people...ALL employees should be selling the product every second. You want privacy? Go sit in your car. An office is a ridiculously expensive proposition. Every employee should work from home...keep out the ridiculous costs, have everyone on sales calls always, and the company is five steps ahead of their competition every single time...

Yep, working on your own at home is a great idea; who needs to share ideas with other people, and who needs social interaction?

Calacanis responds to a critical Techcrunch (there's something you haven't heard before!) piece on the subject.

The worst of it is, I doubt that he even meant what people have picked up from his post. Certainly it could be read the way that Techcrunch has read it, and in fact that's probably the obvious way to read it, but I think Calacanis is just particularly poor at expressing his thoughts... He should probably get someone to read over his posts first.

Then again, when I went to Mahalo:

Possibly the admins are over-stressed. :)

Goodness, I went on on this topic for a while. So many amusing comments...

But is hydrolysed human hair KOSHER?!

Well, apparently yes, as long as it is not derived from hair taken from dead people. Thankfully, this is apparently rarely the case (the dead person hair thing).

L-Cysteine, you see, is an amino-acid often used in food flavouring and particularly treatment of grain for baking. It is derived from feathers, various chemical fermentation and genetically engineered bacteria sources, and, primarily, human hair.

Think about that next time you bite into a nice bread roll.

Anyway, yes, it is apparently generally kosher, though presumably not suitable for vegetarians or Jehovah's Witnesses (for whom it would surely fall under the definition of cannibalism). Islam, by the way, certainly does not allow it if it is sourced from human hair.

Isn't modern food technology fun? It is, quite frankly, a wonder that vegans, in particular, can eat at all.

Madina Desi Indian/Pakistani Restaurant, Mary Street - Review

I briefly mentioned this restaurant before. Anyway, as I say, it's one of my favourite restaurants, though I doubt I'll be visiting too much anymore, for distance reasons... It's at the intersection of Capel Street and Mary Street, more or less.

First, prices. Main courses from 6 to 8 euro, rice not included (except in the 6-7 euro biriani, which really is very good value). Meat dishes are generally chicken or lamb on the bone; as is normal with such restaurants, Lamb Is Best. Always be wary of beef or pork based Indian or Pakistani food; no-one on that subcontinent really eats pork, and Hindus don't eat beef, while it is apparently one of the more awkward and expensive meats to prepare in accordance with Halal or Kosher rules.

Decor is eccentric, even by the rather lax standards allowed in this sort of restaurant; there is a sort of chandelier with spinning balls of lights. More spin-y ball-y things adorn the walls. Music consists of re-done rip-offs of Western pop songs; it's really quite strange. The building seems to have started off life as an office, with elderly Ethernet ports all over the place.

Although the place pitches itself as 'fusion fast food', allow a good hour or so; it takes time to get your food. There is no alcohol, but there is a collection of weird alcohol-free beers, if that's what floats your boat. Personally, I categorise alcohol-free beer with caffeine-free coffee and other such abominations. There's also a weird, presumably imported, lemon drink made by Coca-Cola, which I've never seen before.

The food itself is great, though portions are intimidatingly huge. My personal favourite is lamb with spinach, which I tend to have with pilau rice. It's quite spicy, though; people who don't like hot food might want to go with something milder. The aloo paratha (a sort of flat fried bread with potato) is also very, very good. The 'special' biriani seems to be a biriani with chicken, lamb, prawns... and a fried egg. Bizarre.

There's a wide range of vegetable-based meals, which are prepared in a separate kitchen! Great for vegetarians. Chickpeas are much in evidence.

The menu is great fun, with a variety of mildly surreal descriptions. It doesn't quite come up to the standards of one of the Koreans on Parnell Street ("vegetables, and so on" being one particularly memorable designation) but it's close.

At the checkout, for reasons I am unclear on, there are a wide variety of banknotes from various countries, mostly east-Asian, stuck up on the counter. On your way out, you will notice that the adjacent food shop has a variety of vegetables in strange and suggestive shapes. Also about half of the capital's supply of watermelons.

All in all, it's a great place to go, though you will probably leave suspecting that you've had your weekly allowance of calories, saturated fat, and whole cumin seeds scattered around with wild abandon.

Lovely weather!

Dublin appears to be enveloped in some sort of storm. Ugh. I hope I'm not blown away on the way to work tomorrow...

RIP RIM?

The recent Apple iPhone announcement has caused a lot of fuss, but people have mostly been concentrating on the pending availability of third-party applications. There was something else, though, something which may in the long run do more to boost the thing's market share.

You see, the new iPhone software will support push email, calendar, contacts and so forth from Microsoft Exchange. Through an Exchange plugin, so anyone who has an Exchange server will be able to allow iPhones to use it with no extra software. Compare this to Research in Motion's very popular Blackberry, which seems to still require extra software, and operator support. I'd imagine that many companies, especially smaller companies, will be tempted by the iPhone simply because it will be easier and cheaper to set up.

Where, then, for Blackberry? I suspect that RIM will have to make big changes if they wish to remain a serious player.

My blog, according to Technorati

Here's what Technorati thinks my blog is about:

Well, I suppose it's as good a guess as any other, really. I mean, I don't know what my blog is about...

rsynnott.com, for all your gay Erlang needs.

Absurd Erlang FAQs

From the Erlang FAQ:

There are two oddities here.

The first string is, of course, absurd. A fool could see that. It isn't quite as bad as a Prolog example I once saw:

> lessthan(clergyman, avocado).
yes.

But it's getting there.

And then there is the justification of the silly function placing with hysterical raisins. This is a common theme in Erlang, actually; hide perfectly simple functions in strange modules that no-one uses, then claim historical reasons when they are unearthed.

Technologies that might have been but weren't

From the Erlang FAQ, on applications that Erlang is suited to:

Servers for Internet applications, e.g. a mail transfer agent, an IMAP-4 server, an HTTP server or a WAP Stack.

I'm sorry, but what on earth is a WAP stack?

According to this hideous presentation, it's a big, needlessly complex, scary mess and will have 100 million users by the end of 2000. Well, so much for that; it's used by three people for checking cinema timetables in the real world. AND ALWAYS WILL BE; that is the nature of obscure comms technology. Note telex; no-one ever used it, but it never quite went away.

Possibly this is why it was such a failure:

I mean, imagine sitting down and using that interface all day!

Erlang docs made easy

I believe I've mentioned the awful old un-searchable Erlang documentation before. The documentation itself is fine, but trying to actually find anything in it is a pain.

Anyway, someone seems to have made a little indexer. Have a look. It's great. Wish I'd thought of it first.

P. P. Hammer - A Demonware Production

No, not that Demonware. You see, it turns out that that there was another games company called Demonware a long time ago, which made the following game:

Now, is it just me, or is that the most phallic symbolism you've ever seen in a computer game box? P. P. Hammer's pneumatic weapon, indeed... And then, there's the snake, the ghost, and the money shot with the champagne bottle.

Bonus YouTube of actual gameplay!

There is a WASP in my kitchen

No, not that type.

There is a live wasp in my kitchen. In March. In Dublin. Fortunately, it's currently contained; there is a glass on top of it. Ridiculous.

Here is the wasp. Note, if you can, that it is moving a bit; my phone isn't actually very good at taking video. Also, careful; I cough half way through.

Flaming Homosexual

Or, at least, smouldering...

You see, the other night I was in the George smoking area talking to friends. As you do. And I noticed that my foot was a bit warm. At first, I thought nothing of it; they have heat lamps.

Then I noticed that the bottom of the left leg of my jeans was on fire. No flames (despite Mark's protestations to the contrary) but definitely burning.

Fortunately, people helped me put it out, so no harm done. Well, the jeans are slightly worse for wear, but they were ancient, anyway.

Crisis averted, I went back to my normal activity in the George; being quietly resentful of hot people.

Bonus picture of damaged jeans:

PayPerLie?

I remember thinking at one point that the obvious extension to the then-lucrative (now happily more or less killed by good old Google) PayPerPost business model would be to simply pay newspaper people and so forth to lie.

As always, the real world seems to have been one step ahead of me.

It is alleged that the head of Wikipedia (a non-profit) modified someone's page and destroyed the history (he certainly destroyed the history) in return for a hefty donation. It is further alleged that Wales likes to fly first class on Wikipedia's buck.

I really, really hope it isn't true. Wikipedia is of dubious trustworthiness enough as it is, without bribery. At the moment, it all seems to be nasty rumours, more or less. We shall see how it pans out.

Odd businesses

Apparently, my favourite Indian/Pakistani restaurant is owned by a company which also has a food shop, a wholesale... and a mosque. Bizarre.