Highly important pervert-related announcement

Somebody just came to this blog by googling 'hemingway urinal'.

Just when I think the Internet no longer has the power to terrify me....

Me, on Youtube!

Do not ask. Representing the interests of Luddites.



Here's the nation referred to. :)

Otter!!!

Highly important BBC story about baby otter. Baby otters are cuter than I would have imagined. Also more contemptuous.

Hmm. Adult otters, less so.

Budget Rent-a-Peer

As you'll probably have heard by now, some naughty, naughty Peers told the Sunday Times that they would, well, help along an amendment to a law in return for a bit of cash. Well, that is, they thought they were telling an Asian supermarket company this; the Times was being a little naughty itself, you see.

Anyway, corrupt politicians who don't need to get re-elected, and are very hard to get rid of; there are actual criminals in the Lords. So far so boring.

The sheer range of prices is impressive, though.

You can get Lord Snape here (no relation to Severus) for a mere £24,000 a year, while a higher-end peer will cost you 120 thousand. In the mid range, you can get an ex-MEP, Lord Truscott, a charming man who loves ID cards and hates climate change regulation. Same with Mr. Snape, there, actually. And so does Lord Moonie, who goes for 30k, and is presumably the one you got for when you don't want to spend too much, but don't actually want to go bargain basement. You know, he's the Marks and Spencer of corrupt peers.

Why the link between ID-card-philia and negotiable virtue, anyway? While the climate change thing is pretty obvious, it doesn't seem like anyone would be paying to further the cause of ID cards.

Please note that these people are also Britain's highest court. So if you're planning on murdering somebody, put a deposit down now!

Hopelessly surreal ad of the day

I mean, really. Really.

It's the wacky prince again!

Apparently the guy who possible-racist Harry Windsor called 'Sooty' is not offended.

It's all a bit Enid Blyton, really. No doubt he's also acquainted with 'Golly' and 'Chinky;. And... did the Victorians have a pet slur for the gays? I can't think of one offhand.

I'm a little bit sick of this whole thing, really. Dim, privileged kid in stupid racist remark shocker. I suppose we'll be hearing about it for the next 70 years or so, though...

Microsoft's CSS Hell

From an MSDN page on SQL Server, viewed through a relatively normal browser (Safari, also Firefox):

Eeek. I suppose it makes some sort of sense, assuming your monitor is three inches wide, and 50 feet long.

Sly as a Fox

This just sums up Fox News nicely, I think. An interview with Dawkins (ATHEIST!) and "TERROR ALERT: ELEVATED". The atheists want to steal our Christmases! Also, they are probably in league with the explodey brown people! We'll be back after these ads for things that no-one wants, with the Veiled-Racial-Slur Hour!

Surreal quote of the day

As of 2008, there’s just one deep offshore windfarm in UK waters, an experimental prototype sending all its electricity to a nearby oilrig called Beatrice.

Well, quite. I mean, whyever not?

iPhone weight reduction

Aha, capitalising on Mac World, you see. No, the iPhone itself has not lost weight, but, erm, users may.

Behold, the demo screenshot from some weight tracking app.

Please note that the subject lost 23 pounds in four days. Short of multiple amputation, I don't think that's actually possible.

The new iPhone! Now with dysentery!

The great partitioning of reality

A fascinating trend is emerging with Internet use. Basically, it is quite clear that some people don't like the sort of information that the Internet exposes them. In particular, they do not like objectivity. Witness Conservapedia, the 'conservative' (US usage; read as 'psycho god-bothering fascist') encyclopaedia, founded by someone who was offended by 'liberal bias' (US usage; read as 'truth') on Wikipedia. They aren't the only ones.

Via Damien, behold Catholic Google . Beyond the blatant trademark infringement (would God approve?), well, take a look at it. It's a Google Custom Search, with a horrible logo, and a Catholic bias.

Let's see what it gives us for a (very) common search term.

'Nuf said.

How about sex, then?

In the Vatican, you see, sex is for kids in Latin. Ahem. Note that the ads are not suitably censored.

Now, I don't think that anyone is going to seriously use this thing. If nothing else, it won't be 'round for long; Google tends to protect its trademark. I'd guess that at least 99% of queries are for naughty words.

But is it what the future holds? Is someone out there putting together a search engine for radical evangelical Christians or Muslims? People being people, I very much suspect so.

The apparent owner, by the way, also owns this highly classy Lourdes e-commerce site. It's the discount Catholic store, apparently! Mean-spirited books and showy religious tat, for less!

Excuse the vitriol; I'm unusually irritated with the Catholic church since the scary, evil old git of a pope mentioned that it was the church should 'protect man from himself' RE homosexuality. Hmm. Protect man from himself? How, I wonder? Maybe the whole Nazi Pope thing wasn't so far off the bat after all...

Irish blogger infiltrates Washington DC

From the blog of noted Irish blogger Grandad:

And from Wonkette, a US political blog which used to be one of the many, many, many old bits of Gawker which get thrown away once a year (this one is independent now, I think):

Coincidence, or something more? You decide.

Oh, dear...

Is it bad that I think Niles from Frasier is really cute?

The actual actor is in fact gay, but I think it's mostly the character's silly personality I like. If only he were a decade younger and non-imaginary...

For the record, I don't think Frasier or his dad are at all cute.

Spam in the 80s

In an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey from 1983, Rumpole refers to a pile of uninteresting cases as 'legal spam'.

I hadn't realised common use of the word in that context was so old.

Twitter; less and less usable

When I first started using Twitter, it was actually surprisingly fun and usable; messages would be delivered to your IM account, so you'd always see them and could reply easily.

Oh, how things have changed. Almost a year ago, IM delivery was temporarily suspended; at some point between then and now, all reference to it has vanished from their website. I'm a little puzzled at this, actually; you'd think that Jabber delivery, at least, would be more practical than the pull method used by the various Twitter clients. SMS delivery is also now unavailable in this country, but I can't say that I really mourn its passing that much; it was a bit annoying.

Oh, the clients. Without exception, every client I've tried is either very ugly, has very poor usability, or both. I'm currently using Twitteriffic on my home computer; it says a lot that the iPhone version of the same software is actually more usable than the desktop one. And yet it seems to be about the best available.

That's not saying much, though. It frequently has errors connecting, and when it does get messages, they come in batches, and are awkward to read through. As a result, I barely use the damn thing anymore; even Facebook status updates seem far more usable.

Anyone got any solutions to this? It seems to still be growing in popularity, so presumably there is some nice way to use it?