Saw a flock of Japanese tourists earlier today; the leader held aloft an umbrella, metal thing fully extended but umbrella bit not unfurled. Presumably some new innovation in umbrellas which wards off rain using static electricity or anti-gravity or similar. Also, not raining.
Quite like the Japanese tourists, really; they rarely get irritated if am not able to answer their questions about where some obscure street is, and they don't glare when they see one in a gay pride parade. A lot of the American tourists do; assume are from some godforsaken hole in Mid-West where gays are warded off by Ku Klux Klan or something. Why are these people allowed passports?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Eccentric of the day
Monday, June 16, 2008
Care for a Wall Fish?
Time Warner Cable is a US cable company which is bringing in expensive low-capped Internet service on a phased basis, to replace their uncapped service. I bet they're popular.
Anyway, on a whim, I decided to take a look at their price list. All a bit ho hum, except for one item. It's under installation.
"Wall Fish $75". Erm, I'm sorry, what? No explanation is offered. The Internet is unhelpful on the subject. Wikipedia tells me that it was a Roman euphemism for this:
I doubt that that is what Time Warner means, though; at any rate I hope it's not.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Caprine Rapper
According to eMusic, Lil' Kim (a popular rapper person) has brought out a new album called... wait for it... MS GOAT.
Okay, so GOAT stands for something. Still absolutely bizarre.
Fake Acorn Review!
I just found something rather odd. It's a review of a newish (2005) Acorn Archimedes clone, running RiscOS 5. If you're about my age and Irish or English, you may remember the Acorn Archimedes as that strange thing that your primary school got to replace their BBC Micros just before you finished primary school. Oh, it looked very modern and amazing at the time...
The review in question is of a 600MHz ARM machine (that's about the same as the old iPhone's processor) with 512MB RAM and a 120GB hard drive, costing 1300 pounds. Yep, that's pounds sterling; 1700 euro or 2500 dollars.
It's really, really odd to see something like this; I had assumed that the Archimedes was extremely dead. It even has a new operating system; RiscOS 5. I wonder just who, exactly, the target market is?
Monday, May 19, 2008
Women as chattels; not just for Islam anymore!
Men! Ever feel envious when you read the news and see that Saudi Arabia has just executed another woman for having seen a man out of the corner of her eye? Ever worry that your son's child bride may not know who's boss? Ever worried that those silly little women are beginning to think of themselves as, well, people? Then this just may be for you!
So, there exists something called a 'Purity Ball'. Just the name tells you this won't be good, doesn't it? A purity ball is where fathers, stepfathers and future fathers-in-law promise to 'guard' their daughter's 'purity'. The daughters, from kids to college-age girls, come as their dates. Where's this happening? Saudi Arabia? The Middle Ages? Well, close; Colorado in the United States. That is, it's happening in all of the more Christian-overrun parts of the US; the article I read focuses on Colorado.
A quick Google BlogSearch shows that most people are, rightly, either making fun of this or damning it. But then there's this:
It gets worse:
Young women should not be viewed as sex objects to be exploited, but as regal princesses to be cherished and protected. And father knows best.
One of the most memorable highlights of the ball is when the fathers stand in the middle of the ballroom and form a circle around their daughters standing all aglow in their lovely ball gowns. The fathers place their hands on their daughters, and together we pray for purity of mind, body, and soul for generations to come.And then they throw them into the volcano, as I believe virginity fetishists are wont to do.
Rather she will be saving herself for a real loving man just like her strong daddy. A man who will respect her and knows that the package is clean and new and pure. Something worth waiting for.
Or worse.
In an age when so many children think their parents “aren’t cool”, It’s refreshing to find young girls who want to “date” dad.
Oh, dear. Have the FBI been notified?
Amen Roy Ubu! I bet you that when Sam Brownback takes that little filipino daughter of his to her Purity Ball she will be beaming with joy. Lord knows she probably won’t understand one word of what they are saying, but she will just be happy to be on a date with her daddy.Sam Brownback seems to be another loony presidential candidate, and there's no indication that his 'little filipino daughter' is mentally disabled; presumably she won't understand one word because, well, those foreigners don't talk proper, do they? It's genetic; they can't help it, the poor things.
And then it goes from comments from the dim to comments from the evil:
Why do you think there is such a thing as rape? Its really when the girl’s lust drives her to sin and then she LIES to get out of it. GOD KNOWS what she did and her punishment is to HAVE that baby, perferablly one of those deformed ones that she can take care off for the rest of her life. That would be a suitable lesson for the other girls to learn.Why is it that Christian extremists sound so like a paedophile ring? Ugh.
Back, then, to the less creepy New York Times.
The Wilsons organized what was considered the country’s first father-daughter purity ball 10 years ago, as their oldest girls entered adolescence.Yep, this isn't just some awful Middle Ages thing that hasn't gone away; it is new. Bush, what hath thou wrought?
“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said Jordyn Wilson, 19, another daughter of Randy and Lisa. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”Eek!
But studies have also shown that most teenagers who say they will remain abstinent, like those at the ball, end up having sex before marriage, and they are far less likely to use condoms than their peers.Oh, what a surprise. My, I am shocked! God must be turning in his grave!
Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16. Mr. Clark brought Ashley, in her white satin gown, to show her that he loved her like a daughter,Arranged marriage! Not just for the heathen anymore either!
If most teenage girls would not be caught dead dancing with their dads, the girls at the ball twirled for hours with their game but stiff fathers. Every half-hour, Mr. Wilson stopped the dancing so that fathers could bless their daughters before everyone.The above quote is absolutely not to be read into! Not if you want to sleep tonight, anyway.
Isn't it odd that as America tries to carry on a war against Islamic extremists, it turns into more of a religion-addled nuthouse itself?
Note that that Wikipedia article on the subject has 'Covert incest' as a related item. Unfair, perhaps, but that's sort of how it looks...
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Forget dodgy links; Ron Paul is the new SEO
For the last few months, Google has been seriously cracking down on link sale and so forth. So, how's a respectable dodgy website owner to manipulate search engines and draw visitors?
A few days ago, I mentioned Ron Paul, noted scary American presidential candidate, on this blog. Within hours, the rather boring article had about eight comments, including one from someone who seemingly thought that I was Ron Paul. In all, about 150 people visited through searching for 'Ron Paul'!
It's clear, then. This is the way to get traffic. Simply pepper everything with irrelevant references to popular weird people. As Ron Paul would say.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Automattic embarassments again
Yes, I know I go on about this stuff far too much. I happen to find it rather amusing. Do feel free to skip it.
So, apparently Matt Mullenweg wrote a rather silly post responding to the Coding Horror post on Wordpress being a bit crap, scalability-wise, in which he implies that people who take issue with Wordpress's stupid, stupid, stupid treatment of the database are idiots. Then he deleted it, probably because it made him look a bit reactionary and mad. Now, in the post he mentioned that his blog was doing fine. From a post on his blog:
Now, call me dangerously insane, but to me, half a second to generate a simple web page sounds like a hell of a lot.
I tend to suspect that a lot of the problem with Wordpress is that Matt (who wrote it, or at least forked it, in the first place) thinks that he is a good developer, and thus seems to try to dominate development; you can sometimes see this in action on the mailing list.
Now, the other matter. A while back, Automattic bought something called Gravatar. It's apparently a service which shows user images beside comments, or something.
In the last few days, Automattic finished re-writing Gravatar. In doing so, they seem to have removed support for PNGs. PNG is a lossless compression format for images, which supports transparency and so forth. For small images, especially drawn images, it can be quite a good choice; JPEG will almost inevitably introduce some distortion, and it does not support transparency; transparency is rather useful for this sort of thing. Matt's comment:
Super Coco: Gravatars are meant to be images, the fact that animations and PNGs were allowed was a bit of an accident. (Neither scales well.) Sorry about that.Argh.
They really, really need a PR person. Now.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Getting WAY too excited about FPGAs
From the Xilinx WebPack (the weirdly-named free version of their FPGA development environment):
Really, no-one should be that excited about a cheap FPGA. Especially not someone wearing a shirt and tie.
Actually, why do companies like Xilinx feel the need for this sort of ad at all? Potential customers will probably be doing their research, and are highly unlikely to be swayed by a crazy grinning blond guy.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Stonehenge actually missile site?
From Wikipedia:
Ancient, military and uninhabited structures (such as Stonehenge) are sometimes instead classified as Scheduled Ancient Monuments and protected by much older legislation whilst cultural landscapes such as parks and gardens are currently "listed" on a non-statutory basis.
Monday, April 28, 2008
George Bush's wife being eccentric in public
George Bush's wife, Laura (whose accomplishments, apparently, include being a very heavy smoker and killing a friend when she was a kid through dubious driving; who'da thunk it?) was in the news twice today!
She's brought out a book for kids (on reading; hopefully her command of the English American language is rather better than Georgie's), and won a sandwich-making contest. Really. I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up, could you?
The position of First Lady has always puzzled me a bit. The US press tend to treat her a little like you'd expect the Queen to be treated, but she does seem to do the strangest things!
If Clinton wins the election, will Bill be first gentleman, I wonder? And, if so, will he be expected to go around winning sandwich contests?
Thursday, April 24, 2008
For all your ursine needs
This is from eBay's top level category.
Now, I realise that it (presumably) means teddy bears, but I would like to believe otherwise.
Erm, right.
The page in question is also a worthy competitor for the coveted 'Horrible URL of the Year' award:
It's like the established sites saw the whole Ruby on Rails '/person/mags/nose-length/on-thursday', took it as a personal affront, and went marching off in the other direction.
Update: Ironically enough, the above horrible-URL image rejoices in the URL: http://bp3.blogger.com/_H0m-YylXpxc/SBEbo0B5fyI/AAAAAAAAARk/voZqm-kRrow/s1600-h/Picture+30.png
Sunday, April 20, 2008
More on why Yahoo is in trouble
At Google, they apparently have nice perks, like free food, gym, big monitors, 20% time, and so forth.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
A minor Blogger oddity
I quite like Blogger, by and large. It works well, and removes the need for me to mess about hosting my own blog. However:
Monday, March 31, 2008
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:
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.
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.
