Moore's Law, Sturgeon's Law, Murphy's Law, Coleslaw

Now we don't have Rusty to kick around any more, back to Joss Whedon :-)

2008-07-19T11:00:57Z

1. Dr. Horrible. Are we in whistling dog territory here, i.e. it's more impressive that he managed / decided to do it than he did it very well, as such.
2. Where did he find someone who looked and sang / danced like a cross between Willow and Tara?
3. The premise of Dollhouse still seems rather icky to me - actually having seen the trailer (linked to from the front page here) http://dollhouse.wikia.com/wiki/Dollhouse_Wiki raise that to 'deeply icky'. I mean why not just go to the porn version Joss, I can tell you want to? Or am I missing levels of irony here, ha ha.

Where do you want to go today?

2008-07-18T17:11:59Z

Did you know that
1) the 64 bit versions of things on 64 bit Vista are in the Win32 directory
2) but the 32 bit versions are in the WOW64 directory

On which note, time to go home...

Mr Y Gets His End Away

2008-07-14T20:17:47Z

My copy of 'The End of Mr Y' has arrived. It begins with two pages of praise for PopCo, which was an utterly bizarre book - though not an unpleasant read because it was so deeply pathological. One of the reviews says 'If Cryptonomicon and Fight Club jointly impregnated Thursday Next, then PopCo would be their unholy demon seed. Sprawling, imaginative, clever and absorbing, PopCo is a thinking person's adventure tale, and will delight any reader who embraces their inner, four-eyed, scholastically inclined, misfit geek'.
Hmm. I would have said PopCo was the anti-Cryptonomicon, its sentiments being close to those shared by the straw-(wo)man girlfriend and her eeevil post-modern academic friends. But there are probably levels of irony I am not appreciating.
Anyway, will keep you posted...

No, that's not what I meant, thank you Mr Google

2008-07-14T12:12:04Z

Did you mean: "up bill gates's house"

And finally for now...

2008-07-13T11:40:19Z

... have upgraded the iPod Touch to version 2.0. There is always something about seeing long lists of bits of software like the AppStore or whatever they're calling it set out together on a slab in the manner of fish at a fish-monger's, particularly when lots are slightly lame utilities, is somewhat soul sucking...
On the other hand, it does now have a scientific calculator, so if I ever want a 15 digit random number I know where to find one.

Hamsters within wheels within wheels

2008-07-13T11:21:38Z

I was amused to find, in the Wikipedia entry on Noel Coward, a reference to a Dr. Who novel Mad Dogs and Englishmen in which, I quote from Wikipedia 'The Doctor Who novel Mad Dogs and Englishmen features a version of Coward who has allied himself with alien poodles and gained time travel technology'.
I did wonder whether The Boy Who Told Plausible But Dull Lies had been at work again, but it appears to exist.

Mat Coward appears to have written a Dr. Who short story ( see 'losing the audience' in http://homepages.phonecoop.coop/matcoward/). Looks interesting, but not interesting enough to buy a book of Dr. Who short stories, I don't think. This bizarrely leads round in a circle because Coward (Mat, not Noel) says “Losing the audience” involves several of my great fascinations; Doctor Who, of course, and radio comedy, as well as BH itself, and a period of history that I’m very interested in - the plans for the British Resistance during World War Two', and the reason I was looking up Coward (Noel, not Mat) was that I had just read the Noel Coward play 'Peace In Our Time' which is set in a Britain defeated by the Germans in 1940 and subsequently liberated in Act 2, and largely concerns the Resistance.

Taunted by chocolate

2008-07-13T10:48:48Z

As part of the quest for world domination, our local Tesco has an aisle of stuff that would normally be sold in local ethnic shops where e.g. you can buy large containers of spices for the price of the naff little jars two aisles along, cheaper chick-peas than available in the canned food section etc. They also have some Polish stuff including Mella Galaretka which are chocolate covered fruit jellies which are vegan. They are best described as being like Jaffa Cakes but without the cake.
Perplexingly, the box shows pictures of flavours other than orange, viz cherry and something purple which could be blackberry or blackcurrant. More perplexingly, a search on the web reveals there are at least 3 other flavours including these three i.e. 6 in total. However, whilst there are on-line Polish shops in the UK, they all deliver themselves rather than sell by post (one only in London, one in London and other places where they presumably have partner shops), the only place I have found which does them mail order is from Poland and I don't think I want them that much.
The Polish shop down Cowley Road was shut when I went past it yesterday evening, but didn't obviously have any unless on the one shelf not visible from the window, I shall go and check though.

Incidentally, the doomed shop (on the corner of Bullingdon Road and St Mary's Road, I think) has shut again, it is going to open as a Bangla fish and stuff (and Afro-Caribbean stuff) shop later in July. It has been, in fairly short order, a tattoo parlour, a Brazilian food shop and a Polish shop. Better luck this time, I guess :-)

Not for very much longer...

2008-07-11T20:35:03Z

1. If I never see another bloody Dalek it will be too soon.

2. Given that, for whatever reason, Ms. Piper is no longer willing or able to do the Rose voice, it is really beyond the wit and resources of the Big British Castle to hire a Rose impersonator and dub the voice?

3. Or better still, given the generally slightly bizarre nature of the performance, a Rose impersonator to do the acting as well.

4. Does no-one have the power to beat Rusty about the head with a rolled up copy of a 1980s Dr. Who Magazine and go 'Oy, Rusty, no!', with particular reference to the utterly redundant sub-plots e.g. Martha laboriously goes to Germany with the Finn of McGuff, 'we have something to blow the earth to bits', 'no,' says The Doctor, 'don't'. 'Oh, alright then, I won't.' (and 'Let us stand here in our stasis field'... later...'Oh look, the Dalek's exploded')?

5. As I have probably ranted to some of you, my number one irk with television things is when series think themselves loveable, and have long group-hugs and bye-byes at the end - see particularly the Christmas special of Green Wing (the series of which had not been nearly long enough or good enough to merit this treatment) and the endless Vicar Of Dibley specials. Therefore it was with horror I realised that the Daleks had been flushed down the cosmic plughole (they go down clockwise if you are above the ultra-hyper-mega-equator of the space time multiverse timey wimey continiu-didley-um) and there were STILL TWENTY MINUTES TO GO.

6. I had to hide in the toilet at one point during the 20 minute group-hug-fest.

7. So, this leaves us the question, did we just imagine a 4 series arc with The Doctor gradually re-engaging with life-kind and eventually being driven to change things that should not be changed and rerun the Time War? Or did he cop-out for some reason? If the former, was it apophenia on our behalves? Is Rusty an unconscious artist who achieves effects (sometimes) without realising why?

8. Also, if we're not rerunning the Time War, what do we expect from the specials?

9. Did the costume budget presumably greater than Torchwood's mean that Eve Myles was given some trousers that actually fit for once and made her look less lumpy, or do I need to increase / decrease the dosage of the tablets?

There's a satirical novel I needn't bother writing

2008-07-11T19:57:33Z

Returning to the subject of the Tenori-on, behold the Tenorions http://www.thetenorions.com/biog.htm
Not at all a lame Yamaha stunt, oh no.
The misogynistic and misanthropic Idiot Toys featured them yesterday http://www.idiottoys.com/2008/07/celebrity-holding-girl-band-tenerions.html
Read the PR text and weep. One of the commenters said 'The Last Sane Man Alive said...
Let this day be remembered as the day I realised humanity must die and began the greatest Killing Spree in history.'
And I can kind of understand that response.

The trouble with doing satires of the music industry (and I would, of course, not let my total ignorance of it stand in my way) is that these things end up as a one note thing e.g. 'sickening quantities of drugs, egomania and wasted money, success pretty much a lottery' - see Kill Your Friends by John Niven (link to The Man's bookselling site: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kill-Your-Friends-John-Niven/dp/043401799X ), all the good jokes in which I read in a review, although there was one funny scene in it.

Of course, once we have the band created to publicise the expensive music device, what do we do with them? A Scarlett Thomas style searing indictment of modern capitalism with No Logo thoughtfully included in the reading list in the appendix, or a late Gibson style novel aimed squarely at Monocle http://www.monoclemagazine.com/ readers? (I always think of it as Mon Oncle and think it should have a sister magazine Ma Tante - they could even sell pens as a sideline, ha ha).

"I think I'll buy the flowers myself"

2008-07-08T21:37:24Z

I commend to you the video of Adam and Joe's (specifically Adam's) exit song for The Hours (the conceit is that it is the song that would be played over the end credits) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FqJNQ2-K9g#
As they are flogging their Song Wars songs on iTunes I have had to resort to giving Steve Jobs my debit card number, oh the horror...

It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me

2008-07-08T20:21:09Z

So, what's the ISO standard for time between something being released into the noosphere and spoilers being permitted without official notification? Am I allowed to tell you that Rosbud was the sled? And the basselope?

If there were a word that meant 'icky and irksome'...

2008-06-30T21:40:12Z

... this book cover would be it... ickirkysome?
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007126/cover.html

Smug, with a hint of embarrassingly naff, and a side order of vaguely distasteful.

Unfortunately, not only did I see a copy at the weekend, but there is a copy on a bookcase at work.

RTD OBE TBO

2008-06-28T21:19:27Z

TIA

# You saw the whole of the shape-shifting lizard #

2008-06-26T19:25:05Z

"Mike Scott of The Waterboys wrote a song called "Sympathy for David Icke," which urges people to look beyond the negative media hype and read David's books. "I'm not saying he's the king, and he himself claims no such thing, He said we all are points of light, and you know what, I think he's right."" (Wikipedia so it must be true)

Henley

2008-06-26T18:25:18Z

Well, I think this by-election need not trouble the scorer. My extensive travels round the constituency (work, the specialist vet, the old people's home) displayed an array of Conservative posters.
Q. Why is there so little public sympathy for farmers? A. Because at election time the fields are festooned with Tory boards and placards. Only in Wheatley was there any sign of Lib-Dem boards and one solitary Labour one.
Not quite sure really why people put up the boards, really. No-one is going to think 'well, that farmer / neighbour in sodding big house is going to vote Tory, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I will likewise'. I suppose in the pre-interweb days it was a clue as to how to tactically vote, but we have the interwebs for that now. Not that the answer in that particular constituency is going to be a difficult one.

I am taunted by sandwiches

2008-06-24T13:12:07Z

Have been to the dentist for phase 2 of the crown (temporary crown and taking moulds for the real one)... am hungry but am still too locally anesthetised to risk the sandwiches.

Ha ha

2008-06-23T21:56:37Z

The internets are back. And what are internets for if not snarky reviews of $500 speaker cables?
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Amongst the information poor

2008-06-23T10:38:16Z

Our ADSL has died... I have been onto the phone to Demon 4 times now, and whilst not exactly inspiring, they are a million times better than NTL were.
Also bought another router due to the alarming sparks that appeared every time I plugged in or unplugged the old one :-)

Er-what?

2008-06-17T19:12:48Z

On my way back I stopped at the Borders in Fosse Park. It is always interesting to look at the computer books section in bookshops outside of Oxford which is, I think, rather atypical, to see what is being foisted on people. I was rather surprised to see a copy of the Pragmatic Programmers' Erlang book. This, surely, must be the most bizarre hyping of a language in the history of computer books. I am very suspicious of the ecosystem surrounding the more 'fannish' of the computer book publishers - O'Reilly, APress and the Pragmatic Programmers. It seems to me that 'the gang' publish books about technologies which people then assume are legit because there wouldn't be books about them if they weren't legit. Thus people use those technologies and more books get written about them and so on...
Looking at the blogs on O'Reilly it all seems to resemble fandom more than anything approaching an engineering discipline. If you read the O'Reilly blogs and didn't know better you would think 'I can see why this Linux thing has 90% market share, with the premium Apple thing having its 8% of people willing to pay extra for it, though honestly I can't see why these Microsoft people with their crappy unpopular Windows thing struggling along the bottom even bother'.
I am also rather unconvinced by their analysis of book sales by language, if you read the small print the cut-off is such that if there were 10 approximately equally popular books about a language it could actually be selling as many as one of the 'mid-major' ones without getting onto the list at all http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/state-of-the-computer-book-mar-15.html (and the lower tables are essentially just the noise at the bottom).
Then you get things like the bizarre Tiobe league table http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html If you think 'D' really is one of the A list then I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
Of course, none of this probably matters very much, except that I am sure that people do make bad decisions based on it all.

Hmm

2008-06-16T20:32:10Z

I am getting iTunes to convert some MP2s (moved from 'the bug') to AAC, and it started hitting the net like TCP/IP was going out of fashion. I maced it quickly with the 'stop everything' button on Zone A Llama and it has stopped the naughtiness whilst continuing to convert the files. I assume there is a sensible explantation, like that whilst converting the file it is trying to work out what it is. But still...

This is more of an experiment than anything, since my car radio has an SD card slot and plays MP2 files providing the suffix is MP3(!). Since the radio in the house calls MP2 files MP2 files, all I have to do is to take the SD car from the radio, rename the files on the PC, then insert it into the car radio.

If you tolerate this, then your children will use NeXT

2008-06-16T14:00:05Z

I donate this title free of charge to anyone wishing to write an impassioned article about Apple and their closed development model for the iPhone, relying for its effect on people knowing that the OS for the iPhone comes from the NeXTStep OS acquired with St. Steve of Jobs.
However, I am certainly not going to write it, but thought the title too good to waste.

SF, oh how you taunt me

2008-06-14T11:21:08Z

What I suspect is the final issue of my subscription to Asimov's turned up yesterday and actually had 3 decentish stories in it, albeit very much in the Asimov's Magazine Of The Sort Of Stories That Appear In Asimov's Magazine vein.

Eboffat

2008-06-14T08:23:01Z

No, no, no, Moffat is Taff OM backwards, not Taff OBE backwards. Will do for now, I suppose... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7453014.stm

I think not, on the whole

2008-06-13T12:31:46Z

My emails about the collapse of the global economy must have prompted this one-line ad on GMail...
Bulgarian Off Plan - www.nbproperty.co.uk - Prices from £19,000 - Low deposit & 10% Guaranteed rental returns!

I think not.

Jarndyce (decd) vs Jarndyce (decd) vs Jarndyce

2008-06-12T14:18:33Z

Hey ho, off to see the barrister on Tuesday. Or was it a barrista?