You know what’s even more annoying than having two equations that don’t give the same answer? Having an equation that does, then realising you’ve made a mistake and have to alter it. Argh.

Google announced yesterday that it plans to float on the stock market. I hardly know anything about business, but it seemed like at a minimum they’d have to start doing things in a more business-like manner, which could reflect on their so far laid-back attitude. Then, however, I read this. Most amusing. The article says that Google’s filing document has ’some delightful zingers that come close to giving Wall Street the middle finder.’ For example:

Google won’t be issuing estimates as to their earnings, because “Many companies are under pressure to keep their earnings in line with analysts’ forecasts. Therefore, they often accept smaller, but predictable, earnings rather than larger and more unpredictable returns. Sergey and I feel this is harmful, and we intend to steer in the opposite direction.”

As well as their age-old motto: “Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

I like this attitude Also, the ‘exact value of its planned offering is $2,718,281,828′. Recognise that? I admit that I didn’t. Unsurpisingly, Wall Street isn’t overly impressed by all this. Aaggh, it’s something different! Aaaghhh!

Got any plans for the bank holiday weekend? I’d normally have gone to see Kate, but I can’t move around much atm. I’ve got 25% of my OU assignment left now, so hopefully that’ll be sorted by the end of tomorrow. I’ll finally be able to stop panicking about it, then. Should I treat myself to City of Heroes at that point? Tempting tempting tempting…

I’m thinking that when I’ve finished with this assignment I might treat myself to City of Heroes. Yeah, it’s either expensive or just pointless, as you either have to pay monthly, or only play for the first free month you get with the game. But come on, you get to be a superhero!!!

This is number 4, Nailcia Road. And this is Andrew, the computer consultant who leads an exciting double life! For when Andrew sees a cat and slaps himself with a herring, an AMAZING TRANSFORMATION occurs! Andrew IS WANDWAVER!! EVER ALERT FOR THE CALL TO ACTION!!!

If you know me at all, it may not come as a huge surprise that this appeals hugely. Thing is, you can’t yet buy it in the UK (and maybe not ever, as they currently have no plans to launch it in Europe), so I’d have to get it online. Same price, but you don’t get a manual, map or the box, which I suppose I can live with. Seems a bit of a shame, though.

I have this fantasy of all my friends getting a copy and us forming a superhero league to fight crime and wear cool outfits (currently sans capes, sadly). This is highly unlikely to happen, but hey, I’m good at nagging

I spent all afternoon working on my OU assignment, which consists of various questions regarding stars and their associated properties. One question asked me to calculate the radius of a binary system star via two different methods: one using data from an eclipse of one star by the other, and one using the temperature and luminosity. It took me a while to get the data into a reasonable format and figure out the equations. Eventually I plugged in all the numbers…and got two very different answers. Ugh. I hate that. Now I have to start from scratch and figure out where I went wrong. I’m still not particularly with it and seem to be progressing much more slowly than normal, which is irritating as it’s due in a week tomorrow. Once this question is complete I’ll be 50% done. I can’t believe I used to do this kind of thing three times a week. How the hell did I ever get a maths a-level?

As seen on Ed’s blog, I’m continuing the meme with my current book. Aptly, it’s by Richard Dawkins; it’s called Unweaving the Rainbow:

“have to confront the reality? Recruiting advertisments for the”

Not terribly exciting that one.

UPDATE: Dammit, my first proper meme post and I screw it up! As pointed out by Simon in the comments, I’m meant to post the fifth sentence, not line. That’ll teach me to post when exhausted. So, from the same book:

“Literary scholarship is in danger of becoming similarly undermined.”

Or, from the actual closest book to me (An Introduction to the Sun and Stars):

“With the aid of Wien’s displacement law it is a simple matter to determine the temperature of any source of light, provided that it is a black body source.”

The below is long, complicated and you don’t need to know it. Your time could undoubtedly be better spent. Read on at your own risk.

A few weeks I ordered the components for a client’s PC from overclockers.co.uk. The graphics card was a Geforce FX5200. I had a two week deadline to get it all built and ready. After a couple of days the client changed their mind as to the graphics card, so I sent an email to overclockers explaining that I needed to change the card to a 5700 Ultra, and would it be best, given the time constraints, to order this card separatly then return the original?

A few days later I got an email with an RMA no. Not what I’d been after, but whatever. Easter had got in the way, so it was now the Wednesday before the Saturday deadline. I ordered the 5700 Ultra from overclockers on the Wednesday morning, aiming to get the details sorted out later. By Thursday lunchtime they hadn’t shipped, so I ordered a card from Tekheads, who always despatch blisteringly fast. Both cards turned up on the Friday and I ended up using the Tekheads card as it had more features.

Last week I returned the two cards to overclockers. I made the mistake of not sending them an email to confirm what I’d done, which was a bit silly. This morning what arrives on my doorstep? Not, as you might expect, a 5700 Ultra, but a Geforce FX5200. With a delivery note saying “Problem description: corruptions. Desired action: replace”.

So bum. That’s what I say. Bum.

I discovered today that ICQ 4.0 came out last week. It’s a replacement for ICQ Lite rather than ICQ Pro, as I imagine the former has proven more popular. I only downloaded it today, and so far it seems a bit odd. For a start, one of its major selling points is a term the ICQ website is plastered with: Xtraz! A new dentists opened in Dorridge recently and the sign boldly proclaims the name: Briter Smiles. Call me a snob, but both of these things irritate me. It’s not big and it’s not clever. If you don’t know how to spell, you won’t notice. If you do, are you supposed to be thinking “Hey, those guys spell phoetically! How unique! I’ll certainly be buying their product!”? [Andrew takes a (nother) pill] Apart from grammatical foibles, ICQ 4.0 has an improved message window in which you can see an image the other party has chosen. Can’t think where they got that idea You can also invite the other party to join you in a game, or send them a greetings card. There’s also the welcome return of the birthday reminder, which before I started (then stopped) using Outlook, was an invaluable feature, particularly when combined with the greetings card option. Cheap? Me?

I’ve been running ICQ and MSN for a fair while, and am increasingly, despite my best intentions, using the latter. I started with ICQ years and years ago and do feel a kind of bizarre brand loyalty, but MSN is just so damn quick and easy to use it’s slowly drawing me away. Sure, it doesn’t store the history as well, the user info isn’t as comprehensive, it presumes to know your status if the screensaver conks out and it shares excessive information regarding the status of your chat window, but it has a certain charm…I feel like Anakin Skywalker between Episodes 2 and 3. I know it’s wrong. I know where I’m heading. But there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I’ve also been playing with the Opera 7.5 beta which, contrary to my previous witterings, is quite good. I’ll elucidate later this week, most likely. I only mention it because while trying to solve a problem earlier, I looked up ‘opera 7.5 freeserve’ in google, and what was the first result? Me! Now I feel all paternal.

I’m feeling pretty crappy atm so am going to collapse in front of the tv for the rest of the evening. I’ve got various phone calls to return, a huge OU assignment due in next Friday and a writing project that’s been sitting around for two months, but I can’t face any of them.

Sorry for the lack of postage yesterday, but I do have a good excuse this time. On Friday afternoon I went into hospital for an operation due to some pain I’ve been experiencing. It’s of a rather intimate nature, which I’m thinking is probably all the information you desire I had the operation at 1700 on Friday and was due to come home on Saturday morning, but developed complications in the night. I essentially started bleeding internally, which while not as bad as it sounds did mean I had to have another operation yesterday afternoon. The doctor saw me this morning and I’m happy to say that everything is now sorted; I came home just before lunch. I need to take it easy for a couple of weeks (and try to avoid going up too many stairs!) and I’m not allowed to sign anything legally binding for 24 hours

Going under aneasthetic is an interesting experience. Both times I tried to remember as much as I could before falling asleep, but that isn’t much. After the first injection I felt myself getting drowsy, then there was a funny taste in my mouth. A second injection sent a numbness crawling up my arm, which I remember getting as far as my bicep. I kinda like the idea of being knocked out while people fix you. Having had operations before I knew I wasn’t going to be allergic to the anaesthetic and die, so it wasn’t particularly worrying. You go to sleep, and when you wake up, everything’s done! Kinda, anyway.

So I’m going to be resting up for at least a few days. I’ll be working from home like normal, but can’t really visit any clients for a bit. I’m under orders from Kate not to do too much work, which is great as it means I can catch up with the various free-time activities I’ve been falling behind on recently. So did I miss anything exciting? Anybody get engaged / have Nod’s baby / fall out of a tree onto a helpfully malleable old person?

A few years ago there was a trailer at the cinema for a film called ‘Lucky Star’, which looked intriguing. It had Benicio Del Toro as an apparently incredibly lucky man, and it seemed that the authorities were after him. The film never materialised, so I looked it up. Turns out, there is no film! It was all a Mercedes advert, indeed ‘Lucky Star’ is a reference to their logo. Hmph, it looked quite good from the trailer! I remember years ago hearing about a website on which people tried to make extremely good trailers for films that don’t exist. I looked it up, only to find it was pretty rubbish. Still like the idea, though.

You may have noticed my opinions on AOL, but even I have to admit that this can only be a good thing. Opening up their email should help with a fair few problems I come across.

A few days ago there was a report claiming that most computers are infested with spyware. From my experience I’d agree with this. Any family with kids generally has at least one instance of ‘livesexcam’ running. I’m not sure where that particular gem originates, but I’d guess it must be one of the p2p programs. It’s too prevalent to actually come from porn sites, I think. However the report’s claim of each computer having an average of 27.8 instances of spyware is perhaps OTT, as it seems many of them are tracking cookies.

Now, I know that privacy advocates will claim that these are directly sent from the centre of hell to wreak a terrible tribulation unto the Earth, but frankly I don’t care about them. They don’t actually do any harm and compared with other examples of spyware that could be installed they’re relatively pleasant. Why do people get so worked up about cookies, anyway? Credit card companies, shops, banks, phone service providers, television services - they all track usage in a far more identifiable fashion, but you don’t hear people continually complaining about that. Just seems like another example of ‘the internet is evil’ to me.

“If you come across a road accident victim, whose intestines are lying on the road, should you pick them up and push them back in?” - this and other questions from the bizarre sounding Chinese driving test.

A (serious) link from BBSpot: The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It’s Bogus.

I was plugging in speakers earlier today and had to lay some cable underneath the floorboards. After looking high and low for a torch that worked, I eventually had to resort to the good old standby in such situations: my mobile. It worked surprisingly well, though left various dark corners that became all the worse when I suddenly remembered the old saying about how you’re never more than 3 metres away from a rat. Ugh. Thankfully, I didn’t see any of them I managed to lay the cable without destroying the gas pipe or anything, too. The speakers sound good, I’m glad to say, though I’m still waiting on the centre. I’ve been watching Spider-Man and Armageddon pretty loudly!

I’d just like to state my agreement with this, except for the “weekly or even monthly” part. No obligation at all, please. Incidentally, I had to put my religion down on a form today. I was about to write ’secular humanist’ when I realised that ‘religion’ really means beliefs founded on faith rather than evidence. Secular humanism definitely isn’t that, so I left it blank. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a ban on religion in all public places. Or perhaps some kind of framework that separates the church from all affairs of state. Oh wait, there is. And maybe, just maybe, here too…(yeah, I know that particular point is still being debated.)

Exploits are already being released for the most recent batch of Windows Updates, so get patched up! They’re only little ‘uns, so it shouldn’t take very long. Thanks to TechSpot for the heads up.

If you’re on 95, 98, ME or 2000, go to the Recommended Updates (I think) section of Windows Update and download the Windows Update Notification utility. This’ll let you know whenever anything new comes out. If you’re on XP, go to Control Panel, then System (or ‘Performance and Maintanence’, then ‘System’). Go to ‘Automatic Updates’ and select at a minimum ‘Notify me…’, but preferably ‘Download the updates automatically…’ and click Ok. This’ll make sure you’re always kept up-to-date. I know it’s a pain, but it’s just one of those things. As ever, see the Ballistic Advice page for more info.

Kate went back to York yesterday Pants for me, but good for my legions of loyal followers as it’ll hopefully mean that recently patchy updates will become more regular. Think of it as a period of constipation you had to endure, but now the satisfaction of a good laxative will become apparent as a volley of posts wring wing their way towards you.

I’d just like to point out that it’s now exactly one month until my birthday. Thank you.

So I’m liking a fair few new songs at the moment. Much to Kate’s chagrin, I may be buying Agnetha’s new album after hearing the single. Similarly Anastacia. And, by the way, what’s with Prince being a pop star?

Gah, I still haven’t seen Kill Bill, let alone Volume 2. I think UCI may have special showings of the former - I’ll try to catch it this week. I did see Shaun of the Dead last week, and laughed a lot.

I am, unsurprisingly, slightly behind in my Planetary Science course, so must now beg permission to take my leave and go learn about the interior of the gas giants. So: beggeth.

I drove back from Kate’s last night at around 01:30. I turned into Kingscote Road and found various traffic cones strewn over the road. Given that:

A: They were in the way
B: People drive way too fast up that road
C: After 02:00 70% of drivers are over the legal alcohol limit (according to CSI)

I stopped the car and began moving them. Sometimes kids think it’s entertaining to put cones into the middle of the road, but it had been pretty windy so they could have just blown over. A question may be forming in your minds about now. Remember, though, that it was half past one in the morning and I wasn’t at my most alert! Thank god I don’t drink. Anyway, there were perhaps six or seven cones in the road, which I moved to the pavement.

At about the fifth or sixth cone, I realised that the last couple were in a straight line. Thinking about it, so had the last two I’d moved. Upon looking at the surface, it became clear that they were in the road for a purpose. The tarmac was visibly different on one third of the road. Thankfully, I’d been walking on it and hadn’t sunk; presumably you could walk but not drive on it. I couldn’t remember where I’d moved the cones from, so I left the remaining ones in place and drove away.

So I’m a vandal. In my defence, the first couple were definitely wrong as they were on their sides in the middle of the road - presumably moved by the wind. I wonder whether there are some confused residents this morning! Hopefully I won’t drive down there later and spot boot-shaped footprints in the tarmac