• The Game (game) - Wikipedia - Rule number 2 makes this somewhat challenging…
• Sparklines Generator - What…I don’t get it. Via waxy.
• Ed Bott: Wow! Microsoft releases new RSS standards under a Creative Commons license - Microsoft’s latest announcement regarding their upcoming operating system has a lot of cool stuff. A built-in RSS list accessible by all applications? Bring it on. I can similarly share my feeds over the net, with a creative commons license no less.

This evening BBC1 showed a new film written by Richard Curtis. The Girl in the Café was a rather sweet romance set at a fictional G8 summit. Richard Curtis is one of the major forces behind Make Poverty History, and this film was written to highlight the issues and their importance. I thought it did a great job. As it pointed out, “you don’t know all the facts” isn’t a rebuttal when 30,000 people are dying needlessly per day. Counter that, if you will.

I had a long paragraph here attacking the media (mainly newspapers) for the cynicism they’ve shown toward something so noble. However, I deleted it. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it at all; sure it’s a cliche, but I don’t see that it makes such a bad mantra.

In tonight’s film Richard Curtis called Africa a ‘casual holocaust’. I wasn’t going to be travelling anywhere next Saturday because I’m supposed to be dog-sitting. I’ll just have to sort something, though, because I’m now going to Edinburgh. Maybe it won’t do any good, but maybe, just maybe, we can.

——-
Incidentally, fifteen minutes ago I emailed about seat availability and I’ve just received a non-automated reply saying that seats are available and that I’ll be contacted on Monday to book. At 2345 on a Saturday. That rocks.

Just posted the below. I didn’t realise that Scientology and Cruise in particular have quite such a thing about psychiatry and that it’s been covered by people more knowledgeable than me. So feel free to ignore it ———————————-

Tom Cruise on NBC last night:

Psychiatry is a pseudoscience.

Firstly, it’s psychoanalysis that’s the pseudoscience. Psychiatry is perfectly reasonable. However, when you find out that he’s calling psychiatry a pseudoscience while simultaneously pushing Scientology, one of the most notorious pseudosciences around, you know something’s a little messed up. In accordance with scientological (?) doctrine, Tom Cruise is claiming that antidepressants are no use. His recommendation? Vitamins. Seriously. Never mind the large body of evidence showing that antidepressants have a significant impact over placebo, and the complete lack of a corresponding body for vitamins.

I know he’s just a film star, but he’s in a position to push this nonsense onto people who don’t know that it’s ridiculous. Argh.

• List of euphemisms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - I always like to learn new euphemisms Via dansdata.com
• Zen Pockets - What to carry around with you? I could do with taking this advice, truth be told. Via lifehack.
• DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet - This piece (by Douglas Adams) first appeared in the News Review section of The Sunday Times on August 29th 1999.
• The Sect of Homokaasu - The Rasterbator - The rasterbator is a web service which creates huge rasterized pictures out of relatively small image files. The pictures can be assembled into extremely cool looking posters!
• Essential iPod hacks - A useful roundup of ipod hacks
• del.icio.us on crack - Completely rewrites the del.icio.us interface, and is apparently great. Sadly Opera doesn’t like it. Dammit.

Here’s what Batman thought:

I’d have to say I agree. May have to see that one again

Batman observes his film. He suspects it won’t be as good as the book. On the other hand, Batman thinks every film sucks. Batman is secretly boring like that.

I’ve been rasturbating madly for the past hour, and this is the result. The site can take any image and ‘rasturbate’ it to a size you specify, then create a pdf file that’s easily printable. And it actually does work very well - the effect really is quite impressive at a distance. That’s A4 paper, btw. What Mum and Dad will say when they get home and see what I’ve done to the hall, I don’t know

Google Maps UK now has satellite imagery! This could distract me all afternoon…High-definition pictures apparently aren’t available for the entire country yet. I’m at the red pin…

Update: I do them a disservice, as the entire world is now available, with most major cities in high-definition. Check out the London Eye too.

You know what the highlight of my evening is? Dinner. Yep, dinner.

Continue reading ‘This Evening’

That didn’t go very well Nevertheless, my maths A-level is now finished! I’m pretty sure I’ve got another D, but I’m not going to worry about it too much. While I can’t say I put my all into the studying, I put in as much as I wanted to so won’t feel like a failure this time
Just physics 6 on Monday left now. I’ll have to look at some past papers over the weekend, as I honestly don’t know what’s I’m in for. There’s no real learning necessary as far as I can tell - it seems to be linking together anything and everything from the rest of the course.

I picked up War of the Worlds and was listening to it on the drive home. It’s great! Wimbledon was in HMV for a tenner so I grabbed that too, just to be topical.

• www.dontclick.it - GUI without clicks. In Flash. Can you resist the temptation? Via rocketboom.
• FoxIt PDF Reader - Small and *fast*! Acrobat Reader 7 was substantially faster than 6, but this blows them both out of the water, and is free Via waxy and lifehacker
• How to Make Great Decisions - Links to a few articles that seem quite interesting.
• The Register on Opera / Firefox - Damn, a Register article I actually agree with. [looks around for the horsemen]

Without intending to completely mess up google’s index, here are a few google searches that have brought people to my site in the past week:

• Krypto Porn
• tom williams penis (naughty, Lil)
• 3 legged baby
• what is the weather going to be like in norwich
• dogging + blogs (people aren’t looking for what it seems like they’re looking for…are they?)
• skanky universities
• susie and jeffrey blondie meaning (a very good question, actually)

Along with a hell of a lot that relate to The Doctor. It’s great to help spread the Who goodness

It’s Mechanics 2 tomorrow morning. After that I’ll pop into Solihull and pick up War of the Worlds, as I found

• BBC NEWS | Huge table gives food for thought - Took me a moment to spot the people standing around the table…
• Shiny Shiny: USB Finger Key - A USB Thumb Drive. Gross. I want one. Via boingboing.
• The Onion 2056 - "Million Robot March Attended by Exactly 1,000,000 Robots"
• Open Letter to Kansas School Board - The spaghetti monster deserves equal treatment in evolutionary science discussions. I laughed out loud when I saw the graph. Brilliant. Via boingboing.

The moon does indeed look quite large this evening, while previewing a photograph through a digital camera (using a nearby streetlight as comparison) shows how much smaller it really is. Very interesting optical illusion.