Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arrr, thar be booty fer th’ pickin’. Landlubbers and sea dogs alike stand a good chance a’winnin’ me tome: Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling, there being nay entrants as yet. Ye need but scrawl a smartly ‘avast!’.

‘coupla mornin’ links for ye: mushy romantic drawin’s, via sea dog Waxy, an’ Flyin’ Mobulas via them scurvy Boing Boingers - between ye’ an’ me, I’ve seen better sea beasties.

Me new cabin bunk has arrived! Just need t’ confirm me ship, then all’s well.

Sketchings from th’ lubberboats will appear on th’ bonny sea port flickr today, me hopes.

Arrrr!

I have a friend racing at Silverstone today so am here to watch. Lots of spinny cars so far. I can’t seem to spot the loop-the-loop though We’ve hopefully got pit passes so I’ll take some pictures there later.

Librarything.com: add your books to an online database. You can see who else is reading the same books, and find out what’s similar. You can tag each book, and view everybody’s book by tag. Simple, yet brilliant. Also totally sodding addictive. The one problem is that it only just works atm.

For example, you enter books into the database via keywords which are used to search the US Library of Congress, and any of the Amazon flavours. I type the ISBN number and it works most of the time, but I couldn’t find Noughts and Crosses by any selection of keywords, and ended up entering it manually. The comma delimited tag handling isn’t perfect either - be sure to enter a space after each comma. Entering ‘monkeys,camels’ will work fine in some areas of the site, but will appear as one single tag in others.

These are minor glitches, though, and I think they’ll get sorted quickly. The site’s only been up and running for two weeks, and today Lifehacker linked to it, which must have put quite a strain on the server.

I’ve added a selection of the most easily accessible books from my room - the catalog is here. Note: entering ‘read’ as a tag is a bad idea, because it makes you realise quite how many books you never went back to…

Update: The Author Cloud page shows the authors in larger text sizes according to popularity, and is fascinating. Look at Douglas Adams and J.K. Rowling!

Phew

Are you prepared for Monday? Not only is Katie Melua’s new single released, but it’s also International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

In other words: 24 hours of pure joy. In celebration of this momentous day, I have a copy of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling to give away. Whoever sends me the most entertaining piratical email / voicemail wins the book - simple as that. Here’s a quote from page 2 - probably not strictly legal, but people likely read this far in the bookshop anyway:

The mast completely flattened the pirate who liked to show off how much he knew about wine, whilst the pirate with a hook for a hand found himself engulfed in a billowing white sail, and he was soon chasing the other pirates about, pretending to be a ghost. There was such a commotion none of the pirates even noticed the galley doors swing open and the Pirate Captain himself step out onto the deck. The Pirate Captain had taken to wearing a dashing maroon smoking jacket and a blousy white shirt that had most of the buttons undone to reveal the glossy hairs on his chest. His chest hairs were almost as well-conditioned as the hairs in his luxurious beard, which many of the crew felt to be one of the seven wonders of the oceanic world. If the pirate crew had been asked to list the seven wonders of the oceanic world in full they would have confidently said, in ascending order: 1) the Lighthouse at Pharos; 2) the Colossus of Rhodes; 3) Lulworth Cove; 4) those jellyfish that light up; 5) Lobsters; 6) Girls in Bikinis; 7) the Pirate Captain’s fantastic beard.

How can you resist a book with paragraphs like that?

To win it, get in touch using the details at the top of the right-hand sidebar. Email / call via skype / call via normal phone…If it’s a voicemail, please leave some hint as to who you are. The sole criterion is that it has to be piratical! I’ll post anywhere in the world, and the prize will be awarded on Monday evening, GMT. The judge’s decision is, of course, final

We still haven’t received the mortgage confirmation, which is both worrying and irritating. I can still go on with purchases, but don’t want to start arranging the gas / electricity / broadband until moving is certain. Hopefully it’ll arrive tomorrow! I’ve ordered the sofa and bed - the latter is arriving next Monday, the former in 10-12 weeks. I don’t think there’s much chance of moving in the weekend of the 24th now - there’s not enough time to arrange everything.

Ben and I have been looking at cars for the past week. We’ve narrowed it down to a Ford Ka, Toyota Aygo or Citro

Just a prototype atm, but I want one!

Tony Blair at the UN:

For the first time at this summit we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders but that we in the name of humanity have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not.

Yes.

If you’re anything like me and are frequently called upon to help solve computer problems, you might be interested in UltraVNC SC, in which the SC stands for single-click. Configure the program with your details, send the 166k file to the person with the problem and in one click it initiates a connection to your VNC viewer and displays the remote desktop, helpfully avoiding all firewall problems at the other end. You configure it using a small utility and provide an IP address for connections, so a dynamic IP (edit: I meant dynamic DNS, as Nod points out in the comments) might come in handy. I haven’t actually tried it out yet, but it sounds more useful than bread. Spotted on the always enlightening Lifehacker.

I’ve a couple of eBay auctions ending within 48hrs with no current bidders, so if anybody’s in the market for a cheap graphics card (an Asus V9999GT) or iPod case, head on over. The former is has a

Quote from a ZDNet Bill Gates interview:

So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?

Gates: Well, we don’t know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.

Wait…Isn’t Google’s slogan “Don’t Be Evil”?

I think he’s actually referring to “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But that’s not so funny.

I’ve never been attracted to car racing games. They’re always interesting for a few minutes, but I quickly get bored of racing around tracks with 2D spectators and dull surroundings, no matter how good the graphics. The breakthrough game for me is Trackmania: Sunrise, which is great fun. The race tracks include loops, 600mph corners, breathtaking jumps and bouncing across water like a skipping stone, all while on top of skyscrapers, or Hawaiian islands, abandoned airports…The physics is good enough to be a challenge, but not so realistic that it takes weeks of practice to improve.

Playing with a keyboard is fine for a while, but Ben frequently kicks my ass with his gamepad. So I figured I’d get one myself, as that was clearly the only thing standing between me and Glorious Victory*. Ben’s pad is the Logitech Rumblepad 2, but was either out of stock or overpriced when I searched.

Then Ben spotted that the PC World website have the Cordless Rumblepad for

Anyone else watch CSI: Miami this evening? Spoilers ahead.

Continue reading ‘2 Minutes, Horatio’

Can’t view my website atm, so emailing this entry in (update: fixed the layout).

Microsoft is making a few announcements this week - Scoble’s been dropping hints for ages now - and it’ll be interesting to see what’s coming. A couple of early titbits:

Just downloading the new Microsoft Max which is a photo sharing application built to show off MS’s upcoming features. It’s downloading the WinFX Framework Beta, so is clearly pretty cutting-edge! Update: It may have downloaded it, but the install never finishes for me…Shall give it another try later.

Also check out Microsoft Gadgets which launched today. It looks a lot like the MacOSX widgets, or Konfabulator, but should be pretty cool if they implement it well.

• iPod nano : Page 1 - This thing is seriously small! I like it a lot. If nothing else, get to page 3 to see how much effort they had to expend to break one.
• Canada Rejects Religious Arbitrations - Go Ontario. Via Drink-Soaked Trots.
• Guardian Unlimited | Don’t dumb me down - Why is science journalism so useless, he asks. Extremely clear and well written, imho.
• The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security - #4 is particularly apt