Archive for April, 2005

stuff

Published on 21/4/2005 in miscellaneous. 2 Comments

I love the Straight Dope. Check it out:

Do spiders have hydraulic legs?
Is it possible to be dyslexic in Chinese?
Could you jump off a bridge or a tall building and survive the fall?

Trying to get my hands on Children of a Secret State:

According to some estimates, as many as 3 million of its residents have died of starvation in recent years and there are reports that human meat is being sold in markets.

In the documentary Children of a Secret State, the tragic lives of homeless North Korean children are captured on video filmed secretly by a photographer who calls himself Ahn Chol. Despite knowing that he will likely be tortured and executed if he is caught, Ahn Chol has made several trips into North Korea to document the desperate conditions there.

There is a torrent, but the tracker seems to be dead. Anyway, there are some vids on that page linked above.

My brother was in the Hutt River Province yesterday, it’s their 25th anniversary today.

The Principality of the Hutt River Province is a self-proclaimed “independent nation”. It was founded on 21 April, 1970 by farmer Leonard George Casley (now describing himself as Prince Leonard) when he and his associates proclaimed their secession from Western Australia, a state of Australia.

I’d never yyyyyeard of it!

Another thing I’d never heard of: Inspector Sands:

Inspector Sands is a codeword used by public transport authorities in London. The codeword is used in tannoy (public address) announcements at rail stations, to alert authorities of a potential emergency without causing panic amongst travellers by explicitly mentioning the nature of the emergency. A typical announcement runs

“Will Inspector Sands please come to the control room immediately.”

There is a recording of it here and more info from the Guardian.

dim sum

Published on 20/4/2005 in hong kong. 9 Comments

Q: What happens to you if you have dim sum for lunch?
A: You’re starving by 5pm.

tiger filth

Published on 20/4/2005 in geekery and shifty capone. 0 Comments

So with the Tiger release of Apple OS X comes Spotlight.

Stop looking. Start finding. With Spotlight, you can find anything on your computer as quickly as you type. Search your entire system from one place: Files, emails, contacts, images, calendars and applications appear instantly.

Find anything! Anyone else worried? I hide all sorts of, er, music, yeah, music, in folders deep inside random other folders. Not very secure, but stops the simple user from finding it. Not with Spotlight!

vaticam

Published on 20/4/2005 in miscellaneous. 2 Comments

Gutted. I was glued to the BBC’s VatiCAM yesterday. Saw one that we thought was white, but it turned out to be black. I think they should make it bright red or something.


(note: 9.39 am, first application of handcream by Stinky Soup Doris next to me)

So they go and elect Pope Adolf overnight. So selfish. Having to watch re-runs of the chimney now.

However, as Gunther said “He is pretty old though so might be sooner than you think that VatiCAM will be back online.”

He looks a picture of health. Just what is the little red skull-capped felleh behind the guy to the Pope’s right doing?! He looks very happy.

Also, they apparently had a large/medium/small pope outfit ready, so they had one ready no matter who was elected. So what do they do with the two spares? Ebay?

So Pope Adolf is in touch with the people.

He has also spoken out against homosexuality, and once denounced rock music as “the vehicle of anti-religion”.

UPDATE: Dammit! Fumier beat me to Pope Adolf.

Oh yeah. Last night, some people couldn’t decide between going to the pub or the gym, so Gudmond suggested:

Burn your shorts, if they give off black smoke, no decision made and you’ll have to go and get more guidance from the pub
If they give off white smoke you’ve got no shorts left so you might as well go to the pub

Gunther wants a Pope Party:

Dressed as cardinals with you (as capn dressed as pope) - Can you picture this - 9 gweilos in robes with 1 white clad pope and skull cap supping a pint in devils…..what a photo!
you would have to practise mass on stage in hardys.. arms out stretched … and by mass i mean say “In nomine patris”…then launch into “there once was a lassy.”

We could time it for the live “first mass” he does.. watch it from devils adv - and each time says either of the words” in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Santi” have to do sambuka shots….

MLCCC preffered tailor be able to run up some pope paraphernalia? - should be easy. Can i suggest your line to the female congregation in sea gods (for your mass) is “have you heard i am a hard liner”?

tricky part is getting some kind of contraption that bellows white and black smoke - so that when one of the cardinals is at the bar and barman says what will you be having he can turn to pope in corner who fires off some smoke - so cardinal can say - ahh white smoke - means the holy father would like a stella

even more crap and that

Published on 19/4/2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

New, or is it old, Kleptones mashup. Bo Rap. Not yyyyyeard it yet, but I reckon it might be hip hop and Bohemian Rhapsody.

You can hear a new Coldplay song here apparently. A couple of months or so to wait for the full album. A week earlier for the new Oasis.

Loads of Google Maps stuff going on. Interesting stuff. Area 51 and the new Flickr Memory Maps meme.

Geeky, but handy link checker extension for Firefox. Could do with one of those that scans your entire blog. Hmmm.

Zoomify Nirvana

More in a bit. Got some stories from the weekend.

moon quiz

Published on 19/4/2005 in miscellaneous. 4 Comments

Don’t look it up, just see if you know.

1. Who was the command module pilot for the Apollo 11 mission? You know, they guy that didn’t land on the moon.
2. Who was ‘the last man on the moon’?

mac questions

Published on 14/4/2005 in geekery. 3 Comments

Two of them.

1. Where is the Terminal history kept? You know, when you type history or fc -l you get a list of all your previous commands. Where is that stored? Occasionally my history disappears. I want to back it up.

2. Why do some of my drives show the free space and some don’t? OK, three questions. Why does the icon on the OSX drive hate to stay as a Firewire style icon? I change it, it changes back after a while!


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