I decided to shop locally – it’s convenient, I thought, and probably not that much more expensive than buying over the net. Sandpaper, glue and a clamp – about seventeen pounds. If I’d bought them from Screwfix the exact same things would have cost a pound more including delivery. I’d have got twice as much sandpaper, twice as much glue, the clamp I wanted rather than one that is slightly too small and I wouldn’t have got wet when it rained.
Monthly Archive for April, 2005
Wowser! Here’s a page with a great… well I don’t know if you’d call it an optical illusion or not. I suppose that’s what it is.
Motion Induced Blindness
Warning, this site contains images. I just wish I’d thought of it.
XXXX GALUMPIA ADULT XXXX
This stupid story claims that Bogus blogs snare fresh victims without having a single example of any victim being snared by a bogus blog. It’s a terrific example of the sort of extremely bad tech journalism that the BBC excels in. They have just fallen for a load of hype published by some no-mark parasitic consultancy company.
Anyone visiting the baited blog and falling victim to the keylogger could find that they have bank accounts rifled by the phishing gang behind the bogus website.
What nonsense. The truth is that anyone who downloads and installs a program that installs a keylogger without their anti-virus software noticing and who then uses an online banking service with terrible security might risk losing money. All four online banks that I use either ask for individual letters from my password in a different order each time or ask for different information on every visit. Even if I was foolish enough to accidentally install a keylogger it would take a very long time for someone to gather enough information to get access to my money.
Even as I write this BBC engineers are hard at work trying to find out what is wrong with the Greenwich Time Signal. The GTS is played in the seconds leading up to the top of the hour, ever hour on the World Service, less frequently on other BBC stations. Today someone noticed that it sounded a bit odd. Further listening confirmed that it was roughly a semitone lower than it should be. Nobody knows how long this has been going on for, nor what caused it, nor if the problem is affecting domestic radio as well as the World Service. One thing is sure; it will be fixed as quickly as possible. Listen now, before it is, and you’ll be hearing something unique.
Update (Wed 13 April):
Here’s a recording of World Service GTS last week – old_gts.mp3
And here’s what it sounded like yesterday – new_gts.mp3
(Many thanks to Mike Campbell)
I just heard the Tory candidate for Redditch talking on the radio. She said that Conservative leader Michael Howard had “drawn a line in the sand, all our cards are on the table now.” It wasn’t a slip of the tongue, she said it again later in the interview.
Well, I’ll be. Wired just printed a story admitting that the story they did about toothing (picking up partners for casual sex by sending messages to Bluetooth enabled mobile phones) was a hoax. They even have a link to a blog belonging to one of the people who engineered the hoax. What amazes me is that a search of the BBC news site doesn’t produce any results at all. I wonder if they saw the story and decided it wasn’t true or just didn’t notice it in the first place, or maybe they did do the story and have just deleted it rather than print a retraction.
It’s a bit parochial of me, but I was rather glad to hear the following sentence in a report on the World Service about the impending British election.
Current opinion polls suggest Mr Blair is on course to win a third term in office but the main opposition parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, are both hoping to exploit what they believe is a widespread disillusionment with the prime minister.
This is the first time I’ve heard the Tories described as simply one of the main opposition parties. Much as I dislike the Liberal Democrats I am delighted by the idea that the Tories may be on the way to oblivion. I know I shouldn’t be vindictive but I hope that Margaret Thatcher lives to see her party collapse. If you feel sorry for her, remind yoursef about the miner’s strike by reading some history and you’ll see what I mean.
World Briefing on the BBC World Service ran a three and a half minute piece today by a man they described as a Washington based journalist, James Srodes. In fact they ran it at least four times, maybe more. It was based on a letter which Mr Srodes said was written by British comedian John Cleese after the recent US election. The letter started:
To the citizens of the United States of America, in light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
The letter went on to criticise American pronunciation and spelling, among other things. James Srodes mounted a robust defence, arguing that US English is now the accepted language of commerce around the world. Unfortunately the letter was not written by John Cleese and in fact started life on the internet in 2000, in the days before the world-wide-web made it very easy for journalists to check the accuracy of this sort of urban legend. If only James Srodes had drawn on his “30 years of experience” and done a little bit of actual journalism and investigation before he launched himself onto the airwaves.
I just finished re-reading my favourite book, Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. I first read it at school, at about the same time that I read my other favourite novel, Peter Carey’s Bliss. Put those two books together and you’ve got a map of about half my teenage character. I won’t try and explain Riddley Walker; you can find a fairly good essay about it on a science fiction website called graphesthesia, although it really isn’t science fiction. One of the things that’s interesting about the book is that it’s written in a made up language. It’s not like A Clockwork Orange but it’s a similar idea. Reading it this time I was amazed at how similar the language is to the way in which some people write nowadays. It doesn’t take a nuclear catastrophe, just a combination of text messaging, poor education and the wide availability of computers.
Chalker Marchman the 1stman of the digging he wer talking to a nothing looking witey bloak dint look no moren 10 years old. It wernt the shortness of him I aint a tall man my self but this 1 he lookit like his dad pult out too soon when they ben making him. Witey hair and pinky eyes nor you cudnt see his eye brows they were that lite.
And here’s an extract from an email from a friend. Spot the difference.
I no some people take a gap year between college and uni? what about the idear of a gap year between school and college cause its free 2 go 2 college tell u r 19 so if i took a gap yr and tryed 2 get a job and if i couldnt i went bck 2 college a yr later I would be 17 so even if i did a 2 year cource it would still be free and i would be able 2 get some experiance in theatre and re-take any exams I need 4 the course i wanna do cause GCSE retakes are only a yr long as appose to two years.
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