Truth or Consequences

For the authors among us

2009-08-13T21:18:14Z

Since I know a number of my friends list are either current or aspiring authors of one sort or another, I figured you might be interested in this extremely useful discussion of the Google Books settlement one of my family has written.

"Do no evil" indeed...

Judder!

2007-06-11T08:47:22Z

So, after a week in which I worked the best part of 60 hours in 5 days, I foolishly went to Judder, to see if I could kill myself with lack of sleep.

Figuring that I'd be hard pressed to dance in that state, I took my camera with me...

Much fun was had. There was jelly. More clubs should have jelly.

The rest can be found here.

Cheese Rolling!

2007-05-30T00:43:06Z

So we went to watch the insane Gloucestershire tradition of Cheese Rolling at the weekend. Many insane people throwing themselves down a near vertical hill, in pursuit of a cheese worth far less than the cost of their ensuing medical bills.

I've not really had chance to assess the stuff I took properly, but since I figured people would rather see them sooner than later, here's the first cut with just the really out of focus ones removed.

I took some photos of the main event, and for those that know him, the mighty Lee Chaos descending the hill

I was particularly impressed with the crazy Japanese comedian attempting cheeserolling as part of his TV show. He performed this in a style that only the nation that brought you Endurance and Takeshi's Castle could manage :)

In case you're not Radio 4 listeners

2007-03-29T20:57:34Z

Tonight's half hour of comedy genius was by Mark Thomas, explaining how he'd creatively used the restrictions against demonstrations in front of the houses of Parliament.

He's still one of the best political comedians going, I used to love his stuff on Channel 4, and this is much in the same vein.

If you can bear to live through the hell of Real Player, then you may Listen Again.

Marvellous

Normality is restored

2006-12-09T17:37:26Z

I have interwebs at home now again, after a good month or so without, plus being too busy at work to catch up on LJ - if there's anything important I've missed, comment until I pay attention.

Oh, and I've grown my beard back. By the time even my sister went 'ARGH! GROW IT BACK', it rather had to be done. And to be honest, I prefer myself with it too anyhow :)

Slight bathroom incident

2006-11-11T15:12:08Z

So, while overtired and overworked and feeling a bit funny in the head, I had a bit of an incident in the bathroom.

And, since I'm posting this on LJ, I figure I should do a poll too (which I reserve the right to completely ignore the results of)

View Poll: Beardy

Synthehol is here

2006-09-10T21:59:32Z

Scientists have created a drug that mimics the 'good' effects of alchohol without the hangover

Interesting bit of research (found via OmniBrain), but the bit I find really interesting is the ethical reponses to this, and the discussion of how such a drug would be legislated - it's liable to be much more strictly controlled than alchohol, although it doesn't have such catastrophic health effects (at least as far as they know yet :)), which does really hilight how something like alchohol really does get away with a lot compared to drugs with similar (or in this case identical) effects, legislationwise.

The prospect of being able to instantly sober up does seem attractive, as does the exactitude of dosage, meaning you could aim for an appropriate level of inebriation accurately.

Of course the downside would be that all of the social troubles with drunkeness are still there, plus no clue as to whether the long term effects give you cancer or something of the sort.

So, if it was legal, would you take it? If you were a non-drinker would you take it? If you didn't 'do drugs' would you take it? :)

Photo update the second

2006-05-11T22:59:17Z

After a busy evening hunched over a steaming copy of photoshop, here are some more piccies for your delectation :

The first of the Friday bands : History of Guns (who're a lovely bunch of chaps).

Plus a few extra Spa photos that I missed in the last update, including proof that alabastamasta wasn't drunk in the slightest. Oh no...

More updates to follow.

Photo update

2006-05-10T23:04:51Z

I've been horribly horribly ridiculously busy since I got back from Whitby, what with work, looking for cars and hospital appointments, so I've not had chance to sit down and do much with all the photos I took at Whitby (and before).

I've finally found a few mins to get on with it, so here's the first batch.

Firstly some wandering zombies I found before Judder.

Secondly some of the weird and wonderful people to be found at the Spa on Friday at Whitby.

I'll be updating with the band photos from Friday, and the other days too as soon as I find the time.

Whitbytastic

2006-04-27T08:49:06Z

Had an absolutely fabulous time at Whitby, met many fabulous and photogenic people, took many many photos, and generally had a really fun time. All the more impressive in that I was sober for the entire thing :)

Was really cool to put some faces to names I've only known online previously, and catch up with many of the netgoths who frequent my website and irc server.

I've returned to work to find 164217634981273418923749812 emails waiting for me, and thus am a *tad* busy. Will be getting the photos online in the next few days, and catching up with the huge backlog of friends posts, and adding all the cool new people I met over the weekend.

Phew! :)

The unwitting amusement of sequentially delivered spam

2006-04-07T22:39:58Z

Well it made me laugh....

Weekend adventures

2006-02-27T12:22:04Z

Well that was a very busy and social weekend that was.

Arrived at the ninjagirl's annoyingly late on Friday due to having to stay in Brighton to go to acupuncture. On the plus side, the acupuncture seems to be actually causing my longstanding lurgi to improve finally - I've been ill for over 4 months now, and I'm quite tired of it. This actually seems to be helping, which is more than all the stuff that the doctors have prescribed me over the last few months (and the three entirely different diagnoses I've had...)

Jumped (well crawled) out of bed on Saturday morning to go and collect the lovely jenova_red from the station, drop her stuff off, and then head to Bristol to go to the Zoo with kissycat1000 and family, including ev1ldonut and azekeil.

A pleasant day of wandering in the cold but sunny weather, and taking many many photos followed. As soon as I have five minutes I'll be sticking them up online for your viewing pleasure. Was nice to photogeek with ev1ldonut, although most of it was of the "damn, it's so dark in here and you can't use flash" nature, so it was ISO 3200 all the way, and noise galore I expect... NoiseNinja time for anything worth the effort I suspect :)

We left the Zoo just as it was starting to get a bit more dark and chilly, so the timing was good. Then back to Hanka's for some chilling out and foodage, before heading over to sebastian_lux's housewarming, where after driving round in circles trying to find the house for some time, we ran into kissycat1000 and ev1ldonut just leaving, who were able to point us in the right direction.

The party was most pleasant, was good to put some faces to names I've only previously known on LJ/IRC (who I'm far too vague to list all of right now). I'm glad I skipped the punch, due to driving, and a desire to retain my liver function. I had fun geeking with azekeil and aoakley - happy discussions of the bad old days of the internet pre-aol especially :)

We staggered home quite early due to being knackered after the zoo, which left us time to try and break Jen's brain with only a small selection from Hanka's vast collect of disturbing AVIs. I think she just about survived...

Sunday involved staggering out of bed and putting Jen back on the train to sunny Birmingham, and then heading out to go and look at some cars.

I've been enjoying my Batmobile a great deal for the last 18 months or so, but the change in my lifestyle (being too ill to cycle to work, and visiting Hanka every other weekend or so) has meant I've gone from 500 odd miles a month to more like 1500. At 20-23MPG, this is getting rather painful to afford, so it's got to go :(

I have a long and random list of things to look at, with the main criteria being 'high MPG' and 'comfortable down motorways'. I'm hoping to lose the commuting bit of the equation as my health gradually returns).

The first visit of the day was to the BMW dealer, where I wanted to have a look at some 4/5 year old 320D, 525D and 530D models their website suggested they had in stock. Annoyingly, the only one they actually had there on the day was the 320D, but we did have a chance to have a sit in a similar age, non-diesel 5 series. Unfortunately they also had only one member of staff on duty too, so I wasn't able to take anything for a test drive, but I've arranged to do so the next time I'm in Cheltenham.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the interior of the 3 series, I was suprised how plain and spartan it all was. The 5 series at least felt a bit more like a 'luxury' car, but I was still kinda surprised by how understated it all felt - I think I've got rather spoiled by the interior of the RX-8. The proof of the pudding is in the driving though, so I'm reserving judgement on them until I've had a chance to have a go. I'm not particularly keen on the 3 series from that visit though, so I think the 530D SE, and and the 525D Sport are what I'll be looking to have a test drive in next time.

Then it was off down the road to the Toyota dealer to have a go in the utterly whacky Petrol/Electric Hybrid Prius (yes, I like cars with weird engines). We were able to actually go for a proper test drive in this. It's an odd beasty, it all feels very spaceagey. You get in, stick the keyless entry lump into a hole in the dashboard, and then push a 'Start' button, and lots of lights light up and *nothing* happens. No engine start, no nothing :) Drive off in full electric mode in total silence - as you accelerate hard, or once you get above 30odd MPH, the petrol engine starts automatically (and very quietly) and starts contributing into the mix - when it's not needed, it switches itself off again.

It's very odd to drive, your brain keeps insisting you've stalled it at traffic lights. It's pretty magic round town where you're in electric mode a lot, acceleration from the electric drive is really rather good, and it's all quite nice and nippy. Down the motorway, it's rather more like driving a normal petrol automatic, but it cruises along pretty happily and still has enough grunt to overtake at speed if need be. It does lead to a fairly understated driving style if you want all that potential economy actually delivered.

I remain a bit unsure about the Prius, as round town/mixed driving the economy is fantastic, but it's much less impressive down motorways - and half my reason for doing this is because of doing lots of motorway driving - I hope to lose the round town stuff once my health improves. So a diesel will still beat it for economy on the motorway by some way.

In the near future I'm going to have a play with the VW Golf TDI (preferably with the whacky DSG gearbox as it interests me) and see what that's like. The Honda Accord diesel is supposed to be worth a look too.

Any of you petrolheads have any suggestions for anything else I should be looking at for comfortable, economical, reliable motorway bashing? I have an irrational hatred of Fords for no particularly explicable reason, so don't suggest them :)

Phew, that was a bit epic, zoo photos to follow soon.

Brains are interesting squishy things

2006-01-06T15:50:11Z

More random linkage, ranging from the fascinating to the somewhat disturbing, both from Wired (so apply appropriate amounts of salt to the reporting)...

Firstly the tale of a man's quest to be able to appreciate Ravel's Bolero again after receiving a computerised cochlear implant. What's interesting is the amount that hacking the software capabilities of the device changes things so much, and the plasticity of the brain in learning to make sense of the new stimulus provided. It's also interesting that this tends in the direction of adding hardware to the brain, and providing access to novel senses that weren't previously possible, which has some interesting implications in terms of how people might change in the future, but also what it means to consider yourself a 'normal human' - how much of your brain function can you replace or augment technologically before you start to be considered as no longer 'human' in some sense. After all, we accept happily that people with glasses and normal hearing aids are perfectly human. Artificial limbs don't seem to cause us to judge people as less human - but the thought experiment of gradually replacing bits of brain with, say, silicon chips, providing identical functionality does lead to interesting questions as to whether there's a point where some threshold is crossed and it's no longer a 'proper' brain but just a 'mere computer' :) (This is explored in rather more fun detail in one of the thought experiments in The Mind's I, which I'd heartily recommend to anyone entertained by this kind of idea.)

Secondly, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging being used to detect deception. This is using brain scanners to determine the brain activity that takes place when people are being deceptive - giving something like a 'super lie detector' - and claiming to offer vastly better accuracy than polygraphs and the like, which are notoriously unreliable. This is full on thought police stuff, as it's about what people are thinking (or how they're thinking it) rather than about what they're saying per-se. There are already companies looking to commercialise this, and plans afoot for a remotely deployable version of this that can do the reading at a distance, without the subject's consent. One of the companies commercialising it hints at it being a more socially acceptable alternative to torture. What fun.

On a more personal note, I'm still ill. Have had a rather more successful visit to the doctors who now reckon it's not Gastroenteritis, but probably Giardia instead, which does fit all my lovely symptoms all too well. A nice round of tests for me now to work out if that's what it is, and maybe I'll see the end of this finally - it's only been nearly 2 months of feeling ghastly every day now....

We have ignition!

2005-11-18T11:13:07Z

After failing to turn up yesterday, and ringing me at 6pm to tell me they weren't going to turn up at all, they've *finally* turned up this morning. And mended my boiler! Whoohoo! I have central heating again finally, and boy is it a relief.

It appears the one of the powered valves that governs whether hot water flows into the radiators had siezed, and if that valve doesn't open, the central heating pump and boiler don't get turned on either, which is why it's all been sat there doing nothing. Not something I would have worked out for myself, so I don't feel too incompetent for not having been able to diagnose it :)

Everything appears to be warming up, so all I need to do now is bleed the radiators when I get home from work and it should all be good.

All a bit Flanders and Swann

2005-11-17T16:04:53Z

The Gasman Cometh.

Or rather he doesn't. At least not so far. The nice servicecare people made helpful noises about booking a morning appointment on Thursday. I take the morning 'working from home' - and lo, they ring me at 11:30am to go "Umm, running a bit late today, very busy, we'll be with you in the early afternoon...".

It's now 4pm. There's not a great deal of sign of them. Curse them. In theory, afternoon appointments can run up to 6pm. Good thing my work is flexible enough that I *can* stay in all day waiting eh?

To make it doubly annoying, I'm also out of coal for my little stove, which has been the only thing stopping the place from settling into a new iceage. However, I can't go out and *get* any, because Sod's Law says the moment I step out of the house, Mr BoilerRepairMan will turn up. Grrr.

It's at times like this I'm glad the powerbook runs so hot, it's the only thing that's stopping my fingers from freezing off :)

(Does this count as my first bit of LJ angst? Will adrasteah feel she's getting her money's worth out of my account? :) )

Real Fires

2005-11-15T22:42:54Z

Given that my central heating seems to have decided to give up the ghost, in that traditional way central heating seems to the moment the weather starts to turn at all, I've decided it was time to get the nice little cast iron stove in my living room going again.

After some teething problems with it yesterday, tonight I've got it really cracking along with impressive dancing flames that almost float above the fire.

Makes me remember how much I love real fires, and how they seem to have always been part of my family's life growing up, with all manner of fireplaces, cast iron stoves, and recalcitrant rayburns, and all the ritual of firelighting that goes along with each of them. It's a very soothing and homely thing.

So tonight has been a pleasant time of sitting by the fire, listening to the hifi and nattering about the very happy things in my life with the lovely avoset, while drinking copious amounts of peppermint tea. Life could be a lot worse :)

Genuinely romantic films

2005-11-14T02:32:45Z

Having recently watched Before Sunrise again for the first time in quite a while (I've owned it for ages, but don't watch it that frequently), and having watched the sequel, Before Sunset a few weeks before, I'm reminded how they're both some of the few genuinely romantic films I can think of - that really seem to capture a plausible sentiment without being maudlin, or sickly sweet.

Just wondering what others anyone else can think of, either to see if I agree, or to add new things to my ever growing DVD collection :)

The consequences of making bets...

2005-11-11T20:58:37Z

...and losing them.

Oh dear, I seem to have a livejournal.

It's all adrasteah's fault.

The floor is now open for the ritual humiliation that I so richly deserve, for my years of protestation about the evilness of Livejournal, and how I'd never have one.