I’d often wondered what computer people meant when they referred to one of their kind as a “systems architect”. This UNIX ‘Blog has the answer.
There’ll be so many unused monitors left at our place when we shut down we’ll be able to build “Screenhenge”. [Thanks to Peter Tribble]
I meant to ‘Blog this weeks ago. Readers in the UK might be interested to know that there is at least one way of circumventing those 0870 numbers that firms use these days to get us to pay to talk to them. Thanks to Jonathan Nicholson at the Sanger.
Midnight Pictures is an independent film company based in Northern Ireland, but its people don’t want none of your steenking arts subsidies, thanks very much:
“As with all Midnight Pictures films [Don’t Look In The Attic] will feature:
- NO love-across-the-barricades
- NO terrorists with a heart of gold
- NO conflicted priests and/or policemen
- NO soundtrack by The Cranberries etc.
Consequently, as usual, it will receive NO funding from the Arts Council or the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission, who only ever give money to their mates from Queens in any case.”
[Thanks to the Pilot]
Yes, I know I haven’t posted much of substance the last few days, but at least I’m not as bad as Socialism In An Age Of Waiting For Posts.
You might have noticed that I never write about my own love life here. This is mainly because I don’t have a love life, but neither do I mention foolishly inattentive members of the opposite sex who have accidentally allowed me into their company in the past.
Cryptic and multiply-distorted versions of other people’s affairs are a different matter and I had planned one of my observational “relationship” posts for this evening, but then it turned out to be a little too close to someone real else’s private life. It’s bad enough people suspecting that I’ve been writing about something I couldn’t possibly have known about without people complaining that I’m writing about something I do know about. Sorry about that, folks. There might be some new stuff tomorrow.
And no, I’m not mailing the spiked post to you individually.
In tomorrow’s Observer David Aaronovitch will say lots of things I’ve wanted to say and lots of things I intend to say (though I’ll be doing it rather less politely) about those on the Left who have a problem with Labour’s recent record. The problem these people have is that Tony won’t let them stay out after midnight at the Socialist Fantasy Retro Disco. Harry’s Place has pointed to the piece already, but they’ve wisely left their comments closed. If a trackback appears there I guess I’ll be waking up to thread after thread of “Disgusted of Crouch End” comments here on PooterGeek. I can’t wait.
This advertisement could almost be a follow-up to this post of mine. [via The Motley Fool]
I wanted to comment on a ‘Blog yesterday, but I couldn’t read the distorted characters on the security image clearly enough to type them in. Does this mean that I am really an artificial intelligence?
The Koreans have taken a surprising early lead in the race to unravel Solanaceae DNA with the Dutch, perhaps more understandably, right behind them.
What’s most pleasing about Google’s April Fool joke today is that its text is shot through with the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense that infests thousands of real products’ copy.
Andy at Rummaging collects wacky tales of weird sales on eBay. He’s just been added to the ‘Blogroll. I think I might add a half-dozen or so new entries to the ‘roll over the next couple of weeks. Send your bribe pledge to [this ‘Blog’s name] at gmail.com and I’ll see what I can do for you.
While I’m on the subject of accomplished corporate music monsters, this 10-year-old review of Def Leppard by Andrew Mueller is entertaining, if perhaps a little long and squintily typeset to be read from the screen all in one go. It’s clear that, like me, Mr Mueller can’t help but admire the band—for all their over-produced faults. [I picked this one up via Norm’s quoting of another of the author’s pieces on a more serious matter.]
Elsewhere on Mueller’s site it’s also interesting to read that, despite admitting to being a fan of the works of Naomi Klein and having written an album called Hail To The Thief, Radiohead’s lead singer, Thom Yorke, did originally support [link dead—try here instead] military action in Iraq.
I might have a real-time comment preview feature now, but some glitches still need to be ironed out of the moderation system. Somehow Tim Newman’s comment was blocked, but an anonymous visitor managed to post three stanzas of the aria “Uncle Fucka” from Mozart’s Der Ruggerbugger to PooterGeek. Sorry, Tim.
(I should point out, dad, that Anonymous was posting from Preston—old friend of the Counsell family perhaps?)
The Anonymous Economist lent me a copy of the most recent album from Anastacia (or Shouty Woman, as my officemate Jo calls her). The main producer credited is Glen Ballard. Having listened to the tracks [if I still had dreadlocks they would have trailed back from my head horizontally while I sat in front of the speakers] I think the real perpetrator is that poodle-permed Captain Caveman lookalike who Tina Turner used to keep in a cage during her live shows and let out occasionally to play a sax solo. They are all so LOUD. A typical number goes something like this:
Whatever else you think about her, you’ve got to admit her voice is some kind of physiological marvel. In another age she would be a freak show star: “Dr Caractacus Glennworthy Ballard presents, ‘The Impossibly Infinitesimal Miss Anastacia Shoutywoman: The Human Vocal TARDIS!'”.
Worried about MRSA? Scared of infecting your little ones with your nasty cold? University of North Carolina researchers recommend the most effective anti-microbial hand-washing product known to modern science.
Also on a science kick, Mick Hartley’s ‘Blog always features excellent serious reading material, but what has given rise to the longest (and most amusing) comment thread there in recent weeks? The octopi in disguise!
Now PooterGeek should show a preview of your comment as you type it—on most recent Web browsers—and at the top of this and every other page of the site you should see a legible banner heading showing this ‘Blog’s name in white on a purple background—on all recent browsers. Thanks to casualsavant for aesthetic consulting. [I think you’re right about the text colouring, but wrong about the opacity.]
When you use a comments form here to make a contribution to the site a preview of how your text will look once posted should appear in the white space immediately below the box you are typing in. You might have to scroll down a bit further than you would normally do to see this. Please let me know if you have any problems. (You can test this feature without even having to press the “Submit” button.)
These remixed romance novel covers are painfully funny. Admittedly the raw material was probably hilarious already—just not on purpose.
[I don’t read Instapundit any more, so I refuse to be embarrassed that he picked this up a week ago.]
Cambridge University* has banned all uniforms or national costume (including kilts) from its graduation ceremonies. According to a ranting politician this is of course “elitist“. Actually it’s the opposite: everyone is expected to dress in exactly the same way, regardless of accidents of birth. Besides, Cambridge is an elite university. Get over it. At least these days it makes some effort to discriminate on the basis of achievement rather than (as it did for far too long in the past) pedigree.
Sadly, religious dress escapes this regulation. The history of the institution and the nature of its establishment (not to mention that of this country) give the university authorities no real choice in the matter. It’s a shame, though, that Europe’s finest centre of scientific learning should have to defer to witch doctors. No doubt ranting politicians would call that “racist” or “Islamophobic”. I’m with Paul.
[*Declaration of disinterest: I might have taught in the university, but I have never taught for the university or on any of its official degree programmes. As my personal pages have emphasised for some time, I am not employed by Cambridge but by the Medical Research Council—for the time being—and I’m not speaking on behalf of the MRC either.]
Hey, maybe I could get a job in London and use my redundancy money as a deposit on my own place [requires Flash to view].
Judith and Leasey, connoisseurs of celebrity fashion disasters both, should enjoy the merciless Go Fug Yourself, online home of all that is fugly.
(Occasionally even GFY has to give credit where it’s due, though.)
[UPDATE: GFY brings us a close-up of Kylie Minogue’s lips: I rest my case.]
[Joke stolen from The Motley Fool.]
One evening during my recent week off ‘Blogging I was working with the radio on and heard an advertisement for 1 Xtra, a (relatively) new digital radio station extending the celebrity-/booze-/shagging-obsessed tabloid youf franchise of Radio 1 to Britain’s blacks. The ad’s female voiceover trailed a “documentary” about Condoleezza Rice with the words, “She has become one of the most powerful women in America, but why is she not respected by hip hop artists and fellow African-Americans?”
I didn’t listen to the programme trailed, so I could be jumping to conclusions here. The contributors might well have been a succession of feminist rappers. But I’m willing to bet that 1Xtra’s definition of “hip hop” extended solely to recent examples of its rap sub-genre (and particularly the sorts of acts appealing to white middle-class media execs looking for something “dangerous”) and I suspect that a black British professional female on national public radio was going to ask us to judge a mixed-race American woman who has attained a full professorship at Stanford University by the standards of people who chant recycled misogyny over recycled beats. Because, after all, hip hop is what Black Culture is all about.
Tim Newman and one of his commenters had a point a few weeks ago when they posted this.
If you had developed an amazing new technique to see through your laptop, what would you do with that power? Set up a flickr gallery to show off your handiwork. [via Slashdot]
[UPDATE: After you’ve browsed a few to get the idea, you should check out this one—truly the work of a geek god.]
[NEW UPDATE: Geek goddess Hak takes the effect to the next level. It’s almost as though the cat has passed right through her notebook screen.]
Mona Kuhn takes abstract nude photographs of handsome, ghostly northern European men and women, composed like Japanese flower arrangements.
Kylie Minogue appeals to me sexually like a bath of cold baked beans. No, I’m not into splosh. In her infamous cinema ad for Agent Provocateur underwear she undulates in said lingerie on the back of a bucking electric horse. The punchline is something about how the men in the audience should be too aroused by the end of her performance to be able to get up without being embarrassed by their erections. In my very limited experience Agent Provocateur’s little-bits-of-nothing are indeed the business when wrapping a real woman with a brain and a body, but considerably less effective (even well-lit) on a bland-as-tap-water stick insect. Sadly, she continues to play to the “SexKylie” persona invented for her, despite having all the mystery, allure, charisma, and real beauty of a lawnmower. That‘s what’s really embarrassing. And, as she gets older, it’ll get even more embarrassing.
Kevin Costner is similarly embarrassing when he tries to play a traditional action hero. When he plays a loser, though, he can be compelling. Tin Cup, for example, was an excellent comedy, with the added bonus of Rene Russo and a surprisingly sharp performance from Don Johnson. If you have Apple’s Quicktime Player installed you can watch Costner in a full downloadable preview scene from The Upside Of Anger. On paper I thought this was going to be tosh, custom built for the bitter ex-wife demographic, but this funny little clip suggests that it might turn out to be more interesting.
Something about this:
Howard Flight has quit as Conservative deputy chairman over comments he made about the party’s spending plans.
The MP, who is the Tories’ special envoy to the City, apparently admitted the scale of planned cuts were [sic] being concealed to help win an election.
reminds me of this:
They call it ‘doing a Ratner’ – in memory of the famous gaffe committed by Gerald Ratner back in 1991, when he admitted selling “crap” in his High Street shops.
Now the boss of the UK’s largest credit card company has done it in such a spectacular fashion that it left business observers open-mouthed.
Barclays chief executive Matt Barrett candidly criticised his own product, suggesting that the astute consumer would do well to steer well clear of it.
Backword Dave points to a reason why I might not want to have my photo taken with the Leader of the Free World.
PooterGeek is back—just in time for the Easter holidays. Thanks for your kind words, loser lovers. I am genuinely touched.
Following Colonel Qaddafi’s accusation at the Arab League summit in Algiers today, that the Israelis and Palestinians are “stupid”, thousands of members of both populations have come together to sign an unprecedented cross-community petition declaring Qaddafi “a gibbering loon”.
Waving his arms theatrically as he introduced a joint statement issued with President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, Silvan Shalom the Israeli Foreign Minister added that Qaddafi was “one card short of a full deck, one pole short of a huppah, one oppressive regime short of a Security Council!”
Abbas interjected to point out that Qaddafi was so crazy even Michael Jackson wouldn’t be seen in public with him.
The office of the Libyan Supreme Overlord and Love Raccoon responded with the following short press release:
“Kipper kipper kipper iPod bhangra.”
As the press release was read out at the Algiers evening briefing, Qaddafi and his 40-strong line-up of female bodyguards silently performed the Mashed Potato.
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