uRandom

Mon 30th Jul 2007 @ 13:58 2007: Genesis

Genesis - the lolcats translation

Thu 26th Jul 2007 @ 23:19 2007: Gentoo

In a post titled So, can I have Gentoo back?, Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo, seems to have a problem.

I must admit that I have not been a close follower of Gentoo Linux, but according to this post, and subsequent comments, it would appear that Daniel handed control of Gentoo over to a group of users/developers who requested it, but then (according to Robbins) failed to manage the not-for-profit organisation adequately.

It seems that the Gentoo motto should be "getting the fscking thing up and running is more than difficult" in more ways that one...

Sat 21st Jul 2007 @ 01:02 2007: I guess I can post it now ...

So now I suppose we can admit that the latest Harry Potter book has been on "the interwebs" for a good many days, now.

Those who care, probably even know the ending.

For myself, I managed nearly 2 pages of the first book, before finding it less interesting than Charlie and Lola, as mindless childrens' entertainment goes. Actually, for the first dozen or so episodes, Charlie and Lola is actually rather charming.

Anyway, you can all start a frenzy of piracy, for all I care. Myself, I'll stay well away, thank you very much. I just don't care.

However, a Maggie and the Ferocious Beast bootleg, please let me know!...

Fri 20th Jul 2007 @ 01:07 2007: Browser Statistics

It's rather skewed, because this is a geeky site, but FireFox clearly pushes Internet Explorer out of pole position.

Also, my knowledge of CSS is clearly below par, as this is drifting again :-(

Thu 19th Jul 2007 @ 23:31 2007: AI Draughts

Channel 4 claim that a "truly significant advance in artificial intelligence" has been made, as U Alberta, Canada, have calculated the results of every combination of possible moves in a game of draughts.

Apparently "An average of 50 computers were run together every day for years at a time" - in other words, "some computers". And they apparently enumerated all possible games of Draughts. The result, apparently, is that the computer can guarantee not to lose a game; its opponent's best chance is to draw.

I don't see what this does for Artificial Intelligence. I suppose we can't really expect the home of Big Brother to recognise intelligence, though.

Thu 19th Jul 2007 @ 22:43 2007: Enigma Machine on Ebay!

There's an original WWII Enigma machine up on Ebay!

This auction for a very rare and legendary German WWII chifer machine ENIGMA in mint conditon, all original, nor restored and complete.

Very rare to find in this condition, MUSEUM CONDITION.

FULL WORKING CONDITION WITH EXTRA LAMPS.

Sat 14th Jul 2007 @ 23:10 2007: Smoking in Public

As an ex-smoker (15-and-a-bit-months), I'm not one of those militant "nobody should ever smoke anywhere ever" ex-smokers.

Therefore, I like the suggestion that the 1974 Violence in the Workplace Act, prevents publicans from enforcing the new Smoking ban.

I don't know the logic behind it; when it was quoted on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show, I assumed that it had something to do with the idea that you cannot require an employee to enter into a situation which could cause violence to be committed against the employee.

However, Joey says (in the Manchester Evening News) that "There is the 1974 Violence in the Workplace Act, where it is illegal to harass or bully an employee. By telling a smoker that they cannot smoke may be viewed as harassment.", whilst David Kinsey (in The Independent) simply claims that "Charles Kennedy might care to visit a pub in rural Herefordshire that I walked past yesterday. In its window it had a notice that proclaimed: 'Due to the 1974 Violence in the Workplace Act, I am unable to enforce the smoking ban.'", without providing further details.

Sat 14th Jul 2007 @ 00:22 2007: Shell Scripting CheatSheet

There's no decent shell scripting cheatsheet out there, so here's my first attempt:

UNIX CheatSheet

There are many blanks; I would love to know which blanks you would like to fill in...

UPDATE: This is probably a bit late, but this is a blog where I can collate comments

Tue 10th Jul 2007 @ 01:29 2007: Wintel vs UNIX paradigms

Joel Spolsky, the great software and management guru, has finally launched a data service. Unfortunately, he brings all of his MS Windows (and the "Good Enough" mentality that brings with it) along for the ride, too:

This is a professionally-hosted version of FogBugz 5.0, previously only available as a download...To prepare for FogBugz On Demand, we've done a lot of hard work over the past year...We decided to use high-end components for our hosting architecture: Dell PowerEdge 2950 Servers with SCSI RAID, Windows Server 2003, and SQL Server 2005. Yep, that's an expensive way to do it

To implement this warm backup feature, I wrote a SQL mirroring application that implements transaction log shipping: basically, it does an incremental backup in one city, compresses that backup, ships it to the other city, uncompresses it, and applies it to the warm backup database. Right now, we#re log shipping twice a day, so you might lose a day of work if an entire city blew up, but in a couple of weeks, we'll implement a system that does more continuous backups, and we expect that the warm backups will never get more than 15 minutes behind.

Sun 8th Jul 2007 @ 22:18 2007: Go Nuts!

These antibacterial wipes have an extra 50% free. That's great. A boring product which I don't really want to buy, I just need to have, will cost me a little bit less than it would have done otherwise.

So, I totally fail to understand the instruction to "Go Nuts!" with the extra 28 wipes.

What kind of bacterium-spreading activities do they think that I have had to refraining from, due to a lack of available wipes to clear it up?!

(oh, and the Squirrel logo to the right says "Nutty squirrel bargain - Be smart! Stock up", which wouldn't be "nuts" advice if (say) a bacterial warfare attack was imminent, but (a) I'm not aware of such a plan, and (b), squirrels and/or nuts still have no connection whatsoever with antibacterial wipes.)

Wed 4th Jul 2007 @ 01:18 2007: Straw Man

There seems to be a lot of discussion going on in the good ol' US of A at the moment, about Creation - 'Intelligent Design' "versus" Science. I have come across many rants against ID - this is just one example.

I would love to enter into an intelligent debate with those who say that God created Creation, and those who say that such a claim is not true.

I am sure that there is much to be gained from sincere and frank conversations between those in the Dawkins camp, and those who find his rhetoric somewhat lacking. (Okay, I showed some bias there. Still, I do sincerely believe that humanity could benefit from "full and frank discussions".)

However, all that I do hear about the USAian "debate" about the subject, is tosh like the above-linked above - pure straw-man arguments. "If we were 3 miles closer to the sun then we wouldn't be here"... who ever defined that as a tenet of the Christian faith?!!

What I have never heard, is these "ludicrous" claims made first-hand. I see the "enemy" in citations, but I have yet to see anybody make such ludicrous claims. The militant anti-religious group seem to be fighting a made-up enemy.

There are many observed things which can not yet be explained.

I do not understand why certain parties are getting so excited around the concept that we should teach "here's an idea we don't understand" as opposed to "here's another idea we don't understand, but (for entirely unscientific reasons) dislike"

Tue 3rd Jul 2007 @ 23:48 2007: 10th Dimension

There are two five-minute talks here; The first talk is co-sponsored by the makers of Anadin and Paracetemol.

Imagining the 10th Dimension part1

The second part is sponsored by some gentlemen who may be met, by arrangement, in car parks and other public venues, with the purpose of providing certain medications not necessarily available by the NHS. Being a strongly academic subject, areas frequented by students are a good place to start looking for such individuals. For example, Mancunians may find that heading south from the University district would lead them to Moss Side, from where the appropriate medications may be procured with relative ease.

Imagining the 10th Dimension part2

And if that doesn't cook your brain, it is likely that nobody can help you... you may be a terminal physicist :-(