Okay--say that you're a girl and that we're vaguely going out (or, at least, it seems that way to me)... how would you react to a day trip to the lake district and a candlelit dinner?
What do you get if you stick a few astronauts in a confined place for a few months? A big fight. "Two spacemen failed to get along and "used force in the clash", Dr Gushchin said, without naming the men." Hell, the problem's not getting to Mars, it's making sure that the astronauts will still be talking to each other when they get there... (BBC News)
Marion McGilvary is having a no-sex affair. Isn't this old news? I thought the whole no-sex affair thing had exploded onto the scene months ago: "I'm having an affair. An immaculate affair, the kind that involves lots of flattery, gushingly sincere mutual appreciation and absolutely no sex. There's no physical contact of the biblical kind but, miraculously, there is still a result - though you don't have to wait nine months for it." (The Times).
The latest demographical research indicates that I value sexual fidelity and tougher crime sentences. I also create my own pick-and-mix value system. Pretty much right, then, though I'm inclined towards rehabilitation programmes instead of throwing people in jail (The Times).
I'm not too sure about Ken Livingstone's plan to offer gay marriages as part of his London Mayor campaign. To put the record straight, I'm all for gay marriages and equality, and it's great that he's pushing it as an issue. I'm just not sure whether it's political suicide or not.
There are just too many quotes in the article about the catamaran boat disaster: "It was a thoroughly British response to disaster: a cup of tea." is the first that springs to mind, quickly followed by "'The boat has not performed well". The Times covers the broken boat.
There are just too many quotes in the article about the catamaran boat disaster: "It was a thoroughly British response to disaster: a cup of tea." is the first that springs to mind, quickly followed by "'The boat has not performed well". The Times covers the broken boat.
Guardian's G2 section covers practically fictional novel adaptations and the effect that they have upon students. Example? "In candid moments, English teachers will confess that essays on A Room with a View are often recollections of the Merchant/Ivory 1985 film. A head of English in a large London comprehensive told me that she had hidden the tape of (ex-teacher) Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet after frequent coursework comments about Shakespeare's depiction of Benvolio, in an Hawaian shirt, trying to stop the gunfight between Romeo and Tybalt, or of the playwright's brilliant idea of showing the lovers' first meeting through a fishtank.". Funny.
The Times covers the forthcoming enactment of the Human Rights Act, and the predictable mess that's following since most organisations don't know that they're going to be affected. What a great legal minefield...
I should be going out to see American Beauty tomorrow with Mary, here's what The Times had to say about the film's Oscars. I'm definitely looking forward to it...
NASA's faster, better, cheaper mantra has been damned as too fast, too cheap and not better (BBC News). This is what most engineers have been saying for a while, that faster-better-cheaper isn't necessarily a good thing and NASA shouldn't really expect good results using such cheap methodologies.
I've been thinking about my third year accommodation in college (near Market Sqaure in Cambridge) and it's suddenly dawned on me that it's going to be quite hard to get any work done. Why? Because the College Bar, Sainsbury's (big supermarket), the market, Marks & Spencers, Starbucks, Costa, Peppercorns and McDonalds are all less than a four minute walk away from my spacious set (sitting room, kitchen and bedroom). Wow. Do I have it good next year or what?
I knew I was right all along. Even when all my friends made fun of me, even when they said that at the very least they warmed it up before they had it... it's true -- cold, leftover pizza is great for breakfast (BBC News). The secret's in the tomato puree, apparently.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from battery farming. BBC News is reporting that "Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) wants new welfare laws after scientists carried out studies on factory-farmed chickens, crippled through being forced to grow abnormally quickly in overcrowded conditions... It found that when given a choice of two feeds, one containing the pain-relieving drug carprofen, and one without, more lame birds than fit birds chose to eat the drugged feed." The shit is about to hit the fan for factory farming, and about time too.
One of my friends has said these quotes in public (forwarded to me in an email): "Earrings are a bit like a cross between a tampons and clothes" and "You have no idea how nasty it is to have Kenneth Williams on top of you". Unlike you, though, I'm not surprised...
I got an email from Claire giving me another perspective on my rant that I wrote a couple weeks back. All I really have to say is that sometimes I feel quite lost and it still pisses me off that some people are stupid enough to be racist... (not that I'm preaching or anything, because most of the time everything's actually ok...) I guess the exceptions stand out so much more, that's all.
Oh my god. Our pub quiz team bobobob (formerly bobobobob, but that was just silly) just came third in the music quiz in the local that we go to. And if you knew our team, you'd know that that was an achievement. It isn't enough that we get stick for doing pub quizes and the other (older) regulars are busy pointing out that we're all supposed to be incredibly intelligent students (Nottingham, Cambridge, Warwick...), but then we just point out that we're busy doing degrees in proper subjects, not, say, pub-quiz trivia.
Eleven Seconds is wondering why The Daily Doozer is called The Daily Doozer... well, it all stems back to a mailing list I used to run about three years ago, and yes, it does have something to do with those cool little doozers who built stuff over at Fraggle Rock... I'll let on more soon, I promise!
I'm getting really worried about my reading habits. Over last term I decided to grow up a bit and ended up reading more Kafka, Memoirs of a Geisha, A Handmaid's Tale... and then at the end of term I went all contemporary fiction and bought stuff like Friends like These, The Love Hexagon and Are you Experienced? And, to put it mildly, I haven't been that impressed. I need more good fiction. And it definitely doesn't help that I go out and find that High Fidelity has been adapted into a John Cusack movie. It was a great British book. It had the pathetic British male in. And now, it's a pathetic American male. Why do I suddenly feel a huge wave of disappointment?
One nice thing about being back home is that I get to go through my brother's copies of nature. It's always been weird flicking through the magazine and looking at the advertisements for equipment. You get lines like "Promega's Wizard(R) Genomic DNA Purification System isolates high-molecular weight DNA from practically anything!", and "TaKaRa Z-Taq(TM) The fastest DNA Polymerase Ever (R006A: 200 U, R006B: 200 U x 4)".
Things aren't looking good for Microsoft, that monolithic behemoth of a software company - it seems that settlement negotiations have taken a turn for the worse (BBC News).
Eidos = one trick pony? They don't have much going for them apart from Lara and after about four completely identical games, I think the attraction's wearing a little thing. And where exactly is Daikatana these days?
Media, Music has been updated and separated. Winamp playlist is now up. Commentary and biography areas updated to rev4. And I'm going to go watch the boat race on tv.
The blog page has been updated. Doozer is being spring-cleaned throughout today and being updated to the new rev4 look. Will Try from w4t pointed out that the orange links clash somewhat with the blue backgrounds--I'm aware of this and am desperately trying to come up with a new non-clashing hyperlink colour/style. I think I really need to sort out my local mirrors. I've got about four on my computer at the moment, and the current design rev pretty much in tatters, and that's putting it in a nice way...
Saturday Times carries an article on the identity thieves, yet another piece of misinformed scaremongering, passed off as reporting. The article in the print version has a scene from the film The Matrix accompanied by the caption "The Matrix depicts the theft of identities". Or something along those lines (the paper's downstairs, and I'm not).
Saturday Times Book Reviews includes the weekly How I Write feature with Douglas Coupland. Quote: "I can usually only go on for an hour or two at a time. I used to think that I was just being lazy."
The Times (yet again): Student gave cannabis to grandmother. Great quote: "A student gave her unsuspecting grandmother a cake laced with cannabis to try "to help her to relax". Instead, the elderly woman was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack."
The Times (again) has an article about what you'd do if you saw drug abuse. Absolutely hillarious quote from a policeman: "Sir, I don't know if you are aware, but there is a drugs problem in every town in Britain." Ha!
The Times reports a stolen MI5 laptop on the London underground. Thank god that, as The Times says "Any user of the laptop would need a password." Oh, I can rest safely now that I know MI5 know what passwords are...
Caitlin Moran reviews Chris Morris tv show Jam (unqualified success), saying that "He's a psychotically whimsical preacher - I can imagine his forebears actually inventing the concept of God one Sunday, just for a laugh. The Catholic God - worshipped by the eating of tiny biscuits that are in some way Jesus's legs - just reeks of Morris."
I've never read a more scathing review of a new album than that of The Times's Embrace review: "To make matters much, much worse, for a band named after snogging, Embrace turn out to be a right bunch of sexless, joyless whingers."
Okay, so here's the deal. I've been home since Saturday, and I've been doing a few things. I've (vaguely) watched The Matrix on our spanking new DVD player, was (slightly) impressed by Bound on said player, and (completely) enjoyed watching 10 Things I Hate About You.
I watched that last one with Mary, the person who is confusing me the most at the moment. This isn't that hard to achieve, seeing as I reckon that I'm confused most of the time anyway, and it doesn't really take much to push me (more nudge, really) over the edge.
We'd met up to do something Monday night when she got back from Durham, and ended up going to a local pub to meet a mutual friend, which was nice. Tuesday we didn't see each other since we both had work to do, but she came round on Wednesday, we watched 10 Things... and then ended up doing some... work.
Now she's in Amsterdam visiting one of her close friends, who I also happen to know.
Bleh.
You see, I need to sort a few things out in my head. We still seem quite close. But I don't know how close. So I need to work that out. At the suggestion of my friends (and to save my sanity), I sent her a fairly long email last term in which I basically said "this is how I feel about you," and expected a reply... that never arrived. The issue had just been conveniently skirted. So--looks like someone's going to have to broach the subject on Monday, when she gets back from her trip...
Amsterdam. Sorry, wrong choice of wording. That was a crap, and unintentional, pun.
You wouldn't think that a search on "backstreet boys torture" would give this result, would you! Yahoo! Search Results. Clue: one of the headlines is "University uses Backstreet Boys to "torture" students". Damn. I knew that'd give it away. But it's still funny. Very, very funny.
I know there are lots of definitions for the word "hack", but does this page count? Or is is just an imaginitve hijacking? At Guiness Book of Records you can read the true story behind Kevin Mitnick, while at Guinness Records (note the extra "n"), you can check out the actual recordbook...
From the Blogger "most updates in five minutes" stuff section: Woohoo - famous! Check out the second entry on the list... Not quite sure what that says about me, though.
Articles from yesterday's Times: the Tony Cragg sculpture article (great pictures), and the Will love still matter? article by Hannah Betts, which was hillariously deconstructed by Mary, she with the almost-finished anthropology degree.
After having read an extremely interesting article in yesterday's Times, Mary and I are planning a trip to Tate Liverpool to see Tony Cragg's exhibition. See - Culture.
The first paragraphy of my novel: "Alex wasn’t going anywhere. He was lolling on the sofa, idly flicking through about fifty channels of blandness, and was desperately trying to ignore the fact that yet again, he felt more than somewhat confused. It wasn’t a particularly glamorous state of confusion that he was in. Alex wasn’t, for instance, confused because it was about nine in the morning, and he was naked, cold and in the middle of a field and the last thing he could remember was sliding down a bar and getting a close-up view of a sticky, gunky floor. Neither was he confused because he was in Botswana and didn’t understand a clue of what people were trying to say to him. The reason why Alex was confused was because, basically, he didn’t know what was going on. Sure, he knew what was going on outside of the house, he knew what his friends were doing and he knew the latest unemployment statistics for Britain, though his rather esoteric and specific knowledge of the last piece of information was due to having just watched the one o’clock news and not any particular interest in the DFEE." Any good?
Why does The Times think that a story about "Joanna the SAS man 'gave police a beating'" is interesting, or even news? The fact that a bloke who happens to like dressing up as a women deserves national coverage? This is just one reason why I don't like The Times anymore, aside from its frequently grossly inaccurate reporting... I think I'm turning more towards The Independent and The Guardian now...
I know that I said I'd be doing shitloads of work this vacation, and at some point I probably will manage to get down to it. Unlike today, where, for the most part, I managed to watch four hours of music television (that being MTV, MTV Extra, MTV Base, UK Play, The Box, VH1 and VH1 Classic) just for one video of which I managed to download the mp3 of anyway... Of course, there was the whole half hour taken up for lunch, the good hour and a half of talking to Mary on the phone and other such business. But I only wrote about five hundred words of the essay I wanted to do. How apathetic can you get? I promised photos of mid-way dinner at some point, so they will go up tomorrow. Promise.
Okay, so I'm at home now. A few observations: VHS is dead, long live DVD; our pub quiz team is still crap and... probably more updates later. Sorry about the slowness, but I need to get back into the swing of things.
Matt writes about jobs... and then reveals that he's going to be working for pyra. Okay, hands up who blogs and doesn't work for pyra yet? Still quite a few left. Good, good.
The Guardian reviews Magnolia, and makes me desperately want to see it. The list of films that I want to see is just getting ridiculously long now, and includes American Beauty, Toy Story 2, Being John Malkovich...
Well, it's the end of term. I said I wouldn't do another update until sometime Sunday, but hey, it's Friday, night and I'm feeling a bit shit so let's just sit down and write something...
Ninth week review.
look at my life, look at my heart
i have seen them fall apart
I've had a good term. After what could only be termed as a bizarre Christmas involving quite an unbelievably improbable chain of events (don't ask, and I won't tell. Ask, on the other hand, and I just might...), I was of the firm opinion that maybe, just maybe, things had settled down somewhat in my life.
I think they have. I think I've changed somewhat. I wrote way back in February that I thought there was a new "me" wanering around in place of the old one (and all my friends were suitably warned of any prospective change in my behaviour), and though the change hasn't been that marked, I think I've changed nonetheless.
now i'm ready to rise again
The cunning amongst you will have noticed that I've been quoting lyrics from Gabrielle's album Rise that I bought a few days back. I like it. It's been on repeat ever since it's arrived in my room.
Easter is going to be a time in which I'm going to have to do the proverbial knuckling down and do some work. I need to lock myself in a room and not let myself out until I've hammered contract, international, land, family and legal history into my head until I can't help it from spewing out everytime I say something. I have to know so much that I can recite principle-exception-casename without so much as batting an eyelid.
Because this time, I need to prove it to myself that I can do it. And it's not just me who needs to know. I need to prove it to my supervisors, my tutor and my director of studies because, damn it, I know I can do it and I feel that I've been somewhat letting them down.
You can tell that someone got an average end-of-term report today.
It's not comforting to know that a) you can only really do about four or five hours of intensive work in a day and b) it's physically impossible to learn everything for Part IB law. Those were the grains of truth entrusted to me by my director of studies yesterday.
I just want to surprise everyone (in a good way).
if you want me in your life, where do i stand
i just don't know
It (the left hand sidebar) says that I'm looking forward to catching up with Mary, but if I'm completely truthful about it, I'm oscillating somewhat from looking forward and being absolutely scared shitless. We'd got together over the Christmas vacation and have kept (I think) in close contact over the last nine weeks while she's been at Durham and I've been down here in Cambridge. She's my date for my college May Ball in June (Okay, pedants may point out that a May Ball should be in May and not June, but this is Cambridge and we seem to have more than our fair share of inexplicable traditions). We--independently--sent each other Valentines cards. So... I get to see her for the first time in nine weeks in the next few days.
How scary is that? Or am I just being a bit pathetic?
Crap. Why is it that doing a redesign is much more interesting than doing a contract law essay? Okay, I'll do one today, and hand the other one in tomorrow...
Forty eight hours! Too many exclamation marks! I'm going insane! I'll be on my way home in forty eight hours! The excitement is nearly too much to contain. I think I'll lie down for a while. No, can't do that--contract essay to do...
I'll be free in five hours. I have a Contract supervision at four o'clock for which I have to finish off one essay and write another. And then I'll be free. Free, I tell you, free!. Course, after that, we've got Helen B's birthday bash tonight (wow. alliteration.) which means getting up sometime tomorrow afternoon.
You know that saying "If you love something, set it free?" Ha. Well apply that to the open source model, and shutting down Gnutella has absolutely no effect whatsoever!
Websites carrying the Stephen King book on the net buckle under overwhelming demand. Well, duh. I got Barnes and Noble to send me a .pdf copy of the book for free, but I still haven't received the email. Talk about backlog...
Okay, a brief so everyone know what's going on in my life:
I'm scared about summer vacation placements. I've had rejections so far from all bar one of the eight law firms that I applied to, which means that SJ Berwin, with whom I had an interview last week, are my last ditch hope. I hope I get it, not least because they are the one firm that I actually would love to work for. Their firm exudes this great atmosphere that I think I'd feel right at home in. I'm not lying. I actually feel this way about the firm, and it's not just corporate hire-me bumpf.
tell me what you dream, what you see.
tell me how you feel.
... Of course, that's if I decide that I actually do want to become a lawyer / solicitor. I definitely don't want to be a barrister. For one, the whole wig thing really doesn't get me, so that's out of the question, and though I like to think I'm a fairly good speaker, I'm only a fairly good speaker when I'm with people I know, or in a position where I don't feel intimidated. A courtroom would not be an unintimidating place. There's also the fact that as of right now, my grades are nowhere near good enough to even contemplate going to the bar.
So: job wise, it's either working in a solicitor's firm or... something else entirely. This is where it starts to get scary. I don't know what I want to do. I'm not completely sure if I want to do law anymore, or even if it was the right decision for me. It may just be a question of being interested in the subject. I can do law, if I put my mind to it. I've always been told that I can do pretty much whatever I want to if I just applied myself, and one of my main failings is that I'm far too apathetic most of the time. I can do law. I can write good essays. I do write good essays. I just need to find, in that cliched way, the passion which seems to be missing.
I did have it for a while. Over the Christmas break, I got really fired up over the novel that I started writing. On reflection, from a much more detached viewpoint, it doesn't strike me as complete crap, just something that needs a bit of work. You can't write a novel first off. So right now, I'm twenty five thousands words through this novel I started. And I can't start it again. I did try, though, last night. I rewrote the first two chapters into third person from the original first, just to see how it would go. I'm still not sure what I prefer.
he decided then and there
to reveal his inner fears
I'm looking forward to Easter. I get to see Mary again, and in my head, this is a good thing, because I haven't seen her in the last nine weeks. For those not playing the home game, I have to say that I have absolutely no idea what's going on between me and her other than to say that we seem to be quite close. I guess Easter will let me find out what's happening, if anything. For the first time in my life, though, I'm not letting it stress me out. I'm learning to be more independent than dependent, and it's great. Course, I'm not perfect... But I'm getting better. When I say that, it makes me feel good that I'm not lying to myself.
*
For a while, this whole weblog thing felt like a popularity contest to me, and the one thing that mattered was grabbing readers, reeling them in, searching out the esoteric, the best, the wonderful and the bizarre and showing it off to the rest of the world. I think I've grown up a bit now. I don't need to surf the whole day to show you what's out there, I'm doing this for me now. Which is much nicer. Might sound selfish, but, hey...
*
I was born on the 29th November, 1979. According to some people, that puts me on the tail-end of Generation-X. Am I disaffected?
Bought some new CDs today -- the Blink 182 single All the small things and the Gabrielle album Rise. Rise isn't that long, but first impressions are along the lines of wow that's good... I like it. Already copied a few tracks to minidisc.
I had my last lecture of the term today. I even fell asleep for about five or six minutes half way through. Not good. On the other hand, it's Helen's birthday party tomorrow and we're all off to the Varsity Restaurant to celebrate with a night of drunken debauchery. Fun!
Sorry about the lack of posting. The link to the student webserver fell over at some point last night, so Doozer has been incommunicado. Nice. I like that word.
I was going to post about five different stories from AnchorDesk UK, but then realised that'd be a bit stupid, and instead go look at their homepage. And check out Rupert Goodwin's weekly roundup, because it's always a great read.
Just spent twenty quid at this place getting my hair cut, and found out that Gabrielle used to live down the road from where I live at the moment. Oh, and her mum still lives there, too. I bet you're really impressed.
I registered for ntlWorld today, the UK's first "free" ISP. No metered charges. No subscription charge. Just heavily oversubscribed bandwidth. Well, I wouldn't know. But I will do at the start of next term. CDs are due to start distributing on the 17th of April, so hopefully sometime next term (Great. Just in time for year 2 exams), I'll go unmetered. Woo hoo.
Isn't it great when you hear a backing track on an advert and desperately like it? To the extent of wanting to call up the TV network to find out who placed the ad and then calling up the ad agency to find out what track it is and whether you can get hold of it? Well, the Thorntons advert that recently aired in the UK was just so. I didn't get so far as calling it up, but the best part is when... you like a piece of music. A couple months later you flick through your cd collection and realise that you've already got it--it's on Moby's album Play, on track fourteen. And you feel great.
Via CamWorld. Since I'm not at SXSW, I won't... be going to a 10am Keynote speech, a 11am panel on Design techniques and further panels at 1:30 and 3:30pm on freelancing in the new media landscape or internet industry trends.
Idle wondering. Wired seems to be featuring more and more bloggers... how long until Wired is a blog?
Danny O'Brien, half the brains behind NTK and fully reformed media whore (in the nicest possible sense) has a column in the Sunday Times. This week he talks about how geeks talk.
BBC News reports that the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany are working on a robot to perform spinal surgery. The illustrations in the article look like something straight out of late eighties sci-fi.
Sorry to be repeating other comments, but abortion is murder. the hypocritic oath prohibits the taking of innocent human life, particularly death by abortion. Paul, England
I went to the ADC tonight to see the Footlights Revue and bumped into Kate, Naomi and Paul, who was TDing the show. For those not up to speed, Footlights is the comedy group in Cambridge that spawned the likes of the Monty Python team et al. Needless to say, tonight's show Sit down and shut up was suitably bizarre, to the point that many people in the audience were just scratching their poor heads in dismay. One bad point: the Where's my Cock gameshow sketch just didn't work and was completely juvenile...
Via Wired News, Channel 4 is developing computer-game based animation that looks set to become "a new art form". What's annoying is that they seemed to have set up at the Edinburgh Festival last year, and I didn't see it.
From BBC News, another US school shooting. Ask yourselves again why it is such a fundamental right to be able to bear arms. There, that's me in the pulpit preaching now, isn't it.
Adrian seems to think that there is a proper way to do a weblog. I disagree (but then, I would). I can see a family feud looming on the horizon... Just wait till he has a look at Webloglog! (can't seem to find the url. Now that's embarrassing.)
I'm going out to catch the 11:30pm showing of The Talented Mr. Ripley tonight at the Grafton Centre with Dave B, Adam and Lydia. Should be a good film. After that, I've only got about a million others on my list...
The Guardian discovered the breadth of British talent in sci fi back in December last year, but I must admit that both my brother and I had read all the mentioned books before and loved them anyway. See my brother's site for some fairly comprehensive reviews...
When a toddler dies due to bureaucratic mismanagement, I get extremely angry. I get even more angry when a toddler dies because he's been sent on a 60 mile trip to find an intensive care bed. And do you know what makes me even more angry? The fact that the parents of the toddler have the heart to say this:
"I don't blame anyone in particular. All the medical staff went above and beyond the call of duty.
"I blame the system, and I really blame the way in which the government is handling the whole NHS issue."
Great. UK recalls Zimbabwe commissioner after incident involving diplomatic pouches. Discuss. I can just see this being a hot topic on Wednesday, seeing as I've got an international law supervision then... (BBC News)
Okay, some teen-angst for you all (I know, I'm technically too old for all this): lyrics from the forthcoming Black Box Recorder song Facts of Life
A boy sits by the telephone, wanting to call a girl but not daring to because she might say no. At last he summons up the courage phones her and discovers someone else has asked her first and she said yes. Now's the time to deal with the fear of being rejected, no one gets through life without being hurt. At this point the boy who's listening to this song is probably saying that it's easier said than done and it's true.
Now there's something that makes me feel sixteen again. Or maybe it just makes me feel twenty. Oh, I don't know...
Yesterday's new singles from HMV: Chicane's Don't Give Up and the excellent Movin' Too Fast by Artful Dodger. Now I've got something good to listen to in the library...
Helped out at the college rag Jazz & Cocktails gig last night--the pianist who was supposed to be playing from 8pm-9pm didn't show, so guess who had to fill in... At least I got a couple free drinks out of it!
Way cool article in Wired News today on the Sydney olympics--each piece of official merchandise will have a DNA-based tag rendering it practically impossible to fake. There's one for the counterfeiters to get their teeth round...
So, I had my interview with SJ Berwin this morning. How did it go? Well, let's say that this is my second "proper" job interview so far, and I seem to have absolutely no idea as to how to go about them. There you go. We discussed why I wanted to apply to the firm, in which I tried to shoehorn the word "individualistic" into the conversation as many times as physically possible, we had the discussion about life enhancing experiences where I related how I learnt the importance of customer care, team-orientated workplaces and the ability to call on others when you have to (finally) admit that you're not up to the task... We talked about learning the 'cello and about orchestra tours... and then it was the standard thank you very much and good night. I guess I'll hear from them in a week or so, in which case, you'll probably hear from me in a week or so, as well.
Gasp. More (pseudo) original content--I've made a short stab at the commentary/writings index. More commentaries coming soon, annoyingly, I've got lots of ideas and lots to do at the same time. Typical.
SJ Berwin & Co called this afternoon to invite me to a job interview tomorrow. Excellent.I went to one of their presentations last term, and they were the firm that impressed me most. I'd love it to work for their firm (and all this gushing is real, as well--not made up!)
1GHz has landed and AMD has won the race (ZDNet UK). The 0.9, 0.95 and 1.0GHz Athlons will eb launched at 13:00GMT / 20:00EST in the US today. Quote:
"These new chips are also not cheap. The 1GHz Athlon is priced at $1,299 (£822) per unit in 1,000 unit quantities. The 950MHz processor costs $999 (£632) each per 1,000 and the 900MHz Athlon $899 (£569) each per 1,000."
I was digging around in my email archives and found a Hotwired subscription confirmation dated April 1995. Choice quotes:
Does Hotwired cost anything? No. HotWired is free. You do need a direct connection to the Internet and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) software, which allows your computer to talk to other computers on the Internet.
Course, this was way back when you had to make sure you had a tcp/ip stack... oh dear. Gone all misty eyed again...
Goddarn it, there's more new content on the daily doozer. This one's a pseudo-commentary-rant entitled Looking in from the outside, dealing with a veritable feast of issues. Read it. Weep. Cry. Laugh. Just read it, then email me and tell me whether I should write any more...
I've got an IXUS II waiting for me when I get home, conveniently picked up by my parents whilst on holiday in Hong Kong. I've needed a good pocketable camera for a while, and this one looks like it just might do the trick...
Looks like they've found someone to play Lara Croft, then. "Final negotiations" makes it seem like they're pretty confident as to her taking the role. (Variety.com)
My friend Lisa is considering doing a Science Fiction M.A. at Liverpool University. Cool. She's in the final year of her English degree here at Cambridge at the moment, so is understandably stressed about what she'll be doing next year, or even for the rest of her life.
Heard a new tune today on Radio One--Facts of Life by Black Box Recorder. They're nearly the most under-represented about-to-make-it-very-big band on the net, it seems, and they have a site up at their parent label, Nude Records. The single Facts of Life from the identically-named album is released on the tenth of April. Go buy it. I will.
Salon reviews Madonna's film The Next Best Thing. Quote: "As it is, "The Next Best Thing" takes so many wrong turns it's barely an also-ran. It isn't the next best thing at all. Not even close."
More from BBC News - it seems that pupils are using mobile phones to complain to parents. I think that some mobile phone etiquette teaching is required...
Yeah, there's been a few changes to the layout. New content down the left hand side, and white lines changed to maroon/red ones. Hope it's okay. My sleep patterns are completely messed up, I really need to start going to bed at a reasonable hour.
Arthur C Clarke was the first person who made me think about life on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Now NASA wants to crash the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter, to avoid any chance of contaminating the planet. Now that's responsible biosphere friendly thinking on a planetary, if not solar-system scale...
The Onion story FBI To Require Background Checks For Child-Care Providers: Child-Havers Unaffected is painful to me only because I had to do a family law supervision on exactly why, in the UK, there are such stringent tests on couples who wish to use assisted reproductive techniques (i.e. nearly as stringent as adoption), whereas twelve year old kids who clearly don't know what they're doing are "allowed" by the state to have as many kids as they want. In the supervision we got into a fairly big argument as to whether the state would want to regulate who gets to have children or not if it got the chance. Figures we thought the state would, on the basis of their attitude towards IVF...
The Matrix for Quake 2. For those unconvinced that real life isn't the Matrix, go play it on a computer for a couple hours instead. And then see how that messes with your head.
Newcastle United football fans lost their court case today, but on the upside (if there is an upside, after they're faced with an £80,000 legal bill), it was exactly what the contract law supervision I had today was about. I think that the ruling had something to do with exclusion terms for mispresentation, and strongly doubt the following quote from one of fans:
She added: "This ruling, if unchallenged, will change irrevocably the face of football, legitimising the replacement by corporate interest of genuine supporters."
Um, probably not. It probably means that in contracts such as those, what Newcastle United did was perfectly fine, and that fans just have to take a closer look at whatever they sign. Then again, I haven't read the report of the case, so I can only guess, but I'm sure it won't irrevocably change the face of football.
I think that people who quote to the media should have a five hour cooling off period, so five hours after they've made their quote they're asked whether it still stands. I bet most quoters will admit that they got caught up in hyperbole...
Whoops - PlayStation2 customer info exposed (ZDNet UK). Seems Sony is as prone to customer security as every other e-commerce firm out there. At least the they were on the case 22 minutes after it was discovered.
You have got to check out this Squirrel Fishing site. In fact, I won't even attempt to try to explain it to you in text, because the images and descriptions are just side-splittingly funny. Oh, and no animals were harmed during the production of those pages. Just go and laugh, okay?
As of Tuesday 29th February, the Web Log Scoop Index is broken. Shame, because I really liked it. If there's anything that's going to spur bloggers into action and fine-tooth-combing the net, then it's an index showing who scoops whom...
Via BBC News, the UK government is now opening up bids for third generation mobile phone network licences. The article's got some great pictures of concept handheld videophone devices, and the best part is that in about a year or two we should have 2mbit/second wireless coverage for about 98% of Britain. Cool.
Okay, just got back from doing sound for the Rag event we had tonight--a Blind date style night. We'd managed to persuade college to keep let us open the bar over at Harvey Court (separate from our college bar), so sold a fair amount of drink whilst the Blind Date show was on. Found out that it was the Economist's dinner tonight as well, and that entails the drunken economists running for about five minutes, stark naked, from college back to Harvey Court. So there were thirty-forty of us waiting from them. And we noticed that college had installed a new cctv camera, conveniently pointing in the right direction. The faces on those economists when they came skidding round the corner...
The Times has a story on bringing the mammoth back to life. More cloning news, then. What is the preoccupation with mammoths, anyway? Well, they look kinda cool.
We're doing a Blind Date as part of Rag Week tonight at our first year halls of residence and I've been busy ringing round sorting out the sound side of things. Dave Blake's supplying us with excruciatingly large speakers and a small-yet-powerful amp, I've got two--two--count 'em--mixers, for some reason, four mikes, and a hillariously cheesy soundtrack:
warmup - right here right now - fatboy slim
warmup - blind date theme - na
contestants onstage - suede - beautiful ones
blokes onstage - weather girls - it's raining men
girls onstage - space - female of the species
intervals - cardigans - my favourite game
intervals - soul bossa nova - quincy jones
Now all I have to do is put together the minidisc and we're away. Yay.
Via BBC News, the European Space Agency has launched a competition for the public to name their satellites -- only ESA member states are applicable to the competition.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big hand to the first Microsoft Car. The Register has all the details on the Citroen Windows CE model. Everyone repeat after me... "If cars were computers..."
Just been sorting through some server logs. Bizarrely, if you do a Google search on pictures of coloured horses, Daily Doozer comes up as the third hit, with a horse pictures site being all that separates me from a bizarre animal sex site. What fun.
Apparently, Salon thinks that it's a great time for me to be twenty, and they're running a piece about generation envy. I agree. In fact, I feel damn lucky to be twenty right now. Course, I'm envious towards the people who are about ten years younger than me, because they're going to grow up and take for granted what I've seen grow up with me--the net.
BBC News has a discussion forum on the US gun ownership debate. Best quote?
I don't even see how gun control comes into play in this case. Simply put, if the caretakers of the child had been more responsible and kept the gun in a safe place, this never would have happened. Whether child safety locks and whatnot really would've worked is really something you can't know. David, US
My opinion? If gun control had 'come into play in this case' there would have been no gun, regardless of child safety locks. Can someone come up with a valid reason as to why a mature society requires such free and widespread access to guns?
Scary quote:
...Children know that in the US if a mother does not want her child she may kill him with impunity (abortion). Therefore it does not surprise me that children now have claimed the right to kill their classmates if the classmates do not please them.
The Times now has a search page, but it only extends back to 1 January 2000. Their old search page had been broken since about late 1998 after they said they were "reconstructing their database". Finally. And while they're at it, will someone please take a sledgehammer to The Times's site design?
Unfortunately the content you're looking for isn't here. There may be a misspelling in your web address or you may have clicked a link for content that no longer exists. Perhaps you would be interested in our most recent articles.
