Black Dog Blog

• Return of the Superlambananas http://bit.ly/cvv2j7 @oonagh_j #
• #vss Jesus looked out of the window and – "Aw, dad," he grumbled. Overcast again! He'd have to put off the transfiguration until tomorrow. #
• Ha, @Vesperae will approve. He loved your film. RT @Hazzatronica: We played Connect 4 in the middle of Regent St http://tinyurl.com/yjae9ge #
• I'm jealous. Does anywhere do vegetarian-meat buffets? #meatmonday On the upside, just got great wheat-free birthday cake for mum @ 8th Day. #
• #vss "Special offer!" I smiled, spraying the perfume sampler towards her. The virus would work fast. Her unborn child, replaced by my clone. #

• "Ghostbusters survival horror" – tell me that's not the greatest theme for a video game! Ghost Hunter on PS2 is fun, but tricky, so far. #
• "The dog is the Arduino to the cat's iPod Shuffle." — Richard Feynman or someone #

With help and prompting from Anke, I've made our IRC channels private so we don't get any more botlike people (or personlike bots) coming in, saying "/me *" and then disappearing.

They didn't really bother me, but hey, if I can spend minimal effort removing a negligible annoyance, why not?

For those who don't know, the Profusion channel is on irc.starchat.net, channel #proelium (for legacy reasons). I also maintain #profusion on the same server. Drop in. It's not members only.

• #vss When she suggested driving with the top down I knew it was time to end it. Pity, she's hot, but I can't breathe vacuum. #
• #vss When she flicked on the sluggish light, she saw spindly legs disappear into the corners. They seemed to whisper "BecbecbecbecBECCA!" #

• #vss They're coming. I can hear. My leg won't stop jiggling, ha ha! They're outside. Or inside? My welcoming committee's loaded and cocked. #
• #vss Dear Sally, wish you were here. It is sunny. I saw a girl who looked like you but her blood was the wrong red. See you very soon. XXXXX #
• I love my job, but sometimes it makes me so, so angry. http://bit.ly/boidQf #tftd Platitude of the Day saves my sanity: http://bit.ly/9n9NLP #
• Just found myself thinking "What's the English for Luftkissenfahr… hovercraft!" Yes, I am a native English speaker. #
• RT @thoroughlygood: Rule of thumb: unless they're talent BBC people get very twitchy when there are cameras around. // YES THIS KEEP IT AWAY #

Main impressions of Alice in Wonderland (2010). Not massively spoilerish but I'll put them behind a cut:

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi Southern USA, would you mind not cheesing me off today? Oh never mind, forget it:

US school cancels prom 'over lesbian date'

Fine. OK, China, you're still on probation. Don't let me down now… oh hell, why do I bother ungrounding you lot.

Eleven rare Siberian tigers die at Chinese zoo

Australia, Australia, I hardly dare even ask. Well wait a second, what do we have here?

Atheists meet in Melbourne to celebrate lack of faith

Sounds like lots of fun. I almost wish I could attend.

Female porn director to fight Parliament seat in Kent

It doesn't say if the films she directs make an attempt at being 'healthy', or are the usual creepy exploitative crap. Either way, well, if she wants to run, best of luck to her in evading the Daily Wail and not sabotaging the whole gig for Lib Dem voters country-wide… that's what I care about most here.

Escapologist's ferret escapes

In pictures: PUPPIES! Crufts 2010

I can't remember if I've linked this older story before. Japan's patient pets

This is one of those stories where you almost don't need to read the text, because nothing could outdo the headline. (Any suggestions for a snappy term for this kind of story?)

Mummified hand disappears from Wiltshire pub again

For some time I was wondering why E-Type's song "Fall from the Sky" was in my head, then I remembered I'd seen this story:

Mystery of 75 starlings falling from the sky

Genius.

Nanometre 'fuses' for high-performance batteries

UK treenage slang. A nifty section shows how kids in different areas express this phrase in their own patois:

"John's girlfriend is really pretty. But she got mad with him the other day because he wanted to hang out with his friends rather than take her to the cinema. She got really angry and stormed off. It was very funny."

Giant croc skull

• RT @NameYourTale: In the Hall of Mountain Dew http://is.gd/a9uH7 #microfiction // 'Commissioned' (well, suggested) for @Ree ;-P #
• Brunette and acoustic guitarist busking in reception. Sweet. #
• I'm returning to the first job I ever did for the BBC: making wrong answers for multiple-choice quizzes. Rediscovering how much I enjoy it! #
• There's something magic about making plausible wrong options: fooling people, putting in hidden references for anyone who knows the subject. #
• I'm @Degsy, I like meat and I think cats are sweet. I live in a tower 'caus I like the power and I like an RDF triple with my tipple.*ducks* #

• Uploading and testing #TFTD mightn't be the BEST time for my brain to have a panic twitch at the sound of the speaker's voice. #fail #aspie #

• #vss Some beginning mages turn people into frogs. Some make them think they're frogs (this is funnier). Suitov… just liked to watch frogs. #
• #vss Suitov spent many months observing a captured lizard. The mannerisms he learned proved useful for disconcerting aunts and other adults. #
• #vss A spell in a poorly-researched book of his mother's needed eye of newt. Reasoning that a whole newt was better, Suitov let one observe. #

• Signing off an email full of puns about copper, with the phrase "Cu tomorrow". Wonders if it will be noticed. #
• I feel like this when I remember to take my medication. *happy!* http://bit.ly/9TJCKH #
• Usually I'm high-functioning – can talk, remember to smile and so on. But sometimes I need some time simply to be autistic… #autism #aspie #

• Help. I can't stop listening to this. http://bit.ly/bcohIU [Still Alive remix] #
• Just realised it's someone's birthday on the 15th so I can't go and see Enter the Dragon. Rats. I WANT TO SEE PUNCHING. #
• Compromising. My usual verbal slang for "certificate" is "stiff", but I'm not writing "Thanks, I already have a stiff" over staff messenger. #

• It's a wossname. Metaphor. A tradition or an old charter or something. Or maybe it's a butterfly, dreaming of being a different butterfly. #

My brother's parents¹ keep a tiny weekend house in the Lake District. We went there with a couple of his other friends overnight yesterday. As it happened, I hadn't been there before (not often invited, usually busy).

During the course of the afternoon I proved myself the most adept fire-builder — which was amusing, since two of them claimed first-hand experience lighting fires, whereas I had to approach the thing completely from theory. Nevertheless, the thing lit up at my hands, and a good job it did, because it was below freezing overnight. I also beat an electric pump at inflating mattresses. Old-fashioned footpower for the win?

Also, we melted the nozzle off one of the air mattresses with a hairdryer. On reflection, when I suggested the idea, I should have specified that the thing be set to cold air.

The sheer number of stars in the night sky, out there as we were among sheep-infested hills six miles from the nearest village, was very nice to see.

We got in a little stroll this morning; just ten or twenty minutes or so, because two of the party were not best suited to the exercise. Yes, turns out some people are unfit even compared to me. n00bs!

I seemed to spend a lot of time teaching people things², ranging from how fire works ("small stuff burns faster and hotter; the big logs are the ones that will last all evening, but they need to be much hotter to catch fire, so we have to start with small…" …at which point I trail off, unable to compete with Nuts Magazine, and just get the damn thing going. Fire. Fiiiiire. Pretty pretty fire) to how sheep work ("why is that one's leg bright orange? Was it born like that?" "At a guess, I'd say it was antibiotic dip." … "You don't actually think sheep speak a language, do you?" "Not a syntactic one, but if you mean can they recognise bleats? Absolutely"). (Yeah, I don't know either.)

So, yes, turns out some people know even less about countryside than I. Pah! n00bs, I say!

Also. In general, much as I like 1960s music and classic rock, I've heard enough Magic-FM, Smooth-Radio, Late-Night-Love-Letters, Stuff-Even-Radio-2-is-Too-Embarrassed-to-Play utter shite over this day and night to last me quite some years.³ I had to sneak some headphones on and blast some DragonForce during the car journey or I would have gone quite, quite mental.

¹ Yes, brothers with different parents. It's an honorary thing. No blood-letting was involved.

² "The only one who could ever reach me was the geek-talkin' sonuva teacher man", etc.

³ "Do you not think it's choonage, Herms? You biiiitch!" Sadly, my tolerance of other people's music is not reciprocated when I should want to put on Symphony X.

• Mother: "Are you implying my cat is in any way disloyal?" Herm: "s slash any slash every" #nerd #perljokes #nobodyunderstandsme #

I'm lazy and thus quoting my mate Andrew:

"If you want to save BBC 6 Music, BBC websites, Asian Network, Blast, Switch etc. then you need to contact the BBC Trust. It's they who make the decision, not the Culture Secretary (Tory or Labour) or anyone else. You can give them your views here."

What's really cool is that once you've filled in the questionnaire, the site gives you a PDF of your own responses. For those interested, I've attached mine to this post.

(The questions in the PDF are abridged, so the "what do you think of those proposals?" ones won't make that much sense if you haven't seen what the proposals are. They're shown in full on the consultation site, so go along and have a look if you're curious.)

• BBC responses, 3 March

• #vss He could deal with the maggots, but not the way her face kept changing location between her torso and limbs. "Can we just be friends?" #
• #vss Orbital Station Par-Tay was founded in recognition of a simple principle: in space, nobody can thump the wall complaining of the noise. #
• #vss She was convinced his cat was a chav. Its fur was Tabby by Burberry and it had installed blue LEDs and a subwoofer under its mat. #
• Chav cat by John Riordan: http://www.johnriordan.co.uk/img/pictures/chavcat.jpg #scally #chav #cat #kitten #scum #

• Tech prog: "…trying to frag them at 2 frames per second." Herm: "Lol. See what she did there? It's a pun on FPS." … #nobodyunderstandsme #