Black Dog Blog

Archive for June, 2007

I'm seeing this tonight. A colleague's husband reported on it on the opening night (jammy git!) and said it was marvellous; then someone had a single spare ticket and I bit. Should be cool.

Seen loads of theatrey things recently. I are so cultured. The last thing was Much Ado last weekend, which was great. A very small company, which meant everyone doubled up to play two or three roles. Both sets of lovers were played by the same two actors – the female actor as Beatrice and in drag (army uniform no less… rowr) as Claudio, and the male as Benedick and in a fine, quaint, graceful and excellent dress (it's canon!) to play Hero.

Also, it was an outdoor performance. Last weekend in Manchester it rained A LOT. Yeowch. But they kept at it, and most of the audience stayed.

Other recent things I've seen were a strange Three Musketeers ballet *throws up the horns* and a Bollywood-style Mikado. Oh, and on Monday Slen and I will sit in on a recording of a pilot for a radio quiz to do with classic comedy. And they wonder why my head's eclectic…

edit: And Cats around Slen's birthday, of course – mustn't forget that. Was awesome.

Greek myth personality test via Altivo.

(Have I taken this before? The format of the results seems vaguely familiar. The questions weren't, though, and were fun.)

Your Score: Prometheus

Results and my notes follow…

Read the rest of this entry »

Funky new image technology (ignore the advert for about the first 30 seconds)

'Photosynth' (from about 2:50 mins onwards) is the really exciting thing. The software has found the vanishing points in various photographs and extrapolated, building up a 3D view. Wait 'til their Notre Dame demo, for it is much with the blowing-off of the socks.

It made me wonder

1. what would happen if Google Earth got their hands on it
2. how they'll deal with the major downside to UGC, namely that you get fifty million near-identical copies of what people en masse consider interesting, and no views of the back of the building
3. how the software would cope with things that are broadly rotationally symmetrical, like the Eiffel Tower and whatnot

It's also a good answer to the question I wonder about: what can anyone usefully do with all the largely unremarkable junk people shove on places like Flickr? (Sorry; my web 1.0, skills-and-formal-education-valuing side is showing again. But my serious point is that there's a desperate need for metadata of some kind to make sense, and use, of all these burgeoning resources.)

Microsoft's blurb page – although this is (according to some blokes on the geeky mailing list I got this from) not a Microsoft product itself but a small research company/project/thingy the corp has bought.

Invalid argument against the smoking ban. "Changing the law to make something previously legal illegal will make previously legal things illegal."

Sigh. I struggle with the smoking ban. On the one hand… I am firmly convinced that smoking is the exact moral equivalent of taking a bag of asbestos fibres out with you and blowing them at people. Because of this, I have no sympathy for any argument based on the enjoyable effects people may get from it, and/or on any byproducts of their addiction. So it's relaxing, so you get the jitters if you stop. These are irrelevances. If it wasn't harmful to anyone else, I don't care even if you hate every second of it; I'd still let you do it if you wanted to (or perhaps should phrase that as "if you didn't want help to stop", considering we're dealing with addiction).

The civil liberties vs. totalitarian state issue is where I'm struggling. Because there's no doubt about my own feelings on the issue: I want smoking to be banned. More accurately, I want it to disappear. I also want various other things to disappear, including people who repeat a word or phrase loudly three or more times in certain circumstances (it sets off my autist panic response) and Simply Red. If these didn't exist my life would contain fewer things to spoil my mood. Nona dolorosa.

Well, we know what a country is like that's ruled on gut feelings and I Want To Ban What I Don't Like. Freakin' terrifying.

You can't legislate for considerate behaviour. That's the central thing as I see it.

Smoking has been singled out; there have been no sensible moves to ban petrol cars and other poison-factories (taxing them off the road isn't a complete solution unless you invest in public transport – the rail network in particular urgently needs its prices sharply regulated). Then again, I don't know that it's wrong to single smoking out; it's an easy target because it's such a foul habit. But is it something the government needs to wade in and ban? Grr.

The smoke that bothers me, personally, the most won't even be banned, because most times I come into contact with a faceful are when I'm out walking along the road.

So I think I should be at least partly opposed to the ban. Or maybe it's the right-wing author I've been enjoying recently and I'll feel differently after I've read a few Iain M Bankses. I can't trust my fogged brain even to think clearly at the moment, which is a perfectly hateful state for a deitything that considers itself at least semi-rational.

I love Germany.

Here be Scientology
More on Scientology
Germany rocks.

Well blow me down – it's a Shaded unicorn! Sort of.

The picture is a chevrotain unicorn, looking very much as I'd imagined Shade's native genus (except more beautiful). I was planning something long-term with these little guys over the weekend, as it happens. Must remember to ask Profusionites about that.

Now nobody will believe I came up with them by myself… bah. Why must discovering cool art and stories always come with a bitter aftertaste? (Perhaps I'm a negative bastard, or perhaps I only like things that are similar to the stuff I make myself. We all write for ourselves, after all. Mostly.)

(edit: link changed to deviantart page, since the auction page will presumably disappear when it's won.)

I may not be a very well bunny puppy. Since this weekend, when I kinda sorta blacked out a little bit one time, I've started trying to pay a bit more attention to what I think my rancid meatcarcase body may be trying to tell me.

It doesn't look all that good. I've just been dealing all this time with the tremors and other problems with my hands and, honestly, had forgotten quite how bad things really look from outside.

Tremors and stuff behind the cut… Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, a quick aside: Unsharp Mask, Hue/Saturation and Levels can turn this into this. Photoshop is awesome. I didn't think I'd get much out of that original, since they couldn't give us a larger version.

Now, all sorts of cool audio and articles and pictures!

Men who wear the face veil
New addition to a longer article that I helped research.

Army chaplains
Researched and written by yours truly, also responsible for judicious chopping-up of audio, photos and quotations. As you can see, in places I've put heavy emphasis on letting the guys tell it in their own words. I think they say it best, and anyway, I can't fathom their logic to rephrase it.

Jerusalem gallery
Captions emphatically not researched by me, who wouldn't touch that topic with a +3 stabbity vorpal broadsword unless I had to. Have to be so careful – witness this guide for BBC journalists…

All these articles were written and made at various times, but by coincidence we ended up launching them all this morning. Hectic. I'm quite stressed. Now going to a training session about our shiny new VOIP phones.

I think this guy (from a BBC Backstage mailing list) has the funniest signature I've seen this month.

SELECT * FROM remarks WHERE witty=1 LIMIT 1

It's SQL, and (I'm sure someone who actually knows SQL will correct me on my translation) says "select one record from everything in the 'remarks' table, with the condition that it must be witty". So it's a SQL way of saying "insert witty remark here".

(I think this statement would always return the same witty remark unless you added some kind of command about ordering the results. Not sure, though.)

I'm very easily amused by jokes in languages I don't know well, purely from the excitement of being able to understand them.

Beautiful Flickr photos roundup. You will notice a theme here. (All of these are (currently) licensed so you can use them commercially and make derivative things from them. Check the 'Additional Information' section on the individual Flickr pages.)

Beautiful

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
seven plus one

Cute

nine
ten (These guys do "skeptical" to a T. Perfect.)
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen

Sickeningly cute

fifteen
sixteen
seventeen

Amusing for various other reasons

eighteen
nineteen

Obligatory cat for Ree and similar vile heathens

How many of you jumped straight to this, you rotters? >:(

Beautiful Flickr photos roundup. You will notice a theme here. (All of these are (currently) licensed so you can use them commercially and make derivative things from them. Check the 'Additional Information' section on the individual Flickr pages.)

Beautiful

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
seven plus one

Cute

nine
ten (These guys do "skeptical" to a T. Perfect.)
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen

Sickeningly cute

fifteen
sixteen
seventeen

Amusing for various other reasons

eighteen
nineteen

Obligatory cat for Ree and similar vile heathens

How many of you jumped straight to this, you rotters? >:(

No, no and again no, you pricks!

My mother's hospital ward is a rant for another time…

Good grief. Can nobody stop that boy?

I clean forgot to watch the race yesterday! D'oh.

I'm thoroughly sick of the Falklands. And sick of the UK propaganda machine that has all the media outlets describing it as the anniversary of their "liberation". Not that I'm on Argentina's side in any aspect but the basic geographical-proximity logic… but it's just "blah blah, colonial power, we're so tough".

Because I was born while it was going on, relatives refer to the Falklands conflict as "my war". I think this is most unfair. It's not as though I was entirely the antichrist. Not literally.

The Church is committed to the protection of children.

Yeah, right. They're fanatical about protecting unborn ones from being 'murdered', but once they're popped out, seems to me they can go hang for all the church cares.

Disabled children bullying claims

As seen in my user-info, my views do not represent those of the BBC, as will become obvious when I say that I agree with all the points quoted in this story. In particular, and maybe the report itself mentions this (I'll try to find the time to read or skim it), the BBC cannot cannot cannot report impartially on itself. You can see it over and over – recent example being the licence fee, prominent example being Hutton. No doubt it makes a better effort at this than some other channels, but its coverage has—well, an innate pro-BBC bias.

Brilliant, Mary Jane! (Whatta birdbrain.)

Baby Felicitas!

Call for 'post-9/11' RE teaching

Quite agree. Our RE lessons were rubbish – divorced from reality. That is, I firmly hold that all religion is entirely divorced from reality (most of them seem to be proud of the fact), but our lessons just went over the very basics – this is a mosque, draw this plan of a gurdwara for homework – and didn't explain much of anything underlying.

They didn't explain what religion is for, which I didn't understand at all, being brought up unbrainwashed in at least that regard. (And all right, I still don't understand that question.) Anyway – covering ways in which religion is not always a force for good isn't just a good idea; it should be mandatory.

On the topic of understanding that aforementioned point, I have still to read The God Delusion; my reading list is horribly backed up foul simile deleted, with a stack of Ashers yet to inhale. I am currently discovering the wonders of gabbleducks with dark, ensanguined glee, although scoles and hooders are probably my favourites on this particular savage alien world. (Well, after Jain nanomycelia and, naturally, all possible iterations of Dragon, but those characters aren't natives.)

I think I've sat around basking in the "At last, I feel as though I can really call myself a writer without the need to include sarcastic single quote marks!" glow for long enough and need to create more low-grade fun. Problem is, there's nowhere (/no-one with whom) I can write at my usual haunt. And I'm certainly not ready to start any more long solo projects just yet.

I don't feel up to seeking another RP venue either. I dipped into a couple of the multiversal communities on LJ a few times, with a slightly alternative-universe version of one of my regular characters, but those comms move so fast that I don't feel up to that either.

Stupid me. If there's no polite opening for me to write, I'll jolly well make one. It's about time to boot the Unnamed Taverna anyway.

Bandmate promised to do music with me this evening, so naturally when I went round he was OUT. >:(

MediaMonkey's playback and playlist functionality is so far beyond broken, it's brain-damaged. I can't deal with it at all. For example, if Shuffle is turned on and you tell it to play a particular track, it will play a random OTHER track. Does that seem right to you? Yes, shuffle, well done, but "Play this now" should clearly have priority in its stupid media playering logic. So, while I very happily use MM to catalogue, tag and organise my music collection, I hate trying to listen to things in it.

Of course, just when I'm most irritated by it, MediaMonkey does something like put The Toymaker's Story on and completely draws my tooth. This is probably the single greatest instrumental (synthesised and without words) non-soundtrack (i.e. not a video game remix or similar) piece of music I own.

*puts on HMS Pinafore*

Oh, and I'm trying out FoxyTunes for Firefox, but it's not honestly very useful. If you use it to skip forward in MediaMonkey, the usual little tooltip balloon doesn't come up to tell you what's playing now. … … …Of course, I could just have found the option that shows the now-playing title in the browser status bar. Idiot.

I have my E500 earphones! So far I'm agreeing with the criticisms in the various reviews I read about the clunkiness of the PTH module, which is a shame, because I'd love to wear it if it was usable. The earphones themselves are pretty easy to screw in and wearing them with the wire hooked over the ear isn't too weird at all; I've about got the hang of it after three goes.

I'm not sure how to evaluate the sound, except that I do seem to be hearing things much more clearly – picking out parts I might not have noticed in the past, perhaps that sort of thing. More when I've worn them for a longer period and listened some more. They do isolate more sound. They are also VERY VERY LOUD on my weedy Aspieish ears, necessitating the inline volume turnwheel module.

My cowardly ears are actually the object of the exercise: of necessity, for comfort's sake, I always listen to music so low that background noise is often louder (that's even excluding when I'm on the rattly tram). So, in theory, noise isolation and clearer sound seems like the good shiz. I'll let you know more after I've taken a couple of tram journeys (well, and when I've had my iPod returned from its hospitalised borrower).

I also discovered that despite having pathetically tiny hands and feet, my ear canals are so generous that I need the largest silicone-plastic ear-tip thingies. I tried the foam sleeves, which a lot of people seem to prefer, but hated them. They're exactly like foam earplugs, even down to the yellow colour (why? Hides the wax?), but then again, I don't much like earplugs, either. I'm not sure what about the feel of them is unpleasant.

My fingerless bikarrrgh gloves for my aforementioned stupid tremor-wracked hands arrived! With those and leather coat I look stunningly good, or would if I weren't wearing my brother's Reebok tracksuit bottoms like a stupid chav, and were also thinner and taller and you get the idea.

Finally, I went in to see my mother today. Then, afterwards, I sent some things she wanted in with one of her friends who was visiting her during the second lot of visiting hours. Come to think of it, I hope she remembered the icepack. *twists mouth* Today and yesterday I've been telling all the friends and family I can think of that she's out of theatre and well. Didn't remember her sisters until today. (They do both live far away, and I remembered people in the vicinity first. Damn.)

Getting in to work this morning was fun. Trams were delayed (apparently a few drops of RAIN had fallen (yes, this really was the reason)) and I ended up being offered a lift by someone else who'd been standing at the stop. I and another person I didn't know got driven into town in her big BMW, which was cool of her. (Yes, mother, I did offer dosh for the petrol.)

People are awesome, and now I have to do a random favour for someone I don't know, because my code of honour says so. Maybe I'll get the opportunity this evening when I visit my mum in Wivven Hozza.

For Mancunians, today's the 11th year after the Arndale terrorist bomb.

Lots of the injured folks were behind the police cordon and thought they were safe to rubberneck at the pitty kaboomsplosions.

This explains why I view St Patrick's Day with a sour moue. Ireland hurrah, is that right? So why are there terrorists in its parliament? (Perhaps that's why the day's so widely celebrated by a country with a bunch of war criminals in the cabinet.) (At least our war criminal is stepping down. [Or 'our lackey of their war criminal', if you prefer, but I attribute more responsibility to Blair. He's not stupid or weak.])

More people want to learn English, so we're cutting funding.

What rubbish. English lessons should be compulsory for everyone who lives here. And I do include those born here, especially the Vicky Pollards and anyone who ever misused an apostrophe ever.

Medic in India held for 'female foeticide'

Given my views on abortion (killed while still undifferentiated cells is a consideration-worthy alternative to being born into a crap life where you're unwanted), I'd be inclined to allow the idiots to abort their girlchildren and deal with the consequences. The word 'sister' might almost disappear from the language, and fewer of the spoiled boychildren would be able to find wives, but still.

Unfortunately it's naïf to think that those girls who are born will be valued more as a result.

Howard to hold Dalai Lama meeting

So, someone tell me, what's the great fascination among religious figures for saying "There were prophets/great leaders/neat people before me, but [God says] I will be the last"? Because to me it seems like sulkily stamping your foot and declaring that all progress must stop at your death.

I ask because it's a common theme. The last Jain guy did it, Muhammad did it, I think Jesus tried to do it (but I'm not sure on that one), I can't remember offhand whether Bahà'u'llah did it, Guru Gobind definitely did it (he named a book as his successor, for Gwaed's sake), and even the current Dalai Lama has said he doesn't think he's going to bother being reborn. Reactionary tantrums? Outrage at the thought of things happening after you're gone that you won't be able to control? Plain incredible arrogance in the view that you have all the answers and they won't ever need anyone else? I'm curious.

P.S. China has no right to talk about anything. Ever.

Men suffer from phantom pregnancy symptoms like morning sickness. Doesn't surprise me at all, for some reason.

I know it's too late for Blog the Zombie Apocalypse Day…

Admiration. So much.

Late risers unite in Denmark

Given enough 24/7 shops and services, this would be the definition of awesome.

Hey, wasn't I going to write a sci-fi story once about a society along those lines? There was massive overcrowding in the cities, along with huge demand for labour for some reason – industry in general very unmechanised and un-automated, I think – and people shared houses by shifts. You owned your tiny flat for eight hours a day, in which you slept and used the shower and so on, and for the rest of the time you had to be out while each of the other two people had it. (If you want to do something with this idea, feel free; I doubt I'll get round to it very soon. Feel free to take the title I just came up with, too: Shiftless.)

'Bland' British food goes Indian

There was a brilliant sketch on GGM in which some Indian louts visited an 'English' restaurant (a restaurant serving English food, as we call curry houses Indian restaurants) and drunkenly ordered "the blandest thing on the menu!" (a reversal of non-Asian British louts reeling in and asking for the spiciest thing on the menu out of bravado).

Jihadi diary – this is fascinating.

<3 Banksy.

Only suspended?

Don't like to say what I'd do to the pair of them if they ever came into my power. I suspect it's a good thing I'm not in a law enforcement career. Clearly the priest is seriously sick and needs sectioning – the other one goes without saying. The approach I'm favouring at the moment, however, involves immobilisation, an electrical cord and Ichorite, the enchanted and very rusty-looking bound axe I made last night in Oblivion.

Guide dog leads chapel's singing

Rapid take-up on Windows' Safari (I couldn't download the blasted thing! I'm hearing very good things, though – it's supposedly much faster than IE.)

NEW DESKTOP WALLPAPER

Couldn't they have announced this on the 2nd March?

(2/3, important numbers for self-proclaimed Erisians.)

Pickpocketry.

Mmmm, subtle colours.

Aus Muslim lifeguards (video, 28:48 minutes long).

My mother just got out of theatre and is fine.

Child obesity 'a form of neglect'

Vatican urges end to Amnesty aid

I'd feel bad taking money from the crazy cultists anyway.

The cardinal suggested that Amnesty had come under pressure from the pro-abortion lobby and that this had clouded their judgment. (from video report commentary) Let's all bask in that poisonous hypocrisy awhile.

In pictures: Wildlife survives in southern Sudan

*sings "A lion and a leopard come to this open place" in Zulu*

The bizarre and selective Puritanism of the US is as old as the nation.

Bizarre and selective, absolutely. We all think this.

(But I'm not too sympathetic to the woman who was put in jail for breaking the law. Campaign for a law change or prison reform, absolutely, but if you do something wrong and get caught, quit bitchin'.)

A flood-isolated Australian town was in danger of running out of beer this week until emergency volunteers came to their rescue.

Ah, Oz. <3

A little grave robbing…

…and a kid who hitched a ride in the wrong coffin.

Quite weird, but I'm absolutely sure the dead woman and child don't mind, and while the parents didn't know they didn't mind either. Comes down to a case of simple fraud. They paid for a service they didn't receive.

Birds try to discourage more people entering early graves.

Junk DNA isn't junk!

Corallium corals to be protected from becoming hideous necklaces

(Appeal in progress on behalf of non-tacky jewellery, likely to be turned down, because there's never an excuse for pink.)

Awesome. The landscape needs more water wheels, I say.

Campaigners trawl Tube for papers

Yes! The stacks of free newspapers annoy me so much! Nobody much even puts them in the recycling bins near my work station. They just dump 'em in a normal bin or leave them on the Metrolink seat. There are even people employed to hand out free evening papers on my way home, and that irritates me intensely.

We do not need newspapers. We have radio. We have internet. We have telly, though BBC breakfast 'news' these days is a national joke (or ought to be). We do not need this daily waste of paper. It's absolutely appalling.

Wafflecopter.

Yay Ash! (Especially them. Half the tracks on the album of theirs I've got are rubbish anyway.)

Bad pun alert! "Scot of the Arctic". That's like something Juris would come out with. Mwaha.

When Augustus John sat for Vicari in the 1960s, he insisted he was drawn not painted and I can see why. That one's a brilliant sketch, but the paintings are ugly.

Kettle? This is Pot, you black bastard.

(not-very-nice racial language used purely in spirit of satire)

Spin-savvy politicians (and other celebrities) have a twisted, diseased symbiosis with the press. They're both feeding off each other, except that the tabloids have the option to turn on their mutual parasite (in fact this is guaranteed to happen, after a predictable trimeframe).

I'd like to see standards of quality, not content, imposed on the press. But not by this authoritarian government. The proles seem to want to read this trash about boring Paris Hilton's boring prison sentence or which boring person boring Alan Sugar wants as his boring apprentice, and with this generation it's because they've been brought up on it, so it's a nastily tangled problem.

(Do these 'apprenticeships' only last a year, incidentally, so they can sell a further series of the programme? I thought, traditionally, apprenticeships were much longer. They're for mastering your craft, after all. Clearly I am laughably out of date with today's edumacational system and entertainment media.)

Getting the most from open source

Good that they've finally heard of OpenOffice (which is a pretty good program, though it suffers from a few annoying characteristics inherited from MS Office!), but they could have come up with some more interesting further recommendations than Firefox-Thunderbird.

How about Pidgin (tafka Gaim), the open-source multi-network messaging client? Or PDFCreator, which lets you create PDFs from any program that can print? And those are just some of the ones that this XP-using non-Slashdot-reading aspie's heard of.

US town set to ban saggy trousers

I still think public ridicule trumps legislation as an approach, you reactionary political loon. Having said that, I recently happened to be walking behind an isolated case of some youngster with des waistband approaching des knees. It was hilarious. De had to pull them up in the end.