Black Dog Blog

Archive for April, 2008

I knew I was bad at geography, but on this…

Cool world places game (try it!)

…I scored ~160,500. Pretty poor, but as it turns out, it was… lots more than my coworkers'.

Could one of you please beat my score with one hand tied, for my own peace of mind? I mean, I've got myself filed as "poor at geography"^1,2 and I'd really rather not have to switch labels.

Also, my coworkers think I'm smart. They were all, oh, yeah, I bet Herms thrashes us at this. I feel all uncomfortably warm now.

¹ notwithstanding that I can get within 55km of Helsinki, I also misread 'Western Wall' for 'Great Wall' and clicked in China. WIN
² I'm also the one who uttered "Madagascar? Isn't that the island to the right—uh, east of Africa?" I do, however, blame my illness for the word-finding difficulties there

edit: This is post 666 so I feel I haven't done my duty unless I've said something offensive. Thus, Read the rest of this entry »

nclüdr is beautifully crafted. Of particular note is the CAPTCHA and its accessibility options. Truly an exemplar for the ages.

Their privacy policy looks moderately less scary than what I hear about Facebook, too.

Another random cool thing.

Black squirrel boom time

Free game hopes to save gorillas

Iran calls for ban on Barbie doll

Tiger and zebra among NI 'pets'

Get off your bum, you lazy noisemakers. This problem happened to me a few times when I used to do Sunday morning 6am shifts… usually I was watching out so they didn't get a chance to honk.

This looks awesome. And if it's Tony Head speaking, it'll sound awesome. If I could steal his speaking voice and Brendan Brown's singing voice, I would be a happy, happy individual. And sound very weird.

Flies get 'mind-control sex swap'

Hunger makes bats 'act strangely'

Tourism crash threatens big cats

Crew hopes to film ghost (Flash vid)

But first. *gripes*

This morning:
Spam in inbox: 69 (dudes)
Spam in spam filter: 3 (one of these being a mislabelled real email)

FAIL, MAILFOUNDRY. FAIL.

I really don't want to switch to Gmail, because I likes me some EU data protection laws… but the rubbishness of SquirrelMail as a primary email application, coupled with MailFoundry's non-filtering, is pushing me in that direction.

Killer dogs shot dead by marksmen—ON FATAL RAMPAGE! (sry, no video)

Should Microsoft buy Yahoo? (embedded Flash video)

I recommend you just kind of sit slack-jawed at the epic geekiness. Oh hi, I have a robot. And a 360. (Look at the state of his living room! \m/) And now we'll go off on an argument about Microsoft being evil.

So guys, is the secret geek plot to parody ourselves already underway? 'Cause I didn't get the Twitter.

Eeeeeheeheehee. Want.

Colossal squid comes out of ice—BURNING FOR REVENGE!

Allo Allo dubbed into German… 0,o

US prisoner sues over weight loss—this is hilarious and deeply disturbing. In short, the sort of thing I wish I could make up.

Humphrey Lyttelton has died. :(

London is versus the wider UK (vid, as above)

Kew to display botanical art (vid)

Awesome mandrake in there.

Underwater treadmill tested by doggies, boring journalist. (vid) (relevant sequence ends at 2:00)

Galaxies go wild—FOR YOUR PLEASURE. (vid)

Rapid rise in dumped pets. But, like, for really really good excuses?

Pleasing: Coming up with a really obvious pun for your protag's ship's name, assuming everyone and pis dog will have used said pun before, Googling it and only finding 37 hits, mostly all not using it in the punny sense.

(I guess it helps that the pun only really works in the British pronunciation. Still… it's a lovely multi-level pun, dammit, and should get more exposure.)

Slightly alarming: Getting 6500 words into your short story, definitely more than halfway, and finding it has been breeding, and there is now at least one sequel, probably two, standing demurely in line. Tapping their feet.

I have an idea in my head of releasing parts 1 and 2 back-to-back, so although I hope to have 1 finished in a day or so, I may hang fire on it for a while. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I have so failed with the weekly poetry thing. XD I may try to catch up, but at this rate it's a bit like if Sisyphus had a pointy-haired boss, a wackstreme tremor and a cat tripping him up.

I will also try to catch up with blogs etc.

The BBC Radiophonics Workshop did some groundbreaking, creative stuff, which is why the most creative organisation in da wurld closed it down 10 years ago. But hey, the corp can still trade on the glory, right? Right? Guys? Er… observe, everyone—Dalek voices!

Now, disgusting behaviour.

Balding penguin given wetsuit (embedded Flash video)

(Isn't it nice when there's no commentary?)

EARS. PUPPY. EARSWTFSPLASH. (embedded Flash video)

Lion cubs. (embedded Flash video) I find these a tad creepy actually. (00:45 PAWNED!)

Priests sign huge record deal (embedded Flash video)

The state of the obvious, for all those of you who haven't yet realised that MMORPG players are morons playing is popular.

Oh, and the white hats say Tesco's'a gonna get haxxored.

40-years-dead man dug up, put in rubber mask, displayed to public. If you haven't been following this charnelcuterie of a story, then no, it's not the Tate Modern. It's Padre Pio, a guy who miraculously grew wounds just like his hero Jeezus's, honest. Creepy.

Is there a world? No, thank Baphomet, it's not Zen Buddhism, it's world politics. Yay South Africa, incidentally.

Giraffe's tongue destroys webcam. Striking a blow at Da Man! FREEDOMOMG! from teh surveillance society!

My aunt does audio descriptions for theatre. Somehow, this made me think of her.

Sweden won't follow Norway and Denmark in banning sexist ads.

Calf found running loose in town. Somehow, this Friday cute animal story forgets to say whether "it" is a veal, beef or milk calf. Which is it, guys? Guys? Gonna be killt for leather? Vellum? Burninated 'cause of foot and mouth? Anyone? (Oops, I think I just lost my entire readership.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Marcus Brigstocke's religious routine. <3 I know I've linked to it in the past, but it's just that good.

This clip mentions Ratzinger's past in passing.

Archbishop attacks 'debt culture'. I agree wholeheartedly; I get really angry at all the advertisements that scream "Interest free credit, pay nothing for a year!". But because it's Rowan Williams saying it, somehow I want to disagree.

A third of girls, and a fifth of boys, admit to having self-harmed. This makes me furious.

Trunchbull gets comeuppance. Over 10 years after the first complaints. Roald Dahl was bang on the mark about nobody believing kids.

Making opera interesting and accessible for the new generation. I know, guys! Let's make it look less pretentious… by doing it in a giant plexiglass cube with pictures projected on all the walls around it! Oh, and don't forget to add moar topless chick.

I'd like to see more pretenders to Gilbert and Sullivan's cap. Say, a Lee and Thomas with patter songs. How would that not be awesome? But then, that's my basic problem with opera: taking any of it seriously. People don't (thank Polymnia) sing their feelings in real life, and I can't sympathise with any screaming chick, so. To me the medium just begs for fun and banter. The stilted, formal, genteel, sung equivalent of a rap battle.¹ And, preferably, no mass marriages.

(Yeah, I don't know the first thing about opera. I just thought Lucia di Lammermoor a silly goose², and as for Turandot… seemed a perfectly nice girl to me.)

Carpenter develops wood allergy: one of these cases where you really don't need to read the story, because the headline's glorious on its own.

English village votes to be Welsh (article contains embedded vid)

¹ Or, in web vernacular, "comic baritone x comic baritone OTP".

I should find it most agreeable if you lady novelists would bear this sort of detail in mind. Ta, mate. Toss another— no, sorry, that's Australia.

I forgot to say. A man collapsed on the pavement on Monday afternoon as I was walking from work. Some other passers-by got there first, fortunately because I don't have a mobile phone. I hung around uselessly (another less shy first-aider had turned up by that point). The guy smelt of alcohol; he was barely conscious, eyes open and attempting to speak. Grubby, scruffy clothing. Unshaved. He'd been seen staggering before keeling over.

In due course I went a little way along the road to watch out for the ambulance, guessing that it would go to the wrong place on the basis of the number of times the guy with the mobile had had to repeat our location. (What's hard to find about "on Oxford Road opposite the Cornerhouse"? Don't ask me.) Ambulance duly turned up, sirens a-go-go, and screamed… right past the knot of people, two of whom were waving at it, pulling instead into the train station nearby. It was fetched back, the paras picked up the guy and we dispersed.

This sort of thing doesn't happen often in this immediate area, in my limited experience. There are a few seemingly homeless guys I've seen irregularly begging along Oxford Road, but that's the first time one's fallen down. And it was good to see that plenty of people stopped immediately, and others asked in passing if they could help.

The cheerful blonde paramedic recognised the guy at once. Which was quite sad, actually.

[edit: This was written yesterday and I forgot to publish it. Whee!]

Rent-a-dog! Fantasy Fuff: about as close to a real relationship as hiring a prostitute, imho. Inclined to agree with the RSPCA person.

Cloned sniffer dogs are after your Mary-Jane!

Arrest warrant issued for Darth Vader

Birdie

I was reading this (short) experimental report on chimpanzee grooming. It's from 1958 and laughably patronising, not to mention a bit unimaginative. (Didn't E. ever think of grooming Malcolm in return?)

Also, these things. PRATCHETT things. (David Tennant is involved, for all those who inexplicably find him attractive.)

And finally, a sad tale. Because it's official: I can't hear that damn Metallica song without my fingers twitching. (I'm not a guitarist or guitar-gamer, I point out; I would probably hurt myself if I attempted this track on Easy.¹)

Slen has five-starred almost everything in GHII and III's career modes on Expert (with only that Slayer auditory fart and Misirlou left to go, I think—not counting DragonForce because that is solid damn.) All this has had the effect of making me vaguely itchy to play an actual instrument.

Also, we only have a righty bass guitar, but I'm strongly lefty by instinct. Boo. >:( (cf achirality, which I have in heaps, but I'd really really rather not pluck with the hand whose fingers seize up. Oh well, sucks to be driving this body, I guess.)

¹ Well, my claim to the realm of not suck can be that I got 70% into TTFAF on my first attempt at the game, on Easy obviously. I attribute that to beginner's awesomium coupled with knowing the real song very well. I also epically failed Slow Ride mere minutes beforehand.

[also, edit: must stop air guitaring to Cliffs of Dover in lift.]

I'm all tired, joint-clunky and monitor-eyed¹ today. As I went to bed early and got up late, there is no alternative but to attribute this to the fact that there was a cat on my bed for half the night. Normally my bedroom door is kept closed with him outside. CDE.

:O :O :O (contains embedded Flash vid)

PCOS 'may aid athletes'

Whut? Yes, raised testosterone, leads to inevitable comparisons with steroids. But my understanding's that it's not enough to do any good… while, on the downside², PCOS is also associated with weight problems. And hirsutism. Which, uh, could affect wind resistance?

Horrific Hammer horror picture of horribleness. WARNING, picture is not safe for anyone with taste… and some of the other pages contain stage blood etc, but aren't as horrifying as this.

Most tasteless-yet-safe-for-work joke about this item wins some kind of poem.

Apples seized at docks go to zoo; chimps develop 20-a-day habit

Captive tigers 'may save species'

Rome overrun with extras from Astérix

¹ As in screen, eye fatigue therefrom, not as in lizard. Worse luck.
² Which is in no way to suggest that testosterone is overall better than that wacky oestrogen/progesterone cycle the human world knows and loves.

A conversation partner was telling me she hates worldbuilding. Not shoddy worldbuilding, the sort of stuff that contains Wiccan utopias and Aryan elves, in other words the sort of things that can muck up your average penny dreadful fantasy book (in my view, of course). No, she hates the very idea that writers make up worlds and tell you about them. The adjective used was "arrogant".

Well, the solution to that is simple: stay out of science fiction and fantasy, an area that tends to contain an awful lot of people who feel the other way.

I thought it was a bit insensitive to rant about this to someone who, she's very well aware, is a second-rate worldbuilding writer of fant-shamelessly-mixed-with-SF. But I didn't comment on this, I sat through it and did my best to understand exactly what she was talking about.

Pratchett is OK because his tongue's in his cheek and what he's really writing about (Discworld, world and mirror of worlds) is our world in disguise. Pullman is fine because he sets things in our world or nearly (except when he doesn't, i.e. most of the second and third Dark Materials novels, but apparently that's OK; I didn't manage to get enough clarification as to why). Watership Down on the other hand was hated (I can't comment; I've only seen the film, and thought it was just lame: not worth my time, but certainly not a life-marring experience I'd rail against on numerous occasions in the following years. It seems to have scarred my conversation partner deeply). And Tolkien is detested. Not because of any of the criticisms I'd level at him; simply because he had the "arrogance" to build a world and run an example story or two on it by way of demonstration.

"You can almost hear the geeky little minds ticking over as they decide 'this magic works like this, this species can do this, the limit of this is that'." Said in a rather contemptuous tone.

She's read The Hobbit and gave up a short way into LOTR. (I thrashed the whole way through Hobbit and the trilogy but skipped the appendices and never had any urge to read the prequels.) Other than that, I believe the only SFF she's read has been by the other authors mentioned, barring classics (ie possibly Frankenstein, 20KLUTS, etc).

She finished up by talking about some film she'd seen, set in the real world, in which the premise involved a departure from reality, but nothing was explained because the film itself was all about the reactions of the characters to this event. This was approved of precisely because nothing was explained so there was nothing to "nitpick" (I suspect, didn't have a chance to ask, that a stickling for consistency or realistic fictional rules is also looked down upon).

Now, personally I don't like the attitude that things are inherently superior if they're about Real People or The Real World. I think that's arrogant in itself (edit: and possibly based on a misunderstanding of the point of a large chunk of SFF lit). That aside, the film she described doesn't sound like the sort of film I'd like, because nothing significant in my view seemed to have happened. That's fine and, following my own advice, I simply won't watch any film billed as (for example) "coming-of-age" or "an intimate portrait of" or other helpful warning labels.

But when I said the film sounded boring, which I intended as shorthand for "the sort of thing I'd find boring" because I can't speak perfectly precisely when I'm trying to fit in with a conversation with someone who talks faster than me but nevertheless I hoped it would be perfectly comprehensible that that's what I meant, I got "omg why did you have to say that, that was completely unnecessary, you don't even know anything about it, omg omg".

The hypocrisy hurts. And I was already a little shaken to have sat through someone who has read Mews (which is set in a fictional world, and goes some way to explaining the rules of magic in said world) and said it was great, saying my chosen sphere of writing is arrogant and geeky-in-an-unmitigatedly-pejorative-sense.

I'd also ventured to say that things that completely refuse to explain their premises annoy me, because "it's basically religion; if there's no testable hypothesis, how can you make up your mind?" I should've known better. That won me some contempt. "How ridiculous, it [the film]'s not an experiment!" (Um, yes, it is. Putting Real People characters in a situation and seeing how they react is a thought experiment. Just of a different sort.)

Oh, and then I was accused of being contemptuous of her because I didn't like the sound of some film she liked. This conversation ended with a door being shut in my face. I do not mean this figuratively.

I'm trying to understand the viewpoint that something set on Earth, even if it's warped to the extent of the alternative Earth in Northern Lights, is potentially OK, but something in a fictional setting is damned (at least, if the narrative requires explanation of how the setting works differently from Earth). I'm trying to understand this, because it's so very out of whack with my view.

My view's this, and I tell it to you because I didn't get much chance to express it to her. A barely-fictionalised Real World and a fictional completely alien planet can both be equally ridiculous if used to push a moral. If the entirety of the setup exists to prove that the author's right, then whether your straw men are orcs or record executives (potentially both, in the sort of thing I'd write) and whether your Ethically Compatible Hero saves the day by plucky use of a buttonhole camera or plucky use of the Ancient Macguffin of Kru, I don't think I'll love your writing. 'Course I may like the book if I'm too young to know who the lion is and am enticed by talking dogs, but when I grow up, I'll feel annoyed. Point is, Writer On Board isn't just a fant thing. Nevertheless, still, given the choice of good Real World writing and good fictional world writing, I will take the fictional world. Not only does the Real World grind me down sufficiently all day while I live in it, but fictional worlds have more likelihood of teaching me about those aspects of the real universe that are important to me.

Now I am going off to worry about whether having my villain protagonist agree with much of his author's worldview while being an utter bastard is sufficient recourse to prevent me being tarred with my own 'moralisation' brush. I won't, however, lose too much sleep about whether or not it's arrogant to make up a happy fun playworld. There's no answer to that, except the obvious: don't you urinate in my pool, and I'll stay off your jungle gym. Which, incidentally, somebody built.

Holy–!!

(Safe for work. And blasted cool.)

"Mediums and spiritualists fear changes to laws regulating the industry could leave them open to malicious civil action by sceptics."

You say "malicious civil action", I say "challenging you to prove your juju isn't fraudulent"…

Yes, hard luck for any hypothetical people who honestly think what they're doing is helping people in some way. Perhaps if any such hypothetical whitelighters had paid greater attention to weeding out the frauds who prey on the grieving, the whole industry—sorry, religion—wouldn't need regulating. Honestly though, I think it's shocking that anything should think it's above regulation because it's Mystick™. If I buy paint thinner, it had better do what it says on the tin. If I buy a ghost interview, likewise.

Truth in advertising, people! Why not bill it as "a bit of a laugh, and I'll cold-read you and may come up with something you construe as meaningful"? Hell, I'd go for that.

Nun with opera glasses, deacons playing baseball. ("So Josef, how about those Cardinals?")

Happenings at Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, Suffolk tend to make any Shuckfan prick up its ears, but unfortunately it's nothing to do with our favourite straunge and terrible Wunder. (Unless he's started emplying hoodies, which is arguably exactly Shuck's style.)

Sniffer dogs on nightclub doors with a very silly and awful illustration, do not say you were not warned of the spanielity.

Finally, your bit of non-newsy wacky religious goodness for the day: Revelation. Being a continuation of my gradual prettification of some of our longer, less-well-illustrated articles. There's some great apocalyptic art out there. Check out the mighty angel with the millstone (which I think is actually supposed to be a stone the size of a millstone according to the version I read, but anyway). And yes, Vespers and 'Tivo, horsies. :)

edit: In pictures: Lion King musical (I must see this sometime. I can already sing all the songs.)

Escaped mother panda found alive and gorgeous

Grey squirrels culled for red (embedded vid)

Dinosaur skeleton auctioned (embedded vid)

I object to the reader's final comment.

Call to protect tiger numbers (embedded vid)

Euro MPs urged to save tigers

Pope addresses clergy abuse (embedded vid)

France debates 'too thin' law (embedded vid)

Animals put out the lights at zoo

And quite right too. Who likes light pollution while you're trying to sleep?

New transgender laws considered for Isle of Man. No big shakes (unless you live there); seems to be the same as the UK law.

Further eye candy of the day: this is probably a terrible, dreadful individual who is bad and as for these, don't even get me started (or there'll be the squalling and the dying and the liquification and it'll just get ugly).

New webcomic find. Archive binge! What do we find? Psychic girls… eh. Fox demons… oh, nice. Coyote… mixing our mythoi there, but it's always pleasant to see Hir. Ysengrim… aww, puppy.

The mo'flocking MODDEY DHOO— can we say "very promising indeed"? No, because we are too busy saying "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Because we are a lovably eccentric Briton and therefore we like vengeful, deathly dread black dogs. Yes, we do.

No RSS feed, though, and only 'pending' on Comic Alert. Comic Alert's good, by the way, for keeping track of any reasonably popular webcomics that don't have feeds. Such as Wapsi Square, EOI, Zebra Girl and VG Animals. Of those, EOI is particularly recommended in its early days pre-MMORPG setting, and VG Things has its moments of brilliance… funnier if you've played the game it's parodying, naturally.

How about you, friendslist? Any webcomics, feeded or non, you'd recommend to each other and/or to me?

(Bonus points if it contains mythological dogs, unless the author completely misses the point and makes them angstbuckets, anthropomorphic¹ or scary-faced for a total of one panel before turning out to be friendly and cute thereafter in a hilaaaaaaarious twist. I consider all such travesties to be drawn by cats.)

¹ For the sake of drama avoidance, anthros in general are fine. I read Jack regularly. A badly-drawn animal is better than a badly-drawn human. But anthros are not fine for ratchet dogs. You cannot be anthro and still be Old Shock. Sorry. Them's the rules. If your barghest walks on two legs (as some do. It's canon!) it'd better still be an actual dog or the karma stormtroopers will savage you.

We've got two new sections launched today. Exciting sections. Sections that deserve your VOTE? Well, I'm excited about them, anyway, after working hard on the second one in particular.

Conservative/Masorti Judaism, an explanation and history, rounds off our section on the major subdivisions of Judaism. (I won't make a pun on Masorti.) 'Twas my idea to track down that obituary clip. Sometimes it's very cool indeed working at a Big Big Corporation and having access to such a huge archive.

Speaking of huge archives, this one is epic, bordering on mindblowing. Britain's Spiritual History puts three whole radio series online (that's… well, a lot of hours of audio), along with a bonus picture gallery. Thrill at the woman clothed with the sun! Gasp at Boyle's air pump! Laugh obligingly at the monkey joke! Vote for us!

If any audio doesn't work, or glitches, if you'd make a note of it I'd be much obliged. We've been having RealMedia trouble today.

Great news!

The BBC Religion & Ethics website upon which I lavish my workday attention has been nominated for a Webby Award. These are big things, apparently (I'm told) the Oscars of the internet.

We're up against stiff competition from our old nemesis, the well-funded and magaziney Beliefnet. If you do care to pop along and vote for us in the People's Vote category, I'll not be the slightest bit aghast.

Our news pages have more information.

Priorities, dahlings…

Volunteer dogs can be 'Therapets'

Skyscraper powered by wind but not quite as epic as it sounds. (page with embedded video, requires Flash)

Death to pupae?

'Spitting vicar' sacked by bishop

Ancient snake's second leg is discovered

A man who broke his girlfriend's leg in a compensation claim scam has been jailed for three years.