August 2006 Archives

His voice is like a bee playing a kazoo in an envelope.

I hate him.

Right now I don't like things.

Life is a story - that's a well documented metaphor. Mine is one of many interwoven threads, as I expect most are. The trouble is that right now, my story is far too complicated for me to follow. Too difficult to read anymore.

I think I'll just muddle through until the happy ending appears.

I can't understand why this man is loved by Christians... look:

Way back in 1979 he released We Don't **** Anymore containing these lyrics:

It's so funny how we don't **** anymore.
It's so funny why we don't **** anymore .
But I ain't ****ing **** and ain't ****ing sheep.
It's so funny how we don't **** anymore.

Obviously, I've had to censor it for decency purposes...

How about Devil Woman from 1975:

She's just a **** woman
With **** on her mind
Beware the **** woman
She's gonna **** you
She's just a **** woman
With **** on her mind
Beware the **** woman
She's gonna **** you from behind

Pure filth.

After totally wasting around 79 hours filling in all those bloody surveys (they have a category of their own...) I've realised that all the recent posts - some of which are the best things I've written in ages (I think so anyway) have now disappeared from the front page.

They're all here, just use the archives down the side to get to them - look through August and you'll get all of this current burst of activity. The one about Gandhi may be in July.

There was a point to this post... but it's gone from my memory.

This has nothing to do with the title...

...it's another bloody survey.

OK, so the general feeling is that if I get all of these things out of the way now, no one will ever have to ask me anything ever again.

A third.

And another...

A survey...

Check all of the bands/singers that you have HEARD of. NOT if you LIKE them or not.

I'm sure I've done this one before...

So then, hands up who is surprised to hear that more than 95% of all email is junk?

No one? Good.

The bane of my life, I receive a hell of a lot of junk each day. Yesterday. I got 47 emails that I consider to be spam. But it must be said that Saturdays generally generate less emails for me than a weekday.

Anyway, analysis of the contents of millions of e-mails has revealed that less than 4% is legitimate traffic. Anti-virus firm Sophos has revealed the list of nations where most spam starts its journey across the net.

Top of the list is the US as, according to Sophos, 23.2% of spam originates there. This is probably due to the fact that broadband has become very popular in the US and has led many people leave inadequately protected PCs connected to the net all the time. In the number two position was China which sends out 20% of junk e-mail. Significantly the US and China occupy the number one and two spots in counts of total numbers of net users.

Next in the list come South Korea (7.5%), France (5.2%) and Spain (4.8%). The UK was tenth with 1.8%.

Read the full report here.

An excellent site summing up life in graph form. Great!

Clicky...

Something that really gets on my tits is the price of petrol... thankfully there's a price war going on at the moment (thank you supermarkets!)

Anyway, the best way to find out where the cheapest petrol is near you is the wonderful Petrol Prices.com. They search 9,751 petrol stations and have 8,000 daily updates. Which is some up to date information right there.

It helps too. The place nearest me, and the one I used to use regularly isn't the cheapest - it's more of a middling one to be honest. I could save a whole 4p a litre... anyway.

It's a plug - they wanted people to spread the word. I've done my bit...

In my boredom this summer, it was suggest by JSC that I do some kinda research into something that interested me. An attempt to get me off the web and into a library no doubt (and there would've been had she not said, "It'll get you off the web and into a library...")

Anyway, Daniel Fahrenheit. The Fahrenheit temperature system is one I've never understood. When people spoke of it getting to 100 in July, part of me was thinking that water would instantly boil. And then I remembered about Fahrenheit.

It's not something I've been brought up with. I don't have an understanding of it, the numbers don't mean anything to me. Much like pounds and ounces are of little significance to me.

Born in 1686, spending most of his life in Amsterdam, he lived around the same time as Anders Celsius (the guy whose scale means more to me) - but there is no evidence to say they met.

Fahrenheit was fascinated by scientific instruments and wandered around Europe learning from scientists in different cities. In Copenhagen he met a guy called Olaus Roemer, a Danish astronomer who had invented his own thermometer. Roemer's used alcohol to measure temperatures, specifically wine, using two main points of reference: 60 degrees was the temperature of boiling water and, somewhat bizarrely, 7 and a half degrees as the temperature of melting ice.

Fahrenheit took Roemer's thermometer and modified it because he was no fan of "inconvenient and awkward fractions," according to his letters. He used mercury rather than wine and established three fixed points on his thermometer.

This is the part that I find absurd.

For zero on his scale, he chose the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture. For 30, he chose the freezing point of water, and 90 was supposed to be the human's normal body temperature.

There's so much wrong with that... firstly, Fahrenheit got his measurements wrong. The freezing point of water is 32 degrees and the average human body temperature is 98.6. So he's an inaccurate moron. Secondly, what's wrong with using zero as the freeing point of water, why use 30? Oh, wait, he's used zero for an equal ice-salt mixture. What the...? Why ice and salt? Why not ice and orange juice?

It's just a bad idea. And for some people, Americans in particular, they're stuck with it.

I'm almost glad it means nothing to me.

Anders Celsius by the way would have told you that your cup of coffee would have measured zero degrees by his original scale, as zero represented the boiling point of water and 100 was the temperature at which water froze...

Celsius' scale doesn't make intuitive sense now, and it apparently didn't when he developed it. After he died, his scale was sneakily inverted to the style we now know it as, with zero representing the freezing point of water at standard atmospheric pressure and 100 the boiling point.

A glimpse of the present?

[via YouTube]

While I have no idea when this picture was taken, it's really interesting seeing the differences in fifty odd years! And, er, that's my reason for posting it along with a more recent photograph taken from a similar position (in July 2006).

London, circa 1950 - Chalmers Butterfield. (Click for biggability [5119x3606] - 2.69MB):

London, 2006 - Tom Box. (Click for biggability [2848x2136] - 1.04MB):

[Both images via Wikipedia]

It's not often I get involved with conspiracy theories, but this is an intruiging one. In short, an odd image has been found by this guy on Google Maps, sparking a debate about what the truth could be.

Click for biggability:

Poring over satellite images of China on the free Google Earth service, he came across a strange plot of land [linked above] - approximately 900 metres by 700 metres, about the size of six Sydney Cricket Grounds.

The land, which KenGrok said was landscape that had been modelled for military purposes, is situated near the town of Huangyangtan about 35 kilometres from Yinchuan, the capital of the autonomous region of Ningxia, in northern China.

It's interesting reading.

Read the full overview of the debate here.

"Get Over It" from OK Go's first album, "OK Go".

If the above does not work in your browser, you may wish to download the file here. (MPEG, 21.43MB)

Which of these three would have definitely got an ASBO today?

Three vegetarians - Linda McCartney, Hitler and Gandhi.

So, which of these was certainly a 'orrible little thug in their youth?

In earlier entries you can see the video for the OK Go song A Million Ways. It's a damn good video.

They've surpassed themselves though with the video for their latest single Here It Goes Again. Basically, it's like A Million Ways, but on treadmills. Oh yes. Look:

Is there a better way to use eight treadmills?

Only question is, what next...?

If the above does not work in your browser, you may wish to download the file here. (MPEG, 28.72MB)

Well, after adding that previous entry today I noticed that I'd got a message about a new version of the software that runs this place, the rather excellent Movable Type. If anyone cares, this site now uses version 3.31 of MT. It was 3.2 before.

A rather more striking change is the new look the place has. I like it. Let me know what you think.

Come to think of it, I can't remember if there's a contact form on here (that's how long it's been...) so any comments you need to make, use the comment link. You'll have to register with TypeKey in order to do so - but that's a good thing.

I've no idea when the last entry was on here. I could look... it'll have been a while.

I haven't checked out of the whole website thing - it's always been this sporadic, trust me - I think what has put me off doing anything recently is the upsurge in blogs. After all, the software that powers this site is designed for blogging and I've just customised it and tweaked around until it's how I like it. And even then it could do with some changes...

My advice, if you do want to be kept up to date with my ramblings, would be the use Bloglet to track this site - there should be a form on the right (if you're viewing this on the main page that is) but I've put one below as well just in case - and get it to email you when I've typed something...

Some of you will know that I'm no longer a lay about as such and I do have a job. The beauty of teaching is that I'm on holiday. About half way through as well. And it must be said that while the prospect of six weeks holiday is great, in reality I'm not enjoying it that much.

I have nothing to do. Nothing at all. And when I have nothing to do, I start to think. Which isn't the best of ideas with this mind of mine.

I suppose it's been interesting, really. I've revisited lots of bits of my own self-image. For instance, I've always known that I might not always be someone who gets things done on time; that I might, sometimes, be one of those Other People who neglects things and misses stuff and generally messes it all up. In fact the latter happens more often than not.

What else have I done recently?