...hoarding pack rat when:
For those interested in seeing the Shuttle/ISS then check out NASA's Human Spaceflight tracking page. Wednesday 18.19 looks like the best time to see them this coming week.
Anyone up for a Star Party?
The Supermercado Project has a wonderful article on just how ineffectual Sensis is.
Telstra giving you 80s style service today.
Want to see the 30-second version of Alien? As re-enacted by bunnies? Or how about the RHPS? Jaws? A Wonderful Life? Then pop over to Angry Alien Productions and check out their web animations. They're a hoot.
Some malicious idiot has started an email campaign to counter ICE by falsely stating that setting up an ICE contact in your phone's address book will automatically result in your being charged premium rates for the "service".
ICE is about enabling paramedics and police to figure out whom they shold contact in the event that something messy happens to you. You could tattoo your next-of-kin's name and number on your forehead, or wear dog-tags, or carry an ICE card in your wallet, or provide this basic information in any number of ways. Adding an In Case of Emergency (ICE) number to your contacts is simply the way the UK campaign went because mobile phones are damned near ubiquitous.
So ignore the email when you get it. It's a HOAX, and a petty, mean-spirited one. And if you're stupid enough to believe it, well, hey, there's no helping you.
Okay for those of you who have had broadband connections for a long time this is probably old hat, but for me it's new and exciting. NASA TV rocks. It's fun to hear a highly-trained shuttle astronaut complain about there not being enough hard-disk drive space and having to use a different drive. And if this is live - or near live (I don't know) - then Discovery and Alpha are just now crossing the equator over Africa.
Geeky, but so very cool!
Yesterday we posted the story about setting up 'In Case of Emergency Numbers'. Today, Channel Ten news is running ads promoting the idea. Way to go Ten!
After 30 years of bloodshed, the IRA are formally ending its campaign of violence in favour of democratic and peaceful means to achieve their objective.
The optimist in me says, "Yay! Rationality prevails!"
The skeptic in me says, "Feh. Even the IRA realise they have become irrelevant."
After all, what have they done lately? Robbed a bank, bashed some guy in a pub... Yeah, real nation-building stuff. Deeds to tell the grandkiddies about. They want to be treated like responsible adults capable of running their own country, then they have to start behaving like statesmen, not thugs. A noble cause can only be properly served by noble means.
Bombing civilians, for example, is by no stretch of anyone's dogma a noble means.
First the British Muslim clerics pulled their fingers out and issued a fatwa against suicide bombings. Now the North Americans have jumped onboard. Yay!
But why haven't we heard from the Middle East, or Pakistan, or Indonesia, on any of the other major Muslim nations on this issue? Hello? Feh.
Maybe they'd like to, but their channels are being flooded by the US Government. Telesur is a new pan-Latin-American TV channel being broadcast from Venezuela that seeks to promote South American intergration and basically tell the news from a South American perspective. The US Government has taken this is a direct threat to its dominance of South American airwaves, and claiming anti-US bias, the US House of Representatives has voted to allow the US administration to broadcast its own TV signals to Venezuela to counter Telesur's broadcasts. Big Feh!
I thought it was difficult enough getting local content on Access 31 here in Perth, but imagine having a foreign power putting their shows on your televsion set... um. Never mind.
In Big Yay news, the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest has been announced:
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
-- Dan McKay, Fargo, ND
Last night:
Dinner - scrumptious fish curry. Dessert - ah! Chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate icing and served with chocolate ice-cream. Courtesy of Chef Skribe. Anything he makes is always lovely, but this was lovelier than usual.
Today:
Charcoal lambswool jumper from me to me. Another fabulous find. Designer label, excellent condition, for fewer dollars than I have fingers on one hand.
Pretty shiny candlestick with musk candle, from "some crazy work experience girl at the office" whom I'm not supposed to tell is Kylie. The girliest thing I ever got.
A tin of cherry pastilles and a pocket memo from the boss. (*blink* Did he just pull some random stuff out of his drawer? Guess it's the thought that counts :)
Last night TP and I were playing with Google Earth when suddenly we hear on the tv:
At any time, anywhere in the world someone is watching...Or words to that affect.
In the midst of rendering one project, I'm scouring Soundclick for music for another when I chance upon mp3s of my old school's marching band.
My alma mater had a marching band?
Bloody hell.
That school was such a sorry affair when I began there that the only notable event in its history had been the suicide of its principal the previous year.
Its population was so low that it'd had to merge with another secondary school to boost its numbers, and our classes were still only half-size. Oh, and as a result of the merger we didn't have a standard uniform. The weekly assemblies included public disciplinary actions for vandalism and petty crime, and visits by the local constabulary were a common feature. It was a farce.
Gradually, over the next couple of years, something changed. The new principal was a man who believed that anyone could achieve great things, however disadvantaged they thought they were, as long as they were willing to work for it. Next thing I knew our school had started a small lion-dancing troupe and its own magazine.
Then the school hockey team won the national under-14s trophy. We got a new (icky brown) uniform. Morale and school spirit blossomed, despite the uniform.
In the years after I left, the uniform was redesigned to something a little more flattering, the population maxed out, and my old school was no longer quite the embarassment it once had been.
And a few years ago, they apparently put together a band. And they've posted some mp3s. And they're good.
Wow. Unfamiliar feelings of pride in my alma mater are stirring. This is so weird.
Huh. So while Skribe is out enjoying the sunshine, I'm trapped in the Hell of Subtitling, Re-Editing, & Otherwise Fixing Up The FGM Doco. Chinese have a lot of Hells, Jack.
So, to make the most of this brief respite called dinner-at-home, I recommend:
1. Snopes.com's Urgent But Unanswerable Queries,
2. The Family Guy In A-Ha's Take On Me music video clip,
3. The Ultimate Office-Made RubberBand Gun (I gotta make me one of these).
