What would Freud say??

Talk about 'all men want to marry their mother'

Skirt-chasing playboy Daniel Anceneaux spent weeks talking with a sensual woman on the Internet before arranging a romantic rendezvous at a remote beach -- and discovering that his on-line sweetie of six months was his own mother!

'I walked out on that dark beach thinking I was going to hook up with the girl of my dreams,' the rattled bachelor later admitted. 'And there she was, wearing white shorts and a pink tank top, just like she'd said she would.

'But when I got close, she turned around -- and we both got the shock of our lives. I mean, I didn't know what to say. All I could think was, 'Oh my God! it's Mama!' '

Mr and Mrs become Mrs and Mrs

A couple who wed as man and wife in 1967 have remarried as a gay couple

A husband and wife have 'remarried' as a gay couple - 14 years after the groom had a sex swap operation.
Bernard and Joyce Rogers wed in 1967 but have lived "like sisters" since 1991, when Bernadette, as she's now known, underwent gender surgery.

The Sheet Music Archive

Anyone a budding classical musician??

Well now you can downlad lots of free public domain scores - the only restriciton is that you can only download two per day so be careful what you choose

Look kids, this is what we had before we had iPods

Do you remember the days of cassettes? the C60, C90, how they used to get tangled around the tape head or stretch so the sound went all funny - I do

Here's a page that has loads of images of old cassettes for a burst of nostalgia. Which reminds me, somewhere at home I have a great big bag of cassettes that haven't seen the light of day in years- I should find out what's on them

Oooo how vile!

Look at how horrible this toilet is - surely that's designed to give a man a complex

The health benefits of olive oil

It seems that olive oil works in a similar way to ibuprofen as an anti-inflammatory

Now scientists believe they have discovered exactly what it is that makes extra virgin olive oil so good for us.

A study suggests the oil can prevent inflammation in the same way as common headache pills. In doing so, it helps stave off long-term health problems such as cancer and heart disease.

The researchers, based at the University of Pennsylvania, found the main compound in the oil, oleocanthal, contained the same properties as the painkiller ibuprofen.

Ibuprofen has been linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart problems, as has aspirin, which belongs to the same class of antiinflammatory drugs, called COX inhibitors.

The study concluded that extra virgin olive oil - made from the first pressing of the olive - may offer similar long-term advantages.

The extra virgin oil costs around twice as much as the standard version. While the ordinary oil offers some health benefits, these are less pronounced. Now scientists believe they have discovered exactly what it is that makes extra virgin olive oil so good for us.

A study suggests the oil can prevent inflammation in the same way as common headache pills. In doing so, it helps stave off long-term health problems such as cancer and heart disease.

The researchers, based at the University of Pennsylvania, found the main compound in the oil, oleocanthal, contained the same properties as the painkiller ibuprofen.

Ibuprofen has been linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart problems, as has aspirin, which belongs to the same class of antiinflammatory drugs, called COX inhibitors.

The study concluded that extra virgin olive oil - made from the first pressing of the olive - may offer similar long-term advantages.

The extra virgin oil costs around twice as much as the standard version. While the ordinary oil offers some health benefits, these are less pronounced.

Iraq profiteering

Interesting article looking at the wheels within wheels among the warmongerers and consortia profiting from the war in Iraq

The Bush family connection was obvious. The chairman of New Bridge was Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign. Directors Edward M. Rogers Jr and Lanny Griffith came from one of Washington’s best-connected Republican law firms. Both had been assistants to George Bush Sr in the White House.
A bizarre Bush-Thatcher-Bush-Blair continuum was completed when the company invited an unlikely Englishman to join its ranks. Sir Charles Powell was defence and foreign affairs consultant to Margaret Thatcher and John Major, expending much effort advising PMs that the government needed to invest more in military technology and arms sales. He went on to work for the chairmen of arms firms BAe Systems and Thales, advising them, evidently, that the government needed to invest more in military equipment and arms sales.
As luck would have it, Charles’ brother Jonathan, another Foreign Office diplo-wonk, who used to be Britain’s ambassador in Washington, is now Tony Blair’s chief of staff. He is also said to be the man responsible for single-handedly rubbishing Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy on the basis that Britain needed to invest more in military equipment and arms sales. It must run in the family.

And then, as if that isn't enough, there's yet another connection to Bin Laden and Al Quaeda

What the press release doesn’t mention is that an al-Bunnia partner is also a founding partner in an organisation identified as helping to fund al-Qaeda. Documents from the Swiss Federal Commercial Registry show Sadoon al-Bunnia to be a founding partner in the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (MIGA), one of 14 businesses controlled by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef M. Nada.

In August 2002, US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill announced that businesses in the Nasreddin-Nada network “appeared to be providing a clandestine line of credit to a close associate of Usama bin Laden and as of late September 2001, Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaida organisation received financial assistance from Youssef M. Nada.”

You would think this record might blot the copybook of businessmen hoping to do deals with the US administration in Iraq, but no; US engineering super-giant, Bechtel has just signed them up to help rebuild the Al Mat bridge, bombed by a stray cruise missile during the war.

Astonishingly, the US government and their contractors seem blithely unconcerned about al-Bunnia’s al-Qaeda connection. According to the US Treasury, its undiplomatically-named Office of Foreign Assets Control keeps a list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, prohibiting trade with the listed persons or organisations. MIGA makes the list. Al-Bunnia does not.

When pushed, the US Treasury said that al-Bunnia’s “association with MIGA should raise some due diligence concerns, but it is not necessarily wrong for a US company to do business with him, and it is certainly not illegal.” Senseless and dangerous, perhaps. But not actually illegal.

And then it discusses Karen Kwiatkowski, a whistleblower who was embroiled in the sexing up of the intelligence.

Interesting and yet angry-making reading

Draw a pig

Germans discover world's oldest dildo

Archaeologists have found the remains of the world's oldest dildo

German scientists are tickled pink after unearthing one of the world's oldest sculpted phalluses - 20cm of polished siltstone lovingly created around 28,000 years ago.

The stone schlong was discovered in Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm, Swabia, by a Tübingen University team. Professor Nicholas Conard, from the university's snappily-named department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, explained the excitment to the BBC thus: "Female representations with highly accentuated sexual attributes are very well documented at many sites, but male representations are very, very rare."

Indeed, although other examples of male genitalia - from France and Morocco - predate the Ulm member, to have "any representation of male genitalia from this time period is highly unusual".

There may be a good reason for this - the German sausage bears the scars of having been used to knap flints, and was reassembled from 14 fragments. Despite this abuse, and in a delicious leap of imagination, Conard speculates that the life-size member may have been used as a prehistoric sex toy. As he suggestively notes: "It's highly polished."

Those interested in the sex lives of our distant ancestors will be able to cop an eyeful of the Hohle Fels phallus when it goes on show at a Blaubeuren prehistoric museum exhibition entitled "Ice Art - Clearly Male".

Worldwide Internet Art Project "The Sudden Morning"

Everyone take a photograph at 8.15 on August 6 to mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima.

In these dark times, it is important that right-minded people express their desire for peace world-wide and commemorate on of the most horrific acts of war ever perpetrated.

The Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945. Just 60 yeas after that what scenes are we going to see on 2005, on the very same day and on the very same time that the A-bomb was dropped?
We may see a family at the breakfast table, business people hurrying for work, a newborn baby, people preparing for a wedding or just a quiet harbor.
So many scenes will be laid before us.
This project will give us a chance to see the different views worldwide on the 8:15 am of August 6th this year through the net.
Looking at how people all over the world spend this ordinary morning, we will share some kind of feeling about that sudden morning in Hiroshima. We believe that this will help us genuinely think of what real peace or happiness is all about.
The project is supported by Hiroshima citizens mainly consist of IT engineers. We fully welcome your participation in this project.

Supple girl falls down

slightly weird Flash animation in which a bikini-clad woman keeps falling down through space bouncing on spheres

Oh what a sick and twisted world we live in

Police are investigating a Seattle farm where they believe bestiality has been carried out:

However, authorities didn't learn about the farm until a man drove up to Enumclaw Community Hospital on July 2 seeking medical assistance for a companion. Medics wheeled the man into an examination room before realizing he was dead. When hospital workers looked for the driver, he was gone.
Using the dead man's driver's license to track down relatives and acquaintances, authorities were led to the Enumclaw farm. Some earlier reports had said hospital-surveillance cameras were used to track down the driver.
The dead man was identified as a 45-year-old Seattle resident. According to the King County Medical Examiner's Office, he died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon. The man's death is not being investigated because it did not result from a crime, Urquhart said.
The Seattle man's relatives said yesterday

Turns the stomach to think about it. But it could be worse they could live next door

Two neighbors, a married couple who declined to allow use of their names, said yesterday they had no idea what had been going on at the farm. They said they've known one of the men who live on the farm for years.

On Thursday, police showed the couple videotape seized from the farm showing men having sex with horses. The couple identified one of the horses as belonging to them, Sortland said. The couple also said it appeared at least part of the tape was filmed in their barn, which left them shocked and angry

OK boys, play together nicely or I'll take the computer away

A Shanghai man has been sentenced to death after killing someone who stole a virtual sword in an online game.

The pair had argued over ownership of a virtual sword that Qiu and another player had won in the online game “Legend of Mir III.” Qiu loaned the item to Zhu, but Zhu then sold it for 7,200 renminbi (around US$870). When Qiu tried to involve the police in recovering the item or the money, he was told that such virtual items are not protected by Chinese property laws. After Zhu refused to return the item or pay compensation, Qiu went to his home and stabbed him in the heart, according to the report.

Freakboy alert

Say hello to Mannequim man, the human mannequin.

Preferably with a slap and tell him to get a proper job

I hate those buggers that lurk around Covent Garden standing still all day in rubbish make-up and costumes.

Three years in mime school and that's all your capable of ....

Move along now, there's nothing to see

Ohmigod! Hell just froze over!

How is this for massive news??

Pink Floyd are reforming to play Live8 in July.

Yes indeedy, Roger Waters will play once more with Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright.

Roger Waters always said it would take something of the magnitude of Live Aid to get them back together because otherwise it could only be about making oodles of cash and would just be a huge sell-out of what he thinks it stands for

The Masque of the Red Death

Years ago I wrote and performed a tour of Edgar Allen Poe's The masque of the Red Death, a short story in which a group of rich degenerates lock themselves away in a castle ignoring the dangers of plague, lost in a cloud of debauchery and irresponsibility.

My inspiration for doing the piece was that, even then in 1992, I felt a lot of gay men had grown complacent about the dangers of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. I felt that the rise in drug use that had been happening since the rise of Acid House, raves and other beat heavy dance music clubs had led to greater irresponsibility where safe sex was concerned.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude, and have lived life to the fullest fo the full. What I've never done is play russian roulette with my sexual health.

It comes as no surprise then to read that with the rise of Methamphetamine usage (crystal or tina to her friends) there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of people contracting HIV and other STDs

After years of living in constant fear of aids, many gay men have chosen to resume sexual practices that are almost guaranteed to make them sick. In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by more than four hundred per cent in the past five years. Gay men account for virtually the entire rise. Between 1998 and 2000, fifteen per cent of the syphilis cases in Chicago could be attributed to gay men. Since 2001, that number has grown to sixty per cent. Look at the statistics closely and you will almost certainly find the drug. In one recent study, twenty-five per cent of those men who reported methamphetamine use in the previous month were infected with H.I.V.

The healing hands of the truth

Here's a story of how personal courage and resistance to corruption can pass under the radar even on a national television station.
Natalia Dmytruk, a sign-language interpreter in the Ukraine state-run television station, has won an award for the vital part she played in letting the population of the Ukraine know that the presidential elections had been rigged.
Dmytruk, 48, made sign language her vocation and today interprets for Ukraine's state-run television. Her face and hands appear in a little box at the bottom of the screen as she sends out the news on the mid-morning and early afternoon telecasts to the hearing-impaired.
During the tense days of Ukraine's presidential elections last year, Dmytruk staged a silent but bold protest, informing deaf Ukrainians that official results from the Nov. 21 runoff were fraudulent. Her act of courage further emboldened protests that grew until a new election was held and the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko , was declared the winner.
Dmytruk and three other Ukrainian women received the Fern Holland Award on Tuesday night at the Vital Voices Global Partnership's fifth annual ceremony honoring women from around the world who have made a difference.

Dmytruk's "courageous actions sparked the public outreach and ultimately new and fair elections on Dec. 26, 2004," said Melanne Verveer , chair of the board of Vital Voices.

Election monitors had reported widespread vote-rigging immediately after the runoff between Yushchenko and the Russian-backed prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych . With Yanukovych leading by a slim margin, the opposition urged Ukrainians to gather in Independence Square in front of the parliament building to protest the results.

Each time Dmytruk went to Independence Square with her 20-year-old son and teenage daughter and saw the thousands of protesters, she felt herself transformed .

"I was impressed by the expression on my children's faces. I was so fired up by other people I observed passionately voicing their discontent," she said in an interview this week. "It was that special spirit and energy of people coming together, uneasily at first, but looking in the same direction."

Dmytruk would then return to work and broadcast the state's version of events.

"I was observing it from both sides, and I had a very negative feeling," she said. "After every broadcast I had to render in sign language, I felt dirty. I wanted to wash my hands."

The opposition had no access to the state-run media, but Dmytruk was in a special position as a television interpreter to get their message out.

On Nov. 25, she walked into her studio for the 11 a.m. broadcast. "I was sure I would tell people the truth that day," she said. "I just felt this was the moment to do it."

Under her long silk sleeve, she had tied an orange ribbon to her wrist, the color of the opposition and a powerful symbol in what would become known as the Orange Revolution. She knew that when she raised her arm, the ribbon would show.

The newscaster was reading the officially scripted text about the results of the election, and Dmytruk was signing along. But then, "I was not listening anymore," she said.

In her own daring protest, she signed: "I am addressing everybody who is deaf in the Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies. . . . And I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe you will see me again -- " she concluded, hinting at what fate might await her. She then continued signing the rest of officially scripted news.

Lifecycle of Bloggers

Found this list of stages in the lifecycle of blogging and am trying to decide where I am in the list.

#1. Start reading blogs.
You start out as a lurker and by either having met a blogger or run accross an intriguing and challenging post from someone else’s blog, you start mulling about in your head for either a forum for response, challenge, or agreement. You *could* start by commenting on other folks blogs first, but you start having a gradually increased desire for a space of your own. Like when you’re living in your parent’s basement and the rest of your friends are making weekly trips to Home Depot and using words like “mulching”. You begin to wonder if you want to belong.

#2. You start a blog.
Maybe at first it’s on blogspot or livejournal. You start writing about cheese sandwhiches. You use your full name and the full names of your friends that are involved in your occasionally mischievous exploits. These things satisfy you. Hubris starts taking a more significant part of your site as you develop your tiny homestead online. The notion of fleshing out your online personality becomes important.

#3. You become a stats whore.
Daily stats/referrals and meme participation for webrings, quizlists, personality profiles, and the occasional sepia toned webcam photo to make you look all “emo” and “sultry” and “sensitive” or at least a little bit thinner. And definitley like a Kpop music video still image. You voraciouslly groom your links list as you build a posse. The wishlist makes it’s initial appearance and creepy strangers start sending you gifts when your birthday comes around. You consider this slightly weird, but hey, then again, you *did* get that Star Wars Box set that you always wanted. You *start* memes just for the additional traffic. Perhaps you even start a webgame of sorts.

#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
As you recognize the possibility of being an opinion leader in your personal circle, people flame you. You occasionally flame back. You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You bitch about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds who post jpegs of their warcraft characters online and realize that these lOZeRs aren’t worth your time. This gives you an sense of superiority. Haha! you say to yourself. I have a posse and a blog and you don’t. So fuck off, you lame twat. Hazzah!

#5. You faux “retire” from blogging.
Having temporarily exhausted the emotional reservoir from which your personal blog has released, you post about retiring. Or a vacation. Or a hiatus. Or a sabbattacal. You say this will be permanent. Or last a month.

#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
You candy pants blogging crack addict.

#7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.
You seek out “The A-List” of bloggers and start reading more of them, and news about them, and news about blogging in general. You come to the conclusion that if you ever hope to join their rank, then you need to atleast register your own domain. Afterall, http://candypantsnewbiebloggeraboutcheesesandwhiches.blogspot.com will not get you linked by Kottke.

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.
This will likely end badly. Very badly.

#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
SXSW seems like a good way to go about it. Or attendance at Fray Day. Or finding any excuse possible to move to San Francisco. At least a trip, after all. With a visit to SF, meeting other “celebrity” bloggers is just as tasty a tourist destination as going to Fisherman’s Wharf. Or more so. Definitley more so. Your blogroll grows threefold.

#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.
You become pedantically navelgazingly annoying. For some reason, your blogger readership eats this shit up. This does not convince you, however, that you want to do something silly like smoke weed with Marc Canter. Because even *you* know that’s a bad idea.

I do mine when skiving at work - I almost never get the time to blog at home. I'd like to be a stats whore but I don't think I get enough readers to make it worthwhile. I virtually ever talk about my life and it's more a case of I blog where I've been when I should really be working.

What's your worldview??

You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements

What's your personality defect???

I'm a Starving Artist

You are 42% Rational, 42% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.
You are the Starving Artist! You are more intuitive than logical, and are primarily guided by your heart and emotions. You are also very introverted and gentle. Of course, this does not mean that you do not have an ego. In fact, you are surprisingly arrogant for someone so emotional and gentle. This is why you are best described as a starving artist. You are very introspective and quite sure of yourself, as any accomplished artist is, yet your views are impractical, guided by feelings, and overly gentle. You probably find math, logic, and similar intellectual pursuits offensive to your artistic sensibilities, and you prefer the open-endedness of artistry because then you know you can never truly have a wrong answer. So really you have no reason to be arrogant, you big doofus, because the skills you value (emotion, spirit, art, etc.) in yourself are valuable only on a subjective level, meaning your arrogance is purely masturbatory. In short, your personality is defective because you are arrogant, introverted, introspective, gentle, and thoroughly irrational...posessing most of the traits needed to be a starving--and useless--artist. So get out there, write a few short stories that are allegories for the spirit, and starve!

Your exact opposite is the Capitalist Pig.

Well they got the last bit right - how I hate capitalist pigs - they should be made into capitalist bacon sandwiches and fed to cannibals. Anyone know where i can find a tribe of hungry canibals who'd like to dine on capitalist swine??

How's this for tacky

A dutch site that sells stuffed toys including fake stuffed animal heads - just vey very nasty and unpleasant

What to do in the hereafter

I've always thought I'd liked to be buried in a sack sitting up with an apple tree planted over my head so that my decomposing body could be transformed into something that people could sit under and eat the fruit from the tree fertilised by my life.

Obviously, I'd prefer that this to happen after I die.

Today i read of Eternal reefs, who offer the chance to have one's asshes mixed into a concrete reef scaffolding to help create new habitats for coral and a plethora of other pland and wildlife.



Seems like quite a nice idea

Here's one for all the Star Wars fans

How's about Star Wars origami??

Entrances to hell

Now here's one I forgot all about till I was reminded of it on the Guardian's page. Basically it keeps track of mystrious entrances around the UK which could possibly be an entrance to Hell


This one's called Badadada tatatata

Death by PowerPoint

Now this is what I call torture!!!!

I wonder whether American Intelligence have subjected Saddam to an attack of PowerPoint? If that don't get him talking, nothing will

And on the subject of murderous ex-dictators who deserve to burn in Hell for ever and at least a day, perhaps thewy could subject Pinochet to a never ending PowerPoint-based reminder of all the people he had murdered and all his abuses of power.

Who cares if you had a stroke, I hope you suffer

Yes, but is it art??

Well it looks like bollocks, so it must be



Shy not go to SEattle and buy yourself a handknitted superhero costume

Password generator

This is really useful, a tool for generating passwords to websites that are esy to recover too. You put in a master password and the website name and it scrambles a secure password. There's even a boomarklet version too.

There's even a Dashboard version available from O'Reilly's website.

Sorry windows people, this one's Mac only ha ha ha

Is Colin Baker bonkers

One for the factcheckers at the belfast telegraph, I think

Baby-faced actor David Tennant will make a great 10th Dr Who, says stage and television star Colin Baker, who is about to appear in high drama at the Opera House in Belfast.
And Baker should know - he was the sixth Dr Who and he still attends Dr Who conventions all over the world ...
... I loved my time as Dr Who, with Louise Jameson as my partner Leela in the Tardis and the bonus now is the reunions in towns like Belfast,' adds Baker. 'I spend my day with people who think I am wonderful.'

Colin Baker had Nicola Bryant and Bonnie Langford as his companions during his time in Doctor Who. Did someone make up the quotes and then not check them

Watch out world, here's the first generation of Terminators

US researchers have devised a simple robot that can make copies of itself from spare parts.
Writing in Nature, the robot's creators say their experiment shows the ability to reproduce is not unique to biology.
Their long-term plan is to design robots made from hundreds or thousands of identical basic modules.
These could repair themselves if parts fail, reconfigure themselves to better perform the task they have been set, or even to make extra helpers.

The thoughts of the last Dalek

Awww almost makes you feel sorry for the evil tin-pot monsters

HAVE KILLED MORE HUMANS. LOST COUNT PART WAY THROUGH. WHAT'S THE POINT, AFTER ALL?

THESE FEELINGS ARE CONFUSING ME. THINGS USED TO BE SO SIMPLE.

I . . . I HAVE WRITTEN A POEM ABOUT HOW I FEEL. PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU LIKE IT, AND WHY:





AS MY PLUNGER DEALS DEATH
MY SOUL PLUNGES
INTO THE DEPTHS.

MY VOICE CRIES
IN THE WILDERNESS:
EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
BUT WHY?
THERE IS NOTHING LEFT
TO EXTERMINATE
FOR.

Scott's place :: Vote Dalek

How to fold a fitted sheet

Now this really will come in useful

Being lazy I'm a fan of fitted sheets but boy do I hate folding the bastardos. I've never quite managed to work out a foolproof folding method. Well here's a page that tels you how to - absolutely marvellous

Now here's a thought

If peanuts are legumes and very definitely not nuts, why are all the foodstuffs that are labelled with 'danger, may contain nuts' not labelled, 'danger, may contain legumes'?

Also, if someone is allergic to peanuts, which are legumes, why are they not allergic to peas and beans (or are they), and hence why do tins of Baked Beans come with health warnings?

If someone is allergic to peanuts (which, remember, aren't actually nuts, but grow in pods, just like peas) are they also allergic to nuts? If not, why am I constantly bombarded with warning notices telling me my food may contain traces of nuts when in fact it's legumes which are dangerous to some people?

If anybody can tell me, please leave a comment

Only in America

SEATTLE - Police who went to the aid of a distraught man jumping off a bridge in Seattle ended up shooting him early Friday morning.

Designline - A Design Timeline

Nice site that illustrates designing a blog from start to finish using CSS within an animated gif



Just what I need - as inspiration to set abolut tidying up my template

Macworld UK - Gartner urges Mac user vigilance

Interestingly, since the release of Tiger, Apple has dropped all mention of Virex from the Dot Mac webpage. Now I've paid for that as part of my .Mac membership and I'm intrigued that Apple would so casually dispense with a piece of software which helps to keep one's computer safe

Garbage in, garbage out

More than 120 children in Durham have taken part in a trial to see if taking a cocktail of natural oils could help performance in class.

Half used a combination of omega-3 fish oil and omega-6 evening primrose oil and half took an olive oil placebo

Results suggested that after three months, the group using the fatty acid made 'highly significant improvements' in 12 out of 13 behavioural scales, including three diagnostic ADHD features - inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Short term memory also significantly improved.

It's hardly surprising, when you see the slop that children are fed nowaday (he said, sounding like an old bastard) - all the additives and sugars and lack of vitmains, minerals and essential oils can only be to the long-term detriment of studying

Tweaking Google

There's an interesting article over at the Wall Street Journal looking into the various ways people are leveraging web technologies such as Googles new map facility.

Some good ones include Marcus Weskamp's graphical interface to Google News

Then there's an interface that ties house adverts on Craiglist to Google Maps - that's a really good one and it would be great to see that launch over here in the UK too.

This is my first pot from the Dashboard in Tiger

Well I'm definately a confirmed geek and anorak now. Not only am I all excited at the prospect of the Dalek being in Doctor Who tomorrow, but I also trekked into the Apple Store on Regents street and got my copy of Mac OS X Tiger and have just about got my system running again

Has science gone too far??

Well I've seen everything now, it seems there's a man who is actually pregnant - Lee Mingwei, has been implanted with a foetus and has set up a website to track the progres of the pregnancy.

Daleks

The Public Whip - How They Voted 2005

Yet another poll that tells me to vote Lib Dem, and shows how out of step with me Kate Hoey is

TheyWorkForYou.com: Is your MP working for you in the UK's Parliament?

This is a great site for anyone who wants to check up on their MP and see how they performed in the last Parliament.

It's no secret, I want want Labour to be hammered this time. It's not just because of the the war in Iraq, though let's be honest, that's reason enough; it's not just because of that sneering liar Tony Blair; nope, it's more to do with the fact of having a cabal of tories running what was formerly a socialist party for the ordinary people.

I particularly would like to see regime change in my local constituency where I would like to see Kate Hoey replaced by Charles Anglin, the candidate for the Liberal Democrats.

Now this represents an enormous change of tack for me. I always said a vote for the Lib Dems was a wasted vote, but now they are the only party I can bring myself to vote for. There is absolutely nothing could induce me to vote Conservative, this country is still reeling from the damage they inflicted on it and Michael Howard is just Loathsome.

Anyway, back to Ms Hoey, who should be ousted by the good burghers of Vauxhall. Back in 1997, she made an impassioned plea for support at Duckie in Vauxhall stating very clearly that she supported gay rights and she was going to vote to end fox hunting. She has a poor record of voting ongay-related issues, frequently being absent during votes and she has been vociferously against the ban on fox hunting. Just two reasons why I want her out.

Watch out Tony, they're out to get you

rt
Originally uploaded by iGav.

Exterminate that Blair

Nek Chand

This one reminds me of the Coral castle in Florida. For the last 36 years Nek Chand, a transport official has been building an eccentric piece of folk art in the north Indian city of Chandigarh.

One day 36 years ago, Nek Chand, a humble transport official in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, began to clear a little patch of jungle to make himself a small garden area. He set stones around the little clearing and before long had sculpted a few figures recycled from materials he found at hand. Gradually Nek Chand's creation developed and grew; before long it covered several acres and comprised of hundreds of sculptures set in a series of interlinking courtyards.
After his normal working day Chand worked at night, in total secrecy for fear of being discovered by the authorities.When they did discover Chand's garden, local government officials were thrown into turmoil. The creation was completely illegal - a development in a forbidden area which by rights should be demolished. The outcome, however, was the enlightened decision to give Nek Chand a salary so that he could concentrate full-time on his work, plus a workforce of fifty labourers. Nek Chand's great work received immediate recognition and was inaugurated as The Rock Garden of Chandigarh.

Isn't it nice to hear ...

Something positive about the environment for a change. National Geographic on the revival of life in the Thames which was declared biologically dead in the 1950s after centuries of dumping sewage and rubbish had led to it being uninhabitable.

Dolphins, Seals at Home in London's Reborn River: "More than 130 seals have been spotted in the Thames since last August, according to the Zoological Society of London. Bottlenose dolphins have been seen upstream of London Bridge. And last summer the first sea horse was recorded in the Thames estuary in 30 years ...

... The condition of the Thames—which rises and falls with the tides as far inland as London—was very different 150 years ago. 1858 saw the "Great Stink," when the stench of raw sewage got so bad Parliament, which meets in a riverside building, had to be dissolved.

In 1878 the pleasure steamship Princess Alice sunk in a river collision. Most of the 600 or so passengers who died did so because they were overpowered by a noxious cocktail of human and industrial filth before they could reach safety.

How's this for a great idea?

A company in South Africa has developed a pump which uses the energy of children playing to pump water from a well and solve the chronic water shortages which plague rural African villages.

A pump is attached to a roundabout which pumps water from a well when the children play.

I love it when lateral thinking gets used to solve problems - just like the wind-up radio.

My brother lives not far from a wind farm, which is another great way to generate power without consuming fossil fuels.

What I don't understand though is why people don't use water wheels in rivers to generate power

You see, he does have the power of the dark side

Achtung pigs! You will buy my books, schnell, schnell

It seems that Ratzi really does have the power of the dark side - he has seven of the top ten best selling books in Germany this week - even managing to knock the new Harry Potter book off the top spot - now that takes some serious mind tricks

The writings of Joseph Ratzinger, who has become Pope Benedict XVI, have knocked the next Harry Potter book off the top of a German book chart.
The German version of online retailer Amazon has the Pope's books occupying the top three spots in its chart, with four more of his titles in the Top 10.

Ancient necropolis found in Egypt

Archaeologists say they have found the largest funerary complex yet dating from the earliest era of ancient Egypt, more than 5,000 years ago.
The necropolis was discovered by a joint US and Egyptian team in the Kom al-Ahmar region, around 600 km (370 miles) south of the capital, Cairo.
Inside the tombs, the archaeologists found a cow's head carved from flint and the remains of seven people.
They believe four of them were buried alive as human sacrifices.
The remains survived despite the fact that the tombs were plundered in ancient times.

Rhubarb Vodka

I'm not the biggest fan of rhubarb, it has to be said, though I did make a gallon of viciously powerful rhubarb wine a few years back. This however sounds like it might be worth a look - Rhubarb vodka

So here comes the answer

Ok, so perhaps his eminence the ex-cardinal Ratzi didn't have a wardrobe stocked with Pope-drag ready for his enthronment, instead they were on show in the window of Gammarelli, the ecclesiastical tailors. Now, since I doubt I can walk in off the street and get one of those perky little numbers, why do they display them in the window?

The three white cassocks on display in the window of Gammarelli Ecclesiastical Tailoring come in small, medium and large, because no one knows what size the next pope will be.
In the world of religious raiment, few distinctions are as great as counting the leader of the Roman Catholic Church as a client. So when 115 cardinals meet on Monday in the Sistine Chapel to begin a conclave that will select the next pope, the tailors of Gammarelli will be especially interested to see who will emerge wearing white.
Filippo Gammarelli, 63, whose family has been making papal clothes since 1798, including those for John Paul II, is hoping that the next pope, who will eventually step out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica modeling a Gammarelli cassock for millions, will like the fit.
That has not always been the case.
For the plump John XXIII pins and tape had to be used for last-minute alterations, while in 1914 the diminutive Benedict XV swam in his white silk simar, the special cassock worn by popes only.

Spell with flickr

This is so cool - hours of innocent fun

Did anyone notice??

That last post fizzled out and went nowhere with a diversion about keyboards. The gist of it was supposed to be about the article saying that technology does greater damage to the IQ than smoking marijuana.

So I wonder if anyone's done a study to see the harm that is done to one's intellect from using Word and PowerPoint all day. They are guaranteed to make my brain melt with frustration at least 20 times a day.

One of the people I work with just discovered that you can drag bullet points in PowerPoint to promote or demote them and was thoroughly impressed.

Yes Microsoft, it's nice of your programmers to create neat little user-friendly gimmicks like that, how about fixing all the hideous bugs that litter you bloated software

So what does this mean for Blackberry users?

Just recently I've noticed that there is a technological new kid on the block rivalling the iPod for ubiquity. Yes, as if there aren't enough white ear-bud wearers squashed together glassy eyed on the tube in the morning (Yes, I know, I'm one of those killer iPod Zombies, but mine's an original so I got there at least two years before the rest of you with your iPod Minis and Shuffles) there are now a plethora of Blackberry addicts out there, squinting at their emails at all times of the day and night, trying desperately to type out their replies on those tiny weeny keys that make the littel rubber pads on a Sinclair spectrum look like they were built for high speed

"Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users, in a clinical trial of over a thousand participants. Doziness, lethargy and an inability to focus are classic characteristics of a spliffhead, but email users exhibited these particular symptoms to a 'startling' degree, according to Dr Glenn Wilson.
The deterioration in mental capacity was the direct result of the trialists' addiction to technology, researchers discovered.
Email addicts were bombarded by context switches and developed an inability to distinguish between trivial and significant messages. Incredibly, 20 per cent of trialists jeopardized their immediate social relations by rushing off to 'check their messages' in the middle of a conversation.

How to Survive a Zombie Attack

I would show this to John, but he's pathologically scared of zombies - I know, it's irrational, but I only have to pull a blank face and he freaks.

But just in case you're ever caught in the middle of a zombie attack, there are plenty of helpful hints to help you survive

After your initial panic, it's important to remember that a significant component of your surivival is the demise of the ghouls trying to get your tasty brains. Despite some reports to the contrary, the only way to permanently un-animate a zombie is to destroy its brain. This isn't rocket science (although that would be a cool way to do it). A gunshot to the head is the most direct way to disable a zombie, but not the only way. Decapitation also works, although the head will probably still function so don't let it bite you. If you survive long enough, and society collapses along with any hope of rescue, you'll need to develop some means of skull penetration that doesn't involve guns - a professional bowhunting setup works if you can get it. You might be squeamish at first, taking out your neighbors; with time this will pass, you might even adopt a gleeful hangman's sense of humor in your executions.

That just reminded me

Looking through the cover scans of Spiderfan I spotted this one, which reminded me that this was the very first Spiderman story I ever read. It was the one where Peter Parker tries to get rid of his spider powers so that he can settle down once and for all with Gwen Stacey (remember her, the girl the Green Goblin threw from the top of the Washington Bridge). Unfortunately there was a mix up and instead of losing his powers, PP became a human spider with six arms and had to turn to Curt Connors to cure him. The finale to the story has a battle between Spiderman, the Lizard and Morbius.




The only reason I mention this is that I think this storyline would be the best storyline for the next Spiderman movie and perhaps Morbius will be the character played by Thomas Haden Church.

Seperated at birth/undeath??

People are always harping on about how Michael Jackson has had all that plastic surgery to look like Peter Pan. I think he has an altogether different fictional character in mind ...




Yes indeed, it's Morbius the living vampire

How exciting is this?

There has a been a breakthrough in decoding the Oxyrhyncus fragments. The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. This hoard is owned by the Egypt Exploration Society who have funded this research

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

And I'm not the only one who think's there's something wrong with Ratzi

Look, more people who think he's dodgy ...

He bears a striking resemblance to Nosferatu in this one

You see, I'm not the only one who hates Word

So glad to see that the innumerable unfixed bugs in Word cause more people's brain to melt down than just

Dear Microsoft Word,

Here are a few tips for you.

1.) Don’t ask me if I want help when I’m writing a letter TO YOU at 2:48am.

2.) Don’t do that stupid auto-format shit you just did when I hit enter after I typed “am.” That always messes up my outlines because apparently we don’t have the same style. I go “I.” then “A.” then “1.” then “a.” OK? I don’t want to print my fucking outline at 5am after I’ve worked on it all night and suddenly notice that my shit is all fucked up and you literally WON’T let me fix it. I have to have to wrestle you like a psycho bitch to get you to let me type how I want to. I get A’s in school, ok? Teachers like my outlines the way I do them. I’m sorry.

3.) My teachers want one inch margins. I know, it sucks, but they think I’m a slacker when you slyly auto-fuck with my margins. YOU’RE the slacker, asshole!!!

4.) If I’m writing a ten page paper about, oh, say rhetorical discourse, and I’m on page nine and we’ve (you and I) have been working together for about five hours and I suddenly type “rheotoric,” can’t you REMEMBER that I have correctly typed “rhetoric” nine thousand times by this point and just fucking fix it for me? I have a laptop. Right clicks on those are annoying as shit.

5.) Your dictionary/thesaurus is missing SO MANY fuckin words! What’s up with that?

6.) When I hit “print preview” you really should let me actually EDIT there, too. Print preview means, ok, I’m gonna look it over one more time and see if it’s all good. When I notice something’s fucked up, I have to close print preview to go back and search for it to fix it. C’mon.

7.) When you say something is spelled wrong but really it’s just a word you haven’t learned yet, (it’s ok) and I fix it for you before I type anything else, you switch it back to being wrong! Fuck you is that annoying!

8.) Sometimes, I am just right with the grammar and you’re not.

9.) Is it going to hurt my eyes to see the whole damn menu if I click on File or Edit? What are you ashamed of?

10.) I’m sorry I have been such a rude bitch. We have had great times together, and overall you’re thesaurus has made me sound much smarter than I am in many, many papers. Also, I love it when you track my changes. That’s so sexy. And who can forgot Courier New, to turn a seven page paper into ten! Thank you!

Has anyone else spotted the resemblance???

popish
Originally uploaded by iGav.

So when I said perhaps the new Pope already had the white clothes ready, maybe he was using power of the Dark side to guarantee the result of the election.

Remember the mix up between the black smoke and the white smoke? There's no smoke without fire.

Oh and by the way, just in case anyone flames me about it, according the this chap, I'm already going to hell, so I don't need anyone else telling me, OK

Can anyone tell me?

w042038a
Originally uploaded by iGav.

Is it me or is the new Pope wearing the old one's clothes? Surely there hasn't been enough time to create an entire new wardrobe for him in this much time.

Or did he already have the wardrobe and was planning to get his hands on the job ...

Let's cross our fingers

A harmless bacterium has been discovered taht seems to bind to the HIV virus rendering it ineffective:

Tao and colleagues at Chicago's Rush University isolated the lactobacilli from the oral and vaginal cavities of healthy human volunteers. The team then tested the bacteria against HIV and found two strains that specifically trap the virus by eating mannose and -- in the lab at least -- block infection.
'If we can find its natural enemy, we can control the spread of HIV naturally and cost-effectively, just as we use cats to control mice,' Tao said.

Let's hope this might one day lead to a cheap effective cure

Who should you vote for

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 26
Conservative -57
	Liberal Democrat 90
UK Independence Party -22
	Green 70

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Google Maps Is now working in the UK

And look, you can go all the way from Lands end to John O'Groats

Testing Blood to Track History

An ambitious and controversial genetics project that uses blood to trace the migration patterns of ancient humans faces a possible boycott as it launches this week ...

The Genographic Project is the brainchild of the National Geographic Society and features IBM as its key partner in building the world's largest and most sophisticated human DNA database. The program will cost at least $40 million over five years and includes support from the Waitt Family Foundation of San Diego (which was founded by Gateway founder and chairman Ted Waitt) ...

It's a large and technically challenging project, but nothing IBM hasn't done before,' said Saharon Rosset from IBM Research. IBM will create a secure, scaleable database that will store the data centrally, and will provide sophisticated online collaboration tools.

We know indeed that IBM have helped track down different ethnic groups before

How cute is this

I found it at this site that lists the last 30 images saved by livejournal users.

I guess it's true, I really am a commie pinko fag!

Well, there's no point disputing what I already knew, I'm politically well to the left and I'm proud of it - and isn't it a shame that in the forthcoming election I can no longer bring myself to vote for Labour and especially not that foxhunting apologis Kate Hoey.

By comparing your answers to the answers of the respondents in the opinion poll, we can tell you how your views compare to those of the whole population of Britain.
Compared to the whole population...
0.9% are significantly to your left
5.9% have views about the same as yours
93.2% are significantly to your right

Talk about wear your heart on your sleeve ...

Girl Holding Her Own Heart
Originally uploaded by DBarefoot.

This girl's got it in her hands.

Lovely, just what you want when you're about to go to lunch

Anyone fancy a trip to carhenge?

Carhenge: a replica of Stonehenge built in a Nebraska field from old cars, supposedly with astronomical corrections for the local latitude.

Thank goodness for holidays

Unfortunately, not mine, but the next best thing, my shift manager is away which means I've taken charge of the radio.

Being a boring consultancy with a graphics department, we have no sound capacity on the PCs, and so can't access Internet radio (I know how very 20th century!) and have to use the lousy cassette radio thing with a broken ariel that loses tuning every few minutes.

Still I shouldn't moan too much as having control of the tuning button means we can listen to XFM instead of being subjected to the execrable Virgin that plays the same ten songs over and over again.

Now let's get it straight, I don't have anything against Coldplay, U2, Scissor Sisters or Snow Patrol, or their songs, it's just I hate the way Virgin plays the same two or three sonds by each of them endlessly. Are they paid by someone to conduct this aversion therapy on the British public???

One foot in the Grave :-(

Oh dear, Looks like there's only one more season of Six feet under which has been one of the best tv shows in recent times.

ALAN POUL Yeah. I mean, listen, we're all going to be very moved, and I think we want people who are watching to be moved. But on our show I don't think we've ever tried to move people through sentiment. I don't think overt appeals to sentimentality are part of our style book. So the ending will involve life and death and will involve darker turns for some people and lighter turns for others. The most important thing is we want to have a sense that every story has reached its appropriate conclusion.

Guess it's good that it's a planned ending rather than half the cast leaves and the storylines fizzle out like so many other shows

Microsoft and the thumb based interface

Microsoft Research scientists claim to have designed a revolutionary new input device to facilitate easier use of PDAs and mobile phones:

In their paper, the researchers detailed thumb-as-stylus designs that allow users to operate hand-held devices using only one hand. Although existing stylus-based gesture systems do not preclude the use of the thumb, no systems have been specifically designed to be operated using the thumb, according to the researchers.

Excuse my naivety, but isn't that how I control my iPod every day?? I stroke the trackpad with my thumb whilst holding the iPod in the same hand for one-handed thumb-driven action

Is this not just a case of Microsoft trying to take the credit for something which was invented by someone else?

Ever wondered what it meant??

I did know this, but forgot and then found it on the Internet, isn't technology marvellous when we're having a slow day at work

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch The longest town name in the world means 'The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave'.

Se7en Redux

The climax of Se7en as enacted by stuffed toys

Wish you were there??

For those who didn't want to pay through the nose to go to Rome to see the Pope's corpse for less than 30 seconds, here's a full screen QuickTime VR of mourners in St Peers Square on April 3rd. Almost as good as the real thing, just none of the queueing nor the annoying people with Princess Diana syndrome wailing and gnashing their teeth

Game

From An extraordinary woman in a mediocre life

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that 'cool' or 'intellectual' book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

So here goes:

It looks as if they were employees, not slaves, which they would have been in the West Indies. Queen Elizabeth herself had a negro servant, but that did not stop her from issuing a proclamation that 'there are of late divers blackamoors brought into this realm, of which there are already too many considering how God has blessed this land with great increase of people of our nation ... those kind of people should be sent forth out of the land'. A Lubeck merchant offered to help by shipping them back to Sapina dnPortugal , where he was sure of a good market, but his overtures came to nothing , and the proclamation was never strictly enforced.

It's just the book I'm reading at the moment: Elizabeth's London by Liza Picard.

I wonder what would happen if you put all the quotes that people have come up with together, would it read like some psychotic William Burroughs pastiche???

Burroughs is one of my favourite writers - here you can find sound files

I can't get no Satisfaction

Was at the top of the charts when I was born. Yes, I know, I'll be forty in a few months time.
Talk about a shock to the system; where did the last 20 years go??

Using Google To Find Free Music Downloads - Search Engine Journal

How's this for helpful?

If you type: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 b into google it will list directories of unprotected mp3 files. Even better if you add an artist name to the search string it will search for that artist

I want to go try this

The plot thickens

So it now appears the BBC knew as far back as January that Christopher Ecclestone only intended to do the first series of Doctor Who and never intended to come back for a scond season and had entered into an agreement not to reveal this fact.

Presumably this was in the hope that there would be genuine shock at the end of episode 13 which is when, one would assume, the Doctor is injured in such a way that leads him to regenerate.

Presumably the BBC rushed a press statement once the press got hold of the story of Ecclestone leaving

Head of drama and commissioning Jane Tranter said: "The BBC regrets not speaking to Christopher before it responded to the press questions on Wednesday 30 March.

"The BBC further regrets that it falsely attributed a statement to Christopher and apologises to him."

A BBC spokesman said a mutual agreement was made between the corporation and Eccleston in January that the fact he was not making a second series would not be made public.

But after journalists questioned the press office, the news was confirmed.

When cometh the day ...

... that I take over the world, I can assure you the programming team of word will be hunted down and sent to the salt mines of Siberia for unadulterated incompetence and causing the daily misery that is trying to use Word for anything longer than one side of A4.

Unfortunately, the place where I'm working currently insists on doing everything in Word, but most particularly long long boring pitchbooks with millions of numered headings, subheading, points and sub-points, bullets, sub-bullets and so on ad infinitum.

Why is it after all these years Microsoft Word cannot managed to keep a list of bullets consistent from one paragraph to another?

I've been formatting pages and pages of the bloody things, and from one paragraph to another, Word changes the size of the bullet points.

As if that isn't enough, the author of this dreadful report also insists on using list numbering as well as heading numbering. The list numbering has to start from 1 everytime it is envoked. Try telling Word that. Restarting numbering half way down my document just wrecked all my formatting for the entire document.

I tell you this much, had I been at Buckingham Palace the other week, I would have used the Queen's sword to much better effect than to knight Bill Gates, I'd have frogmarched him to the nearest computer and forced him to sit there formatting a 100 page document in Word to my satisfaction.

Entropy House Productions Presents - Lord of the Peeps

Here's one that passed me by for a long time - the Lord of the
rings as performed by stuffed rabbits … I kid you not!

Entropy House Productions brings to the big screen epic adventure as it has never been presented before. Come with us on a quest to defeat darkness, to save the world from the menace of unsleeping evil.


The Dark Lord Sauron needs but a trifle, a golden ring, to fold Middle-Earth into eternal night. It is given to one small person, Frodo of the Shire, to carry the Ring through many perils to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom…

So is it all part of a masterplan??

There are lots of reports of David Tennant being in the frame to take over the lead in Doctor Who from Christopher Ecclestone. Interestingly, the Times says that the BBC want a regeneration scene in the 13th episode

The BBC wants Tennant in place to shoot a “regeneration” scene at the climax of the 13th and final episode of the revived sciencefiction classic.

He is then expected to make his first appearance as the Doctor in a Christmas special, in which he will team up with Billie Piper, who plays his assistant, Rose.

So if this report is correct, does this mean the BBC want to shoot a different ending to the season than was originally intended?

Or does it mean it was all part of plans for the series, and that they wanted to get the regeneration happening that didn't happen at the beginning of the new series.

There's quite a lot of chatter in the blogosphere to the effect that Christopher Ecclestone's announcement has happened to keep up interest in the show and also to get people excited around the idea of regeneration.

The Daily Mail is reporting that BBC bosses are furious as Ecclestone's departure has ruined all the merchandising they had lined up for Christmas

BBC bosses are furious over Christopher Eccleston's decision to quit as Doctor Who after spending millions on merchandising which carries his image.

They had hoped to cash in on the show's popularity by exploiting the lucrative Christmas market with toys and other merchandise with the actor's distinctive features.

BBC Worldwide licensed Manchester firm Character Options to design more than 20 items. And a 12in action figurine of him is ready to be in the shops by October.

But by Christmas, Eccleston will have already been long departed as the Doctor - his last appearance on television being in June - and will have already been replaced by a new Docousfor the second series, rendering the merchandising obsolete.

There is also the embarrassing possibility that the actor's replacement will already be starring in the planned Christmas special

lowculture: HMM, THAT WAS A BIT QUICK, WASN'T IT?

I'm with Tania on this one

Bastard!

Christopher Ecclestone has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new show, and just as it is confirmed a second series has been commissioned.

"Actor Christopher Eccleston has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new series has been screened, the BBC has confirmed.
Eccleston, whose first appearance as the ninth Time Lord attracted around 10 million viewers, feared being typecast. "

You have to ask yourself what the hell he took the role for in the first place. Surely he realised that there would be an expectation that there would be several series of the show. It hardly bodes well for the future if withon one season of the show they are already replacing the leading man.

Have GPS will travel

Now that doctor who has had a bit of a comeback, why not use those GPS units you got for Christmas and never use to track down one of the 237 remaining Police call boxes dotted around the country

There's even a Geocaching competition to track them down

How cool is this??

Sonycameras save pictures by default with the prefix DSC00

Here's a Google image search that lists a yheap of these saved to the web

Knight Moves Problem

Knight Moves Problem

Goddess with 100ft breasts to rival Angel of the North

Sculptor Charles Jencks plans creating a giant Goddess of the North from waste material generated by open cast mining.

The Sunday Times - Britain



March 27, 2005

Goddess with 100ft breasts to rival Angel of the North
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor



FIRST came the Angel of the North. Now motorists using the A1 are to be confronted with the far earthier figure of a giant reclining “goddess” stretching her curves alongside nearly half a mile of the dual carriageway.
The woman, with breasts and hips up to 100ft high, will be created 10 miles north of Newcastle from the waste material generated by open-cast mining, with each of her enormous curves concealing millions of tons of mining spoil...

The idea for the goddess emerged when the Banks Group, a mining and property company, realised there were millions of tons of valuable coal lying under farmland on the Blagdon estate near Shotton, Northumberland.

The site was, however, sandwiched between the East Coast main railway line and the busy A1. With more than 100,000 motorists and rail users passing by each day there were guaranteed to be protests if the landscape were scarred by mining.

They contacted Jencks after his landscaping for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art won the 2004 Gulbenkian prize for museum of the year.

Jencks said: “When most mining companies finish at an open-cast site, they fill it and turn it back into farmland. We wanted to do something that would give back something positive to the community.”

The huge scale of the goddess, particularly the millions of tons of spoil that will have to be moved to create her face, breasts, hips and thighs, would make the project impossibly expensive if it were attempted anywhere else. Open-cast mining, however, relies on some of the biggest earth-moving machinery ever made and Banks has pledged to allow Jencks whatever he needs.

A Banks spokesman said the figure would become the centrepiece of a “land-art park” with footpaths wending their way over and around the goddess.

I think that's a fantastic idea. Open cast mining creates a horrible amount of waste and this seems a really good way to deal with it.

I particularly like the fact that the resulting earthwork could last for thousands of years - who knows, in a thousand or more years time people may wonder about our beliefs as exemplified by the Goddess

British Heart Foundation - Sponsorship Page

We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.

Photography | Erik Lacson

Fancy some cheery heartwarming pix for Easter - how about Philipinos nailing themselves to crosses for Holy Nailing Day.

You see that's the trouble with holy books, they always incite copycat violence

They should ban it. Otherwise we'll have the children doing it next

Netdisaster.com

Have fun firing disasters at webpages

Yahoo! Search - Creatively Common

Yahoo have created a search engine for searching creative commons content.

Not sure why I would use that rather than Creative commons' own search facility, but there you go

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou
Originally uploaded by whoozee.

Testing this cos my m8 Paul's setting up his blog and needs to know how to post pix

Remains of ancient Egyptian seafaring ships discovered

The first remains of ancient Egyptian seagoing ships ever to be recovered have been found in two caves on Egypt's Red Sea coast, according to a team at Boston University in the US.

They seem to think that the items, found in man made caves, date to the reign of Queen Hatsepsuut, who allegedly made a naval journey to a mysterious incense producing land called Punt

1984 Apple Newsweek Advertising Insert

Interesting little flashback to the Macs of 1984

In the Fall of 1984 Apple published a 16-page (with fold-out) advertising insert in Newsweek magazine. For many, this was the first “up-close” experience with a Macintosh — detailing the radical features of this new computer. The Macintosh was obviously evolving during the production of this insert as applications, icons and even hardware change from one photo to the next (and are often different from what actually made it to the shipping product). Also, in stark contrast to more recent advertising, this brochure actually makes direct comparisons to the competition with ample text to go along with the pictures.

Pimp My Safari

Don't know about you, but Safari's my main browser at home (not at work where I'm cursed to work on Windows and IE 6.0).

I've tried Firefox, but somehow it isn't quite aquafied enough for my liking, although I do like the plugin architecture and it's the only thing I really wish Apple would add to Safari.

Well here comes a site that aims to help in this direction

Fur up your iBook

Go on, you know you want to - I'd love to, but I'm too poor to own one. Does anyone want to donate one to me??

Go on, you know you want to

Worried that Big Brother might be watching you

Use the virtual browser to bypass firewall and proxy limitations - dead useful

Matt Facer.com - Finger Twister

Have a go at playing finger twister on your monitor - loads of fun

Budding musicians take note

Anyone with Garageband can now enter a competition to come up with the best song using 100 Apple loops from Tune media. The best bit is that the loops are free

Guess which arrogant bastards need a slap

Of course, you guessed it, it's everyone's favourite evil empire run by Darth Gates himself, it's Microsoft.

After hearing from Microsoft's competitors, the EU's antitrust office found that the system the company had set up to improve the interoperability between its Windows server and other software companies was insufficient, the AP report said.

"Based on the market tests, it doesn't seem to be working at all," EU spokesman Jonathan Todd was quoted as saying.

More fun with Flickr

Something else you can do with Flickr - you get a colour wheel and can pick picturs based on their predominant colour cast

Lunar Wheel Calendar.

The years getting on a bit, so it's a bit late, but how's this for a different idea for an age old problem



Quite a neat alternative calendar

PostSecret

Ever wanted to get something off your chest? well now you can. Pop it on a postcard and send it to Post secret who will put it up on their website.