Fanboys and bombboys

More on Schneier (from his blog, the man can sure take a joke! (Edit: note that most of these jokes are cryptographic))
Edit: this is my favourite!

Most people use passwords. Some people use passphrases. Bruce Schneier uses an epic passpoem, detailing the life and works of seven mythical Norse heroes.

Vote for this fact

Anyway I found a bbc page detailing the court dates of the failed 21 July 2005 bombers, which are next month and seem long overdue. If they are guilty (and it sure looks that way but I believe the meaning of prejudice is 'pre-judgement') then send the bastards down. That will go a long way towards alleviating the unreality of the war against terrrrism and the scepticism of folks like me who see a straight-line correlation between "greater goverment and police powers needed" and "an increased terrrrist threat"

Hopefully we will see expedited prosecutions with regard to the latest threat, but frankly holding your breath looks high-risk enough..

PS - I highly recommend this post.

PPS - that post links to a University page regarding the use of 'Piranha solutions" (3:1 Sulphuric Acid and Hydrogen Peroxide, please read the instructions carefully :-) which contains this (possibly ironic?) gem:

3. As a reminder, open-toed shoes are not allowed when working in the lab and bare legs must be covered by wearing a full size bunny suit.

Piranha SOP

Shiv

A collection of prison shivs - deadly weapons manufactured inside jail from everyday ingredients.

terrrists

I was thinking about the rule where mothers had to taste their baby milk before being allowed to take it onto a plane.

Let's assume the baby milk is in fact liquid explosive. There are two possibilities (50-50 as my wife likes to call it):

a) The mother knows the bottle contains explosive: she's not going to be bothered about swallowing a bit, she's going to die soon anyway, along with the baby she's carrying. I hesitate after Rwanda and Beslan to say that a terrrist mother would never use a baby to do that, but I know it would be extremely rare.

b) The mother doesn't know the bottle contains explosives, she's going to get an awful shock.

There was an incident (referenced by Bruce Schneier discussing passenger profiling) where a boyfriend planted a bomb in his pregnant girlfriend's bag, but bombing your own baby or your child's baby? Human depravity could sink no lower. Even rarer. Plus someone has to on the plane to activate the explosive.

Great publicity though!

Anyway, couldn't this have been handled along with the other security questions?
Q) Has your luggage been out of your sight at all?
A) Well, it's been in the attic..

Q) Has anyone mixed any baby-milk for you today?
A) I can emphatically say they haven't.

I did note that the final allowance was a laptop bag and an iPod: handy for the executives whose inflated fares are the backbone of air travel, but shit for a mother with young children who hardly ever travels but needs to take a large bag of nappies, spare clothes, wipes, books, toys etc

Basic Internet terminology

From Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 120687:

World Wide Web

A hypertext facility that essentially ties the Internet's many resources into a searchable web. If a certain word or phrase is highlighted on your screen, clicking it takes you to another site, file, or definition linked to that word.

The article also defines Archie, Veronica, Jughead, HGopher - all deader than dodos - and lists examples of browsers as Cello and Mosaic.

Awkward squad

Browsers are grumpy, gnomic beasts. None more than IE6 though: do you think I should be alarmed or relieved about this?

Moving purple dots

My new boss Tina sent me a bunch of optical illusions, this was the best one I hadn't seen before:

"Concentrate on the cross in the middle, after a while you will notice that this moving purple dot will turn green!

Look at the cross a bit longer and you‘ll notice that all dots except the green one will disappear."

ps - blogger image upload converts GIFs to PNGs seemingly which is why the image has been static for 24 hours

pps - if it isn't working and you've had a few drinks, try closing one eye ;-)

Capitalism at work

I hate capitalism with all my heart but this is so beautifully realised - make sure you drag the slider back and forth, how cool is that (ideally set the 'zoom' to 'max' - even the terminology is boss..)

If you find sliders soooo web 1.1 then just drag the chart dude..

Boing

Read this if you've got an iPod or you know someone who has. If you find copyright issues of interest, that is. Or you've bought music from iTunes and you'd rather not throw it away.

Lern yoursefl compooter sience

Robin The Bear laughs at me but I have become increasingly interested in the history of computing and computers and computer science itself. I've been reading an extensive history of Mac OS (that page links to a 3MB 100+ page PDF) and now I'm bookmarking 'bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing' because it looks like learning fun.

I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen computer science over sociology when choosing my degree subject in 1983. Maybe I would have got rich in the dot-con but I would have shown the exact same lack of enthusiasm for reading computer science textbooks as I did for sociology textbooks, and maybe the same disinclination to pursue it afterwards. There's nothing like studying a subject to put you off it - like maths, which I considered as a degree subject for about minus 2 seconds despite it being my best subject at school.

The annoying thing about sociology was years of people saying "oh, you want to be a social worker then?" - yes, they both contain (a homonym of) the word "social". No, I don't plan to. As a long-time Social Services employee I can tell you that a sociology degree would not in any way provide any training towards a career in social work, and you need a CQSW anyway.

My outrageous niece Chloe - who has just scored a first from Ehdenburrer - got it right. Classics! Brilliant. Unless you collapse into academia there isn't the remotest possibility of a relevant job. And she got to go to Iran, lucky lucky.

Another song, another advert

Goodbye another girl another planet. I always loved you.

Viddie frenzy

Juggling in a Cone
Beat box man
More extreme juggling
Dare you refresh the hoffenator?

All nicked from JF - thanks OPs.

Christiano Ronaldo joke

Out on her royal yacht (borrowed for the occasion) the queen was enjoying the sea air when she spied a man in the water off the port bow – clearly being menaced by a very large shark.

Through her binoculars she could see it was Christiano Ronaldo, struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 20 foot shark! The queen ordered the captain to change course to try and save the poor man, but she knew the yachts top speed would never get them there in time.

At that exact moment a speedboat containing three men wearing white tops sped into view. One of the men took aim at the shark and fired a harpoon into its ribs, immobilising it instantly. The other two reached out and pulled Ronaldo from the water and, using long clubs, beat the shark to death.

They bundled the bleeding, semi-conscious Ronaldo into the speedboat along with the dead shark and prepared for a hasty retreat, when they heard frantic calling ...... It was the Queen calling them to the yacht.

On reaching yacht the Queen went into raptures about the rescue and said, "I'll give you a knighthood for your brave actions. I thought the England team would hate Ronaldo after the world cup. But I see that the England team are true heroes and should serve as a model for sportsmanship to other countries." She knighted them and sailed away.

As she departed Rooney asked the others, "Who was that?!"

"That," Beckham answered, "was our Queen. She rules the Commonwealth and knows everything about our country."

"Well," Rooney replied, "she knows fuck all about shark fishing. How's the bait holding up?"

Thanks Paschal-with-an-h

The future

I've installed the betas of Office 2007 and Windows Vista, so I'm seeing the future but I'm not impressed.

It's just the same as the development UI and paradigm (.Net) - everything is being done to increase discoverability for new and novice users, but what's out there for us old hands? Yet another way to to do the same old thing?

Sunscreen Pharmacy Rock

I can get sunscreen prescribed as I have vitiligo - I have less than 30% of the pigment on my face left, look forward to a future post on self-fulfilling prophecies - but I don't bother as it's cheaper to buy. On prescription I would get ROC factor 25 (25 is a total block, don't believe anything claiming higher ratings) but it costs £10 or whatever it is now for a prescription so I buy it ad hoc every year.

I went to Boots before going on holiday and asked for "ROC sunscreen" at the prescription counter. The helpful assistant tried to go and look at the suncream sector until I said it was "like what you get on prescription" at which point she looked strangely at me, had a word with her pharmacist, went off to the store at the back, and came back with a tube of ROC 25. £1.78. Bargain of the year! I asked her, if she didn't mind, to go and get another tube for me, now I have one upstairs and one downstairs for £3.50.

These are 50 ml tubes but bear two things in mind:
* This is the top-notch sunscreen, and as you can imagine I've used a few: it's hypoallergenic, unperfumed, recommended for children and sensitive skins, goes on and comes off clean.

* I recently spent £9+ buying a bottle (150 ml?) of sunscreen for my daughter to take to nursery, and it was a much inferior substance.

* Sunscreen doesn't last forever, especially if it's exposed to the sun - and a big bottle is much likelier to get spilt or stood on or go off in your bag. Have you noticed how the sunscreen companies don't provide small bottles of good-quality sunscreen at a reasonable price? This is the answer.

See you under the sun-umbrella!

It's a game of 10 halves, Binary

Thanks to Satan for this revolutionary pre-match analysis: arsenal.com vs fcbarcelona.com

Environments
-------------------------
Both running on windows, a dull start...
Arse 0 - 0 Barca

Homepage
-------------------------
Both have splash screens before you enter the main site (yawn), the Barca
one has a nice language selection menu, the arse one invites you to gamble
(which we all know is very bad)...
Arse 0 - 1 Barca

HTML etc
-------------------------
Equalizer for the arse as the wisely decide not to use tables, however an
own goal for the over stuffing of keywords (a redundant tag as we all know)
and the use of 7 javasript includes. The arse score again as barca forgot to
declare a doctype and declare backgound colours and widths outside the css!
Another goal for the arse as barca use a spacer gif over 100 times (got
bored counting), and omit both a noscript tag and a separate print style
sheet.
Arse 3 - 2 Barca

Content
-------------------------
Barca equalize due to greater language options, less encouragements to
gamble ('betting' is an option on the arse main menu - very evil) and no
blatant plugs for their own tv channel and less rotating banner ads. The
arse site appears to have a greater range of club related content, history,
stats etc (ladies team - shouldn't that be women's team) and gets quite
nerdy. Visually, I prefer the barca site, it's cleaner and more readable.
Hence:
Arse 3 - 3 Barca .... Penalties it is!!!!

Product placement 3 - Henderson's Delectable Relish

Owl or blade everyone in Sheffield likes Henderson's and with good reason, it is an excellent condiment, similiar to Worcestershire sauce but a lot nicer. The Weaver picks us up a bottle from Sheffield when we run out, but you can buy online for £10 a litre or just pick up some Henderson's merchandise: interestingly, one of the recipes listed in the recipe book is "Ash, Meat & Potato Pie". I must ask the Weaver what's in it..

Network hardware

I replaced our wireless router and it's a true boiling-frog experience: now everything 'just works' again the contrast is spectacular. Anyone out there struggling with a Linksys BEFW11S4 should just start saving for (or spring for) a new router: they aren't very good.. My cat sat on mine for a year which didn't help.

I bought a Linksys WRT54G for £50 (incl tax & post) and it seems fantastic in comparison because I can upload via FTP again, which is a real boon when maintaining websites! This has been a complete pain for a year or so.

Some protocols fared better with the failing device than others. I expect the situation is analagous to teetering on the fringes of a wireless network: HTTP seemed to manage (with occasional network and page errors), BitTorrent wasn't fussed, SMTP is occasional anyway, but FTP hated it. Something in the connection would fail and FTP uploads would hang: for a while I just did HTTP uploads but they started falling over as well and I couldn't upload any files of any size. HTTP downloads seemed to be unaffected, FTP downloads were less happy, but this is probably a function of browser/client/UA used.

Windows (server 2003) fired TCP/IP errors 4201 and 4202: Network Adapters dis- and re-connected, not necessarily in that order: Mac OS logged "mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interface ..[RFC1918IP].. delaying packets by 5 seconds."

I am also seeing another error though: Windows' event log records

The system failed to register host (A) resource records (RRs) for network adapter with settings ... the reason the system could not register these RRs was because the DNS server contacted refused the update request.

Mac OS on the other hand says this:

Wide-Area Service Discovery disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay 194.168.4.100

Code

That's one of NTL's DNS servers, I recognise it from setting up static IP addresses on Virtual PCs (it makes things a lot easier - as does activating a base copy of Windows before using it on different virtual machines). No need to ask Yossarian or Occam what's going on here, I think. I could use different DNS servers (I believe you can specify any server, but I would hope my own ISPs traffic was optimized) but everything's working now with my shiny new router so 'errors schmerrors'.

I vowed while driving home on Friday night that I would learn to touchtype: I suppose I should keep myself to it. Wish me luck..

ps I realise this post is somewhat incoherent but I becoming totally consumed with nerves over the upcoming European Cup Final starring Arsenal FC.. wish us luck, thank you

Google Calendar

This link adds my birthday to your Google Calendar.

I tried to use the date format Google suggest - &dates=20061207/20061207 - but I ended out with a birthday that ended the day before it started: what could be more of a bummer than having an invalid birthday?

Using &dates=20061207/20061208 in the URL (currently) properly creates an all day event on the 7 Dec.

Once a records clerk..

I have some experience in Public Sector Finance and what has happened with the NHS's overspend comes as no surprise to me. When you introduce new funding into an organization which has been starved of resources and forced to operate in survival mode, the expenditure gathers momentum and the tide won't subside until all the money's gone plus a bit more.

Large organisations are elastic: they can absorb times of hardship, contracting and retreating but protecting the core functionality. When the siege is lifted and new funding is provided, there will be a bounce-back as the tension is released. Each new expenditure stream introduces the possibility of knock-on expenditure especially when the underlying infrastructure has had to be neglected in order to provide core services, as when the covers are removed the rot will need fixing. Everybody knows this, of course, but it isn't possible (bar the omniscient) to precisely quantify the knock-on effects of any new spending. It's only possible to paper over the cracks caused by over-stretched resources until the pressure is released, and the worse the deprivation has been the more damage will have been caused to the infrastructure.

Forcing the Health Authorities to make redundancies and cancel services to recover the deficit is just not helpful, unless you prefer the word "idiotic": the government should bite the bullet and pay up. If finance directors are underperforming then sack them by all means, but a 1% overspend shouldn't qualify as a disaster even on a budget the size of this one. If anything, the Government's own planners should have anticipated this and allowed for it.

The Government prefers to spend our money on a spanking new fleet of submarines stuffed with nuclear weapons. A deterrent of mass destruction, though who or what they deter isn't clear to me.

Something anyway

There are two types of people in this world. The ones who divide people into two groups and the others who don't.

We're back..