Stormcaller.net

Saturday, May 31, 2003 - "The Road to El Ray"

> Science/Tech

Funky little US military radio-controlled flying thing, powered by hydrogen fuel pellets. [Details]
I met Sir Martin Rees a couple of weeks ago. He was giving a talk at the Royal Institution, where I work occasionally, on whether mankind will survive the 21st century. Nice friendly chap, and an excellent speaker. [Details]
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's some kind of tumbly thing. [Details]
Little robots are always fun. [Details]
...though bigger, bunker-busting robots are much more fun. [Display]
About time we stopped becoming entirely dependent on America for our strategic capabilities due to our reliance on their surveillance and GPS systems. [Details]
> Geek

Bastards! Got tired of waiting for the BFI to announce the dates for the IMAX showings of "The Matrix: Reloaded", so I phoned their information and bookings line. After three minutes of recorded message and five minutes of being on hold in the queue I get through to an actual human. "Well, we don't really know when it'll be showing, it hasn't been confirmed yet. Maybe sometime in July, we're not sure." JULY?! I made sure to ask him again, very clearly - twice - if he was sure that there was no chance of it coming out on IMAX before July. The answer? A resounding "No". Oh well, I guess I'll have to go see it at a normal cinema this week :/
High speed broadband, both up- and down-stream, through a balloon 1.5km up in the sky. Let's hope it actually gets off the ground, in both senses - this could revolutionise internet access in this country. [Details]
...though it doesn't look as cool as this alternative system. [Details]
I must have missed this last week - a live action movie based on the popular animé "Neon Genesis Evangelion" has been announced, with special effects to be done by Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop (of LOTR, of course). [Details]
I have better visual skills than you. [Details]
More Matrix-related pop culture <-> philosophy type stuff. No spoilers. [Details]
Talking of the Matrix (like I could avoid that), how could anyone possibly want to watch a poor quality, downloaded copy of "Reloaded"? Most film I can understand, but this one really has to be experienced on the big screen - or even on the really big screen. No spoilers. [Details]
"I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly." [Destroy]
There's a good idea - let's make hobbits and elves even more camp by putting them in a musical and making them prance around. Still, this'll hopefully be worth seeing. [Details]
Planetarion are having a free round. I fondly remember playing that for a couple of years, but does anyone actually still play it? [Details]
It's a real shame that KaZaA has become the killer product in the P2P filesharing world. There are far superior systems, such as [Details]
Ok, Google getting silly now. [Details]
> Stuff

What a great idea! Brings a whole new meaning to "Party at x's place!" [Details]
If he keeps breaking bones nobody has ever heard of, the concept of a degree in David Beckham might not seem so absurd. [Details]
Make your bicycle even more of a danger to motorists, by putting bright, colourful spinny things on your spokes to distract them. [Details]
How are they going to let him know whether his campaign has been successful or not? [Details]
This thing shoot globules of water through the air. Pretty wimpy splash, but it looks cool. [Details]
A crude solution, but I guess it works, and it looks funny too! [Details]
Women are evil succubi. [Display]
Open this in IE, and highlight it (Ctrl-A). Genius. Update: Linked it wrong before - try again now. [Dodgy]

Posted by Stormcaller at 8:00 PM GMT [Link]

Sunday, May 25, 2003 - "Another terrible Eurovision Song Contest"

I actually watched most of the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Yes - I was that bored. Of course, I wasn't expecting much, but it's something to do and mildly amusing.
I was busy doing stuff on my computer and don't have a TV in my room, so I was very geeky and watched it online. I was streaming the Latvian TV footage from the official website, which was about 45 seconds behind the TV coverage, fullscreen on my second monitor. But what fun is Eurovision without Terry Wogan taking the piss? So I muted that and also streamed the BBC coverage from the Radio 2 site, which was about 43 seconds behind the TV. So even though I was nearly a minute behind what the rest of the country was seeing, my video stream and the audio I was getting from Radio 2 were almost in sync and therefore watchable. Hooray for technology!
Didn't bother to watch the end and therefore missed the results. I had better things to do with my time, like watch the excellent "Riverworld" on Sci-Fi UK - a film adaptation of Philip José Farmer's series of novels, beginning with "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" in which the entirety of humanity, from every era, have been reborn into a mysterious, Earthlike afterlife.
Anyway - Apparenty Turkey won. I think I missed that performance. That'll be a nice opportunity for a giant advert next year for their application for entry into the EU. I though the British entry was ok, if a little too much like the rest of the Europop. But how could we get zero points?! That never happens to any country! Where were our political votes from Spain, Israel... erm, Belgium...? Not even a sympathy point in sight. Even German entries with old men singing about prancing around in the corn get some points. I suppose that was the ultimate message of "there is no excuse for your existence" to Jemini.
Even the Russian lesbian (so they claim) duo t.A.T.u completely failed to do anything even remotely interesting in their performance, despite the fears of the organisers (and the hopes of everyone else) that there would be "nudity and other raunchy stunts" involved, and for international stars their song was as crap as the rest of them, and more annoying. There weren't even any particularly ridiculous entries to have a good laugh at and use to make fun of "those silly Europeans". How disappointing.

Posted by Stormcaller at 8:33 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 24, 2003 - "General Apathy and Major Boredom"

> Science/Tech

NASA's latest idea that'll probably be scrapped after six months and a few billion dollars. A serious look at space elevator proposals would remove the need for a shuttle replacement. [Details]
What do Earth and the rest of the planets look like from Mars? [Display]
I can think of plenty of people who are closer to chimps than humans. [Details]
Big brother is watching, privacy being violated, US government/military evil, blah, blah, blah... The usual exaggerated rubbish. [Details]
No, they haven't invented the light switch - go read it again. [Details]
Toilet Wars! [Details]
"Mmm... free goo..." [Details]
It's all to do with the effect of solar flares on the quantum flux of the surface tension of the water, naturally. [Details]
I want one! Never mind the broken fingers - you can zap a monitor or mobile phone from a couple of metres away with this baby. [Details]
> Geek

It's going to be difficult and painful, but I'm going to wait to see "The Matrix: Reloaded" on IMAX. By the way - if anyone spoils the plot for me, I'm afraid I'm going to have to castrate them with a rusty spoon, or something equivalent.
"Since its inception almost 30 years ago, the internet has been transformed from a primitive device for sharing thoughts and ideas, into a massive network where people pay to connect and read advertisements they don't want, while calling each other "asshats"." [Details]
L33t f0ld1ng skillz! [Display]
I can go on to any Counterstrike server and see people cheating. Why would I want to watch this specific one? [Details]
What a waste it is to redirect all of your spam to an extra hotmail account or something. Much better to send it to someone who can make use of it. [Details] [Details]
...in fact, just send it to the U.S. federal government. [Details]
Help fight spam! This page generated 100 random email addresses for email address harvesting bots to pick up and add to their list. [Details]
We like Slashdot. [Display]
Don't be so skeptical - official organisations never fiddle statistics, and the government knows all about technology. [Details]
Some Shockwave demos of the physics engine created by Havok, who have worked with Valve on Half-Life 2. [Destroy]
Thirty years on, you can't get the damn things to shut up. [Details]
Too true... [Display]
Ah, DOS. How I miss thee. [Details]
> Stuff

I'm extremely unimpressed by BT's new Home Computing department. A useless website, a ridiculous "help me decide" wizard and all they seem to be doing is reselling Hewlett Packard PCs at twice the price and charging you for £600 photo editing software. And I told them so. [Details]
The BBC changed the figures in this article after we pointed out how ridiculously inaccurate and miscalculated they were. [Details]
And to round off a day of having a go at Britain's major corporations, I send a rather more polite email to a rather smaller company with "British" as the first part of its name, the British Film Institute, asking why they haven't put up dates for "The Matrix: Reloaded" yet on their website and when they plan to do so. [Details]
Chuck some cash to these while on the way to puncture this. [Details]
'Tis Bob! And look what's he's done to his hair... and his lip... and his face. Oh, wait - that's his nose. [Display]
Led Zeppelin are the best. Even three decades later, today's popular music has nothing on them. [Details]
...and the list of 100 albums you should throw away if you own them, on the same site, is almost as amusing as the comments at the bottom. [Details]
If she's ugly by the time she's 526 years old, the insurance company might just break even. [Details]
I love American logic. "Brain cancer is on the rise, so we should ban the addition of fluoride to our public water systems!" [Details]
Baby -> adult pictures. If you've got nothing better to look at. We especially like this one. [Details]
I've seen this diagram before, and perhaps you have too, but it's just so interesting. [Display]

Posted by Stormcaller at 5:43 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 24, 2003 - "Another series of Big Brother. Yay."

The first series of Big Brother was great. Nothing like that had ever done before. It was a truly interesting and entertaining experiment.
Now it's not an experiment any more. What are we up to now, series seven or something? The whole reality genre has been overdone to death, but it looks like it's here to stay - mostly because it's cheap to produce, and television channels can replace their usual rubbish with 24-hour Big Brother (with plenty of adverts, of course). Teenage girls and their mothers all over the world are glued to it. That doesn't, of course, make it any good, since teenage girls and their mothers have been glued to soap operas for decades, and we all know what utter tripe those are.
Big Brother was crap after the end of series one, and will be no better in series four. Another year, another bunch of uninspiring cockney trailer trash and emotionally unstable women. No thank you.

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:47 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 17, 2003 - "Time is up, Donnie."

"But we also need the possibility of cataclysm, so that, when situations seem hopeless, and beyond the power of any natural force to amend, we may still anticipate salvation from a messiah, a conquering hero, a deus ex machina, or some other agent with power to fracture the unsupportable and institute the unobtainable."
- Stephen Jay Gould, "Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown"
Go see the film "Donnie Darko". Then go visit the website. Please.
Cellar door.

Posted by Stormcaller at 5:04 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 17, 2003 - "Plans pondered through the seasons."

> Science/Tech

So much for CD and DVD, or even Blu-ray. Meet AOD - 36GB on a dual-layer rewritable disk. Not a very catchy name, but with that capacity who cares? [Details]
Hollywood law enforcement/military technology compared with the reality. The guys who wrote this article clearly haven't seen Minority Report, Terminator 2, The Matrix... [Details]
So is time travel really possible? [Details]
Google? Bah, too slow. [Details]
This very interesting proposal to send a probe to the Earth's core is all over the web, but Slashdot has a good summary. [Details]
> Geek

I'm nearly wetting myself over Half-Life 2. I can't wait! In terms of anticipation, HL2 > Matrix 2 > Deus Ex 2 > everything else. [Details]
All the HL2 footage from E3 is here. Especially check out the tech demo (the 48mb file), which shows off the graphics and physics in the new game engine. The teaser trailer is over at Fileplanet. [Details]
Oh yes: and there's some kind of Doom sequel coming out, too. [Download]
That thieving shyster Gates! [Details]
Last week I linked an article on the evils of filesharing. Early this week they're telling us how to do it! [Details]
Another followup: Never mind the funky Japanese computer case in the shape of a girl - there's a whole bunch of crazy rigs here. [Details]
And yet more followups: Channel 4 have redeemed themselves somewhat with the excellent "Magnetic Flip", a programme shown on Sunday about how the Earth's magnetic field is rapidly weakening in possible preparation for a flip of polarity where North and South swap over. [Details]
Klingon interpreters? This is way beyond geek. [Details]
Hah - Slashdotters triumph over spammers. [Details]
Memes! This is what it's all about - human culture. Read this, even if only the first half. [Details]
I don't think I'd ever get up if I had this chair. [Details]
A more interesting way to do web design. [Download]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Update: This site appears to have been blogdotted - the new term I made up just now which is like Slashdotting but when lots of blogs link to it. [Drivel]
> Stuff

Totally failing an exam on purpose is much more fun than doing well on one. [Details]
I was asking a friend the other day if all the members of Pink Floyd are still alive. This site doesn't actually list them, but it does have pretty much everyone else who was ever anyone. [Details]
A wonderful speech given by a U.S. Ranger to young miliary cadets. [Details]
Bob's been saying "interrobang" all week. Now you know what the hell he's on about. [Details]
Bored (stupid?) Americans have been cutting their tongues in half with scalpels heated with blowtorches, without anaesthetic. [Details]
...whereas these Americans are just all blatant idiots. [Details]
Reckon this was deliberately planned, or they just chose the lucky van? [Details]
Nuke the whales! [Details]
Whether "the world's best pick-up line" works or not, it's certainly paying off for the guy selling it for $3. [Details]
Just silly place names, really. Not affiliated with this place. [Details]
Advanced procrastination, for professionals. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 4:29 PM GMT [Link]

Sunday, May 11, 2003 - "100 Worst Britons?"

What a ridiculous farce of a programme "100 Worst Britons" was. The results, after 100,000 votes cast by the public on the Channel 4 website, who could vote as many times as they liked, are pathetic. I fancy that one of the mailing lists I'm on could have made a good case for anyone we didn't particularly like if we'd put some effort in; 30 people voting 30 times each is 900 votes, which probably would have gotten our victim into the 70-90 range.
Tony Blair is the Britain's worst living citizen? Public opinion is so vehemently against 'H' from Steps, Jade Goody from Big Brother and Gareth Gates that they are among the top (or bottom?) ten worst Britons? This reads like a list of minor and major celebrities with the odd royal or businessman in there; it's a list of "who's who" in popular culture. Yes, a lot of them are very annoying and I could happily do without the existence of plenty of those listed, but many of the choices are just absurd. Sting? Richard Branson? Heck, the Queen? Even that little - and fictional - git Harry Potter got a mention.
The BBC's "Great Britons" programme was not only interesting and insightful, but was also well chosen (though Isaac Newton should definitely have been first). The Independent got it right when they said that this, on the other hand, was more like "worst ever British TV". Channel 4 really have given up their last remaining shred of dignity.

Posted by Stormcaller at 3:53 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 10, 2003 - "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

> Science/Tech

No joke - this bloke really is building a DIY cruise missile. He plans to use all easily obtainable materials and his own pulsejet engine designs to create a missile that will land to 100m accuracy after travelling 100 miles. [Details]
Astronauts land safely in a Russian Soyuz capsule. Article has some interesting info on how the International Space Station crewing system works. [Details]
Here's me, pre-empting society as usual. I have a 64mb pendrive. [Details]
...but I'll be a step behind when these pieces of kit start making the rounds. [Details]
Pictures of Mercury's solar transit this week. [Details]
Cue deluge of "Hey, I just got an email from Uranus" type quips. [Details]
Control the cursor with your nose! This wonderful little program is far too inaccurate for any serious use, but it's certainly a lot of fun, and you can even play a few games using your nose. Officially a Very Cool Thing. [Details]
Um... yay for peanut butter? Horrible stuff. [Details]
> Geek

I went to the Collectormania event in Milton Keynes on Sunday, along with a group of friends. We met plenty of actors and actresses, playing characters such as The Hulk, Darth Vader, R2-D2, Gollum and Dr. Who, as well as our own favourite, Virginia Hey, who plays Zhaan in Farscape. Fun was had by all - pictures are in the Photos section, or click the link -> [Display]
Water-rocket powered [toy] cars. A safe way of propelling something down a road at high speeds using a rocket. [Details]
Stick your hard drive in that. [Details]
Ok, now the RIAA have given up trying to play by the rules and are just being blatantly illegal. NYTimes article, therefore free reg required. You know the drill. [Details]
People like this make me angry. [Details]
People like this, on the other hand, are taking a step in the right direction. [Details]
Yes, let's get rid of our addiction to online gaming "through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him". That'll save us from the horrible evil of gaming. [Details]
Slashdot linked a thought-provoking article on the relationships between hackers/codemonkeys and artists - "makers" - and science types. Very long article; the good stuff is near the middle. [Details]
The usual one-sided bullshit, this time from Time. Conclusions? Filesharing will destroy the entertainment economy and you're all going to hell. They blame Kazaa for the fact that sales of the top 10 American albums have gone down over the past couple of year - no mention of the fact that 90% and growing of American popular music is utter crap. Thanks for the link, Watto. [Details]
Tim O'Reilly, however, has a good point about buying books and the shop-customer relationship. [Details]
> Stuff

Ghettopoly - brilliant! See some of the properties here. [Details]
Just a warning - this could happen to you. [Display]
It's not, but reading the site you'd think this was a joke. Stupid-yet-cool Nokia thing. [Details]
An $150million film based on Homer's Iliad, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Bana (Bruce Banner in the upcoming Hulk film), and directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Definitely one to watch. It's called "Troy", and coming out next May. [Details]
Spam Wars! Of course. [Destroy]
Evil TV networks. *still sore over Farscape* [Details]
If "six" was the same as "infinity", this would have been a lot more exciting. Funny, though. [Details]
Dead chicken cannon! On the official Edwards Air Force Base website, no less. [Details]
...Well, ok, still dubious - but it's a real problem. [Details]
Urban dictionary. On the same vein as the Bible Re-Write Project, thought not as quite utterly brilliant. Look at the second definition on this page, incidentally. [Details]
For the terminally inept. Oh, wait... (um, and please don't do this) [Display]
Pacino the greatest film star of all time - was there ever any doubt? [Details]
Blatantly nicked from NTK, but it's just so amusing. [Display]
Birmingham's great. Pavarotti says so. [Destroy]
...so support the official "Birmingham: It's Not Shit" campaign. [Details]
So simple. Why did nobody think of this sooner? [Dodgy]
Dodgy photoshopping of Iraqi crowds by the Evening Standard. [Display]
Mmmm... website. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 2:25 AM GMT [Link]

Tuesday, May 6, 2003 - "Idleness Breeds Folly..."

...or why not to ask me daft questions!
"How far is Hyde Park from the Hyde Park Corner tube station?"
Would you believe it, I have a huge 5057x3634, 3mb map of the whole of central London.in jpg form (how handy). So I shall tell you exactly.
The half kilometre scale on my screen is 10.35cm on my ruler.
Therefore 20.7cm on my ruler is equal to one kilometre.
I measure 2.1cm from Hyde Park Corner tube station to the nearest gate to the park (just across the road).
2.1cm is 0.10144927536231884057971014492754 of a kilometre.
Now, I think I can measure accurately on the screen with a ruler to 0.05cm, taking into account both the inaccuracy of my equipment, my vision and the parallax between the screen, the mark on the ruler and my eye. This gives a +/- 0.48% error on the first measurement, which is doubled to +/- 0.97% (carrying through further decimal places) because I doubled the half kilometre measurement to find one kilometre. The second measurement gives an error of +/- 2.38%, due to the smaller number involved, giving a total error of +/- 3.35%.
This gives a final result for the distance between Hyde Park Corner and Hyde Park itself as between 98.05 and 104.85 metres, or a mean average of 101.45m. Approximately.
That, of course, is as the crow flies. I make no allowances for roads, hedges, statues or London buses that may or may not be in the way.
Contrary to what you may think (if you bothered to read this far, of course), there is a point to this. You see, if someone asks me a question and I give them an answer like that, it dissuades them from ever asking me anything again. Which suits me just fine!
Update: Cardelia has pointed out that the error wasn't that large, and I was actually more accurate. The distance is actually somewhere between 98.98m and 103.91m. See here for the explanation.

Posted by Stormcaller at 11:03 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, May 3, 2003 - "It seemed I collected something."

> Science/Tech

Drugs, porn and illegal migrant labour account for more than a tenth of the US economy, with marijuana producing 25%+ more revenue than maize and hardcore adult pornography is equalling box office takes at the nation's cinemas. Ain't America great? [Details]
It holds addresses, memos, to-do lists, dates, sketches and dates. It even tells the time, occasionally. [Details]
These have a 3km range - screw mobile phone networks. iwantoneofthose.com continues to live up to its name, with a new catalogue full of funky stuff. [Details]
Such as this charming little self-contained ecosystem in a glass biosphere. [Details]
Fancy being able to burn 1400mb on to a 700mb CD? Special Engrish press release, complete with lame cartoon. [Details]
Two-decade-old land speed record broken by a rocket sled carrying a missile. [Details]
> Geek

"The Genesis Project", from the excellent Acerbia blog. [Details]
Chewbacca confirmed to be in Star Wars Episode III, with Peter Mayhew reprising his former role. [Details]
Slashdotters are hypothesising about how Chewie and all these other characters could have been part of the prequels but not mention anything in Episodes 4-6. Some people were saying that perhaps Threepio is still secretly loyal to Anakin/Vader, or maybe Vader and Obi-Wan are actually united against the Empire. My favourite silly explanation is that Han Solo can't actually understand Wookie, and that the whole time Chewie is saying things like "Hey, I remember this guy Skywalker's dad" and Han is saying "er... yes, do go fix the rear stabilizer". Same goes for C-3PO not understanding R2-D2, who is madly beeping "Watch out Luke, Vader is your father!". [Discuss]
Talking of Star Wars... [Details]
This lovely little Mortal Kombat gem is doing the rounds by email, bizarrely. So I uploaded it, for a limited time only. [Download - 847KB]
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) are at it again, of course. This time they're sending hundreds of thousands of instant messages over KaZaA telling people that filesharing is illegal, and thereby undermining their own claims in court that such P2P programs are unlawful because they have no use other than sharing files. Duh. Slashdot readers are having a field day. [Details]
Apple's probably-evil US-only, Mac-only iTunes downloadable music store seems to have got off to a good start. [Details]
Filesharing is good for the film industry, anyway. It's undeniable. [Details]
Ever wondered how many football fields an Imperial Star Destroyer would cover, if a Borg Cube is really cubic, or how big the Death Stars each were compared to the Earth's moon, Luna? No, me neither really. [Details]
The things you read when you've been travelling the Distributed Republic of Blogistan for too long. [Details]
> Stuff

Chaos go Mu. Khaled said so. [Details]
What the Levis advert should have been like. [Destroy]
Ridiculously addictive little online tank game. [Destroy]
Unreal II demo released, if you can find it on the pretty but awful to navigate official site. Actually, skip that - you won't be able to. Here's a direct link. [Download - 153MB]
Do it. You now you want to. [Destroy]
President Dubya looked almost heroic when he landed on that US Navy carrier - though Condoleezza Rice just looked silly. A political stroke of genius (that could only have been improved by him jetting in in an F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber, as was the initial plan). [Details]
...unlike it was with Clinton's lot. [Details]
Saddam can't be dead! [Destroy]
Hey! Remember the ingenious Poke the Penguin? No? Oh... well anyway, now you can poke the bunny instead. Without the hilarity. Well, ok, this was probably just a feeble excuse to link Poke the Penguin again. [Details]
See subject.

Posted by Stormcaller at 4:40 PM GMT [Link]