Stormcaller.net

Sunday, August 31, 2003 - "Vitenka"

Vitenka's been running Catnews for a good few years. Before I started this weblog-type-thing, I used to post weekly links over at his site. Now Catnews is no more - hence that link not working - and Vit will be, for the near future at least, contributing his links over here.
Since I tend to do Saturdays, he'll be doing a midweek lot of links and things posted every Wednesday (give or take). Obviously you'll be able to see who's written what by looking at the "Posted by" text at the bottom right hand corner of each entry.

Posted by Stormcaller at 2:46 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, August 30, 2003 - "You are made of meat and I am very hungry."

> Science/Tech

Roboto-chan visits Prague and charms the Czech Prime Minister. But after "The Second Renaissance" we all know where robot delegates lead, don't we? [Details]
A useful, objective analysis of the different methods of filtering spam. [Details]
Hubble gets a playmate. [Details]
How to make the perfect cup of tea. [Destroy]
The world - well, ok, America - really has no excuse for not having rolled out an LED lighting system by now. If a significant proportion of public buildings and areas, let alone households, installed LED lights, it would save millions on energy and building/operating new power plants over the next couple of decades, for a relatively small initial outlay. If every mobile phone, computer, answering machine etc. can have LEDs, why not everything else? [Details]
Read NASA's Columbia report. [Details]
You might not care now, but in ten years you'll be paying Intel for their latest diamond chips. [Details]
Couple of guys in a studio decided to film a moon landing footage outtake proving that it was all faked. Well, at least they admitted they were just goofing around. [Download - 1.24MB]
There have been just 47 fatal events in 90 million Boeing 737 flights, since 1967. This one was damned close, though. [Details]
Concorde, on the other hand, has had one fatal event in 0.08 million flights. As good as dead...
...and some more Boeing 737 facts, while I'm reading about it: About 1200 737s are in the air at any given time, and one takes off every 5.3 seconds somewhere in the world. They have flown over 125 million hours in service, travelling 90 billion kilometres and carrying over 7 billion passengers. [Details]
A mathematician's view of sex. [Details]
> Geek

Microsoft have stopped further development work on Outlook Express. Their advice? Keep using the current version, pay for the full version of Outlook or get ready for MSN and Hotmail to take over your life. [Details]
You know, I think they're on to something here. Games rated by how long it takes to find the first crate, and therefore how long until the developers ran out of ideas. [Details]
Slashdotters' verdict: "You have lots of money but will never get a girlfriend. Please go away." [Details]
Aww, they killed DHTML Lemmings for copyright reasons - click the link for more. He just put this page up on Friday evening and is trying to figure this all out, so by the time you click this link the game might be back up. [Details/Destroy?]
Go read Tenka's Futur webcomic and wiki! [Details]
Mmmm... flesh... [Details]
URL obfuscation. We're getting into pretty heavy duty geekiness here. But I bet you didn't know that you could get to, say, google.com by typing http://3639551331 into your browser, or http://50884191587, or http://0x94f472aad8ef2563/, or even http://www.playboy.com%4025114387811. [Details]
> Stuff

The Beeb looks like it's going to give us all free access to its entire archive of TV and radio programmes. I've lost some faith in the BBC recently, over their bias in the news, too much reality TV and pop rubbish (given that they're supposed to be above all that - I'd expect it from ITV and Four) and their part in this ridiculous and overhyped David Kelly "affair". This, on the other hand, is a great step forward and might go some way towards restoring my faith in them as our national media provider. [Details]
Beautiful panorama views of scenes from the Colosseum in Rome to Alcatraz Island to the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza. [Display]
Goths invade Disneyland. Mickey Mouse goes to see therapist. [Details]
Rampaging through the tundra, swinging a burning branch, cometh Stormdude! And he gives a bloodthirsty roar: "Ares, God of War, be praised! You are made of meat and I am very hungry!!!" Stormdude's battle cry will have to do - Stormcaller's was a little... uh, inappropriate. [Destroy]
Far too slick and professional to be genuine, surely. b3ta reckons it's some kind of promo for a new reality TV show. [Details]
The wonders of airbrushing. I feel so cheated! [Display]
The very definition of safety in the workplace. Thanks MC. [Display]
Whenever I hear the Australian prime minister John Howard on the news giving a speech, I can just never quite take him seriously. Sorry - I've got nothing against Australians, but it's the accent, damnit. So now everyone can view the bible with that same not-quite-serious pinch of salt, which can only be a good thing. [Details]
Ignoring the fact that it's clearly silly... wow! [Details]
Japanese cat-based flash games. Difficult! [Destroy]
Well, we knew most of them were hopping mad, but I had no idea certain MPs were quite so loopy. [Details]
Laser-etched crystal with a miniature 3D model of our galaxy inside. this one is nice too. [Details]
Put this with all the other ridiculous stories we've read about the goings-on in Greece and you get a pretty bleak picture of the Greek legal system. Bunch of savages. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 4:44 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, August 23, 2003 - "Being evil is truly a lifestyle unto itself."

> Science/Tech

A Russian nuclear power station on Mars? Now, how will this one end - Mir, Kursk or Chernobyl? [Details]
Hydrogen power could really work. The first person to mention the Hindenburg disaster gets a slap. [Details]
The Science Museum in London has a new exhibition on "The Lord of the Rings". Not sure exactly of the relevence to science, but it was very popular in New Zealand and has loads of armour, weapons, costumes, models as well as sections about the digital effects and make-up and some original interviews with the cast and crew. [Details]
Kids don't realise that there's little excitement and no money in IT. [Details]
Robot spy snakes. Nearly as cool as Japanese robot guard-dragons. [Details]
> Geek

Woo! "Matrix Revolutions" trailer is out! [Download - Official Site] [Download - BitTorrent]
There's always a bigger... uh, worm. At least some of them are remembering they're supposed to be good for the soil... [Details]
...though that kind of backfires when it's trying to download the same Windows update to 100,000 PCs on a US military network. [Details]
I find it infinitely amusing that this so-called "anti-virus-virus" is now causing more damage than the worm it was supposed to protect against. People truly are very stupid. [Details]
How many times do we have to drill this into people? "Thou shalt not open unidentified email attachments". Oh for a RepositoryOfCommonKnowledge. [Details]
Their next plan to get people watching "Enterprise"? Add the words "Star Trek" to the title. [Details]
Slashdotters like the idea of sitting on their arses for ~12 hours watching the entire extended "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. I'm inclined to agree, actually. [Details]
People aren't seeing movies because their friends are texting them to tell them the film is crap. Not because the film actually sucks, mind you! [Details]
Hmmm... are the Palestinians doing something useful for once, or are they just waiting until they can suicide bomb the MPAA? [Details]
"Max Payne 2" screenies! [Display]
> Stuff

I'm on my way home from Luton Airport on Monday night, having just arrived from Paris, and I get stuck for an hour as the road is flooded. Then we have no water the whole of the next day. Buh. [Details]
Arnie for Governor of California or not? You decide. [Dodgy]
It's Billy the Bass, but cuter and a turtle. Like, dude. [Destroy]
Vomiting the whole afternoon is surely not the usual reaction. Though I guess it's not usually cooked, or disembodied. [Details]
Why would I make my bank balance seem lower? Ahem. [Details]
As cool as a taxi can get without De Niro at the wheel. There's even a 3D panorama... [Details]
...which is almost as amusing as SHP's panorama. Oh, also check out his video montage... uh, thing (download or stream it through RealPlayer). [Download - 3.81MB]
Apparently Queen Latifah is set to play Mary Poppins in a new Disney remake of the classic film. Have they no shame? I don't think the umbrella would be able to lift her, either. Jen suggests Nicole Kidman as more suitable for the Julie Andrews role; I'm inclined to agree. [Details]
Several years after Newgrounds did it comes this. [Details]
Um, why? And why 44 days? And... get some therapy. Get a girlfriend. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 7:24 PM GMT [Link]

Thursday, August 21, 2003 - "Pirates of the Caribbean Mini-Review"

Typical swashbuckling pirate film - dashing, heroic Americans wreaking havok and snotty English Navy types being terribly offended by this. Johnny Depp is excellent as the slightly crazy and very eccentric Captain Jack Sparrow; see him in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and you get the idea. Cute Liz-Hurley-slash-Natalie-Portman-a-like (the character's even called Elizabeth) is bearable and even quite good as your run of the mill damsel in distress who is perfectly happy to thwack baddies over the head with the nearest big, heavy implement. Ditto for Legolas.
Special effects are nice - funky skeletons and stuff. Slightly dodgy "let's just push the last two hours under the table and tie up the loose knots" ending, but never mind. Theme music nicked almost entirely off "Gladiator"; talking of which, Russell Crowe's new movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" looks like it could be excellent, despite the silly title.
So, go see "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl", to give it its full name. Or maybe wait for it to come out on DVD. Good fun.

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:42 AM GMT [Link]

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - "Concatenation"

Well, I'm back. France was fun - Paris, Normandy and the South (Biarritz area). Various amusing tidbits to come when photos are developed and stickers-nicked-off-the-Metro are scanned. And no, Azrael isn't going to be taking over, whatever you might prefer. It could be worse - you could have Vitenka. Who, by the way, has put up his new webcomic, Futur.
On that note, what about a little update here?
Some interesting search strings in the last couple of weeks, for a start:
"lou ferrigno the hulk"
"craig charleslive on earth download"
"i want you.jpg"
"apathy farscape" (hmph!)
dc-hubs jazz
"3200x1200 girl"
Monthly hits shot up to an average of 1000 per day during July - which was nice. No reduction in August, despite me not even being here.
Hits from as far afield as Chile, Japan, US Military, Guatemala, Malaysia, Estonia and Costa Rica, as well as the usual suspects. A third are from the US, so I must be doing something right other than constantly refreshing the page. I'm also clearly a source of great inspiration to our German friends.
I'm also thinking of adding some kind of ticker for current inspiration. Films and songs, I guess. Then again, I'm not on Blogger.com (hell, or Geocities) and, well... pffft. Nobody reads those side boxes anyway. I wonder if anyone is clicking on the logos of my friends and affiliates on the sidebar; guess I should set up some basic, anonymous tracking type thing. For now, you can be content to go listen to "MOP - Stand Clear", "Calm Like A Bomb" by Rage Against The Machine and SOAD's "Chop Suey". And anything by Soulwax.
Did I already mention I've gone up to three monitors? I only did it for the Matrix code (which I'm on the verge of paying $14.95 for the full version of), honest guv.
Right, time to get back to "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne" and the years-old demo of "Evolva" that I had the sudden urge to install and play. Oh, and maybe some schleep at some point. Regularly scheduled transmission will resume this weekend.

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:39 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, August 16, 2003 - "Give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day. Give a man internet access, and he won't bother you for weeks"

> Science/Tech

They really ought to see what happens this time around first [Details]
Have you seen the ISS yet? No? Then this might help [Details]
Cool, we're going to end up with Johnny Five soon [Details]
Nice - and the best thing is, no one will be able to steal your pictures [Details]
Now that's a long flight[Details]
> Geek

Why not get them to wash the real windows and do their parents a favour [Details]
A new way of making sure your system clock is right [Details]
Want to up the data rate of your linux server? [Details]
Poke around this site, there's some good interactive animations [Details]
If only it was this simple [Details]
And yet they still give it away... [Details]
...or perhaps it's all part of a larger evil plan [Details]
Half-Life mods to promote films? [Download]
Speaking of Half-Life - HL2 has been leaked! [Details]
The foreign remake doesn't quite l ive up to the original [Dire]
Get your pictures online even quicker... [Details]
...and to go with it [Details]
I just hope my marriage doesn't convert her like this [Divorce]
Tiny![Details]
What's "outside"?[Details]
> Stuff

If a monkey can get a job programming, why can't I? [Details]
Perhaps this is a viable alternative to working [Details]
Or this [Details]
Go meet some of the Nigerians that keep asking for your help [Defraud]
How fast are you? [Details]
Now we just have to get our government to follow suit [Destroy]
You may not know me, but someone who you know who knows someone else who knows... well, you get the idea [Details]
Check out the Ad that Honda banned [Download]
More bone crunching action for fans of Porrasturvat [Dislocate]
They'll only lose them [Details]
Right, what other patents can we hit them with... [Details]
They're slowly getting back into the black [Details]

Posted by Azrael at 7:39 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, August 9, 2003 - "Stormnews is mine to possess!"

> Science/Tech

Muhahaha. It is I! Vitenka! I have taken over Stormnews for the week. But don't worry, I shall try to keep it as close to normal as possible.
ATITD! Atitd atitd farscape farscape farscape atitd!
Hmmm. A science section. What would stormy talk about here? Let's see. The science of farscape, no doubt. [Farscape!]
We were right all along - light is bad for you. [Turn off the daystar]
> Stuff

did I mention ATITD? Stormy would certainly want me to. [ATITD]
Some people have some stuff collected for downloading. Fancy a lucky dip? [Some]
And [More]
Boring politicals stuffs. [Yawn]
Demo torrents. Yumm. Including Thirteen (XIII). Quicky review:
It looks goofy, it plays pretty slack - like a console game, you're expected to get shot a few times it seems. The first level of the demo is fun, the second level is impossibly dark and not fun.[Download]
And to finish - blatant pimpage. [Yawn]

Posted by Vitenka at 1:16 AM GMT [Link]

Friday, August 1, 2003 - "With eyes closed we in helmets stood."

I'm going to be away this weekend - hence the early links update - at the [WoF] meetup and paintball weekend, then in France (Paris, Normandy and Biarritz) for two weeks. Obviously this means I'm not going to be able to do any posting from now until the week of Monday 18th August (the day I get back). But have no fear, as reinforcements are shortly to arrive. Vitenka and Azrael will be posting some guest links over the next two weeks, probably at the weekend as normal then whatever else they feel like, for which I thank them very much. Regular transmission will resume from... well, probably the weekend links on the 23rd, or perhaps something earlier that week.
> Science/Tech

Amongst the latest fad of Darwinian Somethings, someone's actually had a very good idea: Darwinian Poetry. A lot of it is gibberish, but some verses have evolved into something rather profound. In fact, the title of this post was (well, nearly) generated by this system. [Details]
The Second Renaissance - 2050? [Details]
Me like Phi. [Details]
So much for Asia - look at that difference between the two pictures. [Details]
More home-built flight simulator type stuff. [Details]
Yet another "little robots are fun!" link. This time with Linux. [Details]
> Geek

Really can't wait for the end of September... [Display]
Half-Life servers have had some kind of exploit threatening them this past week, which has taken down most of the major gameservers. But tratment is available - simply apply once and rub in until it disappears. [Details]
MSN are clutching at straws to whinge about rival Google. [Details]
Tesco are selling the Farscape Season One boxed set, with the whole of season one, RRP £99.99, for £17.99! Go buy! [Debit]
And so the vapourware trail begins again - this week, Doom 3. [Details]
Silly Americans. And British pilots, too. [Details]
Another "bastardisation" of the first "Matrix" film - this time with a load of corny AOL and l33t h4x0r jokes. [Details]
Slashdot finds a perfect opportunity to make "In Soviet Russia..." jokes. [Details]
WASTE and similar private, secure, encrypted networks are the future. [Details]
Or not? Cringely has a less likely but even cleverer idea. [Details]
I don't, generally. [Details]
Choose evil. I did. [Details]
The failure of the second "Tomb Raider" film had nothing to do with the lack of plot, cohesion, quality... no, it was the game's fault. [Details]
Imitating Porrasturvat: [Download]
> Stuff

Blair > Bush, clearly. [Details]
If David Lynch and Terry Gilliam had gotten together to design Myst. Beautifully surreal and charming. [Destroy]
Weebl & Bob strike again, of course. Fire is always amusing. [Destroy]
You can still buy everything on eBay. [Details]
Not as badass as the Carebears, though. [Dodgy]
What the hell? The American government has gone... well, more mad. [Details]
Shiny. [Destroy]
Another variation on the ancient block busting game. [Destroy]
Beardy git. [Details]
How much more fun can taking a shit get? Beware of evil MIDI music (on the page, not the toilet). [Details]
My hero picked up a squeaky toy penguin in "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne". Left click to use. Click... *squeak*! Hmm... Anyway, on the same random note: [Destroy]
I've been far too busy these past few days to waste my time playing games like this. In theory. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:25 AM GMT [Link]