Raising Hell

I have now watched the first five Hellraiser films and I have to say they're quite good. Pinhead is one of the best characters ever created; someone who isn't quite evil and is definitely not a villain (except once), and yet who racks up quite a bodycount and spends several centuries torturing people. I like that about him, he doesn't do what he does because he's evil or other such black-and-white concepts, he does it because a) it's fun and b) that's just what he does. Anyway, only three more to go, and then the spinoffs and possibly the remake they're apparently doing this year.

I have such sights to show you...

Random IMs - Emo Currency

Kemp: oh, speaking of converting, we're over the 2 dollars to the pound mark
Kemp: "1 GBP = 2.05243 USD"
Overlord: hahaha
Overlord: Last I saw it was at $2.03
Kemp: USD is made of fail and depression
Kemp: emo currency
Overlord: Crawling in it's economy
Overlord: These stock merchants, they will not deal
Overlord: /me runs

Random IMs - Rock

Overlord: Well, yes
Overlord: But I have today and tomorrow off
Kemp: ooo, nice
Kemp: you could buy my new guitar with your fancy new wages
Kemp: then when I'm famous and worth millions you can be like "yeah, I bought him that guitar"
Overlord: XD
Kemp: and girls will be like "that's nice of you, would you like to do something euphemistic?"
Kemp: and you'd be all "I might be able to fit you in tomorrow, I'm sure the other stockholders will be able to have their meeting without me. I'm the chairman don't you know"
Kemp: and I'd run past half naked screaming "ROOOOOOOOCK!"
Overlord: XD
Kemp: and then everything would burst into flames
Overlord: Have you been at the vodka again *shot*
Kemp: I wish, can you imagine this story with added vodka?
Overlord: LOL

Self-Consistency Is Important

On the Maplin website they have a Linksys Wireless-G router (they don't say which one), but the FAQ makes for interesting reading...

Q) Can this module be used with an ethernet (RJ45) based ADSL modem for wireless internet access? - Steven
A) yes - that is what it is designed for

Q) Can I connect the Linksys 54G access point directly into my ADSL router (spare RJ45 port), to allow wireless internet access? - cbrbiker
A) No that type of connection requires a ROUTER code A17AY

Maybe the difference in questions is too fine for me to understand...

Argument By Wall Of Noise

Sweeney losing it. You may want to really turn down your speakers for this one.

He's a bit of a retard really isn't he.

Edit:
Just in case my position is unclear, if someone does that they automatically lose their argument, no matter how good or bad it is. If he can't handle the fact that they have different views, and possibly any harassment that might have occurred during the production, then he pretty much fails as a journalist. You can't investigate difficult subjects and expect your views to be the only ones heard.

Edit2:
I'm not in favour of scientology, just to be clear, I'm just against this "journalist".

A Song Of Particles

Sing a song of particles,
Infinitely small,
Tissue culture specimens,
From off your stomach wall

I'm sure you all know the tune. I'm not sure who, if anyone, wrote this but Angus Deaton on Have I Got News For You (S01E07) credits it to someone who's name I can't spell, possibly as a joke. I like it.

Justified Brutality

News Coverage

Basic outline:
A guy kills an elderly woman, the police track him down and he gets taken in for questioning. During this he takes a cop's gun, shoots him point-blank in the face and jumps out a 3rd story window. The police catch him, beat him to within an inch of death and people complain about how the police overreact and wah wah wah.

Personally I think this guy got exactly what was coming to him. He not only killed someone who was most likely completely defenceless against him, but then he goes and shots another person in the face at zero range, no doubt killing them too. If you do that to a cop and the drop from the third floor doesn't kill you then you can be pretty sure you'll end up wishing it did. As far as I'm concerned the cops can do anything they want to him.

Oh noes, teh shocking video of injuries! Bet half of that was the fall anyway.

Note for those among us who like to pick faults/overreact/stand up for any cause that happens to float past:
I'm not saying police brutality is correct, justified or allowable in the general case, just in a select few cases where the guy doesn't deserve any less. Human life is sacred blah blah blah not caring.

Why Do People Buy Apple?

If you can convince enough people that it is trendy to own an Apple iToaster, even if it only toasts one at a time, then you will dominate the toaster market. Sure, there will be companies still out there, toasting 2, 4, 16 slices at a time, more suited to the needs of almost everybody. There will be people who buy those products, and don't understand why the hell you would want a one-slice toaster, but it wont matter. Its cool, so the vast majority of people will just go along with it. Its sad, but it is true - most people (at least in the "developed" world) care more about appearance than functionality.

Source

Also of interest (same post):

For anybody that is interested, I recently was reading about a product that is suspiciously similar to the iPhone, called the Meizu M8. The specs are better, the cost is cheaper and all the reviews I have read have been excellent. I am considering getting one, specifically because the battery is removable, unlike in the iPhone.

Rocks and Chaos

It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.
What it's going to be, I don't know.
Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And maybe knowing isn't the point.
Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.

(source: Choke - Chuck Palahniuk)

Fight Club Quote 2

"What you have to consider," he says, "is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen."

(source: novel)

Emigrate Preview Tracks

Quite a while ago it came out that one of the members of Rammstein, Richard Kruspe-Bernstein, had embarked on a side project and we had to suffer through all the wild (unsupported) claims of them breaking up and suchlike which has obviously not happened. In fact in an interview it was mentioned that having an alternate outlet for his creativity meant that he wasn't trying to pull them in different directions, which meant less friction within the band, which made them less likely to break up.

Anyway, we are on the verge of seeing the results of his project with the release of Emigrate's first album. I've heard three of the songs so far (My World, Babe, and Wake Up) and I'm actually rather impressed, it all sounds really good. 31st August is a release date to put in the diary.

YouTube:
My World
Babe
Wake Up

The last two have a video made of clips from Völkerball and Live Aus Berlin, so they show Rammstein not just Richard and they have nothing to do with the actual song. Some very nice clips though :-)

Saxon Is Your Man

Well this post is almost a week late but meh, I've been busy =P Those of you who don't watch Doctor Who can probably ignore this post as irrelevant. Those of you who do watch it and haven't seen the episode from the 23rd yet can probably ignore it as a spoiler.

As I suspected long ago, the Saxon references through the last seasons of Doctor Who and Torchwood were meaningful and the source of this season finale, I don't know who could have mis... fine, I didn't see anything =P But still, they were there if you were looking out for them, or indeed if you go back and look for them.

Now there's a lot of speculation around the Doctor and the Master, but I'd like to take a minute to mention the Master's new companion. She's human as far as I can make out from the episode, and there's no solid evidence otherwise, but she does seem rather... odd. Obviously she gets off on power, you'd have to be that sort of person to hang around with the Master for any length of time, even without marrying him. It seems to go to the extreme in her though, she looked to be on the verge of orgasm when the rift opened up and 6 billion Toclafane came through to slaughter Humanity. Plus the dancing to the music was a nice touch, she seemed barely in control of herself. In fact, through the whole end of that scene, particularly just before the Paradox Machine activates she seems rather too excited for her own good. Oh, and before anyone runs with that "barely in control of herself" statement, I don't think she's being controlled, she doesn't show any of the usual signs of that nor does she show unusual signs of it, this seems to be exactly who she is.

Anywho, on to the Master. Some people seem to have a problem with the explanation of why he's how he is. Originally he was calculating, in control, and pretty much an evil genius; now he's just mentally unstable due to have looked into eternity. This makes him a victim and thus basically a more understandable and fluffy character, which I agree kinda sucks. It does however underline that the Timelord society, while "perfect" in the legends, was at its core cruel and aloof from reality. Personally I think that both views of the Master are right, he is unstable yes, but he couldn't have gotten this far without making big plans and thinking ahead. I think that the description of him as having gone mad is mostly the Doctor imposing his own view on events. On the other hand, his plans have apparently had a definite decline over the course of the show (that's all 29 seasons, not just this episode), which would imply him sinking slowly into some form of madness or desperation, which is understandable when all his plans are constantly thwarted, not to mention the constant drumming at the back of his mind (which I think the Toclafane planted there when he first looked into the Untempered Schism in order to slowly manipulate him here, unless certain other theories are true, in which case they wouldn't have existed properly or at all back then). Dying multiple times, having his race wiped out, running away, and ending up completely along for who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years can't have done him much good either. So now he finally has another chance and he has grabbed it with both hands and managed to get further than he has before. Also it seems that he has noticed that the Doctor's plans always seem to work out (if we ignore the people left behind) and has started to, possibly subconsciously, adopt some of his habits like the random expressions, jellybabies, etc.

As for the Toclafane... Legend come reality through the weirdness of the void? A last resort to save the remaining Timelord children near the end of the war? The Gelth? Or something else entirely? I guess we find out in two days :-)

In other news I'd definitely vote Saxon, evil genius or not. Despite not being Human he acts more like one than any politician we have. At least he's fun...

Customisable Maths

TheDailyWTF*, where we learn that n! (that's n-factorial) is 12 for all values of n.

3! = 12 (base 4)
4! = 12 (base 22)
5! = 12 (base 118)

Apparently it's not only statistics that you can use to prove anything =P And for nit-pickers, yes I know stats and maths aren't exactly unrelated.


* That was, is, and always will be the better name for the site, like the Nintendo Revolution (awesome) vs. the Nintendo Wii (wtf?).

Global Thermonuclear War

There was a BOGOF* on geek jokes I think.

Prissy> I tell ya people now days really need some serious help
Kemp-> serious help = global thermonuclear war?
Kemp-> would you like a game?
Ryvern> oooh
Ryvern> i wanna play
Kemp-> you lose
Kemp-> as does everyone else
Kemp-> would you like to play again?
Prissy> lmao
Ryvern> sure
Ryvern> i wanna play
Kemp-> you lose
Kemp-> as does everyone else
Kemp-> would you like to play again?
Ryvern> AGAIN! AGAIN!
Kemp-> in about a thousand iterations he'll realise there's no winning solution and deactivate the missiles
Kemp-> you lose
Kemp-> as does everyone else
Kemp-> would you like to play again?
Ryvern> one more time
Ryvern> my luck is bound to change
Kemp-> you lose
Kemp-> a cockroach survives
Kemp-> would you like to play again?
Ryvern> yes
Ryvern> i got better luck last time
Ryvern> bound to keep getting better
Kemp-> you are eaten by a grue

---

* Buy One Get One Free

Random IMs - Blackbeard

The other party was doing something else when I said this, thus no comeback:

Kemp: there was a discovery channel episode on blackbeard and they had some guy interviewing "him" and various video clips of life on his ship
Kemp: worst show ever
Kemp: the acting was frankly dire, the actor playing blackbeard was trying far too hard to seem slightly off in the head, and best of all...
Kemp: he moved exactly the same as sparrow
Kemp: the slight swaying, leaning off to one side, the hand gestures, everything
Kemp: great scene where he walked on deck during a brawl and randomly shot someone, the guy did a bored "oh" and fell over :)

FBI tries to fight zombie hordes

BBC News. One of their better headlines :D

Browser Specific Sites

Now websites aren't something I tend to complain about, partly because it's the web and things change very quickly. However, one thing that does really get to me is the exclusion behaviour exhibited by some sites.

For instance, the WiSIG (Wireless Sensing Interest Group) site displays this message if you visit using Firefox:

Thanks for visiting www.wisig.org. This site as well as SensorsKTN.com are best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.5 or above.

If you have a copy of Internet Explorer, now's the time to fire it up and try again ...

Okay, so it's best viewed in IE (according to them), but so what? Are they saying I won't even be able to see the text if I use some other browser? Is the threat to my mental health from the mis-rendered site so bad that I'm not even allowed to try unless I resort to a browser that doesn't even deserve to exist on my system, let alone be "fired up" at the whim of random sites?

Seriously guys, specifically the webmasters among you, even if you "optimise" a site for a specific browser you can still make it work right in other browsers, or failing that at least make it gracefully degrade, or failing that at least let people see it. If nothing else the text will still be visible and they will be able to get the information they want. Forcing the use of a specific browser is very rude behaviour.

If anyone from the WiSIG reads this then sorry for picking on your site but it was one I was trying to visit earlier and I usually expect technology based sites to represent themselves well on the internet. Have a word with your webmaster and see what he/she/it can do for you.

Parallels

Written Thursday 11th August 1994 at 2am (not by me):

I have no life. I never see any of my non-work friends, and I'm wasting away my one and only youth. I ought to be out doing fun things and active things, the kind of things I won't be able to do when my mind and body finally decay. But instead I'm stuck inside under fluorescent lights, pushing bits around inside a computer in ways that are only interesting to other nerds. I glanced at a movie listing and there are movies out that I haven't even heard of. How did that happen?

Far far too true, except I do see non-work people occasionally I guess.

Maybe once my RDC submission and the project review meeting are out of the way, and no doubt several important visitors and miscellaneous demos for other things, and possibly all the reading I've been getting behind on, maybe then I'll be able to... I don't know... eat?

MSN Fails

Is there any official explanation for why MSN Messenger deletes mp3s if you get sent them and try to open them by clicking the link it gives you (the alternative being to navigate to your downloaded files folder)? It says it's potentially harmful and just goes ahead and deletes it, no asking the user, it just does what it feels like. Now I could understand it for executable files, but why mp3s? Executable files, by the way, are not deleted, you just get the potentially harmful warning.

I wonder why I'm gradually not using any MS software?

Hex Strings

Just thought I'd chuck some random numbers out there, a little hex string, no real reason. Enjoy.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0