Taking a subject more near and dear to Adam's heart, Defective By Design has October 3rd announced as "Day Against DRM". That's a little better than the passive-aggressive I-won't-buy-your-crap I had planned; I'm impressed with social activism like… more »

Okay, the warning is perhaps premature, but it could take a while to learn enough Esperanto to go along with the official 'day'. Having encountered Esperanto a long time ago as one of the more durable 'universal language' attempts around, it was funny… more »

I haven't been particularly interested in politics apart from the past, okay, it's approaching a decade. In particular, though, anything that makes international travel less safe (I specifically told the travel agent to avoid all US stopovers for our… more »

Sometimes, there are sites that bring back waves of memory to crusty nerds such as myself. There is a site, which I believe has been around for quite some time, giving code examples of how to count down "99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of… more »

I'd not heard of "presbycusis" before the BBC article linked above, but I am aware of the issue of the range of hearing deteriorating as one ages. In addition to giving me another word I can use while losing at Scrabble, the article describes a gimmicky… more »

This is more of a general musing. Recently a song came on my MP3 player. The song, recorded on tape from the UK's BBC Radio 1 sometime in the late '80s, is not by any artist I know of. There are no phrases that show up in any of the lyric searches. I've… more »

Apparently the VW Beetle wasn't good enough for Germany. more »

Bugs, how I love them ... I love hunting them down and killing them. Hunting down and killing the developer who caused the bug would be just as much fun if it weren’t illegal in every country in the world, that and programmers would probably be an… more »

I'm a sucker for trivia sites. The best I'm aware of is "The Straight Dope" which has the most entertaining bits of patter about the oddest set of questions. To person who swore that baked potatoes should always be wrapped in tinfoil with the shiny… more »

This anime series seems a lot like many other anime series to start with. Many of the typical anime drawings, character reactions, exaggerations and the like are present. There's a strength of story and characters that show up as you continue watching… more »

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this when I saw it in the store. If it was different from Half-Life 2 itself, wouldn't it be episode two? Is Half-Life 2 actually episode zero? Well, it is a sequel to Half-Life 2, and picks up pretty much at the… more »

Want to see why I'm moving away from Windows? OSX may not be better in the long run, but at least so far it's not moving in this direction. more »

After a brief attempt to enable trackbacks on the blog, I've disabled them again due to the incredible spam load. Some people do seem to be doing their darndest to hobble the more interactive aspects of the web. more »

Normally I'd say that Dell was smoking something particularly potent when they created the monstrous XPS M2010 but I know at least one person personally who would probably buy it. The scary thing is that it actually has a battery and runs for about… more »

One of my hot buttons is, and has been for a while, Digital Rights Management (aka DRM.) The main overall change is that the content (the music, movie or book) is no longer considered to be sold but merely licensed. The ability to then sell your copy… more »

I was looking at threads on Fark as usual and someon had posted a funny billboard as an ad for, well, the sign just listed hell.co.nz at the bottom. So what is hell, then? About the funniest site for a pizza place I've ever seen. All the pizzas have… more »

There was an interesting phenomenon that took place on the horizon opposite the sunset when we were leaving the Masai Mara game park one evening. It was a stark diagonal band in the sky, that resolved itself into a couple of bands a little later. Dena… more »

The Code Project is one of my favourite programming resources these days, and has a prominent place on my personalized Google home page. But the link today to an interesting article was cut short by an interesting-looking announcement: We are Moving!… more »

This one came up today in a discussion with a relative. She'd found a weblog belonging to yet another relative that was expressing some fairly personal information, and was wondering about the ethics of reading what's functionally a private diary. My… more »

This is a profoundly bizarre game. Cherokee plus science fiction. It's entertaining, but it will totally mess with you, at least for a while. Alright, the stars of the show are admittedly a little stereotypical, but it does square with the occasional… more »

Every now and again, you discover something that other people have already known about for quite some time. For me, that's the Custom Sign Generator Page. It's been a hard week of work for my dear wife, so I was enjoying myself, making signs and sending… more »

Being a regular flyer and having sat through years worth of preflight briefings, this little commentary from the Economist tickled my funnybone. Title links to the original. more »

Recently a new version of our employee handbook was posted on the corporate intranet. The interesting this is that it now has a section on weblogging listed amongst the bits on inappropriate computer use and workplace harassment. Item #1: Do not blog… more »

One of the tracks from Alan Parsons' "The Time Machine" came up in random shuffle. As with most Alan Parsons' albums, this comes with a theme, and not entirely surprisingly, it's time on this one. On my system, that means that the cover is displayed.… more »

Recently I bought a new laptop after deciding that none of the work laptops were appropriate for a business trip. When I asked my manager if there was a similar program to reimbursing personal car mileage for personal laptop use, I was told there wasn't… more »

I've restored all of the posts that were here originally, prior to the destruction of the original host. There's one I can't find as it was never cached by Google, but that's about it. Back up the site properly, Ritchie :) (Although I'm copying all my… more »

Caught this show on television tonight. It's a science show of the type that's been desperately missing from television for the better part of a decade, apart from perhaps Mythbusters: fun, madcap and informative. The episode today featured a dairy… more »

Right next to Memory Express on 32rd, though the sign outside may bespeak a fancy bistro, it's nothing of the sort, really. It's a pretty casual place with lots of seating that serves individual pizzas, calzones, pasta and salads. The pizzas are… more »

I had always wondered whether the cosmic microwave background radiation ought to have shadows in it where it fails to shine through nearby clusters. Apparently, it should. Also apparently, it doesn't. At least, not consistently, and that's a problem.… more »

'Tis a sad thing - it looks like the server my site was on was essentially razed by a hacker. I'll pass along more details as I get them. Rather sad about the timing - I'd been having troubles getting a backup generated for a very long time, but was… more »