I didn't quite catch that...

I’ll not be posting a lot for the next few days. If you really need me for anything, you’d best go looking in a field in Laois.

Enjoy. Don’t do anything silly while I’m not about.

Went to see that A Scanner Darkly film last night. ‘Tis very good; good story, good acting, fascinating visual presentation and a lovely vision of the future where everyone is under almost constant survailance. All that good stuff that I like to see in film.

The animation of actual acting was pretty cool, I have to say. Apparently, it took about 500 hours of work per minute to get right, but I’d say it was worth it (then again, I didn’t have to pay for that work); it also allowed the filmakers to do a lot of messing with the head, changing scales; drifting furniture about and that sort of thing, and making it look less out of place than it would have done in normal film. And the though-bubble sequences worked out in it, as well.

And, even in semi-animation, Winona Ryder is hawt.

Of course, the enjoyment of it all was disrupted by the uncomfortable nature of the seats. luxury French seating my ass…

You know, there are some people that I just don’t get. And this lot are typical of them.

“Many of us are prepared to break the law, because the powers-that-be are addicted to planet-trashing economic growth.

“Shutting down a power station isn’t enough to stop climate change but it’s a start.”

Ooook-kay. Planet trashing economic growth, you say? I’ll be honest, I’d much rather have an economically viable system, where people can, y’know, eat than a place where people think it’s acceptable to use violence and shutdown 7% of the energy of the country based on bad science.

But that may just be me.

Oh, and if these twats are successful in draining the grid of that 7%, I’d love to be in their shoes when the sodoffswampy brigade come looking for ‘compensation’…

Best thing I’ve read today (gimme a break, it’s still early):

If Gandhi reincarnated in the Middle East tomorrow, they would have to hold a lottery to see who beheaded him first.

(Shamelessly lifted from the Dilbert Blog.)

1. The intuition/smartness/hippy-sense test that manages to be very wrong!

Very Well-Rounded You have: 62% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 62% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition. (Weirdly, your emotional and scientific intuitions are equally strong.) Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you’re good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences. Try my other test! The 3 Variable Funny Test It rules.

You know, i think that I’ll be able to accept that result. Even if it’s COMPLETELY WRONG. It’s managing to overlook my complete social ineptness, for one thing, and my crippling social ineptness for another.

2. The dork/nerd/geek test that manages to be 100% correct!

Pure Dork 43 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 52% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Dork, earning you the title of: Pure Dork. Like our friends Napoleon Dynamite & co. It’s not as though you were some whiz-kid in school. Oh, sure, you probably did okay in some classes, but were probably awful in others. Certainly most people thought you were smarter than you thought yourself to be. And it’s not that you have some overriding passion, like computers or Star Trek that sets you apart for the crowd, though you likely share some interest in some of those sorts of things. You just like to be yourself, and want to express yourself for who you are. And, really, there’s nothing wrong with that. Being who you are often invites scorn, and so it’s a difficult thing in a world that rewards conformity. Be proud of your dorkiness, for often it’s just another word for individuality. (I’d vote for you!) Congratulations! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you’re interested in any of the following: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Professional Wrestling Love & Sexuality America/Politics Thanks Again! — THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Now, there’s a test that manages to get me perfectly.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned this case, about an Iraqi fella who was being hauled before the crown court because he had made a tourist-type video of his trip round central London, and happened to be listening to the arabic version of gansta rap.

And I was unnerved by the situation, to say the least. And I hoped that the government’s case was based on a little more than that.

Turns out, it really wasn’t, except that there was a further unproven allegation that he’s been part of the insurgency in Iraq.

Luckily (for the whole’ rule of law’ thing), the guy was cleared.

Now, it may be that the government have good reason to suspect Mr Mohammed of being connected with terrorism, and it may be that he could go on to assist in an act of terror. But they need to be able to prove it; and that is a feature, not a bug.

(Course, if he’s such a threat, why did they let him back into the country? Is that not what exile is for? Or security at airports?)

Citizens United Negating Technology For Life And People’s Safety: a truely worthwhile campaign to try and save humanity from the evil that is teh interweb; as heard on San Andrea Public Radio since 2004.

Some of their valid warnings:

THE ONLY FRIENDS YOU MAKE ONLINE ARE NERDS, LOSERS OR PERVERTS. BECAUSE EXCEPT FOR YOU AND ME, EVERYONE ONLINE IS ONE OF THESE.

Of course, readers, that YOU there is plural. Except in the case of SWM, for he is both nerd and pervert.

THE INTERNET TEACHES KIDS IT’S OKAY TO TAKE HEROIN AND SELL YOUR BODY FOR KICKS, WHEN, IN FACT, IT ISN’T OKAY AT ALL.

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS?!? I knew about the selling the body for kicks, but why wasn’t I told that it’s okay to take heroin?

For the first time in a while, I have cause to disagree with the greatness that is Twenty Major. For he dislikes grammar pedants. And that is just plain wrong. And that post, with it’s wanton cruelty to the common apostrophe, gives me headache and stabbing tendencies.

Not towards Mr Major, obviously, for he still comes up with this stuff. And because he’s nothing more than a persona, and thusly difficult to stab. But stabbing tendencies in general, which are being taken out in true web2.0 stylee: by writing a post about it, and hitting the keys really hard…

The other day I was flicking between channels on the idiot box before going out to work, and I stumbled across the BBC’s coverage of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Not the sort of thing I’d normally watch, but there was a group that caught my eye. Specificially, these guys, a bunch of Swiss fella who play drums and throw flags about and then pretend to fight each other with drumsticks. And it looks frickin’ amazing.

Now, imagine how cool it owuld be if some of the bands round these here parts could play that well. That would rock.

Via Nelly and CyberScribe, I found out about this face recognition thingy. And some of the results are plain disturbing. I mean, for this photo, my best match is a bloody frenchman, and another high match is Saddam bloody Hussain.

But it then proceeds to get better AND worse at the same time.

For I can settle for Tommy Lee Jones; I’m more than happy with Enzo Ferrari; Kevin Bacon* is an alright result. But Ronaldo, the buck toothed gimp? And yer girl off of Donnie Darko, too; how did that happen?

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* – do I get a number for that?

I tend not to get too worked up about the big things; I can’t do anything to stop world hunger, or Elton John, or Chelski, so I don’t bother with them*.

The little things do annoy me, though. The person who’ll ask you questions and then get pissed off when they can’t hear your answer through their massive iPod earphones. The daft bastid who stalls in the queue of traffic (doubly so if said bastid is me). The lack of dressing in a burger when you specificially asked for dressing.

Of course, this can be a problem in modern life; there are so many little things that can really ruin your day. The only way to stay sane** is to get a disproportionate happy feeling when the little things go away.

Which is why I walked out of work with a big smile on my face tonight. I don’t have to go back for nearly three weeks, which is nice. And the disproportionate happy feeling came not from the two weekends off; nor was it for the plans I have for those two weekends; nor was it the basic feeling of goodwill that comes once a shift has ended.

No, it was because I don’t have to stick one of these in my ear for a while. Which is very, very nice.

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* – ID cards, rampant statism and fingerprinting kids are obvious exceptions to this rule. They’re BIG things, not just big, and thusly deserving of getting worked up about.

** – Stop laughing down the back; yes I said ‘stay sane’, keep your doubts regarding my sanity to yourself, thankyouverymuch.

I know quite a few people who are rather pissed off at this little facility. It’s to do with that bastarding rates rise, and it offers anybody the opportunity to check the rateable value of any property in Norn Iron.

And some people are very up in arms about it. “Why,” say they, “should any fecker be able to find out how much my house is worth?”; a valid complaint, methinks. But, of course, it would be implying that the valuations were anying other than crap. I checked out several houses for which I know approximate late 2004/early 2005 values, and for none of them was the VLA valuation within 15% of the real value. And nearly everyone I’ve spoken to about it has said that they’ve either been heavily undervalued or overvalued.*

So I think that it’s an interesting diversion and stunning insight into the general crapness of public bodies when it comes to hard, fast data. I’m not worried about them revealing information about anyone, because the information is so crap. And, of course, because anyone with a knowlege of the market could get a better valuation by looking at the front door and the prices that have been paid over hte last year.

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* – Of course, everyone I’ve spoken to has seen a rise in their rates. What happened to the supposed 50% of people who would see no rise in rates?

‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

It’d be a poor state of affairs if the bloody imaginary friends didn’t miss me, wouldn’t it?

It look like, after ten seasons and 200-odd episodes, Stargate SG1 is going. Ish. Maybe. Unless some other channel picks it up.

This would be a doubleplusungood thing. I like SG1. I don’t think that it’s gone downhill since MacGyver left; I think that the new bad guys have a lot of opportunity for development. And I think that the tie-ins with Atlantis work well.

So I hope that it continues on some other channel.

Thatisall.

What You Need To Be Cool in College: a list of uber-geeky gadgets that ease you way to very geeky coolness. Honest. No, nobody would point and laugh at you, especially not if you use the indicators.

And I don’t know how cool you’d appear if anyone noticed a pair of these sitting about the dorm… Sure, they wouldn’t steal anything from them, but seriously. If the indicators didn’t stop company turning up in your room, those would make sure any company left. Quickly.

To be fair, the little camera looks cool, and blackmail is always a cool activity. But the bestest device ever has to be this.

A fart detector. No more ‘He who smelt it dealt it’; no more guess work in the life; no more passing off someone else’s masterpiece as you own; no more being blamed for someone else’s poor effort. No, the miracle of modern science has given us a way to prove whodunnit.

Ain’t technology wonderful?

I’m not sure about the butterfly part, but I definitely have the laziness disability.

I just did a little count of the size of this place. In the three and a half years it’s been running, I’ve accumulated 470,491 words. Which works out at about 130,000 a year. Or an average novel.

Or you could just say I’ve spewed eleven thousand words of rubbish a month onto these pages. I dunno if I should be pleased or depressed by that…

Norn Iron continually outperforms the rest of the UK in examinations, the latest example being in the GCSEs. I wonder why that is?

Could it be that people over here are just naturally smarter than our neighbours to the east? Probably, but that’s not scientificially proven, so I doubt it would win many arguements.

How about the exams being easier than in the rest of the UK? Probably not, since I keep hearing about people’s kids getting brilliant grades in exams from the English boards.

Do we just have a better temperment for exams? My guess is, no.

Do we have a better schooling system? Hell yes, starting with the 11+ and moving on towards the vast differences between our grammar/secondary schools and the comprehensive system.

The only definitive difference between the two systems, and it’s the one that they’re abolishing. How stupid is that?

I’ve already mentioned that the lyrics of Sandi Thom’s breakthrough song caused me concern. Mainly because said lyrics were nonsensical.

Turns out that the current single isn’t nonsensical. But it’s daft, all the same.

The song is basicially how Ms Thom sees promise in a prospective doormat fella, but feels that, despite the obvious doormatty nature of said fella, he may not be doormatty enough.

Some sample phrases:

You’ll always tape the football & let me watch my shows

& when we’re tired of the city, & we find a country home
You’ll sell your vinyl records & go get us a loan

You won’t forsake me, your mother won’t hate me

I do so love the whole concept of the song; the whole way that everything is one sided, and then queried as to wether it is one sided enough.

It’s one of those songs that bothers me somewhat, despite being easy on the ears. Same as yon Smile song, but that’s probably only since my wee sister pointed out the general wrongness of the video.

I’m terribly unfit and out of shape. This, however, isn’t a big worry for me. I’ve always been unfit and out of shape, I’ve always eaten too much junk food. And I’ve generally be just over the ‘safe’ BMI level, which makes little or no sense to me; even when I was a real beanpole at uni, I was nearly overweight. And I know people who are clinicially obese by the BMI standard, but that’s only because the carry a metric tonne of muscle.

So I think that the BMI, the general standard by which obesity is measured, is a crock of shit. In my learned scientific opinion. And not just because I quite like my lifestyle and diet and don’t want to change it just because of some height/weight formula.

And this makes me even less inclined to care. For there is now a ‘Minister for fitness’, whose job is to try and ensure that we follow all of nanny’s ‘advice’:

• Eat regular, balanced meals
• Eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day
• Avoid foods that are very high in sugar and/or fat
• Eat less that 6g of salt/day
• If you drink alcohol, drink it in moderation
• For adults: 30 minutes moderate activity five times a week
• For children: an hour a day of moderate activity

Well, I eat regular meals, even if they aren’t balanced. And I drink in moderation (in the process of ‘drinking to excess’, I pass through moderation; I even wave at it on occasion). As for the rest, it can go and jump. Up until the compulsary Physical Jerks are introduced, of course. They it’s us who’ll be doing the jumping…