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2011 – glad to see the back of it

December 31st, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

What a year 2011 has been. It was as if the world had suddenly noticed the proliferation of rolling news channels and social media, noticed how much waffle was on them all and decided it had better come up with stuff to fill them all. And so we had tsunamis, floods, a royal wedding, phone hacking scandals, riots, superinjunctions, uprisings, more floods, deposed despots, Osama getting taken out, economic armageddon, Kim Jog-Il pegging out and to top it all Katy Perry and Russell Brand announce their divorce.

But I wasn’t really paying much attention. [Read more →]

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Kindle vs Sony Reader

December 30th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life, Technology

A lot of people got a Kindle this christmas, according to Amazon’s PR and verified by my Twitter feed where half the people I follow seem to have one now. Jayne and I bought each other a Kindle. I thought it might be fun to do a little review and compare the Kindle to the Sony Reader that I have had for more than a year. [Read more →]

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Chavez out-crazies the Daily Mail

December 29th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

With Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Il out of the way the world had the potential to have a little less crazy in it, but Hugo Chavez has stepped in to compensate by suggesting that the US government has found a way to infect left-wing Latin American leaders with cancer. Even the Daily Mail hasn’t come up with that one yet, and they can never resist a cancer theory, having previously suggested that cancer can be caused by Facebook.

The rationale for Chavez’s theory is that Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Dilma Rouseff and Lula Da Silva of Brazil, Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner of Argentina and himself have all had cancer in the last few years. He says that these incidences are “difficult to explain using the law of probabilities”.

Well my first thought was: clustering. Right or wrong, it is always a viable option whenever there is any sort of apparent outbreak of a non-infectious disease.

Then I read a bit further and saw that these leaders all had different types of cancer making a common cause just a little less likly.

Best of all, Chavez says he is not making” rash accusations” but is merely “thinking aloud”.

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Scrap the Paralympics

December 20th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I have been saying since at least 2008 that the Paralympics should be laid to rest, so I was glad to see the other day that it is an opinion that is gaining a bit more support (as well as a fair bit of opposition). It is too late to make any change in time for the London 2012 Olympics, which is a shame having just one opening and closing ceremony would save a few bob wouldn’t it?

Not that cost-cutting is the reason. I just think that it would be better for all sorts of reasons. Countries take the medal table very seriously for the Olympics, and I reckon that if the current Paralympic events counted towards that total it would give a lot more prominence to those events. Anyone agree?

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The tide of spam

December 20th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life, Technology

I seem to be getting a lot less spam e-mail now and I am not sure exactly why. It sort of started when my PC packed up because ever since I set email up on the new one I have had hardly any spam. Ther is still a fair amount of junk mail but nearly all from companies I have bought things off or registered with. Mostly it gets deleted straight away but at least it is valid and I know I could get off those mailing lists.

It might be because I didn’t set up all the mail accounts I had on the old PC, some of which only ever received junk mail and spam, but I’m sure I used to get spam on my ‘real’ email addresses too. The thing is that my mail comes via several different providers so it can’t be them all tightening up their filters at the same time. Not complaining, just wondering.

At the same time, the number of spam phone calls we get is increasing enormously. There is always somebody trying to persuade us to chase banks for PPI refunds, make a claim for an accident, change our gas supplier, or something like that. The other day we even had that company who try to con you into thinking you have a virus so you buy their anti-virus software. It has got to the point where we rarely even bother to pick up the phone if it rings before 8pm, and sometimes unplug it completely. I would even consider getting rid of it except it would probably cost more to do that because of the way the TV/phone/broadband bundles work.

 

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Black boys – slight return

December 20th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

Some time back I wrote a little about the unfortunate mnemonic used to remember the colour codes for resistors, well now XKCD has come with an alternative. As it happens, I think their version is not very memorable, but I am greatly amused by their topical xmas mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets:

Mary’s “Virgin” Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour

 

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National treasures

December 15th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

Like many people I have used the term ‘national treasure’ before. What I idn’t realise is that the term can have a formal status and actually does in many countries. The term used by UNESCO is living human treasure and they even have a 12-page set of guidelines for how a country should organise an official list of such people. Australia has just such an official list of Australian living treasures, limited to 100 people. I like the fact that they have Barry Humphries on their list. A few of their treasures have died and there are some vacancies. I wonder if they will induct Tim Minchin when it is time to top up the list.

It got me thinking about what such a list would look like for the UK. [Read more →]

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The Sprouts of Wrath

December 14th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

It was xmas lunch day in the canteen at work today. As usual the staff there put a lot of work into the preparation, presentation and cooking, and while our canteen is never going to get any Michelin stars it was a good mealespecially for only a few quid. And yet I was a little disappointed. The sweet potato and lemon grass soup was delicious, the xmas pud was filling in a way that seemed to defy the laws of physics but the main course…

It was described as turkey “with all the trimmings” and came with gravy, roast spuds, stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, carrots and… brocolli. I like brocolli, but surely this is an occasion for sprouts! I am not a great one for traditions, I would happily have a stir-fry on xmas day, but if you are going to do the turkey thing then you must have sprouts. I had been looking forward to those sprouts, and to releasing them back into the wild at intervals throughout the rest of the day.

At least I got to wear a paper hat for an hour or two. That is something I suppose.

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Guid tae see ye

December 7th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I love the fact that, amongst all the different language versions of Wikipedia, alongside French, Spanish, Russian, German, Finnish and all the rest there is a Scottish version of Wikipedia. This is not in Gaelic or anything like that, but written in Scottish dialect. Of dubious actual value, but that is why it is so brilliant – exactly what I like about the internet.

I love the idea that, instead of a FAQ page there is an ASQ page (Aften Spiert Quaistens) and that you are invited to “juist daff aboot in wir sandpit”. The whole thing is like reading the dialogue sections in a Brookmyre book which makes it ironic that there is no page for Christopher Brookmyre himself amongst the 7,700+ articles. That might not sound a lot, but it puts in at 119 out of the 283 languages that Wikipedia is available in. Not bad considering it isn’t really a language as such.

Looking at the list of languages available one thing did make me smile: the site is available in the Kanuri language, sort of,with only a single article but 4,389 edits! I say ‘sort of’ because this version has now been closed following a community vote with the reason being “the absence of both content and community”.

Anyway, I can thoroughly recommend the Scots version and in particular the page on spellin an grammar. Just don’t blame me if you find yourself getting hooked. It may not be the most kenspeckle language but it is fun. Just remember – Scots isna juist English written wi orra wirds an spellins. It haes its ain grammar an aw. If aw ye dae is tak an English text an chynge the spellins an swap a puckle wirds it’ll juist be Scotched English an no Scots.

Lots of buried treasures – like the 30 August edit of the page about Alex Salmond ;)

 

 

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The Clarkson incident

December 1st, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I may not like what Clarkson said yesterday, ”with his outrageously politically incorrect opinions which he has for money” but I can hardly complain about it – last year I absolutely cracked up when I saw Stewart Lee in Horsham and he did this routine.

Remember “it’s just a joke, like on Top Gear”

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

 

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