(Things I found interesting recently.)
I’ve just turned on sub-pixel rendered anti-aliasing on my desktop, using gdkxft and KDE 2.2.1. It’s amazing the difference it makes. Previously, anti-aliasing was pretty similar to just taking my glasses off; but with a TFT laptop screen, you can enable the ClearType-style sub-pixel rendering, and it becomes very smooth.
Dunno if rxvt has it yet, though, so I’m still using blocky ol’ text in my terminal windows.
Slow Wave is “a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world”.
Mind-boggling article about one woman’s journey through Scientology, their surveillance and censorship of the members of their church, and her eventual return from la-la land with the help of Andreas Heldal-Lund and the Lisa McPherson Trust.
So I’ve been taking a few snaps on a Casio Watch Camera I got for my birthday; check it out:
 Luna Park; |
 A self-portrait; |
 Catherine |
Cool.
Checking out the logs and stats for this site, I notice that a google search for “jennifer aniston nipples” is one of the main referrers. It is, of course, a hit to this page, the fake-nipples story. Sex (or nipples, at least) brings hits!
Matthew Leeming describes his unnerving encounter in Afghanistan with the murderers of General Massoud:
This summer that place was Afghanistan, from where I have just crossed, disguised as a woman in a shapeless burqa, over the 16,000ft Shai Salim pass into Pakistan. I met a number of people who, by English standards, were decidedly weird … so the two Moroccan journalists with whom I shared a house in the Panjshir seemed almost normal. It was not until after they had killed themselves and General Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Afghan anti-Taleban forces, a week later that I realised I had spent five days living with two of Osama bin Laden’s kamikaze fighters.
The Enigma story, and the misattributions of credit:
In U-571, Hollywood gave the credit for the Enigma code-cracking heroics of World War Two to the Americans. In the British thriller Enigma, out today, the praise is given to the English. Now, if a protest from the Polish embassy in London is to be believed, it was the Poles that done it after all.
From what I’ve read, the Polish cryptographers are certainly missing out on a lot of the credit they’re rightly due.
Nightmarish details of what the US planned to do as a first strike, in the event of nuclear escalation in the cold war. Mutual assured destruction is the only valid term, IMO.
Great article on practical counter-terrorism in Salon today:
Ask now of any action you mean to take — bombing, assassination, ground war — whether it means there will be more or fewer terrorists when the children who are now in preschool grow up to fighting age. This is not an argument against the use of violence. Violence is absolutely essential; but it has to be used so that it conveys the right political message to the people who might become terrorists when they grow up. The state has to become as good at theater as its enemies. There’s a short version of this lesson: “Don’t shoot the boys throwing stones.”
When Enrico Fermi was working on stabilising the process of nuclear fission, he may have been inspired by a floor-cleaner’s bucket. Great story!
My uncle Kevin, and the other members of the Irish Northwest Passage Expedition have successfully sailed the Northwest passage, from the Atlantic to the Pacific around the north coast of Canada. Cool!
The view from Islamabad, courtesy of Z Magazine via FoRK.
The Sun provides tolerant coverage of Islam? Never thought I’d see the day.
Oh dear — Astrologer takes credit for predicting WTC attacks. “Aye right”, as they say.
and possibly Afghanistan – nearly six weeks ago.
Judd – part of our renowned Jonathan Cainer team – was close to tears yesterday as he recalled his prophecy of August 6.
The key, he wrote, was the opposition of two planets, Saturn in Gemini and Pluto in Sagittarius. Judd said this occurred every 35 years “from last night until May 2002”.
He wrote: “The opposition hits the US horoscope powerfully and immense changes in American political, financial and even constitutional circles are more than possible – even probable.”
Judd, who specialises in charting the fortunes of nations, warned the world to expect an “intensification, and hopefully resolution of religious conflict worldwide (Israel, N.Ireland and Afghanistan etc)…while extremism will rise in the short-term”.
Judd, 46, said yesterday: “I knew as early as 1994 that something cataclysmic was going to happen. There was an intensification in America’s chart from 1999 to 2002.”
A similar picture was apparent just before Vietnam and when the US entered the Second World War.
Judd added: “On Tuesday, I was appalled that astrologers are not taken seriously.” He believes there is worse to come in the next six or seven months, with stability to follow from the end of May next year.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/13_09_01/art19.htm
Daily Star | 13 Sept 2001
Local astrologer predicted attacks in US
Terrorism will strike again in the heart of the United States, Lebanese astrologer Samir Tomb predicted in his yearbook for 2001. Preempting Tuesday’s attacks on America in his book, which describes astral influences and Chinese, Arab and Indian astrological horoscopes, Tomb announced “a terrorist attack which will cause victims.” The Lebanese astrologer also foresees a “strong shake in the world market,” and a stronger euro against the dollar in the fourth quarter of 2001. AFP
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On a lighter note, I’ve written down my adventures through Thailand on the way over to Australia — with pics! Check it out.
Much fun was had. Hopefully I’ll be able to add some more travels to the site soon enough — although it’s doubtful I’ll be doing any overland trips from Asia to Ireland, given the likely feelings towards westerners in the Middle East, soon enough…
I’ve been very quiet about the attack on the World Trade Center; this is not from any unwillingness to talk about it, it’s more because, for the last week, I’ve been doing virtually nothing else, in a range of forums, particularly on Crackmice and the TBTF Irregulars list. What can I say — I guess I’m just not a committed blogger ;)
Anyway, I’ve been forwarding on lots of details on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organisation, which generally makes it look like the US and its allies will have their work cut out for them. Here’s a good one from The Guardian (UK):
Communications are vital. Messages are sent by word of mouth to Pakistan, and from there they are emailed. Bin Laden, testimony has shown, had no contact with any of the east African bombers except for al’Owhali, whom he met, once, 18 months before the attack. Instead the men were selected, briefed and supervised by senior aides, some from organisations affiliated with but discrete from bin Laden’s. And this is the key: al-Qaeda does not act as a commander, it acts as a facilitator, a coordinator, putting together disparate elements – some in Afghanistan, some in the target country, some in other locations entirely – who together can pull off an operation.
It’s going to be messy. And as a much-forwarded piece by Tamim Ansary points out,
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that’s been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They’re already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
There’s lots more good, insightful journalism in the Guardian’s special report on Afghanistan and special report on the WTC attacks. Recommended reading.
“A man managed to escape the World Trade Centre as it was hit by a hijacked jet, only to find out that his sister and young niece were on board.” Life doesn’t get much more tragic than this.
The Evil Gerald special report: “Enterprise to be “ready by Christmas, deffo” — Chief O’Brien.
Chief O’Brien broke the news to Captain Jean-Luc Picard by informing him that the transporter engines were “totally banjaxed”, but promised to begin work on them at 8am the following morning, as he was just about to “knock off” for the day.
A shocked Picard was told that the total cost would be ?5,000 “on the books”, although O’Brien hinted that speedier and more competent work could be carried out for ?3,000 if the usual tax and invoicing regulations were disregarded.
He also stressed that the general state of the engines was “something shocking” and that, in his professional opinion, persons unknown had previously made “a complete bags” of repairing them. Said O’Brien: “Just take a look at what some chancer’s done here to the transmodulator coils. That’s all gonna have to come out of course, you know that.”
Very scary; it’s been discovered that your childhood recollections might be false memories, suggested to you from ads you watch on television.
When the Queen Mother dies, UK TV is going to go apeshit:
One officially recommended script achieves a tone hovering neatly between Iraqi state radio introducing Saddam Hussein and a Monty Python sketch. Over the next two hours (the presenter will say): “We’ll be looking back over her long and remarkable life . . . We’ll be hearing from many of the people who – although they never met her – felt that they knew her too.” (As long as their views have been vetted in advance and declared safe by those responsible for the defence of the nation’s airwaves.)
Before coming over here to Australia from Ireland, I put my CV (ie. resume) up on http://jmason.org/ (I initially assumed I’d be looking for work over here — it’s since turned out that my Irish employers are happy to keep me on, even when I’m on the other side of the world.)
I’ve been getting loads of job offers (about 3 a week, by email and phone) from companies and recruiters in the US, since I put the CV up.
I think I’ve just figured out why… a search for “unix cv resume” on Google returns my CV as the first hit!
No wonder. Any half-awake recruiter who wants someone who can “do UNIX” will try a Google search. Better figure out some way of fixing it to get a lower ranking…
Coca-Cola has been working on a new sales technique for restaurants, called H2No“: a method to reduce what is known as “tap water incidence”.
Each time a glass of water is requested, waiters must emphasise the wide range of beverage selections available, including soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages and alcohol. Especially, no doubt, those produced by Coca-Cola.
Sex in space rears it’s head again (ooer): apparently NASA have sent over a pregnancy testing kit for the {astro,cosmo}nauts on the ISS. Best quote:
In his book Living in Space, Dr Stine, who died in 1997, said that Nasa staff at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, had used a buoyancy tank that simulates low-gravity conditions to test the possibilities of weightless sex. “It was possible but difficult,” he said, “and was made easier when a third person assisted by holding one of the others in place.”
Say no more!
It seems a 3-metre-across meteor exploded over the Pacific on 23 April this year.
Just got ADSL installed — it’s sweet. Napster rides again! Well, to tell the truth — gnapster rides again, the proprietary stuff was never going to work for me on Linux anyway, and they’ve been thoroughly shafted by the RIAA now.
Anyway, as a result, I’ve been getting very heavily into the Congo Natty back catalogue. Junglist! ;)
Sweet! If you’re into your old ragga jungle, Congo Natty is the label Rebel MC set up — it’s got some incredible tunes. I’ve been looking for copies for a while, and finally, I found this discography. Beautiful…
A very cool, very simple Flash animation — follow the money! (via the IRRs)
After a long taint.org hiatus, it’s time to start fwding on more crap… let’s start with the vagaries of Melbourne’s public transport system. Thankfully, the trams are perfectly sane by comparison.
A couple of handy links for while I’m on the road:
Saves me typing — consider these recommendations ;)
Two worlds collide — Barry Morris, CEO of Iona (my employers for 7 years), playing live on stage with Spinal Tap. NOOOOOO!! ;)
On a less disturbing note, I’m off to Thailand for 3 weeks, so updates will be even more sporadic than previously…
A two-headed crocodile has been born at Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm on the outskirts of Bangkok. I’ll be going to Thailand in a week so I can verify if this is just a case of the magic of superglue. ;)
Alan Turing is finally being honoured for his work, with a statue in Manchester. There’s an interesting follow-up mail from Mike O’Dell there, too: “the notes go on at length about the need for subroutines, subroutine libraries for common functions, and he even invented debugging and the concept of a debugger program. he also described what we today called a relocating assembler and linker – inventing the whole notion of “relocation” as an “obvious” aside.”
The hazards of sweary parrots. “Everything was going OK until the word ‘arse’ was blurted out from the cupboard.” Isn’t that always the way?
Toby Young on being interviewed by Joan Bakewell about porn. “It was like being interviewed about pornography by my Mum“. Pretty funny, in an excruciating way.
(Untitled)
One thing I should note — World New York is possibly my best news source for WTC-related commentary, especially for the eyewitness reports. A great site. It was great before the WTC, too — let’s hope things get back to normal pretty soon…