Happenings

Miscellaneous Minutae

Forewarning: if you don’t know me or my friends, this post is best avoided.

To prevent Matt from monopolising coverage of recent goings on, I thought I would point out a classic highlight from the party we were at: Derek Murray finally manages to staple something.

Now, Derek has many talents, but stapling is not one of them. I’ve seen him buckle staples in 4 directions at once. He finally managed though, and we’re all very proud of him.

Of course, there are many other pictures in that gallery, including the first pictures of me since I lost my long hair a few weeks ago.

That in turn made me look for a picture of myself with long hair (not a particularly new one). Realising the link in my FOAF file to it was broken, I said about scouring my hard disk to find the picture (encovering some other classic pictures – including some of my friend Andy passed out and us standing around him giving the thumbs up).

So, that led me to discover that my Public folder on this site had been almost completely wiped. As much of it is back as I can remember, but I’ve no idea if anything is missing. Sorry.

And that rounds up an odd post.

Kenya, Satellites And Chocolate

Time for some more random links:

  • Only In Kenya – From the mind that brought us a flash animation about Badgers, comes one about lions in kenya.
  • DCC2 – The beginnings of an overhaul of the classic IRC connection protocol. Good stuff.
  • Passwords For Chocolate – Most people will trade their passwords for chocolate, once again showing that people are the weakest links in security systems.
  • Derren Brown: Inside Your Mind – Use Derren Brown’s mind tricks to explode other magicians heads. No, really.
  • 10 Worst Album Covers Of All Time – Some really great album covers on display.
  • GameBoy Advance JPEG viewer – Look at pictures on your GBA.
  • Tarantino Meets A Nobody – An odd tale of when a nobody spends a day with Tarantino.
  • Ping-O-Matic – Ping everyone, let God sort it out.
  • Satellite View – See Earth from one of dozens of orbitting satellites.
  • 300 Images – Some really good arrows and icons that should be stolen on a future project.
  • HTTP over SOAP – A lot of discussion on this one is appearing, but Tim Bray sums it up best. A bizarre idea.
  • Floats – A tricky little flash game of grouping moving blobs. Fun.

Done. Posting rates will inevitably drop for the next month or so, as exams are once again imminent.

Dissecting A Car Crash, Part 2: The Main Event

There are three main components of any car crash, although they do not seem to occur in the order one might expect. The crash itself (part 2) happens first.

A crunching, visceral impact; invariably wrenching you forward, hopefully snapping against a seat belt. Debris gains momentum, clashing against anything in the way. The most innocuous of items causes severe damage to those nearby.

A black out. Dead time wasted. A slow realisation the impact is over and the bleeding begins.

An indeterminate paralysis and a cry for help; someone might find you soon, maybe you’ll be alone for a long time.

It’s too early to know if you’ve survived: blood pumps fast, dizziness and nauseousness cloud the senses, and feelings of dread conflict with delirium.

You’ll either make it to Part 3 or you won’t.

FreeCache

After recently being delighted by Archive.org’s new features, they’ve done it again in the form of FreeCache.

It provides a way for content providers with bandwidth limitations to maximise external cache usage. In short, if you want to serve up large files, you save money, your ISP saves money, everyone is happy.

Can’t wait to see what they do next.

Kill Bill, Volume 2

The second installment of Kill Bill is a very different prospect to the first. Where Tarantino focussed on stylish sword play, gallons of blood and an almost comic book atmosphere in Kill Bill, Volume 1, Volume 2 instead takes a much more down to Earth approach.

Instead of showing the bloody rampage of The Bride in its gory detail, it instead centres on her relationship with the eponymous Bill, grounding the film in the events that led to the revenge. It becomes almost tender at times; a million miles away from the cold killing of the first film.

Not that the second film is lacking the over the top kung-fu of its forebear. Pai Mei alone ensures plenty of grainy, cheap zooms, as well as a laugh or two.

An excellent film, that only suffers through the previous excellence of its lineage. While it doesn’t compare with the first installment well, it is a great film in its own right. See it.