Have you found yourself unable to understand what other people say? Can’t work out what that shop assistant was trying to ask you earlier? Puzzling yourself over that new government initiative? Like me, you need yourself a babelfish.
The babelfish is the ‘must have’ item of whatever people are calling this time which we live in. It accurately and quickly translates any speech (and several forms of non-audible grunt) into plain, simple English that you and I can all understand. It’s been rigorously tested in the harshest environments. It’ll easily tackle teenagers, makes light work of today’s music lyrics, it handles the most grammatically challenged tv soaps and can even translate political talk into words that real people use, so you never need to wonder what Boris Johnson is saying again.
The babelfish is universal, it requires no batteries (which is good because none are provided) and one size fits all, unless you’re Gary Lineker, in which case you’ll be needing our super size model. It fits snugly into your ear, and can even be worn with your ipod headphones.
So, get your babelfish today and take that first step to understanding everything people say.
(Note: We are not responsible for any side affects caused by understanding everything people say. Stress, both physical and mental, caused by understanding what the world is really like is you’re own tough luck).
Since this advert was commissioned, we are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, the product is now to be renamed the googlefish and will be withdraw from sale in favour of a large beta release while we work out how adverts can be accomodated. Enjoy.
Making me upgrade to version 6.0 to continue buying songs. Goodbye brushed metal…
I can report that one little bluetooth dongle is all that you need to get an apple wireless keyboard working on your pc. Not going so well with the mouse tho.
I’m sorry Didier, but it’s not “part of the game“, it’s called ‘Handball’ and it’s against the rules.
To celebrate the start of summer time, I’ve provided the above image of the sun. Not quite what you were expecting, but fascinating none the less. One of the less obvious advantages of the internet is the ability to get pictures like this. The image above was taken just a few hours ago (when this was written) by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (or SOHO EIT) and shows a huge solar prominence erupting from the south west corner of the sun (where a sphere can have a south west corner apparently).
Now I’m no physicist, I gave that up at A level, but I do find images like this fascinating, and when you consider that the sun is 1.4 million kilometres wide, and realise just how big this little wisp of sun stuff is, I think you might understand why. It’s a glimpse of a world which we just don’t see, a way to connect with the vastness of it all. It’s also a darn sight cooler than what you’re going to find in a text book. The internet is bringing stuff like this away from the domain of the bearded, lab coated professor to the ordinary people, you and me, and I think it’s great.
A good take on the new French anti-DRM law from BBC’s newnight.
Edit 22/03/07: This post was written after the 2006 budget, therefore the figures are no longer correct. People who are reading this hoping to get a better clue about what car tax you’re going to have to pay in the future, you’ll really want to follow this little blue link.
If you don’t live here in the UK or don’t own a car, or as interested in politics as you are in watching paint dry, you might as well stop reading right now, go look at the archives or something.
For the rest of you, you’ll have heard that as part of the budget yesterday, Gordon Brown created a new system of car taxes, to charge owners based on the environmentally friendliness of their vehicles. I present a number of observations on the new system.
Firstly, you’ll notice that the Toyota Prius, everybody’s favourite green machine, isn’t in the lowest tax bracket. Sorry peeps, go buy a Honda Insight, which emits 20% less co2 and despite it’s crazy half covered back wheels still looks better. Owners of Diesel smart cars (the originals, not the silly roadster or forfour models) can also benefit from paying £0 road tax (to add to not having to pay for parking because you can park them in phone boxes).
Group B (£40) is full of the Diesel models of the super-minis (Except the actual mini). By this point you may notice that if you’ve got a diesel, you’re on to a good thing. Except if you get caught by catch 2, which is that your car has to have been registered after March 2001.
At this point, you could suggest that perhaps it isn’t fair that people who can afford newer cars get to save money, but how could you be so cynical. You could also suggest that the type of car which is going to have reduced tax is the kind which are bought as second cars, but you should put that thought out of your mind and think of the environment. At least all those extra second cars aren’t hurting it as much as the main car.
There are some anomalies thought. Apparently the Jag x-type diesel (which was designed instead of a new sports car) qualifies for lower tax (£100) than a new petrol fiesta, which just doesn’t compute. So that’s company cars (often mid size and mostly diesel) that are saving money as well. I won’t save any money though. Having a car from 1997 means I’m stuck with the old engine size based system and so continue to pay £110. Sadly, I’ve look up my car’s figures only to find this means I’m actually saving money, as my car would fit nicely into band D (£125).
Finally, all those 4×4s that your either hate, or drive, come into band G (£210). Sadly, this isn’t going to put people off. If you can afford a BMW X5, you can afford an extra £50 on your road tax. Oh and to be in this new higher band, you’ve got to be buying a new car, registered today onwards. So it’s ok to own one of these things, just don’t buy a new one. I’d hate to thing that the government is trying to soften the blow for people (voting people), while trying to be ‘tough’ on the environment. It’s also a shame that there isn’t an even higher band for 4×4s that are no good off-road, or for footballers with X5s where the nearest to off road they get is the car park next to the training field, but we can dream.
So, what have we learnt? Nothing really. Try not to buy a new 4×4. Try to buy a diesel if possible. And if you really want to help the environment, try not driving it and taking the bus instead.
Take my word for it, today (21st March) is the official start of spring. Ignore the fact that the vernal equinox was yesterday. Ignore the fact that the weathermen have been announcing spring since the start of the month. It’s today.
So winter, the coldest for a million years? (that was what was predicted, no?) Not really. Cold, yes, but not enough to cause any problems. Snow, not really, not like some other places got. Nothing special. Let’s look forward…
…To the end of the football season (which can’t come quickly enough in my opinion) and a month off before the world cup starts. To the Isle of Wight Festival in June. To the theme parks opening again (I’m really looking forward to getting to Thorpe Park to try Stealth. To being able to spend some time down the beach, or sitting outside at the pub. To hose pipe bans, forest fires and queues of caravans. Well, I didn’t say it was all positive!
People started walking out after 65mins in last nights 3-1 defeat to Watford. A new low.
Phase 1 of my grand ‘diy/redecoration/by shiny expensive things’ plan is complete. The cardboard boxes have gone, replaced by some lovely new furniture, a small pile of spare screws and the like, and a handful of instruction booklets. The room has been dusted and hoovered and most of the clutter has been sorted and stored (or where necessary, dumped). Now if it’s alright with you, I’d not like to do all that again for a while. Thanks.
Which makes it time to plan stage 2. (or stage 3 if you read my original plan). Paint. I’ve taken the first steps to finding a paint for the room (which while being blue like it is now, should be a different blue, those are the only rules) I picked up a leaflet with paint colours in it. Then yesterday I bought a couple of tester pots for the purpose of making the walls just a little bit messier for a short while. While many of you will question painting the walls after buying and making the furniture, that’s the way it had to be, end of conversation.
The plan is to get the walls painted asap, but only after I’ve got a tv aerial socket installed. Then, and only then (and only then after I’ve been paid) can I go out and buy a shiny lcd tv for the wall. (I’m calling it another investment, so please don’t try and force reality onto me by saying I should save some money, I know I should, but I just don’t feel like it).
On a completely different, but equally satisfying note, I managed to change my car headlight yesterday (after waiting at the till in halfords for 5 minutes before someone saw fit to actually serve me). Got my hands really rather dirty. But at least it’s nice to know that not everything that breaks has to be fixed in a garage.
As it’s such a nice day, I suppose I should go and wash it…
If like me you’re a fan, then take note, Snow Patrol release their new album ‘Eyes Open’ on May 1st.
I’m not going to make ranting on here too much of a habit, I like to save my sarcastic moments for the pub or the coffee shop, but once in a while something (or a combination of things) will push me to write something here.
Today’s offender is a poll of 1022 undergraduates by the Times Higher Education Supplement. The thing which turned my head when I heard this story was the bbc’s headline that
“A significant minority of students admit cheating”
Now, good use of an oxymoron, but a significant minority? So that’s a few, but a few doesn’t work in the news these days, they needed to build the story up a bit. Lets go into the reported details. Now I’ve not read the full story, so can’t claim to know all the facts, but I’ll do my best.
Apparently 1 in 6 admitted that they had copied from friends. Which means what? 1 in 6 students takes another students work and copies it? I think not. I’d like to think that most of this is more like friends helping each other, which is hardly a crime. I don’t believe that many students wake up the morning a piece of work needs to be handed in, finds they’ve not started and then copy someone else’s work. The uni’s ‘anti-cheating’ software would be hot on that. More likely, student x would ask for an extension and find it granted because half the class were in the same position.
Next, men were more likely to say that they cheated. So, they were probably proud of it. Also, the word for word copying of work is rare (you don’t say) with only 3% admitting to copying text word for word from books or the interweb. So, do we not quote or use sources anymore?
Finally, and this really got me.
“The poll also identified a greyer area of potential cheating… …copying ideas - rather than the exact words - from books or online sources.”
Sorry. Should students be forced to have every line in their work come from original thought? Do the workers among us not take inspiration/ideas/help and whatever else from our co-workers, friends, books or the internet? Yes. Lets not mention the numerous subjects where the work is exactly that, taking other peoples ideas and discussing them, furthering the work etc. I could go on, but I’ve been typing all day (not on this obviously) and I want a break.
I’ll conclude. This story shows what I think is going wrong with the media at the moment. It’s a non story, it doesn’t show anything that isn’t really quite obvious and it’s just there to fill out the news, possibly make someone some money selling papers. Some students admit to ‘cheating’. Also, more than one way of cheating exists. Thanks for that, now go find something more important to report on.
The tickets for this years Isle of Wight Festival have now sold out. If you’re not already got one, sorry, there’s always next year.
It’s been a trying weekend. I’m not going to go into trying to explain why Saints can’t keep a lead and a clean sheet these days and I’ll leave the cricket and rugby well alone.
Thanks to the magic of the interweb, I was able to track my mini mac from it’s creation in China all the way across the globe to little old me down here in Dorset. Except it got to Dorset when everyone was at work, and got taken back to Hampshire. No big deal, I was going to Southampton anyway so arranged to pick the boxes (the small one with the mac and the large one with the keyboard, mouse and mountain of plastic filling) up from the depot in Eastleigh. My first impressions are that it’s an impressive piece of kit. It makes hardly any noise at all and being able to switch in/out of front row from across the room using the remote is pretty cool. It will take a while to get properly switched over to using it but I’ll get there.
Now the wardrobe. It is written in legend that everyone has a bad experience with a piece of flat pack furniture. This weekend was my turn. A small amount of modification was required to get the wardrobe to fit onto the skirting board which was easy enough. Except this had the undesired effect of weakening the structure some what so when a little too much weight was put on the half built structure last night, crash.
The lower right corner is held together by a mixture of glue and magic. Just don’t touch it. Also thanks to the fact that this house was built by someone who didn’t really understand the concept of a spirit level, the doors don’t exactly hang straight. Some would call it a mess, others would call it character, some might be blind enough not to notice. I took the war zone like state of the room to juggle the other furniture around into their final positions and I’ve cleaned it up best I could, but it’s still very much a work in progress. I’ll ache tomorrow but that’s life. Next up, construct the bed and hope that nothing breaks during the process.
Sorry for there not being a lion or a witch in this post, but the title just seemed to fit. Life, the weekend and the wardrobe was the other title but I didn’t like it as much.
It’s good to change your desktop once in a while. Do it today, but make sure you get the image from mandolux. There’s even ones for you duel screen types.
The Delays 2004 debut, Faded Seaside Glamour is one of my favourite summer albums. It’s 12 tracks of light hearted summery pop complete with soaring harmonies and stick in your head moments. So when I first heard the last single ‘Valentine’ I wasn’t initially impressed by their apparent change of direction, but it’s slowly grown on me. But how does the rest of the new album fare?
I’ll start in a rather odd direction, the cover. Artwork is one of the reasons that I still would rather buy a cd than download the tracks and I really like the plastic shoelace spaghetti art on the cover. I’m disappointed that like a number of cds the logo and title are stuck on the front of the case as a sticker rather than being printed on the sleeve. I’ve no idea why this would be a good idea and I’d like it to stop. Thanks, mini rant over.
The tracks. You’ll be pleased to know that the style hasn’t changed too much. Yes, this isn’t a summer album like the last, it’s bigger, louder, I hate to say it, more ‘mainstream’. If wasn’t for the trademark vocals of Greg Gilbert and the harmonies which remain then at times you could be mistaken for thinking you were listening to someone else.
The album starts in an upbeat mood with first track ‘You and Me’ and the single ‘Valentine’ standing out. It’s foot tapping stuff. ‘Sink Like a Stone’ is the first track which reminds you of their previous work but by this point some people will have already made up their minds.
I’ll put it like this. This album is good, I really do like it, it’s not a bad change of direction and it’s good to have some new material from a band which could have simply disappeared. However, Faded Seaside Glamour is better and is the album I’ll end up listening to more. One of the problems I see with this new album is a lack of stand out songs, the ones that go on to make memorable singles. Time will probably prove me wrong and I hope it does. The world needs bands that have that unique quality, and I’m not just saying that because they’re from Southampton.
The Foo Fighters and Coldplay have been anounced as the saturday and sunday headliners at this year’s Isle of Wight Festival. I bought my ticket in January, so I’m really excited about this now. Rock on.
I’ve been wanting to redo my room for a while now (to the tune of about a year on and off) but have never done anything about it, usually due to not having the money to do it properly (and it needs doing properly, I’ve had some of the furniture since I was very very small). So with a rough plan on paper and a small reserve in the bank, a trip was planned to Ikea in Bristol (yes there isn’t one any closer) to let the designer part of my mind run wild for a few hours.
First, the tools needed to be gathered. Tape measure, check. Notepad with plan, check. Hired van, check. Thus the van was driven to Bristol through the weekend shoppers, dad’s taking their kids to the football/rugby and the odd tractor.
Now I’d never been to Ikea before, neither have I actually bought any large items of furniture (in fact the last item of furniture I needed was constructed by me and my dad out of pine panels and a piece of hardboard) so I’d no idea what to expect. Those with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject should now skip down a few paragraphs to avoid being bored.
First section was the showroom, example rooms all kitted out in neutral tones with fake tv’s and exactly placed furniture, food for thought indeed but largely only there to engage a customer’s brain and distract them from the fact that the rest of the place was sparsely decorated. Everywhere were the little pencils and pieces of paper for jotting down where in the world you were meant to pick up your boxes from. (I tried hard at times to avoid putting the pencil behind my ear or attempting to sketch something on whatever was at hand, including the restaurant table!). A new bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe were chosen, all in birch to match the light wood in my desk and digital radio.
Next the accessories section, where I could have spent quite a lot on artwork had I not forbidden myself from looking properly, due to a lack of finances (and wall space).
Next to the warehouse, where single women struggled with large nondescript cardboard boxes as nobody seemed interested in helping their fellow man (or woman) and the row of tills were only obscured by the queues in front of them. I won’t rant on about the trouble I had finding everything, because you just don’t want to hear it, but I’m confident I’ve got the correct combination of boxes to match what I went for (only time will tell).
Thankful for the size of the van and amazed at how the trolley of boxes made it out without knocking at least a few children over, the experience was over. The van was loaded and the journey home made. The end. To come…
Stage 2: to build the darn the things (in what I’m going to bill as a remake of the krypton factor) and to buy a new mattress (or the bed will be really uncomfortable).
Stage 3: involving paint and other funs. But right now all this can wait, I need a drink.
You may have been having a little trouble reaching anything but the frontpage in the last week. Sorry, my fault. Renamed a file and forgot about it. All fixed now!
So, an independent research group has accused the UK media of sensationalising science. It’s true, the truth can be a dangerous thing in the hands of those who don’t properly understand it. Shame the report isn’t going to be taken seriously when you notice that it was sponsored by UK mobile phone operators!
I’ve been on the verge of buying a mac for a while now. I had a good play with a recent iMac and was really taken by how much I liked using it. Having already got a perfectly good pc, I’m not going to buy a whole new system so set my eyes on a mini mac. Then it was announced that Apple were moving to intel chips which would effectively supercharge the machines, so I held back from buying until the mini got the treatment. Having been disappointed in January by the lack of an announcement then, yesterday’s release of intel powered mini’s meant I had no option, either buy one or shut up. So I ordered one.
The rest of this post may start to sound negative, but there are just a few issues sitting between me and mac happiness. To start with, I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to do quite a lot of what I use my pc for now on the new machine. Microsoft Money doesn’t come for osx just yet and I’ll need to find replacements for the other apps I use, but as I’m not ditching the PC quite yet (not while HL2 still runs on it) there isn’t too much of a problem there. Now I set my budget at £500 (I’ve got an ikea trip planned, so breaking the bank would be silly). When the prices were initially announced, I was pleased. $799 for the dual cored machine works out at £457 at today’s exchange rate, just in the right area. Oh except here in the UK, Apple are selling it for £599, that’s $1047! The single core version (which is fine, I’ve already got a dvd writer drive, it would have been nice that’s all) is $599, that’s £343. So why is my mac costing £449? I didn’t realise that a different power supply would cost that much! Add on £70 for the wireless keyboard and mouse (because my current set are ps/2 so won’t work) and I’m £20 over budget. Not to worry, but it’s going to have to live up to some pretty high standards at that price.
Fine, ordered. I checked the my account section late last night after bowling. The message “we’ve been unable to get authorisation from your card company” was not what I wanted to see. Fine, I call them this morning, “no, we authorised that last night, have these numbers and prove to apple that it’s their mistake”. I phone apple, “oh, this has been happening a lot recently, the system will try again later. No, we can’t do anything with your confirmation number, the system will just have to try again later.” I don’t mind if you take a day to confirm my order, but don’t give me a message to contact my bank to stop them refusing authorisation when it’s actually your fault!
Finally, the wait on a new mac, 2 days. The wait on a keyboard, 8 days. (Ok, so this can’t really be blamed on anyone, but it’s rather annoying). I’m sorry apple, your image in my mind has gone down a notch, please don’t let it slip any further, after all, you know I’ll want one of those video iPod things next month.
Edit 02/03: Looks like they’re not great at estimating either, as it was all dispatched today.