Christopher Eccleston, the new Doctor Who, has tendered his resignation. Geez, his first episode wasn't that bad.
March 2005 Archives
I'm such a geek, but I love it.
For my reward for being a geek, I gave myself this.
A nice box for my complete set of Lord of The Rings, extended editions. Best part is, I got it for 4$, vs getting screwed into having to buy a full box set vs just a box for my existing full collection.
May need to watch those again soon.
Clocky is an alarm clock that hides when you hit its snooze button. It was developed by Gauri Nanda at the MIT Media Lab. From the project description:
When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects on the floor until it eventually finds a spot to rest. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for Clocky. This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Small wheels that are concealed by Clocky's shag enable it to move and reposition itself, and an internal processor helps it find a new hiding spot every day.I don't like being told when to wake up but I've come to terms with the idea that I have to. In designing Clocky, I was in part inspired by kittens I've had that would bite my toes every morning.
Ok, I like my cats a lot, theyre cute and super smart. But there are times when you can have a good reason to hate cats. However if that is not enough, this guy has 32 other reasons to hate cats.
p>Canada's DMCA proposal: not great, could be LOTS worse
The Canadian government has introduced its draft legislation for a "Canadian DMCA" -- a suite of laws to bring Canadian copyright into harmony with the bad treaties that broke the American copyright system in 1998 with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
In many respects, this is vastly superior to the US version -- after seven years of horror stories, it would be criminally stupid for any government to consider a law as bad as the DMCA -- but there are still some substantial problems.
Michael Geist, the Canadian academic copyright lawyer and columnist, has a great first look at the new proposal:
The package will include an anti-circumvention provision applied to copyright material. There is no mention of extending the provision to devices (as is the case in the U.S.) and the specific reference to applying the provision to copyright material suggests that the provision will limit its applicability to circumvention to commit copyright infringement. The rights management information is similarly limited to instances to "further or conceal copyright infringement." While no anti-circumvention provision would be better, this suggests that the Canadian provision will feature some real balance.Moreover, the FAQ makes clear that "the circumvention of a TPM applied to copyright material will only be illegal if it is carried out with the objective of infringing copyright. Legitimate access, as authorized by the Copyright Act, will not be altered." This is very different from anti-circumvention provisions found in the U.S. However, the FAQ also notes that circumvention for the purposes of private copying will not be permitted, meaning people may find themselves paying for a CD and paying a levy on blank CD yet unable to make the copy of the underlying CD.
More here, also the government has posted the full text of all 700 comments from the public review process.
Tod Maffin of the CBC's Definitely Not the Opera has identified some broadcasting-related submissions:
- Canadian Association of Broadcasters
- SOCAN: Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publisher of Canada
- National Association of Broadcasers (American group)
- ACTRA: Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists
- The Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada (AMTEC)
- Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA)
- Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA)
- Copyright Coalition of Creators and Producers
- Periodical Writers Association of Canada (PWAC)
- Writers' Guild of Canada
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
Breakfast Brawl is some very fun Flash Mike Tyson's Punch-Out style.
Finally got around to adding google adsense to my site. Here's how it works.
Jeff Weise's livejournal. The rumors over at livejournal are that Jeff Weise, the shooter in the Red Lake school shooting was a member.
Fifteen Elvish Ways to Die. Tidy creatures, elves insist on the cleanest of bathrooms. But don't mix bleach and ammonia. Lohaton's skill with the longbow is of no use to him now.
Have you checked your humors today? Not the gunky jelly stuff in people's eyes, the other kind.
Are you melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, or choleric? Are you a salamander, gnome, nymph or sylph? Earth, water, air or fire? Elf, Ninja, Pirate or Dwarf? (arrrr! buckets of blood! flagons of phlegm and barrels of black bile!)
If nothing else, the theory of humors adds to one's arcane vocabulary.
Now I have stolen some things from bars, and I know some people who have a hard time not stealing something. Most of us are just happy with the toiletries from hotels. These guys trump everyone - they stole an entire house
No, it's not an urban legend. Yesterday, a woman at a Wendy's in Santa Clara, California put a spoonful of chili in her mouth, paused, and spit out a human fingertip. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Martin Fenstersheib said today the woman was horrified "due to the unpleasant sensation of having this (object) in her mouth...."The restaurant at 1405 Monterey Highway was temporarily closed Tuesday night to allow health officials to impound the remaining chili, which was prepared on site, using a variety of ingredients. Health officials also seized all of the restaurant's remaining stock of ingredients, which will be inspected, and traced back to their manufacturer.
Since all of the workers at the restaurant were in possession "of all 10 of their fingers," health inspectors assume the finger likely entered the food chain as a result of the manufacturing process, according to county Environmental Resources Director Ben Gale.
2 GB of data per second, piggybacking on your skin's electrical field. You == organic lan for small electronic devices.
More than half of all people who've tried low-carb diets have given up, a survey found. Is this the latest indication that the Atkins fad has peaked?
Two years ago this month, Gary Taubes kicked it off with a NYT Magazine cover story arguing that emerging science proved Atkins right and the nurtition establishment wrong. A couple small, short-term studies released shortly thereafter seemed to show he was on to something. But there were problems with the "Big Fat Lie" piece: CNN found that three of the researchers Taubes cited completely disagreed with his main premise. Worse, it turned out Taubes had claimed low-fat diets don't work while ignoring the vast body of peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary, and more of his sources came forward to say things like "I was greatly offended by how Gary Taubes tricked us all into coming across as supporters of the Atkins diet. I think he's a dangerous man. I'm sorry I ever talked to him."
While studies continued to show the healthfulness and effectiveness of low-fat, high-carb diets, the previously-touted Atkins studies began to degenerate: The big weight-loss difference in the six-month study evaporated after another six months, and in another it emerged that 40% of the subjects weren't really on the diet.
At the same time, known risks such as heart disease, cancer and constipation were joined by other concerns from new studies, including bad breath, bad moods, gout, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, kidney failure, massive heart blockage and sudden death. Dr. Atkins' own rather sudden death didn't help matters, especially with the revelation that the diet guru was overweight (even without considering the obesity of his corpse, about which one doctor says "Any medical doctor who allowed this much fluid accumulation in a patient in 9 days should have his medical practices reviewed.") Atkins' company began backing off the Taubes prescription of bacon cheeseburgers, claiming they never meant for people to eat so much saturated fat, but it didn't stop a new coalition of nutritionists from branding the diet "unhealthy" and "a ripoff."
At least one new site is wholly devoted to rigorously debunking Atkins, and while we wait for that emerging science on low-carb's long-term advantage, a new survey this year of 4,000 people across the world found that "without exception, a high complex-carbohydrate, high-fiber, high vegetable-protein diet was associated with low body-mass index (the standard measure of healthy weight). The more animal protein a person ate, the higher his or her weight."
I eat normal now, and work out, I think maintaining the same weight for the past year is good, so I'm a-ok.
Do I need a jacket? The next best thing to looking out the window.
Sony-Ericsson officially endorses upskirt photography.
"If you see some bright lights at about the height of your ankle, you'd better watch out."
I like how it's named Rob, all freaks should be named Rob.
Explore your sense of hearing with LSD... the Leamon Sound Device, that is. The LSD is an extremely interesting audio project that I'd love to be able to listen to... If I wern't 1/2 deaf.
A Japanese artist retells the creation myth with sand trickling through his hands. Amazing stuff. I had seen this once before, back in college (yes, thats 10 years ago almost now)
This is super twisted, and I'm prety much disgusted by it.
Orrin Hatch has been named the head of the new US Senate subcommittee on Intellectual Property -- I guess that Genghis Kahn wasn't available to fill the position.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), once nicknamed "Terminator" for his 2003 comment that the recording industry should be allowed to remotely destroy the computers of file-sharers, was named today to head a new Senate subcommittee on intellectual property. While Hatch backed down slightly from that comment the next day, saying, "I do not favor extreme remedies -- unless no moderate remedies can be found," he has remained a staunch ally of the entertainment industry.
3M Canada has published a detailed HOWTO for turning duct-tape into a wallet. Great idea -- these folks should create a comprehensive directory of duct-tape projects (tuxedos, prom-dresses, etc) for using up their stuff.
In case you didn't know, as much as I love technology and such, I really hate living in a city. I grew up in a very small town in outport Newfoundland and I miss living in such beautiful surroundings. You don't realize how beautiful Newfoundland is if you grew up there, until you leave for a few years and start to hunger for it and the sea.
I need to go home soon and recharge, despite the fact I own a house up here and all the trappings that go with, and despite how much I dislike the people at home, its still home. I wish my Grandmother would move up here, there'd be pretty much no reason to go back other then to take in the scenery then.
p>The e-mail I sent Dan.
Dear Dan,First off, you smell. That stated, I would like to ask why there is no
link to your eternal loves website on your site. In case you have a
new "eternal love". I'm speaking of Nat Shaw. Please respond as soon
as you sober up enough to type.-Rob of RobDurdle.com
(Notice I'm a .com, I'm not a cheap ass)
Now we wait and see what his response is! Isn't this fun, it's like you're all part of the game!
Dan Brennan.ca Changes..
I feel slack for not having mentioned this before, but to be honest I didn't notice, Dan is a fairly insignificant factor in my life, so his site doesn't get much traffic from me. I've been laughing at other even pettier people so much recently that I haven't had time to go to his site more then once since December. Anyway, it's my duty as chairman of the "we hate Dan" club to point out the obvious that some of you might have missed.
It looks like Dan no longer has a link on his site to his eternal loves website anymore, the website he hosted for her... Which oddly enough, is now gone as well (trust me kids, no great loss). One does wonder if there could be another one of the shipwrecks in the black hopeless ocean that is Dan's love life.
No, that could never be! As Dan clearly states on his website, she is the "love of his life", so all must be good. Then again, she was desperate enough to date Dan... That sort of thing would have such an affect on a desperate woman. Maybe she just jumped the fence and is experiencing "the comforts of a woman" now. I could see that being the next logical step from dating Dan.
I'll have to e-mail Dan and ask. Most likely he won't respond. He'll read the e-mail, yes, but he's not so great with technology, so I won't hold my breath waiting.
Posted by Robert at 12:36 PM
They're all here. Or most of them. This will make you dust off your NES/Genesis/Turbo GraphX-16... but this time with a pixel-perfect map of every level of your most beloved games. From Amiga to Xbox.
Castlevania, Zelda, and Megaman among hundreds of others and links to even more in-depth sites.
Warning - some of these maps are EXTREMELY large, like 13000x5000 large. NSFCW (Not safe for child within)
Google Code is a new project launched by Chris DiBona, who used to be a Slashdot editor. It's a single place for open source tools and code for interacting with Google and its API.
Experimental Gameplay is the result of a project undertaken by a group of students at Carnegie Mellon University to create 50 to 100 games in 1 semester.
Some of the games are good, some awful, but I particularly recommend Particle Suck, Opposites Attract and Tower of Goo.
The Great Book of Gaelic. Illustrated poetry.
If your European ancestors survived the Bubonic Plague 700 years ago, they very likely may have also passed on to you a mutation of the CCR5 gene -- called delta 32. This may not sound exciting, but delta 32 is a powerful mistake. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, attacks the human immune system, infecting the white blood cells sent to destroy it. The delta 32 mutation, however, effectively blocks the crucial gateway into human cells the virus needs. In fact, possessing delta 32 could save your life, and the lives of your children.
Can't say your Mom didn't warn you. Side effects include: fatigue, stress, thinning hair, eye floaters or fuzzy vision, and tail bone cramps.
A U.N. commercial depicts American girls playing in a soccer match. A girl steps on a landmine and there's a big explosion. Kids get blown apart. CNN and other networks don't want to air the ad.
The explosion appears to kill and injure some girls, sparking panic and chaos among parents and other children. Shrieks of horror are heard through much of the spot, and a father is shown cradling his daughter's lifeless body, moments after celebrating a goal she had scored.
It closes with a tag line reading: "If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere? Help the U.N. eradicate landmines everywhere."
You can view the ad here.
I remember this one time in college our instructor caught a student stapling cat5 cable to his dorm room wall. He so wanted to hit him, what sort of sick fuck does that to a poor cable? use a ziptie+cables, or get decent clips from radioshack.. but fucking staples? What sort of suckass sick bitch does that to a poor innocent cable? It's just wrong, on so many levels. No skill having coke-heads.
It's insulting to me as a person who isn't as stupid as that person. Speaking of which, I migrated the site to a new host with 0 downtime, look at me, I gots skillz. Boobs who have downtime during migrations should get some skills.
I left a box behind at IK that I missed, after hearing that its no longer in production due to massive hardware failure (due to lack of tender love and care no doubt), I decided to built its twin here.
Luna is sitting on the window sil of the living room picture window watching the snow fall, I've never thought of it before, but everytime it snows, that kitty is in the window. She must love it, all that movement. She's definitely a hunter. I can just imagine what she's going to be like this spring, its going to be so damn funny.
