July 2003 Archives

You know what's almost as annoying as spam? People who send you emails containing memes that you were bored of weeks ago. I've just been sent the "weapons of mass destruction" meme again. It was pretty funny the first dozen or so times I saw it.

Now, I don't stress about meme repetition as much as some people but a good rule of thumb is that any meme that has made it into the papers is a bit tired and should be left to die quietly.

Ok, so it's not really anywhere near as annoying as spam. But it does piss me off. Sometimes.

Why don't digital music players support Ogg Vorbis? I've been looking around and I can't find any that support it. Which is a bit annoying considering the 30 Gb of Ogg Vorbis files that I have :(

That'll teach me to be an early adopter.

Update: Found one!

I've just read U.S. shrugs off world's address shortage which is an interesting article about how the world is running out of IP addresses and how the new IP standard IPv6 addresses(!) this problem.

But the article is full of basic errors. Here's one.

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits. The resulting list of IP addresses is two googols long, an enormous number.

The number of IPv6 addresses is simple to calculate. If there are 128 bits and each bit can be 1 or 0 then there are 2**128 (where ** means "to the power of") addresses. This number is about 3.4e38. Still a huge number, but nowhere near the size of 2 googols (or even 1 googol).

Here's another interesting sounding fact, that turns out to be nonsense.

IPv6 creates enough IP addresses for every person on Earth to have 1,000 Web-enabled devices.

And, of course, it does. One current estimate has just under 6.5 billion people living on Earth right now. Another quick calculation and we can see that 3.4e3 IP addresses spread between 6.5e9 people gives us 5.2e28 IP addresses each. Plenty to go round for years to come.

All of this is just simple mathematics. I really don't understand why the author of the article couldn't run some simple checks to verify the accuracy of what he was saying.

Buffy finished a few weeks ago. This leaves me with a bit of a hole in my TV viewing schedule, so I went looking for something to fill it. And (hopefully) something to also satisfy my desires for teen drama with a supernatural edge.

I'd seen a couple of episodes of Charmed before, but pretty much dismissed it as a Buffy rip-off. But a few weeks ago on of the UK cable channels showed about eight episodes in a day. I only caught the last three, and I found myself really quite enjoying it.

So I've started watching Charmed more regularly. It's all a bit confused as there are five seasons and various UK TV channels are currently showing episodes from three of them. So I'm trying to follow three story arcs simultaneously. Which is a bit challenging. Shame none of them are out on DVD yet. But the good news is that next Monday one of the channels is starting to show the first season in a daily slot. The less good news is that it's on at 4pm.

It's not Buffy. The writing isn't anywhere near as good as on Buffy and the plots are a lot more "fairytale" than anything that Joss Whedon and his team would come up with. But if you're looking for something to fill that Slayer-shaped hole in your life, it might be worth taking a look.

Excuse a quick rant about people who don't understand timezones.

This evening I've got a telephone interview with someone who will be calling me from the US. The recruitment agent told me to expect the call "at 7:30 pm". Of course with no explicit timezone mentioned and with her and me both being in the UK I assumed that she meant the current UK timezone (British Summer Time, aka BST - which is GMT +1).

Then this morning, I get an email from her confirming the interview. It says that the interview is at 7:30 pm GMT. Which would be 8:30 pm BST.

Of course I know what she's done. She's made a lazy assumption that "GMT" means "the current time in the UK", but it's just possible that she's confirmed the time as 7:30 pm GMT with the person who is calling me and that he's intelligent enough to know what that really means (as opposed to what she thinks she means) and that I'll therefore get the phone call an hour later than expected.

I've emailed for clarification. Which I expect will just lead to more confusion.

I swear that each time I take the Political Compass test I get more extreme.

Currently I'm standing at

Economic Left/Right: -8.50
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.05

Whilst it's obviously sad whenever someone dies, Bob hope is not going to be missed at all in my little corner of the world. His films have never struck me as being very entertaining, but my dislike for him increased massively when I heard about his actions at the 1970 Miss World content.

Hope was compere at this contest which was held in London. A group of feminists disrupted the evening by throwing flour bombs. Hope's reaction was to inform the audience that "anyone who would disrupt a beautiful occasion like this must be on some kind of dope", thereby insulting two of my favourite types of people - feminists and dopeheads. Hearing about this opened my eyes to just how bigotted, sexist and unfunny Hope is.... er... was.

I won't miss him.

I used my Oystercard for the first time this morning.

It's very cool.

Whilst in Paris last week (and, largely, on the Eurostar back to London) I read Iain Banks new book Dead Air.

I've been a big fan of Banks since I read The Wasp Factory soon after it came out in 1984. I've been a little disappointed with his last three novels, but this was a great improvement. I don't think he's quite back to the standard of The Bridge or The Crow Road but this story gripped me and I read it quicker than any book I've read for years.

Oh, and Dave's top tip for getting people to read Iain Banks books - don't give them The Wasp Factory. You may well think it's wonderful (and I'd agree with you) but I've had far too many people throw it back at me without finishing it because it disgusted them. Far better to start them off with something like The Crow Road and gradually build up to the more... er... "descriptive" stuff.

Usually I'm very impressed by Amazon recommendations, but today I happened to let slip that I own both of the Sugababes albums and now my music recommendations list is full of Christina Aquilera and Atomic Kitten!

I recently bought the DVD boxed set of Twin Peaks and yesterday we started to watch it. Almost fifteen years after it was made it is still absolutely fantastic. If there has ever been a better TV series then I haven't seen it (tho' The Prisoner comes a close second.)

The only downside is that this set only contains season one which is only eight episodes long (plus the pilot). The really good stuff is in season two which was twenty-two episodes long. And that doesn't seem to be scheduled for release yet.

I'm off to Paris in a few hours. I'll be speaking at YAPC::Europe[1] on Friday. Haven't been to Paris for fifteen years. I hope I get a chance to get out and about and see stuff. I particularly want to find the time to get to Pere Lachaise.

[1] For those that don't know, YAPC is "Yet Another Perl Conference".

Spacecraft Films are in the process of making available DVD sets which include a large proportion of the footage from the various NASA space missions. For example, the forthcoming Apollo 11 set is on three disks and contains over ten hours of footage.

The Apollo missions were a major part of my childhood. I was fascinated by them. I was six when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I remember insisiting that my parents woke me up so I could see Armstrong take his first steps on moon (which happened at about 3am UK time). Apparently when they came to wake me I wanted to stay in bed, but they dragged me up and I'm, of course, glad that they did even though my memories are somewhat hazy.

[via sbisson]

Looks like Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army is getting a general release in the UK.

This is a very good film. Go and see it when it's on near you.

Just in case you've ever wondered how it's done, the BBC publishes a useful guide to being an internet paedophile.

To summarise, the stages are:

1. Friendship: Flattering a child into a private chatroom
2. Relationship-forming: Asking the child what problems they have
3. Mutuality: Identifying with those problems to create bond
4. Risk-assessment: Asking about location of computer etc
5. Exclusivity: Using powerful language to create trust and often love
6. Starting sex chat

Interesting interview with Erica Jong in The Guardian today. I'm glad to see that there are still people who talk this type of unfashionable sense.

What she does mind are young women today who refuse to call themselves feminists and insist the women's movement is obsolete. "They think equal pay and women talking dirty on Sex and the City means we've won, we don't need to fight any more," says Jong, rolling her eyes.

Today is the sort of day that tabloid journalists dream about. Not only do they have a story involving pop stars, "glamour" models and sex, but they have another one that talks about perverts, missing children and the dangers of the internet.

All the important topics covered in just two stories.

Using the Comic Sans typeface is a sign of a complete lack of artistic ability. Ban Comic Sans.

Doncha just love serendipity.

Earlier in the week I caught a brief glimpse of Transvision Vamp on TV. I'd forgotten how much I liked Transvision Vamp so I decided it was about time to buy some of their stuff on CD. As it happens they released a compilation album called Baby I Don't Care last year, so I ordered that.

As I am fundamentally incapable of buying one CD I looked for a couple of CDs in the same vein to go with it. After a brief search I found two other compilations by bouncy 80s girl-singer bands - The Best of Voice of the Beehive and Destiny - The Hits by Altered Images.

Whilst I'm very much enjoying the Transvision Vamp and Altered Images, the Voice of the Beehive CD is a bloody revelation. I'd completely forgotten what a brilliant band they were. I know and love just about every song and it's like it's 1989 all over again.

A quick Google search reveals their official website and it looks like they're planning a reunion tour. They are playing the Hammersmith Odeon (or whatever it's called these days) in December, togther with the Wonder Stuff.

Anyone up for a night of nostalgia?

Forgot to blog this when I first saw it a couple of days ago.

"I don't give a shit," said Harry, continuing to walk. The three of them walked in silence. Eventually Harry spoke: "I think it's weird how, like, the last four years of life have been pretty similar... I mean, it starts with me getting pissed off with the Dursleys and doing some sort of magic which I then get in trouble for, then I end up at school, after a couple of hours where it looks like I might not make it, and get involved in some sort of trouble that reveals itself fully in the last couple of days of the term. It's almost as if I'm living in a repetitive series of books or some shit."

There's an interesting article in today's Guardian. In it Zoe Williams points out that there are probably more gay people in the UK than there are active members of the Church of England.

Update: A big welcome to all the fundementalist christians who seem to be coming across this entry thru some kind of Google search. I'm happy to hear your opinions, but please try to keep the homophobic bigotry to a minimum and remember that arguments based around some mythical sky pixie aren't exactly compelling to non-believers.

This is bizarre. You wait six years for a Government to do something you approve of and then two turn up on the same day.

First they announce that they are bringing in legislation to give gay couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples.

Then there's a massive revolt in Parliament and the first reading on the bill to outlaw fox-hunting is passed with a huge majority. This last one was in direct opposition to the wishes of the Prime Minister who wanted some kind of wishy-washy compromise nonsense.

I almost feel like I have some respect for our Parliament again.