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Notta Blog 
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Sunday, June 29, 2003
See you, Jimmie!Accessibility: I am very pleased to read that Meg has had a Lasik operation and now can see really well again. So to improve her pleasure, I am setting this paragraph in a much smaller font :) All the best, Meg! Glad to hear you could leave the wheelchair too.PS Meg, I now do realise that I got the banner elsewhere, but I never postedit my blog. K.I.S.S : Back in April, Meg also wrote a paragraph entitled: Simple Steps to Usability. One of her questions was "Simple Writing: Is your writing clean and simple?". Now I contend that simple writing is OK in a teaching situation, where the purpose is to be understood, but that more complex writing is far more entertaining, when the purpose is to amuse. Consider the entertainment value of the simple sentence : Liz blogs she goes to the gym. How much more entertaining is the hyperacademic style of Al Schwartz, who would say the same in an ineffebly amusing manner: The aberrant narcissistic drivel mesmerizing upscale social hustlers entails myelotropic hypertrophy accomplished through abnormal flexion, extension, and tension meted out to the somatic muscle groups via formidable metallic and elastomeric punishment contrivances. Possibly biologically inert teflon and silicone lumps can also be forcibly inserted into strategic areas to alter perceived morphology. Oh and by the way, Liz now no longer blogs how often she works out, (a case of failed new year resolutions perhaps ;) instead she encourages us to buy her Tupperware! Mickeysoft : Mickeysoft screwed up yet again, this time on their pursuance of spammers. They are suing a guy who had the misfortune to buy a domain name from spammers just after they had stopped using for spamming. Read more about this Microsoft cock-up, here. Maybe we should get them to take an IQ test! Politics : All my blogreaders know that, whilst I like America and Americans in general, I am no fan of Dubya. But even I don't go as far as TV3 in NZ, who labelled him a professional f*scist. I, certainly, would never have labelled him a professional! But maybe others would? The UK's BBC hosted a unique global television debate about America's place in the world with 10 other national broadcasters. Read their results. Travelogue : Finally today, I would like to recommend to you mainland Britain's and Scotland's remotest pub. The Old Forge offers quality food , with local beer and whisky. An excellent base for hill walking, climbing and sailing. Of course, you can't get there by road; best is to take Brucie's little ferry boat the 7 sea miles from Mallaig. The Old Forge are looking for bar staff today, with a great pun on their website, Star barstaff being recruited now to join a wining team. Can't make up my mind whether they mean winning or whining, in which case maybe Dave should apply :). Whit ye sae, Jimmie? Jimmie asks: Jings! Crivvers! Dae ye ken thae chemical letters fae copper?
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Son of a Son of a GraverobberHistorical fact : Way back in the last century a couple of unscrupulous men desecrated and robbed the grave of Geronimo, the famous Indian Chief. One of the grave-robbers was Dubya's grandfather. I think disregard for the fates of others runs in the family. Here is the full length Quick Time video of Dubya sitting and doing nothing for a full five minutes (not just 2) after being told of the WTC attack on the US.Thanks to The Memory Hole for preserving this! Politics : This is another Jacques E. (Doc) story (see also the June 2nd blog entry). The white house press department rushed excitedly yesterday to the media, to anounce that "Our British allies report finding a store in Baghdad selling semiconductor components used in the detonators of nuclear weapons! So Saddam DID have WMD!"
The local British commanding officer demurred, saying: "This is just the usual white house PR spin;
what we actually said was - and I quote verbatim - Harry Potter : have you ever wondered what J.K.Rowling's secret recipe is for writing all those incredibly successful books? Wonder no more, for I found the recipe on the internet, look here ;)
Monday, June 23, 2003
Son of a BitchPolitics : Hey, Yanqui! Found any WMD lately? All a tissue of lies just to get at their oil? Well you could always look here ;)Celebrations : On a lighter note, it's my dog's ninth birthday today. Happy Birthday, Wilma!
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Hoist by their own Petard :)Nigerian scammer gets ripped off :) There was a great story in the Register(UK) last week, about how a PC Builder took out a nigerian scammer by subtly exploiting his greed. Well done that man!
Hypocritical politician :( Orrin Hatch, an eminently dislikeable
US republican politician, who has been advocating cybernuking the PCs of
people who disregard copyright, turns out to be
using unlicensed
software on his official Senate website. Bishop finally caught for his sins. US catholic bishop Thomas O'Brien has finally resigned, after he was arrested and charged for killing a child in a road accident and then fleeing the scene. That was the US bishop, remember, who covered for catholic priests in his see, who had been buggering children put in their trust.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Past sinsRising crushed :( Today we remember the workers' uprising in what was then Eastern Germany (DDR), exactly 50 years ago today. It was savagely crushed - allegedly by Russian Military, but in fact more were shot by the East German police - and hopes of democracy died there for over 35 years.People fought and died because they wanted to be free. Did Clinton or Bush know that? Draft-dodgers : Forget Clinton and Gore, we know they were active draft dodgers. Take Dubya (please!) : To avoid the Vietnam war, Bush-the-drunken-driver joined the National Guard 12 days before his student deferment would have expired, and in spite of his getting only the lowest possible score on the pilot's aptitude test (25 is the lowest score allowed), and in spite of the waiting list, was accepted immediately (Daddy knew somebody, perhaps?). Here is a link to let you read more about the military "career" of the US Commander in Chief. After failing to report for National Guard duty for over six months (which would have gotten anyone else court-martialled) he went on to become an 'intelligent' student at Harvard. (Daddy knew somebody there too, perhaps?). Perhaps when Dubya was comparing war to raising twins, he was referring to his current War on Terror. One could imagine it would be easier than raising twins (both convicted under-age drinkers), if all you are doing is sending other people's children off to kill other people's children :( Cyberterrorists : So just who are the Cyberterrorists we have been continuously warned about during Dubya's current War on Terror? There are several (U.S.) organizations that track attacks made over the Internet. Over the last six months, less than 1% of all attacks originated from countries on the U.S. government's Cyber Terrorist Watch List, while 35% originated from inside the United States. 'Nuff said!
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Unbalanced LeadershipUnbalanced Leader : Remember what they used to say about Spiro Agnew "can't walk and chew gum at the same time"? Well, Dubya even managed to fall off a Segway!Sore neck / stiff throat ? Wrigley have patented Viagra-flavoured chewing gum. This would explain an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time. Embarrassing though, explaining to the press what you tripped over :) Hard times, these. US Bullying : Rumsfeld - ever the diplomat - is now bullying Belgium. Just a change from bullying France and Germany. Seems the ethical, fundamentalist-christian Junta of Bush-the-usurper don't think that war criminals should be tried if they happen to be american :( Bush-the-elder and Gen.Franks are frightened to visit Nato HQ / Shape in Belgium, because they could be arrested there and tried for their war crimes.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Lies, damned lies and PR SpinMore on US Lies : All Along, Most Iraqi Relics Were 'Safe and Sound'. The US PR spin about the Baghdad museums being raided were lies. Not 170,000 items were stolen but (according to the Washington Post) a mere 33. A slight exaggeration? Once I visited Battle Green in Lexington (Mass.) and listened to the tourist guide ranting on about the massacre by the perfidious British. So I asked him how many US people actually died in the massacre (knowing the answer). He tried to avoid answering but finally had to admit in coram publicum that the answer was only 2 ! OK, some died a few days later due to lead poisoning from lodged musket balls, but only 2 died during the massacre. I have since wondered if these were the first US PR spin lies.BTW: The Washington Post website has an annoying 'feature'. Their popup asks you which country you are from (e.g. Iran) and also asks for your date of birth. But forces you to use Christian date notation. Is this just US cultural ignorance? Or the WP trying to force US culture (sic!) onto the rest of the world? Next thing you know, CNN will be telling us that a little Maine town is really the centre of the Solar system. More on Bible Lies : We've all used the expression "Hotter'n hell" on warm days like yesterday was here. The bible has indoctrinated us that Hell is really burning hot and that heaven is the really cool place to be. But that is just Bible PR. In fact Heaven is quite a lot hotter than Hell; by using 'facts' quoted in the Bible, and high-school physics, you can construct a neat proof that Heaven is even hotter than Hell! Driving fast is easy : This is another piece of PR, this time
propagated by the auto industry, trying to persuade Mr. Average to buy a
more powerful (and expensive) car.
Monday, June 9, 2003
Heaven and HellBuy Bull : That famous drunken driver and election-manipulator, Dubya, is probably convinced he is going to heaven. I wonder why? After all the bible clearly talks about "burning Bush" and it gets pretty hot in Hell. "Burning Bush" even crops up in Revelations, as does the star "Wormwood", signaling the approaching end of the world. And for those of you who don't speak Russian, here is the translation of "Wormwood" into Russian. It is "Tschernobyl". Betcha didn't know that, huh? Part of the fundamentalists' Buy Bull code, man!Politics : I found another wise article explaining growing worldwide anti-americanism (as opposed to my mere anti-Bushism). This - very eloquent - one is by former UK cabinet minister Clare Short on relations between the US and the United Nations in the wake of the Iraq crisis. Accident : If Dubya expects to die and then ascend into heaven,
here is a sad tale of an accident here in Germany yesterday,
where a 5 year old little girl ascended into the heavens
and then died. She was sightseeing from a tethered balloon
when a storm blew up and tore it loose from its moorings.
Sad, freak accident indeed; my sympathies go to her parents.
I wonder though, that the organisers (UK military personnel) didn't
think to pull the balloon down as the storm approached :(
Sunday, June 8, 2003
1010011010A Diet of Worms : No folks, this blog entry is not dated 8th May 1521, but 8th June 2003 (which makes me 59 today. Uggghhh!!!). What really pisses me off is not age, death, burial and the worms, but these virii and worms that attack over the internet. Yesterday I got sent the newest copy of Bugbear.B by some pox-infected innocent. So I had to spend an hour making sure the WIN (lose?) machine is really clean again.So here's my Bright Idea : let's declare Virii and worms as terrorist weapons and have Bush the Usurper fight them for us! Mind you, if he is as successfull as he was finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam or WMD, we can continue struggling on our own. Hey, that's a good idea! Dubya, just resign, willya, and the world would be a more peaceful place. I also just read that Dubya is now well along on his scheme for world domination, as reported in the headline shown here :( And just in case you didn't understand the binary sig. used as today's blog headline, I'll give ye a tip. It's not the sig. of Bugbear.B so just convert it into decimal notation, OK ;)
Thursday, June 5, 2003
Size mattersFighting bloat : Some of my 250+ webpages are really slow loading, especially the photo-galleries. Well, at least they are titled as galleries and the pages that link to them warn surfers that the link will be slow to load. But generally webpages should be like greased lightning - OK, five seconds or less to load - because pundits claim a 10 second load time will cause half your visitors to click away again :(So today I looked at my blog and blog archives. I found that the blog starts out around 10 KB at the start of the month (HEAD and CSS overhead!), climbs to around 70 KB (plus IMGs) by the end of the month, then gets archived. Thus the current blog only contains the current month (my personal convention). I don't put any sound files in the blog, they are too large. But the use of graphics/photos as IMGs slows it too. My May blog was really slow, turned out to be due to the ATC maps I had included. So I took a really close look at the June blog last night. It was loading in (at best) 7.2 seconds on a 64 KBaud ISDN line (about 9 secs for a 56 KBaud modem). This being the start of the month, I had expected about 3 seconds! Turned out that over 40% of the time was for the lovely palmtree banner I got from Meg. So, sorry Meg, but I had to trim it. First I cut the banner height back to 25 from 65, then the width from 800 to 640, then the colour-depth down to 4 bits (making it bluer whilst I was about it ;) ) . That got the banner down from 29 KB to under 6 KB. Similar work done on the two book covers in the recommended reading list. Now I'm down to 2.4 seconds loadtime :) and you have to look hard to notice the difference, and who looks at banners anyway? So, folks, Size Matters ;)
Tuesday, June 3, 2003
Food for thoughtThe Food Timeline :Ever wonder what the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the new world? How Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip...and why?Then you need to go read about the food timeline. Politics : I found a good paper on the anti-americanism that abounds in the world today, and tries to explain it. Would make good reading for the Washington Junta.
Monday, June 2, 2003
Jacques E. (Doc)'s StoryR.I.P : Many years ago I worked for a while near West Sacramento in sunny California. That's not the peaceful, small village of California near Hamburg, here in Germany, but that fault line on which a number of nuclear reactors have been irresponsibly built by a CalPower (Prince of Darkness) Electric Corp. which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, and which is now governed by the eminently recallable Gray Davis :(But back to the main story line. While I was there, living as a guest in a friend's house (Hi, Jane!) she decided to relay the wooden tiling on the floor, using marquetry patterns which I had brought over from Europe. We were helped by her Mexican gardener and jack of all trades, named, if I remember correctly, Jose' Requiez. He was a very small, underset man. Even his pet tomcat "Jerry" (sic!) was small and mangy, too. He was a new immigrant at the time and very enthusiastic about the politeness of the Gringos to him (sic!). For example, he said that every time he went to a ball game, everybody politely stood up first for him and asked "Jose', can you see?" :) But back to the main story line. First we laid the wooden tiles, then we copied the patterns (which I had brougt on large A0 sheets of paper) by pressing down with a pen onto the paper. Between the paper patterns and the wooden tiles we had placed sheets of carbon paper. But sometimes Jose' lifted the pen from the paper, and had used Kleenex instead of carbon paper, so it did not copy properly. Nevertheless, this was probably the first known example of Pen rose Tiling known to the world :) Yes, Sir Roger, I do know that that was a terrible pun (and took you name in vain), but on Sunday morning Red Zora bet me that I couldn't work a mathematical joke into my Blog today. Hey Zora, you owe me a beer :) But back to the main story line. On day 3 we had worked our way gradually up the staircase. The wooden tiles were stored precariously at the top of the stairs. On the third day (this is a traditional, christian, story, folks), Jose' rose again from the tread :) and carelessly leaned on the insecure pile of wooden flooring tiles. The pile of wooden flooring tiles tipped over, cascaded down the stairs, landing on top of poor Jerry, killing him :( . . . . . Requiez' cat in parquet :) Thanks : Thanks go today to
Mandarin Design, who blogged me at the weekend. Alleging too that
I even look friendly,
intelligent and (even) honest.
Maybe I'll change my blogphoto to this one,
and they'll reconsider :) In the meantime, I'll have to try to comb
the honey from my beard, as we say here in Germany :)
Sunday, June 1, 2003
Thick as a brickUS education system : On this site I have a page of famous good English poems. My logfiles of web-hits show that it is popular with schoolchildren and students studying English Literature. However on the poetry index page I do state explicitly:-Schoolchildren and students will NOT find a critique or summary of any of the poems cited here. Do your own homework creatively please! And enjoy!
At the foot of every webpage on my site there is an opportunity to send
feedback to me, to improve the site.The button generates a mail with the following subject line: Now here is an example of feedback from a US teenager, which I got last week: ----- Original Message ----- From: Sweeper032@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:17 PM Subject: Suggested website improvement Here is my improvement suggestion for webpage: poetry. fag, i dont liketo do work, i am lazy, what do u think the internet is for u sack of lard poo, take the vibrator from ur buttt and get a life signed, all the kids that beat u up in highschoolThe usage of dialect words like "highschool", "buttt"(sic!), "fag" in the sense of 'homosexual' rather than 'schoolboy servant' or indeed 'cigarette' leads me to deduce that Sweeper032 is a US teenager in high school. If this is typical of a high school boy, I wonder how bad low school must be? Note the inability to use capital letters properly - or even at all! - and this is certainly no e.e.cummings here ;) Also, he cannot even spell "butt" correctly. The ad hominem attack refers to homosexuality, which he apparently believes a bad thing, in line with US Bible-fundamentalists like those in Dubya's junta. Note too, the aggression of "beat u up". Unjustified aggression seems to me to be characteristic of US society lately, not just of Donny Rumsfeld. Perhaps this is the influence of Hollywood which would rather make films about violence than everything else. This is evidence indeed of the sad decline in US educational standards.
What a pity. A quick Google scan reveals that Sweeper032 has written
nothing else, for which, I suppose, we should be eternally grateful. So this is
his 15 minutes of fame (pace Andy Warhol ;) )
Music : I've just been listening to some old 1960's rock-and-roll by Jethro Tull. Appropriately, today's blog header is my favourite song from their top hits. I don't suppose that Sweeper032 even knows who the original Jethro Tull was :(
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