Palfrey's life

Still a bit blah (but probably going into work tomorrow), post on last weekend's gaming with samurite and rob_is_raze will appear at *some* point...P.S. Need an MLP userpic as I'm posting so damn many of these.

• Charles Stross' take on the whole US loans plan - "Eight years of asset-stripping and looting, and finally the coup de grace: $700Bn in no-questions-asked, no-oversight slush money."


• Another 'Still Alive' video, this one done with fonts and things. I'm still amazed that even now (almost two years after it's initial release) this is still generating way cool fan videos like this. Plus the original version is basically unviewable on a YouTube-sized video box, so fan videos are the better option!


• Finding 'Romeo and Juliet' in Fight Club. Need I say more?


• 365 tomorrows finds a good explanation why Greenpeace are opposed to nuclear power


• Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. How many of these badges should you be awarded?

I'm now attempting to avoid letting this build up so much, and as this has been a week of cool stuff, here's one of these posts

• Victorian Pac-Man strip


• Flowchart for 'Small talk with a web designer', which also occasionally unfortunately applies to us generalised computer folk as well...


• Doctor Who themed cat poster!


• Oh Xkcd, you do temp us so with strips on fetishes and Gödel


• Results of the Register doing a competition for a sign about old people

(Day 1 and explanation)
Aargh! Panic! Ran out of day! Oh wait, it's the weekend, I've forgotten to go to sleep yet, and so therefore I still have enough time...zzzz.... *nlerk*. Note to self: micro-sleeping plus blogging may not be a bright idea. Sleep after this is done....

• Pornographic Tintin


• A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III - ah, an excuse to rewatch all of Star Wars again


• LOLTrek version of 'The Trouble with Tribbles'


• 72-Hour Party People - bizarre story about a group of people's 72-hour drug binge


• 'Down on the Farm' - a new Charles Stross short story in the Laundry sequence. Favourite lines include "the inmates here are not only mad: they’re computer science graduates" and "Matron started life as an IBM 1602 mainframe, back in the day, with a summoning pentacle and a trapped class four lesser nameless manifestation constrained to provide the higher cognitive functions"

(Day 1 and explanation)
I achieved a single-screen bookmarks list yesterday, but I think there's sufficient random stuff still kicking around to get me through today and tomorrow (meaning we at least get a working week of me posting regularly :-)

• Cthulhu the solar powered emo robot - I think the title says all here


• God makes you stupid, researchers claim - correlation is not causation; lies, damn lies and statistics; but still amused


• 'Doctor' - a wonderful picture of all the Doctor's female companions in cartoon form


• Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday provides moving tips


• Dean Dad outlines a potential Pre-Ninja program

(Day 1 and explanation)
Hope I'm not boring any of you too much with this... there is the odd gem in the middle of all the random crap I'm posting right now!

• 'This cartoon wrote a sweary word on your toilet wall' - one of these days I'm going to have to try that out


• 'Teenager finds bat asleep in bra' - a good month ago on the BBC news website (and so probably seen by 90+% of you), but still a good one for the 'how stupid are people really?' category


• Magnetic Movie - a movie showing the secret lives of magnetic fields. Genius


• Melinda shows us an adorable squirrel on a beanbag


• Warren Ellis apparently agrees with me on the subject of dogs (ok, I don't think they're either living on the Moon or collaborating with the Nazis while they're there, but otherwise good)

(Day 1 and explanation)

• xkcd shows us how Google Maps should be - most of you have probably seen this already, but it wouldn't be a series of MLP days without an xkcd post :-)


• Weighted Companion Cube cookies. Want!


• Charlie Brooker speaks his usual frank viewpoint on science in general. It's meant to be a review on the latest Richard Dawkins series 'The Genius Of Darwin', but like most reviewers that I read on any continual basis he gets half way through the article before even mentioning what he's reviewing...


• Using your browser URL history to estimate gender. This is really kinda cool - using existing data on male/female ratios + an interesting hack to find out bits about your browser history (attempts to fix this for Firefox are over here but it's non-trivial)


• A different view on tests from 365 tommorows

I haven't done an MLP (Meaningless Link Propagation - read the vocab people!) post for quite some time and well, they've managed to stack up a bit. When I say a bit, I really mean "my bookmarks scroll off the screen and I'd like to reduce them a bit". So, this week I'm going to try and sift through some of the backlog. I plan to do one post of 5 links every day this week (weeding out some of the things that just aren't so interesting any more), also partially as an experiment in a daily blogging schedule...

So, for today we have:

• Indexed, or how to to explain things with graphs and venn diagrams that you wouldn't normally (acquired via the Freakonomics blog which posts these occasionally)


• Charles Stross' suggestion for a new Olympic sport: the Ned Pentathlon (I particularly like 4 and 5)


• Via ubergeeks, "10 Things NOT to Say During Geek Sex" (with thanks to omylouse for pointing me towards this group)


• Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene: think Photoshopping for video, made *really* easy. The demo video is incredible


• From John Scalzi's blog Whatever, 'Toward a Canonical List of Zombie Rhymes' (e.g. Q: What do vegetarian zombies like to eat? A: GRAAAAAAAAAAINS. Wash, rinse, repeat.)

Admittedly the oldest of those is only 12 days old, but we'll get into some oldies but goodies (hopefully) later in the week.

I'm in the "grr. arrgh. rewrites" stage of getting the thesis through the last member of my defence committee, so here's a chunk of my sanity regaining YouTube viewing (culled from random browsing over some longer period)

• Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) - Mathgeek love song in boyband A Capella style. Courtesy of neobitch, but I believe there's a few here who may appreciate (chalkcircle and alextiefling I bet, although I leave explaining it to your respectives to you)


• Lego stop-motion animation of a Eddie Izzard sketch regarding the Death Star's canteen


• 9 minute Sopranos - WARNING: massive spoilers for the whole run. OTOH, I've only seen ~2 episodes of the first season, and now I want to watch it, so I wouldn't worry.


• 10 Things I Hate About Commandments - absolutely brilliant. Modern update with elements of the classic still embedded.


• 'Little Boxes' Weeds theme music - had to upload this one myself to get a good copy, and if you find yourself using the words "ticky-tacky" in the next weeks, I'm not to blame.... great series BTW.

It doesn't feel that long since the last one of these, but they're stacking up.....

• Building a Steampunk Lightsaber


• The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself


• Volkswagen 'Toy Story' - See Films Differently


• From the "how do I get funding for that" dept, "Chocolate 'aids fatigue syndrome'"