What happens to the other 60%, Professor Blakemore?

The Man in Black has cashed in his chips. If you need me, I'll be in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Last week's Onion? It blew. This week's? Pretty good ...

I think we all know people like this, for example.

Those of us old enough to remember the glory days of Acorn & Sinclair (Timex in the US, oddly enough) have oft lamented that it's phenomenally hard for beginners to learn how computers REALLY work at a low level these days. Back in the day, we had widespread access to cheap'n'cheerful hardware with 8-bit CPUs and 64K of RAM - and an assembler, and hobbyist books, magazines and user groups to support us. Consequently, many of us grew up writing Z80 and 6502 assembler code, or, if we were lucky, PEEKing and POKEing our way through "low memory" with BASIC to see what we could make the machine do.

These days, I don't even know who produces an assembler for whatever x86 or PowerX chip is in our sleek, desktop machines (Metrowerks, maybe?) - and I wouldn't know where to begin if I wanted to actually do some simple graphics ... WinOpenHandle() this and WinRefreshBuffer() that ... eek. You could make these machines do SOMETHING visible by saying:

10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

RUN

(and if you wanted extra points for style, you could throw in a CLear Screen instruction at the beginning)

So, in the light of all this nostalgic wistfulness, I found the following statement very interesting: "Our goal here is to teach electrical engineering and low-level, highly optimized programming". All this, and hardware too, for a projected $99.

It's almost enough to make me want to commandeer the small TV from my mum's bedroom and get coding again ... almost.

Have you ever had one of those days when you just want to crawl inside a beer barrel for a while?
Well, thanks to your good friends at Guinness now you can! You could even live there if you want.

Opener sold separately.

Hey Joe, what did you end up doing with that old truck motor you had out back?

Don't worry, there is nothing to fear. We still have a decade before we are all dead. Its probably a good time to start a mean drug habit.

Got stuff you always wanted to know but couldn't find anyone bored enough to ask? Your prayers have been answered. Can I get an amen?

Airplane in a hailstorm. Enough said.

Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod - Lego, and cranes, and Lego cranes ...

My first reaction to this site was "hey, guys, what about suspension of disbelief?", but then it hit me - the state of physics education (I was about to say "state of science education" but then I remembered that all science is either physics or stamp collecting) is so woeful that most movie goers experience no disbelief in the first place - people really do believe that bullets explode in a flash of light and a shower of sparks when they hit a solid object, that cars always burst into flames following any kind of impact, and so on, because they've seen it in th'movies.

Besides, you can prove to yourself how bad the state of physics education really is - right here.

OK Arnie was weird, but actors have become politicians before. A 26 year-old girlie software engineer from Veritas, though? Still, the campaign merchandise is different...

Eek! Let the airbrushers and tattyshoppers do their work, I say.

Something for your PC that's not too PC, if you catch my drift. A study in the dynamics of fluids in bags.

We do it. Dogs do it. Cows do it so much it pollutes the environment. And it seems that whales do it too...

What really makes this is the picture. You couldn't stage this any better if you tried.

Sure, the idea of using Google to find obscure trivia such as "average mass of one cubic meter of planet Earth" is familiar. But using Google to calculate the average mass of one cubic meter of planet Earth is new.

Check it out - it's very cool. Although the documentation is sparse, a little experimentation shows, for example, that it also handles complex numbers, for example.

I haven't had this much fun with a calculator since ... well, I'd rather not go into that.

Are these guys a satire in the spririt of the Landover Baptist Church or are they for real? If you figure it out let me know. Scary stuff either way.

Time to retire, perhaps. Software developers are only going to get paid peanuts from now on.

After much (gut-churning) speculation and internal debate, I have come to the following conclusions about Shaun's Nullo posting.

After the initial shock of revulsion at the sheer physical violation, I realized that the thing that bothered me more was the relationship angle.

I've also not discounted the possibility that it's a piece of creative fiction - call me a skeptic, but although I can buy the castration scene, the penectomy I just don't think could have gone down like that. I don't see how one person, working under non-sterile conditions, without the capability to administer general anaesthesia or a blood tranfusion, could have done that ... operation ... and for there still be a patient alive to tell the tale. I don't buy it.

And if you have incontrovertible proof that it did happen as stated, kindly keep it to yourself.

Hunting for Bambi? Hoax.

You think your DR site is safe? Well, these guys think your data is as secure as an ech-a-sketch and have a better place for your off-site backups. Way off-site.

Nullo. Warning: don't read just after eating, you could lose your lunch(box).

You have to wonder about a researcher who's trying to figure out who downloads illegal porn, and who says:

"People don't tend to suspect young people of doing this. 

 You get a young, attractive, virile 25-year-old man. 

 Nobody's going to look at them and suspect them."

To which I say: Huhwha? What planet does this person live on? Ah - now it's clear.

So if you were inviting Prince Charles to your city for a cultural festival, what statue would you put up. Perhaps one of a giant man ejaculating into his own mouth? Surely you'd reserve that for Prince Philip...

Thanks to Ian for this one by the way: A hat for W. Which brings me to my next point: The ongoing grudge match between Saddam Hussein and George Bush Sr. has resulted in the death of the former's sons. Here's the kicker: do you think we could get Saddam to do the same for us?

Seems "keepin' it real" and projecting an image of living the "thug life" is great - until someone mistakes you for a thug ...

Microsoft's ingenuity at engineering enormous security holes into the most innocuous-seeming operations never ceases to amaze me. What particularly impresses me, though is not the cleverness or subtlety of the flaw - it's a simple buffer overrun, guys, nothing elaborate - but the fact they were able to allow this flaw to be exploited by playing a MIDI file. Wow.

Microsoft: What do you want to blow today?

Ungrateful little bugger. He's right, though...

To pour oil on troubled waters, or not to pour oil on troubled waters - what does the BBC think Mr Blair was trying to do? (listen carefully at about 59 seconds into the video clip)

But it's been in someone else's mouth!.

It's not very funny, it's not very well done, it's certainly not erotic (at least, not to me, your mileage may vary), but once you see the URL, you'll probably visit it any way out of curiosity just like I did:

FatChicksInPartyHats.com

Friends help you move, and real friends help you move a body, but Zimbabwean friends will rent you a body.

We have a great story breaking in the UK right now. On the 29th of May Andrew Gilligan, a political journalist, reported that No. 10 Downing Street staff had "sexed up" the intelligence presented in the now infamous "dodgy dossier" in BBC Radio 4's renowned Today programme. In a followup report in the Mail on Sunday, he stated that his source, a senior British official, blamed Alaistair Campbell, the PM's director of communications for inserting the claim that Iraq's WMD could be brought to bear in 45 minutes. On the 8th of July, after much bitter wrangling between the Government and the Beeb, the MoD announces that one of their officials - Dr. David Kelly - has stepped forward as having spoken to Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan later denies that Dr. Kelly was his main source, and does so in front of a commons select committee investigating the dossier. Yesterday, Dr. Kelly is reported missing. This morning, he turns up dead in the woods. Nobody thinks this is a conspiracy. Least of all anybody with a copy of Photoshop (that's Alaistair Campbell, btw).

How Lois & Clark should have ended up.

Followup to Dave's post: maybe it's here.

Ever want to live out your Tron fantasy? You may soon be able to...if you have $250,000 to spare. And you can do it at nearly 400 mph.

Competitive typing (for type-A's, geddit?)

I don't know. Did you lose something?

Scared shitless?

Food with attitude

David St. Hubbins once said: "I know what the Stonehenge monument looks like. We don't have that piece of scenery anymore." I'm not sure this is what he was talking about. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I see the resemblance ...

Couldn't they just tell Dubya that "brothel" is the Kiwi word for "soup kitchen"?

Chugga-chugga

Not mentioned in this article were some other unneeded things the Danes sent to Iraq:

• NBC suits


• chemical-weapons disposal systems


• lead-lined radiological containment vessels

The Onion, as regular readers will know, is one of my favourite sites - pretty consistently funny, waaaaaaay politically incorrect, and just an all-around good site. Rarely, however, do you see an item like this, one that comes so far out of left field, I can only say - what were they smoking? And further more - where did they get it? (PS: this infographic is pretty good, too)

Updated the blog template to get rid of the annoying "edit" links - test post to see if it worked.

"Don't make me horny. You won't like me when I'm horny. "

Stupid technology

if you are reading this then, my phone made an xml rpc call to the blog.

Bilderbergers. Mmm .... burgers ....

Take three random words, say: "dead", "pig" and "boat".

Now, put them together, and what have you got? A dead pig boat!

Spot the difference:

Cthulhu	Octodog

Don't know how long this will continue to work, but:

Go to Google, type in "weapons of mass destruction", and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky"

Even the Aussies have noticed ...

"Life imitates art", they say. Well, ConsumerFreedom.org (basically an advocacy group for the "bad for you" industries - fast food, alcohol, tobacco, etc,) certainly imitates The Onion.

Strongbad = Funnyshit.

Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor (Surprisingly, safe for work. More or less. Depends where you work I guess)

Any of you in the UK a more regular blogger? A friend of mine would like to interview you for the Daily Mirror if you blog on a more or less daily basis, especially if you have your own. To quote her:

"All I would need is a 30 minute phone chat, questions to include who are you, what do you do, why did you get involved in blogging, how did you go about it, why is it so important to you etc. We'd then need to send a photographer to him or her and get a shot of them in their blogging headquarters"

If you're interested, mail me here

Think your rice-mobile is the dog's danglies? Not without these it's not...

Not so much a case mode as a whole room mod. This guy's linked 9 pc's and 13 monitors together just to play flight sims.

My cousin Nick just sent me a copy of "Dirty Fan Male". Trunk Records, publisher of said item, have amassed some interesting links in the "toy" area of the site. Check 'em out.

More casemods, this time from guys who not only have no social lives and too much time on their hands, but they also seem to have some real skill with fabrication and design.


Sphere (auto-translated from Japanese)

Pyramid

No idea what to do for a holiday next summer? Why not take a cruise with Face from the 'A' Team?

Not had your yearly fill of exploding microwave ovens, shattering CDs, magnetically launched projectiles and other high-voltage stunts? Well, these guys are here for you.

Occurring at a mall near you...

- "We're sorry, but we can't rehire you because there's already too many Filipinos working here."

- A manager pointed at a poster of a blond-haired, blue-eyed male model and said the store needed more staff members with a similar appearance.

- A line of T-shirts that showed two slant-eyed men in conical hats and the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make it White."

Is it "casual classic American lifestyle" or simply a pack of racists?

Re: this item. We have a bunch of jackasses in the White House. Is that why it's been raining so much here on the East Coast?

I have only one question about this item: when are they going to get around to treating the rest of France? And the French, for that matter?

non se·qui·tur (nn skw-tr, -tr)


n.

1. An inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premises or evidence.
2. A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it.

Example: Damn those Montenegran water-polo hooligans

Sure sounds like an interesting way to convince lots of people to install keystroke logging software onto their PCs. Then, someone with access to this central server could search for things like URLs for bank accounts or retail websites and sift through the keystrokes to find usernames, passwords, PINS, and credit card information.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Huh? Does anyone see any point to this? At all?

If this had involved, say, Bernard Manning, I could have understood it.

If only this happened in real life. And went further. Much further.

The unfortunate URLs saga continues. Sadly, these sites aren't what you'd think:

http://www.powergenitalia.com/
http://www.gotahoe.com/

"... with the exception of certain celebrities and politicians, statements like Chipper's are almost always made by talking animals, superheroes, omniscient narrators, anthropomorphic trains, wandering magicians, friendly dragons, sentient heavenly bodies, Jesus, and other characters subject only to the rules of narrative causality"

A tasty update to the somewhat less interesting periodic table of the elements as baked up by a new coworker of mine.

I would have thought that the Falcon was the coolest case mod I'd seen yet to date, until I saw this... I think this guy needs to get laid (even!) more than the Falcon guy.

My childhood can best be defined by listing the things I did not have. I did not have any toy guns. I did not have any toy weapons, period. I did not have video games or a video game console, although I consoled (good pun, I think) myself by abusing Ataris and Nintendos at my friend's houses. I did not have a computer, although there were a few years in which I busied myself with a TI-99/4A. And, I continued my practice of abusing things that belonged to my friends, although I did much less "damage" playing Zork on an Apple IIE and dialing up BBSes on an old Wintel clone than when playing Pitfall or Contra.

So, in the cruel world of childhood politics, in which the winners are those with the best toys, why would anyone be my friend? It helped that I had the foulest mouth on the block. But, it also helped that I had the coolest Star Wars toy ever made...the "full-size" Millenium Falcon. You could seat Chewie and Han in the cockpit and stuff Luke and the ambiguously gay robot duo in the back. Over time, Star Wars figurines were not enough to entertain me and the Falcon. Many a GI Joe got to ride on the Millenium Falcon before facing an inevitable firecracker death in my neighbor's yard.

Why all the reminiscing? My memories were sparked by this awesome casemod. I have neither the time, the patience, nor the understanding wife to do something like this, but at least I can enjoy reading about it.

Dude, the folks at Blogger might have done a good job on the new UI, but the mechanics still leave something to be desired. I've got four posts sitting around since Friday that have not showed up on the actual published site yet. In fact, I'm just writing this message to see if this one will actually get posted and published.

Lord knows I've been associated with some buggy-ass software, but I always wanted to give the stuff a good strong round of testing before foisting it upon my clients. Reprobates could be the only blog with problems, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: Old posts have posted...but some bugs still remain...

For some reason, the three postings I made earlier today are simply not showing up on reprobates.blogspot.com. I don't get it. And blogger.com must be having some problems as well now since the XML keeps puking every time I try to get to the Discuss pages.

Another prank for today. This is from a good friend of mine and one of the people that convinced my wife and I to buy a Prius.

This one is a real shocker. 80,000 volts...in a jacket?

I really enjoy silly little pranks. And they are doubly satisfying if they exploit weaknesses in the systems that manage our everyday lives. This one is the next on my list of things I must see for myself. It will be so much easier to just sign with a grid from now on.

Well, when you're a small, midwestern Canadian city who has lost your prime source of entertainment (in the form of a once-proud NHL franchise), your winters are brutal, and you have such a problem with mosquitoes that you have a city-sponsored bugline, there's not much left to promote tourism. What better idea than to make Homer Simpson an honorary citizen? D'oh!

This is just so wrong on so many levels:

1. Insurance? Against your husband leaving you?
2. For becoming ugly?
3. As judged by a panel of builders?

I wonder what she did with the money ...

What every office needs (especially mine) is a good, solid, offensive office linebacker.

Got a sick kid? Wonder what'll cheer them up? Try a soft toy...

Last week, I had the luck to get "invited" to work the NDIA show in Baltimore. More specifically, I represented my company by trying to explain biometrics, RF tags, and wireless technology to government bureaucrats and blue shirts (rank and file of the Coast Guard) for 10+ hours straight. It wasn't all bad, though.

After having discussed mobile apps with one blue shirt in particular, he invited me to come over to his booth to play with the toys he was showing off. About an hour later, I was looking through the sight of a shotgun, having a chain gun targeted on my chest, and taking a look at this. Afterwards, they handed me a pretty neat giveaway.

And, only a few booths away from where I was working, was this beautiful thing. It was just sitting there, all alone, begging for some attention. I looked for a price sheet or an order form, but I couldn't find one.

They speak English in South Africa, right? To quote Inigo Mantoya - "You use this word a lot. I do not think it-a means what you think it-a means".

I'm sure it's not 'cool' to admit it, but I have followed Amazon's product recommendations on music several times ("People who bought this bauble you just looked at also purchased the following gewgaws ...") and the results have usually (though not always) been rewarding.

As a result, I have travelled from Tortoise and Hooverphonic to Blue States and Boards of Canada and beyond.

So, as I have taken this journey into the ambient/trip-hop/IDM/illbient "post-rock" netherworld, I have noticed something: the names of the bands, the albums and the songs all have a curious sameness about them in their infinite abstract "weirdness" and variety. Consider this selection of track names from the Tortoise album TNT:

I Set My Face to the Hillside
A Simple Way to Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work
In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
Almost Always Is Nearly Enough

or these album names:

Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
Music Has the Right to Children
Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

or these band names:

Godspeed You Black Emperor!
The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band
Do Make Say Think
Explosions in the Sky

Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff. But, jeez, could we get some track/album/band names that aren't so, aah, pretentious? That so visibly strive to be "different" and "memorable" that they end up merging into a forgettable sameness?

Maybe like The ABC Song?

IROQ!

Animals, computers, and excrement. Sounds like the makings of a great story to me.

Turns out that monkeys would probably never write a play, let alone a copy of one of Shakespeare's works. Although, they seem to have made their own version of "Urinetown".

Don't dismiss monkeys just yet. A small, tree-climbing, monkey-like animal known as a Luwak does have some interesting uses for its own poop. And people seem to like it.

Got this in email:

"This gave me a chuckle so I thought I would share.

Apparently this kid videotaped himself practicing his Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera and left the tape when he was done. Now the video that he left behind is spreading over the net.

Somebody also did a video with special effects and lightsaber noises that is also pretty fun."

Y0 - w3 ridin d@ PH@T Bu5 to 5k00L!

Further proof of racial profiling. Are you going to try and tell me the police would have stopped the guy if he weren't "an ethnic Albanian from the Serb province of Kosovo". For shame!

Exhuming McCarthy

"Let us not assasinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Plane hijacked by terrorists? You're about to crash into a national landmark? Don't want to look, or get an annoying crick in your neck? Try one of these.

Also, while I'm here, more wacky shit from Japan. Strangely, these don't appear on J-List. Yet.

With Mother's day coming don't you think you should pick up the phone and thank your Mom for not abusing you the way these poor slobs were? Don't forget to tell her you love her. We'll wait....

And what could be a better Father's Day gift than one of these?

MAKE.MONEY.FAST!!! (by suing telemarketers)

Is "Inul" Indonesian for "Elvis"?

What's next? The rest of the 50's and 60's? Indonesian Beatles? Tropicalhardwoodstock? Megawati Sukarnoputra's Presidential motorcade arriving in Dealy Plaza, making the slow turn at the triple overpass in front of the Texas School Book Depository?

I'm going to stop now before this turns into a bad Billy Joel song ...

Honda Accord...by Rube Goldberg

You know how most theaters insist that you silence your cell phone before the start of a show? I wouldn't recommend it at this play .

This chap (the one fondling the nymph's ass of brass) is my old school mate Tim Walkup, in Singapore's "Bot"anical Gardens.

He's on his way round the world in the Clipper 2002 race.

Having completed the "third leg" (fnarr fnarr) of the race, they're on leg 4. Leg 6, the final 7,100 mile segment of the odyssey will bring them to New York, where I hope to meet up with Tim, an Original Reprobate from Back In The Day, for the first time in twenty years, some time around the end of August.