Technology and randomness, since 2002
The MacBook is here, and currently downloading about 10 system updates. Unfortunately, I have an exam in 3 hours so I can’t play with it much, but for now I can say the following:
More later (including photos), after I’ve spent 2 hours sat in a room writing about internet security and encryption protocols.
This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.
If you have a few moments to spare, watch The Un-Funny Truth about Scientology over at YTMND. It’s a presentation showing how people’s lives have been affected by the Church of Scientology and how events have been covered up. If you were ever in doubt about just how cooky these people are, then this should confirm your suspicions. Beware of some disturbing images, however.
A sequel has also been published which details the Church’s reaction to it.
Thanks for all of the birthday wishes over the past couple of days – I had quite a good birthday but most of my presents aren’t coming until tomorrow. Not entirely sure what I’m getting but I think they will mostly be vouchers for driving lessons.
I’m having a brief experiment with Trackback. A while ago I removed the block of code that allows other weblogs to discover the trackback URL and post to it, in an effort to reduce trackback spam. This turned out to be very successful, making the trackback problem almost non-existent, however since then I’ve been getting almost no trackbacks at all which makes the feature almost useless. So I’ve re-added it, but now I’ll only be opening trackback on a handful of entries (with it off by default). I’ll see if I start getting more pings this way, or if the spam problem becomes intolerable again.
I’m looking at alternatives to trackback, such as getting data from Technorati and displaying a list of blogs that link to that entry, but I’d like to give trackback another chance before I give up on it.
This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.
A study published by the American Medical Association shows that even the poorest Brits are healthier than the richest Americans:
Middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England, startling new research shows, despite U.S. health care spending per person that’s more than double what England spends.
A higher rate of Americans tested positive for diabetes and heart disease than the English. Americans also self-reported more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and cancer.
The gap between the countries holds true for educated and uneducated, rich and poor.
The study focused only on non-Hispanic whites and took factors like smoking, drinking and obesity into account – Brits tend to drink more heavily and more Americans are obese. It concluded that Americans tend to have a worse diet (eating more junk food) and took part in less exercise, but also that in Britain the primary health care provision was better, so that ailments were being picked up and treated earlier.
The media on both sides of the Atlantic constantly derides Britain’s state health care system but actually it does work nearly all the time, and studies like this show that.
This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.
Sky News, a 24-hour-news channel partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., held an interview with Dr Phill Edwards, the press officer of the British National Party (BNP) – a far-right political party. Though the BNP claims it is not racist, it is essentially opposed to all forms of immigration and several of its members have been taken to court charged with making comments which may incite racial hatred, which is a crime in the UK.
The video of the interview is here – in it, Edwards stands by comments made to a student in January 2005 where he says that young black people have low IQs and are likely to mug you, and that black people generally are not high achievers. Edwards has a PhD and he claims that black people are genetically disadvantaged.
It’s worth a watch.
At about 6 minutes past 5pm on the 14th January 2002, I wrote this entry. 4 years, 4821 entries, 6689 comments, 757 trackback pings and a whole shedload of spam later and it’s my fourth blogiversary.
Four years is a, to put it bluntly, a bloody long time, and I’m really pleased that I’ve been able to keep it going this long. So many of my projects in the past have come and go – this is one that I’ve managed to stick with and it makes me proud to think it’s still going strong. I have no intentions of giving up now.
Most of all, I’d like to thank all of you who have commented and trackbacked over the years, especially people like Andy, Kim, Ben, Richy and Ciaran who have been commenting here almost from the beginning. It’s the feedback I get, more than anything, that keeps me going, so keep it up and I should still be here in another 4 years time 🙂 .
The blog has also been with me through some interesting times. Back in January 2002 I was a 17-year-old college student. Since then I’ve had my 18th and 21st birthdays, left home, been to university, got a degree and started another one, met Hari and visited lots of new places, met lots of new people and done many new things. I can’t guarantee that my life will stay interesting but at least if it doesn’t I have a good record of when it was.
And the blog itself has changed – back in 2002, there were no comments, trackbacks or RSS feeds, and I was posting using Blogger to some webspace that only had 100MB of monthly bandwidth. Now I use 100MB in about 6 hours, the site is powered by Movable Type, and I’ve graduated from RSS to Atom for all my feeds. I also started the sideblog in November 2003 which has been doing well too, despite a few quiet periods.
I don’t regret starting this blog one bit – through it, I’ve made many new friends and got a lot of enjoyment.
Here’s to another 4 years! 🙂
Previous anniversary posts: 2003, 2004 and 2005 (when I nearly forgot).
In what is now an annual event, it’s about time I did the ‘End Of Year Quiz’. Read my answers from 2004 and 2003, or read on for this year’s answers.
Get a serious girlfriend 🙂 . I also went to a few new places.
My resolutions have been the same for a few years now, and they were:
For 2006, I’ll continue with 2,3 and 4. Instead of 1, I’ll do “Don’t binge drink”.
Yes, they did. And he’s sooo cute.
Next year I should have another second cousin, which will be nice. He’s due in April.
Thankfully, no.
Again, didn’t really get to go abroad this year despite a planned trip to Ireland in November. I did spend a day in Scotland though. Hopefully I’ll be able to get away in 2006.
Hmmm. Can’t use the same answer from previous years now. To be honest, I really don’t know – all I can think of are little material things that I probably don’t need anyway, like a new iPod, new laptop…
Meeting Hari in October (because she’s wonderful), the Make Poverty History demo in July (because it was such a big and positive event), my election campaign in March (because I learned a lot and didn’t come out as badly as I’d feared).
Graduating.
Not getting a 2:1 or first class honours in my degree.
Just lots of colds. :-/
My Mac Mini 🙂 . Probably followed by my digital camera.
I’m tempted to say all my friends again. They’ve been excellent this year.
George W Bush. Need I say more?
Oh, and the new president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Like last year, the pub and Apple Computer. But also the University of Bradford now that I’m paying part of my fees myself, eBay, and on stuff with Hari.
Christmas, the beach party, my Mac Mini and Hari. Essentially the same as last year, except last year it was an iPod and I didn’t know Hari.
“Mr Brightside” by The Killers.
happier or sadder?Quite a bit happier.thinner or fatter?I think I’m a bit thinner.richer or poorer?Probably a bit richer (in terms of money in the bank) but I’m still in debt since I owe the student loans company £9000 now.
Time with Hari. And free time in general.
Playing Solitaire and Freecell. Again…
I make this mistake every year don’t I? Oh well, I spent it with my family again. It was nice to see them all again, especially my grandparents.
Davros.
Erm, yeah, just a bit…
None at all.
I was really impressed at the revival of Doctor Who this year. I’ve also been enjoying the new series of Family Guy, Top Gear, Have I Got News For You and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (now that’s available here).
No, not really.
Books?!?!? That’s so ‘old media’!
Erm, well, I enjoyed Hacking Movable Type. Haven’t really read any fiction this year… again…
Probably We Are Scientists and the Kaiser Chiefs.
A new mobile phone (again), a Mac Mini and some other stuff.
Once again, world peace has failed to materialise, and I didn’t get a pony either. Hmph.
Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. But the new Harry Potter film was good too.
Not a lot, since it was the exam period and there was a big football game on. I was 21.
Meeting Hari earlier in the year.
Same as usual.
My friends and hobbies.
Kirsten Dunst still. Though Charlotte Church is nice.
Probably equality and anti-racism, but Fairtrade was up there too.
My former housemate Jamie who’s now in France.
Again, Hari, but there were plenty of others.
I learned that I can’t drink lager quickly and still expect to be able to stand up.
“I’m coming out of my cage, and I’m doing just fine” – Mr Brightside, by The Killers.
Probably about time I posted my annual Christmas Message, so:
Since it’s about 9am here we’ve opened our presents here already – I’ve got:
In other words, I’ll be sat watching DVDs wearing some new clothes and hiking boots, eating chocolate and getting drunk on cocktails 🙂 .
Anyway, for those of you who celebrate Christmas (in whatever way you choose), I hope you have an enjoyable and happy day. 🙂
It’s in French, but here’s 1000 reasons why IE is better than Firefox. Except that there’s only actually 14 reasons, so it’s 986 short. And some aren’t really reasons. In fact, it’s a pretty pointless piece of flame-bait designed to stir up the Firefox community.
In any case, here are those reasons translated into English, with the help of the Google Translator and my French A-level (feel free to correct me if I get any of these wrong):
There you go. Pretty lame reasons, in my opinion, and some of them are reasons not to use IE as far as I’m concerned.
[Via Glazblog]
Since it took me a while to find out how to do this myself, I’m going to use this opportunity to tell you how to take screenshots on a PocketPC or Windows Mobile device – in my case, Windows Mobile 2003.
First of all, you need to know that, as far as I can tell, your device does not have a screenshot capability built in. It’s not like a Windows machine where you can hit Print Screen or a Mac where you can hit Cmd+Shift+3 – you will have to install some software first. I’m sure there’s some fancy-pants shareware jobby that will do the job painlessly but in this instance we’re going to use Pocket SnapIt (link no longer available), which is available for both normal Windows Mobile/PocketPC devices and Windows Smartphone handsets. There’s also a Windows version for your PC. It’s free and open source.
Choose the relevant package – for my Dell Axim x50v, I chose the PocketPC package – and download it to your device. This may mean downloading it to the Mobile Device folder in My Computer and then using ActiveSync to send it across. Then, click on the cabinet file on your device to have it install. If you’re using Windows Mobile 2003 (and probably 5.0 also) you’ll probably get a warning saying that the application was designed for an older operating system – you can ignore this. Now, go to Programs and run the newly-added Pocket SnapIt icon.
You’ll now need to define a hotkey to trigger the taking of screenshots. I chose the ‘/’ character – to set this, click on Menu and select Options. Then click Menu again, expand Options and choose Capture Options. Now click Menu a third time and click Select Capture Button. Click OK and then select a key on the keyboard. Click OK to go back to the main screen, and then click Start.
Now, open up the program you want to take a screenshot of and press the trigger key – you should hear a noise when you do. You should then find a bitmap file in your My Documents folder call Snap001.bmp – this is your screenshot.
You can see my effort further up the page – this was a shot from Skype for PocketPC. As you can see, the capturing mostly works but it chokes on the font smoothing, so you may want to consider turning this off first. You’ll also need to change the image format to something other than bitmap if you want to post your screenshot on the internet (since bitmaps are not compressed) – PNG is probably the best format to go for. The image I posted is less than 13KB.
