Grand prix... Masa was champion when he crossed the finish line. And then...

I didn't realise how much I was hoping Lewis Hamilton would win the Formula 1 championship until, right at the end, he was overtaken.

He had to be fifth. The car that overtook him put him in sixth. That meant that the winning driver,  Masa, had beaten him to the overall Championship. And you could see the joy in Masa's face, even behind the visor; and the Ferrari team which was celebrating with him.

Masa was, technically, in the championship position, and he'd won the race! How could victory possibly be snatched away from him?

It was. Half a minute behind, or more, the driver who had been number two, suddenly lost control of his car in the increasingly wet conditions, and got overtaken. He went down to sixth; and Hamilton went from sixth to fifth. 

So we had the astonishing situation of both teams, McLaren and Ferrari, simultaneously celebrating the winning of the Formula 1 Championship.

And then, as the news of the overtaking manoeuvre sank in, dismay spread around the red uniforms and overalls of the Ferrari pits, like a spilled champagne glass spreading over the table.

Disbelief

dismay

distress

And they'd just won! How hard can it be to win...!

Nudism... and taboos!

This just in from Eolake...

That nudist resort where I went as a boy
was okay till my organ began to deploy.
When puberty started to rear up its head,
my untimely erections would make me turn red.

When girls were equipped with what nature endows
then my southerly region could get quite aroused.
The problem you have when you go for a walk
is that girls like to tease till you're hard as a rock.

It's hard when a game that you played as a kid
causes nasty effects that the nudists forbid.
Just try to play Twister and dodge a disgrace
when opponents keep sticking their boobs in your face.

The wheelbarrow races I wouldn't advise
for you have to grab hold of a girl by her thighs.
A copious crowd always gathers to watch
while your you-know is grinding away at her crotch.

Now one of the guys had a way of relief
when his obstinate member was causing him grief.
He'd go in the lake where his girlfriend would be
and she'd lend him a hand where nobody could see.

And now that I've reached this cantankerous age
and I have to exist in this suit-and-tie cage,
I often return to that fountain of youth,
the place where my member was often uncouth.

But now I parade with no pretense of tact
for I'm HOPING my organ will start to react.

OK, the Open API stuff for Multimap: it can't be handled by Blogger! I posted it in and the Editor calmly deleted most of it.

Here's the code, HTML: - stripped out completely.

 
 




and god knows how much of that will appear in the final piece.  But what follows below (nothing!) is what Blogger's editor left...


  

Multimap: gets stranger and stranger...

When Microsoft bought Multimap, several of us pulled long faces and went into our Grumpy Old Men routine. But I have to admit, I'm baffled by what's been going on - or, more accurately, going off.

For example, the maps. I know I used Multimap to navigate a journey to East Sussex six months ago, and it was incredibly detailed. Yesterday, I tried again; the map has changed. It's about six years old - houses which were on the old map in blade-of-grass detail - gone! - just a vague blur which shows a building site (maybe).

Or the red circle. Six months ago, you could move it. So, if you wanted to send some directions, you could find the approximate area with a search (find, say Manor House Tube) and then focus in on the lake south of there. Then move the focus circle. bingo! - a URL for exactly the spot. Well, either I dreamed it, or it's been hidden, or taken away. Gone.

And what about the "I can't find this address" feedback button? I know it used to be there! Today, looking for a really well known landmark (the Welsh Harp lake at the London end of the M1 motorway) the only place it could find is a farm called Welsh Hook in Dyfed. And no feedback form at all.

Let's see what this "open API" thing is, and find out more...

Another embedded chat window?

here we go:



join in, assign yourself a name...

Can we do mibbit chat here?

Wordpress wouldn't swallow it.

here is the code, embedded:

How to pronounce magic words...

A hollow voice says "Plugh".

If you're a fan of the famous computer game, "Adventure," in which you can spend hours exploring a cave full of treasure and peril while haunted by sepulchral voices, the above will sound familiar and perhaps take you back a few years.

If not, you can find out more at the links below.

Plugh is a magic word used in several text adventure games, including:

• Adventure (the original)
  
• Radio Shack's Haunted House (for the TRS-80)
  
• Pyramid 2000 (another TRS-80 game that was basically a clone of Adventure but took place amongst the pyramids of Egypt)
  
• Raaka-Tu (yet another TRS-80 adventure game)
  
• Bedlam (and even yet another TRS-80 adventure game - also available on the TRS-80 Color Computer)
  

Somehow, however, plugh never quite retained the fame it deserved. Instead, it fell into the shadows of another more famous magic word: xyzzy.

 

Oh, and the origin of "plugh" is tackled. Some claim it means "plughole" truncated to five characters (why?) but the webmaster adds: "I never really did know how to pronounce the word, plugh, so if you happen to know, please tell me!"

He adds:

Someone recently posted an old usenet article written by Don Woods as follows:

From: Don Woods

Date: 1997/02/27

Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction

Subject: Re: XYZZY

 

Alas, Crowther was responsible for XYZZY and PLUGH. I

think I remember him saying that he'd generated them at

random, but I don't remember how (or even if) he pronounced

them.

 

For my part, I say "zizzy" and "ploog". I'm actually rather

emphatic about the latter, since it's supposed to be said in a

hollow voice. I've heard some people pronounce it "plug", "pluh",

or even "pluff", and when I imagine the hollow voice trying to say

those I keep thinking the poor voice is going to break down

laughing... (A hollow laugh, naturally. :-)

 

On the other hand, PLOVER was my addition, and since it's

keyed to the name of the bird ("an emerald the size of a

plover's egg!") it ought to be pronounced like the bird. But --

aha! -- being ignorant on the topic, I always thought the bird's

name was pronounced ploh-ver. It wasn't until I saw the

discussion here that I thought to look up the word, and found

that both pluh-ver and ploh-ver are accepted, but pluh-ver is

apparently preferred. Oh well. But if you pronounce it pluh-ver,

don't blame me if the magic doesn't work!

 

-- Don.

 

The web site creator adds: "Many years ago, my cousin and I were so into these games (especially Adventure) that we wrote a game language and several adventures that used this language."

You can play these games on-line at:

http://www.skyrush.com/explore/

 

Related links:

• The Colossal Cave Adventure Page
  
• Plugh's Home Page
  
• XYZZY
  
• RetroComputing TRS-80
  

Testing Word for HTML creation

Till today, despite my occasional deep sighs over ScribeFire, I used it in preference to other "quick-blog" systems like Google Notes or Microsoft Live! - but today, I've resolved to overcome my deep suspicions of another way - Word itself.

Word has been urging me to do this, by offering me "new blog post" every time I open a new file. So, instead of ignoring it, I resolved to try it out.

Day One

All I need to do today, is create a short blog entry (this is it!) and link to another web site. So I've picked The Guardian's story about " too much bling " as my link.

 

Too much bling costs suspected drug dealer £650,000 in assets

• Guardian, Wednesday February 6 2008
  
• Martin Wainwright
  

A suspected drugs trafficker who claimed that an ice cream van and other small businesses had earned him three homes and a fleet of luxury cars has become one of the biggest victims of criminal assets recovery law. A painstaking audit of Andrew Pickering's accounts by police in Middlesbrough and the Asset Recoveries Agency convinced a judge that the property, along with (...)

(...) fillip for the force's newly launched tip-off operation, Too Much Bling? Give Us A Ring. Neighbours are being encouraged to use anonymous (...)

<img src="http://is0215.www.is.121d8.com/pics/b.gif" align="left" />

 

I've cut that from the Guardian's own web site. We'll see if it works. And finally, let's include a link to a picture from the same site:

 

http://is0215.www.is.121d8.com/pics/b.gif

I am SO tired of Scribefire!

Three months ago, I made a not about Adobe on VeRO page for UK.

Since then, every time I try to blog something I find the Vero stuff at the top. So I'm posting it, in the hope it will bloody vanish at last!

Bet it doesn't... here is the note:


eBay UK: Help: VeRO Programme: VeRO Participants

List of VeRO participants' About Me Pages

The list below with examples of About Me pages have been prepared by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights owners that report through the VeRO Programme. We hope the information provided will assist you in trading safely on eBay. We encourage you to directly contact the rights owners if you have any further questions regarding their products or policies.

* ACD Systems Ltd.
* Adobe
* Adobe Systems UK Ltd.
* Ahead Software

What VeRO is:
eBay UK: Help: VeRO Programme

eBay has created the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Programme so rights owners can report listings that infringe their rights. Any person or company who holds intellectual property rights (such as a copyright, trademark or patent) which may be infringed by listings or items sold on eBay is encouraged to participate in the VeRO Programme.

pretty lady?

this is a test...





met-art_vol_67_0.jpg (JPEG Image, 683x1024 pixels) - Scaled (56%)

Redmond hijacks the U3 flash memory standard?

Here's a left-field take on the joint announcement from Microsoft and Sandisk today: Guy Kewney's comment says:

Despite what many have assumed, the new Sandisk-Microsoft flash platform isn't about data storage for mobile users. It's more about making digital rights management and security for Vista computer users more completely under Redmond's control.

Technorati Tags: Sandisk, Microsoft, Flash, U3, U3 Launchpad, DRM, Fairplay, mobile

Blair: not just the shame of ID cards...

Wendy Grossman doesn't seem too sorry to see Blair go - judging by this week's net.wars column.



She writes:

So, he's gone, or almost. Ten years is a long time for anyone to remain in power. Blair hasn't quite made it as long as Margaret Thatcher did, but by virtue of the UK's different ways in electing the people who fill its top office it's longer than either Reagan or Bush II. There are children who don't remember what it was like to have the Conservatives in power.

.



Technorati Tags: Tony Blair, Blair, Bliar, Wendy Grossman, net.wars, ID cards, no2id, New Labour

My archive copy of "global warming on Mars?"

This from RealClimate
» Global warming on Mars?

Global warming on Mars? Filed under: * Climate Science * Sun-earth connections * Climate modelling * FAQ — group @ 11:21 am - (fr flag) Guest contribution by Steinn Sigurdsson. Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data. A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum. So what is causing Martian climate change now? Mars has a relatively well studied climate, going back to measurements made by Viking, and continued with the current series of orbiters, such as the Mars Global Surveyor. Complementing the measurements, NASA has a Mars General Circulation Model (GCM) based at NASA Ames. (NB. There is a good "general reader" review of modeling the Martian atmosphere by Stephen R Lewis in Astronomy and Geophysics, volume 44 issue 4. pages 6-14.) Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example here and here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are. In 2001, Malin et al published a short article in Science (subscription required) discussing MGS data showing a rapid shrinkage of the South Polar Cap. Recently, the MGS team had a press release discussing more recent data showing the trend had continued. MGS 2001 press release MGS 2005 press release. The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states. Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth...

Photo copyright

Used any pix in your blog recently? Probably not a good idea, reports the Munchy Rat



More on copyright… Wendy in the Guardian « Dirty Bytes

Copyright owners are cracking down on the unlicensed use of images. A sample case: Geoff Cox runs Quest Cars, a small cab company in Taunton. In 2001, he hired a small local web developer (since gone bust) who decorated the resulting website with a few small photographs. Then in July, Cox received a letter from the legal firm Baker and Mackenzie saying that one of those photographs used on the website was copyright to the large picture agency Corbis and asking for £1,300 for a one-year licence to use that photograph (to expire a month later) plus administrative fees. The letter quoted copyright law and stated that there would be no negotiations.

Technorati Tags: wendy grossman, munchy rat, munchyrat

"Innocent" Steve Jobs - no, he can't be canned!

When Guy Kewney at NewsWireless.net asks:" Can Apple manage without Steve Jobs?" - he's joking, right?

"CEOs have been fired for doing what Steve Jobs is supposed to have been caught doing at Apple: backdating their share options to a time when they were worth less. Suppose it's true; and suppose he has to carry the can - will Apple manage without him?"

Summary:

"Even if they were legally required to appoint another CEO (they aren't) they'd make sure he stayed in charge, and obviously so. The alternative would be a collapse in the share price. Of course, there might be those who are already shorting their options in anticipation. Not inside Apple, of coure! - they wouldn't understand that, would they?"

Technorati Tags: Steve Jobs, Apple, iPhone, Mac, backdating, options

Is "patent vampire" going to become part of the language?

Looks like the CSR vs Broadcom story is getting some air: Business Bluetooth and the vampire ran in Science Business:

The choice of firms sued suggests that the WRF is interested primarily in deep pockets, rather than in the merits of its case. A UK journalist from The Register, a specialised publication that covers IT, asserts that the WRF is not just a patent troll, it is a patent “vampire”, scavenging second-rate IP from its members and then looking for soft-touch companies who would rather settle than litigate.

Technorati Tags: bluetooth, broadcom, CSR, patent, patent vampire, patent troll

What's a "SIM box"? Here's a clue...

SIM boxes, also known as GSM gateways, are used to bypass the interconnection and divert international calls to national GSM calls, thus evading revenue that operators are entitled to. Losses can easily amount to €3,500 per SIM box annually.



More details in the PR releases section of Newswireless

Ghent, 12 January 2007. – In 2006, the company Meucci Solutions, who specialise in quality measurements between telecom networks, detected over 50,000 SIM boxes, predominantly on European mobile operators.

Technorati Tags: SIM boxes, meucci Solutions, European mobile, GSM gateways, fraud

Proper Bluetooth headphones for iPod, iPhone

I don't like in-ear earphones. I like over-the-ear things like the iMuffs - the Bluetooth stereo headset for your iPhone « Dirty Bytes reports:

Now you have your iPhone ordered, how … about some accessories?

So, you’ve graduated beyond the “I’m wearing white earplugs” look? You want a good stereo headset, for music, but it has to be wireless? AND it has to be phone-friendly? iMuffs!

Yes, a new model, at Macworld, too…

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod, iMuffs, headset, Bluetooth

fair warning...

I'm about to try linking Performancing to this blog again.

It used to work. Then I ran Writeley, which was then included in Google.

Result: immediately, I found my Google identity subsumed with another Google gmail account, and I was forced to pick one. Next thing I know, I can't log into this site except from my other Google gmail identity.

Naturally, that screwed up Performancing

Beta features - when do they work? or is my geography wrong?

I'm trying to play with the new features of Blogger Beta. As you can see, I appear to have the blogger beta software... complete with whizzy new drag-and-drop Templates. But every time I try to invoke any of these features, I get: "We cannot comply with your request" - no explanation.

Irritating, Google...