Hello all

I've been lazy the last couple of days and have, again, failed to get out riding on a Sunday, although the weather is perfect for it (overcast)

Have been checking Wired Magazine and they have an anniversary article on the Hubble telescope (14 years old!!) which is well worth checking out for the pictures alone.



2 sad things about the Hubble;

A) it's a teenager. When was the last time any of my gadgets lasted more than 14 months, let alone years. Imagine what could be put up there now, telescope geekery wise, compared to what was launched way back when. You could have powered the Apollo missions with 1/2 the computing power on my mobile phone.

B) NASA are pulling maintenance funding with Maintenance mission 4 having been cancelled (NASA astonaughts being too scared to take the shuttles up. Big girls...) This probably means that the Hubble will fail before it's successor, James Webb Space Telescope is in place (2011.) Definitely the seed for a new B Willis disaster movie there "the day the earth was blind and missed a far of galaxy rotating" or something.

Apparently JWST will be super duper compared to Hubble, although we can all expect it to be scrapped to pay fro more tax cuts or the invasion of Foreign or something.

A weak link to US paranoia, Neil Gaiman has a very interesting piece in his blog about use of US anti-terror laws to convict non-terrorists. In this case, a guy was proven to have made ricin in his kitchen. Cops theorised that he was doing it as part of a plan to kill his wife and run off with his mistress (the harlot...) but apparently felt that they didn't have enough for an Attepted Murder charge. What they DID have enough for, according the the Boltimore Sun article linked by Gaiman, is a charge of possession of a biological agent with the intent to use it as a weapon. According to the article; " They [anti-terrorism laws] require lower standards of proof and, in general, impose harsher sentences." This makes no logical sense at all. Surely "intent to use it [ricin] as a weapon" should require the same burden of proof as attempted (or in this case - intent to attempt) murder. Bah humbug, must recycle that store of anthrax in my cellar. Gaiman also illustrates his argument; that there are plenty of people who would make ricin etc with no mal-intent with several links to websites of obscure hobbyists, my favorite of which has to be the electric gerkin and the most poignent the story of the kid who built a breeder reactor to get an Eagle Scout badge. Check it out.

Andre is now blaming me for her not getting any work done on her masters (the reason for the cancellation of the biking today) on the basis that she needs the computer to do it, so I'll hand over to her.

See you next week

Bomber out

Guardian Unlimited | Cartoons | 23.04.04: The confusion over No 10's plans for an EU referendum



The reverand Blair speaks out

Well bugger me if I didn't win both the argument with my boss AND the one with my insurance company

After arguing at great length over the exact meaning of the phrase "reinstatement settlement" the insurance comany didn't accept my definition that it's an amount of money that may or may not be converted back into lost items (they argued the may or may not part) but did agree to pay up first with some vague notion about me giving them receipts later. 2 thousand quid's worth of beer receipts, coming your way...! Beer is "similar" to camera equipment, right?

As for the argument with my boss, it was over a travel allowance that tehy didn't want to give me. Turns out they changed the company handbook without realising that it might allow me to get an ENORMOUS 10 quid a day travel allowance. Shock horror, this one went right to the top (I kid you not.) Remember I work for a firm that gets the prince of darkness himself to authorise paperclip purchases. The result came through yesterday that they will give me DOUBLE my outstanding travel allowance claim, plus an extra 80 quid a month for future travel. This sounds great; which is why I'm sure I'm being set up for a shafting. Probably they'll move me to some N Korean rail project next month (ooh, dear, did I just say that?.)



Meanwhile have looked up Shaun of the Dead, which looks to be the best thing since Evil Dead 2 in the spoof horror Genre and a summer must see. Probably won't ever show up here 'cause Honkies got no sense of humor lah.

Have so far failed to locate requested Worm That Turned secret police pictures, will persevere.

Will try gallantly to get out on mountainbike this weekend, although expect to challenge my sport billy self with my beer-wendy-with-asperations-above-his-station self in Carnage again tonight (and possibly tomorrow)

Cheers

Bomber out

This from the BBC today;

Scientists have created two female mice without fertilising the eggs they grew from, the journal Nature says.

So no more need for us blokes then. The radio said that "due to ethical and technical difficulties, this technique would not be carried out with a human embryo." This to me means; "once we've got over the tachnical difficulties, we'll find somewhere we can do it where ethics aren't an issue.



Anybody remember a skit called "the Worm Turned" on the 2 Ronnies?
(picture taken with no permission whatsoever from tootrikke.blogs.com

Bomber out

The dullest blog in the world

OK, this is a little wierd. I wouldn't link it, except it seems to be getting an absolutely CRAZY amnount of traffic and comments. 900+ comments on an entry which reads "There was an empty plate sitting on a surface in one of the rooms of my house. I picked up the plate and carried it into the kitchen. I then deposited the plate upon one of the kitchen work surfaces"? Something is very odd about this site...

Can anyone tell I'm bored?

Bomber out

Hello again

Well, it's been a shitty day so far, arguments with both my boss and my insurance company; I'll be lucky if I win either, frankly. The argument with my boss is one of those clear cut "I know it says you get that allowance in the company guide book but you can't have it for no real given reason other than I don't want to sign the cheque" sort of deals that we're all used to. The insurance company is another matter. What a bunch of first grade arseholes that lot are. I get robbed (Last August) they make an offer (1/2 what I claimed) last month. I'm ready to accept, because life's too short and I may have slightly overstated the value of the camera equipment (a bit) and then they send me a letter saying they want receipts from the replacement items before they will pay out the cash. WTF is that all about then? For the first insurance claim (which has STILL not been settled) they claimed that because we had no purchase receipts for Andrea's family jewelry, they would offer only 50% of the stated value. Family heirlooms, for god's sake; Oh, I know I'll just go and have Grandma exhumed so I can see if she's got the receipt from her engagement ring in her pocket. No, that won't work, the old dear was cremated. Never mind, couldn't have been worth much in the first place then. After much chomping at the bit and swearing under my breath over the phone they settled on 70%.

I tell you what, these monkeys push you so hard that the only way to get a fair shake is by defrauding them (yes I mean the insurance company AND my employers.)

All stress, no alcohol, what a shitty middle to the week.

On the upside, just finished an excellent lamb curry for lunch; threw it at the bin, missed and covered all my singapore correspondence in sauce and rice. Smart.

Elsewhere and the Guardian reports on some books put on the internet in the British library, notable 'cause they're, like, really, like OLD. So old, in fact that none of them are even in bloody English. No 'kin use at all, frankly. AND someone nicked the helicopter page out of Leonardo's notebook, plau the DIAMOND SUTRA, which is claimed to be the oldest book in the world and with a name like that shuold be porn, is some sort of detective story or something. Anyway it's in Chinese so who cares.

10 minutes of lunch left and playing Backgammon with a bunch of 1s and 0s appeals more than talking to you lot

Bomber out

8am
at home (after coffee)

Just reading Neil Gaiman's blog and found a link to a video of him describing his favorite word

This comes from a site called book television which will warrant further investigation at a later date (probably never, but you never know...)

This is brought up in context in Gaiman's blog alongside an interesting piece on the criminalisation of swearing on television in, you guessed it, the good ol' USofA. Check out the word list, they missed out bollocks AND arse. Tossers.

Bomber out

Hello there

Missed out on the double header, but managed to squeeze in Dawn of the Dead. Passion will have to wait until I can be bothered, probably when it comes out on DVD.

I'm no great aficionado of B-horror or zombie movies and I've never seen the original George Romero Dawn of the Dead from the 70's; but it would have to have been pretty damn good to have been better than the remake.

Gushing blood and teeth marks the likes of which I haven't seen since Evil Dead 2. What a fantastic movie. I won't go further for fear of dropping a spoiler (like; There's a LOT of zombies in it, watch out for Zombie Jay Leno) but will say that the end of the movie has a fantastic sequence that will have you riveted to your seat far beyond the point in the movie where you would normally be out on the street hailing a cab down the local pub to talk about what a fantastically gory movie this is.

In other news, I went on my trip to Taipei today, to find that this "Japan in Taiwan" project they want to do is only one of three on the drawing board for the next year in Taiwan and, in fact, the smallest. Looks like a busy year. Off to Tokyo next week to see the original store that they want us to recreate in Taipei. The original cost something like 50million USD to build so I expect it's on a slightly different scale form what is being expected of us.

Got home last night to find that the cat had been "affectionate" in the bath again (thanks for the clarification, Dave.) Also have news that Dave managed to prove Real fact #168 wrong in a single afternoon. Apparently brow lines are caused by shouting and screaming at subcontractors much more quickly than by mere frowning.

That's about it, although those who have been following the riveting dialogue in the comments pages will have noticed that I now have a whole slew of new nicknames revolving around the 'loser' moniker; if imagination were next to godliness, my friends would be damned.

Bomber out

@ Work

Well, that didn't go as planned. We had originally been thinking of going mountainbiking on Sunday, our only real chance to escape the city each week (now the sailing guys stopped emailing me, I think I let them down too many dimes; damn these business trips...)

Saturday, however, saw us in the infamous Carnegies pub. It's known for good reason as "carnage" so you can fill in the rest for yourselves. Suffice to say Sunday was spent groaning and swearing and losing games of backgammon on FIBS which is an excellent (and free!) backgammon server.

Ho hum, off to taipers tomorrow to look at the 101 project. Things are hotting up around here, not sure how far to let things go before angling for a raise. I say angling, but anything short of taking the MD hostage and placing the office under seige will just get a smile.

This on the inside of my Snapple cap;

Real fact #168

One brow wrinkle is the result of 200,000 frowns.

Tossers

Bomber out