mssv

  • Petals Around The Rose

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    2–3 minutes

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    2 comments on Petals Around The Rose

    In the About page on my weblog, it says that I am a puzzle designer. For various reasons this is not a great description but it works. In any case, when I tell people that I’m a puzzle designer, they invariably get very excited and start asking me about all sorts of stuff, like ‘What…

  • Dark City

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Dark City

    About three or four years ago, I bought Dark City on DVD, after hearing that it was like The Matrix, but with a good story. Now, to be fair, The Matrix does have a good story, but I still maintain that it isn’t anything particularly original – it was just well told (I’m not going…

  • Shuffled

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Shuffled

    Like the rest of the Faithful, I kept a weather eye on my computer a few days ago during the MacWorld SF expo. The Mac Mini is a friendly little computer which I think will do very well in the next few months, mostly by word of mouth. It has the right balance of features,…

  • The Execution of All Things

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    2–3 minutes

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    4 comments on The Execution of All Things

    I have a bad habit with music. Whenever I acquire a particularly good album or set of songs, I play them again and again continuously until I either can’t listen to them for at least another year, or manage to exert some degree of self control and cruelly cut off my access. The current album…

  • Not that desperate

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Not that desperate

    Along with several million other people in the UK, I watched the first episode of Desperate Housewives today. I’m not sure why this deserves a post here when I’ve been watching better shows recently (namely Lost) but the buildup and hype behind this has been such that I couldn’t avoid seeing it. It was amusing…

  • Free, as in Beer

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    2–3 minutes

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    2 comments on Free, as in Beer

    As a big fan of museums, I’m always eager to hear news of how well they’ve been doing since the government scrapped admissions charges. Today it’s been announced that since the charges were scrapped in 2001, visitor numbers have increased by 75%, or 6 million. Considering that it used to be fairly pricey to go…

  • Jingle Rock Bell

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Jingle Rock Bell

    Bell rock jingle rock Bell jingle rock Rock jingle rock Bell jingle bell Rock bell Jingle Rock rock bell Jingle rock, jingle rock Bell bell bell Quite possibly the greatest Christmas song ever – Jingle Rock Bell (Jingle Bell Rock sung using only the words ‘bell’, ‘jingle’ and ‘rock’.

  • Rosetta

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Rosetta

    I was idly flicking through a book someone gave me about hieroglyphics when I decided to look up the Rosetta Stone in the index. I was initially consternated and then outraged when I couldn’t find it – what sorry excuse of a hieroglyphics book was this if it doesn’t have anything about the Rosetta Stone…

  • The Night Before Launch

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    3–4 minutes

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    No comments on The Night Before Launch

    A reworking of ‘The Night Before Christmas’, Syzygy-style.

  • Excitement

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Excitement

    There’s an advert on TV for I, Robot where a typically breathless voiceover proclaims that in the movie, ‘Will Smith defines excitement’. For some reason I can’t get out of my head the image of Will Smith beginning the movie by reading out the definition for ‘excitement’ from a dictionary.