• Ack!

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    Ack! I spent ten long hours at the lab today in an experiment that, while conducted essentially flawlessly, yielded no scientific results whatsoever. All part of the process, I suppose. I eventually got home a little before 8pm and less than an hour later I allowed myself to be dragged out to a jazz event…

  • It’s Complicated, It’s Complex!

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    (Arrrgghhhh! Safari just crashed on me, right on the verge of finishing a long post, reconstructed below. Let no man give Apple unqualified praise now – they have erred, and they have erred greviously in allowing such a shoddy, slow, pre-beta, crash-prone piece of bug-ridden garbage such as Safari to be released to the general…

  • Strike Back

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    A recent conversation: Him: I need to get a new mouse for my computer – the right button doesn’t work any more. Me: Hmm, that sucks. I guess it means that you can’t- Him: Yeah, I can’t crouch in Counterstrike any more, I can hardly play it now. [beat] Me: I was going to say,…

  • It’s a Musical MacWorld

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    I was inclined to write off yesterday’s MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs as a total disappointment; no significantly new hardware was announced and the mini iPod is overpriced. The new iLife suite is an real improvement, but I won’t get to see the software any time soon. For some reason, the UK educational pricing knocks…

  • He Was A Crook

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    He Was A Crook – Hunter S. Thompson’s damning eulogy for his arch-enemy, Richard Nixon. “Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. Nixon laughed when I told him this. “Don’t worry,” he said,…

  • A Faster Future

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    I’ve been shopping around for a TV on the Internet for a while now. After thinking about it and looking at the trends in prices, I’ve decided to buy one of the cheapest TVs possible without completely sacrificing on quality. Normally I subscribe to the belief that if you’re buying a high value, high use…

  • The Price of Ideals

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    “Are those what I think they are?” I asked incredulously, while walking down to the station with a friend. My friend affirmed that yes, the government had built a rather large wind farm off the shore of my home town. This was a bit of a shock. I had absolutely no warning that they were…

  • The Road to Mars is Paved with Money

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    I haven’t been following the Beagle 2 Mars Mission anywhere near as much as I ‘ought’ to be, but I loved this quote from the lead scientist of the project, Colin Pillinger. Interviewer: What happens if you find life on Mars? Prof. Colin Pillinger: I’ll find it a lot easier to get funding for the…

  • Inappropriate Award

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    And the award for the most inappropriate music in a movie trailer goes to Peter Pan which used an instrumental version of ‘Clocks’ by Coldplay. What were they thinking? Other than the fact that Coldplay are popular these days, I can think of no reason why they used them as backing music. Don’t get me…

  • Brandenburg

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    Every once in a while, you have a wonderful experience in which you encounter something which you didn’t know you missed, but did. When I was but a small child, I used to love watching a promotional video of (I think) Birmingham University. There was a particular section which showed the Chemistry Department in all…