The Mule

The Mule is a character in the Foundation and Empire trilogy...

Where I live, several individuals have altered the plans of the majority

Betty, the man at 33, the fence haters, SM,,

Reading an article about steady state reminded me to write down a theory of everything, to include multiverses and The Mind of God.

Little Plastic Covers that Disappear

The Little Plastic Covers on a disposable razor often disappear, since they are clear, the bathroom surfaces are white and I am middle aged man with eyesight to match! Why not make them a clear blue, to contrast with white surfaces and look good on the razor head too?

Unsafe?

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Eight Wheels Bad!

Eight wheeled buggy for infants are now common. They clog up our buses and pavements.

Babies are better off in a sling!

Save The Village Hall!

Sign the Petition

Stop Hammersmith & Fulham selling community buildings!

Paralympic Games.

What does paralympic mean?

The present formal explanation for the name "Paralympic" is that it derives from the Greek preposition παρά, pará ("beside" or "alongside") and thus refers to a competition held in parallel with the Olympic Games. The Summer Games of 1988 held in Seoul was the first time the term "Paralympic" came into official use... from Wikipedia

However, the Olympic Games are already run in parallel, since men and women compete in separate events

KostKutter

Why is that nobody can understand...

• the landline bill


• the mobile phone bill


• the gas bill


• the electricity bill???

Answer: there are gnomes with computers, spreadsheets and models in the gas company, the electricity company, the phone company who want to maximize profits, and devise very complicated "packages"...

Go fish.

Leftovers

Leftovers
Originally uploaded by LoopZilla.

After we legally scrapped the Ford at DROF (now gone underneath the Olympic Park in East London) we had to walk. So we walked to the allotment along the Limehouse Cut, and we walked to the shops.

We now shop only what we can carry home. This means we shop more often (no weekly shop for us). Since I have the time, I often shop for food just for the day. This means that we tend to waste less... and of course food waste can go on the allotment compost heap.

If food is left, leftovers are good for the next day or the day after. Many dishes get better the second time around, notably fassoulada... or veggie curry, which may have new secrets to reveal.

The recipes for the two curries - aloo gobi and chana masala - are from Andy Murray's book The Heretic's Guide to Vegan Cookery which has sold out of the first edition and is now fetching high prices!

The Spending Year.

After Christmas (and New Year), spending in the UK might focus on the family holidays (in January). Then in February, as well as any spending for Chinese New Year, we are encouraged to spend on Valentine's Day. After a short break, comes Mothering Sunday and Easter. Things cool off for a few months, since we need to spend out on the previously booked Summer holidays. After school restarts, wait for Halloween, just in time for the run up to Christmas....

Did somebody plan the year with spending opportunities so carefully spaced out?

NHS Doublespeak

NHS Doublespeak
Originally uploaded by LoopZilla.

Two leaflets from two local GP practices. Are the two related? I think we should be told!

The interface with Facebook

Take a look at http://m.facebook.com/ and compare with http://www.facebook.com/

I started to use http://m.facebook.com/ in a moment of idleness today, and was quickly connected to a link (off a friends page) of great interest. The view from http://m.facebook.com/ is the Facebook of a year or two ago, and has all that is required to connect, and no more. I have lost contact with at least one aspect of the my friends' Facebook activity modes with the current interface (at http://www.facebook.com/).

Progress? Not really, just plain feature bloat.

Lager as a metaphor

Lager ...is one of two main types of beer; the other being ale."

Real Ale in the UK is still a minority drink, compared to lager. The bland taste, the almost freezing temperature and the standard quality are tempting; complex tastes, room temperature and variable quality are avoided by the majority. In the past, only ales would have been available, and mild was drunk since it was low in alcohol.

Don't get me wrong. I drink lager as as well as real ale. In Spain I was surprised to find the "Alahambra" brewery, and drank the beer in Granada, a few steps from the brewery.

What bugs me is the uniformity and the standards. Our culture is now very homogeneous. We like the look, so that singer has to be an attractive young woman to succeed. Everything, from politics to shampoo has to fit the brief, whittled out of focus groups.

Your face has to fit. And if doesn't, then you are in trouble....

In Farenheit 451 the state is trying very hard to make all people the same, to reduce variance. Books are likely to make people think, and be different. Hence, all books are burnt.

A Hypertext Journal

'A Hypertext Journal' - the WWW as Live Interface by Nina Pope & Karen J Guthrie was a prescient piece of work by two artists who travelled to the highlands of Scotland, "... equipped with laptops, modems a digital camera, video and audio equipment."

The journals of Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, who travelled round Scotland in 1773, formed a kernel of an idea.

The interactions, the record of the journey and the "blogging" of everything were novel in 1996. In 2009, Dopplr, Twitter and FLICKR perform the same tasks. To take part, Internet Relay Chat sessions were arranged (in other words, a series of "tweets" were exchanged)....


As Peter Ride points out "...through their open dialogue with the artists, the audience become participants, there is no presumption that the audience is in a position to control the direction of the project."

The Web, version 2.0, already existed in 1996, well at least Somewhere....

Den Tod erlebt man nicht.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark... 
                     near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time....
......Like tears in rain. Time to die"

Roy Batty in Blade Runner

Did Roy Batty know the moment of his death?

A new shorthand for blip.fm

A new shorthand has emerged at blip.fm

When a user re-blips another (say user Fred112233) then a user can add the following: de @Fred112233 where the "de" means from that user. It also means thanks!

Numbers, in Fives and a one-time pad.

Just been listening to a few minutes of recordings from The Conet Project....

The groups of five numbers are messages to spies in the field, transmitted on short wave frequencies. The message could only be revealed using the agent's one-time pad.

And hence are now meaningless....

Russell Brand

Russell
Originally uploaded by Russell Brand on BBC Radio 2.

A former Radio 2 presenter....

Tags for a new generation.

Been this thinking about tags again. Hashtags are beginning, like other tag aggregation tools, to show trends. A tag language may evolve, along the lines of Dynamically defined tags for annotation at the description level

Fifteen minutes of fame

"In the future, everyone will edit Wikipedia for 15 minutes."