29.12.01
Am slightly grumpy Palm has gone for the el cheapo option on providing ftp for its Mac beta testers. Grr. Basically, they've hosted it on a cheesy third party FTP service which limits to 300 users at a time. Bearing in mind the beta has been up for several days now, you would have thought Palm would pay some sort of attention to the level of popularity. Never mind, eh?
21.12.01
Bit of a weird trip up to Oxford tonight; had to call the fire brigade out for a land rover that caught fire. It wasn't the first time I've run up and down the hard shoulder, but the noise from the traffic was unbelievable.
The Landy was laying a big pile of smoke all over the motorway; if must have gone back at least a mile. As I passed it, I could see flames underneath it on the left hand side. At that point, the driver was still crawling down the hard shoulder.
I stopped, and a couple also stopped. We could see the Land Rover plus trailer stopped on the hard shoulder; lots more smoke, but no driver. I called the fire brigade and we ran back towards the Landy to see if we could help. By this time it was well alight; the two of us climbed up the fence by the side of the road to try and see from a distance if anyone was outside the car. The other chap thought he could see someone rummaging in the trailer - which his girlfriend thought might have been a horse box.
The Landy went up - flames licking down the left hand side, underneath, and smoke inside it.
The driver wandered up, either cool as a cucumber, short of common sense or in shock. He'd got bags out of the landrover and the trailer, then walked along the left hand side of it all - with flames everywhere (especially close to the fuel tank) and was strolling towards us! We tried to get him to run, offered to carry one of the bags to make it easier, but he refused. I reckon he must have been in shock, but as the other chap pointed out, he'd driven for at least two miles with smoke pouring from the back of his 4X4.
The fire brigade turned up and put the fire out pretty quickly, but the landy must have been a write-off.
Nowt like a bit of drama, but I'm still a little freaked by the driver's lack of common sense. It really looked as if it was about to go up. That said, it might have been a diesel, which tends not to go boom quite as enthusiastically, but walking two feet from a burning vehicle (and hanging around one to colect your overnight bag) seemed a bit silly...
The Landy was laying a big pile of smoke all over the motorway; if must have gone back at least a mile. As I passed it, I could see flames underneath it on the left hand side. At that point, the driver was still crawling down the hard shoulder.
I stopped, and a couple also stopped. We could see the Land Rover plus trailer stopped on the hard shoulder; lots more smoke, but no driver. I called the fire brigade and we ran back towards the Landy to see if we could help. By this time it was well alight; the two of us climbed up the fence by the side of the road to try and see from a distance if anyone was outside the car. The other chap thought he could see someone rummaging in the trailer - which his girlfriend thought might have been a horse box.
The Landy went up - flames licking down the left hand side, underneath, and smoke inside it.
The driver wandered up, either cool as a cucumber, short of common sense or in shock. He'd got bags out of the landrover and the trailer, then walked along the left hand side of it all - with flames everywhere (especially close to the fuel tank) and was strolling towards us! We tried to get him to run, offered to carry one of the bags to make it easier, but he refused. I reckon he must have been in shock, but as the other chap pointed out, he'd driven for at least two miles with smoke pouring from the back of his 4X4.
The fire brigade turned up and put the fire out pretty quickly, but the landy must have been a write-off.
Nowt like a bit of drama, but I'm still a little freaked by the driver's lack of common sense. It really looked as if it was about to go up. That said, it might have been a diesel, which tends not to go boom quite as enthusiastically, but walking two feet from a burning vehicle (and hanging around one to colect your overnight bag) seemed a bit silly...
This chap has a very good idea. Not sure if he'll get his books back, but you never know. I can't help thinking about the freedom bicycles, though: a great idea for free transport ruined by people who noticed that the free things that were being lent out were valuable, Or, to be more exact, covetable. Is that a word?
Ack.
Ack.
One good thing from today - Symantec sent us (ie, the mag's editorial staff) a gigantic box full of paper hamster bedding, lots of chocolates, beer, toys and Red Bull. And miniature bottles of spirits. The party poppers and indoor sparklers were the first to go, quickly followed by a ritual stuffing of hamster bedding onto art editor's desk. Followed by anxious, guilty hoovering of entire office by hardware correspondent. Classic.
By 6pm, the beer was cold. Still hadn't found any tonic to go with the gin and vodka miniatures, though.
By 6pm, the beer was cold. Still hadn't found any tonic to go with the gin and vodka miniatures, though.
20.12.01
Crikey, what a day. Last day of a three month contract doing news shifts. More redundancies. Too much Red Bull. Nearly empty office - everyone else was either at Christmas lunches courtesy of PR bods, in bed recovering from last night's hangover, or on holiday. Just the four of us in the office today, blatting away at the first issue of next year.
Each one of us imagining ourselves as journalistic cinderellas.
All this doom and gloom is probably because I was working until 3am this morning and got about four hours sleep. well, at least I think so. On the upside, one of my friends has sent through the invite for his New Year's party, and it made me laugh long and hard. But at the moment I'm just to tired to think straight. Or think positive.
Each one of us imagining ourselves as journalistic cinderellas.
All this doom and gloom is probably because I was working until 3am this morning and got about four hours sleep. well, at least I think so. On the upside, one of my friends has sent through the invite for his New Year's party, and it made me laugh long and hard. But at the moment I'm just to tired to think straight. Or think positive.
Buy your own dotcom entrepreneur (34-28-34)
Ye gods - it seems to be genuine.
Kay writes:
"I thought that by creating an online auction I would be able to reach as many men as possible and hopefully prove that the Internet is not full of cyber-geeks, there are normal people out there, and I'm looking for one as a husband!"
The bidding passed a quarter of a million quid a while back - but is this how a 'normal' person would go about getting a wife?
Ye gods - it seems to be genuine.
Kay writes:
"I thought that by creating an online auction I would be able to reach as many men as possible and hopefully prove that the Internet is not full of cyber-geeks, there are normal people out there, and I'm looking for one as a husband!"
The bidding passed a quarter of a million quid a while back - but is this how a 'normal' person would go about getting a wife?
"A man had a dog called Minton. One day Minton ate two shuttlecocks. When the owner found out, he said: 'bad Minton.'"
Not a new idea, but possibly the best example yet of hacking a building's lighting to make a display. Stunning.
Shit. Layoffs at the Register. People I've got drunk with, competed with and had a laugh with. Kieran, Rob, James and Tony - good luck.
More from Mike Magee at The Inquirer. Lots of back story there.
More from Mike Magee at The Inquirer. Lots of back story there.
Mountain Cycle has been bought by Kinesis. The end of an era, really. They first came out with the San Andreas in 1992, and it was the first full susser that actually worked. (sniff). This has pushed me very low, I must say.
Wish I'd been able to make it to Strange Attractor last month to see the guy who wrote this talking about Cargo Cults.
Bit of feedback on the Wired piece on autism. According to Ca: "It's been well known for bloody years in the engineering community at large that engineers have a higher chance of having autistic kids... not news..."
Well that taught me. ;) This article from Salon about Mercury pollution in silicon Valley has been held up as possible evidence that environment was a possible cause. Surely there haven't been enough generations for environment to alter genes so much, though? Where's a good geneticist when you need one?
Well that taught me. ;) This article from Salon about Mercury pollution in silicon Valley has been held up as possible evidence that environment was a possible cause. Surely there haven't been enough generations for environment to alter genes so much, though? Where's a good geneticist when you need one?
19.12.01
Enough for a chuckle or five. Andrew Orlowski has the results of a competition to find the funniest Usenet post. My favourite is the billg ripoff of Linus Torvalds' first posting on the subject of Linux. Tickled me, that one...
Autism in the Valley. The hard copy of this article has a DIY Asperger's test, which I haven't tackled yet. Yes, I am scared. Yes, I am wondering whether being scared is a symptom of raging egomania...
18.12.01
Well, this is the first post. Not in the Slashdot sense, but I'm just trying it all out to see if it works.
Funny really - I've been messing about on the Internet since '93, using Gopher and Usenet and MUDs and Mosaic and Nutscrape 0.9 and all that, and the closest I've come to actually getting my hands dirty in HTML is when I used SGML to lay out pages at a student newspaper. And even then, it took me a few months to work out that the paragraph tag would do the same on a Web page as it did in 3B2d.
Funny really - I've been messing about on the Internet since '93, using Gopher and Usenet and MUDs and Mosaic and Nutscrape 0.9 and all that, and the closest I've come to actually getting my hands dirty in HTML is when I used SGML to lay out pages at a student newspaper. And even then, it took me a few months to work out that the paragraph tag would do the same on a Web page as it did in 3B2d.
