Nixta Sinks

My dear old abusive friend Renos sends me a text each morning reminding me to wake up and to not let the side down by going to work.

He lives his life in an apartment he calls The Rat Hole, surrounded by his sketches and paintings. They hang on the walls, lie rolled up or trodden upon on the floor, or leaning up against the wall 20 deep. Some have been chewed up by Igor Raskolnikov, his hyperactive terrier, some stained by dinner or spilt brandy, or some just torn up in rage. The worst, Igor pisses upon.

Well, if he can live in a rat run, I can live in a rat race. I don't really have a choice, but that's by the by.

To the real point though: Each day I come into work despite Renos' protestations and warnings and I battle against some useless fuckup or another. Today, after 3 days of getting worse and worse, my computer refuses to reboot because of a "Thermal event". Fark knows what that is, but this room is unhealthily warm. Well, I went to find the technical services bloke - the one who came to check it out when it first happened a couple of days ago - and he wasn't there. I've now been sitting at my desk for an hour unable to work. Where is he? An important meeting? Fixing the servers? No. He's having a massage upstairs, paid for by the company.

I should listen to Renos. He might be a drunk, but he's still got more sense than the rest of us combined.

Virgin Digital have a timeconsuming game posted up at Heavy.com with, apparently, 74 bands/artists somehow referenced in a single image (via). Question is, which ones? DaniMc and I (with a tiny bit of help from Dr. R) have found 63 so far, but we're getting really stuck now, though there are some obvious elements of the image that we've not dealt with yet but that we can't decypher.

If you have any ideas about the following, let us know:

• Girl on the fire-escape
• Acrobats in yellow and pink
• Girls by the traffic lights
• Choir in white
• Coloured boarding
• Bus-stop poster of a shark
• Mannequin window (what's that reflected in it?)
• 3 guys on the roof
• 3 girls in front of the rolling stone
• The man in yellow by the cornershop (perhaps)
• The crates and bags in front of the fruit stall
• The plant in front of the flower stall
• The graffitti to the left of the televisions
  

And we might have been cheating with Goldie, Pavement and The Streets.

Also related is this pretty well done (i.e. not entirely stupidly simple) TV commercial, though it seems it's all song titles.

Update: The choir in white we believe to be the Manic Street Preachers.

These are all words I've used to describe myself this morning, along with other rather less publishable ones (not because they're arsingly rude, but because they're more like primordial grunts and growls than words).

Raised by my architect father in a building built and designed by himself instilled in me an interest in architecture, and I'm rather fond of many of Foster And Partners' buildings. There's currently an exhibition of photography entitled "I Shot Norman Foster", the opening party of which I was fortunate enough to be invited to. I invited my mother and my father-in-law, both of whom happen to be in town and was very much looking forward to it. Didn't expect old Fozzie to be there himself, but still intrigued by the show.

Well, all was set for tonight, and then this morning when I examined the invitation in more detail, I found that the opening was yesterday. I was shocked. I was appalled. I bounced around Basil Fawlty style headbutting the bed and slapping myself in the face, and then retired to the shower to shout at the water.

I called the person who invited me, to apologise and to express my irritation at myself. She told me that not only was it a great party, and that all the waiters were wearing I Shot Norman Foster t-shirts, but also that Norman Foster himself was there, dressed in a pink suit. And then there was the champagne! Many times I asked her to stop, but she would not: Not only was the suit pink, but it was smokey pink. Not only was there champagne, but there was caviar, and the bubbly was flowing like nothing else.

To compound that, my father-in-law may head over there this evening to find me between 6pm and 8pm, only the gallery closes at 6pm and he's uncontactable.

Shit.

In other news, this is the worst corporate tagline I've seen this month, made worse by the gratuitous quotation marks:

"Thanks again for letting us be your Merchant of Emotion!"

The only emotion they've got out of me is rage because they failed entirely to fulfill their part of the transaction yesterday, namely to deliver flowers to my wife in New York.

Shits.

Alright, Kitchener, you murderous swine, enough.

Last Friday at the doctor's, I was asked how many units of booze I drink a week. I said 12. I know that's a lie, but what difference will it make? The last thing I need right now is the doctor telling me I need to drink less. I mean, if this is what happens when you're sober, I'm never not drinking again.

My boss just admitted to 10, but was similarly defensive.

What figure would you give your doctor? And what do you really consume? Answers on a postcard please, or at least in the comments section.

Ta taa.

GMap Pedometer is an excellent example of hacking GMap. I may spend some time hacking the whole DEFRA Genesis project to use Google's excellent product - would probably be better, and would allow scrolling while drawing lines.

Here's my walk to work. Note the wonderful use of encoding in the URL.

ESRI should be ashamed, the trouble they put people through for the (hundreds of) thousands of dollars they charge for an alleged API and executable license setup. Sadly, they'll go bust before they blush, the stubbord lovely wonderful people (I still have to work with them, after all). On the other hand, I'd be out of a job... So torn...

I hope that today marks the renaissance of Dr. R's How It Happened. Back to his old form, his post today is marvellous.

Following his link to the 2002 April Fool of pigeon-powered Google, I discovered not only google's calculator, which is a Godsend to anyone trying to convert from seppo cookbooks to pommy goods (half a pound in kilos - genius! Though it fails on "2 car lengths in inches"), but also the "link:" prefix for searching who links to a website.

Interestingly, I'm linked to by some bastards named OnAcne.com, though I can't for the life of me think why (and yes, I've probably thought of all your smart aleck comments already). Turns out that once upon a time I made a little play on the word "comeuppance", writing:

"...like a smelly fish hastily prepared on very old oil, up came my ance all over my nice new shirt and tie and stank the place out."

And the clever bastards decided that where I'd written "ance" I'd really meant to write "acne".

Even more interestingly, the link that google found for me was in fact http://www.onacne.com/ancecure/ which you'll notice references a cure for aNCe and not aCNe.

This bothers me to no small degree because it seems to me that a computer somewhere has taken it upon itself to determine that I can't spell or write (which is fair enough, but for a computer to do that is a bit cheeky) and then provides a link that Google presumably was able to reach that specifically dealt with that. If not, then it must be someone with far too much time on their hands, or else Amazon's Manual Turk (see Dr. R for details) is working far too well... Uhuhuhuhhh.

From Gizmodo, here's PinQY. Note the pretty female Luxembourger on the right under the caption

"PINQY®, THE DISCREET TOOL FOR PUTTING OUT THE BEGINNINGS OF A FIRE."

There's something slightly suspicious about a site that puts © and ® symbols all over the place. Seems like the poor buggers have had a few ideas stolen in the past (perhaps that's just Luxmbourg law), but more to the point, why be discreet about your ability to put out fires?

I can see it now: A bin gently smouldering at a lovely party in Grevenmacher is noticed by the hostess. "Help! Help!" she cries, drawing her arm across her forehead about to faint. "There's the beginnings of a fire in this here bin in the lounge!" Guest sidle off to hide behind plants, join other guests behind the curtain, and feign sudden interest in that photo of the hostess' trip to Bruxelles last year, just in case they're forced to evacuate their discretely hidden and precious PinQY©®™.

I mean, it's not a fucking dildo, the keys to a SMART car, or even a Hitler action figure (check out the muscles on that Goose(stepper)!). No, now Them's things you'd want to keep discrete at a party in outer Grevenmacher...

Having ditched the whole D-Link idea and gone with Netgear, I now have a very good router with 108Mbps wireless, which rocks, and much better range, which also rocks. The software configured nearly everything, requiring only a username and password, and every more importantly the router doesn't squeal when connected to ADSL (in all, it's clear where the extra 30 quid goes). However, I woke up this morning with the left side of my head numb, and a severe case of tinnitus in my left ear. Some sort of bollocks bullshit ear infection, no doubt, but apparently someone doesn't want me to be without an incessant squealing... I wonder if Dr. R. is similarly ailed today.

Grrrr.

Try the D-Link DSL-G604T. I'm on my second one now from PC World and it just whines away whenever connected to ADSL. In our lovely silent new flat, with our lovely perfect hearing, it's driving us mad. I'll have to take it back and get something else. Grrrrrr.