Nixta Sinks

What is the correct form for dealing with dumpster divers under your nose?

I'm throwing out the recycling down in the basement, and this old Chinese lady walks out of one of the rooms (it happens to be the laundry... what? it really did!) and as I'm throwing things into the paper and cardboard bin, starts to rummage around in it. Not from the other side, but so as to stop me throwing more stuff in there.

I just stood there filling an empty bag with stuff for that bin as I filled up the glass and plastic bins instead, then chucked it all in. She seemed so keen to read Sunday's news.

Labels: ettiquette, idiot, rules

Facebook is a violent and dangerous place. Watch out for your kids - there's beatnicks and freaks out there, dark alleys, temptation in a short skirt. There's leather jackets and greased chains, daddy-o. Watch your step. Know your foes. And always keep your hog idling...

Believe what you read

Labels: facebook, internet, violence

Warning: This is not safe for non-techies...

Update: Actually, it's such esoteric cheese that non-hardcore-techies should enjoy this instead.

Hitachi puts money into geek (via Gizmodo).

Why do I care? Good question. Perhaps I shouldn't, and maybe I don't (which is just my way of saying I'm not sure I understand how it works), but my new Macbook Pro's drive is apparently all about Perpendicular, so I figured I should find out. Little did I think I'd find this pastiche of 70s kids educational videos from corporate giant Hitachi.

Labels: education, hitachi, storage, technology

Tigerland. It's Grrrrrrreat!

On Thursday, the DMC and I went out to meet our new chum from the beach house, a man of some considerable foodie heritage and knowledge and not a little professional experience, Larrold (or Larry), for sangria and burgers. Since we wanted the best of both we started with sangria at Tigerland which, if I haven't written about it before, I'm going to recommend thoroughly right now.

Go there. Eat there. If it's the only restaurant you hit when you're next in New York, so be it. Mention us for extra credit and friendliness. Tigerland. Yum. Get the shaking beef. Get the spring rolls. Get the shrimp and bacon. Get the Shiitake Fried Rice. Get the home-made cupcakes. Every penny is well spent, even if you can't eat it and have to take it home.

It's an organic restaurant with its roots firmly in Thai food, although the chef trained in Paris. It's not the organic that draws us to it (as I mentioned to Larry, it's just a great bonus), nor really the Thai (though that's nice too). Not even the admirable way they source the food locally and in person. No. It's just so damned good. In fact, it's amazing. And to boot, their sangria is fantastic as well.

Following on from that, we were set on the new best burger in town, according to the New York Times. Dani had read about it a while back and we've been meaning to try it, so Larry's jaunt down from the hell that is the upper west-side was purposefully for a visit to Royale on Avenue C.

The burger (image gratuitously nicked from eater.com til I get my own)

Our walk up from Tigerland was surprising. Avenue C, which I had last visited about a year ago, had progressed from fledgling gentrification into a fully-matured and thoroughly happening strip of packed bar after packed bar. Royale was perversely empty, although the NYT review explains why - aside from the burgers, it's a very ordinary place. However, contrast the bustle of Avenue C with the decline of Musical Box just a block away on B and there's surely a story there.

Anycrap, the burger was terrific. Spot on. Succinct, slightly smokey, not greasy, nor dry, and deliciously tender. Cooked, as the NYT review also mentioned, exactly as requested. We broke the cardinal rule of burgers and had wine with it, but who cares? Wine good. Burger perfect.

I finished it and, as Jonky Cat at Corner Bistro, wanted another. Where he had balls, I exercised restraint, and have been hankering for that second burger ever since. Tonight, I think, is the night. I'll probably get two.

Labels: burger, nyc, restaurant, royale, tigerland

Hippies! God Damned Hippies everywhere!

Thanks to the DMC again, I've had my mind blown once more by the utter stupidity of the human race.

In the book, a young impetuous horse (something of a douchebag pony bitch if you ask me) learns that doing drugs is bad, mmmmmkkkk?

That's about it. Actually, there's much more to this simplistic racist drivel, but frankly what scares me most is that the author has 8 children, and only two of them had by 1991 figured out how to escape her clutches.

Not surprisingly, the publisher, Vantage Press, is a vanity press, i. e. it makes money from authors paying to print books instead of actually selling them. There's basically no quality control whatsoever. http://www.vantagepress.com/

Read it if you dare. I wanted to laugh, but I was so busy crying inside that even my best clown training was all for naught.

Oh, and this after last night on the terrace at the Musical Box (I say "terrace", but those that know it will recognise my aggrandisement of the place) we were ousted by a bunch of Hippies with their twirly rags. One of them, once she'd figured out how to twirl them without punching herself in the face, actually said this as she flapped the two bits of fabric around the alternate reality that was her arse, face, and the pounds of unruly lard in-between:

"Yeah, this is great, I can feel the soul of the earth"

Hippies.

Labels: book, cartoon, idiot

Yum

I've finally gone Mac.

People will doubtless start calling me a Mac Fanboy soon enough, and at the moment I wouldn't care a jot if they did. It's not all rosy, but it's a different league to XP, not to mention the Vista disaster.

At the weekend, following on from my posts about Adobe CS3 and how the DMC has been patiently waiting for a Universal Binary version of the software she uses extensively and expertly, day in, day out, she and I popped down to the Apple store in Soho and bought ourselves two shiny new MacBook Pros.

I've known for a while, because the DMC has been using an old 17" Powerbook G4 lappy, that Mac OS X is a pretty nice operating system. I've known for a while that it's less frustrating to use than Windows typically is, that the UI is for the most part disjoint from the underlying functionality and will continue to work even if an app has crashed, and that things are just generally simpler, even if there's a slight learning curve to get around a few UI paradigm changes.

But it can be this way for good reason, of course. Apple have the luxury of a single OS/Hardware model. And they have what Bill Gates recently rued as the number one asset of Steve Jobs' that he wished he posessed, which was "taste" ("I’d give a lot to have Steve’s taste"). It looks like it should work, and you're not too surprised then when it does.

I was able to switch now, of course (and to be fair, I haven't totally switched at all - I still have my Windows servers scattered around, but their lifespans are in jeopardy), because of the Intel hardware, Bootcamp, and Parallels. Actually, I haven't even used Bootcamp yet - Parallels works too well for me.

And that's just it. It just works. Everything (so far) just works. Bluetooth on my old laptop would crap out all the time, despite being Dell provided on a Dell laptop. Startup is not much faster than Windows XP, but when you shut the lid, the machine goes to sleep (my XP machine is lucky to do that - there's always a chance that I'll get the dreaded "can't hibernate" error, which I have to wait around to see, and which means a reboot because hibernating is then disabled!), and when you open the lid, it comes back. Quickly. Nearly instantly. Network connectivity is a breeze. You can connect and disconnect USB storage devices easily (if you think it's easy on Windows, you've been risking your data). And it just works. The Finder doesn't pause on random folders for reasons unknown. And the screen quality is fantastic.

I have had two complaints so far. iSight doesn't work in Windows XP under Parallels for me yet, and the wireless network between my Macbook Pro and my D-Link 802.11n router struggles to stay alive if I try to connect at 802.11n (although 802.11g works fine).

What is more interesting to me is that my whole approach to paying for software is already different; because things just work, I seem happy to pay for them. I've bought a couple of third-party apps which I doubt I would have paid for if they were Windows apps: Parallel and the curiously named Delicious Library.

Also of interest is the very obvious effect that having the Intel platform has had on development for the Mac. Filezilla is now available for Mac OS X (albeit in beta form) and more and more applications are being re-coded for Mac OS X. All it takes is a gateway like Parallels or Transgaming's Cider. Clearly more and more development will start to leak across to the Mac.

It's curious then that Apple should try to leak the other way, by porting Safari to Windows. With the iPhone (in particular the keyboard, battery, and developer platform issues), and now porting Safari to Windows, they're playing a risky game. I'm not sure it'll pay off, but at least their other products are careening successfully and thanks to them Apple will certainly not hurt too much if it all falls apart.

Labels: apple, switch, windows

It just gets better. Now, the Paris Hilton Express is derailing at full speed, careening into Al Sharpton's Circus Shed and God's Signalbox of Despair while American TV viewers are expected to forgive her for lying to them all these years. The rich-bitch witch ratfaced whiny little slapper jailbird took only a couple of days to find God.

"I used to act dumb. It was an act." Lying to set a an example where that example is stupidity? OK, fair enough, if you're a fuckfaced moron. What next?

"Sharpton said Hilton was given the star treatment because she is white and rich, and questioned whether a rapper would have been allowed to go home early." Pity him, Mr. T. Pity him. If he really referred to rappers, he should probably reassess his own stereotypes, but aside from that, won't someone stop him stealing all the toys from the sandpit? This one clearly isn't his, and doesn't he have enough of them already?

"My spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen and that is why I was sent to jail. God has released me." You know, everyone bemoans the Crusades and Holy Wars as a shameful travesty and a blight on European history, but perhaps if we're going to be blown up anyway, we should send people like the reformed Whore of Cable-TV (Cabylon didn't quite work) to the front lines. It could even assuage the extremists a little (after all, she's shamsymbolic of much of what they're railing against). She's not going to do any good finding God over here, that's for sure. I suggest a nice game of Celebrity Saviours, as described by Clive to Derek all those years ago...

CLIVE:
The one I ..... fucked and, er, nailed to the wall in Chiswick. Er, she was invited to, erm, 'Celebrity Saviours' .....
DEREK:
Yeah?
CLIVE:
In which, er, well-known people are-, are nailed up to the-, to the wall .....
DEREK:
(laughs)
CLIVE:
..... and the one who screams loudest, er, gets the prize but, er, she said that was, er, beneath her dignity.
DEREK:
Yeah, well .....
CLIVE:
I respect that view .....
DEREK:
(sniggers)
CLIVE:
..... but I still think she was a cunt not to take the money.

Labels: god, hilton, idiot, whore

Oh, I can die happy now. Oh, and there's a wonderful karma about the photo itself (via DMC).

Racist ignorant jerk cries like a girl. It's wonderful.

Labels: baby, cry, cunt, hilton, jerk, justice, loser, wanker

I haven't had a car since 2001. Actually, since 2003, but I hadn't seen *that* car since 2001 and being a 1969 Pontiac Lemans muscle car, it didn't have any remote keyless doodah. But can it be true, as Clarkson claims (embedding not allowed), that you can use your head to increase the range of your remote locking system?

Who wants to try this out? I'll be trying it next time I rent, for sure...

Educanadation?	Embedding blocked, my arse!

[ P.S. Thanks to Technogeek for this post on how to circumvent YouTube embedding restrictions ]

Labels: education

Despite the rather impressive skill in Lego construction that this chap exhibits (coming to... er... Stamford... next year), he's still at heart a nerd. Liberty Jedi? NERD ALERT!!!! Let's steal his brick money! (via Gizmodo, whose first thoughts were: Goatse!)

Screensaver spotted in real world.

Labels: lego, nerd