November 2004 Archives
*Non Numan fans can, at this point, yawn and move along - nothing to see here*
Well the Gary Numan CDs that I was so enthusiastic about have been in my grubby hands for about a week now. The Living Ornaments '79 CD is an exact replica (er, no Numan pun intended) of my vinyl copy. Well obviously the sound quality is better and the CD contains the entire concert and not just the songs that can fit on an LP. But other than that I'm instantly transported back to the days of youth. The opening salvo of the instrumental intro followed by "Airlane" and "Me! I Disconnect From You" are amazing.
Now, had I been paying close attention when ordering Living Ornaments '81 I would have realized that this is a completely different concert than the one in the vinyl box set and hence not the one I was expecting. In my haste I forgot that the vinyl version was actually Living Ornaments '80 and not '81. If I'd read the review before buying I wouldn't have been so surprised.
When Beggars Banquet rolled out its reissue program for Numan in the late '90s, the limited edition Living Ornaments '79 album got a thorough clean-up and expansion for CD, but the tapes for Living Ornaments '80 couldn't be located for a similar job. The upshot was the appearance of this previously unavailable recording -- which turned out to be a good thing, since Living Ornaments '81 easily ranks as Numan's best live album, as well as arguably being one of the best live rock albums ever.Aha, that would explain why some of the synth noises are not what I was expecting. So, is it good? Omigaad yes.
Highlights: the crowd singing on "Please Push No More" and the bonus track; a rare chance to hear Numan's vocals mixed way above the music. From the liner notes:
The recording of this show was made on the final night, 28 April, of the three Wembley shows. The songs performed were the same over each night except "Conversation" which was dropped from the set of this last show. However a mono monitor mix of the track was made from an earlier show ... so "Conversation has been added as a bonus track to the end of the first CD.Being able to hear his vocals clearly is quite nice. His trademark vocals can be a little on the nasal side and it's sometimes hard to work out what he's singing. This version of "Conversation" clears up any doubt I had as to what the intended lyrics are :-)
So, in short, I'm being a little Numan fanboy this week :-)
But we wouldn't say no to some cash.
Former schoolchildren who sang on Pink Floyd's 1979 single Another Brick in The Wall have begun action for unpaid royalties.
Being the sad video game addict that I am, one of the many magazines I buy every month is Electronic Gaming Monthly. It's one of the better video game magazines, well at least *I* think so anyway - YMMV. This month's preview DVD contained quite a lengthy demo of the new Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within. Omigaad does it look good. This is not your friendly kind Prince anymore though and he has a much darker side to him. The fighting system looks awesome and there's some gore involved when dispatching baddies. When it comes out on December 2nd, I'm certainly parting with some cash :-)
Other games that I'll be finding under the ol' crimble tree this year will be Jak 3 and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. I gather that the difficulty level in Jak 3 is not as bloody annoying as Jak 2 so I'm looking forward to it.
So what am I currently playing? A rather spiffy little RPG called Lord Of The Rings: The Third Age thanks for asking. Is it good? In a word, yes.
As a follow on from the Evolution Disclaimer Sticker story, you knew someone was going to spoof those stickers.
My faves are:
This textbook suggests that the earth is spherical. The shape of the earth is a controversial topic, and not all people accept the theory. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.and
This book promotes the theory of continental drift, the gradual movement of the major land masses. Because nobody observed this process, this material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
Yes indeed, my tax dollars hard at work.
Out went money for education, with the way cleared to reduce by 90,000 the number of poor college students getting Pell grants. Environmental protection budgets were cut by more than $330 million, and National Science Foundation research by $105 million.$2 million to buy a yacht eh? Seems quite reasonable. I'm sure that $2 million couldn't possibly have been better spent elsewhere ;-)But there was plenty of money to provide for newfound "essentials" such as:
• $25,000 to study mariachi music in the schools of Las Vegas.
• $100,000 to fund a "weather museum" in Punxsutawney, Pa., home of the hokey Groundhog Day star, Punxsutawney Phil.
• $2 million to buy back the onetime presidential yacht Sequoia, sold off 27 years ago as a long-overdue economy move.
How could I have been so silly? There I was thinking the Grand Canyon was formed over a period of millions of years. Nope, I was totally wrong. It was formed instantly 4500 years ago in Noah's flood. What? You mean *you* weren't aware of that either?
Two-thirds of the way across the continent, some four million people annually visit Grand Canyon National Park, marveling at the awesome view. In National Park Service (NPS) affiliated bookstores, they can find literature informing them that the great chasm runs for 277 miles along the bed of the Colorado River. It descends more than a mile into the earth, and along one stretch, is some 18 miles wide, its walls displaying impressive layers of limestone, sandstone, shale, schist and granite.Sigh.And, oh yes, it was formed about 4,500 years ago, a direct consequence of Noah’s Flood. How’s that? Yes, this is the ill-informed premise of “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” a handsomely-illustrated volume also on sale at the bookstores. It includes the writings of creationists and creation scientists and was compiled by Tom Vail, who with his wife operates Canyon Ministries, conducting creationist-view tours of the canyon. “For years,” Vail explains, “as a Colorado River guide, I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time span of millions of years. (Most geologists place the canyon’s age at some six million years). Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale, can’t possibly be more than a few thousand years old.”
If you're like me (a sad Depeche Mode fanboy) and would like nothing more than to have some DM samples and play around creating cheesy remixes then look no further. Depeche Mode SoundToy is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Takes *ages* to load and the 'connect the dots' thingy is actually the loading message and *not* the soundtoy itself)
ROCK!
As he points out in a comment to my Koders post, Jonathan Hollin has created a Firefox Search Plugin for Koders.
Nice :-)
Who knew Avril Lavigne was this popular? I was out with my two four legged friends tonight and we walked past Glendale Arena where a certain Miss Lavigne happened to be playing. The car parks were jam packed and there were cars as far as the eye could see.
A friend of mine at work mentioned Koders the other day. I've obviously been living in a cave as I'd never heard of it. Blimey, seems like I'm not the first to add it to my del.icio.us stash :-)
Koders is a search engine for source code. It enables developers to easily search and browse source code in thousands of projects hosted at hundreds of open source repositories.Nice :-)
Somehow I've managed to do *something* to that completely bloody useless bone just above my bum. Don't have any idea what I did but I'm finding it quite uncomfortable to sit in most positions.
Ahem. So now that you've got a picture in your mind of my nekkid rear end I'll leave you to get on with your day :-)
So my University has decided that they only support IE and Netscape. Getting redirected to a page informing me to 'upgrade' to IE is quite laughable really. Apparently they must have made this decision since last Friday as everything was hunky dory last week. To be honest, I couldn't care less. A few seconds after realizing what they had done, the ol' User Agent Switcher extension was installed and spoofing nicely :-) While it's certainly not a new extension I'd never actually needed to use it until today.
Rock!
So if you're *still* using another browser, run, don't walk and install Firefox. Go on, I'll wait right here in the meantime...
While many of us have been using Firefox for a good while now, I really hope the coverage of the 1.0 release will help point joe public in the right direction too.
Internet Explorer, you're fired.That should have been said a long time ago. After Microsoft cemented a monopoly of the Web-browser market, it let Internet Explorer go stale, parceling out ho-hum updates that neglected vulnerabilities routinely exploited by hostile Web sites. Not until August's Windows XP Service Pack 2 update did (some) users get any real relief.
And yet people found reasons to stick with IE -- alternative browsers cost money, were too slow, too complicated, or didn't work with enough Web sites.
No more. Tuesday, the answer to IE arrived: a safe, free, fast, simple and compatible browser called Mozilla Firefox.
This is quite freaky. A german car commercial never shown to the public.
If you turn up the sound, you can also hear whispering. The ad was never put on TV because the unexplained ghostly phenomenon frightened the production team out of their wits. Watch it and about halfway through (after the car comes from behind the trees) look closely and you will see the white mist coming up from behind the car and then following it along the road!
Via Brad
You know you've had an long intense coding session when you open MS Word to type up the release notes and you can't understand why those vi commands don't work :-)
Stretch, rub eyes, get some coffee.
Les made me chuckle today.
Breaking news out of England where a bold new study has determined that UK video gamers enjoy playing their games more than watching TV. Next up researchers hope to find out if mountain climbers prefer to climb mountains rather than go surfing as well as whether or not book readers prefer to read books over hitting themselves in the head repeatedly with a hammer. I’m sure we all will be waiting on the edge of our seats for the outcome of those studies.This just in: Gamers prefer playing games to watching TV. Imagine that.
I think there's a Veterans parade in downtown Phoenix today. There are currently about 476 news helicopters circling over our building at the moment. I wish they would bugger off as it's really annoying. I forgot my headphones today so I can't drown out the noise either :-)
I think I was about 13 or 14 when I *really* got into Gary Numan[0]. Sure I'd heard 'Cars' and 'Are Friends Electric?' on the radio when I was a wee nipper but there was one double live album box set that I stumbled across that would go down as one of my fave live albums of all time[1]. The Living Ornaments box set had both the Living Ornaments '79 and Living Ornaments '81 albums included.
Both of those records are now showing their age - I've literally played them to death. Not to fear, turns out the albums were released on CD a few years ago (who knew?). So tonight I ordered them. I can't wait to listen to them :-)
[0] My sister could probably give you my *exact* age because she hates Gary Numan with a passion. In fact she probably came *this* close to beating me up because I played Numan records when we were younger and it has probably scarred her for life. Deep down I'm sure she still wants to beat me up over it :-)
[1] Because the Live In The City Of Light album by Simple Minds is prolly the best live album I've ever heard. Living Ornaments comes a close second though :-)
Now that Konfabulator runs on something other than a Mac, I had a bit of a play with it today on my work winders laptop. Me like.
After getting crapflooded with spam comments on my last vacation I realized that I needed something in addtion to MT-Blacklist to stop the spamming wankers. So, first thing I did was rename mt-comments.cgi and updated all the comment templates with the new comment script name. This had an immediate impact and cut down on 80% of the comment spam. Then I stumbled across James Seng's SCode plugin which adds an extremely simple captcha to your comment form.
Just over a week later and I haven't had a single spam comment.
A suburban American school board found itself in court yesterday after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on its science textbooks saying evolution was "a theory, not a fact".I understand the purpose behind 'freedom of religion' here in the US. I really do, and I respect anyone that chooses to believe in a God - you certainly have the right to your own opinion. But shouldn't there also be a freedom *from* religion to protect those who accept the scientific explanation? Maybe it's just me but I can't help thinking that the things taught in science class should have a little more basis in fact than unprovable stories from the Bible.Atlanta's Cobb County school board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300 strong petition attacked the presentation of "Darwinism unchallenged". Some parents wanted creationism - the theory that God created humans according to the Bible version - to be taught alongside evolution.
What is it about shredding paper that is soooo fun eh? We bought a new shredder yesterday and were just trying it out. Sally started using it first and before long a worried look appeared on my face as I realized we were running out of stuff to shred and I hadn't even had my turn yet :-) So I started looking around for anything to shred. Look out, it it's paper and you don't need it - it's history :-)
I like to have a gander at Wikipedia's featured article of the day. Sometimes you learn something. Today's article is a classic in which we learn about explodinig whales.
Thanks Wikipedia.
I understand the theory behand the electoral college in America. Not so sure it works in practice though. This week, Dubya got a good 3.5 million more votes than Kerry in the popular vote. If Kerry had managed to get another 150,000 or so votes in Ohio, he would have won the state and the Presidency. While I would have loved to see Kerry win Ohio, how much sense does it make to elect someone when their opponent received 3 million more votes?
Ahem. A good gaming session it was but I got totally sidetracked playing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2. Now while that sounds a bit crap, I had *loads* of fun. What rocketh most hard about Ty 2 is the fact that EA games bundled a cool kart racing game along with the main platformer. Load the DVD and you can select kart racing or the main game. The kart racing ROCKS. I've been a huge fan of kart racing games since I played the SNES Super Mario Kart (I also own the N64, and Gamecube incarnations as well) so I was in my gaming element. To be honest they really could have released the kart racing by itself - it's that good.
Bought LOTR - The Third Age this afternoon. Can't wait to play it. Of course, I still haven't finished Prince Of Persia yet. I think I'm at 79% or something - I haven't even used my PS2 in a couple of weeks. What the hell is wrong with me? Well, time to set that right. I'm off for a gaming session that will last until the wee hours of the morning :-)
Ok, granted, it's the bloody Daily Mirror so take it with a pinch of salt. Even so, have a quick gander at the frontpage for Nov 4th.
Yesterday's Astronomy Picture Of The Day has a rather cool time lapse photo of the recent lunar eclipse.
I was talking to two of my neighbors when I got home from work about the election results.
Neighbor1: Well, America has made its bed, now it has to lie in it for the next four years.
Neighbor2: I just want to go on record to say I was one of the 55 million Americans who had no part in yesterday's bed making event.
I just cracked up. But then I'm so easily amused.
Ok, hands up, who was the least bit surprised that Dr Vegas got pulled?
Last year I mentioned that we'd never see Rob Lowe in anything remotely watchable again. Looks like I was right :-)
Nice Flickr fun for this depressing Wednesday morning. Take a screenshot and upload it to Flickr. Make sure you tag it with desktopshowandtell. Here's one of my work winders laptop.
Via Neil.
An unforeseen twilight zone incident must have occured during the night. I appear to have woken up in the bizarro world where the American people have re-elected Bush.
As heard when taking off my headphones today. "Well I've just done my part to ensure the removal of the evil empire". Shame I was swallowing a mouthful of water at the time and nearly choked to death :-)
So sayeth The Independent.
For once, the cliche wheeled out by desperate politicians trying to terrify their lazier supporters into voting is no lie. This is indeed the most important American election of modern times. Indeed, it is arguably the most important single election of modern times.Everyone was talking about voting this morning as I got to work. Huge queues at the polling places according to the local radio as well. I wonder if we'll know who won tonight?
We had so much fun last night. Can't remember the last time we had so many kids round. The best thing of all was the block party atmosphere of our street. All the neighbours wandered around mingling between houses having a beer or two in the process. First time that had ever happened! It felt more like a big party than a normal trick or treat night.