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Recent spammer pseudonyms of note: "Barton Burch", "Amado Travis", "Brain Velez" (wonder if he has a brother named Pinky) and "Pearlie Resendez". ¶ [no comments]

Remedial bootywhang for the ultra-geeky

Dating Design Patterns, or, adapting object-oriented software design methodology to the task of picking up women (or, as the authors put it, "attempting to implement getLaid method successfully on FEMALE platform"); the "design patterns" have names like "Jini Singles Bar", "Pan-Dimensional Renaissance Differentiator" and "Reverse Polarity" (which sounds more like Star Trek than OOP).

Classic Method Call: The recommended parameters for Just Asking.

Structured Exposure, a.k.a. Container-Managed Dating: How to use commonly available dating containers to achieve maximum sessions with less time and effort and an array of services you don't have to write yourself.

Umm, OK... (via Slashdot; where else?) ¶ [no comments]

April Fools roundup

The BBC has an thread, inviting readers to recount their favourite April Fools' jokes, and other miscellany, such as this almost Zen story:

Many many years ago, my cousin, a gullible young Factory Apprentice, was sent off to a distant corner of the plant, having been told to "ask old Joe for a long weight". Of course, Joe said "Hang on here, while I go and get it". Some two hours later, Joe returns, empty handed, cousin asks him where the long weight is. "You've just had it, mate".... (John, England)

Along similar lines, a list of online April Fools jokes, and the Top 100 April Fool's Hoaxes of All Time (a rerun, but a good one). ¶ [no comments]

Morning-people conformity 101

An article on how to reprogram your body clock, changing from being a night- to a morning-person or vice versa, for career purposes, romantic compatibility, or just to join a different time-zone tribe:

The body tells time with a master clock in the brain, a pinhead-sized cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus that takes cues from optic nerves that signal sunlight. By sticking people in isolation chambers, scientists discovered that most people's internal clocks run a bit longer about a half-hour on average than the sun's 24-hour cycle. That's why, for most people, it's easier to stay up later and compensate by sleeping in than to force yourself to sleep early and wake early, explains Dr. Eliza Sutton, an acting assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Morning larks are those rarer birds whose body clock is shorter than 24 hours, so they wake up raring to go.

If you're a night owl with sunrise envy, sleep doctors say you can reset your body clock by following these steps:

• Find out how much sleep you really need
• As soon as you wake up, get sunlight exposure for at least 15 to 30 minutes.
• Go to bed earlier (or later) each night
• Stick to your schedule

Chicken-powered nukes

Ah yes; it has emerged that the British had plans for chicken-powered nuclear weapons; or, more precisely, a nuclear landmine kept warm by a flock of live chickens inside its casing. The mine would have been buried underground in West Germany in the event of a Soviet invasion, with the chickens generating sufficient heat to keep it operational for a week. It is not clear why the plans were abandoned. ¶ [no comments]

A Grunt is on patrol here

Quake as interactive fiction, using the Infocom Z-machine engine and Quake data files. Insane. ¶ [no comments]

Random tangents

A few new items from Gizmodo: this ultra-expensive Sparc/Solaris laptop, for when a PC running Linux or a PowerBook just won't do. (Unlike Apple, it appears that Sun are happy to sell their OS for use with third-party hardware.) And, for the sexually-frustrated otaku out there, busty anime-girl mousepads, made by a company in Taiwan.

Meanwhile, in the same neighbourhood (thematically and geographically), a Chinese woman recently paid for breast enlargement surgery (apparently from a disreputable clinic), and ended up growing a second pair of breasts on her stomach. It is not clear exactly she ended up with the extra pair, which she subsequently had removed. ¶ [no comments]

The Feast of All Fools

Once again, I haven't gotten around to making an April Fool's Day edition of The Null Device; mostly as I have been occupied with other matters. (Lame, I know.) I had some ideas for how to take it, though most of them were lame, like making it ultra-right/left-wing for a day or something, or putting up a "blog" entirely about some obscure niche interest or other. Anyway, Graham has, once again, outdone himself. ¶ [no comments]

Canadian expansionism

There is a movement in Canada, a nation not known for its imperialist ambitions, to annex the Turks and Caicos islands. The islands are a British Crown Colony (i.e., essentially one of the few remaining parts of the British Empire; they are written up in Simon Winchester's Outposts as such), though, the site argues, closer ties with near-neighbour Canada, perhaps leading up to union, would have advantages for both sides (the Canucks would get a warm, sunny province and a foot in the door of the Caribbean/Latin American market (not to mention a forward base for their eventual invasion of the USA), while the islands would get a reduced cost of living, increased investment, expanded educational opportunities and subsidised health care. (via MeFi) ¶ [1 comment]

Feel the world's pain

A new application of wireless networking tailored for the bleeding-heart types of the world: WiFi-SM, which is woen by the user and delivers a painful though harmless electric shock every time a selected keyword (such as "death", "torture" or "war") appears in news sources. If you're afraid that your affluent Western lifestyle cuts you off from the true suffering of the world and diminishes your humanity, this could be for you. If it were real, that is. (Via Gizmodo) ¶ [2 comments]

London bomb plot foiled

Massive bomb plot foiled in London; the suspects are believed to be young British-born radical Muslim militants with no direct links to al-Qaida (which suggests that, everywhere, local bampots are spontaneously planning their own atrocities without outside support). ¶ [no comments]

Amida Simputer

Remember the Simputer, the tiny Indian-designed Linux-based computer that was going to be cheap and rugged enough for remote villages and powerful enough to be useful, and was going to revolutionise life in the developing world? Well, it's now available. The Amida Simputer has some fairly decent specs, and connects to a lot of things. The internal software is based on Linux and X, only with a custom toolkit. The bundled software gives a glimpse of what PCs would have been like had they been invented in India rather than the US, with "Khatha", a financial planning package based on traditional Indian accounting methods and an astrology application ("Even if you are only peripherally interested in astrology, it may still be fun to find out if your girlfriend's star matches yours!") alongside the usual notebooks, MP3 players and world clocks. (via WorldChanging)

It'd be interesting to get a closer look at one of these; on the website, it looks fairly promising, just from the specifications and screenshots. Though so did the Agenda VR3 Linux-based PDA, which turned out to be half-baked and next to unusable, once the novelty of calling up a UNIX shell on something without a keyboard wore off. ¶ [1 comment]

GUIs, past and present

GUIdebook is a museum of graphical user interfaces, past and present, with comparisons of equivalent aspects (dialogs, icons, &c.) of different systems. The UIs include everything from GEOS (Commodore 64 and Apple) to Windows Longhorn, along with curiosities such as Rhapsody (i.e., NeXTSTEP with the MacOS UI bolted onto it), BeOS, the Amiga, QNX and OS/2. (Though with some notable omissions: i.e., GEM doesn't rate a mention once, and nor does any version of the MacOS X interface.)

In a similar vein, System 1.0 Headquarters, examining just how the first Macintosh OS differed from modern versions of MacOS (and here, "modern" means MacOS 7.6 and/or 8.5). ¶ [no comments]

Every pore on Britney's face

Via Substitute, another piece about high-definition TV (HDTV), and in particular, about how the resolution is so good that it brings out every wrinkle, blemish and imperfection on celebrities' faces. I've also heard it claimed that the spread of HDTV will drive the development and adoption of new make-up technologies (ultra-fine nanomaterial cosmetics sprayed on with high-precision airbrushes or what have you), to allow those celebrities to keep looking perfect under the HDTV camera's harsh scrutiny.

Though, when one thinks about it, this sounds suspicious. Is HDTV really more detailed than the 35mm film that is shown in multiplexes? This is unlikely; when film is digitised for processing, each frame measures something like 3,000 pixels across; if HDTV exceeds this, a consumer HDTV set would have a higher resolution than the best computer monitor on the market (and this includes those used by graphic professionals). Not to mention that HDTV production would depend on digital video cameras at the very bleeding edge of the technology.

I suspect that the various stories about HDTV being so good that it shows you every pore on a celebrity's previously perfect-looking face is a sneaky piece of viral marketing, designed by some agency to spread buzz about this expensive new technology. It's a well-crafted piece, tapping into fascination with celebrities and the desire to see them brought down to earth and stripped of their seemingly superhuman perfection. And HDTV is going to need a lot of help in getting off the ground (and recouping investment); with passive TV viewership declining as more people seek out more interactive technologies, the number of people ready to invest in HDTV (which is, essentially, the same deal as regular TV, only with better image quality) off the bat isn't great. ¶ [3 comments]

Graffiti tag-name of the day

It looks like some aspiring homie recently saw the Lord of the Rings films: ¶ [2 comments]

The Shadow of No Towers

Art Spiegelman, the author of Holocaust graphic novel Maus, has tackled September 11:

"The work is on my feelings towards the hijacking and then the hijacking of the hijacking by the Government. I'm not so sure The New Yorker is being complacent. I'm sure I'd be welcomed back once I had found the right medication."

Spiegelman's new book is sure to cause as much, if not more, ruckus as MAUS. It depicts a government out of control, or, more chillingly, totally in control. "They had an agenda already on their mind before September 11," he says. "Drying up funds for health and education and moving the funds upward to the rich, all made more implementable by the war in Iraq."

¶ [3 comments]

Re-bottling the genie

Remember all those claims about how the internet was to render tyranny and authoritarianism unviable and usher in a global blossoming of democracy, pluralism and liberty? Well, according to this article, that's not happening, and if anything, the web is helping to reinforce authoritarian regimes and dissipate dissent:

Singaporean dissident Gomez says the Web empowers individual members of a political movement, rather than the movement as a whole. Opposition members can offer dissenting opinions at will, thus undermining the leadership and potentially splintering the organization. In combating an authoritarian regime, in other words, there's such a thing as too much democracy. Two of the most successful opposition movements of the last few decades--the South African opposition led by Nelson Mandela and the Burmese resistance led by Aung San Suu Kyi--relied upon charismatic, almost authoritarian leaders to set a message followed by the rest of the movement. The anti-globalization movement, by contrast, has been a prime example of the anarchy that can develop when groups utilize the Web to organize. Allowing nearly anyone to make a statement or call a meeting via the Web, the anti-globalizers have wound up with large but unorganized rallies in which everyone from serious critics of free trade to advocates of witches and self-anointed saviors of famed death-row convict Mumia Abu Jumal have their say. To take just one example, at the anti-globalization World Social Forum held in Mumbai in January, nuanced critics of globalization like former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz shared space with, as The New York Times reported, "a long list of regional causes," including anti-Microsoft and anti-Coca Cola activists.

In China, the Web has similarly empowered the authorities. In the past two decades, Beijing's system of monitoring the population by installing informers into businesses, neighborhoods, and other social institutions has broken down--in part because the Chinese population has become more transient and in part because the regime's embrace of capitalism has meant fewer devoted Communists willing to spy for the government. But Beijing has replaced these legions of informers with a smaller group of dedicated security agents who monitor the Internet traffic of millions of Chinese.

Though the article suggests more that the effects of the internet will be slower to take effect, and more long-term. While China has clamped down on anti-government dissent more or less effectively, Chinese environmental activists are organising in ways they would have been unable to before; meanwhile, a new generation of urban Chinese are used to more freedom of choice and cultural expression, and the Communist Party has been forced to enshrine private property and human rights in law (not that that necessarily changes much, but it will). Maybe if we check back in 20 years' time, the verdict on the liberating potential of the internet will be different.

Then again, with the intellectual-property interests which increasingly make up most of the West's economies pushing for "trusted computing" systems, which could just as easily be used to stop samizdat as MP3 sharing, and the increasing will (on the part of both the public and legislators) to accept mechanisms of surveillance and control unthinkable three years ago to defend against an asymmetric terrorist threat, perhaps the liberating potential of computers has peaked, and it can only go downhill from here? ¶ [no comments]

The Soil that Foils

A US "law enforcement and military equipment" company is selling a device for protecting valuables from thieves: pre-stained underpants with hidden pockets. The theory goes, thieves would be reluctant to probe around in a grotty, brown-stained pair of keks for long enough to find the concealed cash/passport/&c. (via Gizmodo) ¶ [no comments]

Husband problems? Try this

Nagyrev is an unexceptional Hungarian village; it was also the site, some 90 years ago, of a conspiracy by the local women to poison their husbands:

"The women used to come to Mrs Fazekas with their problems," Mrs Gunya recalls. She said that when they complained about their drunken or violent husbands, Mrs Fazekas told them: "If there's a problem with him, I have a simple solution". That solution was arsenic, distilled by the midwife by soaking flypaper in water.

Some have claimed that the women of Nagyrev have been poisoning their husbands "since time immemorial"; meanwhile, corpses exhumed in nearby towns have been found to have contained arsenic.

And Maria Gunya points out wryly that after the poisonings the men's behaviour to their wives "improved markedly".

I suspect that the incidents of Nagyrev were the inspiration for the film Hukkle. ¶ [no comments]

Ugly Zoo

Ugly Zoo: a collection of about 100 Photoshopped hybrids of animals (and the occasional human), from real-life gryphons and dog-faced birds to the sorts of "cat girls" very few furries would imagine themselves as. (via wtf_inc on LJ) ¶ [no comments]

The power out

Seen on the sticker on Electrelane's The Power Out:

A record that will appeal
to art rockers,
pure popists, indie kids
& Riot Grrls alike.

"Pure popists"? Isn't that some sort of schismatic Catholic sect or something?

(The album itself is fairly good, on first listen. Not as post-punk and angular as I thought it might be (going by the sticker, I imagined it'd be somewhere between Interpol and Sleater-Kinney or something), but somewhat gentler and a shade more ethereal. I rather like Love Builds Up and Only One Thing Is Needed. ¶ [1 comment]

Tiny Mix Tapes

The Automatic Mix Tape Generator is a service which makes mix tapes to order; you send in a style, emotion, mood, event or other constraint, and the robot (or, actually, a contributor) sends you back a track listing. It's sort of like the USENET Oracle for record geeks. And the site contains recently made mixtapes, with briefs like "Songs That I Would Listen To If I Were A Scientist In An Underwater Laboratory Somewhere Off The Coast Of Antarctica" (which, as you'd expect, contains Radiohead, Sigur Rós and GY!BE), "Music For Someone Who Wishes They Could See All The Stars At Night From The Middle Of The City", as well as universals like "Songs To Get Over Me To", "Songs For Someone Blocked By A Friend On IM For No Reason" and "Less Indie Rock, Dammit". (via FmH) ¶ [no comments]

Phil Collins vs. The Cure

The Coolsie Paradox: daggy 80s top-40 (like, say, Prince or Cyndi Lauper or whoever did Eye Of The Tiger) is cooler than things like The Cure or The Smiths or the Jesus & Mary Chain; that's because everybody knows that the Smiths were cool, and so being "into" them carries little coolness points; whereas, the more daggy/trashy something is, the bigger cojones (or more highly developed sense of hipster irony) you're showing when you admit being into it.

Many years ago, I first discovered The Cure via a borrowed cassette copy of Standing On A Beach: The Singles. On its B-side, after A Night Like This, it was padded out with Phil Collins songs; a shocking faux pas.

I wonder how long until Phil Collins is officially cooler than The Cure. ¶ [18 comments]

Love is...

I believe this is a parody of those "Love Is" cartoons seen on posters in the London Underground:

(via substitute@LJ) ¶ [6 comments]

Punter ay the Rings

What would Lord of the Rings have been like, had it been written by Irvine Welsh? Probably something like this:

"Aragorn!" Gimil calls tae ays. "Ye're late again!"
"Aye," ay smiles back. "Ah ran intae some Orc cunts and they started gittin wide wi us, likesay."
Gimli looks at ays but says nowt. Ah like Gimli, eh's awright. Tidy little cunt in a fight, like ays. Nae like that homo elf who'd rather keep ehs distance and shoot some fuckin arrows from afar.
Ah sits doon and gets oot ma oan grub. Ah starts thinkin ay Arwen, and our last night togethir, when ah shagged er proper and she squealed like a wee piggie. Fit little lassie that, with the extra ay bein an elf, likes, immortal an' aw that. Those tits an' erse'll never sag!

(via Graham) ¶ [2 comments]

Supersize me!

The latest apparatus to adapt to meet the needs of the Supersize Age is the ambulance. To cope with exploding numbers of morbidly obese patients in the US, new ambulances are being rolled out, fitted with beefed-up suspension and dual rear wheels and a winch for loading patients. Expect to see these appearing in your corner of McWorld soon. (via jwz) ¶ [no comments]

Braaaains!

Headline of the day: Zombies defeat robot Jesus. Which is actually about film ticket sales. Meanwhile, zombies have also attacked the RIAA. (via jwz)

While we're on the topic, George Romero's classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead has, by some mysterious means, gone out of copyright (funny; I thought only works made before 1924 or sometime did that), and can now be downloaded here. Download sizes range from 4.1G for MPEG2 (which, I presume, is what you'd burn to a DVD) to a svelte 248.8Mb for MPEG4/DivX. ¶ [6 comments]

The Untitled Project

The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph. (via jwz) ¶ [no comments]

Otaku, furries overrun France

In France, traditional comics such as Asterix and Belgian import Tintin are facing a manga invasion, which is proving a hit with French teenagers. And many French anime-otaku are getting into dressing up in elaborate anime character costumes for a spot of le cosplay. ¶ [no comments]

Tikka masala == death

Tikka masala, Britain's national curry dish, has been found to contain carcinogenic dyes, often at illegal levels. The additives, tartrazine (E102), Ponceau 4R (E124) and the appropriately sinister-sounding Sunset Yellow (E110), add nothing to the flavour, but give the dish its distinctive yellow colour, without which many customers wouldn't eat it. (I wonder whether the tikka masala pastes/sauces you can buy in supermarkets are similarly carcinogenic.) ¶ [2 comments]