Sure I linked to something like this once before - still pretty nifty (and time consuming to make I'd imagine). Tony vs Paul.

10 minute mail. Could be handy....

I'm off work now for a few days. Combination of using up my remaining holiday and not wanting to work on my birthday. Yes, it's my birthday next week but I'm hoping that if I just ignore it, it won't actually have happened. And it's a secret.

Anyway, unless by some act of God my internet connection gets sorted over the weekend, you won't be hearing from me until next Thursday.

Take care y'all.

Totally not safe for work (well, unless you don'd mind people asking "What the hell are you watching?"), a porn cartoon from 1924. You have to wonder what deranged mind thought some of that stuff up......

An interesting article about some potentially groundbreaking tech.

Of course, we could all just build a fusion reactor in the cellar....

Boooo!

Ok, so I know it's good news for retailers and corner shop owners and the ferry companies and oh yes, the government that make billions off the duty but you can't help feeling that once again we are getting screwed in the UK with the stupidly high taxes we have over here. Just cos I could buy cheap beer on the internet wouldn't mean I would start drinking more! It would mean I'd just be spending less every week!

I do remember vaguely hearing that an online petitions service was being set up so that people could submit petitions to Tony Blair, errr... online. Now that I've found it I've enjoyed reading through some of the ones currently running. I do feel that the petition to provide free monkeys on the NHS needs more support.

For the last week or so there has been a funny smell - a bit like old socks and rotting rubbish - in the area right outside my flat. It's not coming from my flat so I can only conclude it's from the bloke next door.

Yesterday as I was fumbling with my keys to get in, a little thought popped into my head. Maybe my next door neighbour had died in there? Then I chuckled to myself at the foolish notion.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't remember hearing him go in or out anytime recently. I've now convinced myself that his bloated corpse is sat in a chair with a half eaten pizza on his lap.

I think my imagination needs some serious help....

I'll leave you to try and guess what you might find at the Spandexman website.

You'll probably have even less trouble guessing what you'll find at CelebrityButtplugs.com. This link was emailed to me by one of my readers (apparently) that started this new venture.

Made me chortle anyway - linky.

I also don't know how Ren and Stimpy got away with this.....

Mark the 22nd of December in your calender folks, it's Global Orgasm day. It's purpose, "To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy, a synchronized global orgasm."

I'm supposed to be out on a work christmas bash that day - this could get tricky....

Having no internet at home is really starting to bug me now. And if I have to listen to the stupid 'on hold' music on the Uk Online support line much more I may go mad.

That aside, I had a nice weekend. Froze my arse off watching Leicester vs Preston but as tickets were only a fiver I can't complain. Also had a very nice meal at Babylonia - a place which has now become one of my favourite restaurants in Leicester (the other being Siam Corner on London Road). It was just so friendly in there - the only place I've ever seen the waitresses hug the customers. Miss C was a little shocked at that I can tell you. Food was top notch too.

To make up for lack of posts over the last couple of days I give you a giggling baby. Such a dirty laugh it has too...

So about seven weeks after my first query and a month after the first (pointless) response, I have finally received another email from the TV licencing people.

"If you receive programme services (as defined above) live via the internet, then a television licence is required. If you are using the Internet to browse archived programme services websites or podcasts, then a television licence is not required."

Not answer my question about how they intend to prove if I am/am not watching programs via the internet at all. Seems like I'm not the first to try and get an answer to that question however.

Detector vans can't tell you're watching TV streamed to your PC. That article is six years old. Doesn't look like the licencing people have made much headway in finding an answer to the issue since then...

Heh, nice advertising angle - buy more Marvel comics or Giant Spacemen Will Eat You.

A useful little site if you need to make a few quick changes to an image but don't have access to any graphics software - Pixer.us. Very similar to the online file conversion software I saw last week.

Whilst I've been avoiding buying some things most people would consider to be essential for a home (wardrobe, ironing board, clothes horse, desk chair etc..), I have been trying to make the place more homely by buying a few plants. I do have a bad habbit of over watering them however. Case in point, a little indoor herb garden I set up about a month ago.

I bought a window box, some herb plants (basil, oregano and thyme) and a couple of heather plants to add some colour. I gave them a little water to help them settle into their new home. The herbs looked a little droopy the next day, so I watered them a little more. Same the next day.

Jump ahead a week or so. By this point the herbs are all virtually dead and the heather is not looking so good either. Not long after that, the whole box is dead and growing fungus.

I'll try again soon but next time I'm not giving in and watering them when they look at me all droopy and sad!

A little response to the article I linked to yesterday.

Actually one of the most interesting reads on that page is not the article itself but the first comment by Rashers101. Worth a read too.

"I avoid, I deny, I justify and rationalise, I pretend, I project, I squirm and sqeeze and do whatever I can to maintain my concept of myself as a good person while still doing what I do. I evade my moral responsibility a day at a time in the hope that reality will somehow be different tomorrow morning."

I don't like days where every time I go to do something, the phone goes. I end up never getting anything done. At least I can see properly today without poking myself in the eye all the time after finding out why my contact lenses were causing me such aggro yesterday. Turns out I'd been *cough*... wearing them in the wrong eyes for the last two days.....

An interesting article giving the other side of the climate change debate. Personally I try and be green not because I think that the world may boil/flood/starve if I don't but because I don't want to be as wastefull as it is so easy to be. Can't really see the downsides of using less electricity or generating less rubbish even if the benefits are not as clear.

Short and sweet.

Got a bad reputation on line? You need Reputation Defender.

Seems that the upcoming introduction of Windows Vista is not going to change one of the first things I do after installing Windows on any machine - remove the annoying Windows startup sound. I think this may be even worse than it's predecessors....

After seeing the problems just one "V" caused in Washinton, I'm just curious what state the police will be in when 100 turn up tomorrow....

...but a week can really drag.

So the family visit wasn't actually that bad. I've definitely had worse. Sure there were a few moments where I had been sat in the pub for a couple of hours and the prospect of another couple had me looking for an escape route (yawning lots and mentioning how early you have to get up for work the next day works quite well actually) but by and large it went ok. And best of all - a year to the next visit!!

Still no internet at home but that's a rant for another day. If it wasn't for the fact that my contact lenses are playing up something rotten today and I can't see a damn thing I'd be back to blogging properly. I'll just keep poking them with my finger - it seems to help.

Trying to be organised for a change I've been looking at booking my train ticket for going to see the family for christmas. I wasn't surprised to find that a return ticket now stands at £109.50 but having recently learnt that it is never cheaper to buy a return and to always go for two singles, I checked out those prices instead.

The leg down looked hopefull with a single coming in at £24.50. The cheapest return journey I could find however was a massive £88! I thought maybe it was just because there were no seats left so I started trying different dates. No luck. I went as far as three months ahead (just to see) and still that was the cheapest I could find. A total con in my book.

Then yesterday I had a brainwave. I split the journey into two parts and checked the prices for each this morning. Total cost, £29.50 - a nice saving of around sixty pounds simply for getting two tickets instead of one on the same trains I would have been on anyway. How stupid is that!?

Total journey cost now £59. That saving is going straight into the 'buy BlogMonkey a great xmas present fun' I can tell you....

Ooooh, these are pretty cringe worthy.

Season it whilst you shoot it - season shot.

Some of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci animated.

Seems strange to be coming back to work for a break but here I am. So far things have not been too bad. The city centre shopping trip yesterday was not the living hell I've endured other years as I actually had a few things that I wanted to buy which kept me occupied and happy. A visit by my nephew who lives nearby and the welcome addition of Miss C made for quite a pleasant evening out last night as well. I would have to say it is slightly strange when you realize that your nephew - the one you taught to ride a bike and used to play football with in the garden - is actually the same age as your girlfriend....

Tonight I'm taking them for a meal (after a brief visit to my flat which I so have to tidy first). Then tomorrow, another day off and more shopping.

Halfway through - I can do this... ;)

Well my mother has arrived (or will be shortly) today and so I have a couple of days off this week. My broadband connection at home is also still kaput.

Result = light bloggage

Back to normal service soon.

Russia plans floating nuclear reactor.

Does a condom class as a gadget? I'm not sure but I'm still impressed with this - Pronto condoms. Linked via this article I think one second might be a little optimistic. Especially if it's dark...

It's nice to add some level headed thoughts on the whole 'climate change' thing - media climate 'porn'.

Oh you so know it's going to end in tears. Fun ride whilst it lasts I expect tho...

Less dangerous is this touchscreen. Pretty nifty.

It's nice to come in and find my website is actually working as intended today. Unfortunately to balance out the good, my broadband connection at home is currently broken. That meant the lottery of phoning up the support line and hoping to get someone that knows what they are doing.

I didn't win on this occasion.

Being in IT support myself, I know when someone doesn't have a clue as to what the problem is. A good support person will start with some simple checks to try and narrow down the problem. A bad support person will try the same checks in the hope that somehow it will fix it and because they have no idea what else to do. She was in the latter group and it almost sounded like she was following a sheet of "Things to try".

After 25 minutes she went to speak to an 'advanced support person' who confirmed that it was a problem with my line. The flashing light on my router indicating that it couldn't detect my ADSL connection told me that pretty much straight away.

Now I just have to wait for BT to fix it. Oh joy, that's bound to happen really quickly...

Take a walk through the life and plays of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

Might have to switch back to drinking red wine rather than white for a while.

I won't mention what I was drinking in the pub last night.

Company sues YouTube because they have a similar domain name. Who would have thought, YouTube are suddenly worth a fortune because of Google and amazingly everyone wants to take them to the cleaners. Didn't see that coming.

Really not sure this company has much of a case?

"It says it wants YouTube to stop operating or alternatively pay for it to create a new web domain."

A new domain is what... less than a hundred quid a year for a .com? Then you just move the website contents to the new domain. Wow, sure YouTube won't be able to afford that...

An 8.6 Gigapixel picture. Might take a while to load for some people with slow connections.

I'm waiting for the day when that's standard for a camera phone...

Korean scientist paid mafia for mammoth tissue. Maybe it's a little wrong of me but I actually think it would be quite cool to bring mammoths back. We are doing such a good job of causing animals to become extinct that I think it would be nice to resurect one that wasn't actually our fault. Just as a side project of course - stopping species from going extinct is a little more important.

The future of mankind - War Babies.

So it appears that once again, my web hosts have been playing silly buggers. Today it's not a holding page I find when I stop by here. Oh no, this time they have removed my index file totally meaning anyone that visit finds an index of the website contents. This is not good.

I have 2GB of web space here and I'll often upload pictures from parties and holidays to subdirectories so I can send the link out to friends, or dump files here I want to store temporarily. They aren't supposed to be seen by people in general. I should clear the stuff out but with that much space, I get lazy and don't often spring clean. Today, everyone had access to this stuff.

Having looked at my logs, I see two of you out there had a little peek. Naughty (but I can't say I blame you for being tempted). I know who one of you is, the other is a mystery reader I've seen around for a while. I hope you can be trusted....?

Didn't see this one coming - Virgin pull out of B3ta ad campaign.

Considering my line of work (if you can all what I do working), I don't tend to get geeky too often. Mostly cos I'm not that interested myself half the time. Today I might indulged however. Feel free to move onto the next post if you have no interest in computer hardware...

As I might have mentioned I have just finished putting together a new computer. In the end I opted for one of these (an E6300) to go with one of these. Out of the box, the processor is quite nippy and also fairly energy efficient. The good bit comes when you start to overclock it though. With little effort I took it from the default 1.86GHz to 2.5GHz with a few simple BIOS changes. With no need to change the core voltage (the motherboard did change it for me so I simply set it back to the default manually), the temperatures stay at a nice 29 degrees when under light load. This means the CPU fan is barely moving and I've also turned off one of the case fans - great for noise levels and power consumption.

I've also set the Windows power scheme to Laptop/Portable which means that when under less than about 65% CPU usage, the processor speed and voltage drops. Again nice for power and noise levels. Even when playing City of Heroes I'm often under that load (although the CPU is still clocked at 2.1GHz even then).

For anyone thinking about an upgrade, this processor and motherboard are well worth a look.

Ok, I'm done being nerdy now.

In a forgotten military base full of insane commanders...

Fallen Art.

Sorry to anyone that may have passed by in the last 12 hours or so and found a UK2 holding page. Think my hosts having been making a few updates. Should be ok now. I hope....