May 29, 2003

Party Time

In the absence of any feedback. I'll confirm the existence of a Pizza Party, at my parents house starting at around 7:00 pm on Sunday 1st June. Yes this Sunday.

I will endeavour to make bases but it's up to you to bring toppings and something to drink.

Spread the word, you can reach me though all the usual channels.

Would blog about some more stuff, but I have to go.

Posted by quix at 07:54 PM | Comments (357)

May 27, 2003

Miscellania

That's not cricket


Shoiab Akhtar tampers with the ball, and get's a fine of only 75% of the match fee, and banned for only 2 games. What's more the Pakistan Cricket Board
don't think it's fair
[They might be right]. It seems to me that the punishment was pretty light compared to what some other sporting codes dish out.

In any case, he did it in the final group match of the Bank Alfalah Cup, which was good for us in the final, which as Ben points out we won! I think we would've done even if he was playing though.

Blow your mind!

When I was doing maths at uni, we had a presentation in the analysis class (all three of us), that prompted the following "joke".

Question:What's an anagram of Banach-Tarski?
Answer:Banach-Tarski, Banach-Tarski!

Now that makes little sense, unless you're aware of some of the crazy things mathematicians do to keep themselves amused. Anyhow, I was wandering around K5 when I came across the Layman's Guide to the Banach-Tarski Paradox. For even more fun, follow the link at the end of the article!

Bemoggler's beware

Following Tim's link to PvP I started reading their archives where I found this cartoon.

PPP

PPP = Probable Pizza Party. This weekend is a nice long one 'cause it's somebody's "birthday", so I'll have the house to myself, and thus there is a chance to make pizza, and sit around and party like we don't have to work on Monday, so in conclusion, there'll prolly be something happening on Sunday at my place. More to follow.

Linkety-Link

ESR on SCO's IBM complaint [via /.]

RotK premiere info[via theonering]

What is the matrix?

So you think you're popular!

Posted by quix at 07:25 PM | Comments (336)

May 19, 2003

mmm lazyness

Okay, in the absence of any feedback, I'm going to be lazy and not bother with the open in a new window links. Also until I fix it all links will be the same colour. [Not that you noticed that external links were in fact a different colour from internal ones].

Matrix


Been there, done that. Once. I guess I'll prolly see it again sometime, because it is rather nifty. I suspect that Barardinelli is right and there ain't much depth to the plot and associated wankiness. However, I quite like the whole reloaded concept. Lot's of action of all sorts though.

Other cool weekend type things

Friday saw me go to Sara's Opening, which was pretty darn cool, and gave me the oppportunity to catch up with miscellaneous people. I also went to an improving Scared Scriptless[sans Si] with Ben. Saturday and Sunday were pretty lazy, but as well as Matrix action, I also watch the latest Grand-Prix which was a bit more interesting than they usually are.

That's about it really, as you don't need to here about my programming successes and failures for the day.

Book Reviews

okay... while I can be bothered, three quick and dirty book reviews. These are listed in increasing goodness, which incidentally correspondes to the order I (re)read them.

The Shelters of Stone, Jean Auel
The latest book in the series that began with Clan of the Cave Bear is probably the least impressive, as it pretty much repeats material presented in the earlier books.

The October Horse, Colleen McCullough
Again, the latest book in a historical fiction series, though this time, it is definitely the final book. While not as interesting as the earlier Masters of Rome books, this one does a pretty good job of finishing off McCullough's "superhuman" Caesar, and is full of the same, sometimes overwhelming, sea of characters in evidence in the other books.

A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
The Hugo winning prequel (of sorts) to the Hugo winning A Fire Upon the Deep is a little bit more approachable (not quite so way out there) than its sequel. A good piece of adventure SF. Recommended.

Note:I managed to get all these books out of the Central City Library. If you're cunning (ie use the catalog) you can check when they're available.

Posted by quix at 07:39 PM | Comments (341)

May 15, 2003

Just for Mark

Well it seems Mark has been complaining about the lack of bloggage, and thus we all need to act, or something...Ben has a response of sorts.

David Gray

Mark also claims I could talk about the David Gray concert. Which is a fair enough call. However there isn't really much to say, other than the standard it was great, and you should've gone. The crowd was a little bit lame though. [Mneme has a tad bit more coverage!]

Linkage

Jeffery Zeldman (noted web style guru) has changed his policy on external links. Should I do the same? No longer requiring to add a target="_blank" to each link would be good. In fact it kind of makes sense, as you can generally use some browser idiom like middle-click to open a link in a new window or new tab (the way I tend to browse these days), but if you've assigned an external target to a link then you can't easily open it in the current window. If anyone has any thoughts on this, then leave a comment!

Empathy vs Systemising

The Guardian has an interesting feature on "male" vs "female" brains, complete with a copy of nifty tests you can do to determine your empathy and systemising quotients. Not unexpectantly I was more systematic than empathetic. However I was surprised by just how low my empathy score was.

Fact and/or Fiction

Finally, I thought I'd link to the HardyLaw page on Bowling For Columbine because I think it's important to know the veracity of the things Michael Moore says. Interestingly enough, knowing the "truth" doesn't really change the impact of the film. It also appears some "public-spirited" americans are calling for his Oscar to be revoked.

BTW more will be done on MT integration and website work sometime, but this should at least be readable.

Posted by quix at 07:58 PM | Comments (172)

May 02, 2003

Have MT, will blog...

Right, now that I have MT, I guess I'll have to start blogging again, or else find another excuse. Not really much to say today however as I've been pretty busy at work this, and so I there's a bit of a dearth of links and stuff. However, I seem to remember that UF was rather funny on Sunday.

If you're using IE then this page will look a little crappy, I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem to like my style. I guess I'll fix that sometime, but not tonight, as I'm rather tired and that would requie something like thinking. Also in the coming soon basket we have updating the rest of the site and getting the archives looking good....

In other news, I've somewhat reclusive in the last few weeks partly by accident and partly through laziness or something worse. I don't think the next week will be much better either.

Hmmm... weird. Now it doesn't seem to be updating properly.
Well this entry is going nowhere fast, so I might as well leave it at that...

Posted by quix at 07:01 PM | Comments (322)