Aquarionics

Fork Lift Safety

So, today I watched a video on Fork Lift Safety. The soundtrack is in german, yet somehow it doesn’t matter. Everyone who can view WMV files should see this.

Fork Lift Safety

(Warning, contains traces of laughing at the amusement and decapitation of others)

Let me tell you a story

This is Bob’s fault

I

The kingdom was in ruins. Count Jim “Twee” Moriarty had suceeded, quite literally in fact when he stormed the castle, proclaimed himself king, and sat down to do some ruling on the great Royal Throne of Albian. The Throne, beyond all other things in the Kingdom, was the symbol of the monachy. It was big. It was stone. It was really, really uncomforable, and it was in the castle.

In a village not far from the castle, the usurped king sat and bewailed his lot. When the Count and his army of golden giants had stormed the castle, he had only just managed to get away with his life, a few of his household, and a few knights. He must, he decided, get his kingdom back. They would wait until early morning, when the giants guarding the castle were sleeping, sneak in and steal the Amulet of Yendor, which enabled the Count to control the Giants. They began walking at dusk, and reached the castle just before dawn, his tired staff in tow. They would storm the castle, and they’d do it all with a few sleepless knights.

II

The first hurdle to be cleared was getting into the castle. The gate was guarded by a Golden Giant, who was fortunatly asleep as was planned. Unfortunatly for the King, it was asleep with one giant hand completely blocking the gate of the castle.
“No Problem” said a knight in black armour, and cast a spell to summon wind and rain to drive the giant away (He was a dark and stormy knight), but this didn’t work, and he was swept up by the Giant and thrown several miles into a handy bed of candyfloss. The second fighter attacked with a large lump of wood, but alas the knight-club didn’t work, and he too was thrown. One after another the knights tried, and all but one failed. The final knight was an expert in getting into castles (He was a fort knight) and suggested that they waited a while. Sure enough, the giant fell asleep again with his hand over the door, but this time the King – at the knights suggestion – sent a couple of his Pages though, who were able to fit though the gaps around the Golden Giant’s hand and into the castle, where they opened the back door for the King and company to march though.

Which all goes to show, said the knight, that you should always let your pages do the walking with the yellow fingers.

III

When they got to the throne room, they found it was gone. Not the throne room, but the throne. The Count had heard the fighting by the gate, and had ordered a couple of his giants to lift it and take it, and as the king looked out of the window he could see the giants carrying the chair – and the Count in it – towards a village in the north. The King gave chase.

A couple of hours later, the King and his supporters arrived at the village. The residents of the village, who didn’t want any trouble – pointed to a straw house towards the south. The King went inside and demanded to see the Count “He isn’t here” the owner said “He’s not here”, and indeed he seemed not to be lying, since there was nowhere in the small straw cottage to hide the massive throne. But then, with a crack, the ceiling of the cottage gave way and the throne crashed to earth, crushing the cottage owner.

Which just goes to show that people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

IV

The Count leapt up from the throne and ordered his Golden Giants – who were hiding around the back – to attack, but the king snatched the Amulet off the count and wore it himself while the Knight caught hold of the Count. “You are accused of High Treason” said the King “The sentance is death”.

They dragged the count outside and tied him to a rock with his head over a treestump, and the Knight raised the Cottage’s wood-axe over his – the count’s – head.

“But!” said the King, “You may live if you tell me where you hid the royal treasury”.
“Never!” said the count “I’ll never speak”
“Right.” said the King, and nodded to the Knight, who swung the axe again.
“NO! WAIT! I’ll tell! I’ll Te…” began the count.
thunk concluded the axe.
“Bother” said the King.

Which just goes to show that you should never hatchet your counts before they chicken.

Fin.

Bob and the Church

God was watching Bob.

Bob was painting a church.

The church was a poor church in a village of rich people, it had enough money to buy a single – though large – tin of paint. Large though the tin of paint was it wasn’t nearly enough to paint an entire church with, so Bob found some paint thinner and poured it in, and began to paint the church.

And God watched Bob, and Bob painted the church.

And after a while, Bob realised that there was no way that even this thinned paint was going to paint the entire church, so he bought some more paint thinner, and tipped it in. The paint didn’t get nearly the ammount of coverage that it did a little while ago, but Bob resolved that he could always do two coats.

Bob wasn’t really very bright.

And God watched Bob, and Bob painted the church.

After doing a bit more, Bob discovered that once again he was going to run out of paint, and so once again he wandered off to the hardware store, and once again he added more thinner to the paint.

At this point Bob was more washing the church than painting it, but still.

God watched Bob, and Bob washed the church.

Another hour passed, and Bob realised he was going to run out of paint again, so turned to go back into town to pick up some more thinner. God finally decided that enough was enough, and with a crash of thunder in an otherwise cloudless sky created a huge pyramid of tins for Bob to redo the church.

“Repaint!” declaimed God, “And thin no more!”

Guaranteed

Antichristmas

A man was walking though a town in mid-december when he saw a sign on a pub door, which read:

“Not taking Christmas bookings. This pub is a Christmas Free Zone”

He walked in, and said to the barman:
“Don’t you think you should get into the Christmas Spirit?”
“I leave that to my customers. Mostly they go for the scotch, though”
“I mean, shouldn’t you be celebrating the Season?”
“Not really. See this bar?” the barman knocked on the surface in front of him. “Touch it”
The man did.
“It’s all sticky” he said, unsuprised. This was a pub, after all.
“Lick it” said the barman
“I’d rather not”
“Don’t worry, it’s safe”
The man did.
“Mmmmm.” he said. “Minty. What is it?”
The barman leant on the black and white striped surface in front of him.

“Bar Humbug” he said.

In The News

Lord Archer is once again under arrest, this time for sharing CDs with Baroness Thatcher.

He’s been accused of operating an illegal peer to peer network.
—
A man with a split-personality lost his transportation yesterday when somebody stole his bi-psyche lock.

Best Joke Ever

What do you call a man in sandals?

Phillip Flop.

Today, I’ve been taught how wonderful Java is, how it runs perfectly on Solaris, and how it should backend onto Oracle.

You see, whilst all the interesting people get to go to eTech, I’ve spent today (and will spend tomorrow) at the Sun Tech Day here in Sunny (did you see what I did there?) London.

Yay.

Crime iiiiiis horrible

Bill Hicks on Hooligans

(3.36mb MP3 file. Warning, Contains Language)

Bill Hicks died 10 years ago today.

Boardom

[15:07] {Mandorallen} bored
[15:22] {Aquarion} Have a tap.
[15:22] {Aquarion} And a potato
[15:24] {Aquarion} Now you can be chip-bored and water-bored.
[15:24] {Stephen} DIE!
[15:24] {Aquarion} no :-)

[15:31] * Khendon chops Mandorallen in half
[15:32] {Mandorallen} Oi!
[15:33] {Mandorallen} whyfor?
[15:33] {Khendon} So you won’t be providing lunch
[15:33] * Khendon puts Mandorallen back together and multiplies him by twenty
[15:33] {Mandorallen} eh?
[15:34] {Khendon} I was running with Aquarion’s joke
[15:34] {Mandorallen} oh
[15:35] {Aquarion} half board
[15:35] {Khendon} Yeah. And…?
[15:35] {Khendon} The second one is less obscure, really
[15:36] {Aquarion} Can’t see the second one at all
[15:36] {Khendon} “Scoreboard”
[15:36] {Aquarion} Ahh

[15:35] {Aquarion} Could be worse, could have sent him around a running track
[15:37] {Khendon} Lapboard? I’m not sure what one of those is, but it probably exists.
[15:37] {Aquarion} Circuit Board.
[15:38] {Khendon} Ahhh

[15:42] * Khendon moves him to the right-hand side
[15:42] {Aquarion} rightboard?
[15:42] {Khendon} Starboard!
[15:42] {Aquarion} Ahh
[15:43] * Mandorallen cries
[15:43] {Khendon} He ought to be invoiced for all these puns
[15:43] * Aquarion folds him into a paper plane, and throws him though the window
[15:44] {Khendon} (billboard!)
[15:44] {Khendon} No, can’t get that one :-)
[15:45] {Khendon} Flyboard?
[15:45] {Khendon} Isn’t “board” a funny looking word?
[15:45] {Aquarion} (Dart-bored and out-bored)
[15:46] {Khendon} Ahh, clever

[15:46] * Khendon dresses him up in women’s clothing and hits him with a whip
[15:47] {Khendon} Hm, the first one there isn’t quite right
[15:47] {Khendon} (“Skirting board”)
[15:47] {Aquarion} Ahh
[15:48] {Aquarion} I’d have put him in a kilt for that :-)
[15:48] {Khendon} Better, yeah :-)
[15:48] {Khendon} The second was switchboard, btw
[15:48] {Aquarion} Heh :)
[15:50] {Aquarion} I think I’ve run out. Last one I could think of is “peg board” or possibly painting him green and launching him into the sky, but both are scraping the barrel slightly
[15:50] {Aquarion} (Thunderbored two, obviously)

[15:52] {Khendon} We could make him run quickly
[15:53] {Aquarion} Sprintboard?
[15:53] {Khendon} Dashboard
[15:53] {Khendon} Ooh, or make him indecisively between two countries (more complex, this one)
[15:53] {itagne} Make him do what indecisively? :)
[15:54] {Aquarion} immigration bored?
[15:54] {Khendon} make him be indecisively between two countries
[15:54] {Senji} Diplomacy board?
[15:54] {Khendon} “Board, err”
[15:54] {Aquarion} Argh
[15:54] {itagne} Euw. :)
[15:54] * Senji throws rotted fruit at Khendon

[15:54] {Aquarion} Or we could give him complete control over a market
[15:54] {Khendon} Monopoly board
[15:55] {itagne} Or make him write a book comparing small boarding-houses.
[15:56] {Khendon} ?
[15:56] {itagne} Pensions review board. :)
[15:57] {Khendon} Put him in an underwater boat!
[15:57] {Khendon} (Getting very tenuous now :-)
[15:57] {itagne} No, don’t see it. :)
[15:57] {itagne} Man overboard? :p
[15:57] {Khendon} In-sub-bored-inate
[15:57] {itagne} Oh dear. :)

UK Comedy Hierachy

The Geek Hierarchy begat the Pagan Hierarchy and the Japanese Hierarchy and all these other little hierarchies, so I’m going to show you the only hierarchy that matters, that of UK comedy. This is it:

(This is either not going to make any sense at all, in which case I’m sorry, or else it is, in which case I’m sorrier)

Apostrocide

Humour

One

So, two dwarves were discussing who would win in a fight between an elf and a bucket of coal dust.

The result was a bit messy, so they called it a drow.

Two

Between our house and the A1 are a couple of rows of monkey puzzle trees.

This is baffling.

Breaking News

Scientists at the Institute for Really Quite Clever People have recently discovered that glass, a compound made from the sand you see on the beaches every day, is actually see-though, when you hold it to the light.

Scientists say it continues to be see-though even when under water, or when placed on the other side of a window.

This discovery is shortly to revolutionise the spectacles industry, which has hithertofore used coal for lenses.

Mac Mini Review

(Not mine, sadly. Though the office is getting one)

The Mini has got some built-in software for basic computer functions, but it cant do many common things as well as its grown-up brothers in the Windows world can. The little things can add up to big frustration for someone who might accidentally buy a Mini expecting it to be just like Windows. For example, there is no Outlook Express for email, but Apple includes a program called Mail, which is like a stripped-down email client that cant execute scripts or open attachments without user intervention.

Division Two reviews The Mac Mini

Quotated

(Moved to holistic while I work out how to serve the special characters as UTF-8 properly).

Simplicity

So yeah, new year, newish design. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a start. And the new new design is trapped in PSP until I get a new 30 day trial :-D

Simplicity

I like simplicity. It appeals to my sense of design, and the light grey with some of the most delicate shading I could make visible is nothing if not simple. The boxes and curves design is lifted from previous designs, but where there they were gradiented and filled here they are lightly hinted at rather than rigidly defined. The construction marks on the logo I like too :-)

Complexity

It’s a long way from the new design, which is slightly more heavy on the photographic backgrounds than I usually do, and is therefore something of a departure. Changes are good.

Smart

Today I spent a long time in a car, and a slightly shorter time in an actual meeting with actual clients. For this I am wearing a suit, and am reminded – as I am always reminded – that I need a new suit at some point. I don’t wear suits very often, and part of the reason for that is my enjoyment of the reaction of people who haven’t seen it before. I hate with a passion, however, the shiny clompy shoes, because the shiny clompy shoes are clompy – and I don’t like being clompy – and the shiny clompy shoes go clomp-clomp-clomp all the way home until they wear though my socks and make the backs of my ankles bleed. Which, you know, hurts.

Tech

I suspect that, with all the lack-of-updatingness and the cheese-sandwichingness (though currently it’s a bacon sandwich. Mmm, bacon) I’ve lost most of the geeky percentage of my audience. Though the geeky percentage probably didn’t notice the not-updatingness because they all use RSS readers, and the rest all use friends lists. Why do I bother with the designing of actual web pages again?

Anyway.

Current things that I have been mucking around with include “DOM Scripting” (as well I might), which I will get around to mentioning in a bit, Scripting in computer games (Both Civilization 4 and Vampire The Masquerade use Python as their primary game scripting language, which I find interesting, and have on my list of Things To Write An Article About) and Visual Studio Express.

Open Sorcery types, you can switch off now, because I don’t need your next reaction.

So, I have downloaded Visual Studio Express which is what happens when Microsoft miss the point. Amateur coders are mostly nowadays developing in things like Python, Perl, PHP and if they have had their brains fiddled with, GCC and Java. Lots on Linux. This is, indeed, partly because Visual Studio costs TEN MILLION DOLLARS per license.

Actually, it doesn’t, but as a non-professional developer it might as well do, as the high licensing puts something of a boot-strapping problem in front of learning to dev for Win32, or even Win64. So, Visual Studio Express you can download for Free (as in Beer). Well, you can download a demo for free (as in beer), but you do have to register for free (as in, be spammed for eternity) and have a Passport account (as in “submit to the almighty Gates empire”. Much like you have to do for OpenSolaris) (Except different empire, obviously) (Yeash, you guys are pedantic). So yeah, I’m downloading VC++ (Because I want to design a Half life 2 mod about killing lawnchairs) (Incidentally, Valve’s Developer docs are all in a Wiki, isn’t that interesting?) (Yes, too many brackets, Sosumi) and it’s taking an eternity, though not as long as XCode did. I mean, what do you have to put into an IDE to make it 800mb?

Oh, right. OS X. Chrome, naturally.

So yeah, updates as and when. Also about the Mysterious Project Breakfast, assuming I get around to that too.

Sushi

Bedford has a sushi restaurant. I swear the things follow me around. I am, of course, doomed, but I am doomed with expensive raw fish, and that somehow makes it all worth while.

Dead Ken(nedy)

Charles Kennedy, leader of the UK Liberal Democrats Governmental party, has, shortly after some people accused him of not being a good leader, admitted to having a drinking problem. His chances are not looking terribly rosy.

(From The Friday Thing Dead Kennedy Pool):
When Charles finally goes, the nearest prediction will win its predictor a bottle of Talisker 18 Year Old Single Malt Whisky. And the country will win a second opposition party with an actual leader. Everyone’s a winner.

(Thats three times I’ve attempted to spell “Kennedy” as “Khennedy”, which is your fault, Jason)

Tuesday, Ten AM.

Shortly afterwards all the people who said they wouldn’t run against him in a leadership election will, in fact, run against him in a leadership election “In the interests of the party”.

Wednesday, Thirteen Fifteen, Sir Malcolm Rifkind will announce that he’s actually really been a spy for the Liberal Democrats all along, will enter – and win – the leadership election, and then all three major parties will be basically Tory. This will set off a chain of Heath Robinson events which will naturally lead to the collapse of the entire political system across the world, leading to the rise and rule of a little known previously almost silent group called the “Bloggers” who will alternate between demanding that everyone be nice to everyone else and being so emo their hair cuts itself, their first action will demand that every person in the entire universe gets a weblog or other online journal and the resulting influx of new accounts at LiveJournal will mean that Six Apart become the single source of money in the entire world, except for Sun, who they buy servers from. Sun will open source world government, leading to rule by whoever argues most consistently on the mailing list, which will eventually lead to the population of the world being run by the commentators on Slashdot, leading to great leaps forward in technological research, the population of Space, a new version of Doom, and a world famine as no money is spent on any food that doesn’t go into either kool aid or cookies. We all die, and it’s all Charlie’s fault for telling us about his drinking problem.

Selfish bastard.

Airline announcement

I’m told this used to be the standard announcement, or variations on it, on Alaska Air. I nicked it from Ed Davis via Dive into Mark, who is, apparently, back.

Hello and welcome to Alaska Flight 438 to San Francisco. If youre going to San Francisco, youre in the right place. If youre not going to San Francisco, youre about to have a really long evening.

Wed like to tell you now about some important safety features of this aircraft. The most important safety feature we have aboard this plane is The Flight Attendants. Please look at one now.

There are 5 exits aboard this plane: 2 at the front, 2 over the wings, and one out the planes rear end. If youre seated in one of the exit rows, please do not store your bags by your feet. That would be a really bad idea. Please take a moment and look around and find the nearest exit. Count the rows of seats between you and the exit. In the event that the need arises to find one, trust me, youll be glad you did. We have pretty blinking lights on the floor that will blink in the direction of the exits. White ones along the normal rows, and pretty red ones at the exit rows. In the event of a loss of cabin pressure these baggy things will drop down over your head. You stick it over your nose and mouth like the flight attendant is doing now. The bag wont inflate, but theres oxygen there, I promise. If you are sitting next to a small child, or someone who is acting like a small child, please do us all a favor and put on your mask first. If you are traveling with two or more children, please take a moment now to decide which one is your favorite. Help that one first, and then work your way down.

In the seat pocket in front of you is a pamphlet about the safety features of this plane. I usually use it as a fan when Im having my own personal summer. It makes a very good fan. It also has pretty pictures. Please take it out and play with it now.

Please take a moment now to make sure your seat belts are fastened low and tight about your waist. To fasten the belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle. To release, its a pulley thing – not a pushy thing like your car because youre in an airplane. HELLO !!

There is no smoking in the cabin on this flight. There is also no smoking in the lavatories. If we see smoke coming from the lavatories, we will assume you are on fire and put you out. This is a free service we provide. There are two smoking sections on this flight, one outside each wing exit. We do have a movie in the smoking sections tonight ..
Hold on, let me check what it is

Oh here it is; the movie tonight is Gone with the Wind.

In a moment we will be turning off the cabin lights, and its going to get really dark, really fast. If youre afraid of the dark, now would be a good time to reach up and press the yellow button. The yellow button turns on your reading light. Please dont press the orange button unless you absolutely have to. The orange button is your seat ejection button.

Were glad to have you with us on board this flight. Thank you for choosing Alaska Air, and giving us your business
and your money. If theres anything we can do to make you more comfortable, please dont hesitate to ask.

If you all werent strapped down you would have given me a standing ovation, wouldnt you?

After landing Welcome to the San Francisco International Airport. Sorry about the bumpy landing. Its not the captains fault. Its not the co-pilots fault. Its the Asphalt.

Please remain seated until the plane is parked at the gate. At no time in history has a passenger beaten a plane to the gate. So please dont even try.

Please be careful opening the overhead bins because shift happens!!

360

Podcast of the week? Something like that.

360 Records’s Podcast [iTunes Link] has been the soundtrack to my commute for a little while now, it’s a mix of this small record label’s latest and best releases. It’s encoded with Apple’s advanced podcast stuff, so it effectivly has tracks within the file, meaning you can skip a song you’re not feeling the love of.

The Now Show [ RSS | iTunes ]

The BBC’s top weekly news satire (Kind of a british Daily Show, really. Except weekly. and without the hit-and-mostly-miss mockumentery bits)

We three things

1. I am going to Maelstrom for the hotest weekend of the year (Not that there’s a hell of a lot of competition). How would you like your Aquarion: baked, boiled or fried?
2. For the They Who Evolve World Cup Sweepstakes, I have drawn the Ivory Coast. Who are doomed, for no better reason than their connection to me.
3. Every so often I obsess over songs and grab all the covers I can find. iTunes’ Music Store is bad for me for this reason. I am not, apparently, the only person to do this. Thirteen covers of The Smith’s ‘There is a light that never goes out’

More things:

• Animation verses Animator
• Fight Club’s plot, in 3D, in lego
• The new Aquarionics design (v12) is mocked up and sitting in PSP. Soon, I will get around to implementing the blasted thing.

BA Announcement

Until further notice BA has halted all flights from the UK.

BA announced: “I ain’t getting on no god damn plane you crazy fool!”

(Via Random)

Bring the funny

Women are funnier than men verses Men are funnier than women

Culture Wars! Round X! FIGHT!

(Different people are funny in different ways. News at 11)

Three

Someone has put a maze of monkey puzzle trees between my house and the law enforcement training academy, in order to protect us from the noise.

Police are baffled.

Cats

1. Lolcats
2. Analysis of Lolcat grammar
3. Lolgays
4. Lolgeeks

Meaning

Translation into Gamer of Matthew Paul Thomas’s Translation from cranky-speak into English of a selected portion of Mark Pilgrim’s ‘Silly season’ :

Adobe Apollo and Microsoft Silverlight are the HyperCard of the 21st century.

Translation:

Platf0rm 1ndepen-c is roxxor teh boxxor, L0cked plat4m suxx0r & is 4 newbs w/out l33t. lfg 4 x-s-able & useable w3b warez.

Mister Lehrer

On Youtube, there is an archive of videos of Tom Lehrer performing.

This is him performing songs you've not heard before, even if you have the full box set:

Part two can be found here

Tom Lehrer is eighty today.