Aquarionics
In our neverending quest to being you the weird, the strange, the B-Sides and the just plain odd, we have brought you Disco remixes of Star Wars, Bagpipe music with electric guitars, and the signing talents of movie stars.
Thus, it’s with great pleasure, we bring you the biggest star of them all, with a tartan cap, remixed for the new generation.
bq.An Arkansas mother was arrested after her 3-year-old daughter died sweltering in a closed car, while her mother played EverQuest, police told the Northwest Arkansas Morning News.
So, Point by point then.
Gah.
So, there are people out there who enjoy watching me rant about technology. Current rants are being shelved until we go public, mostly because I’ve kinda been asked to keep quiet about work stuff (We are doing Cool Things. This is all) because when I mentioned who I was working for, our webtraffic trebled and the number of google matches on our name shot up for a while. Behold the power of a single C-list weblogger.
Anyway, The big thing in the ISW1 right now is either that TheFeedFormat (AKA Pie, Atom, etc) is still happening; or that Greg Dyke wants to open the BBC Archive up. I’m with Danny and Stuart and Half the frigging internet on this one. With the notable and exceptional exception of the British Conservative Party, who think that shutting down BBCi is better fitted to their remit.
The BBC is a fun entity to behold, and it may need to be explained to furriners. Basically, the BBC is funded by us – the TV watching UK public – to (originally) “Inform, Educate and Entertain”. This was then expanded (Or contracted, depending on how you see it) when commercial TV happened, in order that the non-profit nature of the BBC didn’t kill it off. The Remit is a large document on what the BBC can and should do. Generally, the other channels feel that the BBC should stick to public service stuff, and basically leave the entertainment and profitable activities to them. I’d disagree with that, mostly because of what passes for entertainment on channel five, but these are the same people who want to shut down BBC news because Reuters do it commercially.
The first result of this pressure was to shut down half of the BBC World Service, which for many years was (and some would say still is) the best advertising that Britain had. They now want to limit it further – or shut it down completely. All this misses the point. The BBC was invented to “Inform, Educate and Entertain”. It has the wonderful motto “Nation shall speak peace unto nation” not “Nation shall watch it’s borders and keep to itself”, the point of the BBC was – and I’d say is – just to be. To be an example of a public service not just to Britain, but to everything and everyone.
There has been an argument over who owns BBC content for years. Last year it was triggered internally when the BBC Tech department started looking at Ogg Vorbis as an alternative to RealPlayer for their streams. The crucial difference between the technologies was – is, in fact – that Ogg is open. People would be able to download the streams and save them for themselves for playback whenever they wanted. It was a fantastic idea, but got bogged down in legal stuff and then completely killed when BBCi lost half it’s workforce.
The opening of the archive is a wonderful idea, but I have a horrible feeling it’ll get bogged down in “Can we do this” until it gets stop-energied to death.
[1] International States Of Webloggers, because “Blog[o]sphere” is a deeply horrible word.
Nicked shamelessly from Mark
This morning, at quarter to seven, I discovered the ideal way to free space on your /home partition.
The secret, it seems, is to type “rm -rf * BMP” without putting the dot between the star and the BMP.
And deleting everything in my home directory.
That doesn’t include most of my data (which was saved my me pressing “ctrl-c” in time.) or shared data like MP3s (which aren’t in my home directory), but does include about 1.3 gig of stories in progress, non-catergorised MP3s…
…and every email I’ve recieved in the last two years.
Um.
Meep.
You know the music from Pulp Fiction? The guitar thing? Then you probably know it’s called Misirlou, and is one of the most covered pieces in the world.
Here it is, with electric guitars and bagpipes.
From Bash.org, IRC quotes to the gentry.
[JonJonB] Purely in the interests of science, I have replaced the word “wand” with “wang” in the first Harry Potter Book
[JonJonB] Let’s see the results…
[JonJonB] “Why aren’t you supposed to do magic?” asked Harry.
[JonJonB] “Oh, well—I was at Hogwarts meself but I—er—got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wang in half an’ everything
[JonJonB] A magic wang… this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.
[JonJonB] “Yes, yes. I thought I’d be seeing you soon. Harry Potter.” It wasn’t a question. “You have your mother’s eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wang. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wang for charm work.”
[JonJonB] “Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wang. Eleven inches. ”
[JonJonB] Harry took the wang. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wang above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls
[JonJonB] “Oh, move over,” Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry’s wang, tapped the lock, and whispered, ‘Alohomora!”
[JonJonB] The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wang had still been in his hand when he’d jumped – it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.
[JonJonB] He bent down and pulled his wang out of the troll’s nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue.
[JonJonB] He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wang, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wang at the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them.
[JonJonB] Ok
[JonJonB] I have found, definitive proof
[JonJonB] that J.K Rowling is a dirty DIRTY woman, making a fool of us all
[JonJonB] “Yes,” Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding…. Any second now, he might hear his mother again… but he shouldn’t think that, or he would hear her again, and he didn’t want to… or did he?
[JonJonB] Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wang
[JonJonB] Then, with a sigh, he raised his wang and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.
[JonJonB] ‘Get – off – me!’ Harry gasped. For a few seconds they struggled, Harry pulling at his uncles sausage-like fingers with his left hand, his right maintaining a firm grip on his raised wang.
By Nicholas Avenell 23/02/2001
There is no such thing as a happy ending.
There are no endings, only beginnings. The end of a story is the start of a new story. Therefore to get a happy ending, you must stop the story before completion, because completion in the “And then they were married and they had children and lived happily ever after” sense fails to take in the final and ultimate deaths of both Snow White and the Prattsome Hince.
And the dwarfs, slowly drowning to death in the dust that Snow White used to tidy.
Or the Queen, who is an evil bitch, and appears to remain that way. Doesn’t she get a chance to be good?
No. Because the story ends there. Finito.
By the rambling above, you may gather that Claire and I have split up. A week ago you may have ended the story with us walking, hand in hand into the sunset. Or riding up on the big-wheel, or the kiss at the top, seeing the whole village spread out below us like a map. Not that either of us noticed at the time, being -as we were – Otherwise Engaged.
Either of those would have been a perfect ending to the movie. The Perfect Couple. Living Happily Ever After. The End.
It was an amicable departure. By which I mean that I didn’t say much, and she told me that we can remain ‘Just Friends’. I suppose I could keep track of my ‘Just’ friends, of both the “I love you as a…” and the “Can we remain..” variety.
But I won’t.
And it was amicable. She is moving away. Long Distance Relationships Don’t Work (LDR’s, in fact, do work. They just suck mightily. So I’m told. Oh, and both parties have to *want* them to work. Which screwed that idea) and… and…
…and she wants a new life, and I’m not in it.
Helped Claire pack, and watched the car pull out and away. She has my address, she has my number.
I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for contact though.
Throwing myself into work. DVD reviews are in, Cinema tomorrow to catch the last release, Films are cowards, I know. They never come singually, but gang up and pounce at you five at a time. Last two tomorrow evening.
Oh, I have my new writer, BTW. Name of “George”, apparently. Poor sod. I expect he has some nom de’plume he’ll want to use instead. The question is, will the big magazines take any notice of anyone who doesn’t use their real name?
Read the flick-pages. Still nothing. I keep sending them the magazine. For Christ sake, I leave this god-forsaken dump in *Five Months*. I *Have* to get a job by then or it’s another year at the Fuckit & Run, serving lager to overweight football addicts who wouldn’t recognise a real soccer-ball if it bounced against their stomach. Most would probably not even fucking notice.
Anyway, George is apparently showing his face in the office tomorrow. Meanwhile I need to find someone to take to the screening.
(From office, emailed home)
George showed up. George is, in fact, Georgina. Bet Central had a mightily loud giggle at that one. Bastards. Writing style is flowing, slightly academic, and just a touch too serious for the stuff we normally put out. Better get to work.
George & I went out to the screening, and then out for a meal to talk the films over. Nothing fancy, just a Maccy-D. Inteligent. Film-buff. Occasional (she says) weekness for romantic comic-dies. That might be a problem.
Weakness! *HAH*.
What she should have said is: “My critical senses go into overload”, She ripped the fucking thing into confetti! The page of this magazine should be placed in a steel box lest the thing contaminate the very earth.
Fucking *hell* the girl is good.
Flick with G, For fun rather than for the mag. Proper meal this time, restaurant recommended by the foodies.
Went up to the river. Didn’t even notice the trash :).
Sat by moonlight discussing the film.
Then we stopped discussing the film.
11/2
Slept late.
No, In case this is found, nothing happened.
Not sex, anyway. Just talk, sleep. Friends. Lovers in all but the physical act.
14
I still can’t bring myself to write out that full date, not after last year.
Letter from Claire – and a card – saying how much she enjoys her new place. New boyfriend. That makes me feel better, I suppose. It isn’t really *that* long since we split.
G. comes back from her family today. Not much chance of a movie, what with the date, anything not a R-C will have been shunted for something that is.
I’ve been reading this diary again.
There are no happily ever afters.
That doesn’t mean that the happiness cannot last for a fairly long time.
Tomorrow she might have to move away, or I might catch her with the entire football team (Happy Valentines Day *sigh*) or she might do a Gemma and just dump me in the public eye (Front page of the /fucking/ magazine. Bitch).
But for now. For this moment, and for this day, I am in love, and she loves me.
And the only we need is the Happily Ever Now.
In responce to a number of complaints (Two, in fact) the Gallery – ever the black sheep module of AqCom since it (unlike everything else) hasn’t been completely rewritten since 2001 – has been updated. The huge list of all images down the right has gone, the default thumbnail size has been increased (This only affects galleries after CCDE 2003), and you now have – gasp – next and previous buttons to navigate the gallery. Code is online as ever, and whilst it still is nowhere near as robust as anything else on the site (An added forward-slash totally buggers it) it’s an improvement on the useibility monstrosity that was there before.
The Scene: A school stage, after hours. Two sixthform (17ish) students are in the remains of school uniform (smartish shirt/trousers, Shirt is undone at the neck) rehersing for a performance this evening
The man has got the vapours in his ears. I must expell this meloncolly spirit..”.
Damn. I’m going to have to start that one again. Starting positions.
‘From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind
Though all the world bears Rosalind‘
That is, I assume, your major problem.
‘All the world is a stage,
And all the man and women are merely players
They each have their entrances and their exits,
and one man in his life plays many parts
‘…and then the Lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woefull ballard,
Made to his mistriss’ eyebrow;‘
That’s your problem then. You are identifying with the depressingness of Jaques, whilst I am going for the lightness of Touchstone
…that’s it, isn’t it. That’s what this mysterious friend of yours wanted. The Canyon in your relationship. The thing you had to do before it went any further. Fucking Jesus! I’ve spent the last two weeks counsuling you to ruin my fucking life!