The ultimate Christmas present

For the person who has everything, a customised Muppet for only $90

I tried to make one that looks like me but it came out looking a bit like Boris Johnson.

Stephen Fry live blogging new film trip

 

Stephen Fry is currently off around the world filming a follow up to Douglas Adams's radio series "Last Chance To See" for the BBC and is not only Twittering the whole thing (with often hilarious results) but uploading his photos as he goes.

Check them out.

MacUpdate Back to School promo

MacUpdate have released their latest software bundle and it focuses on tools of use to students.

Among the titles of particular interest to anyone writing or researching essays and dissertations are DevonAgent, which is quite a useful tool for online research (I've found it great for finding links between different topics) and BookEnds which helps compile bibliographies.
A word processor, Mellel, offers an alternative to Word that promises to be helpful in compiling long documents with different sections.

As more bundles are sold, other programs get unlocked and MacJournal has just become available - another useful tool this time for keeping notes and ideas.

Highly recommended - all these titles would cost $600 (£300+) but are available for just $49.99 (£25+)

Click the ad below for more details or visit the MacUpdate promo page.

Chinese Cooking

After the Olympics closing ceremony yesterday, my friend Qin cooked me dinner - quite an honour! I thought I'd capture the moment so that anyone could follow along at home:



In case you're wondering, it tasted lovely. :-)

Proof that McDonald's beverages are undrinkable

A story in The Guardian that Fox News channels in the USA have started selling McDonald's the opportunity to have their iced coffee on morning programmes comes with this interesting bit of info:

Two cups of coffee, their cubes of ice glinting in the studio lights, now daily stand before the channel's morning presenters. The presenters conspicuously do not drink from the cups, which is just as well – the cups contain a bogus fluid and fake ice to prevent the cubes melting.

From my recollection, in the UK McDonald's tea has always contained an undrinkable fluid so it's nice to see some consistency.

What replaces oil?

This is one of those questions that keeps me up at night. I don't mean 'what are the alternatives to oil' but something far more puzzling...

All these billions of barrels of oil that have been sucked out of the ocean bed and deep beneath the ground must leave holes behind, right?

So what do they fill the holes with?





There... that's stumped you, hasn't it?

Assistance provided

Spotted on Brighton pier. Remember, it's dangerous to swim or dive unless someone from security is helping...

My MA thesis Wordled...

This is rather nice. Wordle is a web tool that takes a bunch of text and converts it in to something akin to a tag cloud, with word size based on the frequency they occur.

Here's my 2001 MA thesis on polysemy in advertising:

Click on the thumbnail to try it out yourself, and take a look at these created from the subtitles for various episodes of Doctor Who.

Percentage wars

Anna Pickard in The Observer:

Marvellously, The Apprentice brings with it a welcome return of moronic businessisms, as candidates trot out trite examples of things that sound fine in brightly coloured motivational books, but idiotic when tumbling out of mouths.

A favourite is the search for the highest percentage. You may have thought that the highest percentage would be 100, but that would be naive and non-managerial.

For some time, it has not been enough to give 100 per cent effort. To impress, nothing less than 110 per cent is necessary. Or 150 per cent. Or 200 per cent. Percentage wars have broken out and 1,000 per cent is bandied about.

At this point, the notion of percentage flies out of the window and the contestants find themselves stuck in a 'who can think of the biggest number' competition. These are, apparently, some of the best new business minds in the country. Which terrifies me 38,476 per cent.

What does no tip signify?

I'm going to New York in April so this handy little guide (via Passive Aggressive Notes) is well-timed. But if a 10% tip indicates you hate the server and they suck, then what does no tip signify?

What a weird system...

Reading level

Apparently...

Good grammar not included

This ad appeared today on my website



Fills me with confidence

Light Show - recursive animation

Here's a short animation I produced over Christmas that uses recursive patterns to produce an interesting effect.

The music's "Decisions, Decisions", something I wrote around 1992.

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BBC gives mixed signals on Mac compatibility

Two bits of interesting news today from the BBC. Firstly, BBC content will be available free of charge from some wireless hotspots in the UK. And secondly, thanks to a deal with Adobe, it looks like Mac and Linux users will be able to use the iPlayer to download programmes, something that only XP users have been able to do.

Except...

But Mr Highfield [the BBC's director of Future Media and Technology] said the BBC had not committed to offering the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users who want to download and keep content on their machines for a limited period.

He said: "We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux

"It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."

Erm, no. It comes down to equality of access for a service that is funded by a license fee. Something that is enshrined in the BBC's charter.
I pay the same £10 charge every month for the BBC as an XP user. Saying it comes down to cost per person is like saying Sony TV users are a different breed from Samsung TV users. The BBC (and Highfield specifically) have changed their tune on this before - telling reporters that they couldn't offer Mac users a download service because of Apple's 'restrictive' DRM system while plumping to use Microsoft's platform-specific and therefore even more restrictive system.

Why has the BBC got someone so obviously ignorant about IT matters as the head of 'Future Media and Technology'?

Yes, the earth moved. Proof at last!

You see, this is what academic research is all about. Sorting out age-old arguments!

"The Quirkology team has joined forces with Professor John C. Brown, Astronomer Royal for
Scotland,to provide an answer to the age-old question "did the earth move for you?"
The answer, it seems, is always yes, but we have gone all the way to find out just how far."

Work out your prowess here.

Learn to Draw

The Guardian has a supplement today that shows you how to draw various animals in several easy steps. If you can't get hold of the paper, you can download PDFs to print out.

Sod the kids, this is going to keep me quiet for hours!