Archive: 2004-03
The Tribulations of Public Transport
I had a dreadful journey home tonight. The trams were crowded, and it was made worse by one passenger whose girth exceeded her ability to control it. Now the trams are bad at the best of times: neither braking and acceleration have the same fine-grained precision of a car. Accelerator and brake both have only two basic states—on or off—and the G-forces exerted as the vehicle moves between these states would turn the stomach of a Cold War MiG pilot.
England, Here I Come
From tomorrow until 7 April, I’m going to be in England.
How to Ritually Disembowel Yourself
Ignorami often refer to it as hari kiri or, even worse, harry carry <shudder>. Hara kiri (腹切) is more frequently called seppuku (切腹) in Japanese—the kanji are the same for both, but the order is reversed.
Noogle
Misguided
I must confess to being fascinated with North Korea—not, I hasten to add, as a place I’d like to live, or one whose politics I share. Rather, I just think that it’s a very, very strange place.
Free Man
I’ve been rather relaxed about losing my job with the implosion of my employer, and here’s why:
McKids
I’m proud of the BBC for this article on McDonalds’ ill-conceived foray into children’s clothing.
Auditory Illusion
The McGurk Effect is quite extraordinary. When you hear “ba” and see “ga”, you think that you’re hearing “da”.
No Dog Food for MS
From Slashdot: “Microsoft has published a competitive guide on OpenOffice.org 1.1 vs Microsoft Office”.
Toront
This is a random diversion.
SawStop
I’m finding lots of interesting stuff through my new improved news page, such as this incredible finger-detecting circular saw technology (via Boing Boing).
Water on Mars
This is pretty big news, at least for me.
Putsch
I really enjoy my job. I have a good boss, nice colleagues, and work that interests me. I don’t have to wear a suit, and I’m not required to get up early.
Stockings? No, spraypaint!
Proving that technological advances are not always useful is this invention: spray-on tights (or stockings, or nylons, or panty hose, or whatever they are called in your part of the world).
Nearly There
Arabetics
I thought that this New York Times article (via LanguageHat) was really interesting: an Iraqi-American has devised a simplified version of the Arabic alphabet that can be used in either direction (right-to-left or left-to-right) and in which each character has a single glyph.
New News
I’ve just finished a massive overhaul of my news aggregator page. It now orders items according to date rather than by source, so the top items are always the newest ones.
Ikea
I went to Ikea the other week. I’m not proud of it, but...