I know a few friends can work wonders with bread machines, but has anyone set about making authentic baguettes at home? If so, how difficult is it? What secrets (if any) are there in attaining that vanishingly light interior, and that fantastic crunch outside? (Yakitate Japan suggested sprinkling the dough with a little water prior to baking)

w00t! I have DSL again. ^_^ Fantastic as the cellular modem is, it's nice to have 100GB/mo inbound, and full control over port forwarding - so no more random AIM disconnections, or improperly cached message pages on FurAffinity, and full-speed torrents. Yays!

Tuesday's dinner: a simple affair. ^_^ Some fresh ramen, baby corn, mangetout, and Swedish meatballs, plus ketjap manis and Thai sweet chili sauce. =:9

I must recommend Kaiba as a highly creative anime, dropping us straight into an odd world. Try the first episode - if the first few minutes don't grab you, proceed with the rest of your life; but you might like to try this. (For anyone interested in anime generally, the creator was also behind Mind Game and Kemonozume)

Wednesday: I was feeling fairly pooped, so I went with something effortless - a can of three bean soup (plus some smoked paprika and basil), and three chopped up beef sausages of quite surprising quality.

The Sontaran Stratagem: quite promising, even if nothing radically innovative. Its conclusion, however, failed to build on its beginnings, I felt - Rattigan didn't ring true, Ross was sadly wasted, and the ultimate Big Bad Plan didn't seem to have much point, versus simply occupying any number of uninhabited worlds. I'm not seeking scientific accuracy, but still, the conclusion would've been much more convincing had there been some effect beyond a bit of a flambé aerial show (which also left clouds in its wake). Rather disappointing, overall, though still a pleasant enough way to spend a little time.

Yay! Four new episodes of Dogstar! It went on hiatus in December, and recently started airing again, though it appears it actually completed its BBC Two run in December 2007. Has anyone else been watching said show?

35 language courses for free, as podcasts from the iTunes Store.

Toil in the salt mine's going well - we managed to get a relatively exotic chip talking politely to us, and overcame a still-mysterious issue where the receiving code worked perfectly happily on the Frankensteinian creation, but not the actual device, despite both being essentially identical. (For some reason, we wound up having an extra byte kicking around from the previous SPI transfer, which was waiting for us on the main data transfer. So our expected contents wound up being shifted up by one byte, pushing our final byte off the end. Flushing the SPI with an extra register read did the trick) For my next trick, a simplified scheduler - really more of a sequencer, as the priorities are hard-coded - to ensure the radio transmission and reception requests don't step on each others' toes, and similarly with the devices that talk over SPI and I2C, sharing the same physical bus. That'll all be cycling through on something like a 100µs timer, which is an eternity in microprocessor time. =:)

Oooh.. yes, Friday's creation was a particular success. One cheap boneless chicken breast (the kind pumped full of water and other goodies), set along its way to sautée quietly with a bit of olive oil and a couple teaspoons of lemongrass paste, while a few balls of basil pappardelle (pasta ribbons about 3/4" thick) boiled away. The sauce, meanwhile, was most of the remaining portobello & madeira, with three slices of lean bacon torn up, and some sliced up marinated artichoke hearts. Just before the pasta was ready, I added the remaining four asparagus spears. So the final presentation: chicken with a portobello, bacon, artichoke, and madeira sauce, on a bed of pappardelle, with asparagus. =:9

Sheer brilliance. ^_^ The Get Out Clause, a Mancunian band, decided to make a video for one of their songs by playing for surveillance cameras and then demanding the footage under the Data Protection Act.

.. and Saturday, just a pepperoni & anchovy pizza, with some rocket, watercress, and Raf tomatoes as a side salad, accompanied by quite a delightful Bordeaux, Château La Commanderie Saint-Estèphe Cru Bourgeois 2004.

What a wondrous analogy made tangible as a fully realised sculpture/art project.. "It's a clock, turned off, not ticking, showing no progress, encased in glass. When you're ready to make the leap, to commit, to make something happen, you break the glass. The sculpture is ruined. All you have is shards of broken glass. And a working clock. It's alive and it's changing and moving forward."

This is one key thing that makes SL special - the fact that everything's created by everyone else, not pre-canned by the original designers. Of course, that does include signs like the second one here.. beware being AFK for too long. =:D (As indeed the new CEO discovered)

An impressive Star Trek build, for roleplaying. "Have you guys seen the new teaser for the Star Trek XI movie? I actually saw it about two weeks ago and it just totally wow'ed me. Another thing was running in the back of my mind while watching that ... 'man i could totally recreate that in SL ...'

And so, with a friend, I did. I'd like to introduce the 'second trek' project ... basically building a community of star trek and sci-fi fans for role-play in a very immersive environment (visually, audibly, etc. etc.) I picked up a sim, named "Shipyard" and dedicated half of it for the RP. The other half, i'm selling as sci-fi / futuristic themed real estate."

Beer Cider recommendation for the day: Duchy Originals Dry Organic Cider. Excellent. Easily the peer of the best farmhouse ciders you'll find in the netherlands of Somerset.

I suppose this counts as a meme of sorts.. ^_^


history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head

118 top
112 ls
87 grep
29 cd
23 telnet
21 nslookup
16 curl
14 ftp
13 more
10 mp2

And I moved in to the new (and furnished!) warren. It's nice. ^_^ The only photos I've been able to coax out of the ailing (it'd probably be more accurate to say "post mortem") A200 are utterly lousy, but they'll give some idea of the place.

( Follow me! )
The kitchen's inaugural dinner on Sunday night was a small ribeye steak, sprinkled with ketjap manis (Malaysian sweet soy sauce) and wasabi during cooking, joined in the pan by two thickly sliced white mushrooms, and accompanied by four Jersey Gold new potatoes, broccoli, and some asparagus, covered in portobello & madeira sauce. Happy bunny. ^_^

And I have towels! Vivid blue for the main bath towel, hot orange for the smaller one, and an adorable pink for the hand towel. Yay colors! (I've long been an advocate of dyes. We have the technology!)

I thought this visual search was rather neat, even if the demo doesn't really push the tech very far. Basically, it shows them taking a photo of the Finding Nemo DVD cover, with a hand deliberately obscuring part of the cover, and sending the image to their server. That recognises what's being presented, and returns various relevant links, including a YouTube clip, the soundtrack's page on the iTunes Store, a synopsis of the movie, and so on. They make a point of the fact the image can be partially obscured, at an angle, skewed, or upside down, so there's no requirement the image presented be clean and tidy.

The perils and benefits of being a poodle, as discovered by neonbunny. ^_^;

Not, unfortunately, the wonderful lapine version as created by Bunn, but you can pick up a free Iron Man av, and optionally enter their photography competition, with the winner picking up L$100k, and a runner-up receiving L$25k; entries in by May 7. Or, of course, you can just have fun. ^_^

Of techie SL interest: a photo from an internal developmental version of the viewer, showing direct shadowing.

Geek humor in very poor taste over here. rabitguy will get this. =:D

Meanwhile, zrath recommends this and this as superb examples of LOLfashion, Parisienne style. ^_^ (Hey, vandringar!)

Friday turned out to be a particularly bright day for rabbiteering, with several to be seen, including a group of four in one of the favored spots, alternately chasing each other in acrobatic style, and casually nibbling away; meanwhile, others felt relaxed enough to just let the spring breeze caress their fur. I may have to work out a way to get my paws on a Lumix before next month, at this rate.. still, I doubt they're going anywhere. ^_^ It's about as good a home for them as it gets, with some on farmland and the rest neighboring it, so even the occasional fox is probably going to be made to feel unwelcome, though it clearly pays to keep an eye out regardless.

The superbly talented Chris Goodwin would like you to have a paper "print out, cut, and fold" bunny. ^_^

If you have a couple minutes to spare, I'd like to share one of my old favorites from alt.humor.best-of-usenet. Not everyone will get the style of humor, but if you're reading this.. =:D

> A sin, an instant of rebellious pride of the intellect, made
> Lucifer and a third part of the cohort of angels fall from their glory.
> A sin,an instant of folly and weakness, drove Adam and Eve out of Eden
> and brought death and suffering into the world.

And now this sin can be washed away easily using the NEW DIDI-7 Brand Religion(tm)!!
Geek With Fake British Accent: Look at this, Sue! A dirty, filthy soul!
Bland TV Personality: Goodness, Mike... you'll NEVER EVER get that one clean! Might as well just throw it away!
GWFBA: You would think so, wouldn't you? That would be typical of the post-modern nuclear consumerist American disposable society, of which people watching TV at 3am are DEFINITELY members.
BTVP: I agree, Mike! So where's the trash can?
GWFBA: Just one second, Sue. This soul looks pretty dirty right now, doesn't it?
BTVP: Yes, Mike, it does. Those stains will NEVER come out! Right, audience?
AUDIENCE: I'M NOT GOING TO PAY A LOT FOR THIS MUFFLER!
BTVP: But... what are you doing with those Deadly Sins, Mike?
GWFBA: OOOOPS!
BTVP: Oh NO, Mike! You've spilled Greed and Lust all over the soul! Well, that's it: that soul will NEVER be clean! Will it, audience?
AUDIENCE: BRING ON THE DANCING WOLVES!

.. and thus it proceeds. ^_^

Via jovino, this BART driver's view of passing through the transbay tunnel caught my geeky interest. ('Course, on the trains in Kuala Lumpur, you can see a comparable - but not subterranean - view yourself at any time, as it's a driverless system. Longest such in the world, as I recall)

Two pics by sockscatt, entries for Koinup's current SL photography competition; "Giving thanks to the sun" and "Moab Twilight drop".

I'm quite interested in what Apple's motivations might be in the company's recent acquisition of PA Semi, a CPU design house. They're based in IBM's POWER architectures, with a view to energy-efficient PowerPC (something of a close relative of POWER, born of the original AIM - Apple, IBM, Motorola - alliance) compatibles. Apparently, PA Semi were once in the running to be a processor supplier for Apple, but Intel won out; not such a surprise, perhaps, given their offerings were fairly thin on the ground, and comparatively unproven, not to mention the competitive benefits of offering Intel - just drop Parallels or VMware on, and you can have any other OS as well, their windows sharing the same desktop as OS X's, everything running at full native speed. Still, $278m would suggest they're after more than the people involved (and there's definitely some top-tier talent involved, including ex-DEC Alpha people, and the guy who oversaw Apple's transition from 68k to PPC) - if it were only talent they're after, it'd be far cheaper just to go headhunting. ARM-based SoC design? Possible, but I'd have thought they'd be wasted on something of that scale. A PPC competitor to ARM, maybe? Freescale's focus is more traditional embedded applications, and IBM's perfectly happy turning out millions of console and server processors - and superb as ARM's architecture is, they're also not very interested in the high performance end (1GHz+), which seems to be the way the iPhone will head. This would seem to be confirmed by reports that the negotiations were handled on the Apple side by His Steveness and Anthony Fadell, SVP of the iPod Division.

"A goods train in southern France has been attacked by robbers who made off with cushions bearing the Playboy logo."

s30e2 "Fires of Pompeii" - excellent. And I even approached it with caution, not generally being given to historical episodes, but the quality of the supporting cast shone through, coupled to a script that caught a fine balance between levity and tragedy. (Why, yes, I am a little behind with the show =:)

s30s3 "Planet of the Ood" - mixed, but good overall. I'd been interested to see what might come of learning more of the Ood, but hadn't quite expected what was revealed. Whilst the middle of the episode flagged somewhat as it turned into a gunfest, the ending was quite wonderful.

@whee! Just hooked up the radio eval board to the CPU eval board (which in turn hooks to a peripheral chip's eval board, and that to one component on our actual device) - and the two parts of the puzzle are talking to each other! The hacked up creation's transmitting over a 2.4GHz link (courtesy of a single chip that handles everything from serial data I/O to pushing out the final RF signal) to one of our devices, which is receiving and decoding the data stream. It's quite magical, seeing the logic analyzer traces showing the various bit clocks, SPI data streams, chip selects, and interrupt assertions all meshing so perfectly, all acting in a sequential flow, meshed in nanosecond perfection.

And a few weeks ago, I hadn't even heard of SPI. =:D The coworker deserves a great deal of the credit, but still, I think we make a good team. ^_^

And what better note to collapse conclude with than an ode to a cup of brown joy, as discovered by sphelx? =:9

No photos, with my camera out for the count, but Thursday was a bounteous day on the lapine front. ^_^ First one pair, then another pair not far along, a bit later on, and finally, yet another, in a different field - this time, one completely relaxed, whilst the other groomed and massaged. ^_^ (But still alert enough to get by, which is just as well - that morning, we saw a small fox trot through the parking lot, no less wary of the twoleggers)

Yay! The other programmer will, with any luck, be able to bring back one of his Minolta A200s on Monday - so I'll be in a position to try taking some photos of the local lapines. Some of them might even feature vaguely recognisable blurs. ^_^

A snippet of SL humor over here; be sure to read the "update" footnote, and Pathfinder's comment. =:D

Wow. So.. this week was quite the intense introduction to SPI, I2C, and allied TWIs, and the CPU's SSC, SPI, PDC, and AIC units. Not to mention investigating some misbheavior by taking one component from a pre-production unit, by removing four microscopic SMD components and wiring the device to a CPU eval board, then hooking up another eval board to that, and rounding it off by monitoring ten important lines on the logic analyzer/scope. Interrupt City, yay! And the DMA engine's actually rather nice to use, though we're having to drive one crucial chip in a slightly funky manner. So nifty, feeling the project actually coming together, everyone putting in their final contributions as we head towards the finish line. Some fiendishly talented people, to be sure, the aforementioned coworker especially. Ingenuity is inspirational. ^_^

Eudora fans (a certain NorCal ottah comes to mind =:) might want to check out the forthcoming Odysseus, which does indeed look quite promising. No more three-pane pain!

Meanwhile, folks at Stanford are setting up the Quake Catcher Network, using the accelerometers in post-2004 Apple laptops, with a Windows version to follow. "We're not trying to predict earthquakes, we're trying to measure them very rapidly and get the information out before damage is done to large populations." "Hundreds of sophisticated seismometers are already in place in California, but they're spaced relatively far apart. The new distributed network wouldn't replace those, says Paul Davis, a professor of geology at the University of California, Los Angeles, but 'it would fill in the gaps.'"

Maybe it's just me, but I found this Flash demo from NaniMoose quite captivating. It's just a pair of eyes, but they're highly configurable.. roundness, center balance, slant, eyelash weight, and so forth.

Koinup's running another Windlight photo contest, open until May 7, with three prizes of L$20k (~ US$75) up for grabs. I'd highlight the Merovingi Fashion Awards 2008, with category winners receiving a 20" iMac - the real thing, not an SL version - but nominations closed last month. It's now time for the showcase week. I don't follow SL fashion, but I'll admit I'm interested in seeing who's in the running in the furry category. (And not merely a celebration of design panache, but apparently raising funds for Doctors Without Borders, and the National Cancer Society)

Beer for the day: 1066 Country Bitter, from the White Brewing Company in Bexhill-on-Sea. A world apart from the usual wilting flowers of most bitters' hops, this pushes well into the league of ales.

Assuming I wind up landing the house I'm hoping for (and how!), I might eventually be able to give a home to a pair of bunnies. ^_^ What recommendations do you have for breeds, and general guidelines on rabbitproofing a home, and their general health, feeding, and welfare? This wouldn't be until perhaps the end of the year, and only once I'd researched everything well, so there's no hurry. (One breed that appeals is the Belgian Hare, but I imagine I'll simply go along to a shelter and see who takes to me)

In the meantime, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 is the current leading contender on the camera front. The emphasis is still on the automatic control of the camera, but it beats even the Ricoh Caplio R7, with a good quality Leica lens, and a hefty 10x optical zoom, in a similarly diminutive case. Ideal for wildlife photography, whilst still being suitable for slipping into a pocket, such as lunchtime today, when I was able to enjoy watching a pair of wild grey rabbits munching in a field near the office. ^_^

.. and it appears the aforementioned rental application was approved. =:D

This is, in the non-colloquial sense, quite awesome: singing tesla coils, via barberio.. not so much electronica as electrica. Fantastic!

And as rabitguy noticed in this two minute clip, anyone can be twelve years old again. *giggle* (Keep watching - it begins solo, as it were, then a visual chorus =:)

Music for the day: djbalor's Ilmatar's Dance, a nicely bouncy track, yet with a hint of melancholy, and touches of 80s VGM. It's not a genre-buster or redefiner - just a track to play and enjoy. On a slightly gentler ambient note, meanwhile, eliki's "She Forgets" is a delightful piece, at the top of the playlist over here.

I must thank neonbunny for noticing a forthcoming ballot initiative, on the grounds that "on matters ranging from foreign relations to fiscal and environmental stewardship, no other president in American history has accomplished so much in such a short time": "Should the City and County of San Francisco rename the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility the George W. Bush Sewage Plant?" =:D

A cheery verse or two on Zimbabwe.

Very silly: the manly iPod dock (and combination gas meter). =:D

w00t! One nice little side effect of swapping the drives is I've now got a usable external drive for Time Machine - not just the extra space, but the 2.5" case previously held an older 60GB drive, which Hyzenthlay couldn't power unassisted over USB. Checking the drive showed it was rated at 5V @ 700mA, and USB only offers 500mA. The displaced 120GB, however, only requires 420mA, and works perfectly in the 2.5" case. ^_^ (And Time Machine finally works as quickly as it should - my guess is the gigantic file exclusion list is what was slowing it down before)

So, why did I feel such a quiet thrill at riding at the front on the top of a double decker bus? =:D Not the most nimble means of transport, but there's just something fun about them. ^_^

Of course, at the Wetherspoons, I had to go for Badger's Hoppy Hare ("Bound to Please" =:). A good choice, too, not a million miles from Bath Ales' Wild Hare, though the latter remains the better beer, in my meagre estimation. I wonder if Bath Ales need a mascot.. =:)

I thought circuit_four might be similarly warmed by this touching tale of porn tipping. ^_^

Telepathique: Eu Gosto is well worth a try. I'm not sure who to compare the project to, but maybe if you reanimated Paul Oakenfold with Amon Tobin and Fatboy Slim's sensibilities, you'd be somewhere in the right place. "Neither fish nor flesh, neither electro nor rave nor funk nor punk, but a cluster-fuck of all. Their 2006 debut ‘Last Time On Earth’ earned much respect in Portugal and Spain which led to a tour through the region, playing many festival gigs and sharing stages with Diplo, Hot Chip and Massive Attack."

On a more familiar musical note, ristin spotted this rather spiffy Red XIII. =:9

A noteworthy weblog, if you're interested in the artistic possibilities afforded (and there's no shortage of shinies): SL Conceptual Creations. Even if you've no interest in SL per se, it's quite visually engaging.

Here's a mind control/hypnosis story that's particularly well written: Undertow. Hypnosis is only of peripheral interest to me, inasmuch as it might aid the sensation of occupying another physical form, but this story's focus isn't on the act or process.. or maybe it is, but in a somewhat more oblique manner. Either way, it's worth reading.

Behold the Butter Wizard, just in case your kitchen is lacking in geegaws.

As the price had dropped considerably, I finally went ahead and picked up a shiny new 250GB drive for Hyzenthlay. ^_^ (Not quite uneventful getting it in place, as it seems the final revision PowerBooks include a magnetic shield, fairly securely affixed to the drive - we wound up carefully slicing away the tape used. Getting the 'book apart was quite easy, just involving quite a few screws) So nice, suddenly seeing everything still present as before, but now with 120GB or so free. ^_^ That, coupled with a key success at the salt mine, and getting the application off for the house I'm hoping to rent, has made for quite a happy bunny. ^_^ (And as before, if anyone willing to wear multiple programming hats wants a job, we'd love to help - you'll need to be ready to leap in, as there's no shortage of tasks ahead. C/C++, VB, C#, Delphi, Cocoa - it's all good. Analog electronics would be very cool, too)

First things first: do we have any 8051 gurus in the house? I may well be wanting to pick your brains in the coming weeks, if so.. (alternatively, come along and pick up a full-time paycheck!)

Quite a wonderful Overheard in NYC entry, even if likely apocryphal. =:D

I really need to try tracking down more music from the Tanukis, and Tenfold Loadstar. Indeed, I've only heard one track by the latter, "Birdy" - a relatively mainstream piece, but just works nicely.

Amongst the things I'm most looking forward to bringing along to the new place (I've got one place keenly in my sights, but it remains to be seen what will come of the application - beautifully redone interior, with a pair of custom-sized black leather couches in the lounge, a kitchen I could get seriously busy in, a conservatory with all the afternoon lighting you could want, and even a modest garden with a barbecue alcove. Definitely somewhere I could enjoy coming back to and relaxing) are my media collection, keyboard (yay Logic Studio!), and tablet. Time may be in short supply now, but that kind of increased activity just sets off a cascade of little experiments and projects I'd like to try.. ^_^

And for those with literary leanings, the SL Book Fair 2008 will be held on Book Island and Publishing Island on April 25-27. "It's here again and this time bigger and better than ever! The 2007 fair saw 1400 visitors in three days, over 40 exhibitors and nearly 20 events. In 2008, we will be across two sims (eight times more land) with 50 exhibitors and 100 book related shops with around 50 events. SL Book Fair isn't just about books - exhibitors include writers, publishers, editors, bloggers and anything word related!"

MySQL 5.1 might hold modest gains for SL, too - plenty of bugfixes from 5.0, a selection of helpful new features, and a performance boost in the region of 20%.

Dinner - well, there were plenty of temptations in the supermarket - the jumbalaya looked quite decent, as did the king prawn masala - but I felt in more of a picnic mood, perhaps owing to the pleasant weather. Touring the cooked meats and prepared fish aisle convinced me..



Ham, marinated artichokes, a shellfish assortment, prosciutto, and Cornish brie, accompanied by a Westerham Brewery "Freedom Ale", dedicated to William Wilberforce, instrumental in the abolition of the British slave trade.



What need is there in describing it all? The British ham was excellent, suffused with a gentle honey sweetness and a juniper tang, and the demerera sugar in the beer complemented the moderately heavy maltiness and lingering Kentish hops beautifully. Even the bread was surprisingly good, even if nowhere near as vanishingly light as a genuine French baguette, with a strong crust. The brie, meanwhile, could easily hold its own against its more directly Gallic cousins, with the richness of flavor typical of Cornish dairy.

Is it any surprise I loved Ratatouille so much? ^_^

*full, happy bunny*

The Visit Mexico sims do look worth experiencing, recreating elements of Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Campeche and Tabasco. Obviously, no substitute for visiting the real regions themselves, but a lot easier to fit into a busy day. ^_^

The inevitable happened: sooner or later, any device winds up running Quake of some variety. Here's Quake III on an iPod touch. ^_^

Though for WTF factor, the news that Sonic Unleashed will feature a werewolf form of our blue hero probably takes some beating. Hee!

Want $2000? (US$, not L$ - even with the American Peso in its current condition, that's still plenty of broccoli and rocket) Enter TWiki.net's YouTube contest, deadline April 14th, as pointed out by jharish.

Toshiba's beginning sampling a somewhat novel graphics engine in the form of the SpursEngine SE1000, based on the Cell architecture. It's aimed more at video decoding, on first blush, rather than geometry tasks.

Nissan's island looks like being a pleasant distraction, with a surprisingly large number of freebies on offer, including some fairly bizarre contraptions and creatures.

On the subject of sims, I was quite pleased to note that Linden Lab recently dropped the setup fee from a fairly hefty $1675 to a rather more bearable $1000. Monthly maintenance remains at $295. Nice to see the barrier to entry lowered, all the same.

Nothing new, but the IMF's just come out with some new growth forecasts, putting the global figure at 3.7%, down from 4.95% last year, with a danger of global depression if that falls below 3%. More specifically, national figures are put at 0.5% US, 1.4% Europe, and 1.6% UK. Unsurprisingly, the worst effects will be in the US, its primary trading partners, and economies with currencies linked to the USD.

Did you know oil revenues contribute 40% of Mexico's federal income?

I did have to chuckle at the news of one future guest star on Doctor Who: Richard Dawkins. Heh! (Be warned, there's a modest spoiler at the end of the article, regarding episode six, giving away its title)

Of course, I'd first carefully made sure to forget the camera back in the office, but I was quietly pleased by the sight of a wild grey rabbit while on a lunchtime stroll around the trail nearby.

.. don't suppose anyone's thinking of indulging in some varied embedded fun in the wilds of Sussex, are they? C/C++ would be very useful, electronics fearlessness a definite plus (SMD, yay!). There's plenty to be done, and we could easily use at least one more good sort on board.

Wow. Anyone with an interest in old Japan really should take a peek at this recreation of Edo - plainly, an exceptional level of care has been put into its creation, spanning twelve sims.

I'm also going to have to pay a visit to the Popcha sim - that looks about as subdued a visual concoction as Yellow Submarine after being given the Gantz Graf treatment. What's not to love? ^_^

Amazingly, merik noticed that Tiny Toon Adventures is finally coming to DVD, with the first season - 35 episodes - on four discs, due on July 29. =:D Definitely a welcome event, given how much fun TTA was, not to mention it being the show that led to me falling in love. ^_^

Music for the day: The Diaphanoids: Escape from Martius 42. Just so funkeh.

If I get an opportunity to design my own kitchen, I want this gas range. Sounds eminently practical, with attention paid to simmering capability, but also a doddle to clean, with the pan supports and burner retracting when not in use. =:D

Call me geeky, but I found this discussion about the definition of "a couple of.." quite interesting. It seems to confirm the ambiguity I've witnessed, apparently without much basis in nationality or region - some regard it to mean "a small number", whilst others regard the term to be precisely two, with fuzzy exceptions. (I'm in the former group - "a couple grommits" could mean anything from two to four, maybe five, but not only two)

Quite a remarkable announcement on the SL front - IBM will be hosting sims. That is, they'll be hosting the sims themselves, not Linden Lab, with the explicit intent of offering them for corporate use. Nothing special, you might think - true, this is a somewhat geeky matter - but the key point is that for the first time, SL grids will need to genuinely interoperate between organisations, working as a platform, rather than merely an end product. This is the difference between the heterogeneous web we have now, with servers and clients of all varieties, and the strictly walled garden of the AOL of old. I'd imagine this will be a good opportunity for both parties to sort out any issues involved (though already, LL sims are split between hosting in the City, and somewhere in Texas) in distinct sim operations, before attempting to release the server code to the unwashed masses. Which, as far as I can gauge, remains the intent, but one frought with technical and legal obstacles - optimistically, perhaps we might see something by the end of 2008, quite likely into 2009.

I haven't had a chance to check them out yet, but this series, Usavich piqued my interest - miniature CG episodes of furry life in a Russian prison, from Japan. (Each collection of five is barely eight minutes long, so don't worry about the length)

Forgiving their claim that "unlike conventional mice limited to movement on two flat planes, a 3D mouse lets you move effortlessly in all dimensions", Logitech's 3D mouse for SL could be quite nice.

As rabitguy noticed, if you're running Safari, this Surfin' Safari entry has the devteam showing off some neat little geegaws. ^_^ They intend to try introducing the new attributes to the CSS standard. (It'll only show in a recent Safari, as OmniWeb 5.7b2 doesn't appear to have a sufficiently shiny WebKit build)

And I'm up with the morning bunnies again, in yet another new nook of the world to me - Sussex, in the UK, with Eastbourne, Brighton, and London quite readily accessible. ^_^ And thus another adventure begins, with a particularly cool coworker (yep, "a" - I'm only the second full-time programmer, making for quite a cozy office, given it's just us and the boss) with a million stories. With an offer letter in my paws - or, to be strictly accurate, The Bag Of Wonders - and keys to the office, it looks like there's quite a bit of professional fun ahead, of an interestingly embedded nature. It's going to be a very busy April (and more, I'm sure =:), but it'll be rewarding, being instrumental in the completion of a project that'll set the foundation for the future of the company. I get the impression they'll throw money at me occasionally, which I shan't protest. =:) And there do seem to be some fun acts at the Brighton Fringe Festival, too.. ^_^

Sadly, this has been responsible for the recent lack of dinner postings, but I was quite pleased with tonight's visit to a local Indian restaurant, where I plumped for a lamb vindaloo, sag aloo, and keema naan. :-9 It's not the same experience as I enjoyed after a day at Orban, when we'd sometimes head up to Scenic India, but still nummy, despite the lack of company. I feel sushi must figure into things before long - London seems like the best bet, but where to try? (Preferably a bar rather than boat - I love requesting particular rolls and watching them being made in a tenth of the time I'm able to =:)

Via jakebe, the quite inspiring tale of the Stupid Bunny. As he says - isn't this too wonderful to not do? ^_^ This could've been made for stego_s_aurus..

I recently happened upon this book, which promises to be a truly fascinating read - This Is Your Brain on Music - The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin:

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life - even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Levitin unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature, including:

Are our musical preferences shaped in utero?
Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?
What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brain's response to music?
Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?

This Is Your Brain on Music explores cultures in which singing is considered an essential human function, patients who have a rare disorder that prevents them from making sense of music, and scientists studying why two people may not have the same definition of pitch. At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession.

You might, of course, wonder what the author actually understands about what makes music.. so, I had a peek at his bio on Wikipedia:

Within cognitive psychology, he has published articles on absolute pitch and music cognition and perception. He has worked as a producer and sound designer on albums by Blue Öyster Cult, Chris Isaak, and Joe Satriani; as a consultant to Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan; and as a recording engineer for Santana and The Grateful Dead. Records and CDs to which he has contributed have sold in excess of 30 million copies. [...]

Levitin has worked on and off as a stand-up comedian and joke writer, performing at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco with Robin Williams in 1984, and at comedy clubs in California; he placed second in the National Lampoon stand-up comedy competition regionals in San Francisco in 1989, and has contributed jokes to Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall, as well as the nationally syndicated comic strip Bizarro, some of which were included in the 2006 compilation "Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro"

Now there's a life. ^_^

Quite a nice piece of casting news: Thomas Sangster, whom some will recognise from Human Nature/The Family of Blood, has landed the lead role in the forthcoming live action Tintin movies.

A pleasantly silly feature on consumerist polling, posing questions like "What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?" No huge surprises, with various top global names making their way into different top five choices for each scenario. The selections for which brand they'd like to resurrect are mildly interesting, with Atari coming in at number three, and "none" at number one.

You may well have come across The Video Game Name Generator before; but as otter3 discovered, someone's been running a contest to actually create Flash games based on titles tossed out by it. =:D Fancy Narcoleptic Soccer Rush, Enraged Rocket House, Extreme Bedtime: the Next Generation, or Furry Punching Nitro?

Here's a particularly good account of Asperger's Syndrome - like everything that makes up one's personality, there's unquestionably a broad (multidimensional!) spectrum involved - one might exhibit such traits profoundly, or only mild tendencies in some ways. All part of the peculiarity of these weird grey blobs most of us carry around. (Surprisingly high in cholesterol, though)

One of the slightly odder comics you'll find.. remember the myriad "OS-tan" manga girls representing different OS' characteristics? Say hello to Afuganisu-tan and friends, including Pakisu-tan, Kyrgyz-tan, and Meriken. The strips themselves follow the characters' adventures, whilst the accompanying text adds historical information about the countries, the international agents, and the various factions. (Conveniently, the site design is such that you can simply perform a "save all linked images" to retrieve all the character sheets and strips)

Caution: bad pun alert. ^_^;

ZOMG! ibneko alerted me to the existence of Petz Bunnyz, a virtual rabbit for the DS. ^_^

Care
* Pick the perfect bunny buddy and choose from five bunny breeds, including the American Fuzzy Lop and English Angora.
* Customize your bunny’s environment and unlock decorating items such as toys, wallpaper and flowers.
* Your bunny likes to be brushed and cleaned -- and that includes his cage.
* Feed your bunny her favorite foods and she will love you for it.

Training
* Teach your bunny to recognize greetings and phrases using the DS touchpad.
* Care for, pet and play with your bunnies regularly to keep them happy, unlock new items and more.

Tokyo fashion goes furry with genuinely animalistic hoodies!

Now, doesn't this Wiimote use for live music creation have some seriously fun possibilities?

The second, rather grandiose, trailer for Doctor Who season "four". ^_^

So, I thought I'd see what this chain pub's claim to a beer festival was like - and remarkably, it turned out to yield some real finds. First up, Tokyo Black, a Japanese imperial stout, reminiscent of Rasputin's, but not as phenomenally massive - a good thing if you're planning on eating or drinking anything else that day. =:) Then, Orkney Brewing's Dark Island, a distinctive heavy ale - somewhat sweet, quite smokey, and heavily malted. Finally, Nethergate Brewing's April Fool, a surprisingly hoppy ale, more golden and somewhat lighter bodied, but still unmistakably an ale, not a lager. ^_^ (Far be it for be to disparage any such, of course - I'll happily quaff Aecht Schlenkerler Rauchbier or Pilsner Urquell!) 'Course, by "lighter bodied", bear in mind the context - I'd compare this to something like Magnolia Cafe's Proving Ground IPA. :-9

mikesedge noticed the discovery of the world's oldest lapine bones, some 53 million years old, with the foot about a quarter of the length of a contemporary jackrabbit foot.

It's time to Riverdance. =:D

Quite a fascinating concept for learning languages in SL - construct a dozen or so sims, and populate them with professional actors, thereby offering an immersive environment far beyond what a potted offline program could offer.

If you can make good machinima, the Hosoi Ichiba contest offers a prize of L$50k to the winner, with entries closing on June 15. (Full rules in the article, but essentially: "We are looking for artists that can compose the Best Machinima Impression of our Hosoi Ichiba and surroundings on Virgin Island. Hosoi Ichiba is a japanese style market enclosed by walls and watch towers, overlooking a beautiful landscape. Outside the walls you will find Hosoi Yu Ch'un, a typical japanese fishing village and the farming village, "Hosoi Lung Ch'un" The sim is packed with romantic spots for you to build your story around."

How complicated could it be to find a reasonable cordless phone? :-P One of the first things I picked up over the weekend was a replacement for the warren's old one, which has a somewhat ropey recorder (digital, rather low quality), flaky trasmitter, and sticky buttons. One of the few on offer at the supermarket looked like it fit the bill and wasn't too ugly, and a good price. Except once set up, we started to notice the shortcomings - not being able to play messages back from the base station wasn't too huge a matter, but a minor complication. Worse, though, was the way it had no audible alert messages were waiting - you were expected to inspect the handset display for a flashing icon, and that's it. Not so hot. More bizarre, though, was the way to listen to messages - a primary function for a phone/answering machine, you'd think. Except, judging by the menu design, no - you had to enter the menu, then go down six options to the messages submenu, then select listening to them. Blarg. I wouldn't enjoy that, and it didn't thrill my mother, who's somewhat ill at ease with technology beyond TVs and microwaves.

If you have a few shekels to spare, consider helping out the good people of Rabbit Rescue in Ontario, who suddenly have 300 bunnies rescued from a wretched fate. Unsurprisingly, this has put a huge strain on their resources. "Since March 12th, Rabbit Rescue has been working overtime struggling to save hundreds of rabbits that have been surrendered. We have been able to help save 150 so far, but our foster homes are bursting at the seams. We need more fosters, rabbit food and hay, litter, supplies, cages and most of all, money! Our medical costs are sky rocketing for all the spay, neuters and medical care required. If you can spare anything to help us give these rabbits the help they all desperately need, please contact us or donate now!" (Many, many thanks to momentrabbit)

Also via Daily Bunny, a twenty second clip quite easily justified: ear washing. Is cute.

Meanwhile, here's one bun not in need of any rescuing. ^_^ Even for Zen, this is an outstandingly adorable piece. (And it's even worksafe!)


And it's been confirmed: Doctor Who returns to the air on Saturday, April 5 2008. And here's the trailer (1m30, 720x400, 11.3MB) for season "four". (Quotation marks for the fact it's not really the fourth season of DW, but it's a convenient shorthand) As for Torchwood, I'm almost caught up - not helped by the fact there were two episodes this week. "From Out of the Rain" was a curious piece of work, I felt - some superbly atmospheric scenes, especially the opening of the circus, yet with so much left completely unexplained, such as the need for the "last breaths". I suppose much of that can be understood upon realising the writer was also the creator of Sapphire & Steel. (If you've not seen any of it, you might want to give it a try)

Reading through this commentary, I was positively tickled by the idea of having the Ying Tong Song played at a funeral. That's a pretty good way to be bidden farewell. ^_^ But then, the humor of the Goons appealed to me from early on, as one commenter illustrated:

Moriarty: Where's Eccles?
Seagoon: The gunpowder was a bit damp, so he's drying it out by the fire.
Uncle Thingy: That's the last thing he should do!
Bluebottle: It will be..
[sfx] *BOOM*

So, orona_red just had to note he'd never seen any Nibbler (Futurama) porn.. ^_^;

jirris_midvale happened upon this superb ad for milk, "One Gallon Axe", fairly clearly inspired by Spinal Tap. =:D

Well, this is one dinner nobody's walking away from without paying..

A sly reply to the eternal query of how many record execs does it take to screw in a lightbulb.

Bunny O' Jam: Luck of the Hareish, SF, March 22, 8pm-4am. ^_^ Bit late notice, true, but I'm afraid I've been seconded for duty bashing away at keyboards in exchange for rabbit food. As such, I've unfortunately had no time to read anything on LJ (or, indeed, FA, save for a highly welcome care package sent by mycroftb =:) since about Tuesday last week, the 11th. I do, however, bring joyous news, courtesy of someone less normal than I (just in different ways), who thankfully happens to be the guy introducing me to the weird and wonderful ways of USB, raw flash access, and animatronic deer; namely, the culinary revelation that is a Jaffa cake with peanut butter slathered on top. Yes, I'm serious. Or about as much as I ever am. ^_^

If anyone reading this goes along to the Bunnyjam this year, I'd really enjoy seeing any video footage you might be able to take - stills are one thing, but for an event like that, you really need to see and hear the motion and the beat. Bit surprising there's no LondonFurs equivalent, but then, is there much of a guerrilla art scene there, or indeed, in Sydney? So much of plunderphonics seems to orbit San Francisco exclusively. What gives?

Now this does look like fun.. iPhone LEGO. =:D Follow the link for an excellent YouTube trailer, 45s long.

Dusan Writer's holding another competition, this time with a tribal/cargo cult theme. Entries to be submitted by Mar 29, with prizes of L$60k, L$25k, L$15k, and 22 more of L$1k.

Also via DW, a cornucopia of visualisation tech. rabitguy especially might find this brain-tickling.

It's sort of odd, almost, seeing a large corporation actually appearing to understand how they can play an active part in a virtual world like SL, rather than the rather more common "build it and they will come" expectations - but, Orange Island seems to be quite active, and in decidedly un-stuffy ways.

The shoulder dragon mentioned over here ("He sits on your shoulder, looks around, blinks, smiles, pulls out oranges and tosses them in the air and catches them in his mouth to eat, he leans over to nuzzle your neck and occasionally jumps off your shoulder to fly around you.") made me wonder what a pocket version of Scabrous would get up to. =:)

Via thebostondyke, news of a great day for Pastafarians everywhere: the installation of the FSM at the Cumberland County Courthouse lawn, in Crossville, Tennessee.

"Oh, passion's for teens and immigrants." - Marge Simpson

The former roomie/member of the landed gentry let me know Thomas Dolby's got video from his October 2007 "Sputnik and Beyond" show downloadable now, as four 40MB files. "This was a one-off concert to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite successfully launched into space. My friend David Hoffman, a documentary filmmaker, had recently premiered his full-length movie ‘Sputnik Mania’ (previously entitled The Fever of ‘57) and he was kind enough to allow me to use footage and entire edited sequences from his film, to project at the ICA. The Radio Science Orchestra arranged and performed a live soundtrack, with commentary provided by pop culturist/DJ/sci-fi writer Ken Hollings."

Or for something slightly less serious: Broke Trek. ^_^

This is what people can achieve: "Flies faster than a rifle bullet.. it's exciting to sit at 60,000 feet and see the curvature of the Earth; it's exciting to sit at 60,000 feet and see the dark of outer space.. to have a horizon-to-horizon 750 mile range. That's exciting. When you take off for New York in the dark, and see the sun rise in the west, you know you're doing something slightly different." Concorde, here shown in a four minute clip narrated by its pilots, and pointed out by captpackrat.

Some interesting connections are highlighted by Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman. His investigation links Terry Nichols, Ramzi Yousef, and Timothy McVeigh, only to find his requests for interviewing Yousef blocked by the Justice Department.

So, the iPhone/iPod touch saw the roadmap laid out for application development. ^_^ It's the real deal, rather than some half-baked sandbox. What caught my eye, though, was mention of the iFund Initiative "with $100 million in venture capital to invest in companies developing applications and services for Apple's innovative iPhone and iPod touch." And EA announced Spore for it, too (whether the "full" or DS version is another matter - looks closer to the latter), alongside Sega with Super Monkeyball, and ePocrates and Salesforce will be there. ^_^ Ars Technica forum response over here. Engadget's coverage, 37signals, and Apple.

Also noting the SDK's release was John Carmack: "We (Id) have put in our application like everyone else, so I don't have any inside information at this point. I think Steve is still pissed at me over some negative comments I made about iPod development tools a while ago. Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good -- a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70% royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good. The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer / customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly."

Clear off a bit of disk space if you're fetching the SDK - it's a 2.1GB download. Sadly, it's for Intel Macs only, so I'm out in the cold for now. Or is it? "FWIW this is on a PowerPC Mac where I managed to get the full SDK installed by manually opening the packages. Despite Apple not supporting it, it seems to work well; even the simulator runs."

Noteworthy indeed: the reclusive director of, amongst other works, La Jetée (the basis for Twelve Monkeys), Chris Marker, will be present at a gathering in SL on Tuesday, 11am PDT/6pm GMT, courtesy of Zurich's Museum für Gestaltung.

It's essentially a commercial, but what a gorgeously realised one.. Trembled Blossoms.

You've seen the "Truth in Advertising" short, produced a few years back by ad agency insiders - here's a similar endeavor atomicat found, from 1965 or so, The Cliché Family. =:D

Quite a substantial interview with Phorm's CEO, with as much spin as you'd expect; the comments take issue with matters inadequately addressed.

Ah, the joys of security theater.. someone brings a MacBook Air through TSAland: 'One takes me aside to a partitioned cubicle. Another of the endless supply of TSA agents takes the rest of my bags to a different cubicle. No yellow brick road here, just a pair of yellow painted feet on the floor, and my flight is boarding. I am made to understand that I should stand and wait. My laptop is on the table in front of me, just beyond reach, like I am waiting to collect my personal effects after being paroled. I'm standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. "There's no drive," one says. "And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be," she continues.'

Quite neat work: ABBA's Waterloo, with an entirely synthetic lead singer, Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 software, using the Sweet Ann voice.

Via miyabisan, a little lapinity for your car. =:D

This restoration technique struck me as quite ingenious. They're wanting to restore the original color from shows like Doctor Who, where the only surviving prints tend to be b&w film copies. But how can you possibly turn monochrome footage into color, without either entirely faking it, or having to painstakingly work from occasionally available low quality home video recordings, using those for visual references? Apparently, there is a way: "Any black and white telerecording of a colour programme is prone to pick up interference from the colour encoded video signal. This manifests itself as a pattern of small grey dots, called chroma-dots, across the picture. There was a way to stop this from happening, by using a special filter to cut out the electronic artefacts. However, the interference was often deemed so minor that the technicians doing the transfers used no filter and so the resultant film prints often contain a burnt in pattern of these chromadots. Insell suggested that it might be possible to decode the original colour signal of the show from these chromadots, since they contain an electronic remnant of the original video signal. Since then, Insell has set up an independent group - outside the BBC - to put together a technology to extract this coded pattern within the black and white film and decode it."

How would cats react to a (running) vacuum cleaner with a laser pointer aimed a few inches in front of it? Which impulse would win out?

Some nifty Flash-based 3D visualisation tech: Papervision, and another example, the world information map.

Seeing a new announcement of a college or university establishing a presence in SL is nothing new, but I was tickled to see the Johnson County Community College apparently has one of those superb hare sculptures in RL, and in SL too.

The comments for this entry need to be enjoyed in their entirety; be sure to expand the threads. Anyone who's had a cat go into heat will know whereof these people speak. ^_^;

On which note, "The United States is one of the world's most undersexed countries, according to a new study released Monday. Just 53% of Americans having regular, weekly sex according to results from the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey of 26,000 people in 26 countries, tying the USA with Nigeria for the second worst spot on the list." (Number one being Japan, with Greece heading the other end of the list)

circuit_four somehow noticed carbon diselenide, an aromatic compound, in the olfactory, if not chemical, sense. "Selenium compounds are, if anything, more intrinsically noxious than sulfur ones. Imagine a sort of hyperskunk, scattering its enemies before it and making them carom off trees and dive into ponds." "The first report of the compound in the chemical literature is from a German university group from 1936, and it was a memorable debut. A colleague of mine had a copy of this paper in his files, and he treasured a footnote from the experimental section which related how the vapors had unfortunately escaped the laboratory and forced the evacuation of a nearby village."

The European Parliament report on fraud in staff allowances I mentioned last time has been leaked by Paul van Buitenen, MEP for the Netherlands. (Irksomely, the BBC article failed to mention where it could be found, but Wikileaks was happy to oblige)

Oh, you didn't think it was just called Facebook, did you? ^_^;

Check out this Flash demo from Adobe that rabitguy found. Then remember it's a massive 25975 bytes. =:D

Some very young jackrabbits someone loving found, and is carefully (and knowledgably) now attempting to raise by hand.

Very much a series of in-jokes, but if you know SL, Gods of Second Life may prove amusing, comprising a multitude of shrines. "Uncle Phil is the Creator from who's loins the world of Second Life and Ruth, the All-Mother have spung. The bringer of Order from Chaos and Pixelated Reality from the Great Void. An effigy of Philip's pants is the shrine of Ruth." The trinity is completed by "The Great Corey". And as the teleporter inscription commands:

"In Yadni we trust | thou shalt build like crazy | thou shalt help the newbie | thou shalt save the freebie"

There are all manner of wonders in SL; but I thought I'd point out a contrary example, in Sun's presence. As our hero illustrates, it's perfectly competently realised, but with an aura of 'okay, now what?'.

An anthology of Tamil swearing, including such invaluable phrases as "You, who is without an asshole" and "Your dick is smaller than the toothpick I have in my mouth".

Visit Beautiful Swindon! (Motto: "Swindon. There can be only one.")

krinndnz pointed out a very handy Firefox plugin for LJ - in particular, you can expand all an entry's comment threads easily.

Very nice. Samsung's shipping a 500GB 2.5" drive - unlike other makers, it's a normal 5400rpm, rather than slowing down to 4200, and 9.5mm high, so it'll actually fit in most laptops. SATA only, but that's par for the course now; unfortunately, the Intel migration from PowerBooks to the MacBook Pros also brought with it the IDE to SATA switch, so it's not something I can drop into Hyzenthlay - 250GB seems to be about the largest available in IDE.

Rather a neat little scribbling on the nature of popularity and commercial success: 1000 True Fans, illustrating what I'd say reflects the future of artistic endeavor, beyond the giant record labels and publishers.

This piece on collaborative architecture's worth a look, concerning the wiki -based design of a new hospital in Tibet.

The California Supreme Court's been hearing arguments for and against recognising marriage between same or different gender couples.

So, I finally got around to finishing off Torchwood s2e5 "Adam" - certainly one of the best episodes, albeit with yet another nihilistic finale. (And that camerawork.. damn, that's offputting. Maybe the BBC can offer a third version for airing: regular, family-friendly, and image-stabilised) Whilst Reset's plot was pretty much just along for the ride, the character interplay was a joy, not to mention seeing Martha Jones back to being her own self, independent of the Doctor.

Getcher FC2008 video! FC2008 video by BigBlueFox here, gerrit while it's 'ot. 1.2GB in two files, 3h35 long.

As Pharyngula pointed out recently, here's an excellent use of 140 seconds of your time, from a galaxy far, far away: A New Pope. =:D

This fills so many of CuteOverload's Rules of Cuteness, it's implausible. ^_^ If you're not having a good day, look here.

moth_wingthane pointed out a WDCS campaign: "In December 2007, the UK Government stated that it is likely to allow oil