paka might get a giggle out of this short, "Tom and His Pals" that mycroftb found, on one guy and his D&D group. Not entirely worksafe. =:D

Here's an insight from a culinary perspective on what makes Ratatouille such a good movie. (One not-quite-spoiler within) "Last weekend Chef Pardus called me to say if I didn’t take my kids that very weekend to Ratatouille, I was a loser. This from the same guy who called me a wuss because I didn’t want to drive 30 miles through a blizzard to make a bechamel sauce."

Peter Davison's apparently set to take over the role of King Arthur in the West End production of Spamalot. ^_^ "It was written by former Python Eric Idle, who recently unveiled his next project - Not The Messiah (He's A Very Naughty Boy) at Toronto's Luminato festival."

Via metaquotes, Ten Quintessentially British Things the Rest of the World Will Never Understand. "You're allowed to drink legally in the UK at the age of 18 which means that most people are seasoned drinkers by the time they hit 16. However, due to immature taste buds and the need for near-constant sugary input, beer is rarely the beverage of choice. So it usually goes one of two ways - Lambrini for girls, White Lightning for boys. They're pretty interchangeable really, with both just tasting like a combination of Capri Sun and gasoline, but teenage boys can't be seen to drink something as feminine as Lambrini (which I believe is Italian for 'teen pregnancy ahoy'), so they stick with the cider."

Fearsomely pointless invention for the day: sliced bread. Not into slices, but to remove the crusts. It was inevitable, though, given the Anglophone world's obsession with fresh, crunchy breads, leading to over 700 dental accidents in 2005 alone.

Ghibli's latest, Tales from Earthsea, isn't one to hurry out for - but I'll note I'm not one for medieval fantasy. After forty minutes, I gave up on it, to resume some other day - as beautiful as any Ghibli production, very good score, but a wretchedly trite story with all the usual generic elements. Whether this is the fault of the original, or a poor adaptation, I can't say, not knowing the originals; I'd be disappointed either way, frankly. Anime News Network has a lengthier review here, which I'd essentially agree with.

A rather different film was Ga-ga Chwala Bohaterom ("Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes"), a Polish tale of a future in which everyone's too contented to bother with aspiring to be astronauts, so prisoners are sent off to distant planets instead. Our hero arrives, but finds things are.. a little odd. Squalid, certainly, but it's the welcoming gifts the enthusiastic official gives him, including a garotte, automatic machine gun, and a bomb. ("Leave it on a bus, during rush hour. Always very popular!") Think of Mad Max and the dregs of Robocop, crafted with the sharp and bleak humor of Brazil.

Baccano! looks like it could be fun - action/adventure in a Prohibition-style gangland setting. With vampires. ^_^ Looks like it might make up for the loss of Darker than Black from the fansub scene.

Here's quite a neat thread on opening the iPhone, noting the progress that's being made. One easter egg of sorts: dial *3001#12345#* and call. It'll launch the FieldTest application, displaying all the cell towers it's seeing, and whose network they're affiliated to.

Time for some Thai, I thought. Not in the least authentic, but you get the drift. Boiling water, four finely sliced bird's eye peppers, a good dose of garlic granules, some basil, a sachet of chicken & mushroom instant soup, about eight thickly sliced mushrooms, three ground up anchovies, some smoked hot paprika, and two cubed pork chops with the fat trimmed off, all left to simmer gently for an hour or two. Then, once everything seemed to have made its peace with each other, the vegetables - plenty of baby corn, some mangetout, and some green beans, plus a small packet of large prawns, left to steam away at itself until the vegetables remained crunchy but the prawns didn't.

Most satisfactory. Not "burns twice", but more "heated seating option".

Tonight, though, I went in a simpler direction, with two parts to it all - vegetables, and meat. First, some baby corn, mangetout, and sweet pepper into the microwave to get steamed up, then into the wok with three teaspoons of a very pleasant sauce from the supermarket: cranberry, Seville orange, and port, tossed around with a little water to form something of a glaze. Out onto the plate, to make way for the teaspoon of chili oil, sprinking of garlic granules, and a bird's eye pepper, sliced finely. After that had had a chance to cook through, in with a nice pile of left-over chicken & stuffing, cubed up. Tosstosstosstosssoysaucetosstosswatertosstosstoss (and again). And then out to join the vegetables on the other side of the plate.

Definitely worthwhile. I could've maybe used two or three peppers, given they've been in the fridge for a fortnight, so they're not as potent as when fresh, but that well-rounded heat played very well with the stuffing, which in turn went along with the delicately sweetened corn and mangetout.

And as a bonus, the fumes ensured I was left alone in the kitchen. =:D

According to a quick wc LJ*, I've written about 115,600 words in this journal. Still some way to go until I top a million.. well, no time like the present. =:)

ysengrin stumbled upon a NSFW gem of a clip in a somewhat unlikely place, over on Scienceblogs, from the co-founder of the evolution weblog, The Panda's Thumb.

Not the ending I was expecting. ^_^ An episode of Profesor Baltazar, an apparently well-known cartoon series in Croatia, with an animation style reminiscent of the Pink Panther.

Ratatouille: what can I say about this that hasn't already been said? Technically excellent, writing infused with the spirits of wonder and wit, and some of the best animation I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. And anyone of a ratty nature will be in heaven - I'm no expert on the genus, but it seems clear to me they spent no small amount of time looking at just how rats move. Without question, this is the best Pixar's ever done. It's not just a good film, but an outstanding one, that left me with that rare blissful glow of having enjoyed something wonderful. Maybe it can bring the same to you. ^_^

8.9 on IMDb, 95 on Metacritic (compared to Pan's Labyrinth's 98).. yes. Not quite as high as Heart of a Dog, though. The next day, I went for a couple shorts: Deathdealer: A Documentary, and The First Three Lives of Stuart Hornsley. The first stars Henry Rollins as, basically, Death. He's in something of a mid-life crisis, feeling he should maybe pick up on a Jack-in-the-Box franchise opportunity that recently opened up, but.. in the meantime, his work needs to be done. So, thanks to a documentary team, we see him going about his duty. It's gallows humor, no question, and the lives ended aren't trivialised. See what you think.

Stuart Hornsley, on the other hand, is about different lives. We meet him in a University hall, where he's busy with calculations on a time machine project, only to be interrupted by a colleague - and somehow, he feels that was the moment when his life went the wrong way, leading him to a Bronx apartment seven years later, assisted by boy wonder Vitali. Stuart gets the notion of trying to change that moment somehow, and succeeds, when he spills his coffee all over his notes.. and returns to a life as a middle school teacher, but still helped by Vitali. It's a lovingly produced short, with an intriguingly different angle to time travel.

And back in the gutter, this very silly NSFW strip, "Sex Toy" absolutely needs highlighting, following mycroftb's discovery. =:D (Hey, silvertomcat, can you record spidermouse's reaction to that? =:)

( That EQ mememajig )

If you want some rather good - and free - retro electronica, produced entirely on a Synclavier 9600, look over here for "Light and Dark Sides of Indigo Blue". Well worth the time - and if you want a copy of the CD, they'll apparently send you one for the cost of shipping. (Many thanks to rabitguy!)

I submit that there must be a movie version of Buster Wilde.

Kerry meets up with one of the key supporters of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth here, in a Foreign Relations Committee meeting. Mr Fox strongly opposes 527s, and is "very concerned with the amount of money that is going into politics". It's delightful viewing. =:D

Pixar commissioned some absolutely gorgeous 1920s Parisienne style posters for Ratatouille, and the artist's been kind enough to share the results. Magnifique! (And best of all, the guy even links to high resolution versions of each poster!)


Very cool to see Paprika (from the director of Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Godfathers, and Perfect Blue) will be getting a cinematic release in the US. So, no longer do I have to make do with the low-res trailer I linked to a while back - there's a shiny HD version now. And a good trailer it is, too. Go see!

Finally, there's a cheap way to enjoy digital terrestrial TV on OS X: the TubeStick. Only DVB-T, so it's no use in North America, but elsewhere, it's a small USB2 stick with some very slick software, for an entirely palatable 40€. (Currently only for Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands; the rest of Europe's "coming soon" - but not Norway or Sweden, curiously, when even Albania's getting into the action)

Here's a nicely odd Flash platformer unearthed by mycroftb: Lars' Adventure.

And if you're in those regions, you might want to observe some of tonight's total lunar eclipse, where the moon falls into the shadow of the Earth, casting it a ruddy hue. "The eclipse begins at 2018 GMT, with the Moon totally immersed in the shadow of the Earth between 2244 and 2358 GMT."

Now worms have a new home.. seems some kind soul's repurposed the Warezov worm to spread over Skype, appearing to be a request from someone on your contacts list to check out a (malicious) link, leading to an unpleasant surprise for anyone running Windows.

The Perry Bible Fellowship continues to rock.

The Furry Song. Genius. =:D

If that's too sensible, try the techno remix of Machadaynu that rabitguy found. (Caution: MySpace ahead) Music of the 21st Century, today!

Your daily dose of woo: Aquamantra spring water ("Energy Enhanced Natural Spring Water that resonates with the energy and frequency of well-being").

mycroftb spotted this gem of a Flash parody: Phoenix Wrong: Triple Take.

Giant rat in Chicago

dronon found that the terribly bittersweet One Rat Short is viewable online. And, there's a Ratatouille animation test around as well, uploaded by Pixar; it's very welcome to see companies embracing the possibilities YouTube and its ilk afford. And! The Secret of NIMH will see a special edition DVD release this summer, from a new HD master. "Actually, we just completed a re-mastering of the film for a new DVD which will be coming out next year. If all goes according to the marketing plan, it will feature an HDTV 16x9 version [no longer on the cards, apparently], a 1:1.85 letterbox version and a full screen version. It will have all the minutia, including negative dirt and scratches removed. We are doing a producer/director's commentary and on camera interviews for the 'extras' in about two weeks. When we know the release date of , we will post it on the homepage of this site. Right now, we believe it will be in March or April. The new master looks beautiful! MGM/UA is releasing it thru 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment."

rabitguy reminded me of a latterday CG classic that, if you've not seen it, really oughtn't be missed: The End (FLV), by Chris Landreth, also director of the Oscar-winning Ryan, based on the life of Ryan Larkin, who recently fell victim to lung cancer.

And Heck No! (I'll Never Listen to Techno) (FLV) is a brilliant bit of stop-motion animation.

Via relee, an eight page interview will Will Wright on Spore.

otter3 noticed computing with bubbles. Be sure to check out the included movies (MPEG-1) - really quite captivating.

Hey, schnee - how's this for a superlative example of overloading information per syllable? We shall now turn to ibneko for a reading. =:D This shirt I must obtain. Yes. Might well appeal to terminotaur too. ^_^ Ars Technica offers an opinion on Macrovision's open letter to Jobs' DRM missive. (Can you imagine it? A company founded on, and selling nothing but, DRM, coming out.. in favor of DRM?) Or, less reverently, a translation from PR-speak. Ah, I see searching in Google Video now returns results from both Google Video and YouTube. A distinctly retarded, nerdy, and funny short: Gates versus Jobs. A new shareholder lawsuit alleges that Intel paid around $100m per quarter to Dell in exchange for keeping AMD out of their lineup, with one year's payments topping $1b. Intel are claiming what substance there is to the suit constitutes a tiered exclusivity discount.

Chris Chibnall, responsible for some of Torchwood's worst, now graces Life on Mars. Oh joy. Still, the first episode was a very welcome return, even if some elements were overplayed somewhat, like the disdain for reporters. And WTH's with the fog-like thickness of smoke everywhere? Yes, smoking was more widespread then, but people could still see where they were walking.

Silly bit of Flash: 1-click. In case you need enhanced visibility for your mouse pointer..

In the process of seeing whether I could intercept a Flash video stream, I discovered a very handy TCP sniffer front-end, Eavesdrop. Very easy to use, whilst remaining fully functional.

A new, very furry music video: Wintersleep - Jaws of Life. Where else will you get to see a bunny driving a car that's transformed into a mechadeer? (Band's site here)

The other clip you should see this week has to be one person's description (FLV) of March of the Emperor, the original French title for March of the Penguins. =:)

Bruce Campbell is inherently cool (FLV), even in a commercial.

Kawaii Not comes up with another gem. =:) On the genuinely cute (and bizarre) front, though, this fruity entry from CuteOverload really needs to be seen. Who knew you could do that with a banana? (And as for rats..) Here's a superb way to waste an afternoon: a Warcraft-inspired Flash game, noticed by patch_bunny. Lay down a choice of towers with their differing capabilities, upgrade or install new ones as you're able, and see how many levels you can annihilate. ^_^; And if someone at the con's reading this: "Are any of you guys that are headed to FC going to be coming through Colorado on your way back? If so, can you accomodate a small animal carrier with 2-4 baby rats in it? Will trade MULTIPLE full color commissions in exchange for transport help."

ysengrin may want to see the trailer for the forthcoming New Zealand film Black Sheep, as shadowolf noticed.

Sounds like a fascinating documentary: American Eunuchs.

Consider, if you please, the lives of dogs and cats. (Thanks to momentrabbit and dagoski!)

As for the iPhone - drop-dead gorgeous, but it's the UI that fascinates me. It pretty much goes without saying that screen will be coming to the other iPods soon enough. If you've not seen it in action, here's a quick demo that'll give you a good idea of just how much work's been put into the device.. so beautifully refined. Or, if you'd prefer to watch the full-blown demo, the keynote and just the introduction can be seen here, or, for best quality, go to the iTunes Store, search on "keynote", and click "Subscribe" on the Macworld Keynote Address. It'll load in the background - 1.2GB in all.

Speaking of which, this Ars thread explores some of the future possibilities of multitouch UIs - it also covers that demo you may have seen, by Jeff Han of MIT. (And if you haven't, watch it now!)

Apparently, its version of OS X - which does indeed appear to be the real deal, simply optimised and relieved of portions irrelevant to the device - weighs in at "considerably less" than 512MB of flash. I wonder if World of Warcraft could run on it.. =:) (Yes, joking, but still.. only trouble is that the critter appears to be Xscale-based, and furtherance of its design seems to've largely stalled in recent years. Perhaps the iPhone might be where the PowerPC makes its return to Apple - there are some quite attractively low power, high performance PPCs around)

Deservedly, comment of the week on The Comics Curmudgeon, speaks of this Curtis strip, "Why the hell aren't glowing telepathic otters the most publicized aspect of Kwanzaa? Its presence in Curtis has single-handedly legitimized this holiday in my mind." "A mother and son accused of stealing a snake from a pet store were arrested when they returned to the store and asked for books on how to care for the animal, police said. Store clerks recognized the suspects from surveillance video taken during the theft and stalled them until police arrived." The question posed in this quiz show is "which of these orbits the Earth?", with the choices being the Moon, the Sun, Mars, and Venus. The pain, the pain..

Parallels Workstation is nifty stuff. Have a look at these screenshots showing OS X and XP applications side-by-side on the same desktop, like any other apps, each running natively within their own OS, no emulation involved.

Could be interesting: a memorial to Carl Sagan in SL, opened by his son.

balor has nobly been researching what may, indeed, be the world's worst book. Don't say you weren't warned. (An excerpt is included. Oh, how you'll wish there weren't.. and no, this is not intentionally bad, and even has a glowing New Yorker review)

I wonder what kind of climate and soil durians can manage in, outside their native areas..

Not that I have a Linux-capable router (or maybe I do? It's a 3Com 3CRWDR100A-72), but if I had one and put one of the router distros on it, is it possible to rig the firewall rules such that traffic coming in unencrypted would only be able to see the internet, not the LAN, and anything using WPA2 would have full access? (Some bandwidth throttling mightn't be a bad idea either, just to be sure no casual visitor on the street wound up slurping all my bandwidth)

Quote for the day from Tycho: "E3 wasn't so much work as it was... It's hard to say what it was, which I suppose is another reason to dismantle it. It was more like our Moose Lodge, a masculine retreat minus the bongos and face paint." (The comic, though, leaves me puzzled, given I was flying intercontinental before I could walk =:)

For OS X geeks, Google's now released an implementation of the Linux FUSE mechanism, permitting the (theoretically =:) easy addition of a range of filesystems. "Examples of file systems that work have been tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on."

Streamburst has a novel approach to DRM - don't use it. Just add a few seconds at the start saying who downloaded that copy, and embed a small off-screen "watermark" confirming that. Buy an episode of, say, Long Way Round for £1.35, and you get a 752x416 H.264 version for DVD-grade playback, 320x176 H.264 for iPods and suchlike, and 208x112 MPEG-4 for phones. An excellent idea, though spoiled a little by remaining only level with the cost of the DVD purchase - in this case, £13 for all ten episodes on 3 DVDs.

Just so neat.. a foil boat floating on a sea of sodium hexafluoride, a colorless gas. A superb quote regarding not actually lapine shoes, but so very nearly. =:) Arashi no Yoru ni isn't just an anime.. ^_^ Interesting take on personal net.radio: Musicovery. Requires Flash, unfortunately, so it's strictly a browser-bound affair, and may or may not be open to non-OS X/Windows folks. Still, it's a novel approach. marko_the_rat might like to peek at some forthcoming Ratatouille books.

Album title for the day: Tim Koch's "Please don't tell me that's your Volvo".

One of the more daffy memes I've seen, so naturally it appealed: on your LJ user info, you'll see your ID number next to your name. Look that up in the US Patent Office's listings, and see what you're registered as. ^_^ I'm just a boring "air inlet device for internal combustion engines", from 1922. Whee, I suck!

Supposedly, Sony will not allow porn on Blu-Ray. As the brief article notes, "It does not matter how you stand to porn. It is here and it is a massive business. It is also an industry that is an early adopter for new media technology. VHS might not have won with out the adult film industry adopting it." That said, does the future of HD porn lie on either format - and there are others in the background as well - or with downloads? An hour of good quality 720p video using H.264 can fit into around 1GB - and whilst that might sound like a lot, with a low-end DSL connection of 2Mbps, that's about 90 mins to download. Scale up to a more usual 8Mbps, or a good cable connection, and that's all possible now, without any additional equipment required.

Torchwood season 1 finale: oh, gods, what bottomless pit of eternal hackery spewed forth such writing? A few good plot points - particularly the ending, and not just because it brought this to a close - but so much sheer wretchedness everywhere else. Was this some fanfic stinker that managed to slip into the script pile? (Ah, I see the writer was also reponsible for the execrable Cyberwoman, and the nearly-as-stinky second episode. Also Countrycide, which wasn't too bad) Still.. there was that rather delightful endcap to the season.

So, another chapter in SGI's history wraps up, with the last of their Mountain View offices closed; they're now all safely tucked away in Sunnyvale. I only managed to visit a couple times, including one occasion where I visited FurToonia's new home, having handed it over (with almost no downtime, yay!) from tbyte to the paws of another wizard who was working at SGI at the time, deep in their network bowels.

I'm impressed by the level of detail exhibited in Wikipedia's entry on "porn".

Rather a cool photo: a man with 800 acupuncture needles applied to his head.

Enjoying a little relaxation in the spa built within the massive ribcage of a long-expired creature.

Plenty of good news in the US elections - a healthy Democratic majority in the House, including a personal favorite, Jerry McNerney deposing senior incumbent Richard Pombo in CA-11. In the Senate, some gains as well, including the removal of another senior figure, Mr Santorum. Four of the six required Senate gains have been called, with Tester in Montana and Webb in Virginia seeming confident their slender wins will be declared. It therefore appears the Senate will belong to the Democrats. [Edit: CNN's results calls Montana for Tester]

Good to see Ratatouille will be getting good support on the gaming front - THQ's going to be launching their game simultaneously on eleven platforms. ^_^ (OS X, Wii, DS, PSP, PS2, PS3, Windows, GameCube, GBA, Xbox 360, and "wireless devices")

The Register's launched their foray into the wild world of podcasting: RTFM. Check out the first one here, and expect similar reverence as the text version. =:) BareFeats compares a rev.A MacBook Pro (Core Duo) with a rev.B (Core 2 Duo) over here, with mostly predictable results, though with one notable exception: it seems Rosetta performance is much improved on the newer processor. Whilst other tasks ran somewhat faster than the speed bump would account for, Photoshop results were dramatically different (57 vs 94 seconds in one test, 115 vs 200 in another). As plushlover noticed, this latest teddy creation from Michelle Lamb is quite remarkable.

The Ratatouille trailer is now live and in HD. ^_^ [Edit: and with full 5.1 audio, too!]

Ooh. The canned summary of that WB exec chat the other day includes "Tiny Toons/Road Rovers/WN Scooby Doo Season Sets - SD 2007 evaluating TT & RR". So, nothing definite, but TTA is on their radar. Another nugget that caught my eye was the unexpected "LT Bug Bunny Nips The Nips/Coal Black: future release with prologue - under advisement with Management for appropriateness".

And if you're in the mood for plenty of good prog rock, rabitguy noticed this nifty archive, courtesy of the Delicious Agony station.

Looks like someone's got their paws on a Merom (T7400 at 2.16GHz) early, and dropped it into a Mac mini.

While reading the sentence "What ten year old could resist kittens?", for some reason, part of my brain decided it'd be fun to insert the word "nasal" before "kittens".

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As the Apple Turns is back! Well, sort of. ^_^ It's actually being produced by someone else entirely, but very much in the same spirit (and design :).

The peerless cheesefest that is the Eurovision Song Contest is tonight! And, theoretically, the BBC will be offering it live, online. It starts at 8pm BST, noon Pacific. For my part, I've not paid any attention to the entrants, so they'll all be new to me, assuming I can get the stream to work rather than time out. There'll surely be a torrent later on, but I prefer watching a live event live, hein?

[Edit: the German entry is Country.. and I'm enjoying it? Help!]

Maybe 2D artists wanting to move into animation (and make money at it) will have a chance after all, as noted in this TIME interview with John Lasseter: 'Before buying Pixar, a desperate Disney had scuttled its traditional animation unit. Lasseter may restore that. "Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney," he says. "We haven't said anything publicly, but I can guarantee you that we're thinking about it. Because I believe in it."'

And it appears that Jan Pinkava has stepped down from directing Ratatouille, to be replaced by.. Brad Bird. ^_^ The teaser isn't yet online anywhere, but there's a detailed description of it here.

In other cinematic news, it seems the live action Evangelion production is indeed still trudging ahead, though with few new confirmed specifics. Apparently it was WETA Digital who approached ADV about the project, rather than the other way around; and Robin Williams is quite a fan, with the Eva figure in One Hour Photo being his doing. Wonder who'll wind up directing.. how about Michel Gondry?

An interesting op-ed on raising US fuel prices.

Here's a hilarious TV spot worthy of The Onion, produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (whose environmental expert, Myron Ebell, earned the dubious honor of censure by the British parliament). The closing line, to give you a feel for it, is "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

plushlover's selling this Watership Down cel (four layers, actually), featuring Hazel, Fiver, Blackberry, Silver and Pipkin. Bid early and often!

SeatGuru is pretty handy if you're taking a flight, and you'd like to scope out what the layout on your plane will be like. It covers virtually all airlines and their craft, noting the exact layouts, remarks on different groupings of seats, and where onboard power may be found. (The answer usually being "nowhere near you, prole")

So, the MacBooks are out (with Ars' review complemented by this one from the comments =:), complete with peculiar pricing on the black model. Overall, they're pretty decent - I was surprised to see Core Duos across the board, given the Mac mini's two models are differentiated by Solo and Duo. Keyboard looks a bit odd. Magnetic latch. Not sure about the glossy screen - it's a widespread fashion, but doesn't it surely lead to greater reflective glare from lighting? GMA950 GPU, so it's not going to be a Quake 4 monster, but the iBook GPUs were always low-end affairs anyway.

Pleasingly, xlr8yourmac reports that Final Cut Studio 5 does indeed run quite happily on a Mac mini with Core Solo, which also uses the GMA950 for video. On the other paw, if maybe to nobody's great surprise, another reader also notes fairly mediocre WoW performance on a MacBook: "All I had time to do was run around Gadgetzan for a couple minutes. I put the settings to their lowest point and within the city (average number of players in town) I got 10-15 FPS with frequent dips to about 6 when turning around. Outside of the city in the empty desert I saw about 20 FPS. In the inn I got somewhere in the mid 20s." (So, about double the speed of Second Life =:)

Interesting to see the Radeon 1600 and its Mobility variant don't seem to be far apart at all - this set of tests pits a MacBook Pro 2.16GHz against an iMac Core Duo 2.0GHz. As the games tests show, it's a fairly even match.

Thinking about drawing, I was wondering if anyone knew of a page online somewhere that compared different races' facial features, maybe overlaying outline images to highlight the basic variations. What do the noses of the world look like? What makes Asian eyes so characteristic? Are Caucasian lips really that narrow? (And just what are lips anyway?)

I noticed this artist could use some commission income, in dealing with a family sadness. Seems like some very nice work, and not expensive.

Ooh. Sanatorium pod klepsydra looks like it should be entertaining..

Quote for the day: "Few things build a stronger friendship than the mutual enjoyment of the same sins."

So very wrong.. Slave Leia Pet Costume, for dogs; with the curious annotation that it "ships worldwide, except Mexico".

The Rise of the Cybermen - well, I'll admit I'm entirely biased anyway, and wasn't disappointed, despite an awkward non-climax. It's pleasing to see Mickey getting a little more attention, beyond merely comic relief. Very cool new design, quite nicely removed from the latterday guy with helmet and silver moonboots, even if straining beneath the indignity of ring modulation. (As someone speculated in yonder doctorwho, was Eccles' confusion over Mickey/Ricky the result of mere bewilderment, or had he visited that universe before?)

It appears Sun is preparing to open the source to Java, once they work out exactly how to go about doing so.

Have you ever switched species? How did that come about? It's not a common phenomenon, as far as I've known, though kaysho did (or were you always as you were?), as did Malin.

Oh, that's not bad.. the sign-up fee for the Embarcadero YMCA is a fairly sane $25, plus $63/mo membership, or $71/mo including all the others in the City. (Bump the joining fee to $99, and it covers all of the Bay) Too early to tell if I'll be able to take advantage of that, but I'm hoping so. ^_^

In January 2006, Gen. Hayden answered questions at the National Press Club. One question stood out at the time: 'No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush administration? Because as Vice President Gore recently said, "It is much worse than people realize."'

There was a silence, followed by the next question.

Now, ABC reporters make the outright claim: they, personally, are being monitored, ostensibly in tracing the sources of unauthorised leaks.

(I knew I'd read that disturbing non-answer before, but dakhun managed to find the full transcript)

For a summary of the way this has developed in the last few months, here's The Daily Show's look (6m18s, 2.5MB) from Tuesday.

Dance, Monkeys, Dance! is an interestingly Adams-like take on life. Or, download it here (9.1MB FLV).

Do computer fans get louder with age? I don't think Ocelot's fan was this loud when it was new, but I could just be remembering it with the rose-tint of a new purchase (in 2001). Hyzenthlay's fan is all but silent, at least for now - I'm more likely to simply feel it's getting hot than hear it, especially if I've got the windows open. (And it'll only come on under heavy load, such as video compression or playback, even when sat atop a mattress)

It doesn't seem to be online yet, but the Paris premiere of Cars was preceeded by a "well received" teaser for Ratatouille.

Ah, how lovely. Just as I'd got into the bath, and looked behind me, I saw a woodlouse scurrying from a crack where the bath caulking's peeled away from the shelf behind the bath. So if I recline, I may be joined by a multilegged guest. Mm.

Of course, an hour after I write that, I feel.. something on my back.

Wow.. up to 91 icons used of 108. ^_^

So many countries left to visit! I need to see all of SE Asia in particular, as far as permissible - as I recall, Laos doesn't like individual tourists, only groups. And maybe Nepal isn't the best spot right now. I think I'd start in Singapore, up to Kuala Lumpur (both well overdue for another visit), then the train up through the central lands to the eastern side of the Thai border. I don't think I want to plan much of it ahead of time, though - that'd spoil the spontaneity of it. Hmm. Maybe I could remain online via Iridium.. only for email, given the hair-raising costs (around $1/MB, as I recall), and scorching 2400 baud throughput, but it would work everywhere. Although I can imagine some Customs folk being upset with such a device.. not sure North Korea's quite ready for an ad hoc cybercafe. ^_^ (Mind, that would be a load of fun to put into action.. parachute hundreds of tough laptops and satellite modems over some rural areas)

I think I'd like to take the Biology GRE, just for the fun of it.

"If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state." - Cate Blanchett

In Second Life, is it possible for perky bunny ears (*beams* :) to be able to express emotion? Directly up and forwards is very different to swept back and parallel to the ground. How about if I jumped up - would they be able to show a bit of momentum as I landed again? Not that the answers are crucial - I'm bound to wind up there sooner or later, though it's a little irksome that I can't seem to dload the client without first creating an account. I'd like to be able to check how Hyzenthlay and SL get on together. Still, it should be sufficient. (And how difficult is making up a furry form for oneself? Though it'd probably make a lot more sense to buy one from someone, especially if they have experience with lapines)

Riba: the Movie (62MB) is a short about a cat who dreams of being a pianist. Quite wonderful.

This processing of Stairway to Heaven, found by vandringar, is actually quite cool. It's been split into eighth-beat intervals, each slice then reversed.

O.o There's now a (Middle Kingdom, 21st-18th C BC) Egyptian heiroglyphics edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, courtesy of the British Museum.

Anyone skilled at S2 coding should, hopefully, know - would it be feasible to use rosequoll's furry "user" icons (replacing the head & shoulders to the left of the username there)? Ideally, it could know which to use by checking the user's LJ info for some tag, otherwise it could just go with a hard-wired list, perhaps. So postings and comments would all have the appropriate icon used automagically.

Was "Bruce" an especially popular name in Australia at one point?

Being of the FPS genre, I'm not sure it'll grab me as a game, but Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror on the PSP does look quite promising graphically. And with music by the X Files composer, too.

Quite a good car advert.

Amongst the many greater and lesser forthcoming animated features noted by teko is another curiously coincidental pairing from Pixar and Dreamworks - but instead of ants, this time, it's rats: Flushed Away (written by veteran duo Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais) and Ratatouille. Thankfully, there's a good separation between them this time - Flushed Away appears at the end of 2006, whilst the latter sadly won't debut until around a year later. Best of all, though, is that Flushed Away is an Aardman production - and Pixar haven't produced a clunker yet. (I'll reserve judgment on Cars)

Find for the day has to be Stereo Ultra, a collection of 1970s French "action" library music. Deeply funky, and apparently long since out of print. Then again, Batman & Robin, with remarkably little to do with the TV show of the time beyond the opening theme, is pretty groovy too. ^_^ Whilst it wasn't credited as such at the time, it was actually a co-production between the core members of Sun Ra's Arkestra and Al Kooper's Blues Project.

When Hyzenthlay's battery reaches 5%, it's time to get out of the bath.