Posts by Tim Jenkins 468 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2007
Made me think of the opening sequence of "The Martian Chronicles" (1980), where the camera pulls back to reveal the city just out of sight of Viking 1. Still haunts me, that image...
(about 2m 15s into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWen9WZhztU , and try not to be watching it 4 1/2 hours later)
I'm sure Uncle Vlad would be delighted to find out who chatters on FB from a Russian I.P. about his little incursion into Ukraine, just so his chaps can pay them a visit and make sure they are not planning anything naughty, like disagreeing with it in any way. Likewise the Chinese and those misguided HK democracy activists, Free Tibet campaigners or followers of religious 'cults'. Then there's the current Thai regime and the rabble-rousers making dangerous gestures from a bad sci-fi movie, various Gulf States regarding the promotion of womens rights and religious tolerance, the caring and sharing rulers of assorted 'stans and anyone they're not actually related to, geriatric kleptocracies across Africa and local LGBT campaigners....
All those potential 'terrorists'; it's going to get busy out there....
such as the poor sods in SC&O19 who have spent the past couple of years polishing their G36s and staring at that monstrosity of a building:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_Ecuador,_London#mediaviewer/File:Ecuadors_London_embassy_-_September_26,_2012.jpg
I mean, those twirly bits on the balconies are going to start looking like eyes after a while...
A quick visit to her brothers Action Man / GI Joe collection and voila, Peshmerga Barbie
http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/oct/09/kurdish-peshmerga-fighters-women-on-the-frontline-in-pictures
(Showed my daugher those pictures and she cheered; I must be doing something right...)
Yup - both of ours had subscriptions for a while, but now one is surgically attached to her smartphone and the other is on Minecraft (or rather watching other people play Minecraft on YouTube, which is apparently just the same, duh, Dad). Not a word of protest when I cancelled the recurring payments, which, to be fair, Mind Candy does make very easy. Now, if only I could get back those AOL ones...
Mobile communication, particularly via cellphone, but extending into other devices, IS heavily implicated in Rotherham and other recent cases, though. The ability of the groomers to reach into the childrens lives at any time of day or night using the handset they have given them has become a significant controlling influence which wouldn't have been possible in previous generations, limited as they were to a single (and probably monitored) landline in a care home or other institution.
Quite a high proportion of them aren't entirely equipped to grow beards at any stage; something to do with x's and y's, from what I dimly remember about O-level Biology (always got that bit confused with Algebra, which could explain my dire Maths A-level result). Does that mean they don't ever get to use Linux, even if it came in pink?
I suspect it's not just the thick walls that attenuate wifi; after encountering several otherwise inexplicable not-spots inside modern or recently converted buildings, I'm wondering if the increasing presence of metallised film on higher u-value plasterboard, and/or those foil coated bubble-wrap insulation blankets that get nailgunned into thinner internal stud-wall voids are having an effect too.
You left out the inevitable group of short-haired chaps in black hoodies and shiny boots who, shortly before starting the ritual kicking-in of the window of the Mc Ds opposite Horse Guards, are usually to be found clustered around an older guy with the unusual nickname of 'Sergeant '...
And receiving a very restrained (and possibly quite sensible) response, judging from those pics and the Buzzfeed movies and comparing with similar events in my own misspent youth. No armoured robocops visible (just a few helmeted serials in hi-vis), no drawn batons, no blinders (sorry 'torches'), no face-flattening round shields, no kettling for an hour or five. Maybe the Met is over-budget for clubbing hysterical Italian LSE 'anarchists' by this point in the year....
And to think our local fireworks display was boasting about the £2,500 they spent last night.
Mind you, their wizz-bangs lasted longer. And with more colours. And they had those cool ones that whistle as they spiral, which was more than that Antares did...
My supposedly 'smart' Toshiba (about a year old, though admittedly end-of-line at the time) which was sold with BBC/iPlayer logos plastered all over its box, stickers and paperwork, now seems unable to digest the new iPlayer format using its inbuilt app, and just hangs on its loading page. No sign of a firmware update on the manufacturers support website, and given their past record, I don't particularly hold much hope for one. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in iPlayer-on-a-device. Interestingly, both Netflix and Youtube HAVE managed to maintain compatibility with this model despite significant revisions to their own offerings.
Happily, it's only just occurred to me that the Sky+ HD box has an iPlayer client, which I've never got around to firing up...
Just speed up the inevitable and feed the root servers a dictionary or ten*, then allow every word in any language as a TLD. What could possibly go(dot)wrong?
I love that (dot)wang is now available as a gTLD (fnarr, fnarr), and the rest of the list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#ICANN-era_generic_top-level_domains) has some other 'interesting' ones, apparently:
"The .ROCKS new generic top-level domain... is designed to channel the enthusiasm of millennial-generation youth. Individuals, bands, and youth-oriented businesses will all want to jump on board. .ROCKS is so widely applicable that it can truly be all things to all people. Geologists, of course, will be likely to register domains like igneous.ROCKS." (sic) (http://www.uniteddomains.com)
*I know it doesn't really work like that. Probably.
I refer you to the following:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/61579.stm
"...a retired naval pilot from Nipomo in California is being accused of the greatest feat of global manipulation ever. And all because his name is Al Nino... "
(love the 1998-vintage web page too ; )
Ah; the Salmond effect: as long as Alex repeats the magic mantra "everyone in the newly formed country will be able to get broadband" enough times, it will become true, along with keeping the Pound and the Queen (although I'm happy to concede on that last one, as long as they promise not to let any Windsors stray south of Balmoral ever again).
Netflix works fine on my Atom-chipped San Diego phone running ICS, but the iPlayer client still doesn't (some issue between 'droid on Atom and the underlying BBC media database thingy, apparently). Even Chrome was broken for ages on Android-Atom, then fixed, and now works OK except that the latest update from the Play store won't install (again). Some popular games also aren't compatible with this hardware/OS combination (Minion Rush, for example), and neither was Firefox last time I tried it. Hopefully as more Atom devices appear with Android on board, developers will start testing on them too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Routemaster puts the cost of a new RouteMaster (aka 'Boris Bus') as £354,000, so those 470 units would come in at about £170 million (assuming no discount for bulk).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26124894 gives the cost of an F35 at around £60m per plane (£150m+ if you allocate infrastructure, training, support etc.)
So, somewhere between 1 and 3 strike jets, or 470 buses. Now there's a strategic decision worth pondering, particularly if we could have ex-Gurkhas as conductors and Boris himself driving the lead vehicle through the gates of Kabul...
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