Friday  the Nineteenth of July, 2002

Right, I'm off for seven or eight days of holiday, somewhere. Bear with me.
"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'"
Facetious, but following on from a discussion of a hypothetical Dawn of the Dead Poets Society, it seems that Kipling's If is already entirely appropriate for zombies. Except perhaps the bit about running.
More from the Amazon API; Distant Cousins, a strategic guessing game played along Amazon's shelves. Find two books which Amazon considers to be "similar", yet which have a vast sales gulf between them. Odd exercise. [via Nocto]

Gimmickry: Jump to a Random Archive Link


 Thursday  the Eighteenth

A charming base-10-copout binary LED clock for your bedside. But proper binary wins.
How reassuring. More news sites should have ?headlines=true at the end of their URLs.
The Grauniad pays for some cheap viral publicity. They're running a best British weblog award, the winner to be judged in a couple of months' time - the prize is a thousand English pounds and the bitter envy of your peers. There are all sorts of hidden thoughts and motives going on behind blog entries already, but adding the reader-suspicion that any given blog entry is only there to appeal to a given Guardian judge (they're all listed by name on the site), is only there to try and win some money - annoying.


 Wednesday  the Seventeenth

Ah. An Australian correspondent informs me that their native lyrebird has been imitating mobile-phone ringtones for at least a year, along with its usual repertoire of car alarms, chainsaws and the rest. A miserable footprint of mankind, but I suppose the lyrebirds must be enjoying themselves.
Stick your godlike fingers into a strange and abstract ecosystem.
Amazon Light, a useful Google-style interface for the bookseller I never use, forged externally with their new Web services stuff. Nothing for the UK, though? [via Matt]
The irritation of product placement is as nothing compared to the burning rash of pop-up TV banner adverts, which are apparently slouching towards cable television as we speak. They're being trialled because "audience defense against commercials is exceeding the advertisers' ability to hold on to the eyeballs" - we've evolved the evasive technique of flipping channels or making tea during commercial breaks, so the adverts are fighting back by jumping up and down in front of the programmes we're trying to watch. Awful idea.

In a way I admire the stupid guilelessness of it, but it's only a matter of time before digital broadcasting becomes clever enough to implant product placement on the fly, pasting paid-for logos over billboards in films, planting soft-drink cans on the grid-references of flat surfaces. Different every time, depending on which advertiser paid the most.



 Tuesday  the Sixteenth

"How do I get a better weapon?

You are welcome to add this feature, if you can fit it within the 1 byte remaining."

Wolfenstein 5k; a texture-mapped first-person shooter. Written in Javascript. Written in less than 5k of Javascript. Astonishing. And astonishing how readily one's sense of astonishment scales itself to whatever medium you've got your head stuck in.

As Above

Brain children. Those that overlap the Internet.

Online cliques. Trespassers may be welcome.

In the bookpile. About to read, or currently reading, or meaning to take back to the library.

Incidental music. Ohrwurmen or otherwise.

Other weblogs. The ones I make a point of returning to a lot.

Supporting cast. That have Web pages. In alphabetical order.

Weeks beginning. All having ended.
2002: 15.07 08.07 01.07 24.06 17.06 10.06 03.06 27.05 20.05 13.05 06.05 29.04 22.04 15.04 08.04 01.04 25.03 18.03 11.03 04.03 25.02 18.02 11.02 04.02 28.01 21.01 14.01 07.01

2001: 31.12 24.12 17.12 10.12 03.12 26.11 19.11 12.11 05.11 29.10 22.10 15.10 08.10 01.10 24.09 17.09 10.09 03.09 27.08 20.08 13.08 06.08 30.07 23.07 16.07 09.07 02.07 25.06 18.06 11.06 04.06 28.05 21.05 14.05 07.05 30.04 23.04 16.04 09.04 02.04 26.03 19.03 12.03 05.03 26.02 19.02 12.02 05.02 29.01 22.01 15.01 08.01 01.01

2000: 25.12 18.12 11.12 04.12 27.11 20.11


Archive search. You never know.