Monthly Archives: April 2006

Young people today

Posted on April 30, 2006 by acb

For a really jarring post-modern experience, you want to read “this”:http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2006/04/straight-ovtta-londoun.html while listening to “this.”:http://www.ninagordon.com/audio/straightouttacompton.mp3 They are both improbable translations of the same song. If you click on the second link in an open-plan office, you will probably lose your … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Young people today

Plagiarism

Posted on April 30, 2006 by acb

I was impressed by “the arguments”:http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003068.html#more put forward on _Language Log_ that the Harvard student whose novel with a silly name has been withdrawn may well be as innocent as she claims. The longest consecutive stretch of plagiarised words from … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Journalism | 2 Comments

Unbudget flights

Posted on April 29, 2006 by acb

It’s been years since I flew a full-price airline anywhere in Europe. This is partly because i live only about fifteen miles from Stansted, Ryanair’s hub airport; partly because the cheap airlines are so very much cheaper if they are … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Travel notes | Comments Off on Unbudget flights

In Praise of OUP

Posted on April 25, 2006 by acb

The news that OUP “have done a deal”:http://www.oup.com/online/englishpubliclibraries/ with British libraries[1] to make their online reference works available made me rummage around for a piece I wrote in 1996 for British _Wired,_  when Oliver Morton and Sean Geer were running … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Net stories | 2 Comments

A better vat for the brain in your life

Posted on April 23, 2006 by acb

An [“astonishing story”:http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn9038&feedId=online-news_rss20] from the _New Scientist:_ an engineer at the University of Illinois has built a prototype retinal cell out of silicon. The idea is to replace damaged cells in human retinae with something that is a lot better … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Science without worms | 1 Comment

Ongoing improvements

Posted on April 23, 2006 by acb

Jeremy Henty asked in comments what was the God and Darwin conference. It’s “at the British Academy,”:http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2006/darwin/index.html on Friday this week, and it is sold out. In fact, it was someone in the comments here who told me about it, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 1 Comment

Test …

Posted on April 22, 2006 by acb

this should be an entry on the sqlite backend. Ha ha! Movable sodding type: consider yourself pwnzed. I strangle Mena Trott in the intestines of Larry Wall and I _dance!_ Continue reading →

Posted in nördig | 3 Comments

Some short silly links

Posted on April 21, 2006 by acb

* The man whose “idea of fun”:http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2006/04/mmmworms.html is picking through slug shit to find what they’ve been eating. With his son. * The Peter McKay column in the _Mail_ claims — I can’t find this anywhere online — that the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 2 Comments

small spam tweak

Posted on April 21, 2006 by acb

It occurs to me that there is one very simple adjustment could be made to any spam filter: if a message contains “u” and “ur” as separate words, it’s not from anyone I know or want to know. How to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in nördig | 8 Comments

Final note on SQlite and MT

Posted on April 19, 2006 by acb

They are two wholly loathsome bits of software. I’m sure it’s possible to run a Movable Type blog on sqlite if you start from scratch, but once you have a couple of thousand entries, it’s impossible to copy everything over. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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