Things I’ve Seen

From Computer Stupidities: Hardware Abuse

Fact: Boston Computer Museum sells chocolate bars shaped like floppy disks.

Fact: Three year old kids see daddy boot his computer using a floppy to play games.

Fact: Computers are warm inside…even some quite expensive computers.

Thanks to New Matilda, I found this excellent Australian blog called “Turtles All The Way Down”

Its like you crossed Lynn Truss with Media Watch and then focussed it on Radio National:

The Law Report on Radio National is very good, but when you hear someone referred to as “a champion athlete and father”, don’t you have flashbacks to a primary school teacher hurling in your general direction a piece of chalk and the perceptive words, “Oh, he was a champion father, was he?” The ABC needs some chalk throwers, or at least some primary school teachers.

So, Tim Berners Lee now has a blog

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.
Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline.
… Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn’t crazy to think people needed a creative space.

Thinking of giving up coffee?

In case you ever consider getting off caffeine yourself, let me explain the process. You begin by sitting motionlessly in a desk chair. Then you just keep doing that forever because life has no meaning.

So, the other evening I was looking up an article that I remembered reading in bloglines. I initially thought it was on OddThinking, but when I couldn’t find it, I thought maybe it was written by girtby.net. Fortunately, there was a link on OddThinking’s blogroll to girtby, so I followed it.

I’m sure that it was just a typo by OddThinking, but instead of girtby.net I ended up at girtyby.net. If you go to girtyby.net now you’ll find a relatively innocuous search page - but last week it contained some very unworksafe images… which are presumably now cached on my laptop

A cheap gag from the comments at John Quiggin

John Howard: “Hey Kim, joke for yer - when is an Opposition not an Opposition?”
Kim: “I was just going to say that!”

Via brainsnorkel, this is the transcript of a class divided, the story of Jane Elliot’s lesson in discrimination

Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. They are cleaner than brown-eyed people. They are more civilized than brown-eyed people.

The show is also available in streaming video.

The Blowfly Alarm Clock

Set the time on its base and leave the Blowfly there. When the alarm activates, it spins a propeller and flies up above you making ridiculous noises. The only way to stop it is to wake up, grab it, and set it back down in its docking station.

From Real Live Preacher

What if we could do church any way that we wanted?

UK readers in particular might be interested in the Good Gifts Catalogue

Peace is paying dividends in Sierra Leone. The same civil war that depleted the country of tools and work is now providing ample raw material for recovery: weapons. Enterprising blacksmiths and metal workers convert them into farm implements so that a Kalashnikov becomes hoes and axe heads and a rocket launcher transforms into pickaxes, sickles and even school bells.
The indisputable heavyweight champ is a tank (or a heavy duty 16 wheeler) that can provide a year’s work for 5 blacksmiths, turning it into 3,000 items vital to equip a farming village of 100 families. Jobs, tools, agriculture. It isn’t everyday that what you long for comes true.

For £1,000 you can buy a tank…