Sunday, September 11, 2005

annoying comments

Blimey no comments for ages and then three in one night! Two of which may well be from robots. Had to implement that text authentication thingy to try and stop that. How annoying.

One of them was rather amusing though. That heavenly credit money on earth thing. You know who you are...

Harry Potter blah blah blah

At last I have read the new Harry Potter. Brill. Actually I read the back and saw he was meant to be in his 6th year at school and thought "hang on he is about 11 isn't he?" so I had to read all the others before I could read this one to remember what happened. Actually, by read I mean listen to Stephen Fry reading them to me. I wish I could hire Stephen Fry to read to me all the time, he is amazing! Really one of the best audio books I have ever heard, he does all these voices and accents for all the characters so they are instantly recognisable when they speak, and when there is an arguement between to characters with different accents it is amazing. So when I read this one, all the characters had those accents it was wonderful. Highly recommended to anyone.

I won't say anything about the book to spoil it, just that I am soooo pleased XX turned out to be eviiiil!!!!!!!

On another note, whenever I think of Harry Potter I hear that voice saying "Hairy Poe-tar" from that terrible advert a couple of years ago with the American voiceover putting on an English accent. Why do they do it?

R.I.P. Guardian Life section

Tragedy has struck the Guardian once again and they are reformatting and getting rid of the Life section (a science supplement in collaberation with Nature that comes out on Thursdays). Of course it was a bit rubbish in the main, and all the jobs were actually in IT (which is not a science I would hasten to add), but the first couple of pages were an excellent read, excellent enough for me to actually buy it! They do say that they will do a page a day to replace it, but I am still too tight to buy it every day.

Sadly it has gone the way of the Editor, the old Friday supplement that was even better and gave a weeks update of the news from all the papers. That died a death about 3 years ago and was mourned greatly by myself. It was good enough for us to get someone back home to buy it every Friday and send it to us when D and I were travelling. Way better than the Guardian Weekly was. They said they would do a page a day to replace that one too, but that didn't last so I imagine that the promises for the science page will not be fulfilled for long.

Also it is rumoured (as in the editor said it, and then denied doing so) that they are taking a step to the right. Oh deary deary me. What will I read now?!?!

Speaking to Aliens

Apparently we should all be carrying around a bag of small onions and luminous watches so that we can communicate with aliens when they get here. I was watching an informative clip from a TV show of the past this morning...

It seems that in 1966 the Tomorrow's World boffins had considered the fact that aliens may not speak English, or indeed any earthly language. One of them suggested the use of luminous dial watches to emit "hard radiation" which may well be detectable to them. He even was helpfull enough to construct a picture of the plough constellation using said watches, as an attempt to determine the origin of these aliens. Of course he noted that they may well communicate by smell, and proceeded to exchange the watches for... onions.

Hmmmm.

iPod nano

My iPod mini crashed and died the day after the iPod nano was launched. Coincidence? I think not...

Thankfully after wiping the whole thing and restoring the factory settings all is well. Hoorah.

I personally think they are making a mistake downsizing the capability of the iPod. But I suppose this gives them the opportunity to bring out a new iPod nano maxi super smashing great in the next few years.

Nice that you can get a white one that is small though...