Alden Bates' Weblog

I see at long last Google has a Zeitgeist up for New Zealand. Possibly unsurprisingly, the top query is for a well known NZ auction site.

It's... not detailed, but it's something. :)

From JWZ:

"How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software.

Also, Bruce Simpson tells us about the latest copy protection move from the movie industry and how it's likely to be as effective as the copy protection on CDs. Joy! (See also the BBC news story covering this)

Modern Drunkard Magazine presents this item on alcohol in Star Trek, particularly the original series, but also TNG...

Wesley: So you mean I'm drunk! I feel strange, but also good.
Picard: (huffily putting aside his knitting) Because you have lost the capacity for self-judgment. Alcohol does this, Wesley!

Kirk would have challenged the upstart whelp to a Romulan Ale drinking contest, then hooked him up with an Orion slave girl.

Nostalgia presents the best Stargate SG-1 StickFic ever!

*drums fingers while he waits for his PC to return*

Winter/Christmas themed entries I found while surfin' about on BE:

• Santa's reindeer are female
• Things not to do to a sleeping polar bear

Jeff pointed me to Ex Astris Scientia, a formidable Star Trek site. I spent hours reading the "Inconsistencies" section, which has some interesting discussions on TOS versus new-style Klingons, various scientific problems, etc, etc.

Bruce Simpson writes on making electronics less attractive, having been burgled on the weekend and most of his stuff taken. Bruce was previously bankrupted by the NZ government after he designed and built a do-it-yourself cruise missile.

As he points out, even passwords on PCs can be circumvented. I suspect any such measure on electronics such as DVD players is going to have similar problems... Besides which, you'd end up with hundreds of people locked out after a power cut because they can't remember the pass code for their microwave, all calling technical support. :)

Weekly World News: Monkeys Type Shakespeare Play

Ripshaw assembled 5,000 monkeys and an equal number of typewriters. The monkeys were rewarded with bananas every time they filled up a page with letters.

"Ninety-nine percent of it was nonsense," Ripshaw says. "But one of the monkeys put up a blog on the Internet, and it has a big following."

Snicker

Today's Get Fuzzy. Egads, I say. That's a wee bit disturbing...

Edit: I didn't mean to end up ranking so high for Get Fuzzy on Google. My apologies to anyone who landed here expecting something deep and meaningful about the comic and found instead a (now) dead link and two pathetic sentences of comment.

The comic, which is no longer there because comics.com take them down after a couple of weeks, was during a period when Darby was suffering from an injured arm. ISTR it looked like Bucky was doing something obscene to Satchel.

I guess this is more proof Google is broken.

Adoption Centre

This makes me wish I had the software to make SWF files, so I could make a pet Dalek.

Have you committed a thought crime today, citizen?

Best use of Flash EVAR!

Until about half an hour ago, I had completely forgotten that R2D2 and C3PO once appeared on Sesame Street many years ago. I fully remembered the episode of the Muppets where Luke and co turn up, of course, but the Sesame Street episode had completely slipped my mind for the last 20 or so years since I saw it.

But that's why Encyclopedia Obscura exists - to remind us that there are weird and wonderful corners of life which shouldn't be forgotten. Like stupid tie-in products.

It's cool, go browse.

Mr. Rogers' Ghost Terrorizing Children, courtesy the Weekly World News.

"His ghost is the same as he was in life -- sweet, friendly, soft-spoken -- but when you're a floating, transparent wraith, the effect is totally different. Saying 'Howdy, neighbor' and 'Can you say "death"? ' to a five-year-old when you're a spirit is terrifying to them. Children have been freaking out," says Specter.

A workmate 'o mine stumbled on this software called SBaGen which uses your computer's soundcard to generate Sequenced Binaural Beats. From one of the accompanying text files:

The basic idea of binaural beats is that by applying slightly different frequency sine waves to the two ears, a beating affect is created in the brain itself, due to the internal wiring of the brain. If, in the presence of these tones, you relax and let your mind go, your mind will naturally synchronize with the beat frequency. In this way it is possible to accurately lead the brain to various states, according to the frequencies that you apply.

Groovy.