Monthly Archives: February 2006

Still no McRubbish

I’m at least six months into my no-McDonald’s quest and still going strong. There’s absolutely no reason for me to eat there at all – even a friend of mine that’s a McDonalds manager won’t touch the stuff.

I’ve even started eating cous-cous and increased levels of vegetables and fruit. My bowels are much happier for that fact.

Down with tasteless, unhealthy food!

See more progress on: Never eat McDonald’s again

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Filed under 43 Things, Is this supposed to be good for you?

One-liner orgy

Fill your boots with these atrocious one-liners as supplied by Matt:

Energizer Bunny arrested — charged with battery.
A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative.
Practice safe eating — always use condiments.
Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.
Corduroy pillows are making headlines.
Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.
Sea captains don’t like crew cuts.
Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?
A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.
When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Every calendar’s days are numbered.
He broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.
A breakfast boiled egg is hard to beat.
A lot of money is tainted. It t’aint yours and t’aint mine.
His photographic memory was never developed.
When you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
Those who jump off Paris bridge are in Seine.
When she saw her first gray hair, she thought she’d dye.
Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
The short prison escapee fortune teller was a medium at large.
Without geometry, life is pointless.
Dreaming in color is a pigment of your imagination.
A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.
A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
Dijon vu — the same mustard as before.
Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
When egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.
A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two-tired.
A backwards poet writes inverse.
In democracy, your vote counts. In feudalism, your count votes.
Definition of a Will: a dead giveaway.
Pay your exorcist, or you’ll get repossessed.
A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
You’re stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
He fell into an upholstery machine, but is fully recovered.
Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France = Linoleum Blownapart.
Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft, and I’ll show you a flat minor.

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Filed under "Jokes"

New 'linux cafe' opens in Toronto.

New ‘linux cafe’ opens in Toronto. Groups of open source enthusiasts meet there regularly; GTA-lug, Ruby, Python, Asterisk and the Toronto 2600. Linux newbies hang around and gurus visit. There’s a row of penguin buttons and t-shirts and pocket protectors are on the way. Open source, open kitchen, open atmosphere.

No doubt I’ll be hoping to visit this café when I stay with my sister later on this year (if I ever get the flights booked – sorry sis!)

read more | digg story

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Filed under Geekery, Toronto

Superman!

superman.jpg

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Filed under General Chunterings

Tag, you're IT (4-fold Meme)

Aine has tagged me for this internet meme, so here I go with my selection of fours:

Four Jobs I’ve Had

Admin assistant for a Credit Company (robbing bastards – temp job in my teens)
Post room worker (another temporary job)
Telecommunications Technician in the Royal Air Force
Telecommunications Engineer for Ericsson (was Marconi)

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over

The Lord of the Rings (the whole trilogy)
The Matrix (first one)
South Park The Movie (classy)
Toy Story

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

Alias
X-Files
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dark Angel

Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation (in this millenium)

Toronto
Rome
Skegness (well, kind of a holiday)
Toronto

Four Favorite Dishes

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Steak and Kidney Pie
The Chinese Chicken Curry from my local take-away
Pasta Pesto

Four Websites I Visit Daily

Gmail
Dotdragnet
Bloglines
Newsvine (new entry – straight in at number four)

Four Places I’d Rather Be (if I had money to go)

Toronto
Italy
San Francisco
Outer Space

Four Bloggers I’m Tagging

Mattian (UK)
Arvind (UAE)
Greg (UK)
The Geek (Canada)

Ok you four, your turn. Give us your lists of Four and then tag Four more bloggers (if you even notice your referrals!).

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Filed under General Chunterings

Software to Watch DVDs and All Multimedia Files on Ubuntu

Shows where to get the “restricted” libdvdcss2, win32 codecs and other binaries required to complete you Ubuntu multimedia experience. Includes links to the .deb pacakges in case the repositories are down just when you need it.

read more | digg story

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Filed under Geekery

BBC launch climate change study screen saver

Similar to distributed super computers such as the SETI @ Home project, the BBC along with a bunch of Universities and the MET office call on users to help predict weather patterns.

It’s an interesting-looking project and it even has a Linux-flavoured version of the screen-saver too. I’ll be trying this later as my PC is always left on at home and it might as well be doing some good.

read more | digg story

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Filed under Geekery, In the news, The Interweb

Newsvine

I’ve had an invite for a new website that allows you to comment on recent news articles, provide links yourself or even write your own articles. It’s called Newsvine and it’s looking very promising. I’ve seeded a few news articles today to see how it all works. Unfortunately you need to have an account to read the contents at the moment.

It looks a bit like Digg in some aspects, in that people can comment on the news and the number of comments (or “diggs”) determine whereabouts it appears on any given page, but it also seems pretty well designed. I’ve been able to create an RSS-like feed in the sidebar – it’s actually created by Javascript and called JSS – so you can see what I’ve been seeding.

If you’d like an invite to this then please let me know and I’ll send one over to you. It does look like a promising site.

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Filed under The Interweb

Why technology companies hate their customers

So, who’s expecting to be able to play High Definition DVDs on their top-of-the-range home-built PCs then?

Some people are going to be disappointed that their beefed-up box is going to be denied the ability to watch HD DVD due to their machine being locked out by a new kind of Digital Right management (DRM) called HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection).

We’ve been able to confirm that none of the Built-by-ATI Radeons support HDCP. If you’ve just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920×1080 resolution in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

The article goes on to explain that nVidia customers will have the same problem, though if you buy a HD-ready machine from the likes of Sony or Dell then you’ll be fine.

I have no idea how this will affect Linux or Mac users.

Way to go, yet another “innovation” in user-friendly product development. One more way to lock-down users into buying over-priced hardware.

Source: BoingBoing

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Filed under Geekery

Ten things you need to know about procrastination

There’s an interesting article HERE about procrastination, something that I’m afflicted with.

There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination. Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.

OK, so I’m going to draw myself out of my usual torpor and argue that point. Procrastinators don’t tend to chose paths, stuff happens to procrastinators and we’re just usually too lazy to do anything about it. The reason that bills get paid late is that we really can’t be bothered to do much about anything. It’s not that we don’t care about these things, it’s just easier to do nothing.

I’m especially guilty of the “do nothing” mentality and I really wish sometimes that I’d just get my thumb out fo my arse and get stuff done.

I only got to the first of the ten things. Can someone do me a synopsis of the others?

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Filed under The Interweb