Arachnophobic? Try out this little baby.
LHC Rap
Not to be missed: The LHC Rap. I wish all physics was taught like that. Ed: Oh wait, here’s some more =) Don’t miss the Mythbusters video, and the Ruben’s Tube (‘sound on fire’!)
two three
And so another year passes…
These things are going faster and faster every time, I swear.
John Bush?
More marvelous-ness from the Daily Show, having a field day at the RNC:
(Skip ahead to the 4 min mark to get the juicy bit).
Palin, Hypocrite Walking
If there’s one thing I think you’ll appreciate, it’s the following from The Daily Show:
The Daily Show isn’t exactly a bastion of independence, so let the AP sort out a little fact check on various things said over the last couple of days (via Dooce). Here’s another fact-check from AP on Palin’s claim that she “opposed the bridge to nowhere”, when she did no such thing.
I thought it was an interesting nomination, but it’s proving itself to be quite a bit of a farce.
Terms of Service
With the release of the new browser Google Chrome, some people went digging into the Terms of Service you click so fast past, and discovered:
[W]hen you download Google’s new Chrome browser, you agree that any “content” you “submit, post or display” using the service — whether you own its copyright or not — gives Google a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” it.
Update: it’s all ok now, they’ve taken the clause out.
Valleywag exposes a few more, such as Facebook’s terms: (emphasis mine)
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
… essentially, as I read it, giving Facebook full control of whatever you put up on there. And furthermore, here’s their terms of termination:
Termination
The Company may terminate your membership, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the Site or through any Platform Application and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Service or the Site or any Platform Application (or any portion, aspect or feature of the Service or the Site or any Platform Application) for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice.
This kind of shit is getting insidious.
Google has at the very least said they will withdraw the ridiculous clause in the Chrome license, put in due to laziness because “they copied and pasted the text from other Google legalese without thinking”.
…
Which is reassuring in and of itself.
Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War
Charlie Wilson’s War: Amusingly told story of how Charlie Wilson, a smokin’, drinkin’, womanising politician from Texas got the Afghan war of the 80s off the ground. A bit too light-hearted given the relevance of the subject matter today, and unrepentent – the argument being that “it would have been alright if we allocated more money to follow through after the war had been won,” which looks a lot like retroactive re-writing of facts to my cynical nature. ★★☆
The Terrifying Cost of Feeling Safer
The terrifying cost of feeling safer:
“Transnational terrorism across the world leads to an average of 420 deaths a year. With a global population of 6.6 billion, that’s not a big risk. The chance of being killed in a road accident is very much higher… Even the chance of contracting HIV/AIDS would be much higher.”
Ross Gittins points out how much we’re spending to “combat” the emepheral threat of terrorism, and the missed opportunity cost of spending this money on something useful instead.
PSPBook for Mac OSX
This is what you might call a targeted post – if you (a) own a PSP and (b) own a Mac and (c) want to read text files formatted as images on the PSP… well, have I got the program for you :D
A friend (Kelson) told me about how he had a program for Windows that would take a text file as input and spit out images formatted for the PC. I thought, you beauty, now I can read classics on my PSP instead of having to go to the library or buying them. I googled around, expecting only Windows versions, but stumbled upon a little program called PSPBook.
Or rather, frustratingly, links to a program called PSPBook. Links that didn’t work any more, as the creator had apparently moved on and not left any copies around.
Further searching ended up finding the source for it, and what else is a good coder to do than to pick up an abandoned project :D A little bit of tweaking here and there, and we have the following: PSPBook 1.0.3b1.
What this does is get you to select a text file, lay it out in a space that corresponds to the PSP screen, and dump that to a file. Unfortunately, it goes about things in what I consider a clunky way, but it does appear to be a limitation of Apple’s frameworks, unless you really want to rewrite from the ground up (i.e. use CoreText APIs).
You can then copy the files over to your PSP and browse at your lesuire. The program also allows you to tweak the appearance of the text that you’ll be reading. Exporting is a breeze, and that’s about the sum of it :D
This is my first foray into Mac programming, and most of the work was done for me already, with minimal impact from yours truly. It should be a universal binary, though it’s only been tested on a 10.5 Intel, since that’s all I’ve got at home.
The original code was licensed under the BSD license – I’m not a lawyer, but I hope it allows someone to pick up the code should it be available and abandoned. In any case, the original author has been left as the copyright holder, but I’m operating on more of a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license here (do click through there if you’re not sure of Creative Commons).
The app and code is hosted on Google Code, should anyone else feel intrigued enough to pull up XCode and have a poke around (more than welcome to fix bugs, mine or existing!). The previous version is also available, via the repository, should anyone feel like i’ve botched things.
Kudos to Apple for including such a decent set of tools with their OSes – little wonder there’s so much good Mac appery out there.
A Personal Post
Haven’t had one of these in a while, so I thought I’d fill you in on the excitement that’s been happening lately.
I got a MacBook Pro.
Um.
Er…. *scratches head*
Yes, that is just about it. I really, really got nothing. I can’t even say “settling back in to Sydney” because now it’s been nigh on 6 months and I have no excuses. The scary part is that it’s well over a year since I was over in London (I feel like I’ve mentioned this before…). Work continues apace – it’s been a bit nutso lately, as the pressures mount on time and my abilities, but somewhat like assignments at uni I’ve been managing to scrape in at the last minute.
This will catch up to me, one day. Today is not that day, and neither will Monday be. Tuesday, not so sure.
The other thing fun about work is that we’re now regularly playing cards, in a misguided attempt to forget the views we lost. We’re playing 500 at lunch, a game I’d never heard of before, but allegedly it’s “the most popular card game in Australia” (Wikipedia) – go figure. It makes up for a lot when you have people at work that don’t just clock-in-clock-out on the friendship.
On every other front, things are on the boringly staid side of normal. There are some that are vicariously stupendously complicated and unable to be discussed in public. These things I’d love to have a rant about, things I’d love to talk through, but being of sensitive nature to others, it would be insensitive to discuss with y’all, probably even in private.
(and before you get too excited, let me remind you of the meaning of ‘vicarious’)
So in summary, just your stock standard old life. Better luck next week? :)