Archive for January, 2004

Friday five: One MILLION dollars!

January 30th, 2004
Posted in The list memes

You have just won one million dollars:

I’m just wondering if the FridayFive people will be sending me the money automatically or whether I have to send them an email first.

1. Who do you call first?

I’m not sure really. I don’t think I’d call anyone, I might email a few close friends, but I think I’d like to keep it a secret as much as I can.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?

One of these, fully loaded, from the shop on Chapel Street. Since it’s walking distance from home. Then, I might buy a bed.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?

Do other people need things too? Well, okay. The first thing I’d buy would be some kind of gardening / spa relaxing package thing for Mica, cuz she needs something like that.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?

Yeah, I’d probably set aside $100,000 and give chunks of it to family and friends.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?

My friend Lance is a pretty good investor, I’ll probably let him take care of a chunk of the cash. I’m not smart like that.

Pixar punts Disney

January 30th, 2004
Posted in Culture & Trash

Pixar decides to look for Nemo elsewhere, and dumps the mouse. CNN has the story. Looks like Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s getting the blame for this one.

It kind of makes sense on a few levels, especially considering Pixar CEO Steve Jobs’ other life as CEO of Apple. Apple’s getting more and more friendly with AOL/Time Warner, a competitor of Disney, who seems to be slowly aligning itself with the Microsoft camp. If Pixar signs something with AOL/Time Warner, I won’t be surprised. I just hope this recent move doesn’t alienate Jobs and Apple from Disney (owning USA’s ABC TV network, Touchstone, and Hollywood Records, among others), whom they need for Apple’s recent push into the content producers market. The press release and the quotes in the CNN article seem amicable enough though.

The terrible, vulgar case of the Shocker

January 30th, 2004
Posted in Culture & Trash

A horrible habit is happening in the hick hamlet of Hannover.

stickerhand.jpg

Rotten dot com is there with the gory details as always.

Hello MUDDA!

January 27th, 2004
Posted in About music

Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno wrote and distributed a “manifesto” about digital music. Whee! I’m glad to see them take a leadership role in whatever’s going to happen next with digital music distribution. They’re both cleverly wacky and creative people, with enough respect to make a difference in the industry. Salon has a story about it and there will be more to come. I’m going to keep tabs on this one anyway.

(Aside: this might work nicely with Apple’s GarageBand and allow new artists without record labels to distribute their music alongside the big guys. Oooh!)

Friday five: Right here, right now.

January 26th, 2004
Posted in The list memes

”... watching the world wake up from history …”

Ooh good questions this time around. I’ve noticed they’re saying “at the moment” – so these aren’t all-time favourites, just how I’m feeing right at this exact second.

At this moment, what is your favorite…

1. ...song?

Either Fight Test by the Flaming Lips, or 54-40’s Pay for Living.

2. ...food?

Jaffas. They’re little orangey-chocolate nuggets of goodness. Like those Terry’s Orange things, but in small bite-sized candy-coated balls.

3. ...tv show?

I don’t really watch TV, I don’t really have the time. I’ve caught a couple of episodes of Monk though, and think it’s pretty good.

4. ...scent?

Bergamot.

5. ...quote?

One that I meant to use as the ending of The real State of the Union of a couple of days ago. It’s from former Prime Minister Jean Chr�tien – a leader whom I thought of as being merely adequate, not necessarily a wonderful one – but this quote is excellent.

“The Western world is … looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy, and with no limits. And September 11 is an occasion for me to realise it even more.”

I never saw it reported in Canadian media, but it’s in SBS’s Australian Almanac as one of the best quotes of the year.

Feel the penguin love

January 23rd, 2004
Posted in Funny

If you’ve been reading this for a while, gentle reader, or if you know me in real life, you will know I have a certain affinity for penguins. There are lots of potential reasons for this, ranging from a kids book called The Penguin that Hated the Cold (my favourite book when I was a young kid) to Opus the penguin from various Berke Breathed comic strips. So I really like the little guys. When I was in Tasmania, I even got close to some. Big thrill!

All that being said, this is still great fun.

iPod tram

January 23rd, 2004
Posted in Geek

Check it out! It’s an iPod tram! I saw this a few weeks ago, and kept forgetting to post the picture here. I even rode on it once. I’m cool by association.

click for larger image

And I’m still lusting after one of those not-even-shipping-yet iPod mini dinguses. Same storage capacity of the one I have now, but smaller and in colours. Hello, nurse!

A solution to the USA problem

January 22nd, 2004
Posted in Funny

Okay. Here’s an idea. We flood the USA with people from another country, who will, though non-violent means, simply take over. The sheer numbers involved will make it impossible for the USA bureaucracy to function. These people will apply for citizenship, look for places to live, set up shops, get library cards, look for jobs, try to get elected, and line up in places.

The current population of the USA is about 300 million people. I reckon for this to be really effective, we need about 400 or 500 million people. That number would truly gum things up for them, and force them to concentrate on internal problems and leave the rest of us alone.

Now, where to get all these people from? It would be easy to use Canadians and Mexicans, but there’s only about 40-50 million of them, tops. There aren’t many countries who could spare 500 million people, so we can eliminate smaller ones like Switzerland and South Africa. The people would need to have a history of passive resistance, an enterprising and clever nature, and it would be helpful if they would want to move – say, being stuck in an overcrowded country. Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky? Yes! India! They’ve just recently passed 1 billion people, so they can certainly spare a few hundred million. I also appreciate the irony of real Indians showing up in North America to displace the “current” indigenous people. Maybe American Reservations can be built, where they can drive around in their traditional SUVs, eat hamburgers and watch reruns of reality TV shows.

Now the problem comes up: how to get these 500 million people to the USA? It would have to be done pretty quickly, say in a week, otherwise there will be time for the USA to prepare for the peaceful invasion and do something about it. I found this flight:

_(click to enlarge)_

Change planes in Amsterdam – maybe we get get KLM to throw in a stopover. After all, we are buying 500 million tickets. It’s only US$872 right now, and they’ll probably do a decent bulk discount for 500 million people. So, let’s say they’ll lower it to $500. That’s 250 billion dollars. That’s a bit expensive. Besides that, if they use 747’s that fit 400 people each, it will take 1.25 million flights – just over two takeoffs per second. Not only would that be dangerous and unsafe, someone would probably notice. What with the return-trip flight time of nearly 48 hours, we’d have to find nearly 400,000 Boeing 747s from somewhere. I have a feeling the world is a few hundred thousand airplanes short. Not to mention massive jet fuel requirements.

Remember that scene in Wallace & Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers, right at the very end during the model railroad chase sequence? Gromit was chasing Feathers McGraw on a model train, and Feathers pushed Gromit’s train onto a dead-end track. Thinking fast, Gromit grabbed a box of tracks and built the tracks as he went. Clever dog.

Picture a giant, kilometre-wide moving sidewalk. It moves at a fair clip, and can build itself, using prefabricated modules, as it goes. We can get the Chinese to build the modules, having proven themselves very well at megaprojects in the past. No one will notice, since they’ve got lots of space in their country, and no one really asks too many questions. As an added bonus, they’re a neighbour of India’s. Hey! Maybe some of them would like to come along too! So we start the moving sidewalk there, and get people on it in kilometre-wide swaths. Assuming that one person is about a metre, shoulder-to-shoulder, that means we can deliver more 1000 people per second through this sidewalk – definitely better than the 747 idea! That’s 86.4 million people per day!

We can run the sidewalk up over the North Pole, and our 500 million people will see a lot of nice scenery along the way. Hopefully the Northern Lights will be in the sky, it would really be a nice trip for them. Then south through Canada – down through Saskatchewan, so no one will notice, and into the USA. After the last bunch has arrived, the moving sidewalk can disassemble itself, and the new arrivals can use the segments as housing or transportation around the USA.

This solves both the overcrowding in India, as well as the dangerous political stance that the USA has taken up recently. I’m brilliant.

The real state of the Union

January 22nd, 2004
Posted in Culture & Trash

No offence intended to my friends that live there, but someone’s got to stop that moron (and, more importantly, his advisors) before they blow us all to smithereens. It’s amazing how it’s clear to nearly everyone outside of the USA that they’re being arrogant and irresponsible, but the majority of the people inside the USA (a small minority of the people on the planet) seem to think everything’s just dandy.

The Independent from the UK has compiled a very disturbing list of facts and figures detailing monkeyboy’s term of office so far. Some samples:

2: Number of nations that Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into the White House

9.2: Average number of American soldiers wounded in Iraq each day since the invasion in March last year

1.6: Average number of American soldiers killed in Iraq per day since hostilities began

221,000: Number of jobs per month created since Bush’s tax cuts took effect. He promised the measure would add 306,000

1,000: Number of new jobs created in the entire country in December. Analysts had expected a gain of 130,000

1st: George W Bush became the first American president to ignore the Geneva Conventions by refusing to allow inspectors access to US-held prisoners of war

35: Number of countries to which US has suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court

58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling

200: Number of public-health and environmental laws Bush has attempted to downgrade or weaken

And it goes on.

If you, gentle reader, happen to know an American who voted for that Neanderthal (although that might be difficult, given that not very many people actually did), slap them please.

Spam, spam, wonderful spam.

January 21st, 2004
Posted in Geek

Yeah, this one’s pretty good. I present it in its pure, unadulterated format:


<PRE>
Good day,dear Vincent! One more time,I ask You to excuse my
bad English))) A few days ago I almost lost Your e-
mail,cause my computer was breaked,but now all OK,as You
can see.I am OK,the money from Your Baltic partners are
received by me.Of course,in that time I shall not a bank
transfer,becauce I dont want to excite Your fiscal
administration))) I put all money at credit card
account �VISA�.And now I can send this card to You or to
that man,whose name and adress You inform me.I shall send
card by Fedex or DHL or others of Your choice.Already I ve
get my unassuming per cents,but I think Your 87500$ make
glad ever You))) (By the way,it is more than You
awaited,isnt it?)))
I hope I shall not teach You to use credit card VISA)))
Moneys recipient (You or Your man) will be absolutely
anonymous for US goverment,because this
card was opened for fiction person in Russia.Its a nice
scheme,isnt it?Of course,it will be a some expensive,than a
bank transfer,just a little,but I think its a better for me
and You. So,during this week,I am waiting an information
from You about name and adress of man,who I shall send the
card.

Now lets about a rest.Vincent! I
ask You to inform Your Partners from Estonia,they must
prepare a new contracts about road-building,but not about
marketing or audit,becauce it will be more convenient for
me.(the Russian Laws is always changing).However,i am not
sure You understand what I say
about)))
How is the weather where You lives? Our weather is bad now,its very
cold.I hope it will better after our President elections)))
I shall always very glad to talk with You not about
business,but You are always busy.Write me at this e-mail at
any time,as You wants.Best reggards! Always
Yours,Nicolai.

P.S. Pin-code from card I send You at this e-mail or send with
</PRE>