The life and times of a fallen hacker
Posted in photo friday on Feb 29th, 2008
This week’s photo friday challenge is fuzzy.
My take is the attached image of a koala bear from the Brisbane Zoo. As animals go, these marsupials are pretty close to the top in fuzziness.
Posted in haircut on Feb 28th, 2008
The whole day of adding value at the office (or actually, three offices - today was a busy day) felt slow, cough-y and vaguely distant.
Distant in a strange fashion, like there were an inch-thick insulating layer between the soles of my feet and reality.
Home, the truth emerged, it’s not my thick […]
Posted in thursday challenge on Feb 28th, 2008
The subject of this week’s thursday challenge is travel.
My take is the attached image, of the best-known Paris attraction lit on a warm May evening back in 2005. Haven’t been back to the french capital since, but certainly am planning a return visit.
As usual, clicking the photograph provides access to […]
Posted in photo thursday on Feb 28th, 2008
This week’s photo thursday challenge is hard choice.
My take on the subject is the attached image, of a boat heading into the mist just below the Niagara falls. It took about three seconds to make up our minds whether to go on such a cruise and experience the falls up close and personal. […]
Posted in game of the week on Feb 27th, 2008
If the prospect of a postmodern webgame that concentrates on the wrong side of the internet culture appeals to you at all, ForumWarz is heavily recommended.
ForumWarz is a beautifully realized implementation that emulates the whole internet in a single browser window - be it forums, instant messaging, misanthropic people, suspicious webstores or spam, […]
Posted in biodiversity, web on Feb 27th, 2008
The encyclopedia of life unveiled today crumbled almost instantly.
Sadly, it’s far easier to add capacity to a slashdotted web service than to the multiple threatened ecosystems.
Posted in animals on Feb 27th, 2008
As frogs go, there’s nothing bigger than the newly discovered fossil Beelzebufo, the devil frog.
The attached image is just an imaginative artistic rendition of the critter, but its mere size means that this was one effective predator back in the day.
Posted in naked link, news on Feb 26th, 2008
Unsurprisingly the internet censorship discussion continues, sensuuri.info collects a lot of the relevant documentation, including the pitiful hit rate of the original list of censored pages: 9 out of 1047. Lehti adds nothing to the actual news, it is surreal enough to fit amongst their other content without any embellishments.
Posted in naked link on Feb 26th, 2008
A bout of late night surfing yesterday brought forward an intriguing story from cold war Soviet Union: no-one knows what happened to the nine skiers in Dyatlov Pass, but it certainly wasn’t anything good.
Saw an odd tagline for a new book recently:
PIHLAJANORSU - Ilmiö, jonka nähtyään on syytä viettää päihteetön loppuelämä.
Didn’t think much of it, apart from being reduced close to hysterics in public places several times while puzzling over the nearly flawless composition of the sentence.
Certainly didn’t think that such a creature (rowan […]
I’m a sucker for many things, and one of the elements on the long list is good visualization.
And when well-drawn imagery accompanies in an interesting subject, my interest is piqued even further.
New York Times’ recent interactive take on domestic box office take for more than two decades is enlightening. Movie […]
Posted in books on Feb 26th, 2008
After the disappointing-ish Glasshouse I was wondering whether Charles Stross had over-extended himself with a very ambitious publication schedule. While the premise is intriguing, the pacing is off. The book feels padded, this reverse take of the Stepford Wives could easily have been told in with a much smaller page count.
The […]
Posted in games, naked link on Feb 25th, 2008
For a serious dose of deep space ruminants: Gridrunner++ in flash on facebook. That’s a neat display of platform layering.
Posted in macroday on Feb 25th, 2008
This week’s macroday challenge is part.
And what would be a better take on the subject but a lego brick - definitely a part of something bigger, but not of just a single something, but whatever the builder likes.
My trusty S3 is having a hard time in less than optimally lit […]
Spent saturday evening enjoying some quality electronic entertainment in good company.
Amongst the pinball machines there was one change, Getaway had been replaced with World Cup Soccer, celebrating the 1994 cup played in the states. The game was very pleasant, spent perhaps 80% of the pinball time on it, and liked the flow […]
Posted in movies on Feb 25th, 2008
Saw P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood yesterday. The movie was pre-destined for success in the Academy Awards, but came away with more meager pickings than expected. My take on the film is pretty much the same - it wasn’t all it could be, but by no means a waste of time. […]
Posted in movies, naked link on Feb 25th, 2008
Nice liveblog entry of the Oscar-gala last night. Recorded it, haven’t watched yet, and will refrain from reading this until then.
Posted in games on Feb 25th, 2008
Games Workshop did not waste too much time licensing out their non-book, non-miniature portfolio that they abandoned late last month.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t Green Ronin who licensed the games (here’s Chris Pramas’ thoughts), but a new arrival on the Warhammer scene, Fantasy Flight Games. Their press release, while very much on the […]
Posted in movies on Feb 25th, 2008
Not too bad, hit rate of 50%:
Leading actor - Daniel Day Lewis, check.
Supporting actor - Javier Bardem, check.
Leading actress - Marion Cotillard, nope.
Supporting actress - Tilda Swinton, nope, haven’t seen Michael Clayton, but she ought to be very good to beat Amy Ryan.
Animated feature - Ratatouille, […]
Posted in fantasy basketball, fantasy hockey on Feb 25th, 2008
The warm glow of the bowl victory in the Yahoo’s fantasy football has now faded, and it’s time to take a look how the other instances of Haagan Hakkapeliitat are doing.
The hockey team is doing all right (5th out of 12 teams). The season has been uneven, with a lot of stars […]