Thursday, 31 October 2002
Shitty Hospitals [vagga]
It's amazing, you strive to get better, healthier and all that kind of stuff and it's the small things that trip you up. My arm is currently in a sling as I made shit of it playing football on Tuesday night. I did not do it making an amazing last minute save, or tackling some bloke, no I did it getting a ball that had been kicked over a wall. I went to jump over said wall and fell over it. Yes, right out of Michael Crawford's book.
As a result I spent 7 hours in a hospital yesterday. It turns out A+E in UK hospitals is right as the Sun say they are! For about 3 hours over the middle of the day, no one was called through. I said nothing, as moaning will get you nowhere in that situation. Later, when I was called, I asked if there was a problem, it turns out all the doctors went on a long lunch (3 hours) and did not tell anyone. Nice!
Then I was sent from department to department, and from doctor to doctor. I did an xray on my elbow 3 different times. I would not mind, but these days they take them and they are on computer and they can zoom in on parts of the xray if they have to.
My left arm is not broken, but there is a tiny fracture right near my elbow. I could have gotten a cast, all over my arm secured to my body (like the silly wiener fella in the Police Academy movies), but I chose to take it easy and take my chances instead. Its not a broken back or anything ffs. If I move my arm its sore, but if I just leave it in a sling, its not too bad.
I'm typing this with one hand, so I'm not going to hang about, I just thought I should moan somewhere - and where better than here :)
Tuesday, 29 October 2002
Russian siege [lurks]
I'm sure you've been following the Russian theatre siege by Chechen separatists. Most recently of course, the Russians stormed in and forced a quick end to the situation. They did this when the rebels executed a couple of hostages in the morning as they promised.
The thing is, the war on Chechnya has wide spread support in Russia. It's an example of the power of mother Russia in an era where it's citizens have seen nothing but a steady erosion from glories past. Putin has never been up for any shit from Chechen rebels and the military campaign to crush the rebellion in Chechnya has been brutal with many human rights abuse accusations from both sides of the fence.
Now as a hostage scenario, this one was a nightmare. A heck of a lot of hostages with well armed terrorists. They claimed they mined the entrances and they had suicide explosives attached to them as well. I don't envy any special-forces tasked with bringing an end to this as it seems inevitable that significant casualties will result. The final straw was the claim that they had the theatre rigged to blow as well.
Had these Chechen rebels thought things through, there could only be one outcome. Putin was never going to even negotiate their demands (Russian withdrawal from Chechnya, yeah right!) and he's hardly going to sit there and twiddle his thumbs while they toss corpses out the front door now is he.
So he was going to act but boy, he really didn't mess around. The thing which is amazing is the use of some sort of knock-out gas of such potency that it's killed several of the hostages. Everyone appears baffled by what it could be, given that it caused gagging and vomiting as well as unconsciousness and death. Not a very effective knock-out gas by all accounts or is it?
You see the trouble with any sort of gas weapon like this is being able to inflict a heavy enough dose of a substance on enough of these people that they will be so incapacitated so as not being able to execute hostages or blow themselves up. That's very difficult actually because air distribution is by no means uniform and you need to account for the worse case scenarios. That means dramatic over dosage of a significant number of those which you're looking to expose.
There are knock-out gasses around but the trouble is, soon as a couple of rebels get drowsy and fall over - the rest will calmly execute hostages and then blow themselves up. That's not good enough. So as a tactical decision, using a horrible gas like that which was used, which will have all the terrorists gagging, vomiting and falling unconscious quickly... well, it was a valid tactical decision.
Of course they'll be rather a lot of repercussions. The Russians did effectively kill some hostages themselves but in a numbers game, and that's what this sort of military operation amounts to, they undoubtedly saved more lives than had they charged in without using this horrible gas. Only one rebel blew themselves up. The building itself wasn't blow up, all terrorists dead, 100 odd hostages dead, 600 odd hostages rescued.
It's easy to suggest that the SAS or some other special forces may have been able to do better than this but how would you know, the poxy little televised SAS embassy storming that we're all familiar with is play school stuff compared to the Russian nightmare. I think people will probably start saying 'Why didn't they use another gas' or a dozen some such questions. Hard choices undoubtedly needed to be made and I pity the poor bastard that needed to make them.
The thing is, the war on Chechnya has wide spread support in Russia. It's an example of the power of mother Russia in an era where it's citizens have seen nothing but a steady erosion from glories past. Putin has never been up for any shit from Chechen rebels and the military campaign to crush the rebellion in Chechnya has been brutal with many human rights abuse accusations from both sides of the fence.
Now as a hostage scenario, this one was a nightmare. A heck of a lot of hostages with well armed terrorists. They claimed they mined the entrances and they had suicide explosives attached to them as well. I don't envy any special-forces tasked with bringing an end to this as it seems inevitable that significant casualties will result. The final straw was the claim that they had the theatre rigged to blow as well.
Had these Chechen rebels thought things through, there could only be one outcome. Putin was never going to even negotiate their demands (Russian withdrawal from Chechnya, yeah right!) and he's hardly going to sit there and twiddle his thumbs while they toss corpses out the front door now is he.
So he was going to act but boy, he really didn't mess around. The thing which is amazing is the use of some sort of knock-out gas of such potency that it's killed several of the hostages. Everyone appears baffled by what it could be, given that it caused gagging and vomiting as well as unconsciousness and death. Not a very effective knock-out gas by all accounts or is it?
You see the trouble with any sort of gas weapon like this is being able to inflict a heavy enough dose of a substance on enough of these people that they will be so incapacitated so as not being able to execute hostages or blow themselves up. That's very difficult actually because air distribution is by no means uniform and you need to account for the worse case scenarios. That means dramatic over dosage of a significant number of those which you're looking to expose.
There are knock-out gasses around but the trouble is, soon as a couple of rebels get drowsy and fall over - the rest will calmly execute hostages and then blow themselves up. That's not good enough. So as a tactical decision, using a horrible gas like that which was used, which will have all the terrorists gagging, vomiting and falling unconscious quickly... well, it was a valid tactical decision.
Of course they'll be rather a lot of repercussions. The Russians did effectively kill some hostages themselves but in a numbers game, and that's what this sort of military operation amounts to, they undoubtedly saved more lives than had they charged in without using this horrible gas. Only one rebel blew themselves up. The building itself wasn't blow up, all terrorists dead, 100 odd hostages dead, 600 odd hostages rescued.
It's easy to suggest that the SAS or some other special forces may have been able to do better than this but how would you know, the poxy little televised SAS embassy storming that we're all familiar with is play school stuff compared to the Russian nightmare. I think people will probably start saying 'Why didn't they use another gas' or a dozen some such questions. Hard choices undoubtedly needed to be made and I pity the poor bastard that needed to make them.
Monday, 28 October 2002
The Ickle dilemma [lurks]
After Codeplay went bust, I picked up a couple of PCs from them cheap. One was a regular desktop which I rigged up for a chum of mine and another was a dinky little box which I purpose-built at Codeplay to act as the key server for the software Codeplay produced. I basically found a tiny little desktop case which was incredibly well made, proper steel with a tiny AOpen PSU.
I slapped in one of those PC Chips all-in-one micro ATX mobos, rounded it off with a 1GHz Athlon a 20GB FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) Seagate drive, 256mb of memory in two sticks and that's about it. There's no floppy, no CD-ROM. In fact on the CD/DVD side - the Micro ATX mobo sits the CPU quite a ways forwards and is actually in the way of a full depth CD-ROM/DVD drive so that if I put one in it would poke half an inch out the front of the case. Doesn't bother me but might bother someone else.
Anyhow, I was going to replace my Shuttle SV24 system, Wench, with it because it'd be damn easy to make it silent. All I need to do is replace the silly little 60mm fan on the el-cheapo coolermaster HSF really. In particular I wanted to obtain some decent TV out as well but I think I've cracked that with that MPEG4 card I discussed earlier.
The issue with this dinky little desktop case is that it's slim-line and therefore the PCI slots are 'low profile'. I cannot easily find a place that will sell a low profile firewire card which I'd need for Wench's external storage. On the bright side, it has an AGP slot and crap loads of nvidia cards are low-profile factor. Not that it even appears to needs replacing, the KM133 integrated video TV-out is good.
Audio/LAN is all on board etc. There's room for another drive in the case for a 'phat' one and it's got a couple of PCI slots - you just need 'low profile' cards and to remove the brackets.
So what do I do with this machine, anyone want it? It's an ace little server, preinstalled with Win2K on it so far. Doesn't seem very floggable on EBay? I suppose the correct course of action is to try harder to find a low-profile firewire card and replace Wench and then EBay the Shuttle. Hmm.
I slapped in one of those PC Chips all-in-one micro ATX mobos, rounded it off with a 1GHz Athlon a 20GB FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) Seagate drive, 256mb of memory in two sticks and that's about it. There's no floppy, no CD-ROM. In fact on the CD/DVD side - the Micro ATX mobo sits the CPU quite a ways forwards and is actually in the way of a full depth CD-ROM/DVD drive so that if I put one in it would poke half an inch out the front of the case. Doesn't bother me but might bother someone else.
Anyhow, I was going to replace my Shuttle SV24 system, Wench, with it because it'd be damn easy to make it silent. All I need to do is replace the silly little 60mm fan on the el-cheapo coolermaster HSF really. In particular I wanted to obtain some decent TV out as well but I think I've cracked that with that MPEG4 card I discussed earlier.
The issue with this dinky little desktop case is that it's slim-line and therefore the PCI slots are 'low profile'. I cannot easily find a place that will sell a low profile firewire card which I'd need for Wench's external storage. On the bright side, it has an AGP slot and crap loads of nvidia cards are low-profile factor. Not that it even appears to needs replacing, the KM133 integrated video TV-out is good.
Audio/LAN is all on board etc. There's room for another drive in the case for a 'phat' one and it's got a couple of PCI slots - you just need 'low profile' cards and to remove the brackets.
So what do I do with this machine, anyone want it? It's an ace little server, preinstalled with Win2K on it so far. Doesn't seem very floggable on EBay? I suppose the correct course of action is to try harder to find a low-profile firewire card and replace Wench and then EBay the Shuttle. Hmm.
Women are from Venus [slim]
Don't normally regurgitate the joke spam on here, it's a bit lame, but this one's pretty good I thought...
Remember the book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus'?
Well, here's a prime example offered by an English professor at an American University.
Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.
The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent.
There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.'
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca and Gary.
STORY:
first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favourite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. 'A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,' he said into his transgalactic communicator. 'Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far...' But before he could sign off a b luish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman w ho had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
'Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,' Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things round her. 'Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?' she pondered wistfully.
(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.
Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters o n the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. 'We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow'em out of the sky!'
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semiliterate adolescent.
(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. 'Shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels.'
(Rebecca) Asshole.
(Gary) Bitch.
(Rebecca) Wanker.
(Gary) slut.
(Rebecca) Get f*cked.
(Gary) Eat shit.
(Rebecca) FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!
(Gary) Go drink some tea -- whore.
Remember the book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus'?
Well, here's a prime example offered by an English professor at an American University.
Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.
The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent.
There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.'
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca and Gary.
STORY:
first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favourite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. 'A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,' he said into his transgalactic communicator. 'Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far...' But before he could sign off a b luish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman w ho had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
'Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,' Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things round her. 'Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?' she pondered wistfully.
(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.
Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters o n the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. 'We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow'em out of the sky!'
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semiliterate adolescent.
(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. 'Shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels.'
(Rebecca) Asshole.
(Gary) Bitch.
(Rebecca) Wanker.
(Gary) slut.
(Rebecca) Get f*cked.
(Gary) Eat shit.
(Rebecca) FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!
(Gary) Go drink some tea -- whore.
Does constructive criticism work? [lurks]
I'm currently doing my big weekly shop at Tesco.com. Given I live in London, don't have a car and it's only a fiver to deliver as much as I can order - this is possibly the best thing about the Net to date. However, I noticed that plenty of the site is broken. It's simple stuff, they've got searches targeting the top frame leaving you with no navigation and broken javascript.
So I dropped them an e-mail and told them about all the stuff that's broken. I've done this before on on-line retailers, most recently Insight and with them I got a good response back agreeing with my points. Mind you, most of them ignore me and I'm pretty sure Tescos will. Does anyone else do this sort of stuff?
So I dropped them an e-mail and told them about all the stuff that's broken. I've done this before on on-line retailers, most recently Insight and with them I got a good response back agreeing with my points. Mind you, most of them ignore me and I'm pretty sure Tescos will. Does anyone else do this sort of stuff?
Sunday, 27 October 2002
Where are all the UT2K3 players? [lurks]
UT2003 has been out for awhile now. I'd expect there to be quite a lot of people playing it but there isn't. In fact there are less people playing it than Soldier of Fortune for Christ's sake. Given that what people are playing it are split between game types, this thins it out yet more. I quite like Bombing Run but it's actually darn difficult to find a server with anyone on it, even now on a Saturday afternoon. In fact there's less than 150 people playing Bombing Run now!
It has to be pointed out that CS has even /more/ people playing it now. 78,000 players as I write compared to UT2003's 3,100. Normally novelty counts for a lot and you see a good early peak but that's just not coming through at the moment. Is it still too early to tell or are we looking at UT2003 being a bit of a fizzer?
It'd be a shame, I was really warming to Bombing Run but then again... there's not that many maps and a couple of them are shite anyway (BR-Slaughterhouse in particular).
It has to be pointed out that CS has even /more/ people playing it now. 78,000 players as I write compared to UT2003's 3,100. Normally novelty counts for a lot and you see a good early peak but that's just not coming through at the moment. Is it still too early to tell or are we looking at UT2003 being a bit of a fizzer?
It'd be a shame, I was really warming to Bombing Run but then again... there's not that many maps and a couple of them are shite anyway (BR-Slaughterhouse in particular).
Friday, 25 October 2002
dot what?! [lurks]
I just got a letter. At first glance it appeared to be a lame letter from one of those domain poacher type fucks. It basically goes like this;
You currently own ........ MATS.NET
NOW available for $500 ..... MATS.BZ
lol! No I didn't stuff that up, I didn't mean .biz. We're talking .bz. For $500. Ahahahahahahaha!!!! Some scam from some Canadian lamers called neteka.com. You think anyone actually falls for this crap?
You currently own ........ MATS.NET
NOW available for $500 ..... MATS.BZ
lol! No I didn't stuff that up, I didn't mean .biz. We're talking .bz. For $500. Ahahahahahahaha!!!! Some scam from some Canadian lamers called neteka.com. You think anyone actually falls for this crap?
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