Another day off work. Able to go round the supermarket before it gets busy, which suits me fine. Don't need to go till the weekend, now. Hit the post office, get some of the Yuletide cards in the post. The ones to foreign parts.

And trying to prepare some CDs. One is a fairly direct copy, but it hits errors when reading one particular file. This is not good. I need to try alternate methods.
Another is a compilation of some files on my computer, including some in MP3 format. Most of the ones I make are far too noisy and choppy to use. Then I remember that there's a virtual amp in use, and it's taking its settings from that. Remove the amp, and everything is hunky-dory again. Yay.

Dead Ringers, the best BBC Radio comedy show in ten years, is to move to television in a pilot show next year. Culshaw, Ravens, Perry and Connolly will impersonate Blair, Perkins, Widdecombe, and the entire village from The Archers.

A comprehensive definition of wind chill and heat stroke. Including a nifty calculator to work out how cold it really is at certain temperatures.

byron c go:
byron, who remembers when 640x400 (not even 480!) was big for a portable display
Hey, some of us remember the heyday of the 80x25 screen.

Some of us even remember the 23x22 screen (and 20 bonus points to anyone else who remembers *that* computer;)

Another week, another virus. This one's called Bad Trans, and yet again infects users of Microsoft operating systems, reading mail through Microsoft programs. If you can't practice safe hex, be careful out there.

The producer of Harry Potter tells his star not to take a call from Michael Jackson. "I don't want him to become part of the cult of celebrity..."
Geri Halibut claims that Bridget Jones is a heroine, as the two share a lot of experiences. Odd. I don't recall Jones leaving all her work colleagues and becoming boring.

Speaking of Plastic Man... Plastic surgery is so yesterday for Michael Jackson. These days, the Clown Prance of Pop prefers the pixel to the scalpel for his makeovers. Appearing on CBS in a recent concert, Wacko had digital graphics engineers darken his skin in broadcast footage. After the show was taped in September, retouch artists altered 100,000 frames of the footage with the aid of a Henry Machine. The technique was also used to remove his sweat and flesh out his sunken cheeks, and to add virtual weight to a starved-looking Whitney Houston. [tvbarn2]

Another of those major geeky moments...
One of my colleagues receives a virus that our mail server has rendered ineffective, but not removed from the email. It's in the form of a printout. About eight pages of closely typed, incomprehensible garbage.
Quick as a flash, I use powers of 2 to work out the size of the file... 2^6 rows, 2^3 * 10 columns, 2^3 pages. That'll be 10 * 2^12 ... "About 40K?" I ask. 40K is exactly what it says on the tin.

An excellent summary of why the US may go into Iraq. Way too long to reprint here, but well worth reading. [mefi]

A pensioner has completed a twelve year trek round every Asda supermarket in the UK. The Bristol man says that his next trek will be right round the US to visit every store of parent company Wal Mart. After this, he might find somewhere that sells sandwiches at a sensible price.

Chris Kelly:
How about discussing how the text message phenomenon is affecting people's vocabulary and also how it is causing an inability to communicate on anything but the most superficial level (this is actually a bit of a personal beef of mine).
While this is a peculiarly European phenomenon, and hence not particularly appropriate for a US essayist, it is a topic that bears discussion.

For the uninitiated, European mobile (cell) phones come complete with something called Short Messaging System, which allows users to exchange short messages. The limitation of the 128-character set and the 160 character limit arises from the small packets (2^14 bits, each message uses four packets) used to transfer data on GSM phones, and the fact that the packets are optimised for voice error correction, not data throughput. But I get geeky again.

A random sample of cell phones (hi, Jae) in the US shows that this system is less standard, and is not part of urban culture.

To expand: Because they have a limited number of digits a person can fit into a communication people have started to abbreviate pretty much any word that has more then four or five letters in. This is resulting in what is, in my opinion, a huge literacy deficit between those of us who grew up having to write letters and the younger generations who have always had access to quicker and more convenient methods of communicating. (that sounds incredibly pompous, but hey!).
The fundamental aim of communication is to convey an idea from one person to another. The medium, to some extent, is subservient to the content. This doesn't make it acceptable to spell accommodate with only one c, but the fundamental meaning is not lost. Change one character on these SMS transmissions and the whole meaning could be scrambled beyond recognition.

As for the inability to communicate on anything but a superficial level, i just wonder who it's possible to express any real feeling/emotion into 60 digits of abbreviated slang!
Split this into two parts: abbreviations can allow the underlying message to come through. But if it can be conveyed in a microscopically short message, there may well have to be some gross simplification in order to squeeze into the space available.

Or, to put those thoughts into SMS lingo...
Abrvs lt thnks ot Shrt msgs lk dtyl
(Abbreviations let thoughts [thinks] out. Short messages lack detail.]

Readers may have noted that the original requester (Cory) was referred to as an "essayist," a word that might bring to mind the great academics of history. This was quite deliberate, and shows the sort of nuance that would be lost if all sentences and paragraphs were restricted to lengths dictated by the technology, not by regularised and recognised rules of grammar.

So, just when I'm beginning to get into the swing of things, the boss goes around nit-picking at every pernickety thing. And blaming me for things that are wrong with a PC that was set up last Friday. When I was *out of the office.* She doesn't expect to have to look out for things that I've not done; by the exact same token, I don't expect to be required to check the work of competent other people. Still, logic was never her strong suit.

How To Annoy... The Religious Reich. When Christmas comes around this year and all those workers from the Salvation Army take to the streets, have a card ready to slip into the pot. The card will let them know that I really wanted to contribute money for them to help the needy at Christmas time, but because of their homophobic philosophy, I have taken the money I would have donated and have given it, instead, to a local AIDS organization.

Mayor of Florida town issues official proclamation banning Satan. "Be it known from this day forward that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis. Satan is hereby declared powerless, no longer ruling over, nor influencing, our citizens." The representative of former Texas governor George Bush said that his client would no longer be visiting Inglis.

Apparently, there are people who need to be told how to shop at a record store. I shake my head in sadness. [mefi]

Rev Victoria W:
Sorry for sending a forwarded message, but this reminded me of a certain Brit with a bat, so pleasee forgive me.:)
Why ever should a Generic Spoiler remind you of bats up your nightdress?

Spoilers for Every Movie Ever Made
Warning! Spoilers!
Let's see. I've run the Generic Buffy Spoiler before, and put in the Generic MSCL Spoiler yesterday.

How's about a Generic Dawson's Creek Spoiler... All, some, or fewer of the following happen. Pacey dates someone completely inappropriate. Jen hops into bed. Joey makes half the audience squirm gleefully in their seats. Dawson uses long words he doesn't understand.

Or a Generic Weakest Link Spoiler... Which village is missing its idiot? Whose brain is not getting out of first gear? Where did the colour in Anne's costume go? Why are all the contestants such idiots?

More Generic Spoilers follow... if you want them.

Seen And Heard This Week

The Weakest Link: Family Special Extended to an hour in order to battle the new Richard and Judy show. It's too slow for its own good. (BBC2, 5 Mo)

Shafted In which our two contestants deprive each other of £207,000. ITV, deciding that the show is about 2.07m viewers light, shelves the remaining episodes. (ITV, 8:30 Mo)

The Interminable Penalty Shoot-Out First round replays in the FA Cup this week, including one between Forest Green and Macclesfield. It went all the way to the wire, the teams couldn't be split after extra time, so a penalty shoot-out loomed. And started. Radio 5 interrupted its football phone-in to take commentary on the spot kicks. The penalty shoot-out has been dubbed high drama, but this was more prolonged farce. Tied at 4-4, and with neither side in a hurry to take their kicks, it just went on, and on, and on. Adrian Chiles in the studio, and the match reporter Miles Harrison drained their limited store of facts about both sides (Forest Green has never eliminated a league opponent, and, er, that's it) before the visitors won on the 24th kick. As dull as watching paint dry, yet strangely compelling. (Radio 5, about 10:15 We)

Harrison's Death News broke just before 8:15 Friday morning, when Terry Wogan was in full flight on Radio 2, and Virgin was on commercial. Most unexpectedly, the most heartfelt coverage was on Talk Radio. Alan Brazil's breakfast show is meant to be devoted to sport, but this broke the format. Clearly caught unawares by the news - it was 15 minutes before a pre-packaged obit appeared - Brazil and his co-host (whose name I missed) played clips of Harrison's best writings and performances, and reminisced without getting at all maudlin. Astoundingly stirring stuff.

The World Cup Draw Unlike The Interminable Penalty Shoot-Out, this was not compelling. An hour and a half of people prancing about, and twenty minutes to pull a few balls out of a glass bowl. Draws never make that exciting viewing, but this is really the worst. (BBC2, 10am Sa)

Goodbye, Ant and Dec The saviours of Saturday morning television leave SMTV / CDUK after three years. Mariah Carey is totally upstaged, Denise van Outen has a (literal) walk-on part, and the whole thing is controlled chaos. We'll miss 'em. (ITV, Saturday morning)

An unexpected cable outage means I don't get to find who has won the bobsleigh in Germany. Not a disaster, and it's all back on line in little more than an hour. Still unnerving.

The Rest Of The News

Four soldiers from the Special Air Service were wounded in Afghanistan and flown back to Britain. Chancellor Gordon Brown said in his pre-Budget statement that the British economy would grow by between 2 and 2.5 per cent next year. An extra £1 billion would be spent on the National Health Service; the chancellor said he ‘would not rule out tax rises’ in an attempt to improve the NHS. Blair telephoned Costas Simitis, the Prime Minister of Greece, about 12 British aeroplane spotters, 11 men and a woman, who had been in jail for a fortnight on spying charges. Loyalists called off their 12-week picket of children going to the front entrance of Holy Cross primary school in north Belfast. Sir Richard Branson took delivery of one of Virgin’s new tilting trains intended to travel at 140mph on the West Coast route to Scotland; but delays on improving the track mean that they will not be able to go at 125mph until May 2003 or at 140mph until some unknown date. Marks & Spencer sold for $225 million Brooks Brothers, the American clothing chain which it bought for $750 million in 1988.

The Northern Alliance took Kunduz in northern Afghanistan from Taleban control. Before it fell, perhaps 600 mainly non-Afghan Taleban prisoners, captured at Kunduz and held at General Dostum’s headquarters fort at Mazar-i-Sharif, took up arms against their captors, killing perhaps 100, and, with the help of American air power, being killed themselves; 30 held out for more than a day, and perhaps 100 Northern Alliance troops were killed. After a quiet period in Israel, three days saw the deaths of 13 Palestinians, including seven children, and an Israeli soldier; two Palestinians then shot dead two Israelis in Afula and wounded 50 before being shot dead themselves. Israel said that her Shin Bet security service had arrested 15 Palestinian militants funded and trained by Iraq. King Gyanendra of Nepal declared a state of emergency after Maoist rebels killed 80 police and soldiers, losing 200 dead themselves, in four days. President Mugabe of Zimbabwe accused Western journalists of supporting terrorist opponents of his rule. A company in Worcester, Massachusetts said it had cloned human cells as a source of stem cells for experiments. A fire in Phnom Penh destroyed hundreds of shacks and left 1,858 families homeless. An aeroplane crashed in woods near Zurich killing 24, including an American pop singer, Melanie Thornton, who was on tour to publicise her solo album Ready to Fly.