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Message Archive |
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Bend time... - Posted on 4th Oct, 2006 at 14:09 |
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Quizundril: Noun. To perceive something from the future, and use said knowledge to create the thing (notion) in question - essentially an idea that creates itself via recursively looping through time. This violates the common-sense notion of forward-chaining causality, but however sits comfortably within quantum physics and special relativity. All conciousness is at least, a Quizundril. Be part of a Quizundril today! |
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The non-specific 'they' - Posted on 9th Jun, 2005 at 22:43 |
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The term "they" has two main modes of usage in everyday language. "See those guys over there, what are they eating?" the following was an example of a 'specific' they. Choosing a group of individuals, and in context, referring to them. The second, more baffling usage, is of the non-specific variety, for example, "They say eating more red meat will give you longer fingers", wherein the "they" in question refers to "other people, not to be specified". This usage, will undoubtedly be followed up with either "Hrrrm, you don't say...", or a counter-they in the form of "I heard they said it was actually more exercise and less grapes that did that". This essentially means that all parties in the conversation actually rate the opinion of "other non-specified people" higher than they rate their own opinions, or they believe they have such little credibility of there own, that they have to drag vague imaginary people into the conversation. If you were to ask "who are they?" my experience is that the most common responses are "Oh, I read it somewhere", or "Oh, scientists said that. Yeah, science guys". The problem with the first response is one of the issues with all forms of literature (this is especially apparent for the internet). People do in fact believe everything they read. There are countless inaccuracies in a huge number of popular publications, one only has to cast their eyes over a trashy women's magazine to realize that. The second "scientific" explanation is always given and accepted, even though, most of the time, when spoken out of the mouths of scientists themselves, most of what they say is ignored completely. I'm reminded of global warming articles I read as a child, and to this day the US government still hasn't signed the international Kyoto accord, specifying carbon emission standards. Maybe all what's required is for one of Mr Bush's friends to say to him: "I hear they said that all this smog is causing global warming" "Hrrrm, you don't say...." |
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Fuckit. - Posted on 19th Apr, 2005 at 11:31 |
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I'm starting to become one of those people who just posts links to other peoples sites as opposed to creating something original on my own. But fuckit. This is cool. This will eat up your time. |
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Bash. - Posted on 18th Apr, 2005 at 14:30 |
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The tragedy of Canada is they could have had British culture, French cooking, and American technology, but instead they got American culture, British cooking, and French technology. |
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Hahahhaa - Posted on 13th Apr, 2005 at 13:43 |
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best thing ever. All the nuclear explosions in the world. Classic. |
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I give up.... - Posted on 12th Apr, 2005 at 16:34 |
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The fact that MTV journalists fall for such an obvious prank essentially sums up the current state of the music industry. I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be that bad if Tool didn’t post an April Fools joke EVERY YEAR. MTV also fell for the “The whole band died in a bus crash” April fools joke back in 1997. MTV.com article Ungh. |
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I'm tough. - Posted on 6th Apr, 2005 at 18:41 |
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I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said: "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said: "You'll be sorry." He said: "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said: "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well." |
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Pope. - Posted on 4th Apr, 2005 at 15:04 |
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Since everyone seems to be getting-off like spade-wielding necrophiles over the Popes recent demise, I feel like I have little choice but to add my thirty-five pence to the discussion. For fans of brevity, I’ll save you reading the rest of this posting by summing it up in one quick statement: I don’t really care. As far as I’m concerned, it’s once less person around who’d have liked to make me feel guilty for exploring the roots of my own humanity. Sometimes I feel as if I’m left chanting logic from the top of my tongue, only to have it bounce off the spontaneously decided ideals of others, only to be left wallowing in a pool of my own dribbly saliva. The Pope is inherently an endorsement of this strange idea known as ‘Religion’. I appreciate belief, as I myself have beliefs born into me in ways so subconscious and important that I couldn’t live without them. The important difference is that juxtaposed to this reliance on belief, I am more than happy to tear down my personal philosophy in seconds if I believe that my own doctrines are at all ill-informed. I'm happy to let them grow naturally, as I do. I’ll also listen to anyone who tries to enlighten me toward any edification, willingly with an open mind. Belief and Religion are often unfairly intertwined. The term ‘religion’ has a very vague definition, because even though it explicitly refers to an organized belief structure based around a higher being (ala Christianity), it can also be used to describe: A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. [dictionary.com]. Due to this added definition, religion can really be seen to describe any form of commitment. And because of this, it soon becomes incredibly confusing as to what the hell anyone means when they refer to themselves as ‘Religious’. Because of this, in talking to someone who considers themselves a ‘Member of the Roman Catholic religion’, it can now be seen that that doesn’t actually mean anything. So what is it exactly that the Pope was endorsing? What am I endorsing? Ultimately it’s irrelevant, since neither the Pope of myself have any really convincing answers to anything important. At least, not yet. At the moment, my personal doctrine consists of a pretty basic idea:
That way you’ll have such dynamic beliefs you might just be able to skip the middlemen altogether. |
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Happy Birthday! - Posted on 4th Apr, 2005 at 11:24 |
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I’d like to say a big happy birthday to my smelliest friend, Mat Darlington. Happy birthday mate. Have a good one. Mathews engaging website sits at the aptly named Mad-Mat.com, so be sure to check out his ramblings and hideous drawings. |
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Internet Company. - Posted on 24th Mar, 2005 at 15:37 |
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Sometimes, working for an internet company can be quite confusing. Project managers seem to be able to come up with enigmatic buzz-words faster than I can google for their definitions. I've finally found a tool that will help me keep up. I'd write more, but I have to go and benchmark mission-critical paradigms. |
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The London Underground. - Posted on 18th Mar, 2005 at 14:33 |
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Maybe it’s because I’m essentially a public-transport newbie, but I can’t help but feel that large portions of the London Underground must have been designed by drunken chimps with a sense of humour. I have a relatively simple journey to make each day; Catch the overland train to Waterloo, and then catch the Northern line to work. Obviously during 7am to 9am, there is roughly one squillion people making the same commute. It becomes obvious that just after a few seconds that maybe station layout might have an effect on the efficiency of the entire system? Maybe the monkeys missed a trick, but I would have thought it made sence.
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David Hasselhoff. - Posted on 25th Feb, 2005 at 16:31 |
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The funniest thing i've seen in a while Read the user reviews. My Review is the one titled 'Progressive.', by 'MusicLover'. I advise you write your own. |
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Job Title: 'Fantastic Parrot' - Posted on 9th Feb, 2005 at 10:35 |
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Fantastic Parrot This position will require the "curtailment" of various things. Although the above requirement can be interpreted as the reader sees fit, there is one serious consideration that is vital to meet the prerequisites for this position. To be considered, all applicants must have some degree of "transcendence" coupled with a strong desire to pretend to learn advanced yoga positions. The pay rate for this position will change dramatically and unpredictably, the only constant of which will be that your salary will be paid into a small octopus than lives near my house. Any and all applicants will be treated well, each receiving a handsome, well-made bag of Freon nuclei. Sorry for wasting your time, Pedro Gonzales It's my birthday today. I'm 23. |
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Hahhahahha, Oh Christ. - Posted on 30th Jan, 2005 at 21:09 |
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You can’t make stuff up this good. *phone rings* “Hello, David? Yes. We’ve got your phone back from being repaired. Please come in and pick it up when you’re ready.” “Great, about time. I’ll be in tomorrow.” The next day. “Hello, my name is David Bishop, my phone has come back from getting repaired, and I’m here to collect it.” “Sure. Ah, found it. Sign this… Fantastic. All done.” “Cheers” (Still being polite at this point, more relieved to finally have my phone back). Outside Vodafone, I think to myself, “what the hell”, and give the camera a quick check. It doesn’t work. I walk back into Vodafone. “Hello, maybe I’ve missed something. The camera on this phone still doesn’t work.” “What, wasn’t that why it was sent away to get fixed?” “Yes.” (All politeness quickly evaporates leaving a harsh and unforgiving desert) Ten minutes of fiddling with my phone. “It doesn’t seem to work sir.” “Yes. I know. That’s why I brought it in to get repaired, two weeks ago.”
Back to Vodafone in Putney. “They mustn’t have been able to fix it.” “Why did you ring me, tell me it was fixed when it wasn’t? Why am I here?” “Look, it’s not my fault; it says here I can get another phone delivered here in a week” “You told me that three weeks ago. Look, this has been a complete joke. A month ago you sold me a broken phone, and now a month has passed and nothing has been resolved. You’re given me a complete run-around, and wasted hours of my time.” “Sorry, it’s not my fault.” *very angry stare* “Look. I’ll be back in a week. You had better have sorted this damn mess out.” How many pages long should my official complaint be? |
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Wierd... - Posted on 28th Jan, 2005 at 15:10 |
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I've seen some strange things in my time. This is up there. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know. The URL listed doesn't seem to work... |
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Reed Online - Posted on 27th Jan, 2005 at 16:38 |
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Why is it that after I hold a discussion on development processes everyone agrees: "Yes, that's an excellent idea, that will save us time in the long run, and improve software quality". However, within moments of leaving the meeting room everyone is back to their old habits, demanding massive functional changes hours before build/deployment time. Of course this massively error-prone approach undoubtedly causes bugs to eventuate. Once these bugs are detected, the project managers nod their heads knowledgably and exclaim "there are lots of bugs in this release, perhaps we shouldn't do as many releases and more testing". I bang my head against a nearby wall. Of course when you are doing pointless and irritating partial-deployments every night, little time is left for actual development as hours are spent hacking together fixes for the most recently released batch of unnecessary and immature functionality. I always assumed that the term "project manager" had a slightly different definition than that of: "waste half of everyone’s time with pointless changes, ever-changing functional requirements and repeated work". I’ve had a bad day today.  |
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Phanaeus vindex - Posted on 25th Jan, 2005 at 11:25 |
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Over recent months I have noticed that I am starting to have more in common with the ‘Rainbow Scarab’, an insect more commonly known as the Desert Dung Beetle. I say this, because living in London, dealing with English companies is like pushing shit uphill. My Grandmother, an ex-pat, would always complain to me about customer service in Auckland, she would tell me they were rude and that they “couldn’t talk properly”, not like back home in England. At least Auckland has customer service. In London the customer is never right, and it would seem, not deemed important to business. As my last post examined (I still don’t have my phone back), people here will never spend the actual 10 minutes right there and then to solve whatever problems they generate, but they’d rather do nothing, blame you, and make much more work for themselves in the future. Fun examples: Dell: When my newly purchased £1200 Dell laptop didn’t arrive on the date stated, I rang them up to enquire as to where it was. They informed me they couldn’t find my address. After confirming the address they had was in fact correct and that they were useless, they then told me they could organize delivery on Saturday. Upon asking them why they didn’t call me or email me to confirm the address on the Friday (or to organize another day for delivery), and as to why I had to take a day off work for no reason they replied with “oh, sorry”. Delivery did only cost me £60. Upon calling again on Saturday, they told me they had no record of any of my conversations with any of the three Dell staff members, and that delivery was scheduled for Monday. Any self-respecting dung beetle wouldn’t put up with this shit. Vodafone: Fucking useless idiots. They have wasted hours of my time, and it’s still not been resolved, all because they sold me a broken phone. They seem to insist this is somehow my fault. BT: British Telecom has finally resolved our internet charges dispute, and all it took was about five emails and speaking to every single employee and manager of the entire organisation. In good faith, we signed up for BT dial-up Internet, it sounded like a good deal, £1 for your first month, and then only £15 a month. Upon receiving our phone bill, we were a little perturbed to find we had been charged £80 for 80 hours worth of internet. Here is a brief rundown of what happened: “Why have we been charged eighty times the amount we thought we should be charged?” “It seems here you dialled using the wrong phone number” “We didn’t enter in any phone numbers; your connection software did it all. We never even knew any of the phone numbers” “It sounds like our software might have a bug” “Yeah, it does” “Sucks to be you” “We’re not paying £79 for nothing” “We’ll cut off your phone” “Let me speak to your manager” Repeat this exchange five times. London does however have good customer service in bars. I’m going to go get shit-faced. |
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Gay Vodafone. - Posted on 12th Jan, 2005 at 21:21 |
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Buy a new phone for £60. Camera doesn't work. "Hello, can I please get a replacement phone" "Sure, we don’t have any at the moment, come back in a week" One week later. "Hello, I came in about my phones camera not working, you were organizing me a replacement" "Sorry, we don’t have any replacements, I can offer to have your phone repaired under warranty, and give you a temporary phone to use" "Great, I'll do that" "Sorry we don’t have any replacement phones currently, come back in a week, I’ll make sure we have a replacement" One week later. "Hello, I came in about my phones camera not working" "Ahh yes. We've got a replacement. I'd replace it now, but our computer system isn't working, come back in a few hours" Four hours later. "Hello, I came in before about my phones camera not working" "Ahh yes. I remember. Our system is a bit shaky, I’ll try lookup your transaction so I can issue a replacement" 20 minutes of typing and waiting. "Ahh, I found it!" "Great, lets replace this phone!" "Oh, look, really sorry, I don’t have any replacement phones of that model" "Why the hell have I been waiting here for the last half hour?" "Listen, really sorry. I promise they will be able to fix your phone whilst you wait at the Oxford Street Vodafone store" *writes down directions* "Ok, fine" 3 days later, and after a half-hour walk in English rain, I arrive at Oxford Street branch. "Hello, I've been getting jerked around my the morons at Putney branch Vodafone. I know this isn't your fault, but I’d really appreciate a while-you-wait repair on my phone" "Sure, no problem, oh. wait. we can't actually repair that model phone. The staff at Putney have misinformed you" I'm going to go into Putney branch and punch that fucking pimply retarded defective meathead in his smelly face. |
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Great, another web logger. - Posted on 11th Jan, 2005 at 11:00 |
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I hereby promise to be as boring and illiterate as every other web logger currently on the Interweb. I also predict that the only person to ever read this site will be me, as I narcissistically read my own postings, and giggle to myself at how clever I am. (Note to self: I’m awesome) Thanks to Dan for letting me have his sexy new Blogging software, and it’s completely free! Check out his site at: www.lunarbuggy.com |
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