For always and for always, I pray remember me
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Osymandias" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:26 pm
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Torchwood
So, watched the Torchwood thing. Admittedly it was a lot better than the two episodes of the first season that I watched. On the other hand, still has the ridiculous fixation on the idea that melodrama and deus ex machina make for good story.
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06:41 pm
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In trying to talk about sheep for a while there are numerous problems I might have to face
I wrote a song about sheep whilst on the bus back yesterday.
A sheep is a hardy remarkable creature
It lives on the mountain where nothing else grows
But give it a lawn and some grass for to munch on
And watch as its health and its happiness grows
I don't recommend keeping sheep in your house
Or letting one loose on your manicured lawn
For you may come home to find poos in the kitchen
And all of your grass most haphazardly shorn
For a sheep it is not an inside sort of pet
It is perfectly happy outside in a field
It's not terribly bothered about getting wet
But still, give it a shelter beneath which to shield
A sheep it is known as a most wooly creature
It gets rather warm in the summery time
So get you some shears of electrical nature
To shave it all off, and you'll both be just fine
The sheep will be glad that it isn't too hot
And you can sell the wool for a reasonable fee
Or spin it and knit it all into a jumper
A comfort for you (but too itchy for me)
Erm... there were a few other verses, I think, but I forgot them.
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10:57 pm
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And every stop is neatly planned
Rose appears to be trapped in Birmingham New Street train station. One of these situations where having a car would probably come in handy. Hopefully her stepmother may be springing to the rescue.
Meanwhile, I continue to play the field with programming languages, getting excited over Scala. Sadly, the languages I find myself getting excited about are never the ones people want to pay me to play with, and I'm useless at thinking of my own projects to carry out.
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09:44 am
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John the wood went out one day
For some reason they seem to have given me two dreamwidth invite codes. If you want them, let me know.
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06:55 pm
[Link] | Meme from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) teh_elb: a quiz answered in song titles.
( I really don't mind if you miss this one out )
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05:10 pm
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Ode to a Goldfish
For National Poetry Month:
Oh brave little goldfish,
Thou gallant and bold fish,
To circle all day in that water, so cold, fish?
Do you not get tired?
Do you not get bored?
To tarry so hard but with naught as reward.
I love thee, my goldfish,
So please, do not scold, fish,
When I pledge my love, for to have and to hold, fish.
I gift you this poem,
My heart to contain.
For in minutes, I know, you'll forget me again.
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03:09 pm
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LJ Friends graphs
Via emily_shore - foxfirefey has made a very cool tool that produces graphs of your friends network. I've got this running, so if anybody would like one made, let me know.
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10:12 pm
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April Fools Day
There have been some quite good April Fools stories up on Slashdot.org today - though I think what's even more striking is how many of the real stories look like they're fake:
Yeast-Powered Fuel Cell Feeds On Human Blood
Hints of a Link Between Autism and Vinyl Flooring
Cold War Standoff Over ISS Toilet
Volunteers Simulate Mission To Mars (an exerpt: Six volunteers have climbed into a small metal capsule in Moscow as part of a three-month experiment meant to simulate a voyage to Mars. The crew — a German engineer, a French airline pilot, and four Russians — will spend the next 105 days living in a minimally furnished facility erected in a hangar on the outskirts of the Russian capital. [...] Scientists will keep a constant vigil on the team via cameras erected in each of the facility's three modules. Those who survive more than 100 days will earn a $20,000 reward.)
NASA In Colbert Conundrum Over Space Station
There were more I was going to post, but then I realised they were April Fools jokes... :-(
Interview With the Author of "Mastering Cat"
Online Banking Customers Migrating To Lynx
To those interested, a follow up to rfc1149: rfc5514 gives a method for IPv6 over social networking. I now want to go and find the named facebook app (it's not going to exist, is it?).
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10:57 pm
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Watchmen
( Spoilers abound )
ETA: Link stolen from tektotheriggen - a recording from an aborted attempt at a Watchmen cartoon in the 1980s...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
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04:31 pm
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LLVMDC
Watching a couple of compiler writers giving a talk on their subject to a very small audience is very sweet. I think they might be worse than mathematicians. I want to give them a hug.
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04:39 pm
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Thoughts thought upon tracking a breadmaker
Whilst tracking my breadmaker (which departed Glenrothes at 11:57 this morning) it occurred to me: they should have little cameras in the delivery trucks, so not only can we follow the progress with little status messages, we can actually follow the progress directly (also with GPS feed). Get annoyed with traffic jams and bad weather! Now, it's not just a purchase, it's an adventure! Like those things on Sesame street where they would interview the loaf of bread, but for real. If ever there was something to stimulate the economy, this is surely it.
Current Location: I think somewhere around Bolton by now, probably on the M6.
Current Mood:  chipper
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02:52 pm
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When the blacksmith courted me, when he tore away my love
List of books via deepbluemermaid - highlight ones read, undeline ones loved (this was specified as opposed to merely liked) and italicise those which you intend to read.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible - various authors
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare [well, I've read quite a few of the plays and sonnets, but definitely not all!]
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows– Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (representing the proportion of Anna Karenina that I've read...)
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold [I started this, and didn't like it]
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (I really should finish it at some point)
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
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12:20 pm
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They tell of one who tires of all
Think I've pulled my back somehow. Quite painful. No idea how I did it - my dad's always had back problems, so I'm generally very careful about lifting things in the correct way and whatnot.
Oh well, I imagine it will go away.
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09:15 am
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Did you try the doorbell?
http://xkcd.com/530/
This has to be one of my favourite XKCDs in quite a while.
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07:41 am
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snow
As a partial compensation for today being back-to-work day, I awake to a blanket of white covering Cheltenham.
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07:45 pm
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Merry Christmas from Mr. House
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08:05 pm
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In time, I have come to think of you as 'people I've met'
Exciting updates on my life #184:
I have fingerless gloves for typing in. Now only the ends of my fingers get cold.
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02:33 am
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Lines writ after Taruithorn Fireworks
Set to the tune of 'Invisible Touch' by Genesis
Well I've been sleeping, sleeping all through the night
Who would have thought I'd wake up to find a bite?
But now I know, I've got this latent lycanthropy
Want to chase everything I see
I hear the wolves, they're howling, howling for me
I seem to have a metaphysical affliction
I see the moon, and slip right out of my skin
I'm trying to fight my humanflesh addiction
Show me a vein, and I just want to tuck in...
Was just a pleb, I thought my friends were the same
But now they're scared, and I'm playing a different game
Cause now I know, that there's this monster inside of me
Want to eat everything I see
And now it seems, they're hunting, they're hunting for me
I find I have some lunar based reaction
I'm getting hairy, where I've never had hair before
Just trying to get me some decent biting action
But there's some fool who's left a plant at the door
It's going wrong, they heard me move in the night
My aura's tainted, I think I'm in for a fight
Cause now they know, that I've been eyeing them up with glee
Thinking which shall I have for tea?
I hear the shouts: they're calling, calling for me
Just cause I have this jugular fixation
It's just the moon, it takes control of my brain
It's not my fault, just natural predation
This need to bite you, over and over again...
Erm... apologies. Just in general.
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04:23 pm
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The magical multi-functional widget emporium?
So, I actually got around to calling the helpline today, and the upshot is that, as soon as I can actually find my national insurance card, I need to register as self-employed. One of the questions is asking for the name of my business. So, anybody have any cunning suggestions for what I should be called? I'll be doing largely software engineering for the biodiversity community.
All suggestions considered!
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08:27 am
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Retroactive transexualism
This question arose out of a discussion about bugs on facebook. We were discussing whether, if one changes one's sex on facebook, status messages from prior to the change should be altered to reflect the new status. That is, should a sex change be applied retroactively. My feeling was that it shouldn't, in line with most changes of this sort - if I change my name, I would still refer to my older self as my old name, etc. and I think that this is the legal perspective. However, the chap I was talking to suggested that he thought those he knew who'd gone through the change would prefer it to be taken retroactively, which perhaps does make sense if it's seen more as a legal acceptance after the fact of something which was already the case.
A lot of people on here have a lot more exerience and knowledge about issues like this, however, so I thought I'd ask and see what your views are.
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