Author: Rory

Via, Simon Willison, a fully interactive map of Switzerland. This sort of server interaction without page reload is shaping up to be the big web technology of 2005. A few months ago I saw my first example, a simple search-term predictor for someone’s weblog (unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it). Now we have Google Suggest, Gmail, and now this map. PHP.net recently added a similar search-term predictor to their PHP function-list search. This is a fairly major step in the evolution of web-based applications. Expect to see the same technology utilised by Amazon and Ebay by the end of this year.

While this advice might not be the most widely-applicable I think it’s worth giving anyway: if you plan to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a single sitting it might be a good idea to start before 8PM.

No guarantee I’ll do part two but… I’ll start with Funniest Fark Headline of the Year:

First alternate team of reindeer: "Dasher, Conner, Cupid, Vixen, Rudolph, Blitzen, Slayer, Pikachu and Dakota" Still no cure for Prancer.

Story here

Well it’s 2am on Christmas day and the Intarweb seems to have stopped, except for the mysterious "Rosalinde", an oddly Shakespearean spambot that seems rather fond of one of my throwaway addresses right now. Given that I don’t recall ever having slept on Christmas Eve I’ll need to find something to do for the next seven hours, after which time gravity and exaustion will probably conspire to cause me to beat myself to death with my new clubs. Anywho, happy merry Christmas.

Exams finished today. Five exams totalled five hours over the last seven days. I had to hang around for the first hour of each before they’d let me leave. I went into today’s needing (estimated) 0% to get a first overall; I think I did considerably better than that. I had forgotten what it’s like to go into an exam with no concern other than for the early hour at which I was forced to get up ("up at which I was forced to get"?)

Now I can get back (as if I had ever left) to the more important matters. I’ve broken seven personal records today, including getting the 441 pattern to the point that I can claim to do it indefinitely. I set that point at 100 catches, after which drops can be attributed to tiredness. Next stop, the Mills mess.

Since I have no exams worth studying for I’ve been doing a lot of juggling recently. You know the drill: five minutes failing to qualify a five-ball cascade, give up, go watch the new Thomas Dietz video. Anyway I figured it’d be worth keeping track of what I’ve managed to do. Since information wants to be free, this particular information is in its own subsection of SoylentRed. Gentlemen, behold: an incomplete list of my juggling patterns, with approximate records. Note especially the entry under "Six-ball patterns". That’s right.

There are now Letters after my name. The Letters are BSc, and they do not stand for Bronze Swimming Certificate. This new development is a result of a rather long and camera-ful day yesterday at the centre of which was a ceremony of a length that us atheists aren’t generally used to. I tend to expect at least a good movie if I sit still and quite for that long.

I finally managed to juggle five balls yesterday beyond the point of a "qualify" (ie. two catches per prop). I’ve been on the verge of this for weeks, having managed nine catches in Tralee. Of course I promptly managed to go one better and hit eleven catches, which I found amusing. If only I hadn’t wasted all of that time learning three ball tricks.

No other blog I read has used that headline yet. None of them. It’s amazing. Anyway, Thunderbird 1.0 is out. Reclaim your inbox.

I don’t know what the state of shopping is like in other places around the world but going by our local Tesco the future is self-service. Scan your goods, swipe your privacy-invading personal-identifcation extra-value consumer-tracking loyalty card, find your only note crisp enough to feed into the machine (alternatively swipe your other consumer-tracking card; the flexible, friendly one) and go on your way. The brilliance is that most people ’round these parts are afraid of technology so there’s never a queue.